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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter3

2026-06-10T22:48:08Z

Ultranova17: minor

==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?”

[[Image:GT_Index_v14_BW5.jpg|thumb]]

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?”

[[Image:GT_Index_v14_BW6.jpg|thumb]]

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 don't know anything 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.”

[[Image:GT_Index_v14_BW7.jpg|thumb]]

===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.”

[[Image:GT_Index_v14_BW8.jpg|thumb]]

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.

[[Image:GT_Index_v14_BW9.jpg|thumb]]

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter2

2026-06-10T22:47:20Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==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.

[[Image:GT_Index_v14_BW3.jpg|thumb]]

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 thought 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 form 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!!”

[[Image:GT_Index_v14_BW4.jpg|thumb]]

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter1

2026-06-10T22:46:47Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Chapter 1: Fleeing Time Bomb – DEVIL_in_Science_World.==

===Part 1===

Midnight.

The world was meant to be tumbling toward destruction at this time, but Academy City remained intact. But that wouldn’t last if Great Demon Coronzon was allowed to get away. Then the overtime they had earned would only delay that doom until tomorrow.

The red snow had absorbed the explosive soot, dust, and other impurities produced by a warlike situation, but it had ceased.

“Sitra Achra… I knew the theory, but I never imagined I would see it for myself,” said Index in a daze.

Othinus emerged from the white hood and moved to Kamijou’s shoulder.

Wasn’t that the thing Coronzon had used to blow away the thick clouds overhead?

The only one here who seemed sleepy was the calico cat in the girl’s arms.

“That doesn’t help us,” whispered mourning clothes Mikoto, her voice low. “A clear night sky will only allow the temperature to drop thanks to radiative cooling. The red snow has stopped, but there’s enough on the ground to keep traffic a mess. All it did is make this city even more deadly.”

Snow plowing, distributing food, distributing warm clothing – there was a lot that had to be done. But Coronzon was the greatest threat and, until she had been dealt with, everyone had to focus on her. They couldn’t afford to dedicate sufficient manpower to those other tasks.

They had to end this before someone died.

…And Kamijou was also worried about Human Aleister, who remained inside the great demon.

“Teacher!”

“Fool, explain the situation.”

A few more people approached at a run.

Alice Anotherbible, Anna Sprengel, and some more.

Coronzon had mentioned some spatial trickery preventing them from approaching this place…but that must have stopped functioning after she chose to run.

Kamijou intended to give a succinct explanation, but Index and Mikoto joined the conversation too. Even Othinus tugged on his ear from his shoulder. A lot more people than he thought had questions.

He looked up to see the friendly(?) flying pair of the Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. The term “air support” sounded so reassuring at the moment.

He saw another winged girl too.

That one was the artificial demon Qliphah Puzzle 545.

“Wh-what about my master? Has the Board Chairman come to yet?”

“Dammit, I don’t think we can expect any support from him. We’ll just have to do this ourselves.”

“~ ~ ~!!!”

With some noisy flapping, Qliphah Puzzle 545 rapidly took flight.

“Where is she going?” asked Alice Anotherbible, tilting her head up toward the night sky.

She may have been on her way to Accelerator’s secret base. Kamijou didn’t bother stopping her. He didn’t know what she intended to do, but if Accelerator was unconscious, he would need someone’s support.

A loud voice reached him from elsewhere.

It belonged to Kanzaki Kaori.

The Anglicans had to have tens of thousands of people in Academy City.

“We must set up a surveillance network centered on District 7. With her wings damaged, Coronzon will be limited to travel on foot. If you do spot her, do not attempt to face her on your own. Make sure to share the information you receive with your own eyes and ears. Losing that information will only give her a chance to escape!”

She was one of the world’s fewer than twenty Saints.

Kamijou had heard she could run at supersonic speed if she wanted to, but she was matching the others’ speed now.

“I can’t push my body too hard.” Looking composed, Kanzaki answered Kamijou’s gaze. “I will of course remove that limitation once Coronzon has been sighted, but I want to avoid breaking the sound barrier without a solid lead. Because I don’t want to be too worn out to fight by the time I do reach her.”

He doubted that was her only reason.

In the end, Kanzaki was afraid. They were up against Great Demon Coronzon. What if she moved out ahead, leaving her allies behind, and Coronzon snuck in from behind? Then the allies she had left behind in supposed safety would be killed one after another. She most feared a situation like that where only she and her Saintly luck managed to survive.

The red snow crunched below several feet.

More and more magic side pursuers were arriving: Tatemiya Saiji and Itsuwa of the Amakusas, Agnese and Lucia of the former Catholics, and the standard Anglicans.

They needed as much help as they could get.

Academy City covered around a third of Tokyo and contained a population of 2.3 million. They had to find and apprehend a single individual fleeing through that city. Kamijou had no idea if they could actually do it, but the world would be destroyed if they failed tonight.

His entire body ached.

He even felt like something was wrong with the connections between his bones.

But he clenched his teeth and spoke as if directing a challenge toward Kanzaki, who had taken charge.

“I’m going too. I’m the one who fought Coronzon and let her escape. I’m responsible for this, so use me for whatever’s necessary.”

“But…”

“Aleister answered my call. He must still be fighting against Coronzon, so I can’t just go lie in a hospital bed!”

Kanzaki Kaori sighed softly.

She looked away from him and toward Index and Mikoto.

“Always have at least two people with you who you can rely on. I am not permitting you to act on your own.”

“I know I’m asking a lot! Thank-”

“Don’t push your luck. I honestly think it would be a lot simpler to knock you out with a punch to the gut, but that would be too cruel given your injuries. I don’t want to overdo it and kill you.”

…How was he supposed to react to something like that?

Kanzaki Kaori continued in complete seriousness.

“You are in a terrible state. If you refuse to let others support you, I really will knock you out. So choose whichever option you consider safer.”

She likely only made such a swift decision because of how pressing the situation was.

“Fool,” said Anna Sprengel. “Coronzon is on her way to escape Academy City even now.”

“Yes,” agreed Index. “We need to stop her before she crosses the wall and is released into the wider world.”

Kamijou nodded at them both.

Kanzaki reacted with exasperation.

“You really don’t change, do you? I don’t know if I should call you reckless or what.”

“Sorry, but I’m not going to die so easily. I swore I wouldn’t waste this life granted to me in hell.”

For some reason, the earnestness of this response made Kanzaki recoil.

But what about an ordinary high school boy could frighten a great Saint like her?

“Heyyy!” called down a voice overhead.

The Bologna Succubus had descended to circle slowly in the night sky above. With Blodeuwedd the Bouquet dangling from her. The low angle was terribly risque when the girl was only wearing a naked apron below the thick metal coat.

“Still no hints for tracking down Coronzon? Then we’ll fly back up and continue our search.”

“W-wait. I thought magicians weren’t supposed to fly! Wasn’t there some weird rule about flying being easy but bringing you down also being easy!?”

“We can survive even if we are brought down, so no worries. In fact, being brought down would tell us Coronzon is nearby, so it would actually be good news.”

With that said, the Bologna Succubus swung Blodeuwedd the Bouquet around in one hand and ascended back into the night sky.

Yet a lively voice still came from Kanzaki’s hand. …So was Kanzaki holding some kind of communication spiritual item?

“As a lover of the unloved, I’ve honestly taken an interest in Coronzon too.”

Kamijou’s jaw dropped.

(Wait, wait, don’t tell me some weird flag has been triggered in Blodeuwedd the Bouquet!)

But he was afraid a careless question about it would push her in the wrong direction.

The Bologna Succubus’s gloomy voice responded. Sounding like she was used to this.

“Side with her and I finally have the justification I need. I will murder you, satisfying years of resentment, you lewd goddess.”

“(This isn’t good, human. For the Transcendents, their salvation conditions are even more important than their own lives.)”

Othinus was right.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s comments were certainly concerning, but…

“Too bad. What I’m looking for is someone who’s starved for love. When people are providing a plentiful supply at their own expense and she brushes it off as an unasked-for nuisance, it just pisses me off.”

“So maybe there’s nothing to worry about for now?”

Index did not sound very confident. It didn’t inspire much confidence either.

The Transcendents really were a challenge.

Also, why even bring the naked apron girl along? But Blodeuwedd the Bouquet didn’t seem particular bothered by it.

“Those two must be really good frien- dwah?!”

Kamijou didn’t even finish his comment before something fell from the sky.

If he hadn’t noticed it and dodged out of the way, a glass terrarium heavier than a flower pot would have struck him right in the head. Othinus, who had nearly become collateral damage on his shoulder, looked up into the sky and said something.

“That’s the same deadly prank pulled by rude city crows up on building rooftops.”

The sound of something beating at the air interrupted them.

Was the dazzling light a searchlight or something?

“This is Yomikawa of Anti-Skill! We can only perform a primitive search in the helicopter, but we can’t expect any help from drones or satellites right now!! Where should we start looking!?”

“Fool. It looks like the search can continue even if those silly magicians are brought down by an interception spell.”

And…

“Wait,” said a voice. A flat female voice. “I’m going too.”

It was the track suit girl. Wasn’t her name Takitsubo Rikou?

Her tone was flat, but the sound of her breathing showed something was wrong.

“You are injured.”

Golden retriever Kihara Noukan kept it at that. …Was that dog capable of being considerate enough to refrain from digging deeper?

It was hard to tell because Takitsubo rarely showed any expression, but she appeared to be in a fair bit of pain. Most likely, the condition below her clothing would be shocking to see.

She had contacted Great Demon Coronzon before Kamijou arrived.

Since she had collapsed, she had most likely been attacked in some way.

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

“Are you kidding me? You look closer to death than me. To be clear, the Anglicans alone have tens of thousands of people out working, so it’s no problem if an injured person or two sits this one out. We can’t bring you along in that condition!!”

“Hamazura.”

The track suit girl’s eyes were on another boy who lay unmoving in the red snow.

Hamazura Shiage.

…Kamijou couldn’t remember clearly since he had been near death, but he was pretty sure that guy had sided with Coronzon shortly before the Adikalika large-scale attack spell was activated.

He had betrayed them.

And now Adikalika had failed and Coronzon had fled on her own.

Left behind, Hamazura’s position was looking worse all the time.

“Hamazura will be in trouble. I don’t know what system of rules will punish him, but I need to create some kind of bargaining chip before that punishment can happen. So I will do whatever it takes to protect him.”

Kamijou looked to Index. This had to do with magic, so would jurisdiction fall to the Anglicans?

Kamijou couldn’t say if the “bargaining chip” Takitsubo had in mind would mean anything to them.

But that had to be the only thing left for her to rely on.

“What can you do ''now''?” pressed Mikoto in her black mourning clothes.

That wasn’t disgust in her voice. Was it a hint of fear?

“(I know she’s on our side now, but a first impression like that one is hard to shake.)”

“My AIM Stalker is useless on someone without an AIM Diffusion Field. So I can’t directly search for Coronzon.”

But Takitsubo Rikou didn’t hesitate to respond.

While looking Mikoto square in the face.

“But I also have a history gathering and analyzing information for Item. I am used to tracking down and hunting people in this city.”

“Yes, we could use a tracker from the science side. Especially with that new Board Chairman out of the picture,” said Othinus from Kamijou’s shoulder.

Whether she actually meant it or was only trying to put injured Takitsubo’s mind at ease, Kamijou couldn’t tell.

Kamijou waved both hands to call over Kanzaki who was giving instructions to Tatemiya and Agnese a short distance away. Next to him, Alice hopped up and down and waved her hands along with him.

Kanzaki sighed when she heard what he had to say.

“Then have her start at the beginning.”

She kept the instruction short.

Of course, they weren’t relying only on Takitsubo. The magicians would be performing their own magical search. But they were searching for Great Demon Coronzon, who lurked in the abyss to guard magical knowledge, so those attempts would likely be blocked at every turn.

“Coronzon has fled. However, I doubt she has continued running in a single direction. Takitsubo, was it? How can you track her?”

“That demon(?) fortunately lost the use of her wings, so she can’t cheat by flying. And if she is escaping on the surface, she will leave tracks. Especially on a snowy day like this.”

“She will notice any obvious tracks. Won’t she cover them up?”

Good point.

“So it comes down to the balance between the tracks that cannot be prevented and the tracks that will definitely be erased,” said the golden retriever in a highly refined voice.

Takitsubo Rikou plainly continued.

“It is true footprints in the snow can be easily erased. She might not have ordinary fingerprints to leave behind. And given the state of the city, we can’t hope to search for footage of her from security cameras or security robots.”

“Ugh,” groaned Kamijou. “Then how are we supposed to track down Coronzon!?”

“How about this?”

===Part 2===

Academy City District 3 was the northernmost district.

The dead office area had no lights in the windows or even in the traffic signals.

She had managed to shake those loathsome Magic Gods, Nephthys and Niang-Niang.

If she could cross the wall here, she could leave the city to the north…and into the Saitama area.

Great Demon Coronzon hoped to ''quietly'' slip past the wall. Ideally, her pursuers wouldn’t realize she had escaped.

Her useless wings were folded up for now.

She did not let unnecessary regrets hold her back. The Adikalika large-scale attack spell had been stopped. She accepted that result. Which was why she had decided to crush them with all her might.

For her, a few troublesome people were mixed in with her pursuers.

For example, Index, the grimoire library who had memorized 103,001 grimoires. Or Anna Sprengel, the Rosicrucian magician whose skill exceeded that of Mathers or Crowley. And Alice Anotherbible, the oddity who had been ''too'' successful.

Trump cards weren’t only valuable when actually used.

Think of them like nuclear weapons.

Showing them off without using them could restrict an adversary’s actions.

…In truth, Coronzon’s greatest concern was Alice. She couldn’t accurately judge the threat level of that girl. And there was no such thing as a surefire countermeasure against an unknown.

She wanted to escape as soon as possible and eliminate any trace of her path. Even if it meant tearing down any obstacles that got in her way.

She truly felt that way.

Yet she didn’t do it.

After coming all this way.

“Oops,” she said quietly, pressing against the back of a thick roadside tree.

She had spotted a few figures on the large street. Their odd dress made them seem not a part of this world and they held a variety of spiritual items that ignored the laws against weapons and any sense of realism. That was definitely the gear of those who were “in the know”. These had to be the filthy Anglican magicians.

Had they gotten ahead of her? How? Could they have sprouted wings and flown over her head?

No, they had used a more normal method.

(Cars. Maybe I should steal one next.)

[[Image:GT_Index_v14_BW1.jpg|thumb]]

They must have assumed there would be no ordinary vehicles out since people had been ordered to stay in. They had abandoned some vans and trucks in the middle of the three-lane street.

Killing a hundred or even a thousand magicians would be easy enough.

But the rules had changed.

Now that she was trying to escape without being found, her power as a great demon actually hindered her. Anything she did would mean using a major spell, so it was best not to use anything if she could avoid it.

To reiterate, the ideal result was to escape ''quietly''.

That was also why she had “shaken” Nephthys and Niang-Niang instead of immediately killing them with brute force.

“But this is odd…”

She slipped from the tree to a building wall.

Coronzon whispered to herself as she observed the situation on the street.

Kamijou Touma’s side had been precise. Too precise. They had to know her goal was to escape outside Academy City, but they shouldn’t have had any way of detecting what route she would use to cross the wall. After all, the wall surrounded the city in all 360 degrees. So how had they known she was going north to escape into the Saitama area from District 3?

(It wasn’t the security cameras, security robots, and other parts of Academy City’s security network. I already took out Board Chairman Accelerator. And the Anglican magicians have made an awkward takeover of Academy City’s systems, but they couldn’t operate those scientific toys with such precision. That must mean…)

At first, she considered a magical searching method.

Especially when Alice Anotherbible and Anna Sprengel and their extraordinary magic power were in the city. Not to mention that Grimoire Library Index and Magic God Othinus could provide the knowledge.

But then she shook her head.

Because she had arrived at a simpler possibility.

Coronzon’s eyes lowered to her hands.

(Could I have left a hint behind?)

“Aleister… ''How long were you in control of my body''!?”

===Part 3===

Shortly before that, Takitsubo Rikou made her suggestion in District 7.

“Scent.”

Kanzaki was dubious.

It was written plain on her face that she didn’t see how something so ordinary could work.

The track suit girl emotionlessly continued.

“She might be able to easily erase any footprints she leaves, but ''completely'' eliminating the scent particles left in the air is no easy task. After all, your own body is the source of the scent.”

Kamijou looked straight up.

The red snow had stopped and there was no wind, so there was little concern of those particles being swept away.

Coronzon had scattered the thick clouds herself.

Her own actions were beginning to work against her.

“Also, I think it will be a fairly distinctive scent. Instead of just the scent of her hair or clothing, it should be an aroma intentionally left behind.”

“Hm? Why would Coronzon do that?”

“She wouldn’t. But the other one would.”

Did she mean Aleister?

“Scents are invisible. And once you think of something as your own scent, it becomes especially hard for you to detect,” said Othinus.

“It would be a convenient way to tell us where Coronzon is without her noticing,” said Anna Sprengel.

Kamijou tilted his head.

“But what distinctive scent would it be?”

“Probably the snowdrop flower,” replied Takitsubo.

For some reason, this led Kanzaki Kaori to lower her head glumly.

The track suit girl continued with no readable emotion in her eyes.

“It isn’t the best material for an aroma when compared to roses or lavender, but…um, did something occur to you?”

“It’s the title of an erotic novel Crowley wrote around a century ago. Or part of the title, to be more accurate.”

Everyone fell silent.

Alice Anotherbible looked confused.

Humanity might meet its doom before the sun rose in the morning, yet they had run across a choice that may have been serious or may have been a joke in poor taste… Kamijou was certain now. Aleister was definitely still alive.

“But, Touma, how do we follow the scent? A scent…hm, could we use a dog?”

Index sounded disappointed that she only had a calico cat in her arms, but her comment led everyone to look to the dog among them.

At the center of attention, golden retriever Kihara Noukan tilted his head while sitting.

“I do appreciate you consider me reliable, but the world will be destroyed if I screw this up, correct? This is a situation for cautious verification, not my brand of romance. And I would feel bad stealing all of your thunder.”

“Then we can use something else too.”

Takitsubo waved her phone.

But it had an eraser-sized device attached to the connector at the bottom.

“Smelling bad can be considered a form of harassment these days, so they sell these toys for a personal hygiene check. Although I heard they were really just finding ways to expand into other markets because selling breathalyzers wasn’t enough to make back the development costs.”

“But a commercial product won’t be enough to track someone,” said Othinus. “To do that, you should need to expand the hardware or boost the software to forcibly increase its sensitivity.”

“Right.”

Takitsubo tossed her phone over.

To Misaka Mikoto, who could do just about anything when it came to electricity.

“When scent particles adhere to the sensor, they are analyzed into digital values. It’s not glamorous, but the technology has been used in food and detergent labs for decades. And I’d heard there was a special forces team that used this kind of thing in Academy City, but I have no idea what they’re up to now.”

That meant they could track her.

They didn’t know how long Aleister’s hint would last.

They needed to take advantage of it before Coronzon caught on.

Kanzaki waved and the young Amakusas responded. They brought in several vehicles with chains on their tires to deal with the red snow.

“Now we can track her.”

Just like the ritual used by hammer throwers to intentionally push past their own limiters, Kamijou Touma shouted from the bottom of his gut.

Because his body was ready to break if he didn’t.

“We can settle things with Great Demon Coronzon!!”

===Part 4===

She wasn’t even aware of the moments when he took control and she couldn’t question the lapse afterwards.

This was a major problem for Coronzon…but at the same time, it was fortunate she had become aware of the risk sooner rather than later. Even a single second of unconsciousness during a battle could create a fatal opening.

She needed a technical solution.

But for now, she had to lose the nearby pursuers.

Kamijou Touma’s group would arrive in District 3 before long. In pursuit of her. If Aleister had used her body to leave behind a message, there was no doubting it.

(Could I make it if I rushed across the wall from District 3? No. Kamijou Touma is one thing, but the Anglicans are a group. With their coordination, they could have someone waiting there. And this doesn’t actually end after I cross the wall. If they know which direction I escaped to, I can’t disappear and they will continue pursuing me through the Saitama area.)

That meant adopting brute force methods to cross the wall would not solve this. Coronzon’s ideal was to ''quietly'' cross the wall and vanish into the greater world beyond. But this also gave her an opportunity. If her pursuers were convinced she would cross the wall from District 3, she could fully lose them if she crossed the wall from a different district.

She didn’t have much time left.

What could she do in that time?

===Part 5===

“She’s not here?” muttered Kamijou.

They were in District 3, a dead office area where even the traffic signals were off. It was a district for adults, so a high schooler like Kamijou didn’t know it very well. The message Aleister had left by hijacking Coronzon’s body had definitely pointed in this direction. And yet…

“The scent trail ends here,” said Kihara Noukan, sniffing at the ground.

“Confirmed,” said Takitsubo Rikou, her phone in hand.

They were in an empty plaza with nothing there but red snow.

Index tilted her head.

“Did Coronzon notice what was happening and wash it off?”

“Could she wash it off completely enough?”

“She didn’t need to.” Mourning clothes Mikoto breathed a white sigh. “Scents become something entirely different when they mix together. Which is why I really wish they would stop using cheap floral scents in shampoos and body soaps. It reacts with perfumes, ruining their scent.”

Apparently there were other opinions too.

Some were concerned that this hadn’t been Coronzon’s doing.

“Could the message from Aleister itself have been a bluff? I mean, this is Aleister we’re talking about.”

Agnese may have been pushed forward by the many other nuns. She expressed this suspicion as their representative, but Kamijou rejected it.

He had no proof, of course.

But he didn’t want to think that the Aleister who had answered his call would then take Coronzon’s side and try to destroy the world with her.

(What if?)

Kamijou lowered his head.

He pondered the issue with a hand on his chin and his eyes staring down toward his shoes.

(If the message from Aleister was correct and we still lost sight of Coronzon…then one of our assumptions must be wrong. But what could that be?)

Then it hit him.

“I forgot. One basic fact completely slipped my mind.”

“?”

Kanzaki gave him a puzzled look, but he didn’t even glance her way.

He used his foot to scrape the red snow away from the ground, but it wasn’t asphalt below.

He found a thick metal manhole.

All that thought hadn’t been necessary. The answer was so simple!

The loud roar of water rushing by below meant this probably wasn’t an ordinary sewer. It had to be an artificial waterway flowing by below the city.

Humans could not swim in a half-frozen river in January.

Humans could not breathe underwater.

So this couldn’t be called a route. The river wasn’t usable.

Yes, ''if'' you were human.

“''But Great Demon Coronzon isn’t human''!!”

===Part 6===

The water temperature was 2 degrees.

The width was around five meters and the depth was maybe a few meters. Even with microbes and other factors producing some heat, this was a half-frozen January river. If an ordinary human fell in, their life would be at risk.

Of course, that was only for an ordinary human.

“It doesn’t apply to me.”

As she had announced from the beginning, she was a great demon.

Not even the moonlight could reach this place below the city. The ceiling was about two meters up, so a large man would bump his head on that thick concrete.

Maybe there were different areas that required different authorizations to enter and maybe the divisions were out of convenience for the government, but fences and chain-link doors blocked off the passage in places. Coronzon only had to lazily wave her hand to slice right through them.

The rippling water was a deep dark color, but not just because this was a subterranean space ruled by darkness. Jagged metal and what looked like rotting lumber were floating by. One squishy object looked to be a clump of oil larger than a bowling ball.

Great Demon Coronzon sighed in exasperation at herself for hesitating even momentarily.

(Places like this are my proper home. An embodiment of evil shouldn’t avoid impurities. Maybe I spent too long playing the bright and shining Anglican Archbishop.)

This time, she jumped in.

Once the torrent took her away, she would leave District 3 and travel through Districts 14, 19, and 12 to reach the eastern wall bordering the Shinjuku area. That was an entirely different place from the northern wall bordering the Saitama area.

(I don’t know what scent you sprayed on me, Aleister, but now those scent particle can’t be tracked to me.)

Of course, an ordinary human would die before riding the current even 100 meters, but that was no obstacle for Coronzon. She would have no trouble taking this 10+ kilometer water slide.

===Part 7===

Aleister hadn’t lied.

She had been in District 3.

It was a failure on Kamijou’s group’s part that let her escape. They had been wrong to think they could capture Great Demon Coronzon if they surrounded her the same way they would a human. If you were trying to capture a bird or a fish, blockading the roads and setting up checkpoints like you would with a human wouldn’t accomplish much of anything.

Coronzon had thrown herself into the artificial waterway below the city so she could quickly travel long distances.

“The water is two degrees…and she just jumped in?”

Mourning clothes Mikoto couldn’t believe it.

Her phone wouldn’t give her that data, so she may have used her power to hack the river management network. The thing that let you check river water levels during a typhoon.

“The waterway branches out quite complexly. The water generally flows west to east, but it covers a wide area. Predicting her final destination isn’t going to be easy.”

Kanzaki’s assessment didn’t provide any valuable hints.

They didn’t even need to head down underground. They knew Coronzon was using the waterway, but unlike her, they were human. Jumping into filthy half-frozen 2-degree water and letting it carry them for more than 10 kilometers wouldn’t let them track down Coronzon.

“What about the girl?”

“No, Alice.”

Kamijou quickly stopped her.

Alice Anotherbible might be able to survive down there, but that didn’t mean she could catch Coronzon in the endlessly branching waterway. The return was too uncertain for such a definite risk.

They had to come up with some other way.

Even now, Coronzon was being carried rapidly below the city.

Toward some part of the outer wall.

Takitsubo Rikou made a quick decision after simply peeking into the subterranean world through the open manhole.

“We can’t track the scent particles anymore.”

But if they gave up, Coronzon would escape.

Without another hint, humanity was doomed.

“That’s no problem…right? Science isn’t everything. Hey, Index, what ever happened to the magical search methods!? If we try a different approach, we can still-!”

“Touma, what are we supposed to track her with? Some of Coronzon’s blood or hair would be perfect. And if we are going to do it, some more detailed information on that great demon would be helpful.”

Despite the situation – no, because of the situation, Index gave a calm and composed response.

“The famous Aleister Crowley would be one thing…but Coronzon is from the world of myth. Finding detailed information on her will not be easy,” said Anna Sprengel, who seemed fairly legendary herself.

They couldn’t use magic.

But Kanzaki Kaori, commander of the Anglican forces here, wasn’t done.

“There is still something we can do.”

===Part 8===

A large metal object was lowered into the concrete waterway, covering the full width of the dark subterranean space. This wasn’t just grating or a floodgate. This was more brutal. The closest comparison was a giant propeller. But this had several of them arranged along a single shaft to smash up and break down floating objects.

“A public garbage disposal, huh?”

It was more than just the heavy rotating blades. To keep the thick blades sharp, metal-degrading bacteria were made to live on the net-like surface.

She had seen jagged metal and rotting lumber several times on the way here. None of that large trash could be allowed out of the city when the river water flowed out. To prevent any chance of the city’s technology leaking out. So devices to smash up whatever was floating in the river had been placed at regular intervals (and there were likely specialized facilities nearer to the outer wall). The Anglican pursuers in control of Academy City had activated them all.

Coronzon pulled her upper body onto the concrete edge and held her other hand out toward the giant machine.

Destroying it would be easy. It wouldn’t take more than a moment.

But she wanted to avoid triggering an alarm that would inform her pursuers where she was.

That left only one thing to do.

“So the easy ride ends here.”

Coronzon crawled fully out of the filthy water.

There were no signs telling her where to go, but she found some stairs leading up. Still wet, she placed her hand on the railing and got moving.

(I should assume they are guiding me to an extent. It may soon be time to switch to brute force tactics.)

Which district was she in?

She would know as soon as she opened the thick metal door.

===Part 9===

Kamijou heard something like the breathing of a monster.

Something white was being expelled from the pipes on the wall or the metal grate on the ground.

It was hot steam.

This was District 19.

“Hey, Kanzaki. Are you sure Coronzon is here?”

“Assuming the emergency exit sensor was triggered by her. She isn’t an embodiment of science, after all.”

Kamijou spent most of his time in District 7, so he didn’t know much about this one. It was crammed full of short multi-tenant buildings. Overall, the streets looked old and faded. Non-LCD signs had a variety of advertisements posted, but the advertised products were things like cathode-ray tubes, vacuum tubes, records, and steam engines…

“It feels like we’re surrounded by a collection of forgotten technology. Or like the flow of technology branched off and evolved in a unique direction here.”

Mourning clothes Mikoto seemed half taken aback by it all.

A device with several rotating cloth wings slowly passed by on the street. It wasn’t quite a helicopter or a drone. And it was larger than a small truck.

Kamijou looked like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“What is that? One of da Vinci’s models?”

“Uneducated fool, that is Cayley’s steam-powered flying machine.”

…Had designs for flying cars been around for centuries?

Whatever the case, technology was branching off in weird directions here.

(On any other day, I’d love to explore this place.)

Several giant round metal objects were visible in the distance.

In fact, several of the round things were clustered together.

“Looks like a pack of takoyaki.”

Index was right. That was the best comparison Kamijou could come up with too.

It looked a bit like a gas tank – no, a gas holder, but in District 19, that wouldn’t be what it was.

“The Central Boiler,” explained Takitsubo Rikou. “The fuel is burned in a single location to produce a large quantity of steam and then piped out across the district. There is infrastructure for the excess energy produced by a large factory’s boiler to be sent to smaller factories, but this is a larger scale version of that. So maybe like a steam version of the thermal power stations in the age of electricity?”

Of course, Academy City’s power generation was done with the many wind turbines distributed across the city. This produced steam instead of electricity, it was centralized instead of distributed, and it created energy using fossil fuel…

Othinus sighed in exasperation from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“The people of this district must really not want to follow the mainstream of Academy City.”

===Part 10===

“And.”

Great Demon Coronzon was also grinning. It only took her an instant to detonate it from the outside.

“That gives me an opportunity.”

===Part 11===

A deep, muffled sound rumbled out.

The city distance looked white.

Like the cityscape was being obscured by a giant piece of cotton candy.

But that wasn’t what this was.

The exhausted, late-night city had been overwritten. Kamijou definitely saw something pop like a balloon in that white-covered scenery. Even though the thick steel shouldn’t have been able to burst from within like that.

Wasn’t that…?

“Run, fool.”

“Hey, don’t tell me…”

“Coronzon blew up the Central Boiler,” said Anna Sprengel. “Steam of more than 400 degrees Celsius is about to engulf this district. And we will be swallowed up along with it!”

“If we stay outside, the outdoor steam oven will remove all the oil from our bodies as it boils us up nice and healthily. Just like the chicken tenderloins you parboiled for me,” said Kihara Noukan. “If that does not appeal to you, I would recommend hurrying indoors.”

There wasn’t time to think too hard about it.

Kamijou and the others rushed to the nearest concrete structure.

The deep, muffled noise had grown sharper. A lot like the sizzling of water on a heated frying pan. Which wasn’t that far off from the truth. The red snow on the ground was melting, starting from the distance. And the growing mass of steam discolored the roadside trees and peeled the paint from the cars parked on the curb. Like playground equipment in a long abandoned park.

Anna Sprengel and Kihara Noukan were right. A human wouldn’t last an instant in that.

Index, Mikoto, Kanzaki, Anna Sprengel, Alice, and Agnese rushed inside the same building as Kamijou. Othinus and the cat were with them too. The others would have escaped to different buildings.

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

“Who is she!?”

“Don’t ask me! Why was an ordinary person – and a student at that – wandering around outside at this hour!? And after we ordered everyone to stay at home!”

That meant the girl held under Kanzaki’s arm was not a camouflaged Amakusa.

After diving into the reinforced concrete building, Kamijou kicked the door shut from his position down on the ground.

A scorching sound soon followed.

A male voice came from the radio Kanzaki held. It didn’t seem magical.

Was that one of the Anglican magicians managing Academy City? No, it may have been one of the city’s technicians obeying the magicians.

“Boiler #2…and #8 have already…no, it’s no use, it’s fully ruptured!!”

“#5 isn’t looking good either…the boiler pressure won’t stop- we need to evacuate now!!”

An unpleasant straining sound surrounded them.

The entire building was groaning.

Was the great heat causing the metal to bend, or was it the steam pressure?

“Damn!” cursed Kamijou.

Either way, this made running outside and catching up to Coronzon a complete impossibility. That world of 400 degrees Celsius was melting the asphalt of the streets, so they would need to walk on the sidewalk tiles with thick shoes or else suffer severe burns. In fact, if a human simply took a step outside, their flesh, bones, and eyeballs would boil.

''But Great Demon Coronzon wasn’t human.

They had been taught this lesson over and over now…but could she really brute force her way through like this? What route would she use to escape in that world of scorching heat and death!?

===Part 12===

“District 19’s Central Boiler just exploded!?”

Yomikawa Aiho of Anti-Skill’s eyes widened at that report.

(First those Anglican people take over the city’s law enforcement and now this!?)

She didn’t even need to check the camera footage on the helicopter’s multipurpose monitor.

From her vantage point in the night sky, one section of the surface was visibly expanding. The scale was hard to judge, but the buildings being easily engulfed had to be more than ten stories tall.

The male helicopter pilot adjusted his grip on the control column and asked a question.

“Is this that Coronzon person’s doing too? What the hell!? Aren’t fugitives supposed to hold their breath and sneak around!? Why would she go out of her way to cause a scene like this!?”

“Just get us there! Who knows how many people were caught in the blast!”

“I’ll try, but there’s honestly only so much we can do from the air!”

Several shouting voices came over the radio at once, ignoring the aviation radio rules. The pilot was using the radio to pick up as many signals as he could, hoping to get some picture of the situation on the inside.

“Where are the first-aid kits!? Why can’t I find one!?”

“Damn, more burns. There are too many injuries here!! Can someone tell me how I’m supposed to triage this!?”

“We can’t do it in that steam. It’s 400 degrees. We can’t even get close to the storeroom!!”

Yomikawa Aiho glanced aside.

First-aid kits could be found just about anywhere. There was even one belted to the helicopter’s wall. Was the chaos and confusion inside the Central Boiler so bad they couldn’t even find something so basic?

Yes, she had what they needed here.

The pilot must have wanted to help them too, but he gave his expert opinion.

“It’s not happening, Yomikawa! You can see that boiling steam, can’t you!? The steam pressure is disturbing the air currents near the ground too badly to land! If we carelessly descend now, the helicopter will be flipped over on its side!”

“Then what about an ambulance!? If we can’t go by air, we can send someone by ground!”

“What part of ‘boiling steam’ didn’t you understand? An ambulance is little more than an ordinary vehicle, so it just isn’t tough enough. Everyone inside would be steamed to death before they arrived. At 400 degrees, not only would the rubber tires melt, but the asphalt would probably be soft and squishy. Any vehicles will be stuck and the steam getting in through the air conditioning vents would bring the high temps inside too.”

“Then we’ll just have to make do with the helicopter. I know, let’s simulate it!! If we feed the satellite data into the quantum computers and DNA computers, those air current disturbances aren’t an obstacle!”

“How do we do that with the Board Chairman out of commission!? He’s the only one who can use the Master Key!!”

“Kh.”

“We can’t use the satellites, supercomputers, or any other Academy City facilities. Maybe we could use the individual devices, but we can’t tie them together. So my pointstands: it’s not happening, Yomikawa!!”

The helicopter could not descend as the Central Boiler continued to explode.

But voices were calling out for help.

Even an ordinary first-aid kit would be able to save the lives of the people injured by the burning heat and steam.

Yomikawa Aiho saw only one option.

“Then I just won’t use the helicopter.”

“Hey, Yomikawa?”

“You don’t have to do anything crazy. I’ll use this parachute to jump down on my own.”

“Are you stupid!? I said this 5.5 ton piece of metal would be flipped over on its side! You’ll lose all control over a parachute made of flimsy cloth in no time at- wait, no, you idiot!!”

She didn’t bother listening to the end.

Yomikawa Aiho grabbed the first-aid kit in both hands and threw herself out the open side door.

Without hesitation.

It went well. At first.

But 180 seconds after the parachute opened at an altitude of around 20 meters, things rapidly changed. The air current disturbance hit her like a punch from the side. Her neck hurt. She gritted her teeth and tried to restore her balance, but the winds buffeting her from all sides spun her parachute around.

All this and she hadn’t even been directly exposed to the steam. In the last few meters, her parachute turned completely inside out and she landed on some kind of machine. Only after her body badly dented the thin metal panel did she realize it was an industrial air conditioning unit. It had apparently absorbed the force of her landing.

The first-aid kit clutched to her chest had survived too.

Despite the burns and lacerations they must have suffered, the workers ran toward her. Ignoring their own woes and looking worried for her.

The Anti-Skill woman was truly glad she had come to help them.

She pressed the first-aid kit into the chest of a battered-looking worker.

“Are any of your people missing?”

“Th-the chief isn’t here, but his time card shows no record of him arriving. I think he took the night off without calling in…”

Then no need to worry about him.

“No ambulances are coming.”

She made sure they knew their situation.

“I doubt the fire trucks can make it either. So we have to prevent any further harm from the Central Boiler on our own. Where should we start!?”

Something exploded. Very close by.

She heard something whiz past her and felt something sharply stroke her cheek. A pipe must have burst from the internal pressure and a shard the size of a guitar pick had grazed her face.

No one could predict what would explode or when.

As the giant facility collapsed, it was like a single big balloon.

“Just one more…” said a young man, barely breathing. No, he was probably gathering all the strength he could. “Eight boilers make up the giant overall boiler and two of them have already blown. If just one more goes, there will be no stopping it. The reinforced concrete surrounding the place will collapse from the extreme steam pressure!”

“Then that’s what we have to deal with,” said Yomikawa.

“We can’t. We don’t know what happened to the general steam control room. No one can get there. Pipes have burst all throughout the building, so there’s hot steam everywhere!”

“Then I’ll go and check!!”

They could have just told her where that general steam control room was, but a few of the workers whose injuries were relatively minor came with her.

They all wanted to stop this tragedy if they could. Despite saying they couldn’t, they hadn’t given up.

Yomikawa Aiho smiled a little.

“Lead the way.”

She dove into danger.

She was no one special.

Today might finally be the day she died.

''However,'' that was no reason to not protect the Central Boiler and District 19.

===Part 13===

They couldn’t head outside thanks to the intense steam.

Only Coronzon, who had caused the disaster, could move freely in it. They just didn’t know if she would take the subway, the sewers, or what.

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

“We can’t just stand around here. Coronzon must even now be working to cross the wall and escape the city!”

Was there a loophole anywhere? Or a safety measure that would let them travel through the ultra-hot steam? The idea sounded too absurd to even consider, but then someone spoke up.

The girl who Kanzaki had picked up somewhere.

“…in the car.”

Kamijou had a bad feeling about this.

This definitely wasn’t a hint.

The words oozed with an ominous air that made him reluctant to hear the rest.

“My parents are still in the car. They said the city is too dangerous to stay, but then we got stuck in the red snow. I didn’t want to hear them arguing, so I got out of the car on my own. Then that steam came, so they’re probably still in there…”

…In all that steam?

Othinus and Anna Sprengel made an honest simulation rather than being weirdly considerate.

“Even in this thick reinforced concrete building, the door could buckle or the windows could break at any time. And if we’re talking about an ordinary car with no bulletproofing or blast resistance…”

“Fool, even if they covered the A/C vents with balled-up cloth, I’m not sure how long a car with windows on all sides would last. And once the windows break, the people inside will be exposed to the 400-degree steam.”

…Kamijou himself had seen the tough paint peeling off of cars. A human wouldn’t last ten seconds exposed to that.

Kanzaki’s eyes widened.

“It’s past midnight! Why would someone be out at this hour!? Especially when the entire city was ordered to stay in!”

“Because the Anglican grip on the city is weakening. Even as we speak.”

Kamijou gave a calm response to Kanzaki’s shouted question.

Maybe it was hard to grasp for a Saint who lived a proper life day in and day out, but human beings tended to want to do the things they were told not to do. All the more once the authority holding them back loosened its grip. Or once they found a loophole.

“I succumbed to temptation. I couldn’t resist.” Mourning clothes Mikoto scratched her cheek. “Phrases like that have existed since ancient times, which tells you a lot about human nature.”

“It’s not that. …They were just willing to try anything if it would keep their precious family safe.”

“Fool,” curtly called Anna Sprengel.

He didn’t need to hear any more. That magician used her wickedness as a great weapon, so he knew what she was trying to say.

If Coronzon was allowed to escape the city here and now, the entire 7 or 8 billion population of the Earth would be headed toward its doom. Once the process started, no one could stop it.

So they couldn’t afford to lose track of her.

They couldn’t stop to save a couple of unrelated people in the middle of the fight against Coronzon.

He knew that.

He really did, but…

“It’ll be alright.”

The next thing he knew, Kamijou Touma was kneeling down in front of the small girl.

And doing the opposite of Anna’s unspoken advice.

Because it was the right thing to do.

“There are a lot of different people here – the Anglicans, the Amakusas, some who were originally Roman Catholic, and even a Magic God and some Transcendents – but none of them are going to abandon you. Because every one of us are here because we want to help people.”

He just had to remember what kind of being Great Demon Coronzon was.

She tore people apart from each other and kept humanity from reaching magical knowledge.

So this was another side of the battle.

In the fight against Coronzon, they would continue to encounter frustratingly malicious “coincidences” as well as trouble and accidents that seemed designed to test them. Because that was the kind of being she was. Just like there was an angel of love and an angel of righteousness and just like there was a demon of wrath and a demon of envy, she was the great demon who specialized in ''that sort of thing''.

He wouldn’t let those bonds be torn asunder.

…An emergency? An urgent situation? The entire human race’s doom would be assured once the dawn arrived? He still wasn’t going to give up on being human. He couldn’t defeat Coronzon if he wasn’t willing to say that!!

No one stopped him.

Not Index, not Misaka Mikoto, not Kanzaki Kaori, not Agnese Sanctis, not Alice Anotherbible, and not even Anna Sprengel who had given him her advice as a wicked woman.

They had all fought against Coronzon.

“I promise you everything will be alright. We’re going to save your parents right now!!”

===Part 14===

Yomikawa Aiho clicked her tongue.

The equipment in the Central Boiler’s general steam control room had survived, but none of the six remaining boilers responded to anything they did in that room lined with the CRT monitors only found in this district.

One of the workers explained.

“The equipment here is all working. It isn’t malfunctioning, but the steam isn’t reaching the condensers… My guess is the distribution board is to blame. We need to head there and fix it.”

“Distribution board?”

Even as Yomikawa asked, she realized it had to be like a fuse box but for steam instead of electricity.

“Where is it? Tell me and I’ll go check it!”

“But…”

“There’s no time! Which is going to take more work: a small distribution board on the wall or this entire giant general steam control room? And to be blunt, it doesn’t look like there’s much for me to do here!!”

The worker nodded a few times at that.

“I’ll sketch you a simple map. Thanks. The boilers can’t stand this much pressure for long. We’ll have a chain reaction of ruptures in the surviving ones soon!”

Yomikawa Aiho grabbed her radio and stepped out the door.

There was so much white steam.

Had the damage to the facility progressed since she arrived in the room?

The 400-degree steam burst from the walls and ceiling as sharp as blades. Even if it didn’t directly hit her, it made the entire space as hot as a sauna. She wouldn’t be killed right away, but it was sapping her stamina.

The spraying steam made it hard to hear the voice from the radio. But then a loud voice came from the facility’s speakers.

“I’m amazed you decided to rush in here with everything going on. Personally, I have half a mind to run away.”

“But you haven’t run away, have you? So we’re not that different. You see, I have some ''freeloaders'' living with me and I want to protect their home. With people’s lives in my care, I can’t half-ass it.”

(Can’t go this way either.)

Even on the way to the general steam control room, they had encountered a few unopenable metal doors. Instead of the force of the explosion bending the doors, it seemed like they were automatic doors that used steam rather than electricity to open. That meant all the steam erupting from the pipes worked against her. Without sufficient pressure supplied to the doors, they couldn’t open. It was actually an adaption of a 2000-year-old invention known as Heron’s steam turbine.

She broke the hinges with her gun and kicked down the door.

That was a convenient tool for opening any door in here, but firing too recklessly could break a thin pipe and trigger a steam explosion nearby.

Something the size of a rugby ball – probably some kind of drone – was ejecting steam to weave across the floor.

The steam-powered lift was unusable. Yomikawa grabbed some rags from the ground and used them like potholders to grab the metal ladder. Several things exploded as she climbed. Sharp shards flew like flying disks and stabbed into the wall much too close for comfort.

The steam obscured her vision more than she had expected.

She had a hastily sketched map, but she felt like she would get lost even with it.

And she wasn’t looking for a special room. It was only a thin metal box attached to a corridor wall.

Finally, she found it.

“That must be the distribution board!!”

“It’s simple enough to operate. Open the cover and you should see 16 levers. Since our commands aren’t getting through, something must have moved some of the levers. Maybe one of the explosions and maybe the vibration of the steam hitting the wall. The levers have two options: up or down. The pattern we want is YNYNYYYNYNNYYYNY. Look for any that are wrong and flip them to the correct position. That should give us back control! And if you can, use tape or something to fix them in place!!”

She found them.

Three of the levers were in the wrong position.

“If I fix these…”

The ceiling exploded.

Yomikawa jumped back as the white steam passed sharply in front of her. Like a dropping guillotine or shutter. She could feel the 400-degree ferocity raising the air temperature in the corridor.

A voice practically screamed out of the speakers.

“Yomikawa-san! Please respond! Boiler #5 isn’t going to last much longer! You need to hurry!”

The worker couldn’t see the situation here. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said that.

400-degree steam was blocking the way right in front of her. A human would be boiled to the bone by that. She couldn’t even entertain silly ideas about slipping through a gap in the erupting steam.

But if someone didn’t do it, the boiler would rupture. Then the reinforced concrete barrier surrounding them at 3 kilometers would be destroyed by the steam pressure. And everyone working so hard to prevent that would be obliterated along with it.

Could she really let that happen?

(I think this really might be the end for me.)

Yomikawa Aiho honestly accepted that.

But the distribution board was within arm’s reach. Operate that and she could save everyone.

So she had to act.

Misaka Worst, Last Order…and Accelerator.

Academy City was far from a peaceful utopia. It had plenty of flaws. But this was the city that had raised those children. They deserved to smile after everything that had been taken from them. She couldn’t just go, ‘Welp, the city’s destroyed, so that’s that. Bye.” and leave the debt unpaid.

She was afraid to die. Which was why Yomikawa Aiho reminded herself she wanted to be the kind of person who could look those kids in the eye.

So move. Do it.

She was Anti-Skill. She had to focus only on protecting the city.

===Part 15===

They had decided to rescue the ordinary people trapped in a car out on the street.

Hiding inside a reinforced concrete building, mourning clothes Mikoto was the first to speak up.

“The biggest problem with the steam outside is the immense heat and pressure.”

“That’s two problems,” complained Kamijou.

“No, it’s one. The heat is what causes the moisture to expand and produce steam. And that expansion is what creates enough pressure to destroy concrete walls.”

It was important to confirm the basic facts of the situation.

The only flaw was how learning the extent of their hopelessness depressed him so much.

But Kanzaki, who was listening in, saw things differently.

“So we just have to cool it. Is that what you’re saying? The solution is simple. If we cool all that steam, it will return to harmless drops of water.”

Everyone would say that wasn’t possible.

After all, there was enough steam to engulf an entire district. And it was over 400 degrees Celsius. That was hot enough to melt car tires and soften asphalt. Dumping a bucket of water on it wasn’t going to cut it.

“But her logic itself isn’t wrong,” said Othinus.

“Fool. That kind of logic is a crucial condition for magicians. It may look like we can do anything, but we actually achieve our desired result by following a set of laws not found in your chemistry or physics textbooks,” added Anna Sprengel.

Kanzaki listened in while spreading out a large piece of paper on a table.

“We need a simple Christian legend related to cooling. I would suggest St. Dorothea and Theophilus. Agnese, may I borrow a few of your Catholic nuns?”

“Could subordinates like us say no if we wanted to? But that story is the opposite of what you want. The legend says the fresh roses and apples were delivered in the freezing February winter.”

“Which is why we reverse it by adjusting the symbols. Index.”

“That should be easy.”

And they only needed the logic to be sound.

No matter how absurd it looked, they only needed to have “correctness” on their side.

Kanzaki Kaori boldly made her claim.

“From there, I can force it through with my power as a Saint.”

At first, Kamijou thought a machinegun was firing outside.

But no.

Rain was pouring down outside the window. The white steam filling the district was instantly cooled into drops of water. There was so much of it it seemed like the weather had completely changed.

They had altered the scenery itself. The logic may have been sound, but the scale was something else entirely. How many tens of thousands of tons of liquid nitrogen would you need to cause this?

Kamijou felt silly even trying to calculate it.

“This won’t last long… Let’s head out!!”

He didn’t need to be told twice.

But once outside, he found a brown muddy river.

He had stepped down out of the building on pure momentum, but now he couldn’t take another step forward. Everything below his hips felt wrong. If he didn’t keep a hand on the wall and watch his step, he would be dragged down and swept away by the water. He was pretty sure only Alice would be able to stand in this muddy current without difficulty.

The car in question was less than 100 meters away.

Yet getting there was no easy task.

“I think you overdid it!! This is going to wash the car away!”

“This was the only way to keep the hot steam from boiling us!! Everything we do is on the level of changing the weather or dropping a shooting star from the sky!”

The scale of everything with Saints was off the charts.

Kamijou nearly stumbled on the way, but not just because of the current. Something was wrong with the ground. The melted asphalt may have re-hardened in the wrong shape.

Kamijou and Index somehow managed to reach the light car that was rocking like a small boat. The weird round car’s engine compartment looked like a metal drum on its side. Since this was District 19, did it run on steam? No, the lack of smokestack suggested it used coal instead.

Somewhat exasperated, Othinus spoke up from his shoulder.

“If it was a car that used a huge battery to power heating elements that heat water into steam to power the car, it would have been a high-tech eco car.”

This was the part that worried Kamijou.

“The car’s partially submerged, so touching it isn’t going to give me an electric shock, is it? Damn…”

Something banged on the glass from the inside.

Someone was in there. Two someones. Just like the girl had said. Hard to tell if they were more afraid of the steam or the muddy river, though.

(I’m risking my life here too. But I made it this far, so I’m going to save them!!)

The car’s doors weren’t going to open outwards while partially submerged like this. Kamijou grabbed a branch floating down the muddy river and climbed up onto the car’s hood. Sensing his weight, the car’s alarm started beeping, but now wasn’t the time to complain about that. This was probably being recorded by the drive recorder, but he still swung his makeshift bat down towards the windshield.

He smashed right through it, but that wasn’t enough and Kanzaki moved in to tear the rest out along with its frame.

She practically clung to the survivors to drag them out of the car.

The car itself slid sideways, pulled by the current.

It wasn’t going to last much longer.

Clinging to a tree a short distance away, Anna Sprengel shouted over at them.

“With this powerful current, trudging back upstream would be inefficient. Fool, let the current take you! Take shelter in a different building downstream!!”

“Dammit, are you kidding me!?”

He swore, but he was the one who had decided to save these people.

He just had to stick to it to the end.

He started to jump down from the car, but he was stopped by a tug on the back of his neck. Courtesy of Misaka Mikoto.

“Stay there.”

The car clearly moved below his feet. But with a stability not found when the current was pushing it sideways. Was that because he could sense a human will behind it? She must have been magnetically controlling it.

Something shifted out of the way below the water and it began to ride the current like a boat.

Something passed by overhead. He instinctually looked up…and felt his heart freeze when he realized it was a power line. Specifically, an exposed high-voltage line like those used by trains.

“Do they have a retro streetcar running in this area? What would’ve happened to us if that had snapped and fallen into the water?”

“Why is that your main concern when you’re traveling downstream with a billion-volt power source?” asked Mikoto.

The steam car bumped into the stairs at the bottom of a pedestrian overpass.

The muddy river would have prevented them from opening any ground floor doors even if they had wound up right alongside one. Instead, Kamijou, Index, Mikoto, and Kanzaki rushed inside what looked like a department store through the second floor entrance.

Kanzaki shouted into what looked like a paper charm.

“I will be ending the cooling spell’s effects, so everyone get inside a sturdy building! You have 10 seconds!!”

Her countdown was precise.

The white steam once more ruled the world. On the other side of the glass door was a world of deadly steam that would instantly boil a human being with a temperature of more than 400 degrees Celsius.

“While this is tempered security glass, the door could break at any moment. Let’s head further up.”

“What about Coronzon?”

While they dealt with this sidequest, she was free to act.

They had given her time.

So was she already past the wall?

If she had been freed into the wide world beyond, could they even find her? Kamijou felt more and more worried.

But just then…

“Ksshh…ey…”

He heard a sound.

No, a voice. From the small radio Kanzaki held.

“Hey! Please someone listen. This is the Central Boiler’s general steam control room. We somehow managed to keep the rest of the boilers from blowing. We have control of the pressure, so there’s no concern of any more steam escaping! Oh, but call the fire fighters and tell them to hurry!! The Anti-Skill officer helping us hasn’t returned!!”

“Oh, shut up. I’m still alive. Really, if you have fireproof suits for welding work, you should’ve told me. I nearly died.”

Kamijou took a look outside…and sure enough. The density of steam had fallen to little more than a thin fog. He could see things clearly outside. This had started out as a January night cold enough for snow. Without any additional steam, things would cool down on their own.

He and the others tried heading out.

It felt like a sauna. It was hot and humid enough to forget it was January. But it wasn’t enough to burn them. And the muddy river was gone.

Othinus took a look around from his shoulder.

“Looks like you can walk around outside now.”

“I guess it was the heat, but that red snow is gone from the ground.”

Probably a combination of the river and the sauna. Whatever the case, District 19 was clean.

“Fool.”

“Teacherrrr!”

The others caught up with them in the unpleasant steam.

And regrouping meant that girl had been reunited with her parents. The reunion took the form of a tearful embrace.

The steam was no longer a concern. That much was good news. But not all the news was good.

They had lost track of Coronzon. And they had no further clues.

His selfishness had come at a steep price.

Or so he thought, but he had underestimated things.

There were others here fighting.

“Also,” said a voice on the radio. “We have a report from the vicinity of the wall. You’re pursuing a fugitive, right? I don’t know who you’re after or why, but no one has crossed the wall. That much I’m confident of.”

“Eh?”

Several voices were talking.

It wasn’t just one person on the other side of the radio.

“A university research team was still gathering data with all this going on. They’re running a microscopic and macroscopic experiment where they scatter a sticky steam with high water retention over a wide area to see if it will efficiently stick to airborne pollutants, allowing them to be retrieved. What matters to you is that they can tell if someone approaches the wall by the change in the steam distribution. But they didn’t see anything.”

“Whoever it is must still be in the city. And if they’re not there, they must have turned around and gone to another district. Hurry up and catch them. We’d much prefer things to be peaceful around here.”

“The chief was stuck in his car? Oh, he can go to hell. He left his post without taking leave, so you tell him if he really wants to protect people, he needs to do his damn job. Now, if he were alone, I would just leave him out there, but his wife and daughter didn’t do anything wrong, so I guess we’ll have to help!!”

“Coronzon…didn’t approach the wall?”

It didn’t sound real even as Kamijou spoke the words.

But it was the truth.

…This wasn’t over yet.

He had gotten distracted. Taken a detour. Put the entire planet at risk. …Even so, it hadn’t been a complete waste. Small good deeds and kind acts were gathering together to accomplish something bigger.

Because Kamijou’s group had acted selflessly, now these other people were acting selflessly in return.

They were lending a hand.

The ring of cooperation was growing.

This was a weapon they had and Coronzon did not. …Or maybe it was her complete inability to acquire this that had broken her so badly.

Whatever the case, this wasn’t over.

If Coronzon hadn’t crossed the wall, then they could still pursue her!

Then someone voiced a quiet question.

That someone was Misaka Mikoto.

“But why did that Coronzon person move away from the wall?”

“?”

“If you want to escape, it’s human nature to want to run along the wall, right? The wall is right there and if you can get across, you win. But this Coronzon didn’t hesitate to distance herself from the wall. She went away. Heading toward the center of the city should only put her at more risk. What does she gain from this?”

Now that she mentioned it…

“Coronzon is actually trying to escape…isn’t she?” asked Kamijou.

“Yes, she is,” said Othinus. “Not being caught would be her actual top priority, but she must have a goal in mind. In that case, leaving Academy City probably is her priority.”

“But her actions contradict that.” Kihara Noukan joined the conversation. “Approaching the city center and extending her time in the city should only increase the risk of her being caught.”

“The wall might not actually matter,” cut in Index. The magic side girl provided a viewpoint entirely different from Kamijou and Mikoto. “It’s like you said before, Touma: Great Demon Coronzon isn’t human.”

“…?”

Coronzon’s actions were inconsistent.

That made some sense since fleeing after Adikalika failed hadn’t been her initial plan.

At the very least, this wasn’t all some grand plan she had conceived to deceive Kamijou and the others.

So if they wanted to stop her, they had to think up the kind of idea she would come up with but before she did. They were the pursuers. If they overlooked even one thing, she would use it to slip away.

In that sense, Index was bringing them another step closer to Coronzon.

“If you think of her as a collection of Telesma…then she doesn’t actually need to cross the physical wall to leave Academy City. She just has to break herself down into a mass of energy.”

“Hey, wait a second…”

His assumptions were crumbling around him.

Was that really an option?

Could you really just throw this new way of thinking into consideration!?

“Are you saying Coronzon can send herself, and her physical body too, through the city gas or the water pipes!?”

“I don’t know what ‘city gas’ is, but she probably can, yes,” said Index. Confidently. “If she hitches a ride on a ley line – a giant energy line running below the ground – she can’t just escape the city, she can escape to the other side of the planet!!”

[[Image:GT_Index_v14_BW2.jpg|thumb]]

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume13 Epilogue

2026-06-10T22:45:56Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Epilogue: Another – 4th_HERO.==

“Phew.”

Alice Anotherbible let out a white breath.

Even she, the prototype Transcendent, had used so much power she had to catch her breath.

Index and Misaka Mikoto.

She had sent those two girls on ahead.

While ensuring the source of all this trouble didn’t notice.

That had opened a “hole”, but she remained trapped inside the invisible labyrinth. That modern labyrinth kept her from her destination no matter how far she walked and it was a much bigger problem than the blonde hair scouts which appeared more threatening.

She had done it with brute force, but she had opened a hole.

She understood the logic behind it.

Next to her, Anna Sprengel released a white breath of her own and looked up into the sky with annoyance. She was another extreme, a being too irregular to call a Transcendent.

Red snow fell from the night sky.

Cold concrete buildings surrounded them in all four directions.

Meaning…

“Dammit, Coronzon. She used the gray concrete as a replacement for the thick screen of freezing snow that causes people to get lost in a mountain blizzard, didn’t she? And so we’ve been wandering a labyrinth where we think we’re walking in a straight line but end up circling the same block over and over again.”

“Right.”

Tonight was snowy and thick clouds covered the sky above. There were no landmarks.

However, it likely wouldn’t have mattered if there was a moon in the sky. Knowing the direction wouldn’t be enough to escape this dungeon.

Human senses were fragile.

It was simplest to think of it like a room with green screens covering the walls, floor, and ceiling, but people could easily lose track of distance and direction when their vision was all colored a single, unchanging hue. When pushed to the limit, people would wander into places they shouldn’t be and even begin to doubt the accurate data provided by their map or compass. Once that happened, they would only sink further. Strange things happened in the mountains. Maybe so, but a few of them were the result of people unwittingly passing the limits of their body’s functions.

Magician Aleister, the creator of Magick, had also been a mountain climber. That may have played a role in how he shaped his spells.

“But the girl opened a hole once, so she can do it again in the same way. Let’s try again once the girl has managed to charge up again.”

“Assuming Coronzon hasn’t applied any countermeasures.”

Which she would have. She wasn’t a foe you could use the same move against over and over.

These two were out of the loop now.

They hadn’t been fully driven from the scene, but their arrival would be much too late.

The two young(-looking) girls heard a voice from overhead.

“Oh?”

That was the Bologna Succubus with Blodeuwedd the Bouquet hanging down by one huge arm of her metal coat.

Not even looking down from the sky was enough to escape the labyrinth. Just like you couldn’t rescue people from a mountain blizzard using a helicopter.

The super skinny apron girl looked surprised.

“What are you doing, Alice? It’s not like you to give up your feast to someone else☆”

“She’s finally maturing,” remarked the Bologna Succubus.

“Heh heh.

Silently, the red snow continued to fall.

Great Demon Coronzon looked up into the starless night sky and laughed.

It was a laugh of pure scorn.

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!”

“Oh, was there some funny joke I missed?” asked an exasperated Mikoto.

Coronzon answered with her fit of laughter continuing.

“Funny? Yes, funny indeed! My, my. Adikalika really was a poor choice. The spell structure was a bit too delicate, so it could have broken or even shattered had I poured my full strength into a defense at this close range. …But that ends now. No longer will I be disturbed by such trifles. I can finally draw on my full strength. Gya ha ha, and what could be funnier than that!? Bfh, gh, ha ha ha hee!!”

“Full strength?”

Mikoto frowned and Coronzon came to a complete stop and explained.

Without reservation.

“Everything before was just a rehash from the previous battle. Did I do anything new?”

A rehash.

“Some of my power nearly overflowed with Qliphah Puzzle 545, but that was all. If not for that, Kamijou Touma and the rest of you would have been instantly smashed into meatballs before you even arrived here. Grimoire library, do you perhaps understand the relevant values and units here? Heh heh. You should know all too well that Great Demon Coronzon is at least an international threat and not someone any individual should attempt to fight. Bwa ha!! Oh, I can’t help it. Sorry, but I just can’t. Hwa ha ha ha ha!!”

Index didn’t bother answering.

She cut right to something more important.

“You mean Adikalika wasn’t your goal?”

“Not really, no.”

Once again, Coronzon admitted it with terrifyingly little reservation.

Despite everything.

“Adikalika was just one possible method. I wasn’t all that attached to it. Make no mistake. My priority is the ends, not the means. I can begin the end of the world somewhere else. In the very near future.”

“How near…?”

“''Tomorrow if I wanted to.'' From somewhere on the other side of the world from Academy City. Yes, maybe from Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere.”

Coronzon sounded almost puzzled.

And then she burst out laughing.

“Bwa ha!! Wait, don’t tell me. You didn’t think Adikalika was my one and only trump card, did you? I am Great Demon Coronzon, guardian of wisdom in the great tree and the traitor who stole that knowledge. Kee hee hee hee hee hee. Every last one of my fingers and toes wouldn’t be enough to count the ways I know to submerge the planet in a sea of blood!! Bwa nya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

Coronzon had several cards in her deck.

She had no pressing reason to insist on victory here at this moment.

She was already the strongest and she wanted to rid herself of that loathsome power. No failure for her would weaken her. She might be interrupted and driven to failure by humans, but she would retain her full power.

So as long as she was willing to keep going, she could accept any number of losses.

She wasn’t like Fiamma of the Right or Magic God Othinus who had bet everything on a single opportunity.

Coronzon’s evil nature was stickier, harder to get rid of, and hopeless.

Had she had her fill of laughter?

After wiping a tear from her eye, Coronzon finally returned to a serious expression.

“Hee hee. But now I know what to do next. …You two are first on the list. I seriously doubt you could disturb any of my other trump cards, but you did manage to stop me this once. So I will eliminate you before this silly countermeasure can spread to the rest of the riffraff. Then I can take my time as I get to work. And without having to look after Adikalika, I won’t have any limits holding me back!! Or do I need to put it plain words for you? From now on, I will be at my full power!!!”

This was all the more reason for Index and Misaka Mikoto to fight.

Great Demon Coronzon.

The destruction of the world didn’t even come into it. Did she realize that the mess she had made of the city was unforgivable enough? That destruction of their ordinary and everyday was sufficient. Index and Mikoto weren’t trying to rack up a high score by saving people all around the globe. They couldn’t stand to see just one nearby person die.

Something audibly beat against the air.

The great demon had spread her enormous wings wide.

She had readily abandoned the Adikalika fight. Which gave her freedom.

There was an exaggerated element to her behavior, like she was only enjoying an event.

“Now, come!! One of you is the Grimoire Library full of knowledge gathered to fight back against the modern Western magic developed by Magician Crowley and the other is a Level 5 produced by former Board Chairman Aleister. …The perfect combination for the world’s final attempt to fight back. It is time I went around crushing each and every sliver of hope he left in this world so that I can wring the bloody tears from his soul and watch that soul turn blacker and blacker!!”

A high-pitched cling rang out.

It came from the arcade coin flicked up by Misaka Mikoto’s thumb.

“I don’t understand anything you’re going on about, but I hope you don’t think you’ve defeated everything the #3 can throw at you just because you stopped a Railgun head on. These powers are all in how you use them. There are only seven Level 5s, but that isn’t because no one else has this kind of firepower. I’ll show you the wide range of applications that sets the seven of us apart!!”

“…”

Misaka Mikoto was eager to get started, but Index looked pale.

Perhaps because she was from the magic side.

And therefore had a better understanding of what they were up against.

Great Demon Coronzon was still confident enough to play around. As she had said, sporadically throwing individual power against her was not the appropriate strategy for full-power Coronzon.

Othinus whispered from Index’s shoulder.

“(Don’t be intimidated. That will only guide you in the wrong direction. As a god of war, I know that all too well.)”

“Right. But…”

“(You find it disturbing how easily she gave up on Adikalika after putting so much effort into it? She claims she doesn’t care because she has plenty more options for destroying the world? Nonsense. She can laugh, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s panicking after her plan fell apart. She’s currently trying to recover from that failure and is desperate to stay in control ''so she can reuse as much of her plan as possible.'' So as a god of deception, I tell you: do not be deceived. You’ve driven her right up to the precipice. You have no reason to let up now.)”

“Even so…”

“(And if Coronzon is a great demon of knowledge, then you of all people have no reason to fear her. As a god of magic, I assure you: the knowledge in your head is in no way inferior to the knowledge she clings to so preciously. The two of you are equal.)”

“…”

All of this had occurred to Index already.

The problem was Index’s inability to refine her life force into magic power. That meant she could not use the knowledge of her 103,001 grimoires to wield magic herself.

She also couldn’t force that role onto Misaka Mikoto since that girl was a scientific esper. If an esper did force themselves to use magic, it could easily cause severe damage to their blood vessels and nerves. Othinus also couldn’t do it after being shrunk to 15cm and Index couldn’t expect anything from the cat in her arms.

So they weren’t enough.

Grimoire Library Index knew that before the fight even began.

Battling that great demon on even footing would require a clash of knowledge against knowledge.

That required a magician.

A human magician.

They were missing a crucial piece needed to battle Great Demon Coronzon head on!!

Just then.

She heard a voice.

“There’s…still…”

It came from Kamijou Touma.

Coronzon frowned. She supposedly contained all the world’s knowledge, yet this truly baffled her.

He couldn’t even get up, much less fight, so why wouldn’t he just play dead?

Why would he draw attention to himself? What could he do at this point?

He had already lost.

Kamijou Touma had lost. Accelerator had lost. Even Hamazura Shiage was no longer moving.

But…

“There’s still…someone…” whispered the puny boy.

Was that all he could manage even after gathering the very last of his strength?

Even so…

“Long before us. Long, long before any of us were born, there was a hero who’s been fighting this cruelty all along. Fighting against the world and losing, but refusing to give up and getting back up. There’s ''another'' who eventually built this city and gave so many people the power to fight without having to give up!”

“What…?”

“Isn’t that right, ''Aleister''!!?”

Great Demon Coronzon froze.

For just one definite moment.

And.

''Crack!!

The sound of cracks running through something rang out from within Coronzon’s chest.

[[File:GT Index v13 BW8.jpg|thumb]]

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume13 Chapter2

2026-06-10T22:45:24Z

Ultranova17: minor

==Chapter 2: Death and Slaughter – VS_NECROMANCER.==

===Part 1===

The sun was setting on Academy City.

The red snow continued even as night fell.

“Nhh…”

Necromancer Isabella Theism raised her arms and stretched.

Even that dealer in death had visibly white breath in the darkness.

The building was cramped and Isabella knew she was ruining the mood, but she had no real obligation to get along with her colleagues. She hadn’t come to Japan to make friends.

They had taken over this city.

They had accomplished what the magic side as a whole would consider a great feat. This alone had to be causing a kerfuffle in the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches. If the power of science joined the conflict, it would greatly change the three-way stalemate between England, Rome, and Russia.

Offering Academy City to the queen would be enough for Isabella Theism’s name to go down in history.

(How history would describe me is an open question, though. That queen is an upright person who values peace and loathes fighting.)

But controlling the world meant nothing if that world was destroyed tomorrow.

She had to focus on Great Demon Coronzon for now.

“Which means I don’t have time to listen to complaints from ''outsiders''.”

She focused on her earphone and heard an annoyed voice.

“What is wrong with you? Wasn’t that a little quick to completely change your mind on me?”

“All I did was lay some groundwork I felt necessary for my mission. To me, this seems pretty peaceful compared to carpet bombing a jungle or some buildings the enemy might be using to hide.”

“Hold on. It was you Anglicans who said you wanted a united front.” The new board chairman’s voice dropped in tone. “That’s why I didn’t resist much when I discovered your further savagery. Setting aside whether it’s humane or not, I could have ''used magnetic resonance well beyond any safety standards to rattle people’s cranial nerves and turn them into living pawns'' all from a safe distance. I can still do that.”

“Well, that’s a new interpretation of the zombie. And I like that they’re zombies but you aren’t controlling the dead.” Isabella actually sounded amused. “Did we sign any documents? Did we stamp it with our seal? All you’re going off of is a baseless chat with our previous leader, who had no right to be leading in the first place. Now that I’ve taken the position, I’m not bound by any vague verbal promises or implicit understandings. I, Isabella Theism, will do everything necessary to stop the Adikalika large-scale attack spell that Great Demon Coronzon is preparing. …And I mean everything necessary as a necromancer, of course☆”

When the leader changed, so did the overall policy.

That unpleasant side of organizations was rearing its ugly head here.

After trusting and opening up to the previous leader, that leader was driven out by infighting and a completely different person was now in charge and saying the exact opposite. All the personal trust built up before had been shifted onto someone else entirely and all the risk was shoved back onto him for opening up. Even though this was no time to be getting sidetracked with that sort of nonsense.

“Don’t you get that this fun of yours is only going to lead to more meaningless death?”

“Meaningless? Of course not! …I won’t let a single death go to waste. I generally use imitations rather than consume actual dead bodies for my spells, but that doesn’t mean I lack the ability to do so. And creating lookalikes out of safe and reliable ingredient is a lot of work. If Academy City is going to let these real dead bodies go to waste, I will take full responsibility and put them to good use.”

She was smiling.

This was no lie or mockery – she really meant it.

With Isabella Theism, there was little meaning in debating whether she was a good or bad person. The meaning of justice changed depending on your viewpoint and her opinion was technically correct if ''all'' you wanted to do was keep the United Kingdom safe. Of course, that was setting aside the question of if the British people would permit ''a peace built on other’s deaths.''

To Isabella, lives were like a fuel that could be burned with the maximum efficiency. Using them up without any waste was a virtue. So to put it another way, inefficiently protecting others’ lives was not all that important.

Whether this was good or evil didn’t really matter here. That question could wait.

But Accelerator did have an answer for whether he liked it or not: he couldn’t have disliked it more.

“…You’re different.”

“From what?”

“''You’re nothing at all like the necromancer I know.''”

“I should have known the one sitting in the board chairman’s seat would have some delightful friends. But, you see, this field has branched into many different ideologies and factions.”

Yes. Her sensibilities were not off because she was a necromancer or because she was a magician who specialized in human death. This all came down to Isabella’s personal beliefs and tastes.

Her insistence on always doing what was correct rankled Accelerator, but she was the one who had ended up in a position to influence the fate of Academy City and the world as a whole. Was the world really in good hands? In a way, she was even more of a pain than Coronzon who opposed the world more directly.

“But the fact remains that no amount of complaining on your part is going to change anything. I mean, Academy City is a shambles, isn’t it? You can’t gather enough pieces to take on Coronzon. So despite your sensible complaints, you have no choice but to rely on the Anglican experts who have entered your city. And need I remind you that it is we Anglicans who overcame the threat of Coronzon in the past?”

“…”

“Yes, wouldn’t it be nice if Academy City still had a trump card up its sleeve?”

===Part 2===

In a District 7 hospital, a nurse who had gone out of her way to modify her official nurse uniform to give it a miniskirt stepped into the emergency room.

“Hey, doc☆ You have a message from Anti-Skill’s um…how do you read this name? It means yellow spring river, but they really should give you the reading too. Anyway, she’s one of those people who keep the city peaceful. Something about wanting an expert medical opinion.”

“If it will not save a life, I’m not interested.”

“I’m not sure in this case. Apparently there’s a few witness reports around the city saying a dead kid called Kamijou Touma is up and moving around.”

“…”

The frog-faced doctor sighed.

Now there was a name he hadn’t expected to hear again.

And…

“Are they sure he’s really dead?”

“They don’t know, which is why they wanted the advice of the doctor who declared him dead. They apparently can’t contact the crematorium either.”

That meant it was possible he wasn’t dead.

The frog-faced doctor had confirmed the boy’s death and even sewed up his mangled body. He had even observed the embalming in the morgue, but was it really possible to fake death in that state?

However.

If the boy was still alive, then, whatever his state might be, he would be one of the patients the frog-faced doctor had to save. He was probably caught up in some kind of trouble again, but that was no reason for the frog-faced doctor to give up on a patient. No matter what it was.

(And really, this sounds a lot more like the boy I know.)

“Transfer her to this monitor. The hospital is full of computers, so this monitor is as good as any.”

“On it.”

The nurse whose excessive display of sex appeal was constantly troubling the patients left the room.

The very next moment, something else happened.

Specifically, something moved atop a bloody stretcher in the emergency room. Perhaps because the poor female patient was unidentified (despite what looked like an ID card hanging from her neck), she had been sent away from District 10 and across the district line to reach this hospital. But by the time she had arrived, hadn’t she already been in cardiac arrest?

“What…?”

Immediately after the frog-faced doctor’s puzzled question, it happened.

It was like a mousetrap equipped with a powerful spring.

The young emergency patient had lost so much blood after biting her tongue that she hadn’t even been able to move her own heart, yet now she sat up. With enough force to tear out the cardiopulmonary bypass tubes attaching her to an external box.

“Bonjour!”

“…”

The frog-faced doctor looked like he wanted to say something, but it was the emergency patient who smiled and spoke to him.

“Ohh, I feel so dizzy. The blood isn’t reaching my brain. Maybe that’s why my self-diagnosis is stalled… A mystérieuse cardiac arrest patient who you couldn’t seem to identify must have been tough, huh? Well, your Jane Doe is in fact named Kihara Goukei, but you can call me Madame Gou. Oh, right. Do you know the nombre of the ambulance that brought me here? Those EMTs work so hard year round, so I feel bad troubling them with me. I need to send them some expensive mangoes later on.”

She was speaking a mile a minute.

Her tongue was operating quite smoothly for someone who had bitten it badly enough to kill her.

“Um, so, is the dead coming back to life the latest fad in this city or something?”

“Don’t ask me. But every part of my body is crammed full of that sort of technologie,” casually revealed Kihara Goukei.

This was the true face of Bio Secure.

“Nhh hee hee☆ When you belong to a team that deals with the city’s illegal undead, you gather a lot of specialized knowledge from across the city. And no one really tracks what happens to that bizarre technologie once it’s been confiscated, so no one ever notices if you modify some of it for your own use before consigning it to oblivion.”

“So you’re saying you have turned your own body into a collection of forbidden research you gathered around Academy City?”

“Because stealing other people’s recherche is so much faster than developing it yourself. That’s more the thought process of an industrielle spy than a researcher, though.”

Biting your tongue would kill you?

Then you just had to have two tongues.

…It was toying with death on that level that made her a Kihara.

“Do you not consider life to be valuable?”

“Life is precious, of course.”

The answer came immediately.

It sounded pure even.

But all that was distorted a second later.

“''Which is why'' it’s so much fun to toy with! A life is one-of-a-kind and not some replaceable scrap of paper, which is what makes it so exciting. Oui, oui. It all comes down to the knowledge that you are doing something truly irreversible!! Ah ha ha. Isn’t that the very definition of a desecration!?”

This was the difference between normal people and the Kihara family.

It wasn’t that they didn’t understand the value or share that value. They understood it perfectly, but their goal in handling something precious was entirely different. They were a wholly incomprehensible bunch.

Kihara Goukei continued, looking carefree.

“Now, a perfectly healthy person hogging your emergency room would only trouble the next patient, so I will take my leave here. Oh, which way to the payment desk? This looks like a big hôpital, so is it busy on weekdays? I’m in a hurry, so it would help immensely if you could just automatically charge it to my carte.”

“I get the feeling letting you go will bring trouble to many more people.”

“But you can’t stop me. Not as a docteur, anyway.”

She made it sound so obvious.

There were specialized tools in here, like scalpels used to cut skin and bone saws. Even opening the anesthesia valve might be able to neutralize this dangerous person.

But…

“You are a skilled doctor. Skilled enough to make a Kihara like me jealous. But your skills can only be used to save people. You might technically possess the skills, but you cannot cut into people or sew them up for any other raison. That is just how doctors work.”

“…”

“Oh, don’t worry. I too am working to protect Academy City’s peace. So don’t give me that grim look. I will do my job.”

“Even though you’re a Kihara?”

“Oui. I will do it ''as'' a Kihara.”

===Part 3===

The District 2 gunpowder testing lab was in fact an unmanned weapon data center.

It was a large place.

And its security was in fact ''too advanced'' to be fully utilized by the nuns and magicians with a poor grasp of scientific technology.

There were plenty of blind spots.

Lucia had dragged Agnese and Angelene to the heat control room.

Simply put, the room was lined with valves and tanks of the chemical coolant used to cool the large computers.

“What did you want to discuss?”

“Whether or not we’re going to continue obeying Isabella.”

Sister Lucia was fastidious.

She may not have liked Isabella’s methods, such as attacking her own people when they got in her way and accepting the impure along with the pure – and she in fact seemed much more at home with the impure.

“Eh? Eh? But the Anglican Church took us in when we fled the Catholics.”

Stooped Angelene hurriedly observed both Agnese and Lucia’s faces.

That was the first and most important point.

The 250 members of the Former Agnese Forces would gain nothing by clashing with the Anglicans.

In fact, they might end up with their lives at risk.

But Lucia crossed her arms and continued.

“I feel like the fair deal we were given is being violated.”

“Well…we are basically freeloaders with them. This isn’t the first time we’ve been given odd jobs that are definitely not worth the effort. And any accomplishments we do make go to whoever our leader is on paper.”

Agnese shrugged, but Lucia did not stop.

“She knocked out Stiyl and I don’t like the true identity she was hiding. Can we really leave the fate of the Italian Peninsula in her hands? Doesn’t this situation worry you two?”

“If Adikalika is activated, the world will be headed toward its doom. England has no reason to hold back.”

“So you think they’ll treat everyone equally? Really? Destroying the Vatican will not immediately doom London.”

The atmosphere froze.

That statement made them focus on the cracks.

And Sister Lucia wasn’t wrong.

Even if the world was set to be destroyed today or tomorrow, was England really doing everything they could? For example, Queen Elizard wasn’t here. Nor were Princesses Riméa, Carissa, and Villian. It was true it would be unusual for the royal family to be sent to the front line, but why was everything still operating “business as usual” with all this going on?

Even if the Catholics wanted them dead, Agnese and the others couldn’t abandon them to die.

They were only with England because it best served their purposes. Which was why Agnese had just said they were basically freeloaders.

Angelene stammered, “C-come to think of it, I haven’t seen any sign of the war-loving Knights around. The Anglicans are the only one of the three factions here. Before I thought that was lucky since it would avoid infighting, but now…”

It was easy to suspect England wasn’t taking this as seriously as they might.

Even though the clock striking midnight could signal the Italian Peninsula becoming a sea of blood, flesh, and bone.

The discussion had fast reached a point where it would look badly on them to be overheard by any of the true Anglicans.

But they couldn’t help but get worked up among themselves.

Agnese asked a careful question.

“Are you questioning where they’ve set up their defensive line?”

“We’re convenient workers, if not outright sacrificial pawns for them. I expected them to ask us to risk our lives and fight here. Kanzaki might not because she’s too nice, but why isn’t Isabella Theism demanding it of us?”

Could England be taking an optimistic view?

Did they only see this as an occurrence in Academy City of distant Asia, on the other side of the world?

Even if they screwed up and the Italian Peninsula were submerged in a sea of blood, flesh, and bone, did they think they had another chance? Maybe it was only subconscious, but did they still think there was a buffer zone left?

Lucia had a point.

Especially from the perspective of the Former Agnese Forces who wanted to protect the Italian Peninsula at all costs.

But at the same time, Agnese had felt a chill on her spine for a while. A very distinct chill.

The mention of Great Demon Coronzon may have reminded her.

(This happened last time in London, didn’t it?)

So she was cautious.

She had to treat this like defusing a bomb.

Coronzon was an expert at tearing apart the bonds between people.

So it was possible this conflict had been planned and this suspicion between allies would all serve to benefit the great demon.

(Could this be the same war mood – that same scent in the air – that sent Sister Orsola down the path of self-destruction?)

“Even so, you aren’t suggesting a coup here, are you? The Anglicans have over 10 thousand people in Academy City, so there isn’t anything our 250 can do. And they even have that extraordinary Saint. Not to mention that infighting while Adikalika is being prepared will only delight Coronzon.”

“I know that,” immediately replied Lucia. She apparently had a different idea. “Which is why I’m saying we can’t afford to leave this in the wrong hands. At the very least, Isabella can’t be the one to carry the fate of the Italian Peninsula on her shoulders.”

“Then Kanzaki? She is a dazzlingly good person, but she has the Amakusas to protect. Will she really make any bold moves to help us?”

“No.”

The fastidious nun sharply rejected that idea.

“There is someone else in this building, isn’t there? We need to be using everything available to us, but one person is going to waste.”

The three of them exchanged a glance.

Come to think of it…

“If ''she'' is at the center of it, then everyone here will do their job regardless of their position in the magic side power map. Even if it means forcing forward the defensive line that they’ve pulled back. Don’t you think so?”

===Part 4===

In the District 12 consulate, Kamijou Touma and the others were discussing something. Probably a plan to use against Coronzon.

Feeling left out, Hamazura Shiage’s face clouded over.

“Y’know…I just can’t believe Coronzon is trying to destroy the world again.”

“Think of it like her instincts as a great demon,” casually replied Dion Fortune. “You can’t expect to fix this with a conversation. She isn’t one to be stopped with the straightforward methods Kamijou Touma prefers.”

…Was that really true?

Hamazura thought back to the frozen ocean in the UK. When they last spoke in the cruise ship, she hadn’t seemed like an incarnation of evil to him.

333, dispersion. She was the one who tears apart people’s bonds and obstructs their evolution.

That much was true.

But on the other hand…

“Coronzon helped save you back then. She complained a bunch, but she didn’t take the option from me.”

“But would the world at large consider that an act of good? You’re forgetting that I was a pawn she created to grind the UK’s functioning to a halt. She was saving one of her own attackers.”

He hadn’t thought of it that way before.

Hamazura worked to suppress his reflexive response and made sure to actually think before speaking again.

“Are you saying she only showed interest in it because it was an act of evil?”

“Who knows. Even the magicians who have specialized in studying Coronzon are split on the subject. Master Mathers insisted she is an absolute evil while Crowley argued she is one side of a relative evil. Even those at the top of the magic side weren’t certain of her true nature, so that isn’t something you need to worry yourself over.”

No one knew.

It wasn’t clear.

And yet the world had decided they ''might as well'' call her evil?

===Part 5===

Dion Fortune wasn’t the only one hurriedly investigating Adikalika.

This affected everyone in the world.

And Crowley’s home of the United Kingdom had tons of documents related to his Magick. Since it was based on the same source, Isabella could make some predictions and estimations of what Great Demon Coronzon’s version would look like.

With a general knowledge of the destruction specs, one question remained on Isabella Theism’s mind.

(Why Rome instead of the UK?)

Of course, she could guess that Adikalika’s power would be difficult to use effectively against the UK due to their research into anti-Crowley techniques. And if Adikalika blew away an entire region, it would trigger global chaos and war just as well whether the target was the Anglicans or the Catholics.

But was that really enough for that great demon to give up?

Her grudge was clearly centered on the UK. That had to be the place she most wanted to destroy. And once she decided to destroy it, wouldn’t she make sure it happened no matter the cost or how extensive the preparations?

“This isn’t a plan B. Coronzon didn’t shift to her second best candidate as a compromise.”

But if that was true, it formed a natural question within Isabella.

“She’s intentionally targeting the Roman Catholic headquarters at the core of the Italian Peninsula. …''Is there something there''?”

And so.

In Academy City’s District 7.

Isabella Theism decided to find an observation point for Coronzon. She had plenty of sacrificial pawns she could have used, but was that really a good idea? They wouldn’t flat out refuse her orders, but even if they made a show of obedience, they might hide useful information. So she decided it was better to do the investigation herself.

What did Coronzon want to destroy in her attack on the Italian Peninsula?

Revealing the structure of the over-the-top Adikalika spell might just provide a hint there.

“Hm.”

Great Demon Coronzon was in this same district.

Isabella Theism had come here hoping to find something there, but…

“There definitely is something.”

Something was rustling along.

It looked like a giant crab, but that was no crab. The monster was around 2m tall and it was hideous. Instead of a poisonous creature, this thing inspired the sense of disgust felt when peering into the kitchen garbage bucket in a stranger’s house. The mass of gold giving off a twisted glow was in fact formed by balling up something like long blonde hair.

“?”

(Long blonde hair. So did this come from Coronzon? If this is her sending out pawns to stop people instead of just showing off, she must be a lot more concerned than she lets on.)

Apparently there was no need for the things to be crabs.

She also saw a great serpent slithering along the red snow, a thin-winged bat, a fat fly, an eight-legged octopus, an earth-devouring snail, and a scorpion that moved different again from the crab. They were all, of course, made from blonde hair.

(That rules out the idea of them being the horoscope symbols.)

They might simply be based on different demons, but she wasn’t certain of that either. Unlike the horoscopes, she wasn’t familiar with any crab demons.

Isabella Theism was a necromancer who specialized in death.

As she stood still and gave off a death scent to play dead, a blonde hair monster passed right by in front of her. They didn’t seem too intelligent. Maybe they couldn’t ad lib, or maybe they couldn’t recognize people if they didn’t fit certain predetermined search conditions.

The same thing repeated a few times.

The monsters were wandering around with a decent density. Specifically, she could see two or three of them from a major intersection. The distribution seemed to differ depending on location, so traveling toward the denser areas might show her where Coronzon was located. However, playing dead took a fair amount of effort, so she decided to end her recon mission here. She also doubted holding her breath would be enough to approach Coronzon close enough for a surprise attack.

(And I doubt these are the only pawns Coronzon has. After slipping past the grunts, I would probably find a mid-boss waiting for me.)

Isabella’s death camouflage was somewhat effective.

The gold monsters failed to notice her even when passing by right in front of her.

But what would happen if they did notice her?

The answer seemed obvious enough looking at the crab legs and pincers of the one that had gone clacking by earlier.

“A single step outside in District 7 would probably be deadly.”

On the other hand, there was no powerful blood scent hanging over the city.

The pawns were not going around actively breaking into homes and killing people.

If you didn’t leave the buildings, no harm would come to you.

So these pawns were meant to ensure no one interrupted Great Demon Coronzon’s Adikalika preparations. By giving them specialized abilities and a simple movement pattern, she was avoiding the mistake of delaying her plan by giving too many resources to the grunts.

…Of course, a failure to notice the regularity of their movements could lead people to behave like they were asking to be killed.

“Wahh!!”

Isabella heard a scream.

From a small boy of maybe 8 or 10. After seeing a monster out the window, had he decided his room was too dangerous and fled outside instead of locking up and sitting tight? Isabella glanced over but immediately gave up on him.

He was a little too far.

She couldn’t reach him.

And there was no harm in ignoring him.

Isabella’s only goals were preventing Adikalika’s activation and eliminating Great Demon Coronzon. She hadn’t exactly been asked to tally up and report on how many died in the process. Dion Fortune was it? Even if that archbishop added that condition now, she was only a false leader given the position to fill the empty seat in the interim. The older members had no obligation to obey her.

The sounds of splitting flesh and spraying blood rang loud.

Isabella’s expression barely changed.

Someone had protected the boy by placing herself over him. The woman wore a distinctive mask and was dressed a lot like a dentist. The golden pincers and legs had stabbed right into her back.

Red scattered from her.

Anyone could tell she had lost a lethal amount of blood, yet…

“Mon dieu.”

She sounded carefree.

No, she seemed irritated.

“Whoever designed this things needs to observe crabes better. And learn more about romance. A crabe’s pincers don’t stab or slash like a knife – they crush and cut like a chain tool!!”

After a dull scraping sound, the two meter pawn was split in two. Right down the middle. The crab lost control and split apart. Into countless threads – no, hairs.

How had she done that?

Only now was Isabella’s curiosity piqued. Even if this was only a scout or patrolwoman, did Academy City really still have someone capable of slaying one of Coronzon’s pawns?

The boy and the woman appeared to be conversing.

“U-um.”

“What is it?”

“Thank…you?”

The woman in question was soaked with blood.

No matter how invincible that last move had made her look, her back had still been stabbed repeatedly.

“Eek!?”

“My, my. Don’t worry. I am not ''designed'' to let a little thing like this kill me. …Also, I am Kihara Goukei, but you can call me Madame Gou.”

“Madame…ahh, y-you’re so hurt…and it’s…it’s my fault…”

“Forget about that.”

She used those words to set aside the blood still gushing from her.

The bloody woman acted like her next question was what really mattered.

“What is, um…yes, what is your name?”

“Urekawa. Urekawa Ousuke.”

“Urekawa-kun then? Cough, this is all necessary if you’re going to survive…so take a close look so you won’t forget it.”

Seated on the ground, Kihara Goukei pointed elsewhere.

“What…?”

“Do you see the bus there?”

It wasn’t far away. It was doubtful if the middle-aged man floundering in the driver’s seat actually had a large vehicle license, but that wouldn’t matter as long as he could get the bus moving.

“It will be leaving soon, so you need to get aboard before it does. And then the wonderful grownups aboard will make sure you can escape…so hurry.”

“But…what about you? We need to stop your bleeding!!”

“''Don’t worry about that.''”

The intensity behind those words made the Urekawa boy’s little shoulders jump.

Only a second-rate would flash their weapon to gain the obedience of those unable to fight. A true professional could easily grasp someone’s heart just by changing the mood.

The boy took a few steps back.

Kihara Goukei smiled a little as she watched that small back running elsewhere.

More of those weird golden things were wandering the area, but they did not attack anyone beyond a wall or door. So whether the bus was moving or not, the boy would be safe once inside it.

So she must have concluded the boy would be fine.

With that settled, Kihara Goukei turned toward the real threat.

In other words, toward Isabella Theism.

“Now, then.”

After an unpleasant tightening sound, Kihara Goukei’s bleeding stopped.

She didn’t have any bandages, not even a tiny adhesive one, but she had done this on her own.

“Independent stanching. It’s not all that unusual a trick. It’s a standard function for animals that sever a body part to escape predators in an act known as autotomy. Think a lézard’s tail or a crabe’s legs.”

“If you can stop your bleeding at will, why didn’t you fall over and play dead? This way you might as well be asking for someone to finish the job.”

“And then who would protect that boy? From those monstres and from you who had no issue abandoning him to mort.”

Isabella Theism heard a quiet psht of something in the air.

“?”

Something stabbed into her right thigh.

She felt no pain.

It was the dart from a tranquilizer gun.

“Okay, now raise your hand if it hurts.”

With continuous metallic grinding and scraping sounds, something like a scroll was unfurled. A belt as wide as a college notebook was spread out around Kihara Goukei like a hagoromo. It was lined with torture devices.

“Not that I’ll stop if it does☆”

The cruel dentist grinned behind her mask.

And the clash began.

[[File:GT Index v13 BW4.jpg|thumb]]

===Part 6===

“Brr…”

Index had little knowledge of the science side, so she didn’t know where she was locked up. It was a space a lot like a large, large indoor pool. Her arms and legs hadn’t been bound, but escaping the boxy room would still be a challenge.

Meanwhile, Othinus was looking all around from her shoulder.

“They said this was an unmanned weapon data center…but is this a spare room? They’ll need more vending-machine-sized servers when they inevitably need more processing power, so they must have secured the space for them ahead of time.”

“What’s your point?”

“It’s a big room with secure locks, but it’s been left empty since they have no use for it yet.”

Yes, that did sound like a convenient place to lock someone up.

“Hey, are you alright?” asked Othinus.

“I’m hungry, but the cold isn’t too bad.”

“Not what I meant. You can’t forget what happened back there, right?”

Was Othinus referring to the necromancer’s imitation dead bodies, or the fact that Index had been betrayed by her fellow Anglicans?

