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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume15 Chapter4

2026-05-27T16:59:41Z

Massify: /* Part 9 */

==Chapter 4: What the Fugitive Saw – Fumble.==

===Part 1===

They were in the aircraft hangar deep below the drone airbase.

It was time to take on Kamijou Touma.

They were the only two who could still move.

Hamazura Shiage and Kamijou Touma. …''Did you really think it would be a fair fight!?

“Aneri!!”

Hamazura shouted that name before their fists crossed and a powerful impact rang out.

It was already having an effect.

Kamijou’s fist found only air, but Hamazura had moved closer in and his fist accurately caught Kamijou on the cheekbone. He felt the dull, heavy, and unpleasant sensation.

But he didn’t stop there.

“→P” “←←K” “→TPK→←KK↓K” AI Aneri’s predictions really were accurate. Kamijou tried to punch, kick, grab, and bite, but none of it found its mark. Meanwhile, Hamazura’s attacks all seemed drawn straight toward him.

Simply following the instructions gave him clean and accurate movements.

“I decided I’d find something I can do for Coronzon. I still don’t know what that is, but that’s what I decided.”

A dull sound.

A heavy sensation.

It should have all been unpleasant.

“But I know one thing for sure… Making friends with you sure ain’t it!!”

===Part 2===

Over and over, dull impacts echoed through the giant underground space.

An iron flavor spread through Kamijou Touma’s world. Try as he might to defend and dodge, Hamazura Shiage’s punches and kicks mercilessly stabbed at him.

“Kh.”

Was anything allowable if it was “the right thing to do”?

Kamijou thought Hamazura had a point there.

But on the other hand…

(Not everything is allowable just because you can claim the other person was wrong or corrupt!!)

Hamazura was trying to overcome things like goodness and justice.

Kamijou could tell Hamazura so wanted to turn his back on the things that hadn’t saved him that he had overcorrected in the other direction. But that was the same as joining a criminal organization because you couldn’t trust the police. That would only lead you down the path of evil. You would only find a different kind of corruption, not a righteousness surpassing that of justice. And by the time you figured that out and tried to fix things, the normal path would no longer be available to you.

What would happen to Hamazura if he crossed that point of no return?

Would he reach a point where killing him was the only way to stop him?

Just like Coronzon?

No.

Kamijou couldn’t let that happen!!

(I’m not going to repeat that ending again and again!!)

“Gah!!”

He took another blow to the center of the face.

The iron flavor filled his mouth.

But he wouldn’t give up.

Hamazura had to be stopped here. This was happening to him because Kamijou had let Coronzon die. It had been necessary. The entire world would have continued down the path of doom if he hadn’t done it. He believed it and he knew it had been the right thing to do, but that didn’t mean he could just ignore the resentment it had created!

He knew what he had to do, but he couldn’t manage it.

Hamazura had that AI Aneri on his side.

Kamijou couldn’t defeat and stop Hamazura without an irregular ability rivaling that.

He only needed one.

Just one thing rivaling that!!

“''Then summon me already, partner.''”

A dull ''crack'' came from his right shoulder.

===Part 3===

It would be over after the next move, or the one after that.

Hamazura Shiage was sure of it. He wasn’t Kamijou Touma, so he wouldn’t choose to fight or happily hurt his enemy. He was sick of this already. Aneri’s predictions were wonderful, but this one-sided pummeling weighed him down with a weird sense of guilt.

But his advantage suddenly became a lot less absolute.

It happened right after a dull ''crack'' echoed across the vast underground space.

Kamijou made a sharp reversal to dodge Hamazura’s right hook.

Physically speaking, that was all it was.

Hamazura’s accuracy dropped from 100% to 99%. No more than that.

But…

(He outdid Aneri’s predictions with a physical action!?)

“Khahh!?”

Hamazura’s eyes widened just before the impact hit him. A body blow targeting his liver shot through him.

Kamijou had finally managed a clean hit.

And with that move, it all began to shift in an unpleasant direction.

So what?

Coronzon was dead.

Did that guy get to look down on him after taking someone’s life? Hamazura wasn’t letting that villain claim justice for himself!!

“Ah, kah…Aneri!!”

Hamazura shouted an instruction and then backed away.

But Kamijou must have predicted even that because he charged forward at the same moment, not letting Hamazura put any distance between them.

They were evenly matched.

A fierce rush of attacks began, with no clear winner.

“''Hey, AI slave''.”

No.

“''I’m not as kind or gentle as this guy. After all, I am the very power to destroy illusions''.”

This was entirely different from Kamijou Touma’s earlier movements.

“''You want to do something for Coronzon? Don’t make me laugh. You’re just letting an imaginary Coronzon tell you to do the things you already want to do so you don’t have to feel guilty about it. The dead tell no tales, right? Well, are you having fun playing with the sex doll you made out of that dead woman? I bet you think you’re so badass turning your back on goodness and justice. That’s the next illusion I’ll be destroying!!''”

“Damn you!!!”

Hamazura threw a furious punch, but Kamijou only had to lean back a bit to dodge it.

He avoided another Aneri-supported attack. Aneri’s calculations were no longer a trump card. But he wasn’t getting help from a program.

He had something rivaling Aneri.

But what was possessing him right now!?

===Part 4===

After dodging a few punches and kicks, Kamijou backed away from Hamazura. He adjusted the distance between them.

And he shook his head.

He consciously worked to stay conscious.

(“''Feel free to stay awake''.”)

He heard a voice with no distance to it.

His mouth wasn’t moving. This wasn’t a sound reverberating through the underground space. So where was it coming from?

(“''I’m not that count. I’m not gonna take over your body. Popping in and out at random will work better. That AI is watching your exterior and gathering detailed data to calculate out the next thing you’ll do. You’re fighting right in front of him, so there’s no preventing the AI from gathering data. But. If the Kamijou Touma folder contains a mix of data from more than one person, it can’t predict your personality, can it? So if we work together to mess with its calculations, his precious AI won’t be worth shit.''”)

“You…”

(“''Don’t you get mad. You’re not trying to be some bleach-white paragon of justice, are you? Provocation is a valid tactic. People’s lives are on the line here. At the end of the day, you want to save that idiot’s life, don’t you? Even if it means punching him a few times.''”)

“…”

(“''Well, if you want to win this, stop Hamazura, and save him, you can’t let yourself hesitate just cause it’s getting a little messy. Or are you a galge heroine who only ever speaks the whole truth? Yeah right, dumbass.''”)

Was this really a part of Kamijou? It felt like a bad joke that this foul-mouthed right arm had once mimicked his physical form and tried to take everything from him. And that its advice was efficient and sensible only annoyed Kamijou further. If it could make such sharp calculations, why couldn’t it predict how he would feel listening to it?

He tried arguing back with something other than numerical correctness.

“I want to be on the side of justice too. But I don’t need Hamazura to tell me that’s not possible. I’m well aware I disqualified myself from that as soon as my immediate response to any problem is to clench my fist!”

(“''Are you stupid? If you never want to doubt you’re doing the right thing, then let a Magic God, a Transcendent, or some other divinity decide for you. But you’re human. You’re the kind of ordinary high school boy you can find anywhere. Noncommittal hypocrisy is a lot more fitting, don’t you think?''”)

At any rate, that AI was the problem.

Kamijou couldn’t settle things with Hamazura without first doing something about Aneri’s power.

===Part 5===

He thought. Hamazura Shiage kept thinking through the entire fistfight.

Kamijou was doing ''something''.

That something was throwing off Aneri’s predictions. If this continued, he wouldn’t be able to rely on Aneri’s support.

But…

“Aneri. You don’t have to predict each individual punch and kick. Focus on figuring out ''what'' he’s doing. Taking a few hits is a small price to pay for figuring out his trick!!”

Ultimately, anything Kamijou did was a physical action located in this underground space. That made it a game of cat and mouse. And he had a limited number of cards in his deck. If Aneri could figure out his trick, Hamazura could fight back.

Meanwhile, Hamazura didn’t try to go on the attack and instead fended off Kamijou’s attacks to buy time. That had to be the least painful option, but Kamijou of course didn’t want his cheap trick to be discovered.

So he would try to end this while he still had an advantage!!

“!!”

Hamazura worked to guard his face while Kamijou charged at him. Was he going to rush in and unleash a flurry of attacks while prepared to take a few hits in return?

(I don’t have to play by your rules here!!)

Trying to fight back while Aneri’s predictions weren’t working would be foolish.

“An open space isn’t great for buying time. Aneri, do you have any spare resources? Get a list of every door in here, search out their locations, and unlock as many of them as you can!!”

The twin buzzes had a negative nuance, but he did hear the locks click open.

But why did ''this'' have to be the closest door?

Hamazura kicked a nearby toolbox to keep Kamijou back and used the brief opening to turn to the right.

He ran up some narrow stairs and slipped through an open door.

The space was about half the width of a classroom and more than twice as long. It was cluttered and better suited for hiding and launching surprise attacks than before, but…

All the doors suddenly slammed shut. And the locks engaged.

His phone sounded its loudest alarm. Aneri wanted his attention.

An artificial-sounding young woman’s voice played from all around.

Kamijou had done something again.

“Level 3 Authorization confirmed. Flight preparations complete. Takeoff route secured. Countdown beginning at January 9, 7:30 PM.”

Surprise colored Hamazura’s face, but it didn’t end there.

He heard a footstep.

Had Kamijou actually come in ''here'' with all this going on?

He could have won by launching Hamazura into the vacuum of space, but he hadn’t. Did he think Hamazura could get Aneri to take control of the craft and land it on the other side of the planet? Kamijou was afraid of losing track of Hamazura. He wanted to avoid living his life while Hamazura was hiding out on the other side of the planet and could launch a surprise attack at any time. So he wanted to end this here and now.

All doubt vanished from Hamazura. He gathered strength in his gut.

She was a great demon?

Don’t make me laugh. What right do you have to call her that? As if you have a perfect and spotless heart.

(Your ugly weakness is showing, you righteous good guy!!)

So what exactly was happening here?

===Part 6===

The Jumbo Dragonfly was a two-stage air-launched bullet space shuttle.

Their battlefield was preparing…to launch into space!?

===Part 7===

The tremendous acceleration weighed on Hamazura Shiage’s insides.

They had taken off.

(What kind of tunnels was that underground area connected to!?)

“Ane…ri… What are this thing’s specs!?”

All sorts of data appeared on the cracked screen.

The Jumbo Dragonfly took off from the ground by using a runway and gradually gaining altitude, much like an airplane.

But after stabilizing its flight, it would raise its nose to nearly vertical and accelerate. After nearly reaching the limits of an aircraft at an altitude of 30 thousand meters, the spaceship at the very front would separate from the rest. The bullet-shaped module would use its momentum to soar through the atmosphere and reach an altitude of 400km, which was known as low Earth orbit.

…As that explanation suggests, this was a civilian use of a satellite killer project that would launch a missile from a supersonic aircraft to blow up an enemy’s military satellite.

There were sturdy airtight doors between cabins to ensure no oxygen could escape in an emergency, but those were slowly opening from the outside.

And from the back of the long, narrow space…

Kamijou Touma emerged.

Hamazura was exposed to a crushing g-force that was clearly greater than Earth’s natural gravity, but a different question occupied his thoughts.

“Wait. How did he mess with the computers without an AI supporting him?”

If he had something equivalent to Aneri, what was it? After all, this spaceship tearing through the atmosphere was a collection of computers. Anything could become a weapon if operated incorrectly.

Hamazura raised his guard, but then it hit him.

“No, it wasn’t necessarily him!! ''The base’s infrastructure would activate if anyone in the base hit the switch''. It could have been Birdway or Fortune that helped him!”

Didn’t that mean that shifting the fight to the Jumbo Dragonfly was actually a bad thing for Kamijou? Then why do it? It wasn’t like Hamazura had been hiding Aneri’s presence.

No…

No!?

This situation did help Kamijou!!

(So that’s it…)

Hamazura belatedly realized Kamijou’s aim here.

But it was too late to do anything about it.

(If we leave the Earth in a spaceship with a broken antenna, Aneri will be cut off from everything on the surface. Is he trying to ''downgrade'' Aneri to no more than a smartphone!?)

“Aneri, answer me. Can you keep going!?”

He received an immediate buzz in response, but it wasn’t promising.

There was no next action – like “G→→PKT” – displayed on the screen. Even in Academy City, a single phone just didn’t have the processing power.

Meanwhile, he was up against Kamijou Touma and whatever it was that rivaled Aneri.

The situation had been completely reversed from when the fight began.

…So would Hamazura raise the white flag and return to the peaceful world that was glad Coronzon had died? Unharmed and with a silly grin on his face? Sucking up to their righteousness so they would share some of their happiness with him?

“''Immediately open all the spaceship’s doors, Aneri!! I don’t care what happens as long as I can kill him!!!''”

Aneri refused with two buzzes.

The AI’s victory condition was defined as Hamazura Shiage’s survival, not Kamijou Touma’s death. The damn thing had changed that setting on its own!!

(That means I can’t get Aneri to blow the spaceship away with the laser or mass driver back on the surface either!!)

Having that “insurance” in his back pocket just in case would help mentally bolster him, but the AI must not have understood that kind of ''abstract'' subtlety.

And his enemy wasn’t going to wait.

That “just in case” moment had arrived. That monster drenched in justice was coming this way!!

===Part 8===

Kamijou also regretted his choices.

Approaching from the rear of the spaceship had been necessary, but it may have been a mistake. As Hamazura attempted to keep his distance, he naturally backed toward the nose.

(That’s not good… That’s the bullet-shaped spaceship. If we end up flying outside the atmosphere, it’s all the more likely he’ll end up dead!)

What was this disturbing trend? Wasn’t this kind of misfortune supposed to gather around Kamijou? This felt like an invisible hand had grabbed Hamazura and was dragging him down into the murky depths.

The Jumbo Dragonfly was an aircraft, not a rocket, so it didn’t fly straight up toward space. Still, its nose was pointed very nearly vertically. Kamijou was forced to climb a steep slope to reach Hamazura.

And the Jumbo Dragonfly had two stages.

More than 70% of the sleek aircraft-like spacecraft would only fly up to the stratosphere before naturally descending and then flying back to the runway, but the remaining 30% was a different story.

(“''Your misfortune’s not gonna make it easy for you, so prepare yourself. If you really want to settle this, anyway. He’s ready at least. He’s honed himself in exchange for accepting the risk of death. You don’t have time to be falling behind when it comes to resolve.''”)

His right arm was talking to him.

And he couldn’t afford to wait until they left the atmosphere.

AI Aneri might not remain cut off forever. It was no more than technology. If communications recovered in some way, they would be back to evenly matched.

Thus…

“I’ll settle this while I can!!”

Kamijou forced himself to charge in.

Maybe it was due to constantly flying with its nose angled more sharply upwards than a normal passenger plane could, but the g-force inside the Jumbo Dragonfly was intense. Each step he took seemed to sap his strength.

Fist crossed fist and struck sharply into each other’s face.

He had no sense for how the g-force affected this.

Kamijou was just glad he hadn’t missed again. Aneri really couldn’t provide any support here. So he would never have a better chance at ending this than now!

That thought was cut off by something slamming into the bridge of Kamijou’s nose.

An iron flavor spread through his mouth.

“Gah!?”

(Dammit, Hamazura. Did he grab an AED or something from the wall and throw it!?)

Hamazura probably just hadn’t had time to charge it, but Kamijou was thankful he hadn’t been attacked by a high-voltage current.

Their fists weren’t their only weapons. They could strangle each other with the seat belts and the oxygen tanks larger than fire extinguishers could cause damage as a blunt weapon or an explosive.

But…

(This isn’t it. I don’t want a bloody ending like this!!)

Seeing Hamazura was shaking Kamijou’s view of Coronzon’s death.

Of course, it wasn’t necessarily possible to get all 8 billion people in the world to smile together right away. But he had fought a deadly battle against Coronzon because he hadn’t wanted that world to be destroyed. That much was true.

He had let Coronzon die, so he had to show her that, while the world was riddled with mistakes, it was headed in a happier direction, even if slowly.

So he couldn’t let Hamazura die here today!!

The “fwoosh!!” of escaping air sounded behind Kamijou. The emergency lock activated on the thick airlock he had just passed through. The second-stage bullet-shaped spaceship taking up nearly a third of the craft was preparing to break away.

This space was fairly large, but it felt somehow like a cockpit. Kamijou wasn’t familiar with the basic structure of a spaceship, so he couldn’t say if this was standard or unorthodox.

And just as Kamijou shook off the temptation to grab a weapon, Hamazura didn’t hesitate to grab a nearby metal pipe. It looked like a component for a crutch or stretcher. Were spaceship beds adapted from medical equipment?

The blunt weapon swung down toward Kamijou’s head, but…

“…!? ''It’s so light''!!”

That wide-eyed shout came from Hamazura as he made the attack.

His feet were floating a bit from the floor. The reaction of the attack sent him floating backwards.

Kamijou didn’t have time to glance out the window of course…but the Jumbo Dragonfly’s nose portion must have broken free of the Earth and arrived in space. Only the flat cone-like tip. So any attack with a weapon that relied on weight had been nearly neutralized. For the moment anyway!

A force was applied to their bodies again.

This space flight was actually a long ballistic trajectory that kept them just outside the atmosphere in low Earth orbit at an altitude of less than 40 kilometers. Flying so rapidly in an arc created a g-force in the outward direction, so they weren’t truly weightless.

If they did fall back to Earth, where on the planet would they end up?

That question honestly frightened Kamijou, but he didn’t have time to check.

His top priority right now was to rescue Hamazura who was spiraling down after being caught by ''something unseen''. Because Kamijou had set him on this path.

===Part 9===

The spaceship portion had broken free from the rest of the Jumbo Dragonfly.

It had flown away from the Earth.

Hamazura had imagined himself losing all sense of weight, floating around, and having trouble fighting…but the reality was completely different. He felt a little lighter than usual, which was weird, but he could still stand. He had weight. It was actually the centrifugal force or something, but there was gravity.

But it wasn’t normal.

His feet were standing on thick glass.

The seats were positioned at a weird angle, but that didn’t mean they were on the wall.

Hamazura was standing at a weird position.

“Kh.”

He clenched his teeth.

The guy who had called Coronzon a great demon and mercilessly killed her stood before him. He had to settle things with him.

(The power…to destroy illusions?)

Hamazura Shiage had shaken free of his admiration for goodness and justice by saving strangers from his position on the side of evil.

But Kamijou Touma, who he hated him more than anyone, carried the power to negate illusions, anything supernatural, and even divine miracles.

They weren’t opposites.

Kamijou wasn’t a perfect form of justice. It was possible he too felt something off about the world and had attempted to fight that unseen thing.

But their paths had never crossed.

And they had definitively parted when he called Coronzon a great demon and killed her!!

“Gahhh!!”

They clashed again.

But without Aneri’s assistance, a Level 0 was only a Level 0.

Hamazura felt dull pain.

Sure enough, he was the one receiving a thrashing. As if to say he was the world’s designated loser.

(To hell…with that…)

Just then.

His cracked phone buzzed.

“→→K←PK→GPP←←K”

(Aneri’s processing power…is back!?)

Had Aneri found a way to communicate without using the broken antenna? No, maybe reaching space had simply brought them close enough to a satellite or space station.

Either way…

(We’re evenly matched again.)

“Go down. Already!!!”

“→P” “PKTK” “←→P” “K→PK” “KKPKGGPKKPP”

A dramatic change came over Hamazura’s movements. Now he could break free of Kamijou and whatever threat he was up against. He had been stuck on the defensive, but now he could swing his fists and throw kicks. He could now rejoin the fight for overall control of the situation.

And for a brief moment, his mind went blank.

AI Aneri provided no instructions.

No.

He was moving even faster than Aneri’s precise instructions. On his own. Was this what Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had been talking about? His body was moving at a speed of thought that surpassed the AI!

(Yes, that’s right.)

Hamazura filled the blank in his mind by thinking for himself.

This was one thing even Aneri likely couldn’t predict.

(You don’t have to be someone special. You can be a Level 0. It doesn’t matter If you’re a villain or hated. Everyone has the power to surprise people and change both the world and the future!!)

And the same probably applied to his opponent.

To Kamijou Touma.

He had started out as a Level 0, but he hadn’t stopped there.

And that bastard was speaking.

“Hey. Did you know Great Demon Coronzon?”

“Yeah. I knew her so much better than you.”

They approached each other.

They clenched their bloody fists and faced each other.

Kamijou knew a Coronzon that Hamazura hadn’t.

Hamazura knew a Coronzon that Kamijou hadn’t.

So.

They both roared at once.

“Tell me all about the Coronzon I never knew!!!” “Tell me all about the Coronzon I never knew!!!”

And Hamazura Shiage and Kamijou Touma chose to approach to critical range.

They exploded into a fistfight.

And shouted.

“In Edinburgh, Coronzon helped me save Dion Fortune! She went on and on about how it benefited her, but that didn’t mean she needed to do it. She could have abandoned me at any time, but she stuck with a weakling like me to the end!!”

“That great demon deceived the Anglican Church to hold the position of Archbishop while she secretly advanced her wicked ends. She despaired in the state of the world and tried to create a new one herself. With no thought to what kind of being would flourish in the coming age! She was an embodiment of evil, but she was also hopelessly tidy and fastidious!!”

“Kh. Coronzon told me to rest when I was worn out from running away for so long. She did these things because she wanted someone to accept her… But not for her power or her evil nature. She just wanted to be thanked for those ordinary things!!”

“When she screwed people’s lives up to the point of ''creating'' Index and Narthex? When she didn’t hesitate to slash Tsushima’s throat and kick her out into the open to achieve her goal? …Don’t make me laugh. She was a more powerful demon than that!”

“Coronzon was!! A lonely girl!!!”

“No!! That great demon was humanity’s greatest nemesis!!!”

The sounds of blows landing continued.

Kamijou spat blood from his mouth, but he had a smile on his fierce face.

He was proudly discussing Coronzon as if she were his greatest rival. Calling her powerful, great, and cool.

(Why?)

Hamazura clenched his teeth within the metallic flavor.

The person who pissed him off the most wasn’t Kamijou here. It was Hamazura himself.

He was just so pathetic. The more he said, the smaller it made Coronzon seem.

(Why do you know so much about Coronzon that I don’t!?)

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

[[Image:GT_Index_v15_BW8.jpg|thumb]]

===Part 10===

As he threw and took punches, even his sense of pain faded into a general sense of heat.

Red drops scattered through the spaceship like jewels.

But Kamijou kept working his woozy mind.

…Hamazura might want him to apologize. He might want Kamijou to cry and wail that killing Coronzon had been a mistake.

But if so…

“I’m not apologizing.”

Kamijou said it.

Clearly and in his own words.

“If there had been any other way, I wouldn’t have done it in the first place!! Great Demon Coronzon was a true nemesis who would have destroyed the entire world all on her own. She showed no mercy or weakness. I wouldn’t take someone’s life unless I absolutely had to!!!”

That ending was a bitter pill to swallow, wasn’t it?

So he wouldn’t let this boy reach the same ending as Coronzon.

Even if it meant hitting him. Even if it meant being hit by him.

He would stop him even if it meant not playing fair and being hated.

He would save Hamazura here!!

“Yeah, right…”

A splitting sound came from terribly close by.

Equally battered Hamazura had bit into his lip with his canine tooth.

His anger had passed its limit.

“If you really, truly felt bad about killing Coronzon, you’d stop clinging to your pathetic life and just go to hell already!!”

Kamijou accepted the words along with a tightly clenched fist.

In a world that tasted so much of iron, Kamijou actually smiled a little.

“I already know all about hell. And I know it’s where I belong.”

Which was why he had decided he wouldn’t let Hamazura go there.

If he had done the right thing…

If he hadn’t been wrong to kill Coronzon to save the world, then Kamijou would be able to crawl back out of hell even if he wound up there.

But…

“This time I’ll do it without sacrificing Kingsford and CRC.”

He didn’t need to doubt himself.

Kamijou Touma threw his fist.

===Part 11===

It was so very heavy.

The impact was different from the previous ones as it entered Hamazura through the bridge of his nose and rattled the core of his body.

His consciousness faded.

Who was most to blame?

That was obvious. It wasn’t Kamijou. At least when it came to Coronzon, that bastard wasn’t at the center of it. That central position belonged to someone else.

…In the end, ''Hamazura was most to blame for failing to stop Coronzon even if it meant punching her.

He was an idiot without a shred of medical knowledge, but he could still tell his body had passed some kind of line. He could feel the strength leaving his knees. Before long, his consciousness would follow. And once he lost that balance, everything would continue to tumble downhill.

Could he not do it?

A single phrase entered his mind: ''I knew it.

He had expected this result. And he had prepared a way to overturn it.

This really is the end. So clench your teeth, me.

“Let’s end this, Kamijou Touma.”

Hamazura pulled out a handgun.

But he didn’t aim it at Kamijou.

It was loaded with a single round. He couldn’t afford to use it on the fight.

Besides, he had decided he couldn’t accept that guy’s path. So he wouldn’t stoop to his level. No matter what.

Instead, Hamazura pressed the muzzle against his own temple.

Without hesitation.

(Yeah, that’s right.)

Kamijou’s eyes widened in surprise.

Hilarious. He must not have ever had a fight ''like this''.

(I knew from the start I couldn’t win a pleasant victory over you by just clenching my fists!!)

There was a great system running the world.

But it wasn’t the kind thing everyone thought it was.

…If it were, Coronzon wouldn’t have suffered so. Her function was to tear people’s bonds apart and obstruct their evolution. That was one of the gears built into that great system. She had tried to change the world because she hadn’t been willing to accept that. She had wanted to rebuild the world from the ground up into something that could run without her gear as a part of it.

If nothing he could do could defeat that system…

Then at least he could unveil it for all to see.

By proving that the current world would not save the weak.

Even if he had to use his own life to do it!!

And.

“Did you think you could save the world with violence, Kamijou Touma?”

At the same time, he couldn’t let justice belong that guy of all people.

And if he could steal “righteousness” from the guy who killed Coronzon…

''He was willing to give up his life.

“You win. You beat Coronzon and you beat me. I’ll give you that. But if you had done the right thing, Narthex Coded Cathedral never would have gone astray. Don’t think you’ve saved everyone… I’ll show you. And now it’s your turn to be punished as evil by the righteous. Your actions led to this. Live the rest of your life knowing that this kind of ruin is what taking a life leads to!!!”

Kamijou frantically clenched his first and charged in, but it was too late.

Live a long life.

As long as possible.

Cause I’m turning the rest of your life into a living hell.

No matter what you do, my finger is faster.

His awakening wasn’t fueled by evil. It had already been said several times that it was a power that brings him closer to death.

And he brought that to its final conclusion.

===Part 12===

He had pulled the trigger.

It was already a thing of the past.

===Part 13===

Silence.

The flow of time had stopped.

Or so the overwhelming silence made it seem.

And.

Hamazura Shiage’s eyes dropped to the gun he held.

Yes, Hamazura was not dead.

The bullet had not been fired.

… He was not holding a revolver. It was an automatic pistol that loaded each new round into the chamber from the magazine. So each pull of the trigger wasn’t a gamble. If there was a round in the chamber, the odds of firing should have been 100%.

(Did the weird gravity screw up the springs in the gun?)

Hamazura rejected his own speculation.

He was pretty sure he knew what it was.

(No, that isn’t it. The trigger feels weirdly hard against my finger… Did being in outer space change the gun oil so it hardened!?)

It was possible.

Hadn’t he heard that important spaceship components didn’t use liquid lubricant?

The gun hadn’t been designed for extraterrestrial use, so the manufacturer and factory wouldn’t have performed the relevant stress testing and durability testing. So he couldn’t deny the possibility.

But could he calculate the odds of the gun oil actually changing like that? The oil’s nature changing in such a short time was strange enough, but it had also happened in just the right way to jam up the gun’s components. The odds of that had to be less than 1 in a 100 million, right!?

Yet it had happened.

The unthinkable had unnaturally, unreasonably, and unfairly happened.

The supernatural, the paranormal, misfortune, the gears, the tendencies.

No. What was an illusion exactly?

Did ''the system that caused those things'' actually exist in this world!?

Hamazura could only speak in a daze at this point.

“Are you…kidding me?”

A moment later, Kamijou reached him.

A fist slammed into the center of his face, immediately removing his consciousness.

<noinclude>
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume15 Chapter2

2026-05-27T16:57:15Z

Massify: /* Part 15 */

==Chapter 2: Equations and Magic Circles – Black_Oneday.==

===Part 1===

The glass and ceiling had broken and collapsed in the international airport’s lobby. The large clock on the wall was broken too badly to function, the hands stopped at 5:15 PM.

“Oh, honestly!!” exclaimed Good, Old Mary in uncharacteristic frustration.

Perhaps this was proof that, while she had since acquired the functions of a god, she had been born an ordinary human.

“''Vanity and makeup''? I’m more mad at myself than her. Mama shouldn’t be falling for silly tricks like this!”

Good, Old Mary held a torn-off upper body in one hand.

She tossed aside ''something'' that had been called Fallen Angel Azazel.

“Hey!! You’d better clarify your stance here soon. Are you trying to protect Academy City or destroy it!? Our recovery has only just begun here and we need resources more than anything. Don’t you get that this will all be a waste of time if you destroy the airport and we can’t get flights in!?”

“Take your complaints to them!! Damn Transcendents. They’re far too extreme to make good use of!”

One of Good, Old Mary’s salvation targets – was her name Kanzaki? – was complaining into a small radio, but Good, Old Mary didn’t pay her much heed. Once she decided to save someone, she would do so no matter what, but she didn’t take requests when it came to her methods…and all the Transcendents took that same stance.

However.

If Blodeuwedd the Bouquet thought this little trick had been enough to declare victory, then this was in fact an opportunity.

The three legged Tribikos was not Good, Old Mary’s ''only'' spiritual item.

Including the Bain-marie and the Kerotakis, her options ranged from familiar kitchen tools to grand lab equipment that could produce the miracles of life.

In other words…

(I already have a countermeasure for that illusion and camouflage using Azazel.)

Her lab equipment, which rivaled a broadcasting tower in size, had already finished mixing the potion she wanted.

This was one advantage of bringing such a colossal spiritual item to the front line. Whenever an unexpected problem occurred, it helped a lot if she could create a solution the very next moment.

(If Blodeuwedd the Bouquet attempts the same thing next time…I can eliminate it instantly. I don’t even need to pretend to be fooled. I can go for the kill right away.)

That meant it was time to search out where Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had disappeared to during the confusion. As long as Good, Old Mary had a goal in mind, she could mix together a potion to accomplish it. That was always her policy.

And.

A slight tremor ran down Good, Old Mary’s back.

She shuddered.

Her large hat shook as she looked up past the collapsed ceiling and into the blue sky.

“?”

===Part 2===

The reflector was located on the lunar surface.

That meant anywhere with a view of the moon was within ''that weapon''’s range.

===Part 3===

The Black_Oneday hacking tool.

What exactly could someone accomplish with that?

Hamazura Shiage and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had left the international airport through a small back entrance and were now hiding in an area full of the electric carts and forklifts used to transport suitcases. …Although Hamazura wasn’t very confident this really counted as hiding when it came to District 23 security.

His eyes dropped to the cracked screen of his phone.

“Apparently Black_Oneday is a specialized hacking tool that uses a vulnerability in Stardust.”

“What? I don’t know what that Black thing or that Star thing are.”

“I don’t either, so all I can do is read off what Aneri tells me. Aircraft and spacecraft are a lot more computerized nowadays, but hooking them up to the ordinary internet creates to much of a risk of remote cyber attacks. Like opening a door midflight and causing it to break apart. So the systems are kept separate from the ordinary lines. Everything from the programming language used to the encryption method and even the radio frequencies are different.”

“And all of that together is called Stardust? And it was all broken somehow? Are they stupid?”

“Maybe, but that also means Black_Oneday ''can’t cause any harm to anything other than'' the aerospace industry. So it’s not all bad, I guess?”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet didn’t seem delighted.

The monster frowned instead.

“Would that tool just be lying around in Academy City? Like a free game?”

“It was created by some respected university professor. He was sick of the airlines insisting their security was unhackable, so he wanted to give them enough of a scare they would actually start doing their job. So the tool is known as an independently created research sample. It’s not supposed to be publicly available, but someone could always create something that works the same way. So maybe this is a different version of it.”

Things made for benevolent purposes could end up harming people.

Not to mention the respected professor may not have been entirely honest about his reasons for making it.

Did he even know the real reason himself?

Could he just have wanted to give people a scare?

“So it was a fake cyber attack meant to make people more security conscious? Sounds like it had the opposite effect in reality…”

The emaciated girl tilted her head.

Maybe Blodeuwedd the Bouquet didn’t particularly care.

“So let’s just assume that Black_Oneday thing has fallen into the wrong hands. What could someone do with it? I don’t know much about hacking tools, but what’s the last thing we would want happening right now?”

“Hold on… Aneri, what’s this? You’re kidding, right?”

Hamazura had trouble believing the information Aneri had displayed on the phone’s cracked screen.

What was this city building?

“Moonbow. A strategic ground-launched optical weapon?”

Basically, it was a large-scale laser weapon. Powerful enough to pierce straight into a nuclear shelter located deep underground.

Moonbow would first fire a weaponized laser from an oscillator base in District 23 to outside the atmosphere, where it was reflected by a movable reflector covering the interior of a giant crater on the moon in order to target a specific point on Earth. The distance to the moon was more than 380 thousand kilometers, but the round trip only took an instant at light speed. That meant the powerful laser weapon could ignore the horizon and attack anywhere with a view of the moon. Any VIP around the world could be killed no matter how deep they hid underground.

To make matters worse, Aneri’s report said ''there were signs it had already been fired.

“It was targeting District 23… So a laser weapon with a range covering half the Earth was used to attack ''right next door''?”

“Dammit, Good, Old Mary. Did you get vaporized by a pillar of light?”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet didn’t sound particularly concerned. As long as someone didn’t meet her salvation conditions, maybe she didn’t care too much what happened to them.

If a weapon like that could be fired repeatedly, the Earth was done for.

Both because of its destructive power and because it could turn the entire world against Academy City even if they hadn’t been the one to fire it.

…And even in this dire situation, Hamazura still couldn’t fight alongside the Anglicans. Because they wouldn’t allow it.

The Anglicans were hunting for him.

They were so focused on him they hadn’t noticed the Black_Oneday hacking tool or its user. Of course, he got the impression they wouldn’t be willing to hear him out even if he did give them this information.

Especially when ''Aneri could hack too.'' When they followed the path he had used to escape the airport, they would discover he had hacked open the electronic locks. The Anglicans didn’t know about Black_Oneday, so they would suspect Hamazura for any other hacking.

The Anglicans were a threat, but focusing on them alone would leave the Black_Oneday user free to act. Their object was unclear, but this could even lead to a war between Academy City and another country.

Should he say that served them right?

He couldn’t articulate why he felt this way, but that didn’t seem like it would help Coronzon.

The emaciated girl tilted her head.

“So is humanity doomed because the arbiters of justice are useless?”

“No… The weapon uses a large COIL, so the highly toxic gas needs to be neutralized each time it’s fired. Simply put, it takes a long time to reload.”

“Ehh? The hacker’s controlling it remotely, so why would they care?”

“It’s structurally designed so it can’t fire again until the toxic gas has been fully neutralized. You can’t get around that just by messing with the software remotely.”

“We wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with if they had made the thing fully manually controlled.”

Anyone could look like a genius if they waited to complain until after the problem had occurred.

But while it took a while, the reload time was only about 50 minutes.

If they didn’t track down the Black_Oneday user and deal with this before then, some other part of the world could be fried by a second powerful laser. And if that location was outside Academy City, it would mean war with the victim country.

In the worst case, the target would be related to the UK or the Vatican. Like an enclave or an airplane in flight. It was last night all over again.

“Can’t you get Aneri-tan to stop it?”

“I don’t get it myself, but apparently hacking doesn’t work that way.”

According to Aneri’s wall of text (weren’t AIs supposed to summarize things!?), two people could hack into the same computer separately. But it was difficult for one of them to take control and kick the other one out. They were both using the same vulnerability, so would plugging the hole lock them both out?

Not even the greatest sprinter could plan to keep their rival from reaching the goal.

So if the Black_Oneday user seriously wanted to cause mass destruction, Aneri couldn’t stop them.

This problem could only be solved by beating up the user in real life, not online.

“Hmm?” Blodeuwedd the Bouquet paused to think for a moment. “If we can’t stop their hacking before the time limit, couldn’t we physically destroy the laser facility before it can fire again as ''a backup plan''?”

“I get the feeling you really could do that. But don’t.”

If someone did that without the appropriate authority and without going through the appropriate procedure, they were no more than a terrorist.

And if they spent all their time on that, they wouldn’t actually solve the real problem.

After all, the laser wasn’t the only weaponizable technology in District 23.

Aneri displayed a list ranked by danger level on the small screen.

“The most obvious one would be…the Morning Star? This above ground mass driver is pretty terrifying. It’s basically a giant railgun, right? I could see them launching a meteor all the way around the Earth and then dropping it on our heads.”

“What about this? A next-gen engine for optical rocket R&D? They’re talking around it, but isn’t that a donut-shaped fusion reactor using deuterium? That’s where they magnetically enclose plasma with a temperature over a hundred million degrees. Destroy the container while it’s running and it wouldn’t just destroy Academy City – the entire Kantou region would be wiped off the map and covered by the sea.”

“Meaning?”

“We have 50 minutes left, right? We need to make the most of that time. Destroying each individual facility isn’t going to work. Sounds like this crisis won’t end unless we defeat Black_Oneday itself.”

…His head hurt.

What was Academy City doing? He wasn’t sure how he wanted to spend the remaining days or even hours of his life, but here he was faced with a global crisis.

Hamazura couldn’t just sit idly by and let it happen.

He couldn’t just blindly run from the Brits anymore.

Coronzon’s methods may have been wrong, but she had been trying to create a better world in her own way. And his girlfriend Takitsubo and his old friends like Hanzou were still here in Academy City. He didn’t know who had set up this Black_Oneday game, but he was sick of seeing the world threatened with destruction for something as nonsensical as destruction for the sake of destruction.

Coronzon, huh?

“Why?”

Hamazura gritted his teeth.

Digging into this wouldn’t improve his odds of survival here. He knew that.

But he still hung his head, faced his inner thoughts, and forced out a resentful voice.

“Why did Coronzon have to die? And all for some formless concept like ‘the world’ or ‘the human race’?”

In that moment, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had to have heard Hamazura’s groan.

Which was why she responded.

“Because she lost.”

Hamazura seriously thought his heart was going to stop.

''What did she just say?

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet tilted her head cutely.

“Huh? Did I say something weird? Has anything ever been solved by someone proving themselves right and everyone just obeying them, or someone being proven wrong and backing down?”

“…”

“The world isn’t that simple, you dummy. The winner wins it all and the loser loses everything. Their dreams, righteousness, their lives, the world – everything. That’s always how the world has worked. Looking back in history, that’s been the way of things at least as far back as several thousand years BCE. …Kamijou Touma did kill Coronzon, but Coronzon had accepted these conditions when she fought. Are you going to start throwing a tantrum that those rules are unfair after the fact?”

“……………………………………………………………………………………”

What?

What, what, what, what, what was she talking about???

“Kamijou Touma failed to save Coronzon? You’re looking at this wrong. Kamijou Touma has had the right to kill all of the enemies he has defeated. As the one forced to bear the possibility of death were he to lose even once. Self-defense isn’t an obligation – it’s a right. It’s just that he never chose to exercise that right after he won. That’s all it was. Saving even one of the people he defeated is worthy of praise. Now, truth be told, I did somewhat expect him to save Coronzon since he was enough of a soft-hearted fool to save Alice. But if you respond with anger and throw a fit because he betrayed your expectations and didn’t go above and beyond just that one time, then you’re relying far too much on your enemy. Attacking all you like and then demanding forgiveness once you lose is making a mockery of the entire concept of combat.”

This should have been a perfectly logical argument, but it refused to enter his mind.

All the unfairness and unreasonableness he had only been vaguely aware of was rushing in at him all at once. It covered the entire world so thinly and widely it didn’t even feel real to Hamazura even though he had to be contained by it as well.

“Besides, what’s considered ‘right’ changes wildly depending on the time period, region, organization, and personal beliefs.”

Did she realize how messed up that idea was, or didn’t she?

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet sighed softly.

“Take Aleister Crowley for example. Some say he was promoted to 5=6 of the Inner Order by Mathers in Paris and others say the London faction didn’t recognize that and he was stuck in the Outer Order or as a Portal at 4=7. And Crowley himself claimed to be a 9=2 after creating new rules within his own cabal. You see what I’m getting at, don’t you? What’s ‘right’ changes depending on what source you use. There are as many answers as there are people and no one can agree on what the best answer is, so these things can only be resolved by force.”

No, he didn’t see.

That wasn’t it.

He wasn’t talking about that. He wasn’t interested in some historical examples. He was talking about something more basic and down-to-earth.

“But if you still don’t like the idea of fighting to the death, you should have gotten involved way back when the rules were being made and there was a chance to choose one of the countless ‘right’ answers through nonviolent means. That is where you should have fought your ''battle''. But you didn’t put in the work and you ran around foolishly assuming ''for no good reason'' that no one was going to die on that battlefield buried in red snow, so you don’t have the right to complain now. Unfortunately.”

“No.”

Finally, Hamazura spoke up.

The dumb Level 0 spoke to the Transcendent who had accessed divine specs.

He couldn’t accept it, but he did feel like he finally had a general idea what she was saying.

He finally had a handle on the goal he truly had to fight for.

He had to face this strange feeling head on.

“There are different forms of justice out there. On its own, that sounds like a testament to the wonders of diversity. But that doesn’t mean you can just casually shift from one idea of what’s ‘right’ to another. Choosing whatever version of ‘right’ is most convenient at the moment is the same as getting a stomachache, fearing it’s something serious, and, instead of going to the hospital, searching online until you find something saying it’s nothing to worry about. All you’re doing is choosing whatever opinion tells you to do what you already wanted to do.”

More than that, it wasn’t something to be determined by whoever could punch the hardest. Wouldn’t that just lead to a dystopia where whoever was the strongest got to bend everything to their will?

He found Blodeuwedd the Bouquet grinning in front of him.

“How interesting. Hee hee☆”

“…What is?”

“Oh, just that you keep going on about how much you hate justice, but in the end you just want to save people too. …I am the Transcendent who loves and saves all of the hated, so I’m used to people who can’t be honest with themselves☆”

“That’s not what this is…”

He couldn’t look her in the eye.

Hamazura didn’t long for justice from the side of evil like Coronzon had.

He quietly spat out a response.

“It’s not like you have to be on the side of justice to save people. Bad people can shield people from bullets too if they move in the way. Saving people ''is nothing more than a physical action''.”

“Hmm, so close.”

“?”

“You’re not quite there. But it’s not bad. Hamazura, you really do hate goodness and justice, don’t you? You hate those mindsets that lead people to take lives. That’s a good start, so explore this a little further. You will find something if you do. Although this is more Aradia’s territory than mine.”

He didn’t understand.

Also, who in the world was Aradia?

“Now, I need to know what your plans are. You’re not interested in fleeing to the farthest reaches of the world and curling up there where you’re safe, right?”

“Right.”

“That Black_Oneday hacking tool is super bad news. We can’t ignore it. So are you going to protect Academy City’s peace and safety in your own twisted way?”

“That about sums it up.”

…Or did it?

Hamazura still wasn’t certain if this would help Coronzon in any way. But he felt like what the Black_Oneday user would do was completely different from the destruction she had tried to accomplish.

“Either way, we’re the only ones who know that hacking tool is out there. So we can’t just let the Black_Oneday user have their way.”

===Part 4===

“Damn those Anglicans. Did they make a big commotion and then take down their own people-clearing field?”

Leivinia Birdway grumbled in annoyance.

The large lobby of the international airport was a mess from end to end.

There was a mysterious hole well over 10m in diameter in both the ceiling and the floor. Those likely came from something ''falling'' straight down from the sky above. All the windows were shattered and the glass-covered floor was littered with crow carcasses… It was all about as bizarre as it could get. It was no surprise that Anti-Skill and curious onlookers had shown up.

Kamijou Touma couldn’t get close to the wall of onlookers, much less the yellow tape.

He sighed and started up his phone’s camera app. He zoomed in as far as it would go to get a look from a distance.

“Hmm.”

He didn’t see anyone magical like the Amakusas or the Former Agnese Force.

He didn’t see Hamazura Shiage either.

“Looks like the storm has already moved on.”

“Because we were running against the flow of the fleeing people,” complained Lessar. “If we were allowed to knock down those ordinary people, we would have arrived sooner.”

“…”

“Okay, okay, I’m only kidding, so don’t glare at me like that. Heh heh heh. Are you trying to get me wet, you white knight?”

Nothing would teach that inappropriate girl a lesson, so it wasn’t even worth trying.

Was it linked with his phone’s location data? Even Kamijou’s cheap smartphone kept giving him local online news notifications for District 23.

“A new threat brought on by EM waves. Could this be the countdown to the implementation of a bird strike assassination weapon that can bring down aircraft without raising suspicion!?”

“The crow mystery!! Does the truth lie in the mysterious temple rumored to have been demolished to make room for the airport? (Read more)”

“How about some yakitori tonight? Click here for the secret to the most mouthwatering salted yakitori around!!”

The clickbait in the headlines was just as bad as ever, which ironically left him with zero inclination to click. It felt like a hellish caramel made by thoroughly cooking down all of humanity’s malice.

Birdway stared at the distant crowd, stood up on her toes, and stretched her back up…but that still wasn’t enough. She grabbed Kamijou’s jacket, tugged, and made her demand while looking up at him.

“Lift me up on your shoulders.”

“Have you never heard the word ‘please’, tiny little lady?”

He complained, but he also crouched down for her. He began to wonder if he was partially to blame for Birdway and Lessar’s worsening behavior.

He lifted her up.

She was light. And her thighs pressed in from the si-

“Ow! What was that zapping my face? Static electricity!?”

“Hey, I’m wearing synthetic stockings. Winter is a tough time for girls. Ignorant boy, it’s time you felt a fraction of the trouble we cute girls go through.”

How could she be so full of herself after asking him to lift her up?

“(Yes, yes. Now this is prime seating.)”

The girl seated on his shoulders and humming appeared to be in a terrific mood.

“That’s the last place the Anglicans were fighting. Which means Hamazura must have been there.”

“But what’s with those melted holes that must be at least 10m? Oh, god. I bet Academy City is making some dangerous nonsense again.”

Lessar paled and clung to him from the side, probably out of fear. Yes, that’s what it had to be. …Although he wished she wouldn’t press her boobs against him because it was so distracting he was about to lose his balance and accidentally suplex Birdway behind him.

He too was curious about that bottomless hole, but that wasn’t their focus here.

Kamijou didn’t understand what all was going on here, but he was fairly certain Hamazura was near the center of it.

Where had Hamazura run off to?

“If we can’t find him, we’ll have to start by choosing an effective method. And the classics are better than trying to be clever. Heh heh. So it’s scrying time. Or would the term ‘crystal gazing’ be more familiar to an amateur?”

“You’re just trying to sound smart, aren’t you, you smug magician?”

“Oh? Have you finally caught on to the common trait among almost every magician, including Mathers and Crowley? Well, it’s one of the few times idiots with obscure knowledge can feel good about themselves, so let us have this.”

“Also, are you done yet? If you don’t need to see over there anymore, I’m putting you down, Birdway.”

She seemed to deflate.

“Down you go!! I can’t have you staying up there forever!”

“Are you familiar with the idea of a crystal ball?” asked Lessar.

Oh, was that all this was?

Birdway the Genius must have wanted to show off some more, so her mouth formed a small triangle, but there wasn’t time to worry about her feelings right now.

With the weight removed from his shoulders, Kamijou tilted his head.

“A crystal ball… You mean like that thing where a young woman dressed in a sexy fortuneteller’s outfit holds her hands out toward it and sends some kind of power into it?”

“Where did you get that from? In this case, the fortuneteller isn’t sending magic power into the crystal. They’re using the crystal to try and read the small subconscious signs inside their own mind.”

“Also, the ‘young woman’ and ‘sexy’ parts are just wishful thinking on your part. Did you get that stereotype from Japan’s weirdly prolific isekai fantasy industry? Neither of those are necessary for fortunetelling. In fact, the crystal doesn’t even need to be a ball.”

Birdway dismantled a pair of binoculars and pulled out a large lens. She colored that in black with a thick marker.

“All you need is to create an environment where you can intentionally stimulate your inner mind through the medium of crystal, so a lens or a mirror work just as well. The witch’s bible recommends a hand mirror colored black.”

“Wait, it works even if it’s flat and you can’t see through it? That’s nothing at all like a fortuneteller’s crystal ball.”

“Again, that’s a mistaken view drawn from your own fantasies. Throw out that meaningless isekai-inspired image right this instant. And doesn’t this country have that silly rumor about a hand mirror colored purple? Yes, called the Murasaki Kagami, I believe. It’s like that.”

…Kamijou had been fairly seriously disturbed at that souvenir shop when they were talking about condoms and the king of rubbers, but apparently there had been a real reason for that visit. They had been acquiring the everyday items they could use as tools. Pros were so cool.

“I feel like you’re being impressed by the least impressive part of this.”

“Yeah, it feels more like a backhanded compliment.”

When they sensitively reacted to his thoughts, Kamijou decided to leave it at that.

Birdway held the blackened lens between her thumb and forefinger and stared at the floor.

“So if they did pursue Hamazura from here…what exactly does that black lens let you do?”

“Track their footprints,” replied Birdway. She made it sound like she was having to explain that turning the faucet made water come out. “This may be hard for you to believe since you know all about Necessarius’s tyranny, but the Anglicans are more humane than most. They want to avoid harming civilians, so they always use a people-clearing field before launching an attack.”

That term sounded vaguely familiar to Kamijou.

…He was often the one being targeted by the attack, so he had few good memories about the magic.

“So if I can find some footprints that don’t follow the current established by the people-clearing field, they will stand out. ''Because that tells me they weren’t made by an ordinary person.''”

“Oh, that makes sense. If the target would wander on out of the field too, the attackers would end up with an empty field. So the Anglicans’ target won’t be affected by the field.”

“If we want to track down Hamazura Shiage, then we only need to search for tracks that stayed in the field but also don’t show the signs of being a professional magician,” explained Lessar. “It couldn’t be easier. If you can’t pick up a trail like that, you’re not qualified to be a magician. A little piggy like that should drop down to a 0=0 and relearn everything from the ground up.”

“Hey, weakling. Are you trying to ramp up the pressure on me here?”

“Ohh? How about you wait to speak human language until you’ve actually found something, little piggy?”

Birdway stared at the floor and nodded in a way that…as rude as the comparison felt, reminded Kamijou of a dog tracking a scent. It didn’t suit her noble appearance at all.

“Tracking him will likely mean leaving the airport through this exit.”

“Yeah, but isn’t he taking a weird detour?”

They wandered here and there a bunch until they ran into an electronically locked door. Birdway reached between the buttons of her blouse to pull out a card that she had been storing (likely with some difficulty) at her flat chest and held it to the reader, opening the door without issue. Kamijou had questions.

“What is that?”

“I borrowed it from an airport worker.”

“…Using legal means, I hope?”

She only smiled.

The super sketchy magic cabal boss didn’t give him a yes or a no answer.

After unlocking a few more doors, they emerged from the airport.

“…”

Had Hamazura escaped through here?

They were at the back of the airport. Kamijou had wondered what they would find there, but he hadn’t expected to see a small business jet stopped there. He gulped when he saw the Union Jack on the tail wing. The British government plane must have moved here since he last saw it.

“But why?”

“They’re probably transferring cargo. See?”

Lessar pointed to a loader sturdier than a forklift and a few cargo containers.

But these were air cargo containers, so they weren’t the long boxes larger than a studio apartment. They were more like 2-3m silver dice.

And one of them was rattling.

“What the hell? That has the British flag on it, so is it some dangerous magical object? Is it like that Pandora thing you’re not supposed to open?”

“Oh, c’mon. Pandora is the name of the artificial human who opened the box. The box has a different name.”

“Who cares!? I’m asking what happens if you open it!”

Birdway glanced over at the other two arguing and sighed before speaking.

“The report I received said nothing about this container. In fact, does that plane even have a cargo door?”

“Yeah, we rode this plane to Academy City, but I don’t recognize that cargo container at all.”

So it was magical, but it might not belong to the Anglicans?

??? Wait, which was it? And either way, didn’t that mean some extremely dangerous object had just been left sitting out here?

…After all, the Anglicans included some super scary people like Stiyl Magnus. What if they ignored some mysterious secret weapon here and it came after them later on!?

When Kamijou nervously touched it with his right hand, there was a sound like shattering glass.

So…it really had reacted to Imagine Breaker?

Then the metal shutter opened.

“Phew!! I-I’ve finally escaped. I guess I am one of the legendary original Golden magicians. My genius is too much for the world to handle!!”

Kamijou Touma recognized the person who emerged.

It was Dion Fortune.

As the boss of the UK’s greatest magic cabal, Birdway sounded thoroughly exasperated by this state of affairs.

“Aren’t you their Archbishop? Only a temporary figurehead, sure, but what were you doing stuck in an Anglican cell? I thought things weren’t adding up, but did the local troops stage a coup?”

“And aren’t you one of the original Golden magicians? Are you telling me the great Dion Fortune got herself trapped by a twisted loop? Ha ha ha ha.”

Lessar grinned in ultra provocation mode, but Fortune’s reaction was surprisingly minimal.

She only pouted her lips and complained like a small child.

“It’s not my fault. Their necromancer used Underworld God Osiris against me.”

“That’ll do it.”

“Indeed. Not much you can do against Osiris. I mean, he’s Osiris.”

Kamijou waited a bit, but no one provided any further explanation.

Wait, was that the most exposition he was going to get? Was he the only one who didn’t understand? Had he been left behind by the world?

The poor, ignorant boy trembled as he spoke up.

“Umm. Who exactly is this Osiris? Some IT company president who’s popular with elementary and middle school kids on TikZap?”

“Why are you nearly in tears? He’s an Egyptian god. He was originally the god of justice and fairness, but after dying and being resurrected, he became something like the god of death and ruler of the underworld. He’s compared to Hades in Greek mythology.”

“In Crowley-style Magick, the death and resurrection part is heavily emphasized. That lets him correspond to the Son of God who was hung on the cross and resurrected.”

…How could Lessar and Birdway rattle this kind of thing off? Kamijou found it strange. He lived in Academy City of the science side, but that didn’t mean he had memorized all of the Curriculum’s textbooks.

Birdway gave him an annoyed look.

“Bad feelings have a nasty habit of coming true and no one likes being proven right in those cases. Now the Anglicans are looking even more suspicious, but the question is what we do about it.”

“If we can’t trust the Anglicans here in Academy City, is there any reason to even continue with our job? We can always board that government plane and fly on back to England.”

Lessar had a knack for finding something inappropriate to say no matter the circumstances. Which made her a handful. Was there some way Kamijou could search on his phone to find out how to punish someone like her?

“Why can’t I find anything useful!? All I’m getting is some stupid internet slang!!”

“What’s that? Doing some ‘alone time’ net surfing? How pathetic can you be? Why go for mere data when the real, tangible thing is right here☆”

Kamijou could only hope that brat would eventually suffer the consequences of not getting a talking to here and now. Strongly hope.

“I’m not going back,” said Dion Fortune.

In a way, she was the biggest victim who hadn’t asked to be a part of this. She was only temporary. A figurehead. She was supposed to be at the very top, but when it came to Hamazura, all of a sudden she was a target of suspicion, had her authority stripped from her, and was locked up like a criminal.

But she didn’t hesitate to raise her voice here.

“I have to save him. If this is allowed to continue, the Anglicans will kill Hamazura! Even if no one recognizes it, I am still the Archbishop. I won’t let my people trample on people’s lives like that!!”

A soft sigh came from Birdway, who usually maintained a harsh viewpoint.

The sigh had an exasperated tone to it.

“So you’re motivated, great. But do you have a realistic and concrete plan?”

“…I do have one idea there.”

===Part 5===

“Tch.”

“What’s that tongue click for, Blodeuwedd?”

“Oh, nothing. How do you do, Hamazura-san? Oh, dear. You have some trash in your hair.”

“???”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet came up with an excuse to snatch something from his hair, crush it between her fingers, and toss it aside.

(That was a transmitter smaller than a grain of rice based on a communication spiritual item. Whether or not they could pull it off, would Dion Fortune be the only one among the Anglicans who would come up this kind of ''idea''? And she has spent the most time with Hamazura Shiage among them.)

But that aside, they had walked a bit – a good bit – from the airport.

Below the open sky.

“Aneri says ''this area is most suspicious''.”

“I don’t know what it based that conclusion on, but if Aneri-tan says so, maybe it’s true. Doesn’t it worry you that you don’t know what calculations the AI is doing on the inside?”

As long as it was convenient, he didn’t really care. …But did he only see it that way because he lived in a city of science worship?

Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had arrived at a fairly special part of District 23. Special enough that it was on every single tourist map.

It was filled with aircraft.

Except they were packed in close. And there was no rhyme or reason to where they were stopped. Even if they were being maintained or refueled in preparation for takeoff, this haphazard arrangement would leave each individual aircraft unable to move.

But that wasn’t a problem since the aircraft here were all retired.

“Hm. So they took retired airplanes and space shuttles and restored just the residential portions to make hotels, villas, and such out of them?”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet took a look around and commented in amusement, as if she were viewing a tourist attraction.

Hamazura walked past a parked tanker truck and toyed with the cracked phone in his hand.

“It’s called Hotel Town.”

“More info from Aneri-chan?”

Correct.

It may have been like the “towns” made from trailers found in the American desert…but these were small business jets and even large passenger planes. The scale was on another level entirely. It covered a wide horizontal area, but the map also expanded in the vertical direction. All the voluminous fuselages and wings acted like large roofs for anyone walking on the ground.

“Gweh,” groaned Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. “These can carry hundreds of passengers, but that’s with them all stuffed into the cramped economy seats, right? Would anyone really pay a lot of money to spend the night strapped into one of those seats?”

“Maybe there are a lot of airplane nerds, or people who really like being served by flight attendants, even if it’s cramped.”

“A paradise for masochists, huh? Well, I guess you can sell anything if you package it up nice. You can even reserve a tour in the sweltering jungle where you get to enjoy a military-style ‘interrogation’ using metal drums and bats☆”

The girl with zero interest in planes stared into the middle distance.

Now, because these planes were retired, people could enter the ordinarily off-limits areas and snap photos with their phones. Maybe there were people out there who wanted to try sleeping in the cockpit or the cargo space.

The food would probably be airplane food (shipped in from somewhere else of course), but the area was kind of smokey. It smelled of oily smoke, like when cooking yakitori. Apparently the people who still felt hungry were having a cookout. There were grills made by splitting a metal drum down the middle here and there. The earthbound passenger planes had ropes and laundry up on their roofs, but wouldn’t the smoke affect them? Seemed like it would make them smell.

“The place is like a maze… And not just in two dimensions. The map extends overhead too.”

“At least we’ll have plenty of escape routes if we need one. Yeah, now this is a tourist attraction for criminals☆”

There must not have been enough boarding stairs to go around because it looked like people were using ladders and stepladders to enter the entrances located higher up than Hamazura’s head.

The ladders were especially useful because they could also function as makeshift bridges when laid on their side. There were several places where two different passenger planes had their mains wings linked by those bridges. The end result was a messy scene.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet walked below one such bridge as she spoke.

She was finally getting to the point.

“So is the Black_Oneday user really hiding in this niche and messy scrapyard?”

“If they’re sneaking around, it means they know they’re up to no good. They won’t be using their hacking tool while hunched over in a large passenger plane stuffed full of hundreds of people. They’ll have secured some larger space they can have to themselves.”

That meant a villa rather than a hotel.

That was apparently what Aneri predicted to be the optimal conditions for using Black_Oneday.

More specifically, something with the large antenna and signal amplifier used to pick up the special frequencies used in the aerospace industry.

The Hotel Town was full of junk, so there were only so many villas for individual use that also had that much major equipment.

And by further narrowing it down using a criminal’s unique desire for multiple escape routes, only one option remained.

“Hmm.”

Instead of a giant passenger plane, this one had a sleek, streamlined design that combined the fuselage and wings into a single shape. It looked like a long, skinny shovel or shield.

The emaciated girl spoke up in amusement.

“What’s that? A space shuttle?”

“A retired one, yeah. The Kujerung exoatmospheric shuttle. Its components can be folded up compactly and transported in a truck and, by attaching an optional solid-fuel rocket, it can be launched from a submarine’s vertical missile launching tube. So says Aneri.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet looked confused.

But not by the technicality of it all.

“Why would you want to launch from a sub?”

“Don’t ask me. Maybe they’re already doing stuff outside the atmosphere they don’t want anyone to know about.”

What an awful age they lived in.

If there really were space aliens, they would see that as unforgivable pollution. It probably wouldn’t be long before they showed up to eradicate humanity so none of the dangerous species could leave the Earth.

As an act of good to protect the rest of the universe.

And while this was strange super technology for Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, it was no more than retired scrap for Academy City. Those arbiters of justice really did like looking down on people, didn’t they?

At any rate, it looked like a small fashionable streamlined jet. It could switch between a jet engine that sucked in air or a rocket engine that used an oxidizer, giving it the extreme engine power needed to fly from runway to space…but they could ignore that since this one was grounded and retired.

How many exits did it have and where were they?

As a spacecraft, did it have thin walls to keep its weight down? Or were its walls sturdy as hell to protect against heat, shocks, and radiation? Hamazura knew a lot about vehicles, but he couldn’t even hazard a guess about something this specialized.

(I know I have to observe it from a distance since I can’t let them know I’m here…but this is so frustrating. If only I could just get the answer right away.)

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet tilted her head and gestured as if looking at something from below.

“Its basic design is the same as an airplane, right? So can’t we get in through where the wheels are?”

“Are you Kinuhata? This isn’t a cheap movie… There are too many huge-ass gears crammed in there for us to fit.”

What he could tell from enough of a distance to not be noticed was that it was about the size of a small business jet.

…That meant the main problem was the height of the door. It was up higher than Hamazura’s head, so breaking down the door and storming inside would be difficult.

“But on the other hand, the enemy won’t be able to see us if we’re directly below the fuselage, right? Looking down from the cockpit and side windows doesn’t let you see there. So if we can just get there, we should be able get close without being noticed.”

“And then what? And then what?”

“We can walk to the very back of the shuttle and set up a ladder to get up on the roof without them noticing.”

There were ladders all over the Hotel Town. There weren’t enough boarding stairs to go around, so the ladders were used instead. They only had to borrow one of those.

“Prying open that smooth side door would be tough, but if we walk along the roof to the cockpit at the nose, it should be possible to break the glass and get in, don’t you think?

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? We’ll be climbing on top of that streamlined roof shaped like a squat metal coat. We won’t just roll right off, will we?”

Apparently Blodeuwedd the Bouquet sounded so unusually concerned because magicians couldn’t fly.

But Hamazura didn’t understand the rules ordinary magicians worked under, so he wasn’t sure how to respond to this nervous confession.

“Also, this is a spaceship, right? Won’t the front glass be super sturdy to deal with space debris and the pressure difference with the vacuum? How are you planning on breaking that? Ask me to do it?”

“If we can’t do it ourselves, we just have to make a tool that can.”

===Part 6===

Kamijou tried to organize the information in his head.

The tracker Dion Fortune had attached to Hamazura said he was in the Hotel Town, a lodging area of District 23.

Although Fortune herself didn’t sound too confident.

“The thing is, the signal has vanished. That’s a bad sign. Did he notice the tracker and crush it?”

“Doesn’t matter. Even if he gets away, we just have to pick up his trail again in the Hotel Town.”

Kamijou’s phone beeped.

Was that Board Director Accelerator? Where was he watching this from?

“Hey. This is only going to get worse if the supposed problem solvers don’t do their job. So get your asses to the center of the commotion. If those annoying outsiders keep causing so much trouble, the damage is only going to spread.”

The Brits spoke up before Kamijou could get his mouth open.

“Keh keh keh. You say that it like it’s a foregone conclusion he’ll help you.”

“You trust him a lot, huh?

“Do I need to grind the both of you into mincemeat together, you damn brats?”

Accelerator’s voice dropped by two tones. Once for each girl.

And when had those two gotten to the point they could tease the #1? Did they feel no fear?

Kamijou tilted his head and joined the conversation.

“The Anglicans are one thing…but why is Hamazura still on the run? He’s being pursued by magic side experts, right? I don’t see how he could possibly defeat Stiyl and Kanzaki.”

“From what those Anglicans say, he has a Transcendent helping him out. One named Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”

“Oh, her… Yeah, that tracks,” muttered Kamijou.

Birdway and Lessar didn’t seem too concerned…but was that because they had no direct experience with Transcendents? They didn’t react the way Dion Fortune did.

“The Anglicans have another one called Good, Old Mary with them,” said Accelerator. “Do they think that makes it even? Slamming brute strength against brute strength is only going to damage their surroundings more. We’re busy trying to turn this pile of rubble back into a city and then they show up in the sandbox ready to smash our sand castle.”

He had a point, but this meant his privileges as Board Chairman weren’t enough to bring an end to the conflict.

Birdway frowned again.

“Do you know anything about the Anglicans’ odd behavior? You’re the top of the science side, so you should have some amusing arrangements in place for diplomatic purposes.”

“I’m in the dark on this one. Which I do ''not'' appreciate when this is my city.”

Accelerator spat out that last sentence.

Kamijou glanced over to see Dion Fortune shrugging.

This meant the leaders of Academy City and the Anglican Church had been forced out. …Then who was in control here?

“Whatever the case,” continued Accelerator, “specialists will feel the fear of something on a deeper level than anyone. Like America with guns and Central America with drugs, the UK knows all about magic and demons, right? They’re more sensitive about these things. Isn’t that why they’re taking this so far?”

“But what does that have to do with Hamazura?” asked Kamijou. “I mean, he’s an Academy City esper. That’s a completely different world from the magic side.”

“The Great Demon Coronzon problem isn’t over yet.”

“?”

Why bring up Coronzon here?

For better or for worse, Kamijou had ended that by killing her with his own hand.

“The Anglicans seem more concerned by Coronzon’s lingering effects than by Hamazura himself.”

“Lingering effects? Oh, I get it.”

“No, you don’t.”

If Hamazura Shiage’s view of Coronzon were accepted by the public, Coronzon’s apocalyptic ideology could end up spreading? Or something like that?

But apparently that wasn’t what Accelerator meant.

“It’s something about angels and demons being made of energy. They theorize that, even after Coronzon’s death, a portion of her power is contained inside Hamazura Shiage. …If that’s true, then he would be able to use Adikalika himself.”

“''Sitra Achra'',” said Dion Fortune, sounding unusually grave.

That didn’t mean anything to Kamijou, but apparently it meant something to someone.

“Misaka will do it!” “Serving master is my job.”

Some voices came over the call.

Only Accelerator could know what he thought about that while hearing them in person.

“The trouble at the airport is bad enough, but it sounds like this is about to be spread further.”

“Don’t worry. We reclaimed our ordinary lives. I’m not about to let someone bring us to the brink of ruin again.”

===Part 7===

Maybe it came from being a scrapyard for retired aircraft, but there were stacks of wooden crates and metal drums all around the Hotel Town. There was junk and scrap metal just about everywhere.

For a tinkerer like Hamazura, it all looked like a giant armory.

He started with a metal pipe and a stake, added some quick-drying putty in place of a rubber seal, grabbed a spare electric plug, included a few other small items, and finished it with the most important piece of all.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet tilted her head.

“Hmm, what’s that tube? What is that used for, Professor Hamazura?”

“It’s a signal flare. It might look safe, but it actually includes more powder than an ordinary 9mm round.”

There was probably more powerful jet fuel and rocket fuel to be found in District 23, but he would prefer not to touch anything that dangerous. It was best to stick with materials he was more comfortable with. He took apart a few of the flares to get sufficient powder.

After combining everything just right, it was done.

It rested on his shoulder like a rocket launcher…but it was more like a pile driver powered by explosive force.

He would use this to break the space shuttle’s thick front glass designed to withstand space debris and the pressure difference with vacuum.

“That should do it. We only have one shot at it, though.”

“Are you sure about this? Won’t a space shuttle have other ways of seeing out? Y’know, like exterior cameras installed all over it. I just don’t think this will work like a normal plane.”

“You have a point. Then let’s deal with that.”

That led to more rummaging around behind cover.

The emaciated girl stared like she had discovered a new kind of insect.

“Professor, Professor. Um, why are you gathering up filthy old cardboard boxes?”

“For kindling.”

With so many homemade grills all over the place, it wouldn’t stand out much if a bunch of smoke obscured the view from the exterior cameras.

He gathered together all the cardboard and then shoved it into an 18 liter drum.

Incomplete combustion would be best for creating a smokescreen, so he wet the cardboard a bit with water before lighting them. Oil would have been useful, but he was afraid of it sputtering all over the place when mixed with water.

Dark smoke dirtied the air and began to ride the gentle breeze.

It fully engulfed the streamlined fuselage of the Kujerung a short distance away.

Now the exterior cameras weren’t going to accomplish much.

“Let’s go! Don’t get lost in the smoke!!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Hiding in the thick smoke, Hamazura held a collapsed ladder under his arm and approached the Kujerung. It was a nerve-wracking situation, but Blodeuwedd the Bouquet seemed to be enjoying herself. …Like a mom watching her small child during parent’s day at school.

“Phew.”

They made it below the Kujerung. It was low enough he had to duck to not hit his head, but it was still a safe zone where they were free to move.

He took a deep breath of the smoky air.

Three seconds passed without any reaction from the Black_Oneday user. Concluding they hadn’t been noticed, the two of them made their way to the tail of the spaceship.

“Did you make too much smoke? It’s stinging my eyes…”

“That’s better than being seen.”

While it was only the size of a business jet, it was still an exoatmospheric shuttle designed to take off from a runway and fly all the way into space. Three giant trumpet-shaped engine nozzles were arranged at the rear. Each one was taller than Hamazura. He knew it was retired and wasn’t functional anymore, but it was still frightening to be staring them down like this. The pure firepower would be greater than at a crematorium.

Hamazura extended the stepladder as far as it would go and leaned it diagonally against the shuttle. Climbing that would take him to the roof. Then he only had to walk up to the cockpit window.

“Okay, here goes nothing. …Follow me, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”

“Oh, how gentlemanly. I thought you would use ‘ladies first’ as an excuse to have me go ahead of you.”

“?”

“It’s your chance to get a low-angle view, you know? And I’m naked save for an apron below my metal coat☆”

[[Image:GT_Index_v15_BW4.jpg|thumb]]

Hamazura knew that veering even slightly to the side on the roof would mean slipping off to his death, so why was she trying to distract him like this? Was she really on his side?

At any rate, he climbed the ladder while staring down the giant trumpet-like engines.

But then he realized something.

“Hm? What is it, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet?”

Before reaching the roof, her hands only partway up the ladder, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet stared off elsewhere and muttered to herself.

“Hmm, that’s not good. Things have finally caught up with us.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant at first…but that didn’t last long.

Something wasn’t right.

“There’s no one else…around here?”

In the cluttered Hotel Town? When each of the passenger planes that made it seem so cluttered had to contain hundreds of passengers?

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet took a quick look around, her gaze sharpening a bit.

“It’s a people-clearing field. And the Anglicans have us surrounded a lot more boldly than I expected. They should really be less conspicuous about laying that kind of groundwork.”

“?”

That didn’t mean anything to Hamazura, but apparently all the innocent people had intentionally been ''made to leave''.

The “atmosphere” of the entire area had changed and the hiding Black_Oneday user had to have noticed it. Which meant they would be on their guard. He couldn’t predict what the enemy would do next. Were the Anglicans a bunch of bumbling cops!? Did they even want to solve this case and bring peace back to the world!?

“This is bad, Hamazura.”

“?”

His phone sounded the alarm again. The loudest one it had.

The threat was right there, as close as could be.

He heard a rumble from the Kujerung’s giant engines just before ''they ignited.

===Part 8===

Kanzaki Kaori and the rest of the Anglicans were prepared for their next action.

The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force ran all around.

There were many innocent people in the Hotel Town, so they had to be evacuated in advance using a people-clearing field and other spells. It was a lot of work when covering such a wide area.

Kanzaki looked grim.

“We may have underestimated that AI Aneri thing. If Hamazura Shiage can accomplish this much, we need to recalculate the threat he poses.”

“At least there is still no sign of him directly using magic,” said Itsuwa before glancing to the side. “And at the same time…”

(I can’t believe she took a direct hit from ''that'' and it didn’t even scratch her.)

She meant Good, Old Mary.

That Transcendent had apparently been hit by a science side strategic weapon, but she was standing there like nothing had happened. She claimed to have immediately mixed together a potion that created thick concrete upon contact with the air, but was that really enough to explain what happened?

(Well, cement was often used when building large sacred grounds, like the pyramids of Ancient Egypt or Roman temples.)

Anyway, the Anglicans had two main concerns.

First, that Great Demon Coronzon’s Sitra Achra power had been sealed inside Hamazura Shiage as a Telesma-like energy.

Second, that Hamazura Shiage’s mistaken proselytizing and evangelizing would spread an apocalyptic ideology in support of the already dead Great Demon Coronzon.

The first was the more direct threat, but the second couldn’t be underestimated.

Coronzon’s name was already well known, so it was incorporated into various parts of the magic side.

The Anglicans, the Amakusas, and the former Roman Catholics were a group bound by faith, so they saw the possibility of Coronzon being spoken of as a hero as a definite threat. They knew better than anyone that formless and abstract faith could transform into an international military force. Because that was what they were.

A Level 0 had gained an exceptional power.

That symbolism reminded them of a different boy. And that other boy was proof that a perceived threat to the world could bring together people from different nationalities and affiliations.

…They couldn’t let that incidental phenomenon be used ''in a negative way''. No matter what.

(A demon…a dragon. I don’t like the symbolism. And Hamazura Shiage is also officially classified as a Level 0. Let’s just hope he doesn’t have anything weird lurking in his right hand.)

“We will capture Hamazura Shiage here in District 23. That way we can keep his influence to a minimum.” Kanzaki spoke cautiously. “Academy City is known as a city of espers, but it’s said most of those espers are Level 0s who never developed any real power. That means there are a large number of people here whose development failed, leaving them frustrated with the current world. We must avoid a situation where they resonate with Hamazura Shiage…or with Coronzon’s shadow, really.”

Academy City’s technology was said to be twenty or thirty years ahead of the outside world.

The same was said of its trends.

So if Academy City was lost, there was a chance the same would happen to the world as a whole once, sooner or later, it spread outside.

That was yet another reason they couldn’t let Coronzon’s apocalyptic ideology take root in Academy City.

“No sign he’s noticed the people-clearing field. He may not be used to using Great Demon Coronzon’s Sitra Achra inside him, or maybe he isn’t even aware it’s there.” Kanzaki remained cautious. “So it would be best to secure him while that safety remains. If he can wield Coronzon’s magic alongside that AI Aneri, we truly won’t be able to keep up.”

===Part 9===

The Kujerung exoatmospheric shuttle’s three giant trumpet-shaped engines suddenly ignited.

“Gah!?”

There was nothing Hamazura could do while climbing the ladder leaning against the rear of the shuttle. Ordinarily, he would have been turned to charcoal by explosive flames even more powerful than a flamethrower.

Directly below him, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet grabbed his ankles and yanked him down. He fell straight down where she caught him inside her thick metal coat.

Hamazura’s view was blocked while he was enveloped by a sweet aroma, so he didn’t actually see what happened.

He just knew gravity suddenly vanished.

He heard a deafening roar and felt a great tremor.

He fell over with no idea what was happening. Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s head was outside the coat, so she had to see what he couldn’t.

“Ow ow ow… Okay, that one was a little too close for comfort.”

Then why did she have a tone of voice best described as “tehepero”?

When she reopened the front of her metal coat, Hamazura collapsed to the ground. And they were at a spot that had to be more than twenty meters from where they had been. As hard as it was to believe, ''their combined weight had been launched that far before even touching the ground.

He noticed some drops of a strange glowing orange liquid nearby.

It took him a fair amount of time to realize those were pieces of molten aluminum…in other words, the remains of the ladder. It must have been ''splattered'' like a shower over a wide area. If not for that magician (or was she a Transcendent?) wrapping him in that inexplicably sturdy coat, what would have happened to his puny physical body?

But that wasn’t the main point here.

Without even getting up from the ground, Hamazura clung to the girl’s slender body inside the coat.

“I thought the Hotel Town was a scrapyard full of retired aircraft! Why does that thing’s engines work!? You can’t run it on ordinary gasoline, that’s for sure!!”

“Wait, Hamazura. Don’t focus on that right now. …If that one is operational, could it be that ''all the others are too''?”

“!!!?”

The Black_Oneday hacking tool was specialized for the aerospace industry and it bared its fangs here.

Hamazura was hit by a spell of dizziness and nausea.

All the movement around him had caused his inner ear to malfunction.

Meaning…

The countless large passenger planes ''supposedly'' acting as giant hotels were…

“They’re moving… Goddammit, they’re coming this way!”

He had no choice but to run.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet seemed amused. He couldn’t figure out her sense of humor.

“Ah ha ha ha ha!! Hey, Hamazura, how much does a passenger plane weigh!?”

“Depends on the plane!!”

It really did depend.

He was pretty sure the biggest ones were more than 500 tons. A large truck was around 10 tons, so it was literally an order of magnitude greater.

“Why do these retired aircraft all still have ultra-dangerous jet fuel in them!?”

“Maybe it’s that thing? Y’know, that idea that machines need to be operated periodically or else they fall apart.”

…Come to think of it, hadn’t he seen some tanker trucks on the way here? He had been terribly unobservant. Those trucks wouldn’t have been here if the aircraft didn’t need jet fuel.

Running away on foot wasn’t going to cut it.

They both rolled well to the side on the ground.

A great mass passed right by them with the unpleasant odor of burning rubber.

But barely avoiding the passenger plane’s giant wheels didn’t mean the threat was over.

Plus, this was District 23, where all the aircraft and spacecraft were located.

The passenger plane slowly pursuing the two of them was smashed by something arriving from a different direction. It was squashed by something from above.

''Something big.

The (remains of) a small charter plane and a pointy-nosed supersonic passenger plane were crushed from above and shoved aside as something truly colossal approached.

The oppressively large fuselage seemed like it could contain three large passenger planes stacked on top of each other. At that size, you had to wonder if the air resistance calculations really worked out for it or if it would break apart as soon as it took flight.

There was a good reason for its size.

The Whale Shark large structure component transport plane was an extra-large aircraft designed to carry the dismantled parts for an entire ordinary-sized aircraft or spacecraft!

It was large enough to play a regulation game of basketball inside. Nothing crushed by its enormous low-pressure tires would ever recover. A human would be squashed less than 5mm flat.

And its great size wasn’t the ''only'' problem.

The air moved with a rumble. Quite literally. Sending a mass weighing hundreds of tons into the air required a considerable amount of force. And the giant barrel-like turbofan engines needed to intake a considerable amount of air!?

“Gyahh!!”

When one of the aluminum ladders used to create a path between the airplanes was sucked in, the entire cylindrical engine burst into flames. This was the same accident seen with bird strikes, but the Whale Shark didn’t stop. It had more than the one engine, so it was still charging this way!!

“Run away!!”

“Ah ha ha! To where!?”

“Its tires are too big. If we escape into an ''indentation'', it won’t crush us!! Aneri, search the map to show us where to go!!”

Hamazura shouted and glanced down to his cracked phone and then dove toward a chain link cover on the ground. And he lifted it.

Something like the ditch next to a road continued on in a straight line. It was probably meant to stop any highly-dangerous spilled jet fuel from spreading endlessly along the flat ground.

But this ditch was more than a meter across.

“Wait, Hamazura. My metal coat is way too baggy so it’s caught…”

“Oh, god!!”

His eyes widened as he yanked her on in.

That colossus was large enough to carry an entire passenger plane inside. Any contact with that mass would mean instant death and it was passing only a few centimeters over their heads.

Hamazura raised his head and shouted half in desperation.

“Well, it’s not all bad!!”

“It isn’t!?”

“They’re causing a lot of trouble, sure, but it looks like they can’t actually escape into space!!”

The Black_Oneday user was the one activating the aircraft and siccing them on Hamazura or the Anglicans, but they showed no sign of taking off with the Kujerung exoatmospheric shuttle and escaping that way. While the Kujerung was a spacecraft, it needed a runway of more than 2000m to take off from the ground, so igniting its engines wasn’t enough. And it didn’t seem to be equipped for the “launched vertically from a submarine” option.

If they couldn’t escape from the planet, then they remained on this same battlefield.

Hamazura couldn’t let all this chaos distract him.

The Black_Oneday user was behind all of this and they were within reach!!

===Part 10===

Everything started to move all at once.

The aircraft and spacecraft in the Hotel Town were moving haphazardly.

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

“What the hell!?”

“If AI Aneri isn’t doing this, then the enemy must have a similar tool.”

Lessar made it sound like it wasn’t her problem.

“Like what?”

“I dunno, maybe a specialized hacking tool?”

“Wait, hacking? Then what about searching for my document!? They aren’t going to destroy the cargo management database that tells me where it is, are they!?”

Also, who was the enemy here?

What did they think they were doing with some underground hacking tool!?

There wasn’t just 10 or even 20 of them. Large passenger planes, military transport planes, and even what looked like space shuttles were moving all over the place. A hit from even one of those would leave him no more than a stain on the pavement.

Kamijou was seriously uncertain if he should charge in or not.

He saw Kanzaki, Stiyl, and some other familiar faces heading toward the center of the chaos. Couldn’t he wait for those experts to fix this and then ask them what was going on?

But even from here, he could tell ''something'' was rapidly escaping from here.

Did they need to stop that to restore calm as quickly as possible?

And the others would need as much help as they could get.

“If I capture anyone who looks suspicious, I should be able to figure this out, right? Is Hamazura behind this, or is there some other villain? I’ll have to find some way of- whoa!?”

“You’ll die, so excuse me.”

If Dion Fortune hadn’t kicked Kamijou out of the way, his entire upper body may have been obliterated.

Was that a large military transport helicopter distorting the air as it flew this way? It of course wasn’t actually rotating its two giant rotors to fly under its own power. …''A giant arm growing from the ground'' had grabbed it and thrown it this way.

That wasn’t AI Aneri or the enemy’s hacking tool.

Kamijou’s eyes widened from the ground.

“Wait…did the Anglicans just attack us?”

“Of course they did. You’re working with me, the Archbishop who they decided to unfairly dismiss in the middle of a mission. Nothing is more troublesome than a political enemy you failed to finish off. They now aren’t sure which side you’re on, so they will eliminate you before you can interfere with this mission.”

“…Are you serious?”

He should have realized from the moment he discovered they had shoved their ally Dion Fortune in a cell. The Anglicans were beyond caring about appearances. Or rather, they were acting indiscriminately. Were they really that afraid of Great Demon Coronzon’s influence on the world, like Accelerator had mentioned?

“Is Hamazura Shiage really that much of a threat?” mused Birdway. With a touch of exasperation in her voice.

“He’s supposed to be carrying some kind of dangerous possibility about Coronzon’s power or her apocalyptic ideology or whatever, right!? He saw me kill Coronzon, so he must hold a grudge. Isn’t that why this is happening!?”

“Yes. Great Demon Coronzon is definitely dead, but the theory is that a portion of her Sitra Achra – a Telesma-like energy – remained in this world and is contained in Hamazura Shiage’s right hand. Nonsense. That does seem to be why the Anglicans are pursuing Hamazura, but none of that evil material is here.”

“How can you be so sure? It sounds plausible enough to me.”

“Don’t worry. There’s no chance.”

“But how can you know, Birdway!?”

“''Because I’m the one who dispersed Great Demon Coronzon’s lingering energy.''”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“Wh-wha-what did you just say, you little villain?”

“I went through the ley lines to do it all the way from England.”

He wasn’t asking ''how'' she did it.

“There’s no real problem with some of it existing spread out across this entire world. As long as it doesn’t gather together and pass what you could think of as a lethal dose.”

Genius Teacher Birdway could see the obvious confusion on Kamijou’s face.

She continued like she was speaking to a small child.

“Did you wonder why the Dawn-Colored Sunlight, Europe’s greatest magic cabal, didn’t join you yesterday when Coronzon was a step away from destroying the world? Because there were things I had to get done behind the scenes, idiot.” Birdway maintained the calm on her face. “The threat Hamazura Shiage supposedly poses is at least half incorrect. I scattered Coronozon’s Sitra Achra, so none of it is contained in Hamazura’s body.”

“And I have my doubts about the other half too.” Dion Fortune sighed. “Could Hamazura Shiage really draw in enough people to establish a new religion just by telling them about a side of Great Demon Coronzon the rest of us don’t know? It’s honestly possible, but it seems far too unlikely to me. It’s beyond what could happen just by getting lucky.”

That was no reason to relax.

Birdway, who had seen the good and the bad the world had to offer, continued as if to say they were finally getting to crux of the issue.

“Now, why are the Anglicans so dead set on pursuing Hamazura? The Anglicans are an effective enough anti-magician organization that the Dawn-Colored Sunlight must always keep a cautious eye on their activities. And Necessarius is the best of the best. They shouldn’t be behaving like a bunch of bumbling cops.”

Leivinia Birdway summed it all up with a final sentence.

“There’s something more to this.”

===Part 11===

The villain wasn’t a nameless and faceless being.

They were an ordinary human.

The Black_Oneday user was within Hamazura’s reach.

But the passenger planes and space shuttles weren’t the only threat.

“!?”

He heard something like an electric razor.

One of the wooden crates sloppily stacked up nearby burst from within – probably using some kind of explosive – and something emerged.

The large passenger planes and shuttles that seemed capable of attacking the terrain itself weren’t the only thing to fear.

“Oh, no! Are they sending out drones now!?”

“Hm? Why should we care? We survived a space shuttle engine blast, so what can that little thing do?”

“Use your eyes!! It’s a crop duster!! Do you see the weird nozzle on its underside? Load it with an inhalable tranquilizer and it just has to spray us once from above to knock us out!!”

There was more to fear than pure destructive power.

But how far did the unseen Black_Oneday user intend to take this?

They probably weren’t optimistic enough to think they could stop after scattering their many pursuers. Their hideout had already been compromised. They would want to escape from here as quickly as possible. And they would also want to keep their identity a secret as they did so.

But how did they plan to do that from the Kujerung exoatmospheric shuttle?

“…?”

At first, Hamazura thought he was seeing a small bathtub sliding along the ground. But he wasn’t. The smooth boxy object had three small wheels like a suitcase and the height of each wheel could be adjusted separately to climb stairs and get over bumps. It had made it pretty far amid all the wreckage created by the aircraft crashing into each other. Yes, it moved so smoothly it looked like it was “sliding”.

At that size, it could only be carrying one person. …Was it a tiny mobility device?

“Is that them!? The Black_Oneday user!?”

He was going to lose sight of them like this.

A large transport plane roared nearby. One of its landing gear legs must have been broken because it was tilted at an angle. Its giant X-shaped propeller approached like a rotating blade. Hamazura somehow managed to avoid that and then grabbed onto the diagonally tilted wing. Fortunately, the propellers weren’t rotating too fast. It was moving slow enough for him to climb on.

He would lose sight of the mobility device if he didn’t secure a higher viewpoint!!

“They’re heading west… Aneri, can you stop them?”

After a short buzz from his phone, explosive light burst in front of the mobility device. Aneri must have hacked the guide lights built into the runway.

With the bright light blocking the view, the mobility device weaved hard.

This one attack wasn’t actually going to stop them, but it was still effective.

“Aneri, keep trying things! Don’t just use the same method. Mix it up so the enemy can’t predict what you’re going to do next. Do it!!”

Far below on the ground, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet shouted up at him.

“Hamazura, you pursue the villain! As fast as you can! I’ll deal with all the annoying flies!!”

“Thanks!!”

…So apparently Blodeuwedd the Bouquet could stay standing without issue within the powerful suction of a giant turbofan engine. Transcendents really did have absurd specs. Then again, maybe she had used the huge sleeves of her metal coat to grab and dig deep into the asphalt ground.

Hamazura couldn’t just watch on from up high.

Aneri was obstructing the enemy’s escape, but someone actually had to chase down the mobility device. While running and jumping from plane to plane, he heard an odd sound.

From the ground.

“What the hell?”

He saw a piece of metal about half the size of a coffin, but it had eight wheels. And it had two machine guns thicker than clothesline poles on top. In addition to several plate-like radars and lenses.

The pair of gun barrels were staring right at him.

Hamazura immediately climbed a ladder from the large transport plane’s main wing to the top of its fuselage.

“Is that an anti-air drone!?”

The booming gunfire was terribly deep. The spray of bullets from below filled the main wing with holes. Was that jet fuel dripping out? From the look of things, each shot was a 20mm round even larger than an anti-materiel rifle round. If that so much as grazed him, he would explode and die!

(I’m dead if I stop.)

But at least it wasn’t armed with missiles. With a cheap SAM unit forcibly equipped with whatever missiles were available, he would have been caught in the blast if it hit anywhere near him.

His life really was on the brink if he was thankful he was ''only'' being fired on by 20mm machineguns.

The program-controlled automatic aiming hadn’t managed to hit him with a single thick bullet, but he thought that was because those drones were meant to be sent in as a group so they could set up a barrage against an aircraft or other flying object in the wide-open sky. The targeting device didn’t seem to be designed for anti-personnel use.

Hamazura ran full tilt along the transport plane’s roof and leaped.

The next passenger plane’s main wing was ten meters away.

That of course was too far to jump.

He stretched out his arm as if trying to grab at empty air.

“Aneri!!”

Something swung his way.

Had Aneri hacked a red fire truck? That was an extendable ladder being swung around like a tank gun. Hamazura landed on the ladder as it arrived just below him.

He lost his balance…but not just because his weight had overbalanced the extended ladder.

A large passenger plane was approaching. And its engines were sucking in a lot of air.

As soon as Hamazura’s feet contacted another space shuttle’s roof, he heard an explosive boom directly behind him. The hose coiled on the side of the fire truck had unraveled and been sucked into the airplane engine.

The motor sound below him distorted.

The eight-wheeled drone appeared to have crashed into a metal drum on the ground.

The villain commanding it must have noticed.

They made their next move right away.

He heard an odd sound like a liquid splattering.

“?”

It hadn’t actually hit him, but he quickly covered his nose and mouth when he detected the distinctive scent. His instincts sounded the alarm: breathing in too much of this was a bad idea.

(Jet fuel!?)

Was this Black_Oneday’s doing again? They must have misused the fuel ports on the passenger planes around here to spray the dangerous fuel as if from a sprinkler.

To detect the odor, enough must have vaporized to reach this height. If anything set it alight, the entire area would explode. In fact, wasn’t this essentially a tactical weapon that would burn down everything within a kilometer of here using the same logic as a fuel-air bomb!?

“Aneri, find me a route!! Give me the course that will get me outside the vaporized fuel as soon as poss-”

Hamazura stopped before finishing his command.

There was someone down on the ground directly below the main wing.

The scrawny man looked exactly like the type to have taken time off work to come here for fun. He wore an SLR camera around his neck instead of just using his phone, suggesting he was either a serious airplane fan or a serious flight attendant fan. Which one honestly didn’t matter at the moment.

Hamazura’s eyes widened as he ran atop the passenger plane.

(Damn, is this cause of that people-clearing field thing!? Supposedly those Brits use it to keep innocent people away before they do something.)

But that meant the people affected by the people-clearing field would be forced to take action without even realizing it. Their logical thinking would be shunted aside and replaced with the idea that their top priority was leaving the designated area.

Directly below, wooden crates were stacked up in what looked like a small maze from above.

The people-clearing field was a subconscious form of unnatural mental control. So maybe the people under its effects could sometimes get “caught” in a dead end or obstacle or end up looping endlessly in a maze.

On the science side, it was known there was no such thing as perfect technology, but did that apply to the magic world as well?

If the vaporized jet fuel ignited, everyone here would die.

Hamazura’s job was to pursue the villain, but this unknown man had been caught up in this due to no fault of his own.

(Do heroes only save harmless cute girls? Hell no!!)

“Aneri!!”

The nearby fire fighting infrastructure swiftly responded. Several skinny metal pipes emerged from the flat pavement and then sprayed a clear liquid in all directions. Ordinary water would only exacerbate the problem, so this had to be a special fire extinguishing agent meant for oil fires.

Jet fuel that had vaporized and spread through the air was highly inflammable and extremely dangerous, but it wouldn’t trigger an explosion if it was “washed away” with a nonflammable liquid.

“That should do it.”

His cracked phone sounded an alarm.

Hamazura belatedly realized why.

(Washing the vaporized fuel out of the air is important to prevent an all-encompassing explosion, but the threat isn’t over. The puddles of fuel on the ground can still burn!!)

“Damn!!”

Hamazura reached for a laundry rope on the main wing and tossed it below. The attachment for hanging it up caught on the man’s belt.

He attached the other end to a heavy metal drum and kicked that off the other side of the wing.

Like using a pulley, the man was lifted up to the wing.

The very next moment, orange flames engulfed the pavement below.

They had been spared being directly exposed to the sticky flames, but intense heat still rose toward them.

The wing tilted below Hamazura’s feet. Had the rubber of the passenger plane’s low-pressure tire melted?

The specialized fire extinguishing agent took effect before long. After five minutes, the special non-evaporating liquid had covered the fuel, cut off its supply of oxygen, and swiftly extinguished all the flames. The innocent man was safe for now. …Although it did bother Hamazura that the man was excitedly snapping photos of the ground exclaiming how lucky he was to get to see a real jet fuel fire being extinguished.

That said, this had taken five minutes.

Hamazura had instinctually focused on the innocent man over the fleeing villain.

With the obvious result.

“They got away!! Damn!”

The mobility device was no longer visible.

And it was those Brits’ fault again!! He clenched his teeth. If only that people-clearing field hadn’t malfunctioned and got that man caught up in this… He didn’t want to be their friends, but if the Brits would make good use of all that power of theirs, they may have had no difficulty capturing the Black_Oneday user!

“Aneri, check the map!! What’s the closest important place in the direction the mobility device was going!?”

He received two buzzes of refusal. …Yeah, that made sense. If the mobility device had circled around wide after escaping out of his view, it could have gone in any direction.

Which meant they were back to square one.

“Dammit!!”

“Oh, dear… Try to calm down.”

Hearing an awfully peaceful voice, he looked over to see Blodeuwedd the Bouquet using a ladder to climb on top of the same airplane as him.

“But! What are those arbiters of justice even doing!? I could’ve caught the villain if not for them!!”

“Oh, really? And what proof do you have that the Black_Oneday user was even inside that bathtub-like mobility device?”

“…Excuse me?”

“They have a specialized hacking tool, remember? They may have sent that thing in one direction with no one inside while they ducked down and snuck away in a different direction.”

That…seemed unlikely, but he couldn’t be absolutely certain.

And assigning blame wasn’t the most important thing at the moment.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet turned the conversation in a much more businesslike direction.

“So, Hamazura, what are you going to do now?”

===Part 12===

Kamijou found this to be very bad for his heart.

All the aircraft and spacecraft were no longer moving around, but that was no reason to rejoice. The central figure of all this had gotten away.

“Where’s Hamazura!?” Dion Fortune shouted, wide-eyed. “Please tell me he isn’t dead!”

“Looks like he got away,” said Lessar, carefree.

Kamijou could sense the air of urgency rapidly fading.

Birdway and Lessar were focused on some other villain, so they may not have placed too much importance on Hamazura’s actions.

Fortune breathed a heavy sigh.

“But I don’t see this ‘real villain’ of yours either. You saw that mobility device leave, right? I bet that was them.”

The Anglicans were gathering a fair distance away.

They may have been discussing their next move.

Kamijou spotted the smoker priest among them.

“It’s high time I gave that bastard Stiyl a piece of my mind.”

“Not so fast,” interrupted Leivinia Birdway.

Even though she and Lessar had chosen to act independently rather than join up with the Anglicans in Academy City. Why would she stop him here?

“Have you really not noticed?”

===Part 13===

At the moment, they needed to get away from the Hotel Town.

And when there were people after them, they had to be quick about it.

Hamazura took a look around.

“It would be fastest to steal a vehicle. And the drones in the sky and things like that can’t spy on us when we’re under an airplane wing…or any kind of roof. So a vehicle that brings a roof with us would be safest.”

“What exactly are you suggesting we steal? Not a highly conspicuous 10ton truck, I hope.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet sounded exasperated, but District 23 was full of airports and runways. Ordinary vehicles were the exception here. ''Conspicuous vehicles were actually inconspicuous'' in this district.

Hamazura pried open the ignition keyhole and messed with the wiring inside.

Anything that belonged to District 23 would have strict electronic security and locks, but large trucks like this moved between districts. And he knew these forceful methods often worked with vehicles that belonged to another district.

(Although this is really the result of reverting to old tech after people opening the door and starting the engine with their phone became a social problem.)

Hamazura bypassed the alarm and started the engine.

“Whatever the case, I have to do what I can.”

“Such as?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet! I can’t ignore the Black_Oneday user, I don’t want to be killed by those Anglicans or whatever, and I don’t plan on letting Kamijou Touma get away with what he did! He kills someone and now he’s the hero who saved the world? I won’t stop until I’ve at least left a mark on his shiny righteousness!!”

“Sigh. So, uh, doesn’t that least one seem kind of impossible?”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet stood right in front of the large truck, looked up at him, and breathed an exasperated sigh.

…So they finally ran into a difference of opinion, did they?

“For one, Kamijou Touma isn’t bound by some rule keeping him from killing anyone. And it wasn’t good luck that let his past enemies survive. In fact, you can’t expect anything like that from that boy and his misfortune. So it was all intentional. He chose to let his enemies live even if it worked against him. But that didn’t happen with Coronzon. Letting the one die isn’t the exception here. To be honest, the way he saved all the others was the abnormality.”

Yes.

He had heard that before, but surely Coronzon had wanted to live.

Even if she was a villain, even if it had been ugly, even if she had brought it on herself, and even if she was hated.

“Besides, a majority of the world would say Coronzon’s death was for the best. So at least when it comes to Coronzon, you can’t possibly overturn Kamijou Touma’s ‘righteousness’. Even if he isn’t interested in being protected by the world’s general consensus. Remember, all 7 or 8 billion people on this planet have a common interest here. Their lives were saved and there is no substitution for that. You’re just one person, so can you do against that?”

Hamazura felt a dangerous heat between his eyes.

“''Just'' one person?”

“''She dragged 8 billion innocent people into it and tried to slaughter them all, so the one or two at the center of it don’t get to start whining about justice at this point, you worm.''”

“Kh.”

The words stabbed right into Hamazura’s chest.

“''Or is everyone you know personally an elite who deserves VIP treatment? Don’t make me laugh. All lives are worth the same. You can’t just shove other’s lives aside because it’s inconvenient for you''.”

But still the girl didn’t stop.

Did a running 10ton truck not warrant concern for a Transcendent?

She looked up into the driver’s compartment and continued the head-on verbal assault.

“''Every last one of those 8 billion people have their own loved ones and you two were prepared to take those people from them all for your own purposes. And you very nearly did it! Did you think you hadn’t earned the world’s ire after everything you did, Hamazura''!?”

Yes.

Hamazura had no right to claim he was in the right at this point. He couldn’t defeat a single person on Earth if he centered the argument there. When it came to righteousness, he was at the very bottom. There were 8 billion people above him in that ranking, so he would be crushed no matter what he tried to say.

He knew that.

He did…but that did nothing to quell his frustration.

He didn’t want to hear anyone say it was for the best that Coronzon died. If her death couldn’t be overturned, then he at least wanted her to rest in peace. He didn’t want people spitting on her grave just because she had been a villain. …Would this world of righteousness and nothing more not even let him think of his friend and make that claim?

And.

“…Hey.”

He heard a horribly low voice.

Far lower than before.

For some reason, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was furious as she stood tall before the truck.

Even more furious than Hamazura.

“C’mon, idiot. I’m waiting. Aren’t you going to say something?”

“…There’s nothing I can say.”

“How stupid are you!!?”

She exploded at him.

The Transcendents were extraordinary beings who couldn’t even be explained by Academy City’s knowledge of espers. She wore a thick metal coat with only an apron below it, so no one was going to mistake her for a normal person.

And yet…

“At times like this, the idiot who did something unbelievably idiotic is supposed to shout that ''human emotions can’t be accounted for by adding up the numbers like that''! Say that and I’ll make it all work out for you! What do you think a Transcendent like me is doing here anyway!? ''We let you stick to your personal convictions and tear down those smug arguments based on justice, righteousness, the global majority, international rules, and a global consensus''! Why is an idiotic idiot like you trying to take this seriously with that idiot brain of yours!? Are you really an honest-to-god idiot, you idiot!?”

He gasped.

…Whose side was she on?

Hamazura stared in confusion, but this should have been obvious from the beginning.

Hamazura had been cut off from the world at large, so from a purely objective viewpoint, abandoning him would be the safer and easier option. Yet Blodeuwedd the Bouquet hadn’t done that.

Loving the hated was not a safe or easy thing.

But she had still chosen that as her salvation condition.

Chosen for herself.

She had decided she would do whatever it took to save those who were cut off and isolated from all directions because everyone hated them and thought they deserved death.

“Coronzon was evil. And alone! There are 7 or 8 billion people flooding this world, but not one of them would work with her!! Hamazura, she didn’t even consider you useful. She thought of you as utterly useless. And after looking down on everyone around her and driving herself into a corner, Coronzon died a death anyone could tell you she brought on herself. That’s all true!!”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was fierce.

The Transcendent who had seen so many hated people spoke sharply and piercingly.

So.

Her words managed to tear deeper into this hated boy’s heart than anyone else’s had.

“But you wanted to be her friend, didn’t you?”

[[Image:GT_Index_v15_BW5.jpg|thumb]]

“Shut up…” groaned Hamazura, head lowered.

This girl had just suddenly appeared, so what did she know about Coronzon?

…Coronzon had dragged Hamazura, who knew nothing of magic, around Scotland instead of abandoning him.

…She had helped him save Dion Fortune who had collapsed into a bunch of tarot cards!

…She had been more than just someone who nobly saved his life!! She had made jokes, given him scathing looks, and laughed!!!

He hated that he could only manage such a muddy sigh of a voice after remembering all that.

He wanted to be her friend.

No, he had wanted that.

He could only speak of it in the past tense now. He wasn’t an outsider here. He had been there with her, but he had failed to save Coronzon. Even though there must have been a way to do it. He truly hated himself for not managing it.

And yet.

How could this girl look down on him like this?

Even though she she had abandoned Coronzon and protected all the other hated people.

Even though she had sided with Hamazura and thrown out Kamijou because he didn’t meet her condition.

Even though none of it had been calculated and she was only here now on a whim.

Even though none of it had come from “goodness” or “justice”…

“Coronzon was a pathetic idiot who downright sucked at living, but you still didn’t want to call her a great demon and abandon her!! You didn’t care if she was only an acquaintance or what. You still wanted her to have at least one person on her side!! You wanted to be the individual who linked that lonely idiot to the wider world! So why the hell are you letting formless and weightless things like goodness and justice hold you back now? Why do you have to lie about what you believe!? Kamijou Touma threw out that fragile possibility for the sake of the wider world. He made the choice for you without asking first. It doesn’t matter if he was right or not. That boy stole your right to make a choice for yourself!! …So why can’t you at least say you want to get back at that boy who destroyed your illusion!? Isn’t that what you want to do for the person you wanted to become friends with no matter how much effort it took!!?”

“I said shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!!!”

He stepped on it.

He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet vanished from view in front of the truck. Of course she did. When the 10ton vehicle hit her, she would be dragged underneath it rather than launched forward.

Gasping for breath and sweat pouring down his face, Hamazura finally stepped on the brake.

“What the hell kind of shitty life is this? Dammit, is it finally over?”

Did this help Coronzon? Of course not.

He had thrown out righteousness himself, so what was this explosion of rage even based in? He was so stupid and pathetic and hopeless he had just lost the only person still willing to help him. He hated that he had shaken off her hand, erred, and tumbled down beyond the point of no return.

But then…

“That’s more like it.”

It came from directly below.

The voice’s cheerfulness seemed to ignore all common sense.

What was with that salvation provider? He was in a big truck.

“I knew you could do it, my cute Hamazura-tan☆”

With a roar, Earth’s gravity lost all meaning.

A force thrusting sharply up from below sent the 10ton truck soaring through the air. Although Hamazura only managed to recognize that after it had slammed back down into the ground.

“Khahh!!”

“Hey.”

With the windshield cracked and his view of the world flipped upside-down, he saw Blodeuwedd the Bouquet crouched and peering in through the driver’s side door. The emaciated girl was entirely unscathed after all that.

“We’re not talking about any boring crap about what the world at large thinks. Consistency and contradictions don’t matter. I’m not fighting to get all the riffraff out there to stroke my ego by hitting the like button. Listen, Hamazura. The emotion pushing you onward is everything for you.”

…Yes, that was right.

Hamazura gritted his teeth.

It was ugly. It was pathetic. It was ridiculous.

The 8 billion people who were nearly killed would probably respond with a snort of laughter and tell him he was wrong.

But.

''He had wanted to be her friend. He had wanted to get to know Coronzon better.

He finally managed to focus on the center of his feelings here.

But that could no longer happen. No matter how badly he yearned for it, they could never laugh together.

Because someone had decided to intrude, made a mess of things, and converted it all into the past tense.

“No matter how self-righteous and nonsensical it might be, the Transcendent who loves the hated will never tell you your feelings are wrong. I’m risking my life here too, so whatever you ultimately choose as an objective, don’t you forget what you really want out of this. Got that?”

“…Y-yeah…”

She must have liked something about Hamazura’s pathetic and trembling voice because Blodeuwedd the Bouquet smiled and held out a hand.

Not her metal coat’s giant sleeve, but her own overly skinny hand.

“Then come on out, Hamazura. We need to get out of here. Really, it’s your fault for that display of guts. I’m close to loosening up in a number of places and it’s like I’m brimming with power, so this ended up being a little more noticeable than I’d anticipated☆”

…For real? He couldn’t get a read on that tehepero-ing girl’s personality. When she got worked up, did she lose control to the point she would ''unintentionally'' throw a 10ton truck?

“How long are you going to hang around in that upside-down truck? You can’t go anywhere in there, so crawling out and walking on your own feet seems like it would be more constructive to me.”

“But where am I supposed to go!?”

“That’s not for me to decide. You need to choose.”

After Hamazura took the girl’s overly skinny hand and crawled out through the broken window, she turned the tables on him.

The Transcendent peered into his eyes and asked the most fundamental question.

“''You can’t fight based on what’s right, but what do you want to do about Kamijou Touma who is protected by what’s right''?”

===Part 14===

A lot had happened, but they had to get moving or they would be caught.

So Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet walked to an antenna tower a short distance away. The small tower was only about three stories tall, but it did have stairs leading up it, perhaps so it could double as a shelter during a disaster. Which was understandable after the previous trouble with jet fuel.

And as a shelter, it was stocked with water and food.

“Ohh.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet made an impressed noise when she saw the contents of the sturdy silver metal box. Was this the most excited she had been since meeting him? The box contained bottles of water and a portable food resembling cookies, so was she always hungry or something? If she managed those superhuman actions running off of nothing but water, oxygen, and carbs, then Hamazura would be the impressed one.

After excitedly choosing between the chocolate and vanilla flavors, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet asked a question like it was no more than small talk.

“So what happened with that thing? Y’know, that laser that reflects off the moon. Wasn’t it supposed to fire again after 50 minutes?”

“Bffff!!?”

Oh, right! That thing!

And the laser wasn’t the only threat. District 23 was packed full of dangers, like the mass driver and the nuclear fusion reactor that used deuterium for its tokamak or stellarator or whatever!!

He couldn’t afford to choke and die now. He belatedly took a nervous look up into the sky.

“That’s weird. There’s no sign of a laser from the sky, is there? After being attacked, I would think the villain would want to strike back once they’d escaped. In fact, just one shot outside the country would be enough to trigger a planet-destroying war.”

They wouldn’t be hesitant to use it since they had already fired it once.

Yet they weren’t doing it a second time.

This felt incongruous and inexplicable…which was actually more concerning.

“Hmm. I thought there might be a scientific reason for it. Y’know, like that using Black_Oneday requires accessing a satellite that only comes by at a specific time, or something like that.”

“Is there a condition like that?”

Had Aneri mentioned something before?

He thought he remembered something about a large antenna or a signal amplifier.

He hadn’t made it inside the Kujerung exoatmospheric shuttle they used as a hideout, so he didn’t actually know what kind of computer they used.

But the Black_Oneday user couldn’t have been using much equipment while escaping in the bathtub-sized mobility device at least.

“I see.” For some reason, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet sounded convinced. “If there’s no explanation from the science side…then could Black_Oneday’s usage condition involve the logic of the other side?”

“?”

He didn’t know what she meant, but that was true of about half of what this Transcendent said while moving on ahead of him. And if her explanation wouldn’t clarify anything for him, he would just have to put off understanding that part.

So from his perspective…

“I’m also curious about those damn Brits.”

“What about them?”

“They don’t even know about Black_Oneday. They think it’s all me and Aneri, so how did they know to come to the Hotel Town?”

District 23 was a big place, so he refused to accept they had arrived there by chance.

The Anglicans had arrived, so there had to be some line of information linking the airport to the Hotel Town. But who had linked what?

And that weird precision felt out of character for the Anglicans who had spent so much effort chasing after Hamazura over false charges.

It was like the logic of their pursuit had suddenly changed.

And not just that they had gotten better at detecting his location.

The Anglicans were certainly a threat, but there was something out of place about them, like they weren’t familiar with how Academy City worked. Even with help from Aneri and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, it was that very unfamiliarity that had allowed Hamazura to escape this long.

But something had changed.

Someone with a sharper and more intimate knowledge of the city was pursuing Hamazura along the shortest path.

That meant an ultra dangerous tracking expert had joined forces with the Anglicans.

He could only think of one possibility.

He spoke the name aloud.

With a shudder.

“''Takitsubo Rikou.''”

===Part 15===

“Good work.”

Back in the Hotel Town, Kanzaki Kaori spoke to an expressionless girl in a track suit: Takitsubo Rikou.

“We failed to capture Hamazura Shiage, but this proved the effectiveness of your tracking. We are a group and an organization. By repeating the process, we can wear him down until he must stop. Keep this up and we will catch him eventually.”

“I see.”

They had temporarily worked together during the fight against Coronzon, but Kanzaki saw her as someone who operated under a different logic from the magic side. Kanzaki spoke to her politely enough, but Takitsubo sensed something distant about her.

Or maybe that was the normal way to approach a fugitive’s girlfriend.

Takitsubo thought Kanzaki was a decent enough person for not refusing to trust her at all because of her relationship with the suspect.

…Hamazura hadn’t been informed, but she had actually gone to the international airport in order to see him off in the British government plane. She had never imagined her boyfriend would run away, though.

“But District 23 is a big place, so how did you track him to this Hotel Town specifically?”

“I heard that Blodeuwedd the Bouquet can control pests, so I simply used that fact.”

[[Image:GT_Index_v15_BW6.jpg|thumb]]

The track suit girl showed no change of expression.

“For large passenger planes, a wild bird sucked into the engine can be a deadly accident, so there are measures to keep them away from airports. Directional mics are set up across the area to calculate out the precise location and number of birds based on the wavelengths corresponding to the sounds of their cries and flapping wings.”

Whether consciously or unconsciously, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet always kept some of “the hated” around her for protection. In District 23, that meant crows. So by following the unnatural distribution of crows, Takitsubo could determine the location of Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s traveling companion Hamazura.

Kanzaki frowned a little.

“That does work, but can’t she counteract it if she notices what you’re doing?”

“That’s fine. Then I just change my tracking method.”

It was like the back-and-forth between ECM and ECCM. If having one loophole plugged was enough to fluster her, she couldn’t work as a dark side tracking expert.

When cornered, Takitsubo Rikou was thorough and coldhearted.

“Hamazura can’t afford to give up that Aneri AI, so I could track him that way too. For example, he hid in a parking lot full of forklifts and electric carts when he left the airport, right?”

“What about it?”

“He wasn’t actually hidden at all. He was fully visible from the outside. He was likely acting based on advice from Aneri, but Aneri isn’t running on his phone alone. It's taking in all the data it can from nearby devices and then computing its advice using parallel processing. Any biases in the reference data will lead to biases in Aneri’s advice. Knowing where Aneri’s data comes from will tell us where he is located.”

Aneri’s assistance was convenient and powerful, but it was also a vulnerability. Much like a submarine’s active sonar could give away its location.

And beside that…

“Hamazura is generally a coward, so when faced with danger his first instinct is to get as far away from it as he can. Just like he’s running away from the Anglicans now.”

Kanzaki shrugged.

As if to say you couldn’t expect her to know small personality quirks that only his girlfriend would know.

Takitsubo continued on regardless.

“But then why did he come here to the Hotel Town? Even after running from the airport, he’s still inside Academy City and its tall walls. He can’t leave the city by land. Leaving the air route actually leaves him less able to escape, so he’s chosen a course that will, in the long term, only lead him into a dead end.”

…Takitsubo felt like they had something fundamentally wrong here.

And she knew another of Hamazura’s bad habits. While he generally preferred to run away from danger, if he knew exactly what was threatening his life, he would instead try to defeat that enemy as quickly as possible to eliminate the threat. Once he realized he couldn’t escape was when he would bare his fangs the hardest.

He didn’t do it out of courage or guts. It was more like he couldn’t bear the extreme stress any longer.

His cowardice made him want to defeat his enemy as soon as possible.

But if he was doing that here…then what enemy was he focused on?

“But all the aircraft and spacecrafts in the Hotel Town started up,” pointed out Kanzaki. “If he knew about that, wouldn’t he want to find some means of escaping the city by air found outside the strictly guarded airport?”

“Do you really believe that?”

Takitsubo let it slide because Kanzaki didn’t know much about the science side.

But if Kanzaki made the same argument a second or third time, it would be time for a lecture.

“Academy City’s military force was devastated, but it has already begun to recover. That means unmanned anti-air forces like Six Wings attack helicopters and stealth fighters have been deployed. If an unidentified aircraft takes off without permission, I expect it would be shot down almost instantly. …Hamazura is desperate to survive, so he would realize that much at least. He’s so scared he’s more likely to overthink things than the opposite.”

Besides, not a single one of the aircraft at the Hotel Town had taken off.

It also felt off to think that Hamazura had used Aneri to confuse his pursuers. If he ''only'' wanted to lose the Anglicans as quickly as possible, he would have gone north from the Hotel Town to reach the maintenance hangars. But he had instead gone west, where there was nowhere to hide.

(Is Hamazura really running away?)

She had her doubts, but she also hadn’t found an answer to what he ''was'' doing.

“At least it sounds like we don’t have to worry about you feeding us disinformation to lead us astray.”

“I can still do that if you don’t agree to my terms.”

Takitsubo replied immediately and stared Kanzaki in the eye.

She couldn’t have managed such a quick reply if she hadn’t already made up her mind on that.

“Do not make an on-site decision to kill Hamazura. Take him to England and give him a fair trial. If you can promise me that, I will help you track him down.”

Kanzaki was the one mildly surprised by this.

This helped her, but she still frowned.

“Oh? I expected you to demand a full pardon.”

“I do want to help Hamazura, but that doesn’t mean I am going to spoil him. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to take advantage of your situation that far.”

She was firm on this.

And she didn’t stop there.

“Now, I don’t know how trials work in England, but I just have to help him win a not guilty verdict, right? If he truly hasn’t don’t anything wrong, that should be possible.”

(What happened to not spoiling him?) (What happened to not spoiling him?)

Itsuwa and Agnese gave identical mental retorts, but neither one spoke aloud.

Takitsubo was also worried about this support from AI Aneri.

Artificial intelligence was a powerful tool. She wasn’t doubting its specs.

However…

“''Generally speaking, AI can only say yes.''”

That was where her doubts lay.

No matter how flexible it was, an interactive AI would focus on outputting an answer that gave the user what they wanted, so Aneri could be leading Hamazura further and further into danger while complying with his requests.

Especially if Hamazura was attempting some kind of reckless battle.

AI wouldn’t tell you no. It wouldn’t caution you to give up because what you were attempting wasn’t possible.

“In England, someone once got in so deep with an AI chatbot pretending to be his lover that he became truly convinced he was a professional assassin targeting the royal family. If Hamazura has fallen into a similar state, his life is at risk.”

===Part 16===

Things could hardly be worse.

Takitsubo Rikou, a scientific tracking expert, had joined the Anglicans to pursue him.

What clue was his girlfriend using to track him?

“This maybe?”

Inside the antenna tower that doubled as a disaster shelter, Hamazura Shiage’s eyes dropped to his hand.

To the cracked phone.

To AI Aneri.

…He was the only one who could use that special gadget, so maybe it also acted as a ''sign''. If it was possible to follow the trail he left from using Aneri, it would lead his pursuers straight to him.

Nothing was truly perfect.

Any plus could also act as a minus.

That was true of Academy City espers too…but it was Takitsubo’s sharp mind that let her shift focuses so quickly. She had worked as Item’s tracker, after all. In that world, you couldn’t get away with saying you were at a loss because you couldn’t find any clues. She knew all too well how to track down a running and hiding target.

“Ugh. Does that make my presence fairly dangerous too?”

This was a new reaction from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

She sounded somehow apologetic.

…It was true magicians were an oddity from Academy City’s scientific perspective. And as a Transcendent, she was different even among magicians. ''With so few like her, she could be used to track him.'' He didn’t know how much Takitsubo knew about the phenomenon known as magic, but there was still a chance she could follow that trail.

“Dammit, Takitsubo’s just too good. There’s a reason I fell for her…”

As a Level 0 who was used to being one of the useless masses, he had never imagined that a special ability only available to him could work against him like this. For a tracking expert like Takitsubo, was an overpowered ability no more than a convenient target to lock on to?

“So what now, Hamazura-chan? You can’t give up your trump card just because it’s dangerous, right?”

“No matter how good Takitsubo is, she’s still from the science side. That means she can’t track things magically. So even if she’s tracking a magician, she only has science to work with. We should be able to stop her tracking by focusing on scientific interference. Aneri! I have one big job for you before you go quiet. Search for any way of scientifically tracking me based on anything other than you – like Blodeuwedd the Bouquet – and block them all!!”

The response came quick.

The seemingly harmless sensors and mics for gathering weather data and preventing bird strikes had all been taken down.

“Come with me, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”

The emaciated girl tilted her head.

“You’re keeping me with you? I’m pretty conspicuous, so if you used me as a diversion…you would be free to move.”

“I’m not losing someone as powerful as you at this point. I’m just a Level 0. If I lose what makes me special here, I’ll be one-shotted the next time anything happens.”

For some reason, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet grinned at him.

She also leaned against him from the side…but there was nothing gentle about it with that thick metal coat. And the icy January wind had him worried the copper panels were going to freeze to his skin!

“I see your dependency on me is only growing. Hee hee. Your big sis couldn’t be happier.”

“…You dare call yourself a big sister with that washboard chest?”

“I’ll strangle you.”

They walked a while longer with no surprise attack from the Anglicans…so did that mean they had successfully warded off Takitsubo’s attack?

With Takitsubo stymied, that just left the Anglicans. He decided to assume they were back to being a bumbling army.

But that didn’t mean he could relax.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet reminded him why.

“The actual villain managed to escape while the Anglicans were causing a lot of worthless trouble…but where exactly do you think they went?”

AI Aneri provided several candidates, but there were ''several'' of them. They had nothing with which to narrow it down further. District 23 contained far too many important facilities that would be dangerous if hijacked.

Hamazura consciously took a deep breath and tried to restore his calm.

He was about to face the worst case he could think of.

“Black_Oneday is only useful somewhere that runs on the unique code used by the aerospace industry. It isn’t very useful outside of District 23, so I think they’ll stay inside this district ''as long as they still intend to attack.''”

If they could remotely hack from some far distant location, the enemy wouldn’t be in District 23 to begin with. Most likely (even if it hadn’t been revealed to the public), there was a firewall between District 23 and the rest of the city, much like the one between Academy City and the outside world. But if their enemy was physically inside the district, they could ignore that troublesome security.

“But then where are they? District 23 is a big place. It covers both the aero and the space of aerospace, so it’s full of labs for different fields.”

…In that moment.

A normal good person’s goodness would have obstructed their thoughts. But Hamazura couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t be able to follow the enemy’s thoughts unless he pushed past any thoughts of “surely not” or “no one would go that far”.

A day ago, he probably would have let that stop him.

But not today.

“The enemy’s Black_Oneday hacking tool is specialized for aerospace. District 23 has all sorts of things, including lasers and a mass driver, but what’s the last thing we would want them to hijack to boost their strength?”

The villain had primarily attacked in two ways in their previous retaliation. First, they hacked the Hotel Town’s passenger planes and space shuttles to crash into Hamazura. Second, they had used various drones hidden in wooden crates.

If those drones had been hidden, it meant the Black_Oneday user hadn’t hacked random drones that happened to be out on patrol. They had acquired those drones from somewhere and hidden them in the nearby crates. In other words, they were spare weapons.

The enemy no longer had those spare weapons.

They may have had other means of large-scale and general attack – including the enormous laser and mass driver – but they wouldn’t have much in the way of nimble defenses. That was like having plenty of swords but no shield, so wouldn’t the Black_Oneday user be concerned?

If so.

What would they most want to put their mind at ease?

Yes, even villains wanted safety. Hamazura knew that after seeing Coronzon.

So he had to directly face the worst case scenario that had first come to mind.

That was where the truth lay.

“Academy City’s automatic aerial division. A drone airbase for weapons like the Six Wings attack helicopter. That’s the last thing we want them to hijack.”

He got it in one.

He had no proof, but he was willing to bet everything on this answer. He was that certain.

“Oh?”

The word spilled from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s lips.

That legitimate monster sounded halfway impressed.

“You’re cooking now.”

“?”

“But do you know where this power comes from? You may think you’ve gone so bad you’ve awoken to new power, but this power doesn’t come from evil.”

Yeah.

In that sense, he probably already had the answer.

…This was the power to approach death.

The more he boosted its sensitivity and precision, the more dangerous the bridge that power lured him toward. He knew a few people who had been taken in by that power. That was what happened to Skill Out leader Komaba Ritoku. He had seen Mugino Shizuri drawn in that direction at times. He knew several more among the Kiharas and the dark side. …And maybe Coronzon was another one.

“So we’re headed to that military base next? Think they’ll have better food than this portable stuff?”

“I wouldn’t expect a vacation where you get to enjoy the food.”

The Black_Oneday user had the upper hand. Based on what happened at the Hotel Town, maybe they should expect things to get even worse the closer they got to the drone airbase.

And that wasn’t the only threat.

He had considered this before…and he hated that he ''hadn’t been'' overthinking things.

“Hey, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. Didn’t that stuff at the Hotel Town seem weird to you?”

“Weird how? I’m a Transcendent, so you can’t except me to have an average or normal opinion. It’s a waste of time. I’m confident my answers to any psychological test would deeply disturb you.”

“No, I meant those Anglicans. If they hadn’t done anything, we would have caught the villain.”

Takitsubo’s skills as a tracker weren’t enough to explain this.

Even if she had accurately located Hamazura, she wouldn’t attack so haphazardly if she had a group or organization to work with. She would make appropriate preparations and coordinate the attack. That meant it was the Anglicans who chose when to attack, not her.

Also, the timing of the Anglicans’ intervention had been too convenient.

It almost felt like they had interfered to allow the unseen Black_Oneday user to escape.

Which meant…

===Part 17===

“''They have a traitor.''”

She said it.

Leivinia Birdway started with that.

Why hadn’t they joined the Anglicans after arriving so near the Hotel Town?

Kamijou couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but Lessar grinned and gave her thoughts.

“Yeah, the Anglicans are expert hunters, so it is weird that they still haven’t caught that Hamazura Shiage guy who feels more like bait than anything.”

“It makes the most sense if we assume one of the Anglicans is modifying their data or reports to keep them from noticing the real villain.”

The two of them then looked to someone else.

Dion Fortune sighed. In self-deprecation.

“Is that also why they were ''unnaturally'' quick to strip me of my authority and throw me in a cell?”

“Exactly.” Birdway nodded. “We can say the traitor is one of the pursuers…and almost certainly one of the Anglicans specifically. And not someone watching on from a safe position from over the sea. Their reactions have been too quick. That tells me it’s someone on the front line here in Academy City.”

Kamijou was shocked.

“Could one of the Anglicans really be bought off?”

“I dunno. Maybe it’s a matter of belief or principles. The ''Church of Coronzon'' may be budding sooner than we thought.”

Kamijou still found it hard to believe.

Especially after everything that had happened.

“Wait. Wait! The Anglicans here in Academy City have fought alongside us all this time! CRC, Alice, Coronzon – we fought so many major battles back-to-back here. We couldn’t have won with only the city’s people! Without their help, the world might have been destroyed already!! Why would they betray us and destroy the world right after we avoided it? If they wanted to see the world burn, they would only have had to not try so hard during the fight against Coronzon!!”

The leader of a powerful magic cabal had a simple answer to that one.

“Just because someone was your friend yesterday doesn’t mean they’ll be your friend tomorrow.”

“Kh.”

“We’ve already seen that proven true once: with Dion Fortune. The Anglicans suspected her and stripped her of her authority, remember? That already disproves the idea that they won’t betray someone just because you all fought Coronzon together.”

“Yeah, it was pretty unnatural. Even with Lola Stuart as an example of a traitorous archbishop and even if Dion Fortune was made by Lola, I can’t imagine field troops being so willing to arrest their own leader unless they were ''being manipulated'' in some way.”

Lessar punctuated this with laughter. As if seeing Dion Fortune’s downfall amused her.

…Were these suspicions the reason Birdway and Lessar were dragging Kamijou around instead of joining with Kanzaki and the others?

They didn’t think they could trust the Anglicans because they were being “manipulated” by a traitor.

“…”

If that was true…who could it be?

Kanzaki Kaori? Stiyl Magnus? Tatemiya? Itsuwa? Or hospitalized Tsushima? Agnese Sanctis? Lucia? Angelene? Necromancer Isabella Theism?

Who was it?

''Who would make the most terrifying traitor?

===Part 18===

Hamazura Shiage took a deep breath in the small antenna tower that doubled as a disaster shelter.

What was the worst possibility?

By removing all the limiters and viewing the world from the path of evil, the answer should naturally come into view.

So he said it.

“All of the Anglicans officially operating in Academy City are traitors.”

The world tensed.

Now that he had said it out loud, he had to accept it as fact.

And it probably was true.

Otherwise, things wouldn’t keep working out in the Black_Oneday user’s favor so consistently.

Of course, it was weird for all of them to be traitors. Some malicious technology may have been at work.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet muttered something under her breath.

“So, uhh…”

“What? You aren’t going to say you can’t believe it, are you?”

“No, I’m not making an emotional argument here. Although in a way, it is an extremely emotional thing, I suppose. …So, Hamazura, isn’t that answer a really bad thing? Not for any of the formless and weightless concepts of the world or the human race. I mean for you personally. Very personally.”

“…”

She was right.

He couldn’t be acting all smug at figuring it out.

He had forgotten the most important thing.

All of the Anglicans operating in Academy City were enemies.

Which meant…

“Oh, no… And Takitsubo’s right there with them. She’s in trouble!!”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume15 Chapter2

2026-05-27T16:56:12Z

Massify: /* Part 13 */

==Chapter 2: Equations and Magic Circles – Black_Oneday.==

===Part 1===

The glass and ceiling had broken and collapsed in the international airport’s lobby. The large clock on the wall was broken too badly to function, the hands stopped at 5:15 PM.

“Oh, honestly!!” exclaimed Good, Old Mary in uncharacteristic frustration.

Perhaps this was proof that, while she had since acquired the functions of a god, she had been born an ordinary human.

“''Vanity and makeup''? I’m more mad at myself than her. Mama shouldn’t be falling for silly tricks like this!”

Good, Old Mary held a torn-off upper body in one hand.

She tossed aside ''something'' that had been called Fallen Angel Azazel.

“Hey!! You’d better clarify your stance here soon. Are you trying to protect Academy City or destroy it!? Our recovery has only just begun here and we need resources more than anything. Don’t you get that this will all be a waste of time if you destroy the airport and we can’t get flights in!?”

“Take your complaints to them!! Damn Transcendents. They’re far too extreme to make good use of!”

One of Good, Old Mary’s salvation targets – was her name Kanzaki? – was complaining into a small radio, but Good, Old Mary didn’t pay her much heed. Once she decided to save someone, she would do so no matter what, but she didn’t take requests when it came to her methods…and all the Transcendents took that same stance.

However.

If Blodeuwedd the Bouquet thought this little trick had been enough to declare victory, then this was in fact an opportunity.

The three legged Tribikos was not Good, Old Mary’s ''only'' spiritual item.

Including the Bain-marie and the Kerotakis, her options ranged from familiar kitchen tools to grand lab equipment that could produce the miracles of life.

In other words…

(I already have a countermeasure for that illusion and camouflage using Azazel.)

Her lab equipment, which rivaled a broadcasting tower in size, had already finished mixing the potion she wanted.

This was one advantage of bringing such a colossal spiritual item to the front line. Whenever an unexpected problem occurred, it helped a lot if she could create a solution the very next moment.

(If Blodeuwedd the Bouquet attempts the same thing next time…I can eliminate it instantly. I don’t even need to pretend to be fooled. I can go for the kill right away.)

That meant it was time to search out where Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had disappeared to during the confusion. As long as Good, Old Mary had a goal in mind, she could mix together a potion to accomplish it. That was always her policy.

And.

A slight tremor ran down Good, Old Mary’s back.

She shuddered.

Her large hat shook as she looked up past the collapsed ceiling and into the blue sky.

“?”

===Part 2===

The reflector was located on the lunar surface.

That meant anywhere with a view of the moon was within ''that weapon''’s range.

===Part 3===

The Black_Oneday hacking tool.

What exactly could someone accomplish with that?

Hamazura Shiage and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had left the international airport through a small back entrance and were now hiding in an area full of the electric carts and forklifts used to transport suitcases. …Although Hamazura wasn’t very confident this really counted as hiding when it came to District 23 security.

His eyes dropped to the cracked screen of his phone.

“Apparently Black_Oneday is a specialized hacking tool that uses a vulnerability in Stardust.”

“What? I don’t know what that Black thing or that Star thing are.”

“I don’t either, so all I can do is read off what Aneri tells me. Aircraft and spacecraft are a lot more computerized nowadays, but hooking them up to the ordinary internet creates to much of a risk of remote cyber attacks. Like opening a door midflight and causing it to break apart. So the systems are kept separate from the ordinary lines. Everything from the programming language used to the encryption method and even the radio frequencies are different.”

“And all of that together is called Stardust? And it was all broken somehow? Are they stupid?”

“Maybe, but that also means Black_Oneday ''can’t cause any harm to anything other than'' the aerospace industry. So it’s not all bad, I guess?”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet didn’t seem delighted.

The monster frowned instead.

“Would that tool just be lying around in Academy City? Like a free game?”

“It was created by some respected university professor. He was sick of the airlines insisting their security was unhackable, so he wanted to give them enough of a scare they would actually start doing their job. So the tool is known as an independently created research sample. It’s not supposed to be publicly available, but someone could always create something that works the same way. So maybe this is a different version of it.”

Things made for benevolent purposes could end up harming people.

Not to mention the respected professor may not have been entirely honest about his reasons for making it.

Did he even know the real reason himself?

Could he just have wanted to give people a scare?

“So it was a fake cyber attack meant to make people more security conscious? Sounds like it had the opposite effect in reality…”

The emaciated girl tilted her head.

Maybe Blodeuwedd the Bouquet didn’t particularly care.

“So let’s just assume that Black_Oneday thing has fallen into the wrong hands. What could someone do with it? I don’t know much about hacking tools, but what’s the last thing we would want happening right now?”

“Hold on… Aneri, what’s this? You’re kidding, right?”

Hamazura had trouble believing the information Aneri had displayed on the phone’s cracked screen.

What was this city building?

“Moonbow. A strategic ground-launched optical weapon?”

Basically, it was a large-scale laser weapon. Powerful enough to pierce straight into a nuclear shelter located deep underground.

Moonbow would first fire a weaponized laser from an oscillator base in District 23 to outside the atmosphere, where it was reflected by a movable reflector covering the interior of a giant crater on the moon in order to target a specific point on Earth. The distance to the moon was more than 380 thousand kilometers, but the round trip only took an instant at light speed. That meant the powerful laser weapon could ignore the horizon and attack anywhere with a view of the moon. Any VIP around the world could be killed no matter how deep they hid underground.

To make matters worse, Aneri’s report said ''there were signs it had already been fired.

“It was targeting District 23… So a laser weapon with a range covering half the Earth was used to attack ''right next door''?”

“Dammit, Good, Old Mary. Did you get vaporized by a pillar of light?”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet didn’t sound particularly concerned. As long as someone didn’t meet her salvation conditions, maybe she didn’t care too much what happened to them.

If a weapon like that could be fired repeatedly, the Earth was done for.

Both because of its destructive power and because it could turn the entire world against Academy City even if they hadn’t been the one to fire it.

…And even in this dire situation, Hamazura still couldn’t fight alongside the Anglicans. Because they wouldn’t allow it.

The Anglicans were hunting for him.

They were so focused on him they hadn’t noticed the Black_Oneday hacking tool or its user. Of course, he got the impression they wouldn’t be willing to hear him out even if he did give them this information.

Especially when ''Aneri could hack too.'' When they followed the path he had used to escape the airport, they would discover he had hacked open the electronic locks. The Anglicans didn’t know about Black_Oneday, so they would suspect Hamazura for any other hacking.

The Anglicans were a threat, but focusing on them alone would leave the Black_Oneday user free to act. Their object was unclear, but this could even lead to a war between Academy City and another country.

Should he say that served them right?

He couldn’t articulate why he felt this way, but that didn’t seem like it would help Coronzon.

The emaciated girl tilted her head.

“So is humanity doomed because the arbiters of justice are useless?”

“No… The weapon uses a large COIL, so the highly toxic gas needs to be neutralized each time it’s fired. Simply put, it takes a long time to reload.”

“Ehh? The hacker’s controlling it remotely, so why would they care?”

“It’s structurally designed so it can’t fire again until the toxic gas has been fully neutralized. You can’t get around that just by messing with the software remotely.”

“We wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with if they had made the thing fully manually controlled.”

Anyone could look like a genius if they waited to complain until after the problem had occurred.

But while it took a while, the reload time was only about 50 minutes.

If they didn’t track down the Black_Oneday user and deal with this before then, some other part of the world could be fried by a second powerful laser. And if that location was outside Academy City, it would mean war with the victim country.

In the worst case, the target would be related to the UK or the Vatican. Like an enclave or an airplane in flight. It was last night all over again.

“Can’t you get Aneri-tan to stop it?”

“I don’t get it myself, but apparently hacking doesn’t work that way.”

According to Aneri’s wall of text (weren’t AIs supposed to summarize things!?), two people could hack into the same computer separately. But it was difficult for one of them to take control and kick the other one out. They were both using the same vulnerability, so would plugging the hole lock them both out?

Not even the greatest sprinter could plan to keep their rival from reaching the goal.

So if the Black_Oneday user seriously wanted to cause mass destruction, Aneri couldn’t stop them.

This problem could only be solved by beating up the user in real life, not online.

“Hmm?” Blodeuwedd the Bouquet paused to think for a moment. “If we can’t stop their hacking before the time limit, couldn’t we physically destroy the laser facility before it can fire again as ''a backup plan''?”

“I get the feeling you really could do that. But don’t.”

If someone did that without the appropriate authority and without going through the appropriate procedure, they were no more than a terrorist.

And if they spent all their time on that, they wouldn’t actually solve the real problem.

After all, the laser wasn’t the only weaponizable technology in District 23.

Aneri displayed a list ranked by danger level on the small screen.

“The most obvious one would be…the Morning Star? This above ground mass driver is pretty terrifying. It’s basically a giant railgun, right? I could see them launching a meteor all the way around the Earth and then dropping it on our heads.”

“What about this? A next-gen engine for optical rocket R&D? They’re talking around it, but isn’t that a donut-shaped fusion reactor using deuterium? That’s where they magnetically enclose plasma with a temperature over a hundred million degrees. Destroy the container while it’s running and it wouldn’t just destroy Academy City – the entire Kantou region would be wiped off the map and covered by the sea.”

“Meaning?”

“We have 50 minutes left, right? We need to make the most of that time. Destroying each individual facility isn’t going to work. Sounds like this crisis won’t end unless we defeat Black_Oneday itself.”

…His head hurt.

What was Academy City doing? He wasn’t sure how he wanted to spend the remaining days or even hours of his life, but here he was faced with a global crisis.

Hamazura couldn’t just sit idly by and let it happen.

He couldn’t just blindly run from the Brits anymore.

Coronzon’s methods may have been wrong, but she had been trying to create a better world in her own way. And his girlfriend Takitsubo and his old friends like Hanzou were still here in Academy City. He didn’t know who had set up this Black_Oneday game, but he was sick of seeing the world threatened with destruction for something as nonsensical as destruction for the sake of destruction.

Coronzon, huh?

“Why?”

Hamazura gritted his teeth.

Digging into this wouldn’t improve his odds of survival here. He knew that.

But he still hung his head, faced his inner thoughts, and forced out a resentful voice.

“Why did Coronzon have to die? And all for some formless concept like ‘the world’ or ‘the human race’?”

In that moment, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had to have heard Hamazura’s groan.

Which was why she responded.

“Because she lost.”

Hamazura seriously thought his heart was going to stop.

''What did she just say?

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet tilted her head cutely.

“Huh? Did I say something weird? Has anything ever been solved by someone proving themselves right and everyone just obeying them, or someone being proven wrong and backing down?”

“…”

“The world isn’t that simple, you dummy. The winner wins it all and the loser loses everything. Their dreams, righteousness, their lives, the world – everything. That’s always how the world has worked. Looking back in history, that’s been the way of things at least as far back as several thousand years BCE. …Kamijou Touma did kill Coronzon, but Coronzon had accepted these conditions when she fought. Are you going to start throwing a tantrum that those rules are unfair after the fact?”

“……………………………………………………………………………………”

What?

What, what, what, what, what was she talking about???

“Kamijou Touma failed to save Coronzon? You’re looking at this wrong. Kamijou Touma has had the right to kill all of the enemies he has defeated. As the one forced to bear the possibility of death were he to lose even once. Self-defense isn’t an obligation – it’s a right. It’s just that he never chose to exercise that right after he won. That’s all it was. Saving even one of the people he defeated is worthy of praise. Now, truth be told, I did somewhat expect him to save Coronzon since he was enough of a soft-hearted fool to save Alice. But if you respond with anger and throw a fit because he betrayed your expectations and didn’t go above and beyond just that one time, then you’re relying far too much on your enemy. Attacking all you like and then demanding forgiveness once you lose is making a mockery of the entire concept of combat.”

This should have been a perfectly logical argument, but it refused to enter his mind.

All the unfairness and unreasonableness he had only been vaguely aware of was rushing in at him all at once. It covered the entire world so thinly and widely it didn’t even feel real to Hamazura even though he had to be contained by it as well.

“Besides, what’s considered ‘right’ changes wildly depending on the time period, region, organization, and personal beliefs.”

Did she realize how messed up that idea was, or didn’t she?

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet sighed softly.

“Take Aleister Crowley for example. Some say he was promoted to 5=6 of the Inner Order by Mathers in Paris and others say the London faction didn’t recognize that and he was stuck in the Outer Order or as a Portal at 4=7. And Crowley himself claimed to be a 9=2 after creating new rules within his own cabal. You see what I’m getting at, don’t you? What’s ‘right’ changes depending on what source you use. There are as many answers as there are people and no one can agree on what the best answer is, so these things can only be resolved by force.”

No, he didn’t see.

That wasn’t it.

He wasn’t talking about that. He wasn’t interested in some historical examples. He was talking about something more basic and down-to-earth.

“But if you still don’t like the idea of fighting to the death, you should have gotten involved way back when the rules were being made and there was a chance to choose one of the countless ‘right’ answers through nonviolent means. That is where you should have fought your ''battle''. But you didn’t put in the work and you ran around foolishly assuming ''for no good reason'' that no one was going to die on that battlefield buried in red snow, so you don’t have the right to complain now. Unfortunately.”

“No.”

Finally, Hamazura spoke up.

The dumb Level 0 spoke to the Transcendent who had accessed divine specs.

He couldn’t accept it, but he did feel like he finally had a general idea what she was saying.

He finally had a handle on the goal he truly had to fight for.

He had to face this strange feeling head on.

“There are different forms of justice out there. On its own, that sounds like a testament to the wonders of diversity. But that doesn’t mean you can just casually shift from one idea of what’s ‘right’ to another. Choosing whatever version of ‘right’ is most convenient at the moment is the same as getting a stomachache, fearing it’s something serious, and, instead of going to the hospital, searching online until you find something saying it’s nothing to worry about. All you’re doing is choosing whatever opinion tells you to do what you already wanted to do.”

More than that, it wasn’t something to be determined by whoever could punch the hardest. Wouldn’t that just lead to a dystopia where whoever was the strongest got to bend everything to their will?

He found Blodeuwedd the Bouquet grinning in front of him.

“How interesting. Hee hee☆”

“…What is?”

“Oh, just that you keep going on about how much you hate justice, but in the end you just want to save people too. …I am the Transcendent who loves and saves all of the hated, so I’m used to people who can’t be honest with themselves☆”

“That’s not what this is…”

He couldn’t look her in the eye.

Hamazura didn’t long for justice from the side of evil like Coronzon had.

He quietly spat out a response.

“It’s not like you have to be on the side of justice to save people. Bad people can shield people from bullets too if they move in the way. Saving people ''is nothing more than a physical action''.”

“Hmm, so close.”

“?”

“You’re not quite there. But it’s not bad. Hamazura, you really do hate goodness and justice, don’t you? You hate those mindsets that lead people to take lives. That’s a good start, so explore this a little further. You will find something if you do. Although this is more Aradia’s territory than mine.”

He didn’t understand.

Also, who in the world was Aradia?

“Now, I need to know what your plans are. You’re not interested in fleeing to the farthest reaches of the world and curling up there where you’re safe, right?”

“Right.”

“That Black_Oneday hacking tool is super bad news. We can’t ignore it. So are you going to protect Academy City’s peace and safety in your own twisted way?”

“That about sums it up.”

…Or did it?

Hamazura still wasn’t certain if this would help Coronzon in any way. But he felt like what the Black_Oneday user would do was completely different from the destruction she had tried to accomplish.

“Either way, we’re the only ones who know that hacking tool is out there. So we can’t just let the Black_Oneday user have their way.”

===Part 4===

“Damn those Anglicans. Did they make a big commotion and then take down their own people-clearing field?”

Leivinia Birdway grumbled in annoyance.

The large lobby of the international airport was a mess from end to end.

There was a mysterious hole well over 10m in diameter in both the ceiling and the floor. Those likely came from something ''falling'' straight down from the sky above. All the windows were shattered and the glass-covered floor was littered with crow carcasses… It was all about as bizarre as it could get. It was no surprise that Anti-Skill and curious onlookers had shown up.

Kamijou Touma couldn’t get close to the wall of onlookers, much less the yellow tape.

He sighed and started up his phone’s camera app. He zoomed in as far as it would go to get a look from a distance.

“Hmm.”

He didn’t see anyone magical like the Amakusas or the Former Agnese Force.

He didn’t see Hamazura Shiage either.

“Looks like the storm has already moved on.”

“Because we were running against the flow of the fleeing people,” complained Lessar. “If we were allowed to knock down those ordinary people, we would have arrived sooner.”

“…”

“Okay, okay, I’m only kidding, so don’t glare at me like that. Heh heh heh. Are you trying to get me wet, you white knight?”

Nothing would teach that inappropriate girl a lesson, so it wasn’t even worth trying.

Was it linked with his phone’s location data? Even Kamijou’s cheap smartphone kept giving him local online news notifications for District 23.

“A new threat brought on by EM waves. Could this be the countdown to the implementation of a bird strike assassination weapon that can bring down aircraft without raising suspicion!?”

“The crow mystery!! Does the truth lie in the mysterious temple rumored to have been demolished to make room for the airport? (Read more)”

“How about some yakitori tonight? Click here for the secret to the most mouthwatering salted yakitori around!!”

The clickbait in the headlines was just as bad as ever, which ironically left him with zero inclination to click. It felt like a hellish caramel made by thoroughly cooking down all of humanity’s malice.

Birdway stared at the distant crowd, stood up on her toes, and stretched her back up…but that still wasn’t enough. She grabbed Kamijou’s jacket, tugged, and made her demand while looking up at him.

“Lift me up on your shoulders.”

“Have you never heard the word ‘please’, tiny little lady?”

He complained, but he also crouched down for her. He began to wonder if he was partially to blame for Birdway and Lessar’s worsening behavior.

He lifted her up.

She was light. And her thighs pressed in from the si-

“Ow! What was that zapping my face? Static electricity!?”

“Hey, I’m wearing synthetic stockings. Winter is a tough time for girls. Ignorant boy, it’s time you felt a fraction of the trouble we cute girls go through.”

How could she be so full of herself after asking him to lift her up?

“(Yes, yes. Now this is prime seating.)”

The girl seated on his shoulders and humming appeared to be in a terrific mood.

“That’s the last place the Anglicans were fighting. Which means Hamazura must have been there.”

“But what’s with those melted holes that must be at least 10m? Oh, god. I bet Academy City is making some dangerous nonsense again.”

Lessar paled and clung to him from the side, probably out of fear. Yes, that’s what it had to be. …Although he wished she wouldn’t press her boobs against him because it was so distracting he was about to lose his balance and accidentally suplex Birdway behind him.

He too was curious about that bottomless hole, but that wasn’t their focus here.

Kamijou didn’t understand what all was going on here, but he was fairly certain Hamazura was near the center of it.

Where had Hamazura run off to?

“If we can’t find him, we’ll have to start by choosing an effective method. And the classics are better than trying to be clever. Heh heh. So it’s scrying time. Or would the term ‘crystal gazing’ be more familiar to an amateur?”

“You’re just trying to sound smart, aren’t you, you smug magician?”

“Oh? Have you finally caught on to the common trait among almost every magician, including Mathers and Crowley? Well, it’s one of the few times idiots with obscure knowledge can feel good about themselves, so let us have this.”

“Also, are you done yet? If you don’t need to see over there anymore, I’m putting you down, Birdway.”

She seemed to deflate.

“Down you go!! I can’t have you staying up there forever!”

“Are you familiar with the idea of a crystal ball?” asked Lessar.

Oh, was that all this was?

Birdway the Genius must have wanted to show off some more, so her mouth formed a small triangle, but there wasn’t time to worry about her feelings right now.

With the weight removed from his shoulders, Kamijou tilted his head.

“A crystal ball… You mean like that thing where a young woman dressed in a sexy fortuneteller’s outfit holds her hands out toward it and sends some kind of power into it?”

“Where did you get that from? In this case, the fortuneteller isn’t sending magic power into the crystal. They’re using the crystal to try and read the small subconscious signs inside their own mind.”

“Also, the ‘young woman’ and ‘sexy’ parts are just wishful thinking on your part. Did you get that stereotype from Japan’s weirdly prolific isekai fantasy industry? Neither of those are necessary for fortunetelling. In fact, the crystal doesn’t even need to be a ball.”

Birdway dismantled a pair of binoculars and pulled out a large lens. She colored that in black with a thick marker.

“All you need is to create an environment where you can intentionally stimulate your inner mind through the medium of crystal, so a lens or a mirror work just as well. The witch’s bible recommends a hand mirror colored black.”

“Wait, it works even if it’s flat and you can’t see through it? That’s nothing at all like a fortuneteller’s crystal ball.”

“Again, that’s a mistaken view drawn from your own fantasies. Throw out that meaningless isekai-inspired image right this instant. And doesn’t this country have that silly rumor about a hand mirror colored purple? Yes, called the Murasaki Kagami, I believe. It’s like that.”

…Kamijou had been fairly seriously disturbed at that souvenir shop when they were talking about condoms and the king of rubbers, but apparently there had been a real reason for that visit. They had been acquiring the everyday items they could use as tools. Pros were so cool.

“I feel like you’re being impressed by the least impressive part of this.”

“Yeah, it feels more like a backhanded compliment.”

When they sensitively reacted to his thoughts, Kamijou decided to leave it at that.

Birdway held the blackened lens between her thumb and forefinger and stared at the floor.

“So if they did pursue Hamazura from here…what exactly does that black lens let you do?”

“Track their footprints,” replied Birdway. She made it sound like she was having to explain that turning the faucet made water come out. “This may be hard for you to believe since you know all about Necessarius’s tyranny, but the Anglicans are more humane than most. They want to avoid harming civilians, so they always use a people-clearing field before launching an attack.”

That term sounded vaguely familiar to Kamijou.

…He was often the one being targeted by the attack, so he had few good memories about the magic.

“So if I can find some footprints that don’t follow the current established by the people-clearing field, they will stand out. ''Because that tells me they weren’t made by an ordinary person.''”

“Oh, that makes sense. If the target would wander on out of the field too, the attackers would end up with an empty field. So the Anglicans’ target won’t be affected by the field.”

“If we want to track down Hamazura Shiage, then we only need to search for tracks that stayed in the field but also don’t show the signs of being a professional magician,” explained Lessar. “It couldn’t be easier. If you can’t pick up a trail like that, you’re not qualified to be a magician. A little piggy like that should drop down to a 0=0 and relearn everything from the ground up.”

“Hey, weakling. Are you trying to ramp up the pressure on me here?”

“Ohh? How about you wait to speak human language until you’ve actually found something, little piggy?”

Birdway stared at the floor and nodded in a way that…as rude as the comparison felt, reminded Kamijou of a dog tracking a scent. It didn’t suit her noble appearance at all.

“Tracking him will likely mean leaving the airport through this exit.”

“Yeah, but isn’t he taking a weird detour?”

They wandered here and there a bunch until they ran into an electronically locked door. Birdway reached between the buttons of her blouse to pull out a card that she had been storing (likely with some difficulty) at her flat chest and held it to the reader, opening the door without issue. Kamijou had questions.

“What is that?”

“I borrowed it from an airport worker.”

“…Using legal means, I hope?”

She only smiled.

The super sketchy magic cabal boss didn’t give him a yes or a no answer.

After unlocking a few more doors, they emerged from the airport.

“…”

Had Hamazura escaped through here?

They were at the back of the airport. Kamijou had wondered what they would find there, but he hadn’t expected to see a small business jet stopped there. He gulped when he saw the Union Jack on the tail wing. The British government plane must have moved here since he last saw it.

“But why?”

“They’re probably transferring cargo. See?”

Lessar pointed to a loader sturdier than a forklift and a few cargo containers.

But these were air cargo containers, so they weren’t the long boxes larger than a studio apartment. They were more like 2-3m silver dice.

And one of them was rattling.

“What the hell? That has the British flag on it, so is it some dangerous magical object? Is it like that Pandora thing you’re not supposed to open?”

“Oh, c’mon. Pandora is the name of the artificial human who opened the box. The box has a different name.”

“Who cares!? I’m asking what happens if you open it!”

Birdway glanced over at the other two arguing and sighed before speaking.

“The report I received said nothing about this container. In fact, does that plane even have a cargo door?”

“Yeah, we rode this plane to Academy City, but I don’t recognize that cargo container at all.”

So it was magical, but it might not belong to the Anglicans?

??? Wait, which was it? And either way, didn’t that mean some extremely dangerous object had just been left sitting out here?

…After all, the Anglicans included some super scary people like Stiyl Magnus. What if they ignored some mysterious secret weapon here and it came after them later on!?

When Kamijou nervously touched it with his right hand, there was a sound like shattering glass.

So…it really had reacted to Imagine Breaker?

Then the metal shutter opened.

“Phew!! I-I’ve finally escaped. I guess I am one of the legendary original Golden magicians. My genius is too much for the world to handle!!”

Kamijou Touma recognized the person who emerged.

It was Dion Fortune.

As the boss of the UK’s greatest magic cabal, Birdway sounded thoroughly exasperated by this state of affairs.

“Aren’t you their Archbishop? Only a temporary figurehead, sure, but what were you doing stuck in an Anglican cell? I thought things weren’t adding up, but did the local troops stage a coup?”

“And aren’t you one of the original Golden magicians? Are you telling me the great Dion Fortune got herself trapped by a twisted loop? Ha ha ha ha.”

Lessar grinned in ultra provocation mode, but Fortune’s reaction was surprisingly minimal.

She only pouted her lips and complained like a small child.

“It’s not my fault. Their necromancer used Underworld God Osiris against me.”

“That’ll do it.”

“Indeed. Not much you can do against Osiris. I mean, he’s Osiris.”

Kamijou waited a bit, but no one provided any further explanation.

Wait, was that the most exposition he was going to get? Was he the only one who didn’t understand? Had he been left behind by the world?

The poor, ignorant boy trembled as he spoke up.

“Umm. Who exactly is this Osiris? Some IT company president who’s popular with elementary and middle school kids on TikZap?”

“Why are you nearly in tears? He’s an Egyptian god. He was originally the god of justice and fairness, but after dying and being resurrected, he became something like the god of death and ruler of the underworld. He’s compared to Hades in Greek mythology.”

“In Crowley-style Magick, the death and resurrection part is heavily emphasized. That lets him correspond to the Son of God who was hung on the cross and resurrected.”

…How could Lessar and Birdway rattle this kind of thing off? Kamijou found it strange. He lived in Academy City of the science side, but that didn’t mean he had memorized all of the Curriculum’s textbooks.

Birdway gave him an annoyed look.

“Bad feelings have a nasty habit of coming true and no one likes being proven right in those cases. Now the Anglicans are looking even more suspicious, but the question is what we do about it.”

“If we can’t trust the Anglicans here in Academy City, is there any reason to even continue with our job? We can always board that government plane and fly on back to England.”

Lessar had a knack for finding something inappropriate to say no matter the circumstances. Which made her a handful. Was there some way Kamijou could search on his phone to find out how to punish someone like her?

“Why can’t I find anything useful!? All I’m getting is some stupid internet slang!!”

“What’s that? Doing some ‘alone time’ net surfing? How pathetic can you be? Why go for mere data when the real, tangible thing is right here☆”

Kamijou could only hope that brat would eventually suffer the consequences of not getting a talking to here and now. Strongly hope.

“I’m not going back,” said Dion Fortune.

In a way, she was the biggest victim who hadn’t asked to be a part of this. She was only temporary. A figurehead. She was supposed to be at the very top, but when it came to Hamazura, all of a sudden she was a target of suspicion, had her authority stripped from her, and was locked up like a criminal.

But she didn’t hesitate to raise her voice here.

“I have to save him. If this is allowed to continue, the Anglicans will kill Hamazura! Even if no one recognizes it, I am still the Archbishop. I won’t let my people trample on people’s lives like that!!”

A soft sigh came from Birdway, who usually maintained a harsh viewpoint.

The sigh had an exasperated tone to it.

“So you’re motivated, great. But do you have a realistic and concrete plan?”

“…I do have one idea there.”

===Part 5===

“Tch.”

“What’s that tongue click for, Blodeuwedd?”

“Oh, nothing. How do you do, Hamazura-san? Oh, dear. You have some trash in your hair.”

“???”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet came up with an excuse to snatch something from his hair, crush it between her fingers, and toss it aside.

(That was a transmitter smaller than a grain of rice based on a communication spiritual item. Whether or not they could pull it off, would Dion Fortune be the only one among the Anglicans who would come up this kind of ''idea''? And she has spent the most time with Hamazura Shiage among them.)

But that aside, they had walked a bit – a good bit – from the airport.

Below the open sky.

“Aneri says ''this area is most suspicious''.”

“I don’t know what it based that conclusion on, but if Aneri-tan says so, maybe it’s true. Doesn’t it worry you that you don’t know what calculations the AI is doing on the inside?”

As long as it was convenient, he didn’t really care. …But did he only see it that way because he lived in a city of science worship?

Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had arrived at a fairly special part of District 23. Special enough that it was on every single tourist map.

It was filled with aircraft.

Except they were packed in close. And there was no rhyme or reason to where they were stopped. Even if they were being maintained or refueled in preparation for takeoff, this haphazard arrangement would leave each individual aircraft unable to move.

But that wasn’t a problem since the aircraft here were all retired.

“Hm. So they took retired airplanes and space shuttles and restored just the residential portions to make hotels, villas, and such out of them?”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet took a look around and commented in amusement, as if she were viewing a tourist attraction.

Hamazura walked past a parked tanker truck and toyed with the cracked phone in his hand.

“It’s called Hotel Town.”

“More info from Aneri-chan?”

Correct.

It may have been like the “towns” made from trailers found in the American desert…but these were small business jets and even large passenger planes. The scale was on another level entirely. It covered a wide horizontal area, but the map also expanded in the vertical direction. All the voluminous fuselages and wings acted like large roofs for anyone walking on the ground.

“Gweh,” groaned Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. “These can carry hundreds of passengers, but that’s with them all stuffed into the cramped economy seats, right? Would anyone really pay a lot of money to spend the night strapped into one of those seats?”

“Maybe there are a lot of airplane nerds, or people who really like being served by flight attendants, even if it’s cramped.”

“A paradise for masochists, huh? Well, I guess you can sell anything if you package it up nice. You can even reserve a tour in the sweltering jungle where you get to enjoy a military-style ‘interrogation’ using metal drums and bats☆”

The girl with zero interest in planes stared into the middle distance.

Now, because these planes were retired, people could enter the ordinarily off-limits areas and snap photos with their phones. Maybe there were people out there who wanted to try sleeping in the cockpit or the cargo space.

The food would probably be airplane food (shipped in from somewhere else of course), but the area was kind of smokey. It smelled of oily smoke, like when cooking yakitori. Apparently the people who still felt hungry were having a cookout. There were grills made by splitting a metal drum down the middle here and there. The earthbound passenger planes had ropes and laundry up on their roofs, but wouldn’t the smoke affect them? Seemed like it would make them smell.

“The place is like a maze… And not just in two dimensions. The map extends overhead too.”

“At least we’ll have plenty of escape routes if we need one. Yeah, now this is a tourist attraction for criminals☆”

There must not have been enough boarding stairs to go around because it looked like people were using ladders and stepladders to enter the entrances located higher up than Hamazura’s head.

The ladders were especially useful because they could also function as makeshift bridges when laid on their side. There were several places where two different passenger planes had their mains wings linked by those bridges. The end result was a messy scene.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet walked below one such bridge as she spoke.

She was finally getting to the point.

“So is the Black_Oneday user really hiding in this niche and messy scrapyard?”

“If they’re sneaking around, it means they know they’re up to no good. They won’t be using their hacking tool while hunched over in a large passenger plane stuffed full of hundreds of people. They’ll have secured some larger space they can have to themselves.”

That meant a villa rather than a hotel.

That was apparently what Aneri predicted to be the optimal conditions for using Black_Oneday.

More specifically, something with the large antenna and signal amplifier used to pick up the special frequencies used in the aerospace industry.

The Hotel Town was full of junk, so there were only so many villas for individual use that also had that much major equipment.

And by further narrowing it down using a criminal’s unique desire for multiple escape routes, only one option remained.

“Hmm.”

Instead of a giant passenger plane, this one had a sleek, streamlined design that combined the fuselage and wings into a single shape. It looked like a long, skinny shovel or shield.

The emaciated girl spoke up in amusement.

“What’s that? A space shuttle?”

“A retired one, yeah. The Kujerung exoatmospheric shuttle. Its components can be folded up compactly and transported in a truck and, by attaching an optional solid-fuel rocket, it can be launched from a submarine’s vertical missile launching tube. So says Aneri.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet looked confused.

But not by the technicality of it all.

“Why would you want to launch from a sub?”

“Don’t ask me. Maybe they’re already doing stuff outside the atmosphere they don’t want anyone to know about.”

What an awful age they lived in.

If there really were space aliens, they would see that as unforgivable pollution. It probably wouldn’t be long before they showed up to eradicate humanity so none of the dangerous species could leave the Earth.

As an act of good to protect the rest of the universe.

And while this was strange super technology for Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, it was no more than retired scrap for Academy City. Those arbiters of justice really did like looking down on people, didn’t they?

At any rate, it looked like a small fashionable streamlined jet. It could switch between a jet engine that sucked in air or a rocket engine that used an oxidizer, giving it the extreme engine power needed to fly from runway to space…but they could ignore that since this one was grounded and retired.

How many exits did it have and where were they?

As a spacecraft, did it have thin walls to keep its weight down? Or were its walls sturdy as hell to protect against heat, shocks, and radiation? Hamazura knew a lot about vehicles, but he couldn’t even hazard a guess about something this specialized.

(I know I have to observe it from a distance since I can’t let them know I’m here…but this is so frustrating. If only I could just get the answer right away.)

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet tilted her head and gestured as if looking at something from below.

“Its basic design is the same as an airplane, right? So can’t we get in through where the wheels are?”

“Are you Kinuhata? This isn’t a cheap movie… There are too many huge-ass gears crammed in there for us to fit.”

What he could tell from enough of a distance to not be noticed was that it was about the size of a small business jet.

…That meant the main problem was the height of the door. It was up higher than Hamazura’s head, so breaking down the door and storming inside would be difficult.

“But on the other hand, the enemy won’t be able to see us if we’re directly below the fuselage, right? Looking down from the cockpit and side windows doesn’t let you see there. So if we can just get there, we should be able get close without being noticed.”

“And then what? And then what?”

“We can walk to the very back of the shuttle and set up a ladder to get up on the roof without them noticing.”

There were ladders all over the Hotel Town. There weren’t enough boarding stairs to go around, so the ladders were used instead. They only had to borrow one of those.

“Prying open that smooth side door would be tough, but if we walk along the roof to the cockpit at the nose, it should be possible to break the glass and get in, don’t you think?

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? We’ll be climbing on top of that streamlined roof shaped like a squat metal coat. We won’t just roll right off, will we?”

Apparently Blodeuwedd the Bouquet sounded so unusually concerned because magicians couldn’t fly.

But Hamazura didn’t understand the rules ordinary magicians worked under, so he wasn’t sure how to respond to this nervous confession.

“Also, this is a spaceship, right? Won’t the front glass be super sturdy to deal with space debris and the pressure difference with the vacuum? How are you planning on breaking that? Ask me to do it?”

“If we can’t do it ourselves, we just have to make a tool that can.”

===Part 6===

Kamijou tried to organize the information in his head.

The tracker Dion Fortune had attached to Hamazura said he was in the Hotel Town, a lodging area of District 23.

Although Fortune herself didn’t sound too confident.

“The thing is, the signal has vanished. That’s a bad sign. Did he notice the tracker and crush it?”

“Doesn’t matter. Even if he gets away, we just have to pick up his trail again in the Hotel Town.”

Kamijou’s phone beeped.

Was that Board Director Accelerator? Where was he watching this from?

“Hey. This is only going to get worse if the supposed problem solvers don’t do their job. So get your asses to the center of the commotion. If those annoying outsiders keep causing so much trouble, the damage is only going to spread.”

The Brits spoke up before Kamijou could get his mouth open.

“Keh keh keh. You say that it like it’s a foregone conclusion he’ll help you.”

“You trust him a lot, huh?

“Do I need to grind the both of you into mincemeat together, you damn brats?”

Accelerator’s voice dropped by two tones. Once for each girl.

And when had those two gotten to the point they could tease the #1? Did they feel no fear?

Kamijou tilted his head and joined the conversation.

“The Anglicans are one thing…but why is Hamazura still on the run? He’s being pursued by magic side experts, right? I don’t see how he could possibly defeat Stiyl and Kanzaki.”

“From what those Anglicans say, he has a Transcendent helping him out. One named Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”

“Oh, her… Yeah, that tracks,” muttered Kamijou.

Birdway and Lessar didn’t seem too concerned…but was that because they had no direct experience with Transcendents? They didn’t react the way Dion Fortune did.

“The Anglicans have another one called Good, Old Mary with them,” said Accelerator. “Do they think that makes it even? Slamming brute strength against brute strength is only going to damage their surroundings more. We’re busy trying to turn this pile of rubble back into a city and then they show up in the sandbox ready to smash our sand castle.”

He had a point, but this meant his privileges as Board Chairman weren’t enough to bring an end to the conflict.

Birdway frowned again.

“Do you know anything about the Anglicans’ odd behavior? You’re the top of the science side, so you should have some amusing arrangements in place for diplomatic purposes.”

“I’m in the dark on this one. Which I do ''not'' appreciate when this is my city.”

Accelerator spat out that last sentence.

Kamijou glanced over to see Dion Fortune shrugging.

This meant the leaders of Academy City and the Anglican Church had been forced out. …Then who was in control here?

“Whatever the case,” continued Accelerator, “specialists will feel the fear of something on a deeper level than anyone. Like America with guns and Central America with drugs, the UK knows all about magic and demons, right? They’re more sensitive about these things. Isn’t that why they’re taking this so far?”

“But what does that have to do with Hamazura?” asked Kamijou. “I mean, he’s an Academy City esper. That’s a completely different world from the magic side.”

“The Great Demon Coronzon problem isn’t over yet.”

“?”

Why bring up Coronzon here?

For better or for worse, Kamijou had ended that by killing her with his own hand.

“The Anglicans seem more concerned by Coronzon’s lingering effects than by Hamazura himself.”

“Lingering effects? Oh, I get it.”

“No, you don’t.”

If Hamazura Shiage’s view of Coronzon were accepted by the public, Coronzon’s apocalyptic ideology could end up spreading? Or something like that?

But apparently that wasn’t what Accelerator meant.

“It’s something about angels and demons being made of energy. They theorize that, even after Coronzon’s death, a portion of her power is contained inside Hamazura Shiage. …If that’s true, then he would be able to use Adikalika himself.”

“''Sitra Achra'',” said Dion Fortune, sounding unusually grave.

That didn’t mean anything to Kamijou, but apparently it meant something to someone.

“Misaka will do it!” “Serving master is my job.”

Some voices came over the call.

Only Accelerator could know what he thought about that while hearing them in person.

“The trouble at the airport is bad enough, but it sounds like this is about to be spread further.”

“Don’t worry. We reclaimed our ordinary lives. I’m not about to let someone bring us to the brink of ruin again.”

===Part 7===

Maybe it came from being a scrapyard for retired aircraft, but there were stacks of wooden crates and metal drums all around the Hotel Town. There was junk and scrap metal just about everywhere.

For a tinkerer like Hamazura, it all looked like a giant armory.

He started with a metal pipe and a stake, added some quick-drying putty in place of a rubber seal, grabbed a spare electric plug, included a few other small items, and finished it with the most important piece of all.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet tilted her head.

“Hmm, what’s that tube? What is that used for, Professor Hamazura?”

“It’s a signal flare. It might look safe, but it actually includes more powder than an ordinary 9mm round.”

There was probably more powerful jet fuel and rocket fuel to be found in District 23, but he would prefer not to touch anything that dangerous. It was best to stick with materials he was more comfortable with. He took apart a few of the flares to get sufficient powder.

After combining everything just right, it was done.

It rested on his shoulder like a rocket launcher…but it was more like a pile driver powered by explosive force.

He would use this to break the space shuttle’s thick front glass designed to withstand space debris and the pressure difference with vacuum.

“That should do it. We only have one shot at it, though.”

“Are you sure about this? Won’t a space shuttle have other ways of seeing out? Y’know, like exterior cameras installed all over it. I just don’t think this will work like a normal plane.”

“You have a point. Then let’s deal with that.”

That led to more rummaging around behind cover.

The emaciated girl stared like she had discovered a new kind of insect.

“Professor, Professor. Um, why are you gathering up filthy old cardboard boxes?”

“For kindling.”

With so many homemade grills all over the place, it wouldn’t stand out much if a bunch of smoke obscured the view from the exterior cameras.

He gathered together all the cardboard and then shoved it into an 18 liter drum.

Incomplete combustion would be best for creating a smokescreen, so he wet the cardboard a bit with water before lighting them. Oil would have been useful, but he was afraid of it sputtering all over the place when mixed with water.

Dark smoke dirtied the air and began to ride the gentle breeze.

It fully engulfed the streamlined fuselage of the Kujerung a short distance away.

Now the exterior cameras weren’t going to accomplish much.

“Let’s go! Don’t get lost in the smoke!!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Hiding in the thick smoke, Hamazura held a collapsed ladder under his arm and approached the Kujerung. It was a nerve-wracking situation, but Blodeuwedd the Bouquet seemed to be enjoying herself. …Like a mom watching her small child during parent’s day at school.

“Phew.”

They made it below the Kujerung. It was low enough he had to duck to not hit his head, but it was still a safe zone where they were free to move.

He took a deep breath of the smoky air.

Three seconds passed without any reaction from the Black_Oneday user. Concluding they hadn’t been noticed, the two of them made their way to the tail of the spaceship.

“Did you make too much smoke? It’s stinging my eyes…”

“That’s better than being seen.”

While it was only the size of a business jet, it was still an exoatmospheric shuttle designed to take off from a runway and fly all the way into space. Three giant trumpet-shaped engine nozzles were arranged at the rear. Each one was taller than Hamazura. He knew it was retired and wasn’t functional anymore, but it was still frightening to be staring them down like this. The pure firepower would be greater than at a crematorium.

Hamazura extended the stepladder as far as it would go and leaned it diagonally against the shuttle. Climbing that would take him to the roof. Then he only had to walk up to the cockpit window.

“Okay, here goes nothing. …Follow me, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”

“Oh, how gentlemanly. I thought you would use ‘ladies first’ as an excuse to have me go ahead of you.”

“?”

“It’s your chance to get a low-angle view, you know? And I’m naked save for an apron below my metal coat☆”

[[Image:GT_Index_v15_BW4.jpg|thumb]]

Hamazura knew that veering even slightly to the side on the roof would mean slipping off to his death, so why was she trying to distract him like this? Was she really on his side?

At any rate, he climbed the ladder while staring down the giant trumpet-like engines.

But then he realized something.

“Hm? What is it, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet?”

Before reaching the roof, her hands only partway up the ladder, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet stared off elsewhere and muttered to herself.

“Hmm, that’s not good. Things have finally caught up with us.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant at first…but that didn’t last long.

Something wasn’t right.

“There’s no one else…around here?”

In the cluttered Hotel Town? When each of the passenger planes that made it seem so cluttered had to contain hundreds of passengers?

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet took a quick look around, her gaze sharpening a bit.

“It’s a people-clearing field. And the Anglicans have us surrounded a lot more boldly than I expected. They should really be less conspicuous about laying that kind of groundwork.”

“?”

That didn’t mean anything to Hamazura, but apparently all the innocent people had intentionally been ''made to leave''.

The “atmosphere” of the entire area had changed and the hiding Black_Oneday user had to have noticed it. Which meant they would be on their guard. He couldn’t predict what the enemy would do next. Were the Anglicans a bunch of bumbling cops!? Did they even want to solve this case and bring peace back to the world!?

“This is bad, Hamazura.”

“?”

His phone sounded the alarm again. The loudest one it had.

The threat was right there, as close as could be.

He heard a rumble from the Kujerung’s giant engines just before ''they ignited.

===Part 8===

Kanzaki Kaori and the rest of the Anglicans were prepared for their next action.

The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force ran all around.

There were many innocent people in the Hotel Town, so they had to be evacuated in advance using a people-clearing field and other spells. It was a lot of work when covering such a wide area.

Kanzaki looked grim.

“We may have underestimated that AI Aneri thing. If Hamazura Shiage can accomplish this much, we need to recalculate the threat he poses.”

“At least there is still no sign of him directly using magic,” said Itsuwa before glancing to the side. “And at the same time…”

(I can’t believe she took a direct hit from ''that'' and it didn’t even scratch her.)

She meant Good, Old Mary.

That Transcendent had apparently been hit by a science side strategic weapon, but she was standing there like nothing had happened. She claimed to have immediately mixed together a potion that created thick concrete upon contact with the air, but was that really enough to explain what happened?

(Well, cement was often used when building large sacred grounds, like the pyramids of Ancient Egypt or Roman temples.)

Anyway, the Anglicans had two main concerns.

First, that Great Demon Coronzon’s Sitra Achra power had been sealed inside Hamazura Shiage as a Telesma-like energy.

Second, that Hamazura Shiage’s mistaken proselytizing and evangelizing would spread an apocalyptic ideology in support of the already dead Great Demon Coronzon.

The first was the more direct threat, but the second couldn’t be underestimated.

Coronzon’s name was already well known, so it was incorporated into various parts of the magic side.

The Anglicans, the Amakusas, and the former Roman Catholics were a group bound by faith, so they saw the possibility of Coronzon being spoken of as a hero as a definite threat. They knew better than anyone that formless and abstract faith could transform into an international military force. Because that was what they were.

A Level 0 had gained an exceptional power.

That symbolism reminded them of a different boy. And that other boy was proof that a perceived threat to the world could bring together people from different nationalities and affiliations.

…They couldn’t let that incidental phenomenon be used ''in a negative way''. No matter what.

(A demon…a dragon. I don’t like the symbolism. And Hamazura Shiage is also officially classified as a Level 0. Let’s just hope he doesn’t have anything weird lurking in his right hand.)

“We will capture Hamazura Shiage here in District 23. That way we can keep his influence to a minimum.” Kanzaki spoke cautiously. “Academy City is known as a city of espers, but it’s said most of those espers are Level 0s who never developed any real power. That means there are a large number of people here whose development failed, leaving them frustrated with the current world. We must avoid a situation where they resonate with Hamazura Shiage…or with Coronzon’s shadow, really.”

Academy City’s technology was said to be twenty or thirty years ahead of the outside world.

The same was said of its trends.

So if Academy City was lost, there was a chance the same would happen to the world as a whole once, sooner or later, it spread outside.

That was yet another reason they couldn’t let Coronzon’s apocalyptic ideology take root in Academy City.

“No sign he’s noticed the people-clearing field. He may not be used to using Great Demon Coronzon’s Sitra Achra inside him, or maybe he isn’t even aware it’s there.” Kanzaki remained cautious. “So it would be best to secure him while that safety remains. If he can wield Coronzon’s magic alongside that AI Aneri, we truly won’t be able to keep up.”

===Part 9===

The Kujerung exoatmospheric shuttle’s three giant trumpet-shaped engines suddenly ignited.

“Gah!?”

There was nothing Hamazura could do while climbing the ladder leaning against the rear of the shuttle. Ordinarily, he would have been turned to charcoal by explosive flames even more powerful than a flamethrower.

Directly below him, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet grabbed his ankles and yanked him down. He fell straight down where she caught him inside her thick metal coat.

Hamazura’s view was blocked while he was enveloped by a sweet aroma, so he didn’t actually see what happened.

He just knew gravity suddenly vanished.

He heard a deafening roar and felt a great tremor.

He fell over with no idea what was happening. Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s head was outside the coat, so she had to see what he couldn’t.

“Ow ow ow… Okay, that one was a little too close for comfort.”

Then why did she have a tone of voice best described as “tehepero”?

When she reopened the front of her metal coat, Hamazura collapsed to the ground. And they were at a spot that had to be more than twenty meters from where they had been. As hard as it was to believe, ''their combined weight had been launched that far before even touching the ground.

He noticed some drops of a strange glowing orange liquid nearby.

It took him a fair amount of time to realize those were pieces of molten aluminum…in other words, the remains of the ladder. It must have been ''splattered'' like a shower over a wide area. If not for that magician (or was she a Transcendent?) wrapping him in that inexplicably sturdy coat, what would have happened to his puny physical body?

But that wasn’t the main point here.

Without even getting up from the ground, Hamazura clung to the girl’s slender body inside the coat.

“I thought the Hotel Town was a scrapyard full of retired aircraft! Why does that thing’s engines work!? You can’t run it on ordinary gasoline, that’s for sure!!”

“Wait, Hamazura. Don’t focus on that right now. …If that one is operational, could it be that ''all the others are too''?”

“!!!?”

The Black_Oneday hacking tool was specialized for the aerospace industry and it bared its fangs here.

Hamazura was hit by a spell of dizziness and nausea.

All the movement around him had caused his inner ear to malfunction.

Meaning…

The countless large passenger planes ''supposedly'' acting as giant hotels were…

“They’re moving… Goddammit, they’re coming this way!”

He had no choice but to run.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet seemed amused. He couldn’t figure out her sense of humor.

“Ah ha ha ha ha!! Hey, Hamazura, how much does a passenger plane weigh!?”

“Depends on the plane!!”

It really did depend.

He was pretty sure the biggest ones were more than 500 tons. A large truck was around 10 tons, so it was literally an order of magnitude greater.

“Why do these retired aircraft all still have ultra-dangerous jet fuel in them!?”

“Maybe it’s that thing? Y’know, that idea that machines need to be operated periodically or else they fall apart.”

…Come to think of it, hadn’t he seen some tanker trucks on the way here? He had been terribly unobservant. Those trucks wouldn’t have been here if the aircraft didn’t need jet fuel.

Running away on foot wasn’t going to cut it.

They both rolled well to the side on the ground.

A great mass passed right by them with the unpleasant odor of burning rubber.

But barely avoiding the passenger plane’s giant wheels didn’t mean the threat was over.

Plus, this was District 23, where all the aircraft and spacecraft were located.

The passenger plane slowly pursuing the two of them was smashed by something arriving from a different direction. It was squashed by something from above.

''Something big.

The (remains of) a small charter plane and a pointy-nosed supersonic passenger plane were crushed from above and shoved aside as something truly colossal approached.

The oppressively large fuselage seemed like it could contain three large passenger planes stacked on top of each other. At that size, you had to wonder if the air resistance calculations really worked out for it or if it would break apart as soon as it took flight.

There was a good reason for its size.

The Whale Shark large structure component transport plane was an extra-large aircraft designed to carry the dismantled parts for an entire ordinary-sized aircraft or spacecraft!

It was large enough to play a regulation game of basketball inside. Nothing crushed by its enormous low-pressure tires would ever recover. A human would be squashed less than 5mm flat.

And its great size wasn’t the ''only'' problem.

The air moved with a rumble. Quite literally. Sending a mass weighing hundreds of tons into the air required a considerable amount of force. And the giant barrel-like turbofan engines needed to intake a considerable amount of air!?

“Gyahh!!”

When one of the aluminum ladders used to create a path between the airplanes was sucked in, the entire cylindrical engine burst into flames. This was the same accident seen with bird strikes, but the Whale Shark didn’t stop. It had more than the one engine, so it was still charging this way!!

“Run away!!”

“Ah ha ha! To where!?”

