The Executioner and Her Way of Life, Vol. 5: The Promised Land

“Of course not,” Menou answered with a straight face. “I’m a bad guy, after all.”

Right here and now, they’d compared decisions and found they were in agreement. And with that knowledge, they understood their immediate task.

“We’d better go destroy the only means of killing you.”

The Sword of Salt.

It was a blade that had turned an entire continent into salt. An immortal-killer that anyone could use.

Without it, there would be no way to destroy Akari.

There were many things the pair had to do, but that was at the top of the list. The two girls turned in unison to look in the same direction.

The glowing Dragon Gate stood at the end of the rails that extended from the train platform.

Hooseyard had prepared a Guiding Force path to the land of salt, and the teleport conjuring circle still waited at the ready, independent of the vanished holy land.

“Time to go, Akari.”

“Okay, Menou.”

With the same feeling in their hearts, they walked along the tracks and ventured down the road that led far beyond.

At first, it seemed they’d been cast into the sky.

The scene on the other side of the Dragon Gate threw Menou’s sense of equilibrium into chaos.

They’d been teleported into the heavens.

The illusion that there was no surface beneath their feet nearly made Menou lose balance, but she focused on the fact that she could feel her heels planted on the ground.

All there was to see was empty sky, but that wasn’t where they were standing.

They stood in a beautiful mirrored world.

It wasn’t like the white world Menou had seen before. When she’d visited this place with Master Flare long ago, the sky was overcast with white clouds, combining with the endless landscape of salt to create a world of white that seemed to go on forever.

It was quite different this time, however.

Perhaps it had rained.

The utterly flat surface of salt was covered by a shallow layer of water. It stretched across the land of salt without so much as a ripple, reflecting the light to become an enormous natural mirror.

As far as the eye could see, the ground matched the sky.

The border of the horizon became invisible, creating a connected world of heaven and earth. Clouds trailed across the blue overhead, and the land responded in kind. In the evening, it would undoubtedly turn red, and at night the stars would speckle the world above and below.

“…It’s very pretty.” Menou’s quiet remark sounded like a child’s observation.

As soon as she said it, she smiled, realizing it was the kind of thing Akari would say. Wondering what Akari herself thought, she looked over and found the other girl in astonished silence.

“So…”

“So?”

“Soooo cool!” Akari shouted.

She ran forward, the water splashing beneath her feet. It was an even more immature reaction. The Otherworlder spread her arms wide and spun around excitedly.

“Look at this, Menou! It’s sooo pretty!”

Akari’s joy traveled through the route the Guiding Force connection had created between their souls, flowing into Menou’s heart.

She grinned as she looked around again.

This place without sky or sea was truly picturesque. If the Faust had controlled this land purely to protect the view, no one would have doubted them. The tranquil scene was worth any amount of effort to preserve it.

Menou took a step forward.

Ripples spread across the mirrored surface. The peaceful expanse of water that reflected the sky was so incredibly beautiful. It didn’t seem possible that a battle to the death was about to unfold in this very spot.

Still, they couldn’t play around forever.

“Come on, this way.”

Menou took Akari’s sleeve and pulled her along the path she recalled from her youth until they reached a familiar spot.

There, just as Menou remembered, was a shabby-looking sword.

It threatened to crumble from the slightest touch. Inspection suggested it was more fragile than any rusted blade, making it utterly useless.

The Sword of Salt.

It was a pure incarnation created by
Ivory
, who’d destroyed or sealed away the other Four Major Human Errors. Anything cut with its blade would become salt. This nastiest of conjured weapons was responsible for an entire continent melting into the sea.

The girls stood before a tool that could eradicate a planet.

Akari steeled herself and stepped forward.

“Wait, Akari.”

Menou felt Akari’s confusion at her command. She silently sent her reasoning through their connection, and Akari nodded.

Menou would have to go the rest of the way on her own.

“All right. I’ll be waiting.”

Smiling at Akari’s response, Menou approached alone.

She left Akari and kept walking until she was only a few steps away from the Sword of Salt. There, she paused and kicked up some water with her toe. The liquid was barely deep enough to cover the soles of her shoes, but she didn’t require much. The droplets appeared to strike empty air as though it were solid.

In response, the scene before Menou wavered, and a woman emerged like paint peeling away to reveal a hidden picture.

Master Flare.

Menou had seen through the Guiding Camouflage she was using to blend into the background.