Index smiled a little with the cat in her arms.

“I’m fine.”

“…”

“This is nothing compared to Touma being declared dead and having everything taken from him. I can handle this much pain, but it’s different for Touma. He shouldn’t have to put up with that at all.”

“Yeah,” said Othinus.

Kamijou Touma was alive, but there were those who couldn’t accept that. The 15cm god recalled that empty dorm room. Kamijou Touma’s death itself may have happened by chance, but someone somewhere benefited from keeping him in that “dead” state.

Were they on the science side or the magic side?

Either way…

“Robbing a god of her temple and throne is an unforgivable sin. Whoever is responsible, they must be made to pay for violating the sanctity of my holy ground.”

Just then, they heard footsteps.

The footsteps stopped at the door and were followed by the clicking of the lock being operated.

Someone was here.

“Keep quiet.”

The door slowly opened and Kanzaki Kaori entered with a finger up to her lips.

She carried a ring of keys.

“The door has two locks. The idea was for the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Forces to each have a key to prevent betrayal, but as you can see, I am one of the fewer than 20 Saints. They can’t stop me when I put my mind to it.”

“You’re actually…freeing us?”

Index’s question brought sadness to Kanzaki’s eyes.

As If she hadn’t expected this doubt.

“If I didn’t do it, Stiyl would have tried it even if it killed him. I’ve let him be the villain too often already.”

“?”

Index looked confused. She didn’t understand why Kanzaki would bring up that priest.

The absolute confidence she had in her perfect memory only made the missing memories all the more cruel.

She didn’t even question those memories that had been intentionally erased.

(And it turned out Lola Stuart was Great Demon Coronzon. I would love to give her a taste of my full strength as a Saint to pay her back for what she did to us.)

But that likely wasn’t her role.

Kanzaki was aware of that.

She adored Index more than she could say, but she had no intention of destroying the girl’s current world.

“Listen. Isabella is off doing who knows what, so this is my chance to let you go. The knowledge of your 103,001 grimoires should be used to protect people. So it would be best if you went to Kamijou Touma now.”

“But wait.”

Othinus interjected after listening from the nun’s shoulder.

She appreciated this…but it went beyond what could be decided on an emotional impulse.

“The Anglican Church is an organization, right? And a global one at that. Even if you can’t stand Isabella on a personal level, disobeying her orders will only hurt you and your companions.”

“Be that as it may, this is something I must do. Plus, I know those companions. None of them would want me to save them at the cost of your freedom. And I don’t just mean the Amakusas. The Former Agnese Forces were clearly holding back when they fought me.”

That was the end of it.

She stood firm.

The 15cm god clicked her tongue and looked away.

…How could she reject this kindness when Kanzaki looked at her that way?

“It would be a challenge for us to directly cooperate with Kamijou Touma. We have too many other obligations. But you two…”

“We’ll do it.”

Index didn’t even let Kanzaki finish.

The powerful look in her eyes stared directly into Kanzaki’s eyes.

“Because I know it’s what I should do. Helping out Touma is always the best option.”

“This way.”

Kanzaki Kaori would never stand by Index’s side again.

Other people stood there now.

But she did not consider shoving those people aside to reclaim that spot.

Index’s trust had been reset along with her memories.

So the only option was to build them both back anew. Even if it resulted in a different relationship than before.

“I can show you to the building exit, but that is all ''we'' can do. You must find a way to locate Kamijou Touma and join him. Grimoire Library Index, I leave the righteousness and pride of the Anglican Church in your hands.”

===Part 7===

A creepy rustling sound filled the street.

Golden crabs and octopuses automatically tracked Kihara Goukei’s movements and rushed toward her, but each of them was sliced through and broke apart in turn.

In the night, a bone saw and forceps sharply reflected what little light remained from the streetlights.

Kihara Goukei had hoped to end Isabella’s life before her forcibly boosted muscular strength destroyed her joints and cartilage, but Isabella was a lot nimbler than she had expected.

Specifically, Kihara Goukei’s current state gave her enough speed to easily dodge out of the way of a bullet flying straight toward her, but…

(Hm? Ordinary réflexes shouldn’t be able to respond to this.)

That meant her enemy was being boosted somehow.

Come to think of it, there was something odd about the brown woman’s rags. Given the way it fluttered in a way that ignored the wind currents, it appeared to play a muscle-like role similar to externally-attached springs.

“She also seems immune to anesthésiques. What kind of crazy body does she have?”

“You need to ask that of a necromancer?”

Something whooshed by over Kihara Goukei’s head.

It was a filthy rag so stained yellow and brown that its original color was impossible to determine.

It spiraled around high in the air and then stretched out as it fell straight down from heaven to earth. Almost like a guillotine or something.

“What are you, Ittan-Momen 2.0?”

Kihara Goukei considered how to dodge this, tilted her head, and settled on simply jumping back a step.

She heard something slice through the air.

Followed by a heavy crash.

The asphalt was easily smashed and even the dark soil below was thrown into the air. It went without saying what would happen if that hit a human.

Western European necromancy was not about controlling a rotting corpse to sic it on your enemy and it didn’t harness the grudges of the dead to kill people. It’s true identity and essence was the summoning of dead souls using the clothing and other possessions dug up from graves and the revealing of secrets about the world and about individuals using divination (mancy) of the dead (necro). …Simply put, it had been a secret fad among the bored upper classes because there was very little risk in trying it out (because opening a coffin was not a crime if it belonged to a family member).

This meant controlling the clothing of the dead was their specialty.

Of course, this didn’t apply to necromancers from other regions and cultures.

“That isn’t just a piece of cloth. Is it hardened with glue or something?”

“A human body is nothing. With a bit cleverness and creativity, I can slice through a tree branch with this.”

The deadly guillotine dropped from up high a second and third time, but Kihara Goukei intercepted it and knocked it to the ground with her giant forceps, bone saw, and other torture tools.

“Release ocular muscles – boost kinetic vision 500%.”

(Based on the impacts reaching my wrists, its weight is several times that of the heaviest bowling balls. I see. So the problem is the height from which it drops.)

“Ugh, I’m feeling dizzy. Urp. Oh, right. I should have boosted my stomach first…”

“Vomit inside your mask if you like. I will kill you while you do, though.”

The number of rags flying overhead suddenly exceeded the number fingers on both hands.

And they weren’t all guillotines. The one that looked like a large rake may have been a Cat’s Paw that was used to tear at the surface of someone’s body. The one a lot like a crane game with pointy tips was probably a Spanish Spider that was stabbed into someone’s back so they could be suspended from the ceiling and have their flesh torn by their own weight.

Their forms had a historical flavor to them rather than focusing on efficiency.

Was that just the necromancer’s poor taste?

Kihara Goukei muttered under her breath.

(Of course, it says something about me that I can recognize them all on sight.)

Isabella grinned thinly.

“You have some skill – or more likely are using some kind of trick – but there is only so much you can handle with just the two arms. I don’t need anything special. I can simply overwhelm you with numbers!!”

“Yes, excellent logique.”

With the sound of tearing clothing, Kihara Goukei’s number of arms suddenly grew to six.

The opposite could happen too. A pure pursuit of function could take on an appearance straight out of myth.

“Adding on more arms isn’t that hard. It’s adjusting the position of the shoulder joints that takes some doing.”

They clashed regardless.

The arms spread out like wings were completely expendable. The very first strike tore away one of Kihara Goukei’s arms along with the torture device it held. The second strike meant the sacrifice of another arm. They were more broken off than severed. Had it worked against the brown woman that she was using a mixture of different weapons? Kihara Goukei didn’t particularly care as long as the guillotine didn’t slice through her face or torso along with an arm. And the third strike was blocked with a grinding noise.

It had hit something hard.

The flat, rectangular object at her palm was a giant shield. Except it was made of something more biological than steel or plastic.

“Hwa ha ha ha! Countermeasure complete! My monster of the week name is Crab Shell Man!!”

“?”

In the brief moment Isabella’s movement was stopped, Kihara Goukei sent in a sharp right hook. And that arm had already become a human-sized crab pincer, so a direct hit would crush and sever her neck like a chain tool.

''Splat!!

The bloody sound came from the center of Kihara Goukei’s chest.

Several objects like white guitar picks had pierced through from her back.

An unharmed Isabella smiled bewitchingly.

Kihara Goukei’s eyes widened.

“…Eh?”

“Did you already forget what I called myself? I do believe I introduced myself as a necromancer.”

What was the weapon?

What had stabbed through Kihara Goukei’s back and burst out from the center of her chest?

…It was her own broken and severed arm. Or really, the crushed bone in the mutilated cross section?

“And no one ever said I could ''only'' do the Western European version☆”

“…”

“I didn’t expect you to scatter your own dead flesh around. Thanks for the assist. You might as well have been asking me to use it.”

“Gh…ph.”

Kihara Goukei tried to speak, but only fresh blood filled her mask. A large hunk of blood.

She had been stabbed in a very bad location.

“You can use your tricks and cheat death as many times as you like.”

Necromancer Isabella Theism grinned and sprinkled something from her fingers.

It wasn’t visible, but it smelled like blood. Like spotting a crushed frog on the roadside on a rainy day.

“''But all flesh that has died once is my domain.'' Now that you’ve died, you have lost the right to your own body.”

A moment later, all the blood, flesh, and bone separated as it rushed toward its original owner from all directions.

===Part 8===

While Kamijou’s group continued their discussion, the consulate’s doorbell rang again.

Last time, he had gotten all worked up only for it to be Dion Fortune’s group. Thanks to that experience, he was a lot more relaxed this time.

“Who could it be this time?”

“Now that our guard is down, what if it’s Coronzon paying us a late-night visit?”

He really wished the Bologna Succubus hadn’t said that.

The two of them walked to the front entrance…and they could see the answer. Before even opening the door, the nearby crack in the wall provided a view of the visitor.

But he opened the door anyway.

“Who are you?”

“I am Qliphah Puzzle 545, here as a messenger for Board Chairman Accelerator. Um, I thought for sure we had met before.”

The girl had something like a squid tentacle swaying side to side from the back of her hips. And did those English newspaper things even count as clothing?

Whatever the case, she wasn’t an ordinary human.

The Magic Gods, the Transcendents, an artificial demon…and Dion Fortune was a tarot deck and original grimoire, wasn’t she? There was definitely something wrong with Coronzon to be able to stand up to such a wide variety of people all on her own.

“Does it mean what I think it does that he had to send a messenger?”

“Um, yes. It does.”

Accelerator hadn’t come himself because staying in that prison was his way of atoning for his crimes.

But this was more than that.

“Isabella…what was her name? Anyway, the magician effectively commanding the Anglicans at the moment. Is avoiding her complaints really that difficult?”

“It iiiiis. For one thing, my master has only just started learning about magic, so his knowledge is limited. And because he really doesn’t understand it, he can’t figure out how to avoid the attacks being made through the channels that have long lay buried within Academy City.”

Isabella likely had her own methods. Kamijou understood that. But apparently she really would use any means necessary even if her overall goal was to defeat Coronzon and protect the world.

Kamijou invited the artificial demon inside and spoke in a weary tone.

“The city doesn’t need a defense against the Anglicans now too, does it? We already have our hands full with Coronzon, so fighting on two fronts would be such a pain.”

“I get the feeling all of this could change depending on what happens.”

===Part 9===

It was over.

Isabella Theism breathed out through her nose.

Apparently this was all a science side expert in death and the desecration life could manage.

A scratchy sound came from her ear.

That reminded her she was still wearing a wireless earphone. If that had been the science side’s final trump card, then she could only give her condolences. They just hadn’t been up to the task. And that strength, as minuscule as it had been, should have been directed toward Coronzon.

(Then again, I get the feeling she was acting on her own discretion. Magic side or science side, this seems to be the fate of all organizations. The bigger they get, the harder it is to keep track of the extremities.)

“Surely you aren’t going to demand monetary compensation for this damage when the world is on the verge of ending. Or did that finally break your spirit and you’ll announce your surrender?”

“My, how hotblooded of you. But aren’t you fighting the wrong person? Necromancer, you are one of the foolish obstacles to natural decomposition that human knowledge has brought.”

This was not the new board chairman.

Isabella grimaced and lowered her voice.

“Great Demon Coronzon.”

“Don’t act so surprised. You have realized I am taking over the city using something other than science, haven’t you? Then obviously I can take control of the city’s communication infrastructure. Using a method that doesn’t require electricity or electromagnetic signals.”

Apparently Aleister had set up every last part of the city that way. If only he were still alive so she could give him a witch trial and burn him at the stake.

“But the very fact you’re doing that means you’ve already glimpsed your own Achilles heel, doesn’t it?” said Isabella. “If you do launch your Adikalika spell at the Italian Peninsula from here, it will mean the beginning of a global war…but it also ties you to this city. And in the struggle for Academy City’s infrastructure, we have already taken back around half.”

“But you Anglicans don’t rule the world.” There was mockery in Coronzon’s voice. “While Adikalika is directly targeting the Roman Catholics, you’re really only saving them as a means to save yourselves, so I wonder just how much trust they really have in you. Oh, and come to think of it, aren’t there some of them within your own ranks? Yes, that foreign unit of Roman Catholics.”

Dispersion.

She easily separated people from each other.

Even if their goals were the same and they were all working to bring peace to the world.

“And then there’s the Russian Orthodox Church. Heh heh. Have you noticed how much they despise having something inhuman occupying a seat with influence over the fate of the world?”

“…”

“The Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches will do anything to break free of the current situation. Isn’t that right? And Adikalika is reliant on the geographic features of Academy City. So if someone were to ''wipe Academy City from the map'', they could prevent the world-destroying Adikalika from being activated. Simple, isn’t it?”

Only if you didn’t care about the 2.3 million innocent people living there.

And they likely wouldn’t even provide enough advance warning for the Anglicans there to evacuate.

“I am the world’s gear in charge of dispersion, so I will bring natural decomposition to all things. I will bring opposing factions A and B together so they can be discarded like matching cards in old maid. The three main Christian factions are a pain since they are of an odd number, but I can trigger total mutual destruction by adding in Academy City.”

“I would call that interesting, but I’m not one to trust demons. You could be making it all up to make me rush my next move, so I’ll take it with a grain of salt.”

“Oh, really? Believe it or not, I am one to honestly pass on the truly nasty and devastating truths. Like this for example.”

“?”

“Necromancers are not the only fools born of human knowledge who obstruct natural decomposition. It would seem you are not out of the woods yet.”

===Part 10===

Kihara Goukei was lying nearby.

The density of the red snow was growing. It had already begun to accumulate atop her, but she showed no reaction even as it covered her mask like a frozen mass.

Anyone could tell she was approaching death.

And there was one person who could not accept that fact.

“No!!”

In the bus.

The size of the vehicle limited what streets it could use. After turning around, it had needed to drive back this way in order to escape further away.

So he had seen it.

Urekawa Ousuke, the boy rescued by a certain monster, had seen the result of the battle.

If the snow were falling just a bit harder, it would have covered her too much for him to see.

The grownups’ calls for him to stop were drowned out.

Of all things, he opened the window and jumped out.

If he had stayed put and let the bus take him away, he would have escaped to safety. And there was nothing he could accomplish by choosing to remain here even if it meant injuring himself.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t abandon her. Not after she saved him. That grownup had risked her life and bloodied herself protecting him.

“No, wait.”

The boy did not stand back up.

He may not have been able to right away. Even with thick snow to cushion his fall, he had jumped from a moving vehicle.

“Please.”

But there was something requiring his attention more than his body’s pain.

He raised just his head, the rest of him still sprawled out on the cold ground stained by red snow.

And he shouted from his little mouth.

“''Wake up, Madame Gou''!!!”

===Part 11===

Internal Mechanisms: All 185,814 sections responding.

Bio Limiters: Depth 5 release

Lifespan Effect Calculations: Bypassed

Body Local Network General Host Name “Kihara Goukei” has entered final operating mode.

Forcing reboot.

3, 2, 1.

===Part 12===

''Badump!!

That distorted pulse was audible to Isabella Theism even at a short distance.

She shifted her focus from her earphone to the outside world.

Something was happening that required her attention.

This was clearly out of the ordinary.

Kihara Goukei sat up like a mousetrap after luring its prey in with a hunk of cheese.

“Whew. Ha ha ha. Mon dieu. I’m not about to complain if I die. I’ve lived the kind of life that will bring mort to me first and foremost once something goes wrong.”

Her entire body was slick with blood.

Nothing about her situation had improved.

But that other monster spoke with a hand on the side of her wobbling head to hold it in place.

“But now that he’s called that name…''I can’t afford to lose.''”

“Wha-”

Isabella’s question was cut off by an unpleasant cracking sound.

Kihara Goukei’s fist had broken.

Due to the speed and weight with which it slammed into the center of Isabella Theism’s chest.

That unpleasant sound had come from the breaking of Isabella’s ribs and sternum.

(When did she stand up…when did she throw that punch!?)

Isabella held a hand to her mouth but that couldn’t stop her from coughing up blood as she jumped back.

Kihara Goukei smiled as she forcibly mended her broken fist, causing grinding and cracking sounds within the hand.

Her mask was covered in blood. From within.

But still she smiled.

“I really have removed ''my final limiteur''. A child is watching and he trusts in me. So now Madame Gou…absolutely can’t afford to lose.”

“Who…are you?”

She was one who toyed with human life.

She was a hopelessly mad scientist.

She wasn’t about to deny those sides of herself.

''But…

“You can’t get away with everything using the ‘I’m a Kihara’ excuse, you know? I never did like that excuse. So I started wondering if there was some way to live my life so I didn’t have to make excuses and before long it was all I could think about.”

Isabella stopped briefly.

Looking like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“I’ve heard that one a million times. Is that why you decided to be someone who protects small children?”

“Ah ha ha. Oh, if only I could contribute to société in the usual ways. But I’m so afraid of it backfiring that I avoid using my Kihara side to get too involved with individuals.”

“Then why?”

“Because he called for Madame Gou, not a Kihara. ''Everyone always assumes it’s some bad joke,'' but I finally found someone who will trust in that name. What could be more miraculous than that? Scientists are all the kind of jerk who has to question anything and everything, but we’re also capable of accepting the things we see for ourselves. So after seeing this for myself – dammit – I can’t deny it. I’m willing to completely change the way I live my life for this.”

To put it another way, Kihara Goukei was willing to risk her life for this small thing.

That was also why she dressed as a dentist.

A dentist loved children’s smiles more than anyone and mastered the techniques needed to heal them and save them from pain, but they were also feared by those same children. And she had wanted to be someone who could be proud of that.

Just look back at what she had done.

When the presumed “moving corpse” named Kamijou Touma had appeared, when she quarantined the people in the crematorium who could possibly be infected or contaminated, when she protected an innocent child at the cost of so much blood, and when she confronted Isabella Theism. Kihara Goukei hadn’t made a single wrong decision from moment to moment.

She was a member of the Kihara Family, but she was not a broken person.

She was someone who always did the right thing but was always feared for it.

She was a heretic among the Kiharas.

With that battered body, she proudly protected little Urekawa Ousuke and made the position her own. Madame Gou smiled thinly behind her bloody mask.

With a pitying look for the other expert of death who stood opposite her as a relative evil.

“Taking on the thankless role isn’t easy, is it? You’re not even a Kihara, so it must be exhausting to ''force yourself'' to do it.”

“You understand nothing about our world.”

“I’m not interested in learning about any other world than the one I live in, but I am still a Kihara. Even if it’s their job, it hurts anyone to make innocent children cry. Could that be why ''you Britanniques are going so easy on us'' despite shouting about a threat to the world? Your hesitant use of the Academy City facilities means anyone can pick up your communications. I was basically snacking on intercepted messages between the hôpital and here, but it really makes me wonder if you’re even trying.”

“…”

Isabella fell silent.

Kihara Goukei smiled behind her mask. But with all the blood, the smile was more grim than grin.

“I don’t understand any of this Coronzon stuff, but you say there’s a threat to the entire world, right? Then I would think at least one of you would suggest bombing the entire city into oblivion to ensure the safety of the rest of humankind, but none of you is touching on that last resort. It’s hardly a surprise you’re being delayed by enemies you hadn’t even considered. You won’t accomplish anything if everyone on site is hesitant to speak up. And…when everyone deployed to the front line is scared and reluctant to dirty their hands, it’s going to ''put a greater burden'' on their leader.”

Necromancers were cruel.

To their targets, they might even seem like horrific monsters.

But had Isabella mentioned even once that ''she enjoyed that cruelty''?

From the beginning, she had only ever said she had come to Japan to do her job.

So of course she wasn’t interested in people’s dramas or stories. Her stance was to not protect as many people as possible by not letting her personal feelings for her fellow Anglicans hold her back. She was taking the problem seriously and giving it her all.

She could not afford any detours, so she wouldn’t even help a stranger she chanced across along the way. It might seem like a little thing, but going with her heart there could throw off the overall schedule and allow the entire world to end.

Ordinarily, her attitude was the correct one for a combat professional.

“So I don’t blame you for what you did. Whether it’s England or somewhere else, there is ''something you want to protect'', isn’t there? Even if it means dirtying your hands and becoming the kind of person who will make a small child cry and throw stones at you with their small hands in a city turned into a battlefield. You have something that makes it all worth it. …So how about you accept that, hold your head high, and come at me with everything you have? So you can stay true to what you believe is right.”

Isabella Theism listened.

She hung her head as the enemy’s voice reached her ears.

And the brown necromancer smiled.

Just a little.

“Let’s stop playing around.”

“Gladly.”

“And I do have just one thing you should know. Voodoo is known for its zombies, but it is a polytheistic religion where the list of gods being worshiped is always in flux, the good gods and evil gods can swap places depending on the circumstances, and they freely take in parts of other mythologies. Indian mythology has a god that came from a movie, but I think Voodoo provides even more freedom than that. Which makes it extremely convenient for a necromancer who learns bits and pieces from other mythologies and then misuses them. And when you can borrow the power and symbols of any being, you can do things like this.”

“?”

“''Daeva''.”

With that single word, something appeared behind Isabella Theism.

Kihara Goukei first saw a gigantically swollen insect abdomen.

Next, she saw brutal legs resembling spiked clubs, a pair of compound eyes so red they appeared to be filled with blood, and translucent impure wings.

Empty space seemed to distort to allow the appearance of a giant fly of more than 5m.

Yet its curves seemed somehow feminine and alluring.

Each individual part might be found in nature, but this being clearly existed outside the physical world.

It was still transparent, but it had completely affixed itself to this world – this phase.

“I see. Would you look at that.”

Kihara Goukei looked up at it with a half smile.

She didn’t know what it was, but it certainly appeared to be on another level from what she had dealt with so far.

Only Isabella’s voice continued.

She spoke earnestly, like a priestess serving her dark lord.

“You are one of the six demon lords who rule over evil. You are the bearer of deadly poison who will distort your own legend and fuse with others if it will achieve your goal. You are one of the many foundations for controlling death and flesh. Tonight I seek you, o queen of contamination, dead bodies, decomposition, and apostasy.”

“Interesting. …But it doesn’t mesh well with my scientifique tastes.”

“Intrude upon my world, ''Druj Nasu''.”

The phase border was torn asunder and the thing materialized.

===Part 13===

In the District 12 consulate, Kamijou Touma found himself with little to do once it became time to stare at maps and documents and think up a plan. He left the table surrounded by the golden retriever, Dion Fortune, and others and was trying to pass the time when Blodeuwedd the Bouquet approached him.

Apparently she wasn’t much of a thinking type either.

“Neh heh☆”

Her face was awfully close.

He detected more than just a sweet feminine scent. Several floral scents were mixed together.

She had fully locked onto him.

“Help me, Alice!! Or Miss Succubus!!”

“Those are the last people you should go to for help. Unlike them, I’m a fairly reasonable Transcendent.”

What was Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s salvation condition again?

She saved the unloved.

So he was less than delighted to have her locked onto him. He sighed.

“Then why were you attacking Academy City so much? The city was made by Aleister who seems like exactly your type.”

“Ehh, you can’t be serious.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet seemed taken aback.

Like she had been recommended some bizarre food.

Her mouth formed a small triangle.

“He wasn’t hated or unloved. People called him the wickedest man in the world, a cannibal, and a demon lord, but the fact that he was ‘controversial’ means he did have his supporters and defenders. Yet he ignored all of those voices and chose to get all worked up on his own.”

Were those more like mechanical arms than clothing?

The blonde girl used the sleeves of her thick metal coat to mimic a shrug.

“Aleister Crowley was a human who looked past all the talking voices and focused only on the negative opinions. To the point that some people think he actually felt antipathy toward the people who believed and followed the theories he proposed. From outside, that might look cool, but the people who actually worked themselves to the bone sharing their love with him wouldn’t have seen it that way. The world wasn’t cold to him – he simply refused to touch the meal placed before him until it had gone cold and rotten. I’m not a fan of that kind of waste of emotion.”

“…”

“I want to distribute my unseen feelings to the starving people who can never seem to find any love no matter how badly they want it. To the people who need my feelings here and now. I want to provide the kind of warmth and strength that motivates them to get back up in their dark room and reach for the doorknob. I have nothing to give the fools who are so self-absorbed with their own appearance and pride that they let the feelings they are given rot. There are plenty of truly suffering people out there since the world is so starved for kindness.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet stopped speaking there.

She peered up at Kamijou’s face in amusement. Only then did Kamijou realize something.

Had he been hanging his head?

“Oh, you don’t like my answer?”

Kamijou Touma hadn’t been there.

He didn’t know the full story of Aleister’s life.

He had only wandered within the Windowless Building under Mina Mathers’s guidance and received tarot-recreated glimpses of Aleister’s battle with the Golden magicians.

But Aleister had learned his wife Rose was doomed

And he had been told in advance that his baby Lilith would surely die.

That human had trembled in rage when his ordinary happiness had crumbled around him. And knowing the Golden Cabal had been responsible, he had fought the Battle of Blythe Road, said to be the world’s largest magic battle. Kamijou didn’t think Aleister’s path could be simply classified as good or bad.

Kamijou had pushed him to the edge.

Maybe it was selfish of Aleister to force his expectations onto Kamijou.

But it was true Kamijou had failed to live up to them.

He had done what Anna Kingsford said and escaped hell alone. Could there have been another path if he argued back and insisted on thinking it through more carefully?

Why?

Why hadn’t he recklessly insisted that he would bring CRC and Kingsford back to life too and that they would all live happily together next time?

All of that was superfluous.

He knew that of course, but they had directly been dealing with human lives and souls. Wasn’t a crazy place like hell the perfect venue for shouting an unrealistic wish or two?

“If you acted different from normal…”

“?”

“Shouldn’t you suspect you were intentionally guided in that direction? Keep in mind that magic is a system that starts with the manipulation of your own mind in order to influence the outside world and other people. With ceremonies performed by multiple people, it isn’t unusual to sync your mind with the others.”

A journey through hell. Or a jailbreak.

You could say that had been a large-scale ceremony.

“So Aleister was wrong to resent you. You shouldn’t demand someone take responsibility for an unavoidable choice after they finally managed a miraculous resurrection.”

Kamijou couldn’t accept Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s words so easily.

While she was a Transcendent, she hadn’t actually seen that hell. If she could, then the more powerful Alice would have been able to intervene when he died. So Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s argument was no more than speculation.

Just then, a call came in from Accelerator.

“All the calculations are complete. …Once you’re ready, head to District 23.”

Kamijou frowned.

That didn’t sound right to him.

“District 23? I know that’s an adjacent district…but isn’t Coronzon in District 7?”

“You won’t be able to sneak right up to her on foot. You need a plan if you’re going to get close.”

Kamijou understood before even hearing the details.

He was certain he wasn’t going to like this plan.

“So what is your plan?”

“I’ll use all the missiles remaining in District 2. And I really mean using up the entire stockpile.”

“Hey, I seriously doubt ordinary weapons are going to work on Coronzon!”

“Of course they won’t. They’re only a diversion. You’ll be parachuting down through the bombardment to immediately arrive deep inside District 7.”

“Eh? Right in the middle of all those flying explosives?”

If even a single missile detonated nearby, they would die.

Um, didn’t those delicate devices react at some pretty weird times? Like the shoplifting prevention sensors at a store’s exit, or antivirus software? Even the precise location of a store on a map app tended to be off by just a little. Sure computer chips were supposed to be logical, but everyone had pressed the button on a half-broken game console or washing machine while praying that it would work one last time, right!?

…And Kamijou was certain that he would get the short straw on this one. He didn’t have any objective evidence, but never underestimate Academy City’s Mr. Misfortune! He still hadn’t played any games on his smartphone because he knew just how hopelessly bad his luck was!! Why even bother trying for a rare pull when you knew you would never get it, even if you paid!!?

“Coronzon will notice what we’re doing. No matter how hard we try to hide it,” said Accelerator. “So we’ll never get anywhere if you bank on that. But that just means we need to create a situation where she has to focus on something else even though she knows what we’re doing. …Remember, that Adikalika trump card of hers uses the city’s geographical conditions. So she won’t want any serious damage to the city’s landscape, will she?”

“Oh! You’re right…”

That hadn’t occurred to Kamijou.

Great Demon Coronzon was trying to destroy the entire world, but for now she wouldn’t want Academy City destroyed.

“Even if she is a villain, she won’t want missiles bombarding the city until she’s completed her plan, will she?”

“I doubt every last missile we have would kill Coronzon herself, but she’ll be forced to use that sturdy body of hers to destroy the missiles as her top priority. Isn’t that thoughtful of her? She’ll protect the city for us. An enemy’s strength can become a weakness if you change your viewpoint. Coronzon has no family and she’s not sentimental enough to grow attached to a house or other possessions. But we do know one thing she definitely won’t want destroyed, so we just have to focus our attack there.”

Adikalika was the ultimate trump card that could destroy the world if used in that way, so it had seemed like Coronzon was the one in control. And that wasn’t exactly wrong either.

But if Coronzon was too focused on staying in control, that fixation became a weakness because she didn’t want to lose it. It felt at odds with her ultimate goal, but maybe that was just how strategy worked. Once you gained something, there was a cost to defending it. In battle, there were no 100% pure benefits.

This was a ray of hope.

The time had come to reclaim control of the situation.

===Part 14===

Red snow fell in the night.

Great Demon Coronzon stood in a square space that was unusually empty for this urban part of District 7. The long, long blonde hair draped over her large, bat-like wings kept changing shape like it was creating string figures, but she was really only making minor adjustments at this point. She had been building a spell using all of the terrain and landmarks forming Academy City, but now even the final adjustments were nearly finished. She would soon be able to stop work and move on to the next phase.

Preparations for the Adikalika large-scale attack spell were already complete.

This would be the initial signal gun that would submerge the world in a sea of blood.

She didn’t even need to check the horoscope to know the necessary preparations were complete. She was not concerned that the forces of science or magic would take back control of the city, so now she only had to wait for the moment to arrive.

“Are you watching, Aleister?” she whispered.

She turned her gaze elsewhere, wrapped her arms around her own shoulders, and shook with suppressed laughter.

And Great Demon Coronzon spoke as if enjoying his final resistance.

“You will soon see the end of this world you still trusted no matter how much it hurt you.”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume13 Chapter1

2026-06-10T22:44:20Z

Ultranova17: minor

==Chapter 1: A Change – Magician, Witch, Wizard, and…==

===Part 1===

Suddenly.

Something caused the sound of the cold rain to vanish.

Only nothingness remained.

The air temperature must have fallen below freezing. A red – strangely red – snow fell from the leaden sky.

“…”

Kamijou Touma didn’t bother mentioning it.

If he shifted his gaze away from dead ahead for even a split second, Great Demon Coronzon would use that instant to kill him. He was certain of it.

Kamijou, Alice Anotherbible, Great Demon Coronzon, and Vidhatri lying limp and passed out by his side.

He couldn’t see a single positive element to this.

In that silent world, the “kathunk, kathunk” of a subway train passing by sounded deafening loud.

“What’s the matter, human?” whispered the great demon, slowly spreading her arms and wings.

Her long, long blonde hair tangled around her wings and fingertips like spider web.

“Surely, surely you aren’t planning to thoughtlessly charge right at me? You might still be able to get away. Or maybe if you could use that right hand of yours properly. Kee hee hee. At the very least, falling back would improve your chance of survival over a blind charge.”

“Teacher,” sharply warned Alice Anotherbible. “These are the words of a great demon. They might sound kind, but she would never say anything out of concern for someone.”

Something crackled.

From very close by.

The violently flashing orange light resembled the sparks produced by steel striking steel.

…''Sparks?

“Don’t tell me…”

“Magic usage causes slight fluctuations in this world and the collisions between the unseen overlapping phases produce sparks which can at times be deadly. They are the source of the tragedy that sent Aleister Crowley down his path of carnage. What you see now is the result of my power bringing them down to this lower physical world and giving them form,” explained Coronzon, enjoying herself.

This wasn’t the only thing the great demon could do. She had purposefully chosen this from the near endless cards in her deck.

Kamijou heard another unpleasant sparking sound.

A drum-shaped security robot had burst from within.

It was possible Accelerator was monitoring this from afar and he was using the unmanned machines to search out an escape route through the minefield.

It went without saying what would happen if a human body contacted that…unless it was worse than it seemed.

“The surface-level destruction is a mere trifle. Contact that and you will die. I am not talking about the surface-level shock or destruction. It will ensure your death at the more fundamental level of destiny.”

Yes.

Aleister Crowley had failed to overturn this at his peak, so he had lost his wife and daughter. This was that same tragedy.

“And I have another warning. That third tree? Clonoth, was it? That caught me off guard in the UK and stripped my essence from my physical body, but that will not work again.”

The remaining security robots wavered a little.

“After all, I am not a pure demon anymore. Human Aleister’s symbols have been mixed in with me.”

The great demon curled her lips upward and laughed from deep in her throat.

Aleister.

She looked amused to no end that he was disturbing the human world even after he was gone.

“So what will you do, Kamijou Touma?”

She was a great demon, so she didn’t believe in benevolent coincidences or divine miracles to begin with.

“There are only two options in this world: a merciless death void of miracles, or a false miracle formed by human hands.”

“…”

“I know you know what happens if you stop thinking and pray to god without preparing anything yourself. How severe was the cost of crawling back up out of hell, Kamijou Touma? But all that will be for nothing if you fail to make the smart move here.”

(Well, this could hardly be worse.)

Kamijou felt like he had been abandoned in the middle of a minefield.

He was surrounded in all directions by invisible mines that would kill him on contact. And he didn’t even know how far they were distributed, so he had no sense of how far he had to flee in order to survive.

“Ugh, really? Just for your information…”

Coronzon had set all this up, but she still looked somehow displeased.

Even though she supposedly had an absolute advantage here.

As if the grand surprise she had spent so much effort preparing was going unappreciated, so she had to explain it for him.

“I didn’t just lay these out there. I can move them at will. So that is not a minefield you are standing in – it is a monster’s gaping maw. If I close it, you will be crushed between its jaws. I know you puny humans of this lower world only understand the things you can see, but surely that is enough for you to appreciate your situation.”

In other words, staying still wasn’t enough to save him.

He had been doomed from the beginning.

Kamijou’s right hand contained Imagine Breaker. He might be able to break one or two of the invisible fangs. But would that be enough to defeat the monster? If it ignored the pain and forced its mouth shut, he was dead. It would be over in an instant.

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

…He didn’t stand a chance.

What would he accomplish by charging in recklessly? He had previously fought Great Demon Coronzon in the UK. His right arm and the rest of his body had been smashed right away that time.

Imagine Breaker…''was not enough.

He heard a footstep on metal grating rather than asphalt.

Great Demon Coronzon must have noticed the fear and confusion that hearing that single footstep caused because an amused smile spread across her face.

“Why are you doing this now? We already settled this back in the UK!”

“Why?”

Coronzon snorted.

It grew into full-on mocking laughter.

“Of all things, you’re asking for my purpose and objective!? Kamijou Touma, do you want a similar explanation for how you came back to life? You didn’t turn back from hell because you calmly completed the items on a to do list!! You sought life because the state of life is natural for you and you never questioned that idea. It’s no different for me! This is what I have always been!!”

“So you’re really going to bring countless people to tears just because you never had a particular reason to stop!?”

“I have been true to myself no matter what happened.”

She said it so lightly.

Like someone humming the popular song playing on endless loop in a restaurant.

“Natural decomposition – tearing apart all things and returning them to nothing – is my role of dispersion. How could I trust in myself if I was one thing one day and another thing another day? You puny beings seem capable of that, but perhaps it is the result of your excess of free will.”

“…”

“It was that side of you that ended up tormenting Aleister to the bitter end. To be clear, I will be the one to destroy the world, but it was you who opened the box, Kamijou Touma.”

A grin split Coronzon’s face as she said this.

She was finally back in the outside world.

She couldn’t seem to contain her amusement.

“My value is 333 and my meaning is dispersion. I rule over one line on the great tree, yet I induce discord and betrayal to tear apart the bonds between people and obstruct human evolution. Do you really think I am going to stop? Now that I have been freed, of course I am going to work toward that end with every second available to me!!”

“Teacher,” interrupted Alice Anotherbible.

She looked unusually grim.

As if to say her role as a Transcendent, essentially a part in divine school play, were being stripped from her by the alarm ringing from the audience seating.

Was that young-looking girl perceiving something Kamijou couldn’t see?

“You can’t hold a conversation with Great Demon Coronzon. Not the way you’re doing it anyway. She can’t be won over by what’s right. In her mind, all things falling apart and all people suffering through pandemonium is ''the most healthy and active state for the world''. She only sees your kindness and compassion as a toxin that will cool and solidify the world.”

“!!”

“And she loathes that toxin in her own way. That is why your words can never stop her.”

So did he have to fight?

Countless unseen sparks had been placed around him.

Standing within a monster’s gaping maw was nothing but suicide.

And even if he did escape that, he would only have managed to reach the same playing field as her. Being able to defeat full-power Coronzon was another matter entirely.

He was looking at a battle with a higher being who had easily forced Aleister into submission. He couldn’t imagine how to get started, much less win. Fight or flee, anything he tried seemed like it would only work against him.

But.

“I won’t die…”

Even so, Kamijou Touma’s lips were trembling.

So he forced the words out through clenched teeth.

“I won’t die again!! I was already saved from hell once, so I won’t give up my life so easily!!”

Great Demon Coronzon grinned, but was she mocking how obviously terrified he was or how he had nothing to back up those words.

But in fact, Kamijou Touma did not die.

Because something pierced a straight through that space.

It tore apart the area between Kamijou and Coronzon.

That meant it hadn’t been aimed at Coronzon. Was this clearing a route by intentionally triggering the invisible mines laid out all around him?

(A tear…beam? It can’t be!!)

“Much better. You’ve finally got the right attitude, Kamijou Touma.”

“Ha ha. Boy, did your death put a damper on your hot-bloodedness?”

Nephthys.

And Niang-Niang?

“You mustn’t throw your life away. I see you finally arrived at the simplest answer that no one in the real world seems capable of following, Kamijou Touma.”

“I like this version of you better than your weird recklessness. It’s a lot more reassuring for those of us saving your ass.”

Magic Gods.

They were not a new side to this battle.

They were clearly taking Kamijou’s side and taking up positions to cover him.

Kamijou stared in shock.

Did they just say they were saving him?

From this!?

“Hey, wait. You’re under no obligation to help me out of this mess!!”

They didn’t even bother turning around.

The Magic Gods were facing Great Demon Coronzon in a more casual way, but they were also unwavering.

Even though they had to have a better grasp of the situation than Kamijou.

Yet they still spoke firmly.

“My, my. Have you forgotten that I am Nephthys, a god?”

“And I’m Niang-Niang. How about you let us take over for once? You died and came back, but you didn’t get Magic Godded by it. That means you’re nothing special. Live or die, you’re just a normal human. …And you ordinary people don’t need to deal with creeps like this. The monsters can slay the other monsters.”

Alice held her silence for a while.

But she finally opened her mouth.

“The girl will go with her teacher.”

“Good idea. It’ll be safer if he keeps a trump card with him. To be honest, if softhearted Kamijou Touma escaped on his own, I’d half expect him to be back before long. So go show him to the exit, little miss monster. But if you let him die, I will hunt you down.”

“Hey, quit deciding everything for me!”

Nephthys gave a simple answer to his protest.

“Risking your own skin is all well and good, but if you fall here, then who will bring that girl there to safety?”

Only then did Kamijou remember.

That’s right.

He and Alice weren’t the only ones here.

A Transcendent had collapsed before his eyes while trying to inform Alice of the threat.

Vidhatri.

If she was still alive, he couldn’t just abandon her here. If everyone here tried to fight and were wiped out, there would be no one left to help her. Then she would certainly be killed by Coronzon too.

After reminding him of his responsibility here, Nephthys spoke kindly.

“Make sure she gets away.”

“…Thanks!!”

This was only an excuse, of course. A ritual used to rid Kamijou of his guilt and allow him to act freely.

Nephthys ordinarily acted so irresponsible, but she really did seem godlike here.

“I have a question.”

Someone spoke.

Great Demon Coronzon was smiling.

“What logical reason do I have to let them get away after you held your strategy meeting right in front of me? Not much is more challenging than a retreat when you are at a severe disadvantage!!”

Something new emerged.

This time, it wasn’t even human. It was a golden retriever.

The dog spoke human language.

“Drop straight down!!”

A loud noise followed.

Alice Anotherbible’s small hands had torn up part of the metal grating below their feet. Kamijou, carrying Vidhatri, and Alice didn’t hesitate to jump down onto the roof of the subway train passing through the tunnel below.

An impact.

Continuous shaking. Slipping to the side. But he somehow managed to get a grip on the roof.

He didn’t seem to have hit any of those sparks. They had surrounded him in all directions, but apparently only in two dimensions.

“Looks like we barely escaped with our lives.”

The golden retriever was with them.

What was his name again? Whatever his name, that cute doggy was in fact connected to the infamous Kihara family.

But now wasn’t the time to worry about that.

Kamijou groaned as he adjusted his grip on limp Vidhatri atop the train’s roof. That was all he could manage.

“I went to the trouble of coming back to life…and all I can do is run away? Dammit.”

“Staying alive is an accomplishment in and of itself, if you ask me,” said the dog. “At the very least, you overturned that Coronzon person’s expectations.”

“…”

“Dammit,” cursed Kamijou again. He wasn’t about to give up here.

The train was on the move.

This small seam gave him a new start.

===Part 2===

Kamijou Touma, Alice Anotherbible, and the rest had left.

That left Magic Gods Nephthys and Niang-Niang and Great Demon Coronzon.

The higher beings faced each other as red snow fell around them.

“Oh, right.”

The first to speak was Nephthys, the bandaged beauty with silver hair and brown skin.

“I will be killing you here, but I wanted to ask you something first.”

“I’m not here to fulfill your final request. I’m planning on killing billions after this. I can’t give individuals too much attention. It’s a waste of resources.”

“That isn’t what I meant. Is that human still inside you? Or has he been fully destroyed?”

“Did you think a great demon like me would bother using a pathetic hostage?”

“That still isn’t what I meant. I just want to know if I should feel even a little bad after I kill you.”

She made it sound so simple.

And certain.

The Magic God was not swayed by the great demon title. Just like during their previous battle in the UK.

“To be clear, we will be killing you either way,” said Niang-Niang, hiding her mouth behind her modified China dress’s baggy sleeve.

But she wasn’t smiling.

Not now.

“I know this might sound weird coming from Magic Gods who are willing to die to accomplish our goals, but you really should have let it end after you lost last time. Digging this all back up is just a waste of time.”

A tear spilled from Nephthys’s right eye. An unnaturally large tear.

While she laughed and spoke.

It could be easy to forget since she was too powerful, but battle was not that bandaged beauty’s forte. This was her greatest trait as an Egyptian Magic God.

“I weep for you, Niang-Niang.”

The propagating tear.

In other words, a power boost.

''A Magic God’s already ultimate power was being boosted further by another Magic God.

Boosting, raising, buffing, multiplying – none of those words were sufficient to describe this.

This was on another level entirely from their playtime at the student dorm.

“It’s the same for Aleister and Coronzon.”

“You’ve already tried this a few times, so you could say history has already proven the futility of it. Digging it all back up like this isn’t going to end well for you.”

All expression suddenly vanished from Coronzon.

On her noh mask of a face, words gathered in her mouth.

“These are the intruders who impede natural decomposition. Can false gods who began as no more than human never progress beyond this point?”

“Huh?”

“Not that it matters,” muttered Coronzon, already back to herself.

She did not answer Niang-Niang’s question.

What Coronzon did say was simple.

“By the way, how much did you hear? Having to explain it all over and over again is a pain, so I’d like to skip what I can.”

“You expect understanding from gods? And really, what right does a demon have to judge us? We’re the ones testing you, dumbass.”

“I see. So you understand none of it. Then I will keep it simple, so even your single brain cell can comprehend.”

The crackling of sparks came from around Nephthys and Niang-Niang.

All 360 degrees around them.

“This is not a minefield. It is a gaping maw lined with countless fangs.”

===Part 3===

Still being atop the subway train when it pulled into a station would probably cause a panic and they would get in trouble for riding without paying. The train happened to stop before the next station because one of the signals indicated some minor trouble, so Kamijou’s group took that chance to climb down from the roof. It seemed lucky…but with Kamijou Touma that wasn’t an option. It was the result of how badly damaged Academy City was.

Climbing down from the roof was a challenge when carrying someone unconscious. Kamijou was walking it to the end of the tunnel with Vidhatri on his back when the golden retriever asked a question. That the dog spoke human language went without saying at this point.

“Where are you headed?”

“Phew. District 12. The old Bridge Builders Cabal consulate.”

He couldn’t let Great Demon Coronzon kill him. But what could he actually do? She had only been defeated last time at the end of a battle that dragged the entire world into it. Would he have to go through that again? Academy City was already damaged and repairs were slow in coming, so a battle on that scale could easily reduce the entire city to a pile of rubble.

An emergency exit led to a narrow stairway up to the surface. The creepy but bewitching red snow continued to fall. But his breath was white like normal. While viewing the strange scene, Kamijou pulled his phone from his pocket with Vidhatri still on his back.

It was 4 PM, the weather was snowy, and the temperature was -3 degrees.

(It’s no use. I don’t know who would be safe to contact.)

He had a communication device, but he was hesitant to use it. Because he was still officially considered dead. Contacting a classmate or friend would only cause a panic and ordinary Anti-Skill was out of the question. He had only just escaped those Bio Secure people chasing after him with flamethrowers. Not much time had passed at all.

“Teacher, let’s get to the consulate. You can think and call someone after getting some rest.”

“Good point…”

Yes, the consulate.

He wanted time to calm down and think. He couldn’t even come up with any ideas right now. The appearance of Great Demon Coronzon had radically changed things, but he still needed to get to the Bridge Builders Cabal consulate in District 12.

His breath was white.

And that wasn’t all.

“By the way, what is this red snow?”

That had been bugging him.

It didn’t seem to be something Coronzon had done. He reached out just his right hand with Vidhatri supported with his left arm and let some land on his fingertip, but the ice crystal only melted into a drop of water like normal. There was no sign of anything being negated. In that case, had some strange impurity in the air gotten mixed in when the ice crystal was solidifying? He had heard of things like smog and yellow sand changing the color of snow. Maybe it was related to the gas and dust caused by the shells and explosives used in all the recent large-scale battles.

When the snow melted on his fingertip, the resultant drop was clear. So it didn’t seem like blood or some other red liquid had frozen into snow. That was another point toward his theory it was an impurity in the crystal.

…In that case, as bewitching as the red snow looked, it might not be very clean. What did the color red represent? And aside from that, this was city snow which would be full of exhaust.

“Alice, don’t eat the snow.”

“Ehhh!?”

“Why is that so shocking!? There are plenty of other good things to eat!”

“Ugh, fine.”

“You either, doggy.”

“I would hope you could expect a little more intelligence and romance from me.”

At any rate, walking out in the open didn’t seem like a good idea. Kamijou was known as a walking corpse and carrying limp Vidhatri on his back made him look like he was committing some kind of crime. Not to mention the little girl and the large dog not on a leash. Their party was practically asking to be taken in for questioning.

“Uh, oh…”

Someone was dancing on the street up ahead.

She looked to be…middle school aged, maybe?

She had a small collapsible umbrella to keep the red snow off of her and her phone was propped up against the edge of a shrubbery, so she must have thought the unusual weather was an opportunity of some kind.

Was it late enough for school to be out already?

Then again, it was the first day back after winter break, so maybe most schools were only having half days.

(I don’t even know when school lets out anymore. I’m drifting further and further from a peaceful life…)

That was a life-or-death problem. For a high schooler anyway.

Snow was accumulating and it wasn’t Christmas. Maybe there just wasn’t much traffic and maybe all the confusion had prevented the snow from being cleared, but the streets were starting to be covered by the red snow and even the trains were having to stop fairly frequently but irregularly. Not many people would want to head out on a day like this, but as someone who was officially dead, Kamijou still wanted to do his best to avoid being seen. That meant avoiding the person jumping and dancing on the sidewalk with no concern for her short skirt and even walking to the center of a big intersection and slowly turning in a full circle to get a 360-degree shot. The cheerful girl’s extrovert energy pushed Kamijou Touma away, forcing him into the narrow side streets. As the kind of person who preferred to take the far corner seat on the train even when no one else was aboard, he really didn’t mind all that much. Although he was somewhat disgusted with himself for how little it bothered him.

“I really don’t want to make a habit of taking my walks in the shadows.”

“It’s not so bad. Do it enough and it stops feeling weird.”

The dog’s advice did not help improve his mood.

He wanted to do something about it before he reached that point.

But while he was choosing the more deserted paths, it was still midday on a weekday. And he was carrying an unconscious girl on his back, but no one was stopping him. Was ordinary Anti-Skill not functioning well? That was fine as long as no one realized the gravity of it, but this could get bad if some devious people took notice.

Their destination was District 12. It was the most religious district and located on the east side of the city.

They had to take a wide detour around District 23 since it was generally off limits, so it ended up a long walk.

“Phew.”

A lot of time had passed by the time they arrived. It was just past 5 PM or thereabouts. In January, the sun would have been setting at this time, but the clouds were blocking it today.

They had arrived at the familiar consulate…sort of.

It was unrecognizable.

It seemed to have collapsed even more than when Kamijou had seen it last. Had a stray shot hit it at some point?

Several of the spires had broken and the garden was covered in rubble and black soil with a dusting of red snow starting to cover it. Over half of a building larger than the average school had been squashed. From the looks of it, the rainwater had to be getting in. Not many rooms would still be usable, but having a roof above your head still meant a lot.

“May I come in?” he asked Alice without thinking.

That made her squeal with delight. Because he was still treating this as her house maybe?

But…

“I-it’s chilly in here…”

Kamijou shivered. It had to have been colder outside, but he felt it all the worse once he was inside. Maybe his senses were returning to him.

A sofa in the corner of the huge lobby was so fancy he wasn’t sure if it was meant to be used or just decorative, but he lay Vidhatri on it regardless. Even that was difficult with the weird doll attached back-to-back with her. How did you remove it? And he felt like the cold was getting even worse. No, could it be he had been receiving warmth from the brown beauty on his back? Talk about a spoiled way to make use of a young woman. As unscientific as it was, he was afraid he had earned some kind of divine punishment there.

They had somehow arrived at the consulate, but now he had to figure out what to do next.

“F-for now, we need to do something about injured Vidhatri. She still hasn’t woken up, but is she okay? If it requires more than a first-aid kit, then we’re out of luck.”

His first thought was the frog-faced doctor.

Yes, a doctor.

“…”

The main goal of his original plan was to prevent Academy City from pursuing him as the living dead. So by escaping to a consulate belonging to another country(?) where the adults couldn’t touch him, he had hoped to buy enough time to call the frog-faced doctor to him and receive professional confirmation that Kamijou Touma was still alive. And with his status as alive confirmed, he would automatically be preserving Index and Othinus’s home too.

He didn’t know if that Condro-whatever country still officially recognized the consulate, but the actual international effectiveness didn’t really matter. He only needed the powerful adults in Academy City to hesitate.

But Great Demon Coronzon’s appearance had destroyed that plan. Utterly.

To be blunt, she wouldn’t care at all about the consulate. If she didn’t like Kamijou’s group, she would march right in to kill them. After all, she was willing to declare herself one who tore apart human bonds and obstructed their evolution. On a larger scale, there was a real possibility of her ''doing something to Academy City as a whole.'' If it came to that, then Kamijou’s group would be killed along with the rest of the city.

(Seriously, what are we supposed to do? However we stop Coronzon, I do still want to prove I’m alive so I can move through the city more easily…but do I have time for a detour like that?)

What was Index doing right now? Othinus and the calico cat too. It was below freezing outside. He couldn’t leave them out there in the frigid air and red snow and there was always the horrific chance that they would happen across Coronzon out there.

“I guess we can’t just come to a stop. We need to decide on where to start…”

Just as he said that, he heard a weird clattering noise from overhead.

Was someone there?

“Alice, get behind me.”

“Teacher, you don’t need to worry about that.”

Hm? Alice seemed awfully certain about that.

Nervous Kamijou sensed something off.

It came from his sense of smell.

Was that the familiar scent of some extremely ordinary chemical seasonings?

Then someone emerged from the second floor. The underwear woman with large wings on her back was walking while working at a cup of instant noodles with a silver fork.

“Hm? Boy, wherefore are you here?”

She was the Bologna Succubus, one of the Transcendents.

===Part 4===

For Kamijou the Bridge Builders Cabal consulate had seemed like a secret base of evil, but for the Bologna Succubus it was a temporary home in a foreign country. Even if it was falling apart, maybe it was best to just return here.

Kamijou tilted his head.

“What are you normal Transcendents doing now?”

“Normal? That’s a new one, boy. Then again, maybe it was inevitable when you’ve been hanging out with ultra extraordinary Alice so much.”

Standing still, the blonde underwear woman gave him an exasperated look while eating her Japanese cup noodles. Maybe it came from being Western, but he didn’t hear any slurping sounds as she ate the noodles.

“Horrifying. You might as well be eating a cup full of salt,” said the golden retriever.

“Well, this pup feels right out of a fairy tale. The best medicine when you’re tired, if you ask me.”

The tragic state of her diet suggested Good, Old Mary and H. T. Trismegistus were not here since the former was proud of her cooking skills and the latter was picky about manners. …Then again, Kamijou was more at home with cup noodles that would be ready in 3 minutes and eaten in 5 minutes than he was with a full-course dinner that took more than two hours from appetizer to dessert.

“Around half of us were knocked out trying to restrain Aleister when he suddenly went nuts. Vidhatri there was one of them. But we scattered afterwards. After all, our grand plan of saving the world with a resurrected CRC didn’t pan out. And organizations are fragile when they lose their central pillar.”

“Aleister did it?” asked Kamijou because he had thought Coronzon was responsible.

The Bologna Succubus sighed softly.

“There’s something wrong with him. No ordinary human should be able to defeat a group of Transcendents. Maybe that’s just ''the'' Crowley living up to his reputation as the exception among exceptions.”

“''Wait.''”

Kamijou called for a time out.

Something wasn’t right.

“If Aleister alone could have solved the Transcendent problem with Anna Sprengel and such, he wouldn’t have relied on Kingsford in the first place.”

“You have a point,” said the golden retriever. “Thinking back, that preserved corpse was an odd choice for Aleister. It isn’t like him to so wholly rely on someone else like that.”

“This talk of corpses is hitting home a lot more than it did before… But anyway, it sounded like he found some dangerous thing, modified it, and forced it to move.”

“Boy, did you forget?” The Bologna Succubus sounded exasperated. “Aleister is no ordinary human. He has crossed a line much like we have. No, it felt more like he was wielding Great Demon Coronzon’s power.”

“…”

“I doubt he could use all that power to begin with, so maybe something caused him to lose control and break through the limiter?”

“Something? Like what?”

“Kamijou Touma’s death and everything related to Anna Kingsford. You can’t tell me you’ve forgotten about that.”

In other words.

Did it all go back to that?

Just gathering up and using that power was enough to defeat a group of Transcendents. Then what could Great Demon Coronzon herself do now that she was back in control?

The Bologna Succubus shrugged.

“The Bridge Builders Cabal is no longer functioning as a magic cabal.”

“I see…”

“I don’t even know what happened to the other members. Some may still be hiding in Academy City, but I bet most of the Transcendents are leaving now that their reason for being here is gone.”

“…”

Is that why the Bologna Succubus was referring to him as “boy” here?

Alice Anotherbible was no longer her top priority.

In that school on that night, they had seen their pitiful master accidentally kill Kamijou Touma and lose sight of herself. The regular Transcendents must have been disillusioned when Alice didn’t even give them a glance after they served her so thoroughly.

Alice Anotherbible had lost her violent charisma.

And what happened when they also learned that summoning CRC to save the world was nothing more than a pipe dream?

“Nothing but hardtack to eat is murdering my mouth☆ Hey, lewd succubus, was there any canned food anywhere? …What’re they doing here?”

Someone else descended from the second floor.

To her, Alice Anotherbible was just one member of a “they”.

Who was this girl anyway? Kamijou was pretty sure he had never seen her before. The blonde was fully covered by what might have been a copper blast-resistant suit or might have been an iron maiden.

The two began conversing without any kind of introductions.

“We have an injury to deal with, so we’ll have to do something about Vidhatri. Ugh, it’s so inconvenient without Good, Old Mary around. Why does Blodeuwedd the Bouquet have to be the only one left? She’s useless.”

“Kyahah. That’s a neat trick if standing around complaining will heal her wounds. But if not, then we’ll have to figure something out with the people we’ve got, whore demon.”

…The strained atmosphere between those two bothered Kamijou, but it was they who brought a first-aid kit from deeper in the building.

The two Transcendents opened the kit and argued as they opened the manual contained in a waterproof package along with the medicines and bandages.

“First, we need to make sure we use this stuff right☆ Start by disinfecting the wound with alcohol.”

“Don’t be stupid. You need to wash the wound with water first and then disinfect it.”

“This swelling is a bruise, not internal bleeding. That means a compress will do.”

“That’s a hot compress. Are you trying to exacerbate the symptoms? You need a cool compress here, trash.”

“That idiot can be safely ignored. Now, let’s see☆ I need to tie the bandage tight to stop the bleeding.”

“If you want the bleeding to stop fast, you have to let the air contact it. Tying the bandage loose to let it breathe is best, dung beetle girl.”

Left all alone on the sofa, Vidhatri began moaning in her sleep.

Those two were practically at each other’s throats.

The Bologna Succubus and…Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was it? Those two were in fact literally butting heads. Which begged the question of why they were staying here together.

“They must be good friends.”

“Huh?” “Huh?”

[[File:GT Index v13 BW1.jpg|thumb]]

Kamijou’s comment earned him a pair of fairly serious glares. A girl’s “huh?” was a frightening thing.

Kamijou couldn’t say which of their claims were correct. He secretly did some searching on his phone and found plenty of agreement in either direction. It was funny that too many opinions could be a problem too. He decided to just assume a Transcendent’s body would be tough enough to endure whatever those two did. Or wait…were Transcendents’ bodies tough?

“Damn, I really shouldn’t have stayed in Academy City. I know I have a habit of sticking around in unloved places, but I always regret not getting out sooner than I do☆”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was complaining under her breath and Kamijou concluded this really was his first time seeing her.

And the Bologna Succubus was generally welcoming and cheerful no matter what, so it was unusual to see her detest someone so much. She didn’t seem like a bad person to Kamijou, so what made the Bologna Succubus dislike her to this extent?

He asked and the Bologna Succubus reacted with complete exasperation.

In fact, she held a hand to her forehead.

“Boy, um…you are a hopelessly bad judge of character. It’s like you go out of your way to be tricked so you can destroy it all.”

“Oh, c’mon. Ha ha. An ‘evil plot’ by a little girl like this could only be something adora-”

“She was one of the Killers who wanted to murder you in order to control Alice.”

Apparently this was much more serious than he had thought.

…And yet the girl herself held a hand to her cheek while staring at him.

Hm? This seemed quite different from what he had been told. Was that a spellbound look?

“But…now that I’ve met him for myself, he’s nothing like I was expecting. I was imagining an easy-going piece of shit who, y’know, carelessly presses fire alarms and blows up fire extinguishers. But instead he’s more like, well, the shunned and ostracized kid who sits alone in a corner of the classroom. Ahh☆ I, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, am the Transcendent who protects the unloved. And the negative aura coming off of him is more than enough. Pant, pant. Oh, I can’t stand it. Kyahah, unloved one, leap into my arms!!”

“I’d rather not be accepted for ''that'' reason!!”

Was she the type to insult people when trying to be kind!? Kamijou bristled and yelled at the skinny girl whose thick armor opened like double doors. And was she entirely naked except for an apron under there!?

The naked apron was real!!

The depressed aura coming from Kamijou was probably the result of dying, coming back from the dead, being treated as a zombie, being rejected by Aleister for baffling reasons, and then having the resurrected Great Demon Coronzon try to kill him. If he let himself be taken into that soothing shelter, he just knew he would never again be able to leave that sweet-smelling girl’s thick coat!!

(But on the other hand…)

He had died and come back and was now being viewed as a zombie. It was nice finding some people who would ignore all that and actually listen to him.

Great Demon Coronzon.

He couldn’t just ignore that threat, but he needed far more fighters than this to deal with her. He didn’t even know what had happened to Magic Gods Nephthys and Niang-Niang after he left.

Even they had said they would “take over” for him, not that they would defeat her or solve the problem. It had seemed like the Magic Gods were choosing their words carefully.

He didn’t know how that had turned out, but it hadn’t seemed like leaving it with them was the end of it. And if they hadn’t ended it, then he had to assume the Coronzon problem persisted.

The Bologna Succubus put a hand on her hip and spoke.

“Anyway, we’ll treat Vidhatri. We’ll need to take her to another room.”

“I’ll help,” said Kamijou.

“This will mean removing her clothing, so you stay away. As the resident expert on sexiness, I cannot condone non-consensual nudity.”

When put that way, there was nothing Kamijou Touma-chan could do.

“Don’t look so dejected. I’ll let you see me naked later.”

“Could you not make this so awkward to agree with!?”

“Don’t worry. Even if everyone else treats you like a filthy insect, I will be there to hug you☆”

“I don’t like the sound of that future either!!”

The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet began a friendly(?) argument as they moved Vidhatri to another room.

Then the golden retriever made a request in a very dandy voice.

“As a dog whose body requires several nutrients to continue functioning, I would really like to be fed soon.”

Had he not eaten?

But this consulate wasn’t Kamijou’s home. He was reluctant to start searching around for food without permission.

He looked to Alice and she only smiled up at him. Apparently this was fine.

He began searching of the half-destroyed building.

“Come to think of it…I don’t remember seeing a dog last time I was here. I don’t think they have any actual pet food.”

“Such an uncivilized place. But it is what it is. Are there any chicken tenderloins?”

“The premade ones are already seasoned, so won’t they be pretty dangerous? For your kidneys and such? I’ve heard human food has too much sodium for most animals.”

“Of course. Really, only humans are capable of digesting that much salt in daily life. Even the fish swimming the sea show more restraint. Parboil it in water to remove all the excess fat and seasoning. And be thorough.”

As pressing as the situation was, having some work to do helped him calm down.

Or maybe that was just his body being heated by the steam coming from the pot of boiling water on the induction cooker. It wasn’t warming him all that much in this chill, though.

How much could a dog that size eat? He decided to just pile up the boiled tenderloins on a plate until the dog himself said it was enough, placed that and a bowl of water on the floor, and asked a question.

“Are you okay in this cold?”

“This is my winter coat, thankfully. And unlike a cat, my coat resists water. Hot!”

The dog couldn’t handle hot foods any better than cats.

Kamijou badly needed to do something about his freezing body. The dog seemed docile enough, but would he get mad if Kamijou hugged him for warmth?

Then Alice walked over and grabbed his hand.

“Over there, over there. You can warm up with that.”

Something rarely seen in Japan was installed in a one of the cracked walls.

Petty bourgeois Kamijou was used to his dorm’s air conditioning, so the idea of starting a roaring fire inside your home was a fairly exciting one, but Alice seemed to find it normal. Was fire not frightening if it had a partitioned area and was well managed?

And Japan did have its irori.

“Just turn the valve and let the gas out!”

“Wait, fireplaces aren’t for burning chopped wood?”

Apparently the firewood was mostly decorative. So many things evolved with time. Even lanterns used LEDs these days, so apparently nothing was safe.

Also, the building was half destroyed, so was the chimney safe? He was afraid it might be broken partway up or have a hole or crack that would change the flow of smoke in devastating ways…

“Damn, staring at a fire calms you down whether you like it or not, huh? No, that’s a dangerous idea. I need to be careful I don’t Little Match Girl myself… Can you not cook fish or dango on skewers in a fireplace? Like you do with an irori?”

“Ohh, nice and warm…”

Kamijou turned around to ask and heard a sleepy voice next to him.

Alice must not have been satisfied without drying every single part of her wet clothing because she stood facing the fireplace fire with her skirt lifted in her hands.

“Stop that! It’s indecent! There’s a boy here. You’re only supposed to let someone you truly care for see inside your skirt!”

“Ehh? Someone the girl truly cares for?”

“No, stop!!”

Don’t turn this way.

Also, she was wearing some kind of white tights, but was it really safe to heat those so close to a fire? Kamijou didn’t know much about old-fashioned materials, but was that something non-synthetic surrounding her legs? He wasn’t certain. He was a little afraid the heat would suddenly melt it, leading to tragedy.

And as they warmed themselves (“Lower your skirt already!”), someone returned from deeper into the building: the Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. They had returned together…which meant they didn’t need to leave anyone with Vidhatri.

“Was the treatment a success?”

“Nyahah, for now.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet gave a brief response to Kamijou’s question.

So they weren’t completely out of the woods there yet.

Kamijou found this drafty building too cold for his liking, but wearing that thick coat indoors must have been too warm. The skinny apron girl occasionally opened it and fanned it to let some heat out as she gave him a skeptical look.

“We have a question for you.”

“?”

“What are your plans concerning Great Demon Coronzon? This situation looks pretty bad, so we kind of have to play the Alice Anotherbible card, don’t we?”

The central pillars of Alice Anotherbible’s violent charisma and CRC’s world salvation had been broken, and yet…

The Transcendents had begun as a gathering of individuals who wanted to protect the kind of people they personally wanted to help. That meant the Bologna Succubus had people she wanted to help and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had her own.

Great Demon Coronzon.

Kamijou had no idea what she might do, but it made sense those two would be concerned about the appearance of someone who would bring harm to anyone and everyone.

And they would be concerned about the enormous bomb that was Alice Anotherbible.

Blowing up over half the world in a fight to protect the world was meaningless.

Those thoughts were written plain on Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s face.

“It is probably time I decided on a general plan as well.”

The dog was right.

They only had so much time. Doing nothing and avoiding the issue would only be placing the rope around their own necks.

Kamijou organized his thoughts.

And with a deep breath, he spoke.

“I will have Alice fight.”

“Oh,” said Alice, hopping a bit at being brought up in the conversation.

“I had a feeling you would,” said Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, sounding somehow annoyed.

But…

“The problem is she’s too powerful, right? No, I guess the problem isn’t really the size of her power but its instability since you never know where she’ll direct it on a whim. …So we just have to convince the world that ''Alice is a good guy because she’s the one who saved the world.''”

“…”

Kamijou’s explanation caused the skinny apron girl’s sulky look to freeze on her face.

“For real?”

“Great Demon Coronzon is trying to destroy the world. …To be blunt, a threat that over-the-top actually helps us out here. With a half-baked bank robbery or mummy’s curse, we’d be ignored since someone other than Alice could have dealt with it just fine. We need a threat no one else could stop so we can let the entire world know that it was Alice Anotherbible who saved them and that the world would have ended if not for her. Right?”

Fortunately, there was no connection between Great Demon Coronzon and Alice Anotherbible. They both referenced Crowley-style magic, but that wasn’t anything like a personal connection.

That meant it wouldn’t be viewed as the same side splitting between enemy and ally and putting on a show.

“I see,” said the Bologna Succubus, grinning.

She provided criticism and counterarguments as an ally. Like a skilled secretary providing practice before the debate.

“But will it really work out so nicely? Humans are heartless. Once the threat is gone, they might completely forget that someone saved them and start attacking Alice like it’s a demand for disarmament. Because at the end of the day, she’s still a threat for being able to do what she did.”

“I’m aware of that. In that case, we just have to support her. With support from someone who controls the world’s goodness and justice, there won’t be a witch hunt and Alice can become a symbol of victory and peace.”

“Oh? And who did you have in mind?”

“Hey, you’re no diplomat, so stop trying your hand at dangerous diplomatic negotiations, layman.”

A voice suddenly interrupted.

It didn’t come from Kamijou’s phone and the large TV’s LCD screen was badly cracked and broken. It seemed to becoming from the cylinder sitting on the bent table. Kamijou had thought it was a trendy aromatherapy device or something, but…

“The AI speaker is talking on its own!” exclaimed Alice.

Apparently that’s what it was.

Academy City Board Chairman Accelerator.

He had kept silent since the rain turned to red snow, but now he had butted in.

“But how did you…?”

“Consulates that represent a country or region are ordinarily installed with hotlines to the local country.”

He tried to make it sound so obvious, but what did he mean “ordinarily”?

And…

“Academy City, huh?”

The Bologna Succubus sounded surprised.

Apparently she could recognize the massive organization’s leader by his voice. Kamijou was pretty sure the two had never actually met, anyway.

Then the blonde underwear woman winked.

“I thought for sure you were going to go ask the Anglicans.”

“Go to England since this is about magic? I get the idea, but you haven’t forgotten, have you? The original Alice and Aleister Crowley are both from England.”

With that said, Kamijou sighed softly.

Meanwhile, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet seemed to have finally recovered from her freeze.

She pouted her lips and gave her opinion (in a weirdly serious way for a naked apron wearer).

“I see☆ So if Alice’s activities benefited England, it would look too much like it was all a setup?”

“And I doubt we can go to the Roman Catholic or Russian Orthodox Churches. In fact, that would probably end up with the Anglicans claiming original ownership and demanding she be returned to them, so it could just cause further conflict. Really, it will cause the least trouble if we leave Alice with the science side since they know nothing of magic. ''Intentionally ensuring that treasure goes to waste'' will ensure the magic side VIPs don’t get jealous as they watch on from the shadows.”

“How do we know that works?”

“It has with Index, the grimoire library.”

Yes, there was an example very close to home for him.

If the magic side was so afraid of having a specific magician or magic cabal control her, they just had to isolate her in another world where no one could reach her. The same could be said of Alice as well.

Alice had far too much power for an individual and analyzing her body could reveal the open source plans for creating “regular Transcendents”. Handing her over to someone on the magic side who knew how to make use of her sounded far too dangerous no matter who it was.

“Are tenderloins that good?”

“Munch, munch. Alice, these are mine. As a human, you should eat human food.”

“Is the girl still human?”

Talk of the power balance in the world of magic went over Kihara Noukan’s head, so he was busying himself with the big plate of tenderloins on the floor. Or rather, he was fighting for them with Alice who had taken an interest in them.

She definitely needed to be left with someone who didn’t know how to make use of her.

“To sum up, we first need to deal with Coronzon somehow or another. After that, we need to ''make it so that'' credit for saving the world goes to Alice. And lastly, we leave her with Academy City to avoid any further conflict. It's mostly a vague outline with no concrete details, but does that sound like a good overall plan?”

“Hey,” said Accelerator. “You aren’t forgetting that Alice girl is one of the reasons the city is in such a bad state, are you?”

“''The Coronzon problem comes first.''”

“Ugh,” groaned the #1, falling silent.

That was unusual.

“Keep your priorities straight. Coronzon rates higher than Alice,” clearly stated Kamijou. “We don’t have many cards in our deck right now. We can’t afford to lose even one trump card. If we focus on Alice first and end up fighting each other while ignoring Coronzon, whatever it is she’s going to do, Academy City will be destroyed first. If you really want to protect this city, then it’s your job to make sure Alice can fight at full strength, Board Chairman.”

“You make it sound so easy. You don’t think you’re free of responsibility just cause you’re not the guy at the top, do you?”

“And I do think there’s room for leniency with Alice. It’s true the damage was done by her great power, but she had no idea what she was doing and it was everyone else around her who pushed her into doing it. And that includes me. Judge her if you must, but I’m not about to let her face the world’s judgment alone. I sacrificed my life saving her, so I will make sure I save her to the very end.”

“…Tch.”

The board chairman at the very top clicked his tongue for some reason, but he said nothing more.

Kamijou wasn’t sure what part of his argument had hit home.

And then.

He heard a ring as if from a deep bell.

Was that the doorbell?

“…Wait.”

Kamijou tensed.

The only one still relaxed was Alice as she hopped on the sofa.

Meaningless misfortune often paid Kamijou a visit, so he had a very bad feeling about this. In the absolute worst case, this was Great Demon Coronzon ringing the doorbell as a joke.

Kihara Noukan looked up from his plate of tenderloins and spoke quietly.

“I do not know much about that magic stuff, but is there a chance she has detected us here?”

“A big chance. After all, she was sealed inside Aleister all that time. So anything Aleister saw or heard, she would have observed from inside him!”

This was the only real option, but had it been a mistake to choose a known building as a shelter?

Hiding deep in the damaged building and waiting for a chance to strike…would be one option, but this was Coronzon they were talking about. If they didn’t respond, she might not even enter the crumbling building. If she decided to instead blast the entire structure from outside, all of them would die in vain.

So they had to respond.

“Bologna Succubus, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”

“Yes? Are you giving us the dangerous job since you beat us and we have nothing left to live for?”

“Don’t be dumb. Vidhatri is sleeping in the back, right? I’ll deal with whoever’s at the front door, so you two take her out the back way and escape if it looks bad.”

“…”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet fell silent, looking surprised, and the Bologna Succubus patted her on the shoulder. Except she didn’t release the shoulder of that thick coat and squeezed it with a vise-like grip.

“(I found him first. Try anything and you are dead, you naughty spoiling goddess.)”

“(Ehh, that’s no fun. Well, you have my word, but I can’t guarantee my body won’t act of its own accord when the moment comes☆)”

“(Then your word is worthless!)”

“(Who does this man milker think she is looking down on me? Does this nocturnal lesser demon think she’s his guardian or something!?)”

They started struggling against each other, but Kamijou chose to believe it was a sign of friendship.

He had to go answer the front doorbell.

Kihara Noukan accompanied him.

“Do you have any kind of weapon? With the fireplace, there should at least be a poker.”

“It would only get in the way of my right hand.”

He knew ''reflexively holding out his right hand'' was a dangerous move with anyone at the level of an angel or demon, but he still needed to focus on occult countermeasures. This wasn’t like the battle against Stiyl where they both knew each other’s moves.

Alice joined him too.

And he wasn’t even given time to prepare.

He didn’t even have time to think about opening the front door because the outer wall near the door was broken. And so he saw the answer before he could even get nervous. The hole provided a big spoiler.

“Hi.”

Someone stood there.

Dion Fortune…and two others behind her.

No, he recognized them. Wasn’t that Hamazura Shiage and Takitsubo Rikou?

The group was introduced to him as follows:

“It’s the Anglican Archbishop and her jolly friends.”

===Part 5===

Coronzon had moved location.

She didn’t need to prepare any supplies. Everything she needed was right here in the city. Each individual would use the puzzle pieces differently, but the great demon chose to use them purely for destruction.

Yes.

Destruction.

But that meant she did need control of the necessary locations first.

And so despite being known as a great demon, she was forced to do something she would have preferred not to.

Move.

“Pros can become cons, advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses. Really, Aleister would have loved it.”

But at this point, she couldn’t screw this up.

It wasn’t possible.

She had passed the challenges she could not fully calculate for. That is, she was past the point of gambling. For her, whether or not Aleister would self-destruct and release her had been the greatest obstacle.

Now she just has to complete the rest of the job.

The spell she was preparing was on an enormous scale and would take time, but she still swore on her name as a great demon that it would not fail.

No matter what anyone did from here on, it would be ''launched''.

Great Demon Coronzon spoke quietly to herself.

“Time to begin.”

===Part 6===

“Adikalika,” began Dion Fortune, seated on the sofa.

Five seconds after taking a seat, she was already recrossing her legs.

“Great Demon Coronzon is preparing a massive piece of magic in this city. It’s called Adikalika.”

Come to think of it, why were Hamazura and Takitsubo of Academy City working with Dion Fortune of the UK? Maybe Kamijou wasn’t one to talk, but their circle of friends was a bit of a mystery.

However, there was no threat here.

They had moved to the parlour which was barely still intact. The kitchen was apparently still functional, so Kamijou boiled some water and made some tea. He hadn’t the foggiest idea how to make proper British tea, but since Fortune happily held the cup between her hands, he figured he had done well enough.

“Ohh, it’s nice and warm!”

“Hot water really helps you calm. I noticed that with my cup noodles earlier.”

It was below freezing outside. With red snow falling.

…So maybe even boiled tap water would have been fine if it warmed her.

Regardless, Dion Fortune got down to business.

About Adikalika.

“Our grimoire library is still being lent out to someone I should mention, but Orsola Aquinas did a brilliant research job. She tracked it down to a booklet packaged with a strange book not even found in London’s national library. Apparently a used bookstore had bought it from a certain Loch Ness mansion.”

Everything since the funeral had left Kamijou starved for human warmth, so he was pleased to hear this mention of someone he knew, but that wasn’t the main point.

So what exactly was this Adi…whatever-it-was? It sounded foreign to Kamijou’s ears, but also didn’t seem English.

Kihara Noukan and Accelerator on the AI speaker seemed pretty smart, but neither of them tried to take charge of the conversation. Were they waiting to have all the information because magic was outside their areas of expertise? Kamijou could think of any number of questions to ask, but he couldn’t narrow it down to just one.

“What is Adikalika?”

Fortune had brought Takitsubo here, but it was she who asked from the sofa with a blank stare and tilt of the head.

Had Fortune not explained it to her own group?

The science side and magic side were so different she must not have expected them to understand right way, so she gave a quick explanation.

“Right, Adikalika. When written in the alphabet instead of the Sanskrit script, it becomes a Crowley term. Originally, I guess you could say it’s a Magick reinterpretation of the Indian goddess Kali as a being who absorbs all things and make them her own. Using the 11th letter – that is, K. So the key to understanding it is Kali.”

“Wait, not so fast,” interrupted Kihara Noukan. “If you assume your audience already understands everything, your explanation is worthless. Simplicity and ease of understanding should be your goal here.”

Kamijou tilted his head.

“Hm? An Indian goddess, huh?”

For Kamijou, the word “goddess” brought to mind a kind and gentle young woman. Uh, oh. Now he was letting himself be influenced by the earlier mention of Orsola! Goddesses weren’t dorm mangers who always wore aprons and carried around brooms!!

And apparently that was way off in this case.

According to Dion Fortune:

“The original Kali is a fairly dangerous god. She started out as a representation of a certain goddess’s fury, so there’s not a hint of kindness found in her. She is a goddess of death and bloodshed and she is openly introduced as a god who has lost her sanity. But instead of a god of death for individuals, she’s more like a god of destruction for nations and the world. Also, destruction itself is not her final goal. One legend says the world was nearly destroyed by the impacts and tremors caused by her dance of joy after defeating her enemies.”

This was sounding bad already.

Hamazura was having trouble keeping up, so he asked a question.

“This is just a case of using a mythological name or symbol for a major project, right?”

“That does happen sometimes. Like with space exploration rockets or submarine missiles.”

Kamijou knew what Hamazura and Kihara Noukan were trying to say.

He decided to take over for them. …Even though he wasn’t exactly a magic expert himself.

“This spell is simply borrowing that goddess’s name, right? …Right? Surely you’re not going to say that goddess herself is going to be physically summoned here.”

That idea sounded absurd, but the Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet were right over there. The two of them were fighting over a variety pack of cookies that had been left in the consulate. The pack had six different kinds of cookies, but they were both only interested in the chocolate chip ones.

Yes, there were people here with names taken from myth.

After seeing the Magic Gods and Transcendents, Kamijou couldn’t just laugh this off. Vidhatri sleeping in the back had an Indian-sounding name, so anyone familiar with those myths would probably recognize her name. Plus, the Dion Fortune in front of him now wasn’t the real one – she had been created with a magical trick.

“It’s not that bad, but the end result isn’t much better.”

Kamijou felt like he had been trying to hold the conversation back when it suddenly slipped out of his hands entirely.

“As a spell, Adikalika sends the goddess of death and bloodshed to the caster’s chosen coordinates in the world,” continued Dion Fortune. “Specifically, the spell takes the catastrophic destruction that the four-armed black goddess would likely bring and transfers it to a specific land. Only the people in that chosen territory can know what happens there, but I can guarantee you that they will all die. Just assume that it’s all over if the spell is activated.”

The world, catastrophic destruction, chosen territory, all die…

This was sounding worse and worse, but this wasn’t quite enough to picture it. Among the mixture of people from different factions, Kamijou, Hamazura, and Takitsubo had the exact same distinctive look on their faces.

Dion Fortune noticed the way Kamijou was looking at her.

“If you want a description that’s easier for your science brains to understand, I guess you could think of it like an ICBM loaded with a really dangerous poison gas or germ. …But with Adikalika, it cannot be blown up after it is launched. And once it hits, all life within the land assigned the chosen human name will die. It is predicted that ''the people will be reduced to a mass of blood, flesh, and bone. That is, they will be crushed and sliced into what looks like a giant hunk of gore while still alive.''”

That was even more gruesome than expected.

Of course, it was always going to be bad if Great Demon Coronzon felt it was worth the time and effort to use. But still.

At this point, Accelerator spoke through the AI speaker, keeping his voice low.

“What does Coronzon hope to do with that thing?”

“Hm? Isn’t she going to attack Academy City with it?”

[[File:GT Index v13 BW2.jpg|thumb]]

Takitsubo answered his question with a question.

Was that really the answer, though?

Attacking Academy City sounded straightforward at first, but it felt wrong somehow. For one, she was in the city. If the spell was that destructive, she wouldn’t want to be caught in the destruction herself.

Dion Fortune recrossed her legs on the sofa and responded.

“I bet she has a different target.”

“?”

“I said the target was defined by a name assigned by humans, remember? To be blunt, the global Achilles heel she’s aiming for will probably be related to the Anglican Church or the Roman Catholic Church.”

“They are both foundations of the vast magic side☆” added Blodeuwedd the Bouquet with a cackle.

It sounded like even the Transcendents saw it that way. Now, anyway. Not long ago, they had acted like they were the center of the world.

Dion Fortune nodded and then said more.

“But I expect she’ll choose the headquarters of the Catholics in the end. So the Vatican…no, she’ll probably expand the scope to the entire Italian Peninsula.”

Kamijou had a question.

“But why? Wouldn’t she have a grudge against the UK?”

“I imagine she does. But she can’t attack us.”

Dion Fortune didn’t hesitate there.

But not because she was optimistic.

She had a bitter grimace on her face. As if to say the problem would be a lot smaller if the UK would just be chosen as the target.

“I mean, if she could use that against us, she would have done so last time. …If you follow her actions then, she attacked Board Chairman Aleister in Academy City before returning to Britain, stealing a treasure in Scotland, and attempting a major spell. If she could have launched Adikalika from Academy City and turned the entire United Kingdom into a sea of blood and mincemeat, she would have done so already. But that wasn’t what happened.”

Feeling a chill down the spine here may have been the natural human reaction, but it was also a meaningless reaction.

They had to focus on constructive topics, not the past. Even if they had to force their thoughts in that direction.

Then ''why didn’t it happen that way''?

Dion Fortune sighed.

“Crowley is a British magician. Ignoring his work could damage the UK’s reputation, so they put in a lot of work analyzing his spells.”

The Bologna Succubus commented while munching on the edge of a chocolate chip cookie (that she had swiped at the end of a battle of scratching nails with Blodeuwedd the Bouquet).

“I see. So do you have some kind of powerful resistance against Crowley-style magic, including Adikalika?”

“Right. At the very least, for the spells he created before his official death in 1947. …That’s why Coronzon tried to use a royal treasure to destroy the UK from within last time.”

“But the Roman Catholics are a different story?” asked Kamijou.

Dion Fortune shrugged.

“When it comes to Crowley, Italy had the huge bomb that was the Abbey of Thelema. But it sounds like Italy threw everything out of the country – including documents and spiritual items – when they ordered Crowley to leave.”

So If the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church had no Crowley resistance, would they have no way of preventing this attack from turning the entire country into a sea of blood, flesh, and bone?

And if that happened…

Takitsubo slowly blinked before asking a question.

“I’m not familiar with the different powers of the, um, magic…side? What happens in the worst case?”

“If nothing is done and this plays out to the end, Adikalika will first trigger all-out war between the magic side and science side. Because Academy City could have stopped it, but Great Demon Coronzon is a being who can only be explained by the magic side.”

“I see, I see. So even though Academy City wasn’t involved in the attack, the magic side will still blame them for not stopping Coronzon. But Academy City will fire back, saying Coronzon is from the magic side. Both sides will have a point, so there will be no end to the argument.”

When the Bologna Succubus spoke up, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet apparently felt a need to as well.

Because they were rivals, or because they were friends?

“The Roman Catholic Church has 2 billion followers, right? Even with all of Academy City’s unmanned weapons, how much can its 2.3 million people do with the city so exhausted?☆”

“…”

And what good was defeating those 2 billion anyway?

The point wasn’t to pit humans against each other to create an even bigger ocean of blood and dye the entire earth red like one big disturbing candy apple.

Would the world really let a single demon drive them that far over the edge?

“And despite being part of the magic side, the Roman Catholics will attack the Anglicans too. Because Crowley is a British magician. Not to mention how closely connected England and Academy City have been. And if the UK does have anti-Crowley tech, the Catholics would want it.”

Takitsubo cut in here.

“We’re talking about war, right? Could they really choose to fight on two fronts like that?”

“As we said, the problem with a war where both sides have a point is it’s hard for either side to stop.”

Things were reaching a large scale here.

But Kamijou knew the same had happened with World War Three, Gremlin, the Crowley’s Hazards, and R&C Occultics.

The global balance was a perilous thing, so even a small trigger could lead to an age of global war.

Great Demon Coronzon herself had said that she was a being who tore apart people’s bonds and obstructed human evolution. And that her method of doing that was the natural decomposition of her dispersion.

That meant Coronzon was intentionally trying to trigger a war like that. It was not a deterrent, a necessary cost, or a single step in some master plan. The war and chaos itself was her goal. The Adikalika spell was no more than the trigger for that.

…They had to stop something like that from happening ''again''.

This was no longer just about Academy City.

Kamijou wanted to know more details. He wanted as broad and deep an understanding as he could get.

“How long does this Adikalika spell take to prepare?”

“By my estimate, the world will be headed toward its doom by midnight tonight. Assuming we don’t do anything to stop it.”

Midnight.

“But that’s a fairly optimistic estimate.”

So there was a chance it could end before then.

It was nearly 6 PM.

They had less than 7 hours remaining. The beginning of disaster was imminent.

“She’s moving awfully fast,” groaned Kihara Noukan. “This Coronzon person has only been in control for less than two hours, right? I don’t see how she could have made any large-scale preparations for this.”

“She doesn’t need any. How long was she sealed inside Aleister? I bet she’s been making full use of her great demon mind that entire time, running simulation after simulation. And as a fellow Golden magician, it was obvious at a glance that Academy City is littered with pieces of Crowley’s legacy. This isn’t like a poison gas weapon she has to smuggle into the country or a nuclear bomb she has to manufacture. She’s surrounded by items she can use.”

“Oh? So to look at it in reverse…”

“I like the way you think, golden retriever. Yes, Adikalika can only be readied inside Academy City. You can think of it as an issue of feng shui or the terrain if you want.”

Even so…

(Aleister, huh?)

What had become of him?

Was he trapped inside that body with Coronzon in control now, or had he been annihilated when she emerged? Kamijou still didn’t know.

At the very least, he knew Aleister, the man who had grieved for the people he lost, was human. For better and for worse. On an instinctual level, he wouldn’t want to construct this Adikalika spell and destroy the world with it.

That human had lost his family and, due to that one factor, decided to declare war on the Golden magic cabal.

At his peak, that human would have been on the side trying to stop this.

No matter how much he would probably deny it.

“…”

Kamijou had Imagine Breaker in his right hand.

Its ability to negate any supernatural ability should be able to stop Coronzon’s Adikalika. However, relying on ''that alone'' would be suicide. For one, he couldn’t win a one-on-one fight against Coronzon, so even approaching the core of her plan would be a challenge.

Imagine Breaker was important, but it wasn’t enough.

“W-we do have a trump card, don’t we?”

This came from Hamazura.

He might seem far removed from magic, but he apparently had an idea.

“Dion Fortune’s…whatever it’s called. That black box!”

“Oh… I really wouldn’t recommend using the Archetype Processor here.”

“Why not!? Can’t it…what was it? Eat any magic and then break it apart and…transform it? Into something else? You were ''forced to use it'' in the UK, so I know what it can do!”

This carried a lot of meaning.

Yes.

Great Demon Coronzon was painstakingly constructing some unprecedented magic. This spell was on such a scale that not even she could whip it up in a flash, so it had to be quite complex. …So with Dion Fortune’s black box(?), couldn’t they mess it up and ruin the entire plan?

They could use that.

If they had two trump cards, Coronzon would have to split her focus. Which could create an opening. And more importantly, even if Kamijou’s right hand failed to reach her, it helped immensely to have another trump card available.

But something bothered Kamijou.

That item belonged to Dion Fortune, so why hadn’t she brought it up as an option?

“First of all, don’t expect much from it. My toy isn’t as convenient as your right hand.”

Dion Fortune sighed and raised her index finger. A box the size of a soccer ball twirled atop it. Alice stared at it, wide eyed.

She seemed confident in her control.

So her concern wouldn’t just be whether she succeeded or failed.

“All this thing does is convert an existing spell into ‘an unpredictable form’. That means the magic in front of me doesn’t just disappear.”

“But that’s not nothing,” said Hamazura. “If it can at least stop that world-destroying Adikalika magic, then it’s worth using.”

“''The massive amount of magic power gathered to activate Adikalika will remain untouched.''”

The atmosphere strained.

So would it be like causing a top-of-the-line race car to explode just before the race began?

“After the spell is fully dismantled and converted into something else inside the box, not even I can predict what form it will take when it reemerges into the world. Listen, Hamazura. If we’re unlucky, it could even blow away Academy City. And even if we aren’t unlucky, it could still have a major downside. There is technically a chance it could result in a fantastically lucky phenomenon like burying Academy City in candy, but you’d have better odds of winning the lottery. Are you willing to bet on those odds? When it means putting so many other people’s lives at risk?”

“Uh…”

Hamazura groaned, but Kamijou glanced over at Alice.

Alice Anotherbible might be able to “adjust” the entire structure of the world to ''force a jackpot''…but that would be a whim on her part.

Getting Alice’s help was fine.

But they couldn’t rely entirely on her when they had no other chance of winning. If she failed and was attacked for bringing about the end of the world, it could turn her into a monster again.

“It’s an interim position until the next one is officially chosen, but I am currently the archbishop in charge of the entire Anglican Church. I intend to live up to the trust placed in me. So I am not willing to make a choice that might protect the world but would be like killing 2.3 million people. How about you?”

The rest fell silent.

Kamijou, Hamazura, Takitsubo, Kihara Noukan, the Bologna Succubus, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, Accelerator, and even Alice.

Their unwillingness to speak meant they were conflicted. They each had two weights: one on the yes side of the scales and one on the no side. It was a matter of extent and size and also proof that none of them was willing to give up on Academy City so readily.

But at the same time, Kamijou had a thought.

…This was probably something she could only say at this point.

If Adikalika’s preparations really were complete and the final seconds were ticking down until the 7 or 8 billion people around the globe were dragged into a massive war, he thought Dion Fortune probably would make the decision. She would choose to force a resolution by putting 2.3 million lives at risk. Because she had said she would live up to the trust placed in her as the archbishop of the Anglican Church which protected the people from wicked magic.

Kamijou breathed in and out.

Stop thinking so negatively. Dion Fortune had said herself she didn’t want to do that. And because the situation was so pressing, he needed to come up with more positive ideas.

“Let’s just think of that as a last resort available just in case. If we try everything else and none of it works, then it’s up to Dion Fortune. If we think of it as a lifeline during this tightrope walk, it should help our mental state.”

“Hey, I said I wasn’t going to-”

“And we’re risking our lives so you won’t have to. That’s why we’re here, right?”

And speaking of having someone to support you, Kamijou Touma recalled his fight against Stiyl Magnus.

“I’m so glad I know the board chairman…”

It helped immensely to have Academy City’s new board chairman on their side. The city wasn’t in the best state, but holding full authority over it changed things considerably from fighting as individuals.

“I doubt it will be that easy.”

But.

It was Dion Fortune who immediately shot down that hope.

“I can only guess, but I bet she’ll be making her move soon.”

===Part 7===

“What?”

Accelerator frowned.

An alarm was buzzing.

This wasn’t just a single window or popup displaying a dangerous error. They were popping up too fast to read. He would have to check the log for that, but that was scrolling by endlessly like a realtime chat.