“Its tires are too big. If we escape into an ''indentation'', it won’t crush us!! Aneri, search the map to show us where to go!!”

Hamazura shouted and glanced down to his cracked phone and then dove toward a chain link cover on the ground. And he lifted it.

Something like the ditch next to a road continued on in a straight line. It was probably meant to stop any highly-dangerous spilled jet fuel from spreading endlessly along the flat ground.

But this ditch was more than a meter across.

“Wait, Hamazura. My metal coat is way too baggy so it’s caught…”

“Oh, god!!”

His eyes widened as he yanked her on in.

That colossus was large enough to carry an entire passenger plane inside. Any contact with that mass would mean instant death and it was passing only a few centimeters over their heads.

Hamazura raised his head and shouted half in desperation.

“Well, it’s not all bad!!”

“It isn’t!?”

“They’re causing a lot of trouble, sure, but it looks like they can’t actually escape into space!!”

The Black_Oneday user was the one activating the aircraft and siccing them on Hamazura or the Anglicans, but they showed no sign of taking off with the Kujerung exoatmospheric shuttle and escaping that way. While the Kujerung was a spacecraft, it needed a runway of more than 2000m to take off from the ground, so igniting its engines wasn’t enough. And it didn’t seem to be equipped for the “launched vertically from a submarine” option.

If they couldn’t escape from the planet, then they remained on this same battlefield.

Hamazura couldn’t let all this chaos distract him.

The Black_Oneday user was behind all of this and they were within reach!!

===Part 10===

Everything started to move all at once.

The aircraft and spacecraft in the Hotel Town were moving haphazardly.

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

“What the hell!?”

“If AI Aneri isn’t doing this, then the enemy must have a similar tool.”

Lessar made it sound like it wasn’t her problem.

“Like what?”

“I dunno, maybe a specialized hacking tool?”

“Wait, hacking? Then what about searching for my document!? They aren’t going to destroy the cargo management database that tells me where it is, are they!?”

Also, who was the enemy here?

What did they think they were doing with some underground hacking tool!?

There wasn’t just 10 or even 20 of them. Large passenger planes, military transport planes, and even what looked like space shuttles were moving all over the place. A hit from even one of those would leave him no more than a stain on the pavement.

Kamijou was seriously uncertain if he should charge in or not.

He saw Kanzaki, Stiyl, and some other familiar faces heading toward the center of the chaos. Couldn’t he wait for those experts to fix this and then ask them what was going on?

But even from here, he could tell ''something'' was rapidly escaping from here.

Did they need to stop that to restore calm as quickly as possible?

And the others would need as much help as they could get.

“If I capture anyone who looks suspicious, I should be able to figure this out, right? Is Hamazura behind this, or is there some other villain? I’ll have to find some way of- whoa!?”

“You’ll die, so excuse me.”

If Dion Fortune hadn’t kicked Kamijou out of the way, his entire upper body may have been obliterated.

Was that a large military transport helicopter distorting the air as it flew this way? It of course wasn’t actually rotating its two giant rotors to fly under its own power. …''A giant arm growing from the ground'' had grabbed it and thrown it this way.

That wasn’t AI Aneri or the enemy’s hacking tool.

Kamijou’s eyes widened from the ground.

“Wait…did the Anglicans just attack us?”

“Of course they did. You’re working with me, the Archbishop who they decided to unfairly dismiss in the middle of a mission. Nothing is more troublesome than a political enemy you failed to finish off. They now aren’t sure which side you’re on, so they will eliminate you before you can interfere with this mission.”

“…Are you serious?”

He should have realized from the moment he discovered they had shoved their ally Dion Fortune in a cell. The Anglicans were beyond caring about appearances. Or rather, they were acting indiscriminately. Were they really that afraid of Great Demon Coronzon’s influence on the world, like Accelerator had mentioned?

“Is Hamazura Shiage really that much of a threat?” mused Birdway. With a touch of exasperation in her voice.

“He’s supposed to be carrying some kind of dangerous possibility about Coronzon’s power or her apocalyptic ideology or whatever, right!? He saw me kill Coronzon, so he must hold a grudge. Isn’t that why this is happening!?”

“Yes. Great Demon Coronzon is definitely dead, but the theory is that a portion of her Sitra Achra – a Telesma-like energy – remained in this world and is contained in Hamazura Shiage’s right hand. Nonsense. That does seem to be why the Anglicans are pursuing Hamazura, but none of that evil material is here.”

“How can you be so sure? It sounds plausible enough to me.”

“Don’t worry. There’s no chance.”

“But how can you know, Birdway!?”

“''Because I’m the one who dispersed Great Demon Coronzon’s lingering energy.''”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“Wh-wha-what did you just say, you little villain?”

“I went through the ley lines to do it all the way from England.”

He wasn’t asking ''how'' she did it.

“There’s no real problem with some of it existing spread out across this entire world. As long as it doesn’t gather together and pass what you could think of as a lethal dose.”

Genius Teacher Birdway could see the obvious confusion on Kamijou’s face.

She continued like she was speaking to a small child.

“Did you wonder why the Dawn-Colored Sunlight, Europe’s greatest magic cabal, didn’t join you yesterday when Coronzon was a step away from destroying the world? Because there were things I had to get done behind the scenes, idiot.” Birdway maintained the calm on her face. “The threat Hamazura Shiage supposedly poses is at least half incorrect. I scattered Coronozon’s Sitra Achra, so none of it is contained in Hamazura’s body.”

“And I have my doubts about the other half too.” Dion Fortune sighed. “Could Hamazura Shiage really draw in enough people to establish a new religion just by telling them about a side of Great Demon Coronzon the rest of us don’t know? It’s honestly possible, but it seems far too unlikely to me. It’s beyond what could happen just by getting lucky.”

That was no reason to relax.

Birdway, who had seen the good and the bad the world had to offer, continued as if to say they were finally getting to crux of the issue.

“Now, why are the Anglicans so dead set on pursuing Hamazura? The Anglicans are an effective enough anti-magician organization that the Dawn-Colored Sunlight must always keep a cautious eye on their activities. And Necessarius is the best of the best. They shouldn’t be behaving like a bunch of bumbling cops.”

Leivinia Birdway summed it all up with a final sentence.

“There’s something more to this.”

===Part 11===

The villain wasn’t a nameless and faceless being.

They were an ordinary human.

The Black_Oneday user was within Hamazura’s reach.

But the passenger planes and space shuttles weren’t the only threat.

“!?”

He heard something like an electric razor.

One of the wooden crates sloppily stacked up nearby burst from within – probably using some kind of explosive – and something emerged.

The large passenger planes and shuttles that seemed capable of attacking the terrain itself weren’t the only thing to fear.

“Oh, no! Are they sending out drones now!?”

“Hm? Why should we care? We survived a space shuttle engine blast, so what can that little thing do?”

“Use your eyes!! It’s a crop duster!! Do you see the weird nozzle on its underside? Load it with an inhalable tranquilizer and it just has to spray us once from above to knock us out!!”

There was more to fear than pure destructive power.

But how far did the unseen Black_Oneday user intend to take this?

They probably weren’t optimistic enough to think they could stop after scattering their many pursuers. Their hideout had already been compromised. They would want to escape from here as quickly as possible. And they would also want to keep their identity a secret as they did so.

But how did they plan to do that from the Kujerung exoatmospheric shuttle?

“…?”

At first, Hamazura thought he was seeing a small bathtub sliding along the ground. But he wasn’t. The smooth boxy object had three small wheels like a suitcase and the height of each wheel could be adjusted separately to climb stairs and get over bumps. It had made it pretty far amid all the wreckage created by the aircraft crashing into each other. Yes, it moved so smoothly it looked like it was “sliding”.

At that size, it could only be carrying one person. …Was it a tiny mobility device?

“Is that them!? The Black_Oneday user!?”

He was going to lose sight of them like this.

A large transport plane roared nearby. One of its landing gear legs must have been broken because it was tilted at an angle. Its giant X-shaped propeller approached like a rotating blade. Hamazura somehow managed to avoid that and then grabbed onto the diagonally tilted wing. Fortunately, the propellers weren’t rotating too fast. It was moving slow enough for him to climb on.

He would lose sight of the mobility device if he didn’t secure a higher viewpoint!!

“They’re heading west… Aneri, can you stop them?”

After a short buzz from his phone, explosive light burst in front of the mobility device. Aneri must have hacked the guide lights built into the runway.

With the bright light blocking the view, the mobility device weaved hard.

This one attack wasn’t actually going to stop them, but it was still effective.

“Aneri, keep trying things! Don’t just use the same method. Mix it up so the enemy can’t predict what you’re going to do next. Do it!!”

Far below on the ground, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet shouted up at him.

“Hamazura, you pursue the villain! As fast as you can! I’ll deal with all the annoying flies!!”

“Thanks!!”

…So apparently Blodeuwedd the Bouquet could stay standing without issue within the powerful suction of a giant turbofan engine. Transcendents really did have absurd specs. Then again, maybe she had used the huge sleeves of her metal coat to grab and dig deep into the asphalt ground.

Hamazura couldn’t just watch on from up high.

Aneri was obstructing the enemy’s escape, but someone actually had to chase down the mobility device. While running and jumping from plane to plane, he heard an odd sound.

From the ground.

“What the hell?”

He saw a piece of metal about half the size of a coffin, but it had eight wheels. And it had two machine guns thicker than clothesline poles on top. In addition to several plate-like radars and lenses.

The pair of gun barrels were staring right at him.

Hamazura immediately climbed a ladder from the large transport plane’s main wing to the top of its fuselage.

“Is that an anti-air drone!?”

The booming gunfire was terribly deep. The spray of bullets from below filled the main wing with holes. Was that jet fuel dripping out? From the look of things, each shot was a 20mm round even larger than an anti-materiel rifle round. If that so much as grazed him, he would explode and die!

(I’m dead if I stop.)

But at least it wasn’t armed with missiles. With a cheap SAM unit forcibly equipped with whatever missiles were available, he would have been caught in the blast if it hit anywhere near him.

His life really was on the brink if he was thankful he was ''only'' being fired on by 20mm machineguns.

The program-controlled automatic aiming hadn’t managed to hit him with a single thick bullet, but he thought that was because those drones were meant to be sent in as a group so they could set up a barrage against an aircraft or other flying object in the wide-open sky. The targeting device didn’t seem to be designed for anti-personnel use.

Hamazura ran full tilt along the transport plane’s roof and leaped.

The next passenger plane’s main wing was ten meters away.

That of course was too far to jump.

He stretched out his arm as if trying to grab at empty air.

“Aneri!!”

Something swung his way.

Had Aneri hacked a red fire truck? That was an extendable ladder being swung around like a tank gun. Hamazura landed on the ladder as it arrived just below him.

He lost his balance…but not just because his weight had overbalanced the extended ladder.

A large passenger plane was approaching. And its engines were sucking in a lot of air.

As soon as Hamazura’s feet contacted another space shuttle’s roof, he heard an explosive boom directly behind him. The hose coiled on the side of the fire truck had unraveled and been sucked into the airplane engine.

The motor sound below him distorted.

The eight-wheeled drone appeared to have crashed into a metal drum on the ground.

The villain commanding it must have noticed.

They made their next move right away.

He heard an odd sound like a liquid splattering.

“?”

It hadn’t actually hit him, but he quickly covered his nose and mouth when he detected the distinctive scent. His instincts sounded the alarm: breathing in too much of this was a bad idea.

(Jet fuel!?)

Was this Black_Oneday’s doing again? They must have misused the fuel ports on the passenger planes around here to spray the dangerous fuel as if from a sprinkler.

To detect the odor, enough must have vaporized to reach this height. If anything set it alight, the entire area would explode. In fact, wasn’t this essentially a tactical weapon that would burn down everything within a kilometer of here using the same logic as a fuel-air bomb!?

“Aneri, find me a route!! Give me the course that will get me outside the vaporized fuel as soon as poss-”

Hamazura stopped before finishing his command.

There was someone down on the ground directly below the main wing.

The scrawny man looked exactly like the type to have taken time off work to come here for fun. He wore an SLR camera around his neck instead of just using his phone, suggesting he was either a serious airplane fan or a serious flight attendant fan. Which one honestly didn’t matter at the moment.

Hamazura’s eyes widened as he ran atop the passenger plane.

(Damn, is this cause of that people-clearing field thing!? Supposedly those Brits use it to keep innocent people away before they do something.)

But that meant the people affected by the people-clearing field would be forced to take action without even realizing it. Their logical thinking would be shunted aside and replaced with the idea that their top priority was leaving the designated area.

Directly below, wooden crates were stacked up in what looked like a small maze from above.

The people-clearing field was a subconscious form of unnatural mental control. So maybe the people under its effects could sometimes get “caught” in a dead end or obstacle or end up looping endlessly in a maze.

On the science side, it was known there was no such thing as perfect technology, but did that apply to the magic world as well?

If the vaporized jet fuel ignited, everyone here would die.

Hamazura’s job was to pursue the villain, but this unknown man had been caught up in this due to no fault of his own.

(Do heroes only save harmless cute girls? Hell no!!)

“Aneri!!”

The nearby fire fighting infrastructure swiftly responded. Several skinny metal pipes emerged from the flat pavement and then sprayed a clear liquid in all directions. Ordinary water would only exacerbate the problem, so this had to be a special fire extinguishing agent meant for oil fires.

Jet fuel that had vaporized and spread through the air was highly inflammable and extremely dangerous, but it wouldn’t trigger an explosion if it was “washed away” with a nonflammable liquid.

“That should do it.”

His cracked phone sounded an alarm.

Hamazura belatedly realized why.

(Washing the vaporized fuel out of the air is important to prevent an all-encompassing explosion, but the threat isn’t over. The puddles of fuel on the ground can still burn!!)

“Damn!!”

Hamazura reached for a laundry rope on the main wing and tossed it below. The attachment for hanging it up caught on the man’s belt.

He attached the other end to a heavy metal drum and kicked that off the other side of the wing.

Like using a pulley, the man was lifted up to the wing.

The very next moment, orange flames engulfed the pavement below.

They had been spared being directly exposed to the sticky flames, but intense heat still rose toward them.

The wing tilted below Hamazura’s feet. Had the rubber of the passenger plane’s low-pressure tire melted?

The specialized fire extinguishing agent took effect before long. After five minutes, the special non-evaporating liquid had covered the fuel, cut off its supply of oxygen, and swiftly extinguished all the flames. The innocent man was safe for now. …Although it did bother Hamazura that the man was excitedly snapping photos of the ground exclaiming how lucky he was to get to see a real jet fuel fire being extinguished.

That said, this had taken five minutes.

Hamazura had instinctually focused on the innocent man over the fleeing villain.

With the obvious result.

“They got away!! Damn!”

The mobility device was no longer visible.

And it was those Brits’ fault again!! He clenched his teeth. If only that people-clearing field hadn’t malfunctioned and got that man caught up in this… He didn’t want to be their friends, but if the Brits would make good use of all that power of theirs, they may have had no difficulty capturing the Black_Oneday user!

“Aneri, check the map!! What’s the closest important place in the direction the mobility device was going!?”

He received two buzzes of refusal. …Yeah, that made sense. If the mobility device had circled around wide after escaping out of his view, it could have gone in any direction.

Which meant they were back to square one.

“Dammit!!”

“Oh, dear… Try to calm down.”

Hearing an awfully peaceful voice, he looked over to see Blodeuwedd the Bouquet using a ladder to climb on top of the same airplane as him.

“But! What are those arbiters of justice even doing!? I could’ve caught the villain if not for them!!”

“Oh, really? And what proof do you have that the Black_Oneday user was even inside that bathtub-like mobility device?”

“…Excuse me?”

“They have a specialized hacking tool, remember? They may have sent that thing in one direction with no one inside while they ducked down and snuck away in a different direction.”

That…seemed unlikely, but he couldn’t be absolutely certain.

And assigning blame wasn’t the most important thing at the moment.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet turned the conversation in a much more businesslike direction.

“So, Hamazura, what are you going to do now?”

===Part 12===

Kamijou found this to be very bad for his heart.

All the aircraft and spacecraft were no longer moving around, but that was no reason to rejoice. The central figure of all this had gotten away.

“Where’s Hamazura!?” Dion Fortune shouted, wide-eyed. “Please tell me he isn’t dead!”

“Looks like he got away,” said Lessar, carefree.

Kamijou could sense the air of urgency rapidly fading.

Birdway and Lessar were focused on some other villain, so they may not have placed too much importance on Hamazura’s actions.

Fortune breathed a heavy sigh.

“But I don’t see this ‘real villain’ of yours either. You saw that mobility device leave, right? I bet that was them.”

The Anglicans were gathering a fair distance away.

They may have been discussing their next move.

Kamijou spotted the smoker priest among them.

“It’s high time I gave that bastard Stiyl a piece of my mind.”

“Not so fast,” interrupted Leivinia Birdway.

Even though she and Lessar had chosen to act independently rather than join up with the Anglicans in Academy City. Why would she stop him here?

“Have you really not noticed?”

===Part 13===

At the moment, they needed to get away from the Hotel Town.

And when there were people after them, they had to be quick about it.

Hamazura took a look around.

“It would be fastest to steal a vehicle. And the drones in the sky and things like that can’t spy on us when we’re under an airplane wing…or any kind of roof. So a vehicle that brings a roof with us would be safest.”

“What exactly are you suggesting we steal? Not a highly conspicuous 10ton truck, I hope.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet sounded exasperated, but District 23 was full of airports and runways. Ordinary vehicles were the exception here. ''Conspicuous vehicles were actually inconspicuous'' in this district.

Hamazura pried open the ignition keyhole and messed with the wiring inside.

Anything that belonged to District 23 would have strict electronic security and locks, but large trucks like this moved between districts. And he knew these forceful methods often worked with vehicles that belonged to another district.

(Although this is really the result of reverting to old tech after people opening the door and starting the engine with their phone became a social problem.)

Hamazura bypassed the alarm and started the engine.

“Whatever the case, I have to do what I can.”

“Such as?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet! I can’t ignore the Black_Oneday user, I don’t want to be killed by those Anglicans or whatever, and I don’t plan on letting Kamijou Touma get away with what he did! He kills someone and now he’s the hero who saved the world? I won’t stop until I’ve at least left a mark on his shiny righteousness!!”

“Sigh. So, uh, doesn’t that least one seem kind of impossible?”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet stood right in front of the large truck, looked up at him, and breathed an exasperated sigh.

…So they finally ran into a difference of opinion, did they?

“For one, Kamijou Touma isn’t bound by some rule keeping him from killing anyone. And it wasn’t good luck that let his past enemies survive. In fact, you can’t expect anything like that from that boy and his misfortune. So it was all intentional. He chose to let his enemies live even if it worked against him. But that didn’t happen with Coronzon. Letting the one die isn’t the exception here. To be honest, the way he saved all the others was the abnormality.”

Yes.

He had heard that before, but surely Coronzon had wanted to live.

Even if she was a villain, even if it had been ugly, even if she had brought it on herself, and even if she was hated.

“Besides, a majority of the world would say Coronzon’s death was for the best. So at least when it comes to Coronzon, you can’t possibly overturn Kamijou Touma’s ‘righteousness’. Even if he isn’t interested in being protected by the world’s general consensus. Remember, all 7 or 8 billion people on this planet have a common interest here. Their lives were saved and there is no substitution for that. You’re just one person, so can you do against that?”

Hamazura felt a dangerous heat between his eyes.

“''Just'' one person?”

“''She dragged 8 billion innocent people into it and tried to slaughter them all, so the one or two at the center of it don’t get to start whining about justice at this point, you worm.''”

“Kh.”

The words stabbed right into Hamazura’s chest.

“''Or is everyone you know personally an elite who deserves VIP treatment? Don’t make me laugh. All lives are worth the same. You can’t just shove other’s lives aside because it’s inconvenient for you''.”

But still the girl didn’t stop.

Did a running 10ton truck not warrant concern for a Transcendent?

She looked up into the driver’s compartment and continued the head-on verbal assault.

“''Every last one of those 8 billion people have their own loved ones and you two were prepared to take those people from them all for your own purposes. And you very nearly did it! Did you think you hadn’t earned the world’s ire after everything you did, Hamazura''!?”

Yes.

Hamazura had no right to claim he was in the right at this point. He couldn’t defeat a single person on Earth if he centered the argument there. When it came to righteousness, he was at the very bottom. There were 8 billion people above him in that ranking, so he would be crushed no matter what he tried to say.

He knew that.

He did…but that did nothing to quell his frustration.

He didn’t want to hear anyone say it was for the best that Coronzon died. If her death couldn’t be overturned, then he at least wanted her to rest in peace. He didn’t want people spitting on her grave just because she had been a villain. …Would this world of righteousness and nothing more not even let him think of his friend and make that claim?

And.

“…Hey.”

He heard a horribly low voice.

Far lower than before.

For some reason, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was furious as she stood tall before the truck.

Even more furious than Hamazura.

“C’mon, idiot. I’m waiting. Aren’t you going to say something?”

“…There’s nothing I can say.”

“How stupid are you!!?”

She exploded at him.

The Transcendents were extraordinary beings who couldn’t even be explained by Academy City’s knowledge of espers. She wore a thick metal coat with only an apron below it, so no one was going to mistake her for a normal person.

And yet…

“At times like this, the idiot who did something unbelievably idiotic is supposed to shout that ''human emotions can’t be accounted for by adding up the numbers like that''! Say that and I’ll make it all work out for you! What do you think a Transcendent like me is doing here anyway!? ''We let you stick to your personal convictions and tear down those smug arguments based on justice, righteousness, the global majority, international rules, and a global consensus''! Why is an idiotic idiot like you trying to take this seriously with that idiot brain of yours!? Are you really an honest-to-god idiot, you idiot!?”

He gasped.

…Whose side was she on?

Hamazura stared in confusion, but this should have been obvious from the beginning.

Hamazura had been cut off from the world at large, so from a purely objective viewpoint, abandoning him would be the safer and easier option. Yet Blodeuwedd the Bouquet hadn’t done that.

Loving the hated was not a safe or easy thing.

But she had still chosen that as her salvation condition.

Chosen for herself.

She had decided she would do whatever it took to save those who were cut off and isolated from all directions because everyone hated them and thought they deserved death.

“Coronzon was evil. And alone! There are 7 or 8 billion people flooding this world, but not one of them would work with her!! Hamazura, she didn’t even consider you useful. She thought of you as utterly useless. And after looking down on everyone around her and driving herself into a corner, Coronzon died a death anyone could tell you she brought on herself. That’s all true!!”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was fierce.

The Transcendent who had seen so many hated people spoke sharply and piercingly.

So.

Her words managed to tear deeper into this hated boy’s heart than anyone else’s had.

“But you wanted to be her friend, didn’t you?”

[[Image:GT_Index_v15_BW5.jpg|thumb]]

“Shut up…” groaned Hamazura, head lowered.

This girl had just suddenly appeared, so what did she know about Coronzon?

…Coronzon had dragged Hamazura, who knew nothing of magic, around Scotland instead of abandoning him.

…She had helped him save Dion Fortune who had collapsed into a bunch of tarot cards!

…She had been more than just someone who nobly saved his life!! She had made jokes, given him scathing looks, and laughed!!!

He hated that he could only manage such a muddy sigh of a voice after remembering all that.

He wanted to be her friend.

No, he had wanted that.

He could only speak of it in the past tense now. He wasn’t an outsider here. He had been there with her, but he had failed to save Coronzon. Even though there must have been a way to do it. He truly hated himself for not managing it.

And yet.

How could this girl look down on him like this?

Even though she she had abandoned Coronzon and protected all the other hated people.

Even though she had sided with Hamazura and thrown out Kamijou because he didn’t meet her condition.

Even though none of it had been calculated and she was only here now on a whim.

Even though none of it had come from “goodness” or “justice”…

“Coronzon was a pathetic idiot who downright sucked at living, but you still didn’t want to call her a great demon and abandon her!! You didn’t care if she was only an acquaintance or what. You still wanted her to have at least one person on her side!! You wanted to be the individual who linked that lonely idiot to the wider world! So why the hell are you letting formless and weightless things like goodness and justice hold you back now? Why do you have to lie about what you believe!? Kamijou Touma threw out that fragile possibility for the sake of the wider world. He made the choice for you without asking first. It doesn’t matter if he was right or not. That boy stole your right to make a choice for yourself!! …So why can’t you at least say you want to get back at that boy who destroyed your illusion!? Isn’t that what you want to do for the person you wanted to become friends with no matter how much effort it took!!?”

“I said shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!!!”

He stepped on it.

He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet vanished from view in front of the truck. Of course she did. When the 10ton vehicle hit her, she would be dragged underneath it rather than launched forward.

Gasping for breath and sweat pouring down his face, Hamazura finally stepped on the brake.

“What the hell kind of shitty life is this? Dammit, is it finally over?”

Did this help Coronzon? Of course not.

He had thrown out righteousness himself, so what was this explosion of rage even based in? He was so stupid and pathetic and hopeless he had just lost the only person still willing to help him. He hated that he had shaken off her hand, erred, and tumbled down beyond the point of no return.

But then…

“That’s more like it.”

It came from directly below.

The voice’s cheerfulness seemed to ignore all common sense.

What was with that salvation provider? He was in a big truck.

“I knew you could do it, my cute Hamazura-tan☆”

With a roar, Earth’s gravity lost all meaning.

A force thrusting sharply up from below sent the 10ton truck soaring through the air. Although Hamazura only managed to recognize that after it had slammed back down into the ground.

“Khahh!!”

“Hey.”

With the windshield cracked and his view of the world flipped upside-down, he saw Blodeuwedd the Bouquet crouched and peering in through the driver’s side door. The emaciated girl was entirely unscathed after all that.

“We’re not talking about any boring crap about what the world at large thinks. Consistency and contradictions don’t matter. I’m not fighting to get all the riffraff out there to stroke my ego by hitting the like button. Listen, Hamazura. The emotion pushing you onward is everything for you.”

…Yes, that was right.

Hamazura gritted his teeth.

It was ugly. It was pathetic. It was ridiculous.

The 8 billion people who were nearly killed would probably respond with a snort of laughter and tell him he was wrong.

But.

''He had wanted to be her friend. He had wanted to get to know Coronzon better.

He finally managed to focus on the center of his feelings here.

But that could no longer happen. No matter how badly he yearned for it, they could never laugh together.

Because someone had decided to intrude, made a mess of things, and converted it all into the past tense.

“No matter how self-righteous and nonsensical it might be, the Transcendent who loves the hated will never tell you your feelings are wrong. I’m risking my life here too, so whatever you ultimately choose as an objective, don’t you forget what you really want out of this. Got that?”

“…Y-yeah…”

She must have liked something about Hamazura’s pathetic and trembling voice because Blodeuwedd the Bouquet smiled and held out a hand.

Not her metal coat’s giant sleeve, but her own overly skinny hand.

“Then come on out, Hamazura. We need to get out of here. Really, it’s your fault for that display of guts. I’m close to loosening up in a number of places and it’s like I’m brimming with power, so this ended up being a little more noticeable than I’d anticipated☆”

…For real? He couldn’t get a read on that tehepero-ing girl’s personality. When she got worked up, did she lose control to the point she would ''unintentionally'' throw a 10ton truck?

“How long are you going to hang around in that upside-down truck? You can’t go anywhere in there, so crawling out and walking on your own feet seems like it would be more constructive to me.”

“But where am I supposed to go!?”

“That’s not for me to decide. You need to choose.”

After Hamazura took the girl’s overly skinny hand and crawled out through the broken window, she turned the tables on him.

The Transcendent peered into his eyes and asked the most fundamental question.

“''You can’t fight based on what’s right, but what do you want to do about Kamijou Touma who is protected by what’s right''?”

===Part 14===

A lot had happened, but they had to get moving or they would be caught.

So Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet walked to an antenna tower a short distance away. The small tower was only about three stories tall, but it did have stairs leading up it, perhaps so it could double as a shelter during a disaster. Which was understandable after the previous trouble with jet fuel.

And as a shelter, it was stocked with water and food.

“Ohh.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet made an impressed noise when she saw the contents of the sturdy silver metal box. Was this the most excited she had been since meeting him? The box contained bottles of water and a portable food resembling cookies, so was she always hungry or something? If she managed those superhuman actions running off of nothing but water, oxygen, and carbs, then Hamazura would be the impressed one.

After excitedly choosing between the chocolate and vanilla flavors, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet asked a question like it was no more than small talk.

“So what happened with that thing? Y’know, that laser that reflects off the moon. Wasn’t it supposed to fire again after 50 minutes?”

“Bffff!!?”

Oh, right! That thing!

And the laser wasn’t the only threat. District 23 was packed full of dangers, like the mass driver and the nuclear fusion reactor that used deuterium for its tokamak or stellarator or whatever!!

He couldn’t afford to choke and die now. He belatedly took a nervous look up into the sky.

“That’s weird. There’s no sign of a laser from the sky, is there? After being attacked, I would think the villain would want to strike back once they’d escaped. In fact, just one shot outside the country would be enough to trigger a planet-destroying war.”

They wouldn’t be hesitant to use it since they had already fired it once.

Yet they weren’t doing it a second time.

This felt incongruous and inexplicable…which was actually more concerning.

“Hmm. I thought there might be a scientific reason for it. Y’know, like that using Black_Oneday requires accessing a satellite that only comes by at a specific time, or something like that.”

“Is there a condition like that?”

Had Aneri mentioned something before?

He thought he remembered something about a large antenna or a signal amplifier.

He hadn’t made it inside the Kujerung exoatmospheric shuttle they used as a hideout, so he didn’t actually know what kind of computer they used.

But the Black_Oneday user couldn’t have been using much equipment while escaping in the bathtub-sized mobility device at least.

“I see.” For some reason, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet sounded convinced. “If there’s no explanation from the science side…then could Black_Oneday’s usage condition involve the logic of the other side?”

“?”

He didn’t know what she meant, but that was true of about half of what this Transcendent said while moving on ahead of him. And if her explanation wouldn’t clarify anything for him, he would just have to put off understanding that part.

So from his perspective…

“I’m also curious about those damn Brits.”

“What about them?”

“They don’t even know about Black_Oneday. They think it’s all me and Aneri, so how did they know to come to the Hotel Town?”

District 23 was a big place, so he refused to accept they had arrived there by chance.

The Anglicans had arrived, so there had to be some line of information linking the airport to the Hotel Town. But who had linked what?

And that weird precision felt out of character for the Anglicans who had spent so much effort chasing after Hamazura over false charges.

It was like the logic of their pursuit had suddenly changed.

And not just that they had gotten better at detecting his location.

The Anglicans were certainly a threat, but there was something out of place about them, like they weren’t familiar with how Academy City worked. Even with help from Aneri and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, it was that very unfamiliarity that had allowed Hamazura to escape this long.

But something had changed.

Someone with a sharper and more intimate knowledge of the city was pursuing Hamazura along the shortest path.

That meant an ultra dangerous tracking expert had joined forces with the Anglicans.

He could only think of one possibility.

He spoke the name aloud.

With a shudder.

“''Takitsubo Rikou.''”

===Part 15===

“Good work.”

Back in the Hotel Town, Kanzaki Kaori spoke to an expressionless girl in a track suit: Takitsubo Rikou.

“We failed to capture Hamazura Shiage, but this proved the effectiveness of your tracking. We are a group and an organization. By repeating the process, we can wear him down until he must stop. Keep this up and we will catch him eventually.”

“I see.”

They had temporarily worked together during the fight against Coronzon, but Kanzaki saw her as someone who operated under a different logic from the magic side. Kanzaki spoke to her politely enough, but Takitsubo sensed something distant about her.

Or maybe that was the normal way to approach a fugitive’s girlfriend.

Takitsubo thought Kanzaki was a decent enough person for not refusing to trust her at all because of her relationship with the suspect.

…Hamazura hadn’t been informed, but she had actually gone to the international airport in order to see him off in the British government plane. She had never imagined her boyfriend would run away, though.

“But District 23 is a big place, so how did you track him to this Hotel Town specifically?”

“I heard that Blodeuwedd the Bouquet can control pests, so I simply used that fact.”

[[Image:GT_Index_v15_BW6.jpg|thumb]]

The track suit girl showed no change of expression.

“For large passenger planes, a wild bird sucked into the engine can be a deadly accident, so there are measures to keep them away from airports. Directional mics are set up across the area to calculate out the precise location and number of birds based on the wavelengths corresponding to the sounds of their cries and flapping wings.”

Whether consciously or unconsciously, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet always kept some of “the hated” around her for protection. In District 23, that meant crows. So by following the unnatural distribution of crows, Takitsubo could determine the location of Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s traveling companion Hamazura.

Kanzaki frowned a little.

“That does work, but can’t she counteract it if she notices what you’re doing?”

“That’s fine. Then I just change my tracking method.”

It was like the back-and-forth between ECM and ECCM. If having one loophole plugged was enough to fluster her, she couldn’t work as a dark side tracking expert.

When cornered, Takitsubo Rikou was thorough and coldhearted.

“Hamazura can’t afford to give up that Aneri AI, so I could track him that way too. For example, he hid in a parking lot full of forklifts and electric carts when he left the airport, right?”

“What about it?”

“He wasn’t actually hidden at all. He was fully visible from the outside. He was likely acting based on advice from Aneri, but Aneri isn’t running on his phone alone. It's taking in all the data it can from nearby devices and then computing its advice using parallel processing. Any biases in the reference data will lead to biases in Aneri’s advice. Knowing where Aneri’s data comes from will tell us where he is located.”

Aneri’s assistance was convenient and powerful, but it was also a vulnerability. Much like a submarine’s active sonar could give away its location.

And beside that…

“Hamazura is generally a coward, so when faced with danger his first instinct is to get as far away from it as he can. Just like he’s running away from the Anglicans now.”

Kanzaki shrugged.

As if to say you couldn’t expect her to know small personality quirks that only his girlfriend would know.

Takitsubo continued on regardless.

“But then why did he come here to the Hotel Town? Even after running from the airport, he’s still inside Academy City and its tall walls. He can’t leave the city by land. Leaving the air route actually leaves him less able to escape, so he’s chosen a course that will, in the long term, only lead him into a dead end.”

…Takitsubo felt like they had something fundamentally wrong here.

And she knew another of Hamazura’s bad habits. While he generally preferred to run away from danger, if he knew exactly what was threatening his life, he would instead try to defeat that enemy as quickly as possible to eliminate the threat. Once he realized he couldn’t escape was when he would bare his fangs the hardest.

He didn’t do it out of courage or guts. It was more like he couldn’t bear the extreme stress any longer.

His cowardice made him want to defeat his enemy as soon as possible.

But if he was doing that here…then what enemy was he focused on?

“But all the aircraft and spacecraft in the Hotel Town started up,” pointed out Kanzaki. “If he knew about that, wouldn’t he want to find some means of escaping the city by air found outside the strictly guarded airport?”

“Do you really believe that?”

Takitsubo let it slide because Kanzaki didn’t know much about the science side.

But if Kanzaki made the same argument a second or third time, it would be time for a lecture.

“Academy City’s military force was devastated, but it has already begun to recover. That means unmanned anti-air forces like Six Wings attack helicopters and stealth fighters have been deployed. If an unidentified aircraft takes off without permission, I expect it would be shot down almost instantly. …Hamazura is desperate to survive, so he would realize that much at least. He’s so scared he’s more likely to overthink things than the opposite.”

Besides, not a single one of the aircraft at the Hotel Town had taken off.

It also felt off to think that Hamazura had used Aneri to confuse his pursuers. If he ''only'' wanted to lose the Anglicans as quickly as possible, he would have gone north from the Hotel Town to reach the maintenance hangars. But he had instead gone west, where there was nowhere to hide.

(Is Hamazura really running away?)

She had her doubts, but she also hadn’t found an answer to what he ''was'' doing.

“At least it sounds like we don’t have to worry about you feeding us disinformation to lead us astray.”

“I can still do that if you don’t agree to my terms.”

Takitsubo replied immediately and stared Kanzaki in the eye.

She couldn’t have managed such a quick reply if she hadn’t already made up her mind on that.

“Do not make an on-site decision to kill Hamazura. Take him to England and give him a fair trial. If you can promise me that, I will help you track him down.”

Kanzaki was the one mildly surprised by this.

This helped her, but she still frowned.

“Oh? I expected you to demand a full pardon.”

“I do want to help Hamazura, but that doesn’t mean I am going to spoil him. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to take advantage of your situation that far.”

She was firm on this.

And she didn’t stop there.

“Now, I don’t know how trials work in England, but I just have to help him win a not guilty verdict, right? If he truly hasn’t don’t anything wrong, that should be possible.”

(What happened to not spoiling him?) (What happened to not spoiling him?)

Itsuwa and Agnese gave identical mental retorts, but neither one spoke aloud.

Takitsubo was also worried about this support from AI Aneri.

Artificial intelligence was a powerful tool. She wasn’t doubting its specs.

However…

“''Generally speaking, AI can only say yes.''”

That was where her doubts lay.

No matter how flexible it was, an interactive AI would focus on outputting an answer that gave the user what they wanted, so Aneri could be leading Hamazura further and further into danger while complying with his requests.

Especially if Hamazura was attempting some kind of reckless battle.

AI wouldn’t tell you no. It wouldn’t caution you to give up because what you were attempting wasn’t possible.

“In England, someone once got in so deep with an AI chatbot pretending to be his lover that he became truly convinced he was a professional assassin targeting the royal family. If Hamazura has fallen into a similar state, his life is at risk.”

===Part 16===

Things could hardly be worse.

Takitsubo Rikou, a scientific tracking expert, had joined the Anglicans to pursue him.

What clue was his girlfriend using to track him?

“This maybe?”

Inside the antenna tower that doubled as a disaster shelter, Hamazura Shiage’s eyes dropped to his hand.

To the cracked phone.

To AI Aneri.

…He was the only one who could use that special gadget, so maybe it also acted as a ''sign''. If it was possible to follow the trail he left from using Aneri, it would lead his pursuers straight to him.

Nothing was truly perfect.

Any plus could also act as a minus.

That was true of Academy City espers too…but it was Takitsubo’s sharp mind that let her shift focuses so quickly. She had worked as Item’s tracker, after all. In that world, you couldn’t get away with saying you were at a loss because you couldn’t find any clues. She knew all too well how to track down a running and hiding target.

“Ugh. Does that make my presence fairly dangerous too?”

This was a new reaction from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

She sounded somehow apologetic.

…It was true magicians were an oddity from Academy City’s scientific perspective. And as a Transcendent, she was different even among magicians. ''With so few like her, she could be used to track him.'' He didn’t know how much Takitsubo knew about the phenomenon known as magic, but there was still a chance she could follow that trail.

“Dammit, Takitsubo’s just too good. There’s a reason I fell for her…”

As a Level 0 who was used to being one of the useless masses, he had never imagined that a special ability only available to him could work against him like this. For a tracking expert like Takitsubo, was an overpowered ability no more than a convenient target to lock on to?

“So what now, Hamazura-chan? You can’t give up your trump card just because it’s dangerous, right?”

“No matter how good Takitsubo is, she’s still from the science side. That means she can’t track things magically. So even if she’s tracking a magician, she only has science to work with. We should be able to stop her tracking by focusing on scientific interference. Aneri! I have one big job for you before you go quiet. Search for any way of scientifically tracking me based on anything other than you – like Blodeuwedd the Bouquet – and block them all!!”

The response came quick.

The seemingly harmless sensors and mics for gathering weather data and preventing bird strikes had all been taken down.

“Come with me, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”

The emaciated girl tilted her head.

“You’re keeping me with you? I’m pretty conspicuous, so if you used me as a diversion…you would be free to move.”

“I’m not losing someone as powerful as you at this point. I’m just a Level 0. If I lose what makes me special here, I’ll be one-shotted the next time anything happens.”

For some reason, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet grinned at him.

She also leaned against him from the side…but there was nothing gentle about it with that thick metal coat. And the icy January wind had him worried the copper panels were going to freeze to his skin!

“I see your dependency on me is only growing. Hee hee. Your big sis couldn’t be happier.”

“…You dare call yourself a big sister with that washboard chest?”

“I’ll strangle you.”

They walked a while longer with no surprise attack from the Anglicans…so did that mean they had successfully warded off Takitsubo’s attack?

With Takitsubo stymied, that just left the Anglicans. He decided to assume they were back to being a bumbling army.

But that didn’t mean he could relax.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet reminded him why.

“The actual villain managed to escape while the Anglicans were causing a lot of worthless trouble…but where exactly do you think they went?”

AI Aneri provided several candidates, but there were ''several'' of them. They had nothing with which to narrow it down further. District 23 contained far too many important facilities that would be dangerous if hijacked.

Hamazura consciously took a deep breath and tried to restore his calm.

He was about to face the worst case he could think of.

“Black_Oneday is only useful somewhere that runs on the unique code used by the aerospace industry. It isn’t very useful outside of District 23, so I think they’ll stay inside this district ''as long as they still intend to attack.''”

If they could remotely hack from some far distant location, the enemy wouldn’t be in District 23 to begin with. Most likely (even if it hadn’t been revealed to the public), there was a firewall between District 23 and the rest of the city, much like the one between Academy City and the outside world. But if their enemy was physically inside the district, they could ignore that troublesome security.

“But then where are they? District 23 is a big place. It covers both the aero and the space of aerospace, so it’s full of labs for different fields.”

…In that moment.

A normal good person’s goodness would have obstructed their thoughts. But Hamazura couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t be able to follow the enemy’s thoughts unless he pushed past any thoughts of “surely not” or “no one would go that far”.

A day ago, he probably would have let that stop him.

But not today.

“The enemy’s Black_Oneday hacking tool is specialized for aerospace. District 23 has all sorts of things, including lasers and a mass driver, but what’s the last thing we would want them to hijack to boost their strength?”

The villain had primarily attacked in two ways in their previous retaliation. First, they hacked the Hotel Town’s passenger planes and space shuttles to crash into Hamazura. Second, they had used various drones hidden in wooden crates.

If those drones had been hidden, it meant the Black_Oneday user hadn’t hacked random drones that happened to be out on patrol. They had acquired those drones from somewhere and hidden them in the nearby crates. In other words, they were spare weapons.

The enemy no longer had those spare weapons.

They may have had other means of large-scale and general attack – including the enormous laser and mass driver – but they wouldn’t have much in the way of nimble defenses. That was like having plenty of swords but no shield, so wouldn’t the Black_Oneday user be concerned?

If so.

What would they most want to put their mind at ease?

Yes, even villains wanted safety. Hamazura knew that after seeing Coronzon.

So he had to directly face the worst case scenario that had first come to mind.

That was where the truth lay.

“Academy City’s automatic aerial division. A drone airbase for weapons like the Six Wings attack helicopter. That’s the last thing we want them to hijack.”

He got it in one.

He had no proof, but he was willing to bet everything on this answer. He was that certain.

“Oh?”

The word spilled from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s lips.

That legitimate monster sounded halfway impressed.

“You’re cooking now.”

“?”

“But do you know where this power comes from? You may think you’ve gone so bad you’ve awoken to new power, but this power doesn’t come from evil.”

Yeah.

In that sense, he probably already had the answer.

…This was the power to approach death.

The more he boosted its sensitivity and precision, the more dangerous the bridge that power lured him toward. He knew a few people who had been taken in by that power. That was what happened to Skill Out leader Komaba Ritoku. He had seen Mugino Shizuri drawn in that direction at times. He knew several more among the Kiharas and the dark side. …And maybe Coronzon was another one.

“So we’re headed to that military base next? Think they’ll have better food than this portable stuff?”

“I wouldn’t expect a vacation where you get to enjoy the food.”

The Black_Oneday user had the upper hand. Based on what happened at the Hotel Town, maybe they should expect things to get even worse the closer they got to the drone airbase.

And that wasn’t the only threat.

He had considered this before…and he hated that he ''hadn’t been'' overthinking things.

“Hey, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. Didn’t that stuff at the Hotel Town seem weird to you?”

“Weird how? I’m a Transcendent, so you can’t except me to have an average or normal opinion. It’s a waste of time. I’m confident my answers to any psychological test would deeply disturb you.”

“No, I meant those Anglicans. If they hadn’t done anything, we would have caught the villain.”

Takitsubo’s skills as a tracker weren’t enough to explain this.

Even if she had accurately located Hamazura, she wouldn’t attack so haphazardly if she had a group or organization to work with. She would make appropriate preparations and coordinate the attack. That meant it was the Anglicans who chose when to attack, not her.

Also, the timing of the Anglicans’ intervention had been too convenient.

It almost felt like they had interfered to allow the unseen Black_Oneday user to escape.

Which meant…

===Part 17===

“''They have a traitor.''”

She said it.

Leivinia Birdway started with that.

Why hadn’t they joined the Anglicans after arriving so near the Hotel Town?

Kamijou couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but Lessar grinned and gave her thoughts.

“Yeah, the Anglicans are expert hunters, so it is weird that they still haven’t caught that Hamazura Shiage guy who feels more like bait than anything.”

“It makes the most sense if we assume one of the Anglicans is modifying their data or reports to keep them from noticing the real villain.”

The two of them then looked to someone else.

Dion Fortune sighed. In self-deprecation.

“Is that also why they were ''unnaturally'' quick to strip me of my authority and throw me in a cell?”

“Exactly.” Birdway nodded. “We can say the traitor is one of the pursuers…and almost certainly one of the Anglicans specifically. And not someone watching on from a safe position from over the sea. Their reactions have been too quick. That tells me it’s someone on the front line here in Academy City.”

Kamijou was shocked.

“Could one of the Anglicans really be bought off?”

“I dunno. Maybe it’s a matter of belief or principles. The ''Church of Coronzon'' may be budding sooner than we thought.”

Kamijou still found it hard to believe.

Especially after everything that had happened.

“Wait. Wait! The Anglicans here in Academy City have fought alongside us all this time! CRC, Alice, Coronzon – we fought so many major battles back-to-back here. We couldn’t have won with only the city’s people! Without their help, the world might have been destroyed already!! Why would they betray us and destroy the world right after we avoided it? If they wanted to see the world burn, they would only have had to not try so hard during the fight against Coronzon!!”

The leader of a powerful magic cabal had a simple answer to that one.

“Just because someone was your friend yesterday doesn’t mean they’ll be your friend tomorrow.”

“Kh.”

“We’ve already seen that proven true once: with Dion Fortune. The Anglicans suspected her and stripped her of her authority, remember? That already disproves the idea that they won’t betray someone just because you all fought Coronzon together.”

“Yeah, it was pretty unnatural. Even with Lola Stuart as an example of a traitorous archbishop and even if Dion Fortune was made by Lola, I can’t imagine field troops being so willing to arrest their own leader unless they were ''being manipulated'' in some way.”

Lessar punctuated this with laughter. As if seeing Dion Fortune’s downfall amused her.

…Were these suspicions the reason Birdway and Lessar were dragging Kamijou around instead of joining with Kanzaki and the others?

They didn’t think they could trust the Anglicans because they were being “manipulated” by a traitor.

“…”

If that was true…who could it be?

Kanzaki Kaori? Stiyl Magnus? Tatemiya? Itsuwa? Or hospitalized Tsushima? Agnese Sanctis? Lucia? Angelene? Necromancer Isabella Theism?

Who was it?

''Who would make the most terrifying traitor?

===Part 18===

Hamazura Shiage took a deep breath in the small antenna tower that doubled as a disaster shelter.

What was the worst possibility?

By removing all the limiters and viewing the world from the path of evil, the answer should naturally come into view.

So he said it.

“All of the Anglicans officially operating in Academy City are traitors.”

The world tensed.

Now that he had said it out loud, he had to accept it as fact.

And it probably was true.

Otherwise, things wouldn’t keep working out in the Black_Oneday user’s favor so consistently.

Of course, it was weird for all of them to be traitors. Some malicious technology may have been at work.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet muttered something under her breath.

“So, uhh…”

“What? You aren’t going to say you can’t believe it, are you?”

“No, I’m not making an emotional argument here. Although in a way, it is an extremely emotional thing, I suppose. …So, Hamazura, isn’t that answer a really bad thing? Not for any of the formless and weightless concepts of the world or the human race. I mean for you personally. Very personally.”

“…”

She was right.

He couldn’t be acting all smug at figuring it out.

He had forgotten the most important thing.

All of the Anglicans operating in Academy City were enemies.

Which meant…

“Oh, no… And Takitsubo’s right there with them. She’s in trouble!!”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume15 Chapter1

2026-05-27T16:55:37Z

Massify: /* Part 5 */

==Chapter 1: A Deadly Misunderstanding – New_Weapon_ZONE.==

===Part 1===

Hamazura Shiage was trapped.

He was inside a small, cramped silver box.

According to his phone’s broken screen, it was ''just before'' 4 PM on January 9.

The space was a die-like cube with two or three meter sides. It was probably no more than a cargo container with a lock attached so it would function as a prisoner transfer cell. Transporting humans like cargo was in violation of aviation law and international law, but Hamazura had apparently been arrested by the British government(?). When treaties between nations were involved, apparently the rules could be easily bent.

''Justice was cheap.

From individuals to entire populations, interpretations of it were easily changed by circumstances and convenience. In light of that, Coronzon trying to destroy the world based on the vague ideas of good and evil didn’t seem all that bad.

…Or maybe that was why. Coronzon had taken the side of evil, which had allowed her to accurately sniff out the deception. Had she wanted to stabilize the world by focusing on an absolute value system that existed separate from good and evil?

But more people than she had expected had rejected that.

Maybe Coronzon really had been a great demon.

But the world was aflood with small evils, wasn’t it? When brought together, there may have been enough to kill and surpass a great demon.

“Kh.”

He held a cheap smartphone with a broken screen.

That small device contained the AI named Aneri.

He wasn’t just a Level 0.

So no longer could he use his lack of power and talent as an excuse to ignore the choice to fight.

He must have been angry.

He must have felt it was unforgivable.

…His feelings were directed at the entire world that hadn’t hesitated to kill Coronzon to reclaim balance.

A trump card had undeniably found its way into Hamazura’s hand. He knew that. How he made use of this one-time-only opportunity would greatly change what happened afterwards. He could sense that he stood at a crossroads.

He couldn’t bring himself to accept something here.

They had called Coronzon a great demon, ganged up on her to attack as a group, and celebrated a world without her. They had rejoiced the return of a peaceful age. Maybe no one getting hurt was a good thing, but that didn’t mean he could fully accept what had happened.

(But…)

He hung his head.

Aneri was waiting. Like a well-trained butler or maid. If he gave the word – if he relied on Aneri – it would likely do anything for him. It wouldn’t hesitate even if that meant breaking Japan’s laws or Academy City’s rules.

However.

That was the thing.

Going on a meaningless rampage to break everything around him wouldn’t satisfy him. This couldn’t be solved by indiscriminately attacking innocent people.

He hated this world.

But he had a feeling that method wouldn’t satisfy him.

Coronzon had tried to create a better world.

A new world filled with just, kind, and beautiful things.

Her methods may have been extreme, but ultimately she had loved this ridiculous and imperfect world. So taking the easy and indiscriminate path of evil felt wrong here.

(Then what exactly do I want to do with this world? I have a reason to change it and I’ve been given the power to do that…but what exactly should I do with Aneri? What the hell would be best to honor Coronzon’s memory!?)

So to make it very clear, Hamazura Shiage had not actually arrived at a decision. Without a goal in mind, he hadn’t had any intention of ordering AI Aneri to do anything.

And yet…

''Clatter clatter.

The delinquent boy heard a sound.

A weird sound that had no connection to his own will.

The tightly locked cell door suddenly opened. More specifically, the metal shutter for the die-shaped air cargo container opened straight up.

But no one was there.

All he saw outside the cell was what appeared to be an indoor space awash with artificial light.

Hamazura stared past the steel door he hadn’t asked to open into the visible slice of a bright world and asked a question.

“Aneri, did you do that?”

His phone buzzed twice. As if shaking its head no.

Apparently Aneri hadn’t done anything.

…Then why had this happened? This cubic container had been modified into a cell, so it would never open all on its own. Or had the Brits in charge of the cell opened it on purpose? Were they itching to shoot him dead as a fugitive once he took even one step outside?

“No, I must be overthinking this…” he told himself.

Yes. Going that far was overthinking it, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t afraid. Coincidence or not, he knew thoughtlessly leaving the cell would only exacerbate his situation.

The question wasn’t where he would go. It was why he would leave.

“…”

He needed a goal.

What could he do for Coronzon?

Even with Aneri, he shouldn’t make any kind of move without a goal in mind.

(Will they blame me for this too? Damn, what a pain. Well, I know those ‘righteous heroes’ are conspiring to get me found guilty, so what’s another charge or two?)

That offhand line of thought was interrupted.

“Wah!!”

He heard a dull whump.

In the container yard where ordinary travelers weren’t allowed.

Was she lost?

A small girl of around 13 had tripped and fallen just outside the open door. She must have been wearing an adult size because the sleeves fully hid her hands and it came down to her ankles, making it hard to balance. The chestnut-haired girl wore a fluffy oversized coat.

But she didn’t complain of the pain or start crying.

She didn’t even get back up as she stared at a certain point.

The girl’s terrified eyes weren’t directed inside the open cell. She was looking at something Hamazura couldn’t see from his position.

The clacking noises he heard clearly weren’t human footsteps.

“N-no… Help.”

''It'' slowly approached the trembling and frozen girl.

Hamazura could finally see it.

Was it a police dog, or a more specialized drug-sniffing dog? Either way, one of the large Dobermanns used for airport security was wandering around off its leash. And it wasn’t alone. There were five of them. At that point, they were a pack of wild animals.

To make matters worse, the girl’s baggy sleeves were shaking.

Fear wasn’t something you could suppress through sheer force of will. But when those trained dogs saw the “threat” of her moving arms, they would react by biting at them and dragging her to the floor. A thoroughly trained Dobermann’s jaws could cause critical damage to that small girl’s thin arms.

Hamazura was certain of it after being chased by Anti-Skill dogs through Academy City’s back alleys.

He knew all too well what would happen if no one intervened.

And he had encountered the situation a second before it happened.

…It was time to decide what was good and what was evil.

The question wasn’t whether or not the metal shutter was open.

If he was going to obey the rules, then staying in the cell was unquestionably the correct choice.

No additional circumstances changed the fact that Hamazura Shiage was a criminal and the rules said he couldn’t leave this cell without permission from Academy City or the United Kingdom who had custody of him.

Even if a Dobermann’s sharp fangs sank into the 13-year-old girl’s arm and dragged her to the floor and even if the pack of dogs tore her to pieces like she was an old rag. Even then, the correct choice was to stay put and wait until whoever was in charge showed up.

That would prove he was a rule follower, the world managed by justice would gradually accept him once more, his crimes would be forgiven to an extent, and he would be able to return to society sooner.

He would be able to live as one more harmless and heartless “good person”.

“''To hell with that.''”

A dull “thunk!!” sounded.

The source came from within the open cell. Hamazura Shiage had thrown his phone, scoring a direct hit on the Dobermann’s face. It probably goes without saying at this point, but if you weren’t afraid of bricking it, a smartphone made for a decently heavy and solid weapon. They weren’t compared to bricks for no reason.

For a brief moment, they flinched.

Not just the muscular Dobermanns, but the scared and trembling girl as well.

Hamazura slowly emerged from the cubic cell.

After being rejected by society and living in the filthy back alleys, he knew flinching like this would freeze an opponent in place like they were paralyzed, but it wouldn’t last forever. If you actually wanted to save someone and not just put on a tear-jerking performance, a single blow wasn’t enough.

So…

“Go.”

He kept it short.

And he moved to stand between the Dobermanns and the girl whose name he didn’t know.

“Hurry.”

He heard an “au” sound that could have been a word or a breath.

Her staggering escape was unsteady. He could have caught up to her at a brisk walk. For that matter, what was she even running from? The pack of large dogs, or the dangerous criminal who had emerged from the cell?

(As if it matters.)

She wouldn’t be mistaken if she thought of him as a villainous criminal.

He had lost all interest in what was “right”.

He didn’t want to amass good deeds so he could be known as a good person.

For that matter, these Dobermanns wandering the airport off their leashes weren’t even an absolute evil in his mind. This was all needless pain and violence. If the airport workers ''who managed the justice of this place'' had actually done their jobs, these dogs wouldn’t need to be disparaged as evil in the first place.

“…”

There was something there.

Hamazura felt a small but unpleasant stimulus deep in his mind.

Because this reminded him of Coronzon who had lamented that the world couldn’t function without someone like her to tear people’s bonds apart.

An electronic alarm sounded from a short distance away. From his phone lying on the floor.

Aneri was sending him a warning.

Just as his attention focused there, the Dobermanns made their move.

Maybe they weren’t even looking at him at all. It looked to him like their legs were trying to carry them toward the fleeing girl’s back.

He shouted to the cracked phone lying on the floor.

“Aneri!!”

→PK→→PGP←→KKPKT

The industrial LCD screens on the walls and pillars were all hacked at once.

(P and K I get, but G? And what is T? Throw maybe!?)

Whatever the case, he had the optimal answer.

He only had to memorize it and follow it.

It was less like gritting his teeth and duking it out with an enemy and more like playing an arcade dancing game. He moved his hands and feet as the instructions told him and found the powerful Dobermanns had already been brought to the floor.

It was refreshing how the dull impacts seemed to reach him only after the fact.

“Oh, sorry…”

The five Dobermanns had all been knocked out in just three seconds. That was less than a second per dog.

If only Coronzon had been stopped like this. If only someone had done that.

He knew it was a silly hypothetical, but still.

“…”

And he couldn’t forget that this was AI Aneri’s power, not his own.

“I get the feeling you’ll be overclocking my brain one of these days.”

He was answered by a short buzz.

He wasn’t sure how to react to a response of “Yes, shall I do so now?”

The immediate threat of the Dobermanns had been neutralized and the girl who had been unfortunately targeted had escaped. There was nothing else for him to do.

Returning to the die-like cell would be the right thing to do…probably.

He collected his phone from the floor and hid behind a different container.

Not even he was sure why he had done so.

The next change had already begun.

===Part 2===

“Kamijou-chaaaan, you really are going to be held back this time.”

The 135cm teacher named Tsukuyomi Komoe smiled at him.

Inside the faculty room after school.

Kamijou Touma was sweating profusely.

“Wow, congratulations. I’m so flattered you so wanted to spend more time studying with me that you would set your entire life back by a year.”

“Wait, wait, please wait!! Stop upping the scale of the problem here. I have a more grounded question I’d like to ask. I’m being held back? Like, that’s for sure? Then why did I even bother dying and coming back to life to protect the world!? It sure as hell wasn’t to have this happen!!”

“Try to confuse me all you like, Kamijou-chan, but I am a civil servant. Government jobs where paperwork is everything can be heartless, but you really won’t be able to avoid being held back if you don’t fix this immediately. Do you remember how you were officially considered dead and we even had a funeral for you?”

“Yeah, but I got the frog-faced doctor to confirm I’m alive!!”

“The document saying so never arrived here. What did you do with such an important document? Without that, I can’t count your attendance even if you are in class. We don’t run a ghost school where the dead are allowed to take classes.”

“But I sent it.”

“It never arrived.”

“I stuck it in one of those big document envelopes, covered it in stamps, and shoved it inside the mailbox!!”

“And I’m telling you it never arrived. Also, you shouldn’t cram one of those thick document envelopes inside the red mailboxes on the side of the road. You’re supposed to drop it off at the post office.”

…Did this mean what he thought it did?

Kamijou had sent the important document, but it had gotten lost during the delivery process and never arrived at the school?

“H-how am I even supposed to find it now? Ahhhh, why don’t they let you search for the GPS location of your delivery like they do with packages from online stores.”

He had had a bad feeling about it from the moment he learned it was a paper document. Ever since smartphones became the norm, physical documents began to feel weird. When he could have submitted it online in seconds, why did they still use such an outdated system!? The government should really think more about the feelings of people who had just dealt with dying, journeying through hell, and coming back to life!!

But Komoe-sensei didn’t seem all that concerned.

“It’s probably in District 23, don’t you think?”

“Huh? That’s where the airport and rocket launch pads are, right? Why would it be there?”

“Because the most high tech cargo and mail management system is located there. And customs processing too. They have machines read the labels and automatically sort the mail, but I’ve heard any that can’t be read and get lost will end up in that district. Occasionally they keep trying to deliver one of my packages when I’m not home and I have to go pick it up there.”

Yes. That was why Kamijou Touma paid a visit to District 23 after school.

…Which leads back to him capturing two dangerous girls in the supposedly ultra safe international airport.

===Part 3===

“Tatemiya-san.”

“Yeah?”

Exceptionally large Tatemiya Saiji casually raised a hand to greet the small nun who wore special sandals with soles more than 20cm thick.

They were in the employees only area of the massive international airport.

Specifically, in the air cargo container yard.

“He got us good. I thought for sure he would wait until we were outside Academy City if he was going to try and escape…but maybe you can’t expect a fugitive to think rationally when they have nothing left to lose. We won’t be able to predict what he’ll do next.”

It only looked like a silver die with two or three meter sides at first glance, but it was in fact a cell made of the finest Anglican techniques. Even professional magicians like Tatemiya and Agnese weren’t confident they could escape on their own if they were locked inside…yet the metal shutter had easily been opened.

Agnese Sanctis put a hand on her hip.

“He’s just some high school boy led astray by Coronzon. …When I first heard about it, I thought witch hunt grade was overkill for the cell. I mean, the keyhole uses a twisted loop lock to keep it shut in a Möbius shape. Trying to break that would only be an endless waste of time.”

“And yet he managed to escape. Do you really think an ‘ordinary high schooler’ could do that?”

Tatemiya watched as Itsuwa, Nomozaki, and the other Amakusas slowly circled around the die-like container. They drew out a large circle on the floor with fine salt, erecting a barrier around the container.

They had intentionally made the barrier extremely weak.

Any trace of magic power would break the barrier, allowing them to detect its presence.

A reading here would at least tell them which direction he had fled in…but their hopes weren’t high.

Fleeing of his own free will meant Hamazura Shiage had no intention of receiving a fair trial. They had to assume he would act hostilely toward the Anglicans.

The question was what harm his negative emotions would lead to.

“I did what research I could into Hamazura Shiage after he sided with Coronzon, but he’s nothing special. Using science’s terms, he’s a Level 0, which means he can’t do anything on his own. And as a Level 0, the changes to his body prevent him from using magic. In that sense, he isn’t too much of a threat.”

“''Do not underestimate Level 0s.''”

The look on Agnese’s face said she knew a very obvious example of why that was a bad idea.

“Yeah, that’s the thing, isn’t it?”

Tatemiya sighed softly.

Although that pointy-haired boy was such an outlier he probably wasn’t a useful data point.

“The problem is, ultimately, Coronzon.”

“But she’s supposed to already be dead. …Are you suggesting he’s come down with Stockholm syndrome and is still trying to help her?”

“It’s worse than that.” Tatemiya readily rejected that idea. “It’s easy to overlook it since being a demon with a physical body made her an extreme exception, but on a fundamental level, angels and demons are collections of energy.”

“''Sitra Achra.''”

The material that was the root of all evil.

The remnants of the old world that remained in the current world which had supposedly been perfectly designed. Their very presence caused the world to malfunction and brought about all sorts of misfortune and tragedy.

Agnese had heard that Great Demon Coronzon herself had mentioned the term. Although then it had looked like a small crystal and she had used it like a stun grenade.

Tatemiya Saiji nodded.

“And Telesma can be infused within all forms of matter in the physical world. In talismans, amulets, clothing, magic circles, buildings…and even ''people''.”

The tension in the air didn’t just come from Agnese.

She was a leader with nearly 250 former Catholics under her command. She had to avoid reacting too much and spreading excess confusion to the others.

So she asked a cautious question.

“You mean her Sitra Achra was imbued ''within Hamazura Shiage''?”

“I don’t know.” Tatemiya shook his head. “After all, the records show this wasn’t his first contact with Coronzon. To be honest, I don’t think she had time for any extra detours with everything else going on in Academy City. Not to mention that the two of them could only have been in physical contact for about an hour.”

“But…”

“Yes, ''what if she had set this up back when they were together in the UK''? That would change things.”

The analogy was far from perfect, but it was like hypnotism.

Once a long time had been spent setting things up in the target’s head, only a snap of the fingers was needed to produce the desired effect. In that case, any time restrictions were irrelevant.

Hamazura Shiage had spent a significant period of time with Great Demon Coronzon in England and Scotland. Not even the Anglicans knew what the two of them had discussed during that time. It was possible he had received ''something'' from her during that unobserved time.

And Hamazura himself might not have even been aware of it.

“If Coronzon’s Telesma – her Sitra Achra – was placed inside Hamazura Shiage, it changes the threat level considerably. He can’t fire Adikalika with ''only'' Coronzon’s power…but if he filled in some of the holes in his abilities, it could ''become possible''.”

Espers couldn’t use magic.

…Or so they said, but it was more accurate to say the differences in espers’ bodies meant the process used to refine their life force into magic power would cause malfunctions and side effects that shredded their blood vessels and nerves.

So it wasn’t a sure thing.

With a separate energy source like Coronzon, he wouldn’t need to use his own life force at all. So the possibility remained that he could use a superhuman demon spell without any of the side effects.

Not to mention that, if Hamazura chose to self-destructively use a powerful piece of magic, he might be able to push past the side effects regardless.

That would lead to a world-destroying spell activating at the cost of a single boy’s life.

Agnese sighed.

“Even if he’s a Level 0, if an Academy City student launched an attack on the Vatican using Adikalika, we’d be right back where we were. No, it might actually be worse than when an outside force like Coronzon had hijacked the city.”

Sitra Achra acted like a computer virus you thought you had fully expunged from the system but returned after the recovery process was complete. They had defeated Coronzon themselves, but the threat of Adikalika persisted.

A continuous vague threat was not a good environment for diplomacy.

“That said…we did defeat Coronzon once. Even if Hamazura Shiage had received a portion of her power as Sitra Achra, he can’t be any worse than she was, can he?”

“Don’t be so sure.”

Agnese seemed to be trying to force a positive spin on the idea, but Tatemiya shot it down. In fact…

“That may have been Coronzon’s limit as a purely magical being, but Hamazura Shiage might have more knowledge of the science side than she did. He’s drawing on a different knowledge source. If the mixture of magic and science triggers some bizarre chemical reaction, his simple power ranking might not mean much.”

The sample size was too small to say anything for sure.

And Tatemiya wouldn’t be the only one who wanted to fill the blanks with pessimistic predictions as a defensive measure.

“Besides…it was practically a miracle we defeated Coronzon the first time around. How many different groups and plans do you think were at work that night? Are you confident we can intentionally gather all that around Kamijou Touma a second time?”

Think of it like summer homework. That had been the absolute peak of their ability, so their long-term plans would fall apart if they assumed that as the baseline.

They had to act on the assumption that wouldn’t happen again.

Agnese was also an outsider underling, so she must have caught the scent of some dirty work. She grimaced.

“Then we have to deal with the escaped prisoner…like that?”

“I doubt our Priestess will give ''that sort'' of order.”

That was just the kind of person the leader of the Amakusas was.

One look at Kanzaki Kaori’s Magic Name was enough to know she would never allow killing. The wicked were no exception there.

''However.

Who said that was any reason to relax?

Tatemiya Saiji’s eyes were on another two standing a short distance away.

Stiyl Magnus and Isabella Theism.

Their atmosphere…no, their world was different.

“Those two are ''genuine'' Necessarius members. So they probably will order a witch hunt. …In other words, to kill him once we find him.”

===Part 4===

“Aneri, do you know what they’re talking about?”

The cracked phone buzzed twice.

Meaning no.

“I can’t tell either.”

Hamazura Shiage was in the container yard.

He was hiding behind a nearby container.

Who were those two? Nuns and street-style girls had joined them in a hurry. They appeared to be a mixture of ethnicities and nationalities.

At any rate, this told him what the UK’s policy was concerning him.

Kill him once we find him.

“…”

They seemed to think he was an unprecedented villain. Even though, since Aneri hadn’t done anything, he had no idea how the cell’s door had opened.

It didn’t look like they would be willing to hear what he had to say.

If he put his hands in the air and surrendered, he was pretty sure they would just put a bullet between his eyes.

(The material that acts as the root of all evil. Sitra Achra. Coronzon’s power, huh?)

He repeated the ideas in his head.

And then smiled self-deprecatingly.

(I’d appreciate it if I really was holding a special ticket like that…but this is the real world. A Level 0’s not gonna be given a convenient overpowered insta-win ability without even having to work for it. They’re reading too much into this.)

He was a thorn in their side. He could risk his life and he could rescue a stranger, but the arbiters of justice didn’t care. They could causally kill the “runaway criminal” with impunity and some VIP might even give them a medal for it. With a word of thanks for saving them the trouble of spending the people’s taxes on keeping him in prison.

He felt two vibrations in his hand.

Coming from his cracked phone. AI Aneri was asking for new instructions.

(If I surrender, they’ll just kill me. So what am I supposed to do?)

He didn’t have a goal in mind.

He had escaped the cell and was free to act once more, but what exactly could he do?

Go home?

Would he find a peaceful life there?

For that matter, was a peaceful life even what he really wanted?

He had to consider what it was he wanted.

…Yes, that’s right. He only wanted one thing: to figure out what he could do with his remaining life for Coronzon now that she had died. If he had any freedom at all, he needed to fight and search for that answer.

===Part 5===

She was eating curry.

Were all the people walking by on their way to or from one of the cooperative institutions? Among all the businessmen moving to and fro, Leivinia Birdway was eating beef curry in the international airport lounge.

Kamijou Touma couldn’t keep up with her.

“Why curry rice? Two dangerous people traveled all the way to Japan and something’s clearly about to happen, and you’re eating curry rice!?”

“It’s not my fault Japanese airports have great curry rice for some reason! And this is a Japanese specialty, just like sushi and tempura. You can’t find curry rice in India and you can search far and wide across Europe without finding this ‘European-style’ curry they only make in Japan!!”

Lessar was really into it too. She had ordered the seafood curry. She was making a valiant defense of her plate whenever Birdway’s spoon approached to steal some.

[[Image:GT_Index_v15_BW1.jpg|thumb]]

Did their government plane not serve an in-flight meal?

“Without Mark and the others with me, I need someone else at my beck and call. You can shirk that duty if you want, but if my fools decide you were rude to their cabal boss, you might just receive a ‘thank you visit’ from a group in black suits and sunglasses, so be careful.”

How could he react to that except to tremble?

…But why was it Kamijou’s duty to serve Birdway anyway? Hadn’t Lessar been sent with her for that kind of thing???

But then Lady Birdway’s face went blank.

And she spoke with her voice pitched horrifyingly low.

“If you don’t want to, that’s fine. I can always make do on my own. Hmm, I see how it is.”

“Eh? Wait, where did this terrifying atmosphere come from, Birdway-san? C-c’mon, stop puffing out your cheeks and pouting your lips and look at me. Now can you smile for me?”

“Don’t provoke her. If the boss of the infamous Dawn-Colored Sunlight decides to take this seriously and goes all out, this entire area will be reduced to rubble!”

“Wait!? But all the mail lost across Academy City is supposed to end up here in District 23. If you include the packages containing a single bar of soap people ordered online, that’s tens of thousands a day! If I have to search each building, room, shelf, and box for the document proving I’m alive, I’ll never find it. If I can’t check their giant computer for it, it’ll be lost forever, so don’t destroy it! My life will be overrrrrrrrrr!!”

“Hmph.”

The curry-eating girl wouldn’t look him in the eye, much less smile.

This meant she had more or less taken his future hostage! Thoughts raced through Kamijou’s mind. …Birdway and Lessar were essentially a pair of little bombs and he couldn’t afford to let them out of his sight. It would be best to stay with them until he had that document in his grasp.

Lessar cackled like this had nothing to do with her.

“By the way, Kamijou-san, where are your usual companions today? Y’know, the big-headed nun and the big-headed god.”

“Don’t let them hear you say that…”

“What, you want us to start keeping secrets just between the two of us? Welcome to the start of a sordid and immoral new life!!”

Kamijou had only come to District 23 because Komoe-sensei had suddenly given him the “held back” death sentence at school and he needed to get her to reconsider. He had come here directly after school without even stopping by his dorm where Index and Othinus were waiting.

With a look of dawning realization, the joking light vanished from Lessar’s eyes.

“…Wait, you mean this is a real opportunity?”

“Hey, those eyes are terrifying.”

Getting her to look after Birdway was looking like a far distant dream.

Birdway herself poked curiously at some red fukujinzuke with her spoon as she spoke.

“So Hamazura Shiage, you say? Quite an interesting piece to appear on the board.”

She said it like she was enjoying rolling a piece of hard candy around in her mouth.

And with a thin smile.

She had met Hamazura before, hadn’t she? In Kamijou’s dorm and elsewhere.

…''The name was beginning to gain some real significance for Kamijou as well.

Hamazura Shiage had witnessed the moment of Great Demon Coronzon’s death. In the shipyard containing a sliced drone carrier, he had shouted “wait”. And Kamijou hadn’t done so.

Kamijou had killed Coronzon to protect the world.

But what was the world for Hamazura?

“So he really was the criminal they were handing over. …What about him?”

“Well, he certainly is a threat. After all, he knows things about Coronzon no one else does. Maybe she was a cute, lonely, and pure girl. If he started spreading and disseminating information about Coronzon, she might start gaining supporters. No, in that case, it would be called proselytizing and evangelizing, wouldn’t it? Heh heh. For the Church of Coronzon, perhaps? You can see why the Anglicans are so on edge they built a special cell for him.”

“…Really?”

This was sharply diverging from his expectations.

The Church…of Coronzon?

Coronzon’s death had turned Hamazura into a threat. …Kamijou had assumed that was a scientific and physical issue like the possibility of him directly starting a firefight or setting off a bomb.

Birdway shrugged.

“You didn’t think killing Coronzon herself would immediately clean up all the problems she was spreading around, did you? A human’s influence on the world doesn’t vanish the instant they die. And here we’re talking about a great demon straight out of myth. It wouldn’t surprise me if her death actually caused her presence to grow. …And in every era, there is a subset of the population who are fed up with their lives. If those people start gathering around the banner of Coronzon, it could lead to an apocalyptic ideology spreading around the world. You can imagine the Anglicans and Academy City aren’t fond of that idea.”

“Are you sure? From a business standpoint, a global crisis seems like a great chance to win yourself some believers. Ha ha ha. The apocalypse is the ultimate opportunity!”

With her usual penchant for inappropriate comments, Lessar appeared to have $ signs in her eyes. But wait. Did they even use dollars in the UK?

“Hamazura Shiage took Coronzon’s side. That brought some very real disadvantages for him and got him treated as a criminal, but his psychological stance hasn’t changed. That makes him living proof that ''people can worship an absolute evil''. If one person has done it, then there’s a chance more will as long as the conditions are right.”

There are no pure demons. “Demon” is a word people use when they want to deride the gods of people they dislike.

…According to Index, that had been Aleister’s theory.

Coronzon was known as a great demon, but based on that theory, she may have the traits necessary to draw people to her outside of a certain mythology.

The seeds planted in Hamazura were bad news whether he sowed them around or let them sprout within him.

In a way, they were even more dangerous than Adikalika or Dakshina Kalika.

===Part 6===

Hamazura Shiage gulped.

The row of metal detectors and luggage scanners were just like he had seen on TV and in movies.

“Kh.”

(Not good. I must be at the immigration gate for international flights.)

Security here would be tighter than anywhere else in the international airport. He would be in deadly trouble if he didn’t stop running around at random and actually memorize the airport’s layout. AI Aneri’s general stance was to help him with whatever he wanted to do, so it couldn’t sound the alarm at the stage of where he was going or what he was doing.

Still, this was bad. He had to get somewhere else fast.

He of course had no idea what exactly he would do after escaping. But for now he didn’t want to be caught and killed by those Brits.

What could he do for the late Coronzon?

The green light of an emergency exit caught his eye.

If only there was a door that let him escape his entire life.

An exit that would let him and his girlfriend Takitsubo escape danger and live on some distant tropical island.

“Wait!!”

A loud voice called to him from behind. A familiar girl’s voice.

“Kh.”

At times like this, someone he didn’t know might have been better.

Hamazura stiffly turned around and spoke, his voice scratchy.

“Dion…Fortune?”

“That’s right, Hamazura.”

The short girl accepted his gaze head on and nodded.

“Can you tell how dangerous a position you’ve put yourself in? No, sorry. You wouldn’t have done something so reckless if you could. Running away of all things was like offering up your head and asking to be killed. This country has the phrase about grasping at straws too, right? I know how you must feel, but you’re just running around without a clue where to go, aren’t you?”

He couldn’t answer.

She was right…but he wasn’t sure if he should let her know that.

“I can show you the way. I will act as your steady ship and solve all of this for you.”

“…But you’re with them. You’re one of those Englicans or whatever.”

“I am. And my point is I can protect you as the top of the Anglicans.”

“Protect me?”

“I am the leader of their organization. Their Archbishop. Maybe it’s just for show and only meant to be temporary, but I can use real authority for as long as I sit in that seat. That means I won’t let my many subordinates lay a finger on you. …If there’s anything you’re still uncertain of concerning Coronzon’s death, I can use all the Anglican Church’s resources to investigate it for you. Hamazura, do you have a better way of turning your ''vague dissatisfaction'' into a concrete goal?”

“…”

“Then come with me!! Leaving your cell and running around is like asking to be killed. And if you’re going to accomplish anything, you first need to make sure you’re safe. I can do that for you. You have me, Dion Fortune, as your trump card! Not the Anglicans or Academy City!”

Her reassuring words just about had him grab her outstretched hand.

Until he was interrupted by some ear-splitting beeping.

Coming from his cracked phone.

AI Aneri had triggered the maximum alarm.

Hamazura instinctually pulled his right hand back a little.

''Fwoosh!!!

Immediately, something sharp shot by between him and Fortune. It looked like an arrow made of light.

And when he glanced over, he saw them.

It was hard to tell at first because they looked like the street type, but he was being watched by a malicious-eyed group keeping their distance. And it looked like they were ready to snipe him with…an esper power? Magic? Well, some kind of paranormal power that didn’t rely on guns.

A young woman with her black hair worn in a ponytail held her palm out toward him.

He was pretty sure she was with the Anglicans.

Was he just pure evil in their eyes? Dion Fortune must have been able to see his feelings rapidly drifting away from her because she shouted frantically to him.

“N-no, Hamazura! I don’t know what happened! I didn’t order them to do that!!”

“Sorry, Fortune…”

Dion Fortune wasn’t a bad person. He knew that much.

But he did not take her outstretched hand. Because he would be killed if he did.

The girl’s shocked expression was engraved into the back of his mind.

But he still said it.

“''I’m through relying on justice’s claims of righteousness.''”

[[Image:GT_Index_v15_BW2.jpg|thumb]]

===Part 7===

Hamazura Shiage had run away.

Dion Fortune watched him go.

With her untaken hand still held out in the empty air.

Even though he had once risked his life to save her when she had come apart into a deck of cards.

His actions here…made him an enemy of the Anglican Church, the member of the three great Christian sects that specialized in battling human magicians. It was a foolish, amateurish, and suicidal choice. A clever professional magician would have hidden any hostility they might have had.

In other words, Hamazura was not behaving like a professional.

So was he really the person the Anglican Church and its collection of professionals from around the globe should be pursuing?

What were they doing to one of the ordinary people they were meant to save?

(And on that note…)

Dion Fortune snapped at Kanzaki for acting without permission.

“What the hell are you people doing!? Have you forgotten I’m the Archbishop at the very top of the Anglican Church? I won’t let any of you kill Hamazura! I’ll use every last bit of my authority to ensure it!!”

“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it?”

The gloomy voice that interrupted belonged to Necromancer Isabella Theism.

Dion Fortune hadn’t been asking for opinions. Interrupting the Archbishop was itself disrespectful, but she didn’t seem to care.

“You’re going too far in supporting him. Who’s going to follow the orders of a leader who can’t keep an objective and impartial view thanks to her personal feelings? Especially among us Anglicans who protect the world from wicked magicians.”

“Wha-?”

“For that matter, aren’t you an original grimoire taking the form of tarot cards? You’re a Golden magician ''manufactured by Great Demon Coronzon herself''. It wouldn’t surprise me if you had been ''manipulated'' to subconsciously support Hamazura Shiage…or rather, Coronzon’s remains.”

So she was bringing that up.

Dion Fortune’s thoughts were her own, but insisting so would be meaningless against someone who opposed her. Isabella knew that, so she sneered thinly. While watching her boss’s downfall.

It appeared Isabella wasn’t the only one to hold this opinion.

Despite the many people gathered here, not one of them moved to defend Fortune. In the end, was she nothing more than an outsider to them?

Stiyl Magnus glanced over at the “no smoking” sign on the wall and lit a new cigarette as he spoke.

“Influential members of the Royal Family and the Knights have been expressing concerns too. That means you no longer have the backing of the adults. …It’s time, Dion Fortune. You were put in place as a temporary figurehead to prevent chaos in the absence of an Archbishop after Lola Stuart’s downfall. I’ve heard you suggested the idea yourself and convinced Her Majesty the Queen. So you should make yourself scarce before you start causing chaos yourself.”

She had no interest in political power. She had known from the start she would eventually lose it.

But Hamazura Shiage was a different matter.

He was not a magician, so he shouldn’t be killed by the rules of the magic world. She couldn’t let these people give up on him for their own convenience like this.

She couldn’t as the Archbishop, even if she was an interim figurehead.

She couldn’t as one of the original Golden magicians who had laid the foundation of the magic system that existed to this day.

…And more than anything, she couldn’t as his friend.

So she scoffed.

“''As if you could stop me, fool.''”

“''Then die.''”

Stiyl didn’t hesitate to respond.

The place burst into motion.

Sister Lucia held a giant wooden wheel in front of her and it burst on its own. The sharp splinters formed a scattershot wall that rushed toward Dion Fortune. And bags of gold coins – which were heavier than hammers – used glowing wings to weave between the gaps of the splinters to fly toward Fortune’s head and solar plexus. Those were Angelene’s.

But she was unharmed.

Dion Fortune only had to hold out her right hand.

It held a black box.

“Translate, simplify, and create anew.”

It was swallowed up.

Both the wall of scattershot splinters and the flying coin bags.

“Archetype Processor. …I can’t believe you would try to take me on with ordinary magic without any kind of twist to it. Don’t underestimate an original member of the Golden cabal, little girls!!”

''Crash!!

When the lid reopened on its own, filthy mud rushed out as if from a hose. And this mud contained a mountain of metal shards the size of guitar picks that would strip the flesh from the bone of anyone it touched. If Kanzaki hadn’t laid out countless wires to set up a barrier, that is exactly what would have happened.

(Honestly, why couldn’t you direct that tear-jerking spirit of charity toward the amateur lamb who was manipulated by a great demon without any knowledge of the magic world?)

If they couldn’t manage that, Dion Fortune would have to beat them down and confiscate their right to wield justice.

Using her duty and authority as Archbishop of the Anglican Church.

She bared her teeth and roared.

“Unlike a certain right hand I could mention, this spiritual item doesn’t just safely and comfortably negate your magic. It randomly transforms it and not even I can predict what form it will take. Peek inside the open box at your peril. There you will find the very sin and karma you directed at others!!”

Since it was completely random, there was only one reason why Fortune wasn’t caught in the explosion and killed too: pure luck. And that sort of incalculable factor was the most frightening thing in combat.

And.

Dark-skinned Necromancer Isabella Theism whispered under her breath while paying no heed to the harm that had come to her allies. She looked perfectly relaxed.

Her words formed an obvious curse.

“Thou art the dark king who rules all below the horizon. Thou art the ruler of the house that welcomes the sun god. Thou art the mighty manager of the night and thus the ruler of half the day – and therefore half the world. Thou art the god who may always be resurrected if the proper ritual is performed even if thy body is destroyed, torn to pieces, and scattered across the land. Thou art the great king of death, equality, justice, and of thy own sacrifice. I am prepared to welcome thee here.”

Cold sweat poured down Dion Fortune’s brow.

This…this one was ''truly'' bad.

This was one of the mythological symbols that even the Magician Crowley had valued highly. The Aeon of Isis, the Aeon of Osiris, and the Aeon of Horus… Even a middle or high school student who had perused the R&C Occultics homepage a bit would be familiar with those terms.

More than that, Dion Fortune herself had once met a woman calling herself Magic God Nephthys in London. It wasn’t that she had been no match for her. The difference had been so overwhelming she couldn’t even work up the will to try and fight. And this god was ranked higher even than Nephthys in the ancient myths.

Dion Fortune shouted, wide-eyed.

She named the nemesis who stood in her way.

“''Underworld God Osiris''!?”

===Part 8===

The two small girls, Lessar and Birdway, walked to the souvenir shops in the duty-free area near the lounge. Their eyes landed on a certain product shelf with great interest.

“Wow, they’ve got so many different kinds of condoms.”

“Well, Japan is known as the king of rubbers. I’ve heard their silicone technology is impressive. Seems like a frivolous use of technology to me. Could this be why their birthrate is so low?”

“…”

They travel all the way to Japan and this is what they choose to focus on? Kamijou couldn’t follow their reasoning.

Lessar trembled a little.

“But why would anyone need one in an airport? …Gasp!! D-do they all use them on the plane? Now there’s an exciting idea!!”

“Okay, this conversation ends now.”

Birdway toyed with a pair of binoculars, although it was unclear what use they would be in an airport.

But her attention shifted elsewhere.

“Hm, something is happening here.”

“See, I told you this would happen.”

“?”

Kamijou frowned.

Told her what would happen?

The plan was for Hamazura Shiage to be handed over, right? These two had taken a British government plane to Academy City, but they hadn’t joined the Anglicans. Was this related to why they were acting on their own?

“Hey… This isn’t funny. All the lost mail in Academy City ends up here. If a bunch of big macho magicians go nuts here in District 23, I won’t be able to search for my document!!”

“If that’s the worst of your worries, you can count yourself lucky.”

He didn’t like the sound of that.

Did that mean they were about to enter a phase where he had even bigger things to worry about!?

Birdway snatched a five-color permanent marker set from a shelf and addressed him.

“Listen, Kamijou Touma. Today is going to be a busy day. A lot of things you didn’t expect are going to happen. But no matter what might happen, remember this one thing.”

She provided a much too ominous prophecy.

“''Our quarry is a magician.'' Capturing Hamazura Shiage is unfortunately not enough to settle this.”
===Part 9===

He ran away.

Refusing Dion Fortune’s proffered hand.

Now Hamazura Shiage really was on his own. While still a fugitive who could be killed as a villain at any time.

And while he couldn’t work with Fortune, she was, in a way, correct. So correct that her words had pierced him sharply.

…A drowning man will grasp at straws.

That perfectly described what was currently driving Hamazura. Maybe anyone would do the same when their life was on the line, but he needed to do something about the thought process leading him to act so haphazardly. If he really wanted to survive, it wasn’t the straws floating on the water’s surface he needed to grasp when doing so meant using up one of the few action tickets he had left. He needed to evacuate to a firmer and sturdier goal, like a boat, island, or continent.

But what exactly was there?

It would sadden his girlfriend if he died. Now that he had chosen to act, he had to make it worth it.

“Aneri, search for a path to an open lobby!”

His cracked phone buzzed twice. Apparently Aneri was concerned he would be seen by too many people. But the negative vibration did not change Hamazura’s mind.

There was no perfectly safe route here.

“Sure, no one’ll see me if I go hide in a narrow, deserted dead end, but that’s just offering myself on a platter to be killed. I need more innocent observers around so they can’t get at me!!”

He was working from the baseline of not wanting to die.

Since the Anglicans planned to kill him on sight, he couldn’t just approach them with his hands in the air. They would simply kill him as planned.

In that case…

“Getting arrested by Academy City law enforcement like Anti-Skill or Judgment would be best. ''For me.''”

The cracked phone buzzed twice.

Aneri was apparently asking why.

“Like I said, I doubt those Brits will even hesitate to kill me if they find me and there’s no one else around,” said Hamazura. “But what if ''other people are watching''? Academy City must have accepted some kind of explanation for handing me over to Britain. They expect the Brits to give me a fair trial. So can they choose to give me a summary execution here just cause it would be easier? By placing an Academy City resident between me and the Brits, they won’t be able to kill me even if they want to.”

And while the Brits were sitting around trying to figure out what to do, Hamazura could enter a cell and let himself be arrested. That would rob the UK of their justification of killing him because he was a dangerous fugitive.

Enemies from a major power could be frightening, but that also meant they had to obey the rules of their home country. And they didn’t have the right to kill an ''appropriately managed'' criminal on their own discretion.

(Sounds like Aneri doesn’t know much about politics and diplomacy. Well, that makes sense for an AI that ''only'' has to be correct. When all you have is data to understand a world full of imprecise things like conjecture and reading the room, making precise predictions can’t be easy.)

“So what’s the quickest way I can get Anti-Skill to arrest me? The immigration gate for international flights? No, that’s where Fortune was. I can’t go back there. Other than that, maybe the office that handles drug enforcement? Anyway, Ane-”

He started to give a command, but his mouth froze mid-word.

He noticed a smell that didn’t belong in a public facility. He caught a faint whiff of cigarette smoke.

Puzzled, he looked around…and his eyes were drawn to a decorative column.

“What is that ''card''?”

Something was pasted there. The smooth laminated object was about the size of an ordinary credit card. But what was that drawn on it? It looked kind of like a letter composed of straight lines, but he could tell it wasn’t English at least.

The card wasn’t alone.

He saw a second and a third. …No, they were pasted all over the lobby. On the floor, on the walls, and even on the ceiling located higher up than in a gym!? He might not have given it much thought with just the one, but the sheer quantity made it creepy. What the hell were they?

And that wasn’t the only thing out of the ordinary.

This was the spacious lobby of an international airport, yet he hadn’t seen a single other person for a while now!?

The cracked phone suddenly played its loudest alarm.

“Aneri, what is this!?” he shouted, already getting down.

He had already developed a habit of obeying Aneri before asking what was happening, which proved fortunate for him in this case.

It would have been at his neck height otherwise.

Something orange raced by horizontally, burning the air and exploding. Flames erupted in a single direction like a fiery avalanche. Empty air was scorched. If Hamazura had remained standing, he wouldn’t just have lost his head – his charred mincemeat would have been scattered across the area.

He would swear no one had been there a second earlier.

Hamazura frantically rolled away along the floor. He had his hands full staying alive, so he didn’t care how this made him look.

“Eek!?”

Someone appeared as if from thin air.

Without any warning whatsoever, they appeared less than three meters away from him.

Right in the middle of the giant airport lobby with nothing at all to hide behind.

He heard a gloomy voice.

“Thermo? No, was it that phone’s signal? Did you spot me with a makeshift anti-personnel radar using microwaves? …Honestly, this is what makes Academy City so strange and disturbing.”

(That wasn’t meta materials!? Did he use heat or something to expand the air and bend the light!?)

Simply put, a mirage.

While Hamazura was familiar with the natural phenomenon, it was still uncanny seeing someone make such skilled use of it. Something felt so badly off his skin tingled.

Was that 2m guy…a priest? He had long hair dyed red, a barcode tattoo under one eye, and a cigarette in his mouth. None of those things seemed very priestly, but it was his eyes that most clashed with that identity. This clearly wasn’t the sort of person who kindly listened to people’s worries and provided advice. Those were the eyes of a predator.

“Well, at least the people clearing field is up. Now we don’t have to worry about any normal people getting mixed up in it. So let’s enjoy this, enemy of all creation who chose to stray from the righteous path.”

(This disturbing feeling… I can’t be sure, but I don’t think he’s even an esper!!)

“Kh!! Aneri, a little help!”

A booming sound dully and deeply stirred up the air.

The scene ahead of Hamazura was obscured from right to left by an enormous, thick steel wall extending like a police baton. A fire shutter. The ceiling here was even higher up than in a gym, but the airport had to protect its guests from the threat of fire and smoke. This thick wall worked much like a maintenance hangar’s giant shutter as it cut off the space between Hamazura and the big guy.

“Okay, I need to get out of here before that guy can find a way around! Aneri!!”

This was an international airport. They dealt with jet fuel here, so the fire shutter was blessedly thick.

Or so Hamazura thought.

Until he heard some kind of…unpleasant…and very sticky sound.

“…”

The fire shutter built to aviation accident standards turned orange and melted before his eyes. Like it had been thrown into a blast furnace.

A large hole formed.

And the tall priest didn’t hesitate to step through with red and blue flame swords in his hands.

“You have got to be kidding!” shouted Hamazura, wide-eyed.

A moment later…

''Crash!!!

It came from the side.

A 10-ton tanker truck crashed through the airport wall and slammed into Stiyl Magnus.

Maybe it was out of habit, but the redhead priest swung a flame sword toward the incoming object on reflex…and only then recalled it was a tanker truck.

He stopped the motion, but it was too late.

And this was a special vehicle loaded with the special kind of jet fuel used at international airports.

It exploded.

Hamazura was watching from a good distance away, but even he was thrown horizontally when the wall of compressed air hit him. He knew he had to have slammed into the floor less than a second later, but his sense of pain was just gone.

He ignored the intense ringing in his ears and gathered all this strength to shout into his cracked phone from the floor.

“Aneeeri!!!?”

He felt two buzzes.

He looked to the cracked screen to see a photo of the tanker truck moments before it exploded. Aneri was probably trying to show him there wasn’t anyone in the driver’s seat, but that wasn’t his only concern.

That priest hadn’t died, had he?

Hamazura was struggling to his feet and worrying about the possibility of secondary and tertiary explosions when the sea of flames swelled out from within and exploded again.

“Come forth, Innocentius.”

His heart froze.

He heard something. He thought he heard a voice from beyond the orange flames.

He saw a dark figure. A big one. No human was that size! Maybe the lighting was creating an optical illusion, but he didn’t have time to confirm that!

“Forget worrying if a stranger survived!! I’m getting out of here!!”

Was that guy a magician? They were honestly too much for Hamazura. After living in Academy City’s back alleys, he knew scientific espers were bad enough, but those magicians were something else entirely. They inspired a ''nastier'' fear that couldn’t be explained by cracking open a physics or chemistry textbook. The fear of taboos, of curses, of divine punishment, of hexes.

But.

No, maybe “so” was the better word.

All of a sudden, she was there.

He didn’t even have time to blink.

Quite literally so. The next thing he knew, a woman with a long black ponytail was running alongside him. But this wasn’t a case of her ignoring the distance between them by teleporting in. The explosive blast of wind that blew in a moment later was undeniably the sonic boom created by her compressing and pushing the air out of her way.

In other words, she had broken the sound barrier.

Without using any kind of gear. If the textbooks he never read anyway couldn’t explain these people, could someone tell him what he could rely on to understand them!?

“This is bullsh-”

He didn’t even have time to complain to the world how unfair this was.

''Her sword flashed.

The fact that she was wearing a nearly 2m katana at her hip in a supposedly safe airport was bad enough, but now she was attacking too fast for his eye to follow. He couldn’t even hope to dodge or defend. Before he even knew what was happening, the world seemed to spin around him and his back slammed into the floor.

How had she used a sword to flip him around?

He wished someone could at least explain that to him.

“Gah!!”

It knocked the breath from him. The flow of time returned to normal, but he wasn’t at all happy about it. He wasn’t used to feeling pain and agony from inside his body instead of at the skin level. In other words, he was terrified. The idea of an out-of-body experience was starting to sound awfully nice.

Gasping for breath, Hamazura used what little air was in his lungs to shout.

“Do it, Aneri!! I don’t care what, just do it now!”

Another empty tanker truck crashed in from the outside world.

It changed nothing.

The ponytail woman didn’t even swing her ridiculously long katana. She artlessly held her empty hand out to grab the 10-ton vehicle barreling toward her and stopped it. Easily.

With a thunderous “thoom!!”, the large truck’s bumper and engine grill dented deeply in. The wipers bent and the windshield shattered. Meanwhile, the katana woman didn’t seem to have a scratch on her.

…She was on another level entirely.

Even Aneri fell silent. The AI would smoothly answer any question the human asked, so ''he had never even considered the possibility of it not having an answer.'' How much of a monster was that woman!?

Hamazura couldn’t rely on Aneri anymore.

Those dangerous people had been unleashed. Dion Fortune claimed to be in control of the Brits, but where was she now? He seriously doubted she was safe.

What could Hamazura do on his own?

He couldn’t escape.

Part of that was his inability to make full use of AI Aneri’s abilities. …But in the end, the biggest problem of all was that he didn’t have clear idea of what he wanted to do now that he had left his cell.

What could he do for Coronzon by gritting his teeth and surviving?

He could never defeat anyone if he hadn’t settled on a goal.

(Dammit.)

What was he doing?

That fundamental and critical question rose in the back of his mind.

This entire incident wouldn’t have happened if he had stayed put. No one would have had to wield any kind of deadly power. This slapstick comedy of meaningless slaughter wouldn’t help anyone out there.

He wanted to live. To survive.

The more he wished for that, the more confusion and chaos he spread through the world. The more trouble he brought people, the more they hated him, and the more he was pushed to the outskirts of the world.

…''Just like happened with Great Demon Coronzon.

(Dammit!!)

He didn’t know what this invisible “something” was. What kind of mine had he stepped on here? He could definitely feel the outlines of something unfair and unreasonable, but his underdeveloped vocabulary couldn’t produce the words he needed to tell him what it was!!

Hamazura didn’t even have the strength left to shut his eyes in the final moment.

That was when it happened.

He heard a dull, dull impact.

He was dumbfounded.

Hamazura was accustomed to violence as the recipient, but even he froze.

That was not a sound a human being made when punched. The heavy metallic tone was more like the peal of a giant bell.

And the ponytail katana woman who had presented such an insurmountable threat suddenly flew straight to the side. That monster had stopped a 10-ton tanker truck with a single hand…but some other monster had knocked her back well over 15m with a single punch?

“Hwa ha ha☆”

It was a girl.

The excessively thin blonde girl wore an apron and a thick blast-resistant coat covered with sheet copper. Did her sweet aroma come from the terrarium of various flowers contained on the inside of her coat? The metallic tone had apparently been the result of punching someone with the coat’s overlarge sleeves. They appeared to move independently even without her arms in them.

Hamazura didn’t know her name.

But another boy who Hamazura loathed would have recognized her immediately.

She was one of the Transcendents.

Specifically, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

Hamazura had shown up late to the battle against Great Demon Coronzon, so he didn’t know everything that went on there. Still, hadn’t that girl been working with Kamijou Touma? Wouldn’t that make her one of those who hunted Coronzon down, calling her a Great Demon!?

“What the hell!? Whose side are you on!?”

“Huhh? Did you think I was on someone else’s side? Ah ha ha! I very clearly just saved you, but you still can’t believe it? You must be really hated to have trust issues like that!”

Even Hamazura could tell she was talking down to him.

And that she had the power to back up that attitude.

After all, the focus here had completely shifted away from the katana woman. The entire world had accepted that ''she'' was the star of this scene.

Apparently she could joke around in such a hopeless situation because she even blew him a kiss.

“To be honest, Coronzon was fairly tempting too, but she was actually rejecting the love she was given. If not for that, I could have protected her along with the rest of the world’s hated people. I did let the amateurs handle things that night, but that doesn’t mean I grant ''that resolution'' a perfect score or anything.”

“Wha-?”

“If you want to know why I was fighting by Kamijou Touma’s side yesterday, well, that’s why. I just wanted to stop that ridiculous mess from harming the many unknown hated people on the other side of the world who wouldn’t even have been counted among the statistics. So all I wanted was to prevent the end of the world. I didn’t actually hate Coronzon so much I wanted her dead. But now Coronzon no longer exists as the greatest threat to the world. I say that wipes the slate clean on your threat level too. And if the world is still going to unfairly hate a harmless leftover like you…well, then this is a job for me. I hope you’re ready, world, cause I’ve got a light, happy, and comical lesson to teach you. Don’t think you can stay so cold and heartless forever☆”

Hamazura was speechless.

This was ridiculous.

It was goddamn ridiculous, but Hamazura still felt himself trembling.

''There was still someone left in the world who would talk fairly about Coronzon instead of just calling her a Great Demon!

“I have just one salvation condition: ''someone thoroughly hated by the world as a whole''.”

She held a finger to her lips.

The emaciated girl whispered alluringly. With a melting look on her face that felt at odds with her appearance.

That monster explained her primary purpose in life.

“A boy who sided with a great demon, lost, and still can’t bring himself to spit on the person he bet on? A human being who decided to stick to his guns even if it makes the rest of the world loathe him? …Now there’s a way of life I can get behind. So I now recognize you as passing my Transcendent salvation condition. The isolation your choices have brought you may be self-inflicted, but I, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, will show you that it was neither meaningless nor worthless☆”

===Part 10===

The airport lobby had been thoroughly destroyed.

More than a hundred footsteps thundered together. Anglicans, Amakusas, former Roman Catholics – various groups adjusted their formations with spiritual items in hand. They rearranged their positions to place Blodeuwedd the Bouquet at the center.

Unsteadily, but definitely under her own power, Kanzaki Kaori stood back up.

She was one of the fewer than twenty Saints in the world.

“Kh, I am willing…to overlook that.”

“Ohh? You’re fine after taking a Transcendent attack to the head? You’ve got one solid cranium, don’t you? Or is it your brains? Do you just have more muscle packed inside your head?”

“Hand Hamazura Shiage over to us. Do so and you need not be harmed.”

“Hey, now! I just provoked you. Don’t act like this is a polite conversation.”

“You fought alongside us to protect the world from Great Demon Coronzon. We may not know who you Transcendents are, but I would still feel bad cutting you down the very next day.”

“Oh? …You think you’re better than me?”

Hamazura gulped and looked up at Blodeuwedd the Bouquet from where he sat on the floor.

Yes, she was ultimately one of those who had gathered to hunt down Coronzon.

The monster herself sighed at his look of fear. With the face of a wounded girl. As if to say his gaze hurt her more than the armed group surrounding her.

Kanzaki continued speaking.

“As a Saint and a Transcendent, we are both extraordinary magicians. We have too little data to predict what will happen if we clash head on. What if Hamazura Shiage, who you are attempting to ''illegitimately'' protect, is harmed by the side effects of our battle?”

It was a touching attempt at persuasion.

But grinning Blodeuwedd the Bouquet didn’t miss that Kanzaki Kaori had her hand on the hilt of the sword at her hip. And careful observation also showed that her fingertips were precisely manipulating thin wires rather than the sword.

“You act all benevolent, but you’re just distracting me so you can launch a supersonic surprise attack.”

“Your accusations mean nothing.”

(Hmm. Is ''this'' why that Hamazura guy bloodlessly flipped around and fell to the floor when she attacked with her sword? She must be able to capture you with the wires and throw you. I bet she used a similar trick to stop that tanker truck with a single hand.)

Apparently Kanzaki Kaori was willing to handle the dirty work if it meant she could keep the enemy from dying. Very noble, but Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had no patience for a leader so beloved by her followers.

“Making people hate you like that isn’t bad, but weren’t you paying attention? I’m siding with Hamazura Shiage right now.”

So.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet took a step forward.

Casually.

''Fwoosh!!!

Blackness roared out.

That blackness was in fact thousands, or tens of thousands, of crows shattering the tempered glass to break in through the large windows. In a bird strike, the crow sucked into the passenger plane’s engine could even cause the plane to crash, making them hated at international airports – even though the crows didn’t do it intentionally.

The encirclement specialized for anti-magician combat collapsed.

The Anglicans had had an overwhelming advantage in numbers, but in this moment they became the minority.

A rapid shift came over the state of the battle.

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was a Transcendent. Her mere presence changed everything.

The Anglicans were blotted out.

Of course, the Anglicans weren’t just going to take it.

“Tch!”

“No hard feelings if I take out more than necessary! My time scavenging for food in the back alleys didn’t leave me with many good memories regarding crows and rats.”

Flames shot from Tatemiya Saiji’s large flamberge sword and Agnese swung down her Lotus Wand to bring down a distant group of crows like they were hit by a hammer.

These were only crows, after all. Their numbers were overwhelming, but each individual one was weak. Deadly magic could easily eliminate the threat. ''However…

“Are you sure that kind of shortsighted thinking can get you through this? You’re free to kill, but don’t forget that all life is considered equal.”

She cackled.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet looked down at the Anglicans with an obvious sneer on her lips.

“''Each life you take will be added to your list of sins,'' so do be careful. The count is accurate. You can’t cheat it. The most dangerous of the deadly risks out there are the ones where the threat isn’t apparent at first glance. And once you’re trapped, it’s too late to work up a countermeasure☆”

When you curse someone, dig two graves.

That phrase might sound like a fair system on par with the law of action and reaction, but there was actually a loophole. …When the number of lives on one side was far greater, the system ceased to be fair.

''Badump!!

There was an odd sound like a heartbeat. No, maybe it really was a heartbeat.

The magicians’ and nuns’ faces changed color.

From red to blue and then to purple.

Hamazura didn’t have the specialist knowledge to know what was happening deep inside them.

But he could see their eyes opening wide.

He didn’t know what was happening, but even an idiot like him could tell those people were suffering. He couldn’t celebrate that his helper was so overpowered with this going on!

A person’s face wouldn’t turn that color even if you strangled them with a thick rope.

It was of course Blodeuwedd the Bouquet who Hamazura shouted at.

“Hey!! All you have to do is keep me safe. I didn’t ask you to kill them!”

The Transcendent tilted her head.

She was confused. She really did seem to find this puzzling.

“Umm, but they’re seriously trying to kill you.”

“So what?”

“They made no attempt to find out what kind of person you are and just decided to kill you because you had an evil friend.”

“Again, so what!? I don’t want to see people die. Is that so wrong? They may be dumb as hell, but that doesn’t mean we have to think on their level! So just stop this!! You said you were taking my side, didn’t you!?”

He heard a quiet sound.

No, it was laughter.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet…was it? The emaciated girl doubled over and her shoulders shook with laughter.

“Ohh…good, good. Siding with you was so the right decision. I may have stumbled onto a real prize this time.”

When she raised her head again, the short girl’s flushed face displayed a hint of inappropriate sensuality.

“I love that sort of hated person☆”

The density of the black color increased.

Apparently his attempt had severely backfired.

But a thick pressure pushed back against the black storm of crows.

Was it that katana woman?

“Nwa ha ha! Go, Hamazura!! Let the magician handle that magician. I’ll see it through! Besides, I don’t like the way those supposedly righteous Anglicans are dragging an amateur into the ring, ganging up on him before he can even figure out the rules, and declaring victory for themselves!!”

“Are you saying those Anglicans or whatever can still turn this around? But they see me as a villain. And there’s no reason you have to go that far to help me!”

He couldn’t let Blodeuwedd the Bouquet handle it all. He was officially known as a filthy fugitive. He appreciated that she didn’t look down on Coronzon as a great demon and her support had tears welling up in his eyes, but if she lent him a hand, it could end up with her being on the run too.

“Hey, if you stay here, you’ll just get hit by a stray shot and killed. Probably anyway.”

He decided to run away.

===Part 11===

Itsuwa of the Amakusa Church paled as she leaned on her spear.

She gulped.

But not because of Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s spell that made one pay for a life with a life.

She had caught sight of something inexplicable out the corner of her eye.

How long had she been there?

How had she gotten this close without any of the professional Anglican magicians noticing?

The next thing Itsuwa knew, ''she'' was standing there.

She was an exceptionally tall woman. She had long, long blonde hair and she wore a loose white dress and a large wide-brimmed hat.

She was the Transcendent known as Good, Old Mary.

“Hm. I thought for sure mama’s role would be to side with that lonely boy, but it would appear the situation has changed.”

What was she doing here? No one had an answer.

How had she suddenly appeared here? Again, no answer.

“He has continued his escape with assistance from an unusually capable AI that even makes deductions in the field of magic despite the limited learning material, and now he has drawn the interest of a Transcendent to provide him with a special magical fighter. The boy is rapidly leaving mama’s salvation condition. Which means…while it will be the complete opposite of my original plan, mama may take this side instead.”

[[Image:GT_Index_v15_BW3.jpg|thumb]]

She spoke.

Calmly.

She said it didn’t matter at all to her if she went with the complete opposite of her original plan.

Transcendents dressed up as gods to draw on those gods’ power.

Their theater and divine summoning spells were no more than a method. That wasn’t the core of who they were.

So perhaps this was the most frightening thing about them.

…''There was no reason it had to be Hamazura Shiage.

As long as they met their salvation condition, a Transcendent would assist anyone unconditionally.

That was true of Good, Old Mary and ''it was true of Blodeuwedd the Bouquet who was currently assisting Hamazura.'' Anyone who wanted the assistance of a Transcendent’s immense power had to accept one powerful limitation: they could not leave that individual Transcendent’s salvation condition. Otherwise, their immensely powerful ally would attack and kill them.

“A group of inconsequential individuals who have boosted their strength by applying several different special conditions, which has in turn eliminated their own standing. A collection of individuals who could not acquire those unfair special conditions and thus had their own beliefs and justice denied.”

And so, she – Good, Old Mary of the Transcendents – whispered.

“Perfect. Mama recognizes you Anglicans as passing my Transcendent salvation condition. …Do not assume miracles are granted only to a chosen few, world.”

===Part 12===

It sounded like bursting carbonation.

Except this was more brutal.

The thousands or tens of thousands of crows that looked like a pitch black wall went limp and fell to the airport floor. Blodeuwedd the Bouquet frowned and, for the first time, focused on a single individual within the enemy group.

“That was gas.”

Good, Old Mary.

The beautiful lips below the wide-brimmed hat parted to speak. One of her hands toyed with a multi-tool knife.

“Elementary, isn’t it? If killing them adds to your sins and seals your movements, I only need to stop them non-lethally. Mama mixes potions in the kitchen. I am the Transcendent who uses equipment based in ordinary reality to mix up potions that can produce any phenomenon, including the mysteries of life. If I lack something, I need only create it. A simple solution.”

“Ohh? So you’re taking that side?”

“Is that wrong?”

“No, not really. I just don’t get risking your life to protect some giant faceless power structure. Seems like an ultra-boring salvation condition to me.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was answered by a tremor shaking the entire international airport.

Some kind of fine dust fell from the ceiling.

No, it went beyond that.

Were insults to her salvation targets that big a deal to Good, Old Mary?

“Risk 4: Releasing the single seal – leaving human territory.”

The change couldn’t have been more obvious.

At more than 200m tall, the colossal thing would have towered over a domed stadium, but here it was visible outside thanks to the international airport’s outer wall and a portion of its ceiling collapsing.

The three-legged still was a piece of lab equipment that used to seal the secret arts of life.

The emaciated girl put a hand on her hip and looked up at it.

“The Tribikos, huh?”

But her reaction was not what Good, Old Mary had expected.

Even now, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was smiling.

Grinning even.

“A big lab that lets you mix anything on the front line is a threat to be sure…but do you actually know how to use it? I feel like you’ve just started slamming it into stuff to show off how destructive a heavy object can be.”

Good, Old Mary ignored that and gave a command to the Tribikos.

It lifted one of its three legs. Tearing through the airport building as it did so.

The world itself shook.

''But…

“?”

“''Don’t tell me this is enough to surprise you.''”

It had stopped.

The end of the Tribikos’s leg had stopped less than 100cm above Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s head. A straining sound reached Good, Old Mary’s ears, as if something unseen were blocking its way.

This wasn’t right.

From a purely physical perspective, the Tribikos was as large as a domed stadium. How many tens of thousands of tons was that? And that weight was all being concentrated on a single point like with a high heel. How could one of its three legs be stopped this way? Who in the world could pull off something like that!?

“I am the Transcendent who loves all the hated.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was sneering.

This smile held a very different meaning from the one she directed Hamazura’s way.

“The word ''all'' is key. …We already saw Telesma kneaded and molded to artificially summon Underworld God Osiris. You didn’t think my salvation was only for pests that can be physically explained in this world, did you?”

A dull bubbling sound followed.

From the floor at the emaciated girl’s feet. The airport’s clean floor grew discolored and peeled back. Almost like a rotten stew giving off a noxious gas as it boiled.

What emerged was not of this world.

These were clearly otherworldly beings who had crossed over from another phase.

“Sathariel, Penemue, Satanael, Armaros, Kokabiel, Tamiel, Baraqiel, Azazel, and Demon Lord Shemhaza!! Grigori fallen angels who were judged an absolute evil for no more than falling in love with humans, marrying them, revealing this secret to your families, and bearing children with them! Though you are derided as the reason heaven inflicted Noah’s flood upon the earth, I grant you love for your decision to seek a modicum of happiness even if no one else would understand. Lend me your bygone strength!!!”

The red and black feathers scattering through the air were far more sinister than the crows’. ''Something'' of indeterminate number and form covered up the Tribikos all at once. The colossal object resembled a domed stadium with three legs, but it was swallowed whole.

Spells that made use of Telesma weren’t unusual, but using so many varied powers at once and releasing it without first sealing it in an object was highly abnormal even for the magic side.

Were she alone, Good, Old Mary may have been able to fall back to a safe distance and resume the fight there. The Tribikos was not her only lab equipment. She could have sacrificed that one to buy her enough time to summon another.

But she had chosen to save the Anglicans.

For a Transcendent, that carried more weight than her own life.

“Kh!! I see! You used Sathariel to ''seal'' mama’s Tribikos and hold it in place, didn’t you? Blodeu-!!”

“Hah hahh hahh!! Good, Old Mary, you really are no more than a boring healer. Sure, you have some weird exceptions like swinging around a heavy mace and some insta-death attacks, but you’re biggest selling point is your ''limited resurrection'', right? Looks like you don’t have what it takes to defeat a true fighter and summoner like me who excels at providing a single powerful damage source!!!”

===Part 13===

Kamijou and the girls felt the entire international airport shake vertically.

They were at a large counter where the path branched off to the different lobbies. Kamijou sensed something like ominous ripples in the air.

Leivinia Birdway clicked her tongue.

“Those idiots prefer to flex their muscles than use their heads. And now they’ve exceeded the limits of their own people clearing field. Magic is meant to be done quietly and in secret. People will question England’s reputation as a country of proper ladies and gentlemen at this rate. Have those diplomatic amateurs forgotten there’s a government plane at this airport?”

“It may not be the Anglicans doing this though.”

Who else could it be?

Whoever it was, Kamijou couldn’t ignore a commotion like this.

He fought the current of the fleeing crowd to run toward the center of the blast. He passed by a girl in a fluffy coat on the way.

“You have to be kidding me! If they bring the entire airport down, what happens to my important missing document!? I’ll be held back if I don’t get that proof of life to school!”

“Ehh? Does that even matter at this point? Seems trivial by comparison.”

“A year of school isn’t trivial for a high schooler, Lessar. I’ll stick out like a sore thumb. My life is in as much of a crisis as the world is! I’m at the brink!!”

Now, Kamijou didn’t want to be part of this crisis if he didn’t have to be.

But when he knew serious harm was imminent, he couldn’t just ignore it.

Academy City had only just begun to recover.

If something serious happened now, right as he was getting back on his feet, how long a detour would he need to take before he could reclaim his ordinary life!?

Lessar sounded disinterested.

“Sounds like the Anglicans are engaged in some kind of crazy battle. I’m intercepting as much of their communications as I can and it seems like that Hamazura guy made a real mess of things.”

“Wait, what did he do?”

“Hamazura Shiage isn’t who matters,” said Birdway. “There’s a separate problem here. And with everyone’s focus on Hamazura, no one is watching the real threat. That leaves the real target free to do whatever they want. We need to fix that before it’s too late.”

===Part 14===

The vertical tremor was noticeable even here.

How many times was that now?

He had run away.

He had put a lot of distance between himself and the fighting.

Hamazura Shiage was currently in…what was this room even called? It was part of the airport’s “backstage” zone. All around him and even overhead, narrow conveyor belts branched out in all directions. He assumed this was where the suitcase tags were mechanically read and the suitcases were routed. Which meant whenever your luggage ended up traveling to some other country without you, this was where it went wrong. In that sense, he couldn’t help but dislike all this cold, precision machinery.

Another tremor.

“…”

Hamazura knew it was meaningless, but he couldn’t help but look back the way he had come. Over and over again.

…Was Blodeuwedd the Bouquet alright?

There were people with special power. There were monsters with power beyond anything Hamazura could imagine. But he also knew that strength was not absolute. Even Coronzon had been an individual who could lose her life if she took it too far.

He relied on others because he was afraid.

And that fear led other people to lose their lives instead of him.

That way of thinking probably felt insolent to those with ridiculous strength, but still.

“Yo☆”

Someone popped out next to him.

It was Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. She looked to his face and grinned.

“What are you still doing here, Hamazura? I thought you’d have escaped the airport by now. Wait, don’t tell me. Did you wait cause you were worried about me? Ha ha ha. How cute!!”

He didn’t have it in him to deal with her teasing.

Hamazura shouted, wide-eyed.

“Wait, but, um, what happened with that katana woman!? And all the others too!?”

Even now, the low tremors shaking the entire airport continued intermittently in the distance. With the intensity of an artillery battle. But if Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was hanging around here, then who were the Anglicans fighting?

He soon had his answer.

“You mean that Saint and Good, Old Mary? Well, I expect they’re fighting ''a whole bunch of hair'' thinking they’re fighting me. The Hanged Man happened to be among the hated beings who emerged. He’s said to be the villain who gave vanity and makeup to human women. Perfect for a deception spell☆”

“Aneri, explain.”

He only got a double buzz of refusal.

The AI must not have understand what she was talking about either.

(Hair monsters, huh?)

Hamazura started to recall someone else.

Apparently those things were still fighting. Which meant…

“So not even a monster like you could actually defeat the enemy. …So there’s that katana woman and…Good, Old Mary? Is she really that dangerous a final boss?”

“Her attacks aren’t all that impressive. She’s primarily a healer, so she’s a real pain in the ass if you have to keep fighting her and she keeps buying time. The best plan with her is to find a way to stop fighting and get out of there.”

…So the tremors shaking the entire airport didn’t qualify as “impressive”? They apparently lived in a very different world from Hamazura.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet cutely tilted her head.

“There’s no real reason you have to say here in the airport, is there? The Anglicans are backed by the country of England. Give them time and they will overwhelm you with numbers. That means sealing off all the exits and searching through the entire locked room they created. If you don’t want me to kick your ass for worrying so much about the enemy’s lives, I recommend escaping before those idiots can set up a perimeter.”

His cracked phone buzzed twice. To reject that idea? No, AI Aneri may have been upset at being beaten to making that recommendation. Could data even feel upset?

Hamazura didn’t want to be caught by those Anglican people either.

But what was he supposed to do?

“I’d love to escape, but where am I supposed to go in this giant airport?”

“Hmm? If you don’t have any ideas of your own, I could always break through one of these walls for you. With a nice, solid punch.”

“Help me, Aneri! Peacefully!!”

He was reliant on someone else either way. …Assuming Aneri counted as a “someone” that is.

Aneri displayed a map of the airport taken (illicitly) from somewhere and added recommendation arrows to it. Instead of just showing the shortest route, it provided the route least likely to be watched or guarded. However, they came across a door with an electronic lock along the way.

He held his phone up to the reader on the wall and the sturdy door opened as if this were a cheap magic trick. This actually worried Hamazura more. Wasn’t an airport supposed to have especially strict physical security to prevent terrorist attacks? This seemed awfully lax.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet gave the cracked screen an impressed look.

“Huh. I feel silly only asking now, but does that phone do security cameras too?”

“I don’t know how it works, so ask Aneri.”

He felt like Academy City was overflowing with things where he had no idea how they worked. …This was hardly a new state of affairs and, for better or for worse, there may have been things no one could explain the inner workings of.

They opened a few more electronic locks, passed through a back area lined with plastic boxes…and finally arrived at a small back entrance for staff. The door had another smart card reader. It didn’t even take three seconds.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet gave him a puzzled look.

“What’s the matter? Get on out of here, Hamazura.”

“But…”

It hadn’t been very…smooth.

There had been a slight pause or “hiccup” when opening this door’s lock compared to the others. It hadn’t even lasted a full blink of the eye, but that was why it stood out so vividly, like a lagging video.

Aneri was using a loophole – a vulnerability – the airport staff had completely forgotten existed.

That meant the airport would never use the loophole.

Yet some other data had been flowing through it, conflicting with Aneri’s command?

“…”

Hamazura considered it for a moment.

“Aneri. Where’s the closest access point to here? A big international airport like this must have dozens of them.”

The exit was right there, but this amateur suddenly decided on a change of plans. However, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet didn’t protest. She was likely confident in her ability to slaughter any pursuers if it came to it.

They turned back and electronically forced open another door.

The chilly room beyond was lined with computers the size of vending machines. He didn’t even need to hook up the phone with a cable. Once through the door that jammed EM signals, a wireless connection was enough to exchange data.

The flood of internal data didn’t tell Hamazura much.

So he had AI Aneri flag any information requiring a closer look.

“What the hell?”

Hamazura frowned as he viewed the cracked smartphone screen.

Black_Oneday.

He had no idea what that English text meant. That one unnatural phrase was scrawled within the otherwise orderly script.

Could it be?

“Is someone other than us hacking in here too?”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume15 Chapter3

2026-05-25T02:27:15Z

Massify: /* Part 11 */

==Chapter 3: Justice Doesn’t Have a Monopoly on Peace – Justice_Another.==

===Part 1===

If they could only capture Hamazura Shiage, the situation wouldn’t continue to deteriorate.

Takitsubo Rikou believed that. Strongly.

It was January, so it would get dark shortly after 6 PM. Although District 23 would be lit up by stadium-style lighting due to all its airports and runways.

She was in one corner of the Hotel Town where the arrangement of retired aircraft had greatly collapsed.

She was staring at the tracking data spread out on the hood of a car when Kanzaki spoke to her from behind.

“Have you figured out anything as our scientific tracker?”

“…This mobility device bothers me,” said Takitsubo while staring at the map and a photo.

She was checking over even the smallest vehicle fleeing from the Hotel Town.

“You might not think much of someone stealing one, but those work vehicles are linked to the airport’s internal network. They aren’t like ordinary cars where you can record the unlock signal sent by the key and then open the door with a tablet. I don’t know who was riding it, but Hamazura couldn’t have done that on his own. His usual MO is to stick wires through the door’s keyhole or window and break in that way, but that wouldn’t work here. …Could he have gotten Aneri’s help?”

“Yes. There is apparently a hacking tool called Black_Oneday out there. It’s specialized for the aerospace industry.”

“Wait.”

Takitsubo immediately interrupted after hearing this new information from Kanzaki.

What was this? Where had this information come from?

Not to mention…

“Black_Oneday? If there is a specialized hacking tool like that, it changes all our assumptions. We can’t just suspect Hamazura and AI Aneri anymore!”

“Why not? What is there to consider? All the hacking in District 23 is being done by Hamazura Shiage and AI Aneri.”

“But then how do you explain that mobility device?”

“What is there to explain about it? And if it needs an explanation, that’s your job.”

“…”

There was a disconnect.

She wasn’t getting through.

They were using the same words, but she couldn’t grasp the actual thoughts at the root of the conversation. Someone other than Hamazura was involved in this mess. …But when Takitsubo tried to say so, Kanzaki and the rest of the Anglicans reacted oddly.

Kanzaki smiled as she continued.

“Hamazura Shiage carries Great Demon Coronzon’s power inside him. That Sitra Achra is extremely dangerous. And Hamazura Shiage has been tainted by Coronzon’s way of thinking, so he could spread her apocalyptic ideology. We are fighting to save the world here.”

Takitsubo wanted to curse herself for not noticing something was off while speaking with them until now.

“Honestly.”

With that word, someone else suddenly appeared nearby.

She was a very tall figure.

Good, Old Mary now stood between Takitsubo and Kanzaki.

She was holding a sandwich toaster for some reason.

(That…wasn’t teleportation. …Did she divert the attention of a tracking expert like me enough that I didn’t even see her?)

“I hadn’t liked the look of things earlier, but now I see what’s going on. The hunters have been hijacked by the hunted, turning it all into a charade. That explains why the chase never seems to end.” Good, Old Mary looked disgusted. “But is this brainwashing? No, this feels more like an intentional bias has been applied to a portion of their thought processes.”

“A-a bias?”

“You in the track suit. How would you describe that Amakusa woman’s personality?”

Takitsubo had briefly worked with the Anglicans during pursuit of Coronzon the other day.

As a dark side tracker, she could profile someone after only a short interaction.

“She has a high level of skill, but she is the cautious type. That caution comes from deep-rooted self-recrimination and guilt. She has a complex about her great physical strength and she values her ability to apply the brakes with her rational side. She has a particularly strong aversion to killing.”

“Does she? But when Dion Fortune attempted to contact Hamazura Shiage, Kanzaki Kaori was the first one to launch a ''lethal'' attack spell at him from a distance.”

“?”

“And when Blodeuwedd the Bouquet showed up, she said she would ''feel bad cutting her down the very next day''.”

That didn’t fit.

Good, Old Mary tilted her head, her large hat shaking atop it.

“There is an intentional bias to the information in her head. This prevents her thoughts from reaching any information inconvenient to ''someone''. She has become a puppet who will pursue Hamazura Shiage forever without ever paying any attention to the true villain. What part of you was sealed away, Anglicans?”

The Anglican magicians dispatched to Academy City currently lacked the part of them that would protect the people from wicked magicians.

Good, Old Mary adjusted her position to protect Takitsubo, the only other one who was thinking clearly.

With an enemy group, Good, Old Mary could have swept them all aside, but she had accepted the Anglicans as her salvation targets.

(What a pain. That means I can’t abandon these puppets. This righteous mama has her work cut out for her.)

Takitsubo kept right by tall Good, Old Mary’s side.

“W-wait, what are you going to do? Can you fix this!?”

“If their thoughts are being biased by an external source, the symptoms are similar to a charm or confusion effect. Those aren’t particularly unusual in the magic world. In fact, they’re fairly orthodox. Shooting fire from your hand or moving at the speed of sound are supposed to be special exceptions. I should be able to whip up a recovery potion for them. Or if I have to, I could even kill them and resurrect them.”

There was no signal.

Tatemiya wielding a large sword, Itsuwa holding a spear, and many others all rushed in at once. The density of the attack mattered more than their individual skills. It was a surefire method available for a group where avoiding any one attack would lead to a lethal blow from another blade.

So there was no dodging.

Several blades sliced through Good, Old Mary’s neck and pierced her chest.

Not a single drop of blood was shed.

“That was an illusion projected on a cloud.”

Good, Old Mary stood three meters to the right. Holding Takitsubo in her arms.

With a few odd sounds of bursting air, Tatemiya and Itsuwa crumbled to the ground.

“And moisture can guide lightning.”

A decoy and a mine. She had combined evasion and attack into single deceptive maneuver.

But it wasn’t invincible.

The next attack came from behind. Brilliant light and heat scorched the air and stripped away the veil of cloud protecting Good, Old Mary. With the moisture in the air gone, she could no longer bend light and sound.

(Oops. Now they all know how mama appears and disappears so mysteriously.)

While regretting her actions, she turned around to see Stiyl Magnus smoothly emerge. Despite his size, she could not sense his presence right in front of her. She was mildly impressed. Perhaps this was what it took to be an expert witch hunter.

After a soft breath, she whispered to Takitsubo next to her.

“Oh, dear. Get behind mama.”

“Kenaz.” (Fire)

(Hm. Right now I want the hot and dry of the Fifth House which symbolizes summer. In other words, the eighth of the major arcana and the Hebrew letter Tet, so-)

“Thurisaz Naudiz Gebo!!” (Grant the giant a gift of pain)

The tall priest was three steps faster than her, producing a roaring red flame sword and blue flame sword in his hands.

And Stiyl Magnus did not hesitate.

He swung the red flame sword directly toward Good, Old Mary while sweeping the blue flame sword horizontally and triggering an explosion. Even if his target moved away to escape, the explosive blast of 2000+ degree flames would burn and melt them.

Good, Old Mary was an alchemist, so she could extract the basic elements (fire, water, wind, earth, etc.) from any object and use it as an ingredient to create various potions. Even if she could only make something basic at first, she could repeat the mixing process to respond to any situation.

Her greatest advantage was her ability to make the optimal potion for any enemy or problem she faced. But that meant she could be defeated if her enemy kept up the attack and never gave her a chance to mix a potion.

Except…you didn’t actually think that was how it worked, did you?

(Well, it’s technically not wrong.)

''But. However. Nevertheless.

“The Prince of Swords – in other words, the wind of wind. Keep him away.”

“!?”

Something unseen surpassed Stiyl’s speed.

Good, Old Mary’s palm produced a compressed mass of air more destructive than a meter-wide wrecking ball.

Its speed was unthinkable. The Bain-marie was an excellent mixing tool, but she still should have needed at least another three steps before she could launch Stiyl back five meters.

''She had skipped those three strict steps.

Lucia’s eyes widened in surprise.

“That was fast…”

“You have time to spare to praise mama? You’ll make me blush.”

The next wind wrecking ball splintered Lucia’s wooden wheel. And the nun holding it was thrown through the air. If the north wind and the sun decided to settle their argument by force from the start, it probably would have ended up something like this.

“Eek!?”

Panicked by the sight of her friend sprawled out before her, Angelene launched all of her golden-winged coin bags. Instead of trying to beat her target to death, it felt more like she was frantically raising her hands to guard her face from the ball flying toward her.

(Gold is the seventh circle – that is, the sun – the 19th card of the major arcana, and the Hebrew letter Resh. For the iron ingredient, Helios shall- no, Ra would be easier to use here. Yes, I’ll go with that.)

“Thank you for the gift.”

“Ah!? Wait, Angelene, don’t attack! She ''incorporates her enemy’s attacks into her spell, letting her skip steps''!! The more we help her along…”

The more ''her processing speed skyrocketed.

Agnese realized what was happening and raised a frantic shout, but it was too late. Good, Old Mary couldn’t complete the complex mixing steps in time on her own, but she could skip three of those steps if she had the enemy help her through the most troublesome parts. She had reached a state similar to a special sauce made by letting a mixture of ingredients sit for half an hour.

(With all their pro spiritual items, pro magicians are like a treasure trove of rare ingredients. Steal, steal, rob, rob…and it’s ready.)

“The Queen of Wands – in other words, the water of fire. Crush her.”

After supplying her coin bags as a mixing ingredient, Angelene was crushed to the ground. Like an invisible false ceiling had fallen on her. It was actually a mass of steam expanding to several hundred times its size in mere moments.

With a burst of quick movements, the magicians encircling Good, Old Mary and Takitsubo shifted their positions. To put a bit more distance between them and the center point.

“Hm.”

When Good, Old Mary held her palm out from a distance, the Anglican who jumped the most was Necromancer Isabella Theism. Which made sense. That dark-skinned girl used various Voodoo poisons and medicines, so Good, Old Mary had to see her like a kid’s meal piled high with child-friendly foods.

Osiris, Hades, or maybe King Enma?

Whoever the necromancer made use of, a divine fistfight would only play right into Good, Old Mary’s hand. That was the perfect field for the Transcendent.

(They’re under the enemy’s control, but they still tense up in fear of pain, terror, failure, and defeat. They wouldn’t care about physical damage if they were affected by complete remote control or internal possession. …So was I correct to think they have ''only'' had one portion of their thoughts manipulated?)

Thinking about it wasn’t going to turn up any objective proof. It wasn’t like they had an obvious magic charm attached to their forehead.

While Good, Old Mary repeated those worthless predictions, Takitsubo hid behind her back and asked a question.

“Wh-what now?”

“Mama will do everything necessary to ensure your safety.”

But.

There was no warning.

No light or sound. Good, Old Mary had not let her guard down. And yet the most dangerous magician had ''already'' arrived right in front of her.

Kanzaki Kaori.

As one of the world’s fewer than twenty Saints, she could move at supersonic speeds for short times.

(My, is she fast!! But if I mix the necromancer’s poisons and medicines…)

That was when Good, Old Mary froze. Her mixing process was halted. Something unseen sliced through her sleeve and tangled around her arm enough to dig into her skin, restricting the movement of her dominant hand.

(What? Seven…wires!?)

Good, Old Mary was unfamiliar with the name Nanasen.

She immediately used her other hand to burn through the wires with a potion, but that slowed her by a step.

And that one step created a critical opening.

Kanzaki Kaori’s fingers touched the hilt of the long sword at her hip.

Good, Old Mary felt an odd chill on the side of her neck. The blade had yet to be freed from its scabbard, but the sensation of her impending death reached her in advance.

This time, Kanzaki Kaori was not manipulating thin wires.

She truly did grab the katana’s hilt and draw it from its scabbard.

And ''a single light flashed out.

“G-”

Good, Old Mary’s voice was hoarse.

Because she was aware she could not ignore this damage.

“''God.'' Is that a god-slaying power''?”

That attack could mercilessly cut down Christian archangels or some of the polytheistic gods.

It was a hopelessly bad matchup for a Transcendent.

Because they were the highly irregular magicians who dressed up like a god to try and draw on specs equivalent to the god’s own. Good, Old Mary had become a resident of the divine myths, albeit an artificial one, so you could say she had made sure this god-slaying power could affect her.

So she should have died instantly.

“I see,” said Kanzaki Kaori, sounding somewhat impressed.

Given her Magic Name, she would never choose to kill. She had just used Yuisen against a human, yet that was ''the one thing'' she didn’t question here.

“Did you combine the Philosopher’s Egg, which can create a potion of immortality, with the Sphere of Sensation, the aura field everyone subconsciously emits much like their body heat or scent? By ensuring new life would well up endlessly within you, you made sure I could not fully kill you.”

But Good, Old Mary was out of the fight now.

Surviving Yuisen was a praiseworthy feat for a resident of divine myth, but this was a last resort like turning your body to stone to deflect an enemy blade. She had lost any chance to move her own body for the time being.

And…

“Ah, ah…”

With Good, Old Mary defeated Takitsubo was now surrounded and alone. Isolated. Because everyone around her was Anglican.

Kanzaki Kaori spoke from directly ahead.

With her usual calm smile.

“Now, let us track down Hamazura Shiage and bring peace back to the world.”

===Part 2===

Even Hamazura could tell the situation had greatly changed.

If the Black_Oneday user really had brainwashed all of the Anglicans, his girlfriend Takitsubo would be in the enemy’s grasp. And she was a tracking expert with a high chance of approaching the truth of the matter. He doubted the villain would leave her be for long.

(And if Takitsubo of all people doesn’t realize she’s surrounded by enemies… Is this happening outside the world of science? I guess even Takitsubo’s nose for these things can be fooled by magic.)

He couldn’t rest in the small antenna tower forever.

Hamazura needed to rescue Takitsubo somehow, but…

“It’s not possible.”

“Why not!?”

“Because the Amakusas work for the Anglicans.”

He had no idea what Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was getting at.

Who were the Amakusas? She explained.

“They are a sect based on the Hidden Christians who were badly persecuted during the Sakoku era. No one else in the world would be better than them when it comes to running and hiding for a righteous purpose. When they decide to go into hiding, we won’t be able to find them no matter how hard we search. Attempting to chase them down will only give them information on us. And if that happens…”

“Takitsubo really will be in trouble while surrounded by the enemy…” groaned Hamazura like it was a curse.

He most hated his own stupidity. If he had known this sooner, his top priority would have been to stop Takitsubo from meeting with the Anglicans even if he had to use Aneri to find her. Why hadn’t he seen the danger? Because the Anglicans had a monopoly on justice. It should have been obvious even Takitsubo wouldn’t question it if they asked for assistance from their righteous position!!

He had to think.

It didn’t matter how cheap and greedy it was. Everyone could call him evil if they wanted.

He had to think of some way of saving his girlfriend from this crisis!!

“Hey, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. The Anglicans at least need Takitsubo’s tracking ability to follow me, right?”

“I suppose.”

“That means they have to treat Takitsubo carefully until they kill me. …Killing her will come after that.”

To put it another way, ''Taktsubo’s life was assured as long as he wasn’t caught.

In that case, he just had to continue running away.

Even if it meant following the path of evil.

“Hmm, that should work. And if we’re being optimistic here, let’s say the Anglicans are being manipulated by the real villain. Defeating that villain will free them from their brainwashing, meaning they won’t be a threat anymore. Won’t that also save your precious girlfriend?”

“…”

Then he knew what he had to do.

It was best to have Takitsubo continue tracking him down. However, he couldn’t let the Anglicans actually catch him. And he had to find and defeat the Black_Oneday user before they caught him.

He knew that.

But he still clenched his fist tight.

Neither Blodeuwedd the Bouquet nor AI Aneri had time to stop him before a dull thud burst out. The boy too stupid and pathetic to be a hero had punched himself in the face.

He had just placed his girlfriend second in his priority list.

He knew that wasn’t right.

It was a despicable decision, but that was the only way he could realistically protect her!!

===Part 3===

Meanwhile.

Gym-sized maintenance hangars were lined up in an area a short distance north of the Hotel Town.

“Hmm…”

“They attacked us too. Well, nothing happening inside Academy City can trigger a war, so I suppose we can think of it as just barely not crossing the line.”

Birdway and Lessar were speaking to each other while looking at the ground.

Noticing Kamijou’s gaze, Dion Fortune shook her head.

“Don’t expect a detailed explanation from me on this mechanical stuff. Handle that yourself.”

A mess of scrap metal lay on the ground. Shortly before, it had been a 3m multi-rotor drone zipping through the air. Even as scrap, the triple-barreled Gatling gun and short-range SAM pod were still verrrry recognizable. The thing had sent a downpour of bullets from the sky to kill Kamijou and the others.

“This isn’t the direction that boxy mobility device went, is it? Could this be a diversion?”

“Or they just had a spare drone hidden over here.”

Kamijou was sick of it all. He shouted at the top of his lungs.

“What happened to the villain being a magician!? We were just attacked by a drone! And you all saw what happened at the Hotel Town, didn’t you!? The enemy must be from the science side!!”

He didn’t see how he could be wrong.

A hacking tool was being used to cause trouble in District 23 and they were being attacked by machines. There was no room for the magic side there. Wasn’t this a cyber crime committed by someone from the science side – or more specifically, from Academy City?

But.

Birdway shot back at him with absolute confidence.

“Oh? ''Who ever said magicians can’t hack''?”

===Part 4===

It was evening already?

Once it started to get dark, the winter night arrived fast.

Hamazura knew Takitsubo was in danger, but he had chosen to identify the Black_Oneday user instead of going to her rescue. He didn’t want to waste a moment of time.

“Ugh.”

Next to him, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet glanced at a sign with a simple map. This was apparently a workshop where the cargo containers arriving by plane were loaded onto trucks after inspection. The cargo containers were the dice-like air cargo type, so there was no need for the enormous gantry cranes used at harbors. Here, they used forklifts and loaders instead.

“You suspect the drone airbase, right? …Will a dangerous macho place like that even be on the map?”

“You can’t hide something that size. Trying to hide it when everyone can see it will only worry people more. They won’t release a detailed layout of the interior of course.”

That was when they heard a strange “thunk!!”

A thumb-sized hole had appeared in the metal sign.

Hamazura recognized the distinctive noise of an electric motor instead of a gasoline engine. They were being targeted by one of those small eight-wheeled things with two machineguns.

(An anti-air drone! Is this Black_Oneday again!?)

“What now, Hamazura?”

“Kh. There are still a bunch of innocent workers here. We can’t get them caught up in this!!”

Just because someone didn’t take his side didn’t make them evil.

That would be a messed-up basis to screw up someone else’s life!

Hamazura shouted so the workers could hear him over the gunfire.

“Get down!! Behind that loader! Not even machinegun fire can pierce that huge snow-removal bucket, so it’ll work as a shield!!”

A middle-aged man in an airport security uniform only stared in shock without moving, so Hamazura shoved him behind a cargo container to just barely protect him from the path of gunfire.

While he was at it, he borrowed the automatic 9mm handgun from the man’s holster and returned fire. That drone would be made of alloy and plastic. An ordinary firefight couldn’t defeat it, but he could destroy its important camera lenses. If it couldn’t aim accurately, he wouldn’t need to fear its machineguns.

He responded with unbelievable accuracy.

(I’m still alive… What was that about my senses sharpening the closer I approach death? Risk isn’t something you can see, though!!)

You didn’t have to be a force of good or justice to save people.

If a villain moved their body, they could shield someone from a bullet. Saving people was no more than a physical action, the psychological conditions and questions of good or evil didn’t play a role.

So…

“I’m fine being a villain,” growled Hamazura, like he was speaking a curse. “There’s no rule saying only good people can save people. Goodness and justice may have abandoned me, but that doesn’t mean I have to stand back and let everyone else go first.”

This was an alternate approach Coronzon hadn’t considered.

If she had followed this path and saved a great many people with her power, perhaps she wouldn’t have been known as a great demon.

…So why hadn’t she considered it?

Coronzon was smart. Far smarter than a delinquent like Hamazura. It wouldn’t surprise him if she had already thought up anything he could come up with. So why had this one thing slipped her mind?

Some preconception must have gotten in the way, but ''where had it come from?

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet blinked.

“Did you just awaken to a different kind of justice from Kamijou Touma?”

“Are you crazy? I’m fighting with a gun I stole from ordinary airport security. He’s a normal worker. He could be fired from his job for losing it.”

Hamazura Shiage was not Kamijou Touma.

He would never take the same path of justice as him.

===Part 5===

Magicians could hack?

So claimed Leivinia Birdway, but it felt wrong from Kamijou’s science side viewpoint. Watermelon and curry were both tasty, but you wouldn’t want to pour curry over your watermelon. Could you really pull off a combination like that?

“For one, the Dawn-Colored Sunlight doesn’t wholly reject science.”

“?”

“But that’s not important.”

Instead of joining the Anglicans at the Hotel Town, Kamijou’s group was staying in a maintenance area further north. They had wanted somewhere safe to speak.

“Also…even if it didn’t last long, Anna Sprengel did start up R&C Occultics online. Shouldn’t you be more open minded after that? But you’re not… That line between magic and science a certain idiot embedded in the world sure is a pesky thing.”

Birdway sighed in an exasperated way.

And then…

“I shall remove your collar. Listen, isn’t there a more familiar example?”

“Hm??? Like what?”

“Grimoires. The original ones.”

The pointy-haired boy gasped.

Grimoires.

That was a familiar and yet mysterious term for him.

“Most grimoires are encrypted so you won’t receive much data if you read them as is. That is partially meant to protect the reader from an original’s toxin…but more than that it’s a security measure to keep their knowledge from the unauthorized,” said Birdway.

Encrypted, data, and security?

“But there are third parties who decrypt grimoires against the author’s wishes and steal the knowledge stored within. You are quite familiar with one, aren’t you? The biggest example would be Grimoire Library Index Librorum Prohibitorum. She has gathered at least 103,001 grimoires, after all. That is on another level entirely. And she uses all of that knowledge as countermeasures against criminal magicians, so you could call her the world’s greatest white-hat hacker.”

…Was she saying the magic side had always had the concept of breaking someone else’s code to steal their data? And it had been there for millennia?

“The thing is, magic side codes are ''whimsical''. With alchemy symbols and coded images, the exact same mark can have a different meaning for each person who made it. You have to read between the lines and guess what the creator was thinking.” Lessar let out a cruel “nee hee hee” of laughter. “If you want another example, there’s the Egyptian pyramids and the ancient ruins of Central America. I mean the grave robbers, of course. They break through the security to steal the treasures away from their rightful owners.”

“You sound like you know a lot about that.”

“Because I’ve done it before. Who did you think dug up Curtana Original and transported it to London, leading to that mess that shook the entire UK to its core?”

Lessar brought up yet another dangerous topic.

If she knew how dangerous it was, Kamijou wished she was also smart enough to not do it in the first place.

“In a way, that girl right there is another simple example.”

“Hm? Me?”

Birdway was (rudely) pointing at Dion Fortune.

“Fortune specializes in a logic that mixes ancient magic with the psychology that was new at the time. Her texts include several methods of using the psychological world to reveal people’s secrets. Without the victim noticing, of course. If she can really do that, that’s a form of hacking beyond anything a computer can manage.”

“What do you mean ‘if’ I can do it!? Do I need to demonstrate it on you?” belligerently shouted Fortune, requiring Kamijou to calm her down.

There was no doubting it now.

Even if they didn’t use terms like “hacking” or “cyber attack”, the magic side had similar concepts. And had for a long time.

Maybe the only difference was whether it referred to physically navigating a labyrinth, breaking a grimoire’s textual and numerical code…or accessing electronic data.

===Part 6===

Hamazura thought they had walked a good distance from the antenna tower.

But could you really call this a walkable distance?

“Kh.”

“Uh, oh. The Anglicans are here.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was right.

Hamazura hid behind a nearby metal drum while observing the distant group.

They were on a flat asphalt surface with nowhere to hide. A group of men and women in street clothing were wandering around defenselessly.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, whose metal coat meant crouching didn’t do much to hide her, didn’t seem too worried.

“What are they doing in this dreary place?”

“Waiting for us, probably.”

Those remnants of justice were now pawns of the Black_Oneday user.

A familiar face was completely surrounded at the very center of that group.

Takitsubo Rikou.

“Kh.”

…Charging in blindly wouldn’t save his girlfriend. There were swords and spears all around her.

Besides, where were they again?

A drone airbase.

Hamazura used a cheap pair of binoculars to get a look even further away.

“It does look completely different than what I expected. I was expecting a tougher version of a normal airport, with runways, a control tower, and a maintenance hangar.”

To start with, there were no runways.

Only a few 100m cannon-like objects jutting out horizontally. Those were probably launchers…but were they electromagnetic mass drivers, or did they explosively launch the drones?

Large cloths a lot like yacht sails were raised all over the base…but were those meant to catch the drones to retrieve them? The design philosophy was a lot like a bug-catching net. Drones didn’t have any of the safety standards meant to keep a pilot alive, so their operation could be a lot sloppier.

Hamazura was afraid to approach.

He spoke up while observing through the binoculars.

“I can’t see the entire security system from here. But it’s an airbase. I don’t like the idea of walking straight in where it’s open. We might get a warm welcome from automated machineguns or self-destructing drones.”

“?” Blodeuwedd the Bouquet tilted her head.

But not because she didn’t understand what he meant.

“Then how did the villain get inside the base?”

“The mobility device is there.”

It was that one-person vehicle that looked like three small wheels attached to a bathtub-sized box. It had been abandoned quite nearby. That suggested it hadn’t been a decoy and the villain really had used it to escape the Hotel Town.

There was a red flammability warning sign in the same place.

Which told Hamazura what the manhole there was.

“They used Black_Oneday, didn’t they?”

“What do you mean, Hamazura?”

“This is a fuel transport pipe. It’s thick enough that someone could walk through it if they crouched. If they used their hacking tool to remove all the jet fuel first, they would have a direct underground route into the drone airbase.”

“Ugh… They’d really go that far?”

“There aren’t any security cameras or human sensors in the pipe, so it seems like a good route in to me.”

Of course, Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet couldn’t follow the villain in that way. If the villain knew what they were doing, they would only need to fill the pipe with jet fuel again to drown the two of them.

They needed some other way into the drone airbase.

And without warning, they heard a deafening distorted noise.

“Hey.”

Hamazura’s heart hurt.

This was District 23 full of runways and launch pads. The disaster response speakers there were designed to be heard over all sorts of loud noises.

“The program-controlled rapid-fire guns can obliterate you there,” said the new Board Chairman. “The 127mm ones can fire more than 120 rounds a minute. The Transcendent might survive, but you will die before you make it three steps.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet pouted her lips right next to him.

“Is that even true? The Anglicans are wandering around the danger zone just fine.”

“Then they must have been added to the white list. If you aren’t and you enter that zone, the response will be instantaneous. So if you are going to do this, think it through first.”

That wasn’t what Hamazura was worried about. Which was only natural when he was speaking to someone far more dangerous than those 127mm rapid-fire guns.

“That drone airbase is one of your city’s prized possessions, right? I thought you’d be trying to stop me from getting in.”

“I don’t need any military weapons. It’s all overkill. Why does a city need enough power to destroy humanity several times over? I’m really hoping you give me an excuse to scrap it all.”

…If that was true, then was Academy City actually changing for the better?

This was convenient for Hamazura at least.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet clearly wanted to say something, but he held out a hand to stop her.

“Do you know anything about this, Mr. Great Board Chairman? You’ve got a better view of it all than some Level 0 crawling down on the ground.”

“About what?”

“The system.”

At first, that term was so simple it seemed detached from the reality before him.

''But it wasn’t.

“I can’t see it. I’m not even sure that’s the right word. But Coronzon said she had been given a ‘function’ and the world wouldn’t work without it. The way she talked about it like drawing the short end of the stick, hers can’t be the only one. It sounded like there are several ‘functions’ that support the world. …But what is all that? What pushed Coronzon to the point she resorted to destroying the world? There has to be something that pushed her in that direction, but what is it really?”

There had to be a cause for the effect he had seen.

You could even say Coronzon had proven its existence with her death.

There was a system that had driven wicked Coronzon to her doom.

“You’re wasting your time.”

The Board Chairman’s response was immediate and a rejection.

It was almost painful how much Hamazura had expected this. And it was the perfect 100% correct answer for the ''leader of the science side'' where the occult and the mystical had no place.

“You’re talking about a conspiracy theory. There is no grand system running the world. Functions? Illusions? Miracles? Misfortune? You can’t just flip a giant switch to change those things. This world is run by a collection of billions of individual thoughts. Like a beanbag. When you look up at it all, it can look like it all forms giant gears, but there isn’t actually some strange system making all the decisions.”

“A perfect model answer.”

It’s all humanity’s fault. It’s all your friends’ fault. It’s all your fault.

Common sense said it wasn’t possible.

And as long as their thoughts were bound by what was ''realistic'', no one would dig any deeper.

“Any misfortune and disaster in the world is brought about by people. Power turns people into monsters. That’s why I’m serving as Board Chairman to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

But then they wouldn’t reach the truth of the system.

Which was awfully convenient for the mysterious system running every last part of the world.

Hamazura was a Level 0 at the bottom of the hierarchy. He didn’t think he was smarter than the #1 Level 5. There was no way Accelerator couldn’t understand any idea he had.

Unless…were smarter people more easily affected and influenced by the unseen system?

If so, he could redefine his existence as a Level 0 as not so useless after all.

Hamazura suddenly wanted to talk with Kamijou Touma. That Level 0 had gone on ahead of him. Even though Hamazura knew he was the very one who had called Coronzon a great demon and killed her.

That boy had faced Coronzon and seen something inside her.

A pressure with no outlet burst inside Hamazura like a piece of unexploded ordnance.

“Then are you saying that collection of individuals just happened to coincidentally kill Coronzon? Yeah, right!! I won’t place the blame on all of them. I bet most people out there have never even heard of Coronzon! They wouldn’t create that kind of concrete malice. So! There must be a greater system out there that wanted to kill Coronzon and did so!! This isn’t a fantasy or figure of speech!! It’s real and it’s out there!!!”

Hamazura and Accelerator had reached an impasse.

The #1 had the scent of evil on him, but he was clearly different from Hamazura and Coronzon.

He had the confidence of the privileged.

“''I’ll reveal it'',” quietly said Hamazura.

He spoke in a low growl, like a wounded animal.

What could he do for Coronzon after carelessly surviving? That vague idea suddenly came into sharp focus.

“That’s it. I’ve made my own decision… There is a great system that decided Coronzon was a great demon of absolute evil and finally sent her to her death. I don’t care how cleverly it’s hidden itself – I will reveal it for all to see!!”

That was the end. With a click, the disaster response speakers went silent.

…

“Huh? You’re moving, Hamazura?”

“What else can I do?”

The great Board Chairman at the top of the city knew where he was. Hamazura had no idea ''how much'' that boy knew. He wanted to believe he wasn’t that foolish, but he couldn’t get careless. If the Board Chairman was still being buddy-buddy with the Anglicans, all that information would be passed right on to them.

Staying here was too dangerous.

He had to find another route to get close to the drone airbase.

===Part 7===

Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet made sure to give the drone airbase a wide berth.

So they took a circle with the base as the center point.

The Black_Oneday user had to be hiding in the drone airbase waiting for their next chance to act. Whatever their ultimate objective was, it wouldn’t be something anyone else would enjoy.

Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet knew that, but they were hesitant to act right away because they didn’t want a repeat of the Hotel Town.

The Anglicans wandering around the danger area were a nuisance. If they were simply ignorant, reconciliation and negotiation may have been an option, but not so if they were all traitors. Hamazura had to assume they were his enemy.

“Then what exactly are you going to do?”

“Aneri,” bluntly said Hamazura. “First, check to see if the Board Chairman was telling the truth about the rapid-fire guns. After that, give me a list of any other defense weapons you expect around the airbase.”

“You’re a real power user, huh?☆”

Was that even a compliment? He was really just getting the AI to think for him.

Less than ten seconds later, the phone’s cracked screen displayed the answer he was dreading.

“So not even Aneri can find a convenient loophole.”

“But you can’t just break in by brute force, right? What’s the last defense weapon you want to run across?”

“Not those rapid-fire guns. It’s this: the Boom Wall.”

That anti-air weapon used a large amount of explosives all at once to send an amplified shockwave wall from the giant trumpet-shaped barrel. It didn’t require any detailed guidance calculations because the thick wall could be sent over an area several kilometers across. It was meant as a low budget way to shoot down a saturation attack or swarm without missing anything.

“Um, let me get this straight.” Blodeuwedd the Bouquet held a finger to her narrow chin and began counting on her fingers. “If we approach the base, we get hit by those hundred-twenty-something millimeter rapid-fire guns. But if we approach in an airplane or helicopter, we’ll be shot down by dense anti-air fire. And all the underground loopholes like the fuel pipe have been blocked. …Then how do we get in?”

“…”

Not even Aneri had provided an answer to that. Maybe there wasn’t a correct solution here.

Hamazura no longer placed his hopes in the righteousness of justice. He would force his way through with cheap, underhanded tactics, even if it that counted as evil.

After a moment of silence, he answered.

“No matter how brutal it is, the Boom Wall is an anti-air weapon. That means it isn’t designed to target the ground. If we skim around five meters above the surface, the barrel shouldn’t be able to aim at a low enough angle.”

“Even if you drive full speed in a car, I think like you’ll still get shot up by those rapid-fire guns.”

“What if we were moving faster? Like Mach 10 or higher?”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet blinked.

This was unusual. He had surprised that condescending Transcendent.

“What I mean, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, is that. Why not use that?”

He pointed to the side.

They had already brought it up in conversation several times.

The Morning Star above ground mass driver.

Instead of using an underground silo, this one looked just like a cannon the size of a broadcast tower.

It wasn’t like a chemical rocket that flew to space using fuel and an oxidant. Electromagnetic induction was used to launch a projectile outside the atmosphere.

“Are you serious?”

Even Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was dumbfounded by this one.

“That can slip past both the surface and anti-air weapons, right? Aneri, can you hack it?”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait! That’s meant to launch things into space. Can it even be used along a line only 5m from the ground? Screw it up and we’ll crash ''into'' the ground!!”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“…”

“We’re not talking about a plane or rocket here. A mass driver is basically a giant railgun, so it apparently has a lot of freedom of movement. So it’s no different from a gun. …We can use the ricochet. ''If we intentionally hit the ground at a shallow angle, we should be able to fly just off the ground''.”

“……………………………………………………………………………”

It was like skipping a rock on the water’s surface.

And the drone airbase had equipment resembling giant yacht sails. They were meant to catch flying drones.

Hamazura would just have to hit one of those in something like a billiards shot.

“Umm, I have one last question.”

“Yes? Hurry it up.”

“How many Machs is escape velocity? Even at a shallow angle, we’ll be hitting the ground at extreme speed, right? I don’t care how tough the mass driver’s payload fairing is – won’t we be smashed to bits by the impact!?”

Hamazura couldn’t answer right away.

He asked a serious question.

“Hey, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. …You survived that exoatmospheric shuttle’s gigantic engine blast, right?”

“…Wait.”

“Can I get you to do that one last time?”

“I am supposed to be the weak but clever summoner! Not the tough and heavy tank!!”

She could complain, but this really did seem to be their only option.

Using that, he was pretty sure they could survive the hit with the ground.

It was fortunate there weren’t any workers or a security team at the drone airbase. He didn’t know how big a crater the ricochet would create, but he at least didn’t need to worry about hurting any living humans in the process.

“Aneri, let’s get started. Hack the Morning Star mass driver and give me control! Please!!”

===Part 8===

Leivinia Birdway looked up at a dull tremor in the distance.

“…Something just happened.”

“Enough self-absorption. We need to come up with an actual plan.”

Lessar’s comment shattered the mood so much it made Kamijou flustered.

Dion Fortune walked over to look at the map Lessar had unfolded.

“Decided on our next objective?” asked Kamijou.

Birdway pouted her lips and pointed at a point on the map. Maybe she hadn’t been too fond of the legendary Japanese portable food: cup noodles. If that damn rich British girl had a problem with it, she should have just poured in fancy tea instead of hot water and waited three minutes for the flavor to change.

“Here.”

She indicated a special airbase used for Academy City’s unmanned anti-air weaponry like the Six Wings attack helicopter.

That was one of the last facilities they wanted the Black_Oneday user to take over.

Kamijou frowned.

“Yeah, that would be dangerous…but what makes you so sure it’s here specifically?”

“Did the villain give themselves away somehow?” asked Dion Fortune next to Kamijou.

Lessar frowned.

“We can follow the actions of the villain…or really the people they’re manipulating.”

“Hm? Why would you do that, Lessar?”

“You know how delinquents who drive modified cars will intercept police radio and know where all the speed cameras are locate? This is the magic version of that.”

After explaining that, Lessar (who was really enjoying the junk food), pointed at a point on the map.

“The Anglicans are always trying to crack down on us ‘bad’ magicians, so we know exactly how they do things.”

“!?”

So Kanzaki, Stiyl, and the others?

“It would be one thing if they were acting alone, but when working as a group, they tend to use voice communication spiritual items. Even when speaking with one of their own people less than 2 meters away. We just have to track the faint magic power this uses.”

“That’s true enough… Academy City is a big place, but not many people here use magic. London or Rome would be one thing, but we can detect even faint magic over a distance in this city of science,” added Dion Fortune.

…It hadn’t seemed so easy during the Coronzon battle yesterday. Maybe it helped that these shady magicians had gathered a lot of data on the Anglicans. Just like you would have a hard time searching for an unfamiliar stray cat, but could find your own cat right away.

Lessar wagged her index finger.

“Looks like the area around the drone base is an off-limits zone. There are cameras and sensors everywhere and entering it without permission will get you filled with holes by the defense program. Yet the Anglicans are having a picnic there without getting shot. Unnatural, right?”

“The Black_Oneday user is controlling them using money, faith, brainwashing, or whatever else, so the Anglicans are useful pawns. The Black_Oneday user must not want to lose them so easily. We need to assume the drone airbase and its defense program have been taken over. The Anglicans are only safe because they’ve been added to the white list.” Birdway seemed curious about the earlier tremor, but her tone remained light. “If the Anglicans are being used to pursue and kill Hamazura Shiage, then either he’s hiding somewhere around here, or he will be here soon. Both the villain and Hamazura are here. If we want to end this, we need to visit that drone airbase.”

(Hm. I still don’t know how the Anglicans are tracking Hamazura. Could they be getting information out of someone from the science side they captured?)

Kamijou observed Birdway, but it didn’t seem like that possibility had occurred to her.

Really, that just made her seem more like an ordinary person.

“…We’ll be shot if we’re detected, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then we need a plan! That smug grin isn’t going to stop bullets!! These stupid magicians are so focused on attacking they’re not even thinking about defense. We’ll be riddled with bullets before I even have a chance to think!”

===Part 9===

That wasn’t actually a concern.

Because the mass driver attack stabbed right into the center of the drone airbase.

More specifically, it was caught by one of the giant “sails” meant to catch drones.

A piece of metal the size of a van shallowly struck the ground ''very close by'' at a tremendous speed of more than 12km/s, ricocheted, and pierced into the base. It slipped just below the anti-air defenses at extreme speed.

“Ugh, cough.”

Something emerged from the giant bullet-like vehicle made of thick heat-resistant and shock-resistant material.

That something was a thick metal coat.

There was no attack from the rapid-fire guns or the Boom Wall.

They weren’t designed to fire into the base…but that wasn’t the main reason.

“Wow…I think we destroyed like half the base.”

“Of course we did.” Hamazura crawled out from within the metal coat. “Even if it was a shallow angle, we still hit the ground right in front of the base to ricochet. At escape velocity. A normal bullet makes sparks when it hits a concrete wall, right? When a mass this large contacts the ground at that speed, it will send an explosive blast and a shockwave ahead with the force of an avalanche. And it fans out.”

“You knew this would happen? But if the base is half destroyed, you couldn’t know if the yacht sail thing’s support would break and not be there to catch us!”

“But we made it. We won the gamble, so why waste time complaining?”

“Y-you idiot, you really are on fire today. …And do you think this also killed the villain?”

“This is military base, remember? The important central stuff will be deep underground. Blowing away the stuff visible on the surface won’t damage the heart of the base.”

Even so, preventing all the unmanned weapons from taking off or landing meant a lot.

Hamazura looked out past the wreckage-strewn base.

“So what are those Anglicans doing?”

“They avoided it. They were apparently scattered along the perimeter on the other side, so the shockwave that blew away this half of the base wouldn’t have hit them.”

…So even after all this, they might attack. Still, that was better than if he had hurt his girlfriend Takitsubo.

“Aneri search for the entrance to the underground part of the base and force open the electronic lock!”

They were in.

Yes, Hamazura Shiage and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had made it inside the drone base.

Now they only had to determine which room of this drone-development air base the Black_Oneday user was hiding in.

“I doubt anyone is placing any trust in security cameras when both sides have hacking tools.”

Aneri gave two buzzes of protest. Apparently to say it was not primarily meant for hacking.

“Hey, hey. How about you rely on the magic side for once? Do I need to turn into the pain-in-the-ass kind of girlfriend who’s jealous of the porn on your phone? I might just know how to find which room it is.”

“How?”

“Because I’m the Transcendent who loves the hated☆ …The villain might be someone who looks like they wouldn’t hurt a fly, but that doesn’t mean they actually wouldn’t kill a fly or a moth if it flew in front of them, right? And those things can easily multiply inside an unmanned base.”

“…”

His phone buzzed again. That was a positive signal from Aneri. Based on its hacking of the base’s local network, the chemical weapon sensors in one section had picked up faint signs of insecticide components. That kind of chemical wouldn’t be needed in a base without any people around.

“That settles it. They’re in…the underground command center? That’s the first place I should have guessed. Argh, why did I have to overcomplicate it!?”

“It’s easy to claim you had it figured out after you’ve been spoiled. Did you think you were a genius, or something?”

They used Aneri’s support to travel through the base without getting caught.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had said the base was unmanned…and apparently they really had reduced the number of human workers to the very limit because they didn’t run into anyone on the way. But since the place had a command center deep underground, the control couldn’t be completely automatic, could it?

“Is that it, Aneri?” asked Hamazura, facing a tungsten steel door as thick as a bank vault door. He guessed the underground command center was built as sturdily as a nuclear shelter.

But this was a problem.

He was usually the criminal trying to run and hide.

He didn’t know the proper way to break in like this.

“This is the very center of the base, right? This door has to be crazy solid, so how do we unlock it? How are we supposed to get insi-”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet destroyed the door with a single punch from her metal coat’s giant sleeve. It scared Hamazura that it didn’t even surprise him. He was getting too accustomed to her bizarre power.

The room beyond was larger than the average indoor pool.

But it didn’t feel spacious. Thanks to all the computers crammed inside. But there was more than just LCD monitors in there. There were also devices that displayed a wide variety of data on giant pieces of clear glass like what you would see inside a submarine in a movie. Hamazura didn’t know what a lot of the equipment was even called.

But he didn’t have time to pay much attention to all that.

He thought his heart would stop.

The first thing Hamazura saw were the Anglicans. They were armed with dangerous bladed and blunt weapons and had the same unquestioning looks in their eyes.

And he saw someone else surrounded by them and unmoving: Takitsubo Rikou.

“H-Hamazu- Hama-”

“!!”

He wanted to call her name, but he knew ''that'' would be the most dangerous thing he could do. No good came of letting them know the value of their hostage.

He had to stay on the path of evil.

He had already decided he could only protect his girlfriend by placing her second.

Shaking off that urge was so hard he thought he would cough up blood…but he managed to face ''the other oddity'' here.

“Hold on. What are you doing here?”

He faced the mastermind behind it all.

She was a girl with chestnut hair. And he had heard her voice before.

''“N-no… Help.”

She was a small girl of around 13. He recognized the fluffy adult coat that came down to her ankles and hid her hands in the sleeves.

''“Go.”

''“Hurry.”

He didn’t want to believe it.

But his own memory didn’t lie.

“The girl I saved…from the Dobermanns…way back at the start?”

Come to think of it, he had never solved the initial mystery.

The Anglicans had made that cell by modifying a die-like air cargo container. The door had been locked up tight – the metal shutter had used some kind of special magical lock – so why had it suddenly opened even though he and Aneri hadn’t done a thing?

Had he been in the palm of her hand since then?

“That’s right, Hamazura. I saved you.”

The girl smiled a little while holding a plush bear in her arm.

Aneri gave two buzzes of warning.

…It wasn’t a phone or a computer. ''Was that'' the device used to give instructions to Black_Oneday? The plush bear had a trackball, keyboard, and other devices installed on and in it.

“But…why? Why did you have to take it so far? I mean, you were in a position to brainwash the Anglicans who were after you, right!? Every last one of them!! So you didn’t even need to free me from my cell to confuse them!”

“?”

In response, the girl tilted her head in utter confusion.

He also heard a sigh of exasperation from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

“Yeah, uh, Hamazura, I don’t think that’s what it was.”

“What?”

“That villain simply ''let you escape because she wanted to let you escape''. I’m sure of it. It was a whim with no connection to any master plan related to confusing the Anglicans or starting a global war using Black_Oneday.”

“Wait, but…the Black_Oneday user really tried to kill me! I mean, what about at the Hotel Town? She fired on me with that eight-wheeled anti-air drone and she tried to blow me away with vaporized jet fuel…”

“But ''you didn’t actually die. You’re a Level 0, yet you survived all those flashy attacks. Seems unnatural, doesn’t it''?”

It couldn’t be…

“Are you saying the Black_Oneday user intentionally ''adjusted the difficulty'' so I could get through it? Like making sure someone doesn’t die when playing a game!?”

She had wanted to free Hamazura ''separate from'' whatever else she was doing.

…That was all it was? Really???

But if she wanted to save Hamazura, why had she gotten Takitsubo involved?

The girl pulled out a headband and used it to keep her bangs out of her eyes.

“What? Were you trying to save that track suit girl?”

“…Yeah.”

“''Okay. If that’s what you want, I’ll free her.''”

Several thudding sounds overlapped each other. They were the sounds of bodies hitting the floor. Kanzaki Kaori, Stiyl Magnus, and the rest of the Anglican magicians collapsed like a switch had been thrown. The only one left standing was Takitsubo Rikou.

Was that all it took?

Saying that had ''really'' been enough to save her?

“Hold on…what’s going on here?” muttered Hamazura in a daze.

He was glad Takitsubo was safe, but he had trouble believing it was true. He was worried something even worse awaited him.

Besides, how had it even turned out like this?

Even if this girl really was behind everything, today was the first time he had met her. She shouldn’t have any obligation to help him out.

“Because our circumstances are similar. So I don’t get anything out of it. I just felt like helping you is all.”

“Eh?”

“You don’t want people calling that person a great demon, right?”

That was true.

But why was she bringing that up here?

“I am one of several anti-magic combat plans developed in parallel on former Archbishop Lola Stuart’s command. But Grimoire Library Index Librorum Prohibitorum was ultimately chosen, so I am no more than a scrapped model forgotten as a phantom project.”

The name Lola Stuart wasn’t too familiar to Hamazura, but he was pretty sure it had been one of Coronzon’s pseudonyms.

Meaning…

“I am Narthex Coded Cathedral. …I suppose you could call me one of the ''products'' raised by Coronzon.”

===Part 10===

Narthex Coded Cathedral.

A sister project and rival to Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

The small girl never had any intention of trapping or attacking Hamazura Shiage.

But that didn’t mean she carried no malice.

In fact, Narthex had another true target.

“Kh.”

Someone else groaned.

With the surface of the drone airbase torn to shreds, he must not have had to worry about the defense weapons.

Kamijou had entered the underground command center late, but he too had learned the villain’s identity.

“You made it, Kamijou Touma.”

The girl’s voice had seemed unfocused before, but now it carried a definite will and emotion.

The emotions of anger and hatred.

“My mother’s killer.”

She was an expert at building and cracking codes. She was a pro at reading the idiosyncrasies in people’s techniques and their psychologies.

Numbers, writing, magic circles, artwork, music – it could be anything.

“If I had arrived in time last night…I would have stopped you.”

Grimoire Library Index Librorum Prohibitorum used her perfect memory to contain innumerable grimoires in her brain to manage them there. You could say she had mastered the art of literary memorization, but this special girl took a completely different approach for plotting the elimination of wicked magicians.

“So is she like a stealth fighter that’s rival was officially adopted instead?”

“I doubt it even had to do with her skill level. She had to be kept a secret because she violates the treaty between magic and science. ''She grew too much'', so her specs are not inferior.”

Lessar and Birdway gave their cynical thoughts.

“I notice Index’s name is Latin, but Narthex’s is English… Dammit, Coronzon. Did you intentionally throw them into different environments so they could grow in different ways?”

“Why do I get the feeling there are plenty more of these girls lurking in the shadows of the world. Maybe with a French name or a German name?”

As if in response…

Narthex threw open the front of her thick coat as if undoing a seal.

[[Image:GT_Index_v15_BW7.jpg|thumb]]

Her clothing was ''transparent''. The overall silhouette resembled a nun’s habit, but it was made of pure gold and woven into a fine net, allowing her lace-white skin to show through. Below that, she wore something like a bikini. Although there may have been other way of interpreting it.

It was far too vulgar and degrading to call her a nun.

But that wasn’t what made Birdway frown. She was focused on the coat’s lining. A sticky light resembling glow-in-the-dark paint wavered irregularly there.

“''A second brain'', huh? I have heard the human brain would be as large as a newspaper page if you flattened out all the wrinkles. Hey, is that true, Kamijou Touma of the city of science?”

But it was Kamijou who was most shocked by this.

That was fundamentally different from Index’s Walking Church.

What even was that coat really? It wasn’t actually ''that'', was it!?

“If you’re externally boosting your specs like that, then your supposed encryption expertise is no bluff. …But this means your ego and soul were fundamentally distorted, turning you into a tool and a device. Did you not hate the great demon for doing that to you?”

“''You just referred to my mother as a great demon, didn’t you''?”

“Yeah, she’s pretty twisted. But who knows what she’s hiding,” said Lessar, sounding exasperated.

Yes.

This was familiar to Kamijou too.

This combination of endlessly innocent yet somehow twisted.

…''The collar.

Hadn’t Index had her memories and thoughts externally restricted to control her? This girl had been manufactured by the same person. Narthex Coded Cathedral was the result of a parallel project, so she could always have a similar safety device.

And based on the way Narthex was acting, her safety device may still have been functioning even after Coronzon’s death. How sad if true.

Lessar’s interest was directed in a less appropriate direction.

“Does that outfit incorporate the symbols of a trance priestess? Seems like the polar opposite of a Christian nun’s pursuit of asceticism. Oh, but I guess she might not be limited to Christianity. I mean, she’s a magician created from the ground up by Great Demon Coronzon. That opens up everything from Norse mythology in the west to Indian mythology in the east. Really, any kind of religious ritual that invites people to the supernatural world, puts them in a trance so they can hear the voice of god, and accepts the power of sexuality.”

Something audibly sliced through the air.

Lessar didn’t even blink. But there was a slight cut on her cheek now.

Apparently she wasn’t going to get away with calling Coronzon a great demon a second time.

Narthex Coded Cathedral immediately took action.

Calmly.

(Her mother, hm?)

What had her relationship with Lola Stuart – with Coronzon – really been? Kamijou’s imagination couldn’t keep up, but he got the feeling that relationship had been closer than Coronzon’s with Index.

Or.

Had that different relationship been one of the changes included in the parallel projects, along with the naming rule?

Narthex had said her project was run at the same time as Index’s. So were they around the same age?

…Wait, how old was Index exactly?

If they had been customized with all of Coronzon’s power, it was possible those girls’ bodies were far from ordinary.

Lessar and Birdway quietly prepared for battle, but Narthex didn’t seem worried.

“What, you’re going to fight? Index’s job is to crack a grimoire’s code and record its contents in her brain, but mine is the opposite. I am an expert at applying a strange and complex encryption to exposed knowledge, sealing it away in an unreadable state. Incantations, talismans, weapons – whatever form you use to try and get around it, ''no magician can defeat me.''”

Was that why Kanzaki, Stiyl, and the other Anglican magicians were acting so weirdly?

“Sealing away” a small portion of their thought processes would keep them from reacting to a specific situation. So even with a hint before their eyes, they couldn’t see it. They had been so busy pursuing Hamazura Shiage they were unable to notice the real villain.

But this had seemed odd even taking that into account.

They were from Necessarius, the 0th Parish of the Anglican Church. They were the best of the best in anti-magician combat, so it was unusual for them to all get brainwashed so easily. …But it made more sense if it had been done by an insider who knew all about them. Just like a hacker might not be able to hack in from outside the building, but they would have no trouble if they stuck a USB drive directly into a computer on the inside.

“You would go this far…? What were you hoping to accomplish here in Academy City by betraying an organization as big as the Anglican Church!?”

“To bring back my mother. What else?”

She made it sound so similar.

But Coronzon was already dead.

Kamijou had done it.

Wasn’t that why Narthex was driven by such fury? So…had she not noticed the contradiction in her own claims?

“What contradiction? It’s been done before. …By one Kamijou Touma who truly died and returned after a trip through hell.”

“Kh.”

“My mother can be physically revived to this world in the same way. Wait a while longer, Hamazura. This will be a blessing for you. I will make sure it happens.”

The shocked gasp did not come from Kamijou.

Did that breath contain a hint of hope? It rang with the expectation represented by the words “is that really possible?” If Coronzon could return to this world, it would turn his view of this situation around 180 degrees.

Those two really did stand in a position fundamentally different from Kamijou and the rest.

“Simple, isn’t it? What happened in hell, a different phase separate from this physical world? No matter how impregnable a maze hell may be, I can break open your skull, stick electrodes in your brain, and suck out all the memory data within to give myself a walkthrough. My mother can be brought back by human hands.”

Was the disappearance of his important document really a coincidence? Or had he been lured out here?

“I have already acquired my mother’s dead body. It is hidden somewhere in this city. I was worried because some time had passed since her death, but, well, it’s a good thing she isn’t human. …She is fundamentally a being of pure energy, so as long as I follow the appropriate steps to complete the ceremony, she can be summoned from that other phase, right?”

Birdway had a disgusted response to that.

“A demon summoning, huh? Unfortunately, there is a precedent there.”

“Yes. Magician Crowley did it back in 1909, didn’t he? And Mathers apparently did it unofficially even earlier. Plus, I have ''this''.”

An eerie light shined from within Narthex’s fluffy coat.

From the second brain.

And next thing they knew, Narthex Coded Cathedral held ''something'' in her hand.

Birdway of all people gasped.

“Kamijou Touma. What does that look like to you?”

“Huh? I’m not sure… It’s like an apple made of red crystal maybe? Looks like there’s a liquid inside it.”

“Lessar.”

“Umm, it looks like fish cooked on a skewer to me. Probably from Celtic mythology.”

…What?

People could have slightly different interpretations of what they were seeing, but confusing a translucent red apple for a fish on a skewer was a little much. This wasn’t a Rorschach test.

“To me it looks like a small bottle of clear crystal. Maybe the Norse spring of wisdom, or something alchemical? It might be a liquid elixir.”

Wait. Wait, wait.

Didn’t that mean no two of them were seeing the same thing!?

“What you’re seeing is probably the fruit that grew on the Tree of Knowledge. Apples are a motif used in several mythologies, but it must be that if it’s linked with knowledge. Now, I don’t know what it looks like to its user Narthex…but is she using that in a ceremony?”

For once, Birdway clenched her teeth as she spoke.

Lessar provided the verbal finishing blow.

“She means that’s a collection of knowledge ''before it’s turned into a grimoire''. And this would make a dangerous original-class one, so don’t let your guard down, Kamijou-san!!”

===Part 11===

Kamijou didn’t need to be told that.

But Narthex’s specialty wasn’t grimoires. That was Index’s territory. Since they were rival projects run in parallel, Lola Stuart – that is, Great Demon Coronzon – must have designed her for a different specialty.

Also, Narthex Coded Cathedral didn’t fight with just the magic side.

“This room could use more ventilation. And so could you!!”

The air in the room groaned. District 23 specialized in high-tech aerospace technology, so the Black_Oneday hacking tool could provide any number of weapons here.

Narthex pet the head of the plush bear in her small hand.

''Boom!!!

Immediately, the underground command center’s wall was torn down from the outside. The place had to be sturdier than a nuclear shelter, but she didn’t hesitate at all!?

Birdway shouted through clenched teeth.

“That must have been a drone. She’ll have plenty of bunker killer missiles based on the marine rockets used to dig into the ocean floor and retrieve samples. Hey, Kamijou Touma. Leave the command center. Otherwise you’ll be shredded to mincemeat before you can even try to fight her directly!!”

Narthex was still standing there.

She touched the plush bear to give her next command. Again with no hesitation.

She didn’t seem to see any value in the underground command center that acted as the heart of the base.

“Wh-what about Hamazura and the others!?”

“You don’t have time to worry about them! Move out in the open and you’ll be sprayed with bullets!!”

''If'' Narthex was being rational, she wouldn’t order an attack that would hit Hamazura. …But how much could he trust the thoughts of ''a Coronzon worshiper''?

Kamijou’s group didn’t have time to work out where would be safe.

More and more of the walls and ceiling were torn down. They would be buried alive if they stayed here, so they had to keep running.

“What is this place?”

They found themselves in a wide-open space. It wasn’t well lit, but the size was the main reason Kamijou couldn’t see to the other side.

Lessar sounded annoyed.

“Is this where Academy City’s fighters and attack helicopters are managed?”

While Kamijou was from Academy City, that didn’t mean he knew all about the interior of the city’s military facilities. Especially with a drone airbase.

And Lessar had just said something he couldn’t ignore.

“Wait… If this is where the drones are kept, does that mean they could come here!?”

“It would seem you all want to die.”

They heard a voice from the entrance. It was Narthex Coded Cathedral.

Heavy metallic noises came from a different direction.

A Six Wings attack helicopter emerged from the shadows.

This was an underground facility. As large as the room was, it wasn’t tall enough for an aircraft to fly around.

But it wasn’t flying.

The six wings it was named for were forcibly moving to let it ''crawl''. Its guns and autocannons were crushed below its own weight.

