Through the eyes of her monitoring familiar, Touko Aozaki watched Alice Kuonji's Shield of Mist get effortlessly torn apart by Beo Lugh.
Alice Kuonji's abdomen was ripped open by the attack, chunks of viscera visibly spraying out. Her slight, slender body crumpled to the ground like a rag doll.
Touko's breath immediately caught.
"Beo!" Touko's echoing voice came from all directions. "What did I tell you before?! You are not allowed to kill Alice Kuonji or Aoko Aozaki! You have violated the contract!"
"You're so noisy, Touko." The golden wolf bared its fangs, saliva dripping through the gaps between its teeth. Its gaze overflowed with lust, bloodlust, and immense greed. Staring at Alice Kuonji's corpse on the ground, Beo Lugh said to Touko, "I haven't violated the contract. Take a closer look at that female magus. She isn't dead."
Hearing that, Touko adjusted the familiar's focus and looked at Alice Kuonji on the ground.
She had indeed shed quite a bit of blood, but a human who had nearly been cut in half at the waist obviously could not have lost only that much.
Alice Kuonji's body emitted a faint blue glow, then instantly burst into blue feathers that filled the sky before vanishing from the spot.
"Substitution magecraft?" Touko's low voice echoed through the abandoned amusement park. "I truly underestimated you, Alice."
"I should be the one saying that," Alice Kuonji said. At some point, she had reappeared atop a moon-shaped sculpture on one of the buildings. "Aoko warned me that you might have found a rather powerful familiar, yet I still underestimated your abilities."
Alice looked down. Resting in her palm was that little blue bird.
Its usually cheerful chirping had long fallen silent, and its beautiful blue feathers were now utterly disheveled. Robin the robin had a huge wound across its abdomen, nearly severing it into two halves.
Then the blue bird's feathers gradually faded, turning gray-white before finally becoming a strange statue cracked apart down the middle.
Alice took out a bag, carefully placed the broken statue inside, and put it away with equal care.
"Surrender, Alice," Touko's voice said. "You have seen Beo's strength. You have no chance of winning. As long as you sign a self-binding oath with me and agree not to interfere in the battle between Aoko and me, I will not make things difficult for you."
"You really are a heartless person, Touko," Alice said with a sigh. "What would you do if I said I would not sign it?"
"Heh heh." Touko laughed coldly. "A witch should not say such things. If you refuse, I will have Beo defeat you, then seal all the magical energy in your body until I defeat my arrogant little sister."
"And then?" Alice asked flatly. "After sealing my magical energy, will you toss me here for wild dogs to eat?"
"..."
"That is why I say that compared to Aoko, you are the truly heartless one." Alice sighed softly again and lovingly took a small bottle from beneath her cloak, as though it were something immensely precious.
She gave it a slight shake, and the contents of the flask swayed with it, like some sort of green cloud.
Touko watched Alice's movements closely from afar. The instant she saw the bottle Alice Kuonji had taken out, her expression changed.
"The situation has changed! Stop Alice Kuonji immediately! Do not let her use that thing in her hand!" Touko's voice shouted the command as Beo Lugh transformed once more into a golden whirlwind and swept toward the girl above.
At the same time, Touko activated the contingency she had buried throughout this abandoned amusement park—the reason this place had been called a trap.
They were traces of mystery that Touko had personally inscribed into every corner, divine words she had personally restored from the corners of history.
A full three hundred thousand Runic words concerning the power of the sun were activated by Touko.
In an instant, the amusement park's "night" was replaced by "day." Alice Kuonji's "Feast of Night" was naturally driven away, for where there was light, there could be no night.
"How crude, Touko," Alice Kuonji remarked. "You two truly are sisters by blood."
The twin little pigs, who had just escaped disaster, let out strange clacking laughter. Without the slightest fear, they blocked the golden wolf's path, seeking to stop it from advancing.
"Out of my way! You worthless toys!" Beo Lugh roared as it tore the twin little pigs apart. Yet their remaining wreckage still managed to halt the golden wolf for a brief instant. Their mission had been fulfilled.
The pigs' remains gave one final eerie, broken laugh, as though mocking Beo's failure, before turning back into damaged clappers and a stapler.
Beo's form twisted into some soft, flowing substance and charged at the girl upon the moon.
But just before its indestructible claws could touch Alice's body, a soldier blocked it.
This should have been impossible. Beo could not make sense of it no matter how it thought about it. How could such junk possibly stop it, a top-tier Phantasmal Species?
Yet it happened. A toy soldier in ridiculous formal wear raised a shattered serving tray as a shield and withstood the full-force strike of Beo Lugh, the golden werewolf, Miracle of the Earth.
When Beo tried to leap into the air again, the situation had already become difficult to handle, because it could no longer reach the girl in black.
The moon sculpture beneath Alice Kuonji—had become a real moon.
A crescent moon, like a small boat, carried the sole master of this bounded field and slowly rose into the sky, looking down upon the earth.
No matter how powerful a Phantasmal Species with three thousand years of age might be, without a pair of wings, it could not reach the girl now.
No, it would not be quite right to say it absolutely could not reach her. With a body made from materialized soul, Beo Lugh could theoretically transform into any form of life on Earth, birds included.
But it had been raised by a tribe of werewolves. The forms it knew best and was most accustomed to were naturally those of werewolves and giant wolves. Without training, it had no idea how to transform into a flying form.
"Retreat! Beo! We were not prepared enough today. We cannot deal with that—" Touko Aozaki's anxious voice came from all around as she tried to order Beo Lugh to withdraw.
But it was already too late. The cap of the magical little bottle had been opened.
The golden wolf felt the caress of a breeze.
It was a miracle that most magi had never experienced, one that awakened things long dead and rusted.
The sunlight brought by the Runic was once again obscured by thick mist. "Day" returned to "night," damaged wooden horses became pure white unicorns, and the puppets began to play a cheerful tune.
Alice Kuonji's slender fingers brushed lightly over the air, and the abandoned amusement park returned to a splendor it had never possessed.
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