It was an attack whose activation—and even the warning signs preceding its activation—could not be sensed at all.
Creak creak!!
Bang!
The instant that icy female voice sounded behind him, the Horizontal Movement spell activated. Golden light flashed, and Fiamma of the Right tried to escape as though teleporting away. Yet in the very next instant, space-time trembled. Fiamma of the Right failed to move even a few meters before crashing down like someone tripping over his own feet.
"Cough, cough...damn it. The Horizontal Movement spell was disrupted...has the surrounding space been sealed?"
On the uneven steps, Fiamma of the Right could not calm himself at all.
Because from the ribs near his right arm, where the Subspace Lance had pierced him, all the way across his chest, neck, and cheeks, patterns of Honkai corrosion had already spread. Immediately afterward, an overwhelming wave of agony surged through him.
"AAAAAAAHHHH—!!"
The sensation was close to having every joint forcibly dislocated and snapped, while his tendons and muscles were pulled out and stretched like strings on an instrument.
Not only did no blood strangely flow from the wound caused by the Subspace Lance, it instead seemed as though some invisible, viscous substance was invading Fiamma of the Right's body through it.
"My, my. You're looking rather miserable, Savior. Founder of a new era."
"Ugh...aaaaahhh...hah—!"
Following the voice, Fiamma of the Right looked up. Both his pupils were bloodshot, his face twisted hideously as he glared at the face atop the platform, so precise and perfectly symmetrical that it looked almost like a doll's. The intense pain stirred his brutality. His heart filled with malice as the desire to destroy surged forth.
The more beautiful a heretical thing is, the deeper its sin and blasphemy. As the savior chosen by destiny for the Roman Catholic Church, I must destroy it all the more!
"Hehehehe...hahahahahaha! I really did almost die! Strongest of the Science Side, you disappoint me. You can't even pull off a sneak attack properly!"
"You should've cut off my head—or severed Yours Truly's right hand."
Bent forward at the waist, trembling violently like an epileptic patient from the pain, Fiamma of the Right let out a delighted, deranged laugh from deep in his throat. Beneath his disheveled fiery-red bangs, his eyes gleamed with confused madness.
"Now...it's Yours Truly's turn!"
Out of the corner of his eye, Fiamma of the Right looked toward the "third hand" protruding from his right shoulder.
It was a hand stained with blood and shining with distorted light, extending from Fiamma of the Right's right shoulder. It resembled both a dragon's claw and a demon's hand, as though it contained every mystery and miracle in existence. The space around its shriveled, pointed fingers twisted unnaturally, like syrup being stirred.
As long as the Holy Right remained, he would forever stand undefeated!
"I'm going to kill you! Selene, howl like a beaten dog! This is—the power of God!!"
Fiamma of the Right's lips split into a bloodthirsty grin as he controlled the "third hand" on his shoulder and swung it toward Selene. Just like every time before, the instant it moved, every enemy standing in front of him would be destroyed!
And then...
The freezing stratospheric wind swept across the sky ten thousand meters above the ground.
Nothing happened.
"How is that possible?!!"
The wild laughter on Fiamma of the Right's face froze instantly. He subconsciously raised his head and saw the undisguised mockery and ridicule in Selene's crimson diamond-shaped eyes.
"I think you've misunderstood something."
Beneath the mottled magical glow, Selene descended with graceful steps. "A new era? Mm, you're right about that. But let me correct one thing. This isn't your new era. It's mine."
Tap, tap~
Every step she took landed like a heavy hammer striking Fiamma of the Right. Within several kilometers, the ground was shredded by tides of purplish-red energy and sank inward, sending rubble and dust flying everywhere.
Riiip—!
Enormous fissures tore through the barrier of reality. Blinding white light suddenly erupted one beam after another, draping the entire Star of Bethlehem fortress beneath a veil called Honkai.
Crack crack!
Points of light drifted down from the sky like feathers. One after another, colossal angelic knights clad from head to toe in silver-white heavy armor appeared atop the Star of Bethlehem fortress amid violent space-time tremors!
With a casual downward gesture from Selene, flying rubble and thunderous explosions erupted throughout the area. The Roman Catholic punitive force that had only just gained the upper hand instantly switched roles from hunters back into prey.
In the sky, Archangel Gabriel, who had been slaughtering Academy City's armed forces and attacking the Level 5s without restraint, was surrounded within a few breaths by hundreds upon hundreds of colossal angelic knights.
"No...impossible. Yours Truly can't do it. I clearly possess the same power as the Son of God, the power to save the world. Yet Yours Truly can't save the world...pfft—!"
Before Fiamma of the Right's pale lips could even finish moving, they abruptly split. His entire body spun through the air and crashed away, his head swelling red as blood sprayed from his mouth.
"Blegh..."
His face was smashed so deeply into the wall that it became embedded there. Fiamma of the Right slid down, spitting out broken teeth streaked with blood. Despite his wretched condition, his mind, usually clouded by arrogance and rage, actually became somewhat clearer.
He tightly gripped the cylindrical metal ingot in his left hand.
