Roland shook his head in amusement as he watched the knight-suited figure unconsciously step back.
"Not going to keep going?"
The corners of his mouth lifted into a teasing smile.
"If you're ready to stop at this level, you don't even qualify as a farce."
It was naked mockery.
As though deliberately returning the Deadlock leader's earlier condescension, Roland, who had dismantled all three attackers, did not launch an attack. Instead, he watched the agitated assailants with interest.
He had not even changed the way he held her in a bridal carry, as though declaring that this group, formed specifically to hunt down Espers, did not even deserve to make him free up a hand.
But even with their obsession dismissed as trash unworthy of being called a farce, not one attacker struck out on their own.
They simply stared blankly at their companions, who had been reduced to literal fragments scattered across the ground. Even the faint sound of their breathing was suppressed to the utmost, as though any louder noise would wake some unknown presence.
Misaki Shokuhou could understand what their enemies were thinking.
It was like how legends of Voodoo flourished among pirates who made their living through murder and plunder, or how serial killers who treated human lives as worthless often worshipped demons.
Once an obsession grew deep enough, it instead made people yearn for and fear the unknown that they could not understand all the more.
If Roland had simply killed these attackers, it would only have stirred their ferocity further.
They used speeds of two hundred kilometers per hour in conjunction with explosive pile drivers, and engines powered by aviation fuel that burned at absurdly high temperatures and would explode at the slightest leak.
Before they mastered the use of the Usurper's Spear, brutal