Chapter 190

The moment I stepped outside, a blue light glittered far off, and several buildings sank beneath ice.

The blast had not drawn only me into the open. The others staying at the inn I had just left came out to see what was happening, and from the houses some emerged already carrying weapons. This being the world it was, a good number of them wore blades and armor besides. I cut between them and walked toward the most violent part of town.

It was a thinly settled place—hardly a building stood taller than three stories—but there were plenty of people. An acrid reek of burning hung in the air, and faint through it ran the smell of iron.

The heart of the city. The place where a building stood wrapped in barbed wire. There, soldiers and townspeople were fighting.

Common sense says that when soldiers fight citizens, the soldiers ought to cut them down without contest. Not here. A great many of these people carried real force of their own, and that force was nothing so simple as swinging clubs. Some held swords or bludgeons; some planted themselves in front with shields to hold the line, while behind them others hurled powerful magic.

If the citizens looked like a war band stepped straight out of a fantasy, the army facing them looked like something out of steampunk, armed with weapons that ran on clockwork—an army, if anything, from an age further along.

Strange. Ask me what was strange, and it was this: not one person on the citizens' side was using clockwork. Anyone who was not truly destitute used clockwork machines. Think of the clockwork that had suddenly begun killing people aboard the airship, and the shape of it came clear enough. For some reason, they could no longer be used.

While I was still fitting the situation together piece by piece, I reached the fighting. My head isn't good for this sort of thing. Reality lands before I have properly understood a thing.

"Aaaaagh!"

Beside me, a man cooked halfway through by fire was howling. On a battlefield where magic flies, life vanishes in every manner of way. At least he had not died on the spot. That was fortunate.

I crouched beside him and waited until the screaming thinned—until pain had muddled his mind and he had almost no strength left to move. I held on until he reached the point of having to clutch even a rotten rope, and then I asked.

"Do you want to live?"

He mumbled that he did. He had lost too much strength for it to come out as a proper sound, but I could make it out. So I recited the words of the contract.

Set beside what I had just asked, it was strange. I ask whether he wants to live, then tell him I am giving him myself. Anyone in his right mind would have demanded to know what on earth I was saying.

But in a moment like this? Whatever it is, you have to grab at straw, don't you?

Crack.

Soon his whole body hardened like porcelain and split away, and blue skin showed from within. Oh. He really had been dying. When limbs are blown off, or with any reasonably grave illness, it has always ended in white skin.

Anyway, the man got to his feet with a dumbstruck face. I rose as well, and said this to him.

"Do whatever you want."

Then I moved on to the next.

Of those who had watched the man come back to life, the ones who were hurt themselves came first. I recited the contract. Their wounds closed. And the more people saw me healing, the more of them came running, one after another, begging me to save them.

Hehe.

"That bitch is healing people! Kill her!"

Someone bellowed it from where the soldiers stood. I looked that way and saw a soldier in a brass exoskeleton coming toward me, weapon raised.

The Harvesters moved to block them, faces grave.

Become a Harvester, and every function rises across the board. Even the functions that spend mana grow. People I had already struck down return to the field, stronger. Their wits sharpen too, which is to say they find the weak points a little more cleanly.

Once the balance of strength shifted, the soldiers began to give ground. The wounded became Harvesters and ran back out to fight. One person's fortune is another's misfortune. To seize me—who must have looked, at a glance, like a healer—heavy brass armor vented blue mana, lifted into the air, and flew this way.

Unfortunately for them, every attack ended in failure. The moment they rose, magic struck from every side and dropped them to the ground. The shape of the battle had changed. The soldiers were trying to kill me. The citizens were trying to keep me alive.

As the soldiers' corpses began to pile, I went to a soldier this time: one dying, trapped inside crushed brass armor. His half-burst side was packed with ruined clockwork. A wound it would not have been strange to die of on the spot. I approached him and recited the contract.

In that instant, everything around us went quiet.

"Why...?"

The dying soldier asked me. So I told him.

"Because you're dying."

I trusted he would not refuse to become a Harvester. And he answered that trust.

His whole body turned to porcelain. The brass armor split, and a blue-skinned man burst free, like something being born from an egg.

"From now on, do whatever you wish."

At that, he drove his head into the ground. In plainer words, he prostrated himself.

"I will follow you."

Something about it reeked of religion. Worse, it spread in an instant. One by ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠one, the people around me bowed toward me.

No—isn't it strange for some cult to start forming when I don't even want one? Isn't the normal thing here to say thank you, and praise my moral character? Or the ungrateful sort—thanks for the healing, now die? There is no brainwashing built into making someone a Harvester!

"Bell? This... what is this..."

I turned. A little way off stood Victoria, and near her Polaris was shaking, his hand clenched on the hem of her clothes.

