The white brilliance of the explosion did not fade so much as it was consumed by the predatory cold radiating from the center of the room. Lavinia Reni stood amidst the settling frost, her sapphire blue eyes fixed on the silhouette of the woman stood at the pinnacle of the magical world.
The silence that followed the blast was heavy crystalline chiming of the Absolute Demise as its four ice-forged arms adjusted their grip on the frozen air.
Lavinia had expected a swift victory.
Without the god slaying power of the Incinerate Anthem, she had assumed Augusta would not be a problem to her, even if her own mastery over her Sacred Gear can't be said to be that high, but Augusta without her Longinus, Incinerate Anthem is a mere Master Magician.
But as the smoke cleared, she realized it would not be so simple. Lavinia had underestimated the weight and authority carried by the title Witch of the East. This was no mere honorific, but the culmination of decades spent refining the arcane, a true Wizard of Oz who had shaped magic itself through time and discipline.
The earth golem standing before Augusta was not a simple construct of mud and stone. It was a masterpiece of elemental architecture. Its surface was etched with self-repairing magic squares that glowed with a dull subterranean amber light.
"You seem surprised, little girl," Augusta said, her voice raspy, edged with quiet mockery. "Did you truly believe my greatness was bound to something as hollow as a Sacred Gear? I am the East... Do you think a title like that is earned by relying on a single relic?"
She straightened slightly, pride settling into her posture. A thin smile creased her wrinkled face.
"We are not the same."
Lavinia's eyes narrowed, her grip tightening around her wand as frost gathered at its tip.
"Foundation or not, even the oldest mountain can be reduced to dust by the frost. You are fighting a losing battle, Augusta. Your magic is a relic of a dying era."
Augusta answered with laughter, dry and brittle, echoing through the chamber like bones striking stone.
"Perhaps," she said softly. "Then let this old relic teach you what it means to stand on the top of magical world for decades!"
With a sharp movement of her fingers, Augusta activated a series of complex formulas.
The earth golem roared, a sound like grinding tectonic plates, and lunged. At the same time, Walburga, giggling from atop her broom, began to dive toward Lavinia from the periphery as her hands glowing with a sickly violet light.
"Don't forget about me, Ice Princess!" Walburga squealed.
Lavinia didn't even look at the girl. She commanded the Ice Princess manifestation to intercept. The three-meter-tall doll swung two of its arms, creating a massive arc of frozen energy that forced Walburga to veer off, her laughter turning into a frustrated hiss.
Meanwhile, the earth golem's massive fist collided with the defensive barrier of the Ice Doll. The impact was staggering.
For the first time, Lavinia felt a jolt of genuine pressure. The golem's strength was bolstered by a high-degree gravitational spell that increased the mass of its strike by a factor of ten. A sharp crack echoed through the room as a fracture appeared on the Doll's crystalline torso.
"Oh? Does the perfect toy have a flaw?" Augusta taunted, her hands moving in a blur as she sent three more fireballs—smaller, but denser and faster—toward Lavinia's flank.
Lavinia gritted her teeth. She pivoted, her mind calculating the moisture content in the air to create a series of localized high-pressure ice shields.
"You talk too much for a woman who is one step away from the grave," Lavinia countered.
She pointed her wand at the golem's legs and spoke a command.
"Freeze!"
The moisture within the stone golem's joints was suddenly frozen and expanded with the force of a hydraulic press. The golem staggered, its knee joint shattering into shards of granite.
The battle shifted into a brutal exchange of attrition. Augusta used her mastery of the elements to weave a web of fire and stone, trying to find a gap in Lavinia's absolute defense. Each time the golem took damage, Augusta would feed it mana, the stone knitting back together with a searing violet heat.
"Is this the limit of your icy doll?" Augusta sneered, her robes billowing as she hovered just behind her construct. "It is beautiful, I will give you that. But beauty is fragile. Your mastery over the Eternal Ice Princess is a joke!"
Lavinia felt a surge of cold fury. "Fragility is a matter of perspective."
She closed her eyes for a heartbeat, synchronizing her heartbeat with the pulsing core of Absolute Demise. The six eyes on the Doll's face began to bleed a deep starlight blue.
But Lavinia ignoring her.
The Doll grew. Not in physical size, but in the density of its aura. Its four arms reached out, two grabbing the golem's shoulders, the other two plunging directly into the golem's chest. The golem roared, trying to shake the ice manifestation off, but the Doll was like a glacier.
It's slow, inevitable, and crushing.
Lavinia channeled every ounce of her mana into a single point.
"Return to Dust!" she commanded.
The Doll's hands reached the nucleus of the golem as a glowing, emerald-core gem infused with some sort of life force. The ice didn't just touch it, it stripped away the energy and pierce it with one of its hand. The emerald turned white, then brittle, before shattering into ten thousand pieces.
