Volume 4, 7 - Mutsuki and Ange

Volume 4, Chapter 7 - Mutsuki and Ange

“Zh! Gh! Gaaaaahhhhhhh!!”

In FeTUS’s deepest laboratory which was known as the Sanctuary, Metatron Ange, the lightning of god, continued fighting Alice Arc, mankind’s greatest mind.

Ange had shattered the tanks in the walls and vaporized the liquid within, but she had not managed to land a lethal blow on Miss A.

Nor had she been able to avoid her opponent’s attacks.

The purple lightning magic circle continued to ensnare her and its sparks built up the damage inside her.

“Kgah…khah…pant, pant.”

No matter where she dodged, it stuck with her like a remora. And no matter how much she attacked, her opponent dodged it all with willow-like movements. Even Ange had to fall to her knees eventually.

“Finally worn out? A normal angel would have been incapacitated by the KW in five seconds, but you kept taking it for twenty minutes. You’re pretty tough.”

Miss A stood before the girl as the lightning continued to torment her.

Ange fiercely narrowed her golden eyes, but even the most hateful glare could not keep the attacks from hitting her.

Like a leaf avoiding a great blaze, the young girl who looked like she would break from a single strike moved back as much as her opponent approached and approached as much as her opponent moved back.

Black Cat was more nimble than Ange, yet not even she would have been able to pull this off. With all rational thought gone from her mind, Ange still wondered if this meant the girl had greater speed than Black Cat.

“Foresight?” muttered Rapha.

Alice grinned as if to say, “So you’ve figured it out?”

“Precisely. I have always enjoyed chess, so I am good at reading people’s actions in advance.”

She continued attacking Ange all the while.

“I have borrowed three seconds of this girl’s future.”

She looked to the rabbit sitting in the center of the room. It held a clock with its second hand shifted three seconds off.

Rapha was not the only one to gasp at this ability to predict the future. Miss C and Miss D did as well.

“All creatures seem to act based on their own will, but those actions are always taken in accordance to their situation, mental state, and the other internal and external pressures that make up their environment. The will is but one of the factors making up one’s environment.”

“If you can calculate out all of those factors, you can calculate out what action your target will take next. Miss A can see what Jiyuuni-san will do next.”

Alice smiled a little.

“All strategies, all weapons, and all science can be traced back to humans.”

She lifted her right leg.

“Gaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!”

Ange swung her sword toward that right leg only after the attack had already been dodged.

The girl was confused when her strike cut through empty air and the innocent-looking younger girl gave a smile much too vicious for her age.

It was a witch’s smile.

“My friend Miss Y constructed this ultimate strategy against intelligent life forms. This is the Grand Guignol de Iris!”

“Kh…kwaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!”

“Jiyuuni Ange. You are now my puppet.”

After missing, the girl continued swinging her blade as she jumped toward the ceiling.

The wildly swinging sword could not be dodged even if it could be predicted, so Alice temporarily pulled back her purple lightning and moved back.

Except…

“…Vh!?”

“And farewell, red queen.”

She had predicted where Ange would flee and let her go there. A trap had been laid on the ceiling.

As soon as Ange set foot there, a giant magic circle glowed from the entire broad surface of the ceiling.

“Checkmate.”

“Pgyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!”

She had suffered so much from the purple lightning of the small magic circles, but this one was the size of the entire ceiling.

The girl was helplessly engulfed by a sea of lightning.

The pain was so great that Ange dropped her divine sword and writhed in midair. Even so, the lightning stickily tangled around her skin and refused to let go.

The flames bursting from her entire body dissipated and the flames making up her body as an angel began to collapse.

“Ah…ahhh…”

Amid the pain and suffering of her physical body’s annihilation, Ange tried desperately to reach a hand toward Miss A. Even on the verge of death, she acted like a wolf trying to tear out her enemy’s windpipe.

Even her own death could not stop her resentment. Feeling pity, Miss Alice Arc gently closed her eyes. Having lost a formidable rival, Miss C bit her lower lip with a complicated look. Unable to bear seeing a young girl suffering so thoroughly, Miss D looked away.

But…

“Once.” Rapha did not seem concerned. “God sent this world a box filled with disaster. A woman named Pandora opened that box, but because she quickly closed the lid, mankind was spared the final disaster.”

He turned from Ange to Miss A.

She was the one he gave the pitying look.

