"What's this 'Queen's fleet'?"
In this narrow gunnery room, Kamijou asked this question.
"Well, this is a fleet formed to monitor the Adriatic Sea."
Agnese seemed to have released her tension now. Though she was still keeping her distance, the tips of her hands and feet were relaxed.
"Right now, we're collecting data from the starry night, the wind and the surface of the sea. After that, we'll check a certain part of the Adriatic Sea, and see how much magical energy was used. Because the sea is different from the land, we can't investigate it like normal. It'll be terrible if the enemy casts some weird magic experiment."
"…Monitoring the Adriatic Sea?"
Orsola sounded somewhat surprised and looked around the room that was made of ice.
"But is it really necessary to build such a large facility?"
"We should be able to build it a bit smaller if it's now, but the 'Queen's Fleet' was built several centuries ago… at that time, a lot of attention was placed on the security of the Adriatic Sea."
Agnese replied in an uninterested manner.
"There's also the meaning of suppressing other religions. The organisations of the magic side have been shaken by quite a few recent events. They had to hold some huge event to reorganise themselves."
If so, the Anglican Church and the Russian Orthodox Church should know about the movements of this 'Queen of the Adriatic Sea'. If they didn't do this, they would not achieve the aim of 'warning others'.
Upon hearing her say this, Kamijou asked,
"What? Then the higher ups knew about this, yet they choose to remain silent over it? If it's a containment game, there's no need to cause such a huge event. Wouldn't a bigger problem occur if the underlings are to run riot? You see, like now?"
"…Wait a minute. I still don't know what's going on. We don't know what the 'Queen of the Adriatic Sea' is. If they know of this disastrous situation…"
"Do you think they'll think that much? In other words—"
Agnese suddenly stopped.
Footsteps could be heard from the outside the door. Agnese placed her ear on the ice door waiting for the footsteps to cease. How many people were there on this ship? The black habit guy who had attacked Kamijou and company, and the coarse-sounding guy on the deck—these guys didn't seem like they were Agnese's men.
"But I have never heard of this thing while with the Roman Catholic Church."
"I didn't know that as well before I got here. The Roman Catholic Church does have 2 billion followers, and they have quite a lot of deployed squads. All we know are the areas that we're familiar with or some high level ones."
"…Now that you mention it, I have no idea exactly how many people are in a company[1]."
Upon Agnese mentioning this, Orsola seemed to start thinking about the deployment and the groupings.
However,
"What? This ship is only meant to be a surveillance facility?"
Kamijou looked stunned as he asked Agnese.
"We were suddenly attacked by the people on this ship, saw a gigantic ship that came out of nowhere and broke the banks, and before we knew it, we're smack down in the middle of this fleet. Why must we always end up in this kind of situation?"
"Humph."
For some reason, Agnese snorted.
"I'll ask you this again: you have nothing to do with the 'Queen of the Adriatic Sea', right?"
"I said before, I was in the midst of moving houses. Speaking of which, are my Amakusa friends alright?"
Orsola worriedly asked. Agnese, looking rather tired, sighed and said,
"Don't tell me you were being watched? You're people who disrupted the plans of the Roman Catholic Church, so you'll be on the blacklist, and one of you came all the way from Japan, while the other came all the way here from London, leading a battle group like the Amakusa. All the important people related to The Book of the Law are gathered here, so it's not weird for you to be suspected of 'coming here to do something…' by the enemy."
I see, Kamijou tilted his head.
To be honest, it was hard to imagine what the 'normal response' of the magic side would be.
At this moment, Agnese grinned,
"However, to feel weird about 'this facility that's meant to maintain surveillance', it seems like you're rather sharp."
"What?"
Kamijou asked. Agnese continued,
"'This facility is meant to maintain surveillance', in truth, it's an excuse on the surface."
"What's going on?"
"The real reason is that this is a labor facility."
A tinge of darkness could be seen in Agnese's smile.
"This place is meant to gather sinners and failures like me, and have them repay the damages done to the Roman Catholic Church. All the people on the ship are from my company… no, they're from my ex-company. The remaining ones are here to control us."
