Chapter 800: Innocentius and the Sun-Sized Innocentius
"Damn it! The mission target has been discovered!"
Stiyl's reaction was instantaneous the moment the words 'grimoire index' left Ren's mouth. His hand blurred, plunging into his dark robes and whipping out a thick stack of laminated paper talismans. With a sharp flick of his wrist, he scattered the rune cards into the air.
It looked like a frantic, haphazard toss.
But every single card fluttered down with unnatural precision, sticking to the concrete, the walls, and the surrounding debris in a flawless geometric formation.
Ren simply stood there, his hands tucked into his pockets, watching the tall magician with the mild, amused gaze of a man observing a circus clown performing a cheap trick.
Ignoring the blatant disrespect, Stiyl pressed his fingers together and began to solemnly chant.
"One of the five great elements that compose the world, O great primordial flame. It is the benevolent light that nurtures life, and the light of retribution that punishes evil. It brings peace and happiness, and it is the ill fortune that eradicates coldness and the darkness of freezing. Its name is Flame, its role is Sword. Manifest, devour my body, and transform into power—Innocentius, its name signifies certain death!"
The moment the final syllable left his lips, the scattered rune cards ignited. Crimson fire erupted from the paper, twisting and coalescing in the center of the formation.
A towering giant forged entirely of roaring, blinding fire materialized before him.
Innocentius. The Witch-Hunting King.
It was a monstrous entity summoned through Stiyl's rune magic, bound within the spatial confines of the cards. Radiating a blistering heat that easily exceeded three thousand degrees Celsius, it warped the very air around it.
The true terror of Innocentius lay in its absolute immortality. As long as the rune cards remained intact and the giant stayed within their inscribed boundary, it could regenerate infinitely. It would melt through any physical attack, vaporize any obstacle, and relentlessly track its designated prey until nothing but ash remained. It was the ultimate expression of offense functioning as an absolute defense.
With the roaring heat of the fire giant at his back, Stiyl's previous panic vanished, replaced by a sneering, arrogant confidence.
He took a long drag from his cigarette, his eyes glinting dangerously through the smoke. "Relax, kid. We won't kill you. At most, we'll just burn away a few of your memories."
"You plan to control me with that oversized campfire?"
Ren couldn't help but laugh. A dry, mocking sound that cut right through the crackling roar of the flames.
He raised his right hand. His thumb and middle finger pressed together.
Snap.
"Then do you mind if I kill you a few thousand times with the exact same trick?"
Stiyl opened his mouth, fully prepared to mock the boy's delusional arrogance.
Before a single word could escape his throat, a blinding flash of heat erupted directly to his left.
Stiyl whipped his head around. Another towering giant of fire, an exact, flawless replica of Innocentius, was rising from the concrete.
His brain stalled. He had only placed runes for one.
But the heat didn't stop. It multiplied.
Stiyl's pupils shrank to pinpricks as the ground trembled. A third fire giant erupted. Then a fourth. A tenth. A fiftieth.
"Stiyl. Look down."
Kanzaki Kaori's voice was tight, stripped of all its usual calm. She was standing near the edge of the rooftop, staring down at the sprawling cityscape of Academy City.
Stiyl stumbled forward, looking over the edge.
As far as the eye could see, the city was burning.
Every street, every intersection, every rooftop, and every alleyway was illuminated by towering pillars of crimson fire. Thousands upon thousands of fire giants stood shoulder to shoulder, their combined heat warping the night sky into a hazy, boiling red.
They were all Innocentius.
Stiyl's jaw went entirely slack. The cigarette slipped from his lips, tumbling down into the inferno below. As a master of rune magic, he knew exactly the astronomical calculations, the precise placement, and the sheer magical stamina required to summon just one Witch-Hunting King.
But this...
He was completely surrounded. The entirety of Academy City had been transformed into a blinding beacon of apocalyptic fire.
"An illusion...?" Stiyl choked out, his voice cracking violently.
Kanzaki took a slow, shuddering breath. Her hand gripped the hilt of her nodachi so tightly her knuckles turned white.
"It's not an illusion."
Stiyl fell dead silent. His legs felt like lead.
But Ren wasn't finished.
"If that isn't enough to convince you," Ren's voice echoed, casual and entirely unstrained, "how about a slight upgrade?"
The moment the words hung in the air, the boiling red sky above them shattered.
Blinding, pure white sunlight poured down over the earth. The deep night was instantly violently eradicated, replaced by the searing brilliance of high noon.
But it wasn't just light. The oppressive, crushing wave of heat that descended from the heavens forced both Kanzaki and Stiyl to instinctively snap their heads upward.
One look. That was all it took.
Stiyl's knees buckled. He collapsed hard onto the concrete, his eyes bulging with absolute, unadulterated terror. His mouth hung open, but his vocal cords refused to produce even a whimper.
A few feet away, Kanzaki's fingers went entirely numb. Her grip on her sword failed, the weapon slipping from her hand to clatter loudly against the rooftop.