“That remaining disaster was foresight. Because mankind was spared that, they remained ignorant of the disasters the future held and would thus not fall into despair. That allowed them to live with hope.”

“…”

“Acquiring that by your own hind is most impressive. I admire the resolve it must have taken to throw out that unstable hope in order to advance your own goal.”

He gave another small smile. It was a cold, unemotional smile with no hint of evil to be found.

“My actual job was to search out any research materials on the Holy Grail and destroy them, but I’d rather not see my cute little sister suffer any longer. I suppose I can have Micha deal with that when she shows up later.”

He shrugged and shook his head at that major job.

“Ange.”

“Vv…”

“We’ve lost. We have to settle for simply destroying this place.”

He spoke in the kind voice of a big brother.

Miss A’s eyes widened, although Miss C and Miss D still did not understand.

“Vaaaaaaaaaaah!”

As the purple lightning clung to and squeezed her body, the girl’s clothing vanished.

That meant both her uniform and the special angelic heat-resistant material known as a Suit.

The nude girl brushed off the purple lightning clinging to her and gently landed on the ceiling. That sight caused not Miss A and the other two Witches to pale.

“Joule heating?”

“Not good! She’s gonna blow!”

How she had broken through the purple lightning was simple. Her burned clothing had turned to plasma, which had strengthened its electrical resistance and cut off the magnetic lines.

The problem was why the clothing had burned.

An angel’s flame was a light meant to destroy its enemies. That was why it did not harm an ally like Rapha no matter how hot it burned and why it did not burn her own clothing.

But now it was indiscriminately burning everything around her. It had returned to the Joule heating of a normal flame, which meant…

“V…vvv… Mom…”

The floor, the ceiling, and even Rapha were overwhelmed by the great heat as Ange’s expression grew distorted with rage.

“I hate you…! I hate mom…! I hate everyone…!”

She was just like a crying child.

The girl had transformed from an angel of heaven’s laws and into a destructive fireball.

She had become Metatron.

“Kh…! Stop her! Stop her this instant!”

Black Cat threatened Rapha with her claws against his throat. In her haste, the sharp tips sliced a few centimeters into the man’s throat.

But the young man’s smile remained even as his throat was cut and blisters covered his skin because he was receiving Ange’s heat without a protective device like the Witches had.

“That is impossible. Once Metatron has activated, it cannot be stopped. At this point, we can only wait for the collapse. Not even god can stop it.”

“You’ll die too!”

“So what? I had no intention of returning after leading my little sister to her death.”

He almost looked delighted as he narrowed his eyes toward his sister.

“More importantly, look. Metatron uses her own resentment as fuel, so if the legends are true, she will burn through her hatred and release all of her nightmares in the final moment.”

“Ah…ah…”

He did not hesitate to point to the girl even as his fingertip burned.

“Even after receiving new life as an angel, the suffering of her past life continued to burn her body, but she has finally been released from it.”

Ange’s physical body returned to a mere shine and the boundary between the light and her body vanished.

The hatred left her face and her expression became the peaceful and somewhat lonely one of a girl of four.

“…Mutsuki.”

“Ah…gh!”

As he was continually burnt and regenerated in a battle of endurance, Lucia’s strength finally reached its limit.

The unilaterally defeated boy collapsed limply to the ground.

“It’s over then.”

Once the opposing force of will had been worn down, Micha produced especially large wings of flame and approached the boy.

She brought the two wings together in the form of a giant fist.

“S-stop!”

When he realized she planned to finish him off, Mutsuki lay on top of Lucia’s unconscious form.

“Out of the way, Mutsuki-kun. I need to fry that demon, so you’ll get burned if you’re touching him.”

“No! No… Stop this, Micha-san!”

“Don’t make this difficult!”

“Wah!”

Even if she did not burn him with her flames, Mutsuki could not stand up to an angel. She pulled him to his feet with her outstanding strength and tossed him aside. He rolled through the mud on the ground.

He felt pain, frustration, and self-hatred as a liquid other than rainwater dripped from the corners of his eyes.

“Why?” His low voice trembled. “Why!? Didn’t you say before that we could get along with Lucia-kun and Ibekusa-san!? Didn’t you say we didn’t have to fight them!? Was that a lie!?”

“…”

Micha ignored him and focused on Lucia.

“How can you hurt Lucia-kun!? How can you fight Ibekusa-san and the others!?”

She raised her flame hammer.