“Did you come alone?” Menou questioned.

“Sure did,” Flare responded evenly. “If I stayed in the cathedral much longer, Elcami would’ve ordered me to deal with that dragonblight. So I decided to wait for you.”

Master Flare looked at Menou, standing in front, and Akari, holding her breath some distance away. She threw back her head and laughed with her mouth open wide.

“And you came with her, eh?”

“Yes.”

Menou nodded calmly.

“Bet you came here to break the Sword of Salt… But do you really think you’re able? A little whelp who stopped short of taking my life?”

“I can do it. I’ve recovered my memories with Akari.”

Menou wouldn’t let the recollections of those cycles that she hadn’t experienced herself go to waste. And the same went for the connection between her soul and Akari’s. She wouldn’t let Akari lose this time, either.

“I see. A Guiding Force connection, eh? That’s one answer, to be sure.”

Master Flare chuckled, as though deeply amused. Menou had finally realized the value of her ability to create Guiding Force connections with others, even if that was only the tip of the iceberg.

Reliving Akari’s memories had taught Menou more than that, however.

“You don’t intend to kill Akari, do you, Master?”

“Oh? You figured it out.”

It was obvious with enough consideration.

If anything, throughout all the time loops, Master Flare had made an effort to avoid killing Akari. She even slew Menou if she ever attempted to destroy Akari.

As far as Master Flare was concerned, the real value lay in letting Akari go out of control to create new conjurings… But was that truly the whole story? Menou still wasn’t certain of Master Flare’s motives.

“You’re dead-on. I don’t plan to kill Akari Tokitou, no. This time, it won’t end until she becomes a Human Error.”

“…And what do you plan to do with her once that happens?”

“Nothing, really. Whatever happens after isn’t my job.”

With that, Master Flare’s arm shot out abruptly.

It was a sweep to one side. At the end of the swing, her hand grasped the Sword of Salt stuck into the ground.

The purest, most powerful weapon in the world snapped in her grip. True to its flimsy appearance, the Sword of Salt that had been there for a thousand years broke into pieces with almost absurd ease.

Menou gasped. Ignoring her reaction, Master Flare thoroughly stomped on every fragment.

The blade that had once wiped out an entire continent crumbled beneath her heel. It was nothing but salt now, with no possible way to recover it.

“Looks like you couldn’t break it after all.”

There was no particularly deep reason why Master Flare had broken the Sword of Salt.

Menou said she came to destroy it, so Master Flare destroyed it instead. It was nothing but a useless old relic to her anyway, and it seemed like a good way to deny Menou’s wishes and dampen her spirit. The fact that she’d destroyed an irreplaceable object for the sake of little more than a show of spite was enough to stun Menou into silence.

“So, Menou. What will you do next?”

Was her only concern ensuring that the Sword of Salt, the only means of killing Akari, was destroyed? Would she turn her back on Master Flare and run? By smashing the Sword of Salt, Master Flare hoped to draw out the true motivation that Menou hadn’t yet spoken aloud.

She knew Menou had already hesitated to strike her down once. No matter how valuable it was, how much power it contained, or how many legends there were of it, a tool was only a tool to Master Flare.

Menou took a deep breath. Before she and Akari came here, she’d vowed to destroy the Sword of Salt, yet Master Flare had crushed that plan. The young woman wanted to groan and say
Thanks a lot
. Her heart and words were being drawn out onto a stage where she could no longer hide them.

Thus, Menou decided to speak the truth.

“I’m going to stop you from turning Akari into a Human Error.”

“How?”

“By killing you.”

There was no hesitation in Menou’s answer. She was determined to see this battle through, to protect Akari and find her way forward.

Recognizing that Menou had decided to murder someone of her own free will, Master Flare threw back her head and laughed. “Ha! Now that I’d like to see.”

Master Flare reached behind herself. She wore a belt wrapped around her lower chest, which had the symbol of the church on its buckle. From it, she retrieved a dagger.

Her guard was wide open as she pulled out the blade, but Menou couldn’t bring herself to jump in.

The action felt so deliberate that Menou had to wonder if it was a trap. If she brushed that off as overthinking it and went for the opening, she was sure to be killed. The feint was the move of one who knew that being both too cautious and too reckless could be fatal.

Only Master Flare, the ultimate Executioner, could wield Menou’s mental image of herself to her own advantage.

