A Feast of Desecration and Distortion
The curtain veiled by Distortion was ripped away, and Simon was forced to face an ugly reality.
The department pillars where students scored points by planting throwing daggers — in truth, human beings hung from them. Twisted and warped as though three-dimensional people had been flattened into sheets of two-dimensional paper, they coiled around the pillars, wailing in agony.
AAAAAAAARGH!
AAAAAAAACK!
Spectators, servants, necromancer agents, and seven people whose clothing had been mangled beyond recognition — all of them, drenched in blood from the flying daggers, were shrieking.
"……!" Simon stared down at the dagger in his hand. It was shaped like a blood-red cross.
What is this?
His vision bled red. The giggling of students lining up their throws rang through the air like a haunted valley. Every time a dagger buried itself in the tip of a pillar, the crowd erupted into a great swell of cheers.
"Aim properly, dammit!"
"Hit it! Hit it!"
Gyahaha-ha-ha-ha!
Gyahaha-ha-ha!
His ears buzzed, and a splitting headache clamped down on him. Simon staggered and clutched his forehead.
Gyahaha!
Hahahahahaha!
AAAAAAAACK!
"Hit it! Hit it!"
"Stop it! GHHHAAAAAAH!"
Laughter and screams crossed and tangled at his ears.
"One more!"
Shwaaaaak! Just then, another red dagger came flying in to strike a pillar. Simon's eyes went bloodshot. His body moved before reason could catch up — he leapt into the air and caught the incoming crimson dagger with his bare hand. His palm tore open, blood bursting from the wound. But he bit down on his lip and clenched the dagger all the more fiercely. The Curse Department student who had thrown it went wide-eyed.
"Hey, you didn't have to go that far."
Simon's eyes rolled back with fury.
"STOOOOOP!"
BOOM! BOOM! The world snapped back into place. At Simon's colossal roar, everyone in the stadium who had been moving without a breath's pause froze for an instant.
"What's his problem?"
"Is he insane?"
The students brushed it off and kept moving. One male student stepped onto Jet-Black and leapt skyward, raising his dagger to drive it straight into a pillar.
"Yes! One more point—!"
THWACK!
Before anyone realized it, Simon's body — lunging like a bolt of lightning, a dark-blue glint spilling from his eyes — was gripping the male student's head. As the boy rolled his eyes upward, he saw the pitch-black monster exhaling on him.
FWOOOOOOM! Simon hurled him away, dunking him into the water, then planted himself before the pillar and raised both arms high.
"Stop it! Just stop already!"
But the students did not stop.
"What is that? Some new tactic?"
"Ignore him and throw!"
Crunch. Simon bit his lip until it bled.
A rage-laced roar rang across the entire arena. And Deimos, the summon waiting at the water's edge, responded to his will — its maw gaping wide, it fired a surging shell of water straight at the giant scoreboard.
⟨ Ocean Current Cannon ⟩
KWAAAAAAAM—! With a crackling groan, the enormous scoreboard began to collapse. Only then did the students gape at Simon, mouths hanging open.
"D-damage to the arena?"
"Has he seriously lost his mind?"
Murmur murmur murmur! Only now did the watching referees and safety personnel rush onto the field.
"Student! What is the meaning of this?"
Simon shouted at them. "We have to halt the match right now and get everyone out of here!"
"What did you say?"
"There is a fanatic inside this arena!"
The safety officers' expressions warped into something grotesque. "……A fanatic?" "Haah, this is Roke Island, student. Drop the nonsense and just—"
Simon, at last unable to contain the fury boiling up to the crown of his head, whipped around and roared.
"EVER KIRE!"
BOOM! BOOM! His cry sent ripples surging across the pool.
"Why are you doing this?! Come out this instant!"
"Student!"
The safety officers' faces were turning ugly now. The students glared at Simon as though he'd gone completely mad, and the crowd grumbled about the match so abruptly cut short.
Tss! Tss! Magic circles unfurled at the officers' fingertips. "Keep this up, and Student Council President or not, we'll have no choice but to drag you out by force." "Come along quietly."
Simon exhaled ragged breaths, his bangs trembling as he glared back at them.
Hoooo—
These were men who had fought through countless battles in their prime, yet at the sheer force of will radiating from a mere eighteen-year-old boy, they flinched despite themselves. All the more rattled for it, they went beyond merely subduing a rampaging student — they layered their magic circles with genuinely potent curses.
"Hands in the air, NOW!"
