"『D4C!』"
Valentine's target was not the Stand before him—unsettling as its silhouette was. 『D4C』, Destructive Power and Speed both at A-rank, drove a palm straight toward the chimney.
Brick and mortar exploded outward, dust billowing up in a curtain between them—but his goal wasn't a simple visual screen. The Holy Corpse fragments were inside that chimney. He had hidden them there only moments ago. But smashing it to rubble changed nothing: the space inside was already empty.
Gone. That cat—that Horseman of the Apocalypse—had taken it from him?
"Heee-YAH!"
The horse screamed. A forearm swung through the settling dust and drove straight for Valentine's face—D4C caught it by a razor-thin margin. In terms of raw destructive power alone, the mounted knight bearing down like living hellfire seemed to fall short of D4C's punch. Valentine registered that fact immediately and launched his counterattack.
The blue giant's hand became a blade, driving through the horseman's shoulder without resistance.
"This is a trial sent by God—and I, Valentine, will welcome it gladly. Whether God's messenger or a creature from the gutter, bring everything you have!"
"Mrow!" Blood sprayed from Yimi's forelimb.
Valentine—who had already heard a broad outline of Yimi's abilities from Diego—stepped back to keep clear. But—
Crack.
The sound of splintering bone rang out simultaneously from Valentine's own left shoulder.
"What?!"
He had seen it clearly. D4C had struck the other Stand. A rebound ability?
In Yimi's mind, the gold-haired human had "hurt her." Therefore, the gold-haired human had to pay a price Yimi deemed appropriate.
I hit you because you deserved it. You hit me—that's on you.
Valentine clutched his nearly shattered shoulder. The will to fight drained out of him in an instant.
"…Truly worthy of God's messenger."
If the Holy Corpse had already passed to this rider's hands, its purpose fulfilled, it should have retreated by now—but its continued pursuit only reinforced Valentine's conviction that he remained the Corpse's chosen. Which meant the vanished fragments must still be in this room—on the one other person present.
Valentine's gaze dropped to Lucy, slumped on the floor with empty eyes. He commanded D4C to pin down the Horseman, then tipped the nearby table and let its weight crash down over himself and Lucy, pressing them both flat.
"Mrow!"
As they fell through the gap, Yimi sprang off her remaining free legs and raked him with one paw at the last possible moment.
"Damn it—!"
Valentine made it through to the parallel world—but his stomach, still full from a meal on the train not long ago, lurched into sudden, gnawing hunger.
Yimi's ability worked even across the gap between parallel worlds? Even the Holy Corpse itself couldn't function across parallel timelines.
The power of a "Holy Miracle" was not so simple after all.
He glanced down at his right hand—three deep gouges sliced clean through to the muscle. He had no Diego's rough, reptile-hard skin to absorb it. The hunger was continuous, relentless. The only way to stop it would be to have D4C sever the hand. But his other arm was immobilized by the shattered shoulder. Both arms, effectively gone.
"『D4C!』"
Valentine summoned his Stand.
The blue giant materialized behind him. Without hesitation, it brought a hand-blade down across his own neck. The host body fell. Another Valentine in another world received the memories in full.
The parallel-world Valentine looked down at the corpse at his feet. "Memory transfer complete."
Since parallel worlds are infinite, Valentine typically shifted to a timeline closely resembling the world with the Corpse when acting in emergencies—and so, in this parallel iteration, Lucy Steel had similarly infiltrated the presidential manor, intent on stealing a special diamond.
Valentine summoned D4C without hesitation, hurling the parallel-world Lucy ten meters through the air—keeping her away from the Corpse-world Lucy, preventing annihilation on contact.
Then he turned to the Corpse-world Lucy, still curled on the floor sobbing, in what looked like quiet surrender. Without ceremony, he pried away the hands clutched over her stomach and tore open her garments.
A skeletal face stared up from the girl's otherwise flat abdomen—sunken, not quite human.
Lucy still offered no resistance—the sudden fact of her pregnancy had locked up her capacity for thought entirely.
There was no mistaking it. This was the Holy Corpse's final miracle—a virgin bearing child.
The "infant" within her was the last component of the Holy Corpse: the skull. The collection was complete.
"I see… Everything arranged by fate. And all I must do is face the final trial the Corpse has set before me."
The Corpse brought trials. That was one reason he had enlisted others to help gather the fragments. Now, with every piece assembled, the last trial had to be faced by his own hand.
"No matter. The stronger the trial's enemy, the better. Whatever twists the path may take, destiny has already plotted the destination—every fragment that has come to me has proven that."
He seized Lucy's arm—firm but not brutal—and dragged her out of the manor.
"No—no!"
Valentine's every grievance dissolved. He ordered a carriage readied at once.
"That cat will follow. Her ability to track the Holy Corpse crosses parallel worlds."
There was no running from it—especially since he needed to return to the Corpse's origin world. The Holy Corpse only manifested its full power in the world it belonged to.
Eyeing the horse conspicuously visible beneath the Horseman's silhouette, Valentine immediately settled on a battlefield that would partially neutralize that advantage.
"To the train station."
With everything arranged, he turned back to the girl beside him—the one who had shared his wife's bed. Lucy's abdomen had swelled beyond a four-month pregnancy in under twenty minutes. At this rate she might deliver before they boarded.
The miracle continues to act even in this world?
"Do not be frightened, Lucy Steel. I will treat you with the reverence owed a goddess—and when happiness covers this land, I shall erect a statue in New York grander than the Statue of Liberty in your honor."
The elation flooding through him was like sunlight melting snow overhead, filling every corner of his chest. Perhaps the Holy Corpse had already begun delivering its miracle to him—he almost forgot the unforgivable act the girl at his side had committed.
That buoyancy carried him all the way to the train station.
"I'm very sorry, Mr. President—you can't take this train just yet!" The conductor rushed forward to intercept.
"Why?"
"The train ahead of us derailed, sir. Funny thing—that shift was originally mine. I traded it because my stomach was acting up." The conductor let out a laugh of sheer relief, then added, in the easy tone of a man who had just escaped death: "I've been driving that train so long it feels like my wife—so when I hand it off to someone else, I always get that peculiar feeling of… my wife going off the rails…" He paused. "Oh—'going off the rails.' I just invented that phrase on the spot. Meaning: when a married person betrays their spouse. Does it fit?"
"Of course, of course—compared to my life, none of this matters in the slightest. It's not as if my wife actually went off the rails—that isn't something you could go around saying like it were something to boast about…" He trailed off. "Why are you staring at the top of my head, sir."
"Ah—I know I'm out of regulation, but this cap was made for me by my wife herself, so if you'd like it, please—take it. I only ask that you overlook the whole matter."
The conductor lifted the green hat from his head and held it out to Valentine.
"Mr. President, you don't look well."
Valentine's expression darkened. He pushed the door open. "Could I trouble you to step over here for a moment?"
"Of course, sir."
The moment the man stepped where indicated, Valentine used the door to clamp him through into a parallel world.
"…" He exhaled. Better.
Valentine smoothed back his hair.
My heart and my deeds—clear as a mirror. All that I do is justice.