“I never said I was calling Birdway. In fact, I never said I was making a call!!”
It may have been improvised, but he now had control of his left leg.
Saronia had carelessly drawn close enough for him to plow his right fist straight into her at full strength.
That was the strike that she—that Gremlin—was so worried about.
Imagine Breaker slammed into her and a dull noise burst out.
Saronia A. Irivika’s small body bent backwards.
But that was it.
She held her ground. Her lip split and a trail of blood dripped down, but she did not go down.
“I already told you!” she spat out while grabbing a large number of seeds in her right hand. “Even if you can use your leg, your left arm is paralyzed, so you can’t control your goddamn weight!!”
She threw the seeds at Kamijou as if scattering salt.
Taking the shower of seeds straight on, Kamijou collapsed to the ground once more. His entire body convulsed. He had no idea what expression was on his face and he could feel his blood vessels pulsating unnaturally. He could not move anything except for the part of his right arm that was past the elbow.
“…Chehh. So your organs are still functioning. I guess it really is best to get the pollen directly in the target’s mouth.”
“…Gh…Khah…”
Kamijou could not even breathe without focusing on it.
He moved his right arm and slowly crawled, scraping himself across the hard ground.
“You are the one who ended the war. There was one thing I wanted to ask you if I ever met you.”
Kamijou now knew the details of Saronia A. Irivika’s Leshy spell.
But he still had a question.
She could only use her magic after creating numerous “enclaves” linked back to her small forest in Russia. Birdway had suspected the preparation time for one of those enclaves was a few days long.
However, Saronia had only learned that Lindy Blueshake was there a half hour or so before.
Saronia would not have had time to prepare an enclave.
“Why did you end the war the way you did? The areas like Russia that were brought to ruin by the war are undergoing reconstruction, but do you know what is actually going on there?”
“Academy City and America are…”
“They are messing with other people’s countries as they see fit just for fun.” Saronia smiled, but it was completely devoid of joy. “In exchange for all the money they are throwing around, they are interfering with the structure of the government, seizing control of infrastructure like electricity and water, and deciding who will be saved and who will not. And yet they are part of the group that pulled the trigger that started that war. They are dividing people up like oranges being packed into boxes and then throwing away the boxes they don’t like the taste of.”
“…”
“Even my small forest was cleared away and covered in asphalt. If I had not joined Gremlin, I would have been unable to transfer over the power that makes me a magician.”
Had she started by making all of Hawaii or at least Kauai into an enclave? That was not it. If she had done that, she would have put Lindy into a trance before trying to forcibly abduct her. Even if she was up against amateurs, it would have been better to eliminate all possibility of escape or resistance.
“I know that world has ended and cannot be brought back, but we can live on even after it has ended. I want to make the preparations for that. And this life will not be something forced on us by Academy City or America.”
That meant there had to be a reason.
There had to be some kind of trick that allowed her to create an enclave there without waiting for days.
“It seems Gremlin as a whole and Olay are trying to destroy the balance between science and magic by recreating the United States into a theocracy, but that is nothing more than a trivial task to me. I don’t care what it is as long as it rids Russian and Europe of those who use the name of justice to profit.”
“We…” Kamijou forced out his words even as it felt like his breathing would stop. “We did not…end that war…for that to happen. We…”
“But that was the result.”
“Then…it is my duty…to fight those who…are making you suffer in the…name of justice. There is no…need for you to…do these things… that will make the world...blame you.”
“How naïve. You were only able to end that war because of all the preparations made by others. What can a mere pawn do when faced with the people who made those preparations?”
Saronia needed two things for her Leshy spell.
Plants and animals.
When Saronia possessed plants and animals that created a cycle of oxygen and carbon dioxide, she transformed that area into a “forest”. In that twisted zone, she ruled over the twisted community and had assaulted Kamijou with a twisted penalty based on twisted rules.
“And you are weak. Gremlin has joined together to fight the world’s victors. How is a loser who cannot even defeat a single one of us supposed to accomplish something as grand as you are proposing?”
In that case, couldn’t she use a type of supplement?