“Watch out for the floor. It seems to be reinforced with steel beams, but I can see something through the gaps.”

“Is this a multilevel hangar? That means we could ''break through'' if we overdo it. This isn’t getting any easier.”

Birdway clicked her tongue.

Narthex touched the plush bear…and operated the trackball installed within it.

She didn’t hesitate to speak.

“Do it.”

The 30ton mass charged forward.

That was deadly enough on its own given a large semi-truck or tanker truck weighed 10 tons, but it was too forceful. It was effectively robbing itself of its guns and missiles this way.

No.

That was an unmanned attack helicopter, so it would have no problem with crushing its own missiles or shells and exploding from within. Because the shockwave and shrapnel would shred Kamijou.

“Weakling,” spat Birdway.

“Hee hee. Once I win, make sure to use my name when you compliment me, you dumb-as-shit little girl.”

Lessar stepped forward and threw something. Even though Kamijou could have sworn she had been empty-handed a moment before.

A flat piece of stone even more precise than a ruler drew out an erratic course like a boomerang.

“Thou art valiant yet no match for the thunder god, but I shall even make use of thy defeat. Whetstone of Hrungnir, shatter and pierce!!”

Stone scattershot flew out 360 degrees around the point it hit.

The crawling Six Wings tilted unnaturally.

Lessar appeared to have thrown a projectile at the arm’s joint to prevent anything from detonating.

But even broken and off balance, the Six Wings did not stop. It was now in a position resembling a formal bow…which meant its main rotor was tilted diagonally toward them as it made its next move.

“Uh, oh,” groaned Kamijou.

The main rotor rotated with great force. Like a giant blender blade intent on slicing through everything in the world. It stirred up the air into a gale as the Six Wings, missing a few of its arms, scraped its fuselage against the floor in its forced approach.

“Run, run, run! Get behind a pillar or something!!”

“That pillar’s too skinny. That thing can slice right through a steel beam.”

Then did they have to destroy the Six Wings?

Despite what the term “aircraft” would suggest, attack helicopters were meant to attack tanks and armored trucks on the ground. So their engine was located at the point hardest to target from below.

And with the Six Wings approaching with its main rotor tilted toward them, ''that point was now right in front of them.'' They couldn’t stop the deadly rotating blade without destroying the engine, but a magical projectile from Lessar or Birdway would most likely cause the jet fuel to explode.

Imagine Breaker was the only card in Kamijou’s deck, so no one expected anything from him to begin with. He could only shout in a panic.

“Wh-what do we do!?”

“Eliminate the threat, obviously,” spat Birdway with a glance toward Lessar. “Hey, weakling. The cabal boss’s life is in your hands. If I die because you didn’t do your job, the Dawn-Colored Sunlight will be forced to head out on a hunting picnic, so be careful.”

“Gyehhh. This is why I didn’t want to be this selfish little girl’s bodyguard. Every part of the job is a deadly gamble!!”

Birdway already held some kind of metal wand. Kamijou hadn’t even seen her pull it out. And compressed flames hovered at the end of it.

If she carelessly launched that, it would cause everything to explode, blowing them all to smither-

“Hot and dry. That is, the fire of fire. I’ll blow you away Mathers-style, small fry!!”

There was nothing Kamijou could do. He could only watch as the orange fireball was launched.

And exploded.

But there wasn’t just one explosion. The jet fuel was dangerous enough, but the shells and missiles carried within the Six Wings detonated too.

The steel beams below their feet bent and a portion of the floor groaned. The movement of the smoke was odd. A slight breeze was blowing in from the lower level. The floor was designed for aircraft weighing dozens of tons, but this had caused it to collapse.

However…

“Magic is such a threat to science because it can brute force its way through these things.”

They were all unharmed.

Because Lessar had held out her palm and activated something.

It looked like a glowing translucent wall.

If they had a way to protect them all from a military weapon exploding at close range, they could blow away as many of those unmanned Six Wings as necessary. Magic really was a brute force power found by pursuing wisdom far enough.

''But.

“Hee hee.”

The magicians surviving the scientific Six Wings had not put a dent in Narthex’s composure.

Solid snapping sounds came from her.

Did they come from the back of her neck…or from her back?

Birdway grinned.

“That would be the branches. The physical connections are used to alter her second brain’s thought circuits.”

In other words, she could switch between using magical encryption or the scientific hacking tool.

She could switch between two modes corresponding to the two worlds.

“If you would prefer to be killed by one or the other, let me know soon.”

Narthex’s bewitching smile looked out of place on her small body.

But learning this external sign gave Kamijou’s side an advantage.

She held out her empty hand – the one not holding the plush bear.

Yes. Narthex Coded Cathedral could use more than just the scientific hacking tool.

Her lips formed a smile and then whispered.

“''Seal''.”

Leivinia Birdway stiffened.

She suddenly came to a stop in the middle of battle.

“!?”

“What’s wrong, Birdway!? If you have a trump card, use it now!!”

Kamijou shouted wide-eyed, but the small girl’s eyes remained lowered to her hands.

Birdway, the Dawn-Colored Sunlight’s boss, was trembling.

“…I can’t.”

“What?”

“I was just using spells without even thinking about it…but now I don’t know how. No, ''was the neural pathway sealed, temporarily preventing me from remembering how''!?”

“Wait, wait, wait. I don’t have the talent of a powerful cabal boss. You can’t take away the one or two things an average person like me can do! Then I’ll just be a normal human!”

Lessar blanched and abandoned the spell she had been frantically trying to compose.

Memories.

Was this the opposite of Index who kept having hers taken?

If the sealer could predict what card you would play before you used it, you could never use it again.

Narthex was designed for anti-magician combat. She was a different sort of wizard killer from Grimoire Library Index. She rejected the mystical side of her enemy.

Kamijou had known this wouldn’t be easy, but she was an even more dangerous foe than he had expected!

He couldn’t bear to look at Birdway and Lessar who had immediately been taken out of the fight. He frantically raised his voice.

“Wh-what do we do? If that’s magic, I can destroy it with Imagine Breaker, but do you have a weird magic circle on your body or something? What part of you am I supposed to touch to fix this!?”

“I don’t know! Just touch me all over and give me lots of head pats!!”

He had a feeling he couldn’t trust what panicked Lessar was saying. Since he couldn’t expect much from the magicians, was Imagine Breaker all he had?

Only that. …When the enemy had her pick of magic or science!

===Part 12===

“Nyah!?”

The underground command center’s walls and floor had collapsed.

Hamazura heard a panicked voice from nearby and looked over to see a flustered Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. It wasn’t that she had been suddenly pulled down. The emaciated girl was being crushed by her own weight.

Or more accurately, by the weight of her thick metal coat covered in copper panels that could move like an independent creature.

…Her ability to survive a hit from a 10-ton truck or launch the truck up from below apparently came from the metal coat. Was it like a powered suit? When the giant engine had blasted her with flames, had she protected her exposed face with magic or did the coat provide some kind of protective field? Whatever the case, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet herself must not have been particularly sturdy and tough.

“Th-this is bad… That Narthex girl sealed my metal coat. Will no one other than you accept me as their ally?”

She had sided with Kamijou and worked toward killing Coronzon not long ago, so maybe it was only natural Narthex resented her.

Kamijou and Narthex were fighting in a fairly distant location, but apparently they were still close enough for the effects to reach them here. With the thick walls and floor collapsed, there was no longer any division between rooms.

“So what now, Hamazura?”

“What now?”

Narthex Coded Cathedral was an unofficial Anglican nun weapon who could use magical and scientific technology with a focus on the concept of “sealing”. She was a forbidden trump card Coronzon hadn’t had a chance to play before she died. Level 0 Hamazura Shiage couldn’t think of a single way of hurting someone like that.

“No.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet must have known what the waver in his eyes meant because she immediately rejected his thoughts.

“You see how chaotic their battle is, right? He’s wide open right now. Your vengeance probably can’t reach Kamijou Touma if you attack head on, but you might be able to stab him in the side right now. That’s what I’m talking about.”

So.

Was she asking if he could see what Narthex Coded Cathedral had done today and guess what she was likely to do in the future…and still focus on attacking Kamijou Touma instead?

“Why are you here?”

That was the fundamental question.

And not just in this moment. It was a question he had asked himself over and over: when he saw Coronzon die, when he was trapped in that box, when the cell was unlocked, and after he was freed.

“To save the world and put smiles on everyone’s faces? Or to get back at Kamijou Touma!? …You need to actually face your own goal here, Hamazura. You need to stop blaming someone or something else, lamenting that your circumstances or environment are the problem without trying to fix them, and cursing the world as a whole. Neither Kamijou Touma nor Narthex Coded Cathedral are paying any attention to you. As you can see, I can’t move with control of my metal coat sealed. So whether you win, lose, save, or destroy, you’re the one who holds the choice in your hands, Hamazura Shiage!!”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was the Transcendent who loved the hated.

Good, evil, humanity, the world…and even her own life were secondary to that.

“None of those ridiculous conditions matter.”

So she smiled as she made a suggestion.

As a Transcendent, it was an extremely destructive suggestion.

And it was just like the one he had once given Coronzon.

“''Just do whatever it is you want to do,'' Hamazura.”

===Part 13===

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

Narthex Coded Cathedral could seal any magic she predicted before it was used, so any magician would be driven into a worse and worse position as the battle continued.

(It’s technically not a negation like my Imagine Breaker. It’s probably a mind control power that precisely messes with their brain, ''preventing them from remembering the necessary incantation''.)

If she could use that magic, did it mean she, unlike Index, could refine her life force into magic power?

…The worst part was that there was no penalty for Narthex if her prediction was wrong. It wasn’t like she could only seal away a maximum of five things at a time or that she lost some power each time she was wrong. That meant she could use it all she liked. She had no reason to hesitate. She could seal away any magician if she set up a perimeter by listing off the ten or twenty most likely candidates.

Kamijou would have to do it.

Imagine Breaker let him fight Narthex without worrying about her magic sealing!

“(Or we can use magic she doesn’t expect in the slightest for a cheap win. Either way, you move out and gather attention. Make us look like no more than ''useless bystanders''.)”

“(Because once Narthex isn’t paying attention to us, we’re free to act again. Even a spell that wouldn’t normally hit can do the trick if we launch it from a blind spot☆)”

Just then Narthex whispered a word.

“''Release''.”

That word was the opposite of a seal, making it the trigger to free something.

But free what?

Kamijou didn’t even have time to wonder.

“Come forth, knowledge. You are the Original Sin for which all mankind was expelled from paradise!!”

Lessar’s body tilted unnaturally to the side. Before a surprised Kamijou could even try to support her, Birdway collapsed to the floor. She was bleeding from the nose and mouth, but she did nothing to wipe it away. She had passed out.

(What? That wasn’t poison gas. It would’ve taken me out too. But then…)

Narthex sneered over at him from her distant position.

The hand not holding the plush bear was toying with a floating apple seemingly made of red crystal. No, that was only what it looked like to Kamijou. Whatever it was, it could take many forms.

“Did you forget I am holding the fruit hanging from the branches of the Tree of Knowledge? This is the ''raw'' forbidden knowledge before it is processed into a grimoire.”

So were those two in the same state they would be if they had received the toxic knowledge of an original grimoire!? No one other than Index could defend against that. And given a professional magician’s greed for knowledge, they may have had their souls absorbed and polluted even more than a normal person.

But what if attacking the magicians had delayed her by a step, creating an opening?

“!!”

Kamijou immediately grabbed a burner from the floor. It was probably a maintenance tool for the military weapons kept here.

Instead of targeting Narthex, he went for a thick power cable running alongside a steel pillar.

What if he burned through that and dropped the sliced end to the floor?

The cut power cable scattered bluish-white sparks and he rushed rapidly along the steel reinforcement beams arranged in a lattice pattern. He ran toward little Narthex!

An unpleasant “zap!!” rang out.

But Narthex Coded Cathedral did not fall.

Just beforehand, her lips and tongue had uttered a word.

“''Seal''.”

(She used magic to cut off the high-voltage current!?)

He slammed on the brakes. If this wouldn’t even act as a smokescreen, charging in like this would only get him killed.

“That seal isn’t just a psychological attack! It works on non-magical things too?”

“My mother did not see the magic side as her ''only'' enemy.”

Of course she didn’t. Great Demon Coronzon had ultimately intended to destroy all 7 or 8 billion humans, be they from magic or science.

“You can find seals in mythologies the world over, but the most dynamic would probably be from Greek mythology. After all, Cronus and Zeus both swallowed their pesky children to try and remove them from the world of myth. Of course, those gods were generally immortal, so it didn’t count as killing. It was seen as a seal because they would be back to normal once removed from their father’s belly. Ah ha ha. Doesn’t that remind you of that absurd Red Riding Hood story where she was eaten by a wolf but somehow still had a happy ending?”

Kamijou glared straight at Narthex while moving just his eyes to the sides. Was there anything he could use here? She could seal anything, but was there nothing that would let him use that against her!?

“So seals don’t actually negate the energy the way your Imagine Breaker does. They are much more ecological. They let me remove your deadly force, but I hold the right to release the seal. That means I can effectively steal my enemy’s power and use it myself. A lot like stealing a demon and using them as your servant.”

Narthex Coded Cathedral licked her lips with her little tongue.

And she gave a death sentence.

Before Kamijou could find anything capable of breaking free of this bind.

“So I can have fun like this. …Release!!”

''Crash!!!

Fearsome light and noise were released horizontally. It was the ultra-high-voltage current used to power the electromagnetic catapults that launched the drone airbase’s unmanned fighters into the sky. That deadly energy shot across the underground space.

''No, that wasn’t all.

Kamijou couldn’t even react.

“Wha-?”

“Even ordinary electricity can have its apparent power multiplied by gathering and sealing it. The capacitors used to amplify the voltage of stun guns are primarily made of ''insulators'' like paper or glass. Even a high schooler understands how that works, I hope?”

And it didn’t follow a straight line.

When Narthex swept her outstretched hand from right to left, the destructive energy did the same. The blinding light forming a great serpent of more than a hundred million volts shorted the metal pillars and thick power cables as it targeted Kamijou’s head!!

He could see now why Lola Stuart had kept Narthex a secret.

She was a taboo among taboos.

She was a combination of science and magic that had been treated as a failure for being ''too successful''.

“!!!?”

===Part 14===

Silence fell.

Even the scent of scorched air seemed to be considerately keeping its distance from people’s senses.

The electric current of more than a hundred million volts had been magically controlled, ensuring a hit.

But Kamijou Touma still wasn’t dead.

Because someone else had made themselves into a human shield.

“…''Hama''…''zura''…?”

Narthex Coded Cathedral spoke his name in surprise.

That boy hadn’t wanted to call Coronzon a great demon. He had felt the same way she did.

So why had he saved Coronzon’s killer?

Was that the thing he ''most'' wanted to risk his life for!?

“You could have done anything you wanted, so why would you waste it on something so stup- gah…ah…!?”

The girl’s head wobbled.

Something was wrong with the right half of her vision. She didn’t have time to check a mirror, but the capillaries in the white of the eye may have burst, turning the eye bloodshot.

“You aren’t Index.”

And.

Since Hamazura Shiage had shielded him, Kamijou remained standing.

And he could…clench his right fist.

“Kh.”

“So you don’t have an extreme resistance to a grimoire’s toxin. You said that knowledge was as toxic as an original grimoire, right? If you could’ve just used that as much as you wanted, you would’ve just started with that. The only reason you didn’t is because that trump card damages you too, doesn’t it? “

Narthex had the Black_Oneday hacking tool.

She could have used that to damage Academy City and then spread that damage across the world, but she hadn’t.

She launched her cyber attacks with the same decryption skill she would use for a grimoire’s symbolism or a magic circle’s layout.

But that had been a burden on her.

She hadn’t wanted to use it more than necessary.

Because she could tell it was threatening her life.

Otherwise, she would likely have already triggered a major war like Coronzon had attempted with Adikalika.

(It’s just like with Index… When Coronzon gives someone a power, it isn’t going to make them happy. It will destroy their life and transform them into a living secret weapon.)

That great demon could only tear people’s bonds apart. She couldn’t actually save people no matter how hard she tried.

This had so bothered her that she had tried to destroy the world over it, so it did seem a lot like her.

“So you should stop here. The ordinary fear of death is catching up to you, isn’t it? But you see your ability to do these unusual things as your bond with Coronzon, so you don’t want to stop. But it’s not like your memories of her will vanish if you do things normally.”

“Shut up,” snapped Narthex Coded Cathedral. “I loved my mother. I truly respected her… I know so much about her you never knew. She tore people’s bonds apart and obstructed their evolution? That was all she could do? That isn’t true and I’ll prove it… That’s enough of a reason to risk my life.”

She looked around 13 – although her actual age was unknown – but her face was a portrait of fury, hatred, humiliation, scorn, and frustration. Every negative emotion aside from sorrow was contained there.

“You killed my mother.”

Kamijou had no memory before a certain day during summer break.

He knew he had saved Index during that time, but he felt like he hadn’t actually experienced it himself.

Even so, he could tell.

This girl…was an Index who hadn’t met Kamijou Touma.

So she had relied on someone else. Such as viewing her own creator as a parent.

For one, it was the person who had shattered her cage of misfortune. For the other, it was the person who had created her cage of misfortune.

It had all branched out from there.

“But that wasn’t enough, so now you’re going to rob her of the possibility of being reborn and getting a second chance at life? Kamijou Touma. You don’t have the right!! No one does!!!”

Maybe not.

But…

“I might be plagued by ''misfortune'',” said Kamijou.

He didn’t avert his gaze even as he was called a murderer.

Because…

“But I’m still not as ''miserable'' as you. Because I had the freedom to overcome my misfortune.”

“Kh.”

“Narthex, your circumstances weren’t your fault. You were made to be that way for someone else’s purposes and benefit. That much is obvious. …And that Great Demon Coronzon did that to you is all the more reason something had to be done about her.”

“My life is none of your business! Don’t barge in and act like you know if I’m happy or not. All that mattered to me was that my mother wasn’t alone!! But you and your smug self-righteousness took everything from her! Including her life!!!”

The girl screamed at him.

With tears in her eyes.

“For so long she called herself the Anglican archbishop! She said her name was Lola Stuart! She couldn’t tell anyone who she really was. Not even her real name!! Because she would be killed if the truth got out! You would know all about that since you’re the one that actually did it. And all because you’d decided getting the whole damn world to gang up on her and attack her was the ‘right thing to do’! …I was the only one she had. I was the only one who knew her name was Coronzon and accepted her for who she was. Only I could save her!!”

That had to be Narthex Coded Cathedral’s true feelings

She had to be coming up with these words on her own.

Looking at this alone, her story sounded like a moving one.

Kamijou Touma’s heart should have ached as the one who fought Coronzon as a great demon and let her die.

''But he couldn’t let himself forget.

Narthex had been ''created'' by Coronzon. And unlike Index, she hadn’t broken free of Coronzon’s control…so she had never been saved. Just like Index had several layers of security built into her without her consent.

In that case.

Narthex referred to Coronzon as her “mother”.

That was a title of love and respect. Those feelings were likely real. If she had started saying that without being ordered to by her puppeteer, the great demon hadn’t corrected her. And even if it was a mistake or bug her creator hadn’t intended, Kamijou still felt some sympathy for the lonely demon who had wanted to hear that word.

…But he would never be moved by Narthex’s devotion.

Coronzon must never have imagined she would die.

Of course she hadn’t when she had fought to the very end under the wholehearted belief that she would win.

The unintended cage she left behind with her death had to be broken here.

This was a misfortune that not even Coronzon had wanted.

“…I’ll kill you.”

The girl must have realized her words weren’t reaching him.

With a low growl of a voice, Narthex stuck her small hand in the rear of the plush bear. Did it contain a keyboard or a touchscreen? Either way, she must have decided the track ball on its face wasn’t enough.

“You are the one person in this world I swear I will kill! I will smash you into tiny little pieces! …I don’t need your brain to get knowledge of your return from hell when Anna Kingsford’s preserved corpse exists. The border between life and death can be crossed! And I don’t need you to create a vessel for summoning my mother back to this world!!”

But the Six Wings around her did not respond.

“Someone already hacked them and expelled all their fuel?”

Come to think of it, someone had gone missing partway through this battle.

Narthex’s eyes darted around the area.

“Dion Fortune? What has she been doing on this base!?”

But she couldn’t afford to split her focus at the moment.

Insulting someone who wasn’t even present would change nothing. And Kamijou was currently stepping toward her.

“Ohhh!!”

“Hm? No…”

A loud “slap!” rang out.

Kamijou had knocked the plush bear to the floor with his palm. Now she couldn’t use her hacking tool to send commands to the science side weapons.

“Tch!!”

Narthex held out the red apple of knowledge in her other hand. That thing had knocked out Birdway and Lessar, but a moment later it shattered with a solid sound of impact.

Courtesy of Imagine Breaker.

Now the girl couldn’t use science or magic.

And Kamijou Touma had already clenched his right fist.

Tightly.

“If you are convinced Great Demon Coronzon’s death was a mistake. If the remnants of Coronzon still lingering inside you are mechanically making you say that!!”

“Kh.”

(Hey, Coronzon.)

It was like he wanted to show that girl how the great demon had met her end since she hadn’t been there to see it herself.

He threw his words and his fist at her.

(This rampage isn’t the downfall you wanted to see, is it!? So it’s time you gave that girl’s life back!!!)

“Then!! I’ll destroy that illusion!!!”

===Part 15===

A dull crash.

===Part 16===

She had fallen.

Narthex Coded Cathedral lay unmoving on the hard floor.

A wet splat came from her.

Kamijou had grabbed something from her back and pulled it away. It was a clear tube…no, several of them. He had physically broken her connection to her second brain. The tubes crumbled away.

Narthex…had lost.

Coronzon would never come back to life.

Hamazura clenched his back teeth. He had stopped her by shielding Kamijou. That was true…but why had that been the only option their side had?

The people who sided with the hated were always, always labeled evil and defeated.

Because what they were doing “wasn’t right”.

Was that so wrong? So much so that the only option was to throw their lives in the gutter?

“Phew…”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet sighed a short distance away.

This was an aircraft hangar. The underground space was so large it could be easy to forget that.

She seemed to be dragging along a great weight. The seal on her metal coat should have been released, but was she still not back at 100%? She was at least doing better than Birdway and Lessar who were still unable to move after being hit by toxic knowledge on the level of an original grimoire.

The emaciated girl sighed.

(It almost feels like everyone else was intentionally taken out of the fight. I guess the only person left who ''I need to keep away from here'' is Dion Fortune, wherever she is on the base.)

“Hamazura, are you alive?”

“Even though I doubt anyone in the world wants me to be,” sulked Hamazura.

He knew he was actually lucky to have his girlfriend and a Transcendent on his side.

So. Was he supposed to just accept the world’s idea of what was “right” and head home?

“I feel bad saying this Hamazura, but Coronzon herself really was evil. I don’t think you’re going to convince anyone otherwise.”

“I know.”

Hamazura wasn’t going to deny that any longer.

But…

“I still wanted to be her friend. What’s wrong with that?”

“Heh. That look on your face is more like it. Then I’ll let you handle the rest.”

Narthex had been defeated. Hamazura didn’t know what she had been planning, but it wasn’t going to happen now. Coronzon was dead and nothing would change that. He felt like something unseen was holding his head down and had placed a thick lid over him.

“…”

Takitsubo Rikou…was safe.

But Hamazura didn’t run over to her.

He couldn’t return yet. He hadn’t ended this yet.

So.

After shaking free of Blodeuwedd the Bouquet who weakly waved her hand, he firmly changed direction.

To face someone else: Kamijou Touma.

“Narthex Coded Cathedral was trying to destroy the world for Coronzon and she wanted to crack open your head and bring her back. …I’ve been trying to figure out what I can do for Coronzon now that she’s dead, but I didn’t think either of those things would do that. That’s why I helped you. I’m still not sure I should have and I kind of wish I hadn’t.”

“I see…”

“But this doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you for killing Coronzon.”

He couldn’t.

No matter what. It wasn’t a matter of right or wrong.

“Coronzon chose for herself to take the path of evil, so you had no choice?”

What a joke.

There were people who couldn’t do the right thing.

They wanted to and they admired those who did more than anyone, but they believed someone as wretched as them couldn’t…and so they pulled back the hand they actually wanted to reach out.

Hamazura wouldn’t let anyone say otherwise.

Because that had been him.

When he was labeled a Level 0 and then crushed by the pressure of being the new leader of Skill Out. He had rotted to the core back then, but he hadn’t crawled back out on his own. Only after running across Item, meeting people like Mugino and Takitsubo, and overcoming a great battle had he finally found himself. Yes, it had taken a collection of factors he normally never could have hoped to encounter.

Had Coronzon been given a chance like that?

She had always been alone.

The entire world had labeled her an absolute evil.

She hadn’t had a chance to crawl back out and no one had held out their hand.

Instead, they had gathered around, forced her into even worse circumstances, and called her evil for not figuring out her mistake all on her own. Was that how this world worked!?

Pain. Fear. Agony. Suffering.

It was true Coronzon had never uttered a word of it on that red snowy night.

Being who she was, Coronzon must have proudly stuck to her role as the powerful enemy to the very end.

''But…

“Are you kidding me, Kamijou Touma? The people who are suffering and in pain can’t even ask for help. It might seem easy to you!! But they’ve been pushed to the point they’ve lost sight of what’s normal. So they try to act bad, they turn their back on you, and they convince themselves it’s better that way!”

Even as he shouted the words, Hamazura realized this really was the side for him.

This was a risk.

He could tell he was tumbling further down the slope.

This temporary awakening didn’t come from evil. He knew this was no more than a power that brought him closer to death, but still he did it.

It was time to draw a line in the sand.

They could call him evil if they wanted. He didn’t need justice or righteousness here!!

“She couldn’t say it. Coronzon couldn’t manage to get the words out. But that doesn’t excuse you for killing her!!!”

On his way here today, Hamazura had opposed goodness and justice in a number of ways. But that didn’t mean all evil was destructive and deadly. He must have gotten a blow or two in on the existing idea of goodness by saving some strangers along the way.

Between good and evil, Coronzon had been evil.

But preferring evil didn’t mean she had to destroy humanity.

''Villains could be kind to people in their own evil way.

If someone had taught her that, maybe she could have developed her evil in that direction and grown into something else. If the world had been willing to compromise with her, maybe she could have found a place for herself and lived there.

But no one had.

Everyone had stubbornly refused to do so!

On that night, even Hamazura had spoken in support of the destruction she was plotting. He had acted like he was on her side, but he had really been pushing her away by calling her a harmful being who would destroy the world!

What had Coronzon really wanted him to say?

Had it actually devastated her when she had heard him speak up in support of her destructive plan using Adikalika?

What if he had insisted she was too kind a person to destroy the world?

Yes, that was it.

He had already known he was stupid, so why hadn’t he been able to say that stupid thing!?

Even if it wasn’t true, wouldn’t Coronzon have wanted to hear someone say it to her? He knew it was a silly thing to consider. Maybe proud Coronzon was shouting resentfully up at him from the pit of hell, saying not to twist his memories to reduce her to something so weak. …But what if that really had been ''all it was''? If so, then the one who had ultimately cut her lifeline and shoved her off the cliff was none other than Hamazura himself!!

Coronzon hadn’t figured out how to use evil.

If she wanted to save someone, she had been free to do so from the side of evil.

What had kept her from realizing that?

And who had killed her before she could realize it?

(That’s obvious.)

He couldn’t run away.

What could he do for Coronzon? He had come all this way in search of an answer.

So Hamazura Shiage would not run away from here.

The rest of the world had called Coronzon a great demon, thrown stones at her, and spat on her.

But.

There were 8 billion people out there. So couldn’t there be just one idiot who clenched his fist for her?

(I encouraged her and you killed her to stop her. We share the blame for believing too much in our own ridiculous ideas of what’s right!!)

===Part 17===

Kamijou Touma.

I will never, ever forgive you!!!

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume15 Chapter3

2026-05-25T02:26:58Z

Massify: /* Part 11 */ wrong word used here, had to replace it with what is actually translates to

==Chapter 3: Justice Doesn’t Have a Monopoly on Peace – Justice_Another.==

===Part 1===

If they could only capture Hamazura Shiage, the situation wouldn’t continue to deteriorate.

Takitsubo Rikou believed that. Strongly.

It was January, so it would get dark shortly after 6 PM. Although District 23 would be lit up by stadium-style lighting due to all its airports and runways.

She was in one corner of the Hotel Town where the arrangement of retired aircraft had greatly collapsed.

She was staring at the tracking data spread out on the hood of a car when Kanzaki spoke to her from behind.

“Have you figured out anything as our scientific tracker?”

“…This mobility device bothers me,” said Takitsubo while staring at the map and a photo.

She was checking over even the smallest vehicle fleeing from the Hotel Town.

“You might not think much of someone stealing one, but those work vehicles are linked to the airport’s internal network. They aren’t like ordinary cars where you can record the unlock signal sent by the key and then open the door with a tablet. I don’t know who was riding it, but Hamazura couldn’t have done that on his own. His usual MO is to stick wires through the door’s keyhole or window and break in that way, but that wouldn’t work here. …Could he have gotten Aneri’s help?”

“Yes. There is apparently a hacking tool called Black_Oneday out there. It’s specialized for the aerospace industry.”

“Wait.”

Takitsubo immediately interrupted after hearing this new information from Kanzaki.

What was this? Where had this information come from?

Not to mention…

“Black_Oneday? If there is a specialized hacking tool like that, it changes all our assumptions. We can’t just suspect Hamazura and AI Aneri anymore!”

“Why not? What is there to consider? All the hacking in District 23 is being done by Hamazura Shiage and AI Aneri.”

“But then how do you explain that mobility device?”

“What is there to explain about it? And if it needs an explanation, that’s your job.”

“…”

There was a disconnect.

She wasn’t getting through.

They were using the same words, but she couldn’t grasp the actual thoughts at the root of the conversation. Someone other than Hamazura was involved in this mess. …But when Takitsubo tried to say so, Kanzaki and the rest of the Anglicans reacted oddly.

Kanzaki smiled as she continued.

“Hamazura Shiage carries Great Demon Coronzon’s power inside him. That Sitra Achra is extremely dangerous. And Hamazura Shiage has been tainted by Coronzon’s way of thinking, so he could spread her apocalyptic ideology. We are fighting to save the world here.”

Takitsubo wanted to curse herself for not noticing something was off while speaking with them until now.

“Honestly.”

With that word, someone else suddenly appeared nearby.

She was a very tall figure.

Good, Old Mary now stood between Takitsubo and Kanzaki.

She was holding a sandwich toaster for some reason.

(That…wasn’t teleportation. …Did she divert the attention of a tracking expert like me enough that I didn’t even see her?)

“I hadn’t liked the look of things earlier, but now I see what’s going on. The hunters have been hijacked by the hunted, turning it all into a charade. That explains why the chase never seems to end.” Good, Old Mary looked disgusted. “But is this brainwashing? No, this feels more like an intentional bias has been applied to a portion of their thought processes.”

“A-a bias?”

“You in the track suit. How would you describe that Amakusa woman’s personality?”

Takitsubo had briefly worked with the Anglicans during pursuit of Coronzon the other day.

As a dark side tracker, she could profile someone after only a short interaction.

“She has a high level of skill, but she is the cautious type. That caution comes from deep-rooted self-recrimination and guilt. She has a complex about her great physical strength and she values her ability to apply the brakes with her rational side. She has a particularly strong aversion to killing.”

“Does she? But when Dion Fortune attempted to contact Hamazura Shiage, Kanzaki Kaori was the first one to launch a ''lethal'' attack spell at him from a distance.”

“?”

“And when Blodeuwedd the Bouquet showed up, she said she would ''feel bad cutting her down the very next day''.”

That didn’t fit.

Good, Old Mary tilted her head, her large hat shaking atop it.

“There is an intentional bias to the information in her head. This prevents her thoughts from reaching any information inconvenient to ''someone''. She has become a puppet who will pursue Hamazura Shiage forever without ever paying any attention to the true villain. What part of you was sealed away, Anglicans?”

The Anglican magicians dispatched to Academy City currently lacked the part of them that would protect the people from wicked magicians.

Good, Old Mary adjusted her position to protect Takitsubo, the only other one who was thinking clearly.

With an enemy group, Good, Old Mary could have swept them all aside, but she had accepted the Anglicans as her salvation targets.

(What a pain. That means I can’t abandon these puppets. This righteous mama has her work cut out for her.)

Takitsubo kept right by tall Good, Old Mary’s side.

“W-wait, what are you going to do? Can you fix this!?”

“If their thoughts are being biased by an external source, the symptoms are similar to a charm or confusion effect. Those aren’t particularly unusual in the magic world. In fact, they’re fairly orthodox. Shooting fire from your hand or moving at the speed of sound are supposed to be special exceptions. I should be able to whip up a recovery potion for them. Or if I have to, I could even kill them and resurrect them.”

There was no signal.

Tatemiya wielding a large sword, Itsuwa holding a spear, and many others all rushed in at once. The density of the attack mattered more than their individual skills. It was a surefire method available for a group where avoiding any one attack would lead to a lethal blow from another blade.

So there was no dodging.

Several blades sliced through Good, Old Mary’s neck and pierced her chest.

Not a single drop of blood was shed.

“That was an illusion projected on a cloud.”

Good, Old Mary stood three meters to the right. Holding Takitsubo in her arms.

With a few odd sounds of bursting air, Tatemiya and Itsuwa crumbled to the ground.

“And moisture can guide lightning.”

A decoy and a mine. She had combined evasion and attack into single deceptive maneuver.

But it wasn’t invincible.

The next attack came from behind. Brilliant light and heat scorched the air and stripped away the veil of cloud protecting Good, Old Mary. With the moisture in the air gone, she could no longer bend light and sound.

(Oops. Now they all know how mama appears and disappears so mysteriously.)

While regretting her actions, she turned around to see Stiyl Magnus smoothly emerge. Despite his size, she could not sense his presence right in front of her. She was mildly impressed. Perhaps this was what it took to be an expert witch hunter.

After a soft breath, she whispered to Takitsubo next to her.

“Oh, dear. Get behind mama.”

“Kenaz.” (Fire)

(Hm. Right now I want the hot and dry of the Fifth House which symbolizes summer. In other words, the eighth of the major arcana and the Hebrew letter Tet, so-)

“Thurisaz Naudiz Gebo!!” (Grant the giant a gift of pain)

The tall priest was three steps faster than her, producing a roaring red flame sword and blue flame sword in his hands.

And Stiyl Magnus did not hesitate.

He swung the red flame sword directly toward Good, Old Mary while sweeping the blue flame sword horizontally and triggering an explosion. Even if his target moved away to escape, the explosive blast of 2000+ degree flames would burn and melt them.

Good, Old Mary was an alchemist, so she could extract the basic elements (fire, water, wind, earth, etc.) from any object and use it as an ingredient to create various potions. Even if she could only make something basic at first, she could repeat the mixing process to respond to any situation.

Her greatest advantage was her ability to make the optimal potion for any enemy or problem she faced. But that meant she could be defeated if her enemy kept up the attack and never gave her a chance to mix a potion.

Except…you didn’t actually think that was how it worked, did you?

(Well, it’s technically not wrong.)

''But. However. Nevertheless.

“The Prince of Swords – in other words, the wind of wind. Keep him away.”

“!?”

Something unseen surpassed Stiyl’s speed.

Good, Old Mary’s palm produced a compressed mass of air more destructive than a meter-wide wrecking ball.

Its speed was unthinkable. The Bain-marie was an excellent mixing tool, but she still should have needed at least another three steps before she could launch Stiyl back five meters.

''She had skipped those three strict steps.

Lucia’s eyes widened in surprise.

“That was fast…”

“You have time to spare to praise mama? You’ll make me blush.”

The next wind wrecking ball splintered Lucia’s wooden wheel. And the nun holding it was thrown through the air. If the north wind and the sun decided to settle their argument by force from the start, it probably would have ended up something like this.

“Eek!?”

Panicked by the sight of her friend sprawled out before her, Angelene launched all of her golden-winged coin bags. Instead of trying to beat her target to death, it felt more like she was frantically raising her hands to guard her face from the ball flying toward her.

(Gold is the seventh circle – that is, the sun – the 19th card of the major arcana, and the Hebrew letter Resh. For the iron ingredient, Helios shall- no, Ra would be easier to use here. Yes, I’ll go with that.)

“Thank you for the gift.”

“Ah!? Wait, Angelene, don’t attack! She ''incorporates her enemy’s attacks into her spell, letting her skip steps''!! The more we help her along…”

The more ''her processing speed skyrocketed.

Agnese realized what was happening and raised a frantic shout, but it was too late. Good, Old Mary couldn’t complete the complex mixing steps in time on her own, but she could skip three of those steps if she had the enemy help her through the most troublesome parts. She had reached a state similar to a special sauce made by letting a mixture of ingredients sit for half an hour.

(With all their pro spiritual items, pro magicians are like a treasure trove of rare ingredients. Steal, steal, rob, rob…and it’s ready.)

“The Queen of Wands – in other words, the water of fire. Crush her.”

After supplying her coin bags as a mixing ingredient, Angelene was crushed to the ground. Like an invisible false ceiling had fallen on her. It was actually a mass of steam expanding to several hundred times its size in mere moments.

With a burst of quick movements, the magicians encircling Good, Old Mary and Takitsubo shifted their positions. To put a bit more distance between them and the center point.

“Hm.”

When Good, Old Mary held her palm out from a distance, the Anglican who jumped the most was Necromancer Isabella Theism. Which made sense. That dark-skinned girl used various Voodoo poisons and medicines, so Good, Old Mary had to see her like a kid’s meal piled high with child-friendly foods.

Osiris, Hades, or maybe King Enma?

Whoever the necromancer made use of, a divine fistfight would only play right into Good, Old Mary’s hand. That was the perfect field for the Transcendent.

(They’re under the enemy’s control, but they still tense up in fear of pain, terror, failure, and defeat. They wouldn’t care about physical damage if they were affected by complete remote control or internal possession. …So was I correct to think they have ''only'' had one portion of their thoughts manipulated?)

Thinking about it wasn’t going to turn up any objective proof. It wasn’t like they had an obvious magic charm attached to their forehead.

While Good, Old Mary repeated those worthless predictions, Takitsubo hid behind her back and asked a question.

“Wh-what now?”

“Mama will do everything necessary to ensure your safety.”

But.

There was no warning.

No light or sound. Good, Old Mary had not let her guard down. And yet the most dangerous magician had ''already'' arrived right in front of her.

Kanzaki Kaori.

As one of the world’s fewer than twenty Saints, she could move at supersonic speeds for short times.

(My, is she fast!! But if I mix the necromancer’s poisons and medicines…)

That was when Good, Old Mary froze. Her mixing process was halted. Something unseen sliced through her sleeve and tangled around her arm enough to dig into her skin, restricting the movement of her dominant hand.

(What? Seven…wires!?)

Good, Old Mary was unfamiliar with the name Nanasen.

She immediately used her other hand to burn through the wires with a potion, but that slowed her by a step.

And that one step created a critical opening.

Kanzaki Kaori’s fingers touched the hilt of the long sword at her hip.

Good, Old Mary felt an odd chill on the side of her neck. The blade had yet to be freed from its scabbard, but the sensation of her impending death reached her in advance.

This time, Kanzaki Kaori was not manipulating thin wires.

She truly did grab the katana’s hilt and draw it from its scabbard.

And ''a single light flashed out.

“G-”

Good, Old Mary’s voice was hoarse.

Because she was aware she could not ignore this damage.

“''God.'' Is that a god-slaying power''?”

That attack could mercilessly cut down Christian archangels or some of the polytheistic gods.

It was a hopelessly bad matchup for a Transcendent.

Because they were the highly irregular magicians who dressed up like a god to try and draw on specs equivalent to the god’s own. Good, Old Mary had become a resident of the divine myths, albeit an artificial one, so you could say she had made sure this god-slaying power could affect her.

So she should have died instantly.

“I see,” said Kanzaki Kaori, sounding somewhat impressed.

Given her Magic Name, she would never choose to kill. She had just used Yuisen against a human, yet that was ''the one thing'' she didn’t question here.

“Did you combine the Philosopher’s Egg, which can create a potion of immortality, with the Sphere of Sensation, the aura field everyone subconsciously emits much like their body heat or scent? By ensuring new life would well up endlessly within you, you made sure I could not fully kill you.”

But Good, Old Mary was out of the fight now.

Surviving Yuisen was a praiseworthy feat for a resident of divine myth, but this was a last resort like turning your body to stone to deflect an enemy blade. She had lost any chance to move her own body for the time being.

And…

“Ah, ah…”

With Good, Old Mary defeated Takitsubo was now surrounded and alone. Isolated. Because everyone around her was Anglican.

Kanzaki Kaori spoke from directly ahead.

With her usual calm smile.

“Now, let us track down Hamazura Shiage and bring peace back to the world.”

===Part 2===

Even Hamazura could tell the situation had greatly changed.

If the Black_Oneday user really had brainwashed all of the Anglicans, his girlfriend Takitsubo would be in the enemy’s grasp. And she was a tracking expert with a high chance of approaching the truth of the matter. He doubted the villain would leave her be for long.

(And if Takitsubo of all people doesn’t realize she’s surrounded by enemies… Is this happening outside the world of science? I guess even Takitsubo’s nose for these things can be fooled by magic.)

He couldn’t rest in the small antenna tower forever.

Hamazura needed to rescue Takitsubo somehow, but…

“It’s not possible.”

“Why not!?”

“Because the Amakusas work for the Anglicans.”

He had no idea what Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was getting at.

Who were the Amakusas? She explained.

“They are a sect based on the Hidden Christians who were badly persecuted during the Sakoku era. No one else in the world would be better than them when it comes to running and hiding for a righteous purpose. When they decide to go into hiding, we won’t be able to find them no matter how hard we search. Attempting to chase them down will only give them information on us. And if that happens…”

“Takitsubo really will be in trouble while surrounded by the enemy…” groaned Hamazura like it was a curse.

He most hated his own stupidity. If he had known this sooner, his top priority would have been to stop Takitsubo from meeting with the Anglicans even if he had to use Aneri to find her. Why hadn’t he seen the danger? Because the Anglicans had a monopoly on justice. It should have been obvious even Takitsubo wouldn’t question it if they asked for assistance from their righteous position!!

He had to think.

It didn’t matter how cheap and greedy it was. Everyone could call him evil if they wanted.

He had to think of some way of saving his girlfriend from this crisis!!

“Hey, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. The Anglicans at least need Takitsubo’s tracking ability to follow me, right?”

“I suppose.”

“That means they have to treat Takitsubo carefully until they kill me. …Killing her will come after that.”

To put it another way, ''Taktsubo’s life was assured as long as he wasn’t caught.

In that case, he just had to continue running away.

Even if it meant following the path of evil.

“Hmm, that should work. And if we’re being optimistic here, let’s say the Anglicans are being manipulated by the real villain. Defeating that villain will free them from their brainwashing, meaning they won’t be a threat anymore. Won’t that also save your precious girlfriend?”

“…”

Then he knew what he had to do.

It was best to have Takitsubo continue tracking him down. However, he couldn’t let the Anglicans actually catch him. And he had to find and defeat the Black_Oneday user before they caught him.

He knew that.

But he still clenched his fist tight.

Neither Blodeuwedd the Bouquet nor AI Aneri had time to stop him before a dull thud burst out. The boy too stupid and pathetic to be a hero had punched himself in the face.

He had just placed his girlfriend second in his priority list.

He knew that wasn’t right.

It was a despicable decision, but that was the only way he could realistically protect her!!

===Part 3===

Meanwhile.

Gym-sized maintenance hangars were lined up in an area a short distance north of the Hotel Town.

“Hmm…”

“They attacked us too. Well, nothing happening inside Academy City can trigger a war, so I suppose we can think of it as just barely not crossing the line.”

Birdway and Lessar were speaking to each other while looking at the ground.

Noticing Kamijou’s gaze, Dion Fortune shook her head.

“Don’t expect a detailed explanation from me on this mechanical stuff. Handle that yourself.”

A mess of scrap metal lay on the ground. Shortly before, it had been a 3m multi-rotor drone zipping through the air. Even as scrap, the triple-barreled Gatling gun and short-range SAM pod were still verrrry recognizable. The thing had sent a downpour of bullets from the sky to kill Kamijou and the others.

“This isn’t the direction that boxy mobility device went, is it? Could this be a diversion?”

“Or they just had a spare drone hidden over here.”

Kamijou was sick of it all. He shouted at the top of his lungs.

“What happened to the villain being a magician!? We were just attacked by a drone! And you all saw what happened at the Hotel Town, didn’t you!? The enemy must be from the science side!!”

He didn’t see how he could be wrong.

A hacking tool was being used to cause trouble in District 23 and they were being attacked by machines. There was no room for the magic side there. Wasn’t this a cyber crime committed by someone from the science side – or more specifically, from Academy City?

But.

Birdway shot back at him with absolute confidence.

“Oh? ''Who ever said magicians can’t hack''?”

===Part 4===

It was evening already?

Once it started to get dark, the winter night arrived fast.

Hamazura knew Takitsubo was in danger, but he had chosen to identify the Black_Oneday user instead of going to her rescue. He didn’t want to waste a moment of time.

“Ugh.”

Next to him, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet glanced at a sign with a simple map. This was apparently a workshop where the cargo containers arriving by plane were loaded onto trucks after inspection. The cargo containers were the dice-like air cargo type, so there was no need for the enormous gantry cranes used at harbors. Here, they used forklifts and loaders instead.

“You suspect the drone airbase, right? …Will a dangerous macho place like that even be on the map?”

“You can’t hide something that size. Trying to hide it when everyone can see it will only worry people more. They won’t release a detailed layout of the interior of course.”

That was when they heard a strange “thunk!!”

A thumb-sized hole had appeared in the metal sign.

Hamazura recognized the distinctive noise of an electric motor instead of a gasoline engine. They were being targeted by one of those small eight-wheeled things with two machineguns.

(An anti-air drone! Is this Black_Oneday again!?)

“What now, Hamazura?”

“Kh. There are still a bunch of innocent workers here. We can’t get them caught up in this!!”

Just because someone didn’t take his side didn’t make them evil.

That would be a messed-up basis to screw up someone else’s life!

Hamazura shouted so the workers could hear him over the gunfire.

“Get down!! Behind that loader! Not even machinegun fire can pierce that huge snow-removal bucket, so it’ll work as a shield!!”

A middle-aged man in an airport security uniform only stared in shock without moving, so Hamazura shoved him behind a cargo container to just barely protect him from the path of gunfire.

While he was at it, he borrowed the automatic 9mm handgun from the man’s holster and returned fire. That drone would be made of alloy and plastic. An ordinary firefight couldn’t defeat it, but he could destroy its important camera lenses. If it couldn’t aim accurately, he wouldn’t need to fear its machineguns.

He responded with unbelievable accuracy.

(I’m still alive… What was that about my senses sharpening the closer I approach death? Risk isn’t something you can see, though!!)

You didn’t have to be a force of good or justice to save people.

If a villain moved their body, they could shield someone from a bullet. Saving people was no more than a physical action, the psychological conditions and questions of good or evil didn’t play a role.

So…

“I’m fine being a villain,” growled Hamazura, like he was speaking a curse. “There’s no rule saying only good people can save people. Goodness and justice may have abandoned me, but that doesn’t mean I have to stand back and let everyone else go first.”

This was an alternate approach Coronzon hadn’t considered.

If she had followed this path and saved a great many people with her power, perhaps she wouldn’t have been known as a great demon.

…So why hadn’t she considered it?

Coronzon was smart. Far smarter than a delinquent like Hamazura. It wouldn’t surprise him if she had already thought up anything he could come up with. So why had this one thing slipped her mind?

Some preconception must have gotten in the way, but ''where had it come from?

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet blinked.

“Did you just awaken to a different kind of justice from Kamijou Touma?”

“Are you crazy? I’m fighting with a gun I stole from ordinary airport security. He’s a normal worker. He could be fired from his job for losing it.”

Hamazura Shiage was not Kamijou Touma.

He would never take the same path of justice as him.

===Part 5===

Magicians could hack?

So claimed Leivinia Birdway, but it felt wrong from Kamijou’s science side viewpoint. Watermelon and curry were both tasty, but you wouldn’t want to pour curry over your watermelon. Could you really pull off a combination like that?

“For one, the Dawn-Colored Sunlight doesn’t wholly reject science.”

“?”

“But that’s not important.”

Instead of joining the Anglicans at the Hotel Town, Kamijou’s group was staying in a maintenance area further north. They had wanted somewhere safe to speak.

“Also…even if it didn’t last long, Anna Sprengel did start up R&C Occultics online. Shouldn’t you be more open minded after that? But you’re not… That line between magic and science a certain idiot embedded in the world sure is a pesky thing.”

Birdway sighed in an exasperated way.

And then…

“I shall remove your collar. Listen, isn’t there a more familiar example?”

“Hm??? Like what?”

“Grimoires. The original ones.”

The pointy-haired boy gasped.

Grimoires.

That was a familiar and yet mysterious term for him.

“Most grimoires are encrypted so you won’t receive much data if you read them as is. That is partially meant to protect the reader from an original’s toxin…but more than that it’s a security measure to keep their knowledge from the unauthorized,” said Birdway.

Encrypted, data, and security?

“But there are third parties who decrypt grimoires against the author’s wishes and steal the knowledge stored within. You are quite familiar with one, aren’t you? The biggest example would be Grimoire Library Index Librorum Prohibitorum. She has gathered at least 103,001 grimoires, after all. That is on another level entirely. And she uses all of that knowledge as countermeasures against criminal magicians, so you could call her the world’s greatest white-hat hacker.”

…Was she saying the magic side had always had the concept of breaking someone else’s code to steal their data? And it had been there for millennia?

“The thing is, magic side codes are ''whimsical''. With alchemy symbols and coded images, the exact same mark can have a different meaning for each person who made it. You have to read between the lines and guess what the creator was thinking.” Lessar let out a cruel “nee hee hee” of laughter. “If you want another example, there’s the Egyptian pyramids and the ancient ruins of Central America. I mean the grave robbers, of course. They break through the security to steal the treasures away from their rightful owners.”

“You sound like you know a lot about that.”

“Because I’ve done it before. Who did you think dug up Curtana Original and transported it to London, leading to that mess that shook the entire UK to its core?”

Lessar brought up yet another dangerous topic.

If she knew how dangerous it was, Kamijou wished she was also smart enough to not do it in the first place.

“In a way, that girl right there is another simple example.”

“Hm? Me?”

Birdway was (rudely) pointing at Dion Fortune.

“Fortune specializes in a logic that mixes ancient magic with the psychology that was new at the time. Her texts include several methods of using the psychological world to reveal people’s secrets. Without the victim noticing, of course. If she can really do that, that’s a form of hacking beyond anything a computer can manage.”

“What do you mean ‘if’ I can do it!? Do I need to demonstrate it on you?” belligerently shouted Fortune, requiring Kamijou to calm her down.

There was no doubting it now.

Even if they didn’t use terms like “hacking” or “cyber attack”, the magic side had similar concepts. And had for a long time.

Maybe the only difference was whether it referred to physically navigating a labyrinth, breaking a grimoire’s textual and numerical code…or accessing electronic data.

===Part 6===

Hamazura thought they had walked a good distance from the antenna tower.

But could you really call this a walkable distance?

“Kh.”

“Uh, oh. The Anglicans are here.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was right.

Hamazura hid behind a nearby metal drum while observing the distant group.

They were on a flat asphalt surface with nowhere to hide. A group of men and women in street clothing were wandering around defenselessly.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, whose metal coat meant crouching didn’t do much to hide her, didn’t seem too worried.

“What are they doing in this dreary place?”

“Waiting for us, probably.”

Those remnants of justice were now pawns of the Black_Oneday user.

A familiar face was completely surrounded at the very center of that group.

Takitsubo Rikou.

“Kh.”

…Charging in blindly wouldn’t save his girlfriend. There were swords and spears all around her.

Besides, where were they again?

A drone airbase.

Hamazura used a cheap pair of binoculars to get a look even further away.

“It does look completely different than what I expected. I was expecting a tougher version of a normal airport, with runways, a control tower, and a maintenance hangar.”

To start with, there were no runways.

Only a few 100m cannon-like objects jutting out horizontally. Those were probably launchers…but were they electromagnetic mass drivers, or did they explosively launch the drones?

Large cloths a lot like yacht sails were raised all over the base…but were those meant to catch the drones to retrieve them? The design philosophy was a lot like a bug-catching net. Drones didn’t have any of the safety standards meant to keep a pilot alive, so their operation could be a lot sloppier.

Hamazura was afraid to approach.

He spoke up while observing through the binoculars.

“I can’t see the entire security system from here. But it’s an airbase. I don’t like the idea of walking straight in where it’s open. We might get a warm welcome from automated machineguns or self-destructing drones.”

“?” Blodeuwedd the Bouquet tilted her head.

But not because she didn’t understand what he meant.

“Then how did the villain get inside the base?”

“The mobility device is there.”

It was that one-person vehicle that looked like three small wheels attached to a bathtub-sized box. It had been abandoned quite nearby. That suggested it hadn’t been a decoy and the villain really had used it to escape the Hotel Town.

There was a red flammability warning sign in the same place.

Which told Hamazura what the manhole there was.

“They used Black_Oneday, didn’t they?”

“What do you mean, Hamazura?”

“This is a fuel transport pipe. It’s thick enough that someone could walk through it if they crouched. If they used their hacking tool to remove all the jet fuel first, they would have a direct underground route into the drone airbase.”

“Ugh… They’d really go that far?”

“There aren’t any security cameras or human sensors in the pipe, so it seems like a good route in to me.”

Of course, Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet couldn’t follow the villain in that way. If the villain knew what they were doing, they would only need to fill the pipe with jet fuel again to drown the two of them.

They needed some other way into the drone airbase.

And without warning, they heard a deafening distorted noise.

“Hey.”

Hamazura’s heart hurt.

This was District 23 full of runways and launch pads. The disaster response speakers there were designed to be heard over all sorts of loud noises.

“The program-controlled rapid-fire guns can obliterate you there,” said the new Board Chairman. “The 127mm ones can fire more than 120 rounds a minute. The Transcendent might survive, but you will die before you make it three steps.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet pouted her lips right next to him.

“Is that even true? The Anglicans are wandering around the danger zone just fine.”

“Then they must have been added to the white list. If you aren’t and you enter that zone, the response will be instantaneous. So if you are going to do this, think it through first.”

That wasn’t what Hamazura was worried about. Which was only natural when he was speaking to someone far more dangerous than those 127mm rapid-fire guns.

“That drone airbase is one of your city’s prized possessions, right? I thought you’d be trying to stop me from getting in.”

“I don’t need any military weapons. It’s all overkill. Why does a city need enough power to destroy humanity several times over? I’m really hoping you give me an excuse to scrap it all.”

…If that was true, then was Academy City actually changing for the better?

This was convenient for Hamazura at least.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet clearly wanted to say something, but he held out a hand to stop her.

“Do you know anything about this, Mr. Great Board Chairman? You’ve got a better view of it all than some Level 0 crawling down on the ground.”

“About what?”

“The system.”

At first, that term was so simple it seemed detached from the reality before him.

''But it wasn’t.

“I can’t see it. I’m not even sure that’s the right word. But Coronzon said she had been given a ‘function’ and the world wouldn’t work without it. The way she talked about it like drawing the short end of the stick, hers can’t be the only one. It sounded like there are several ‘functions’ that support the world. …But what is all that? What pushed Coronzon to the point she resorted to destroying the world? There has to be something that pushed her in that direction, but what is it really?”

There had to be a cause for the effect he had seen.

You could even say Coronzon had proven its existence with her death.

There was a system that had driven wicked Coronzon to her doom.

“You’re wasting your time.”

The Board Chairman’s response was immediate and a rejection.

It was almost painful how much Hamazura had expected this. And it was the perfect 100% correct answer for the ''leader of the science side'' where the occult and the mystical had no place.

“You’re talking about a conspiracy theory. There is no grand system running the world. Functions? Illusions? Miracles? Misfortune? You can’t just flip a giant switch to change those things. This world is run by a collection of billions of individual thoughts. Like a beanbag. When you look up at it all, it can look like it all forms giant gears, but there isn’t actually some strange system making all the decisions.”

“A perfect model answer.”

It’s all humanity’s fault. It’s all your friends’ fault. It’s all your fault.

Common sense said it wasn’t possible.

And as long as their thoughts were bound by what was ''realistic'', no one would dig any deeper.

“Any misfortune and disaster in the world is brought about by people. Power turns people into monsters. That’s why I’m serving as Board Chairman to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

But then they wouldn’t reach the truth of the system.

Which was awfully convenient for the mysterious system running every last part of the world.

Hamazura was a Level 0 at the bottom of the hierarchy. He didn’t think he was smarter than the #1 Level 5. There was no way Accelerator couldn’t understand any idea he had.

Unless…were smarter people more easily affected and influenced by the unseen system?

If so, he could redefine his existence as a Level 0 as not so useless after all.

Hamazura suddenly wanted to talk with Kamijou Touma. That Level 0 had gone on ahead of him. Even though Hamazura knew he was the very one who had called Coronzon a great demon and killed her.

That boy had faced Coronzon and seen something inside her.

A pressure with no outlet burst inside Hamazura like a piece of unexploded ordnance.

“Then are you saying that collection of individuals just happened to coincidentally kill Coronzon? Yeah, right!! I won’t place the blame on all of them. I bet most people out there have never even heard of Coronzon! They wouldn’t create that kind of concrete malice. So! There must be a greater system out there that wanted to kill Coronzon and did so!! This isn’t a fantasy or figure of speech!! It’s real and it’s out there!!!”

Hamazura and Accelerator had reached an impasse.

The #1 had the scent of evil on him, but he was clearly different from Hamazura and Coronzon.

He had the confidence of the privileged.

“''I’ll reveal it'',” quietly said Hamazura.

He spoke in a low growl, like a wounded animal.

What could he do for Coronzon after carelessly surviving? That vague idea suddenly came into sharp focus.

“That’s it. I’ve made my own decision… There is a great system that decided Coronzon was a great demon of absolute evil and finally sent her to her death. I don’t care how cleverly it’s hidden itself – I will reveal it for all to see!!”

That was the end. With a click, the disaster response speakers went silent.

…

“Huh? You’re moving, Hamazura?”

“What else can I do?”

The great Board Chairman at the top of the city knew where he was. Hamazura had no idea ''how much'' that boy knew. He wanted to believe he wasn’t that foolish, but he couldn’t get careless. If the Board Chairman was still being buddy-buddy with the Anglicans, all that information would be passed right on to them.

Staying here was too dangerous.

He had to find another route to get close to the drone airbase.

===Part 7===

Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet made sure to give the drone airbase a wide berth.

So they took a circle with the base as the center point.

The Black_Oneday user had to be hiding in the drone airbase waiting for their next chance to act. Whatever their ultimate objective was, it wouldn’t be something anyone else would enjoy.

Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet knew that, but they were hesitant to act right away because they didn’t want a repeat of the Hotel Town.

The Anglicans wandering around the danger area were a nuisance. If they were simply ignorant, reconciliation and negotiation may have been an option, but not so if they were all traitors. Hamazura had to assume they were his enemy.

“Then what exactly are you going to do?”

“Aneri,” bluntly said Hamazura. “First, check to see if the Board Chairman was telling the truth about the rapid-fire guns. After that, give me a list of any other defense weapons you expect around the airbase.”

“You’re a real power user, huh?☆”

Was that even a compliment? He was really just getting the AI to think for him.

Less than ten seconds later, the phone’s cracked screen displayed the answer he was dreading.

“So not even Aneri can find a convenient loophole.”

“But you can’t just break in by brute force, right? What’s the last defense weapon you want to run across?”

“Not those rapid-fire guns. It’s this: the Boom Wall.”

That anti-air weapon used a large amount of explosives all at once to send an amplified shockwave wall from the giant trumpet-shaped barrel. It didn’t require any detailed guidance calculations because the thick wall could be sent over an area several kilometers across. It was meant as a low budget way to shoot down a saturation attack or swarm without missing anything.

“Um, let me get this straight.” Blodeuwedd the Bouquet held a finger to her narrow chin and began counting on her fingers. “If we approach the base, we get hit by those hundred-twenty-something millimeter rapid-fire guns. But if we approach in an airplane or helicopter, we’ll be shot down by dense anti-air fire. And all the underground loopholes like the fuel pipe have been blocked. …Then how do we get in?”

“…”

Not even Aneri had provided an answer to that. Maybe there wasn’t a correct solution here.

Hamazura no longer placed his hopes in the righteousness of justice. He would force his way through with cheap, underhanded tactics, even if it that counted as evil.

After a moment of silence, he answered.

“No matter how brutal it is, the Boom Wall is an anti-air weapon. That means it isn’t designed to target the ground. If we skim around five meters above the surface, the barrel shouldn’t be able to aim at a low enough angle.”

“Even if you drive full speed in a car, I think like you’ll still get shot up by those rapid-fire guns.”

“What if we were moving faster? Like Mach 10 or higher?”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet blinked.

This was unusual. He had surprised that condescending Transcendent.

“What I mean, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, is that. Why not use that?”

He pointed to the side.

They had already brought it up in conversation several times.

The Morning Star above ground mass driver.

Instead of using an underground silo, this one looked just like a cannon the size of a broadcast tower.

It wasn’t like a chemical rocket that flew to space using fuel and an oxidant. Electromagnetic induction was used to launch a projectile outside the atmosphere.

“Are you serious?”

Even Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was dumbfounded by this one.

“That can slip past both the surface and anti-air weapons, right? Aneri, can you hack it?”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait! That’s meant to launch things into space. Can it even be used along a line only 5m from the ground? Screw it up and we’ll crash ''into'' the ground!!”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“…”

“We’re not talking about a plane or rocket here. A mass driver is basically a giant railgun, so it apparently has a lot of freedom of movement. So it’s no different from a gun. …We can use the ricochet. ''If we intentionally hit the ground at a shallow angle, we should be able to fly just off the ground''.”

“……………………………………………………………………………”

It was like skipping a rock on the water’s surface.

And the drone airbase had equipment resembling giant yacht sails. They were meant to catch flying drones.

Hamazura would just have to hit one of those in something like a billiards shot.

“Umm, I have one last question.”

“Yes? Hurry it up.”

“How many Machs is escape velocity? Even at a shallow angle, we’ll be hitting the ground at extreme speed, right? I don’t care how tough the mass driver’s payload fairing is – won’t we be smashed to bits by the impact!?”

Hamazura couldn’t answer right away.

He asked a serious question.

“Hey, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. …You survived that exoatmospheric shuttle’s gigantic engine blast, right?”

“…Wait.”

“Can I get you to do that one last time?”

“I am supposed to be the weak but clever summoner! Not the tough and heavy tank!!”

She could complain, but this really did seem to be their only option.

Using that, he was pretty sure they could survive the hit with the ground.

It was fortunate there weren’t any workers or a security team at the drone airbase. He didn’t know how big a crater the ricochet would create, but he at least didn’t need to worry about hurting any living humans in the process.

“Aneri, let’s get started. Hack the Morning Star mass driver and give me control! Please!!”

===Part 8===

Leivinia Birdway looked up at a dull tremor in the distance.

“…Something just happened.”

“Enough self-absorption. We need to come up with an actual plan.”

Lessar’s comment shattered the mood so much it made Kamijou flustered.

Dion Fortune walked over to look at the map Lessar had unfolded.

“Decided on our next objective?” asked Kamijou.

Birdway pouted her lips and pointed at a point on the map. Maybe she hadn’t been too fond of the legendary Japanese portable food: cup noodles. If that damn rich British girl had a problem with it, she should have just poured in fancy tea instead of hot water and waited three minutes for the flavor to change.

“Here.”

She indicated a special airbase used for Academy City’s unmanned anti-air weaponry like the Six Wings attack helicopter.

That was one of the last facilities they wanted the Black_Oneday user to take over.

Kamijou frowned.

“Yeah, that would be dangerous…but what makes you so sure it’s here specifically?”

“Did the villain give themselves away somehow?” asked Dion Fortune next to Kamijou.

Lessar frowned.

“We can follow the actions of the villain…or really the people they’re manipulating.”

“Hm? Why would you do that, Lessar?”

“You know how delinquents who drive modified cars will intercept police radio and know where all the speed cameras are locate? This is the magic version of that.”

After explaining that, Lessar (who was really enjoying the junk food), pointed at a point on the map.

“The Anglicans are always trying to crack down on us ‘bad’ magicians, so we know exactly how they do things.”

“!?”

So Kanzaki, Stiyl, and the others?

“It would be one thing if they were acting alone, but when working as a group, they tend to use voice communication spiritual items. Even when speaking with one of their own people less than 2 meters away. We just have to track the faint magic power this uses.”

“That’s true enough… Academy City is a big place, but not many people here use magic. London or Rome would be one thing, but we can detect even faint magic over a distance in this city of science,” added Dion Fortune.

…It hadn’t seemed so easy during the Coronzon battle yesterday. Maybe it helped that these shady magicians had gathered a lot of data on the Anglicans. Just like you would have a hard time searching for an unfamiliar stray cat, but could find your own cat right away.

Lessar wagged her index finger.

“Looks like the area around the drone base is an off-limits zone. There are cameras and sensors everywhere and entering it without permission will get you filled with holes by the defense program. Yet the Anglicans are having a picnic there without getting shot. Unnatural, right?”

“The Black_Oneday user is controlling them using money, faith, brainwashing, or whatever else, so the Anglicans are useful pawns. The Black_Oneday user must not want to lose them so easily. We need to assume the drone airbase and its defense program have been taken over. The Anglicans are only safe because they’ve been added to the white list.” Birdway seemed curious about the earlier tremor, but her tone remained light. “If the Anglicans are being used to pursue and kill Hamazura Shiage, then either he’s hiding somewhere around here, or he will be here soon. Both the villain and Hamazura are here. If we want to end this, we need to visit that drone airbase.”

(Hm. I still don’t know how the Anglicans are tracking Hamazura. Could they be getting information out of someone from the science side they captured?)

Kamijou observed Birdway, but it didn’t seem like that possibility had occurred to her.

Really, that just made her seem more like an ordinary person.

“…We’ll be shot if we’re detected, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then we need a plan! That smug grin isn’t going to stop bullets!! These stupid magicians are so focused on attacking they’re not even thinking about defense. We’ll be riddled with bullets before I even have a chance to think!”

===Part 9===

That wasn’t actually a concern.

Because the mass driver attack stabbed right into the center of the drone airbase.

More specifically, it was caught by one of the giant “sails” meant to catch drones.

A piece of metal the size of a van shallowly struck the ground ''very close by'' at a tremendous speed of more than 12km/s, ricocheted, and pierced into the base. It slipped just below the anti-air defenses at extreme speed.

“Ugh, cough.”

Something emerged from the giant bullet-like vehicle made of thick heat-resistant and shock-resistant material.

That something was a thick metal coat.

There was no attack from the rapid-fire guns or the Boom Wall.

They weren’t designed to fire into the base…but that wasn’t the main reason.

“Wow…I think we destroyed like half the base.”

“Of course we did.” Hamazura crawled out from within the metal coat. “Even if it was a shallow angle, we still hit the ground right in front of the base to ricochet. At escape velocity. A normal bullet makes sparks when it hits a concrete wall, right? When a mass this large contacts the ground at that speed, it will send an explosive blast and a shockwave ahead with the force of an avalanche. And it fans out.”

“You knew this would happen? But if the base is half destroyed, you couldn’t know if the yacht sail thing’s support would break and not be there to catch us!”

“But we made it. We won the gamble, so why waste time complaining?”

“Y-you idiot, you really are on fire today. …And do you think this also killed the villain?”

“This is military base, remember? The important central stuff will be deep underground. Blowing away the stuff visible on the surface won’t damage the heart of the base.”

Even so, preventing all the unmanned weapons from taking off or landing meant a lot.

Hamazura looked out past the wreckage-strewn base.

“So what are those Anglicans doing?”

“They avoided it. They were apparently scattered along the perimeter on the other side, so the shockwave that blew away this half of the base wouldn’t have hit them.”

…So even after all this, they might attack. Still, that was better than if he had hurt his girlfriend Takitsubo.

“Aneri search for the entrance to the underground part of the base and force open the electronic lock!”

They were in.

Yes, Hamazura Shiage and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had made it inside the drone base.

Now they only had to determine which room of this drone-development air base the Black_Oneday user was hiding in.

“I doubt anyone is placing any trust in security cameras when both sides have hacking tools.”

Aneri gave two buzzes of protest. Apparently to say it was not primarily meant for hacking.

“Hey, hey. How about you rely on the magic side for once? Do I need to turn into the pain-in-the-ass kind of girlfriend who’s jealous of the porn on your phone? I might just know how to find which room it is.”

“How?”

“Because I’m the Transcendent who loves the hated☆ …The villain might be someone who looks like they wouldn’t hurt a fly, but that doesn’t mean they actually wouldn’t kill a fly or a moth if it flew in front of them, right? And those things can easily multiply inside an unmanned base.”

“…”

His phone buzzed again. That was a positive signal from Aneri. Based on its hacking of the base’s local network, the chemical weapon sensors in one section had picked up faint signs of insecticide components. That kind of chemical wouldn’t be needed in a base without any people around.

“That settles it. They’re in…the underground command center? That’s the first place I should have guessed. Argh, why did I have to overcomplicate it!?”

“It’s easy to claim you had it figured out after you’ve been spoiled. Did you think you were a genius, or something?”

They used Aneri’s support to travel through the base without getting caught.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had said the base was unmanned…and apparently they really had reduced the number of human workers to the very limit because they didn’t run into anyone on the way. But since the place had a command center deep underground, the control couldn’t be completely automatic, could it?

“Is that it, Aneri?” asked Hamazura, facing a tungsten steel door as thick as a bank vault door. He guessed the underground command center was built as sturdily as a nuclear shelter.

But this was a problem.

He was usually the criminal trying to run and hide.

He didn’t know the proper way to break in like this.

“This is the very center of the base, right? This door has to be crazy solid, so how do we unlock it? How are we supposed to get insi-”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet destroyed the door with a single punch from her metal coat’s giant sleeve. It scared Hamazura that it didn’t even surprise him. He was getting too accustomed to her bizarre power.

The room beyond was larger than the average indoor pool.

But it didn’t feel spacious. Thanks to all the computers crammed inside. But there was more than just LCD monitors in there. There were also devices that displayed a wide variety of data on giant pieces of clear glass like what you would see inside a submarine in a movie. Hamazura didn’t know what a lot of the equipment was even called.

But he didn’t have time to pay much attention to all that.

He thought his heart would stop.

The first thing Hamazura saw were the Anglicans. They were armed with dangerous bladed and blunt weapons and had the same unquestioning looks in their eyes.

And he saw someone else surrounded by them and unmoving: Takitsubo Rikou.

“H-Hamazu- Hama-”

“!!”

He wanted to call her name, but he knew ''that'' would be the most dangerous thing he could do. No good came of letting them know the value of their hostage.

He had to stay on the path of evil.

He had already decided he could only protect his girlfriend by placing her second.

Shaking off that urge was so hard he thought he would cough up blood…but he managed to face ''the other oddity'' here.

“Hold on. What are you doing here?”

He faced the mastermind behind it all.

She was a girl with chestnut hair. And he had heard her voice before.

''“N-no… Help.”

She was a small girl of around 13. He recognized the fluffy adult coat that came down to her ankles and hid her hands in the sleeves.

''“Go.”

''“Hurry.”

He didn’t want to believe it.

But his own memory didn’t lie.

“The girl I saved…from the Dobermanns…way back at the start?”

Come to think of it, he had never solved the initial mystery.

The Anglicans had made that cell by modifying a die-like air cargo container. The door had been locked up tight – the metal shutter had used some kind of special magical lock – so why had it suddenly opened even though he and Aneri hadn’t done a thing?

Had he been in the palm of her hand since then?

“That’s right, Hamazura. I saved you.”

The girl smiled a little while holding a plush bear in her arm.

Aneri gave two buzzes of warning.

…It wasn’t a phone or a computer. ''Was that'' the device used to give instructions to Black_Oneday? The plush bear had a trackball, keyboard, and other devices installed on and in it.

“But…why? Why did you have to take it so far? I mean, you were in a position to brainwash the Anglicans who were after you, right!? Every last one of them!! So you didn’t even need to free me from my cell to confuse them!”

“?”

In response, the girl tilted her head in utter confusion.

He also heard a sigh of exasperation from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

“Yeah, uh, Hamazura, I don’t think that’s what it was.”

“What?”

“That villain simply ''let you escape because she wanted to let you escape''. I’m sure of it. It was a whim with no connection to any master plan related to confusing the Anglicans or starting a global war using Black_Oneday.”

“Wait, but…the Black_Oneday user really tried to kill me! I mean, what about at the Hotel Town? She fired on me with that eight-wheeled anti-air drone and she tried to blow me away with vaporized jet fuel…”

“But ''you didn’t actually die. You’re a Level 0, yet you survived all those flashy attacks. Seems unnatural, doesn’t it''?”

It couldn’t be…

“Are you saying the Black_Oneday user intentionally ''adjusted the difficulty'' so I could get through it? Like making sure someone doesn’t die when playing a game!?”

She had wanted to free Hamazura ''separate from'' whatever else she was doing.

…That was all it was? Really???

But if she wanted to save Hamazura, why had she gotten Takitsubo involved?

The girl pulled out a headband and used it to keep her bangs out of her eyes.

“What? Were you trying to save that track suit girl?”

“…Yeah.”

“''Okay. If that’s what you want, I’ll free her.''”

Several thudding sounds overlapped each other. They were the sounds of bodies hitting the floor. Kanzaki Kaori, Stiyl Magnus, and the rest of the Anglican magicians collapsed like a switch had been thrown. The only one left standing was Takitsubo Rikou.

Was that all it took?

Saying that had ''really'' been enough to save her?

“Hold on…what’s going on here?” muttered Hamazura in a daze.

He was glad Takitsubo was safe, but he had trouble believing it was true. He was worried something even worse awaited him.

Besides, how had it even turned out like this?

Even if this girl really was behind everything, today was the first time he had met her. She shouldn’t have any obligation to help him out.

“Because our circumstances are similar. So I don’t get anything out of it. I just felt like helping you is all.”

“Eh?”

“You don’t want people calling that person a great demon, right?”

That was true.

But why was she bringing that up here?

“I am one of several anti-magic combat plans developed in parallel on former Archbishop Lola Stuart’s command. But Grimoire Library Index Librorum Prohibitorum was ultimately chosen, so I am no more than a scrapped model forgotten as a phantom project.”

The name Lola Stuart wasn’t too familiar to Hamazura, but he was pretty sure it had been one of Coronzon’s pseudonyms.

Meaning…

“I am Narthex Coded Cathedral. …I suppose you could call me one of the ''products'' raised by Coronzon.”

===Part 10===

Narthex Coded Cathedral.

A sister project and rival to Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

The small girl never had any intention of trapping or attacking Hamazura Shiage.

But that didn’t mean she carried no malice.

In fact, Narthex had another true target.

“Kh.”

Someone else groaned.

With the surface of the drone airbase torn to shreds, he must not have had to worry about the defense weapons.

Kamijou had entered the underground command center late, but he too had learned the villain’s identity.

“You made it, Kamijou Touma.”

The girl’s voice had seemed unfocused before, but now it carried a definite will and emotion.

The emotions of anger and hatred.

“My mother’s killer.”

She was an expert at building and cracking codes. She was a pro at reading the idiosyncrasies in people’s techniques and their psychologies.

Numbers, writing, magic circles, artwork, music – it could be anything.

“If I had arrived in time last night…I would have stopped you.”

Grimoire Library Index Librorum Prohibitorum used her perfect memory to contain innumerable grimoires in her brain to manage them there. You could say she had mastered the art of literary memorization, but this special girl took a completely different approach for plotting the elimination of wicked magicians.

“So is she like a stealth fighter that’s rival was officially adopted instead?”

“I doubt it even had to do with her skill level. She had to be kept a secret because she violates the treaty between magic and science. ''She grew too much'', so her specs are not inferior.”

Lessar and Birdway gave their cynical thoughts.

“I notice Index’s name is Latin, but Narthex’s is English… Dammit, Coronzon. Did you intentionally throw them into different environments so they could grow in different ways?”

“Why do I get the feeling there are plenty more of these girls lurking in the shadows of the world. Maybe with a French name or a German name?”

As if in response…

Narthex threw open the front of her thick coat as if undoing a seal.

[[Image:GT_Index_v15_BW7.jpg|thumb]]

Her clothing was ''transparent''. The overall silhouette resembled a nun’s habit, but it was made of pure gold and woven into a fine net, allowing her lace-white skin to show through. Below that, she wore something like a bikini. Although there may have been other way of interpreting it.

It was far too vulgar and degrading to call her a nun.

But that wasn’t what made Birdway frown. She was focused on the coat’s lining. A sticky light resembling glow-in-the-dark paint wavered irregularly there.

“''A second brain'', huh? I have heard the human brain would be as large as a newspaper page if you flattened out all the wrinkles. Hey, is that true, Kamijou Touma of the city of science?”

But it was Kamijou who was most shocked by this.

That was fundamentally different from Index’s Walking Church.

What even was that coat really? It wasn’t actually ''that'', was it!?

“If you’re externally boosting your specs like that, then your supposed encryption expertise is no bluff. …But this means your ego and soul were fundamentally distorted, turning you into a tool and a device. Did you not hate the great demon for doing that to you?”

“''You just referred to my mother as a great demon, didn’t you''?”

“Yeah, she’s pretty twisted. But who knows what she’s hiding,” said Lessar, sounding exasperated.

Yes.

This was familiar to Kamijou too.

This combination of endlessly innocent yet somehow twisted.

…''The collar.

Hadn’t Index had her memories and thoughts externally restricted to control her? This girl had been manufactured by the same person. Narthex Coded Cathedral was the result of a parallel project, so she could always have a similar safety device.

And based on the way Narthex was acting, her safety device may still have been functioning even after Coronzon’s death. How sad if true.

Lessar’s interest was directed in a less appropriate direction.

“Does that outfit incorporate the symbols of a trance priestess? Seems like the polar opposite of a Christian nun’s pursuit of asceticism. Oh, but I guess she might not be limited to Christianity. I mean, she’s a magician created from the ground up by Great Demon Coronzon. That opens up everything from Norse mythology in the west to Indian mythology in the east. Really, any kind of religious ritual that invites people to the supernatural world, puts them in a trance so they can hear the voice of god, and accepts the power of sexuality.”

Something audibly sliced through the air.

Lessar didn’t even blink. But there was a slight cut on her cheek now.

Apparently she wasn’t going to get away with calling Coronzon a great demon a second time.

Narthex Coded Cathedral immediately took action.

Calmly.

(Her mother, hm?)

What had her relationship with Lola Stuart – with Coronzon – really been? Kamijou’s imagination couldn’t keep up, but he got the feeling that relationship had been closer than Coronzon’s with Index.

Or.

Had that different relationship been one of the changes included in the parallel projects, along with the naming rule?

Narthex had said her project was run at the same time as Index’s. So were they around the same age?

…Wait, how old was Index exactly?

If they had been customized with all of Coronzon’s power, it was possible those girls’ bodies were far from ordinary.

Lessar and Birdway quietly prepared for battle, but Narthex didn’t seem worried.

“What, you’re going to fight? Index’s job is to crack a grimoire’s code and record its contents in her brain, but mine is the opposite. I am an expert at applying a strange and complex encryption to exposed knowledge, sealing it away in an unreadable state. Incantations, talismans, weapons – whatever form you use to try and get around it, ''no magician can defeat me.''”

Was that why Kanzaki, Stiyl, and the other Anglican magicians were acting so weirdly?

“Sealing away” a small portion of their thought processes would keep them from reacting to a specific situation. So even with a hint before their eyes, they couldn’t see it. They had been so busy pursuing Hamazura Shiage they were unable to notice the real villain.

But this had seemed odd even taking that into account.

They were from Necessarius, the 0th Parish of the Anglican Church. They were the best of the best in anti-magician combat, so it was unusual for them to all get brainwashed so easily. …But it made more sense if it had been done by an insider who knew all about them. Just like a hacker might not be able to hack in from outside the building, but they would have no trouble if they stuck a USB drive directly into a computer on the inside.

“You would go this far…? What were you hoping to accomplish here in Academy City by betraying an organization as big as the Anglican Church!?”

“To bring back my mother. What else?”

She made it sound so similar.

But Coronzon was already dead.

Kamijou had done it.

Wasn’t that why Narthex was driven by such fury? So…had she not noticed the contradiction in her own claims?

“What contradiction? It’s been done before. …By one Kamijou Touma who truly died and returned after a trip through hell.”

“Kh.”

“My mother can be physically revived to this world in the same way. Wait a while longer, Hamazura. This will be a blessing for you. I will make sure it happens.”

The shocked gasp did not come from Kamijou.

Did that breath contain a hint of hope? It rang with the expectation represented by the words “is that really possible?” If Coronzon could return to this world, it would turn his view of this situation around 180 degrees.

Those two really did stand in a position fundamentally different from Kamijou and the rest.

“Simple, isn’t it? What happened in hell, a different phase separate from this physical world? No matter how impregnable a maze hell may be, I can break open your skull, stick electrodes in your brain, and suck out all the memory data within to give myself a walkthrough. My mother can be brought back by human hands.”

Was the disappearance of his important document really a coincidence? Or had he been lured out here?

“I have already acquired my mother’s dead body. It is hidden somewhere in this city. I was worried because some time had passed since her death, but, well, it’s a good thing she isn’t human. …She is fundamentally a being of pure energy, so as long as I follow the appropriate steps to complete the ceremony, she can be summoned from that other phase, right?”

Birdway had a disgusted response to that.

“A demon summoning, huh? Unfortunately, there is a precedent there.”

“Yes. Magician Crowley did it back in 1909, didn’t he? And Mathers apparently did it unofficially even earlier. Plus, I have ''this''.”

An eerie light shined from within Narthex’s fluffy coat.

From the second brain.

And next thing they knew, Narthex Coded Cathedral held ''something'' in her hand.

Birdway of all people gasped.

“Kamijou Touma. What does that look like to you?”

“Huh? I’m not sure… It’s like an apple made of red crystal maybe? Looks like there’s a liquid inside it.”

“Lessar.”

“Umm, it looks like fish cooked on a skewer to me. Probably from Celtic mythology.”

…What?

People could have slightly different interpretations of what they were seeing, but confusing a translucent red apple for a fish on a skewer was a little much. This wasn’t a Rorschach test.

“To me it looks like a small bottle of clear crystal. Maybe the Norse spring of wisdom, or something alchemical? It might be a liquid elixir.”

Wait. Wait, wait.

Didn’t that mean no two of them were seeing the same thing!?

“What you’re seeing is probably the fruit that grew on the Tree of Knowledge. Apples are a motif used in several mythologies, but it must be that if it’s linked with knowledge. Now, I don’t know what it looks like to its user Narthex…but is she using that in a ceremony?”

For once, Birdway clenched her teeth as she spoke.

Lessar provided the verbal finishing blow.

“She means that’s a collection of knowledge ''before it’s turned into a grimoire''. And this would make a dangerous original-class one, so don’t let your guard down, Kamijou-san!!”

===Part 11===

Kamijou didn’t need to be told that.

But Narthex’s specialty wasn’t grimoires. That was Index’s territory. Since they were rival projects run in parallel, Lola Stuart – that is, Great Demon Coronzon – must have designed her for a different specialty.

Also, Narthex Coded Catherdral didn’t fight with just the magic side.

“This room could use more ventilation. And so could you!!”

The air in the room groaned. District 23 specialized in high-tech aerospace technology, so the Black_Oneday hacking tool could provide any number of weapons here.

Narthex pet the head of the plush bear in her small hand.

''Boom!!!

Immediately, the underground command center’s wall was torn down from the outside. The place had to be sturdier than a nuclear shelter, but she didn’t hesitate at all!?

Birdway shouted through clenched teeth.

“That must have been a drone. She’ll have plenty of bunker killer missiles based on the marine rockets used to dig into the ocean floor and retrieve samples. Hey, Kamijou Touma. Leave the command center. Otherwise you’ll be shredded to mincemeat before you can even try to fight her directly!!”

Narthex was still standing there.

She touched the plush bear to give her next command. Again with no hesitation.

She didn’t seem to see any value in the underground command center that acted as the heart of the base.

“Wh-what about Hamazura and the others!?”

“You don’t have time to worry about them! Move out in the open and you’ll be sprayed with bullets!!”

''If'' Narthex was being rational, she wouldn’t order an attack that would hit Hamazura. …But how much could he trust the thoughts of ''a Coronzon worshiper''?

Kamijou’s group didn’t have time to work out where would be safe.

More and more of the walls and ceiling were torn down. They would be buried alive if they stayed here, so they had to keep running.

“What is this place?”

They found themselves in a wide-open space. It wasn’t well lit, but the size was the main reason Kamijou couldn’t see to the other side.

Lessar sounded annoyed.

“Is this where Academy City’s fighters and attack helicopters are managed?”

While Kamijou was from Academy City, that didn’t mean he knew all about the interior of the city’s military facilities. Especially with a drone airbase.

And Lessar had just said something he couldn’t ignore.

“Wait… If this is where the drones are kept, does that mean they could come here!?”

“It would seem you all want to die.”

They heard a voice from the entrance. It was Narthex Coded Cathedral.

Heavy metallic noises came from a different direction.

A Six Wings attack helicopter emerged from the shadows.

This was an underground facility. As large as the room was, it wasn’t tall enough for an aircraft to fly around.

But it wasn’t flying.

The six wings it was named for were forcibly moving to let it ''crawl''. Its guns and autocannons were crushed below its own weight.

“Watch out for the floor. It seems to be reinforced with steel beams, but I can see something through the gaps.”

“Is this a multilevel hangar? That means we could ''break through'' if we overdo it. This isn’t getting any easier.”

Birdway clicked her tongue.

Narthex touched the plush bear…and operated the trackball installed within it.

She didn’t hesitate to speak.

“Do it.”

The 30ton mass charged forward.

That was deadly enough on its own given a large semi-truck or tanker truck weighed 10 tons, but it was too forceful. It was effectively robbing itself of its guns and missiles this way.

No.

That was an unmanned attack helicopter, so it would have no problem with crushing its own missiles or shells and exploding from within. Because the shockwave and shrapnel would shred Kamijou.

“Weakling,” spat Birdway.

“Hee hee. Once I win, make sure to use my name when you compliment me, you dumb-as-shit little girl.”

Lessar stepped forward and threw something. Even though Kamijou could have sworn she had been empty-handed a moment before.

A flat piece of stone even more precise than a ruler drew out an erratic course like a boomerang.

“Thou art valiant yet no match for the thunder god, but I shall even make use of thy defeat. Whetstone of Hrungnir, shatter and pierce!!”

Stone scattershot flew out 360 degrees around the point it hit.

The crawling Six Wings tilted unnaturally.

Lessar appeared to have thrown a projectile at the arm’s joint to prevent anything from detonating.

But even broken and off balance, the Six Wings did not stop. It was now in a position resembling a formal bow…which meant its main rotor was tilted diagonally toward them as it made its next move.

“Uh, oh,” groaned Kamijou.

The main rotor rotated with great force. Like a giant blender blade intent on slicing through everything in the world. It stirred up the air into a gale as the Six Wings, missing a few of its arms, scraped its fuselage against the floor in its forced approach.

“Run, run, run! Get behind a pillar or something!!”

“That pillar’s too skinny. That thing can slice right through a steel beam.”

Then did they have to destroy the Six Wings?

Despite what the term “aircraft” would suggest, attack helicopters were meant to attack tanks and armored trucks on the ground. So their engine was located at the point hardest to target from below.

And with the Six Wings approaching with its main rotor tilted toward them, ''that point was now right in front of them.'' They couldn’t stop the deadly rotating blade without destroying the engine, but a magical projectile from Lessar or Birdway would most likely cause the jet fuel to explode.

Imagine Breaker was the only card in Kamijou’s deck, so no one expected anything from him to begin with. He could only shout in a panic.

“Wh-what do we do!?”

“Eliminate the threat, obviously,” spat Birdway with a glance toward Lessar. “Hey, weakling. The cabal boss’s life is in your hands. If I die because you didn’t do your job, the Dawn-Colored Sunlight will be forced to head out on a hunting picnic, so be careful.”

“Gyehhh. This is why I didn’t want to be this selfish little girl’s bodyguard. Every part of the job is a deadly gamble!!”

Birdway already held some kind of metal wand. Kamijou hadn’t even seen her pull it out. And compressed flames hovered at the end of it.

If she carelessly launched that, it would cause everything to explode, blowing them all to smither-

“Hot and dry. That is, the fire of fire. I’ll blow you away Mathers-style, small fry!!”

There was nothing Kamijou could do. He could only watch as the orange fireball was launched.

And exploded.

But there wasn’t just one explosion. The jet fuel was dangerous enough, but the shells and missiles carried within the Six Wings detonated too.

The steel beams below their feet bent and a portion of the floor groaned. The movement of the smoke was odd. A slight breeze was blowing in from the lower level. The floor was designed for aircraft weighing dozens of tons, but this had caused it to collapse.

However…

“Magic is such a threat to science because it can brute force its way through these things.”

They were all unharmed.

Because Lessar had held out her palm and activated something.

It looked like a glowing translucent wall.

If they had a way to protect them all from a military weapon exploding at close range, they could blow away as many of those unmanned Six Wings as necessary. Magic really was a brute force power found by pursuing wisdom far enough.

''But.

“Hee hee.”

The magicians surviving the scientific Six Wings had not put a dent in Narthex’s composure.

Solid snapping sounds came from her.

Did they come from the back of her neck…or from her back?

Birdway grinned.

“That would be the branches. The physical connections are used to alter her second brain’s thought circuits.”

In other words, she could switch between using magical encryption or the scientific hacking tool.

She could switch between two modes corresponding to the two worlds.

“If you would prefer to be killed by one or the other, let me know soon.”

Narthex’s bewitching smile looked out of place on her small body.

But learning this external sign gave Kamijou’s side an advantage.

She held out her empty hand – the one not holding the plush bear.

Yes. Narthex Coded Cathedral could use more than just the scientific hacking tool.

Her lips formed a smile and then whispered.

“''Seal''.”

Leivinia Birdway stiffened.

She suddenly came to a stop in the middle of battle.

“!?”

“What’s wrong, Birdway!? If you have a trump card, use it now!!”

Kamijou shouted wide-eyed, but the small girl’s eyes remained lowered to her hands.

Birdway, the Dawn-Colored Sunlight’s boss, was trembling.

“…I can’t.”

“What?”

“I was just using spells without even thinking about it…but now I don’t know how. No, ''was the neural pathway sealed, temporarily preventing me from remembering how''!?”

“Wait, wait, wait. I don’t have the talent of a powerful cabal boss. You can’t take away the one or two things an average person like me can do! Then I’ll just be a normal human!”

Lessar blanched and abandoned the spell she had been frantically trying to compose.

Memories.

Was this the opposite of Index who kept having hers taken?

If the sealer could predict what card you would play before you used it, you could never use it again.

Narthex was designed for anti-magician combat. She was a different sort of wizard killer from Grimoire Library Index. She rejected the mystical side of her enemy.

Kamijou had known this wouldn’t be easy, but she was an even more dangerous foe than he had expected!

He couldn’t bear to look at Birdway and Lessar who had immediately been taken out of the fight. He frantically raised his voice.

“Wh-what do we do? If that’s magic, I can destroy it with Imagine Breaker, but do you have a weird magic circle on your body or something? What part of you am I supposed to touch to fix this!?”

“I don’t know! Just touch me all over and give me lots of head pats!!”

He had a feeling he couldn’t trust what panicked Lessar was saying. Since he couldn’t expect much from the magicians, was Imagine Breaker all he had?

Only that. …When the enemy had her pick of magic or science!

===Part 12===

“Nyah!?”

The underground command center’s walls and floor had collapsed.

Hamazura heard a panicked voice from nearby and looked over to see a flustered Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. It wasn’t that she had been suddenly pulled down. The emaciated girl was being crushed by her own weight.

Or more accurately, by the weight of her thick metal coat covered in copper panels that could move like an independent creature.

…Her ability to survive a hit from a 10-ton truck or launch the truck up from below apparently came from the metal coat. Was it like a powered suit? When the giant engine had blasted her with flames, had she protected her exposed face with magic or did the coat provide some kind of protective field? Whatever the case, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet herself must not have been particularly sturdy and tough.

“Th-this is bad… That Narthex girl sealed my metal coat. Will no one other than you accept me as their ally?”

She had sided with Kamijou and worked toward killing Coronzon not long ago, so maybe it was only natural Narthex resented her.

Kamijou and Narthex were fighting in a fairly distant location, but apparently they were still close enough for the effects to reach them here. With the thick walls and floor collapsed, there was no longer any division between rooms.

“So what now, Hamazura?”

“What now?”

Narthex Coded Cathedral was an unofficial Anglican nun weapon who could use magical and scientific technology with a focus on the concept of “sealing”. She was a forbidden trump card Coronzon hadn’t had a chance to play before she died. Level 0 Hamazura Shiage couldn’t think of a single way of hurting someone like that.

“No.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet must have known what the waver in his eyes meant because she immediately rejected his thoughts.

“You see how chaotic their battle is, right? He’s wide open right now. Your vengeance probably can’t reach Kamijou Touma if you attack head on, but you might be able to stab him in the side right now. That’s what I’m talking about.”

So.

Was she asking if he could see what Narthex Coded Cathedral had done today and guess what she was likely to do in the future…and still focus on attacking Kamijou Touma instead?

“Why are you here?”

That was the fundamental question.

And not just in this moment. It was a question he had asked himself over and over: when he saw Coronzon die, when he was trapped in that box, when the cell was unlocked, and after he was freed.

“To save the world and put smiles on everyone’s faces? Or to get back at Kamijou Touma!? …You need to actually face your own goal here, Hamazura. You need to stop blaming someone or something else, lamenting that your circumstances or environment are the problem without trying to fix them, and cursing the world as a whole. Neither Kamijou Touma nor Narthex Coded Cathedral are paying any attention to you. As you can see, I can’t move with control of my metal coat sealed. So whether you win, lose, save, or destroy, you’re the one who holds the choice in your hands, Hamazura Shiage!!”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was the Transcendent who loved the hated.

Good, evil, humanity, the world…and even her own life were secondary to that.

“None of those ridiculous conditions matter.”

So she smiled as she made a suggestion.

As a Transcendent, it was an extremely destructive suggestion.

And it was just like the one he had once given Coronzon.

“''Just do whatever it is you want to do,'' Hamazura.”

===Part 13===

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

Narthex Coded Cathedral could seal any magic she predicted before it was used, so any magician would be driven into a worse and worse position as the battle continued.

(It’s technically not a negation like my Imagine Breaker. It’s probably a mind control power that precisely messes with their brain, ''preventing them from remembering the necessary incantation''.)

If she could use that magic, did it mean she, unlike Index, could refine her life force into magic power?

…The worst part was that there was no penalty for Narthex if her prediction was wrong. It wasn’t like she could only seal away a maximum of five things at a time or that she lost some power each time she was wrong. That meant she could use it all she liked. She had no reason to hesitate. She could seal away any magician if she set up a perimeter by listing off the ten or twenty most likely candidates.

Kamijou would have to do it.

Imagine Breaker let him fight Narthex without worrying about her magic sealing!

“(Or we can use magic she doesn’t expect in the slightest for a cheap win. Either way, you move out and gather attention. Make us look like no more than ''useless bystanders''.)”

“(Because once Narthex isn’t paying attention to us, we’re free to act again. Even a spell that wouldn’t normally hit can do the trick if we launch it from a blind spot☆)”

Just then Narthex whispered a word.

“''Release''.”

That word was the opposite of a seal, making it the trigger to free something.

But free what?

Kamijou didn’t even have time to wonder.

“Come forth, knowledge. You are the Original Sin for which all mankind was expelled from paradise!!”

Lessar’s body tilted unnaturally to the side. Before a surprised Kamijou could even try to support her, Birdway collapsed to the floor. She was bleeding from the nose and mouth, but she did nothing to wipe it away. She had passed out.

(What? That wasn’t poison gas. It would’ve taken me out too. But then…)

Narthex sneered over at him from her distant position.

The hand not holding the plush bear was toying with a floating apple seemingly made of red crystal. No, that was only what it looked like to Kamijou. Whatever it was, it could take many forms.

“Did you forget I am holding the fruit hanging from the branches of the Tree of Knowledge? This is the ''raw'' forbidden knowledge before it is processed into a grimoire.”

So were those two in the same state they would be if they had received the toxic knowledge of an original grimoire!? No one other than Index could defend against that. And given a professional magician’s greed for knowledge, they may have had their souls absorbed and polluted even more than a normal person.

But what if attacking the magicians had delayed her by a step, creating an opening?

“!!”

Kamijou immediately grabbed a burner from the floor. It was probably a maintenance tool for the military weapons kept here.

Instead of targeting Narthex, he went for a thick power cable running alongside a steel pillar.

What if he burned through that and dropped the sliced end to the floor?

The cut power cable scattered bluish-white sparks and he rushed rapidly along the steel reinforcement beams arranged in a lattice pattern. He ran toward little Narthex!

An unpleasant “zap!!” rang out.

But Narthex Coded Cathedral did not fall.

Just beforehand, her lips and tongue had uttered a word.

“''Seal''.”

(She used magic to cut off the high-voltage current!?)

He slammed on the brakes. If this wouldn’t even act as a smokescreen, charging in like this would only get him killed.

“That seal isn’t just a psychological attack! It works on non-magical things too?”

“My mother did not see the magic side as her ''only'' enemy.”

Of course she didn’t. Great Demon Coronzon had ultimately intended to destroy all 7 or 8 billion humans, be they from magic or science.

“You can find seals in mythologies the world over, but the most dynamic would probably be from Greek mythology. After all, Cronus and Zeus both swallowed their pesky children to try and remove them from the world of myth. Of course, those gods were generally immortal, so it didn’t count as killing. It was seen as a seal because they would be back to normal once removed from their father’s belly. Ah ha ha. Doesn’t that remind you of that absurd Red Riding Hood story where she was eaten by a wolf but somehow still had a happy ending?”

Kamijou glared straight at Narthex while moving just his eyes to the sides. Was there anything he could use here? She could seal anything, but was there nothing that would let him use that against her!?

“So seals don’t actually negate the energy the way your Imagine Breaker does. They are much more ecological. They let me remove your deadly force, but I hold the right to release the seal. That means I can effectively steal my enemy’s power and use it myself. A lot like stealing a demon and using them as your servant.”

Narthex Coded Cathedral licked her lips with her little tongue.

And she gave a death sentence.

Before Kamijou could find anything capable of breaking free of this bind.

“So I can have fun like this. …Release!!”

''Crash!!!

Fearsome light and noise were released horizontally. It was the ultra-high-voltage current used to power the electromagnetic catapults that launched the drone airbase’s unmanned fighters into the sky. That deadly energy shot across the underground space.

''No, that wasn’t all.

Kamijou couldn’t even react.

“Wha-?”

“Even ordinary electricity can have its apparent power multiplied by gathering and sealing it. The capacitors used to amplify the voltage of stun guns are primarily made of ''insulators'' like paper or glass. Even a high schooler understands how that works, I hope?”

And it didn’t follow a straight line.

When Narthex swept her outstretched hand from right to left, the destructive energy did the same. The blinding light forming a great serpent of more than a hundred million volts shorted the metal pillars and thick power cables as it targeted Kamijou’s head!!

He could see now why Lola Stuart had kept Narthex a secret.

She was a taboo among taboos.

She was a combination of science and magic that had been treated as a failure for being ''too successful''.

“!!!?”

===Part 14===

Silence fell.

Even the scent of scorched air seemed to be considerately keeping its distance from people’s senses.

The electric current of more than a hundred million volts had been magically controlled, ensuring a hit.

But Kamijou Touma still wasn’t dead.

Because someone else had made themselves into a human shield.

“…''Hama''…''zura''…?”

Narthex Coded Cathedral spoke his name in surprise.

That boy hadn’t wanted to call Coronzon a great demon. He had felt the same way she did.

So why had he saved Coronzon’s killer?

Was that the thing he ''most'' wanted to risk his life for!?

“You could have done anything you wanted, so why would you waste it on something so stup- gah…ah…!?”

The girl’s head wobbled.

Something was wrong with the right half of her vision. She didn’t have time to check a mirror, but the capillaries in the white of the eye may have burst, turning the eye bloodshot.

“You aren’t Index.”

And.

Since Hamazura Shiage had shielded him, Kamijou remained standing.

And he could…clench his right fist.

“Kh.”

“So you don’t have an extreme resistance to a grimoire’s toxin. You said that knowledge was as toxic as an original grimoire, right? If you could’ve just used that as much as you wanted, you would’ve just started with that. The only reason you didn’t is because that trump card damages you too, doesn’t it? “

Narthex had the Black_Oneday hacking tool.

She could have used that to damage Academy City and then spread that damage across the world, but she hadn’t.

She launched her cyber attacks with the same decryption skill she would use for a grimoire’s symbolism or a magic circle’s layout.

But that had been a burden on her.

She hadn’t wanted to use it more than necessary.

Because she could tell it was threatening her life.

Otherwise, she would likely have already triggered a major war like Coronzon had attempted with Adikalika.

(It’s just like with Index… When Coronzon gives someone a power, it isn’t going to make them happy. It will destroy their life and transform them into a living secret weapon.)

That great demon could only tear people’s bonds apart. She couldn’t actually save people no matter how hard she tried.

This had so bothered her that she had tried to destroy the world over it, so it did seem a lot like her.

“So you should stop here. The ordinary fear of death is catching up to you, isn’t it? But you see your ability to do these unusual things as your bond with Coronzon, so you don’t want to stop. But it’s not like your memories of her will vanish if you do things normally.”

“Shut up,” snapped Narthex Coded Cathedral. “I loved my mother. I truly respected her… I know so much about her you never knew. She tore people’s bonds apart and obstructed their evolution? That was all she could do? That isn’t true and I’ll prove it… That’s enough of a reason to risk my life.”

She looked around 13 – although her actual age was unknown – but her face was a portrait of fury, hatred, humiliation, scorn, and frustration. Every negative emotion aside from sorrow was contained there.

“You killed my mother.”

Kamijou had no memory before a certain day during summer break.

He knew he had saved Index during that time, but he felt like he hadn’t actually experienced it himself.

Even so, he could tell.

This girl…was an Index who hadn’t met Kamijou Touma.

So she had relied on someone else. Such as viewing her own creator as a parent.

For one, it was the person who had shattered her cage of misfortune. For the other, it was the person who had created her cage of misfortune.

It had all branched out from there.

“But that wasn’t enough, so now you’re going to rob her of the possibility of being reborn and getting a second chance at life? Kamijou Touma. You don’t have the right!! No one does!!!”

Maybe not.

But…

“I might be plagued by ''misfortune'',” said Kamijou.

He didn’t avert his gaze even as he was called a murderer.

Because…

“But I’m still not as ''miserable'' as you. Because I had the freedom to overcome my misfortune.”

“Kh.”

“Narthex, your circumstances weren’t your fault. You were made to be that way for someone else’s purposes and benefit. That much is obvious. …And that Great Demon Coronzon did that to you is all the more reason something had to be done about her.”

“My life is none of your business! Don’t barge in and act like you know if I’m happy or not. All that mattered to me was that my mother wasn’t alone!! But you and your smug self-righteousness took everything from her! Including her life!!!”

The girl screamed at him.

With tears in her eyes.

“For so long she called herself the Anglican archbishop! She said her name was Lola Stuart! She couldn’t tell anyone who she really was. Not even her real name!! Because she would be killed if the truth got out! You would know all about that since you’re the one that actually did it. And all because you’d decided getting the whole damn world to gang up on her and attack her was the ‘right thing to do’! …I was the only one she had. I was the only one who knew her name was Coronzon and accepted her for who she was. Only I could save her!!”

That had to be Narthex Coded Cathedral’s true feelings

She had to be coming up with these words on her own.

Looking at this alone, her story sounded like a moving one.

Kamijou Touma’s heart should have ached as the one who fought Coronzon as a great demon and let her die.

''But he couldn’t let himself forget.

Narthex had been ''created'' by Coronzon. And unlike Index, she hadn’t broken free of Coronzon’s control…so she had never been saved. Just like Index had several layers of security built into her without her consent.

In that case.

Narthex referred to Coronzon as her “mother”.

That was a title of love and respect. Those feelings were likely real. If she had started saying that without being ordered to by her puppeteer, the great demon hadn’t corrected her. And even if it was a mistake or bug her creator hadn’t intended, Kamijou still felt some sympathy for the lonely demon who had wanted to hear that word.

…But he would never be moved by Narthex’s devotion.

Coronzon must never have imagined she would die.

Of course she hadn’t when she had fought to the very end under the wholehearted belief that she would win.

The unintended cage she left behind with her death had to be broken here.

This was a misfortune that not even Coronzon had wanted.

“…I’ll kill you.”

The girl must have realized her words weren’t reaching him.

With a low growl of a voice, Narthex stuck her small hand in the rear of the plush bear. Did it contain a keyboard or a touchscreen? Either way, she must have decided the track ball on its face wasn’t enough.

“You are the one person in this world I swear I will kill! I will smash you into tiny little pieces! …I don’t need your brain to get knowledge of your return from hell when Anna Kingsford’s preserved corpse exists. The border between life and death can be crossed! And I don’t need you to create a vessel for summoning my mother back to this world!!”

But the Six Wings around her did not respond.

“Someone already hacked them and expelled all their fuel?”

Come to think of it, someone had gone missing partway through this battle.

Narthex’s eyes darted around the area.

“Dion Fortune? What has she been doing on this base!?”

But she couldn’t afford to split her focus at the moment.

Insulting someone who wasn’t even present would change nothing. And Kamijou was currently stepping toward her.

“Ohhh!!”

“Hm? No…”

A loud “slap!” rang out.

Kamijou had knocked the plush bear to the floor with his palm. Now she couldn’t use her hacking tool to send commands to the science side weapons.

“Tch!!”

Narthex held out the red apple of knowledge in her other hand. That thing had knocked out Birdway and Lessar, but a moment later it shattered with a solid sound of impact.

Courtesy of Imagine Breaker.

Now the girl couldn’t use science or magic.

And Kamijou Touma had already clenched his right fist.

Tightly.

“If you are convinced Great Demon Coronzon’s death was a mistake. If the remnants of Coronzon still lingering inside you are mechanically making you say that!!”

“Kh.”

(Hey, Coronzon.)

It was like he wanted to show that girl how the great demon had met her end since she hadn’t been there to see it herself.

He threw his words and his fist at her.

(This rampage isn’t the downfall you wanted to see, is it!? So it’s time you gave that girl’s life back!!!)

“Then!! I’ll destroy that illusion!!!”

===Part 15===

A dull crash.

===Part 16===

She had fallen.

Narthex Coded Cathedral lay unmoving on the hard floor.

A wet splat came from her.

Kamijou had grabbed something from her back and pulled it away. It was a clear tube…no, several of them. He had physically broken her connection to her second brain. The tubes crumbled away.

Narthex…had lost.

Coronzon would never come back to life.

Hamazura clenched his back teeth. He had stopped her by shielding Kamijou. That was true…but why had that been the only option their side had?

The people who sided with the hated were always, always labeled evil and defeated.

Because what they were doing “wasn’t right”.

Was that so wrong? So much so that the only option was to throw their lives in the gutter?

“Phew…”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet sighed a short distance away.

This was an aircraft hangar. The underground space was so large it could be easy to forget that.

She seemed to be dragging along a great weight. The seal on her metal coat should have been released, but was she still not back at 100%? She was at least doing better than Birdway and Lessar who were still unable to move after being hit by toxic knowledge on the level of an original grimoire.

The emaciated girl sighed.

(It almost feels like everyone else was intentionally taken out of the fight. I guess the only person left who ''I need to keep away from here'' is Dion Fortune, wherever she is on the base.)

“Hamazura, are you alive?”

“Even though I doubt anyone in the world wants me to be,” sulked Hamazura.

He knew he was actually lucky to have his girlfriend and a Transcendent on his side.

So. Was he supposed to just accept the world’s idea of what was “right” and head home?

“I feel bad saying this Hamazura, but Coronzon herself really was evil. I don’t think you’re going to convince anyone otherwise.”

“I know.”

Hamazura wasn’t going to deny that any longer.

But…

“I still wanted to be her friend. What’s wrong with that?”

“Heh. That look on your face is more like it. Then I’ll let you handle the rest.”

Narthex had been defeated. Hamazura didn’t know what she had been planning, but it wasn’t going to happen now. Coronzon was dead and nothing would change that. He felt like something unseen was holding his head down and had placed a thick lid over him.

“…”

Takitsubo Rikou…was safe.

But Hamazura didn’t run over to her.

He couldn’t return yet. He hadn’t ended this yet.

So.

After shaking free of Blodeuwedd the Bouquet who weakly waved her hand, he firmly changed direction.

To face someone else: Kamijou Touma.

“Narthex Coded Cathedral was trying to destroy the world for Coronzon and she wanted to crack open your head and bring her back. …I’ve been trying to figure out what I can do for Coronzon now that she’s dead, but I didn’t think either of those things would do that. That’s why I helped you. I’m still not sure I should have and I kind of wish I hadn’t.”

“I see…”

“But this doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you for killing Coronzon.”

He couldn’t.

No matter what. It wasn’t a matter of right or wrong.

“Coronzon chose for herself to take the path of evil, so you had no choice?”

What a joke.

There were people who couldn’t do the right thing.

They wanted to and they admired those who did more than anyone, but they believed someone as wretched as them couldn’t…and so they pulled back the hand they actually wanted to reach out.

Hamazura wouldn’t let anyone say otherwise.

Because that had been him.

When he was labeled a Level 0 and then crushed by the pressure of being the new leader of Skill Out. He had rotted to the core back then, but he hadn’t crawled back out on his own. Only after running across Item, meeting people like Mugino and Takitsubo, and overcoming a great battle had he finally found himself. Yes, it had taken a collection of factors he normally never could have hoped to encounter.

Had Coronzon been given a chance like that?

She had always been alone.

The entire world had labeled her an absolute evil.

She hadn’t had a chance to crawl back out and no one had held out their hand.

Instead, they had gathered around, forced her into even worse circumstances, and called her evil for not figuring out her mistake all on her own. Was that how this world worked!?

Pain. Fear. Agony. Suffering.

It was true Coronzon had never uttered a word of it on that red snowy night.

Being who she was, Coronzon must have proudly stuck to her role as the powerful enemy to the very end.

''But…

“Are you kidding me, Kamijou Touma? The people who are suffering and in pain can’t even ask for help. It might seem easy to you!! But they’ve been pushed to the point they’ve lost sight of what’s normal. So they try to act bad, they turn their back on you, and they convince themselves it’s better that way!”

Even as he shouted the words, Hamazura realized this really was the side for him.

This was a risk.

He could tell he was tumbling further down the slope.

This temporary awakening didn’t come from evil. He knew this was no more than a power that brought him closer to death, but still he did it.

It was time to draw a line in the sand.

They could call him evil if they wanted. He didn’t need justice or righteousness here!!

“She couldn’t say it. Coronzon couldn’t manage to get the words out. But that doesn’t excuse you for killing her!!!”

On his way here today, Hamazura had opposed goodness and justice in a number of ways. But that didn’t mean all evil was destructive and deadly. He must have gotten a blow or two in on the existing idea of goodness by saving some strangers along the way.

Between good and evil, Coronzon had been evil.

But preferring evil didn’t mean she had to destroy humanity.

''Villains could be kind to people in their own evil way.

If someone had taught her that, maybe she could have developed her evil in that direction and grown into something else. If the world had been willing to compromise with her, maybe she could have found a place for herself and lived there.

But no one had.

Everyone had stubbornly refused to do so!

On that night, even Hamazura had spoken in support of the destruction she was plotting. He had acted like he was on her side, but he had really been pushing her away by calling her a harmful being who would destroy the world!

What had Coronzon really wanted him to say?

Had it actually devastated her when she had heard him speak up in support of her destructive plan using Adikalika?

What if he had insisted she was too kind a person to destroy the world?

Yes, that was it.

He had already known he was stupid, so why hadn’t he been able to say that stupid thing!?

Even if it wasn’t true, wouldn’t Coronzon have wanted to hear someone say it to her? He knew it was a silly thing to consider. Maybe proud Coronzon was shouting resentfully up at him from the pit of hell, saying not to twist his memories to reduce her to something so weak. …But what if that really had been ''all it was''? If so, then the one who had ultimately cut her lifeline and shoved her off the cliff was none other than Hamazura himself!!

Coronzon hadn’t figured out how to use evil.

If she wanted to save someone, she had been free to do so from the side of evil.

What had kept her from realizing that?

And who had killed her before she could realize it?

(That’s obvious.)

He couldn’t run away.

What could he do for Coronzon? He had come all this way in search of an answer.

So Hamazura Shiage would not run away from here.

The rest of the world had called Coronzon a great demon, thrown stones at her, and spat on her.

But.

There were 8 billion people out there. So couldn’t there be just one idiot who clenched his fist for her?

(I encouraged her and you killed her to stop her. We share the blame for believing too much in our own ridiculous ideas of what’s right!!)

===Part 17===

Kamijou Touma.

I will never, ever forgive you!!!

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume15 Chapter1

2026-05-11T19:18:20Z

Massify: /* Part 5 */

Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter3

2026-03-23T22:23:26Z

Massify: /* Part 5 */

==Chapter 3: Prophecy – Last_Branch(of_Die).==

===Part 1===

Late at night in District 7, Anna Kingsford stood at the very top of an enormous crane.

She stood tall and simply directed her gaze overhead.

The night sky seemed blotted out by the lights of the city, but viewing the clear stars in the sky gave this expert access to more information than searching the world linked together by fiber optics.

And she only used this for just causes.

Which was what made her an expert.

(The ⭐s are in place. That boy should become aware of the branch he passed by now.)

She sighed.

That was a complete side issue.

For one, Kingsford had never directly met Kamijou Touma. Which made him no more than a stranger in the same city as her.

(But awareness does ❌ allow him to change it. It may be his life, but he can ❌ change the decision he made on a branch he has already passed. Just like CRC passed a crucial branch ''and was defeated in a ⚔️ he should have won easily.'' The greatest enemy in an individual’s life is their own karma.)

“Not that he can ignore it now that he knows.”

But she would not just abandon him.

That expert did not consider her own interests, the state of the battle, or even whether or not she knew the boy.

He was a complete stranger?

So what?

If anyone was troubled, uncertain, or suffering, she was already taking action.

Anna Kingsford had perfected that way of life.

A fool who had yet to reach that point spoke to her.

It was the human named Aleister.

“Where are you going, Kingsford?”

“To serve others.”

“That’s my job. There’s no reason for you to continue fighting!!”

Even her battle against Rosencreutz had essentially been a miracle.

She had not actually won the battle. CRC could instantly search for any information about the world, but he had ''just so happened'' to overlook the fact that Anna Kingsford was a preserved corpse. If not for that, he would have destroyed her more thoroughly and she couldn’t have recovered.

She was reliant on unpredictable miracles.

Even a magician who mastered the field to the point of being known as an expert would lose eventually.

She had to know that.

Alice Anotherbible had easily crushed and killed CRC and so thoroughly eliminated him from the world that he could never recover. She was a true monster.

Kingsford had not reached that point.

She had to understand that. She wielded great power using the correspondence between the microcosm within a person and the macrocosm of the physical world around them, so she would have thoroughly analyzed herself in that way.

But the woman with a proper understanding of magic’s essence smiled as she responded.

She was accurately viewing her own fate, but she didn’t hesitate to speak.

“This is 👋.”

“But!!”

Contact with the new Board Chairman had been lost.

They couldn’t hope for anymore cooperation, so they had to settle this on their own.

The situation was clearly worsening and Alice was even more powerful than CRC. Certain death awaited Kingsford. Alice waited in a land that brought death to all who set foot there.

“Aleister. You must have understood from the beginning that I am ❌ more than a preserved corpse. You are only using ⚙️s to move an already ☠️ body around, so I never was alive. I escaped the previous ⚔️ intact by pure luck, but ❌ even that can save me next time. This ☠️ body will find only ☠️.”

“…”

As an expert who understood the secrets of the world of the living and the world of the dead, she was not too attached to her own life.

The only ones who clung to life with such ugly desperation were the half-baked magicians who remained fixated on this one life.

Still, he understood in his own inexpert way.

Anna Kingsford was an expert through and through. She didn’t even think of clinging to life or staying in this world forever.

She was only interested in eliminating the unknown threat making someone suffer before her eyes.

She didn’t even consider whether or not she had ever met that person.

She had no intention of returning. Her win condition didn’t even take that into account.

She was an example of how far people could go if they mastered their field.

“What was my role meant to be? I was supposed to be a trump 🃏 for use against the unbeatable Anna Sprengel. Now that Miss Sprengel has been freed from her wicked ⛓️ and that ⚔️ need ❌ be fought, my purpose is complete.”

Aleister had no response to that.

Because she was exactly right.

This goodbye could not be avoided. This was Aleister Crowley’s reward for wielding superhuman knowledge, doing what no one else could do, and enduring trials normal people would never even know existed. Kingsford was correct that the greatest enemy in an individual’s life was their own karma.

He was already in checkmate.

And yet…

“That just means I have to do the work myself.”

He understood it intellectually but he still tried to fight it. Was that because Aleister was an inexpert and ugly human?

But you must never forget that, while that human had accumulated a lot of bad karma, he would never stop struggling for his own ends.

“Aleister Crowley officially died in 1947 and stubbornly clung to life until he actually died battling Great Demon Coronzon. I’m as dead as you are. If someone has to save that boy, I’ll do it. I can do it if necessary!! And I’m better suited for that role. The wickedest man in the world should be standing up to the world even after death, not a pure and proper holy woman!”

“But you are still fixated on this 🌍.”

She shot back.

A true expert did not bother arguing about secrets.

She had already seen into the depths of his mind that even he wasn’t consciously aware existed.

She did it naturally.

And kindly.

“Conscious or ❌, you hijacked that great 👿’s body to cling to life. Either you still have something you want to do in this 🌍, or there is something you are ❌ yet willing to give up here. Dying for him is not the same as living with him. It never can be. Either way, it is too soon for you. Everyone dies eventually, so there is no need to rush toward ☠️. Live out your life first, Aleister. You can prepare yourself for ☠️ once you have done that.”

Kingsford smiled as she said this.

Smiled faintly.

Aleister lightly clenched his empty right hand.

He felt the pressure of a staff so twisted his fingertips tingled at the mere sight of it.

Special numbers scattered from his hand like sparks.

“I’ve had enough. What if I said I would stop you by force?”

“I would knock you aside and continue on my way.”

“Kh.”

She didn’t even hesitate.

She said it gently, like it was a foregone conclusion.

Kingsford used no more than words to overpower the victor of the Battle of Blythe Road.

He couldn’t say she couldn’t do it. He was already well past his limit with Alice Anotherbible and Anna Sprengel. He had only so insolently decided to make use of this preserved corpse because he couldn’t handle them.

Trickery, betrayal, surprise attacks, intrigue, and – when necessary – direct confrontation.

He had used every trick in the book to drive the world’s greatest magic cabal to destruction at the Battle of Blythe Road, but none of it would work here.

He could not win in a direct one-on-one confrontation.

If Anna Kingsford went all out, Aleister had no way of opposing her. He knew she would simply prove how inexpert he really was. He would never manage to get his hands on the switch hidden below her skin.

“I do ❌ want you to ☠️ here. No number of previous ☠️s is any reason to accept ☠️ next time. So I will use all of my power to defeat you here. Soundly enough that you do ❌ have enough strength left to go out and ☠️.”

That was contradictory.

Kingsford kept saying she would not let people die so easily, but she was about to head out for her own death.

She was saying she would use up all of the tickets provided for her as a thinking and moving preserved corpse.

But that gentle smile of hers made the contradictory premise and conclusion seem to fit together with no problem.

It was strange really.

Was this the essence of magic known only to the few true experts – a position Aleister had yet to reach? This was the human-made miracle of protecting everyone you encountered and spreading smiles everywhere you went.

He couldn’t stop her.

This wasn’t the ''divine cosplay spell'' that simply let one dress up in the appearance and abilities of a god. Nor was it the reverse logic where one tried to divulge the workings of the world to rebel against the god they so hated.

With a quiet bump, the failure of a student buried his face in Anna Kingsford’s chest.

He sniffled like a child.

“I don’t want you to die.”

“I know.”

“You shouldn’t have to die.”

“That I met someone who feels that way and that I inspired these feelings in you, who felt betrayed by everything, tells me that I have won a victory against this 🌍.”

Clear drops spilled out.

Anna Kingsford held the lost child’s head to her chest and whispered gently to him.

She stroked the inexpert one’s blonde hair like a mother.

“I think you did have need of my preserved corpse. Especially on December 31. If no one had stopped Anna Sprengel, the 🌍 would have been thrown into chaos before CRC could even be reborn.”

One by one, the expert explained everything to the fool.

She taught him some terribly simple things that no one had ever before taught that human.

Not his parents who had thought meaningless strictness was a virtue, not his teachers who had failed to correct the social problem left in their care, and not the Golden magicians who had abandoned their pursuit of knowledge to spend their time on ugly internecine conflict.

Even though these should have been the first things he was taught.

“But you must ❌ toy with life. Because you are powerful enough to do so with ease, you have ❌ way to keep yourself focused other than using pure willpower to manage yourself. The ☠️ have their own dignity. Humans remain human even in ☠️. You ensured your own pain from the moment you disrespected the ☠️ for the sake of the living. Improve yourself, Aleister. If you do ❌ fear taking the long way around to avoid pain, there is much you can learn. Just like any magician.”

“…”

“And do ❌ worry, lost child of the living. You will not be alone. As an expert, I will do whatever it takes to save the one you care for. Even if it requires every trick in the 📖. So there is ❌ chance you will be crushed by loneliness.”

===Part 2===

Kamijou Touma heard a wet sound.

It came from inside his body.

He thought he must have imagined it.

But the sound of rotting flesh falling away was so distinct.

“…”

He was dying.

He was certain of it in that brightly lit classroom.

It was an unavoidable fate. No one had cruelly pushed him to this point. There was a chance he could have survived had he given up on saving others, but he had chosen this path for himself while on the dark side.

He felt an odd scraping.

Was that the wound from Aradia he felt in his right side and spine? The odd feeling in his neck would be H.T. Trismegistus.

Everything felt normal-ish, but that lack of extreme pain only terrified him more.

Something was definitely happening to him.

He couldn’t tell what was happening inside him. He only felt a vague disgust. It was like his silent organs were changing color without sending out any kind of alert. Death. The end. An invisible pressure. A cruel time bomb with the LCD timer omitted.

“Human…”

Even Magic God Othinus only groaned that word before falling silent.

There was no recovering from this.

''“You will die.”

''“That doesn’t change my answer.”

Thinking back, he had made that fateful choice when that god wasn’t with him.

He had carelessly made such an important decision on his own.

Of course he had screwed it up.

Everything had been wrong from the beginning.

How many times had he availed himself of Good, Old Mary’s resurrection? In other words, ''how many times had he died on the way here''? In just a few days’ time? Maybe you would survive certain death, as if by mistake, once over your long life. But he seriously doubted those bugs or errors would occur in his favor every single time like that. Not to mention that he was plagued by misfortune due to his right hand, so lady luck would never smile on him in that way.

The flaw wasn’t in Good, Old Mary.

Bringing him back to life even once was more than enough of a miracle.

The problem was him having her use it so many times in such a short period of time without considering the usage limits.

''He couldn’t fool death any longer.

''The corner of the mask was starting to peel away.

“Hey, teacher, why do you think the girl wanted the grimoire library?”

“…”

“Because the girl wanted to use the library’s knowledge to do something she couldn’t? To correct her broken head? No, the girl is already perfect and unbreakable. The answer is simple. ''The girl wanted to help you after you passed the final branch.'' The girl wanted to search through a library of all the world’s knowledge to find some method still remaining in this world. That was all.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………”

He had passed the fatal branch.

He had foolishly chosen to cross it and he had arrived at a mistaken destination.

Which one of them was really in need of help?

“If the girl found it, she would use it. If not, she would give up, deciding the world was just too shallow. There are billions of people in this wide world, so if not even one of them has a way to save you, it means they didn’t try hard enough and then the girl would have to punish them all with her power.”

H.T. Trismegistus had said he had always been one of the Killers.

He had said the swiftest and surest way to take Kamijou’s life was to have him meet Alice. He had been right.

It didn’t help the deathly ill to fear the doctor’s prognosis. Kamijou understood that. They had come down with the illness much earlier. The real problem may have been from their exercise, diet, or other life habits.

Nevertheless, that fear was real.

The tables had been turned.

The symbol of death had shifted from Alice Anotherbible to another girl Kamijou knew quite well.

White. Pure white. The all-knowing nun who was always by his side.

He felt no pain.

He wasn’t even given the right to writhe in agony as certain death approached.

The pressure mounted.

Like he was being slowly crushed by an incredibly thick invisible wall.

Which was more horrific: being turned to red and black spray by the world’s fastest linear motor train before you could even feel the fear, or having your body gradually drawn into the wheel of a local train as it pulled into the station?

With no malice, the girl spoke with an innocent smile.

“Well, teacher? Let’s go see the grimoire library! The girl can’t diagnose you, so we can have the all-knowing nun do that part☆”

===Part 3===

H.T. Trismegistus watched from a distance.

He had known Alice Anotherbible longer than any other member of the Bridge Builders Cabal. After all, he was the one who had discovered her in the modern day.

But there was a lot the young butler did not know.

Most notably, he did not know her origins.

Where was she born, where was she raised, where was she altered, and from where had she fled?

He didn’t have a single answer.

It had only been pure coincidence when he found her in a city abroad. She was in the shadows of a roofless shelter. She had tremendous value as an open-source spell, but he had not realized this until well after taking in the wandering girl.

At first, she had been like a wild animal.

She had gone so wild he had questioned what she had even eaten to survive.

It was nothing more than luck that Alice hadn’t known how to use her power. If she had chaotically wielded her power as Alice Anotherbible at that point, she probably would have destroyed the entire world.

Alice was smiling innocently next to someone else.

She wore an expression he had never seen before.

That much was fine.

The young man simply obeyed. Of course, this was for himself, not for Alice. H.T. Trismegistus was a Transcendent who had abandoned his magic name to dress up in the appearance and abilities of a god. He could only view the world and choose who to save based on the salvation condition he had set for himself. So the first person he had to save was not himself or Alice.

He was the guardian deity of common sense.

He protected the people against anything that altered people’s sense of normalcy: war, rioting, disaster, loneliness, disease, famine, financial panic.

He sought a master who would save the world.

''Or to put it another way,'' the only person he would allow to distort common sense was the bearer of the paradigm shift that would guide all of humanity to the next stage. He could not leave this in the hands of just any old charismatic leader.

Was Christian Rosencreutz the one he sought?

Or was it Alice Anotherbible?

His objective was clear, but a question occurred to the young butler.

He knew his salvation condition.

But who exactly did he want to save?

===Part 4===

On the District 7 bridge, the Transcendents vs. Transcendents battle was trending in one direction.

“Tch! Good, Old Mary!?” shouted Aradia, holding onto the railroad crossing barrier she had borrowed as a broom and clinging to the side of a steel beam distributing the bridge’s weight.

But the woman collapsed on the cold asphalt did not respond.

That was a bad sign.

Good, Old Mary was the foundation of their recovery magic, but she had suddenly collapsed.

This was worse than simply losing one of their number.

Vidhatri, the brown-skinned woman with model-like proportions, shook the arms and legs of the Dhatri ball-joint doll she wore on her back, intricately manipulating white thread and black hair as she whispered to Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

“Do you still need support?”

“Nope. Everyone can do their own thing. Instead of assigning as many Transcendents as we can to attacking a single point, it would help me if we increased the total number of attack points to fill up the processing power of their minds.”

Something hovered through the air.

Some teacups and saucers were slowly flying around

Those were symbols from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The Bologna Succubus noticed and groaned while breathing heavily with her hands down on the ground.

“Kssshhh, they’ve made it this far?”

“Ha ha☆ Of course they have.”

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW4.png|thumb]]

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet smiled calmly.

A single smile on that extremely lovable face summoned a great black dragon into the night sky. Was the twisting serpent actually tens of thousands of starlings? They were not venomous, but in great enough numbers, any creature was a threat to human life.

The instant the Bologna Succubus looked up at the black dragon filling the entire night sky, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet took a large step forward.

Without hesitation.

“Kh.”

Now was not the time to be overwhelmed by the intimidating numbers.

The Bologna Succubus flapped her wings to gather as much air as possible.

She launched herself straight to the side.

The coat-shaped blast-resistant suit covered in thick metal panels snapped shut like a ferocious beast’s jaws. It was a sweet-smelling iron maiden. The air inside that isolated space was compressed with no outlet, producing a strange sound much like a steam engine.

The Bologna Succubus had just barely avoided it.

If she had carelessly stayed in place, she would have been “devoured”.

Instead of feeling fear, she gathered offensive power between her brows.

(Argh. I can’t let this chaos be unleashed on the boy’s city.)

What were Kamijou Touma and Alice Anotherbible doing right now?

She couldn’t predict how few seconds a regular Transcendent would last against Alice if she were serious about fighting, but it was still much too dangerous to let that boy stand defenselessly before Alice.

The alluring demon smiled bitterly at that thought and focused her feelings on the battle at hand.

“Oh, what’s this?”

Smiling, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet again spread her arms wide. Slowly.

Almost like a solid wall, a stifling nectar scent emerged from the blast-resistant suit and pushed toward the Bologna Succubus. Even at this distance, she had to stay focused to avoid getting dizzy.

What was happening in that closed world?

The skinny girl(?) wearing an apron over her naked body giggled before speaking.

“This won’t hurt at all, so don’t worry. I’m more interested in creating a gentle world where even the unloved are loved equally. Did you really understand my salvation condition? Kee hee hee☆ I have love even for a filthy sex demon, so get over here and let me give you a hug!!”

“Killing with pleasure, huh?”

“Ah ha ha☆ This is Total Courtship! Welcome to the sweetest, most luxurious ending to a life♪”

Roaches could rapidly build up a resistance to deadly insecticides, so they couldn’t necessarily be killed by escalating the chemical suffering. Instead, there were products that ''tricked them'' into thinking ethanol, acetaldehyde, sotolon, or another chemical compound was delicious food, luring them into the trap where they would take a different chemical back to the colony to kill them all at once. Humans didn’t just use what their target disliked – they would also use whatever their target most liked.

This girl similarly used love to kill. She was a super sweet monster who had continually honed the emotion of love into a deadly weapon. If you simply increased your defenses to prevent pain and prepared ordinary attacks, she would ''slip past them all'' and kill you instantly.

She was a specialist in that.

This Transcendent was a different form of strongest, whose trump card was the complete opposite of the Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress which converted all forms of pleasure into pain.

Her victims were robbed of even the right to feel fear as they were filled with no more than ''happiness'' until they lost their life. In a trippy world where everything was vague, they would cross the final line without intent or resolve.

They were stranded.

She had complete control over them, not even giving them a chance to speak their final words.

She brought a death more certain than a .44 caliber bullet and its name was love.

“Yeah, I don’t think we could ever get along.”

“Kya ha ha☆ You’re only saying that because that makes it more exciting, aren’t you!?”

This must have been her combat form.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had her enormous blast-resistant suit spread wide to display the terrarium trapped within. The skinny naked-apron girl pushed out a nectar scent so powerful it caused heartburn. And she took a casual step forward.

“You didn’t find it remotely odd? We’re all regular Transcendents here. A clash between our two groups shouldn’t end so easily. Yet you’re being easily defeated in a one-sided game. Is it a bad matchup between the individual Transcendents? Do our spells combine so well it’s like we were dealt a royal flush? No, that could never happen.”

“…”

“''No one can defeat Alice Anotherbible.''”

For this alone, she took on a respectful tone.

Almost like she was reading off the handwritten creed only she believed in.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet thought only of her own blessings as she spoke euphorically.

“You underestimated the meaning of that statement. And that optimism has brought you certain death. It doesn’t just mean you won’t survive a direct physical fight against Alice. There’s no getting around it. We control all of the coincidences and all of our baseless hunches and inspirations will work out in our favor. We have the ''trends'' of the world on our side. That is what it means to ‘resonate’ with Alice and take the winning side. To be clear, we are only firing blindly from the hip. You’re the ones ensuring we hit you.”

Vidhatri.

2nd Saga.

And Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

The Bologna Succubus’s side was being worn down, but all three of them were unharmed. She had gotten a few clean hits in on them, so had they managed to shrug off the damage?

And she was slipping past their expectations and landing an attack they failed to dodge or defend against, so it made no sense for them to be changing their stance to reduce the damage with 100% accuracy.

That wasn’t their individual abilities.

It was their “resonance” with Alice Anotherbible.

“Defying her means death. You had lost from the moment you bet on there being an exception to that, like that you could move beyond her reach, hide where she couldn’t find you, or escape punishment if your defiance was indirect. Not that she would let you get away with this even if you had been correct.”

“How are you on Alice’s side when you only love yourself?”

“Isn’t it cruel to expect such a small child to judge everything so accurately? They say to let your child make mistakes to learn from them, but do you think that kind of harsh parental love will work on that girl? Alice is simpler than that. Which is what makes her so frightening. At her mental age, she probably sees anyone who praises her and spoils her as her ally.”

And it didn’t end there.

“Heyyy.”

Something enormous was parting the large river to approach.

It was a special warship measuring around 100m long.

That was small compared to a nuclear aircraft carrier of more than 300m long, but it was undoubtedly a warship.

Plus, this was not the ship itself.

It was made out of smooth white shadow.

A girl’s lazy voice played from the speakers probably meant for giving warnings or making threats.

Come to think of it, hadn’t one of them seemingly vanished?

“This took some time to prepare, but I’m back.”

The ship’s bridge stood taller than the iron bridge.

She must have torn down all the other bridges spanning the river to clear a path here. It made you wonder which side was doing more damage to Academy City.

Aradia’s eyes really did bug out as she shouted.

“Mut Thebes!? What is that thing!?”

“You don’t know? It’s the Academy City drone carrier Kagenui.”

An aircraft carrier had to carry multiple large aircraft, necessitating a great size. Submersible and aerial aircraft carriers could not be made because the size and weight affected their balance too much. ...But that accepted principle had been overturned by shrinking the aircraft down by eliminating the cockpit and turning them into drones. Even the maintenance work could be carried out by an unmanned maintenance factory within the ship.

As usual, Academy City loved making bizarre things.

But now wasn’t the time for exasperation.

That was a carrier.

“Go, everyone.”

A series of explosions rang out. The boxy canisters on the flat deck rose up and opened fire. There were electrically ignited guns that could fire at a rate of a million rounds a minute. It looked like a programmed fireworks show. In truth, the honeycomb-like holes on the front of the canisters were releasing a large number of flying objects. By spreading their movable wings in air, they gathered in orderly teams and flew in formation. Now both sides had a flying swarm. The drones clashed directly with the tens of thousands of starlings ruling the night sky.

The assumptions and superiority had been overturned.

One side was alive and the other was machine.

When they were both controlled remotely and were equal in number, it went without saying whether the small birds or the man-made meter-long aerial weapons would win.

Perhaps the counterattack was necessary.

But as the drones pursued the fleeing starlings, their machinegun fire stabbed into the skyscrapers built along the river and sent sparks exploding from walls as thick power cables were ruptured.

“Mut Theeeebes!!!”

Aradia roared in anger, but then she stopped.

The brown girl was acting weird.

“Yayyy. Who wants to take a killer selfie? Just tell me when and I’ll get the timing right for you. Yippee! Let’s keep this Alice Parade Party going☆”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet giggled.

She clearly welcomed this turn of events.

Mut Thebes wasn’t enemy or ally – she was losing all awareness that she was participating in the battle at all. She was throwing that aside to enjoy herself. And her actions were clearly working against the Bologna Succubus’s side.

They sensed a trend in the series of unpleasant coincidences.

“I believe it’s called Acute Kotatsu Syndrome. Basically, Alice affects the group psychology of an area when she stays there long enough. Did you think you were ''immune'' for some reason? Even magicians and Transcendents will be engulfed by Alice sooner or later.”

“…”

“That includes all of us. Yes, you are no exception, Bologna Succubus. And most likely, neither are we. We will all lose our sense of who is on whose side in this mad tea party. The world that people across the globe have worked so hard to create could end today, but in a way that could mean the arrival of an age of peace. If everything is engulfed and everyone is a victim, then the distinction between enemy and ally loses all meaning.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet made it sound so obvious.

But it didn’t add up.

They were using their all-important salvation conditions as an excuse to love themselves and preserve their power by protecting Alice, so they wouldn’t want an ending where they were engulfed by Alice’s madness and lost sight of who they were. Narcissists who cared about themselves more than anything else in the world would never seek out a form of satisfaction created by having their internal aesthetic sense altered.

“''Do you have any idea what you’re saying''?”

“Ha ha☆ What? Are you saying I’ve already broken too''?”

It didn’t sound like she cared.

Someone on her level had lost the right to feel fear and disgust, or even detect that anything was amiss.

This space was going mad.

It had started at a single point, but the entire world would be this way eventually.

Whether or not Alice Anotherbible wanted it.

This was ominous enough to make that prediction.

“It doesn’t really matter. No one can defy Alice whether they put up a resistance or not.”

“Are you shoving responsibility for the world onto Alice’s shoulders while you alone abandon the effort of living, like you’re just a tree, grass, or flower, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet!?”

“Hee hee☆ Total Courtship – ready for dissemination. Now, I think I’ll pack you so full of super-sweet love that all your veins burst. Alice hates it when you try to lecture people like that, which is why she’s striking back at you, you know?”

===Part 5===

“…”

Anna Sprengel saw it.

She had supposedly divined the location of Kamijou and Alice, but ''something had gone wrong'' and she ended up here instead. Were you not even allowed to walk in a straight line without the proper credentials in this wonderland?

Everything within a 400 radius of the iron bridge was a zone of death. Crowds who had never even seen Alice directly were filling the streets due to her influence, but not even they would approach that area.

It may have been a type of instinct.

Just like people’s homing instincts worked even when drunk, the boys and girls who had lost sight of reality still knew they should keep away.

Although even that instinct would probably melt away eventually.

Once that happened, the world really was over.

Anna wanted to rescue Kamijou Touma. She wanted to fight against Alice Anotherbible with him. She wanted to protect him.

But so much depended on that bridge where an ''unnatural amount'' of things had gathered.

If those Transcendents scattered across the city again, Kamijou alone wouldn’t be able to deal with them. Then his world would simply fall apart.

So.

Before that happened…

“What are you planning?”

“!?”

Anna heard a female voice.

From right by her ear.

She belatedly spun around.

But she did not find one of the Transcendents who relied on the easy ''divine cosplay spell''. This was an expert who carried a magic name in her heart, stood on her own two feet, and had chosen for herself to take on the wide world.

It wasn’t a logical thing.

But Miss Sprengel could not hide the trembling and the cold sweat that came from her very soul.

“Anna Kingsford!?”

“You really should ❌ try it. It is ❌ like you. Two groups of Transcendents are ⚔️ing and one side is winning. Adding one more fighter to the fray will ❌ make a significant difference. As a self-proclaimed villain, you should know that quite well.”

“Why would you stop me? It shouldn’t be any skin off your nose if the fake Anna dies.”

“It would be. Because I do ❌ want you to ☠️.”

Kingsford didn’t hesitate.

The true villain was not used to being told these things so directly.

(First that fool and now her.)

Taken aback, little Miss Sprengel lost her chance to strike back and Kingsford laughed elegantly before continuing.

That smile was so much like Miss Sprengel’s, but she could never imitate it.

“It does appear that the side of the ⚔️ supported by, no, the side resonating with Alice has the advantage. Transcendents are, after all, the false gods created when modern magicians used the incomplete 🪄 they created by analyzing the one and only success case: Alice Anotherbible. They have always been incomplete and unstable. They have a model. It should be obvious they will be 💪er when supported by the completed Alice.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? If Aradia’s side loses, who will be left to help that fool? Even if the entire world joined forces against Alice, I’m not sure it would work! And if the Alice-addled Transcendents gathered here end up scattering across Academy City, they could completely destroy that fool’s cit-”

“You only need to supply a ⛰️ greater than Alice.”

It didn’t even take a full second.

Kingsford placed her index finger on her slender chin and gave the answer with a confident smile.

An expert was a powerful guide in and of herself.

Just like sailors lost at sea would rely on the sun and moon in the sky to find the way back home.

“Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, Vidhatri, and 2nd Saga… They are borrowing a special power by resonating with Alice. So we just have to supply the same condition. If someone else leads the Transcendents, this problem is easily solved.”

Anna Sprengel only showed exasperation on her face.

Preparing a rival even more powerful than Alice was Kingsford’s idea of easy?

“I suppose someone as special as you would have no problem doing that,” said Miss Sprengel.

“Me? ❌, the only one who can do this is you.”

This time, Miss Sprengel’s eyes opened wide.

This had to be a joke.

“W-wait. I-I am no more than a common 2nd-rate magician who expanded my appearance and abilities by borrowing your name but still had to boost my specs further with Aiwass!!”

“Belittle yourself all you like, you are still an irregular Transcendent. Plus, you borrowed someone else’s name, but you did ❌ acquire the necessary 🪄 by analyzing Alice. You did your research from the ground up and successfully ‘👗ed up as’ Anna Kingsford. Which puts you on equal 🦶ing. We must refer to you as an irregular Transcendent for the exact same reason we refer to Alice Anotherbible that way.”

“…”

“You can do it.” Kingsford made this point clear. “Both you and Aleister have accomplished so much, so I can ❌ fathom why you both insist on belittling yourselves at every turn… I am saying there is something only you can accomplish, Miss Sprengel. I can ❌ do it. No matter how unnecessarily ashamed you are of yourself, your 🪄 to 👗 up as someone else is something that never occurred to me. Using that to help others qualifies as praiseworthy service if you ask me, but do you disagree?”

Silence.

Eventually followed by a wet sound.

It was the sound of a sniffling nose.

“Don’t tell that fool.”

“Sigh. I really think it is ⌚ the world recognized your talents.”

“Don’t tell him.”

“As you wish.”

“Then come forth, Aiwass!! Come to me, the walking amplifier for my will that has a mind of its own!!”

“Took you long enough, my benevolent genius.”

Anna Sprengel and Anna Kingsford.

The long-held conflict between them had been resolved.

Now they stood side by side, wielding great magic to protect an innocent life.

===Part 6===

The massive bridge had clearly been bent by an impact from the side. Cracks ran through the asphalt, steel screws larger than golf balls popped forcefully from the metal beams, and the joints between the girders swelled upwards.

The black bass and bluegills seemed harmless at first, but even at 500g each, tens of thousands of them still amounted to a large weight.

With the most lovable face, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet only had to blow a kiss to control them all.

Good, Old Mary had already collapsed after taking one to the center of the chest.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet chose Aradia as her next target.

It didn’t matter that she was directly facing the Bologna Succubus right now.

She set her sights on the witch goddess who stood on the complex arrangement of metal beams used to distribute the bridge’s weight.

“Look!! The world’s most high-tech city will have any number of unloved creatures: black bass, bluegills, rats, stray cats, pigeons, and starlings to name a few. Now, false goddess, let’s see how you handle the love-starved laments of the unloved!!”

“Tch!!”

“''Hee hee☆ Or should I send the unloved humans your way''?”

As soon as Aradia stiffened, stopping her interception spell, a babbler soared sharply toward her unguarded flank. A direct hit would probably kill the wild bird, but it would go through its death throes while embedded deep inside the wound and its beak and feathers would spread contaminants around.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet stuck out her tongue.

But the night wind that reached her was no more than a night wind.

It did not carry a rusty scent.

“?”

Had it missed?

When the support from “resonating” with Alice Anotherbible should have acted as a ''tailwind'' for all her actions?

Even though simply firing blindly from the hip should have always hit the enemy?

Before Blodeuwedd the Bouquet could pursue that question, Vidhatri shouted from where she stood.

“2nd Saga!! Eliminate her now!”

“Hee hee.”

An alluring female face and limbs appeared in the dark night. She was around 18, at the midpoint between girlhood and womanhood.

But that was all that was visible.

The pieces floated separately. No, her torso had clearly been torn apart. It now contained strange hollow spaces. Had her human silhouette unraveled like bandages? Was it due to the thick ribbon that had been wrapped around her torso? The lights of the city were visible in the space beyond her partially eliminated body.

The space seemed somewhat distorted.

Or maybe it was a type of ''camouflage''.

Aradia faced this person who was strange even for a Transcendent. She had the face of a girl with short flaxen hair with the interior dyed bright blue.

“2nd Saga. Do you derive some special meaning from covering and hiding things?”

“I’ve always had trouble choosing just one thing. I never want to throw anything out, so my room always ends up a mess.”

Saga was a goddess from Norse mythology.

She was said to be extremely powerful and to manage the spring where Odin is gifted with poetry and wisdom.

But she is barely mentioned throughout all the Norse monuments and texts.

Barely anything is known about her other than that her home is called Sokkvabekkr.

Information on her was scarce.

She was a mysterious figure who is simply known to share drinks with the top Norse god.

This woman had gone out of here way to choose a god like that.

She had wanted to be her.

Aradia spat annoyed words with the yellow and black railroad crossing barrier in hand.

“If a single performer tries to forcibly dress up as multiple gods, the traits of the gods cancel each other out, diluting their presence. We normally have strict rules about what we can’t do if we want to stay in character and keep our costume authentic, but I didn’t expect one of us to take advantage of that fact.”

“By intentionally keeping a low profile, I can do things other gods can’t. I am not the star of the show. But if a tree or a bush does something they shouldn’t, the audience has no way of knowing if it was correct or not. This allows me to be a performer on the stage while also freeing me from the bonds of the script. I am the only one allowed to be myself.”

“…”

“I am the Transcendent ''who saves all the bit parts and understudies who never get any attention.'' I can’t look down on them if I’m to do that. I need to understand how they feel and be one of them first.”

She disappeared.

Did she unleash her skill to the point she became one with the air?

The bluish-white armor partially surrounding 2nd Saga’s limbs vanished into the air, causing what little of her skin and face were still visible to look unnaturally alluring.

The bright round skin of her face was like a device for giving off sex appeal.

The pupils of her blue eyes were colored an impossible bright red. Did she use a light-bending technique to pull that one off?

Even with her full body unraveled, the individual pieces were made of captivating feminine skin.

But if a member of the opposite sex were caught by her like this, it would probably break his mind.

The strange avant-garde woman sneered.

“My name is 2nd Saga, a fictional god created on the mischievous whim of the compiler. Which allows me to ''add on'' any magic I wish which is never actually found in Norse mythology. …Now, it is time you lost your one and only life. The divine curse – that is, the light of Brisingamen, necklace of infidelity – can even trigger a war between world-destroying kings. Do not assume an individual can escape that deadly fate!!”

It started at the center, where her chest had been.

The thick ribbon, which bound her skin and showed the city behind her, created a transparent distortion much like sugar water, which spilled beyond her outlines.

It forcibly gathered Aradia’s focus on a single point, much like having a finger jabbed between the eyes at close range.

Aradia sensed a definite deadliness in this unknown phenomenon.

Was she mistaken, or had that been the true trigger?

The impossible distortion became a large artillery shell that tore through the air.

This was an assassination spell.

It was guaranteed to take a life.

And the user could sidestep their own sin by saying they were only adoring the beautiful gold and jewels. The necklace brought doom, but it allowed the user to claim they didn’t know it was cursed and thought it was only a beautiful piece of jewelry. Was that to insure they would not be hit in the unlikely case that the curse was sent back the way it had come?

Aradia snorted with laughter.

The rails were laid out nicely, but it was all nonsense with no actual mythological basis. The sky is heaven, the gods shine bright, the workings of salvation and divine punishment, cats are capricious and dogs are loyal – by combining the common symbols found across cultures, anyone could fake apparent legitimacy.

Yes, this was faked.

''Her cosplay was sloppy.'' Gods were meant to draw a strict line between right and wrong, so they couldn’t accept – much less use – a loophole like this. A real god did not choose their words carefully for fear of backlash or controversy. Even the cruelest act could be written off as “divine punishment” if it was truly necessary.

And even if this curse would pursue Aradia to the ends of the Earth, there was only one thing she had to do.

“''There just have to be two Aradias''.”

“Wha-!?”

Immediately after 2nd Saga’s dumbfounded shock, the invisible curse tore itself apart with its own power.

The chilly moonlight shined on two identical people.

The black and yellow railroad crossing barriers resting on their shoulders crossed like swords mounted on a wall.

Aradia hadn’t actually done anything. The curse simply hadn’t been designed to handle an abnormal situation where two identical people existed. It was unable to deal with the situation it found, so the single shell attempted to pursue two targets at once, tearing itself apart from within.

It dissipated.

It disappeared.

“Don’t you dare call this cheating. This has always been our role – we’re the perfect performers. And it was all of you who created ''a second one'' and brought her here without even asking me.”

Right and left.

The identical Aradias launched wind magic that struck the formless Transcendent.

The tides were turning.

“…”

Vidhatri was dumbfounded.

But she wasn’t simply shocked that a Transcendent receiving a ''tailwind'' by “resonating” with Alice Anotherbible had been defeated by a Transcendent who had that link severed and was alone in the storm.

More than that…

“''Why did you have that idea just now''?”

“''What do you mean''?”

“It also doesn’t make sense that you avoided Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s initial attack. Even if there was a way for you to defeat 2nd Saga, it never should have occurred to you!! That kind of support comes from Alice. How did you break through the thought masking!?”

“I would assume conditions have changed somewhere away from here.”

“Tch!!”

Panic spread through the air, infecting the entire space.

Vidhatri seemed rushed by something unseen rather than her own will as she unspooled a lot of white thread and black hair from the ball-joint doll she wore on her back.

By intentionally omitting all mention of something, that spell let her erase anything she didn’t like from the small world set up around her. If she erased everything that could kill her, then no one could defeat her.

A moment later, a dull impact struck her cheekbone. Something flew in from the side and Vidhatri was launched spinning through the air. The impact permeated her. Before she could figure out what had happened, her ball-joint doll broke apart and her model-proportioned body soared over the pedestrian railing and toward the dark river below.

But Aradia hadn’t done anything.

“You were focused on the wrong person, dumbass.”

Aradia glanced over to see a small figure standing boldly atop a metal beam.

It was Anna Sprengel.

“Keh heh heh. Alice no longer rules this world. Worms, bow before me and beg for your pitiful lives. It wasn’t you who created the Shrink Drink – you needed Alice’s help for that. Yet all you worthless regular Transcendents had the nerve to look down on me and try to kill me!!!”

“Before she could figure out what had happened, huh?” the goddess of witches whispered in exasperation. “So Vidhatri could preemptively eliminate any threat, but she was defenseless against any threat that never occurred to her.”

If anything, that was a lot like the death of the immortal Norse god of light, Baldr. That similarity was ''not'' a case of cultural transmission between India and Europe. It was instead evidence of the Transcendents not actually being strictly bound to a single god or even a single mythology.

“Have you imagined your own fate yet, 2nd Saga?”

“Have you imagined your own fate yet, 2nd Saga?”

“!?”

Multiple beams of light flashed out at once.

The two Aradias held out their palms to launch projectile magic toward the figure leaping vigorously from beam to beam. The attacks actually hit 2nd Saga. It was hard to believe she had been so untouchable just a bit ago. She was knocked from the beam above to the bridge below.

Mut Thebes (who was on their side but had lost control of herself) had her drone carrier stopped by a three-legged object that appeared out of thin air. That was Good, Old Mary’s Tribikos.

The tides had turned in the blink of an eye.

The only one left was Blodeuwedd the Bouquet in her coat-like blast-resistant suit and naked apron.

Aradia approached her directly, the Bologna Succubus glared icily at her, and bloody Good, Old Mary slowly rose to her feet.

“Wai-”

The dull “thump!!” of pierced flesh rang out.

The Bologna Succubus had launched her sharp tail and caught Blodeuwedd the Bouquet in the shoulder.

Using a frontal attack with no tricks.

The force of the blow broke the iron-maiden-like blast-resistant suit and the double doors covered in metal panels fell to the asphalt. With her protection gone, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s bare skin was exposed to the frigid air while she scattered junk from her terrarium and UV LED lights. The night wind carried away the flower petals.

“This is already over,” said the Bologna Succubus.

Her voice was colder than it ever had been when that boy was present.

The naked apron girl backed away, but her legs tangled underneath her.

She fell like normal.

Her specialness was gone.

“You forgot about your salvation condition, you abandoned the people you should be saving, and you thought only of preserving your own power. And then you blamed Alice for it all. …So this is already over. You have nothing left. Nothing at all.”

“You’re going to win this...and take everything from me?”

With only her frilly apron left, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet held her wounded shoulder with the opposite hand and struggled to keep her breath.

The powerful sex appeal she gathered around her had dissipated, leaving behind only the fear of a small child.

“This is all we have. You can’t tell me the idea of losing your power doesn’t scare you.”

“I am a Transcendent. I choose who I should protect and then guard those people from the threat this world presents them. Which is why I abandoned my own identity to dress up as a god,” said Witch Goddess Aradia. “My salvation condition does not include myself. And I would never rob innocent people of their future just so I could keep my own shameful life.”

With a dull sound, the Transcendent ended things with the Transcendent.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was the last one.

There had been others, but they raised their hands in surrender when they saw the tides changing. That was about what you got with people who only worried about themselves.

But with Alice ''Anotherbible'' as an open-source example, more Transcendents could be created. Just like there were two Aradias here.

Remaking the city’s people into makeshift witches wasn’t an option here like it had been in Shibuya. If Academy City espers used magic, they would be harmed by the side effects and, if Alice wanted to, she could produce an unlimited supply of regular Transcendents. Those would be literally a grade above.

Any victories won fighting on the outer edges would only be temporary. And with only limited numbers to work with, they wouldn’t last if they were forced to fight the same battles over and over.

“This was no more than an opening skirmish,” said Anna Sprengel despite understanding that.

She was another host and open-source example who differed greatly from the Alice line.

They couldn’t stop here.

“Our real target is Alice. This rioting doesn’t end until she’s been stopped. The Queen of Hearts and Executioner waiting near Alice could easily be more powerful than the regular Transcendents.”

“If you have the time, could you deal with her too? Mut Thebes is shooting off ‘fireworks’ like this is some kind of party, so it would be great if you could bring that idiot back to her senses!!”

“Oh? Silly girl, are you sure you don’t want to take a video first?”

The giant white ship shook.

She must have been freed from the unseen physics that could be seen as Alice’s ''tailwind''.

Mut Thebes must have absorbed the weapon’s shadow, but where exactly was she attached to it?

“Bff!? Wait, wait, I’ll be good.”

“Finally come to your senses? Then take a look at the collapsed city around you. I can’t wait to see what kind of excuse you can come up with while dripping with sweat, God of Partying.”

“But if my partying was enough to destroy an entire city by accident, doesn’t that make me a super powerful goddess? And since we can all see how ultra-cute I am, can’t I get off the hook with a quick: ‘Oopsie. Tee hee’?”

“Good, Old Mary, use your Tribikos to step on that god of destruction, ship and all. It’s January, so dunking her to the bottom of the river ought to cool her head.”

Aradia icily passed judgment, but then a cracking voice came over the ship’s speakers.

“Oh, and the drone carrier’s antenna picked something up,” said Mut Thebes.

“?”

“It wasn’t encrypted or anything, so it was a lot like a radio transmission. Maybe it’s best to say this is being sent out all over the place. They might have been hoping we would pick it up. It’s being transmitted from ''a prison in District 10'' and it says it’s about Alice Pleasance Liddell.”

===Part 7===

After seeing off the little magician who had freed herself from her self-made bonds, Anna Kingsford sighed all on her own.

The end was nigh.

“Now, then.”

(I need to prepare for my part in this.)

===Part 8===

There were no subjective symptoms.

Kamijou wasn’t even allowed any obvious pain or bleeding.

Then was this a delirium or hallucination caused by all the stress he was under?

Except there was something there.

With each step he took down the long hallway, he heard a sound like thin threads snapping inside him. Like the creaking of bone or the beating of his heart, these were delicate sounds that shouldn’t have been audible outside his body.

He had heard on some trivia show that the simple action of walking concentrated a lot of weight and force on the leg bones. If that was true, then his body could no longer keep up with his movement. His insides were already breaking down to that extent.

Death.

The unavoidable destruction of the self.

Alice apparently wanted to ask Index if there was a way to heal him.

But Kamijou already knew the answer.

This was different from any of the previous times.

Or rather, this wasn’t a one-off failure. Everything he had done had pushed him too far. He was finally paying the price for it all. No one could escape the consequences of their own actions.

The end was nigh.

And it was only now that Kamijou realized something.

In a battle so severe, why hadn’t he noticed anything amiss? His survival this long had been the unnatural part.

“Hm, hm, hm☆”

Alice Anotherbible skipped out ahead of him.

She turned back, her skirt lifting disconcertingly high.

“C’mon, teacher. Everyone’s here now, so you need to hurry. Good or bad, you wouldn’t want it to end without ever learning the answer, would you?”

“…”

That was the opinion of someone watching from the outside.

It was clearly missing the viewpoint of the person on the verge of learning if their death was unavoidable.

They did not arrive at a normal classroom.

That was the door to the library.

That should have made for a poor prison. A solid kick would probably break open the sliding door and the outside windows were probably ordinary glass.

But since Alice had chosen this location, it was probably impossible to open from inside. Even with the knowledge of 103,001 grimoires at your disposal.

The door opened.

From the outside, it was surprisingly easy.

Kamijou doubted that was Imagine Breaker’s doing. He probably just had Alice’s permission.

“Touma!”

He heard a familiar voice.

She wasn’t bound with packing tape or zip ties. The windows and door were not reinforced. But there was definite relief on her face. That was the look of someone who just saw the thick door to their prison cell open.

And her smile froze in place.

The pure white sister was not concerned by Alice and H.T. Trismegistus’s presence. She was clearly looking at something else. The boy could tell that even with the mixture of truth, lies, and hallucination in his head.

“No...what is that?”

Her eyes widened because of Kamijou.

She had already detected something out of the ordinary.

Whether Alice was aware of that or not, she spoke in her childlike way.

“Okay, teacher. Ask her!”

The young butler clearly knew what was coming and struggled to suppress a grin.

Malicious words and actions were not the only way to hurt people.

Because he was bound by common sense, H.T. Trismegistus would never hurl abuse himself. The look on his face seemed to say there was no law against silence.

“I...won’t.”

“You have to,” said Alice.

“There’s no reason to force her to give an answer!!”

“Leaving the question unanswered solves nothing. Stopping here only lets the problem grow worse with time. She has 103,001 grimoires. With so much knowledge from all around the world available to her, the girl just knows she can find a way to heal you!!”

Was it even possible?

Had it been definitively proven, or was it only a theory?

Alice didn’t care about that.

It could be the geocentric theory, phlogiston, an ancient nuclear war, or that dinosaur farts caused the ice age. Of course, it could also be something accurate like universal gravitation or quantum theory. Accurate or not, if a theory had ever been proposed – if someone had thought it up and put together the logic behind it – she could build a bridge to it. She could choose ''whichever theories she wanted'' and link to them to wholly change the world. She was the ultimate conversion device. She could place Yamatai anywhere she liked, she could invent a perpetual motion machine of the first kind to produce unlimited energy, or she could remake the spherical Earth into a flat disk.

So there just had to be a single section in the more than 10 thousand grimoires.

Just one passage.

Even a single line would do.

No matter how absurd or difficult to achieve it was.

Alice could easily activate it and save Kamijou.

''But.

''Even then.

Index did not give a yes or no answer.

She kept her silence.

That was enough of an answer. If she wasn’t willing to say it out loud, she didn’t need to.

Her attempt at kindness was ineffective.

The verdict had been given.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Death.

That was the only option left.

Kamijou did not weep or rage.

He even forgot to fall to the floor.

In a way, he abandoned his humanity.

He simply stood there, stock still.

“Hu…man.”

Othinus’s quiet voice was enough for his head to wobble.

There was nothing there.

It wasn’t even emptiness that filled his mind.

He felt a heat surrounding him.

He simply stood there, forgetting even to collapse.

There was no way to save him.

The world had not developed that far.

It was underdeveloped.

People had studied what they liked and technology had branched off into countless directions, but never in this one.

The world didn’t care.

Time would continue on like normal even after he was gone.

And…

“Then let’s destroy it,” said a young voice.

Alice Anotherbible sounded the same as ever.

No, her voice sounded dried out.

Terrifyingly so.

This wasn’t part of the plan.

She sounded like her surprise party plan had fallen apart.

“We have our answer. And if this world can’t save you, teacher, than the girl is going to destroy it. The girl heard what you said, so she knows this world wouldn’t still be here if not for you. So it’s only fair the world goes away when you do, don’t you think?”

“Wait! Don’t, Touma!!” sharply shouted Index.

The knowledge of her grimoires must have told her Alice could do exactly what she claimed. And that she would do it the instant Kamijou gave her some kind of sign.

He would never do that under normal circumstances.

But it was wrong to assume he would behave normally now that he knew he would lose everything.

y/n.

The available options had been narrowed down as far as possible.

The fate of the world hinged on this one question.

“I do not agree.” H.T. Trismegistus finally spoke up, his shoulders shaking as he didn’t even bother to suppress his chuckling. “Destroying the world for a single individual is wrong. Maybe if this would save his life, but you should not destroy humanity if all you are doing is lashing out. Some might consider it moving, but common sense says it is not a benevolent act.”

Alice’s eyes widened like dinner plates.

And she lowered her voice.

“''H. T. Trismegistus''.”

“As you can see…”

The young butler raised his hands and kept speaking, undaunted.

He didn’t seem to care that the invisible muzzle of death was pressed unsteadily against his brow.

“I can tell Alice what common sense says, but I have no real way of stopping her. This is ultimately between you and her. No, make your own choice, Kamijou Touma. You cannot rely on Another Bible here and not even all the world’s grimoires contain a means of saving you. So what will you choose in the final moments now that your death is assured?”

Othinus gasped and looked up from his shoulder.

She was the only person who had just about achieved a perfect victory against Kamijou Touma.

She knew this ending.

She knew this dead end.

Because the one-eyed war god had intentionally set up a situation just like this to kill the boy when he refused to give up no matter what else she tried.

“I see what you’re doing. Hey, human, don’t listen to-!!”

“Yes, you could go crying to Alice and have her take the world out with you. In fact, you needn’t even say a word. If you remain silent, she might just be considerate enough to do it on her own. But common sense tells me that Alice’s ''only'' motivation is making you happy. ''So you could eliminate Alice’s motivation by taking your own life before she destroys the world on your behalf.'' You will die soon regardless, so why not move up the timetable just a bit to save so many people?”

Mere moments before H.T. Trismegistus completed his encircling argument, someone kicked down the library door from the outside.

With no difficulty.

“Fool.”

It was easy to miss by how easily it happened, but this should have been an unavoidable critical hit. Kamijou’s path should have ended.

But it hadn’t.

Because someone wouldn’t let it.

You could develop an attack specialized for a single individual, but that individual didn’t need to fight alone.

Just by setting foot in here, little Anna Sprengel had accomplished what no one else could.

She was probably the only person in the world not affected by Alice’s madness.

She deflected it.

And that villain mercilessly stomped her way into Alice’s territory.

No one could stop her.

“Hmph. So only I made it this far in? I feel a little bad leaving Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the others stuck fighting an endless battle. You basically asked us to come and even showed us the way, but then you drove your guests away? When you think about it, that’s hilariously pathetic.”

“You?”

“You haven’t figured it out yet, you gloomy microdick? You should have known better than to trust your assumptions from the moment you couldn’t kill me with the Shrink Drink filled with Alice’s power.”

Anna chuckled and Othinus gave her a look more of exasperation than admiration.

“I see. So if you had actually killed that shitty villain, we wouldn’t be dealing with this nonsense about her ''outdoing Alice''.”

“Are you saying the world switched rails back then?” asked Index.

“That’s right, you dregs of a god and you pathetic loafer,” said Anna, giving Othinus and Index a scornful look. Then she spread her little hands. “The fool changed things. He moved many people’s hearts with his own actions rather than having Alice cheat for him. I did not achieve this miracle on my own. Don’t you think the first person to receive its blessings should be the one who worked so hard to make it happen?”

Yes.

No one had invited Anna. She did not have Alice’s permission. That meant she had faced Alice’s madness without fear, repelled it, and forced her own actions through.

She faced that tremendous charisma without being engulfed.

She had the brand name of the mystery woman behind the founding of the world’s largest magic cabal.

This villain carried a legend of equal value.

“Honestly. You always let everyone push you around when it comes to Alice, fool. Do you seriously believe in the nice-sounding but scientifically-baseless and perverted jinx that the unclouded eyes of young children reflect truths the adults have long forgotten? If you ask me, you should learn to ignore it all as ''the words of an ignorant little kid''.”

“Anna…?”

“You might die, fool.”

Kamijou’s breath caught in his throat.

The thick invisible wall once more intruded on the ordinary scene around him.

Death.

The end.

It was approaching second by second, yet he felt no pain. Like a cruel time bomb with the LCD screen omitted.

What was wrong with feeling fear?

But Anna wasn’t done talking.

“I said ‘might’. None of this is set in stone, but Alice is acting like it’s 100% going to happen. Why?”

Othinus caught on first.

Almost like the thought had been unnaturally blocked until now.

“Oh, I get it. Everyone would prefer the opposite outcome, but she was enjoying telling everyone that he was definitely going to die.”

“It’s simple really. What did a certain monster need to do for him to drop his guard and let her in? What about showing him a greater threat so she doesn’t seem so bad? Just like I came off as a harmless companion when faced with the greater threats of CRC and Alice. But there is no threat greater at present than the Anotherbible. So a certain someone suggested the fool’s death.”

“Wait.”

“You should already know the answer. Alice Anotherbible only gets so assertive when it comes to Kamijou Touma. In a way, this is to be expected since I imprinted the fool’s past actions in her mind.”

It wasn’t her fault she had been deceived.

Anyone that little villain took advantage of already had an opening in them.

Or you could call it a vulnerability.

She could not create something from nothing. She pried open a small existing hole and then controlled them as she saw fit.

She was a reasonable but contemptible miracle-worker.

“The central factor for her has always been loneliness. Yes, I am the one who deceived her. Wherever she came from, I know the current Alice Anotherbible’s mind better than you.”

So?

What was that supposed to mean?

What was she imagining when she said that?

A cold sweat poured from Kamijou’s body.

For a brief moment, even his very real fear of death vanished from his mind.

“Hold on!! You’re not making sense. Alice means no harm. For better or for worse, what you see is what you get with her. Wasn’t that our initial assumption here? She can’t set people up, plot out some grand plan, or any other intellectual stuff like that!!”

“True,” agreed H.T. Trismegistus. “She is too powerful to do anything of the sort. Common sense says that someone capable of killing a dinosaur with a barehanded punch would never even think of inventing a gun, correct?”

“Shut up, you gloomy butler. And, fool, remind me who you came here to save?”

Anna sounded exasperated.

That was their initial assumption.

Kamijou had said that himself, but he had somehow forgotten it.

“I thought that issue had nothing to do with whether or not you will survive.”

“…”

He wanted to rescue Index and save Alice too.

That was why he had decided to fight Alice. That had been his initial objective.

And yet.

Why was he now seeking salvation from Alice?

Alice was the same as always. She was alive and well. It didn’t matter that her head had been crushed by Rosencreutz.

So shouldn’t he be rejoicing?

Shouldn’t he be weeping and laughing while hugging Alice?

Why was he being driven into a dead end?

''When had his objective been replaced?

''Who had caused that switch?

No.

…But…

It couldn’t be? Could it?

“Fool. I agree that Alice isn’t calculating enough to put together a long-term plan to fool people. Even telling her to ‘sit’ or ‘stay’ in front of a feast wouldn’t last very long. She may only be honestly saying what she believes to be right.”

That was a weirdly indirect phrasing.

Which suggested that phrasing was somehow necessary.

Othinus gave a snort.

“Yeah, I thought that was strange for a grimoire library whose job is to provide answers. Is this why she hesitated to give a response? Because she couldn’t easily reach a yes or no answer?”

The white nun, who was the polar opposite of the villain, spoke up quietly.

“But if Alice’s mind is too badly broken to tell what is and isn’t accurate, she might not be doing the right thing. Touma, you can’t trust that the things she tells you are accurate.”

Everyone’s eyes gathered on a single point.

Even H.T. Trismegistus, who had been taking advantage of the situation.

They heard a creaking sound.

Sounds like thick, straining leather came from within the girl as she hung her head.

“Those magicians could not change the world the way they wanted, nor could they follow their own rules after coming up with lofty salvation conditions,” said Anna Sprengel in a singsong way. “It probably was pure chance that very average group discovered the artificial miracle that is Alice Anotherbible before they began dressing up as gods. But they realized something.”

“…”

“In a mishmash of fiction and reality, a real girl had been remade into the storybook Alice and the storybook Alice had been created in the real world. They extracted a portion of those ‘plans’ and applied it to themselves. By customizing themselves as they liked with pieces of the preexisting open-source spell, they could abandon their individuality to dress up as any god or demon with extraordinary precision.”

The Transcendents really had transformed themselves that way.

At the cost of their own individuality.

For the Bridge Builders Cabal, the ''Anotherbible'' was a priceless text, but Alice was no more than a target of their worship. So they feared her and respected her, but they did everything they could to avoid third parties contacting her.

What had that lonely girl really wanted?

Or, more accurately, who?

“I see,” said Othinus on Kamijou’s shoulder. Sounding somewhat exasperated. “''This human was perfect for the role.'' I see now why that little monster was so obsessed with him.”

“Alice Pleasance Liddell listened to Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, the prototype for it all, and was the one clear model for the protagonist. But in a later era, she was abducted by a ‘Teacher of Crowley’ and thoroughly modified to create the Alice seen in the story.”

Little Anna herself proved that one’s apparent age wasn’t necessarily reliable.

Even if she was already an adult when she was abducted, the magician would have made the necessary adjustments. Very physical adjustments using a scalpel and saw. It may have taken cutting through bone, sewing together skin, and rearranging organs, but they would have kept working and adjusting until she had the exact same height and adorable appearance as the fictional girl.

That could not have been an enjoyable experience.

But after being freed from the mystery magician and finding a place in the center of the Bridge Builders Cabal, Alice had not been able to live the innocent life of the storybook. Even though she was already free and more powerful than anyone. She had given up on any life other than fulfilling other people’s interests.

And she really had become an innocent child.

She probably wasn’t even aware of her own humiliation and resignation.

Anna sighed softly and dug into the ugly side of humanity.

That was something Kamijou couldn’t do.

This was a territory only allowed for a worldwide villain.

She would carry the burden of everyone’s ire as she revealed the necessary truth.

“A parent who values logic has no dreams to share with their child.

“When Mathematician Lewis Carroll later began creating the world’s greatest fantasy, he laid out symbols and meanings, discovered a special child, and used her as a model to tell the prototype of it all: Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.

“A self-proclaimed Teacher of Crowley saw value in you as no more than the one and only specimen to know of the uncorrected original version, so they remade you by rearranging everything from your bones to your organs into the optimal color, shape, and size.

“When the Bridge Builders Cabal ‘rediscovered’ the girl still wandering in the shadows of the modern world, they only saw you as an open-source spell of great power. They feared and respected you in something more like worship than anything.”

And so the girl had been craving more.

Starving for it.

It mattered little if it was a conscious or subconscious thing.

Alice was always surrounded by so many people, but none of them were really looking at her.

Her reputation had preceded her.

With one exception.

There was one boy who did not want her power as a Transcendent, had rejected the “happiness” brought by her ultimate power, and faced her with nothing but his own fist no matter how many times he was killed.

It all began there.

Like dreaming of something from a storybook, a certain girl had thought that was her last chance there.

So she wanted it no matter what.

“Touma, stand back.”

“Ah.”

“Stand back! Now!!”

Hesitantly, Kamijou got his voice out from his parched and trembling mouth.

While asking himself what it was he was so afraid of.

“Al...ice?”

“Yes?”

''The girl raised her head.

''Except she no longer had anything above her neck.

===Part 9===

Aradia had finally caught up.

She walked through the high school’s front gate, setting foot inside its grounds.

Or so she thought.

“Tch!!”

She immediately swung her black and yellow railroad crossing barrier and was answered with a dull crack. It suddenly broke at about the middle. Even with the power of the goddess of witches, she was forced back.

Good, Old Mary, who was woozy from blood loss, muttered quietly.

“It looks like a rabbit, but it doesn’t have a watch. It must be the March Hare from the tea party.”

“One of the Alice Series!?”

The flamingo bats. The hedgehogs.

The Gryphon, the Executioner, the Cook.

These were Alice’s raw and unstoppable toys which magicians had not yet turned into tools.

They seemed to be fighting as two opposing armies, but here it looked like the enemy of your enemy wasn’t your friend. The flamingo bats and hedgehogs would sometimes attack the Transcendents without provocation, so they couldn’t be trusted.

The March Hare had apparently attacked just now, but which side was he on?

For that matter, why were different monsters born from Alice fighting each other in the first place!?

“What are we supposed to do?” asked the Bologna Succubus.

“We should have Good, Old Mary stay back. We shouldn’t rely too heavily on her resurrection, but we shouldn’t waste her by sending her up against an even more dangerous enemy either!!”

The school was a rather large place.

Where was that boy?

And while they were only regular ones, it was strange that a group of several Transcendents couldn’t get past this one position.

They supposedly each wielded strange spells capable of taking on the entire magic side single-handedly.

The Gryphon, the Executioner, the bipedal hare, and the Cook throwing irons and pots.

They were all Alice’s toys with their origins in Wonderland.

But while they were only toys, they had been directly injected with a portion of Alice’s power. As seen with the Shrink Drink, that power made these far from your normal foe.

Ultimately, the Bridge Builders Cabal did not exist for Alice.

It was the result of the regular Transcendents, who sought and feared her great power, struggling to find some way of managing her.

All on her own, Alice was more powerful than countless armies.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and Mut Thebes.

Those four Transcendents gathering here was no problem at all for Alice. She probably hadn’t even decided to fight against the Transcendents. This could be seen in how the toys continued fighting each other instead of driving out the intruders.

“By the way, where did Anna get off to!?” asked Aradia.

“Did that slut use mama and the rest of you as bait for these pain-in-the-ass opponents while she went on ahead? She did, didn’t she?”

They said nothing more.

First, they sensed a great pressure. Only a moment later did they feel the powerful tremor in the ground.

It was Dinah the cat.

The fluffy white and black beast had grown larger than the gym, so a single step caused the entire space to shake. The flamingo bats and hedgehogs ran around in a panic and the Gryphon failed to get away in time and had its front leg crushed underfoot.

It didn’t matter if they were on Alice’s side.

And the culprit – Dinah – wasn’t even aware she had done it.

She was the greatest force in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

She carried such great firepower that the mice and birds who caused Alice so much trouble had fled at the mere mention of her name.

If this really was her, then she might cause destruction greater than Alice intended for.

That meant there was a risk of her crushing the entire school building with Kamijou and Alice inside.

Which was exactly what happened.

With her back to the school building, Aradia briefly froze up, so the Bologna Succubus had to flap her bat wings and tackle Aradia from the side to send them both tumbling across the ground. A gust of wind blew past them like a subway train had passed by nearby. That thing was much too large for anyone human-sized to take a direct hit from it. Aradia didn’t have time to celebrate her survival. She roared up toward the heavens while still tangled up with the Bologna Succubus.

That was the most prized of Alice’s toys.

Deadly Dinah.

Only one Transcendent could hope to battle that giant that rivaled a school gym in size.

“Mut Thebes, stop that thing immediately!!”

“It is too soon for me to attack. Wait 15 minutes for me to absorb enough shadows to create a body that can safely face the cat.”

Aradia’s eyes widened.

Mut Thebes wasn’t going to be any help.

Dinah was charging head-first toward the school building.

And just before she crashed into it, a deafening roar rang out.

Dinah was knocked rolling back, gouging large pieces of dirt out of the schoolyard and sending tons of dust into the air. It made no sense. There was no thick barrier there and no steel warship had appeared.

There was only a single human silhouette.

It looked downright minuscule compared to Dinah, who was large enough to look down at the gym.

Nevertheless, it was Dinah whose max-speed charge had been repelled, sending her rolling backwards.

“Wha-?”

Aradia was speechless.

This wasn’t even a Transcendent.

“Honestly.”

A voice came from the cloud of dust.

Aradia’s group did not recognize the voice. But the female voice inspired a compulsion that prevented even the Transcendents from taking it lightly.

“Alice Anotherbible has fallen apart more than I 💭. All of these things are a 🧩 of her – they are the many opinions she has ❌ been able to reconcile. I did ❌ expect her to be so overwhelmed with emotion that she nearly crushed her own 🏰 with her inside.”

This was Anna Kingsford.

The magician stood there on her own two feet without borrowing anyone’s appearance or abilities.

A moment later, the dirt thrown high into the sky was pulled back down by gravity.

It was like a dry rain.

Kingsford casually directed her index finger skyward and something invisible became a large umbrella. She alone was left without a speck of dust in her hair or on her clothes.

Something sliced sharply through the dusty veil.

It was a flamingo bat and the Cook.

Both sides of the conflict arrived at once.

Kingsford extended a single finger and drew out a few patterns in empty air.

They were constellations.

Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces.

The sharp sound was a moment delayed.

A scattershot of compressed water tore through the Cook like a cookie cutter through dough. When her blue-glowing fingertip turned toward the flamingo bat, the bat began to tremble while hovering in the air. Despite being inorganic, it clearly shrank two sizes.

The basics of astrology were to assign various elements and symbols to the 7 planets and 12 constellations of the horoscope and then experiment to see what effects were produced on yourself and others when they were applied from different angles and combinations. There were even tricky ways of building them into attack spells.

So by combining only the water element constellations, you could greatly amplify the power of ordinary water.

Instead of simple addition, it worked through multiplication, so it was like shifting up a gear in a car.

That expert did not bother coming up with impressive special attacks.

By earnestly working at the basic fundamentals that anyone could do and that novices tended to look down on, any magic could be brought to the point of a one-hit kill.

But none of that was particularly important.

For one, that wouldn’t be enough to kill Dinah.

“I will ❌ let you destroy the things you care about, Alice. That would be much too 😢 to see. I assure you on my name as an expert, being special does ❌ cut you off from the supply of ☺️.”

Just then…

“…?”

Anna Kingsford looked down at her right hand.