If so, was Agnese working here as well? Looking for intruders should be part of the work as well. But no matter whether it was those people that suddenly attacked or the existences that were hidden, he did feel an uneasy atmosphere.
"What are you doing, basically?"
Kamijou asked.
"The basis of the work is extremely simple; the working hours are long, about 18 hours a day. For those nuns who aren't used to this kind of environment, it's no different from Hell."
These words shocked Kamijou and Orsola.
This… feels rather similar to a punishment…
The currently banned form of punishment called "futility".
In other words, the punishment was to torture the prisoners by forcing them to do simple and futile tasks to wear them down psychologically. The more meaningless the work, the larger the impact it was psychologically. This feeling of "working to such an extent yet completely useless" was like the pain of running a marathon and nearly making it to the finish line, only to be suddenly told that they had to re-time the run.
"Then, back to proper business. The price of letting you off is… Sister Lucia and Sister Angelene. They're my underlings, and I hope that you can save them."
Lucia and Angelene.
Kamijou didn't remember them at first, but thinking in retrospect, he remembered that they were the nuns he had met during the battle involving The Book of the Law and Orsola. He had been fiercely attacked by them at the 'Parallel Sweets Wonderland'.
"However, what's this with saving them?"
"About that… well, they got what they deserved."
Agnese sighed impatiently,
"Both of them escaped from the 'Queen's Fleet', most likely to save me and the other nuns. I can only say that I'm really grateful for their kind intentions. They got outside and were preparing to save us."
Hearing Agnese's reply, one could feel that she was bored, the tone being rather cold.
"As for the method, well, seems like they could escape the spell that the 'Queen's Fleet' uses to identify enemies… never mind, anyway, they escaped, so you can believe them."
What was the point of asking someone to save somebody who had escaped from a prison? Before asking this question, Kamijou thought of the answer.
After they escaped, they had been caught again.
"So after they got caught, they're being lectured?"
"How can it be just a lecture?"
Agnese looked uninterested as she said,
"…This is a prison. Including me, all the nuns here are criminals to the Roman Catholic Church. The most important thing is to 'seal the escape hole' in order to prevent prisoners from escaping. But this isn't an execution ground, so they won't kill them just for the sake of sealing the exit. The most they'll do is to add extra labor, forcing those two to be unable to use those spells."
"What do you mean by extra work?"
Kamijou casually asked. Orsola frowned, and as if she was trying to confirm it, asked,
"Forbidding them to use magic, you mean taking away their reasoning? Destroying their brain structure?"
Hearing this, Kamijou sat on the icy surface, wide-eyed. Though he hadn't heard of the exact way, it sure added on to that irritating image.
Agnese sighed,
"They're not corpses that are meant for an Uetara spell (some spell used to control corpses), just mindless labor alone is enough to make people sick of it. Thus, I hope that you can save them before they end up like that."
She scratched her head in frustration,
"…Just those two for now. The other nuns have the minimum amount of food and clothing given to them, so it looks like they don't have the strength to fight back. As for those two, if we save them before their brains get destroyed, we can get the spell to escape the prison."
"But wouldn't the Roman Catholic Church know of this escape spell?"
"The 'Queen's Fleet' has a lot of things to do. Only the higher ups know about the specifics. As they have already deployed people here, the Roman Catholic Church won't really care about one or two people escaping; they're not stupid enough to focus on something trivial and neglect the major things."
After motivating herself for a bit, Agnese said,
"So if we want to escape, this is our only chance. If you two are willing to help, this problem will be easier to settle. I want to create a distraction, so I have to go to the flagship of the 'Queen's Fleet'. During this time, please think of an idea."
In other words, there was a way to go from this escort ship to the flagship? Since this was a magic facility, there might be some strange bridle device.
"…You're willing to help us?"
"Not help, I'm going to use you. If you don't, I won't be going to the flagship. On the contrary, I'll go and report to them."
Agnese maliciously twisted her lips as she said this. Seeing her like this, Orsola just smiled and said,
"Alright, alright. You don't have to say such words to hide your embarrassment. You wouldn't tell us all this if you didn't want us to help you."
