The billowing black smoke obscured their vision, making it impossible to see into the distance.
Touko Aozaki stood on full alert, every rune brought to a near-activated state.
A gust of wind appeared from nowhere, and a circular azure magic circle spun outward through the black smoke.
The slowly dispersing smoke was gathered by an unknown force into a whirlwind before exploding apart.
Standing at the center of the scorched ground before Touko was Aoko, her long red hair trailing all the way to the ground.
Her figure and apparent age had not changed, but the length of her hair and the aura she carried had subtly shifted.
"My, my, what an enthusiastic welcome, Sister," Aoko teased Touko in a relaxed tone. "So? Do you still have enough runes in reserve?"
"Hmph. As long as they can kill you, I can have as many runes as I want!" Touko replied viciously, glaring at Aoko.
"You really do hurt my feelings," Aoko said, though there was not the slightest fluctuation in her voice, and she even retained a warm smile. "Did I wound your pride?"
"I don't believe rune incineration on that level could be blocked by some bizarre magecraft," Touko said, avoiding Aoko's question and firing one back. "So that is the Aozaki family's magic?"
"Who knows?" Aoko replied. "You can try again."
That was exactly what Touko intended to do.
Touko closed her right eye and activated the Mystic Eye in her left. Her inherent Mystic Eye of Accumulation achieved thousands of internal reflections and amplifications, sacrificing the uniqueness of Mystery in exchange for greater power.
It was a masterpiece of genius: a Mystic Eye she had created anew from her natural Mystic Eye. In the original timeline, even Alice Kuonji, whose Mystic Eyes far surpassed Touko's in quality, had fallen to this move.
"Hmm. So this is what it feels like to be seen by your Mystic Eye, Touko."
The red-haired Aoko clenched her hand, feeling her movements become slightly sluggish. Clearly, though, this level of effect was not what Touko had intended to achieve.
Touko stared at Aoko in shock, her kaleidoscopic Mystic Eye showing utter disbelief.
"You... dispersed the Mystic Eye's effect?!" Touko asked. "Did you repeatedly summon yourself, placing countless versions of yourself from different points in time at the same point on the timeline?!"
"Impossible!" The moment Touko voiced her guess, she dismissed it herself. "Time travel is already encompassed by the nature of the Second Magic. The Aozaki family's magic cannot be that simple!"
"Actually, your guess was close, Touko," Aoko said casually, one hand resting on her slim waist. "I merely temporarily merged the Aoko Aozakis of different parallel worlds into one person. That way, even if your Mystic Eye refracts thousands of times, it has no effect on me, because it gets diluted."
Touko gritted her teeth as she stared at the casually talking Aoko, carefully calculating the trump cards she still had left--
"Still, just taking hits without striking back isn't my style," Aoko said, looking at Touko. "A bad sister deserves punishment. Are you ready?"
As soon as Aoko finished speaking, pale blue-white specks of light slipped from her hair, crystalline like dewdrops after rain.
In an instant, Aoko Aozaki lit up every one of her Crests—abnormal markings spread across her arms, torso, neck, and face.
As Aoko activated her Crests, the countless "dewdrops" that had fallen from her long hair earlier all floated in midair before reaching the ground, radiating dazzling light.
Like the rings of some planet, countless shining magical bullets bearing cruciform light slowly revolved around Aoko, poised to fire.
"These aren't the Aozaki family's Crests at all! Just who are you--"
However, at that very moment, four strange black-and-white blades struck Aoko's four vital points from four different angles at once. The blades then collided with one another, releasing a blinding light and triggering an explosion even more violent than the rune fire Touko had created earlier!
Things had developed to the point that Touko was somewhat at a loss. Logically, she had also noticed that Alice had sealed off this battlefield through the Mirror of Noon and the Nameless Forest. No one should have been able to enter.
Yet the duel between the Aozaki sisters had been disrupted by a third party—and Touko knew nothing about it.
The moment Touko steadied herself against the blast, a figure clad in tattered red cloth charged into the smoke kicked up by the explosion. In that instant, Touko vaguely saw the red shadow wielding two black-and-white blades.
But soon afterward, the red shadow was sent flying at a speed far greater than the one at which he had charged in. He crashed heavily into the ground, carving a long trail.
"Subjective Axis: Fixed."
Aoko's spotless figure reappeared before Touko, wearing an expression of anger Touko had never seen on her before.
At some point, the surrounding snowfield had turned into a sea of flowers, with unknown azure blossoms covering the mountains and plains.
Aoko's attention was no longer on Touko. Instead, she glared viciously at the red shadow lying on the ground.
"I don't particularly like anyone in your family," Aoko said, speaking words that sounded rather inexplicable to Touko. "Especially you."
"Since neither you nor your master knows when to quit, then just die already!"
With that, Aoko snapped her fingers. The starlight surrounding her erupted at once, all of it slamming into the red shadow.
The dazzling magical bullets that followed detonated in a string of piercing blasts. Countless cruciform flashes exploded in an extremely short span of time. Whoever that red shadow was, Touko did not believe he could survive firepower on that level.
Just as Touko expected, after the explosions ended, nothing remained where the red shadow had been except a massive crater dozens of meters across.
"All right, Touko, the annoying fly has been dealt with," Aoko said, resuming her usual composed smile. "Now we can handle the private matter between us sisters."
As soon as she said that, countless motes of starlight gathered around Aoko again, even more numerous than when she had destroyed the red shadow.
Numerous three-dimensional magic circles, like exquisite hollow glass artworks, surrounded Aoko.
The magical starlight around her was forcibly poured into these magic circles, built upon the theoretical foundation of number magecraft, repeatedly compressed, spun, and accelerated like a jet engine--
The vast, alien Crests on Aoko's body grew ever brighter, while ninety-nine Magic Circuits greedily drew upon the mana of the Great Source--
"Exchange number pattern, connect." Aoko spread her arms, and every magic circle around her extended "threads" that connected to the Crests on her body.
"Ether loading, complete." Beneath Aoko's calm tone was the excitement of finally being able to go all out.
"Struggle. Let me see what you've accomplished in these past two and a half years, Sister—Incineration Formula: Blue!"
Before you continue