The war was caused by the conflict between two overlapping alliances: the Roman Catholic Church + the Russian Orthodox Church + Christian allied nations under religious influence (primarily the old European continent and the nations of North Africa) and Academy City + the Anglican Church + emerging secular national governments dominated by scientific power (primarily North America and the pan-Pacific nations).
This is the most widely accepted view among historians after the official outbreak of World War III.
Some went even further and argued that this was not fundamentally a conflict between the Roman Catholic Church and Academy City, much less a simple war between individual nations. Rather, it was a declaration of war by rising powers against the forces of the old order.
The reasoning was also quite convincing.
Both camps contained forces from the magic side and the science side.
The Roman Catholic Church and Russian Orthodox Church were deeply entrenched beneficiaries of the old order. The Roman Catholic Church in particular regarded itself as God's shepherd in the mortal world, claiming authority over the "management and operation of the world" while reaping countless benefits from that position.
Academy City, by contrast, did not appear until the twentieth century and naturally belonged to the ranks of the rising powers. Its emergence had shaken the foundations of the magic side, so conflict between the two had merely been a matter of time.
As for the Anglican Church...tsk, tsk. The old troublemaker had been stirring the pot for ages.
It had indeed appeared very early. Back in the latter half of the sixteenth century, after King Henry VIII of England broke with the Vatican, the Roman Catholic Church in England became a tool under the king's authority for preserving royal rule.
At the time, devout believers within the church demanded the removal of lingering Catholic elements from the national church. Their doctrine came to be known as "Puritanism," and they themselves were called Puritans. From then on, the Anglican Church became distinct from the Roman Catholic Church.
At the height of the British Empire, upon which the sun never set, Britain had naturally also been one of the beneficiaries of the old order. Through its "balance-of-power policy" on the continent, it had even remained the greatest beneficiary for a long time.
Unfortunately, that was all in the past. After throwing everything it had into two world wars, the empire on which the sun never set eventually became an empire basking only in the afterglow of sunset.
And as for whom the Roman Catholic Church supported and whom it undermined, that hardly needed explanation. France had once been hailed as the "eldest daughter of the Catholic Church."
In this world of Index Librorum Prohibitorum, even during eras when gods, monsters, and supernatural beings remained out of sight, the strongest and most dominant forces in the world had never truly been sovereign states. Take the Roman Catholic Church as an example. At its height, it had more than two billion believers, regardless of how devout they actually were, with influence extending across 113 countries.
By the twenty-first century, England's voice on the European continent had largely been squeezed out and usurped by its "old nemesis," France.
It truly was a case of trying to steal a chicken only to lose a fistful of rice instead, leaving Britain isolated offshore once more. Of course, as for how much of that Britain had brought upon itself, opinions differed depending on whom you asked.
Centuries of conflict between Britain and France, collisions between the American-centered economy and the European-centered economy, the war between the euro and the dollar...
Every argument seemed to contain some truth. What a chaotic world.
Things like this would never end...World War III was merely another opportunity to reshuffle the deck.
Just look. The moment the Third Princess, Carissa, came to power as regent, she picked up her blade and went to have a little "physical exchange" with France.
Across the entire world, aside from the Battle of the Strait of Malacca where the Roman Catholic Church and Academy City were confronting one another head-on, the fiercest fighting was between England and France at the Battle of Calais.
Both sides had deployed strategic magical armaments. Within French territory, along the Calais-Gravelines line, the current leaders of the two countries, Princess Carissa and the "Woman Who Could Ruin a Nation," had already reached the point of bayonets drawn and were fighting in deadly earnest.
There was also the Battle of the Bering Strait, where the North American coalition exchanged fire with Russia, the American coalition's amphibious landings in Central and West Africa within France's traditional sphere of influence, and the Russian air and naval forces' bombing and blockade campaign against the Japanese archipelago...
The smell of gunpowder had already spread everywhere. Including the allied nations of both camps, the overwhelming majority of people had given up hope that the war would end quickly. People stockpiled supplies and built shelters in the countryside, already preparing themselves for the war to drag on as long as the previous two world wars, or even escalate into nuclear conflict.
Selene's response to all of this was—decapitation strikes.
She was not Khorne. She had no intention of chopping down more than two billion people one by one.
Vatican City had already been bombed so thoroughly that not even rubble remained. As for the Russian Orthodox Church, dealing with it was both extremely difficult and extremely simple.
