The Executioner and Her Way of Life, Vol. 3: The Cage of Iron Sand

“Shoot her full of holes!”

On the leader’s command, the surrounding Guiding gun users began firing indiscriminately.

These guns consumed the Guiding Force of the user each time they were fired, but this was no time to be sparing about it. Unlike when they were taking careful aim before, now they were clearly just shooting without much thought. As the bullets sprayed randomly, the last man charged forward. These guns weren’t strong enough to pierce Guiding armor. He couldn’t defeat her one-on-one, but if she was caught in a storm of bullets…

“This is what I hate about Guiding guns.” Ashuna sighed in disappointment and charged her broadsword.

Guiding Force: Connect—Royal Sword, Crest—Multi-Invoke [Multi-Barrier]

The crest conjuring activated. Several shields formed from her sword. The walls of light not only protected Ashuna herself, but expanded to swallow up the men shooting as well.

Startled by the sudden appearance of barriers in front of them, the men were unable to react in time, and their shots ricocheted back toward them. One by one, they went down groaning from their own bullets.

Observing this result, Ashuna spat in disappointment. “They always go down too easily.”

Ashuna had figured out the shooters’ positions from their firing. The Guiding armored warrior who remained stood there stunned.

“What the…what the hell is happening h—ah!”

Ashuna appeared right in front of his eyes, swinging her
broadsword upward. His face twisted as he realized that the last thing he would ever see was the smile of this woman, enjoying the battle from the bottom of her heart.

“You monster…”

“Now, those are some choice last words.” She brought her blade down without a hint of mercy. “It’s embarrassing to hear such high praise from someone you just fought to the death.”

As she grinned with pleasure, the two halves of the Guiding armored warrior collapsed behind her. Ashuna let her broadsword
whiz
through the air, shaking off the blood.

The battle was just getting started.

“Now, who’s next?”

Her appetite for combat still had to be sated, and there were still enemies to defeat. How much of her normally latent power would she be able to let loose today? Wiping blood from her cheek with the palm of her hand, she trembled with the uncontrollable desire to fight.

Ashuna Grisarika wore a half-crazed smile as she threw herself back into the fray.

The gunshots that had been going on for the past few minutes stopped abruptly.

Ashuna must have won that fight. As she assessed the battle situation based on sound, Menou kept moving through the heart of the base, wiping out one floor at a time until she reached the door to the top.

“So you’re here.” A slender young man was waiting on the top floor.

It was the boy who’d seemed to be the leader of the group that attacked them in town before. He turned his cold gaze toward Menou; the right eye was a prosthetic.

He has an artificial body part, too.
Alarms went off in Menou’s head.

“I take it that you’re…not the ringleader here.”

The leader, Wolff, was a man near his forties. This young man must have been the other wanted criminal, Miller.

Had Wolff run away, then? And if so, would Sahara catch him? Menou’s mind raced through the possibilities as she steadied her dagger.

“You must be Miller, the vice-captain of Iron Chain. Where’s the leader, Wolff?”

“Killed him.”

She hadn’t actually expected him to give her the principal offender’s whereabouts, but his response was even more surprising.

“…Killed him? Was it
you
? But why?”

“Wolff decided to scrap this base. What a ridiculous idea. By luring your team in, we’ll be able to activate the conjuring circle without a problem.”

Another one.
When Menou found a second strange connection, her guard went up even higher. “I knew it…so this base itself really is a summoning circle.”

“Yep. The kind that activates when conditions are met. Since we can’t use veins out here, we just have to provide it with Guiding Force through other means. This circle functions by absorbing Guiding Force from the dead. Wolff knew that and still didn’t want his men to die.”

“I see.”

Evidently, there were different levels of scumminess. Menou grew that much wiser from this unexpected lesson and made a mental note. The former leader had been the type to value his subordinates’ lives over his goals.

“And you?”

“You really need to ask?”

He had a point. If he valued people’s lives, he wouldn’t have killed his leader.

“This conjuring circle. Is it the kind for summoning Otherworlders? You must know that a circle on a level surface won’t connect to the other world, correct?”

“No need. There are Otherworlders in this world, too.”

At first, Menou didn’t understand what he meant.

“Did you know? The barrier around the Mechanical Society is weakening. It’s one of the Four Major Human Errors. This circle was made to summon and control a part of it.”

A part of one of the Four Major Human Errors. Their plan was to take its power for their own. In other words, Iron Chain was attempting the same thing that Manon Libelle did.

“Done with the questions?”

“Yes. Thank you for answering. Is there any particular reason why you’re being so forthright?”

“Whether I die or you die, it’s not going to change the end result.”

“Don’t worry. Now that I’ve heard all that, I’ll be sure to capture you alive.”

To put it another way, a conditional activation for the summoning circle meant that it wouldn’t activate as long as those conditions weren’t met. Menou just had to make sure that neither she nor Miller died.

