"Even a Grand Magus would want to remove this. Its roots have already spread throughout your internal organs. If you try to dispel the magecraft, your Magic Crest will be destroyed along with it."
To a magician, a Magic Crest could sometimes be more important than their own life. If Mayo had threatened someone else today, he would most likely have succeeded. But Aozaki Touko was an exception.
"I never had such a thing as a Magic Crest." As she spoke, Aozaki Touko traced a Rune Script over her chest. The next moment, tree roots burst from her body, then withered away and vanished. Yet strangely, despite the hole that had opened in her chest, not a drop of blood flowed from Touko's body.
The hole in her chest resembled a black hole, pitch-black and utterly devoid of luster.
"Looks like I still haven't remembered what I was thinking before. I've gotten a little lax lately." Touko lightly tapped her head with a finger, then took out half a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and tossed it to Lord El-Melloi II.
"Sorry, please hold onto those for me. I'll come get them back later. My apologies, everyone. I know my final curtain call was disappointing, but I had no choice. Things had come to this.
"Lately, people have been exposing all my trump cards, so hardly anyone wants to kill me anymore. Oh, right. You people probably didn't know about this."
As she spoke, Touko's upper body began to crumble apart. It was not flesh and blood, but something more like the materials of a puppet. As her body disintegrated, a dark, eerie aura continuously spread through the room.
"I used to get ambushed a lot, so I came up with a solution afterward and put that inside here.