I can see it.
Bring the hammer at my waist down on her.
Clang—!
She precisely knocks the hammer's handle aside with her spear, then follows up with an attack...
"Where do you think you're going!"
Clang――!!
Damn it! Stab with the nail, three-hit combo!
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
I forced my foot free from the slick hill of corpses and rolled across the ground.
"Huff... Huff..."
This is fucking brutal...
Why the hell has that crazy bitch been targeting only me from the start?
"Ha... This is fun. Really fascinating. How have you been dodging so well since earlier? Almost like you know how I'm going to move."
Well, because I do... would be the correct answer, but there was no reason to say it out loud.
If I just kept reading her movements and waited for someone else to kill her somehow—
Ah, damn it.
"Still, I'm bored of this now. Tag is over."
With a blank expression, Kromer said that and raised her hand high, clenching the air hard.
"Kgh..."
At the same time, all the strength left my body.
...I expected as much, but what an absurd ability. What the hell is the nature of that power?
Since I couldn't see the process, only the result, I had no way of knowing how that lunatic was doing it.
And if you asked whether I'd learned anything from the fight that led up to it... no, not really.
The only thing I'd figured out was that she could only bind one person at a time.
And that after a certain amount of time, it would naturally wear off.
Also, the cooldown was about the same as the duration, so she could keep using it whenever one person broke free.
The effect was monstrous, but it was hard to uncover? There's no more unfair ability than that.
Even if someone sliced open her skin to force bleeding, or burned her with the kind of weapons the Liu Association usually handles, she'd just regenerate the wound at terrifying speed.
Her attacks were limited, and her specs were absurd enough to surpass that bastard Guido, but unlike him, who relied purely on physical ability, she also had some bizarre power and an insane level of regeneration.
Guido's only advantage, if anything, was his raw natural healing.
Completely useless information in this situation, though.
After a while of trading blows and roughly confirming her ability, we'd been slowly working her down by identifying attacks that wouldn't regenerate.
And in fact, wounds were starting to appear all over her now.
No matter how strong her body was, it was 13 against 1, and unlike Guido, she wasn't fighting alongside subordinates. It was only natural she'd be pushed back.
We'd all gradually lose stamina, and then small mistakes would start piling up, making the battle flow a little strange...
Still, there was no sign yet that we'd be utterly crushed.
Which meant that, as things stood, we should win without much trouble.
So all we needed was for no weird variable to show up...
...Huh?
Unable to move my body and forced to keep my eyes darting around nonstop, I spotted something strange.
Kromer's body was twisted like an Abnormality... like one of those incomprehensible monsters.
Her appearance reminded me of what Faust called a Sin-afflicted body of lust.
...Why was there suddenly a possibility like that?
The instant that abnormal situation appeared, my brain started running at its limit.
My eyes were, I guessed, closer to showing the possibilities that could plausibly exist.
In fact, Kromer's actions, and the actions of my allies when I looked to the side, had all been realized from among those possibilities.
And the closer an action came to happening, the narrower those possibilities became.
Which meant that the grotesquely twisted Kromer was a fairly high-probability outcome... what?
"....."
Something. I was missing something.
That crazy bitch's sudden transformation possibility...
Exists.
I had a hunch.
The experiment, the thing meant to artificially induce corrosion.
Just as we were descending to the second floor, we'd seen them conducting an artificial experiment to transform an Inquisitor into a beast.
But what if, what if, the "experiment" we saw upstairs to induce corrosion wasn't simply for combat enhancement?
What if it was actually meant to be used on herself? What if she was pursuing some ultimate goal through it?
Once my brain started guessing, it didn't stop.
The scattered clues were assembled, and soon one conclusion emerged.
Mutating into a monster-like form is also part of Kromer's plan.
I couldn't say why. Just as a criminal can't predict the plans of a madman.
But even if I realized that, nothing changed.
Even after noticing this possibility, no new possibility appeared.
That was probably fate.
A probability infinitely close to one.
Then it would be right to give up on twisting that possibility.
I couldn't gamble on a problem with no proper answer in sight.
