Chapter 652 - 369: A curse from me to you

[Realm: álfheimr]

[Location: Dominion of Oz]

[Winkie Country]

("Will destruction come again? Because I was too docile? Too weak?")

The thought drifted through Electra’s mind as she stared up at the figure standing over her.

It was almost difficult to reconcile the sight. The Angel who had brought her to this state was so strikingly beautiful that, under different circumstances, she might have found herself lingering on the details of his appearance. His delicate features, snow-white hair, and vivid red eyes seemed strangely out of place amid the devastation surrounding them. Yet there was nothing gentle about the way he looked down at her.

Mikoto’s expression remained passive. His eyes held neither anger nor satisfaction, neither sympathy nor any discernible trace of irritation.

Even so, Electra could not shake the feeling that she had incurred his wrath.

She had attacked him. She had injured him, however briefly, and forced him to expend considerably more effort than he might have preferred. Whatever indifference he displayed now, she could hardly pretend that there would be no consequences for what she had done.

And now those consequences had arrived.

She had lost.

Her body had been reduced to little more than a remnant of what it had once been, her ability to resist him all but exhausted.

Yet, even then, Electra’s thoughts did not settle.

("No... There is still something I can do. It has taken an interest in him. If I could somehow draw it towards the Angel...")

Her thoughts slowed as she considered the possibility.

There was an opportunity, however narrow, but she could not simply act without thinking. Mikoto was standing directly over her. His attention was fixed on her, and any sudden movement would almost certainly be noticed. She needed something to divert his attention, even for a moment.

But what?

What could possibly distract someone who had already decided that her life was no longer worth preserving?

"I’d ask whether you have any last words, but I would only be lying to myself by pretending I care enough to hear them," Mikoto said, his soothing voice cutting through her thoughts. "I suppose it would be the polite thing to do, considering the circumstances. Unfortunately, I have never been interested in pretending to be polite."

He slowly raised his right hand towards her prone form.

To him, this was already over.

"This will be the end of it," he murmured. "And maybe, if you’re lucky enough to have a next life, you’ll learn not to make yourself so uselessly sentimental. Caring about things that cannot be saved, or insisting on protecting things that cannot protect themselves, is a miserable way to spend your existence."

"I’d say caring about simple things is what helps one remain sane," Electra replied idly.

Her expression remained unperturbed. There was no visible fear in her eyes, nor did she seem concerned by the hand hovering above her. Her body was in no condition to resist, and she knew it.

"Even if those things are small, insignificant, or incapable of offering anything in return, they can still give someone a reason to carry on. Not everything needs to be useful to justify its existence. Sometimes, having something to care about is enough."

"You mean useless things," Mikoto corrected.

His gaze did not leave her.

"What exactly does caring about something that offers you no benefit accomplish? It consumes your time and gives other people something they can use against you. You become attached, and suddenly you have something to lose. I fail to see what’s admirable about making yourself vulnerable for the sake of something that cannot repay you."

There was no genuine curiosity behind the question. He was not attempting to understand her position, nor did he seem interested in hearing an argument that might change his mind. He was merely stating what he considered an obvious truth.

Electra studied him for a moment.

"You’re awfully cruel for an Angel," she murmured, her pale-blue eyes remaining fixed on his face. "I had expected something different, although perhaps that was foolish of me. Still, if you genuinely want to know, then this was an anchor. Something I could hold on to, even when everything else became difficult to bear."

Her gaze shifted briefly towards the ruined landscape surrounding them.

"As foolish as it might seem to you, protecting these lands was something I could still do. Something that belonged to me, and something I could choose to preserve. I may not have been good at it, but that does not mean it was meaningless."

"Quite the job you’re doing," Mikoto snorted.

His raised hand remained poised above her, although his expression suggested that he was becoming increasingly tired of the conversation.

"You chose to fight me, and now you’re lying here in pieces. The land you’re so determined to protect has been reduced to this, and you haven’t exactly demonstrated an impressive ability to keep anything safe. If this is what you consider protecting something, then I would hate to see what you consider neglecting it. It’s useless car—"

He stopped.

Not because of Electra.

Something pulsed within him.

The sensation was sudden, but not entirely unfamiliar. It moved through his body with a peculiar insistence, almost like a force pressing against the inside of his chest. It was not painful, nor did it resemble the sensation of a spell being disrupted. Instead, it felt like resistance. A refusal, unmistakably directed towards the action he was about to take.

Mikoto’s expression changed.

Only slightly, but enough for his brows to draw together.

("Sabre?")

He immediately recognized the source.

It was not sentient, at least not in any conventional sense. It possessed no independent personality capable of reasoning or communicating with him. However, as a former holy sword, it could be said to retain something resembling a will.

That will should have been little more than a remnant by now.

The corruption it had endured over the years was extensive. Whatever purity or original purpose the weapon had once possessed should have been thoroughly buried beneath everything that had been forced upon it. Mikoto had never considered its lingering resistance significant, and, until now, it had never given him a reason to reconsider that assessment.

Yet it was reacting.

Quite vehemently, too.

It was resisting his intention to kill Electra.

Mikoto’s fingers shifted slightly inside his gauntlet. His raised hand remained suspended, but the pressure he had felt within himself had become difficult to dismiss.

("It never bothered reacting like this before. What’s different?")

He considered the possibility that Sabre was responding to something about Electra herself. Perhaps there was something within the Progenitor that the weapon recognized, or perhaps its reaction had nothing to do with her directly.