And the “unknown error” messages weren’t exactly helpful.

He still held the master key that took the form of a smartphone, yet his commands were being rejected. There shouldn’t have been privileges higher than that, but something else was obviously intervening and hijacking control.

This wasn’t anything like hacking or a cyber attack.

No one was breaking in by spoofing their credentials.

He didn’t sense that sort of logic here.

And, of course, these weren’t just unintentional failures or malfunctions.

Which meant…

Was there some command structure entirely separate from the scientific technology?

“I-isn’t this really bad?”

“…”

“This isn’t just the satellites and comms. There’s a chain reaction of malfunctions in the electric, gas, and water systems! It’s January and it’s snowing outside. Who knows how many people will starve or freeze if the pipes freeze and the power stops!!”

Most of Academy City’s food came from agro-buildings and clone meat, but a failure in the RFID-tag-based transportation instructions could create a situation where plenty of ingredients were being produced but none of it could be processed or reach the stores and restaurants. And in fact the bases responsible for that were going down one after another.

“C-could this also be why false alarms keep coming in? Even from the germ lab, the petrochemical plant, and the radiation testing lab… N-n-now there’s no way to tell a real major incident from all the false alarms!”

Were all the automatic reports meant to paralyze Anti-Skill, the firefighters, the hospitals, and everyone else who preserved the peace?

No, this was too roundabout a method for that.

(This is clearly more than just some unfortunate trouble, but the methods are really inconsistent for an intentional attack. It also doesn’t feel like someone acquired the city’s emergency response manual and used that to reverse engineer a method of paralyzing the city.)

He could tell this was an emergency, but that was why he couldn’t act rashly.

“So this isn’t meant as an attack. So is it a side effect of something? But of what?”

As Accelerator glowered into the screen, attempting to grasp the situation, Qliphah Puzzle 545’s shrill voice pierced his ears. She was kind of annoying. …Although that was, in a way, unavoidable when she had been ''designed'' as an agitator meant to create a mood that would lead to war.

“Can’t you artificially stop the rain…no, it’s snow now, isn’t it? Anyway, can’t you change the weather? This snow did start out as artificial rain, didn’t it?”

“Stopping the snow’d be easy, but clear skies would only bring the temperature down further. You’ve heard of radiative cooling, haven’t you? That accumulated snow won’t melt right away.”

And if the temperature dropped, more people would die.

The map of Academy City displayed on a wall monitor was gradually changing color.

Yellow indicated areas where ordinary living would be a challenge. Red indicated areas where survival would be a challenge.

Around half was already marked one or the other.

“So within 72 hours, it’s estimated this many will die? More than 100 thousand?”

In urban life, snow accumulation made travel difficult and isolated households. If the power and water stopped in that situation, people would soon start to die. Before even considering transportation, the city’s food was almost entirely reliant on the agro-buildings and clone meat. They wouldn’t be able to grow much of anything without water or electricity.

To prevent such a situation, Academy City had decentralized its power generation using the wind turbines distributed around the city, but even that was useless if the central facilities controlling the power system went down.

And…

“This estimate is assuming everyone obediently stays home as their told and dies there.”

“…”

“If they start rioting or looting, these calculations don’t mean shit. Then we could see several times as many victims.”

It was said the Japanese were relatively less likely to do such things, but that didn’t mean they would just sit tight at home and wait for death. With their lives on the line, they would try to survive. Accelerator felt that was the natural reaction for any living thing.

But…

(I thought this city was designed to avoid this kind of large-scale infrastructure trouble. I know there’s no such thing as absolute safety, but this number of loopholes feels intentional.)

These times were complicated by the fact that he had inherited the city from someone else instead of building it from the ground up himself. He held the smartphone master key, but he hadn’t designed the structure and layout of every single facility and piece of equipment.

However, the previous board chairman had been Aleister. He had been able to shrug it off every time the dark side took a shot at him, so it seemed unlikely he would leave foolish holes like this unplugged for long.

In fact, with holes this large, wouldn’t some hacker from inside or outside the city have used them to bring down the city already?

In that case…

(These loopholes are no mistake. Someone placed them there on purpose.)

He thought in silence.

But he could only come up with unpleasant ideas.

(But no one except Aleister could make use of them. They use some kind of system that the hackers, crackers, and others who make ''ordinary science'' their plaything couldn’t even imagine.)

The screen suddenly changed.

No, someone had taken control of it. Even here in the board chairman’s headquarters.

The voice that spoke from it was familiar.

“Hello again. Have you started to catch on, Mr. New Board Chairman?”

“…Is this your doing?”

“This is nothing more than a side effect. I am not trying to destroy the infrastructure for everyday necessities. The destruction I am after is on a much larger scale. Then again, seeing peaceful people starving, resenting each other, and beginning a chain reaction of violence could make for an amusing, unintentional, show. But it is nothing more than a bit of entertainment.”

“You’re only using a backdoor. You haven’t actually taken full control.”

“Give up. It’s a fundamentally different system. You can’t influence the side I’m on no matter how much you type away on your keyboard. Can you keep up with this? Here’s a hint: the science side has no way of explaining the problem plaguing Academy City. Magician Aleister Crowley designed the city that way from the beginning. He took the laws and rules of our magic side and hid them below a veneer of cutting-edge science.”

“…”

Accelerator intentionally remained silent.

So it was Qliphah Puzzle 545 who carelessly opened her mouth and continued the conversation.

“What do you mean…and how far…does it go?”

“How far? Everything. Everything!! For example, the dam in the mountains, the flow of the rivers, and even the culverts hidden below ground! And it isn’t just the water supply either. The railway lines, the broadcast facilities, the main roads, the highways, and even the layout of the districts!! Which is why I can so easily remove them from your control and place them under mine!!! …This is a city of learning created by Aleister Crowley, so it is nothing more than a rehash of the Abbey of Thelema he once built in Italy in order to drag talent out of young lives by drowning them in the supernatural and drugs!!”

After all that, Coronzon cooled down.

In fact, it was uncertain if she had even really felt all that emotion deep down.

“But none of that matters… Academy City appears to detest me for the chaos I bring, but are you sure that’s a good idea, my enemy? Have you perhaps forgotten something?”

“Like what?”

“That I am no longer your only enemy.”

Coronzon did not use hints and insinuations at this point.

Likely because she knew a direct statement would cause a greater shock and more chaos.

“The world will be split in two. Because Academy City named itself a city of science and the sole representative of one side of the world, the rest of the world had no choice but to categorize itself as the magic side. But now it is coming out that Academy City is chock full of magical symbols. …Do you really think the people forced so unfairly to keep their heads down are going to let that go?”

===Part 8===

They didn’t hesitate.

Kanzaki Kaori, Itsuwa, and the other Anglican magicians had been waiting outside Academy City near the wall, but as soon as they detected ''an unfavorable sign'', they immediately crossed the wall none of them had been able to cross before.

They didn’t even bother masking their footsteps or presences.

The outsiders of the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Forces took the lead and paved the way for the second wave made up of the main Anglican team. It was their usual method.

The total number that crossed the wall in that series of actions exceeded ten thousand.

“Wh-who are you people!?”

When an Anti-Skill officer reacted to the unexpected group in a fluster, Tatemiya Saiji approached and swiftly took control of his consciousness. This meant more than just putting him to sleep on his feet. Tatemiya dragged out every last piece of information the man knew: the names and faces of his colleagues and superiors, the location of crucial facilities, passwords, and so on. Complete brainwashing was too much of a challenge, but searching out information was doable.

Then they only had to repeat the process.

It helped that Academy City was severely shorthanded. Drum-shaped security robots, eight-legged Predator Octopuses, Six Wings attack helicopters, and other unmanned weapons were being used to make up for the lack, but they weren’t much use against the magicians. The magicians passed right by them without being detected.

Perhaps this was the result of England’s long relationship with Academy City.

The Anglicans already had countermeasures ready.

“We Amakusas will head to District 2. The Former Agnese Forces should head first to District 1 and move on to the retrieval job once you finish there.”

“Understood.”

“And take this just in case.”

“A duralumin case? What’s in it? An Anglican-tuned spiritual item would actually be a poor match for us.”

“There are British flags inside. Raise them around the city if you need to reduce the morale of the enemy remnants.”

“What a pain.”

Agnese Sanctis sounded truly annoyed.

She didn’t know whose idea this was, but did they not consider the possibility of it angering the enemy into rebelling?

Then again, her own use of the word “rebelling” may have been a sign of her subconsciously looking down on them. This was their city, so the science side was ostensibly the one in charge.

“So we’re already thinking of Academy City as nothing more than remnants?”

“They did fail to stop us at the wall.”

No matter how much security had been beefed up using science, it was powerless against magic. The magicians could drag out any information someone knew and, if they needed biometrics like a fingerprint or iris scan, they could ''send the approved person trudging over to the scanner'' and get it unlocked that way.

District 1 contained Anti-Skill headquarters and District 2 contained the unmanned weapon communication data center disguised as a gunpowder testing lab.

With classified information like that, it would ordinarily take years to confirm the facility even existed, much less determine its location. But a group of magicians had no trouble taking control.

And once they held the location, they wouldn’t even need to use magic to deceive the unmanned weaponry.

They were even gradually identifying the locations of the 12 directors. All the information that had been kept so unnaturally under wraps had to be hidden somewhere in the facilities they were taking. Also, Kanzaki and the others didn’t even need any knowledge or skills with machines. By placing the necessary symbols on the devices in question and holding out their hands, they could read the residual thoughts left by the people who had operated them.

Science side telepathy and magic side spells worked entirely differently.

Which meant there was no defense against this unknown form of attack.

(Aleister. …Given who he was, I doubt this approach would have worked back when he was in charge. But things have changed.)

The R&C Occultics affair had partially exposed the existence of magic to the world, but based on the response from the city, the exposure hadn’t been serious enough to launch a specialized attack against a professional magician. Did information that spread through fads not stick around long? Not only did people simply stop paying attention, but any knowledge could be distorted into uselessness as it spread.

They had already secured a few of the directors, so it looked like they could stick to the current plan while staying on the lookout for any surprise attacks.

Kanzaki and the rest had won.

(This just leaves the District 10 prison. The biggest hurdle will be whether we can checkmate him without directly approaching that most crucial point, but it looks like this will end without giving them a chance to send out the science side’s angel.)

“Other teams have taken District 15’s broadcast station and smartphone data center. Anti-Skill, was it? We can now block the drive recorders and tablets they use. Apparently arrest warrants are all digital nowadays, so this effectively leaves them powerless. Does this make phase 1 a success, Priestess?”

“I suppose it does.”

Kanzaki Kaori did not look pleased by Tsushima’s report.

This had been their plan of course, but…

(It was too easy. Was the science side really already on its last legs?)

The world-renowned Anglican Church had deployed a large number of personnel for this, but it had still only been a blitzkrieg strike of less than half an hour.

What had happened to the power balance between science and magic? The two sides being too evenly matched for any kind of attack had supposedly been the best way to keep the peace, but now it looked like one side would endlessly push back the other.

Monotone beeping sounded within the vast structure with no workers or supervisors.

A communication device had received a call.

“Are you the dumbasses making a mess of an already messy situation?”

“Just a moment,” said Kanzaki as she made a few operations on the data center’s devices. “I just set this facility to handle some of the processing that had grown unstable. Of course, I only mean I followed the instructions on the warning window. I hope that stabilized communications somewhat.”

“What are you after?”

“We could not allow Academy City to remain in charge after discovering the city itself breaks the treaty between magic and science. And if the city still contains some secrets after Aleister left, then the best way of ensuring a solid foundation for the fight against Coronzon is for our Anglican Church to temporarily take over management of the city.”

“The treaty…” said Itsuwa, sounding somewhat worried.

“Take over management, my ass. You know what you’ve done is an invasion, don’t you? Besides, I’ve never even heard of this treaty you’re referencing.”

“That goes back to before you took over. And now that we know Lola Stuart of the Anglican Church was Great Demon Coronzon and Academy City’s board chairman was Crowley, that agreement likely was a meaningless and empty thing. Plus, both Archbishop Lola and Board Chairman Aleister are officially considered dead. It is very unclear if any agreement made between the two holds any power anymore.”

And of course, it provided the new board chairman with no defense here.

In a way, it may have helped him that he hadn’t played a part in it.

“If we don’t do anything, Coronzon will continue to take over Academy City’s functions. We need to stop her Adikalika spell as much as anyone. Plus, we cannot allow large numbers of innocents to die of starvation, freezing, accidents, or the general chaos.”

“Tch.”

But Kanzaki Kaori did not gloat here.

She simply spoke calmly to the many magicians on her side.

“We will manage Academy City. That means the safety of the city’s residents and their property is our responsibility. Do not forget that we are rightfully to blame if a single person in the city starves during a blackout or dies in a traffic accident. Each team is to distribute personnel across the city to restore order and, if necessary, clear snow or guide traffic.”

In truth, Kanzaki Kaori did not have a clear view of it all.

Their original mission had been to retrieve Index.

The plan to take control of Academy City had only been if the city refused to return her. It had simply been reworked for use in the fight against Coronzon.

It was all the result of chance.

In this, she was the opposite of Kamijou Touma and his misfortune.

Was it Kanzaki Kaori’s unnatural level of luck that had allowed it all to come together so well?

(I always get first prize all on my own. And by holding the spot at the top, my luck sends my neighbors down toward hell. It makes me sick.)

Great Demon Coronzon was attempting to use the entire city to construct a single massive spell.

The fact that Academy City could use magic was a major problem in and of itself, but Kanzaki thought making that accusation now would be misjudging their priorities. Doing that now would be playing right into the demon’s hands as she prepared Adikalika.

They could not give her time.

Fighting back against Coronzon was the more urgent task.

So if the Anglicans used magic to try and take back the city the demon was using magic to hijack, they could establish an evenly-matched tug-of-war.

“All we have under our control are the bare minimum of electricity, gas, and water… But the Adikalika described by the current archbishop would instantly blow away this brief calm. In fact, it would plunge the entire world into the fires of war. We must avoid a meaningless three-way war between the Anglican Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and Academy City. By any means necessary.”

She doubted they could take complete control back from Coronzon at this point, but they could at least delay her.

They had done all this just for that.

They had even pressed their blades and magic against the people they were supposed to be helping.

Kanzaki Kaori clenched her teeth.

“I hope this will slow her at least a little…but even then it will only buy some time. This crisis will not end unless something is done about Coronzon herself.”

===Part 9===

Back inside the half-destroyed consulate…

“A large Anglican group…just took over the city and are keeping order for the city?”

A dazed Kamijou parroted what Accelerator had just told them.

This was a new turn of events.

Academy City was on the verge of death with no means of fighting back, but still.

And even if it looked like the Anglicans were providing friendly cooperation, it sounded a lot like they had concluded the city no longer had the strength left to keep its own peace.

It was looking like the very framework of Academy City could collapse from conflict between humans before Great Demon Coronzon even did anything.

“Dion Fortune, was it?” asked Accelerator. “Do something about this. You’re their boss, aren’t you!?”

“Well…”

This should have been a basic question and request.

Yet Fortune seemed reluctant to respond.

“If I had to guess, I really don’t think my power would be very effective here. I mean, the previous archbishop was Lola Stuart…''in other words, Great Demon Coronzon'', right? After being betrayed by the person at the very top, they’re going to be skeptical of anything coming from the next person in that role. And technically speaking, I’m not even human. I started out as a scout created by Coronzon.”

The Anglican Church couldn’t leave their top spot empty and they had needed someone to fill the role, but did that not mean they actually had much trust in the chosen individual?

They ordinarily did what she said, but that might not hold once the world was on the verge of destruction.

“Damn,” Kamijou muttered under his breath.

Yet again things were looking worse.

His plan to get Alice Anotherbible accepted by the world by advertising her as the hero who had saved the world by defeating Coronzon was already falling apart.

Academy City had been the perfect place to send the magic side’s greatest tinderbox because the place had no connection to magic.

But now that Academy City itself was known to be steeped in magic, the Anglican Church would never agree to leave Alice Anotherbible there. In fact, there would be fears that adding Alice’s incredible power to Academy City’s arsenal could lead to the creation of a third faction that could wield both magic and science.

And in fact, R&C Occultics had used both as a weapon and had caused great chaos during its short time in business.

Then Dion Fortune spoke from the sofa.

“Wait. Hold on.”

“What now?”

“Well, there’s another operation being carried out in parallel to that one.”

“What exactly is it!?”

Kamijou’s strong question did not get an answer out of Fortune.

After a while, she finally spoke quietly and quickly without looking him in the eye.

“If my people aren’t interested in obeying me…that one might actually be even more dangerous?”

===Part 10===

“That’s it. That’s Academy City’s outer wall,” said Index, holding the calico cat.

She had been communicating with the Anglican Church using carrier pigeons instead of EM signals or fiber optic cables. With no home in Academy City and magicians all over the world are after the grimoire library in her head, she had no option but to return to England.

She heard a sudden voice.

But she couldn’t see anyone around.

Index had made a friend here in Academy City.

Kazakiri Hyouka.

“So you’re going…”

“I am.”

“I’ll miss you, but if this is the path you’ve chosen, I won’t stop you.”

Index was glad they got a chance to talk before she left.

But that wasn’t all.

Kazakiri had one more thing to say.

“But be careful. Don’t let your guard down until the very end.”

“?”

[[File:GT Index v13 BW3.jpg|thumb]]

The disembodied voice stopped there.

Othinus, the 15cm girl on Index’s shoulder, sighed.

“I know I’m not one to talk, but you meet the strangest people.”

Maybe so.

Index continued through the red snow to approach the city wall.

“Oh, there you are.”

She heard a voice.

It was Agnese Sanctis.

Sisters Lucia, Angelene, and more were there as well. The Amakusas would be better acquainted with Japanese geography, but apparently the Roman Catholic unit that had joined the Anglicans was here as well.

“That’s odd,” whispered Othinus up on Index’s shoulder.

Come to think of it, wasn’t the Anglican unit supposed to be waiting just outside the wall?

The cat mewed. Apparently he wasn’t bothered.

With Index’s perfect memory, she knew she wasn’t misremembering the plan. They were supposed to protect her after she left the city…

“Everything’s gotten all confused. This Great Demon Coronzon – I think it was? – has appeared in Academy City, so we’re dealing with that before taking you back home.”

“Really?”

Index tilted her head.

Was it really safe to wait around like that?

Wasn’t the idea to get her out of Academy City and return her back to England as quickly as possible?

“We could just head back to England I guess, but, um, if we don’t do anything about Coronzon, the country might not be there when we get back. Or something like that? Anyway, follow me.”

Agnese took the lead. And moved back into the city.

This really was strange.

“(Hey.)”

“?”

“(Be cautious. A last-minute change of plans is more dangerous than the grim reaper on the front line.)”

Othinus kept her voice low so Agnese and the rest couldn’t hear.

Which meant she was working to hide their doubts.

This had been odd from the start. The idea had been to meet Index secretly and help her escape the city, yet Agnese’s group didn’t seem concerned about discovery. Even though Academy City could easily view this as a betrayal. It was almost like they weren’t at all worried about being caught.

“For now, let’s get you to District 2. Letting you see Kanzaki would be best.”

===Part 11===

“(E-excuse me. We have a report from the Former Agnese Forces. They say they’ve brought Index-san here.)”

The room was so quiet that Itsuwa’s modest whisper to Kanzaki managed to permeate the entire space.

A strange air hung over the District 2 unmanned weapon data center.

And this air was no metaphor.

The odor of death hung over the place.

Just as human sweat and the smell of a beast were different things, the stench of your own species decomposing was somehow different. The brain warned you to be on your guard and not to overlook anything.

It said danger was approaching.

“Hello, hello. I’m Isabella Theism of Necessarius. My specialty is necromancy.”

There was a stark difference between the carefree smile and the words it produced.

Necromancy.

“I know it has a sketchy reputation, but fortunetelling and the impurity of death are really about the only two superstitions that remain in the depths of ordinary people’s hearts even in a world of science. Like seeing a house as special because someone was killed there, or seeing a rope as special because it was used to hang someone. See what I mean? It’s something you can’t rid yourself of with equations. You might find it silly, but it’ll still be there inside you. That is what I make use of☆”

A stir spread around Kanzaki Kaori.

The Amakusas had been developed (by Kanzaki herself) to be pure and straightforward in that regard. They couldn’t so easily accept someone who called herself a necromancer.

And the woman appeared accustomed to the reaction.

She herself was a beautiful woman with silver hair and brown skin, but all she did was smile in rags permeated with the odor of death.

Agnese, who must have come all the way to District 2 to escort Index, joined the conversation while brushing red snow off her shoulders.

“She has experience as a team leader. I’ve heard she had cleaned up several troublesome messes on a global scale, like the Cadaver Island Struggle and the Necropolis Calamity. …Which means she was hiding who she really is ''last time we worked together''.”

“Oh, yeah. I did do those things, didn’t I? But I wasn’t hiding it exactly. I just forgot is all. Why bother remembering incidents once they’re over?”

“Then did you solve those with necromancy too?”

“Everyone starts off in their own unique way, but they all end up wailing by the end. ‘I wish I’d never been born’, and stuff like that. So I can’t say who was who. They all blur together in my memory☆”

This was no laughing matter.

Both of those had been true wars with, even looking just at the official count, over a thousand combatants. And these had all been the professional magicians of top-level magic cabals. If the count went past the official members and included the workers building barricades, the lookouts and spies hidden here and there, and the mercenaries (from the magic side of course) who were invited in to bolster their personnel, who could say how many more it was. And they had all ended up much the same.

Only Isabella herself continued smiling emptily.

“Hee hee. Did I scare you?”

An “eep” escaped someone.

Itsuwa jumped at suddenly being the target of the woman’s attention, so Tsushima, who was the big sister type, instinctually inserted herself between the two of them.

“Unfermented wine and flavorless brown bread – both symbols of death,” sang Isabella regardless. “The name necromancy sounds frightening, but that’s all it really comes down to. It did used to involve drawing magic circles on dead bodies, but nowadays everyone uses imitations so they don’t gather the attention of the police. This country has ceremonies where you burn or bury a doll in place of a person, doesn’t it? It’s like that.”

“Eh?” Itsuwa sounded surprised. “You mean you don’t actually work with dead bodies?”

“I suppose the closest thing I do would be borrowing their clothing. Although different factions are split on whether that’s to search for the deceased’s soul so you can summon it or if you use it to remind someone of the deceased so you can extract the related memories and testimony from their mind.”

To be blunt, there were ways in the modern age to legally (although only by abusing loopholes in the law) acquire a full dead human body, but Isabella did not do that.

She had a simple reason.

She didn’t see any real purpose in having a real corpse.

''At least in Western European necromancy'', the actual ceremonies were very different from the public conception.

“Going grave digging and making a servant out of the dead body? Resurrecting a mummy from an ancient sarcophagus? No, no, I would never. Nobody uses those methods anymore – they’re too inefficient. Besides, the essence of necromancy is communicating with the spirits of the dead. So instead of shutting off their physical limiters to provide superhuman strength, it’s about acquiring information you shouldn’t have by using spirits who have been freed from the physical laws. So really you could say it’s like an uglier version of divination.”

From a Japanese perspective, it was like a version of the Kokkuri-san that used the dead.

The technique was only used to learn.

You couldn’t expect to intentionally mimic the cases where the necromancer screwed up and ended up possessed, allowing a mysterious entity into their body so they could surpass the laws of physics and shoot fire from their hands. That was far too dangerous.

As long as you understood the proper methods, you could complete the ceremonies without an actual dead body.

It could be the room where someone died, the rope used to hang someone, or clothing covered in death odor. How much of “the air of death” an item required to guide you to a special mental state depended on the individual magician, but in this case the level of the technique came from how cost efficient it was.

Isabella Theism had reached the point that she could do this:

“Really, it’s best to have a recipe for a dead body where all the ingredients can be found at the average supermarket or home improvement store. You take some pork or beef and then you make a skull out of lumber and so on.”

“Th-that’s how it’s done? That sounds more like a shop class project.”

Itsuwa’s comment made Isabella clap her hands together in delight.

“It all depends on the quality. Back before CG was so easy to use, splatter films had all sorts of tricks to make convincing fake guts. The poor image quality helped, but the end result was a lot more grotesque and disturbing than what you see in modern horror.”

Kanzaki sighed and spoke up.

“I don’t know if we will have any use for you. For now, I imagine the tug-of-war over the city against Coronzon will continue as we try to delay the activation of Adikalika, but magic to artificially consume lives doesn’t sound very useful there.”

“You think you’re in control of the entire city?” quietly asked Isabella. In a mocking tone. “Do you really believe that? Take as much of the surface-level infrastructure and important facilities as you like, you won’t fully stop the city from functioning. There’s so much more still hidden below the surface. Not to mention you haven’t even captured half of the 12 directors and have no idea where the rest are. You can’t stop Coronzon’s work by desperately trying to plug all the holes. Academy City has more than one map. It looks like a peaceful city at first, but the things hidden by the multiple overlapping maps are what makes it so horrifying.”

It wasn’t Kanzaki who immediately replied.

Itsuwa made the first rebuttal while trembling.

“H-how can you know that? Academy City is supposed to be an unknown world for you too.”

“''I can smell death here.'' The city is thick with it, so there has to be more we aren’t seeing.”

She made it sound obvious.

Or maybe this was a sense unique to necromancers.

Kanzaki asked a careful question.

“Finding fault is easy, but if you were in charge, what exactly would you do to solve the problem?”

“I will answer that with my first job as a necromancer.”

Isabella turned her attention toward something other than Great Demon Coronzon or Academy City.

She focused on the girl who they had supposedly been asked to retrieve and protect.

“The grimoire library, hm? Quite a troublesome thing to be left in Academy City with all this going on. It was miraculous good fortune that Coronzon didn’t secure her before we found her. Coronzon will not leave someone so dangerous free. Dealing with that must be our top priority.”

“What are you going to do with Index!?”

“For now, locking her up should work. She shouldn’t be a problem as long as Coronzon can’t abuse her knowledge, so the situation isn’t pressing enough to require ''silencing her more permanently.'' But to be clear, that’s only for now.”

Isabella Theism was saying she would do it if it became necessary.

She viewed the current Adikalika as the borderline with the worst case. She was saying they had to keep those 103,001 grimoires from being used to either greatly abbreviate Adikalika’s preparation period or to create magic even more troublesome than Adikalika.

She was correct.

While also twisted at a fundamental level.

“The other uncertain factor would be Kamijou Touma.”

Isabella Theism actually sounded amused.

The brown necromancer continued.

“The effects of his right hand are certainly fascinating, but whoever they might be, ''someone who has died once already is part of my domain.'' He is dead meat. That is a resource that should be utilized for maximum effectiveness. And I mean toward resolving the Coronzon and Adikalika problem, of course.”

“That is unaccep-”

“Oh? And who exactly can protect someone who is still considered dead on paper?”

“Wait.”

The interruption came from the white nun.

Despite the situation, Index’s concern wasn’t for herself.

“D-do you mean Touma?”

“…Sigh, what a pain.”

“Why are you talking about him that way? Died once already? Why would you phrase it that way? What exactly happened to Touma!?”

Index heard a sticky splat.

From her shoulders.

They had been grabbed by discolored corpse hands with visible bone and a rotting stench.

She didn’t even have time to scream. Rotting corpses too melted and swollen to even tell their sex had grabbed her shoulders and pinned her down on the floor.

“Agh!!”

“Don’t worry. These are decoy bodies made from sanitary ingredients,” said a cool-faced Isabella.

But no matter what they were made from, these were “dead bodies” professionally made to be indistinguishable from real ones. The shock of unexpected contact with one was no different.

“I came all the way to Japan to do my job. I am not interested in your home drama.”

Index had a perfect memory.

So she could never forget anything she saw or felt.

So.

“Don’t…you dare.”

A new voice joined in.

Stiyl Magnus.

Unlike with Index, there had been no report of his arrival. Kanzaki was supposedly in charge here, but she had no idea why he was here or how he had gotten so injured and weakened.

But something must have happened for him to be so badly hurt.

Stiyl gasped for breath and practically had to drag his body over as he approached.

“What do you think you’re doing, Isabella Theism? You want to lock her up? Stop that this instant. You aren’t fit to command the Anglicans… As a Saint, Kanzaki is the one in command here. If you’re going to insist otherwise, I will punish you!!”

“Ehh? You’re really going with that? The guy who betrayed Kanzaki the first chance he got really shouldn’t be talking about the sanctity of rules.”

A large mass dropped from the necromancer’s rags, landing at her feet.

It was a thoroughly dried, and thus lightweight, corpse.

Had it been pasted to the inside of her rags, arranged just right to be hidden despite the many holes?

It was likely only an imitation made from a mixture of cow bones, pork, ceramic, and more.

“Is this really a job to outsource and leave in the hands of a subcontractor? Obviously the on-site leader should be an actual Anglican. And I would say you’ve disqualified yourself after rushing off on a personal vendetta.”

The hunk of death lying at her feet suddenly absorbed all the moisture around her.

It grew to nearly three meters and lost its humanoid shape.

Kanzaki realized what was happening.

“Wait, Isabe-!?”

A wet pop followed.

The blood and innards were red. Beads of death were scattered evenly in all 360 degrees. Each one could ''eat through'' glass used to store nearly any chemical and plastic that wouldn’t decompose even after buried for 100 years. And there were tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of them.

“!?”

Even Kanzaki Kaori flinched before that contaminant. She sharply strung out invisibly thin wires to sacrifice them to the goop. To protect the Amakusas behind her, not herself.

Which created the tiniest of openings.

The Saint who insisted she would save everyone could only watch as Stiyl Magnus and Isabella Theism both took a step forward.

The tall priest’s eyes displayed contempt.

“Is that all?”

He spread out his rune cards.

A flame sword extended from his clenched right hand.

“Did you really think that could stop me, Isabella!?”

Death by burning symbolized purification in Christianity. But it did not mean salvation for the object being burned. Instead, it annihilated the object to eliminate it from the world. Some even believed that a body burned according to a certain ritualized procedure lost the right to participate in the Last Judgment.

It was a matter of compatibility.

Any amount of that contaminant could be eliminated by Stiyl’s flame sword.

Thus, the necromancer’s trick proved meaningless as the priest’s sword sliced through that unclean space. Along with the magician who had scattered the deadly contaminant in the first place.

The flame roared loud as it sucked in oxygen. More than just toss fire at her from without, the brown necromancer’s slashed body was burned from within.

It was thorough and swift.

But she put up too little resistance for someone being burned alive.

Eventually, Stiyl caught on.

“Is this another imitation made from different ingredients!?”

By the time the words had left him, he was surrounded by brown women.

All imitations.

But he didn’t have time to gasp.

Directly behind him, Isabella Theism hid among the imitations.

The action she took wasn’t even all that difficult.

It was gentle even.

She simply placed a hand on the priest’s shoulder.

Stiyl Magnus’s eyes rolled back in his head.

He coughed up something dark. A clump of blood. More of the hideous color spilled from his eyelids and ears. But most importantly, his two-meter form crumpled straight down.

Even the veteran Necessarius members who were world-renowned for their skill in battle against magicians couldn’t tell what had happened.

“Unlike you, I came all the way to Japan to do my job.”

Only the expert in death – the brown necromancer – chuckled and spoke.

“I am not interested in your adolescent escapades.”

<noinclude>
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume13 Prologue

2026-06-10T22:43:33Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Prologue: Absolute Evil and Relative Evil – CHORONZON.==

That being had been watching.

She had been holding her breath and observing the outside world.

She had supposedly killed Magician Aleister Crowley herself, but he had used a brief opening to take control of her body.

Her mind had been swiftly sealed deep within her own body.

She couldn’t escape.

From there, it had been a complete farce. She had felt like she was trapped in a cell where the entire floor, walls, and ceiling were covered in barbed wire. For that great demon, agony and spinning one’s wheels were one and the same.

But that did not mean there had been no entertainment at all.

Even if she could not break free of that cell, the world beyond it was as harsh to Aleister as ever.

When he captured Anna Sprengel, the big boss of R&C Occultics which had plunged the world into chaos, his trusted Kamijou Touma had harshly criticized him.

When he tried to save him regardless, Anna Kingsford, his teacher who he had finally opened up to, had told him that Kamijou Touma was doomed to die.

Kingsford had promised to save Kamijou, but not only did she fail to keep that promise, her life as an autonomous preserved corpse had come to an end along with Kamijou’s death.

When, left behind by the two of them, he tried to overturn Kamijou’s death, the new board chairman had mocked him.

And after it all, Kamijou had returned from hell alone.

His beloved teacher Anna Kingsford had not accompanied Kamijou.

How could she not clap her hands and howl with laughter?

The world was such a foolish and ridiculous thing. That human had broken so many taboos to hijack the body of the great world-destroying demon, yet the lid had unwittingly been forced open from without.

The fact that they didn’t even realize they were doing it made it an even greater failure than Pandora’s failure to contain her curiosity.

Everyone who had frowned and spoken of justice had become the reason the world would be destroyed.

She couldn’t help but laugh.

But that being still wasn’t satisfied.

Her current condition was stable, but she was crude, incomplete, and awkward.

Oxygen atoms and hydrogen atoms would not stick around long in their pure form. They would either bond with identical atoms to form a gas, or they would bond with different atoms to form water. There was no intention behind it. It would happen all on its own.

That being was the same.

So.

When Aleister Crowley reached his limit and his heart broke, that being once more crawled out into the open world. It happened naturally, as if to say that which was to be destroyed needed to be destroyed.

And that being – Great Demon Coronzon – made a loud announcement.

“I was waiting. Waiting for the moment your will weakened!!”

Now, humans.

Enjoy the fruit of your ignorant sins.

<noinclude>
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume12 Chapter2

2026-06-10T22:42:57Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Chapter 2: Funeral – Good_Bye_Bad.==

===Part 1===

Cold rain that couldn’t quite become snow fell from thick gray clouds.

It was weaker than before.

But that made it seem more stable, suggesting it would last longer.

A funeral was underway.

It had begun in the school auditorium.

The entire student body was gathered there, so they had to line up based on a system to fit. …Except Aogami Pierce and Fukiyose Seiri had frozen up nearby. Apparently Komoe-sensei had panicked, so their class’s guidance was a mess. But that boy may have appreciated a human response like that.

The space was large enough to hold hundreds of people.

That meant the heating was only so effective. Even with the air conditioning and halogen heaters, the chill could not be fully banished.

It was the presence of death.

Something you normally didn’t sense but crept up on everyone the same.

Aogami Pierce felt like the world itself were telling him an attempt to act cheerful would not fundamentally change what they were here for.

This was a funeral.

A member of their class was dead.

“Thank you all for attending despite the poor weather. Perhaps the heavens themselves are weeping for the deceased. It pains me just as much to lose someone so young.”

A young Buddhist monk got started with a microphone in hand. Fukiyose Seiri was only familiar with the term “abbot” as a title for a Buddhist monk, but she wasn’t sure if there was a proper hierarchy there.

“The abbot is the head of a single temple,” explained Aogami Pierce. “They’re the one who leads the rest of the temple’s monks. But there are a fair number of temples where the abbot is the only monk due to the aging population or just being shorthanded, so a lot of people get the terms monk and abbot confused. It’s unusual for someone that young to be one.”

“Why do you know so much about this?”

“What, are you really not reading that social media gag manga that went viral on New Year’s? It’s called ‘I Was Reincarnated and Got a Hypnotizing 5 yen Coin That Makes People Do Anything I Say, but I Ended Up in a Buddhist Temple Full of Macho Monks’. The unexpected mismatch!! What fate awaits our gloomy heroine after the ascetic life and vegetarian food cleanses her in body and soul!?”

“Why can’t someone ban this guy’s very existence?” asked an exasperated Fukiyose.

But had her senses dulled over winter break? She appeared to have forgotten insults of that level were nothing more than a reward. She could be two or even three times as harsh and he would still welcome it.

The screen on the wall behind the auditorium stage came to life.

“I am truly grateful you have all gathered today for our son.”

Remote comments by Kamijou Touma’s parents played on the screen. They apparently used more than just telegrams in this day and age.

A loud slam came from the back of the auditorium.

Someone had been unable to contain themselves and rushed out while covering their mouth. For a brief moment, the outside light shined into the dark auditorium. Surprisingly, this person was not from their class. From where they came from, they must have been a student from another year.

“Kami-yan sure was loved.”

“He had the weirdest connections. I sometimes saw him speaking with an upperclassman girl.”

There was some kind of accident that led to shouting, but the funeral itself continued without a hitch.

Aogami Pierce got some words out while staring out ahead.

“Why…?”

“Hm?”

“Why do people die so easily?”

This was somehow different from before.

Death.

The word carried so much more weight. Instead of the light and empty feeling of losing a life in a video game, this carried the heavy weight of reality.

Maybe that was what a funeral was.

It was about saying goodbye.

But in a different way from a classmate moving away.

Instead of not being able to see him again after this, they already couldn’t see him again. People could not accept that so quickly, so they needed a way to smooth over the rough edges of reality or else the small society that was a school could collapse.

It was like bringing things into focus.

Uh, oh.

It wasn’t so bad when the image before Aogami’s eyes was blurry. He could stand that. But once the outlines came into focus, the corners of his eyes could be in trouble.

Trouble?

Who said it was wrong to cry? It wasn’t a competition and who did he even think he was competing with? Apparently adolescent rebelliousness could needlessly screw with people’s lives even here.

“…”

He realized he hadn’t heard Fukiyose’s voice in a while.

When he focused, he could hear some breaths seemingly covered by an unseen hand.

Or maybe she had a handkerchief out.

He wasn’t about to peek over at the next seat, though.

He envied the people who could let themselves cry here. He was always shouting in the classroom, but he felt some kind of barrier forcing himself to hold back here.

Aogami Pierce was not a diligent student.

Even during ordinary classes, he would stare out the window and daydream about battling terrorists.

He had always thought Kamijou Touma would survive to the very end.

He could do anything in his fantasies, but for some reason that boy always survived longer than Aogami himself. Aogami would sometimes save everyone and end up with a harem and he would sometimes get dramatically shot and die, but no matter what happened, Kamijou Touma would always survive to the end, no matter how beat up he was.

But.

Reality was something else entirely.

He could think of any number of things to say if he were the one to die, but he couldn’t think of a single one when it was Kamijou Touma who had died.

“I’m such an idiot,” he muttered to himself.

He hadn’t expected this.

Something had happened somewhere he wasn’t aware of.

He guessed people all over thought these things as they lived with regret.

“Now, if you will please come forward to burn incense. Yes, it will help if you climb the stairs on the right and descend the stairs on the left. You may begin.”

===Part 2===

Meanwhile, two girls experienced this from a different viewpoint.

District 7.

An ordinary high school.

The entire student body was gathered in the auditorium. But even with the warmth of hundreds of bodies, the chilly air could not be entirely banished by the air conditioning too weak for the size of the space and the halogen heaters set up in a hurry.

That acted as the breath of death in contrast to the human warmth.

A large portrait photo sat atop the stage.

The face belonged to Kamijou Touma.

They must not have expected this. He looked almost villainous on the portrait forcibly blown up from his student ID. But maybe anyone would in an expressionless ID photo taken from head on.

A part-time monk, who was apparently an unsuccessful entertainer who did this as a side job, held a microphone.

His weirdly cheerful voice may have come from mixing together his two jobs.

“Thank you all for attending despite the poor weather. Perhaps the heavens themselves are weeping for the deceased. It pains me just as much to lose someone so young.”

In addition to the student body, a guest space had been prepared at one side.

Mikoto and Shokuhou were seated there.

One of them was shaking.

“Brrrrrr. Misa-Misaka-sa-Misaka-san, it’s so c-c-cold, you need to w-w-w-warm me up.”

“Are you even wearing clothes?”

Mikoto sighed while using a hand to the face to shove away the idiot queen – who Mikoto was beginning to suspect she might actually be “wearing” body paint – as she shivered and tried to cling to Mikoto from the side.

This was a high school.

For a middle schooler, it was like another world entirely.

But the usual tension she would feel was nowhere to be found.

She had actually been here before, but…

(I never imagined I would visit that idiot’s high school for this.)

Her heavy sighing wouldn’t stop.

However, she saw no one who could be his parents in the guest section.

Unsurprisingly.

Given all the paperwork and approvals required, there just hadn’t been time to invite someone in to Academy City.

“?”

“What is it, scheming queen?”

“Oh, I was just wondering who the chief mourner is. Ahn, halogen heater☆”

Shokuhou Misaki’s eyes melted at a machine that was like a “warm fan” that an official had placed in the nearby aisle. She looked about ready to spread her arms and hug the heater with hearts displayed in her pupils. Why had she even come to the funeral?

That aside…

(Chief mourner.)

Come to think of it, this was odd.

As fancy as all this looked, the crucial pillars were missing.

It all felt hollow and artificial.

“That said, we must not keep the deceased here forever. As painful as it will be, we must continue with the ceremony to put him at ease as he takes his journey into the great beyond.”

A gentle sound enveloped the auditorium.

Classical music of unknown composer and title began to play.

“…?”

Mikoto knew how to play the piano and the violin, but she frowned. She didn’t recognize this. It may have been healing music recently composed entirely on a computer. That would be fitting for Academy City.

A slideshow of photos played along with the music.

It was obvious what these were from.

“The Daihaseisai, the Ichihanaransai – Kamijou Touma-san really did smile so brightly during these events.”

''Uh, uh…

Damp sobs spilled from here and there.

But wait.

Hold on.

What was this? Even in his school, how many people even knew Kamijou Touma? He hadn’t been part of any clubs and he had no connections outside his class. He wasn’t a master shogi player and he didn’t get the top score in the national practice exam. So why were all of those students who looked like second or third years shedding tears?

Mikoto was astonished.

Maybe it was a Pavlovian response, like people who would always cry when hearing a music box playing when in a sad mood.

“They’re like the delinquents who only cry at the graduation ceremony.”

Now that she had recovered using the heat of the halogen heater, Shokuhou’s whisper pierced sharply into Mikoto.

You smile at New Year’s and you cry at funerals.

That was all it was.

Like flipping a switch or turning a dial.

Was that really enough?

Could someone’s life end with this?

Of course, it would also piss her off if someone was chatting or using their phone in the middle of the ceremony, but this felt different somehow. The tears felt cheap. She wanted to stand up and shout that this wasn’t right.

Mikoto was sad.

She didn’t know what to do now that the time had come to say goodbye.

But.

She felt her heart distancing itself at the scene she found here. The distance kept growing. Her heart had lost the ability to sense her feelings.

Why?

It was already over. She knew that. Yet she felt some kind of powerful impatience growing inside her.

Was this really enough?

Would this mark the end of someone’s life?

“To represent you all, his homeroom teacher Tsukuyomi Komoe-sensei will now present some flowers.”

“Uhh.”

It might all look emotional, but it was nothing but checking off everything on the list.

It was a routine.

It was a ceremony to cut someone away from society, forget them, and erase them.

And.

Mikoto saw a red dot out of the corner of her eye.

“?”

Curious, she looked over to see a video being recorded.

Since she wasn’t familiar with funerals, she thought maybe that was a way to leave some memory behind, but…

“(That’s the funeral company. I bet they’ll chop it up and use it in their ads.)”

Shokuhou was more coldhearted.

Perhaps she was more accustomed to death than Mikoto.

But from where?

There was no answer to that question. As Shokuhou faced forward, her profile looked somehow lonely.

The entertainer hosting the event continued on.

“We will now receive a message from Kamijou Touma-san’s parents.”

The slide show of school events switched to something else.

“I am truly grateful you have all gathered today for our son.”

Were they using an online conference app?

The white wall behind the auditorium stage acted as a large screen to project someone who was presumably his father.

He was likely at home. The room behind him looked lived in.

Maybe this had been too sudden for anything else.

His user name was displayed below him in small text.

Kamijou Touya.

His flowing words were anything but coldhearted.

Even through the screen, Mikoto could sense just how hard that grown adult was clenching his teeth to get through it.

That distant place carried a much more appropriate mood than the site of the funeral.

Or so it seemed to Mikoto.

She sensed something authentic there.

“I’m sure Touma’s life in Academy City was full of smiles and memories with all of you. He never was great in school and he didn’t develop any kind of esper power, but we have all of you to thank for allowing him to enjoy himself enough to forget about those things. Our son seemed so happy in all the emails and messages he sent us. He also sent plenty of photos and videos. Those limited glimpses into his life were enough to know his time there was a bright and happy one. And I imagine he enjoyed himself even more than he let us know. I would like to thank you all deeply on behalf of our son. Even if his life there was cut short, he was truly fortunate to be surrounded by so many wonderful frie- kh...no, I can’t do it!!”

His trembling voice grew strained partway through.

The middle-aged man’s face filled the screen. With tears welling in his eyes.

“He was our family!! Our son is dead!!! But they won’t let us in the city!! They won’t even tell us the exact cause of death!! Is it not as safe inside those walls as we were led to believe!? This is crazy! What the hell is going on in that ci- (voice muted)”

His mouth flapped silently for a few more seconds before the video also cut out.

The host put on a fake smile and worked at smoothing that over.

“Oh, dear. The signal appears to be unstable and since it still hasn’t come back, we will move on.”

How could they just move past that!?

Mikoto just about stood up from her folding chair, but Shokuhou grabbed her hand.

Firmly, to hold her in place.

Even his parent’s wholehearted rebellion had accomplished nothing.

That was just one branch on the flowchart.

By following that branch through, they could bring the ceremony back on track.

“Now, if you will please come forward to burn incense. Yes, it will help if you climb the stairs on the right and descend the stairs on the left. You may begin.”

If the entire student body burned incense, it would take all day. Instead, each class sent a representative up to the altar. The staff held stopwatches and kept everything on the schedule determined during the dry run. Someone had died, but they didn’t allow anything to break down.

It was like the sand in an hourglass.

Once the stock had been used up, it was over. The coffin would be shut and placed in the hearse to be taken to the crematorium. Then nothing would remain. Kamijou Touma would be burned to ashes, leaving nothing even on the genetic level.

The entertainer monk continued with a smile.

“Finally, I would like to read the telegrams that have arrived from those close to the deceased. To start with, um, we have a Miss Leivinia Birdway from England.”

It was ending.

The funeral really was going to end.

“You’re looking at it wrong.”

Still facing forward, Shokuhou spoke quietly but clearly in her mourning clothes.

Even though Mental Out wasn’t supposed to work on Mikoto.

Her voice was somewhat stiff, but she still managed to say it.

“We have to bring his life to an end ourselves. So, Misaka-san, you need to prepare yourself to actually say goodbye.”

===Part 3===

Outside in the frigid January city, Index and Othinus stood in the rain.

Without an umbrella.

Breakfast time had passed, but for once Index had no appetite.

On her shoulder, Othinus held down the brim of her hat and looked up.

“Good grief. Even the weather forecast felt need to betray us… This unnatural rain is more what I would expect of that human’s misfortune.”

“That would be just like Touma.”

“Along with the fake-looking condition of the sky.”

“?”

A long vehicle passed them. The strange automobile was decorated with black and gold.

It was a hearse.

Two buses followed after it.

Once they had fully passed by, Othinus whispered a question.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go?”

“What about you?”

“I am the god of war, magic, and deception. This isn’t Baldr’s trial and I’m not the type to cry at funerals. But you’re a nun, aren’t you? This really is your last chance. You might be fine now, but the regret over not seeing him off will weigh heavy on you later.”

“I’m still in training.”

Index hung her head.

She had to be feeling something.

Othinus didn’t address it.

The one-eyed god with a lance was rarely depicted as kind.

“Now, what will we do? We are a living sample of a Magic God and a grimoire library. If we head out into the world with Academy City’s protection gone, magic cabals the world over will be after us both. If you aren’t interested in following him into death, then you need to continue working at survival.”

The city was surrounded by a thick wall and invisible EM and IR were used to cut off all wireless communications between the outside and inside. Even so, the air on both sides was the same and bugs and birds could fly across the wall with ease.

So.

Index raised her head and gave her answer.

“''We’ll do what the carrier pigeon said to.''”

“Good grief. Is that method just so old-fashioned they overlooked it? But as soon as Academy City learns about it, they’ll probably fill that hole with pheromones or light or something.”

If they headed to his school now, they might make it in time.

But they didn’t.

They couldn’t.

Index gave her reasoning.

“If I was there to say goodbye, I know I’d ruin the whole ceremony by crying too loud.”

The cat said nothing in the girl’s arms.

He wasn’t supposed to understand what was going on, but for some reason he seemed to.

===Part 4===

“It’s over,” muttered Aogami Pierce.

All the strength left his body.

He made it sound like his team had just lost a big tournament.

“That’s the end of Kami-yan’s funeral.”

“Pull yourself together. Komoe-sensei is calling us over to get to the crematorium.”

Perhaps Fukiyose found it easier if she focused her mind on a task. She seemed to be constantly searching for a new one.

Aogami rubbed his belly.

“I’m starving… I want to devour my lunch while watching an isekai cooking anime to give a psychological boost to the convenience store bento.”

“How about you chew on a handkerchief?”

Only his classmates were going to the crematorium. As much as they had sobbed during the funeral, the students from other years didn’t wait around before leaving the auditorium. Almost like a movie ad with people making insincere-sounding comments at an advance screening. The kind of ad that made it sound like the record for most moving film of the century was broken every other second.

Aogami saw a busty black-haired upperclassman girl look back toward the stage just once at the exit before leaving.

“Would they even show up if it was us who died?”

“This is better than it could be. Do you ordinarily get teary-eyed seeing the news on TV or online?” dryly asked Fukiyose.

That she sounded more irritable than normal may have been the greatest compliment to Kamijou Touma who had disappeared from their school.

===Part 5===

A woman in a beige habit stood in a city of white and black.

That was Human Aleister Crowley.

The ridiculous artificial rain continued to fall.

The golden retriever stayed by his side in the frigid chill without a word of complaint, but he did ask a question here.

“You aren’t going to see it through to the end?”

“You know all too well I don’t have the courage. Why would I have struggled so much if I did?”

“The regret always comes later.”

“I know that. Better than anyone in the world,” spat Aleister.

He didn’t want to believe it.

She had promised she would break whatever rules were necessary to save the boy.

Had she broken her promise in the end?

That meant there was something even Anna Kingsford couldn’t do.

He knew this was as absurd as wanting your parents to continue to be infallible beings, but still.

“If I could only save that one,” muttered Aleister.

“?”

“That one act would have meant so much. It would have triggered a chain reaction to fix everything. But it failed at the very first domino. …That boy remains dead.”

Kihara Noukan was an unusual genius even for a Kihara, but even he had trouble grasping what Aleister was getting at.

And he knew the human wasn’t going to explain.

Whatever it was, it was a dream that had ended unrealized.

“What now?” asked the dog.

“I wouldn’t be wandering like this if I could answer that.”

Was there any meaning in life now?

His questions had reached that level.

What in this wide world should he tie his existence to?

===Part 6===

The rain was falling.

The funeral in the auditorium had ended, so most of the students were using the walkway to return to the main school building.

They were pinching something and sprinkling it on their heads. It turned out to be salt.

Mikoto sighed softly as she walked out.

“So even the students at his school treat his death as something unclean.”

“I doubt many people in Academy City understand the symbolism. Just like very few people bother looking up the etymology of words like ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. Most people see it as no more than the done thing, like bowing your head when entering a room. And does it have to be so cold!?”

Shokuhou’s shouted breath was already visible.

And a frigid rain was falling outside.

Shokuhou had started off holding her own shoulders, but once she set her sights on Mikoto, she grabbed onto her.

“Get off, Shokuhou. Kimonos are hard to fix once they start to come undone, so don’t grab onto me.”

“Oh, c’mon. Being a hot-water bottle is about all you’re good for, Misaka-san.”

“Oh, really? Even though I happen to have some hand warmers?”

Shokuhou Misaki petrified.

The corners of her lips twitched.

Her pride appeared to be conflicted over whether or not she should put on a polite smile.

“If you don’t want any, then fine. I’ll seal them away at the bottom of my purse. In the zone where I can’t dig them out again.”

“Wait, Misaka-saaan! You win, I admit it! So please show some love to this Little Match Girl freezing in the winter collllllllld!!”

“You have everyone call you a queen and now you have the nerve to act like the unfortunate Little Match Girl?

Mikoto toyed with the unathletic girl by tossing her hand warmer packs one after another as if to have her juggle them.

…This entire exchange may have been a way of preserving their mental balance. To Mikoto, the forced cheerfulness only made her entire life seem like an act.

“Ahh…☆”

“Hey, where the hell are you shoving that hand warmer, Shokuhou!? What happened to us having a shame culture!?”

The girl was shutting her eyes, trembling, and sighing like she was sinking into a hot spring, but the details were best left unstated.

She was capable of prioritizing what really mattered, meaning she was the type who would decide to nestle together in the nude to stay warm if they were stranded on a snowy mountain in the winter. Mikoto was certain of that now.

The official next to the hearse formed a megaphone with his hands and guided them.

“The buses are over here! Um, if you’re from the school, use bus 1. If you’re a visitor, use bus 2.”

Yes, it wasn’t over yet.

Many umbrellas blossomed like flowers and gathered together.

Carried by the adults.

The coffin was loaded onto the hearse.

The black and gold vehicle was headed to District 10.

Specifically, to the crematorium.

The entire student body wouldn’t fit there, so only what appeared to be Kamjou’s class would be going.

A bus was enough to carry that many.

And a second bus was enough for the visitors.

Another time limit had appeared.

Mikoto saw the distance to the crematorium like the timer ticking down on a time bomb.

But what did that time limit matter at this point?

Death could not be overturned.

It was already over.

“…”

“Ohh, blessed heat ability. Modern conveniences are truly wonderful…”

Next to her, the queen was saying something that suggested a kotatsu was all you needed to win her heart.

The two buses left the rear of the school to follow the hearse. The reporters out front seemed to be making a minor fuss, but the buses had no obligation to wait for them.

No one on the fairly large bus uttered a word.

The GPS navigation system provided a few instructions in a female voice, but the driver appeared to be ignoring them. Maybe there was some kind of etiquette to it, but the hearse seemed to avoid the shortest route and took a longer way to their destination.

In the adjacent seat, Shokuhou whispered briefly while staring out the window being pummeled by raindrops.

“Misaka-saaan.”

“Ugh, what idiot is sending a drone after us?”

With a sparking sound, the multicopter lost control out in the rain.

But who did those persistent reporters want to attack with their articles? Surely it wasn’t Alice Anotherbible or the Transcendents from the hidden side of the world.

“Maybe you could say we sent him to his death too. We didn’t stand in his way and attack him, but we did give him a push from behind.”

“Misaka-san. Malign his resolve and determination again and I will slap you.”

But Shokuhou didn’t actually deny it.

It probably bothered her too.

It was the same when they had fought Christian Rosencreutz. It had required a lot of power to repel him and Kamijou would have been killed if it had been even slightly insufficient.

Even so.

If their power hadn’t been up to the task, would he have considered running away?

“Not likely.”

“Not a chance. I can’t see him giving up on a fight once he started it.”

He hadn’t actually started that fight himself, but no matter how unfairly he was dragged into it, he had always fought to end it. So he could gently untangle the mess of threads.

“…”

It didn’t take very long.

They arrived at the crematorium.

A large roof covered the area in front of the entrance.

Had it been designed with bad weather like this in mind?

It looked like they had to wait for the workers to deal with the coffin.

“Go on, Misaka-san.”

At Shokuhou’s prompting, Mikoto got off the bus.

She wasn’t used to descending a bus’s stairs in Japanese mourning clothes. The clothing was like a single tube, so had it even been designed with climbing and descending stairs in mind?

“Of course it was. Did you forget the stone steps leading up to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples?”

“Oh, no. Now that idiot is correcting me.”

“Oh? Misaka-san, did you forget I am the intellectual type? Care to see who does better with our next exam ability?”

Come to think of it, didn’t they have five-story pagodas in the Edo period? And those buildings wouldn’t have had elevators or escalators.

Shokuhou Misaki continued to rub the hand warmer against her cheek. It would have run out of heat by now, so was she making use of the placebo effect? Or maybe the cold was making her hallucinate.

An official guided them into the building.

There were numbered tatami mat waiting rooms with cremation chambers lined up.

Maybe there was a rule, but the cremation chambers not in use had their doors wide open. A square metal door led into a closed space seemingly made of brick or blocks. The shape was something like a modified baker’s furnace.

Mikoto peered inside and fell silent.

“…”

It wasn’t even the size of a laundromat.

Yet it felt far too ordered and optimized.

She sighed softly.

(I’m just not used to this.)

It was actually a bit of a relief when she spotted a few old vending machines jumbled together in a corner of the long hallway. She had wanted to see something that threw off the excessive organization of the place.

“It’s nice and warm in the building at least. Ugh, but now I kind of have to use the restroom.”

“I was a fool looking for salvation in a messy idiot like her…”

They could hear the conversation of officials in some room or another.

The voices crept up from the floor like the chill.

“A healthy high school boy? He should have thick bones.”

“We’ll have to burn him for a full four hours. That way there’s no chance any trace of his DNA map or the chemicals used for esper development will remain.”

A heavy scraping sound followed.

It came from something like a piece of pottery the size of a volleyball. Something had caused it to scrape against its lid.

“What does the height chart say? Is this size good?”

That was the funerary urn.

Would a whole person really fit in something so small?

Mourning clothes Mikoto frowned.

“Hold on. I get cremating him, but who gets his ashes?”

“The funerary urn can be transferred to someone else after being placed in the grave.”

Shokuhou’s finger hovered indecisively in front of the vending machine, but she only fidgeted without actually buying any warm coffee. Her fear of artificial additives appeared to be rearing its ugly head again.

“For now, he’ll probably be temporarily buried in a public grave.”

Could they really just do that?

Even as ashes, he would officially count as “remains”.

Besides. His parents apparently weren’t in the city, so who had submitted the notification of death to the government office? Mikoto had thought you couldn’t cremate someone until that had been received.

(Then again, this is the city that buried over ten thousand clones in secret, so they may have some tricks to get around that.)

They entered the waiting room.

The space was about 45 square meters.

Perhaps everyone wanted their own space.

His high school classmates were here, but Mikoto didn’t know any of them very well. She naturally kept her distance.

It was a weird feeling.

Why was she staying by Shokuhou’s side?

And while Mikoto mostly associated funerals with flowers and incense, the scent of burning candles was stronger. Maybe because that scent was a lot more oily.

A large LCD TV sat in the tatami mat room. In addition to over-the-air, and cable, it included an online streaming app. There was also a tablet with a public SIM. That may have been so hot food could be ordered in with a bike delivery service. Mikoto recognized a few of the apps lined up on the screen.

Shokuhou pointed at a sliding screen by the wall that seemed to lead to storage space.

“It looks like they have napping blankets in there.”

“I can’t imagine sleeping here could lead to sweet dreams.”

Four hours.

That explained why they had so many entertainment options for killing time.

“Shokuhou.”

“Yes?”

“Can you last four hours?”

“Sorry, excuse me a moment while I go freshen up.”

Western mourning clothes Shokuhou vanished somewhere with a severe look on her face. She had apparently gone out to visit the ladies room. Unable to relax without anything to focus on, Mikoto grabbed the TV remote and faced the giant screen. The time for New Year’s specials was over. A middle schooler like her had no idea what usually aired on weekday mornings.

(But maybe it would look more authentic if I don’t get all worked up over it?)

You were supposed to smile at New Year’s and cry at funerals.

She was fed up seeing people switch modes as if with a switch or dial.

She flipped through the channels for a bit.

The talk shows were more than she could handle today, so she kept changing the channel to escape them, but that mostly left shopping shows and old dramas.

After settling on a satellite broadcast animal show, she saw an enormous polar bear mercilessly attacking a family of seals. She was taken aback. She had been expecting footage of frolicking kittens or puppies. She wasn’t looking for the bloody and gory reality of nature right now!!

“What are you doing, Misaka-saaan? Why wouldn’t you go for a safe worldwide cruise show?”

That girl returned, looking exasperated.

But why was Shokuhou Misaki so familiar with TV on weekday mornings?

“Are you really a middle schooler?”

“If you’re trying to imply I’m an old lady, I will hit you.”

Something was sitting next to the TV.

At first, Mikoto thought it was a piece of Japanese-style artwork meant to help set the mood.

“Wait…” she said without thinking.

They already had a memorial tablet ready.

At first, Mikoto was confused who it was for. Because the name on it was a dharma name.

“I always thought the name was meant to be symbolic in some way.”

“In Academy City, they apparently have a website that automatically assigns one. Y’know, by tweaking a program ability meant to come up with a pet name if you can’t come up with one yourself.”

Did this city not have the rule where it only counted if it came from an important abbot?

Of course, it seemed like Academy City’s monks were part-timers who also worked as entertainers.

===Part 7===

Inside the District 10 prison, a monitor displayed Anti-Skill officer and high school teacher Yomikawa Aiho as she gave a report.

“The funeral ended without issue.”

“I see.”

“The hearse has left for the crematorium. Here, we’re holding an abbreviated version of the opening ceremony. You’re closer to the crematorium actually.”

The crematorium was in the same district, but that simple fact was far from the new Board Chairman’s mind.

It didn’t feel real.

(Accept his death? Why am I the one saying that shit?)

He had thought he would feel rage when standing on the verge of the death. But now that that line had been crossed, he was supposed to shake off all that emotion? Accelerator couldn’t say anything. Was he facing this like he should, or had his senses simply numbed over?

He couldn’t afford to forget what human warmth felt like.

No matter how many he saved with lifeless methods, he would only be retreading the path of Academy City’s former mistakes.

So what should he do?

Was it more human to let his emotions explode and destroy everything in sight?

“…”

Academy City’s #1 monster looked up.

He couldn’t see heaven there. Only a ceiling made of a special thick armor.

The prison had taken considerable damage from the attack by one of those Transcendents. This room was actually a secondary cell he had been moved to. Still, the white monster hadn’t died. Even though there were plenty of reasons for him to be killed. Was this just how life was?

“What was that bastard thinking dying before the villain,” he muttered.

Death was impartial.

It could visit anyone at any time, no matter how good a person they were, and they would lose their life.

“Aneri.”

An electronic beep.

Of rejection.

Apparently someone else had administrator privileges there. The new Board Chairman didn’t particularly care.

“Qliphah Puzzle 545.”

“Yes, yes. Kee hee hee.”

In that sense, the artificial demon was a lot less trouble.

And she also knew a lot about the world ''beyond'' science.

The #1 had just one question.

“Where is the person who did it?”

===Part 8===

A cold rain was falling.

The ugly rain could not become snow, but it rejected all human warmth while it naturally permeated the city of cutting-edge scientific technology.

The rain stealing heat from the entire city was impartial.

Even in the back alleys.

The countless raindrops falling from the heavens mercilessly located everyone, even a silent and unsteady girl, and soaked them.

She was tall. She wore black leather belts wrapped complexly around her naked body, making her stand out even in Academy City, which was isolated from the outside world.

Her long wavy blonde hair was plastered to her white skin.

She didn’t seem to have even the willpower to brush it away.

“…”

Alice Anotherbible.

She looked up at the sliver of rainy sky visible between the buildings.

And she didn’t move.

She had known that boy would die before they even met.

She had announced it herself.

But he had left the track of survival so that he could save the lives of others.

''“You will die.”

''“That doesn’t change my answer.”

She had seen the boy rushing toward death.

She had thought he might seek help at some point.

But he hadn’t.

''“So fight me!! Alice Anotherbible!!!”

Kamijou Touma had rejected her once.

She had lost sight of herself and resurrected Christian Rosencreutz as she was told.

''“Hold on. You don’t mean…?”

Yes, he had been shaken when he first learned he was doomed to die.

But he had still ultimately chosen the lives of others.

The doomed boy had stuck to his way of life and finally brought Alice Anotherbible back to her senses.

''“…I…”

''“I don’t…”

''“I don’t want to see anyone suffering from even more misfortune than me!! You got a problem with that!?”

He wasn’t coming back.

Alice Anotherbible could easily twist the world to her liking, but that was exactly why the person she had killed could not return. No matter what.

This was the result.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the rest of the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal were no longer here.

That meant Alice Anotherbible was no longer a fearsome leader.

She could trick people into seeing a form of beauty by taking death and violence to their extremes, but that was meaningless without those extremes. Being second best or lower simply made you a troublemaker.

A scratchy voice spoke.

The girl who had lost everything whispered into the emptiness.

“Tea…cher.”

===Part 9===

The final moment had arrived.

They would never see Kamijou Touma’s face again.

The coffin was already closed.

Although it was a Japanese-style coffin, so there was a small double door open over the face. That small square space seemed to be gradually cut away from the world at large.

“…”

Mikoto reached out her hand a bit and touched his cheek. Softly.

“?”

“Wait. You’d feel bad if you messed up his mortuary makeup at the very end, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, right. It’s just…”

“What?”

Mikoto had no answer for Shokuhou’s quizzical gaze.

Meanwhile, the #5 Queen made her move. She raised a hand to the side of her head and lifted her veil before lowering her head toward the little window.

The instant before she kissed his cheek, Mikoto elbowed her in the side.

Sharply.

“No touching.”

“Ubwogh!? I-I really don’t see what’s so wrong with wishing him good fortune in the next life!!”

“You wouldn’t want to mess up his mortuary makeup, would you? Besides, you’re wearing lipstick.”

Misaka Mikoto had grown up in Academy City where science was everything, but she still knew it would be inappropriate to have him cremated with a lipstick mark on his face.

Each of them wasn’t given much time to say their goodbyes.

Mikoto and Shokuhou moved away.

Aogami Pierce placed a small rectangular object on his close-eyed friend’s pillow.

It was a smartphone.

Fukiyose frowned.

“Are you really allowed to put that in there?”

“Kami-yan was so happy when he got his first smartphone…”

An employee might get mad at him if they found out, but after burning any gold teeth and artificial bones along with the body, they apparently retrieved the rare earths. …And they wouldn’t know what materials had been included in some rich person’s expensive pure gold accessory.

The unsuccessful entertainer who worked part-time as a monk began speaking into the microphone he held.

“Now, everyone, let us once more pray for the deceased’s fortune in the next life. It is now time to say our final goodbye.”

===Part 10===

And.

And.

And then.

===Part 11===

…

…

…

Kamijou Touma silently opened his eyes in a small, dark space.

Yes.

The pointy-haired boy opened his eyes.

“?”

(Where am I? I can’t tell, but this definitely isn’t that artificial hell. Then am I alive again? Did Kingsford actually keep her prom-)

“Bweh, cough! Cough, hack!!”

Now wasn’t the time to be getting emotional.

Something was caught deep in his throat. He desperately coughed until he got a clump of something out. It was too dark to see what it was. He groped around the cramped space until he found something. For whatever reason, a phone was with him in the small box.

That gave him a light.

He tried to open his eyes to see, but something was wrong with his vision.

“Ow!! My eyes hurt!? What the hell!? You’re kidding, right!? Is there something in them!?”

He hesitantly pinched his eyelid and used the other hand’s index finger to feel around. It was big. He pulled something larger than a 100 yen coin from under his eyelids. He checked with with the LED light and found it was absorbent cotton heavy with his tears. He shuddered.

And the thing that had been in his throat appeared to be some kind of cloth.

Maybe to keep his tongue from falling back into his throat or maybe to keep insects from getting inside his body? He hadn’t known they did all that at funerals.

And something else gradually dawned on him.

This was not a hospital morgue. He had thought it was one of those locker-like storage spaces seen in TV dramas, but it wasn’t. He didn’t feel chilly at all.

That only left one possibility.

“Wait…”

He was lying face up in a space too small to move much. He smelled wood and flowers all around him. The ceiling? He sensed the wood less than 30cm away. Relying on the phone light, he tried pressing on it with his palm and the resistance vanished sooner than expected. Oh? It wasn’t heavy at all?

No.

He had only opened a small double door that had already been there. About 20cm across.

“Wait, wait, wait…”

The space beyond the little window was dark too. And it smelled of metal. After all the cheap meals he had cooked in his dorm, he recognized what he was seeing.

That was a fish grill.

Except this one was large enough to cook an entire human being.

“Ubwahhhhhh!! Does that mean I’m in the crematorium!!?”

Understanding your circumstances was important.

Because now the squeezing at his heart was so much stronger.

Did that mean the wooden box he was inside was a coffin!? He pushed on the actual cover with his palms to try and get out this time, but…oh, no. It wasn’t opening. It didn’t appear to be nailed shut. It would open upwards a few centimeters before something stopped it. Apparently the cremation chamber itself was short, so the coffin door was hitting the top.

Wait, did that mean he couldn’t get out?

If he stayed here like this, he had a strong feeling they really would ignite the chamber!

“Help!! I know it’s way too late for this, but Kamijou Touma is alive, so you all need to waiiiiiiiit!!”

He screamed with all his might…but did it do any good?

There was no reaction.

He wasn’t even certain his voice could be heard outside the chamber. He had never been to a crematorium before, but didn’t the cremation chambers have thick metal walls? And he was Academy City’s Mr. Misfortune. It was looking more likely he was going to go unnoticed and be roasted due to this careless mistake. A lot more likely.

“Th-th-th-the ph-ph-phone! I need to call someone outside and- mgwah!? Why doesn’t it have a signal!? Because the walls are so thick!? Is this stone and metal cremation chamber blocking the signal!?”

It didn’t look like he could count on any help from outside.

He would have to crawl out on his own.

However, the space was so small. It didn’t seem like the coffin lid would be able to open inside the cremation chamber, but that just meant he needed to get creative.

“Hnh!!”

Specifically, he moved to one side of the rectangular coffin to shift the center of gravity. Then he rolled up onto the side. Like rolling around in a giant ball, he tilted the entire coffin over 90 degrees.

There would be more horizontal than vertical space.

He could finally push on the large lid and escape the coffin…or so he thought before a powerful blow hit his back. He choked hard and then realized he had fallen off of something. The ceiling had seemed so low because the coffin had been sitting on something like a stretcher. The metal scent was a lot stronger now. Still, the place was dark and he knew he was inside a giant fish grill that would burn his flesh and bones using city gas. Even now, he assumed the emotional goodbyes were solemnly approaching their climax. If he waited around, he would meet the same fate as a saury prepared by a childhood friend who was a terrible cook.

(How long until they ignite it? Damn, I can’t hear any voices from outside!!)

It might happen an hour from now, but it also might happen a minute from now.

Either way, he was done for once it happened.

Kamijou aimed the phone around and discovered steel pipes as thick as his thumb running near the low ceiling. He chose not to imagine what the black soot he saw was primarily composed of. In fact, he worked very hard to not think about it. The shape of the place was indeed similar to a fish grill. That meant it had a few gas sprayers and spark plugs.

(I’m screwed if those work properly.)

“!! Oh, hell!!”

Or to put it another way, he had to destroy them if he wanted to live! He grabbed at whatever he could and yanked until a pipe came away with a dull snap.

He couldn’t celebrate yet.

A horrible stench stabbed into his nose.

A threat familiar to anyone who used a kitchen clutched at his heart. Even more strongly than before.

(Wait a second. Is that city gas?)

“Gwohhhhh!! Doesn’t that mean this chamber is filling with gas, even if it isn’t burning!? Then I’m going to suffocate and die anyway!!”

He had no idea if he had increased or decreased his time limit.

Flailing about wasn’t going to help.

He knew what he had to do. He had to get out of here. No matter what.

There was nothing like a chimney. He assumed it did have an exhaust vent somewhere, but he couldn’t find it with his phone’s light. Was there a small hole hidden in some gap somewhere? At the very least, it didn’t seem likely he could sneak out through a duct like an action movie star.

That left only one option.

The only exit was the door he had been shoved in through.

“Kh.”

(But will it open? I don’t know much about funerals, but aren’t cremation chamber doors made of really thick metal!?)

He desperately shined his phone’s LED lights that way…and didn’t see a knob. In fact, he was surprised to find the back of the metal door was covered in stuff. A few metal panels and joints fit together complexly.

That was probably the mechanism that allowed the door to be opened by a large lever on the outside.

Did it look like one big panel on the outside, but this opening and closing gimmick was hidden on the back?

Which meant…

“Can I break it open by kicking at this stuff?”

…The problem was the flammable city gas beginning to fill the interior of the chamber.

If he waited, he would definitely suffocate and die, but what if two metal pieces collided and produced a spark?

Accept it.

Trust in hope.

Giving into fear will only mean suffocating.

“Open.”

He had to do it.

Even if he was terrified and even if his heart was raising a scream so soon after beginning to beat once more.

Kamijou Touma repeatedly slammed his heel against the complex stopper on the back of the cremation chamber door.

“Opeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!”

===Part 12===

It came from within.

The metal door was kicked down with a loud roar.

Everyone gasped.

There was a voice.

''Today is my January birthday.

:''Today is the day I was born.

::''I am the star of this wonderful birthday.

''Today is my January birthday.

He was dressed in burial clothes.

A triangle of cloth was tied to the forehead below his pointy hair.

It was definitely him who crawled on out.

And he spoke.

“Hi there, everyone! Sorry if I surpri-”

“Eeeek, a zombie! It’s going to infect us all with who knows what!!!”

[[File:GT Index v12 BW1.jpg|thumb]]

They didn’t even let him finish his sentence.

Tears welled up in the eyes of the corner-of-the-classroom boy who didn’t get to be the star even after coming back from the dead.

Panic and pandemonium were already setting in.

Of course they were.

Based on his phone’s screen, it hadn’t just been a few minutes since he died. Anyone would be terrified if someone who’s heart had long since stopped beating suddenly got back up.

(I’m grateful you brought me back to life, but couldn’t you have worked a little faster, Kingsford!?)

“Abababawawa, no, no, it’s true I, Kamijou Touma, died, but I’m alive again, and I mean, technically today isn’t my birthday, but can’t you please give me a more peaceful reaction along the lines of what you would do if a cardiac massage work-”

“Quiet, everyone! Quiet!! Take deep breaths to calm yourselves and stay where you are. Now, what were you doing in there? Who are you!?”

The extremely part-time monk was shouting into his microphone.

Then Kamijou heard a strange mechanical sound.

Someone was coming.

These people were wearing shiny silver armor that covered them from head to toe.

No, were those powered suits?

“Is that the exceptional remains!?”

“Commence incineration.”

They were holding something at their hips.

They looked like a fire fighter’s hose, but not quite.

A small lighter-sized flame flickered in front of the nozzle.

“Flamethrowers!!?”

How well prepared were they!?

Why did they have a unit like this already on standby? Did corpses have a habit of getting back up in this city!?

Anyway, he couldn’t let himself be roasted after just narrowly escaping that fate.

He had no choice but to run barefoot out of the crematorium.

“Damn!!”

Kamijou Touma threw open the frosted glass window and climbed out.

Frigid rain was falling outside.

''And the girl who pointed at me and called me a zombie right after I came back to life – that was Fukiyose, wasn’t it? Kamijou-san isn’t about to forget that!!

===Part 13===

Kamijou Touma wasn’t the only one in trouble.

Aogami Pierce, Fukiyose Seiri, and the others left in the crematorium were in no position to just stare.

The situation was on the move.

“Whoa!?”

They heard a “fwoosh!!” sound.

It came from right outside the window. More people in powered suits were spraying something out of large canisters. It was reminiscent of spraying agrochemicals on a field, but these weren’t pesticides. The outside of the window soon grew thick and translucent.

Aogami Pierce couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Is that a plastic glue? That’s like a more impressive version of the security sheets you put on windows.”

“With that, they can quarantine a location in less than 5 minutes. Now I doubt any person or any bacteria or viruses can get in or out.”

At field hospitals, thick plastic sheets were used to demarcate a space while air curtains controlled the air currents, but was this a more advanced version of that?

Then Fukiyose commented on the phrase she had used that had caught her attention.

“Any person…?”

“A corpse just woke up and ran off. That qualifies as an emergency in my book. Did it not occur to you that we’re trapped inside here now?”

But the reaction had been too quick.

Kamijou Touma’s remains getting up and fleeing the crematorium was certainly a shock, but not even a few minutes had passed since then.

That speed was only possible if those people had been on standby to begin with.

It meant they must always monitor the cremations of anyone who had died under “suspicious circumstances”.

“(If they were this well prepared, does this kind of thing happen from time to time in Academy City?)”

“(Anything can happen here. I mean, this city creates superhuman Level 5s.)”

None of it sounded real.

Kamijou Touma had gotten up. That much was true.

But what exactly had happened? Saying a mystery virus was responsible sounded plausible enough, but it lacked the weight of reality. That was the same as saying ghosts were actually plasma. Smugly explaining that in a dark abandoned building did nothing to put your mind at ease.

And that aside…

“What happens to us now?” asked Aogami.

“Trying to move from here could be dangerous.”

That she didn’t scoff at his question meant Fukiyose was aware they were trapped in here.

This wasn’t like daydreaming about fighting terrorists during a boring class.

The entire building was sealed off from the outside by thick plastic walls. A mop or a metal bat weren’t going to break through the windows. Even a gun probably wouldn’t be enough. A specialized gas proof door had been set up as the only way in or out, but the powered suits were gathered around it.

And someone was loudly approaching from there.

At some point the number of powered suits had grown past 10.

“Quiet, everyone! We are Bio Secure!”

This person also wore a powered suit.

Maybe anything seemed suspicious when viewed in that light, but it felt like they were intentionally making themselves indistinguishable from each other. Like robbers in masks.

“Your movement will be temporarily restricted, but please do not worry. Once we ensure you are safe, you will be released, so I ask that you cooperate and avoid causing a disturbance.”

He “asked that” they cooperate, but he showed no sign of waiting for a yes or no response from them.

He was actually telling them to resist at their peril.

He made it clear who was in charge here.

How were they supposed to “not worry” when he was wearing a fully-sealed powered suit and equipped with a flamethrower? It was written on his hidden face that there was likely something invisible in the air and that his team would be fine.

“W-wait…” protested a pale-faced crematorium worker.

Even the adults didn’t know what this was.

That only worried Aogami Pierce and Fukiyose Seiri more. And they doubted Komoe-sensei was going to be much help here.

“Wait a second! What is happening? The paperwork said nothing about infectious disease, but are we safe? And do we have permission to continue running this facility!?”

“We are not authorized to answer that. Chief ''Kihara Goukei'' has yet to arrive, but she will explain everything once she does. Hold your questions until then.”

A sound a lot like steam followed.

The powered suits were tossing things into a large rectangular glass vat full of powerful acid. They were quite casual about it, probably because the splashing liquid and smoke wouldn’t harm them anymore.

Those were the bouquets and Kamijou Touma’s possessions prepared for the funeral.

They of course didn’t ask anyone’s permission first.

It had been through a screen, but during the funeral Aogami Pierce had seen the tearful face of that father enraged over his son’s death. The items he and his wife were meant to receive were all being heartlessly dissolved.

Even if this had been a performance put together by professionals, the sight seemed to fully reject the gentle atmosphere of the day.

His breathing was shallow and a cold sweat wouldn’t stop pouring down his brow, but Aogami may still not have accurately grasped the threat. If he had, he could easily have collapsed from hyperventilation.

If he couldn’t take advantage of his own ignorance here, he was in trouble.

His instincts told him so.

What was going to happen to them?

Would they be infected?

If they were, would that be done to them too?

But the situation was advancing whether he liked it or not.

A short distance away, one powered suit was speaking to another.

“What is it?”

“Chief Kihara Goukei has arrived.”

===Part 14===

The dead had come back to life.

Did that qualify as a good thing or a bad thing?

And this was Academy City.

If he was captured, he would either be sent to a lab to be soaked in formalin or he would be directly roasted by flamethrower.

Either way…

“I’m screwed!! My life is over if I’m caught!!”

Kamijou Touma ran outside in the frigid rain.

His burial clothes, which were one step removed from being a Halloween costume, did nothing to keep out the cold. And he was barefoot. Keep in mind it was January. Being stuck out in the rain dressed like this would kill him within an hour of coming back to life!!

“Ahh, brrr. There aren’t even any soaked girls caught in the sudden summer downpour. Winter sucks. There’s nothing at all good about being wet in this season.”

The city had been badly damaged.

The cumulative effect of the battles against Anna Sprengel, Christian Rosencreutz, and Alice Anotherbible really had left it close to collapse. The repairs could not keep up, so construction scaffolding and soundproofing sheets could be seen all over the place.

Kamijou Touma had received that same deadly force with his flesh-and-blood body.

That explained why it was so unusual for him to be alive.

He heard a groaning “gashunk!!” sound.

That was the sound of a powered suit’s artificial muscles operating.

“Dammit, they’re so fast!!”

Powered suit legs could run at 40-50km/h without the help of wheels or a car motor.

An ordinary human couldn’t hope to escape them while running along a wide street on foot.

“Kh.”

They had nearly caught up.

The powered suit’s thick fingers were approaching the back of his neck.

“Damn!!”

He clicked his tongue and changed direction.

He slid across the wet pavement, slipped below a soundproofing sheet, and tumbled into the construction site for repairs on a nearby building.

Sites like this could be found just about anywhere thanks to the battles against powerful foes like Anna Sprengel, Christian Rosencreutz, and Alice Anotherbible.

He heard the snapping of breaking metal.

After the powered suit’s thick fingers had found only air, it had easily torn through the exterior barricade made of soundproofing sheets and metal panels.

It worked like the building demolition beaks attached to the end of a mechanical arm.

A hit from that would smash his body apart even if it only caught on his clothes a little.

“Why aren’t we authorized to use our flamethrowers!?”

“Ask Chief Kihara Goukei. She’s the boss of Bio Secure, not us.”

He heard some terrifying voices from behind, but he couldn’t just stop.

The sounds of thick metal tearing apart continued.

The pursuing powered suits didn’t bother going around or climbing over obstacles. They would shove a stack of pipes aside with a single arm or tackle through a forest of erected steel beams, causing an entire half-repaired building to tilt.

Getting caught in any of that would be the end of Kamijou.

He couldn’t stay here in the construction site.

“Eek!!”

The loud and heavy sounds of bending metal filled the air.

Two of the rapidly-moving powered suits appeared to have collided.

“Y-your suit’s lost integrity!”

“Don’t worry about me and go on ahead! Hurry!!”

“Stop acting all heroic while brandishing flamethrowers! It’s terrifying!” shouted Kamijou, bristling as he fled.

In their minds, they weren’t ganging up on a victim to bully him – they seemed to truly see themselves as fighting to protect Academy City. Which meant they would not compromise or let their guard down. But so what? Someone who could emotionally kill a stranger without second thought was a terrible person in Kamijou’s book.

Kamijou spotted a slope leading underground, so he raced down it. He was expecting an underground mall, but was instead hit by a mass of malodorous air. He had apparently wandered into a culvert where a river ran below the city.

On the floor, he found large wireless communication equipment, professional-looking tools, and a long power cable leading somewhere.

Apparently repairs were underway here as well.

He was afraid of giving away his position, but it was dark in here. Missing a step and falling into the winter river would be no laughing matter, so he suppressed the fear and switched on the LED light.

“The all-purpose smartphone really is one of humanity’s greatest inventions.”

He wished he could just call Anti-Skill and have them come to the rescue, but he got the impression he couldn’t trust in the grownups’ systems.

Where was the exit?

Was heading outside even his best option?

Or should he hide out in this labyrinthine underground structure until his pursuers had moved on?

And how many minutes would he have to wait until he considered that plan a success?

He had too many unanswered questions.

Behind him, he heard the “gashunk, gashunk” of machines operating. Were they still after him!?

(But they’re not moving as fast as before. Did they not have night vision gear because it’s still daytime, or are they afraid of falling in the water and sinking like a rock?)

He thought he would pass out from the fear if he didn’t force his thoughts in a positive direction.

He had to keep running and escape.

It was all so unfair.

He was moments away from death, but for some reason he found laughter spilling from his lips as he ran away soaking wet.

He couldn’t stop.

“Ha ha ha…”

He was afraid of dying.

Of course he was.

Because no matter what anyone might say, Kamijou Touma was alive!!

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!”

He was alive.

He had never felt so aware of the life within him.

He wasn’t a ghost or a zombie or anything like that.

Being human was such a wonderful feeling!!

Although if Anna Kingsford saw this, she might hold a hand to her head in exasperation or she might bring her fist down on his head.

(Still…)

Chief Kihara Goukei.

They had used the name Kihara.

Was it the same Kihara?

In addition to the business with Kihara Kagun, he was pretty sure he had heard that name associated with the incident where he first met Alice Anotherbible. That operation had been meant to clean up the dark side lurking in Academy City’s shadows, but outside influence had twisted it into a great tragedy. Many people had died. But…they were still there.

“Does that mean that dark side thing is still alive and kicking after all that? Dammit!”

He heard an ominous roar.

That was the sound of flames sucking in oxygen.

He looked back while running and his eyes widened. A fireball of a flame flickered in the air.

That was the tip of a flamethrower.

“A-are you kidding me!?”

Even though it branched off every which way, this was still an enclosed space. Bio Secure might survive thanks to their thick powered suits and oxygen supplies, but Kamijou would either be instantly fried or would suffocate with his lungs roasted.

(I thought that Kihara person wasn’t letting them use those!)

It was too late to complain now.

And maybe it had been wrong to count on the enemy’s situation remaining unchanged.

Without hesitation, the flamethrower nozzle aimed his way spewed an oxidant and a jelly-like liquid combustible material.

And a moment later…

It exploded.

“Wahgyahhh!!!”

Kamijou was soaked with sweat as he leaped down a different branching path.

What?

He was still alive, but what was that!?

There had been flames, but that wasn’t right. If the flamethrower had been functioning normally, he knew he should have been wrapped in flames himself. The powered suit had done something wrong. Because it was the pursuer who had ended up on fire.

White fire.

What kind of explosion was that?

It had seemed like something at the powered suit’s feet had exploded immediately after the flamethrower was activated.

(Was that acetylene gas used for welding!?)

That special flammable gas was used to create the ultra-high temperature flames needed to melt and combine reinforcing steel. The powered suit appeared to be designed to withstand the heat of a flamethrower, but an explosion of that stuff at such close range had to have damaged it at least some.

Kihara Goukei was it?

This may have been part of the reason why the powered suits’ boss had banned them from using their flamethrowers. With propane, city gas, and more, the densely populated city contained a surprising amount of flammables and explosives. The recovery had finally begun after the many battles. There was even the possibility of unexploded shells or missiles lying around.

“Pant, gasp!!”

Anyway, Kamijou Touma was alive.

If he continued playing tag with these powered suits, he would be killed. If he was going to escape, it had to be now while they were panicked over their own screw up.

Bio Secure(?), or whatever they were called, didn’t seem worried inside the steel-melting flames.

He felt their gaze on him.

And heard a straining sound.

They were having trouble, but they only had to wait until their suits managed to reboot inside the flames. Kamijou know he couldn’t destroy them by going on the offensive. Once their self-scans and error recovery was complete, he would be out of options. He wouldn’t be able to escape.

So move your legs.

The culvert was one step removed from a sewer. He was worn out from all the strenuous exercise, but he wasn’t at all inclined to lean against the wall. He used his phone’s LED light to walk down a small side path in the dark culvert that stank of sludge and he eventually found a small door.

Maybe it was for work access and maybe it was an emergency exit, but on the other side, narrow stairs led up toward the surface.

“Wheeze, wheeze…”

He was right back out in the rainy world.

He honestly didn’t feel at all like he had escaped.

He was certain the flamethrower-wielding powered suits would find him again soon enough.

Was coming back from the dead really so difficult?

This was nothing like the emotional reactions to a miraculous experience he had been expecting.

(But what do I do now? If I’m supposed to be dead, my dorm room might be gone. And it doesn’t look like anyone I know will be any help.)

“?”

He spotted a camera-equipped security robot and instinctively moved from the main road to an alley to hide.

He felt like he was moving further and further from the sun.

At this rate, was he going to find himself crawling underneath a flower pot in the schoolyard?

“Also.”

Being dead had scared him.

Finding some way of returning to life had been the only thing on his mind.

But.

Could it be?

“Does no one want a world with me in it?”

He hung his head.

It really hurt.

Then again, he was only a high school boy. He wasn’t some important Buddhist priest whose remains would be preserved after death. So maybe there just wasn’t anyone who wanted to see him again badly enough to deal with something as bizarre as this…

He had died and come back.

Being killed by Alice Anotherbible had complicated matters this time, but he had actually already experienced something similar a few times with full-power Othinus and Good, Old Mary…but was it just different once the pieces on the board had made it as far as the funeral? Instead of just physically dying, his death had been socially accepted this time. It took dying for him to realize death happened in stages.

A whirring motor sound passed by overhead.

“Eek!?”

Now wasn’t the time to be waxing philosophical.

Kamijou released a quick shriek and then hid below an air conditioner attached to the wall in the narrow alley. The flying drone passed by. The dark side was supposed to have declined and they could still do all this? He really didn’t want to be found by the adults right now. They did have flamethrowers after all!

And that hadn’t just been a scout.

It wasn’t harmless.

It was very different from one of these drum-shaped security robots.

Specifically, an object the size of a rugby ball was hanging down from it. He couldn’t be certain, but he was pretty sure that was an anti-tank rocket.

If it had noticed him and fired that, he would have been blown to pieces along with this corner of the alley. That 8000yen-a-pop explosive was enough to fully change the meaning of the electronic device.

It was over once he was caught.

Kamijou Touma desperately held his breath.

Maybe he was doing something incredibly stupid. After all, it wasn’t a living creature. Staying still behind cover like this might not matter depending on what kinds of sensors it was using to scan the surface.

The next 30 seconds seemed to scorch his heart.

And that was assuming his sense of time was accurate.

The drone indifferently flew off. Like nothing had happened.

In that final moment, its motion seemed somehow human, so it was possible it had shifted from programmed flight to remote manual control.

Regardless, that meant the threat had passed…right?

“Phew…”

Thanks to that assumption, it caught him completely by surprise.

While all his focus was overhead, he heard a noise from straight ahead.

A quiet footstep.

Someone was there.

The person was frozen in place, staring wide-eyed at him.

She was tall and beautiful. Her long wavy blonde hair was wet with rain and her skinny body was tightly bound by black leather belts, making for a strange manner of dress even for Academy City.

She was a Transcendent.

Alice Anotherbible.

She was frozen in apparent surprise, widened eyes directed his way.

“Y-you can…see me???”

The idiot had so lost his faith in humanity he had to ask that in a trembling voice.

Tears welled up in the corners of the girl’s eyes.

Large ones.

The cold rain was still falling, but these drops were noticeably different and carried body heat.

“T-””

She was stiff and trembling.

And…

“Teacher!!”

[[File:GT Index v12 BW2.jpg|thumb]]

She spread her arms and leaped at him.

Her momentum was too much for him, so Kamijou Touma toppled back onto his rear.

Yes, he could feel her.

Her hair wet with the cold rain, her skin, her sweet scent, and her high-pitched voice piercing into his ears. Sensations the dead could never experience bewildered his senses and stabbed directly into his brain. Kamijou Touma was alive, including those brains.

…I thought I would never see you again.

His heart had stopped, his brain’s neural network had been shredded, and he had fully died.

Saying he would return to life had been an absurd fantasy.

Yet he had done it.

He had returned alive from hell.

However, he didn’t deserve the credit there.

That hell had been an artificial one that Christian Rosencreutz had created to resurrect himself and Anna Kingsford had hijacked control of it. And she hadn’t hesitated to hand the resurrection ticket to Kamijou Touma.

He had been saved every step of the way.

The pointy-haired boy hadn’t accomplished anything on his own. Those true experts had done it for him.

They had taught him what it means to save people.

But.

He hadn’t done the wrong thing.

He had finally found something in this half-destroyed world that convinced him of that.

“You’re alive, you’re here, ohh, the girl can touch you, teacher is really here. Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

No matter how cold the rain was, he could feel this girl’s warmth beyond it.

Returning to life was meaningless?

Don’t be ridiculous.

There was a girl here letting him experience something he never would have if he hadn’t returned to the world of the living.

“Thank goodness… Teacher, you’re breathing, you’re alive. The girl, uh, the girlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!”

She couldn’t even get her words out.

Still slumped down, Kamijou Touma placed a hand on sobbing Alice’s head.

He could touch her.

He could influence things.

He could save a single crying girl.

The pointy-haired boy was undoubtedly alive here.

“Heh…”

What an awful day.

He had taken so long to return to life that now he was seen as the living dead. They seemed to think he was infected with some kind of Academy City something, so a group of adults with flamethrowers was after him.

But.

Nevertheless…

“Coming back to life…was definitely the right move.”

He could finally say that.

For today at least, he could smile.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume12 Chapter1

2026-06-10T22:42:00Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Chapter 1: A Scene of White and Black – the_DEATH.==

===Part 1===

This was a perfectly ordinary high school in District 7.

Or it should have been.

Every other school had already had their opening ceremony, but not this one.

A lot of people were coming and going.

The adults stood out most since this was a school.

“The florist just showed up”

“I know, but what about the salt!? What idiot forgot to order it!?”

“The discount store that sells just about anything doesn’t open until 10.”

“Ordering it online won’t arrive in time for the ceremony. Run to the convenience store!”

