Chapter 68 : Deus Ex Machina

“…”

Click click

Only the sound of my footsteps echoed as I entered the Kremlin Palace, filled with a chilling silence. The entire huge city of Moscow was enveloped in an unpleasant silence.

Boom

Grooooowl

Only the faint sounds of the Sirius covering the entry team by hitting all shots through cause and effect reversal, and the beast trying to shoot it down with high-powered lasers, spread from far away.

A huge ship and magical girls.

Tens of millions of puppets and a beast of mythical proportions.

Their battle continued fiercely under the protection of cause and effect reversal.

“…”

Click

I had to stop in my tracks at the sight inside the Kremlin Palace.

In the deepest part of the Kremlin Palace, the corridor leading to the Presidential office was filled with girls dressed up in colorful dresses.

Bam!

“…Ugh?!”

Suddenly, with the sound of trumpets, middle-aged male musicians wearing old-fashioned suits and holding instruments stood at the top of the stairs and began playing a celebratory song.

Creak creak

And the 100 girls filling the corridor gestured in the air as if dancing with imaginary partners.

A dance without partners.

A ball of puppets who had lost their reason.

Creak creak

Beautiful magical girls dancing awkwardly, losing their minds while surrendering their bodies to the clumsy celebratory song slowly echoing.

“…Stop this unpleasant welcome ceremony and come out.”

“Oh? I thought you liked this kind of thing. I thought our tastes were quite similar.”

From the deepest part of the corridor leading to the Presidential office, a girl with fluorescent green hair wearing a black coat approached.

A thick Middle Eastern accent and tanned skin.

The magical girl of [Puppet].

“Doctor…!”

“Ah, I’ve never heard my alias from my own mouth? Let me introduce myself formally. The magical girl of [Pupp…”

[Deception] Magical Girl’s Unique Skill

Dream World

Cognitive acceleration

“…et]. I discarded my name long ago, and those who have been with me call me Doctor.”

“Tch.”

“Kihihihi, I thought you might try to paralyze and kill me right away, so I’ve already taken precautions against that.”

The puppet in the form of Doctor said with a grin.

“Was it quite obvious? Seeing as you came right here.”

“It’s all just a game to you. That’s why you were waiting in a meaningful place rather than hiding.”

“What if I’m a villain who hates all of humanity? What if I’ve already prepared to launch all the nukes?”

“If your real goal was human extinction, you would have fired the nukes first.”

“What if I’m such a terrible villain that I’ve already pressed the button in the Presidential office?”

“Don’t lie.”

I felt anger boiling up at the playful mental image I sensed from her.

A girl who treats everything as a game and just laughs at people’s confusion.

A girl who plays with others like toys without any hostility.

I drew out my silver sword. I wanted to cut down the evil that had taken root in this puppets’ ball filling the cold corridor. A sword strike that flashed like lightning.

Slash

Following the sword strike, a silver ripple arose and cut through space as it advanced.

The power originally given to the magical girl overseeing war.

A wave of blades cutting down armies.

The silver wave advanced towards the girl mocking the world, emitting an even colder light in the chilly corridor.

When the wave finally reached Doctor at the end of the corridor after brushing past everyone in the hallway, Doctor simply put her neck forward with a leisurely smile.

Drip

“Hmm?”

Doctor, who had been expecting her head to fall off, rubbed the blood flowing from the wound on her cheek with her hand.

“…Heal.”

Thud

The puppets all collapsed at once as if finishing a puppet show.

The 100 magical girls filling the corridor and the middle-aged men disguised as musicians, with eyes that had lost reason, received a single wound on their cheeks and fell into a state of suspended animation due to the deceptive heal.

Suddenly, only Doctor and I were left standing in the corridor.

“Kihihihi, this turned out disappointing. I had one more thing prepared for around this point.”

Doctor muttered with a deflated expression.

“As expected, apostles serving gods don’t know how to have fun.”

Apostle.

It felt like an important keyword.

“…I don’t serve anyone.”

“I guess you’re different from [War]? Hmm. Well, it’s not important, so let’s move on.”

[War]… I see.

I finally understood who these guys were listening to.

Born 3-star magical girls already existed in some form.

“Then why are you trying to save humanity?”

“Because I decided to protect magical girls and this world.”

Doctor pondered for a moment with a thoughtful face, then tilted her head. And she said while moving her hands around:

“You know… when normal humans talk about the world, they mean a very narrow range? It’s rare for people to live more than 16 kilometers away from where they were born until they die.”

“Stop talking nonsense and get to the point.”

“Kihihihi, don’t cut me off when you don’t even know where the real body is! Listen for a bit! Isn’t that the etiquette of puppet play?”

“…”

“What I want to say is that humans don’t have such a broad perspective. Their country, their neighborhood, their home. They can’t recognize the world as the world if they go just a bit beyond that.”

As I listened to those words, I quietly checked the state of the barrier. The direction where Doctor’s mental image was narrowing as I focused more on the conversation.

“Your ‘such’ perspective is a kind of madness… if I had to say, it’s like a god’s perspective.”

I hesitated for a moment at those words.

“Usually, humans only try to save a few people related to them, they don’t try to save everyone like you do?”

