Fooling the eyes of the audience with the balloon uproar and the smoke screen, Zeljirga hid herself in one of the abandoned ruins adjoining the plaza. Everything as of that moment had gone exactly as planned.
The residents in the vicinity of the old town plaza had been evicted in order to use the place as an arena for the Sixways Exhibition. Just as Psianop and Toroa had done in the first match, it was possible to dash inside said evicted buildings during the match—however, this was simply an exception to the rule that exploited a hole in the definition of the arena.
Using a mirror trick, she kept her eyes on Mestelexil.
…Let's start with the opening move.
From her faraway position, Zeljirga was controlling the golem puppet, which was continuing to fly with abnormal power output, using the threads on her fingertips. The Morf puppet recited Word Arts.
"—Saknamop lastarmokg. (—Bore closing twilight)
"Amteneaor sharbardhor nes tort sind get zept merticst—" (Fill the vessel with corundom thorns, separate root, stem, and leaf from the horizontal plane knot, worldly affairs are gold—)
Coming up at the end of the incantation, Mestelexil reconstructed his right arm into a shotgun. The puppet radiated a bright heat ray, melting through part of the golem's right arm and chest as it passed by Mestelexil. Mestelexil's breast plating melted under the high heat, and for a moment, he lost sight of the speedily flying puppet. A heat-induced sensory error.
The puppet's true identity was Reshipt Modified-II. A golem meant for suicide attacks, wholly specialized at its charging drill offensive and nothing else.
Obsidian Eyes had hidden this golem inside the balloon that had caused the earlier explosion. The doll that Zeljirga had initially brought in with her, similarly, was the necessary opening move to launch a surprise attack through its substitution.
Miluzi the Coffin Edict's trump card. Compared with Mestelexil, its capabilities are almost laughably inferior.
Nevertheless, just as it had been with Reshipt and Nemerhelga…there was one sole part of its functionality that could stand shoulder to shoulder with Mestelexil's abilities. Reshipt Modified-II was a model even further specialized in one particular function.
Zeljirga needed to constantly keep directing and controlling Reshipt Modified-II's high-speed movements through her tarantula threads. Reshipt Modified-II wasn't equipped with any directional capabilities of its own.
"Hrnk, phew… This…is seriously…hard…work!"
She wrapped the end of the threads—which were violently struggling under the tremendously high speeds—around the nails on the floor, dispersing her strength and using her fingers, and sometimes her feet and teeth, to handle the complicated and simultaneous controls. Every time she tried to pull a thread, her fingers would bear the load of its tremendous velocity, and blood seeped from Zeljirga's fingertips. The bones in them would creak, and she bent them until they were just about to break.
Reshipt Modified-II went halfway around the arena, at high enough speeds to look like little more than a glint of light, and went behind Mestelexil.
Conversely, Mestelexil stood in the middle of the arena and didn't move. "O-oh, it's you, Morf! What is it?"
However, he generated a countless number of gun barrels all over his body.
…Uh-oh.
She immediately let go of the threads around her fingers. Mestelexil's precision deflection shooting landed three hits on Reshipt Modified-II as it flew at high speed. The only reason it wasn't hit any further was because Zeljirga had released some portion of the threads, erratically altering its flight path.
With its trajectory thrown off by the shots, Reshipt Modified-II crashed down into the rubble and stopped.
I can't believe it was able to immediately respond to such speeds…and shoot it down, too!
Reshipt Modified-II's main body was protected in the front by sloped armor, so the crash didn't cause a fatal malfunction. However, there was a slight distortion in its machinery. She could tell that through her threads.
"Hey, Mestelexil! That scrap heap's just buying time! Find Zeljirga and kill her!"
Kiyazuna issued her orders with a loud shout.
Zeljirga didn't let the chance slip by and pulled on the threads connecting to Reshipt Modified-II.
"G-g-got it! Mama—"
Charge again.
The golem furiously flew out from the mountain of debris. Its propulsion was still working.
It wasn't aiming for Mestelexil. Without any directional control, Reshipt Modified-II pierced through to the second floor of the ruined residence. Raining down a shower of debris, it interfered with Mestelexil's next move.
Only five left. No, six… I didn't expect to have so many tarantula-silk control lines severed just to suppress his opening moves. I can probably only set up for one more attack. Dear me, honestly…
She heard a soft thud.
A pain in her upper left arm. "...!"
It'd been pierced with an arrow.
When had he gotten in so close? She hadn't sensed him at all.
Behind Zeljirga…a large number of machines, resembling bird skeletons, silently hovered in the air.
"Golems…!"