“Ha!” Miller sneered. “Go ahead and try, Flarette. If I kill someone like you, my level’s sure to go up.”

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Eye, Inner Seal Conjuration—

Menou’s brow furrowed at the developing conjuring. She’d seen a very similar structure quite recently.

But why?
As her doubts began to rise, the conjuring activated.

Activate [Skill: Petrifying Snake Eye]

Light burst out of Miller’s fake eye. Everything the greenish Guiding Light shone on turned to gray stone.

As Menou dived out of the way, she considered the conjured phenomenon. Even if the artificial eye was a Guiding vessel, the conjuring was far too specific. From a materialogy standpoint, there was no way something the size of an eyeball should be able to contain the components for something as unusual as petrifaction.

“Is that an ancient relic?”

“No.”

She wondered if it was a Guiding vessel from the civilization that existed a thousand years ago, but Miller denied it. His voice carried an uncharacteristic fervor.

“This is power I gained myself.”

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Eye, Inner Seal Conjuration—Activate [Skill: Scorching Scarlet Eye]

Miller’s prosthetic eye changed color from green to red. As the conjured phenomenon unfolded, everything in his line of sight burst into flame. Menou managed to duck down and just barely avoid it. Trailing behind her, the end of her ponytail was singed by the flames.

The smell of burning hair filled her nostrils, but there was
no time to worry about that. Menou jumped up toward the ceiling to avoid Miller’s line of sight.

He was able to use the same Guiding vessel to invoke a completely different conjuring—a feat normally limited to an ultra-complex vessel like the scriptures of the Faust. And yet, Miller was creating scorching flames just by looking around. Doubting the existence of the threat attacking her wouldn’t help her survive it.

One way or another, the source of his power was definitely his artificial eye. Menou kept moving to dodge the attacks from his sight line.

As she jumped into the air, she twisted around and used the ceiling to push off toward the wall. Menou’s Guiding Enhancement-heightened physical abilities let her maneuver her way behind Miller.

“I’m impressed you can dodge this.”

Miller spun around to chase after her, then focused his eyes on one point. What was he trying to do? As Menou watched warily, a ball of flame formed where Miller’s vision was focused.

The flame’s level of heat was highly condensed.

Seeing this, Menou immediately sent Guiding Force into the crest in her priestess robes.

Guiding Force: Connect—Priestess Robes, Crest—

The ball of flame contracted.

—Invoke [Barrier]

There was a massive explosion.

At point-blank range, the blast pierced through the barrier created by the crest in her robes. The explosion in the small, tightly sealed room lowered the atmospheric pressure drastically, weighing down her body.

“Well, now you’ve done it!”

That could have easily killed her. Managing to get by with only light burns even as she was blown away by the blast, Menou kicked off the wall to dive toward Miller from the side. If she could entrap him in close-quarters combat, he wouldn’t be able to use those attacks for fear of getting caught in the blast himself. Menou aimed for that as she drew out her dagger.

Miller’s right eye gleamed blue.

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Eye, Inner Seal Conjuration—Activate [Skill: Bewitching Evil Eye]

“Enough, I’ve seen through you already!”

Menou held the side of her dagger aloft as she shouted. All of Miller’s attacks thus far had been by way of his line of sight. So this time, she used the reflective surface of her dagger to bounce the blue Guiding Light back at him.

“Nngh!”

The blue light ricocheted right into Miller. Trapped in some illusion of his own making, he stopped moving. Menou used that moment to close in. She tried to slash at him, but he regained his senses too quickly.

Miller immediately brought up a thick knife and blocked Menou’s blow.

Their eyes met, and they glared at each other at point-blank range. After having his conjuring reflected back at him, Miller seemed reluctant to use another one.

Hesitation meant an opportunity for attack. Menou swung her dagger again and sliced Miller’s cheek.

“Tch!” Miller lashed back with his knife—a feint, trying to put distance between them. Menou dodged it by a hair, refusing to give an inch. As she narrowly avoided his attack, she used
the momentum of the dodge to drive her right leg into her opponent’s knee.

It could have easily broken his knee joint, but Miller managed to tough it out with Guiding Enhancement. His knife swung down toward her.

Menou parried the blade with her dagger. It was a heavy attack, even with Menou’s arm strength boosted by Guiding Enhancement. Miller, sensing that he could wear her down, pushed even harder. Abandoning the prospect of pushing back with brute strength, Menou jumped backward.

As she withdrew, it created an opening. Menou watched her opponent closely to analyze his unusual features.

Miller’s physical abilities obviously exceeded Menou’s. Without Guiding Enhancement, there would be no comparison at all, and even with it at full throttle, he still seemed to be faster and stronger. His movements were polished, and his hand-to-hand combat skills were on par with Menou’s, too. With the addition of his unique conjurings from his artificial eye, he was undoubtedly a dangerous opponent.

