The world creaked.
Massive power gathered in the ten crossbows.
The girl that was Magic God Othinus had rejected Kamijou Touma’s salvation.
And in exchange, she would die.
“Thor, get down.”
Kamijou would not hesitate any longer.
He clenched his fist until it was as hard as rock and spoke without turning back.
“A single hit from this would blow the planet away. I doubt even you would survive.”
He took a step into the snow.
As long as he could take that one step, he would make it. His feet would not stop. He walked, ran, and then dashed full speed through the snow.
He rushed toward Othinus.
He made his way to the girl who had put too much of a burden on herself and was about to break apart.
“Othinus!!”
The eyepatch girl faced him with her one eye.
The other eye was still not inside her eye socket and the cracks continued to spread through her body. Even if he was going to do something about the eye, he had to stop those crossbows first. She had lost her lance, so the source of her power as a magic god was the fairy spell wound in her chest.
That was the trump card against magic gods that Ollerus had developed.
But it was magic, so his right hand would be able to destroy it.
“…”
Meanwhile, she held out her slender hand.
Her index finger pointed at the boy.
She had finished targeting him.
Next, she would fire.
The ten embodiments of destruction rushed out all at once.
To the boy named Kamijou Touma that was an absolute wall. It was death itself. It had truly and completely killed him once in the past. Just as all living creatures could not oppose their own lifespans, that great firepower was the ending point for him.
(I won’t let myself lose here.)
However, he did not look away and he charged straight forward.
This time, he would overcome it.
He was determined to.
(There’s no reason to give up after coming this far!!)
The sound arrived after a short delay.
One beam of concentrated destruction shot by his side. He had not avoided it with his athletic ability. It had been an intentional sacrificial pawn meant to restrict his possible routes. In that infinite hell, it had been the final shot that killed him.
He understood that, but he continued to run.
More arrows raced past him and they all narrowed his range of motion. His freedom was reduced and his death approached, but he still ran with all his strength. Each time an arrow was fired, the cracks crawling along Othinus’s skin would have an explosion of growth. He could not allow that to happen no matter what, so he ran. He forced down the fear to reach her as quickly as possible.
In that hell one step away from death, his eyes met with hers.
She had a slight smile on her face.
It was the same smile she had given when silently accepting Index, Mikoto, and the others’ attacks on Sargasso. It was as if she were saying everything was returning to its proper position.
(That’s not what this is.)
The destruction of Othinus continued and her body inexorably crumbled.
“To hell with this!! You brought me back to life, returned everything to normal, and saved me! You understood what a small piece of happiness was!! You can’t possibly think it’s right to sacrifice yourself like this!!”
The god’s answer was to fight back.
The death that invited in took clear form and assaulted him head on.
(Ahh.)
He could not evade it now.
The previous arrows had guided him and worn down his freedom of movement. Even if this was an open area of land, it felt no different from a straight and narrow tunnel and a final attack seemed to fill that entire tunnel.
This was unavoidable death.
As he watched it approach, he had a sudden thought about when he had died before.
(Come to think of it, I never tried this back then.)
He clenched his right fist.
He could not evade, so that left only one option.
His right fist clashed head on with the magic god’s arrow.
In the instant of impact, he realized he had failed.
An ominous noise passed through his arm. Imagine Breaker was not enough to completely destroy this attack and he could feel his arm being pushed back.
(I don’t care if it gets broken, crushed, or ripped apart! As long as it isn’t torn off, I can still negate the stake in her chest!!)
He swung up his right arm that had become a spiral of intense pain.
With a sound like a rubber band snapping after being stretched beyond its limit, the arrow’s trajectory was diverted slightly upwards and he slipped below it.
The girl’s surprised face lay before him.
“I win, Othinus!!!!!”
He had made his way up to her, but he did not clench his fist as he moved his red-stained arm. Rather than punching, he embraced her slender body in both arms.
He wrapped his arms behind her and his palm touched the stake of light piercing through the center of her chest.
He gathered his last strength in those five fingers.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
And he pulled it out from her back.
“I won’t let you run away,” he whispered in her ear.
His body was completely battered, but he still gathered strength in his fingers.
That was enough to smash the stake of light to pieces.
“I promised, remember? I said I would save you even if it meant fighting the entire world.”
“Yes…you did.”
Othinus narrowed her eyes as the boy held her in his arms.
She looked happy.
She looked truly happy.
“But you don’t have to worry.”
He heard a cracking noise.
It was a very quiet noise.
“I was…”
But it did not stop and it did not come to an end. As the sound of thin ice breaking continued from her body, the blonde girl in an eyepatch smiled.
“I was already saved from the moment you said that to me.”
He saw light.
He saw particles of light.
By the time he noticed the change, he could no longer feel the girl in his arms. Her slender body crumbled. He could not understand it. Her crumbling body was more fleeting than snow. It turned to smooth particles of light as it fell to the ground and those were swept away by the wind.
He had been one step – just one step – too late, and in that moment, he thought he heard her voice once more even after she had vanished.
“Thank you.”
Before he could determine whether that voice had been real or imagined, something within him reached its limit and he collapsed onto the snow.
