The Sage Sion wasn't keeping an especially close eye on the Selection
Battle.
Watching a scuffle between Sage candidates who weren't even thatstrong wasn't particularly interesting.
The only things she paid attention to
were when they died and when they left the combat zone.
Since she was ableto track both of those things through the system, she had returned to her base in the capital to relax.
"Wasn't there a better way to do this? If things had gone well, there couldhave been multiple Sages coming out of that group."Sion was lying on a luxurious sofa in her extravagantly decorated room.
Standing in front of her and offering his frank opinion was her attendant,Youichi. He was a friend who had known her since her name had been Shion Ryuuouin.
"Does it bring back bad memories?"
"Honestly, it doesn't feel great." He must have been remembering when they were Sage candidates themselves, judging from the bitter expression onhis face.
"At least they are allowed to choose who they kill. That's better than we
had it."
"And what are you going to do if they all die? We've spent so much time
and effort on them."
"If they are weak enough to be wiped out, there is nothing we can doabout it. Van seemed to have a plan, so at worst, we'll leave things up tohim." The Sage Van, grandson of the Great Sage, had mentioned earlier that creating new Sages would be a simple process.
"Anyway, do you needsomething?"
"It's about the Aggressors. There's been a sudden spike in activity amongthe Angel-types—"
"Oh, sorry, please hold that thought. Someone is trying to go out of bounds"Sion created an image displaying what was happening on the outskirts ofthe designated battle zone.
A number of candidates were heading straight for the boundary line.
"Wait a second! What happened?! What's going on down there?!"Youichi was shocked by the scene before them.
"Hmm. Judging from the level of the destruction, it looks like there was an attack on the scale of a nuclear bomb."
The wall that should have been surrounding the area had been completely
blown away.
Even the trees of the forest had vanished without a trace, so theymust have been close to the center of the explosion.
"They're just walking through something like that without a problem?!"
"Of course they would need to be able to do that much...at least, I'd like tothink so, but considering they're in a place where they can wield their powersfreely and without consequence, if that bomb is the best they can manage,I'm admittedly disappointed."
She didn't know who had caused the explosion, but if one of thecandidates had awakened and still only been able to do such comparatively
minimal damage, they were a long way from making it to the rank of Sage.
"Well, it seems that group is officially out of bounds."
She had thought it possible they might still turn around. After all, she hadmade the danger a Sage posed to them quite plain, but they had stepped over the line regardless.
Specifically, Daimon Hanakawa and Yogiri Takatou had crossed the border of the area for the Selection Battle.
Sion stood from the sofa, stepping into a more open space, as she didn't
want to accidentally bring her furniture along with her.
She could teleport to anywhere she had already been, including a place like the Underworld.
"Hey, are you sure you'll be okay going there right now?"
"You really are a worrywart, aren't you?"
There were none among the Sages who would be threatened by something as trifling as radiation If that were enough to kill them, they never would have qualified to be a Sage.
Giving the anxious Youichi a small smile, she teleported to appear right in front of the runaways.
◇ ◇ ◇
What had occurred to Sion after that was simple.
She had suddenly lost
the ability to put strength into her right ankle. Unable to support her own weight, she'd fallen.
By the time she realized what had happened, she was already on the ground.
If she had wanted to stay standing, it would have been easy to do so.
Forsomeone with her abilities, maintaining her posture on one foot was as easy
as breathing.
But being caught by surprise, she had dropped. Even now she couldn't figure out why. There was no reason for her to have lost the feeling
in her foot.
Her body was perfect. Since becoming a Sage, she hadn't felt the slightest trace of pain.
Her physique was flawless to the point where she had even forgotten the sensation.
When anything happened to her, she recovered instantaneously before she could even realize that something was wrong.
Never mind having to deal with a permanent handicap, there was nothing that
could so much as slow her down.
That's why she was so confused. The fact that she had fallen over at all
defied belief.
Checking her right ankle, it didn't seem to hurt. It simply refused to move. Even touching it with her fingers, she could feel nothing.
It was like everything from her ankle down had ceased to exist.
"I killed her right ankle, just like I've been practicing."
Sion heard the words but couldn't process them. Supposedly, this boy
could kill anything, but she had never imagined his power would work against her.
She had countless magical barriers protecting her from any kind of attack, and even if he had been able to penetrate each and every one of
them, she was still dimensionally displaced.
And on the one-in-a-million chance he was able to hurt her, or even kill her, she would still recover immediately.