Autonomously driven, airborne, and tasked with searching for the enemy, even when Mestelexil wasn't moving. Mestelexil was producing this swarm of
golems right at the same time he was countering back against Reshipt.
The information had been obtained from the battle with the Particle Storm, and she would've known about this aspect of his unlimited capabilities.
A golem who could make golems.
"Ah-hyah-hyah-hayh… What does knowing about something like this even do for me?"
The golem swarm fired their arrows all at once. Zeljirga's threads had caught up a majority of the golems right before they fired, mixing them into the debris to avoid the attack and live through the lethal storm.
She was skewered. Her left knee. Waist. Stomach. The tip of her left foot.
A fatal wound and a wound to both arms, which she used for her clown craft, were the only things she needed to avoid.
The attack wasn't going to end here. The fact that the scouting golems had found where she was hiding meant…
Here it comes!
Using her uninjured right leg, she immediately jumped out of a window. An explosion.
Zeljirga tumbled out into the arena, as if swept away by the shock wave and air blast, which felt strong enough to shatter her bones.
The ruins that she had been hiding in moments prior had lost over half of its total cubic volume.
"SMAW rocket launcher."
As Mestelexil muttered, he folded up the cannon barrel that had spread out from his waist, which had been opened up by his reconstruction.
Her wounds were deep. She had to handle the next attacks. How? Where?
Mestelexil's singular eye aimed at Zeljirga. On his back was some box- shaped equipment.
"Ah…hyah, well now…it's good to see you aga—"
An invisible yet colossal something slammed Zeljirga's body.
It was as if the very air itself had crushed her. It had surpassed the range of what her senses could tolerate, making her unable to perceive it as sound, either.
—A directional acoustic weapon. "LRAD 2000X."
Zeljirga lost consciousness.
"Hmph. We won, then."
Sitting next to Kaete, Kiyazuna instead seemed displeased as she spoke.
At times like this, she felt absolute indignation at the fact that her son had been injured, however slightly—something her pupil Kaete could understand.
Since he, too, felt the same sort of anger.
"…The incident with the balloon was clearly an intentional accident. I was thorough in ensuring there were no traps in the arena, but…the sky was a blind spot even to me. I should have expected it."
While he had correctly sensed some danger, he hadn't been able to properly guard against it.
Mestelexil had won as if it was a matter of course, but Kaete himself truly felt like he had lost.
"Bah, who cares? It wasn't much of a problem anyway."
"Mestelexil has a semiautomatic counterattack logic incorporated into his construction. That's why they didn't fill it with explosives, but a smoke screen heavier than air. It's just a golem puppet, but I can't believe that some connection of Enu's was able to make something so well-built."
"Nah. That thing's one of Miluzi's golems." "…It's what?"
Surprisingly, Kiyazuna was gazing down at the battlefield, still propping up her cheek on one hand. Or rather, she was staying on guard.
Miluzi the Coffin Edict. The person who developed this world's steam engines. A self-proclaimed demon king recognized in the later days of the True Demon King's age, and whose whereabouts were unknown. In particular, he was said to rival even Kiyazuna the Axle when it came to the level of completion he had in his golems.
"The individual quirks of the creator show up in how a golem's made. That puppet there was definitely made by Miluzi, but…Miluzi'd make something like that? Strange."
"Huh? I have absolutely no idea what that's supposed to mean…!"
"The design philosophy behind it ain't his style. It's almost as if some other person was forcing him to—"
Kiyazuna's words stopped there.
There was a strange phenomenon in the area. Zeljirga was standing up. "Hey. Grams."
"Nah-uh, no way…it's impossible. Physically impossible."
There existed examples of warriors who had lost consciousness without
falling down and still continued to stand. However, after getting directly hit by an acoustic weapon and fainting, getting back up from the ground should have been impossible.
"Proceed," the adjudicator Meeka tersely declared.
Ahhh, this is funny, so funny. The ground's wobbling back and… No, that's not it.
Aware of the fact that she had stood up on her own feet, Zeljirga strove to maintain her consciousness.
If she didn't stand up, there was a chance she may never wake up. She had fallen into a dreamless darkness up until just a moment ago. I'm the one who's wobbling, and I…I'm fighting.
She moved her fingers. One, two, three. Using the movements that had become customary from her training with threads, she regained the sense that she was herself.
"Huh? We're still, fighting? Okay, then i-if I…defeat her, one more time, I win!"
The adjudicator Meeka appeared to be explaining to Mestelexil why the match was restarting.
She was grateful. Right now, a few brief seconds were more valuable to her than tens of years.
Pathetic, Zeljirga the Abyss Web. Mestelexil being an invincible and immortal golem, all of it… You knew all that a long time ago.
