Bound for Holy War
“Your breathing suddenly turned ragged—are you quite all right?”
“I'm fine…”
In any case, hearing that his comrades were lending him their strength, a smile spread across Shiva's lips. The larger this one grew, the fewer brothers and sisters would come to harm.
“Sister Alana must be pleased.”
“You mean the nun who leads the Purification Volunteer Corps?”
“Not the leader, no, but she does hold a high position.”
Alan recalled the sister. Her muscles looked ready to tear straight through her black habit, and her ferocious face left quite an impression.
“She did seem rather formidable.”
“That would be because she carries the blood of both orc and dwarf. From what I understand, she takes after her mother in build and after her father in her brown skin.”
“A hybrid of two species—the physical performance must be tremendous.”
Then again, it probably took that much to keep criminals in line.
The next day, a line of grim-black cars led by Sister Alana appeared near the warehouse.
Inquiries had revealed that Alan could obtain official identification—but it would take a full week. Applying for a passport on top of that would easily stretch to twice as long.
For that reason, Alan decided to cross the border disguised as a member of the Purification Volunteer Corps.
Sister Alana stepped down from her car and clasped hands with Taylor.
“Thank you for your help. The world only becomes worth living in when there are righteous souls like you, Senior.”
“Ha, ha, ha.”
Taylor laughed awkwardly. Up close, the sister's bulk was no joke—she was nearly his own size, and his frame had been swollen through extensive modification.
“And my thanks to that young Brother of yours as well.”
“Hup!”
A shriek rang out the moment Sister Alana winked. It hadn't come from Alan—it came from the corps members boarding the cars nearby.
When Alan opened the car door, a familiar face looked back at him.
“Hello.”
Kaka, the orc who had been captured while tailing Novak, scrunched up his face.
“Goddammit.”
Gary, the maggot who'd been hooked by Taylor's fishing line back in the Labyrinth, swallowed hard.
“H-hello.”
“It's good to see you living for the world. You're far better off than before, aren't you?”
“…”
It was that good—he couldn't manage so much as a reply.
With the greetings concluded, Alan claimed the corner of the troop transport for himself and began tinkering with his magic devices.
The corps member Alan had booted from his seat started to grumble, took one hit from Panther, and fell silent. That quiet didn't last long before the members struck up a conversation among themselves.
“Let's bag as many as we can alive.”
“Yeah. We can't hog all this goodness to ourselves.”
There was tremendous resolve in their tone.
— Kamiro (1) · End —
— Kamiro (2) —
At the thunder rolling in from outside, Alan turned his gaze out the window. Fighters and transports stood parked in neat rows—it looked like an air force base some distance from the city.
Every time a plane passed, it sounded like an approaching storm. Jet engines burned magic stones and fossil fuel side by side, and so were never free of noise.
Outside the hangar, an air force commander who had been waiting fell into conversation with Sister Alana.
The seat Alan occupied had a coin-sized window punched into it, letting him observe the outside. And none of the corps members had the nerve to say a single word to the man sitting in such a prime spot.
“They're smiling at each other. So the talks with city hall are already finished.”
“It pays to stockpile favors at times like this.”
The rat-faced Gary chimed in from beside him. And he was right—the Mother Church was the kind of religion it paid to be friendly with.
The Love Hospital alone was an enormous facility, and since it charged only the minimum for treatment, the citizens' support for the church ran deep.
“Shall we have a listen to what they're discussing?”
When Alan signaled the spider clinging to the outside of the car, a small antenna sprang from its abdomen.
“Thank you for your assistance.”
“You people do good work. Of course we should help.”
The commander was quite cordial.
“And the cars in the back…?”
“Those are souls undertaking penance to cleanse body and mind.”
“Ah, so they're paying off their debts that way, are they? Good riddance—feeding them on taxes was a waste anyway.”
The commander nodded as if he understood. It meant the soldiers were managed separately, but he showed no intention whatsoever of standing in the way.
Meanwhile, the soldiers gathered a little distance off muttered among themselves, pointing at the cars.
“Aren't those the trash? Getting recycled?”
