Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume1 Phase2 (section)

===Part 14===

Striker Henrietta Split Destrius, who wore her blonde hair in a braid modeled after a ponytail and who wore old-fashioned armor that included asphalt-colored protectors and a tight miniskirt, heard the loud gunshot.

(It is no use.)

Any magic fired directly at her would be swept aside by the wind swirling wildly around her. And even if they knocked down a sign or cleaning gondola, she could deflect it with her own body thanks to her physical buffing magic.

Before the appearance of sorcery guns, her house had specialized in the halberd which was a fusion of a spear and an axe. That could still be seen in her house’s coat of arms, but that symbolized the ability to slay any foe and to remove any trouble standing in the people’s way.

She still felt ashamed wielding even the bare minimum of a sorcery gun, but she continued to embody the tactics that her ancestors had considered the ideal. She had insisted on using the axe bayonet despite everyone telling her it would negatively affect the barrel of the gun and she had proven that it had the power to overwhelm sorcery criminals. It was her use of that splitting weapon that had allowed her to take her middle name.

It would take a very large mass indeed to stop her.

For example, it would take the steel beams scattered from the end of a ballista crane crashing into and breaking the back of a giant windmill’s support pillar, sending the entire cross-shaped windmill with 35 esoule<ref>Approximately 42 meters.</ref> blades flying toward her like a rotating deathtrap.

“Wha-!!!???”

Even Henrietta widened her eyes at that.

The largest of the things she had destroyed and deflected so far had been the size of a vehicle. Not even she would break through what amounted to a small building to take a shortcut. But the underhanded Sorcery Hacker fleeing up ahead would see that she ''dodged the windmill instead of destroying it.''

This was bad.

Crashing into it would be bad.

But if she slowed her pursuit to avoid the windmill filling her vision like a giant screen, the Sorcery Hacker group would pull away and escape.

Would she prioritize her life or her honor?

She was struck by fear that felt like an icy hand clutching her heart, but Henrietta Split Destrius was still a Striker. She had lost the title of Knight and taken the temporary title of Striker instead, but she was a true warrior who had not lost her noble spirit.

[[Image:SorceryHacker_v01_BW04.png|thumb]]

The king had lent her more authority than she felt she deserved, so she had to live up to that.

“Buff till it’s enough: Primary Ex Massive!!!!!!”

She ignored the scope, fired the bolt-action carbine with axe bayonet like a gun salute, and applied even more muscle-amplification magic. She was reaching the point where her own reinforcements could destroy her own body, but she did not care.

Instead of clearing this wall and hurdle, she had to smash through it and reach her targets!!

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

She would use no tricks.

With more of a roar than a shout, Henrietta charged straight toward the thick barrier in front of her. With axe at the ready, that outdated protector of the people risked her life to challenge the inanimate windmill. Smirk and call it silly if you like, but no matter how much dust had gathered on the concept of chivalry, there was no other life for the woman named Henrietta.

An explosive boom erupted high in the sky.

She had of course collided with one of those giant blades.

She felt pain in all of her joints, but she kept her charge going. She tore into it and dove through it until she finally formed cracks in the enormous structure, widened those, and broke through.

If this was the underhanded Sorcery Hacker’s final trick, then she had them in checkmate.

They seemed to want to focus on obstructing her path from a distance instead of directly fighting her, so she would grab those faces full of false hope and throw them down to the depths. Henrietta Split Destrius would prove through her actions that righteousness filled your blade with the greatest of powers.

She could fly freely through the sky once more.

With all the obstacles gone, that beautiful Striker gave a roar.

“This ends here, Sorcery Hacker!!”

But.

But.

But.

Her target was not there.

They had disappeared in the brief moment she was distracted by the giant screen formed by that windmill!?

And that was not the only surprise.

Something towered up before her: an unbelievably thick wall. Once she saw it, she finally realized what the enemy had been trying to do. No matter how powerful her equipment and no matter how far she buffed herself with magic, she had no chance of breaking through this.

Strikers could not oppose the king from whom they borrowed their power.

Not just in action, but in thought as well.

In other words…

“Light Castle Brightio’s…Free Audience Restriction!?”

No one could pass that barrier without the royal family’s permission. That destructive wall shined like an aurora. There were no exceptions, not even the divine and the demonic beings that had existed in this world since ancient times.

The royal castle was surrounded by the fire, water, wind, and earth areas, so every castle town bordered the Free Audience Restriction. And hadn’t those giant windmills grown more common the closer they moved to the center?