Employees of various businesses were running here and there: clothes rentals, large stage lighting and sound equipment, and a caterer providing snacks and drinks for nutrition and to help people rest. The place had the feel of backstage during some kind of event. Instead of an announcer, the host was a fairly unsuccessful comedian holding a mic. He could have just worn a short-range mic on his ear, but he had insisted on a large one in a microphone stand. That was likely his personal preference rather than having anything to do with the ceremony.

Aogami Pierce sighed softly in a brand new classroom.

“Why do those people look like they put on shows in the shopping district?”

“Probably because they do. They’re primarily entertainers, but they study Buddhist temple stuff in college. So maybe this counts as practice for them?”

Fukiyose Seiri had all the information.

Come to think of it, didn’t she usually volunteer for the committees that ran school events?

Aogami Pierce took a look around the gloomy classroom.

“Did you see those weird people hanging around the front gate? They all had smartphones, so do reporters these days not lug around heavy cameras?”

“That’s why the school opened up the back entrance for teachers. The hearse, which is kept chilly inside with dry ice, should be here soon.”

Was that why the curtains were shut first thing in the morning? Carelessly approaching a window would probably end up with a toy-like drone approaching to get some footage.

The TV stations had reporters on the scene too.

They couldn’t just ignore it. As members of the class in question, it made them nervous.

They didn’t know what exactly had happened, but they could tell it was a big deal.

Something big had happened over winter break.

“If only they would send in that sexy female reporter in a miniskirt suit.”

“Honestly. This really isn’t a job for her. We’re not talking about a culinary report discussing the soul food of regions you’ve never even heard of. I did see something like the ghost of parents day wandering around, though.”

“You mean the Old Bavarian Cream Lady of the Educational World? Wow, Kami-yan’s getting the early morning human-interest story treatment.”

“Better than having a self-styled spiritualist show up and chant Buddhist incantations at him, right? Next thing you know, they’d be saying the student who died at our school was a fallen warrior and there was a grave here in ancient times or something. Thank goodness this is Academy City.”

No matter how depressed the mood, people couldn’t help but talk when enough of them had gathered. Maybe that was just human nature.

No.

Maybe the pressure of silence scared them more.

So they were subconsciously avoiding it.

Someone was dead, but the teachers hadn’t explained anything.

And a ton of reporters were here.

It was all too concerning to let it pass in silence. This naturally led to the spread of rumors. Based on absolutely nothing, of course.

“Signs of foul play and mysterious circumstances, huh?”

“Sounds like Academy City to me,” was all Fukiyose said.

As plausible as it sounded, they had no actual evidence.

It was an empty conversation. If they knew the truth, they probably couldn’t have said anything at all.

Aogami Pierce sighed again.

“I heard we’d be released by midday.”

“The other classes will be. We’re riding a bus to the crematorium, so it’s a full day for us.”

“What about lunch? I’m a little worried about that. I was so busy this morning I missed breakfast.”

“Were you too busy to see the message sent to the entire class? It said to bring your own lunch today.”

The day’s schedule had been changed last second for this, but today was only meant to be the opening ceremony. The teachers apparently didn’t think this would affect their classes. Which made the students wonder what the point of that opening ceremony even was. Didn’t that just mean they would have been wasting a day of their winter break?

A look of belated realization came over Aogami Pierce.

“Hm? Hold on. You mean I can’t use the cafeteria or school store?”

“I imagine you would only find an empty and lonely room. The opening ceremony was meant to end at midday and there were no club activities scheduled. They wouldn’t have any ingredients for lunch ready.”

“I-I-I-I- wait just a bit, I’ve gotta run to the convenience store!!”

“You can try if you want, but the closest one will probably be full of the less motivated reporters chatting in the eat-in section. Are you sure you want to go there? Your face will be on the cover of the tabloids as the sorrow-stricken classmate.”

“Hey, wait, ah!! Sensei’s here. The event’s already starting!”

Their free time had ended.

While the classmates chatted, the sliding door by the blackboard opened and Tsukuyomi Komoe, their homeroom teacher, walked in. At 135cm, she was a very compact teacher and she had chosen thick felt clothing to keep warm in the cold. If not for the veil over her head, it could have looked like a private elementary school uniform.

She spoke with just her head poking up above the lectern.

Even for that, she was probably on her tiptoes.

“Himegami-chan, Fukiyose-chan, and the rest of you. Before the classes head to the auditorium one at a time, I want to take roll, so to your seats. The first years go first, so we don’t have much time.”

“Why send us there class by class?”

“Someone messed up designing the auditorium, so its entrance is too narrow. If everyone tried to enter at once, I think we would get stuck,” explained Fukiyose, sounding exasperated.

A gym teacher called to them from outside. The busty one who always wore a track suit.

The students filed out into the hallway.

This was the first day of their third term, but there was no opening ceremony.

Today was a special day.

It was Kamijou Touma’s funeral.

===Part 2===

Inside a student dorm in District 7.

Specifically, inside a room on the seventh floor.

Palm-sized Othinus, the 15cm god, stood tall on the glass table. The kotatsu had been put away since it used power.

They had to pack their things.

“Leave the key next to the phone.”

“I know. I do have a perfect memory.”

That was true of Index, a girl wearing a white nun’s habit with gold embroidery making it look like a fancy teacup, but Othinus couldn’t trust the girl’s accuracy for a very different reason. Remembering everything she saw and heard was all well and good, but then how did she explain being told very clearly that the industrial-sized bag of rice crackers was for everyone to eat through little by little over the course of January and then leaving nothing but the empty bag the very first chance she got?

A cat mewed.

“Oh, right. Him.”

“We can’t leave Sphinx here, can we?”

Index picked up the calico cat.

Just like she always did.

The cat didn’t seem to understand the human circumstances.

Othinus didn’t want to be stuck with him, so she looked away from the ferocious beast only to meet the eye of a dove sheltering from the rain on the narrow balcony railing.

The symbol of peace looked her in the eye and tilted its head. The feathery thing didn’t seem to mind the January chill.

“Is that everything?”

“It should be.”

Index was carrying the cat in her hands. She hadn’t said anything, but Othinus was already up on her shoulder.

Othinus arrogantly crossed her legs and whispered with her voice low.

“Then are you ready?”

“…Yes.”

“The cat is really the only thing you’re taking from the room?”

“Because this is Touma’s room.”

“That it is.”

Their circumstances differed, but they were both freeloaders here.

The room belonged to someone else.

And looking at it now, they could see just how much that boy had shared with them. Even though he hadn’t been in any way obligated to do so. He hadn’t been particularly well off and had constantly lamented being a poor student. But when accepting them, he had done it without a second thought.

Index put on her shoes at the front door.

Would she never complete that simple action again?

She didn’t say anything for a while.

After tapping her toes against the floor to adjust the fit of the shoes, the white nun opened the front door. Index looked back into the room just once, but she saw only an empty space.

“…”

The thin door to the student dorm room shut and the click of its lock rang loud.

===Part 3===

The excitement of beginning the third term was nowhere to be found.

“Does this look right?” asked Misaka Mikoto.

It was 8 in the morning.

Only convenience stores and casual restaurants would be open at this time, but Mikoto was inside a kimono store at a giant shopping mall. She stood quietly in front of a large mirror. She wore her short hair up and she wasn’t wearing her usual Tokiwadai Middle School blazer. She was wearing a black kimono, which seemed out of place on a 14-year-old girl. The half moon comb designs were the Misaka family crest.

These were mourning clothes.

She of course wasn’t going to attend her school’s opening ceremony dressed like this.

(This is nothing like a New Year’s furisode. It’s heavier.)

“Misaka-saaan, are you ready?”

A familiar face poked in.

Shokuhou Misaki appeared to have chosen Western mourning clothes.

Except why were they so see-through and revealing?

That looked more like a black party dress.

Specifically, it was a gorgeous black dress and veil, but it had slits all over the place with pearl accessories glittering here and there. Did that girl ever stop showing off?

For some reason, the weird girl gave Mikoto a weird look.

“Japanese clothing is a terrible choice for someone who doesn’t know how to put it on themselves. My choice is definitely going to be easier.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. That isn’t a character costume – more goes into it than just zipping up the back, I’m betting.”

“Come to think of it, you never wear long socks, do you?”

“Anything that would turn into something like melted cheese when exposed to a high-voltage current gets a no from me.”

And so she had chosen Japanese clothing.

Misaka Mikoto wanted nothing to do with garter belts or stockings.

…Still, she was glad she had gotten the scheming queen’s help since she knew how to rent out a kimono store before it opened for the day. This store’s quality was superb even with a rush job like this. But maybe that was always the demand for mourning clothes. On her own, Mikoto wasn’t sure she would have even considered getting mourning clothes. That said, Tokiwadai’s uniform was too bright for a sorrowful ceremony like this, so she had wanted something else to wear.

She wasn’t used to carrying around a small purse. For all the annoying insurance-related paperwork, she had agreed to all of the employee’s recommendations and then paid by card.

The two of them left the store together.

Shokuhou Misaki immediately began clutching her shoulders and shivering. Was she trying to accentuate her boobs?

“Brr!! It really is January, isn’t it? I thought all the slits and sheer lace would be sexy, but the winter chill is piercing right through it.”

“Huh, imagine that.”

“Wait, why don’t you understand me? Misaka-san, is your mourning clothes ability stuffed with fluffy cotton or something!?”

“Hey, quit it, don’t grab onto me, you made your choice, you exhibitionist idiot, so now deal with the consequences on your own.”

Really, those were supposed to be winter mourning clothes, so why was her skin showing through?

And wouldn’t you normally at least drape a shawl or stole over your shoulders to stay warm when outside?

Mikoto stared into the distance and muttered to herself.

“They do say children don’t feel the cold. Or is the saying that idiots can’t catch cold the one I want here?”

“I don’t want to hear that from the girl who wears shorts no matter how rainy or windy it is.”

Shokuhou was lucky she wasn’t wearing a shawl. Because Mikoto might have strangled her with it.

Just as Tokiwadai’s Ace and Queen were about to start grappling on a 2nd story outdoor passageway, something flashed in the corner of Mikoto’s vision.

It came from the open terminal at the interior of the large C-shaped shopping mall.

It was a taxi’s headlights.

The tall-roofed light station wagon taxi was modeled after the London ones. It was very round and cute.

Shokuhou Misaki was using her phone as she walked.

She appeared to have used a taxi hailing app.

“We can’t exactly walk through the entire city dressed like this, can we?”

“No, we can’t,” honestly admitted Mikoto.

Yes…

“You’re dressed as provocatively as a video producer desperate to get her subscriber count up. If you were walking out in the open, Anti-Skill would be on the scene in no time even this early in the morning.”

“Sigh. I really don’t want to hear that from the girl strutting around in the much freakier combination of a 14-year-old in mourning clo- gbhbhbhbhbhbbh!?”

Oh, it turned out the chain of her purse could also be used to strangle.

The mall hadn’t officially opened yet, so the escalator wasn’t running. After using it like stairs to reach the ground floor, Mikoto and Shokuhou climbed into the taxi’s back seat.

The driver was a woman. Maybe that was something the app let you request.

“Where to?”

“To the District 7 high school that was recently rebuilt. The one requiring black clothes like this to get in today.”

“Right.”

That was all the driver said.

The taxi smoothly pulled out onto the public road.

The driver thoughtfully switched off the overly bright LCD advertisement.

Mikoto’s warm Japanese clothing was fluffy enough to make fastening her seat belt a challenge. After making sure she heard it click, she sighed.

“So are we splitting the fare 50/50?”

“Sorry, but this is a hired vehicle with a contract updated every six months, so the distance of a single trip like this doesn’t really have a price. Or were you offering to pay for the full half year?”

“Go to hell.”

Their wealthy surroundings had its pros and its cons. Showing off with vehicles like this tended to escalate in any surroundings, but at Tokiwadai some girls went as far as hiring a helicopter. And unlike in the movies, they couldn’t just land on any building roof, which made them extremely inconvenient for getting around in a city.

The taxi…or was it technically a hired vehicle? Whatever it was, the car traveled smoothly.

The city had a unique feel this early in the morning.

Some of the restaurants were serving their morning menu, but most other service industry locations had their metal shutters down. The city still hadn’t woken from its slumber. In some places, both sides of the major street were rejecting customers.

No.

Was it more than just that?

“…”

Since she had nothing to discuss with the scheming queen, Mikoto looked out the window.

Academy City was torn up.

Buildings here and there were covered by soundproofing sheets and construction equipment like bulldozers and concrete mixer trucks were traveling every which way on the morning streets. At some intersections, the streetlights were dark and adults were directing traffic. They must have been using noise canceling technology, but a closer inspection showed the flashing light of welding being done this early in the morning.

Anna Sprengel, Christian Rosencreutz, and Alice Anotherbible. The repairs to the city had been delayed by one major incident after another.

(I wasn’t involved in it all, though.)

Would the outcome have differed had she been?

Mikoto wasn’t confident she could have survived an incident not even that idiot had managed to overcome.

She didn’t feel like she had survived.

She had been left behind.

That more accurately summed up her feelings.

Those who had lost their lives may have been furious to hear her say so, though.

She saw a city of white, black, and gray.

The pretty exterior had been stripped away.

Just viewing it brought a gloom drifting down onto her like volcanic ash.

She muttered a few words with her eyes still directed outside the window.

“…How much longer?”

“We’re almost there.”

===Part 4===

At the international airport in Haneda.

Kanzaki Kaori was Japanese, so she could blend into the crowds easily enough (including her 2m katana she had slipped through hidden among her luggage). She knew she had been chosen for this role for that purpose.

The Amakusas were currently being protected by the Anglican Church.

This naturally had an effect on their actions.

(But…)

She was gathering a lot of attention.

And not because she was wearing a midriff-baring top and jeans with one leg cut off at the base of the thigh.

“How long are you going to keep crying?”

“But…but…”

She was with Itsuwa.

They had received word of that boy’s death some time ago. Nevertheless, Itsuwa had been like this the entire flight here. The flight attendant kept giving her worried looks and the child in a nearby seat had snickered, probably because he thought she was overreacting to a movie.

Yet she was supposed to be a member of the Amakusa Church who stuck to their faith even if it meant going into hiding.

As Itsuwa finally replied, her eyes were red from rubbing them so much.

Tatemiya, Tsushima, and the rest had managed to restrain themselves, but Itsuwa hadn’t.

“It doesn’t bother you, Priestess? I mean…we can never…never see him again.”

“…”

Kanzaki had failed to save someone.

She was always insisting she would save everyone, yet this was a familiar feeling for Saint Kanzaki Kaori. She was always the only one to survive and the world never did change.

He was dead, but time marched on.

Mercilessly.

No, she couldn’t just let death happen and move on. There was much that had to be done because someone had died.

Kanzaki sighed softly.

The smell of morning curry wafted in, presumably from the lounge. Just like any other day.

Academy City’s District 23 had an international airport. There were direct flights there from England. So why had the Amakusas entered Japan through Haneda, which was outside the city?

Kanzaki Kaori quietly asked for confirmation.

“You know what we must do, don’t you?”

“Yesh…”

===Part 5===

Gray Academy City was falling apart after so many consecutive battles.

A long narrow polished car drove slowly through the city, looking out of place among all the damage that had happened too quickly for repairs to be made.

It was colored black and gold.

It was a hearse.

There must have been a tacit understanding because the workers directing traffic rotated their red poles to keep the hearse moving.

Academy City had the unusual feature of a population 80% made up of students. The housing was overwhelmingly made up of student dorms. This greatly changed the methods for wakes and funerals compared to ordinary cities. For example, the majority of people had no blood relatives in the city, so the body was generally not returned home for a wake after the death was confirmed at a hospital. A wake was either held at a ceremony hall or the body was stored in the morgue a while longer.

Also, funerals were usually held at the student’s school.

This served several purposes: it helped reduce the impact of the death on the teachers and students, any specialized facilities for that purpose would be too few in number to cover all the city’s dead, and most importantly of all, it made a clear statement of who had jurisdiction over the body that had gone through the esper development program.

Altogether, this meant there was no hiding the date of a funeral.

Because of this, if you knew the start and end locations – the frog-faced doctor’s hospital and an ordinary high school in this case – you could predict what route the hearse would take. It helped that the unusual length of a hearse restricted what streets it could use.

A building was leaning at an angle after its rebuilding had been delayed.

On its roof, Human Aleister clutched the twisted railing and stared intently down at the ground.

The hearse couldn’t have been more vulnerable.

He could only imagine they were unaware of the value of what they carried.

The golden retriever by his side spoke bitterly.

“Don’t.”

“But this is the last chance.”

“See him off. Like a true friend should.”

“I know that!! But this is the only chance to steal the body intact!” he roared.

Anyone could choose to do the right thing. But there were paths that could not be reached in that way. Throughout this human’s history, he had been despised for taking those paths.

He didn’t ask for others’ understanding.

He had learned all too well over the course of his life that someone who feigned intellectualism by lobbing criticisms from a position of safety could never direct history in a positive direction.

If he was going to change things, it had to be now.

Chances were slippery. They were reduced in real time.

And they never grew.

“He will be at the crematorium in a few hours’ time!! Once even his bones have been burned and not even a hair remains to retrieve his DNA map from, it’s all over. ''Then I truly will be powerless.'' …Doing the right thing? Nonsense. What good is that other than a salve to dull the pain of failure??? This is how it always works in my life! It’s too late to regret your actions once it’s all over!!”

The boy’s death had already been confirmed.

He was past the point of being revived by electric shocks or a cardiac massage.

Why?

Why obsess over the presence of the body at this stage?

Why must he steal it intact?

Aleister’s opinion was simple.

He simply couldn’t accept it.

He had seen the moment of death more times than he could count.

But that didn’t mean he was used to it.

“Academy City has clone technology.”

Anyone would feel this way.

If there was a means of overturning death, what was wrong with relying on it?

This really could be the last chance. So struggle. He had no obligation to nobly give up and protect the natural order.

He shouted.

With all his strength.

“What about powered suits filled with life-support devices, cyborg tech, artificial ghosts, or even giving his preserved corpse autonomous movement! Yes, he’s dead, but so what? Death is no reason to give up!! If I make all the mistakes myself, then he can again smile in this world!!!”

The golden retriever said nothing.

Aleister had to know he was wrong.

But Kihara Noukan understood how foolish it was to reject someone’s emotions based on what was logically right. Besides, the Kihara family placed no importance on what the general public considered to be “right”.

Aleister was human through and through.

For better and for worse.

Kihara Noukan actually liked that messier side of him. That was a fact.

“But.”

The golden retriever used a skinny mechanical arm to place a cigar in his mouth.

And he prepared a special lighter to light it.

“Not everyone is going to understand your idea of romance.”

Without warning and as cheaply as in a TV drama, a cold rain began to fall.

Kihara Noukan stared at his top-quality Cuban in disappointment.

The rooftops were private property, so Academy City’s no smoking ordinance shouldn’t have applied there.

“…”

There had been no advance sign.

This rain was blatantly unnatural.

Then again, maybe it was wrong to look for anything natural inside Academy City to begin with.

A voice spoke within the pouring rain.

“Cool it.”

He wasn’t actually here of course.

The familiar voice was not playing from a speaker. Even a researcher with the Kihara name was a smidge impressed.

“That’s the sound of the falling rain. So are you superimposing your voice onto the vibrations of the raindrops themselves?”

Meanwhile, the human spoke with his voice low.

As if he were uttering a powerful curse.

“''The new Board Chairman,'' huh?”

“And get a clue. You don’t have a choice here. That third-rate bastard used up all his options that day. That’s all there is to this. Neither of us can waltz in after the fact and start messing with things.”

This rain didn’t just ''seem'' artificial.

It truly was artificial rain created by Academy City technology.

He could freely control the entire world’s weather and environment, but a single person’s life was beyond his reach. Controlling so much great knowledge wasn’t enough to make someone happy.

But this wasn’t enough to extinguish Aleister’s obsession which burned as hot as scorching lava.

Like steam, incredible emotion rose from his shoulders.

“You can’t just let this happen, can you? You must understand. He didn’t need to die. Anna Sprengel, Christian Rosencreutz, and Alice Anotherbible – those were all issues we should have solved! But he carried it all on his shoulders when there was no need to!! And now you’re going to give up? Surely you understand! If we follow the ordinary morality that everyone understands, we will lose him forever!!”

“Yes,” admitted Accelerator.

He accepted the possibility that something that should have ended could be made to continue using a cruel and grotesque method.

If all you wanted to do was make the flesh and bones called Kamijou Touma continue operating, ''that could be done.

You could mend the stopped brain and send electrical signals through it again. ''But only that.''

However.

Even then…

“But this isn’t your city anymore.”

“Kh.”

“I didn’t unfairly usurp it from you. You handed the keys to me yourself because you were satisfied. Coming back now and trying to take it back is just sad.”

He wasn’t level-headed.

He knew what this meant.

He had his own thoughts on the matter. But Accelerator appeared to be fighting his own emotions. And the #1 knew what happened when his emotions and his reason fought and the emotions won. After crawling through the city’s darkness, he knew all too well.

And he knew that bloody path led nowhere.

So he would show that his desire to not turn back and to keep his path a one-way road was more than just wordplay.

“I know,” said the new Board Chairman. His voice firm. “After choosing to participate in that experiment to kill 20 thousand clones, I know what it means for someone to die. The living are free to struggle against death. And I think they should. But someone else messing with someone who’s already dead is something else entirely. It’s similar, but so very different, Aleister.”

The 20 thousand clones’ numbers had been reduced to less than 10 thousand.

Could he atone for his sins by using the same cells to produce another 10 thousand girls with the same face?

''Like hell he could.

…Those unspoken words left Aleister stunned.

Even an idiot could understand this.

Accelerator was undeniably in the right here.

Kihara Noukan’s wet and unlit cigar wiggled uselessly in his mouth.

(The military clones, hm? That experiment was meant to evolve the #1. ''Or that was the official story anyway.'' It pushed him to grow in an unexpected direction, but you’re still the one that gave him that push, Aleister.)

“People mustn’t defile the deaths of others. The question isn’t if it’s possible. The fact that it is technologically possible is why we must show restraint.”

===Part 6===

“…”

Aleister listened to it all.

He listened to the raindrop voice.

It didn’t reach him.

Not that he didn’t understand it.

That wasn’t what he wanted right now.

How could you find ordinary peace by following that sort of path?

Human Aleister clenched his teeth and whispered in a terrifyingly low voice.

“Now that I’ve heard you out.”

“Huh?”

“What if I still refuse?”

“Then I’ll stop you of course, ''outsider''. I won’t let you turn Academy City back into what it was. Like I already told you: this isn’t your city.”

The voice carried by the raindrops pounding against the rooftop conveyed icy killer intent.

Academy City began to move.

Rotors loudly sliced at the air.

“…”

These were unmanned Six Wings attack helicopters.

Those had been used in combat for a while now, but they had only become known to the media at large during World War Three, which was arranged in secret by Fiamma of the Right. The world had been shocked by the sight of the helicopters accurately locating an enemy tank battalion in the middle of a raging blizzard and then destroying only the enemy weapons while avoiding all the anti-air fire.

''It was an older weapon at this point.

Daily progress was a thing everywhere, but the value of each and every minute and second was so much greater in Academy City.

Weapons several generations ahead of the current standard had to be lurking deep within labs across the city.

This was an attack with overwhelming numbers by a known technology. It was effective, but it brought no risk to the one giving the orders. It was a boring “no risk, high return” strategy. The leader safely surrounded by thick walls only had to view the distant future and spit out logical arguments.

It was the method of Academy City’s Board Chairman.

Aleister felt like he was seeing his old self.

(He’s dealing with me, who, for better or for worse, knows Academy City inside and out. I thought he would ''at least'' silently distribute nanodevices modeled after a deadly virus, but does he not even have that much left to use?)

“Is that all?”

Aleister felt no fear.

He only felt rage.

''Take this seriously.

''This is literally the final line to determine his fate.

“Did you really think this was enough for someone as stubborn as me to quietly back off!?”

A giant blackness appeared with so much force it seemed ready to engulf the world before concentrating powerfully down into a single point above Aleister’s palm.

Black.

That was a pitch black flame not found in the natural world.

It was the ultimate destruction controlled by “the wickedest man in the world” who prophesied the outbreak of World War One and, since he couldn’t stop the death it would bring, considered putting together a massive spell using all the bloodshed.

“Protector of the abyss – that is, the barrier none can cross – and the monster that severs the bonds between people to prevent their evolution. Your value is 333, your meaning is dispersion. Demon who I have named, gather in my hand, Coronzon!!!”

He felt his own heart crawl disconcertingly.

Something unseen had been carved away.

He could tell.

But this was what it meant to stick to your guns.

Had he thought he could do this without any risk to himself?

As long as it would not force misfortune and tragedy onto an unknown third party, Aleister would use any forbidden magic.

This would scatter “sparks” from the collision between phases, but he would direct that side effect onto himself.

A cold sweat very different from the chilly rain formed on his face, but he bared his teeth and spoke.

“You’re no monster. You’re as much a human as I am.”

“…”

“And as you have gathered all the ugliest parts of that humanity, allow me to gift you the ultimate foolishness. …This is death. If you would dismiss human death as something that ‘can’t be helped’, then raise your head from your paperwork and look me in the eye. I will test the rawness of death for you!!!”

The voice didn’t even respond.

It was a thorough rejection. The ultimate lack of understanding. Which may have been why the new Board Chairman was so disappointed.

It didn’t end with bringing down the Six Wings.

Far below, on the surface, a monster emerged looking like a tank gun attached to the roof of an 8-wheel armored truck. That was a Predator Octopus. By breaking the pillars in accordance with careful calculations, even a building like this could be brought down.

''A mere'' 120mm gun?

Laughable.

Who did they think they could destroy with that?

It all felt like a desperate attempt to cover up a lack of forces. After the consecutive attacks of Anna Sprengel, Christian Rosencreutz, and Alice Anotherbible, Academy City was run down. It didn’t have many remaining forces.

If an individual wanted to have their way within the city, now was the only chance.

The 8-wheeled vehicle turned its gun to aim at Aleister.

It didn’t bother thinking about cover or an escape route.

That suggested it was unmanned.

An explosive sound erupted out.

It was a roar.

Produced by a human body. The wall of compressed air blew away the airborne shell, crushed the unmanned weapon, and caused a circle of asphalt to sink down. Deep down.

(I will not let him be taken to the crematorium.)

Thus, Aleister was leaning forward in that moment.

(As long as I can secure Kamijou Touma’s whole body, there are still options. Plenty of options!! I don’t even need any help from Academy Ci-)

Crash!!!

Without warning, a powerful lightning bolt fell from the sky, piercing Aleister’s body on its way down.

===Part 7===

Accelerator had not left the District 10 prison.

Not a single step.

That was the restriction he had placed on himself.

And he didn’t even need to.

“Hmph.”

Gas pipes, water pipes, and fiber optic cables.

All sorts of plumbing and wiring was laid out like a spider web below Academy City. The total length could wrap around the earth two and a half times with more to spare.

So.

With the ultimate vector control power, there was no need to leave the strictly guarded prison. As long as he knew an effective path, he could easily use the artificial objects underground to manipulate the atmosphere, create pressure differences, and send down an electric attack like a spear piercing the human who was located several train stations away.

He had never said he was helpless just because he wouldn’t leave.

No matter the reason, he would not use a crisis as an excuse to cut his punishment short. But with so much power at his disposal, he couldn’t just let people die when he was capable of saving them. Both of those were absolutes in his mind.

He would make them both work together.

So the new Board Chairman had honed his #1 Level 5 power to this point.

Could he win against that bastard now?

(A meaningless question.)

Accelerator shook his head.

What good was winning?

For that matter, did he even need enemies?

Creating a world with no need for a division between friend and foe would be the much greater challenge. But there was a boy who had accomplished something close to that. He hadn’t cared too much about the level system, he had understood adults and children alike, and he hadn’t cared if someone was from inside or outside Academy City. It was a small thing, but someone had created a world like that.

He hadn’t feared failure.

Even if it meant embarrassment, injury, or acting in vain, he hadn’t hesitated to reach out his hand.

It was the same for Accelerator. In his fairly short life, the moments he sensed obvious growth in himself were generally when he was crawling through the mud. The #1 could count his experiences like that on one hand, but that boy had done it every single day like it was normal.

He had grown so much more.

Which explained why Accelerator had never been able to catch up.

Board Chairman of Academy City?

Maybe all forms of information gathered here.

But that boy’s field of view had to have been much wider.

(Focus on the immediate issue.)

Accelerator looked to one wall of his cell.

The LCD monitor there displayed all sorts of information at once and it was currently producing a voice.

This was not a voice of fiery rage.

The emotion was more like a resentment with the sticky consistency of mud.

It was the voice of a cornered beast.

“That was roughly a billion volts. Did that wake you up, human?”

“Hm, so the artificial rain was only the rehearsal. To test how far your vector control could influence atmospheric and meteorological conditions!!”

He hadn’t used dry ice or silver iodide.

This weather control had used an entirely different principle to alter the atmospheric pressure.

Should he create some scorching plasma next?

“That level of deception is standard on the dark side. People have a bad habit of readily accepting lies they find convenient. Ridiculous. Like I would change the weather just to help you cool your head. Civilian companies have weather forecast apps these days. And there are tons of people who would rate them poorly after just one prank like this.”

===Part 8===

Burning wasn’t quite the right word.

All the oxygen molecules in the air were split into individual atoms before rebonding and giving off the distinctive odor of ozone.

Aleister clenched his teeth while doubled over on the rooftop as a second punishing blow dropped toward him. A blinding flash and deafening boom followed.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

“I don’t need a big, one-shot attack.”

These words rejected everything Accelerator used to be.

And he spoke them without a hint of hesitation.

Were the logics of an offensive battle and a defensive battle entirely different?

“If I have a way to whittle down your stamina bit by bit, I just have to keep doing that as long as it takes. I can slowly but surely wear down your defenses. I will continue to fight with the resources I have. Can you kill me right away? If not, you’re screwed. It doesn’t matter how boring and silly a win this will be.”

“Gh, khh!!”

A third bolt. A fourth.

But he didn’t break.

Aleister Crowley did not fall.

Everyone else was accepting that boy’s death.

He had to consider what would be lost if he broke now.

Just once more!!

“Not…yet!! I will have my way this time… I will use every piece of knowledge at my disposal!! But not for myself. So that he can stand back up and once more reach out that right hand to save many more people! I will break any taboo that stands in my way. If it will keep them from giving up on a human life, I will stand up to even the most powerful enemy!”

“What does it matter if you defeat that enemy? Why do you even need to make enemies?”

He had no answer.

He couldn’t find anything to say.

He was the human who had belonged to the world’s largest magic cabal and had made full use of his notoriety in that world but had also made countless enemies and ultimately vanished into the shadows of history. Aleister himself knew what would happen if he bragged about being the most infamous magician in the world.

A life of making and defeating enemies did not lead to happiness.

The effort spent on gathering the power to kill and end problems that way could instead be spent on working to explain yourself. To avoid opposition and misunderstandings in the first place. Effort toward that was much healthier and correct.

The Golden cabal had been the world’s largest.

Aleister Crowley was the magician who had won and survived the Battle of Blythe Road.

But.

In the end.

Had he found happiness by ''only'' pursuing the power to master magic and to fight?

What did it matter if you were the strongest?

Someone else had once walked that path.

The old Board Chairman had stayed there, but the new Board Chairman had begun searching through the darkness for a different exit.

His voice spoke.

The collection of raindrop sounds carried human emotion.

No matter how many detours he had taken along the way, his continuing effort to atone for his sins had allowed this monster to begin down a different path from Aleister.

“You could have risked your life to reach out a helping hand. You were in the city, so you weren’t just an observer. You had what it took to take part in the conclusion. But now isn’t the time for that.”

“!!”

“It’s already over.”

One by one, the new Board Chairman’s low words stabbed deep into his own chest.

“You were in the city, weren’t you? Then location wasn’t the issue. Like I said, it was an issue of timing. You chose the wrong time to play your trump card.”

Aleister’s mouth opened and closed, but no words left it.

And not because of the lightning.

They were both unusual geniuses, so he understood what the #1 was trying to say.

Simply put…

“Accept the truth. Stop blaming it on everyone else. …This is all the result of your own choices. Trying to cover up your own failures will only distort the world around you.”

“Oh, oh.”

He crumbled.

He couldn’t even breathe.

His voice eventually rose to a cry – the cry of human lamentation.

…It wasn’t like he had especially cared about the boy to begin with.

No matter how unusual they were, his plan had him observing all residents of Academy City equally.

''“Let’s do this.”

''”No words are necessary. We know each other better than that.”

But in truth, that boy had delved deep inside the Windowless Building and, with Mina Mathers’s help, smashed Aleister’s plan with his right fist.

''“Then prove that we can defeat Coronzon without using Lilith!! What other way is there to protect your precious baby!!!???”

He had saved Baby Lilith and battled Great Demon Coronzon.

During a large-scale battle covering the entire United Kingdom, if not the entire world, Aleister had somehow ended up fighting alongside that boy.

How much had that saved him on the inside even as he maintained a cynical attitude toward the world?

Without seeing that boy’s way of life up close, Aleister could never have faced his own inferiority complex and would have been killed by Mathers then.

''“Ahhhh!! Ahhhhhhh!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

When Alice Anotherbible appeared and delivered a devastating blow to the dark side, Aleister had once more entered Academy City.

The monster himself had forgotten how that boy had wept upon learning of Human Aleister Crowley’s survival.

''“Run away with me, Anna Sprengel!!!”

He and the boy had stood on opposite sides on the question of what to do about Anna Sprengel.

From an efficiency and safety standpoint, Aleister hadn’t been wrong.

He was sure of that.

But Kamijou Touma had been right.

That boy had clearly been correct.

Aleister knew that wicked woman had smiled happily by Kamijou Touma’s side after her poison had been removed and the threat negated. That had been a win for the boy’s belief in human possibility.

Aleister couldn’t abandon him.

Even if they had parted ways after failing to reach an agreement.

But.

This was that human’s selfish desire.

Was it not what that boy wanted and would it not make him happy?

This desire wouldn’t lead anywhere.

The memories of him that Aleister had worked so hard to gather up were spilling away.

It was time.

Give up.

If you truly want to focus on a life more precious than your own.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Yes.

The final person accepted it.

Accepted his death.

===Part 9===

Inside a District 7 hospital, it was still early morning.

No one else was inside the hallway waiting area where a few vending machines were lined up. The frog-faced doctor sat alone on the artificial leather sofa there staring out of the window as raindrops pounded on it.

The paper cup in his hand hadn’t moved in a while. The coffee had long since gone cold.

“…Phew.”

His let out a heavy breath.

He had seen the hearse off.

It was necessary, but this was his hardest job as a doctor.

Would the funeral be starting about now?

He drew the line here.

As the doctor who had failed to save him, he felt wrong heading to the funeral. He wished the boy’s surviving family could at least direct all their anger at him, but his parents wouldn’t even be in the city.

There were lives he could not save.

No matter what strange alternate name he was known by, there was nothing he could do when the patient’s heart and brain activity had stopped by the time they arrived at the hospital. The frog-faced doctor could only save the living.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but wonder.

What if?

If he had broken more of the rules, could something have changed here?

(Does it make me coldhearted that I can calmly say I shouldn’t do that specifically because it is technically possible?)

“…”

Hurried footsteps snapped the frog-faced doctor out of his reverie.

Someone poked their head out from around the hallway corner.

It was a familiar face.

It belonged to a young medical intern.

“Doctor, we have an emergency! A District 7 ambulance is headed our way. There was an accident at a construction site and a worker had their hand caught in the machinery.”

“Understood. Prepare to receive them immediately.”

He swallowed the rest of the liquid in the paper cup, crushed it in his grip, and tossed it in the nearby trash can.

He stood from the sofa.

The frog-faced doctor turned around.

His white coat swishing around him.

He turned his back.

He cut off all feelings related to Kamijou Touma who was already gone.

It was a conscious choice.

Nothing he could do would bring back the dead.

But there was another emergency patient he could still save.

===Part 10===

In a brand new high school in District 7, Komoe-sensei spoke to the students in her classroom.

“Fukiyose-chan, Aogami-chan…and the rest of you too. The ceremony is about to begin, so please move to the auditorium.”

They filed out.

It was all in motion now.

The final obstacle – Aleister Crowley – had been removed.

The world had accepted it.

Kamijou Touma’s funeral was finally beginning.

<noinclude>
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Chapter1

2026-06-10T22:41:08Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Chapter 1: The Other Side of the Ordinary – Hell,_Hades,_and_Gehenna.==

===Part 1===

“…”

“…”

Silence.

After all, this was ''the'' Rosencreutz. How were you supposed to hold a conversation with the monster who single-handedly made a mess of Academy City!? It felt like being alone in a cramped elevator late at night with a man who had a prominent pompadour. The tension was intense. Kamijou was more friendly and welcoming to science, magic, and weirdos than most, but even he had his limits. Just walking alongside this man counted as an emergency in his book!

“Hm, hm♪ Oh, dear. Maybe I should have 🍴en some 🗾ese katsudon before I died.”

Kamijou heard a carefree voice.

The only smiling person here was Anna Kingsford as she walked a step ahead of him.

A great gale blew across the wasteland here, but she simply held her hat down with a hand like none of it mattered.

She even hummed a casual tune.

Kamijou really would have preferred to stick with that gentle and safe young woman who looked so soft in every aspect than to have anything to do with that dangerous man, but doing that would have meant turning his back to CRC. How could he do that? Wouldn’t that be just as suicidal as refusing to stick with the group and holing up in a room alone while a murderer lurked the halls of the mansion? It honestly terrified him!!!

“Don’t worry so much, boy.” The red-clad young man chuckled while stroking his beard. “This old man must also travel through hell, so at the very least I will not disturb your journey. They say all travelers could use a companion, don’t they? This old man has died, so now I must redo things. So let’s form the greatest all-star party and enjoy a picnic together!!”

“…”

Kamijou felt blue.

He sensed more to that man’s words, or he wasn’t sure how to interpret them. Regardless, each and every thing he said seemed to carry a deep and dangerous meaning!! The way he talked about a traveling companion with such a dark grin was terrifying!!!

“The ✝️ hell is shaped like a giant mortar,” said Kingsford without looking back.

She didn’t seem to mind.

Was she not afraid? Hadn’t Rosencreutz killed her once?

Or was being killed just the once a trivial matter to an expert who had transcended life and death?

This was unlike Aleister Crowley and Anna Sprengel, who were extraordinary magicians in their own right. Those two still clung to their lives and formulated their plans and strategies without giving up on living. So even if their skills were transcendent, Kamijou and others could predict their actions to an extent.

The Magic Gods like Othinus and High Priest had sacrificed their lives to master their paths, but it was their understanding of how valuable a life was that allowed them to make such great use of their own.

But this woman lacked that, so she could casually cross the boundary between life and death.

She could leave and return.

That was Anna Kingsford.

Doing things normally and ordinarily in these circumstances was in fact extremely bizarre.

“The shape of hell is ❌ so much like a 🌕 crater as it is like what you’ll see if you search for an image of open-pit mining. Each level is like another step, with the levels growing narrower as they go down, with the very bottom converging on a single point.”

Kamijou heard the clinking sounds of hard objects colliding. Rather than plastic, this was the high-pitched and dangerous sound of glass or crystal.

Rosencreutz held something like a clear jigsaw puzzle in his hand.

“This was originally a single card.”

The jumble of pieces refused to fit together, their contours constantly bumping together.

It looked the full shape would be…a V?

No, a mortar.

But when viewing a cross-section from the side, it may have resembled a deep canyon.

Although it appeared to be glitching and refused to function.

“My miniature model of the world recreates all phenomena within itself, thus gathering all phenomena relating to the world’s past, present, and future in my hand. However, it does not seem to work with the realm of hell which is found outside the world.”

Regardless, Kamijou and the others were at the very top of the mortar, on the outermost edge.

Hell was spacious.

They were supposed to be pulling a jailbreak, but where were they supposed to go and what were they supposed to do?

“Like I 💬, hell is shaped like a giant mortar or like an inverted pyramid.”

Kingsford poked the broken model with a smile.

Those two were both experts.

The location was hell.

All things considered, this was one hell of a roadside chat.

“By 👣ing all the way around each level, we should find a stairway or slope leading down to the next level.”

“Hmph. I doubt that’s ''all'' we will find.”

CRC boredly poked his finger at the V-shaped miniature model(?) floating in front of his face to guide a stray piece toward the whole.

“This hell is a mixture of a few different ideas. There is no accurate model, so there is no correct path. We might suddenly wind up in the Buddhist Eight Great Hells or in the Shinto Yomotsu Hirasaka. In fact, if we go waltzing down there, thinking we know the answer, we might just run into a dead end.”

“I am aware of that.”

Kingsford and Rosencreutz looked Kamijou’s way at the same time.

He didn’t understand it.

Feeling like an outsider, the idiot had been only half-listening, waiting for the experts to arrive at an answer, so he panicked now.

“Wh-what? Me?”

“In this case, I expect he will be the 🗝️. Our view will mostly be the Western conception of hell, but he is 🗾ese and will think of the Eastern conception of hell, ruled by Lord Enma and full of 👹.”

“If we’re lucky. How are we supposed to predict what we’ll run across if he’s thinking of the ‘demon world’ shown on some trading card? This old man’s miniature model of the world is only meant to reproduce the past, present, and future of the real world. It can’t do the same for a purely fictional story.”

Kamijou didn’t like what he was hearing.

Apparently he had leveled up from dead weight to a ticking time bomb.

“Also, do ❌ lose the sense that you do ❌ belong.”

“?”

“Traveling through hell is all well and good, but you must ❌ let it influence you too much. This is only a temporary place for you. If you plant roots too deep, you will ❌ be able to return. Just think of it as a good-luck charm to help our jailbreak succeed.”

That made sense.

He doubted he could ever feel at home in hell, but how long would that last? Who keeps company with the wolf will learn to howl. The Japanese language contained multiple phrases to that same end, which suggested everyone knew it could happen. Kamijou had a feeling the Japanese were especially prone to just going with the flow. Like how everyone complained about global warming while gradually getting used to the higher temperatures.

But.

“Okay, I get the idea, but what exactly am I supposed to avoid doing? I’m not sure how I can avoid it if you don’t tell me what the ‘land mines’ are.”

“There is ❌ way to know how many there are in all.”

Wait.

“Wouldn’t the simplest examples be eating or drinking the food and drink of hell?” said Rosencreutz.

“What about looking back?”

“In the story of Orpheus stealing back his wife, he had promised Hades he would not look back until he had left hell. We just have to hope we do not run afoul of any rules we can break without first making a promise.”

“Um.”

Kamijou wanted them to slow down.

Weren’t there any more obvious “land mines” like kicking a jizo statue on the side of the road or eating a grave offering? Now he was more worried than ever he would step on one without realizing it!

Kingsford gently placed a hand on her cheek and looked his way.

“It should go without 💬ing that hell does not play fair.”

“Ugh.”

“But at the same ⏱️, hell is meant to make sinners suffer, not to apply violence indiscriminately.”

In that sense, was hell better than the overly passionate and indiscriminate stories of being chased through the school all night long after happening to see a ghost there or finding a strange woman waiting at an intersection?

The idea of only the properly judged sinners being chosen for punishment was very different from the 2-hour summer ghost story specials on TV where the suffering dead would grab at anyone and everyone to drag them down to hell with them. In Japanese horror, it was more the fresh and still-living souls that would gather around.

But…

“We were in fact properly judged and sent to hell. Not this young lady who cheated her way here, but I doubt you or this old man will be awarded that luxurious mystery prize.”

“Ugh!!”

Kamijou had forgotten he had wound up in hell the ordinary way.

But at least he would be less hesitant to escape from a gloomy and torturous hell than from a heaven where all his wants were fulfilled.

He could become bound to hell.

There were taboo actions hidden in the scenery around him.

Without knowing the exact conditions, he couldn’t predict when or where he might step on a “land mine”. It was possible one wrong move was all it took, but he decided to assume the danger grew the longer he remained in hell. Like how the danger of Russian roulette grew with each consecutive round.

“☠️ing and being killed in hell are ❌ problem. What you need to 👀 out for is becoming bound to hell. Keep that in 🧠.”

“Watch that you do not ''cling to'' hell, boy.”

Kamijou decided to assume hell was always hostile.

And that it would pull out all the stops on violence and deception.

He heard a rustling sound.

He turned toward it and saw something there.

A muscular macho man with a bull’s head was carrying a humongous axe.

Was this a random encounter!? What were the “land mines” he had to avoid here? Was he really supposed to keep going without knowing the rules of hell!?

“Hey, wait, wh-what is this all of a sudden!?”

“Good question. A Greek harpy or minotaur as a gatekeeper is a very odd thing for a Christian-based hell.”

“That is not what I meant! Quit grinning at me like thaaaaaaaat!!!”

Even as Kamijou shouted, he clenched his right fist.

Would that help here?

Did he even still have Imagine Breaker now that he was dead? And even if he did, he had no clue if it would work against that mountain of muscle!!

The minotaur was a bipedal and muscular monster standing what looked to be 3m tall. It raised an ultra-heavy axe that rivaled the minotaur itself in size. The wind roared as the air was compressed. That axe had the unmistakable weight and glint of steel. At the very least, the weapon part didn’t look like an illusion.

Oh, I might be screwed.

Just as that thought came to the spiky-haired boy, Anna Kingsford and Christian Rosencreutz each took a step forward. The two experts both waved their right index finger.

Casually.

The great mountain of muscle was sliced through diagonally down from each shoulder, forming an X-shape.

The minotaur didn’t seem to have any weight. Instead of its pieces falling to the ground, they turned to thin shadows and vanished into nothingness.

The two experts didn’t seem to care much.

“That should do it. Since we have descended from earth to hell, the heaven-to-earth format of the Sephiroth needed to be replaced with the Qliphoth, but it worked out well enough. It would seem magic is still functional even in hell.”

“Sigh. There really should ❌ have been a minotaur at this shallow a level. A world of 🧠 images must be more easily influenced than I thought.”

Kamijou had no words.

One was an expert of good, the other was the opposite.

They really were on a level far beyond Kamijou Touma’s understanding.

===Part 2===

They continued through the dark hell.

Hell as a whole was supposedly shaped like mortar, but it looked like their goal was to continue downwards. Kamijou didn’t know his way around, so he had no choice but to follow Kingsford. He wanted to avoid getting lost and ending up alone with ''the'' Rosencreutz.

(Also…)

His right hand.

Did it still have any power, or not?

He tried touching his palm to a nearby black rock.

Inconclusive.

The rock was a rock, but it showed no sign of disappearing. He couldn’t say for sure what that meant. He was only sure of one thing: he was probably making a fool of himself.

For his next test, he tried touching Rosencreutz.

“O-oh?”

No change.

Why wouldn’t that man just disappear?

Then again, Kingsford had suffered no ill effects from him taking her hand.

Even so, he couldn’t be certain about Imagine Breaker unless he saw something be unnaturally destroyed. Like maybe that unnecessarily long beard.

“Wh-why are you suddenly flirting with this old man? O-oh, my. Someone help! This boy is a molester!”

A touch from his right hand proved nothing.

And he had another question.

“What did you mean about hell being influenced?”

He meant the question for Kingsford, but Rosencreutz answered (while trembling for some reason).

“Ultimately, it is possible god didn’t give all that much thought to hell compared to heaven. It is described in Revelation, but modern people are as influenced by hymns and Paradise Lost as they are by the Bible and academic books.”

“Is it really that vague? I mean, aren’t heaven and hell a pretty core or root part of the entire mythology?”

“Tartarus, Niflheim, the Eight Great Hells, Yomi, and all other ideas of the realm of the dead are no more than phases placed on top of the physical world. But once you enter one, you can never return to the basic physical world.”

That made it sound like ''this'' was found alongside the ordinary streets and parks, just behind a thin layer of reality. That was hard to believe while seeing it from the hell side.

“Also, everyone views hell differently. The 16th century Dutch view gives the demons of hell an opposition party and a master accountant – that is, a treasurer in charge of the demonic kingdom’s finances.”

“In that system, the supposedly wild and vicious 👿s did ❌ have free use of 💷.”

“But no matter how many conceptions of hell you consider, you will never find one that is correct. Which is why you can’t exactly be angry about the inclusion of non-biblical ideas.”

In other words, anything goes.

In that case, why couldn’t this be a hell with a tiny silver-haired and horned goth loli demon lord seated in an oversized throne and full of succubi in the kind of sexy underwear that makes it look like they lost a bet? The Transcendents who cosplayed as gods and demons had the Bologna Succubus, didn’t they!? That meant the original sexy young woman she was based on had to exist as a “species” in some world myth! There, he had an excuse!! Now he could finally transform this horrific hell into a wonderful picnic!!!

“Boy, you assume the Western hell is crawling with demons, don’t you? In truth, hell is managed by angels like Uriel, Kushiel, Anafiel, and Mastema. Hell is not a lawless realm of demons – it is a part of the omniscient and omnipotent god’s plan for all parts of the world from heaven to hell. A place where humans have their souls removed and laundered after they make a deal with the devil? That is no more than an idea created by folklore and fiction.”

“…”

Had it already been influenced that much?

The majority of Kamijou’s knowledge came from video games, so he was completely out of luck.

He could at least pick up that he wasn’t going to find a tiny silver-haired and horned goth loli demon lord seated in an oversized throne or any succubi in the kind of sexy underwear that makes it look like they lost a bet. Apparently this was a place bound by more serious rules than that. Was he allowed to despair yet? What fun was a hell like this!? Supposedly this was what god had created as part of his plan, but what kind of loving god would create that bull-head minotaur instead of a busty loli in a cow print bikini (who was actually super strong)!!!???

Maybe it was wrong to be looking for fun in hell.

The idea of the good guys managing hell reminded Kamijou of Lord Enma.

Kingsford laughed.

“But this vagueness can be exploited. We can manipulate this hell with our 🧠 images.”

Manipulate hell.

Kamijou knew better than to think it was really that simple.

That was a miracle only possible with the help of monsters like Christian Rosencreutz and Anna Kingsford. If an ordinary person wandered into this undefined hell, they would wander endlessly through the nightmarish world without any hope of finding their bearings, until they were so worn down their soul itself was snuffed out.

(I need to be careful. Who knows what we could come across from here on.)

They had already seen a minotaur.

It was easy to overlook thanks to the two experts, but if Kamijou had been alone, he was certain he would have been helplessly pummeled to death.

As the three of them continued walking through the shadows while a wind blew through, two rising shapes came into view in the distance.

(Are those mountains?)

Kamijou tried to ask that aloud, but his throat suddenly went dry and the words never came out.

He had a bad feeling about this.

But what was it this time? A hell of precipitous mountains or a hell of fire and ice? Since this was hell, he doubted whatever it was would be any fun. He honestly wanted to stop and assess what they were approaching, but Rosencreutz and Kingsford plowed on ahead.

“Hey, wait…”

“Nothing good will come of 🛑ing.”

“This is hell, after all.”

The spiky-haired boy had no choice but to keep up with them. He wasn’t even remotely emotionally ready, but being left alone in these shadows would be far worse.

As Kamijou Touma reluctantly approached the two mystery mountains, their shape gradually came into view.

He was speechless.

The two towering shapes were a pair of enormous breasts.

“Um!?”

The spiky-haired boy collapsed on the spot.

Supposedly, their thoughts could influence hell, but it was obvious whose thoughts were at work here. Because the other two were serious, expert-level magicians! And while he really didn’t want to accept it, those colossal boobs were very clearly contained in a swimsuit!!

It couldn’t be more obvious what Kamijou Touma had been looking at to put that image in his mind.

That swimsuit was very familiar.

Plus, there was only one woman in the group.

The glasses woman walking right there was wearing a racing swimsuit! And she was more casual about it than the people at a Los Angeles beach! The shape, the firmness, and the way they seemed ready to swell right out of the swimsuit were all identical to that gentle woman!!

(This is hell.)

The teenager wanted to die of embarrassment, but he wasn’t even allowed that.

Because Kamijou Touma was already dead.

He felt like his spine was twisting and his entire body was itching, but all he could do was shed tears of blood and clench his teeth.

Intentionally manipulating hell was apparently ultra-high-level magic, but uncontrollably influencing it appeared to be a different story.

(This really is hell!! Just standing here is damaging me more than any demon ever could!!!)

“Oh, dear. Oh, my, my, my.”

Anna Kingsford placed a hand on her cheek and gave a wonderfully elegant smile. There was no bitterness in it. And even that action was enough to cause some jiggling. Kamijou would have preferred it if she yelled at him and zapped him. The unconcerned deflection of his teenage desire was far more painful. Why couldn’t she at least rebuke him?

Christian Rosencreutz stared into the middle distance.

He appeared to understand.

“If you ask this old man, the blame lies in the careless woman who chose to dress like that and jiggle everywhere.”

“N-now this is true misfortune. I can’t believe I’m getting pity from a weirdo like him…”

Kamijou hung his head and trembled with humiliation.

He couldn’t bring himself to look at the colossal boobs that symbolized his sin. He wanted to get away from here as quickly as possible. That was the only thing driving him as he somehow managed to get his legs moving again. They did choose to avoid the mystery boob mountains because they had no idea what kind of powerful enemies or traps might be waiting there.

Once Kamijou had finally shaken free of his past mistake, he managed to look out ahead again.

He saw a pair of mountains.

Of jiggling fruits.

Together, they formed a colossal butt.

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………My ''what'' is colossal?”

She came to a stop.

While still smiling. The dense pressure radiating from the glasses woman was intense. Kamijou hung his head and couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye. Apparently Anna Kingsford was the type to overlook a first mistake but never a second. Her warmth with the boobs had vanished.

But this was the same.

The shape, the firmness, the way the swimsuit rode up into it.

She was wearing a pareo over it, but he could tell! Because it occasionally swept backwards or blew upwards!!

CRC came to the teenager’s defense.

He roared with unclouded eyes.

“Put some clothes on before you scold the boy!! This old man is taking the boy’s side. Heh heh, ha ha ha ha ha! Why are you wearing so little over your enormous breasts and butt when this isn’t even a midsummer beach!? Gweh heh heh! Are you so unsatisfied you felt the need to seduce the poor boy!!?”

“Stop pouring oil on the fire for your own entertainment!! I’m the one who will catch all the flak for it!!” shouted Kamijou, bristling.

He took it all back. Rosencreutz might be able to enjoy himself since he was a monster, but they were up against an expert like Kingsford here. What would that curvy woman do if she got mad? A single “eek, pervert!” slap would snap Kamijou’s neck and send his head flying from his shoulders. And what happened to him if he lost his head in hell where he was already dead!?

“Boy, if you let safe and peaceful sex appeal rule the conversation, you might just be able to prevent a truly dangerous threat from rearing its ugly head.”

“Don’t give me an out, CRC. I might try to take it.”

Then the boy tried to change the subject.

While looking up at the colossal swimsuit butt.

“So what do we do now?”

The terrain wasn’t going to change into a brutal dungeon whenever he got hungry or tired and wanted a break, was it? Kamijou was worried. He only had a vague understanding of it, but wasn’t gluttony one of the Seven Deadly Sins that often appeared as bosses in video games?”

===Part 3===

Hell continued on and on.

They kept trudging along.

The place was apparently shaped like a bowl, but how many levels did it have in all? The clear jigsaw puzzle-like pieces of CRC’s miniature model were still clinking against each other without fitting together, so they could see the overall shape but not their exact position.

“Phew.”

After walking for a while, an odd thought occurred to Kamijou.

Hell was a dark, unpleasant place crawling with dangerous monsters. But when he just stood there, he didn’t feel any strong rejection to being there, like the intense pain or suffering of being in a fire or underwater.

He more felt an emptiness or blandness.

He had a vague idea staying here for too long would be a bad idea, but there were times when he wondered if coming to stop was really such a big problem.

If there was no immediate danger, was there any need to hurry on like this?

“Not wanting to die is a perfectly normal thing for living people,” said Rosencreutz as he walked nimbly alongside Kamijou. “That is because their instincts bind them there as long as they remain alive. Like the proverbial drowning man grasping at straws, their instincts will generally overpower their rational mind. Even if they have no dreams or hopes for the future, everyone knows dying is painful and frightening. So even without a reason to live, they will not want to die. Living people are fixed in that state.”

“Fixed?”

“Indeed. But the same is not true of the dead,” continued CRC, viewing a few unsteady shadows passing by in the darkness up ahead. “Because once they lose their life, they are freed from the bonds – the instincts – of life. Boy, do you have a dream for the future? Or a hope? Now that you are dead, you cannot rely on the ordinary instincts of a living being. Which means if you are to live, you must find an answer with your rational mind.”

“You mean…?”

“You can no longer rely on the lazy delaying factor of ''not dying simply because you do not want to die''. Your values and definitions have changed since you were alive. For the dead, being dead is the default state, so it is a very painful thing to wish strongly to return to life ''no matter what it might take''. You must find a purpose equally strong to the purposes that motivate the living to accept death.”

Before, he hadn’t died because he hadn’t wanted to die.

To overcome that required the willpower to sit down below the water and keep yourself there until your breathing stopped and death arrived.

Now, he didn’t live because he didn’t want to live.

How much willpower would it require to overcome that?

Was the pain and suffering of fighting his current “state of being” what Kingsford had meant by making a jailbreak from hell?

“…”

Kamijou stopped breathing.

Nothing felt wrong.

It wasn’t pleasant. He felt the pain of not breathing, but nothing more than that. He wasn’t afraid. He felt like he could keep doing this indefinitely as long as he didn’t decide to stop.

Did he have a powerful enough purpose?

Did he have a dream for the future? Did he have any hopes he wanted to ensure came true? Of course he wasn’t going to find anything like that. He was a 1st year in high school, so he wouldn’t be preparing for college or trying to find a job anytime soon.

He had always thought he didn’t want to die.

But he had accepted death to save Alice Anotherbible.

He had pushed himself to the limit.

And he really had died.

…It all made perfect sense. So what was there to complain about? Sure, dying was normally considered a painful thing, but he had taken that journey to accomplish what had to be done. And he had done it. So why should he keep fighting, keep struggling, and cling to the material world now that he was a ghost or a soul?

Attachment?

:Regrets?

::Or a grudge even?

Did he really have something like that in his heart?

“Oh, dear. It seems this bland hell has affected you faster than I 💭.”

“Affected?”

“🎯.”

Kamijou frowned and Kingsford nodded without turning toward him.

She spoke casually.

“That is how hell works. It removes one’s regrets about and ⛓️ to the world of the living so they will eternally wander this world of punishment. Thus, what you are feeling was ❌ born within you. You must ❌ let this false resignation deceive you. That is only the great device known as hell externally manipulating you. In a most efficient and effective manner.”

“But…”

Kamijou was hesitant to speak.

Like he was ashamed by the emptiness within him.

“Rosencreutz was right. You will normally grasp at straws when drowning. Because you can’t breathe. But what if you don’t breathe? Do you need to grasp at the straws then? If you can remain below the water without issue, why would you need to swim up to the distant surface? I am dead. That’s a fact. I have no dreams for the future. I can’t think of any reason why I would want to go to such lengths to come back to life.”

“❌.”

Kamijou himself couldn’t come up with anything, but Kingsford had an answer immediately.

An expert never made mistakes.

“You do, Kamijou Touma. You must clench your 🦷, crawl through the mud, and do whatever else it takes to escape hell and return to the world of the living. You have an all too obvious reason.”

“?”

Kamijou didn’t understand.

Anna Kingsford pointed her index finger to the side and moved it in a circle.

What kind of trick was she using?

A girl sat below a spotlight there. A silver-haired green-eyed girl in a white nun’s habit with gold embroidery decorating it like a fancy teacup.

What had that expert just done!?

“Wha-? That’s…Index?”

Kamijou’s eyes widened, but Christian Rosencreutz simply looked bored. Apparently this wasn’t worthy of surprise for another expert.

“Hmph. ''Made a connection,'' did you? But it’s only a pinhole.”

“Well, yes. The Qliphoth is a 🗺️ of the entire realm of 👻s and curses, but it is also an access route from hell to earth.”

That didn’t explain much for Kamijou.

But below the unseen surface, some kind of rules and laws must have fit together. Hell hadn’t counted this as a violation, but it sure seemed like a cheat or a loophole to Kamijou.

More importantly, that was Index.

Kamijou and Rosencreutz’s presence made sense – they were dead. But what was she doing here? Hadn’t Kingsford said this was hell – a destination for the dead!?

“Index!!”

“She can ❌ hear you. This is much like 👁️ing out through your front 🚪’s peephole.”

“Also, she isn’t here. You’re only spying on another territory located far from here. The world is made up of countless overlapping phases, but the distance between each phase is unimaginably great.”

“This is a different place. If you wish to open the 🚪 to meet her, you must first escape from this hell.”

“…”

Index wasn’t in hell.

That was a relief, at least.

He hesitantly reached out for her slender shoulder with his right hand, but stopped partway through the action. He didn’t know whether or not he still had Imagine Breaker, but negating this image of Index would be more than his heart could bear.

Maybe it was only an image, but he had finally seen Index again.

After he wasn’t even able to say goodbye.

“Touma…”

It felt like forever since he had heard that voice.

He relished the sound for just a moment. Because he had thought he would never hear it again.

But…

“Why did you have to die?”

He froze.

Index was seated on the ground and didn’t raise her head.

She looked anything but happy.

But wait.

Kamijou could accept his own death, but what did this mean for Index? She had been living in his dorm room. So had Othinus. He hadn’t seen Anna Sprengel since that time in the hospital, but she hadn’t even had a temporary place to stay.

And this wasn’t limited to the magic side.

He also had friends on the science side – in Academy City.

“How could I just let him die like that? And I call myself Academy City’s #3? I never even thanked that idiot. Not even for saving all my sisters!!”

This time, the image was of Misaka Mikoto.

She was hanging her head and her voice had no strength to it.

And it wasn’t just that special Level 5. He should have started the third school term like normal after the final day of winter break, but now he wouldn’t be able to see any of his classmates.

What about New Board Chairman Accelerator? He had directed all of Academy City’s forces against CRC because he bet on Kamijou winning. He had apparently been defeated by Trismegistus and taken out of the fight when Alice arose as a threat afterwards, but he had still bet on the city prevailing. He had trusted the rest of the city could solve the problem without him.

How had all that turned out in the end?

“We were classmates. Of course I just assumed you’d be here. …What do you mean I can never see you ever again, Kami-yan?”

“Everyone, please gather in the gym first thing that day. Sob. We will be heading out to the funeral afterwards, so the opening ceremony is going to take up the full half day.”

The mood in the classroom was bleak.

One desk stood out from the rest by having no one sitting in it.

Those classmates were seeing each other for the first time since before the break. They had to have plenty they wanted to share, but not one of them was smiling. They were all turning emotionless eyes toward the empty seat.

“…”

This wasn’t right.

Kamijou had an extremely bad feeling. Like realizing he had buttoned his shirt up wrong. Or like he had turned in a test with supreme confidence, but then couldn’t remember if he had actually written his name on it.

He was satisfied with his death.

But…had he actually thought that through?

And.

And.

And.

The last person to appear in the spotlight was Alice Anotherbible. The girl who had used herself as the ingredients to remake herself. The girl Kamijou had risked his one and only life to save.

But something wasn’t right.

Her head was lowered. Her shoulders were slumped. She wasn’t looking out ahead. Left all alone in an uninteresting world, she couldn’t bring herself to go anywhere.

What had happened to her?

“Al-”

But Kamijou Touma couldn’t speak to her.

Just before he tried, she whispered to herself.

“Teacher died.”

Kamijou’s shoulders shook.

He froze in place.

Her voice was void of all emotion. She sounded worn down. Like her life, her soul, or some other intangible something had critically worn away. She seemed in an even worse state than Kamijou who had wound up in hell.

Something felt intensely wrong to Kamijou.

He had made the right choice…he thought.

He had saved Alice.

He had seen no option except to sacrifice his life.

And he had succeeded, hadn’t he?

Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling.

He looked back at his choice over and over, confirming he had done the right thing, but the anxiety wouldn’t leave him.

He felt like he had missed some crucial fact, like he thought he had followed the bungee jump instructor’s directions flawlessly, but then, just before he jumped, he saw the other end of his lifeline dangling down, not connected to anything.

“The girl killed him. She shouldn’t have hoped he would save her. If only she hadn’t thought about making up with him. If the girl didn’t exist, none of this would have happened.”

She burned with resentment.

But it wasn’t directed at Kamijou who had died and left the stage, satisfied.

That girl was pure, innocent, and honest.

So.

That resentment was directed entirely at Alice Anotherbible.

She could no longer forgive herself.

“It’s all the girl’s fault. She is a murderer. …The girl wishes she had never been born.”

There wasn’t even noise.

Only an endless span of pure silence.

“No…”

Kamijou was trembling.

He couldn’t believe what he had just seen.

“No!! Are you kidding me with this!? This isn’t what I gave up my life to see! Was it all a waste…? I sacrificed my life and it still wasn’t enough!? I mean, Alice did nothing wrong. I chose to sacrifice my life. I’m satisfied with my choice. So why should Alice blame herself!?”

“But your 🗣️ can ❌ reach her.”

With that simple statement, Kingsford shook her head.

“If you look at just the objective and mechanical facts, Alice Anotherbible gave a ☠️ly wound to Kamijou Touma. …That is the whole of it. She ☠️ed you. The truth has a way of being omitted. Without you there to 💬 it was your strong willpower that burned away your life, the feelings behind the event have no way of reaching anyone. They can ❌ reach the 🌍 at large which burns with misguided accusations and they can ❌ reach little Alice who you tried to save.”

“But…”

“As things are, the mechanical fact that Alice Anotherbible ☠️ed Kamijou Touma is all that will remain. There is ❌ time. And if she accepts the plain and simple abbreviation as the truth, Alice herself will be crushed under its weight. She will believe she is a ☠️er who is ❌ allowed happiness. She will 🪤 herself in that mistaken definition and reduce her own value.”

“…”

“''Do you want to 👁️ her carry the burden of your ☠️ and choose for herself to fall? A meaningless fall taking her all the way to these depths?''”

Of course not.

It was so easy for the one who died.

He could experience satisfaction in his accomplishment and die. End of story.

But what about the one who killed him?

Was it easier for the victim or the killer? Kamijou had no way of determining that. But at the very least, Kamijou Touma was the satisfied victim while Alice had been made into the killer against her will. He didn’t even need to wait for Kingsford to say more. Why had he been so smugly certain he had saved her all on his own? This wasn’t right at all!!

What exactly had he done?

He had discovered a girl who had been wandering for so long, unable to seek out help. But instead of saving her, he had bloodied her hands and placed the crime of murder on her head.

That wasn’t her crime.

It had been Kamijou’s plan.

He had made the choice all on his own. She had never agreed to any of it.

So…

So why did she have to be crushed by his selfish actions!?

Anna Kingsford was always correct.

Which was why she was known as an expert.

“What will you do?”

“…”

A dull thud rang out.

Kamijou Touma had slammed his right fist into his own cheek.

The boy used the back of his hand to wipe the taste of blood from his lips.

For the living, being alive was the default state. For the dead, being dead was the default state. A dead person trying to force themselves back to life required just as much willpower as a living person keeping themselves underwater until they drowned.

That was probably true.

Kamijou had no job he wanted in the future and no dream he wanted to achieve. He didn’t even know if he wanted to get a job after high school or continue on to college.

But this was wrong.

It was wrong.

“Are you kidding me?”

He had done everything he could to save Alice Anotherbible, the girl who had wandered the wide world all alone and decided to destroy it all. He had accepted that maybe he had no choice but to lose his one and only life to accomplish that goal.

But what if it didn’t end with his death?

What if he hadn’t actually saved anyone?

What if his death had been wasted, or even made things worse? What if his final choice had only dragged Alice even deeper down toward the depths of hell?

Then he had to start by destroying that illusion.

Kamijou Touma clenched his right fist as hard as he could.

He raised his lowered head to stare straight ahead. So he could accurately view the exit from hell.

He felt real strength once more.

===Part 4===

No compromise.

He would challenge reality, surpass reality, and return to reality.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter3

2026-06-10T22:40:30Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==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 any more 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.jpg|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 her 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.jpg|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:GT Volume10 Chapter2

2026-06-10T22:40:06Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Chapter 2: Welcome to the Psychedelic – Little_Queen_Wonderland.==

===Part 1===

The District 10 prison contained a maximum-security cell in its greatest depths.

That cell acted as New Board Chairman Accelerator’s headquarters.

“You say you have information on Alice Anotherbible?”

“I do.”

The big screen TV embedded in the wall displayed Mina Mathers…apparently.

She was the self-proclaimed black cat witch he had encountered in the Academy City night once.

“As Academy City’s new king, you must be at least a little aware of the world outside your city’s walls. I won’t ask that you refine your own life force into magic power and construct spells, but you should know there is a mystical power other than Academy City’s espers.”

“So it’s about that side of things, is it?”

“Half the world is covered by something you could never find even when searching using your full authority. It’s simple really. When investigating the science side doesn’t turn up any answers, you should assume you are looking at a product of the magic side.”

Accelerator clicked his tongue.

Maybe it was a problem that he only had the artificial demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 to assist his decisions regarding these things.

As useful as she was, there was only one of her. Which made her an Achilles’ heel.

He needed at least two. Preferably three.

He doubted Qliphah Puzzle 545 would let it go to her head or be corrupted by it, but the greater her importance, the greater the risk of an enemy attacking her. Increasing his options wouldn’t decrease that risk to zero, but reducing the risk to more comfortable levels would be a task for later.

But for now…

“Tell me what you know. I can decide for myself if I believe you.”

“I never said I was handing over this information for free.”

“You’re trying to negotiate at this point?”

An icy mood set in.

The rioters flooding the streets were even now gradually destroying Academy City.

Anti-Skill and Judgment had been issued live ammunition, but even with high-level espers among the rioters, city residents firing on other city residents would only expand the damage to the city.

The only people to benefit from that were Alice and the Transcendents, outsiders who were distorting the city. That would let them destroy the city, and the world along with it, for free.

They needed to be swiftly attacked to shut off that deadly tap.

As soon as possible.

If Mina Mathers was using that crisis to jack up the price for her information, she had some nerve.

Accelerator was the new Board Chairman.

It was up to him what kind of city Academy City grew to be.

“I am not exactly on Academy City’s side. I am not even a pure member of the science side anymore. Thus, I am sharing what information I believe will benefit me to share. I lose all reason to share it if that condition is not met.”

“…”

“Go to Aleister Crowley. You can place me on your blacklist if you like, but not that human. He has already died once in the UK and died a second time to atone for his sins. No sin is greater than death and that human accepted his death of his own free will. I know you are the successor he directly gave his code list to, but you have no reason to treat your predecessor so harshly. In times of crisis, why not go to him for advice?”

“What’s this?”

Out of nowhere, a new voice interrupted the call without Accelerator’s authorization.

A wholly unknown line had managed to access this maximum security prison.

This was the work of a human who, in a way, knew Academy City even more thoroughly than Accelerator did.

He looked a lot different than he had when Accelerator had received the code list, however.

“It looks like the processor I built is troubling you for no good reason. She might act all wicked, but her thought processes were designed to never do anything truly bad. Whatever happens, she will hand over the information regarding Alice Anotherbible in the end. She isn’t like you or me, so rest easy.”

“Aleister. I am currently using what information I have to hold an official negotiation from an Academy City general contact point. I will be fair, so would you kindly back off and stop interrupting?”

“What has you so upset? This isn’t like you at all. People might not like me very much, but everyone can tell how skilled you are. If you prove your skill as Mina Mathers and establish an official channel with Academy City, I’m sure they will hear you out.”

“(Do you not get that my name alone isn’t enough to manage that, you lonely idiot?)”

“Leave me out of this, dumbasses,” grumbled Accelerator.

That inhuman tsundere was a pain in the ass.

“So are you giving me your information or not?” he said.

“Ahem. Fine, I will. But do remember that this is repaying a debt owed by a certain human, not me. This gives me a bargaining chip to use with the new Board Chairman.”

“Mina. I hate to interrupt when you’re trying to sound threatening by lowering your voice like that, but I can hear a baby crying from off camera. You can leave this web meeting and go comfort her if you like.”

“And who’s child do you think that is? Did you think shoving your baby onto a babysitter counted as doing your duty as a parent, you neglectful moron?”

Even as she said this, Mina Mathers was doing something off camera that produced delighted giggles.

And she got back on topic.

“The oldest instance of the term Anotherbible I found was during the early 20th century in the outskirts of London, England. Aleister, you wouldn’t have been there at the time because you had left on your world trip with your wife Rose.”

“You mean something happened in England while I was away?”

“A new trend began at the time. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland became recognized as a grimoire and a theory was formed that you could understand and manipulate the structure of the world if you understood all the hidden meaning written in that book. Of course this ''goes beyond'' the surface text and whatever Lewis Carroll was seeing and imagining at the time. This included ‘decoding’ the text by replacing it with numbers and rearranging or reordering them.”

“I see. Hence ‘another bible’.”

“Yes. Plenty of magic cabals attempted to forcibly decode the bible based on their own independent rules, but here people were doing this with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland instead.”

It was obvious what the unseen magician at the time would have wanted.

A medium that faithfully reproduced Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Magic in the form of a human.

“If you wanted the details to be as precise as possible, there would have been only one starting point you would want to use.”

Needless to say, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was fiction.

Wonderland and Alice did not actually exist.

But with all that in mind, Mina Mathers had an answer.

“Alice Pleasance Liddell.”

Silence followed.

Mina Mathers continued speaking like a machine.

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was not originally written as a story to be published for a general audience. It is based on Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, a story the mathematician Lewis Carroll told a girl named Alice and a few others on July 4, 1862. So while the children’s story itself is complete fiction, the heroine was modeled after someone who did exist.”

“Are you saying some magician abducted her and thoroughly modified her, creating the current Alice Anotherbible?”

“If so, it makes sense why the regular Transcendents respect Alice as their prototype or model. They have not actually seen Alice’s skeleton or the arrangement of her organs. They have extracted and duplicated something else – the actual spell that thoroughly modified the girl called Alice and turned her into ‘Another Bible’ – and they have applied it to themselves. That is how they developed their ''divine cosplay spell'' that allows them to wear the appearances and abilities of gods.”

That was Alice Anotherbible’s identity.

She had ''once been'' a perfectly ordinary girl.

The person who had been the model for a children’s story had been remade into a fairy tale heroine.

From reality to story and from story to reality – the link between truth and fiction had become twisted like a Möbius strip.

And a single spell had made this possible.

“Honestly. Fairy tales and children’s stories are extremely useful for creating the mental images needed to focus the mind and enter a meditative state, but how did people get it in their heads that a children’s story points to the truth of the world? I can’t believe someone took it so far they actually kind of succeeded. The very idea is giving me a headache.”

“Don’t act so innocent, Aleister.”

“?”

“I’m sure you’ve already suspected, but you, Aleister Crowley, were the one who strongly recommended people read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for its magical correspondences. Or do I need to cite the exact grimoire and page number in which you said so?”

“…”

“You said an expert in Kabbalah would see the true value of the book, but I suspect you were just saying things. On the same page, you also recommend Dracula, a popular book at the time. You also recommended Maugham’s The Magician, which painted you in a rather unkind light. You went as far as calling it a must-read and introduced it to all your friends. For your own amusement. It is well-known you wrote these things deep in your grimoires, but I am sure you were verbally publicizing them well before that.”

…Accelerator sighed.

It wasn’t exactly unusual for your past to come back and bite you long after you thought you’d left it behind.

But not even the #1 had guided the world to destruction based on jokes and pranks.

“So are you saying an apprentice of mine is behind this?”

“It happened too long ago for that. There are traces of them already being active at the time of your arrival. So calling them your teacher might be more accurate.”

“Heh heh,” someone laughed.

It appeared to be Aleister.

“My teacher, huh?”

“Who would that be?” asked Accelerator.

“Beats me.”

“You expect me to believe you’ve never met this person? Give me a break. We’re talking about whoever taught you magic.”

“There are simply too many candidates for a supposed ‘Teacher of Crowley’. Because I’m just that famous. Be it my parents, my relatives, my schoolteachers, or anyone at the different magic cabals I belonged to, everyone with even the slightest connection to me falls into two general categories: those who want to act like they have nothing to do with me and those who want to take credit for teaching me everything I know. Needless to say, the later category is much larger. The people who knew me directly tend to dislike me, but the people with more indirect connections tend to worship me.”

“…”

“And so, ever since ''my official death'' in 1947, there has been no shortage of magicians the world over who claim to be my teacher. Including modern ones, even though that makes no chronological sense whatsoever. But if this person contacted Alice Pleasance Liddell when she was alive, and not just her preserved corpse, they wouldn’t have been too far off from my time. Still, I have no clue who they might be. The most I can say is they were one of the many skilled magician found all over the world.”

The accumulation of history had its pros and cons.

Accelerator was the new Board Chairman and the #1 Level 5, but this was a different kind of distortion.

“Now, the standard assumption on the magic side is that every magician that came about after I received the Book of the Law from Aiwass in 1904 has been influenced by me to some extent. In the modern era, the concept of the occult has already been ''remade'' by me. Of course, there are probably some cowards hiding in the depths of the world who would disagree out of sour grapes. But at the very least, it is impossible to learn magic today without being even slightly influenced by me.”

“Don’t forget that you also rewrote the definition of science,” said Mina Mathers. “To be scientific does not mean to be superior or more realistic. Before you were born, there was no clear division between science and magic. There was only the pursuit of knowledge of the natural world. For example, during the 19th century, the Golden cabal was seen as a secret salon where academics, poets, actresses, and intellectuals from a variety of industries gathered. Magic was seen as a proper study of the world, not the pursuit of eccentrics who refuse to face reality. Aleister, you so loathed the cabals, you changed those definitions so ‘scientific’ refers to a belief in reality and you spread that new definition around the world to create the foundation of the today’s science-centric worldview. This in turn reduced magic and the occult to toys for stubborn freaks.”

There was such a thing as being too influential. This was the perfect example of how charisma could be a harmful thing.

Did this mean you could not escape Aleister Crowley’s influence unless you hid on the dark side of the moon?

“Hey, I don’t know exactly what they used, but this Teacher of Crowley, whoever they might be, got carried away and screwed it up, right?” said Accelerator. “Can’t you clean up this mess? If you know how they do things, you can’t tell me there’s nothing you can do.”

“There are different kinds of failure,” replied Aleister with a hint of exasperation. Probably because he had seen the fate of the Golden cabal with his own eyes. “If an experiment is a dud, there’s no problem, but that isn’t the only kind of failure. For example, what if someone built an experimental reactor without the appropriate knowledge and they screwed up operating it, triggering uncontrolled nuclear fission?”

“…”

“Alice exists. ''And she was definitely too great a success''. But the magician who created her is nowhere to be found. A magic user capable of creating her would stand out for better or for worse, but there hasn’t been any hint of them. Do you still not get it? This Teacher of Crowley may have been a Golden member I met at some point, or they could be a butcher or pub drunk with no connection to me at all, but whoever they are, they’re long since dead. My guess is, shortly after they completed Alice Anotherbible, they became their own greatest accomplishment’s first victim. They would have been annihilated to the point you could search the world with a fine-toothed comb and never find their remains or even a shred of their thoughts.”

He snorted with laughter.

With the cynical look of seeing a craftsman fall victim to the very torture device they had invented.

That human could see the humor in such things.

Aleister had developed such violent Level 5s in Academy City, but he had avoided having them directly threaten him. If the seven of them had worked together, they likely could have reduced the city to rubble, but despite nearly all of them having some kind of gripe with or grudge against Academy City, they had strangely never done that. The Level 5s might briefly join forces by random chance, but this never lasted long. But who did this benefit most? Had they been ''well managed'' in a way Alice’s creator had failed to do?

At any rate, Alice Anotherbible’s foundation was deeply rooted in the Crowley-style magic known as Magick.

Since the magician who had abducted Alice Pleasance Liddell was not an actual acquaintance of his, he wouldn’t directly understand the spell used, but as the creator of the framework behind Modern Western Magic, Aleister might be able to determine how it worked based on fragmentary knowledge.

There was hope.

That human had abandoned Academy City, so Accelerator was extremely reluctant to place him in a central position that could influence the city’s future, but since this had to do with magic, he would just have to let Qliphah Puzzle 545 keep an eye on things.

But just as he made that decision, Accelerator suddenly looked up.

“Who’s there?”

Several straight lines ran through the thick, explosion-resistant prison wall as it was sliced through, the pieces crumbling away once gravity took over.

That wall was made of the same stuff as the Windowless Building which could theoretically withstand a vector attack by the #1, but it was so easily sliced through from the outside, ''which was in fact the back side''.

“Hey.”

Accelerator stayed where he was.

He let out a growling voice while seated on the bed.

“I asked who the hell you are. If you aren’t answering, it means you’ve got a deficiency of either brains or manners. I’m not going to leave this cell, but if anyone’s stupid enough to come in here with me, I can’t guarantee they’ll leave alive.”

He heard a quiet metallic click. It was the sound of a thin blade returning to its sheath disguised as a cane.

And a black-haired young butler bowed politely beyond the rubble.

“H.T. Trismegistus,” he said.

“…”

“How you run your city is none of my concern. Except if it will anger my Alice and send her on a rampage. That would be rather troublesome. ...As for you two outsiders, common sense says this is the difficulty level you should be considering.”

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW2.jpg|thumb]]

===Part 2===

Little Anna Sprengel was miffed.

She had been left behind.

And to add insult to injury, Kamijou Touma ''had not disappeared on his own.

In their eyes, was she no different from the calico cat curled up in a corner of the room?

In a hurry to leave the dorm, she threw open the front door, hesitated, and realized it was meaningless. She had no idea where Kamijou or Alice would be.

(Alice Anotherbible’s irregular behavior isn’t that fool’s responsibility alone. He could have blamed me for intentionally derailing her from her position as an ordinary Transcendent.)

Alice Anotherbible was certainly extraordinary.

Even a thorough understanding of the hidden Rosicrucian arts wasn’t enough to defeat her head on.

But there was a way to deal with her.

And sneaking around doing the dirty work needed to make the impossible possible was a villain’s specialty. Had he forgotten Anna had already successfully gained access to Alice while the Bridge Builders Cabal protected her and given the girl an interest in Kamijou Touma like he was a picture book protagonist?

(That fool had better not be so stupid he snuck out because he didn’t want to pressure me to do that kind of dirty work.)

“Argh!! I guess I have to start with narrowing down the possible locations with some divination. Breaking the rules is more my style anyway. And I doubt anyone other than Kamijou Touma and Alice Anotherbible could come up with the correct answer anyway.”

Of course, she didn’t think she could just divine the answer with tarot cards or a crystal ball.

Nothing was that easy when it came to Alice Anotherbible.

But she was a Secret Chief’s priestess and magical knowledge was a rarity in Academy City. What would it mean if something in this city forcibly repelled her search?

That would be where those two were.

Real scrying did not require a crystal ball. Anna used a thick permanent marker to color a magnifying glass black.

“Okay, you had better not get yourself killed before I arrive, fool!!”

===Part 3===

Where was Kamijou’s school?

That was actually a tricky question because he had two schools: his original school that was destroyed by Magic God High Priest and the school he had been temporarily using after that destruction.

Neither answer was definitively correct. No one could work out a logical answer.

Kamijou himself just had to go with his gut.

Just like the storybook girl had wandered Wonderland as her whims led her.

He ended up choosing his original high school.

Academy City’s technology was 20-30 years ahead of the outside world. Magic God High Priest, the Elements, and so many other threats had smashed up the city, but it had been redeveloped or repaired back to its original form in an extremely short time.

Kamijou’s school was no exception.

No one who didn’t know it had been destroyed would think it had been rebuilt. The large school building, the dirt schoolyard, the pool, the gym, and the other additional structures were still covered in construction scaffolding and thick soundproofing sheets, but it was all already complete. It looked a bit like a present waiting to be unwrapped. The usual school was there like usual.

“That’s incredible,” muttered 15cm Othinus from his shoulder.

Kamijou frowned.

Sure, it was impressive, but it was nothing more than science. While she had lost her obvious powers, she was still a Magic God. Was Academy City’s construction technology really enough for her to gasp over?

“That isn’t what I meant at all. But I suppose it isn’t your fault you can’t sense ley line fluctuations and distortions. You will understand once you set foot inside. This is something you can’t avoid if you want to meet with Alice.”

“?”

They arrived at the school’s front gate.

It was getting late at night, but the sliding metal gate was open for some reason.

As soon as Kamijou stepped through, the world changed.

But this wasn’t a visible change in the color or light.

Still, he grimaced as soon as he stepped through.

It wasn’t quite like a bog.

This was much worse. To the point that trying to comprehend it by giving it a name would break his mind.

He had to focus on the costs and his stamina.

He couldn’t afford any wasted effort.

From here on, every step he took would put his life at risk.

He was only a high school boy and he could tell that.

“If Alice wanted, she could have changed the world you see before you in any way she liked,” said War God Othinus from his shoulder. “The consulate in District 12 is a good example of that.”

“I thought the other Transcendents made that.”

“You need to assume Alice can do anything the regular Transcendents can. In fact, her version is probably the original.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Did you really think the Bridge Builders Cabal members created that divine cosplay spell all on their own without any hints to work off of? Remember, these are the people who abandoned their magic names and relied on someone else because they knew they could never achieve their goals themselves. …You can think of the regular Transcendents as custom products created by taking the open-source Alice ''Anotherbible'' and tweaking the details to fit their preferences. Where Alice came from, I couldn’t tell you.”

Othinus spoke harshly, but she was that way about everyone on Earth.

In fact…

“Hm? I don’t sense much scorn in your voice there, god.”

“Because I have no real reason to feel scornful,” readily replied the ''real god''.

This wasn’t about what was correct. They simply used different methods. She spoke like a living national treasure of a dancer appreciating the younger people in a phone video who were simply enjoying moving their bodies.

Apparently that was analogous to the one-eyed girl who had gathered faith and polished her skills until she became known as a god and the Transcendents who had chosen various gods and dressed up as them.

“Do not forget that magic itself is a way of breaking the rules. The world of magic is an absurd place where the kind of decent person who stops when the ordinary methods can take them no further are ridiculed as hardheaded. When a magician senses their power is insufficient, they do not run into the wall of reality and give up – they continue struggling to achieve their goal regardless and this comes entirely naturally to them. …Plus, the top Norse god is a god of deception. Have you forgotten that I became a Magic God by defeating Ollerus and stealing his future and possibilities?”

“…”

“Either way, I’m the person ''selfish'' enough to abandon the world of my birth to obtain an understander. Still, I wouldn’t consider throwing out everything I am inside and out to dress up as a different god.”

This was all on such a large scale Kamijou wasn’t sure what to make of it.

He had never imagined the day would come when the word “god” had any relevance to the real world.

Both as a reliable ally.

And as a very real threat.

“Basically, Alice is an extraordinary being who can build a bridge between reality and any proposed theory or concept, no matter how inaccurate or contradictory it might be. It could be the geocentric model, phlogiston, conspiracy theories about the moon landing being fake, that the Y2K problem would cause the world’s computers to run wild and destroy the world, that neutrinos travel faster than light, or anything else. The Anotherbible provides freedom on a level far beyond even the framework of magic. It might be faster to just say there is effectively nothing she can’t do.”

The 15cm eyepatch girl, who existed here like normal, sighed with exasperation and looked to the school once more.

“But despite all that, Alice decided this was the best shape for this place. That shows a fixation, doesn’t it? It implies that using her all-powerful crafting to alter even a single side path or building corner would cause her to lose all interest in the place.”

“…”

“But whatever shape it takes, this is already Alice’s castle. Human, this world will not be kind to you.”

The density of death was growing.

Kamijou always had to contend with misfortune, but tonight was different.

It was intentional.

This world was designed for someone.

It had been remade for that purpose. If everything, even the unseen probabilities, would bare their fangs against any intruders, what could Kamijou Touma hope to do?

“Prepare yourself, human,” whispered Magic God Othinus.

Had she sniffed this out as a god of war, or as a god of magic and deception?

“Something’s coming.”

===Part 4===

District 7 had a certain iron bridge.

While most main streets were aflood with costumed rioters, that bridge alone didn’t have even a single car driving on it. Although it may have been better to say they ''weren’t allowed'' to.

Only a few people occupied the bridge.

It was Transcendents vs. Transcendents.

Given what spells they had, they didn’t even need to cross the bridge on foot and there wasn’t just one route leading to “A Certain High School” that had become the center point of the world’s distortions.

Still, they had all chosen to gather here.

No one had told them to, but here they all were.

Perhaps making the conscious decision to cross a river acted as a sort of ritual.

“Well, we did decide to help him because we could easily predict this would happen.”

“So from the cabal’s perspective, are we traitors to Alice?”

“These opportunists scattered the instant Alice died and came back as soon as they learned she was alive again. Their word doesn’t carry enough weight to stop the goddess of witches.”

Seeing Aradia give a snort, Good, Old Mary shook her head in her large hat.

“You certainly have taken a liking to that boy.”

“Wha-buh-no- I have no idea what you mean by that.”

“That isn’t very convincing after the stammering.”

“Well, by any normal reckoning, I don’t see how any number of us regular Transcendents could hope to win against Alice Anotherbible ''herself''.”

The Bologna Succubus smiled bitterly and held her hands behind her head.

That much was true.

But their actions didn’t seem to agree.

“Yet here we are. I’d like to take that as our real answer.”

“The fight against CRC actually helped us in a way, Aradia. We no longer need to argue over our stance as individual Transcendents concerning that boy.”

“And I’d like to know why you think I’d agree with you on this!”

“That seems self-evident, you naughty girl.”

“Aye. She’s like the naughty girl next door who tries and fails to put on an intellectual front.”

“Aradia is naughty?”

The final comment from the expressionless brown-skinned girl made Aradia hang her head in despair.

“That’s just too much. Why am I being mocked by the goddess who instantly fell in love with that boy so hard you could practically hear the ‘kyun☆’ sound effect?”

“The fact that the punishment expert isn’t doing anything should be enough to know we don’t deserve any punishment.”

“Hm?”

Aradia, Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and head-tilting Mut Thebes had gathered to travel toward a certain high school, but they all stopped speaking to look in the same direction.

Because they weren’t the only ones here.

“Which tells me they’re the ones who need a beating.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

Vidhatri.

2nd Saga.

Several other shadowy figures were gathered on the opposite side of the bridge. They were all Transcendents. By abandoning the magic name which had acted as the pillar of their lives, those monsters had dressed up in their chosen god’s appearance and abilities, they wielded powerful spells, and they had gained enough strength to take on the entire magic side single-handedly.

The global power balance had shifted.

The balance just barely maintained by leaving the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in the center of the science side had clearly grown unbalanced.

Then again, the distortion had reached a critical point from the moment Alice Anotherbible remained in this city.

The Bologna Succubus grimaced after seeing one member of the enemy group.

One of them was particularly unpleasant.

“Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”

“Kyahah☆ Thanks for the shout-out!”

The girl with fluffy blonde hair (who looked around 16 ''if her outward appearance was to be believed'') gave a flirty smile. Unnaturally so.

“What’s an old lady like you doing with twintails and double chignons?”

“You should really count the candles on your birthday cake before calling anyone old.”

She had a beautiful face.

And that was all you could see.

She looked like a teru-teru bozu, or like she was wearing one of the towels that used rubber bands to cover everything below the head during pool class. Her girly silhouette was obscured by a coat-like explosion-resistant suit made by attaching thick copper armor plates to a sturdy cloth.

Or maybe she looked more like an iron maiden.

The original Blodeuwedd was a flower goddess or fairy from Celtic mythology. When the goddess Arianrhod cursed a male god to never marry, an impossibly beautiful but clearly artificial woman was created from flowers and other plants to be his bride. The created woman boasted dazzling beauty, but her internal settings were altered, turning her into a wanton traitor who colluded with a lover to murder her husband. Horror stories of an artificial monster created with too-advanced technology rebelling or running wild were not exclusive to modern SF. That was in fact a historical and traditional genre dating back to BCE times.

This Transcendent had chosen to dress up as that goddess.

And her salvation condition was…

“''Saving all the lonely and unloved,'' wasn’t it?”

“And what if it is?”

“You’re like an animal that inundates people with condescending love and leaves them no room for reprisal. I’ve always hated you because you’re more like a succubus than I am.”

The Bologna Succubus was answered by a smile.

Blodeuwedd may have agreed with her.

“Hwa ha ha☆ Love is meant to come from an outside source. And why shouldn’t I provide you with enough of that sweet nectar you could drown in it? And since one of us has to kill the other anyway, this seems better than sharing tear-jerking stories while we slug it out.”

“On that we agree.”

But that was only Blodeuwedd the Bouquet and the Bologna Succubus’s personal beef.

The other Transcendents had no reason to go along with it.

So…

“Alice has broken.”

She looked to be around 25. She had black hair, brown skin, and a model’s figure with a height of probably 180cm. Her red eyes bent.

Vidhatri.