The giant earth golem stiffened. Its stone skin turned pale, the amber light in its cracks extinguished.
With a sound like a collapsing mountain, the construct disintegrated. Leaving nothing but a pile of inert gravel on the white floor.
Lavinia exhaled, a cloud of white mist escaping her lips. Her chest heaved, but she kept her wand pointed at Augusta.
"You have no means of surviving anymore, Augusta," she said, her voice cold and final.
Augusta stood amidst the rubble of her greatest creation, her expression unreadable. Then, she began to chuckle. The sound grew into a full, resonant laugh that echoed off the concrete walls.
"Kukuku... such confidence. I expect no less from Glenda's most brilliant disciple," Augusta said, her eyes glinting with a malicious light.
"Flattery will not save you," Lavinia said, her eyes narrowing.
"Oh, I am not trying to save myself, child," Augusta said, stepping back and waving her hand in a circular motion. "I am simply preparing the stage for the next act."
Dozens of magical activation circle then appeared as teleportation portal, dark and swirling with the sickly hue of stagnant mana opened behind Augusta.
Dozens of people began to walk out of the rift. At first, Lavinia thought they were reinforcements, more agency members or the Utsusemis itself.
But as they stepped into the light, her stomach turned.
These people were dressed in ordinary clothes. Some wear suits, dresses, school uniforms but there was no light in their eyes. They moved with a jerky, unnatural gait, their limbs swinging like those of broken marionettes.
A Zombie.
They were breathing, but they were not alive.
"I still have some of them left in my arsenal," Augusta said, her voice dripping with sadistic pleasure.
"You filthy..." Lavinia began, her voice trembling with a mixture of rage and horror.
"Don't worry," Augusta interrupted, waving a dismissive hand. "It's just a hypnosis spell. They are still alive and well... well, not for long, anyway."
As the last word left her lips, the people began to scream. It wasn't a sound of pain, but a wet, tearing noise that came from deep within their chests.
Lavinia watched in paralyzed horror as their bodies began to distend. One man's skin turned a translucent, bruised purple before his torso inflated like a balloon. His ribs snapped outward, the white bone tearing through his suit jacket to form jagged, chitinous wings. Another woman's jaw unhinged, her face splitting open as a mass of writhing, dog-like muzzles erupted from her neck.
Their bodies were being used as cocoons. The "monsters" that emerged were abominations of flesh and bone. Some were massive, lumpy golems of muscle that dripped with a foul-smelling ichor. Others were nightmarish chimeras, a sickening blend of human limbs and bat-like wings, their faces a distorted mash of multiple features.
The sound of the transformation was a symphony of snapping bone, squelching organs, and the chittering of creatures that should not exist. The stench of rot and ozone filled the chamber, making Lavinia want to puke.
"This is the blueprint for the Utsusemis," Augusta explained, her eyes wide with a manic pride. "You could call these the failed Utsusemi. But I like these a little better. After all, human souls are one of the strongest mediums compared to a hollow vessel for acting as Independent avatar-type Sacred Gears."
Lavinia staggered back, her hand covering her mouth. The sheer filthiness of the magic, the casual destruction of human lives for the sake of an experiment was more than she could bear.
"The golem you just killed was also human," Augusta added, her voice a cruel caress. "Look how well he performed, even if he was though barely can hold its ground to your Sacred Gear. Isn't that amazing?"
"How can you call yourself one of the best magicians while relying on this... this disgusting magic!" Lavinia screamed, her voice breaking.
Augusta exhaled, looking almost bored. "Well, I am not the one who created this magic. I am merely a developer, you could say."
"What do you mean?" Lavinia asked, her eyes narrowing as she felt a cold dread settle in her gut.
"Do you know who was the most interested in Sacred Gears?" Augusta asked, moving toward the edge of the portal. "Initially, she created this research only for her own personal use. I personally didn't know her goals, but this research into Independent Avatar Type Sacred Gears is what initiated the Utsusemi Agency and the Four Fiends project."
"Stop with the-" Lavinia began, but the word died in her throat as before she could finished her words.
"Glenda... This is your master's research, Lavinia." Augusta said. Her face displayed an obscene smile, one that reached her ears and crinkled her eyes with a terrifying joy.
The world seemed to stop. Lavinia's heart skipped a beat, the blood in her veins turning into ice that had nothing to do with her magic.
"What... what did you say?"
"Glenda's research was the core of this whole project," Augusta continued, enjoying the way Lavinia's face drained of color. "See, it's all because Glenda was looking after the ice princess ojou-chan. This whole project is based on her research of your Sacred Gear, Absolute Demise. She was just using you to conduct this research."