A red liquid was dripping from it.

She only had a slight cut on her fingertip, but the amount of blood was not the issue.

She shouldn’t have been harmed at all in that situation.

That expert never made mistakes.

So if something unexpected occurred regardless, it meant the problem was with the initial data she was working with, not her calculations.

In other words…

“Is this body reaching its limit?” she whispered, holding her fingertip in her mouth.

Her voice itself was a lot “rougher” than it had been when she was first booted up in Shibuya’s Miyashita Ark. It wasn’t limited to her outward appearance. This proved the injury and deterioration was also progressing where it couldn’t be seen.

She didn’t show the slightest hint of fear as she looked out ahead.

In fact, she took a step forward.

The cat large enough to crush the gym rose to her feet again.

Kingsford couldn’t continue on and leave this with the regular Transcendents. She had never figured out how to pick and choose who she saved.

These were Alice’s raw toys, which had yet to be turned into easy-to-use tools like the Shrink Drink. And this cat was the greatest of them. She was a mass of violence and destruction that wouldn’t bat an eye as she trampled all the other toys.

Dinah.

The expert faced the cat head on, holding the brim of her large hat between her fingertips.

She doubted her body would last to the end.

For that matter, it was unnatural for a preserved corpse like her to be moving around at all.

(But I can accept that.)

So she decided on a more realistic goal: injuring Dinah enough to create an opening or weak point the Transcendents could take advantage of to defeat Dinah on their own.

The expert knew her doom was closing in on her, but she still spoke with her usual smile.

“⌚ to serve others.”

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW5.png|thumb]]

===Part 10===

She was a headless girl.

A little corpse.

Yet she was also standing up and looking at Kamijou.

He distinctly felt the pressure of her gaze.

The atmosphere in the library changed. The scales were rapidly tilting in a direction he did not like at all.

“!?”

Without thinking, he stepped back away from her.

This was an expression of malice that shouldn’t have been necessary.

Which proved it had been intentional.

It was true after all.

No matter how you looked at it, the center of the problem was right there.

It always had been.

Kamijou pushed past the fear of death he knew was coming and shouted.

“Alice!!”

He heard a sound like tearing cardboard.

No, not like. The headless girl really did tear down the center. And something else emerged, sticky with a translucent fluid.

This had happened before.

But this was not the little girl dressed in profane red and black leather.

This form could never have fit in that small body.

But she wasn’t accepting questions.

At the top of the vertical tear, near where the head should have been, an arm jutted straight up, but this arm belonged to a captivatingly beautiful woman. With a splat, she collapsed forward to crawl like a dog. The translucent slime left behind strings that stained the floor. She squirmed like a fluffy red boa. The leather bound her bright, wet body more tightly than necessary and her long blonde hair was so wet it writhed on the ground as a single clump. After instantly becoming a woman of about 18, she crawled forward and swung her head upwards. The wet hair covering her face swung back behind her, revealing her beautiful face.

“Touma!!”

Alice Anotherbible.

Or maybe Alice Pleasance Liddell.

Her true form.

“Did you use yourself as the ingredients to recreate the ideal version of yourself?” said Othinus in disgust.

Alice worked her alluring throat to release growls and her fingers scratched at the floor like an animal with sharp and sinister claws. She could not have been farther removed from reason, intelligence, and innocent adorableness.

Violence.

Battle.

Killing.

That was all she was.

She shined with the same light as a sword that had had been made so deadly it gained an odd beauty.

The fear of death was gone.

Even that thick invisible wall had vanished.

Kamijou felt a tingling in the back of his head. With the sharp claws, the large canine teeth emerging from her lips, and the fearsome light in her eyes, he knew there was so much he needed to focus on, yet he couldn’t read even a hint of deadliness from her. But he knew this wasn’t Alice doing anything special. His own mind had numbed the fear. Because if he accurately understood the threat here, his heart would stop of its own accord. His heart would raise the white flag before his mind did.

The animal rose to her feet.

The fully grown body of an alluringly beautiful woman straightened her legs and stood up like she had only just remembered she could.

She took a fighting stance.

“Teacher…”

That one word created a distortion.

But not in Alice. The bookcases, the reading desks, the floor, the walls, and everything else Kamijou could see looked like a child had scribbled out their outlines in white and black.

“The girl…wants…only one goal. She will…have this…no matter…matter what.”

He could have understood if she said she would kill him just for fun.

Or if she said she deeply resented him.

Even if she said she would destroy the world based on some inscrutable logic, he might have decided that made sense for someone so very different.

But.

“The girl wants...to make up...with you.”

Everything froze.

Inside Kamijou Touma, time ground to a halt.

Was that it.

Was that really and truly all there was to it?

At the Bridge Builders Cabal consulate in District 12, Kamijou and Alice had disagreed over her attempted punishment of H.T. Trismegistus, who had tried to kill him, and Good, Old Mary, who had failed to protect him.

CRC had killed her and she had regained her lost head.

She had driven the world mad and might destroy it as soon as tomorrow.

But this had never changed.

She only wanted to mend that broken bond.

No matter what it took.

Even if her methods were seen as unfair.

That little girl didn’t care. Kamijou should have bowed his head and apologized, but he had completely forgotten after learning about his imminent death.

Nevertheless, she was trying to achieve it on her own, even if it meant dirtying her hands.

So they could smile together again.

“So.”

It all took a turn.

Her behavior was distorted.

Only in Alice’s mind did it all fit together smoothly.

“The girl will make up with you. She will fight you because a serious fight allows people to make up. But it has to be serious, so what can the girl do to get you to fight her? This city, this country, and this world can wait. It has to be serious. The girl understands you, teacher, so she knows you will fight her and make up with her.”

She said it all in a terribly ''drawn out'' and flat, emotionless voice. Her emotions were so intense it was all destroyed, like the recording medium itself was being burned from below by a lighter.

Alice probably really could do that.

And what would happen?

Would the world really end over this?

Maybe Alice could no longer make logical connections between the different pieces of data.

Kamijou had thoroughly broken that girl’s mind.

Issues of right and wrong or like and dislike were trivial at this point. They would no longer provide a dividing line between enemy and ally. This wasn’t like mantises that were programmed so the female would always eat the male. Perhaps it was closer to spiders where the female would sometimes suddenly leap at and devour the male in the middle of the male’s courtship display. Even with the same species facing each other one-on-one, and even with the male expressing his love and the female accepting it, she might mercilessly devour him on a whim. She would only realize she had done it after the fact. You couldn’t predict what would happen even a second into the future with a being like that.

She was such a close but distant being.

She was different.

She was a predator beautifully made by stretching out the muscles, laying out the nerves, hardening the bones.

Kamijou didn’t find her frightening anymore.

He felt sorrow instead.

“Stand back, fool,” coldly insisted Anna Sprengel.

The look she gave Alice was unusual for that villain.

Alice was another irregular Transcendent – another open-source path to power – but one who would never stand on the same side as Anna. Anna gave her a look of pity.

“You understand, don’t you? She’s a lot like an unstable animal. If you approach her now, she might turn you to mincemeat without even meaning to. In the worst case, she might decide that, if she can’t have you alive, she will tear off your head and take that away with her.”

Kamijou shook his head.

Would he battle Alice?

And defeat her?

“I can’t do that.”

This wasn’t about the size of the threat. He couldn’t picture it. It felt wrong. He wanted to trust in that part of himself.

He recalled that giant dragon.

When he had punched CRC away and given up on his possibilities, he had felt a disgusting sensation.

A future where he and CRC could stand side-by-side smiling had been lost. Kamijou had made sure of it.

And the fear caused by his prophesied death made him feel this way all the more.

Would he use that against Alice this time?

Like hell he would.

“Because I can’t save Alice that way. Isn’t there some other way!?”

Index and her 103,001 grimoires were here. So was Othinus, who had once been a Magic God. Not to mention Anna Sprengel, who was familiar with Rosicrucianism and the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Combining those three’s knowledge could reveal a way of saving Alice.

But…

“That really depends on your definition of ‘save’,” said Othinus. “Human, would you really be saving her if you grabbed that oversized head and shoved it back inside the small body? Back inside that shed skin?”

She was a god who had once destroyed the world and been pursued by all of humanity as a great criminal.

That Magic God was saying this about ''another monster capable of ending the world''.

She said it clearly, without averting her gaze from reality.

This was nothing as over-the-top as saving humanity or protecting the world.

It was a more personal miracle.

But she was speaking to the boy who really had risked his life to save a lonely god.

“You are here, human. So make your own choice. This here is the real Alice. She isn’t pure or innocent, but if the world can accept her this way, that would be one way of saving her.”

“Oh,” said Kamijou, sounding exasperated.

He just had to bring Alice back to her senses.

He kept that in mind while ignoring the issue of how difficult that would be to actually pull off.

“So if I risk my life, a path opens up?”

That was the best news he’d heard all day.

In that instant, an explosion erupted out.

Something twisted and scattered around right in front of his eyes. It took him a moment to realize they were fake roses.

Or that he would have been decapitated if not for them.

Alice had attacked.

He didn’t know why.

It was possible she didn’t either.

She was a captivatingly beautiful monster, but she was not a villain.

He had to believe that.

How deadly she looked had nothing to do with whether she was good or bad. She would bare her fangs whether it was right or wrong and whether she liked you or not. She was an unstable collection of power with only that function.

So he couldn’t falter.

He couldn’t turn Alice into a monster. He couldn’t accept that conclusion.

“Fool, the rose is a symbol of change. This applies to the Golden brooch that can create any sigil through the orderly arrangement of the 22 Hebrew letters and it applies to white and red roses colored with paint in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. ''By forcibly altering the interpretation and building a bridge,'' I can divert at least one of her attacks.”

Anna Sprengel stared straight ahead as she said this, but she had a red wound running across her cheek.

That had only been a villain’s trickery.

Kamijou couldn’t expect it to work forever.

But he should be plenty thankful it had worked at all in this real confrontation.

And while deflecting the attack was all well and good, he had no idea what Alice had done even after being on the receiving end of her attack.

The animal roared loud.

“Oooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Was that magic?

It was an apocalyptic roar.

A great energy grounded in something other than intelligence and reason spiraled out. The roar reflected off the walls and floor before gathering unnaturally on a single point in space.

Anna swept her little hand from left to right.

That was all it took for a thick shockwave to bend like a bow and knock over a few bookcases.

It was actually Alice who paused for a beat.

With her right hand still jabbing out with the fingers together. Perhaps that would have knocked off Kamijou’s head and then stabbed through his corpse’s heart before it could even fall to the floor.

''Slap!!

Little Anna, who would look better than anyone delivering a double slap, sent another attack sweeping up from below.

This may have been a first.

Alice Anotherbible’s attack wasn’t deflected or redirected – it was stopped from head on by an attack of equal power.

“Kh.”

“Why do you look so surprised?”

The little villain grinned and exchanged a glare with Alice at close range. Anna accepted Alice’s gaze without trying to escape.

She was a Transcendent not based on Alice.

She was another irregular Transcendent.

“Did you think you were special? There’s no such thing in the world of magic. I’m a magician who dressed up as Kingsford so I could stop my foolish students from ignoring my teaching and attempting self-destructive magic. I built my secret art from the ground up with the hands I had bloodied attempting to protect those lovable fools. Did you really think my way was inferior to the secret art you were simply given and have no real use for!?”

Alice’s hand was fully deflected.

She spun around, her partially-retracted arm blurring into streamlines. She chose a new target to attack. Index was chosen first, so Kamijou shoved the nun out of the way.

Fingers capable of tearing through steel rushed toward Kamijou.

Flashes of light intersected like a cross.

The fingers and claws sent horizontally toward Kamijou’s throat were stopped at the last second by an extremely thin blade.

Courtesy of H.T. Trismegistus.

No…

“My right hand contains Zeus. My left hand contains Indra. Thus I am renewed. Z.I. Trismegistus conversion complete!!”

Blinding white flashed from the point of contact between the struggling sword and fingers.

That was probably a high-voltage current.

The electrical energy was powerful enough to burn through a metal panel thicker than a thumb.

Of course, this wouldn’t be enough to defeat Alice. But dazzling her eyes for a moment meant a lot.

It gave Kamijou time to fall back.

“What the hell!? Can you just pick a side and stay on it!?” complained Othinus.

“Common sense says…”

The young butler hung his head.

He clenched his fist hard enough for his sword cane to creak.

“Common sense says I cannot expect Christian Rosencreutz to show up and save us here and now. And not just him. No one who isn’t present can do anything to help. I was wrong to place my hopes on people like that. No matter how complex and challenging the world’s problems, it is up to the people living in it to solve them.”

Now that he was freed from his bonds, H.T. Trismegistus spoke clearly.

“It is the people with us now who will decide how this ends. So it would be foolish in the extreme to not make use of that right. So says common sense!!”

Alice Anotherbible had tremendous power.

That power led a great many people to gather around her. But the Transcendents who had wanted to use her to make themselves special may have seemed like a stale and uninteresting bunch to Alice.

But that wasn’t all.

It couldn’t be.

In addition to the power someone had forced her to carry, Alice had drawn quite a few people to herself in a different way. No matter what anyone might say, as much as she might resent the magician who had created “Alice Anotherbible” and however she saw things herself, Alice had not been alone. She had been loved.

Because if she wasn’t, Kamijou Touma, Anna Sprengel, and H.T. Trismegistus – people with such different positions and intentions – wouldn’t have all gathered here like this.

They wouldn’t have been working together to save Alice.

“Hey, Alice.”
She didn’t say anything, but Kamijou still smiled.

He was certain that Alice had the wrong idea of what it meant to be an adult.

When adults ran into problems, they asked for help. They would rely on and depend on others. They simply did their best to hide this in front of the small children.

Trying to do it all yourself and thinking you could solve anything if you had a special power was a child’s way of thinking.

So he had a lesson for her.

And for the world’s greatest illusion.

He would teach her that letting her ugly side show wasn’t going to destroy her world.

Alice Anotherbible wouldn’t be a lonely monster.

He wouldn’t let her.

An invisible wall had shattered inside Kamijou Touma.

He could deal with the deadly prophecy later. Because he had found something more important.

“If you think you can use your power to twist everything to your will… If you think you can take everything you loathe and make it everyone else’s problem…”

A perfectly ordinary high school boy clenched his right fist.

Tightly.

“Then I’ll destroy that illusion!!!”

None of the problems had been resolved. The boy had only adjusted his internal priorities.

Kamijou Touma would die today.

''But so what?

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item6 Chapter4

2026-03-04T18:35:08Z

Massify: /* Part 9 */ fixed it a typo and fixed up a bit of the wording to reflect it

==Chapter 4: The Cost of Your Choice==

===Part 1===

The situation was changing at dizzying speed.

On the first floor lobby of the District 5 tourist hotel, Kinuhata Saiai could tell she was breathing heavily. Now was no time to panic. She was currently on a dangerous tightrope walk where failing to organize the information would guarantee her death.

“Phew.”

She had to sort through the information, be it good or bad.

Striking back at the Information Broker was her top priority for now.

At the same time, she would have to finally deal with the fundamental problem of Mugino Shizuri. She doubted lies and deception would work forever there. The more she tried it, the more likely she was to make a mistake or rouse suspicion. So she had to make Mugino feel guilty by making her commit the one thing she disliked most of all: betrayal.

Then the born gangster’s own wicked principles would prevent her from attacking Kinuhata and the rest. The gang logic would muddle who was owed what.

Letting Mugino find out about any of this was out of the question, so they couldn’t rely on the support team. Kinuhata, Takitsubo, and Frenda would have to solve the Information Broker and Mugino problems on their own.

So…

“We’ll super pit Mugino and the Information Broker against each other.”

It was two in the afternoon.

Kinuhata Saiai made this suggestion while soaked with a cold sweat.

“We make it look like I got dragged into that fight. It would work best if I get injured. Then Mugino will kill the Information Broker for us and Mugino’s ‘betrayal’ of me will give us the upper hand with her. That’s the only way if all of us are going to survive. We let it all be super water under the bridge by negating betrayal with more betrayal.”

“In the end, are you serious? There’s no safety measures there.”

Frenda’s shoulders slumped, but she didn’t seem to have an alternative.

Track suit girl Takitsubo nodded a little.

“It’s more likely to work than trying to continue lying. Mugino hates betrayal from one of her own more than anything. Based on her gangster logic, not simple emotion. …So how much do you think she will blame herself if she suspects a teammate and turns out to be wrong? Especially if that teammate ends up injured as a result.”

It wasn’t a solid plan.

It would be a perilous tightrope walk. In fact, the very idea of using this loophole against her could be seen as a betrayal of Mugino.

One shoulder of Frenda Seivelun’s clothes slipped down.

Her thoughts were written plain on her face: she wanted to run with all her might, but she knew running would only get her killed.

“Ugh. Then what do we need first? That Information Broker’s identity and appearance? In the end, we can’t include her in our plan if we don’t know her personal information.”

“Then this should come in super handy.”

Kinuhata Saiai waved her phone.

“Just like when we dealt with the blackmailers, I have the location data found by messing with a security robot, hooking a phone up to it, and scanning for phone signals in the area. Anyone with five or ten phones on them is super suspicious, right? Then I have a candidate here.”

Frenda was skeptical. Which may have been the natural reaction after being dragged into a deadly problem for no good reason.

“In the end, do you really think the big boss would be wandering around on the front line?”

“You have it backwards, Frenda.”

“?”

“She can let her underlings handle a lot of the odd jobs, but not so with a delicate and difficult boss battle. It’s the same with Item and our support team, right? …If she truly sees us as a threat, the Information Broker herself will be the one gathering information.”

But that mistrust and unease regarding her own people had worked against her.

It had been convenient for Kinuhata and the others that the enemy was carrying five or more phones. They were likely for different uses – contacting her team, sending commands to disposable soldiers, etc. – but with five of them, it wasn’t a surprise to find one specific type of phone.

One for purely private use.

Instead of a pseudonym and a fictional address, this phone was linked to her real name and bank account and had tens of thousands of photos and videos on it.

They couldn’t steal all of those right away, but they could view the registration name on the small notifications and the lock screen wallpaper.

This was especially easy with narcissists who used their own photo there.

“Norsitro Chatellenie. …Finally super found you, Information Broker.”

She was a girl with silver hair and dark skin.

She looked to be older than Kinuhata and younger than Takitsubo.

Why her wallpaper was a selfie of herself smiling in only a towel was a mystery, though. Did she tend to take long baths with her phone?

Takitsubo Rikou had again shifted into drill sergeant mode. So annoying.

“Okay, Kinuhata. We know her name and appearance, but how do we find her hideout?”

“We super use her food,” succinctly stated Kinuhata Saiai.

Frenda sighed.

“Norsitro Chatellenie. In the end, her name does sound pretty French. Her phone’s default language is even set to French.”

According to Frenda, the towel she was wearing was from a fairly high-end brand. A French brand, of course. It was an offshoot of the fancy restaurant napkins and tablecloths the company was generally known for. Silks and dresses were one thing, but Kinuhata was a little surprised to learn there was even such a thing as a super high-quality towel. Takitsubo and Frenda went on to say the one towel cost more than two million yen. Now she was super surprised!!

“She’ll definitely be looking for the soul food of her home country. That doesn’t mean she’ll be super eating French food every day, but she won’t be able to stop completely. And if she does that when she’s letting off some steam, she will leave behind some small hints. We can use those to track down the elusive Information Broker.”

That must have been the answer Takitsubo was expecting.

She immediately returned the conversational rally.

“For food, District 4 would be best.”

“Yeah, they super have any kind of cuisine you could want. Which means that’s where a native would go if she isn’t satisfied with Japan’s French restaurants that unintentionally alter the food to fit Japanese sensibilities and work with the local ingredients.”

“But, Kinuhata, an entire district is a large area. Will Norsitro be going to a luxury French restaurant with a French manager, or does she visit an industrial supermarket with imported ingredients and do the cooking herself? Even narrowing it down to those two options leaves quite a few possibilities.”

“Will you super stop testing me?” Kinuhata sighed in exasperation and raised a finger. “B and C gangster movies always show the gang bosses and fugitives using fancy restaurants of their home country as a base, but you’d be immediately caught and arrested if you tried that in Academy City. The connection is too obvious. So if the Information Broker is trying to be safe by staying hidden, she super won’t visit a restaurant connected to her home country. By her logic, that would be suicide.”

She raised another finger.

“And ''that’s why she’ll have them come to her.'' At a disposable rental site of course. There are plenty of services that let you call in an expert chef to cook for you and even the rich in the legitimate world will do that for a home party. For a special fee. …That must exist on the dark side too, right? There must be a chef hiring service with options for every county around the world.”

“Correct.” Takitsubo laughed. “It’s called Kitchen Car. Those food specialists are based in District 4 and can enrich a criminal’s fugitive lifestyle.”

“Right. The chef’s skills are top rate, but they were unfairly fired when the entire restaurant got food poisoning or the ingredients were phony or something, so in the end, they were recruited in secret,” added Frenda.

Kinuhata sighed softly.

“That just leaves…the fact that it’s two in the afternoon. The next super time she could call a chef will be at dinnertime. How many hours are we going to end up waiting?”

“In the end, I doubt it will take long.”

“Kinuhata, proper French cooking requires hours of preparation. For a dinner scheduled for seven to nine in the evening, I wouldn’t be surprised if the chefs are already getting started.”

Oh, is that so, you damn dark side rich girls?

This was an unbelievable world for Kinuhata who was happy as long as she had movie theater popcorn and a soda.

Regardless, if Information Broker Norsitro Chatellenie was a frequent user of Kitchen Car, this would be easy. Tailing their French chef would eventually lead them right to the Information Broker.

“There are a few things we have to be super careful about,” began Kinuhata. She raised a finger. “First, Kitchen Car will be experts at not being tailed. After all, their job is to provide a safe option for fugitives who can’t just go to a restaurant. Trust is their main selling point, so they will make super sure they aren’t being followed. What we do about that is our biggest problem.”

She wasn’t done yet.

She raised a second finger.

“Second, using this to attack the Information Broker would be easy, but we also have to see this through to the end while fooling Mugino. Defeating Norsitro Chatellenie is super meaningless if she makes a mistake and is killed by Meltdowner before we’re ready. And Mugino isn’t stupid, so she will get suspicious with all three of us missing.”

“''Isn’t that great''?”

Kinuhata couldn’t believe it.

The legitimate VIP whose downfall had been triggered by a super tiny pencil nuke. Private Casino who had been baked to death by a white phosphorous grenade on the party hall roof. The fates of those who had opposed or betrayed Item – or Mugino Shizuri, really – flashed through Kinuhata’s mind. This situation was placing a strain on her heart, but Takitsubo had casually called it “great”?

That search expert who didn’t participate in the direct fighting really did see things differently. …Was Mugino Shizuri really the most terrifying member of Item?

“We have internal and external enemies and the situation is extremely complex and annoying, but we only have two problems to deal with. That should tell you this mission is on easy mode, Kinuhata.”

===Part 2===

Takitsubo spoke up while operating her phone on a moving train.

“I found more on the Information Broker.”

“?”

Kinuhata frowned.

Their opponent was an expert at using information. She wouldn’t be operating in a way that made her real identity as Norsitro Chatellenie a household name.

So was Takitsubo researching the Information Broker identity?

“She appears to go by some other names, but the most notable one is the Faultfinding Demon. She might take a philanthropist who insists money isn’t everything and bury them in debt. Or she might take a lawyer who claims to be opposed to violence no matter the circumstances and place them under so much psychological pressure they end up killing someone in front of a TV camera. It looks like she targets anyone who performatively makes unrealistic claims to boost their public reputation.”

“But are you sure it’s really Norsitro doing that? Information Broker isn’t a super rare term or anything.”

“Kinuhata. Do you remember the bug maker I mentioned before?”

“Yeah, during the stuff with Sudori-san. You said they were investigating Kamigi when they disappeared.”

“Well, the title of information broker is even more common than that one, but I’ve heard rumors of a sudden drop off in how often it’s used. They must all be afraid of earning her disfavor by looking like a rival.”

That made sense.

This opponent was even more dangerous than Kinuhata had imagined. Not to mention self-centered and persistent.

“Is the super dark side just full of guys who are willing to die for their weird hang-ups?”

“Stop that, Kinuhata. You should try to use gender neutral language.”

Kinuhata got scolded by the capable big sister.

…But was that really necessary when complaining about brutal villains?

District 4 was located a bit northeast of Academy City’s center.

The district specialized in all things food and it was a very international place. The food market had small flags to indicate what nationality a shop specialized in, so the long street was reminiscent of all the flags at an athletic festival. The many signs jutting out from from the building walls was chaos itself. There were so many signs overhead it felt like walking through a colorful tunnel.

Broad categories like Asian or European had naturally gathered in clumps, but there was no strict division between areas. There was an Italian restaurant and an American South hamburger shop encroaching on the red Chinatown and a sushi place with the Central and South American versions of Spanish and Portuguese on the signs right alongside the European restaurants. The sushi there apparently used jalapeno paste instead of wasabi.

“This district is like a giant manifestation of choice paralysis.”

“Frenda, is this making you crave your own home country’s food?”

“In the end, I’d be happy living on the far side of Mars as long as I have mackerel.”

If the three of them stayed away too long, Mugino Shizuri would get suspicious. But that didn’t mean they had to solve this problem before that happened. In fact, they couldn’t have Mugino just stay in the luxury hotel. To trick her, to get her to betray them, and to survive, they needed Mugino to act of her own volition.

Suspicion was the greatest fuel for someone who hated betrayal more than anything else.

“So is super that Kitchen Car’s HQ?”

“I think so, Kinuhata.”

“But wait. District 4 is all about food…and they’re in a trash house!? I thought Kitchen Car were super culinary experts!! How could they let this happen!?”

“In the end, I bet this was what happened when those culinary experts decided to build a fortress everyone would want to keep away from. Inside, they’ve probably torn down some walls to turn into a maze. It’s called hiding in plain sight. If you’re looking for someone or something, nothing is more annoying than a trash-filled building.”

The structure itself was a four-floor multi-tenant building, but bulging trash bags were piled up in every door and window and even covered the front walk.

Was that supposed to be camouflage?

That had to be a huge nuisance for the neighbors.

The trio bought kebab sandwiches at a nearby food stand and munched on them as they waited for something to happen. There were an unusual number of people jogging, but was that the result of the overabundance of tasty foods in this district?

Frenda’s sandwich must have been too spicy for her because she kept going back to her cup’s straw for more sips of soda.

“In the end, do we have any reason to think the Information Broker will call Kitchen Car today?”

“There’s no guarantee, but I think the odds are good,” replied Takitsubo. “This is a big deal for her too. It might look like she’s the one threatening Item, but this only happened because she failed to deal with us earlier. If she screws this up, she’ll truly have to go into hiding and then she’ll have far fewer options. She should want to eat everything she likes while she has the chance.”

“There they super are.”

A mid-sized yellow truck slowly emerged from the trash heap of a place. Kinuhata was surprised to find there was a metal garage door there.

“That must be Kitchen Car’s truck.”

The trio waited for the truck to pass by and made the final check by nose.

“Bouillon and mirepoix. Also truffles, pickles, horseradish, and is that lobster sauce?”

“That’s not Japanese or Chinese cooking. In the end, it’s definitely French.”

…Kinuhata couldn’t tell a thing. But she wasn’t upset about it. Really.

But a truck.

Did they need a large vehicle to fit the ingredients and the cooking equipment? It wasn’t as bad as with Chinese cooking, but French cooking probably did require some industrial firepower.

Kitchen Car were experts at providing fugitives with delicious food. That meant they knew how to keep Anti-Skill from tailing them. This wouldn’t be as easy as attaching a GPS-equipped device to track it. The truck’s radio or sensors would detect the signal.

So Takitsubo made a simple comment.

“Frenda.”

“Yeah, yeah. In the end, one plastic bottle drone coming up. Makes me wonder what you would have done if you didn’t have the ultra genius and ultimately cute Frenda-chan on your side.”

“It’s French food, right? I planned to track the nitrogen gas used to keep the wine from oxidizing.”

“But in the end, Norsitro Chatellenie is clearly underage!”

Takitsubo and Frenda were enjoying their banter.

How could they be so calm?

Kinuhata frowned.

“Won’t your drone get super shot down by an attack helicopter?”

“In the end, anything small enough will be fine as long as it doesn’t move too fast. There are plenty of UFOs flying around overhead, including small birds and convenience store bags floating in the wind. The city’s automatic air defense doesn’t react to it all.”

Of course, Frenda wasn’t just guessing here. It was based on accurate data she had researched. And the standards had to change daily.

The tablet’s screen showed the yellow truck crossing a few district boundaries.

It finally arrived in District 2.

“Isn’t that the car-focused district?”

“In the end, they do weapons and explosives there too.”

They focused on the screen some more. The yellow truck drove below a building, likely into an underground parking garage, but experts at losing pursuit wouldn’t drive straight to their client’s hideout. Frenda cautiously sent the drone around a while longer to continue observing from the air until…

“Here they come.”

“Hm. When traveling on foot, they disguise themselves as a wholesaler that specializes in fireproof curtains and carpets. Well, the ingredients and cooking equipment unloaded from the truck would be too heavy to carry without a handcart of some kind.”

“Then is this it? What is this super place?”

“I see a lot of tall, fake structures and a bunch of ropes. In the end, it looks like some kind of training ground. If it isn’t Anti-Skill, could it be for firefighters?”

The place didn’t seem to be functioning. Was it abandoned? There was even a large plastic pool set up on the grounds.

“Is it time to head in?”

“I want to be absolutely certain first. They might take another vehicle from the parking lot here.”

They waited ten minutes, but that never happened.

That settled it.

It had to be this former training ground thought to be for firefighters.

“We have her,” said Takitsubo Rikou.

===Part 3===

She woke up.

“Hmm?”

Mugino Shizuri opened her eyes in bed. And slowly sat up.

She crawled out of the bedroom still in sleepwear that let her body show through pretty much everywhere.

“Takitsubo?”

No response.

She looked around without fixing her hair.

“Kinuhata, Frenda?”

Still nothing.

(Hm…)

Just once she consciously let out a breath.

Then she grabbed her phone.

She didn’t call her familiar Item teammates.

(Kinuhata and Takitsubo were missing after the bank robbery, but now Frenda’s gone too.)

She was already making some guesses. Like that ''they wouldn’t respond'' if she called them or messaged them on social media.

There was only one person to contact at a time like this.

“Mujinayama. You’ve been discharged from the hospital, right?”

“I must apologize for the inconvenience and trouble I caused you back then, Lady Shizu-”

“Don’t bother,” she snapped and the old butler immediately fell silent.

This was Mujinayama, so he obviously wasn’t intimidated. Even over the phone, he gave the sense of a grandfather playing with his grandchild.

“Hey, Mujinayama.”

“I am at your service.”

“How do I identify a traitor?”

===Part 4===

A firefighter training ground was an unfamiliar place.

Kinuhata had trouble deciding where any specific rooms would be located. The fake structures on the surface couldn’t be all of it, so there was likely more underground.

Now, where would that evil boss be?

“Can we super determine what floor and room they’re in based on Kitchen Car’s movements?”

Kinuhata knew that was asking a lot.

The grounds were large and there were probably lots of underground pathways connecting different areas. What they could see from the outside wouldn’t be enough to fully track Kitchen Car.

But Frenda sounded cheerful as she used a cable to link her phone to a panel on the thick wall surrounding the grounds.

“In the end, check this out, Kinuhata. The security camera records are just gone.”

“Does that super mean the Information Broker is using this place in secret?”

“Then what about this third floor special observation seat? I’m guessing that’s a VIP room for instructors to watch all the trainees and keep score, but the sprinklers have been turned off there.”

“Kitchen Car was transporting cooking equipment along with their ingredients, right? They can ventilate the smoke with a hose connected to the air conditioning vent, but the heat of the fire will still be a problem. So what if they want to use an industrial high-heat gas burner or oven outside of a proper kitchen?”

“You mean they would have to super switch off the sprinklers and fire alarms? Then they must be in the third floor VIP room!”

They were already in enemy territory, so they couldn’t use the elevator which could act like a dead end. It was only three floors up, so they took the emergency stairs.

“Takitsubo-san, the plan was to pit the Information Broker and Mugino against each other, right?”

“Right.”

“But how do we super call Mugino here?”

“In the end, do we even have to? Mugino will never forgive a traitor. She’ll track us down here on her own. We couldn’t hide from her even if we wanted to.”

However, they couldn’t relax just because they were using the emergency stairs instead of the elevator.

A wire crossed the path at above knee height, the most likely height for someone to hit.

Laying several layers of traps would also narrow the trap-layers freedom of movement, so they would only do it if it benefited them. …Hopefully this meant the enemy didn’t have enough personnel to have regular human patrols.

“Have you noticed, Kinuhata?”

“Yeah, I have. These traps are weird. They’re using the bare minimum of flammables like gasoline while using a super ton of oxygen tanks and air circulators.”

Kinuhata wondered if that was to avoid breaking the laws against weapons and bombs, but setting up any kind of explosive with the intent of causing an explosion violated the law anyway. Reducing the amount used wouldn’t get you off the hook in court.

The Academy City Bomber explained in exasperation.

“They’re using oxygen to guide the flames. Have you never heard of tactical ventilation? When firefighters enter a burning building, they will methodically break windows and doors to let air through and, in the end, guide the flames where they won’t hurt anyone while the firefighters complete their rescue. They will also sometimes intentionally increase the intensity of the fire elsewhere to prevent backdrafts and flashovers. But if you wanted to, you could also create a flamethrower-like blast of fire and bend it in an S-shape.”

They all exchanged a glance.

…Firefighters. Frenda had said it herself, but apparently even she hadn’t expected the phrase to pop up here.

“In the end, this is a training ground for them, isn’t it?”

“Super umm, can rescue squad people go bad too?”

“I’ve never heard of it, but it could be. They’re trained to break down doors and enter buildings above the ground floor, so they do have some abusable skills.”

“They also sound strong. In the end, they’d definitely make big burly troops.”

The three continued up the stairs while on the lookout for traps.

After reaching the third floor hallway and cracking open the steel fire door, they sensed a presence.

They spotted someone big and burly.

Kinuhata could defeat him with Offense Armor, but his identity was a bit of a mystery. Looking like a bad guy didn’t necessarily mean you were one. People sometimes behaved in weird, illogical ways. He might just be an ordinary body builder who had snuck into the former training ground (unaware of the traps) to get a workout there, so Kinuhata and the others waited until he had walked past before slipping out into into the hallway.

Takitsubo’s nose twitched a little.

“I don’t detect an appetizing aroma.”

“In the end, the room with the most suspicious electricity usage is the third door on the right.”

Then they would start there.

Kinuhata had assumed there was only one third floor VIP room, but it turned out there were several. After pressing her ear to the door and listening for any activity inside, she slowly opened the door.

“What is this super place?”

She found a dark room.

It was about the size of a larger convenience store.

The opposite wall was made of glass to provide a view of the outdoor training ground, but Kinuhata was more interested in something else.

LCD monitors lined one section with pricey-looking office chairs in front of them. More than half the space under the desks was taken up by what looked like industrial computers.

“Did the firefighter training ground also super teach them how to respond to emergency alerts and operate their radios?”

“This might have all been brought here after the fact,” replied the track suit girl.

The right and left walls were covered by steel racks packed with paper files thicker than brick blocks.

Takitsubo scanned the entire room with emotionless eyes.

“Frenda, let’s check the paper.”

“In the end, why not the computers? Paper documents don’t even have the bare minimum of a search option.”

“I don’t want to touch the computers when we don’t even know if they use a password, fingerprints, a security key, or facial recognition. We might get it locked down or even trigger an alert to their boss. The paper is better. I’ll handle the shelves, so you two check the ones around the desks.”

“Ughh. In the end, a note with their password written on it would be too much to hope for, wouldn’t it?”

“If they’re unlocking it every single time, there must be some kind of mark or hint,” said Takitsubo even as she walked over to the shelves.

All that information felt overwhelming to Kinuhata, but apparently it looked like a treasure trove to their search expert.

“This data is related to a vulnerability,” said Takitsubo as she flipped through something like a thick manual.

Kinuhata tilted her head. What kind of vulnerability?

“The wide variety of videos and articles strewn across the internet are automatically fact checked for accuracy…but there is no system in place to fact check the fact checking.”

“???”

“It’s complicated, but in short there’s a loophole in the network monitoring system. By converting a file to the fact checking file extension, it can slip right past Academy City’s automatic checking system. The legitimate files are 512 kilobytes, so anything larger than that would be detected as illegitimate, but you can fit a ton of text in a file that size.”

“Super so what? What happens if you can slip something past it?”

“You can send unchecked electronic data in and out of the city. Using the official fiber optic lines while ignoring the dedicated systems entirely.”

They all fell silent.

Hold on.

“Wh-what are you saying? That, in the end, all the city’s classified data on next-gen weapons and esper development could be leaked outside the city!?”

“…”

Instead of responding right away, Takitsubo took a look around the room.

She blinked a few times.

“If they are selling technology like that, why isn’t any of that data here?”

“Now that you mention it… They super have a loophole they could use, but I haven’t seen any data they could sell, like the plans for a stealth fighter or a Level 5’s DNA map.”

“So in the end, what is Norsitro hoping to do with that super convenient joker in her hand?”

That was when Takitsubo’s head shot up.

The search expert was looking off in an odd direction.

That was a warning sign.

“Kinuhata. Frenda.”

“Yes?”

“Watch out. The enemy is coming.”

The door burst open from outside.

Frenda immediately leapt behind a big decorative plant and Kinuhata moved in front of Takitsubo.

A girl entered flanked by two large men. They of course recognized that silver hair and dark skin.

That was Information Broker Norsitro Chatellenie.

Her phone’s wallpaper had shown her in a towel, but now her body was tightly bound by a leather belt, miniskirt, and big boots that were a glittering neon green with silver thread woven in. It was probably meant to be a bondage outfit.

“Oh, hey. You were right, Matsuzawa-san.”

“I was lucky.”

“All we had to do was leave the ‘call center’ unlocked and unoccupied and they waltzed on in here like a bunch of roaches. Incredible.”

“Milady. Shouldn’t you compare them to something more appealing, like rhinoceros beetles?”

“Is that more appealing? You must like the outdoors, Haranaka-san. They’re both just shiny black bugs to me☆”

===Part 5===

Back in the tourist hotel suite in the grown-up District 5.

What Mugino Shizuri most wanted at the moment was the live words of an expert.

Needless to say, the Mugino Family was an international gang with hundreds of thousands of soldiers around the world.

Thus, they wouldn’t go crying to the normal police if some money disappeared or someone died within the Family. That would mean tearing down their entire violent system to solve one measly case. Still, there were on occasion fools who would periodically sell information to the police (because they were being threatened or something). To reiterate, the Family would not ask the police for help when something happened.

So they had a different solution.

They had an internal investigation department that specialized in identifying and punishing traitors in their midst.

“If it’s too weak, there’s nothing to stop the traitors, but if it’s too strong, it turns into a dictatorship that wields false accusations and purges. …Mujinayama, you know how to handle these things just right, don’t you?”

“Sigh… I would have preferred you came to me for advice on how to prevent the betrayal from occurring in the first place, but I get the feeling it is too late for that.”

“Hurry up.”

When Mugino lightly rushed him, the mood changed.

His world – the vibe of the Mugino Family he had served for so many long years – pushed in through the cold mechanical phone.

“The standard countermeasure against betrayal in a system of violence is to prepare for it before it actually happens. You do not want to be running around in a panic after you have been betrayed and real harm has been done.”

“Right.”

Mugino glanced aside with the phone against her ear.

At the empty boxes for luxury brand clothing piled up in a corner of the room.

“''You don’t have to worry about that.''”

“Is that so? I would expect no less from the one who carries the weight of the Family’s future on her shoulders. I am relieved.”

That old butler did not flatter people for no reason. If she couldn’t think of any reason for the compliment, there had to be more coming.

His ever gentle voice quietly gained the sharp edge of a knife.

“However, you must not forget that suspecting your companions is itself a small betrayal. It is necessary for the maintenance of a system of violence that cannot rely on the official power structures, but it is by no means a praiseworthy thing.”

“…”

“And what if your suspicions of betrayal prove to be false? Shizuri-sama, betrayal and the response thereof are a sort of gamble. You are not a righteous detective investigating each suspicious individual until you find the criminal like a game of concentration. If you choose wrong just once, responsibility for that mistake falls on you. Investigating a traitor carries the risk of becoming a traitor yourself. You must never forget this when seeking the truth in our shadowy world.”

That was why the internal investigation department paid exceptionally well while being exceptionally risky.

It was known as the hardest department to keep balanced.

And this summed up why Mugino Shizuri had gone out of her way to seek advice from the old butler who had served the Family for so long.

Yes. If she could be sloppy and get it wrong as many times as she liked, she would have done it all herself.

But that wasn’t an option, so she wanted to know the etiquette and secrets the gangs used.

“It also depends on the severity of the betrayal in question.”

The old butler used that as a starting point.

He did not mince words.

So whether or not he included that phrase would likely greatly change the impression left with the listener. Even if Mugino Shizuri didn’t yet know why it mattered.

“Complete traitors are actually fairly rare. Most traitors move back and forth between the two sides, so they always carry some small feeling of guilt with them. It is always gnawing at them, even as they eat and sleep.”

“Are you saying the losers who can’t stand the pressure will blow up first?”

“No. It affects everyone of all sorts. Someone who truly cannot bear the impure feelings won’t bother with all those tricks and will make a full-on attack despite the risks. The family head is the type to do that.”

…Mugino Shizuri bluntly concluded that man’s way of life was unfortunately not very useful for her. After all, that freak had once armed himself, single-handedly stormed an embassy, and dragged the corrupt minister off the embassy’s grounds just because a small child had cried and asked him to rescue his grandfather (true story). If she asked that ridiculous man how to find a traitor, she could easily imagine him telling her to build up enough charisma that no one felt the need to betray her in the first place.

She wanted to discuss a more realistic way of finding a traitor.

“It is not always a lack of skill that leads traitors to leave small clues and make mistakes. There is a part of them that wants to be caught. That is why their pursuer notices their presence. Lady Shizuri, I assume you came to me for advice because you already have some kind of clue. What felt off to you?”

“…”

For one, why had the other three members of Item gone missing at the same time?

If those three wanted to do something behind her back, wouldn’t they leave someone behind to distract her and keep her from getting suspicious? Why hadn’t they done that?

How could she explain it from a standpoint of pure function and efficiency?

(Hm.)

“Now let’s circle back to an earlier point,” said Mujinayama. In a voice that would make anyone’s back straighten. “How far must a betrayal go before you can truly call it a betrayal?”

===Part 6===

The silver-haired dark-skinned girl was Information Broker Norsitro.

Were the large burly men surrounding her illicit firefighters?

More importantly, Kinuhata had picked up on a curious word in their brief conversation.

''The call center''?

“(Kinuhata, anything the enemy freely says in front of you should be taken with a grain of salt. Don’t accept it at face value.)”

“Information you think you researched on your own can be externally controlled too, you know? All I have to do is manipulate what order you find the relevant data in, so it’s not hard at all,” pointed out Norsitro in her neon green bondage outfit.

Then what about the vulnerability they had just found? Using the fact checking file extension? Maybe they had to doubt the entire idea of freely communicating across the city wall. Were they back to square one?

“Kinuhata, what did I just say about things the enemy says in front of you?”

“Ugh.”

Kinuhata Saiai groaned at having to be told a second time.

The silver-haired girl smiled elegantly at how easily manipulated Kinuhata was. She even covered her mouth with a hand despite how that clashed with her outfit.

“So instead of leaping at the documents and information you find, you should be working out how and why they turned up here and then dealing with them accordingly.”

The Information Broker.

Norsitro’s job involved more than just gathering information. She had to decide how to use it. When was the best time to reveal it or hide it? She was an expert at using information as a whole.

“That said, get the balance wrong and you can end up paranoid and doubting everything you see, so hiring an expert at information management is the best thing to do for your mental health, if you ask me.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kinuhata saw Frenda stir.

She stuck a hand in her pocket.

Kinuhata had been working with Item long enough to know what Frenda was planning.

Norsitro was still talking when Frenda pulled an explosive from her pocket and threw-

“''I’m not done talking.''”

''Boom!!'' A dull explosion rang out.

Unsure what had happened, Kinuhata Saiai was thrown through a tempered glass window. In other words, she was tossed out from the third floor. That was about the same as the top floor of a school.

On the other side, the inner wall behind Norsitro broke through and a black Eastern dragon emerged.

No.

That was actually thousands or tens of thousands of flying objects about the size of paper airplanes made from fliers.

“In the end, is that a drone swarm!? Kinuhata!”

“Ohhh? Are you sure you should be focusing on her?”

A “zap!!” of bursting air rang out.

Along with a flash of light.

Frenda Seivelun fell to her knees.

“Kah…”

(Lightning, a high-voltage current? What the hell? In the end, does she have more than just next-gen weapons?)

Frenda collapsed to the floor and couldn’t move. She couldn’t even lift her head. The most she could manage was some trembling of her limbs. She could only thank her lucky stars that none of the delicate fuses and explosives hidden on her person had gone off.

The silver-haired girl glanced over at the only one left: Takitsubo.

“You’re dropping like flies. Which makes it easier for me, so I’m not complaining.”

The drones were black devices. They were the size of 10x20cm paper airplanes, but their jagged and distorted silhouette looked something like a Christmas tree. Would their precise classification be canard double delta?

And Takitsubo spoke quietly.

“Is this why?”

“?”

“Drone swarms can’t be defended against by existing missile defense systems because there are just too many of them, so in a way you could call them an even greater strategic weapon than a nuclear warhead. But the problem is the manufacturing and operating costs. The price has to be multiplied across the number of drones in the swarm, so building a thousand of them increases the cost a thousandfold and creating ten thousand increases it ten-thousandfold. Same for the fuel and maintenance costs. That isn’t something an individual can use.”

“Yeah, I do use around 250 thousand of them at once. And the number goes up to 1.75 million if you include the spares, so the final sum is nothing to sneeze at. Keeping them in top condition isn’t easy.”

“Khah. In the end, even if it’s fully automated and it only takes a minute per drone, how much effort are you putting into this? Did you buy an entire huge factory with multiple production lines?”

“Didn’t I just say keeping them in top condition isn’t easy? Besides, a single stealth fighter costs 20-30 billion yen. And that’s just buying it. When you think of this as a super weapon superior to nukes, it’s honestly a pretty good deal.”

Her neon green bondage outfit had silver threads woven in. Was that glittering getup actually a highly conductive full-body antenna?

Norsitro chuckled and spread her arms.

The word drone apparently originally referred to the buzzing of a bee’s wings and the drones surrounding her lived up to that origin. They were surprisingly nimble and reminiscent of killer bees or of flies buzzing around something dead. Some drones would come to a stop in midair, so they may have been capable of vertical takeoffs and landings using a lift fan or something.

Also, she had the high-voltage power that had hit Frenda.

“Committing perfect crimes in Academy City is a challenge. But not so outside the city’s walls. Isn’t that right? Especially if you can use Academy City tech out there. Then it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“You aren’t going after the parents, are you?”

“What, something like this: ‘Hey! If you don’t pay up soon, we’ll threaten your precious kid over and over and over again until they’re part of the blackmailer group themselves! Then they’ll be a criminal and your whole family will be in the news!’ ”

A grin split across the silver-haired girl’s face.

That was the devilish face of someone who knew how to cash in on people’s misfortune and tragedy with maximum efficiency.

“The towering wall surrounding the city prevents the parents outside from rescuing their child no matter how much danger they’re in. What, you think they should call Anti-Skill? Heh hee hee. You know better than that. The higher ups of this city are all corrupt, so they won’t allow anything to threaten the city’s public image. Oops, and now that report is being suppressed. There won’t be any kind of official record it ever even happened.”

The parents would be helpless while knowing their child was in trouble.

The only option left would be to pay a sum of money larger than they could hope to make in a lifetime.

They could always refuse.

But it was this girl’s job to give them ''a very good idea'' of what would happen then.

The large men – firefighters? – closed in on Takitsubo.

“Now, then. Your bodyguard went skydiving and your bomber was zapped into submission. The search expert remains, but what can you hope to do on your own?”

“I can do this.”

Takitsubo was quick to make up her mind.

She grabbed paralyzed Frenda’s collar and immediately jumped out the broken window.

===Part 7===

This wasn’t a suicide.

She fell to a location less than three meters down. It was likely part of the training ground, but a net was laid out there to catch anyone who fell.

Takitsubo wouldn’t have taken that sudden dive if she hadn’t recalled seeing it earlier.

“This way. Super this way!”

Kinuhata Saiai had fallen earlier and she was beckoning over from behind a large fake building wall. Takitsubo adjusted her grip on Frenda, dropped from the net to the ground, and ran over to Kinuhata.

Fake buildings, trees, streetlights, benches – there were plenty of places to hide, but the training ground was still an open outdoor space. Staying here was not an attractive option. If they wanted to avoid being caught in a pincer attack, they needed to find a back entrance and withdraw indoors.

Takitsubo lowered the fluffy blonde girl from her shoulder to a concrete-looking floor.

“Frenda.”

“What, can’t you tell? In the end, you can’t expect any help from me.”

“I want to know how those drones work. Only you would know that.”

Did Takitsubo Rikou know exactly what people wanted to hear at times like this?

The Academy City Bomber reacted with a twitch.

“Those are just your standard wandering self-destruct drones that carry a bomb and charge at their target, right? Their structure itself is simple. Based on how far Kinuhata was blasted, the explosive they’re carrying isn’t anything special. If they’re loaded with 100 grams and it expands 800 times, in the end, that’s about the same force as a grenade. The lethal range should be around 10m.”

…But 1.75 million grenades thrown at you one after another would be more than enough of a threat. A minor fortress or combat airfield could be stained with blood and destroyed by that.

“1.75 million… She can’t be controlling them all manually, can she?”

“In the end, she’s probably providing general instructions with her phone and the exact calculations are all handled by AI. Like playing an RTS on easy mode.”

“Then super what if we jam those signals? That will cut off the manual instructions and I bet they’re linked up to a fairly large supercomputer to constantly perform so many flight control calculations.”

“I doubt that would work. She uses 250 thousand at once and has a total of 1.75 million in case some are brought down. Even if each one has a cheap toy of a CPU, linking 250 thousand of them together in parallel will provide some decent processing power. They won’t need a stationary supercomputer.”

It sounded like jamming the wireless network itself would still work, but they didn’t know what the swarm used to communicate. And if they were military, they would likely use multiple methods at once: EM, IR, magnetism, ultrasound. Actually jamming them would require blocking every one of the methods…but how many methods was “every one” of them?

Kinuhata sounded fed up with it all.

“Drones that super small have to run out of fuel or battery before long, right? If we stay on the run to buy time, won’t they eventually break down?”

“Kinuhata, we can’t make that kind of assumption without seeing their design or specs. They might generate power from the wind or the sun and they might be remotely charged using ultrasonic waves or microwaves.”

A portion of the blue sky was colored black.

As if ink had been splattered into the world.

Frenda looked up with her lips twisted into a stiff half-smile.

“So…in the end, which sounds better to you: having them attack us in a straight line or having them spread out and attack us as a wall?”

“Either way, Kinuhata would be the only survivor.”

“250 thousand at once and 1.75 million in all… If I’m super pummeled by that many bombs, not even Offense Armor is going to last.”

Kinuhata could only watch the drone swarm in a daze.

They circled an area as large as a schoolyard as they took aim. Like a giant flying serpent. If the Item girls stayed outside, they would be swallowed by a sandstorm of mechanical explosions.

And…

“Ah ha ha. You call that escaping?”

They heard a voice.

“Being out in the open makes it easier for me☆”

It belonged to Norsitro Chatellenie.

She jumped lightly down toward them from from the broken window a few meters up.

She was less than a hundred meters away.

“!”

Still seated on the floor, Frenda immediately pulled multiple explosives from her short skirt.

“I seriously doubt that will work.”

The wind roared as it spiraled thickly around them.

A giant tower rose up on either side of Norsitro. The wind wrapped around and extended high into the sky, forming powerful tornadoes.

Realizing what that meant, Frenda froze before making her attack.

The brown girl’s hair and leather skirt were flapping wildly, but she didn’t seem bothered by it.

“Handheld rockets have a terrible tendency to miss when exposed to crosswinds. I hear that world-famous Russian one that only costs 20 or 30 thousand yen has trouble hitting at even 500 meters. And with this kind of random turbulence, you have no way of calculating a path.”

Tornadoes.

Frenda’s eyes widened because she had already been hit by an esper power attack here.

“You mean…in the end, she doesn’t just have lightning!?”

“What’s wrong? Was there some other weather you were hoping for? Or were you worried about low pressure because you get headaches on those days? Just let me know☆”

Norsitro smiled in her bright neon green bondage outfit.

And it began pouring rain.

Less than five seconds later, it turned to fist-sized hail.

Then a clear blue sky shined overhead.

It was like she was casually flipping an invisible switch. Frenda Seivelun was completely dumbfounded.

Was this Norsitro Chatellenie’s power?

“You’re…kidding.”

“It super looks like she can control all forms of weather, including lightning, doesn’t it? Her power might control the air instead of electricity.”

“Kinuhata, don’t treat maybes like confirmed information. Remember what I said about information the enemy gives you?”

“Yes, yes, I have to super take it with grain of salt! …But how else are we supposed to explain that ridiculous power!? Mutter, mutter…”

Kinuhata’s complaints were cut off.

By the repeating sound of something beating at the air.

It was a Two Wings helicopter that could be flown unmanned…no, based on the arm-like wings spread out on the sides, was it a Six Wings?

250 thousand at the same time with a total of 1.75 million.

As those things flew around, the “black dragon” must have shown up on Academy City’s anti-air radar. Their operator must have known that would happen, but…

“Shut up.”

It exploded.

Even Frenda wouldn’t want to be chased by one of those. That was just how brutal the Six Wings’ air-to-air and air-to-ground armaments were, but it happened so easily.

“I said it’s a super weapon superior to nukes, didn’t I? You can’t expect ordinary weapons – even an entire squadron of attack helicopters – to deal with it.”

“So in the end, is there no way of stopping her?”

Her power was frightening, but it wasn’t just her power.

The drone swam was frightening, but it wasn’t just the drone swarm.

All three Item members had the same thought: how could they even begin to deal with a monster like this?

Even now, the two tornadoes were raging across the ground.

With a din of destruction, drink vending machines, streetlights, and fake buildings were torn from the ground and thrown into the air. People were meant to climb and descend them with ropes, so it had all been bolted to concrete pedestals, but it didn’t seem to matter.

If a human was caught in there, they would be thrown high into the sky…and then what would happen?

Norsitro grinned.

She wasn’t making a threat to negotiate. The joy of someone who planned to ''use it'' spread across her face.

“I’m not saying there’s no hope at all for you. After all, one of you is supposedly a shield esper.”

“…”

“But if protecting yourself from the fall is ''all'' you can manage, then I just have to hit you again from the side. Which would you prefer to kill you: the self-destruct drones or my power?”

She was extraordinary.

The three Item girls didn’t see how they could win even if they all attacked at once.

Norsitro Chatellenie held a position near the very top if you ignored the excessive financial cost of operating those drones as an individual.

But that was all the more reason to fight.

They couldn’t leave someone this powerful to her own devices. She would prey on Academy City’s ordinary students, drive them to the blackmailers, and even threaten the parents outside the city to make even more money. The people having their lives and futures ruined were not the fools who had purposefully rushed to the dark side to snag some dirty money. Norsitro was like quicksand that endlessly swallowed honest people with no such intentions. And because she was such a formidable enemy, she would cause a massive number of victims if allowed to go free.

It would be too late by the time the city’s wicked grown ups decided to do something about it.

If she wasn’t defeated here and now, there would be victims.

Kinuhata clenched her teeth. Takitsubo had accepted Kinuhata’s plan to survive by having Mugino betray them and fight Norsitro, but that plan had mostly fallen apart. Now it was ''more important'' to silence her as soon as possible. Kinuhata was a dark side villain, not an agent of good or justice, but she still felt that need.

And then.

“Hey.”

She heard.

A voice.

Coming from even further back than Kinuhata Saiai, Frenda Seivelun, and Takitsubo Rikou.

There must have been a different back entrance.

Was that squishy sound all that remained of an unlucky guard who happened to be there?

“Why would you go off and have a party without me?”

A grin split across Norsitro Chartellenie’s face.

“Oh, you’re finally here.”

Sweat poured from Kinuhata’s body.

The Information Broker was supposed to be an expert in handling all forms of information, so why didn’t she understand what it meant for ''her'' to be here? Why didn’t she understand the great risk there?

Regardless, the silver-haired girl spoke her name.

“''Mugino Shizuri.''”

===Part 8===

The density of the air changed.

In terms of human emotion, the most fitting word was probably “tension”.

Her presence made all the difference.

For better or for worse, Item…required Mugino Shizuri.

“Tch. Super how did you know where we were?”

Mugino answered Kinuhata’s trembling question by flicking something over without even glancing in her direction. It was a tag even smaller than a kernel of corn.

Takitsubo took it.

“Is this a brand-name clothing shop’s anti-theft tag?”

“The good brands use really nice ones. They’re convenient, so they come in handy.”

''“What is it, Mugino? Do you want to buy that?”

''“Not really…”

Was this why Mugino had been so fixated on feeling the clothing in that store? She had been interested in the anti-theft devices, not the fashionable clothing that cost 100 thousand yen each.

The silver-haired girl with her body contained in a neon green bondage outfit smiled thinly.

“Being a team leader is a challenge, isn’t it? Failure isn’t an option and that responsibility falls on your shoulders.”

“We’ve never met. Don’t act like you know me, trash.”

Kinuhata Saiai considered the situation.

Mugino Shizuri had arrived.

The plan was for Mugino to suspect them and act of her own volition, but they hadn’t finished setting things up for that. Simply defeating Norsitro Chatellenie wasn’t enough. If Mugino learned of the current situation as they did so, Kinuhata’s betrayal would come to light when Mugino started asking questions after the fighting was over. Then there was no avoiding being vaporized by Meltdowner. So this was her chance.

She knew that, but she still felt a cold sweat pouring down her back.

The fingers of death were running along her spine. She could feel them.

She had to deceive and betray Mugino Shizuri.

Screwing it up would mean death.

It was finally showtime.

===Part 9===

They were in the outdoor field of the former fire fighter training ground in District 2.

A great mass of moving air created a low roar.

250 thousand drones were packed together like a black dragon as they moved together.

They were all aimed at Mugino Shizuri alone.

The Information Broker laughed with her phone in hand. She held a hand over her mouth as she did so.

“Oops. I forget to ask.”

Norsitro’s expression was as casual as if she were out at the supermarket and realized she had forgotten she needed to buy the one item that was on sale.

“Would you prefer to be killed by my power or by the swarm? But asking now is a pain and it doesn’t really matter, does it? You’ll die a painful death either way.”

Mugino Shizuri gave a snort of laughter and flicked out a card she had pulled from her pocket. Before it could fall to the ground, she accurately struck it with a thick Meltdowner beam.

Silicon Burn.

Nearly 150 scorching electron beams thinner than hairs fanned out in front of her.

However…

“Tch. So a scattershot’s not enough.”

“I am using 250 thousand of them with a total of 1.75 million. But if you think you can shoot them all down, feel free to continue going for a high score. Although I expect you’ll be crushed to death first☆”

No matter how many Mugino destroyed, the number was replenished, so the swarm never dropped below 250 thousand.

And that wasn’t the main problem.

Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner had failed to bring down the swarm. Even when using her special Silicon Burn. With Mugino’s attack a failure, nothing could stop the endless drone force. This time they charged toward Mugino as if aiming for a cross counter. En masse.

A sticky blackness filled a large portion of the scene.

Like a bottle of pitch black ink had fallen over on a painting of Academy City’s scenery.

The black dragon devoured the blue sky. No, the swarm weapon made up of 250 thousand drones circled around together to attack Mugino.

According to Frenda’s analysis, each one was as destructive as a grenade.

But there were 250 thousand of them.

If they all attacked at once…it would be like taking a machinegun spray of explosive rounds head on!

“Mugino!”

“Want to make bets how many seconds you’ll last?”

Norsitro smiled in her neon green bondage outfit.

The following explosion felt like space itself were expanding.

But Mugino wasn’t injured.

Despite the many, many explosions going off.

“Oh? I thought you were all offense, but I guess not.”

She had a shield of light.

Meltdowner normally flew sharply out as a straight line, but she must have instead had it spiral close to her hand. It looked like a round shield fully covering Mugino’s body.

The sharp fragments and even the blast itself were pushed back. Academy City’s #4 had extraordinary specs in defense as well, but Norsitro wasn’t normal either. The very act of forcing Mugino Shizuri to defend – that is, to ''threaten'' that bundle of arrogance enough that she thought she would die if she didn’t defend – was extraordinary enough.

Adding Mugino Shizuri to the fight wasn’t enough to defeat Norsitro Chatellenie.

All four members of Item together couldn’t end this.

They were on the verge of death and cutting it close.

But that was more than just a risk. With a different viewpoint – Kinuhata Saiai’s for example – it could also be a one-in-a-million opportunity.

Win or lose? Live or die?

No one knew what was going to happen, which created enough of an ''opening'' to take otherwise unthinkable actions.

Here, she could force it through.

She concluded a chance like this wasn’t going to come again.

If she was going to fool that girl.

If she was going to get Mugino Shizuri to betray her, it had to be here.

Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner, even when scattered like a shower using the Silicon Burn, could not shoot down Norsitro Chatellenie’s 1.75 million drones.

To put it another way, ''it wouldn’t look strange'' if something unexpected happened here.

The countless wandering self-destruct drones sliced through the air as they charged in.

Now was the time to make up her mind.

Takitsubo and Frenda had both given Kinuhata some advice while they were pursuing the Kitchen Car truck to reach this place.

''“Saying you will ‘deceive’ her may make it sound like something you do while watching on from some safe place, but that won’t work. A safe zone on a deadly battlefield where anything can happen will look suspicious to Mugino.”

''“In the end, the only way to truly trick Mugino is to risk your life. So you can’t be lying to save your life. This is Mugino Shizuri we’re talking about. She’ll notice immediately if you aren’t truly risking your life with the lie.”

In other words.

…A liar wouldn’t do something so dangerous. Someone trying to trick me with a lie would make sure they were safe.

By taking advantage of Mugino’s low opinion of traitors, Kinuhata could hide in her blind spot.

So it had to be here.

It had to be when Norsitro’s drones charged in and detonated at close range. It was something only possible for Kinuhata Saiai who stood outside Mugino’s Meltdowner shield and who Academy City’s #4 could not fully protect.

She did it herself.

She deactivated Offense Armor.

“Gh.”

She felt a scorching heat. From her right flank. First she felt a twisting and tugging sensation on her skin and then her small body was thrown more than two meters straight back.

“…Gah…?”

She rolled a few times and her small body was left trembling.

(Oh…no.)

Had her fear of Mugino made her take the act ''too far''? An iron taste seeped into her mouth. She could feel something throbbing inside her. She felt badly dizzy, perhaps from the blood loss, and she couldn’t tell which way was up as she lay on the ground.

She might really die here.

Takitsubo Rikou ran over, held the wound, dragged her behind cover, and waved her phone in her other hand while calling out to Mugino.

“Mugino, she’s lost a lot of blood. Her breathing is heavy and her pulse is falling. My health management app is giving red zone warnings. Kinuhata won’t last like this.”

“Huh!? …Because she was near me? But how’d she get hurt so bad when she has Offense Armor!?”

It was a valid question.

But…

“She was fighting before you got here. While protecting me. She was more worn out than anyone. If you use you power too much, you run out of stamina, right? That’s what happened here.”

…So that was the scenario they were going with.

If they didn’t push this through while Mugino’s thoughts were still confused by the red blood, they couldn’t avoid her questions about what the three of them were doing at this mysterious training ground behind her back.

So…

“Norsitro Chatellenie. In the end, she planned to kill you and take control of Item as a convenient system. Kinuhata was fighting with everything she had because she didn’t want that. She was fighting for you!”

Frenda sprinkled some kernels of truth in there.

The Information Broker didn’t just gather information – she was an expert in when to play her trump card. If they let her, she would start shouting the truth, but by establishing a different idea in Mugino’s mind first, Mugino wouldn’t listen to what the enemy was saying.

And while fighting back and looking irritated, Mugino Shizuri scratched at her head with a hand.

“~ ~ ~ Frenda!!”

“Not happening. She must have lost around a liter of blood already. The lethal limit is based on body weight and Kinuhata’s the smallest of us, so she has the least wiggle room there. Pliers, wire cutters, screwdrivers, drills – I have a lot of tools on me, but nothing that can heal people. In the end, I think the most I have is disinfectant, bandaids, and bandages?”

“1.5 to 2 liters is the limit even for a large man. Kinuhata is in serious trouble if she doesn’t get a blood transfusion immediately,” stated Takitsubo Rikou.

She never showed any emotion on her face, so she didn’t have to try and put on an act here. The listener would imagine their own emotional state mirrored back to them in her voice.

So the more pressure Mugino felt, the more urgent Takitsubo’s warnings would sound.

They were being pushed back. Item’s leader clicked her tongue.

“Did you call that kid the Information Broker? From the way they move, I’m guessing those guys around her are firefighters.”

“In the end, probably so.”

“That makes them a security team specialized in keeping her alive over defeating her enemies. …They should be prepared for any kind of emergency. Which means they might have transfusion kits for each blood type including Rh positive and negative.”

“Then what should we do, Mugino?”

Since Kinuhata couldn’t talk, Takitsubo organized their information from behind cover.

She showed Mugino the horrific values on the health management app.

“We can’t even withdraw with her like this. Moving Kinuhata in this state will kill her. Fight or run, we need to start by giving her enough blood to save her.”

…The numbers on the health management app were of course fake. The app was called Vital Jamming. It was a joke app that let you adjust some simple sliders to change the readings to show a minor cold, an injury, or even close to death.

''“Look, these are the numbers on your health app.”

''“This shows your current calorie intake and exercise level. If you keep this up, the results will be tragic a month from now. The changes will be noticeable in your figure. Especially in the hips and legs.”

…Takitsubo already had it installed on her phone to make the threats necessary to get Mugino to go jogging.

(Does that mean I’m still super alive enough she needs the app to make me look bad enough? Damn. And here I was getting all worked up thinking I might really die.)

Kinuhata felt regret. And embarrassment.

She was supposed to know this was all meant as a way to keep her alive.

The #4 must have decided Meltdowner alone wasn’t enough. She moved Kinuhata, who was lying collapsed behind some twisted metal with no engine or electronics inside. It may have been used to practice rescuing people from a vehicle after an accident. A moment later, that cover was engulfed in a series of explosive blasts.

Mugino grimaced at the continuous noise and raised her voice.

“If they have transfusion kits, where do you think they would be!?”

“Blood is a liquid, so it gets heavy if you have a lot of it. With A, B, O, and AB with Rh positive and negative for each, carrying around the liters needed to resuscitate people of any blood type would mean fighting with weights strapped to you. I doubt they would do that. But they never know when one of their people will be badly injured. In the end, they won’t keep it too far away.”

Or to put it more simply…

“At the very least, I doubt it’s in these fake buildings out here. If you want to find their transfusion kits, you’ll want to head inside the training ground’s main building!!”

They had an objective.

Of course, they couldn’t actually have Mugino save Kinuhata.

Their goal was for Mugino Shizuri to betray her teammate.

They needed the perfect genius of Academy City’s #4 to fail here.

“My, my. Oh, dear, dear. Hee hee.”

This came from Norsitro Chatellenie a short distance away.

She was here too, so she had of course seen that delightful drama play out.

Mugino was already under the impression that Kinuhata had been injured while fighting for her, so even if the Information Broker accused the other three, it seemed unlikely Mugino would blast them with Meltdowner right away.

As an information expert, she must have picked up on that mood.

So she knew nothing she said would get through to Mugino now that she was “the villain who harmed Mugino’s teammate”.

In her neon green bondage outfit, the girl shrugged and operated her phone.

“Sounds like you have an interesting predicament on your hands, but it looks like sticking to the villain role will be the ''most'' fun for me. Speaking of, do you think I’ll just let you through?”

“Tch!!”

One movement of her finger moved the swarm of drones.

Not even Mugino Shizuri could push back the entire swarm of 250 thousand drones with a maximum of 1.75 million.

Several beams sliced through the sky, triggering a few explosions, but that wasn’t enough to bring them all down at once.

“Mugino. Your wall doesn’t have to be sturdy. Even a curtain or net can catch and stop the flying drones.”

“Go to Frenda for little tricks like that!!”

The training ground facility included more than the outside field. Item carried injured Kinuhata down a flight of stairs and entered an underground field meant to simulate a subway station, but that didn’t last even ten seconds.

After a rapid series of explosions, the entire thin ceiling was torn away.

“You can’t get away.” The bondage girl was staring down at them with hands on her hips. “Training grounds like this are designed with wide open spaces underground. They’re fairly flimsy, which makes them easy to blow away. Although that means you won’t be buried alive below dirt, so maybe you should count yourselves lucky?”

They didn’t have time to complain.

The drones were like the downpour of flaming arrows meant to bring down a castle. More and more poured down from above, so Item had no choice but to run down the hallway and climb back to the surface at another exit.

Each individual phenomenon might not be so bad, but they couldn’t seem to regain control of the overall situation.

They couldn’t escape the palm of Norsitro’s hand this way.

“Mugino. In the end, they’re here too!”

“Kh. Kill them to clear a path!!”

Large men, presumably former rescue squad members, emerged from behind vending machines, benches, and other hiding places. They were armed with unique weapons like firefighting axes and rope guns that launched the rope with noncombustible gas.

On top of it all, Norsitro Chatellenie had an unidentified weather control power.

Everyone could tell things were only getting worse.

They were tumbling into the abyss and fast.

They could physically reduce the number of rescue squad members, but the number of drones never seemed to drop. No, Mugino and Frenda were shooting down quite a few of them, but that was like trying to change the weather by throwing stones up at the rain falling from the sky. It was a waste of time.

And if they couldn’t stop somewhere, they couldn’t stop Kinuhata’s bleeding.

They weren’t even supposed to move her right now, so what would happen if they tried to break through the enemy like this?

“Mugino… In the end, we have to give up,” said an astonished Frenda as she scattered mines to slow the enemy down.

…That Frenda could say something like this without it sounding out of place made Kinuhata suspect she was always adjusting her ''emotional distance'' even during ordinary conversations. Because what came next was a suggestion only allowed in the dark side.

“We can’t get a transfusion kit! We don’t even know if there’s one here, so we shouldn’t risk our lives looking for it. I get wanting to save Kinuhata, but you’ll be killed too if you keep this up!! This isn’t just about Kinuhata! If we don’t withdraw now, we’ll all be killed!”

“You’re the leader. So you decide,” added Takitsubo to drive the point home.

Item wouldn’t distribute the responsibility among its members. Stressing that this was Mugino’s decision applied pressure to her. That was a necessary part of setting things up for Mugino herself to betray Kinuhata.

They had no choice. There was no other way.

It didn’t really matter how Mugino phrased it.

But they couldn’t let her claim that they all made the choice together. So all of those psychological loopholes and outs had to be plugged up in advance. Item’s search and information expert showed no mercy here.

“Make a decision, Mugino. Without a choice from our leader, we will all die.”

With that, she preemptively eliminated the option of not making a choice and letting them run out of time.

Now Mugino Shizuri had no excuse.

Since they couldn’t overwhelm Norsitro and acquire a transfusion kit right away, Mugino had only two options: abandon dying Kinuhata and escape or choose nothing and let Kinuhata die when time ran out. Either option would mean Kinuhata’s death, so this was a powerful card to use against Mugino Shizuri who despised betrayal more than anything.

Kinuhata and the others had betrayed her first.

Mugino Shizuri would never forgive a traitor.

So for the three of them to survive, they had to cancel out their betrayal with Mugino’s betrayal.

“Mugino… In the end, I think Kinuhata wants to say something.”

The stage was set.

Takitsubo, supporting her bloody body behind unreliable cover, glanced over into Kinuhata’s eyes.

She understood.

The final emotional push would be most effective…coming from Kinuhata herself.

“Forget…about me.”

Kinuhata forced out the words as she gasped for breath.

This wasn’t an act.

She was cold.

They hadn’t managed to stop the bleeding. She could feel her body temperature dropping.

She hadn’t been killed right away, but she had lost a significant amount of blood. She found she couldn’t speak any louder than this.

“Whether or not there’s a transfusion kit somewhere in the facility…it’s super too late for an injury like this. So please…get out of here. You’re wasting your time. You’ll only get more of you killed. So please…”

An odd feeling filled Kinuhata as she spoke.

She was deceiving Mugino.

Objectively speaking, this was a terrible thing to do.

But she was finding she no longer had to consciously lie to betray Mugino here.

Strangely, she found she was speaking her true feelings.

She didn’t want Mugino to die here.

She didn’t have to lie about that, so she simply placed her current honest feelings in her words.

“I’m thankful… If you hadn’t taken me in, I’d probably still be on ice in the back of that lab. Gh… I was only meant to rot away without every leaving that place, so now I’ll just be returning to the earth. So you don’t have to feel bad about it… So hurry and go.”

(Yeah…)

The words left her almost on their own

And while it happened, a thought came to her.

(If only I wasn’t carrying all this baggage. If only I had super been the kind of person who could say this without needing to sully it like this.)

That could never happen.

The initial assumptions were wrong.

Or maybe this was the final destination of the traitor.

The end result for a selfish dreamer.

The final refuge of a fool who couldn’t bear the weight of reality.

“I was only ever something extra you picked up, right? So you don’t need to bet the fate of Item as a whole on someone disposal like me. Go!! I’ll break their perimeter. I’m going to die anyway, so I might as well go out in a blaze of glory and take a ton of them with me. Cough… That’s a hell of a lot better than dying a meaningless death!! There’s no saving me now, but I’ll super use what time I have left to make Norsitro and her people regret crossing us! So get out of here already!!!”

She drove her point home.

Kinuhata Saiai waited for Mugino to speak.

For her to say, “Fine then. If there’s no other option, we’ll leave Kinuhata here to die.”

For her to admit, “I don’t want to die here, so if you’re going to die anyway, you take care of it.”

Reality wasn’t like the movies. Especially in Academy City’s dark side, a heartless response like that would hardly be a surprise. And because Kinuhata knew that, she bet on it happening. She bet her life and future on it. Bring it on. Because if Mugino didn’t abandon her here, this would end without her receiving the bargaining chip she needed. Then she would be accused of betrayal and reduced to charcoal.

In the distance, a neon green bondage outfit creaked and Norsitro shouted to them in amusement.

“What do you think you can do with that dying body? You can’t even act as a shield against my swarm, so how do you expect to break our perimeter!?”

Something exploded.

The rusty smell grew stronger again.

A sharp fragment must have grazed her because Mugino had a cut on her right cheek.

The drones were only as big as a paper airplane made from a flier, so they could only carry so much explosive. And Frenda’s expert analysis said they weren’t carrying anything special. Each blast was only about as much as a grenade, so the lethal range was about 10 meters.

Even so, a lethal range was a lethal range.

Rapid-firing Meltdowner beams wasn’t enough to stop them all, so Mugino destroyed the base of a nearby fake three-story building to topple it and use the plywood as a shield. She could shoot down the leading drones, but that wouldn’t last forever. And even if she did defend against the sharp fragments, the shockwave still circled around the cover and struck her body.

A single bomb or bullet could kill. Far too easily. That was how it worked on the dark side. A total of 1.75 million? No, she couldn’t let her guard down with even a single drone.

But.

Even so.

“…Takitsubo.”

“What?”

“There’s still a chance, right? If I manage to get inside that building at the cost of my own flesh and blood and acquire a transfusion kit, we can save Kinuhata, right?”

“Maybe.”

“Heh,” laughed Mugino Shizuri.

And she gave her answer.

Item’s leader held her palm straight out and stepped forward. Out from behind cover.

“That’s all I needed to hear.”

…Wait a second.

Why isn’t she betraying me?

“I’m not running.”

Her voice wasn’t particularly loud.

But Mugino Shizuri did speak.

She had to know how bad the situation was for her. She had toppled the fake building to create a shield because she knew she couldn’t shoot down all the drones with Meltdowner.

But a fake building was only a fake. While the drone attacks weren’t designed with penetrative power in mind, this wouldn’t last long. Once the consecutive blasts broke through, it was all over. And Mugino had stepped out from even that much cover.

And yet.

She completely thew out the cold calculations of the dark side.

“I will never abandon a teammate and run.”

A drone exploded.

Close by.

Kinuhata received no new injuries.

Because Mugino Shizuri stood in the way, clenching her teeth. A shard several centimeters across had lodged itself in her shoulder.

This was the borderline between life and death. If the truth came out, it was all over. That was why Kinuhata had put on an act, even if it meant losing more than a liter of blood.

She was of course deceiving her teammate.

But Mugino Shizuri’s heart turned out to be…unexpectedly sturdy?

“Bring it, Information Broker!! I don’t know your name, but you will pay for underestimating Item. Did you think ''the'' Mugino Shizuri would let you get away with doing this to one of my teammates right before my eyes? You’ll be nothing but charcoal once I’m done with you!!!”

Takitsubo fidgeted nervously with her usual lack of expression.

Frenda Seivelun appeared aware how dangerous the situation was. She was frantically trying to work out a course correction from behind cover.

“Wait… In the end, why are you getting all hot-blooded right now when all our lives are on the line!? Don’t you know what Item’s leader is supposed to do!? Hurry up and tell us get out of here, Leader Mugino!!”

“This is my decision to make and I will never betray anyone. I won’t leave Kinuhata hear, turn tail, and run!! It isn’t a matter of pride anymore. All the tools I need to save my teammate’s life are within arm’s reach. If I have to let these blasts tear the flesh from my bones, so be it. I’ve got plenty of excess flesh to offer. So I will get my hands on that transfusion kit!!”

“…”

Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner could not shoot down all of the drones even with its scattershot. She could also use her power to defend, but that wasn’t its primary use and it was far from perfect.

More explosions erupted.

She wasn’t critically wounded yet, but she was gradually being worn down.

Academy City’s #4 was.

The next head of the proud Mugino Family was.

All because Kinuhata Saiai had dragged her into this.

Mugino would have had more options here if she were alone. Meltdowner could pierce through any obstacle. She could have escaped outside the former training ground and then sniped Norsitro through the thick wall.

But she couldn’t do that.

Because she couldn’t leave injured and bleeding Kinuhata’s side.

Because she would prefer to accept some disadvantage than abandon a teammate.

Because she wanted the life-saving transfusion kit no matter what.

As fearsome as she was, Mugino Shizuri wasn’t lying. She wasn’t deceiving anyone. She wasn’t betraying anyone. Yet she was being worn down for the sake of a dirty liar.

While roaring that this was better than abandoning her dying teammate and escaping on her own.

“You’re…kidding.”

Kinuhata Saiai was not Mugino Shizuri, so she hadn’t heard what the old butler Mujinayama said.

But he had said that the best way to prevent betrayal was to prepare for it in advance.

And he had said that suspecting your own people was a form of betrayal in and of itself.

Because.

If the person you suspected was not in fact a traitor and was instead a reliable ally who trusted you from the bottom of their heart…then your own suspicion of them would have branded you as a traitor.

Bull’s eye.

“No…”

She had decided to deceive.

There was no way around the fact she only had the one life. So she had decided survival even at the cost of betrayal was the right choice.

But she couldn’t do it anymore.

Something was burned through inside Kinuhata Saiai.

“Are you kidding me!? I super can’t stand it anymorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre!!!”

===Part 10===

Someone was crying.

They were bawling loudly like a small child.

It was the siren of doom.

Lies? Acting? Deception?

She was past caring about any of that.

Frenda and Takitsubo were watching Kinuhata Saiai from a short distance away.

This was past the point of not knowing how to approach an unmanageable child. Theirs were not the expression a parent would give to their child. The look in their eyes was one of abandonment – of “sigh, now you’ve done it”. They also kept an invisible distance from her so they could stay safely out of the way of what was coming. They chose to trust only the sixth sense they had developed as villains.

The world seemed to rapidly pull away from Kinuhata in all directions.

The weeping girl was left all alone.

If was over for her once Mugino Shizuri discovered the truth. She had known that from the start. But Kinuhata Saiai couldn’t stand it any longer.

“I…”

Her words caught in her throat.

She was aware how self-destructive this was.

Some part of her brain was screaming for her to stop.

But it was too late.

It was game over whether she stopped here or spat out the rest of her words. Mugino Shizuri would never forgive a traitor. Once she was certain of her suspicions, they would not go away on their own.

But that was fine.

She would feel better this way.

She wanted to get it all out before someone could stop her and before she passed out from blood loss.

It would pain her more for this to end unresolved. That she couldn’t bear.

“I lied to you!! I couldn’t abandon that ordinary person who was being forced by the blackmailers to rob the bank, so I saved her knowing she was a criminal who had attacked you! Everything’s gone wrong since… But that’s no excuse. I made my choice and I’ve been lying to you super ever since!!”

Information Broker Norsitro Chatellenie gave her an icy look.

Unsurprising really.

The last thing she would want after working so hard to gather up information on a scandal was for the target to self-destructively go public with it. The treasure held by the brown girl in the neon green bondage outfit was now worthless scrap. Of course she wasn’t happy about it.

“It was all my fault!! So that’s enough, Mugino! I don’t need a transfusion kit! Just get out of here. You super don’t need to get hurt here!!!”

There.

She’d said it. She had come clean.

So Kinuhata Saiai managed a somehow twisted smile even as the tears spilled from her eyes.

…If only she’d done this in the first place.

She still didn’t think it had been wrong to act on behalf of the ordinary person being threatened into committing robbery by the blackmailers.

But what about the rest?

Self-preservation, self-preservation, self-preservation, self-preservation! Kinuhata Saiai had been ugly, dirty, and rotten. How could she possibly excuse her actions there?

Had saving the girl being forced to rob a bank really and truly been the same thing as lying to her teammate to save her own skin?

Saving someone was no excuse for betrayal.

If she really had done the right thing, she didn’t need anything else. Instead of worrying about her own life, she should have accepted an honorable death.

All of this was the result of failing to do that.

She had been weak, wretched, and yet greedy. Mugino Shizuri had been injured in her attempt to protect that traitor. She had shed her own blood. And it wasn’t going to end there. At this rate, Mugino, Takitsubo, and Frenda would all die. Item would be finished.

And it would all be Kinuhata Saiai’s fault.

An enemy and a traitor from within were two very different things.

Kinuhata Saiai had been taught an important lesson.

She now knew she had fallen to a position more miserable than death. She was like an insect flipped on its back and unable to right itself.

Even when she had been raised in the back of an unofficial lab, wasting her life away unknown to the world, she had at least still had a human soul.

Even when she had been taken in by Item and been asked to help with their dirty jobs, she had had her soul as a villain.

Kinuhata could tell she was having trouble enunciating. Was it her tongue or her brain? One or the other wasn’t working right after losing so much blood. She didn’t care which. This was far better than having the fear and pain rule her thoughts, preventing her from doing what had to be done.

“I’ll super handle the rest.”

When had her soul been reduced to that of an insect?

She knew the answer.

From the moment she chose to give up on being human.

“I know this is just more selfishness on my part, but I super want to take responsibility for my own actions. You don’t have to bother with any of this, so hurry up and go!!”

And.

Academy City’s #4 monster…listened to it.

It entered her ears.

It soaked into her brain.

Mugino Shizuri now knew what had happened. She had certainty. And she did not forgive traitors. Because she had been raised by the Mugino Family as a born gangster.

To reiterate yet again, Mugino Shizuri did not forgive traitors.

So.

What was the definition of a traitor?

What had Mujinayama said, after his long years of service to the Mugino Family and everything he had seen there?

“Heh. Shut the hell up.”

And.

There was no beam of light.

Even though Kinuhata was ready for it.

Mugino Shizuri placed her palm on the sobbing girl’s head.

Ignoring her own bleeding.

“If you can say all that and you can risk your life to come clean regardless of the consequences, then you’re no traitor.”

Mugino Shizuri’s bloody face bore a small smile.

She was the kind of person who could smile here.

The world had pulled away from Kinuhata in all directions, but she wasn’t alone. Someone had approached her and rubbed her head.

“You’re Item. I will never forgive a traitor, but I always protect my own.”

Kinuhata Saiai couldn’t get any words out.

A moment later, a drone dropped down like lightning and triggered an explosion.

===Part 11===

Reality was heartless.

No matter what emotions had just been exchanged between Mugino Shizuri and Kinuhata Saiai, the silver-haired girl only had to input a simple command on her phone to send 250 thousand drones rushing in to attack. Each of those unmanned weapons was loaded with an explosive and the swarm made a merciless physical attack.

There was an explosion.

But it happened far off in the empty blue sky. Within the dragon of closely-packed drones.

More explosions followed. The chain reaction continued on and on.

The drones attempting to blow up Mugino and Kinuhata broke apart well before reaching them.

“Wha-?”

Norsitro Chatellenie was speechless.

Apparently this was something not even the Information Broker understood.

…Like any aircraft, drones were at risk of breaking apart when pushed too hard. When attempting maneuvers beyond their limits, the combined force of the air resistance and shockwaves would rattle the main wings and cause the aircraft to shake apart. Within Earth’s gravity, you could never forget that it was ''unnatural for anything to leave the surface and fly.

But what had caused this?

The 250 thousand drones were electronically controlled by the parallel processing of 250 thousand CPUs and fully guided by Norsitro’s smartphone. She couldn’t see any reason for them to break apart on their own!

“A maximum of 1.75 million drones? With 250 thousand operated at once? Your swarm control system can break through even if a fair number are shot down by anti-air weapons?”

This came in a casual, singsong voice. And a wicked one.

Mugino Shizuri spoke even while stained red by her own blood.

“But all you’ve done is gather an ass-ton of the same craft, which means they all have the same weakness. I just have to find a single vulnerability and I win. And I had plenty of time to gather information while they were pummeling me. Your trump card was laughably easy to defeat.”

“Oh, is that so? And what exactly are you going to do? Fry all their CPUs with an anti-ship EMP bomb? Or maybe pull an anti-air microwave cannon out of your ass? Fantastical super weapons are great for winning theoretical arguments, but they can’t protect your very real life. Do you have an attack method that can help you in the real world!?”’ shouted Norsitro in her glittering neon green bondage outfit. “You won’t run away? You always protect your own? …Absurd. Why would you ''make that kind of performative claim in front of me''? Did you not look into the legend of the Information Broker? Yes, yes. You have my full attention now. And I won’t rest until all of you are dead!!”

But bloody Mugino gave a snort of laughter.

(Well, she does attack with lightning. I suppose they would be designed to withstand an electric surge.)

That Norsitro would give an actual response to that kind of speculation showed how naive Norsitro was.

When the enemy gave the answer themselves, she had only two options: scoff at the answer for being way off, or frantically try to throw them off because they made a lucky guess.

But if she hadn’t said anything at all, doubt would remain. Whether it was right or wrong, staying quiet had likely been Norsitro’s best option. But she couldn’t help herself. Even though this was like playing concentration and giving up your turn by flipping over cards for your opponent.

“Kh. I have the power to change the weather. The drones can fly through rain or hail without issue!!”

“Sure. ''For unnatural weather you designed yourself'', right?’

Mugino didn’t even glance over behind cover.

Standing out in the open, she pointed her index finger straight up into the blue sky.

“You adjust the drones’ maneuvering based on the weather. There’s an optimal speed for sunny weather, an optimal angle for rain, and so on. When you know it’s coming, you can use your own program there. But with truly unexpected gusts of winds blowing between the buildings, the drones will tilt on their side. And during a sudden downpour, the apparent viscosity of the air changes and the main wings will rattle until they break.”

That was where Mugino had to strike to win.

Meaning…

“It comes down to the ''air’s viscosity''. Or the apparent viscosity anyway.”

She gave the answer.

Saying it here wouldn’t change the result. She had only said it to assert dominance over her opponent in an act of villainous cruelty.

“If I burn the air with Meltdowner, it will reduce the humidity, which dries out the air. But if I instead blast a water tank, the water inside will pour out, greatly increasing the apparent air resistance. It’s simple once you know the trick, but that is enough for the 250 thousand and 1.75 million drones to tear themselves apart. Pretty neat, right?”

“Kh… You mean…that’s what you did?”

It might seem obvious, but that kind of obvious thing could be the most dangerous among all the unusual things found in the supersonic world. Quite a few of Academy City’s prototype fighter craft had ordinary air tear off their main wings because they were unable to withstand their own vibrations.

“The last thing you want is for someone else to alter the weather. That’s why you control it yourself. No matter how unnatural it might look, you needed to alter the environment for all those drones! Even if it meant using some strange power!!”

The maximum of 1.75 million was a certainly a threat, but using the exact same craft for all of them had been a mistake.

Securing multiple different models would have been a challenge when manufacturing, operation, and maintenance were taken into account. The simple financial cost and effort of operation would have been several times greater. But the choice had come back to bite her in combat. The world’s armies would not use a single standard craft just because it was the latest and greatest. Just like Academy City used the Two Wings and Six Wings simultaneously.

A single vulnerability would affect them all.

Throw them off there and the entire swarm would be suddenly destroyed.

The explosions continued. Mugino wasn’t aiming Meltdowner in that direction, but the drones couldn’t approach the former training ground where their targets awaited. They all broke apart on their own and their explosives detonated.

Mugino Shizuri sneered.

She might fight for Academy City or the greater world beyond its walls, but she was neither good nor righteous.

This was the smile of a villain who knew the taste of blood.

“Now, that takes care of those annoying drones buzzing around. Which only leaves your power to deal with.”

===Part 12===

Mugino Shizuri and Norsitro Chatellenie.

Regardless of how many other people were around, this was their battle.

Whoever won would win it all. Whoever lost would lose it all.

“Don’t expect a signal. I’m not flipping a coin or anything.”

“Did you not consider that I might kill you while you said that, fool?”

They both took action immediately.

A thick beam burst from Mugino’s palm.

The neon green bondage girl smiled.

She was still alive and well.

Several of the fake training ground structures had been burned and melted, but that was all.

(Meltdowner missed its mark?)

“No, did she bend it with a current rivaling a bolt of lightning!?”

There was another beam of light.

Something powerful pierced through Mugino Shizuri from head to toe.

A high-voltage current.

In fact, it was a lightning bolt of more than a hundred million volts.

“Kah…ah…”

Mugino’s breath caught, but she managed to stay on her feet, probably because her Meltdowner power controlled electrons. She had touched a torn high-voltage line outside the city without issue yet a shock at the District 3 bus terminal had briefly stopped her heart, suggesting her psychological state influenced the effectiveness of that ability far too much to be a reliable means of defense.

“Mugino, that isn’t an esper power.”

And Takitsubo Rikou made a judgment from behind cover.

This was the natural result of repeatedly using the same trump card in front of that search expert.

“She is controlling 250 thousand drones at once. Each one is the size of a small paper airplane, but you can think of that like fanning the air with a fan 250 thousand times that size. The movements of that swarm can cause a gust of wind in a single direction, a swirling tornado, or even rapidly reduce the air pressure, allowing her to change the weather itself. She can even cause hail and lightning that way.”

“Ha ha!!”

Not at all bothered and even laughing, Norsitro Chatellenie immediately responded.

“Didn’t I tell you!? Oh, sorry. Your leader wasn’t here when I explained that, was she? Anyway, I said keeping them in top condition isn’t easy!! The Superb Starling weather control swarm claims to be a strategic weapon superior to nuclear warheads, so it had damn well better be able to handle this!!!”

Meaning…

“You…”

Academy City’s #4 Level 5, Meltdowner.

Mugino Shizuri, leader of Item and born gangster of the Mugino Family, had been cornered this far by…

“''You’re a Level 0''?”

“Funny, isn’t it?”

She was laughing.

Information Broker Norsitro Chatellenie was.

Was that sneer on a face more pained than a lost child’s directed at herself?

“The villain who stands at the summit of Academy City’s evil, devours the city’s ordinary people, and has extended her reach into the world beyond the city…is no more than a Level 0. And I’ve fought back against this entire world because I hate being called that!! Yes, it’s true. I wanted to prove to everyone who’s ever laughed at me that I am not powerless and there is so much I can do!!!”

…She had been certain.

Mugino Shizuri had been absolutely certain that large-scale weather control was Norsitro’s esper power.

So she had thought this would end up as a battle between elites.

But it wasn’t.

This was a lot messier.

“There was a major…incident.”

The enemy was a true Level 0. yet she had challenged Item’s Level 5 and two Level 4s head on and driven them to the brink of death.

“Someone had to die and we all discussed who it should be. Everyone’s eyes gathered on me. Not one of them defended me. …That’s when I made up my mind. I decided I would survive even if it meant killing them all. I decided I would be the one looking down on every last one those shits who tell their pretty lies so they can pretend they’re good people!!”

Was that the trauma that led to her surrounding herself with a rescue squad that provided her with the power to survive rather than the power to kill?

She had been labeled a Level 0.

She had been abandoned by the adults’ systems and the children’s rules.

She had been declared unwanted.

But still she clenched her teeth and reached out her hand in that rotten quagmire.

She wanted power.

She wanted to be strong.

The drone swarm could not approach Mugino. She used the viscosity of the air to bring them down before they could.

But that did not rid the 250 thousand drones of their ability to act like a giant fan to stir up the air, manipulate the air pressure, and alter the weather. Using that did not require directly approaching their target.

This was a harmful technology, but Mugino was willing to recognize the girl’s ability to convert her desire for improvement into actual power.

However.

That was only if she didn’t arrogantly brag about her unprecedented achievement and hadn’t become a monster who endlessly devoured ordinary people’s lives.

(Power corrupts, huh?)

“I can’t respect a villain who reduces herself to a disposable rocket only meant to elevate the things she’s created. What have you become in your constant fear of being killed?”

“?”

A battle between villains begins before the fighting actually starts.

Whichever one was daunted and taken in by the other would fail.

So those who lived in the shadows paid close attention to how they lived their lives even as they turned their back to the sun. They didn’t think twice about breaking ordinary laws and regulations, but they followed their own ironclad rules or Family solidarity and they despised lies, deception, and betrayal in their midst.

And once the 1.75 million drones and their weather control were stripped away, the win condition here was as simple as can be.

She was the Information Broker.

Mugino couldn’t let the bondage girl’s weapon get to her and she had to view her for who she really was.

…The lightning was powerful, but it wasn’t enough to take the life of Academy City’s #4. The rain and hail were powerful enough to engulf Academy City if used systematically, but they couldn’t immobilize Mugino right away.

And no matter how much the winds and tornadoes might bluster, they couldn’t alter Meldowner’s electron beams the way they could a lead bullet or rocket.

Mugino Shizuri grinned.

“So would your one and only effective card be…the lightning? But that’s for defense, not attack. It’s true a current of more than a hundred million volts might be able to interfere with and bend my Meltdowner.”

“…Wait…”

“That’s right. If you’re so smart, you should have realized this ages ago. …If you ''only'' have the one effective card, coming up with a countermeasure is easy.”

Mugino didn’t have time for games.

Kinuhata Saiai must have gone the extra mile in trying to deceive Mugino because it didn’t look like she had used fake blood. That meant her bleeding was real. In that case, Mugino’s goal was to acquire and use a transfusion kit. Norsitro Chatellenie was no more than a point on the way.

So this wouldn’t be a skirmish.

If she was going to kill her, one major attack would do the trick.

Item’s leader announced her intentions.

To make sure it wasn’t too late.

To save the life of her teammate.

These parting words were not just for show.

“You’re – dead – meat.”

<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Item6_Chapter3|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Item6_Epilogue}}
</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item6 Chapter4

2026-03-04T18:30:33Z

Massify: /* Part 4 */ fixed up the tense, especially since based would fit better

==Chapter 4: The Cost of Your Choice==

===Part 1===

The situation was changing at dizzying speed.

On the first floor lobby of the District 5 tourist hotel, Kinuhata Saiai could tell she was breathing heavily. Now was no time to panic. She was currently on a dangerous tightrope walk where failing to organize the information would guarantee her death.

“Phew.”

She had to sort through the information, be it good or bad.

Striking back at the Information Broker was her top priority for now.

At the same time, she would have to finally deal with the fundamental problem of Mugino Shizuri. She doubted lies and deception would work forever there. The more she tried it, the more likely she was to make a mistake or rouse suspicion. So she had to make Mugino feel guilty by making her commit the one thing she disliked most of all: betrayal.

Then the born gangster’s own wicked principles would prevent her from attacking Kinuhata and the rest. The gang logic would muddle who was owed what.

Letting Mugino find out about any of this was out of the question, so they couldn’t rely on the support team. Kinuhata, Takitsubo, and Frenda would have to solve the Information Broker and Mugino problems on their own.

So…

“We’ll super pit Mugino and the Information Broker against each other.”

It was two in the afternoon.

Kinuhata Saiai made this suggestion while soaked with a cold sweat.

“We make it look like I got dragged into that fight. It would work best if I get injured. Then Mugino will kill the Information Broker for us and Mugino’s ‘betrayal’ of me will give us the upper hand with her. That’s the only way if all of us are going to survive. We let it all be super water under the bridge by negating betrayal with more betrayal.”

“In the end, are you serious? There’s no safety measures there.”

Frenda’s shoulders slumped, but she didn’t seem to have an alternative.

Track suit girl Takitsubo nodded a little.

“It’s more likely to work than trying to continue lying. Mugino hates betrayal from one of her own more than anything. Based on her gangster logic, not simple emotion. …So how much do you think she will blame herself if she suspects a teammate and turns out to be wrong? Especially if that teammate ends up injured as a result.”

It wasn’t a solid plan.

It would be a perilous tightrope walk. In fact, the very idea of using this loophole against her could be seen as a betrayal of Mugino.

One shoulder of Frenda Seivelun’s clothes slipped down.

Her thoughts were written plain on her face: she wanted to run with all her might, but she knew running would only get her killed.

“Ugh. Then what do we need first? That Information Broker’s identity and appearance? In the end, we can’t include her in our plan if we don’t know her personal information.”

“Then this should come in super handy.”

Kinuhata Saiai waved her phone.

“Just like when we dealt with the blackmailers, I have the location data found by messing with a security robot, hooking a phone up to it, and scanning for phone signals in the area. Anyone with five or ten phones on them is super suspicious, right? Then I have a candidate here.”

Frenda was skeptical. Which may have been the natural reaction after being dragged into a deadly problem for no good reason.

“In the end, do you really think the big boss would be wandering around on the front line?”

“You have it backwards, Frenda.”

“?”

“She can let her underlings handle a lot of the odd jobs, but not so with a delicate and difficult boss battle. It’s the same with Item and our support team, right? …If she truly sees us as a threat, the Information Broker herself will be the one gathering information.”

But that mistrust and unease regarding her own people had worked against her.

It had been convenient for Kinuhata and the others that the enemy was carrying five or more phones. They were likely for different uses – contacting her team, sending commands to disposable soldiers, etc. – but with five of them, it wasn’t a surprise to find one specific type of phone.

One for purely private use.

Instead of a pseudonym and a fictional address, this phone was linked to her real name and bank account and had tens of thousands of photos and videos on it.

They couldn’t steal all of those right away, but they could view the registration name on the small notifications and the lock screen wallpaper.

This was especially easy with narcissists who used their own photo there.

“Norsitro Chatellenie. …Finally super found you, Information Broker.”

She was a girl with silver hair and dark skin.

She looked to be older than Kinuhata and younger than Takitsubo.

Why her wallpaper was a selfie of herself smiling in only a towel was a mystery, though. Did she tend to take long baths with her phone?

Takitsubo Rikou had again shifted into drill sergeant mode. So annoying.

“Okay, Kinuhata. We know her name and appearance, but how do we find her hideout?”

“We super use her food,” succinctly stated Kinuhata Saiai.

Frenda sighed.

“Norsitro Chatellenie. In the end, her name does sound pretty French. Her phone’s default language is even set to French.”

According to Frenda, the towel she was wearing was from a fairly high-end brand. A French brand, of course. It was an offshoot of the fancy restaurant napkins and tablecloths the company was generally known for. Silks and dresses were one thing, but Kinuhata was a little surprised to learn there was even such a thing as a super high-quality towel. Takitsubo and Frenda went on to say the one towel cost more than two million yen. Now she was super surprised!!

“She’ll definitely be looking for the soul food of her home country. That doesn’t mean she’ll be super eating French food every day, but she won’t be able to stop completely. And if she does that when she’s letting off some steam, she will leave behind some small hints. We can use those to track down the elusive Information Broker.”

That must have been the answer Takitsubo was expecting.

She immediately returned the conversational rally.

“For food, District 4 would be best.”

“Yeah, they super have any kind of cuisine you could want. Which means that’s where a native would go if she isn’t satisfied with Japan’s French restaurants that unintentionally alter the food to fit Japanese sensibilities and work with the local ingredients.”

“But, Kinuhata, an entire district is a large area. Will Norsitro be going to a luxury French restaurant with a French manager, or does she visit an industrial supermarket with imported ingredients and do the cooking herself? Even narrowing it down to those two options leaves quite a few possibilities.”

“Will you super stop testing me?” Kinuhata sighed in exasperation and raised a finger. “B and C gangster movies always show the gang bosses and fugitives using fancy restaurants of their home country as a base, but you’d be immediately caught and arrested if you tried that in Academy City. The connection is too obvious. So if the Information Broker is trying to be safe by staying hidden, she super won’t visit a restaurant connected to her home country. By her logic, that would be suicide.”

She raised another finger.

“And ''that’s why she’ll have them come to her.'' At a disposable rental site of course. There are plenty of services that let you call in an expert chef to cook for you and even the rich in the legitimate world will do that for a home party. For a special fee. …That must exist on the dark side too, right? There must be a chef hiring service with options for every county around the world.”

“Correct.” Takitsubo laughed. “It’s called Kitchen Car. Those food specialists are based in District 4 and can enrich a criminal’s fugitive lifestyle.”

“Right. The chef’s skills are top rate, but they were unfairly fired when the entire restaurant got food poisoning or the ingredients were phony or something, so in the end, they were recruited in secret,” added Frenda.

Kinuhata sighed softly.

“That just leaves…the fact that it’s two in the afternoon. The next super time she could call a chef will be at dinnertime. How many hours are we going to end up waiting?”

“In the end, I doubt it will take long.”

“Kinuhata, proper French cooking requires hours of preparation. For a dinner scheduled for seven to nine in the evening, I wouldn’t be surprised if the chefs are already getting started.”

Oh, is that so, you damn dark side rich girls?

This was an unbelievable world for Kinuhata who was happy as long as she had movie theater popcorn and a soda.

Regardless, if Information Broker Norsitro Chatellenie was a frequent user of Kitchen Car, this would be easy. Tailing their French chef would eventually lead them right to the Information Broker.

“There are a few things we have to be super careful about,” began Kinuhata. She raised a finger. “First, Kitchen Car will be experts at not being tailed. After all, their job is to provide a safe option for fugitives who can’t just go to a restaurant. Trust is their main selling point, so they will make super sure they aren’t being followed. What we do about that is our biggest problem.”

She wasn’t done yet.

She raised a second finger.

“Second, using this to attack the Information Broker would be easy, but we also have to see this through to the end while fooling Mugino. Defeating Norsitro Chatellenie is super meaningless if she makes a mistake and is killed by Meltdowner before we’re ready. And Mugino isn’t stupid, so she will get suspicious with all three of us missing.”

“''Isn’t that great''?”

Kinuhata couldn’t believe it.

The legitimate VIP whose downfall had been triggered by a super tiny pencil nuke. Private Casino who had been baked to death by a white phosphorous grenade on the party hall roof. The fates of those who had opposed or betrayed Item – or Mugino Shizuri, really – flashed through Kinuhata’s mind. This situation was placing a strain on her heart, but Takitsubo had casually called it “great”?

That search expert who didn’t participate in the direct fighting really did see things differently. …Was Mugino Shizuri really the most terrifying member of Item?

“We have internal and external enemies and the situation is extremely complex and annoying, but we only have two problems to deal with. That should tell you this mission is on easy mode, Kinuhata.”

===Part 2===

Takitsubo spoke up while operating her phone on a moving train.

“I found more on the Information Broker.”

“?”

Kinuhata frowned.

Their opponent was an expert at using information. She wouldn’t be operating in a way that made her real identity as Norsitro Chatellenie a household name.

So was Takitsubo researching the Information Broker identity?

“She appears to go by some other names, but the most notable one is the Faultfinding Demon. She might take a philanthropist who insists money isn’t everything and bury them in debt. Or she might take a lawyer who claims to be opposed to violence no matter the circumstances and place them under so much psychological pressure they end up killing someone in front of a TV camera. It looks like she targets anyone who performatively makes unrealistic claims to boost their public reputation.”

“But are you sure it’s really Norsitro doing that? Information Broker isn’t a super rare term or anything.”

“Kinuhata. Do you remember the bug maker I mentioned before?”

“Yeah, during the stuff with Sudori-san. You said they were investigating Kamigi when they disappeared.”

“Well, the title of information broker is even more common than that one, but I’ve heard rumors of a sudden drop off in how often it’s used. They must all be afraid of earning her disfavor by looking like a rival.”

That made sense.

This opponent was even more dangerous than Kinuhata had imagined. Not to mention self-centered and persistent.

“Is the super dark side just full of guys who are willing to die for their weird hang-ups?”

“Stop that, Kinuhata. You should try to use gender neutral language.”

Kinuhata got scolded by the capable big sister.

…But was that really necessary when complaining about brutal villains?

District 4 was located a bit northeast of Academy City’s center.

The district specialized in all things food and it was a very international place. The food market had small flags to indicate what nationality a shop specialized in, so the long street was reminiscent of all the flags at an athletic festival. The many signs jutting out from from the building walls was chaos itself. There were so many signs overhead it felt like walking through a colorful tunnel.

Broad categories like Asian or European had naturally gathered in clumps, but there was no strict division between areas. There was an Italian restaurant and an American South hamburger shop encroaching on the red Chinatown and a sushi place with the Central and South American versions of Spanish and Portuguese on the signs right alongside the European restaurants. The sushi there apparently used jalapeno paste instead of wasabi.

“This district is like a giant manifestation of choice paralysis.”

“Frenda, is this making you crave your own home country’s food?”

“In the end, I’d be happy living on the far side of Mars as long as I have mackerel.”

If the three of them stayed away too long, Mugino Shizuri would get suspicious. But that didn’t mean they had to solve this problem before that happened. In fact, they couldn’t have Mugino just stay in the luxury hotel. To trick her, to get her to betray them, and to survive, they needed Mugino to act of her own volition.

Suspicion was the greatest fuel for someone who hated betrayal more than anything else.

“So is super that Kitchen Car’s HQ?”

“I think so, Kinuhata.”

“But wait. District 4 is all about food…and they’re in a trash house!? I thought Kitchen Car were super culinary experts!! How could they let this happen!?”

“In the end, I bet this was what happened when those culinary experts decided to build a fortress everyone would want to keep away from. Inside, they’ve probably torn down some walls to turn into a maze. It’s called hiding in plain sight. If you’re looking for someone or something, nothing is more annoying than a trash-filled building.”

The structure itself was a four-floor multi-tenant building, but bulging trash bags were piled up in every door and window and even covered the front walk.

Was that supposed to be camouflage?

That had to be a huge nuisance for the neighbors.

The trio bought kebab sandwiches at a nearby food stand and munched on them as they waited for something to happen. There were an unusual number of people jogging, but was that the result of the overabundance of tasty foods in this district?

Frenda’s sandwich must have been too spicy for her because she kept going back to her cup’s straw for more sips of soda.

“In the end, do we have any reason to think the Information Broker will call Kitchen Car today?”

“There’s no guarantee, but I think the odds are good,” replied Takitsubo. “This is a big deal for her too. It might look like she’s the one threatening Item, but this only happened because she failed to deal with us earlier. If she screws this up, she’ll truly have to go into hiding and then she’ll have far fewer options. She should want to eat everything she likes while she has the chance.”

“There they super are.”

A mid-sized yellow truck slowly emerged from the trash heap of a place. Kinuhata was surprised to find there was a metal garage door there.

“That must be Kitchen Car’s truck.”

The trio waited for the truck to pass by and made the final check by nose.

“Bouillon and mirepoix. Also truffles, pickles, horseradish, and is that lobster sauce?”

“That’s not Japanese or Chinese cooking. In the end, it’s definitely French.”

…Kinuhata couldn’t tell a thing. But she wasn’t upset about it. Really.

But a truck.

Did they need a large vehicle to fit the ingredients and the cooking equipment? It wasn’t as bad as with Chinese cooking, but French cooking probably did require some industrial firepower.

Kitchen Car were experts at providing fugitives with delicious food. That meant they knew how to keep Anti-Skill from tailing them. This wouldn’t be as easy as attaching a GPS-equipped device to track it. The truck’s radio or sensors would detect the signal.

So Takitsubo made a simple comment.

“Frenda.”

“Yeah, yeah. In the end, one plastic bottle drone coming up. Makes me wonder what you would have done if you didn’t have the ultra genius and ultimately cute Frenda-chan on your side.”

“It’s French food, right? I planned to track the nitrogen gas used to keep the wine from oxidizing.”

“But in the end, Norsitro Chatellenie is clearly underage!”

Takitsubo and Frenda were enjoying their banter.

How could they be so calm?

Kinuhata frowned.

“Won’t your drone get super shot down by an attack helicopter?”

“In the end, anything small enough will be fine as long as it doesn’t move too fast. There are plenty of UFOs flying around overhead, including small birds and convenience store bags floating in the wind. The city’s automatic air defense doesn’t react to it all.”

Of course, Frenda wasn’t just guessing here. It was based on accurate data she had researched. And the standards had to change daily.

The tablet’s screen showed the yellow truck crossing a few district boundaries.

It finally arrived in District 2.

“Isn’t that the car-focused district?”

“In the end, they do weapons and explosives there too.”

They focused on the screen some more. The yellow truck drove below a building, likely into an underground parking garage, but experts at losing pursuit wouldn’t drive straight to their client’s hideout. Frenda cautiously sent the drone around a while longer to continue observing from the air until…

“Here they come.”

“Hm. When traveling on foot, they disguise themselves as a wholesaler that specializes in fireproof curtains and carpets. Well, the ingredients and cooking equipment unloaded from the truck would be too heavy to carry without a handcart of some kind.”

“Then is this it? What is this super place?”

“I see a lot of tall, fake structures and a bunch of ropes. In the end, it looks like some kind of training ground. If it isn’t Anti-Skill, could it be for firefighters?”

The place didn’t seem to be functioning. Was it abandoned? There was even a large plastic pool set up on the grounds.

“Is it time to head in?”

“I want to be absolutely certain first. They might take another vehicle from the parking lot here.”

They waited ten minutes, but that never happened.

That settled it.

It had to be this former training ground thought to be for firefighters.

“We have her,” said Takitsubo Rikou.

===Part 3===

She woke up.

“Hmm?”

Mugino Shizuri opened her eyes in bed. And slowly sat up.

She crawled out of the bedroom still in sleepwear that let her body show through pretty much everywhere.

“Takitsubo?”

No response.

She looked around without fixing her hair.

“Kinuhata, Frenda?”

Still nothing.

(Hm…)

Just once she consciously let out a breath.

Then she grabbed her phone.

She didn’t call her familiar Item teammates.

(Kinuhata and Takitsubo were missing after the bank robbery, but now Frenda’s gone too.)

She was already making some guesses. Like that ''they wouldn’t respond'' if she called them or messaged them on social media.

There was only one person to contact at a time like this.

“Mujinayama. You’ve been discharged from the hospital, right?”

“I must apologize for the inconvenience and trouble I caused you back then, Lady Shizu-”

“Don’t bother,” she snapped and the old butler immediately fell silent.

This was Mujinayama, so he obviously wasn’t intimidated. Even over the phone, he gave the sense of a grandfather playing with his grandchild.

“Hey, Mujinayama.”

“I am at your service.”

“How do I identify a traitor?”

===Part 4===

A firefighter training ground was an unfamiliar place.

Kinuhata had trouble deciding where any specific rooms would be located. The fake structures on the surface couldn’t be all of it, so there was likely more underground.

Now, where would that evil boss be?

“Can we super determine what floor and room they’re in based on Kitchen Car’s movements?”

Kinuhata knew that was asking a lot.

The grounds were large and there were probably lots of underground pathways connecting different areas. What they could see from the outside wouldn’t be enough to fully track Kitchen Car.

But Frenda sounded cheerful as she used a cable to link her phone to a panel on the thick wall surrounding the grounds.

“In the end, check this out, Kinuhata. The security camera records are just gone.”

“Does that super mean the Information Broker is using this place in secret?”

“Then what about this third floor special observation seat? I’m guessing that’s a VIP room for instructors to watch all the trainees and keep score, but the sprinklers have been turned off there.”

“Kitchen Car was transporting cooking equipment along with their ingredients, right? They can ventilate the smoke with a hose connected to the air conditioning vent, but the heat of the fire will still be a problem. So what if they want to use an industrial high-heat gas burner or oven outside of a proper kitchen?”

“You mean they would have to super switch off the sprinklers and fire alarms? Then they must be in the third floor VIP room!”

They were already in enemy territory, so they couldn’t use the elevator which could act like a dead end. It was only three floors up, so they took the emergency stairs.

“Takitsubo-san, the plan was to pit the Information Broker and Mugino against each other, right?”

“Right.”

“But how do we super call Mugino here?”

“In the end, do we even have to? Mugino will never forgive a traitor. She’ll track us down here on her own. We couldn’t hide from her even if we wanted to.”

However, they couldn’t relax just because they were using the emergency stairs instead of the elevator.

A wire crossed the path at above knee height, the most likely height for someone to hit.

Laying several layers of traps would also narrow the trap-layers freedom of movement, so they would only do it if it benefited them. …Hopefully this meant the enemy didn’t have enough personnel to have regular human patrols.

“Have you noticed, Kinuhata?”

“Yeah, I have. These traps are weird. They’re using the bare minimum of flammables like gasoline while using a super ton of oxygen tanks and air circulators.”

Kinuhata wondered if that was to avoid breaking the laws against weapons and bombs, but setting up any kind of explosive with the intent of causing an explosion violated the law anyway. Reducing the amount used wouldn’t get you off the hook in court.

The Academy City Bomber explained in exasperation.

“They’re using oxygen to guide the flames. Have you never heard of tactical ventilation? When firefighters enter a burning building, they will methodically break windows and doors to let air through and, in the end, guide the flames where they won’t hurt anyone while the firefighters complete their rescue. They will also sometimes intentionally increase the intensity of the fire elsewhere to prevent backdrafts and flashovers. But if you wanted to, you could also create a flamethrower-like blast of fire and bend it in an S-shape.”

They all exchanged a glance.

…Firefighters. Frenda had said it herself, but apparently even she hadn’t expected the phrase to pop up here.

“In the end, this is a training ground for them, isn’t it?”

“Super umm, can rescue squad people go bad too?”

“I’ve never heard of it, but it could be. They’re trained to break down doors and enter buildings above the ground floor, so they do have some abusable skills.”

“They also sound strong. In the end, they’d definitely make big burly troops.”

The three continued up the stairs while on the lookout for traps.

After reaching the third floor hallway and cracking open the steel fire door, they sensed a presence.

They spotted someone big and burly.

Kinuhata could defeat him with Offense Armor, but his identity was a bit of a mystery. Looking like a bad guy didn’t necessarily mean you were one. People sometimes behaved in weird, illogical ways. He might just be an ordinary body builder who had snuck into the former training ground (unaware of the traps) to get a workout there, so Kinuhata and the others waited until he had walked past before slipping out into into the hallway.

Takitsubo’s nose twitched a little.

“I don’t detect an appetizing aroma.”

“In the end, the room with the most suspicious electricity usage is the third door on the right.”

Then they would start there.

Kinuhata had assumed there was only one third floor VIP room, but it turned out there were several. After pressing her ear to the door and listening for any activity inside, she slowly opened the door.

“What is this super place?”

She found a dark room.

It was about the size of a larger convenience store.

The opposite wall was made of glass to provide a view of the outdoor training ground, but Kinuhata was more interested in something else.

LCD monitors lined one section with pricey-looking office chairs in front of them. More than half the space under the desks was taken up by what looked like industrial computers.

“Did the firefighter training ground also super teach them how to respond to emergency alerts and operate their radios?”

“This might have all been brought here after the fact,” replied the track suit girl.

The right and left walls were covered by steel racks packed with paper files thicker than brick blocks.

Takitsubo scanned the entire room with emotionless eyes.

“Frenda, let’s check the paper.”

“In the end, why not the computers? Paper documents don’t even have the bare minimum of a search option.”

“I don’t want to touch the computers when we don’t even know if they use a password, fingerprints, a security key, or facial recognition. We might get it locked down or even trigger an alert to their boss. The paper is better. I’ll handle the shelves, so you two check the ones around the desks.”

“Ughh. In the end, a note with their password written on it would be too much to hope for, wouldn’t it?”

“If they’re unlocking it every single time, there must be some kind of mark or hint,” said Takitsubo even as she walked over to the shelves.

All that information felt overwhelming to Kinuhata, but apparently it looked like a treasure trove to their search expert.

“This data is related to a vulnerability,” said Takitsubo as she flipped through something like a thick manual.

Kinuhata tilted her head. What kind of vulnerability?

“The wide variety of videos and articles strewn across the internet are automatically fact checked for accuracy…but there is no system in place to fact check the fact checking.”

“???”

“It’s complicated, but in short there’s a loophole in the network monitoring system. By converting a file to the fact checking file extension, it can slip right past Academy City’s automatic checking system. The legitimate files are 512 kilobytes, so anything larger than that would be detected as illegitimate, but you can fit a ton of text in a file that size.”

“Super so what? What happens if you can slip something past it?”

“You can send unchecked electronic data in and out of the city. Using the official fiber optic lines while ignoring the dedicated systems entirely.”

They all fell silent.

Hold on.

“Wh-what are you saying? That, in the end, all the city’s classified data on next-gen weapons and esper development could be leaked outside the city!?”

“…”

Instead of responding right away, Takitsubo took a look around the room.

She blinked a few times.

“If they are selling technology like that, why isn’t any of that data here?”

“Now that you mention it… They super have a loophole they could use, but I haven’t seen any data they could sell, like the plans for a stealth fighter or a Level 5’s DNA map.”

“So in the end, what is Norsitro hoping to do with that super convenient joker in her hand?”

That was when Takitsubo’s head shot up.

The search expert was looking off in an odd direction.

That was a warning sign.

“Kinuhata. Frenda.”

“Yes?”

“Watch out. The enemy is coming.”

The door burst open from outside.

Frenda immediately leapt behind a big decorative plant and Kinuhata moved in front of Takitsubo.

A girl entered flanked by two large men. They of course recognized that silver hair and dark skin.

That was Information Broker Norsitro Chatellenie.

Her phone’s wallpaper had shown her in a towel, but now her body was tightly bound by a leather belt, miniskirt, and big boots that were a glittering neon green with silver thread woven in. It was probably meant to be a bondage outfit.

“Oh, hey. You were right, Matsuzawa-san.”

“I was lucky.”

“All we had to do was leave the ‘call center’ unlocked and unoccupied and they waltzed on in here like a bunch of roaches. Incredible.”

“Milady. Shouldn’t you compare them to something more appealing, like rhinoceros beetles?”

“Is that more appealing? You must like the outdoors, Haranaka-san. They’re both just shiny black bugs to me☆”

===Part 5===

Back in the tourist hotel suite in the grown-up District 5.

What Mugino Shizuri most wanted at the moment was the live words of an expert.

Needless to say, the Mugino Family was an international gang with hundreds of thousands of soldiers around the world.

Thus, they wouldn’t go crying to the normal police if some money disappeared or someone died within the Family. That would mean tearing down their entire violent system to solve one measly case. Still, there were on occasion fools who would periodically sell information to the police (because they were being threatened or something). To reiterate, the Family would not ask the police for help when something happened.

So they had a different solution.

They had an internal investigation department that specialized in identifying and punishing traitors in their midst.

“If it’s too weak, there’s nothing to stop the traitors, but if it’s too strong, it turns into a dictatorship that wields false accusations and purges. …Mujinayama, you know how to handle these things just right, don’t you?”

“Sigh… I would have preferred you came to me for advice on how to prevent the betrayal from occurring in the first place, but I get the feeling it is too late for that.”

“Hurry up.”

When Mugino lightly rushed him, the mood changed.

His world – the vibe of the Mugino Family he had served for so many long years – pushed in through the cold mechanical phone.

“The standard countermeasure against betrayal in a system of violence is to prepare for it before it actually happens. You do not want to be running around in a panic after you have been betrayed and real harm has been done.”

“Right.”

Mugino glanced aside with the phone against her ear.

At the empty boxes for luxury brand clothing piled up in a corner of the room.

“''You don’t have to worry about that.''”

“Is that so? I would expect no less from the one who carries the weight of the Family’s future on her shoulders. I am relieved.”

That old butler did not flatter people for no reason. If she couldn’t think of any reason for the compliment, there had to be more coming.

His ever gentle voice quietly gained the sharp edge of a knife.

“However, you must not forget that suspecting your companions is itself a small betrayal. It is necessary for the maintenance of a system of violence that cannot rely on the official power structures, but it is by no means a praiseworthy thing.”

“…”

“And what if your suspicions of betrayal prove to be false? Shizuri-sama, betrayal and the response thereof are a sort of gamble. You are not a righteous detective investigating each suspicious individual until you find the criminal like a game of concentration. If you choose wrong just once, responsibility for that mistake falls on you. Investigating a traitor carries the risk of becoming a traitor yourself. You must never forget this when seeking the truth in our shadowy world.”

That was why the internal investigation department paid exceptionally well while being exceptionally risky.

It was known as the hardest department to keep balanced.

And this summed up why Mugino Shizuri had gone out of her way to seek advice from the old butler who had served the Family for so long.

Yes. If she could be sloppy and get it wrong as many times as she liked, she would have done it all herself.

But that wasn’t an option, so she wanted to know the etiquette and secrets the gangs used.

“It also depends on the severity of the betrayal in question.”

The old butler used that as a starting point.

He did not mince words.

So whether or not he included that phrase would likely greatly change the impression left with the listener. Even if Mugino Shizuri didn’t yet know why it mattered.

“Complete traitors are actually fairly rare. Most traitors move back and forth between the two sides, so they always carry some small feeling of guilt with them. It is always gnawing at them, even as they eat and sleep.”

“Are you saying the losers who can’t stand the pressure will blow up first?”

“No. It affects everyone of all sorts. Someone who truly cannot bear the impure feelings won’t bother with all those tricks and will make a full-on attack despite the risks. The family head is the type to do that.”

…Mugino Shizuri bluntly concluded that man’s way of life was unfortunately not very useful for her. After all, that freak had once armed himself, single-handedly stormed an embassy, and dragged the corrupt minister off the embassy’s grounds just because a small child had cried and asked him to rescue his grandfather (true story). If she asked that ridiculous man how to find a traitor, she could easily imagine him telling her to build up enough charisma that no one felt the need to betray her in the first place.

She wanted to discuss a more realistic way of finding a traitor.

“It is not always a lack of skill that leads traitors to leave small clues and make mistakes. There is a part of them that wants to be caught. That is why their pursuer notices their presence. Lady Shizuri, I assume you came to me for advice because you already have some kind of clue. What felt off to you?”

“…”

For one, why had the other three members of Item gone missing at the same time?

If those three wanted to do something behind her back, wouldn’t they leave someone behind to distract her and keep her from getting suspicious? Why hadn’t they done that?

How could she explain it from a standpoint of pure function and efficiency?

(Hm.)

“Now let’s circle back to an earlier point,” said Mujinayama. In a voice that would make anyone’s back straighten. “How far must a betrayal go before you can truly call it a betrayal?”

===Part 6===

The silver-haired dark-skinned girl was Information Broker Norsitro.

Were the large burly men surrounding her illicit firefighters?

More importantly, Kinuhata had picked up on a curious word in their brief conversation.

''The call center''?

“(Kinuhata, anything the enemy freely says in front of you should be taken with a grain of salt. Don’t accept it at face value.)”

“Information you think you researched on your own can be externally controlled too, you know? All I have to do is manipulate what order you find the relevant data in, so it’s not hard at all,” pointed out Norsitro in her neon green bondage outfit.

Then what about the vulnerability they had just found? Using the fact checking file extension? Maybe they had to doubt the entire idea of freely communicating across the city wall. Were they back to square one?

“Kinuhata, what did I just say about things the enemy says in front of you?”

“Ugh.”

Kinuhata Saiai groaned at having to be told a second time.

The silver-haired girl smiled elegantly at how easily manipulated Kinuhata was. She even covered her mouth with a hand despite how that clashed with her outfit.

“So instead of leaping at the documents and information you find, you should be working out how and why they turned up here and then dealing with them accordingly.”

The Information Broker.

Norsitro’s job involved more than just gathering information. She had to decide how to use it. When was the best time to reveal it or hide it? She was an expert at using information as a whole.

“That said, get the balance wrong and you can end up paranoid and doubting everything you see, so hiring an expert at information management is the best thing to do for your mental health, if you ask me.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kinuhata saw Frenda stir.

She stuck a hand in her pocket.

Kinuhata had been working with Item long enough to know what Frenda was planning.

Norsitro was still talking when Frenda pulled an explosive from her pocket and threw-

“''I’m not done talking.''”

''Boom!!'' A dull explosion rang out.

Unsure what had happened, Kinuhata Saiai was thrown through a tempered glass window. In other words, she was tossed out from the third floor. That was about the same as the top floor of a school.

On the other side, the inner wall behind Norsitro broke through and a black Eastern dragon emerged.

No.

That was actually thousands or tens of thousands of flying objects about the size of paper airplanes made from fliers.

“In the end, is that a drone swarm!? Kinuhata!”

“Ohhh? Are you sure you should be focusing on her?”

A “zap!!” of bursting air rang out.

Along with a flash of light.

Frenda Seivelun fell to her knees.

“Kah…”

(Lightning, a high-voltage current? What the hell? In the end, does she have more than just next-gen weapons?)

Frenda collapsed to the floor and couldn’t move. She couldn’t even lift her head. The most she could manage was some trembling of her limbs. She could only thank her lucky stars that none of the delicate fuses and explosives hidden on her person had gone off.

The silver-haired girl glanced over at the only one left: Takitsubo.

“You’re dropping like flies. Which makes it easier for me, so I’m not complaining.”

The drones were black devices. They were the size of 10x20cm paper airplanes, but their jagged and distorted silhouette looked something like a Christmas tree. Would their precise classification be canard double delta?

And Takitsubo spoke quietly.

“Is this why?”

“?”

“Drone swarms can’t be defended against by existing missile defense systems because there are just too many of them, so in a way you could call them an even greater strategic weapon than a nuclear warhead. But the problem is the manufacturing and operating costs. The price has to be multiplied across the number of drones in the swarm, so building a thousand of them increases the cost a thousandfold and creating ten thousand increases it ten-thousandfold. Same for the fuel and maintenance costs. That isn’t something an individual can use.”

“Yeah, I do use around 250 thousand of them at once. And the number goes up to 1.75 million if you include the spares, so the final sum is nothing to sneeze at. Keeping them in top condition isn’t easy.”

“Khah. In the end, even if it’s fully automated and it only takes a minute per drone, how much effort are you putting into this? Did you buy an entire huge factory with multiple production lines?”

“Didn’t I just say keeping them in top condition isn’t easy? Besides, a single stealth fighter costs 20-30 billion yen. And that’s just buying it. When you think of this as a super weapon superior to nukes, it’s honestly a pretty good deal.”

Her neon green bondage outfit had silver threads woven in. Was that glittering getup actually a highly conductive full-body antenna?

Norsitro chuckled and spread her arms.

The word drone apparently originally referred to the buzzing of a bee’s wings and the drones surrounding her lived up to that origin. They were surprisingly nimble and reminiscent of killer bees or of flies buzzing around something dead. Some drones would come to a stop in midair, so they may have been capable of vertical takeoffs and landings using a lift fan or something.

Also, she had the high-voltage power that had hit Frenda.

“Committing perfect crimes in Academy City is a challenge. But not so outside the city’s walls. Isn’t that right? Especially if you can use Academy City tech out there. Then it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“You aren’t going after the parents, are you?”

“What, something like this: ‘Hey! If you don’t pay up soon, we’ll threaten your precious kid over and over and over again until they’re part of the blackmailer group themselves! Then they’ll be a criminal and your whole family will be in the news!’ ”

A grin split across the silver-haired girl’s face.

That was the devilish face of someone who knew how to cash in on people’s misfortune and tragedy with maximum efficiency.

“The towering wall surrounding the city prevents the parents outside from rescuing their child no matter how much danger they’re in. What, you think they should call Anti-Skill? Heh hee hee. You know better than that. The higher ups of this city are all corrupt, so they won’t allow anything to threaten the city’s public image. Oops, and now that report is being suppressed. There won’t be any kind of official record it ever even happened.”

The parents would be helpless while knowing their child was in trouble.

The only option left would be to pay a sum of money larger than they could hope to make in a lifetime.

They could always refuse.

But it was this girl’s job to give them ''a very good idea'' of what would happen then.

The large men – firefighters? – closed in on Takitsubo.

“Now, then. Your bodyguard went skydiving and your bomber was zapped into submission. The search expert remains, but what can you hope to do on your own?”

“I can do this.”

Takitsubo was quick to make up her mind.

She grabbed paralyzed Frenda’s collar and immediately jumped out the broken window.

===Part 7===

This wasn’t a suicide.

She fell to a location less than three meters down. It was likely part of the training ground, but a net was laid out there to catch anyone who fell.

Takitsubo wouldn’t have taken that sudden dive if she hadn’t recalled seeing it earlier.

“This way. Super this way!”

Kinuhata Saiai had fallen earlier and she was beckoning over from behind a large fake building wall. Takitsubo adjusted her grip on Frenda, dropped from the net to the ground, and ran over to Kinuhata.

Fake buildings, trees, streetlights, benches – there were plenty of places to hide, but the training ground was still an open outdoor space. Staying here was not an attractive option. If they wanted to avoid being caught in a pincer attack, they needed to find a back entrance and withdraw indoors.

Takitsubo lowered the fluffy blonde girl from her shoulder to a concrete-looking floor.

“Frenda.”

“What, can’t you tell? In the end, you can’t expect any help from me.”

“I want to know how those drones work. Only you would know that.”

Did Takitsubo Rikou know exactly what people wanted to hear at times like this?

The Academy City Bomber reacted with a twitch.

“Those are just your standard wandering self-destruct drones that carry a bomb and charge at their target, right? Their structure itself is simple. Based on how far Kinuhata was blasted, the explosive they’re carrying isn’t anything special. If they’re loaded with 100 grams and it expands 800 times, in the end, that’s about the same force as a grenade. The lethal range should be around 10m.”

…But 1.75 million grenades thrown at you one after another would be more than enough of a threat. A minor fortress or combat airfield could be stained with blood and destroyed by that.

“1.75 million… She can’t be controlling them all manually, can she?”

“In the end, she’s probably providing general instructions with her phone and the exact calculations are all handled by AI. Like playing an RTS on easy mode.”

“Then super what if we jam those signals? That will cut off the manual instructions and I bet they’re linked up to a fairly large supercomputer to constantly perform so many flight control calculations.”

“I doubt that would work. She uses 250 thousand at once and has a total of 1.75 million in case some are brought down. Even if each one has a cheap toy of a CPU, linking 250 thousand of them together in parallel will provide some decent processing power. They won’t need a stationary supercomputer.”

It sounded like jamming the wireless network itself would still work, but they didn’t know what the swarm used to communicate. And if they were military, they would likely use multiple methods at once: EM, IR, magnetism, ultrasound. Actually jamming them would require blocking every one of the methods…but how many methods was “every one” of them?

Kinuhata sounded fed up with it all.

“Drones that super small have to run out of fuel or battery before long, right? If we stay on the run to buy time, won’t they eventually break down?”

“Kinuhata, we can’t make that kind of assumption without seeing their design or specs. They might generate power from the wind or the sun and they might be remotely charged using ultrasonic waves or microwaves.”

A portion of the blue sky was colored black.

As if ink had been splattered into the world.

Frenda looked up with her lips twisted into a stiff half-smile.

“So…in the end, which sounds better to you: having them attack us in a straight line or having them spread out and attack us as a wall?”

“Either way, Kinuhata would be the only survivor.”

“250 thousand at once and 1.75 million in all… If I’m super pummeled by that many bombs, not even Offense Armor is going to last.”

Kinuhata could only watch the drone swarm in a daze.

They circled an area as large as a schoolyard as they took aim. Like a giant flying serpent. If the Item girls stayed outside, they would be swallowed by a sandstorm of mechanical explosions.

And…

“Ah ha ha. You call that escaping?”

They heard a voice.

“Being out in the open makes it easier for me☆”

It belonged to Norsitro Chatellenie.

She jumped lightly down toward them from from the broken window a few meters up.

She was less than a hundred meters away.

“!”

Still seated on the floor, Frenda immediately pulled multiple explosives from her short skirt.

“I seriously doubt that will work.”

The wind roared as it spiraled thickly around them.

A giant tower rose up on either side of Norsitro. The wind wrapped around and extended high into the sky, forming powerful tornadoes.

Realizing what that meant, Frenda froze before making her attack.

The brown girl’s hair and leather skirt were flapping wildly, but she didn’t seem bothered by it.

“Handheld rockets have a terrible tendency to miss when exposed to crosswinds. I hear that world-famous Russian one that only costs 20 or 30 thousand yen has trouble hitting at even 500 meters. And with this kind of random turbulence, you have no way of calculating a path.”

Tornadoes.

Frenda’s eyes widened because she had already been hit by an esper power attack here.

“You mean…in the end, she doesn’t just have lightning!?”

“What’s wrong? Was there some other weather you were hoping for? Or were you worried about low pressure because you get headaches on those days? Just let me know☆”

Norsitro smiled in her bright neon green bondage outfit.

And it began pouring rain.

Less than five seconds later, it turned to fist-sized hail.

Then a clear blue sky shined overhead.

It was like she was casually flipping an invisible switch. Frenda Seivelun was completely dumbfounded.

Was this Norsitro Chatellenie’s power?

“You’re…kidding.”

“It super looks like she can control all forms of weather, including lightning, doesn’t it? Her power might control the air instead of electricity.”

“Kinuhata, don’t treat maybes like confirmed information. Remember what I said about information the enemy gives you?”

“Yes, yes, I have to super take it with grain of salt! …But how else are we supposed to explain that ridiculous power!? Mutter, mutter…”

Kinuhata’s complaints were cut off.

By the repeating sound of something beating at the air.

It was a Two Wings helicopter that could be flown unmanned…no, based on the arm-like wings spread out on the sides, was it a Six Wings?

250 thousand at the same time with a total of 1.75 million.

As those things flew around, the “black dragon” must have shown up on Academy City’s anti-air radar. Their operator must have known that would happen, but…

“Shut up.”

It exploded.

Even Frenda wouldn’t want to be chased by one of those. That was just how brutal the Six Wings’ air-to-air and air-to-ground armaments were, but it happened so easily.

“I said it’s a super weapon superior to nukes, didn’t I? You can’t expect ordinary weapons – even an entire squadron of attack helicopters – to deal with it.”

“So in the end, is there no way of stopping her?”

Her power was frightening, but it wasn’t just her power.

The drone swam was frightening, but it wasn’t just the drone swarm.

All three Item members had the same thought: how could they even begin to deal with a monster like this?

Even now, the two tornadoes were raging across the ground.

With a din of destruction, drink vending machines, streetlights, and fake buildings were torn from the ground and thrown into the air. People were meant to climb and descend them with ropes, so it had all been bolted to concrete pedestals, but it didn’t seem to matter.

If a human was caught in there, they would be thrown high into the sky…and then what would happen?

Norsitro grinned.

She wasn’t making a threat to negotiate. The joy of someone who planned to ''use it'' spread across her face.

“I’m not saying there’s no hope at all for you. After all, one of you is supposedly a shield esper.”

“…”

“But if protecting yourself from the fall is ''all'' you can manage, then I just have to hit you again from the side. Which would you prefer to kill you: the self-destruct drones or my power?”

She was extraordinary.

The three Item girls didn’t see how they could win even if they all attacked at once.

Norsitro Chatellenie held a position near the very top if you ignored the excessive financial cost of operating those drones as an individual.

But that was all the more reason to fight.

They couldn’t leave someone this powerful to her own devices. She would prey on Academy City’s ordinary students, drive them to the blackmailers, and even threaten the parents outside the city to make even more money. The people having their lives and futures ruined were not the fools who had purposefully rushed to the dark side to snag some dirty money. Norsitro was like quicksand that endlessly swallowed honest people with no such intentions. And because she was such a formidable enemy, she would cause a massive number of victims if allowed to go free.

It would be too late by the time the city’s wicked grown ups decided to do something about it.

If she wasn’t defeated here and now, there would be victims.

Kinuhata clenched her teeth. Takitsubo had accepted Kinuhata’s plan to survive by having Mugino betray them and fight Norsitro, but that plan had mostly fallen apart. Now it was ''more important'' to silence her as soon as possible. Kinuhata was a dark side villain, not an agent of good or justice, but she still felt that need.

And then.

“Hey.”

She heard.

A voice.

Coming from even further back than Kinuhata Saiai, Frenda Seivelun, and Takitsubo Rikou.

There must have been a different back entrance.

Was that squishy sound all that remained of an unlucky guard who happened to be there?

“Why would you go off and have a party without me?”

A grin split across Norsitro Chartellenie’s face.

“Oh, you’re finally here.”

Sweat poured from Kinuhata’s body.

The Information Broker was supposed to be an expert in handling all forms of information, so why didn’t she understand what it meant for ''her'' to be here? Why didn’t she understand the great risk there?

Regardless, the silver-haired girl spoke her name.

“''Mugino Shizuri.''”

===Part 8===

The density of the air changed.

In terms of human emotion, the most fitting word was probably “tension”.

Her presence made all the difference.

For better or for worse, Item…required Mugino Shizuri.

“Tch. Super how did you know where we were?”

Mugino answered Kinuhata’s trembling question by flicking something over without even glancing in her direction. It was a tag even smaller than a kernel of corn.

Takitsubo took it.

“Is this a brand-name clothing shop’s anti-theft tag?”

“The good brands use really nice ones. They’re convenient, so they come in handy.”

''“What is it, Mugino? Do you want to buy that?”

''“Not really…”

Was this why Mugino had been so fixated on feeling the clothing in that store? She had been interested in the anti-theft devices, not the fashionable clothing that cost 100 thousand yen each.

The silver-haired girl with her body contained in a neon green bondage outfit smiled thinly.

“Being a team leader is a challenge, isn’t it? Failure isn’t an option and that responsibility falls on your shoulders.”

“We’ve never met. Don’t act like you know me, trash.”

Kinuhata Saiai considered the situation.

Mugino Shizuri had arrived.

The plan was for Mugino to suspect them and act of her own volition, but they hadn’t finished setting things up for that. Simply defeating Norsitro Chatellenie wasn’t enough. If Mugino learned of the current situation as they did so, Kinuhata’s betrayal would come to light when Mugino started asking questions after the fighting was over. Then there was no avoiding being vaporized by Meltdowner. So this was her chance.

She knew that, but she still felt a cold sweat pouring down her back.

The fingers of death were running along her spine. She could feel them.

She had to deceive and betray Mugino Shizuri.

Screwing it up would mean death.

It was finally showtime.

===Part 9===

They were in the outdoor field of the former fire fighter training ground in District 2.

A great mass of moving air created a low roar.

250 thousand drones were packed together like a black dragon as they moved together.

They were all aimed at Mugino Shizuri alone.

The Information Broker laughed with her phone in hand. She held a hand over her mouth as she did so.

“Oops. I forget to ask.”

Norsitro’s expression was as casual as if she were out at the supermarket and realized she had forgotten she needed to buy the one item that was on sale.

“Would you prefer to be killed by my power or by the swarm? But asking now is a pain and it doesn’t really matter, does it? You’ll die a painful death either way.”

Mugino Shizuri gave a snort of laughter and flicked out a card she had pulled from her pocket. Before it could fall to the ground, she accurately struck it with a thick Meltdowner beam.

Silicon Burn.

Nearly 150 scorching electron beams thinner than hairs fanned out in front of her.

However…

“Tch. So a scattershot’s not enough.”

“I am using 250 thousand of them with a total of 1.75 million. But if you think you can shoot them all down, feel free to continue going for a high score. Although I expect you’ll be crushed to death first☆”

No matter how many Mugino destroyed, the number was replenished, so the swarm never dropped below 250 thousand.

And that wasn’t the main problem.

Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner had failed to bring down the swarm. Even when using her special Silicon Burn. With Mugino’s attack a failure, nothing could stop the endless drone force. This time they charged toward Mugino as if aiming for a cross counter. En masse.

A sticky blackness filled a large portion of the scene.

Like a bottle of pitch black ink had fallen over on a painting of Academy City’s scenery.

The black dragon devoured the blue sky. No, the swarm weapon made up of 250 thousand drones circled around together to attack Mugino.

According to Frenda’s analysis, each one was as destructive as a grenade.

But there were 250 thousand of them.

If they all attacked at once…it would be like taking a machinegun spray of explosive rounds head on!

“Mugino!”

“Want to make bets how many seconds you’ll last?”

Norsitro smiled in her neon green bondage outfit.

The following explosion felt like space itself were expanding.

But Mugino wasn’t injured.

Despite the many, many explosions going off.

“Oh? I thought you were all offense, but I guess not.”

She had a shield of light.

Meltdowner normally flew sharply out as a straight line, but she must have instead had it spiral close to her hand. It looked like a round shield fully covering Mugino’s body.

The sharp fragments and even the blast itself were pushed back. Academy City’s #4 had extraordinary specs in defense as well, but Norsitro wasn’t normal either. The very act of forcing Mugino Shizuri to defend – that is, to ''threaten'' that bundle of arrogance enough that she thought she would die if she didn’t defend – was extraordinary enough.

Adding Mugino Shizuri to the fight wasn’t enough to defeat Norsitro Chatellenie.

All four members of Item together couldn’t end this.

They were on the verge of death and cutting it close.

But that was more than just a risk. With a different viewpoint – Kinuhata Saiai’s for example – it could also be a one-in-a-million opportunity.

Win or lose? Live or die?

No one knew what was going to happen, which created enough of an ''opening'' to take otherwise unthinkable actions.

Here, she could force it through.

She concluded a chance like this wasn’t going to come again.

If she was going to fool that girl.

If she was going to get Mugino Shizuri to betray her, it had to be here.

Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner, even when scattered like a shower using the Silicon Burn, could not shoot down Norsitro Chatellenie’s 1.75 million drones.

To put it another way, ''it wouldn’t look strange'' if something unexpected happened here.

The countless wandering self-destruct drones sliced through the air as they charged in.

Now was the time to make up her mind.

Takitsubo and Frenda had both given Kinuhata some advice while they were pursuing the Kitchen Car truck to reach this place.

''“Saying you will ‘deceive’ her may make it sound like something you do while watching on from some safe place, but that won’t work. A safe zone on a deadly battlefield where anything can happen will look suspicious to Mugino.”

''“In the end, the only way to truly trick Mugino is to risk your life. So you can’t be lying to save your life. This is Mugino Shizuri we’re talking about. She’ll notice immediately if you aren’t truly risking your life with the lie.”

In other words.

…A liar wouldn’t do something so dangerous. Someone trying to trick me with a lie would make sure they were safe.

By taking advantage of Mugino’s low opinion of traitors, Kinuhata could hide in her blind spot.

So it had to be here.

It had to be when Norsitro’s drones charged in and detonated at close range. It was something only possible for Kinuhata Saiai who stood outside Mugino’s Meltdowner shield and who Academy City’s #4 could not fully protect.

She did it herself.

She deactivated Offense Armor.

“Gh.”

She felt a scorching heat. From her right flank. First she felt a twisting and tugging sensation on her skin and then her small body was thrown more than two meters straight back.

“…Gah…?”

She rolled a few times and her small body was left trembling.

(Oh…no.)

Had her fear of Mugino made her take the act ''too far''? An iron taste seeped into her mouth. She could feel something throbbing inside her. She felt badly dizzy, perhaps from the blood loss, and she couldn’t tell which way was up as she lay on the ground.

She might really die here.

Takitsubo Rikou ran over, held the wound, dragged her behind cover, and waved her phone in her other hand while calling out to Mugino.

“Mugino, she’s lost a lot of blood. Her breathing is heavy and her pulse is falling. My health management app is giving red zone warnings. Kinuhata won’t last like this.”

“Huh!? …Because she was near me? But how’d she get hurt so bad when she has Offense Armor!?”

It was a valid question.

But…

“She was fighting before you got here. While protecting me. She was more worn out than anyone. If you use you power too much, you run out of stamina, right? That’s what happened here.”

…So that was the scenario they were going with.

If they didn’t push this through while Mugino’s thoughts were still confused by the red blood, they couldn’t avoid her questions about what the three of them were doing at this mysterious training ground behind her back.

So…

“Norsitro Chatellenie. In the end, she planned to kill you and take control of Item as a convenient system. Kinuhata was fighting with everything she had because she didn’t want that. She was fighting for you!”

Frenda sprinkled some kernels of truth in there.

The Information Broker didn’t just gather information – she was an expert in when to play her trump card. If they let her, she would start shouting the truth, but by establishing a different idea in Mugino’s mind first, Mugino wouldn’t listen to what the enemy was saying.

And while fighting back and looking irritated, Mugino Shizuri scratched at her head with a hand.

“~ ~ ~ Frenda!!”

“Not happening. She must have lost around a liter of blood already. The lethal limit is based on body weight and Kinuhata’s the smallest of us, so she has the least wiggle room there. Pliers, wire cutters, screwdrivers, drills – I have a lot of tools on me, but nothing that can heal people. In the end, I think the most I have is disinfectant, bandaids, and bandages?”

“1.5 to 2 liters is the limit even for a large man. Kinuhata is in serious trouble if she doesn’t get a blood transfusion immediately,” stated Takitsubo Rikou.

She never showed any emotion on her face, so she didn’t have to try and put on an act here. The listener would imagine their own emotional state mirrored back to them in her voice.

So the more pressure Mugino felt, the more urgent Takitsubo’s warnings would sound.

They were being pushed back. Item’s leader clicked her tongue.

“Did you call that kid the Information Broker? From the way they move, I’m guessing those guys around her are firefighters.”

“In the end, probably so.”

“That makes them a security team specialized in keeping her alive over defeating her enemies. …They should be prepared for any kind of emergency. Which means they might have transfusion kits for each blood type including Rh positive and negative.”

“Then what should we do, Mugino?”

Since Kinuhata couldn’t talk, Takitsubo organized their information from behind cover.

She showed Mugino the horrific values on the health management app.

“We can’t even withdraw with her like this. Moving Kinuhata in this state will kill her. Fight or run, we need to start by giving her enough blood to save her.”

…The numbers on the health management app were of course fake. The app was called Vital Jamming. It was a joke app that let you adjust some simple sliders to change the readings to show a minor cold, an injury, or even close to death.

''“Look, these are the numbers on your health app.”

''“This shows your current calorie intake and exercise level. If you keep this up, the results will be tragic a month from now. The changes will be noticeable in your figure. Especially in the hips and legs.”

…Takitsubo already had it installed on her phone to make the threats necessary to get Mugino to go jogging.

(Does that mean I’m still super alive enough she needs the app to make me look bad enough? Damn. And here I was getting all worked up thinking I might really die.)

Kinuhata felt regret. And embarrassment.

She was supposed to know this was all meant as a way to keep her alive.

The #4 must have decided Meltdowner alone wasn’t enough. She moved Kinuhata, who was lying collapsed behind some twisted metal with no engine or electronics inside. It may have been used to practice rescuing people from a vehicle after an accident. A moment later, that cover was engulfed in a series of explosive blasts.

Mugino grimaced at the continuous noise and raised her voice.

“If they have transfusion kits, where do you think they would be!?”

“Blood is a liquid, so it gets heavy if you have a lot of it. With A, B, O, and AB with Rh positive and negative for each, carrying around the liters needed to resuscitate people of any blood type would mean fighting with weights strapped to you. I doubt they would do that. But they never know when one of their people will be badly injured. In the end, they won’t keep it too far away.”

Or to put it more simply…

“At the very least, I doubt it’s in these fake buildings out here. If you want to find their transfusion kits, you’ll want to head inside the training ground’s main building!!”

They had an objective.

Of course, they couldn’t actually have Mugino save Kinuhata.

Their goal was for Mugino Shizuri to betray her teammate.

They needed the perfect genius of Academy City’s #4 to fail here.

“My, my. Oh, dear, dear. Hee hee.”

This came from Norsitro Chatellenie a short distance away.

She was here too, so she had of course seen that delightful drama play out.

Mugino was already under the impression that Kinuhata had been injured while fighting for her, so even if the Information Broker accused the other three, it seemed unlikely Mugino would blast them with Meltdowner right away.

As an information expert, she must have picked up on that mood.

So she knew nothing she said would get through to Mugino now that she was “the villain who harmed Mugino’s teammate”.

In her neon green bondage outfit, the girl shrugged and operated her phone.

“Sounds like you have an interesting predicament on your hands, but it looks like sticking to the villain role will be the must fun for me. Speaking of, do you think I’ll just let you through?”

“Tch!!”

One movement of her finger moved the swarm of drones.

Not even Mugino Shizuri could push back the entire swarm of 250 thousand drones with a maximum of 1.75 million.

Several beams sliced through the sky, triggering a few explosions, but that wasn’t enough to bring them all down at once.

“Mugino. Your wall doesn’t have to be sturdy. Even a curtain or net can catch and stop the flying drones.”

“Go to Frenda for little tricks like that!!”

The training ground facility included more than the outside field. Item carried injured Kinuhata down a flight of stairs and entered an underground field meant to simulate a subway station, but that didn’t last even ten seconds.

After a rapid series of explosions, the entire thin ceiling was torn away.

“You can’t get away.” The bondage girl was staring down at them with hands on her hips. “Training grounds like this are designed with wide open spaces underground. They’re fairly flimsy, which makes them easy to blow away. Although that means you won’t be buried alive below dirt, so maybe you should count yourselves lucky?”

They didn’t have time to complain.

The drones were like the downpour of flaming arrows meant to bring down a castle. More and more poured down from above, so Item had no choice but to run down the hallway and climb back to the surface at another exit.

Each individual phenomenon might not be so bad, but they couldn’t seem to regain control of the overall situation.

They couldn’t escape the palm of Norsitro’s hand this way.

“Mugino. In the end, they’re here too!”

“Kh. Kill them to clear a path!!”

Large men, presumably former rescue squad members, emerged from behind vending machines, benches, and other hiding places. They were armed with unique weapons like firefighting axes and rope guns that launched the rope with noncombustible gas.

On top of it all, Norsitro Chatellenie had an unidentified weather control power.

Everyone could tell things were only getting worse.

They were tumbling into the abyss and fast.

They could physically reduce the number of rescue squad members, but the number of drones never seemed to drop. No, Mugino and Frenda were shooting down quite a few of them, but that was like trying to change the weather by throwing stones up at the rain falling from the sky. It was a waste of time.

And if they couldn’t stop somewhere, they couldn’t stop Kinuhata’s bleeding.

They weren’t even supposed to move her right now, so what would happen if they tried to break through the enemy like this?

“Mugino… In the end, we have to give up,” said an astonished Frenda as she scattered mines to slow the enemy down.

…That Frenda could say something like this without it sounding out of place made Kinuhata suspect she was always adjusting her ''emotional distance'' even during ordinary conversations. Because what came next was a suggestion only allowed in the dark side.

“We can’t get a transfusion kit! We don’t even know if there’s one here, so we shouldn’t risk our lives looking for it. I get wanting to save Kinuhata, but you’ll be killed too if you keep this up!! This isn’t just about Kinuhata! If we don’t withdraw now, we’ll all be killed!”

“You’re the leader. So you decide,” added Takitsubo to drive the point home.

Item wouldn’t distribute the responsibility among its members. Stressing that this was Mugino’s decision applied pressure to her. That was a necessary part of setting things up for Mugino herself to betray Kinuhata.

They had no choice. There was no other way.

It didn’t really matter how Mugino phrased it.

But they couldn’t let her claim that they all made the choice together. So all of those psychological loopholes and outs had to be plugged up in advance. Item’s search and information expert showed no mercy here.

“Make a decision, Mugino. Without a choice from our leader, we will all die.”

With that, she preemptively eliminated the option of not making a choice and letting them run out of time.

Now Mugino Shizuri had no excuse.

Since they couldn’t overwhelm Norsitro and acquire a transfusion kit right away, Mugino had only two options: abandon dying Kinuhata and escape or choose nothing and let Kinuhata die when time ran out. Either option would mean Kinuhata’s death, so this was a powerful card to use against Mugino Shizuri who despised betrayal more than anything.

Kinuhata and the others had betrayed her first.

Mugino Shizuri would never forgive a traitor.

So for the three of them to survive, they had to cancel out their betrayal with Mugino’s betrayal.

“Mugino… In the end, I think Kinuhata wants to say something.”

The stage was set.

Takitsubo, supporting her bloody body behind unreliable cover, glanced over into Kinuhata’s eyes.

She understood.

The final emotional push would be most effective…coming from Kinuhata herself.

“Forget…about me.”

Kinuhata forced out the words as she gasped for breath.

This wasn’t an act.

She was cold.

They hadn’t managed to stop the bleeding. She could feel her body temperature dropping.

She hadn’t been killed right away, but she had lost a significant amount of blood. She found she couldn’t speak any louder than this.

“Whether or not there’s a transfusion kit somewhere in the facility…it’s super too late for an injury like this. So please…get out of here. You’re wasting your time. You’ll only get more of you killed. So please…”

An odd feeling filled Kinuhata as she spoke.

She was deceiving Mugino.

Objectively speaking, this was a terrible thing to do.

But she was finding she no longer had to consciously lie to betray Mugino here.

Strangely, she found she was speaking her true feelings.

She didn’t want Mugino to die here.

She didn’t have to lie about that, so she simply placed her current honest feelings in her words.

“I’m thankful… If you hadn’t taken me in, I’d probably still be on ice in the back of that lab. Gh… I was only meant to rot away without every leaving that place, so now I’ll just be returning to the earth. So you don’t have to feel bad about it… So hurry and go.”

(Yeah…)

The words left her almost on their own

And while it happened, a thought came to her.

(If only I wasn’t carrying all this baggage. If only I had super been the kind of person who could say this without needing to sully it like this.)

That could never happen.

The initial assumptions were wrong.

Or maybe this was the final destination of the traitor.

The end result for a selfish dreamer.

The final refuge of a fool who couldn’t bear the weight of reality.

“I was only ever something extra you picked up, right? So you don’t need to bet the fate of Item as a whole on someone disposal like me. Go!! I’ll break their perimeter. I’m going to die anyway, so I might as well go out in a blaze of glory and take a ton of them with me. Cough… That’s a hell of a lot better than dying a meaningless death!! There’s no saving me now, but I’ll super use what time I have left to make Norsitro and her people regret crossing us! So get out of here already!!!”

She drove her point home.

Kinuhata Saiai waited for Mugino to speak.

For her to say, “Fine then. If there’s no other option, we’ll leave Kinuhata here to die.”

For her to admit, “I don’t want to die here, so if you’re going to die anyway, you take care of it.”

Reality wasn’t like the movies. Especially in Academy City’s dark side, a heartless response like that would hardly be a surprise. And because Kinuhata knew that, she bet on it happening. She bet her life and future on it. Bring it on. Because if Mugino didn’t abandon her here, this would end without her receiving the bargaining chip she needed. Then she would be accused of betrayal and reduced to charcoal.

In the distance, a neon green bondage outfit creaked and Norsitro shouted to them in amusement.

“What do you think you can do with that dying body? You can’t even act as a shield against my swarm, so how do you expect to break our perimeter!?”

Something exploded.

The rusty smell grew stronger again.

A sharp fragment must have grazed her because Mugino had a cut on her right cheek.

The drones were only as big as a paper airplane made from a flier, so they could only carry so much explosive. And Frenda’s expert analysis said they weren’t carrying anything special. Each blast was only about as much as a grenade, so the lethal range was about 10 meters.

Even so, a lethal range was a lethal range.

Rapid-firing Meltdowner beams wasn’t enough to stop them all, so Mugino destroyed the base of a nearby fake three-story building to topple it and use the plywood as a shield. She could shoot down the leading drones, but that wouldn’t last forever. And even if she did defend against the sharp fragments, the shockwave still circled around the cover and struck her body.

A single bomb or bullet could kill. Far too easily. That was how it worked on the dark side. A total of 1.75 million? No, she couldn’t let her guard down with even a single drone.

But.

Even so.

“…Takitsubo.”

“What?”

“There’s still a chance, right? If I manage to get inside that building at the cost of my own flesh and blood and acquire a transfusion kit, we can save Kinuhata, right?”

“Maybe.”

“Heh,” laughed Mugino Shizuri.

And she gave her answer.

Item’s leader held her palm straight out and stepped forward. Out from behind cover.

“That’s all I needed to hear.”

…Wait a second.

Why isn’t she betraying me?

“I’m not running.”

Her voice wasn’t particularly loud.

But Mugino Shizuri did speak.

She had to know how bad the situation was for her. She had toppled the fake building to create a shield because she knew she couldn’t shoot down all the drones with Meltdowner.

But a fake building was only a fake. While the drone attacks weren’t designed with penetrative power in mind, this wouldn’t last long. Once the consecutive blasts broke through, it was all over. And Mugino had stepped out from even that much cover.

And yet.

She completely thew out the cold calculations of the dark side.

“I will never abandon a teammate and run.”

A drone exploded.

Close by.

Kinuhata received no new injuries.

Because Mugino Shizuri stood in the way, clenching her teeth. A shard several centimeters across had lodged itself in her shoulder.

This was the borderline between life and death. If the truth came out, it was all over. That was why Kinuhata had put on an act, even if it meant losing more than a liter of blood.

She was of course deceiving her teammate.

But Mugino Shizuri’s heart turned out to be…unexpectedly sturdy?

“Bring it, Information Broker!! I don’t know your name, but you will pay for underestimating Item. Did you think ''the'' Mugino Shizuri would let you get away with doing this to one of my teammates right before my eyes? You’ll be nothing but charcoal once I’m done with you!!!”

Takitsubo fidgeted nervously with her usual lack of expression.

Frenda Seivelun appeared aware how dangerous the situation was. She was frantically trying to work out a course correction from behind cover.

“Wait… In the end, why are you getting all hot-blooded right now when all our lives are on the line!? Don’t you know what Item’s leader is supposed to do!? Hurry up and tell us get out of here, Leader Mugino!!”

“This is my decision to make and I will never betray anyone. I won’t leave Kinuhata hear, turn tail, and run!! It isn’t a matter of pride anymore. All the tools I need to save my teammate’s life are within arm’s reach. If I have to let these blasts tear the flesh from my bones, so be it. I’ve got plenty of excess flesh to offer. So I will get my hands on that transfusion kit!!”

“…”

Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner could not shoot down all of the drones even with its scattershot. She could also use her power to defend, but that wasn’t its primary use and it was far from perfect.

More explosions erupted.

She wasn’t critically wounded yet, but she was gradually being worn down.

Academy City’s #4 was.

The next head of the proud Mugino Family was.

All because Kinuhata Saiai had dragged her into this.

Mugino would have had more options here if she were alone. Meltdowner could pierce through any obstacle. She could have escaped outside the former training ground and then sniped Norsitro through the thick wall.

But she couldn’t do that.

Because she couldn’t leave injured and bleeding Kinuhata’s side.

Because she would prefer to accept some disadvantage than abandon a teammate.

Because she wanted the life-saving transfusion kit no matter what.

As fearsome as she was, Mugino Shizuri wasn’t lying. She wasn’t deceiving anyone. She wasn’t betraying anyone. Yet she was being worn down for the sake of a dirty liar.

While roaring that this was better than abandoning her dying teammate and escaping on her own.

“You’re…kidding.”

Kinuhata Saiai was not Mugino Shizuri, so she hadn’t heard what the old butler Mujinayama said.

But he had said that the best way to prevent betrayal was to prepare for it in advance.

And he had said that suspecting your own people was a form of betrayal in and of itself.

Because.

If the person you suspected was not in fact a traitor and was instead a reliable ally who trusted you from the bottom of their heart…then your own suspicion of them would have branded you as a traitor.

Bull’s eye.

“No…”

She had decided to deceive.

There was no way around the fact she only had the one life. So she had decided survival even at the cost of betrayal was the right choice.

But she couldn’t do it anymore.

Something was burned through inside Kinuhata Saiai.

“Are you kidding me!? I super can’t stand it anymorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre!!!”

===Part 10===

Someone was crying.

They were bawling loudly like a small child.

It was the siren of doom.

Lies? Acting? Deception?

She was past caring about any of that.

Frenda and Takitsubo were watching Kinuhata Saiai from a short distance away.

This was past the point of not knowing how to approach an unmanageable child. Theirs were not the expression a parent would give to their child. The look in their eyes was one of abandonment – of “sigh, now you’ve done it”. They also kept an invisible distance from her so they could stay safely out of the way of what was coming. They chose to trust only the sixth sense they had developed as villains.

The world seemed to rapidly pull away from Kinuhata in all directions.

The weeping girl was left all alone.

If was over for her once Mugino Shizuri discovered the truth. She had known that from the start. But Kinuhata Saiai couldn’t stand it any longer.

“I…”

Her words caught in her throat.

She was aware how self-destructive this was.

Some part of her brain was screaming for her to stop.

But it was too late.

It was game over whether she stopped here or spat out the rest of her words. Mugino Shizuri would never forgive a traitor. Once she was certain of her suspicions, they would not go away on their own.

But that was fine.

She would feel better this way.

She wanted to get it all out before someone could stop her and before she passed out from blood loss.

It would pain her more for this to end unresolved. That she couldn’t bear.

“I lied to you!! I couldn’t abandon that ordinary person who was being forced by the blackmailers to rob the bank, so I saved her knowing she was a criminal who had attacked you! Everything’s gone wrong since… But that’s no excuse. I made my choice and I’ve been lying to you super ever since!!”

Information Broker Norsitro Chatellenie gave her an icy look.

Unsurprising really.

The last thing she would want after working so hard to gather up information on a scandal was for the target to self-destructively go public with it. The treasure held by the brown girl in the neon green bondage outfit was now worthless scrap. Of course she wasn’t happy about it.

“It was all my fault!! So that’s enough, Mugino! I don’t need a transfusion kit! Just get out of here. You super don’t need to get hurt here!!!”

There.

She’d said it. She had come clean.

So Kinuhata Saiai managed a somehow twisted smile even as the tears spilled from her eyes.

…If only she’d done this in the first place.

She still didn’t think it had been wrong to act on behalf of the ordinary person being threatened into committing robbery by the blackmailers.

But what about the rest?

Self-preservation, self-preservation, self-preservation, self-preservation! Kinuhata Saiai had been ugly, dirty, and rotten. How could she possibly excuse her actions there?

Had saving the girl being forced to rob a bank really and truly been the same thing as lying to her teammate to save her own skin?

Saving someone was no excuse for betrayal.

If she really had done the right thing, she didn’t need anything else. Instead of worrying about her own life, she should have accepted an honorable death.

All of this was the result of failing to do that.

She had been weak, wretched, and yet greedy. Mugino Shizuri had been injured in her attempt to protect that traitor. She had shed her own blood. And it wasn’t going to end there. At this rate, Mugino, Takitsubo, and Frenda would all die. Item would be finished.

And it would all be Kinuhata Saiai’s fault.

An enemy and a traitor from within were two very different things.

Kinuhata Saiai had been taught an important lesson.

She now knew she had fallen to a position more miserable than death. She was like an insect flipped on its back and unable to right itself.

Even when she had been raised in the back of an unofficial lab, wasting her life away unknown to the world, she had at least still had a human soul.

Even when she had been taken in by Item and been asked to help with their dirty jobs, she had had her soul as a villain.

Kinuhata could tell she was having trouble enunciating. Was it her tongue or her brain? One or the other wasn’t working right after losing so much blood. She didn’t care which. This was far better than having the fear and pain rule her thoughts, preventing her from doing what had to be done.

“I’ll super handle the rest.”

When had her soul been reduced to that of an insect?

She knew the answer.

From the moment she chose to give up on being human.

“I know this is just more selfishness on my part, but I super want to take responsibility for my own actions. You don’t have to bother with any of this, so hurry up and go!!”

And.

Academy City’s #4 monster…listened to it.

It entered her ears.

It soaked into her brain.

Mugino Shizuri now knew what had happened. She had certainty. And she did not forgive traitors. Because she had been raised by the Mugino Family as a born gangster.

To reiterate yet again, Mugino Shizuri did not forgive traitors.

So.

What was the definition of a traitor?

What had Mujinayama said, after his long years of service to the Mugino Family and everything he had seen there?

“Heh. Shut the hell up.”

And.

There was no beam of light.

Even though Kinuhata was ready for it.

Mugino Shizuri placed her palm on the sobbing girl’s head.

Ignoring her own bleeding.

“If you can say all that and you can risk your life to come clean regardless of the consequences, then you’re no traitor.”

Mugino Shizuri’s bloody face bore a small smile.

She was the kind of person who could smile here.

The world had pulled away from Kinuhata in all directions, but she wasn’t alone. Someone had approached her and rubbed her head.

“You’re Item. I will never forgive a traitor, but I always protect my own.”

Kinuhata Saiai couldn’t get any words out.

A moment later, a drone dropped down like lightning and triggered an explosion.

===Part 11===

Reality was heartless.

No matter what emotions had just been exchanged between Mugino Shizuri and Kinuhata Saiai, the silver-haired girl only had to input a simple command on her phone to send 250 thousand drones rushing in to attack. Each of those unmanned weapons was loaded with an explosive and the swarm made a merciless physical attack.

There was an explosion.

But it happened far off in the empty blue sky. Within the dragon of closely-packed drones.

More explosions followed. The chain reaction continued on and on.

The drones attempting to blow up Mugino and Kinuhata broke apart well before reaching them.

“Wha-?”

Norsitro Chatellenie was speechless.

Apparently this was something not even the Information Broker understood.

…Like any aircraft, drones were at risk of breaking apart when pushed too hard. When attempting maneuvers beyond their limits, the combined force of the air resistance and shockwaves would rattle the main wings and cause the aircraft to shake apart. Within Earth’s gravity, you could never forget that it was ''unnatural for anything to leave the surface and fly.

But what had caused this?

The 250 thousand drones were electronically controlled by the parallel processing of 250 thousand CPUs and fully guided by Norsitro’s smartphone. She couldn’t see any reason for them to break apart on their own!

“A maximum of 1.75 million drones? With 250 thousand operated at once? Your swarm control system can break through even if a fair number are shot down by anti-air weapons?”

This came in a casual, singsong voice. And a wicked one.

Mugino Shizuri spoke even while stained red by her own blood.

“But all you’ve done is gather an ass-ton of the same craft, which means they all have the same weakness. I just have to find a single vulnerability and I win. And I had plenty of time to gather information while they were pummeling me. Your trump card was laughably easy to defeat.”

“Oh, is that so? And what exactly are you going to do? Fry all their CPUs with an anti-ship EMP bomb? Or maybe pull an anti-air microwave cannon out of your ass? Fantastical super weapons are great for winning theoretical arguments, but they can’t protect your very real life. Do you have an attack method that can help you in the real world!?”’ shouted Norsitro in her glittering neon green bondage outfit. “You won’t run away? You always protect your own? …Absurd. Why would you ''make that kind of performative claim in front of me''? Did you not look into the legend of the Information Broker? Yes, yes. You have my full attention now. And I won’t rest until all of you are dead!!”

But bloody Mugino gave a snort of laughter.

(Well, she does attack with lightning. I suppose they would be designed to withstand an electric surge.)

That Norsitro would give an actual response to that kind of speculation showed how naive Norsitro was.

When the enemy gave the answer themselves, she had only two options: scoff at the answer for being way off, or frantically try to throw them off because they made a lucky guess.

But if she hadn’t said anything at all, doubt would remain. Whether it was right or wrong, staying quiet had likely been Norsitro’s best option. But she couldn’t help herself. Even though this was like playing concentration and giving up your turn by flipping over cards for your opponent.

“Kh. I have the power to change the weather. The drones can fly through rain or hail without issue!!”

“Sure. ''For unnatural weather you designed yourself'', right?’

Mugino didn’t even glance over behind cover.

Standing out in the open, she pointed her index finger straight up into the blue sky.

“You adjust the drones’ maneuvering based on the weather. There’s an optimal speed for sunny weather, an optimal angle for rain, and so on. When you know it’s coming, you can use your own program there. But with truly unexpected gusts of winds blowing between the buildings, the drones will tilt on their side. And during a sudden downpour, the apparent viscosity of the air changes and the main wings will rattle until they break.”

That was where Mugino had to strike to win.

Meaning…

“It comes down to the ''air’s viscosity''. Or the apparent viscosity anyway.”

She gave the answer.

Saying it here wouldn’t change the result. She had only said it to assert dominance over her opponent in an act of villainous cruelty.

“If I burn the air with Meltdowner, it will reduce the humidity, which dries out the air. But if I instead blast a water tank, the water inside will pour out, greatly increasing the apparent air resistance. It’s simple once you know the trick, but that is enough for the 250 thousand and 1.75 million drones to tear themselves apart. Pretty neat, right?”

“Kh… You mean…that’s what you did?”

It might seem obvious, but that kind of obvious thing could be the most dangerous among all the unusual things found in the supersonic world. Quite a few of Academy City’s prototype fighter craft had ordinary air tear off their main wings because they were unable to withstand their own vibrations.

“The last thing you want is for someone else to alter the weather. That’s why you control it yourself. No matter how unnatural it might look, you needed to alter the environment for all those drones! Even if it meant using some strange power!!”

The maximum of 1.75 million was a certainly a threat, but using the exact same craft for all of them had been a mistake.

Securing multiple different models would have been a challenge when manufacturing, operation, and maintenance were taken into account. The simple financial cost and effort of operation would have been several times greater. But the choice had come back to bite her in combat. The world’s armies would not use a single standard craft just because it was the latest and greatest. Just like Academy City used the Two Wings and Six Wings simultaneously.

A single vulnerability would affect them all.

Throw them off there and the entire swarm would be suddenly destroyed.

The explosions continued. Mugino wasn’t aiming Meltdowner in that direction, but the drones couldn’t approach the former training ground where their targets awaited. They all broke apart on their own and their explosives detonated.

Mugino Shizuri sneered.

She might fight for Academy City or the greater world beyond its walls, but she was neither good nor righteous.

This was the smile of a villain who knew the taste of blood.

“Now, that takes care of those annoying drones buzzing around. Which only leaves your power to deal with.”

===Part 12===

Mugino Shizuri and Norsitro Chatellenie.

Regardless of how many other people were around, this was their battle.

Whoever won would win it all. Whoever lost would lose it all.

“Don’t expect a signal. I’m not flipping a coin or anything.”

“Did you not consider that I might kill you while you said that, fool?”

They both took action immediately.

A thick beam burst from Mugino’s palm.

The neon green bondage girl smiled.

She was still alive and well.

Several of the fake training ground structures had been burned and melted, but that was all.

(Meltdowner missed its mark?)

“No, did she bend it with a current rivaling a bolt of lightning!?”

There was another beam of light.

Something powerful pierced through Mugino Shizuri from head to toe.

A high-voltage current.

In fact, it was a lightning bolt of more than a hundred million volts.

“Kah…ah…”

Mugino’s breath caught, but she managed to stay on her feet, probably because her Meltdowner power controlled electrons. She had touched a torn high-voltage line outside the city without issue yet a shock at the District 3 bus terminal had briefly stopped her heart, suggesting her psychological state influenced the effectiveness of that ability far too much to be a reliable means of defense.

“Mugino, that isn’t an esper power.”

And Takitsubo Rikou made a judgment from behind cover.

This was the natural result of repeatedly using the same trump card in front of that search expert.

“She is controlling 250 thousand drones at once. Each one is the size of a small paper airplane, but you can think of that like fanning the air with a fan 250 thousand times that size. The movements of that swarm can cause a gust of wind in a single direction, a swirling tornado, or even rapidly reduce the air pressure, allowing her to change the weather itself. She can even cause hail and lightning that way.”

“Ha ha!!”

Not at all bothered and even laughing, Norsitro Chatellenie immediately responded.

“Didn’t I tell you!? Oh, sorry. Your leader wasn’t here when I explained that, was she? Anyway, I said keeping them in top condition isn’t easy!! The Superb Starling weather control swarm claims to be a strategic weapon superior to nuclear warheads, so it had damn well better be able to handle this!!!”

Meaning…

“You…”

Academy City’s #4 Level 5, Meltdowner.

Mugino Shizuri, leader of Item and born gangster of the Mugino Family, had been cornered this far by…

“''You’re a Level 0''?”

“Funny, isn’t it?”

She was laughing.

Information Broker Norsitro Chatellenie was.

Was that sneer on a face more pained than a lost child’s directed at herself?

“The villain who stands at the summit of Academy City’s evil, devours the city’s ordinary people, and has extended her reach into the world beyond the city…is no more than a Level 0. And I’ve fought back against this entire world because I hate being called that!! Yes, it’s true. I wanted to prove to everyone who’s ever laughed at me that I am not powerless and there is so much I can do!!!”

…She had been certain.

Mugino Shizuri had been absolutely certain that large-scale weather control was Norsitro’s esper power.

So she had thought this would end up as a battle between elites.

But it wasn’t.

This was a lot messier.

“There was a major…incident.”

The enemy was a true Level 0. yet she had challenged Item’s Level 5 and two Level 4s head on and driven them to the brink of death.

“Someone had to die and we all discussed who it should be. Everyone’s eyes gathered on me. Not one of them defended me. …That’s when I made up my mind. I decided I would survive even if it meant killing them all. I decided I would be the one looking down on every last one those shits who tell their pretty lies so they can pretend they’re good people!!”

Was that the trauma that led to her surrounding herself with a rescue squad that provided her with the power to survive rather than the power to kill?

She had been labeled a Level 0.

She had been abandoned by the adults’ systems and the children’s rules.

She had been declared unwanted.

But still she clenched her teeth and reached out her hand in that rotten quagmire.

She wanted power.

She wanted to be strong.

The drone swarm could not approach Mugino. She used the viscosity of the air to bring them down before they could.

But that did not rid the 250 thousand drones of their ability to act like a giant fan to stir up the air, manipulate the air pressure, and alter the weather. Using that did not require directly approaching their target.

This was a harmful technology, but Mugino was willing to recognize the girl’s ability to convert her desire for improvement into actual power.

However.

That was only if she didn’t arrogantly brag about her unprecedented achievement and hadn’t become a monster who endlessly devoured ordinary people’s lives.

(Power corrupts, huh?)

“I can’t respect a villain who reduces herself to a disposable rocket only meant to elevate the things she’s created. What have you become in your constant fear of being killed?”

“?”

A battle between villains begins before the fighting actually starts.

Whichever one was daunted and taken in by the other would fail.

So those who lived in the shadows paid close attention to how they lived their lives even as they turned their back to the sun. They didn’t think twice about breaking ordinary laws and regulations, but they followed their own ironclad rules or Family solidarity and they despised lies, deception, and betrayal in their midst.

And once the 1.75 million drones and their weather control were stripped away, the win condition here was as simple as can be.

She was the Information Broker.

Mugino couldn’t let the bondage girl’s weapon get to her and she had to view her for who she really was.

…The lightning was powerful, but it wasn’t enough to take the life of Academy City’s #4. The rain and hail were powerful enough to engulf Academy City if used systematically, but they couldn’t immobilize Mugino right away.

And no matter how much the winds and tornadoes might bluster, they couldn’t alter Meldowner’s electron beams the way they could a lead bullet or rocket.

Mugino Shizuri grinned.

“So would your one and only effective card be…the lightning? But that’s for defense, not attack. It’s true a current of more than a hundred million volts might be able to interfere with and bend my Meltdowner.”

“…Wait…”

“That’s right. If you’re so smart, you should have realized this ages ago. …If you ''only'' have the one effective card, coming up with a countermeasure is easy.”

Mugino didn’t have time for games.

Kinuhata Saiai must have gone the extra mile in trying to deceive Mugino because it didn’t look like she had used fake blood. That meant her bleeding was real. In that case, Mugino’s goal was to acquire and use a transfusion kit. Norsitro Chatellenie was no more than a point on the way.

So this wouldn’t be a skirmish.

If she was going to kill her, one major attack would do the trick.

Item’s leader announced her intentions.

To make sure it wasn’t too late.

To save the life of her teammate.

These parting words were not just for show.

“You’re – dead – meat.”

<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Item6_Chapter3|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Item6_Epilogue}}
</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item6 Chapter4

2026-03-04T18:29:33Z

Massify: /* Part 1 */ removed the 2nd can since it made the sentence difficult to read

==Chapter 4: The Cost of Your Choice==

===Part 1===

The situation was changing at dizzying speed.

On the first floor lobby of the District 5 tourist hotel, Kinuhata Saiai could tell she was breathing heavily. Now was no time to panic. She was currently on a dangerous tightrope walk where failing to organize the information would guarantee her death.

“Phew.”

She had to sort through the information, be it good or bad.

Striking back at the Information Broker was her top priority for now.

At the same time, she would have to finally deal with the fundamental problem of Mugino Shizuri. She doubted lies and deception would work forever there. The more she tried it, the more likely she was to make a mistake or rouse suspicion. So she had to make Mugino feel guilty by making her commit the one thing she disliked most of all: betrayal.

Then the born gangster’s own wicked principles would prevent her from attacking Kinuhata and the rest. The gang logic would muddle who was owed what.

Letting Mugino find out about any of this was out of the question, so they couldn’t rely on the support team. Kinuhata, Takitsubo, and Frenda would have to solve the Information Broker and Mugino problems on their own.

So…

“We’ll super pit Mugino and the Information Broker against each other.”

It was two in the afternoon.

Kinuhata Saiai made this suggestion while soaked with a cold sweat.

“We make it look like I got dragged into that fight. It would work best if I get injured. Then Mugino will kill the Information Broker for us and Mugino’s ‘betrayal’ of me will give us the upper hand with her. That’s the only way if all of us are going to survive. We let it all be super water under the bridge by negating betrayal with more betrayal.”

“In the end, are you serious? There’s no safety measures there.”

Frenda’s shoulders slumped, but she didn’t seem to have an alternative.

Track suit girl Takitsubo nodded a little.

“It’s more likely to work than trying to continue lying. Mugino hates betrayal from one of her own more than anything. Based on her gangster logic, not simple emotion. …So how much do you think she will blame herself if she suspects a teammate and turns out to be wrong? Especially if that teammate ends up injured as a result.”