“The Mother Church folks will handle it. They swapped out their Brain Expansion Devices, so they've got more than enough means of control.”
“And if they step out of line—boom!”
Alan had configured the speakers, so their voices carried into the cars as well. Kaka's green skin trembled bluish—whether from fear or fury, there was no telling. Gary, on the other hand, wore the expression of a man watching the world work exactly as expected.
Ordinarily the corps members would have spewed every insult they knew at the soldiers, but with Alan beside them, the entire corps held its silence. Judging by his handiwork he was unmistakably a magitech engineer, yet something about him stirred an inexplicable unease.
“The device limits their mana, but the structure doesn't actually explode.”
“Really?”
“Yes. The Mother Church people are quite kind. Though why they'd give up such an efficient means, I can't fathom.”
“…”
He was speaking of explosions as casually as ever. While they talked, the car was loaded wholesale into a transport plane. The transport was so enormous that several cars fit inside with room to spare.
In the meantime, Alan tended to his magic devices while Gary watched from beside him.
“That fun, huh? I'm watching you fiddle with that thing out of sheer boredom, and I don't understand a damn bit of it.”
“Magicware and magic devices are interest itself. Repair, modification, reinforcement—the list of things to do never ends.”
“Then how about reinforcing mi—urk!”
Box's pincer arm stretched out long and snatched Gary by the throat. No matter how hard he clawed at it with both hands, it wouldn't budge an inch.
The moment Gary's face turned deathly pale, Alan spoke.
“That's enough.”
“Kgh!”
At its master's word, Box released its grip, and Gary gulped down the oxygen he'd been lacking, mouth stretched wide. Once Gary's condition settled, Alan said,
“It seems he felt your remark crossed a line, Gary.”
“What? Aren't you supposed to have them under perfect control, being their master?”
“I prefer freedom to restraint.”
“And what'll you do if they stage a rebellion?”
The moment Gary's words spread to those around, Box's body jolted upright and its toad-like camera eyes shook violently left and right.
Beeeeep!
“He says he'll do no such thing. Oh, and clear it with Sister Alana before asking for any reinforcement.”
“You'd actually do it?”
“The stronger all of you become, the less the priests get hurt, after all.”
“…”
And so the transport climbed into the sky. The criminals wearing the name of volunteers had never even been screened. The soldiers treated them outright as dead men—or as objects.
Alan manipulated the spider to open the door that only unlocked from the outside. The priests raised their fists, then quietly lowered them at the sight of Alan's face.
Taylor, seated in a small chair bolted to the wall, raised a hand.
“Bored?”
“No.”
As Alan said so, lifting his magic device, Taylor nodded.
“Figures. No time for it, huh.”
“Why is the Sister lying down?”
When Alan pointed at Sister Alana dozing in the corner with her eyes closed, Shiva spoke up.
“Allow me to explain that. It is a holy art called the Dream Temple. Just as the name suggests, it lets one converse with one's brothers and sisters within dreams.”
“Impressive.”
“Though if the distance grows too great, only fragmentary meaning gets through.”
“Even so, it must be extraordinarily useful. Unlike ordinary communications, there's no risk of interception, after all.”
It was no wonder Sister Alana was spreading her holy art. If the cartel tapped this side's communications, the whole point of support would collapse. Since time immemorial, the difference between facing a hawk knowingly and facing one blind had always been stark.
“And who is she connecting with?”
“A High Priest or Priest overseeing Kamiro, most likely. Only those of that rank can spread the holy art in the first place.”
The Mother Church's clerical hierarchy was simple: High Priests, Priests, and then monks and nuns—differing only in gender. Rank descended in that order, and even the High Priests and Priests had passed through the monastic and sisterhood stages on their way up.
Put differently, every cleric of the Mother Church was someone capable of combat in one form or another.
Taylor, who had been listening quietly, slid a glance at Shiva.
“Only priests can spread the Dream Temple?”
“Yes.”
“Then he lied to us.”
“Pardon?”
“You said you met Mother in your dreams.”