...Then what could I do?
Since earlier, Kromer had been constantly throwing me off balance, apparently displeased that I was tying up her feet.
Thanks to that, I'd been rendered useless for a long while and couldn't even join the fight.
In a situation where I couldn't move, there was... realistically, nothing I could do.
Even the information that Kromer might suddenly transform like an Abnormality would only end up lowering morale right now.
So in the end, all I could do was watch... was that it?
A faint sense of helplessness and bitterness lingered in my mouth.
*
Clang! Clang—!
Whoosh, thud!
The fierce sounds of battle kept ringing out ahead.
Crunch, creak!
After the prisoners had kept stacking damage on Kromer all this time, they'd finally managed to inflict serious wounds on her.
That crazy bitch would have died long ago if she hadn't received that insane level of bodily reinforcement.
While landing that many attacks, we'd all grown exhausted, been injured, and some of us had even died.
That didn't include me, since I'd been forcibly removed from the fight under her constant gaze.
If things stayed like this, we'd eventually win, but I knew Kromer still had one more move left.
As expected, whether that had been part of her plan too or not, Kromer was wearing a broad, blood-soaked grin despite her severe injuries, radiating triumph.
Then, as if issuing our death sentence, she reached out and rummaged through Sinclair's inner coat pocket.
"Now, the time has come, Sinclair."
"I'm taking the second coin... your last chance."
...Instinctively, I felt Kromer's twisting possibility drawing closer and closer.
A probability that had been infinitely close to one now approaching perfect certainty.
"Why are you doing this to me...?"
"Why... of all people..."
I could see every other possibility slowly fading away, leaving only one.
"Sinclair, do you know why I gave the basement key back so willingly?"
"It's not because I'd already found this place, and it's not because I made a copy of the key."
"It's because you were my key."
Wow. If the situation weren't such a complete disaster and the speaker weren't my mortal enemy, that would've been a pretty romantic confession.
Of course, since the other party was a lunatic and this was being said atop a hill of corpses, the only reaction I could muster was disgust.
"I know a way to peer into the countless futures that could unfold."
"Among them, I saw a future where you and I roam the Nest together, cutting down every heretic scattered everywhere."
"Because you were someone they could find repulsive. Isn't that funny?"
Ha... seriously. The more I listened, the more absurd it sounded.
All because of that... that pathetic reason, she killed countless people and drove one person's life straight into hell?
Kromer didn't stop there. In a voice full of madness, she kept speaking to Sinclair.
"You'll pierce the heretics' heads with that halberd!"
"N-no, don't lie..."
"And I'll smash their skulls to pieces with my hammer!"
"Don't..."
"Ahaha... In that world, you truly looked freer and more transcendent than anyone else."
"It's a lie!!!"
"Whether it's a lie or not..."
"Hehe."
Kromer let out a grotesque laugh and stopped moving.
And instinctively, I understood.
...It's coming.
The Golden Bough placed on the altar began to shine brighter and brighter, as if resonating with her laughter.
Ah, right.
That thing had the power to resonate with the user's psyche.
The current user was Kromer... then does that mean Kromer's grotesque form is probably the shape she desires for herself?
I felt as though the final missing puzzle piece had clicked into place.
And then—
"Ahhh...! It's started... At last, the time for my ultimate wish to be fulfilled!"
Creak, creak-creak-creak!!
Flesh wrapped around her lower body.
Countless grotesque masses of meat, impossible to tell whether they were arms or legs, erupted from the hill of corpses manifested below and enveloped her.
At last, the Golden Bough answered her desire and fully revealed her lust and madness to the world.
"Now then... Sinclair."
Her lower body had become the form of a massive Sin-afflicted body of lust.
"Tear me apart and devour me."
Her upper body was Kromer, veins bulging all over her, raising her grotesquely transformed arm overhead.
"If you can... heehee."
From Kromer's unmistakably monstrous form, the eerie pressure unique to an Abnormality began to seep out.
Boom――!!
Then Kromer charged at us.
That was the signal, and the story outside the memory also began racing toward its end.
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