Chapter 3: Code Name: Jormungand

As a healthy young man in the prime of adolescence, Shido Itsuka naturally had all the normal urges of a teenage boy.

Tobiichi Origami might have worn a blank expression, but she was unquestionably a beautiful girl. She lacked the seductive charm of the actresses on screen, but her well-trained body gave off a different sort of youthful vitality.

It was just…

Whenever he met Origami’s eyes, an inexplicable fear gripped him. It was a dread that came from the depths of his soul, as if a savage wolf were eyeing him, ready to devour him at any moment.

Origami put a little strength into her arms and pushed Shido down onto his back. Her slender fingers traced lazy circles on his chest through his shirt, and her whole body slowly leaned over him.

That angelic face drew closer and closer. Shido felt his cheeks burn so hot they hurt. The instincts sleeping inside him were stirring, slowly but unmistakably.

“W-wait! This isn’t the time for that!”

“No?”

Seeing Origami tilt her head in puzzlement, Shido’s throat seemed to catch. His mind went blank for a moment.

‘This girl…’

Origami tilted her head again, apparently taking the handsome boy’s silence as consent. She settled into a more proper sitting position, placed both hands lightly on his waist, and slid forward.

Her movements were gentle, but poor Shido still felt a jolt like a gear being slammed into place. He snapped wide awake.

“No! Not here! There are so many people watching!”

“Oh, I almost forgot. There are two spirits here.”

Origami stood up calmly. Her expression had not changed in the slightest, as if nothing had happened at all. But what she had just done was genuinely terrifying… who would have thought she could be that forward?

While everyone was still lost in their own fantasies, Chihaya Sayo… no, Chihaya Sayo’s body moved again.

She stepped forward at a fixed, steady pace. Her movements were light, but with every step the great shadow beneath her feet spread a little further outward. Each footfall seemed to land on everyone’s hearts, pressing down until it was hard to breathe.

The mysterious purple-haired girl clearly had no intention of attacking one of her own kind. The armored girls did not dare make a move either, and just stood by, gripping their weapons tightly.

‘Are you kidding? There are two spirits here! Even if one of them seems barely conscious, what if our attacks trigger a reaction out of her?’

Were they about to be double-teamed by two spirits? Forget driving them off or killing them. Even surviving until they disappeared was going to be an uphill fight.

The best approach was still to hold still, drag things out as long as possible, and pray they disappeared soon.

The purple-haired girl showed no sign of attacking either. A strange equilibrium settled over the center of the crater, and everyone watched tensely as the girl at the heart of the shadows advanced, step by slow step.

Madness. Chaos. Rage. All kinds of tangled emotions hammered against everyone’s chests.

No one was affected more than Tobiichi Origami. That mysterious emotion seemed to find a crack in her heart and pry it open, stoking the fury inside her.

‘Why? Why should I sit here waiting quietly for the spirit to disappear? Why can’t I attack?’

She knew all too well that the gap between her strength and a spirit’s was like a chasm. But that one was clearly just a mindless puppet. Even if death was a real possibility, this was the closest she had ever come to killing a spirit!

“I…”

Origami bit her lip hard. Her palm, gripping the light saber, was already scored with bloody marks from her fingernails. The pain did not free her from that nameless hold. It only fed her rage.

“I… I’ll kill you!”

The white-haired girl let out a roar. Ignoring the pleas of her comrades and superiors, she kicked off the ground with her thrusters and swung her light saber at the figure standing in the darkness.

Three hundred meters. Two hundred. One hundred.

No spirit barrier. No obstruction. The other side had not even called out her Angel.

‘Maybe… this time, I can actually do it!’

As the blade closed in on the unknown spirit, the fury that had consumed Origami calmed, strangely.

Her mind drifted over so many things. The past. The day the whole city was swallowed in smoke and fire. The nameless spirit that brought flame and death. And finally, the last image in her head settled on the gentle face of a blue-haired boy.

‘If I had to do it all over again, I would still walk this path without hesitation.’