Lavinia felt the floor beneath her feet becoming unsteady. "So... you forcibly snatched this research? You stole information about my Sacred Gear from Oshishou-sama to create these abominations?"
Augusta let out a long meaningful laugh. It was an ugly triumphant sound.
"Kukukuh..."
Smiling that extremely ugly smile, Augusta leaned forward. "That's wrong. That's completely wrong. It was offered to us by Glenda in exchange for some of my darkness magic regarding the soul. She gave me all about the power of your independent avatar type, that is."
Lavinia stiffened. The air in her lungs felt like lead. Her master? The woman who had taken her in when she had lost everything? The woman who had given her hope and a path forward?
"What... what are you saying...?" Lavinia's voice was a shaky, pathetic thing.
Augusta's joy was boundless. "Oh dear. Unexpectedly, you're a child who struggles to comprehend. Well then, allow me to explain it clearly. Glenda is a witch on our side. She has been from the start. Good witch? Bad witch? That is a self-centered scale based on information transmitted by people on our side. At the time, there was a terrible factional dispute in the world of Oz between the north, south, east, and west. We magicians of 'The Country of Oz' were never interested in anything beyond boosting our own magic. Principles mean nothing to a seeker of truth."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Lavinia's wand slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the white floor with a sound that felt like a gavel.
Her arms hung languidly at her sides, and her gaze became unfocused. The sharp, crystalline composure she had maintained throughout the battle was gone, replaced by a hollow broken expression.
"HAHAHA! Such a display of weakness!" Walburga laughed maniacally, circling above like a vulture. "Look at her! The little princess is broken!"
Even the Ice Doll standing in front of Lavinia ceased its offensive posture. It remained still, its six eyes dimming as the will of its master flickered and died.
The truth was a poison.
" Oshishou-sama... " She muttered in denial.
Every memory Lavinia had of Glenda, every word of encouragement, every lesson, every moment of kindness was now tainted by the image of the woman selling her soul to the Agency. The patron who had shown her hope was the architect of her nightmare.
"No... that's not true," Lavinia whispered, her voice barely a breath.
She staggered, her legs becoming unsteady. She felt as though she were falling through the floor, descending into a darkness deeper than any bunker.
"N-No way," she screamed, the sound tearing from deep within her body. "I DO NOT BELIEVE IT! I don't... I don't believe it!"
She was a girl who had lost her family once. She had been adopted, nurtured, and treated as her own child by Glenda. To have that foundation ripped away was to cease to exist.
Seeing the opening, Walburga's eyes lit up with a predatory gleam.
Lavinia was wide open, her back turned, her defenses completely down. Augusta had said to bring her alive, but she hadn't said she couldn't break a few bones first.
"You're mine, Ice Princess!" Walburga shrieked, lunging downward from her broom. Her fingers were curved like claws, aiming for Lavinia's delicate, pale neck.
She was inches away. She could almost feel the warmth of Lavinia's skin.
But then, the air in the room changed.
A killing intent so heavy and so cold that it made the abominations of flesh whimper erupted behind Lavinia. It was a pressure so dreadful that Walburga's eyes widened in instinctive terror. Every cell in her body screamed for her to retreat, to fly away, to hide.
But it was too late.
A whisper, calm and devoid of all emotion, drifted through the room.
"Rupture."
SHIING.
In an instant, the world seemed to flicker.
Walburga didn't even feel the pain at first as she saw her own hand, the right one just gone. Literally.
Blood sprayed in a fine, purple-tinted mist, painting the white floor.
"ARGHHH!!!"
The scream that left Walburga's throat was primal. She used her teleportation magic in a blind panic, reappearing beside Augusta, clutching the bloody stump of her wrist as she collapsed to her knees, sobbing and howling in agony.
Augusta stood in silent awe, her eyes fixed on the spot where Walburga had been a second ago.
"What... what just happened?"
A figure emerged from the shadows behind Lavinia.
He was a young man dressed in casual attire, looking so ordinary that one might have thought he had simply wandered into the wrong room. His black hair was slightly tousled, and his gaze was empty.
Not with the vacancy of the Utsusemi, but with the terrifying stillness of a deep dark ocean.
Jay stood there, his presence anchoring the room. He looked at Augusta with a gaze that made the old witch feel like a specimen under a microscope.
"Speak of lies and deceive," Jay said, his voice low and vibrating with a power that made the concrete walls hum. "You live up to your reputation, the Witch of the East."
Lavinia didn't turn around. She was still lost in her despair.
Augusta gripped her remaining power, her eyes narrowing at the newcomer.
"Who... who are you?"
Jay didn't answer.
He simply looked at the "Witch" as the purple embers of his mana beginning to swirl underneath his feet.