Kuro no Maou 423

Mind Controlling Devices: Angel Ring VS Fairy Ring (Part 1)

“Hmm, just as I thought, this must be the door.”

Protected by her two companions, Lily seems far from being in a hurry and instead moves elegantly as she searches for the cockpit’s hatch.

The ancient golem stands tall in front of us, towering over the surroundings like a wall. All we see is a sheet of unpolished armored steel plating spreading over its surface with no signs of any kind of joints. There also doesn’t seem to be any sort of doorknob around.

However, Lily is certain that this being the right spot.

There are three reasons for this. The first one is that her intuition tells her so. The second one is that there are some a few signs of magical power leaking out, though they are so faint that you might doubt whether you actually felt them or if they were just your imagination.

But the third and most conclusive reason for believing that the door is there is the artifact Lily is holding in her hand.

“‘Diamond Heaven’ is reacting… now we can get in easily.”

The huge spherical diamond that Lily is holding in her right hand is flashing intermittently as if calling out to her. I don’t think that there is a reaction more obvious than that one.

Back when she got this artifact on that dirty orphanage, it was thought that it could be used to interfere with a homunculus’ mind. While it’s possible that it has such properties, that doesn’t seem to be the only thing it can be used for.

Since ‘Diamond Heaven’ seems to have many more uses, Lily had thought it might be possible to use it as some sort of key.

“Do my bidding, ‘Diamond Heaven’!”

A little bit of magical power flows into the jewel in Lily’s hand. It briefly shines with a white radiance, and reacting to it — no, more like answering to it, the wall begins to change before our very eyes.

With a faint clank, part of a metal sheet slides open. Rather than an actual door, it looks more like a panel about 30 centimeters both wide and long. It is white, and it seems to be made from something resembling mithril silver, although somewhat different. I can’t feel mithril silver’s usual magical power and beauty from this.

Lily shades her eyes with her empty left hand as she sees some bluish pale letters appearing on the surface. Of course, those are ancient characters. However, since all of these characters are written horizontally instead of forming a circle, they don’t seem to be any sort of magic curse.

It’s impossible to completely decipher these ancient characters, even for Lily. She innately knows how to read some of them, but not even her lessons at the academy had prepared her to read the more advanced ones written here.

However, she was somehow able to understand what was written on that panel.

“‘Access granted’, huh?”

Lily touches the faintly radiant panel with the palms of her hands as gently as falling autumn leaves.

Having done that, the heavily armored panel in front of us opens neatly like a set of sliding doors. The way it slides open seems way too smooth for an ancient relic.

The area that opens is a rectangle of about two and a half meters tall by one meter wide. It definitely seems built to let the average human through. The small and delicate Lily walks through the door with little difficulty.

Instead of proper lighting, the corridor behind has shining panels embedded at equal intervals on its walls and ceiling. Though it feels rather gloomy in here, we can see another door at the other end of the corridor, a mere three meters away.

The cockpit must definitely be on the other side of that door.

And Lily doesn’t waste time to confirm that this second door opens by simply touching it.

The first thing that we see inside is the same bluish pale light as we had seen on that authentication panel earlier. Both walls are covered in pipes and tubes as if countless snakes were crawling on them, but looking at the front, we can see a jet black wall with several ancient characters messily written on them, just like that monument on the plaza of Spada, ‘Zero Chronicle’.

On the ceiling, which is as high up as the corridor, there’s only one luminescent panel, and there are no other sources of light. Not even from windows.

In other words, there’s no way to see what’s happening outside from here. There isn’t even any image anywhere that would show that we are in front of the great castle walls of Galahad Fortress.

And still, this place is definitely the cockpit we’ve been looking for…

“… Well, hello there!”

… Because there’s a pilot here. This small room is so narrow and cluttered that it feels like you can’t even breathe in here, but a quick glance reveals that there’s a person sitting in the center.

Rather than replying to Lily’s friendly greeting, that person just remains sitting motionlessly.

Wait, is that even a proper chair? It’s covered in leather, so it can’t be very uncomfortable, but it’s also equipped with countless white belts across its entire build. Of course, all of these belts are being currently used to bind the pilot to the chair, making its occupant look more like a death row inmate about to be executed on an electric chair than a pilot.

“I see, more than operating this golem, they’re being directly connected to them.”

The unconcerned Lily isn’t surprised by the pilot’s strange circumstances, and simply gathers information from everything she can see, analyzes it, and makes her guesses in order to derive the ancient golem’s secrets.

Lily not only has a truly sharp mind for both humans and magicians alike, but she also understands the study of the ‘White Sacrament’ more than anyone in all of the Pandora continent, making it easy for her to understand how this thing works.

To be more specific, she clearly recognizes those white belts that are wrapped around the pilot — those are powerful magic items which have been thoroughly analyzed, studied, and taken to the point of being put to practical use.

“A variant of the Angel Ring… so it’s like an improved version of it?”

That’s the most powerful restraint that binds the pilot to the chair.

Formerly bound to Kurono’s mind and body, and now Lily’s toy, the ‘Angel Ring’ looks like a simple white ring. Though the pilot’s face is covered with a white mask, judging from his familiar black hair and the black plug-suit that denotes his slender body, it can be determined that more than a simple foreigner, this is a youngster that has been summoned from a different world called ‘Japan’ to run experiments on his body.

“Hmm, just as I thought, it looks like we can’t take these off him.”

Lily has no interest in taking a severed head with her, so creating dimensional spaces is out of the question.

“But I have to make sure of what this thing is…”

Murmuring those words, Lily draws a simple magic circle of light in mid-air using her fingertips. When she holds her hand over the magic circle, an item comes rolling down.

That’s a white ring that resembles the ‘Angel Ring’ quite well. The only difference in its design is that a string of magical characters is carved on its surface as if streaming around it. And in fact, not only do they look similar, but they seem to have similar functions.

Yes, this is the same thing that Lily had conducted her research on, Simon had developed, and Regin had forged: A prototype of a ‘Fairy Ring’.

“Now, tell me your secrets…”

And so, Lily softly lays the ‘Fairy Ring’ on top of the ‘Angel Ring’ that shines on the boy’s head.