Doctor finally sighed deeply and spoke. A sigh of relief that her puppet play partner was not a fearsome apostle of god, but a madman not much different from herself.

“Aren’t you the one not seeing the humans of this world as humans? You’re exactly the same as me.”

“…”

“Kihihihi, I don’t understand why your alias is [Beginning]. [Deception] would make more sense, acting like a god while pretending to be human and trying to save everyone.”

Above.

The place where the mocking mental image was narrowing and gathering. A fragment of mistake that burst out for a moment. Even now, this girl was not serious at all.

Whoosh!

Shing!

Rumble

A silver cross engraved on the ceiling.

After swinging the silver sword I had drawn in an instant to cut the ceiling, I burst upwards, breaking through the collapsing ceiling.

“Whoa?! Wait a minute!!”

Leaving behind Doctor’s surprised voice, who had probably expected me to kill the puppet before rushing at the real body, I climbed onto the roof, bathed in dazzling sunlight.

Cold wind.

The chilly view of Moscow.

A fluorescent green giant body.

‘Griffin…?’

Another Doctor riding a huge griffin about 10 meters tall seemed to be hesitating for a moment as if switching control, in slow motion.

I swung the silver sword horizontally, causing a huge ripple.

Shing!

In the friendly match not long after returning from the future, the sword recreated with Yuki’s insufficient 1-star starlight was just a hard flame sword, but.

My war sword imbued with starlight became a huge silver wave over 50 meters long, rushing towards the griffin and Doctor.

Slash!

Before the silver blade ripple cutting down armies could swallow the griffin, Doctor shouted:

“Jiz! Scatter your feathers!”

The huge fluorescent green griffin spread its enormous wings and flashed. Feathers spraying out from the huge wings shining with momentum to completely cover Moscow’s sky.

And explosion.

Boom!

When the flash created by the collision of silver and fluorescent green subsided, a terrible scene was visible.

Due to the explosion of the griffin resisting the silver wave, the terrain over a radius of 100 meters was shattered. Those gathered in the Kremlin Palace became bloody lumps crushed by building debris. They had become corpses so cold that even the chilly winter wind felt warm in comparison.

“Jiz! Keep exploding like that!”

Roar!

The griffin roared loudly and rose, indiscriminately illuminating its feathers in the sky, and the explosions grew even larger, overlapping.

Bang!

Bang!

Rain of fire.

A burning city.

A monster calling for destruction.

The time of destruction was recreated by the hand of the girl who had created puppets earlier than the demons summoned by evil gods.

“Kihihihi, that’s right! Before the gods ruin it! Fun…”

Slap

[Deception] Magical Girl’s Unique Skill

Dream World

“Yes, such a puppet.”

“What, when did this happen?!”

“I had already set this up all around before coming in.”

I released the illusion barrier and returned the situation to a standoff, then swung the silver sword, changing it into a scythe.

Slash!

It was emitting a mysterious light like a crescent moon shining in the dead of night.

A desolate silver scythe imbued with moonlight.

The ominous scythe of death that cuts down everything existing in this world beyond life and death passed through the griffin and grazed Doctor.

“Ugh?!”

The sensation of having one’s soul cut.

But only a small part was cut.

‘This is not the real body either.’

I grabbed Doctor’s collar on the griffin and threw her with all my might towards the skies of Moscow.

Whoosh

Doctor, paralyzed by the shock of her soul being attacked, flew into the air without releasing control of the puppet…

Thud!

“Ugh… damn it?! What is this?”

Scales floating in the air.

Doctor landed on black and silver scales. On the scale plate where unpleasant black and silver coexisted, Doctor still couldn’t move due to the shock of her soul being hit.

‘I need to scatter the puppets quickly…!’

Click

The black scale symbolizing greed moved down.

The silver scale symbolizing emission moved up.

The meaning is absorption.

“Arghhhh!”

Doctor writhed in pain as her starlight was absorbed. Faint fluorescent green lines shone towards the tens of millions of puppets she was controlling.

Most of the lines stretched towards the battlefield where the beast and ship were fighting, but a few lines were spread throughout Moscow.

The puppets Doctor had prepared in Moscow numbered 121.

While Doctor was writhing in pain, I calmly drew out a silver bow.

Originally, it was a weapon that should shoot arrows blessed with certain hit while listening to God’s whispers, but…

[Deception] Magical Girl’s Unique Skill

Cause and Effect Reversal

I fired transparent arrows imbued with the starlight of deception that reverses cause and effect. The fired arrows advanced towards the sky, leaving brilliant rainbow-colored trajectories.

Whoosh

1

2

4

8

16

…

The arrows gradually split as they flew through the air, and by the time they came down from the sky again, they had become thousands of arrow rain. The silver arrows poured down, leaving rainbow-colored trajectories like a net entangling Moscow’s sky.

Swoosh-swoosh-swoosh-swoosh–

Like birds unable to escape under the sky’s net.

After the arrow rain passed, achieving an impossible certain hit by receiving the power to distort the world.

“What a truly unreasonable power…”

The Doctor before my eyes, who should have been a puppet, became the real body again.