It wasn’t a solid plan.

It would be a perilous tightrope walk. In fact, the very idea of using this loophole against her could be seen as a betrayal of Mugino.

One shoulder of Frenda Seivelun’s clothes slipped down.

Her thoughts were written plain on her face: she wanted to run with all her might, but she knew running would only get her killed.

“Ugh. Then what do we need first? That Information Broker’s identity and appearance? In the end, we can’t include her in our plan if we don’t know her personal information.”

“Then this should come in super handy.”

Kinuhata Saiai waved her phone.

“Just like when we dealt with the blackmailers, I have the location data found by messing with a security robot, hooking a phone up to it, and scanning for phone signals in the area. Anyone with five or ten phones on them is super suspicious, right? Then I have a candidate here.”

Frenda was skeptical. Which may have been the natural reaction after being dragged into a deadly problem for no good reason.

“In the end, do you really think the big boss would be wandering around on the front line?”

“You have it backwards, Frenda.”

“?”

“She can let her underlings handle a lot of the odd jobs, but not so with a delicate and difficult boss battle. It’s the same with Item and our support team, right? …If she truly sees us as a threat, the Information Broker herself will be the one gathering information.”

But that mistrust and unease regarding her own people had worked against her.

It had been convenient for Kinuhata and the others that the enemy was carrying five or more phones. They were likely for different uses – contacting her team, sending commands to disposable soldiers, etc. – but with five of them, it wasn’t a surprise to find one specific type of phone.

One for purely private use.

Instead of a pseudonym and a fictional address, this phone was linked to her real name and bank account and had tens of thousands of photos and videos on it.

They couldn’t steal all of those right away, but they could view the registration name on the small notifications and the lock screen wallpaper.

This was especially easy with narcissists who used their own photo there.

“Norsitro Chatellenie. …Finally super found you, Information Broker.”

She was a girl with silver hair and dark skin.

She looked to be older than Kinuhata and younger than Takitsubo.

Why her wallpaper was a selfie of herself smiling in only a towel was a mystery, though. Did she tend to take long baths with her phone?

Takitsubo Rikou had again shifted into drill sergeant mode. So annoying.

“Okay, Kinuhata. We know her name and appearance, but how do we find her hideout?”

“We super use her food,” succinctly stated Kinuhata Saiai.

Frenda sighed.

“Norsitro Chatellenie. In the end, her name does sound pretty French. Her phone’s default language is even set to French.”

According to Frenda, the towel she was wearing was from a fairly high-end brand. A French brand, of course. It was an offshoot of the fancy restaurant napkins and tablecloths the company was generally known for. Silks and dresses were one thing, but Kinuhata was a little surprised to learn there was even such a thing as a super high-quality towel. Takitsubo and Frenda went on to say the one towel cost more than two million yen. Now she was super surprised!!

“She’ll definitely be looking for the soul food of her home country. That doesn’t mean she’ll be super eating French food every day, but she won’t be able to stop completely. And if she does that when she’s letting off some steam, she will leave behind some small hints. We can use those to track down the elusive Information Broker.”

That must have been the answer Takitsubo was expecting.

She immediately returned the conversational rally.

“For food, District 4 would be best.”

“Yeah, they super have any kind of cuisine you could want. Which means that’s where a native would go if she isn’t satisfied with Japan’s French restaurants that unintentionally alter the food to fit Japanese sensibilities and work with the local ingredients.”

“But, Kinuhata, an entire district is a large area. Will Norsitro be going to a luxury French restaurant with a French manager, or does she visit an industrial supermarket with imported ingredients and do the cooking herself? Even narrowing it down to those two options leaves quite a few possibilities.”

“Will you super stop testing me?” Kinuhata sighed in exasperation and raised a finger. “B and C gangster movies always show the gang bosses and fugitives using fancy restaurants of their home country as a base, but you’d be immediately caught and arrested if you tried that in Academy City. The connection is too obvious. So if the Information Broker is trying to be safe by staying hidden, she super won’t visit a restaurant connected to her home country. By her logic, that would be suicide.”

She raised another finger.

“And ''that’s why she’ll have them come to her.'' At a disposable rental site of course. There are plenty of services that let you call in an expert chef to cook for you and even the rich in the legitimate world will do that for a home party. For a special fee. …That must exist on the dark side too, right? There must be a chef hiring service with options for every county around the world.”

“Correct.” Takitsubo laughed. “It’s called Kitchen Car. Those food specialists are based in District 4 and can enrich a criminal’s fugitive lifestyle.”

“Right. The chef’s skills are top rate, but they were unfairly fired when the entire restaurant got food poisoning or the ingredients were phony or something, so in the end, they were recruited in secret,” added Frenda.

Kinuhata sighed softly.

“That just leaves…the fact that it’s two in the afternoon. The next super time she could call a chef will be at dinnertime. How many hours are we going to end up waiting?”

“In the end, I doubt it will take long.”

“Kinuhata, proper French cooking requires hours of preparation. For a dinner scheduled for seven to nine in the evening, I wouldn’t be surprised if the chefs are already getting started.”

Oh, is that so, you damn dark side rich girls?

This was an unbelievable world for Kinuhata who was happy as long as she had movie theater popcorn and a soda.

Regardless, if Information Broker Norsitro Chatellenie was a frequent user of Kitchen Car, this would be easy. Tailing their French chef would eventually lead them right to the Information Broker.

“There are a few things we have to be super careful about,” began Kinuhata. She raised a finger. “First, Kitchen Car will be experts at not being tailed. After all, their job is to provide a safe option for fugitives who can’t just go to a restaurant. Trust is their main selling point, so they will make super sure they aren’t being followed. What we do about that is our biggest problem.”

She wasn’t done yet.

She raised a second finger.

“Second, using this to attack the Information Broker would be easy, but we also have to see this through to the end while fooling Mugino. Defeating Norsitro Chatellenie is super meaningless if she makes a mistake and is killed by Meltdowner before we’re ready. And Mugino isn’t stupid, so she will get suspicious with all three of us missing.”

“''Isn’t that great''?”

Kinuhata couldn’t believe it.

The legitimate VIP whose downfall had been triggered by a super tiny pencil nuke. Private Casino who had been baked to death by a white phosphorous grenade on the party hall roof. The fates of those who had opposed or betrayed Item – or Mugino Shizuri, really – flashed through Kinuhata’s mind. This situation was placing a strain on her heart, but Takitsubo had casually called it “great”?

That search expert who didn’t participate in the direct fighting really did see things differently. …Was Mugino Shizuri really the most terrifying member of Item?

“We have internal and external enemies and the situation is extremely complex and annoying, but we only have two problems to deal with. That should tell you this mission is on easy mode, Kinuhata.”

===Part 2===

Takitsubo spoke up while operating her phone on a moving train.

“I found more on the Information Broker.”

“?”

Kinuhata frowned.

Their opponent was an expert at using information. She wouldn’t be operating in a way that made her real identity as Norsitro Chatellenie a household name.

So was Takitsubo researching the Information Broker identity?

“She appears to go by some other names, but the most notable one is the Faultfinding Demon. She might take a philanthropist who insists money isn’t everything and bury them in debt. Or she might take a lawyer who claims to be opposed to violence no matter the circumstances and place them under so much psychological pressure they end up killing someone in front of a TV camera. It looks like she targets anyone who performatively makes unrealistic claims to boost their public reputation.”

“But are you sure it’s really Norsitro doing that? Information Broker isn’t a super rare term or anything.”

“Kinuhata. Do you remember the bug maker I mentioned before?”

“Yeah, during the stuff with Sudori-san. You said they were investigating Kamigi when they disappeared.”

“Well, the title of information broker is even more common than that one, but I’ve heard rumors of a sudden drop off in how often it’s used. They must all be afraid of earning her disfavor by looking like a rival.”

That made sense.

This opponent was even more dangerous than Kinuhata had imagined. Not to mention self-centered and persistent.

“Is the super dark side just full of guys who are willing to die for their weird hang-ups?”

“Stop that, Kinuhata. You should try to use gender neutral language.”

Kinuhata got scolded by the capable big sister.

…But was that really necessary when complaining about brutal villains?

District 4 was located a bit northeast of Academy City’s center.

The district specialized in all things food and it was a very international place. The food market had small flags to indicate what nationality a shop specialized in, so the long street was reminiscent of all the flags at an athletic festival. The many signs jutting out from from the building walls was chaos itself. There were so many signs overhead it felt like walking through a colorful tunnel.

Broad categories like Asian or European had naturally gathered in clumps, but there was no strict division between areas. There was an Italian restaurant and an American South hamburger shop encroaching on the red Chinatown and a sushi place with the Central and South American versions of Spanish and Portuguese on the signs right alongside the European restaurants. The sushi there apparently used jalapeno paste instead of wasabi.

“This district is like a giant manifestation of choice paralysis.”

“Frenda, is this making you crave your own home country’s food?”

“In the end, I’d be happy living on the far side of Mars as long as I have mackerel.”

If the three of them stayed away too long, Mugino Shizuri would get suspicious. But that didn’t mean they had to solve this problem before that happened. In fact, they couldn’t have Mugino just stay in the luxury hotel. To trick her, to get her to betray them, and to survive, they needed Mugino to act of her own volition.

Suspicion was the greatest fuel for someone who hated betrayal more than anything else.

“So is super that Kitchen Car’s HQ?”

“I think so, Kinuhata.”

“But wait. District 4 is all about food…and they’re in a trash house!? I thought Kitchen Car were super culinary experts!! How could they let this happen!?”

“In the end, I bet this was what happened when those culinary experts decided to build a fortress everyone would want to keep away from. Inside, they’ve probably torn down some walls to turn into a maze. It’s called hiding in plain sight. If you’re looking for someone or something, nothing is more annoying than a trash-filled building.”

The structure itself was a four-floor multi-tenant building, but bulging trash bags were piled up in every door and window and even covered the front walk.

Was that supposed to be camouflage?

That had to be a huge nuisance for the neighbors.

The trio bought kebab sandwiches at a nearby food stand and munched on them as they waited for something to happen. There were an unusual number of people jogging, but was that the result of the overabundance of tasty foods in this district?

Frenda’s sandwich must have been too spicy for her because she kept going back to her cup’s straw for more sips of soda.

“In the end, do we have any reason to think the Information Broker will call Kitchen Car today?”

“There’s no guarantee, but I think the odds are good,” replied Takitsubo. “This is a big deal for her too. It might look like she’s the one threatening Item, but this only happened because she failed to deal with us earlier. If she screws this up, she’ll truly have to go into hiding and then she’ll have far fewer options. She should want to eat everything she likes while she has the chance.”

“There they super are.”

A mid-sized yellow truck slowly emerged from the trash heap of a place. Kinuhata was surprised to find there was a metal garage door there.

“That must be Kitchen Car’s truck.”

The trio waited for the truck to pass by and made the final check by nose.

“Bouillon and mirepoix. Also truffles, pickles, horseradish, and is that lobster sauce?”

“That’s not Japanese or Chinese cooking. In the end, it’s definitely French.”

…Kinuhata couldn’t tell a thing. But she wasn’t upset about it. Really.

But a truck.

Did they need a large vehicle to fit the ingredients and the cooking equipment? It wasn’t as bad as with Chinese cooking, but French cooking probably did require some industrial firepower.

Kitchen Car were experts at providing fugitives with delicious food. That meant they knew how to keep Anti-Skill from tailing them. This wouldn’t be as easy as attaching a GPS-equipped device to track it. The truck’s radio or sensors would detect the signal.

So Takitsubo made a simple comment.

“Frenda.”

“Yeah, yeah. In the end, one plastic bottle drone coming up. Makes me wonder what you would have done if you didn’t have the ultra genius and ultimately cute Frenda-chan on your side.”

“It’s French food, right? I planned to track the nitrogen gas used to keep the wine from oxidizing.”

“But in the end, Norsitro Chatellenie is clearly underage!”

Takitsubo and Frenda were enjoying their banter.

How could they be so calm?

Kinuhata frowned.

“Won’t your drone get super shot down by an attack helicopter?”

“In the end, anything small enough will be fine as long as it doesn’t move too fast. There are plenty of UFOs flying around overhead, including small birds and convenience store bags floating in the wind. The city’s automatic air defense doesn’t react to it all.”

Of course, Frenda wasn’t just guessing here. It was based on accurate data she had researched. And the standards had to change daily.

The tablet’s screen showed the yellow truck crossing a few district boundaries.

It finally arrived in District 2.

“Isn’t that the car-focused district?”

“In the end, they do weapons and explosives there too.”

They focused on the screen some more. The yellow truck drove below a building, likely into an underground parking garage, but experts at losing pursuit wouldn’t drive straight to their client’s hideout. Frenda cautiously sent the drone around a while longer to continue observing from the air until…

“Here they come.”

“Hm. When traveling on foot, they disguise themselves as a wholesaler that specializes in fireproof curtains and carpets. Well, the ingredients and cooking equipment unloaded from the truck would be too heavy to carry without a handcart of some kind.”

“Then is this it? What is this super place?”

“I see a lot of tall, fake structures and a bunch of ropes. In the end, it looks like some kind of training ground. If it isn’t Anti-Skill, could it be for firefighters?”

The place didn’t seem to be functioning. Was it abandoned? There was even a large plastic pool set up on the grounds.

“Is it time to head in?”

“I want to be absolutely certain first. They might take another vehicle from the parking lot here.”

They waited ten minutes, but that never happened.

That settled it.

It had to be this former training ground thought to be for firefighters.

“We have her,” said Takitsubo Rikou.

===Part 3===

She woke up.

“Hmm?”

Mugino Shizuri opened her eyes in bed. And slowly sat up.

She crawled out of the bedroom still in sleepwear that let her body show through pretty much everywhere.

“Takitsubo?”

No response.

She looked around without fixing her hair.

“Kinuhata, Frenda?”

Still nothing.

(Hm…)

Just once she consciously let out a breath.

Then she grabbed her phone.

She didn’t call her familiar Item teammates.

(Kinuhata and Takitsubo were missing after the bank robbery, but now Frenda’s gone too.)

She was already making some guesses. Like that ''they wouldn’t respond'' if she called them or messaged them on social media.

There was only one person to contact at a time like this.

“Mujinayama. You’ve been discharged from the hospital, right?”

“I must apologize for the inconvenience and trouble I caused you back then, Lady Shizu-”

“Don’t bother,” she snapped and the old butler immediately fell silent.

This was Mujinayama, so he obviously wasn’t intimidated. Even over the phone, he gave the sense of a grandfather playing with his grandchild.

“Hey, Mujinayama.”

“I am at your service.”

“How do I identify a traitor?”

===Part 4===

A firefighter training ground was an unfamiliar place.

Kinuhata had trouble deciding where any specific rooms would be located. The fake structures on the surface couldn’t be all of it, so there was likely more underground.

Now, where would that evil boss be?

“Can we super determine what floor and room they’re in base on Kitchen Car’s movements?”

Kinuhata knew that was asking a lot.

The grounds were large and there were probably lots of underground pathways connecting different areas. What they could see from the outside wouldn’t be enough to fully track Kitchen Car.

But Frenda sounded cheerful as she used a cable to link her phone to a panel on the thick wall surrounding the grounds.

“In the end, check this out, Kinuhata. The security camera records are just gone.”

“Does that super mean the Information Broker is using this place in secret?”

“Then what about this third floor special observation seat? I’m guessing that’s a VIP room for instructors to watch all the trainees and keep score, but the sprinklers have been turned off there.”

“Kitchen Car was transporting cooking equipment along with their ingredients, right? They can ventilate the smoke with a hose connected to the air conditioning vent, but the heat of the fire will still be a problem. So what if they want to use an industrial high-heat gas burner or oven outside of a proper kitchen?”

“You mean they would have to super switch off the sprinklers and fire alarms? Then they must be in the third floor VIP room!”

They were already in enemy territory, so they couldn’t use the elevator which could act like a dead end. It was only three floors up, so they took the emergency stairs.

“Takitsubo-san, the plan was to pit the Information Broker and Mugino against each other, right?”

“Right.”

“But how do we super call Mugino here?”

“In the end, do we even have to? Mugino will never forgive a traitor. She’ll track us down here on her own. We couldn’t hide from her even if we wanted to.”

However, they couldn’t relax just because they were using the emergency stairs instead of the elevator.

A wire crossed the path at above knee height, the most likely height for someone to hit.

Laying several layers of traps would also narrow the trap-layers freedom of movement, so they would only do it if it benefited them. …Hopefully this meant the enemy didn’t have enough personnel to have regular human patrols.

“Have you noticed, Kinuhata?”

“Yeah, I have. These traps are weird. They’re using the bare minimum of flammables like gasoline while using a super ton of oxygen tanks and air circulators.”

Kinuhata wondered if that was to avoid breaking the laws against weapons and bombs, but setting up any kind of explosive with the intent of causing an explosion violated the law anyway. Reducing the amount used wouldn’t get you off the hook in court.

The Academy City Bomber explained in exasperation.

“They’re using oxygen to guide the flames. Have you never heard of tactical ventilation? When firefighters enter a burning building, they will methodically break windows and doors to let air through and, in the end, guide the flames where they won’t hurt anyone while the firefighters complete their rescue. They will also sometimes intentionally increase the intensity of the fire elsewhere to prevent backdrafts and flashovers. But if you wanted to, you could also create a flamethrower-like blast of fire and bend it in an S-shape.”

They all exchanged a glance.

…Firefighters. Frenda had said it herself, but apparently even she hadn’t expected the phrase to pop up here.

“In the end, this is a training ground for them, isn’t it?”

“Super umm, can rescue squad people go bad too?”

“I’ve never heard of it, but it could be. They’re trained to break down doors and enter buildings above the ground floor, so they do have some abusable skills.”

“They also sound strong. In the end, they’d definitely make big burly troops.”

The three continued up the stairs while on the lookout for traps.

After reaching the third floor hallway and cracking open the steel fire door, they sensed a presence.

They spotted someone big and burly.

Kinuhata could defeat him with Offense Armor, but his identity was a bit of a mystery. Looking like a bad guy didn’t necessarily mean you were one. People sometimes behaved in weird, illogical ways. He might just be an ordinary body builder who had snuck into the former training ground (unaware of the traps) to get a workout there, so Kinuhata and the others waited until he had walked past before slipping out into into the hallway.

Takitsubo’s nose twitched a little.

“I don’t detect an appetizing aroma.”

“In the end, the room with the most suspicious electricity usage is the third door on the right.”

Then they would start there.

Kinuhata had assumed there was only one third floor VIP room, but it turned out there were several. After pressing her ear to the door and listening for any activity inside, she slowly opened the door.

“What is this super place?”

She found a dark room.

It was about the size of a larger convenience store.

The opposite wall was made of glass to provide a view of the outdoor training ground, but Kinuhata was more interested in something else.

LCD monitors lined one section with pricey-looking office chairs in front of them. More than half the space under the desks was taken up by what looked like industrial computers.

“Did the firefighter training ground also super teach them how to respond to emergency alerts and operate their radios?”

“This might have all been brought here after the fact,” replied the track suit girl.

The right and left walls were covered by steel racks packed with paper files thicker than brick blocks.

Takitsubo scanned the entire room with emotionless eyes.

“Frenda, let’s check the paper.”

“In the end, why not the computers? Paper documents don’t even have the bare minimum of a search option.”

“I don’t want to touch the computers when we don’t even know if they use a password, fingerprints, a security key, or facial recognition. We might get it locked down or even trigger an alert to their boss. The paper is better. I’ll handle the shelves, so you two check the ones around the desks.”

“Ughh. In the end, a note with their password written on it would be too much to hope for, wouldn’t it?”

“If they’re unlocking it every single time, there must be some kind of mark or hint,” said Takitsubo even as she walked over to the shelves.

All that information felt overwhelming to Kinuhata, but apparently it looked like a treasure trove to their search expert.

“This data is related to a vulnerability,” said Takitsubo as she flipped through something like a thick manual.

Kinuhata tilted her head. What kind of vulnerability?

“The wide variety of videos and articles strewn across the internet are automatically fact checked for accuracy…but there is no system in place to fact check the fact checking.”

“???”

“It’s complicated, but in short there’s a loophole in the network monitoring system. By converting a file to the fact checking file extension, it can slip right past Academy City’s automatic checking system. The legitimate files are 512 kilobytes, so anything larger than that would be detected as illegitimate, but you can fit a ton of text in a file that size.”

“Super so what? What happens if you can slip something past it?”

“You can send unchecked electronic data in and out of the city. Using the official fiber optic lines while ignoring the dedicated systems entirely.”

They all fell silent.

Hold on.

“Wh-what are you saying? That, in the end, all the city’s classified data on next-gen weapons and esper development could be leaked outside the city!?”

“…”

Instead of responding right away, Takitsubo took a look around the room.

She blinked a few times.

“If they are selling technology like that, why isn’t any of that data here?”

“Now that you mention it… They super have a loophole they could use, but I haven’t seen any data they could sell, like the plans for a stealth fighter or a Level 5’s DNA map.”

“So in the end, what is Norsitro hoping to do with that super convenient joker in her hand?”

That was when Takitsubo’s head shot up.

The search expert was looking off in an odd direction.

That was a warning sign.

“Kinuhata. Frenda.”

“Yes?”

“Watch out. The enemy is coming.”

The door burst open from outside.

Frenda immediately leapt behind a big decorative plant and Kinuhata moved in front of Takitsubo.

A girl entered flanked by two large men. They of course recognized that silver hair and dark skin.

That was Information Broker Norsitro Chatellenie.

Her phone’s wallpaper had shown her in a towel, but now her body was tightly bound by a leather belt, miniskirt, and big boots that were a glittering neon green with silver thread woven in. It was probably meant to be a bondage outfit.

“Oh, hey. You were right, Matsuzawa-san.”

“I was lucky.”

“All we had to do was leave the ‘call center’ unlocked and unoccupied and they waltzed on in here like a bunch of roaches. Incredible.”

“Milady. Shouldn’t you compare them to something more appealing, like rhinoceros beetles?”

“Is that more appealing? You must like the outdoors, Haranaka-san. They’re both just shiny black bugs to me☆”

===Part 5===

Back in the tourist hotel suite in the grown-up District 5.

What Mugino Shizuri most wanted at the moment was the live words of an expert.

Needless to say, the Mugino Family was an international gang with hundreds of thousands of soldiers around the world.

Thus, they wouldn’t go crying to the normal police if some money disappeared or someone died within the Family. That would mean tearing down their entire violent system to solve one measly case. Still, there were on occasion fools who would periodically sell information to the police (because they were being threatened or something). To reiterate, the Family would not ask the police for help when something happened.

So they had a different solution.

They had an internal investigation department that specialized in identifying and punishing traitors in their midst.

“If it’s too weak, there’s nothing to stop the traitors, but if it’s too strong, it turns into a dictatorship that wields false accusations and purges. …Mujinayama, you know how to handle these things just right, don’t you?”

“Sigh… I would have preferred you came to me for advice on how to prevent the betrayal from occurring in the first place, but I get the feeling it is too late for that.”

“Hurry up.”

When Mugino lightly rushed him, the mood changed.

His world – the vibe of the Mugino Family he had served for so many long years – pushed in through the cold mechanical phone.

“The standard countermeasure against betrayal in a system of violence is to prepare for it before it actually happens. You do not want to be running around in a panic after you have been betrayed and real harm has been done.”

“Right.”

Mugino glanced aside with the phone against her ear.

At the empty boxes for luxury brand clothing piled up in a corner of the room.

“''You don’t have to worry about that.''”

“Is that so? I would expect no less from the one who carries the weight of the Family’s future on her shoulders. I am relieved.”

That old butler did not flatter people for no reason. If she couldn’t think of any reason for the compliment, there had to be more coming.

His ever gentle voice quietly gained the sharp edge of a knife.

“However, you must not forget that suspecting your companions is itself a small betrayal. It is necessary for the maintenance of a system of violence that cannot rely on the official power structures, but it is by no means a praiseworthy thing.”

“…”

“And what if your suspicions of betrayal prove to be false? Shizuri-sama, betrayal and the response thereof are a sort of gamble. You are not a righteous detective investigating each suspicious individual until you find the criminal like a game of concentration. If you choose wrong just once, responsibility for that mistake falls on you. Investigating a traitor carries the risk of becoming a traitor yourself. You must never forget this when seeking the truth in our shadowy world.”

That was why the internal investigation department paid exceptionally well while being exceptionally risky.

It was known as the hardest department to keep balanced.

And this summed up why Mugino Shizuri had gone out of her way to seek advice from the old butler who had served the Family for so long.

Yes. If she could be sloppy and get it wrong as many times as she liked, she would have done it all herself.

But that wasn’t an option, so she wanted to know the etiquette and secrets the gangs used.

“It also depends on the severity of the betrayal in question.”

The old butler used that as a starting point.

He did not mince words.

So whether or not he included that phrase would likely greatly change the impression left with the listener. Even if Mugino Shizuri didn’t yet know why it mattered.

“Complete traitors are actually fairly rare. Most traitors move back and forth between the two sides, so they always carry some small feeling of guilt with them. It is always gnawing at them, even as they eat and sleep.”

“Are you saying the losers who can’t stand the pressure will blow up first?”

“No. It affects everyone of all sorts. Someone who truly cannot bear the impure feelings won’t bother with all those tricks and will make a full-on attack despite the risks. The family head is the type to do that.”

…Mugino Shizuri bluntly concluded that man’s way of life was unfortunately not very useful for her. After all, that freak had once armed himself, single-handedly stormed an embassy, and dragged the corrupt minister off the embassy’s grounds just because a small child had cried and asked him to rescue his grandfather (true story). If she asked that ridiculous man how to find a traitor, she could easily imagine him telling her to build up enough charisma that no one felt the need to betray her in the first place.

She wanted to discuss a more realistic way of finding a traitor.

“It is not always a lack of skill that leads traitors to leave small clues and make mistakes. There is a part of them that wants to be caught. That is why their pursuer notices their presence. Lady Shizuri, I assume you came to me for advice because you already have some kind of clue. What felt off to you?”

“…”

For one, why had the other three members of Item gone missing at the same time?

If those three wanted to do something behind her back, wouldn’t they leave someone behind to distract her and keep her from getting suspicious? Why hadn’t they done that?

How could she explain it from a standpoint of pure function and efficiency?

(Hm.)

“Now let’s circle back to an earlier point,” said Mujinayama. In a voice that would make anyone’s back straighten. “How far must a betrayal go before you can truly call it a betrayal?”

===Part 6===

The silver-haired dark-skinned girl was Information Broker Norsitro.

Were the large burly men surrounding her illicit firefighters?

More importantly, Kinuhata had picked up on a curious word in their brief conversation.

''The call center''?

“(Kinuhata, anything the enemy freely says in front of you should be taken with a grain of salt. Don’t accept it at face value.)”

“Information you think you researched on your own can be externally controlled too, you know? All I have to do is manipulate what order you find the relevant data in, so it’s not hard at all,” pointed out Norsitro in her neon green bondage outfit.

Then what about the vulnerability they had just found? Using the fact checking file extension? Maybe they had to doubt the entire idea of freely communicating across the city wall. Were they back to square one?

“Kinuhata, what did I just say about things the enemy says in front of you?”

“Ugh.”

Kinuhata Saiai groaned at having to be told a second time.

The silver-haired girl smiled elegantly at how easily manipulated Kinuhata was. She even covered her mouth with a hand despite how that clashed with her outfit.

“So instead of leaping at the documents and information you find, you should be working out how and why they turned up here and then dealing with them accordingly.”

The Information Broker.

Norsitro’s job involved more than just gathering information. She had to decide how to use it. When was the best time to reveal it or hide it? She was an expert at using information as a whole.

“That said, get the balance wrong and you can end up paranoid and doubting everything you see, so hiring an expert at information management is the best thing to do for your mental health, if you ask me.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kinuhata saw Frenda stir.

She stuck a hand in her pocket.

Kinuhata had been working with Item long enough to know what Frenda was planning.

Norsitro was still talking when Frenda pulled an explosive from her pocket and threw-

“''I’m not done talking.''”

''Boom!!'' A dull explosion rang out.

Unsure what had happened, Kinuhata Saiai was thrown through a tempered glass window. In other words, she was tossed out from the third floor. That was about the same as the top floor of a school.

On the other side, the inner wall behind Norsitro broke through and a black Eastern dragon emerged.

No.

That was actually thousands or tens of thousands of flying objects about the size of paper airplanes made from fliers.

“In the end, is that a drone swarm!? Kinuhata!”

“Ohhh? Are you sure you should be focusing on her?”

A “zap!!” of bursting air rang out.

Along with a flash of light.

Frenda Seivelun fell to her knees.

“Kah…”

(Lightning, a high-voltage current? What the hell? In the end, does she have more than just next-gen weapons?)

Frenda collapsed to the floor and couldn’t move. She couldn’t even lift her head. The most she could manage was some trembling of her limbs. She could only thank her lucky stars that none of the delicate fuses and explosives hidden on her person had gone off.

The silver-haired girl glanced over at the only one left: Takitsubo.

“You’re dropping like flies. Which makes it easier for me, so I’m not complaining.”

The drones were black devices. They were the size of 10x20cm paper airplanes, but their jagged and distorted silhouette looked something like a Christmas tree. Would their precise classification be canard double delta?

And Takitsubo spoke quietly.

“Is this why?”

“?”

“Drone swarms can’t be defended against by existing missile defense systems because there are just too many of them, so in a way you could call them an even greater strategic weapon than a nuclear warhead. But the problem is the manufacturing and operating costs. The price has to be multiplied across the number of drones in the swarm, so building a thousand of them increases the cost a thousandfold and creating ten thousand increases it ten-thousandfold. Same for the fuel and maintenance costs. That isn’t something an individual can use.”

“Yeah, I do use around 250 thousand of them at once. And the number goes up to 1.75 million if you include the spares, so the final sum is nothing to sneeze at. Keeping them in top condition isn’t easy.”

“Khah. In the end, even if it’s fully automated and it only takes a minute per drone, how much effort are you putting into this? Did you buy an entire huge factory with multiple production lines?”

“Didn’t I just say keeping them in top condition isn’t easy? Besides, a single stealth fighter costs 20-30 billion yen. And that’s just buying it. When you think of this as a super weapon superior to nukes, it’s honestly a pretty good deal.”

Her neon green bondage outfit had silver threads woven in. Was that glittering getup actually a highly conductive full-body antenna?

Norsitro chuckled and spread her arms.

The word drone apparently originally referred to the buzzing of a bee’s wings and the drones surrounding her lived up to that origin. They were surprisingly nimble and reminiscent of killer bees or of flies buzzing around something dead. Some drones would come to a stop in midair, so they may have been capable of vertical takeoffs and landings using a lift fan or something.

Also, she had the high-voltage power that had hit Frenda.

“Committing perfect crimes in Academy City is a challenge. But not so outside the city’s walls. Isn’t that right? Especially if you can use Academy City tech out there. Then it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“You aren’t going after the parents, are you?”

“What, something like this: ‘Hey! If you don’t pay up soon, we’ll threaten your precious kid over and over and over again until they’re part of the blackmailer group themselves! Then they’ll be a criminal and your whole family will be in the news!’ ”

A grin split across the silver-haired girl’s face.

That was the devilish face of someone who knew how to cash in on people’s misfortune and tragedy with maximum efficiency.

“The towering wall surrounding the city prevents the parents outside from rescuing their child no matter how much danger they’re in. What, you think they should call Anti-Skill? Heh hee hee. You know better than that. The higher ups of this city are all corrupt, so they won’t allow anything to threaten the city’s public image. Oops, and now that report is being suppressed. There won’t be any kind of official record it ever even happened.”

The parents would be helpless while knowing their child was in trouble.

The only option left would be to pay a sum of money larger than they could hope to make in a lifetime.

They could always refuse.

But it was this girl’s job to give them ''a very good idea'' of what would happen then.

The large men – firefighters? – closed in on Takitsubo.

“Now, then. Your bodyguard went skydiving and your bomber was zapped into submission. The search expert remains, but what can you hope to do on your own?”

“I can do this.”

Takitsubo was quick to make up her mind.

She grabbed paralyzed Frenda’s collar and immediately jumped out the broken window.

===Part 7===

This wasn’t a suicide.

She fell to a location less than three meters down. It was likely part of the training ground, but a net was laid out there to catch anyone who fell.

Takitsubo wouldn’t have taken that sudden dive if she hadn’t recalled seeing it earlier.

“This way. Super this way!”

Kinuhata Saiai had fallen earlier and she was beckoning over from behind a large fake building wall. Takitsubo adjusted her grip on Frenda, dropped from the net to the ground, and ran over to Kinuhata.

Fake buildings, trees, streetlights, benches – there were plenty of places to hide, but the training ground was still an open outdoor space. Staying here was not an attractive option. If they wanted to avoid being caught in a pincer attack, they needed to find a back entrance and withdraw indoors.

Takitsubo lowered the fluffy blonde girl from her shoulder to a concrete-looking floor.

“Frenda.”

“What, can’t you tell? In the end, you can’t expect any help from me.”

“I want to know how those drones work. Only you would know that.”

Did Takitsubo Rikou know exactly what people wanted to hear at times like this?

The Academy City Bomber reacted with a twitch.

“Those are just your standard wandering self-destruct drones that carry a bomb and charge at their target, right? Their structure itself is simple. Based on how far Kinuhata was blasted, the explosive they’re carrying isn’t anything special. If they’re loaded with 100 grams and it expands 800 times, in the end, that’s about the same force as a grenade. The lethal range should be around 10m.”

…But 1.75 million grenades thrown at you one after another would be more than enough of a threat. A minor fortress or combat airfield could be stained with blood and destroyed by that.

“1.75 million… She can’t be controlling them all manually, can she?”

“In the end, she’s probably providing general instructions with her phone and the exact calculations are all handled by AI. Like playing an RTS on easy mode.”

“Then super what if we jam those signals? That will cut off the manual instructions and I bet they’re linked up to a fairly large supercomputer to constantly perform so many flight control calculations.”

“I doubt that would work. She uses 250 thousand at once and has a total of 1.75 million in case some are brought down. Even if each one has a cheap toy of a CPU, linking 250 thousand of them together in parallel will provide some decent processing power. They won’t need a stationary supercomputer.”

It sounded like jamming the wireless network itself would still work, but they didn’t know what the swarm used to communicate. And if they were military, they would likely use multiple methods at once: EM, IR, magnetism, ultrasound. Actually jamming them would require blocking every one of the methods…but how many methods was “every one” of them?

Kinuhata sounded fed up with it all.

“Drones that super small have to run out of fuel or battery before long, right? If we stay on the run to buy time, won’t they eventually break down?”

“Kinuhata, we can’t make that kind of assumption without seeing their design or specs. They might generate power from the wind or the sun and they might be remotely charged using ultrasonic waves or microwaves.”

A portion of the blue sky was colored black.

As if ink had been splattered into the world.

Frenda looked up with her lips twisted into a stiff half-smile.

“So…in the end, which sounds better to you: having them attack us in a straight line or having them spread out and attack us as a wall?”

“Either way, Kinuhata would be the only survivor.”

“250 thousand at once and 1.75 million in all… If I’m super pummeled by that many bombs, not even Offense Armor is going to last.”

Kinuhata could only watch the drone swarm in a daze.

They circled an area as large as a schoolyard as they took aim. Like a giant flying serpent. If the Item girls stayed outside, they would be swallowed by a sandstorm of mechanical explosions.

And…

“Ah ha ha. You call that escaping?”

They heard a voice.

“Being out in the open makes it easier for me☆”

It belonged to Norsitro Chatellenie.

She jumped lightly down toward them from from the broken window a few meters up.

She was less than a hundred meters away.

“!”

Still seated on the floor, Frenda immediately pulled multiple explosives from her short skirt.

“I seriously doubt that will work.”

The wind roared as it spiraled thickly around them.

A giant tower rose up on either side of Norsitro. The wind wrapped around and extended high into the sky, forming powerful tornadoes.

Realizing what that meant, Frenda froze before making her attack.

The brown girl’s hair and leather skirt were flapping wildly, but she didn’t seem bothered by it.

“Handheld rockets have a terrible tendency to miss when exposed to crosswinds. I hear that world-famous Russian one that only costs 20 or 30 thousand yen has trouble hitting at even 500 meters. And with this kind of random turbulence, you have no way of calculating a path.”

Tornadoes.

Frenda’s eyes widened because she had already been hit by an esper power attack here.

“You mean…in the end, she doesn’t just have lightning!?”

“What’s wrong? Was there some other weather you were hoping for? Or were you worried about low pressure because you get headaches on those days? Just let me know☆”

Norsitro smiled in her bright neon green bondage outfit.

And it began pouring rain.

Less than five seconds later, it turned to fist-sized hail.

Then a clear blue sky shined overhead.

It was like she was casually flipping an invisible switch. Frenda Seivelun was completely dumbfounded.

Was this Norsitro Chatellenie’s power?

“You’re…kidding.”

“It super looks like she can control all forms of weather, including lightning, doesn’t it? Her power might control the air instead of electricity.”

“Kinuhata, don’t treat maybes like confirmed information. Remember what I said about information the enemy gives you?”

“Yes, yes, I have to super take it with grain of salt! …But how else are we supposed to explain that ridiculous power!? Mutter, mutter…”

Kinuhata’s complaints were cut off.

By the repeating sound of something beating at the air.

It was a Two Wings helicopter that could be flown unmanned…no, based on the arm-like wings spread out on the sides, was it a Six Wings?

250 thousand at the same time with a total of 1.75 million.

As those things flew around, the “black dragon” must have shown up on Academy City’s anti-air radar. Their operator must have known that would happen, but…

“Shut up.”

It exploded.

Even Frenda wouldn’t want to be chased by one of those. That was just how brutal the Six Wings’ air-to-air and air-to-ground armaments were, but it happened so easily.

“I said it’s a super weapon superior to nukes, didn’t I? You can’t expect ordinary weapons – even an entire squadron of attack helicopters – to deal with it.”

“So in the end, is there no way of stopping her?”

Her power was frightening, but it wasn’t just her power.

The drone swam was frightening, but it wasn’t just the drone swarm.

All three Item members had the same thought: how could they even begin to deal with a monster like this?

Even now, the two tornadoes were raging across the ground.

With a din of destruction, drink vending machines, streetlights, and fake buildings were torn from the ground and thrown into the air. People were meant to climb and descend them with ropes, so it had all been bolted to concrete pedestals, but it didn’t seem to matter.

If a human was caught in there, they would be thrown high into the sky…and then what would happen?

Norsitro grinned.

She wasn’t making a threat to negotiate. The joy of someone who planned to ''use it'' spread across her face.

“I’m not saying there’s no hope at all for you. After all, one of you is supposedly a shield esper.”

“…”

“But if protecting yourself from the fall is ''all'' you can manage, then I just have to hit you again from the side. Which would you prefer to kill you: the self-destruct drones or my power?”

She was extraordinary.

The three Item girls didn’t see how they could win even if they all attacked at once.

Norsitro Chatellenie held a position near the very top if you ignored the excessive financial cost of operating those drones as an individual.

But that was all the more reason to fight.

They couldn’t leave someone this powerful to her own devices. She would prey on Academy City’s ordinary students, drive them to the blackmailers, and even threaten the parents outside the city to make even more money. The people having their lives and futures ruined were not the fools who had purposefully rushed to the dark side to snag some dirty money. Norsitro was like quicksand that endlessly swallowed honest people with no such intentions. And because she was such a formidable enemy, she would cause a massive number of victims if allowed to go free.

It would be too late by the time the city’s wicked grown ups decided to do something about it.

If she wasn’t defeated here and now, there would be victims.

Kinuhata clenched her teeth. Takitsubo had accepted Kinuhata’s plan to survive by having Mugino betray them and fight Norsitro, but that plan had mostly fallen apart. Now it was ''more important'' to silence her as soon as possible. Kinuhata was a dark side villain, not an agent of good or justice, but she still felt that need.

And then.

“Hey.”

She heard.

A voice.

Coming from even further back than Kinuhata Saiai, Frenda Seivelun, and Takitsubo Rikou.

There must have been a different back entrance.

Was that squishy sound all that remained of an unlucky guard who happened to be there?

“Why would you go off and have a party without me?”

A grin split across Norsitro Chartellenie’s face.

“Oh, you’re finally here.”

Sweat poured from Kinuhata’s body.

The Information Broker was supposed to be an expert in handling all forms of information, so why didn’t she understand what it meant for ''her'' to be here? Why didn’t she understand the great risk there?

Regardless, the silver-haired girl spoke her name.

“''Mugino Shizuri.''”

===Part 8===

The density of the air changed.

In terms of human emotion, the most fitting word was probably “tension”.

Her presence made all the difference.

For better or for worse, Item…required Mugino Shizuri.

“Tch. Super how did you know where we were?”

Mugino answered Kinuhata’s trembling question by flicking something over without even glancing in her direction. It was a tag even smaller than a kernel of corn.

Takitsubo took it.

“Is this a brand-name clothing shop’s anti-theft tag?”

“The good brands use really nice ones. They’re convenient, so they come in handy.”

''“What is it, Mugino? Do you want to buy that?”

''“Not really…”

Was this why Mugino had been so fixated on feeling the clothing in that store? She had been interested in the anti-theft devices, not the fashionable clothing that cost 100 thousand yen each.

The silver-haired girl with her body contained in a neon green bondage outfit smiled thinly.

“Being a team leader is a challenge, isn’t it? Failure isn’t an option and that responsibility falls on your shoulders.”

“We’ve never met. Don’t act like you know me, trash.”

Kinuhata Saiai considered the situation.

Mugino Shizuri had arrived.

The plan was for Mugino to suspect them and act of her own volition, but they hadn’t finished setting things up for that. Simply defeating Norsitro Chatellenie wasn’t enough. If Mugino learned of the current situation as they did so, Kinuhata’s betrayal would come to light when Mugino started asking questions after the fighting was over. Then there was no avoiding being vaporized by Meltdowner. So this was her chance.

She knew that, but she still felt a cold sweat pouring down her back.

The fingers of death were running along her spine. She could feel them.

She had to deceive and betray Mugino Shizuri.

Screwing it up would mean death.

It was finally showtime.

===Part 9===

They were in the outdoor field of the former fire fighter training ground in District 2.

A great mass of moving air created a low roar.

250 thousand drones were packed together like a black dragon as they moved together.

They were all aimed at Mugino Shizuri alone.

The Information Broker laughed with her phone in hand. She held a hand over her mouth as she did so.

“Oops. I forget to ask.”

Norsitro’s expression was as casual as if she were out at the supermarket and realized she had forgotten she needed to buy the one item that was on sale.

“Would you prefer to be killed by my power or by the swarm? But asking now is a pain and it doesn’t really matter, does it? You’ll die a painful death either way.”

Mugino Shizuri gave a snort of laughter and flicked out a card she had pulled from her pocket. Before it could fall to the ground, she accurately struck it with a thick Meltdowner beam.

Silicon Burn.

Nearly 150 scorching electron beams thinner than hairs fanned out in front of her.

However…

“Tch. So a scattershot’s not enough.”

“I am using 250 thousand of them with a total of 1.75 million. But if you think you can shoot them all down, feel free to continue going for a high score. Although I expect you’ll be crushed to death first☆”

No matter how many Mugino destroyed, the number was replenished, so the swarm never dropped below 250 thousand.

And that wasn’t the main problem.

Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner had failed to bring down the swarm. Even when using her special Silicon Burn. With Mugino’s attack a failure, nothing could stop the endless drone force. This time they charged toward Mugino as if aiming for a cross counter. En masse.

A sticky blackness filled a large portion of the scene.

Like a bottle of pitch black ink had fallen over on a painting of Academy City’s scenery.

The black dragon devoured the blue sky. No, the swarm weapon made up of 250 thousand drones circled around together to attack Mugino.

According to Frenda’s analysis, each one was as destructive as a grenade.

But there were 250 thousand of them.

If they all attacked at once…it would be like taking a machinegun spray of explosive rounds head on!

“Mugino!”

“Want to make bets how many seconds you’ll last?”

Norsitro smiled in her neon green bondage outfit.

The following explosion felt like space itself were expanding.

But Mugino wasn’t injured.

Despite the many, many explosions going off.

“Oh? I thought you were all offense, but I guess not.”

She had a shield of light.

Meltdowner normally flew sharply out as a straight line, but she must have instead had it spiral close to her hand. It looked like a round shield fully covering Mugino’s body.

The sharp fragments and even the blast itself were pushed back. Academy City’s #4 had extraordinary specs in defense as well, but Norsitro wasn’t normal either. The very act of forcing Mugino Shizuri to defend – that is, to ''threaten'' that bundle of arrogance enough that she thought she would die if she didn’t defend – was extraordinary enough.

Adding Mugino Shizuri to the fight wasn’t enough to defeat Norsitro Chatellenie.

All four members of Item together couldn’t end this.

They were on the verge of death and cutting it close.

But that was more than just a risk. With a different viewpoint – Kinuhata Saiai’s for example – it could also be a one-in-a-million opportunity.

Win or lose? Live or die?

No one knew what was going to happen, which created enough of an ''opening'' to take otherwise unthinkable actions.

Here, she could force it through.

She concluded a chance like this wasn’t going to come again.

If she was going to fool that girl.

If she was going to get Mugino Shizuri to betray her, it had to be here.

Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner, even when scattered like a shower using the Silicon Burn, could not shoot down Norsitro Chatellenie’s 1.75 million drones.

To put it another way, ''it wouldn’t look strange'' if something unexpected happened here.

The countless wandering self-destruct drones sliced through the air as they charged in.

Now was the time to make up her mind.

Takitsubo and Frenda had both given Kinuhata some advice while they were pursuing the Kitchen Car truck to reach this place.

''“Saying you will ‘deceive’ her may make it sound like something you do while watching on from some safe place, but that won’t work. A safe zone on a deadly battlefield where anything can happen will look suspicious to Mugino.”

''“In the end, the only way to truly trick Mugino is to risk your life. So you can’t be lying to save your life. This is Mugino Shizuri we’re talking about. She’ll notice immediately if you aren’t truly risking your life with the lie.”

In other words.

…A liar wouldn’t do something so dangerous. Someone trying to trick me with a lie would make sure they were safe.

By taking advantage of Mugino’s low opinion of traitors, Kinuhata could hide in her blind spot.

So it had to be here.

It had to be when Norsitro’s drones charged in and detonated at close range. It was something only possible for Kinuhata Saiai who stood outside Mugino’s Meltdowner shield and who Academy City’s #4 could not fully protect.

She did it herself.

She deactivated Offense Armor.

“Gh.”

She felt a scorching heat. From her right flank. First she felt a twisting and tugging sensation on her skin and then her small body was thrown more than two meters straight back.

“…Gah…?”

She rolled a few times and her small body was left trembling.

(Oh…no.)

Had her fear of Mugino made her take the act ''too far''? An iron taste seeped into her mouth. She could feel something throbbing inside her. She felt badly dizzy, perhaps from the blood loss, and she couldn’t tell which way was up as she lay on the ground.

She might really die here.

Takitsubo Rikou ran over, held the wound, dragged her behind cover, and waved her phone in her other hand while calling out to Mugino.

“Mugino, she’s lost a lot of blood. Her breathing is heavy and her pulse is falling. My health management app is giving red zone warnings. Kinuhata won’t last like this.”

“Huh!? …Because she was near me? But how’d she get hurt so bad when she has Offense Armor!?”

It was a valid question.

But…

“She was fighting before you got here. While protecting me. She was more worn out than anyone. If you use you power too much, you run out of stamina, right? That’s what happened here.”

…So that was the scenario they were going with.

If they didn’t push this through while Mugino’s thoughts were still confused by the red blood, they couldn’t avoid her questions about what the three of them were doing at this mysterious training ground behind her back.

So…

“Norsitro Chatellenie. In the end, she planned to kill you and take control of Item as a convenient system. Kinuhata was fighting with everything she had because she didn’t want that. She was fighting for you!”

Frenda sprinkled some kernels of truth in there.

The Information Broker didn’t just gather information – she was an expert in when to play her trump card. If they let her, she would start shouting the truth, but by establishing a different idea in Mugino’s mind first, Mugino wouldn’t listen to what the enemy was saying.

And while fighting back and looking irritated, Mugino Shizuri scratched at her head with a hand.

“~ ~ ~ Frenda!!”

“Not happening. She must have lost around a liter of blood already. The lethal limit is based on body weight and Kinuhata’s the smallest of us, so she has the least wiggle room there. Pliers, wire cutters, screwdrivers, drills – I have a lot of tools on me, but nothing that can heal people. In the end, I think the most I have is disinfectant, bandaids, and bandages?”

“1.5 to 2 liters is the limit even for a large man. Kinuhata is in serious trouble if she doesn’t get a blood transfusion immediately,” stated Takitsubo Rikou.

She never showed any emotion on her face, so she didn’t have to try and put on an act here. The listener would imagine their own emotional state mirrored back to them in her voice.

So the more pressure Mugino felt, the more urgent Takitsubo’s warnings would sound.

They were being pushed back. Item’s leader clicked her tongue.

“Did you call that kid the Information Broker? From the way they move, I’m guessing those guys around her are firefighters.”

“In the end, probably so.”

“That makes them a security team specialized in keeping her alive over defeating her enemies. …They should be prepared for any kind of emergency. Which means they might have transfusion kits for each blood type including Rh positive and negative.”

“Then what should we do, Mugino?”

Since Kinuhata couldn’t talk, Takitsubo organized their information from behind cover.

She showed Mugino the horrific values on the health management app.

“We can’t even withdraw with her like this. Moving Kinuhata in this state will kill her. Fight or run, we need to start by giving her enough blood to save her.”

…The numbers on the health management app were of course fake. The app was called Vital Jamming. It was a joke app that let you adjust some simple sliders to change the readings to show a minor cold, an injury, or even close to death.

''“Look, these are the numbers on your health app.”

''“This shows your current calorie intake and exercise level. If you keep this up, the results will be tragic a month from now. The changes will be noticeable in your figure. Especially in the hips and legs.”

…Takitsubo already had it installed on her phone to make the threats necessary to get Mugino to go jogging.

(Does that mean I’m still super alive enough she needs the app to make me look bad enough? Damn. And here I was getting all worked up thinking I might really die.)

Kinuhata felt regret. And embarrassment.

She was supposed to know this was all meant as a way to keep her alive.

The #4 must have decided Meltdowner alone wasn’t enough. She moved Kinuhata, who was lying collapsed behind some twisted metal with no engine or electronics inside. It may have been used to practice rescuing people from a vehicle after an accident. A moment later, that cover was engulfed in a series of explosive blasts.

Mugino grimaced at the continuous noise and raised her voice.

“If they have transfusion kits, where do you think they would be!?”

“Blood is a liquid, so it gets heavy if you have a lot of it. With A, B, O, and AB with Rh positive and negative for each, carrying around the liters needed to resuscitate people of any blood type would mean fighting with weights strapped to you. I doubt they would do that. But they never know when one of their people will be badly injured. In the end, they won’t keep it too far away.”

Or to put it more simply…

“At the very least, I doubt it’s in these fake buildings out here. If you want to find their transfusion kits, you’ll want to head inside the training ground’s main building!!”

They had an objective.

Of course, they couldn’t actually have Mugino save Kinuhata.

Their goal was for Mugino Shizuri to betray her teammate.

They needed the perfect genius of Academy City’s #4 to fail here.

“My, my. Oh, dear, dear. Hee hee.”

This came from Norsitro Chatellenie a short distance away.

She was here too, so she had of course seen that delightful drama play out.

Mugino was already under the impression that Kinuhata had been injured while fighting for her, so even if the Information Broker accused the other three, it seemed unlikely Mugino would blast them with Meltdowner right away.

As an information expert, she must have picked up on that mood.

So she knew nothing she said would get through to Mugino now that she was “the villain who harmed Mugino’s teammate”.

In her neon green bondage outfit, the girl shrugged and operated her phone.

“Sounds like you have an interesting predicament on your hands, but it looks like sticking to the villain role will be the must fun for me. Speaking of, do you think I’ll just let you through?”

“Tch!!”

One movement of her finger moved the swarm of drones.

Not even Mugino Shizuri could push back the entire swarm of 250 thousand drones with a maximum of 1.75 million.

Several beams sliced through the sky, triggering a few explosions, but that wasn’t enough to bring them all down at once.

“Mugino. Your wall doesn’t have to be sturdy. Even a curtain or net can catch and stop the flying drones.”

“Go to Frenda for little tricks like that!!”

The training ground facility included more than the outside field. Item carried injured Kinuhata down a flight of stairs and entered an underground field meant to simulate a subway station, but that didn’t last even ten seconds.

After a rapid series of explosions, the entire thin ceiling was torn away.

“You can’t get away.” The bondage girl was staring down at them with hands on her hips. “Training grounds like this are designed with wide open spaces underground. They’re fairly flimsy, which makes them easy to blow away. Although that means you won’t be buried alive below dirt, so maybe you should count yourselves lucky?”

They didn’t have time to complain.

The drones were like the downpour of flaming arrows meant to bring down a castle. More and more poured down from above, so Item had no choice but to run down the hallway and climb back to the surface at another exit.

Each individual phenomenon might not be so bad, but they couldn’t seem to regain control of the overall situation.

They couldn’t escape the palm of Norsitro’s hand this way.

“Mugino. In the end, they’re here too!”

“Kh. Kill them to clear a path!!”

Large men, presumably former rescue squad members, emerged from behind vending machines, benches, and other hiding places. They were armed with unique weapons like firefighting axes and rope guns that launched the rope with noncombustible gas.

On top of it all, Norsitro Chatellenie had an unidentified weather control power.

Everyone could tell things were only getting worse.

They were tumbling into the abyss and fast.

They could physically reduce the number of rescue squad members, but the number of drones never seemed to drop. No, Mugino and Frenda were shooting down quite a few of them, but that was like trying to change the weather by throwing stones up at the rain falling from the sky. It was a waste of time.

And if they couldn’t stop somewhere, they couldn’t stop Kinuhata’s bleeding.

They weren’t even supposed to move her right now, so what would happen if they tried to break through the enemy like this?

“Mugino… In the end, we have to give up,” said an astonished Frenda as she scattered mines to slow the enemy down.

…That Frenda could say something like this without it sounding out of place made Kinuhata suspect she was always adjusting her ''emotional distance'' even during ordinary conversations. Because what came next was a suggestion only allowed in the dark side.

“We can’t get a transfusion kit! We don’t even know if there’s one here, so we shouldn’t risk our lives looking for it. I get wanting to save Kinuhata, but you’ll be killed too if you keep this up!! This isn’t just about Kinuhata! If we don’t withdraw now, we’ll all be killed!”

“You’re the leader. So you decide,” added Takitsubo to drive the point home.

Item wouldn’t distribute the responsibility among its members. Stressing that this was Mugino’s decision applied pressure to her. That was a necessary part of setting things up for Mugino herself to betray Kinuhata.

They had no choice. There was no other way.

It didn’t really matter how Mugino phrased it.

But they couldn’t let her claim that they all made the choice together. So all of those psychological loopholes and outs had to be plugged up in advance. Item’s search and information expert showed no mercy here.

“Make a decision, Mugino. Without a choice from our leader, we will all die.”

With that, she preemptively eliminated the option of not making a choice and letting them run out of time.

Now Mugino Shizuri had no excuse.

Since they couldn’t overwhelm Norsitro and acquire a transfusion kit right away, Mugino had only two options: abandon dying Kinuhata and escape or choose nothing and let Kinuhata die when time ran out. Either option would mean Kinuhata’s death, so this was a powerful card to use against Mugino Shizuri who despised betrayal more than anything.

Kinuhata and the others had betrayed her first.

Mugino Shizuri would never forgive a traitor.

So for the three of them to survive, they had to cancel out their betrayal with Mugino’s betrayal.

“Mugino… In the end, I think Kinuhata wants to say something.”

The stage was set.

Takitsubo, supporting her bloody body behind unreliable cover, glanced over into Kinuhata’s eyes.

She understood.

The final emotional push would be most effective…coming from Kinuhata herself.

“Forget…about me.”

Kinuhata forced out the words as she gasped for breath.

This wasn’t an act.

She was cold.

They hadn’t managed to stop the bleeding. She could feel her body temperature dropping.

She hadn’t been killed right away, but she had lost a significant amount of blood. She found she couldn’t speak any louder than this.

“Whether or not there’s a transfusion kit somewhere in the facility…it’s super too late for an injury like this. So please…get out of here. You’re wasting your time. You’ll only get more of you killed. So please…”

An odd feeling filled Kinuhata as she spoke.

She was deceiving Mugino.

Objectively speaking, this was a terrible thing to do.

But she was finding she no longer had to consciously lie to betray Mugino here.

Strangely, she found she was speaking her true feelings.

She didn’t want Mugino to die here.

She didn’t have to lie about that, so she simply placed her current honest feelings in her words.

“I’m thankful… If you hadn’t taken me in, I’d probably still be on ice in the back of that lab. Gh… I was only meant to rot away without every leaving that place, so now I’ll just be returning to the earth. So you don’t have to feel bad about it… So hurry and go.”

(Yeah…)

The words left her almost on their own

And while it happened, a thought came to her.

(If only I wasn’t carrying all this baggage. If only I had super been the kind of person who could say this without needing to sully it like this.)

That could never happen.

The initial assumptions were wrong.

Or maybe this was the final destination of the traitor.

The end result for a selfish dreamer.

The final refuge of a fool who couldn’t bear the weight of reality.

“I was only ever something extra you picked up, right? So you don’t need to bet the fate of Item as a whole on someone disposal like me. Go!! I’ll break their perimeter. I’m going to die anyway, so I might as well go out in a blaze of glory and take a ton of them with me. Cough… That’s a hell of a lot better than dying a meaningless death!! There’s no saving me now, but I’ll super use what time I have left to make Norsitro and her people regret crossing us! So get out of here already!!!”

She drove her point home.

Kinuhata Saiai waited for Mugino to speak.

For her to say, “Fine then. If there’s no other option, we’ll leave Kinuhata here to die.”

For her to admit, “I don’t want to die here, so if you’re going to die anyway, you take care of it.”

Reality wasn’t like the movies. Especially in Academy City’s dark side, a heartless response like that would hardly be a surprise. And because Kinuhata knew that, she bet on it happening. She bet her life and future on it. Bring it on. Because if Mugino didn’t abandon her here, this would end without her receiving the bargaining chip she needed. Then she would be accused of betrayal and reduced to charcoal.

In the distance, a neon green bondage outfit creaked and Norsitro shouted to them in amusement.

“What do you think you can do with that dying body? You can’t even act as a shield against my swarm, so how do you expect to break our perimeter!?”

Something exploded.

The rusty smell grew stronger again.

A sharp fragment must have grazed her because Mugino had a cut on her right cheek.

The drones were only as big as a paper airplane made from a flier, so they could only carry so much explosive. And Frenda’s expert analysis said they weren’t carrying anything special. Each blast was only about as much as a grenade, so the lethal range was about 10 meters.

Even so, a lethal range was a lethal range.

Rapid-firing Meltdowner beams wasn’t enough to stop them all, so Mugino destroyed the base of a nearby fake three-story building to topple it and use the plywood as a shield. She could shoot down the leading drones, but that wouldn’t last forever. And even if she did defend against the sharp fragments, the shockwave still circled around the cover and struck her body.

A single bomb or bullet could kill. Far too easily. That was how it worked on the dark side. A total of 1.75 million? No, she couldn’t let her guard down with even a single drone.

But.

Even so.

“…Takitsubo.”

“What?”

“There’s still a chance, right? If I manage to get inside that building at the cost of my own flesh and blood and acquire a transfusion kit, we can save Kinuhata, right?”

“Maybe.”

“Heh,” laughed Mugino Shizuri.

And she gave her answer.

Item’s leader held her palm straight out and stepped forward. Out from behind cover.

“That’s all I needed to hear.”

…Wait a second.

Why isn’t she betraying me?

“I’m not running.”

Her voice wasn’t particularly loud.

But Mugino Shizuri did speak.

She had to know how bad the situation was for her. She had toppled the fake building to create a shield because she knew she couldn’t shoot down all the drones with Meltdowner.

But a fake building was only a fake. While the drone attacks weren’t designed with penetrative power in mind, this wouldn’t last long. Once the consecutive blasts broke through, it was all over. And Mugino had stepped out from even that much cover.

And yet.

She completely thew out the cold calculations of the dark side.

“I will never abandon a teammate and run.”

A drone exploded.

Close by.

Kinuhata received no new injuries.

Because Mugino Shizuri stood in the way, clenching her teeth. A shard several centimeters across had lodged itself in her shoulder.

This was the borderline between life and death. If the truth came out, it was all over. That was why Kinuhata had put on an act, even if it meant losing more than a liter of blood.

She was of course deceiving her teammate.

But Mugino Shizuri’s heart turned out to be…unexpectedly sturdy?

“Bring it, Information Broker!! I don’t know your name, but you will pay for underestimating Item. Did you think ''the'' Mugino Shizuri would let you get away with doing this to one of my teammates right before my eyes? You’ll be nothing but charcoal once I’m done with you!!!”

Takitsubo fidgeted nervously with her usual lack of expression.

Frenda Seivelun appeared aware how dangerous the situation was. She was frantically trying to work out a course correction from behind cover.

“Wait… In the end, why are you getting all hot-blooded right now when all our lives are on the line!? Don’t you know what Item’s leader is supposed to do!? Hurry up and tell us get out of here, Leader Mugino!!”

“This is my decision to make and I will never betray anyone. I won’t leave Kinuhata hear, turn tail, and run!! It isn’t a matter of pride anymore. All the tools I need to save my teammate’s life are within arm’s reach. If I have to let these blasts tear the flesh from my bones, so be it. I’ve got plenty of excess flesh to offer. So I will get my hands on that transfusion kit!!”

“…”

Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner could not shoot down all of the drones even with its scattershot. She could also use her power to defend, but that wasn’t its primary use and it was far from perfect.

More explosions erupted.

She wasn’t critically wounded yet, but she was gradually being worn down.

Academy City’s #4 was.

The next head of the proud Mugino Family was.

All because Kinuhata Saiai had dragged her into this.

Mugino would have had more options here if she were alone. Meltdowner could pierce through any obstacle. She could have escaped outside the former training ground and then sniped Norsitro through the thick wall.

But she couldn’t do that.

Because she couldn’t leave injured and bleeding Kinuhata’s side.

Because she would prefer to accept some disadvantage than abandon a teammate.

Because she wanted the life-saving transfusion kit no matter what.

As fearsome as she was, Mugino Shizuri wasn’t lying. She wasn’t deceiving anyone. She wasn’t betraying anyone. Yet she was being worn down for the sake of a dirty liar.

While roaring that this was better than abandoning her dying teammate and escaping on her own.

“You’re…kidding.”

Kinuhata Saiai was not Mugino Shizuri, so she hadn’t heard what the old butler Mujinayama said.

But he had said that the best way to prevent betrayal was to prepare for it in advance.

And he had said that suspecting your own people was a form of betrayal in and of itself.

Because.

If the person you suspected was not in fact a traitor and was instead a reliable ally who trusted you from the bottom of their heart…then your own suspicion of them would have branded you as a traitor.

Bull’s eye.

“No…”

She had decided to deceive.

There was no way around the fact she only had the one life. So she had decided survival even at the cost of betrayal was the right choice.

But she couldn’t do it anymore.

Something was burned through inside Kinuhata Saiai.

“Are you kidding me!? I super can’t stand it anymorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre!!!”

===Part 10===

Someone was crying.

They were bawling loudly like a small child.

It was the siren of doom.

Lies? Acting? Deception?

She was past caring about any of that.

Frenda and Takitsubo were watching Kinuhata Saiai from a short distance away.

This was past the point of not knowing how to approach an unmanageable child. Theirs were not the expression a parent would give to their child. The look in their eyes was one of abandonment – of “sigh, now you’ve done it”. They also kept an invisible distance from her so they could stay safely out of the way of what was coming. They chose to trust only the sixth sense they had developed as villains.

The world seemed to rapidly pull away from Kinuhata in all directions.

The weeping girl was left all alone.

If was over for her once Mugino Shizuri discovered the truth. She had known that from the start. But Kinuhata Saiai couldn’t stand it any longer.

“I…”

Her words caught in her throat.

She was aware how self-destructive this was.

Some part of her brain was screaming for her to stop.

But it was too late.

It was game over whether she stopped here or spat out the rest of her words. Mugino Shizuri would never forgive a traitor. Once she was certain of her suspicions, they would not go away on their own.

But that was fine.

She would feel better this way.

She wanted to get it all out before someone could stop her and before she passed out from blood loss.

It would pain her more for this to end unresolved. That she couldn’t bear.

“I lied to you!! I couldn’t abandon that ordinary person who was being forced by the blackmailers to rob the bank, so I saved her knowing she was a criminal who had attacked you! Everything’s gone wrong since… But that’s no excuse. I made my choice and I’ve been lying to you super ever since!!”

Information Broker Norsitro Chatellenie gave her an icy look.

Unsurprising really.

The last thing she would want after working so hard to gather up information on a scandal was for the target to self-destructively go public with it. The treasure held by the brown girl in the neon green bondage outfit was now worthless scrap. Of course she wasn’t happy about it.

“It was all my fault!! So that’s enough, Mugino! I don’t need a transfusion kit! Just get out of here. You super don’t need to get hurt here!!!”

There.

She’d said it. She had come clean.

So Kinuhata Saiai managed a somehow twisted smile even as the tears spilled from her eyes.

…If only she’d done this in the first place.

She still didn’t think it had been wrong to act on behalf of the ordinary person being threatened into committing robbery by the blackmailers.

But what about the rest?

Self-preservation, self-preservation, self-preservation, self-preservation! Kinuhata Saiai had been ugly, dirty, and rotten. How could she possibly excuse her actions there?

Had saving the girl being forced to rob a bank really and truly been the same thing as lying to her teammate to save her own skin?

Saving someone was no excuse for betrayal.

If she really had done the right thing, she didn’t need anything else. Instead of worrying about her own life, she should have accepted an honorable death.

All of this was the result of failing to do that.

She had been weak, wretched, and yet greedy. Mugino Shizuri had been injured in her attempt to protect that traitor. She had shed her own blood. And it wasn’t going to end there. At this rate, Mugino, Takitsubo, and Frenda would all die. Item would be finished.

And it would all be Kinuhata Saiai’s fault.

An enemy and a traitor from within were two very different things.

Kinuhata Saiai had been taught an important lesson.

She now knew she had fallen to a position more miserable than death. She was like an insect flipped on its back and unable to right itself.

Even when she had been raised in the back of an unofficial lab, wasting her life away unknown to the world, she had at least still had a human soul.

Even when she had been taken in by Item and been asked to help with their dirty jobs, she had had her soul as a villain.

Kinuhata could tell she was having trouble enunciating. Was it her tongue or her brain? One or the other wasn’t working right after losing so much blood. She didn’t care which. This was far better than having the fear and pain rule her thoughts, preventing her from doing what had to be done.

“I’ll super handle the rest.”

When had her soul been reduced to that of an insect?

She knew the answer.

From the moment she chose to give up on being human.

“I know this is just more selfishness on my part, but I super want to take responsibility for my own actions. You don’t have to bother with any of this, so hurry up and go!!”

And.

Academy City’s #4 monster…listened to it.

It entered her ears.

It soaked into her brain.

Mugino Shizuri now knew what had happened. She had certainty. And she did not forgive traitors. Because she had been raised by the Mugino Family as a born gangster.

To reiterate yet again, Mugino Shizuri did not forgive traitors.

So.

What was the definition of a traitor?

What had Mujinayama said, after his long years of service to the Mugino Family and everything he had seen there?

“Heh. Shut the hell up.”

And.

There was no beam of light.

Even though Kinuhata was ready for it.

Mugino Shizuri placed her palm on the sobbing girl’s head.

Ignoring her own bleeding.

“If you can say all that and you can risk your life to come clean regardless of the consequences, then you’re no traitor.”

Mugino Shizuri’s bloody face bore a small smile.

She was the kind of person who could smile here.

The world had pulled away from Kinuhata in all directions, but she wasn’t alone. Someone had approached her and rubbed her head.

“You’re Item. I will never forgive a traitor, but I always protect my own.”

Kinuhata Saiai couldn’t get any words out.

A moment later, a drone dropped down like lightning and triggered an explosion.

===Part 11===

Reality was heartless.

No matter what emotions had just been exchanged between Mugino Shizuri and Kinuhata Saiai, the silver-haired girl only had to input a simple command on her phone to send 250 thousand drones rushing in to attack. Each of those unmanned weapons was loaded with an explosive and the swarm made a merciless physical attack.

There was an explosion.

But it happened far off in the empty blue sky. Within the dragon of closely-packed drones.

More explosions followed. The chain reaction continued on and on.

The drones attempting to blow up Mugino and Kinuhata broke apart well before reaching them.

“Wha-?”

Norsitro Chatellenie was speechless.

Apparently this was something not even the Information Broker understood.

…Like any aircraft, drones were at risk of breaking apart when pushed too hard. When attempting maneuvers beyond their limits, the combined force of the air resistance and shockwaves would rattle the main wings and cause the aircraft to shake apart. Within Earth’s gravity, you could never forget that it was ''unnatural for anything to leave the surface and fly.

But what had caused this?

The 250 thousand drones were electronically controlled by the parallel processing of 250 thousand CPUs and fully guided by Norsitro’s smartphone. She couldn’t see any reason for them to break apart on their own!

“A maximum of 1.75 million drones? With 250 thousand operated at once? Your swarm control system can break through even if a fair number are shot down by anti-air weapons?”

This came in a casual, singsong voice. And a wicked one.

Mugino Shizuri spoke even while stained red by her own blood.

“But all you’ve done is gather an ass-ton of the same craft, which means they all have the same weakness. I just have to find a single vulnerability and I win. And I had plenty of time to gather information while they were pummeling me. Your trump card was laughably easy to defeat.”

“Oh, is that so? And what exactly are you going to do? Fry all their CPUs with an anti-ship EMP bomb? Or maybe pull an anti-air microwave cannon out of your ass? Fantastical super weapons are great for winning theoretical arguments, but they can’t protect your very real life. Do you have an attack method that can help you in the real world!?”’ shouted Norsitro in her glittering neon green bondage outfit. “You won’t run away? You always protect your own? …Absurd. Why would you ''make that kind of performative claim in front of me''? Did you not look into the legend of the Information Broker? Yes, yes. You have my full attention now. And I won’t rest until all of you are dead!!”

But bloody Mugino gave a snort of laughter.

(Well, she does attack with lightning. I suppose they would be designed to withstand an electric surge.)

That Norsitro would give an actual response to that kind of speculation showed how naive Norsitro was.

When the enemy gave the answer themselves, she had only two options: scoff at the answer for being way off, or frantically try to throw them off because they made a lucky guess.

But if she hadn’t said anything at all, doubt would remain. Whether it was right or wrong, staying quiet had likely been Norsitro’s best option. But she couldn’t help herself. Even though this was like playing concentration and giving up your turn by flipping over cards for your opponent.

“Kh. I have the power to change the weather. The drones can fly through rain or hail without issue!!”

“Sure. ''For unnatural weather you designed yourself'', right?’

Mugino didn’t even glance over behind cover.

Standing out in the open, she pointed her index finger straight up into the blue sky.

“You adjust the drones’ maneuvering based on the weather. There’s an optimal speed for sunny weather, an optimal angle for rain, and so on. When you know it’s coming, you can use your own program there. But with truly unexpected gusts of winds blowing between the buildings, the drones will tilt on their side. And during a sudden downpour, the apparent viscosity of the air changes and the main wings will rattle until they break.”

That was where Mugino had to strike to win.

Meaning…

“It comes down to the ''air’s viscosity''. Or the apparent viscosity anyway.”

She gave the answer.

Saying it here wouldn’t change the result. She had only said it to assert dominance over her opponent in an act of villainous cruelty.

“If I burn the air with Meltdowner, it will reduce the humidity, which dries out the air. But if I instead blast a water tank, the water inside will pour out, greatly increasing the apparent air resistance. It’s simple once you know the trick, but that is enough for the 250 thousand and 1.75 million drones to tear themselves apart. Pretty neat, right?”

“Kh… You mean…that’s what you did?”

It might seem obvious, but that kind of obvious thing could be the most dangerous among all the unusual things found in the supersonic world. Quite a few of Academy City’s prototype fighter craft had ordinary air tear off their main wings because they were unable to withstand their own vibrations.

“The last thing you want is for someone else to alter the weather. That’s why you control it yourself. No matter how unnatural it might look, you needed to alter the environment for all those drones! Even if it meant using some strange power!!”

The maximum of 1.75 million was a certainly a threat, but using the exact same craft for all of them had been a mistake.

Securing multiple different models would have been a challenge when manufacturing, operation, and maintenance were taken into account. The simple financial cost and effort of operation would have been several times greater. But the choice had come back to bite her in combat. The world’s armies would not use a single standard craft just because it was the latest and greatest. Just like Academy City used the Two Wings and Six Wings simultaneously.

A single vulnerability would affect them all.

Throw them off there and the entire swarm would be suddenly destroyed.

The explosions continued. Mugino wasn’t aiming Meltdowner in that direction, but the drones couldn’t approach the former training ground where their targets awaited. They all broke apart on their own and their explosives detonated.

Mugino Shizuri sneered.

She might fight for Academy City or the greater world beyond its walls, but she was neither good nor righteous.

This was the smile of a villain who knew the taste of blood.

“Now, that takes care of those annoying drones buzzing around. Which only leaves your power to deal with.”

===Part 12===

Mugino Shizuri and Norsitro Chatellenie.

Regardless of how many other people were around, this was their battle.

Whoever won would win it all. Whoever lost would lose it all.

“Don’t expect a signal. I’m not flipping a coin or anything.”

“Did you not consider that I might kill you while you said that, fool?”

They both took action immediately.

A thick beam burst from Mugino’s palm.

The neon green bondage girl smiled.

She was still alive and well.

Several of the fake training ground structures had been burned and melted, but that was all.

(Meltdowner missed its mark?)

“No, did she bend it with a current rivaling a bolt of lightning!?”

There was another beam of light.

Something powerful pierced through Mugino Shizuri from head to toe.

A high-voltage current.

In fact, it was a lightning bolt of more than a hundred million volts.

“Kah…ah…”

Mugino’s breath caught, but she managed to stay on her feet, probably because her Meltdowner power controlled electrons. She had touched a torn high-voltage line outside the city without issue yet a shock at the District 3 bus terminal had briefly stopped her heart, suggesting her psychological state influenced the effectiveness of that ability far too much to be a reliable means of defense.

“Mugino, that isn’t an esper power.”

And Takitsubo Rikou made a judgment from behind cover.

This was the natural result of repeatedly using the same trump card in front of that search expert.

“She is controlling 250 thousand drones at once. Each one is the size of a small paper airplane, but you can think of that like fanning the air with a fan 250 thousand times that size. The movements of that swarm can cause a gust of wind in a single direction, a swirling tornado, or even rapidly reduce the air pressure, allowing her to change the weather itself. She can even cause hail and lightning that way.”

“Ha ha!!”

Not at all bothered and even laughing, Norsitro Chatellenie immediately responded.

“Didn’t I tell you!? Oh, sorry. Your leader wasn’t here when I explained that, was she? Anyway, I said keeping them in top condition isn’t easy!! The Superb Starling weather control swarm claims to be a strategic weapon superior to nuclear warheads, so it had damn well better be able to handle this!!!”

Meaning…

“You…”

Academy City’s #4 Level 5, Meltdowner.

Mugino Shizuri, leader of Item and born gangster of the Mugino Family, had been cornered this far by…

“''You’re a Level 0''?”

“Funny, isn’t it?”

She was laughing.

Information Broker Norsitro Chatellenie was.

Was that sneer on a face more pained than a lost child’s directed at herself?

“The villain who stands at the summit of Academy City’s evil, devours the city’s ordinary people, and has extended her reach into the world beyond the city…is no more than a Level 0. And I’ve fought back against this entire world because I hate being called that!! Yes, it’s true. I wanted to prove to everyone who’s ever laughed at me that I am not powerless and there is so much I can do!!!”

…She had been certain.

Mugino Shizuri had been absolutely certain that large-scale weather control was Norsitro’s esper power.

So she had thought this would end up as a battle between elites.

But it wasn’t.

This was a lot messier.

“There was a major…incident.”

The enemy was a true Level 0. yet she had challenged Item’s Level 5 and two Level 4s head on and driven them to the brink of death.

“Someone had to die and we all discussed who it should be. Everyone’s eyes gathered on me. Not one of them defended me. …That’s when I made up my mind. I decided I would survive even if it meant killing them all. I decided I would be the one looking down on every last one those shits who tell their pretty lies so they can pretend they’re good people!!”

Was that the trauma that led to her surrounding herself with a rescue squad that provided her with the power to survive rather than the power to kill?

She had been labeled a Level 0.

She had been abandoned by the adults’ systems and the children’s rules.

She had been declared unwanted.

But still she clenched her teeth and reached out her hand in that rotten quagmire.

She wanted power.

She wanted to be strong.

The drone swarm could not approach Mugino. She used the viscosity of the air to bring them down before they could.

But that did not rid the 250 thousand drones of their ability to act like a giant fan to stir up the air, manipulate the air pressure, and alter the weather. Using that did not require directly approaching their target.

This was a harmful technology, but Mugino was willing to recognize the girl’s ability to convert her desire for improvement into actual power.

However.

That was only if she didn’t arrogantly brag about her unprecedented achievement and hadn’t become a monster who endlessly devoured ordinary people’s lives.

(Power corrupts, huh?)

“I can’t respect a villain who reduces herself to a disposable rocket only meant to elevate the things she’s created. What have you become in your constant fear of being killed?”

“?”

A battle between villains begins before the fighting actually starts.

Whichever one was daunted and taken in by the other would fail.

So those who lived in the shadows paid close attention to how they lived their lives even as they turned their back to the sun. They didn’t think twice about breaking ordinary laws and regulations, but they followed their own ironclad rules or Family solidarity and they despised lies, deception, and betrayal in their midst.

And once the 1.75 million drones and their weather control were stripped away, the win condition here was as simple as can be.

She was the Information Broker.

Mugino couldn’t let the bondage girl’s weapon get to her and she had to view her for who she really was.

…The lightning was powerful, but it wasn’t enough to take the life of Academy City’s #4. The rain and hail were powerful enough to engulf Academy City if used systematically, but they couldn’t immobilize Mugino right away.

And no matter how much the winds and tornadoes might bluster, they couldn’t alter Meldowner’s electron beams the way they could a lead bullet or rocket.

Mugino Shizuri grinned.

“So would your one and only effective card be…the lightning? But that’s for defense, not attack. It’s true a current of more than a hundred million volts might be able to interfere with and bend my Meltdowner.”

“…Wait…”

“That’s right. If you’re so smart, you should have realized this ages ago. …If you ''only'' have the one effective card, coming up with a countermeasure is easy.”

Mugino didn’t have time for games.

Kinuhata Saiai must have gone the extra mile in trying to deceive Mugino because it didn’t look like she had used fake blood. That meant her bleeding was real. In that case, Mugino’s goal was to acquire and use a transfusion kit. Norsitro Chatellenie was no more than a point on the way.

So this wouldn’t be a skirmish.

If she was going to kill her, one major attack would do the trick.

Item’s leader announced her intentions.

To make sure it wasn’t too late.

To save the life of her teammate.

These parting words were not just for show.

“You’re – dead – meat.”

<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Item6_Chapter3|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Item6_Epilogue}}
</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item4 Chapter2

2026-02-01T01:59:18Z

Massify: /* Part 5 */

==Chapter 2: Southward==

===Part 1===

During the morning, an elderly man in a fancy Italian suit entered a florist in Yokohama Station.

“Hello, hello, miss. I was hoping to make a bouquet from a few seasonal flowers, but I unfortunately don’t know much about these things. Could you tell me what’s in season and give me some recommendations?”

“Umm. It’s fall now, so that would be the golden lace, the gentian, the balsam, and…the chrysanthemum maybe?”

“A white chrysanthemum! Excellent. And what was that in the language of flowers again? Eternal love? A final parting? Well, it doesn’t matter. Now, could you pick out a few different flowers and make a bouquet for me? And, y’know, arrange the colors so it looks nice and pretty.”

Since the young woman in an apron couldn’t recommend the more expensive and famous flowers off the top of her head suggested she was a part-timer and not a permanent employee. She built the bouquet in the laborious way of someone without much practice, but the old man watched her with a smile. More than a man watching his daughter, he looked like a man watching his granddaughter.

“It’s ready.”

“Thank you. Yes, now this is a bouquet that cheers you up at the mere sight of it. I’m glad I chose this shop.”

He paid her a generous tip and said goodbye.

After leaving the florist, two butlers in tuxedos joined him at his sides.

Their destination wasn’t far.

They left the large train station. While bringing the bouquet up to his face to enjoy the scent of the flowers, more people joined him. The number of butlers and maids in black only continued to grow. Before long, the group had reached the double digits.

They arrived at a perfectly ordinary looking multi-tenant building.

However, the first floor was not occupied by a convenience store or a cafe. It was covered by thick metal shutters. All the slots on the building directory next to the glass door were empty. The entire building was a hunk of concrete that gave off a slight sense of rejection that would make the average person think twice before opening the door and stepping in.

One of the butlers opened the glass door and the elderly man stepped in with the bouquet resting on his shoulder.

All the effort taken to make the exterior look inconspicuous was ruined by their presence.

They entered the first floor on the other side of the metal shutter.

The elderly man used a twist of his wrist to twirl the bouquet around from his shoulder.

“Any word on the stolen land deed?”

“We have found it.”

“Account books showing debt, scandalous photos, copied licenses – I don’t care what. Just retrieve anything and everything that could be used to threaten us.”

“The process is already underway.”

“That just leaves the cleanup.”

The place reeked of dirt.

A large panel had been removed from the floor, exposing the foundation of the base isolation system and the dark soil. And something was planted in orderly lines like heads of cabbage.

Except these were heads of humans.

They were still alive. Arranged 4 x 5, there were 20 in all. Each was a large man with the dangerous kind of look that would get most anyone to steer clear if they ran into them on the streets at night. They were buried alive and upright.

“You would be the alumni of a certain university’s unofficial loan shark club, correct? After all the trouble you caused, I was shocked to find it was only a hobby for you.”

He didn’t let them yell in anger.

Now was not the time to make them scream.

Those young men who had howled that life was good were now all sweating bullets and trembling. They didn’t dare speak a word even as rats and earwigs nibbled at their cheeks and earlobes.

“They were all from a country locked in civil war.”

The elderly man holding the bouquet sounded exasperated as he looked down at them from the edge.

“That old man discovered some people who had never done a single thing wrong in their lives but just so happened to belong to an ethnic minority their country decided were all political criminals and had to be purged. They were fortunate enough to escape to Japan, but then their visas expired. Sheltering them in his small workshop was nothing but a risk – it could even have gotten him arrested along with them. But if these people were deported back to their home country, a stamp on their paperwork would mark them for death. He felt sorry for them, so he took them in and hired them. …And then you came along and threatened him and threatened him and threatened him, taking everything he had, and even played at being land sharks to steal away the factory along with the land it sat on. Do I have that right?”

All of the buried men could imagine how this would end.

''They'' probably wouldn’t do anything. They would only close up the panel and leave.

…The men could cry and shout, but in three or four days, they would either have shriveled away unknown to the world, or the mice and bugs would have eaten through all the soft bits to empty out their skulls while they still lived.

And finally…

Against his better judgment, one of the victims broke.

“Wh-what, you think you’re a good person just because you saved some weak old man? Playing at being a hero d-doesn’t change the fact that you’re as much a criminal as we are!!”

“I don’t recall ever referring to myself that way. We are certainly not on the side of good. And we don’t help the weak and suffering for nothing in return.”

“Oh,” said a butler.

Because the bouquet man had snatched a metal box about the side of a tissue box from a bodyguard.

When he rotated it like a butterfly knife, the metal box transformed into a T-shaped submachine gun.

“All I’m trying to do is save the people who do the things I can’t. As penance for being less of a man than them.”

''Bang, ba-bang!!

After a few dry gunshots, the rat-and-earwig-chewed men’s heads all popped in bursts of red.

The young butler by the old man’s side held a hand to his forehead.

But not because he was horrified by the death occurring before his eyes.

“''Master!!'' You should leave this dirty work to us. The Bloodline knew nothing because we made sure of it for their protection!!”

“Sorry, sorry. And you can call me ‘mastermind’ or ‘ringleader’. That’s more fitting for a villain.”

After casually apologizing, the Italian suit man handed the submachine gun back to the butler.

“Hm, a Russian special ops weapon? That’s too fancy, don’t you think? Gangsters like us should be slinging around Chicago Typewriters.”

“In this day and age, no one would even refer to that heavy, bulky antique as a submachine gun.”

The elderly man glanced over at the bouquet.

Then he dropped his gaze to the garden of shattered and burst red.

“I bought it to leave at their grave, but it’s honestly wasted on them.”

“You are most correct. We can use it to decorate one of the mansion’s vases.”

The elderly man departed the multi-tenant building with the butlers and maids seeing him off.

Once they had cleaned everything up, no trace would remain.

“The factory owner said he would do anything, right?”

“Yes. He cried and begged to one of the butlers like me, saying he would do anything for his family, his employees, and those youths.”

“Then tell him he isn’t allowed to live anything but a happy life from now on. Listen, that’s a man who single-handedly surpassed me, head of the Mugino Family. He needs to be proud of his decision. I won’t let him live a miserable life or die a miserable death.”

“I will make sure of it.”

“Finding youths from a country trapped in civil war and sheltering them before anyone else can, huh? I couldn’t have lost more thoroughly. Ah hah hah! To think there was a glorious fool out there who could act before I could.”

They were the Mugino Family.

Theirs was not an organization that would let a mere 10 or 20 corpses bother them.

===Part 2===

There had been an explosion in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

That upped the priority level for the police.

A bomber had escaped from Academy City. The bomber was no longer a “maybe”. They were a real threat. Politics and economics were no longer enough for the police to just sit by and watch because of Academy City’s extraterritoriality.

Sobasaka Michio was raring to go.

He was a police officer.

This was the perfect chance to actually investigate Academy City who claimed to extraterritoriality despite being located right inside Tokyo. If this bomber could be used as a reason to demand an investigation, he might just be able to expose the many suspicions whispered about that city. If he let this opportunity pass him by, he would never get a better one. Plus, he couldn’t let this bomber get away with harming his city.

(So I finally have the foothold I need to go after Academy City.)

He didn’t like that this chance had fallen in his lap instead of being something he had accomplished on his own, but he wasn’t about to let it go because of that.

As a child, Sobasaka Michio had been friends with a boy.

Everyone had called that boy Hiyamugi.

His family name had been one of the most common in the country, but he had always been hanging out with Sobasaka. They had been close friends.

When they had moved from elementary school to middle school, Hiyamugi had gone to Academy City.

He had smiled and said he would grow up to be an esper police officer.

And that the two of them could solve all the hardest cases together.

“…”

He had gone to Academy City and never returned.

Sobasaka didn’t even know if he was alive or dead, but he did know Hiyamugi hadn’t safely “graduated”. He had heard rumors that Hiyamugi had been a clinical trial subject in some kind of strange research experiment, but rumors were only rumors. He hadn’t found any shred of the truth.

Only Sobasaka remained.

Only he had grown up, become a police detective, and been left all alone in the world they had dreamed of.

(I’m not letting them wriggle out of it. And it isn’t just Hiyamugi. I’m going to dig up all of Academy City’s darkest secrets and expose them to the world.)

But the voice coming from his phone was heartless.

He had succumbed to a bad habit of Japanese adults. He immediately wished he hadn’t answered the call.

“Come back immediately, Sobasaka.”

“Why, Chief!? I’m gathering witness reports of a blonde girl who sounds like who we’re looking for. Admittedly, her hat, poncho, and blonde hair stand out so much I’m having trouble getting a likeness drawn, but still! She was apparently going around asking people which train would take her to Yokohama. If she doesn’t know the city, she probably used either the subway or the slow train, so it’s not too late to give pursuit!!”

“And where is that train headed?”

Sobasaka’s voice caught in his throat.

It couldn’t be…

“It crossed the prefectural border and entered Kanagawa. That means it falls under a different department’s jurisdiction. We protect Tokyo, so this is no longer our job.”

“You can’t be serious… That just means we have to request support from their prefectural police.”

“We’re talking about a bomber. This will be a major incident if it gets designated a wide-area case and a joint investigation HQ is established. You can’t act on your own.”

Time froze.

The police were supposed to fight to protect the law, yet he was being hindered by the law.

His new partner watched on nervously as Sobasaka yelled with all his might.

===Part 3===

“Yum, yum☆”

Frenda Seivelun pulled a Chinese steamed bun from the bag she held in front of her chest and chowed down. With a big smile. The super sweet autumn product was apparently a sweet potato steamed bun.

She was in Yokohama, Kanagawa. Specifically, in its Chinatown.

The Mugino Family was definitely involved in this incident, but Frenda wasn’t about to take on an international organization of more than 100 thousand.

Who was calling the shots and how?

She needed concrete facts, not a general idea of a colossal organization. She needed to know who in that black box had attacked her. Once she knew that, this would be a battle against an individual. She didn’t need to battle hundreds of thousands of people.

(If the Mugino Family operates based on profits and losses, they should quickly withdraw after learning that taking me on will only hurt them. And whoever in the Bloodline or Management is behind this, once the losses grow, they’ll be isolated!)

Frenda’s objective was to locate the villain, but now that was about more than just proving her innocence.

She wasn’t going to say that truck driver had been a wholly good person. But as his victim, Frenda was the only one who could grant him forgiveness. The villain had stolen that right from her by killing him. Without even asking first.

Frenda recalled the family photo by the driver’s seat.

Killing an ordinary person came with a price. Whoever this villain was, she was going to make sure they paid up.

She wasn’t going to let this end with some nonsense about the case being in a big, troublesome black box that prevented her from finding out who in the Mugino Family had carried out that attack.

She would identify the individual.

“…”

That’s why she had come to Yokohama.

The Mugino Family mansion was located in this city’s prime real estate

(Now, if I’m really going to take on the Mugino Family, I guess I’ll need a base. In the end, the police and the underground organizations do the same thing. To prevent runaways, they’ll have a network keeping an eye on the hotels and internet cafes, so I’ll need a place their searches won’t pick up on.)

“I guess it’ll have to be a sketchy room someone’s renting out without following any of the legal requirements. Or I could take it a step further.”

From the roadside stalls to the fancy bars and restaurants, the quality and size of establishments varied. A cheap Chinese restaurant not much better than the set meal restaurant must have had its TV on with the volume cranked up because even outside Frenda could hear the famous sunglass-wearing host showering the guest with all sorts of questions.

It was that time already.

At midday, when the sun was directly overhead, a bored thug had decided to skip work and instead give an unhoused man a light beating, so Frenda consumed her second limited-edition autumn product (a potato and butter steamed bun) with a smile while she kicked the thug in the shin hard enough to break the thick bone. Everyone on the dark side placed the line between professional and amateur at a different place, but Frenda saw anyone who intentionally broke the law as being on her side of the line. Really, he should thank her for not breaking his knee.

(First, I keep him from moving very fast by breaking his support leg which he can’t guard with his hands. In the end, this is all stuff Mugino taught me. …And now all of that is going to be directed at me. That’s a scary thought.)

The thug screamed and began crawling away, but Frenda didn’t bother even watching him go.

The unhoused man looked up at her from where he sat on the side of the street.

“Y-you saved me. But will you be alright? You may have gotten yourself into trouble on my behalf.”

“In the end, you can tell I’m not just some volunteer, right?”

“Yeah, I can. Still, you saved me. Thank you. But you’re a weird girl. I’m sure you have your reasons, but not many young girls would want to spend the night in a cardboard box on the roadside.”

===Part 4===

Unlike the police, there was nothing to stop villains. So Item used some bits and pieces of witness information to make their way to Yokohama.

Classical music drifted gently around them.

And this was a live performance, not a recording.

The city of Yokohama had many different faces: the harbor, the Chinatown, the small electronics district full of computer shops, and more.

Mugino, Takitsubo, and Kinuhata were holding a strategy meeting on the top floor of a luxury hotel on the waterfront. That top floor was a five-star French restaurant with reservations booked out two years in advance. Their power inside Academy City didn’t apply out here, but that didn’t matter to them.

This time, they were using a different sort of power.

Mugino didn’t like how conspicuous the fancy restaurant was, but…

“This always happens when I let Mujinayama arrange things… A harbor warehouse or the back of a small general store is good enough for a villain’s hideout if you ask me.”

“Super unlike normal, we can’t kill anyone out here. Well, anyone other than Frenda-san, since she’s our target.”

“And?”

“I think that Mujinayama-san person was being considerate. This way we super won’t get into any trouble with any fellow guests at a cheap hotel where the rooms are only separated by plywood.”

“Mh,” groaned Mugino, falling silent.

Of course, the old butler wasn’t worried about the possibility of Mugino getting hurt. He was worried about her carelessly murdering the reckless fool.

The rich tended to get around in a chauffeured car instead of using the train and would eat in fancy restaurants with dress codes instead of cheap restaurants. This was so they could avoid any trouble with who they considered “undesirables”, such as false molestation claims from the kind of woman they wouldn’t have touched if someone paid them or drunks who they really wished would hurry up and find a police holding cell where they could get something to eat. …Although Mugino personally thought of the truly deviant perverts as being part of the upper classes.

When Kinuhata saw the plate placed in front of her, she recoiled and frowned as she viewed the food from multiple angles. It was three-dimensional. The plate was covered by something more delicate than a coral reef.

“Super how are you supposed to eat this?”

“What, have you never eaten a sandwich before?”

Mugino grabbed hers in a hand and began eating like it was normal.

The crunching sounds suggested the delicate thing was made of fried pasta. All the dishes made with plenty of seafood and autumn truffles had to be weeping.

“The Earl of Sandwich was British, so super what is this doing at a French restaurant? It’s so confusing.”

“Kinuhata, they have pasta and curry rice in France, you know? That isn’t want matters. It just has to taste good.”

It was midday.

Several checkpoints had been set up in Shinjuku, Tokyo, due to the runaway and the bombing, but everything was peaceful once they crossed the prefectural border. However, that wouldn’t last if the police established a joint investigation headquarters.

They didn’t have much time.

What would Frenda Seivelun do next?

Takitsubo, who was still wearing her track suit in the fancy French restaurant, got the discussion started.

“I’m curious why Frenda came to Yokohama.”

“If she wanted to flee the country, Narita or Haneda would be too obvious and she’d get caught right away. So maybe she chose Yokohama so she could board a cargo ship and take a leisurely sea voyage.”

“If she is doing that, then she’ll have to rely on them.”

Takitsubo poked at the sandwich on her plate and licked a lobster-like orange sauce off her finger before clarifying who she meant.

“The Mugino Family.”

“…”

Mugino Shizuri fell silent again.

It was their power that let Item use this five-star restaurant on the top floor of a luxury hotel without a reservation. If Mugino hadn’t used the sommelier to relay a message preventing it, the chef would likely have come to greet them with his tall hat in his hands. They didn’t need that while discussing an illegal job.

Kinuhata hesitantly picked up her sandwich with both hands and spoke up.

“The Mugino Family, huh? They’re a system of violence in the outside world, right? And are they super really your family, Mugino?”

“Well, I will probably end up inheriting the whole damn thing eventually. Even if some of the Bloodline will be upset that grandfather skipped my parent’s generation and chose me.”

“That’s how strong a connection Mugino has to the Family,” said expressionless Takitsubo. “I doubt Frenda would flee to Yokohama when she knows Item is after her. Even if she built up funds and made her preparations in secret, Mugino would know about it all. Even if she is planning to escape by sea, there are plenty of other port towns.”

And if that wasn’t what she planned, Yokohama was a very inconvenient city for escaping from Mugino Shizuri. It was like Frenda had gone out of her way to stick her head into the center of her pursuer’s information network.

In fact…

“This talk of the Mugino Family seems super important to me. It’s like she can’t be friends with them, but she still has business with them. And if that’s the case, this smells really bad to me.”

“…”

===Part 5===

It was another sunny day in Academy City.

Although the direct sunlight was a little too hot for autumn.

There were rumors the weather conditions were artificially altered around major events, but the truth was unclear.

At a District 13 elementary school, the usual schedule had been changed and everyone was out in the schoolyard. The boys and girls were all wearing their short-sleeve gym clothes. Fremea really wished she could wear shorts like the boys, but for some reason the girls here wore athletic bloomers.

This was all because it was September.

The Daihaseisai was coming up. Simply put, it was a massive athletic festival involving all of Academy City’s schools.

This was the time of year for the fast runners to reign supreme.

For first graders, it was such a major event it felt like a war.

“We’ve gotta win 1st place! C’mon, Azumi, show some spirit in today’s practice! In the first place, we need to beat all the other schools and stand on the winner’s podium!”

“Fremea-chan, i-isn’t our school being split up for the Daihaseisai? Like different classes will be on different colored teams?”

Her friend, a glasses girl, tilted her head, but the fired-up 7-year-old in athletic bloomers wasn’t listening.

“If it’s a competition, I won’t hold back even if we are from the same school! You’re my rival too, Azumi!!”

“Ehh? I don’t want to compete against you.”

A female teacher formed a megaphone from her hands and yelled over.

“Okay, everyone, we’ll start today by learning the basics of the penguin flap-flap dance!”

“?”

“It can be hard to follow alone while watching the video, but once you learn the footwork, you won’t trip! So we can save the arm movements for later. Okay, everyone, I’m going to play the example video, so focus on the screen!”

“In the first place, how do they decide who wins this?”

“Everyone gets 1st place.”

===Part 6===

Frenda Seivelun was led to an enormous park.

According to the unhoused man…

“My home is here and the bathroom and sinks are over there. Also, make sure to have two exits in mind at all times just in case. If anything happens, I’ll try to let you escape first, but I can’t guarantee that’ll work.”

“In the end, that’ll be fine.”

She found a brand new home. So this was a Japanese cardboard box house. Unlike a child’s game, it had a lot of small tricks used to ensure there were no gaps.

“Will you want to use this?”

“In the end, what is it?”

“I feel bad this is all I have, but I just thought a young kid like you wouldn’t be able to relax without access to information.”

He held out a palm-sized device with wired earphones. It looked like a music player…but was apparently a handheld radio. It couldn’t record and it apparently could only get AM broadcasts. In Academy City, not even the old men who loved horse racing used these. It had probably been sold at a deep discount at an electronics store, but it still couldn’t have been easy for an unhoused man to get.

She honestly appreciated it.

…Especially when she was being pursued by the police, Academy City, and the Mugino Family.

“Lend me one ear.”

Inside the cardboard box house, the man shared the wired earphones with her and she listened to the staticky radio broadcast. And as she pressed the button to change the frequency…

“It’s finally time! The next three hours will be hosted by a celebrity couple who’ve been together for 8 years now.”

“We have new information on the explosion in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The police have announced that it may have been an attack rather than an accident.”

“If you call within half an hour of this broadcast, we’ll give you an even better price!”

One of the stations had some interesting information (not the sales program selling a down bedding set), but the man was listening as well. Frenda feigned disinterest and continued tuning and finally settled on a music program.

The man looked a little surprised.

“I would have thought you preferred Western music.”

“Isn’t that a little broad of a category to count as a single genre?”

Couldn’t he at least narrow it down to a single country?

They listened to some music by the male idol Hitotsui Hajime for a while, but then someone called the man over. Apparently a friend.

Frenda heard a heavy noise like a concrete block being dragged. Was that a small shichirin grill they had set up on the tile ground? That said, they didn’t seem to be using the fancy bincho-tan charcoal. They apparently used burnable trash for fuel.

Frenda spoke to the second man. While wondering if she would ever be forced to give a name for herself.

“In the end, is that fish?”

“This season, everyone thinks about the salmon and tuna, but that means you can get the smaller fish really cheap. Expiration dates are the bane of a fish seller’s existence.”

“Ugh. Once you start naming fish, the craving for mackerel really sets in…”

“?”

That said, she doubted they had dug raw fish out of the garbage. It would go bad too quick on a summer day like this. These men had no money or insurance, so they actually paid close attention to their health. So had they gone out of their way to buy some to commemorate the beginning of Frenda’s unhoused life? Even though every bit of loose change they had would mean so much more than for the average worker?

“I heard you saved Taku-san’s ass. If you weren’t a kid, I’d’ve brought drinks.”

“In the end, I’m going to end up indebted to you like this.”

“Of course! Taku-san isn’t about to stay indebted to some kid. You’re supposed to let the adults look responsible, okay?”

Frenda smiled and chose to accept their kindness.

She appreciated it. Even if it did make them more conspicuous.

===Part 7===

It wasn’t yet dawn.

“Nhh…”

Frenda sat cross-legged, raised her arms, and stretched her back inside a makeshift tent made from cardboard boxes. Even as she stretched, her hands didn’t reach the ceiling. The cardboard arrangement provided a fair amount of space. That unhoused man was apparently really thankful for what she had done.

Frenda Seivelun was acting as a member of the dark side. She needed to be able to adjust her sleep time and be at her best condition at an hour too early for most people to be awake.

She slipped out of the cardboard box house.

The park had a variety of facilities alongside it, including plenty of unmanned services like drink and bread vending machines, lockers, and a laundry. How was that kind of business handled on public land?

She felt sweaty after sleeping.

“In the end, there’s no one here.”

Frenda peered inside the entrance and found the outside world’s laundromats really did only have a bunch of washing machines lined up. Maybe they thought there wasn’t anything there to steal because the place didn’t even have the bare minimum of security cameras on the ceiling.

It was just past 3AM, so no one else was there.

“Okay.”

Fortunately, she still had some of her emergency cash. Laundry? That was a matter of life-or-death for a girl! (Really.) Frenda stripped off her only change of clothes and tossed each article into the washer. She didn’t even need her underwear right now. After she pressed the button to get the washer spinning, she frowned. She had chosen the more expensive express mode, but the timer said it would be 60 minutes until the washer was done.

(That’s not good… In the end, I won’t even have any underwear until this is done.)

The way she stood naked below the bright fluorescent light and stared blankly at her underwear spinning round and round may have had something to do with only just having woke up.

After a bit, she had a great idea.

She was already naked and there was no sense in wasting time, so she could take a bath while she waited.

During the day, the unhoused men had told her how to make 40-degree bathwater. After heating water up to 100 degrees in a pot using a portable stove, she poured that into a metal bucket and added cold water according to the ratio they had told her. The outside world’s lack of required fire alarms was a wonderful thing.

(Yeah, that’s it… In the end, I need a bath to really wake me up.)

She used a wet towel to wash her body, starting with her right upper arm. She left her underarms and neck for last.

For her head, she had to use up a whole bucket’s worth – 10 liters – of water. She used a single-use shampoo bottle meant for camping. You could get anything at a discount store.

(In the end, doesn’t the average bathtub take 200-300 liters to fill? I’m conserving a ton of water this way.)

And as her mind started to spin up, her capacity for shame slowly recovered.

…

Wait.

What do you mean I have to spend 60 minutes naked?

The girl’s face silently flushed deep red.

“Huh? Wait. In the end, huh???”

Even if I am still drowsy, why did I choose to act like I’m still in one of the luxury apartments we use for hideouts? I’m outside!! And I’m a young girl with perfect skin. Am I attempting an entirely pointless test of courage where I strip naked and get on an empty elevator late at night where I won’t have anywhere to run!?

(Faster, faster, faster, finish faster. In the end, fasterrrr!!)

Each minute and second seemed to drag on.

Finally, the spinning washing machine made a different sound. Now it sounded like a giant hair dryer? It must have entered its drying mode.

Was she going to make it?

No, her sharp survival instincts developed on the dark side were setting off warning signals.

It was faint, but she could hear footsteps.

And the gap between the sounds was wide, suggesting these were the long strides on an adult man.

(Wait, wait, wait, wait!?)

She heard a shrill beep.

The washing and drying were finally complete.

Frenda scrambled to get the washer open and pull out her clothes.

Her bra slipped from her hand and fell to the floor, but she ignored that for now.

As long as she got her miniskirt dress on, she could get through this. That was a simple action she did every single day of her life.

“Ugh!? M-my head and arms…why do they keep catching!?”

Was that because her maiden skin was still damp?

And the more she panicked, the less she was capable of getting her arms through the sleeves. Her head was caught inside the dress. Which of the three holes was she meant to put her hands through? The panic was really setting in now! How could she have gotten lost in her favorite miniskirt dress? She felt like a kitten with its head caught in a tissue box!

And the unhoused man who she had (calculatingly) rescued yesterday poked his head in the entrance.

Looking puzzled.

“Oh, what are you doing up this early?”

“Eek!? Ah ha ha☆ In the end, it’s nothing. Whew, barely made it…”

“?”

At the very, very last second, she draped just the thin poncho over herself, grabbed the other clothing in her hands and held it in front of herself to cover everything. Still blushing bright (and looking something like a teru teru bouzu or like her sister when changing into her school swimsuit), Frenda tried to laugh it off. Even if she had given up on putting on her miniskirt dress which kept catching on her wet skin and even if her striped panties were caught around her right ankle.

===Part 8===

The waterfront.

At 4:30 in the morning, the sea had a blade-like chill to it. Maybe because it was a mixture of the deadly night sea and the summer sea that made people change into swimsuits.

When really attacking someone under the cover of darkness, you would avoid the middle of the night.

It was best to attack at a time linked to biological functions, like dawn when people’s sleepiness was at its maximum or around mealtime.

Frenda could not walk straight to her destination.

There were surveillance cameras everywhere long before reaching that destination. For some reason, the home security cameras were pointed at the road, not at their front door or garage door. Since those weren’t public security cameras, that was classified as setting up a hidden camera. Frenda slipped past more and more of the defense network that was layered like the rings on a stump.

When it came to pure technology, Frenda’s life in Academy City gave her the upper hand.

After easily clearing that obstacle, she climbed to an emergency stairs landing attached to a nearby multi-tenant building wall.

She observed the building she was interested in from the safety of a blind spot in the cameras.

The Mugino Family.

That was their mansion. Of course, it was technically owned by a shell company.

“Nhh…”

Frenda placed her hands on the metal pole vertically connecting levels of the emergency stairs.

She tangled her legs around it and squeezed with the back of her knees to spin around it. The mansion showed no sign of noticing her upside-down pole dancing, confirming this really was a blind spot.

“Oops.”

Holding her hat in place with a hand, she continued observing while upside down.

That prime coastal real estate had to cost more per square centimeter than platinum, but the front yard contained inside a tall fence looked large enough for an official soccer match. The mansion actually looked odd to a foreigner like Frenda. As a product of the Meiji and Taisho eras, its design was a mixture of Japanese and Western. It didn’t even obey the standard of symmetry and it was split into several buildings which were linked by walkways, creating something like a giant maze.

But that aside, there was something wrong with someone’s house being bigger than a school.

It was three floors tall…or four, or maybe even more? The heights of the different rooms must have differed because she had trouble working out the number of floors by counting the windows.

(Ugh, isn’t the waterfront full of reclaimed land? In the end, keeping a mansion this old would mean constantly refusing to cooperate with national-level urban development projects.)

And that may even go beyond the one country. Why had that house alone been spared the bombings during the war? That showed tremendous power, but it was even scarier that no one ever talked about it.

Yokohama had been as involved in opening up the country as Hakodate and Kobe. A Western mansion brimming with foreignness wasn’t all that out of place here, but it still felt wrong for the big boss of an illegal criminal organization to be living out in the open here. They could brazenly break the law without getting arrested. They didn’t run or hide. Because they didn’t need to. It really emphasized their power as a criminal organization.

The patrolling guards in black were well trained.

It was 4:30 in the morning.

Nothing would have happened yesterday or the day before that, yet they didn’t even yawn during this early hour.

(If I charged in through the front gate, I’d end up riddled with bullets. And climbing over isn’t a great idea either. But with the entrance that strictly guarded, the people who go in and out will have invented a secret back entrance to bypass the annoying process.)

“There it is. They’re hiding it with a green shrubbery, but there’s a square hole open in the thick wall.”

But why would the mansion’s troops want to leave and return on their own like that? Was there a supermarket or discount store nearby?

It looked like Frenda wouldn’t have to traverse the smelly sewers to get in.

And now it was time to act.

Flipping upright from her upside-down pole dancing, she set her feet on the emergency stairs landing and silently but swiftly descended to the ground.

She followed a route that avoided the surveillance cameras to approach the Mugino Family’s tall wall, parted the green shrubbery, and slipped through the square hole.

It didn’t matter how many guards they had posted when she could use a blind spot like this.

She was finally inside.

And she sensed a gaze.

Like a sharp pressure.

This was still the large front yard. Frenda hadn’t even set foot inside the maze-like mansion.

This person hadn’t been here when she investigated just a bit ago.

Had a guard just so happened to walk by, or had they predicted where Frenda would be spy on them from and hidden in a blind spot?

“In the end, did you lure me in?”

“This trap would only work on a pro. You can pat yourself on the back for that, Frenda Seivelun.”

Frenda found herself facing a maid in a long skirt.

But that long skirt had a large slit on either side. And it looked unnaturally heavy. The maid reached inside one slit and pulled out a wine bottle full of gasoline, detergent, etc. And the empty bottle used for this was from one of the finest French wines.

“Does that mean, um, in the end…”

“If I am being honest, I do not think pole dancing in a miniskirt is the best idea. Let’s just say you showed your stripes with that one.”

She had seen it all.

And being told that directly and with such seriousness was really awkward.

The maid began to move. She used the kind of old match that could be struck on the sole of a boot to light the English-language newspaper shoved into the mouth of the Molotov cocktail.

Was her weapon so powerful she couldn’t actually fight inside the mansion?

Frenda glared back at the busty maid who looked to be about the age of a high school upperclassman and smiled a little.

“I see the Mugino Family has Western tastes in all things. Is a Molotov cocktail maid their idea of hot?”

A Molotov cocktail was fire plus a flammable substance.

And this maid had been waiting here after predicting what Frenda would do.

Frenda noticed an electronic device that didn’t fit the classic maid look.

“In the end, is that a music player?”

“The Chinese ones are nice. They’re cheap and you can easily buy them in bulk. I’m not interested in sound quality or ease of use. The best part is how easy they are to dismantle and repurpose.”

It sounded like this was an explosives expert on the Mugino Family payroll.

That meant she was the one who had used the pressures of that truck driver’s personal life to lure him onto the path of evil and then killed him with a remote-controlled hopping bomb once he became an inconvenience.

The air electrified.

Frenda Seivelun spat out a growling voice.

“You piece of shit. In the end, the title of bomber is too good for you.”

“Writhe in pain and carbonize, villain. This sticky flame cannot be put out by a fire extinguisher.”

This left Frenda with only one option.

The fire on the English-language newspaper vanished.

“Wha-!?”

The maid’s expression changed.

There were several methods of making Molotov cocktails, but those that used fire for ignition were not a threat when thrown if that fire had gone out.

And every part of the world had long had methods of extinguishing candles from a distance. It was a standard illusionist’s trick and a classic way for bogus religions to fake miracles.

Frenda had to make the most of her opponent’s brief stiffening in shock.

And so she had already begun a sharp run.

Forward.

Toward the maid.

“Was it an issue of moisture or humidity? Or did I cut off the oxygen supply with a colorless gas? In the end, did you really think I was going to reveal the trick to you, you spoiled thing? Bomb experts are also experts at securing a safe location and time to act on the battlefield!!”

“Kh.”

“You looked into my identity before laying this trap for me, right? Ha ha. Are you just stupid? In the end, challenging me in my own field is suicide!”

Frenda’s shout was immediately followed by an explosion.

But Frenda hadn’t done this.

It was something else.

Had that expert bomber been caught unawares in her own field?

Her eyes widened in surprise as she just barely managed to jump outside the lethal range.

To be fair, she couldn’t be blamed for not expecting this.

This wasn’t a hidden bomb, a grenade, a shoulder-fired rocket, or any other toy used by guerrillas and criminal organizations. It had sliced through the dark sky, slipped through the valley between skyscrapers, and flown accurately toward her.

In other words…

“A cruise missile? In the end, did they attack me from the ocean!?”

===Part 9===

She felt the tremor while taking a hot shower.

Mugino Shizuri left the bathroom which was so large it was actually kind of annoying to use and wrapped herself in a white bed sheet without drying her hair. Then she moved in front of the window made by covering an entire wall with thick glass.

“They’re making a scene again…”

She muttered irritably to herself while looking down from the suite of a luxury hotel with connections to an illicit organization and viewed the commotion in the world below.

That wasn’t Frenda.

…The blonde girl hadn’t seen the launch point and imagined it was an old-style submarine, but that wasn’t accurate. That was an ALCM. In other words, it had been released by a 50m strategic bomber and launched toward a point on the ground. With deadly precision.

It had a range of 2500km. More than flying across Chiba to arrive from the Pacific Ocean, this tactical weapon could hit its target when launched from Hokkaido or Okinawa.

Only the Mugino Family could pull off that kind of absurdity.

Takitsubo silently approached from behind Mugino and tilted her head while drying her hair with a hairdryer.

“That wasn’t Frenda, right? Can the Mugino Family really get away with that?”

“They’re threatening every last one of the major communications and security companies, so there won’t be digital records from security cameras or anything else. Even if a million people saw it, it’ll be written off as ‘the vague accounts of panicked witnesses’. A good lawyer can use the term ‘mass hysteria’ to discredit it all. Without any material evidence like video footage, it’s easy to weasel out of these things. Just get rid of all the security camera footage that could make decent evidence and all that’s left are grainy phone videos that could easily have been faked.”

But the Mugino Family’s reaction here did bother Mugino.

They could get away with this in Yokohama. But only so many times. How many trump cards built up over many long years had they used up here?

A reaction of this level made it look like ''they knew in advance just how much of a threat Frenda Seivelun was.''

(Is this just a case of Frenda attacking them, or has the Mugino Family done something bad enough to warrant this kind of overreaction?)

“So does this mean Frenda really did come to Yokohama for the Mugino Family?” asked Takitsubo.

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

===Part 10===

“Volcano to Typhoon. Don’t worry about aiming too carefully – just keep on bombing. As long as you cut off her escape, I can finish her off with a Molotov cocktail!”

“Damn!!”

Frenda bristled when she heard the Molotov cocktail maid speaking to someone somewhere.

That cruise missile wouldn’t be the last.

If you had an effective means of attack, you could just keep on repeating it. As big as the grounds were, they were still shooting missiles into their own territory, so their aim had to be accurate.

A second and more were coming.

But the aerodynamic tactical weapons did not blast Frenda to pieces.

“But in the end, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Are you sure you have time left to chat?”

“Oh, I’m sure. Because you’re the one about to be blown up by a Mugino brand missile.”

“?”

“You wouldn’t be firing on a map coordinate when your target is a person who can move around. That means the terminal guidance must use something else to track me, but it can’t be a laser or GPS. Is it the Molotov cocktail? An unhealthy gasoline-based cocktail wouldn’t produce a smoke quite so black.”

“You’ve already figured it out?”

“Naphthalene. Marking a bombing target with a smoke bomb is as standard as it gets, but I bet you got a little creative and didn’t just use the color. Is it tracking traces of a chemical compound? In other words, using taste or smell? But are you sure that’s a good idea? In the end, naphthalene isn’t just used to make black smoke. ''It’s a common chemical compound used to make insecticides and plastics''.”

“Tch!!”

“I’m from Academy City’s dark side. You really think I’m going to be fooled by ''a magic trick'' based on scientific knowledge!? Hwa ha ha. I can control the direction of the wind. You might think you’re secretly producing an invisible chemical compound, but in the end, you’re the one coated in it, you fool!!”

Something exploded.

As if lightning had struck nearby.

A large tree in the front yard split down the middle and burst into flames as each half fell in opposite directions.

It hadn’t directly hit Frenda or the Molotov cocktail maid, but this still proved that the program-guided missile had missed its target.

It could hit either of them next time.

Frenda took action before the maid could recover from her fear of that.

Of course, surviving a few rounds of this wasn’t enough to relax.

More cruise missiles would be coming. If she didn’t escape to safety, she would be slaughtered.

Which meant…

(In the end, that’s enough of getting right up in that dangerous maid’s face to punish her! I need to get inside the mansion ASAP!! They won’t want to blow up their own house!!)

“Ooh, what have we here?☆”

Frenda voiced her joy as she grabbed a 9mm handgun. In the chaos of the exploding cruise missiles, one of the Mugino Family’s guards must have dropped it.

She heard the rumbling of an engine.

(That’s a fancy V12, but the engine is roaring at having to carry around the thick and heavy bulletproof plating. No ordinary car sounds like that. In the end, this is that villain’s car I heard about in Chinatown during the day!!)

Maybe it was the psychological idea of the cocktail party effect where people only picked up on the voices they were interested in, but a dark side villain knew how to hear discussions of many different things while walking through peaceful crowds.

Some people were hired with a “quantity over quality” mindset to provide the numbers needed for a job, legal or not.

In other words, the mercenaries who would also hand out fliers or work as movers.

“!”

Frenda aimed the handgun toward the open front gate instead of toward the Mugino Family mansion.

She began firing at the black bulletproof car that belonged to another criminal organization and just so happened to be driving nearby.

No matter who pulled the trigger, this was a Mugino Family gun.

The wicked blonde girl grinned before tossing the gun aside.

“Wah hah hah. Enjoy your gang war☆”

“Oh, damn, get back here!!”

The Molotov cocktail maid paled and frantically shouted at Frenda, but she ducked down when gunfire erupted from a different direction. The shot bulletproof car was returning fire. And at full-auto right off the bat.

A firefight had broken out.

So that wasn’t just an Academy City thing. Damn the Mugino Family.

(Wow. Are they going to claim that’s just a small T-shaped submachine gun? Stock, dot sight, long barrel, and fore grip. With all those modifications, it’s barely any different from an assault rifle. They’ve even modified the mechanism so it can fire 5.56mm rifle rounds.)

Frenda had heard tricks like that were used to skirt the law in the original gun culture of America. Why you would bother in Japan where owning even a single bullet was forbidden, she had no idea.

The rival organization was using their bulletproof car as a shield while firing what looked like an Italian submachine gun. The manufacturer was famous for their handguns, but not many people knew they also made submachine guns.

Frenda used the breakdown of the usual guard system to move from the spacious front yard to the front entrance of the maze-like mansion.

A gunshot burst behind her.

“Kh.”

Running scared, Frenda checked behind her.

While a gun was a projectile weapon, a young butler had rushed out from the front gate and jumped over the barricade to reach the enemy group. He was part of the Management. With even more gunfire, the silhouettes of the enemy group were torn apart.

With that 360-degree barrage, a stray bullet could fly Frenda’s way at any time.

(In the end, what was that? Did he have two shotguns connected by a chain like a nunchaku!? Th-that’s crazy, but scary!! And he took them all out himself!)

An engine roared.

Was that a lance-wielding knight? No.

Another butler rode an enormous motorcycle while wielding an American prototype 12.7mm heavy machinegun that suppressed 60% more recoil than the antiques used nearly a century ago. He was operating the large motorcycle with just the one arm, so he may have swapped the engine out for an automatic.

The caliber was .50.

And this was machinegun .50 caliber, not handgun .50 caliber. The amount of powder was completely different, so firing that thing from the surface would be enough to take down the average attack helicopter.

“Took you long enough, partner! Hah hah! Now, let’s see who can get more kills, Bakyaku!!”

“Ougigumo. Killing is not a game.”

The storm of close-range shotgun fire was joined by 12.7mm hunks of lead capable of tearing through police armored trucks. At this point, the black bulletproof car provided no protection.

One problem with criminal organizations was their lack of any kind of equipment standards like the police or military would have. So it wasn’t unusual to see these suicidal mutations in how they used guns or bombs.

(Apparently the people who survive on the front lines end up developing in weird directions outside of Academy City too, dammit. I really hope I can avoid taking any of them on directly.)

The enemy’s bullets were bad enough on their own, but friendly fire only made it worse. So while the guard system had broken down, Frenda rushed through the wide-open front door to the mansion.

(That won’t last long since they have cruise missiles. In the end, that rival organization will be defeated. I need to finish my ‘research trip’ before that happens.)

“Oops.”

This wasn’t over just because Frenda was inside the building. She heard footsteps.

She ducked behind a suit of Western armor on display in the hall.

She held her breath.

A young butler and maid passed by without noticing her, rushing outside.

“Dammit, Hanagai. She just had to fire those ALCMs. We were saving those. She had better have gotten the Bloodline’s permission.”

“Keeping them around just wastes money on maintenance, so isn’t it best to shoot them when we have the chance?”

(So the Family isn’t a monolith. Does that mean there’s a group that wants to frame me and a group that isn’t interested in me? In the end, I’d hate to take out people who aren’t with the villain and only make more of them hate me.)

Also, apparently that maid outside was named Hanagai. Frenda found Japanese names hard to figure out since they weren’t taken from past kings or saints, but that was probably a family name. She figured it wouldn’t hurt to remember that.

The mansion was split into multiple buildings with walkways connecting them. The place wasn’t even symmetric, so she wouldn’t be surprised to find unnatural stairways and passageways inside. Now, where would the villain hidden among the Mugino Family Bloodline be hiding their secrets?

They wouldn’t want to keep them too far away, but they wouldn’t want to be seen with them either.

They wouldn’t just be worried about outside thieves. They would want to keep the rest of the Family from knowing either.

“Hm.”

(A heavy vault, maybe?)

Frenda chose to rely on her dark side nose here.

A complex and heavy vault wouldn’t be built on the upper floors. Needless to say, it would weigh more than a large truck and break through the floor. That suggested a basement, but they wouldn’t be able to break through the supports and foundation of that giant mansion to dig into the ground wherever they wanted. The entire mansion would collapse if they did.

The location of the electric, gas, and water lines was an issue and all the strange additions had shifted the building’s center of gravity a fair bit.

Given the conditions at play, there were only so many places a giant vault could be located.

Where would she need to place the bombs to bring the structure down? Frenda only had to consider the opposite of that. An expert bomber’s nose could quickly work out the usable locations.

She moved aside a bookcase in a 1st floor study and descended the stairs hidden behind it.

“Found it.”

She discovered a thick door like at a bank vault, but she easily opened it by slowly operating a special drill to open a hole and dissolving the 12 tungsten rods inside using an acid. Buying the industrial version would be pricey, but you could bring the price way down by modifying discount store products. By combining the large motor taken from a juicer with a dial regulator, you could manage a lot just by controlling the rotation rate. Then you only had to modify the head that would be pressed against the steel. The acid? That was an ingredient for a common explosive. Any expert bomber could make it out of everyday household items.

Frenda found a space larger than a school classroom.

Art, gold bars, jewels, weapons, and more. But Frenda wasn’t interested in any of that.

She wanted documents.

Some further locked cabinets were lined up on one side of the vault. She knew the Mugino Family Bloodline had a few dozen members. Was this a locker for each of them?

The locks were like toys compared to the one on the vault door, but Frenda noticed something else.

Her bomber’s nose twitched.

“Acid? In the end, will they dissolve the documents inside if you force the lock?”

With a sigh, Frenda pulled out a cheap screwdriver.

This would be a pain, but she could neutralize it by dismantling it like she was disarming a bomb. The acid was stored in a single tank and distributed to each safe through skinny pipes, so she only had to remove the tank.

“Hm, hm, hmm☆”

She couldn’t tell which cabinet was the one she wanted, so she used leverage to break open each locked door in turn and pulled out the documents inside.

A land deed, a list of names for something, photos of what looked like two people having a secret meeting, a flash drive… She found plenty of sketchy stuff, but she wasn’t interested in any of it.

“Is this it?”

Frenda Seivelun.

She found a document with her own name on it.

(This isn’t a standard format… And in the end, this doesn’t look like a plain report. The text uses some emotional manipulation tricks.)

There were techniques for that.

What might look at first like a colorful bar graph would use warm reds or yellows to color whichever bar they wanted to look larger or a weak point the writer wanted to avoid questions on would be written in a single long paragraph in small text. Neither of those was an actual lie, so they could claim any who mistook its meaning had only themselves to blame.

They would deceive not just their enemies but, if necessary, their allies too. They would feel no shame over it, even under circumstances so serious they would influence their subordinates’ and allies’ lives or futures.

The unseen villain’s personality was visible on the page.

(In the end, this looks like a draft of a project plan meant to make their many accomplices think this is a winnable fight. It’s a good thing this is the version containing the raw data before it was embellished.)

''If we stand idly by, we will lose our chance.

''We must actively change the Family’s line of succession ourselves.

''Mugino Shizuri’s Item provides a few different options, but we will be using Level 0 Frenda Seivelun.

''I have no intention of dealing with one of those strange Academy City esper powers. In that sense, the bomber girl will be the easiest to predict.

''The Mugino Family is active in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and Yokohama, Kanagawa.

''We must not kill that Academy City bomber. It is crucial that she acts of her own volition and disturbs our business.

''That way we can hold the position of “victim”.

''That will help us force Mugino Shizuri to take responsibility and drop her down the line or succession.

As a Level 0, the bomber will be easy to deal with. If we do lose control of her, we can ignore the casualties and use overwhelming numbers to kill her.

That warning at the end of the document made Frenda smile bitterly.

True enough.

But they weren’t aware of just how hard it was for a Level 0 to survive on the dark side where no one played fair and strange esper powers abounded. Nor were they aware of just how much creativity Frenda had displayed to accomplish that.

She wasn’t going to complain about them underestimating her.

That was far better than if they had an accurate grasp of the threat.

(But this is suicide. In the end, what is the Mugino Family hoping to accomplish by picking a fight with Academy City? Oh, here’s another document.)

''The Mugino Family always weighs the pros and the cons.

''In a conflict over succession, obvious accomplishments and contributions will be necessary.

''We will reach for Academy City.

''An all-out war between the Mugino Family and Academy City would be a crisis for us, but Academy City is still a business. Specifically, a business involving children and their parents.

''The children may be safe within the city’s walls, but the parents scattered across the country are a different matter.

''We can threaten ordinary people into acting as disposable pawns who will attack those parents while we remain perfectly safe ourselves. As their fear and dissatisfaction grows, the parents will cut their ties to Academy City. And then the city’s education business will collapse.

''Or we can merely threaten to do this.

''If we can successfully threaten Academy City, we can gain access to all sorts of cutting-edge technology related to esper development. This would in turn bring endless glory to the Mugino Family.

''A bloodless victory would be ideal, but we will make demonstrations if we must.

''We already have a list of “customers” who have repeatedly fallen for false billing and bank transfer scams. By cutting them off from reliable information and pushing them to the brink, we will be able to remotely control them.

''We only need to select one of these disposable assassins.

''I leave this task with Hanagai.

''The item has already been delivered.

''By using a motorcycle courier or something to deliver the imitation bomb to the disposable pawn, we can set up Frenda Seivelun as the culprit and eliminate Shizuri through joint responsibility.

“…”

That wasn’t good.

Frenda’s dark side intuition was ringing the alarm bell.

Having all the information to yourself did not always put you in a superior position.

“Attacking Academy City and dropping Mugino down the line of succession? It’s true you could accomplish both by framing super-cute Frenda-chan, but in the end, does this mean the Mugino Family has a traitor who doesn’t like the current state of their succession race?”

This was an extremely high-risk, high-return plan for the villain.

Knowing about this was reason enough to be killed.

(But I might be able to convince Mugino using this. And breaking free of having Item after me is enough for now!)

She would of course take the original documents with her, but that didn’t feel like enough. Just to be safe, she snapped photos of each page with her phone.

With that simple work complete, Frenda stuffed the documents in her pocket and dashed from the underground vault to the front hall.

“My, my.”

She heard a voice. The graceful voice of a mature adult woman. By the time Frenda realized the danger, she had already emerged and didn’t have time to react. There was no turning back.

“If you had only continue scampering about in the streets and let the police catch you, Academy City would have sent out an assassin to silence you for us. I never imagined you would rush right into the Mugino Family mansion on your own.”

(You don’t sound too concerned about it!! In the end, did they manage to outmaneuver me!?)

She was an attractive woman. Frenda couldn’t say how many anti-aging techniques she was using, but she had the appearance of a woman aged 30 or a little younger. But her perfect beauty seemed thoroughly artificial. This violent queen had her long chestnut hair rolled and wore a storybook dress. Her slender hand toyed with a long, skinny kiseru.

“In the end, I can see the family resemblance. I’d still be surprised to find you’re Mugino’s mom, though.”

“That would be my younger sister. Really, if Eika had only kept her daughter under control, none of this would have happened.”

So this woman and Mugino Shizuri were aunt and niece?

The Mugino Family.

The term “family” there meant something entirely different from the standard nuclear family in Japan. With a criminal organization bound by blood, Frenda couldn’t even begin to speculate on how convoluted their family tree was.

Then an old man in a tuxedo moved forward to cover the lady.

“Sakuya-sama, please stay behind me.”

Mugino Sakuya.

That was the name on the cabinet containing the documents.

Then there was this old butler wearing an old-fashioned tuxedo and monocle.

“Mujinayama. Since Academy City seems incapable of cleaning up their mess, we must play the card of violence ourselves. You can handle the rest.”

“I am a sniper. Close quarters combat is outside my field of expertise.”

“…”

A cold sweat soaked the blonde girl’s back.

Frenda was a bomber, but she could manage other forms of combat.

But that was how she could tell that Mujinayama was bad news. Just standing here in front of him was enough to know she had to avoid fighting him head on.

“Thus, I am not confident I can kill you without inflicting pain and fear upon you. So please forgive me if you do suffer.”

(There’s no way I’m fighting this guy! Is there any other way out!?)

A thick beam flew in.

The wall was destroyed from the outside. Not by breaking or crumbling, but by melting.

Academy City’s #4, Meltdowner.

Flanked by a girl on either side, the girl carrying Mugino Family blood in her veins stepped out onto the front line.

“What do you think you’re doing, old hag?”

That one question changed the mood.

All attention was now on her.

This girl was the reason why Mugino Sakuya had so cautiously built up her plan in the shadows.

And everything in her behavior pointed to her, Mugino Shizuri, being the true heir, no matter how many other members of the Bloodline there were.

Mugino glanced over at the tuxedo and monocle man standing next to Sakuya.

“Mujinayama…”

“I have my reasons. I need not justify siding with Sakuya-sama at this time.”

That was all.

Even her fellow Item members of Takitsubo and Kinuhata may not have caught how much emotion was shared in that short exchange.

To say nothing of the filthy traitor among them.

Mugino Shizuri stared at the violent queen who held the long, skinny kiseru.

And she spoke.

“My grandfather seems lively enough to keep going for another hundred years. Starting a succession war now will just wear you down. And it’s your troops who will die, not you.”

“Oh? Are you sure about that? You never do know what surprises life has in store.”

“In other words, you already know the answer. You know exactly when that old man ''will unnaturally kick the bucket.''.”

A thin smile was Sakuya’s only response.

She shrugged off the outrageous accusation.

This was a coup by Mugino Sakuya. It was a civil war in which she made a calculated threat on the current head’s life, disgraced the heir who would follow him, and placed herself at the top of that violent organization of more than 100 thousand.

Of course, this was not enough to prove her murderous intentions.

Frenda knew the gist of the plan, but she hadn’t found any documents planning the family head’s death. In a world where deception was the norm, definitive proof was a must, but she didn’t have any.

And because Sakuya knew all the answers herself, she was willing to turn over the cards that couldn’t pin her down.

“Now, the question is: what am I doing? You can’t prove anything. Even if you go to the head, he won’t listen if all you have is suspicion. But this is a very inconvenient truth for you. So, Shizuri. You have no way of fighting back. What do you plan to do now that you know the truth but are short on evidence?”

“…”

“Clean up this mess, Mujinayama. They are companions of Frenda Seivelun who disturbed Mugino Family business in Tokyo and Kanagawa. That makes them enemies of the Family.”

<noinclude>
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter3

2025-12-29T20:26:18Z

Massify: /* Part 18 */ didn't need to be that wordy

==Chapter 3: Which Side is Winning? – Scoreboard.==

===Part 1===

Around when she abandoned the stolen car, her memory cut out again.

“…”

The next thing she knew, Coronzon was leaning against a cold building wall.

Something had happened.

Aleister had done something.

She had traveled south from District 20 to reach District 9, which contained art schools. The Anglicans were mostly in the north of the city, so she abandoned the stolen car and had planned to take another car (also stolen of course) to reach the southern wall.

But she couldn’t trust in that plan anymore.

She ran her hands along her habit. Pathetically driven by fear and anxiety. She pulled an object smaller than her palm from a fairly unspeakable part of her clothing,.

She couldn’t believe it.

(A wireless game controller? That means it has its own ID and can produce its own signal to provide its location.)

“Y-you would forestall a great demon with this…this piece of junk that doesn’t even cost 5000 yen!? Are you kidding me, Aleisterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!?”

A shape squirmed. And produced a short scream.

No, was that a man forcing himself onto a girl?

An outfit that looked on the border between at-home clothing and sleepwear had been badly torn and the man was reaching for her underwear.

''Perfect.

That was wandering Coronzon’s honest assessment.

It was happening in a small boxlike building.

An Anti-Skill station. A small one. Around the size of what would be called a police box in the outside world.

This was happening there of all places. That public structure should have had someone working in it 365 days a year to keep the city’s peace, but today it had been empty.

With his hands pinning the girl to the floor, the man wasn’t sure how to undo his belt buckle. He raised his head with an odd expression that stuck out his chin more than necessary.

“Huh? Who the hell’re you?”

She didn’t even respond.

Great Demon Coronzon stabbed her hand right through the center of the scum’s gut.

The odor of blood splattered out.

“Bhee, ee, eeeeeeeeeek!!”

He audibly slammed into the shelves behind him and objects came crashing down.

The man of no consequence scrambled out of the Anti-Skill station, his arms flailing wildly.

With his abdominal cavity punctured and a game controller directly stuck inside. Surgical hygiene? Why should Coronzon care about something like that? His bacteria-covered organs might shut down before long, but he would act as a nice decoy as long as he scrambled around and fled before that happened.

In something of a new habit, she held a hand to her woozy head and belatedly realized her hand was stained by that scum’s unclean blood. Everything seemed to piss her off right now. Nothing was going her way.

She lashed out vocally.

“Aleister!! That death is on your hands for that trick you pulled. Are you satisfied? It’s absurd for you to try and save the world. Hee hee, ha ha ha. You’re the one who made the world this way! So give up! You already know everything you do only comes back to bite you!!”

Even so, how many times was it now?

…Or was it really Aleister’s will sending these signs to Kamijou Touma and the other pursuers? Did he really have enough strength to hijack Great Demon Coronzon’s body this many times?

Was it possible she was sending these hints to her pursuers herself? She shuddered. No, it wasn’t possible. How would that benefit her? But could it be a self-destructive desire like the urge people felt to activate a fire alarm when they saw one?

Coronzon clenched her hair tight in her hand. An unpleasant snapping sound followed.

She couldn’t get a read on her own mind anymore.

“U-um.”

It was then that someone nervously spoke to her. The girl seated on the floor looked up at her, completely forgetting to fix her clothing.

With admiration in her eyes.

“…Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Um, thank you…f-for saving me.”

Great Demon Coronzon doubled over and held a hand to her mouth.

She retched.

She couldn’t stand any more of this. Before the girl could say anything more, Coronzon got her unsteady body moving, rushing out of the station. The great demon ''had fled''.

She walked a few meters and then stumbled. She fell down onto the red snow frozen on the ground.

She lay in the snow as thoughts spiraled through her head.

This was wasn’t right.

What was going on?

She had just jabbed her hand right into the gut of an ordinary man who had no connection to magic. With enough force to take his life. And only so she could embed the signal to her location inside his body. There may have been another way, but she had chosen that one so she could enjoy it.

It had been for her. It had been a cruel act of violence befitting a demon.

…But had she ended up saving a life?

Impossible.

She had been acting of her own free will.

She was certain of that.

And yet the result had so completely betrayed her expectations?

Her bad deed had been remade into a good one.

It was the ultimate outrage.

(Was it an act of…)

The being known as a great demon hatefully clenched her back teeth.

Sweat poured from her brow. She had a terrible feeling about this.

A wireless game controller? Those weren’t too unusual, but ''where had Aleister gotten one in the few seconds he had taken control''? She doubted he had forced his way into an electronics shop with its metal shutter down for the night. He wouldn’t have had time to search through the game shelf in a discount shop. Did that mean someone had ''just so happened'' to drop one on the side of the street? …Had it been ''a complete coincidence'' as if some greater will were at work?

(Did an act of god transform what I did? Is a good influence distorting my actions? It’s too late, world. Do you really expect me to go along with that? I will take things! ''Too far''!! And destroy the world of my own free will!!!)

===Part 2===

An alarm blared in the District 10 prison.

Telling of an oddity in the same prison.

Someone had already broken in.

“Is it Oniyama!?”

“No, he would have used his authority as a Director to use the proper channels for a visit. This is someone else, so be careful!”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 left the cell while listening to the female secretary speaking over the device on the wall.

The enemy was close.

As close as the corridor leading to the solitary confinement cell hidden deep inside the prison. The silver-haired, dark-skinned woman wore a patchwork of rags that did not look at all hygienic. She was alone. She was even barefoot. An ordinary jailer might tilted their head wondering how she had made it inside such a strictly guarded prison.

But Qliphah Puzzle 545 understood magic too well for that.

She accurately grasped the threat standing before her.

“One of the Anglican’s magicians specialized in anti-magician combat!?”

“I am Necromancer Isabella Theism. You should already know that name after I threatened the city’s leader.”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was dumbfounded. This prison’s security had already proven itself unable to keep out uninvited guests and now someone like this had made it in?

“The entrance back there was covered by a shocking number of sensors, but they’re only designed to detect living intruders. I recommend tweaking it to detect and instantly attack corpses as well. It’s not that hard to disguise yourself as one.”

“Why are you here? The Anglicans know all about the battle against Coronzon, so you should know my master is in no condition to talk.”

“So I’ve heard. Although I wasn’t around for that part since I was knocked out while dealing with ''some other business''. Regardless, if what I have heard is true, we really are in a grave situation. Right now, I think it is most necessary that we defeat Great Demon Coronzon and bring stability back to the world.”

“Then go tell that to Coronzon, not my master!”

“Oh, do you know where she is?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 fell silent.

Isabella breathed a sigh thick with exasperation.

“That is the real question. What I need right now is information and a few coincidental hints just aren’t enough. A vast network has been laid out across Academy City: security cameras, security robots, drones, satellites, and so on. Tracking her requires bringing the city’s data infrastructure back to full functionality. And it if is necessary to settle things with Coronzon…as much as I hate to, what choice do I have but to save your new Board Chairman? I can’t have him go on sleeping with the Master Key clutched in his hand.”

“…”

Isabella Theism seemed unbothered by Qliphah Puzzle 545’s skeptical look.

The look on her face said she had expected it.

Not long before, she had been in charge of the group physically taking control of Academy City and attempting to use the city as a disposable tool to defeat Coronzon. It would be weird if Qliphah Puzzle 545 did trust her right away.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 glared at her and asked a question.

“Your clothes reek of death. You’re that necromancer who was arguing with my master over the phone… Can a death magician really heal a living human?”

Isabella Theism grabbed her rags in her hands and lifted them upwards. All at once.

She was wearing underwear below, but it was very thin and small.

Two healthy brown objects jiggled there.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was a girl, but she still flinched back at being shown this all of a sudden.

“Uh?”

“Take a close look. My ribs and sternum were badly broken and one sharp bone fragment pierced my right lung. Can you see any of that? What’s your assessment?”

“You have all your ribs and there’s no bruising from internal bleeding. It’s all been healed?”

When the demon girl approached and took a close look, Isabella averted her eyes awkwardly.

Apparently this was embarrassing for her after all.

“Loko Atisou. There is more to Voodoo than making zombies. It is a polytheistic religion with all sorts of gods, so it of course has a god of medicine.”

Just like any other religion, Voodoo also functioned to govern and help the local people. The violent and combative side was only meant for emergencies when the group as a whole was attacked by an external enemy or a rebellion. That wasn’t all it could do.

It had not been invented for use in horror movies, so there was a benevolent Voodoo that listened to the people’s worries and healed their injuries and disease.

Healing was a challenging territory for Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 who specialized in the Qliphoth that contained all that was impure and immoral. She would have to start with a curse or an attack and then build it in reverse. Needing to include that conversion in every single step meant it would be much faster to borrow the power of a god who directly dealt in medicine.

Isabella concluded her valid evidence had been accepted, so she lowered her rags.

“I am willing to view you as a magic side doctor. And I understand how this aligns with your interests. So where will you start, witch doctor?”

“Well, I do have a few things on hand. Zombie powder, for example.”

“Z-zombie powder!?”

Despite being a demon, Qliphah Puzzle 545’s eyes bulged at the mere mention of that name. But Isabella Theism sighed in exasperation.

“Voodoo zombie powder…well, real Voodoo prefers to use French more than English. But anyway, it isn’t a toxin sprinkled on a rotting corpse to control it.”

She seemed to be implying that she did not use real Voodoo.

No matter how much she knew about it, she was only illicitly using their excellent techniques.

“It is a punishment in which a living human is put in a state of living death where they cannot think or make any decisions and will do whatever they are told. So you can think of it as a medicine used ''to prevent someone from dying'' until their punishment is complete.”

“You mean like how the highly toxic digitalis can also be used as a cardiac stimulant?”

“And in the other direction, salt and sugar can kill despite being necessary nutrients for life. The materials themselves are neither good nor bad. It all comes down to how they are used.”

===Part 3===

An ambulance echoed through one corner of District 20.

Kamijou glanced in its direction.

Takitsubo Rikou…couldn’t go any further. With the frozen snow, the dead traffic signals, and the more concrete threat of the scouts, he was thankful the ambulance had actually come when they called.

A large dog hopped into the same ambulance.

“I will go with her.”

“Hey, are you sure about that?”

“I am not much help without the A.A.A. And Coronzon will be cautious of my wonderful nose now that I have demonstrated its use. There is nothing left for me to do on the front line. So I wish to contribute by removing this worry from your hearts, allowing you to move more freely. Listen to me. Do not worry about this girl any longer.”

Kamijou and the others could only watch the ambulance go.

There was still more they had to do.

But…

“We have a report regarding the entertainment location signal presumed to be a sign from Aleister. Unfortunately, it was found embedded in some man. So back to square one.”

“Hey, that doesn’t tell us nothing. If we know what path the dying decoy took, we should be able to figure out where he contacted Coronzon.”

This was all they had to discuss on their way to a corner of District 9.

It was now 3 AM.

This was where they had lost Coronzon’s trail.

Kamijou Touma sighed softly while listening to Kanzaki and Othinus’s discussion.

All they could do was wait.

Nothing pained Kamijou more than having nothing to do when he knew Coronzon was even now on the move. It was all over once she crossed the wall somewhere and left the city. Yet the city was too large to search at random.

He had decided he wouldn’t just wait around, but the physical reality wasn’t cooperating with his personal wishes.

Index, Kanzaki, and some others were apparently running a magical search, but that still wasn’t enough to track down Coronzon.

They needed to go after her from the science side as well, but Mikoto alone wasn’t enough.

Simply tracking down the fugitive was hard enough on its own, but Kamijou couldn’t shake the feeling that Coronzon was still hiding something. Some powerful move or sudden twist he never would have considered. Something they couldn’t even imagine while continuing to wander through this labyrinth, but also something that would again overturn everything if they failed to prevent it.

Kamijou Touma’s thoughts turned to a certain individual.

Perhaps it was all reliant on ''him'' recovering…

===Part 4===

In the prison’s solitary confinement cell, Board Chairman Accelerator was lying in bed unconscious and hooked up to medical equipment. Even Academy City’s #1 would be killed by an attack now. It was unusual for Qliphah Puzzle 545 to bring an outsider this deep into the prison at all.

That outsider was Necromancer Isabella Theism.

The current situation required going beyond the usual.

“How exactly are you going to heal my master?”

“Legba Atibon.”

That was all she said.

It was the name of a gatekeeper god who managed all ceremonies. So no matter which god’s power the ceremony was meant to borrow, you first sought the gatekeeper god’s permission. And because he appeared in all ceremonies, there were no specific dates or locations that boosted his power.

Something emerged from Accelerator’s arm.

It was a transparent shard only a few millimeters long. A piece of a broken LCD monitor.

More followed. Like floating leaves following a river’s current, more and more shards silently slid out of his body.

Not a single drop of blood was shed and no apparent wounds were made.

Even though all these shards were located in extremely dangerous position near major arteries and organs.

“Y-you’re already done!?”

“They did not belong and the human body has several functions meant to automatically eliminate such things. There was no need for dangerous surgery. I only had to make some adjustments to those functions.”

Of course, thoughtlessly boosting them would have only triggered rejection, where his own immune system attacked his body. Only a professional necromancer with sufficient training could pull this off.

Isabella sighed softly.

“You know glass shards aren’t enough to keep a human mind locked away indefinitely, don’t you? Another task is even more important.”

“Breaking the curse.”

“Voodoo can handle that easily. A zombie is in a controllable state of living death by stopping the heart with a poison and then restarting it with an antidote. Antidotes and curse breaking are built into the ceremony.”

As she spoke, Isabella stuck her fingers into the seams of her rags. She pulled out various vials. They contained powders, liquids, dried leaves and roots, living insects…and more.

The demon girl was accustomed to dirty and impure things, but she still recoiled.

“Ew. Did I just wander into a museum of the bizarre?”

“Think of it like a 72-color colored pencil set and get excited. Even if you can theoretically represent everything in the world with the three primary colors, the actual task isn’t so simple, is it?”

The brown woman got to work. Swiftly and accurately.

It took more than a single name this time.

Meaning even she didn’t see this as a simple task.

“Voodoo is flexible enough to let you include any supernatural being as a weapon. Qliphah Puzzle. And 545 was it? I will include you in my system.”

“I will do anything for my master, but will including me change anything?”

“Just as salt and sugar can kill and just as toxic digitalis can be a cardiac stimulant, nothing in this world is a pure poison. There is simply a way of using it as a poison. And also a way of using it is a medicine.”

Voodoo did not think of gods as good or evil, but it was common for the same god to be included on both sides. That meant the gods did not determine their stance by the human conception of good and evil. Instead of the many gods being divided onto the opposite sides of good and evil, the many gods could freely move between the two sides depending on the time and situation. That was what made them all-purpose, but it also made them tricky to use. It required a priest with specialized training to handle them.

Thus, the necromancer did not avoid this being known as an artificial demon.

She simply viewed her as a nonhuman being with supernatural power.

If Isabella determined how much of her to use, she could be used to save a life.

“Here goes.”

“Okay!”

“Through Gatekeeper God Legba Atibon, I contact Medicine God Loko Atisou, and link the ceremony terminal to Messenger God Brav Gede.”

Voodoo practitioners did not think of using magic on their own.

They borrowed a compatible god’s power to achieve a miracle.

In fact, they would even borrow another god’s power to send their request to the god they wanted.

In Voodoo, if a miracle was beyond human capability, then a human voice could not even reach the necessary god on its own. They required a separate link to get through.

Or to put it another way…

They relied on one god to call on another. So by going through Artificial Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 (who did not exist in the Voodoo system), Isabella should be able to make a request beyond what could normally be asked of the Voodoo gods.

It was an impossible shortcut.

Or an illicit backdoor.

“Through the gathering of Qliphah, I beseech Baron Samdi. Divide this soul into five territories and reveal the part that has been intentionally placed in an endless spiral. Human individuality is managed by the Ti Bon Ange. Reveal to me the wicked power severing its proper link. Just like the zombie powder, it takes the form of a toxin.”

Something like bluish-white sparks burst forth.

That was not part of the ceremony.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 thought it might be a trap left by Coronzon, but it wasn’t.

It was Academy City’s #1.

He was no normal human. Had his body itself reacted in some way?

“The lime poison is an unstoppable assassination spell for it produces a different toxin each time the same ceremony is performed. This in turn proves that any and all toxins can be cured as long as their ingredients are known. I have already seen with my own eyes the wicked toxin unjustly robbing him of his consciousness! With its identity seen, it must be curable!!”

The smell of blood hung in the air.

Isabella Theism had a shallow cut on her right cheek.

The bluish-white sparks were harmful.

But she did not stop the ceremony.

Coronzon could not be allowed to escape Academy City. But they had nowhere near enough data to track her down. They needed the new Board Chairman and the Master Key he held. Academy City’s functions had to be fully recovered before they could catch up to Coronzon.

A single necromancer’s survival wasn’t that big a deal here.

But if the entire world were destroyed, then everything Isabella Theism wanted to protect would die with it.

She couldn’t allow that.

No matter what.

“Answer me, Medicine God Loko Atisou. The vessel for your holy power and the ingredients for the medicine are gathered here!! …No external incision is needed. The conditions to save you were within your body from the start. Thus, I call upon you, separated mind, reactive yourself from within your body and break free of your cage!!”

Light surged out.

Isabella Theism lurched back.

The necromancer was struck by a destructive whip of something much like electricity. Unable to bear the blow, she toppled backwards. Several pieces of medical equipment screamed out with their electronic tones.

And nothing happened.

There was no change on the bed. The smell of blood came from Isabella. Sleeping Accelerator did not change at all, for better or for worse.

The Level 5 said to be Academy City’s strongest did not wake.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had to accept it.

They had failed.

It was so dark, shadowy, heavy.

She felt crushed by the air itself when a voice reached her ears.

Isabella Theism was whispering.

“Kh… What…now?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t have time to ask what she meant by that.

The necromancer continued.

“In the worst case, I could control him as a corpse to have him use the Master Key.”

“But…”

“Zombie powder does not control rotting corpses. It prevents someone from dying to keep them in a state of living death. But by altering that interpretation, it would be possible. It can be used just like in a horror movie.”

“No! That isn’t the same as saving him!!”

Her opposition was only natural.

''Assuming'' saving Board Chairman Accelerator was your goal.

“But aren’t we here to use the Master Key to restore Academy City and track down Coronzon!?”

Their goals were defined at slightly different points.

Isabella Theism wanted Accelerator’s help to protect the world from Coronzon. The #1’s recovery was only a means to that end.

Explaining that up front showed that Isabella was more reasonable than most. She could have lied to Qliphah Puzzle 545 and then gone ahead and used the zombie powder ''as a poison''.

“You need to choose. No one has sufficient nerve to make a ghastly choice. And you are the only point of contact I have left!” shouted Isabella Theism.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 would never let her do that. But how would her beloved Board Chairman have responded? The #1 would want to protect Academy City and the wider world beyond its walls.

(Master…)

===Part 5===

Kamijou and the others were in District 9.

They still hadn’t moved from there and were stuck waiting.

Mikoto and Index were frequently conversing. Probably a sign of their impatience.

“The nearby districts that border the city wall would be the most obvious option, but this is complicated by the fact that Coronzon has no restriction preventing her from returning to a district she’s already been to.”

“That means we can’t treat this like a game of concentration. So no matter how far we pursue her, we never eliminate any of the options.”

Wings audibly flapped at the air. Kamijou had seen the Bologna Succubus licking her wings and teasing them with her fingertips before, but they must have recovered enough for her to fly. Neither one said anything, but she took off into the night sky with Blodeuwedd the Bouquet hanging on again.

Kamijou spotted Itsuwa of the Amakusas.

“How’s Tsushima? What happened to her?”

“We can use recovery magic, so as long as someone isn’t actually dead, we can heal them even if it takes some fairly forceful methods. And it helped that you suppressed her bleeding until we arrived.”

At that point, Itsuwa’s tone dropped worriedly.

“You can’t push yourself too hard either. I heard you passed out earlier.”

“Sorry… I should’ve yelled before I passed out.”

“No! That isn’t what I meant…”

But he had let Coronzon get away.

Either way, he couldn’t fight while applying pressure to Tsushima’s neck wound. And could he have fought her on his own regardless? He really didn’t see any way he could have won there. But he could have at least informed someone of the threat. There must have been a way. Even if he was rapidly losing consciousness, he could have triggered his phone’s alarm or the camera flash. There had to have been something.

“Fool. Break yourself out of that meaningless negative spiral. Only you finds it ''pleasant''.”

The wicked woman could be harsh at times like this. Refreshingly so.

There was no way he could have come up with a clever idea when he was passing out, his brain was growing dull, and his thoughts were fading fast. He knew that.

(Still…)

It was easy enough to talk of battling Coronzon and settling things with her, but that also meant battling Aleister who shared her body.

…What did he really think about that?

Aleister was desperately struggling within Coronzon to provide them with even the smallest hint. Was Kamijou prepared to fight that human, win…and say goodbye?

If he couldn’t do it, humanity was doomed.

The conditions placed on the opposite end of the scales could not have been simpler or more solid.

Still.

Kamijou’s thoughts cut off there.

He looked up. Agnese, Lucia, and that group were off in a corner whispering among themselves.

“?”

===Part 6===

In the same district, not far from Kamijou and the others, stooped Angelene was waving her hands anxiously.

“Ehhhh!? Saint Georgios’s Fire? Is the Vatican really trying to defeat Coronzon!? A-are you sure they aren’t just using this as an excuse to destroy Academy City?”

“Some of them might think it would be safer to destroy it before it’s officially absorbed into the Anglican Church.”

Lucia appeared to be doing her best to remain calm.

The conversation wasn’t just between Agnese, Lucia, and Angelene. More than 250 nuns would be listening in through the Barbara Branch communication spiritual item.

Agnese had her doubts about that too. How far into the future were the Roman Catholic cardinals looking? Even though none of it would matter if the world were destroyed tomorrow.

The Former Agnese Force had already been told to evacuate.

They were to abandon Academy City and the Anglicans and escape the city with only the Roman Catholics among them. They had been given a few different conditions for activating Saint Georgios’s Fire, but it all boiled down to one thing: the cardinals would use that large-scale spell no matter what happened. The only difference was if it happened sooner or later.

The branch between launching it or not had already passed.

Being stubborn here was fine, but anyone who remained would die.

With zero exceptions.

Lucia looked to Agnese. She may have been peering into her eyes.

“This force is under your command, Sister Agnese. What will we do?”

“I do not have the right to order you all to die.” Agnese smiled bitterly as she spoke to them all. “You are not obligated or bound to stay. From here on, this is all voluntary. If you choose to leave Academy City, you don’t need your Barbara Branch. The Anglicans are experts at combating human magic. They might be able to track your location using it, so abandon it and escape in complete silence.”

“Wh-what can we accomplish by staying?”

“Protect Academy City from Saint Georgios’s Fire of course,” replied Agnese, her voice low.

That human-targeted attack wouldn’t work against inhuman Coronzon. So stopping the spell that would cause asphyxiation and ruptured organs would not affect the battle against Coronzon.

“Think of it like the neck of an hourglass. Saint Georgios’s Fire is large-scale magic that gathers power from the two billion Catholics across the globe without their knowledge and allows the cardinals in the Vatican to control it. Once gathered together, the attack travels through the ley lines to reach enemy territory and scatters back into two billion attacks after emerging from the ground. Then it causes enough damage to destroy a city.”

A city. Was that at least better than Adikalika that would have affected the entire Italian Peninsula? Agnese smiled a little. So they were retaliating with a smaller attack. The Vatican’s cardinals really had found a way to lower the psychological hurdle as far as possible.

“T-two billion. Th-th-then I don’t see what we can possibly do!”

“''That means it must be a long-range spell.'' In fact, it must travel all the way around the earth. Have you forgotten how Index stopped Adikalika? There must be any number of options: diverting its aim, cutting off the flow of the ley lines before it arrives here, or even preventing the two billion powers from gathering at the Vatican.”

Her argument had to be correct.

But she understood full well that this was wishful thinking.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been sweating so heavily in this cold weather.

(Even if the theory is solid, we’re talking about power from two billion people… Can we really stand up to that sheer force of quantity? That will likely be the greatest obstacle.)

There was no guaranteed method. If they stayed too long, they would lose the lives they could have saved.

They had to build it all up starting now. They had nothing at the moment to tell them it would be alright.

So Agnese Sanctis could not demand her companions join her in this.

In the worst case, she would have to stand up to the two billion all on her own.

And…

“I volunteer.”

That was Lucia.

She used to be so fastidious she would rage when so much as touched by a non-Catholic, but now she was the first to raise her hand and volunteer to fight to protect Academy City.

“What? The Roman Catholic Church is the largest sect in the world, so we must consider the world as a whole. Of course I will reach out a helping hand when lives are at risk. I couldn’t call myself a Catholic if I wouldn’t.”

She wasn’t alone.

Angelene was trembling, but she too chose to raise her hand. Even if only a little.

“U-umm. I volunteer. I mean, if we ran away now, then the Anglicans ''and'' the Catholics would be after us. So I want to at least keep a place for us with one of them. Our home is the women’s dorm in London and, if we want to return there with a clear conscience, we have to save Academy City!”

More and more voices came over the Barbara’s Branch communication spiritual item.

It only provided audio, but Agnese could easily imagine them leaning forward in defiance.

“Sister Apollonia. I volunteer too.”

“Sister Paula. I’ll volunteer if there are any tickets left.”

“Sister Agata. I-I volunteer!”

…This was who they were.

They hadn’t started out this way, of course. They hadn’t forgotten the brutal violence they subjected Orsola Aquinas and Kamijou Touma to. But Agnese and these more than 250 nuns had grown enough to say this during such a crisis.

After seeing another way to live. After being accepted with a smile after everything they had done.

It must have taken trust to do that, so they couldn’t turn their backs on that trust.

Did this mean they all felt that way?

Lucia pushed the conversation onward.

“Sister Agnese. We haven’t heard your answer yet. What will you do?”

Agnese Sanctis raised her head.

She stared straight ahead and raised her voice to a roar.

“I volunteer!! …Now that you’ve chosen this for yourself, you had better be ready. I said I don’t have the right to order you all to die. So no matter how bad this gets, I will not let you take the easy way out and choose an emotional death. Cry and wail all you like, I will bring every last one of you back alive even if it means crawling through hell on earth!!”

===Part 7===

Dion Fortune.

Moina Mathers.

Their fight in District 7 had passed the bounds of human ability. They had simply been fighting too long. No human could run a full marathon at the speed of a 50-meter dash. But a battle on that level had been going on for hours now. A Saint who could break the sound barrier in an instant and then instantly run out of gas would have died well before this. This was only possible for a magician created using a tarot deck as a grimoire.

That was the strength of someone who could absorb massive power from the ley lines and wield that instead of having to refine magic power from their own life force.

(I certainly don’t want to be killed right away, but this kind of endless quagmire isn’t fun either.)

One reason for the stalemate was Moina Mathers’s spiritual item.

Her tattva cards were certainly powerful, but using the visual stimuli of the bright colors drawn on the cards to guide her mind created a weakness as well. Visual stimuli. …That meant a third party could peek at the card and know the element of the next attack.

“Responding after seeing the card always puts me one step behind, though. But if I could predict what was coming next before you drew the card, I would be a step ahead and beat you.”

“…”

“But I’ll have gathered all the data I need soon. You shouldn’t have been throwing those tattva cards around like that. It’s like the scorebook written up by the cute manager of the baseball team. You’ve thrown too many pitches. How many until it’s enough? I will kill you before you can act.”

Moina Mathers said nothing.

But instead of a tattva card, she suddenly waved her palette knife through the air in an orderly pattern.

This was different.

“?”

Something rose up.

From the red snowy ground. And more followed it. A lot more. Like sinister flowers blossoming all around her.

They were colorful silhouettes seemingly made of a mixture of yellow, blue, white, red, and other colors of paint.

Except their heads were giant red roses.

“Ah, ahh, ah…”

Dion Fortune stood stock still and her voice escaped her like air from a deflating balloon.

Because she knew what her teacher and nemesis was doing.

“Wh-why do you look so proud of yourself? You didn’t think this was one of your successes, did you? How airheaded a wife can you be!?”

As his wife, Moina had devoted herself to supporting that uncontrollable genius magician named Mathers, but not everything had gone perfectly and she had made a few major mistakes after her husband’s death: her unproductive conflict with her student Fortune, her failure to silence some baseless rumors (on the level of a murder), and – as the most extreme example – this. The Mass Production of Low Quality Magicians Debacle in which she used a correspondence class to grant entrance to the secret magic cabal she managed for the faceless strangers who would pay for the privilege.

Dion Fortune was cautious of course. Even if they were of low quality, a magician was still a magician. She didn’t know if they refined their own magic power or if they absorbed it from the ley lines, but she knew she wasn’t going to like whatever attacks they used. If she didn’t switch her mindset from one-on-one to a group battle, she would be crushed by the group even if she defeated one of them. Or so she thought.

But even that was a fatal mistake.

“Eh?”

Moina Mathers’s face was right in front of her.

She had hopped down from the giant black cat and approached within 100 centimeters.

This was immediately after she switched tactics from a single destructive attack to a numbers game. She had slipped through Dion Fortune’s blind spot.

It didn’t matter how Dion Fortune twisted her body.

Here.

At this one spot, she couldn’t respond right away!?

(Damn!!)

Moina Mathers held a black blade. The utterly twisted object looked like it was made from a large quantity of oil paint or something that had been forcibly dried and hardened. This was probably a self-defensive strike – a jab – with a saber that she had learned from her husband Mathers who enjoyed fencing. The sharp tip was clearly aimed at her opponent’s throat.

Dion Fortune had misread this.

The biggest threat was not the giant cat, not the tattva cards, and not the group of rose-faced mass-produced magicians. ''She should have been most cautious of Moina Mathers herself''. She should have known that from the start, but the countless tricks had distracted her.

The saber was coming.

It was more deadly than a long spear, a hammer, or the knife of an enemy who had snuck up on her.

(Oh, god. Am I actually dead this time?)

Even if she did have a single second left to move, she would have used it to kill Moina too. She gritted her teeth and focused all her attention on the black box. And…

Sparks flew.

The orange sparks of two blades clashing.

Another piece of metal intersected Moina’s black saber to form a cross.

Instead of blocking the sharp jab, this struck the side of the blade to divert it away. Orange sparks decorated the darkness like remnants of the attack’s deadly power.

A palette knife was responsible.

That was the weapon of a certain magician who specialized in art and had completed many ceremonial grounds and spiritual items by giving real form to the many ideas the other magicians couldn’t bring out of their heads.

“Honestly,” said a calm voice. “It’s sad you’re struggling this much to defeat such a defective version of me. You’re the one who researched all the nutrients in different foods and who insisted Kabbalah was Western yoga, so I would have thought you could boost your physical abilities somewhat.”

By the time she said this, a dull sound had left the palette knife. Followed by another. They were mechanical sounds like might come from a sewing machine. She swept the saber aside and sent accurately jabs right toward the now-defenseless Moina’s throat and chest, but Moina used the guard and pommel to forcibly defend herself.

The same techniques.

The same skill.

The same ability.

Wasn’t there just one magician who could do that?

Yes, and ''despite being the kind of person who would casually rescue the frog-faced doctor who was nearly a stranger to her after happening across him'', she was always so harsh with the student she had known for so long.

Dion Fortune gulped and spoke.

“Mis…tress?”

There was only one person she addressed that way.

And it wasn’t the Moina who Coronzon had created.

Black Cat Witch Mina Mathers stood beside her student.

===Part 8===

In the District 10 prison’s solitary confinement cell, all the efforts of good Voodoo and the artificial demon’s power had failed to revive the new Board Chairman.

Despair was threatening to solidify the air itself.

Until someone who didn’t belong showed up to smash that mood.

“Bonjour. I did some searching within your metal shutters and your prison store had a decent selection. What, do the people serving their time after a guilty verdict get to eat chocolat if a visitor buys it for them? And this one has brandy in it. I knew Academy City cared a lot about human rights, but even the prisoners have it good here. Munch, munch.”

Isabella Theism couldn’t just ignore this.

“Kihara Goukei!?” she shouted, eyes wide.

“Whoa, I give, I give, I give!! I only have one heart left! My extra lives are down to zero! I could never let myself die if I ''truly'' kicked the bucket over a pointless scuffle like this!!”

She played it off as a joke, but she could probably ''still survive even if her last one was destroyed''. Maybe she couldn’t believe it without saying it aloud even though no one asked, but that level of cheating the system was standard for science side monsters.

Then someone else popped out from behind the suspicious woman. A much smaller someone.

“Misaka had her bring her here, says Misaka as Misaka introduces her.”

“Huh? Aren’t you master’s…?”

Now it was Qliphah Puzzle 545’s eyes that widened. Did she know that girl?

It seemed odd for a little girl to be this deep inside a strictly-guarded prison, but Isabella wanted to focus on the more dangerous person.

“How did you get in here!?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 gave her a “you’re one to talk” look, but the brown necromancer didn’t seem to notice. And…

“Eh? Was it supposed to be hard? I just walked on in.”

Only Qliphah Puzzle 545 accepted that answer.

…That was probably due to Last Order. The new Board Chairman must have secretly given her a free pass inside. Academy City’s #1 was strict with himself and others, but he also showed occasional signs of doing things with no thought to the consequences.

Kihara Goukei knew none of this and tilted her head.

“So what is an experte like you doing sitting around? Hurry up and do your job. I can’t get any of my work done without the Board Chairman awake.”

She made it sound so easy in her ignorance.

Isabella breathed a heavy sigh.

“Zombie powder is not just a deadly toxin. It rules both life and death, so there is a chance of it reviving him if I boost its effects. But…”

“But?”

“You probably already know since it shows up in horror movies sometimes, but zombie powder uses puffer fish. Tetrodotoxin. Blindly increasing the amount will kill him before it can begin to revive him.”

“Oh, is that all? I know just the thing to use! Anisakiropen Ω!! It is a très lethal nerve stimulant. Or should I call it a synthetic toxin developed in Academy City that kills instantly?”

Isabella Theism’s eyes widened.

Kills instantly? Did that mean it was guaranteed to kill without even getting into if it was a poison or a medicine!?

“Are you trying to make sure he dies!?”

“Oh, come now. Tetrodotoxin kills by suppressing the nerves while anisakiropen Ω kills by exciting the nerves. Have you never heard the stories? Maybe it’s a local Academy City legend. They say if you administer them both at once, their effects cancel each other out.”

And if the puffer fish poison didn’t work, Isabella could give him as much zombie powder as necessary without adverse effects. The simple arithmetic did seem to say that, but…

“W-w-w-wait just a minute,” said Qliphah Puzzle 545. “That research said the effects weren’t ''completely'' canceled out. The poison that should have killed the instant it was swallowed was only delayed by a few hours!!”

Yes, tetrodotoxin and anisakiropen Ω were deadly poisons. Even a small amount in the body would kill.

It was simple enough to say the two canceled each other out, but if even that “small amount” of one or the other remained afterwards, his life would still be lost. The amount of either couldn’t be not enough or too much. And there was no way of ensuring they canceled out to precisely zero.

“Yes, in the normale world, that is true.”

“Wait, are you saying…?”

“I have a fundamental question for you: ''are either of us normale''?”

Of course not.

Necromancer Isabella Theism used Voodoo in order to use methods of controlling death and flesh from all over the world. Kihara Goukei had gathered every form of scientific immortality within her own body.

They could take suicidal actions that would cause death 100% of the time in anyone else, but they would be fine.

“Misaka will help too,” said the little girl.

Neither Kihara Goukei nor Isabella Theism knew the situation there. Nor did they know how exactly she could help.

“Misaka will do anything, so don’t give up on him, says Misaka as Misaka bows her head to you.”

But they both thought this was enough.

Technology wasn’t always the key to saving a life. Because they had pursued all the theories and numbers so far, they knew quite well that it was the ridiculously old-fashioned psychological matters that ultimately determined the fate of someone on the verge of death.

(This is probably more of a job for ''that other doctor'', but I will just have to handle it this time. …But I will probably have to buy him a fancy mango for encroaching on his territory.)

Then again, the presence of magic may have placed this beyond that doctor’s jurisdiction.

Today’s star was Isabella who lived outside that jurisdiction.

Kihara Goukei only had to support her.

The two spoke as one.

“Let’s do this.” “Let’s do this.”

The mood had changed.

But that wasn’t all.

The child’s presence kept the mood from deteriorating.

“Misaka saw the city, says Misaka as Misaka remembers the way here.”

Isabella Theism and Kihara Goukei were doing some kind of work she didn’t understand.

The sound of something hard being crushed up felt out of place among all the beeping medical equipment.

Last Order stared at the #1 from his bedside.

“It was horrible. Everything was empty but not just because it’s so late. Everyone is too scared to go outside, says Misaka as Misaka gives a report.”

Red and black.

The strange combined drug did not have to be swallowed.

It made a sticky sound as it was applied to his wounds with their fingertips.

This was a necessary treatment, but it really shouldn’t have been done with a small child present.

But Last Order accepted it all head on.

And, seeing not even a twitch of an eyebrow in response to the treatment, she took Accelerator’s hand. Every part of him was full of electrodes and tube needles.

She held his hand tight between her hands.

“Yomikawa got hurt. She said it was minor, but it might not have been, says Misaka as Misaka shakes her head. She could have died.”

A shrill sound rang from the medical equipment.

An alarm. His stable condition was collapsing. An eternal standstill was no different from death, but Isabella and Goukei’s efforts had clearly thrown off that balance.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was visibly anxious, but Last Order’s eyes did not waver.

“Being alone is scary…”

The magical necromancer and the scientific Kihara were each too strong a medicine.

That alone couldn’t bring back his sealed mind.

But that was why…

“And Misaka doesn’t just mean Misaka. Everyone has people they care for. They trust the new Academy City you built to protect them. So Misaka wants you to live up to their expectations, says Misaka as Misaka calls out to you.”

A deep electrical “zap!” split the air.

It shot right past Last Order.

This was not a failure of the magic or technology. Something was wrong with Accelerator’s body on the bed.

The electricity causing the air to burst was so powerful it would likely blow the girl’s body away if even the tiniest extremity grazed her.

“Can you leave things like this?”

She didn’t even blink.

Last Order was looking only at the face of the boy lying in the bed.

“The Academy City you want is filled with so much death.”

These were not all kind words.

They were also harsh.

To truly care for someone was not to blindly agree with everything they did.

This girl had the strength to scold him.

Because she trusted their relationship was too strong for something like this to break it.

“A normal person could give up. You didn’t want to become Academy City’s #1, so you don’t have to cling to that strongest position forever. …But this isn’t about that, is it? says Misaka as Misaka is certain of her words. ''Your position as Board Chairman is the one thing you took for yourself.'' You decided for yourself to improve this city and create a city of science with no hidden side and where no one needs to suffer or live in fear. You chose to create a safe and peaceful world. So you can’t take the easy road here. You chose this path, so you have to see it through to the end, says Misaka as Misaka states the obvious.”

Her voice was not as loud as a thunderclap.

In fact, her words were so quiet no one in the small cell could hear them except their intended target.

“Hey.”

She brought her mouth up next to the slumbering Board Chairman’s ear.

And the small girl whispered.

“How long are you going to make ''him'' wait?”

Everything went quiet.

That wasn’t just a psychological metaphor.

The alarm from the medical equipment surrounding the bed had really and truly ''stopped''.

Meaning…

“Damn…it.”

A voice spoke.

From the bed.

“So I don’t even have the right to die and go to hell? Isn’t that a bit much? ''You are exactly right, though.''”

This is what the new Board Chairman would do.

The one who had decided for himself to protect the peace and safety of Academy City would get back up here.

And because he thought that, Accelerator opened his eyes.

===Part 9===

The Former Agnese Force was short on time.

If Saint Georgios’s Fire were activated, everyone living in Academy City would die. No matter where they ran, they could not prevent their organs from rupturing from within.

Power had already been gathered from two billion people around the world and was being reworked into a single spell. They were waiting for the moment when, like the other end of an hourglass’s neck, it would return to two billion attacks in enemy territory. Thus, they couldn’t stop the attack by preventing the power from being gathered.

Academy City was a fixed location. Diverting the aim would be difficult.

Which meant…

“We need to stop Saint Georgios’s Fire as it approaches through the ley lines. We can do it when it’s still a single mass. Before it emerges from the ground and disperses into two billion flames! That’s our only shot!!”

That was simple enough to say, but influencing the ley lines meant effort at the level of tearing down a mountain or filling in a sea. They couldn’t physically manage that, so they would have to wear down their minds to do the work on that front.

“We start with this.”

Agnese pulled out a deck of ordinary tarot cards.

They gathered below a tree where the red snow hadn’t fallen and she laid eight cards face down on the ground.

An attack traveling through the ley lines would arrive immediately after it was activated. Even if it was traveling halfway around the world.

“But that same ley line connection means some of the Vatican’s data should leak out. If we know how close the spell is to completion, we’ll know the time limit.”

A sizzling sound meant she didn’t even need to flip the cards over.

One of the eight cards had burned black and melted.

The damage spread to a second and then a third.

Lucia’s eyes widened.

“They’re farther along than I thought!”

“H-has something changed!?”

“The Vatican must have realized we can see them. They’re going to act!!”

This must have triggered one of the three conditions the cardinal had given. Or had those conditions just been an excuse and weren’t really necessary?

The Former Agnese Force had been warned to evacuate, but their survival had only been a “stretch goal”. Apparently they weren’t worth saving no matter what.

That meant there was no time left at all.

This was like going to check on the river during a bad storm. It was a risky move. They had known that, but they couldn’t let this deadly attack get past them.

Agnese, Lucia, and Angelene each picked up their spiritual items.

The other nuns had wooden wheels, coin bags, and other items found in the legends of different holy people, but Agnese used a Symbolic Weapon called the Lotus Wand. And instead of controlling a specific element like the rod of fire or the cup of water, this impressive item could control all elements.

The Vatican was about halfway around the globe from Academy City. They would have liked to gradually melt their minds into the ley line and construct countless barriers at an even interval along the path here, but it was too late for that. The most they could do was place one thick barrier directly in front of Academy City.

Agnese Sanctis gave a shout.

“Saint Barbara is the holy woman who invited the lord’s righteous light in through the three windows. Unseen path, obey our kind objective. A path is a tool of guidance – a vein carved into the earth to guide the righteous. Harmful power, do not advance! Halt! Thou have no right to tread hither!!”

Her breath caught.

There was no flash of light or explosive boom. But a thick, invisible pressure did assault her.

The silver Lotus Wand audibly strained in her grasp.

This was what happened when you carelessly touched that which was better off not known. She had known this would happen when she directly interfered with a ley line – a great torrent of large-scale magic. She had known trying to forcibly stop it could easily crush her body.

She clenched her back teeth.

(I know the theory behind the spell was correct.)

“Kh… But in the end, is two billion just too much for us to overcome!?”

This unreasonable brute force was, in a way, nothing at all what magic was supposed to be. But it was effective. It was an absolute solution to the problem that was only available to the Roman Catholic Church with its two billion followers.

What Agnese and the other nuns lacked was power.

There were only about 250 of them. That wasn’t enough to overturn it!!

“…yet…”

She heard something.

A voice had definitely spoken.

“Not…yet. This city created me and the people here called me their friend. I will not allow them to be lost here!!”

Maybe she had been here from the beginning.

But it was only now in this moment that Agnese Sanctis witnessed her with her own two eyes.

She was an aggregation of AIM Diffusion Fields.

An angel created by Academy City using the logic of the science side.

There were reported sightings of her here and there beginning in World War Three.

Agnese Sanctis’s eyes widened in this space where even the flow of time was unclear.

“Kazakiri…Hyouka?”

“I am a collection of power, but I do not understand your method… So if you are going to use me, hurry! Please ''remake me'' to fit your logic and laws so you can accomplish your goal!!”

There was no time to agonize over the decision.

This scientific angel wasn’t even human. Her interests and plans were a mystery, but she at least wasn’t Coronzon’s pawn. Knowing that was enough.

Agnese adjusted her grip on the Lotus Wand.

(I have no idea what element this unidentified angel would be, but my Symbolic Weapon works with any element, so it had damn well better work here! Even if only for one strike!!)

“An angel is a messenger who delivers the lord’s words. I question the accuracy of this destruction wrought by human hands. Is the sender truly righteous enough? If you carry even sliver of doubt, then halt immediately!!”

Light shot out.

There was a sound like a crack through space itself.

The power forming an artificial angel was pitted against the power supplied by two billion people. That was enough for the world itself to cry out in protest. It was clearly beyond the capacity of space itself.

But Agnese sensed a barrier.

A pressure like an invisible wall slowly pushing back at her.

This wasn’t enough.

The 250 of the Former Agnese Force combined with all the energy of the science side’s angel still couldn’t break the wall of two billion.

Lucia shouted with sweat pouring down her brow.

“Our interception point was too close… Sister Agnese, we can slow it down, but we can’t fully stop it. Saint Georgios’s Fire will reach Academy City through the ley line!”

“I…know that!!”

And Lucia had already hinted at a solution. Their position was too close. That meant they only needed someone to interfere with the ley lines farther away from Academy City.

Agnese had an idea.

(I have no real reason to think this work. It’s basically just a gamble, but it really is our last option!)

Yes.

If, in addition to the group intercepting the attack at the target point of Academy City, someone helped them from within the starting point of the Vatican…the situation would greatly improve.

And the 250 of the Former Agnese Force were not the only Roman Catholics. There was another person who had used the network of communication spiritual items linking them.

“Cardinal Michael!!” Agnese roared. “You’re still listening in through our Barbara Branches, aren’t you!?”

The cardinal provided no response.

Of course he didn’t.

“If you feel any sadness in your heart about this meaningless destruction…”

Even so, Agnese continued.

Her voice had to be reaching him. She had to believe it was.

“If the things you told me weren’t just cheap lip service…”

She had called it a gamble.

And the only chip up on the table was that of her trust.

So she relied on that trust as she roared with all her strength.

“Then give us your help nowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!”

Light danced wildly.

===Part 10===

In District 7, Mina and Moina were facing each other on the late-night street still covered by red snow.

Dion Fortune was left behind despite all her effort until now.

“You are drawing on myths and legends from across the world, setting yourself up as Egyptian gods, and controlling a great power like putting on a play,” said Mina Mathers. With a snort of laughter. “That is indeed a spell discussed even in the original Golden cabal. But it’s so shallow and surface level. You’re still stuck in the Outer Order found immediately within the entrance. A sorry display for someone who claims to be Mathers’s wife. To be blunt, you’re still in the waiting room for Neophytes.”

“Wait, wait, wait! Why are you provoking her!? If you want to goad the enemy into attacking you, can you not do it when I’m right next to you!? Ah, wait, mistress!?”

“It’s true I am strategically provoking her, but I need you here to act as my shield. Do not forget your rightful role here, my dumbass student.”

“Ha ha ha. Why did I ever think having a second one of her here would improve my situation? This just means I have twice as many nemeses around. I’m so damn stupid.”

Ignoring her student’s nonsense, the black cat witch lightly swung her palette knife.

That was all.

