Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume2 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 8===

After several heavy metallic sounds, two translucent ski-like units appeared out of thin air and attached to Natalena’s feet. They were not actually skis of course. Since she had chosen Anubis as her god for Crystal Magic, this had to be some related symbol.

That god was symbolized as a dog or jackal and his stories did indeed involve a long, rod-like tool.

(Scales?)

Karuta could guess that was what these were, but he could not tell how they would be used to attack. Were they like the catapults used to fling large rocks that would bring down medieval castle walls?

(Anubis judged the souls of the dead and the result of that judgment was shown by the tilting of the scales.)

“Please, Anubis.”

Was this how she began the process? She went out of her way to speak to the god whose name was sealed inside the small circuit board. Just like the former world’s strongest who had beseeched their gods to bring about miracles.

“You were the one and only god my sister relied on! So please give me the power needed to save her soul!!”

The calendar based on Anubis provided an understanding of the occult atmospheric pressure. The two skis suddenly opened up like fans on the front and back. This created a total of 16 crane arms or spider legs. Thin wires were rapidly ejected from the ends of those legs. At the ends of those wires were objects not quite like metal jaws and not quite like metal flowers. Due to seeing the arms like crane arms, Karuta saw them like grab buckets that used 8 movable parts to grab grains or coal from a cargo ship.

(They grab, lift up, and swing around.)

“I get it!!”

Just as the boy groaned that, the wires thrown in completely different directions began to move like they had a mind of their own. The grab buckets bit at and grabbed a giant rock, an electric cart for the walking path, and the crushed vending machine.

The grab buckets were only the size of golf balls, but they spread out to the size of a small dog’s jaws and bit into the surface of their target.

''They grabbed everything that would function as a blunt weapon'' and swung them around.

Some were swung vertically like a meteor falling from the heavens.

Some were swung horizontally like an axe felling a large tree.

She seemed to have forgotten about her short skirt as she sometimes made a large roundhouse kick, sometimes kicked up high or dropped her heel back down, and sometimes placed her hands on the ground to smoothly cartwheel to the side. Each time, all that mass created a raging storm of motion.

It was too elegant to call martial arts, but too savage to call ballet.

“I’m not done yet!!” she roared as something odd happened.

She grabbed more things, but these clearly followed a different set of rules. A single grab bucket pulled out a cube of sand more perfectly formed than a shipping container and another lifted up all the water in a nearby fountain. The size of the buckets was irrelevant.

He had forgotten that this was magic.

(Yeah, this is what I should’ve expected from Anastasia’s sister!!)

This covered solids and liquids. He did not know how much more Natalena could do, but this was plenty on its own. Most likely, she could grab all of the moisture from the air to create 0% humidity that would sap his strength, or she could pull up a building at its foundation to topple the entire massive structure.

It did not matter if any individual attack was intercepted. Her strength was found in the near limitless supply of weapons she had. The only way to cut her off from her ammo was to throw her out into the vacuum of space.

Anubis was a god of judgment.

No matter how many of the dead were lined up before him, they were humans and he was a god. He would never compromise in his judgments due to their numbers. A single god could overpower countless numbers of the dead and force them to obey his rules. That was how it was meant to be.

However…

“You still have a long way to go.”

“?”

“This is efficient, I’ll give you that, but maxing out efficiency ''isn’t how the strongest does things''. The real world’s strongest is more wasteful and pours in resources on an absurd scale without even thinking about how much they’re using. They use such an insane amount that you don’t even know how to process what you’re seeing!!”

Karuta smiled and stuck a hand into his blazer uniform. He pulled out a thoroughly modified military flashlight. It was strong enough to use as a club, but that was not what mattered here.

The light had been replaced with a powerful laser emitter. With the amp on the back and the kind of diffusion lens used in laser printers, it could be made to send out a wedge of truly blinding light.

Pain in the eyes was a unique thing. It was not something you could suppress or ignore.

“Gah!?”

“Your scales are admittedly powerful.”

Having one of her eyes taken out temporarily must have thrown off the girl’s depth perception.

Karuta rolled to the side to dodge the boulder she dropped from above and the electric cart sweeping in horizontally was deflected upwards when it crashed into the boulder embedded in the sandy beach. The masses of sand and of water were similar. He just had to make sure his vision was not obscured by what remained after they burst like balloons.

“But whether you’re using a solid or a liquid, morning stars work by ''gathering up strength as you swing them around'', so it takes some time before they actually hit. Giving me time to see them and think about them is a critical flaw. At the very least, Elicia, Yukino, and Anastasia had eliminated any such openings. Even if it meant burning through earth’s resources all on their own!!”

A quiet cracking sound followed.

Crystal Magic would heal any non-fatal wound in 30 seconds.

But that also meant it took 30 seconds for even the smallest injury. If they were attacked again in that time and the crystallized part was shattered, it would never recover.

So she could not use one of her eyes for 30 seconds now that the laser had injured it, causing it to crystallize. Not many people could shake free of the fear of permanently losing an eye in order to take immediate action.

“Ahhhh!! Senpai!!”

The scales that resembled crane arms or spider legs began to squirm.

Natalena swung in several more flails while she performed flips and cartwheels. She grabbed a great mass of sand to create a landslide and she grabbed some water to swing around a highly pressurized liquid, but Karuta kept his cool. Natalena Blast lacked the curse-like intimidation that her sister Anastasia had demonstrated.

