Too late.
Even if she poured in all her mana right now, or used the recoil from the ribbon’s contraction and expansion—
She could not arrive before the Storm Demon completed its magic.
Magi White’s past battle experience warned her: harden your defenses at once.
On the other hand, her sense of duty as a magical girl cried out: if that magic was allowed to be completed, there was no telling what harm might befall Hikarious.
A dozen seconds remained. As the backlight of the gathering thunder gnawed her vision white—
“Demon Realm. Coronation.”
The Shadow Magician’s deep voice rang out.
“Dodge.”
An enemy who had already fought her several times. A monstrously ominous thing, more dangerous than all the freaks of the Ivory Tower she had encountered before combined.
And a comrade standing against the Demon.
Some instinct moved Schnee’s body. Just as the Shadow Magician had said, she soared high into the sky, escaping from the center of the battlefield.
“A pair of crowns.”
At last, the thunder reached its zenith. The crackling discharge of lightning, which had been chirping like a thousand birds inside the Storm Demon’s body, tore through that body and was released into the world.
A roar that shook the heavens like the bellow of an earthquake. A sound that seemed as if some transcendent something were ripping apart the vast canvas called the sky, a sound that threatened to paralyze hearing itself, was about to spread through all creation—
And the world stopped.
***
“Kahahahahahaha! I did it! I succeeded! At last, Charles has been defeated in a battle of wits against this Raban!”
Inian wondered where, exactly, the “wits” were in any of this, but she did not say it aloud.
Because there was something she was more curious about.
“Why in the world did you recite an incantation with no effect or anything of the sort?”
“To harass Charles.”
It was a simple and rational reason. Charles had pressed the Storm Demon’s self-destruct button. The procedure for self-destruction involved oversaturating his body with mana and incinerating every mana circuit that composed him.
In other words, for a perfect incineration, he had to move a large amount of mana step by step from the extremities of his body toward the center. Charles’s magical detection ability was bound to suffer a major decline.
Therefore, Charles could not distinguish whether the user of the petrification magic was Raban, or someone else.
“Well, his audiovisual detection might still be alive through a reserve familiar or the remains of the Diner inside the Predatory Ecosystem. Even I would have prepared that much. That’s why I said it.”
With this, Raban had obtained a bluff he could use in his confrontation with Charles, and one that would have an extremely high probability of succeeding at least once. From now on, the moment Raban uttered an incantation beginning with “Demon Realm, Coronation,” Charles would have to guard against the possibility of petrification.
“And while I was at it, I seasoned the information that would pass through the magical girl to the mascot.”
In other words, by reciting one utterly hollow spell, he had spread fake-news leaflets to both factions. Since the development of this battle had been improvisation from beginning to end, the few seconds just now were all the time he had had to come up with such a scheme.
It was judgment befitting a monster whose mind accelerated to astronomical speeds the more dangerous the situation became.
Ha. Inian let out a hollow laugh. If she could, she would have liked to see that black-magic beast’s face, but that was impossible right now. If she turned her eyes, the influence of her evil eye would scatter.
And in her current state, with the evil eye deployed beyond its proper output, one wrong move could cause her mana to flow backward.
“Now then, it is time to eat. With gratitude for all the ingredients of Earth. Thank you for the mea—…”
Raban’s voice stopped.
“Has something happened? Was Charles a base villain like you, and transformed his body into deadly poison in advance?”
Raban could not answer. The situation was more serious than that.
‘This is bad.’
He had miscalculated the mana needed to maintain the Predatory Ecosystem because he had been talking too much.
***
Despite his desperate silence, Inian realized the situation Raban was in. She did not turn her gaze toward the black magician whose skeleton was currently twisting beside her.
She did not have enough affection for him to take on the risk of her evil eye backfiring just to look to the side.
She could simply see it. The tentacles of the Predatory Ecosystem, which should have been receiving the minced meat of the petrified Charles, writhed all over as if seized by violent illness, spewing blood before withering away.
“Aaaaaaagh! You imbecile! Did you not calculate your mana?!”
Since she had seen this sight before while fighting Raban head-on, Inian immediately grasped what was happening.
“At the moment… answering is difficult…”
Raban assembled his words with great effort. Now that he had grown used to the pain and his mana generation could no longer support the mass of the Predatory Ecosystem, the magic was entering rapid collapse.
As if the body that had already been self-torturing—not that this mattered much, honestly, since he was used to it—had not been enough, the collapse of the magic was now added on top of it, and every single somatic cell was in the middle of throwing a fit. Raban somehow stitched together vocal cords and tongue that seemed ready to split apart at any moment.