“How could you not stop Ange when you knew!?”

“————!”

She stopped before completing the action.

Unable to remain as stoic as Machina, she wrinkled her brow and glared back at Mutsuki.

“Not stop her?”

“Eh?”

“I wanted to do something, you know!?”

This was his second time seeing that look on her face.

“The only way to stop Metatron was to have Ange throw out her resentment of humans. But nothing I said was enough to convince her after that awful death. That’s why I brought her as your…as Adam’s bodyguard.”

It was the resentful look of a loving older sister who had lost her little sister.

“I thought she might change her mind if she learned of the human world. I thought she might change if she made some friends. And even if none of that worked, I thought she could be forcibly changed with the Serpent’s Eye’s power to rule over all women.”

Mutsuki’s eyes widened.

Could he have saved Ange if he had used that power inside him?

“…”

Micha must have realized she had said too much because she swallowed any further words and returned her focus to Lucia.

Dumbfounded, Mutsuki watched the scene in a daze.

And he recalled that he had the Serpent’s Eye.

He recalled that he had the power to rule over half the world.

“Eh…?”

The angel once said to be the strongest of them all – commonly known as Michael – felt confusion for the first time in a long while. She had encountered a phenomenon she had never before seen in her long history.

She had struck Lucia with her full-power flames, yet the demon’s body would not burn in the slightest. Even if he could regenerate, he should have run out of the strength needed to do so. Plus, that was only after he had been turned to ash. It was impossible for her to not even scorch him as she was now.

Angels had an absolute advantage over demons, so there simply could not be a demon that was immune to the divine light of her flames.

“Stop, Micha-san.”

Those words told her the answer.

“Lucia-kun isn’t an enemy.”

“It can’t be…”

She looked back and her eyes met those of Mutsuki who had stood up.

He stared straight at her with his usual clear and adorable left eye.

And with his darkened left eye.

“You removed the seal? You broke through my power…and did it on your own?”

While the Serpent’s Eye was Mutsuki’s, he had never used its power on his own.

As a mere human, he should not have been able to control the ultimate power that was the Serpent’s Eye.

“Looks like the battle’s over?”

Lucia opened his eyes while a pillar of fire pressed down on him yet he showed no sign of igniting.

Micha was confused, but her veteran instincts quickly caught on.

The demon had not been the one to negate her flames.

It was Mutsuki. The Adam boy had told her he was not an enemy, so the holy fire of her body could not view the demon as an enemy. That was why the flames would not reach him.

She was Michael, the most powerful angel, yet as a woman, she was already ruled by the Serpent’s Eye.

And at the same time, Lucia got up.

“Ha ha? My female side is getting all excited. It takes a lot of work to do it on my own, so changing sex due to an outside force is a weird feeling.”

A change came over his body.

His white skin became a similar brown to Micha’s, his shoulders and hips gained a bit more roundness, and his body grew curvier.

He now had a girl’s boy.

“But this is amazing. This is a female body…it’s made to be Mutsuki-kun’s slave. I can feel the power welling up without end. Ha ha ha. I’m about to cum just standing here?”

Micha gasped again when she saw Lucia’s genderbent form.

“Don’t tell me…”

But before she could say anything, the boy’s…no, the girl’s fist sank into her belly. The single attack knocked Micha out and she collapsed on the spot.

“Lucia-kun, are you okay?”

Mutsuki ran over and Lucia tried to greet him with a smile, but…

“Wah! W-wait. Don’t look at me with that eye when I’m a girl… My hips are going to give out.”

Lucia’s knees nearly collapsed.

“Oh, sorry. Um, wait just a second.”

Mutsuki quickly blinked his eye.

He did not know exactly how to close the Serpent’s Eye that had opened on its own, but when he willed it to “Close!” it returned to being his normal right eye.

At the same time, Lucia’s brown-dyed skin returned to being white and a slight change came over his body’s frame. He seemed to have regained his boy’s body.

Mutsuki was curious about that girl’s body he had seen before, but he turned toward the school since he had something else to do first.

No one stood in his way any longer, so he gave a large nod and the two of them started running hand-in-hand.

“Wait. Hold on.”

Mutsuki came to a stop.

He turned back toward Micha’s collapsed form. She had taken a blow to the stomach, but she seemed to still be conscious. He heard a groan from her.

He hesitated a moment, but then picked up the umbrella that had fallen nearby.