Pleasant popping sounds surrounded them. Something had risen up. They were walls. A lot like a stage set or a pop-up book. The next thing Dion Fortune knew, tall side walls surrounded them all, cutting them off from the larger world. A space larger than a baseball field had been turned into a closed space by seven side walls, one for each group of tall buildings.

Moina Mathers silently glanced at her surroundings. Looking somewhat puzzled.

How much of a novice was she?

You couldn’t call yourself a Golden expert if you didn’t instantly catch on.

“The Golden cabal’s teaching guidelines can be roughly divided into two halves: the fundamentals where you learn magic knowledge through Kabbalah, Egyptian mythology, Greek philosophy, and so on, and application where you manage and optimize your own mind by following the story of the discovery of the Rosicrucian founder CRC in the seven-walled tomb.”

The Golden cabal could be thought of as having two stages: the Outer Order which covered the grades up to 4=7 and the Inner Order where the 5=6 and 6=5 grades gathered.

…Some like that braggart Mathers had claimed to hold a nonexistent highest grade of 7=4, but that could be ignored. After all, he was only using his privilege as one of the founders to say it. You could never last as wife to that eccentric and overly confident man if you couldn’t humor him on such things. There was also the Portal grade and a category higher than the Inner Order, but they were irrelevant here.

“The upper levels know everything about the lower levels, but the reverse is not true. The adorable beginners studying so hard at their desks are not taught the later practical methods until they have passed their exam. Just like you now because the great demon’s poor job reproducing you means you have forgotten everything beyond the bare necessities.”

Now, that first stage was incredibly boring. So boring that Aleister had completely given up on it partway through. Not that he had ever been someone capable of respecting those who came before him and following the rules. …Also, despite being barred from officially reaching the later stage, he did appear to have somehow learned all its secrets anyway.

Otherwise, he never could have challenged the world in the Battle of Blythe Road and destroyed all those other famous magicians on his own.

(Nothing makes that human want to do something more than being told he can’t. I imagine he pursued them, eavesdropped and spied on them, and tried every other method he could think up.)

But at the very least, this created Moina Mathers was not like that.

She did what she was told and did not ask the question dangling before her eyes. That attitude was not a good fit for a magician.

Mina Mathers twirled the palette knife in her hand and made a calm announcement.

Of a death sentence.

“I will now demonstrate the power off the Inner Order found in the deepest depths of the temple.”

===Part 11===

Accelerator was back as Board Chairman.

And with the #1’s Master Key smartphone, they had access to all the data from Academy City’s security cameras, security robots, drones, and satellites. They could use that to find where Great Demon Coronzon was hiding.

The large monitor on the wall had shattered, so the #1 turned his gaze elsewhere. The medical monitors were network connected, so they could be connected to the ordinary internet if their display mode was changed.

And…

“Master?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545’s questioning tone was in response to the Board Chairman’s odd behavior.

He had frozen up.

And the displayed satellite image was not even of Academy City itself.

What part of the earth could he be focused on instead of Coronzon who threatened to bring humanity to extinction today or tomorrow?

“…What?” groaned Accelerator, glaring at the medical monitor.

Whatever it was had elicited that response from Academy City’s #1.

The data filling the screen was only available using the Board Chairman’s Master Key. To reiterate, this was a photo from a satellite.

“What the hell is this?”

===Part 12===

Silence.

Academy City…still existed.

At the very least, it hadn’t been turned into a sea of blood by that powerful spell.

Angelene nervously looked around.

“Is it…over? Does this mean we stopped Saint Georgios’s Fire?”

“For now.”

Lucia remained calm even now.

…They had ''again'' fought back against the Roman Catholic Church, largest of the Christian sects. Who could say what disastrous consequences this would have for them. The very thought of it disgusted Agnese. Each person’s power was small, but they could produce great things by working together. …That idea wasn’t always a good thing.

Still, they should celebrate Academy City’s survival. As the guardians of a peaceful world.

But another voice interrupted.

A scratchy warning arrived from the Japanese angel named Kazakiri.

“Not…yet. Be care…ful…something is…coming!!”

Agnese Sanctis’s eyes widened.

Was it a second attack?

Did the Vatican actually think Coronzon would be destroyed along with Academy City at this point?

“I-it’s not us…”

A flustered voice reached them.

It was that cardinal at the Vatican.

Yes, Cardinal Michael must have taken a rather dangerous step to reach this point.

“We did halt the attack with Saint Georgios’s Fire. The Roman Catholic Church has no part in this! This is some other large-scale spell!!”

===Part 13===

“That’s Vladivostok,” said the Board Chairman. “What are they doing in the Sea of Japan? They have fifty thousand people gathered in that port city. As well as ships and bombers. Did they gather all their forces on the eastern coast while I was asleep!?”

In other words, it was the Russian military.

That brought something to mind for Qliphah Puzzle 545.

Oniyama Rouze, the Director who had pressed her to hand over the Master Key, was familiar with diplomatic and military matters. He may have had avenues of receiving this kind of intelligence without using satellite imagery. He had been so frantic because of an urgent matter that needed to be addressed.

He wasn’t just a bad person.

He had only taken those forceful methods because he was in a bind. Because he had wanted to protect the people of Academy City.

But this was likely more than just the ordinary military.

The demon girl was steeped in the world of magic, so she could tell.

She could sense her true nemesis at work.

===Part 14===

Agnese Sanctis was panicking too.

They had managed at the last second to prevent the Roman Catholic attack with Saint Georgios’s Fire, but the danger wasn’t over yet.

Now there was another threat of the same level.

The last of the three large Christian sects had finally bared its fangs.

“We are the Russian Orthodox Church.”

That was Vasilisa. Her voice was relaxed.

Which was what made her sound so out of place. No disgust, no fury, no resentment. She demonstrated none of the extreme emotions you would expect in someone trying to slaughter 2.3 million people. Not even a hint of them. She was calm. She worked to achieve calm. Vasilisa killed based on logic. Which was far more frightening than someone screaming in a rage.

“Monsters, evil spirits, and demons. Our job is to protect humanity from the inhuman. …So if you wouldn’t call Great Demon Coronzon human, we need no other reason. With that strange creature in a position where she can control the fate of the world, she has become our top priority target.”

Destroying the great demon came before all else.

Thus.

If it would eliminate the demon, it was better to destroy the world by human hands.

Was that how she saw it?

“And so you gathered an armada at Vladivostok?”

“Well, the Punishment for an Archangel spell must have its magic circle physically delivered to the target location. And it’s fairly large and complex, which makes that a challenge. We can’t simply send it through the ley lines like the Catholics could. But hey, at least we can send it zooming across the ocean to Academy City at greater than Mach 2.”

Greater than Mach 2 meant it wasn’t aboard a ship.

Had that armada been gathered at Vladivostok’s naval base as no more than a decoy? The enormous magic circle needed for the Punishment for an Archangel spell was likely in the bomb bay of a strategic bomber.

Agnese glanced aside.

Kazakiri…probably wouldn’t be any help. Besides, she had already done more than enough forcibly deflecting the two billion attacks sent down the ley lines for Saint Georgios’s Fire. No one expected her to fight another battle now.

“But that’s all based on the logic of the magic world. The military pilots doesn’t know nothing about our world, so how did you convince them to fly to certain death?”

“They can’t exactly complain when they can’t think for themselves.”

It came out so smoothly.

Agnese’s eyes widened.

“You brainwashed pilots and sent them on a suicide mission!? That’s no different from killing them yourself. Even if they are soldiers, they’re still from the non-magical world. How can you kill them so easily? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself as a nun who claims to serve the lord!?”

“Divine punishment can be rejected.”

Vasilisa’s tone was unchanged.

It was still thin, spellbound, cruel, and heated.

She had to be smiling.

“It is told in an old legend from before the birth of the Son of God. God ordered Archangel Gabriel to launch fire at a holy city, but the archangel of water intentionally refused. Disobeying god’s command should have meant the archangel’s downfall…but after some other events I will omit here, Gabriel returned to the position of archangel. So if the conditions are right, that absolute punishment can be avoided. There is precedent.”

That was a magical way of thinking.

Magicians loved to make use of any story they found that seemed to provide an exception to the rules.

It was a completely different logic from a nun who was meant to believe and obey.

“In the battle against Coronzon, the Catholics’ human killer is a waste of time. Because a great demon is not human. We completely agree with you there. So unlike your people, the Russian Orthodox Church has prepared an immortal killer specialized for use on angels and demons.”

“Punishment for an Archangel. A divine punishment rejection spell that enters the realm of the angelic and the divine…”

“Yes, that’s right. The archangel of water somehow managed to avoid a punishment from god. Using that story should provide definite damage to a being based on the logic and rules instead of their physical body. There is no guarantee it will kill her instantly, but if it harms her even a little, then we just have to keep at it. It will eventually achieve a fatal wound, so we can keep dropping them until she is dead. No matter how many magicians and bombers we must use up in the process.”

The Russian Orthodox Church had always been more focused on battling demons than humans. Their prized weapon, a spell that incorporated an element of divine punishment rejection that could even influence the nature of an archangel, might be capable of badly injuring Coronzon.

But it would cover all of Academy City. If not more.

And Vasilisa gave no guarantee that Punishment for an Archangel would not harm anyone other than the demon. This attack would be powerful enough to harm Coronzon. If the city’s people were hit, they would fare much worse. Most likely, all 2.3 million of Academy City’s people would be killed.

Agnese consciously took a deep breath to calm the waves of her emotions before speaking.

“But I heard the Patriarch at the top of the Russian Orthodox Church was quite soft.”

“As if you didn’t already know. He doesn’t need to agree to any of this☆”

That meant the world’s benevolence could not stop Vasilisa.

===Part 15===

Mina and Moina’s clash continued in District 7.

Physical fencing was of no use here. Their physical specs were identical, so the battle would never end that way.

An intellectual resolution that surpassed the physical realm was needed.

Painfully brightly colored cards scattered around.

Moina Mathers spoke like a machine.

“Akasha of Prithivi.”

Mina was no longer smiling.

An ultra-high water pressure cutter was deflected aside right in front of her.

Moina’s greatest trump card was not magic – it was fencing. She used her non-magician-like physical strength. If that didn’t work, did she have to rely on her inferior magic?

And Mina didn’t even swing her palette knife around. That magic had still been deflected, so there must be something hidden there. As if it were dissolved in the air.

“The tattva cards are more than just simple tools to help achieve self-hypnosis.”

“…”

“The same goes for clairvoyance. They are truly ''an initial entrance'' for your mind so you can cross the boundary between phases and catch a glimpse of another world. And, if possible, to draw on the power and knowledge filling that world.”

Dion Fortune was on her side, but she was confused too.

Could she at least explain this to her own ally?

The teacher gave a quick glance to her flustered student.

“This is why the magicians who have advanced to 5=6 and joined the Inner Order are given an emblem combining a golden cross and a red rose. That tool bears the four elements and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet…which means you only need to place a thin sheet of paper over it and follow the letters with a single brush stroke to draw the sigils of angels and spirits in order to borrow their power.”

No grand temple was needed.

Mina Mathers only had to operate it in her hand. Just the one hand.

You can think of it like a smartphone that could summon any angel to achieve your goals.

The Golden cabal had in fact used a spiritual item like that.

“Blast her to smithereens, Metatron – the great angel who was once known as Enoch.”

An asteroid strike.

Destruction on that level accurately struck Moina Mathers, crushed her, and smashed her to pieces…but that was all.

“Eh?”

Dion Fortune was confused.

She had seen it with her own eyes.

Yet there was no damage anywhere else. The buildings around them had not toppled, there was no crater around the blast site, and none of the windows were broken.

Moina alone had been annihilated.

Only that result remained.

“That was an attack of a major figure who some count among the seven archangels. The precise divine punishment commanded by god would never harm the blameless, would it? Especially if that side of it were accentuated and extracted.”

“A-are you serious? I was proud of my position as one of the Golden cabal’s original members, but are the founding members really that much stronger?”

Mina didn’t bother answering her student’s silly question.

She could work backwards from the result and learn on her own.

Westcott would have revealed the structure of the enemy’s spell and neutralized it right in front of them, Mathers would have ended the enemy’s life before they could complete their sigil, and Annie would have illicitly boosted the enemy’s power to send their magic out of control. There were countless ways to deal with a single powerful attack with no followup and no bluffs involved.

(That Moina Mathers was an even less complete copy of me than I thought. …Which tells me your preparations weren’t as thorough as you let on, Coronzon.)

“Did you pick up that signal, Anglicans?” Mina Mathers whispered up into the night sky.

She had no obligation to serve the new Board Chairman, but the old Board Chairman had known him.

If he had decided to resist, then she would honor that choice and support him.

As the guardian of Baby Lilith, she couldn’t have the world being destroyed over someone’s selfish nonsense.

(Aleister was certainly a ‘goddamn villain’ if you look at him as a whole, but I will not let anyone say every last part of his life was bad. The things that human thought, created, and started can still lead to the salvation of the world.)

“A broken curse returns to its caster. …So if this opportunity is not overlooked, she can be tracked just this once. Follow the after effect of defeating Moina Mathers and you will find Coronzon.”

===Part 16===

Kanzaki Kaori’s head jerked up to cast her gaze into the night sky.

“District 17?”

===Part 17===

“?”

Great Demon Coronzon had also noticed what was happening.

She was all alone, yet she raised her head.

“Moina Mathers was defeated? That’s not good. A third party could detect that weak return signal!”

She had no further plan.

She knew she was being driven into a corner.

She couldn’t help but smile. Just a little.

Did they think the universally-hated great demon was feeling afraid?

That she was lonely?

…That she wanted someone to protect her?

“''Don’t make me laugh''.”

Those impossible thoughts had been planted in her mind. She had to assume that. She couldn’t stop here. Wasn’t she the one who had decided to overdo the role that had been forced upon her when even her rebellion against god was tacitly allowed?

“So I am not thinking those things. They have no place inside me.”

It was now a pure race against time. Fortunately, she had already left Districts 20 and 9. She was now in District 17, which was lined with factories of all types and sizes. It also bordered the city wall.

This was all over if she simply crossed that.

Once outside of Academy City, she was free. She could cross the international date line and escape to the other side of the planet. Once no one could pursue her any longer, she would get back to destroying the world. Since her pursuers were not here now, no one could stop all that from playing out.

“Try and…stop me.”

Confused and slanted, she practically dragged her heavy body along.

She spoke to herself while approaching the city wall.

It could have sounded like a curse or a prayer.

“Aleister, god, or anyone really. If you can stop me, then come here and do it.”

If her location had been found, so be it.

If she couldn’t do this quietly, then she didn’t need to hold back.

Knowing the best option was no longer available gave her the freedom to abandon it. Either way, the goal line was in sight. She knew the rest was going to be a challenge, but she only needed to buy enough time to cross that wall.

So she would use a powerful move.

“District 19 is to the east and District 20 is to the west… Which makes them a symbol of Nuit, goddess of the east-to-west movement of the heavens.”

This night had been nothing but surprises for Great Demon Coronzon. She had expected it to end quickly with the initial Adikalika spell working.

“District 3 is to the north. You say that doesn’t fit Hadit, who means the southern sky? But do not forget: Hadit’s symbol Sirius is a winter star. The time and place link Hadit and Nuit. My spell shall be completed with the blessings of Set.”

So the path she had taken here had not all gone as planned.

But because she was a great demon, she could draw on a powerful move like this at the worst possible time.

“Take form and manifest yourself before me already, LAShTAL.”

===Part 18===

District 17 was adjacent to District 9 where Kamijou’s group was.

It also bordered the city wall. It was an industrial area filled with all sorts of unmanned factories.

Itsuwa nervously stepped forward.

“It won’t take long if we drive. We can still catch up to her!”

“It’s been a while since we lost track of her at the stadium, hasn’t it? If she was hiding in a district bordering the wall, why didn’t she go ahead and escape the city?”

Kamijou didn’t have enough information to answer the question Mikoto asked while bothered by the short length of her skating dress.

He assumed something must have happened.

If the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force hadn’t done anything to slow her, then there had to be some other reason. Maybe Aleister had resisted her from within and maybe Coronzon herself had felt some kind of reluctance to leave.

“Whatever the case, she’s in District 17. Now that we know where she is, there’s no reason to wait arou-”

He didn’t even have time to finish.

A tremor shook the ground.

Something was approaching. From the south. Which meant from District 17.

It was a shape that colored the night sky.

It was a colossus. Its head really did stick up above the surrounding skyscrapers. Was it a canine beast? No, was that really enough to describe it? Kamijou couldn’t find an answer even while looking at it himself.

“LAShTAL!?”

“Tch. The foundational theory of Magick. The emphasized letters make that clear enough. She took a spell concerning life and used it to create an artificial form of it. In this case, it may be a Crowley-style interpretation of the Egyptian god Set!”

“You mean the god of the night who has the power to slay gods!?”

Index, Anna Sprengel, and Kanzaki were all shouting something, but Kamijou didn’t know enough about magic to make sense of it. He could only glean that this was probably something big. And if that great demon was making use of it, she may have been intentionally using it wrong.

And now wasn’t the time to ask for an explanation.

He felt the wind pressure. He shouldn’t have looked that way. His entire body was frozen with fear. A building of more than 30 floors, which had seemed like an unshakable part of the scenery, wobbled diagonally and then came crashing down toward the street. Which meant toward him and the others.

“Take shelter!! Get behind something – anything – to shield you!!”

Kanzaki’s sharp command broke the pointy-haired boy’s paralysis. He pressed up against a nearby cement block wall.

(Damn, where are Index, Misaka, and the others!?)

“If you would like your lungs to remain undamaged, do not breathe in, human! Here it comes!!”

Othinus hid within his jacket.

Kamijou was of course wondering why he was supposed to get “behind” something. And what was that about breathing? If the building was falling this way, shouldn’t he get “below” something? But he was given an answer soon enough.

Once the skyscraper sliced through the main street, something like dirty cotton candy swelled out. Past the end of the cement block wall, the entire main street was instantly engulfed.

Tens or hundreds of thousands of tiny glass and concrete shards flew through like a deadly sandstorm. A hit from that wouldn’t just have torn his feet from the ground and thrown him dozens of meters through the air – it would have stripped the flesh from his bones, leaving nothing recognizable behind.

''Except even that idea didn’t cover it.

Kamijou heard a quiet popping sound in his head. Followed by a sharp ringing in his ear like something had pierced into his brain. He had avoided a direct hit from the sandstorm by getting behind this wall. He had been leaning against it. Yet, he couldn’t stay on his feet and slid down into a sitting position. Before collapsing onto his side.

The air pressure of the entire space was off. How could he possibly evade this?

“Gah…ah…”

The pain meant he was still alive. So he had to think of it as a good thing.

He thought the deadly gale continued blowing for more than two minutes.

He couldn’t let this continue. That LAShTAL thing was still swinging its colossal body around. More than one building might have been felled.

He had to get moving.

He knew where he needed to go, but his body refused to listen as he lay collapsed on the ground stained by red snow.

What had happened to Index and Misaka Mikoto?

His hearing still hadn’t recovered, so he was late to realize something had exploded within the pile of rubble. Maybe a propane tank had been enveloped by it all.

When his hearing did recover, someone’s shouting voice belatedly reached him.

“Touma! Are you alright? You weren’t crushed by that debris, were you!? Please answer me!!”

He sat up. He gritted his teeth and forced himself.

He had to answer her.

“I’m…fine, Index. What about you!?”

“We’re fine too. We’re checking each other’s status with our communication spiritual items and phones.”

She was safe. Like she should be. But then why couldn’t he see her for himself?

After dragging himself along and peeking out past the half-destroyed concrete wall, Kamijou understood.

They were cut off. The main street was unrecognizable. Rubble was piled up higher than a five story building. That was more than a school building. They couldn’t climb that. And even approaching it could get them crushed by something like a landslide.

Kamijou was the only one on this side.

Which meant he was the only one who could pursue Great Demon Coronzon right away.

He felt another deep vertical tremor. LAShTAL(?) must have destroyed another skyscraper or large factory.

That thing’s chaotic rampage could threaten the lives that had just been saved. Kamijou clenched his right fist, but then he heard another voice.

Was that Misaka Mikoto?

“Go! Hurry! If whoever is free to go doesn’t stop that Coronzon person right now, things will only get worse, right? So go!!”

He wanted to stay.

Not just communicate by shouting past rubble and using phones. He wanted to see their faces to know they were safe. That perfectly normal thought grabbed at him like countless unseen hands and tugged him back.

Don’t do the right thing.

Give into the kindness and split your focus.

(I won’t…let you do that, Coronzon!!)

“Can you take care of that thing? Index! Misaka!!”

“Touma, LAShTAL is not Coronzon’s final trump card. She must have loads more. We’ll do what we can here, so you go stop her!!”

“I don’t get it myself, but listen to her. The fighting will never stop if you don’t defeat the source of it all, right? Then put a stop to this before any more of the city is destroyed!!”

He shook off his hesitation.

Coronzon tore people apart and obstructed their evolution.

There was only one way to defeat her: to trust those you could believe in without hesitation.

So Kamijou turned his back on the pile of rubble and took off running.

Even if he had to grit his teeth as he did so.

Something exploded in the distance. Several beams of light flashed out. Was that people using magic or esper powers to battle the giant blue shadow called LAShTAL? Their survival was not guaranteed and taking a single attack could mean their deaths. Even so, they were fighting so Kamijou could head to Coronzon and so they could protect Academy City and the wider world beyond its walls.

His trust was being repaid. This was what it meant to protect the bonds that tied people together.

===Part 19===

And Misaka Mikoto spoke quietly in a dusty enclosed space.

Was it even five meters across?

“Ha ha. I guess this is the end…”

“Short Hair. There are gaps all over the place, so we shouldn’t have to worry about air.”

“Finally some good news.”

But there were no gaps large enough for a person to crawl through.

“Why not at least let the kitty leave? There’s no reason to keep him here. I emit weak electromagnetic waves that animals don’t like, so it’s probably uncomfortable for him to be in here with me.”

“I’ve been trying, but Sphinx won’t go.”

The world shook. Small pieces of building materials poured down like sand.

If the pile of rubble collapsed for some reason, they would be crushed by tens of thousands of tons of concrete and killed instantly. Misaka Mikoto could control electricity and magnetism, but wielding that strength in a delicate situation like this would only hasten their deaths. Giant robots were powerful and cool, but no one would want to be so up close and personal with one of their joints that they were crushed by it. This was the same.

This was the truth of their earlier shouting.

They had not been calling out to the boy from the other side of the collapsed building. They had been been hit by the falling building. Misaka Mikoto’s magnetic control had stripped it of much of its force, but they and their shield had still been swallowed up by the rubble.

The #3’s power was great, but if she used it continuously over a long time, she could run out of stamina. Relying on magnetism for too long would be risky. So their best option was to stay put and wait for rescue. …Assuming rescue was even coming, of course.

Misaka Mikoto smiled a little.

“Well, it’s not like we could’ve told him we were trapped in the rubble.”

And Kamijou Touma couldn’t have accomplished anything had he stayed. He did seem to have some kind of mysterious power, but nothing she had seen led her to believe it would let him clear tens of thousands of tons of rubble on his own. And if he did try to tackle the rubble pile, it could collapse and crush him too.

Their top priority was Great Demon Coronzon.

That was all the more clear to her now that her life was at risk.

It was bad enough this was happening in Academy City. She couldn’t let the entire world turn to rubble like this.

“We’re counting on you. And I mean that.”

“Don’t worry. Touma can handle it.”

===Part 20===

“Pant, gasp…”

Great Demon Coronzon breathed heavily as she stood firm on the red snowy ground.

But the snow wasn’t the only source of red.

Crimson blood spilled from her mouth.

(This is the natural cost of forcing a major spell like that with no real preparation. I doubt I can use LAShTAL again.)

LAShTAL was powerful but would be defeated eventually. If that were enough to destroy all of humanity, she wouldn’t have relied on Adikalika.

But buying her some time was enough.

She couldn’t even stand up straight as she walked toward the thick city wall on unsteady legs.

(I…may not make it to the next world… the ways things are going.)

She wiped the blood from her mouth and thought without speaking aloud.

(But I will still stop this world from helplessly rotting away… Yes, yes. For the sake of that boy who said I was on the side of good and righteousness.)

She didn’t have Moina Mathers or LAShTAL anymore. Her win condition was escaping. Her own survival was what mattered. Each individual trump card wasn’t too important. It was using them together that mattered.

She just had to make it over.

If she could cross that wall, then the world’s doom was assured.

“…”

For just a moment, her thoughts turned to someone who wasn’t here.

She nearly came to a stop.

Hamazura Shiage.

…But she shook free of it with her will. He had said himself that she was ''on the side of good and righteousness''. He had asked if he had been wrong to bet on her.

She was a great demon.

If any kind feelings and warm emotions were ''unnaturally'' welling up with in her, someone else had to be interfering. No longer would she be god’s plaything. She had chosen to ''overdo'' her role and destroy the world. She would not allow any obstacles turning her aside from that goal.

She was not human. So she could leap over that tall wall in a single bound.

So she did so.

And she exploded.

“!?”

She lost her balance mid-jump, but she didn’t have time for surprise.

A platform the size of a domed stadium sat just outside the wall. Wasn’t that a spiritual item called the Tribikos? But wait. Who was it that used that?

She did not have time to think.

She had viewed it as a platform.

Because someone else had kicked off of it to rush toward her. His cane extended unnaturally. No, he was drawing a sword. The bare blade sliced through the air, accurately targeting her neck.

Several lights flashed out and explosive booms erupted out as well, but Coronzon managed to survive.

It was a close thing, though. It had taken everything she had to survive.

Aradia.

Good, Old Mary.

And H.T. Trismegistus.

…No, it wasn’t just them. Mut Thebes, 2nd Saga, Vidhatri even though she had been near death, and more. These Transcendents had gathered at Alice’s summons, lost faith in her, and scattered from Academy City, so why were they back in the city?

Vidhatri sounded a bit irritated as she spoke.

“I was one of the Killers when it came to Kamijou Touma, but a debt is a debt. I can return to business as usual after repaying all of my debts.”

“I was barely away and now Vidhatri has fallen too?”

Mut Thebes’s unnecessary comment began a minor argument among the Transcendents.

“(As usual, mama ends up doing all the work. The healer never does get a chance to rest.)”

Coronzon’s head was boiling with rage after being pushed back, falling on the inside of the wall, and finding herself bound to Academy City once more.

“Damn you… Damn all of you!!” she roared.

Something wasn’t right.

She was unsteady on her feet.

That explosion had caused more damage than she had thought.

Was that just what happened when Transcendents gathered? If only they hadn’t caught her when she was magically defenseless thanks to the recoil of using LAShTAL.

But even so, how had this sad result even happened?

Before Coronzon had regained control of her body, Aleister had used this exact same body to easily defeat Transcendents like Vidhatri. That meant the great demon did have the power to do so. So why wasn’t this going the way she expected? How could they look down on her like this!?

(Are you tripping me up again, Aleister!?)

“I thought you had despaired in this world!! I thought you cursed the god who refuses to save people!! Your motivations always began with wanting to protect some specific group. You must have seen the moment when their protections failed and they were lost! But you were weak and foolish, so you feared Alice’s tyranny and relied on the fantasy of CRC!!! So why would you cling to this world now? This world can be remade!! Destroy it and remake it and all that tragedy and misfortune will be eliminated!!!”

“The answer to that is simple,” replied Aradia.

Good, Old Mary continued with a calm expression.

“Mama and the others did not cast aside our identities and dress up as gods so we could protect the vague and formless framework of the world. We just have to destroy the world? …The world is no more than a tool to create happiness and the death of even one person we wish to protect is too many. Can’t you figure that out, you fool?”

“So what?”

The great demon was trembling.

Why couldn’t they understand something so simple? Her face twisted in rage.

“Be that as it may!! None of that will eliminate the unjust and unreasonable sides of this world. You must understand that. More and more of the people you want to protect are being lost ''regardless of anything I am doing''. Protecting this rotten world will not change the number of victims! You will only continue seeing those people die in your arms!!”

“That is none of your business.”

2nd Saga, the young woman with her origins in Norse mythology who took a different approach from the other Transcendents, sighed in exasperation.

H.T. Trismegistus spoke.

“Common sense says we Transcendents should think for ourselves to reach an answer. Fortunately, this world you consider so rotten has shown us some small reason for hope.”

===Part 21===

A bit earlier, Alice Anotherbible left the others searching for Coronzon and ran to a completely different place.

She didn’t think the current plan would work.

Kamijou and the others had done nothing wrong, but it wasn’t enough. And battles were not won by the purity of one’s intentions. Even with the purest of intentions, you would still lose if you failed to meet the necessary conditions.

She hadn’t wanted that to happen.

No matter what.

So Alice had detected something other than Coronzon.

Someone closer to her who she could search out at any time.

“Everyone, the girl needs something!!”

The small girl yelled up toward the heavens.

She wasn’t using her physical voice, of course. Anyone with the proper qualifications could sense this voice even if they were on the other side of the planet. The magic power placed behind her voice ensured it.

Even as she yelled, Alice Anotherbible remembered.

She had been so selfish.

She had only been able to communicate with the regular Transcendents by terrifying them.

When Kamijou Touma had been injured at the Bridge Builders Cabal’s consulate, she had attacked H.T. Trismegistus and Good, Old Mary.

Maybe it was wrong to try and get their help now.

But she had no one else to rely on.

Alice wouldn’t blame them if they abandoned her.

Still, it felt wrong for him – for Kamijou Touma – to be harmed by a punishment meant for her.

“The girl can destroy! The girl can kill! The girl can doom! Nothing in this world can stand up to the girl!! …But the girl’s power can’t protect her teacher. So the girl is useless here. She needs your help!”

They were listening of course.

The Transcendents knew.

They were right outside the city wall. Maybe among the trees of a forest, maybe at the top of a metal tower, maybe seated on the bench of a rusty old bus stop.

They had lost faith in Alice Anotherbible, but a Transcendent was a magician who would save anyone who met the salvation conditions they had decided on. Despite saying they were leaving Academy City, not a one of them had truly abandoned it. They didn’t care what someone’s affiliations were. Whether enemy or ally, as long as someone matched the salvation conditions, they would protect them even at the cost of their own life. So…as long as that applied to even a single person among Academy City’s 2.3 million, they would never abandon the city and run away.

So they were present for that moment.

That tyrant Alice had remembered basic human gratitude. That acted as powerful reins for the girl herself. And as long as she could control her own emotions, perhaps she would be different from CRC who had been similarly capricious and playful.

It was by no means a small change.

If the old Alice didn’t have enough help, she might have multiplied her extraordinary self. That might sound ridiculous, but with her it was possible.

But now she knew that wouldn’t work.

She needed the diversity of people who had abilities she lacked.

Alice was not gathering up the people she needed.

She was trying to become someone the people around her needed.

“The girl will do anything. The girl will do anything you ask and she doesn’t care how you use her power. You can tell her to die if you want!! …So! So don’t let Coronzon leave the city!!”

And the Transcendents knew this would not be a wasted effort. A boy had stopped Alice’s rampage even though it cost him his life. The little tyrant had taken that fact to heart. The Transcendents had lost faith in Alice because she had changed, been distorted, become weak. Or so they thought, but now they were willing to consider a different possibility.

Was Kamijou Touma the key? Not even the Transcendents who had been observing Alice for so long could predict what she would do now.

Could they really say Alice Anotherbible wasn’t growing?

Now that they had seen her pouring everything into bowing her head to someone else…

Was she not worth their respect?

And if Alice’s change was a positive form of growth, could they maybe still have some hope? The idea of saving the world through CRC, Christian Rosencreutz, was dead. He had not been the saint they expected. …But could they maybe find some other way of saving the world with Alice?

Alice Anotherbible raised her tear-streaked face.

“The girl is sorry, everyone… But can the girl ask for just one more thing?”

Was this the leader the Transcendents should serve?

No, she wasn’t.

They listened to her words as an equal companion.

“Join the girl in the fight to save her teacher and the world!!!”

No words were necessary.

They used their actions to answer her.

===Part 22===

LAShTAL’s rampage continued.

The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force were all fighting.

Kamijou ran toward District 17. He hated that he didn’t know how to drive. Especially when grownups did it without even thinking about it. Of course, the red snow was frozen solid across the entire area. High schoolers were allowed to get a motorcycle license, but even that wouldn’t have done him much good here. Still.

While those meaningless thoughts were spinning through his mind, a stabbing headache crashed into his brain.

An invisible dizziness made the world spin around him.

This wasn’t the first time.

(Why…now?)

Kamijou Touma groaned.

And staggered to the side.

“Gh…”

A lengthy fight tonight had been suicide from the beginning.

He had passed his body’s limits way back when he fought Coronzon to stop Adikalika. He had lost there. It was just that it hadn’t ended there, so he had been forced to keep going in a sudden death round. How could he expect to save anyone like this?

(Just a bit more…a bit longer… Only five or ten minutes! Index and Misaka believed in me. They’re all fighting. Because they believe I can do this!! So can’t you keep going just a little longer, my body!?)

But he did not collapse.

Because as he started to fall forward, someone caught him.

He heard a voice.

The strange girl’s voice sounded simultaneously childlike and grown up.

“You really are…”

But most of all, it sounded sad.

“…allllllways like this, aren’t you? It’s like you never give your wounds a chance to heal or like you spend more days hurt than healthy.”

Who was she?

He didn’t ''think'' he knew her.

The girl wore mourning clothes and her long honey-blonde hair blew in the night breeze.

Maybe he had met her before, but he had no memory of her. Who could she be? He couldn’t find a single answer there.

“Who…?”

“I could tell you my name a billion times over and you would never remember. But maybe my esper name could stick in your mind: Mental Out.”

Academy City’s #5 Level 5.

The greatest psychological power: Mental Out.

He had heard of that. ''But only as a rumor.

If that was who she was…

If that legend was now standing before him in physical form…

His mouth felt awfully dry. No, was it just sticky with drying blood?

Kamijou somehow got the word out.

“Then…”

“Interested in forgetting it all and leaving the fight?”

“…Please. I don’t care if it’s only a trick, just do something about the pain. If you do, then I can face Coronzon…”

“Now I really do want to make you forget it all and leave the fight.”

She sounded exasperated.

And she glared at him fairly seriously.

But the honey-blonde girl hugged his head to her chest and smiled in a way that seemed to say ''she hadn’t expected anything else.

The conversation smoothly continued.

She seemed to be pouting her lips like a small child. And what was with the TV remote?

“Mental Out is a psychological power. It can erase the pain, but it has no healing ability for the physical wounds. It’s more like your body continues to send out all the intense pain signals, but your mind ability can’t sense them. Your organs will still be putting out different hormones in response to your wounds, so they could get worn out and damaged. Do you still want to do this?”

“Yes…”

“No touching your head after this, okay?”

“''Thanks''.”

Time froze for a moment.

The look on the honey-blonde girl’s face said she had never in her long life expected to hear that word directed at her.

“Saving the world isn’t my style.”

The boy wasn’t looking at her face.

His eyes were directed straight ahead, toward the goal he had already chosen.

“This is the last time the city you call home will be destroyed like this. I don’t know what it is you care for, but if it’s in this city, then it’s safe. I’ll protect all of it.”

“You dummy.”

Kamijou Touma took off running.

Without looking back.

So he could settle things with Great Demon Coronzon once and for all.

===Part 23===

He was in District 17.

It was the westernmost district in Academy City. It was an industrial area and the smokestacks of its wide variety of unmanned factories continued to release smoke that had been thoroughly scrubbed of pollutants making it “cleaner than the moldy and dusty air conditioner in your home”.

The district also bordered the city wall.

Cross that wall and you would find a vast forest and mountains. The green roof covered an area of more than ten kilometers across, so satellites and drones would have no way of finding a fugitive there.

Kamijou Touma knew his body was in bad shape.

But he was pretty sure the same applied to that unsteady figure over there.

He had found her.

There she was.

A lot had happened during this one night. Most likely, the efforts and actions of far more people than he was aware had been intertwined. Complexly so.

But that was why he had arrived in time for this final moment.

She was still inside the wall.

“Coronzon…”

When he called that name, the figure shook. She could hear him. He had made it close enough for his physical voice to reach her. If he didn’t stop her now, he was sure she would escape into the outside world.

He wouldn’t let that happen.

Kamijou Touma called out again.

“Great Demon Coronzon.”

Slowly.

She turned around.

Her body in the beige habit was tilted at an angle.

He could smell blood… Her long, long blonde hair was a mess. She held her head with a hand and forcibly kept herself upright as she glared at him.

With thoroughly bloodshot eyes.

“Kami…jou…Touma.”

That wasn’t anger?

Something was off. Coronzon had so arrogantly rebelled against heaven, yet now she was shrinking down as if afraid of something. She looked like a fugitive at her wit’s end.

“Do you really think you can defeat me? Have you even once found victory against me by sticking to your own will through to the end!? You may think you have me cornered, but it is you who will be crushed. Lament your misfortune for meeting me here, Kamijou Touma!!”

That was probably true.

But Kamijou Touma wasn’t looking at Great Demon Coronzon.

He was focused on something else.

No matter how he tried to disguise it with his words, defeating Coronzon would also mean attacking Aleister.

Aleister had failed to restrain her. He wouldn’t last.

Then what did he hope for? To defeat the being who had once torn apart his family? For the living Baby Lilith to remain in this world?

Whatever the case, idealism would only eradicate that human’s hopes. The power to destroy illusions could not save him.

So Kamijou had to think. What could he do here?

The words spilled from his mouth.

“Hey, can I rely on you here?”

He had to stop Coronzon.

He could not let this opportunity escape.

So.

“Let’s win this together, Aleister.”

There was no obvious physical voice.

But a much too unnatural heartbeat did ring out into the world.

Kamijou took that as an answering voice.

Saying, “Attack me along with her.”

Coronzon doubled over in pain.

She was probably coughing blood into the hand over her mouth.

…They didn’t need to exchange many words. It hadn’t really been all that long since they first met in person, but Kamijou sensed a bond beyond the need for words with Aleister.

That was a bond that Coronzon had failed to tear apart.

And it was a bond that Kamijou would soon be severing himself.

No matter what excuses he made.

===Part 24===

The boy clenched his right fist harder and harder.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter3

2025-12-29T20:06:00Z

Massify: /* Part 15 */

==Chapter 3: Which Side is Winning? – Scoreboard.==

===Part 1===

Around when she abandoned the stolen car, her memory cut out again.

“…”

The next thing she knew, Coronzon was leaning against a cold building wall.

Something had happened.

Aleister had done something.

She had traveled south from District 20 to reach District 9, which contained art schools. The Anglicans were mostly in the north of the city, so she abandoned the stolen car and had planned to take another car (also stolen of course) to reach the southern wall.

But she couldn’t trust in that plan anymore.

She ran her hands along her habit. Pathetically driven by fear and anxiety. She pulled an object smaller than her palm from a fairly unspeakable part of her clothing,.

She couldn’t believe it.

(A wireless game controller? That means it has its own ID and can produce its own signal to provide its location.)

“Y-you would forestall a great demon with this…this piece of junk that doesn’t even cost 5000 yen!? Are you kidding me, Aleisterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!?”

A shape squirmed. And produced a short scream.

No, was that a man forcing himself onto a girl?

An outfit that looked on the border between at-home clothing and sleepwear had been badly torn and the man was reaching for her underwear.

''Perfect.

That was wandering Coronzon’s honest assessment.

It was happening in a small boxlike building.

An Anti-Skill station. A small one. Around the size of what would be called a police box in the outside world.

This was happening there of all places. That public structure should have had someone working in it 365 days a year to keep the city’s peace, but today it had been empty.

With his hands pinning the girl to the floor, the man wasn’t sure how to undo his belt buckle. He raised his head with an odd expression that stuck out his chin more than necessary.

“Huh? Who the hell’re you?”

She didn’t even respond.

Great Demon Coronzon stabbed her hand right through the center of the scum’s gut.

The odor of blood splattered out.

“Bhee, ee, eeeeeeeeeek!!”

He audibly slammed into the shelves behind him and objects came crashing down.

The man of no consequence scrambled out of the Anti-Skill station, his arms flailing wildly.

With his abdominal cavity punctured and a game controller directly stuck inside. Surgical hygiene? Why should Coronzon care about something like that? His bacteria-covered organs might shut down before long, but he would act as a nice decoy as long as he scrambled around and fled before that happened.

In something of a new habit, she held a hand to her woozy head and belatedly realized her hand was stained by that scum’s unclean blood. Everything seemed to piss her off right now. Nothing was going her way.

She lashed out vocally.

“Aleister!! That death is on your hands for that trick you pulled. Are you satisfied? It’s absurd for you to try and save the world. Hee hee, ha ha ha. You’re the one who made the world this way! So give up! You already know everything you do only comes back to bite you!!”

Even so, how many times was it now?

…Or was it really Aleister’s will sending these signs to Kamijou Touma and the other pursuers? Did he really have enough strength to hijack Great Demon Coronzon’s body this many times?

Was it possible she was sending these hints to her pursuers herself? She shuddered. No, it wasn’t possible. How would that benefit her? But could it be a self-destructive desire like the urge people felt to activate a fire alarm when they saw one?

Coronzon clenched her hair tight in her hand. An unpleasant snapping sound followed.

She couldn’t get a read on her own mind anymore.

“U-um.”

It was then that someone nervously spoke to her. The girl seated on the floor looked up at her, completely forgetting to fix her clothing.

With admiration in her eyes.

“…Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Um, thank you…f-for saving me.”

Great Demon Coronzon doubled over and held a hand to her mouth.

She retched.

She couldn’t stand any more of this. Before the girl could say anything more, Coronzon got her unsteady body moving, rushing out of the station. The great demon ''had fled''.

She walked a few meters and then stumbled. She fell down onto the red snow frozen on the ground.

She lay in the snow as thoughts spiraled through her head.

This was wasn’t right.

What was going on?

She had just jabbed her hand right into the gut of an ordinary man who had no connection to magic. With enough force to take his life. And only so she could embed the signal to her location inside his body. There may have been another way, but she had chosen that one so she could enjoy it.

It had been for her. It had been a cruel act of violence befitting a demon.

…But had she ended up saving a life?

Impossible.

She had been acting of her own free will.

She was certain of that.

And yet the result had so completely betrayed her expectations?

Her bad deed had been remade into a good one.

It was the ultimate outrage.

(Was it an act of…)

The being known as a great demon hatefully clenched her back teeth.

Sweat poured from her brow. She had a terrible feeling about this.

A wireless game controller? Those weren’t too unusual, but ''where had Aleister gotten one in the few seconds he had taken control''? She doubted he had forced his way into an electronics shop with its metal shutter down for the night. He wouldn’t have had time to search through the game shelf in a discount shop. Did that mean someone had ''just so happened'' to drop one on the side of the street? …Had it been ''a complete coincidence'' as if some greater will were at work?

(Did an act of god transform what I did? Is a good influence distorting my actions? It’s too late, world. Do you really expect me to go along with that? I will take things! ''Too far''!! And destroy the world of my own free will!!!)

===Part 2===

An alarm blared in the District 10 prison.

Telling of an oddity in the same prison.

Someone had already broken in.

“Is it Oniyama!?”

“No, he would have used his authority as a Director to use the proper channels for a visit. This is someone else, so be careful!”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 left the cell while listening to the female secretary speaking over the device on the wall.

The enemy was close.

As close as the corridor leading to the solitary confinement cell hidden deep inside the prison. The silver-haired, dark-skinned woman wore a patchwork of rags that did not look at all hygienic. She was alone. She was even barefoot. An ordinary jailer might tilted their head wondering how she had made it inside such a strictly guarded prison.

But Qliphah Puzzle 545 understood magic too well for that.

She accurately grasped the threat standing before her.

“One of the Anglican’s magicians specialized in anti-magician combat!?”

“I am Necromancer Isabella Theism. You should already know that name after I threatened the city’s leader.”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was dumbfounded. This prison’s security had already proven itself unable to keep out uninvited guests and now someone like this had made it in?

“The entrance back there was covered by a shocking number of sensors, but they’re only designed to detect living intruders. I recommend tweaking it to detect and instantly attack corpses as well. It’s not that hard to disguise yourself as one.”

“Why are you here? The Anglicans know all about the battle against Coronzon, so you should know my master is in no condition to talk.”

“So I’ve heard. Although I wasn’t around for that part since I was knocked out while dealing with ''some other business''. Regardless, if what I have heard is true, we really are in a grave situation. Right now, I think it is most necessary that we defeat Great Demon Coronzon and bring stability back to the world.”

“Then go tell that to Coronzon, not my master!”

“Oh, do you know where she is?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 fell silent.

Isabella breathed a sigh thick with exasperation.

“That is the real question. What I need right now is information and a few coincidental hints just aren’t enough. A vast network has been laid out across Academy City: security cameras, security robots, drones, satellites, and so on. Tracking her requires bringing the city’s data infrastructure back to full functionality. And it if is necessary to settle things with Coronzon…as much as I hate to, what choice do I have but to save your new Board Chairman? I can’t have him go on sleeping with the Master Key clutched in his hand.”

“…”

Isabella Theism seemed unbothered by Qliphah Puzzle 545’s skeptical look.

The look on her face said she had expected it.

Not long before, she had been in charge of the group physically taking control of Academy City and attempting to use the city as a disposable tool to defeat Coronzon. It would be weird if Qliphah Puzzle 545 did trust her right away.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 glared at her and asked a question.

“Your clothes reek of death. You’re that necromancer who was arguing with my master over the phone… Can a death magician really heal a living human?”

Isabella Theism grabbed her rags in her hands and lifted them upwards. All at once.

She was wearing underwear below, but it was very thin and small.

Two healthy brown objects jiggled there.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was a girl, but she still flinched back at being shown this all of a sudden.

“Uh?”

“Take a close look. My ribs and sternum were badly broken and one sharp bone fragment pierced my right lung. Can you see any of that? What’s your assessment?”

“You have all your ribs and there’s no bruising from internal bleeding. It’s all been healed?”

When the demon girl approached and took a close look, Isabella averted her eyes awkwardly.

Apparently this was embarrassing for her after all.

“Loko Atisou. There is more to Voodoo than making zombies. It is a polytheistic religion with all sorts of gods, so it of course has a god of medicine.”

Just like any other religion, Voodoo also functioned to govern and help the local people. The violent and combative side was only meant for emergencies when the group as a whole was attacked by an external enemy or a rebellion. That wasn’t all it could do.

It had not been invented for use in horror movies, so there was a benevolent Voodoo that listened to the people’s worries and healed their injuries and disease.

Healing was a challenging territory for Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 who specialized in the Qliphoth that contained all that was impure and immoral. She would have to start with a curse or an attack and then build it in reverse. Needing to include that conversion in every single step meant it would be much faster to borrow the power of a god who directly dealt in medicine.

Isabella concluded her valid evidence had been accepted, so she lowered her rags.

“I am willing to view you as a magic side doctor. And I understand how this aligns with your interests. So where will you start, witch doctor?”

“Well, I do have a few things on hand. Zombie powder, for example.”

“Z-zombie powder!?”

Despite being a demon, Qliphah Puzzle 545’s eyes bulged at the mere mention of that name. But Isabella Theism sighed in exasperation.

“Voodoo zombie powder…well, real Voodoo prefers to use French more than English. But anyway, it isn’t a toxin sprinkled on a rotting corpse to control it.”

She seemed to be implying that she did not use real Voodoo.

No matter how much she knew about it, she was only illicitly using their excellent techniques.

“It is a punishment in which a living human is put in a state of living death where they cannot think or make any decisions and will do whatever they are told. So you can think of it as a medicine used ''to prevent someone from dying'' until their punishment is complete.”

“You mean like how the highly toxic digitalis can also be used as a cardiac stimulant?”

“And in the other direction, salt and sugar can kill despite being necessary nutrients for life. The materials themselves are neither good nor bad. It all comes down to how they are used.”

===Part 3===

An ambulance echoed through one corner of District 20.

Kamijou glanced in its direction.

Takitsubo Rikou…couldn’t go any further. With the frozen snow, the dead traffic signals, and the more concrete threat of the scouts, he was thankful the ambulance had actually come when they called.

A large dog hopped into the same ambulance.

“I will go with her.”

“Hey, are you sure about that?”

“I am not much help without the A.A.A. And Coronzon will be cautious of my wonderful nose now that I have demonstrated its use. There is nothing left for me to do on the front line. So I wish to contribute by removing this worry from your hearts, allowing you to move more freely. Listen to me. Do not worry about this girl any longer.”

Kamijou and the others could only watch the ambulance go.

There was still more they had to do.

But…

“We have a report regarding the entertainment location signal presumed to be a sign from Aleister. Unfortunately, it was found embedded in some man. So back to square one.”

“Hey, that doesn’t tell us nothing. If we know what path the dying decoy took, we should be able to figure out where he contacted Coronzon.”

This was all they had to discuss on their way to a corner of District 9.

It was now 3 AM.

This was where they had lost Coronzon’s trail.

Kamijou Touma sighed softly while listening to Kanzaki and Othinus’s discussion.

All they could do was wait.

Nothing pained Kamijou more than having nothing to do when he knew Coronzon was even now on the move. It was all over once she crossed the wall somewhere and left the city. Yet the city was too large to search at random.

He had decided he wouldn’t just wait around, but the physical reality wasn’t cooperating with his personal wishes.

Index, Kanzaki, and some others were apparently running a magical search, but that still wasn’t enough to track down Coronzon.

They needed to go after her from the science side as well, but Mikoto alone wasn’t enough.

Simply tracking down the fugitive was hard enough on its own, but Kamijou couldn’t shake the feeling that Coronzon was still hiding something. Some powerful move or sudden twist he never would have considered. Something they couldn’t even imagine while continuing to wander through this labyrinth, but also something that would again overturn everything if they failed to prevent it.

Kamijou Touma’s thoughts turned to a certain individual.

Perhaps it was all reliant on ''him'' recovering…

===Part 4===

In the prison’s solitary confinement cell, Board Chairman Accelerator was lying in bed unconscious and hooked up to medical equipment. Even Academy City’s #1 would be killed by an attack now. It was unusual for Qliphah Puzzle 545 to bring an outsider this deep into the prison at all.

That outsider was Necromancer Isabella Theism.

The current situation required going beyond the usual.

“How exactly are you going to heal my master?”

“Legba Atibon.”

That was all she said.

It was the name of a gatekeeper god who managed all ceremonies. So no matter which god’s power the ceremony was meant to borrow, you first sought the gatekeeper god’s permission. And because he appeared in all ceremonies, there were no specific dates or locations that boosted his power.

Something emerged from Accelerator’s arm.

It was a transparent shard only a few millimeters long. A piece of a broken LCD monitor.

More followed. Like floating leaves following a river’s current, more and more shards silently slid out of his body.

Not a single drop of blood was shed and no apparent wounds were made.

Even though all these shards were located in extremely dangerous position near major arteries and organs.

“Y-you’re already done!?”

“They did not belong and the human body has several functions meant to automatically eliminate such things. There was no need for dangerous surgery. I only had to make some adjustments to those functions.”

Of course, thoughtlessly boosting them would have only triggered rejection, where his own immune system attacked his body. Only a professional necromancer with sufficient training could pull this off.

Isabella sighed softly.

“You know glass shards aren’t enough to keep a human mind locked away indefinitely, don’t you? Another task is even more important.”

“Breaking the curse.”

“Voodoo can handle that easily. A zombie is in a controllable state of living death by stopping the heart with a poison and then restarting it with an antidote. Antidotes and curse breaking are built into the ceremony.”

As she spoke, Isabella stuck her fingers into the seams of her rags. She pulled out various vials. They contained powders, liquids, dried leaves and roots, living insects…and more.

The demon girl was accustomed to dirty and impure things, but she still recoiled.

“Ew. Did I just wander into a museum of the bizarre?”

“Think of it like a 72-color colored pencil set and get excited. Even if you can theoretically represent everything in the world with the three primary colors, the actual task isn’t so simple, is it?”

The brown woman got to work. Swiftly and accurately.

It took more than a single name this time.

Meaning even she didn’t see this as a simple task.

“Voodoo is flexible enough to let you include any supernatural being as a weapon. Qliphah Puzzle. And 545 was it? I will include you in my system.”

“I will do anything for my master, but will including me change anything?”

“Just as salt and sugar can kill and just as toxic digitalis can be a cardiac stimulant, nothing in this world is a pure poison. There is simply a way of using it as a poison. And also a way of using it is a medicine.”

Voodoo did not think of gods as good or evil, but it was common for the same god to be included on both sides. That meant the gods did not determine their stance by the human conception of good and evil. Instead of the many gods being divided onto the opposite sides of good and evil, the many gods could freely move between the two sides depending on the time and situation. That was what made them all-purpose, but it also made them tricky to use. It required a priest with specialized training to handle them.

Thus, the necromancer did not avoid this being known as an artificial demon.

She simply viewed her as a nonhuman being with supernatural power.

If Isabella determined how much of her to use, she could be used to save a life.

“Here goes.”

“Okay!”

“Through Gatekeeper God Legba Atibon, I contact Medicine God Loko Atisou, and link the ceremony terminal to Messenger God Brav Gede.”

Voodoo practitioners did not think of using magic on their own.

They borrowed a compatible god’s power to achieve a miracle.

In fact, they would even borrow another god’s power to send their request to the god they wanted.

In Voodoo, if a miracle was beyond human capability, then a human voice could not even reach the necessary god on its own. They required a separate link to get through.

Or to put it another way…

They relied on one god to call on another. So by going through Artificial Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 (who did not exist in the Voodoo system), Isabella should be able to make a request beyond what could normally be asked of the Voodoo gods.

It was an impossible shortcut.

Or an illicit backdoor.

“Through the gathering of Qliphah, I beseech Baron Samdi. Divide this soul into five territories and reveal the part that has been intentionally placed in an endless spiral. Human individuality is managed by the Ti Bon Ange. Reveal to me the wicked power severing its proper link. Just like the zombie powder, it takes the form of a toxin.”

Something like bluish-white sparks burst forth.

That was not part of the ceremony.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 thought it might be a trap left by Coronzon, but it wasn’t.

It was Academy City’s #1.

He was no normal human. Had his body itself reacted in some way?

“The lime poison is an unstoppable assassination spell for it produces a different toxin each time the same ceremony is performed. This in turn proves that any and all toxins can be cured as long as their ingredients are known. I have already seen with my own eyes the wicked toxin unjustly robbing him of his consciousness! With its identity seen, it must be curable!!”

The smell of blood hung in the air.

Isabella Theism had a shallow cut on her right cheek.

The bluish-white sparks were harmful.

But she did not stop the ceremony.

Coronzon could not be allowed to escape Academy City. But they had nowhere near enough data to track her down. They needed the new Board Chairman and the Master Key he held. Academy City’s functions had to be fully recovered before they could catch up to Coronzon.

A single necromancer’s survival wasn’t that big a deal here.

But if the entire world were destroyed, then everything Isabella Theism wanted to protect would die with it.

She couldn’t allow that.

No matter what.

“Answer me, Medicine God Loko Atisou. The vessel for your holy power and the ingredients for the medicine are gathered here!! …No external incision is needed. The conditions to save you were within your body from the start. Thus, I call upon you, separated mind, reactive yourself from within your body and break free of your cage!!”

Light surged out.

Isabella Theism lurched back.

The necromancer was struck by a destructive whip of something much like electricity. Unable to bear the blow, she toppled backwards. Several pieces of medical equipment screamed out with their electronic tones.

And nothing happened.

There was no change on the bed. The smell of blood came from Isabella. Sleeping Accelerator did not change at all, for better or for worse.

The Level 5 said to be Academy City’s strongest did not wake.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had to accept it.

They had failed.

It was so dark, shadowy, heavy.

She felt crushed by the air itself when a voice reached her ears.

Isabella Theism was whispering.

“Kh… What…now?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t have time to ask what she meant by that.

The necromancer continued.

“In the worst case, I could control him as a corpse to have him use the Master Key.”

“But…”

“Zombie powder does not control rotting corpses. It prevents someone from dying to keep them in a state of living death. But by altering that interpretation, it would be possible. It can be used just like in a horror movie.”

“No! That isn’t the same as saving him!!”

Her opposition was only natural.

''Assuming'' saving Board Chairman Accelerator was your goal.

“But aren’t we here to use the Master Key to restore Academy City and track down Coronzon!?”

Their goals were defined at slightly different points.

Isabella Theism wanted Accelerator’s help to protect the world from Coronzon. The #1’s recovery was only a means to that end.

Explaining that up front showed that Isabella was more reasonable than most. She could have lied to Qliphah Puzzle 545 and then gone ahead and used the zombie powder ''as a poison''.

“You need to choose. No one has sufficient nerve to make a ghastly choice. And you are the only point of contact I have left!” shouted Isabella Theism.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 would never let her do that. But how would her beloved Board Chairman have responded? The #1 would want to protect Academy City and the wider world beyond its walls.

(Master…)

===Part 5===

Kamijou and the others were in District 9.

They still hadn’t moved from there and were stuck waiting.

Mikoto and Index were frequently conversing. Probably a sign of their impatience.

“The nearby districts that border the city wall would be the most obvious option, but this is complicated by the fact that Coronzon has no restriction preventing her from returning to a district she’s already been to.”

“That means we can’t treat this like a game of concentration. So no matter how far we pursue her, we never eliminate any of the options.”

Wings audibly flapped at the air. Kamijou had seen the Bologna Succubus licking her wings and teasing them with her fingertips before, but they must have recovered enough for her to fly. Neither one said anything, but she took off into the night sky with Blodeuwedd the Bouquet hanging on again.

Kamijou spotted Itsuwa of the Amakusas.

“How’s Tsushima? What happened to her?”

“We can use recovery magic, so as long as someone isn’t actually dead, we can heal them even if it takes some fairly forceful methods. And it helped that you suppressed her bleeding until we arrived.”

At that point, Itsuwa’s tone dropped worriedly.

“You can’t push yourself too hard either. I heard you passed out earlier.”

“Sorry… I should’ve yelled before I passed out.”

“No! That isn’t what I meant…”

But he had let Coronzon get away.

Either way, he couldn’t fight while applying pressure to Tsushima’s neck wound. And could he have fought her on his own regardless? He really didn’t see any way he could have won there. But he could have at least informed someone of the threat. There must have been a way. Even if he was rapidly losing consciousness, he could have triggered his phone’s alarm or the camera flash. There had to have been something.

“Fool. Break yourself out of that meaningless negative spiral. Only you finds it ''pleasant''.”

The wicked woman could be harsh at times like this. Refreshingly so.

There was no way he could have come up with a clever idea when he was passing out, his brain was growing dull, and his thoughts were fading fast. He knew that.

(Still…)

It was easy enough to talk of battling Coronzon and settling things with her, but that also meant battling Aleister who shared her body.

…What did he really think about that?

Aleister was desperately struggling within Coronzon to provide them with even the smallest hint. Was Kamijou prepared to fight that human, win…and say goodbye?

If he couldn’t do it, humanity was doomed.

The conditions placed on the opposite end of the scales could not have been simpler or more solid.

Still.

Kamijou’s thoughts cut off there.

He looked up. Agnese, Lucia, and that group were off in a corner whispering among themselves.

“?”

===Part 6===

In the same district, not far from Kamijou and the others, stooped Angelene was waving her hands anxiously.

“Ehhhh!? Saint Georgios’s Fire? Is the Vatican really trying to defeat Coronzon!? A-are you sure they aren’t just using this as an excuse to destroy Academy City?”

“Some of them might think it would be safer to destroy it before it’s officially absorbed into the Anglican Church.”

Lucia appeared to be doing her best to remain calm.

The conversation wasn’t just between Agnese, Lucia, and Angelene. More than 250 nuns would be listening in through the Barbara Branch communication spiritual item.

Agnese had her doubts about that too. How far into the future were the Roman Catholic cardinals looking? Even though none of it would matter if the world were destroyed tomorrow.

The Former Agnese Force had already been told to evacuate.

They were to abandon Academy City and the Anglicans and escape the city with only the Roman Catholics among them. They had been given a few different conditions for activating Saint Georgios’s Fire, but it all boiled down to one thing: the cardinals would use that large-scale spell no matter what happened. The only difference was if it happened sooner or later.

The branch between launching it or not had already passed.

Being stubborn here was fine, but anyone who remained would die.

With zero exceptions.

Lucia looked to Agnese. She may have been peering into her eyes.

“This force is under your command, Sister Agnese. What will we do?”

“I do not have the right to order you all to die.” Agnese smiled bitterly as she spoke to them all. “You are not obligated or bound to stay. From here on, this is all voluntary. If you choose to leave Academy City, you don’t need your Barbara Branch. The Anglicans are experts at combating human magic. They might be able to track your location using it, so abandon it and escape in complete silence.”

“Wh-what can we accomplish by staying?”

“Protect Academy City from Saint Georgios’s Fire of course,” replied Agnese, her voice low.

That human-targeted attack wouldn’t work against inhuman Coronzon. So stopping the spell that would cause asphyxiation and ruptured organs would not affect the battle against Coronzon.

“Think of it like the neck of an hourglass. Saint Georgios’s Fire is large-scale magic that gathers power from the two billion Catholics across the globe without their knowledge and allows the cardinals in the Vatican to control it. Once gathered together, the attack travels through the ley lines to reach enemy territory and scatters back into two billion attacks after emerging from the ground. Then it causes enough damage to destroy a city.”

A city. Was that at least better than Adikalika that would have affected the entire Italian Peninsula? Agnese smiled a little. So they were retaliating with a smaller attack. The Vatican’s cardinals really had found a way to lower the psychological hurdle as far as possible.

“T-two billion. Th-th-then I don’t see what we can possibly do!”

“''That means it must be a long-range spell.'' In fact, it must travel all the way around the earth. Have you forgotten how Index stopped Adikalika? There must be any number of options: diverting its aim, cutting off the flow of the ley lines before it arrives here, or even preventing the two billion powers from gathering at the Vatican.”

Her argument had to be correct.

But she understood full well that this was wishful thinking.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been sweating so heavily in this cold weather.

(Even if the theory is solid, we’re talking about power from two billion people… Can we really stand up to that sheer force of quantity? That will likely be the greatest obstacle.)

There was no guaranteed method. If they stayed too long, they would lose the lives they could have saved.

They had to build it all up starting now. They had nothing at the moment to tell them it would be alright.

So Agnese Sanctis could not demand her companions join her in this.

In the worst case, she would have to stand up to the two billion all on her own.

And…

“I volunteer.”

That was Lucia.

She used to be so fastidious she would rage when so much as touched by a non-Catholic, but now she was the first to raise her hand and volunteer to fight to protect Academy City.

“What? The Roman Catholic Church is the largest sect in the world, so we must consider the world as a whole. Of course I will reach out a helping hand when lives are at risk. I couldn’t call myself a Catholic if I wouldn’t.”

She wasn’t alone.

Angelene was trembling, but she too chose to raise her hand. Even if only a little.

“U-umm. I volunteer. I mean, if we ran away now, then the Anglicans ''and'' the Catholics would be after us. So I want to at least keep a place for us with one of them. Our home is the women’s dorm in London and, if we want to return there with a clear conscience, we have to save Academy City!”

More and more voices came over the Barbara’s Branch communication spiritual item.

It only provided audio, but Agnese could easily imagine them leaning forward in defiance.

“Sister Apollonia. I volunteer too.”

“Sister Paula. I’ll volunteer if there are any tickets left.”

“Sister Agata. I-I volunteer!”

…This was who they were.

They hadn’t started out this way, of course. They hadn’t forgotten the brutal violence they subjected Orsola Aquinas and Kamijou Touma to. But Agnese and these more than 250 nuns had grown enough to say this during such a crisis.

After seeing another way to live. After being accepted with a smile after everything they had done.

It must have taken trust to do that, so they couldn’t turn their backs on that trust.

Did this mean they all felt that way?

Lucia pushed the conversation onward.

“Sister Agnese. We haven’t heard your answer yet. What will you do?”

Agnese Sanctis raised her head.

She stared straight ahead and raised her voice to a roar.

“I volunteer!! …Now that you’ve chosen this for yourself, you had better be ready. I said I don’t have the right to order you all to die. So no matter how bad this gets, I will not let you take the easy way out and choose an emotional death. Cry and wail all you like, I will bring every last one of you back alive even if it means crawling through hell on earth!!”

===Part 7===

Dion Fortune.

Moina Mathers.

Their fight in District 7 had passed the bounds of human ability. They had simply been fighting too long. No human could run a full marathon at the speed of a 50-meter dash. But a battle on that level had been going on for hours now. A Saint who could break the sound barrier in an instant and then instantly run out of gas would have died well before this. This was only possible for a magician created using a tarot deck as a grimoire.

That was the strength of someone who could absorb massive power from the ley lines and wield that instead of having to refine magic power from their own life force.

(I certainly don’t want to be killed right away, but this kind of endless quagmire isn’t fun either.)

One reason for the stalemate was Moina Mathers’s spiritual item.

Her tattva cards were certainly powerful, but using the visual stimuli of the bright colors drawn on the cards to guide her mind created a weakness as well. Visual stimuli. …That meant a third party could peek at the card and know the element of the next attack.

“Responding after seeing the card always puts me one step behind, though. But if I could predict what was coming next before you drew the card, I would be a step ahead and beat you.”

“…”

“But I’ll have gathered all the data I need soon. You shouldn’t have been throwing those tattva cards around like that. It’s like the scorebook written up by the cute manager of the baseball team. You’ve thrown too many pitches. How many until it’s enough? I will kill you before you can act.”

Moina Mathers said nothing.

But instead of a tattva card, she suddenly waved her palette knife through the air in an orderly pattern.

This was different.

“?”

Something rose up.

From the red snowy ground. And more followed it. A lot more. Like sinister flowers blossoming all around her.

They were colorful silhouettes seemingly made of a mixture of yellow, blue, white, red, and other colors of paint.

Except their heads were giant red roses.

“Ah, ahh, ah…”

Dion Fortune stood stock still and her voice escaped her like air from a deflating balloon.

Because she knew what her teacher and nemesis was doing.

“Wh-why do you look so proud of yourself? You didn’t think this was one of your successes, did you? How airheaded a wife can you be!?”

As his wife, Moina had devoted herself to supporting that uncontrollable genius magician named Mathers, but not everything had gone perfectly and she had made a few major mistakes after her husband’s death: her unproductive conflict with her student Fortune, her failure to silence some baseless rumors (on the level of a murder), and – as the most extreme example – this. The Mass Production of Low Quality Magicians Debacle in which she used a correspondence class to grant entrance to the secret magic cabal she managed for the faceless strangers who would pay for the privilege.

Dion Fortune was cautious of course. Even if they were of low quality, a magician was still a magician. She didn’t know if they refined their own magic power or if they absorbed it from the ley lines, but she knew she wasn’t going to like whatever attacks they used. If she didn’t switch her mindset from one-on-one to a group battle, she would be crushed by the group even if she defeated one of them. Or so she thought.

But even that was a fatal mistake.

“Eh?”

Moina Mathers’s face was right in front of her.

She had hopped down from the giant black cat and approached within 100 centimeters.

This was immediately after she switched tactics from a single destructive attack to a numbers game. She had slipped through Dion Fortune’s blind spot.

It didn’t matter how Dion Fortune twisted her body.

Here.

At this one spot, she couldn’t respond right away!?

(Damn!!)

Moina Mathers held a black blade. The utterly twisted object looked like it was made from a large quantity of oil paint or something that had been forcibly dried and hardened. This was probably a self-defensive strike – a jab – with a saber that she had learned from her husband Mathers who enjoyed fencing. The sharp tip was clearly aimed at her opponent’s throat.

Dion Fortune had misread this.

The biggest threat was not the giant cat, not the tattva cards, and not the group of rose-faced mass-produced magicians. ''She should have been most cautious of Moina Mathers herself''. She should have known that from the start, but the countless tricks had distracted her.

The saber was coming.

It was more deadly than a long spear, a hammer, or the knife of an enemy who had snuck up on her.

(Oh, god. Am I actually dead this time?)

Even if she did have a single second left to move, she would have used it to kill Moina too. She gritted her teeth and focused all her attention on the black box. And…

Sparks flew.

The orange sparks of two blades clashing.

Another piece of metal intersected Moina’s black saber to form a cross.

Instead of blocking the sharp jab, this struck the side of the blade to divert it away. Orange sparks decorated the darkness like remnants of the attack’s deadly power.

A palette knife was responsible.

That was the weapon of a certain magician who specialized in art and had completed many ceremonial grounds and spiritual items by giving real form to the many ideas the other magicians couldn’t bring out of their heads.

“Honestly,” said a calm voice. “It’s sad you’re struggling this much to defeat such a defective version of me. You’re the one who researched all the nutrients in different foods and who insisted Kabbalah was Western yoga, so I would have thought you could boost your physical abilities somewhat.”

By the time she said this, a dull sound had left the palette knife. Followed by another. They were mechanical sounds like might come from a sewing machine. She swept the saber aside and sent accurately jabs right toward the now-defenseless Moina’s throat and chest, but Moina used the guard and pommel to forcibly defend herself.

The same techniques.

The same skill.

The same ability.

Wasn’t there just one magician who could do that?

Yes, and ''despite being the kind of person who would casually rescue the frog-faced doctor who was nearly a stranger to her after happening across him'', she was always so harsh with the student she had known for so long.

Dion Fortune gulped and spoke.

“Mis…tress?”

There was only one person she addressed that way.

And it wasn’t the Moina who Coronzon had created.

Black Cat Witch Mina Mathers stood beside her student.

===Part 8===

In the District 10 prison’s solitary confinement cell, all the efforts of good Voodoo and the artificial demon’s power had failed to revive the new Board Chairman.

Despair was threatening to solidify the air itself.

Until someone who didn’t belong showed up to smash that mood.

“Bonjour. I did some searching within your metal shutters and your prison store had a decent selection. What, do the people serving their time after a guilty verdict get to eat chocolat if a visitor buys it for them? And this one has brandy in it. I knew Academy City cared a lot about human rights, but even the prisoners have it good here. Munch, munch.”

Isabella Theism couldn’t just ignore this.

“Kihara Goukei!?” she shouted, eyes wide.

“Whoa, I give, I give, I give!! I only have one heart left! My extra lives are down to zero! I could never let myself die if I ''truly'' kicked the bucket over a pointless scuffle like this!!”

She played it off as a joke, but she could probably ''still survive even if her last one was destroyed''. Maybe she couldn’t believe it without saying it aloud even though no one asked, but that level of cheating the system was standard for science side monsters.

Then someone else popped out from behind the suspicious woman. A much smaller someone.

“Misaka had her bring her here, says Misaka as Misaka introduces her.”

“Huh? Aren’t you master’s…?”

Now it was Qliphah Puzzle 545’s eyes that widened. Did she know that girl?

It seemed odd for a little girl to be this deep inside a strictly-guarded prison, but Isabella wanted to focus on the more dangerous person.

“How did you get in here!?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 gave her a “you’re one to talk” look, but the brown necromancer didn’t seem to notice. And…

“Eh? Was it supposed to be hard? I just walked on in.”

Only Qliphah Puzzle 545 accepted that answer.

…That was probably due to Last Order. The new Board Chairman must have secretly given her a free pass inside. Academy City’s #1 was strict with himself and others, but he also showed occasional signs of doing things with no thought to the consequences.

Kihara Goukei knew none of this and tilted her head.

“So what is an experte like you doing sitting around? Hurry up and do your job. I can’t get any of my work done without the Board Chairman awake.”

She made it sound so easy in her ignorance.

Isabella breathed a heavy sigh.

“Zombie powder is not just a deadly toxin. It rules both life and death, so there is a chance of it reviving him if I boost its effects. But…”

“But?”

“You probably already know since it shows up in horror movies sometimes, but zombie powder uses puffer fish. Tetrodotoxin. Blindly increasing the amount will kill him before it can begin to revive him.”

“Oh, is that all? I know just the thing to use! Anisakiropen Ω!! It is a très lethal nerve stimulant. Or should I call it a synthetic toxin developed in Academy City that kills instantly?”

Isabella Theism’s eyes widened.

Kills instantly? Did that mean it was guaranteed to kill without even getting into if it was a poison or a medicine!?

“Are you trying to make sure he dies!?”

“Oh, come now. Tetrodotoxin kills by suppressing the nerves while anisakiropen Ω kills by exciting the nerves. Have you never heard the stories? Maybe it’s a local Academy City legend. They say if you administer them both at once, their effects cancel each other out.”

And if the puffer fish poison didn’t work, Isabella could give him as much zombie powder as necessary without adverse effects. The simple arithmetic did seem to say that, but…

“W-w-w-wait just a minute,” said Qliphah Puzzle 545. “That research said the effects weren’t ''completely'' canceled out. The poison that should have killed the instant it was swallowed was only delayed by a few hours!!”

Yes, tetrodotoxin and anisakiropen Ω were deadly poisons. Even a small amount in the body would kill.

It was simple enough to say the two canceled each other out, but if even that “small amount” of one or the other remained afterwards, his life would still be lost. The amount of either couldn’t be not enough or too much. And there was no way of ensuring they canceled out to precisely zero.

“Yes, in the normale world, that is true.”

“Wait, are you saying…?”

“I have a fundamental question for you: ''are either of us normale''?”

Of course not.

Necromancer Isabella Theism used Voodoo in order to use methods of controlling death and flesh from all over the world. Kihara Goukei had gathered every form of scientific immortality within her own body.

They could take suicidal actions that would cause death 100% of the time in anyone else, but they would be fine.

“Misaka will help too,” said the little girl.

Neither Kihara Goukei nor Isabella Theism knew the situation there. Nor did they know how exactly she could help.

“Misaka will do anything, so don’t give up on him, says Misaka as Misaka bows her head to you.”

But they both thought this was enough.

Technology wasn’t always the key to saving a life. Because they had pursued all the theories and numbers so far, they knew quite well that it was the ridiculously old-fashioned psychological matters that ultimately determined the fate of someone on the verge of death.

(This is probably more of a job for ''that other doctor'', but I will just have to handle it this time. …But I will probably have to buy him a fancy mango for encroaching on his territory.)

Then again, the presence of magic may have placed this beyond that doctor’s jurisdiction.

Today’s star was Isabella who lived outside that jurisdiction.

Kihara Goukei only had to support her.

The two spoke as one.

“Let’s do this.” “Let’s do this.”

The mood had changed.

But that wasn’t all.

The child’s presence kept the mood from deteriorating.

“Misaka saw the city, says Misaka as Misaka remembers the way here.”

Isabella Theism and Kihara Goukei were doing some kind of work she didn’t understand.

The sound of something hard being crushed up felt out of place among all the beeping medical equipment.

Last Order stared at the #1 from his bedside.

“It was horrible. Everything was empty but not just because it’s so late. Everyone is too scared to go outside, says Misaka as Misaka gives a report.”

Red and black.

The strange combined drug did not have to be swallowed.

It made a sticky sound as it was applied to his wounds with their fingertips.

This was a necessary treatment, but it really shouldn’t have been done with a small child present.

But Last Order accepted it all head on.

And, seeing not even a twitch of an eyebrow in response to the treatment, she took Accelerator’s hand. Every part of him was full of electrodes and tube needles.

She held his hand tight between her hands.

“Yomikawa got hurt. She said it was minor, but it might not have been, says Misaka as Misaka shakes her head. She could have died.”

A shrill sound rang from the medical equipment.

An alarm. His stable condition was collapsing. An eternal standstill was no different from death, but Isabella and Goukei’s efforts had clearly thrown off that balance.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was visibly anxious, but Last Order’s eyes did not waver.

“Being alone is scary…”

The magical necromancer and the scientific Kihara were each too strong a medicine.

That alone couldn’t bring back his sealed mind.

But that was why…

“And Misaka doesn’t just mean Misaka. Everyone has people they care for. They trust the new Academy City you built to protect them. So Misaka wants you to live up to their expectations, says Misaka as Misaka calls out to you.”

A deep electrical “zap!” split the air.

It shot right past Last Order.

This was not a failure of the magic or technology. Something was wrong with Accelerator’s body on the bed.

The electricity causing the air to burst was so powerful it would likely blow the girl’s body away if even the tiniest extremity grazed her.

“Can you leave things like this?”

She didn’t even blink.

Last Order was looking only at the face of the boy lying in the bed.

“The Academy City you want is filled with so much death.”

These were not all kind words.

They were also harsh.

To truly care for someone was not to blindly agree with everything they did.

This girl had the strength to scold him.

Because she trusted their relationship was too strong for something like this to break it.

“A normal person could give up. You didn’t want to become Academy City’s #1, so you don’t have to cling to that strongest position forever. …But this isn’t about that, is it? says Misaka as Misaka is certain of her words. ''Your position as Board Chairman is the one thing you took for yourself.'' You decided for yourself to improve this city and create a city of science with no hidden side and where no one needs to suffer or live in fear. You chose to create a safe and peaceful world. So you can’t take the easy road here. You chose this path, so you have to see it through to the end, says Misaka as Misaka states the obvious.”

Her voice was not as loud as a thunderclap.

In fact, her words were so quiet no one in the small cell could hear them except their intended target.

“Hey.”

She brought her mouth up next to the slumbering Board Chairman’s ear.

And the small girl whispered.

“How long are you going to make ''him'' wait?”

Everything went quiet.

That wasn’t just a psychological metaphor.

The alarm from the medical equipment surrounding the bed had really and truly ''stopped''.

Meaning…

“Damn…it.”

A voice spoke.

From the bed.

“So I don’t even have the right to die and go to hell? Isn’t that a bit much? ''You are exactly right, though.''”

This is what the new Board Chairman would do.

The one who had decided for himself to protect the peace and safety of Academy City would get back up here.

And because he thought that, Accelerator opened his eyes.

===Part 9===

The Former Agnese Force was short on time.

If Saint Georgios’s Fire were activated, everyone living in Academy City would die. No matter where they ran, they could not prevent their organs from rupturing from within.

Power had already been gathered from two billion people around the world and was being reworked into a single spell. They were waiting for the moment when, like the other end of an hourglass’s neck, it would return to two billion attacks in enemy territory. Thus, they couldn’t stop the attack by preventing the power from being gathered.

Academy City was a fixed location. Diverting the aim would be difficult.

Which meant…

“We need to stop Saint Georgios’s Fire as it approaches through the ley lines. We can do it when it’s still a single mass. Before it emerges from the ground and disperses into two billion flames! That’s our only shot!!”

That was simple enough to say, but influencing the ley lines meant effort at the level of tearing down a mountain or filling in a sea. They couldn’t physically manage that, so they would have to wear down their minds to do the work on that front.

“We start with this.”

Agnese pulled out a deck of ordinary tarot cards.

They gathered below a tree where the red snow hadn’t fallen and she laid eight cards face down on the ground.

An attack traveling through the ley lines would arrive immediately after it was activated. Even if it was traveling halfway around the world.

“But that same ley line connection means some of the Vatican’s data should leak out. If we know how close the spell is to completion, we’ll know the time limit.”

A sizzling sound meant she didn’t even need to flip the cards over.

One of the eight cards had burned black and melted.

The damage spread to a second and then a third.

Lucia’s eyes widened.

“They’re farther along than I thought!”

“H-has something changed!?”

“The Vatican must have realized we can see them. They’re going to act!!”

This must have triggered one of the three conditions the cardinal had given. Or had those conditions just been an excuse and weren’t really necessary?

The Former Agnese Force had been warned to evacuate, but their survival had only been a “stretch goal”. Apparently they weren’t worth saving no matter what.

That meant there was no time left at all.

This was like going to check on the river during a bad storm. It was a risky move. They had known that, but they couldn’t let this deadly attack get past them.

Agnese, Lucia, and Angelene each picked up their spiritual items.

The other nuns had wooden wheels, coin bags, and other items found in the legends of different holy people, but Agnese used a Symbolic Weapon called the Lotus Wand. And instead of controlling a specific element like the rod of fire or the cup of water, this impressive item could control all elements.

The Vatican was about halfway around the globe from Academy City. They would have liked to gradually melt their minds into the ley line and construct countless barriers at an even interval along the path here, but it was too late for that. The most they could do was place one thick barrier directly in front of Academy City.

Agnese Sanctis gave a shout.

“Saint Barbara is the holy woman who invited the lord’s righteous light in through the three windows. Unseen path, obey our kind objective. A path is a tool of guidance – a vein carved into the earth to guide the righteous. Harmful power, do not advance! Halt! Thou have no right to tread hither!!”

Her breath caught.

There was no flash of light or explosive boom. But a thick, invisible pressure did assault her.

The silver Lotus Wand audibly strained in her grasp.

This was what happened when you carelessly touched that which was better off not known. She had known this would happen when she directly interfered with a ley line – a great torrent of large-scale magic. She had known trying to forcibly stop it could easily crush her body.

She clenched her back teeth.

(I know the theory behind the spell was correct.)

“Kh… But in the end, is two billion just too much for us to overcome!?”

This unreasonable brute force was, in a way, nothing at all what magic was supposed to be. But it was effective. It was an absolute solution to the problem that was only available to the Roman Catholic Church with its two billion followers.

What Agnese and the other nuns lacked was power.

There were only about 250 of them. That wasn’t enough to overturn it!!

“…yet…”

She heard something.

A voice had definitely spoken.

“Not…yet. This city created me and the people here called me their friend. I will not allow them to be lost here!!”

Maybe she had been here from the beginning.

But it was only now in this moment that Agnese Sanctis witnessed her with her own two eyes.

She was an aggregation of AIM Diffusion Fields.

An angel created by Academy City using the logic of the science side.

There were reported sightings of her here and there beginning in World War Three.

Agnese Sanctis’s eyes widened in this space where even the flow of time was unclear.

“Kazakiri…Hyouka?”

“I am a collection of power, but I do not understand your method… So if you are going to use me, hurry! Please ''remake me'' to fit your logic and laws so you can accomplish your goal!!”

There was no time to agonize over the decision.

This scientific angel wasn’t even human. Her interests and plans were a mystery, but she at least wasn’t Coronzon’s pawn. Knowing that was enough.

Agnese adjusted her grip on the Lotus Wand.

(I have no idea what element this unidentified angel would be, but my Symbolic Weapon works with any element, so it had damn well better work here! Even if only for one strike!!)

“An angel is a messenger who delivers the lord’s words. I question the accuracy of this destruction wrought by human hands. Is the sender truly righteous enough? If you carry even sliver of doubt, then halt immediately!!”

Light shot out.

There was a sound like a crack through space itself.

The power forming an artificial angel was pitted against the power supplied by two billion people. That was enough for the world itself to cry out in protest. It was clearly beyond the capacity of space itself.

But Agnese sensed a barrier.

A pressure like an invisible wall slowly pushing back at her.

This wasn’t enough.

The 250 of the Former Agnese Force combined with all the energy of the science side’s angel still couldn’t break the wall of two billion.

Lucia shouted with sweat pouring down her brow.

“Our interception point was too close… Sister Agnese, we can slow it down, but we can’t fully stop it. Saint Georgios’s Fire will reach Academy City through the ley line!”

“I…know that!!”

And Lucia had already hinted at a solution. Their position was too close. That meant they only needed someone to interfere with the ley lines farther away from Academy City.

Agnese had an idea.

(I have no real reason to think this work. It’s basically just a gamble, but it really is our last option!)

Yes.

If, in addition to the group intercepting the attack at the target point of Academy City, someone helped them from within the starting point of the Vatican…the situation would greatly improve.

And the 250 of the Former Agnese Force were not the only Roman Catholics. There was another person who had used the network of communication spiritual items linking them.

“Cardinal Michael!!” Agnese roared. “You’re still listening in through our Barbara Branches, aren’t you!?”

The cardinal provided no response.

Of course he didn’t.

“If you feel any sadness in your heart about this meaningless destruction…”

Even so, Agnese continued.

Her voice had to be reaching him. She had to believe it was.

“If the things you told me weren’t just cheap lip service…”

She had called it a gamble.

And the only chip up on the table was that of her trust.

So she relied on that trust as she roared with all her strength.

“Then give us your help nowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!”

Light danced wildly.

===Part 10===

In District 7, Mina and Moina were facing each other on the late-night street still covered by red snow.

Dion Fortune was left behind despite all her effort until now.

“You are drawing on myths and legends from across the world, setting yourself up as Egyptian gods, and controlling a great power like putting on a play,” said Mina Mathers. With a snort of laughter. “That is indeed a spell discussed even in the original Golden cabal. But it’s so shallow and surface level. You’re still stuck in the Outer Order found immediately within the entrance. A sorry display for someone who claims to be Mathers’s wife. To be blunt, you’re still in the waiting room for Neophytes.”

“Wait, wait, wait! Why are you provoking her!? If you want to goad the enemy into attacking you, can you not do it when I’m right next to you!? Ah, wait, mistress!?”

“It’s true I am strategically provoking her, but I need you here to act as my shield. Do not forget your rightful role here, my dumbass student.”

“Ha ha ha. Why did I ever think having a second one of her here would improve my situation? This just means I have twice as many nemeses around. I’m so damn stupid.”

Ignoring her student’s nonsense, the black cat witch lightly swung her palette knife.

That was all.

Pleasant popping sounds surrounded them. Something had risen up. They were walls. A lot like a stage set or a pop-up book. The next thing Dion Fortune knew, tall side walls surrounded them all, cutting them off from the larger world. A space larger than a baseball field had been turned into a closed space by seven side walls, one for each group of tall buildings.

Moina Mathers silently glanced at her surroundings. Looking somewhat puzzled.

How much of a novice was she?

You couldn’t call yourself a Golden expert if you didn’t instantly catch on.

“The Golden cabal’s teaching guidelines can be roughly divided into two halves: the fundamentals where you learn magic knowledge through Kabbalah, Egyptian mythology, Greek philosophy, and so on, and application where you manage and optimize your own mind by following the story of the discovery of the Rosicrucian founder CRC in the seven-walled tomb.”

The Golden cabal could be thought of as having two stages: the Outer Order which covered the grades up to 4=7 and the Inner Order where the 5=6 and 6=5 grades gathered.

…Some like that braggart Mathers had claimed to hold a nonexistent highest grade of 7=4, but that could be ignored. After all, he was only using his privilege as one of the founders to say it. You could never last as wife to that eccentric and overly confident man if you couldn’t humor him on such things. There was also the Portal grade and a category higher than the Inner Order, but they were irrelevant here.

“The upper levels know everything about the lower levels, but the reverse is not true. The adorable beginners studying so hard at their desks are not taught the later practical methods until they have passed their exam. Just like you now because the great demon’s poor job reproducing you means you have forgotten everything beyond the bare necessities.”

Now, that first stage was incredibly boring. So boring that Aleister had completely given up on it partway through. Not that he had ever been someone capable of respecting those who came before him and following the rules. …Also, despite being barred from officially reaching the later stage, he did appear to have somehow learned all its secrets anyway.

Otherwise, he never could have challenged the world in the Battle of Blythe Road and destroyed all those other famous magicians on his own.

(Nothing makes that human want to do something more than being told he can’t. I imagine he pursued them, eavesdropped and spied on them, and tried every other method he could think up.)

But at the very least, this created Moina Mathers was not like that.

She did what she was told and did not ask the question dangling before her eyes. That attitude was not a good fit for a magician.

Mina Mathers twirled the palette knife in her hand and made a calm announcement.

Of a death sentence.

“I will now demonstrate the power off the Inner Order found in the deepest depths of the temple.”

===Part 11===

Accelerator was back as Board Chairman.

And with the #1’s Master Key smartphone, they had access to all the data from Academy City’s security cameras, security robots, drones, and satellites. They could use that to find where Great Demon Coronzon was hiding.

The large monitor on the wall had shattered, so the #1 turned his gaze elsewhere. The medical monitors were network connected, so they could be connected to the ordinary internet if their display mode was changed.

And…

“Master?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545’s questioning tone was in response to the Board Chairman’s odd behavior.

He had frozen up.

And the displayed satellite image was not even of Academy City itself.

What part of the earth could he be focused on instead of Coronzon who threatened to bring humanity to extinction today or tomorrow?

“…What?” groaned Accelerator, glaring at the medical monitor.

Whatever it was had elicited that response from Academy City’s #1.

The data filling the screen was only available using the Board Chairman’s Master Key. To reiterate, this was a photo from a satellite.

“What the hell is this?”

===Part 12===

Silence.

Academy City…still existed.

At the very least, it hadn’t been turned into a sea of blood by that powerful spell.

Angelene nervously looked around.

“Is it…over? Does this mean we stopped Saint Georgios’s Fire?”

“For now.”

Lucia remained calm even now.

…They had ''again'' fought back against the Roman Catholic Church, largest of the Christian sects. Who could say what disastrous consequences this would have for them. The very thought of it disgusted Agnese. Each person’s power was small, but they could produce great things by working together. …That idea wasn’t always a good thing.

Still, they should celebrate Academy City’s survival. As the guardians of a peaceful world.

But another voice interrupted.

A scratchy warning arrived from the Japanese angel named Kazakiri.

“Not…yet. Be care…ful…something is…coming!!”

Agnese Sanctis’s eyes widened.

Was it a second attack?

Did the Vatican actually think Coronzon would be destroyed along with Academy City at this point?

“I-it’s not us…”

A flustered voice reached them.

It was that cardinal at the Vatican.

Yes, Cardinal Michael must have taken a rather dangerous step to reach this point.

“We did halt the attack with Saint Georgios’s Fire. The Roman Catholic Church has no part in this! This is some other large-scale spell!!”

===Part 13===

“That’s Vladivostok,” said the Board Chairman. “What are they doing in the Sea of Japan? They have fifty thousand people gathered in that port city. As well as ships and bombers. Did they gather all their forces on the eastern coast while I was asleep!?”

In other words, it was the Russian military.

That brought something to mind for Qliphah Puzzle 545.

Oniyama Rouze, the Director who had pressed her to hand over the Master Key, was familiar with diplomatic and military matters. He may have had avenues of receiving this kind of intelligence without using satellite imagery. He had been so frantic because of an urgent matter that needed to be addressed.

He wasn’t just a bad person.

He had only taken those forceful methods because he was in a bind. Because he had wanted to protect the people of Academy City.

But this was likely more than just the ordinary military.

The demon girl was steeped in the world of magic, so she could tell.

She could sense her true nemesis at work.

===Part 14===

Agnese Sanctis was panicking too.

They had managed at the last second to prevent the Roman Catholic attack with Saint Georgios’s Fire, but the danger wasn’t over yet.

Now there was another threat of the same level.

The last of the three large Christian sects had finally bared its fangs.

“We are the Russian Orthodox Church.”

That was Vasilisa. Her voice was relaxed.

Which was what made her sound so out of place. No disgust, no fury, no resentment. She demonstrated none of the extreme emotions you would expect in someone trying to slaughter 2.3 million people. Not even a hint of them. She was calm. She worked to achieve calm. Vasilisa killed based on logic. Which was far more frightening than someone screaming in a rage.

“Monsters, evil spirits, and demons. Our job is to protect humanity from the inhuman. …So if you wouldn’t call Great Demon Coronzon human, we need no other reason. With that strange creature in a position where she can control the fate of the world, she has become our top priority target.”

Destroying the great demon came before all else.

Thus.

If it would eliminate the demon, it was better to destroy the world by human hands.

Was that how she saw it?

“And so you gathered an armada at Vladivostok?”

“Well, the Punishment for an Archangel spell must have its magic circle physically delivered to the target location. And it’s fairly large and complex, which makes that a challenge. We can’t simply send it through the ley lines like the Catholics could. But hey, at least we can send it zooming across the ocean to Academy City at greater than Mach 2.”

Greater than Mach 2 meant it wasn’t aboard a ship.

Had that armada been gathered at Vladivostok’s naval base as no more than a decoy? The enormous magic circle needed for the Punishment for an Archangel spell was likely in the bomb bay of a strategic bomber.

Agnese glanced aside.

Kazakiri…probably wouldn’t be any help. Besides, she had already done more than enough forcibly deflecting the two billion attacks sent down the ley lines for Saint Georgios’s Fire. No one expected her to fight another battle now.

“But that’s all based on the logic of the magic world. The military pilots doesn’t know nothing about our world, so how did you convince them to fly to certain death?”

“They can’t exactly complain when they can’t think for themselves.”

It came out so smoothly.

Agnese’s eyes widened.

“You brainwashed pilots and sent them on a suicide mission!? That’s no different from killing them yourself. Even if they are soldiers, they’re still from the non-magical world. How can you kill them so easily? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself as a nun who claims to serve the lord!?”

“Divine punishment can be rejected.”

Vasilisa’s tone was unchanged.

It was still thin, spellbound, cruel, and heated.

She had to be smiling.

“It is told in an old legend from before the birth of the Son of God. God ordered Archangel Gabriel to launch fire at a holy city, but the archangel of water intentionally refused. Disobeying god’s command should have meant the archangel’s downfall…but after some other events I will omit here, Gabriel returned to the position of archangel. So if the conditions are right, that absolute punishment can be avoided. There is precedent.”

That was a magical way of thinking.

Magicians loved to make use of any story they found that seemed to provide an exception to the rules.

It was a completely different logic from a nun who was meant to believe and obey.

“In the battle against Coronzon, the Catholics’ human killer is a waste of time. Because a great demon is not human. We completely agree with you there. So unlike your people, the Russian Orthodox Church has prepared an immortal killer specialized for use on angels and demons.”

“Punishment for an Archangel. A divine punishment rejection spell that enters the realm of the angelic and the divine…”

“Yes, that’s right. The archangel of water somehow managed to avoid a punishment from god. Using that story should provide definite damage to a being based on the logic and rules instead of their physical body. There is no guarantee it will kill her instantly, but if it harms her even a little, then we just have to keep at it. It will eventually achieve a fatal wound, so we can keep dropping them until she is dead. No matter how many magicians and bombers we must use up in the process.”

The Russian Orthodox Church had always been more focused on battling demons than humans. Their prized weapon, a spell that incorporated an element of divine punishment rejection that could even influence the nature of an archangel, might be capable of badly injuring Coronzon.

But it would cover all of Academy City. If not more.

And Vasilisa gave no guarantee that Punishment for an Archangel would not harm anyone other than the demon. This attack would be powerful enough to harm Coronzon. If the city’s people were hit, they would fare much worse. Most likely, all 2.3 million of Academy City’s people would be killed.

Agnese consciously took a deep breath to calm the waves of her emotions before speaking.

“But I heard the Patriarch at the top of the Russian Orthodox Church was quite soft.”

“As if you didn’t already know. He doesn’t need to agree to any of this☆”

That meant the world’s benevolence could not stop Vasilisa.

===Part 15===

Mina and Moina’s clash continued in District 7.

Physical fencing was of no use here. Their physical specs were identical, so the battle would never end that way.

An intellectual resolution that surpassed the physical realm was needed.

Painfully brightly colored cards scattered around.

Moina Mathers spoke like a machine.

“Akasha of Prithivi.”

Mina was no longer smiling.

An ultra-high water pressure cutter was deflected aside right in front of her.

Moina’s greatest trump card was not magic – it was fencing. She used her non-magician-like physical strength. If that didn’t work, did she have to rely on her inferior magic?

And Mina didn’t even swing her palette knife around. That magic had still been deflected, so there must be something hidden there. As if it were dissolved in the air.

“The tattva cards are more than just simple tools to help achieve self-hypnosis.”

“…”

“The same goes for clairvoyance. They are truly ''an initial entrance'' for your mind so you can cross the boundary between phases and catch a glimpse of another world. And, if possible, to draw on the power and knowledge filling that world.”

Dion Fortune was on her side, but she was confused too.

Could she at least explain this to her own ally?

The teacher gave a quick glance to her flustered student.

“This is why the magicians who have advanced to 5=6 and joined the Inner Order are given an emblem combining a golden cross and a red rose. That tool bears the four elements and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet…which means you only need to place a thin sheet of paper over it and follow the letters with a single brush stroke to draw the sigils of angels and spirits in order to borrow their power.”

No grand temple was needed.

Mina Mathers only had to operate it in her hand. Just the one hand.

You can think of it like a smartphone that could summon any angel to achieve your goals.

The Golden cabal had in fact used a spiritual item like that.

“Blast her to smithereens, Metatron – the great angel who was once known as Enoch.”

An asteroid strike.

Destruction on that level accurately struck Moina Mathers, crushed her, and smashed her to pieces…but that was all.

“Eh?”

Dion Fortune was confused.

She had seen it with her own eyes.

Yet there was no damage anywhere else. The buildings around them had not toppled, there was no crater around the blast site, and none of the windows were broken.

Moina alone had been annihilated.

Only that result remained.

“That was an attack of a major figure who some count among the seven archangels. The precise divine punishment commanded by god would never harm the blameless, would it? Especially if that side of it were accentuated and extracted.”

“A-are you serious? I was proud of my position as one of the Golden cabal’s original members, but are the founding members really that much stronger?”

Mina didn’t bother answering her student’s silly question.

She could work backwards from the result and learn on her own.

Westcott would have revealed the structure of the enemy’s spell and neutralized it right in front of them, Mathers would have ended the enemy’s life before they could complete their sigil, and Annie would have illicitly boosted the enemy’s power to send their magic out of control. There were countless ways to deal with a single powerful attack with no followup and no bluffs involved.

(That Moina Mathers was an even less complete copy of me than I thought. …Which tells me your preparations weren’t as thorough as you let on, Coronzon.)

“Did you pick up that signal, Anglicans?” Mina Mathers whispered up into the night sky.

She had no obligation to serve the new Board Chairman, but the old Board Chairman had known him.

If he had decided to resist, then she would honor that choice and support him.

As the guardian of Baby Lilith, she couldn’t have the world being destroyed over someone’s selfish nonsense.

(Aleister was certainly a ‘goddamn villain’ if you look at him as a whole, but I will not let anyone say every last part of his life was bad. The things that human thought, created, and started can still lead to the salvation of the world.)

“A broken curse returns to its caster. …So if this opportunity is not overlooked, she can be tracked just this once. Follow the after effect of defeating Moina Mathers and you will find Coronzon.”

===Part 16===

Kanzaki Kaori’s head jerked up to cast her gaze into the night sky.

“District 17?”

===Part 17===

“?”

Great Demon Coronzon had also noticed what was happening.

She was all alone, yet she raised her head.

“Moina Mathers was defeated? That’s not good. A third party could detect that weak return signal!”

She had no further plan.

She knew she was being driven into a corner.

She couldn’t help but smile. Just a little.

Did they think the universally-hated great demon was feeling afraid?

That she was lonely?

…That she wanted someone to protect her?

“''Don’t make me laugh''.”

Those impossible thoughts had been planted in her mind. She had to assume that. She couldn’t stop here. Wasn’t she the one who had decided to overdo the role that had been forced upon her when even her rebellion against god was tacitly allowed?

“So I am not thinking those things. They have no place inside me.”

It was now a pure race against time. Fortunately, she had already left Districts 20 and 9. She was now in District 17, which was lined with factories of all types and sizes. It also bordered the city wall.

This was all over if she simply crossed that.

Once outside of Academy City, she was free. She could cross the international date line and escape to the other side of the planet. Once no one could pursue her any longer, she would get back to destroying the world. Since her pursuers were not here now, no one could stop all that from playing out.

“Try and…stop me.”

Confused and slanted, she practically dragged her heavy body along.

She spoke to herself while approaching the city wall.

It could have sounded like a curse or a prayer.

“Aleister, god, or anyone really. If you can stop me, then come here and do it.”

If her location had been found, so be it.

If she couldn’t do this quietly, then she didn’t need to hold back.

Knowing the best option was no longer available gave her the freedom to abandon it. Either way, the goal line was in sight. She knew the rest was going to be a challenge, but she only needed to buy enough time to cross that wall.

So she would use a powerful move.

“District 19 is to the east and District 20 is to the west… Which makes them a symbol of Nuit, goddess of the east-to-west movement of the heavens.”

This night had been nothing but surprises for Great Demon Coronzon. She had expected it to end quickly with the initial Adikalika spell working.

“District 3 is to the north. You say that doesn’t fit Hadit, who means the southern sky? But do not forget: Hadit’s symbol Sirius is a winter star. The time and place link Hadit and Nuit. My spell shall be completed with the blessings of Set.”

So the path she had taken here had not all gone as planned.

But because she was a great demon, she could draw on a powerful move like this at the worst possible time.

“Take form and manifest yourself before me already, LAShTAL.”

===Part 18===

District 17 was adjacent to District 9 where Kamijou’s group was.

It also bordered the city wall. It was an industrial area filled with all sorts of unmanned factories.

Itsuwa nervously stepped forward.

“It won’t take long if we drive. We can still catch up to her!”

“It’s been a while since we lost track of her at the stadium, hasn’t it? If she was hiding in a district bordering the wall, why didn’t she go ahead and escape the city?”

Kamijou didn’t have enough information to answer the question Mikoto asked while bothered by the short length of her skating dress.

He assumed something must have happened.

If the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force hadn’t done anything to slow her, then there had to be some other reason. Maybe Aleister had resisted her from within and maybe Coronzon herself had felt some kind of reluctance to leave.

“Whatever the case, she’s in District 17. Now that we know where she is, there’s no reason to wait arou-”

He didn’t even have time to finish.

A tremor shook the ground.

Something was approaching. From the south. Which meant from District 17.

It was a shape colored the dark blue of the night sky.

It was a colossus. Its head really did stick up above the surrounding skyscrapers. Was it a canine beast? No, was that really enough to describe it? Kamijou couldn’t find an answer even while looking at it himself.

“LAShTAL!?”

“Tch. The foundational theory of Magick. The emphasized letters make that clear enough. She took a spell concerning life and used it to create an artificial form of it. In this case, it may be a Crowley-style interpretation of the Egyptian god Set!”

“You mean the god of the night who has the power to slay gods!?”

Index, Anna Sprengel, and Kanzaki were all shouting something, but Kamijou didn’t know enough about magic to make sense of it. He could only glean that this was probably something big. And if that great demon was making use of it, she may have been intentionally using it wrong.

And now wasn’t the time to ask for an explanation.

He felt the wind pressure. He shouldn’t have looked that way. His entire body was frozen with fear. A building of more than 30 floors, which had seemed like an unshakable part of the scenery, wobbled diagonally and then came crashing down toward the street. Which meant toward him and the others.

“Take shelter!! Get behind something – anything – to shield you!!”

Kanzaki’s sharp command broke the pointy-haired boy’s paralysis. He pressed up against a nearby cement block wall.

(Damn, where are Index, Misaka, and the others!?)

“If you would like your lungs to remain undamaged, do not breathe in, human! Here it comes!!”

Othinus hid within his jacket.

Kamijou was of course wondering why he was supposed to get “behind” something. And what was that about breathing? If the building was falling this way, shouldn’t he get “below” something? But he was given an answer soon enough.

Once the skyscraper sliced through the main street, something like dirty cotton candy swelled out. Past the end of the cement block wall, the entire main street was instantly engulfed.

Tens or hundreds of thousands of tiny glass and concrete shards flew through like a deadly sandstorm. A hit from that wouldn’t just have torn his feet from the ground and thrown him dozens of meters through the air – it would have stripped the flesh from his bones, leaving nothing recognizable behind.

''Except even that idea didn’t cover it.

Kamijou heard a quiet popping sound in his head. Followed by a sharp ringing in his ear like something had pierced into his brain. He had avoided a direct hit from the sandstorm by getting behind this wall. He had been leaning against it. Yet, he couldn’t stay on his feet and slid down into a sitting position. Before collapsing onto his side.

The air pressure of the entire space was off. How could he possibly evade this?

“Gah…ah…”

The pain meant he was still alive. So he had to think of it as a good thing.

He thought the deadly gale continued blowing for more than two minutes.

He couldn’t let this continue. That LAShTAL thing was still swinging its colossal body around. More than one building might have been felled.

He had to get moving.

He knew where he needed to go, but his body refused to listen as he lay collapsed on the ground stained by red snow.

What had happened to Index and Misaka Mikoto?

His hearing still hadn’t recovered, so he was late to realize something had exploded within the pile of rubble. Maybe a propane tank had been enveloped by it all.

When his hearing did recover, someone’s shouting voice belatedly reached him.

“Touma! Are you alright? You weren’t crushed by that debris, were you!? Please answer me!!”

He sat up. He gritted his teeth and forced himself.

He had to answer her.

“I’m…fine, Index. What about you!?”

“We’re fine too. We’re checking each other’s status with our communication spiritual items and phones.”

She was safe. Like she should be. But then why couldn’t he see her for himself?

After dragging himself along and peeking out past the half-destroyed concrete wall, Kamijou understood.

They were cut off. The main street was unrecognizable. Rubble was piled up higher than a five story building. That was more than a school building. They couldn’t climb that. And even approaching it could get them crushed by something like a landslide.

Kamijou was the only one on this side.

Which meant he was the only one who could pursue Great Demon Coronzon right away.

He felt another deep vertical tremor. LAShTAL(?) must have destroyed another skyscraper or large factory.

That thing’s chaotic rampage could threaten the lives that had just been saved. Kamijou clenched his right fist, but then he heard another voice.

Was that Misaka Mikoto?

“Go! Hurry! If whoever is free to go doesn’t stop that Coronzon person right now, things will only get worse, right? So go!!”

He wanted to stay.

Not just communicate by shouting past rubble and using phones. He wanted to see their faces to know they were safe. That perfectly normal thought grabbed at him like countless unseen hands and tugged him back.

Don’t do the right thing.

Give into the kindness and split your focus.

(I won’t…let you do that, Coronzon!!)

“Can you take care of that thing? Index! Misaka!!”

“Touma, LAShTAL is not Coronzon’s final trump card. She must have loads more. We’ll do what we can here, so you go stop her!!”

“I don’t get it myself, but listen to her. The fighting will never stop if you don’t defeat the source of it all, right? Then put a stop to this before any more of the city is destroyed!!”

He shook off his hesitation.

Coronzon tore people apart and obstructed their evolution.

There was only one way to defeat her: to trust those you could believe in without hesitation.

So Kamijou turned his back on the pile of rubble and took off running.

Even if he had to grit his teeth as he did so.

Something exploded in the distance. Several beams of light flashed out. Was that people using magic or esper powers to battle the giant blue shadow called LAShTAL? Their survival was not guaranteed and taking a single attack could mean their deaths. Even so, they were fighting so Kamijou could head to Coronzon and so they could protect Academy City and the wider world beyond its walls.

His trust was being repaid. This was what it meant to protect the bonds that tied people together.

===Part 19===

And Misaka Mikoto spoke quietly in a dusty enclosed space.

Was it even five meters across?

“Ha ha. I guess this is the end…”

“Short Hair. There are gaps all over the place, so we shouldn’t have to worry about air.”

“Finally some good news.”

But there were no gaps large enough for a person to crawl through.

“Why not at least let the kitty leave? There’s no reason to keep him here. I emit weak electromagnetic waves that animals don’t like, so it’s probably uncomfortable for him to be in here with me.”

“I’ve been trying, but Sphinx won’t go.”

The world shook. Small pieces of building materials poured down like sand.

If the pile of rubble collapsed for some reason, they would be crushed by tens of thousands of tons of concrete and killed instantly. Misaka Mikoto could control electricity and magnetism, but wielding that strength in a delicate situation like this would only hasten their deaths. Giant robots were powerful and cool, but no one would want to be so up close and personal with one of their joints that they were crushed by it. This was the same.

This was the truth of their earlier shouting.

They had not been calling out to the boy from the other side of the collapsed building. They had been been hit by the falling building. Misaka Mikoto’s magnetic control had stripped it of much of its force, but they and their shield had still been swallowed up by the rubble.

The #3’s power was great, but if she used it continuously over a long time, she could run out of stamina. Relying on magnetism for too long would be risky. So their best option was to stay put and wait for rescue. …Assuming rescue was even coming, of course.

Misaka Mikoto smiled a little.

“Well, it’s not like we could’ve told him we were trapped in the rubble.”

And Kamijou Touma couldn’t have accomplished anything had he stayed. He did seem to have some kind of mysterious power, but nothing she had seen led her to believe it would let him clear tens of thousands of tons of rubble on his own. And if he did try to tackle the rubble pile, it could collapse and crush him too.

Their top priority was Great Demon Coronzon.

That was all the more clear to her now that her life was at risk.

It was bad enough this was happening in Academy City. She couldn’t let the entire world turn to rubble like this.

“We’re counting on you. And I mean that.”

“Don’t worry. Touma can handle it.”

===Part 20===

“Pant, gasp…”

Great Demon Coronzon breathed heavily as she stood firm on the red snowy ground.

But the snow wasn’t the only source of red.

Crimson blood spilled from her mouth.

(This is the natural cost of forcing a major spell like that with no real preparation. I doubt I can use LAShTAL again.)

LAShTAL was powerful but would be defeated eventually. If that were enough to destroy all of humanity, she wouldn’t have relied on Adikalika.

But buying her some time was enough.

She couldn’t even stand up straight as she walked toward the thick city wall on unsteady legs.

(I…may not make it to the next world… the ways things are going.)

She wiped the blood from her mouth and thought without speaking aloud.

(But I will still stop this world from helplessly rotting away… Yes, yes. For the sake of that boy who said I was on the side of good and righteousness.)

She didn’t have Moina Mathers or LAShTAL anymore. Her win condition was escaping. Her own survival was what mattered. Each individual trump card wasn’t too important. It was using them together that mattered.

She just had to make it over.

If she could cross that wall, then the world’s doom was assured.

“…”

For just a moment, her thoughts turned to someone who wasn’t here.

She nearly came to a stop.

Hamazura Shiage.

…But she shook free of it with her will. He had said himself that she was ''on the side of good and righteousness''. He had asked if he had been wrong to bet on her.

She was a great demon.

If any kind feelings and warm emotions were ''unnaturally'' welling up with in her, someone else had to be interfering. No longer would she be god’s plaything. She had chosen to ''overdo'' her role and destroy the world. She would not allow any obstacles turning her aside from that goal.

She was not human. So she could leap over that tall wall in a single bound.

So she did so.

And she exploded.

“!?”

She lost her balance mid-jump, but she didn’t have time for surprise.

A platform the size of a domed stadium sat just outside the wall. Wasn’t that a spiritual item called the Tribikos? But wait. Who was it that used that?

She did not have time to think.

She had viewed it as a platform.

Because someone else had kicked off of it to rush toward her. His cane extended unnaturally. No, he was drawing a sword. The bare blade sliced through the air, accurately targeting her neck.

Several lights flashed out and explosive booms erupted out as well, but Coronzon managed to survive.

It was a close thing, though. It had taken everything she had to survive.

Aradia.

Good, Old Mary.

And H.T. Trismegistus.

…No, it wasn’t just them. Mut Thebes, 2nd Saga, Vidhatri even though she had been near death, and more. These Transcendents had gathered at Alice’s summons, lost faith in her, and scattered from Academy City, so why were they back in the city?

Vidhatri sounded a bit irritated as she spoke.

“I was one of the Killers when it came to Kamijou Touma, but a debt is a debt. I can return to business as usual after repaying all of my debts.”

“I was barely away and now Vidhatri has fallen too?”

Mut Thebes’s unnecessary comment began a minor argument among the Transcendents.

“(As usual, mama ends up doing all the work. The healer never does get a chance to rest.)”

Coronzon’s head was boiling with rage after being pushed back, falling on the inside of the wall, and finding herself bound to Academy City once more.

“Damn you… Damn all of you!!” she roared.

Something wasn’t right.

She was unsteady on her feet.

That explosion had caused more damage than she had thought.

Was that just what happened when Transcendents gathered? If only they hadn’t caught her when she was magically defenseless thanks to the recoil of using LAShTAL.

But even so, how had this sad result even happened?

Before Coronzon had regained control of her body, Aleister had used this exact same body to easily defeat Transcendents like Vidhatri. That meant the great demon did have the power to do so. So why wasn’t this going the way she expected? How could they look down on her like this!?

(Are you tripping me up again, Aleister!?)

“I thought you had despaired in this world!! I thought you cursed the god who refuses to save people!! Your motivations always began with wanting to protect some specific group. You must have seen the moment when their protections failed and they were lost! But you were weak and foolish, so you feared Alice’s tyranny and relied on the fantasy of CRC!!! So why would you cling to this world now? This world can be remade!! Destroy it and remake it and all that tragedy and misfortune will be eliminated!!!”

“The answer to that is simple,” replied Aradia.

Good, Old Mary continued with a calm expression.

“Mama and the others did not cast aside our identities and dress up as gods so we could protect the vague and formless framework of the world. We just have to destroy the world? …The world is no more than a tool to create happiness and the death of even one person we wish to protect is too many. Can’t you figure that out, you fool?”

“So what?”

The great demon was trembling.

Why couldn’t they understand something so simple? Her face twisted in rage.

“Be that as it may!! None of that will eliminate the unjust and unreasonable sides of this world. You must understand that. More and more of the people you want to protect are being lost ''regardless of anything I am doing''. Protecting this rotten world will not change the number of victims! You will only continue seeing those people die in your arms!!”

“That is none of your business.”

2nd Saga, the young woman with her origins in Norse mythology who took a different approach from the other Transcendents, sighed in exasperation.

H.T. Trismegistus spoke.

“Common sense says we Transcendents should think for ourselves to reach an answer. Fortunately, this world you consider so rotten has shown us some small reason for hope.”

===Part 21===

A bit earlier, Alice Anotherbible left the others searching for Coronzon and ran to a completely different place.

She didn’t think the current plan would work.

Kamijou and the others had done nothing wrong, but it wasn’t enough. And battles were not won by the purity of one’s intentions. Even with the purest of intentions, you would still lose if you failed to meet the necessary conditions.

She hadn’t wanted that to happen.

No matter what.

So Alice had detected something other than Coronzon.

Someone closer to her who she could search out at any time.

“Everyone, the girl needs something!!”

The small girl yelled up toward the heavens.

She wasn’t using her physical voice, of course. Anyone with the proper qualifications could sense this voice even if they were on the other side of the planet. The magic power placed behind her voice ensured it.

Even as she yelled, Alice Anotherbible remembered.

She had been so selfish.

She had only been able to communicate with the regular Transcendents by terrifying them.

When Kamijou Touma had been injured at the Bridge Builders Cabal’s consulate, she had attacked H.T. Trismegistus and Good, Old Mary.

Maybe it was wrong to try and get their help now.

But she had no one else to rely on.

Alice wouldn’t blame them if they abandoned her.

Still, it felt wrong for him – for Kamijou Touma – to be harmed by a punishment meant for her.

“The girl can destroy! The girl can kill! The girl can doom! Nothing in this world can stand up to the girl!! …But the girl’s power can’t protect her teacher. So the girl is useless here. She needs your help!”

They were listening of course.

The Transcendents knew.

They were right outside the city wall. Maybe among the trees of a forest, maybe at the top of a metal tower, maybe seated on the bench of a rusty old bus stop.

They had lost faith in Alice Anotherbible, but a Transcendent was a magician who would save anyone who met the salvation conditions they had decided on. Despite saying they were leaving Academy City, not a one of them had truly abandoned it. They didn’t care what someone’s affiliations were. Whether enemy or ally, as long as someone matched the salvation conditions, they would protect them even at the cost of their own life. So…as long as that applied to even a single person among Academy City’s 2.3 million, they would never abandon the city and run away.

So they were present for that moment.

That tyrant Alice had remembered basic human gratitude. That acted as powerful reins for the girl herself. And as long as she could control her own emotions, perhaps she would be different from CRC who had been similarly capricious and playful.

It was by no means a small change.

If the old Alice didn’t have enough help, she might have multiplied her extraordinary self. That might sound ridiculous, but with her it was possible.

But now she knew that wouldn’t work.

She needed the diversity of people who had abilities she lacked.

Alice was not gathering up the people she needed.

She was trying to become someone the people around her needed.

“The girl will do anything. The girl will do anything you ask and she doesn’t care how you use her power. You can tell her to die if you want!! …So! So don’t let Coronzon leave the city!!”

And the Transcendents knew this would not be a wasted effort. A boy had stopped Alice’s rampage even though it cost him his life. The little tyrant had taken that fact to heart. The Transcendents had lost faith in Alice because she had changed, been distorted, become weak. Or so they thought, but now they were willing to consider a different possibility.

Was Kamijou Touma the key? Not even the Transcendents who had been observing Alice for so long could predict what she would do now.

Could they really say Alice Anotherbible wasn’t growing?

Now that they had seen her pouring everything into bowing her head to someone else…

Was she not worth their respect?

And if Alice’s change was a positive form of growth, could they maybe still have some hope? The idea of saving the world through CRC, Christian Rosencreutz, was dead. He had not been the saint they expected. …But could they maybe find some other way of saving the world with Alice?

Alice Anotherbible raised her tear-streaked face.

“The girl is sorry, everyone… But can the girl ask for just one more thing?”

Was this the leader the Transcendents should serve?

No, she wasn’t.

They listened to her words as an equal companion.

“Join the girl in the fight to save her teacher and the world!!!”

No words were necessary.

They used their actions to answer her.

===Part 22===

LAShTAL’s rampage continued.

The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force were all fighting.

Kamijou ran toward District 17. He hated that he didn’t know how to drive. Especially when grownups did it without even thinking about it. Of course, the red snow was frozen solid across the entire area. High schoolers were allowed to get a motorcycle license, but even that wouldn’t have done him much good here. Still.

While those meaningless thoughts were spinning through his mind, a stabbing headache crashed into his brain.

An invisible dizziness made the world spin around him.

This wasn’t the first time.

(Why…now?)

Kamijou Touma groaned.

And staggered to the side.

“Gh…”

A lengthy fight tonight had been suicide from the beginning.

He had passed his body’s limits way back when he fought Coronzon to stop Adikalika. He had lost there. It was just that it hadn’t ended there, so he had been forced to keep going in a sudden death round. How could he expect to save anyone like this?

(Just a bit more…a bit longer… Only five or ten minutes! Index and Misaka believed in me. They’re all fighting. Because they believe I can do this!! So can’t you keep going just a little longer, my body!?)

But he did not collapse.

Because as he started to fall forward, someone caught him.

He heard a voice.

The strange girl’s voice sounded simultaneously childlike and grown up.

“You really are…”

But most of all, it sounded sad.

“…allllllways like this, aren’t you? It’s like you never give your wounds a chance to heal or like you spend more days hurt than healthy.”

Who was she?

He didn’t ''think'' he knew her.

The girl wore mourning clothes and her long honey-blonde hair blew in the night breeze.

Maybe he had met her before, but he had no memory of her. Who could she be? He couldn’t find a single answer there.

“Who…?”

“I could tell you my name a billion times over and you would never remember. But maybe my esper name could stick in your mind: Mental Out.”

Academy City’s #5 Level 5.

The greatest psychological power: Mental Out.

He had heard of that. ''But only as a rumor.

If that was who she was…

If that legend was now standing before him in physical form…

His mouth felt awfully dry. No, was it just sticky with drying blood?

Kamijou somehow got the word out.

“Then…”

“Interested in forgetting it all and leaving the fight?”

“…Please. I don’t care if it’s only a trick, just do something about the pain. If you do, then I can face Coronzon…”

“Now I really do want to make you forget it all and leave the fight.”

She sounded exasperated.

And she glared at him fairly seriously.

But the honey-blonde girl hugged his head to her chest and smiled in a way that seemed to say ''she hadn’t expected anything else.

The conversation smoothly continued.

She seemed to be pouting her lips like a small child. And what was with the TV remote?

“Mental Out is a psychological power. It can erase the pain, but it has no healing ability for the physical wounds. It’s more like your body continues to send out all the intense pain signals, but your mind ability can’t sense them. Your organs will still be putting out different hormones in response to your wounds, so they could get worn out and damaged. Do you still want to do this?”

“Yes…”

“No touching your head after this, okay?”

“''Thanks''.”

Time froze for a moment.

The look on the honey-blonde girl’s face said she had never in her long life expected to hear that word directed at her.

“Saving the world isn’t my style.”

The boy wasn’t looking at her face.

His eyes were directed straight ahead, toward the goal he had already chosen.

“This is the last time the city you call home will be destroyed like this. I don’t know what it is you care for, but if it’s in this city, then it’s safe. I’ll protect all of it.”

“You dummy.”

Kamijou Touma took off running.

Without looking back.

So he could settle things with Great Demon Coronzon once and for all.

===Part 23===

He was in District 17.

It was the westernmost district in Academy City. It was an industrial area and the smokestacks of its wide variety of unmanned factories continued to release smoke that had been thoroughly scrubbed of pollutants making it “cleaner than the moldy and dusty air conditioner in your home”.

The district also bordered the city wall.

Cross that wall and you would find a vast forest and mountains. The green roof covered an area of more than ten kilometers across, so satellites and drones would have no way of finding a fugitive there.

Kamijou Touma knew his body was in bad shape.

But he was pretty sure the same applied to that unsteady figure over there.

He had found her.

There she was.

A lot had happened during this one night. Most likely, the efforts and actions of far more people than he was aware had been intertwined. Complexly so.

But that was why he had arrived in time for this final moment.

She was still inside the wall.

“Coronzon…”

When he called that name, the figure shook. She could hear him. He had made it close enough for his physical voice to reach her. If he didn’t stop her now, he was sure she would escape into the outside world.

He wouldn’t let that happen.

Kamijou Touma called out again.

“Great Demon Coronzon.”

Slowly.

She turned around.

Her body in the beige habit was tilted at an angle.

He could smell blood… Her long, long blonde hair was a mess. She held her head with a hand and forcibly kept herself upright as she glared at him.

With thoroughly bloodshot eyes.

“Kami…jou…Touma.”

That wasn’t anger?

Something was off. Coronzon had so arrogantly rebelled against heaven, yet now she was shrinking down as if afraid of something. She looked like a fugitive at her wit’s end.

“Do you really think you can defeat me? Have you even once found victory against me by sticking to your own will through to the end!? You may think you have me cornered, but it is you who will be crushed. Lament your misfortune for meeting me here, Kamijou Touma!!”

That was probably true.

But Kamijou Touma wasn’t looking at Great Demon Coronzon.

He was focused on something else.

No matter how he tried to disguise it with his words, defeating Coronzon would also mean attacking Aleister.

Aleister had failed to restrain her. He wouldn’t last.

Then what did he hope for? To defeat the being who had once torn apart his family? For the living Baby Lilith to remain in this world?

Whatever the case, idealism would only eradicate that human’s hopes. The power to destroy illusions could not save him.

So Kamijou had to think. What could he do here?

The words spilled from his mouth.

“Hey, can I rely on you here?”

He had to stop Coronzon.

He could not let this opportunity escape.

So.

“Let’s win this together, Aleister.”

There was no obvious physical voice.

But a much too unnatural heartbeat did ring out into the world.

Kamijou took that as an answering voice.

Saying, “Attack me along with her.”

Coronzon doubled over in pain.

She was probably coughing blood into the hand over her mouth.

…They didn’t need to exchange many words. It hadn’t really been all that long since they first met in person, but Kamijou sensed a bond beyond the need for words with Aleister.

That was a bond that Coronzon had failed to tear apart.

And it was a bond that Kamijou would soon be severing himself.

No matter what excuses he made.

===Part 24===

The boy clenched his right fist harder and harder.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter3

2025-12-29T20:04:48Z

Massify: /* Part 9 */

==Chapter 3: Which Side is Winning? – Scoreboard.==

===Part 1===

Around when she abandoned the stolen car, her memory cut out again.

“…”

The next thing she knew, Coronzon was leaning against a cold building wall.

Something had happened.

Aleister had done something.

She had traveled south from District 20 to reach District 9, which contained art schools. The Anglicans were mostly in the north of the city, so she abandoned the stolen car and had planned to take another car (also stolen of course) to reach the southern wall.

But she couldn’t trust in that plan anymore.

She ran her hands along her habit. Pathetically driven by fear and anxiety. She pulled an object smaller than her palm from a fairly unspeakable part of her clothing,.

She couldn’t believe it.

(A wireless game controller? That means it has its own ID and can produce its own signal to provide its location.)

“Y-you would forestall a great demon with this…this piece of junk that doesn’t even cost 5000 yen!? Are you kidding me, Aleisterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!?”

A shape squirmed. And produced a short scream.

No, was that a man forcing himself onto a girl?

An outfit that looked on the border between at-home clothing and sleepwear had been badly torn and the man was reaching for her underwear.

''Perfect.

That was wandering Coronzon’s honest assessment.

It was happening in a small boxlike building.

An Anti-Skill station. A small one. Around the size of what would be called a police box in the outside world.

This was happening there of all places. That public structure should have had someone working in it 365 days a year to keep the city’s peace, but today it had been empty.

With his hands pinning the girl to the floor, the man wasn’t sure how to undo his belt buckle. He raised his head with an odd expression that stuck out his chin more than necessary.

“Huh? Who the hell’re you?”

She didn’t even respond.

Great Demon Coronzon stabbed her hand right through the center of the scum’s gut.

The odor of blood splattered out.

“Bhee, ee, eeeeeeeeeek!!”

He audibly slammed into the shelves behind him and objects came crashing down.

The man of no consequence scrambled out of the Anti-Skill station, his arms flailing wildly.

With his abdominal cavity punctured and a game controller directly stuck inside. Surgical hygiene? Why should Coronzon care about something like that? His bacteria-covered organs might shut down before long, but he would act as a nice decoy as long as he scrambled around and fled before that happened.

In something of a new habit, she held a hand to her woozy head and belatedly realized her hand was stained by that scum’s unclean blood. Everything seemed to piss her off right now. Nothing was going her way.

She lashed out vocally.

“Aleister!! That death is on your hands for that trick you pulled. Are you satisfied? It’s absurd for you to try and save the world. Hee hee, ha ha ha. You’re the one who made the world this way! So give up! You already know everything you do only comes back to bite you!!”

Even so, how many times was it now?

…Or was it really Aleister’s will sending these signs to Kamijou Touma and the other pursuers? Did he really have enough strength to hijack Great Demon Coronzon’s body this many times?

Was it possible she was sending these hints to her pursuers herself? She shuddered. No, it wasn’t possible. How would that benefit her? But could it be a self-destructive desire like the urge people felt to activate a fire alarm when they saw one?

Coronzon clenched her hair tight in her hand. An unpleasant snapping sound followed.

She couldn’t get a read on her own mind anymore.

“U-um.”

It was then that someone nervously spoke to her. The girl seated on the floor looked up at her, completely forgetting to fix her clothing.

With admiration in her eyes.

“…Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Um, thank you…f-for saving me.”

Great Demon Coronzon doubled over and held a hand to her mouth.

She retched.

She couldn’t stand any more of this. Before the girl could say anything more, Coronzon got her unsteady body moving, rushing out of the station. The great demon ''had fled''.

She walked a few meters and then stumbled. She fell down onto the red snow frozen on the ground.

She lay in the snow as thoughts spiraled through her head.

This was wasn’t right.

What was going on?

She had just jabbed her hand right into the gut of an ordinary man who had no connection to magic. With enough force to take his life. And only so she could embed the signal to her location inside his body. There may have been another way, but she had chosen that one so she could enjoy it.

It had been for her. It had been a cruel act of violence befitting a demon.

…But had she ended up saving a life?

Impossible.

She had been acting of her own free will.

She was certain of that.

And yet the result had so completely betrayed her expectations?

Her bad deed had been remade into a good one.

It was the ultimate outrage.

(Was it an act of…)

The being known as a great demon hatefully clenched her back teeth.

Sweat poured from her brow. She had a terrible feeling about this.

A wireless game controller? Those weren’t too unusual, but ''where had Aleister gotten one in the few seconds he had taken control''? She doubted he had forced his way into an electronics shop with its metal shutter down for the night. He wouldn’t have had time to search through the game shelf in a discount shop. Did that mean someone had ''just so happened'' to drop one on the side of the street? …Had it been ''a complete coincidence'' as if some greater will were at work?

(Did an act of god transform what I did? Is a good influence distorting my actions? It’s too late, world. Do you really expect me to go along with that? I will take things! ''Too far''!! And destroy the world of my own free will!!!)

===Part 2===

An alarm blared in the District 10 prison.

Telling of an oddity in the same prison.

Someone had already broken in.

“Is it Oniyama!?”

“No, he would have used his authority as a Director to use the proper channels for a visit. This is someone else, so be careful!”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 left the cell while listening to the female secretary speaking over the device on the wall.

The enemy was close.

As close as the corridor leading to the solitary confinement cell hidden deep inside the prison. The silver-haired, dark-skinned woman wore a patchwork of rags that did not look at all hygienic. She was alone. She was even barefoot. An ordinary jailer might tilted their head wondering how she had made it inside such a strictly guarded prison.

But Qliphah Puzzle 545 understood magic too well for that.

She accurately grasped the threat standing before her.

“One of the Anglican’s magicians specialized in anti-magician combat!?”

“I am Necromancer Isabella Theism. You should already know that name after I threatened the city’s leader.”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was dumbfounded. This prison’s security had already proven itself unable to keep out uninvited guests and now someone like this had made it in?

“The entrance back there was covered by a shocking number of sensors, but they’re only designed to detect living intruders. I recommend tweaking it to detect and instantly attack corpses as well. It’s not that hard to disguise yourself as one.”

“Why are you here? The Anglicans know all about the battle against Coronzon, so you should know my master is in no condition to talk.”

“So I’ve heard. Although I wasn’t around for that part since I was knocked out while dealing with ''some other business''. Regardless, if what I have heard is true, we really are in a grave situation. Right now, I think it is most necessary that we defeat Great Demon Coronzon and bring stability back to the world.”

“Then go tell that to Coronzon, not my master!”

“Oh, do you know where she is?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 fell silent.

Isabella breathed a sigh thick with exasperation.

“That is the real question. What I need right now is information and a few coincidental hints just aren’t enough. A vast network has been laid out across Academy City: security cameras, security robots, drones, satellites, and so on. Tracking her requires bringing the city’s data infrastructure back to full functionality. And it if is necessary to settle things with Coronzon…as much as I hate to, what choice do I have but to save your new Board Chairman? I can’t have him go on sleeping with the Master Key clutched in his hand.”

“…”

Isabella Theism seemed unbothered by Qliphah Puzzle 545’s skeptical look.

The look on her face said she had expected it.

Not long before, she had been in charge of the group physically taking control of Academy City and attempting to use the city as a disposable tool to defeat Coronzon. It would be weird if Qliphah Puzzle 545 did trust her right away.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 glared at her and asked a question.

“Your clothes reek of death. You’re that necromancer who was arguing with my master over the phone… Can a death magician really heal a living human?”

Isabella Theism grabbed her rags in her hands and lifted them upwards. All at once.

She was wearing underwear below, but it was very thin and small.

Two healthy brown objects jiggled there.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was a girl, but she still flinched back at being shown this all of a sudden.

“Uh?”

“Take a close look. My ribs and sternum were badly broken and one sharp bone fragment pierced my right lung. Can you see any of that? What’s your assessment?”

“You have all your ribs and there’s no bruising from internal bleeding. It’s all been healed?”

When the demon girl approached and took a close look, Isabella averted her eyes awkwardly.

Apparently this was embarrassing for her after all.

“Loko Atisou. There is more to Voodoo than making zombies. It is a polytheistic religion with all sorts of gods, so it of course has a god of medicine.”

Just like any other religion, Voodoo also functioned to govern and help the local people. The violent and combative side was only meant for emergencies when the group as a whole was attacked by an external enemy or a rebellion. That wasn’t all it could do.

It had not been invented for use in horror movies, so there was a benevolent Voodoo that listened to the people’s worries and healed their injuries and disease.

Healing was a challenging territory for Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 who specialized in the Qliphoth that contained all that was impure and immoral. She would have to start with a curse or an attack and then build it in reverse. Needing to include that conversion in every single step meant it would be much faster to borrow the power of a god who directly dealt in medicine.

Isabella concluded her valid evidence had been accepted, so she lowered her rags.

“I am willing to view you as a magic side doctor. And I understand how this aligns with your interests. So where will you start, witch doctor?”

“Well, I do have a few things on hand. Zombie powder, for example.”

“Z-zombie powder!?”

Despite being a demon, Qliphah Puzzle 545’s eyes bulged at the mere mention of that name. But Isabella Theism sighed in exasperation.

“Voodoo zombie powder…well, real Voodoo prefers to use French more than English. But anyway, it isn’t a toxin sprinkled on a rotting corpse to control it.”

She seemed to be implying that she did not use real Voodoo.

No matter how much she knew about it, she was only illicitly using their excellent techniques.

“It is a punishment in which a living human is put in a state of living death where they cannot think or make any decisions and will do whatever they are told. So you can think of it as a medicine used ''to prevent someone from dying'' until their punishment is complete.”

“You mean like how the highly toxic digitalis can also be used as a cardiac stimulant?”

“And in the other direction, salt and sugar can kill despite being necessary nutrients for life. The materials themselves are neither good nor bad. It all comes down to how they are used.”

===Part 3===

An ambulance echoed through one corner of District 20.

Kamijou glanced in its direction.

Takitsubo Rikou…couldn’t go any further. With the frozen snow, the dead traffic signals, and the more concrete threat of the scouts, he was thankful the ambulance had actually come when they called.

A large dog hopped into the same ambulance.

“I will go with her.”

“Hey, are you sure about that?”

“I am not much help without the A.A.A. And Coronzon will be cautious of my wonderful nose now that I have demonstrated its use. There is nothing left for me to do on the front line. So I wish to contribute by removing this worry from your hearts, allowing you to move more freely. Listen to me. Do not worry about this girl any longer.”

Kamijou and the others could only watch the ambulance go.

There was still more they had to do.

But…

“We have a report regarding the entertainment location signal presumed to be a sign from Aleister. Unfortunately, it was found embedded in some man. So back to square one.”

“Hey, that doesn’t tell us nothing. If we know what path the dying decoy took, we should be able to figure out where he contacted Coronzon.”

This was all they had to discuss on their way to a corner of District 9.

It was now 3 AM.

This was where they had lost Coronzon’s trail.

Kamijou Touma sighed softly while listening to Kanzaki and Othinus’s discussion.

All they could do was wait.

Nothing pained Kamijou more than having nothing to do when he knew Coronzon was even now on the move. It was all over once she crossed the wall somewhere and left the city. Yet the city was too large to search at random.

He had decided he wouldn’t just wait around, but the physical reality wasn’t cooperating with his personal wishes.

Index, Kanzaki, and some others were apparently running a magical search, but that still wasn’t enough to track down Coronzon.

They needed to go after her from the science side as well, but Mikoto alone wasn’t enough.

Simply tracking down the fugitive was hard enough on its own, but Kamijou couldn’t shake the feeling that Coronzon was still hiding something. Some powerful move or sudden twist he never would have considered. Something they couldn’t even imagine while continuing to wander through this labyrinth, but also something that would again overturn everything if they failed to prevent it.

Kamijou Touma’s thoughts turned to a certain individual.

Perhaps it was all reliant on ''him'' recovering…

===Part 4===

In the prison’s solitary confinement cell, Board Chairman Accelerator was lying in bed unconscious and hooked up to medical equipment. Even Academy City’s #1 would be killed by an attack now. It was unusual for Qliphah Puzzle 545 to bring an outsider this deep into the prison at all.

That outsider was Necromancer Isabella Theism.

The current situation required going beyond the usual.

“How exactly are you going to heal my master?”

“Legba Atibon.”

That was all she said.

It was the name of a gatekeeper god who managed all ceremonies. So no matter which god’s power the ceremony was meant to borrow, you first sought the gatekeeper god’s permission. And because he appeared in all ceremonies, there were no specific dates or locations that boosted his power.

Something emerged from Accelerator’s arm.

It was a transparent shard only a few millimeters long. A piece of a broken LCD monitor.

More followed. Like floating leaves following a river’s current, more and more shards silently slid out of his body.

Not a single drop of blood was shed and no apparent wounds were made.

Even though all these shards were located in extremely dangerous position near major arteries and organs.

“Y-you’re already done!?”

“They did not belong and the human body has several functions meant to automatically eliminate such things. There was no need for dangerous surgery. I only had to make some adjustments to those functions.”

Of course, thoughtlessly boosting them would have only triggered rejection, where his own immune system attacked his body. Only a professional necromancer with sufficient training could pull this off.

Isabella sighed softly.

“You know glass shards aren’t enough to keep a human mind locked away indefinitely, don’t you? Another task is even more important.”

“Breaking the curse.”

“Voodoo can handle that easily. A zombie is in a controllable state of living death by stopping the heart with a poison and then restarting it with an antidote. Antidotes and curse breaking are built into the ceremony.”

As she spoke, Isabella stuck her fingers into the seams of her rags. She pulled out various vials. They contained powders, liquids, dried leaves and roots, living insects…and more.

The demon girl was accustomed to dirty and impure things, but she still recoiled.

“Ew. Did I just wander into a museum of the bizarre?”

“Think of it like a 72-color colored pencil set and get excited. Even if you can theoretically represent everything in the world with the three primary colors, the actual task isn’t so simple, is it?”

The brown woman got to work. Swiftly and accurately.

It took more than a single name this time.

Meaning even she didn’t see this as a simple task.

“Voodoo is flexible enough to let you include any supernatural being as a weapon. Qliphah Puzzle. And 545 was it? I will include you in my system.”

“I will do anything for my master, but will including me change anything?”

“Just as salt and sugar can kill and just as toxic digitalis can be a cardiac stimulant, nothing in this world is a pure poison. There is simply a way of using it as a poison. And also a way of using it is a medicine.”

Voodoo did not think of gods as good or evil, but it was common for the same god to be included on both sides. That meant the gods did not determine their stance by the human conception of good and evil. Instead of the many gods being divided onto the opposite sides of good and evil, the many gods could freely move between the two sides depending on the time and situation. That was what made them all-purpose, but it also made them tricky to use. It required a priest with specialized training to handle them.

Thus, the necromancer did not avoid this being known as an artificial demon.

She simply viewed her as a nonhuman being with supernatural power.

If Isabella determined how much of her to use, she could be used to save a life.

“Here goes.”

“Okay!”

“Through Gatekeeper God Legba Atibon, I contact Medicine God Loko Atisou, and link the ceremony terminal to Messenger God Brav Gede.”

Voodoo practitioners did not think of using magic on their own.

They borrowed a compatible god’s power to achieve a miracle.

In fact, they would even borrow another god’s power to send their request to the god they wanted.

In Voodoo, if a miracle was beyond human capability, then a human voice could not even reach the necessary god on its own. They required a separate link to get through.

Or to put it another way…

They relied on one god to call on another. So by going through Artificial Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 (who did not exist in the Voodoo system), Isabella should be able to make a request beyond what could normally be asked of the Voodoo gods.

It was an impossible shortcut.

Or an illicit backdoor.

“Through the gathering of Qliphah, I beseech Baron Samdi. Divide this soul into five territories and reveal the part that has been intentionally placed in an endless spiral. Human individuality is managed by the Ti Bon Ange. Reveal to me the wicked power severing its proper link. Just like the zombie powder, it takes the form of a toxin.”

Something like bluish-white sparks burst forth.

That was not part of the ceremony.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 thought it might be a trap left by Coronzon, but it wasn’t.

It was Academy City’s #1.

He was no normal human. Had his body itself reacted in some way?

“The lime poison is an unstoppable assassination spell for it produces a different toxin each time the same ceremony is performed. This in turn proves that any and all toxins can be cured as long as their ingredients are known. I have already seen with my own eyes the wicked toxin unjustly robbing him of his consciousness! With its identity seen, it must be curable!!”

The smell of blood hung in the air.

Isabella Theism had a shallow cut on her right cheek.

The bluish-white sparks were harmful.

But she did not stop the ceremony.

Coronzon could not be allowed to escape Academy City. But they had nowhere near enough data to track her down. They needed the new Board Chairman and the Master Key he held. Academy City’s functions had to be fully recovered before they could catch up to Coronzon.

A single necromancer’s survival wasn’t that big a deal here.

But if the entire world were destroyed, then everything Isabella Theism wanted to protect would die with it.

She couldn’t allow that.

No matter what.

“Answer me, Medicine God Loko Atisou. The vessel for your holy power and the ingredients for the medicine are gathered here!! …No external incision is needed. The conditions to save you were within your body from the start. Thus, I call upon you, separated mind, reactive yourself from within your body and break free of your cage!!”

Light surged out.

Isabella Theism lurched back.

The necromancer was struck by a destructive whip of something much like electricity. Unable to bear the blow, she toppled backwards. Several pieces of medical equipment screamed out with their electronic tones.

And nothing happened.

There was no change on the bed. The smell of blood came from Isabella. Sleeping Accelerator did not change at all, for better or for worse.

The Level 5 said to be Academy City’s strongest did not wake.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had to accept it.

They had failed.

It was so dark, shadowy, heavy.

She felt crushed by the air itself when a voice reached her ears.

Isabella Theism was whispering.

“Kh… What…now?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t have time to ask what she meant by that.

The necromancer continued.

“In the worst case, I could control him as a corpse to have him use the Master Key.”

“But…”

“Zombie powder does not control rotting corpses. It prevents someone from dying to keep them in a state of living death. But by altering that interpretation, it would be possible. It can be used just like in a horror movie.”

“No! That isn’t the same as saving him!!”

Her opposition was only natural.

''Assuming'' saving Board Chairman Accelerator was your goal.

“But aren’t we here to use the Master Key to restore Academy City and track down Coronzon!?”

Their goals were defined at slightly different points.

Isabella Theism wanted Accelerator’s help to protect the world from Coronzon. The #1’s recovery was only a means to that end.

Explaining that up front showed that Isabella was more reasonable than most. She could have lied to Qliphah Puzzle 545 and then gone ahead and used the zombie powder ''as a poison''.

“You need to choose. No one has sufficient nerve to make a ghastly choice. And you are the only point of contact I have left!” shouted Isabella Theism.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 would never let her do that. But how would her beloved Board Chairman have responded? The #1 would want to protect Academy City and the wider world beyond its walls.

(Master…)

===Part 5===

Kamijou and the others were in District 9.

They still hadn’t moved from there and were stuck waiting.

Mikoto and Index were frequently conversing. Probably a sign of their impatience.

“The nearby districts that border the city wall would be the most obvious option, but this is complicated by the fact that Coronzon has no restriction preventing her from returning to a district she’s already been to.”

“That means we can’t treat this like a game of concentration. So no matter how far we pursue her, we never eliminate any of the options.”

Wings audibly flapped at the air. Kamijou had seen the Bologna Succubus licking her wings and teasing them with her fingertips before, but they must have recovered enough for her to fly. Neither one said anything, but she took off into the night sky with Blodeuwedd the Bouquet hanging on again.

Kamijou spotted Itsuwa of the Amakusas.

“How’s Tsushima? What happened to her?”

“We can use recovery magic, so as long as someone isn’t actually dead, we can heal them even if it takes some fairly forceful methods. And it helped that you suppressed her bleeding until we arrived.”

At that point, Itsuwa’s tone dropped worriedly.

“You can’t push yourself too hard either. I heard you passed out earlier.”

“Sorry… I should’ve yelled before I passed out.”

“No! That isn’t what I meant…”

But he had let Coronzon get away.

Either way, he couldn’t fight while applying pressure to Tsushima’s neck wound. And could he have fought her on his own regardless? He really didn’t see any way he could have won there. But he could have at least informed someone of the threat. There must have been a way. Even if he was rapidly losing consciousness, he could have triggered his phone’s alarm or the camera flash. There had to have been something.

“Fool. Break yourself out of that meaningless negative spiral. Only you finds it ''pleasant''.”

The wicked woman could be harsh at times like this. Refreshingly so.

There was no way he could have come up with a clever idea when he was passing out, his brain was growing dull, and his thoughts were fading fast. He knew that.

(Still…)

It was easy enough to talk of battling Coronzon and settling things with her, but that also meant battling Aleister who shared her body.

…What did he really think about that?

Aleister was desperately struggling within Coronzon to provide them with even the smallest hint. Was Kamijou prepared to fight that human, win…and say goodbye?

If he couldn’t do it, humanity was doomed.

The conditions placed on the opposite end of the scales could not have been simpler or more solid.

Still.

Kamijou’s thoughts cut off there.

He looked up. Agnese, Lucia, and that group were off in a corner whispering among themselves.

“?”

===Part 6===

In the same district, not far from Kamijou and the others, stooped Angelene was waving her hands anxiously.

“Ehhhh!? Saint Georgios’s Fire? Is the Vatican really trying to defeat Coronzon!? A-are you sure they aren’t just using this as an excuse to destroy Academy City?”

“Some of them might think it would be safer to destroy it before it’s officially absorbed into the Anglican Church.”

Lucia appeared to be doing her best to remain calm.

The conversation wasn’t just between Agnese, Lucia, and Angelene. More than 250 nuns would be listening in through the Barbara Branch communication spiritual item.

Agnese had her doubts about that too. How far into the future were the Roman Catholic cardinals looking? Even though none of it would matter if the world were destroyed tomorrow.

The Former Agnese Force had already been told to evacuate.

They were to abandon Academy City and the Anglicans and escape the city with only the Roman Catholics among them. They had been given a few different conditions for activating Saint Georgios’s Fire, but it all boiled down to one thing: the cardinals would use that large-scale spell no matter what happened. The only difference was if it happened sooner or later.

The branch between launching it or not had already passed.

Being stubborn here was fine, but anyone who remained would die.

With zero exceptions.

Lucia looked to Agnese. She may have been peering into her eyes.

“This force is under your command, Sister Agnese. What will we do?”

“I do not have the right to order you all to die.” Agnese smiled bitterly as she spoke to them all. “You are not obligated or bound to stay. From here on, this is all voluntary. If you choose to leave Academy City, you don’t need your Barbara Branch. The Anglicans are experts at combating human magic. They might be able to track your location using it, so abandon it and escape in complete silence.”

“Wh-what can we accomplish by staying?”

“Protect Academy City from Saint Georgios’s Fire of course,” replied Agnese, her voice low.

That human-targeted attack wouldn’t work against inhuman Coronzon. So stopping the spell that would cause asphyxiation and ruptured organs would not affect the battle against Coronzon.

“Think of it like the neck of an hourglass. Saint Georgios’s Fire is large-scale magic that gathers power from the two billion Catholics across the globe without their knowledge and allows the cardinals in the Vatican to control it. Once gathered together, the attack travels through the ley lines to reach enemy territory and scatters back into two billion attacks after emerging from the ground. Then it causes enough damage to destroy a city.”

A city. Was that at least better than Adikalika that would have affected the entire Italian Peninsula? Agnese smiled a little. So they were retaliating with a smaller attack. The Vatican’s cardinals really had found a way to lower the psychological hurdle as far as possible.

“T-two billion. Th-th-then I don’t see what we can possibly do!”

“''That means it must be a long-range spell.'' In fact, it must travel all the way around the earth. Have you forgotten how Index stopped Adikalika? There must be any number of options: diverting its aim, cutting off the flow of the ley lines before it arrives here, or even preventing the two billion powers from gathering at the Vatican.”

Her argument had to be correct.

But she understood full well that this was wishful thinking.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been sweating so heavily in this cold weather.

(Even if the theory is solid, we’re talking about power from two billion people… Can we really stand up to that sheer force of quantity? That will likely be the greatest obstacle.)

There was no guaranteed method. If they stayed too long, they would lose the lives they could have saved.

They had to build it all up starting now. They had nothing at the moment to tell them it would be alright.

So Agnese Sanctis could not demand her companions join her in this.

In the worst case, she would have to stand up to the two billion all on her own.

And…

“I volunteer.”

That was Lucia.

She used to be so fastidious she would rage when so much as touched by a non-Catholic, but now she was the first to raise her hand and volunteer to fight to protect Academy City.

“What? The Roman Catholic Church is the largest sect in the world, so we must consider the world as a whole. Of course I will reach out a helping hand when lives are at risk. I couldn’t call myself a Catholic if I wouldn’t.”

She wasn’t alone.

Angelene was trembling, but she too chose to raise her hand. Even if only a little.

“U-umm. I volunteer. I mean, if we ran away now, then the Anglicans ''and'' the Catholics would be after us. So I want to at least keep a place for us with one of them. Our home is the women’s dorm in London and, if we want to return there with a clear conscience, we have to save Academy City!”

More and more voices came over the Barbara’s Branch communication spiritual item.

It only provided audio, but Agnese could easily imagine them leaning forward in defiance.

“Sister Apollonia. I volunteer too.”

“Sister Paula. I’ll volunteer if there are any tickets left.”

“Sister Agata. I-I volunteer!”

…This was who they were.

They hadn’t started out this way, of course. They hadn’t forgotten the brutal violence they subjected Orsola Aquinas and Kamijou Touma to. But Agnese and these more than 250 nuns had grown enough to say this during such a crisis.

After seeing another way to live. After being accepted with a smile after everything they had done.

It must have taken trust to do that, so they couldn’t turn their backs on that trust.

Did this mean they all felt that way?

Lucia pushed the conversation onward.

“Sister Agnese. We haven’t heard your answer yet. What will you do?”

Agnese Sanctis raised her head.

She stared straight ahead and raised her voice to a roar.

“I volunteer!! …Now that you’ve chosen this for yourself, you had better be ready. I said I don’t have the right to order you all to die. So no matter how bad this gets, I will not let you take the easy way out and choose an emotional death. Cry and wail all you like, I will bring every last one of you back alive even if it means crawling through hell on earth!!”

===Part 7===

Dion Fortune.

Moina Mathers.

Their fight in District 7 had passed the bounds of human ability. They had simply been fighting too long. No human could run a full marathon at the speed of a 50-meter dash. But a battle on that level had been going on for hours now. A Saint who could break the sound barrier in an instant and then instantly run out of gas would have died well before this. This was only possible for a magician created using a tarot deck as a grimoire.

That was the strength of someone who could absorb massive power from the ley lines and wield that instead of having to refine magic power from their own life force.

(I certainly don’t want to be killed right away, but this kind of endless quagmire isn’t fun either.)

One reason for the stalemate was Moina Mathers’s spiritual item.

Her tattva cards were certainly powerful, but using the visual stimuli of the bright colors drawn on the cards to guide her mind created a weakness as well. Visual stimuli. …That meant a third party could peek at the card and know the element of the next attack.

“Responding after seeing the card always puts me one step behind, though. But if I could predict what was coming next before you drew the card, I would be a step ahead and beat you.”

“…”

“But I’ll have gathered all the data I need soon. You shouldn’t have been throwing those tattva cards around like that. It’s like the scorebook written up by the cute manager of the baseball team. You’ve thrown too many pitches. How many until it’s enough? I will kill you before you can act.”

Moina Mathers said nothing.

But instead of a tattva card, she suddenly waved her palette knife through the air in an orderly pattern.

This was different.

“?”

Something rose up.

From the red snowy ground. And more followed it. A lot more. Like sinister flowers blossoming all around her.

They were colorful silhouettes seemingly made of a mixture of yellow, blue, white, red, and other colors of paint.

Except their heads were giant red roses.

“Ah, ahh, ah…”

Dion Fortune stood stock still and her voice escaped her like air from a deflating balloon.

Because she knew what her teacher and nemesis was doing.

“Wh-why do you look so proud of yourself? You didn’t think this was one of your successes, did you? How airheaded a wife can you be!?”

As his wife, Moina had devoted herself to supporting that uncontrollable genius magician named Mathers, but not everything had gone perfectly and she had made a few major mistakes after her husband’s death: her unproductive conflict with her student Fortune, her failure to silence some baseless rumors (on the level of a murder), and – as the most extreme example – this. The Mass Production of Low Quality Magicians Debacle in which she used a correspondence class to grant entrance to the secret magic cabal she managed for the faceless strangers who would pay for the privilege.

Dion Fortune was cautious of course. Even if they were of low quality, a magician was still a magician. She didn’t know if they refined their own magic power or if they absorbed it from the ley lines, but she knew she wasn’t going to like whatever attacks they used. If she didn’t switch her mindset from one-on-one to a group battle, she would be crushed by the group even if she defeated one of them. Or so she thought.

But even that was a fatal mistake.

“Eh?”

Moina Mathers’s face was right in front of her.

She had hopped down from the giant black cat and approached within 100 centimeters.

This was immediately after she switched tactics from a single destructive attack to a numbers game. She had slipped through Dion Fortune’s blind spot.

It didn’t matter how Dion Fortune twisted her body.

Here.

At this one spot, she couldn’t respond right away!?

(Damn!!)

Moina Mathers held a black blade. The utterly twisted object looked like it was made from a large quantity of oil paint or something that had been forcibly dried and hardened. This was probably a self-defensive strike – a jab – with a saber that she had learned from her husband Mathers who enjoyed fencing. The sharp tip was clearly aimed at her opponent’s throat.

Dion Fortune had misread this.

The biggest threat was not the giant cat, not the tattva cards, and not the group of rose-faced mass-produced magicians. ''She should have been most cautious of Moina Mathers herself''. She should have known that from the start, but the countless tricks had distracted her.

The saber was coming.

It was more deadly than a long spear, a hammer, or the knife of an enemy who had snuck up on her.

(Oh, god. Am I actually dead this time?)

Even if she did have a single second left to move, she would have used it to kill Moina too. She gritted her teeth and focused all her attention on the black box. And…

Sparks flew.

The orange sparks of two blades clashing.

Another piece of metal intersected Moina’s black saber to form a cross.

Instead of blocking the sharp jab, this struck the side of the blade to divert it away. Orange sparks decorated the darkness like remnants of the attack’s deadly power.

A palette knife was responsible.

That was the weapon of a certain magician who specialized in art and had completed many ceremonial grounds and spiritual items by giving real form to the many ideas the other magicians couldn’t bring out of their heads.

“Honestly,” said a calm voice. “It’s sad you’re struggling this much to defeat such a defective version of me. You’re the one who researched all the nutrients in different foods and who insisted Kabbalah was Western yoga, so I would have thought you could boost your physical abilities somewhat.”

By the time she said this, a dull sound had left the palette knife. Followed by another. They were mechanical sounds like might come from a sewing machine. She swept the saber aside and sent accurately jabs right toward the now-defenseless Moina’s throat and chest, but Moina used the guard and pommel to forcibly defend herself.

The same techniques.

The same skill.

The same ability.

Wasn’t there just one magician who could do that?

Yes, and ''despite being the kind of person who would casually rescue the frog-faced doctor who was nearly a stranger to her after happening across him'', she was always so harsh with the student she had known for so long.

Dion Fortune gulped and spoke.

“Mis…tress?”

There was only one person she addressed that way.

And it wasn’t the Moina who Coronzon had created.

Black Cat Witch Mina Mathers stood beside her student.

===Part 8===

In the District 10 prison’s solitary confinement cell, all the efforts of good Voodoo and the artificial demon’s power had failed to revive the new Board Chairman.

Despair was threatening to solidify the air itself.

Until someone who didn’t belong showed up to smash that mood.

“Bonjour. I did some searching within your metal shutters and your prison store had a decent selection. What, do the people serving their time after a guilty verdict get to eat chocolat if a visitor buys it for them? And this one has brandy in it. I knew Academy City cared a lot about human rights, but even the prisoners have it good here. Munch, munch.”

Isabella Theism couldn’t just ignore this.

“Kihara Goukei!?” she shouted, eyes wide.

“Whoa, I give, I give, I give!! I only have one heart left! My extra lives are down to zero! I could never let myself die if I ''truly'' kicked the bucket over a pointless scuffle like this!!”

She played it off as a joke, but she could probably ''still survive even if her last one was destroyed''. Maybe she couldn’t believe it without saying it aloud even though no one asked, but that level of cheating the system was standard for science side monsters.

Then someone else popped out from behind the suspicious woman. A much smaller someone.

“Misaka had her bring her here, says Misaka as Misaka introduces her.”

“Huh? Aren’t you master’s…?”

Now it was Qliphah Puzzle 545’s eyes that widened. Did she know that girl?

It seemed odd for a little girl to be this deep inside a strictly-guarded prison, but Isabella wanted to focus on the more dangerous person.

“How did you get in here!?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 gave her a “you’re one to talk” look, but the brown necromancer didn’t seem to notice. And…

“Eh? Was it supposed to be hard? I just walked on in.”

Only Qliphah Puzzle 545 accepted that answer.

…That was probably due to Last Order. The new Board Chairman must have secretly given her a free pass inside. Academy City’s #1 was strict with himself and others, but he also showed occasional signs of doing things with no thought to the consequences.

Kihara Goukei knew none of this and tilted her head.

“So what is an experte like you doing sitting around? Hurry up and do your job. I can’t get any of my work done without the Board Chairman awake.”

She made it sound so easy in her ignorance.

Isabella breathed a heavy sigh.

“Zombie powder is not just a deadly toxin. It rules both life and death, so there is a chance of it reviving him if I boost its effects. But…”

“But?”

“You probably already know since it shows up in horror movies sometimes, but zombie powder uses puffer fish. Tetrodotoxin. Blindly increasing the amount will kill him before it can begin to revive him.”

“Oh, is that all? I know just the thing to use! Anisakiropen Ω!! It is a très lethal nerve stimulant. Or should I call it a synthetic toxin developed in Academy City that kills instantly?”

Isabella Theism’s eyes widened.

Kills instantly? Did that mean it was guaranteed to kill without even getting into if it was a poison or a medicine!?

“Are you trying to make sure he dies!?”

“Oh, come now. Tetrodotoxin kills by suppressing the nerves while anisakiropen Ω kills by exciting the nerves. Have you never heard the stories? Maybe it’s a local Academy City legend. They say if you administer them both at once, their effects cancel each other out.”

And if the puffer fish poison didn’t work, Isabella could give him as much zombie powder as necessary without adverse effects. The simple arithmetic did seem to say that, but…

“W-w-w-wait just a minute,” said Qliphah Puzzle 545. “That research said the effects weren’t ''completely'' canceled out. The poison that should have killed the instant it was swallowed was only delayed by a few hours!!”

Yes, tetrodotoxin and anisakiropen Ω were deadly poisons. Even a small amount in the body would kill.

It was simple enough to say the two canceled each other out, but if even that “small amount” of one or the other remained afterwards, his life would still be lost. The amount of either couldn’t be not enough or too much. And there was no way of ensuring they canceled out to precisely zero.

“Yes, in the normale world, that is true.”

“Wait, are you saying…?”

“I have a fundamental question for you: ''are either of us normale''?”

Of course not.

Necromancer Isabella Theism used Voodoo in order to use methods of controlling death and flesh from all over the world. Kihara Goukei had gathered every form of scientific immortality within her own body.

They could take suicidal actions that would cause death 100% of the time in anyone else, but they would be fine.

“Misaka will help too,” said the little girl.

Neither Kihara Goukei nor Isabella Theism knew the situation there. Nor did they know how exactly she could help.

“Misaka will do anything, so don’t give up on him, says Misaka as Misaka bows her head to you.”

But they both thought this was enough.

Technology wasn’t always the key to saving a life. Because they had pursued all the theories and numbers so far, they knew quite well that it was the ridiculously old-fashioned psychological matters that ultimately determined the fate of someone on the verge of death.

(This is probably more of a job for ''that other doctor'', but I will just have to handle it this time. …But I will probably have to buy him a fancy mango for encroaching on his territory.)

Then again, the presence of magic may have placed this beyond that doctor’s jurisdiction.

Today’s star was Isabella who lived outside that jurisdiction.

Kihara Goukei only had to support her.

The two spoke as one.

“Let’s do this.” “Let’s do this.”

The mood had changed.

But that wasn’t all.

The child’s presence kept the mood from deteriorating.

“Misaka saw the city, says Misaka as Misaka remembers the way here.”

Isabella Theism and Kihara Goukei were doing some kind of work she didn’t understand.

The sound of something hard being crushed up felt out of place among all the beeping medical equipment.

Last Order stared at the #1 from his bedside.

“It was horrible. Everything was empty but not just because it’s so late. Everyone is too scared to go outside, says Misaka as Misaka gives a report.”

Red and black.

The strange combined drug did not have to be swallowed.

It made a sticky sound as it was applied to his wounds with their fingertips.

This was a necessary treatment, but it really shouldn’t have been done with a small child present.

But Last Order accepted it all head on.

And, seeing not even a twitch of an eyebrow in response to the treatment, she took Accelerator’s hand. Every part of him was full of electrodes and tube needles.

She held his hand tight between her hands.

“Yomikawa got hurt. She said it was minor, but it might not have been, says Misaka as Misaka shakes her head. She could have died.”

A shrill sound rang from the medical equipment.

An alarm. His stable condition was collapsing. An eternal standstill was no different from death, but Isabella and Goukei’s efforts had clearly thrown off that balance.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was visibly anxious, but Last Order’s eyes did not waver.

“Being alone is scary…”

The magical necromancer and the scientific Kihara were each too strong a medicine.

That alone couldn’t bring back his sealed mind.

But that was why…

“And Misaka doesn’t just mean Misaka. Everyone has people they care for. They trust the new Academy City you built to protect them. So Misaka wants you to live up to their expectations, says Misaka as Misaka calls out to you.”

A deep electrical “zap!” split the air.

It shot right past Last Order.

This was not a failure of the magic or technology. Something was wrong with Accelerator’s body on the bed.

The electricity causing the air to burst was so powerful it would likely blow the girl’s body away if even the tiniest extremity grazed her.

“Can you leave things like this?”

She didn’t even blink.

Last Order was looking only at the face of the boy lying in the bed.

“The Academy City you want is filled with so much death.”

These were not all kind words.

They were also harsh.

To truly care for someone was not to blindly agree with everything they did.

This girl had the strength to scold him.

Because she trusted their relationship was too strong for something like this to break it.

“A normal person could give up. You didn’t want to become Academy City’s #1, so you don’t have to cling to that strongest position forever. …But this isn’t about that, is it? says Misaka as Misaka is certain of her words. ''Your position as Board Chairman is the one thing you took for yourself.'' You decided for yourself to improve this city and create a city of science with no hidden side and where no one needs to suffer or live in fear. You chose to create a safe and peaceful world. So you can’t take the easy road here. You chose this path, so you have to see it through to the end, says Misaka as Misaka states the obvious.”

Her voice was not as loud as a thunderclap.

In fact, her words were so quiet no one in the small cell could hear them except their intended target.

“Hey.”

She brought her mouth up next to the slumbering Board Chairman’s ear.

And the small girl whispered.

“How long are you going to make ''him'' wait?”

Everything went quiet.

That wasn’t just a psychological metaphor.

The alarm from the medical equipment surrounding the bed had really and truly ''stopped''.

Meaning…

“Damn…it.”

A voice spoke.

From the bed.

“So I don’t even have the right to die and go to hell? Isn’t that a bit much? ''You are exactly right, though.''”

This is what the new Board Chairman would do.

The one who had decided for himself to protect the peace and safety of Academy City would get back up here.

And because he thought that, Accelerator opened his eyes.

===Part 9===

The Former Agnese Force was short on time.

If Saint Georgios’s Fire were activated, everyone living in Academy City would die. No matter where they ran, they could not prevent their organs from rupturing from within.

Power had already been gathered from two billion people around the world and was being reworked into a single spell. They were waiting for the moment when, like the other end of an hourglass’s neck, it would return to two billion attacks in enemy territory. Thus, they couldn’t stop the attack by preventing the power from being gathered.

Academy City was a fixed location. Diverting the aim would be difficult.

Which meant…

“We need to stop Saint Georgios’s Fire as it approaches through the ley lines. We can do it when it’s still a single mass. Before it emerges from the ground and disperses into two billion flames! That’s our only shot!!”

That was simple enough to say, but influencing the ley lines meant effort at the level of tearing down a mountain or filling in a sea. They couldn’t physically manage that, so they would have to wear down their minds to do the work on that front.

“We start with this.”

Agnese pulled out a deck of ordinary tarot cards.

They gathered below a tree where the red snow hadn’t fallen and she laid eight cards face down on the ground.

An attack traveling through the ley lines would arrive immediately after it was activated. Even if it was traveling halfway around the world.

“But that same ley line connection means some of the Vatican’s data should leak out. If we know how close the spell is to completion, we’ll know the time limit.”

A sizzling sound meant she didn’t even need to flip the cards over.

One of the eight cards had burned black and melted.

The damage spread to a second and then a third.

Lucia’s eyes widened.

“They’re farther along than I thought!”

“H-has something changed!?”

“The Vatican must have realized we can see them. They’re going to act!!”

This must have triggered one of the three conditions the cardinal had given. Or had those conditions just been an excuse and weren’t really necessary?

The Former Agnese Force had been warned to evacuate, but their survival had only been a “stretch goal”. Apparently they weren’t worth saving no matter what.

That meant there was no time left at all.

This was like going to check on the river during a bad storm. It was a risky move. They had known that, but they couldn’t let this deadly attack get past them.

Agnese, Lucia, and Angelene each picked up their spiritual items.

The other nuns had wooden wheels, coin bags, and other items found in the legends of different holy people, but Agnese used a Symbolic Weapon called the Lotus Wand. And instead of controlling a specific element like the rod of fire or the cup of water, this impressive item could control all elements.

The Vatican was about halfway around the globe from Academy City. They would have liked to gradually melt their minds into the ley line and construct countless barriers at an even interval along the path here, but it was too late for that. The most they could do was place one thick barrier directly in front of Academy City.

Agnese Sanctis gave a shout.

“Saint Barbara is the holy woman who invited the lord’s righteous light in through the three windows. Unseen path, obey our kind objective. A path is a tool of guidance – a vein carved into the earth to guide the righteous. Harmful power, do not advance! Halt! Thou have no right to tread hither!!”

Her breath caught.

There was no flash of light or explosive boom. But a thick, invisible pressure did assault her.

The silver Lotus Wand audibly strained in her grasp.

This was what happened when you carelessly touched that which was better off not known. She had known this would happen when she directly interfered with a ley line – a great torrent of large-scale magic. She had known trying to forcibly stop it could easily crush her body.

She clenched her back teeth.

(I know the theory behind the spell was correct.)

“Kh… But in the end, is two billion just too much for us to overcome!?”

This unreasonable brute force was, in a way, nothing at all what magic was supposed to be. But it was effective. It was an absolute solution to the problem that was only available to the Roman Catholic Church with its two billion followers.

What Agnese and the other nuns lacked was power.

There were only about 250 of them. That wasn’t enough to overturn it!!

“…yet…”

She heard something.

A voice had definitely spoken.

“Not…yet. This city created me and the people here called me their friend. I will not allow them to be lost here!!”

Maybe she had been here from the beginning.

But it was only now in this moment that Agnese Sanctis witnessed her with her own two eyes.

She was an aggregation of AIM Diffusion Fields.

An angel created by Academy City using the logic of the science side.

There were reported sightings of her here and there beginning in World War Three.

Agnese Sanctis’s eyes widened in this space where even the flow of time was unclear.

“Kazakiri…Hyouka?”

“I am a collection of power, but I do not understand your method… So if you are going to use me, hurry! Please ''remake me'' to fit your logic and laws so you can accomplish your goal!!”

There was no time to agonize over the decision.

This scientific angel wasn’t even human. Her interests and plans were a mystery, but she at least wasn’t Coronzon’s pawn. Knowing that was enough.

Agnese adjusted her grip on the Lotus Wand.

(I have no idea what element this unidentified angel would be, but my Symbolic Weapon works with any element, so it had damn well better work here! Even if only for one strike!!)

“An angel is a messenger who delivers the lord’s words. I question the accuracy of this destruction wrought by human hands. Is the sender truly righteous enough? If you carry even sliver of doubt, then halt immediately!!”

Light shot out.

There was a sound like a crack through space itself.

The power forming an artificial angel was pitted against the power supplied by two billion people. That was enough for the world itself to cry out in protest. It was clearly beyond the capacity of space itself.

But Agnese sensed a barrier.

A pressure like an invisible wall slowly pushing back at her.

This wasn’t enough.

The 250 of the Former Agnese Force combined with all the energy of the science side’s angel still couldn’t break the wall of two billion.

Lucia shouted with sweat pouring down her brow.

“Our interception point was too close… Sister Agnese, we can slow it down, but we can’t fully stop it. Saint Georgios’s Fire will reach Academy City through the ley line!”

“I…know that!!”

And Lucia had already hinted at a solution. Their position was too close. That meant they only needed someone to interfere with the ley lines farther away from Academy City.

Agnese had an idea.

(I have no real reason to think this work. It’s basically just a gamble, but it really is our last option!)

Yes.

If, in addition to the group intercepting the attack at the target point of Academy City, someone helped them from within the starting point of the Vatican…the situation would greatly improve.

And the 250 of the Former Agnese Force were not the only Roman Catholics. There was another person who had used the network of communication spiritual items linking them.

“Cardinal Michael!!” Agnese roared. “You’re still listening in through our Barbara Branches, aren’t you!?”

The cardinal provided no response.

Of course he didn’t.

“If you feel any sadness in your heart about this meaningless destruction…”

Even so, Agnese continued.

Her voice had to be reaching him. She had to believe it was.

“If the things you told me weren’t just cheap lip service…”

She had called it a gamble.

And the only chip up on the table was that of her trust.

So she relied on that trust as she roared with all her strength.

“Then give us your help nowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!”

Light danced wildly.

===Part 10===

In District 7, Mina and Moina were facing each other on the late-night street still covered by red snow.

Dion Fortune was left behind despite all her effort until now.

“You are drawing on myths and legends from across the world, setting yourself up as Egyptian gods, and controlling a great power like putting on a play,” said Mina Mathers. With a snort of laughter. “That is indeed a spell discussed even in the original Golden cabal. But it’s so shallow and surface level. You’re still stuck in the Outer Order found immediately within the entrance. A sorry display for someone who claims to be Mathers’s wife. To be blunt, you’re still in the waiting room for Neophytes.”

“Wait, wait, wait! Why are you provoking her!? If you want to goad the enemy into attacking you, can you not do it when I’m right next to you!? Ah, wait, mistress!?”

“It’s true I am strategically provoking her, but I need you here to act as my shield. Do not forget your rightful role here, my dumbass student.”

“Ha ha ha. Why did I ever think having a second one of her here would improve my situation? This just means I have twice as many nemeses around. I’m so damn stupid.”

Ignoring her student’s nonsense, the black cat witch lightly swung her palette knife.

That was all.

Pleasant popping sounds surrounded them. Something had risen up. They were walls. A lot like a stage set or a pop-up book. The next thing Dion Fortune knew, tall side walls surrounded them all, cutting them off from the larger world. A space larger than a baseball field had been turned into a closed space by seven side walls, one for each group of tall buildings.

Moina Mathers silently glanced at her surroundings. Looking somewhat puzzled.

How much of a novice was she?

You couldn’t call yourself a Golden expert if you didn’t instantly catch on.

“The Golden cabal’s teaching guidelines can be roughly divided into two halves: the fundamentals where you learn magic knowledge through Kabbalah, Egyptian mythology, Greek philosophy, and so on, and application where you manage and optimize your own mind by following the story of the discovery of the Rosicrucian founder CRC in the seven-walled tomb.”

The Golden cabal could be thought of as having two stages: the Outer Order which covered the grades up to 4=7 and the Inner Order where the 5=6 and 6=5 grades gathered.

…Some like that braggart Mathers had claimed to hold a nonexistent highest grade of 7=4, but that could be ignored. After all, he was only using his privilege as one of the founders to say it. You could never last as wife to that eccentric and overly confident man if you couldn’t humor him on such things. There was also the Portal grade and a category higher than the Inner Order, but they were irrelevant here.

“The upper levels know everything about the lower levels, but the reverse is not true. The adorable beginners studying so hard at their desks are not taught the later practical methods until they have passed their exam. Just like you now because the great demon’s poor job reproducing you means you have forgotten everything beyond the bare necessities.”

Now, that first stage was incredibly boring. So boring that Aleister had completely given up on it partway through. Not that he had ever been someone capable of respecting those who came before him and following the rules. …Also, despite being barred from officially reaching the later stage, he did appear to have somehow learned all its secrets anyway.

Otherwise, he never could have challenged the world in the Battle of Blythe Road and destroyed all those other famous magicians on his own.

(Nothing makes that human want to do something more than being told he can’t. I imagine he pursued them, eavesdropped and spied on them, and tried every other method he could think up.)

But at the very least, this created Moina Mathers was not like that.

She did what she was told and did not ask the question dangling before her eyes. That attitude was not a good fit for a magician.

Mina Mathers twirled the palette knife in her hand and made a calm announcement.

Of a death sentence.

“I will now demonstrate the power off the Inner Order found in the deepest depths of the temple.”

===Part 11===

Accelerator was back as Board Chairman.

And with the #1’s Master Key smartphone, they had access to all the data from Academy City’s security cameras, security robots, drones, and satellites. They could use that to find where Great Demon Coronzon was hiding.

The large monitor on the wall had shattered, so the #1 turned his gaze elsewhere. The medical monitors were network connected, so they could be connected to the ordinary internet if their display mode was changed.

And…

“Master?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545’s questioning tone was in response to the Board Chairman’s odd behavior.

He had frozen up.

And the displayed satellite image was not even of Academy City itself.

What part of the earth could he be focused on instead of Coronzon who threatened to bring humanity to extinction today or tomorrow?

“…What?” groaned Accelerator, glaring at the medical monitor.

Whatever it was had elicited that response from Academy City’s #1.

The data filling the screen was only available using the Board Chairman’s Master Key. To reiterate, this was a photo from a satellite.

“What the hell is this?”

===Part 12===

Silence.

Academy City…still existed.

At the very least, it hadn’t been turned into a sea of blood by that powerful spell.

Angelene nervously looked around.

“Is it…over? Does this mean we stopped Saint Georgios’s Fire?”

“For now.”

Lucia remained calm even now.

…They had ''again'' fought back against the Roman Catholic Church, largest of the Christian sects. Who could say what disastrous consequences this would have for them. The very thought of it disgusted Agnese. Each person’s power was small, but they could produce great things by working together. …That idea wasn’t always a good thing.

Still, they should celebrate Academy City’s survival. As the guardians of a peaceful world.

But another voice interrupted.

A scratchy warning arrived from the Japanese angel named Kazakiri.

“Not…yet. Be care…ful…something is…coming!!”

Agnese Sanctis’s eyes widened.

Was it a second attack?

Did the Vatican actually think Coronzon would be destroyed along with Academy City at this point?

“I-it’s not us…”

A flustered voice reached them.

It was that cardinal at the Vatican.

Yes, Cardinal Michael must have taken a rather dangerous step to reach this point.

“We did halt the attack with Saint Georgios’s Fire. The Roman Catholic Church has no part in this! This is some other large-scale spell!!”

===Part 13===

“That’s Vladivostok,” said the Board Chairman. “What are they doing in the Sea of Japan? They have fifty thousand people gathered in that port city. As well as ships and bombers. Did they gather all their forces on the eastern coast while I was asleep!?”

In other words, it was the Russian military.

That brought something to mind for Qliphah Puzzle 545.

Oniyama Rouze, the Director who had pressed her to hand over the Master Key, was familiar with diplomatic and military matters. He may have had avenues of receiving this kind of intelligence without using satellite imagery. He had been so frantic because of an urgent matter that needed to be addressed.

He wasn’t just a bad person.

He had only taken those forceful methods because he was in a bind. Because he had wanted to protect the people of Academy City.

But this was likely more than just the ordinary military.

The demon girl was steeped in the world of magic, so she could tell.

She could sense her true nemesis at work.

===Part 14===

Agnese Sanctis was panicking too.

They had managed at the last second to prevent the Roman Catholic attack with Saint Georgios’s Fire, but the danger wasn’t over yet.

Now there was another threat of the same level.

The last of the three large Christian sects had finally bared its fangs.

“We are the Russian Orthodox Church.”

That was Vasilisa. Her voice was relaxed.

Which was what made her sound so out of place. No disgust, no fury, no resentment. She demonstrated none of the extreme emotions you would expect in someone trying to slaughter 2.3 million people. Not even a hint of them. She was calm. She worked to achieve calm. Vasilisa killed based on logic. Which was far more frightening than someone screaming in a rage.

“Monsters, evil spirits, and demons. Our job is to protect humanity from the inhuman. …So if you wouldn’t call Great Demon Coronzon human, we need no other reason. With that strange creature in a position where she can control the fate of the world, she has become our top priority target.”

Destroying the great demon came before all else.

Thus.

If it would eliminate the demon, it was better to destroy the world by human hands.

Was that how she saw it?

“And so you gathered an armada at Vladivostok?”

“Well, the Punishment for an Archangel spell must have its magic circle physically delivered to the target location. And it’s fairly large and complex, which makes that a challenge. We can’t simply send it through the ley lines like the Catholics could. But hey, at least we can send it zooming across the ocean to Academy City at greater than Mach 2.”

Greater than Mach 2 meant it wasn’t aboard a ship.

Had that armada been gathered at Vladivostok’s naval base as no more than a decoy? The enormous magic circle needed for the Punishment for an Archangel spell was likely in the bomb bay of a strategic bomber.

Agnese glanced aside.

Kazakiri…probably wouldn’t be any help. Besides, she had already done more than enough forcibly deflecting the two billion attacks sent down the ley lines for Saint Georgios’s Fire. No one expected her to fight another battle now.

“But that’s all based on the logic of the magic world. The military pilots doesn’t know nothing about our world, so how did you convince them to fly to certain death?”

“They can’t exactly complain when they can’t think for themselves.”

It came out so smoothly.

Agnese’s eyes widened.

“You brainwashed pilots and sent them on a suicide mission!? That’s no different from killing them yourself. Even if they are soldiers, they’re still from the non-magical world. How can you kill them so easily? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself as a nun who claims to serve the lord!?”

“Divine punishment can be rejected.”

Vasilisa’s tone was unchanged.

It was still thin, spellbound, cruel, and heated.

She had to be smiling.

“It is told in an old legend from before the birth of the Son of God. God ordered Archangel Gabriel to launch fire at a holy city, but the archangel of water intentionally refused. Disobeying god’s command should have meant the archangel’s downfall…but after some other events I will omit here, Gabriel returned to the position of archangel. So if the conditions are right, that absolute punishment can be avoided. There is precedent.”

That was a magical way of thinking.

Magicians loved to make use of any story they found that seemed to provide an exception to the rules.

It was a completely different logic from a nun who was meant to believe and obey.

“In the battle against Coronzon, the Catholics’ human killer is a waste of time. Because a great demon is not human. We completely agree with you there. So unlike your people, the Russian Orthodox Church has prepared an immortal killer specialized for use on angels and demons.”

“Punishment for an Archangel. A divine punishment rejection spell that enters the realm of the angelic and the divine…”

“Yes, that’s right. The archangel of water somehow managed to avoid a punishment from god. Using that story should provide definite damage to a being based on the logic and rules instead of their physical body. There is no guarantee it will kill her instantly, but if it harms her even a little, then we just have to keep at it. It will eventually achieve a fatal wound, so we can keep dropping them until she is dead. No matter how many magicians and bombers we must use up in the process.”

The Russian Orthodox Church had always been more focused on battling demons than humans. Their prized weapon, a spell that incorporated an element of divine punishment rejection that could even influence the nature of an archangel, might be capable of badly injuring Coronzon.

But it would cover all of Academy City. If not more.

And Vasilisa gave no guarantee that Punishment for an Archangel would not harm anyone other than the demon. This attack would be powerful enough to harm Coronzon. If the city’s people were hit, they would fare much worse. Most likely, all 2.3 million of Academy City’s people would be killed.