In Indian mythology, that goddess lived underground and controlled fate in the form of weaving. She always accompanied the goddess of creation, freely controlled the path of the entire world, and just like the goddess she was paired with, ultimately became no more than an alternate name for the top level gods like Brahma and Vishnu due to her great ability. She was a symbol who had been rearranged for human purposes.

This performer had chosen to dress up in that role.

Her icy voice seemed to slice through the air with words alone.

“The first time, it was due to Anna Sprengel’s scheming, but the real damage was done by Kamijou Touma. His ignorance caused Alice to fully shatter. I will not allow him near Alice again. It is a miracle she managed to get back on her feet at all, so I will not let you cause even more damage.”

“In other words,” sighed Aradia.

In place of a broom, she was holding a black and yellow barrier she must have torn away from a railway crossing somewhere.

She rested that on her shoulder and sent over a look containing a generous helping of scorn.

“You’re siding with Alice?”

“Yes.”

“Liar. You’re just afraid of anything happening that could threaten or eliminate the foundation of your power as Transcendents.”

Silence followed.

Which was as good as confirmation.

One weakness of open-source programs was malicious third parties taking advantage of the ability to freely view the internal code to analyze it and develop viruses and malware specialized for that program.

So the Transcendents would be in serious trouble if a third party were to collect Alice, who was their original version. Especially if that third party was one of the ''despicable winners'' like Anna Sprengel or Aleister Crowley. Maybe it would be a poison and maybe it would be a curse, but there was a risk of Alice being used to develop a countermeasure capable of eradicating the entire Alice series of magicians.

Most likely, they were acting now to prevent Kamijou Touma from unwittingly causing such an occurrence.

That would mean the only Transcendent who actually cared about Alice Anotherbible was H.T. Trismegistus. That gloomy, inconspicuous believer in common sense had certainly found a way to make his presence felt. If only it weren’t by being a world-destroying pedophile.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet did not deny her weakness.

“We have our own salvation conditions to worry about. Keh heh heh☆ And we cannot afford to lose our power as Transcendents. For their sakes.”

“And now you’re using them as an excuse, you slut.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“How about I trample this stubborn dandelion growing from a crack in the ground and continue on to Alice?”

With a pop, the thick copper coat covering Blodeuwedd the Bouquet from neck to toe opened to the sides like double doors. The thick locks lined up vertically down the front noisily unlocked one by one.

A dazzling light emerged.

Along with a sweet aroma so powerful it was like a thick wall.

The inside of the coat had been turned into a terrarium full of colorful flowers. That garden of eternal spring was contained in a glass container and supported by appropriate amounts of water, nutrients, electric heaters, and UV LED lights.

She herself wore only a frilly apron over her dazzlingly pale skin.

The sleeves extending from the metal coat had only been remote-controlled arms.

“Quite the showy transformation she’s got there,” said the Bologna Succubus.

“She may see that as releasing her true power. We do need to display our divinity or devilishness in an obvious form to convince ourselves as much as anyone, but is this really her interpretation of superhuman beauty? Does she think the amount of exposed skin is the only thing that matters? How vulgar,” said Aradia, sounding icy.

In her pursuit of higher morals in knowledge and miracles, that young witch was not actually used to being viewed in a sexual light (by younger boys), so it didn’t occur to her to consider how her own outfit played into this discussion.

The girl – who looked unhealthily skinny rather than sexy – grinned.

And with all the appropriate pieces present in her appearance, that sweet-smelling person spoke.

“My, my. Have you forgotten what it is we do?”

“…”

It sounded a lot like a crashing wave.

“Ah ha ha☆ Alice isn’t the only one. The rest of us regular Transcendents also have enough charisma for our very presence to distort human society and create new trends. Maybe you could call it a flaw of dressing up as a god. However, I am exceptional in that regard. In this one field, my ability is even more obvious than Alice’s.”

That they were on a bridge over a large river wasn’t enough to explain it.

This noise was unusual.

The dark water of the January night was stirring with no connection to the water or wind current.

Stirring violently.

“I am loved by all living things. And not just people – birds, land animals, bugs, and fish too.”

Something crashed into the large bridge. They were the black bass, bluegills, and other troublemakers of the river environment. They were small and common creatures with nothing divine about them, but tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands had gathered to form a giant wave.

''These lives were so easily manipulated.

Red and silver.

They had enough force and mass to possibly break a bridge weighing more than ten thousand tons.

“What do you think of my Total Courtship?☆”

Using cries, pheromones, dances, and colors, she could seduce any living creature, including humans. Simply put, she was a courtship expert.

Was she already drunk on victory?

Euphoric, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet raised her voice.

“Ha ha☆ Love them, demon of the night. Love every last one of them. But there are plenty of environmentally destructive species that are hated just because there are too many of them!!!”

“Cold Mistress.”

“Agh!?”

Seeing that spell replace her euphoria with pain was quite satisfying.

===Part 5===

Everything set into motion all at once.

Like water and oil bursting from the surface of a heated frying pan.

Several Transcendents quickly moved back to reassess the distance between them, others moved in like arrows to prevent that, and several smaller battlefields formed within the overall group battle.

===Part 6===

A quake-like vibration disturbed the dark river.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet could make a weapon out of the vast city full of pests and vermin, but she wasn’t the only one responsible.

As the fish rushed in as a great wave threatening to swallow up the bridge from the side, they were stopped by a three-legged object the size of a stadium.

“Tribikos,” whispered Good, Old Mary, manager of experimental tools.

She was facing Vidhatri, Indian goddess of fate. Their eyes happened to meet and she took a breath as their piece of time and space was cut away from the confused battlefield. At times, rhythm and timing meant everything in a chaotic battle. Good, Old Mary was bound by Vidhatri in the same way.

Their clash was inevitable now.

Good, Old Mary addressed the perfectly-proportioned model wearing a red sari.

“Vidhatri, mama is serious. Mama will crush you. So what will you do?”

“Are you sure you want me to take this seriously?”

“Feel free. Mama is a fount of mercy, after all. You decided to hold onto your Transcendent power even if it meant shamefully forgetting all about your salvation condition. Mama may be facing a despicable slut, but it would be downright cruel to kill you before you can even use the trump card you have been greedily holding in reserve.”

The brown beauty suddenly grew more arms.

No, it was more accurate to say she was standing back to back with had a doll of nearly 2m. It was even larger than Vidhatri’s model-like figure. While she was stiflingly captivating and sensual, this was a life-size ball-jointed doll made of a hard, smooth material.

Was she actually wearing it on her back with thick shoulder straps?

It had apparently been contained inside a rectangular bag.

White thread and black hair were tangled around its artificial fingers.

The Indian fate goddess Vidhatri did not exist on her own. She and the creation goddess Dhatri were always depicted as a pair.

By weaving white and black threads, those gods determined the fate of the entire world, making them extremely powerful.

Threads.

Weaving.

And a doll.

Good, Old Mary sighed as she rapidly analyzed these things to predict what her opponent could do.

“A supermodel figure and a red backpack? Those doesn’t fit together at all.”

“This is no more than a leather bag marketed for all ages.”

Good, Old Mary’s vision slanted.

She tasted blood.

Her chest was sticky and red.

“…?”

A bluegill was to blame.

It was one of the tens of thousands of fish Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had summoned half as a joke. Just as a speck of lead could be deadly when moving fast enough, the fish could embed itself in human flesh if it tore through the air with enough speed.

Good, Old Mary grabbed the intruder flopping around while embedded in her chest wound and pulled it out. This felt different from a sharp blade. The open gills and countless scales caught on the wound, spreading it and rubbing in deadly germs.

But something else bothered her more.

How had the fish even made it this far?

She looked up to see the great wall was missing.

The Tribikos.

In the brief time she had looked away, her stadium-sized trump card had completely vanished.

Like it had been nightmarishly spirited away.

“You must understand.”

With the sounds of springs operating, the ball-joint doll Dhatri’s arms split and lots of pulleys and latches emerged. It formed a loom.

Extremely thin pieces of white and black danced about.

They were threads.

No, was some of that her own black hair?

“Vidhatri controls fate and Dhatri creates all things. Those two goddesses determine all that happens through the weaving of the white and black. Good, Old Mary, you may be able to create anything with your alchemy, but I decide how many different options are included in that ‘anything’.”

“I see.”

“I am Vidhatri. When paired with my partner goddess, I control fate and creation. I am the Transcendent who classifies the world based on my preferences and ''saves all of those that meet my preferences.''”

The threads of fate were woven together to create the warp and the weft of the world.

Was this what it meant to confront someone who had control over all things?

“You are the same as mama. You contain a portion of the mystical power you borrowed from Alice, but you have failed to make full use of it. You are no more than an imperfect performer.”

“Say what you like. In this field, Good, Old Mary, I can easily erase your very existence. I must only intentionally omit all mention of you.”

Good, Old Mary didn’t even have time to hear her out.

With the breakwater gone, the fish crashed into the bridge like a silver wave.

===Part 7===

A flapping sound echoed through the schoolyard night.

Something flitted by the right corner of Kamijou’s vision. It was a monster with the body of a lion and the head and wings of a bird of prey.

It was a deadly creature mixed in with the other characters in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

This was the Gryphon.

“!?”

That specialist in swift destruction and cleanup was only released when Alice Anotherbible was bored with the world. He was like switching life to double speed. He had in fact bitten off Kamijou’s right arm at the District 12 consulate.

Kamijou didn’t have time to do anything.

As soon as the great wings spread wide, the trauma surfaced from the depths of Kamijou’s mind. Reflexively holding his hands up to guard himself was an obvious mistake. By flapping his wings and converting the power of the air into forward momentum, the truck-sized Gryphon charged straight toward him.

Kamijou heard a deafening roar.

But he felt no pain.

A pink color sliced sharply through the night air.

It had appeared out of nowhere.

The flamingo bat held back the Gryphon’s massive beak and even slid the enemy’s attack to the side before delivering a powerful blow in return.

The Gryphon was noisily knocked to the ground.

“You?” said Kamijou in wonderment.

He reached out without thinking and the hovering pink bat slipped away from him. He felt like he was trying to grab a leaf in the water.

Maybe it wanted to avoid Imagine Breaker.

Even so, it flew slowly but playfully around Kamijou before clashing with the Gryphon’s talons when the creature attempted another attack. Orange sparks burst into the night air.

The flamingo bat wasn’t alone. Several hedgehogs much larger than real ones were bouncing around near Kamijou’s feet. Shortly after he noticed them, they exploded. More accurately, they formed long swords made of countless spines and they struck. They all rushed in to attack the emaciated multi-armed doll that had appeared. The enemy was made of bones. It was a full skeleton made of a transparent crystal-like material.

Kamijou had seen this during the clash with the dark side on December 29.

Wasn’t that the Executioner that took people’s heads off on the Queen of Heart’s command?

The distance between them was little comfort. That thing did not use its physical strength to decapitate. It took the heads off with an attack more like an invisible curse.

The battle was fought between different monsters found in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Unlike with the Shrink Drink, these had not been converted into a tool by an outside magician – these were the pure and untouched toys. Most likely, a high school boy with nothing but a special right hand going for him wouldn’t have been able to stand up to even one of them. If he had directly clashed with these things, he would have been killed instantly before he could reach Alice herself.

But Kamijou still lived.

Beings controlled by Alice were battling with other beings controlled by Alice.

Maybe this meant she was conflicted.

Regardless, Kamijou wasn’t without allies.

Even if Alice herself was mercilessly attacking the intruder.

“Alice is waiting,” said Othinus, sounding exasperated.

“Yeah.”

“I wonder what the grimoire library is doing. Well, she was specially designed as an anti-magic combat specialist. Since she had her ability to fight directly intentionally stripped from her, I would hope she excels in other survival strategies.”

“Like what?”

“Negotiating herself a position in the enemy group, or making herself so adorable the enemy would prefer to protect her than exact violence on her.”

“…”

“What’s that silent look supposed to mean? Hey, did you just mouth ‘not a chance’? I was providing an optimistic viewpoint to assist with your mental health.”

He couldn’t picture it.

Index was the last person he could imagine doing something so Machiavellian.

Her perfect memory would let her memorize the position of every single playing card or mahjong tile, but he had a feeling she would still lose to a normal person in those games…

On the other hand, there were miracles that could occur because of her complete lack of scheming, but the same could be said of Alice.

Being unable to predict enemy or ally presented an extreme challenge. Especially when it came to rescuing a hostage.

Othinus gave a disgusted look from his shoulder.

“Does she carry the infinite possibilities of a child? Damn her. She’s physically preventing herself from making a choice and limiting herself to one course of action. At this rate, there will be no obvious distinction between enemy and ally. A million organizations and plans will spring forth from Alice and a million armies will clash in a nonsensical battle. Humanity will be dragged into it and destroyed without any say in the matter.”

“We’ll settle this before that happens.”

Kamijou spoke quietly, but with great conviction.

“Alice is only being so aggressive because she can’t trust anyone around her, but that’s because people taught her that the future is something to be feared. I think I was one of those people. I hurt her. So I need to reach her and tell her directly that life isn’t all that bad.”

“But will she listen? Human, have you forgotten that she abducted the grimoire library? Not to mention that your right hand has burdened you with such an unreasonable amount of misfortune. Has your life really been a happy enough thing for you to argue for the goodness of the world?”

“What if I put it like this? Luck is all in how you look at it. Sure I’m an unfortunate guy, but I don’t have to feel inferior to special people like you and Alice. Just because I started a lot farther back from the starting line doesn’t mean I can’t reach the goal.”

That statement carried a lot more weight coming from the boy who had dealt with misfortune for so long.

Because he was the boy who had overcome millions or billions of deaths to slowly approach Othinus during his direct confrontation with that Magic God.

The flamingo bat swooshed through the air and stopped right in front of Kamijou’s face. The hedgehogs exhaled through their noses at his feet. There were also a large caterpillar and piglet he didn’t recognize. Where did they appear in the story and what did they do? He wished he had read more of that story.

They wordlessly told him they would watch his back.

But that must have been one of Alice’s opinions.

The gym noisily split apart from within. An enormous fluffy cat emerged. It gave a displeased growl and glared at Kamijou with open hostility. It was shaped like an adorably round pet, but it was the size of a kaiju. Kamijou felt something other than fear crawling along his spine. His pride and dignity as a person were gone if he was slowly tormented to death by that thing’s kitty punches.

Humor felt horribly out of place when combine with death.

This one was different. It was clearly far more powerful than the others.

Kamijou gulped.

“What is that? The cat in Alice is, um…what was it again?”

“Do not become the kind of person who needs his phone to know anything.” Othinus sounded exasperated. “That’s probably Dinah, Alice’s pet cat. Butterflies and birds talk like normal in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but Dinah is the one being who is nearly invincible and unbeatable. She only appears in the parts of the story that take place in the real world, but she possesses such deadly power that the other characters tremble in fear and run away at the mere mention of her name.”

This was another opinion.

It was a very real thing Alice thought.

There was definitely a part of Alice that wanted to kill Kamijou.

But there wasn’t time for fear.

Kamijou hadn’t been unfairly dragged down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. He had chosen for himself to set foot in this deadly world.

“Hm, so her coat is a mixture of black and white.”

“Is that important?”

“As much as Alice bragged about Dinah, she never mentions what type of cat she is. Since Dinah is caring for a white kitten and a black kitten in Through the Looking Glass, you can infer she is one color or the other, but this appears to be using the idea that Dinah provided both kittens’ colors without needing the father’s help.”

“Is that really so important when a giant cat is about to kill us!?”

Index was here too. And had been for far longer than Kamijou.

And more than that, was this really what Alice wanted to create and proliferate?

“This is no more than the dolls and toys controlled by mere fragments of thoughts. We have yet to see the real Alice Anotherbible, human!”

“Yeah, I know. Alice is waiting for me. That’s why I came here, so I’m not turning back now!!”

===Part 8===

Alice was inside the school building.

This high school had been destroyed, but no one could match the construction technology of Academy City, the city that once constructed a space elevator in almost no time at all. Once the soundproofing sheets were removed, the building would be ready for classes to begin.

This was the pointy-haired boy’s high school.

Did Alice have a reason for choosing this location?

Not even the young butler who had served her for so long could tell what she was thinking. She was a great individual. H.T. Trismegistus always pursued common sense, so perhaps she had always been beyond his ability to predict.

“This place will soon change into a place more suited for Alice.”

H.T. Trismegistus gave a rectangular protein bar a skeptical look before finally tossing it aside.

Grimoire Library Index was with him.

Alice apparently still wanted the hostage alive.

“At this point, I doubt it even matters if Alice wants it or not. She is the whole of the Bridge Builders Cabal. Alice’s presence appears to have put the people of this city into a sort of high. This will probably eventually spread beyond Academy City. And the resonance from person to person will spread Alice’s garden.”

The young butler wobbled a bit to the side.

A red liquid flowed from his tailcoat’s sleeve to his fingertips.

Where had he gone and who had he fought since Index last saw him?

Regardless, H.T. Trismegistus had a smile on his face.

“It shouldn’t take long for the world to be dyed in her color.”

“Are you saying the world will be flooded with the Gryphon and Executioner I saw before?”

“Maybe so, but that is a minor issue.”

He sounded confident.

“As long as CRC is reborn.”

There was a hint of intoxication in his voice.

“If I can only bring back Christian Rosencreutz properly this time, common sense says he will save the world. As hard as it is to accept, his identity and real name are a trivial matter. I only need to prepare myself to accept his true meaning.”

“You can’t complete that large scale rebirth ceremony on your own.”

“As long as I have Alice as the prototype, I can create as many regular Transcendents as necessary. But aside from that, once word of Alice’s survival gets out, the scattered Transcendents should regather. I can hold an audition to decide whether to reuse them or to train up new performers.”

“…”

No matter how you sliced it, the Bridge Builders Cabal was built around Alice. The Transcendents had scattered after learning of her death, so the return of their “Another Bible” would draw them back in like iron sand to a magnet.

Without any thought to what that would cause.

After all, Transcendents were the magicians who had been unable to make a decision under their own responsibility, so they carried no magic name and instead dressed up as gods while leaving the salvation of the world in someone else’s hands. They were a group with no self initiative. Which wouldn’t be too much of a problem if not for the great power each of them carried.

“But that won’t work,” insisted Index.

The young butler glared at her, but she glared right back.

“You must know that already.”

“Know what exactly?”

“You can bring CRC back with your own knowledge. That isn’t a reason to want or be afraid of losing the knowledge of the grimoires in my head.”

“…”

“You’re afraid of Alice,” stated the nun.

Wasn’t one of her duties to identify people’s inner worries from the things they said?

“You aren’t certain she is ''the same'' Alice Anotherbible as the one you used to serve. That’s why you keep leaning on your past successes. Because at least until you brought back CRC, your cabal was winning. You were in a position to make decisions for the entire world. So you’re trying to turn the clock back to that time so you can stay on the rails of success this time around. Even though that isn’t actually a real option.”

“Did no one ever tell you libraries are supposed to be quiet?”

“I don’t know ''the real reason'' you captured me. Maybe you want a spell to determine if Alice really is still Alice and maybe you know she’s broken and you want to use my grimoires to fix her.”

“I said shut up.”

===Part 9===

Several thick shockwave-like impacts rang out in quick succession and the flamingo bat crashed into the flower bed alongside the walking path.

It hadn’t even bought them a few minutes, but it was enough.

Kamijou thanked it and tackled his shoulder into the glass entranceway door.

It broke shockingly easily.

Unable to stop his momentum, he tumbled inside, where the world changed yet again.

The change wasn’t visible.

But all sound from outside was shut out.

The dark school building was so silent his ears ached. He had shattered the glass in the entrance door, but he doubted he could have returned to the visible schoolyard if he tried. He had a feeling he would be ''deflected or thrown back.'' Not that he had any interest in testing this theory.

The presence of Imagine Breaker suddenly felt a lot less significant.

It was a reference point for the world.

And so it could negate any and all illusions.

But that meant it had no effect on anything that could distort even that reference point.

For example, his right hand hadn’t been able to destroy the infinite worlds created by Othinus.

Alice could absorb the world to that extent.

She simply hadn’t done so before now.

“What...is this place?”

Everything looked normal, but that was no reason to relax.

Kamijou felt like something was lurking on the other side of an invisible barrier.

Something he couldn’t see and that spelled doom if he ever confirmed its presence.

He sensed that collection of terror.

Most likely, not even the pursuing Gryphon and Executioner could enter here.

Not to mention the flamingo bat and hedgehogs who had taken his side.

''Had they been deflected or thrown back''?

Again, he had no interest in testing that theory.

He sighed once, got up, and faced forward.

“Okay,” said Othinus from his shoulder. “This looks like a greater challenge than Crete’s Labyrinth containing a bull-headed monster, but what’s your plan?”

“I suppose there’s no point in trying to predict where in the school Index is being held… That wouldn’t be Index’s choice and Alice’s own preferences wouldn’t come into it. So our best bet is probably predicting Alice’s preferences and going where we think she would be.”

“And where exactly would that be?”

“My classroom,” replied Kamijou without delay.

This wasn’t logic – his own gut instinct was enough. Where would little Alice most want to go in a school she had never before visited? That question was enough to reach the answer. And this was a method only Kamijou could use.

Several female voices whispered from the ducts in the ceiling. A gaze which spoke volumes peered out from the gap in the metal door to the fire hose. When Kamijou turned to look at the janitorial locker or a gap in the wall he had glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, something small skittered out of view.

So much was making its presence known, but it was all strangely ephemeral.

He felt like his mind would break if he didn’t stay strong and tell himself those things really did exist. He had to accept it as is and not question it. Logic was an impediment here. Once he started wondering if something was a hallucination dreamt up by his mind, he would end up circling forever in the same place. He would be stranded in a 1m square.

Othinus spoke up in partial exasperation.

“This is just like the flamingo bat and the Gryphon. They were more obvious, but the presences and scenery around us are also being controlled by Alice’s inner conflict.”

“…”

“Human, if Alice wanted to invite you in, she would only need to come out herself. And if she wanted to reject you, she could have turned the doors and windows into monsters or just created a thick wall. She’s hidden and created several suspicious locations to get you lost, but there is a proper path, isn’t there? That proves she hasn’t settled on a plan. …That she can create all of her different plans at once shows how scarily powerful she is, though.”

Kamijou heard a solid thunk.

It came from the darkness.

This one was a footstep. His heart naturally raised the alarm. A black-haired young butler appeared. It was H.T. Trismegistus.

“Hey,” complained Othinus. “Stop lurking in the shadows. I know Alice leaves more of an impression, but we just about missed you. Anyway, are you the Trismegistus we saw at the consulate before? Or are you one of the understudies?”

“Common sense says I can leave that up to your imagination.”

With a creaking sound, the wallpaper peeled away.

Mice emerged.

They were the size of sports bags and there was an entire swarm of them.

What meaning did those characters have within Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? Kamijou didn’t have time to think about it.

A pleasant “slap!” rang out.

It happened too fast for Kamijou to see.

He simply noticed a flash of light from the young butler’s hand and then the hunks of flesh split in two like some kind of joke. There was no blood. They lost all color, became dark shadows, and faded into nothingness.

It could be hard to tell how impressive that had been, but he had been attacked by dozens of beings on the same level as the flamingo bat and the Gryphon. He could probably kill Kamijou on the spot with ease.

“…”

“This way.”

The black-haired butler turned around.

Apparently he was leading Kamijou somewhere.

“Unlike during your battle against Rosencreutz, you should not expect any support from the upper levels of this scientific city this time. I had a feeling they would trouble Alice, so I attacked them at the very top.”

“Wait, but the Board Chairman right now is- you beat him!?”

“I did not need to win,” said H.T. Trismegistus. His presence here alive was enough to know how that had turned out. “I only needed to restrict his movements for the time being. Fortunately, I noticed he is receiving electronic support from his choker. Destroying the nearby communications equipment and other electronics to create signal noise and then burying him in rubble was enough to immobilize him.”

Kamijou gulped.

H.T. Trismegistus really was a Transcendent.

''Anyone who knew the #1 knew that plan was much easier said than done.

The very ability to act on a plan when faced with him was unusual.

Was this H.T. Trismegistus’s true power?

Or had Alice Anotherbible linked to ''something'' that distorted the world?

While walking through a hallway with whisperings, mutterings, and rustlings beckoning toward the various gaps, a sharp light would occasionally flash from H.T. Trismegistus’s hand. The sword drawn from his cane easily sliced through the monsters wriggling out from the gaps in the walls and from behind posters, so Kamijou nervously followed after him.

Should he really have been killing those things?

After all, wasn’t everything here – enemy or ally – being subconsciously controlled by Alice? Those were the raw toys – no reasonable magician had remade them into proper tools like the Shrink Drink. They were on the same level as the “Drink Me”. Kamijou recalled a column in a corner of a textbook telling of an overstressed child causing the poltergeist phenomenon in the small territory of their home. What did it mean for Alice when a third party cut down and eliminated part of her inner conflict?

H.T. Trismegistus remained entirely composed as he spoke.

“Common sense says this should go without saying, but I am not your ally. I have always sided with the Killers when it comes to you and nothing has changed there. You do not fit my salvation condition and provoking Alice will only further distort the world.”

“Then why are you helping me?”

“Are you incapable of using common sense?”

The young butler sounded exasperated.

He smiled thinly as he continued.

“Common sense says the most logical way to swiftly and surely take your life is to have you meet Alice Anotherbible as soon as possible.”

“…”

“I see you do not deny this.”

His words were polite but as sharp as any blade.

What exactly was Alice to this butler?

“Common sense says you did this. And as a result, Alice was stupefied to the point she left herself undefended, allowing Rosencreutz to kill her. It all leads back to you. …What will happen when Alice sees you now? Nothing could be more obvious.”

They climbed the stairs.

They avoided the clear slime dripping from the ceiling and arrived in front of one of the many doors lining the hallway.

That door led to Kamijou’s classroom.

It was a perfectly ordinary door that would open when slid to the side.

But it carried more weight than an audience chamber where a king waited.

“Please enter,” was all H.T. Trismegistus said.

It felt like something from a dream.

Othinus had been calling everything into question before, but even she had gone quiet now.

Kamijou felt strangely compelled to continue.

This path was like a contradictory nightmare where he created the very thing he did not want to see.

Invisible rails had been laid out before him, so he could not leave this course.

And he didn’t even have a chance to find this strange.

He should have known opening this door would lead to grave danger. Not opening it was always an option, or he could wait to open it until he had worked up sufficient resolve and made ample preparations.

Nevertheless, Kamijou stood before the sliding door.

He grabbed the handle and opened it.

Like it was nothing.

===Part 10===

As soon as he slid the door open, he heard a sharp “pop!!” directly in front of him.

He immediately ducked down and froze up as something grazed his spiky hair.

He hesitantly grabbed some of it to find it was colorful streamers.

The scent of gunpowder came from the conical party popper in the little girl’s hands.

“Tah dah!!”

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW3.jpg|thumb]]

Alice Anotherbible stood there.

Her beaming smile was so unchanged Kamijou could scarcely believe it.

She was smiling.

Yes, Alice had a face.

That shouldn’t have been unusual, but it clashed with how he had last seen her.

The classroom looked normal too. The desks were lined up in orderly rows and there was no graffiti on the chalkboard. Had she been politely waiting for him here? While wondering which of the desks was Kamijou’s?

“Teacher, the girl is glad you made it!!”

On that signal, the lights came on.

That wasn’t limited to the classroom. Lights filled every window in the building, the gym that had supposedly collapsed when enormous Dinah made her appearance was enveloped in light, and the outdoor lights illuminated the schoolyard and pool.

The school had returned to life.

No, the new term had yet to start, so it was more accurate to say it breathed its first breath.

''Dammit, Anna. I thought you said Alice would be asleep. But here she is wide awake like an excited kid on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve.

Or had ''the'' Miss Sprengel’s prediction been so wrong because of Alice’s power?

Yes…

“Al...ice?”

“That’s right.”

The little girl responded with a volleyball-sized hole in the center of her face.

The classroom behind her was visible through the hole and it was impossible to tell where her eyes or mouth were, but she still spoke the same as always.

“Ah ha ha! Is something the matter, teacher?”

“…”

Yes.

Come to think of it, why had they been so sure Alice had broken after having her head fatally crushed?

Because she killed Christian Rosencreutz?

Because the headless girl had cackled?

Had everyone forgotten that Rosencreutz killed her first? Was it that strange and incomprehensible for someone to consider taking revenge on the person who killed them if he was walking around free and unpunished? And forget niceties about the emptiness of revenge. In the moment someone achieved their vengeance, wouldn’t anyone laugh at being freed from all that pressure?

Alice was normal.

She had simply done some physically unusual things like getting up after being killed and tearing through someone with her hands. But the thought processes leading to those extraordinary actions were entirely ordinary.

Kamijou did still have a question.

(But why is Alice here?)

“The girl could have gone home and sulked, but she couldn’t just leave you, teacher. So she came to give you a piece of advice!”

“Advice...for me?”

“Yes!”

When the grotesque girl nodded, her adorable face had returned.

Kamijou didn’t know which version was correct.

It was possible he had never actually seen her ''real face''.

“Teacher, the time has come.”

“?”

“The predetermined limit is approaching. Do you not remember what we said? The girl already told you what would happen.”

“…Wait.”

He had been wrong.

He had misread this.

Alice Anotherbible was the same as always. In fact, why had it seemed strange for her to do bizarre things? Had he ever once been able to determine the true meaning behind any of her whims?

''It was normal for her to be unpredictable.

If Alice wasn’t behaving normally, it wasn’t something inside her that was responsible. Something in the world outside her was making her behave that way.

She was concerned.

Uncharacteristically so.

Then what was causing it? She knew what was rushing her and making her act this way. That meant this wasn’t an unknown phenomenon – the answer already existed in the past.

Kamijou had stepped on a landmine.

But when?

“Did something happen when I was fighting Rosencreutz?”

“Nope.”

Yes, it wouldn’t have been when he fought Christian Rosencreutz. Alice was already dead by then, so for better or for worse, nothing could have occurred between her and Kamijou then.

Because he hadn’t arrived in time.

Because he hadn’t saved her.

If Alice wasn’t going to accuse him for that, then it wasn’t that either.

“Then was it when we stole the Predator Octopus and-”

“Nope. What even is that?”

For the same reason, it couldn’t have been when he was fleeing through Academy City with Anna Sprengel and Aradia. Mut Thebes and the Shrink Drink that borrowed a portion of Alice’s power had been a threat, but Alice had already been in a daze by then. In all likelihood, she had been far away working with H.T. Trismegistus, Good, Old Mary, and the rest of the Bridge Builders Cabal to complete the ceremony to resurrect CRC.

Alice had filled the Shrink Drink spear with her power before all of that.

In that case…

“If it was before that, was it at the consulate?”

“Not even close.”

The Bridge Builders Cabal creating their consulate in District 12 had been a major turning point.

Alice had cried there.

Because she and Kamijou had definitively parted ways.

But Alice had been hurt there, not Kamijou. Since she had so readily forgiven him here, that wouldn’t be the root of the problem.

The current problem came from elsewhere.

“Then does it go all the way back to Shibuya?”

“Buzz. Wrong. The girl really wanted to visit Japan’s Shibuya.”

Before that would mean Shibuya on December 31, but that was meaningless. Only regular Transcendents like the Bologna Succubus, Aradia, and Good, Old Mary had appeared there. As the only person (supposedly) capable of controlling Alice, the Rescuers and Killers had fought over what to do with him, but Alice herself hadn’t been present.

Then.

Was it even earlier?

“Hold on. You don’t mean…?”

“''It was when we first met.''”

December 29.

A series of incidents had started with an accident involving Overhunting, a prisoner transport train carrying several dark side criminals.

That was when Alice had first wielded her power in Academy City.

What had happened between her and Kamijou then?

“The girl asked to make sure. She didn’t do this against your will. You told the girl to do it and she told you it was a bad idea, but you made the final decision. Which is why the girl asked you if that was what you really wanted.”

On that day, at that time, Alice had tried to forcibly alter the structure of the incident. To create a resolution with no deaths despite several dark side monsters being on the run, she had ''forcibly created a false truth'' in which the original culprit was Frillsand #G.

''“Now.”

''“Please guide the girl, teacher. She wants to ''go on an adventure'' inside you.”

Kamijou had rejected it.

He had told her to bring back the real truth, no matter how harsh it might be.

''“Then return everything to the way it was, Alice. If I use your power like this, I can never truly reach the end.”

''“Umm, are you sure you want that?”

That was when he had said it.

“Do you remember now?”

Some future decision wasn’t going to determine the ending.

He had long since passed the final branch.

Yes.

''“You will die.”

''“That doesn’t change my answer.”

He had said it.

There was no denying it.

On the very first day he met Alice Anotherbible, Kamijou Touma had said it himself. He had known Alice was dangerous, but he had rejected her idea and changed course. He had ignored her advice and demanded it.

When that horrific incident had ended, he had assumed he had gotten through safely.

But he had been wrong.

Alice had never said ''when'' he would die.

It was a prophecy.

Like Nostradamus, astrology, a dream that comes true, letting a spirit possess you to answer questions, or having an aquarium octopus predict the results of soccer matches.

It didn’t really matter what.

It could be scientific or not and ''it could even violate the rules of magic''. If the theory had been proposed at any time throughout history, Alice could build the bridge to make it real. Once a ridiculous theory began to operate, she could toy with it until it was hers.

It may have been less concerning if she had said she simply knew it to be true with no reason behind it. Because no matter how often someone’s intuition was correct, it could always be wrong.

But that excuse didn’t exist here.

The logic behind it was nonsensical, but it did exist.

If Alice said it would happen, then it was guaranteed to happen.

Why had he let himself relax?

She had never said a single word about what hour, minute, second, or rotation of the Earth it would happen on.

Now was still an available option.

Alice’s prophecy was not over yet. The predetermined outcome was still coming.

“…”

Then there was nothing more he could do.

Struggle all he wanted, he couldn’t recover from taking the wrong turn so long ago.

Kamijou Touma’s life had been over from the day he first met Alice.

Their difference in power was just that great.

Of course, Alice hadn’t intended to harm him.

He had chosen it himself. She had warned him not to, but he hadn’t believed in the absoluteness of her prophecy, he hadn’t given much thought at all to his own life, ''and he had simply assumed everything would work out the way it always did.'' Even though things were different this time. If he had known then how extraordinary Alice was, he never would have seen it that way.

But a choice was a choice.

He had already used up his one and only ticket.

He had walked through the crossroads, so there was no way left to avoid his predetermined death.

===Part 11===

Did you think that statement didn’t mean much?

It meant more than anything.

Alice Anotherbible’s power is absolute. That does not apply only to direct violence.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter1

2026-06-10T22:39:27Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Chapter 1: The World is Not So Strong – the_End_of_Real.==

===Part 1===

It was January 6 at the District 7 hospital.

Furthermore, it was morning.

“Uhh…”

Kamijou Touma was zoning out in a bed that reeked of disinfectant. He was wearing his extremely lazy hospital clothes that were rapidly becoming his secondary pajamas. The look on his face said to let it slide since at least they weren’t a track suit.

His precious winter break was almost over, but he had nothing to do all morning.

“Winter break is ending. And then the new school term is starting. ...Is this really happening? And I thought for sure I wasn’t going to survive this time!!”

“Fool, don’t rewrite your own memories to tell yourself you got through this deathless. You needed Good, Old Mary’s resurrection, which is proof enough that you died. More than once, even.”

“Ugh,” groaned Kamijou in the bed.

Someone sat next to the bed on a simple folding chair.

She looked just like a small girl of around 10. Her long, strawberry blonde hair was done up in several flat fried shrimp shapes, creating a volume greater than her short, slender body. Her oversized, baggy red dress was forcibly held up against her chest, so it did very little to cover up most of her skin.

She was Anna Sprengel.

And true to the exasperation on her face, Kamijou’s current survival was not the result of a future he had acquired through his own work and choices. In his conflict against the Transcendents, Alice Anotherbible, and Rosencreutz, he had learned far too well what happened when he recklessly attempted something beyond his abilities.

His thoughts continued on from there.

But Anna was here. She was not an illusion and she would not suddenly disappear.

Also, this was a private hospital room.

...What was Anna Sprengel doing in his room? What was she doing in the men’s ward which smelled as much of sweat, tears, and unfulfilled desire as a baseball clubroom during the rainy season?

“You’re still recovering too, right? Why’d you slip out of your room to visit me?”

“To nurse you,” was her succinct response.

Kamijou blinked twice before responding.

“Ha ha ha. You were lonely without anyone to talk to, weren’t you? To think that wicked woman would end up like this. You never know what life has in store for-”

“This room reeks, fool. It smells like a lonely, loser male.”

“Really, why are you here?”

He even forgot to cry.

The high school boy had dried out to the point his mind went entirely blank, but Anna had an immediate response for him.

“Fool, is your head so defective it can’t remember what I told you three minutes ago? I am here to nurse you.”

Anna soaked a clean towel in a filled washtub and wrung out the towel with her little hands.

“First, I will wash you until you shine, so strip, fool.”

“Bff!?”

This came out of nowhere.

And it was apparently a foregone conclusion in Anna’s mind. She climbed onto the bed with the wet towel in hand. With a silent, catlike movement.

“N-n-now, wait just a second! Do you know what you’re saying!? As a girl!?”

“What’s this, fool? Are you embarrassed?”

“Don’t be silly, little kid! You’re 10 years – no, 15 years and 4 months – too young to do anything for Kamijou-san and his secret love of dorm managers!!”

Anna, who looked 10, blinked silently at first, but she eventually looked down at her own short and slender form.

And then…

“Oh? You aren’t into small bodies?”

She grinned wickedly.

And a moment later, she had grown into a fully grown woman.

“''Lucky for you, I can do this''.”

“Ahh!?”

“The choice is yours. I’m fine with either form.”

Anna crawled along the bed in a feline way, but this version of her was no kitty cat. She was a much bigger cat and her sweet scent was far more noticeable than before.

Something large swayed below her.

Anna chuckled with the wet towel in hand.

“Then again, now that I have taken this curvier form, it would take a lot of courage for you to come out and say you prefer the little form better, wouldn’t it?”

Could he defuse this situation faster by staying silent than by trying to correct her reasoning?

Asking himself that had been a mistake.

He was only avoiding the issue.

Because if he did nothing to actively put a stop to it, she would continue along her current course. No matter how misguided that course might be.

“Well, I probably should stick with the bigger form. It is more convenient for moving you and rolling you. But if you do get tired of it and want a change, just let me know, fool. I can change forms at any time.”

“The bigger form is more convenient? What, are you going to grab me and flip me over?”

“I am offering the noble service of washing you, so hurry up and get those clothes off, fool.”

“You’re not making any sense. Do have any idea what you’re asking!? This is as out of place as nikujaga made by a gyaru! Are you sure this is what you want to do, Anna-san!?”

Anna’s grin only grew.

Miss Sprengel apparently found his fluster to be most entertaining.

Such was the mysterious nature of that wicked woman.

“My, my. Is this one of those foolish adolescent rebellious phases? Only one day in the hospital and the forced abstinence is already too much for you? How depraved a life have you been living? Hee hee. Oh, I can practically hear a certain part of your anatomy sproinging up in response to my sinful body.”

Kamijou’s mind was driven to a stage beyond entirely blank.

He was in new territory here.

He averted his gaze and spoke up quietly.

“Um.”

“What, fool?”

“This is really awkward to bring up...but I know they use a ‘sproing’ sound effect in trashy comedies, but that’s only a metaphor and a guy’s body doesn’t actually make a noise like that.”

“Wha-!? It doesn’t?”

Anna Sprengel quaked while in oddly extreme contrast, like the portrait on a piece of paper money.

She had done a lot to come off as a wicked woman...but was it possible?

“Hey, but that’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Ha ha ha. For grownup Kamijou-san, this return to a more innocent age is honestly refreshing. Yes, it’s so nice to meet a pure young girl who isn’t ready for any of that kind of thing. Ha ha ha ha ha.”

Anna fell silent.

Eventually, she sighed.

“Fool. Maybe it would be better to spring it on you as a joke said in a wooden voice, but just so you know, girls don’t actually shout ‘I’m coming’ when they climax.”

“Eh? Wait, I didn’t want to know that. Is this you taking revenge for-”

“It’s the height of folly really. The screenwriters probably just aren’t used to putting together natural-sounding dialogue because even dramas rarely include sex scenes these days.”

“But!? It can’t be! Noooooo! …Then how ''does'' the cosmos work? Wh-what are we supposed to believe in now!?”

“Not that this information has any relevance to a pure and upright fool who has decided to guard his virginity more fiercely than Joan of Arc despite literally no one asking him to.”

“…”

In this case, hanging his head in silence was definitely the wrong answer.

He did not know how to deal with a wicked woman like Anna.

Sensing something in the air, she grinned. That was the look of a bully who had found the perfect target.

“Well, if you do ever find the dorm manager of your dreams after journeying to some other dimension or something, let’s hope she’s the kind of person who lets her emotions explode out in verbal form.”

“I notice you’ve taken the issue of your own ignorance and swept it under the rug like someone who doesn’t actually know how to clean.”

“What? You wanna fight, fool!?”

“––––––!!”

“!?”

===Part 2===

She was exhausted.

“Phew,” softly sighed 15cm Othinus.

As swift as the cat was, he didn’t have the stamina to cross a space as large as Academy City. While riding him, Othinus had held onto his collar with her little hands and given him directions. They had finally made it this far after hopping into the back of the trucks driving through the city during the night and early morning.

Still, they had made it safely.

Any knowledge of how monstrous H.T. Trismegistus and Alice Anotherbible were would tell you how miraculous that was.

There was more than just luck at play here.

This had only been possible thanks to someone else’s sacrifice.

This message had to get through.

Grimoire Library Index had let herself be captured by Alice in order to give Othinus this one and only chance. It was unclear how many screws had come loose in Alice’s little head, so it was impossible to predict when she would take a life ''due to a malfunction'' rather than any sensible reason. Index had known this but still gone through with it.

Othinus couldn’t let that be for nothing.

She would reward that effort.

This response was like an instinct for her as a god of war.

So she had traveled all the way to District 7.

She had finally arrived at the usual hospital.

“How many times...tell you...off your clothes, fool?”

“And how many...have to tell...that’s embarrassing!?”

With a big “?” in her head, Othinus gave the cat one more instruction.

Cats these days knew how to get into trouble by smoothly opening a sliding door.

The door opened, allowing the voices to reach Othinus more clearly.

“Why am I the one pinning you down to the bed, fool!?”

“Probably because you haven’t been looking after your common sense by making sure you get enough Vitamin C and coenzyme Q10!!”

The voices came from atop the hospital bed.

Kamijou Touma’s pajamas were partway removed.

Anna Sprengel had grown.

The boy had somehow gotten himself turned around while he struggled, so now his pointy-haired head was resting on adult-mode Anna’s lap who was forcibly placing her weight down on him like she had been sitting on her knees before collapsing forward.

Simply put, a human head was trapped between a pair of thighs and a pair of boobs.

Big Anna Sprengel had apparently turned herself into a human mousetrap because she needed her hands free for some other task. She had her face down near the boy’s navel and…

“Just settle down and let me wash you! I am too sexy and perfect to back down now, fool!!”

“Can’t...breathe! Boobs...too fat! Thighs...too- mgh!”

To sum up, it was one of Japan’s infamous fanservice festivals.

The exhausted god wobbled wearily.

Hatred filled her one eye.

Magic God Othinus passed judgment from atop her feline steed.

She lightly kicked the cat’s belly with her little legs to get the clawed and fanged beast to charge.

“I’m just killing you this time!!!”

“Bwah, what? At least give me a reason, Othinus!”

===Part 3===

Kamijou was being processed for release from the hospital.

The 1st floor lobby was busy. But was it really a good thing for business to be booming at a hospital? Not only were patients and doctors moving about, but there were workers up on metal scaffolding. A closer look revealed they were replacing the New Year’s decorations with new decorations to match the beginning of a new school term.

Winter break was ending.

He had heard Misaka Mikoto, Aradia, and some others were hospitalized here too, but he hadn’t had any chance to see them since men and women were kept in different wards. He was just glad to know they were okay.

He used the waiting time in the busy lobby to speak with Othinus.

“Rosencreutz is...dead?” he muttered.

“You must have had a peaceful night if that’s enough to surprise you. He is no longer the primary problem.”

He couldn’t see her while she sat on his shoulder, but he could tell Othinus had sighed with her arms crossed.

“Alice Anotherbible was hard enough to predict already, but I fear she may have gone completely off the rails. Even CRC may have been easier to deal with since he was only interested in malicious destruction.”

Alice Anotherbible.

Was she still alive? Even though he could still see the image of her small body tossed artlessly on the floor after Rosencreutz crushed her head?

“Hold on, this isn’t some tear jerking story,” sharply cut in Othinus. “Did you forget the part about her capturing the grimoire library?”

“…”

That chilled his excitement.

Now he couldn’t simply rejoice at the survival of someone he thought had died.

But what exactly had happened?

“It won’t be that simple with a monster like her. Christian Rosencreutz was only a detour. He was the Bridge Builders Cabal’s goal, not ours. This means we’re finally back on track and our true enemy has shown up.”

“Was...Alice mad?”

“Beats me.” Little Othinus sighed softly. “If she was acting based on a simple emotion like that, we might have a chance at predicting her, but that wasn’t the sense I got. I would find it more believable if I learned Alice’s mere presence is enough to destroy the world.”

“…”

“The fact remains that the grimoire library is missing. Because she acted as bait so I could escape. We have no idea what happened to her. An ordinary magician would spare her life and keep her around, but there’s no predicting what Alice might do.”

Index was missing.

And unlike before, Alice wouldn’t have just taken Index to her secret base to play. And even if she had done that, leaving someone in Alice’s care now was far too dangerous.

The girl had been decapitated.

But that hadn’t been enough to stop her.

She had killed CRC.

Even a monster on his level had lost his life when he angered Alice and made her take him even a little bit seriously. And now those same sharp claws were at someone else’s throat.

“But...I can’t believe Alice would threaten Index’s life.”

“I don’t think she’s killed the grimoire library yet. That’s fortunate, at least.”

“Hm? You sound certain of that. I mean, I hope it’s true, but how can you know?”

“Because Alice is still in Academy City. The only reason she hasn’t lost interest in this place and disappeared is because of her obsession with you, human. So in all likelihood, she will be hesitant to kill someone connected to you. But on the other hand, that means the grimoire library’s life comes to an end as soon as Alice loses interest in you.”

That was her prediction as a war god.

It was an analysis based on accurate data and an intuition based on a vast quantity of harsh experiences, so a simple high school boy couldn’t hope to argue with it.

Kamijou still refused to back down, perhaps because an irreplaceable life was on the line here.

“I still find it hard to believe she’s alive. Is she really still in the city?”

“It is endlessly tiresome that my word as a god isn’t enough for you and you require objective evidence for every little thing, but there is some indirect evidence you can see for yourself. Just take a look outside.”

“?”

Exasperated, Othinus elaborated from his shoulder.

“Do you remember the social phenomenon unique to Academy City that was linked to Alice Anotherbible’s presence?”

“Hm? Oh, you mean Kotatsu Syndrome?”

If he was being honest, he had completely forgotten. He had assumed that had just gone away once New Board Chairman Accelerator declared martial law.

That strange form of group psychology led people to passively protest their entrance exams and the new school term by lazing around instead.

It led people to shortsightedly seek peace and comfort without worrying about the later consequences.

“Let’s head outside,” was all Othinus said. “It may not be visible from here, but you will see soon enough.”

Skeptical, Kamijou walked to the hospital exit after his release process was complete.

The glass door was partially soundproofed, probably to make life in the hospital more comfortable for the patients.

Something was exploding outside.

At first, Kamijou had no idea what it was.

He really did think something was exploding in the distance.

But when he listened more closely, he realized it was an amalgam of voices.

“''I’m sick of this martial law! You can’t tell me what to do anymore!''”

“''They’re keeping down the little guy, as usual!!''”

“''Flip them!! Flip all those armored monstrosities!!''”

Was that a wave of people? Were those strange voices and noises being made by human beings?

“I already saw it all on the way here.”

Maybe the hospital was so busy because people were claiming to feel sick and hiding out there for safety.

“It probably began with the melancholy caused by winter break ending and the new school term beginning,” quietly explained Othinus. “Then the new Board Chairman declared martial law and banned them from leaving their homes, so their frustrations grew as their vacation passed them by under those restrictions. When Alice Anotherbible’s return triggered a resurgence of Kotatsu Syndrome, it pushed all the city’s residents’ minds in the opposite direction. ...This is entirely different from the gentle social phenomenon built on escapism. I get the sense that, whether it will help them or hurt them, they will yell at and ''physically attack'' anyone who tries to boss them around.”

This wasn’t Kamijou’s first time seeing a city-wide riot.

For example, he had seen Academy City during the Christmas season when Anna Sprengel had arranged the rise of R&C Occultics.

For example, he had seen Shibuya on December 31 flooded with the youths influenced by the Transcendents Aradia and the Bologna Succubus.

But this was different from those.

When it was caused by Alice Anotherbible, the nature of the riot changed.

“It’s beginning.”

“…”

“Acute Kotatsu Syndrome is a very different threat from CRC, who was the ultimate ''individual''. This is a new trend – a countdown toward destruction by a ''group''. If nothing is done about Alice, Academy City will be brought down by internal violence. Maybe it could be stopped by a military force, but that would require Anti-Skill, or whoever else, to fire live ammunition on the people of the city.”

===Part 4===

“You expect me to head home at night? Why is the school curfew in effect during winter break!?”

“Go to hell!! I’m not going back to school. We didn’t get a real break because your stupid martial law! Extend the break for as long as that was in effect and then we can talk!!”

“We’re free!! No one can tell us what to do!! Get them!!”

A large group of boys and girls shouted and climbed on top of an armored vehicle that was swallowed up by the crowd after its occupants tried to put a stop to the rioting but couldn’t actually fire their weapons.

Would you call this Acute Kotatsu Syndrome?

Human Aleister and Golden Retriever Kihara Noukan were also watching Academy City innocently fall apart.

“U-um, Fukiyose-chan? I know that’s supposed to be cosplay, but what are you thinking? What is that character even from? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a character who’s naked except for a bunch of color-changing rainbow LED ribbons! So, um, I think it’s my duty as your teacher to tell you…”

“Eh!? What’s that!? It sure is loud out here! You’re going to have to speak up, Sensei!!”

“I have one piece of advice for today: I think that outfit shows off way too much of your boobs!!!!”

The children probably saw this as making use of their rights.

Whether they were flipping cars or throwing burning tabloids into the air, they may have been diluting the responsibility and guilt by acting as a group.

But more than any of that, this reckless behavior was caused by the subconscious influence of Alice Anotherbible’s powerful charisma.

They would do things they would normally never even consider yet not find it strange. They could go completely off the rails and simply laugh it off. This was a unique space, ruled by irrational thought processes even worse than “they were drunk, so they couldn’t help it”.

Had Kihara Noukan wanted him to see this state of the world?

Aleister wondered this and creased his brow as he followed the golden retriever around.

A severed head.

A bisected torso.

Anna Kingsford.

Another life lost. He was well aware of what his own inexperience had wrought.

“...me…”

Aleister clenched his teeth as a trembling voice spilled out.

“She died because of me…”

Once he got started, the rest came so easily.

Like a dam breaking.

That human was half howling as he cursed himself.

“It’s so obvious I used her in the wrong way! If I had more sense and if I was actually strong enough to fight by her side, Kingsford might not have died!! Maybe someone had to die, but it didn’t have to be her. If I had only stepped forward instead of abandoning her, she would be right here with us!!!”

But.

That was when Kihara Noukan saw something in Aleister’s blind spot.

Directly behind him, in fact.

Anna Kingsford had the most awkward smile on her face.

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW1.jpg|thumb]]

This was no ghost.

Kihara Noukan firmly rejected the existence of anything so unscientific.

She was unharmed. She was perfectly fine.

Eliminating all of the silly unscientific terms and logically assessing the situation led him to a single conclusion.

(Th-that bitch survived!)

This was not good.

A change came over Kihara Noukan’s round doggy eyes. They stared far, far into the distance. Extremely complex and advanced calculations rapidly unfolded in his mind. The relative locations of Aleister weeping and howling and of Kingsford blushing, smiling bashfully, and tapping her index fingers together was very bad indeed. It was a lot like a mother looking in her delinquent son’s closet and finding the knit scarf he had used as a small child stored with great care in the back. At any rate, their relative positions were at odds with romance. Depending how this turned out, Aleister’s very existence could explode in violation of all physical laws!!

...Was there any way of safely defusing this situation?

Kihara Noukan had to let his friend know.

It was too soon to give up. Romance’s doom had already approached within 5m of that human’s back.

“Are you listening, Kihara Noukan!? I am trying to tell you about my great sin!!”

“Um, yes. B-but everyone dies eventually, so shouldn’t you see all goodbyes as inevitable?”

“Maybe so! But my point is it didn’t have to be then and there!!”

“My advice as your friend is to take deep breaths to calm this swelling of emotion! When you learn the truth, it will be a great shock and you may curse the world, but I hope you can view it as a reason why this world has its positive side and that you can peaceably lower your raised hand!!”

“What are you talking about!? Hold on, why do you keep glancing behind me?”

“No, my old friend, do not turn around!! Do not, I said!!!”

Aleister ignored that advice.

This was a mistake that human continued to make again and again.

Then his eyes met hers.

Aleister saw it all and petrified.

“Ah.”

It took a full five seconds before that sound escaped his throat.

Kihara Noukan was so nervous he actually failed to get a new cigar in his mouth. The thick, fancy cigar that cost as much as a tenderloin fell to the ground unlit, but he didn’t even glance down at it.

The cat was out of the bag.

“Anna Kingsford?”

Aleister received bitter laughter in response. The glasses woman gave a little wave.

There was some bashfulness mixed in.

She must have heard everything he said.

Aleister squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath.

But this was not a ritual meant to calm his feelings.

Kingsford was an expert, so she immediately recognized this as preparations to refine life force into magic power.

“Hm, so should I 🏃 away now?”

As always, she was correct.

The magician who authored the Book of the Law unleashed all sorts of forbidden spells from his hands.

===Part 5===

This place was “somewhere else”.

But the distortion ''wasn’t yet'' great enough to call it another world.

“…”

Index was not dead.

Not yet, anyway.

Alice Anotherbible’s whims had just so happened to work out in her favor. But whether that would remain true a second from now was anyone’s guess.

“The Bridge Builders Cabal’s objective remains unchanged,” said H.T. Trismegistus with a composed expression. “Common sense says we only want universal salvation for the world.”

“You’re going to thoughtlessly repeat your mistake? Rosencreutz wasn’t the saint spoken of in legend. You should know that in your very bones after what happened!!”

Index was not one to be influenced by false appearances or records.

She had a perfect memory.

She had been born with that ability, so it had influenced her psychological development whether she liked it or not.

“''Touma and the others’ victory was a fluke.'' That rebirth ceremony was a type of magic, so it can be reproduced. That means you can try again after that one failure. But if CRC is brought back into this world, there really will be no stopping him!”

“Christian Rosencreutz was no more than a collection of his own desires and passions,” replied the young butler.

Calmly.

No, that wasn’t accurate.

“Yes, yes. Common sense says that can’t be true. I cannot accept that Christian Rosencreutz would bring violence and ruin. His true identity and name are of no consequence. He must have had a good reason for behaving that way. He did not save the world because we were not ready to understand his truth. Doesn’t that make far more sense!?”

“…”

Index said nothing.

H.T. Trismegistus appeared to stay true to his principles and keep his cool no matter the situation, but that was not without its problems.

Common sense.

That young butler had no way of handling unprecedented and abnormal situations. When an obvious mistake or error appeared before him, he would continue to attempt the “preexisting” solution that common sense provided him.

The common sense widely accepted by the world was not necessarily correct.

As an outcast who had worked to learn magic, he should have already known that.

“That method will fail.”

“Oh, I know.” The young butler nodded in a sarcastic way. “Of course I know. I am Transcendent H.T. Trismegistus, a regular-sized being who cannot move past that position. Which is why common sense tells me the best option is to leave the fate of the world in the hands of someone greater than I.”

===Part 6===

Kamijou Touma left the hospital and walked through the streets.

Aogami Pierce walked with him.

The other boy apparently rented out a room somewhere instead of living in the dorms (which was probably against the school rules), but their way home was the same for part of the trip.

“Man, we just barely got out of the hospital before winter break ended, huh?” said Aogami.

“What, are you happy you’re out? In the hospital, they serve you three meals a day and even clean the place for you.”

“Course I am. I’ll admit I’m sad to say goodbye to the intellectual lady doctors and the nurses, but school starts back on the 8th. The end of the break sucks, but I’ve gotta show up to school on the first day.”

“…”

“I mean, if I skipped the first day for a reason everyone in class accepted as legit, I’d make a habit of it and I’d never work up the motivation to go to school again. Hah hah!!”

Aogami laughed it off.

Even though they had no guarantee the new school term was going to start on schedule.

Was it called Acute Kotatsu Syndrome?

It seemed to have gotten even worse than what Othinus had seen.

The main street was packed full of costumed students like it was Halloween, so vehicles couldn’t get through. The boys and girls climbed on top of the stuck armored vehicles and some even climbed up on top of the wind turbines. It looked like they might even break the turbines down like the tower-toppling game during the Daihaseisai.

“Uh, oh. It’s as crowded as a rush hour train out here.”

“Then how about we charge headfirst into a zone with a high concentration of girls and all the plump boobs and butts that come with them?” suggested Aogami. “It wouldn’t be our fault! They’re the ones blocking our way and forcing us to push through, so we’re the victims really!!”

“Do you want to end up like the creepy guy who gets arrested at a fireworks show or on Halloween?”

The density of people was a lot like a solid wall. Kamijou did not have the courage to plunge in and try to part the crowd to get through.

So he and Aogami took a detour while complaining.

They ended up in a boxy area full of cheap artificial marble and greenery, making it a lot like a sanctuary for people who bring their lunch. But instead of a park, it was technically on the grounds of a trendy office building. The small pathway ran alongside the large building, but it was strangely void of people.

“None of those partiers here,” noted Kamijou.

“Phone GPS maps tend not to show private property. All the popular kids letting their phones guide them to the party don’t even know this kind of path exists. That’s what you get when you don’t think for yourself.”

On the main street, a taxi was being lifted like a mikoshi.

Without knowledge of paths like this, you couldn’t even get around on foot right now.

“Heh heh. The knowledge you pick up living as a Level 0 comes in handy sometimes,” said Aogami.

“Yeah, you can never have enough escape routes to use when some bored delinquents decide to chase you around.”

Now that they were out of the crowd, they found themselves able to observe it more objectively.

They watched the crowd after climbing the stairs to the top of an unnatural rise in the path, probably built up to avoid gas pipes and high-voltage lines.

People were even crowding the top of an elevated train track.

“A miniskirt, a bare midriff, and thigh armor? Hokaze-san, is that supposed to be an armored cheerleader?”

“No, Kobayashi-san, I am obviously the legendary Soaring Knight who flies through the sky and fights with a spear. The character is doing a collab with Gekota at a...I believe it is called a convenience store? Hee hee hee. These ringlets do come in handy from time to time☆”

“How is that supposed to be the ultimate gear? Is it one of those things where your strength grows the more of the heavy seals you remove!?”

“I really don’t want to hear that from the person dressed as a demon character who only wears black tape over her naked body yet has added an apron to try and pretend she is a wholesome homemaker. ...It’s probably just that the closed environment death game is so complicated people lose interest before you’re done explaining the basic rules, but I really wish they would find a less indecent way to sell the character merchandise.”

“Oh, dear. And the entrance exams are coming up soon.”

“I’m going to lie around in the kotatsu all day and no one can stop me!!”

It was honestly bad for his heart.

His distance from them didn’t really matter.

This space didn’t exist on the phone GPS maps, but it wasn’t actually a sanctuary protected by a thick wall. It simply hadn’t been discovered ''yet''. A great crowd could flood in at any moment.

“Wow, look at all the people on the tracks there. Even the trains must be stopped.”

“Wow is right. Check out all those cute little middle schoolers showing off their navels and thighs. If they’re gonna give me some delicious eye candy, they can stop the trains all day for all I care.”

Kamijou and Aogami descended the arch-like stairs to continue along the narrow private pathway.

But their safe zone did not last for long. Once they left the office grounds, they were out on another major street.

In place of fireworks, someone had ignited car smoke bombs and started twirling them through the air.

They weren’t low-temperature fireworks, so they made a lot of noise.

“Anyway, I had no idea you could ask at the hospital reception counter and they’d arrange to have your luggage sent to your dorm.”

“I was worried with the martial law and all, but the delivery industry still seems to be working. We need to thank those delivery drones that can get through even when the ground routes are blocked like this.”

But these life-or-death issues apparently didn’t matter much to the boy who lived for moe.

“More importantly, did you see that ultra-rare cosplayer dressed as Biritta-san? I’m ready to weep for joy. I can’t imagine how hard it was to get that right. I mean, that demon girl only has black tape to cover up her naughty bits. Or maybe the hard part is cleaning up after removing it? Now that I’d love to help with.”

“What are you talking about? Biritta-san?”

“She’s the girl in this year’s winter anime who dies in the first five minutes of the closed room death game. Her death was so unnecessarily well animated that she’s become the latest meme online. The animation team really poured their heart and soul into it since it was in the first episode, so she gets slaughtered with the smoothest animation you’ve ever seen. Seriously, don’t search for ‘Biritta Burrito’. The rest of us were traumatized, but you don’t have to be.”

Oh, so was she the character the show kills off right away to make it clear people know are actually going to die in the show? Kamijou stared into the distance. What a waste. He felt like there were better ways to shock the audience without actually reducing the number of characters, like having her brought back with CPR or revealing it was actually a human-sized hunk of raw meat thrown into the tiger’s cage.

“Okay, say cheese. My phone’s the newest, so I’ll share the photo with you all.”

“Wait a second, Saten-san. …Kongou-san, we’re taking a photo, so try to cover your chest more when you lean over like that. I can see something I shouldn’t!”

“Oh, this isn’t my areola – it’s a rash on my boob. I think it’s the costume’s material making the skin turn all pink. Maybe I have a metal allergy?”

“Um, I wouldn’t know.”

“Seriously though, say cheese! We’ve gotta get a photo of us with this VIP armored car we flipped when it tried to run off!! See, this is what we can do! We don’t need esper powers! With 20 of us together, flipping a 1ton car is nothing☆”

“Oh, no! But I’m supposed to be with Judgment!”

A bunch of girls in revealing costumes were gathered around a single phone to take a commemorative photo.

They wiped their faces with sports towels, drank tea from plastic bottles, and laughed cheerfully together.

Ordinarily, these girls would be chatting peacefully. And a lot of their costumes were about as revealing as a bikini, leaving a lot of skin and curves exposed, so Kamijou got the feeling he would get yelled at if he stared.

At the same time, he had also seen them shouting while they flipped Anti-Skill vehicles.

They were enjoying the freedom of their winter break, but they would also fiercely attack anyone who tried to interrupt them even a little.

Peaceful did not always mean harmless.

They may have been like a swarm of hornets guarding their large nest of peace.

“The world is ending.”

The 15cm war god hiding in Kamijou’s coat collar whispered that in his ear.

The partiers were bad, but the ones trying to stop them weren’t much better.

“Fweeeeet!! What are you doing, you uncivilized barbarians!? And why are you abandoning Academy City’s rules right along with them, Uihar-wahhh!!?”

“But, Shirai-san, a bunch of suspicious gold bars spilled out of that car’s trunk after we flipped it. We may have actually busted a crime.”

The Judgment members were dressed in strange costumes too. Like the busty glasses girl in bikini armor or the twintails girl dressed as a necromancer in a cloak with only thick chains worn below it. This wasn’t quite the same as the Dr. Police who showed up on that giant Shibuya Scramble Crossing during Halloween. The lines were blurry, like they were simply being influenced by the overall atmosphere.

Shirai Kuroko was still managing to resist thanks to her strong sense of justice, but the glasses girl with a high STR value was viewing the riot crippling the city’s ability to function with exasperation, like she had partially accepted the state of affairs already.

Othinus stared into the distance.

She was more bothered by the moral collapse than by the actual destruction.

“These people treating Academy City like their own secret base will bring down the city. And the world economy supported by science will go down with it. They can’t suppress this with force like they do with demonstrations. Not when it’s backed by Alice’s charisma. This is being fueled from the outside. Aiming a gun at these students will not stop them, nor will actually firing on them. So like I said, the only way to stop this is to slaughter every last Academy City resident with Academy City’s guns. Win or lose, the city is done for.”

It was a shift – a distortion – in morals.

Even if captured Index lost her life now, would it be caught up in this bizarre scenery and converted into something that was considered “for the best”?

If so, Kamijou had to settle this before that happened.

He had to draw on everything he had and face Alice.

He understood what had to be done.

“But…”

Misaka Mikoto had died. ******** ****** had died too. (''…? Why did I think there was someone else there?'')

Aradia and the Bologna Succubus had been killed before his eyes.

Mut Thebes had likely been killed instantly.

That had only been fixed thanks to Good, Old Mary’s resurrection and they were all staying in the frog-faced doctor’s hospital, but what had happened was still etched deep into Kamijou’s heart.

Talent, aptitude, skill, equipment, hierarchy, and rank were no guarantee.

Anyone could die at any time.

That was an obvious but absolute rule.

And this time he would be facing Alice Anotherbible, who had easily slaughtered Christian Rosencreutz, the very person who had caused all that death. That simple firepower was bad enough, but there was a more fundamental condition he had to keep in mind.

As a regular Transcendent, Good, Old Mary could not defeat an irregularity like Alice. That was plain as day from the fact that her resurrection had failed to save Anna from the Shrink Drink which had ''only'' contained a portion of Alice’s power.

They already had the proof.

The resurrection would not work on anyone killed by Alice.

''Or to put it in a simpler, more direct, way, if anyone died this time, it really was over for them.

“…”

Kamijou had to rethink this.

Could he really ask this of them under these circumstances?

Who would be eliminated from this unpredictable death game?

Mikoto and the others might decide they wanted to take part and the Transcendents might think it was their responsibility, but was getting them involved really the right thing to do? No, this wasn’t about right or wrong. The question was whether or not Kamijou himself could let it happen.

This wouldn’t be his own misfortune.

So many people he knew well would experience even greater misfortune than him. Could he really let that happen?

This wasn’t shogi – it was chess.

No matter how insignificant or crucial – no matter how it happened – the taken pieces were permanently gone.

===Part 7===

They were in Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany.

Specifically, they had snuck into a library closed for the night to search through the old books there.

Mina Mathers and Dion Fortune had been searching for the Licht Liebe Leben Temple, but the situation was changing rapidly.

Christian Rosencreutz was dead.

Baby Lilith was giggling happily and playing with the tarot cards on the table. Instead of the ordinary arcana, this was the Crowley-style Thoth Tarot which used some different symbols.

Something was unusual about the arrangements of cards she produced. They were clearly missing some of the major symbols.

The Tower, which meant doom.

The Art, which indicated the accomplishment of a phenomenon.

But at the same time, cards indicating danger kept showing up. Which meant nothing was over yet.

Like the Hanged Man, a symbol of defeat, and the Aeon, the final choice.

These cards kept gathering in concerning places.

It would actually have been a relief for to simply see Death.

Black Cat Witch Mina Mathers sighed expressionlessly.

“So CRC has left the game board after being defeated by Alice Anotherbible. That makes our trip to Nuremberg a waste of time.”

“I want to die… Look at this horrific amount of books we read through. Is this what I get for actually working hard for once?”

Dion Fortune collapsed into a heap on the same table.

If Christian Rosencreutz had been who the legends said, they would have had a hard time believing the news of his death. But from what they had heard, it sounded like that silver young man was in fact someone else entirely: Johann Valentin Andreae.

So the legend had been nothing more than a legend.

As people who were half legend themselves, that possibility could be easy to forget. The Golden cabal really did exist, so they had a tendency to believe other legends also existed.

Mina Mathers and Dion Fortune here were not the same as Aleister. They were not the same magicians who had been active during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but they could use nearly all the same thought processes and spells as the real ones.

So however he came to be, they had believed without evidence that anyone calling himself CRC would have the same specs.

Mina Mathers sighed softly.

“Then our next stop is England. The focus is now on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, so there isn’t much more we can do here in Germany.”

“Ehh!? If we’ve finished our work, can’t we go get a hotel!? Here in Nuremberg!? I don’t expect much in the way of a hot spa culture here in Germany, but we’re in the country of local beers, sausages, and potatoes. Stuffing ourselves with local delicacies and diving into a huge bed sounds like the perfect luxury to end our day with!!”

“It isn’t too late to catch a plane. And work which did not result in anything can hardly be called ‘finished’, my idiot of a student.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the one being smart here! The idiot here is you for letting Japan’s toxic work culture corrupt you! My stupid idiot of a teacher needs a lesson in keeping a healthy work-life bal- owww!? Did you really just s-scratch me with your claws!?”

===Part 8===

“You’re late, fool.”

When Kamijou finally made it back to his dorm, Anna Sprengel was waiting for him like she was supposed to be there. The mystery little girl without a passport or residency papers was sitting on his bed and she patted the space next to her with her little hand.

He decided it was best not to ask why.

“Left to your own devices, you’re going to get involved with this Alice stuff, aren’t you? Both to stop the way she’s distorting the world around her and to take back that nun. But instead of rushing in blindly, wouldn’t it be better to have the help of someone who knows a thing or two about the Bridge Builders Cabal and Alice herself?”

“Hey, I never said anything about taking you with me.”

“What, afraid I won’t be much help against Alice herself when the Shrink Drink that borrowed only a fraction of her power nearly killed me?”

“No, I’m worried about you.”

That shut Anna up.

But only briefly.

She soon resumed speaking.

“If you want to rescue the hostage, you should wait for the perfect time to act.”

“Eh? Hold on, you want me to wait? Can’t we at least discuss this first!? Index was captured and Alice could make her move at any time.”

“Fool, there’s no point in trying to include Alice’s capriciousness in your calculations. The grimoire library could be killed a second from now, or she and Alice could be the best of friends a year from now. The one thing we do know is that we only have one shot at making a rescue. Screw that up and there’s no ‘could be’ about it. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum will surely die. And in a way that prevents Good, Old Mary’s resurrection from working.”

“…”

“As a wicked woman who prefers to discard her ordinary emotions to think more rationally, I would weigh the time against the necessary work and recommend you focus on the greatest quality rescue. Aiming for speed will only cause the quality to drop below the minimum line. Are you sure you want to waste your one and only shot at this?”

“Hmph. You at least understand the basics of being a trickster.” Othinus sighed softly and crossed her arms atop the glass table. “Hey, human. Don’t look so lost. Stop assuming any lost time is exacerbating the situation. Rushing in fueled by righteous anger, kicking down the door, and rescuing the hostage only happens in the movies. Real special forces who can’t afford to let a single life be lost will build a set identical to the target location and spend hours practicing there before going for the real mission.”

All the information was accurate.

Yet as the data piled up, there was no hope to be found.

The farther they went, the deeper they sank.

Othinus cast an appraising look over at Anna.

“Do you have a concrete vision of how this rescue could play out?”

“We make our move during the night.” Miss Sprengel gave a wicked snort of laughter. “Around midnight would probably be best. Which means I would want us to finish gathering intel before then.”

“Won’t they suspect an attack in the night?”

“H.T. Trismegistus will of course, but Alice is essentially a small girl. I highly doubt she will still be awake at that hour.”

“Hm.”

“Needless to say, the ideal scenario is where we secure the site before Alice wakes up. But that might not work out, so we should also simulate who Alice will attack if she does wake up. Simply saying she’s in an unstable state and impossible to predict isn’t good enough to give the go-ahead on this rescue operation.”

“C’mon, you don’t have to hold back with this god of deception. What nasty trick are you actually considering, villain?”

“Really, you have to ask? I would like to manipulate grumpy Alice so she defeats H.T. Trismegistus for us. Did you think I would even attempt a direct confrontation? If you have more than one powerful foe to deal with, then pit them against each other so they wear each other down.”

“Yes, those probably are our best bet for Plans A and B, but I’d like a Plan C just in case.”

Kamijou got to thinking while listening to those two speaking and grinning wickedly.

A switch capable of destroying the entire world was being toyed with by a capricious girl too young to stay up late.

Humanity really could be destroyed by this.

Kamijou frowned.

“Okay, we know the time, but what about the place?”

“It will be somewhere linked to you, fool,” stated Anna.

Kamijou looked taken aback, but Anna wasn’t just guessing.

“That’s the only reason Alice would still be fixated on Academy City. And if she had gone elsewhere, the Acute Kotatsu Syndrome would be slowly destroying a city or country outside of Academy City. To be honest, I saw this dorm as a likely candidate. Not to mention the hospital you were recovering in. But Alice hasn’t shown at either place. What other candidates can you think of?”

“…”

“Where would Alice want to be, or where would she have dreamed of going at some point? She will be waiting for you there. If an idea occurred to you when I asked that question, that’s probably the answer.”

===Part 9===

The darkness of night covered the world.

The costumed crowds filled the main streets, but they did not reach the skyscraper rooftops.

Or, in this case, the narrow catwalk along the building’s front face allowing maintenance access to the giant sign.

Anna Kingsford was there smiling but also looking unusually beaten up.

Most notably, her retro glasses had cracked lenses.

“Good grief. You have improved your skills while I was gone, Aleister. Still, ⛽ing your creativity with 😡 and hatred will narrow your focus. It can be productive, but if you aren’t careful, you can end up developing self-centered 🪄 and eroding your 🔗 to the world around you.”

“You have some nerve saying that after getting yourself killed and then provoking me like that… Are all teachers untrustworthy garbage?”

“Not what I would expect to hear from the person who created Academy City,” said the golden retriever.

He pulled out a thick cigar with his thin metal arm only for it to be snatched away by Kingsford again. That kind of casual habit and mannerism helped convince Aleister she really was alive and this wasn’t some kind of bad joke.

Anna Kingsford was alive.

“Don’t get all 😢 on me.”

“There are no tears in my eyes.”

“Now, let’s get ⬇️ to business.”

The expert added a sharp edge to her words.

The mood changed.

For a true magician, was their interior identical to the world around them?

Anna replaced her broken glasses with a spare pair as she spoke.

“I am only a preserved corpse. If the great threat to the 🌍 has vanished and my service is ❌ longer necessary, I see ❌ real reason to stick around. I can return to being an ordinary corpse. Yet I have unnaturally remained in this city even if it meant reconnecting my severed torso and neck. That means something out there is worth my remaining.”

“Are you saying this didn’t end with Anna Sprengel and Christian Rosencreutz?”

“Rosencreutz was only a side issue. The 🌉 Builders Cabal dragged him out onto the stage as their savior, but he is ❌ the real threat. The center of that cabal has always been someone else: Alice Anotherbible. She has never even tried to hide it.”

“What are you saying is going to happen?”

“He will ☠️.”

Aleister nearly missed it.

Anna Kingsford stated it so naturally.

With sadness in her eyes.

But has that expert ever said anything wrong before?

“Do you think Kamijou Touma can overcome this because of who he is? Do you believe for ❌ good reason that he will find some way pull through yet again? But things are different this time. Because he is the one who chose the current conditions.”

“…”

“So I am sorry to say, he really will ☠️ this time. …And at the very least, he alone cannot change that. No matter what.”

===Part 10===

The plan was to attack Alice Anotherbible somewhere in Academy City.

The attack would happen at midnight tonight.

The location would be somewhere linked to Kamijou Touma. The pointy-haired boy’s own experience and knowledge would be more helpful there than any magical knowledge.

Anna Sprengel did not know how much existing magic could accomplish against the monster named Alice. Since the Rosicrucian founder, Christian Rosencreutz, had been killed so easily, it would be nearly impossible to defeat Alice with only Rosicrucian spells.

But if Alice was not stopped, Academy City would be overwhelmed by rioting crowds.

It didn’t matter if Alice meant for it to happen or not.

A day before, Miss Sprengel might have snorted with laughter and stirred up more trouble. She would have eliminated all thoughts of morals or good sense so no one on either side could predict her actions, allowing her to achieve results beyond her abilities. That was just how that wicked woman worked.

But things had changed.

“…”

It was January 6 at 10 PM.

A battle against Alice would be bad enough on its own, but needing to rescue a hostage too made it an exceedingly delicate matter. They had to gather intel and then finalize their plan before making their move, so it was about time to get started. Anna walked through the small room and knocked on the door to the bathroom the pointy-haired boy was using as a bed.

No response.

Puzzled, she called for him and then tore open the door, lock and all, with her small hand.

There was no one inside.

“Fool…?”

===Part 11===

Kamijou Touma walked through the city night.

He had come to a standstill less than 100m from his dorm.

“Who are you dressed as?”

“S.T.A.R.K.S. from Zombie Hazard! Bang, bang, kaboom!!”

“Is that the movie version of the uniform? Now that’s a deep cut!”

A cosplay group was dressed up all in black as some kind of special forces. They were laughing and aiming their weapons around, but those were probably real revolvers and grenade launchers they had stolen from Anti-Skill.

They were all smiling.

They meant no harm.

All of this would prevent Academy City from functioning, which would in turn cause the world economy to collapse.

The ones dooming the world had no idea they were doing it.

All of the streets were crammed full of crowds. The density was worse than a rush hour train, so if you tried to push through the crowd, it would take you all night to make it 50m. But occasionally, there were strange gaps. Those gaps usually meant the middle and high schoolers were riding around on massive tanks or armored vehicles like they were tourist carts. None of them had licenses, so they were running right over the guardrails and street signs.

Some of them must have swiped the backpack-sized communication equipment and then stolen the necessary sync settings to fly military drones around with their phones.

The bronze statue of some school’s principal had been dragged out to the center of the road where they lifted it up like a mikoshi.

“(If this is all due to Alice’s ''influence'', I can’t let her misbehave any more.)”

Charging in blindly would only get Kamijou repelled by the solid wall of people.

If the crowds grew violent or hit him with one of their vehicles, he would die.

Not all deaths were of the dramatic variety.

“(I can’t leave Index with her either. Dammit, they’re both just innocent gluttons. Is there really no way for them to get along and work together!?)”

The crowd parted as an armored vehicle moved out ahead on a joyride.

Kamijou ran out from behind cover to make use of that gap.

And…

“(I feel bad sneaking out on Anna and Othinus, but I have a really bad feeling about this one. It’d be one thing if this was shogi, but I can’t ask anyone to help when it’s chess. Good, Old Mary’s resurrection doesn’t work on lethal injuries caused by Alice. I just can’t justify involving those two in-)”

“How stupid are you, human?”

“Gwah!?”

Kamijou was so surprised his feet got tangled up below him and he nearly fell to the cold ground.

The 15cm god gave him an exasperated look from her usual spot on his shoulder.

“I’ve been around you long enough to know what you’ll do. The real question is how you keep managing to sneak out on that nun when she’s supposed to have a perfect memory.”

“Y-you’re here to stop me?”

“From doing what?”

“From saving Alice.”

Silence followed.

Othinus didn’t immediately snap at him at times like this.

She used her silence to get him to continue talking.

“I mean, maybe Alice is causing all of this. And Index is in danger. Maybe these rioters will destroy the city if nothing is done and maybe Alice could destroy the entire world on a whim.”

“…”

“But is that really her fault? It isn’t, is it?”

Kamijou’s eyes dropped to his right hand.

He still felt a dull impact there. The feeling of punching Christian Rosencreutz with the giant Dragon Strike still lingered there.

That wasn’t the same as an ordinary fistfight. That power took lives. It gave up on people and robbed them of their future possibilities.

He didn’t want to do that to Alice.

Even if the world might end tonight.

Seeing Alice dead had left him an empty shell.

He hadn’t been able to think.

In a way, it had been his inability to overturn that death that had led him to pour everything he had into fighting CRC and saving Anna Sprengel.

But.

If she was still alive…

If he could still reach out his hand to her…

Alice Anotherbible’s story was not yet over. He could still correct her mistakes and save Index while he was at it.

He thought back to when Index and Alice had eaten breakfast in his dorm.

They could all be together like that again.

(And that’s worth risking my life for.)

“The Bridge Builders Cabal put Alice where she is, Rosencreutz killed her, and I gave up on her… You can find any number of other causes. Maybe I do have to settle things with Alice, but that doesn’t have to mean killing her. Whatever it takes, I will end this so Index is safe and Alice is smiling. She’s allowed to see no hope left in this world and want to do something about that and I’m allowed to feel some responsibility there! Because I’m the one who pushed Alice to this point!!”

“Sounds good to me.”

Othinus gave in surprisingly fast.

Kamijou was actually taken aback.

“What’s the confusion? I’m your understander. Alice Anotherbible is definitely the center point of all the trouble that started around Christmas last year. The way things are, the grimoire library will die at some point. No matter how stupid this current trouble looks, if we ignore it, there is no stopping Academy City from collapsing and world economy along with it. ...But does that mean killing Alice is the right move? As a war god, I won’t hesitate to say yes, but you don’t agree, do you, human?”

“…And you’re okay with that?”

“You caused me so much trouble over saving that villain Anna and ''now'' you ask if I’m okay with what you’re doing? This is well past discussing what I’m okay with and you know it.”

“…”

“The fate of the world hangs in the balance. Make the wrong move and you will never see the Index Librorum Prohibitorum again. Worse, tomorrow might never come. ...But all of that is between you and Alice...and that nun, I guess. So make your choice based on what you want to do. Nothing else is going to change what happens here.”

Kamijou smiled a little.

And then he resumed running.

“Where are you headed?” asked Othinus from his shoulder.

“School.”

That place was closely linked to Kamijou.

Anna had said his dorm was a likely candidate, but that was wrong.

Alice had already seen his dorm.

She would be more interested in visiting a place she hadn’t been before.

“I bet Alice wanted to go there at least once!!”

For some reason, this statement earned an exasperated sigh from Othinus.

“Who does she think she is, following the same logic as me?” griped the war god who had once fully destroyed the world.

Something had to be done.

He would save Index and he would stop Alice’s misbehavior.

He wouldn’t treat that girl like a monster.

He had to make sure someone he cared for did not harm someone else he cared for.

Whatever form it would take, the time had come to settle things with Alice Anotherbible.

<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume10_Prologue|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume10_Chapter2}}
</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Chapter4

2026-06-10T22:38:08Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Chapter 4: Decide For Yourself Which Girl to Save – Battle_of_HsB-AD-CVA01.==

===Part 1===

With the siren stopped, the battlefield was silent.

Aradia’s bare feet traced sharply across the floor of the broken walkway.

Collapsed and unmoving, Anna Sprengel glowed with a pale light.

Mut Thebes, having become a massive bird, tilted her head.

“A barrier? No, a witch ointment. That can help you fly or transform you by rearranging the structure of your body.”

“It’s nothing that fancy. Only a mild protection. I can’t remove the Shrink Drink itself, but I can slow its spread.”

“But this anti-explosive suntan lotion disappears if you die, doesn’t it?”

“Do I really have to answer that?”

“Only one way to find out.”

An explosive boom rumbled out.

Mut Thebes horizontally swung her massive right wing, which was actually a pair of 300m aircraft cruisers.

The white torrent smashed up the entire top half of the giant cinema complex and scattered the pieces into the air.

Kamijou Touma was tossed into the air as well.

Aradia grabbed him by the back collar while straddling a mic stand used when the director or cast made a public statement at an advance screening or opening night.

A witch did not necessarily need to use a broom to fly in the night sky.

What mattered was the ointment rubbed onto the tool.

“Whoa!?”

“Grab onto me, not the mic stand. I like to think we’re safe as long as you don’t touch the shadow, but if your right hand does affect it, we fall. Also, Mut Thebes isn’t the only threat!!”

The witch goddess then took a more cautious tone.

“Why isn’t she using the Shrink Drink? Oh, she might want to avoid friendly fire.”

Aradia turned a sharp glare elsewhere.

Someone else was soaring through the night sky on a long mic stand of her own.

''It was the other Aradia.

Even her choice of tool when short on time was the same.

The identical silver-haired woman held her palm out with an alluring whisper on her lips.

“''The Apostle Peter forbids Simon Magus’s demonic flight''!!”

“You can tell it’s her first day. She needs more training. How do you call yourself the goddess of witches and then use that!?”

Kamijou and Aradia plummeted. Flying was easy for magicians, but the counter spell was also easy, making it hard in practice. They were forced to land atop one of the aircraft cruisers Mut Thebes was swinging around.

“Where’s Anna!?”

“How are you concerned about someone other than yourself right now? I covered her with a protective ointment, so she’ll be fine! As long as you don’t touch her with your right hand, she could be buried in a pile of concrete without so much as a scratch!!”

Mut Thebes again swung the two ships of her right wing together like she was shooing away a fly.

Aradia was tossed into the empty air. She knew her flight would be canceled by the counter spell, so she guided Kamijou to different footing a lot like descending in a parachute.

They were behind Mut Thebes this time.

They were on the bow of the aircraft cruiser – also at least 300m long – that acted as the giant bird’s body or tailfeathers.

The other Aradia landed her bare feet atop a trio of ship’s guns towering overhead like a mountain. She laughed and looked down at them with the moon behind her. Even the cheap ventilation fan cover mesh was the same. Even though there was no need to match the emergency fixes if that was an official costume.

“Don’t worry. I will protect your hope. I will ensure the good witch child need not wander in the dark.”

Next to Kamijou, Aradia twirled the long mic stand like a baton and rested it on her shoulder as she looked up at her target. The two Aradias’ gazes clashed head on.

And they both spoke at once.

“''I will kill her.''”

“''I will kill her.''”

Aradia jumped up from the deck to the guns in a single bound and the identical Transcendents began their battle.

However, Kamijou was in no position to simply watch on.

He needed to settle things with Transcendent Mut Thebes.

(If this whole thing is a bird, then this is the body or tail. Mut Thebes is at the center, so I need to move from the bow to the stern of this ship!!)

Mut Thebes of course responded.

The nearest trio of guns slowly turned.

Those giant ship’s guns had a diameter of 35cm.

“Yikes!”

Multiple blasts erupted simultaneously.

The deck kicked up below him so hard he thought he would flip over onto his back. He was shaken so hard his vision broke apart and he didn’t even have it in him to thrust his right hand out toward the source of the sound.

But unexpectedly, it didn’t hit him.

Kamijou held the side of his head with a hand and wobbled on his feet while he moved to the narrow side deck. And he continued onward.

“Ow.”

(I guess I should have expected that. Aircraft cruisers aren’t designed to shoot themselves. As long as I’m on the deck, this ship’s guns can’t hit me.)

But only this ship’s.

He heard something scraping along metal rails and looked up to see movement from the ships forming the great bird’s left wing. An angular white shadow was launched into the sky from the flight deck created by removing the stern weaponry.

That was an HsF/A-49 Sharp Frame, a stealth craft designed for aircraft carriers.

Although it looked weird colored entirely white.

“How much did she absorb, dammit!?”

Mut Thebes could increase her forces whenever her shadow touched another shadow, so even the aircraft cruisers were expendable to her. She had no problem with using the plane to obliterate this ship with its autocannons and aerial bombs.

And Kamijou was dead if even one shot hit him.

If he failed to defeat Mut Thebes and then reach Alice Anotherbible, there was no way left to save Anna Sprengel from the Shrink Drink.

The stealth craft circled sharply through the night sky and finally took aim.

(Can I stop that with Imagine Breaker!?)

Kamijou held up his right hand and clenched his teeth as he ran. If that thing sprayed 6000 bullets a minute from its Gatling gun, he would be killed before he could even use Imagine Breaker.

His throat went dry when he saw the stealth craft’s belly open up to reveal the weapons within. Apparently it was going to launch an air-to-surface missile or an aerial bomb. If the explosive contained napalm or white phosphorus, then “bad” didn’t even begin to describe it.

But Kamijou belatedly realized something.

The aircraft cruisers and the stealth craft were shadows absorbed my Mut Thebes’s magic.

So he was thinking about this wrong.

''The stealth craft and its bullets or bombs weren’t the only thing his right hand could destroy. He could also destroy the very aircraft cruiser he was running on.

“!?”

He didn’t even aim for a door – he directly punched the wall of thick armor. With a dull crash, a 2m cube was torn away. Was it divided into blocks like that? Kamijou lost his balance, so he tumbled right on inside the ship.

Shortly thereafter, the outside world was engulfed in explosive flames and shockwaves.

More than his ears ringing, he felt a pain akin to an electrical tingling across all of his skin. There had been multiple explosions out there. Like someone had tossed in a bundle of giant-sized firecrackers.

“Was that a cluster bomb!?”

“I don’t know how to use it, but I assume if I simply drop it on you, you will die before you can complain.”

Mut Thebes’s emotionless voice played from the ship’s internal speakers.

Kamijou didn’t know what kind of equipment the ship had, but apparently she was tracking his location and could hear his voice.

Still, he figured he should be safe as long he remained in the indoor passageways. Whether or not the Transcendent knew where he was, the ship couldn’t shoot itself, the walls were plenty thick, and the stealth craft was too big to fit through the door. Even if he did come across a locked door or bulkhead, it was all made of magic and he could break through with Imagine Breaker.

That meant this was a sturdy and safe tunnel for him.

“What a pain,” said Mut Thebes.

“I wouldn’t be so calm if I were you! I’ve found a safe zone, so now it’s time to turn the tables on you!!”

“Are you sure it’s safe?”

Kamijou heard a sound like an electric razor.

He looked to the side to see something skillfully turn a corner in the passageway, slip through an open door, and slowly approach him at a height of about a meter.

The white shadow was only about 45cm.

Overall, it resembled the sharp isosceles triangle of a delta wing, but it had a round hole in the center and it used coaxial rotors to move vertically or hover in place like a helicopter.

What was it?

Was it another piece of the aircraft cruiser’s equipment, making it another weapon Mut Thebes had acquired by absorbing its shadow!?

“Eh?”

He was caught off guard when the lightweight solid fuel ignited and the self-destruct drone shot toward him like a missile.

===Part 2===

The muffled explosion was audible even on the bow deck.

Witch Goddess Aradia’s long silver hair and large wimple blew in the frigid wind, but she sighed softly.

(Well, I like to think that isn’t enough to kill him when he has Imagine Breaker. No matter what it looks like or how she uses it, ''everything here is magic, including the weapons and explosions.'')

She also found this a strange thought.

To think the day would come she was acting based on trust in Kamijou Touma’s abilities.

She glanced down at her ankle and smiled a little.

“Now, I need to focus on my own job.”

She looked back up.

The two of them stood directly above the bow’s trio of main guns.

The moon shined down on the two identical witch goddess. Their long silver hair and ankle-length wimples blew in the frigid wind and they breathed identical white breaths as they smiled thinly.

There was no signal.

The two Aradias took action simultaneously.

They moved their mic stand brooms to their left hands.

One swung her right hand horizontally and the other did the same.

Their voices overlapped in disturbing synchronicity.

“I will bring peace to this city by defeating my enemy. Which makes this a good deed.”

“I will bring peace to this city by defeating my enemy. Which makes this a good deed.”

They sealed a cutting edge in their nails and took a step forward.

Their slicing fingers intersected for their first attack.

They jumped from gun to gun. When one threw an open-hand slap, the other struck that wrist to send it off course. They both twisted around while aiming a palm at the other.

Witch Goddess Aradia’s magic was based on the Triple Reload.

They didn’t need to defeat their opponent in one strike.

As long as they gave meaning to their attack, each consecutive one would grow more powerful in a snowball effect. It was an endless triple increase. There was no upper limit. As the chain continued, they would reach the point where they could fight the entire magic side and win.

A shockwave exploded out.

The aircraft cruiser’s gun barrel bent.

Fists flew, stainless steel mic stands roared, and roundhouse kicks tore through the air.

The rubbing of their feet squeaked like during a basketball game. The shadows at their feet grew more apparent. Both Aradias rubbed down the metal clasps of their decorations, sprinkling medicinal herbs at their feet, and used their bare feet to mix in sebum to create their witch ointment.

Their witchcraft mostly relied on that ointment.

Their shadows writhed in a disturbing fashion as the two witches shared a Sabbat dance.

The giant guns exploded below them, so one witch goddess gently landed her bare feet on the side deck another level down.

The other woman also landed with a smile.

“Oh? You aren’t leaving the human realm?”

“Kh.”

She clenched her teeth but couldn’t fully suppress the breath of slight exhaustion.

The other Aradia’s smile grew.

“Hee hee. That’s right. Using the Secret Chief’s power is a broken spell that lets us fight the entire magic side on our own. But it is not enough to come out on top when fighting another Aradia.”

Immediately after, the two blurred into motion.

They clashed.

Aradia and Aradia ran along the side deck, tore into the ship’s armor, and scattered sparks as they crashed into each other a few times. Their fingers sharply intersected, their feet ran, and they either swung their mic stand around in a hand or straddled it to fly in the night sky. They drew out large, twisted arcs and turned those into unorthodox loop-the-loops while their lights collided over and over before the two witches dropped straight toward the aircraft cruiser’s deck once more.

(If I only knew where the unseen rail is.)

Even as they fought fiercely enough to melt and distort the side deck’s armor, the witch goddess kept her thoughts cool and calm.