Even now, her power continued to grow. Without any action on her part, her strength was always increasing, so any change in her condition, no matter how slight, would always be reset.
And yet her foot wouldn't move. It wasn't returning to normal.
It was as if it had never worked in the first place. She couldn't connect that fact to the
boy standing in front of her.
It was so far removed from her expectations of reality that she couldn't wrap her mind around it.
The ankle was only a single part of her body. It didn't mean she had lost
or that she was going to die. But it did mean that, if only in some small way,
there was someone out there who could hurt her.
She wouldn't have believed it possible.
When presented with something wholly reality-defying, something so unimaginable, most people tend to replace that inexplicable phenomenon with another in their head.
They twist and warp their own experience until it fits into a world they understand. Sion decided that this phenomenon was
merely a temporary glitch, a rarely occurring error.
She convinced herself that this convenient delusion was the truth.
"Hey, are you listening? Come down out of the clouds and answer me." Before anything else, she figured she should get rid of him.
He was foolish enough to break the rules she had laid out, so she needed to draw a
line in the sand. Raising a hand with her palm facing him, Sion began to compress her excess magical energy.
Using any specific technique was generally unnecessary for her, so this was her normal method of attacking.
Her palm began to glow as a ball of light formed in front of it. And then it suddenly disappeared. Just before it fired, it simply winked out of existence.
"Could you stop doing that? You're only going to get yourself killed." Finally, Sion understood.
◇ ◇ ◇
"Just to warn you, if you try to do something like boil my blood, it won't work. You'll die before you get the chance," Yogiri warned as he killed off the ball of light.
If the Sage tried to shoot something at him, he could kill the object instead of her, but an attack that would directly influence his own body would be more troublesome.
His only option then would be to finish her first, which would render all their efforts to contact her a complete waste.
"I'll say it one more time: I want to know how to get back to my original world. I thought you would know, since you summoned us here in the first place."
Although she had seemed completely out of it a moment before, Sion appeared to return to her senses after the failed attempt on his life. So she should have been able to understand what he was saying, but for some reason
she didn't reply.
She might have been thinking of some other annoying method of attack, but Yogiri wasn't interested in taking his time.
He could handle the dangers of the environment they were currently in, but he didn't want to stay in Phase 2 any longer than was absolutely necessary.
Sion stifled a cry. Yogiri had killed the pinky and ring finger of her right hand. He had only intended to kill one of them, but his training with such precise targets was lacking.
"Well, you still have three left, so I'm sure you'll manage."
He would kill her extremities one by one. That was the best threat without killing her outright.
True, it felt a bit like plain old torture, but he didn't hesitate. All the suffering and hardship they had experienced was because of
Sion.
She had summoned them here and sent them off to overcome various ordeals against their will. It was as good as murder, so she could hardly complain when he retaliated.
"I'll kill you bit by bit until you feel like talking,"he threatened calmly.
Sion suddenly disappeared. She must have teleported. Perhaps she had panicked, as a good chunk of the ground beneath her was gone as well.
Clearly, she could teleport objects around her as well if she wasn't careful.
"What?! Did she just run away?! She disappeared as fast as she appeared!" Hanakawa said in a panic.
"Don't worry; it's fine." Yogiri figured she would be back soon enough.
◇ ◇ ◇
Sion returned to her base in the capital with a large amount of dirt around her. As an emergency teleport, she had unintentionally brought a portion of her surroundings along.
Her destination was similarly inaccurate, as she had intended to teleport to her bedroom on the second floor but had instead appeared in the air of the first floor corridor.
Covered in filth, she fell and landed on the carpet.
"What...what was that?" she gasped, sitting on the floor.
His power was nothing like she had anticipated. Ignoring all of her defenses, he had simply stopped the functions of anything he wanted. It was far more than Instant Death magic.
Not knowing how it worked, and having
no way to counter it, she'd had no choice but to flee.
Sion did her best to calm down. She needed to think clearly so that she could analyze what had happened. She sat up and tore off her right hand withher left.
The hand regenerated instantly, but her pinky and ring finger still wouldn't move. She didn't even need to test whether the same would be true of her ankle.
She felt ashamed. Even in the face of certain death, she hadn't been able to do a thing about it. But she was lucky to have gotten away in the condition she was in.
If she had let her pride take control, who knows how she would have ended up? Luckily, all he could do was kill things. It didn't seem like he
could teleport to chase her down.
She stood up unsteadily. If she assumed she simply didn't have a right foot or those fingers, they wouldn't be obstacles.