Agnese consciously took a deep breath to calm the waves of her emotions before speaking.

“But I heard the Patriarch at the top of the Russian Orthodox Church was quite soft.”

“As if you didn’t already know. He doesn’t need to agree to any of this☆”

That meant the world’s benevolence could not stop Vasilisa.

===Part 15===

Mina and Moina’s clash continued in District 7.

Physical fencing was of no use here. Their physical specs were identical, so the battle would never end that way.

An intellectual resolution that surpassed the physical realm was needed.

Painfully brightly colored cards scattered around.

Moina Mathers spoke like a machine.

“Akasha of Prithivi.”

Mina was no longer smiling.

An ultra-high water pressure cutter was deflected aside right in front of her.

Moina’s greatest trump card was not magic – it was fencing. She used her non-magician-like physical strength. If that didn’t work, did she have to rely on her inferior magic?

And Mina didn’t even swing her palette knife around. That magic had still been deflected, so there most be something hidden there. As if it were dissolved in the air.

“The tattva cards are more than just simple tools to help achieve self-hypnosis.”

“…”

“The same goes for clairvoyance. They are truly ''an initial entrance'' for your mind so you can cross the boundary between phases and catch a glimpse of another world. And, if possible, to draw on the power and knowledge filling that world.”

Dion Fortune was on her side, but she was confused too.

Could she at least explain this to her own ally?

The teacher gave a quick glance to her flustered student.

“This is why the magicians who have advanced to 5=6 and joined the Inner Order are given an emblem combining a golden cross and a red rose. That tool bears the four elements and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet…which means you only need to place a thin sheet of paper over it and follow the letters with a single brush stroke to draw the sigils of angels and spirits in order to borrow their power.”

No grand temple was needed.

Mina Mathers only had to operate it in her hand. Just the one hand.

You can think of it like a smartphone that could summon any angel to achieve your goals.

The Golden cabal had in fact used a spiritual item like that.

“Blast her to smithereens, Metatron – the great angel who was once known as Enoch.”

An asteroid strike.

Destruction on that level accurately struck Moina Mathers, crushed her, and smashed her to pieces…but that was all.

“Eh?”

Dion Fortune was confused.

She had seen it with her own eyes.

Yet there was no damage anywhere else. The buildings around them had not toppled, there was no crater around the blast site, and none of the windows were broken.

Moina alone had been annihilated.

Only that result remained.

“That was an attack of a major figure who some count among the seven archangels. The precise divine punishment commanded by god would never harm the blameless, would it? Especially if that side of it were accentuated and extracted.”

“A-are you serious? I was proud of my position as one of the Golden cabal’s original members, but are the founding members really that much stronger?”

Mina didn’t bother answering her student’s silly question.

She could work backwards from the result and learn on her own.

Westcott would have revealed the structure of the enemy’s spell and neutralized it right in front of them, Mathers would have ended the enemy’s life before they could complete their sigil, and Annie would have illicitly boosted the enemy’s power to send their magic out of control. There were countless ways to deal with a single powerful attack with no followup and no bluffs involved.

(That Moina Mathers was an even less complete copy of me than I thought. …Which tells me your preparations weren’t as thorough as you let on, Coronzon.)

“Did you pick up that signal, Anglicans?” Mina Mathers whispered up into the night sky.

She had no obligation to serve the new Board Chairman, but the old Board Chairman had known him.

If he had decided to resist, then she would honor that choice and support him.

As the guardian of Baby Lilith, she couldn’t have the world being destroyed over someone’s selfish nonsense.

(Aleister was certainly a ‘goddamn villain’ if you look at him as a whole, but I will not let anyone say every last part of his life was bad. The things that human thought, created, and started can still lead to the salvation of the world.)

“A broken curse returns to its caster. …So if this opportunity is not overlooked, she can be tracked just this once. Follow the after effect of defeating Moina Mathers and you will find Coronzon.”

===Part 16===

Kanzaki Kaori’s head jerked up to cast her gaze into the night sky.

“District 17?”

===Part 17===

“?”

Great Demon Coronzon had also noticed what was happening.

She was all alone, yet she raised her head.

“Moina Mathers was defeated? That’s not good. A third party could detect that weak return signal!”

She had no further plan.

She knew she was being driven into a corner.

She couldn’t help but smile. Just a little.

Did they think the universally-hated great demon was feeling afraid?

That she was lonely?

…That she wanted someone to protect her?

“''Don’t make me laugh''.”

Those impossible thoughts had been planted in her mind. She had to assume that. She couldn’t stop here. Wasn’t she the one who had decided to overdo the role that had been forced upon her when even her rebellion against god was tacitly allowed?

“So I am not thinking those things. They have no place inside me.”

It was now a pure race against time. Fortunately, she had already left Districts 20 and 9. She was now in District 17, which was lined with factories of all types and sizes. It also bordered the city wall.

This was all over if she simply crossed that.

Once outside of Academy City, she was free. She could cross the international date line and escape to the other side of the planet. Once no one could pursue her any longer, she would get back to destroying the world. Since her pursuers were not here now, no one could stop all that from playing out.

“Try and…stop me.”

Confused and slanted, she practically dragged her heavy body along.

She spoke to herself while approaching the city wall.

It could have sounded like a curse or a prayer.

“Aleister, god, or anyone really. If you can stop me, then come here and do it.”

If her location had been found, so be it.

If she couldn’t do this quietly, then she didn’t need to hold back.

Knowing the best option was no longer available gave her the freedom to abandon it. Either way, the goal line was in sight. She knew the rest was going to be a challenge, but she only needed to buy enough time to cross that wall.

So she would use a powerful move.

“District 19 is to the east and District 20 is to the west… Which makes them a symbol of Nuit, goddess of the east-to-west movement of the heavens.”

This night had been nothing but surprises for Great Demon Coronzon. She had expected it to end quickly with the initial Adikalika spell working.

“District 3 is to the north. You say that doesn’t fit Hadit, who means the southern sky? But do not forget: Hadit’s symbol Sirius is a winter star. The time and place link Hadit and Nuit. My spell shall be completed with the blessings of Set.”

So the path she had taken here had not all gone as planned.

But because she was a great demon, she could draw on a powerful move like this at the worst possible time.

“Take form and manifest yourself before me already, LAShTAL.”

===Part 18===

District 17 was adjacent to District 9 where Kamijou’s group was.

It also bordered the city wall. It was an industrial area filled with all sorts of unmanned factories.

Itsuwa nervously stepped forward.

“It won’t take long if we drive. We can still catch up to her!”

“It’s been a while since we lost track of her at the stadium, hasn’t it? If she was hiding in a district bordering the wall, why didn’t she go ahead and escape the city?”

Kamijou didn’t have enough information to answer the question Mikoto asked while bothered by the short length of her skating dress.

He assumed something must have happened.

If the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force hadn’t done anything to slow her, then there had to be some other reason. Maybe Aleister had resisted her from within and maybe Coronzon herself had felt some kind of reluctance to leave.

“Whatever the case, she’s in District 17. Now that we know where she is, there’s no reason to wait arou-”

He didn’t even have time to finish.

A tremor shook the ground.

Something was approaching. From the south. Which meant from District 17.

It was a shape colored the dark blue of the night sky.

It was a colossus. Its head really did stick up above the surrounding skyscrapers. Was it a canine beast? No, was that really enough to describe it? Kamijou couldn’t find an answer even while looking at it himself.

“LAShTAL!?”

“Tch. The foundational theory of Magick. The emphasized letters make that clear enough. She took a spell concerning life and used it to create an artificial form of it. In this case, it may be a Crowley-style interpretation of the Egyptian god Set!”

“You mean the god of the night who has the power to slay gods!?”

Index, Anna Sprengel, and Kanzaki were all shouting something, but Kamijou didn’t know enough about magic to make sense of it. He could only glean that this was probably something big. And if that great demon was making use of it, she may have been intentionally using it wrong.

And now wasn’t the time to ask for an explanation.

He felt the wind pressure. He shouldn’t have looked that way. His entire body was frozen with fear. A building of more than 30 floors, which had seemed like an unshakable part of the scenery, wobbled diagonally and then came crashing down toward the street. Which meant toward him and the others.

“Take shelter!! Get behind something – anything – to shield you!!”

Kanzaki’s sharp command broke the pointy-haired boy’s paralysis. He pressed up against a nearby cement block wall.

(Damn, where are Index, Misaka, and the others!?)

“If you would like your lungs to remain undamaged, do not breathe in, human! Here it comes!!”

Othinus hid within his jacket.

Kamijou was of course wondering why he was supposed to get “behind” something. And what was that about breathing? If the building was falling this way, shouldn’t he get “below” something? But he was given an answer soon enough.

Once the skyscraper sliced through the main street, something like dirty cotton candy swelled out. Past the end of the cement block wall, the entire main street was instantly engulfed.

Tens or hundreds of thousands of tiny glass and concrete shards flew through like a deadly sandstorm. A hit from that wouldn’t just have torn his feet from the ground and thrown him dozens of meters through the air – it would have stripped the flesh from his bones, leaving nothing recognizable behind.

''Except even that idea didn’t cover it.

Kamijou heard a quiet popping sound in his head. Followed by a sharp ringing in his ear like something had pierced into his brain. He had avoided a direct hit from the sandstorm by getting behind this wall. He had been leaning against it. Yet, he couldn’t stay on his feet and slid down into a sitting position. Before collapsing onto his side.

The air pressure of the entire space was off. How could he possibly evade this?

“Gah…ah…”

The pain meant he was still alive. So he had to think of it as a good thing.

He thought the deadly gale continued blowing for more than two minutes.

He couldn’t let this continue. That LAShTAL thing was still swinging its colossal body around. More than one building might have been felled.

He had to get moving.

He knew where he needed to go, but his body refused to listen as he lay collapsed on the ground stained by red snow.

What had happened to Index and Misaka Mikoto?

His hearing still hadn’t recovered, so he was late to realize something had exploded within the pile of rubble. Maybe a propane tank had been enveloped by it all.

When his hearing did recover, someone’s shouting voice belatedly reached him.

“Touma! Are you alright? You weren’t crushed by that debris, were you!? Please answer me!!”

He sat up. He gritted his teeth and forced himself.

He had to answer her.

“I’m…fine, Index. What about you!?”

“We’re fine too. We’re checking each other’s status with our communication spiritual items and phones.”

She was safe. Like she should be. But then why couldn’t he see her for himself?

After dragging himself along and peeking out past the half-destroyed concrete wall, Kamijou understood.

They were cut off. The main street was unrecognizable. Rubble was piled up higher than a five story building. That was more than a school building. They couldn’t climb that. And even approaching it could get them crushed by something like a landslide.

Kamijou was the only one on this side.

Which meant he was the only one who could pursue Great Demon Coronzon right away.

He felt another deep vertical tremor. LAShTAL(?) must have destroyed another skyscraper or large factory.

That thing’s chaotic rampage could threaten the lives that had just been saved. Kamijou clenched his right fist, but then he heard another voice.

Was that Misaka Mikoto?

“Go! Hurry! If whoever is free to go doesn’t stop that Coronzon person right now, things will only get worse, right? So go!!”

He wanted to stay.

Not just communicate by shouting past rubble and using phones. He wanted to see their faces to know they were safe. That perfectly normal thought grabbed at him like countless unseen hands and tugged him back.

Don’t do the right thing.

Give into the kindness and split your focus.

(I won’t…let you do that, Coronzon!!)

“Can you take care of that thing? Index! Misaka!!”

“Touma, LAShTAL is not Coronzon’s final trump card. She must have loads more. We’ll do what we can here, so you go stop her!!”

“I don’t get it myself, but listen to her. The fighting will never stop if you don’t defeat the source of it all, right? Then put a stop to this before any more of the city is destroyed!!”

He shook off his hesitation.

Coronzon tore people apart and obstructed their evolution.

There was only one way to defeat her: to trust those you could believe in without hesitation.

So Kamijou turned his back on the pile of rubble and took off running.

Even if he had to grit his teeth as he did so.

Something exploded in the distance. Several beams of light flashed out. Was that people using magic or esper powers to battle the giant blue shadow called LAShTAL? Their survival was not guaranteed and taking a single attack could mean their deaths. Even so, they were fighting so Kamijou could head to Coronzon and so they could protect Academy City and the wider world beyond its walls.

His trust was being repaid. This was what it meant to protect the bonds that tied people together.

===Part 19===

And Misaka Mikoto spoke quietly in a dusty enclosed space.

Was it even five meters across?

“Ha ha. I guess this is the end…”

“Short Hair. There are gaps all over the place, so we shouldn’t have to worry about air.”

“Finally some good news.”

But there were no gaps large enough for a person to crawl through.

“Why not at least let the kitty leave? There’s no reason to keep him here. I emit weak electromagnetic waves that animals don’t like, so it’s probably uncomfortable for him to be in here with me.”

“I’ve been trying, but Sphinx won’t go.”

The world shook. Small pieces of building materials poured down like sand.

If the pile of rubble collapsed for some reason, they would be crushed by tens of thousands of tons of concrete and killed instantly. Misaka Mikoto could control electricity and magnetism, but wielding that strength in a delicate situation like this would only hasten their deaths. Giant robots were powerful and cool, but no one would want to be so up close and personal with one of their joints that they were crushed by it. This was the same.

This was the truth of their earlier shouting.

They had not been calling out to the boy from the other side of the collapsed building. They had been been hit by the falling building. Misaka Mikoto’s magnetic control had stripped it of much of its force, but they and their shield had still been swallowed up by the rubble.

The #3’s power was great, but if she used it continuously over a long time, she could run out of stamina. Relying on magnetism for too long would be risky. So their best option was to stay put and wait for rescue. …Assuming rescue was even coming, of course.

Misaka Mikoto smiled a little.

“Well, it’s not like we could’ve told him we were trapped in the rubble.”

And Kamijou Touma couldn’t have accomplished anything had he stayed. He did seem to have some kind of mysterious power, but nothing she had seen led her to believe it would let him clear tens of thousands of tons of rubble on his own. And if he did try to tackle the rubble pile, it could collapse and crush him too.

Their top priority was Great Demon Coronzon.

That was all the more clear to her now that her life was at risk.

It was bad enough this was happening in Academy City. She couldn’t let the entire world turn to rubble like this.

“We’re counting on you. And I mean that.”

“Don’t worry. Touma can handle it.”

===Part 20===

“Pant, gasp…”

Great Demon Coronzon breathed heavily as she stood firm on the red snowy ground.

But the snow wasn’t the only source of red.

Crimson blood spilled from her mouth.

(This is the natural cost of forcing a major spell like that with no real preparation. I doubt I can use LAShTAL again.)

LAShTAL was powerful but would be defeated eventually. If that were enough to destroy all of humanity, she wouldn’t have relied on Adikalika.

But buying her some time was enough.

She couldn’t even stand up straight as she walked toward the thick city wall on unsteady legs.

(I…may not make it to the next world… the ways things are going.)

She wiped the blood from her mouth and thought without speaking aloud.

(But I will still stop this world from helplessly rotting away… Yes, yes. For the sake of that boy who said I was on the side of good and righteousness.)

She didn’t have Moina Mathers or LAShTAL anymore. Her win condition was escaping. Her own survival was what mattered. Each individual trump card wasn’t too important. It was using them together that mattered.

She just had to make it over.

If she could cross that wall, then the world’s doom was assured.

“…”

For just a moment, her thoughts turned to someone who wasn’t here.

She nearly came to a stop.

Hamazura Shiage.

…But she shook free of it with her will. He had said himself that she was ''on the side of good and righteousness''. He had asked if he had been wrong to bet on her.

She was a great demon.

If any kind feelings and warm emotions were ''unnaturally'' welling up with in her, someone else had to be interfering. No longer would she be god’s plaything. She had chosen to ''overdo'' her role and destroy the world. She would not allow any obstacles turning her aside from that goal.

She was not human. So she could leap over that tall wall in a single bound.

So she did so.

And she exploded.

“!?”

She lost her balance mid-jump, but she didn’t have time for surprise.

A platform the size of a domed stadium sat just outside the wall. Wasn’t that a spiritual item called the Tribikos? But wait. Who was it that used that?

She did not have time to think.

She had viewed it as a platform.

Because someone else had kicked off of it to rush toward her. His cane extended unnaturally. No, he was drawing a sword. The bare blade sliced through the air, accurately targeting her neck.

Several lights flashed out and explosive booms erupted out as well, but Coronzon managed to survive.

It was a close thing, though. It had taken everything she had to survive.

Aradia.

Good, Old Mary.

And H.T. Trismegistus.

…No, it wasn’t just them. Mut Thebes, 2nd Saga, Vidhatri even though she had been near death, and more. These Transcendents had gathered at Alice’s summons, lost faith in her, and scattered from Academy City, so why were they back in the city?

Vidhatri sounded a bit irritated as she spoke.

“I was one of the Killers when it came to Kamijou Touma, but a debt is a debt. I can return to business as usual after repaying all of my debts.”

“I was barely away and now Vidhatri has fallen too?”

Mut Thebes’s unnecessary comment began a minor argument among the Transcendents.

“(As usual, mama ends up doing all the work. The healer never does get a chance to rest.)”

Coronzon’s head was boiling with rage after being pushed back, falling on the inside of the wall, and finding herself bound to Academy City once more.

“Damn you… Damn all of you!!” she roared.

Something wasn’t right.

She was unsteady on her feet.

That explosion had caused more damage than she had thought.

Was that just what happened when Transcendents gathered? If only they hadn’t caught her when she was magically defenseless thanks to the recoil of using LAShTAL.

But even so, how had this sad result even happened?

Before Coronzon had regained control of her body, Aleister had used this exact same body to easily defeat Transcendents like Vidhatri. That meant the great demon did have the power to do so. So why wasn’t this going the way she expected? How could they look down on her like this!?

(Are you tripping me up again, Aleister!?)

“I thought you had despaired in this world!! I thought you cursed the god who refuses to save people!! Your motivations always began with wanting to protect some specific group. You must have seen the moment when their protections failed and they were lost! But you were weak and foolish, so you feared Alice’s tyranny and relied on the fantasy of CRC!!! So why would you cling to this world now? This world can be remade!! Destroy it and remake it and all that tragedy and misfortune will be eliminated!!!”

“The answer to that is simple,” replied Aradia.

Good, Old Mary continued with a calm expression.

“Mama and the others did not cast aside our identities and dress up as gods so we could protect the vague and formless framework of the world. We just have to destroy the world? …The world is no more than a tool to create happiness and the death of even one person we wish to protect is too many. Can’t you figure that out, you fool?”

“So what?”

The great demon was trembling.

Why couldn’t they understand something so simple? Her face twisted in rage.

“Be that as it may!! None of that will eliminate the unjust and unreasonable sides of this world. You must understand that. More and more of the people you want to protect are being lost ''regardless of anything I am doing''. Protecting this rotten world will not change the number of victims! You will only continue seeing those people die in your arms!!”

“That is none of your business.”

2nd Saga, the young woman with her origins in Norse mythology who took a different approach from the other Transcendents, sighed in exasperation.

H.T. Trismegistus spoke.

“Common sense says we Transcendents should think for ourselves to reach an answer. Fortunately, this world you consider so rotten has shown us some small reason for hope.”

===Part 21===

A bit earlier, Alice Anotherbible left the others searching for Coronzon and ran to a completely different place.

She didn’t think the current plan would work.

Kamijou and the others had done nothing wrong, but it wasn’t enough. And battles were not won by the purity of one’s intentions. Even with the purest of intentions, you would still lose if you failed to meet the necessary conditions.

She hadn’t wanted that to happen.

No matter what.

So Alice had detected something other than Coronzon.

Someone closer to her who she could search out at any time.

“Everyone, the girl needs something!!”

The small girl yelled up toward the heavens.

She wasn’t using her physical voice, of course. Anyone with the proper qualifications could sense this voice even if they were on the other side of the planet. The magic power placed behind her voice ensured it.

Even as she yelled, Alice Anotherbible remembered.

She had been so selfish.

She had only been able to communicate with the regular Transcendents by terrifying them.

When Kamijou Touma had been injured at the Bridge Builders Cabal’s consulate, she had attacked H.T. Trismegistus and Good, Old Mary.

Maybe it was wrong to try and get their help now.

But she had no one else to rely on.

Alice wouldn’t blame them if they abandoned her.

Still, it felt wrong for him – for Kamijou Touma – to be harmed by a punishment meant for her.

“The girl can destroy! The girl can kill! The girl can doom! Nothing in this world can stand up to the girl!! …But the girl’s power can’t protect her teacher. So the girl is useless here. She needs your help!”

They were listening of course.

The Transcendents knew.

They were right outside the city wall. Maybe among the trees of a forest, maybe at the top of a metal tower, maybe seated on the bench of a rusty old bus stop.

They had lost faith in Alice Anotherbible, but a Transcendent was a magician who would save anyone who met the salvation conditions they had decided on. Despite saying they were leaving Academy City, not a one of them had truly abandoned it. They didn’t care what someone’s affiliations were. Whether enemy or ally, as long as someone matched the salvation conditions, they would protect them even at the cost of their own life. So…as long as that applied to even a single person among Academy City’s 2.3 million, they would never abandon the city and run away.

So they were present for that moment.

That tyrant Alice had remembered basic human gratitude. That acted as powerful reins for the girl herself. And as long as she could control her own emotions, perhaps she would be different from CRC who had been similarly capricious and playful.

It was by no means a small change.

If the old Alice didn’t have enough help, she might have multiplied her extraordinary self. That might sound ridiculous, but with her it was possible.

But now she knew that wouldn’t work.

She needed the diversity of people who had abilities she lacked.

Alice was not gathering up the people she needed.

She was trying to become someone the people around her needed.

“The girl will do anything. The girl will do anything you ask and she doesn’t care how you use her power. You can tell her to die if you want!! …So! So don’t let Coronzon leave the city!!”

And the Transcendents knew this would not be a wasted effort. A boy had stopped Alice’s rampage even though it cost him his life. The little tyrant had taken that fact to heart. The Transcendents had lost faith in Alice because she had changed, been distorted, become weak. Or so they thought, but now they were willing to consider a different possibility.

Was Kamijou Touma the key? Not even the Transcendents who had been observing Alice for so long could predict what she would do now.

Could they really say Alice Anotherbible wasn’t growing?

Now that they had seen her pouring everything into bowing her head to someone else…

Was she not worth their respect?

And if Alice’s change was a positive form of growth, could they maybe still have some hope? The idea of saving the world through CRC, Christian Rosencreutz, was dead. He had not been the saint they expected. …But could they maybe find some other way of saving the world with Alice?

Alice Anotherbible raised her tear-streaked face.

“The girl is sorry, everyone… But can the girl ask for just one more thing?”

Was this the leader the Transcendents should serve?

No, she wasn’t.

They listened to her words as an equal companion.

“Join the girl in the fight to save her teacher and the world!!!”

No words were necessary.

They used their actions to answer her.

===Part 22===

LAShTAL’s rampage continued.

The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force were all fighting.

Kamijou ran toward District 17. He hated that he didn’t know how to drive. Especially when grownups did it without even thinking about it. Of course, the red snow was frozen solid across the entire area. High schoolers were allowed to get a motorcycle license, but even that wouldn’t have done him much good here. Still.

While those meaningless thoughts were spinning through his mind, a stabbing headache crashed into his brain.

An invisible dizziness made the world spin around him.

This wasn’t the first time.

(Why…now?)

Kamijou Touma groaned.

And staggered to the side.

“Gh…”

A lengthy fight tonight had been suicide from the beginning.

He had passed his body’s limits way back when he fought Coronzon to stop Adikalika. He had lost there. It was just that it hadn’t ended there, so he had been forced to keep going in a sudden death round. How could he expect to save anyone like this?

(Just a bit more…a bit longer… Only five or ten minutes! Index and Misaka believed in me. They’re all fighting. Because they believe I can do this!! So can’t you keep going just a little longer, my body!?)

But he did not collapse.

Because as he started to fall forward, someone caught him.

He heard a voice.

The strange girl’s voice sounded simultaneously childlike and grown up.

“You really are…”

But most of all, it sounded sad.

“…allllllways like this, aren’t you? It’s like you never give your wounds a chance to heal or like you spend more days hurt than healthy.”

Who was she?

He didn’t ''think'' he knew her.

The girl wore mourning clothes and her long honey-blonde hair blew in the night breeze.

Maybe he had met her before, but he had no memory of her. Who could she be? He couldn’t find a single answer there.

“Who…?”

“I could tell you my name a billion times over and you would never remember. But maybe my esper name could stick in your mind: Mental Out.”

Academy City’s #5 Level 5.

The greatest psychological power: Mental Out.

He had heard of that. ''But only as a rumor.

If that was who she was…

If that legend was now standing before him in physical form…

His mouth felt awfully dry. No, was it just sticky with drying blood?

Kamijou somehow got the word out.

“Then…”

“Interested in forgetting it all and leaving the fight?”

“…Please. I don’t care if it’s only a trick, just do something about the pain. If you do, then I can face Coronzon…”

“Now I really do want to make you forget it all and leave the fight.”

She sounded exasperated.

And she glared at him fairly seriously.

But the honey-blonde girl hugged his head to her chest and smiled in a way that seemed to say ''she hadn’t expected anything else.

The conversation smoothly continued.

She seemed to be pouting her lips like a small child. And what was with the TV remote?

“Mental Out is a psychological power. It can erase the pain, but it has no healing ability for the physical wounds. It’s more like your body continues to send out all the intense pain signals, but your mind ability can’t sense them. Your organs will still be putting out different hormones in response to your wounds, so they could get worn out and damaged. Do you still want to do this?”

“Yes…”

“No touching your head after this, okay?”

“''Thanks''.”

Time froze for a moment.

The look on the honey-blonde girl’s face said she had never in her long life expected to hear that word directed at her.

“Saving the world isn’t my style.”

The boy wasn’t looking at her face.

His eyes were directed straight ahead, toward the goal he had already chosen.

“This is the last time the city you call home will be destroyed like this. I don’t know what it is you care for, but if it’s in this city, then it’s safe. I’ll protect all of it.”

“You dummy.”

Kamijou Touma took off running.

Without looking back.

So he could settle things with Great Demon Coronzon once and for all.

===Part 23===

He was in District 17.

It was the westernmost district in Academy City. It was an industrial area and the smokestacks of its wide variety of unmanned factories continued to release smoke that had been thoroughly scrubbed of pollutants making it “cleaner than the moldy and dusty air conditioner in your home”.

The district also bordered the city wall.

Cross that wall and you would find a vast forest and mountains. The green roof covered an area of more than ten kilometers across, so satellites and drones would have no way of finding a fugitive there.

Kamijou Touma knew his body was in bad shape.

But he was pretty sure the same applied to that unsteady figure over there.

He had found her.

There she was.

A lot had happened during this one night. Most likely, the efforts and actions of far more people than he was aware had been intertwined. Complexly so.

But that was why he had arrived in time for this final moment.

She was still inside the wall.

“Coronzon…”

When he called that name, the figure shook. She could hear him. He had made it close enough for his physical voice to reach her. If he didn’t stop her now, he was sure she would escape into the outside world.

He wouldn’t let that happen.

Kamijou Touma called out again.

“Great Demon Coronzon.”

Slowly.

She turned around.

Her body in the beige habit was tilted at an angle.

He could smell blood… Her long, long blonde hair was a mess. She held her head with a hand and forcibly kept herself upright as she glared at him.

With thoroughly bloodshot eyes.

“Kami…jou…Touma.”

That wasn’t anger?

Something was off. Coronzon had so arrogantly rebelled against heaven, yet now she was shrinking down as if afraid of something. She looked like a fugitive at her wit’s end.

“Do you really think you can defeat me? Have you even once found victory against me by sticking to your own will through to the end!? You may think you have me cornered, but it is you who will be crushed. Lament your misfortune for meeting me here, Kamijou Touma!!”

That was probably true.

But Kamijou Touma wasn’t looking at Great Demon Coronzon.

He was focused on something else.

No matter how he tried to disguise it with his words, defeating Coronzon would also mean attacking Aleister.

Aleister had failed to restrain her. He wouldn’t last.

Then what did he hope for? To defeat the being who had once torn apart his family? For the living Baby Lilith to remain in this world?

Whatever the case, idealism would only eradicate that human’s hopes. The power to destroy illusions could not save him.

So Kamijou had to think. What could he do here?

The words spilled from his mouth.

“Hey, can I rely on you here?”

He had to stop Coronzon.

He could not let this opportunity escape.

So.

“Let’s win this together, Aleister.”

There was no obvious physical voice.

But a much too unnatural heartbeat did ring out into the world.

Kamijou took that as an answering voice.

Saying, “Attack me along with her.”

Coronzon doubled over in pain.

She was probably coughing blood into the hand over her mouth.

…They didn’t need to exchange many words. It hadn’t really been all that long since they first met in person, but Kamijou sensed a bond beyond the need for words with Aleister.

That was a bond that Coronzon had failed to tear apart.

And it was a bond that Kamijou would soon be severing himself.

No matter what excuses he made.

===Part 24===

The boy clenched his right fist harder and harder.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter2

2025-12-29T19:51:48Z

Massify: /* Part 24 */ something about making it a singular space for one and um, fixed up the wording for another (since it felt like a mtl moment when really it should've been fixed up a bit more)

==Chapter 2: Divine Slope, Forbidden Book – Magical Exit.==

===Part 1===

In Academy City’s District 7, someone was still fighting on and on, separate from the core of the incident.

That person was Dion Fortune.

“Ahhh, they’ve forgotten me… I just know they’ve all left me behind!! They must have done something about Adikalika since the Earth is still intact, but couldn’t they have launched a group attack to come help me before they left? I am technically the archbishop at the very top of the Anglican Church, you know!?”

A scraping sound came from a short distance away. A giant black cat stood more than two meters tall there. The bizarre beast appeared to be drawn with black paint and it was ridden by a magician in mourning clothes.

Moina Mathers.

She was undeniably a formidable foe. After all, that official member of the Golden cabal, once called the largest in the world, had been fighting for hours now, but the battle still wasn’t over. Even though an average magician who be delighted to be referred to as “first rate” would have been killed instantly.

(This is bad. I know Coronzon is our top priority, but I can’t just leave her out here.)

The enemy said nothing.

Seated atop the black cat that had to be more than two meters tall, Moina Mathers made some complex movements with her fingertips.

Like a magic trick, countless cards appeared and were then pinned in midair.

The cards were not as complex as tarot. They only depicted a combination of basic symbols like circles and triangles.

These cards could express anything in the world using a combination of a primary element and a secondary element.

Dion Fortune’s eyes widened when she saw the dancing colors.

“Geh, are those tattva cards!?”

The mourning clothes woman’s lips writhed.

She produced a voice.

“Apas of Tejas.”

With a roar, a fireball more than a meter in diameter consumed oxygen and rushed toward Dion Fortune.

This had been referenced in the Golden cabal’s official texts, but it was in fact a controversial text that had been officially adopted at one point but then rejected within the cabal. (From the perspective of Western Europe in the 19th century,) India, Tibet, and the East in general were utopias of miracles and the mystical! …But Mathers hated that view, so he took the unusual step of writing a serious warning against the use of the tattvas due to their Eastern origins.

(She’s an artist and a clairvoyance expert. This wife probably did write a lot about the tattvas.)

However, the fireball was approaching slowly enough to see it coming.

Dion Fortune held her black box out in front of her.

If any kind of magic entered that special spiritual item, its data would be randomly rearranged, changing it into something else entirely. That meant it could rob most any attack spell of its lethality, but…

(Would ''the'' Moina Mathers really be satisfied with an explosive that moved this slow? Uh, oh. She intentionally combined multiple elements in this one spell, so even if my box consumes the primary element of Tejas, will the secondary element of Apas still explode?)

“Wahhh!!”

She couldn’t let herself be caught by such obvious bait.

Dion Fortune quickly got down on the red snow to dodge.

The fireball passed by barely above her head before exploding and toppling a wind turbine behind her.

With the tattvas, it was thought the world was constructed of five simple elements, but it was incredibly difficult to extract those elements in their pure form. That was why the elements were used in combination, like Apas of Tejas or Prithivi of Vayu.

(Kind of like a different version of Western-loving Mathers’s Hot and Dry or Cold and Wet!)

Dion Fortune raised her head from the red snow and shouted.

“Argh, you really had to use the tattvas, huh!? Are you intentionally using your husband’s doubts and detours as a weapon!? How much of a cruel wife are you!?”

And…

(If a pawn created by Coronzon can use the tattvas, then Coronzon must know how to use them too.)

She had a bad feeling about this.

The tattva cards depicted a combination of a primary element and a secondary element. They were a spiritual item that provided visual support for sending your mind into a deeper state. Moina was using them in a physical and offensive way, but she was doing that by pushing her own mind to extract the necessary spell from within herself.

That made this a tool specialized for manipulating non-physical energy and for breaking down the world into five elements and managing it in that form.

What was the worst thing an inhuman demon could do using the tattvas?

Dion Fortune thought she knew.

“Oh, no. If she breaks herself down into her component elements and remakes that into pure Telesma energy…could she escape anywhere on the Earth through the ley lines!?”

===Part 2===

They went back into the department store so they get out of the January chill while they thought.

Coronzon was trying to magically escape Academy City using something called a ley line rather than physically crossing the wall.

Kamijou and the others knew that now.

But where in the city would she perform that major ceremony? Now that they had lost track of her, they had to get back on her trail. But how could they do that?

They didn’t even know what district she had escaped to.

“The girl can help!” Alice Anotherbible volunteered. “The girl will divine her location! But, but! She would feel lonely doing it alone, so will someone good with magic help?”

That ruled out Kamijou. Imagine Breaker was never going to help with something like this. And Mikoto visibly cringed at the very idea of relying on divination here, so she was out too.

…But he couldn’t get a read on Takitsubo’s stance. She always had a blank expression and he couldn’t tell if her staring eyes were a sign of agreement or rejection.

The pointy-haired boy tilted his head in the women’s clothing section.

“Eh? You can use Alice in Wonderland for divination?”

“You can use any book, Touma. Haven’t you heard of bibliomancy? You flip through a thick book and place your finger on a random page. Then you apply the passage found there to the problem you’re facing to find an answer.”

Why would he have heard of something like that?

On his shoulder, Othinus continued the conversation like all of this was normal.

“As a piece of nonsense literature, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tends to be associated with mystical matters, including this sort of divination.”

“So, Touma, it should be a good fit here. It’s also well known.”

“That’s not what the girl is doing! We want to know where to go next, right? That means we want a number from 1 to 23, not a literary passage.”

So the district number?

But how would you use Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to search for a number?

“Playing cards, right?” said an exasperated Anna Sprengel.

Her exasperation was not directed at Alice for the suggestion. It was directed at Kamijou for not figuring it out right away. And it was quite strong.

“Fool. Gambling, by its nature, is often associated with divination. Playing cards are no exception. For a familiar example, playing solitaire on your own is practically a form of divination already.”

This was apparently a slightly more complicated version of solitaire.

Alice clapped her hands and spread them apart, causing playing cards to spill out from the space between her palms. They scattered atop a glass showcase.

Index and Anna Sprengel joined Alice in organizing the cards. After forming a few triangles reminiscent of bowling pin formations, Alice flicked away the unneeded cards, formed new triangles…and repeated the process a few times.

“Human. In this case, you can ignore the suits and focus only on the numbers,” advised Othinus from his shoulder.

In the end, only two cards remained.

Index identified them.

“10 and 10.”

“Wait, so is that the answer? But if it’s District 10, why is there two of them?”

“If you rush to the answer in your ignorance, I will stomp on your crotch, fool. She said the answer would be ''a'' number, remember? But playing cards only go from 1 to 13, so a single card can’t indicate a number higher than that. And playing cards have no zero. So this is the only way to output the answer.”

“This is the answer here. You only have to add the two numbers.”

“Then…Coronzon is in ''District 20''?”

As soon as Kamijou said this, looking thoughtful…

''Ba-zap!!!

“Whoa!?” shouted Index.

The roar was loud enough to make you flinch even at a distance. It resembled electrical sparks. He couldn’t be certain, but was this really safe? If Anna Sprengel hadn’t grabbed Index’s hand and pulled her away at the last second, would they both have been turned to charcoal?

Alice Anotherbible, however, simply smiled.

Only she was unfazed after being exposed to that effusion of power.

“Yay, now we know where to go next!”

“…”

Alice really was special. Her power was extraordinary enough on its own, but nothing good came of incorporating it into ordinary magic. While it was normal for Alice herself, everyone else had to endure that fearsome strength.

===Part 3===

“Ughhh, I’m so hungry… You Amakusas have a lot of Eastern stuff for your camouflage, right? Do the Flying Alms Bowl.”

“The Flying Alms Bowl is not like an app-based bike delivery service. Here, Index, I do have a chocolate bar.”

“Yay!” shouted Index, raising her arms in celebration and running off for a late-night snack. It was past 1 AM. Did she feel no guilt eating chocolate at this hour?

Kamijou’s visible confusion elicited an exasperated sigh from Othinus on his shoulder.

“The Flying Alms Bowl is a spell that Buddhist monks up in the mountains could use to send just their alms bowl flying out to the city to receive pindapata. And since I know you’re going to ask, pindapata is the practice of people offering food to monks.”

“Wait, so there’s magic that brings food to you?”

“So the basic idea of a delivery drone has existed for centuries, huh? It just took a while before they had the physics and science to pull it off.”

Mikoto sounded impressed in her own way. Also, pindapata was a form of charity, so it was free. The ancient people sure came up with some neat ideas.

Then it occurred to Kamijou this probably meant he had mentally recovered enough to begin using his imagination again.

They hadn’t lost track of Coronzon. There was still hope.

Here in District 20.

Index tilted her head.

“Hey, Touma? What kinds of things do they have here?”

“I think it’s mostly sports stuff. Baseball, soccer, basketball, and more.”

“It’s more than just hard fields and courts. The place is filled with huge stadiums and domes, including indoor pools and skating rinks,” elaborated mourning clothes Mikoto.

Takitsubo was viewing a nearby guide map. With her head tilted. She wore a track suit, but she may not have been a very athletic person.

“That would provide plenty of locations capable of hiding a large-scale ceremony,” said Kanzaki, hiding frustration behind her polite tone.

She may have realized just how hard a search this was going to be.

“If Board Chairman Accelerator were awake, we could have used the satellites,” said Kihara Noukan.

That would have helped a lot. The satellite images could have ruled out the non-domed stadiums, but they didn’t have what they didn’t have.

They would have to do it themselves.

Instead of using the obvious borderline of the wall, Coronzon planned to escape the city by melting into a…ley line? Well, into the ground. Kamijou didn’t know enough about magic to even guess at how long that would take.

But if they didn’t find her as soon as possible, they could be too late.

Not knowing only made him more antsy.

However, checking every single stadium in the entire district would be far too inefficient. He could see so many from here alone. He never knew you could have too many landmarks.

“We’ve reached District 20 too.”

He heard a voice and Kanzaki held something to her ear.

“Wh-what is that? I though it was weird before…but now I’m certain of it: that isn’t a phone!”

“It’s a communication spiritual item.”

Index’s explanation probably didn’t explain anything for Mikoto.

The paper charm – communication spiritual item? – in Kanzaki’s hand produced the familiar voice of the Bologna Succubus. It was apparently the Amakusa style to attach it to the back of a phone so it would be less conspicuous.

“Hey, witch hunt team, you tell that lad there’s nothing to report from up here. No sign of Coronzon. …The Anti-Skill helicopter is gone, so are we the only ones in the air any longer?”

“After everything that happened in District 19, I imagine anything that can fly is busy providing disaster relief or transporting supplies.”

The conversation suddenly ended after that comment from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, who was presumably dangling down with the Bologna Succubus.

They were cut off by a tremendous noise that made Kamijou cover his ears.

“What the hell was that!?”

“An interception spell,” muttered Othinus.

“Flying with magic is just too dangerous!” shouted Index.

“Ksshh! We were brought down by an interception spell, but that means she’s nearby. Coronzon is definitely in District 20!! And if she doesn’t want us spying from the sky, ksshh, she’s not in a roofed dome or an indoor stadium! Look for the outdoor stadiums with nothing covering them!!”

“Hey! You crashed, right!? Are you okay!? Please tell me you are!”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting from a demon like me, but quit it. We can’t fly anymore, but we’ll catch up soon. We can run on the ground, so don’t worry!!”

“Damn you, sex demon. I know my coat is sturdy, but get your ass off it! Kiiii! You do not meet my salvation conditions, so you do not get to use me as a chair!!”

They seemed to be doing well.

The sounds of a scuffle coming through suggested they were unharmed.

That aside, Coronzon herself had reacted here. That gave them a huge opportunity as pursuers. They couldn’t waste it.

“So a sports facility without a roof covering it. It must be one of the open stadiums. In that case…”

“Different sports have different magical meanings,” said Index.

“Then what about soccer?”

“A festival held in England since ancient times. It’s the origin of all forms of football. Of course, a festival from the 12th century will either be 100% Christian or have incorporated aspects of other myths or religious events like with May Day or Halloween.”

His casual question received quite the explanation in return.

But she of course had a reason for explaining all this.

“But when we’re talking about sports and stadiums, I would start looking here. The ancient Greeks. Everyone in the world knows the sporting event where people compete for the gold medal, but that was originally held at Zeus’s sanctuary. It was meant as an offering to the gods led by Zeus.”

“If we can swap that name out for Jupiter, there are plenty in Rome too,” said Agnese.

Kamijou’s knowledge of Greek mythology didn’t go much past “that thing used for the astrological horoscopes on the morning news”. Where did Great Demon Coronzon belong exactly? With all the talk of rebelling against god, he had assumed she was a Christian demon, but could she use techniques from Greek mythology?

Mikoto and the golden retriever took a step back when these topics came up.

So it was Index who fluently responded.

“Magician Crowley said there are no such thing as demons.”

“Wait, but he called her ''Great Demon'' Coronzon himself.”

“He also said there are no pure demons. He said ‘demon’ is a word people use when they want to deride the gods of people they dislike.”

“…”

Yes, that sounded a lot more like that human who always took the cynical view.

But in that case…

“Could Great Demon Coronzon be referred to as a great god by some other religion?”

“Fool. Even Mathers rejected that idea. He called her an absolute evil to all humanity who was equally and uniformly opposed even when comparing every last myth and legend.”

“But Crowley supported the idea that she is a relative evil who ''appears evil'' from a certain viewpoint.”

A pure evil that did only evil.

Could such a being really exist?

To him that sounded like a strange magnet with only a north pole.

“People on the side of evil tend to be strict about the rules, don’t they?” said Takitsubo. “They have a lot of inviolable rules and strong bonds with their companions. Mugino is like that. If Coronzon is evil but doesn’t need that solid core, then she really isn’t human.”

But Coronzon herself believed they could exist. Which was the source of her self-loathing. She believed her great power was an irregular “distortion” a lot like a monopole. She thought it could only tear people apart. She thought it was twisted and wrong, so no matter how powerful she was, she could never be proud of herself. …If she could, none of this would ever have happened.

Whether or not Aleister’s theory was correct, Othinus arrived at a conclusion.

“Because she is a demon who doesn’t follow the rules, she might have full use off the techniques and fields not approved by Christianity. The rules don’t bind her.”

Mikoto put a hand on her hip and asked Index a question.

“Look, I don’t get any of this occult mumbo jumbo, so can you just tell us where to go?”

“If she is using Zeus’s symbols, a track stadium. His symbols are the sky, thunder, mountains, fatherhood, and many more. He’s the most important god, so he has a lot of attributes. But in this case, there aren’t many symbols Coronzon can use for her spell.”

Kamijou didn’t even have time to ask why.

Index was the star of the show at times like this.

“Zeus is generally a sky god. But Coronzon wants a way to the control the ley lines in the ground, which is the complete opposite. So we can ignore almost all of his attributes.”

“Hm? If it’s that much of a mismatch, why would she use Zeus in the first place?” asked Kamijou.

Othinus and Index both answered him.

“Because, human, he is the top god. He’s powerful enough you don’t want to reject him out of hand.”

“Not relying on Zeus in a district of athletic stadiums is like trying to win a soccer game without ever touching the ball.”

That made sense.

Zeus was a famous enough god that even Kamijou was familiar with him (from manga and games), so his power would be obvious and great. If Coronzon could use it, she would of course want to, but since he was a mismatch for her current objective, she wanted a connector to link the ingredient with her plan.

…Or something like that?

He felt like the situation was similar to a fugitive getting an airplane but having trouble taking off in it.

“So because Zeus is such an important god, he has a lot of different attributes? Then what part of Zeus is Coronzon trying to use? You said he’s a sky god, but she needs an attribute related to deep underground, right? Then what exactly is she going to-”

“Rain,” she replied immediately. “There’s a legend saying the current world is so full of different gods and heroes because Uranus and Zeus were joined with many earth goddesses through the rain that falls from heaven. …Touma, is there anywhere those intersect? For example, a place where a long waterway for rainwater passes directly below a large track stadium?”

===Part 4===

It was a dreary place.

The room was large but plain. Like a big metal box. And it was chilly.

Isabella Theism, a necromancer with silver hair and dark skin, took a look around.

“Why…am I alive?”

No one answered her.

Kihara Goukei was it? Had that bio-monster transported an enemy who would have died if just abandoned on the side of the road?

Cigarette smoke lingered thinly in the air.

So was that Stiyl Magnus on the other side of the locked door? He showed no mercy. If Isabella took any careless action, he wouldn’t hesitate to burn her away with 3000-degree flames.

(True Voodoo priests are apparently immune to fire, but I’m only making use of their techniques and haven’t mastered it to that extent.)

Besides, there were no gaps in the thick metal door. It had probably been welded shut by those same 3000-degree flames. Only a magician who could burn through the metal could open the door.

Isabella searched through her rags to check on her possessions. Unsurprisingly, all of the obviously dangerous items had been confiscated. However, these rags patched together from the clothes of several dead people had a lot of hidden pockets. She stuck a finger through the sloppy stitching and…yep, there it was.

Something stirred in the corner of her vision.

“?”

She only now realized she wasn’t alone in here. It wasn’t an Anglican magician keeping an eye on her. If it was, they would have stopped her by now.

That meant this was someone else under surveillance like her.

(What is this unnatural lack of vitality? I specialize in life and death and even I overlooked his presence.)

“Who are you?”

“''Hamazura Shiage''.”

Even as he responded, he seemed about as lively as withered grass.

He was Japanese…but he didn’t seem to be one of those Amakusas who Kanzaki Kaori had brought along. There was no scent of magic on the high schooler.

Then why had he been arrested by the Anglicans? He was a completely ordinary person…but that mismatch with his surroundings made him an uncanny sight here.

(It feels like being placed in front of ''too cheap'' of ingredients.)

It was uncanny, but if he wasn’t going to get in her way, she saw no reason to eliminate him.

She had no intention of staying in this prison with a stranger. She pulled out the spiritual item – or really, the materials to create one – hidden inside her rags.

(There’s a chance a scanning spell would detect the faint magic power emanating from a completed spiritual item…but the materials are no more than ordinary goods and ingredients. Slipping past checks like that is so useful.)

“What are you doing?”

“Escaping. I don’t have anything to do here.”

Isabella pulled out a small lime. One with a branch thinner than a matchstick still attached. She sliced it in two without a knife and squeezed one half to sprinkle the juice on the outdoor wall opposite the door.

A chemical smoke burst forth as if she had used a powerful acid.

A hole visibly grew until it was more than two meters in diameter.

That wall was no more than metal. Breaking through was easy if you had the appropriate magical knowledge. Plus, lemons, limes, and other acidic fruits were common components of Voodoo magic. It was used in an emergency antidote for zombie powder and in the lime poison created by combining the various toxins and antidotes found in the lime.

“Stiyl…wouldn’t have noticed. With the thick metal door fused shut, he wouldn’t be able to hear any of the noise I’m making in here.”

He would have any number of ways of stopping her if he did notice, though.

The delinquent-looking boy had a surprisingly mild reaction.

He was imprisoned. He would normally leap at the chance to escape without even considering the consequences.

“What I meant is, what do you hope to accomplish by escaping?”

“No matter what anyone else says and no matter how ugly a choice it may be…I will always do what I think is most necessary. Right now, that means defeating Great Demon Coronzon and bringing stability back to the world.”

===Part 5===

Done talking, the brown woman who reeked of death departed into the outside world.

She likely had something to do.

Unlike Hamazura.

(What do I do now?)

Hamazura Shiage lacked that level of motivation.

He had bet his entire life on Coronzon…and lost.

He was worried about Takitsubo Rikou, but he didn’t think she was in that much danger as long as she was within Academy City. After all, she was a high-level esper theorized to possibly become the eighth Level 5.

If he didn’t want any stray shots, or accurate sniper shots pretending to be one, hitting her, it was best if he stayed away while he was a fugitive.

Which meant…

“Oh, I know. What about Coronzon?”

Where had she gone?

He was worried about her too. She wanted to destroy the current rotten world and create a clean new world. Something must be happening that made her feel that way. What if this world was already damaged beyond repair but that damage simply wasn’t visible?

Then what exactly was happening? He wanted to speak with her.

Despite his earlier strong words, he did want to live with Takitsubo.

So he wanted to know what was going to happen.

However, wouldn’t Coronzon have to be in a dangerous position if he was able to catch up to her in his state? He really wanted her at least to escape the city soon…

===Part 6===

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had returned to the District 10 prison.

The facility doubled as the new Board Chairman’s headquarters.

It was guarded by several layers of thick metal doors, metal bars, and all sorts of sensors, but that meant nothing to an artificial demon who could freely switch between corporeal and incorporeal forms.

“I-I’m back.”

No response.

She may have expected that.

In the single-occupant cell, a frail figure lay on the bed.

Surrounded by medical equipment.

The only sound was a rhythmic beeping and a pump expanding and contracting to push out air.

…His body hadn’t been in perfect working order to begin with. Brain damage had left him reliant on a modern design cane and he couldn’t even understand human speech without the choker-style electrode around his neck.

Even so.

It was far too painful to see him lying in the bed like that.

Academy City’s #1 could not live on his own.

He was kept alive by all the machines hooked up to him.

“Master…” weakly called the demon girl.

“Monitor fragments have pierced every part of his body.”

Even a prison had doctors.

Serious illness did not cancel out a prisoner’s sentence, so in a way it was the natural arrangement.

It was their job to keep the prisoners alive in whatever form it took.

“Some are right next to major arteries and organs, making them too dangerous to touch without care. Removing them will be very difficult… But that isn’t enough to explain his condition. If it were simple blood loss keeping him unconscious, the transfusion should be showing effects by now.”

“I know…”

“?”

Yes, she didn’t have time for sorrow.

The new Board Chairman would never wake up ''naturally'' in this state. That had been obvious at first glance, which was why someone needed to externally induce a recovery.

These wounds were magical in nature.

They were scars of an attack from Great Demon Coronzon, a being beyond human understanding.

That meant magical knowledge was a requirement to heal him.

(I will heal you, so please wait until I can, master.)

Something beeped.

But it wasn’t the medical equipment. It came from something like an intercom on the wall.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know if she had the right, but everyone else watched the device from a distance and made no move to touch it. She had no choice but to press the button and answer.

It displayed a familiar female secretary who ordinarily helped with the paperwork.

“What is it?”

“We have a visitor for the Board Chairman. He doesn’t have an appointment, but will you meet with him?”

“No appointment? Then send him awa-”

“He is Oniyama of the Board of Directors. Will you still refuse him?”

A visitor.

And at this precise moment.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 said for him to wait, but when she went out, he was already within the special security zone. Left alone, who knows how much he would have explored.

All of the jailers and guards looked afraid. Apparently it was up to the artificial demon to say this.

“Only the Board Chairman is allowed in here. What are you doing here!?”

“Oniyama Rouze.”

The old man’s eyes shined with the greed of a much younger man.

“I am one of Academy City’s 12 Directors. That comes with certain privileges.”

His words dripped with arrogance.

So what if he was one of the Directors? Just because there weren’t many of them didn’t mean they could enter this place without permission. Just think of the Windowless Building from when Aleister was at the top. No one should be here without its master’s permission.

(Has Academy City collapsed to that extent!?)

Oniyama was the Director with a focus on vehicles, including automobiles, ships, and aircraft.

And there had been suspicions he was interested in expanding into the military field. The military had its own specialists, but those who controlled those unscrupulous military forces – Shiokishi, Nakimoto, Neoka – tended to drop out or be replaced quickly due to that very unscrupulousness. A perfect opportunity for those who were hoping to break into that field.

To be blunt, she had a bad feeling about his presence.

“How bad are his injuries?”

He was too casual.

If Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know Great Demon Coronzon was responsible, she would have suspected this man.

“Why are you here without even making an appointment?”

“I am here to give you a valuable warning, so watch your tone.”

“Nothing you say changes the fact that I only have one master!!”

“My point is that your behavior calls your master’s civility into question. The unintelligent never seem to wait for people to finish, which makes speaking with them so tiring.”

He snorted with laughter.

And then got back on topic.

“The situation is too pressing to wait for the Chairman’s recovery.”

“Kh.”

“Academy City is using all of its scientific knowledge to search for the culprit, yet we have turned up empty-handed. That makes this an unknown situation. And ignoring it shows no sign of improvement. Someone must grab the reins and take control soon. Before serious damage is done.”

He said that like the new Board Chairman’s injuries did not count as “serious damage”.

As it were a trivial matter.

Not worth any concern.

Even though the very top of the city had been directly attacked and remained unconscious.

“…You look happy about this.”

“Surely you jest. I am only doing my job. If the Chairman is unable to fulfill his duties, don’t you think his privileges should be temporarily transferred to a third party? I am not asking for his eternal expulsion from the throne through dismissal or impeachment. I am only suggesting someone else take over his duties until he comes to.”

“You just want the Master Key.”

“Ah, so you read me like a book.”

“And just how many people were you planning to kill using those next-gen weapons!?”

The Master Key looked like a smartphone, but it gave full privileges over everything in Academy City. It was stuffed full of passwords, passcodes, access keys, and other such data.

Including for military facilities and equipment.

Academy City’s functions and military might would eventually recover. If it were handed over to someone else, something terrible would happen. And if it fell into the hands of a Director who knew enough about diplomacy and war, it could lead to a war with any place on the planet.

She was a demon.

She knew just how twisted the world was.

And in that knowledge, she had placed her hopes in the #1. She had decided the world was still worth protecting. So she couldn’t allow the world to be destroyed now while the new Board Chairman lingered on the verge of death. No matter what.

“But the Master Key is a dangerous power. Who can you trust it with, if not me and my knowledge of diplomacy and military matters? Noncommittal Kaizumi? Surely not that pacifist Oyafune?”

“They would be better than you at least…”

“Oh, dear. So you, the guardian of the Master Key, are unaware just how dangerous it is. Listen, ''even someone who doesn’t know how to use it can lose control.'' I was fine with leaving it in the Chairman’s hands since he is the #1. I trusted that someone who has killed so many people would know very well how to handle that kind of threat. But leaving it in the hands of someone who has no familiarity with deadly power would be suicide. Suicide on a planetary scale.”

“Leave! If you don’t wish for the Board Chairman to recover, people could see that as contempt of the chain of command. I will not give you the Master Key. Only my master has the right to grant it to someone else. So please leave now!!”

The old man took a step back without taking his eyes off her.

He was not intimidated.

The smile on his face conveyed a clear message: I don’t even need to return here. You will come crying to me by the end.

“Academy City is a heavy burden to bear. Contact me when you are ready to give up.”

“Leave!!!”

===Part 7===

Footsteps trudged through the snow.

Kihara Goukei was bloody and woozy.

“Ughh, I’m so dizzy…”

She had rescued Urekawa Ousuke, the miracle child born of Academy City, and then handed that goddamn Necromancer to the Anglicans who seemed to have invaded the city (even though they didn’t seem to be soldiers?), but she had gotten badly torn up in the process. Three computer chips, two bacteria colonies, one pea crab, and what else? 99% of the secret ingredients giving her her “Kihara-ness” had been destroyed.

She had only one heart left. That was fine. Everyone else only had one too.

She couldn’t get spoiled.

She was running dry, so she needed nutrients. Her powerful regeneration was working against her. Like this, she would eventually dry up into a husk. Before that happened, she needed sugar, salt, fat, protein, calcium, various vitamins and minerals, and more.

(Why do all the restaurants have to close early today of all days? There would usually be at least an izakaya or family restaurant open.)

“Oh.”

She spotted a vending machine.

The small glowing display shined bright in the darkness. It actually had power.

(Oui, oui. Vending machines are cleverly designed to continue functioning even after a fire or other disaster. Oh, I’m saved.)

And it wasn’t a drink or bread machine. It was one of the unique varieties you spotted from time to time. Specifically, this odd kind of vending machine that sold things like wagyu sukiyaki meals on the side of the street. And one of the large sample photo on this one showed…

“On this freezing night with my breath visible before me I find…ramen!! Oh, that has such a sinful ring to it. But I must do this to regain what my body has lost. How merveilleuse it is to have an actual excuse. Hwa ha ha ha ha ha! Behold, world!! I choose the piping hot tonkotsu ramen!! I am freed from all guilt as I ingest this unhealthy meal in the middle of the night!!!”

Even among the Kiharas, facing your own death was something only an oddity could do. It was a good thing the vending machine let you pay with a train card. …All of her paper money would have absorbed too much blood by this point.

A clunking sound came from the machine.

(Oh, that sounds harder than I would expect.)

With a noodles vending machine, she had imagined something like a better version of a coffee vending machine: first a styrofoam bowl, then the drained noodles and other ingredients, and finally the hot soup slowly pouring in.

Silence surrounded her.

Nothing happened after the initial clunking.

Kihara Goukei crouched down and nervously opened the overly large door to check.

“Is this…a frozen food vending machine!?”

It was rock solid.

The instructions on the package said you could enjoy restaurant quality flavor after only 15 minutes in the microwave.

Was she supposed to stand around in this freezing weather for those 15 minutes?

All she had was a solid object that could probably kill someone if applied forcefully to the cranium.

“Uhh…”

Yet she really would dry up and die without something to eat. Surrounded by a freezing night with red snow covering the road, Kihara Goukei had no choice but to tear open the package, pull out the rectangular block, hold it in both hands, and gnaw on it. Yeah, it was not a flavorful experience. Sure, it had salt and fat, but that didn’t go well with the ice!! The white-frozen pieces of pork fat were especially bad. Was this some kind of divine punishment?

“?”

Suddenly, she felt like she was being watched.

There was someone, or something, here.

She found the gaze surprisingly nearby. Looking up at her.

It belonged to…a girl of around 10?

“Misaka has never seen someone eat a popsicle in the winter! says Misaka as Misaka checks the package. Tonkotsu ramen! …Misaka doesn’t remember that Gorigori-kun flavor.”

“What are you doing here? And please feel free to call me Madame Gou.”

“Well, Misaka needs to get to District 10, but she doesn’t know where it is, says Misaka as Misaka explains her predicament.”

“Eh? District 10?”

Wasn’t that the district of battles and machos, said to be the most dangerous in the city? And the girl only looked around 10, so what was she doing out alone at night?

(And if I send her back the way she came, um, oh dear. Aren’t those giant bugs and sea creatures made of weird blonde hair wandering around there?)

Kihara Goukei wept.

This sounded like trouble to her.

First Urekawa and now this. Was tonight the night for running into small children? Was it some kind of bonus mode?

“Where is District 10?”

“The complete opposite direction, so please don’t look at me…”

“If you know the way, then tell Misaka! says Misaka as Misaka begs you!”

“One heart. Just one left. Another death and I really will die… I-I’ve done more than enough already, haven’t I? I already saved Urekawa Ousuke-kun in the very middle of the night, so I really want to get home and sleep until-”

“No! ''Help me, Madame Gou''!!”

“Neh heh☆ …Well, you drive a hard bargain. When you put it like that, I can’t go to sleep now, can IIIIIIII!?”

===Part 8===

On the roof of a far distant skyscraper, one of the mass-produced military clones known as the Sisters removed her eye from the scope of a large sniper rifle.

“She doesn’t appear to be a threat, concludes Misaka #10032.”

“Doesn’t appear to be? Are you glitching? What kind of fuzzy opinion is that for a living computer?”

“It is called personal growth.”

She had grown enough to make casual remarks over the Misaka Network at any rate.

Misaka Worst, who was tuned to pick up on the especially malicious emotions within that vast network composed of countless identical brainwave signals, responded with exasperation in her voice.

“This is all because you discussed that stuff on the Misaka Network, you know? Have you forgotten that mini-Misaka is your host and control tower? She can hear everything you say, even if it’s in your sleep.”

“You mean that our ability to control electricity might be able to force open the lock on the new Board Chairman’s Master Key? asks Misaka for confirmation.”

“No, that screwing it up would destroy the Master Key! If it turns out the only way forward is for the #1 to wake up, then of course the little one’s going to try and do something about it. Goddammit, what a pain. …But Yoshikawa’s the real loser here. She’s locked in her room with nothing to do. Cause the great Last Order used her power to hack the electric lock.”

“Then wouldn’t it be best to send her straight there? Also, that person appears to be a Kihara, which should come in handy on the way, says Misaka, providing her opinion.”

“Then are we finally going to stop playing stalker? Misaka doesn’t want to hold onto this sniper rifle in this cold-ass weather any longer. Misaka is afraid her cheek is going to freeze to the metal.”

“If you are fine with that immortality expert getting her hands on clone technology, responds Misaka. Misaka checked her spec sheet and it would be a real pain if she learned to multiply herself.”

“…When can Misaka finally get back to bed?”

“As if you have any intention of doing that.”

===Part 9===

Great Demon Coronzon slipped through the darkness like a shadow.

She had chosen a stadium that was unusually large even among the outdoor track stadiums. Everything she currently sought was contained there. Here she could convert her physical body into a massive amount of Telesma energy. Once that was done, she only had to send herself into the current of a ley line running underground. She would still be limited to the planet, but that would allow her to instantly escape anywhere on Earth, even the opposite side of the planet.

Wasn’t its maximum capacity 255 thousand?

The outdoor type without a dome was easier to scale up in size, but this felt like overdoing it.

Academy City had a population of 2.3 million, so a full tenth of the population could be crammed inside.

Humans were apparently frail beings who were afflicted by loneliness when standing alone in a massive artificial space, but she was a being known as a great demon.

She felt nothing amiss as she walked toward the center.

Other than the wrongness of her own existence.

“Sitra Achra, hm?”

Coronzon rolled that term around on her tongue.

And smiled cynically.

Sitra Achra could be described as the substance that caused evil. The current world, from the tiny humans to the vast world itself, could supposedly be fully described using the diagram called the Sephiroth, but there were some impurities which did not fit into the grand Sephiroth. Those impurities were Sitra Achra. They were ruins – shards – of the old world which was destroyed to create the current one. They were the substance that caused evil. They had no place in the current world, had no role, and should not have remained, so their very existence obstructed the system of the current age. Like pebbles caught in the gears.

The world god had created was perfect.

Things only went awry because of the extraneous impurities mixed in.

(Sounds like me.)

Shadow covered her face as she silently expressed this only silently.

Even though self-deprecation could not turn evil into good.

She had always questioned it.

Why hadn’t she become an angel of love? Or an angel of righteousness?

If she had been…

If she had been given that role…

…She would have poured herself into that work more diligently than anyone else.

If god had known from the beginning that Coronzon would rebel against heaven and turn evil and had let her go ahead and do it because it was part of some kind of plan of his, then she would ''overdo'' the role god had given her and ruin that plan.

God was an absolute being, but he did not save all lives.

Everyone accepted that even their misfortunes would be given meaning and purpose if they obeyed god.

But the very existence of that system meant he had known from the beginning there would be victims. He had known and let it happen. For some grand plan of his.

Coronzon’s role was to tear people apart. Why should she obey someone who had abandoned her?

So she had decided to use everything given to her and ''overdo'' it. That way she could obliterate that heartless plan without betraying her purpose.

She would dedicate herself to her evil identi-

…?

At that point, she tilted her head.

No, wait. She had noticed it this time.

Her memories skipped a few seconds.

“Dammit, not again…Aleister!!”

She held a hand to her head.

She had finally managed to prepare this place for her ceremony, but she would have to leave if word reached Kamijou’s group.

Coronzon started to panic…but then it hit her.

A few seconds.

She stood in the very center of an enormous stadium. She had no computer or smartphone to contact anyone and there were no old-fashioned payphones in sight. So even if Aleister had hijacked her body, he couldn’t have done anything in that time. She could ignore the outrage if it only lasted a few seconds.

On the other hand…

(It’s good I noticed it this time, but was the gap itself longer than before?)

She had a bad feeling about this.

Was Aleister starting to get the hang of it? That concern crept up in the back of her mind. Losing consciousness for even a second in the middle of a battle with her pursuers could be fatal. And even if that didn’t happen, Aleister could attempt suicide if he took control for long enough.

He would do it.

Especially now that he viewed her as his enemy and had killing her as his primary objective.

Directly comparing their specs wasn’t enough to rest easy. Aleister had won the Battle of Blythe Road after all.

Coronzon consciously took a deep breath.

(I need to shift my focus.)

Not only were there other stadiums, but magic materials could be found anywhere. After all, Aleister Crowley had built this city during the confusion of the postwar recovery. It was an alternate form for the Abbey of Thelema. It had been deftly hidden by repainting it all in the terms of science, but it would be hard to find places and objects here without magical symbolism.

Coronzon only had to collect the items that were already present.

She wouldn’t have any difficulty as long she knew the proper way to combine them.

She could begin the ceremony at any time.

The only problem was how long it would take.

…No matter how much she tried to shorten that time, she couldn’t reduce it to zero. And she would be entirely defenseless in that time. She was the Coronzon who had destroyed legendary magicians like Mathers and Aleister, but during that time she could be killed even by an ordinary human.

“…”

Coronzon shut her eyes, held her breath, and searched for any sounds around her.

She was focused on the area outside the stadium.

(My greatest enemy is the time limit. Because I’m sure they’re searching for me with everyone they have. Weak as they are, hiding from them is a pain when there are so many of them. For once I need to look out for weaklings because this crucial ceremony will be ruined if they interfere in the middle of it.)

===Part 10===

When they checked the map based on Index’s advice, the answer was obvious.

Kamijou pointed at a spot on the large map.

“The General Athletics Stadium. …It’s gotta be this, right? It’s a track stadium and there’s a huge underground waterway running below it!”

“If Coronzon is using Zeus symbolism for a ceremony to send her through a ley line, then it must be there.”

The white girl sounded confident.

It wasn’t like they had any other leads to go on, so Kamijou had to trust in this one.

“Fool.”

Someone else called out to him.

Anna Sprengel.

“I double-checked it all just to be safe, and everything the grimoire library said checks out. Her calculations are correct, so Coronzon should be at the General Athletics Stadium. The only question left is if we arrive in time.”

The Amakusas were magicians who blended into modern society, so they all knew how to drive. …Kamijou preferred not to think about where they had procured so many vehicles in Academy City, but it would be best to make use of them now.

And just as he was thinking that, his eyes met another pair of eyes.

But these definitely weren’t human.

They were compound eyes.

A carnivorous dragonfly more than three meters long was gliding at eye level.

It was made of blonde hair.

“Coronzon’s…scouts!?”

“Stupid bug jamboree!!”

He heard an odd voice just before a blonde young woman drop-kicked the giant dragonfly from the side, sending it flying. She was the Transcendent Bologna Succubus.

“Just when I thought I’d caught up on foot, this is what I find? When do I get a breather!?”

“Pant, gasp… M-my coat…is so heavy with…the steel armor and the terrariums…I’m dyiiiiiing…”

Even as she complained, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet deflected the scouts’ attacks with her thick coat. …Wait, did she just protect the Bologna Succubus?

However, squashing a single dragonfly wasn’t enough to turn the tide.

There were butterflies, hornets, stag beetles, flies, and more.

Kanzaki raised her voice.

“If she’s sending these out, it must mean we’re getting close!”

It didn’t feel like Coronzon was trying to lay low and hide anymore. Did she want to buy time even if it made her more conspicuous?

She really was here.

In District 20. Index, Anna Sprengel, and the others had been right.

…The question was whether or not these scouts were passing information back to Coronzon. Either way, it would be best not to waste time here.

“We need to strike before she can get away!!” shouted Kamijou.

===Part 11===

The scouts sent out by Great Demon Coronzon included three meter dragonflies and hornets.

Kamijou immediately clenched his right fist, but nothing would be more annoying than having a group of 20 or 30 drop from the sky all at once. Kihara Noukan turned his way and shouted.

“Be careful. If they grab onto you and carry you up high, you will be playing a deadly version of the crane game!”

He couldn’t let the flying scouts use the powerful weapon that was height.

Plus, the stag beetle ones wouldn’t even need lift him up. They could crush or slice his body right here on the ground.

“Get inside, it doesn’t matter where!!”

On Kanzaki’s instructions, Kamijou and Mikoto practically tackled open the door to a nearby building.

They ran further inside. When they reached a more open space, they found something odd there.

A frozen pool?

No, was it a skating rink?

Kamijou wasn’t familiar with them and had imagined them as something like a massive cold storage warehouse, but was this skating rink actually warmer than outside?

“They’re coming. Those weird bugs are coming!!”

“Wait, Misaka! Don’t use your Railgun down a straight corridor! Are you trying to hit our friends!?”

Lucia, Angelene, and more of the Former Agnese Force jumped on the giant flies as a group. That still wasn’t enough offensive power, but it slowed the scouts enough for Blodeuwedd the Bouquet and Anna Sprengel to finish them off with stronger attacks.

The scouts were powerful. They were, but they weren’t Great Demon Coronzon herself. The scouts made of her blonde hair were not unbeatable!

“In that case…”

“Hm? Lad, don’t let your guard down!!”

A supposedly defeated scout stirred.

No, a large quantity of something burst from the giant stag beetle’s body. Flat ovals about fifty centimeters long poured out like a slot machine jackpot. There were more than a hundred of them and they were all wriggling. And squirming.

There were more scouts…inside the scouts?

And a ton of them!!

“Ahhhhhhh!?”

Kamijou backed away, more creeped out than afraid of the threat they posed. The small scouts leaped at the boy one after another.

Itsuwa sharply jabbed her spear out to guard him, but she grimaced.

“They’re hard. Are they based on parasitic shellfish!?”

“You mean the more enemies we defeat, the more of them there will be? Hard to think of a better way to buy time!” shouted Othinus.

Kamijou’s group would be overwhelmed by the enemy army.

Sounds like collapsing piles of sand came from all around.

“Wow!”

Alice Anotherbible was the only one capable of smiling as they swarmed around her. A normal human would be bitten into tiny pieces if they tried that!!

They would be killed if they didn’t defeat the attacking scouts, but defeating the scouts only allowed them to multiply.

It was a vicious cycle.

…And Kamijou had only thought of these things as scouts made of blonde hair. But he felt pity for them now that he saw them forced to fight, writhing in pain as they burst from within, and releasing a flood of other monsters.

“Fool, now isn’t the time. If you stop, we will be killed!”

Great Demon Coronzon.

Even if she was fighting for her life, she shouldn’t force her own side to do this.

A dull crash broke through Kamijou’s thoughts.

It came from directly in front of him. The skating rink’s wall broke through and a giant rotary snowplow emerged from the side. The row of scouts in its path were crushed and sliced up by the rotating blades.

The fluffy blonde Amakusa was operating it.

Kamijou had seen her a few times before. Wasn’t her name Tsushima?

“Hop on!! Coronzon is our top priority, so we can’t waste our time with these things!!”

There was no reason to stick around here. The giant rotating blades on the front and the snow expulsion device sticking out the side like an elephant’s trunk looked dangerous, but Kamijou grabbed onto something like a short ladder on the side. Only after the heavy snowplow begin to move did he notice something.

“W-where’s Index!? And Misaka too!”

“I’m not the only Amakusa. And everyone will soon think to use snowmobiles and other vehicles capable of driving on this red snow. We all have the same destination, so we’ll meet back up with them if we head to the track stadium!!”

A few others managed to jump onto the snowplow. He saw Kanzaki and Itsuwa among them.

A three meter dragonfly was still stubbornly pursuing them, but it was shot down by a beam of light. Neither Kanzaki nor Itsuwa had done that. Apparently another vehicle was following them.

Eventually, no more hornets and stag beetles could be seen.

Kamijou sighed and leaned against the rotary snowplow that rattled along on its continuous tracks.

“Well…it certainly is a good thing that Tsushima was there to help us, human,” said the 15cm god.

“Yeah, it really was. Life is so much easier when you have a capable young woman around. Thanks.”

“…Ohh?” “…Ohh?”

“(Wait, did I just step on some deadly landmine here. And to make matters worse, two of them at once?)”

A secret light shined sharply from Kanzaki Kaori and Itsuwa’s eyes and Tsushima wept in the driver’s seat.

===Part 12===

It was late at night. 1 AM had come and gone.

When you imagined a late night hospital, did you think of a horror story? Or something more risque? After many long years working here, the frog-faced doctor knew neither option was likely. When you worked there day in and day out, even a special location became no more than a routine. The fear faded and any weird expectations vanished.

Of course, he wouldn’t normally be working on this shift, but today was a special day. He hadn’t gotten any rest during the day either.

A young medical intern gave him a worried look.

“You need to get some sleep, doctor. You’re no good to us here if you pass out.”

“If I could get some free time…yes, there is something I should do, so can you cover things here?”

“Doctor!” the intern called after him, but this was his nature. He wanted to save every patient he could.

If Kamijou Touma was already dead, then there was nothing to be done.

But what if the boy was still alive?

Then he was the frog-faced doctor’s patient.

If a patient had received improper treatment, it was a doctor’s duty to save them.

(What a pain. Where do I even start with determining if a supposedly dead person is alive or dead? The guidelines for brain death would probably be best. Or mayb-)

He left the hospital.

And some strange thing attacked him only three steps out the door.

“Eh?”

If he had to describe it, he would have called it a golden crab standing more than three meters tall.

Even after seeing the pincer raised high, the frog-faced doctor only managed to get out a confused sound.

He did not properly understand the danger.

Yes.

He had no way of knowing since he knew nothing of magic, but his hospital was in District 7. That was the area where Coronzon had scattered so many of her scouts made of blonde hair.

And Coronzon had been so focused on escaping she hadn’t actually ordered them to stop.

Which meant they were still acting on orders to protect the ceremonial ground for Adikalika – the former site of the Windowless Building.

A pleasant slashing sound raced out.

The frog-faced doctor did not shed a single drop of blood.

It was sliced vertically.

The blonde hair scout’s bisected halves scattered to either side.

His eyes widened in confusion as a dark, lithe figure whispered to him.

“It is a pleasure to see you again, doctor.”

===Part 13===

In the District 20 skating rink, Misaka Mikoto had definitely seen that pointy-haired boy on the side of a large rotary snowplow.

And it had happened as the vehicle drove right past her.

She had been left behind.

“I want to shoot that idiot so bad.”

She flicked up arcade coins and launched a few Railguns at the monsters as she retreated from the skating rink proper into a narrow corridor.

The more she defeated, the more of them there were, which couldn’t have been much more annoying.

And the initial dragonflies and stag beetles were powerful enough already, so she would be killed if she didn’t fight back. There was no room for holding back.

(Are the others retreating somewhere too? There isn’t time to ask where we’ll meet up next, so I’ll just have to magnetically attach myself to one of the vehicles’ roofs.)

And all of a sudden, something occurred to Misaka Mikoto.

“…Wait.”

(If that idiot is alive, then why am I even wearing mourning clothes? Ahhh, how long am I going to keep wearing this cumbersome outfit? Now I feel like I’ve been making a fool of myself!!)

This was a sports facility, so would they have rental sportswear anywhere? Even a track suit or jumpsuit would be fine. She was willing to ignore how it looked if it was at least warm and didn’t restrict her movements!!

But this was a skating rink.

That meant any clothing would be for skating.

Such as a painfully bright lemon yellow figure skating uniform.

“U-um, would you call this a skating dress?”

It wouldn’t restrict her movements since it was designed for sports use. Combined with the bladeless shoes meant for the staff, she would have no trouble moving around. At the very least, she would have a much easier time of it than in this Japanese clothing. But why did it have to have a miniskirt? Or should she think of it more like a swimsuit’s pareo? Either way, it wasn’t something for walking around town in!

“B-but it’s so cold! What choice do I have!?”

She had decided herself she was willing to ignore how it looked.

It would certainly protect her from the biting chill of the January night.

It left less skin exposed than she had expected. Because it covered her with a skin-colored material.

But that was a problem of its own. The thin synthetic fiber was like wearing a full-body stocking. A terrifying thought for someone who tended to get zappy at the drop of a hat!

===Part 14===

Kamijou and the others arrived at a dark shape so large they truly had to look up to see it all.

This was the General Athletics Stadium.

Its size was apparent even from the outside.

Its diameter alone had to be hundreds of meters.

Instead of a dome covering it, it was apparently an outdoor stadium. Still, tall walls surrounded it on all sides. Those would be for the tiered seating, but they were just as tall as a four story building. So the same as a school building. This meant there was no seeing inside from out here.

Several other vehicles joined the rotary snowplow operated by Tsushima.

Index and Misaka Mikoto were among them.

“Thank good- woah! Misaka, what are you wearing!?”

“Don’t look at me!! Don’t look at my new and improved flavor with 20% extra at the same great price!!”

Her retort was as unusual as her outfit.

Was this the higher rarity version that showed more skin, or had she been unable to bear the cold and chose to rely on a figure skating outfit? He wished she would stop tugging down on the miniskirt-like part because that only drew his eye there all the more.

The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet were both tilting their heads (in friendly synchronization?). …Yeah, they probably wouldn’t get what the big deal was when they had no trouble walking around in the frigid January night in their underwear or a naked apron.

But focusing on this wasn’t going to lead them to Coronzon.

Kamijou was curious about something.

“The tall walls keep us from seeing inside. I hope that also means Coronzon can’t see out.”

“Does it mean that? Wouldn’t a great demon be able to use clairvoyance or remote viewing?”

Tracking expert Takitsubo brought up a difficult topic.

“In modern Western magic, clairvoyance isn’t a means of seeing the contents of a closed envelope. It’s a ceremony used for spiritual meditation.”

Kanzaki provided an explanation, but it was hard to grasp without a solid foundation in the magic side.

She had spread out a large map, probably a privilege she had gained by taking control of the city. That she went to the trouble of printing out a paper copy seemed to show she still wasn’t used to the science side, though.

“It was fortunate we could get our hands on the official blueprints. Our numbers work in our favor. First, we should station personnel at each exit. There are more than 20 official gates for spectators and the real number is even greater due to the unofficial entrances for athletes and staff. With the exits blocked, we can begin exploring inside. Once we know where Coronzon is inside the large stadium and how she has modified it for her ceremony, we can launch our attack.”

“Coronzon should be defenseless while she works,” added Index. “Even if we can’t win a straight fight, we should be able to win right now.”

They could win?

Then why not charge in right this instant?

Kamijou couldn’t believe they would stay out when they knew she was in there.

Othinus must have sensed his impatience because she made a piercing comment from his shoulder.

“Wait, human. If Coronzon detects us and runs off, this will all have been a waste of time.”

“Either way, we should carefully investigate the situation inside and gather what information we can. We can always make our attack after all escape routes we are aware of have been covered.”

Kamijou was a little surprise to find Anna Sprengel advocating the cautious option.

Had that wicked woman learned how frightening it was to have everything fall apart at the last second?

“But can we really wait around that long? There’s that ley line thing, right? That direct route running underground that only the great demon can use. We can have her surrounded as much as we want – it won’t matter if she just teleports out of here!”

“Failure puts the entire human race at risk. Great Demon Coronzon will be able to do more than just this.”

Was that why she didn’t want anyone spying on her from the sky?

After giving a skeptical look at the Bologna Succubus (or her clothing more likely), Kanzaki nodded in agreement.

“We mustn’t forget that she will have escaped if she physically crosses the city wall.”

“But we don’t know the time limit!!”

“It won’t be in the next 5 or 10 minutes at least. That gives us time to take it slow, human.”

===Part 15===

“Hm.”

Great Demon Coronzon put a hand on her hip and observed her surroundings.

She stood at the very center of the enormous stadium.

“That completes the ceremonial ground. And the attribute extracted from the stadium as a whole gives me what I need. Direction, time, number…and the actual spiritual item in my hands: the tattva cards.”

She held a few colorful cards.

However, these cards were not historical antiques.

They were only symbols meant to help one enter the special mental state of meditation, so as long as the colors and symbols were correct, the material was immaterial. They were in fact made by coloring cardstock with thick permanent markers she had acquired after breaking the metal shutter covering a stadium shop. (There was probably a demand for materials that spectators could use to make placards or to draw their team’s logo on their face.)

Perhaps the stadium functioned like a giant magical circle with the cards acting as a control medium like a mouse or keyboard.

Coronzon had a physical body, but her true essence was a collection of Telesma energy. Unlike the pure angels, she was a mixture of different elements, which could be a pain, but by breaking them apart, she too could be handled as pure energy.

That meant she could inject herself into a weapon or armor or she could be carried around inside a thin talisman.

Or she could send herself through the ley lines to instantly travel to the other side of the planet.

“Now, time to begin,” she whispered.

===Part 16===

Kamijou was anxious.

Great Demon Coronzon was inside there, but the great size of the stadium worked against them. With more than 20 public gates, entering the wrong way would give Coronzon a chance to escape out a different one.

They needed to know her exact location before heading in.

…He understood the Anglicans’ point, but that didn’t mean he liked it. No matter how well they prepared themselves, Coronzon would disappear if they didn’t arrive in time. Then the world’s doom would begin on the other side of the planet. Coronzon would be able to choose any location she liked, so she could ensure the optimal conditions for herself. The next time would be far worse. Everything might truly be destroyed.

Next to him, Index spoke up. Addressing Kanzaki.

“Are you going to run a search from the outside? Isn’t that dangerous too?”

“It is. She could detect the magic power of a normal through-walls scan. However, we Amakusas have specialized in hiding our faith to avoid persecution, so we know a few tricks we can use.”

Kamijou and Mikoto had no clue what the Amakusas were working on with such determined looks on their faces. At this point, Index and her 103,001 memorized grimoires was the only person they could rely on.

She got it right on the first guess.

“The Maria Kannon?”

“This isn’t how they were originally used, but they were designed to look like an ordinary Buddhist figure while revealing its true face as the Virgin Mary to anyone who knew what to look for. By intentionally taking a broad interpretation of that concept, it can be remade into a camouflage-breaking searching spell to locate that which is hidden.”

===Part 17===

In the very center of the spacious stadium, Great Demon Coronzon sat quietly, regulated her breathing, and placed her index finger against one of the toxically colorful cards lined up on the ground.

Something felt off.

A sensation like a finger pressed between her eyes caused a tingling in the center of her head. Even though she was the one reaching out her finger. No, it was meaningless to think of it in that way.

The two were linked.

To touch it was to be touched.

The line between the self and the other – between the inner world and the outer world – was blurring.

The core of her body distorted. She was uncertain where she was even sitting.

“Kh.”

Her head wobbled. A vertiginous fluctuation interrupted her thoughts.

This was an Eastern mystical philosophy from ancient India.

She knew it wasn’t a good fit for her. A pure and proper angel never could have done it. But she was an impure and wicked being known as a great demon. And the Crowley system said every from of the mystical could be incorporated into your own spells if you reinterpreted it with your own logic. The wise would not give up just because they reached an impasse. They would use the discovery of that impasse to further elevate themselves.

She took deep breaths.

She consciously guided her thoughts toward stability.

She needn’t think of purifying herself.

There didn’t have to be just one answer.

The tattva cards did not work with pure elements in the first place.

Mathers had warned that meditation using those painfully colorful cards could cause intense anxiety or headaches for a mere human if used incorrectly. So how much worse would the damage from failure be for Coronzon as she tried to return herself to a state of pure energy?

She did not approach the true essence of this Eastern mystical philosophy.

The tattva cards were no more than tools used for control. That would have been how the Golden cabal used them too. They were valuable when it came to understanding the five elements, but there would be discrepancies between the cabal’s manual and the actual Eastern philosophy.

(The work has just passed 50%. That would explain why this inner fear and anxiety is taking on such concrete form.)

Coronzon did not move her eyes.

She had to focus her whole mind on ascending straight up.

Thus, any trivial distractions and detours could end up tearing her ego apart.

So she always stared straight ahead, using only the corner of her vision to watch how her own shadow wavered and thinned.

It was progressing well.

Once her shadow fully vanished, she would have also ''physically'' disappeared from Academy City.

The destruction of the world was within reach.

===Part 18===

“How is that search spell going!?” shouted Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

“I-it just passed 70%!” nervously reported Itsuwa.

70%.

That was more than halfway done, but Kamijou and the others didn’t know Coronzon’s status. If she was even a single percentage point ahead of them, they wouldn’t finish in time. It was possible the Anglicans would fully surround the stadium and rush in only to find Coronzon had already vanished.

Othinus sighed from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“There’s no need to wait until it’s 100% complete. We know Coronzon is in this building. So if we attack the small unsearched spots, we can confirm her location by sight.”

“How much of the stadium do you think those ‘small spots’ cover?” strongly retorted Kanzaki. “The search has covered 70% or maybe 80%. We’re risking our lives going in, so we want a little more assurance than that!!”

“What do you think, Touma?” asked Index.

“Hm? We should go in now! Right now!!”

He had no idea why an outsider like him had been asked for his opinion on a magical matter, but he gave his answer right away.

“Tsujiura,” said Index. “Kushiura and Qiu Xiang Bu also work. Those are Eastern, so the Amakusas should be able to use them too.”

“I see. So the idea that the first thing said by someone ignorant of the topic at hand can be used for divination,” said Kanzaki, sounding impressed.

In this case, Kamijou’s ignorance of magic gave his words meaning.

…He felt like this was declaring him useless in this fight, which seemed kind of insulting, but if the experts would listen to what he had to say, he didn’t care why.

Whatever the case, Kamijou’s words set them all into motion.

“Kanzaki will join one of the Amakusa teams, I guess. Okay, Alice!! You go lend Agnese’s group a hand!”

“Hm? The girl would prefer to stay with you, teacher.”

“Please! And Anna, you go with that team including Itsuwa and Tsushima!”

“Fool. I will step on you later.”

They complained, but they still split up.

Even Takitsubo and Kihara Noukan did as he said. They had to know even less about magic than him, but they were still risking their lives to stop this unknown threat.

After all, there were more than twenty public gates. The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force would be blocking all of those exits, but they were dealing with ''the'' Coronzon here. Ordinary magicians weren’t enough. Each team needed an irregular member such as a Saint like Kanzaki Kaori, a Transcendent like the Bologna Succubus or Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, or even a special Transcendent like Anna Sprengel or Alice Anotherbible.

Kamijou didn’t see this as splitting up their forces.

Once they entered the stadium, they would converge on Coronzon’s location. He didn’t want anyone dying in the “blank time” until they broke down the right door and found Coronzon. He was sick of Coronzon being able to choose one of them at random for a one-hit kill lottery. Even if one team was unfortunate enough to run across Coronzon on their way in, they didn’t have to defeat her. Kamijou wanted to give each team someone who could let them survive until the other teams arrived.

Mikoto, who always felt left behind when it came to magical matters, suddenly panicked.

“W-wait, what about me!?”

“You’re with me, of course!! C’mon!!”

“Eh? O-oh…okay.”

Kamijou and Mikoto would enter through the closest gate: Gate 15. Neither knew much about magic, but he figured Othinus’s presence would make up for that. Index’s knowledge was the most important of all, so he couldn’t keep it to himself.

Gate 15 was shut with a metal grate shutter and a glass door, but Mikoto only had to inhale and exhale before it all opened for them. And not just Gate 15. All of the shutters and locks opened at once.

Without waiting for the shutter to fully rise, they ducked below it.

They entered a dark corridor.

And ran.

“Hey, human. Don’t get one-shotted here. Even if Coronzon is busy, she could have sent out those scouts.”

Othinus warned him from his shoulder, but Kamijou didn’t have time to respond. If they were even a second too late, it was all over.

His heart pounded in his ears. He felt like he was going to die on his own without Coronzon having to lift a finger. But he gritted his teeth and kept running.

He wouldn’t let her try again at destroying the world.

He would end this tonight.

===Part 19===

(75%.)

Great Demon Coronzon’s voice no longer vibrated the air.

From her perspective, it was less like her body was unraveling and more like the world around her was changing. Or maybe like she was crossing the boundary between phases. Her coordinates remained the same, but the scene around her changed as if flipping over a page.

Perhaps there was no real difference between the two.

The Golden cabal never managed to send their body across. Thus, their experts had tried to separate just their minds in an act known as astral projection to virtually achieve a leap between phases. They had worked hard to peek into another world like heaven or hell. …And as a result, quite a few magicians had failed to cling to their sanity.

Coronzon’s nearly transparent fingertip passed right through the tattva card.

She was more than halfway on the other side now.

The great demon grinned.

(No more physical control is needed at this point. Now I only have to wait for the process to complete!!)

===Part 20===

Kamijou and Mikoto ran down a long, long corridor.

They couldn’t afford to hide their footsteps now.

Coronzon was so close.

“We’re going to come out into the stands, right? How far is it to the actual sports field!?”

“The actual distance isn’t that far, but the stands aren’t flat. Don’t trip and fall in the darkness, okay?”

Mikoto gave him a surprisingly sincere answer.

There hadn’t been any bright beams of light or explosions yet.

What were Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others doing?

They would have entered through all the entrances at once, but apparently none of the teams had run into Coronzon. They didn’t know where she was hiding to complete her ceremony, but she hadn’t noticed their presence yet. That made this their best chance.

If they failed, it was all over.

(We might not win in a straight fight, but what if she’s immobilized by the important ceremony? This time will be different. This is our only chance to settle things with her!!)

The end of the corridor came into view.

Like a rectangular hole cut out of the darkness.

Kamijou gritted his teeth, clenched his fist, and ran with all his might.

He emerged into a silent space. The flow of time ground to a halt.

No one was there.

The place was deserted.

“What’s…going on?” muttered Kamijou, stopped partway down the stands.

He could hear more people emerging from different directions. But that was all. Even from here, he could see Agnese, the Bologna Succubus, and others looking around in confusion on the other side of the stadium. The great demon wasn’t shining bright as she completed some kind of ceremony and Coronzon didn’t begin a fierce battle in an attempt to escape.

Great Demon Coronzon wasn’t here.

It didn’t feel like she had fled in a panic either. There was no warmth in the vast space. It had likely been empty this entire time. Coronzon had never been here. They had chosen the wrong location.

Had their calculations been off?

No, they hadn’t been relying on Index alone. It had been a group effort with help from Anna Sprengel, Kanzaki Kaori, and more from the magic side. And they had been certain Coronzon would use this stadium if she was using Zeus symbolism. So how could they have been wrong!?

“Touma.”

A girl from another group joined him.

Index’s usual childlike air was broken by the trembling voice she forced out.

She seemed hesitant to speak.

“Is this district used for any other special purpose? Other than sports!”

“Huh? Yes. It is a district of stadiums and domes meant to hold tens of thousands of people. I think Aogami Pierce mentioned it being the holy land for idol concerts.”

A quiet thud reached his ears.

Index was unable to support her wobbling body and fell back into one of the seats. The cat mewed in complaint from her arms.

“Then Coronzon wasn’t using sports as the symbol for a sanctuary or temple.”

Her lips quivered.

“Songstresses, plays…she was using the performing arts. Which means it isn’t Zeus! And if she is using a different symbol and a different god, she would be in an entirely different location!!”

===Part 21===

Maximum occupancy: 255 thousand.

Coronzon snorted with laughter when she recalled that extreme number.

…A soccer stadium or baseball stadium could never reach that number even with every seat filled. That display was meant for a concert or live performance where even the field itself was filled with seats.

Coronzon was somewhere like that.

(This district is filled with stadiums and domes. To put it another way, most of them are not the designated home field of a pro team whose games you can watch on a sports app. And “just a stadium” isn’t going to be used just for sports. …District 20’s stadiums probably make most of their income this way. I saw through that right away. And a facility primarily used for concerts is not a Zeus-associated track stadium. To be blunt, this is a large facility built for shows, not for sports.)

She didn’t want Apollo, god of music.

She wanted Dionysus, god of theater.

In ancient Greece, sporting events had been held in sanctuaries as a ceremonial offering to a god, but plays and songs had been made as offering in those same sanctuaries. Thus, holding a concert or live performance in a stadium that could contain a large audience was not a new idea.

Greek theater was the origin of modern stage plays. And the original form of that had been a festival held as an offering to Dionysus, god of alcohol and insanity.

That meant his symbols could be extracted from a large stadium like this.

(The work is past 90%. And yet no pursuit has arrived yet. What’s the matter, humanity? If you let me escape this easily, you will be extinct by tomorrow!!)

===Part 22===

So not sports but music. No, theater.

Not a stadium for sporting events but for concerts and live performances.

When they corrected the initial assumption and had Index recalculate, they were given a single candidate.

“The Brilliant Outdoor Performance Stadium. It points north and, if the adjacent park is viewed as a mountain forest, you could extract the symbols of Dionysus. This time I’m sure of it! A god of insanity would be perfect for controlling her power as a chaotic great demon!”

Now that they had a new answer, they couldn’t just sit around.

Their initial wrong answer would have given Coronzon that much more time for the ceremony to break her body down into energy. As soon as she finished that, she would dive into a ley line and escape to the other side of the planet. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

Kamijou and the others hitched a ride on the rotary snowplow driven by Tsushima of the Amakusas to reach the new destination.

It was in the same district.

Driving there, it wouldn’t take long. The giant stadium capable of holding 255 thousand came into view.

“Is that it? Please still be in the city, Coronzon. Dammit.”

As soon as Kamijou jumped down from the snowplow onto the red snow, he staggered to the side.

He regathered his strength, somehow managing to keep himself steady, but he bumped into something next to him.

But not because he had nearly fallen.

“Ugh…”

He heard a small groan.

From Takitsubo Rikou.

She must have arrived on a different vehicle. Kamijou instinctually caught the unsteady track suit girl…and found her body temperature was higher than he had expected.

Not just warm, but blazing hot.

He was shocked.

“That’s not good… How long have you been hiding this, Takitsubo!?”

“…”

She refused to say a word.

She had been knocked out by some kind of attack from Coronzon during the Adikalika stuff. It was a miracle she was even still alive, yet she had joined the chase instead of calling an ambulance. Anyone would be in a similar state after that.

“You can’t go on. You need to get some rest! You’ve seen the way things are, right!? The Anglicans don’t want to torment Hamazura!!”

“You should listen to your own advice, Touma. Stopping Adikalika was more than enough of a win. You’re hurt, so stay here and look after her,” said an exasperated Index.

Even though it was she who had actually stopped the attack after arriving late. She had a perfect memory, so this wasn’t just a mistake. So was she giving them the credit? When he thought about it, he realized Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others hadn’t actually seen the moment Adikalika was stopped…

Speaking of Kanzaki, she called everyone over.

“If the countdown is close to the end, we can’t spend time on an initial search like before. That will mean a greater risk when we enter. Needless to say…”

“Then do we have time to sit around listening to the headmaster’s speech? I’ll steal a map of the stadium with my powers, so let’s get going!”

Mikoto, Index, Kanzaki, and the rest got moving.

In no time, there wasn’t anyone left.

It was so quiet.

Kamijou sat down and focused on taking deep breaths. He wasn’t as bad as Takitsubo, but he had lost his balance earlier. He had taken a direct hit from Coronzon. He wasn’t a doctor and couldn’t even imagine how much damage had been done inside his body, but he knew better than to be optimistic.

Takitsubo Rikou’s lips moved where she lay right next to him.

He doubted she was conscious, so maybe she was having a nightmare.

“…Hamazura…”

“Kh.”

Kamijou grimaced. In agony.

She had to be badly worried about her friend. If she didn’t do something to help out and earn points with the Anglicans, she would lose all chance of negotiating with them. But she was too injured to move.

If Coronzon did escape, who could say where they would direct their anger. Even if Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others fighting here didn’t, the higher ups watching from across the ocean might demand a live sacrifice from those who were close to Coronzon.

Could that be why Index had used such vague phrasing to give up credit for stopping Adikalika?

But it wasn’t enough. Takitsubo wanted something more to push her claim of having contributed, so Adikalika wasn’t enough and she had come with them even if it meant hiding how bad her injuries were.

And unlike her, Kamijou could still move.

He couldn’t push himself too hard.

But he had to make up his mind.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

“Human? …It figures.”

“I’ll stop Coronzon, so don’t you worry, Takitsubo. Don’t forget: winning is meaningless if you die. Your goal is to be with Hamazura, right? Then you need to rest.”

He forced his heavy body up and began to walk.

No, he was trying to run full speed, but this was the most speed he could manage.

Even so, Imagine Breaker would have to be of some use.

Coronzon’s magic was extraordinarily powerful.

Maybe he couldn’t fight her himself, but he could at least help out someone who could. If he could shield them from even a single attack, it might be enough to decide the battle.

He would overturn the game as a wild card.

===Part 23===

Great Demon Coronzon only had to wait. And the time finally arrived.

It was already over.

99%.

Even if someone barged in now, she could break her body down into Telesma and escape Academy City through the ley line before they could do anything.

Her victory was assured. Those humans were too late to prevent their doom. The silly fools should have resisted more.

But then…

“You think so? Then allow me to cause a bit of trouble.”

Her vision shattered.

Black, red, silver, blue, yellow… It all collapsed into a wild dance of colors.

No.

Crossing between phases and breaking herself down may have been the same thing. She had thought so herself.

Which meant it was she who was collapsing.

She could no longer support her sitting position and fell to the side. Something was wrong with her limbs. She couldn’t remember how to breathe. Nevertheless, she managed to gather all her strength and scream.

“A…lei…sterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!?”

“Now, now, Coronzon. You should know better than to mess with anything as dangerous as the tattva cards which even the Golden cabal had to issue a recall for. Don’t you remember what Mathers said? They can cause intense anxiety or headaches if used incorrectly. Why would you visit the mental world after going to the trouble of physically sealing me away? Are you trying to kill yourself? ''In here'', I can still wield some power.”

(Emergency…shutoff!!)

A dull “snap!” came from the center of her head.

“Khah!!”

She tried to let out the breath caught in her throat, but what came out was colored red.

For a while, she lay on her side convulsing until she forcibly suppressed the writhing of every last one of her internal organs. Yes, it was urgent that she accurately recalled the shape of her body. She had already begun to enter the ley line when the magic failed. She had to return to her original body in a hurry, but if she forgot that body’s shape now, she could be entirely annihilated.

It took her a full ten seconds.

Once she calmed her wild breathing and recalled the cycle for inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, she had reclaimed her physical body.

The tattva cards could cause mental confusion if used incorrectly.

For her, did that mean releasing the sealed Aleister? In other words…

“Dammit!!!”

This meant a change of plans.

She couldn’t use this method anymore.

And if she was going to cross Academy City’s wall for a physical escape…she had no reason to remain in this stadium. She had to leave as soon as possible.

===Part 24===

Kamijou forced his unsteady body to keep moving and pushed open a small metal door with his shoulder.

He slipped through the half-open door, probably a staff entrance, and entered the stadium.

He found a dark, cold, heavy space.

Big too.

…He had apparently entered something like a parking garage. Was it a space for workers located below the stadium? He didn’t know enough to have a good mental picture of how stadiums were structured.

He did have his phone with him, but he didn’t know what was happening inside. The pursuers had to be careful too, so he wanted to avoid causing someone’s phone to ring while they were trying to hide.

“Index? Misaka?” he called quietly.

He didn’t know how the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force were searching the stadium. Because they weren’t sharing information with him.

He heard some light footsteps through the darkness. They echoed off the gray walls and were moving away from him.

He immediately ran full speed in that direction.

He could tell just from listening whose they were.

“(Human, you noticed how odd that was, I trust?)”

(We all know how powerful Coronzon is, so everyone will be searching as part of a team. So no one should be leaving on their own like that!)

“Coronzon!! Is that you!?”

“You really shouldn’t have announced your presence. Unless you have the supernatural power to kill with words alone.”

The footsteps stopped.

A voice spoke from behind one of the thick concrete pillars lining the space.

A hateful voice.

“I’m relieved. Because I can easily kill you and complete my escape. Now, Kamijou Touma, how do you intend to stop me? Don’t try to tell me that foolish shout was all part of a plan and you have a more troublesome opponent hiding nearby.”

15cm Othinus could not directly fight, so he was effectively alone.

Coronzon had seen right through him.

What about the phone in his pocket? No. He might not have a signal, but more than that, using the touchscreen in the dark parking garage would give him away with the backlight. Coronzon would act before he could call for help.

“You chose this stadium because it was your best bet, right? You can’t use magic to escape through the ley lines now. So give up, Coronzon.”

“Why should I? Great demons are perfectly capable of driving cars. And it goes without saying that ordinary cars can slip right past a scan for magic power.”

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

That was her plan immediately after trying to escape using Telesma and a ley line? She switched gears way too fast.

“How many trump cards do you have!?”

“More than a mere human could ever imagine, that’s for sure.”

If she escaped in a car, he couldn’t keep up on foot. His phone was an iffy option too. So was there nothing he could do? If he shouted at the top of his lungs, the others would surely gather here. He wouldn’t let her escape.

The voice alone continued from behind the pillar.

“How about this, Kamijou Touma? What if you keep quiet and let me go?”

“Why even ask that? It’s meaningless. If you escape tonight, you’ll work to destroy all of humanity by tomorrow, right? Then nothing you could offer me would be worth it!!”

“Oh, you will let me go. Because I happened to pick up a trump card on my way here.”

Someone emerged from behind the concrete pillar. Slowly.

Blonde hair.

A woman.

But that hair was fluffy and only fell to the shoulder blades.

This wasn’t Great Demon Coronzon.

He had only heard a single set of footsteps, so had she been captured behind the pillar?

What was being held against her from outside Kamijou’s view? The feminine lines of her body were trembling and her expression was like a cross between tears and a smile.

He recognized her as one of the Amakusas.

“Tsushima.”

It wasn’t even a case of “move and she’s dead”.

All of a sudden, the red splattered out.

From the side of her neck. Kamijou was an ordinary high school boy without much forensic medical knowledge, but the location the blood was spraying from sent a chill down his spine. She seemed to have been cut by an invisible blade.

A laughing woman stuck her head out from behind the pillar.

Great Demon Coronzon really was a demon.

“Kee hee ha ha!! Protecting human lives is no easy task, is it? Or are you willing to take another tour of hell for her!?”

Coronzon kicked Tsushima’s doll-like body from behind, shoving her toward him.

He had no choice but to catch her. Only a few seconds had passed, but she felt limp and heavy in his arms. She clung heavily to him like a down blanket soaked with water. He pressed his palm firmly against the wound in her neck. How much blood loss was lethal for a human? If he didn’t stop the blood spurting from the side of her neck, she really would die.

At that moment, Kamijou’s vision suddenly went dark.

But not because Coronzon had done anything. It took him a while to even realize that. He had long since pushed his body past the limit.

He shouldn’t have been up and about at all.

“Human!!”

“Kah…ah…?”

He felt horribly faint.

He collapsed and couldn’t get back up. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t move his arms and legs very much. He wasn’t even sure which way was up.

“Kh.”

He held Tsushima tight in his arms. He gritted his teeth and tried to take in as much information on the physical reality around him. Sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch… it didn’t matter what. He was afraid he would pass out otherwise.

“Ha ha ha!! You said it was meaningless, didn’t you? You couldn’t have been more right! Why bother saving a life or two now when I will be destroying the entire world soon!”

No, it wasn’t working.

Even after all this…he couldn’t stop his mind from slipping away into darkness.

He had to avoid removing his hand from that neck wound.

He heard the sound of metal breaking.

Then the sound of an engine starting and the sound of Coronzon driving a car away.

“Wait…Coronzon…”

The darkness took over.

Kamijou Touma’s consciousness fully faded.

“Waiiiiit!!!”

===Part 25===

“Can you hear me?”

Near the center of the open stadium, Agnese heard a young male voice.

Hearing a voice when no one was there was nothing unusual. She was commanding more than 250 people, so she was using communication magic.

But this was odd.

The Former Agnese Force was all female.

“This…Mich………k… I have an urgent message. Can anyone hear me?”

She was using a Roman Catholic communication spiritual item derived from the Barbara Branch. It was made from a cherry tree twig with a few buds attached and it wasn’t all that unusual. …Even if it did seem wrong for nuns to be carrying around tools for love fortunetelling.

The hard buds unnaturally opened below the frigid sky and the flower petals vibrated.

They produced a human voice.

(You’re kidding. Is someone hijacking the channel!?)

“Is anyone at all in Academy City receiving this!? There is something I must tell you immediately!”

“?”

Itsuwa gave Agnese a puzzled look from nearby. …Apparently she couldn’t hear this. That meant it was targeted only at the Roman Catholics of the Former Agnese Force.

Agnese Sanctis frowned.

“This is Agnese Sanctis. Who are you?”

“Thank god… I got through! This is Michael Speak, a cardinal officially appointed by the pope!!”

She was at a loss for words.

…Those were the around a hundred ultra elites chosen out of the two billion Roman Catholics to directly advise the pope. Ordinarily, she would never even directly speak to one.

But his voice didn’t fit the part. He sounded like a stressed young man. He didn’t sound even thirty.

Perhaps his modesty was what had earned him so much popularity.

(Another Michael. And with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.)

“What does a great cardinal want with lowly peon like me?”

“Tell only the Roman Catholics to get out of there immediately. You need to leave Academy City as soon as possible. Your team will obey you if you tell them!”

“?”

She had expected a protest or sarcasm in response, so this came as a complete surprise.

This was advance warning of an attack.

She didn’t know what the Vatican was preparing to do, but she had to assume it was a fairly dangerous large-scale spell. Something even greater than Coronzon’s Adikalika.

“You mean it’s close to being activated?”

“As Roman Catholics, we cannot allow someone as dangerous as Great Demon Coronzon to escape Academy City. If she cannot be defeated on the front line, then the Vatican must reach out a helping hand.”

Reach out a helping hand.

So from their perspective, they were saving lives.

And the same went for Agnese, Lucia, Angelene, and the rest of the Former Agnese Force fighting on the front line.

“There are three activation conditions. First, if you completely lose track of Coronzon and the trail goes cold. Two, at 5:47 AM local time. In other words, at dawn. Third, if we believe a non-Catholic force has learned of our plan and could attempt to stop it. If any one of those conditions is met, the Vatican will activate Saint Georgios’s Fire.”

“Kh.”

The most important condition was the third.

That meant the Vatican didn’t want them sharing this information with anyone else. Even though this would mean the destruction of Academy City. The chance to evacuate was for the Former Agnese Force only.

…Were they being pressured to abandon Academy City and the Anglicans who they had fought and risked their lives alongside?

“We are always watching and listening, Sister Agnese. The physical distance matters little. So do not attempt to contact anyone else through trickery or deception. We will not overlook it.”

(Magical surveillance is a hell of a thing. Although I’m sure it was originally justified as a way for the pure servants of god to punish wicked magicians.)

She didn’t actually know how much she was being observed. The Catholics had been outdone by the other forces so far, so Agnese thought they had to be bluffing to an extent. But this still made it hard to take any bold action.

And she knew what Saint Georgios’s Fire was.

She had heard rumors of it back when she still lived in Italy.

There was a legend about the death of Saint Georgios, or Saint George as he was known in England. When he was being pressured to renounce his faith in a wicked temple, a great ball of fire fell from heaven and blew it all away. So it was a legend of pure attack power.

“That’s a large-scale spell that targets a distant location through the ley lines, isn’t it?”

“Ironically, it uses the same pathway Coronzon is attempting to use to escape. But since we can only use it and not control it, we cannot stop her from using it.”

The Roman Catholic spell was essentially a cluster bomb that detonated two billion explosive flames across the entirety of the targeted city.

And rather than burn everything down with the explosive blasts and flames, it used an extreme high temperature to rapidly alter the atmospheric pressure and oxygen level across the entire area. That meant fortifying oneself behind a shield or wall was meaningless. Because your own body would rupture from within. Afterwards, only a lifeless city would remain.

It was effectively the ideal form of a human killer.

(Now isn’t the time for us humans to be fighting among ourselves!!)

“I thought the pope had learned an important lesson from the trials of World War Three. I can’t believe he would agree to such a forceful solution.”

“His authorization is unnecessary. The cardinals have the right to hold an ecumenical council or election. …And the majority wish to do this. We in the minority have no way to stop them.”

“Doesn’t that seem disrespectful?”

“Abstaining in protest will not change the outcome of the vote. Did I ever say that I like that this is happening!?”

There was real strength behind those last words.

That had to be what he really thought. Which was why it pierced Agnese so deeply.

But even if he was sensible, he couldn’t change what was happening. She could tell that too.

(Well, this is a disaster…)

And there was an issue beyond the number of victims across Academy City.

A more fundamental issue.

“Don’t you know ''a human killer spell won’t affect an inhuman demon''? Sowing further confusion in Academy City will only create more openings in the city perimeter!! You’re playing right into Coronzon’s hand!!”

Apparently Coronzon’s special trait remained in effect.

She tore people apart and obstructed their evolution.

(But I can’t believe it’s gone so far.)

“Sister Agnese!!”

“What do you want, cardinal!? I’m really goddamn busy right now!”

“This is a compromise. As much of one as I could get. The original plan was to immediately activate Saint Georgios’s Fire and I only barely stopped that from happening!”

There was kindness in his words.

But that kindness was unnecessary. Something was fundamentally off about this.

“Don’t tell me this is about wounded pride. Index stopped Adikalika by redirecting it to an unnamed desert island in the Atlantic. The Italian peninsula wasn’t harmed!”

“But Coronzon did launch her large-scale attack spell. And that wasn’t her only trump card. Her power is unfathomable, so she must be destroyed when we have the chance. None of the cardinals can ignore that point. I’m sorry, but that includes me!”

She wasn’t sure what to say.

She understood. Yes, even Agnese was furious. If she hadn’t made a conscious effort to calm herself, she might have left the Anglicans back then.

“Violence is wrong,” he continued. “I understand that. We erred and let God’s Right Seat manipulate us during World War Three. …But this time, ''we are in our rights to retaliate.'' Overturning that idea will not be easy, Sister Agnese.”

(Coronzon. Your mere presence really does make a mess of humanity as a whole!)

The Roman Catholics naturally had a variety of emotions about this.

About Coronzon and about Academy City for failing to stop this crisis earlier.

…Nuclear missiles could destroy the world, so it would take a lot of guts to launch the first one yourself. But what if an enemy launched one at you first? That would lower the mental hurdle for pressing the launch button considerably.

People were easily influenced by the word “retaliation”. And that could burn down the entire world.

“I will do everything I can, but I doubt I can stop this from happening. Sooner or later, Saint Georgios’s Fire will be launched.”

He was one of the sensible ones.

He would truly prefer not to use it.

But that was why nothing he said was a mere threat or bluff.

For the pacifists, nothing was more painful than having to declare that an atrocity would soon be happening.

“So you need to escape that city immediately. It’s a shame what will happen to Academy City and the Anglicans, but it’s too late for them. Gather up all the Roman Catholics and get out of there!!”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter2

2025-12-29T19:50:06Z

Massify: /* Part 20 */ messed up with the tenses (if it was began, then it should've been reflected it in the sentence)

==Chapter 2: Divine Slope, Forbidden Book – Magical Exit.==

===Part 1===

In Academy City’s District 7, someone was still fighting on and on, separate from the core of the incident.

That person was Dion Fortune.

“Ahhh, they’ve forgotten me… I just know they’ve all left me behind!! They must have done something about Adikalika since the Earth is still intact, but couldn’t they have launched a group attack to come help me before they left? I am technically the archbishop at the very top of the Anglican Church, you know!?”

A scraping sound came from a short distance away. A giant black cat stood more than two meters tall there. The bizarre beast appeared to be drawn with black paint and it was ridden by a magician in mourning clothes.

Moina Mathers.

She was undeniably a formidable foe. After all, that official member of the Golden cabal, once called the largest in the world, had been fighting for hours now, but the battle still wasn’t over. Even though an average magician who be delighted to be referred to as “first rate” would have been killed instantly.

(This is bad. I know Coronzon is our top priority, but I can’t just leave her out here.)

The enemy said nothing.

Seated atop the black cat that had to be more than two meters tall, Moina Mathers made some complex movements with her fingertips.

Like a magic trick, countless cards appeared and were then pinned in midair.

The cards were not as complex as tarot. They only depicted a combination of basic symbols like circles and triangles.

These cards could express anything in the world using a combination of a primary element and a secondary element.

Dion Fortune’s eyes widened when she saw the dancing colors.

“Geh, are those tattva cards!?”

The mourning clothes woman’s lips writhed.

She produced a voice.

“Apas of Tejas.”

With a roar, a fireball more than a meter in diameter consumed oxygen and rushed toward Dion Fortune.

This had been referenced in the Golden cabal’s official texts, but it was in fact a controversial text that had been officially adopted at one point but then rejected within the cabal. (From the perspective of Western Europe in the 19th century,) India, Tibet, and the East in general were utopias of miracles and the mystical! …But Mathers hated that view, so he took the unusual step of writing a serious warning against the use of the tattvas due to their Eastern origins.

(She’s an artist and a clairvoyance expert. This wife probably did write a lot about the tattvas.)

However, the fireball was approaching slowly enough to see it coming.

Dion Fortune held her black box out in front of her.

If any kind of magic entered that special spiritual item, its data would be randomly rearranged, changing it into something else entirely. That meant it could rob most any attack spell of its lethality, but…

(Would ''the'' Moina Mathers really be satisfied with an explosive that moved this slow? Uh, oh. She intentionally combined multiple elements in this one spell, so even if my box consumes the primary element of Tejas, will the secondary element of Apas still explode?)

“Wahhh!!”

She couldn’t let herself be caught by such obvious bait.

Dion Fortune quickly got down on the red snow to dodge.

The fireball passed by barely above her head before exploding and toppling a wind turbine behind her.

With the tattvas, it was thought the world was constructed of five simple elements, but it was incredibly difficult to extract those elements in their pure form. That was why the elements were used in combination, like Apas of Tejas or Prithivi of Vayu.

(Kind of like a different version of Western-loving Mathers’s Hot and Dry or Cold and Wet!)

Dion Fortune raised her head from the red snow and shouted.

“Argh, you really had to use the tattvas, huh!? Are you intentionally using your husband’s doubts and detours as a weapon!? How much of a cruel wife are you!?”

And…

(If a pawn created by Coronzon can use the tattvas, then Coronzon must know how to use them too.)

She had a bad feeling about this.

The tattva cards depicted a combination of a primary element and a secondary element. They were a spiritual item that provided visual support for sending your mind into a deeper state. Moina was using them in a physical and offensive way, but she was doing that by pushing her own mind to extract the necessary spell from within herself.

That made this a tool specialized for manipulating non-physical energy and for breaking down the world into five elements and managing it in that form.

What was the worst thing an inhuman demon could do using the tattvas?

Dion Fortune thought she knew.

“Oh, no. If she breaks herself down into her component elements and remakes that into pure Telesma energy…could she escape anywhere on the Earth through the ley lines!?”

===Part 2===

They went back into the department store so they get out of the January chill while they thought.

Coronzon was trying to magically escape Academy City using something called a ley line rather than physically crossing the wall.

Kamijou and the others knew that now.

But where in the city would she perform that major ceremony? Now that they had lost track of her, they had to get back on her trail. But how could they do that?

They didn’t even know what district she had escaped to.

“The girl can help!” Alice Anotherbible volunteered. “The girl will divine her location! But, but! She would feel lonely doing it alone, so will someone good with magic help?”

That ruled out Kamijou. Imagine Breaker was never going to help with something like this. And Mikoto visibly cringed at the very idea of relying on divination here, so she was out too.

…But he couldn’t get a read on Takitsubo’s stance. She always had a blank expression and he couldn’t tell if her staring eyes were a sign of agreement or rejection.

The pointy-haired boy tilted his head in the women’s clothing section.

“Eh? You can use Alice in Wonderland for divination?”

“You can use any book, Touma. Haven’t you heard of bibliomancy? You flip through a thick book and place your finger on a random page. Then you apply the passage found there to the problem you’re facing to find an answer.”

Why would he have heard of something like that?

On his shoulder, Othinus continued the conversation like all of this was normal.

“As a piece of nonsense literature, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tends to be associated with mystical matters, including this sort of divination.”

“So, Touma, it should be a good fit here. It’s also well known.”

“That’s not what the girl is doing! We want to know where to go next, right? That means we want a number from 1 to 23, not a literary passage.”

So the district number?

But how would you use Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to search for a number?

“Playing cards, right?” said an exasperated Anna Sprengel.

Her exasperation was not directed at Alice for the suggestion. It was directed at Kamijou for not figuring it out right away. And it was quite strong.

“Fool. Gambling, by its nature, is often associated with divination. Playing cards are no exception. For a familiar example, playing solitaire on your own is practically a form of divination already.”

This was apparently a slightly more complicated version of solitaire.

Alice clapped her hands and spread them apart, causing playing cards to spill out from the space between her palms. They scattered atop a glass showcase.

Index and Anna Sprengel joined Alice in organizing the cards. After forming a few triangles reminiscent of bowling pin formations, Alice flicked away the unneeded cards, formed new triangles…and repeated the process a few times.

“Human. In this case, you can ignore the suits and focus only on the numbers,” advised Othinus from his shoulder.

In the end, only two cards remained.

Index identified them.

“10 and 10.”

“Wait, so is that the answer? But if it’s District 10, why is there two of them?”

“If you rush to the answer in your ignorance, I will stomp on your crotch, fool. She said the answer would be ''a'' number, remember? But playing cards only go from 1 to 13, so a single card can’t indicate a number higher than that. And playing cards have no zero. So this is the only way to output the answer.”

“This is the answer here. You only have to add the two numbers.”

“Then…Coronzon is in ''District 20''?”

As soon as Kamijou said this, looking thoughtful…

''Ba-zap!!!

“Whoa!?” shouted Index.

The roar was loud enough to make you flinch even at a distance. It resembled electrical sparks. He couldn’t be certain, but was this really safe? If Anna Sprengel hadn’t grabbed Index’s hand and pulled her away at the last second, would they both have been turned to charcoal?

Alice Anotherbible, however, simply smiled.

Only she was unfazed after being exposed to that effusion of power.

“Yay, now we know where to go next!”

“…”

Alice really was special. Her power was extraordinary enough on its own, but nothing good came of incorporating it into ordinary magic. While it was normal for Alice herself, everyone else had to endure that fearsome strength.

===Part 3===

“Ughhh, I’m so hungry… You Amakusas have a lot of Eastern stuff for your camouflage, right? Do the Flying Alms Bowl.”

“The Flying Alms Bowl is not like an app-based bike delivery service. Here, Index, I do have a chocolate bar.”

“Yay!” shouted Index, raising her arms in celebration and running off for a late-night snack. It was past 1 AM. Did she feel no guilt eating chocolate at this hour?

Kamijou’s visible confusion elicited an exasperated sigh from Othinus on his shoulder.

“The Flying Alms Bowl is a spell that Buddhist monks up in the mountains could use to send just their alms bowl flying out to the city to receive pindapata. And since I know you’re going to ask, pindapata is the practice of people offering food to monks.”

“Wait, so there’s magic that brings food to you?”

“So the basic idea of a delivery drone has existed for centuries, huh? It just took a while before they had the physics and science to pull it off.”

Mikoto sounded impressed in her own way. Also, pindapata was a form of charity, so it was free. The ancient people sure came up with some neat ideas.

Then it occurred to Kamijou this probably meant he had mentally recovered enough to begin using his imagination again.

They hadn’t lost track of Coronzon. There was still hope.

Here in District 20.

Index tilted her head.

“Hey, Touma? What kinds of things do they have here?”

“I think it’s mostly sports stuff. Baseball, soccer, basketball, and more.”

“It’s more than just hard fields and courts. The place is filled with huge stadiums and domes, including indoor pools and skating rinks,” elaborated mourning clothes Mikoto.

Takitsubo was viewing a nearby guide map. With her head tilted. She wore a track suit, but she may not have been a very athletic person.

“That would provide plenty of locations capable of hiding a large-scale ceremony,” said Kanzaki, hiding frustration behind her polite tone.

She may have realized just how hard a search this was going to be.

“If Board Chairman Accelerator were awake, we could have used the satellites,” said Kihara Noukan.

That would have helped a lot. The satellite images could have ruled out the non-domed stadiums, but they didn’t have what they didn’t have.

They would have to do it themselves.

Instead of using the obvious borderline of the wall, Coronzon planned to escape the city by melting into a…ley line? Well, into the ground. Kamijou didn’t know enough about magic to even guess at how long that would take.

But if they didn’t find her as soon as possible, they could be too late.

Not knowing only made him more antsy.

However, checking every single stadium in the entire district would be far too inefficient. He could see so many from here alone. He never knew you could have too many landmarks.

“We’ve reached District 20 too.”

He heard a voice and Kanzaki held something to her ear.

“Wh-what is that? I though it was weird before…but now I’m certain of it: that isn’t a phone!”

“It’s a communication spiritual item.”

Index’s explanation probably didn’t explain anything for Mikoto.

The paper charm – communication spiritual item? – in Kanzaki’s hand produced the familiar voice of the Bologna Succubus. It was apparently the Amakusa style to attach it to the back of a phone so it would be less conspicuous.

“Hey, witch hunt team, you tell that lad there’s nothing to report from up here. No sign of Coronzon. …The Anti-Skill helicopter is gone, so are we the only ones in the air any longer?”

“After everything that happened in District 19, I imagine anything that can fly is busy providing disaster relief or transporting supplies.”

The conversation suddenly ended after that comment from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, who was presumably dangling down with the Bologna Succubus.

They were cut off by a tremendous noise that made Kamijou cover his ears.

“What the hell was that!?”

“An interception spell,” muttered Othinus.

“Flying with magic is just too dangerous!” shouted Index.

“Ksshh! We were brought down by an interception spell, but that means she’s nearby. Coronzon is definitely in District 20!! And if she doesn’t want us spying from the sky, ksshh, she’s not in a roofed dome or an indoor stadium! Look for the outdoor stadiums with nothing covering them!!”

“Hey! You crashed, right!? Are you okay!? Please tell me you are!”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting from a demon like me, but quit it. We can’t fly anymore, but we’ll catch up soon. We can run on the ground, so don’t worry!!”

“Damn you, sex demon. I know my coat is sturdy, but get your ass off it! Kiiii! You do not meet my salvation conditions, so you do not get to use me as a chair!!”

They seemed to be doing well.

The sounds of a scuffle coming through suggested they were unharmed.

That aside, Coronzon herself had reacted here. That gave them a huge opportunity as pursuers. They couldn’t waste it.

“So a sports facility without a roof covering it. It must be one of the open stadiums. In that case…”

“Different sports have different magical meanings,” said Index.

“Then what about soccer?”

“A festival held in England since ancient times. It’s the origin of all forms of football. Of course, a festival from the 12th century will either be 100% Christian or have incorporated aspects of other myths or religious events like with May Day or Halloween.”

His casual question received quite the explanation in return.

But she of course had a reason for explaining all this.

“But when we’re talking about sports and stadiums, I would start looking here. The ancient Greeks. Everyone in the world knows the sporting event where people compete for the gold medal, but that was originally held at Zeus’s sanctuary. It was meant as an offering to the gods led by Zeus.”

“If we can swap that name out for Jupiter, there are plenty in Rome too,” said Agnese.

Kamijou’s knowledge of Greek mythology didn’t go much past “that thing used for the astrological horoscopes on the morning news”. Where did Great Demon Coronzon belong exactly? With all the talk of rebelling against god, he had assumed she was a Christian demon, but could she use techniques from Greek mythology?

Mikoto and the golden retriever took a step back when these topics came up.

So it was Index who fluently responded.

“Magician Crowley said there are no such thing as demons.”

“Wait, but he called her ''Great Demon'' Coronzon himself.”

“He also said there are no pure demons. He said ‘demon’ is a word people use when they want to deride the gods of people they dislike.”

“…”

Yes, that sounded a lot more like that human who always took the cynical view.

But in that case…

“Could Great Demon Coronzon be referred to as a great god by some other religion?”

“Fool. Even Mathers rejected that idea. He called her an absolute evil to all humanity who was equally and uniformly opposed even when comparing every last myth and legend.”

“But Crowley supported the idea that she is a relative evil who ''appears evil'' from a certain viewpoint.”

A pure evil that did only evil.

Could such a being really exist?

To him that sounded like a strange magnet with only a north pole.

“People on the side of evil tend to be strict about the rules, don’t they?” said Takitsubo. “They have a lot of inviolable rules and strong bonds with their companions. Mugino is like that. If Coronzon is evil but doesn’t need that solid core, then she really isn’t human.”

But Coronzon herself believed they could exist. Which was the source of her self-loathing. She believed her great power was an irregular “distortion” a lot like a monopole. She thought it could only tear people apart. She thought it was twisted and wrong, so no matter how powerful she was, she could never be proud of herself. …If she could, none of this would ever have happened.

Whether or not Aleister’s theory was correct, Othinus arrived at a conclusion.

“Because she is a demon who doesn’t follow the rules, she might have full use off the techniques and fields not approved by Christianity. The rules don’t bind her.”

Mikoto put a hand on her hip and asked Index a question.

“Look, I don’t get any of this occult mumbo jumbo, so can you just tell us where to go?”

“If she is using Zeus’s symbols, a track stadium. His symbols are the sky, thunder, mountains, fatherhood, and many more. He’s the most important god, so he has a lot of attributes. But in this case, there aren’t many symbols Coronzon can use for her spell.”

Kamijou didn’t even have time to ask why.

Index was the star of the show at times like this.

“Zeus is generally a sky god. But Coronzon wants a way to the control the ley lines in the ground, which is the complete opposite. So we can ignore almost all of his attributes.”

“Hm? If it’s that much of a mismatch, why would she use Zeus in the first place?” asked Kamijou.

Othinus and Index both answered him.

“Because, human, he is the top god. He’s powerful enough you don’t want to reject him out of hand.”

“Not relying on Zeus in a district of athletic stadiums is like trying to win a soccer game without ever touching the ball.”

That made sense.

Zeus was a famous enough god that even Kamijou was familiar with him (from manga and games), so his power would be obvious and great. If Coronzon could use it, she would of course want to, but since he was a mismatch for her current objective, she wanted a connector to link the ingredient with her plan.

…Or something like that?

He felt like the situation was similar to a fugitive getting an airplane but having trouble taking off in it.

“So because Zeus is such an important god, he has a lot of different attributes? Then what part of Zeus is Coronzon trying to use? You said he’s a sky god, but she needs an attribute related to deep underground, right? Then what exactly is she going to-”

“Rain,” she replied immediately. “There’s a legend saying the current world is so full of different gods and heroes because Uranus and Zeus were joined with many earth goddesses through the rain that falls from heaven. …Touma, is there anywhere those intersect? For example, a place where a long waterway for rainwater passes directly below a large track stadium?”

===Part 4===

It was a dreary place.

The room was large but plain. Like a big metal box. And it was chilly.

Isabella Theism, a necromancer with silver hair and dark skin, took a look around.

“Why…am I alive?”

No one answered her.

Kihara Goukei was it? Had that bio-monster transported an enemy who would have died if just abandoned on the side of the road?

Cigarette smoke lingered thinly in the air.

So was that Stiyl Magnus on the other side of the locked door? He showed no mercy. If Isabella took any careless action, he wouldn’t hesitate to burn her away with 3000-degree flames.

(True Voodoo priests are apparently immune to fire, but I’m only making use of their techniques and haven’t mastered it to that extent.)

Besides, there were no gaps in the thick metal door. It had probably been welded shut by those same 3000-degree flames. Only a magician who could burn through the metal could open the door.

Isabella searched through her rags to check on her possessions. Unsurprisingly, all of the obviously dangerous items had been confiscated. However, these rags patched together from the clothes of several dead people had a lot of hidden pockets. She stuck a finger through the sloppy stitching and…yep, there it was.

Something stirred in the corner of her vision.

“?”

She only now realized she wasn’t alone in here. It wasn’t an Anglican magician keeping an eye on her. If it was, they would have stopped her by now.

That meant this was someone else under surveillance like her.

(What is this unnatural lack of vitality? I specialize in life and death and even I overlooked his presence.)

“Who are you?”

“''Hamazura Shiage''.”

Even as he responded, he seemed about as lively as withered grass.

He was Japanese…but he didn’t seem to be one of those Amakusas who Kanzaki Kaori had brought along. There was no scent of magic on the high schooler.

Then why had he been arrested by the Anglicans? He was a completely ordinary person…but that mismatch with his surroundings made him an uncanny sight here.

(It feels like being placed in front of ''too cheap'' of ingredients.)

It was uncanny, but if he wasn’t going to get in her way, she saw no reason to eliminate him.

She had no intention of staying in this prison with a stranger. She pulled out the spiritual item – or really, the materials to create one – hidden inside her rags.

(There’s a chance a scanning spell would detect the faint magic power emanating from a completed spiritual item…but the materials are no more than ordinary goods and ingredients. Slipping past checks like that is so useful.)

“What are you doing?”

“Escaping. I don’t have anything to do here.”

Isabella pulled out a small lime. One with a branch thinner than a matchstick still attached. She sliced it in two without a knife and squeezed one half to sprinkle the juice on the outdoor wall opposite the door.

A chemical smoke burst forth as if she had used a powerful acid.

A hole visibly grew until it was more than two meters in diameter.

That wall was no more than metal. Breaking through was easy if you had the appropriate magical knowledge. Plus, lemons, limes, and other acidic fruits were common components of Voodoo magic. It was used in an emergency antidote for zombie powder and in the lime poison created by combining the various toxins and antidotes found in the lime.

“Stiyl…wouldn’t have noticed. With the thick metal door fused shut, he wouldn’t be able to hear any of the noise I’m making in here.”

He would have any number of ways of stopping her if he did notice, though.

The delinquent-looking boy had a surprisingly mild reaction.

He was imprisoned. He would normally leap at the chance to escape without even considering the consequences.

“What I meant is, what do you hope to accomplish by escaping?”

“No matter what anyone else says and no matter how ugly a choice it may be…I will always do what I think is most necessary. Right now, that means defeating Great Demon Coronzon and bringing stability back to the world.”

===Part 5===

Done talking, the brown woman who reeked of death departed into the outside world.

She likely had something to do.

Unlike Hamazura.

(What do I do now?)

Hamazura Shiage lacked that level of motivation.

He had bet his entire life on Coronzon…and lost.

He was worried about Takitsubo Rikou, but he didn’t think she was in that much danger as long as she was within Academy City. After all, she was a high-level esper theorized to possibly become the eighth Level 5.

If he didn’t want any stray shots, or accurate sniper shots pretending to be one, hitting her, it was best if he stayed away while he was a fugitive.

Which meant…

“Oh, I know. What about Coronzon?”

Where had she gone?

He was worried about her too. She wanted to destroy the current rotten world and create a clean new world. Something must be happening that made her feel that way. What if this world was already damaged beyond repair but that damage simply wasn’t visible?

Then what exactly was happening? He wanted to speak with her.

Despite his earlier strong words, he did want to live with Takitsubo.

So he wanted to know what was going to happen.

However, wouldn’t Coronzon have to be in a dangerous position if he was able to catch up to her in his state? He really wanted her at least to escape the city soon…

===Part 6===

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had returned to the District 10 prison.

The facility doubled as the new Board Chairman’s headquarters.

It was guarded by several layers of thick metal doors, metal bars, and all sorts of sensors, but that meant nothing to an artificial demon who could freely switch between corporeal and incorporeal forms.

“I-I’m back.”

No response.

She may have expected that.

In the single-occupant cell, a frail figure lay on the bed.

Surrounded by medical equipment.

The only sound was a rhythmic beeping and a pump expanding and contracting to push out air.

…His body hadn’t been in perfect working order to begin with. Brain damage had left him reliant on a modern design cane and he couldn’t even understand human speech without the choker-style electrode around his neck.

Even so.

It was far too painful to see him lying in the bed like that.

Academy City’s #1 could not live on his own.

He was kept alive by all the machines hooked up to him.

“Master…” weakly called the demon girl.

“Monitor fragments have pierced every part of his body.”

Even a prison had doctors.

Serious illness did not cancel out a prisoner’s sentence, so in a way it was the natural arrangement.

It was their job to keep the prisoners alive in whatever form it took.

“Some are right next to major arteries and organs, making them too dangerous to touch without care. Removing them will be very difficult… But that isn’t enough to explain his condition. If it were simple blood loss keeping him unconscious, the transfusion should be showing effects by now.”

“I know…”

“?”

Yes, she didn’t have time for sorrow.

The new Board Chairman would never wake up ''naturally'' in this state. That had been obvious at first glance, which was why someone needed to externally induce a recovery.

These wounds were magical in nature.

They were scars of an attack from Great Demon Coronzon, a being beyond human understanding.

That meant magical knowledge was a requirement to heal him.

(I will heal you, so please wait until I can, master.)

Something beeped.

But it wasn’t the medical equipment. It came from something like an intercom on the wall.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know if she had the right, but everyone else watched the device from a distance and made no move to touch it. She had no choice but to press the button and answer.

It displayed a familiar female secretary who ordinarily helped with the paperwork.

“What is it?”

“We have a visitor for the Board Chairman. He doesn’t have an appointment, but will you meet with him?”

“No appointment? Then send him awa-”

“He is Oniyama of the Board of Directors. Will you still refuse him?”

A visitor.

And at this precise moment.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 said for him to wait, but when she went out, he was already within the special security zone. Left alone, who knows how much he would have explored.

All of the jailers and guards looked afraid. Apparently it was up to the artificial demon to say this.

“Only the Board Chairman is allowed in here. What are you doing here!?”

“Oniyama Rouze.”

The old man’s eyes shined with the greed of a much younger man.

“I am one of Academy City’s 12 Directors. That comes with certain privileges.”

His words dripped with arrogance.

So what if he was one of the Directors? Just because there weren’t many of them didn’t mean they could enter this place without permission. Just think of the Windowless Building from when Aleister was at the top. No one should be here without its master’s permission.

(Has Academy City collapsed to that extent!?)

Oniyama was the Director with a focus on vehicles, including automobiles, ships, and aircraft.

And there had been suspicions he was interested in expanding into the military field. The military had its own specialists, but those who controlled those unscrupulous military forces – Shiokishi, Nakimoto, Neoka – tended to drop out or be replaced quickly due to that very unscrupulousness. A perfect opportunity for those who were hoping to break into that field.

To be blunt, she had a bad feeling about his presence.

“How bad are his injuries?”

He was too casual.

If Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know Great Demon Coronzon was responsible, she would have suspected this man.

“Why are you here without even making an appointment?”

“I am here to give you a valuable warning, so watch your tone.”

“Nothing you say changes the fact that I only have one master!!”

“My point is that your behavior calls your master’s civility into question. The unintelligent never seem to wait for people to finish, which makes speaking with them so tiring.”

He snorted with laughter.

And then got back on topic.

“The situation is too pressing to wait for the Chairman’s recovery.”

“Kh.”

“Academy City is using all of its scientific knowledge to search for the culprit, yet we have turned up empty-handed. That makes this an unknown situation. And ignoring it shows no sign of improvement. Someone must grab the reins and take control soon. Before serious damage is done.”

He said that like the new Board Chairman’s injuries did not count as “serious damage”.

As it were a trivial matter.

Not worth any concern.

Even though the very top of the city had been directly attacked and remained unconscious.

“…You look happy about this.”

“Surely you jest. I am only doing my job. If the Chairman is unable to fulfill his duties, don’t you think his privileges should be temporarily transferred to a third party? I am not asking for his eternal expulsion from the throne through dismissal or impeachment. I am only suggesting someone else take over his duties until he comes to.”

“You just want the Master Key.”

“Ah, so you read me like a book.”

“And just how many people were you planning to kill using those next-gen weapons!?”

The Master Key looked like a smartphone, but it gave full privileges over everything in Academy City. It was stuffed full of passwords, passcodes, access keys, and other such data.

Including for military facilities and equipment.

Academy City’s functions and military might would eventually recover. If it were handed over to someone else, something terrible would happen. And if it fell into the hands of a Director who knew enough about diplomacy and war, it could lead to a war with any place on the planet.

She was a demon.

She knew just how twisted the world was.

And in that knowledge, she had placed her hopes in the #1. She had decided the world was still worth protecting. So she couldn’t allow the world to be destroyed now while the new Board Chairman lingered on the verge of death. No matter what.

“But the Master Key is a dangerous power. Who can you trust it with, if not me and my knowledge of diplomacy and military matters? Noncommittal Kaizumi? Surely not that pacifist Oyafune?”

“They would be better than you at least…”

“Oh, dear. So you, the guardian of the Master Key, are unaware just how dangerous it is. Listen, ''even someone who doesn’t know how to use it can lose control.'' I was fine with leaving it in the Chairman’s hands since he is the #1. I trusted that someone who has killed so many people would know very well how to handle that kind of threat. But leaving it in the hands of someone who has no familiarity with deadly power would be suicide. Suicide on a planetary scale.”

“Leave! If you don’t wish for the Board Chairman to recover, people could see that as contempt of the chain of command. I will not give you the Master Key. Only my master has the right to grant it to someone else. So please leave now!!”

The old man took a step back without taking his eyes off her.

He was not intimidated.

The smile on his face conveyed a clear message: I don’t even need to return here. You will come crying to me by the end.

“Academy City is a heavy burden to bear. Contact me when you are ready to give up.”

“Leave!!!”

===Part 7===

Footsteps trudged through the snow.

Kihara Goukei was bloody and woozy.

“Ughh, I’m so dizzy…”

She had rescued Urekawa Ousuke, the miracle child born of Academy City, and then handed that goddamn Necromancer to the Anglicans who seemed to have invaded the city (even though they didn’t seem to be soldiers?), but she had gotten badly torn up in the process. Three computer chips, two bacteria colonies, one pea crab, and what else? 99% of the secret ingredients giving her her “Kihara-ness” had been destroyed.

She had only one heart left. That was fine. Everyone else only had one too.

She couldn’t get spoiled.

She was running dry, so she needed nutrients. Her powerful regeneration was working against her. Like this, she would eventually dry up into a husk. Before that happened, she needed sugar, salt, fat, protein, calcium, various vitamins and minerals, and more.

(Why do all the restaurants have to close early today of all days? There would usually be at least an izakaya or family restaurant open.)

“Oh.”

She spotted a vending machine.

The small glowing display shined bright in the darkness. It actually had power.

(Oui, oui. Vending machines are cleverly designed to continue functioning even after a fire or other disaster. Oh, I’m saved.)

And it wasn’t a drink or bread machine. It was one of the unique varieties you spotted from time to time. Specifically, this odd kind of vending machine that sold things like wagyu sukiyaki meals on the side of the street. And one of the large sample photo on this one showed…

“On this freezing night with my breath visible before me I find…ramen!! Oh, that has such a sinful ring to it. But I must do this to regain what my body has lost. How merveilleuse it is to have an actual excuse. Hwa ha ha ha ha ha! Behold, world!! I choose the piping hot tonkotsu ramen!! I am freed from all guilt as I ingest this unhealthy meal in the middle of the night!!!”

Even among the Kiharas, facing your own death was something only an oddity could do. It was a good thing the vending machine let you pay with a train card. …All of her paper money would have absorbed too much blood by this point.

A clunking sound came from the machine.

(Oh, that sounds harder than I would expect.)

With a noodles vending machine, she had imagined something like a better version of a coffee vending machine: first a styrofoam bowl, then the drained noodles and other ingredients, and finally the hot soup slowly pouring in.

Silence surrounded her.

Nothing happened after the initial clunking.

Kihara Goukei crouched down and nervously opened the overly large door to check.

“Is this…a frozen food vending machine!?”

It was rock solid.

The instructions on the package said you could enjoy restaurant quality flavor after only 15 minutes in the microwave.

Was she supposed to stand around in this freezing weather for those 15 minutes?

All she had was a solid object that could probably kill someone if applied forcefully to the cranium.

“Uhh…”

Yet she really would dry up and die without something to eat. Surrounded by a freezing night with red snow covering the road, Kihara Goukei had no choice but to tear open the package, pull out the rectangular block, hold it in both hands, and gnaw on it. Yeah, it was not a flavorful experience. Sure, it had salt and fat, but that didn’t go well with the ice!! The white-frozen pieces of pork fat were especially bad. Was this some kind of divine punishment?

“?”

Suddenly, she felt like she was being watched.

There was someone, or something, here.

She found the gaze surprisingly nearby. Looking up at her.

It belonged to…a girl of around 10?

“Misaka has never seen someone eat a popsicle in the winter! says Misaka as Misaka checks the package. Tonkotsu ramen! …Misaka doesn’t remember that Gorigori-kun flavor.”

“What are you doing here? And please feel free to call me Madame Gou.”

“Well, Misaka needs to get to District 10, but she doesn’t know where it is, says Misaka as Misaka explains her predicament.”

“Eh? District 10?”

Wasn’t that the district of battles and machos, said to be the most dangerous in the city? And the girl only looked around 10, so what was she doing out alone at night?

(And if I send her back the way she came, um, oh dear. Aren’t those giant bugs and sea creatures made of weird blonde hair wandering around there?)

Kihara Goukei wept.

This sounded like trouble to her.

First Urekawa and now this. Was tonight the night for running into small children? Was it some kind of bonus mode?

“Where is District 10?”

“The complete opposite direction, so please don’t look at me…”

“If you know the way, then tell Misaka! says Misaka as Misaka begs you!”

“One heart. Just one left. Another death and I really will die… I-I’ve done more than enough already, haven’t I? I already saved Urekawa Ousuke-kun in the very middle of the night, so I really want to get home and sleep until-”

“No! ''Help me, Madame Gou''!!”

“Neh heh☆ …Well, you drive a hard bargain. When you put it like that, I can’t go to sleep now, can IIIIIIII!?”

===Part 8===

On the roof of a far distant skyscraper, one of the mass-produced military clones known as the Sisters removed her eye from the scope of a large sniper rifle.

“She doesn’t appear to be a threat, concludes Misaka #10032.”

“Doesn’t appear to be? Are you glitching? What kind of fuzzy opinion is that for a living computer?”

“It is called personal growth.”

She had grown enough to make casual remarks over the Misaka Network at any rate.

Misaka Worst, who was tuned to pick up on the especially malicious emotions within that vast network composed of countless identical brainwave signals, responded with exasperation in her voice.

“This is all because you discussed that stuff on the Misaka Network, you know? Have you forgotten that mini-Misaka is your host and control tower? She can hear everything you say, even if it’s in your sleep.”

“You mean that our ability to control electricity might be able to force open the lock on the new Board Chairman’s Master Key? asks Misaka for confirmation.”

“No, that screwing it up would destroy the Master Key! If it turns out the only way forward is for the #1 to wake up, then of course the little one’s going to try and do something about it. Goddammit, what a pain. …But Yoshikawa’s the real loser here. She’s locked in her room with nothing to do. Cause the great Last Order used her power to hack the electric lock.”

“Then wouldn’t it be best to send her straight there? Also, that person appears to be a Kihara, which should come in handy on the way, says Misaka, providing her opinion.”

“Then are we finally going to stop playing stalker? Misaka doesn’t want to hold onto this sniper rifle in this cold-ass weather any longer. Misaka is afraid her cheek is going to freeze to the metal.”

“If you are fine with that immortality expert getting her hands on clone technology, responds Misaka. Misaka checked her spec sheet and it would be a real pain if she learned to multiply herself.”

“…When can Misaka finally get back to bed?”

“As if you have any intention of doing that.”

===Part 9===

Great Demon Coronzon slipped through the darkness like a shadow.

She had chosen a stadium that was unusually large even among the outdoor track stadiums. Everything she currently sought was contained there. Here she could convert her physical body into a massive amount of Telesma energy. Once that was done, she only had to send herself into the current of a ley line running underground. She would still be limited to the planet, but that would allow her to instantly escape anywhere on Earth, even the opposite side of the planet.

Wasn’t its maximum capacity 255 thousand?

The outdoor type without a dome was easier to scale up in size, but this felt like overdoing it.

Academy City had a population of 2.3 million, so a full tenth of the population could be crammed inside.

Humans were apparently frail beings who were afflicted by loneliness when standing alone in a massive artificial space, but she was a being known as a great demon.

She felt nothing amiss as she walked toward the center.

Other than the wrongness of her own existence.

“Sitra Achra, hm?”

Coronzon rolled that term around on her tongue.

And smiled cynically.

Sitra Achra could be described as the substance that caused evil. The current world, from the tiny humans to the vast world itself, could supposedly be fully described using the diagram called the Sephiroth, but there were some impurities which did not fit into the grand Sephiroth. Those impurities were Sitra Achra. They were ruins – shards – of the old world which was destroyed to create the current one. They were the substance that caused evil. They had no place in the current world, had no role, and should not have remained, so their very existence obstructed the system of the current age. Like pebbles caught in the gears.

The world god had created was perfect.

Things only went awry because of the extraneous impurities mixed in.

(Sounds like me.)

Shadow covered her face as she silently expressed this only silently.

Even though self-deprecation could not turn evil into good.

She had always questioned it.

Why hadn’t she become an angel of love? Or an angel of righteousness?

If she had been…

If she had been given that role…

…She would have poured herself into that work more diligently than anyone else.

If god had known from the beginning that Coronzon would rebel against heaven and turn evil and had let her go ahead and do it because it was part of some kind of plan of his, then she would ''overdo'' the role god had given her and ruin that plan.

God was an absolute being, but he did not save all lives.

Everyone accepted that even their misfortunes would be given meaning and purpose if they obeyed god.

But the very existence of that system meant he had known from the beginning there would be victims. He had known and let it happen. For some grand plan of his.

Coronzon’s role was to tear people apart. Why should she obey someone who had abandoned her?

So she had decided to use everything given to her and ''overdo'' it. That way she could obliterate that heartless plan without betraying her purpose.

She would dedicate herself to her evil identi-

…?

At that point, she tilted her head.

No, wait. She had noticed it this time.

Her memories skipped a few seconds.

“Dammit, not again…Aleister!!”

She held a hand to her head.

She had finally managed to prepare this place for her ceremony, but she would have to leave if word reached Kamijou’s group.

Coronzon started to panic…but then it hit her.

A few seconds.

She stood in the very center of an enormous stadium. She had no computer or smartphone to contact anyone and there were no old-fashioned payphones in sight. So even if Aleister had hijacked her body, he couldn’t have done anything in that time. She could ignore the outrage if it only lasted a few seconds.

On the other hand…

(It’s good I noticed it this time, but was the gap itself longer than before?)

She had a bad feeling about this.

Was Aleister starting to get the hang of it? That concern crept up in the back of her mind. Losing consciousness for even a second in the middle of a battle with her pursuers could be fatal. And even if that didn’t happen, Aleister could attempt suicide if he took control for long enough.

He would do it.

Especially now that he viewed her as his enemy and had killing her as his primary objective.

Directly comparing their specs wasn’t enough to rest easy. Aleister had won the Battle of Blythe Road after all.

Coronzon consciously took a deep breath.

(I need to shift my focus.)

Not only were there other stadiums, but magic materials could be found anywhere. After all, Aleister Crowley had built this city during the confusion of the postwar recovery. It was an alternate form for the Abbey of Thelema. It had been deftly hidden by repainting it all in the terms of science, but it would be hard to find places and objects here without magical symbolism.

Coronzon only had to collect the items that were already present.

She wouldn’t have any difficulty as long she knew the proper way to combine them.

She could begin the ceremony at any time.

The only problem was how long it would take.

…No matter how much she tried to shorten that time, she couldn’t reduce it to zero. And she would be entirely defenseless in that time. She was the Coronzon who had destroyed legendary magicians like Mathers and Aleister, but during that time she could be killed even by an ordinary human.

“…”

Coronzon shut her eyes, held her breath, and searched for any sounds around her.

She was focused on the area outside the stadium.

(My greatest enemy is the time limit. Because I’m sure they’re searching for me with everyone they have. Weak as they are, hiding from them is a pain when there are so many of them. For once I need to look out for weaklings because this crucial ceremony will be ruined if they interfere in the middle of it.)

===Part 10===

When they checked the map based on Index’s advice, the answer was obvious.

Kamijou pointed at a spot on the large map.

“The General Athletics Stadium. …It’s gotta be this, right? It’s a track stadium and there’s a huge underground waterway running below it!”

“If Coronzon is using Zeus symbolism for a ceremony to send her through a ley line, then it must be there.”

The white girl sounded confident.

It wasn’t like they had any other leads to go on, so Kamijou had to trust in this one.

“Fool.”

Someone else called out to him.

Anna Sprengel.

“I double-checked it all just to be safe, and everything the grimoire library said checks out. Her calculations are correct, so Coronzon should be at the General Athletics Stadium. The only question left is if we arrive in time.”

The Amakusas were magicians who blended into modern society, so they all knew how to drive. …Kamijou preferred not to think about where they had procured so many vehicles in Academy City, but it would be best to make use of them now.

And just as he was thinking that, his eyes met another pair of eyes.

But these definitely weren’t human.

They were compound eyes.

A carnivorous dragonfly more than three meters long was gliding at eye level.

It was made of blonde hair.

“Coronzon’s…scouts!?”

“Stupid bug jamboree!!”

He heard an odd voice just before a blonde young woman drop-kicked the giant dragonfly from the side, sending it flying. She was the Transcendent Bologna Succubus.

“Just when I thought I’d caught up on foot, this is what I find? When do I get a breather!?”

“Pant, gasp… M-my coat…is so heavy with…the steel armor and the terrariums…I’m dyiiiiiing…”

Even as she complained, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet deflected the scouts’ attacks with her thick coat. …Wait, did she just protect the Bologna Succubus?

However, squashing a single dragonfly wasn’t enough to turn the tide.

There were butterflies, hornets, stag beetles, flies, and more.

Kanzaki raised her voice.

“If she’s sending these out, it must mean we’re getting close!”

It didn’t feel like Coronzon was trying to lay low and hide anymore. Did she want to buy time even if it made her more conspicuous?

She really was here.

In District 20. Index, Anna Sprengel, and the others had been right.

…The question was whether or not these scouts were passing information back to Coronzon. Either way, it would be best not to waste time here.

“We need to strike before she can get away!!” shouted Kamijou.

===Part 11===

The scouts sent out by Great Demon Coronzon included three meter dragonflies and hornets.

Kamijou immediately clenched his right fist, but nothing would be more annoying than having a group of 20 or 30 drop from the sky all at once. Kihara Noukan turned his way and shouted.

“Be careful. If they grab onto you and carry you up high, you will be playing a deadly version of the crane game!”

He couldn’t let the flying scouts use the powerful weapon that was height.

Plus, the stag beetle ones wouldn’t even need lift him up. They could crush or slice his body right here on the ground.

“Get inside, it doesn’t matter where!!”

On Kanzaki’s instructions, Kamijou and Mikoto practically tackled open the door to a nearby building.

They ran further inside. When they reached a more open space, they found something odd there.

A frozen pool?

No, was it a skating rink?

Kamijou wasn’t familiar with them and had imagined them as something like a massive cold storage warehouse, but was this skating rink actually warmer than outside?

“They’re coming. Those weird bugs are coming!!”

“Wait, Misaka! Don’t use your Railgun down a straight corridor! Are you trying to hit our friends!?”

Lucia, Angelene, and more of the Former Agnese Force jumped on the giant flies as a group. That still wasn’t enough offensive power, but it slowed the scouts enough for Blodeuwedd the Bouquet and Anna Sprengel to finish them off with stronger attacks.

The scouts were powerful. They were, but they weren’t Great Demon Coronzon herself. The scouts made of her blonde hair were not unbeatable!

“In that case…”

“Hm? Lad, don’t let your guard down!!”

A supposedly defeated scout stirred.

No, a large quantity of something burst from the giant stag beetle’s body. Flat ovals about fifty centimeters long poured out like a slot machine jackpot. There were more than a hundred of them and they were all wriggling. And squirming.

There were more scouts…inside the scouts?

And a ton of them!!

“Ahhhhhhh!?”

Kamijou backed away, more creeped out than afraid of the threat they posed. The small scouts leaped at the boy one after another.

Itsuwa sharply jabbed her spear out to guard him, but she grimaced.

“They’re hard. Are they based on parasitic shellfish!?”

“You mean the more enemies we defeat, the more of them there will be? Hard to think of a better way to buy time!” shouted Othinus.

Kamijou’s group would be overwhelmed by the enemy army.

Sounds like collapsing piles of sand came from all around.

“Wow!”

Alice Anotherbible was the only one capable of smiling as they swarmed around her. A normal human would be bitten into tiny pieces if they tried that!!

They would be killed if they didn’t defeat the attacking scouts, but defeating the scouts only allowed them to multiply.

It was a vicious cycle.

…And Kamijou had only thought of these things as scouts made of blonde hair. But he felt pity for them now that he saw them forced to fight, writhing in pain as they burst from within, and releasing a flood of other monsters.

“Fool, now isn’t the time. If you stop, we will be killed!”

Great Demon Coronzon.

Even if she was fighting for her life, she shouldn’t force her own side to do this.

A dull crash broke through Kamijou’s thoughts.

It came from directly in front of him. The skating rink’s wall broke through and a giant rotary snowplow emerged from the side. The row of scouts in its path were crushed and sliced up by the rotating blades.

The fluffy blonde Amakusa was operating it.

Kamijou had seen her a few times before. Wasn’t her name Tsushima?

“Hop on!! Coronzon is our top priority, so we can’t waste our time with these things!!”

There was no reason to stick around here. The giant rotating blades on the front and the snow expulsion device sticking out the side like an elephant’s trunk looked dangerous, but Kamijou grabbed onto something like a short ladder on the side. Only after the heavy snowplow begin to move did he notice something.

“W-where’s Index!? And Misaka too!”

“I’m not the only Amakusa. And everyone will soon think to use snowmobiles and other vehicles capable of driving on this red snow. We all have the same destination, so we’ll meet back up with them if we head to the track stadium!!”

A few others managed to jump onto the snowplow. He saw Kanzaki and Itsuwa among them.

A three meter dragonfly was still stubbornly pursuing them, but it was shot down by a beam of light. Neither Kanzaki nor Itsuwa had done that. Apparently another vehicle was following them.

Eventually, no more hornets and stag beetles could be seen.

Kamijou sighed and leaned against the rotary snowplow that rattled along on its continuous tracks.

“Well…it certainly is a good thing that Tsushima was there to help us, human,” said the 15cm god.

“Yeah, it really was. Life is so much easier when you have a capable young woman around. Thanks.”

“…Ohh?” “…Ohh?”

“(Wait, did I just step on some deadly landmine here. And to make matters worse, two of them at once?)”

A secret light shined sharply from Kanzaki Kaori and Itsuwa’s eyes and Tsushima wept in the driver’s seat.

===Part 12===

It was late at night. 1 AM had come and gone.

When you imagined a late night hospital, did you think of a horror story? Or something more risque? After many long years working here, the frog-faced doctor knew neither option was likely. When you worked there day in and day out, even a special location became no more than a routine. The fear faded and any weird expectations vanished.

Of course, he wouldn’t normally be working on this shift, but today was a special day. He hadn’t gotten any rest during the day either.

A young medical intern gave him a worried look.

“You need to get some sleep, doctor. You’re no good to us here if you pass out.”

“If I could get some free time…yes, there is something I should do, so can you cover things here?”

“Doctor!” the intern called after him, but this was his nature. He wanted to save every patient he could.

If Kamijou Touma was already dead, then there was nothing to be done.

But what if the boy was still alive?

Then he was the frog-faced doctor’s patient.

If a patient had received improper treatment, it was a doctor’s duty to save them.

(What a pain. Where do I even start with determining if a supposedly dead person is alive or dead? The guidelines for brain death would probably be best. Or mayb-)

He left the hospital.

And some strange thing attacked him only three steps out the door.

“Eh?”

If he had to describe it, he would have called it a golden crab standing more than three meters tall.

Even after seeing the pincer raised high, the frog-faced doctor only managed to get out a confused sound.

He did not properly understand the danger.

Yes.

He had no way of knowing since he knew nothing of magic, but his hospital was in District 7. That was the area where Coronzon had scattered so many of her scouts made of blonde hair.

And Coronzon had been so focused on escaping she hadn’t actually ordered them to stop.

Which meant they were still acting on orders to protect the ceremonial ground for Adikalika – the former site of the Windowless Building.

A pleasant slashing sound raced out.

The frog-faced doctor did not shed a single drop of blood.

It was sliced vertically.

The blonde hair scout’s bisected halves scattered to either side.

His eyes widened in confusion as a dark, lithe figure whispered to him.

“It is a pleasure to see you again, doctor.”

===Part 13===

In the District 20 skating rink, Misaka Mikoto had definitely seen that pointy-haired boy on the side of a large rotary snowplow.

And it had happened as the vehicle drove right past her.

She had been left behind.

“I want to shoot that idiot so bad.”

She flicked up arcade coins and launched a few Railguns at the monsters as she retreated from the skating rink proper into a narrow corridor.

The more she defeated, the more of them there were, which couldn’t have been much more annoying.

And the initial dragonflies and stag beetles were powerful enough already, so she would be killed if she didn’t fight back. There was no room for holding back.

(Are the others retreating somewhere too? There isn’t time to ask where we’ll meet up next, so I’ll just have to magnetically attach myself to one of the vehicles’ roofs.)

And all of a sudden, something occurred to Misaka Mikoto.

“…Wait.”

(If that idiot is alive, then why am I even wearing mourning clothes? Ahhh, how long am I going to keep wearing this cumbersome outfit? Now I feel like I’ve been making a fool of myself!!)

This was a sports facility, so would they have rental sportswear anywhere? Even a track suit or jumpsuit would be fine. She was willing to ignore how it looked if it was at least warm and didn’t restrict her movements!!

But this was a skating rink.

That meant any clothing would be for skating.

Such as a painfully bright lemon yellow figure skating uniform.

“U-um, would you call this a skating dress?”

It wouldn’t restrict her movements since it was designed for sports use. Combined with the bladeless shoes meant for the staff, she would have no trouble moving around. At the very least, she would have a much easier time of it than in this Japanese clothing. But why did it have to have a miniskirt? Or should she think of it more like a swimsuit’s pareo? Either way, it wasn’t something for walking around town in!

“B-but it’s so cold! What choice do I have!?”

She had decided herself she was willing to ignore how it looked.

It would certainly protect her from the biting chill of the January night.

It left less skin exposed than she had expected. Because it covered her with a skin-colored material.

But that was a problem of its own. The thin synthetic fiber was like wearing a full-body stocking. A terrifying thought for someone who tended to get zappy at the drop of a hat!

===Part 14===

Kamijou and the others arrived at a dark shape so large they truly had to look up to see it all.

This was the General Athletics Stadium.

Its size was apparent even from the outside.

Its diameter alone had to be hundreds of meters.

Instead of a dome covering it, it was apparently an outdoor stadium. Still, tall walls surrounded it on all sides. Those would be for the tiered seating, but they were just as tall as a four story building. So the same as a school building. This meant there was no seeing inside from out here.

Several other vehicles joined the rotary snowplow operated by Tsushima.

Index and Misaka Mikoto were among them.

“Thank good- woah! Misaka, what are you wearing!?”

“Don’t look at me!! Don’t look at my new and improved flavor with 20% extra at the same great price!!”

Her retort was as unusual as her outfit.

Was this the higher rarity version that showed more skin, or had she been unable to bear the cold and chose to rely on a figure skating outfit? He wished she would stop tugging down on the miniskirt-like part because that only drew his eye there all the more.

The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet were both tilting their heads (in friendly synchronization?). …Yeah, they probably wouldn’t get what the big deal was when they had no trouble walking around in the frigid January night in their underwear or a naked apron.

But focusing on this wasn’t going to lead them to Coronzon.

Kamijou was curious about something.

“The tall walls keep us from seeing inside. I hope that also means Coronzon can’t see out.”

“Does it mean that? Wouldn’t a great demon be able to use clairvoyance or remote viewing?”

Tracking expert Takitsubo brought up a difficult topic.

“In modern Western magic, clairvoyance isn’t a means of seeing the contents of a closed envelope. It’s a ceremony used for spiritual meditation.”

Kanzaki provided an explanation, but it was hard to grasp without a solid foundation in the magic side.

She had spread out a large map, probably a privilege she had gained by taking control of the city. That she went to the trouble of printing out a paper copy seemed to show she still wasn’t used to the science side, though.

“It was fortunate we could get our hands on the official blueprints. Our numbers work in our favor. First, we should station personnel at each exit. There are more than 20 official gates for spectators and the real number is even greater due to the unofficial entrances for athletes and staff. With the exits blocked, we can begin exploring inside. Once we know where Coronzon is inside the large stadium and how she has modified it for her ceremony, we can launch our attack.”

“Coronzon should be defenseless while she works,” added Index. “Even if we can’t win a straight fight, we should be able to win right now.”

They could win?

Then why not charge in right this instant?

Kamijou couldn’t believe they would stay out when they knew she was in there.

Othinus must have sensed his impatience because she made a piercing comment from his shoulder.

“Wait, human. If Coronzon detects us and runs off, this will all have been a waste of time.”

“Either way, we should carefully investigate the situation inside and gather what information we can. We can always make our attack after all escape routes we are aware of have been covered.”

Kamijou was a little surprise to find Anna Sprengel advocating the cautious option.

Had that wicked woman learned how frightening it was to have everything fall apart at the last second?

“But can we really wait around that long? There’s that ley line thing, right? That direct route running underground that only the great demon can use. We can have her surrounded as much as we want – it won’t matter if she just teleports out of here!”

“Failure puts the entire human race at risk. Great Demon Coronzon will be able to do more than just this.”

Was that why she didn’t want anyone spying on her from the sky?

After giving a skeptical look at the Bologna Succubus (or her clothing more likely), Kanzaki nodded in agreement.

“We mustn’t forget that she will have escaped if she physically crosses the city wall.”

“But we don’t know the time limit!!”

“It won’t be in the next 5 or 10 minutes at least. That gives us time to take it slow, human.”

===Part 15===

“Hm.”

Great Demon Coronzon put a hand on her hip and observed her surroundings.

She stood at the very center of the enormous stadium.

“That completes the ceremonial ground. And the attribute extracted from the stadium as a whole gives me what I need. Direction, time, number…and the actual spiritual item in my hands: the tattva cards.”

She held a few colorful cards.

However, these cards were not historical antiques.

They were only symbols meant to help one enter the special mental state of meditation, so as long as the colors and symbols were correct, the material was immaterial. They were in fact made by coloring cardstock with thick permanent markers she had acquired after breaking the metal shutter covering a stadium shop. (There was probably a demand for materials that spectators could use to make placards or to draw their team’s logo on their face.)

Perhaps the stadium functioned like a giant magical circle with the cards acting as a control medium like a mouse or keyboard.

Coronzon had a physical body, but her true essence was a collection of Telesma energy. Unlike the pure angels, she was a mixture of different elements, which could be a pain, but by breaking them apart, she too could be handled as pure energy.

That meant she could inject herself into a weapon or armor or she could be carried around inside a thin talisman.

Or she could send herself through the ley lines to instantly travel to the other side of the planet.

“Now, time to begin,” she whispered.

===Part 16===

Kamijou was anxious.

Great Demon Coronzon was inside there, but the great size of the stadium worked against them. With more than 20 public gates, entering the wrong way would give Coronzon a chance to escape out a different one.

They needed to know her exact location before heading in.

…He understood the Anglicans’ point, but that didn’t mean he liked it. No matter how well they prepared themselves, Coronzon would disappear if they didn’t arrive in time. Then the world’s doom would begin on the other side of the planet. Coronzon would be able to choose any location she liked, so she could ensure the optimal conditions for herself. The next time would be far worse. Everything might truly be destroyed.

Next to him, Index spoke up. Addressing Kanzaki.

“Are you going to run a search from the outside? Isn’t that dangerous too?”

“It is. She could detect the magic power of a normal through-walls scan. However, we Amakusas have specialized in hiding our faith to avoid persecution, so we know a few tricks we can use.”

Kamijou and Mikoto had no clue what the Amakusas were working on with such determined looks on their faces. At this point, Index and her 103,001 memorized grimoires was the only person they could rely on.

She got it right on the first guess.

“The Maria Kannon?”

“This isn’t how they were originally used, but they were designed to look like an ordinary Buddhist figure while revealing its true face as the Virgin Mary to anyone who knew what to look for. By intentionally taking a broad interpretation of that concept, it can be remade into a camouflage-breaking searching spell to locate that which is hidden.”

===Part 17===

In the very center of the spacious stadium, Great Demon Coronzon sat quietly, regulated her breathing, and placed her index finger against one of the toxically colorful cards lined up on the ground.

Something felt off.

A sensation like a finger pressed between her eyes caused a tingling in the center of her head. Even though she was the one reaching out her finger. No, it was meaningless to think of it in that way.

The two were linked.

To touch it was to be touched.

The line between the self and the other – between the inner world and the outer world – was blurring.

The core of her body distorted. She was uncertain where she was even sitting.

“Kh.”

Her head wobbled. A vertiginous fluctuation interrupted her thoughts.

This was an Eastern mystical philosophy from ancient India.

She knew it wasn’t a good fit for her. A pure and proper angel never could have done it. But she was an impure and wicked being known as a great demon. And the Crowley system said every from of the mystical could be incorporated into your own spells if you reinterpreted it with your own logic. The wise would not give up just because they reached an impasse. They would use the discovery of that impasse to further elevate themselves.

She took deep breaths.

She consciously guided her thoughts toward stability.

She needn’t think of purifying herself.

There didn’t have to be just one answer.

The tattva cards did not work with pure elements in the first place.

Mathers had warned that meditation using those painfully colorful cards could cause intense anxiety or headaches for a mere human if used incorrectly. So how much worse would the damage from failure be for Coronzon as she tried to return herself to a state of pure energy?

She did not approach the true essence of this Eastern mystical philosophy.

The tattva cards were no more than tools used for control. That would have been how the Golden cabal used them too. They were valuable when it came to understanding the five elements, but there would be discrepancies between the cabal’s manual and the actual Eastern philosophy.

(The work has just passed 50%. That would explain why this inner fear and anxiety is taking on such concrete form.)

Coronzon did not move her eyes.

She had to focus her whole mind on ascending straight up.

Thus, any trivial distractions and detours could end up tearing her ego apart.

So she always stared straight ahead, using only the corner of her vision to watch how her own shadow wavered and thinned.

It was progressing well.

Once her shadow fully vanished, she would have also ''physically'' disappeared from Academy City.

The destruction of the world was within reach.

===Part 18===

“How is that search spell going!?” shouted Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

“I-it just passed 70%!” nervously reported Itsuwa.

70%.

That was more than halfway done, but Kamijou and the others didn’t know Coronzon’s status. If she was even a single percentage point ahead of them, they wouldn’t finish in time. It was possible the Anglicans would fully surround the stadium and rush in only to find Coronzon had already vanished.

Othinus sighed from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“There’s no need to wait until it’s 100% complete. We know Coronzon is in this building. So if we attack the small unsearched spots, we can confirm her location by sight.”

“How much of the stadium do you think those ‘small spots’ cover?” strongly retorted Kanzaki. “The search has covered 70% or maybe 80%. We’re risking our lives going in, so we want a little more assurance than that!!”

“What do you think, Touma?” asked Index.

“Hm? We should go in now! Right now!!”

He had no idea why an outsider like him had been asked for his opinion on a magical matter, but he gave his answer right away.

“Tsujiura,” said Index. “Kushiura and Qiu Xiang Bu also work. Those are Eastern, so the Amakusas should be able to use them too.”

“I see. So the idea that the first thing said by someone ignorant of the topic at hand can be used for divination,” said Kanzaki, sounding impressed.

In this case, Kamijou’s ignorance of magic gave his words meaning.

…He felt like this was declaring him useless in this fight, which seemed kind of insulting, but if the experts would listen to what he had to say, he didn’t care why.

Whatever the case, Kamijou’s words set them all into motion.

“Kanzaki will join one of the Amakusa teams, I guess. Okay, Alice!! You go lend Agnese’s group a hand!”

“Hm? The girl would prefer to stay with you, teacher.”

“Please! And Anna, you go with that team including Itsuwa and Tsushima!”

“Fool. I will step on you later.”

They complained, but they still split up.

Even Takitsubo and Kihara Noukan did as he said. They had to know even less about magic than him, but they were still risking their lives to stop this unknown threat.

After all, there were more than twenty public gates. The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force would be blocking all of those exits, but they were dealing with ''the'' Coronzon here. Ordinary magicians weren’t enough. Each team needed an irregular member such as a Saint like Kanzaki Kaori, a Transcendent like the Bologna Succubus or Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, or even a special Transcendent like Anna Sprengel or Alice Anotherbible.

Kamijou didn’t see this as splitting up their forces.

Once they entered the stadium, they would converge on Coronzon’s location. He didn’t want anyone dying in the “blank time” until they broke down the right door and found Coronzon. He was sick of Coronzon being able to choose one of them at random for a one-hit kill lottery. Even if one team was unfortunate enough to run across Coronzon on their way in, they didn’t have to defeat her. Kamijou wanted to give each team someone who could let them survive until the other teams arrived.

Mikoto, who always felt left behind when it came to magical matters, suddenly panicked.

“W-wait, what about me!?”

“You’re with me, of course!! C’mon!!”

“Eh? O-oh…okay.”

Kamijou and Mikoto would enter through the closest gate: Gate 15. Neither knew much about magic, but he figured Othinus’s presence would make up for that. Index’s knowledge was the most important of all, so he couldn’t keep it to himself.

Gate 15 was shut with a metal grate shutter and a glass door, but Mikoto only had to inhale and exhale before it all opened for them. And not just Gate 15. All of the shutters and locks opened at once.

Without waiting for the shutter to fully rise, they ducked below it.

They entered a dark corridor.

And ran.

“Hey, human. Don’t get one-shotted here. Even if Coronzon is busy, she could have sent out those scouts.”

Othinus warned him from his shoulder, but Kamijou didn’t have time to respond. If they were even a second too late, it was all over.

His heart pounded in his ears. He felt like he was going to die on his own without Coronzon having to lift a finger. But he gritted his teeth and kept running.

He wouldn’t let her try again at destroying the world.

He would end this tonight.

===Part 19===

(75%.)

Great Demon Coronzon’s voice no longer vibrated the air.

From her perspective, it was less like her body was unraveling and more like the world around her was changing. Or maybe like she was crossing the boundary between phases. Her coordinates remained the same, but the scene around her changed as if flipping over a page.

Perhaps there was no real difference between the two.

The Golden cabal never managed to send their body across. Thus, their experts had tried to separate just their minds in an act known as astral projection to virtually achieve a leap between phases. They had worked hard to peek into another world like heaven or hell. …And as a result, quite a few magicians had failed to cling to their sanity.

Coronzon’s nearly transparent fingertip passed right through the tattva card.

She was more than halfway on the other side now.

The great demon grinned.

(No more physical control is needed at this point. Now I only have to wait for the process to complete!!)

===Part 20===

Kamijou and Mikoto ran down a long, long corridor.

They couldn’t afford to hide their footsteps now.

Coronzon was so close.

“We’re going to come out into the stands, right? How far is it to the actual sports field!?”

“The actual distance isn’t that far, but the stands aren’t flat. Don’t trip and fall in the darkness, okay?”

Mikoto gave him a surprisingly sincere answer.

There hadn’t been any bright beams of light or explosions yet.

What were Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others doing?

They would have entered through all the entrances at once, but apparently none of the teams had run into Coronzon. They didn’t know where she was hiding to complete her ceremony, but she hadn’t noticed their presence yet. That made this their best chance.

If they failed, it was all over.

(We might not win in a straight fight, but what if she’s immobilized by the important ceremony? This time will be different. This is our only chance to settle things with her!!)

The end of the corridor came into view.

Like a rectangular hole cut out of the darkness.

Kamijou gritted his teeth, clenched his fist, and ran with all his might.

He emerged into a silent space. The flow of time ground to a halt.

No one was there.

The place was deserted.

“What’s…going on?” muttered Kamijou, stopped partway down the stands.

He could hear more people emerging from different directions. But that was all. Even from here, he could see Agnese, the Bologna Succubus, and others looking around in confusion on the other side of the stadium. The great demon wasn’t shining bright as she completed some kind of ceremony and Coronzon didn’t begin a fierce battle in an attempt to escape.

Great Demon Coronzon wasn’t here.

It didn’t feel like she had fled in a panic either. There was no warmth in the vast space. It had likely been empty this entire time. Coronzon had never been here. They had chosen the wrong location.

Had their calculations been off?

No, they hadn’t been relying on Index alone. It had been a group effort with help from Anna Sprengel, Kanzaki Kaori, and more from the magic side. And they had been certain Coronzon would use this stadium if she was using Zeus symbolism. So how could they have been wrong!?

“Touma.”

A girl from another group joined him.

Index’s usual childlike air was broken by the trembling voice she forced out.

She seemed hesitant to speak.

“Is this district used for any other special purpose? Other than sports!”

“Huh? Yes. It is a district of stadiums and domes meant to hold tens of thousands of people. I think Aogami Pierce mentioned it being the holy land for idol concerts.”

A quiet thud reached his ears.

Index was unable to support her wobbling body and fell back into one of the seats. The cat mewed in complaint from her arms.

“Then Coronzon wasn’t using sports as the symbol for a sanctuary or temple.”

Her lips quivered.

“Songstresses, plays…she was using the performing arts. Which means it isn’t Zeus! And if she is using a different symbol and a different god, she would be in an entirely different location!!”

===Part 21===

Maximum occupancy: 255 thousand.

Coronzon snorted with laughter when she recalled that extreme number.

…A soccer stadium or baseball stadium could never reach that number even with every seat filled. That display was meant for a concert or live performance where even the field itself was filled with seats.

Coronzon was somewhere like that.

(This district is filled with stadiums and domes. To put it another way, most of them are not the designated home field of a pro team whose games you can watch on a sports app. And “just a stadium” isn’t going to be used just for sports. …District 20’s stadiums probably make most of their income this way. I saw through that right away. And a facility primarily used for concerts is not a Zeus-associated track stadium. To be blunt, this is a large facility built for shows, not for sports.)

She didn’t want Apollo, god of music.

She wanted Dionysus, god of theater.

In ancient Greece, sporting events had been held in sanctuaries as a ceremonial offering to a god, but plays and songs had been made as offering in those same sanctuaries. Thus, holding a concert or live performance in a stadium that could contain a large audience was not a new idea.

Greek theater was the origin of modern stage plays. And the original form of that had been a festival held as an offering to Dionysus, god of alcohol and insanity.

That meant his symbols could be extracted from a large stadium like this.

(The work is past 90%. And yet no pursuit has arrived yet. What’s the matter, humanity? If you let me escape this easily, you will be extinct by tomorrow!!)

===Part 22===

So not sports but music. No, theater.

Not a stadium for sporting events but for concerts and live performances.

When they corrected the initial assumption and had Index recalculate, they were given a single candidate.

“The Brilliant Outdoor Performance Stadium. It points north and, if the adjacent park is viewed as a mountain forest, you could extract the symbols of Dionysus. This time I’m sure of it! A god of insanity would be perfect for controlling her power as a chaotic great demon!”

Now that they had a new answer, they couldn’t just sit around.

Their initial wrong answer would have given Coronzon that much more time for the ceremony to break her body down into energy. As soon as she finished that, she would dive into a ley line and escape to the other side of the planet. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

Kamijou and the others hitched a ride on the rotary snowplow driven by Tsushima of the Amakusas to reach the new destination.

It was in the same district.

Driving there, it wouldn’t take long. The giant stadium capable of holding 255 thousand came into view.

“Is that it? Please still be in the city, Coronzon. Dammit.”

As soon as Kamijou jumped down from the snowplow onto the red snow, he staggered to the side.

He regathered his strength, somehow managing to keep himself steady, but he bumped into something next to him.

But not because he had nearly fallen.

“Ugh…”

He heard a small groan.

From Takitsubo Rikou.

She must have arrived on a different vehicle. Kamijou instinctually caught the unsteady track suit girl…and found her body temperature was higher than he had expected.

Not just warm, but blazing hot.

He was shocked.

“That’s not good… How long have you been hiding this, Takitsubo!?”

“…”

She refused to say a word.

She had been knocked out by some kind of attack from Coronzon during the Adikalika stuff. It was a miracle she was even still alive, yet she had joined the chase instead of calling an ambulance. Anyone would be in a similar state after that.

“You can’t go on. You need to get some rest! You’ve seen the way things are, right!? The Anglicans don’t want to torment Hamazura!!”

“You should listen to your own advice, Touma. Stopping Adikalika was more than enough of a win. You’re hurt, so stay here and look after her,” said an exasperated Index.

Even though it was she who had actually stopped the attack after arriving late. She had a perfect memory, so this wasn’t just a mistake. So was she giving them the credit? When he thought about it, he realized Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others hadn’t actually seen the moment Adikalika was stopped…

Speaking of Kanzaki, she called everyone over.

“If the countdown is close to the end, we can’t spend time on an initial search like before. That will mean a greater risk when we enter. Needless to say…”

“Then do we have time to sit around listening to the headmaster’s speech? I’ll steal a map of the stadium with my powers, so let’s get going!”

Mikoto, Index, Kanzaki, and the rest got moving.

In no time, there wasn’t anyone left.

It was so quiet.

Kamijou sat down and focused on taking deep breaths. He wasn’t as bad as Takitsubo, but he had lost his balance earlier. He had taken a direct hit from Coronzon. He wasn’t a doctor and couldn’t even imagine how much damage had been done inside his body, but he knew better than to be optimistic.

Takitsubo Rikou’s lips moved where she lay right next to him.

He doubted she was conscious, so maybe she was having a nightmare.

“…Hamazura…”

“Kh.”

Kamijou grimaced. In agony.

She had to be badly worried about her friend. If she didn’t do something to help out and earn points with the Anglicans, she would lose all chance of negotiating with them. But she was too injured to move.

If Coronzon did escape, who could say where they would direct their anger. Even if Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others fighting here didn’t, the higher ups watching from across the ocean might demand a live sacrifice from those who were close to Coronzon.

Could that be why Index had used such vague phrasing to give up credit for stopping Adikalika?

But it wasn’t enough. Takitsubo wanted something more to push her claim of having contributed, so Adikalika wasn’t enough and she had come with them even if it meant hiding how bad her injuries were.

And unlike her, Kamijou could still move.

He couldn’t push himself too hard.

But he had to make up his mind.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

“Human? …It figures.”

“I’ll stop Coronzon, so don’t you worry, Takitsubo. Don’t forget: winning is meaningless if you die. Your goal is to be with Hamazura, right? Then you need to rest.”

He forced his heavy body up and began to walk.