“Please head back home.”

He handed it to her.

“I’ll be back with Ange.”

“…”

Micha said nothing, but he turned his back on her and ran off with Lucia.

“Wait for me, Ibekusa-san…and Ange!”

“——”

“What is it?”

Machina felt like she had awoken from a dream. Her mind floated up from the mud.

(Fujita-kun’s voice.)

She thought she had heard a voice similar to yet distinct from the one seductively whispering by vibrating her eardrums.

That voice lessened the excessive endorphins pumped into her brain by the demon’s bodily fluids.

She had been in a state of ecstasy much like constant orgasm, but it faded away.

The demon drug had only kept her from descending from that ecstasy, so she had already been empty on a physical level. Her thoughts rapidly cooled.

The voice that might have been a hallucination had much greater value than the pleasure that had surpassed human knowledge.

She was happier to have heard his voice.

(He said to wait for him.)

Then she had to wait.

“!? W-wait! I won’t let you go anywhere.”

“I have to. Fujita-kun is coming.”

After returning to her senses, the girl tried to get up from the black fleshy mass she had sunk into.

Her movements were restricted by the tentacles wrapped around her, so she had to remove them first.

She created a gold circle in her palm and pasted the ether vibration she had copied.

Immediately…

“Hee!? Th-that’s Master Lilith’s-…”

The lower demon known as an Incubus had no choice but to obey the instructions to release the girl’s restraints.

This was Mutsuki’s wavelength that had so easily removed the Succubus earlier. She had created the exact same wavelength that was thought to have interfered with Lucia’s chakra.

It was a power unknown to mankind, but it had not been difficult to simply copy and paste it. This had brought an upper demon in line, so a lower demon did not stand a chance.

“Nn…”

Machina’s body trembled as the tentacles pulled out from her nipples, vagina, and womb.

“Wh-why? Why do you have her-…?”

She also pulled out the tentacles attached to her eardrums that created the vibrations of that confused voice. They tickled as they left her ears.

“Gbh…gzh…curse you…no female can endure my juices…without becoming my slave…!”

The demon twisted around while speaking with a gradually more difficult to hear voice, but it could not disobey the magic circle modeled on the Adam boy and it could not attack Machina.

“It was indeed a dreadful power.”

The girl gently wiped her mouth. The yogurt-like extract stuck to it smelled so tasty she briefly hesitated to throw it away.

That delectable demon drug had melted her mind. She had had no way of fighting it. If it had continued flowing into her stomach without end, she would still be in the demon’s grasp.

The demon’s mistake had been attacking her womb.

That had brought calm to everything but her drug-addled brain. It had let her hear Mutsuki’s voice and fight back in her moment of clarity.

The demon itself had said a woman must be tamed through the womb and that was true.

But a lower demon had lacked the power needed to steal a womb already tamed by Fujita Mutsuki.

“Goodbye.”

Humans had no means of opposing demons, but FeTUS had plenty of ways to eliminate them if they did not struggle. They were nothing more than creatures with superior evolution.

“Gah!”

A ball of light appeared out of nowhere and enveloped the demon.

Its body was immediately and entirely vaporized.

No matter how evolved they were, no living creature could survive being trapped in a sphere with a central temperature of over five hundred thousand degrees. A new crater appeared next to the one Ange had made and not a drop of the black liquid remained.

Machina sighed quietly after confirming that.

“She escaped the Incubus!?”

“Impossible. She’s just a human…”

She had forgotten about the three angels, so she looked up when she heard their voices.

“Ibekusa-san!”

As he flew through the sky in Lucia’s arms, Mutsuki was dumbfounded by the view of the school with the usual clock tower missing.

Still, he saw Machina wrapping golden threads around the three angels he had seen before, so he knew this had to be where Ange and Rapha had gone.

“FeTUS HQ is below the school… Ange is here, right?”

“Positive.”

There was a bottomless hole in the floor where the tower had been.

The edges of the hole were melted like hot water dripped onto a sheet of ice. Ange was the only angel he knew who could provide that kind of heat.

He was about to turn to Lucia and say they had to head down there, but…

“…Ibekusa-san, did something happen?”

He noticed Machina was acting odd.

Her unfamiliar and sexy outfit was one thing, but she also had flushed cheeks and damp eyes. Almost as if…

“It’s nothing.”

The girl gave a quick reply and looked the other way.

“…”

The boy more or less understood what he had to do.