The red-haired woman aimed her dagger down and let go.

The tip of the weapon dropped easily into the soft salt that made up the ground and remained stuck there. Master Flare stepped on the hilt, driving the dagger down to the root of its blade. Then she sent Guiding Force through her feet into it.

There were two crests engraved upon Master Flare’s dagger: guiding branch and thunderclap. This time, she activated the former.

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

Short, repeated vibrations shook the water on the ground’s surface, twisting the sky’s reflection. The visible change drew Menou’s attention to what was below.

Then the ground burst.

Guiding Branches spread upward, splitting the surface and scattering salt everywhere. Roots of Guiding Force spread from the dagger and stuck into the ground, growing into a tree in the blink of an eye.

It wasn’t just one, either. Countless Guiding Force boughs sprouted around Menou, surrounding her.

Before long, she was in the midst of a luminous forest.

Each of the trees around Menou moved at Master Flare’s will.

“Don’t let this kill you.”

The woman’s voice echoed from nowhere like a signal, and the sharp branches sped toward Menou from every angle.

A Guiding Force branch grazed Menou’s hair as she dodged to the side. She’d survived the first attack with the loss of only a few strands. Before she could catch her breath, more branches swept at her legs in irregular intervals.

Far from the battlefield, Akari could detect Menou’s movements.

Although Akari couldn’t see beyond the dense forest of Guiding Force trees, she felt Menou’s emotions and senses as clearly as if they were her own.

She understood Menou’s rapid movements, the calm in her spirit even in the face of danger, and the determination in her soul. Everything Menou saw, heard, smelled, and felt was shared with Akari.

Menou knocked away a branch aimed at her face with her dagger and activated a crest conjuring.

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

The conjuring spun a strand of Guiding Force from her dagger. This alone wasn’t enough to guard. In that way, the barrier crest in her priestess robes was better suited to the situation. However, there were many more creative uses for Guiding Thread.

As she dodged the attacks, Menou wrapped Guiding Thread around the writhing trees of Guiding Force.

Guiding Thread, one of the two crests in Menou’s dagger, was thin but strong. The more they moved, the more the branches became tangled, hindering their movements.

There was a loud, grating
creak
.

The Guiding Force trees had all gotten snared in one another, or the string wound around them, stopping them from moving almost completely.

Menou’s first priority was getting out of the forest Master Flare had created. She leaped onto the Guiding Thread that was now pulled taut, using it as a foothold and taking advantage of its flexibility to jump higher into the air. It functioned almost like a trampoline beneath her feet, launching the young woman. The vicarious experience of something she could never do herself made Akari’s heart dance.

Sharing a separate person’s senses was strange in a way she’d never anticipated. Menou’s drive and actions were beyond anything Akari could feel alone. As Menou’s thoughts and feelings showed Akari a new world, Akari felt strangely comfortable, even excited.

Guiding Force: Connect (via Guiding Branch)—Dagger, Crest—Invoke [Thunderclap]

The conjuring crest unfolded in under a second. A Guiding Branch next to Menou suddenly became a surge of lightning. It burned through the Guiding Thread binding it, aiming straight for Menou.

Akari gasped. “Look out!” she whispered instinctively.

Fortunately, Menou had been expecting the attack.

Unlike Akari, Menou was confident that Master Flare could react to her on the spot, and she immediately put her hand on a different Guiding Branch and changed directions in midair. Feeling the heat of the lightning race past her head, she took another leap.

Master Flare’s speed at crest conjurings was on par with Menou’s, if not even faster. There was no time to react after the fact as there was with an ordinary opponent. As soon as she sensed the beginnings of a conjuring, Menou predicted the
Thunderclap
, used the thread beneath her feet to launch herself in a different direction, and kept advancing.

Amazing…!
Akari’s eyes sparkled. She’d always known Menou was incredible, but by witnessing it via the other girl’s eyes, it struck her anew. The speed and boldness of her decision-making, the elegance of her Guiding Force manipulation… She made up for everything Akari lacked.

The forest Master Flare had constructed was no more than fifty meters in circumference. As the branches occasionally transformed into lightning, Menou used the Guiding Thread strung around them to cross the area. The wind on her face and the weightless sensation of springing through the air set Akari’s heart aflutter.

Menou escaped the forest unscathed by any of the scorching bolts. Free of the trees, the expansive mirrored sky came into sight again. There was nowhere to hide, yet Master Flare was absent.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Menou charged toward one spot.