(Triple upon triple upon triple upon triple. My Triple Reload increases my power threefold with each new good deed, which is like creating a single rail. If I can predict hers, I can block her and keep her dominos from continuing to fall.)

Even in a battle between Aradias, how they used their spells could create a difference in strength. If one continued to grow her power with Triple Reload and the other had that process stopped early, the resultant difference could be used to end the battle.

Aradia knew she could predict that rail.

After all, her opponent was another Aradia.

She could easily tell what in this environment could be converted into a good deed.

But if she tried to take advantage of her opponent’s weakness that way, her opponent would do the same to her.

Stopping the falling dominos was meaningless if it was mutual. Then the shadows at their feet would lose everything they had built up and both of them would have to start over from scratch.

Whether she tried it or hesitated, it wasn’t enough to end the battle.

And…

“Tch!!”

She clicked her tongue and they exchanged a few more attacks.

The air vibrated and even the ship’s thick armor creaked concerningly.

Maybe it was for the best that they were on an aircraft cruiser cut off from the Academy City streets.

Even without the giant gun barrels breaking and flying away, wielding this kind of power would have done untold damage to the city.

“Oh, no. Are we stuck in a permanent stalemate?”

“Maybe so, if our power really is equal.”

They continued to clash like beams with a cutting edge, but that couldn’t go on forever.

One of them came to a stop and the other stopped on the deck in kind.

The Aradia fighting for the boy in trouble tried to surreptitiously catch her breath.

Her attempt failed.

“Huff, puff.”

“What’s wrong? Worn out already? I guess you are ''the old Aradia.'' Feel free to say you only lost because you were still worn out from your previous battles.”

“Do you really expect that to happen?”

“No, I doubt it will be that easy. But if this continues, we really will be pushing ourselves to the limits of our identical specs. And that gives me a small opportunity. One you lack.”

“Won’t you be in trouble if you’re wrong and we defeat each other?”

“Not really.”

That was all she had to say.

(Mut Thebes must have given her a lot of information on me.)

If both Aradias were defeated here, did she assume it wouldn’t affect their ceremony because another performer would fill the role? Had she added the ventilation fan cover mesh to her official costume to ensure their specs were truly equal, thus not giving the “old Aradia” even the slightest chance? And as long as their savior arrived, the witches she wanted to protect would be saved.

That wasn’t good enough for this Aradia.

She smiled a little upon discovering that feeling inside her.

If their specs were completely identical, they were stuck in a permanent stalemate. That meant she needed something ''other than'' her Aradia identity. With that something extra on the scales, she could achieve victory.

(I already gave him hope as a goddess, so I can’t let myself be defeated now.)

Would that feeling give her something that let her overcome her physical exhaustion?

''It would.

A heavy breath appeared white in the winter chill.

Aradia’s shoulders heaved on the side deck as she glanced to the side.

“Hoping to ask him for support?”

The other noticed and smiled thinly.

The other magician taking the Aradia name shrugged with her mic stand broom still in hand.

“Seems to me that would only complicate matters. We look and act the same and we use the same spells. Can he look at the two Aradias here and tell which one is on his side?”

“Oh? Do you really think he can’t?”

“?”

Then.

A certain woman focused on one point of the Aradia standing in front of her. She noticed the difference between them.

''The other one had a single loop of duct tape around her right ankle.

“Ah.”

“''Our appearance and specs might be identical, but the things we’ve experienced and the memories we’ve made make a difference''.”

Kamijou Touma rushed in from the side, his fist crashing into the enemy Aradia’s cheek.

Not even the triple goddess beyond human territory mattered.

No secret move was enough to block that boy’s right fist.

(I only wrapped this duct tape around my ankle at the gas station. Mut Thebes must not have seen me between then and our arrival at the cinema complex.)

“Also.”

The witch goddess wagged her finger down at the other Aradia who had been knocked out by the blow to the head. She winked and whispered.

“The goddess of all witches isn’t all that physically strong. A solid hit from Kamijou Touma’s fist is enough to knock her out. …I know that firsthand from Shibuya on the 31st.”

===Part 3===

Defeating the enemy Aradia wasn’t enough to end this.

An earsplittingly shrill sound exploded out.

A formation of four HsF/A-49 stealth craft passed by overhead. The aerial bombs that separated off in midair accurately dropped toward Kamijou and Aradia, but Aradia extended her left hand into the air just before they hit. One after another, several explosions burst in the frigid night sky.

“I will hold back her aerial forces. You go deal with Mut Thebes herself!!”

“Thanks!!” shouted Kamijou, running to the side deck. Aradia did not join him, instead mounting her mic stand broom and taking off toward the bridge roof.

More explosions burst like fireworks overhead while Kamijou ran until his surroundings changed.

The floor below his feet was flat.

He had arrived on the flight deck equipped with an electromagnetic catapult that launched planes using the same principle as a linear motor. That meant he was at the stern.

(Sure, you can use this to take off, but how are you supposed to land again!? Stupid Academy City and its stupid, stupid weapons!! Are they VTOL? Or do they use floats to land in the water and then the front of the ship swallows them like a landing ship!?)

He heard a dull tremor.

Mut Thebes had apparently separated the 10 aircraft cruisers attached to her back like a giant bird. The massive white shadows remained standing like shed skins as she slowly turned toward him.

And she stepped onto the flight deck.

The newly flat surface made it look like the entire environment was prostrating before Mut Thebes as its master, ensuring it would never end up looking down at her.

Kamijou Touma and the Transcendent faced each other directly below the moon.

Mut Thebes slowly tilted her head and spoke plainly. Her expression was no different from when she had asked him to pass the French dressing back at the consulate.

“Should I shout the name of my special attack?”

“I’d much prefer you said nothing and let me defeat you.”

“Leaving human territory. Risk 4: Life and death, pure and impure, quiet and noisy, holy and evil, correct and incorrect – releasing the dual seal. Swiftly activate, Dead Phoenix.”

“So much for my preference, goddammit!!!”

Kamijou clenched his right fist and Transcendent Mut Thebes swept her hand horizontally at the same moment.

Something white moved.

An object with a nearly 3m diameter emerged from her shoulder. It looked like an enlarged version of a circular saw for cutting lumber, but it was actually a giant 8-bladed propeller.

“!?”

It rotated rapidly at a diagonal angle from her shoulder. If it so much as grazed Kamijou, he would be torn to pieces. He hurriedly held out his right hand to negate it, but something wasn’t right.

It was so large that mere contact would mean instant death for a human-sized target like Kamijou, but one look at the massive bird wings from before was enough to know that a warship’s propeller should have been more than 10m across.

(''She changed its size''? Could she always do that, or is that what the inhuman Dead Phoenix mode does!?)

And Mut Thebes was already expressionlessly summoning another weapon.

A white object covered her back like a giant armored snail shell. It was in fact…

“A boiler.”

“Wha-?”

Roaring flames flew straight toward him. He negated them with his right hand, but the dark smoke obscured his vision. She made her next move while he was still choking. She swept her arm to the side and something like a white beam of light shot out.

“Water jet auxiliary power.”

(Water.)

The dark smoke was sliced through along a diagonal line.

There was no time.

The blade of ultra-pressurized water extended without end. After all, this was a propulsion device meant to push a warship weighing more than 100 thousand tons. A hit would easily slice apart a human torso. Kamijou ducked low to the ground to just barely avoid the horizontal sweeping attack, but the aircraft cruiser’s bridge was sliced off at the base, causing it to collapse.

Mut Thebes tilted her head and readily threw away the weapon boasting so much destructive power.

And next…

“Grounding plate.”

“What the hell!?”

“The base of the ground line. However, a ship can’t bury the plate in the ground like normal, right? Instead, the massive amount of excess electricity produced within the ship is sent out into the seawater.”

“Not my point. What’s with all these crazy things!?”

“You mean this?”

The brown girl brought her palms close together in front of her chest and thick lines of electricity crackled between them. If what she said was true, that had to be even more powerful than a train’s high voltage line.

“As I have already explained, I absorb the weapon’s shadow, not the weapon itself. I have no real reason to use them for their intended purpose.”

“So you can just do whatever you want!?”

“More or less,” she plainly agreed. “And another thing. Remember the boiler?”

“?”

“I was opening the maintenance hatch of a running diesel engine to forcibly extract the flames, but that isn’t all that emerged. What do you think happens to a human who breathes in ''invisible oxygen-deficient air'' created when combustion steals all the oxygen away?”

“…Gah!?”

Suddenly, Kamijou’s right knee nearly dropped to the deck.

Mut Thebes’s expression was unchanged.

“You do not need a special poison gas to kill someone. The air contains around 21% oxygen. Simply reducing that by half creates deadly air guaranteed to make a human pass out.”

“~ ~ ~!!!!”

“Or so it said in the engine room manual. Extracting the knowledge from the shadow wasn’t easy, just so you know.”

Using the items in such unusual ways may have been a privilege gained by leaving the human territory, but how far would she grow if she were to absorb the shadow of, for example, an original grimoire or Index?

And Kamijou couldn’t spend any time on that thought.

He could tell he wouldn’t remain conscious for long. Similar to motion sickness, he didn’t seem able to fight it despite being aware of it.

He wanted to end this quick so he could at least pave the way to saving Anna before he passed out. He could have Aradia, the caring big sister, carry him to Alice. He had seen enough of that goddess of the cold but gentle moonlight to trust her that much.

So he didn’t need to worry about himself.

He would focus on that life they could all save together.

“Gahhh!!” he shouted, breaking through his mental limiters like a hammer throw athlete.

He clenched his right fist tight and took a powerful step forward.

Mut Thebes only tilted her head.

She did not use the electrocution weapon she had called a grounding plate.

With a deep rumble, gravity suddenly released its grip on Kamijou. A push from below had launched his feet from the flight deck. His footing – that is, the aircraft cruiser – had moved.

The brown girl sighed softly.

“My control is not limited to the weapons attached to me.”

“Gwah!?” groaned Kamijou when, a moment later, he was slammed back down into the deck.

At least his right hand hadn’t touched the floor, causing him to plummet further.

But.

He couldn’t reach her.

Gathering all of his resolve wasn’t enough for his fist to reach that Transcendent.

He was out of breath and unable to get up, but when he looked up at her, he saw the girl raising both hands overhead with the moon behind her. Thick electricity crackled between her palms.

Mut Thebes did not hesitate.

“The ship’s fluid dynamic power generator produces 45,000kW of alternating current power at a frequency of 60Hz. That easily surpasses the power of a nuclear aircraft carrier and is enough to cause the human body to explode.”

“You think you can kill me with ''electricity''? Sorry, but I’ve built up a resistance to high voltage currents.”

“There is no such thing.”

An extra-powerful discharge burst out.

Kamijou Touma tried to raise his right hand, but he was trembling too badly to move.

The light filled his vision.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

His pure white vision did not return to normal. But that he could sense the passage of time meant he was still conscious?

“What…happened?”

He tried to speak and found his voice was terribly hoarse.

Still collapsed, he blinked hard several times before his vision somewhat returned. The deck was scorched brutally black right next to him. And Mut Thebes stood a short distance away. But she hadn’t had any reason to move away in that situation?

No, that wasn’t true.

The aircraft cruiser itself was tilted diagonally. The girl was leaning her back against a wall to prop herself up.

“What…”

She was moving her head side to side to see what had happened.

“…the hell?”

===Part 4===

Aradia tore through the night sky on her mic stand, bringing down one stealth craft after another.

Her magic was based on tripling. So the more she brought down, the greater her power. Once she got the ball rolling, she had nothing to fear. She weaved in an S-shape to dodge the shots from the 35cm ship guns firing from the giant bird wings spread out overhead. When antiair missiles were vertically launched from the deck, she let them follow her for a bit before she spiraled around one of the five legs until they had all crashed into that “wall”.

The antiair laser units could shoot down cruise or ballistic missiles with greater than 99.9% accuracy, but not even they could catch the witch goddess flitting this way and that in the sky.

She slipped through the deadly net pouring down like rain.

“I had heard laser weapons aren’t visible, so are those weird green lines the equivalent of tracer rounds?”

(The giant bird is made up of 10 ships and each one is loaded with 30 or 40 planes. That means they could carry nearly 400 in all. And since I’ve taken out- hm? How many was it?)

Aradia flew straight up again on her mic stand and smacked her forehead.

Apparently she had earned too good a high score.

The ship guns roared and an ordinarily impossible scattershot approached her like a wall.

The projectiles were all Shrink Drink spears.

In a way, this was the most fearsome attack for a Transcendent.

(With the second Aradia defeated, I guess Mut Thebes doesn’t have to worry about friendly fire anymore.)

“Tch!!”

Aradia sharply changed course to slip through a gap.

(How am I still in the air? I’m pretty sure warships and aircraft carriers need a crew in the hundreds or thousands. And there are ten of them here. Are there too many weapons for Mut Thebes to control them all? She also must be too focused on Kamijou Touma to eliminate my flight ointment.)

The ordinary firepower wasn’t a threat.

She needed to be on the lookout for something else instead.

“Oops.”

She twisted around and flew in a spiral to let a slowly-approaching 45cm self-destruct drone pass her before detonating. Fortunately, their rotors were too loud for them to sneak up on her, but she still had to be careful because they moved differently from artillery or a missile.

Aradia’s top priority was drawing the fire of the aircraft cruiser and its aircraft since Kamijou Touma couldn’t dodge or defend against them on his own. That way he could focus on his own fight. So she could accomplish her goal just by flying around.

But if possible, she also wanted to do damage to Mut Thebes.

This wasn’t even about wanting to repay him for saving her before.

That boy was already her target of salvation.

The Bridge Builders Cabal may no longer recognize her legitimacy, but that goddess had to save him.

The witch goddess flew her stainless steel mic stand in a large circle around the giant bird like a drone getting video footage. She focused on one point of that massive bird comprised of several aircraft cruisers.

It technically wasn’t a weapon.

“Hm,” she muttered quietly.

She was said to be the goddess of the night and the moon and her lips contained the bewitching shine to match.

“I bet I can use ''that anchor''.”

She took aim and sharply descended.

Her target was the metal latch holding a chain thicker than her arm.

===Part 5===

An unnatural tremor ran through the ship.

If Kamijou wasn’t careful, he would have slid to the side even as he lay collapsed on the flight deck. In this case, it looked like Mut Thebes had a harder time keeping her balance while standing up.

Yes, the giant bird created from several aircraft cruisers was clearly shifting out of place. It tilted diagonally and didn’t fix itself. One of the five legs extending down like a long skirt must have been squashed like an aluminum can.

This was no coincidence.

Good fortune had no love for Kamijou Touma.

“''Aradia''?” asked Mut Thebes, looking somewhat confused.

This couldn’t possibly be good fortune, so the boy had to ask which goddess had chosen to protect him.

“She must have lowered the anchor. But how did that cause so much damage? The anchor is a standard piece of the ship’s equipment and it isn’t even a weapon. It isn’t enough to bend and break a military ship.”

“Don’t be so sure. I don’t know what exactly Aradia did, but if that really was the anchor, it is possible for that to destroy the ship. There are standards concerning the water depth and the chain length and there are apparently detailed rules about using two anchors at once and how to lower them. Forcibly lower the anchor in the wrong way and the power of the waves tugging on the ship can bend or even break its hull.”

“They teach these things in Academy City?”

He decided it was best not to mention he knew this from an old B movie he had seen on TV recently. Even if it only came once in your life, not every day of your first high school winter break was guaranteed to be exciting.

“And let’s not forget what you said about reaching the cinema complex.”

“?”

“''You walked here.''”

Kamijou slowly gathered enough strength to stand back up.

His head was still woozy from breathing in the oxygen-deficient air, but he could still fight.

He could pass out a little later.

“You also said it took some time to absorb multiple 300m aircraft cruisers, but that means you would have needed to rush here to make up for the lost time. You would normally run and jump in those circumstances.”

“…”

“But you didn’t do that.”

No.

Was there a reason she couldn’t do it?

“Ships are made to float in the ocean, not walk on land. Even if you can pull it off slowly, forcing it to a run would bend the hull and concentrate enough weight to crush it. I’m betting you gave it five legs because you wanted to distribute the weight. And even then, you had to walk slowly and carefully!!”

Aradia had done it on purpose. By lowering the heavy anchors one after another, each part of the giant bird had been forcibly twisted in different directions. She had broken a weapon larger than the average building by using the enemy’s weight and momentum against them like a form of martial arts self-defense.

“Tch.”

This may have been a first.

Mut Thebes clicked her tongue. And her focus shifted from Kamijou to Aradia, who was flying around in the sky.

She didn’t even need to use the Shrink Drink designed to kill Transcendents.

Flying with magic was easy, but shooting her down with the counter spell was just as easy.

Kamijou couldn’t let that happen.

“Ohhhh!!’

“?”

In the precise moment her focus shifted, Kamijou Touma shot to his feet and used all his strength to push himself forward while crouched low. He threw a full-power tackle toward Mut Thebes’s slender hips.

He struck.

Gravity briefly vanished and then they both crashed down onto the flight deck.

Afterwards, a powerful vertical tremor hit them. Had Aradia dropped another anchor to the ground, tugging unnaturally at the great bird?

The shaking and tilting sent Kamijou and Mut Thebes rolling along the flight deck while tangled together. They picked up speed. They rolled on and on and belatedly realized the tilting of the deck was getting worse.

There was no stopping it now.

They grabbed at each other while sliding down the steep downward slope of the flight deck. Kamijou couldn’t stop their momentum, but by pressing the soles of his shoes against the deck and creating resistance, he could guide their slide to the sides. They would be badly injured if they hit a wall at this speed, so he desperately directed them toward the starboard side deck, slammed Mut Thebes against the base of the destroyed deck to dislodge her grip on him, and slid another few hundred meters down. They both slid all the way down to the asphalt far below.

“Gh.”

They had reached the ground.

A short distance away, the girl silently rose to her feet.

The massive bird seemed to cover the sky overhead.

A dull, heavy scraping and groaning of metal came from above. The bird could no longer keep its balance, so its upper body pressed against the remaining bottom half of the cinema complex and it stopped as if leaning against the building for support.

Most likely, that massive bird was no longer usable.

But the aircraft cruisers were not Transcendent Mut Thebes’s only weapons. She took a quick look around at the bottom of the skirt-like five legs and her eyes stopped on an armored vehicle flipped over on the road. No, it only looked like one. A high pressure water weapon was crushed between the vehicle and the road.

That meant the vehicle was an anti-NBC decontamination vehicle.

Or was Mut Thebes focused on the revolving grenade launcher fallen next to it? If it was meant to distribute gas, it likely contained tear gas or emetic gas. Artillery only fired upon a single point, but these invisible chemicals would spread to cover an entire area. Was she going to use that to take out Kamijou? It was true gas was a more effective anti-personnel weapon than bullets.

And she had already had some success with the damage caused by the oxygen-deficient air.

She licked her lips and held out her palm.

“The vulture devours the flames enveloping it and devours the dead flesh. All is reborn anew. In other words, the Dead Phoenix.”

“!?”

There was a powerful flash of light.

But it didn’t come from Mut Thebes. A nearby streetlight was blown away by a tank gun at close range. The gun was attached to an 8-wheel mobile combat vehicle – a Predator Octopus. Only one person could have used the smart glasses to control that military vehicle which should have been abandoned in the underground parking garage.

And the shadows stretching across the road were influenced by the number and position of light sources.

So.

Blowing away the streetlight and spreading explosive flames in an unexpected direction caused the vehicle’s shadow to stretch in the opposite direction, as if fleeing from Mut Thebes. Same for the grenade launcher next to it. Now she couldn’t absorb the surrounding shadows and create her white versions.

Now an ordinary fist could reach her.

“What!?” groaned the brown girl.

This wasn’t over yet.

Kamijou clenched his teeth and his right fist.

And he thought of the person who had fought alongside him.

(Anna…Sprengel.)

===Part 6===

The small girl was crawling on the floor.

That position was impossible to imagine from her usual vicious pride.

She was more than 50m from the ground.

The half-destroyed cinema complex didn’t have any real floors left. Only some slight remnants of the floor still existed around the thick pillars and by the walls. Anna was crawling along that narrow space, meaning she had nowhere to go and no way to go back.

“Kh.”

Maybe she couldn’t defeat Alice Anotherbible’s power. The amount of power ''alone'' was extraordinary.

Maybe she couldn’t escape the Shrink Drink.

Maybe she was doomed to die.

Without ever finding the king she sought.

“But…”

She refused to give up without at least trying first.

Those two had done nothing wrong. They had not ignored her explanations and they had not impatiently skipped through the text. They hadn’t made any of those mistakes.

Anna was sick of watching people digging their own graves.

She was frustrated with this world where no one would follow her instructions.

But.

If someone who had followed her instructions and hadn’t done anything wrong were to fall, something even deeper than the core of her being would break.

(I…)

She was not a praiseworthy person.

She was a wicked woman through and through.

If Kingsford did everything the right way, then Miss Sprengel did everything the underhanded way.

This Anna had not lived a life she could be proud of.

But even so.

(I wanted to teach people. I wanted to be someone’s teacher.)

“I thought as much.”

She heard a voice.

Probably Aiwass’s.

“Finally decided to be honest with yourself? You did not want a king because you wanted someone to bind your wicked ways. You wanted to give this would-be king a proper education, didn’t you? And this time, you would keep trying no matter how many times you failed. Because you believed doing that would make the present world a better place, at least a little bit.”

Anna did not reply.

She wasn’t in a position where she could explain every little thing anyway.

The goal of the Rosicrucian magic cabal was to use mystical magical knowledge to eliminate the world’s sickness and restore it to a healthy state, just like a person took medicine to heal their illness.

She had simply been too powerful a medicine to take as is.

The world’s sickness had definitely existed.

In that case…

(I can’t die yet.)

Miss Sprengel caught something with her trembling hand’s fingertip: her smart glasses.

(I can’t die now that I know what I truly want!!)

It took all her strength just to place them on her face coated with gray dust. She clenched her teeth and focused like never before.

“Those innocent ones…sought out my teachings.”

It was fortunate the walls and floor had crumbled away and she was stranded partway up the building.

This gave her an excellent view of the world.

She could see the city that she knew would soon be destroyed but she still wanted to remain beautiful.

She wasn’t going to remain conscious for long.

She could tell.

Her vision was flickering in and out, but she managed to raise her voice just before it went dark for good.

“So keep your hands off of theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeem!!!”

She could see two people far below.

As well as an 8-wheel Predator Octopus.

===Part 7===

Kamijou Touma walked on wobbling legs.

He was at his limit thanks to the shockwaves pummeling his body and the oxygen-deficient air reaching his blood.

But he still managed to clench his right fist tight.

He thought about Aradia, goddess of witches, the moon, and the night. He thought about Miss Sprengel who had played a role in founding the Golden cabal. He thought about those two who weren’t physically with him, but were fighting alongside him all the same. The labels of human and Transcendent – of regular and irregular – didn’t matter here. Their desire to help each other intersected and laid out a powerful web of support.

Kamijou Touma was the same. He had no grand purpose, but he wouldn’t concede to anyone when it came to the strength of his feelings. If he didn’t win here, those two were in trouble. He would have to helplessly watch as they were killed for the grand plan of the great Transcendents.

''He couldn’t let that happen.

''He refused.

So a completely ordinary high school boy gritted his teeth and clenched his right fist tight.

Just like those two, he would force this to work.

Stronger. Stronger! Stronger!!

“It doesn’t matter how many weapons you have. That power is only an illusion.”

“Kh.”

“True strength comes from your friends, Mut Thebes!!!”

He caught the Transcendent’s cheekbone right when she finally turned his way.

Kamijou Touma swung his right fist with his full weight behind it.

<noinclude>
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Chapter4

2026-06-10T22:37:07Z

Ultranova17:

==Chapter 4: Hear the Name of Thy Ruin, World – Call_“XXXXX”.==

===Part 1===

Kamijou felt the entire world raise a groaning cry in that moment.

===Part 2===

The gloomy young butler known as H. T. Trismegistus pushed his cane sword up with a thumb and attacked.

They had more than 10m between them, but it didn’t matter. The boy only saw it as something like a tremendous explosion.

A silver explosive blast formed a sharp, straight line.

That wasn’t possible when swinging an ordinary blade, so it had to be some kind of twisted magic.

“!!!???”

Kamijou felt a tension strike him on the cheek. A moment later, the air burst, blasting him in the right eardrum. He couldn’t even tell if that was a sound or a rapid pressure distortion.

But he had dodged it.

Kamijou Touma had just barely dodged it.

At the last second, he had concluded Imagine Breaker and its ability to negate all supernatural powers wouldn’t be enough. A memory he shouldn’t still have throbbed in the back of his mind. Had something happened long ago that gave him a powerful fear of ''iaijutsu and other sword-drawing techniques''?

He could hear something.

Despite the vibration of his aching eardrum, some distorted common tones reached him from head on.

He knew he couldn’t afford to miss this.

“''No more holding back. Risk 4: Releasing the numberless seal – leaving human territory. Rapidly renewing myself using a trio of great beings.''”

“…”

Kamijou gasped, forgetting even to frown.

It wasn’t exactly the same, but he recognized those words. When Witch Goddess Aradia was pushed to the limit in Shibuya on the 31st, she had attempted to draw on something.

Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker had shattered it that time before it was complete.

But not this time.

“My right hand contains Zeus. My left hand contains Indra.”

''From the very first move, Transcendent H. T. Trismegistus was taking this to the level of tearing down half of the world supported by science and magic!?

“Thus I am renewed. ''Z. I. Trismegistus'' conversion complete.”

“Really!?”

“Think about it.”

The young butler silently pushed his thumb up against the head of the cane that hid a blade.

A few millimeters of the deadly glint emerged once more.

“Common sense says I have no reason to hold back. If an enemy is being a nuisance, you should kill them right away, don’t you think?”

“…”

“The drowning man grasps at straw. An excellent saying. The proverbial man is earnest about survival and, no matter how pathetic he might appear, he is not causing anyone else any trouble. …But with a plank of Carneades, the drowning man must snuff out the life of another in the fight over the plank floating in the ocean.”

That was probably what led him down this path. Or a small glimpse of it.

Hadn’t he said that, no matter how logically you explain your academic theories, there is nothing you can do when people brush them aside based on emotion?

But using that reasoning to ban people from having emotions wasn’t going to create an ideal world.

“Have you heard that people once believed madness was caused by a stone of folly inside the head and victims actually had their heads cut open in a serious attempt at medical treatment? How about the baseless legend that all medieval castles have cruel dungeons or long, hidden escape routes? This is not unique to any one era. Superstitions always find their way into the world of academia and they are extremely hard to extricate once they have taken root. They cause so much harm to the human world. So someone must prevent these farces from altering common sense. And the distortions that my Alice would bring to the world are the greatest such example. Someone must put a stop to it.”

This probably wasn’t about Carneades. If he simply hated that story about a plank, he wouldn’t be trying to solve this by killing Kamijou. Trismegistus was a throwaway penname shared by academics in an older age. So who was this guy?

Kamijou stepped on a frozen puddle.

He didn’t have time to prepare for the impact.

They had more than 10m between them, but since Aradia had been cut down in front of him, he could tell the length of the cane sword and the range of the actual attack did not match.

From there, Kamijou Touma recalled something else.

He had to set aside the intense fear of death trying to numb the back of his mind and the uncontrollable racing of his heart. He couldn’t forget what really mattered. What did he need to focus on most here?

Transcendent Aradia.

First and foremost, he needed to prevent any further attacks on her while she lay motionless on the ground.

It was distorted.

To Kamijou, the deadly slash flying straight toward him looked a lot like an exploding firework.

The roar of bursting air arrived after a short delay. The explosive sound crashed into his right eardrum as he just barely dodged to the side. The green grass was torn through and a zigzagging line of destruction sent dark soil soaring into the sky.

This time, he had done it with his own willpower.

Time had seemed to stretch out infinitely, but it soon returned to normal.

The rose hedge behind him was torn through.

(Damn, I can’t let this scare me so much. Aradia’s in trouble if I don’t move in and negate this with Imagine Breaker!!)

“Tch!!”

“I feel like clicking my tongue as well. I clearly have a long way to go as a Transcendent if I fail to kill my target with the first attack, even if outdoor battles do add in many complicated environmental factors. I cannot look my Alice in the eye after this.”

More small explosions followed. And some shattering glass sounds. The garden’s streetlights and bug zappers were scattering sparks, but Kamijou knew he was dead the instant he looked toward them.

He didn’t have time to stand around.

He kept his momentum going as he charged toward the small woods in the garden. They were only decorative and would not even function as a windbreak, but this was still better than out on the open grass.

Kamijou ducked down after just barely surviving, but he was also smiling.

(H. T. Trismegistus is focused on me, which means he won’t attack Aradia again.)

Some words were already escaping the young butler’s mouth.

“Shall I call Alice?”

Kamijou heard the young butler’s footsteps from beyond the thicket. He also heard the rubbing of metal hinges, so the man was presumably opening a storage case and pulling out a notebook or pocket watch or something.

He was confident.

But that made Kamijou smile even more. ''What luck.'' Even Mr. Misfortune himself couldn’t help but think that.

H. T.? Or was it Z. I. now? Whatever it was, Trismegistus was pursuing Kamijou. Luring him away from collapsed and unmoving Aradia was the right thing to do here. What was this if not a silver lining to his predicament?

“There is no common sense at all in your attempt here, but I suppose it is the only option that could possibly allow you to defeat me. But either way, I will have this dealt with before Alice arrives.

Common sense.

Kamijou hadn’t heard the details, but was that the starting point for this Transcendent calling himself Z. I. Trismegistus? It was possible he had seen the moment when a major ''disturbance'' in that concept had led to a vast tragedy.

Just like Witch Goddess Aradia had roared after witnessing the persecution of so many witches.

Just like the Bologna Succubus’s soul had been burned by the false accusations her name pointed to.

Z. I. Trismegistus was the same.

“…”

Was it Zeus and Indra?

But Kamijou didn’t have Index with him. And he had thrown 15cm Othinus to go seek help. On his own, Kamijou was only a high school boy, so he didn’t know what these magical words meant. Even though he knew they had to contain the key to a miraculous upset here.

He heard a metallic sound at his feet.

His throat went dry. He had stepped on the stainless steel cover over a drainage ditch.

He sensed his impending death.

“''There you are.''”

“''!!!???''”

The instant after he rolled to the side, a long-range slash lashed out. In fact, it circled around the large tree he had been leaning against and sliced right through the stainless steel cover, sending sparks flying.

(That didn’t even move in a straight line!? This is bad. I can’t even imagine what kind of path it can take!!)

The young butler’s voice came from somewhere in the windy artificial woods.

“Hm, so I missed. Then I should visually confirm your location first instead of relying solely on intuition. I do not want to destroy the beautiful garden I created for Alice.”

(Does that mean he wasn’t using any kind of clairvoyance or precog? No, wait. He’s a Transcendent. He might just be trying to trick me into lowering my guard that way!!)

Hiding behind the trees was relatively useless if the slashes could move around obstacles. But running out into the open garden would be suicide. So…

(I need to get inside the consulate!!)

He tackled the back entrance opening out into the woods and tumbled inside. If he had knocked or even grabbed the knob, a slash from behind probably could have sliced horizontally through him along with the door and the stone wall.

But he had survived. He got back up and ran down the long hallway.

(I don’t like the idea of relying on this.)

Kamijou gulped and pulled out his old folk’s smartphone while still crouched low.

He used the device to connect to R&C Occultics’s official website.

And to the magic database that had been leaked to the public.

If you typed in a term and ran a search, it would pull up a list of webpages, especially ones selling related products, but when Kamijou tapped the link now, he only got a simple “this service has been shut down” message. He realized he should have expected that after he destroyed the giant IT company during the incident in Los Angeles.

But a few external sites apparently still had cached versions of the website. That would only contain fragments of the vast database, but it was better than nothing.

Staying on the 1st floor too long could get him killed by a horizontal attack since that slash’s range was unknown, so Kamijou made his way to the nearest stairway before the young butler made an appearance.

(Zeus at least sounds vaguely familiar. He’s some kind of god, right?)

He ran a search and found Zeus was a Greek god.

He was the final child of Cronus and Rhea. He was the ruler of heaven and symbolized by the blessing of the rain. On the other hand, he was also known for the lightning bolt he held in his hand which obliterated all of the gods’ enemies and meted out divine punishment.

(A lightning bolt?)

He tapped another link in the explanation to delve deeper, but none of it was very clear. He could tell Zeus had an ultimate weapon symbolized by lightning, but nothing said whether it was a spear, a bow, a sling, or a magic bullet. One sculpture of Zeus showed him holding something rodlike, but that was only meant to be the lightning itself and other art depicted various designs for his weapon.

A formless weapon.

Bright light, an explosive sword drawing, streetlights and bug zappers destroyed just because they were nearby…

“!?”

Outside the window, a slash suddenly flew Kamijou’s way.

If he had left the stairs and entered the 2nd floor hallway lined with windows, that would have hit him. He fell on his rear and the horizontal line sliced through the walls just above his head. Was the attack aimed solely on a vague figure visible through the window? But the windows remained shut and the glass intact.

How ''disturbing'' that was belatedly crawled up Kamijou’s back.

(How does that work!? Is it not just the blade extending out through space!?)

Z. I. Trismegistus must have been able to see him from outside, so he needed to move elsewhere. He quickly turned around and fled further up the stairs.

(Dammit, I can’t do that. If I hide on the 3rd floor, I’m putting the Bologna Succubus at risk!!)

He turned around again.

Surrounding the consulate’s White House-style mansion were several walls and towers straight out of a fairy tale castle. If he wanted to keep anyone else from getting hurt, he had to avoid the main structure and escape into one of the towers.

Indra.

When he typed that other foreign term into his old folk’s smartphone, he found that was a god from the Hindu religion spread across the Indian region. That felt like it had nothing to do with Zeus, but apparently there was a cultural connection. For example, the names of the Indian god Dyaus, the Greek god Zeus, and the Roman god Jupiter all came from the same name. And Indra used lightning too. But Kamijou doubted the pair had been chosen for that alone.

Most likely, there was some other rule at play. Something that would be obvious if he could only look it up in some kind of magic or occult ''dictionary''.

(Do Zeus and Indra have something in common?)

The site said the form of the Hindu lightning weapon was just as unclear. For example, Indra’s weapon was known as the Vajra. When the stories arrived in China and Japan, the Vajra was said to be shaped like a five-pronged club or a pestle with a blade on the ends. But those were only exorcism weapons designed by Indian artists and priests because “lightning is difficult to explain without giving it some kind of shape”.

Both traditions incorporated the same name.

Both had weapons symbolizing formless lightning.

Weapons that could later be given form by someone else – even mere humans.

(Is that it!?)

Kamijou ran up a tower’s spiral stairs and exited through the skylight leading to the roof. At first glance, the height made this a dead end, but there were still a few paths he could take, like the tall castle walls or the roofs of the elevated passageways. And useful items could be found anywhere.

For example…

“A solar power cable!!”

Z. I. Trismegistus could freely change his name and his attacks were undeniably frightening. Both for their simple power and range, but also because the slashes could change direction and circle around cover. They moved too quickly to react to, so they would be deadly when combined with iaijutsu, which could be so hard to predict.

But those attacks had to follow some kind of rules.

(That stainless steel ditch cover in the artificial woods.)

What connected the Greek Zeus and the Hindu Indra?

(I’m pretty sure the window frames on the 2nd floor were metal too. That means his sword strikes follow paths of electrical conduction!!)

“And if his weapon is lightning, I should be able to redirect it!!”

“Sigh.”

The young butler’s voice softly but bluntly interrupted him.

“''This is not Zeus.'' Common sense should have told you that right away.”

How – and when – had he arrived on the tower’s roof?

Something flashed. The person using the Trismegistus name had flicked up a clear plastic cocktail pin with his thumb.

Then the cane sword was released from its scabbard and light surged out.

Kamijou held his right hand out, but it wasn’t enough. He definitely felt something being negated, but when the blade’s light hit the cocktail pin overhead, the light scattered as if from a disco ball.

That light carried the sword strike.

This didn’t follow the rules of electricity at all.

The victim didn’t even have time to feel a chill on his spine. More than eight glowing slashes rushed toward his neck from different directions.

His death was a silent one.

His vision spun around.

It wasn’t Zeus’s lightning bolt or Indra’s Vajra.

And he was punished for his wrong answer.

After failing to find the key to a miracle, the boy could only look back up at his own headless body, still standing there.

(Aradi-)

===Part 3===

Kamijou’s vision restarted.

===Part 4===

The best Kamijou could describe the feeling was having the film of his memories forcibly linked together. And he only knew one person capable of something so absurd. She was so convenient she could eliminate the very tragedy of death, but she would utterly destroy your world the instant you started to ''assume you would receive her help''. This monster – this Transcendent – had complete control over an artificial miracle.

“Good…” he groaned.

His right shoulder felt funny. Had she severed that arm again?

He couldn’t even get up, so he held his throat and looked up at the woman in a large hat and a maternity dress who stood next to him like shimmering heat or a ghost.

“Good, Old Mary?”

“Do not worry.”

Good, Old Mary did not assume she would give her help either.

And she knew what that puny boy most wanted to hear.

She remained entirely motionless even in the biting wind.

“Aradia is safe. Since you managed to distract H. T.? Z. I.? ABC? Random Letters Trismegistus, mama could complete the process in peace.”

That was all it took.

Kamijou Touma felt so much relief he nearly let go of the consciousness he had reclaimed.

But he couldn’t do that.

Z. I. Trismegistus – that monster who was not Zeus and did not wield a lightning bolt – was still out there. Leaving him be would give him a chance to use his cane sword against Aradia again.

So Kamijou had to do something.

Even if nothing he had done had worked so far!!

“Mama said not to worry.”

Kamijou’s anxiety motivated him to try and force himself up on the tower roof, but Good, Old Mary bluntly interrupted.

“You have met mama’s conditions for salvation. By managing that, you and Aradia’s gamble paid off. So stay here and accept your victory prize. Mama will defeat him. You are not needed.”

“Really? First Aradia and now Kamijou Touma? You would give your miracles out to just anyone, wouldn’t you? I can’t let Alice see this.”

On a different roof, the young butler gently returned the sword to its scabbard and tapped his finger against the hilt like he was timing something.

The air between the two Transcendents seemed to electrify.

“Good, Old Mary. Your conditions are too broad and lax. Do not forget that we are the Transcendents who accompany Alice. Did you think you could avoid the ‘monster’ label if you played at being a doctor?”

“Have you gone so senile you cannot tell the difference between a proud doctor who pours all of their efforts into helping any suffering people they come across and mama who blurs the line between life and death for her own purposes?”

Her sigh sounded exasperated.

Z. I. Trismegistus’s fingers toyed with his cane sword.

“''Common sense says not everyone deserves these grand miracles.''”

“''Who says miracles only belong to a chosen privileged class, you fuck.''”

[[Image:GT_Index_v07_337.jpg|thumb]]

These were their starting points.

The very cores of these Transcendents clashed head on.

A moment later, something shining exploded from the distant young butler’s cane sword, but it was clearly thrown off course. That wasn’t lightning or light. It was pressurized water. The deadly water jet targeted Kamijou’s neck while he was unable to get up, but its path changed when it hit something else and sliced diagonally through a different tower.

A huge explosion of orange sparks occurred a moment later.

The leaves floating in the air were all sliced through when the splashing droplets hit them.

If Kamijou had tried to block that with Imagine Breaker, the main water jet would have exploded, drenching him. And if each drop could slice through solid objects, his entire body would have been shredded.

Kamijou couldn’t tell what Good, Old Mary had done.

He only saw her slender fingers occasionally toy with the camping kitchen tools hanging from her belt ''which looked vaguely weaponlike'': the tea kettle, the gas burner, the multitool, the sandwich toaster, etc.

“Random Letters.”

“Please state my identity accurately. Alice is going to start calling me that.”

“That name is too long. But you have nothing to worry about. Mama will resurrect you even if you die. However, mama must punish you, so you will be resurrected into a state with all your bones removed and your organs crushed. It is time you crawled this earth like a worm in a state of constant, undying pain, Transcendent. Maybe then you will understand what it feels like for those who can only look up from below.”

“…”

“Do you understand the consequences if you lose? Then do take this seriously. Life is such a wonderful thing, so make sure to thank mama, Random Letters.”

“I don’t even care if you get it wrong, at least try to say my name right!!”

Good, Old Mary was still toying with the kitchen tools in her hands.

She did not actually use any of them or try to hit him with any of them.

Yet far below, a massive fissure formed in the ground and orange lava erupted sharply upwards. It looked like a disturbing glowing serpent. The young butler jumped up to avoid it, but then a mass larger than a dump truck crashed into him from the side. The massive blunt object might as well have been one of the wrecking balls used by cranes to demolish buildings, but it was actually a hunk of ice weighing more than 30 tons.

A deadly attack split the ice into three pieces.

Trismegistus didn’t even wait to reach the ground. He landed on one piece of ice and continued slicing through the bed and desk that crashed through a window and the storm of pebbles torn from the white wall, ''before solidifying it all.'' What even was that? Clear crystals jutted from where he sliced through the objects, linking together Good, Old Mary’s projectiles, and pinning them in place in midair.

Based on what Kamijou had seen, those sword strikes came in more than one variety.

Lightning.

Light.

Water.

Crystal.

How did it have so much variety? The young butler himself had said ''it wasn’t Zeus'', but even knowing that, Kamijou couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Aradia and the Bologna Succubus’s spells were supposedly powerful enough to fight the entire magic side on their own. Same for Good, Old Mary’s resurrection.

Was Trismegistus the same?

He could infuse his sharp blade into any phenomenon, so if he wasn’t afraid of cutting himself, could he fill this entire universe with ''miniscule'' death and destruction?

“Do not worry. Mama has a scorching hotplate double slap with that gloomy butler’s name on it.”

“I’m thankful that you’re helping me, but how am I even supposed to respond to something like that!?”

Kamijou trembled and shouted back at her, but the Transcendent didn’t seem to care.

As if this wasn’t enough to surprise Good, Old Mary.

“Trismegistus. Who is currently in your right hand? And who do you have serving within your left hand? Did you attack Aradia before your top priority target because she uses a similar spell and you were afraid she would see through it?”

''Flash.

''Boooooooooom!!!

This time, it wasn’t a long range slash. Was it lightning? With cane sword in hand, Trismegistus himself dropped sharply down like a flash of light. But he was forcibly stopped right in front of Good, Old Mary who stood atop the tower with her large hat swaying.

There was an invisible wall there.

The one Transcendent revealed the other’s secrets from such close range.

“Mama knows your trick. You are not borrowing a portion of a god’s power and you are not making yourself identical to a god to wield their power. You place one god in your right hand and another in your left. Including you, that creates a large triangle that implants the world with ''a false definition'' saying you yourself are a god too. That is your method of leaving human territory. So instead of borrowing an existing god’s name, you create a brand new god and make yourself that god. You use the correspondences of the Liber 777 to accomplish this. Thus, you are not Zeus or Indra and you were not Hermes or Thoth. In the end, you never could love anyone other than yourself.”

“Tch!! “My right hand contains Odin. My left hand contains-”

“Mercury? Or maybe Anubis or Loki?”

“!?”

“Weren’t you listening? Mama knows your trick. Anyone who understands Crowley’s correspondence table can predict your next move. And that means your sword is no longer a threat. You cannot freely transform your blade into whatever you want. It operates on a predictable pattern.”

Aradia had mentioned the triple goddess in Shibuya.

Kamijou still didn’t know what that meant, but Trismegistus was another Transcendent whose power was based on the number 3.

“I too am a Transcendent who serves Alice. I know you do not have as much an advantage as you claim to.”

The young butler’s trick had been revealed, but he still smiled and pressed his sword against the invisible barrier.

“Your surefire plan has already failed from the moment I got this close. Not too surprising really since you are no more than the kitchen manager. Food is meant to be carried out to the guests; you do not want them entering your territory.”

A slight cut ran down Good, Old Mary’s cheek visible below the brim of her hat. A few red drops formed and dripped down to color her face.

The young butler could apparently ''infuse'' his sword strikes into a variety of ordinary phenomena like light and water. So could he apply a cutting edge to an electric ''field'' and not just to a lightning strike?

“Good-”

Kamijou gasped just before an explosion burst out.

Trismegistus was sent spinning away. He forcibly applied the brakes by stabbing his cane sword into the flower garden on the roof of a midair passageway connecting the sharp tower to the large mansion. A storage case similar to a tackle box spilled from his cloak and he couldn’t return it to its pocket. He tilted to the side with his right half covered in blood, but he was definitely smiling.

He was focused on Good, Old Mary’s right hand back on the tower.

She held an ordinary sandwich toaster like it was weapon.

“Ha ha ha!! I’ve peeled back another layer, Good, Old Mary! How many more until I break through that calm façade? You might be the kitchen master who can create a microcosm contained to a glass container, but not even the greatest chef can cook without her tools. I will keep peeling back those layers. And with each tool I take from you, the more powerless you will be!!!”

The previous rules no longer applied.

Good, Old Mary took a step forward.

“''Steam.''”

The word came after the fact.

Her tall body suddenly disappeared.

It wasn’t a simple issue of speed. Unlike with Saints such as Kanzaki or Acqua, there was no roar or blast of wind as she tore through the air. Maybe this was the light physically bending and maybe she had constructed some kind of trick that placed her in a preexisting blind spot found in human vision, but she must have surrounded herself in something that prevented anyone else from seeing her.

(You’re kidding, right?)

Kamijou recalled how Good, Old Mary had appeared out of nowhere when called back in Shibuya on the 31st. What if she hadn’t teleported from afar and had already been standing in that scramble crossing?

By the time the powerless boy realized a blade had been against his throat at the end of the previous year, Good, Old Mary had approached Trismegistus.

She was already making her next move.

“!?”

Transcendent clashed with Transcendent.

They reduced the distance between them to zero, several explosions erupted, and each time, a tea kettle or gas burner dropped to the ground far below.

It looked a lot like Good, Old Mary was overwhelming her opponent while appearing from and vanishing into the background. With each explosion, Trismegistus took a powerful blow and the rusty scent in the air grew stronger. The flurry of attacks was too great to block with a cane sword alone.

But who was really making progress here? Hadn’t Trismegistus said his goal was to take away all of her tools?

Kamijou Touma was concerned, but his imagination proved insufficient.

“Mama is going to allow herself a risk of 4. Releasing the singular seal – leaving human territory,” said Good, Old Mary. “Show yourself, Tribikos – the tool mama used to contain a complete universe.”

Kamijou felt some shaking.

He thought it was an earthquake, but apparently not.

“…”

He looked up toward the sky without thinking, but in this case, the foolish pointy-haired boy hadn’t been hopelessly left behind.

Trismegistus did it too.

He reacted just like Kamijou even as he sneered despite his battered body. He silently looked overhead. Yes, even though ''they were at the top of a tower or in a rooftop flower garden.''

Three distorted legs – each one taller than the average transmission tower – supported a squashed sphere resembling a domed baseball stadium. Was it supposed to resemble chemistry equipment like beakers and flasks? Or was it supposed to resemble a living, breathing creature? Kamijou wasn’t sure, but the very core of his body was ruled by a dreadful shaking. Even at the top of a tower, the sky overhead was entirely blotted out.

It was as hard as thick porcelain.

But it was also clearly pulsating from the inside.

What did it contain? A collection of energy as massive as the sun or even the big bang? An all-consuming black hole? Good, Old Mary had called it a universe. Was that a metaphor, or was it literally true? Looking up at it, Kamijou could no longer tell what was a joke and what wasn’t.

“The red stone, a panacea that provides immortality, pure control over the five elements, rearranging the universe.”

Good, Old Mary accepted what she had summoned like it was nothing. She did not even glance up at it.

That Transcendent calmly viewed her enemy from below the brim of her hat.

Calmly but strongly.

“But a creator must do more than complete their research. They cannot make any progress without first inventing the necessary tools. Mama is Good, Old Mary. The Bain-marie insulated pot, the Kerotakis reflux device, and the Tribikos distiller are all the basic tools needed to create a universe, so do not underestimate the one who rules ''the very foundation'' of those tools, long-named one.”

The giant mass did not attack.

She was going to use the brand new death and destruction contained within.

How far did it go? This was something from a brand new category than all the types of magic and elements Kamijou had seen before. What if it pushed even a bit past the limits of what the 103,001 grimoires covered? Wouldn’t this be magic that ''not even Grimoire Library Index could defend against''?

Did this simply make Good, Old Mary frightening, or was the real threat Trismegistus for requiring something so powerful to deliver the finishing blow?

“Ha…ha ha ha. Good, Old Mary, you are rebelling against Alice at this point.”

“You are a Transcendent, making you more powerful than the average person, but mama heard what you childishly said to this high school boy, knowing he is forced to walk a path of greater-than-average misfortune because he lives in this city and is unfairly shunned by god’s miracles. You said common sense says you have no reason to hold back and, if an enemy is being a nuisance, you should kill them right away.”

“There, that’s the final layer. Once I survive this, you are done forrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!”

“Mama sends those words right back at you. Since you wield your own miracles to trample on the less fortunate, you do not meet mama’s conditions. Thus, she will not hold back. So bring it on, you depressing butler. Mama will kill you quickly like the worm you are.”

There was a sharp clash of metal. Trismegistus had remade himself into a brand new being by swapping out the names of the gods wielded by his hands and he rushed toward Good, Old Mary, slicing through even the wind with his cane sword. Whatever he planned on infusing his sword strike into, he pushed the sword up from its scabbard with his thumb and tons of rusty sewing needles spilled from the blade.

Good, Old Mary had told him to come to her, so she was unfazed. A massive piece of lab equipment covered the sky overhead and she only needed to release what it contained. All she did was pull back her index finger while standing in the flower garden.

This time, they both attacked in a straight line.

The two Transcendents clashed after tearing through the seals which kept them human.

And…

===Part 5===

Light flashed.

A wet explosion rang out.

===Part 6===

“…”

It took Kamijou Touma a moment to realize nearly all sound had vanished.

Was that short rhythm he heard his own shallow breathing?

The destruction was so bad he just about forgot he was on the roof of a tower on the consulate grounds. The ground was torn up, orange lava spewed out, and a few of the other towers had collapsed. It looked like the end of the world. He was all the way at the top of a tower, but he felt dark soil on his head.

His entire body was stiff and he had trouble simply moving his head. So he instead moved just his eyes while slumped on the roof.

The wind blew and dust scattered through the air.

He saw a silhouette through that dust cloud. It was lying on an elevated passageway that looked ready to collapse at any moment. Kamijou gasped when he noticed how dark the silhouette was, but he could make out some other features too. It wasn’t feminine. It only looked dark because of the old-fashioned tailcoat and cloak it wore. It looked a lot like a crushed cicada. A tiered storage case similar to a tackle box sat partially open and crushed.

That was Trismegistus.

Kamijou couldn’t say whether he was H T, Z I, O M, or whatever other combination at the moment.

He wasn’t moving anymore.

But Kamijou Touma remained frozen. He couldn’t relax yet. Of course he couldn’t. Not when he could see another silhouette collapsed a short distance away from the motionless young butler.

That one was Good, Old Mary.

The giant Tribikos’s three legs had shattered, its smooth squashed sphere was split in two, and its pieces leaned against the consulate.

But this wasn’t a case of mutual destruction. If the threat was gone, Kamijou’s paralysis would have gone with it. He would have found some way to run to Good, Old Mary and see if she needed medical care. And if she was fine, he would have tried to restrain Trismegistus.

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t bring himself to move while on the top of the tower. The deadly paralysis showed no sign of going away.

Because something else had happened here.

This ''was not'' two Transcendents attacking and defeating each other simultaneously.

“Court, court, court.”

Far below, a small silhouette walked along the ground. And the girl was saying something.

Her words formed a rhythm like she was humming an improvised song.

Hers was the last voice Kamijou had wanted to hear right now.

“The girl’s court is in session.”

This was Alice Anotherbible, the true tyrant who had obliterated those ''ordinary'' Transcendents in the blink of an eye.

With a roar, the tower and the rooftop flower garden collapsed. Kamijou could tell grabbing onto something wasn’t going to be enough here, so he steeled himself and aimed for a body of water that had survived the devastation. He couldn’t re-aim after being thrown into the air. So instead, he leaped from the crumbling tower himself to reach a garden pool that was even more bent than a gourd.

“Gahh!?”

He landed in the water, but he still ended up bloody. The extreme chill seemed to slice through his skin. But he had made the right choice. He couldn’t let the pain or chill stop him now. He didn’t have time to safely run down the spiral staircase.

Because Good, Old Mary and Trismegistus were in danger if he didn’t reach them immediately.

What would happen to them if Alice reached them while they were helpless?

(Ugh. Not to mention…)

He realized he should have seen this coming.

Trismegistus had been using his cane sword to produce supernatural blades ''not found in any mythology'' and Good, Old Mary had produced a piece of lab equipment so massive it covered the sky. With that going on, there was no way the young master of the consulate would fail to notice.

The idea of “ordinary Transcendents” was absurd, but she was so overwhelmingly unusual that he felt the need to apply that “ordinary” qualifier to Trismegistus and Good, Old Mary. She was so extraordinary that even other Transcendents feared her.

(It’s no use.)

Kamijou forgot to even breathe.

He was entranced.

(Mut Thebes is an execution expert and has that “drink me” item capable of killing Transcendents, but not even she can defeat Alice. Even thinking about fighting her is the wrong move!!)

Alice’s cute lips had uttered the words “court is in session”.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was a global best seller, but Kamijou was ashamed to admit he didn’t know that much about it. He knew there was a tea party with a hatter and a march hare, he knew there was a cricket game at the castle with the queen of hearts, and he thought there might be a court scene too. Was that related to the hysterical queen who yelled “off with their head” at the drop of a hat?

That would mean this trial meant death for the accused.

The odds of a guilty verdict and immediate death were greater than 99.9% and any other result had such slim odds it deserved to be called a miracle. On the other hand, there was no possibility at all of harming Alice herself. Not even a 0.1% chance.

It was that unilateral of a massacre.

“A-Alice?”

“Yes, teacher?”

“That’s enough. This is already over. So you need to calm down and-”

“''No.''”

A dull popping sound followed.

But it was wetter than an explosive going off.

The young girl hadn’t even directed her small palm in that direction. She hadn’t even glanced that way.

But Trismegistus was still launched from the ground. His already injured body twisted further in midair, crashed helplessly back to the ground, and kept rolling.

“Alice!!!”

Was he alright? Not the physical impact or pressure. Was he alright on the level of the fundamental definition of a Transcendent!?

And it didn’t end there.

Alice’s shadow pulsated at her feet. She wanted another sacrifice.

She wanted the other Transcendent lying motionless on the ground.

“The Trismegistus stuff is over!! Good, Old Mary didn’t do anything! In fact, she saved my life! So-!!”

“''No.''”

Kamijou moved between them.

Alice’s usual smile was gone. She kept the blank expression of a noh mask as she silently tilted her head.

That was far more terrifying than if her face was red with fury.

She opened her eyes unnaturally wide and spoke without blinking.

“Teacher. There is blood on the ground. It smells like you.”

“…”

“Good, Old Mary was too slow. She did not risk her life to protect you. She failed to see the threat coming and then patched things up afterwards. That ''isn’t good enough.'' She neglected her duties. The girl told everyone in this secret base – consulate? – that you are an invited guest and they were not to harm you. But these two failed to keep the most basic of promises: ''don’t kill people''.”

More pulsating.

But this time it came from inside Alice’s children’s book dress.

She could not restrain her power anymore. Kamijou clenched his teeth knowing what lay at the foundation of it all.

Alice was frustrated.

She was frustrated that someone she cared for had come to harm. She was frustrated that the Transcendents who lived with her had done it. And she was frustrated that she had failed to stop them and save his life.

I’ve come to play, teacher.

What if Alice’s first words to him had really and truly been ''the whole story'' for her?

The thought made him grimace.

This wasn’t good.

It went beyond Trismegistus and Good, Old Mary. Based on Alice’s current rules, Shibuya on the 31st was a problem too.

Aradia had killed him and the Bologna Succubus had failed to prevent it.

This one seam threatened to tear down everything around her.

Hence the tyrant title.

That immature ruler had tremendous power but could not protect the world because she was too easily manipulated by her emotions.

“You can’t, Alice,” said Kamijou without thinking.

She was acting entirely on a child’s logic, so he maybe could have chosen to simply hear her out instead of rejecting what she was feeling. But he still made his move since it looked like the tiny tyrant was ready to explode at any moment.

And losing everything here would be far too painful.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and Trismegistus. If he was being honest, none of the Transcendents had been perfect. He couldn’t fully accept the inhuman way they each set their own conditions for saving people.

But they still cared deeply for the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Trismegistus had been utterly terrifying, but even he had only wanted to eliminate Kamijou so he could protect Alice. He had been willing to bloody his hands and take Kamijou’s life because he cared about the home he had found in the Bridge Builders Cabal more than anything.

Maybe he had gone about it the wrong way. But now the man who had gone to so much misguided effort, and the woman who had tried so hard to stop him but just barely failed, had both been badly injured. There was no reason to punish them further.

The young tyrant needed to learn that forgiveness was another option.

“You can’t do it this way, Alice.”

“Are you going to fight the girl? To protect Good, Old Mary who is lying there close to death?”

But with her head still tilted, noh mask Alice immediately rejected her own question.

“No, teacher. The girl can tell from your eyes. You are also looking at Trismegistus. That means ''you’re talking about saving them both.''”

Good, Old Mary had saved his life, so it made sense with her.

But he had no reason to insist on saving the young butler known as Trismegistus. Even if he had done it for Alice, he had cruelly cut down Aradia and attempted to do the same to Kamijou.

But Kamijou didn’t even need to think about his response.

“So what if I am?”

“Why would you do that?”

“If I don’t have a reason, I’ll find one. At the very least, I don’t have it in me to abandon someone to die and then smile like nothing happened.”

He directed his right fist toward her.

There was a dull cracking sound, but not from his fist.

It came from Alice Anotherbible’s tilted head. The angle of the tilt had passed a certain threshold. Her thin neck continued making strange cracking noises, but no hint of pain was visible on her face.

She spoke from that abnormal angle and from the noh mask that seemed entirely devoid of life.

“You too, teacher?”

Something more frightening, and much more painful, than tears of blood spilled from her eyes.

“''You’re afraid of the girl and her power just like all the others? But the girl hasn’t said anything wrong. The girl hasn’t done anything wrong.''”

That was probably close to the very core of that young girl.

This was something Anna Sprengel’s whisperings had implanted in her and something she had ended up clinging to.

“I’m sorry…Alice.”

It was true Kamijou had kept his eyes on both Good, Old Mary and Trismegistus to ensure no stray shots would hit them. And Alice had seen right through him.

But did she realize that it wasn’t ''only'' those two.

They were confronting each other head on. They were clearly enemies. But it was an indisputable fact that Kamijou Touma had kept that young girl in the very center of his vision this entire time.

He would save Alice too.

If he didn’t have a reason to, he would find one.

He was making the choice that none of the Transcendents had dared make.

“The Bologna Succubus and Good, Old Mary told me about this too.”

“…Did they?”

Their eyes met.

He couldn’t look away now.

“They said I was the only person in the world who could hold an ordinary conversation with you and the only one who could get you to accept your mistakes if you did the wrong thing. If that’s true, then this is my job. Alice Anotherbible, it doesn’t matter if you hate me now or not. Don’t ever think that’s enough to stop Kamijou Touma!!!”

“Enough, teacher. ''Just shut up.'' You’re completely helpless once you get caught up in a few ''wonders''. That puny fist of yours would shatter if you tried to break through the wall you’re facing now, so don’t think the girl is going to start bawling just because you threaten her with it!!!”

Her picture book dress completely tore away, revealing soft skin and leather overflowing with immorality.

The psychedelic sight would destroy the souls of all who ignored their instincts and attempted to attack her. Alice Anotherbible’s fury had easily dealt with the entirety of Academy City’s dark side, but now it was manifesting in full to crush just one boy.

He realized this may have been the first time Alice had ever directed real hostility in his direction.

It scared him.

People trying to survive a bombing or shelling could apparently feel so much fear they bled from their heart. The pressure bearing down on Kamijou was reaching that level.

Nevertheless, the puny boy chose to fight back against this deadly barrage. He knew that, deep down, Tyrant Alice wasn’t looking for someone unnaturally kind who would bake her a birthday cake every single day. She wanted someone who would do this without hesitation.

He had to believe that.

''If he wasn’t sure what to do, he only needed to listen to his will.

He could not take a single step away. He was certain he stood in the position needed to save Alice.

And that had to be enough to give him the strength to fight against such great power!!!

===Part 7===

Alice Anotherbible.

Bits and pieces of her power had been seen in Academy City on December 29. There were the direct examples like the hedgehog balls and flamingo bat, there was the Executioner with unknown attack conditions, and even the Bridge Building that constructed bridges between the world’s logic and laws to distort the world as she saw fit. Seeing as she had created a reality where the dark side’s survivors all worked together to fight a powerful foe, her power had reached the point of forcibly creating impossible results.

Also, her body was immune to bacteria, bugs, curses, and all other forms of internal damage, both scientific and magical. As for external damage, she would always remain unscathed thanks to the hedgehogs and flamingo protecting her. Moreover, this didn’t come from a fear of shedding blood. She protected herself that way because if anything obstructed her actions, she might get angry and kill someone.

It was unknown if it was even possible to defeat her.

Kamijou couldn’t guess what punching her with Imagine Breaker would accomplish.

And with all that in mind…

(My top priority is that world-distorting power.)

Kamijou set his sights on that.

(I have to avoid ''being sucked into a fake happy ending where I forget all about fighting.'' But as long as I can avoid that, I can at least continue to fight back. That means-)

“''Gryphon, clean this up.''”

Everything blurred.

Kamijou’s vision grew distorted as he was tossed more than 20m backwards. Alice’s already small form looked so much smaller due to the greater distance.

Horrific snapping and cracking sounds came from inside his body. He belatedly realized he was basically being squeezed within a giant press.

Giant feathery wings spread wide before his eyes. That was definitely a sharp beak and talons holding him. Overall, it reminded him of a hawk or eagle, but that was no bird. When his eyes finally managed to focus again, he realized he was pinned down by a lithe body covered in feline muscles.

Hadn’t Alice mentioned a gryphon?

He estimated it was more than 7m long. The spread wings made it look nearly three times as large. A lion was 2.5m and a Siberian tiger could reach 3m, so how strong was this beast!?

(Damn, I’m not sure what a gryphon is supposed to be! And since this came from Alice, is it a specific one from that children’s book? I need Index’s knowledge here!!)

“Bh?”

''He hadn’t known about this.

''Kamijou hadn’t heard a thing about this trump card!

“Gahh!! Cough, cough, agh! Alice!!!”

Held between a giant beak and pressed roughly to the ground, “cornered” didn’t adequately describe Kamijou’s plight.

“Gryphon.”

Alice wasn’t even looking his way with her leather and soft skin exposed.

She only held out a hand and observed her nails.

“The girl is bored. Entertain her with the usual lobster dance.”

“!?”

Kamijou’s vision turned to flowing lines and gravity seemed to vanish.

It took him a few seconds to realize the giant monster was shaking its head side to side with him still in its beak. By then, he had already been slammed into the dark soil. He heard a disconcerting cracking sound deep inside him. He couldn’t have survived a second or third time, but he instead slipped from the beak, flew through the air, and tumbled along the ground. Thankfully, the beak wasn’t good at gripping. With a jaw with rows of teeth or fangs, he would have been pummeled until he didn’t even look human anymore.

Some kind of massive vortex approached him with rumbling sounds reminding him of artillery fire.

Was that the lobster dance?

That told him nothing! He couldn’t even predict what was flying his way! He was up against incredible power wielded in seemingly meaningless ways, so he had the feeling anything he tried to do to escape would backfire!!

He put off worrying about his inability to breathe. He instead rolled to the side to escape.

It didn’t help.

He felt something catch on his back and then the world around him lost shape again. By the time he realized, a birdlike talon had caught him, he slammed into the ground, tearing up the grass. He forgot all about breathing. He couldn’t resist in the slightest as the sharp break grabbed him again.

Kamijou couldn’t win. Or more accurately, ''he couldn’t even start to fight.'' He had badly misjudged this. After running around Academy City’s darkness with Alice on December 29, he had tricked himself into thinking he understood the girl.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, Trismegistus, and all the other Transcendents were each said to rival the entire magic side on their own, so did he really think what he had seen before was enough to terrify them?

How many more trump cards did Alice have?

In fact, this giant monster with a lion’s body and a bird of prey’s beak, wings, and talons – had she called it a gryphon? – had been tossed out so thoughtlessly he wondered if Alice Anotherbible even considered it to be a trump card. Could this be her idea of ''teasing him'' with her little finger instead of one-shotting him like she had the others?

“Teacher.”

Cold wasn’t the right word.

Alice’s words were empty, like she didn’t care at all if he lived or died, which tore into Kamijou’s heart.

“You don’t need to worry about that. There is no way you can escape the Gryphon.”

“Aghhh!?”

“Do not underestimate the girl’s Gryphon. He is an embodiment of destruction who insists everything is a boring illusion and strips all things of value.”

Alice made it sound like no concern of hers. The Gryphon may have been the one who got rid of any nuisances bothering her.

It appeared whenever Alice didn’t feel like playing and it swiftly cleaned up whatever was ruining her fun. No, it was more than that. That monster would also perform the aforementioned lobster dance to cheer up the small girl. It destroyed only the simplest of hurdles. Its job was to give her a change of pace when she was done playing with someone and wanted them removed in a hurry.

The Gryphon hadn’t made an appearance on December 29.

Because Alice hadn’t felt the need.

Did that mean, ''in Alice’s opinion anyway,'' the Gryphon was even more dangerous than Academy City’s entire dark side!?

(A-)

Still in its mouth, Kamijou reached out his hand.

Toward the girl in the unsuitable leather outfit who was trying to display no interest in him.

He couldn’t reach her.

He knew that.

But if he died here, what would happen to her?

(Al…ice.)

A dull crunch rang out.

The gruesome sound of crushed flesh and bone echoed across the area.

He had known this. He had known Imagine Breaker wasn’t enough to battle a Transcendent without anything else prepared. That was an undeniable fact when he had already been killed multiple times by Transcendents like Aradia and Trismegistus. And he doubted Good, Old Mary was going to conveniently get up and resurrect him right now.

If he died, it was all over.

That basic fact of life applied to everyone equally…but it did not bare its fangs against Kamijou Touma here.

He was not dead.

The crunch had not been the Gryphon mercilessly shutting its giant beak. The gruesome sound of crushed flesh and bone had contained another sound as well.

''An explosive blast.

The flesh and bone belonged to the Gryphon, not to Kamijou.

But this wasn’t just a sniper shot. The abnormal bird of prey was more than 7m long and it was blasted so hard from the side that it forcibly spat Kamijou from its beak. That couldn’t have been a simple 12.7mm anti-materiel rifle. It had to be something large enough to deserve the title of “cannon” rather than “gun”.

“Bwah!! Cough, cough. Ughh!?”

Kamijou rolled along the ground trying to get air in his lungs again, but all he found was a rusty flavor. He heard definite cracking sounds from inside his body. He may have broken a few ribs.

Alice looked away from her nails.

And she spoke in a dry, emotionless voice.

“Hm. An antique.”

===Part 8===

Identical clone girls were focused on their binoculars at a position about 1.5km from the Bridge Builders Cabal Consulate.

“The target was hit, reports Misaka #10777.”

“Hitting without an initial test firing is not easy, says Misaka #15000 to boost morale through self-praise. Even if it was a test shell without any explosive inside.”

“The hot combustion gas is constantly changing the metal barrel, repeats Misaka #18009 while preparing the next shell. Adjust the targeting grid up and right by 25 degrees for the 2nd shot.”

One of the Sisters held a giant hammer over her shoulder.

But it was not meant to break down a building wall or work in a mine.

It was used to drive in the metal spikes needed to secure an old weapon to the ground.

And unlike a department store or shopping mall during a good sale going on, the public museum was relatively quiet during the New Year’s holiday. This was often when the displays were maintained and aired out.

“Flak 18,” whispered the hammer Sister, her breath visible in the cold.

That was an oft-romanticized weapon that had once been used for both antiair and antitank combat.

“If you need to shoot something, you can’t go wrong with an Acht-Acht, says Misaka #19090, wiping sweat from her brow.”

Misaka Mikoto, still not used to the Japanese clothes she was wearing, was taken aback on a building rooftop.

And here she had thought she could enjoy a peaceful time with the Sisters over the holiday.

“H-how can you fire an 8.8cm cannon horizontally through an urban area, you stupid sisters!?”

“Misaka doesn’t want to hear that from the girl who starts blasting railguns everywhere the instant anything irritates her, calmly retorts Misaka #10032.”

“Gh. Th-that’s different…”

“Also this right here is the maintenance plan for the Acht-Acht given to us by the District 2 Firearm Museum, says Misaka, smugly showing off a fancy tablet since we live in a paperless era. We were asked to keep it in fireable order, so we have done so. And they do say that a machine must be used periodically if you want it to remain functional.”

“That’s a superstition! And I thought these things had internal parts severed to prevent them from being fired!? Curse that new board chairman. Why would he approve something like this? He’d better not be doing everything you ask out of guilt.”

“(Misaka thinks his approval had more to do with ''him'' than with us.)”

“?”

“…says Misaka while running a meaningless simulation based on fictional parameters to have fun with the Misaka Network. Some might call it fantasizing about amusing scenarios.”

Anyway.

There was of course only one possible destination for the two identical girls.

Misaka realized it was unusual for the two of them to accompany each other like this.

“We got that thing to spit ''him'' out, but this is still a crisis situation. The details and size of the enemy force are unknown. And the known enemy appears unharmed by an artillery blast to the side, reports Misaka, sharing the information taken from the other observers.”

“So what is it? I’m reluctant to fight a fluffy animal for different reasons than a human. But if it’s as big as you say it is, I’ll probably get over that reluctance real quick once I see it for myself.”

“The best tactic with monsters is to avoid making contact with them in the first place, says Misaka, trying her hand at counseling. So what should we do? This monster did not shed a single drop of blood after a direct hit from an Acht-Acht.”

Misaka Mikoto’s answer began with a quiet metallic sound.

She had flicked up an arcade coin with her thumb.

“Then we’ll have to try a cutting-edge railgun.”

In the blue sky above, an irregular demon girl floated in defiance of gravity. She did have wings reminiscent of marine animals on her back, but they clearly weren’t large enough to provide enough lift for her to fly.

“Kee hee hee. Look at ‘em go. Well, he’s not the type to let someone go through with murder just because they’re in a consulate protected by international law.”

A consulate represented an entire country, so attacking one wasn’t that simple.

But a consulate could also freely move around within the host country. And once it had moved, the former site of the consulate was no longer bound by the same legal restrictions.

So that was what he had done.

In exchange for some economic support, the new board chairman had gotten the consulate moved to Academy City’s District 1, a much nicer part of the city.

This was a gray zone.

The original Condroniard Republic had been bought by the Bridge Builders Cabal. Their bureaucrats would behave very differently depending on who came out on top here – Academy City or the cabal. Instead of ending the legal protections once the move was complete, they were holding off on doing anything for today, waiting to see how it turned out.

But the board chairman only needed this one day.

Academy City could deal with the rest.

Floating next to Qliphah Puzzle 545 was her opposite: a scientifically-created angel.

“What do we do now?” asked the busty glasses girl.

“Well,” said the demon in a newspaper dress, grinning. A demon’s logic was always the same: “We do whatever we want.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’s looking like our current job is to deal with anyone who steps outside the bounds of humanity,” whispered Qliphah Puzzle 545, her tail whipping side to side.

The teacher’s pet and the mischievous girl.

They held opposite positions, but they were already forming a new bond between themselves.

“And in that sense, Alice Anotherbible has made herself an obvious target. ''Sometimes being too powerful invites further danger.'' Now, let’s show her how we do things here in Academy City!!”

There was also movement on the consulate’s grounds.

“Hey, have you managed to analyze Alice Anotherbible yet? Without that, heading out there will only get you killed! It’s meaningless!!”

“Sphynx, bite that pagan god the next time she says anything pessimistic.”

“Yikes, yikes, yikes!!” shouted 15cm Othinus, her hair bristling.

“I’m close. So close,” said Index sullenly.

“So are you ready to accept it now? The Index Librorum Prohibitorum doesn’t mention any of the spells used by the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal.”

“No, not that,” interrupted Index.

Never underestimate her. They had seen a lot of special types of people – Saints, God’s Right Seat, angels, demons, Magic Gods, and now Transcendents – but none of them made the grimoire library any less valuable.

“This isn’t just about Alice Anotherbible. I’m so close to seeing a common factor between them all. I’m so close to having a definition for what a Transcendent is!!”

“…”

“If I get closer and actually confront her, I might get the last piece of the puzzle. And we can’t wait any longer anyway. Touma’s going to die!!”

“Yes, I’ll grant you that one. And none of this means anything if that human dies. But let me ask one last time: are you sure this is the choice you want to make? Don’t regret this after the fact, human girl!!”

[[Image:GT_Index_v07_298-299.jpg|thumb]]

===Part 9===

Someone was coming. Kamijou’s woozy mind managed to hear several footsteps approaching. They were on their way despite the laws and treaties protecting the consulate and despite the fact that it was a monstrous place guarded by countless Transcendents, including Alice herself.

They were on their way to bring an end to all this trouble.

They were on their way to protect Kamijou Touma.

“Damn.”

(I appreciate it, but I can’t get them involved in the battle against Alice. If they go up against her without any real chance of winning, who knows what kind of trick she’ll reveal she still has up her sleeve!!)

That meant he only had one option.

He couldn’t rely on kindness, warmth, or the good of the world.

He had to crawl back to his feet if he wanted to protect them himself.

And if he wanted to prevent Alice from becoming that kind of enemy!!

“Bh.”

He had no way of knowing what was going on inside his body.

A rusty flavor filled his mouth.

Maybe this was what it meant to fight a Transcendent without a plan. With Aradia, Trismegistus, and Alice, simply being with them meant risking your life and directly facing them meant unavoidable death.

All the more reason why he couldn’t let anyone else get involved.

He moved his body despite the disturbing sounds it made when he did so and he dug his fingers into the dark soil.

He was painfully aware of the birdcage his ribs formed in his chest. Something hot was exploding inside that cage.

He had pushed himself too hard.

The blood went wild in the core of his being and he collapsed back to the ground.

“Gahh!?”

How much longer would he be able to move?

10 minutes? 5? Maybe not even 1.

But.

He gathered strength in his deteriorating body once more.

He was willing to cough up blood, break some bones, or damage his internal organs if that was what it took.

As long as he could keep himself moving for another minute.

As long as he could stand back up and clench his fist again.

His right hand wandered.

He touched Trismegistus’s sword on the ground and it shattered. With Good, Old Mary’s outdoor kitchen tools, he wasn’t sure how they were even used as weapons.

Nevertheless…

“Gahh!!”

He stood up.

He threw his right fist forward.

Toward the giant monster rushing toward him. The difference in their strength had already been proven beyond a doubt. The Gryphon opened its large beak and bit at the boy’s right arm.

He heard an unpleasant tearing sound.

He felt searing heat.

But.

His arm exploded.

''Something'' burst from within his torn-off right arm and rapidly expanded within the bird of prey’s mouth.

The Gryphon’s silhouette burst like a balloon.

“Ah, ahh, ahhh, ahhhh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

(This isn’t over.)

He staggered to the side.

His vision faded due to all the blood gushing from his arm.

(Alice is still there.)

He still had to deal with the hedgehog balls, the flamingo bat, the executioner, and the small girl herself.

He knew that.

He wasn’t going to last much longer.

Defeating the giant Gryphon wasn’t the end of it. it probably didn’t even qualify as one of the main cards in Alice Anotherbible’s deck. Kamijou was already battered before even arriving in front of her. If he couldn’t defeat her at his best, what hope did he have in his current state?

Still.

Kamijou Touma used his remaining arm and his mouth to tie a handkerchief tightly around the shoulder just above where his arm had been torn off.

He couldn’t afford to pass out yet.

He knew people were rushing to his aid, but he couldn’t expose them to the threat that was Alice. If this had all begun with the two of them meeting on that adventure in the dark side, he had to be the one to end it.

“Al…ice.”

He couldn’t even straighten his slanted stance.

But he still clenched his bloody teeth and took a step forward.

“Forget about the others. Pretend they’re not even here.”

He moved forward.

He moved of his own free ''will'' to stand before that young monster whose innocence was what made her so terrifying.

“''So fight me!! Alice Anotherbible!!!''”

And…

“…”

Alice looked away from him in her inappropriate leather outfit. She was instead focused on the many footsteps surrounding them.

On all the people attempting to eliminate her to protect Kamijou.

Then she let out a visible breath with resignation on her face. It was the look of a child who had been so excited about going to the amusement park but, once she arrived, got lost, was taken into custody by the park officials, waited and waited for her parents to come get her, and as the sun began to set, finally realized that her parents had abandoned her.

That face stabbed into Kamijou Touma’s heart far more painfully than anger or the noh mask ever could.

“Forget it…”

''Uh, oh,'' realized Kamijou, but it was too late.

He had already seen the clear drops growing in the corners of her eyes as she pouted her lips and turned away.

And the girl said one last thing now that she was truly alone.

“Stupid teacher.”

[[Image:GT_Index_v07_307.jpg|thumb]]

===Between the Lines 4===

The girl thought she would be happy if she became something special.

She thought she wasn’t happy now because she hadn’t done enough to set herself apart.

Maybe she could be like Cinderella. Or like Snow White.

So she specialized herself more and more and more. To a dangerous degree.

She innocently improved herself.

She became someone who did what no one else could.

Now, let’s take a peek at the answer.

How did that turn out for the girl?

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Chapter4

2026-06-10T22:36:34Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Chapter 4: Hear the Name of Thy Ruin, World – Call_“XXXXX”.==

===Part 1===

Kamijou felt the entire world raise a groaning cry in that moment.

===Part 2===

The gloomy young butler known as H. T. Trismegistus pushed his cane sword up with a thumb and attacked.

They had more than 10m between them, but it didn’t matter. The boy only saw it as something like a tremendous explosion.

A silver explosive blast formed a sharp, straight line.

That wasn’t possible when swinging an ordinary blade, so it had to be some kind of twisted magic.

“!!!???”

Kamijou felt a tension strike him on the cheek. A moment later, the air burst, blasting him in the right eardrum. He couldn’t even tell if that was a sound or a rapid pressure distortion.

But he had dodged it.

Kamijou Touma had just barely dodged it.

At the last second, he had concluded Imagine Breaker and its ability to negate all supernatural powers wouldn’t be enough. A memory he shouldn’t still have throbbed in the back of his mind. Had something happened long ago that gave him a powerful fear of ''iaijutsu and other sword-drawing techniques''?

He could hear something.

Despite the vibration of his aching eardrum, some distorted common tones reached him from head on.

He knew he couldn’t afford to miss this.

“''No more holding back. Risk 4: Releasing the numberless seal – leaving human territory. Rapidly renewing myself using a trio of great beings.''”

“…”

Kamijou gasped, forgetting even to frown.

It wasn’t exactly the same, but he recognized those words. When Witch Goddess Aradia was pushed to the limit in Shibuya on the 31st, she had attempted to draw on something.

Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker had shattered it that time before it was complete.

But not this time.

“My right hand contains Zeus. My left hand contains Indra.”

''From the very first move, Transcendent H. T. Trismegistus was taking this to the level of tearing down half of the world supported by science and magic!?

“Thus I am renewed. ''Z. I. Trismegistus'' conversion complete.”

“Really!?”

“Think about it.”

The young butler silently pushed his thumb up against the head of the cane that hid a blade.

A few millimeters of the deadly glint emerged once more.

“Common sense says I have no reason to hold back. If an enemy is being a nuisance, you should kill them right away, don’t you think?”

“…”

“The drowning man grasps at straw. An excellent saying. The proverbial man is earnest about survival and, no matter how pathetic he might appear, he is not causing anyone else any trouble. …But with a plank of Carneades, the drowning man must snuff out the life of another in the fight over the plank floating in the ocean.”

That was probably what led him down this path. Or a small glimpse of it.

Hadn’t he said that, no matter how logically you explain your academic theories, there is nothing you can do when people brush them aside based on emotion?

But using that reasoning to ban people from having emotions wasn’t going to create an ideal world.

“Have you heard that people once believed madness was caused by a stone of folly inside the head and victims actually had their heads cut open in a serious attempt at medical treatment? How about the baseless legend that all medieval castles have cruel dungeons or long, hidden escape routes? This is not unique to any one era. Superstitions always find their way into the world of academia and they are extremely hard to extricate once they have taken root. They cause so much harm to the human world. So someone must prevent these farces from altering common sense. And the distortions that my Alice would bring to the world are the greatest such example. Someone must put a stop to it.”

This probably wasn’t about Carneades. If he simply hated that story about a plank, he wouldn’t be trying to solve this by killing Kamijou. Trismegistus was a throwaway penname shared by academics in an older age. So who was this guy?

Kamijou stepped on a frozen puddle.

He didn’t have time to prepare for the impact.

They had more than 10m between them, but since Aradia had been cut down in front of him, he could tell the length of the cane sword and the range of the actual attack did not match.

From there, Kamijou Touma recalled something else.

He had to set aside the intense fear of death trying to numb the back of his mind and the uncontrollable racing of his heart. He couldn’t forget what really mattered. What did he need to focus on most here?

Transcendent Aradia.

First and foremost, he needed to prevent any further attacks on her while she lay motionless on the ground.

It was distorted.

To Kamijou, the deadly slash flying straight toward him looked a lot like an exploding firework.

The roar of bursting air arrived after a short delay. The explosive sound crashed into his right eardrum as he just barely dodged to the side. The green grass was torn through and a zigzagging line of destruction sent dark soil soaring into the sky.

This time, he had done it with his own willpower.

Time had seemed to stretch out infinitely, but it soon returned to normal.

The rose hedge behind him was torn through.

(Damn, I can’t let this scare me so much. Aradia’s in trouble if I don’t move in and negate this with Imagine Breaker!!)

“Tch!!”

“I feel like clicking my tongue as well. I clearly have a long way to go as a Transcendent if I fail to kill my target with the first attack, even if outdoor battles do add in many complicated environmental factors. I cannot look my Alice in the eye after this.”

More small explosions followed. And some shattering glass sounds. The garden’s streetlights and bug zappers were scattering sparks, but Kamijou knew he was dead the instant he looked toward them.

He didn’t have time to stand around.

He kept his momentum going as he charged toward the small woods in the garden. They were only decorative and would not even function as a windbreak, but this was still better than out on the open grass.

Kamijou ducked down after just barely surviving, but he was also smiling.

(H. T. Trismegistus is focused on me, which means he won’t attack Aradia again.)

Some words were already escaping the young butler’s mouth.

“Shall I call Alice?”

Kamijou heard the young butler’s footsteps from beyond the thicket. He also heard the rubbing of metal hinges, so the man was presumably opening a storage case and pulling out a notebook or pocket watch or something.

He was confident.

But that made Kamijou smile even more. ''What luck.'' Even Mr. Misfortune himself couldn’t help but think that.

H. T.? Or was it Z. I. now? Whatever it was, Trismegistus was pursuing Kamijou. Luring him away from collapsed and unmoving Aradia was the right thing to do here. What was this if not a silver lining to his predicament?

“There is no common sense at all in your attempt here, but I suppose it is the only option that could possibly allow you to defeat me. But either way, I will have this dealt with before Alice arrives.

Common sense.

Kamijou hadn’t heard the details, but was that the starting point for this Transcendent calling himself Z. I. Trismegistus? It was possible he had seen the moment when a major ''disturbance'' in that concept had led to a vast tragedy.

Just like Witch Goddess Aradia had roared after witnessing the persecution of so many witches.

Just like the Bologna Succubus’s soul had been burned by the false accusations her name pointed to.

Z. I. Trismegistus was the same.

“…”

Was it Zeus and Indra?

But Kamijou didn’t have Index with him. And he had thrown 15cm Othinus to go seek help. On his own, Kamijou was only a high school boy, so he didn’t know what these magical words meant. Even though he knew they had to contain the key to a miraculous upset here.

He heard a metallic sound at his feet.

His throat went dry. He had stepped on the stainless steel cover over a drainage ditch.

He sensed his impending death.

“''There you are.''”

“''!!!???''”

The instant after he rolled to the side, a long-range slash lashed out. In fact, it circled around the large tree he had been leaning against and sliced right through the stainless steel cover, sending sparks flying.

(That didn’t even move in a straight line!? This is bad. I can’t even imagine what kind of path it can take!!)

The young butler’s voice came from somewhere in the windy artificial woods.

“Hm, so I missed. Then I should visually confirm your location first instead of relying solely on intuition. I do not want to destroy the beautiful garden I created for Alice.”

(Does that mean he wasn’t using any kind of clairvoyance or precog? No, wait. He’s a Transcendent. He might just be trying to trick me into lowering my guard that way!!)

Hiding behind the trees was relatively useless if the slashes could move around obstacles. But running out into the open garden would be suicide. So…

(I need to get inside the consulate!!)

He tackled the back entrance opening out into the woods and tumbled inside. If he had knocked or even grabbed the knob, a slash from behind probably could have sliced horizontally through him along with the door and the stone wall.

But he had survived. He got back up and ran down the long hallway.

(I don’t like the idea of relying on this.)

Kamijou gulped and pulled out his old folk’s smartphone while still crouched low.

He used the device to connect to R&C Occultics’s official website.

And to the magic database that had been leaked to the public.

If you typed in a term and ran a search, it would pull up a list of webpages, especially ones selling related products, but when Kamijou tapped the link now, he only got a simple “this service has been shut down” message. He realized he should have expected that after he destroyed the giant IT company during the incident in Los Angeles.

But a few external sites apparently still had cached versions of the website. That would only contain fragments of the vast database, but it was better than nothing.

Staying on the 1st floor too long could get him killed by a horizontal attack since that slash’s range was unknown, so Kamijou made his way to the nearest stairway before the young butler made an appearance.

(Zeus at least sounds vaguely familiar. He’s some kind of god, right?)

He ran a search and found Zeus was a Greek god.

He was the final child of Cronus and Rhea. He was the ruler of heaven and symbolized by the blessing of the rain. On the other hand, he was also known for the lightning bolt he held in his hand which obliterated all of the gods’ enemies and meted out divine punishment.

(A lightning bolt?)

He tapped another link in the explanation to delve deeper, but none of it was very clear. He could tell Zeus had an ultimate weapon symbolized by lightning, but nothing said whether it was a spear, a bow, a sling, or a magic bullet. One sculpture of Zeus showed him holding something rodlike, but that was only meant to be the lightning itself and other art depicted various designs for his weapon.

A formless weapon.

Bright light, an explosive sword drawing, streetlights and bug zappers destroyed just because they were nearby…

“!?”

Outside the window, a slash suddenly flew Kamijou’s way.

If he had left the stairs and entered the 2nd floor hallway lined with windows, that would have hit him. He fell on his rear and the horizontal line sliced through the walls just above his head. Was the attack aimed solely on a vague figure visible through the window? But the windows remained shut and the glass intact.

How ''disturbing'' that was belatedly crawled up Kamijou’s back.

(How does that work!? Is it not just the blade extending out through space!?)

Z. I. Trismegistus must have been able to see him from outside, so he needed to move elsewhere. He quickly turned around and fled further up the stairs.

(Dammit, I can’t do that. If I hide on the 3rd floor, I’m putting the Bologna Succubus at risk!!)

He turned around again.

Surrounding the consulate’s White House-style mansion were several walls and towers straight out of a fairy tale castle. If he wanted to keep anyone else from getting hurt, he had to avoid the main structure and escape into one of the towers.

Indra.

When he typed that other foreign term into his old folk’s smartphone, he found that was a god from the Hindu religion spread across the Indian region. That felt like it had nothing to do with Zeus, but apparently there was a cultural connection. For example, the names of the Indian god Dyaus, the Greek god Zeus, and the Roman god Jupiter all came from the same name. And Indra used lightning too. But Kamijou doubted the pair had been chosen for that alone.

Most likely, there was some other rule at play. Something that would be obvious if he could only look it up in some kind of magic or occult ''dictionary''.

(Do Zeus and Indra have something in common?)

The site said the form of the Hindu lightning weapon was just as unclear. For example, Indra’s weapon was known as the Vajra. When the stories arrived in China and Japan, the Vajra was said to be shaped like a five-pronged club or a pestle with a blade on the ends. But those were only exorcism weapons designed by Indian artists and priests because “lightning is difficult to explain without giving it some kind of shape”.

Both traditions incorporated the same name.

Both had weapons symbolizing formless lightning.

Weapons that could later be given form by someone else – even mere humans.

(Is that it!?)

Kamijou ran up a tower’s spiral stairs and exited through the skylight leading to the roof. At first glance, the height made this a dead end, but there were still a few paths he could take, like the tall castle walls or the roofs of the elevated passageways. And useful items could be found anywhere.

For example…

“A solar power cable!!”

Z. I. Trismegistus could freely change his name and his attacks were undeniably frightening. Both for their simple power and range, but also because the slashes could change direction and circle around cover. They moved too quickly to react to, so they would be deadly when combined with iaijutsu, which could be so hard to predict.

But those attacks had to follow some kind of rules.

(That stainless steel ditch cover in the artificial woods.)

What connected the Greek Zeus and the Hindu Indra?

(I’m pretty sure the window frames on the 2nd floor were metal too. That means his sword strikes follow paths of electrical conduction!!)

“And if his weapon is lightning, I should be able to redirect it!!”

“Sigh.”

The young butler’s voice softly but bluntly interrupted him.

“''This is not Zeus.'' Common sense should have told you that right away.”

How – and when – had he arrived on the tower’s roof?

Something flashed. The person using the Trismegistus name had flicked up a clear plastic cocktail pin with his thumb.

Then the cane sword was released from its scabbard and light surged out.

Kamijou held his right hand out, but it wasn’t enough. He definitely felt something being negated, but when the blade’s light hit the cocktail pin overhead, the light scattered as if from a disco ball.

That light carried the sword strike.

This didn’t follow the rules of electricity at all.

The victim didn’t even have time to feel a chill on his spine. More than eight glowing slashes rushed toward his neck from different directions.

His death was a silent one.

His vision spun around.

It wasn’t Zeus’s lightning bolt or Indra’s Vajra.

And he was punished for his wrong answer.

After failing to find the key to a miracle, the boy could only look back up at his own headless body, still standing there.

(Aradi-)

===Part 3===

Kamijou’s vision restarted.

===Part 4===

The best Kamijou could describe the feeling was having the film of his memories forcibly linked together. And he only knew one person capable of something so absurd. She was so convenient she could eliminate the very tragedy of death, but she would utterly destroy your world the instant you started to ''assume you would receive her help''. This monster – this Transcendent – had complete control over an artificial miracle.

“Good…” he groaned.

His right shoulder felt funny. Had she severed that arm again?

He couldn’t even get up, so he held his throat and looked up at the woman in a large hat and a maternity dress who stood next to him like shimmering heat or a ghost.

“Good, Old Mary?”

“Do not worry.”

Good, Old Mary did not assume she would give her help either.

And she knew what that puny boy most wanted to hear.

She remained entirely motionless even in the biting wind.

“Aradia is safe. Since you managed to distract H. T.? Z. I.? ABC? Random Letters Trismegistus, mama could complete the process in peace.”

That was all it took.

Kamijou Touma felt so much relief he nearly let go of the consciousness he had reclaimed.

But he couldn’t do that.

Z. I. Trismegistus – that monster who was not Zeus and did not wield a lightning bolt – was still out there. Leaving him be would give him a chance to use his cane sword against Aradia again.

So Kamijou had to do something.

Even if nothing he had done had worked so far!!

“Mama said not to worry.”

Kamijou’s anxiety motivated him to try and force himself up on the tower roof, but Good, Old Mary bluntly interrupted.

“You have met mama’s conditions for salvation. By managing that, you and Aradia’s gamble paid off. So stay here and accept your victory prize. Mama will defeat him. You are not needed.”

“Really? First Aradia and now Kamijou Touma? You would give your miracles out to just anyone, wouldn’t you? I can’t let Alice see this.”

On a different roof, the young butler gently returned the sword to its scabbard and tapped his finger against the hilt like he was timing something.

The air between the two Transcendents seemed to electrify.

“Good, Old Mary. Your conditions are too broad and lax. Do not forget that we are the Transcendents who accompany Alice. Did you think you could avoid the ‘monster’ label if you played at being a doctor?”

“Have you gone so senile you cannot tell the difference between a proud doctor who pours all of their efforts into helping any suffering people they come across and mama who blurs the line between life and death for her own purposes?”

Her sigh sounded exasperated.

Z. I. Trismegistus’s fingers toyed with his cane sword.

“''Common sense says not everyone deserves these grand miracles.''”

“''Who says miracles only belong to a chosen privileged class, you fuck.''”

[[Image:GT_Index_v07_337.jpg|thumb]]

These were their starting points.