If you were only strong enough to cause external damage, you could not bind anyone.

In other words…

“You’ve lost your depth perception without that eye. Your attacks might be powerful, but they’re entirely meaningless when you can’t aim properly.”

“!?”

Was that enough for it to all crumble away? Was non-strongest magic really that fragile?

“And Crystal Magic isn’t all powerful. I know that all too well since we so thoroughly lost to God Worshiping Magic that one time. Our magic is a flawed thing that can be defeated any number of ways if you know what you’re doing!!”

He did not hesitate to walk forward through the horizontal and vertical storm of blunt weapons. Her depth perception was shot, but that did not mean she could not see him. A single hit would crush him or bisect him, yet he showed no sign of fear.

“Then…”

How frightening did that make him to the small girl who ''only had this''?

“Then!!”

“Are you going to fly? Yeah, I suppose that would be your safest bet.”

By the time he spat out the words, she had already spread out her armor and flown straight up. Invisible sails caught the occult high and low pressure fronts. He could not use the flight Preset, so vertical distance was much safer for her than horizontal distance. And once she was up there, she could obliterate him with a unilateral aerial bombing.

She had much more freedom of motion in midair. She could rotate her body vertically or horizontally and build up plenty of centrifugal force in the blunt weapons.

But it was her and not Karuta who grimaced.

“You thought you could fly without depth perception?”

“Oh, no.”

“And in this domed Crystal Beach no less. Crystal Magic flight has acceleration surpassing that of a fighter plane, so you’ll crash into the ceiling in less than a second at max speed.”

Crystal Magic had to be used very differently indoors and outdoors.

With the tall palm trees, taller buildings, and the C World dome itself, this Crystal Beach was full of obstacles. This was not the open sky where she could fly around as she pleased.

While she immediately applied the brakes and tried to come to a stop in midair, Karuta took just three steps to the side while looking up at her. A metal box the size of a vending machine stood unnaturally up from the sandy beach.

Those devices were unique to this place. They were only needed in this enclosed environment.

The label called it a “fire prevention emergency smoke exhaust device”.

He only had to slam down the added amp on the back of his flashlight.

The reinforced glass of the safety cover broke and he pressed the large button within. Immediately, a portion of the translucent ceiling opened and the pressure difference set the air in motion. Just like water drawn into a drain, an artificial blast of wind blew toward the ceiling.

Natalena spun around.

She had already been unstable while stopping so rapidly, so she was completely swept away by this unexpected gust.

“Here’s some advice for free.” Karuta was calm enough to tap the flashlight on his shoulder. “Your greatest attack is that makeshift morning star made using the wires and grab buckets, but you can still get tangled in those wires yourself.”

“Ah, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

She fell.

But she did not slam into the ground, crystallizing her entire body.

The many thin wires caught in the branches of the palm trees that decorated the sandy beach and her small body ended up suspended and swaying side to side like a bagworm. A normal human would have been squeezed to the point of tearing their body apart, but she had the blessings of Crystal Magic. She was protected by the translucent armor and the barrier-like spatial vibration field and any parts the wires did dig into were quickly crystallized for the regeneration process.

These wounds would heal.

Because she could use the latest form of magic.

“Now, then.”

“Kh.”

Her shoulders shook while she swayed upside down in the air.

He had not been her superior in Crystal Magic. He had surpassed her on the more fundamental level of thoughts. And he still had the fighting power known as Aine on top of this.

He put his hands on his hips and looked up at the palm tree.

“So. How did you like our first ''sparring match''?”

Yes.

If no one died in a battle, it was not true combat. Just like mahjong and poker transformed into entirely different games when money was bet on them.

“Why?”

If he had lost, she might have killed him.

But there were tears of humiliation in Natalena’s eyes after being spared.

“Why didn’t you show me what you saw in my sister!?”

“Because this is what I saw,” he responded with a faint smile. “Anastasia was constantly fighting anyone who might become the next strongest. Day after day, she killed those challengers to keep her title as strongest, until that one day when she lost. Maybe the other four were different, but that was who she was.”

So to put it another way…

“That monster named Anastasia Blast wasn’t interested in anything other than being the strongest. She wasn’t even interested in fighting someone unless they might be the next strongest.”

“Are you saying she recognized your skill? Which is why she went all out and fought you!? Showing you a side of her I never saw!?”

“I have no way of proving it since I didn’t record it all or anything, but unlike Elicia and Yukino, I doubt she ever attacked anyone who did not qualify under her rules. No matter what. At the very least, she wasn’t a pathetic enough person to feel satisfied attacking the weak and defenseless.”

Of course, that was only the one-sided assessment of the person doing the attacking.

For Karuta’s group, who had everything taken from them out of the blue, the attack had seemed entirely random.

“Just like us, she only killed when it was necessary. And it isn’t necessary with you, Natalena. Not for me and not for her. So this is what I think she would have done if she was fighting you ''as you are now''.”

“…”

The small girl bit her lip. Tears spilled from her eyes, but these were not fueled by humiliation.

Someone’s younger sister spoke quietly.

“This is…who my sister was? If people weren’t good enough for her, she made them feel this pathetic?”

“Yes.”

“She was my family. Are you saying I knew nothing about my own sister?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

That was a non-answer, but it was the truth.

He awkwardly looked aside as he said more.

“But learning the truth won’t necessary make you feel better. That’s what it means to be human.”