Even without them, she had a number of ways to compensate.
Yogiri Takatou was a threat.
But knowing that, she only needed to avoid getting involved with him. It was almost offensive for a Sage to have to hide
from someone, and the thought alone made her seethe with anger, but she
locked those feelings away deep inside.
She floated through the air.
Down the corridor and up the stairs, she
headed to her bedroom on the second floor. Suddenly, she lost her sense of balance, ran straight into a wall, and fell back to the floor.
Her left ankle...Yogiri had attacked her again.
She began to panic.
She was up on the surface now, on a completely different plane of existence.
Yet he was still able to reach her. A chilling fear took hold of her.
No matter the distance between them, even from one world to another, he could kill her. Every time he attacked, she would lose a part of her body, never to be regenerated.
Without knowing the true nature of his powers, she couldn't avoid or defend against them nor could she fight back. She was helpless.
"What is going on?! I don't understand how!"
Her voice was ragged. Her left little finger. Her right shin.
Her left earlobe. Bit by bit, she was losing all sensation in her body. The fear of that loss was driving her mad.
I'll kill you bit by bit until you feel like talking.
That's what Yogiri had said.
She realized he would continue to carry out
that threat, no matter where she was.
"Like hell I'll talk! If you're going to kill me anyway, why would I tell you anything?!"
Even if it meant her death, she wouldn't yield. That was her last bit of pride as a Sage.
She somehow managed to make it to her room.
He was only killing her extremities, so if she kept that in mind, she could move without too much difficulty.
Entering, she saw Youichi. Although it felt like she had been through a lengthy ordeal, it had only been minutes since she'd first teleported
away.
"Youichi..."
In spite of the situation, seeing his face gave her a sense of relief. She might die, but at least she was with him.
If he could watch over her as she died, that might be a satisfying enough end to the ridiculous life she had led.
She might just be able to accept her fate.
He turned and saw that Sion was covered in dirt.
"Sion?! What happened?!" Concerned, he immediately ran to her side...and suddenly fell.
His face was blank, utterly confused by having tripped over nothing.
Then he
screamed. Howling in pain, his hands went to his right ankle. "But...how...?"
It was the same thing Sion was experiencing. Youichi had been attacked in the exact same way.
But he didn't have the same kind of resistance that she did.
There was no way he would manage after losing his ankle like that.
He used his left hand to press down on his right foot next.
Everything that had happened to her was now happening to him. Why? How was it even
possible? Sion couldn't explain it. And then she remembered.
She had summoned a man in a lab coat who had known Yogiri. He had exploded soon
after she brought him to this world.
She hadn't known why at the time, but she was starting to understand it now. Yogiri could use his powers through other people.
"What is this?" Sion shuddered. Aoi had said earlier that the world was as good as dead.
Sion had written her off as having lost her mind, but she was finally beginning to comprehend her fellow Sage's words.
"My foot...my hand!" Youichi was in agony. He was screaming as he lost parts of his body bit by bit.
Watching him slowly dying before her, Sion finally gave in.
After a short while, just as Yogiri had predicted, Sion returned.
"Please...don't hurt Youichi anymore." The way she sat on the ground and begged him made her look somehow pathetic.
"I said right from the beginning that I just wanted to talk. If you answer my questions, I won't hurt anyone." Now that she was back, Yogiri was satisfied.
"I'm sure you've figured it out, but I can kill you no matter where you go, and I can attack anyone you've seen."
"Your words are beyond terrifying!" Hanakawa interjected. "Wait, does that mean I am also at risk?"
"Don't worry; you aren't a target, Hanakawa. I can only do that while I'm in Phase 2." Yogiri didn't kill indiscriminately. He thought he was being plenty considerate in that regard.
"Uhh...honestly, it is a bit off-putting,"Tomochika remarked.
"Just be glad it only went as far as it did," added Ryouko
"I'm starting to understand what Ryouko was talking about now," Carol agreed.
The three girls had all stepped up to join them. It wasn't Yogiri's intention to make Tomochika uncomfortable, but if he wanted to get her home, he couldn't be picky about his methods.
"All right, then, let me ask one more time. Tell me how to get home."
After hesitating for a time, Sion finally managed to answer. "There's no way back prepared for you."
It didn't seem like she was lying.
"This guy, Hanakawa, he came here before and was sent back to our home once already."
"That must be because they maintained a link to your world when they summoned him," Sion explained, going on to describe it like putting an elastic band around him.