The very cores of these Transcendents clashed head on.

A moment later, something shining exploded from the distant young butler’s cane sword, but it was clearly thrown off course. That wasn’t lightning or light. It was pressurized water. The deadly water jet targeted Kamijou’s neck while he was unable to get up, but its path changed when it hit something else and sliced diagonally through a different tower.

A huge explosion of orange sparks occurred a moment later.

The leaves floating in the air were all sliced through when the splashing droplets hit them.

If Kamijou had tried to block that with Imagine Breaker, the main water jet would have exploded, drenching him. And if each drop could slice through solid objects, his entire body would have been shredded.

Kamijou couldn’t tell what Good, Old Mary had done.

He only saw her slender fingers occasionally toy with the camping kitchen tools hanging from her belt ''which looked vaguely weaponlike'': the tea kettle, the gas burner, the multitool, the sandwich toaster, etc.

“Random Letters.”

“Please state my identity accurately. Alice is going to start calling me that.”

“That name is too long. But you have nothing to worry about. Mama will resurrect you even if you die. However, mama must punish you, so you will be resurrected into a state with all your bones removed and your organs crushed. It is time you crawled this earth like a worm in a state of constant, undying pain, Transcendent. Maybe then you will understand what it feels like for those who can only look up from below.”

“…”

“Do you understand the consequences if you lose? Then do take this seriously. Life is such a wonderful thing, so make sure to thank mama, Random Letters.”

“I don’t even care if you get it wrong, at least try to say my name right!!”

Good, Old Mary was still toying with the kitchen tools in her hands.

She did not actually use any of them or try to hit him with any of them.

Yet far below, a massive fissure formed in the ground and orange lava erupted sharply upwards. It looked like a disturbing glowing serpent. The young butler jumped up to avoid it, but then a mass larger than a dump truck crashed into him from the side. The massive blunt object might as well have been one of the wrecking balls used by cranes to demolish buildings, but it was actually a hunk of ice weighing more than 30 tons.

A deadly attack split the ice into three pieces.

Trismegistus didn’t even wait to reach the ground. He landed on one piece of ice and continued slicing through the bed and desk that crashed through a window and the storm of pebbles torn from the white wall, ''before solidifying it all.'' What even was that? Clear crystals jutted from where he sliced through the objects, linking together Good, Old Mary’s projectiles, and pinning them in place in midair.

Based on what Kamijou had seen, those sword strikes came in more than one variety.

Lightning.

Light.

Water.

Crystal.

How did it have so much variety? The young butler himself had said ''it wasn’t Zeus'', but even knowing that, Kamijou couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Aradia and the Bologna Succubus’s spells were supposedly powerful enough to fight the entire magic side on their own. Same for Good, Old Mary’s resurrection.

Was Trismegistus the same?

He could infuse his sharp blade into any phenomenon, so if he wasn’t afraid of cutting himself, could he fill this entire universe with ''miniscule'' death and destruction?

“Do not worry. Mama has a scorching hotplate double slap with that gloomy butler’s name on it.”

“I’m thankful that you’re helping me, but how am I even supposed to respond to something like that!?”

Kamijou trembled and shouted back at her, but the Transcendent didn’t seem to care.

As if this wasn’t enough to surprise Good, Old Mary.

“Trismegistus. Who is currently in your right hand? And who do you have serving within your left hand? Did you attack Aradia before your top priority target because she uses a similar spell and you were afraid she would see through it?”

''Flash.

''Boooooooooom!!!

This time, it wasn’t a long range slash. Was it lightning? With cane sword in hand, Trismegistus himself dropped sharply down like a flash of light. But he was forcibly stopped right in front of Good, Old Mary who stood atop the tower with her large hat swaying.

There was an invisible wall there.

The one Transcendent revealed the other’s secrets from such close range.

“Mama knows your trick. You are not borrowing a portion of a god’s power and you are not making yourself identical to a god to wield their power. You place one god in your right hand and another in your left. Including you, that creates a large triangle that implants the world with ''a false definition'' saying you yourself are a god too. That is your method of leaving human territory. So instead of borrowing an existing god’s name, you create a brand new god and make yourself that god. You use the correspondences of the Liber 777 to accomplish this. Thus, you are not Zeus or Indra and you were not Hermes or Thoth. In the end, you never could love anyone other than yourself.”

“Tch!! “My right hand contains Odin. My left hand contains-”

“Mercury? Or maybe Anubis or Loki?”

“!?”

“Weren’t you listening? Mama knows your trick. Anyone who understands Crowley’s correspondence table can predict your next move. And that means your sword is no longer a threat. You cannot freely transform your blade into whatever you want. It operates on a predictable pattern.”

Aradia had mentioned the triple goddess in Shibuya.

Kamijou still didn’t know what that meant, but Trismegistus was another Transcendent whose power was based on the number 3.

“I too am a Transcendent who serves Alice. I know you do not have as much an advantage as you claim to.”

The young butler’s trick had been revealed, but he still smiled and pressed his sword against the invisible barrier.

“Your surefire plan has already failed from the moment I got this close. Not too surprising really since you are no more than the kitchen manager. Food is meant to be carried out to the guests; you do not want them entering your territory.”

A slight cut ran down Good, Old Mary’s cheek visible below the brim of her hat. A few red drops formed and dripped down to color her face.

The young butler could apparently ''infuse'' his sword strikes into a variety of ordinary phenomena like light and water. So could he apply a cutting edge to the an electric ''field'' and not just to a lightning strike?

“Good-”

Kamijou gasped just before an explosion burst out.

Trismegistus was sent spinning away. He forcibly applied the brakes by stabbing his cane sword into the flower garden on the roof of a midair passageway connecting the sharp tower to the large mansion. A storage case similar to a tackle box spilled from his cloak and he couldn’t return it to its pocket. He tilted to the side with his right half covered in blood, but he was definitely smiling.

He was focused on Good, Old Mary’s right hand back on the tower.

She held an ordinary sandwich toaster like it was weapon.

“Ha ha ha!! I’ve peeled back another layer, Good, Old Mary! How many more until I break through that calm façade? You might be the kitchen master who can create a microcosm contained to a glass container, but not even the greatest chef can cook without her tools. I will keep peeling back those layers. And with each tool I take from you, the more powerless you will be!!!”

The previous rules no longer applied.

Good, Old Mary took a step forward.

“''Steam.''”

The word came after the fact.

Her tall body suddenly disappeared.

It wasn’t a simple issue of speed. Unlike with Saints such as Kanzaki or Acqua, there was no roar or blast of wind as she tore through the air. Maybe this was the light physically bending and maybe she had constructed some kind of trick that placed her in a preexisting blind spot found in human vision, but she must have surrounded herself in something that prevented anyone else from seeing her.

(You’re kidding, right?)

Kamijou recalled how Good, Old Mary had appeared out of nowhere when called back in Shibuya on the 31st. What if she hadn’t teleported from afar and had already been standing in that scramble crossing?

By the time the powerless boy realized a blade had been against his throat at the end of the previous year, Good, Old Mary had approached Trismegistus.

She was already making her next move.

“!?”

Transcendent clashed with Transcendent.

They reduced the distance between them to zero, several explosions erupted, and each time, a tea kettle or gas burner dropped to the ground far below.

It looked a lot like Good, Old Mary was overwhelming her opponent while appearing from and vanishing into the background. With each explosion, Trismegistus took a powerful blow and the rusty scent in the air grew stronger. The flurry of attacks was too great to block with a cane sword alone.

But who was really making progress here? Hadn’t Trismegistus said his goal was to take away all of her tools?

Kamijou Touma was concerned, but his imagination proved insufficient.

“Mama is going to allow herself a risk of 4. Releasing the singular seal – leaving human territory,” said Good, Old Mary. “Show yourself, Tribikos – the tool mama used to contain a complete universe.”

Kamijou felt some shaking.

He thought it was an earthquake, but apparently not.

“…”

He looked up toward the sky without thinking, but in this case, the foolish pointy-haired boy hadn’t been hopelessly left behind.

Trismegistus did it too.

He reacted just like Kamijou even as he sneered despite his battered body. He silently looked overhead. Yes, even though ''they were at the top of a tower or in a rooftop flower garden.''

Three distorted legs – each one taller than the average transmission tower – supported a squashed sphere resembling a domed baseball stadium. Was it supposed to resemble chemistry equipment like beakers and flasks? Or was it supposed to resemble a living, breathing creature? Kamijou wasn’t sure, but the very core of his body was ruled by a dreadful shaking. Even at the top of a tower, the sky overhead was entirely blotted out.

It was as hard as thick porcelain.

But it was also clearly pulsating from the inside.

What did it contain? A collection of energy as massive as the sun or even the big bang? An all-consuming black hole? Good, Old Mary had called it a universe. Was that a metaphor, or was it literally true? Looking up at it, Kamijou could no longer tell what was a joke and what wasn’t.

“The red stone, a panacea that provides immortality, pure control over the five elements, rearranging the universe.”

Good, Old Mary accepted what she had summoned like it was nothing. She did not even glance up at it.

That Transcendent calmly viewed her enemy from below the brim of her hat.

Calmly but strongly.

“But a creator must do more than complete their research. They cannot make any progress without first inventing the necessary tools. Mama is Good, Old Mary. The Bain-marie insulated pot, the Kerotakis reflux device, and the Tribikos distiller are all the basic tools needed to create a universe, so do not underestimate the one who rules ''the very foundation'' of those tools, long-named one.”

The giant mass did not attack.

She was going to use the brand new death and destruction contained within.

How far did it go? This was something from a brand new category than all the types of magic and elements Kamijou had seen before. What if it pushed even a bit past the limits of what the 103,001 grimoires covered? Wouldn’t this be magic that ''not even Grimoire Library Index could defend against''?

Did this simply make Good, Old Mary frightening, or was the real threat Trismegistus for requiring something so powerful to deliver the finishing blow?

“Ha…ha ha ha. Good, Old Mary, you are rebelling against Alice at this point.”

“You are a Transcendent, making you more powerful than the average person, but mama heard what you childishly said to this high school boy, knowing he is forced to walk a path of greater-than-average misfortune because he lives in this city and is unfairly shunned by god’s miracles. You said common sense says you have no reason to hold back and, if an enemy is being a nuisance, you should kill them right away.”

“There, that’s the final layer. Once I survive this, you are done forrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!”

“Mama sends those words right back at you. Since you wield your own miracles to trample on the less fortunate, you do not meet mama’s conditions. Thus, she will not hold back. So bring it on, you depressing butler. Mama will kill you quickly like the worm you are.”

There was a sharp clash of metal. Trismegistus had remade himself into a brand new being by swapping out the names of the gods wielded by his hands and he rushed toward Good, Old Mary, slicing through even the wind with his cane sword. Whatever he planned on infusing his sword strike into, he pushed the sword up from its scabbard with his thumb and tons of rusty sewing needles spilled from the blade.

Good, Old Mary had told him to come to her, so she was unfazed. A massive piece of lab equipment covered the sky overhead and she only needed to release what it contained. All she did was pull back her index finger while standing in the flower garden.

This time, they both attacked in a straight line.

The two Transcendents clashed after tearing through the seals which kept them human.

And…

===Part 5===

Light flashed.

A wet explosion rang out.

===Part 6===

“…”

It took Kamijou Touma a moment to realize nearly all sound had vanished.

Was that short rhythm he heard his own shallow breathing?

The destruction was so bad he just about forgot he was on the roof of a tower on the consulate grounds. The ground was torn up, orange lava spewed out, and a few of the other towers had collapsed. It looked like the end of the world. He was all the way at the top of a tower, but he felt dark soil on his head.

His entire body was stiff and he had trouble simply moving his head. So he instead moved just his eyes while slumped on the roof.

The wind blew and dust scattered through the air.

He saw a silhouette through that dust cloud. It was lying on an elevated passageway that looked ready to collapse at any moment. Kamijou gasped when he noticed how dark the silhouette was, but he could make out some other features too. It wasn’t feminine. It only looked dark because of the old-fashioned tailcoat and cloak it wore. It looked a lot like a crushed cicada. A tiered storage case similar to a tackle box sat partially open and crushed.

That was Trismegistus.

Kamijou couldn’t say whether he was H T, Z I, O M, or whatever other combination at the moment.

He wasn’t moving anymore.

But Kamijou Touma remained frozen. He couldn’t relax yet. Of course he couldn’t. Not when he could see another silhouette collapsed a short distance away from the motionless young butler.

That one was Good, Old Mary.

The giant Tribikos’s three legs had shattered, its smooth squashed sphere was split in two, and its pieces leaned against the consulate.

But this wasn’t a case of mutual destruction. If the threat was gone, Kamijou’s paralysis would have gone with it. He would have found some way to run to Good, Old Mary and see if she needed medical care. And if she was fine, he would have tried to restrain Trismegistus.

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t bring himself to move while on the top of the tower. The deadly paralysis showed no sign of going away.

Because something else had happened here.

This ''was not'' two Transcendents attacking and defeating each other simultaneously.

“Court, court, court.”

Far below, a small silhouette walked along the ground. And the girl was saying something.

Her words formed a rhythm like she was humming an improvised song.

Hers was the last voice Kamijou had wanted to hear right now.

“The girl’s court is in session.”

This was Alice Anotherbible, the true tyrant who had obliterated those ''ordinary'' Transcendents in the blink of an eye.

With a roar, the tower and the rooftop flower garden collapsed. Kamijou could tell grabbing onto something wasn’t going to be enough here, so he steeled himself and aimed for a body of water that had survived the devastation. He couldn’t re-aim after being thrown into the air. So instead, he leaped from the crumbling tower himself to reach a garden pool that was even more bent than a gourd.

“Gahh!?”

He landed in the water, but he still ended up bloody. The extreme chill seemed to slice through his skin. But he had made the right choice. He couldn’t let the pain or chill stop him now. He didn’t have time to safely run down the spiral staircase.

Because Good, Old Mary and Trismegistus were in danger if he didn’t reach them immediately.

What would happen to them if Alice reached them while they were helpless?

(Ugh. Not to mention…)

He realized he should have seen this coming.

Trismegistus had been using his cane sword to produce supernatural blades ''not found in any mythology'' and Good, Old Mary had produced a piece of lab equipment so massive it covered the sky. With that going on, there was no way the young master of the consulate would fail to notice.

The idea of “ordinary Transcendents” was absurd, but she was so overwhelmingly unusual that he felt the need to apply that “ordinary” qualifier to Trismegistus and Good, Old Mary. She was so extraordinary that even other Transcendents feared her.

(It’s no use.)

Kamijou forgot to even breathe.

He was entranced.

(Mut Thebes is an execution expert and has that “drink me” item capable of killing Transcendents, but not even she can defeat Alice. Even thinking about fighting her is the wrong move!!)

Alice’s cute lips had uttered the words “court is in session”.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was a global best seller, but Kamijou was ashamed to admit he didn’t know that much about it. He knew there was a tea party with a hatter and a march hare, he knew there was a cricket game at the castle with the queen of hearts, and he thought there might be a court scene too. Was that related to the hysterical queen who yelled “off with their head” at the drop of a hat?

That would mean this trial meant death for the accused.

The odds of a guilty verdict and immediate death were greater than 99.9% and any other result had such slim odds it deserved to be called a miracle. On the other hand, there was no possibility at all of harming Alice herself. Not even a 0.1% chance.

It was that unilateral of a massacre.

“A-Alice?”

“Yes, teacher?”

“That’s enough. This is already over. So you need to calm down and-”

“''No.''”

A dull popping sound followed.

But it was wetter than an explosive going off.

The young girl hadn’t even directed her small palm in that direction. She hadn’t even glanced that way.

But Trismegistus was still launched from the ground. His already injured body twisted further in midair, crashed helplessly back to the ground, and kept rolling.

“Alice!!!”

Was he alright? Not the physical impact or pressure. Was he alright on the level of the fundamental definition of a Transcendent!?

And it didn’t end there.

Alice’s shadow pulsated at her feet. She wanted another sacrifice.

She wanted the other Transcendent lying motionless on the ground.

“The Trismegistus stuff is over!! Good, Old Mary didn’t do anything! In fact, she saved my life! So-!!”

“''No.''”

Kamijou moved between them.

Alice’s usual smile was gone. She kept the blank expression of a noh mask as she silently tilted her head.

That was far more terrifying than if her face was red with fury.

She opened her eyes unnaturally wide and spoke without blinking.

“Teacher. There is blood on the ground. It smells like you.”

“…”

“Good, Old Mary was too slow. She did not risk her life to protect you. She failed to see the threat coming and then patched things up afterwards. That ''isn’t good enough.'' She neglected her duties. The girl told everyone in this secret base – consulate? – that you are an invited guest and they were not to harm you. But these two failed to keep the most basic of promises: ''don’t kill people''.”

More pulsating.

But this time it came from inside Alice’s children’s book dress.

She could not restrain her power anymore. Kamijou clenched his teeth knowing what lay at the foundation of it all.

Alice was frustrated.

She was frustrated that someone she cared for had come to harm. She was frustrated that the Transcendents who lived with her had done it. And she was frustrated that she had failed to stop them and save his life.

I’ve come to play, teacher.

What if Alice’s first words to him had really and truly been ''the whole story'' for her?

The thought made him grimace.

This wasn’t good.

It went beyond Trismegistus and Good, Old Mary. Based on Alice’s current rules, Shibuya on the 31st was a problem too.

Aradia had killed him and the Bologna Succubus had failed to prevent it.

This one seam threatened to tear down everything around her.

Hence the tyrant title.

That immature ruler had tremendous power but could not protect the world because she was too easily manipulated by her emotions.

“You can’t, Alice,” said Kamijou without thinking.

She was acting entirely on a child’s logic, so he maybe could have chosen to simply hear her out instead of rejecting what she was feeling. But he still made his move since it looked like the tiny tyrant was ready to explode at any moment.

And losing everything here would be far too painful.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and Trismegistus. If he was being honest, none of the Transcendents had been perfect. He couldn’t fully accept the inhuman way they each set their own conditions for saving people.

But they still cared deeply for the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Trismegistus had been utterly terrifying, but even he had only wanted to eliminate Kamijou so he could protect Alice. He had been willing to bloody his hands and take Kamijou’s life because he cared about the home he had found in the Bridge Builders Cabal more than anything.

Maybe he had gone about it the wrong way. But now the man who had gone to so much misguided effort, and the woman who had tried so hard to stop him but just barely failed, had both been badly injured. There was no reason to punish them further.

The young tyrant needed to learn that forgiveness was another option.

“You can’t do it this way, Alice.”

“Are you going to fight the girl? To protect Good, Old Mary who is lying there close to death?”

But with her head still tilted, noh mask Alice immediately rejected her own question.

“No, teacher. The girl can tell from your eyes. You are also looking at Trismegistus. That means ''you’re talking about saving them both.''”

Good, Old Mary had saved his life, so it made sense with her.

But he had no reason to insist on saving the young butler known as Trismegistus. Even if he had done it for Alice, he had cruelly cut down Aradia and attempted to do the same to Kamijou.

But Kamijou didn’t even need to think about his response.

“So what if I am?”

“Why would you do that?”

“If I don’t have a reason, I’ll find one. At the very least, I don’t have it in me to abandon someone to die and then smile like nothing happened.”

He directed his right fist toward her.

There was a dull cracking sound, but not from his fist.

It came from Alice Anotherbible’s tilted head. The angle of the tilt had passed a certain threshold. Her thin neck continued making strange cracking noises, but no hint of pain was visible on her face.

She spoke from that abnormal angle and from the noh mask that seemed entirely devoid of life.

“You too, teacher?”

Something more frightening, and much more painful, than tears of blood spilled from her eyes.

“''You’re afraid of the girl and her power just like all the others? But the girl hasn’t said anything wrong. The girl hasn’t done anything wrong.''”

That was probably close to the very core of that young girl.

This was something Anna Sprengel’s whisperings had implanted in her and something she had ended up clinging to.

“I’m sorry…Alice.”

It was true Kamijou had kept his eyes on both Good, Old Mary and Trismegistus to ensure no stray shots would hit them. And Alice had seen right through him.

But did she realize that it wasn’t ''only'' those two.

They were confronting each other head on. They were clearly enemies. But it was an indisputable fact that Kamijou Touma had kept that young girl in the very center of his vision this entire time.

He would save Alice too.

If he didn’t have a reason to, he would find one.

He was making the choice that none of the Transcendents had dared make.

“The Bologna Succubus and Good, Old Mary told me about this too.”

“…Did they?”

Their eyes met.

He couldn’t look away now.

“They said I was the only person in the world who could hold an ordinary conversation with you and the only one who could get you to accept your mistakes if you did the wrong thing. If that’s true, then this is my job. Alice Anotherbible, it doesn’t matter if you hate me now or not. Don’t ever think that’s enough to stop Kamijou Touma!!!”

“Enough, teacher. ''Just shut up.'' You’re completely helpless once you get caught up in a few ''wonders''. That puny fist of yours would shatter if you tried to break through the wall you’re facing now, so don’t think the girl is going to start bawling just because you threaten her with it!!!”

Her picture book dress completely tore away, revealing soft skin and leather overflowing with immorality.

The psychedelic sight would destroy the souls of all who ignored their instincts and attempted to attack her. Alice Anotherbible’s fury had easily dealt with the entirety of Academy City’s dark side, but now it was manifesting in full to crush just one boy.

He realized this may have been the first time Alice had ever directed real hostility in his direction.

It scared him.

People trying to survive a bombing or shelling could apparently feel so much fear they bled from their heart. The pressure bearing down on Kamijou was reaching that level.

Nevertheless, the puny boy chose to fight back against this deadly barrage. He knew that, deep down, Tyrant Alice wasn’t looking for someone unnaturally kind who would bake her a birthday cake every single day. She wanted someone who would do this without hesitation.

He had to believe that.

''If he wasn’t sure what to do, he only needed to listen to his will.

He could not take a single step away. He was certain he stood in the position needed to save Alice.

And that had to be enough to give him the strength to fight against such great power!!!

===Part 7===

Alice Anotherbible.

Bits and pieces of her power had been seen in Academy City on December 29. There were the direct examples like the hedgehog balls and flamingo bat, there was the Executioner with unknown attack conditions, and even the Bridge Building that constructed bridges between the world’s logic and laws to distort the world as she saw fit. Seeing as she had created a reality where the dark side’s survivors all worked together to fight a powerful foe, her power had reached the point of forcibly creating impossible results.

Also, her body was immune to bacteria, bugs, curses, and all other forms of internal damage, both scientific and magical. As for external damage, she would always remain unscathed thanks to the hedgehogs and flamingo protecting her. Moreover, this didn’t come from a fear of shedding blood. She protected herself that way because if anything obstructed her actions, she might get angry and kill someone.

It was unknown if it was even possible to defeat her.

Kamijou couldn’t guess what punching her with Imagine Breaker would accomplish.

And with all that in mind…

(My top priority is that world-distorting power.)

Kamijou set his sights on that.

(I have to avoid ''being sucked into a fake happy ending where I forget all about fighting.'' But as long as I can avoid that, I can at least continue to fight back. That means-)

“''Gryphon, clean this up.''”

Everything blurred.

Kamijou’s vision grew distorted as he was tossed more than 20m backwards. Alice’s already small form looked so much smaller due to the greater distance.

Horrific snapping and cracking sounds came from inside his body. He belatedly realized he was basically being squeezed within a giant press.

Giant feathery wings spread wide before his eyes. That was definitely a sharp beak and talons holding him. Overall, it reminded him of a hawk or eagle, but that was no bird. When his eyes finally managed to focus again, he realized he was pinned down by a lithe body covered in feline muscles.

Hadn’t Alice mentioned a gryphon?

He estimated it was more than 7m long. The spread wings made it look nearly three times as large. A lion was 2.5m and a Siberian tiger could reach 3m, so how strong was this beast!?

(Damn, I’m not sure what a gryphon is supposed to be! And since this came from Alice, is it a specific one from that children’s book? I need Index’s knowledge here!!)

“Bh?”

''He hadn’t known about this.

''Kamijou hadn’t heard a thing about this trump card!

“Gahh!! Cough, cough, agh! Alice!!!”

Held between a giant beak and pressed roughly to the ground, “cornered” didn’t adequately describe Kamijou’s plight.

“Gryphon.”

Alice wasn’t even looking his way with her leather and soft skin exposed.

She only held out a hand and observed her nails.

“The girl is bored. Entertain her with the usual lobster dance.”

“!?”

Kamijou’s vision turned to flowing lines and gravity seemed to vanish.

It took him a few seconds to realize the giant monster was shaking its head side to side with him still in its beak. By then, he had already been slammed into the dark soil. He heard a disconcerting cracking sound deep inside him. He couldn’t have survived a second or third time, but he instead slipped from the beak, flew through the air, and tumbled along the ground. Thankfully, the beak wasn’t good at gripping. With a jaw with rows of teeth or fangs, he would have been pummeled until he didn’t even look human anymore.

Some kind of massive vortex approached him with rumbling sounds reminding him of artillery fire.

Was that the lobster dance?

That told him nothing! He couldn’t even predict what was flying his way! He was up against incredible power wielded in seemingly meaningless ways, so he had the feeling anything he tried to do to escape would backfire!!

He put off worrying about his inability to breathe. He instead rolled to the side to escape.

It didn’t help.

He felt something catch on his back and then the world around him lost shape again. By the time he realized, a birdlike talon had caught him, he slammed into the ground, tearing up the grass. He forgot all about breathing. He couldn’t resist in the slightest as the sharp break grabbed him again.

Kamijou couldn’t win. Or more accurately, ''he couldn’t even start to fight.'' He had badly misjudged this. After running around Academy City’s darkness with Alice on December 29, he had tricked himself into thinking he understood the girl.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, Trismegistus, and all the other Transcendents were each said to rival the entire magic side on their own, so did he really think what he had seen before was enough to terrify them?

How many more trump cards did Alice have?

In fact, this giant monster with a lion’s body and a bird of prey’s beak, wings, and talons – had she called it a gryphon? – had been tossed out so thoughtlessly he wondered if Alice Anotherbible even considered it to be a trump card. Could this be her idea of ''teasing him'' with her little finger instead of one-shotting him like she had the others?

“Teacher.”

Cold wasn’t the right word.

Alice’s words were empty, like she didn’t care at all if he lived or died, which tore into Kamijou’s heart.

“You don’t need to worry about that. There is no way you can escape the Gryphon.”

“Aghhh!?”

“Do not underestimate the girl’s Gryphon. He is an embodiment of destruction who insists everything is a boring illusion and strips all things of value.”

Alice made it sound like no concern of hers. The Gryphon may have been the one who got rid of any nuisances bothering her.

It appeared whenever Alice didn’t feel like playing and it swiftly cleaned up whatever was ruining her fun. No, it was more than that. That monster would also perform the aforementioned lobster dance to cheer up the small girl. It destroyed only the simplest of hurdles. Its job was to give her a change of pace when she was done playing with someone and wanted them removed in a hurry.

The Gryphon hadn’t made an appearance on December 29.

Because Alice hadn’t felt the need.

Did that mean, ''in Alice’s opinion anyway,'' the Gryphon was even more dangerous than Academy City’s entire dark side!?

(A-)

Still in its mouth, Kamijou reached out his hand.

Toward the girl in the unsuitable leather outfit who was trying to display no interest in him.

He couldn’t reach her.

He knew that.

But if he died here, what would happen to her?

(Al…ice.)

A dull crunch rang out.

The gruesome sound of crushed flesh and bone echoed across the area.

He had known this. He had known Imagine Breaker wasn’t enough to battle a Transcendent without anything else prepared. That was an undeniable fact when he had already been killed multiple times by Transcendents like Aradia and Trismegistus. And he doubted Good, Old Mary was going to conveniently get up and resurrect him right now.

If he died, it was all over.

That basic fact of life applied to everyone equally…but it did not bare its fangs against Kamijou Touma here.

He was not dead.

The crunch had not been the Gryphon mercilessly shutting its giant beak. The gruesome sound of crushed flesh and bone had contained another sound as well.

''An explosive blast.

The flesh and bone belonged to the Gryphon, not to Kamijou.

But this wasn’t just a sniper shot. The abnormal bird of prey was more than 7m long and it was blasted so hard from the side that it forcibly spat Kamijou from its beak. That couldn’t have been a simple 12.7mm anti-materiel rifle. It had to be something large enough to deserve the title of “cannon” rather than “gun”.

“Bwah!! Cough, cough. Ughh!?”

Kamijou rolled along the ground trying to get air in his lungs again, but all he found was a rusty flavor. He heard definite cracking sounds from inside his body. He may have broken a few ribs.

Alice looked away from her nails.

And she spoke in a dry, emotionless voice.

“Hm. An antique.”

===Part 8===

Identical clone girls were focused on their binoculars at a position about 1.5km from the Bridge Builders Cabal Consulate.

“The target was hit, reports Misaka #10777.”

“Hitting without an initial test firing is not easy, says Misaka #15000 to boost morale through self-praise. Even if it was a test shell without any explosive inside.”

“The hot combustion gas is constantly changing the metal barrel, repeats Misaka #18009 while preparing the next shell. Adjust the targeting grid up and right by 25 degrees for the 2nd shot.”

One of the Sisters held a giant hammer over her shoulder.

But it was not meant to break down a building wall or work in a mine.

It was used to drive in the metal spikes needed to secure an old weapon to the ground.

And unlike a department store or shopping mall during a good sale going on, the public museum was relatively quiet during the New Year’s holiday. This was often when the displays were maintained and aired out.

“Flak 18,” whispered the hammer Sister, her breath visible in the cold.

That was an oft-romanticized weapon that had once been used for both antiair and antitank combat.

“If you need to shoot something, you can’t go wrong with an Acht-Acht, says Misaka #19090, wiping sweat from her brow.”

Misaka Mikoto, still not used to the Japanese clothes she was wearing, was taken aback on a building rooftop.

And here she had thought she could enjoy a peaceful time with the Sisters over the holiday.

“H-how can you fire an 8.8cm cannon horizontally through an urban area, you stupid sisters!?”

“Misaka doesn’t want to hear that from the girl who starts blasting railguns everywhere the instant anything irritates her, calmly retorts Misaka #10032.”

“Gh. Th-that’s different…”

“Also this right here is the maintenance plan for the Acht-Acht given to us by the District 2 Firearm Museum, says Misaka, smugly showing off a fancy tablet since we live in a paperless era. We were asked to keep it in fireable order, so we have done so. And they do say that a machine must be used periodically if you want it to remain functional.”

“That’s a superstition! And I thought these things had internal parts severed to prevent them from being fired!? Curse that new board chairman. Why would he approve something like this? He’d better not be doing everything you ask out of guilt.”

“(Misaka thinks his approval had more to do with ''him'' than with us.)”

“?”

“…says Misaka while running a meaningless simulation based on fictional parameters to have fun with the Misaka Network. Some might call it fantasizing about amusing scenarios.”

Anyway.

There was of course only one possible destination for the two identical girls.

Misaka realized it was unusual for the two of them to accompany each other like this.

“We got that thing to spit ''him'' out, but this is still a crisis situation. The details and size of the enemy force are unknown. And the known enemy appears unharmed by an artillery blast to the side, reports Misaka, sharing the information taken from the other observers.”

“So what is it? I’m reluctant to fight a fluffy animal for different reasons than a human. But if it’s as big as you say it is, I’ll probably get over that reluctance real quick once I see it for myself.”

“The best tactic with monsters is to avoid making contact with them in the first place, says Misaka, trying her hand at counseling. So what should we do? This monster did not shed a single drop of blood after a direct hit from an Acht-Acht.”

Misaka Mikoto’s answer began with a quiet metallic sound.

She had flicked up an arcade coin with her thumb.

“Then we’ll have to try a cutting-edge railgun.”

In the blue sky above, an irregular demon girl floated in defiance of gravity. She did have wings reminiscent of marine animals on her back, but they clearly weren’t large enough to provide enough lift for her to fly.

“Kee hee hee. Look at ‘em go. Well, he’s not the type to let someone go through with murder just because they’re in a consulate protected by international law.”

A consulate represented an entire country, so attacking one wasn’t that simple.

But a consulate could also freely move around within the host country. And once it had moved, the former site of the consulate was no longer bound by the same legal restrictions.

So that was what he had done.

In exchange for some economic support, the new board chairman had gotten the consulate moved to Academy City’s District 1, a much nicer part of the city.

This was a gray zone.

The original Condroniard Republic had been bought by the Bridge Builders Cabal. Their bureaucrats would behave very differently depending on who came out on top here – Academy City or the cabal. Instead of ending the legal protections once the move was complete, they were holding off on doing anything for today, waiting to see how it turned out.

But the board chairman only needed this one day.

Academy City could deal with the rest.

Floating next to Qliphah Puzzle 545 was her opposite: a scientifically-created angel.

“What do we do now?” asked the busty glasses girl.

“Well,” said the demon in a newspaper dress, grinning. A demon’s logic was always the same: “We do whatever we want.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’s looking like our current job is to deal with anyone who steps outside the bounds of humanity,” whispered Qliphah Puzzle 545, her tail whipping side to side.

The teacher’s pet and the mischievous girl.

They held opposite positions, but they were already forming a new bond between themselves.

“And in that sense, Alice Anotherbible has made herself an obvious target. ''Sometimes being too powerful invites further danger.'' Now, let’s show her how we do things here in Academy City!!”

There was also movement on the consulate’s grounds.

“Hey, have you managed to analyze Alice Anotherbible yet? Without that, heading out there will only get you killed! It’s meaningless!!”

“Sphynx, bite that pagan god the next time she says anything pessimistic.”

“Yikes, yikes, yikes!!” shouted 15cm Othinus, her hair bristling.

“I’m close. So close,” said Index sullenly.

“So are you ready to accept it now? The Index Librorum Prohibitorum doesn’t mention any of the spells used by the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal.”

“No, not that,” interrupted Index.

Never underestimate her. They had seen a lot of special types of people – Saints, God’s Right Seat, angels, demons, Magic Gods, and now Transcendents – but none of them made the grimoire library any less valuable.

“This isn’t just about Alice Anotherbible. I’m so close to seeing a common factor between them all. I’m so close to having a definition for what a Transcendent is!!”

“…”

“If I get closer and actually confront her, I might get the last piece of the puzzle. And we can’t wait any longer anyway. Touma’s going to die!!”

“Yes, I’ll grant you that one. And none of this means anything if that human dies. But let me ask one last time: are you sure this is the choice you want to make? Don’t regret this after the fact, human girl!!”

[[Image:GT_Index_v07_298-299.jpg|thumb]]

===Part 9===

Someone was coming. Kamijou’s woozy mind managed to hear several footsteps approaching. They were on their way despite the laws and treaties protecting the consulate and despite the fact that it was a monstrous place guarded by countless Transcendents, including Alice herself.

They were on their way to bring an end to all this trouble.

They were on their way to protect Kamijou Touma.

“Damn.”

(I appreciate it, but I can’t get them involved in the battle against Alice. If they go up against her without any real chance of winning, who knows what kind of trick she’ll reveal she still has up her sleeve!!)

That meant he only had one option.

He couldn’t rely on kindness, warmth, or the good of the world.

He had to crawl back to his feet if he wanted to protect them himself.

And if he wanted to prevent Alice from becoming that kind of enemy!!

“Bh.”

He had no way of knowing what was going on inside his body.

A rusty flavor filled his mouth.

Maybe this was what it meant to fight a Transcendent without a plan. With Aradia, Trismegistus, and Alice, simply being with them meant risking your life and directly facing them meant unavoidable death.

All the more reason why he couldn’t let anyone else get involved.

He moved his body despite the disturbing sounds it made when he did so and he dug his fingers into the dark soil.

He was painfully aware of the birdcage his ribs formed in his chest. Something hot was exploding inside that cage.

He had pushed himself too hard.

The blood went wild in the core of his being and he collapsed back to the ground.

“Gahh!?”

How much longer would he be able to move?

10 minutes? 5? Maybe not even 1.

But.

He gathered strength in his deteriorating body once more.

He was willing to cough up blood, break some bones, or damage his internal organs if that was what it took.

As long as he could keep himself moving for another minute.

As long as he could stand back up and clench his fist again.

His right hand wandered.

He touched Trismegistus’s sword on the ground and it shattered. With Good, Old Mary’s outdoor kitchen tools, he wasn’t sure how they were even used as weapons.

Nevertheless…

“Gahh!!”

He stood up.

He threw his right fist forward.

Toward the giant monster rushing toward him. The difference in their strength had already been proven beyond a doubt. The Gryphon opened its large beak and bit at the boy’s right arm.

He heard an unpleasant tearing sound.

He felt searing heat.

But.

His arm exploded.

''Something'' burst from within his torn-off right arm and rapidly expanded within the bird of prey’s mouth.

The Gryphon’s silhouette burst like a balloon.

“Ah, ahh, ahhh, ahhhh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

(This isn’t over.)

He staggered to the side.

His vision faded due to all the blood gushing from his arm.

(Alice is still there.)

He still had to deal with the hedgehog balls, the flamingo bat, the executioner, and the small girl herself.

He knew that.

He wasn’t going to last much longer.

Defeating the giant Gryphon wasn’t the end of it. it probably didn’t even qualify as one of the main cards in Alice Anotherbible’s deck. Kamijou was already battered before even arriving in front of her. If he couldn’t defeat her at his best, what hope did he have in his current state?

Still.

Kamijou Touma used his remaining arm and his mouth to tie a handkerchief tightly around the shoulder just above where his arm had been torn off.

He couldn’t afford to pass out yet.

He knew people were rushing to his aid, but he couldn’t expose them to the threat that was Alice. If this had all begun with the two of them meeting on that adventure in the dark side, he had to be the one to end it.

“Al…ice.”

He couldn’t even straighten his slanted stance.

But he still clenched his bloody teeth and took a step forward.

“Forget about the others. Pretend they’re not even here.”

He moved forward.

He moved of his own free ''will'' to stand before that young monster whose innocence was what made her so terrifying.

“''So fight me!! Alice Anotherbible!!!''”

And…

“…”

Alice looked away from him in her inappropriate leather outfit. She was instead focused on the many footsteps surrounding them.

On all the people attempting to eliminate her to protect Kamijou.

Then she let out a visible breath with resignation on her face. It was the look of a child who had been so excited about going to the amusement park but, once she arrived, got lost, was taken into custody by the park officials, waited and waited for her parents to come get her, and as the sun began to set, finally realized that her parents had abandoned her.

That face stabbed into Kamijou Touma’s heart far more painfully than anger or the noh mask ever could.

“Forget it…”

''Uh, oh,'' realized Kamijou, but it was too late.

He had already seen the clear drops growing in the corners of her eyes as she pouted her lips and turned away.

And the girl said one last thing now that she was truly alone.

“Stupid teacher.”

[[Image:GT_Index_v07_307.jpg|thumb]]

===Between the Lines 4===

The girl thought she would be happy if she became something special.

She thought she wasn’t happy now because she hadn’t done enough to set herself apart.

Maybe she could be like Cinderella. Or like Snow White.

So she specialized herself more and more and more. To a dangerous degree.

She innocently improved herself.

She became someone who did what no one else could.

Now, let’s take a peek at the answer.

How did that turn out for the girl?

<noinclude>
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter3

2026-06-10T22:35:57Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Chapter 3: The Transcendent Blossoms – Sabbat_VS_Witch_Hunt.==

===Part 1===

Kamijou threw open the stainless-steel back entrance.

The winter sky was still blue since it was 3 or maybe a bit later. Soaking themselves in the hot spa had been a bad idea even if it had been part of a plan. He thought the north wind was going to freeze him solid.

“Damn!!”

He didn’t have time to worry about that.

Transcendent Aradia would be back soon. Kamijou and the Bologna Succubus alone could not protect that large shopping mall with so many entrances. Aradia already knew they were in the Miyashita Ark, so staying there would be like asking her to launch a surprise attack and kill them.

He lent the Bologna Succubus his shoulder and half-shouted his questions. But not because he was overexcited. He was afraid she wouldn’t hear him otherwise.

That was how weak she was.

But she still wrapped him up in her light pink wings like a cloak. She wanted to give him as much of her remaining body heat as she could.

“What do we do now!? We need somewhere to hide if I’m going to treat your wound!!”

“Hee hee.”

“What is it now, Bologna Succubus?”

“I’m just thinking how glad I am I risked my life to save you. Here, I’ll reward you with a nice tight hug☆”

“T-take this seriously!”

She pouted her lips at that.

“Goodness gracious. So you want my request? Then I say a sauna or a capsule hotel would be safest. A sand bath or an enzyme bath would do if you want to have more fun with it.”

“What is it with you and baths?”

“Fine, would you prefer a love hotel or soapland? At a massage parlor, you can put on paper underwear and get a mystery gel rubbed all over your back. Do they have showers you can use there?”

“What is it with you and…that stuff!?”

Kamijou was blushing now and the Bologna Succubus giggled weakly. She could barely stand up straight, but she was amused by his reactions.

“First, I’m interested in Japan’s strange bath culture. And second, an indoor facility with lots of small rooms separated out like honeycombs suits our needs best. Karaoke boxes and manga cafés don’t give you much privacy as a deterrent against crime, so we have to look at the more ''adult'' destinations instead.”

So was the lowest hurdle among them the capsule hotel?

Kamijou checked his map app with his empty hand.

“Damn, I’m getting more and more poisoned by the smartphone culture. I get worried whenever I can’t look something up on here first.”

They made their way to the map icon closest to the Miyashita Ark.

The place was deserted.

Had everyone left with all those creepy faces appearing? Or was the place made so you could check in without interacting with a real person? Either way, no one stopped them as they walked right through the front desk area. Kamijou’s clothes were still soaked, so he appreciated the warmth of the heater. It was enough to make him teary-eyed.

“What the hell is this?”

Something like coin lockers for giants lined the walls. The doors were 1m squares of translucent frosted glass, but that was it. Each box was a room just big enough for someone to get some sleep inside. It reminded him of a sterile spaceship in an SF movie or maybe an extremely efficient prison.

He wasn’t sure he could carry the weak Bologna Succubus to a higher level and he didn’t need to anyway. He pushed her into a box on the bottom level and had her lie on her back.

He was chilled to the bone, but treating her was more urgent than heating himself.

He leaned into the same space and immediately detected a sweet scent. He hadn’t noticed it before, but it probably came from her hair.

“So I want to treat your wound, but ''where were you hit''? No covering up with your hands! Or your wings! Just let me see. Actually, are a succubus’s organs even in all the same places as human ones?”

“Oh, you licentious lad. Are you that eager to get into my underwear?☆”

“I’m going to assume these jokes mean it’s not that serious. Do you want those to be your last words!?”

“But how else do you plan to see underneath this?”

He froze. She must have liked the attention because she slapped his cheek with her pink tail.

That light pink lingerie was the only thing she wore and it was a one-piece corset that covered her from top to bottom like a bunny girl. When Aradia had kicked her back in the hot spa, it had been in the stomach, but that was the hardest spot to check with that outfit. The waist was fitted pretty tightly. In fact, it had to be the tightest part of the entire thing. Q: You want to see a bunny girl’s navel without having to see her boobs or butt in the process. How do you accomplish this? A: ………Why wasn’t there an answer!?

This was first aid. It was a necessary medical procedure!

Kamijou kept trying to convince himself of that in front of the defenseless young woman, but he couldn’t seem make himself actually do anything.

“Oh, no. I don’t think there’s any other option. But how do you even take one of these off?”

“Sorry, boy. I can’t help it I’m such a natural virgin killer, so try to be patient with me.”

“Why am I taking such massive psychological damage when I’m only trying to selflessly help someone!? It’s like my heart is a hunk of ice being chipped away with an icepick!!”

He got carried away and bumped his head into the low ceiling.

He was left to sob with his hands over his face, so the Bologna Succubus put her hands on her hips while still lying on her back. But she didn’t seem angry with the pathetic boy who couldn’t just enjoy the situation he found himself in. Instead, he heard a strange ''ziiiip'' sound from either side of her hips. She was undoing the zippers there.

She used her wings to push her back up from the bed.

“There we go.”

“Ahhh!?”

She pulled the thin material down to her navel and rolled it up there. It was a lot like someone pulling off their school swimsuit’s shoulder straps and half removing the swimsuit.

“Hee hee. I appreciate the mighty big reaction, boy. It’s a real confidence booster.”

Being a succubus, she didn’t seem to mind at all. She even placed her hands behind her head. The two big things jiggled on top of her chest and Kamijou blushed so bright he thought his face was going to explode. It was super awkward because she made no effort to cover up and even grinned up at him. He wanted to politely look away from that part of her that now had only her hair to cover it, but that wasn’t an option. She was injured and needed treatment.

“I would recommend getting this over with quickly. Aradia is working to recover as well. If we can recover faster, than we have a chance to send an attack her way. Every second wasted reduces our odds of survival.”

“You’re certain Aradia will come back for us?”

“Unquestionably.”

He couldn’t send the Bologna Succubus back into such a deadly fight while still injured. He needed to at least provide first aid to stabilize her condition. He looked back down at her body and noticed a purplish discoloration above her navel. A large one too. About the size of a child’s fist.

“Yikes.”

“Hell’s bells. That kind of reaction is a lot scarier than any kind of scientific threat, you know?”

“But what do I do about this? I-is this internal bleeding? Since I don’t see an open wound here, I don’t think disinfectant or a bandage will help. Applying a compress seems like the only thing I can do.”

“That should be enough. It’s only a bruise, albeit a severe one. It is internal bleeding and I know it looks bad, but it doesn’t look like a major artery or organ was affected.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“If the internal bleeding was that serious, I would have passed out from blood loss as soon as I loosened the waist constriction. This is very tight to protect the dreams of boys like you.”

The simple store in the hotel sold most basic medical equipment.

Kamijou soon returned with a variety of options.

“Is a warm compress or a cold one best for this?”

“A nice, cool one. You wouldn’t heat up a lump on your head, would you?”

He just took her word for it and peeled off the compress’s clear film like he was unwrapping the single-slice cheese used for toast.

Then he faced her again.

“Okay, I’m going to apply it.”

“Hee hee☆ Have at it, boy. I’m ready for- bdflkbhldfh!?”

“Yikes!! Bologna!”

“Krlrlrl- ah ha ha. That was chillier than I expected and I have very sensitive skin. You did nothing wrong, so keep going.”

Was that just her common tones breaking down?

He thought something had exploded inside her.

“This compress really smells.”

“Aromas are more noticeable in a small space like this.”

The Bologna Succubus reached out a hand while lying on that minimal bed. It made her look like a good-looking but lazy young woman reaching for some snacks. He wished she would cover up those large things with her hands since her hair was doing a very poor job of it. Or she could use her pink wings or tail. She had plenty of options!!

The topless Western woman (!?) remained oblivious to that wish.

“Do you have any painkillers?”

“I brought over everything they had, but don’t ask me what any of it is. Oh, this says it’s a cold medicine. And this is a sleeping pill?”

“My, oh, my. What is some loxoprofen doing here? Don’t you normally need a prescription for that? But I want a little more than that. Ooh, an anticonvulsive. Since it isn’t from my flesh or bones, I’m guessing this pain is related to my smooth muscle, so I’ll be taking that☆”

“Wait, um, taking it? But I just carried this over for you to see! You can pay for it yourself, I hope!?”

Kamijou didn’t know much about painkillers (despite having been in and out of the hospital more than the stereotypical sickly girl), but if she was happy with it, he wasn’t going to argue. In fact, he was a little surprised that ordinary drugs even worked on her.

“I think that’s all you can do for me. Oh, but this drug is supposed to be taken with food, so I should eat something. Hmm, I’ll probably heal faster if I eat this takoyaki, tenkasu, and mayo sandwich they’re offering.”

“Why would you go for a mass of grease and carbs that even a high school boy like me would shy away from?”

The demoness really did buy the mystery sandwich. She turned out to be the type who eats triangular foods by holding the bottom two corners in her hands while she nibbled at the top corner. That was weirdly cute. Maybe her younger habits never faded since demons(?) didn’t age. Whatever the case, Kamijou thought his heart was going to stop from the combination of the childish mannerisms and her large and topless chest.

She again demonstrated her opposition to littering by balling up the sandwich wrapper for easy disposal later.

“Mmm. That was good. And a full stomach makes me sleepy.”

She stretched her arms up while sitting up on her knees now. She was once more leaving herself with nothing but her hair to cover up and the ceiling was so low her palms ended up pressed against it, but she looked happy enough. Had that greasy sandwich really healed her? Surely not. The more he learned about Transcendent physiology, the more confused he got.

“Now we need to get our clothes dry. Oi, quit leaving the capsule every chance you get, boy. Climb back in here with me.”

“Why should I?”

“Because the capsules let you set their temperature and humidity. If I lower the humidity as far as it goes and crank up the heat, it should function like a dryer.”

“Are the SDGs just a joke to you!?”

But it was true he was going to freeze to death as things were, so he had no choice but to crawl into the cramped space with her.

He made sure to apologize to the god in heaven before succumbing to the demon’s temptation.

“What is this sweet scent? The compress didn’t smell like this, so is there something in the air conditioning filter?”

“Buzz. Wrong. That would be my cleavage. The bare skin may give off more milky pheromones than the half-dried underwear.”

“…”

“Sorry for being a virgin killer in more than just the visual way, boy.”

''Does she have to keep bringing that up!?'' Kamijou did his best not to look at the winking young woman a mere 50cm away from him. She must have enjoyed teasing him because she was in a very good mood and even cackled while switching to a cross-legged position.

But what were they supposed to do now?

He was honestly unsure how healed she was, but she had been hit pretty badly. And Aradia had apparently received a weird boost to her power brought on by desperation. Kamijou couldn’t instantly power himself up and it would be heartless to throw the Bologna Succubus into the line of fire every time he sensed danger.

He could only think of one option.

“Let’s meet up with Index and the others,” he whispered.

“You mean the grimoire library?”

“And Othinus too. They might give us the clue we need. You keep talking about the Bridge Builders Cabal and Transcendents, so I think it would be best to see what some magic experts have to say.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” said the Bologna Succubus while belatedly putting those big things back in the chest of her underwear and adjusting their position a little. Kamijou blushed, but he was more fascinated with the discovery of how a bunny girl costume was actually put on.

“However, that is easier said than done. How exactly do you plan on doing it? I doubt you would run into them if you just ran around the large open world of Shibuya.”

“So would it be best to send them some kind of sign that we’re in this capsule hotel?”

“What if Aradia sees it? Then the inevitable battle would begin before we had time to prepare.”

“Th-then it just has to be a subtle sign that only Index would notice.”

“A quiet whisper will never reach every corner of Shibuya.”

She shot down his every idea. Unfortunately, she was right.

A noticeable sign would be noticed by Aradia, but a subtle one wouldn’t reach Index. He wracked his brains for a solution until…

“Oh.”

“Hm? Wh-what now, boy?”

“I’ve found the answer. There really is a way of sending an obvious sign to Index no matter where she is in Shibuya while that transcendent magician Aradia remains none the wiser!!”

“Th-there is!? O-out with it then! Gulp.”

He raised his trembling head and gave her the deadly serious look of someone revealing an apocalyptic prophecy.

“I can message her phone.”

“You had a mobile this entire time!?”

The sexy demon rapped her knuckles against the top of his head.

He pulled out his phone to find a flood of messages from Kumokawa-senpai.

===Part 2===

“…”

When Index arrived at the back-alley capsule hotel, she crossed her arms and puffed out her cheeks.

Othinus and Kumokawa Seria weren’t much different.

The only one who wasn’t upset was the calico cat on the nun’s head.

Kamijou Touma was confused. The Bologna Succubus was the one crazy enough to go around in nothing but underwear, so why were their piercing gazes focused on him? Not to mention that the god was trying to act like a reasonable dresser when her outfit was just as revealing.

Maybe it was all the time he had spent in that capsule full of sweet female pheromones to dry his clothes.

Whatever the case, he wasn’t given a chance to defend himself.

[[Image:GT_Index_v06_BW3.png|thumb]]

“(My plan is in complete shambles now. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I’m supposed to be the mature beauty of his group, but then she comes along out of nowhere and steals that position away from me!)”

“(Human, why are you falling for a mere big-titty demon when you are already have an ultra super rare god?)”

The ones muttering under their breath were giving off a terrifying dark aura. And one of them was a god, so she was probably uttering curses that would drive all who heard them to madness.

“(He’s clearly a phone newbie, yet he can summon a swarm of girls with a single message? And he didn’t think twice about calling in more girls when he was already with me. Not to mention that this is a ''hotel''. I can’t believe he didn’t have an issue asking them here or that they didn’t have an issue coming here.)”

“Shut up, you winged freak!”

“Shut up, you winged freak!”

Kumokawa and Othinus appeared to have become friends at some point.

Index didn’t seem to realize what the Bologna Succubus had been implying, so she alone watched on in confusion.

They couldn’t all fit in that capsule, so they remained in the hallway. The Bologna Succubus used the edge of the capsule entrance like a bench since she was injured. When Kamijou tried to leave the capsule, her pink tail coiled around his neck and yanked him back to her side. The super sweet and sexy young woman’s lonely gesture nearly sent him (quite literally) to heaven.

Othinus got the conversation started, sounding somewhat irritated.

“So, human. Did you drive everyone out of this building to claim it for yourself?”

“Do you really think he could do that? It is still the late afternoon outside, but the guests will start returning once night falls. Capsule hotels are generally built alongside saunas, but they are still hotels.”

Kamijou wanted to get down to business.

What did his two experts – Index and Othinus – think of Transcendent Aradia?

“I’ve never heard of a person called Aradia.” The nun still looked upset, but she answered his question while seated on the hallway bench. “But I have heard of ''a book'' called Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches.”

Kamijou’s heart skipped a beat.

Aradia. And witches.

“But a lot of people think that was a story a witch made up on the spot to tell the author what he wanted to hear.”

Kumokawa seemed to prefer being in the corner because she leaned back against a square pillar and held the bored-looking cat while tilting her head at that answer.

“So that witch used the same technique as a streetside fortuneteller?”

“More or less. ''According to a fortuneteller who has since abandoned their authority,'' the entire field is about drawing out the words a hesitant person wants to say themself.”

“The witch herself probably wanted to be seen as a good talker and a clever doctor,” cynically added Othinus while climbing up onto Kamijou’s shoulder.

But this wasn’t any help at all.

If it was only a book, then what exactly were the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal?

Kamijou glanced over at the Bologna Succubus, but the demon seated next to him was only smiling. When she noticed him looking, she winked and squeezed her upper arms together to accentuate her cleavage. But he did recall that she had said her purpose in life and actions were centered on someone being sentenced to death for the absurd charge of running a succubus brothel.

Anna Sprengel had apparently joined that cabal and the magic side generally believed that she was no more than a name that appeared in the letter Westcott forged when founding the Golden cabal. Kamijou had assumed that forgery theory only meant that Anna herself had never appeared directly on center stage to spread any those global disasters, but what if there was more to it than that?

And then there was ''Alice'' who stood at the top of the Bridge Builders Cabal.

“Don’t let them confuse you, human.” After finally reaching her usual spot on his shoulder, the 15cm god tickled his ear with an exasperated sigh. “There is no way of proving one way or the other if a goddess named Aradia really existed in the distant past. The same is true for the entire Bridge Builders Cabal. The issue we need to focus on is the fact that a magician going by that name is here in Shibuya today and that she is attacking you with some kind of powerful spell. Whoever she might be, you can eliminate her as a threat if you defeat her.”

That was true enough.

But this was a big problem Kamijou didn’t think he could just ignore.

“If she is using witchcraft, then it should be based on natural chemicals.” Index attacked the issue from a different angle while kicking her legs atop the bench in the shared hallway running between the locker-like rows of capsules. “A witch’s supernatural feats of healing, divination, cursing, flight, and crop growth should all be derived from medicinal herbs and minerals. They are basically priestesses living deep in the woods after all.”

“So what is that Triple whatever thing, Index?”

“You mean the Wiccan Triple Reload?”

The Bologna Succubus, who was of uncertain age, was playing with the cat. The cat had slipped from Kumokawa’s hands to chase after her wiggling tail, so she was skillfully sending her tail darting this way and that to just barely dodge the kitty punches.

Her clarification meant nothing to the high school boy, but it was valuable information for Index.

“I see. ''That'' explains the Aradia name. In that case, you can call what she uses witchcraft, but her spells are not based on a specific mythology or religion like Greek or Celtic.”

“U-um, Index?”

“This is something newer and more like a ''superstition''. Instead of digging up the ancient techniques, this witchcraft was created new by mixing together bits and piece of the thoroughly Christianized culture. That means she won’t just use the Rule of Three. Wicca has plenty of rules and taboos all its own. Use those against her and you should be able to defeat her no matter how much more powerful she- oh.”

Index was cut off by a rattling sound.

But what was rattling?

The floor was. No, was it the entire multi-tenant building containing the capsule hotel!?

The Bologna Succubus whispered into Kamijou’s ear while sitting next to him and resting her head on his shoulder (and receiving threats from Othinus for invading the little god’s territory).

“Aradia is here.”

===Part 3===

The sun had set.

The sky was dark and, true to the December date, the winter season became impossible to ignore once sunset arrived. However, it was also New Year’s Eve, so Shibuya was only starting to get fired up.

“…”

One girl wore a translucent raincoat over a swimsuit-based outfit. She wore an eyepatch and looked something like a comical ghost or a clione, but she was currently staring at the scenery of Spain Zaka.

She saw a large piece of cloth fluttering there.

A small girl of about 10 was trotting along in a witch outfit, probably on her way to the scramble crossing. “How cute,” said the ghost, but on closer inspection, that witch girl had her navel exposed and she was barefoot. She could easily freeze to death in that modified bikini, so did she have a thick layer of some kind of heat insulating gel applied to her bare skin?

“A witch.”

The ghost had had a frightening experience with one of those earlier in the day.

Her hand froze up while reflexively reaching for her phone to record the possible news in front of her. But this witch costume looked a lot cheaper than the last one. The clasps didn’t look like real gold, for one. It may have been made with a clothing printer that used a remote machine to perform automatic high-speed sewing based on the supplied pattern data. Recently, White Spring had a deal where you could order a printed garment online and then have their delivery service deliver it to you in less than half an hour.

(But is that really a popular enough character for someone so clearly new to cosplay to choose? For that matter, ''is that even a character from something''? Well, someone may have thrown together the pattern data based on the uploaded videos and then released it for public use.)

Just then, the ghost took a step back and nearly bumped into a witch.

But this witch looked to be of high school age.

“?”

(Um!?)

A moment later, the ghost realized there were even more of them.

Everywhere she looked, she found witches wearing ankle length wimples and modified bikinis. There were 5 or 10 or maybe more. The number gradually increased like stepping on the white beach and seeing dark oil start to seep out from below the sand. It was like the scratchy sound of cheap bells were drowning out the crowd’s chatter.

None of them were looking her way.

They were only respectfully holding some folded clothes in their hands. For whatever reason, blank pieces of looseleaf paper were stacked up on top of the clothing.

They were all muttering the same thing under their breath.

It was a forbidden, profane, and sweet utterance that brought the word “secret” to mind.

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

For some reason, when the ghost heard those whispered voices, something started to grow in the back of her mind.

This was something she had tried to forget. It was an unseen scar on her heart that formed the foundation of her current life and could not be removed at this point.

She belonged to a group who posted videos to a video site. She was always conscious of her numbers, but that wasn’t always a battle against herself.

She had once had a rival.

She hadn’t heard anything from that rival ever since the girl made the mistake of uploading a shoplifting video and had to move away.

They had been friends…or she thought they had. But the silly number of followers tacked onto the end of their account names had always led them to compete, for better or for worse. And if the ghost hadn’t come out just barely on top, that friend, whose real name she didn’t even know, may never have felt the need to gather attention with a shoplifting video.

She had been terrified of the guilt catching up to her.

So she had grown even more obsessed. Because if she dressed in crazy outfits and received the praise of so many people online, she could forget all about the more colorful reality she lived in. And who was going to complain about that choice if she also earned more money than most adults made?

But she couldn’t shake off, wash away, or escape reality.

She was wearing a translucent raincoat over a costume based on a practice swimsuit. That cheap, meaningless outfit wasn’t enough. That plastic and synthetic fabric had no mystical significance and couldn’t free her from reality. It couldn’t relieve the weight suffocating her.

So what else could she do?

What could she do to finally shake free of the reality doggedly pursuing her?

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

“Oh.”

There was the answer.

The witches continued to multiply.

Just like with Halloween costumes and video posting, it was so much less frightening when you weren’t the only one doing something.

There were more and more.

More and more and more and more and more and more.

More and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more.

They came from every direction. Witches emerged from every street corner to flood the scene. There were some suppressed screams as people were overwhelmed by the sight, but everyone was paralyzed by it and no one began recording with their phone.

The ghost should have felt the same.

But this didn’t even seem strange to her anymore, much less frightening. She instead felt an all-encompassing sense of calm. Most everyone understood what a follower count was these days and it was so much easier for new content creators to get started. This worked the same as video sites and the rest of the internet. Once enough people were doing something, it gained legitimacy.

Everyone was doing this too, so she had nothing to worry about.

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

One witch must have sensed something because she held out some folded clothes and a stack of looseleaf paper.

The ghost smiled as she accepted the invitation and opened a new door by repeating the secret keyword.

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

Meanwhile, someone was humming atop Shibuya Scramble Squiz, a skyscraper complex connected to Shibuya Station.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm, hm.”

On the special observation deck at the 46th floor, Transcendent Aradia raised her arms and stretched in the large space with a view of the city’s nightscape through the surrounding glass.

She snapped open the clasps to her modified bikini, letting the garment fall away. She only ever exposed her naked body to the green trees, but in artificial Shibuya, the temporary botanical garden being held here was the only option available.

[[Image:GT_Index_v06_BW4.png|thumb]]

Her long silver hair became much more noticeable.

Witches were meant to bathe in the moonlight and live secret lives deep in the forest, so if she wanted to eliminate the noise from her thoughts and get a fresh look at her situation, moonbathing and forest bathing were her only real options.

(I had prepared myself for the lack of starlight, but this is bad. Even the moonlight is barely leaking through.)

So this was little more than a way of calming herself.

Aradia spread her arms and bathed in the night air of the artificial greenery.

The witch goddess slowly walked naked across the 46th floor observation deck, stopping to snatch a free pamphlet from the magazine rack along the way. The action had no meaning. She was only relaxing her body and eliminating all biases from her thoughts.

The ad campaign described on the pamphlet was apparently a common thing in the shopping district lately.

''“Help grow more greenery and kick global warming’s butt with Magical Powered Kanamin! Get your free flower seeds now! If we all do our part, we can save the planet with our flower pots!!”

“Hee hee.”

Aradia laughed when she saw the magical girl drawn on the pamphlet in primary colors.

But not because she found it laughable.

(So this teaches people to love the deep forests and to assist those close to them?)

This was an Academy City entertainment product made for small children and the campaign’s claims had little to no scientific basis behind them. But ironically enough, it hit a lot closer to the essence of a witch than those texts written to criticize witches that based their beliefs on all the ancient parchment documents they had gathered.

Aradia glanced to the side while toying with the pamphlet in her hand.

She saw some billowing clothes there.

But they weren’t hers. They were worn by the girls who were serving the witch goddess in the hopes of receiving even a small fraction of her blessing. They were watching Aradia as a living model of a perfect witch, making note of everything from her gait to her breaths, and jotting it all down on their looseleaf paper.

That was known as their Book of Shadows. Modern witches bound by the Rule of Three were given a stack of blank paper when they first started down that path. The newcomers would continue writing down all the knowledge they obtained until the day they died to create their own personal grimoire.

The girls kept writing without even looking up and they all spoke in unison.

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

That sounded important, but the phrase was actually meaningless.

It was the same as youth slang and online memes.

Having some kind of secret shared term or phrase created a sense of unity while also creating a sense of superiority over anyone who didn’t understand it. Those in the know were separated from the world at large and formed a loose community. But it was easier for people to get onboard if the phrase felt like it had some history or tradition behind it. Repeating that phrase created the illusion of invisible bonds and made them think they were protected as part of some great purpose. The same method had been used at the Sabbats during the Middle Ages, a time when some people wanted to return to their ancestors’ ways after Christianity had taken over.

''I want to know too.

It was an intellectual poison that silently spread using that common desire.

When a demon (or something forced to bear that title) were summoned at those gatherings, the process to perform the summoning tended to be a lot lengthier and more complex than the part where they actually did anything with the summoned being. Why? Because those arcane rituals were the best part and it was so relaxing to be actively working on something. Perhaps it would be too romantic to liken that to the period leading up to an unrequited love being fulfilled.

“Hm.”

With influencers on social media and whatever-tubers on video sites, the world continued to transform and evolve at an accelerated rate, but the basic desires at the bottom of it all had not changed. Aradia saw the world as a living fossil.

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

::::::::I want to live an active life without anyone knowing who I really am.

:“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

:::::::I want to be an entirely new person.

:: “''May the holy witch guide us.''”

::::::I don’t want to screw up or fail.

:::“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

:::::I don’t want to make a fool of myself in public.

::::“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

::::I want to learn how it works without needing to be an expert.

:::::“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

:::But I also want a skill no one else can imitate.

::::::“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

::And I don’t want to work hard for it.

:::::::“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

:I don’t want to bow down to the know-it-alls.

::::::::“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

I want a trick that makes reaching my goal easy.

(This city’s people have so many openings for me to utilize. I don’t think it’s as bad as New York, though.)

So these girls would not rely on the mythologies and religions linked to great political power. They were only using their young sensibilities to link together some slang and memes they all knew, but that was to be expected when they all lived separate lives. It was selfish, willful, and entirely for themselves. They were driven by their own desire, so they could never get along with the mythologies and religions that asked for a unified lifestyle before seeking happiness – in other words, ''that demanded their followers protect their teachings that had already been finalized so long ago.

This is what witches had always been. The Sabbat had always been this sort of gathering.

Transcendent Aradia was the one who gave concrete form to those desires and provided the witches with the necessary knowledge and a place at which to practice it.

The nude idol spread her arms at the center of the Sabbat and sang loud.

“It is time to begin the second round.”

She would keep this simple.

If she could not settle this on her own, then she would crush her target with an onslaught of 100 thousand witches.

===Part 4===

The entire building containing the capsule hotel shook violently.

The demoness shrieked and clung to Kamijou’s side. He stuck just his head out of the capsule and took a look around, but since the capsule hotel was basically a portion of a sauna or bath, it lacked windows.

“Well, something’s happening, but what do we do about it!?”

“With just you, I could have flown you away from the roof, but I can’t do that with three or four people and a pussy cat. And I couldn’t sleep at night if I coldheartedly abandoned the cat.”

The busty upperclassman and busty god glared at the demoness as if to say “so you could sleep like a baby after abandoning us?”

But the Bologna Succubus had a mind tougher than depleted uranium, so she sat up from the edge of the capsule and winked at only Kamijou.

“So our first job is recon and intel gathering. We can fight, hole up in here, or run away, but we’ll want to see what Aradia is up to before choosing.”

“In other words, you don’t have an actual plan. Got it.”

The capsule’s wonderfully ecofriendly heater had fully dried their clothing.

Aradia could easily break through the concrete wall to get into the building. The Bologna Succubus had already mentioned that flying away wasn’t an option with more than just Kamijou, so she had likely already ruled out staying in the building too.

They needed to get a look outside. Inside a smoking room that had somehow survived into the current day, they found a window covering one of the walls.

Kamijou was dumbfounded by what he saw.

The sidewalks, streets, and every other part of the ground were covered in witches, witches, and more witches!!

“What the hell is this?”

It looked like a riot. Every single person crammed in like on a packed train wore an ankle-length wimple and a modified bikini. Kamijou initially thought she had ''multiplied'', but a closer inspection proved that wrong.

“Blast it, Aradia. Have you started proselytizing?”

“Prosely-what?”

They all stood at different heights, wore different hair styles, and were of different ages. They were all dressed in the same witch outfit as Aradia, but those had to be the ordinary people of Shibuya exposing their skin to the frigid air. Some of the witches were even standing on the roofs of the cars parked on the curb and on the supports for the blue road signs crossing the large road.

“''May…tch…us.''”

There was a good distance between him and them.

“''May the…witch…us.''”

There was a thick layer of tempered glass in between too.

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

But a great vibration still reached him.

“''May the holy witch guide us!!!!!!''”

It wasn’t just the glass or the building shaking – it was the ground.

Their fearsome chorus may have shown up on a seismograph. Kamijou was pushed beyond dumbfounded. He was terrified. The visual alone had blanked his mind, but his instincts were telling him he would die if he wasted what little time he still had.

“What is going on?”

“Witches never make their presence known. They slowly spread below the surface, silently corrupting a family, a town, a country, or any other community,” explained Index, standing on her toes atop a bench to better see straight down.

The Bologna Succubus bent and stretched her body and flapped her pink wings one at a time to see how her recovery was going.

“This is what Aradia’s dangerous charisma can accomplish when she puts her mind to it. She already has a new coven. The youngins of Shibuya are highly receptive to the latest trends, so that may’ve hastened the spread.”

“Dangerous charisma? Are you saying she started a cult?” groaned Kumokawa Seria.

They could only see one side of the building from here, but they had to assume the other three sides were much the same They were completely surrounded and the disturbing shaking of the building suggested some of the witches were already breaking holes in the walls to get in.

It felt like fleeing inside a rundown shack in the humid jungle to escape a swarm of army ants.

“Um, quick question.”

“Yes, boy?”

“Are ''all of those'' Aradia? That is, can they all do everything she can!?”

“She is the witch goddess who rules the night and the moon. She appears at the secret Sabbats to grant the witches the knowledge they need to escape the cross’s persecution. They can’t do everything she can, but they can easily ''borrow'' a portion of her power temporarily.”

“H-how big a portion!?”

“They should be able to use Triple Reload since that’s built into Wicca itself.”

Sweat poured from Kamijou’s brow.

The Bologna Succubus’s body temperature was a bit elevated after she finished her stretches and she started leaning against him while clearly amused by his reaction.

“With some exceptions like Magic Gods, Saints, and Alice, any spell you see someone use is built from the basics of magic. ''And she is a generous goddess who does not hesitate to grant the witches her greatest techniques.'' I don’t know if they gather their knowledge in a paper notebook or on their phone’s memo app these days, though. Still, the Rule of Three is a double-edged sword with a serious chance of self-destruction, so it takes experience and a certain style to use it at Aradia’s level. Really, it comes down to whether or not you can grasp the boundary lines of that taboo well enough to survive your very first experience with it.”

If that was true, this could hardly get worse. They had barely managed to drive off Aradia alone, but now the witch goddess had abandoned all kindness and carelessness and strengthened herself with an army large enough to cover the ground below. Meanwhile, the injured Bologna Succubus had only been treated with a compress and painkillers. Index and Othinus’s knowledge was a help, but they couldn’t provide direct violence. That went double for Kumokawa Seria who was only an upperclassman at school.

Kamijou’s right hand carried Imagine Breaker, which could negate any supernatural power.

But he was the only one capable of physically fighting against those 10 thousand or even 100 thousand witches. How much could they even do in this situation? A group that big would physically crush him before the supernatural even came into it.

“H-hey, Senpai? Or Index? Forget my fantasies – how much does the average girl actually weigh? 40kg? Maybe 50?”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

For some reason, everyone else there glared at him. Even Othinus and the Bologna Succubus who couldn’t be described as “average” by any stretch of the imagination.

But this time Kamijou wasn’t just being rude.

“There are adults and children out there, so let’s just go with 40kg as a rough estimate for the average female weight. If we also assume there are 100 thousand of them out there, that would be…”

“Sigh. 4000 tons, human.”

“I wish I could disbelieve that number, but this is deadly serious. Even if we hide in here to avoid getting crushed by the group, I get the feeling that flood of bodies could directly tear this building from its foundation.”

However…

“You don’t need to worry about that.”

Kamijou couldn’t believe it, but the Bologna Succubus was actually smiling.

“You might think this can hardly get worse, but only due to your own lack of imagination. I expected this much and there is nothing to fear as long as that holds true. Aradia actually ''takes her work very seriously''. The thing is, that’s what gives her such a short fuse. She can be a pain to deal with, but that’s probably the 1st requirement for becoming a witch. She puts her fears at ease by throwing out the wild, eccentric tricks and sticking with the tried and true fundamentals. Ha ha. She would make a good civil servant, but she could never make it as a gambler. And the thing is, we aren’t doing boring paperwork here.”

The Bologna Succubus stepped away from the window and stabbed the arrowhead of her tail into a device on the opposite wall: a fire alarm.

Afterwards, she took in a deep breath that sent a tremor through her alluring bodylines, spread her wings wide, and shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Watch out for the dust!! They’re tearing down the building walls! Is there no line those freaks won’t cross!? You need to run away before they get you too! Also, I’d rather not mention what’s in that dust hanging in the air, but breathing it in is enough for it to harm you! If you start to feel dizzy or faint, that’s means it already got to you!!”

The clangor of the alarm squeezed at Kamijou’s heart.

But he was also confused.

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, it’s just a bluff.” The Bologna Succubus grinned. “But the primary enemy of the witch has always been the witch hunt. In psychological terms, that’s known as mass hysteria. With sufficient data, you can trigger one yourself like you’re following a flowchart.”

“You’re pitting mass hysteria against a cult!? So many people are going to die!”

Kumokawa Seria’s eyes widened, but the Bologna Succubus readily nodded.

“Listen. The witch hunts began with the virtuous citizens accusing each other, ''so you could say it was history’s worst neighborhood dispute.'' You don’t know why, but you’re pissed off, nothing is going right, and something must be to blame. And wouldn’t you know it? That one neighbor seems awfully sus, don’t they? Humans love to blame something close by and eliminate it to reclaim peace of mind. And what’s the first thing anyone in Shibuya is going to see or hear about at the moment? Aradia’s witches.”

With a flapping sound, the demon spread her pink bat wings with her hands clasped below her navel.

“And I believe I already showed you my magic. Cold Mistress converts all pleasure signals into pain. But if I adjust its strength, I can create a ''nagging irritation'' that creates a subconscious source of unease. They might be hesitant at first, but there is no avoiding it. They can try drinking some tea or petting their dog, but all attempts to soothe themselves will only make it worse. Before long, that small irritation will rule their mind. Just like with disease, weather, accidents, and recessions, when humans have trouble understanding some large, invisible factor, they try to calm themselves by directing their hate toward a target closer at hand and then they can’t stop themselves.”

“I see,” said Othinus from Kamijou’s shoulder. “But that only works if people can hear you. There weren’t any ordinary people in this entire building. You can’t fill out the ranks of your witch hunt army without anyone to corrupt.”

“True,” agreed the Bologna Succubus. “But who ever said my Cold Mistress is limited to this building?”

A new rumbling reached them.

Kamijou spun back toward the window to find the witches were being overrun. New colors were flooding the unified colors of the witches like muddy water entering a clear river.

“Touma, something’s happening down there!”

“The fire alarm and the lie about the dust were only the ignition needed to get the ball rolling. The actual seed of displeasure that spreads through the people could be anything. Then Cold Mistress amplifies that feeling into a great irritation and they start searching out for any rumors that might give them a reason or a cause for their unease. If there is an obvious outsider nearby, it’s so easy to convince them they can solve everything by attacking that group. That is how witch hunts work.”

No, that “muddy water” was the hair atop people’s heads.

A mixture of blacks, browns, yellows, reds, and even some obviously dyed greens and pinks formed a single mass that attacked the witch army. This group was a mix of genders and they had no uniform. They were less organized, but they were larger in terms of both numbers and momentum.

Kamijou could hear an earth-rattling rumble through the tempered glass.

“It’s you outsiders refusing to obey the rules that give Shibuya a bad name!”

“Ugh, shut up! My head hurts so bad! What the hell did you do to me!? Argh!?”

“I’m calling the police! This is an unauthorized assembly! Scram and quit bothering the rest of us!!”

It scared Kamijou that the rumble came from human voices instead of bombs or gas explosions.

This was the result of Transcendent Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress spell.

From the looks of it, that spell’s range covered all of Shibuya if not more.

He could see now why she had said she might be able to fight back against Alice with that power. When you didn’t need to specifically target each individual, you could attack a general group over a large range.

The sexy demon wiggled her tail and smiled scornfully down at the surface.

“100 thousand witches? Don’t make me laugh, Aradia. Today is New Year’s Eve. ''100 thousand is a tiny minority.'' Did you even consider how many people from all across Japan are gathered in Shibuya for the countdown tonight? And what if we include foreign visitors too?”

What was happening down there?

Which side was overwhelming the other? Could it have reached the level of bloodshed?

“And magic will lose to the ordinary crowd. Bodyguards, companions, slaves, a best friend – every Transcendent belonging to the Bridge Builders Cabal seeks it in different forms, but in the end, we all long for the human world. Aleister may have tilted the scales toward science for the general public, but that is still the world we live in. Humans cling to the easily visible and controllable things. They might claim otherwise, but when they find themselves on a sinking ship, do they reach for their holy talisman or for a lifejacket made of petroleum? When their life is on the line, no one ever relies on their capricious and unfathomable god.”

“Bologna Succubus!?”

“Ah ha ha. Yes, I’m the demoness who hates any and all false accusations. The witch hunts are such a perfect example of it that they left their name in history. ''They weren’t even attacking the real supernatural demons at the center of the issue.'' They were lashing out at anyone they found suspect to forcibly stabilize their imperfect society. Really, it was little more than a human sacrifice ceremony. Watching this here isn’t at all fun for me, let me tell you.”

The Bologna Succubus laughed lightly with her mouth hidden behind her large wings.

Perhaps she was redrawing the lines of what she needed to protect after seeing the boy worry about the very witches who were trying to kill him.

“But these casual witches fell for Aradia’s temptation, went to her for easy help, found an excuse for their own weakness, and decided to attack complete strangers like you. ''They were bad people to begin with.'' Don’t kid yourselves, you rioting criminals. Did you think there wouldn’t be any consequences as long as you were just a face in the crowd? Did you think you counted as a victim for letting yourself get agitated into violence? I protect innocent people who have been falsely accused. So, boy, my concern is limited to kind people like you who have a penchant for getting themselves into trouble. We demons haven’t fallen so far we go around saving even despicable villains.”

“But you can’t let this continue! Stop it! No one wants it to end like this!!”

“Ha ha! Yes, ''that’s the look'' that makes me want to help you out so badly. And I’m sorry to say they don’t have that same appeal. Concern for others is undoubtedly the greatest virtue ever discovered, but do remember that being weak does not mean someone is pure of heart.”

Kamijou heard a shattering of glass as the demon’s pink tail swept horizontally like a whip.

A downpour of sharp shards burst out with terrifying force.

The Bologna Succubus had just finished saying not even demons would save the wicked, so she wouldn’t care what happened to the witches on the ground far below.

The Transcendent was indeed transcendent.

He had been caught up in some nerve-wracking rescues when working with Alice Anotherbible. Anna Sprengel’s many misdeeds may have been similar in that they were unpredictable and capricious. These people could not be judged as either good or bad. He was working alongside a Transcendent from the Bridge Builders Cabal, so he should have considered the possibility of her resorting to ''capricious violence based on a desire to help''!!

She flapped her wings, jumped out from the window, and soared into the night sky.

“Wait, Bologna Succubus! Stop those witch hunters! You aren’t running away after all this, are you!? You’re they only one who can switch this off!!”

“Hah hah hah! This is where we say goodbye, sightseer boy. Serious and short-fused Aradia has a difficult time with unexpected trouble and can’t adlib to save her life, so now’s our chance to show her what for. And it’s a Transcendent’s job to clean up this Transcendent mess, so you can rest easy, join that young crowd, and head back to Academy City. That city’s thick wall will protect you from any riots in Shibuya☆”

He wasn’t in the mood for that kind of nonsense, so he reached out his hand on reflex. But…

“Stop, boy!!”

Kumokawa grabbed him around the hips and pulled back with her full body weight.

His momentum died and his grasping fingertips just barely missed the tip of the Bologna Succubus’s tail.

But without that assistance, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself and would have plummeted from the window.

With a heavy roar of something moving through the air, the Bologna Succubus vanished into the night sky.

“Dammit!!”

“Touma!”

Index called out to him after Kumokawa pulled him onto his back.

She was implicitly asking him what they should do now.

How was that even a question? The Bologna Succubus had helped him so much this entire time. Without her, he quite literally would have died to Aradia’s hand a third and final time. But that didn’t mean he could just let her use the innocent people of Shibuya as disposable shields.

He had to pursue her.

If they didn’t stop Aradia’s witches ''and'' the Bologna Succubus’s witch hunt, Shibuya would be destroyed before the countdown was complete!!

===Part 5===

Things had gone from bad to worse.

Pursuing Aradia or the Bologna Succubus required going outside, but passing through that crowd unnoticed wasn’t possible.

Or so Kamijou thought.

“Huh?”

After descending the emergency stairs and carefully opening the door, he found the crowd pressing in from nearby. But none of them were looking his way.

“Aradia may have ordered them to ‘kill Kamijou Touma’,” whispered Othinus from his shoulder. “But did she ever snap a photo of your face with a phone or camera? If it was an oral command with no photographic reference, you might be able to get through undetected.”

He was glad his clothes had dried. He wanted to avoid anything that would make him stand out.

“But they have access to those modern marvels too,” cautioned Kumokawa Seria. “New Year’s Eve is basically one giant photoshoot here. They might be tracking down a photo on social media that happened to catch you in the background. This doesn’t guarantee your safety, so be careful.”

But he honestly had some more immediate things to worry about at the moment.

“Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!?”

“Kyah!? Stop grabbing at my clothes!”

“I work so hard! Day in and day out! So why don’t I ever have any more money? Someone out there must be counteracting my efforts!!!!!”

The people out there were arguing back and forth.

The girl in a large eyepatch, a wimple, and a modified bikini looked an awful lot like the video site ghost Kamijou had seen near the station. Her lack of chest left a lot of openings in Aradia’s costume, which actually made it more risqué. And who was that swinging around a folding chair with all her might? Yes, wasn’t that the tanned call girl in a camisole?

The deep metallic sounds coming from her didn’t match her jiggliness at all.

(I met them both with my delivery job, so I’m glad we didn’t use our names or phone numbers. We only know the 8-digit single-use ID we gave each other.)

“Give it a rest, you- gyah!?”

A bluish-white beam shot off in the wrong direction.

Was that lightning? The eyepatch ghost had flipped through her looseleaf papers and traced her finger along something written there, but it looked like her attempt to retaliate with Triple Reload had failed.

Yes, the scary thing here was how the magically-powered witches were being pushed back by the powerless witch hunters. The Bologna Succubus had said the Rule of Three magic introduced a large risk of self-destruction. It was a tricky spell and going through the process was probably hard in this chaos and with a crowd packed around you so tightly.

“The real difference is that the witches want the help of the beneficial supernatural if they can get it, but the witch hunters will not give up until they have eliminated the negative anxiety they feel.” Exasperated, Othinus watched the commotion from Kamijou’s shoulder. That god of war, deception, and magic explained her thoughts. “''A group that fears death will act fearless if it will distance them from death.'' That might look contradictory, but it happens all the time during riots and wars. When people are pushed passed their limits, they will step on a mine themselves or rush straight toward the incoming shells or flamethrowers. With enough people doing that, they can bring down the enemy force. When you aren’t crossing the border for fun and the collapse of your country is a real possibility, anyone who still acts ‘reasonable’ will be overwhelmed and lose.”

“I don’t believe it…”

“That’s the normal way to think. And war doesn’t just mess with people’s patience and sensibilities – it tears down their standards of normalcy. Which is why this sort of thing is best avoided.”

They didn’t have time to stand around watching.

There was more than one kind of hell underway here.

The cat on Index’s head was growling a low warning for once.

In fact…

“Damn, this area’s covered in blood!”

“Boy, the rioters didn’t do this. It was the glass shards that supposed demon sent raining down earlier.”

In her thick coat and tight skirt suit, Kumokawa pointed toward the rusty smell.

Several girls lay on the cold sidewalk at the base of the building. They were all witches. Their groans joined the rusty smell. The downpour of clear blades must have hit them directly, but everything around them was in chaos. No one was even considering treating their wounds.

And Kamijou himself couldn’t do anything more than pull out the obvious shards and tie up the wounds with whatever cloth he could find. He had no way of checking for smaller shards and, even if he saved their lives, he wasn’t sure if this would leave scars on their skin.

“Ugh.”

“Don’t say anything. I stopped your bleeding, so you’ll be fine for the time being!”

“Thank you. Now I just have to find Kamijou Touma.”

“…”

With no photo, the girl had no idea who she was talking to.

For that matter, what had they even gathered here to do? What would have happened to him, Index, and the rest if no one had interrupted? For that matter, ''if the witches couldn’t determine who near the building was Kamijou Touma, could they have tried to fulfill Aradia’s command by going on a magical mass shooting of every high-school-aged boy they came across?

“(Boy, it would be dangerous to stay much longer.)”

“(But we have to call an ambulance for them, Senpai!)”

“(I overheard some girls over there talking about your delivery job. Delivering the food uses a single-use ID, but you have to use your real name when cashing out at the convenience store. So you need to get away before they- hey, wait! You and your stupid kindness!!)”

Kamijou shook his head to drive out the fact that he was being targeted by 100 thousand witches who had given up on thinking for themselves and converted to the Transcendent’s cult.

He couldn’t do this like the Bologna Succubus.

He refused to accept that you didn’t need to care about someone if they were a bad person.

After roughly stopping all the injured witches’ bleeding, Kamijou tried to call an ambulance but found he couldn’t get through even with the emergency line. He didn’t hear the usual ringing – he just heard three short beeps before the connection ended.

“What, I can’t even call the emergency number? Why are the lines so overloaded?”

“Because the entire city is like this right now, human. Unless Aradia and the Bologna Succubus are stopped, who knows how long it would take for an ambulance to arrive even if you did call for one. These people are covering the sidewalks, roads, and the cars parked on the curb.”

That meant he had to end this entire commotion if he wanted to get professional help for those girls.

That meant chasing down Aradia and the Bologna Succubus.

If the emergency numbers weren’t working, then the normal internet was out of the question.

“If no one can use social media, it might take them longer to work out your identity,” said Kumokawa.

“…”

“Okay, okay. I take it back, boy. Say whatever you want, just don’t glare at me like that.”

How frightening did he look today? For some reason, even that perfect upperclassman raised her hands awkwardly. When he tried to look her in the eye, she averted her gaze.

Othinus sighed from his shoulder.

“Your face was everywhere back when the two of us were on the run from the world in Denmark. No one can check that right now with no internet access, but someone with a good memory might still recognize you.”

“Are you saying they’re gradually narrowing in on me?”

“Frankly, it’s strange they haven’t figured it out yet.”

Kamijou was so plagued by misfortune he knew better than to chalk that up to luck. He needed to be on the lookout for some even greater disaster waiting to ensnare him.

At any rate, he wouldn’t be able to track down the Transcendents by checking for the latest photos posted by witnesses on social media.

“Shibuya is a big place. Where do you think they went?”

“Those Transcendents are decently skilled at magic, but too dumb to even use a people clearing field to hide their presence. Just head for the center of the commotion, human. That will get you there quickest.”

“Got it, Othinus. Index, Senpai, follow me!”

The god was telling him to charge right into the most dangerous part of the riot. He would honestly have preferred having Index and Kumokawa take refuge in a sturdy building, but he had no idea where would be safe at the moment.

They kept low while moving through the crowd flooding the streets. It pained him when he saw some people grappling nearby, but Kumokawa grabbed his hand when he reached out to help. She silently shook her head.

The ordinary ramen shops scared him at the moment.

A riot like this could lead to a fire so easily.

None of them recognized him without a photo, but all of these 100 thousand witches were after Aradia’s enemy: Kamijou Touma. However, the witch hunters had no real reason to protect him either. If he did anything to stand out or the witches learned who he was, both sides would attack even harder and make it impossible to move.

“(Hate me for this if you want, but for now you need to keep your head down and ignore all of these supposed witches.)”

“(But, Senpai!)”

“(If they notice you and start to attack you directly, the individuals working to protect you will be trampled by both sides of the conflict. And I mean that literally. We will be trampled to death below living people’s feet. The supernatural isn’t the greatest threat during a riot. It’s being crushed to death ''without anyone even noticing they’re doing it''!!)”

He was honestly surprised there weren’t any fires yet.

Meanwhile, Index spoke up.

“Aradia, huh?”

“?”

He really didn’t want her saying anything that would provoke the witch hunters, but they mostly appeared to be responding to the witch outfits at the moment. Index was dressed pretty unusually (and had a cat on her head), but they ignored her completely.

But that meant the witches could attack them at any moment for not wearing that uniform.

“Touma, do you know when Wicca was created?”

“Don’t use his name!” shouted Othinus from his shoulder.

Kamijou frowned.

“When? I mean, we’re talking about real witches here, so long, long ago in the times told of in fairy tales, right?”

“No, it was created in 1954 AD. Yes, there may have been some prototype witches before the official textbook was released, but it was officially announced in 1954.”

That was a surprise.

What the heck was this? That was after World War Two. Hadn’t the story of the bear grease come from a cursing ceremony some British witches had directed at an entire country to keep the German army away during the war?

“What’s this textbook?” he asked in a bit of a daze.

“The witches use what they learn to write a grimoire they call the Book of Shadows, but it is highly unusual for one of those to reach the level of a true Original Grimoire. When Gardner released his own collection of self-taught knowledge, it doubled as a report on the truth of witches.”

Kamijou wasn’t exactly an expert on children’s stories and fairy tales, but he was pretty sure there were stories that included witches – like Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, and Hansel and Gretel – that were older than that.

For that matter, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland would have already been out by 1954. He had a hard time believing that no one around the world had ever imagined a witch flying a broom through the night sky before then.

But Index’s explanation kept going. She made sure to hold down the cat on her head when he took an interest in the garbage strewn from a toppled garbage can.

“Witches are said to be the priestesses of an ancient religion that predates the arrival of Christianity, but they aren’t the originals. They’re a reproduction created in a later era. A magical researcher named Gerald Gardner, who even interacted with ''Crowley'', is said to have dug up the ancient mythologies and religions from before they were twisted by Christianity and carefully reproduced the original texts from before witches were considered villains.”

“And Aradia is the perfect witch based on his findings?”

“I don’t think so,” bluntly stated Index.

In the distance, something was being shaken up and down like a mikoshi. Kamijou glanced over at it without really thinking and gasped when he realized it was a van large enough to carry 10. Since the windows were covered by a chain mesh and the roof had red lights on it, that had to be a police vehicle here to keep an eye on the countdown. Also, it didn’t look like it was the supernaturally-powered witches who were doing it. The panicked group didn’t even care if their targets wore a witch outfit anymore.

Othinus sighed from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“It has been pointed out that Gerald Gardner had a few biases when creating his reproduction of the ancient witches. Of course, even on the magic side, that kind of skeptic tends to be the sharp-tongued type who don’t make many friends, but it is true Gardner’s supposedly ‘perfect reproduction’ included some inauthentic sexual ceremonies just because he loved them so much. Do you get what I mean, teenage boy? I’m talking about the kind of sexual ceremonies groups of witches hold in secret night after night.”

“Um…”

Kamijou wasn’t sure how to respond to that one, so he looked the other way and groaned, earning him a glare from both Othinus and Kumokawa. The teenage girls’ faces told him that response had earned him a failing grade. But what was he supposed to say when they brought it up in the first place!?

The only girl oblivious to all this placed her finger on her chin.

“The biggest story among all this was Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches.”

?

Kamijou frowned. Index had mentioned that title before and it bothered him that it included the name Aradia.

“It was presented as a report on the legends conveyed to the author by an Italian witch, but like I said before, no mythology features a goddess named Aradia. Since it even calls her the daughter of Lucifer and Diana, it seems likely that it was all made up by the witch on the spot in response to what the author wanted to hear.”

“Wait, so you mean it’s all based on nothing?”

“Probably.”

Kamijou placed his hand on the back of Index’s head to have her crouch down. Real money was flying around like confetti and the cat on Index’s head kept punching at it. He didn’t even want to know where that had come from.

And Index was a little too oblivious to her surroundings while lost in thought.

“The problem is that Gardner believed every word of the report ''and included the legend of Aradia in his Wiccan spells''. And at such a deep level there is no removing her.”

“…”

That made sense.

Hadn’t a fake ''female magician'' who only existed as the name Anna Sprengel in some letters played a role in the foundation of the Golden cabal? The idea that Westcott had made her up entirely hadn’t seemed so likely after Anna herself showed up, but Kamijou was growing less certain of that.

Index continued over the mechanical alarm of a vending machine or ATM.

“In that sense, you could indeed say that Aradia is the goddess of all witches. How it got that way is complicated, but everyone involved in Wicca today is receiving the blessings of those Aradia-born theories. And if you follow the instructions found in the looseleaf Book of Shadows written by each witch, anyone can use her magic.”

Then what was this woman claiming to be Aradia trying to accomplish? If she only wanted the blessings of that name, just being any old witch would have been enough.

Was the story of Aradia entirely made up?

Or was she such a powerful being that the humans had failed to record her presence accurately?