The usurping bishop Nikolai Tolstoy was a bellicose, greedy, and unstable element, so the solution was simply to make him disappear physically.
Then drag this meek, submissive-looking Patriarch, whose face practically screamed "I am easy to control," out of imprisonment, order him to withdraw the Russian Federation from the war against Academy City, and place all the blame on the Roman Catholic Church.
With that, more than half the problem would be solved.
If anyone objected, the red-robed nun before her would handle it.
With righteousness as justification, even purging large numbers of people during wartime could be declared correct. Among Russians, whose style of administration tended to be rather rough around the edges, that was hardly unusual.
Vasilisa was the leader of Annihilatus, the Russian Orthodox Church's pride and joy, a unit specialized in magical combat. She was also an exceptionally powerful magician. Her true age was unknown, as the magic she practiced prevented her body from aging, making it impossible to estimate her age by appearance.
...Probably another ancient monster.
"Well, in that case, it's like having a blade pressed right against your throat...That's what this amounts to, isn't it? The Roman Catholic Church is destined to cease existing. The European continent only needs one voice."
A ring of visible space-time ripples appeared around the white-haired beauty.
Her silky silver-white hair, long enough to reach her waist, fluttered in the night breeze. The hem of her skirt, embroidered with holy lilies, twisted amid the movement of distorted light particles, while the swing of her arm set the white glove on her right hand and the cape over her shoulders in motion.
The combat suit, resembling an evening gown, tightly wrapped Selene's curvacious body. It allowed free movement while making her figure even more alluring. A platinum-white overskirt adorned with white flowers fell elegantly over her slender calves, and each step she took sent the hem fluttering.
Bzzzz—!
The rift that had torn open the space-time of the material universe vanished. Looking outward through the corridor's transparent stained-glass windows, the radiant light of early morning was slowly rising beyond them.
"M-Mmmph!!"
Once that terrifying presence had departed, Krans R. Tsarski, not yet sixteen years old, tried to scream, but it was as though something had plugged his throat, leaving him unable to make a sound.
He was terrified. He wanted to struggle back to the monastery palace, the only place where he felt safe, but Selene had earlier lifted him through the air and carried him through the void. That experience alone had drained all strength from his body. He was limp all over and found it difficult even to squirm.
After so many years of imprisonment, he had barely even seen outsiders. And now, the moment someone finally appeared, things had become this intense...
"Patriarch, we must issue a declaration ending the war immediately. For every second we delay, countless believers of the Russian Orthodox Church will lose their lives because of this damned, meaningless war."
Vasilisa lowered her gaze and took Krans by the hand as she led him toward the exit of St. Basil's Cathedral.
"After we carry out that lady's instructions, will she let me go?"
Krans followed closely as Vasilisa pulled him along. Only after a long while did he finally raise his head.
Vasilisa did not answer because she knew this was nothing more than leaving a wolf's den only to fall into a tiger's jaws. Krans' fate would most likely be to become Selene's puppet on strings, and as for her...she had no choice.
Sasha had been captured by Fiamma of the Right because her all-purpose magical constitution allowed her to "switch tactics to adapt to any situation." According to Selene, Fiamma of the Right had already taken her to the South Asian subcontinent and was now heading toward the Strait of Malacca.
Vasilisa lacked the ability to save her. She could only become Selene's accomplice in controlling the Russian Orthodox Church, but if that meant Selene would rescue Sasha, then so what if she betrayed the faith? Could things possibly become worse than starting this war in the first place?
...
Strait of Malacca.
Dawn had only just begun to brighten the horizon. Amid the snowflakes filling the sky, nearly the entire island of Sumatra had already been buried beneath heavy snow as far as the eye could see. Green and brown had both been replaced by an endless expanse of white.
Rumble!
Gales raged wildly. The entire strait had fallen into darkness, with a vast blizzard blotting out almost all light from the sky and making hundreds of kilometers of ocean seem as though they had entered an ice age.
The next moment, the clouds once again began collapsing and flowing toward the center. Before long, they formed a slowly rotating ring of clouds centered on an enormous icicle.
An explosion thundered.
Several kilometers away, a massive anchor of ice struck the land and detonated.
It was not an explosion of fire produced by gunpowder.
It was freezing ice sand!
The frigid blast generated by the explosion took the form of icicles hundreds of meters long. Ice spikes sharper than ordinary steel spears erupted in every direction by the tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands.
