“Good... Well done, Power Angel!”

Merka hesitantly lowered the arm he'd held up in front of himself. At once, he caught sight of Power Angel's back, solid as a wall of concrete and steel, and breathed a sigh of relief.

The corner of his mouth curled up slightly. A fully formed plan appeared in his mind.

“Power Angel, keep it busy for me!”

“Watch out for that giant mace!”

Merka gently stroked Power Angel's skin with one hand.

The white flames of the Descent of the Holy Son swept over Power Angel's entire body in an instant.

Raw, brutal power surged through Power Angel like magma.

The huge holes blasted into Power Angel's body rapidly swelled, spitting out enormous white tumors.

Power Angel turned completely white. Its fearsome shoulders, like a tiger-headed executioner's blade, and its arms, as brutal as cannons, slowly bulged with muscles its frame couldn't bear.

It let out a sharp roar at the killer bee, like a polar bear bellowing at the edge of a frozen lake.

“...Good. It's working.”

Watching the killer bee's attention drawn to Power Angel, Merka reached up and wiped the cold sweat running down his forehead with a finger. A faint, triumphant smile appeared on his face.

He slipped one hand behind his back and released several blue owl plectrum servants.

“Now... I just have to wait for the plectrum servants to find those lozenges, and then I can escape with Turing.”

【Here again...】

【Am I having another nightmare?】

【Wait... Why did I say ‘another’?】

In the snowfield veiled by white mist lay brittle, withered reeds that refused to break, and a frozen river winding in crooked bends.

As she'd done countless times in her dreams, Turing instinctively looked up and gazed across the frozen river.

A handsome boy whose face she couldn't make out was bending over, rolling a sparkling snowball in his hands.

“Turing, you really love having snowball fights!”

The boy spoke. His voice seemed both far away and close, reaching straight into Turing's mind.

“At Soul-Repose Lake this afternoon, you've been talking to me all this time.”

【Soul-Repose Lake...?】

【What Soul-Repose Lake...? Oh, right. That's where Merka and I had a snowball fight.】

【Why did I go have a snowball fight with Merka again...?】

【He said he wanted to cure my illness... with hydrotherapy, to heal the pain in my mind.】

【But why was I sick in the first place...?】

【Because... because of what?】

【Because I'm a boy?】

【A boy unfit to shoulder the family’s responsibilities...?】

Turing's mind told her she'd never seen this scene before...

But the heart burning fiercely in her chest kept reminding her—this place had once been enough to burn her soul to ashes.

“Merka...”

Turing softly called to Merka across the frozen river.

But the boy on the other side only raised the snowball in his hand high in answer.

“Turing, hey! Catch!”