Her enemy had no chance of defeating her, so they had chosen to slam her into the Free Audience Restriction. They took advantage of the city infrastructure to defeat even those who wielded that power through the proper channels.

It was exactly the Sorcery Hacker modus operandi.

The blonde braided Striker tried to slam on the brakes, but she could not stop the momentum she had built up to break through that windmill. And while plowing straight toward her doom, she saw something out of the corner of her eye: the targets she had lost sight of. That Sorcery Hacker boy and the others were standing on the wall of a nearby building. She could tell they had only disappeared for a few seconds at most. They had simply cut to the side right in front of her. That kind of distraction combined with sleight of hand was such hackneyed child’s play it barely even qualified as a trick, but no matter how simple it was, she could not complain when she fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Their eyes met for a brief moment.

He was smiling and she could clearly read the words on his lips: ''You are my only hope. Fire on my signal.

A continuous barrage of water and fire attacked Henrietta. She had already passed them by, so this pushed on her back to slam her face-first into the thick Free Audience Restriction barrier that protected the royal castle. Of course, the whirlwind’s protection diverted the attack magic’s aim, but she could not do anything else while focusing on that.

That delayed applying the brakes even further.

That colorful attack magic missed her and flew off in a different direction, but her throat finally went dry when she saw it destroy the base of another giant windmill of all things.

It tore apart and rode the artificial air current.

One of the giant blades slammed into her from behind as if it had been calculated out from the beginning.

The blonde braided woman’s body was trapped between central Brightio’s Free Audience Restriction and the giant windmill, so she was shoved further and further toward that flickering wall of light.

The Free Audience Restriction was not just a wall.

It would repel any unauthorized visitors and, if they showed no sign of leaving, it would mercilessly destroy whoever was making contact.

The stone that passed by her was shattered like it had been pressed against a jackhammer meant to mine for gems.

She was hit by an impact that seemingly tried to crush her entire body with rapid vibrations. At this point, she might as well not have had the soundproofing meant to take advantage of the link between magical range and the sound of the gunshot. A fearsome level of damage was crashing down toward her.

Orange sparks flew violently from the surface of contact.

“Gwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!”

She loathed them.

Sorcery Hackers had already stolen the traditional title of Knight from her and forced her to take the temporary title of Striker that had no history behind it, but now one was abusing the power of the royal family to use it against her. Was there no way she could put a stop to it? She had worked herself to the bone in the name of righteousness, but everything kept coming back to bite her based on bizarre words like “loophole” and “vulnerability” and now she was going to lose to the power of the very king she served.

Was this just the way of things now?

Was she the fool for not adapting with the times!?

“I refuse to accept it.”

A deafening straining noise rang out.

Maybe it made her foolish, maybe it made her stupid, and maybe it made her too honest for her own good.

But for a moment, that proud Striker’s willpower manifested itself as a supernatural phenomenon that overturned the assumptions of sorcery.

“I refuse to accept this ending!! I refuse to accept we live in a world where legitimate efforts are not rewarded with legitimate results and only those who search out shortcuts and loopholes get to skip half the steps and look down on the honest folk!! As someone tasked with preserving the king’s safety and the people’s happiness, I refuse to accept that!!!!!!”

She pushed it back.

Bit by bit, she pushed back the giant windmill in order to escape the destructive effects of the Free Audience Restriction protecting the royal castle. All so she could pursue that filthy Sorcery Hacker as a hound once more.

She created a slight gap that allowed her to escape that surface of contact. For a brief moment, the sparks stopped scattering. She could escape this!

But then she heard something hitting the other side of the giant windmill blade.

Someone had ridden an air current to land on that back surface. No, had they hit it with a flying kick? It was a slight thing compared to the overall mass of the windmill. It had no tactical effect.

But the Sorcery Hacker had done it.

He had intervened in that final scene while ignoring the realistic risks.

He would defeat her with his own hand.

He had arrived much like an old-fashioned knight demanding a duel.

“Hi there, Lady Knight!! I know I’m the one who did this to you, but I’ve got my own circumstances to consider. So I thought I’d pay you a visit and break your spirit!!”

“Do not mess with me, criminal. You call this an honorable duel!? I do not follow a version of chivalry that accepts a filthy soul such as yours!!”

“Sure, sure. When you get down to it, I’m a Sorcery Hacker first and a Forward second. I’m not about to deny what I’ve done. Not that I’m going to sit around and let you arrest me for it either.”