No, he was trying to run full speed, but this was the most speed he could manage.

Even so, Imagine Breaker would have to be of some use.

Coronzon’s magic was extraordinarily powerful.

Maybe he couldn’t fight her himself, but he could at least help out someone who could. If he could shield them from even a single attack, it might be enough to decide the battle.

He would overturn the game as a wild card.

===Part 23===

Great Demon Coronzon only had to wait. And the time finally arrived.

It was already over.

99%.

Even if someone barged in now, she could break her body down into Telesma and escape Academy City through the ley line before they could do anything.

Her victory was assured. Those humans were too late to prevent their doom. The silly fools should have resisted more.

But then…

“You think so? Then allow me to cause a bit of trouble.”

Her vision shattered.

Black, red, silver, blue, yellow… It all collapsed into a wild dance of colors.

No.

Crossing between phases and breaking herself down may have been the same thing. She had thought so herself.

Which meant it was she who was collapsing.

She could no longer support her sitting position and fell to the side. Something was wrong with her limbs. She couldn’t remember how to breathe. Nevertheless, she managed to gather all her strength and scream.

“A…lei…sterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!?”

“Now, now, Coronzon. You should know better than to mess with anything as dangerous as the tattva cards which even the Golden cabal had to issue a recall for. Don’t you remember what Mathers said? They can cause intense anxiety or headaches if used incorrectly. Why would you visit the mental world after going to the trouble of physically sealing me away? Are you trying to kill yourself? ''In here'', I can still wield some power.”

(Emergency…shutoff!!)

A dull “snap!” came from the center of her head.

“Khah!!”

She tried to let out the breath caught in her throat, but what came out was colored red.

For a while, she lay on her side convulsing until she forcibly suppressed the writhing of every last one of her internal organs. Yes, it was urgent that she accurately recalled the shape of her body. She had already begun to enter the ley line when the magic failed. She had to return to her original body in a hurry, but if she forgot that body’s shape now, she could be entirely annihilated.

It took her a full ten seconds.

Once she calmed her wild breathing and recalled the cycle for inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, she had reclaimed her physical body.

The tattva cards could cause mental confusion if used incorrectly.

For her, did that mean releasing the sealed Aleister? In other words…

“Dammit!!!”

This meant a change of plans.

She couldn’t use this method anymore.

And if she was going to cross Academy City’s wall for a physical escape…she had no reason to remain in this stadium. She had to leave as soon as possible.

===Part 24===

Kamijou forced his unsteady body to keep moving and pushed open a small metal door with his shoulder.

He slipped through the half-open door, probably a staff entrance, and entered the stadium.

He found a dark, cold, heavy space.

Big too.

…He had apparently entered something like a parking garage. Was it a space for workers located below the stadium? He didn’t know enough to have a good mental picture of how stadiums were structured.

He did have his phone with him, but he didn’t know what was happening inside. The pursuers had to be careful too, so he wanted to avoid causing someone’s phone to ring while they were trying to hide.

“Index? Misaka?” he called quietly.

He didn’t know how the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force were searching the stadium. Because they weren’t sharing information with him.

He heard some light footsteps through the darkness. They echoed off the gray walls and were moving away from him.

He immediately ran full speed in that direction.

He could tell just from listening whose they were.

“(Human, you noticed how odd that was, I trust?)”

(We all know how powerful Coronzon is, so everyone will be searching as part of a team. So no one should be leaving on their own like that!)

“Coronzon!! Is that you!?”

“You really shouldn’t have announced your presence. Unless you have the supernatural power to kill with words alone.”

The footsteps stopped.

A voice spoke from behind one of the thick concrete pillars lining the space.

A hateful voice.

“I’m relieved. Because of you I can easily kill and complete my escape. Now, Kamijou Touma, how do you intend to stop me? Don’t try to tell me that foolish shout was all part of a plan and you have a more troublesome opponent hiding nearby.”

15cm Othinus could not directly fight, so he was effectively alone.

Coronzon had seen right through him.

What about the phone in his pocket? No. He might not have a signal, but more than that, using the touchscreen in the dark parking garage would give him away with the backlight. Coronzon would act before he could call for help.

“You chose this stadium because it was your best bet, right? You can’t use magic to escape through the ley lines now. So give up, Coronzon.”

“Why should I? Great demons are perfectly capable of driving cars. And it goes without saying that ordinary cars can slip right past a scan for magic power.”

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

That was her plan immediately after trying to escape using Telesma and a ley line? She switched gears way too fast.

“How many trump cards do you have!?”

“More than a mere human could ever imagine, that’s for sure.”

If she escaped in a car, he couldn’t keep up on foot. His phone was an iffy option too. So was there nothing he could do? If he shouted at the top of his lungs, the others would surely gather here. He wouldn’t let her escape.

The voice alone continued from behind the pillar.

“How about this, Kamijou Touma? What if you keep quiet and let me go?”

“Why even ask that? It’s meaningless. If you escape tonight, you’ll work to destroy all of humanity by tomorrow, right? Then nothing you could offer me would be worth it!!”

“Oh, you will let me go. Because I happened to pick up a trump card on my way here.”

Someone emerged from behind the concrete pillar. Slowly.

Blonde hair.

A woman.

But that hair was fluffy and only fell to the shoulder blades.

This wasn’t Great Demon Coronzon.

He had only heard a single set of footsteps, so had she been captured behind the pillar?

What was being held against her from outside Kamijou’s view? The feminine lines of her body were trembling and her expression was like a cross between tears and a smile.

He recognized her as one of the Amakusas.

“Tsushima.”

It wasn’t even a case of “move and she’s dead”.

All of a sudden, the red splattered out.

From the side of her neck. Kamijou was an ordinary high school boy without much forensic medical knowledge, but the location the blood was spraying from sent a chill down his spine. She seemed to have been cut by an invisible blade.

A laughing woman stuck her head out from behind the pillar.

Great Demon Coronzon really was a demon.

“Kee hee ha ha!! Protecting human lives is no easy task, is it? Or are you willing to take another tour of hell for her!?”

Coronzon kicked Tsushima’s doll-like body from behind, shoving her toward him.

He had no choice but to catch her. Only a few seconds had passed, but she felt limp and heavy in his arms. She clung heavily to him like a down blanket soaked with water. He pressed his palm firmly against the wound in her neck. How much blood loss was lethal for a human? If he didn’t stop the blood spurting from the side of her neck, she really would die.

At that moment, Kamijou’s vision suddenly went dark.

But not because Coronzon had done anything. It took him a while to even realize that. He had long since pushed his body past the limit.

He shouldn’t have been up and about at all.

“Human!!”

“Kah…ah…?”

He felt horribly faint.

He collapsed and couldn’t get back up. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t move his arms and legs very much. He wasn’t even sure which way was up.

“Kh.”

He held Tsushima tight in his arms. He gritted his teeth and tried to take in as much information on the physical reality around him. Sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch… it didn’t matter what. He was afraid he would pass out otherwise.

“Ha ha ha!! You said it was meaningless, didn’t you? You couldn’t have been more right! Why bother saving a life or two now when I will be destroying the entire world soon!”

No, it wasn’t working.

Even after all this…he couldn’t stop his mind from slipping away into darkness.

He had to avoid removing his hand from that neck wound.

He heard the sound of metal breaking.

Then the sound of an engine starting and the sound of Coronzon driving a car away.

“Wait…Coronzon…”

The darkness took over.

Kamijou Touma’s consciousness fully faded.

“Waiiiiit!!!”

===Part 25===

“Can you hear me?”

Near the center of the open stadium, Agnese heard a young male voice.

Hearing a voice when no one was there was nothing unusual. She was commanding more than 250 people, so she was using communication magic.

But this was odd.

The Former Agnese Force was all female.

“This…Mich………k… I have an urgent message. Can anyone hear me?”

She was using a Roman Catholic communication spiritual item derived from the Barbara Branch. It was made from a cherry tree twig with a few buds attached and it wasn’t all that unusual. …Even if it did seem wrong for nuns to be carrying around tools for love fortunetelling.

The hard buds unnaturally opened below the frigid sky and the flower petals vibrated.

They produced a human voice.

(You’re kidding. Is someone hijacking the channel!?)

“Is anyone at all in Academy City receiving this!? There is something I must tell you immediately!”

“?”

Itsuwa gave Agnese a puzzled look from nearby. …Apparently she couldn’t hear this. That meant it was targeted only at the Roman Catholics of the Former Agnese Force.

Agnese Sanctis frowned.

“This is Agnese Sanctis. Who are you?”

“Thank god… I got through! This is Michael Speak, a cardinal officially appointed by the pope!!”

She was at a loss for words.

…Those were the around a hundred ultra elites chosen out of the two billion Roman Catholics to directly advise the pope. Ordinarily, she would never even directly speak to one.

But his voice didn’t fit the part. He sounded like a stressed young man. He didn’t sound even thirty.

Perhaps his modesty was what had earned him so much popularity.

(Another Michael. And with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.)

“What does a great cardinal want with lowly peon like me?”

“Tell only the Roman Catholics to get out of there immediately. You need to leave Academy City as soon as possible. Your team will obey you if you tell them!”

“?”

She had expected a protest or sarcasm in response, so this came as a complete surprise.

This was advance warning of an attack.

She didn’t know what the Vatican was preparing to do, but she had to assume it was a fairly dangerous large-scale spell. Something even greater than Coronzon’s Adikalika.

“You mean it’s close to being activated?”

“As Roman Catholics, we cannot allow someone as dangerous as Great Demon Coronzon to escape Academy City. If she cannot be defeated on the front line, then the Vatican must reach out a helping hand.”

Reach out a helping hand.

So from their perspective, they were saving lives.

And the same went for Agnese, Lucia, Angelene, and the rest of the Former Agnese Force fighting on the front line.

“There are three activation conditions. First, if you completely lose track of Coronzon and the trail goes cold. Two, at 5:47 AM local time. In other words, at dawn. Third, if we believe a non-Catholic force has learned of our plan and could attempt to stop it. If any one of those conditions is met, the Vatican will activate Saint Georgios’s Fire.”

“Kh.”

The most important condition was the third.

That meant the Vatican didn’t want them sharing this information with anyone else. Even though this would mean the destruction of Academy City. The chance to evacuate was for the Former Agnese Force only.

…Were they being pressured to abandon Academy City and the Anglicans who they had fought and risked their lives alongside?

“We are always watching and listening, Sister Agnese. The physical distance matters little. So do not attempt to contact anyone else through trickery or deception. We will not overlook it.”

(Magical surveillance is a hell of a thing. Although I’m sure it was originally justified as a way for the pure servants of god to punish wicked magicians.)

She didn’t actually know how much she was being observed. The Catholics had been outdone by the other forces so far, so Agnese thought they had to be bluffing to an extent. But this still made it hard to take any bold action.

And she knew what Saint Georgios’s Fire was.

She had heard rumors of it back when she still lived in Italy.

There was a legend about the death of Saint Georgios, or Saint George as he was known in England. When he was being pressured to renounce his faith in a wicked temple, a great ball of fire fell from heaven and blew it all away. So it was a legend of pure attack power.

“That’s a large-scale spell that targets a distant location through the ley lines, isn’t it?”

“Ironically, it uses the same pathway Coronzon is attempting to use to escape. But since we can only use it and not control it, we cannot stop her from using it.”

The Roman Catholic spell was essentially a cluster bomb that detonated two billion explosive flames across the entirety of the targeted city.

And rather than burn everything down with the explosive blasts and flames, it used an extreme high temperature to rapidly alter the atmospheric pressure and oxygen level across the entire area. That meant fortifying oneself behind a shield or wall was meaningless. Because your own body would rupture from within. Afterwards, only a lifeless city would remain.

It was effectively the ideal form of a human killer.

(Now isn’t the time for us humans to be fighting among ourselves!!)

“I thought the pope had learned an important lesson from the trials of World War Three. I can’t believe he would agree to such a forceful solution.”

“His authorization is unnecessary. The cardinals have the right to hold an ecumenical council or election. …And the majority wish to do this. We in the minority have no way to stop them.”

“Doesn’t that seem disrespectful?”

“Abstaining in protest will not change the outcome of the vote. Did I ever say that I like that this is happening!?”

There was real strength behind those last words.

That had to be what he really thought. Which was why it pierced Agnese so deeply.

But even if he was sensible, he couldn’t change what was happening. She could tell that too.

(Well, this is a disaster…)

And there was an issue beyond the number of victims across Academy City.

A more fundamental issue.

“Don’t you know ''a human killer spell won’t affect an inhuman demon''? Sowing further confusion in Academy City will only create more openings in the city perimeter!! You’re playing right into Coronzon’s hand!!”

Apparently Coronzon’s special trait remained in effect.

She tore people apart and obstructed their evolution.

(But I can’t believe it’s gone so far.)

“Sister Agnese!!”

“What do you want, cardinal!? I’m really goddamn busy right now!”

“This is a compromise. As much of one as I could get. The original plan was to immediately activate Saint Georgios’s Fire and I only barely stopped that from happening!”

There was kindness in his words.

But that kindness was unnecessary. Something was fundamentally off about this.

“Don’t tell me this is about wounded pride. Index stopped Adikalika by redirecting it to an unnamed desert island in the Atlantic. The Italian peninsula wasn’t harmed!”

“But Coronzon did launch her large-scale attack spell. And that wasn’t her only trump card. Her power is unfathomable, so she must be destroyed when we have the chance. None of the cardinals can ignore that point. I’m sorry, but that includes me!”

She wasn’t sure what to say.

She understood. Yes, even Agnese was furious. If she hadn’t made a conscious effort to calm herself, she might have left the Anglicans back then.

“Violence is wrong,” he continued. “I understand that. We erred and let God’s Right Seat manipulate us during World War Three. …But this time, ''we are in our rights to retaliate.'' Overturning that idea will not be easy, Sister Agnese.”

(Coronzon. Your mere presence really does make a mess of humanity as a whole!)

The Roman Catholics naturally had a variety of emotions about this.

About Coronzon and about Academy City for failing to stop this crisis earlier.

…Nuclear missiles could destroy the world, so it would take a lot of guts to launch the first one yourself. But what if an enemy launched one at you first? That would lower the mental hurdle for pressing the launch button considerably.

People were easily influenced by the word “retaliation”. And that could burn down the entire world.

“I will do everything I can, but I doubt I can stop this from happening. Sooner or later, Saint Georgios’s Fire will be launched.”

He was one of the sensible ones.

He would truly prefer not to use it.

But that was why nothing he said was a mere threat or bluff.

For the pacifists, nothing was more painful than having to declare that an atrocity would soon be happening.

“So you need to escape that city immediately. It’s a shame what will happen to Academy City and the Anglicans, but it’s too late for them. Gather up all the Roman Catholics and get out of there!!”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter2

2025-12-29T19:48:44Z

Massify: /* Part 11 */ the classic ESL mistake where it should've been onto instead of into

==Chapter 2: Divine Slope, Forbidden Book – Magical Exit.==

===Part 1===

In Academy City’s District 7, someone was still fighting on and on, separate from the core of the incident.

That person was Dion Fortune.

“Ahhh, they’ve forgotten me… I just know they’ve all left me behind!! They must have done something about Adikalika since the Earth is still intact, but couldn’t they have launched a group attack to come help me before they left? I am technically the archbishop at the very top of the Anglican Church, you know!?”

A scraping sound came from a short distance away. A giant black cat stood more than two meters tall there. The bizarre beast appeared to be drawn with black paint and it was ridden by a magician in mourning clothes.

Moina Mathers.

She was undeniably a formidable foe. After all, that official member of the Golden cabal, once called the largest in the world, had been fighting for hours now, but the battle still wasn’t over. Even though an average magician who be delighted to be referred to as “first rate” would have been killed instantly.

(This is bad. I know Coronzon is our top priority, but I can’t just leave her out here.)

The enemy said nothing.

Seated atop the black cat that had to be more than two meters tall, Moina Mathers made some complex movements with her fingertips.

Like a magic trick, countless cards appeared and were then pinned in midair.

The cards were not as complex as tarot. They only depicted a combination of basic symbols like circles and triangles.

These cards could express anything in the world using a combination of a primary element and a secondary element.

Dion Fortune’s eyes widened when she saw the dancing colors.

“Geh, are those tattva cards!?”

The mourning clothes woman’s lips writhed.

She produced a voice.

“Apas of Tejas.”

With a roar, a fireball more than a meter in diameter consumed oxygen and rushed toward Dion Fortune.

This had been referenced in the Golden cabal’s official texts, but it was in fact a controversial text that had been officially adopted at one point but then rejected within the cabal. (From the perspective of Western Europe in the 19th century,) India, Tibet, and the East in general were utopias of miracles and the mystical! …But Mathers hated that view, so he took the unusual step of writing a serious warning against the use of the tattvas due to their Eastern origins.

(She’s an artist and a clairvoyance expert. This wife probably did write a lot about the tattvas.)

However, the fireball was approaching slowly enough to see it coming.

Dion Fortune held her black box out in front of her.

If any kind of magic entered that special spiritual item, its data would be randomly rearranged, changing it into something else entirely. That meant it could rob most any attack spell of its lethality, but…

(Would ''the'' Moina Mathers really be satisfied with an explosive that moved this slow? Uh, oh. She intentionally combined multiple elements in this one spell, so even if my box consumes the primary element of Tejas, will the secondary element of Apas still explode?)

“Wahhh!!”

She couldn’t let herself be caught by such obvious bait.

Dion Fortune quickly got down on the red snow to dodge.

The fireball passed by barely above her head before exploding and toppling a wind turbine behind her.

With the tattvas, it was thought the world was constructed of five simple elements, but it was incredibly difficult to extract those elements in their pure form. That was why the elements were used in combination, like Apas of Tejas or Prithivi of Vayu.

(Kind of like a different version of Western-loving Mathers’s Hot and Dry or Cold and Wet!)

Dion Fortune raised her head from the red snow and shouted.

“Argh, you really had to use the tattvas, huh!? Are you intentionally using your husband’s doubts and detours as a weapon!? How much of a cruel wife are you!?”

And…

(If a pawn created by Coronzon can use the tattvas, then Coronzon must know how to use them too.)

She had a bad feeling about this.

The tattva cards depicted a combination of a primary element and a secondary element. They were a spiritual item that provided visual support for sending your mind into a deeper state. Moina was using them in a physical and offensive way, but she was doing that by pushing her own mind to extract the necessary spell from within herself.

That made this a tool specialized for manipulating non-physical energy and for breaking down the world into five elements and managing it in that form.

What was the worst thing an inhuman demon could do using the tattvas?

Dion Fortune thought she knew.

“Oh, no. If she breaks herself down into her component elements and remakes that into pure Telesma energy…could she escape anywhere on the Earth through the ley lines!?”

===Part 2===

They went back into the department store so they get out of the January chill while they thought.

Coronzon was trying to magically escape Academy City using something called a ley line rather than physically crossing the wall.

Kamijou and the others knew that now.

But where in the city would she perform that major ceremony? Now that they had lost track of her, they had to get back on her trail. But how could they do that?

They didn’t even know what district she had escaped to.

“The girl can help!” Alice Anotherbible volunteered. “The girl will divine her location! But, but! She would feel lonely doing it alone, so will someone good with magic help?”

That ruled out Kamijou. Imagine Breaker was never going to help with something like this. And Mikoto visibly cringed at the very idea of relying on divination here, so she was out too.

…But he couldn’t get a read on Takitsubo’s stance. She always had a blank expression and he couldn’t tell if her staring eyes were a sign of agreement or rejection.

The pointy-haired boy tilted his head in the women’s clothing section.

“Eh? You can use Alice in Wonderland for divination?”

“You can use any book, Touma. Haven’t you heard of bibliomancy? You flip through a thick book and place your finger on a random page. Then you apply the passage found there to the problem you’re facing to find an answer.”

Why would he have heard of something like that?

On his shoulder, Othinus continued the conversation like all of this was normal.

“As a piece of nonsense literature, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tends to be associated with mystical matters, including this sort of divination.”

“So, Touma, it should be a good fit here. It’s also well known.”

“That’s not what the girl is doing! We want to know where to go next, right? That means we want a number from 1 to 23, not a literary passage.”

So the district number?

But how would you use Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to search for a number?

“Playing cards, right?” said an exasperated Anna Sprengel.

Her exasperation was not directed at Alice for the suggestion. It was directed at Kamijou for not figuring it out right away. And it was quite strong.

“Fool. Gambling, by its nature, is often associated with divination. Playing cards are no exception. For a familiar example, playing solitaire on your own is practically a form of divination already.”

This was apparently a slightly more complicated version of solitaire.

Alice clapped her hands and spread them apart, causing playing cards to spill out from the space between her palms. They scattered atop a glass showcase.

Index and Anna Sprengel joined Alice in organizing the cards. After forming a few triangles reminiscent of bowling pin formations, Alice flicked away the unneeded cards, formed new triangles…and repeated the process a few times.

“Human. In this case, you can ignore the suits and focus only on the numbers,” advised Othinus from his shoulder.

In the end, only two cards remained.

Index identified them.

“10 and 10.”

“Wait, so is that the answer? But if it’s District 10, why is there two of them?”

“If you rush to the answer in your ignorance, I will stomp on your crotch, fool. She said the answer would be ''a'' number, remember? But playing cards only go from 1 to 13, so a single card can’t indicate a number higher than that. And playing cards have no zero. So this is the only way to output the answer.”

“This is the answer here. You only have to add the two numbers.”

“Then…Coronzon is in ''District 20''?”

As soon as Kamijou said this, looking thoughtful…

''Ba-zap!!!

“Whoa!?” shouted Index.

The roar was loud enough to make you flinch even at a distance. It resembled electrical sparks. He couldn’t be certain, but was this really safe? If Anna Sprengel hadn’t grabbed Index’s hand and pulled her away at the last second, would they both have been turned to charcoal?

Alice Anotherbible, however, simply smiled.

Only she was unfazed after being exposed to that effusion of power.

“Yay, now we know where to go next!”

“…”

Alice really was special. Her power was extraordinary enough on its own, but nothing good came of incorporating it into ordinary magic. While it was normal for Alice herself, everyone else had to endure that fearsome strength.

===Part 3===

“Ughhh, I’m so hungry… You Amakusas have a lot of Eastern stuff for your camouflage, right? Do the Flying Alms Bowl.”

“The Flying Alms Bowl is not like an app-based bike delivery service. Here, Index, I do have a chocolate bar.”

“Yay!” shouted Index, raising her arms in celebration and running off for a late-night snack. It was past 1 AM. Did she feel no guilt eating chocolate at this hour?

Kamijou’s visible confusion elicited an exasperated sigh from Othinus on his shoulder.

“The Flying Alms Bowl is a spell that Buddhist monks up in the mountains could use to send just their alms bowl flying out to the city to receive pindapata. And since I know you’re going to ask, pindapata is the practice of people offering food to monks.”

“Wait, so there’s magic that brings food to you?”

“So the basic idea of a delivery drone has existed for centuries, huh? It just took a while before they had the physics and science to pull it off.”

Mikoto sounded impressed in her own way. Also, pindapata was a form of charity, so it was free. The ancient people sure came up with some neat ideas.

Then it occurred to Kamijou this probably meant he had mentally recovered enough to begin using his imagination again.

They hadn’t lost track of Coronzon. There was still hope.

Here in District 20.

Index tilted her head.

“Hey, Touma? What kinds of things do they have here?”

“I think it’s mostly sports stuff. Baseball, soccer, basketball, and more.”

“It’s more than just hard fields and courts. The place is filled with huge stadiums and domes, including indoor pools and skating rinks,” elaborated mourning clothes Mikoto.

Takitsubo was viewing a nearby guide map. With her head tilted. She wore a track suit, but she may not have been a very athletic person.

“That would provide plenty of locations capable of hiding a large-scale ceremony,” said Kanzaki, hiding frustration behind her polite tone.

She may have realized just how hard a search this was going to be.

“If Board Chairman Accelerator were awake, we could have used the satellites,” said Kihara Noukan.

That would have helped a lot. The satellite images could have ruled out the non-domed stadiums, but they didn’t have what they didn’t have.

They would have to do it themselves.

Instead of using the obvious borderline of the wall, Coronzon planned to escape the city by melting into a…ley line? Well, into the ground. Kamijou didn’t know enough about magic to even guess at how long that would take.

But if they didn’t find her as soon as possible, they could be too late.

Not knowing only made him more antsy.

However, checking every single stadium in the entire district would be far too inefficient. He could see so many from here alone. He never knew you could have too many landmarks.

“We’ve reached District 20 too.”

He heard a voice and Kanzaki held something to her ear.

“Wh-what is that? I though it was weird before…but now I’m certain of it: that isn’t a phone!”

“It’s a communication spiritual item.”

Index’s explanation probably didn’t explain anything for Mikoto.

The paper charm – communication spiritual item? – in Kanzaki’s hand produced the familiar voice of the Bologna Succubus. It was apparently the Amakusa style to attach it to the back of a phone so it would be less conspicuous.

“Hey, witch hunt team, you tell that lad there’s nothing to report from up here. No sign of Coronzon. …The Anti-Skill helicopter is gone, so are we the only ones in the air any longer?”

“After everything that happened in District 19, I imagine anything that can fly is busy providing disaster relief or transporting supplies.”

The conversation suddenly ended after that comment from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, who was presumably dangling down with the Bologna Succubus.

They were cut off by a tremendous noise that made Kamijou cover his ears.

“What the hell was that!?”

“An interception spell,” muttered Othinus.

“Flying with magic is just too dangerous!” shouted Index.

“Ksshh! We were brought down by an interception spell, but that means she’s nearby. Coronzon is definitely in District 20!! And if she doesn’t want us spying from the sky, ksshh, she’s not in a roofed dome or an indoor stadium! Look for the outdoor stadiums with nothing covering them!!”

“Hey! You crashed, right!? Are you okay!? Please tell me you are!”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting from a demon like me, but quit it. We can’t fly anymore, but we’ll catch up soon. We can run on the ground, so don’t worry!!”

“Damn you, sex demon. I know my coat is sturdy, but get your ass off it! Kiiii! You do not meet my salvation conditions, so you do not get to use me as a chair!!”

They seemed to be doing well.

The sounds of a scuffle coming through suggested they were unharmed.

That aside, Coronzon herself had reacted here. That gave them a huge opportunity as pursuers. They couldn’t waste it.

“So a sports facility without a roof covering it. It must be one of the open stadiums. In that case…”

“Different sports have different magical meanings,” said Index.

“Then what about soccer?”

“A festival held in England since ancient times. It’s the origin of all forms of football. Of course, a festival from the 12th century will either be 100% Christian or have incorporated aspects of other myths or religious events like with May Day or Halloween.”

His casual question received quite the explanation in return.

But she of course had a reason for explaining all this.

“But when we’re talking about sports and stadiums, I would start looking here. The ancient Greeks. Everyone in the world knows the sporting event where people compete for the gold medal, but that was originally held at Zeus’s sanctuary. It was meant as an offering to the gods led by Zeus.”

“If we can swap that name out for Jupiter, there are plenty in Rome too,” said Agnese.

Kamijou’s knowledge of Greek mythology didn’t go much past “that thing used for the astrological horoscopes on the morning news”. Where did Great Demon Coronzon belong exactly? With all the talk of rebelling against god, he had assumed she was a Christian demon, but could she use techniques from Greek mythology?

Mikoto and the golden retriever took a step back when these topics came up.

So it was Index who fluently responded.

“Magician Crowley said there are no such thing as demons.”

“Wait, but he called her ''Great Demon'' Coronzon himself.”

“He also said there are no pure demons. He said ‘demon’ is a word people use when they want to deride the gods of people they dislike.”

“…”

Yes, that sounded a lot more like that human who always took the cynical view.

But in that case…

“Could Great Demon Coronzon be referred to as a great god by some other religion?”

“Fool. Even Mathers rejected that idea. He called her an absolute evil to all humanity who was equally and uniformly opposed even when comparing every last myth and legend.”

“But Crowley supported the idea that she is a relative evil who ''appears evil'' from a certain viewpoint.”

A pure evil that did only evil.

Could such a being really exist?

To him that sounded like a strange magnet with only a north pole.

“People on the side of evil tend to be strict about the rules, don’t they?” said Takitsubo. “They have a lot of inviolable rules and strong bonds with their companions. Mugino is like that. If Coronzon is evil but doesn’t need that solid core, then she really isn’t human.”

But Coronzon herself believed they could exist. Which was the source of her self-loathing. She believed her great power was an irregular “distortion” a lot like a monopole. She thought it could only tear people apart. She thought it was twisted and wrong, so no matter how powerful she was, she could never be proud of herself. …If she could, none of this would ever have happened.

Whether or not Aleister’s theory was correct, Othinus arrived at a conclusion.

“Because she is a demon who doesn’t follow the rules, she might have full use off the techniques and fields not approved by Christianity. The rules don’t bind her.”

Mikoto put a hand on her hip and asked Index a question.

“Look, I don’t get any of this occult mumbo jumbo, so can you just tell us where to go?”

“If she is using Zeus’s symbols, a track stadium. His symbols are the sky, thunder, mountains, fatherhood, and many more. He’s the most important god, so he has a lot of attributes. But in this case, there aren’t many symbols Coronzon can use for her spell.”

Kamijou didn’t even have time to ask why.

Index was the star of the show at times like this.

“Zeus is generally a sky god. But Coronzon wants a way to the control the ley lines in the ground, which is the complete opposite. So we can ignore almost all of his attributes.”

“Hm? If it’s that much of a mismatch, why would she use Zeus in the first place?” asked Kamijou.

Othinus and Index both answered him.

“Because, human, he is the top god. He’s powerful enough you don’t want to reject him out of hand.”

“Not relying on Zeus in a district of athletic stadiums is like trying to win a soccer game without ever touching the ball.”

That made sense.

Zeus was a famous enough god that even Kamijou was familiar with him (from manga and games), so his power would be obvious and great. If Coronzon could use it, she would of course want to, but since he was a mismatch for her current objective, she wanted a connector to link the ingredient with her plan.

…Or something like that?

He felt like the situation was similar to a fugitive getting an airplane but having trouble taking off in it.

“So because Zeus is such an important god, he has a lot of different attributes? Then what part of Zeus is Coronzon trying to use? You said he’s a sky god, but she needs an attribute related to deep underground, right? Then what exactly is she going to-”

“Rain,” she replied immediately. “There’s a legend saying the current world is so full of different gods and heroes because Uranus and Zeus were joined with many earth goddesses through the rain that falls from heaven. …Touma, is there anywhere those intersect? For example, a place where a long waterway for rainwater passes directly below a large track stadium?”

===Part 4===

It was a dreary place.

The room was large but plain. Like a big metal box. And it was chilly.

Isabella Theism, a necromancer with silver hair and dark skin, took a look around.

“Why…am I alive?”

No one answered her.

Kihara Goukei was it? Had that bio-monster transported an enemy who would have died if just abandoned on the side of the road?

Cigarette smoke lingered thinly in the air.

So was that Stiyl Magnus on the other side of the locked door? He showed no mercy. If Isabella took any careless action, he wouldn’t hesitate to burn her away with 3000-degree flames.

(True Voodoo priests are apparently immune to fire, but I’m only making use of their techniques and haven’t mastered it to that extent.)

Besides, there were no gaps in the thick metal door. It had probably been welded shut by those same 3000-degree flames. Only a magician who could burn through the metal could open the door.

Isabella searched through her rags to check on her possessions. Unsurprisingly, all of the obviously dangerous items had been confiscated. However, these rags patched together from the clothes of several dead people had a lot of hidden pockets. She stuck a finger through the sloppy stitching and…yep, there it was.

Something stirred in the corner of her vision.

“?”

She only now realized she wasn’t alone in here. It wasn’t an Anglican magician keeping an eye on her. If it was, they would have stopped her by now.

That meant this was someone else under surveillance like her.

(What is this unnatural lack of vitality? I specialize in life and death and even I overlooked his presence.)

“Who are you?”

“''Hamazura Shiage''.”

Even as he responded, he seemed about as lively as withered grass.

He was Japanese…but he didn’t seem to be one of those Amakusas who Kanzaki Kaori had brought along. There was no scent of magic on the high schooler.

Then why had he been arrested by the Anglicans? He was a completely ordinary person…but that mismatch with his surroundings made him an uncanny sight here.

(It feels like being placed in front of ''too cheap'' of ingredients.)

It was uncanny, but if he wasn’t going to get in her way, she saw no reason to eliminate him.

She had no intention of staying in this prison with a stranger. She pulled out the spiritual item – or really, the materials to create one – hidden inside her rags.

(There’s a chance a scanning spell would detect the faint magic power emanating from a completed spiritual item…but the materials are no more than ordinary goods and ingredients. Slipping past checks like that is so useful.)

“What are you doing?”

“Escaping. I don’t have anything to do here.”

Isabella pulled out a small lime. One with a branch thinner than a matchstick still attached. She sliced it in two without a knife and squeezed one half to sprinkle the juice on the outdoor wall opposite the door.

A chemical smoke burst forth as if she had used a powerful acid.

A hole visibly grew until it was more than two meters in diameter.

That wall was no more than metal. Breaking through was easy if you had the appropriate magical knowledge. Plus, lemons, limes, and other acidic fruits were common components of Voodoo magic. It was used in an emergency antidote for zombie powder and in the lime poison created by combining the various toxins and antidotes found in the lime.

“Stiyl…wouldn’t have noticed. With the thick metal door fused shut, he wouldn’t be able to hear any of the noise I’m making in here.”

He would have any number of ways of stopping her if he did notice, though.

The delinquent-looking boy had a surprisingly mild reaction.

He was imprisoned. He would normally leap at the chance to escape without even considering the consequences.

“What I meant is, what do you hope to accomplish by escaping?”

“No matter what anyone else says and no matter how ugly a choice it may be…I will always do what I think is most necessary. Right now, that means defeating Great Demon Coronzon and bringing stability back to the world.”

===Part 5===

Done talking, the brown woman who reeked of death departed into the outside world.

She likely had something to do.

Unlike Hamazura.

(What do I do now?)

Hamazura Shiage lacked that level of motivation.

He had bet his entire life on Coronzon…and lost.

He was worried about Takitsubo Rikou, but he didn’t think she was in that much danger as long as she was within Academy City. After all, she was a high-level esper theorized to possibly become the eighth Level 5.

If he didn’t want any stray shots, or accurate sniper shots pretending to be one, hitting her, it was best if he stayed away while he was a fugitive.

Which meant…

“Oh, I know. What about Coronzon?”

Where had she gone?

He was worried about her too. She wanted to destroy the current rotten world and create a clean new world. Something must be happening that made her feel that way. What if this world was already damaged beyond repair but that damage simply wasn’t visible?

Then what exactly was happening? He wanted to speak with her.

Despite his earlier strong words, he did want to live with Takitsubo.

So he wanted to know what was going to happen.

However, wouldn’t Coronzon have to be in a dangerous position if he was able to catch up to her in his state? He really wanted her at least to escape the city soon…

===Part 6===

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had returned to the District 10 prison.

The facility doubled as the new Board Chairman’s headquarters.

It was guarded by several layers of thick metal doors, metal bars, and all sorts of sensors, but that meant nothing to an artificial demon who could freely switch between corporeal and incorporeal forms.

“I-I’m back.”

No response.

She may have expected that.

In the single-occupant cell, a frail figure lay on the bed.

Surrounded by medical equipment.

The only sound was a rhythmic beeping and a pump expanding and contracting to push out air.

…His body hadn’t been in perfect working order to begin with. Brain damage had left him reliant on a modern design cane and he couldn’t even understand human speech without the choker-style electrode around his neck.

Even so.

It was far too painful to see him lying in the bed like that.

Academy City’s #1 could not live on his own.

He was kept alive by all the machines hooked up to him.

“Master…” weakly called the demon girl.

“Monitor fragments have pierced every part of his body.”

Even a prison had doctors.

Serious illness did not cancel out a prisoner’s sentence, so in a way it was the natural arrangement.

It was their job to keep the prisoners alive in whatever form it took.

“Some are right next to major arteries and organs, making them too dangerous to touch without care. Removing them will be very difficult… But that isn’t enough to explain his condition. If it were simple blood loss keeping him unconscious, the transfusion should be showing effects by now.”

“I know…”

“?”

Yes, she didn’t have time for sorrow.

The new Board Chairman would never wake up ''naturally'' in this state. That had been obvious at first glance, which was why someone needed to externally induce a recovery.

These wounds were magical in nature.

They were scars of an attack from Great Demon Coronzon, a being beyond human understanding.

That meant magical knowledge was a requirement to heal him.

(I will heal you, so please wait until I can, master.)

Something beeped.

But it wasn’t the medical equipment. It came from something like an intercom on the wall.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know if she had the right, but everyone else watched the device from a distance and made no move to touch it. She had no choice but to press the button and answer.

It displayed a familiar female secretary who ordinarily helped with the paperwork.

“What is it?”

“We have a visitor for the Board Chairman. He doesn’t have an appointment, but will you meet with him?”

“No appointment? Then send him awa-”

“He is Oniyama of the Board of Directors. Will you still refuse him?”

A visitor.

And at this precise moment.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 said for him to wait, but when she went out, he was already within the special security zone. Left alone, who knows how much he would have explored.

All of the jailers and guards looked afraid. Apparently it was up to the artificial demon to say this.

“Only the Board Chairman is allowed in here. What are you doing here!?”

“Oniyama Rouze.”

The old man’s eyes shined with the greed of a much younger man.

“I am one of Academy City’s 12 Directors. That comes with certain privileges.”

His words dripped with arrogance.

So what if he was one of the Directors? Just because there weren’t many of them didn’t mean they could enter this place without permission. Just think of the Windowless Building from when Aleister was at the top. No one should be here without its master’s permission.

(Has Academy City collapsed to that extent!?)

Oniyama was the Director with a focus on vehicles, including automobiles, ships, and aircraft.

And there had been suspicions he was interested in expanding into the military field. The military had its own specialists, but those who controlled those unscrupulous military forces – Shiokishi, Nakimoto, Neoka – tended to drop out or be replaced quickly due to that very unscrupulousness. A perfect opportunity for those who were hoping to break into that field.

To be blunt, she had a bad feeling about his presence.

“How bad are his injuries?”

He was too casual.

If Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know Great Demon Coronzon was responsible, she would have suspected this man.

“Why are you here without even making an appointment?”

“I am here to give you a valuable warning, so watch your tone.”

“Nothing you say changes the fact that I only have one master!!”

“My point is that your behavior calls your master’s civility into question. The unintelligent never seem to wait for people to finish, which makes speaking with them so tiring.”

He snorted with laughter.

And then got back on topic.

“The situation is too pressing to wait for the Chairman’s recovery.”

“Kh.”

“Academy City is using all of its scientific knowledge to search for the culprit, yet we have turned up empty-handed. That makes this an unknown situation. And ignoring it shows no sign of improvement. Someone must grab the reins and take control soon. Before serious damage is done.”

He said that like the new Board Chairman’s injuries did not count as “serious damage”.

As it were a trivial matter.

Not worth any concern.

Even though the very top of the city had been directly attacked and remained unconscious.

“…You look happy about this.”

“Surely you jest. I am only doing my job. If the Chairman is unable to fulfill his duties, don’t you think his privileges should be temporarily transferred to a third party? I am not asking for his eternal expulsion from the throne through dismissal or impeachment. I am only suggesting someone else take over his duties until he comes to.”

“You just want the Master Key.”

“Ah, so you read me like a book.”

“And just how many people were you planning to kill using those next-gen weapons!?”

The Master Key looked like a smartphone, but it gave full privileges over everything in Academy City. It was stuffed full of passwords, passcodes, access keys, and other such data.

Including for military facilities and equipment.

Academy City’s functions and military might would eventually recover. If it were handed over to someone else, something terrible would happen. And if it fell into the hands of a Director who knew enough about diplomacy and war, it could lead to a war with any place on the planet.

She was a demon.

She knew just how twisted the world was.

And in that knowledge, she had placed her hopes in the #1. She had decided the world was still worth protecting. So she couldn’t allow the world to be destroyed now while the new Board Chairman lingered on the verge of death. No matter what.

“But the Master Key is a dangerous power. Who can you trust it with, if not me and my knowledge of diplomacy and military matters? Noncommittal Kaizumi? Surely not that pacifist Oyafune?”

“They would be better than you at least…”

“Oh, dear. So you, the guardian of the Master Key, are unaware just how dangerous it is. Listen, ''even someone who doesn’t know how to use it can lose control.'' I was fine with leaving it in the Chairman’s hands since he is the #1. I trusted that someone who has killed so many people would know very well how to handle that kind of threat. But leaving it in the hands of someone who has no familiarity with deadly power would be suicide. Suicide on a planetary scale.”

“Leave! If you don’t wish for the Board Chairman to recover, people could see that as contempt of the chain of command. I will not give you the Master Key. Only my master has the right to grant it to someone else. So please leave now!!”

The old man took a step back without taking his eyes off her.

He was not intimidated.

The smile on his face conveyed a clear message: I don’t even need to return here. You will come crying to me by the end.

“Academy City is a heavy burden to bear. Contact me when you are ready to give up.”

“Leave!!!”

===Part 7===

Footsteps trudged through the snow.

Kihara Goukei was bloody and woozy.

“Ughh, I’m so dizzy…”

She had rescued Urekawa Ousuke, the miracle child born of Academy City, and then handed that goddamn Necromancer to the Anglicans who seemed to have invaded the city (even though they didn’t seem to be soldiers?), but she had gotten badly torn up in the process. Three computer chips, two bacteria colonies, one pea crab, and what else? 99% of the secret ingredients giving her her “Kihara-ness” had been destroyed.

She had only one heart left. That was fine. Everyone else only had one too.

She couldn’t get spoiled.

She was running dry, so she needed nutrients. Her powerful regeneration was working against her. Like this, she would eventually dry up into a husk. Before that happened, she needed sugar, salt, fat, protein, calcium, various vitamins and minerals, and more.

(Why do all the restaurants have to close early today of all days? There would usually be at least an izakaya or family restaurant open.)

“Oh.”

She spotted a vending machine.

The small glowing display shined bright in the darkness. It actually had power.

(Oui, oui. Vending machines are cleverly designed to continue functioning even after a fire or other disaster. Oh, I’m saved.)

And it wasn’t a drink or bread machine. It was one of the unique varieties you spotted from time to time. Specifically, this odd kind of vending machine that sold things like wagyu sukiyaki meals on the side of the street. And one of the large sample photo on this one showed…

“On this freezing night with my breath visible before me I find…ramen!! Oh, that has such a sinful ring to it. But I must do this to regain what my body has lost. How merveilleuse it is to have an actual excuse. Hwa ha ha ha ha ha! Behold, world!! I choose the piping hot tonkotsu ramen!! I am freed from all guilt as I ingest this unhealthy meal in the middle of the night!!!”

Even among the Kiharas, facing your own death was something only an oddity could do. It was a good thing the vending machine let you pay with a train card. …All of her paper money would have absorbed too much blood by this point.

A clunking sound came from the machine.

(Oh, that sounds harder than I would expect.)

With a noodles vending machine, she had imagined something like a better version of a coffee vending machine: first a styrofoam bowl, then the drained noodles and other ingredients, and finally the hot soup slowly pouring in.

Silence surrounded her.

Nothing happened after the initial clunking.

Kihara Goukei crouched down and nervously opened the overly large door to check.

“Is this…a frozen food vending machine!?”

It was rock solid.

The instructions on the package said you could enjoy restaurant quality flavor after only 15 minutes in the microwave.

Was she supposed to stand around in this freezing weather for those 15 minutes?

All she had was a solid object that could probably kill someone if applied forcefully to the cranium.

“Uhh…”

Yet she really would dry up and die without something to eat. Surrounded by a freezing night with red snow covering the road, Kihara Goukei had no choice but to tear open the package, pull out the rectangular block, hold it in both hands, and gnaw on it. Yeah, it was not a flavorful experience. Sure, it had salt and fat, but that didn’t go well with the ice!! The white-frozen pieces of pork fat were especially bad. Was this some kind of divine punishment?

“?”

Suddenly, she felt like she was being watched.

There was someone, or something, here.

She found the gaze surprisingly nearby. Looking up at her.

It belonged to…a girl of around 10?

“Misaka has never seen someone eat a popsicle in the winter! says Misaka as Misaka checks the package. Tonkotsu ramen! …Misaka doesn’t remember that Gorigori-kun flavor.”

“What are you doing here? And please feel free to call me Madame Gou.”

“Well, Misaka needs to get to District 10, but she doesn’t know where it is, says Misaka as Misaka explains her predicament.”

“Eh? District 10?”

Wasn’t that the district of battles and machos, said to be the most dangerous in the city? And the girl only looked around 10, so what was she doing out alone at night?

(And if I send her back the way she came, um, oh dear. Aren’t those giant bugs and sea creatures made of weird blonde hair wandering around there?)

Kihara Goukei wept.

This sounded like trouble to her.

First Urekawa and now this. Was tonight the night for running into small children? Was it some kind of bonus mode?

“Where is District 10?”

“The complete opposite direction, so please don’t look at me…”

“If you know the way, then tell Misaka! says Misaka as Misaka begs you!”

“One heart. Just one left. Another death and I really will die… I-I’ve done more than enough already, haven’t I? I already saved Urekawa Ousuke-kun in the very middle of the night, so I really want to get home and sleep until-”

“No! ''Help me, Madame Gou''!!”

“Neh heh☆ …Well, you drive a hard bargain. When you put it like that, I can’t go to sleep now, can IIIIIIII!?”

===Part 8===

On the roof of a far distant skyscraper, one of the mass-produced military clones known as the Sisters removed her eye from the scope of a large sniper rifle.

“She doesn’t appear to be a threat, concludes Misaka #10032.”

“Doesn’t appear to be? Are you glitching? What kind of fuzzy opinion is that for a living computer?”

“It is called personal growth.”

She had grown enough to make casual remarks over the Misaka Network at any rate.

Misaka Worst, who was tuned to pick up on the especially malicious emotions within that vast network composed of countless identical brainwave signals, responded with exasperation in her voice.

“This is all because you discussed that stuff on the Misaka Network, you know? Have you forgotten that mini-Misaka is your host and control tower? She can hear everything you say, even if it’s in your sleep.”

“You mean that our ability to control electricity might be able to force open the lock on the new Board Chairman’s Master Key? asks Misaka for confirmation.”

“No, that screwing it up would destroy the Master Key! If it turns out the only way forward is for the #1 to wake up, then of course the little one’s going to try and do something about it. Goddammit, what a pain. …But Yoshikawa’s the real loser here. She’s locked in her room with nothing to do. Cause the great Last Order used her power to hack the electric lock.”

“Then wouldn’t it be best to send her straight there? Also, that person appears to be a Kihara, which should come in handy on the way, says Misaka, providing her opinion.”

“Then are we finally going to stop playing stalker? Misaka doesn’t want to hold onto this sniper rifle in this cold-ass weather any longer. Misaka is afraid her cheek is going to freeze to the metal.”

“If you are fine with that immortality expert getting her hands on clone technology, responds Misaka. Misaka checked her spec sheet and it would be a real pain if she learned to multiply herself.”

“…When can Misaka finally get back to bed?”

“As if you have any intention of doing that.”

===Part 9===

Great Demon Coronzon slipped through the darkness like a shadow.

She had chosen a stadium that was unusually large even among the outdoor track stadiums. Everything she currently sought was contained there. Here she could convert her physical body into a massive amount of Telesma energy. Once that was done, she only had to send herself into the current of a ley line running underground. She would still be limited to the planet, but that would allow her to instantly escape anywhere on Earth, even the opposite side of the planet.

Wasn’t its maximum capacity 255 thousand?

The outdoor type without a dome was easier to scale up in size, but this felt like overdoing it.

Academy City had a population of 2.3 million, so a full tenth of the population could be crammed inside.

Humans were apparently frail beings who were afflicted by loneliness when standing alone in a massive artificial space, but she was a being known as a great demon.

She felt nothing amiss as she walked toward the center.

Other than the wrongness of her own existence.

“Sitra Achra, hm?”

Coronzon rolled that term around on her tongue.

And smiled cynically.

Sitra Achra could be described as the substance that caused evil. The current world, from the tiny humans to the vast world itself, could supposedly be fully described using the diagram called the Sephiroth, but there were some impurities which did not fit into the grand Sephiroth. Those impurities were Sitra Achra. They were ruins – shards – of the old world which was destroyed to create the current one. They were the substance that caused evil. They had no place in the current world, had no role, and should not have remained, so their very existence obstructed the system of the current age. Like pebbles caught in the gears.

The world god had created was perfect.

Things only went awry because of the extraneous impurities mixed in.

(Sounds like me.)

Shadow covered her face as she silently expressed this only silently.

Even though self-deprecation could not turn evil into good.

She had always questioned it.

Why hadn’t she become an angel of love? Or an angel of righteousness?

If she had been…

If she had been given that role…

…She would have poured herself into that work more diligently than anyone else.

If god had known from the beginning that Coronzon would rebel against heaven and turn evil and had let her go ahead and do it because it was part of some kind of plan of his, then she would ''overdo'' the role god had given her and ruin that plan.

God was an absolute being, but he did not save all lives.

Everyone accepted that even their misfortunes would be given meaning and purpose if they obeyed god.

But the very existence of that system meant he had known from the beginning there would be victims. He had known and let it happen. For some grand plan of his.

Coronzon’s role was to tear people apart. Why should she obey someone who had abandoned her?

So she had decided to use everything given to her and ''overdo'' it. That way she could obliterate that heartless plan without betraying her purpose.

She would dedicate herself to her evil identi-

…?

At that point, she tilted her head.

No, wait. She had noticed it this time.

Her memories skipped a few seconds.

“Dammit, not again…Aleister!!”

She held a hand to her head.

She had finally managed to prepare this place for her ceremony, but she would have to leave if word reached Kamijou’s group.

Coronzon started to panic…but then it hit her.

A few seconds.

She stood in the very center of an enormous stadium. She had no computer or smartphone to contact anyone and there were no old-fashioned payphones in sight. So even if Aleister had hijacked her body, he couldn’t have done anything in that time. She could ignore the outrage if it only lasted a few seconds.

On the other hand…

(It’s good I noticed it this time, but was the gap itself longer than before?)

She had a bad feeling about this.

Was Aleister starting to get the hang of it? That concern crept up in the back of her mind. Losing consciousness for even a second in the middle of a battle with her pursuers could be fatal. And even if that didn’t happen, Aleister could attempt suicide if he took control for long enough.

He would do it.

Especially now that he viewed her as his enemy and had killing her as his primary objective.

Directly comparing their specs wasn’t enough to rest easy. Aleister had won the Battle of Blythe Road after all.

Coronzon consciously took a deep breath.

(I need to shift my focus.)

Not only were there other stadiums, but magic materials could be found anywhere. After all, Aleister Crowley had built this city during the confusion of the postwar recovery. It was an alternate form for the Abbey of Thelema. It had been deftly hidden by repainting it all in the terms of science, but it would be hard to find places and objects here without magical symbolism.

Coronzon only had to collect the items that were already present.

She wouldn’t have any difficulty as long she knew the proper way to combine them.

She could begin the ceremony at any time.

The only problem was how long it would take.

…No matter how much she tried to shorten that time, she couldn’t reduce it to zero. And she would be entirely defenseless in that time. She was the Coronzon who had destroyed legendary magicians like Mathers and Aleister, but during that time she could be killed even by an ordinary human.

“…”

Coronzon shut her eyes, held her breath, and searched for any sounds around her.

She was focused on the area outside the stadium.

(My greatest enemy is the time limit. Because I’m sure they’re searching for me with everyone they have. Weak as they are, hiding from them is a pain when there are so many of them. For once I need to look out for weaklings because this crucial ceremony will be ruined if they interfere in the middle of it.)

===Part 10===

When they checked the map based on Index’s advice, the answer was obvious.

Kamijou pointed at a spot on the large map.

“The General Athletics Stadium. …It’s gotta be this, right? It’s a track stadium and there’s a huge underground waterway running below it!”

“If Coronzon is using Zeus symbolism for a ceremony to send her through a ley line, then it must be there.”

The white girl sounded confident.

It wasn’t like they had any other leads to go on, so Kamijou had to trust in this one.

“Fool.”

Someone else called out to him.

Anna Sprengel.

“I double-checked it all just to be safe, and everything the grimoire library said checks out. Her calculations are correct, so Coronzon should be at the General Athletics Stadium. The only question left is if we arrive in time.”

The Amakusas were magicians who blended into modern society, so they all knew how to drive. …Kamijou preferred not to think about where they had procured so many vehicles in Academy City, but it would be best to make use of them now.

And just as he was thinking that, his eyes met another pair of eyes.

But these definitely weren’t human.

They were compound eyes.

A carnivorous dragonfly more than three meters long was gliding at eye level.

It was made of blonde hair.

“Coronzon’s…scouts!?”

“Stupid bug jamboree!!”

He heard an odd voice just before a blonde young woman drop-kicked the giant dragonfly from the side, sending it flying. She was the Transcendent Bologna Succubus.

“Just when I thought I’d caught up on foot, this is what I find? When do I get a breather!?”

“Pant, gasp… M-my coat…is so heavy with…the steel armor and the terrariums…I’m dyiiiiiing…”

Even as she complained, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet deflected the scouts’ attacks with her thick coat. …Wait, did she just protect the Bologna Succubus?

However, squashing a single dragonfly wasn’t enough to turn the tide.

There were butterflies, hornets, stag beetles, flies, and more.

Kanzaki raised her voice.

“If she’s sending these out, it must mean we’re getting close!”

It didn’t feel like Coronzon was trying to lay low and hide anymore. Did she want to buy time even if it made her more conspicuous?

She really was here.

In District 20. Index, Anna Sprengel, and the others had been right.

…The question was whether or not these scouts were passing information back to Coronzon. Either way, it would be best not to waste time here.

“We need to strike before she can get away!!” shouted Kamijou.

===Part 11===

The scouts sent out by Great Demon Coronzon included three meter dragonflies and hornets.

Kamijou immediately clenched his right fist, but nothing would be more annoying than having a group of 20 or 30 drop from the sky all at once. Kihara Noukan turned his way and shouted.

“Be careful. If they grab onto you and carry you up high, you will be playing a deadly version of the crane game!”

He couldn’t let the flying scouts use the powerful weapon that was height.

Plus, the stag beetle ones wouldn’t even need lift him up. They could crush or slice his body right here on the ground.

“Get inside, it doesn’t matter where!!”

On Kanzaki’s instructions, Kamijou and Mikoto practically tackled open the door to a nearby building.

They ran further inside. When they reached a more open space, they found something odd there.

A frozen pool?

No, was it a skating rink?

Kamijou wasn’t familiar with them and had imagined them as something like a massive cold storage warehouse, but was this skating rink actually warmer than outside?

“They’re coming. Those weird bugs are coming!!”

“Wait, Misaka! Don’t use your Railgun down a straight corridor! Are you trying to hit our friends!?”

Lucia, Angelene, and more of the Former Agnese Force jumped on the giant flies as a group. That still wasn’t enough offensive power, but it slowed the scouts enough for Blodeuwedd the Bouquet and Anna Sprengel to finish them off with stronger attacks.

The scouts were powerful. They were, but they weren’t Great Demon Coronzon herself. The scouts made of her blonde hair were not unbeatable!

“In that case…”

“Hm? Lad, don’t let your guard down!!”

A supposedly defeated scout stirred.

No, a large quantity of something burst from the giant stag beetle’s body. Flat ovals about fifty centimeters long poured out like a slot machine jackpot. There were more than a hundred of them and they were all wriggling. And squirming.

There were more scouts…inside the scouts?

And a ton of them!!

“Ahhhhhhh!?”

Kamijou backed away, more creeped out than afraid of the threat they posed. The small scouts leaped at the boy one after another.

Itsuwa sharply jabbed her spear out to guard him, but she grimaced.

“They’re hard. Are they based on parasitic shellfish!?”

“You mean the more enemies we defeat, the more of them there will be? Hard to think of a better way to buy time!” shouted Othinus.

Kamijou’s group would be overwhelmed by the enemy army.

Sounds like collapsing piles of sand came from all around.

“Wow!”

Alice Anotherbible was the only one capable of smiling as they swarmed around her. A normal human would be bitten into tiny pieces if they tried that!!

They would be killed if they didn’t defeat the attacking scouts, but defeating the scouts only allowed them to multiply.

It was a vicious cycle.

…And Kamijou had only thought of these things as scouts made of blonde hair. But he felt pity for them now that he saw them forced to fight, writhing in pain as they burst from within, and releasing a flood of other monsters.

“Fool, now isn’t the time. If you stop, we will be killed!”

Great Demon Coronzon.

Even if she was fighting for her life, she shouldn’t force her own side to do this.

A dull crash broke through Kamijou’s thoughts.

It came from directly in front of him. The skating rink’s wall broke through and a giant rotary snowplow emerged from the side. The row of scouts in its path were crushed and sliced up by the rotating blades.

The fluffy blonde Amakusa was operating it.

Kamijou had seen her a few times before. Wasn’t her name Tsushima?

“Hop on!! Coronzon is our top priority, so we can’t waste our time with these things!!”

There was no reason to stick around here. The giant rotating blades on the front and the snow expulsion device sticking out the side like an elephant’s trunk looked dangerous, but Kamijou grabbed onto something like a short ladder on the side. Only after the heavy snowplow begin to move did he notice something.

“W-where’s Index!? And Misaka too!”

“I’m not the only Amakusa. And everyone will soon think to use snowmobiles and other vehicles capable of driving on this red snow. We all have the same destination, so we’ll meet back up with them if we head to the track stadium!!”

A few others managed to jump onto the snowplow. He saw Kanzaki and Itsuwa among them.

A three meter dragonfly was still stubbornly pursuing them, but it was shot down by a beam of light. Neither Kanzaki nor Itsuwa had done that. Apparently another vehicle was following them.

Eventually, no more hornets and stag beetles could be seen.

Kamijou sighed and leaned against the rotary snowplow that rattled along on its continuous tracks.

“Well…it certainly is a good thing that Tsushima was there to help us, human,” said the 15cm god.

“Yeah, it really was. Life is so much easier when you have a capable young woman around. Thanks.”

“…Ohh?” “…Ohh?”

“(Wait, did I just step on some deadly landmine here. And to make matters worse, two of them at once?)”

A secret light shined sharply from Kanzaki Kaori and Itsuwa’s eyes and Tsushima wept in the driver’s seat.

===Part 12===

It was late at night. 1 AM had come and gone.

When you imagined a late night hospital, did you think of a horror story? Or something more risque? After many long years working here, the frog-faced doctor knew neither option was likely. When you worked there day in and day out, even a special location became no more than a routine. The fear faded and any weird expectations vanished.

Of course, he wouldn’t normally be working on this shift, but today was a special day. He hadn’t gotten any rest during the day either.

A young medical intern gave him a worried look.

“You need to get some sleep, doctor. You’re no good to us here if you pass out.”

“If I could get some free time…yes, there is something I should do, so can you cover things here?”

“Doctor!” the intern called after him, but this was his nature. He wanted to save every patient he could.

If Kamijou Touma was already dead, then there was nothing to be done.

But what if the boy was still alive?

Then he was the frog-faced doctor’s patient.

If a patient had received improper treatment, it was a doctor’s duty to save them.

(What a pain. Where do I even start with determining if a supposedly dead person is alive or dead? The guidelines for brain death would probably be best. Or mayb-)

He left the hospital.

And some strange thing attacked him only three steps out the door.

“Eh?”

If he had to describe it, he would have called it a golden crab standing more than three meters tall.

Even after seeing the pincer raised high, the frog-faced doctor only managed to get out a confused sound.

He did not properly understand the danger.

Yes.

He had no way of knowing since he knew nothing of magic, but his hospital was in District 7. That was the area where Coronzon had scattered so many of her scouts made of blonde hair.

And Coronzon had been so focused on escaping she hadn’t actually ordered them to stop.

Which meant they were still acting on orders to protect the ceremonial ground for Adikalika – the former site of the Windowless Building.

A pleasant slashing sound raced out.

The frog-faced doctor did not shed a single drop of blood.

It was sliced vertically.

The blonde hair scout’s bisected halves scattered to either side.

His eyes widened in confusion as a dark, lithe figure whispered to him.

“It is a pleasure to see you again, doctor.”

===Part 13===

In the District 20 skating rink, Misaka Mikoto had definitely seen that pointy-haired boy on the side of a large rotary snowplow.

And it had happened as the vehicle drove right past her.

She had been left behind.

“I want to shoot that idiot so bad.”

She flicked up arcade coins and launched a few Railguns at the monsters as she retreated from the skating rink proper into a narrow corridor.

The more she defeated, the more of them there were, which couldn’t have been much more annoying.

And the initial dragonflies and stag beetles were powerful enough already, so she would be killed if she didn’t fight back. There was no room for holding back.

(Are the others retreating somewhere too? There isn’t time to ask where we’ll meet up next, so I’ll just have to magnetically attach myself to one of the vehicles’ roofs.)

And all of a sudden, something occurred to Misaka Mikoto.

“…Wait.”

(If that idiot is alive, then why am I even wearing mourning clothes? Ahhh, how long am I going to keep wearing this cumbersome outfit? Now I feel like I’ve been making a fool of myself!!)

This was a sports facility, so would they have rental sportswear anywhere? Even a track suit or jumpsuit would be fine. She was willing to ignore how it looked if it was at least warm and didn’t restrict her movements!!

But this was a skating rink.

That meant any clothing would be for skating.

Such as a painfully bright lemon yellow figure skating uniform.

“U-um, would you call this a skating dress?”

It wouldn’t restrict her movements since it was designed for sports use. Combined with the bladeless shoes meant for the staff, she would have no trouble moving around. At the very least, she would have a much easier time of it than in this Japanese clothing. But why did it have to have a miniskirt? Or should she think of it more like a swimsuit’s pareo? Either way, it wasn’t something for walking around town in!

“B-but it’s so cold! What choice do I have!?”

She had decided herself she was willing to ignore how it looked.

It would certainly protect her from the biting chill of the January night.

It left less skin exposed than she had expected. Because it covered her with a skin-colored material.

But that was a problem of its own. The thin synthetic fiber was like wearing a full-body stocking. A terrifying thought for someone who tended to get zappy at the drop of a hat!

===Part 14===

Kamijou and the others arrived at a dark shape so large they truly had to look up to see it all.

This was the General Athletics Stadium.

Its size was apparent even from the outside.

Its diameter alone had to be hundreds of meters.

Instead of a dome covering it, it was apparently an outdoor stadium. Still, tall walls surrounded it on all sides. Those would be for the tiered seating, but they were just as tall as a four story building. So the same as a school building. This meant there was no seeing inside from out here.

Several other vehicles joined the rotary snowplow operated by Tsushima.

Index and Misaka Mikoto were among them.

“Thank good- woah! Misaka, what are you wearing!?”

“Don’t look at me!! Don’t look at my new and improved flavor with 20% extra at the same great price!!”

Her retort was as unusual as her outfit.

Was this the higher rarity version that showed more skin, or had she been unable to bear the cold and chose to rely on a figure skating outfit? He wished she would stop tugging down on the miniskirt-like part because that only drew his eye there all the more.

The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet were both tilting their heads (in friendly synchronization?). …Yeah, they probably wouldn’t get what the big deal was when they had no trouble walking around in the frigid January night in their underwear or a naked apron.

But focusing on this wasn’t going to lead them to Coronzon.

Kamijou was curious about something.

“The tall walls keep us from seeing inside. I hope that also means Coronzon can’t see out.”

“Does it mean that? Wouldn’t a great demon be able to use clairvoyance or remote viewing?”

Tracking expert Takitsubo brought up a difficult topic.

“In modern Western magic, clairvoyance isn’t a means of seeing the contents of a closed envelope. It’s a ceremony used for spiritual meditation.”

Kanzaki provided an explanation, but it was hard to grasp without a solid foundation in the magic side.

She had spread out a large map, probably a privilege she had gained by taking control of the city. That she went to the trouble of printing out a paper copy seemed to show she still wasn’t used to the science side, though.

“It was fortunate we could get our hands on the official blueprints. Our numbers work in our favor. First, we should station personnel at each exit. There are more than 20 official gates for spectators and the real number is even greater due to the unofficial entrances for athletes and staff. With the exits blocked, we can begin exploring inside. Once we know where Coronzon is inside the large stadium and how she has modified it for her ceremony, we can launch our attack.”

“Coronzon should be defenseless while she works,” added Index. “Even if we can’t win a straight fight, we should be able to win right now.”

They could win?

Then why not charge in right this instant?

Kamijou couldn’t believe they would stay out when they knew she was in there.

Othinus must have sensed his impatience because she made a piercing comment from his shoulder.

“Wait, human. If Coronzon detects us and runs off, this will all have been a waste of time.”

“Either way, we should carefully investigate the situation inside and gather what information we can. We can always make our attack after all escape routes we are aware of have been covered.”

Kamijou was a little surprise to find Anna Sprengel advocating the cautious option.

Had that wicked woman learned how frightening it was to have everything fall apart at the last second?

“But can we really wait around that long? There’s that ley line thing, right? That direct route running underground that only the great demon can use. We can have her surrounded as much as we want – it won’t matter if she just teleports out of here!”

“Failure puts the entire human race at risk. Great Demon Coronzon will be able to do more than just this.”

Was that why she didn’t want anyone spying on her from the sky?

After giving a skeptical look at the Bologna Succubus (or her clothing more likely), Kanzaki nodded in agreement.

“We mustn’t forget that she will have escaped if she physically crosses the city wall.”

“But we don’t know the time limit!!”

“It won’t be in the next 5 or 10 minutes at least. That gives us time to take it slow, human.”

===Part 15===

“Hm.”

Great Demon Coronzon put a hand on her hip and observed her surroundings.

She stood at the very center of the enormous stadium.

“That completes the ceremonial ground. And the attribute extracted from the stadium as a whole gives me what I need. Direction, time, number…and the actual spiritual item in my hands: the tattva cards.”

She held a few colorful cards.

However, these cards were not historical antiques.

They were only symbols meant to help one enter the special mental state of meditation, so as long as the colors and symbols were correct, the material was immaterial. They were in fact made by coloring cardstock with thick permanent markers she had acquired after breaking the metal shutter covering a stadium shop. (There was probably a demand for materials that spectators could use to make placards or to draw their team’s logo on their face.)

Perhaps the stadium functioned like a giant magical circle with the cards acting as a control medium like a mouse or keyboard.

Coronzon had a physical body, but her true essence was a collection of Telesma energy. Unlike the pure angels, she was a mixture of different elements, which could be a pain, but by breaking them apart, she too could be handled as pure energy.

That meant she could inject herself into a weapon or armor or she could be carried around inside a thin talisman.

Or she could send herself through the ley lines to instantly travel to the other side of the planet.

“Now, time to begin,” she whispered.

===Part 16===

Kamijou was anxious.

Great Demon Coronzon was inside there, but the great size of the stadium worked against them. With more than 20 public gates, entering the wrong way would give Coronzon a chance to escape out a different one.

They needed to know her exact location before heading in.

…He understood the Anglicans’ point, but that didn’t mean he liked it. No matter how well they prepared themselves, Coronzon would disappear if they didn’t arrive in time. Then the world’s doom would begin on the other side of the planet. Coronzon would be able to choose any location she liked, so she could ensure the optimal conditions for herself. The next time would be far worse. Everything might truly be destroyed.

Next to him, Index spoke up. Addressing Kanzaki.

“Are you going to run a search from the outside? Isn’t that dangerous too?”

“It is. She could detect the magic power of a normal through-walls scan. However, we Amakusas have specialized in hiding our faith to avoid persecution, so we know a few tricks we can use.”

Kamijou and Mikoto had no clue what the Amakusas were working on with such determined looks on their faces. At this point, Index and her 103,001 memorized grimoires was the only person they could rely on.

She got it right on the first guess.

“The Maria Kannon?”

“This isn’t how they were originally used, but they were designed to look like an ordinary Buddhist figure while revealing its true face as the Virgin Mary to anyone who knew what to look for. By intentionally taking a broad interpretation of that concept, it can be remade into a camouflage-breaking searching spell to locate that which is hidden.”

===Part 17===

In the very center of the spacious stadium, Great Demon Coronzon sat quietly, regulated her breathing, and placed her index finger against one of the toxically colorful cards lined up on the ground.

Something felt off.

A sensation like a finger pressed between her eyes caused a tingling in the center of her head. Even though she was the one reaching out her finger. No, it was meaningless to think of it in that way.

The two were linked.

To touch it was to be touched.

The line between the self and the other – between the inner world and the outer world – was blurring.

The core of her body distorted. She was uncertain where she was even sitting.

“Kh.”

Her head wobbled. A vertiginous fluctuation interrupted her thoughts.

This was an Eastern mystical philosophy from ancient India.

She knew it wasn’t a good fit for her. A pure and proper angel never could have done it. But she was an impure and wicked being known as a great demon. And the Crowley system said every from of the mystical could be incorporated into your own spells if you reinterpreted it with your own logic. The wise would not give up just because they reached an impasse. They would use the discovery of that impasse to further elevate themselves.

She took deep breaths.

She consciously guided her thoughts toward stability.

She needn’t think of purifying herself.

There didn’t have to be just one answer.

The tattva cards did not work with pure elements in the first place.

Mathers had warned that meditation using those painfully colorful cards could cause intense anxiety or headaches for a mere human if used incorrectly. So how much worse would the damage from failure be for Coronzon as she tried to return herself to a state of pure energy?

She did not approach the true essence of this Eastern mystical philosophy.

The tattva cards were no more than tools used for control. That would have been how the Golden cabal used them too. They were valuable when it came to understanding the five elements, but there would be discrepancies between the cabal’s manual and the actual Eastern philosophy.

(The work has just passed 50%. That would explain why this inner fear and anxiety is taking on such concrete form.)

Coronzon did not move her eyes.

She had to focus her whole mind on ascending straight up.

Thus, any trivial distractions and detours could end up tearing her ego apart.

So she always stared straight ahead, using only the corner of her vision to watch how her own shadow wavered and thinned.

It was progressing well.

Once her shadow fully vanished, she would have also ''physically'' disappeared from Academy City.

The destruction of the world was within reach.

===Part 18===

“How is that search spell going!?” shouted Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

“I-it just passed 70%!” nervously reported Itsuwa.

70%.

That was more than halfway done, but Kamijou and the others didn’t know Coronzon’s status. If she was even a single percentage point ahead of them, they wouldn’t finish in time. It was possible the Anglicans would fully surround the stadium and rush in only to find Coronzon had already vanished.

Othinus sighed from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“There’s no need to wait until it’s 100% complete. We know Coronzon is in this building. So if we attack the small unsearched spots, we can confirm her location by sight.”

“How much of the stadium do you think those ‘small spots’ cover?” strongly retorted Kanzaki. “The search has covered 70% or maybe 80%. We’re risking our lives going in, so we want a little more assurance than that!!”

“What do you think, Touma?” asked Index.

“Hm? We should go in now! Right now!!”

He had no idea why an outsider like him had been asked for his opinion on a magical matter, but he gave his answer right away.

“Tsujiura,” said Index. “Kushiura and Qiu Xiang Bu also work. Those are Eastern, so the Amakusas should be able to use them too.”

“I see. So the idea that the first thing said by someone ignorant of the topic at hand can be used for divination,” said Kanzaki, sounding impressed.

In this case, Kamijou’s ignorance of magic gave his words meaning.

…He felt like this was declaring him useless in this fight, which seemed kind of insulting, but if the experts would listen to what he had to say, he didn’t care why.

Whatever the case, Kamijou’s words set them all into motion.

“Kanzaki will join one of the Amakusa teams, I guess. Okay, Alice!! You go lend Agnese’s group a hand!”

“Hm? The girl would prefer to stay with you, teacher.”

“Please! And Anna, you go with that team including Itsuwa and Tsushima!”

“Fool. I will step on you later.”

They complained, but they still split up.

Even Takitsubo and Kihara Noukan did as he said. They had to know even less about magic than him, but they were still risking their lives to stop this unknown threat.

After all, there were more than twenty public gates. The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force would be blocking all of those exits, but they were dealing with ''the'' Coronzon here. Ordinary magicians weren’t enough. Each team needed an irregular member such as a Saint like Kanzaki Kaori, a Transcendent like the Bologna Succubus or Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, or even a special Transcendent like Anna Sprengel or Alice Anotherbible.

Kamijou didn’t see this as splitting up their forces.

Once they entered the stadium, they would converge on Coronzon’s location. He didn’t want anyone dying in the “blank time” until they broke down the right door and found Coronzon. He was sick of Coronzon being able to choose one of them at random for a one-hit kill lottery. Even if one team was unfortunate enough to run across Coronzon on their way in, they didn’t have to defeat her. Kamijou wanted to give each team someone who could let them survive until the other teams arrived.

Mikoto, who always felt left behind when it came to magical matters, suddenly panicked.

“W-wait, what about me!?”

“You’re with me, of course!! C’mon!!”

“Eh? O-oh…okay.”

Kamijou and Mikoto would enter through the closest gate: Gate 15. Neither knew much about magic, but he figured Othinus’s presence would make up for that. Index’s knowledge was the most important of all, so he couldn’t keep it to himself.

Gate 15 was shut with a metal grate shutter and a glass door, but Mikoto only had to inhale and exhale before it all opened for them. And not just Gate 15. All of the shutters and locks opened at once.

Without waiting for the shutter to fully rise, they ducked below it.

They entered a dark corridor.

And ran.

“Hey, human. Don’t get one-shotted here. Even if Coronzon is busy, she could have sent out those scouts.”

Othinus warned him from his shoulder, but Kamijou didn’t have time to respond. If they were even a second too late, it was all over.

His heart pounded in his ears. He felt like he was going to die on his own without Coronzon having to lift a finger. But he gritted his teeth and kept running.

He wouldn’t let her try again at destroying the world.

He would end this tonight.

===Part 19===

(75%.)

Great Demon Coronzon’s voice no longer vibrated the air.

From her perspective, it was less like her body was unraveling and more like the world around her was changing. Or maybe like she was crossing the boundary between phases. Her coordinates remained the same, but the scene around her changed as if flipping over a page.

Perhaps there was no real difference between the two.

The Golden cabal never managed to send their body across. Thus, their experts had tried to separate just their minds in an act known as astral projection to virtually achieve a leap between phases. They had worked hard to peek into another world like heaven or hell. …And as a result, quite a few magicians had failed to cling to their sanity.

Coronzon’s nearly transparent fingertip passed right through the tattva card.

She was more than halfway on the other side now.

The great demon grinned.

(No more physical control is needed at this point. Now I only have to wait for the process to complete!!)

===Part 20===

Kamijou and Mikoto ran down a long, long corridor.

They couldn’t afford to hide their footsteps now.

Coronzon was so close.

“We’re going to come out into the stands, right? How far is it to the actual sports field!?”

“The actual distance isn’t that far, but the stands aren’t flat. Don’t trip and fall in the darkness, okay?”

Mikoto gave him a surprisingly sincere answer.

There hadn’t been any bright beams of light or explosions yet.

What were Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others doing?

They would have entered through all the entrances at once, but apparently none of the teams had run into Coronzon. They didn’t know where she was hiding to complete her ceremony, but she hadn’t noticed their presence yet. That made this their best chance.

If they failed, it was all over.

(We might not win in a straight fight, but what if she’s immobilized by the important ceremony? This time will be different. This is our only chance to settle things with her!!)

The end of the corridor came into view.

Like a rectangular hole cut out of the darkness.

Kamijou gritted his teeth, clenched his fist, and ran with all his might.

He emerged into a silent space. The flow of time ground to a halt.

No one was there.

The place was deserted.

“What’s…going on?” muttered Kamijou, stopped partway down the stands.

He could hear more people emerging from different directions. But that was all. Even from here, he could see Agnese, the Bologna Succubus, and others looking around in confusion on the other side of the stadium. The great demon wasn’t shining bright as she completed some kind of ceremony and Coronzon didn’t began a fierce battle in an attempt to escape.

Great Demon Coronzon wasn’t here.

It didn’t feel like she had fled in a panic either. There was no warmth in the vast space. It had likely been empty this entire time. Coronzon had never been here. They had chosen the wrong location.

Had their calculations been off?

No, they hadn’t been relying on Index alone. It had been a group effort with help from Anna Sprengel, Kanzaki Kaori, and more from the magic side. And they had been certain Coronzon would use this stadium if she was using Zeus symbolism. So how could they have been wrong!?

“Touma.”

A girl from another group joined him.

Index’s usual childlike air was broken by the trembling voice she forced out.

She seemed hesitant to speak.

“Is this district used for any other special purpose? Other than sports!”

“Huh? Yes. It is a district of stadiums and domes meant to hold tens of thousands of people. I think Aogami Pierce mentioned it being the holy land for idol concerts.”

A quiet thud reached his ears.

Index was unable to support her wobbling body and fell back into one of the seats. The cat mewed in complaint from her arms.

“Then Coronzon wasn’t using sports as the symbol for a sanctuary or temple.”

Her lips quivered.

“Songstresses, plays…she was using the performing arts. Which means it isn’t Zeus! And if she is using a different symbol and a different god, she would be in an entirely different location!!”

===Part 21===

Maximum occupancy: 255 thousand.

Coronzon snorted with laughter when she recalled that extreme number.

…A soccer stadium or baseball stadium could never reach that number even with every seat filled. That display was meant for a concert or live performance where even the field itself was filled with seats.

Coronzon was somewhere like that.

(This district is filled with stadiums and domes. To put it another way, most of them are not the designated home field of a pro team whose games you can watch on a sports app. And “just a stadium” isn’t going to be used just for sports. …District 20’s stadiums probably make most of their income this way. I saw through that right away. And a facility primarily used for concerts is not a Zeus-associated track stadium. To be blunt, this is a large facility built for shows, not for sports.)

She didn’t want Apollo, god of music.

She wanted Dionysus, god of theater.

In ancient Greece, sporting events had been held in sanctuaries as a ceremonial offering to a god, but plays and songs had been made as offering in those same sanctuaries. Thus, holding a concert or live performance in a stadium that could contain a large audience was not a new idea.

Greek theater was the origin of modern stage plays. And the original form of that had been a festival held as an offering to Dionysus, god of alcohol and insanity.

That meant his symbols could be extracted from a large stadium like this.

(The work is past 90%. And yet no pursuit has arrived yet. What’s the matter, humanity? If you let me escape this easily, you will be extinct by tomorrow!!)

===Part 22===

So not sports but music. No, theater.

Not a stadium for sporting events but for concerts and live performances.

When they corrected the initial assumption and had Index recalculate, they were given a single candidate.

“The Brilliant Outdoor Performance Stadium. It points north and, if the adjacent park is viewed as a mountain forest, you could extract the symbols of Dionysus. This time I’m sure of it! A god of insanity would be perfect for controlling her power as a chaotic great demon!”

Now that they had a new answer, they couldn’t just sit around.

Their initial wrong answer would have given Coronzon that much more time for the ceremony to break her body down into energy. As soon as she finished that, she would dive into a ley line and escape to the other side of the planet. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

Kamijou and the others hitched a ride on the rotary snowplow driven by Tsushima of the Amakusas to reach the new destination.

It was in the same district.

Driving there, it wouldn’t take long. The giant stadium capable of holding 255 thousand came into view.

“Is that it? Please still be in the city, Coronzon. Dammit.”

As soon as Kamijou jumped down from the snowplow onto the red snow, he staggered to the side.

He regathered his strength, somehow managing to keep himself steady, but he bumped into something next to him.

But not because he had nearly fallen.

“Ugh…”

He heard a small groan.

From Takitsubo Rikou.

She must have arrived on a different vehicle. Kamijou instinctually caught the unsteady track suit girl…and found her body temperature was higher than he had expected.

Not just warm, but blazing hot.

He was shocked.

“That’s not good… How long have you been hiding this, Takitsubo!?”

“…”

She refused to say a word.

She had been knocked out by some kind of attack from Coronzon during the Adikalika stuff. It was a miracle she was even still alive, yet she had joined the chase instead of calling an ambulance. Anyone would be in a similar state after that.

“You can’t go on. You need to get some rest! You’ve seen the way things are, right!? The Anglicans don’t want to torment Hamazura!!”

“You should listen to your own advice, Touma. Stopping Adikalika was more than enough of a win. You’re hurt, so stay here and look after her,” said an exasperated Index.

Even though it was she who had actually stopped the attack after arriving late. She had a perfect memory, so this wasn’t just a mistake. So was she giving them the credit? When he thought about it, he realized Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others hadn’t actually seen the moment Adikalika was stopped…

Speaking of Kanzaki, she called everyone over.

“If the countdown is close to the end, we can’t spend time on an initial search like before. That will mean a greater risk when we enter. Needless to say…”

“Then do we have time to sit around listening to the headmaster’s speech? I’ll steal a map of the stadium with my powers, so let’s get going!”

Mikoto, Index, Kanzaki, and the rest got moving.

In no time, there wasn’t anyone left.

It was so quiet.

Kamijou sat down and focused on taking deep breaths. He wasn’t as bad as Takitsubo, but he had lost his balance earlier. He had taken a direct hit from Coronzon. He wasn’t a doctor and couldn’t even imagine how much damage had been done inside his body, but he knew better than to be optimistic.

Takitsubo Rikou’s lips moved where she lay right next to him.

He doubted she was conscious, so maybe she was having a nightmare.

“…Hamazura…”

“Kh.”

Kamijou grimaced. In agony.

She had to be badly worried about her friend. If she didn’t do something to help out and earn points with the Anglicans, she would lose all chance of negotiating with them. But she was too injured to move.

If Coronzon did escape, who could say where they would direct their anger. Even if Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others fighting here didn’t, the higher ups watching from across the ocean might demand a live sacrifice from those who were close to Coronzon.

Could that be why Index had used such vague phrasing to give up credit for stopping Adikalika?

But it wasn’t enough. Takitsubo wanted something more to push her claim of having contributed, so Adikalika wasn’t enough and she had come with them even if it meant hiding how bad her injuries were.

And unlike her, Kamijou could still move.

He couldn’t push himself too hard.

But he had to make up his mind.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

“Human? …It figures.”

“I’ll stop Coronzon, so don’t you worry, Takitsubo. Don’t forget: winning is meaningless if you die. Your goal is to be with Hamazura, right? Then you need to rest.”

He forced his heavy body up and began to walk.

No, he was trying to run full speed, but this was the most speed he could manage.

Even so, Imagine Breaker would have to be of some use.

Coronzon’s magic was extraordinarily powerful.

Maybe he couldn’t fight her himself, but he could at least help out someone who could. If he could shield them from even a single attack, it might be enough to decide the battle.

He would overturn the game as a wild card.

===Part 23===

Great Demon Coronzon only had to wait. And the time finally arrived.

It was already over.

99%.

Even if someone barged in now, she could break her body down into Telesma and escape Academy City through the ley line before they could do anything.

Her victory was assured. Those humans were too late to prevent their doom. The silly fools should have resisted more.

But then…

“You think so? Then allow me to cause a bit of trouble.”

Her vision shattered.

Black, red, silver, blue, yellow… It all collapsed into a wild dance of colors.

No.

Crossing between phases and breaking herself down may have been the same thing. She had thought so herself.

Which meant it was she who was collapsing.

She could no longer support her sitting position and fell to the side. Something was wrong with her limbs. She couldn’t remember how to breathe. Nevertheless, she managed to gather all her strength and scream.

“A…lei…sterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!?”

“Now, now, Coronzon. You should know better than to mess with anything as dangerous as the tattva cards which even the Golden cabal had to issue a recall for. Don’t you remember what Mathers said? They can cause intense anxiety or headaches if used incorrectly. Why would you visit the mental world after going to the trouble of physically sealing me away? Are you trying to kill yourself? ''In here'', I can still wield some power.”

(Emergency…shutoff!!)

A dull “snap!” came from the center of her head.

“Khah!!”

She tried to let out the breath caught in her throat, but what came out was colored red.

For a while, she lay on her side convulsing until she forcibly suppressed the writhing of every last one of her internal organs. Yes, it was urgent that she accurately recalled the shape of her body. She had already begun to enter the ley line when the magic failed. She had to return to her original body in a hurry, but if she forgot that body’s shape now, she could be entirely annihilated.

It took her a full ten seconds.

Once she calmed her wild breathing and recalled the cycle for inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, she had reclaimed her physical body.

The tattva cards could cause mental confusion if used incorrectly.

For her, did that mean releasing the sealed Aleister? In other words…

“Dammit!!!”

This meant a change of plans.

She couldn’t use this method anymore.

And if she was going to cross Academy City’s wall for a physical escape…she had no reason to remain in this stadium. She had to leave as soon as possible.

===Part 24===

Kamijou forced his unsteady body to keep moving and pushed open a small metal door with his shoulder.

He slipped through the half-open door, probably a staff entrance, and entered the stadium.

He found a dark, cold, heavy space.

Big too.

…He had apparently entered something like a parking garage. Was it a space for workers located below the stadium? He didn’t know enough to have a good mental picture of how stadiums were structured.

He did have his phone with him, but he didn’t know what was happening inside. The pursuers had to be careful too, so he wanted to avoid causing someone’s phone to ring while they were trying to hide.

“Index? Misaka?” he called quietly.

He didn’t know how the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force were searching the stadium. Because they weren’t sharing information with him.

He heard some light footsteps through the darkness. They echoed off the gray walls and were moving away from him.

He immediately ran full speed in that direction.

He could tell just from listening whose they were.

“(Human, you noticed how odd that was, I trust?)”

(We all know how powerful Coronzon is, so everyone will be searching as part of a team. So no one should be leaving on their own like that!)

“Coronzon!! Is that you!?”

“You really shouldn’t have announced your presence. Unless you have the supernatural power to kill with words alone.”

The footsteps stopped.

A voice spoke from behind one of the thick concrete pillars lining the space.

A hateful voice.

“I’m relieved. Because of you I can easily kill and complete my escape. Now, Kamijou Touma, how do you intend to stop me? Don’t try to tell me that foolish shout was all part of a plan and you have a more troublesome opponent hiding nearby.”

15cm Othinus could not directly fight, so he was effectively alone.

Coronzon had seen right through him.

What about the phone in his pocket? No. He might not have a signal, but more than that, using the touchscreen in the dark parking garage would give him away with the backlight. Coronzon would act before he could call for help.

“You chose this stadium because it was your best bet, right? You can’t use magic to escape through the ley lines now. So give up, Coronzon.”

“Why should I? Great demons are perfectly capable of driving cars. And it goes without saying that ordinary cars can slip right past a scan for magic power.”

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

That was her plan immediately after trying to escape using Telesma and a ley line? She switched gears way too fast.

“How many trump cards do you have!?”

“More than a mere human could ever imagine, that’s for sure.”

If she escaped in a car, he couldn’t keep up on foot. His phone was an iffy option too. So was there nothing he could do? If he shouted at the top of his lungs, the others would surely gather here. He wouldn’t let her escape.

The voice alone continued from behind the pillar.

“How about this, Kamijou Touma? What if you keep quiet and let me go?”

“Why even ask that? It’s meaningless. If you escape tonight, you’ll work to destroy all of humanity by tomorrow, right? Then nothing you could offer me would be worth it!!”

“Oh, you will let me go. Because I happened to pick up a trump card on my way here.”

Someone emerged from behind the concrete pillar. Slowly.

Blonde hair.

A woman.

But that hair was fluffy and only fell to the shoulder blades.

This wasn’t Great Demon Coronzon.

He had only heard a single set of footsteps, so had she been captured behind the pillar?

What was being held against her from outside Kamijou’s view? The feminine lines of her body were trembling and her expression was like a cross between tears and a smile.

He recognized her as one of the Amakusas.

“Tsushima.”

It wasn’t even a case of “move and she’s dead”.

All of a sudden, the red splattered out.

From the side of her neck. Kamijou was an ordinary high school boy without much forensic medical knowledge, but the location the blood was spraying from sent a chill down his spine. She seemed to have been cut by an invisible blade.

A laughing woman stuck her head out from behind the pillar.

Great Demon Coronzon really was a demon.

“Kee hee ha ha!! Protecting human lives is no easy task, is it? Or are you willing to take another tour of hell for her!?”

Coronzon kicked Tsushima’s doll-like body from behind, shoving her toward him.

He had no choice but to catch her. Only a few seconds had passed, but she felt limp and heavy in his arms. She clung heavily to him like a down blanket soaked with water. He pressed his palm firmly against the wound in her neck. How much blood loss was lethal for a human? If he didn’t stop the blood spurting from the side of her neck, she really would die.

At that moment, Kamijou’s vision suddenly went dark.

But not because Coronzon had done anything. It took him a while to even realize that. He had long since pushed his body past the limit.

He shouldn’t have been up and about at all.

“Human!!”

“Kah…ah…?”

He felt horribly faint.

He collapsed and couldn’t get back up. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t move his arms and legs very much. He wasn’t even sure which way was up.

“Kh.”

He held Tsushima tight in his arms. He gritted his teeth and tried to take in as much information on the physical reality around him. Sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch… it didn’t matter what. He was afraid he would pass out otherwise.

“Ha ha ha!! You said it was meaningless, didn’t you? You couldn’t have been more right! Why bother saving a life or two now when I will be destroying the entire world soon!”

No, it wasn’t working.

Even after all this…he couldn’t stop his mind from slipping away into darkness.

He had to avoid removing his hand from that neck wound.

He heard the sound of metal breaking.

Then the sound of an engine starting and the sound of Coronzon driving a car away.

“Wait…Coronzon…”

The darkness took over.

Kamijou Touma’s consciousness fully faded.

“Waiiiiit!!!”

===Part 25===

“Can you hear me?”

Near the center of the open stadium, Agnese heard a young male voice.

Hearing a voice when no one was there was nothing unusual. She was commanding more than 250 people, so she was using communication magic.

But this was odd.

The Former Agnese Force was all female.

“This…Mich………k… I have an urgent message. Can anyone hear me?”

She was using a Roman Catholic communication spiritual item derived from the Barbara Branch. It was made from a cherry tree twig with a few buds attached and it wasn’t all that unusual. …Even if it did seem wrong for nuns to be carrying around tools for love fortunetelling.

The hard buds unnaturally opened below the frigid sky and the flower petals vibrated.

They produced a human voice.

(You’re kidding. Is someone hijacking the channel!?)

“Is anyone at all in Academy City receiving this!? There is something I must tell you immediately!”

“?”

Itsuwa gave Agnese a puzzled look from nearby. …Apparently she couldn’t hear this. That meant it was targeted only at the Roman Catholics of the Former Agnese Force.

Agnese Sanctis frowned.

“This is Agnese Sanctis. Who are you?”

“Thank god… I got through! This is Michael Speak, a cardinal officially appointed by the pope!!”

She was at a loss for words.

…Those were the around a hundred ultra elites chosen out of the two billion Roman Catholics to directly advise the pope. Ordinarily, she would never even directly speak to one.

But his voice didn’t fit the part. He sounded like a stressed young man. He didn’t sound even thirty.

Perhaps his modesty was what had earned him so much popularity.

(Another Michael. And with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.)

“What does a great cardinal want with lowly peon like me?”

“Tell only the Roman Catholics to get out of there immediately. You need to leave Academy City as soon as possible. Your team will obey you if you tell them!”

“?”

She had expected a protest or sarcasm in response, so this came as a complete surprise.

This was advance warning of an attack.

She didn’t know what the Vatican was preparing to do, but she had to assume it was a fairly dangerous large-scale spell. Something even greater than Coronzon’s Adikalika.

“You mean it’s close to being activated?”

“As Roman Catholics, we cannot allow someone as dangerous as Great Demon Coronzon to escape Academy City. If she cannot be defeated on the front line, then the Vatican must reach out a helping hand.”

Reach out a helping hand.

So from their perspective, they were saving lives.

And the same went for Agnese, Lucia, Angelene, and the rest of the Former Agnese Force fighting on the front line.

“There are three activation conditions. First, if you completely lose track of Coronzon and the trail goes cold. Two, at 5:47 AM local time. In other words, at dawn. Third, if we believe a non-Catholic force has learned of our plan and could attempt to stop it. If any one of those conditions is met, the Vatican will activate Saint Georgios’s Fire.”

“Kh.”

The most important condition was the third.

That meant the Vatican didn’t want them sharing this information with anyone else. Even though this would mean the destruction of Academy City. The chance to evacuate was for the Former Agnese Force only.

…Were they being pressured to abandon Academy City and the Anglicans who they had fought and risked their lives alongside?

“We are always watching and listening, Sister Agnese. The physical distance matters little. So do not attempt to contact anyone else through trickery or deception. We will not overlook it.”

(Magical surveillance is a hell of a thing. Although I’m sure it was originally justified as a way for the pure servants of god to punish wicked magicians.)

She didn’t actually know how much she was being observed. The Catholics had been outdone by the other forces so far, so Agnese thought they had to be bluffing to an extent. But this still made it hard to take any bold action.

And she knew what Saint Georgios’s Fire was.

She had heard rumors of it back when she still lived in Italy.

There was a legend about the death of Saint Georgios, or Saint George as he was known in England. When he was being pressured to renounce his faith in a wicked temple, a great ball of fire fell from heaven and blew it all away. So it was a legend of pure attack power.

“That’s a large-scale spell that targets a distant location through the ley lines, isn’t it?”

“Ironically, it uses the same pathway Coronzon is attempting to use to escape. But since we can only use it and not control it, we cannot stop her from using it.”

The Roman Catholic spell was essentially a cluster bomb that detonated two billion explosive flames across the entirety of the targeted city.

And rather than burn everything down with the explosive blasts and flames, it used an extreme high temperature to rapidly alter the atmospheric pressure and oxygen level across the entire area. That meant fortifying oneself behind a shield or wall was meaningless. Because your own body would rupture from within. Afterwards, only a lifeless city would remain.

It was effectively the ideal form of a human killer.

(Now isn’t the time for us humans to be fighting among ourselves!!)

“I thought the pope had learned an important lesson from the trials of World War Three. I can’t believe he would agree to such a forceful solution.”

“His authorization is unnecessary. The cardinals have the right to hold an ecumenical council or election. …And the majority wish to do this. We in the minority have no way to stop them.”

“Doesn’t that seem disrespectful?”

“Abstaining in protest will not change the outcome of the vote. Did I ever say that I like that this is happening!?”

There was real strength behind those last words.

That had to be what he really thought. Which was why it pierced Agnese so deeply.

But even if he was sensible, he couldn’t change what was happening. She could tell that too.

(Well, this is a disaster…)

And there was an issue beyond the number of victims across Academy City.

A more fundamental issue.

“Don’t you know ''a human killer spell won’t affect an inhuman demon''? Sowing further confusion in Academy City will only create more openings in the city perimeter!! You’re playing right into Coronzon’s hand!!”

Apparently Coronzon’s special trait remained in effect.

She tore people apart and obstructed their evolution.

(But I can’t believe it’s gone so far.)

“Sister Agnese!!”

“What do you want, cardinal!? I’m really goddamn busy right now!”

“This is a compromise. As much of one as I could get. The original plan was to immediately activate Saint Georgios’s Fire and I only barely stopped that from happening!”

There was kindness in his words.

But that kindness was unnecessary. Something was fundamentally off about this.

“Don’t tell me this is about wounded pride. Index stopped Adikalika by redirecting it to an unnamed desert island in the Atlantic. The Italian peninsula wasn’t harmed!”

“But Coronzon did launch her large-scale attack spell. And that wasn’t her only trump card. Her power is unfathomable, so she must be destroyed when we have the chance. None of the cardinals can ignore that point. I’m sorry, but that includes me!”

She wasn’t sure what to say.

She understood. Yes, even Agnese was furious. If she hadn’t made a conscious effort to calm herself, she might have left the Anglicans back then.

“Violence is wrong,” he continued. “I understand that. We erred and let God’s Right Seat manipulate us during World War Three. …But this time, ''we are in our rights to retaliate.'' Overturning that idea will not be easy, Sister Agnese.”

(Coronzon. Your mere presence really does make a mess of humanity as a whole!)

The Roman Catholics naturally had a variety of emotions about this.

About Coronzon and about Academy City for failing to stop this crisis earlier.

…Nuclear missiles could destroy the world, so it would take a lot of guts to launch the first one yourself. But what if an enemy launched one at you first? That would lower the mental hurdle for pressing the launch button considerably.

People were easily influenced by the word “retaliation”. And that could burn down the entire world.

“I will do everything I can, but I doubt I can stop this from happening. Sooner or later, Saint Georgios’s Fire will be launched.”

He was one of the sensible ones.

He would truly prefer not to use it.

But that was why nothing he said was a mere threat or bluff.

For the pacifists, nothing was more painful than having to declare that an atrocity would soon be happening.

“So you need to escape that city immediately. It’s a shame what will happen to Academy City and the Anglicans, but it’s too late for them. Gather up all the Roman Catholics and get out of there!!”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter2

2025-12-29T19:47:13Z

Massify: /* Part 2 */ had to fix the word to another word

==Chapter 2: Divine Slope, Forbidden Book – Magical Exit.==

===Part 1===

In Academy City’s District 7, someone was still fighting on and on, separate from the core of the incident.

That person was Dion Fortune.

“Ahhh, they’ve forgotten me… I just know they’ve all left me behind!! They must have done something about Adikalika since the Earth is still intact, but couldn’t they have launched a group attack to come help me before they left? I am technically the archbishop at the very top of the Anglican Church, you know!?”

A scraping sound came from a short distance away. A giant black cat stood more than two meters tall there. The bizarre beast appeared to be drawn with black paint and it was ridden by a magician in mourning clothes.

Moina Mathers.

She was undeniably a formidable foe. After all, that official member of the Golden cabal, once called the largest in the world, had been fighting for hours now, but the battle still wasn’t over. Even though an average magician who be delighted to be referred to as “first rate” would have been killed instantly.

(This is bad. I know Coronzon is our top priority, but I can’t just leave her out here.)

The enemy said nothing.

Seated atop the black cat that had to be more than two meters tall, Moina Mathers made some complex movements with her fingertips.

Like a magic trick, countless cards appeared and were then pinned in midair.

The cards were not as complex as tarot. They only depicted a combination of basic symbols like circles and triangles.

These cards could express anything in the world using a combination of a primary element and a secondary element.

Dion Fortune’s eyes widened when she saw the dancing colors.

“Geh, are those tattva cards!?”

The mourning clothes woman’s lips writhed.

She produced a voice.

“Apas of Tejas.”

With a roar, a fireball more than a meter in diameter consumed oxygen and rushed toward Dion Fortune.

This had been referenced in the Golden cabal’s official texts, but it was in fact a controversial text that had been officially adopted at one point but then rejected within the cabal. (From the perspective of Western Europe in the 19th century,) India, Tibet, and the East in general were utopias of miracles and the mystical! …But Mathers hated that view, so he took the unusual step of writing a serious warning against the use of the tattvas due to their Eastern origins.

(She’s an artist and a clairvoyance expert. This wife probably did write a lot about the tattvas.)

However, the fireball was approaching slowly enough to see it coming.

Dion Fortune held her black box out in front of her.

If any kind of magic entered that special spiritual item, its data would be randomly rearranged, changing it into something else entirely. That meant it could rob most any attack spell of its lethality, but…

(Would ''the'' Moina Mathers really be satisfied with an explosive that moved this slow? Uh, oh. She intentionally combined multiple elements in this one spell, so even if my box consumes the primary element of Tejas, will the secondary element of Apas still explode?)

“Wahhh!!”

She couldn’t let herself be caught by such obvious bait.

Dion Fortune quickly got down on the red snow to dodge.

The fireball passed by barely above her head before exploding and toppling a wind turbine behind her.

With the tattvas, it was thought the world was constructed of five simple elements, but it was incredibly difficult to extract those elements in their pure form. That was why the elements were used in combination, like Apas of Tejas or Prithivi of Vayu.

(Kind of like a different version of Western-loving Mathers’s Hot and Dry or Cold and Wet!)

Dion Fortune raised her head from the red snow and shouted.

“Argh, you really had to use the tattvas, huh!? Are you intentionally using your husband’s doubts and detours as a weapon!? How much of a cruel wife are you!?”

And…

(If a pawn created by Coronzon can use the tattvas, then Coronzon must know how to use them too.)

She had a bad feeling about this.

The tattva cards depicted a combination of a primary element and a secondary element. They were a spiritual item that provided visual support for sending your mind into a deeper state. Moina was using them in a physical and offensive way, but she was doing that by pushing her own mind to extract the necessary spell from within herself.

That made this a tool specialized for manipulating non-physical energy and for breaking down the world into five elements and managing it in that form.

What was the worst thing an inhuman demon could do using the tattvas?

Dion Fortune thought she knew.

“Oh, no. If she breaks herself down into her component elements and remakes that into pure Telesma energy…could she escape anywhere on the Earth through the ley lines!?”

===Part 2===

They went back into the department store so they get out of the January chill while they thought.

Coronzon was trying to magically escape Academy City using something called a ley line rather than physically crossing the wall.

Kamijou and the others knew that now.

But where in the city would she perform that major ceremony? Now that they had lost track of her, they had to get back on her trail. But how could they do that?

They didn’t even know what district she had escaped to.

“The girl can help!” Alice Anotherbible volunteered. “The girl will divine her location! But, but! She would feel lonely doing it alone, so will someone good with magic help?”

That ruled out Kamijou. Imagine Breaker was never going to help with something like this. And Mikoto visibly cringed at the very idea of relying on divination here, so she was out too.

…But he couldn’t get a read on Takitsubo’s stance. She always had a blank expression and he couldn’t tell if her staring eyes were a sign of agreement or rejection.

The pointy-haired boy tilted his head in the women’s clothing section.

“Eh? You can use Alice in Wonderland for divination?”

“You can use any book, Touma. Haven’t you heard of bibliomancy? You flip through a thick book and place your finger on a random page. Then you apply the passage found there to the problem you’re facing to find an answer.”

Why would he have heard of something like that?

On his shoulder, Othinus continued the conversation like all of this was normal.

“As a piece of nonsense literature, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tends to be associated with mystical matters, including this sort of divination.”

“So, Touma, it should be a good fit here. It’s also well known.”

“That’s not what the girl is doing! We want to know where to go next, right? That means we want a number from 1 to 23, not a literary passage.”

So the district number?

But how would you use Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to search for a number?

“Playing cards, right?” said an exasperated Anna Sprengel.

Her exasperation was not directed at Alice for the suggestion. It was directed at Kamijou for not figuring it out right away. And it was quite strong.

“Fool. Gambling, by its nature, is often associated with divination. Playing cards are no exception. For a familiar example, playing solitaire on your own is practically a form of divination already.”

This was apparently a slightly more complicated version of solitaire.

Alice clapped her hands and spread them apart, causing playing cards to spill out from the space between her palms. They scattered atop a glass showcase.

Index and Anna Sprengel joined Alice in organizing the cards. After forming a few triangles reminiscent of bowling pin formations, Alice flicked away the unneeded cards, formed new triangles…and repeated the process a few times.

“Human. In this case, you can ignore the suits and focus only on the numbers,” advised Othinus from his shoulder.

In the end, only two cards remained.

Index identified them.

“10 and 10.”

“Wait, so is that the answer? But if it’s District 10, why is there two of them?”

“If you rush to the answer in your ignorance, I will stomp on your crotch, fool. She said the answer would be ''a'' number, remember? But playing cards only go from 1 to 13, so a single card can’t indicate a number higher than that. And playing cards have no zero. So this is the only way to output the answer.”

“This is the answer here. You only have to add the two numbers.”

“Then…Coronzon is in ''District 20''?”

As soon as Kamijou said this, looking thoughtful…

''Ba-zap!!!

“Whoa!?” shouted Index.

The roar was loud enough to make you flinch even at a distance. It resembled electrical sparks. He couldn’t be certain, but was this really safe? If Anna Sprengel hadn’t grabbed Index’s hand and pulled her away at the last second, would they both have been turned to charcoal?

Alice Anotherbible, however, simply smiled.

Only she was unfazed after being exposed to that effusion of power.

“Yay, now we know where to go next!”

“…”

Alice really was special. Her power was extraordinary enough on its own, but nothing good came of incorporating it into ordinary magic. While it was normal for Alice herself, everyone else had to endure that fearsome strength.

===Part 3===

“Ughhh, I’m so hungry… You Amakusas have a lot of Eastern stuff for your camouflage, right? Do the Flying Alms Bowl.”

“The Flying Alms Bowl is not like an app-based bike delivery service. Here, Index, I do have a chocolate bar.”

“Yay!” shouted Index, raising her arms in celebration and running off for a late-night snack. It was past 1 AM. Did she feel no guilt eating chocolate at this hour?

Kamijou’s visible confusion elicited an exasperated sigh from Othinus on his shoulder.

“The Flying Alms Bowl is a spell that Buddhist monks up in the mountains could use to send just their alms bowl flying out to the city to receive pindapata. And since I know you’re going to ask, pindapata is the practice of people offering food to monks.”

“Wait, so there’s magic that brings food to you?”

“So the basic idea of a delivery drone has existed for centuries, huh? It just took a while before they had the physics and science to pull it off.”

Mikoto sounded impressed in her own way. Also, pindapata was a form of charity, so it was free. The ancient people sure came up with some neat ideas.

Then it occurred to Kamijou this probably meant he had mentally recovered enough to begin using his imagination again.

They hadn’t lost track of Coronzon. There was still hope.

Here in District 20.

Index tilted her head.

“Hey, Touma? What kinds of things do they have here?”

“I think it’s mostly sports stuff. Baseball, soccer, basketball, and more.”

“It’s more than just hard fields and courts. The place is filled with huge stadiums and domes, including indoor pools and skating rinks,” elaborated mourning clothes Mikoto.

Takitsubo was viewing a nearby guide map. With her head tilted. She wore a track suit, but she may not have been a very athletic person.

“That would provide plenty of locations capable of hiding a large-scale ceremony,” said Kanzaki, hiding frustration behind her polite tone.

She may have realized just how hard a search this was going to be.

“If Board Chairman Accelerator were awake, we could have used the satellites,” said Kihara Noukan.

That would have helped a lot. The satellite images could have ruled out the non-domed stadiums, but they didn’t have what they didn’t have.

They would have to do it themselves.

Instead of using the obvious borderline of the wall, Coronzon planned to escape the city by melting into a…ley line? Well, into the ground. Kamijou didn’t know enough about magic to even guess at how long that would take.

But if they didn’t find her as soon as possible, they could be too late.

Not knowing only made him more antsy.

However, checking every single stadium in the entire district would be far too inefficient. He could see so many from here alone. He never knew you could have too many landmarks.

“We’ve reached District 20 too.”

He heard a voice and Kanzaki held something to her ear.

“Wh-what is that? I though it was weird before…but now I’m certain of it: that isn’t a phone!”

“It’s a communication spiritual item.”

Index’s explanation probably didn’t explain anything for Mikoto.

The paper charm – communication spiritual item? – in Kanzaki’s hand produced the familiar voice of the Bologna Succubus. It was apparently the Amakusa style to attach it to the back of a phone so it would be less conspicuous.

“Hey, witch hunt team, you tell that lad there’s nothing to report from up here. No sign of Coronzon. …The Anti-Skill helicopter is gone, so are we the only ones in the air any longer?”

“After everything that happened in District 19, I imagine anything that can fly is busy providing disaster relief or transporting supplies.”

The conversation suddenly ended after that comment from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, who was presumably dangling down with the Bologna Succubus.

They were cut off by a tremendous noise that made Kamijou cover his ears.

“What the hell was that!?”

“An interception spell,” muttered Othinus.

“Flying with magic is just too dangerous!” shouted Index.

“Ksshh! We were brought down by an interception spell, but that means she’s nearby. Coronzon is definitely in District 20!! And if she doesn’t want us spying from the sky, ksshh, she’s not in a roofed dome or an indoor stadium! Look for the outdoor stadiums with nothing covering them!!”

“Hey! You crashed, right!? Are you okay!? Please tell me you are!”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting from a demon like me, but quit it. We can’t fly anymore, but we’ll catch up soon. We can run on the ground, so don’t worry!!”

“Damn you, sex demon. I know my coat is sturdy, but get your ass off it! Kiiii! You do not meet my salvation conditions, so you do not get to use me as a chair!!”

They seemed to be doing well.

The sounds of a scuffle coming through suggested they were unharmed.

That aside, Coronzon herself had reacted here. That gave them a huge opportunity as pursuers. They couldn’t waste it.

“So a sports facility without a roof covering it. It must be one of the open stadiums. In that case…”

“Different sports have different magical meanings,” said Index.

“Then what about soccer?”

“A festival held in England since ancient times. It’s the origin of all forms of football. Of course, a festival from the 12th century will either be 100% Christian or have incorporated aspects of other myths or religious events like with May Day or Halloween.”

His casual question received quite the explanation in return.

But she of course had a reason for explaining all this.

“But when we’re talking about sports and stadiums, I would start looking here. The ancient Greeks. Everyone in the world knows the sporting event where people compete for the gold medal, but that was originally held at Zeus’s sanctuary. It was meant as an offering to the gods led by Zeus.”

“If we can swap that name out for Jupiter, there are plenty in Rome too,” said Agnese.

Kamijou’s knowledge of Greek mythology didn’t go much past “that thing used for the astrological horoscopes on the morning news”. Where did Great Demon Coronzon belong exactly? With all the talk of rebelling against god, he had assumed she was a Christian demon, but could she use techniques from Greek mythology?

Mikoto and the golden retriever took a step back when these topics came up.

So it was Index who fluently responded.

“Magician Crowley said there are no such thing as demons.”

“Wait, but he called her ''Great Demon'' Coronzon himself.”

“He also said there are no pure demons. He said ‘demon’ is a word people use when they want to deride the gods of people they dislike.”

“…”

Yes, that sounded a lot more like that human who always took the cynical view.

But in that case…

“Could Great Demon Coronzon be referred to as a great god by some other religion?”

“Fool. Even Mathers rejected that idea. He called her an absolute evil to all humanity who was equally and uniformly opposed even when comparing every last myth and legend.”

“But Crowley supported the idea that she is a relative evil who ''appears evil'' from a certain viewpoint.”

A pure evil that did only evil.

Could such a being really exist?

To him that sounded like a strange magnet with only a north pole.

“People on the side of evil tend to be strict about the rules, don’t they?” said Takitsubo. “They have a lot of inviolable rules and strong bonds with their companions. Mugino is like that. If Coronzon is evil but doesn’t need that solid core, then she really isn’t human.”

But Coronzon herself believed they could exist. Which was the source of her self-loathing. She believed her great power was an irregular “distortion” a lot like a monopole. She thought it could only tear people apart. She thought it was twisted and wrong, so no matter how powerful she was, she could never be proud of herself. …If she could, none of this would ever have happened.

Whether or not Aleister’s theory was correct, Othinus arrived at a conclusion.

“Because she is a demon who doesn’t follow the rules, she might have full use off the techniques and fields not approved by Christianity. The rules don’t bind her.”

Mikoto put a hand on her hip and asked Index a question.

“Look, I don’t get any of this occult mumbo jumbo, so can you just tell us where to go?”

“If she is using Zeus’s symbols, a track stadium. His symbols are the sky, thunder, mountains, fatherhood, and many more. He’s the most important god, so he has a lot of attributes. But in this case, there aren’t many symbols Coronzon can use for her spell.”

Kamijou didn’t even have time to ask why.

Index was the star of the show at times like this.

“Zeus is generally a sky god. But Coronzon wants a way to the control the ley lines in the ground, which is the complete opposite. So we can ignore almost all of his attributes.”

“Hm? If it’s that much of a mismatch, why would she use Zeus in the first place?” asked Kamijou.

Othinus and Index both answered him.

“Because, human, he is the top god. He’s powerful enough you don’t want to reject him out of hand.”

“Not relying on Zeus in a district of athletic stadiums is like trying to win a soccer game without ever touching the ball.”

That made sense.

Zeus was a famous enough god that even Kamijou was familiar with him (from manga and games), so his power would be obvious and great. If Coronzon could use it, she would of course want to, but since he was a mismatch for her current objective, she wanted a connector to link the ingredient with her plan.

…Or something like that?

He felt like the situation was similar to a fugitive getting an airplane but having trouble taking off in it.

“So because Zeus is such an important god, he has a lot of different attributes? Then what part of Zeus is Coronzon trying to use? You said he’s a sky god, but she needs an attribute related to deep underground, right? Then what exactly is she going to-”

“Rain,” she replied immediately. “There’s a legend saying the current world is so full of different gods and heroes because Uranus and Zeus were joined with many earth goddesses through the rain that falls from heaven. …Touma, is there anywhere those intersect? For example, a place where a long waterway for rainwater passes directly below a large track stadium?”

===Part 4===

It was a dreary place.

The room was large but plain. Like a big metal box. And it was chilly.

Isabella Theism, a necromancer with silver hair and dark skin, took a look around.

“Why…am I alive?”

No one answered her.

Kihara Goukei was it? Had that bio-monster transported an enemy who would have died if just abandoned on the side of the road?

Cigarette smoke lingered thinly in the air.

So was that Stiyl Magnus on the other side of the locked door? He showed no mercy. If Isabella took any careless action, he wouldn’t hesitate to burn her away with 3000-degree flames.

(True Voodoo priests are apparently immune to fire, but I’m only making use of their techniques and haven’t mastered it to that extent.)

Besides, there were no gaps in the thick metal door. It had probably been welded shut by those same 3000-degree flames. Only a magician who could burn through the metal could open the door.

Isabella searched through her rags to check on her possessions. Unsurprisingly, all of the obviously dangerous items had been confiscated. However, these rags patched together from the clothes of several dead people had a lot of hidden pockets. She stuck a finger through the sloppy stitching and…yep, there it was.

Something stirred in the corner of her vision.

“?”

She only now realized she wasn’t alone in here. It wasn’t an Anglican magician keeping an eye on her. If it was, they would have stopped her by now.

That meant this was someone else under surveillance like her.

(What is this unnatural lack of vitality? I specialize in life and death and even I overlooked his presence.)

“Who are you?”

“''Hamazura Shiage''.”

Even as he responded, he seemed about as lively as withered grass.

He was Japanese…but he didn’t seem to be one of those Amakusas who Kanzaki Kaori had brought along. There was no scent of magic on the high schooler.

Then why had he been arrested by the Anglicans? He was a completely ordinary person…but that mismatch with his surroundings made him an uncanny sight here.

(It feels like being placed in front of ''too cheap'' of ingredients.)

It was uncanny, but if he wasn’t going to get in her way, she saw no reason to eliminate him.

She had no intention of staying in this prison with a stranger. She pulled out the spiritual item – or really, the materials to create one – hidden inside her rags.

(There’s a chance a scanning spell would detect the faint magic power emanating from a completed spiritual item…but the materials are no more than ordinary goods and ingredients. Slipping past checks like that is so useful.)

“What are you doing?”

“Escaping. I don’t have anything to do here.”

Isabella pulled out a small lime. One with a branch thinner than a matchstick still attached. She sliced it in two without a knife and squeezed one half to sprinkle the juice on the outdoor wall opposite the door.

A chemical smoke burst forth as if she had used a powerful acid.

A hole visibly grew until it was more than two meters in diameter.

That wall was no more than metal. Breaking through was easy if you had the appropriate magical knowledge. Plus, lemons, limes, and other acidic fruits were common components of Voodoo magic. It was used in an emergency antidote for zombie powder and in the lime poison created by combining the various toxins and antidotes found in the lime.

“Stiyl…wouldn’t have noticed. With the thick metal door fused shut, he wouldn’t be able to hear any of the noise I’m making in here.”

He would have any number of ways of stopping her if he did notice, though.

The delinquent-looking boy had a surprisingly mild reaction.

He was imprisoned. He would normally leap at the chance to escape without even considering the consequences.

“What I meant is, what do you hope to accomplish by escaping?”

“No matter what anyone else says and no matter how ugly a choice it may be…I will always do what I think is most necessary. Right now, that means defeating Great Demon Coronzon and bringing stability back to the world.”

===Part 5===

Done talking, the brown woman who reeked of death departed into the outside world.

She likely had something to do.

Unlike Hamazura.

(What do I do now?)

Hamazura Shiage lacked that level of motivation.

He had bet his entire life on Coronzon…and lost.

He was worried about Takitsubo Rikou, but he didn’t think she was in that much danger as long as she was within Academy City. After all, she was a high-level esper theorized to possibly become the eighth Level 5.

If he didn’t want any stray shots, or accurate sniper shots pretending to be one, hitting her, it was best if he stayed away while he was a fugitive.

Which meant…

“Oh, I know. What about Coronzon?”

Where had she gone?

He was worried about her too. She wanted to destroy the current rotten world and create a clean new world. Something must be happening that made her feel that way. What if this world was already damaged beyond repair but that damage simply wasn’t visible?

Then what exactly was happening? He wanted to speak with her.

Despite his earlier strong words, he did want to live with Takitsubo.

So he wanted to know what was going to happen.

However, wouldn’t Coronzon have to be in a dangerous position if he was able to catch up to her in his state? He really wanted her at least to escape the city soon…

===Part 6===

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had returned to the District 10 prison.

The facility doubled as the new Board Chairman’s headquarters.

It was guarded by several layers of thick metal doors, metal bars, and all sorts of sensors, but that meant nothing to an artificial demon who could freely switch between corporeal and incorporeal forms.

“I-I’m back.”

No response.

She may have expected that.

In the single-occupant cell, a frail figure lay on the bed.

Surrounded by medical equipment.

The only sound was a rhythmic beeping and a pump expanding and contracting to push out air.

…His body hadn’t been in perfect working order to begin with. Brain damage had left him reliant on a modern design cane and he couldn’t even understand human speech without the choker-style electrode around his neck.

Even so.

It was far too painful to see him lying in the bed like that.

Academy City’s #1 could not live on his own.

He was kept alive by all the machines hooked up to him.

“Master…” weakly called the demon girl.

“Monitor fragments have pierced every part of his body.”

Even a prison had doctors.

Serious illness did not cancel out a prisoner’s sentence, so in a way it was the natural arrangement.

It was their job to keep the prisoners alive in whatever form it took.

“Some are right next to major arteries and organs, making them too dangerous to touch without care. Removing them will be very difficult… But that isn’t enough to explain his condition. If it were simple blood loss keeping him unconscious, the transfusion should be showing effects by now.”

“I know…”

“?”

Yes, she didn’t have time for sorrow.

The new Board Chairman would never wake up ''naturally'' in this state. That had been obvious at first glance, which was why someone needed to externally induce a recovery.

These wounds were magical in nature.

They were scars of an attack from Great Demon Coronzon, a being beyond human understanding.

That meant magical knowledge was a requirement to heal him.

(I will heal you, so please wait until I can, master.)

Something beeped.

But it wasn’t the medical equipment. It came from something like an intercom on the wall.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know if she had the right, but everyone else watched the device from a distance and made no move to touch it. She had no choice but to press the button and answer.

It displayed a familiar female secretary who ordinarily helped with the paperwork.

“What is it?”

“We have a visitor for the Board Chairman. He doesn’t have an appointment, but will you meet with him?”

“No appointment? Then send him awa-”

“He is Oniyama of the Board of Directors. Will you still refuse him?”

A visitor.

And at this precise moment.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 said for him to wait, but when she went out, he was already within the special security zone. Left alone, who knows how much he would have explored.

All of the jailers and guards looked afraid. Apparently it was up to the artificial demon to say this.

“Only the Board Chairman is allowed in here. What are you doing here!?”

“Oniyama Rouze.”

The old man’s eyes shined with the greed of a much younger man.

“I am one of Academy City’s 12 Directors. That comes with certain privileges.”

His words dripped with arrogance.

So what if he was one of the Directors? Just because there weren’t many of them didn’t mean they could enter this place without permission. Just think of the Windowless Building from when Aleister was at the top. No one should be here without its master’s permission.

(Has Academy City collapsed to that extent!?)

Oniyama was the Director with a focus on vehicles, including automobiles, ships, and aircraft.

And there had been suspicions he was interested in expanding into the military field. The military had its own specialists, but those who controlled those unscrupulous military forces – Shiokishi, Nakimoto, Neoka – tended to drop out or be replaced quickly due to that very unscrupulousness. A perfect opportunity for those who were hoping to break into that field.

To be blunt, she had a bad feeling about his presence.

“How bad are his injuries?”

He was too casual.

If Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know Great Demon Coronzon was responsible, she would have suspected this man.

“Why are you here without even making an appointment?”

“I am here to give you a valuable warning, so watch your tone.”

“Nothing you say changes the fact that I only have one master!!”

“My point is that your behavior calls your master’s civility into question. The unintelligent never seem to wait for people to finish, which makes speaking with them so tiring.”

He snorted with laughter.

And then got back on topic.

“The situation is too pressing to wait for the Chairman’s recovery.”

“Kh.”

“Academy City is using all of its scientific knowledge to search for the culprit, yet we have turned up empty-handed. That makes this an unknown situation. And ignoring it shows no sign of improvement. Someone must grab the reins and take control soon. Before serious damage is done.”

He said that like the new Board Chairman’s injuries did not count as “serious damage”.

As it were a trivial matter.

Not worth any concern.

Even though the very top of the city had been directly attacked and remained unconscious.

“…You look happy about this.”

“Surely you jest. I am only doing my job. If the Chairman is unable to fulfill his duties, don’t you think his privileges should be temporarily transferred to a third party? I am not asking for his eternal expulsion from the throne through dismissal or impeachment. I am only suggesting someone else take over his duties until he comes to.”

“You just want the Master Key.”

“Ah, so you read me like a book.”

“And just how many people were you planning to kill using those next-gen weapons!?”

The Master Key looked like a smartphone, but it gave full privileges over everything in Academy City. It was stuffed full of passwords, passcodes, access keys, and other such data.

Including for military facilities and equipment.

Academy City’s functions and military might would eventually recover. If it were handed over to someone else, something terrible would happen. And if it fell into the hands of a Director who knew enough about diplomacy and war, it could lead to a war with any place on the planet.

She was a demon.

She knew just how twisted the world was.

And in that knowledge, she had placed her hopes in the #1. She had decided the world was still worth protecting. So she couldn’t allow the world to be destroyed now while the new Board Chairman lingered on the verge of death. No matter what.

“But the Master Key is a dangerous power. Who can you trust it with, if not me and my knowledge of diplomacy and military matters? Noncommittal Kaizumi? Surely not that pacifist Oyafune?”

“They would be better than you at least…”

“Oh, dear. So you, the guardian of the Master Key, are unaware just how dangerous it is. Listen, ''even someone who doesn’t know how to use it can lose control.'' I was fine with leaving it in the Chairman’s hands since he is the #1. I trusted that someone who has killed so many people would know very well how to handle that kind of threat. But leaving it in the hands of someone who has no familiarity with deadly power would be suicide. Suicide on a planetary scale.”

“Leave! If you don’t wish for the Board Chairman to recover, people could see that as contempt of the chain of command. I will not give you the Master Key. Only my master has the right to grant it to someone else. So please leave now!!”

The old man took a step back without taking his eyes off her.

He was not intimidated.

The smile on his face conveyed a clear message: I don’t even need to return here. You will come crying to me by the end.

“Academy City is a heavy burden to bear. Contact me when you are ready to give up.”

“Leave!!!”

===Part 7===

Footsteps trudged through the snow.

Kihara Goukei was bloody and woozy.

“Ughh, I’m so dizzy…”

She had rescued Urekawa Ousuke, the miracle child born of Academy City, and then handed that goddamn Necromancer to the Anglicans who seemed to have invaded the city (even though they didn’t seem to be soldiers?), but she had gotten badly torn up in the process. Three computer chips, two bacteria colonies, one pea crab, and what else? 99% of the secret ingredients giving her her “Kihara-ness” had been destroyed.

She had only one heart left. That was fine. Everyone else only had one too.

She couldn’t get spoiled.

She was running dry, so she needed nutrients. Her powerful regeneration was working against her. Like this, she would eventually dry up into a husk. Before that happened, she needed sugar, salt, fat, protein, calcium, various vitamins and minerals, and more.

(Why do all the restaurants have to close early today of all days? There would usually be at least an izakaya or family restaurant open.)

“Oh.”

She spotted a vending machine.

The small glowing display shined bright in the darkness. It actually had power.

(Oui, oui. Vending machines are cleverly designed to continue functioning even after a fire or other disaster. Oh, I’m saved.)

And it wasn’t a drink or bread machine. It was one of the unique varieties you spotted from time to time. Specifically, this odd kind of vending machine that sold things like wagyu sukiyaki meals on the side of the street. And one of the large sample photo on this one showed…

“On this freezing night with my breath visible before me I find…ramen!! Oh, that has such a sinful ring to it. But I must do this to regain what my body has lost. How merveilleuse it is to have an actual excuse. Hwa ha ha ha ha ha! Behold, world!! I choose the piping hot tonkotsu ramen!! I am freed from all guilt as I ingest this unhealthy meal in the middle of the night!!!”

Even among the Kiharas, facing your own death was something only an oddity could do. It was a good thing the vending machine let you pay with a train card. …All of her paper money would have absorbed too much blood by this point.

A clunking sound came from the machine.

(Oh, that sounds harder than I would expect.)

With a noodles vending machine, she had imagined something like a better version of a coffee vending machine: first a styrofoam bowl, then the drained noodles and other ingredients, and finally the hot soup slowly pouring in.

Silence surrounded her.

Nothing happened after the initial clunking.

Kihara Goukei crouched down and nervously opened the overly large door to check.

“Is this…a frozen food vending machine!?”

It was rock solid.

The instructions on the package said you could enjoy restaurant quality flavor after only 15 minutes in the microwave.

Was she supposed to stand around in this freezing weather for those 15 minutes?

All she had was a solid object that could probably kill someone if applied forcefully to the cranium.

“Uhh…”

Yet she really would dry up and die without something to eat. Surrounded by a freezing night with red snow covering the road, Kihara Goukei had no choice but to tear open the package, pull out the rectangular block, hold it in both hands, and gnaw on it. Yeah, it was not a flavorful experience. Sure, it had salt and fat, but that didn’t go well with the ice!! The white-frozen pieces of pork fat were especially bad. Was this some kind of divine punishment?

“?”

Suddenly, she felt like she was being watched.

There was someone, or something, here.

She found the gaze surprisingly nearby. Looking up at her.

It belonged to…a girl of around 10?

“Misaka has never seen someone eat a popsicle in the winter! says Misaka as Misaka checks the package. Tonkotsu ramen! …Misaka doesn’t remember that Gorigori-kun flavor.”

“What are you doing here? And please feel free to call me Madame Gou.”

“Well, Misaka needs to get to District 10, but she doesn’t know where it is, says Misaka as Misaka explains her predicament.”

“Eh? District 10?”

Wasn’t that the district of battles and machos, said to be the most dangerous in the city? And the girl only looked around 10, so what was she doing out alone at night?

(And if I send her back the way she came, um, oh dear. Aren’t those giant bugs and sea creatures made of weird blonde hair wandering around there?)

Kihara Goukei wept.

This sounded like trouble to her.

First Urekawa and now this. Was tonight the night for running into small children? Was it some kind of bonus mode?

“Where is District 10?”

“The complete opposite direction, so please don’t look at me…”

“If you know the way, then tell Misaka! says Misaka as Misaka begs you!”

“One heart. Just one left. Another death and I really will die… I-I’ve done more than enough already, haven’t I? I already saved Urekawa Ousuke-kun in the very middle of the night, so I really want to get home and sleep until-”

“No! ''Help me, Madame Gou''!!”

“Neh heh☆ …Well, you drive a hard bargain. When you put it like that, I can’t go to sleep now, can IIIIIIII!?”

===Part 8===

On the roof of a far distant skyscraper, one of the mass-produced military clones known as the Sisters removed her eye from the scope of a large sniper rifle.

“She doesn’t appear to be a threat, concludes Misaka #10032.”

“Doesn’t appear to be? Are you glitching? What kind of fuzzy opinion is that for a living computer?”

“It is called personal growth.”

She had grown enough to make casual remarks over the Misaka Network at any rate.

Misaka Worst, who was tuned to pick up on the especially malicious emotions within that vast network composed of countless identical brainwave signals, responded with exasperation in her voice.

“This is all because you discussed that stuff on the Misaka Network, you know? Have you forgotten that mini-Misaka is your host and control tower? She can hear everything you say, even if it’s in your sleep.”

“You mean that our ability to control electricity might be able to force open the lock on the new Board Chairman’s Master Key? asks Misaka for confirmation.”

“No, that screwing it up would destroy the Master Key! If it turns out the only way forward is for the #1 to wake up, then of course the little one’s going to try and do something about it. Goddammit, what a pain. …But Yoshikawa’s the real loser here. She’s locked in her room with nothing to do. Cause the great Last Order used her power to hack the electric lock.”

“Then wouldn’t it be best to send her straight there? Also, that person appears to be a Kihara, which should come in handy on the way, says Misaka, providing her opinion.”

“Then are we finally going to stop playing stalker? Misaka doesn’t want to hold onto this sniper rifle in this cold-ass weather any longer. Misaka is afraid her cheek is going to freeze to the metal.”

“If you are fine with that immortality expert getting her hands on clone technology, responds Misaka. Misaka checked her spec sheet and it would be a real pain if she learned to multiply herself.”

“…When can Misaka finally get back to bed?”

“As if you have any intention of doing that.”

===Part 9===

Great Demon Coronzon slipped through the darkness like a shadow.

She had chosen a stadium that was unusually large even among the outdoor track stadiums. Everything she currently sought was contained there. Here she could convert her physical body into a massive amount of Telesma energy. Once that was done, she only had to send herself into the current of a ley line running underground. She would still be limited to the planet, but that would allow her to instantly escape anywhere on Earth, even the opposite side of the planet.

Wasn’t its maximum capacity 255 thousand?

The outdoor type without a dome was easier to scale up in size, but this felt like overdoing it.

Academy City had a population of 2.3 million, so a full tenth of the population could be crammed inside.

Humans were apparently frail beings who were afflicted by loneliness when standing alone in a massive artificial space, but she was a being known as a great demon.

She felt nothing amiss as she walked toward the center.

Other than the wrongness of her own existence.

“Sitra Achra, hm?”

Coronzon rolled that term around on her tongue.

And smiled cynically.

Sitra Achra could be described as the substance that caused evil. The current world, from the tiny humans to the vast world itself, could supposedly be fully described using the diagram called the Sephiroth, but there were some impurities which did not fit into the grand Sephiroth. Those impurities were Sitra Achra. They were ruins – shards – of the old world which was destroyed to create the current one. They were the substance that caused evil. They had no place in the current world, had no role, and should not have remained, so their very existence obstructed the system of the current age. Like pebbles caught in the gears.

The world god had created was perfect.

Things only went awry because of the extraneous impurities mixed in.

(Sounds like me.)

Shadow covered her face as she silently expressed this only silently.

Even though self-deprecation could not turn evil into good.

She had always questioned it.

Why hadn’t she become an angel of love? Or an angel of righteousness?

If she had been…

If she had been given that role…

…She would have poured herself into that work more diligently than anyone else.

If god had known from the beginning that Coronzon would rebel against heaven and turn evil and had let her go ahead and do it because it was part of some kind of plan of his, then she would ''overdo'' the role god had given her and ruin that plan.

God was an absolute being, but he did not save all lives.

Everyone accepted that even their misfortunes would be given meaning and purpose if they obeyed god.

But the very existence of that system meant he had known from the beginning there would be victims. He had known and let it happen. For some grand plan of his.

Coronzon’s role was to tear people apart. Why should she obey someone who had abandoned her?

So she had decided to use everything given to her and ''overdo'' it. That way she could obliterate that heartless plan without betraying her purpose.

She would dedicate herself to her evil identi-

…?

At that point, she tilted her head.

No, wait. She had noticed it this time.

Her memories skipped a few seconds.

“Dammit, not again…Aleister!!”

She held a hand to her head.

She had finally managed to prepare this place for her ceremony, but she would have to leave if word reached Kamijou’s group.

Coronzon started to panic…but then it hit her.

A few seconds.

She stood in the very center of an enormous stadium. She had no computer or smartphone to contact anyone and there were no old-fashioned payphones in sight. So even if Aleister had hijacked her body, he couldn’t have done anything in that time. She could ignore the outrage if it only lasted a few seconds.

On the other hand…

(It’s good I noticed it this time, but was the gap itself longer than before?)

She had a bad feeling about this.

Was Aleister starting to get the hang of it? That concern crept up in the back of her mind. Losing consciousness for even a second in the middle of a battle with her pursuers could be fatal. And even if that didn’t happen, Aleister could attempt suicide if he took control for long enough.

He would do it.

Especially now that he viewed her as his enemy and had killing her as his primary objective.

Directly comparing their specs wasn’t enough to rest easy. Aleister had won the Battle of Blythe Road after all.

Coronzon consciously took a deep breath.

(I need to shift my focus.)

Not only were there other stadiums, but magic materials could be found anywhere. After all, Aleister Crowley had built this city during the confusion of the postwar recovery. It was an alternate form for the Abbey of Thelema. It had been deftly hidden by repainting it all in the terms of science, but it would be hard to find places and objects here without magical symbolism.

Coronzon only had to collect the items that were already present.

She wouldn’t have any difficulty as long she knew the proper way to combine them.

She could begin the ceremony at any time.

The only problem was how long it would take.

…No matter how much she tried to shorten that time, she couldn’t reduce it to zero. And she would be entirely defenseless in that time. She was the Coronzon who had destroyed legendary magicians like Mathers and Aleister, but during that time she could be killed even by an ordinary human.

“…”

Coronzon shut her eyes, held her breath, and searched for any sounds around her.

She was focused on the area outside the stadium.

(My greatest enemy is the time limit. Because I’m sure they’re searching for me with everyone they have. Weak as they are, hiding from them is a pain when there are so many of them. For once I need to look out for weaklings because this crucial ceremony will be ruined if they interfere in the middle of it.)

===Part 10===

When they checked the map based on Index’s advice, the answer was obvious.

Kamijou pointed at a spot on the large map.

“The General Athletics Stadium. …It’s gotta be this, right? It’s a track stadium and there’s a huge underground waterway running below it!”

“If Coronzon is using Zeus symbolism for a ceremony to send her through a ley line, then it must be there.”

The white girl sounded confident.

It wasn’t like they had any other leads to go on, so Kamijou had to trust in this one.

“Fool.”

Someone else called out to him.

Anna Sprengel.

“I double-checked it all just to be safe, and everything the grimoire library said checks out. Her calculations are correct, so Coronzon should be at the General Athletics Stadium. The only question left is if we arrive in time.”

The Amakusas were magicians who blended into modern society, so they all knew how to drive. …Kamijou preferred not to think about where they had procured so many vehicles in Academy City, but it would be best to make use of them now.

And just as he was thinking that, his eyes met another pair of eyes.

But these definitely weren’t human.

They were compound eyes.

A carnivorous dragonfly more than three meters long was gliding at eye level.

It was made of blonde hair.

“Coronzon’s…scouts!?”

“Stupid bug jamboree!!”

He heard an odd voice just before a blonde young woman drop-kicked the giant dragonfly from the side, sending it flying. She was the Transcendent Bologna Succubus.

“Just when I thought I’d caught up on foot, this is what I find? When do I get a breather!?”

“Pant, gasp… M-my coat…is so heavy with…the steel armor and the terrariums…I’m dyiiiiiing…”

Even as she complained, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet deflected the scouts’ attacks with her thick coat. …Wait, did she just protect the Bologna Succubus?

However, squashing a single dragonfly wasn’t enough to turn the tide.

There were butterflies, hornets, stag beetles, flies, and more.

Kanzaki raised her voice.

“If she’s sending these out, it must mean we’re getting close!”

It didn’t feel like Coronzon was trying to lay low and hide anymore. Did she want to buy time even if it made her more conspicuous?

She really was here.

In District 20. Index, Anna Sprengel, and the others had been right.

…The question was whether or not these scouts were passing information back to Coronzon. Either way, it would be best not to waste time here.

“We need to strike before she can get away!!” shouted Kamijou.

===Part 11===

The scouts sent out by Great Demon Coronzon included three meter dragonflies and hornets.

Kamijou immediately clenched his right fist, but nothing would be more annoying than having a group of 20 or 30 drop from the sky all at once. Kihara Noukan turned his way and shouted.

“Be careful. If they grab onto you and carry you up high, you will be playing a deadly version of the crane game!”

He couldn’t let the flying scouts use the powerful weapon that was height.

Plus, the stag beetle ones wouldn’t even need lift him up. They could crush or slice his body right here on the ground.

“Get inside, it doesn’t matter where!!”

On Kanzaki’s instructions, Kamijou and Mikoto practically tackled open the door to a nearby building.

They ran further inside. When they reached a more open space, they found something odd there.

A frozen pool?

No, was it a skating rink?

Kamijou wasn’t familiar with them and had imagined them as something like a massive cold storage warehouse, but was this skating rink actually warmer than outside?

“They’re coming. Those weird bugs are coming!!”

“Wait, Misaka! Don’t use your Railgun down a straight corridor! Are you trying to hit our friends!?”

Lucia, Angelene, and more of the Former Agnese Force jumped on the giant flies as a group. That still wasn’t enough offensive power, but it slowed the scouts enough for Blodeuwedd the Bouquet and Anna Sprengel to finish them off with stronger attacks.

The scouts were powerful. They were, but they weren’t Great Demon Coronzon herself. The scouts made of her blonde hair were not unbeatable!

“In that case…”

“Hm? Lad, don’t let your guard down!!”

A supposedly defeated scout stirred.

No, a large quantity of something burst from the giant stag beetle’s body. Flat ovals about fifty centimeters long poured out like a slot machine jackpot. There were more than a hundred of them and they were all wriggling. And squirming.

There were more scouts…inside the scouts?

And a ton of them!!

“Ahhhhhhh!?”

Kamijou backed away, more creeped out than afraid of the threat they posed. The small scouts leaped at the boy one after another.

Itsuwa sharply jabbed her spear out to guard him, but she grimaced.

“They’re hard. Are they based on parasitic shellfish!?”

“You mean the more enemies we defeat, the more of them there will be? Hard to think of a better way to buy time!” shouted Othinus.

Kamijou’s group would be overwhelmed by the enemy army.

Sounds like collapsing piles of sand came from all around.

“Wow!”

Alice Anotherbible was the only one capable of smiling as they swarmed around her. A normal human would be bitten into tiny pieces if they tried that!!

They would be killed if they didn’t defeat the attacking scouts, but defeating the scouts only allowed them to multiply.

It was a vicious cycle.

…And Kamijou had only thought of these things as scouts made of blonde hair. But he felt pity for them now that he saw them forced to fight, writhing in pain as they burst from within, and releasing a flood of other monsters.

“Fool, now isn’t the time. If you stop, we will be killed!”

Great Demon Coronzon.

Even if she was fighting for her life, she shouldn’t force her own side to do this.

A dull crash broke through Kamijou’s thoughts.

It came from directly in front of him. The skating rink’s wall broke through and a giant rotary snowplow emerged from the side. The row of scouts in its path were crushed and sliced up by the rotating blades.

The fluffy blonde Amakusa was operating it.

Kamijou had seen her a few times before. Wasn’t her name Tsushima?

“Hop on!! Coronzon is our top priority, so we can’t waste our time with these things!!”

There was no reason to stick around here. The giant rotating blades on the front and the snow expulsion device sticking out the side like an elephant’s trunk looked dangerous, but Kamijou grabbed into something like a short ladder on the side. Only after the heavy snowplow begin to move did he notice something.

“W-where’s Index!? And Misaka too!”

“I’m not the only Amakusa. And everyone will soon think to use snowmobiles and other vehicles capable of driving on this red snow. We all have the same destination, so we’ll meet back up with them if we head to the track stadium!!”

A few others managed to jump onto the snowplow. He saw Kanzaki and Itsuwa among them.

A three meter dragonfly was still stubbornly pursuing them, but it was shot down by a beam of light. Neither Kanzaki nor Itsuwa had done that. Apparently another vehicle was following them.

Eventually, no more hornets and stag beetles could be seen.

Kamijou sighed and leaned against the rotary snowplow that rattled along on its continuous tracks.

“Well…it certainly is a good thing that Tsushima was there to help us, human,” said the 15cm god.

“Yeah, it really was. Life is so much easier when you have a capable young woman around. Thanks.”

“…Ohh?” “…Ohh?”

“(Wait, did I just step on some deadly landmine here. And to make matters worse, two of them at once?)”

A secret light shined sharply from Kanzaki Kaori and Itsuwa’s eyes and Tsushima wept in the driver’s seat.

===Part 12===

It was late at night. 1 AM had come and gone.

When you imagined a late night hospital, did you think of a horror story? Or something more risque? After many long years working here, the frog-faced doctor knew neither option was likely. When you worked there day in and day out, even a special location became no more than a routine. The fear faded and any weird expectations vanished.

Of course, he wouldn’t normally be working on this shift, but today was a special day. He hadn’t gotten any rest during the day either.

A young medical intern gave him a worried look.

“You need to get some sleep, doctor. You’re no good to us here if you pass out.”

“If I could get some free time…yes, there is something I should do, so can you cover things here?”

“Doctor!” the intern called after him, but this was his nature. He wanted to save every patient he could.

If Kamijou Touma was already dead, then there was nothing to be done.

But what if the boy was still alive?

Then he was the frog-faced doctor’s patient.

If a patient had received improper treatment, it was a doctor’s duty to save them.

(What a pain. Where do I even start with determining if a supposedly dead person is alive or dead? The guidelines for brain death would probably be best. Or mayb-)

He left the hospital.

And some strange thing attacked him only three steps out the door.

“Eh?”

If he had to describe it, he would have called it a golden crab standing more than three meters tall.

Even after seeing the pincer raised high, the frog-faced doctor only managed to get out a confused sound.

He did not properly understand the danger.

Yes.

He had no way of knowing since he knew nothing of magic, but his hospital was in District 7. That was the area where Coronzon had scattered so many of her scouts made of blonde hair.

And Coronzon had been so focused on escaping she hadn’t actually ordered them to stop.

Which meant they were still acting on orders to protect the ceremonial ground for Adikalika – the former site of the Windowless Building.

A pleasant slashing sound raced out.

The frog-faced doctor did not shed a single drop of blood.

It was sliced vertically.

The blonde hair scout’s bisected halves scattered to either side.

His eyes widened in confusion as a dark, lithe figure whispered to him.

“It is a pleasure to see you again, doctor.”

===Part 13===

In the District 20 skating rink, Misaka Mikoto had definitely seen that pointy-haired boy on the side of a large rotary snowplow.

And it had happened as the vehicle drove right past her.

She had been left behind.

“I want to shoot that idiot so bad.”

She flicked up arcade coins and launched a few Railguns at the monsters as she retreated from the skating rink proper into a narrow corridor.

The more she defeated, the more of them there were, which couldn’t have been much more annoying.

And the initial dragonflies and stag beetles were powerful enough already, so she would be killed if she didn’t fight back. There was no room for holding back.

(Are the others retreating somewhere too? There isn’t time to ask where we’ll meet up next, so I’ll just have to magnetically attach myself to one of the vehicles’ roofs.)

And all of a sudden, something occurred to Misaka Mikoto.

“…Wait.”

(If that idiot is alive, then why am I even wearing mourning clothes? Ahhh, how long am I going to keep wearing this cumbersome outfit? Now I feel like I’ve been making a fool of myself!!)

This was a sports facility, so would they have rental sportswear anywhere? Even a track suit or jumpsuit would be fine. She was willing to ignore how it looked if it was at least warm and didn’t restrict her movements!!

But this was a skating rink.

That meant any clothing would be for skating.

Such as a painfully bright lemon yellow figure skating uniform.

“U-um, would you call this a skating dress?”

It wouldn’t restrict her movements since it was designed for sports use. Combined with the bladeless shoes meant for the staff, she would have no trouble moving around. At the very least, she would have a much easier time of it than in this Japanese clothing. But why did it have to have a miniskirt? Or should she think of it more like a swimsuit’s pareo? Either way, it wasn’t something for walking around town in!

“B-but it’s so cold! What choice do I have!?”

She had decided herself she was willing to ignore how it looked.

It would certainly protect her from the biting chill of the January night.

It left less skin exposed than she had expected. Because it covered her with a skin-colored material.

But that was a problem of its own. The thin synthetic fiber was like wearing a full-body stocking. A terrifying thought for someone who tended to get zappy at the drop of a hat!

===Part 14===

Kamijou and the others arrived at a dark shape so large they truly had to look up to see it all.

This was the General Athletics Stadium.

Its size was apparent even from the outside.

Its diameter alone had to be hundreds of meters.

Instead of a dome covering it, it was apparently an outdoor stadium. Still, tall walls surrounded it on all sides. Those would be for the tiered seating, but they were just as tall as a four story building. So the same as a school building. This meant there was no seeing inside from out here.

Several other vehicles joined the rotary snowplow operated by Tsushima.

Index and Misaka Mikoto were among them.

“Thank good- woah! Misaka, what are you wearing!?”

“Don’t look at me!! Don’t look at my new and improved flavor with 20% extra at the same great price!!”

Her retort was as unusual as her outfit.

Was this the higher rarity version that showed more skin, or had she been unable to bear the cold and chose to rely on a figure skating outfit? He wished she would stop tugging down on the miniskirt-like part because that only drew his eye there all the more.

The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet were both tilting their heads (in friendly synchronization?). …Yeah, they probably wouldn’t get what the big deal was when they had no trouble walking around in the frigid January night in their underwear or a naked apron.

But focusing on this wasn’t going to lead them to Coronzon.

Kamijou was curious about something.

“The tall walls keep us from seeing inside. I hope that also means Coronzon can’t see out.”

“Does it mean that? Wouldn’t a great demon be able to use clairvoyance or remote viewing?”

Tracking expert Takitsubo brought up a difficult topic.

“In modern Western magic, clairvoyance isn’t a means of seeing the contents of a closed envelope. It’s a ceremony used for spiritual meditation.”

Kanzaki provided an explanation, but it was hard to grasp without a solid foundation in the magic side.

She had spread out a large map, probably a privilege she had gained by taking control of the city. That she went to the trouble of printing out a paper copy seemed to show she still wasn’t used to the science side, though.

“It was fortunate we could get our hands on the official blueprints. Our numbers work in our favor. First, we should station personnel at each exit. There are more than 20 official gates for spectators and the real number is even greater due to the unofficial entrances for athletes and staff. With the exits blocked, we can begin exploring inside. Once we know where Coronzon is inside the large stadium and how she has modified it for her ceremony, we can launch our attack.”

“Coronzon should be defenseless while she works,” added Index. “Even if we can’t win a straight fight, we should be able to win right now.”

They could win?

Then why not charge in right this instant?

Kamijou couldn’t believe they would stay out when they knew she was in there.

Othinus must have sensed his impatience because she made a piercing comment from his shoulder.

“Wait, human. If Coronzon detects us and runs off, this will all have been a waste of time.”

“Either way, we should carefully investigate the situation inside and gather what information we can. We can always make our attack after all escape routes we are aware of have been covered.”

Kamijou was a little surprise to find Anna Sprengel advocating the cautious option.

Had that wicked woman learned how frightening it was to have everything fall apart at the last second?

“But can we really wait around that long? There’s that ley line thing, right? That direct route running underground that only the great demon can use. We can have her surrounded as much as we want – it won’t matter if she just teleports out of here!”

“Failure puts the entire human race at risk. Great Demon Coronzon will be able to do more than just this.”

Was that why she didn’t want anyone spying on her from the sky?

After giving a skeptical look at the Bologna Succubus (or her clothing more likely), Kanzaki nodded in agreement.

“We mustn’t forget that she will have escaped if she physically crosses the city wall.”

“But we don’t know the time limit!!”

“It won’t be in the next 5 or 10 minutes at least. That gives us time to take it slow, human.”

===Part 15===

“Hm.”

Great Demon Coronzon put a hand on her hip and observed her surroundings.

She stood at the very center of the enormous stadium.

“That completes the ceremonial ground. And the attribute extracted from the stadium as a whole gives me what I need. Direction, time, number…and the actual spiritual item in my hands: the tattva cards.”

She held a few colorful cards.

However, these cards were not historical antiques.

They were only symbols meant to help one enter the special mental state of meditation, so as long as the colors and symbols were correct, the material was immaterial. They were in fact made by coloring cardstock with thick permanent markers she had acquired after breaking the metal shutter covering a stadium shop. (There was probably a demand for materials that spectators could use to make placards or to draw their team’s logo on their face.)

Perhaps the stadium functioned like a giant magical circle with the cards acting as a control medium like a mouse or keyboard.

Coronzon had a physical body, but her true essence was a collection of Telesma energy. Unlike the pure angels, she was a mixture of different elements, which could be a pain, but by breaking them apart, she too could be handled as pure energy.

That meant she could inject herself into a weapon or armor or she could be carried around inside a thin talisman.

Or she could send herself through the ley lines to instantly travel to the other side of the planet.

“Now, time to begin,” she whispered.

===Part 16===

Kamijou was anxious.

Great Demon Coronzon was inside there, but the great size of the stadium worked against them. With more than 20 public gates, entering the wrong way would give Coronzon a chance to escape out a different one.

They needed to know her exact location before heading in.

…He understood the Anglicans’ point, but that didn’t mean he liked it. No matter how well they prepared themselves, Coronzon would disappear if they didn’t arrive in time. Then the world’s doom would begin on the other side of the planet. Coronzon would be able to choose any location she liked, so she could ensure the optimal conditions for herself. The next time would be far worse. Everything might truly be destroyed.

Next to him, Index spoke up. Addressing Kanzaki.

“Are you going to run a search from the outside? Isn’t that dangerous too?”

“It is. She could detect the magic power of a normal through-walls scan. However, we Amakusas have specialized in hiding our faith to avoid persecution, so we know a few tricks we can use.”

Kamijou and Mikoto had no clue what the Amakusas were working on with such determined looks on their faces. At this point, Index and her 103,001 memorized grimoires was the only person they could rely on.

She got it right on the first guess.

“The Maria Kannon?”

“This isn’t how they were originally used, but they were designed to look like an ordinary Buddhist figure while revealing its true face as the Virgin Mary to anyone who knew what to look for. By intentionally taking a broad interpretation of that concept, it can be remade into a camouflage-breaking searching spell to locate that which is hidden.”

===Part 17===

In the very center of the spacious stadium, Great Demon Coronzon sat quietly, regulated her breathing, and placed her index finger against one of the toxically colorful cards lined up on the ground.

Something felt off.

A sensation like a finger pressed between her eyes caused a tingling in the center of her head. Even though she was the one reaching out her finger. No, it was meaningless to think of it in that way.

The two were linked.

To touch it was to be touched.

The line between the self and the other – between the inner world and the outer world – was blurring.

The core of her body distorted. She was uncertain where she was even sitting.

“Kh.”

Her head wobbled. A vertiginous fluctuation interrupted her thoughts.

This was an Eastern mystical philosophy from ancient India.

She knew it wasn’t a good fit for her. A pure and proper angel never could have done it. But she was an impure and wicked being known as a great demon. And the Crowley system said every from of the mystical could be incorporated into your own spells if you reinterpreted it with your own logic. The wise would not give up just because they reached an impasse. They would use the discovery of that impasse to further elevate themselves.

She took deep breaths.

She consciously guided her thoughts toward stability.

She needn’t think of purifying herself.

There didn’t have to be just one answer.

The tattva cards did not work with pure elements in the first place.

Mathers had warned that meditation using those painfully colorful cards could cause intense anxiety or headaches for a mere human if used incorrectly. So how much worse would the damage from failure be for Coronzon as she tried to return herself to a state of pure energy?

She did not approach the true essence of this Eastern mystical philosophy.

The tattva cards were no more than tools used for control. That would have been how the Golden cabal used them too. They were valuable when it came to understanding the five elements, but there would be discrepancies between the cabal’s manual and the actual Eastern philosophy.

(The work has just passed 50%. That would explain why this inner fear and anxiety is taking on such concrete form.)

Coronzon did not move her eyes.

She had to focus her whole mind on ascending straight up.

Thus, any trivial distractions and detours could end up tearing her ego apart.

So she always stared straight ahead, using only the corner of her vision to watch how her own shadow wavered and thinned.

It was progressing well.

Once her shadow fully vanished, she would have also ''physically'' disappeared from Academy City.

The destruction of the world was within reach.

===Part 18===

“How is that search spell going!?” shouted Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

“I-it just passed 70%!” nervously reported Itsuwa.

70%.

That was more than halfway done, but Kamijou and the others didn’t know Coronzon’s status. If she was even a single percentage point ahead of them, they wouldn’t finish in time. It was possible the Anglicans would fully surround the stadium and rush in only to find Coronzon had already vanished.

Othinus sighed from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“There’s no need to wait until it’s 100% complete. We know Coronzon is in this building. So if we attack the small unsearched spots, we can confirm her location by sight.”

“How much of the stadium do you think those ‘small spots’ cover?” strongly retorted Kanzaki. “The search has covered 70% or maybe 80%. We’re risking our lives going in, so we want a little more assurance than that!!”

“What do you think, Touma?” asked Index.

“Hm? We should go in now! Right now!!”

He had no idea why an outsider like him had been asked for his opinion on a magical matter, but he gave his answer right away.

“Tsujiura,” said Index. “Kushiura and Qiu Xiang Bu also work. Those are Eastern, so the Amakusas should be able to use them too.”

“I see. So the idea that the first thing said by someone ignorant of the topic at hand can be used for divination,” said Kanzaki, sounding impressed.

In this case, Kamijou’s ignorance of magic gave his words meaning.

…He felt like this was declaring him useless in this fight, which seemed kind of insulting, but if the experts would listen to what he had to say, he didn’t care why.

Whatever the case, Kamijou’s words set them all into motion.

“Kanzaki will join one of the Amakusa teams, I guess. Okay, Alice!! You go lend Agnese’s group a hand!”

“Hm? The girl would prefer to stay with you, teacher.”

“Please! And Anna, you go with that team including Itsuwa and Tsushima!”

“Fool. I will step on you later.”

They complained, but they still split up.

Even Takitsubo and Kihara Noukan did as he said. They had to know even less about magic than him, but they were still risking their lives to stop this unknown threat.

After all, there were more than twenty public gates. The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force would be blocking all of those exits, but they were dealing with ''the'' Coronzon here. Ordinary magicians weren’t enough. Each team needed an irregular member such as a Saint like Kanzaki Kaori, a Transcendent like the Bologna Succubus or Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, or even a special Transcendent like Anna Sprengel or Alice Anotherbible.

Kamijou didn’t see this as splitting up their forces.

Once they entered the stadium, they would converge on Coronzon’s location. He didn’t want anyone dying in the “blank time” until they broke down the right door and found Coronzon. He was sick of Coronzon being able to choose one of them at random for a one-hit kill lottery. Even if one team was unfortunate enough to run across Coronzon on their way in, they didn’t have to defeat her. Kamijou wanted to give each team someone who could let them survive until the other teams arrived.

Mikoto, who always felt left behind when it came to magical matters, suddenly panicked.

“W-wait, what about me!?”

“You’re with me, of course!! C’mon!!”

“Eh? O-oh…okay.”

Kamijou and Mikoto would enter through the closest gate: Gate 15. Neither knew much about magic, but he figured Othinus’s presence would make up for that. Index’s knowledge was the most important of all, so he couldn’t keep it to himself.

Gate 15 was shut with a metal grate shutter and a glass door, but Mikoto only had to inhale and exhale before it all opened for them. And not just Gate 15. All of the shutters and locks opened at once.

Without waiting for the shutter to fully rise, they ducked below it.

They entered a dark corridor.

And ran.

“Hey, human. Don’t get one-shotted here. Even if Coronzon is busy, she could have sent out those scouts.”

Othinus warned him from his shoulder, but Kamijou didn’t have time to respond. If they were even a second too late, it was all over.

His heart pounded in his ears. He felt like he was going to die on his own without Coronzon having to lift a finger. But he gritted his teeth and kept running.

He wouldn’t let her try again at destroying the world.

He would end this tonight.

===Part 19===

(75%.)

Great Demon Coronzon’s voice no longer vibrated the air.

From her perspective, it was less like her body was unraveling and more like the world around her was changing. Or maybe like she was crossing the boundary between phases. Her coordinates remained the same, but the scene around her changed as if flipping over a page.

Perhaps there was no real difference between the two.

The Golden cabal never managed to send their body across. Thus, their experts had tried to separate just their minds in an act known as astral projection to virtually achieve a leap between phases. They had worked hard to peek into another world like heaven or hell. …And as a result, quite a few magicians had failed to cling to their sanity.

Coronzon’s nearly transparent fingertip passed right through the tattva card.

She was more than halfway on the other side now.

The great demon grinned.

(No more physical control is needed at this point. Now I only have to wait for the process to complete!!)

===Part 20===

Kamijou and Mikoto ran down a long, long corridor.

They couldn’t afford to hide their footsteps now.

Coronzon was so close.

“We’re going to come out into the stands, right? How far is it to the actual sports field!?”

“The actual distance isn’t that far, but the stands aren’t flat. Don’t trip and fall in the darkness, okay?”

Mikoto gave him a surprisingly sincere answer.

There hadn’t been any bright beams of light or explosions yet.

What were Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others doing?

They would have entered through all the entrances at once, but apparently none of the teams had run into Coronzon. They didn’t know where she was hiding to complete her ceremony, but she hadn’t noticed their presence yet. That made this their best chance.

If they failed, it was all over.

(We might not win in a straight fight, but what if she’s immobilized by the important ceremony? This time will be different. This is our only chance to settle things with her!!)

The end of the corridor came into view.

Like a rectangular hole cut out of the darkness.

Kamijou gritted his teeth, clenched his fist, and ran with all his might.

He emerged into a silent space. The flow of time ground to a halt.

No one was there.

The place was deserted.

“What’s…going on?” muttered Kamijou, stopped partway down the stands.

He could hear more people emerging from different directions. But that was all. Even from here, he could see Agnese, the Bologna Succubus, and others looking around in confusion on the other side of the stadium. The great demon wasn’t shining bright as she completed some kind of ceremony and Coronzon didn’t began a fierce battle in an attempt to escape.

Great Demon Coronzon wasn’t here.

It didn’t feel like she had fled in a panic either. There was no warmth in the vast space. It had likely been empty this entire time. Coronzon had never been here. They had chosen the wrong location.

Had their calculations been off?

No, they hadn’t been relying on Index alone. It had been a group effort with help from Anna Sprengel, Kanzaki Kaori, and more from the magic side. And they had been certain Coronzon would use this stadium if she was using Zeus symbolism. So how could they have been wrong!?

“Touma.”

A girl from another group joined him.

Index’s usual childlike air was broken by the trembling voice she forced out.

She seemed hesitant to speak.

“Is this district used for any other special purpose? Other than sports!”

“Huh? Yes. It is a district of stadiums and domes meant to hold tens of thousands of people. I think Aogami Pierce mentioned it being the holy land for idol concerts.”

A quiet thud reached his ears.

Index was unable to support her wobbling body and fell back into one of the seats. The cat mewed in complaint from her arms.

“Then Coronzon wasn’t using sports as the symbol for a sanctuary or temple.”

Her lips quivered.

“Songstresses, plays…she was using the performing arts. Which means it isn’t Zeus! And if she is using a different symbol and a different god, she would be in an entirely different location!!”

===Part 21===

Maximum occupancy: 255 thousand.

Coronzon snorted with laughter when she recalled that extreme number.

…A soccer stadium or baseball stadium could never reach that number even with every seat filled. That display was meant for a concert or live performance where even the field itself was filled with seats.

Coronzon was somewhere like that.

(This district is filled with stadiums and domes. To put it another way, most of them are not the designated home field of a pro team whose games you can watch on a sports app. And “just a stadium” isn’t going to be used just for sports. …District 20’s stadiums probably make most of their income this way. I saw through that right away. And a facility primarily used for concerts is not a Zeus-associated track stadium. To be blunt, this is a large facility built for shows, not for sports.)

She didn’t want Apollo, god of music.

She wanted Dionysus, god of theater.

In ancient Greece, sporting events had been held in sanctuaries as a ceremonial offering to a god, but plays and songs had been made as offering in those same sanctuaries. Thus, holding a concert or live performance in a stadium that could contain a large audience was not a new idea.

Greek theater was the origin of modern stage plays. And the original form of that had been a festival held as an offering to Dionysus, god of alcohol and insanity.

That meant his symbols could be extracted from a large stadium like this.

(The work is past 90%. And yet no pursuit has arrived yet. What’s the matter, humanity? If you let me escape this easily, you will be extinct by tomorrow!!)

===Part 22===

So not sports but music. No, theater.

Not a stadium for sporting events but for concerts and live performances.

When they corrected the initial assumption and had Index recalculate, they were given a single candidate.

“The Brilliant Outdoor Performance Stadium. It points north and, if the adjacent park is viewed as a mountain forest, you could extract the symbols of Dionysus. This time I’m sure of it! A god of insanity would be perfect for controlling her power as a chaotic great demon!”

Now that they had a new answer, they couldn’t just sit around.

Their initial wrong answer would have given Coronzon that much more time for the ceremony to break her body down into energy. As soon as she finished that, she would dive into a ley line and escape to the other side of the planet. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

Kamijou and the others hitched a ride on the rotary snowplow driven by Tsushima of the Amakusas to reach the new destination.

It was in the same district.

Driving there, it wouldn’t take long. The giant stadium capable of holding 255 thousand came into view.

“Is that it? Please still be in the city, Coronzon. Dammit.”

As soon as Kamijou jumped down from the snowplow onto the red snow, he staggered to the side.

He regathered his strength, somehow managing to keep himself steady, but he bumped into something next to him.

But not because he had nearly fallen.

“Ugh…”

He heard a small groan.

From Takitsubo Rikou.

She must have arrived on a different vehicle. Kamijou instinctually caught the unsteady track suit girl…and found her body temperature was higher than he had expected.

Not just warm, but blazing hot.

He was shocked.

“That’s not good… How long have you been hiding this, Takitsubo!?”

“…”

She refused to say a word.

She had been knocked out by some kind of attack from Coronzon during the Adikalika stuff. It was a miracle she was even still alive, yet she had joined the chase instead of calling an ambulance. Anyone would be in a similar state after that.

“You can’t go on. You need to get some rest! You’ve seen the way things are, right!? The Anglicans don’t want to torment Hamazura!!”

“You should listen to your own advice, Touma. Stopping Adikalika was more than enough of a win. You’re hurt, so stay here and look after her,” said an exasperated Index.

Even though it was she who had actually stopped the attack after arriving late. She had a perfect memory, so this wasn’t just a mistake. So was she giving them the credit? When he thought about it, he realized Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others hadn’t actually seen the moment Adikalika was stopped…

Speaking of Kanzaki, she called everyone over.

“If the countdown is close to the end, we can’t spend time on an initial search like before. That will mean a greater risk when we enter. Needless to say…”

“Then do we have time to sit around listening to the headmaster’s speech? I’ll steal a map of the stadium with my powers, so let’s get going!”

Mikoto, Index, Kanzaki, and the rest got moving.

In no time, there wasn’t anyone left.

It was so quiet.

Kamijou sat down and focused on taking deep breaths. He wasn’t as bad as Takitsubo, but he had lost his balance earlier. He had taken a direct hit from Coronzon. He wasn’t a doctor and couldn’t even imagine how much damage had been done inside his body, but he knew better than to be optimistic.

Takitsubo Rikou’s lips moved where she lay right next to him.

He doubted she was conscious, so maybe she was having a nightmare.

“…Hamazura…”

“Kh.”

Kamijou grimaced. In agony.

She had to be badly worried about her friend. If she didn’t do something to help out and earn points with the Anglicans, she would lose all chance of negotiating with them. But she was too injured to move.

If Coronzon did escape, who could say where they would direct their anger. Even if Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others fighting here didn’t, the higher ups watching from across the ocean might demand a live sacrifice from those who were close to Coronzon.

Could that be why Index had used such vague phrasing to give up credit for stopping Adikalika?

But it wasn’t enough. Takitsubo wanted something more to push her claim of having contributed, so Adikalika wasn’t enough and she had come with them even if it meant hiding how bad her injuries were.

And unlike her, Kamijou could still move.

He couldn’t push himself too hard.

But he had to make up his mind.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

“Human? …It figures.”

“I’ll stop Coronzon, so don’t you worry, Takitsubo. Don’t forget: winning is meaningless if you die. Your goal is to be with Hamazura, right? Then you need to rest.”

He forced his heavy body up and began to walk.

No, he was trying to run full speed, but this was the most speed he could manage.

Even so, Imagine Breaker would have to be of some use.

Coronzon’s magic was extraordinarily powerful.

Maybe he couldn’t fight her himself, but he could at least help out someone who could. If he could shield them from even a single attack, it might be enough to decide the battle.

He would overturn the game as a wild card.

===Part 23===

Great Demon Coronzon only had to wait. And the time finally arrived.

It was already over.

99%.

Even if someone barged in now, she could break her body down into Telesma and escape Academy City through the ley line before they could do anything.

Her victory was assured. Those humans were too late to prevent their doom. The silly fools should have resisted more.

But then…

“You think so? Then allow me to cause a bit of trouble.”

Her vision shattered.

Black, red, silver, blue, yellow… It all collapsed into a wild dance of colors.

No.

Crossing between phases and breaking herself down may have been the same thing. She had thought so herself.

Which meant it was she who was collapsing.

She could no longer support her sitting position and fell to the side. Something was wrong with her limbs. She couldn’t remember how to breathe. Nevertheless, she managed to gather all her strength and scream.

“A…lei…sterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!?”

“Now, now, Coronzon. You should know better than to mess with anything as dangerous as the tattva cards which even the Golden cabal had to issue a recall for. Don’t you remember what Mathers said? They can cause intense anxiety or headaches if used incorrectly. Why would you visit the mental world after going to the trouble of physically sealing me away? Are you trying to kill yourself? ''In here'', I can still wield some power.”

(Emergency…shutoff!!)

A dull “snap!” came from the center of her head.

“Khah!!”

She tried to let out the breath caught in her throat, but what came out was colored red.

For a while, she lay on her side convulsing until she forcibly suppressed the writhing of every last one of her internal organs. Yes, it was urgent that she accurately recalled the shape of her body. She had already begun to enter the ley line when the magic failed. She had to return to her original body in a hurry, but if she forgot that body’s shape now, she could be entirely annihilated.

It took her a full ten seconds.

Once she calmed her wild breathing and recalled the cycle for inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, she had reclaimed her physical body.

The tattva cards could cause mental confusion if used incorrectly.

For her, did that mean releasing the sealed Aleister? In other words…

“Dammit!!!”

This meant a change of plans.

She couldn’t use this method anymore.

And if she was going to cross Academy City’s wall for a physical escape…she had no reason to remain in this stadium. She had to leave as soon as possible.

===Part 24===

Kamijou forced his unsteady body to keep moving and pushed open a small metal door with his shoulder.

He slipped through the half-open door, probably a staff entrance, and entered the stadium.

He found a dark, cold, heavy space.

Big too.

…He had apparently entered something like a parking garage. Was it a space for workers located below the stadium? He didn’t know enough to have a good mental picture of how stadiums were structured.

He did have his phone with him, but he didn’t know what was happening inside. The pursuers had to be careful too, so he wanted to avoid causing someone’s phone to ring while they were trying to hide.

“Index? Misaka?” he called quietly.

He didn’t know how the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force were searching the stadium. Because they weren’t sharing information with him.

He heard some light footsteps through the darkness. They echoed off the gray walls and were moving away from him.

He immediately ran full speed in that direction.

He could tell just from listening whose they were.

“(Human, you noticed how odd that was, I trust?)”

(We all know how powerful Coronzon is, so everyone will be searching as part of a team. So no one should be leaving on their own like that!)

“Coronzon!! Is that you!?”

“You really shouldn’t have announced your presence. Unless you have the supernatural power to kill with words alone.”

The footsteps stopped.

A voice spoke from behind one of the thick concrete pillars lining the space.

A hateful voice.

“I’m relieved. Because of you I can easily kill and complete my escape. Now, Kamijou Touma, how do you intend to stop me? Don’t try to tell me that foolish shout was all part of a plan and you have a more troublesome opponent hiding nearby.”

15cm Othinus could not directly fight, so he was effectively alone.

Coronzon had seen right through him.

What about the phone in his pocket? No. He might not have a signal, but more than that, using the touchscreen in the dark parking garage would give him away with the backlight. Coronzon would act before he could call for help.

“You chose this stadium because it was your best bet, right? You can’t use magic to escape through the ley lines now. So give up, Coronzon.”

“Why should I? Great demons are perfectly capable of driving cars. And it goes without saying that ordinary cars can slip right past a scan for magic power.”

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

That was her plan immediately after trying to escape using Telesma and a ley line? She switched gears way too fast.

“How many trump cards do you have!?”

“More than a mere human could ever imagine, that’s for sure.”

If she escaped in a car, he couldn’t keep up on foot. His phone was an iffy option too. So was there nothing he could do? If he shouted at the top of his lungs, the others would surely gather here. He wouldn’t let her escape.

The voice alone continued from behind the pillar.

“How about this, Kamijou Touma? What if you keep quiet and let me go?”

“Why even ask that? It’s meaningless. If you escape tonight, you’ll work to destroy all of humanity by tomorrow, right? Then nothing you could offer me would be worth it!!”

“Oh, you will let me go. Because I happened to pick up a trump card on my way here.”

Someone emerged from behind the concrete pillar. Slowly.

Blonde hair.

A woman.

But that hair was fluffy and only fell to the shoulder blades.

This wasn’t Great Demon Coronzon.

He had only heard a single set of footsteps, so had she been captured behind the pillar?

What was being held against her from outside Kamijou’s view? The feminine lines of her body were trembling and her expression was like a cross between tears and a smile.

He recognized her as one of the Amakusas.

“Tsushima.”

It wasn’t even a case of “move and she’s dead”.

All of a sudden, the red splattered out.

From the side of her neck. Kamijou was an ordinary high school boy without much forensic medical knowledge, but the location the blood was spraying from sent a chill down his spine. She seemed to have been cut by an invisible blade.

A laughing woman stuck her head out from behind the pillar.

Great Demon Coronzon really was a demon.

“Kee hee ha ha!! Protecting human lives is no easy task, is it? Or are you willing to take another tour of hell for her!?”

Coronzon kicked Tsushima’s doll-like body from behind, shoving her toward him.

He had no choice but to catch her. Only a few seconds had passed, but she felt limp and heavy in his arms. She clung heavily to him like a down blanket soaked with water. He pressed his palm firmly against the wound in her neck. How much blood loss was lethal for a human? If he didn’t stop the blood spurting from the side of her neck, she really would die.

At that moment, Kamijou’s vision suddenly went dark.

But not because Coronzon had done anything. It took him a while to even realize that. He had long since pushed his body past the limit.

He shouldn’t have been up and about at all.

“Human!!”

“Kah…ah…?”

He felt horribly faint.

He collapsed and couldn’t get back up. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t move his arms and legs very much. He wasn’t even sure which way was up.

“Kh.”

He held Tsushima tight in his arms. He gritted his teeth and tried to take in as much information on the physical reality around him. Sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch… it didn’t matter what. He was afraid he would pass out otherwise.

“Ha ha ha!! You said it was meaningless, didn’t you? You couldn’t have been more right! Why bother saving a life or two now when I will be destroying the entire world soon!”

No, it wasn’t working.

Even after all this…he couldn’t stop his mind from slipping away into darkness.

He had to avoid removing his hand from that neck wound.

He heard the sound of metal breaking.

Then the sound of an engine starting and the sound of Coronzon driving a car away.

“Wait…Coronzon…”

The darkness took over.

Kamijou Touma’s consciousness fully faded.

“Waiiiiit!!!”

===Part 25===

“Can you hear me?”

Near the center of the open stadium, Agnese heard a young male voice.

Hearing a voice when no one was there was nothing unusual. She was commanding more than 250 people, so she was using communication magic.

But this was odd.

The Former Agnese Force was all female.

“This…Mich………k… I have an urgent message. Can anyone hear me?”

She was using a Roman Catholic communication spiritual item derived from the Barbara Branch. It was made from a cherry tree twig with a few buds attached and it wasn’t all that unusual. …Even if it did seem wrong for nuns to be carrying around tools for love fortunetelling.

The hard buds unnaturally opened below the frigid sky and the flower petals vibrated.

They produced a human voice.

(You’re kidding. Is someone hijacking the channel!?)

“Is anyone at all in Academy City receiving this!? There is something I must tell you immediately!”

“?”

Itsuwa gave Agnese a puzzled look from nearby. …Apparently she couldn’t hear this. That meant it was targeted only at the Roman Catholics of the Former Agnese Force.

Agnese Sanctis frowned.

“This is Agnese Sanctis. Who are you?”

“Thank god… I got through! This is Michael Speak, a cardinal officially appointed by the pope!!”

She was at a loss for words.

…Those were the around a hundred ultra elites chosen out of the two billion Roman Catholics to directly advise the pope. Ordinarily, she would never even directly speak to one.

But his voice didn’t fit the part. He sounded like a stressed young man. He didn’t sound even thirty.

Perhaps his modesty was what had earned him so much popularity.

(Another Michael. And with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.)

“What does a great cardinal want with lowly peon like me?”

“Tell only the Roman Catholics to get out of there immediately. You need to leave Academy City as soon as possible. Your team will obey you if you tell them!”

“?”

She had expected a protest or sarcasm in response, so this came as a complete surprise.

This was advance warning of an attack.

She didn’t know what the Vatican was preparing to do, but she had to assume it was a fairly dangerous large-scale spell. Something even greater than Coronzon’s Adikalika.

“You mean it’s close to being activated?”

“As Roman Catholics, we cannot allow someone as dangerous as Great Demon Coronzon to escape Academy City. If she cannot be defeated on the front line, then the Vatican must reach out a helping hand.”

Reach out a helping hand.

So from their perspective, they were saving lives.

And the same went for Agnese, Lucia, Angelene, and the rest of the Former Agnese Force fighting on the front line.

“There are three activation conditions. First, if you completely lose track of Coronzon and the trail goes cold. Two, at 5:47 AM local time. In other words, at dawn. Third, if we believe a non-Catholic force has learned of our plan and could attempt to stop it. If any one of those conditions is met, the Vatican will activate Saint Georgios’s Fire.”

“Kh.”

The most important condition was the third.

That meant the Vatican didn’t want them sharing this information with anyone else. Even though this would mean the destruction of Academy City. The chance to evacuate was for the Former Agnese Force only.

…Were they being pressured to abandon Academy City and the Anglicans who they had fought and risked their lives alongside?

“We are always watching and listening, Sister Agnese. The physical distance matters little. So do not attempt to contact anyone else through trickery or deception. We will not overlook it.”

(Magical surveillance is a hell of a thing. Although I’m sure it was originally justified as a way for the pure servants of god to punish wicked magicians.)

She didn’t actually know how much she was being observed. The Catholics had been outdone by the other forces so far, so Agnese thought they had to be bluffing to an extent. But this still made it hard to take any bold action.

And she knew what Saint Georgios’s Fire was.

She had heard rumors of it back when she still lived in Italy.

There was a legend about the death of Saint Georgios, or Saint George as he was known in England. When he was being pressured to renounce his faith in a wicked temple, a great ball of fire fell from heaven and blew it all away. So it was a legend of pure attack power.

“That’s a large-scale spell that targets a distant location through the ley lines, isn’t it?”

“Ironically, it uses the same pathway Coronzon is attempting to use to escape. But since we can only use it and not control it, we cannot stop her from using it.”

The Roman Catholic spell was essentially a cluster bomb that detonated two billion explosive flames across the entirety of the targeted city.

And rather than burn everything down with the explosive blasts and flames, it used an extreme high temperature to rapidly alter the atmospheric pressure and oxygen level across the entire area. That meant fortifying oneself behind a shield or wall was meaningless. Because your own body would rupture from within. Afterwards, only a lifeless city would remain.

It was effectively the ideal form of a human killer.

(Now isn’t the time for us humans to be fighting among ourselves!!)

“I thought the pope had learned an important lesson from the trials of World War Three. I can’t believe he would agree to such a forceful solution.”

“His authorization is unnecessary. The cardinals have the right to hold an ecumenical council or election. …And the majority wish to do this. We in the minority have no way to stop them.”

“Doesn’t that seem disrespectful?”

“Abstaining in protest will not change the outcome of the vote. Did I ever say that I like that this is happening!?”

There was real strength behind those last words.

That had to be what he really thought. Which was why it pierced Agnese so deeply.

But even if he was sensible, he couldn’t change what was happening. She could tell that too.

(Well, this is a disaster…)

And there was an issue beyond the number of victims across Academy City.

A more fundamental issue.

“Don’t you know ''a human killer spell won’t affect an inhuman demon''? Sowing further confusion in Academy City will only create more openings in the city perimeter!! You’re playing right into Coronzon’s hand!!”

Apparently Coronzon’s special trait remained in effect.

She tore people apart and obstructed their evolution.

(But I can’t believe it’s gone so far.)

“Sister Agnese!!”

“What do you want, cardinal!? I’m really goddamn busy right now!”

“This is a compromise. As much of one as I could get. The original plan was to immediately activate Saint Georgios’s Fire and I only barely stopped that from happening!”

There was kindness in his words.

But that kindness was unnecessary. Something was fundamentally off about this.

“Don’t tell me this is about wounded pride. Index stopped Adikalika by redirecting it to an unnamed desert island in the Atlantic. The Italian peninsula wasn’t harmed!”

“But Coronzon did launch her large-scale attack spell. And that wasn’t her only trump card. Her power is unfathomable, so she must be destroyed when we have the chance. None of the cardinals can ignore that point. I’m sorry, but that includes me!”

She wasn’t sure what to say.

She understood. Yes, even Agnese was furious. If she hadn’t made a conscious effort to calm herself, she might have left the Anglicans back then.

“Violence is wrong,” he continued. “I understand that. We erred and let God’s Right Seat manipulate us during World War Three. …But this time, ''we are in our rights to retaliate.'' Overturning that idea will not be easy, Sister Agnese.”

(Coronzon. Your mere presence really does make a mess of humanity as a whole!)

The Roman Catholics naturally had a variety of emotions about this.

About Coronzon and about Academy City for failing to stop this crisis earlier.

…Nuclear missiles could destroy the world, so it would take a lot of guts to launch the first one yourself. But what if an enemy launched one at you first? That would lower the mental hurdle for pressing the launch button considerably.

People were easily influenced by the word “retaliation”. And that could burn down the entire world.

“I will do everything I can, but I doubt I can stop this from happening. Sooner or later, Saint Georgios’s Fire will be launched.”

He was one of the sensible ones.

He would truly prefer not to use it.

But that was why nothing he said was a mere threat or bluff.

For the pacifists, nothing was more painful than having to declare that an atrocity would soon be happening.

“So you need to escape that city immediately. It’s a shame what will happen to Academy City and the Anglicans, but it’s too late for them. Gather up all the Roman Catholics and get out of there!!”

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