Wait, this is… my life flashing before my eyes?

Origami snapped back to herself. A heavy dread clenched her chest like a giant hand. Facing the enemy she had hunted her whole life, she felt ‘fear’ for the first time.

“Execute the mission.”

The girl parted her lips. The voice that came out was sweet and pleasant, but to Origami’s ears it was like a death sentence delivered by an emotionless machine.

At her words, the shadows around her rippled like living things. In the span of a breath, they wrapped around Origami’s body. The light saber in her hand was less than half a meter from the spirit’s head, but she no longer had any strength left to swing it.

Sudden power-ups only happened in TV shows and novels. No matter how strong a person’s will was, it could not overcome reality. Even as Origami strained with everything she had, she could not move a single muscle. Thinking itself had become a task that drained her.

To the onlookers, it all happened in the blink of an eye. In just two blinks, the white-haired girl collapsed limply to the ground, alive or dead no one knew.

“Origami!”

“Interference detected. Executing directive.”

The girl’s voice stayed cold. She stepped over Origami’s body and pressed on. The darkness that had torn through their proud Territory in an instant crept back around her, as if escorting a monarch who ruled the shadows.

What kind of Angel was that? An unregistered spirit?

Unlike the other spirits, she seemed less like a spirit and more like a bioweapon. She had none of the gentleness of the spirits they had seen before. She was a cold, merciless killing machine.

And with the Princess watching from the side, their group really might be finished here.

The shadow beneath the unknown girl paused for half a second. Then it shot out like an arrow from a bow, straight toward the densest cluster of people. It dragged even the Princess into its range.

‘Damn it, is she insane?’

‘If even my Territory can’t hold against an attack like that, what else do I have?’

‘Use my standard CR-Unit to run? You’ve got to be kidding! A uniform product like that can’t reach that kind of speed. The only ending waiting for us is to be caught one by one by that darkness and erased in ways we can’t understand.’

Just as the girls had resigned themselves to their fate, the shadow that was rushing toward them suddenly pulled back, as if yanked by an unseen leash. Together with the darkness that had already covered nearly half the city, it bloomed into a brilliant light, then vanished.

“Coordinates FJ1820. Princess and unknown spirit have disappeared. Ambient reaction wave below 6000. Disappearance confirmed.”

****

“Unknown spirit, temporary identification code, Jormungand. Danger level C.”

A girl with golden hair sat at a desk piled high with paperwork. The man lounging nearby, sipping tea at leisure, was none other than her boss, Westcott.

The girl’s full name was Ellen Mira Mathers, the world’s greatest wizard, with extraordinary mastery in the art. But so what? Even the strongest wizard still had to answer to her employer.

Despite her youth, Ellen already had two heavy dark circles under her eyes. The fingers clutching her little notebook were pale and sickly, like those of a corpse, and anyone would worry she might drop dead at any moment.

But she knew she would not die. She could not die. Perhaps not just for her dream, but for her boss’s happy life?

Casting a faintly resentful look at Westcott, Ellen spoke softly.

“Jormungand… isn’t that code name a bit much? And that spirit never once manifested her Angel, or showed off any real power… As a primary target, she hardly seems…”

“Don’t fixate on appearances.”

Westcott took a slow sip of coffee. The corners of his mouth curled up as he forced a gentle smile, yet his eyes remained dull and lifeless.

“I don’t care how strong that spirit is, Ellen. What I care about is her power. That malice, as if she were bent on destroying the world… I’ve only ever seen it in two people. She is the true embodiment of evil, the avenger of the whole world. Using Jormungand, the world-devouring serpent of Norse mythology, as her code name is only fitting, don’t you think?”

“Doomsday? You mean…”

Westcott laughed. He laughed happily, and for a moment even his normally still, untroubled eyes seemed to sparkle with an unusual light.

“She is not our enemy, Ellen. If anything, she is a friend who shares our values. I deliberately kept her danger level at C, after all…”

“In every script, the villain who destroys the world always needs some time to build up strength, doesn’t he?”

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