Bzzzt—!
The object emitting light was the John's Pen Remote Control in Fiamma of the Right's hand.
"Warning. Chapter Four, Section Six...confirmed that connected user's life-energy loss exceeds permitted quantity. Foreign ability interference detected. To ensure restoration, eliminating...beginning automatic removal of personnel threatening the connected user."
A chaotic voice spilled from the little nun like sound from a scratched recording.
BOOM!
Accompanied by a powerful gust of wind, dark-red wings formed on the back of the girl in the white nun's habit, shielding Fiamma of the Right within them.
Rather than flames, their color resembled blood. Complex magical formations flashed inside the girl's pupils as she locked onto Selene, who stood atop the platform with one arm behind her back and had only just made a flicking gesture with her fingers.
"Warning. Chapter Twenty-Two, Section One. Designated as My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me—two seconds remaining until full activation."
BOOM!
A blood-red flash erupted.
"I haven't lost control of my body. My magical power hasn't been destroyed either. The Holy Right is still housed in my right hand..." Fiamma of the Right murmured. At that thought, he looked toward the Subspace Lance piercing his right shoulder blade.
"It's that!"
"Oh? You finally noticed? Unfortunately, it's already too late."
Shhk!
Amid the shriek of displaced air, the dark-gold spear shot forward. The floating little nun in white jerked violently backward as though struck by a mountain. A long spray of blood flew through the air as she blasted through several interconnected fortress structures, crashed through a church, and disappeared beneath the collapsing rubble without another sound.
The increasingly hot and numb sensation spreading through Fiamma of the Right's neck left him helpless. His consciousness grew thinner and thinner, until he could no longer even control his own body.
Crack!
With extremely precise gravitational control, the fingers of Fiamma of the Right's left hand gripping the metal ingot were pried open one by one. "You've relied far too heavily on the Holy Right, Fiamma of the Right."
"How could I possibly cut off your head or your right hand? Those are my property. Not just them—your entire body belongs to me too."
Taking the John's Pen Remote Control, Selene parted her crimson lips and exhaled a warm breath. Her voice was gentle, yet the words she spoke plunged Fiamma of the Right into an abyss of ice.
"Your arrogance and conceit surpass even mine. Apart from the Holy Right, your weaknesses are far too obvious."
Fiamma of the Right's Holy Right—just how powerful was it? Selene had searched the souls of so many Roman Catholic cardinals that even she could not argue with the evaluation of the Holy Right: strong. Extremely strong.
Aside from cases where it could not determine Imagine Breaker, the Holy Right automatically adjusted its power according to the strength of the opponent until it reached enough force to defeat them.
As long as someone's strength was below Fiamma of the Right's, they would inevitably be defeated. Skill became meaningless against him. Because the attack ignored distance and struck simply by being swung, speed did not need to be considered. Because swinging it was enough to defeat the enemy, there was no need for greater destructive power.
It was like rock-paper-scissors. As long as Fiamma of the Right moved his hand, he had already won. His victories had always come in a single strike.
Whether the strength of Selene's divided-spirit incarnation fell within the Holy Right's automatic adjustment limit, she honestly didn't know—and had no intention of finding out, because she had chosen a shortcut instead.
I'm not actually some brainless brute. Why would I clash with it head-on?
The Holy Right was extremely unstable and would disintegrate in midair because it could not be maintained for long. Fiamma of the Right mostly did nothing more than swing it. He was still far from truly controlling that power, overcoming its usage limitations, and drawing out its full output.
That was also why Fiamma of the Right needed the knowledge of Index Librorum Prohibitorum and the power of Imagine Breaker.
In other words, if Theresa was a Judah launcher, then Fiamma of the Right was a Holy Right launcher.
After losing his right hand, Fiamma of the Right would basically become more than half useless. That was Aleister's assessment. In the original timeline, Aleister had dealt with his threat by severing Fiamma of the Right's right hand.
To be safe, Selene had deliberately hidden within a spatial gap and watched the show for quite a while, waiting specifically for the instant Fiamma of the Right used the Holy Right.
No matter how high the upper limit of that power might be, the amount of power he himself could output was only so much.
Selene had already accounted for the restrictions on usage count and target judgment. Conveniently, Fiamma of the Right was facing Kamijou Touma. Imagine Breaker's inability to be properly judged made it easier for Selene to seize the exact instant he swung the Holy Right.
And so, Fiamma of the Right had ended up like this.
In fact, aside from physically preventing Fiamma of the Right's right hand from exerting force, Selene had added another layer of insurance by corroding his body with Honkai energy. She had especially targeted his neck, crudely separating head from body and cutting off the central nervous system's control signals from his brain to the rest of his body.
"This ability is merely housed in your right hand. It doesn't belong to your whole being. Your power is borrowed."
Selene directly seized Fiamma of the Right by the throat with one hand and slowly lifted his thin, reed-like body into the air. The moment she tightened her grip, his eyes rapidly reddened with blood, bulging wide as he glared desperately at Selene, yet no sound emerged from his open mouth.