"Put your hands up!"
Simon ground his teeth. The situation was spiraling out of control.
I moved too rashly. Only now, as his overheated head cooled, did a measure of reason return. His body had acted on its own the moment he thought of saving the people turned into pillars — but no one would blindly believe a story like that, dropped on them out of nowhere.
What's the best play? How do I make them believe me and get everyone evacuated? Simon's mind spun taut. Dozens of simulations ran in parallel, sketching out one ideal scenario after another — and not a single one was a sure thing.
If this keeps up—!
"We're taking you down."
Just as the safety officers moved to loose their curses—
KWAAAAAAAM—!
An explosion tore out from the empty spectator stands. Simon's head, the officers', the students', and the crowd's all whipped around in unison. Pure-white blasts were erupting one after another.
"A fanatic!"
A girl's cry rang out. Simon's eyes flew wide.
Lethe!
"A fanatic really has appeared! Run!"
Along with her astonishingly convincing cry, another white explosion burst open before everyone's eyes.
Thud. A student in the arena, his expression gone blank, let the dagger slip from his fingers. Anyone could see it. This was Divinity.
"Haah! Haahk! Hooohk!"
"GYAAAAAAAAAH!"
"It's really a fanatic!"
"Save me!"
"I said stop pushing!"
The arena descended into pandemonium in an instant. Spectators screamed and stampeded for the exits. Even the safety officers who had been leveling their curses at Simon had no choice but to break off and move to hunt the fanatic and control the crowd.
Haah. Feeling his legs go weak beneath him, Simon sank into a crouch on his platform. Ahead, he could see Lethe up on her tiptoes, flashing hand signals his way before breaking into a run toward him.
……That was the single best call you could have made, Lethe. For her to cast holy magic herself and then scream that a fanatic had appeared — clever as ever. And he was grateful beyond words that she had trusted him.
Simon rose to his feet and stared straight ahead. Somewhere in this arena, Ever Kire is—
Shaaaaaaa—! The water in the arena began draining at a furious pace. Simon's body dropped in an instant, his feet landing on the arena floor. The sky was drowning in crimson blood, and the clouds had been crushed into grotesque shapes.
KUNG!
KU-UNG! Every gate of the arena slammed shut. The fleeing spectators hammered on the sealed doors, screaming in raw terror — but it was no use.
Face frozen solid, Simon stared dead ahead.
Glub—
At the very center of the arena. From the eyes and mouth of the Valkeje statue, where fresh water had once poured down like a waterfall — tears of blood began to flow.
Gurrrrrrr— The wine-red liquid soaked the statue crimson and trickled down in long streams, pooling across the arena floor. Simon drew up his Jet-Black and readied himself.
Drip. Drip. The vivid blood spilling across the floor gathered into a puddle. The puddle rippled and swayed as though it were alive. And from within it — gurrrrrr— something was surging upward.
"……!"
It was a cross lacquered in red. The instrument of death used to execute heretics in the Holy Federation. And a woman hung upon that cross.
No way.
The woman hung there of her own will, her body entwined in horrific thorn vines.
"Aaah! Ah!" Every time the naked woman thrashed in agony, the thorns gouged brutally into her flesh. The wounds ran deep enough to bare bone and organs, blood pouring from her in sheets. Yet before long the injuries would pale and knit closed — and she would writhe again, tearing herself open on the thorns once more.
"O Goddess!" However many wounds piled upon wounds, she never once stopped her self-mutilation. Eyes rolled back to show only whites, a stiff tongue jutting up toward the sky, an ocean of blood gushing from her body.
"O Goddess, I beseech Thee — forgive this sinner her sins!" Eyes glazed with rapture, she howled between ragged gasps. "The sinner must be punished! The sinner must be punished! More! More! More pain!"
To the people of the Dark Alliance, there could be no sight more horrifying than this.
"A-Aaagh!" Extreme grotesquerie. A scene straight out of a nightmare. Some people retched where they stood. Even Simon could barely hold on to his sanity. It was as though the sight itself were assaulting his mind.
"Simon!"
Lethe had leapt into the arena and was standing at his side. "You all right, y'know?"
"Yeah. But that thing—"
"Yep."
Lethe's brow knotted. "Pretty sure that's Ever Kire all right."
She stared with loathing at the woman thrashing upon the cross. "What the hell is that! Even blasphemy has its limits, y'know!"
Simon nodded. No matter how you looked at her, the woman's mind was anything but sound.