“Ah…”

He embraced her oddly warm body in the rain.

She seemed a little surprised, but no words were necessary.

Lucia pouted his lips in displeasure as he watched Mutsuki’s powerful embrace.

Machina finally relaxed her body and entrusted all of herself to him.

“Fully deploy heat-resistant fibers…negative. Physical interference in phase space impossible.”

“Expanding 36 layers of KW…no effect.”

Ange had become an embodiment of judgement, so she was now a sun-like ball of light that burned away all that approached.

The top and bottom of the room were melting in a round shape. The acrylic glass of the surrounding water tanks was melting and the formaldehyde vaporized in less than ten seconds.

The angel named Rapha had already passed out and collapsed onto the floor. That only left the three Witches equipped with heat-resistant circuits and the rabbit decoration.

They had brought out all of their anti-angel equipment to protect their headquarters, but it had been ineffective and the equipment itself soon melted.

“This is a problem.”

Miss A sat on the large clock she loved so much. The cup she had set down there earlier had already burned into white sand.

“What do we do? What are we supposed to do!? Miss A, can’t you do something!?”

Schwarze shouted at her because her heat-resistant circuits could no longer fight the heat. Even breathing had grown difficult and just speaking left her out of breath.

“Hm,” said Miss Alice. “Where is the data on our Holy Grail research?”

She turned toward sweaty Miss D for that question.

“I-it is being transferred to the headquarters in another country. But I believe only about half has been sent so far.”

“I see. That isn’t good. If this place is lost, it will set our research back by ten years.”

“How can you be so calm!? We need to do something about her! If this fire is directed outward, this country will only have Hokkaido and Okinawa left!”

Black Cat raised her voice and Miss Arc’s lips loosened a little.

“You’re so kind, Miss C. You always were. You’ll get as cruel as can be for your duty, but you always did hate harming unrelated people.”

She stood up and waved both hands.

Golden threads shot from her tiny fingertips. They intertwined into thick threads and wrapped around the bomb of light that Ange had become.

“An angel’s flame is matter, not plasma. When it explodes, it should take 1/1000 of a second to convert the holy flame of her body into fire. If this heat distorting fiber is directed vertically when that happens, the acceleration of energy might be directed up into the sky as a capillary action.”

“So the heat would escape into space?”

“If it goes well, the residual heat would only vaporize this hill or this city.”

“B-but then…”

By applying a trick at the instant of detonation, they could minimize the damage, but the person who applied the trick would have to be there at the instant of detonation.

“It has to be me. The only way to predict the right 1/1000 of a second is to use the Grand Guignol system.”

“But, Miss A! Then you’ll-….!”

Their heat-resistant circuits were useless already, so a human Witch would be instantly turned to ash once Metatron exploded.

But the girl insisted.

“I will simply be visiting some old friends.”

The smile on her innocent face seemed to say she did not mind.

“Heh heh. But Miss Y won’t be too happy to see me if I don’t have any chocolate for her as a souvenir.”

It was an aged and horribly tired smile that looked out of place on her young face.

She almost seemed to be looking forward to the afterlife.

“You two escape. If you’re lucky, you can survive.”

“But…”

“Once you get outside, leave this hill as quickly as possible. I expect the angels will have evacuated him, but make sure to protect the Adam boy. Mankind’s future and everything we must overcome rest on that boy’s shoulders.”

Miss C wrinkled her brow and looked like she had something to say and Miss D’s face stiffened as the young girl gave them both kind, motherly instructions.

“And…Miss E.”

She was kindly yet coolly looking to the future as she gave these instructions.

“You can give up on the data if you must. And don’t forget to get Machina out of here.”

“…”

“As long as we have the Adam boy and Machina, we have the bare minimum needed to continue

the plan.”

“…Understood.”

“Go.”

As Ange’s light gradually grew, Alice spread her arms and prepared for the instant of judgment.

The other two Witches were polar opposites.

Miss D’s expression froze over like a noh mask and she started to leave the room as instructed.

Conversely, Miss C stayed put. She wrinkled her brow and looked on the verge of tears as she refused to take her eyes off of Miss A.

“You go too, Miss C. It’s dangerous here.”

“But…but…”

“Schwarze. Do not trouble me here.”

How was she to convince this reluctant kitten to leave her mother in such a short time? Alice truly was troubled.

She decided to have loyal Miss D carry Miss C out, so she looked over to stop the maid.