How does she know when she can’t see her?
Akari wondered, but Menou’s logic cleared up her doubts by way of their connection. Just as Akari was able to watch the scene from Menou’s eyes, Menou could observe through Akari’s eyes as well. Since Akari was farther from the fight, she had a wider view of the area.

Menou had access to a third-person perspective of her own battlefield.

It would be silly not to seize upon that advantage. Menou had deduced Master Flare’s location by using Akari’s vision and focusing on the water’s surface, which Akari wasn’t paying attention to at all.

The ripples created by the skirmish moved oddly in one particular spot. That was proof someone was there, even if they were invisible. Perhaps realizing she’d been found out, the red-haired woman reappeared, dismissing her Guiding Camouflage.

Master Flare had always been a symbol of terror for Akari—the source of her trauma. Yet when she saw Master Flare now, there was no fear in Akari’s heart. If anything, she felt strangely overstimulated, as if she was drunk. This was a completely different kind of battle from Akari’s Pure Concept-based combat experience. By tracing over Menou’s emotions, Akari felt an exhilaration from combat that was entirely unlike her.

Menou kicked off the watery surface, straight toward Master Flare. She activated the crest conjuring
Gale
, speeding up even further.

Akari’s heart was ablaze. The sensation of her fingers coiled around the dagger’s hilt, the breathtaking speed. By unifying with Menou, Akari felt so much a part of the fight that she called out when Menou thrust her blade forward.

“Don’t lose, Menooouuu!”

Of course I won’t lose…!

Menou heard Akari’s voice despite the distance, stoking her fighting spirit.

With Akari’s feverish shout pushing her forward, her own heart opened up as well. She cast aside her usual calmness, letting her will to fight blaze intensely. Heedless of whether it might befit an Executioner, she struck with all her passion.

Her blade met her opponent’s with a
clang
.

Their daggers only locked for an instant. Before the echoes of the collision faded, they struck each other a second time, then a third. The phosphorescent glow of Guiding Enhancement surrounded the two in their flurry of blows, lighting up the world of sky.

The battle of flashing knives kicked up the water beneath them. Menou was the first to find an opening. She thrust with the full force of her body at Master Flare, ready to pierce the woman’s heart.

But while Akari was excited at the apparent victory, Menou felt something under her hands that wasn’t flesh. This sensation was much too firm to be mistaken for having stabbed a human being. Master Flare had used one of her Guiding Branches as a shield and hid with Guiding Camouflage.

This was quickly followed by back-to-back conjurings.

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

Guiding Force: Connect—Priestess Robe, Crest—Invoke [Barrier]

The simultaneously invoked
Thunderclap
and
Barrier
canceled each other out, and Menou jumped back. Something besides Master Flare had caught her attention in Akari’s vision.

A cluster of the Guiding Force trees behind Menou were reaching out their branches and tangling together.

Were they going to attack her as a group? Was it a feint to distract from an underground attack? Maybe the tactic was to trick Menou into turning so Master Flare could stab from behind.

It was none of those options.

Menou’s eyes widened with recognition at the almost pointlessly beautiful cradle of tree limbs in front of her.

It was a ceremonial conjuring.

Guiding Force: Connect—Guiding Branch, Ceremonial Crest Conjuring—Invoke [Laurel Crown]

Laurel buds opened on the branches.

As the many flowers blossomed, they fired beams of light from their centers.

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

Menou was right to choose a scripture conjuring instead of the defensive crest in her priestess robes. Simple yet gorgeous flowers of Guiding Force continued to germinate, each loosing a luminous ray at one of Menou’s vital points.

Even Menou had never seen this conjuring. Terrifyingly enough, it was probably Master Flare’s original creation. Each beam carried heat and lethal force, yet the conjuring persisted for a long time. It was such an impressive work that it was difficult to believe someone had invented it.

What an incredible command of Guiding Force manipulation and technique. During the fight in the cathedral, Master Flare must have been holding back. That clearly wasn’t the case now.

For some reason, this made Menou happy.

Making no attempt to disguise her exhilaration, Menou readied her dagger. She felt unusually excited despite being in the middle of a battle. Perhaps it was her link to the emotional Akari.

“First up…!”

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

Menou hurled her dagger as she invoked a crest conjuring. Pushed by the summoned wind, the blade pierced one of the Guiding Force trees.