"Eh!? Wait… why are you hugging me all of a sudden!?"
Agnese was now being hugged by a kind Orsola, her face stuffed in Orsola's breasts. Kamijou instantly turned his head away to look away, and a cracking sound could be heard.
Right now, the important thing was—
"You just said that we have to think of a plan during this time… aren't you captured as well? Then come and escape with us."
Kamijou asked as he looked up from the floor and stared at Agnese.
Hearing this, Agnese broke free from Orsola.
"I have a symbolic purpose."
"…I don't really understand what you mean."
"I'll explain it simply. Most of the people on this fleet are members of my captured squad. The people watching them would be most worried about a rebellion among the workers. Basically, I'm a psychological safety mechanism that's meant to prevent this from happening. Say… for example, like how a leader among the prisoners is meant to control all the prisoners."
She smiled sarcastically,
"In the ex-Agnese's forces, I'm the one with the most influence. If I submit completely to the 'Queen's Fleet', my squad members will think 'I can't do it if she can't'…this is basically just a mistaken view."
Agnese sighed gently.
One could tell that she had the authority to do this if she was able to act on her own. It felt like Agnese was looking for Lucia and Angelene.
"Though I'm imprisoned, I do have the freedom to walk around the fleet, and so I'm excused from labor. Besides the basic meals, I have the luxury of choosing coffee or fruit juice after a meal. Not bad, huh? In order to maintain this comfortable life, I have to make everyone work."
"…"
"To me who's enjoying the treatment of being like a guest, Sister Lucia and Sister Angelene efforts should be considered a waste, they're like fools. The other nuns are all so obedient, so if they want to defy any further, they could have just escaped on their own. Yet they came all the way to this tightly guarded room and told me, 'We'll save all of you'."
It was hard to hear any sense of seriousness in Agnese's voice.
But these words continued to echo out from her mouth,
"They didn't even need to escape; I have no obligation to work. All I needed to do was to wait on the sofa, and one day, I can return back to work. Don't you find that pitiful?"
Hearing Agnese's words, Kamijou couldn't help but feel impatient. It may be a troublesome thing to the people involved, but did she need to use that tone to say it?
"So, what are your intentions? Anyway, if you want to safely escape from the fleet, you still need their assistance. Though it'll be troublesome, try your best."
"What do you mean by 'try your best'?"
"This is just my honest opinion. On a side note, if you can escape here safely, don't ever get involved with the Roman Catholic Church again."
Though Kamijou didn't like the tone, Agnese was right. They couldn't keep hiding in the same place. They had to do it fast if they wanted to escape, and the means of escape was right in front of them.
Kamijou sat on the floor, slumped as he sighed heavily.
"…I know. But we're outnumbered; there's a chance that we won't be able to save them."
"Is that an appropriate line for a man who challenged 250 nuns?"
Looked like she recognized Kamijou's ability as an enemy. Agnese laughed in an ironic manner before bending down and extending her hand out to Kamijou, as if she wanted to hold Kamijou's hand.
Seemed like she wanted him to stand up.
"Oh, thanks."
Kamijou immediately reached his right hand out and grabbed Agnese's hand.
Just as he grabbed the slender fingers, and the cloth of the nun's habit—
*Rip*
The stitches on Agnese's habit broke apart instantly, causing her clothes to drop down.
"Oh my…"
Orsola put her hands on her face.
"Well, I did feel that the design was somewhat weird. So this revealing nun's habit has a magical binding effect."
This was now pointless.
Right now, the most important thing was that in front of Kamijou, Agnese, who was still bending down, was now wearing only undergarments, cute white laced underwear. As the hole in the back was extremely big, she wasn't even wearing a bra. As she was bending down, the little chest was amiably advocating its presence.
At first, Agnese revealed an unexpected look. However, once she started to look down…to confirm how she looked now…
"WAAA—"
She finally started to scream.
"——!!??"
Kamijou and Orsola suppressed Agnese from behind, covering her mouth to avoid causing a commotion.