And then her expression froze in surprise for the first time that day.

“Wow, look at all that light… I-is that Ange!?”

“Damn, that’s hot! That’s definitely angel light. So this is Metatron… Hot, hot, hot!”

“Stay back. The heat is being bent with a spatial fissure, but photons this powerful are enough to burn away a normal human on their own.”

Machina, a demon, and the Adam boy who should never have been here rushed into the room.

Miss D, Miss C, and even Miss A were dumbfounded.

That boy was the core of FeTUS’s plan and mankind’s history would end if anything happened to him, but he had rushed up to a bomb that was about to detonate.

The boy did not seem to care as he bowed toward Black Cat and ran toward the light.

“Ange! Can you hear me, Ange!? You’re in there, right!?”

He yelled.

Machina’s heat-erasing magic circle was managing for now, but the room’s temperature was already high enough to boil all the moisture in a living creature’s body. Lucia was weak to angelic power, so he was suffering just being in the room.

Even so, Mutsuki approached the source of the heat.

“N-not good! Miss C! Miss D! Send all your KWs to the boy!”

The loss of the Adam boy was the greater threat than the destruction of 80% of the country. Miss A abandoned her heat distorting fibers and sent a new circle Mutsuki’s way.

The four magic circles from the four Witches bent the light ahead of him.

That slight path led to a human figure at the source of the light.

“Ange…”

The familiar redheaded girl stood there with her eyes closed and the peaceful look of a baby on her face, as if she had forgotten everything.

“Wake up…Ange. Let’s head home.”

Mutsuki reached out his hand.

“Ahhhh!”

But even with the magic circles, the tip of his middle finger sizzled and burned black.

Next, the burns spread across both arms and his skin grew bright red. He grimaced from a pain much like sticking his hand in a fire.

“Oh, honestly~!”

Lucia was having trouble just being here, but he supported Mutsuki by placing his hands on the boy’s back and sending his cells into him.

The demonic life force caused the boy’s hands to regenerate with new cells.

“Kh…gh…Wake up, Ange. C’mon, Ange…”

He could regenerate without end thanks to Lucia’s power, but the wounds burned as soon as they healed.

He clenched his teeth at the infinite pain of his skin repeatedly healing and burning and he took one step and then another toward the girl.

He placed his hand on her peacefully sleeping cheek.

“You brought Fujita here…? What are you thinking, Miss E!?”

As she watched the boy’s hand burning, Schwarze shouted angrily at Machina for foolishly guiding the Adam boy to the bomb.

Machina replied as calmly as ever.

“We now know Metatron is a living creature…namely, Jiyuuni Ange. In that case, I determined the best countermeasure is the one Fujita-kun suggested: convincing her to stop.”

“Are you saying he’ll use the power of Adam to have her obey because she’s a girl?”

“That is a very poor bet, Miss E. She is closer to being fire itself than a girl…no, than a living creature. Will Adam’s power really get through to her?”

Even Miss A grimaced.

But Machina…

“Not a problem.”

“Ange.”

He nearly passed out from the pain of his sizzling hands, but Mutsuki’s tone of voice remained gentle.

“I’m not asking you to like people, I don’t know what happened to you in the past, and you can hate me if you want.”

“…”

“But don’t do it this way. Don’t sacrifice yourself.”

The light only grew stronger.

“No matter how much you hate us…”

It was too great for the Witches to restrain and it enveloped the boy.

“I still love you, Ange.”

Mutsuki and Ange vanished within the great light.

Machina watched it all with a complicated look on her face.

“This is not a problem.”

The light grew even further, and finally…

“Jiyuuni Ange has…”

It filled the entire room.

“…been a girl when it comes to Fujita-kun for quite some time.”

“Pwaaah~”

Lucia, the one who had actually put in the most effort, fell onto his butt.

The four Witches also lowered their arms. Miss C and Miss D’s eyes were wide with shock and Miss A’s cheeks loosened into a bitter smile.

Machina still had a complicated and somewhat displeased look.

Then the light concentrated back on the center of the room and something appeared within it.

“…”

“………………”

Mutsuki held the almost frailly slender body of a limp redheaded girl.

After rubbing his cheek against hers a few times, he pulled his face back.

Ange maintained the innocent look of a four year old for a while, but she finally put on the usual lopsided frown.

“Welcome back, Ange.”

“I’m hungry.”