「Ahaha… Ahahahaha…!!」
Shoulders trembling, Kokujou threw his head back and laughed, mouth wide open with delight.
「No matter what, you still won’t use that power, huh?」
He glanced back over his shoulder at Aoi, light blue eyes glinting with menace.
「Sorry. I’ve got no intention of going along with your little plan.」
Aoi gripped his sword with his right hand.
From fingers to shoulder, his arm was covered in armor.
「But no matter what, you, I’ll take you down.」
Kokujou’s lips curled into a wild grin.
「Ahahahaha!! Wonderful!!」
Whipping around, he unleashed a slash of black energy.
Aoi leapt high into the air, evading the attack as he soared over Kokujou’s head.
While airborne, he struck his sword into the air,
A black flame erupted, writhing toward Kokujou like a living thing.
But Kokujou’s own slash collided with it, nullifying the blast.
The resulting shockwave carried Aoi across the battlefield.
He tried to land beyond the swamp, but the unfamiliar power threw off his balance, and he slipped, falling flat onto his backside.
As he wiped the dirt from his mouth and tried to get up, a hand reached out to him.
It was Kotone.
Standing beside him, her crimson eyes never left Kokujou.
「Just possessing a Malice Divine Arms is a crime, you know. If a scolding is all you get, you should count yourself lucky.」
「You’re not thinking of quitting being human, are you…?」
Hayato joined her, brushing dust off his clothes.
Looking down, he caught sight of Aoi’s reflection in the scattered shards of glass.
A black combat suit covered his body.
And his right eye, its entire sclera was dyed pitch black.
As Aoi rose to his feet, Kotone spoke again, still without turning toward him.
「Sazanami-kun. The next time you wake up in the hospital, my palm will be the first thing you feel. Don’t you dare forget that.」
The sheer pressure of the “main heroine’s” fury was so intense, Hayato visibly shrank with fright.
Yet despite its cold sharpness, Kotone’s anger felt almost like encouragement.
「Yeah. Please do. I’ll be counting on it.」
He didn’t know if he could be forgiven, but he would apologize properly.
That resolve had just settled in his chest when a voice, lower and colder than Kotone’s, cut through the air.
「You, what the hell were you thinking?」
It was Rui.
Standing beside them, her tone carried a quiet fury that made Hayato shrink even smaller.
Her freezing voice, those sharp aquamarine eyes.
This wasn’t the usual playful tsundere deflection.
She was genuinely, seriously mad.
「You said you’d come back, sure. But you never said you’d come back like that.」
Rui only got this angry when someone she cared about was in real danger.
And even though it was inappropriate, Aoi felt a small part of him glad for that fact.
Facing her head-on, Aoi replied.
「I have no intention of breaking my promise. No matter what happens. I didn’t come here to die.」
Aoi’s calm, unwavering words did nothing to quell the cold fury in Rui’s eyes.
Even so, she didn’t seem to doubt his resolve. With a sharp exhale, she shifted her gaze toward Kokujou.
Aoi followed her lead, setting his sights forward.
Fear of what came after lingered in the back of his mind, but that future wouldn’t exist if he died here.
To ensure it would, he rallied both his heart and body.
「–gh!」
Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through his left chest.
Startled, he looked down.
Rui’s fist had struck him square in the chest, not in anger, it seemed, but for another purpose.
Heat, not his own, pulsed into him from the point of contact.
A foreign warmth spread from his chest through his limbs, and glowing blue lines traced across his suit.
His body felt slightly lighter.
「If you die… I’ll cut you down myself.」
With that, Rui turned, her sleeves fluttering as she drew her sword.
Aoi gave a small nod of thanks.
The others, too, fell into battle stances.
The girl he had once longed for from afar.
The protagonist.
The main heroine.
To stand side by side with them now, what an honor.
Their enemy: the queen of malice, Kokujou Lilia.
At the center of the swamp, she twirled around with perverse delight.
The mire continued to spread.
「Fufufufu… Ahahahahahahahaha!!」
Kokujou extended a single arm to the side.
This time, it wasn’t tentacles that emerged from the toxic mire.
It was something else entirely,
Armored soldiers, rising from the swamp like puppets of a nightmare.
It was reminiscent of that battle in the swamp behind the Kuklesias terror attack.
Back then, soldiers had emerged from the mire,
But this time, the armor contained nothing but skeletons.
Jet-black plate armor rattled unsettlingly, as if disturbed by the emptiness inside.
Their skeletal hands clutched swords, their exposed skulls fixed on Aoi and the others with deathly intent.
From deep within those hollow eye sockets, killing intent radiated.
Kokujou’s puppets surged from the swamp in an endless tide.
No formations. No strategy. Just wild, mindless charges toward them.
They looked brittle, but each was likely powered by the same Malice Divine Arms that had once belonged to the group known as the “Armor Breakers.”
With poison added to their arsenal, they were an even greater threat.
These were the same monsters who had massacred an entire FND regiment in the original story.
「Now then, my lovely little puppets, bring color to my life! Give me the thrill of living! Don’t you dare disappoint me!!」
The queen cackled from behind her army.
Greedy. Selfish.
The poison that engulfed the city was an extension of her arrogance and tyranny.
How many righteous souls had sunk to the bottom of that swamp, their regrets drowned in poison?
The more he thought about it, the more unforgivable she became.
He couldn’t let the girl imprisoned inside that monster die, not like this.
「Kiyosato… just a little longer… hold on…!!」
The countdown had already begun.
There was almost no time left.
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