"It is far too late already." Ever Kire's hollow, emotionless pupils — still flailing in agony upon the cross — swung toward Simon and Lethe. The corners of her mouth tore open grotesquely, stretching beyond any range a human face should allow.
"Every last preparation is complete."
"Get out of here! Student!" Two safety officers dove into the arena and hurled their curses — but before the spells could touch Ever Kire's body, they slammed into something unseen and scattered harmlessly.
"……!"
"She's bound to that cross, isn't she? How? What blocked them?"
Ever Kire laughed, dark and sinister. Her long, seaweed-like hair swayed side to side, deepening the horror.
"Now is the hour of our farewell."
Keeeeeeeeeee—! Suddenly, countless magic formulas began activating across every inch of the arena. Simon sensed it immediately — a wide-area holy magic formula that turned the entire stadium into its casting ground.
"Goodbye."
Tick— With the sound of something snapping, the holy magic activated.
The light vanished from the security officers' eyes, and they crumpled where they stood like puppets with cut strings. The Kizen students running to the rescue rolled back their eyes as well and, unable to check their own momentum, pitched face-first onto the ground. Thud! Thud! The people fleeing the stands — KUNG!whump. — the people pounding and wailing before the sealed gates. Every last one of them lost consciousness.
"Very good."
Ever Kire rippled her body with a hideous cackle. Every time the thorns stabbed into her flesh, she only laughed all the more strangely, as though satisfied.
"……You." The head of Ever Kire — who had been savoring her own suffering as divine punishment — lowered. Simon, whom they had all believed collapsed, was staggering back to his feet.
"You, of all people — I will never forgive."
"Oh-ho." The fanatic hanging on the red cross creaked, tilting her head at a grotesque angle. "Twice now you have startled me. How is it that you can still move?"
"Looks to me like a formula that converts standby mana into a holy shock to drop necromancers in their tracks, y'know."
Flap! Lethe flung off her robe. Her whole body was already clad in the pristine white uniform of Epnel. "No way something like that works on this one, though, don't ya think. Fanatic."
"Saintess of the Stars." The fanatic on the cross snickered. "Why would the daughter closest to the Goddess turn her back on the Goddess's will? Necromancers must be wiped from this world to the very last. So too must the common folk who serve them. That is the will of the great Goddess."
Lethe's eyes hardened. "Don't you dare tailor the will of God to suit yourself."
"Heh heh heh."
Shrrrrrk! The thorn vines pinning Ever Kire to the cross came undone. She plummeted from a height of eight stories and smashed face-down onto the floor. Something cracked; something pulped. And yet she was pushing herself upright in a twisted, inhuman shape.
"Epnel is the one distorting the Goddess's will." She spread her arms wide. "I am the one and only existence truly chosen by the Goddess!"
Her body was enveloped in white light and reshaped itself into the form of a garment. Lethe's watching eyes flew wide open.
"How can you of all people—!"
A mere fanatic was wearing the Holy Saintly Robe — the sacred raiment granted only to half-divine Saintesses.
"Care to say hello?" She clamped both hands over her own abdomen and pulled it wide open. Within her belly gaped a pitch-black void — and out of it flowed a long, pale hand.
"That's—!" Simon, finally snapping back to himself, went rigid. As Ever Kire took the long hand and drew it gently out of her stomach, faded golden hair spilled into view — then eyes stitched shut with surgical thread, and a face covered in burn scars.
"The Saintess of the Harvest!"
While Simon and Lethe were still reeling from the shock, Ever Kire smirked and, seizing the woman's limp hand, waved it at the two of them.
"Hellooo~ hellooo~ it's been ages, everyone. I'm the Saintess of the Harvest, you see..."
KEEE-BOOOOM! From the right, Simon's Bone Spear; from the left, Lethe's La Escrime — both slammed against the barrier of divinity. Sparks of fury flashed in the two of their eyes.
"And here I thought you wouldn't even let me finish the greeting." So saying, Ever Kire spread both arms wide.
"Then — begin!"
Shaaaaaaa!
Shaaaaaaa! The two flinched and looked down at their feet. Wheat was rising from the arena floor. Not just the floor — golden wheat was sprouting across the walls, the stands, everywhere the eye could reach.
"I, Ever Kire — the great Goddess's one and only servant, her one and only apostle, the Saintess of the Harvest!" Her mouth split open like a monster's maw.
"A holy war for thee, and for thee alone, shall I now prepare!"
The feast of desecration and distortion had begun.