Apocalypse Witch: To the Strongests of an Age of Plenty
Episode 24

No need to hold back at this point.

Utagai Karuta called Crystal Girl Aine from her back and shouted to Marika who had been equipped with Crystal Blossom armor and a rapier sword.

"Aine, you go first! Marika, you're flying!!"

He gave instructions using his own voice instead of Crystal Blossom vibrations and, as Anastasia focused on them, he moved straight towards her.

He took his modified military flashlight out of his blazer pocket, activated a dazzling beam made from a combined laser pointer with a special lens used for the printer, and silently illuminated it into Anastasia's face.

But.

"Do you know what magic is?"

He disappeared.

He heard a distortion in the voice of the woman in black and suddenly he was standing right beside where the laser was shining.

“That term refers to all attempts to understand the world around you that are based on divine worship or belief in religion. Does the arrangement of the cards explain the Tree of Life? Can a special calendar reveal the world's doomsday? Can a certain set of dance steps call for rain at any time? The details have many different names, but the basic principle is the same."

"Khh!"

Karuta continues to aim a dazzling laser from the ground while Marika with corn-tailed hair switches to the reverse shot mode and launches a completely deadly laser from the sky, but none of it hits. They are not allowed to hit. Even with the speed of light on their side, Anastasia continued to "disappear" and they could not deliver a proper blow.

(Is he teleporting or what? Or does he read our minds when we shoot!?)

"It's a simple matter" Anastasia said as she remained standing still. I told you magic is an attempt to understand the world around you, right? That means it's also true for the attempt to understand Newtonian physics that allows you to sense invisible quantum physics."

"What?"

"In simple language, I can avoid attacks made of light if I move faster than the speed of light. And the light constantly hits my body. If I add my own power to the light that already drives my body, then I get the following equation: (Light speed) + (My athletic ability) = (My current speed). If I can add a little value above the standard value for light, then of course I can exceed the speed of light.”

“What are you talking about anyway?”

The explanation was too absurd that he suspected it was only meant to confuse him.

It's very silly logic. Even a child knows that nothing can go beyond the speed of light. Anastasia produces very extreme results, but the basics are very contradictory. It makes Karuta shiver.

“And this is not limited to the speed of light. You saw the other Trouble Experts, didn't you? Star and calendar predictions? Your Magic Crystal ability might just be reading the flow of energy between heaven and earth, but do you think it is enough to manage the strongest power in the world?"

“…”

Dinosaurs, spears of light, giant swords, and regeneration.

True, everything feels to be the strongest because it comes from a very different category.

Any attempt to understand them has been abandoned by categorizing them all as God's Servant Magic.

He could not hope to understand them, yet it was there. That might make them so scary.

"There was the age of dinosaurs, the age of stone tools, the age of sticks and crystal balls, the age of weapons and steam, and much more. I think the previous era was the age of electricity and petroleum. But we destroyed it. Our ability to do that is what shaped the Age of Magic God-worshipping and earned us the title of being the strongest in the world." Anastasia laughs. "God Witchcraft Users are not brilliant geniuses or wise sages. On the one hand, we are fools. The forces coming down from space, the energies rising from the center of the earth, and the invisible mountains and valleys created from the collision of those objects, are all meaningless. While you stare at that magical weather map, we created our own bomb cyclones. Because we can. ... And once you get to that point, you reach a world where the speed of light is a thin constraint."

The power he possessed felt like a joke.

This is the definition of magic itself.

He was an incomprehensible monster in human form. Karuta felt terrified fur on his skin while dealing with the woman, but then he realized the fundamental fact.

It's not over yet.

He can move faster than light. It felt like it was impossible to attack such an enemy, but that was not true. It was just the view of most people because they considered the speed of light to be the absolute limit.

After all this...

Anastasia's childish form of ignorance does not think, no, does not believe that light is the fastest in the world. He believed that many things move faster than light.

He swallowed his saliva.

(So he knows how to conquer light, but he doesn't believe that it's enough to bend the world to his liking. It could be vibration, or electrons, or wind, or fire. He believed that many other ordinary things had the possibility to surpass light. So, so, so.).

"Amine! Hit him directly!!"

(This only allows it to dodge laser attacks because it uses light, so other forms of attacks have a chance of hitting it!!)

