[290] 5. Every Variable (4)
Freed from the tentacles, Amy cleared her head under a crimson glow. The sedatives still churned her stomach, but she just managed to slip into the Spirit Zone.
Arming herself with a decisive fireball, Amy charged the door and swung her arm. The spell slammed into it and the organic, webbed door shattered to pieces.
By the time Gion realized he'd been fooled, the second door was already blasted open.
"Damn it…!"
Gion barked at Armand in frustration.
"What the hell were you doing? You missed!"
Typical behavior for an inexperienced user.
Armand could copy a user's mind and approximate intelligence, but strictly speaking he was only a symbiotic sword for his owner. He couldn't be expected to make decisions in someone else's stead.
So cursing Armand would only be cursing his own stupid head.
"We have to give chase. Move."
As if answering Gion, countless tentacles shot out from the Vajra Armor and dug into the wall. Gion used their pull to launch himself forward like swinging on a trapeze.
@
Reina halted and cocked her head toward the sound. Her Sound of Silence ability picked up a massive vibration coming from below.
The noise traveling through the walls was faint. But if even a fortress touted as the kingdom's most durable could transmit that sound, the epicenter must have suffered a tremendous shock.
'They're underground!'
Reina sprang for the visible stairway.
A force strong enough to shake the building couldn't have come from an ordinary swordsman's strike. Shirone had definitely cast magic.
The moment she set foot on the lower level, someone came running from the far end of the corridor. The rhythm of the footsteps marked extreme agitation.
Reina pressed herself against the wall and watched the approaching figure warily. Piercing the veil of darkness, one person came bolting forward.
She spotted Amy and hurried to cut her off.
"Amy!"
"Eek! You scared me! Sis?"
"What are you doing here?"
"Just run!"
As if there was no time to explain, Amy grabbed Reina's arm and sprinted. Reina activated Schema and matched her pace.
Thud! Thud!
Heavy impacts rattled through the walls.
Reina shut off Sound of Silence. If she kept listening in that state, her eardrums might be ruined.
"What is that? Is something following us?"
Amy let out a frustrated breath. She wanted to tell Reina the absurd story she'd just been through, but finding Shirone came first.
"I'll explain later. Where's Shirone?"
"This way. The sound came from there."
They took the left fork and stopped before a storeroom at the dead end. A sign hung from the ceiling: Food Storage.
Inside was a chaotic mess from battle.
Flour had been overturned and hung in the air like smoke, making the air cloudy. Vegetables lay chopped in pieces and dusted in flour. Amy felt relieved it wasn't a meat storeroom.
"Where's Shirone?"
As Amy scanned the room, Reina stepped forward and spread her arms to block her.
"Dangerous. Don't move."
Startled, Amy followed Reina's gaze. Through the flour haze, countless webs were strung across the space.
"This is…!"
When she took it in, the room was plastered with webs on every side. It looked as if the storeroom had been sealed for a hundred years—eerily still.
"Why would there be webs here? And those look like huge spiders."
"Be careful. Something's here."
Reina eased through the webs with Amy behind her.
At that moment, a faint voice came from the other side among piled sacks.
"…here."
Reina and Amy both lunged toward the sound.
Shirone hung upside down in a massive web. His clothes were torn and his body riddled with countless wounds.
Amy felt tears prickle.
"Shirone!"
"Run… this thing… is incredibly strong…"
"Hold on! I'll get you out!"
Amy rushed forward.
Just picturing someone trapped in a web was chilling, but knowing it was Shirone made the horror all the sharper.
She examined the web briefly, and finding no tool, grabbed and tore it with her hands. A cold, stinging pain ran through her. When she pulled back, the palms of her hands were sharply cut.
"What kind of web is this?"
Summoning what strength he had left, Shirone cried out.
"Amy! Run!"
At that moment Reina grabbed Amy's waist and hurled her aside. The sharp rush of air was a pitch that none but Reina could have produced.
Amy hit the floor bewildered and looked back at Reina. Reina's gaze, however, was locked on something in the darkness.
"Kekke, not bad."
A Jenoger descended to the same level as the upside-down Shirone.
Amy and Reina flinched at the grotesque man's appearance. The torchlight was distant, but it was clear he had multiple pupils.
"When something moves, vibrations happen. If you can hear those vibrations, then a two-dimensional cut won't kill them. Yes, exactly."
Amy took a step forward and shouted.
"What did you do to Shirone? Let him go now!"
Jenoger turned his head toward Shirone, who dangled at eye level.
"Oh? This? I just kept him here, kiki. As you can see from touching him, he's quite sharp. If he struggles, he'll be sliced to pieces. So he can't even twitch a fingertip."
"This…!"
As Amy flared with fury, Jenoger continued.
"Now then, a question. When were these wounds on Shirone inflicted? Option one: before he was caught in the web. Option two: after being trapped."