Now she had a path. Menou bridged her Guiding Force to Akari, still observing from a distance.

Guiding Force: Connect—Akari Tokitou—Extract [Power]—

Without even touching, Menou was able to tap into Akari’s Guiding Force through their link.

Having one’s Guiding Force drawn out felt like a light stroke across the skin. Since she was also sharing Akari’s senses, Menou unexpectedly felt the ticklish sensation, too.

“Nn… Mmph!”

Menou’s shoulders shivered, but she wasn’t using Akari’s Guiding Force to construct a conjuring. Instead, she took more power than she could ever produce alone and sent it through the Guiding Thread into the Guiding Branches she had punctured.

Afflux [Guiding Branch]

Unable to contain the enormous amount of Guiding Force fed into them, the tree limbs broke one after another. It was an inelegant approach of sheer strength.

A path was required to control Guiding Force. Just as Menou’s Guiding Thread always created a string of Guiding Force connected to the hilt of her dagger, the roots of Master Flare’s Guiding Branch traced back to her knife.

This destroyed everything sprouting from the ground.

Master Flare stood in the middle of her summoned trees as they ruptured and scattered.

“Not bad.”

She met Menou’s murderous glare with a smile. Menou was grinning, too, although she didn’t realize it. For some reason, she was still enjoying this.

“Menou, can you really accept living and keeping a lost one alive?”

Just like their previous fight, Master Flare was striking at Menou’s core with her words, hoping to shake the younger woman’s resolve.

Menou had lived as an Executioner all this time.

Master Flare was asking whether she felt guilty for all those she’d felled.

“I do feel remorseful, and I believe I’m in the wrong, too,” Menou replied unflinchingly.

She should have betrayed the Faust much sooner if her intent was to save Akari. Her sense of reason whispered that she had no right to preserve life after all that death. How would she explain this to the innocents she had murdered? The anguish of it was enough to tempt Menou into stabbing her own throat.

For a long time, some part of Menou had wished to die.

However, Akari’s intense wish for Menou to live had overpowered the Executioner’s sense of guilt. When Menou was at an impasse, Akari’s feelings pushed her forward via their linked souls.

So she could answer honestly.

“But there’s someone who wants me to continue.”

“Hmph… And what do you plan to do about Akari Tokitou’s inevitable transformation into a Human Error?”

“I’ll stay with her to ensure she never uses her Pure Concept. I can even supplement her memories through a Guiding Force connection.”

By reaching into Akari’s soul through Guiding Force, Menou could maintain Akari’s memories. She couldn’t recover the ones already lost, yet those still at risk of vanishing now lived within Menou as well.

“So you can prevent
Time
from becoming a Human Error because she trusts you, eh? Then what will you do about any new Otherworlders who come to our world? Maybe you just form deep bonds of friendship with all of them and make up a whole happy little class, just like in their world. Ha! Talk about a pipe dream.”

Menou understood that Master Flare was right, of course. It would be difficult enough to keep Akari alone from transforming into a Human Error.

That didn’t mean she hadn’t considered how to deal with future Otherworlders, though.

“You said it yourself, didn’t you, Master? That I’ve chosen the wrong path in life.”

“And you truly believe it’s not too late to start over now?”

“…Long ago, I decided that since I don’t have the power to change the world, I would dirty my hands in the place of others.”

That was her vow when she was young. When she was taken to Master Flare’s monastery and saw how the training to murder people was slowly eating away at the girls, Menou resolved to kill so the rest wouldn’t have to.

She thought that would reduce the amount of times someone had to take a good person’s life.

Menou possessed a sense of duty as an Executioner. And she understood that disposing of taboos protected innocents. It wasn’t always wrong to take a life to help a person.

However, there had to be a superior method for dealing with Otherworlders, whose only crime was being summoned here against their will.

So Menou decided to alter her methods. Undoubtedly, she would still have to cut people down. She would still be an Executioner who murdered for others. But she would not be fettered by the Faust’s rules.

There was only one path she was striving for now.

She wouldn’t slay Otherworlders, nor would she try to send them back to their own world at the cost of massive casualties.

“I’m going to kill the very concept of Otherworlder summoning.”

She would prevent Otherworlders from being brought to this world in the first place, thereby erasing the very existence of the taboo Pure Concepts. And Menou didn’t intend to stop at the summonings performed by humans. She would find the causes of the naturally occurring ones and destroy those, too. Elders sought to gather new conjurings, making it entirely possible they knew the reason behind natural Otherworlder appearances.