Could it sense something he could not?

Mikoto did not immediately arrive at an answer.

That, more than anything, was unusual.

He was accustomed to understanding the things happening around him, particularly when they involved his own abilities. Even when he lacked complete information, he could generally identify the nature of a disturbance and determine whether it warranted his attention. But this was different. Sabre’s reaction was not something he could easily explain, and he had no intention of blindly following an impulse simply because it came from a weapon.

Still, he hesitated.

Electra noticed.

She had been watching him throughout the exchange, paying attention to the way he held himself. His expression had remained largely unchanged, even when he threatened to kill her. There had been no uncertainty in his movements and certainly no indication that he found the prospect of ending her life troubling.

This hesitation, however, was different.

It was not the hesitation of someone who could not bring himself to kill another person. She had seen enough of Mikoto to understand that much. He had no apparent difficulty inflicting violence, and the destruction of her body had done little to disturb his composure.

No, this was something else.

He was confused.

And confusion, however brief, was an opportunity.

("He seems confused...")

Electra’s eyes remained on him for another moment before they slowly closed.

("But this is my chance.")

She could not afford to waste it. Whatever had caused Mikoto to hesitate had already diverted his attention, and she needed only to make use of that brief opening. There was no guarantee that the plan would work, nor could she be certain of what would happen once she released it.

But she had already exhausted nearly every other possibility.

("You want your fun, right?")

Her thoughts were directed towards the presence that had lingered within her for so long. The same presence that had interrupted her conversations, intruded upon her mind, and occasionally made itself known in ways she could neither predict nor control.

It had taken an interest in Mikoto.

Perhaps that interest was enough.

("Then there. I release you.")

For the briefest moment, nothing happened.

T????????????????????????????h????????????????????a???????????????n??????????????????????k???????????????s???????????

Mikoto blinked.

The familiar incomprehensible presence had returned, accompanied by those distorted words that seemed to force their way directly into his mind. He barely had time to register them before his attention snapped down towards Electra.

But his vision was immediately overwhelmed.

Black sparks scattered across his field of view.

They appeared without warning, flickering and branching through his sight like fragments of something breaking apart. For an instant, he could no longer distinguish the Progenitor beneath him from the ruined plains beyond her. The landscape seemed to distort, its familiar outlines slipping out of place as though his eyes were no longer capable of interpreting what they were seeing.

A sharp pain erupted through his head.

Mikoto’s expression tightened. His brows drew together, and his jaw stiffened as he fought against the sudden discomfort. He wanted to close his eyes, if only to escape the disorienting flashes, but doing so felt like surrendering what little control he still had over his senses.

Static.

That was the closest comparison he could make.

His vision was filled with it, an incoherent mess of black interference that seemed to obscure everything around him. It was not simply a matter of his sight being obstructed. Something was interfering with the way he perceived the world itself.

("What the—")

W?????????????h??????????????????????o????????????????????a???????????????????????,????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????i???????????????????????????????????t????????????????????’??????????????????????????????s??????????????????? ????????????????????????????c??????r?????????????????????o???????????????????????????w????????????d???????????????????????e??????????????????????????d?????????????? ?????????????????????i????????????????????????????????n?????????????????????????? ???????????????????h???????????????????????????e????????????????????????r????????????????e??????????!??????????????????

Mikoto was about to force the disturbance away with magic.

The response came instinctively. Whatever was interfering with his senses, he intended to identify it and suppress it before it could cause any further disruption. He began to gather the necessary power, preparing to push against the intrusion and restore his perception.

But before he could do anything, it stopped.

Just as abruptly as it had begun, the interference vanished.

Mikoto blinked several times, waiting for his vision to settle. The black sparks disappeared, the distorted outlines of the world gradually returned to their proper places, and the ruined plains came into view once more.

His sight recovered, but the pain did not disappear immediately.

His eyes still stung, and he could feel a discomfort lingering behind them. He looked down towards the place where Electra had been lying, only to find that the Progenitor was no longer there.

There was no sign of her ruined body.

Mikoto regarded the empty space for a moment before his expression settled back into its usual passivity.

"So she had tricks up her sleeve after all," he noted.

His tone was neither irritated nor surprised. Electra had managed to disappear while his senses were compromised, and he could acknowledge that much without finding it especially troublesome.

The Progenitor was no longer a threat to him. Even if she had somehow survived and managed to escape, he doubted she possessed the means to pose any meaningful danger. If their paths crossed again, he could deal with her then.

That was not what bothered him.

His attention remained on the peculiar disturbance that had just occurred, the strange interference that had momentarily thrown his perception into disarray.

It certainly had not been the result of magic. He was familiar enough with magical interference to recognize when something was attempting to disrupt his senses, and this had not behaved like any spell he knew. Nor could he comfortably attribute it to Electra’s Manus Dei. Whatever she had done to influence the world, the phenomenon he had experienced seemed to operate on an entirely different level.

It was something else entirely.

Mikoto slowly lowered his right hand.

He brought his fingers towards his temples and massaged them, applying a little pressure as he attempted to ease the lingering discomfort.

There was still a faint buzzing inside his head.

It was not painful anymore, though it remained persistent enough to remind him that the disturbance had happened. He could not determine whether it was simply an aftereffect or whether something had been left behind.

Neither possibility was especially appealing.

He exhaled through his nose and allowed his hand to fall.

Then he sighed.

Something told him that things were going to become a great deal more annoying.