Amy couldn't see why that mattered right now.
But the more she thought about Jenoger's words, the redder her face grew. If the answer was the latter, she'd tear his neck out no matter what.
"You'll never be forgiven."
Amy's anger gave Jenoger a small thrill. In truth, option two was his favorite game: place prey on the web and make small cuts until it could neither move nor die—perfect torment.
Unfortunately for him, the correct answer was option one.
Shirone's assassin senses were formidable, even to Jenoger. After a ten-minute pursuit, Shirone had only then been bound in the web.
A voice came from the storeroom entrance—Gion's.
"What, it still isn't finished?"
Amy turned in dismay. Gion, his tentacles draped like octopus legs, stood with his hands behind his back, arrogantly looking down.
Amy and Reina turned to face him immediately.
Shirone was captured by assassins and their retreat was cut off. Everything pointed to disaster.
But Gion paid the two women no mind.
Reina's pursuit this far was unexpected, but they were mice trapped in a jar anyway. He was more interested in Shirone, bound in webbing.
Jenoger, having landed, bowed.
"You've arrived, Prince. I was just about to finish."
"Finish? It's way past the scheduled time. What happened?"
"My apologies."
Jenoger offered no excuses. No matter how skilled an assassin, someone bearing the Last Wail of the Jaeger family deserved a single courtesy delay. Still, Spatur's pride came from skill.
Gion waved a hand irritably.
"Never mind that. Finish the job. Cut off Shirone's head."
"As you command."
Jenoger bowed and climbed the web toward Shirone. But as he prepared to finish the task, he paused.
"One person still hasn't shown up, yes?"
He meant Arius.
Gion didn't care.
Flicker magic, the specialty of the Scale mages, is a short-range teleport born of extreme spacetime distortion.
Even if you were locked in a cell, without a mana-control device a Scale mage could vanish and reappear on the other side in an instant.
For Arius, time and space were not particularly important; he was probably waiting for a spacetime coordinate to slip through now.
"He can wait. Now, separate Shirone's head from his body."
"As you command."
Amy flipped into a fighting stance and shouted.
"You must be joking. Who's going to let that happen?"
Gion finally turned his attention to the women and exuded a murderous aura. Tentacles reared over his shoulders like a witch's claws.
Even in fading consciousness, Shirone sensed that the armor surrounding Gion was Armand's true form.
Knowing they'd all die if they stayed, he paid no mind to his torn flesh and struggled to shout.
"Run! Reina, take Amy and run!"
Amy didn't listen.
What good would running do if Shirone died? They had no choice but to settle this with Gion now.
Reina had reached the same conclusion; she widened her stride and fixed her gaze on him.
The Ozent family revered the sword. Though unarmed, the skills she'd honed since childhood were no joke.
Amy and Reina split left and right to pincer Gion. Unexpectedly, Armand's response visibly weakened.
Even a symbiote follows its owner's decisions. Gion, lacking combat experience, couldn't properly handle a two-pronged attack, and so Armand's tentacles couldn't find precise strike points.
Amy noticed the change immediately.
'He's been underestimating us. I'll make him pay!'
Gion ground his teeth at the unforeseen situation. It wasn't the spells Armand blocked that bothered him so much as the unseen presence of Reina.
"Damn! Those bitches!"
Gion backed up as far as he could and blocked the doorway. If he couldn't finish them, he would at least cut off their escape.
But that was precisely what the two women had hoped for.
Reina made a wide arc around the storeroom, stepped onto a sack, and jumped.
"Here!"
Most knights would have ignored Reina's shout. Even a child could tell which was more dangerous—Reina's bare-handed combat or Amy's magic.
But Gion turned in panic, and Amy seized that blind spot to cast Fire Strike.
'This is it!'
The moment Amy thought so, a strange force seized her and hurled her through the air. She flailed against the momentum, but it was irresistible.
As she flew, she glanced at Reina and at last understood.
A coil launched like a cannon unfurled and turned into webbing that struck Reina. The web and Reina's body slammed against the wall, almost up to the ceiling.
Seeing that, Amy crashed into the wall and felt a brutal pain in her back.
She looked down at the webbing that pinned her. No matter how she tried to tear it, it wouldn't give.
If the strands that bound Shirone were razor-sharp, this was like sticky mucus.
Reina and Amy struggled with all their might, but Jenoger would not leave them alone.
He puffed up his upper body like a balloon and spat beads of webbing from his mouth.
The successive strands snapped open midair and kept covering Reina and Amy.
"Grrrr!"
Each layer that stuck tightened its hold.
After five or more layers clung to them, Amy found herself utterly immobilized. Reina, pressed to the opposite wall, was the same.
"Kekke, flailing about, are we? Are you all right, Prince?"
Only then did Gion step down to the floor, finally relieved. Seeing the three little flies bound and unable even to struggle, he was thoroughly pleased.