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Eye, Inner Seal Conjuration—Activate [Skill: Beastly Red Eye]

His eye turned red. But it seemed different from the flame attack he’d used before.

Miller charged toward her head-on. Even with Menou’s advanced kinetic vision, his outline seemed to blur with the sheer speed of his movement. It was on a completely different level from the physical abilities he’d shown thus far. This was no ordinary Guiding Enhancement. The conjuring from his prosthetic eye was further augmenting his movements.

But his trajectory was simple to follow. Menou was about to
use a conjuring to counter him when suddenly—Miller shot up into the air.

“What?!”

It was a vertical jump with almost no buildup, seemingly using only his ankles. Menou’s attempts to read his movement were thrown off by the unusual shift, leaving her frozen in surprise for just a fraction of a second.

But Miller didn’t stop moving. He hit the ceiling, pressed both hands against it, bent his knees, and stored up power. He was aiming directly at Menou below him. Miller dropped straight down, like a spear shooting toward the ground.

The floor broke below him.

His kick was all the more powerful with the entirety of his body weight and gravity behind it.

Menou dropped along with the sturdy stone fragments of the floor. She shifted her position in midair and landed on her feet.

But Miller was waiting for that moment.

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Eye, Inner Seal Conjuration—Activate [Skill: Scorching Scarlet Eye]

Flames as thick as flowing magma flew toward her.

He had aimed for the exact moment that she lowered her guard to focus on landing safely. But the flames didn’t reach Menou.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 2:5—Invoke [Rejoice, for the wall that surrounds a pious flock of sheep shall never crumble.]

Unexpected occurrences in the midst of battle were well within Menou’s expectations. Which was why she had an ace in the hole that could be played in the nick of time to deal with any such developments.

The wide variety of scripture conjurings was beyond compare to anything else.

A pure wall formed around the advancing flames. Menou was fully aware that she would be open to attack in the moment of landing. She had prepared the defensive conjuring well in advance.

And in the moments before she landed, she invoked another scripture conjuring.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 1:2—Invoke [Drive in the stake and make known the ground where all shall begin.]

Menou’s Guiding Force created a stake of light, which drove into the ground at her feet. It wasn’t an attack conjuring. She was using it to fix her own Guiding Force in one stable place.

As soon as she finished her preparations, the effects of the barrier wore off. She threw her dagger to fend off Miller as he immediately moved to close in on her.

Guiding Force: Connect—Dagger, Crest—Invoke [Guiding Thread]

Thread made out of Guiding Force formed around her dagger’s hilt. As it flew toward him with the thread trailing behind, Miller tossed a knife of his own to block it.

The two blades crashed in midair and went flying. Miller grabbed the now empty-handed Menou’s shoulder and flashed his red-tinged fake eye toward her from point-blank range.

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Eye, Inner Seal Conjuration—Activate [Skill: Scorching Scarlet Eye]

“Now you die.”

“That’s my line.”

Miller’s killer move was a moment too late.

The dagger that was knocked to the ground had ended up buried point-first in the solidified Guiding Force area that Menou had created earlier.

Guiding Force: Connect (via Guiding Thread)—Dagger, Crest—Remote Invoke [Gale]

A burst of wind shot up from beneath Miller’s feet.

She had used the Guiding Thread as a conduit to activate the crest conjuring with the Guiding Force she’d solidified in advance. Unaware of this, Miller fell right into her trap.

Miller clutched his eye as he was sent crashing into the ceiling. He couldn’t control his movements in midair. As his body spun around, his eyesight spun with it, creating flames that danced wildly throughout the room.

Miller came spiraling back down. As he fell, Menou sent the hem of her robe fluttering in the air, raising her leg in an almost perfectly vertical line—then brought it down on him with all her might.

“OOMPH!”

It was a perfect ax kick.

Menou’s heel came down directly on Miller’s stomach. The impact when it smashed him into the ground was intense enough that he choked and spat up bile.

As soon as he was immobilized, Menou mercilessly thrust her fingers into his right eye socket, which contained his prosthetic eye.

“S-stop—”

“I’ll be taking this.”

“…ngaaaAAAAAH!”

She gouged the artificial eye out.

There was a snapping sound like optic nerves being torn apart. Ordinarily, prosthetic eyes were only for show, but it appeared this one was connected to his brain after all.

“A Guiding vessel made with Primary Colors, is it?”

Menou grimaced and tossed the stolen eye far from where Miller could reach it. She could figure out what to do with it later.

Miller’s abilities were astounding. His basic stats were high, and he had very unusual powers on top of it. But that just made him an ideal opponent for Menou.

For better or worse, the likes of Momo and Ashuna generally didn’t go after their opponents’ weak points. They had enough raw power that they favored head-to-head battles. If either of them had faced Miller, there was a possibility that they could’ve been caught off guard by his prosthetic eye’s bizarre abilities and lost.