In short, during his previous visits, there had always been a source of power at work trying to return him home, so sending him back at the end was easy.
All they had to do was stop trying to hold him
there.
"And you're saying we don't have a link like that?" Yogiri recalled
Mokomoko mentioning such a thing earlier.
"Yes. If you'd had one, you wouldn't have been able to gain any significant strength in this world."
Yogiri sighed. He had hoped that Sion, as the one who had summoned them, could simply send them back herself, but it didn't seem like that was the case. "All right, then, tell me the coordinates for our home world."
She made a face as if to ask what he could possibly do with that iformation, but answered without complaint.
The numbers she gave were far too large for an ordinary human to remember, though, so they would have to rely on Mokomoko.
There, you see! I am very useful! If you want to return home, my power is
necessary!
"Yes, yes, you're wonderful, I get it." Despite brushing off her guardian spirit's accomplishments, Tomochika had finally forgiven the ghost for the battle suit incident.
"We were told if we had the coordinates and enough energy, we could go
back. Do you have any idea how we could obtain that energy?"
Yogiri didn't really expect to get any useful information based on such a vague question, but Sion's response took him by surprise.
Punching her left hand into her own chest, she pulled something out of her body.
"This is a Philosopher's Stone." The object she held out was a round, transparent stone, just big enough to fill her hand.
"I-It is?! The artifact that, if not used carefully, will bring accusations of plagiarism?!"
"All right, Hanakawa, please be quiet." Knowing his inability to read the atmosphere, Tomochika quickly shut him up.
"One isn't enough, but if you had a number of them, you would be able to manage."
"Are you okay without it?"
"I'll be fine. I've never relied on it."
"I see. Then thanks." Yogiri took the stone from her. "I guess that means all the Sages I've killed so far had these too, huh?" he said, thinking back on the boy who had attacked them on the train, and Lain, who had been indiscriminately destroying the city of Hanabusa.
If he had known about these stones then, he could have had two more by now.
"Allow me to give you some advice. When a Sage dies, the Philosopher's Stone they carry in their body normally loses its power. When you killed Santarou in the canyon, his stone immediately became useless. While the
stone was in their body, a Sage was more or less immortal. If they died, it
meant the stone's power had been exhausted."sion said
"I see. That's kind of annoying." If it were true, Yogiri wouldn't be able
to use his abilities to retrieve the stones instantly. "Where are the other Sages?"
"I can't say precisely, but..." With that disclaimer, Sion gave him the names and territories of a number of her fellow Sages.
"I guess that's it for now. Hanakawa, I know the wall is gone, but what about the exit?"
"What? The exit? Oh, it's still showing on the map, so it doesn't seem like it has been destroyed. Wait, are you just going to leave her here like that?!"
"I don't care either way. I only wanted information. I might have a bit of a
grudge against her, but it's not like I need to kill her."
"Really?! But didn't she put us through an awful lot? Doesn't it make you
want to do all sorts of...I mean, of course not!"
Noticing the icy glares of the
three girls, Hanakawa immediately began walking.
◇ ◇ ◇
Yogiri's group headed to where the wall used to be before descending underground.
From their conversation, there was something down there that allowed them free movement through the Underworld.
Sion sat where she was and blankly watched them go.
Yogiri had only wanted to get some information out of her. He had been killing parts of her
bit by bit and doing the same to Youichi merely as a threat.
She had been unable to stop him. Given the clear difference in power, she didn't even have the urge to fight back.
Sion took it all in. Although she was continuously growing stronger, she
had never thought of herself as a flawless being.
Certainly, she was a level above the other Sages, but the Great Sage had always been stronger than any of them.
So it wasn't too difficult to accept the fact that Yogiri was more powerful than she was.
"Oh, I need to go help Youichi." She had put him into a deep sleep before coming here.
He seemed to be suffering intensely, but with proper treatment, she should be able to deal with the pain for him.
Sion lifted herself up into the air.
Despite both of her feet being useless,
she could still move about freely.
She was lucky to have gotten off as lightly
as she had. She hadn't lost any critical organs. While he didn't seem to care one way or another about her, Yogiri had at least been that considerate.
Sion pictured her room back in the capital, where Youichi was waiting, and prepared to teleport. But sensing something nearby, she instinctively stopped.
A formless blob was flying through the air towards her.
She immediately fired a bolt of light at it. It was large enough to swallow a person whole, but
her attack was similar in size, and it was vaporized in an instant.
"What was that?" She soon realized that she was surrounded by transparent blobs. They were enormous gel-like masses.