Her standing up just now wasn't due to Zeljirga's own strength, either—there was someone who was moving her body and had made her stand up in her stead.
The two had made a promise to do just so in case of an emergency. Zeljirga was one of Linaris's corpses.
Thank you very much. My lady.
Zeljirga had volunteered to be a hero candidate in the Sixways Exhibition. That was easily done. Most who willingly undertook these sort of missions would find themselves on the borderline between life and death. For her…for someone from the old Obsidian Eyes, this was simply a part of everyday life.
It must have been a heartbreaking feeling for Linaris. That was all the more reason for Zeljirga to laugh.
"…Hya, ah-hya…"
"Zeljirga. M-Meeka…told me something g-good!"
Mestelexil's singular eye rolled around his head with excitement.
"She said, it's okay, for you to surrender! If you do…I won't, have to kill you, will I?! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Since, you are, my friend!"
"Ahhh, yes…that's right… Silly me. I forgot."
Having watched so many children delight at her craft, Zeljirga understood. Mestelexil was an invincible weapon. Nevertheless, at the same time, he was a young child.
Except in this world, there were children who could kill even those they once saw as friends.
Zeljirga was just such a creature. Mestelexil was likely the same. Creatures of battle, who definitely couldn't live in a world of peace.
The minute nicks gouged into Mestelexil's armor had long been repaired.
The smoke screen was gone, and there was nowhere to hide. Zeljirga was covered in wounds from head to toe, and she was facing Mestelexil head-on. The gap in their strength was so vast that she knew the moment Mestelexil shifted his gun barrel the slightest millimeter, that alone would blast her from this world into the next.
We don't need to win.
Obsidian Eyes' duty was not combat. It was fair for her to say that the moment she got into a battle with Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge, that alone meant defeat.
"Zeljirga the Abyss Web, do you wish to surrender?"
But there's also no need to lose, then, is there?
Zeljirga shook her head in reply to Meeka the Whispered's question.
"Ah-hyah-hyah… Before I end up losing here, there's only one thing I want to do. Since you're a friend of mine, Mestelexil…"
Gasping for breath in her current state, Zeljirga produced her final weapon. "…this is for you."
"Candy—"
It was just a piece of candy.
At that moment, Mestelexil turned around in the direction of Kiyazuna. In that instant that he took his focus off Zeljirga, she released the final two threads she had kept gripped tight in her hand.
"Again… Attack again!"
From the sidelines as the pair faced off, Reshipt Modified-II, all its moorings released, flew ferociously into the air. It rammed itself straight into Mestelexil's
chest like a warhead and begin digging into him.
"Resipkt io halese. Win halt elk, nertak mamert—" (From Reshipt to Halesept's eyes. Gear in the soil, flower petals as golden film—)
Rotate. Bore. Incant. "Wh-what?"
"—Saknamop lastarmokg." (—Bore closing twilight.)
Reshipt Modified-II fired a heat ray from completely point-blank range. Heat arts radiated from its built-in magical tool at its maximum energized state. Together with a temperature hot enough to melt its own body down, Reshipt Modified-II penetrated even further and tried to pierce all the way—to Mestelexil's life core, the homunculus.
"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! That, tickles!" Then it was smashed into smithereens.
Mestelexil hadn't even needed to rebuild his weaponry. With his individual power output, which surpassed any and all other golems, he had simply crushed Reshipt Modified-II, which had been digging into his plating, with his fist.
Neither defenses that could withstand gunfire nor the offensive power to pierce through armor were a match for Mestelexil's capabilities.
However. "My lady…"
Zeljirga the Abyss Web couldn't have possibly overlooked that ever-so-brief moment when the golem was destroyed.
A fine thread, impossible to catch without straining the eyes long and hard, was stretching into the crack in Mestelexil's head section.
Reshipt Modified-II was the guide for Zeljirga's thread.
"…I, Zeljirga the Abyss Web, to live up to your faith in me, have successfully pulled off my performance."
Like a spider's web after the rain, there was a trick to make water droplets blanket a thread.
It may have been nothing but an inconsequential bit of street magic, useless in battle.
A single meager drop of the blood-borne pathogen afflicted the homunculus life core.
"..."
"Mestelexil. This gambit…"
The perfectly ordinary piece of candy fell to the ground.
That day she first met Mestelexil, Zeljirga had shown him a piece of candy
right before shooting at Kiyazuna. The reason he had suddenly turned back to Kiyazuna was because that threat had been instilled in him subconsciously.
"…wouldn't have been possible if you weren't my friend."
The strongest weapon in the land lost power right on the spot, collapsed, and didn't get up.