A suffocating wave of powerlessness crushed their hearts.
They saw the sun.
But it wasn't a star. It was a Witch-Hunting King.
A colossal, planet-sized giant constructed of apocalyptic flames floated in the vacuum of space, gazing down at them from beyond the Earth's atmosphere. Its sheer brilliance illuminated the entire hemisphere, casting the light of a true sun across the globe.
They understood fire magic. They understood giants.
But a flame giant so incomprehensibly massive that it dwarfed the planet itself?
This was not magic. This was a divine miracle.
Seeing that the two magicians had completely lost their will to fight, their spirits utterly broken by the cosmic display, Ren casually closed his raised hand into a fist.
The sun-sized Innocentius vanished in a blink. The thousands of fire giants crowding the city streets snuffed out simultaneously.
The suffocating heat dissipated, and Academy City was instantly plunged back into the quiet, cool silence of the deep night.
"Who... exactly are you?"
Kanzaki stared at Ren, her chest heaving as she struggled to catch her breath. Even though the apocalyptic flames were gone, she knew in her bones it hadn't been a trick of the mind.
And she was right. It wasn't an illusion.
Ren had simply dragged them into a temporary parallel dimension the moment he snapped his fingers, ensuring his little display didn't accidentally vaporize the real Academy City.
"I told you already," Ren replied, brushing a speck of imaginary dust from his sleeve. "I am the General Superintendent of Academy City."
This time, Kanzaki didn't doubt him for a second.
If this monster possessed the power to casually rewrite reality and manifest miracles, then the rumor of him slaughtering Aleister Crowley was no longer just a possibility. It was a certainty.
Kanzaki forced herself to stand straight, her expression hardening into a mask of grave respect.
"I apologize. Our intrusion into the territory of the Science Side was strictly to fulfill orders from the Archbishop of Necessarius, the Church of Necessary Evil. Our sole objective is to secure and return the grimoire index. We had absolutely no intention of provoking you or declaring war."
Ren raised a hand, cutting off her diplomatic speech.
"I am perfectly aware of your objective. You're here for nothing more than to erase Index's memories."
Kanzaki flinched. Her eyes narrowed sharply, a flash of genuine shock breaking through her composed facade.
She hadn't expected him to know their deepest, most guarded secret.
But Ren's next words shattered whatever composure she had left.
"Index. Come out and greet your old friends."
"Index?!" Stiyl gasped, scrambling up from the floor.
A small figure slowly stepped out from the shadows of the rooftop stairwell.
It was Index. She had been standing there the entire time. She had heard every single word.
Her usually bright, energetic eyes were dull and hollow. She stared at Kanzaki and Stiyl, watching the blood drain completely from their faces.
"Are you... really from the Christian Church?"
Her voice was hoarse, trembling with a fragile, pitiful desperation. She was practically begging them to deny it, hoping against hope that the boy who had just rewritten the stars was lying to her.
But Kanzaki Kaori could not lie.
Even as her own body trembled, even as her heart twisted painfully in her chest, the Saint answered truthfully.
"Yes. We are magicians from the Church."
Stiyl forced himself to stand upright. All of his previous swagger, his arrogant sneers, and his aggressive posturing were completely gone. Having witnessed the absolute chasm between his power and Ren's, he had no pride left to hide behind.
Looking at the heartbroken girl before him, Stiyl clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms. He gritted his teeth and forced the words out.
"I'm sorry, Index. For your own safety... we really had to do it."
"So you really do know me?"
Index wrapped her arms around herself, her small frame shaking violently. The pieces were falling into place. The gaps in her mind. The strange familiarity.
This wasn't the first time her memories had been stolen from her.
"But... why?" Tears welled up in her green eyes. "Why would you do that?"
"Index, I..."
Stiyl took a desperate step forward, wanting nothing more than to comfort her, to explain that he cared for her. But Kanzaki cut him off.
She was a warrior. She was far better at delivering harsh truths than offering empty comfort.
"Index, eighty-five percent of your brain's capacity has been completely taken up by the one hundred and three thousand grimoires stored inside your mind. To maintain your basic bodily functions and survive, you are forced to rely on the remaining fifteen percent."
Kanzaki's voice was steady, but her eyes betrayed a deep, agonizing sorrow.
"Because you possess perfect memory, your brain permanently records every single detail of your life. Every sight, every sound, every conversation. Soon, that remaining fifteen percent will hit its absolute limit."
She took a slow breath, forcing herself to maintain eye contact with the crying girl.
"If those everyday memories overflow, your brain will overload, and you will die. To prevent that, to keep you alive... that specific portion of your memory must be manually erased every single year."
Her words were heavy, spoken with absolute sincerity. There was no deception in her tone, only a desperate, deep concern for the girl's life.
Beside her, Stiyl looked away, his face contorted in raw agony.
It was painfully obvious.
They truly believed it.
They had staked their entire lives, their morals, and their hearts on this utterly absurd, scientifically illiterate lie.
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