If Menou was going to dirty her hands, then she would become an Executioner who killed to rewrite the rules for the sake of innocent Otherworlders.

“So you see, Master…I’m going to gain the power to change the world and save all the lost ones together with Akari.”

“……What?”

Master Flare was stunned into silence. She stared wide-eyed at Menou’s confident expression for a long moment.

Then her shoulders started trembling, and she burst into laughter.

“Heh… Heh-heh… Bah-ha-ha-ha-ha! The power to change the world? You and that
Time
girl there? Save the lost ones? Bwah-ha-ha-ha! …You really are a total idiot, aren’t you?”

True to her words, Master Flare regarded Menou like she’d said something unbelievably stupid. As the woman continued snickering, Menou countered with a question of her own.

“Why do
you
kill people, then, Master?”

“Me?”

If she won, Menou would never get another chance to ask that question.

If she lost, Master Flare would kill her. Akari would lose control and become a Human Error trying to save her, and Momo would be killed as well. So to ensure that she carried no regrets, Menou posed a simple inquiry to get to the core of the person she was about to kill.

“It’s simple. Because someone told me to.”

Master Flare’s answer was far too plain.

She ended lives on account of her orders. Any priestess who became an Executioner would’ve given the same response.

“Believe it or not, I’ve never once killed of my own choice.”

Not once had Master Flare slain a person out of hatred or a desire for justice. She did it simply because that was her duty—to be a cog in the machine of society.

“I’ve always killed people as I was instructed. I act in accordance with my instructions. There is no honor, purpose, or reason. Whether I’m hated or praised, rewarded or vilified. It was no different when I killed my friend. I ended her because she was a taboo. That’s all I’ve ever done.”

She was an Executioner through and through, committed to her duty.

It wasn’t Master Flare’s unshakable will that made her an Executioner, but that she murdered in accordance with that role.

Each time she ended a life, Master Flare became a more perfect Executioner, until finally, she reached the pinnacle of slaughter and was left with nowhere else to go.

“I don’t feel any guilt. Nor am I in despair. I don’t change in the least, regardless of how many fall before me. It’s been this way since the first time I slew someone. Do you get it now, Menou? My survival is proof there is no justice in this world.”

All at once, Menou understood.

She remembered her Master’s teachings. The legendary Executioner Flare, who had killed the hated taboos without salvation, righteousness, reward, recompense, resentment, or anger. If nothing else, she had never been discarded.

Even as she taught Menou, there were things Master Flare herself hadn’t put into practice. That was where her true desire lay hidden.

“That’s the kind of villain I am.”

Master Flare knew she was wicked. It was the reason she’d raised Menou.

She desired punishment. It wasn’t that she wanted to die, for she would resist that to the bitter end. However, there was a hope that justice would be leveled against her when she could no longer escape.

Master Flare, who had never been cast aside as an Executioner, wanted to perish at the hand of one who was her reflection.

Menou’s hesitation melted away when she realized this.

“Master. How many sacrifices will be necessary to ensure that a lost one never finds their way here again?”

“Rebel against the Lord and kill the Elders,” she replied succinctly.

Long, long ago, Master Flare must have found the method to change the present order, yet she’d never enacted it. How could she? The woman was merely an Executioner.

Nothing in her soul, spirit, or body could save the world.

“If you do that, the world will shift of its own accord. Although I could never manage to kill a single Elder myself.”

Menou would make her way further down that path. Undoubtedly, that resolution was clear to Master Flare without putting it into words.

“Menou. You were a full-fledged Executioner.”

“Yes.”

“When you gained your time with Akari Tokitou, that happiness destroyed everything and remade you.”

“Yes.”

“Prepare yourself, then.”

The scripture in Master Flare’s left hand glowed with Guiding Light. The weapon she hadn’t yet drawn in battle was about to display its worth.

“If you don’t kill me right now, you’re going to die.”

Menou silently readied the dagger gripped in her right hand.

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

The Guiding Force thread created by the crest conjuring fluttered in the wind, spiraling into a helix.

Menou resolved never again to hesitate on the journey she was meant for.

“Here I come.”

“Bring it.”

On the same ground where she had once vowed to become her Master, her battle to overturn those words from her youth began.