"..."
"The more you struggle, the faster the corrosion spreads, doesn't it, Mr. Fiamma of the Right? You have a new guest inside your body. As the host, shouldn't you show a little generosity?"
Her expression remained completely calm, her crimson eyes undisturbed as still water. Selene passed judgment on Fiamma of the Right as casually as though she were eating or drinking.
As the leader of God's Right Seat, host of the Holy Right, and a genius chosen by heaven from among two billion Roman Catholic believers, Fiamma of the Right's talent and potential were beyond question.
Otherwise, the Holy Right, a right hand said to embody every miracle contained within Christian legend, would never have chosen him.
Even after suffering Aleister's full-force sneak attack, he had survived despite severe injuries. After losing his right hand, he rapidly learned spells such as Fairyization, rose again from adversity, and eventually grew into one of the strongest humans beneath the Magic Gods. He improved the Fairyization spell and even caused Magic God Othinus no small amount of trouble.
Unfortunately...all of that came later.
Without receiving Kamijou Touma's personality-correcting fist to the face, Fiamma of the Right, bearer of the Holy Right, was still that same madman who placed his own objectives above everything else, arrogant and convinced that everything lay within his control.
And Selene clearly had no interest in correcting his personality.
Hiss...
His head felt as though it were splitting apart.
Whatever Selene was saying, Fiamma of the Right could no longer respond. It felt as though something sharp was multiplying inside every cell of his body. The energy particles that had entered his blood vessels devoured everything belonging to Fiamma of the Right in an instant.
Pop.
A sound like a balloon being crushed reached his ears. A liquid that resembled tears yet was not quite tears spilled from his eyes. It tasted of rust, redder than tears and murkier than tears...
And then, through his hazy vision, he saw an unusual magician.
Why is there someone else inside my mind?
Silver hair reaching the ankles. A perfectly composed face from which no expression could be read. Bare toes standing within an endless dark void filled with purplish-red points of light, the figure dressed in nothing but a green surgical gown.
A strange atmosphere that seemed to contain man and woman, adult and child, saint and sinner all at once.
Fiamma of the Right knew this magician.
"...Academy City Board Chairman...Aleister Crowley..."
In a daze, the purplish-red corrosive force invading his mind wrapped around him. What awaited him was endless darkness and absolute silence.
"As expected, leaving the container gives one a much more accurate perception. An interesting sensation. So this is Selene's authority? An ability that can be shared, an ability that belongs to oneself, complete mastery over every power one possesses."
Aleister flexed his fingers, seemingly testing the composition of his current state as he murmured to himself.
...
"...?????????..."
Suspended entirely in midair and having completely descended into incoherent gibberish, "Fiamma of the Right" displayed such remarkable vocal dexterity that the speed and accent left Selene genuinely impressed.
"The severed right hand..."
After first using John's Pen Remote Control to command Index to enter restoration standby mode, Selene found a severed arm amid the chaotic ruins. "Kamijou probably doesn't need this reattached, right? It'll grow back anyway."
"And then...are the two of you planning to watch the show from the sidelines and swoop in afterward just like I did? Are you interested in the future of this new century too?"
Rather horrifyingly tossing the blood-soaked severed arm back and forth, Selene looked sideways toward a corner of the sea of clouds beyond the walls of the Star of Bethlehem fortress.
Selene tilted her head slightly, the golden diamond-shaped cross-ring pupils within her crimson eyes contracting faintly. "Still not coming out?"
Bzzzt—!
RUMBLE—!!
Enormous bolts of lightning erupted from nowhere within the sea of clouds, sounding the trumpet of the God of Thunder. In a single flash, they expanded into a vast ocean of lightning stretching for hundreds of kilometers!!
At this moment, purely in visual terms, the Star of Bethlehem fortress, more than forty kilometers in diameter, looked no different from a lone leaf boat drifting upon the ocean. Everywhere the eye could see, lightning crisscrossed the heavens. The boundless brilliance seemed capable of tearing apart the firmament itself, as though even space-time could be pierced with ease!
"Did you do this?" Mugino Shizuri's mouth fell open. She lowered the Diffusion Support Semiconductor in her hand and stared wide-eyed at the chestnut-haired girl beside her.
"Huh?"
Only belatedly reacting, Misaka Mikoto stared blankly for a moment, blinked several times, then raised both hands in front of herself.
Did I do this?
She was furious because the Academy City soldiers fighting beside her had been killed by Archangel Gabriel, and she had indeed just been doing everything she could to borrow the lightning accumulated within the clouds, but...am I really this strong?
How come even I didn't know that?
Clap clap!
Beyond the fortress walls came the sound of applause. Even amid the thunder, Selene distinguished it clearly.
"Hahahaha...what a powerful offensive. Young people these days truly put old fellows like us to shame...though I must say, madam, your temper is rather fierce."
The two figures emerging from the thunderclouds, one man and one woman, had already stepped onto the fortress.
Selene was not surprised in the slightest. She turned around.
"Aleister! Are you done yet? We've got guests!"