Just then, two holes appeared in the windmill blade between the two of them.

Ayato had used his Linkage Plug sword and Henrietta had used her bolt-action carbine with axe. They had torn through that obstacle in order to strike each other.

But as a result…

“Kh!?”

“Oh, I felt that one land. That’s your armor, but…yes, I think that must be the shoulder joint. While trapped in there, I guess you can’t even dodge an amateur’s blade. Now, what level am I at right now? Surely you don’t think your armor’s defenses are going to keep me out!”

He was much more confident.

There was a monstrous vibration and sparks resumed flying from the surface of contact between armor and barrier.

He had her life in his hand. Chunks of brick and stone larger than her head were being obliterated by the surface of contact. If her magical defenses were taken from her now, she would be crushed and reduced to mincemeat by the jackhammer-like barrier that protected the king’s castle with so much energy.

The concept of just deserts and the world’s righteousness really were malfunctioning. Henrietta felt like everything was wrong with this goddamn modern era.

“You…criminal. You Sorcery Hackerrrrrrr!!”

“Criminal, huh? But you must have known that Mamilis Coster was a war victim who had her house destroyed by Government Security’s cannon fire!!”

“…”

“Yet when you fought us, you didn’t hesitate to say you had ‘no problem at all’ with shooting all three of us to end this. Why was that!?At the time, you couldn’t have known. Mamilis Coster might have been tricked or threatened into helping us. The only fact you had on hand was her name on the list of Sky City Celedileka residents. So even if you had your suspicions, she should have been ''one of the people a knight is meant to protect''! So why did you immediately abandon her!?”

An invisible stake stabbed into Henrietta’s heart.

“Call it cynicism or sophistry if you like, but the fact that you have no rebuttal for the words of a ‘filthy Sorcery Hacker’ like me is proof that your righteousness is a fraud!! When placed in an uncertain situation, you weighed one of the people’s lives against your own achievements and chose one over the other. Needless to say, it was your bloody and stained honor you chose!! Despicable knight, I doubt you’ll believe me, but that sniper in red leather used those human traffickers to abduct the city’s urban design manager in order to get information on the city’s vulnerabilities for some kind of major job. And even if you do trust me, the biases you’ve created for yourself will probably only see it as a chance to make a name for yourself! Did you enjoy making those false accusations? Are you going to lament what happens after you turned a blind eye to the unanswered questions and simply blamed everything on us!?”

It had been a split-second decision.

When they had their sorcery guns aimed at each other, she had decided that brown girl was an enemy.

That guess probably had not even been wrong.

No matter what that filthy Sorcery Hacker said, she had seen enough now to know Mamilis Coster had almost certainly joined his group.

However…

(Why?)

Why had she doubted that girl so immediately? Why had she not trusted in the good of the people?

What even was the kind of Striker that Henrietta Split Destrius wanted to be?

No, what kind of Knight had she wanted to be back before that title had been taken from her?

Had she strived to reject people as enemies?

Hadn’t she wanted to rely on people even if they seemed suspicious, give them a chance to redeem themselves even if they did betray her, and to create an opportunity to gently hold them as they trembled from the weight of their crimes? Hadn’t she wanted to never give up on those who had made a mistake and try to save them as many times as it took? Hadn’t she been willing to accept any injury to that end?

Hadn’t she wanted to be a sword that served the king and a shield that protected the people?

Hadn’t she wanted to be someone that everyone, regardless of social position, could love and trust?

Hadn’t she wanted to be the person people thought of first when they were in trouble, no matter how trivial a thing it might be?

If not, what had she been trying to protect by changing her title from Knight to Striker!?

(How did I think I could protect anything by giving up on people?)

“Do you know why I came to this city as a Forward? I’ll give it to you straight from the lips of a ‘filthy Sorcery Hacker’.”

Someone spoke.

This was not someone who had found a hole and crawled inside. It was someone who had been cast into a blind spot of the world yet continued to struggle from there.

“''To right the world’s cruelties''! It’s over for you if you let someone else take over your role while someone out there steals the truth away right before your eyes and manipulates you for their own ends. So rethink how you live your life, Lady Knight!!!!!!”

Those words, finally broke Henrietta Split Destrius’s spirit.

The orange sparks scattering from her armor reached the breaking point.

The will to fight left her body and the power of the thick Free Audience Restriction barrier pierced her from head to toe.