“Lord Archduke of the Demon Realm, please fire the Lamashtu Javelin…!”
From the moment control of the Predatory Ecosystem collapsed, the remaining fragments of the Diner had begun watching for a chance to break out.
‘No. It’s linking together the remains of different Diners and skillfully joining them into one mass.’
These were not the movements of the Diner that had originally owned the body. This was Charles’s intervention. As expected, he must have been continuing to gather information about the surroundings by using the Diner fragments as a kind of familiar.
He intended to use those things to recover the petrified minced meat of Charles. Raban absolutely could not allow that.
It was fine if I failed to profit.
But I cannot tolerate someone else taking less of a loss…!
It was a rare degree of pettiness. Rarer still was the fact that the Archduke of the Demon Realm agreed with that pettiness.
However, there was a problem.
“I do not know the limits of this body’s mana control ability! I cannot say what result will come from maintaining the evil eye at its current output while using Lamashtu Javelin in parallel!”
Raban inwardly poured out his resentment toward the heavens. Even if it was the mandate of heaven to interfere whenever a black magician tried to profit, still—
Couldn’t it look the other way when black magician was fighting black magician?
“Damn it! The results we’ve gotten so far amount to nothing more than pounding Charles’s spirit body flat, evaporating only half his mana, and wrecking the bodies of two Diners!”
For a moment, a thought rose in Inian’s mind: Huh, isn’t that a decent result?
“Kh. If only I had eaten all that mana, the time needed for my return would have been reduced by a month, kraaaaagh!”
…And then it faded. One way or another, they had to secure the petrified Charles meatballs first.
‘But how?’
The instant a modern-art chimera, grotesquely woven from shadow and rebar framework, thrust out its arm through the rotting flesh of the Predatory Ecosystem—
“Go, Salamandine! It is a fire attack! I shall bring the southeast wind!”
“Oh, come on, birdbrain read something weird again and now she’s spouting nonsense!”
Two of the Four Heavenly Kings appeared!
“Hey, wait for me!”
And Magi Black, too.
***
The results of the Four Heavenly Kings’ vote on a temporary alliance with the Diner were as follows.
Abstention: 1.
“…”
Grata’s face was always stiff, but lately her condition seemed even worse. Since Grata raised her hand neither in favor nor against, she was counted as an abstention.
In favor: 1.
“No, am I the only one in favor? Don’t tell me this is because of that chivalry or whatever. Dynamis! You are older than Salamandine, so how can you still be like this!”
Sargasso looked around in dismay. Grata was one thing, but why Dynamis, who had wanted more than anyone to settle things with the magical girls?
Opposed: 2.
“Well done, Dynamis! Honestly, I thought all that chivalry you kept holding up was just an act! So you did have some pride!”
Salamandine patted Dynamis on the shoulder. After all, there was romance in battle. What sense of accomplishment was there in defeating the weakest enemy?
Greater glory was granted only when one defeated a stronger foe!
With a groan, Sargasso let out a sigh, but she did not overturn the meeting. She was an adult who knew how to accept a given result.
“Very well. We must not overturn the vote.”
Since the consensus of the Four Heavenly Kings had been decided as rejection, now they had to convey their refusal in a grave and courteous message—
“No, Sargasso. We must choose the more efficient option.”
“Mm?”
“First, send a reply that we will accept the battle against Magi Black, at least.”
Dynamis rose from her seat, saying that she would “take care of the rest on-site.”
And then—
“Magi Black.”
“Salamandine! Dynamis! Why are you here? Don’t tell me you joined hands with the Diner?!”
In the battle that followed, Dynamis whispered secretly to Magi Black.
“Listen well. The Diner intends to keep you tied down here while seeking to eliminate Magi White.”
“?”
“Why do you think Salamandine, one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Flame, and I, one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Wind, came together? It is to conceal this place from the eyes of those who must be watching it, with wind bearing fire and smoke.”
Dynamis declared proudly to the magical girl.
“The ones who fight with the fate of this city at stake must be us and you. A duel between the Ivory Tower and the magical girls! I cannot allow some ghost of an old era to mar our struggle. Is that not so…!”
At that resolute vow, Salamandine laughed heartily.
“Damn it, Dynamis! Just this once, you were actually kind of cool—”
“Only then will the victory I offer to the Lady of the Black Wings become all the more precious!”
Salamandine squeezed her eyes shut and looked away from Magi Black’s gaze.