“Shiva's still spouting that bullshit—no, that nonsense? He hasn't changed one bit.”
Alana, who had just risen from her seat, spat the words out. The moment Shiva heard them, he shut his eyes and began reciting scripture.
“He's been famous for goldbricking since the old days. It got so bad that the Mother Superior once sat Shiva right down in front of her and—”
Shiva's recitation was so thunderous that Alana's voice was drowned out entirely. She snorted at his desperate performance and turned to the matter at hand.
“Apparently every branch in Kamiro took damage from a coordinated enemy assault. For a pack of heretics, they were remarkably well prepared.”
“There's only one organization in Kamiro with the capacity for that. The Electo Cartel.”
They had ruled Kamiro's nights and days alike. Even the drug syndicate working Aromaa was an organization nested under Electo's wing.
“You know them well.”
“I lived in Kamiro once…”
Alana nodded and tapped her temple. Light spewed from her artificial eye, sketching a blue map in the air.
“First, we descend into the country beside Kamiro and move by car. Our destination is a city at the northern edge called Pisto.”
From Pisto, the map began to bleed white. The whiteness spreading inward from the borders crept slowly toward the heart of Kamiro.
“More of our brothers and sisters will come as reinforcements, and those already in Kamiro will rise up as well.”
“I thought we'd be brawling over one city, but it's a whole country? This is an out-and-out war.”
“A holy war.”
Alana fixed her gaze on Taylor and forced out a resolute voice. Her already fearsome face looked all the more terrifying for it.
“It has already begun, so we have no choice but to see it through. Until now, we refrained from all-out war for fear that innocent citizens would suffer for it.”
“And the people of Kamiro? Are they just going to stand and watch?”
“Naturally, righteous volunteers will cooperate from within. However strong we may be, we cannot single-handedly bend a nation.”
We probably could, though. Alan hid the thought and returned his attention to his magic devices. He intended to spend the entire trip this way until they arrived.
From the rooftop of an unfinished building, Alan looked down at the city below. Pisto was small.
Then again, that might only be because Maze City is absurdly large…
Smoke rose from every quarter of the city. The torches the Electo Cartel had flung spread in all directions, and the people and organizations they provoked turned violent in turn.
Gangs of every stripe sprang up and collided, and the fallout landed squarely on the citizens.
The operation would begin shortly. Alan's task was to deter hacking. All he had to do was hold off the mages and Sharks in Electo's employ.
Beep.
When the hour came, Box made a small sound. At the same moment, the spiders positioned on all sides spewed out mana. A barrier for jamming took shape, and Alan pushed his mind inside it.
When he opened his eyes, a dark, cramped room greeted him. Around a small table sat six people, Alan included.
“Who the hell are you?!”
“An enemy? What organization?!”
“What the fuck is this shithole?!”
Alan was the only uninvited guest. But that was all. The other five couldn't so much as lift their backsides from their chairs.
Looking at them, Alan felt a flicker of disappointment. He'd expected the clash to surface some new technique, but the resistance was weaker than he'd imagined.
“I'll be excusing myself, so entertain yourselves as you see fit.”
Sliding a magazine home, Alan handed the revolver to the man nearest him. A fight in a virtual world was a collision of willpower and mana. Unfortunately, the enemies had no capacity to resist, and the muzzle came to rest against their temples.
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!
Five gunshots in rapid succession. No blood spilled, but every one of them had his face slammed into the table.
In reality, direct armed conflict had broken out. The Mother Church's priests and their collaborators stormed Electo's branch in a single blow.
Taylor, formally excluded from the fighting under the pretext of guarding Alan, watched the scene from a rooftop.
“Damn, they're even worse than the stories. Thighs turned to hamburger by gunfire heal up that fast? Going by that recovery speed, those meatheads and holy power are a far better match than I thought.”
“Do you know why that might be, Brother?”
Shiva, assigned the very same task, asked. The answer came from Alan, who had chosen that moment to open his eyes.
“It's thanks to what they implanted in their Brain Expansion Devices, isn't it? I could feel it radiating holy power. Is it a holy relic?”
“Ah—