Although they seemed like living beings, the fact that they were resilient enough to survive
the aftermath of a nuclear attack was impressive.
Sion wasn't terribly well informed when it came to the Underworld, so she figured it was just one of the many monsters that called this place home.
She decided to wipe them all out. Teleportation was a delicate bit of magic, and she wanted to avoid having to use it while being attacked.
Within view of her were two thousand and fifty-six of the creatures.
But given the environment, she didn't need to make any considerations for her
surroundings, so the number was irrelevant.
Normally, she would concentrate her magical energy into a single shot so that she only destroyed her intended target, but if she was attempting to wipe out enemies in a large area, she could ignore that unnecessary step.
Sion released the entirety of her magical energy.
It fired off in every direction, becoming a heat and light that incinerated everything around her.
Nothing remained.
Even the small fragments of trees and bits of rubble had been erased, not leaving so much as ashes behind.
It was an attack that surpassed that of the nuclear bomb in raw power.
Yet an instant later, all of her magical energy had been fully restored.
Always growing, always healing. That was her Gift.
"I need to get back now." She once again attempted to teleport home, but it didn't work. A warning blinked in her vision: Teleport Mass Limit Exceeded.
Her teleportation was meant to move only herself. She couldn't carry much with her as a rule, but she wasn't carrying anything at all right now.
In fact, having given up her Philosopher's Stone, her mass had actually
decreased.
Sion looked down at her body and saw the problem immediately.
Something had wrapped itself around her numb ankles.
They were like tentacles that had sprouted out of the ground. Naturally, she couldn't teleport
in such a state.
As she considered that, the entire ground beneath her transformed into flesh
.
"I thought my immune system was getting a bit overactive, but if it isn't one of those little Sages!" The mass of meat sprouting from the ground gathered into the form of a person.
In stark contrast to the dark red muck that
had woven together to construct her, her final form was that of a woman with
a positively divine beauty.
"Ah, you must be the Dark God, then." It was obvious at a glance that the woman was some sort of god.
I had intended to push them hard, but I suppose this was a bit reckless, she
realized.
This creature was on a totally different level. Sion could instinctively recognize that. If this was the Dark God, there was no way the
Sage candidates would have been able to stand against her.
Sion quickly sliced off her feet. The tentacles wrapped around her had already begun to fuse with them.
If she had left things as they were, she would have been absorbed by the woman before her. The stubs regenerated instantly.
Though her feet remained without feeling, she wouldn't make the same mistake twice. Now that she knew of the danger around her, she just needed to be more careful.
Sion had no intention of fighting the Dark God. She couldn't get herself killed and leave Youichi alone forever.
So she tried to teleport again. Now that she was free of the tentacles, it should have been possible.
But it didn't work. She wasn't even floating in the air anymore. With a squelching sound,
she fell into the sea of flesh beneath her.
"As tiny as you are, you seem useful enough. I'm afraid I can't let you leave."
"What?" Sion's body slowly sank into the meat below her. As she did, the flesh
fused with her body, the distinction between them starting to melt away.
"Battlesong, is it? Heh, it's amusing that you Sages call yourselves wise despite relying on such a thing." Sion felt her power leaving her body.
"Battlesong was made for children to play with. We can't allow just anyone
to use it. And if I set the Parental Controls...well, you see what happens."
In every meaning of the word, Sion was helpless. When she tried to pull
herself out, the hand she pressed on the ground simply sank right back in.
Her magic and abilities as a Sage were completely gone now.
The system that was the source of all her power had abruptly ceased to function.
Slowly, her body was being absorbed. Bit by bit, she was losing the ability to distinguish
between herself and the flesh that she was sinking into. In those last moments, she tried to think of what she could do.
If the Dark God was left to continue growing like this, she would eventually fill the
entire Underworld before spilling out onto the surface.
And if that happened, Youichi would be in danger too. Sion wanted to avoid that, if nothing else, but all she could do was instill an idea in the Dark God's mind.
She could do nothing but try to use words to lead her captor astray. That was the limit of
her abilities now. But what should she say?
"Yogiri Takatou....remember that name. It's the name of the one who will kill you."It was no more than a gamble.
There was no guarantee that after hearing
his name, the Dark God would take an interest in him.
But if she could get her to do so, and to even try and hurt him, it might be enough.
If the Dark God went up against Yogiri, he should be able to kill it.
There was no guarantee her plan would work, but she had done everything she could.
"Youichi..." Sion whispered his name as her head sank below the surface.