But Victoria—why was she wearing the face of someone for whom the thing that had to come had finally come? A face that said worshipping me was only natural? Excuse me. Have you forgotten the moment you and I first met? You were a fish monster well over seven meters long, weren't you?

Just now the surroundings were very still. Aside from a voice in the barbed-wire fort in the distance, screaming itself hoarse to kill that woman, it was quiet to an unnatural degree. As if there had never been a fight at all, they had stopped and bowed their heads toward me.

No... Well. I'll simply make use of it, for now. Right now I need more Harvesters. Whoever is giving the order to attack from that place is unlikely to be the one who set all of this in motion. Which means I need still more of them. If the clockwork machines turn enemy, we will probably be the ones at a disadvantage. Even just to grasp the situation, I need more eyes.

"Bring me the wounded."

Said like that, the number of people worshipping me would probably grow—but whether they revered me afterward or not, I could cast them off later.

The moment I finished speaking, they brought people who were badly hurt and dying. As the wounded stacked up before me, one and then another, I went to them and recited the contract.

It being something close to a civil war, a few among them were people I had already made into Harvesters. Those, I left to die. Once you have become a Harvester, you cannot be healed a second time.

Becoming a Harvester is throwing a cup called a person into a puddle called me. When I fill that cup, a Harvester is what you are. It is irreversible. What has gone in once cannot be put in again.

Take it out and put it back? Why? Why should I hand over warmth that has already come into my hands? I would sooner make the next Harvester.

Anyway—if I ignored the ones who were already Harvesters, people would see that I was not something worth worshipping.

That was when it happened.

A faint thread of light shot out from behind a building and grazed the place where I stood. In that instant, a memory from the Harvester I had just gained flashed.

And the thing called Craft Nine was the weapon that had fired a beam at the airship.

Ah.

A very thin thread of light lanced from a building's wall, passed through the place where Bell stood, and struck the building opposite.

In the moment people were still wondering what that light was—

"Everyone, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠get clear!"

The man who had been a soldier at Bell's side shouted it as he caught her in his arms and hurled his body aside.

Most of those present, Victoria among them, froze where they stood, not understanding what ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he meant. A few moved. Those who knew what the phenomenon was, like the soldier wrapped around Bell; those who felt it in the gut and dodged before they thought; and someone like Polaris, who had been gripping Victoria's clothes from the start because he wanted to be anywhere but here—they could move. They seized what was precious to them and flung themselves to the far side of the light.

And then—

Fwaaaaaah—!

A thick pillar of light took the place of the faint line, and in the same instant tremendous heat scorched the air along its path. Dozens of people standing there melted in the beam and vanished into vapor.

Polaris, who had caught Victoria and hauled her backward, took that wave of heat across his back.

The weapon called Craft Nine had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been made to face enormous things—flying fortresses, aerial battleships, giant monsters of the sky. Fire something like that down a city street, and what happens?

The surplus force did not merely evaporate every object in its path. Air heated in a heartbeat expanded and birthed a shockwave, dealing a second wave of harm. But the attack itself was a simple beam. The light was gone almost at once, leaving only the corridor it had pierced, heat-haze rising from it.

Because Polaris had caught Victoria by the upper body, drawn her behind him, and held her there, she was spared a killing wound. When the strength embracing her faded, she got to her feet, and a burning hell filled her eyes.

She looked to Polaris beside her, and a groan escaped her before she could stop it. His back was severely burned, most of his hair scorched away, and he was dying. Without some emergency treatment, he would not last.

Thinking that, Victoria searched for Bell without quite meaning to, hoping that if it was Bell, she would heal him somehow.

Through ground that had boiled up on every side, through blackened corpses and people dying of their burns, Victoria found the one she was looking for.

More precisely, she found what had been that person.

A pure white hand, and the hem of a garment. Bell's hand. But no more flesh remained than that. Char black ran to the elbow, and past it white bone lay bare. Even that was bubbling, melting away.

The moment she understood what it meant—

"Aaaaaaaaaah!"

Victoria roared.

Now. Let us look at the power Victoria possesses.

She commands water.

Filled with rage, half out of her reason, she dragged up every scrap of strength. And this was a port city. Water is everywhere.

As if answering Victoria's fury, not only the moisture in the air but the seawater around the harbor was hauled upward, straight over her. Streams reached in from every direction and massed into a single body above her head. Clump upon clump, the water gradually filled the sky, until at last the sky itself was changing into a surface of water. Even then it did not stop. It drew in the sea lying far off and kept on swelling.

At last the little port city lay, quite literally, upon the seabed.

Deep beneath the sea. In the middle of an abyss no single light could reach. The girl who had made a prison of desperate hatred—swearing she would not leave a single enemy alive—drew a deep breath, and let it out.

Then, her face set with resolve, Victoria Vett began to strike her enemies down.

Just as she once had, at the Great Serpent's forward base.