The roar of wind came from the katana made of translucent materials like crystals. The katana had a jitte-like branch on the back of its blade and a special laser weapon unit attached there. Crystal Girl Aine's clean white dress fluttered around her as she dashed forward with a weapon in hand.

The distance between the two is less than 20m.

Its nonhuman legs can travel that distance in one second.

But Anastasia laughed and stepped back.

That was enough to stop Aine's speed. He's stopped. For some reason, he ran and ran but could not reach the woman wearing the yellow and black uniform.

"Now you're carrying around some old Greek bullshit!?" marika shouted from the sky as she came like a meteor with a rapier sword in hand.

Anastasia could not use that method to attack from above because she could not sink into the ground. She could not bind the attack with magic that allowed her to ignore the distance and speed, so Marika should be able to reach it. Yet...

"The moon pulled me towards her, so I could fly."

"!!!???"

Anastasia's missing.

Marika quickly pulled back her rapier, but then her right arm's weapons and armor were thrown off. Although he uses a protector that (unlike Karuta's) can fend off machine gun fire. A rumbling sound was heard a moment later. The two-pointed girl narrowly avoided the collision and instead made an unstable emergency landing.

Anastasia passed at a speed too fast to be followed by the naked eye and her right fist shattered and her arm bone sticking out at the elbow.

He paused in the air, laughed, and kissed the back of his shattered hand.

"I can smell it and make it better."

What happened next need not be said.

There was no time limit or detailed rules like the ones on crystal magic.

Sweat flowed from Karuta's body as he gazed upwards from the ground due to the usual gravitational bonds.

Rather than being in tension or fear of uncertainty, seeing the true nature of magic made him feel disgusted.

It's not that Anastasia doesn't know how things really work.

He said he could fly because "the moon pulled me towards him". The basis of his statement required knowledge of universal gravity, but he still prioritized his own thoughts and believed in it without the slightest hesitation. For it is the age and the world in which they live. Is it his pride to claim the most powerful title and make the world fit what he sees? Although all the possibilities of every other parallel world would not allow for this absurd conclusion, this world was different.

It is a magic that corrupts a world that its users have never actually seen. This is very similar to drawing a map of the end of the world based on your imagination rather than actually going there.

(What should we do? What are we supposed to do!? This mixed feeling from him was different from a dinosaur or a spear of light! This is much worse! Is it possible to create and follow a plan for someone like this? Can we really defeat that bomb storm just by reading the weather map and following what it says? That doesn't seem realistic. He took it so far that I saw no way to defeat him!!)

“Sacri-sama.”

Aine jumped back at him with a special katana in her hand.

Marika waved from where she landed some distance from there. He had been hit by a blow from Anastasia, but he was still able to continue fighting.

“Give me your instructions,” says Aine. “What should I do next?”

"Good question."

The response was not from Karuta but from Anastasia in the sky above.

The woman in the yellow and black jacket smiled against the background of the purple sky.

"This is the taste of our apocalyptic daily life. We always destroy someone and one day we will be destroyed by someone. You started it, so let us end it. Is your effort over? What happened to your ace? Is it over just like that? It seems that today is not the day of my death. I will defend the title of strongest man at least until tomorrow."

Is this how it works?

He had no idea how many secrets and mysteries the world possessed. He had no way of checking to see which would evolve and cover the world if they were supported in a normal way. But their light faded away easily when faced with something as mind-boggling as the God-Eating Magic that was so jumbled up and seemed to be completely immune to their every attempt.

"All I did was recite a simple mantra, focus my actions on defense, and respond with the right reaction to your attack."

They watched as floating Anastasia pulled something from inside the tight skirt of her military uniform.

A thick set of cards looks like a poker hand, but that is not possible.

Or maybe this is the original form of the card set.

“So now I will attack. Didn't I say that magic refers to any attempt to make sense of the world around you? And one of the prime examples is trying to explain the Tree of Life with a tarot?” card

The cards are flying.

They followed some rules to scatter like a shield in front of him.

“Technically, this is not the way it is intended to be used, but I guarantee you will be entertained.”

And.

And.

And.

“Enjoy the strongest of mine.”

The ground split apart and a gigantic shape appeared above Anastasia in the sky.