A huge chunk of earth was gouged away directly. Great quantities of snow and twisted fragments of black metal flew through the air. It was obvious that the protective walls of Academy City's underground base had been blasted open. With attacks of this scale and power, even a concealed underground fortress would undoubtedly have its "skullcap" ripped away.
Cracked barrels from large-caliber heavy artillery and the wreckage of various armored vehicles fell from the sky, smashing up great plumes of snow. Circuit boards were scattered everywhere in such numbers that obvious arcs of electricity crackled among them.
"Hahahaha...Finally cracked open your turtle shell. Whether it's the 'Son of God' or the Queen of the Adriatic Sea, Christianity has countless stories about suppressing storms and protecting ships. The attributes under my control are 'wind' and 'air.' A storm at sea is fundamentally a combination of the attributes of 'wind' and 'water.'"
Surrounded by more than several hundred ice frigates, Vento of the Front stood on the bow deck of the moonlit ice vessel, the Queen of the Adriatic Sea, and let out a vicious laugh.
"Hey, idiot! Do you see how the Queen of the Adriatic Sea is supposed to be used now?! So what if all those old fossils are dead? As long as God's Right Seat still exists, none of this is over!"
Under her undisguised, contemptuous gaze, the bruised and swollen Biagio Busoni did not dare argue back.
Aside from the enormous difference between their actual ability to control the Queen of the Adriatic Sea, what mattered even more was that he had learned the horrifying news that Vatican City had been destroyed, with the Pope and the cardinals all dead.
The forces here might already be the Roman Catholic Church's last remaining large-scale organized magical combat force...He was lost...Should he seize the opportunity to rise while no one remained above him?
Forget it. Taking power now would not be picking ripe fruit. It would be painting a target on himself!
If he possessed the ability to turn the tide, that would be another matter. But did he?
He wished he did, but he simply did not have that kind of ability, understood?!
He might have been arrogant, but he was not stupid. He knew his own limits.
"Hmph!" Seeing Biagio shrink back like that, Vento of the Front snorted coldly.
Crackle!
At that moment, countless arcs of electricity erupted violently from the metal crater gouged into the ground. The blue-white arcs now carried a strangely deep hue, almost as though they had shifted from blue-white to dark blue.
The wreckage of armored vehicles scattered around the area seemed to respond to the electrical arcs and gradually gathered together, forming a thick, pitch-black object resembling a cone. As the iron and metal fused together, thunderous booms echoed continuously.
A Railgun...? Vento of the Front kept rotating the spiked hammer in her hand as she stared at the conical metal pillar wrapped in electricity. Her lips split into a grin. "Bring it on!"
The gigantic conical ice anchor mounted on the bow rose upward. Under Vento of the Front's control, the entire anchor began glowing with an aura like a white light bulb.
Boom!!
A deafening roar erupted. Almost at the same moment, a brilliant streak of lightning spanning heaven and earth tore through the air with overwhelming momentum.
Immediately afterward, BOOM—!!
The gigantic ice anchor and the blinding pillar of lightning collided head-on. In an instant, a brilliant point of light appeared in the sky and seemed to freeze there, as though time itself had stopped for a fraction of a second. Then, in the next moment...
Crack!
The ice anchor shattered completely from the inside. The force was so immense that its explosion produced a tremendous roar, and the wreckage was hurled away by the shock wave generated by the opposing forces.
The shattered anchor broke into countless pieces several meters long, flying in every direction.
The waters occupied by Vento of the Front's "Queen's Fleet" were no exception. Dense waves of ice blades rained down like artillery fire. The frozen sea surface became uneven and pitted, resembling the surface of the moon.
Even the ice railing on the deck where Vento of the Front stood had a chunk smashed out of it.
"Now that's more like it!" Completely unmoved, she spoke while slightly extending her tongue like a snake tasting the air. With a soft clink, a thin metal chain slowly slid down from between the woman's lips.
Bzz!
"Come on, again!"
The entire "Queen's Fleet" turned broadside and formed a firing line. The enormous ice cannons mounted along the ships' sides creaked as they rotated toward the area where the lightning lingered.
Boom, boom, boom—!
The sky was dyed the color of snow and ice. Even though the shells themselves were made of ice, the visual impact of an entire fleet firing a broadside was breathtaking.
In the next second, another pillar of lightning lit up and struck the ice shells rising from the frozen ocean with flawless accuracy. A human figure trailing clouds of red, blue, and yellow smoke broke the sound barrier and shot into the sky. Pure white Dark Matter wings rose from the underground forest of steel, followed one after another by fluorescent green beams of light...