But Menou had been trained in a fighting style that could take out such strong opponents.

Back when she fought Orwell, the archbishop had nearly managed to shut Menou down with her range of abilities, but that was highly unusual. Menou excelled at both head-on battles and sneakier tactics, so it was almost unheard-of for her to get backed into a corner.

Menou had won.

“Aaaagh… Give it back… I—I need it, or I’ll…”

Miller was covering his eye socket and groaning. It wasn’t bleeding. Instead, it was Guiding Light that came out of the gaping hole. Upon seeing this, Menou was even more certain.

His body had been remade.

In order to match the prosthetic eye Menou had just pulled out, his flesh had a higher percentage of power that was rendering it less than human.

“A
Vessel
attachment… I see.”

Menou quietly repeated the words Sahara had used as she looked at Miller.

Through a stroke of good luck, she’d managed to capture him alive. He was begging for his fake eye back, but that was important evidence. Since Menou had a strong grasp of crestology and materialogy, she intended to analyze it later.

She knocked Miller out with a kick to the jaw.

“That takes care of that—hmm?”

Just as she was thinking about working with Ashuna to destroy the conjuring crest in the guise of a base on which they stood, the door to the room where Menou had been fighting opened. Turning around, she saw Sahara enter.

“You’re done, too?”

“Yep.”

Regardless of whether that was true or not, Menou listened closely. Judging by the sounds she heard from outside, it sounded like Ashuna and the knights were well on their way to victory, too. It might take a little longer, but their domination of the base was going smoothly.

“Well, I’ll let you handle turning this man in.”

“All right.”

Sahara nodded and moved toward Miller.

Menou took a step back.
What’s going to happen next?
She kept her dagger gripped in her right hand instead of putting it away in the holder around her thigh, watching closely.

Sahara raised her metal right arm and smashed Miller’s head open.

“…Heh-heh.”

I see. So that’s how it’s going to go.

She chose to murder the man instead of immobilizing him. As Menou watched, a smile spread across Sahara’s face.

“It won’t be long now until the conjuring circle activates.” Her smile was terribly twisted. “It’s a pity we weren’t able to take out a single one of the knights or Ashuna Grisarika, but…at least I managed to separate you from Akari Tokitou and Momo. You’re exhausted from battle, too. Not half bad.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You don’t look surprised.”

“Well, I had my suspicions.”

Menou had been forming this theory ever since she saw Sahara’s conjuring. The nature of its construction was definitely strange.

“That arm. It’s the same sort of thing as the prosthetic eye Miller here was using, right? Like I asked you before, is your arm all right?”

“I already told you.”

Once she’d fought Miller, her suspicion had turned to near-certainty. There were too many similarities between how the two of them spoke and acted. At first, she thought they were in collusion, but evidently, it was more than just that.

“This is my power that I gained in the eastern Wild Frontier, the Mechanical Society.” As she spat out a bitter reply, Sahara clenched her fist on her right arm. “Menou…”

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Arm, Inner Seal Conjuration—

The basic structure of her conjuring was just like that of Miller’s.

“I’m going to surpass you in this fight.”

Activate [Skill: Guiding Cannon]

After the squad led by the Guiding armored warriors was wiped out, the enemy scattered.

The knights who had separated from Ashuna were working together to defeat the rest.

“We’re lucky we were able to get help from such a skilled priestess.”

“That’s our Princess Ashuna.”

The criminals were running around frantically, clearly not getting any orders from central command. The fight had already turned into a matter of hunting down the remaining enemies.

“But we haven’t just been tricked into helping destroy Iron Chain, right?”

Their primary goal was to capture a certain woman who’d fled from the east. While they’d entered the lawless desert of the central Wild Frontier to chase her, they weren’t expecting to have to fight this so-called Iron Chain group.

They were only after one lone criminal.

A fugitive who started to turn into a conjured soldier on the front lines of the eastern Wild Frontier, but fled into the lawless area of the central Wild Frontier.

“It’s not that surprising for a confident criminal to join forces with an armed group of thugs, but still.”

“Even if we have been fooled, there’s no harm in destroying a human trafficking operation while we’re at it, right? Iron Chain is a group of scumbags who think they can kidnap people
within lawful nations just because they were under Genom Cthulha.”

“Ha-ha, true. This is a good opportunity.”

Knowing that justice was on their side along with the tide of the battle, the knights laughed among themselves.

“Hopefully we still can catch the criminal we’re after and fulfill our mission, though.”

“Yeah, since she got involved with the Mechanical Society but managed to escape.”

“We can’t let her get away with it, that’s for sure.” The knight scowled as he spoke the name of the criminal they were chasing. “Not a wanted criminal like the traitorous nun Sahara.”