A beam of light shot into the night sky with the intensity of a nearby lightning strike. Even from here, Kamijou could see what he thought was Shibuya Pelko’s roof being torn away. That was the Wiccan Triple Reload, but it must have failed again. If it were under control, it would have crushed the witch hunters (who were really ordinary people rioting).

A shrill scream burst from the cloud.

More magic had failed.

Hadn’t he been told the line between good and bad deeds was determined by general consensus rather than any individual? He was starting to wonder if only Aradia could control that magic. Even if she had distributed her secret technique, that didn’t mean everyone could perfectly absorb that information.

The large discount store and department store scared him. If the furious rioters stole some kitchen or hardware tools, this could easily lead to bloodshed.

Kumokawa Seria whispered to him while reflexively keeping her head low.

“You wanted to reach the heart of the commotion, didn’t you? I think you’re almost there.”

“What? Are you saying she circled all the way around the station and returned to the scramble crossing?”

You couldn’t take a direct route with so many rioters around. Had she naturally wandered back there while avoiding the streets blocked by rolled-over cars and barricades of piled-up bicycles? But was that really a coincidence? Hadn’t the Bologna Succubus also flown in a circle and returned close to their starting point when escaping through Shibuya’s sky?

Was there some kind of magical meaning to making a big circle and going into hiding?

Or maybe it was a common understanding within the Bridge Builders Cabal that showed itself when they were on the run.

(Did Alice do anything like that?)

During that day wandering through Academy City’s darkness, he recalled a few times when he was separated from Alice and they were unnaturally reunited, but he couldn’t say what route she had taken.

He thought about it a bit, but he wasn’t going to find an answer right now.

Because he had seen something else.

Two Transcendents stood at the center of the scramble crossing, surrounded by the crowd of witches and witch hunters.

Car headlights shined in from multiple directions, casting their shadows in just as many directions.

Enough rioters had appeared to separate an entire ward from the rest of Tokyo and the people even stood on the roofs of a donut truck and a red fire truck that had failed to escape in time.

It was actually beautiful.

This was the center of the riot that had left Shibuya entirely nonfunctioning, but all of the rioters kept their distance so as not to disturb those two. It gave the scramble crossing the harmony and formality of an international competition. Just the two of them had overpowered and held back hundreds of thousands of people.

They were not using dreadful magic or demonstrating superhuman strength.

Perhaps this was the true essence of the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal.

They corrupted their surroundings.

They ruled the very space they occupied.

They possessed an overwhelming charisma. It wasn’t an issue of good or evil, legal or illegal. Their very presence loudly announced that they made the rules and they were the true pillar from which the world was constructed. In other words, they were transcendent.

Aradia glanced over at Kamijou. With a single shadow stretching from her feet, the witch’s eyes shined bright like a small child offered a sweet treat. The expression didn’t match her sexy modified bikini, but that was in fact the extent of the power balance between her and Kamijou Touma. No matter how hard he might push himself.

So when she spoke, it wasn’t directed at him.

[[Image:GT_Index_v06_BW5.png|thumb]]

“He’s here.”

“Verily.”

The Bologna Succubus smiled bitterly and sighed with her light pink wings spread. She had multiple shadows spread out like a flower thanks to the headlights.

“I went to all that effort to help you escape the riot and then you come marching to the center of it anyway. You really are incorrigible. But maybe that’s what makes me want to protect you so much.”

“''Are you sure about this?''”

“''I am.''”

With that, the Bologna Succubus and Aradia both took action.

But hold on.

Something deep in Kamijou Touma’s chest was ringing an alarm bell. What had they just said? The Bologna Succubus had run off after irresponsibly turning the people of Shibuya into rioters in order to fight back against Aradia. That much was true. But that didn’t mesh with what was happening now.

For one thing, the Bologna Succubus had been running away this entire time.

If she could defeat Aradia in a one-on-one fight, why had she been so adamant that they needed to run away?

It was over before it started.

The “legend” built up around that demoness unraveled.

They didn’t even get to exchange attacks. The Bologna Succubus was sent spinning through the air before slamming back down into the asphalt. Her wings were bent and pinned between her body and the ground.

The Wiccan Triple Reload spell had done this.

But Kamijou didn’t understand what exactly had happened to her. There hadn’t been any obvious light or noise. That spell was something else entirely in the hands of Aradia.

Every good deed she made using magic would return to her at triple the power.

And she would have set things up so doing all this to Shibuya, spreading her witch cult, and creating 100 thousand witches were all considered good deeds.

The transformation of 100 thousand people into witches and everything they had done

The riot in Shibuya.

It had all been gathered together, multiplied by three, and sent in to attack the Bologna Succubus.

“You should have known there was no defeating me.”

Aradia kept her palm aimed toward her enemy with a thin smirk on her face and her long silver hair spread out behind her.

Did even this count as a good deed in the world of witches?

“Your Cold Mistress takes every single pleasure signal – which are meant to efficiently guide us toward survival and reproduction – and converts them all into intense pain. I can’t deny it is a dangerous power that could even stop that tyrant Alice if the conditions were right, but if I soak myself in negative emotions like regret and hatred, then you have nothing left to convert. Your spell is powerless if I do not seek out pleasure or comfort.”

“…”

“Yet you still decided to challenge me directly. A demon ignoring the odds and hoping for a divine miracle sounds like a double standard to me, Bologna Succubus.”

The demoness couldn’t even get up.

Which meant she had no way of stopping Aradia from revealing the truth.

“Is he really worth going this far to protect?”

“Ah,” groaned Kamijou.

''He should have realized.

Yes, all of Shibuya was engulfed in a massive riot. Objects had been destroyed and blood had been shed. But with hundreds of thousands rioting, he had yet to see a single death. How had that happened? Someone must have set it up that way.

“How shortsighted. I imagine your plan was to have him hide beyond my reach while I was dealing with you, but that fell apart the instant my foolish target trotted on up to us without even noticing what you were doing. ''You failed to earn his trust.'' You should have given up on the fool, so why was a Transcendent like you so obsessed with him?”

When the Bologna Succubus had broken that window at the capsule hotel, it had injured the girls directly below. But what if she hadn’t done that? If 100 thousand people had tackled the building, how many would have been crushed and killed in the process? None of them would have hesitated to do so without the blood to frighten them.

“Ah, ah.”

''He should have realized.

She had taken flight, saying she would handle the rest of the fighting on her own, but was that really her being irresponsible? If she were really irresponsible, she could have abandoned the fight against Aradia, left Shibuya, and ensured her own safety.

The witches vs. witch hunters looked a lot like a clash between two Transcendents tearing Shibuya apart, but Aradia had always been the one to make the first move and the Bologna Succubus had always been responding after the fact. The Bologna Succubus couldn’t take the initiative, so it was always Aradia making the surprise attacks. That was why the Bologna Succubus had flown from that window. By taking a route Kamijou’s group couldn’t follow, she had hoped to keep them out of this extreme battle.

“Ahhhhhhhh!”

''He really should have realized it so much sooner!!

The Bologna Succubus’s actions had been consistent from start to finish! She had rescued Kamijou for no real reason, rejected all false accusations directed at him, and risked her own life to save all people in that position!! Yes, and she had even said the witch hunts counted as a type of false accusation. She couldn’t ignore that, so of course she would have tried to protect the witches kneeling to Aradia!!

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

He poured all his strength into running.

He crouched in front of the Bologna Succubus and propped her up since she was too badly injured to even get up on her own.

“No, no.”

Her voice was frail and her body felt unnaturally cold. Like she was missing something.

“I didn’t – cough – want you to see me looking so pathetic.”

“Pathetic?”

He thought on that word.

There was nothing he could do but shout.

“In what world is this pathetic!? Goddammit!!”

Something was staining his clothes, leaking through, and soaking his skin.

It was her blood.

He started to reach out, but Kumokawa reached out her own hand uncertainly.

“That wound is bad, boy.”

“Yeah, I know!!”

The blood kept flowing without stopping. It was more than internal bleeding this time. Even he could tell this wasn’t your average wound. He was a fairly experienced brawler, but not even he knew what to do about this one. At this rate, she really would lose her life.

She had already passed out in his arms.

If nothing was done, she would die.

He couldn’t remember the name at first.

But then he recalled that other name that had been key to this incident from the very beginning.

“Yeah, that’s it. Good, Old Mary!!”

“You’re going to rely on her, human?”

“What choice do I have!?”

He shouted into the night sky with the Bologna Succubus in his arms.

He didn’t know where that woman was.

But she was the only chance left.

“I know you’re out there somewhere, so save her – save the Bologna Succubus!! Please. You saved me after I had my spine and guts torn out, right? You did that for a stranger who your cabal thinks is trouble! But this isn’t an enemy! It’s another Transcendent from your cabal!! So why wouldn’t you-”

“''Because it would not work.''”

Out of nowhere, he found someone standing right next to him. Even ''Othinus'' was caught off guard and gasped.

“?”

The woman’s long blonde hair spread out at ankle length and she wore a long, loose dress.

The stomach looked especially loose, so it may have been a maternity brand. The thick belt lazily wrapped around her produced a series of deep metallic sounds. They sounded like jangling bells, but they were actually a variety of camping kitchen products clanking together. He didn’t know what meaning they held, but they included a fancy multitool from Switzerland, a portable pot with a collapsible handle, a small burner that could be used as a stove, and a sandwich toaster. The knife with a weird seal mascot on it made her look more like a type of Kuchisake Onna than a homemaker.

The brim of her large hat hid her eyes while her alluring lips whispered to Kamijou. He couldn’t distinguish them from a physical voice, but she may have been using common tones like the Bologna Succubus had.

“She told you from the beginning that mama’s resurrection is not all-powerful. Technically speaking, mama’s resurrection recipe only closes up a dead person’s wounds and returns them to the initial moment of cardiac arrest, making it a very boring and common sort of miracle. No matter how perfectly the body is mended, it must contain enough blood for CPR to work. Otherwise you will only have a fresh hunk of flesh to watch slowly decompose.”

He didn’t understand.

Yes, the Bologna Succubus was injured all over. Yes, she had internal bleeding in her gut from earlier. But he had been resurrected after having his torso pierced through and torn open. It wasn’t like she was hemorrhaging a fountain of blood.

It was Aradia who gave him the answer.

“You can’t blame him for not remembering what happened when I killed him so quickly. He was in no state to form the memories in the first place.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“True. And if he doesn’t know, it means she intentionally didn’t tell him. That was a meaningless choice, but mama quite likes that sort of kindness.”

“What do you two know that I don’t!?”

Good, Old Mary froze in place and Aradia shrugged.

Aradia was the first to speak.

Good, Old Mary’s silence functioned as mild criticism of her revealing the truth the Bologna Succubus had kept hidden this whole time.

“You lost your life more than once at my hand. When I directly destroyed your torso.”

“What about it?”

“''Didn’t you find it odd?'' That kind of injury means a lot of lost blood. Of course it does when I calculated out a death that would prevent Good, Old Mary from resurrecting you. So why was she still able to do so anyway? And twice in a row at that?”

He thought about it and then looked down into his arms.

He focused on the disturbingly “cold mistress” he held there.

He noticed something odd on the inside of her left elbow. He pushed her arm cover out of the way and found a special bandage covering the small mark left by needle.

Good, Old Mary must have decided there was no hiding it anymore, so she provided the answer.

“''She gave you her blood.''”

“…”

“The blood needed to save you came from her. Enough to make up for your destroyed spine and stomach the first time and your ruptured liver the second time.”

He heard a straining sound coming from his back teeth.

He hated this.

It infuriated him.

It hadn’t been misfortune after all. He hadn’t just been dragged into a fight between these Transcendents. Which one of them had truly dragged the other one into the pit of death!? He wanted to curse his own foolishness!!

“Why?”

He was shaking.

Unable to fight the intense emotion, he shouted into the ear of the demoness held tightly in his arms.

“Why didn’t you tell meeeeee!?”

She didn’t give a single word in reply.

Her eyes were shut, her limbs hung at her side, and her body was limp. She wasn’t even conscious anymore. Even she would ''end up like this'' once she hit her limit. He still didn’t have a good grasp on what a Transcendent was and maybe they didn’t even qualify as human anymore, but he should have noticed. Before he allowed it to end like this!!

There must have been hints.

For one, hadn’t she said the Transcendents tried to work out a unified plan ''because they were afraid of dying'' and also feared that unpredictable Alice would tear it all down with a smile at some point!?

Good, Old Mary provided the truth.

“She has lost as much blood as you did in your two deaths, so mama’s resurrection will not work on her. She is already past the limit. It is honestly amazing she could still move around at all in that state.” Her words were precise and cruel. “But that ends here. Third time’s the charm, as they say. All that movement has ended once and for all here.”

The Bologna Succubus had been laughing and showing off her skin to tease the boy.

But even that had been a desperate act to keep him from realizing what was really going on.

He thought back on all that.

He thought on what the word “savior” really and truly meant.

This had never even been her fight. She had only done all this to meddle in Kamijou’s affairs when the Bridge Builders Cabal’s Killers decided to take his life. If she had stayed out of it, it would only have meant a quick and near painless death for a complete stranger.

She could have kept out of it because it wasn’t in her power to stop it. When he had died, she could have deemed her attempt a failure and gone home. When she found there was no way left to win, she could have left and saved herself. But she hadn’t done any of that. She had given him her blood and repeatedly put herself at increasingly greater risk for a clueless idiot who kept throwing away the precious second and third chance at life she had given him. She had even thrown out all those safer options and started a fight she couldn’t win to protect a complete stranger.

She refused to allow any and all false accusations.

She wanted to create a world where no innocent people were made to suffer.

That was really and truly her only reason.

“To hell with this.”

What could he do? The Killers, the Rescuers, and the entire cabal didn’t matter anymore. What could Kamijou Touma do for the Bologna Succubus who had literally saved his life twice!? After thinking for a bit, his trembling abruptly stopped.

He had found what he needed to do.

He focused on the path forward.

“Good, Old Mary.”

“Yes?”

“Would your resurrection work if she had enough blood? What if we could get her her missing blood?”

“No.”

She bluntly rejected that idea.

She didn’t allow him even the small possibility he had used to gather up what little fighting spirit he had left.

“A demon can give blood to a human, but it does not work the other way around. A human blood type cannot be used to save her. No one in the world can do that.”

That made sense. If ordinary blood would do, then the Bologna Succubus could have gone to a hospital, borrowed a transfusion kit, and “recharged” to give them more chances at resurrection. But she hadn’t done that.

There was no way of saving her.

He wasn’t even given the right to throw away his life to fight for her.

His vision started to go dark, but then…

“You Transcendents have some weird gaps in your knowledge. Or maybe these are blind spots born of unexamined assumptions.”

Kumokawa Seria interrupted.

The ever-perfect upperclassman hadn’t given up yet.

She was willing to keep fighting for Kamijou’s battered spirit.

“You said it was human blood types that prevent us from saving her, but does that mean injecting her with a typeless blood substitute to stabilize her blood pressure would work?”

The Transcendent in a big hat tilted her head for a few seconds.

Then a slight smile formed on her lips. The Transcendent had accepted someone else’s opinion.

“I see. An interesting idea.”

“Just to be absolutely sure, can we save the Bologna Succubus by stringing her along just long enough with a completely artificial substance like saline, Ringer’s solution, an iron distribution fluid, or even artificial plasma? Think this through carefully. That boy’s future is counting on this!!”

“That method should work. If you can stabilize her blood pressure somehow or other and keep her ready for resuscitation, then mama’s resurrection should work just fine.”

“Then let’s go with that. Boy, that means you too!!”

Kumokawa slapped him on the back and then started tying up the Bologna Succubus’s thighs with some rope she found, even though the wound was on the demon’s gut. She didn’t seem to care how much blood was getting on her fancy coat and suit. He wasn’t sure what she was doing at first, but apparently she was trying to increase the blood flow to the vital organs by restricting blood flow to the extremities. That was one way of feigning an increase in blood pressure without increasing the total amount of blood. A fighter pilot’s g-suit used the same principle. A mistake here could easily lead to necrosis in her legs, but Kumokawa showed no hesitation.

But this was only buying them a bit more time.

It wasn’t a fundamental solution.

Good, Old Mary kept her eyes hidden behind the brim of her hat while she glanced down at that desperate work.

“However, it is unlikely an ambulance could reach us through this riot. The hospitals themselves will be overwhelmed too. There will be no doctors available to perform first-aid even if you carry her to a hospital yourselves.”

“What’s the actual limit?” bluntly asked Kamijou.

The answer came so smoothly it almost sounded cold.

“If you wish to complete the transfusion before she dies, you would need to begin within 20 minutes.”

“Got it.”

They would fake the conditions needed to save her.

They would snatch her away from the deadly grasp of fate or god.

He held the Bologna Succubus tight once more before relaxing his grip.

“Senpai, where’s the closest major hospital? A general hospital that accepts emergency outpatients would be best.”

“I’m searching now. The phone service and social media sites are overloaded, but the GPS isn’t so bad. Only because my provider uses an Academy City satellite, though.”

“Index, you help Senpai carry this biggest idiot in the universe to the hospital. That should be faster than waiting for an ambulance.”

“Okay, but what about you?”

That wasn’t really a question. Her tone made it clear she already knew the answer.

If the Shibuya-wide riot wasn’t ended in the next 20 minutes, the Bologna Succubus’s treatment couldn’t begin. Then her heart would stop and there would be no saving her.

But on the other hand, she could be saved as long as the riot was stopped before then.

“Good, Old Mary.”

“Are you sure you want mama going ''with them''? Mama is a Transcendent who can create a small universe in a clear box and make use of any and all recipes. Mama would have much better odds of winning a fight against Aradia, who has mastered the witchcraft of the ancient forest and carries the blessings of the night and the moon.”

“You worry about your job. After getting our hopes up like that, you don’t get to come back and say you couldn’t save her after all.”

Her eyes were hidden behind her hat, but she still seemed to be examining the boy with an appraising eye.

She was judging the resolve and determination of an average, normal, and ordinary high school boy.

And she finally nodded.

From there, they didn’t waste time with excess words.

“''Leave it to me.''”

“''Then you leave this with me.''”

[[Image:GT_Index_v06_BW6.png|thumb]]

He left his savior’s life in her hands.

Then Kamijou Touma scraped the soles of his shoes against the pavement to turn and face his enemy.

She stood at the center of the scramble crossing.

That Transcendent could have attacked at any time, but she had chosen to watch it all play out. He had always been her one and only target. The Bologna Succubus’s opposition would have been a surprise and she would probably prefer it if her fellow cabal member were saved. So she wouldn’t bother pursuing the Bologna Succubus, Kumokawa, and the others. Not because she was a good person or wasn’t that kind of person – she simply had no reason to.

On the other hand, she wasn’t going to stop the witch riot.

Her top priority was killing the threat, not rescuing her fellow cabal member.

But Kamijou Touma was not going to let that happen.

He clenched his right fist so hard it hurt. The target of that fist stood right in front of him.

He had to get started.

He had to take that first step forward.

“Aradia, you might be a witch goddess of the night and of the moon and you might be a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal.”

“Are you all done chatting?”

“But I will destroy all of your illusions in the next 20 minutes. Got that? 20 minutes. By then, I’ll have ended this riot of witches covering Shibuya!!”

===Between the Lines 2===

Scarlet flames burned the night sky.

Every breath pulled black soot deep into the lungs, which was enough on its own to shorten someone’s life.

A fire was burning deep in a forest where the old superstitions had never died.

It burned the small log cabin, the garage added to the side, and even the pile of firewood the old lady had smiled and bragged would get her safely through the winter.

What had that little old lady done to deserve this?

Because her life in the forest had taught her how to tame birds? Because she was too old and feeble to keep the black cats from sitting on her windowsill? Because she lived all alone away from society? Because her long life had left her with no shortage of old tales to tell?

Maybe it was all of those reasons together.

Whatever the case, when a mysterious infectious disease ran rampant in the area, the people concluded she was behind it.

“Don’t worry about me.”

Black pieces crumbled from what the witch goddess held in her arms.

Beautiful, noble, and resigned words spilled from the old woman’s cracked lips.

The people who proudly held their giant crosses high probably had no idea this was happening in one corner of the world. With more than 2 billion believers, they would probably complain if they were asked to take responsibility for the actions of a mere 1% who had lost control.

But that didn’t mean it didn’t happen.

These things happened and then were always written off as a margin of error so small it could be ignored.

A life had been carbonized to the point she had no recognizable eyes or mouth left, but she still gathered her last ounce of strength to get out one final whisper.

“So please. Save the next one instead.”

A mere 50m away, the curtain of dark trees opened up onto a highway. A giant billboard stood there for the drivers to see: ''Grapple’s latest phone – the MilliPhone 15 High End – makes its debut this fall!!

…Yes, I will rid the world of this.

The witch goddess roared into the moonlit night while holding a stranger’s corpse so close her hair and cheeks were covered in soot.

Her job wasn’t done yet.

Even in the present day, the world hadn’t changed in the slightest.

It never would unless someone worked to change it.

She couldn’t abandon this mechanism of salvation just because the age of witches was a thing of the past.

So Aradia continues to roar in a world full of true contradiction and cruelty.

She had decided to save any and all witches.

No longer would she be a mere witch.

She swore to herself she would become a goddess.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter1

2026-06-10T22:35:28Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Chapter 1: Go Get That New Year’s Eve Job – Away_SHIBUYA,31.==

===Part 1===

“…ey, you. Hey. You should probably wake up, boy!”

Kamijou Touma’s mind was shaken awake by the voice shouting into his ear. Only after realizing he didn’t know who the voice belonged to did he realize his eyes were shut.

He had to pour all his might into forcing his eyelids open.

“What is going- eh? Kumokawa-senpai?”

“I’ll admit some things came up and I arrived late, but were you really so bored you ended up napping on the sidewalk people probably walk their dogs on?”

Kumokawa Seria, his busty upperclassman with her glossy black hair held back by a hairband, gave him an exasperated look while crouching down and poking him on the forehead. The mature upperclassman’s casual clothing was a thick coat and the kind of tight skirt suit a capable schoolteacher might wear, so it was worrying in a number of ways when she crouched in front of him like that. (And wasn’t she cold wearing such a skintight blouse for a top?)

But the pointy-haired boy was too confused to focus on any of that.

Realization slowly sank in, but once it dawned on him that he had been stabbed in the back, it avalanched into his mind like panic setting in.

He sprang to a sitting position.

“Eh? Huh!?”

“Hyah?”

Kumokawa jumped and shrank down in an unexpectedly cute way, but he didn’t even notice.

Was he still in District 11? At the east gate? What had happened after that?

“Wait, wait, wait. What’s going on here? Someone spoke to me from behind and I didn’t even have time to turn around. I heard some weird and disconcerting sounds from my body and then my spine – yeah, that’s right! It pierced right through my back! So what happened to me!?”

He ran his hands along his chest and stomach.

“Huh? There’s nothing wrong with me?”

“Did you have a bad dream?”

The way her exasperation was gradually shifting to suspicion was adorable.

He wasn’t injured. His spine hadn’t been shattered, his flesh hadn’t been torn away, his clothes weren’t ripped, and there wasn’t a drop of blood on him.

The digital clock on a building wall said it was 9:15 AM.

What had he been doing for the past 15 minutes?

“You’re getting really worked up over nothing. Were you that afraid of heading out of the city to visit Shibuya? Look, your coat still has the price tag attached.”

“Eh? Huh?”

“Stay still. I’ll cut it off for you.”

Kumokawa Seria pulled a small pair of scissors from a portable sewing kit and cut the plastic thread. That upperclassman was so perfect she even showed off homemaking skills that felt incongruous with her sexy looks.

“Touma. Huff, puff.”

Then he heard Index’s voice. She had the cat on her head and Othinus on her shoulder, the latter trembling in fear while just barely out of range of the former’s front paws. The way that arrogant god was clinging to the white hood of the nun’s habit was just like a terrified girl in a haunted house.

“Huff, puff. W-we finally caught up, so let’s go get something to eat. Ugh, I can’t go on eating the mystery veggies I grew by sprinkling watered-down ketchup in a corner of the balcony.”

“Heh heh. Don’t worry, Index. Cotton candy can fill your stomach with its great size, but it started out as nothing more than grains of sugar. Humans can eat the mist or the air if they’re clever enough.”

“It isn’t fair that Sphinx has cat food ''and'' catches mice to eat.”

“And he’s trying to eat me as we speak. The animal lovers in this country get mad at you if you catch a pigeon and eat it, don’t they? I might try raising mice if they really did multiply as fast as people say, but apparently it isn’t true. Yikes, he’s trying it again! Human, bring me a book of your country’s laws! I need to find a legal way for me to eat this cat!!”

Technically, they were leaving the city to earn the money needed to buy food, not to directly get something to eat, but Index was skipping that first step in her head. Their New Year’s Tokyo survival life wasn’t over yet. And while they played that game, the god of poverty had grown to a hellish size.

Kumokawa placed a hand on her chin after listening to the poor student, the mysterious nun, the cat, and the god.

“Your idea of survival has a very urban slant to it and it’s based on Academy City standards. This is technically Japan’s capital, you know? And I thought you lived in the dorms where the adults are supposed to be taking care of you.”

Kamijou started to think he might have simply collapsed from hunger. People’s memories were malleable, so his mind might have invented a reason for passing out after the fact.

(Yeah, that sounds more likely. I mean, I already have amnesia.)

Now they all had to leave the city together.

They showed their departure permits at the east gate, which had a very open feel to it. It looked like no more than a small guard booth with a flimsy barrier like at a railroad crossing, but it actually had a thick shutter that would drop down like a guillotine and was guarded by dangerous firearms and unmanned weapons. Tracking nanodevices were injected into their arms with a ''pshh'' of air. The cat and god were exempt from that process, earning them an envious look from Index who hated injections (even when they didn’t involve a needle).

Kamijou looked back the way he had come while he stepped out past the thick wall.

“There’s usually a lot more Anti-Skill here. Are they all on winter break?”

“(Knowing the new Board Chairman, he might start using those mass-produced military clones to fill out the ranks of the city’s law enforcement. Someone has to replace everyone who was lost and, if he wants the people to support protecting them, it can’t hurt to give them an official position that lets them prove their worth to society.)”

“?”

The mysterious upperclassman was so perfect she always seemed to be a million steps ahead, but that led to one of her few flaws: she sometimes said things that were so far above his head he failed to understand what she was even talking about.

Leaving through the east gate placed them in the vicinity of Shinjuku, but since Kamijou’s gang was so devastatingly poor, they were forced to walk the rest of the way. He was so thankful for free apps at times like this. He checked his old folks smartphone and it told him they only needed to travel a few kilometers south.

“The phone bill is due at the end of the month, right? Human, that means the 31st, so if you don’t get any money today, they’ll shut off your service.”

“…”

“Also, boy. If you thoughtlessly fail to pay your phone bill enough times, it will affect your credit rating. I believe there’s even an urban legend saying two or three late payments is enough to cut you off from getting a credit card. If you don’t want to be digging yourself out of this hole for the next decade or longer, you’re going to have to work your ass off today.”

The boy too poor to ride the train was persistently marching onward with his own two legs, but nothing anyone had to say to him was making him feel any better.

He passed by a man who seemed to be out on a pleasant morning jog. Kamijou’s gang could only be described as “trudging along”, but the distances involved were more the “casual exercise” variety.

Kumokawa toyed with the hair draped over her shoulder while walking alongside him.

“Here, I’ll hail a taxi for you. All it takes is a quick wave of my phone.”

“Stop it, you bourgeois. I’m here to make money, not spend it.”

“Did you forget to do the math? The taxi fare is the same no matter how many people you have riding with you.”

He had bigger concerns right now.

He took the fateful step.

“Ugh.”

Halfway down a seemingly ordinary road, he felt something crawling up him from his feet. He had stepped on something here. It was like he had crossed an invisible barrier. He wasn’t taking a train, so there was no obvious sign or set backdrop telling him he had arrived in Shibuya. He knew that, but still.

“I think we’re about at Shibuya now,” bluntly stated Kumokawa Seria.

“Eeek!!”

“I said ‘about’. We’re still in Harajuku. Hee hee.”

“…”

“Ow! Hey, cut it out! Don’t use your fist against a girl! Stop silently giving me a noogie!”

Thanks to that, Kamijou Touma was forced to scream again once they actually left Harajuku.

“Abwahhh!!!!”

“What’s wrong, Touma? Why are you trembling and sticking your head between my back and my hood?”

Index’s voice sounded so distant.

And he lost sight of where he even was.

There was so much color. Too much. There were clothing stores, record stores, and was that a store just for sneakers? Land here was so expensive that all the stores were tiny and seemed crammed together, but they all tried to stand out by using lots of primary colors and it made his eyes hurt. It reminded him of children’s building blocks or a notebook covered in thick lines from different colors of highlighter. He ended up recalling the trivia he had learned about a certain country developing an incapacitating weapon where they launched a grenade full of LSD into enemy territory.

“Why are they like this?” He spoke in a vanishingly quiet voice while trembling behind a girl a head shorter than he was. “Why are they all so supremely confident in their extreme taste in colors!?”

“Hm, are they though? Most people say Shibuya has gotten a lot chicer lately.”

Apparently it didn’t bother some people as much.

This did a lot more damage to Kamijou since he had drawn a line between the people who could survive here and those who couldn’t. He wanted to find some way of dragging this busty upperclassman onto his side of the divide.

“Do the people here hate how their surroundings look so much they feel the need to fill everything with their own colors!? That manga artist known worldwide for his sharp aesthetic sense caused so much controversy with his striped house, but the people of Shibuya don’t seem to care at all! It’s terrifying. If the people here can feel remotely relaxed looking at this colorful assault on the senses, then what color do they see when they look at a strawberry shortcake!?”

“I will admit things are wilder here than near the train station, but this is far from the worst area. I mean, all we’ve done is walk a bit south past that big shrine in Harajuku.”

“Hold on, Senpai. Why are you still dressed so lewdly when we’re in Shibuya? You’re dressed like a schoolteacher and also showing off your midriff. Won’t a group of hip hop guys in giant T-shirts surround you and harass you?”

“First of all, there aren’t groups carrying giant boomboxes around Shibuya. Second of all, not everyone here hates teachers. And third of all, ‘hip hop guys’ aren’t bad people.”

“And then I’ll be forced to intervene to help you. That sounds like misfortune to me, so I just know it’s going to happen!!”

“Hm. I like the sound of that, so maybe I should undo another button.”

He had to restrain the beautiful girl before she could invite in disaster.

At any rate, this was apparently not the center of Shibuya that Japan liked to show off to the world, but he was already feeling his HP dropping with each step he took. Demon Castle Shibuya was a fearsome place indeed.

“What is your deal with Shibuya, human?” Othinus sounded thoroughly exasperated. “You saw worse than this in the world I created. And you walked through even more fashionable areas of London and LA without batting an eye.”

That was different. It was like how an actor in a foreign film speaking a foreign language looked cool no matter what they were wearing or saying, but it just seemed silly in a domestic film using your own language. He had been so overwhelmed by the scenery in the UK and the US that he had overlooked these differences, but they managed to hit home and rattle his soul when he was in Japan. The difference in style was terrifying! He was a high school boy so poor he couldn’t even shop at Uniqlo and wore synthetic materials that stank of insecticide, so he was afraid he might just spontaneously combust after trying to enter Shibuya. He trembled, feeling like he was violating a taboo along the lines of carelessly placing a metal spoon in the microwave.

“What are you so afraid of, boy? You’ve never been to Shibuya before, have you? So what do you even know about it?”

“I-I know enough!! Shibuya is a post-apocalyptic underground world of fashion where the buildings have numbers like 110 or 119 on them. If you let your guard down for a second, someone will have you carrying a mysterious herb for them!! And it’s dangerous for girls!!!!!!”

“Were you watching some kind of police special on TV? Is that why you think the world works like a video game rated 17+? Just so you know, your idea of Shibuya is about as accurate as a foreigner’s idea of geishas and ninjas.”

Kamijou jumped when a blaring siren and red-flashing lights drove past them from behind. He lost his balance and caught himself on his perfect upperclassman’s shoulder through her super-expensive-looking coat. For some reason, Kumokawa Seria was unable to suppress a grin.

“What the hell was that!?”

“A cop car? Oh, I guess they are fairly different from what Anti-Skill drives in Academy City. But you can find them year-round anywhere, so this isn’t even a Shibuya thing.”

“Then why is that gaudy car split in two!? How the hell did that happen? I thought Level 5s like that white monster didn’t exist out here! Or is there a wild Gemstone with some crazy power wandering around out here!?”

“Huh. Based on what I can find on this video site, it ran full speed into a stainless steel streetlight. The driver survived and no one else was hurt. Oh, and you called it gaudy, but the driver is an 83-year-old man from Osaka.”

“So if you make a mistake here, videos of it are all over the internet in the blink of an eye!? Whatever happened to privacy!?”

Kamijou was already imagining people pointing, laughing, and taking photos of his out-of-place clothing and him ending up with a 30-second rotating panorama video of him going viral on PokPok. In this land of fashion, a single fashion faux pas could plague you for the rest of your life. Scary stuff.

However.

“I’m hungry.”

The surprising number of ramen shops in the area must have been preparing their ingredients for the day. Index picked up the scent of seafood and pork and her comment provided a small injection of strength back into Kamijou’s breaking spirit. That was practically her catchphrase at this point, but it carried a lot more weight this time. They were still living their New Year’s Tokyo survival life.

He needed a job that would pay in cash today.

It didn’t matter what that job was. If he didn’t make some emergency income now, he would have a decent supply of dried human meat in his dorm room by the time the new school year started. As the manager of the dorm room’s kitchen, he wasn’t going to let that happen.

He pulled his old folks smartphone from his pocket.

“Okay, time to find a job. What should I start with?”

===Part 2===

It was basically a map app for his phone.

The location service only functioned in the designated area, so it unfortunately didn’t show anything until he was actually inside Shibuya.

The map displayed pins on the restaurants and companies looking for workers. Before entering any kind of search terms, the screen was filled with pins.

“Wow, that’s a lot. The world is overflowing with money!”

“Narrow it down with some search terms, human. You want the ones looking for same-day work that will pay today in cash.”

That took away most of the pins.

All the ramen shops and discount stores were gone.

If the pins were the Amazon rainforest, then the earth was in danger.

“Awww.”

“It’s a miracle anyone is paying in cash in this day and age. Now let’s see what’s left. I already know there won’t be any standardized convenience stores or chain restaurants.”

“Hmm.”

Kamijou was a little overwhelmed by the sweet scent coming from the beautiful upperclassman peering at the screen from the side, but he managed to tap a pin and read the bubble that appeared.

“ ‘Special Cleaning Service (Emergency). Urgent! Change into clothes you’re willing to get dirty and gather at Shibuya Station immediately. Tongs and baskets will be provided by the employer, but you will need to bring your own rubber gloves and boots.’ What’s that about?”

“It’s probably related to a railroad accident. So are the trains stopped right now? We were right to walk to Shibuya then. And I would skip that one. Unless you want to have nightmares full of red and black body parts, that is.”

“There’s also this one: ‘Sanitation Job. All applicants must pass an allergy patch test for formaldehyde and methyl alcohol.’ ”

“That would be for scrubbing corpses floating in a pool of chemicals.”

“ ‘￥￥￥ Much welcome for young and no disease history with healthy organ. Easy job of change into surgical gown and take sleepy pill for best sleep of life $$$’ ”

“Do that and they’ll take your organs! Wow, every one of these jobs is urban legend tier and completely void of morals!! That last one was even in broken Japanese!”

Kumokawa-senpai was supposed to be the Shibuya expert, so Kamijou really wished she wouldn’t get so freaked out. He felt like he had been following a guide deep into the jungle only to find them half in tears and scratching their head trying to figure out where they were.

“So what would be a safe bet?”

“You are asking to be paid in cash – that is, to not leave a paper trail – in an age where all money is digitized either in your bank account or as electronic money on your phone. Most places find using cash to be a pain these days. You should have expected this sort of job when you narrowed down your search that way.”

“Hey, human.” Othinus sighed on his shoulder. “What about this one?”

“?”

“You would be delivering food on a bike. And Shibuya serves an inordinate amount of energy-boosting ramen and garlicy pork bowls, perhaps for all the workers delivering clothing and club equipment. It even says the employer will pay for the bike if you use one of their company’s rentals.”

===Part 3===

Kamijou Touma was mildly impressed as he stepped out of a rare(?) non-chain gyudon place.

He looked down at the weighty plastic bag he held.

“Huh, so they seal up the top of the bag and the box’s cover with tape. Not that I need to get inside it just to deliver it.”

“Touma, I smell beef. Drool.”

“I imagine the tape is to keep the deliverer from sneaking some of it like a certain nun is planning,” said Othinus. “But they could make you the perfect delivery boy in more ways than one if they attached a smaller baggie to the underside of the box. You never would know what you were carrying.”

''Stop trying to scare me,'' he thought just as the 15cm god slipped inside the plastic bag. At her size, simply taping up the top wasn’t enough to keep her out.

“No sign of drugs or other dangerous objects. You’re in luck, human. You might not end up on the run from the police for your measly delivery fee.”

“Oh, so I’m not the only one feeling wary of the post-apocalyptic crime land of Shibuya.”

Kamijou sounded exasperated as he removed a key from the rental board. It was known as a rental bike, but it was more like a kick scooter made by attaching T-shaped handlebars to a skateboard.

Index and Kumokawa rented their own kick scooters. A white nun’s habit and a sexy schoolteacher suit were about the last outfits you would expect of someone using a kick scooter.

Whether they were powered or not, any kind of bicycle or board had to be ridden at the very edge of the road, right next to the sidewalk, but it was still pretty dangerous with all the cars parked on the curb and trucks unloading deliveries. Plus, Shibuya was a hilly place with a complex street layout. He had his phone attached to the handlebars with the map showing him where to go, but he had no idea which light to watch when he came to a five-way intersection. So it wasn’t uncommon for a gaudy coupe or a miniature one-person car to honk at him from behind.

“Why am I the only one wearing a backpack?” he asked.

“I don’t need any money, but they let you rent the scooter even if you don’t complete any jobs.”

“A-and you, Othinus-san?”

“Explain to me how I’m supposed to operate a kick scooter at 15cm tall, human.”

“Index!?”

“What’s a job?”

The cat mewed lazily atop the nun’s head.

That was too many “we’re not helping” notifications at once. ''I was right about having to do all the work myself!'' he lamented.

The train station area came into view.

Maybe it was the holiday season and maybe it was the railroad accident Kumokawa had mentioned, but there were a surprising number of people around. Everything around him was still part of this fashion zone, but he was still relieved to see the familiar sign for a major bookstore chain. Anyway, it looked more like people were coming here to see the scramble crossing than they were on their way to get somewhere else.

Kumokawa Seria nodded in slight exasperation while waiting for the light to change.

“You aren’t wrong about that, but it’s the 31st. You can find people gathering for New Year’s countdown events all across Japan today.”

He still thought Shibuya was weird for setting this area of road as their final destination.

Just he was wondering if there were any ordinary homes around when land was so pricey in Shibuya, he discovered this delivery was meant for the back entrance to a multi-tenant building. He nervously pressed the intercom for workers and a tanned woman emerged with cream-colored hair swaying. She was around college age, her white camisole seemed insufficient for December 31, and one of the shoulder straps had slipped down.

“Oh, good. My gyudon with extra meat and red pickled ginger is here♪”

She was a very fluffy person. She made no attempt to cover up and various parts of her were quite jiggly. They didn’t know each other’s names and they could only confirm each other’s identities using the one-time-use 8-digit ID number displayed on their phones. He felt like this was managing people’s data even more coldly than they did in Academy City. The fluffy tanned woman checked the contents of the bag first and then turned her interest toward the boy who had delivered it. She waved the phone she had pulled from between her jiggly breasts.

“So you’re stuck working on New Year’s Eve too, huh? I sympathize, so hold your phone out so I can give you a full 5-star rating! I’ll even give you a 2-coin tip for braving the cold☆”

“You’re working too?”

“As a call girl. I’ll finally be getting some sleep after eating this. I’m always so tired once morning arrives.”

“…”

Japan’s largest shopping district was too much for him.

He scrolled through the list of jobs and found someone nearby who wanted a special winter meal from a burger shop. (It was a chain known around the world, but it was only found in Shibuya in Japan.) He had seen this meal advertised in LA, so it must have arrived on Japan’s shores as well. He figured he might as well, so he accepted the job and set out to use his kick scooter to deliver a fast food meal that included a giant burger with beef, pork, and chicken between the buns.

“What a weird place. When you look down any of these narrow roads, you see nothing but bars and small theaters.”

“This is Dogenzaka after all. And boy? That sign you’re staring at is for an adult establishment,” nonchalantly explained Kumokawa Seria-senpai while walking alongside him.

Index didn’t seem to know what that meant, but he could feel the great pressure of Othinus glaring from his shoulder.

At any rate, he continued making similar deliveries.

Before long, he could spot his fellow bike deliverers riding around. He even exchanged a nod with a young man in a helmet who was passing by going the other way. It was a small thing, but it made him feel like he knew what he was doing.

“I think that’s ten deliveries now. Touma, I want to eat lunch.”

“Holy crap. Look at my phone. I have money. I was so poor, but now my funds are going up, Index-san! Man, I’m a little afraid the yen is going to collapse if you can get money this easily!”

“How much did you make? I’ve heard you’re supposed to eat soba on New Year’s in Japan! I want juwari soba with big shrimps on top.”

“I have a whole 980 yen! It’s a miracle. How much is that divided between you, the cat, the god, and me, Index!? We have to divide that by four and then by three meals for each day, so that means-”

The nun kicked off the ground to take her kick scooter on a journey somewhere, so he had to grab her shoulder and stop her.

“What, do you have a problem with this, Index?”

“I want shrimp soba! How much more do you have to work before we can get a least 100 yen per person each day!?”

“You have to be crazy to think we’ll be eating shrimp tempura, Index! Besides, soba tastes better if you go with the nihachi noodles that mix in some wheat and thickener instead of being pure buckwheat!!”

“In your personal opinion, boy.”

“Index, you fool, you can’t expect us to be rolling in money after this. This delivery service is only marginally more expensive than picking it up yourself and the company and the government have to take their cut first, so we’re never going to end up with more money than what the customer paid for the food themselves. This is what happens when you get complacent. Apologize to the money, girl!!”

Index glanced over at something.

There was an unapproachable group of gyarus who didn’t just look like the most popular people in their class or their school but in the entire galaxy. They were lined up at a donut shop where the handwritten blackboard-style sign gave a price of more than 1000 yen for a single donut sitting on a paper plate with a massive pile of whipped cream on top. The price would go up even higher if you added photogenic colorful powders made from cinnamon or mint. Candles and sparklers that had no effect on the flavor or nutrition were listed as 300 yen each.

“Interesting. So those things are popular outside of Academy City too.”

“Touma, look at that number.”

“E-eating out is always expensive. You can’t base anything on those numbers.”

“Do I need to read it out loud for you?”

It was too depressing, so Kamijou quickly covered Index’s mouth with a hand.

It was already midday. At this rate, how much could he even make if he worked his rear off all day? He could probably make a decent amount if he focused on doing this for an entire month, but they didn’t have time for such a long-term plan. But after leaving Academy City for this, he wanted to earn enough to stop worrying about collapsing from hunger.

Also, the delivery job paid the same whether he was delivering a premade meal from a convenience store or a fancy bottle of wine. Nor did he get more for delivering over longer distances like a taxi would. That meant completing more jobs was the only way to earn more.

So…

“Distance is the most important factor.”

“?”

“I want as short a distance as possible between the store and the client for a higher turnover rate. That has to be the trick to making the most money.”

Unfortunately, the map app didn’t display elevation differences, so the simple distance wasn’t always the best metric in such a hilly area.

The list of jobs would not stop scrolling as more and more came in. Since this was all food, it made sense there would be peak hours, but that also meant there would be dead hours. If he wanted to complete a lot of jobs, he needed to really hustle during the lunch hours.

“Let’s see. The closest one would be…the hell is this?”

One job had him bringing food to the center of the public square in front of the train station. On his way toward the bus terminal, he saw a bunch of people in the crowd making weird poses with their phones covered in lenses and microphones bigger than the phones themselves. Shibuya contained a lot of colorful people who barely seemed real, but this looked more like cosplay. After all, the most conspicuous girl only wore something like a training swimsuit below a translucent raincoat. She had the coat closed in front, but that did nothing to hide the slim body within. The large hood and baggy hem of the raincoat made her look like a comical ghost or maybe a clione. She wore a colored contact in one eye and an eyepatch over the other. The eyepatch was presumably see-through from the other side so it wouldn’t hinder her depth perception.

Kamijou was nervous to approach the younger girl.

“Your food is here. Will I get in the way of the cameras if I approach from here?”

“Don’t worry. I’m not streaming right now. But I might have had to kill you if you let the viewers see a guy anywhere near me on stream.”

The small girl looked to be around the first year of middle school, but since she was a customer, she didn’t bother being polite with him. Fortunately, Kamijou didn’t mind after spending so much time around that arrogant, belligerent electric middle schooler (with a flat- well, never mind that).

The cosplay ghost asked him a curious question.

“What is that on your shoulder? A bipedal dancing robot?”

“Shut up, little girl. Keep your hands off me.”

“And it talks!? Wow, do you do tech review videos or something? And the cat on your head is the gold standard! You have my support since I don’t do the robot or animal genres.”

Now the middle school girl was being casual with a cat and a god. Did kids fear nothing at that age? The eyepatch ghost confirmed the delivery on her phone before taking the bag in both hands.

“Oh, right. This Japanese-style pasta has mentaiko with extra butter but no shiso, right?”

“Eh? I honestly couldn’t tell you.”

“Sorry, my bad. I forgot the delivery workers can’t see inside. There’s nothing wrong with shiso, but people tend to just shove a whole bunch of the chopped leaves in their food and then then the whole thing tastes and smells like nothing but shiso, shiso, and more shiso. The miracle that is shiso requires a more delicate touch♪”

It was hard to tell if she liked shiso or not.

She had also mentioned streaming, so she must have been active on a video site. Kamijou had wondered if this was her and her friends having fun in the big city for winter break, but apparently not. The baggy sleeves girl started discussing something with her friends who were carrying phones covered in so many extra lenses and microphones that they looked ready to evolve into six-legged mechanical lifeforms.

“Hey, so how are my numbers doing? No, not my viewer count. What are the donations looking like? Nice, I already have 19 silver coins! Just 10 minutes and I’ve already got about 150 thousand going straight into the bank account I have in my sister’s name. I told you midday on the 31st was the best time. All the people who couldn’t get a ticket to an idol’s New Year’s concert are going to be online with their would-be ticket money burning a hole in their pocket☆”

“I hope lightning strikes you to teach you a lesson about life, you spoiled brat” would be a very rude thing to say to a customer, so Kamijou instead kept a smile while sending waves of dark energy her way.

The friendly ghost must not have been very attuned to other people feelings because she chose to speak to Kamijou’s group some more while opening the clear plastic lid to her Japanese-style pasta (skillfully avoiding getting the baggy plastic sleeves dirty in the process). She apparently opted for chopsticks even though it was pasta. Instead of giving him a tip through her phone, she gave Index the very first bite.

“Hee hee. Is it good?”

“Yeah! Restaurant food is always so good!!”

“It doesn’t taste like shiso?”

“You just wanted a taste tester, didn’t you?”

The ghost shrugged off Kamijou’s exasperated comment and started eating the skinny pasta after mixing in the chopped green onion, mentaiko, and melted butter.

“The Dr. Police are already here. I saw them earlier, but it looks like they’re just sneaking around keeping an eye on things for now.”

“You mean those police officer doctors who show up on TV during Halloween?”

“There was an underground ad from what looked like a burner account offering 100 thousand yen worth of crypto for anyone who punches those showoffs in the middle of the scramble crossing. But they’re cops, so it’d probably be safer to make money by streaming it than by trying it myself.”

[[Image:GT_Index_v06_BW1.png|thumb]]

“…”

Was this place completely devoid of morals?

The list of jobs shrank considerably after 1PM. People’s mealtimes stayed fairly consistent even during winter break. An older guy who had ordered a large cutlet curry (was it listed as Kanazawa curry?) had told Kamijou he would have to wait until after 10 PM if he wanted to make some real money. There would apparently be a rush of orders for New Year’s soba.

“We’re in high school, so we aren’t allowed to work past 10.”

“Did that accursed misfortune follow me all the way to Shibuya!?”

But he still gave it his all.

The more he rode his kick scooter around, the more money he made.

“W-wow. This job is incredible! I already have 2500 yen!!”

“Human, take a look at that convenience store. It’s help wanted poster says they pay 1500 yen an hour.”

“I hate to wipe that smug grin off your face, Othinus, but are you stupid? We could never do that job. We’re beginners at this working thing. Convenience stores do just about everything from home deliveries to accepting public utilities payments, so amateurs like us couldn’t just step in and start working there. That’s a job for specialists. Every time you line up to check out, make sure to thank them for supporting our everyday lives.”

Kamijou’s group quit working just as the big wave of jobs faded away into nothing.

But one thing still bothered him.

“How do I convert this into cash?”

There were small boxy structures similar to unmanned convenience stores located here and there. They functioned as stations for the kick scooters and accepted the synthetic backpacks used by the delivery workers. There was a machine about the size of a vending machine at once corner and he held his old folks smartphone up to that when the artificial female voice told him to.

“Whoa.”

With a surprisingly deep metallic sound, a few cheap-looking gold coins fell into the opening near the bottom. They reminded him of toy coins or casino chips.

He hesitantly collected them.

“I’m supposed to trade these for cash at a convenience store or drugstore, right? That seems unnecessarily complicated. Why not just give me the cash to begin with?”

This technically qualified as paying him with cash on the same day, but it seemed convoluted. He didn’t use the service much himself, but couldn’t they just have you pay with your phone instead?

Then Kumokawa muttered something under her breath.

“(The idea is probably to have people circulating pieces of ordinary plastic like they have value. It’s an investment meant to eventually allow a limited number of private companies to take control of the currency system away from the governments of the world. You can’t say White Spring has no ambition. Their lack of tradition makes them a lot less reluctant to attempt bold new ideas.)”

“?”

Since he had to receive his cash at a convenience store, Kamijou was afraid he would spend it all immediately. The hot snacks next to the register were awfully tempting. The fried chicken and fries they had in the glass case were basically a trap. The sound of the frying oil joined with the visual and olfactory allure to ensnare your soul.

The convenience store worker seemed accustomed to the process. Registers these days had you insert the coins into the machine like with a vending machine, so that apparently determined if the coins were real or not. At long last, he had some paper money in his hands. After receiving that like he had turned in a winning token at a candy shop, he just stared at the money with one foot still on his kick scooter back on the sidewalk.

After taking a break for that, he couldn’t regather the mental strength needed to start working again.

And something else surprised him as he stared blankly at the alternate dimension that was Shibuya.

“Huh? I’m weirdly used to it now.”

“The way you were freaking out over it before was the weird part,” said Kumokawa Seria.

All his hard work had only earned him 2500 yen. But once he got over his nerves as a beginner, he would get more efficient. If he worked through the evening snack time and the late-night mealtime, he could earn 5000 yen or even a fantastic 10,000 yen. Although a high schooler was only allowed to work until 10 PM.

“Are you going to grab lunch somewhere, boy?” casually suggested his busty black-haired upperclassman.

“I take it back! That donut shop from earlier had a single donut costing more than 1000 yen! I could spend 100 years here and I swear I’d never get used to it. Eating out in fashionable Shibuya has got to be like highway robbery. I came here to earn money, so I refuse to head back in debt!!”

“If you say so. By the way, a multinational restaurant at the Miyashita Ark near the station is doing one of Japan’s ridiculous food challenges. If a single person in the restaurant miraculously manages to finish their XXL bucket-sized shrimp and cheese French ramen, then everyone in the restaurant at the time gets their food for free. Here’s a photo from their website. You can judge the width of the bowl by comparing it to the chopsticks next to it. Use the position of the light source and the bowl’s shadow to calculate its depth.

“Index, I need an expert opinion here. Could you polish this off, soup and all? What about those gross-looking shrimp heads?”

“Bring it on!”

“That settles it then.”

“Wait, I was suggesting this as a challenge for your stomach of a growing boy,” muttered Kumokawa Seria, but he ignored her. He wanted to make sure he could win this one.

These kinds of challenges were used to draw in customers, but they were designed so no one would succeed. Serving size affected the customer’s satisfaction just as much as flavor and it also directly affected the ingredient costs. The experts at a restaurant had already researched everything from their small size to their XXL size, so they had all the data they would need on making an amount that looked doable but no one could actually finish. This would have been calculated out as coldly as the height of a prison fence. But there was one thing they wouldn’t have accounted for: a being whose gastronomical limits far surpassed humanity’s had been released from the giant cage that was Academy City. By the time they realized their mistake, it would be too late. This was about talent, not technique. There were monsters out there who could bring down an entire casino by accurately predicting where the roulette ball would end up just by listening to the subtle differences in the spinning of the wheel. In the same way, some people had had inborn eating talent that no amount of hard work could ever match. She was one of them.

“This French ramen is incredible. Is this photo modified? The soup looks like a neon orange. What did they boil in there to give it that color? Okay, Senpai, which way to that Ark-”

For some reason, he stopped talking midsentence.

He felt a chill.

He felt a painful tingling in his skin, but what had caused this?

He didn’t understand where this extreme tension was coming from. He felt paralyzed while his instincts took over and he froze in place.

This wasn’t the first time.

This had happened once before.

Just like the anaphylaxis that set in after being stung by a venomous hornet, once your body had learned the sensation, it would violently reject it the next time around. After some thought, Kamijou Touma arrived at an extremely simple answer: this was a trauma response.

But what in the past had left such a powerful emotional scar on him?

(No.)

He naturally pressed his hand against the center of his chest.

His palm was soaked with sweat.

There was no wound or blood there. His clothing wasn’t even torn.

But.

When Kumokawa Seria had helped him up near District 11’s east gate, she had cut the price tag from his coat with the small scissors in her sewing kit. But hold on a second. ''How could such a desperately poor boy have afforded new clothes''? There had to be more to this. Something had happened to him outside of his own memory. In other words…

(No! That wasn’t a dream after all!! I don’t know what happened to the big bloody hole through my chest, but someone must have at least bought new clothes to replace my torn and bloody ones!)

He gulped and realized that he ''could'' gulp.

His self-imposed paralysis was gone.

If fear had seized his body because he had sensed something in common with that last time, then a threat had to be approaching in the same way. He spun around with all his might. He didn’t care if he broke his hipbones doing it.

And…

“Impressive.”

He heard a voice.

An alluring and bewitching female voice.

It slipped into his ear, seemingly separating him from the peaceful scene around him.

The first thing he saw was a large cloth. She was standing right in front of him, but it felt so unreal that each individual part seemed to be going wild in his vision. It all refused to form a single cohesive image in his head, like a Rorschach inkblot test that kept transforming into shapes that would horrify the psychologists familiar with all the most dangerous responses.

But he could understand her voice.

“''You actually managed to turn around this time.''”

A woman’s hand shot straight toward him and swung to the side, tearing away so much flesh from his side that his spine was visible.

<noinclude>
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Chapter4

2026-06-10T22:34:37Z

Ultranova17: minor spelling

==Chapter 4: If Someone Remains to be Saved – Final_Exams_“Handcuffs”.==

===Part 1===

It doesn’t matter which side anyone is on. Let’s combine all the strange tech seen in Operation Handcuffs and resurrect the dead.

That was the plan from Alice’s world, which sounded ridiculous in hindsight.

But what if Kamijou hadn’t attempted it alone? What if someone far more talented and wicked than a simple high schooler had attempted it in the real world?

“…”

Kamijou Touma stared at the phone receiver for a while after the call ended.

Payphones mostly had the same features as an ordinary phone, but they unfortunately lacked a redial button. And during his New Year’s Tokyo survival life, he couldn’t hope to guess the right number with only 49 yen to work with. It was already looking like they would have to survive until the ATMs were back on nothing but a small convenience store chocolate bar and a packet of sold-separately dressing.

But who were Kihara Hasuu and Risako? Where in Academy City were they? Needless to say, Academy City was a large place covering a third of Tokyo where 2.3 million people lived.

(Think back.)

Accelerator had hung up without giving him any answers.

Accelerator wasn’t the type to bother with riddles. He had the best brain in the city, so he had likely skipped several steps to reach the answer on his own. That meant the necessary clues were already here and Accelerator hadn’t seen a need to state the obvious.

(The answer isn’t hidden somewhere like District 15 or 20 that hasn’t shown up at all during this mess. The answer is right there in everything I’ve already seen. And Accelerator would know what the others were doing too. That means Benizome, the Rakuoka siblings, Youen and Kaai, and Frillsand #G. Could there be a hint in something the others saw?)

Drencher, the Anti-Skill woman, and even the Anti-Skill Negotiator had shown them that Academy City’s adults weren’t all bad – even if that last one had had a messed-up way of showing it.

They had risked their lives to fight for someone else.

Everything would fall apart if he ignored their resolve and determination now.

With that in mind, he raised his head.

“Damn, that’s right. There’s still Frillsand #G.”

“Um?”

Still holding onto him from the side, Alice shook her fine blonde hair, wiggled the fluffball on the back of her apron, and tilted her smiling head. She still didn’t seem bothered by her short sleeves. Now, was Accelerator aware this small storybook girl was here? It wouldn’t surprise Kamijou to find out that ''Alice had mysteriously escaped his notice.

“The real one was so powerful that simply seeing her was enough to nearly kill us. We didn’t even have a chance to make out what she was talking about.”

He had admittedly written it off as nothing more than her being a creepy ghost, but he couldn’t do that here.

“But ''where did she appear from''?”

He couldn’t always rely on what had happened in Alice’s world since she had distorted so many factors, but there she had walked around the concourse and suddenly appeared from the next room by passing through the wall. That meant she wasn’t bound by the laws of physics but still followed the paths on the map to an extent. She did not suddenly teleport from point to point like Shirai Kuroko.

Then realistically speaking, how could she have caught them by surprise at that covered bus stop?

They would have noticed her approaching from a distance. Or rather, they would have collapsed sooner. She hadn’t passed through the wall of a nearby building either. Which only left one option:

“''Underground,''” he muttered. That was the only way for her to get so close without them noticing. “She emerged from underground. Like someone floating up to the ocean surface. It was the same with Rakuoka Houfu. I thought he was underground because Kaai was in the sewers, but what if that wasn’t the only reason?”

He heard a solid metallic sound.

It came from Rakuoka Houfu, who had shrunk down to a small middle-aged man. Anti-Skill had placed him on a stretcher. He had fought Tessou Tsuzuri who had pushed back with extraordinary strength and he had been sniped a few times by Benizome, so he was in no state to answer any questions.

For just a moment, Anti-Skill stopped working.

He couldn’t get up from the stretcher, but he managed to reach out and touch the forehead of a woman knocked out by a drug. They didn’t say a word. Neither sibling had lived a laudable life, but he still deserved a chance to reconfirm the weight of what he had risked his life and taken bullets to protect.

Finally, Anti-Skill loaded Rakuoka Houfu onto the ambulance.

Whatever was on her mind, Shirai Kuroko sighed while watching from a distance. Kamijou had not played a role in Handcuffs, so he couldn’t know what feelings that sigh carried.

“Well, there is that place hidden deep below District 10.” The answer came with surprising casualness from the cream-colored liquid violating gravity by spiraling around Youen. It transformed into the other twin like a water spirit (that looked so filthy you would take poison damage if you touched it). “Youen and I didn’t see Handcuffs through to the end, but I did notice something strange while enjoying my lovely sewer vacation. Everything down there is designed to ''avoid'' a certain area. We didn’t care about it, but that might have been the goal for most of the criminals caught up in Handcuffs.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“What else?” The liquid girl seemed confused he didn’t know. “I’m talking about ''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo.''”

Hanatsuyu Kaai went on to explain something unbelievable.

According to her, Academy City strongly promoted recycling since they could not mine their own resources, but that wasn’t enough to break the city’s reliance on importing resources. However, the amount of materials brought in and the amount of garbage produced didn’t match up. For some reason, the amount of garbage was larger. That violated conservation of mass, so the numbers only added up if there was a secret underground passageway through which materials were transported.

However, the legend of a secret passageway was only a bluff meant to hide the truth and Academy City’s Greatest Taboo was ''something else''.

The real answer was Operation Handcuffs’ ending point.

While so many criminals met tragic ends, only a few experts like Kihara Hasuu and Frillsand #G would have arrived at that true darkness. If some part of the supposedly resolved incident remained, it had to be there.

Youen sighed and continued for her twin.

“If it’s below District 10’s outer wall, your best bet is probably to descend into the subway and travel as far south as you can get. Although Kaai said the underground infrastructure is built to avoid the Taboo.”

“Hmm. Is it really that complicated?” asked Kamijou. “If he really was working with Frillsand #G, then Drencher must have reached that Taboo as well. His mobile base was left in the parking lot of the abandoned leisure spa next door, so we should be able to reach our destination by heading underground from here.”

“I see. And even if he did seal up the underground passageway, we can break through a random wall to make a shortcut. A biological acid or a methane explosion should do the trick.”

“Youen? Since when are you helping me?”

“What? You’re going to make use of us criminals again, aren’t you? Then hurry it up. If I have to risk my life, I want to get it over with as soon as possible. Even if urban pests and vermin tend not to hibernate, it still isn’t easy chemically guiding them during a late December night.”

“No.” She made it sound like a foregone conclusion, but Kamijou shook his head. “You’ve done enough already. I mean, none of this would have even happened if the Overhunting hadn’t crashed. You have no stake in this fight, so you don’t need to risk your life.”

“Do you have a death wish? I’ve only heard of Kihara Hasuu and never actually met him, but if he reached the Taboo and is waiting there now, then he’s an even ''deeper'' part of the darkness than me. Did you think bringing ordinary Anti-Skill and Judgment with you would be enough?”

“No, I didn’t. But if I used you, I wouldn’t be any better than that Anti-Skill Negotiator.”

“But-”

Youen started to say more, so he grabbed her skinny shoulders and crouched down.

He put himself at her eye level before continuing.

“Please. This isn’t the first time you’ve saved my life.”

“?”

Oh, right. She didn’t remember what happened in Alice’s world.

Not that it mattered. He would ''never forget'' any of the things that little villain had done for him.

“If I owed you anything more, I’d never be able to repay you, so I want you to stay where it’s safe.”

She fell silent at that.

But the less sensible twin started trembling.

“F-first he asks for help to save that muscle man and now he has the audacity to say he cares about her safety? And Youen is falling for it? …Yes. Oh, god, yes!! Youen’s heart and body are falling for a bankrupt boy with only 49 yen to his name and I’m helpless to do anything at all to stop it! I-is this what they call NTR? I can already tell this will defile my soul in ways I never even imagined! Gulp!!”

“Shut up, Kaai!! I-I am not falling for him in any way shape or form!!”

“I am not bankrupt!! Don’t even suggest something so horrifying!!”

Kamijou beckoned Shirai Kuroko over and she explained the situation.

“Yomikawa-san was sent away after getting a splint for her arm and the other Anti-Skill officers are staying here. They need to preserve the scene of the crime, quarantine and exterminate the pests and vermin, and keep an eye on the recaptured prisoners. I will be heading underground to tie up the last loose ends.”

“Got it. So is it just the two of us paying Academy City’s Greatest Taboo a visit?”

“The girl is coming too☆”

“Hey, no fair!!” shouted Youen, forcing Shirai to hold out a hand to silence her.

“You have no business doing this either. And you were shot!” she shouted to him, looking like she had a headache.

“But we’re the only two who can do this. I’m sick of forcing the risk onto people just because they’re villains, so I’m going too. I want to create a version of the 29th I’m satisfied with.”

“Okay, that’s enough!!”

Unable to just watch any longer, Youen popped off the rubber cap of a test tube and then Kamijou felt something hot at the center of his gut. Right at the bullet wound.

“It’s a nontoxic mold. It can only place a thin film over the wound, but that’s better than nothing, right?”

“Mold?”

“If you don’t want it, you can remove it by rubbing on some ethanol, but that would probably cause the wound to open up all the way, killing you.”

This exchange left Shirai Kuroko looking about as exasperated as humanly possible. Was that directed at Youen herself or at Kamijou for speaking so casually with such an unmanageable villain?

“I really think I should leave you here with the prisoners where Anti-Skill can protect you,” she said.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m willing to put ''myself'' through hell as many times as it takes.”

“Why do I get the feeling that right there is the entire problem with you?”

Shirai sighed in utter annoyance, but she didn’t stop him either. She was still a middle school 1st year, so whether she was consciously aware of it or not, she may have been reluctant to approach this unseen Taboo alone.

Frillsand #G and Kihara Hasuu. Youen had assured him this darkness was ''deeper'' than her.

Fortunately, there were plenty of stairways leading underground.

“Let’s get going.”

“Sure.”

===Part 2===

All hesitation was gone once they descended the subway station stairs.

''Something isn’t right,'' gulped Kamijou.

They hadn’t arrived at Academy City’s Greatest Taboo yet. Drencher may have passed through here on the way to the Taboo, but according to Kaai and Youen, they would have to travel south from here and maybe blow up a wall before finally reaching it.

The station was warm.

And not just because they were sheltered from the winter air. A somewhat musty and sour smell helped make him feel like he was walking down the gullet of a giant creature.

“Hey,” he said.

“Yes?” asked Shirai Kuroko.

“This is ''still'' a normal subway station, right?”

The ticket gates extended from the walls.

They walked around those since they couldn’t pass through them and a bit later the floor changed from concrete to marble. The basement of a fancy department store led to the sewer, which ultimately smoothly connected to a rough stony area reinforced with steel beams. It was a lot like a cave or a mine.

Something very different was happening here. They were going somewhere else entirely without knowing what had caused the change.

Could they blame this on Frillsand #G or on the mysterious researcher named Kihara Hasuu?

“Wait, wait, wait. A mine? Since when does Academy City have one of those?” he asked.

“The Taboo was supposed to be a secret passageway for transferring materials, so perhaps they preserved the limited underground resources instead of using them. Or maybe they distributed algae that rapidly convert animal carcasses into petroleum,” suggested Shirai.

“I get the concept and maybe somewhere like that does exist somewhere in the city, but it seems wrong for this place to directly connect to those ordinary tunnels, like something from a surreal painting.”

“This could be the physical manifestation of something. It isn’t biological like the AIM Burst was, but this feels similar to me.”

AIM. That term reminded Kamijou of Kazakiri Hyouka, the girl who existed as a collection of the AIM diffusion fields made from the faint power that escapes an esper.

(But if that’s true…)

He gulped and looked around.

(Is that what ''all of this'' is?)

That did seem worth calling Academy City’s Greatest Taboo.

He had entered District 10 through the subway tunnels in Alice’s world, so he couldn’t rely on that memory. However, it did get him thinking.

The tunnels hadn’t been this expansive back then, so was something causing the distortion to accelerate?

The underground wasn’t covered by the map apps, so he doubted he could rely on them. That meant his old folk’s smartphone was only good for its digital compass. He kept them pointed south. The underground space stretched out in a network of tunnels, but he was afraid one wrong turn down a side tunnel would mean never finding the surface again.

They heard a solid sound like shoes on the ground.

Shirai Kuroko casually turned toward the source and then collapsed. Whatever she had seen had drained the strength from her legs. Kamijou recognized that phenomenon, so he kept his head turned the other way while picking up the limp girl and hiding behind a nearby pillar. He normally wasn’t aware of it, but the human body was a heavy thing. It felt like dragging a sandbag.

“Frillsand #G!!”

She didn’t respond, which was for the best. Whether or not the artificial ghost meant any harm, her stimuli were too powerful for human senses. And sight wasn’t necessarily the only trigger. An unexpected word from her could always knock him out.

With a visual threat, he could at least guess what to punch with Imagine Breaker to damage it, but this was too vague and spectral to have a punchable target.

“Please, ''restrain yourself'' a little more!! We aren’t strong enough to bear it!!”

He heard more footsteps resembling a knocking sound. Incautious Alice was clearly sticking her head out from behind the pillar and smiling, the white fluffball on the back of her apron cutely wiggling. She could shrug off a curse, germ, or any other internal threat (it was like trying to kill a mole by burying it alive) and she seemed proud of that ability, giving off some full power “compliment me” beams. The upper arms left exposed by her short sleeves shined bright without a single goose bump.

“Teacher, that ghost is leaving.”

“Is she telling us to follow her? Or is she telling us to leave because it’s too dangerous?”

“That would be good to know.”

Kamijou tried to puzzle it out while lending feverish Shirai his shoulder and leaning out from behind the pillar. Frillsand #G was already gone, but he could hear her footsteps coming from the shadows up ahead.

“I think she’s telling us to follow her.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Because she could have knocked them all out now if she only wanted to stop them. She could have done so with ease. Well, except for with Alice Anotherbible.

Kamijou asked another question while helping Shirai stay on her feet.

“She lived with Drencher and those specimen children, right? How could something so deadly live with people?”

“Hm. Maybe it wasn’t always like this.” Alice placed her index finger on her chin. “What is this place, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Academy City’s Greatest Taboo was supposed to be near District 10’s outer wall, so whatever it is, it wouldn’t be this large. Doesn’t that mean the Taboo wasn’t originally like this and ''something destroyed it''?”

“So what is happening here?” asked Shirai.

“Who knows. But this definitely isn’t a normal place. If teacher is right and the ghost is guiding you, then maybe she knows more about it.”

Alice tilted her head while poking at her hair’s animal ear curls. Was this underground labyrinth the result of Frillsand #G coming in contact with Academy City’s Greatest Taboo?

Or had something else caused the collapse?

What did she even want them to do? Accelerator had suggested they needed to rescue Risako from Kihara Hasuu, but was that really a powerful enough enemy that not even Frillsand #G could defeat him?

It felt like all those questions had taken physical form.

They followed the footsteps up ahead. Kamijou tried his map app, assuming it wouldn’t work, but it was completely frozen. He checked the digital compass and they were definitely headed south. Nevertheless, the tunnel they were following never seemed to end. He felt like they were going to leave Academy City if they kept this up much longer.

“Gh. This is just like that 1994 theory on faster-than-light travel,” groaned Shirai Kuroko, shaking her head and still borrowing his shoulder.

He hadn’t heard of this one.

“Near the end of the 20th century, a certain physicist seriously constructed a warp theory. The idea was to compress space, cross that distorted space in a single step, and then revert space to normal like straightening out a scrunched-up carpet to ignore the speed-of-light limit.”

Shirai probably knew so much about this because she was a Teleporter. She may have wanted to research all the other ideas out there.

“This could be the opposite. Some kind of force may have ''crumpled up'' this space like a flyer being thrown in the trash. So we won’t reach our destination by counting our steps in the same direction. It might look we’re only taking one step, but if space has been ''crumpled up'', then this might actually be a third of Tokyo or an even greater distance compressed down to almost nothing.”

“Wait, then is Frillsand #G not leading us somewhere?”

“Who ever said she was?”

Maybe Frillsand #G thought she was safely guiding them, but Alice had said this space was destroyed.

In other words…

“Is this place ruled by conflicting wills, one wanting to protect us and one wanting to eliminate us?”

“The question is whether there is a third party in control here, or if this is a psychological battle being waged inside her.”

But protect them from what?

If Frillsand #G was this powerful, then why did she need someone else’s help?

An electronic sign used to display warnings sat on the rocky mine-like ground.

Text scrolled by on the orange lights.

“Why am I always the one that survives?”

Kamijou tilted his head. Would a ghost talk about “surviving”? After leaving the mine, they found a large, clean train station concourse. All of the pillars there had curved advertisement LCD displays attached.

Each one displayed a different smiling face. The voice they played was not the ghost’s.

One displayed a golden retriever.

“I haven’t seen the doggy since the sewers.”

One displayed Vivana Oniguma.

“The girl who saved me had her picture on the news. They said she died.”

One displayed Drencher Kihara Repatri.

“I saw mister shot to death.”

One was Hamazura Shiage.

“The delinquent who took Sodate-chan and me to the surface was…”

The trembling voice belonged to a girl Alice’s age or younger and was permeated with sorrow.

Kamijou didn’t recognize everyone shown.

And even those he did, he couldn’t say how much they matched up with what he had learned in Alice’s world. Take Drencher Kihara Repatri for example. The artificial ghost’s lightning attacks had burned an image into his mind, but was that what had really happened, or was it something Alice had invented just for fun?

He felt certain he would find the answer if he pursued Risako, who had been saved by villain after villain.

Maybe none of them had been good people. They probably felt more at home in the shadows. But during the chaos of Handcuffs, those villains had felt a stirring from the last shreds of a conscience in their hearts. When they had seen a young life thrown into the center of that hellish Christmas, they had reached out a helping hand with no thought to their own lives. They had wanted to smile and give her a chance to run away and survive.

These people had risked their lives for nothing more than that.

Whatever the result had been, some of the villains on that day had possessed a strong enough will to make that choice. So Risako had no reason to feel this way.

And yet…

“''So I need to be strong.''”

All the concourse lights went out. In the pitch darkness, an image was displayed across an entire wall, like projection mapping.

A small girl hung her head and bit her lip while an artificial ghost flew around her.

“I want the kind of power that lets me keep anyone else from getting hurt. I need to protect Sodate-chan, the ghost lady, and everyone else from my weakness. ''No matter what it takes''.”

The text displayed on the wall received a response.

Frillsand #G shouted to the girl.

She said that wasn’t true, she said drowning in the darkness would accomplish nothing, and she said the people lost during Handcuffs had gladly risked their lives to drag her out of that very darkness.

But none of it reached the girl.

Frillsand #G was so dreadfully powerful, but her voice couldn’t even reach this small girl’s ears.

Why was that?

Because someone else didn’t want the nightmare to end and thus silenced the saving voice that would guide the girl to the safe exit.

“Hee hee. Ah ha ha. Your voice will never reach Risako-kun. You already lost during Handcuffs because an artificial ghost like you cannot exist in this space, remember? So you cannot reach her. She can only hear me! You are as powerless to protect her as the man you loved!! Gee hee ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!”

An old man laughed crudely.

But this voice did not come from a mouth. It came from near the girl’s feet. Her young hands held a horrifically brutal chainsaw.

A voice seemed to bleed through from the depths of the earsplitting roar. Just like you started fantasizing a meaning in any white noise if you listened to it for long enough.

“Quite the retro sound, don’t you think? But it contains everything needed to destroy.”

A vague shape other than Risako appeared alongside her.

It stood across the chainsaw from her and held the weapon along with her, like a bride and groom holding the knife to cut the cake. Maybe the brutal chainsaw functioned as a link between the living and the dead.

The other figure could no longer be called human.

Frillsand #G and the heavy weapon spewing malicious words glared at each other with oblivious Risako in between. Yes, the old man clashed directly with the artificial ghost and even held his own.

“You cannot reach her.”

The mocking words did not come from the spectral old man. He was moving his mouth in time with them, but the sound actually came from the violent power tool young Risako held in her hands.

Something evil resided in that rotating blade.

“Your words cannot reach her. ''Only logical words can reach Risako-kun now''. No matter how cruel it might seem, anyone can understand something if it is logically sound.”

“Kh.”

“Rejecting someone’s logical argument with groundless, subjective emotion feels so terribly violent to them. And violence is what Risako-kun detests most of all after the events of Handcuffs, so won’t she just push you away?”

“''Kihara…Hasuu''!!”

This would be over in the blink of an eye if Risako would simply open the door to her heart, but that would not happen. Other people’s emotions were so difficult to predict and they could even lead to violence if you weren’t careful, so the young girl would reject them herself.

Even though there was nothing at all wrong with emotions.

Was logic a symbol of calm stability and emotion a symbol of violent outbursts? Of course not. Anyone who lived in Academy City long enough would realize the great value of the ordinary kindness and gentleness that helped hold wild logic in check. If the world was ruled by nothing but logic, life would be so much colder and crueler. Hadn’t Drencher Kihara Repatri tricked profit-focused Academy City and taken in those specimen children so he could fight back against exactly that?

“I attempted to ''reproduce my mind'' based on you, but several of the details differ. For example, I can control the malfunctions brought on by Academy City’s Greatest Taboo. I can also hold objects to an extent. But unlike you, if I try to leave the Taboo, I would apparently release such a powerful and uncontrollable burst of electricity it would fry the entire city. It saddens me I would destroy any valuable experimental equipment I might try to approach, so I need a convenient body to use.”

“So you’re going to hijack Risako’s body!?”

“Oh, this is nothing so cliché.”

Why had Risako come all this way in the first place?

If Kihara Hasuu couldn’t leave, he couldn’t have forcibly taken her here.

Had she survived the 25th, but something hadn’t sat right with her?

Had she descended to this place in the hopes of collecting the traces of the people who hadn’t survived and then encountered a horrific monster?

If so, this was as horrifying a crime as a murderer killing a complete stranger while they visited a loved one’s grave.

“Admittedly, finding a way to possess people and jump from body to body would be interesting, but I bet the #5 could do that if she were willing to abandon her body. As a Kihara, I want my death to give the world an even greater dream.”

That guess was wrong, off base, and mistaken, but did that mean he wasn’t threatening Risako’s life?

No.

The old man sharing the chainsaw with her wasn’t so kind.

He hadn’t appeared in Alice’s world, which meant even Alice had done everything she could to keep Kamijou away from him. The dead ends of so many lives were gathered on this one point.

The roaring engine tricked the mind into hearing a human voice once more.

“''Which is why'' Risako-kun is simply buying me some time until my work is complete. The thing is, I am apparently too powerful on my own at the moment. I don’t know if she will survive until the end of my work, but she was always meant to be a research specimen. I might as well use her as she was intended. Gee hee, gee hee, hee hee hee ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

Frillsand #G wasn’t just going to stand there.

This may have been Kamijou’s first time seeing the artificial ghost’s right hand form a fist, take direct aim at something, and send hostility their way.

But Kihara Hasuu looked entirely unfazed.

The old man had implied he had defeated her during Handcuffs. He smiled thinly, took one hand from the chainsaw, held out his right hand so their arms crossed, and formed a finger gun.

“You cannot win.”

“Gah!?”

“So leave it all to me. Both the Taboo that has ''swallowed you whole'' and this puny life you still try to protect.”

There was no light or sound, but something like an invisible thread definitely snapped. Frillsand #G was rapidly pushed away from Academy City’s Greatest Taboo. She reached out in desperation, but Risako failed to notice while standing down in the deepest depths of the darkness.

Frillsand #G was clenching her teeth and trying so hard to rescue her, but the young girl remained oblivious while speaking to herself.

“This time, I will protect the ghost lady.”

The concourse’s bright lights came on, blowing away the image projected on the wall.

This wasn’t over and Kamijou’s group were the only ones who could do anything about it.

The ''very future of Academy City'' had to be riding on this one.

“This isn’t right,” said Kamijou Touma.

No one disagreed. That silence was a wholehearted agreement.

It was an agreement with the boy who questioned the darkness and chose to stand up to the city’s remaining cruelty.

“We can’t let this happen.”

Risako was clearly acting oddly. Something had been implanted in her mind.

Why would she see anything logical as correct and reject everything else? Why didn’t she allow anything based on emotion?

What if everyone had responded with cold, mechanical logic during the Cold War when two superpowers had aimed nuclear missiles at each other, during World War Three when science and magic had clashed directly, or when Othinus had half-jokingly blown away the world with Gungnir? The world would have ended long ago.

When people saw the world approaching destruction, they felt fear. When they failed to protect their loved ones, they felt pain. When they learned powerful people were manipulating the world from the shadows, they felt anger. When they wanted to ensure they could continue living their lives tomorrow, they decide to screw up their courage.

What was wrong with those feelings filling people’s hearts?

So many things couldn’t be explained with logic.

Why do people laugh? Why can’t you see people’s thoughts? Why are there so many stars? So many problems become a tangled mess once you try to explain them logically.

“She wanted to say that herself, but she couldn’t. She kept shouting it, but it never reached Risako who was lured into the depths of the darkness and now wanders there all alone. Dammit, is this the regret keeping that ghost from passing on?”

They now knew the motive preventing the ghost from truly dying.

They had finally found the reason Frillsand #G fought. Unlike in Alice’s world, she wasn’t fighting for herself. She wanted to respect the feelings of the dead by protecting this young life that still lived, but she couldn’t do it. So she had needed someone else’s help. No matter what.

Kamijou did not know the whole story of Operation Handcuffs. Maybe he didn’t really have the right to be standing here. But this small life had barely survived thanks to the work of so many people risking it all on that day and now some piece of shit was trampling on it all by repeating that stupid tragedy while sneering out from the shadows.

He had finally found the last person still struggling in the sticky darkness.

But he hadn’t reached her yet.

Handcuffs still wasn’t over. It would never end unless someone put an end to this tragedy.

“…”

Kamijou Touma stepped away from Shirai Kuroko who was still supporting herself on his shoulder.

“Hey, you said we’ll never reach our destination like this, didn’t you? Because this space was broken against Frillsand #G’s will?”

“I did.”

“And you said the space is essentially crumpled up, right?”

“What of it?”

He silently turned to face one of the concourse’s pillars.

It could have been anywhere. He only had to clench his right fist.

“''So what happens if I do this''?”

He slammed his fist against the illusion before his eyes.

===Part 3===

''Crash!!!!!!

===Part 4===

After a moment of dizziness, Kamijou Touma found himself in an unfamiliar location.

It looked like an ancient colosseum. A large, circular space contained evenly-spaced concrete pillars. A train turntable was located in the center. Much like a clockface, tracks extended from it in 12 directions before being swallowed up by dark tunnels.

This was Academy City’s Greatest Taboo.

This was the very end of Operation Handcuffs.

Shirai Kuroko and Alice Anotherbible were no longer by his side.

The crumpled-up space had been returned to normal, so even though they had appeared to be so close, they may have been sent to some distant place when the wrinkles were straightened out. Wherever they were, they were probably somewhere beneath Academy City.

So.

The small figure in front of him was not either of the girls he had been working with. Someone more dangerous was waiting for him now that he was freed from that distortion.

It was an old man in a lab coat.

He probably shouldn’t have been here.

He held a chainsaw longer than 150cm. Young Risako had been holding that in the image Kamijou had seen while Frillsand #G was guiding them.

He had a bad feeling about this.

“What happened to Risako?” asked Kamijou, his voice low.

“''I ate her up. Leaving nothing but bone''.”

An unpleasant noise came from Kamijou’s back teeth.

Kihara Hasuu’s shoulders shook in laughter, as if this ordinary human anger was the funniest thing he had ever seen.

“I’m only kidding. Seen too many remnants of Handcuffs while you wandered around today? Did you figure one of us ''might just go that far''?”

He doubled over in laughter before straightening up and raising a finger.

No, that wasn’t it.

He was pointing up toward the tall, tall ceiling. Perhaps this would have been more clearly visible for anyone who arrived here along the proper route.

Something dangled from the ceiling like a bagworm. No, that was a tiny silhouette being suspended from the ceiling.

“There’s no real meaning behind it.”

The simplest kind of cruelty suddenly blossomed here.

What greater desecration was there?

Kihara Hasuu made it sound so obvious that Kamijou nearly missed it.

“She is 550m up. The ceiling of this underground space borders the surface, but no direct routes lead here. And at the center of the Taboo I control, not even a ghost can pass through the walls. So just like fooling GPS guidance, Frillsand #G will wander forever in search of the shortest route to save Risako-kun. You see, if it came down to a real clash between us two immortal ghosts, this place would collapse before either of us did. I would still prefer not to push this unstable Taboo to that point.”

“…”

“I am sure she is panicking. The more her efforts fail, the more it will feel like I have taken Risako-kun from her. Unfortunately for me, I could dig through this underground space forever and never reach my objective. I would much prefer to reach out and touch the sky. Heh heh.”

It was impossible to know if he was telling the truth.

But Kamijou doubted Kihara Hasuu would be joking to smooth things over at this point.

In other words…

(There is something here he doesn’t want to tell me right away.)

After reaching that conclusion, Kamijou took a step forward.

What reason did he have to fear?

“This isn’t what I saw on the way here. Why did you change your plan?”

“What a pain. Did Frillsand #G show you that? Or was my subconscious leaking out? This Vanishing Tunnel doesn’t play well with ghosts, so I was originally planning to whisper in Risako-kun’s ear to manipulate her.”

But that hadn’t worked, so his plans had changed.

The rapid expansion of the Taboo may have come from that change of plans.

“I am ashamed to admit I had trouble with her. Such a stubborn girl. She won’t shut up about never doing anything that would make ‘Sodate-chan’ or ‘the ghost lady’ sad, ''so I shut her up myself.''”

That was enough out of him.

Was the splitting sound Kamijou heard his canine tooth breaking through the corner of his lip?

His heart was shouting from within his chest.

It said he no longer needed a reason. It said he needed to fight for someone. It said that was how things ''should be'' in the remade Academy City – in the city he called home.

He clenched his right fist and raced forward without any hesitation.

An engine roared in response. Kihara Hasuu tugged hard on the chainsaw cord and a bicycle-like chain covered in short, thick blades began to rotate violently fast.

(So what?)

Kamijou Touma poured courage into his heart to fight the squeezing it felt.

And he took another powerful step forward.

(I heard you, Risako. Maybe you can’t say a word yourself and maybe it only reached me through someone else’s malicious words, but I still heard your refusal to disappoint the people you care for. So I won’t back down now!!)

Yes, his opponent held a chainsaw about as long as he was tall. An attack from that would mean instant death. And Imagine Breaker probably wouldn’t work on it. But its length and weight would also limit how it could be used. That old man might be a ghost, but he still moved on his two feet.

Would he sweep it horizontally or swing it down diagonally from the shoulder?

Either way, he would have a hard time swinging it around to the left while holding it at his right hip.

Plus, he was a ghost.

If that was true, then Imagine Breaker might just come in handy!!

“Go to hell!!” shouted Kamijou as he got to work.

Once he moved in close, Kihara Hasuu was sure to swing the chainsaw. A horizontal sweep would be his best bet. But if Kamijou knew it was coming, he could prepare for it.

Specifically, he kicked up a plastic bag lying on the ground.

A chainsaw was undeniably a deadly weapon, but it always rotated in the same direction. And as thin as the plastic bag was, it wouldn’t vanish once it was torn through. With something caught in the blade, the chainsaw would stop!!

Or so he thought.

However…

“Nice try.”

(Damn, is there more to this!?)

When he heard the old man’s mocking voice, Kamijou practically doubled over and threw himself backwards to stop in a hurry. His back slammed against the concrete floor like he had failed doing the limbo, but it was well worth it since the chainsaw blade swung by just above him.

No, that wasn’t just the chainsaw.

When the tattered plastic touched the old man’s skin, it was blown away with some unnatural bluish-white sparks.

“By the way.”

“!”

“And this really is just a warning for your benefit – I would recommend against trying to negate me with Imagine Breaker. My basic structure is identical to Frillsand #G. Granted, I did remove a few features to eliminate the compatibility problems with the Vanishing Tunnel, so I had to abandon her level of lethality.”

The old man’s smile spread while a faint electrical sound filled the brief silence.

“That makes me a physical phenomenon that can be electrically explained using High Voltage Cutting. Touch me and your flesh will burst and you will be scorched to the bone. But if you have the courage needed to destroy a running transformer with your bare fist, I won’t stop-”

A dull impact burst out.

Kamijou Touma had ignored the man and thrown his fist. Of course, Imagine Breaker didn’t work on a ghost who could be scientifically explained.

“''So what''?”

“…”

Kamijou held a thick roll of duct tape he had found on the ground. About half of the plastic tape was blown away and melted.

“So my right fist doesn’t work. Did you really think ''that was enough to stop me''? After you’ve done all this? When Risako is right there suffering at the hands of a dead man after she managed to survive the 25th?”

He tossed aside the already unusable duct tape roll and cautiously viewed his surroundings. Duct tape must have been used for train maintenance because there were plenty more usable rolls on the turntable covered in various tools and cleaning supplies.

Today had been a terrifying day.

Enough to make him painfully aware that he had been shielded from the city’s darkness all this time.

Alice’s world had been a mess of truths and fictions, but he had still learned some things from it. Hadn’t Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier mentioned how useful a ground could be? It was hard to electrocute people if the current didn’t reach their brain or heart.

The reality he had returned to had been even more frightening. But as inappropriate as it might seem, he had been impressed with Tessou Tsuzuri and Rakuoka Nodoka. They had done whatever it took to make up for what they didn’t have. Even if that meant wearing a tool to protect their fist.

Kamijou Touma hadn’t been standing down here the whole time.

Unlike this man, he had been fighting to ensure his enemies and allies could survive.

The journey he had taken to reach Academy City’s Greatest Taboo hadn’t been for nothing.

So it was time to end this.

It was time to defeat the final enemy using everything that had come before.

“If you want me to hit you, I’ll turn you into a goddamn punching bag. I don’t get how any of it works, but you’re supported and stabilized by electricity, aren’t you? I saw you ''blur'' a bit when that plastic exploded and vaporized. How about I try it with steel or aluminum next? What about a liquid or powder? Whatever’s supporting your body has an upper limit! So I’ll keep at it as long as it takes. I don’t even need to wrack my brains over it – it’s like making wrong guesses in a game of concentration. I just have to keep risking my own life until I find the right answer. ''That’s all it takes. So I will rescue Risako from your clutches''!!!!!!”

“Tch. You masochistic martyr!!”

For the first time, Kihara Hasuu moved to dodge an attack.

Kamijou could use insulation, a ground, and even the concept behind birds on the power lines.

Electricity always took the path of least resistance. If there were multiple routes and one was more efficient than the human body, you could just barely avoid death. As long as he could come up with ideas, he could fight.

Kihara Hasuu must have known he couldn’t just rely on the high-voltage current here, so this time he came for Kamijou. He raised the chainsaw to swing it down. Kamijou could do no damage to the old man by clenching his teeth and stubbornly opposing the chainsaw. He would only get his body torn apart. Then he couldn’t save Risako. He clicked his tongue and fell back for the time being.

Kihara Hasuu pursued, even using the bouncing of the rotating blade. The slightest graze and it would tear into Kamijou’s clothing and shred his flesh and bones.

“Tch!!”

“You negated it once with your right hand, but the Taboo is still running wild. And the civilization battery supported by High Voltage Cutting uses the acid rain produced by a metropolis as a power source. I am only hitching a ride for now, but if I use the Taboo tunnel leading out of the city to send out Academy City machinery and materials, I can control the technological level and economic status of the entire world. I will have free control over the operational status of any factory and vehicle.”

“…?”

Kamijou moved away, got up, and gave the old man a puzzled look.

Why didn’t he continue the attack?

What was he so desperate to distract Kamijou from?

“Didn’t I tell you? I accomplish nothing digging through this underground space. My objective can only be found in the sky. One magnet does not pull the other to it – they affect each other. That remains true for the magnetosphere covering the planet and the geomagnetism produced by the magma flowing underground. Precisely controlling the earth’s sky lets you indirectly influence the earth’s core. That is because the magnetism covering the planet comes from the flowing magma and rotating core acting like a giant generator. So what if a ghost like me – a collection of electrical energy – could reach that?”

Kihara Hasuu was an artificial ghost, but he had said several of his details differed from Frillsand #G. For one, Kamijou could directly view him without bleeding and collapsing.

He had also said he initially planned to use Risako.

“I will link myself to the dynamo theory.”

Kamijou had made it this far, but Kihara Hasuu would not stop.

The old man would greedily absorb everything that caught his interest, no matter how much harm it caused others.

“''Then destroying me would require destroying the earth’s core.'' It is currently moving a little too fast for that kind of precision work, but not to worry. With Risako-kun’s assistance, I can buy myself enough time to modify and tame it. Assuming I do not end up stuck in an endless battle with Frillsand #G who also uses High Voltage Cutting.”

(This bastard.)

He sounded so casual about it.

Like he was mentioning how cheap the eggs were at the local supermarket.

This was not the lifelong dream of the researcher named Kihara Hasuu. He had been mentioned in Alice’s world as an expert in android research, so ghosts had to be outside his area of expertise.

So.

This was something he had realized he could piece together with the items lying around, so he might as well do it. He was that casual about trampling on people’s dignity and even extending his influence to the core of the planet. He didn’t feel even a twinge of guilt as he stomped all over an individual and the entire world.

He didn’t need a grand objective to destroy things people cared about and he would simply laugh after seeing someone emotionally devastated.

He was that kind of evil.

(Now I get it, Drencher Kihara Repatri. I’ve never met you, but I still understand you! I see why you wanted to create a place for the children who had fallen to the dark side, even if it meant throwing away your one and only life in a world where the dead can never be brought back!! That’s right. We can’t just let this happen. This is the worst kind of evil and it easily surpasses the greatest tragedy I could imagine!!)

“Once I do that, I should be strong enough to leave the Taboo without bursting and frying the entire city. It would be a real tragedy if I became immortal yet couldn’t touch my lab equipment without destroying it. This immortality was an unexpected prize, so now I need to figure out how to use all this extra time. Once no one on the planet can punish me, I suppose I should start by continuing my research until I grow weary of it.”

That was sure to lead to more tragedy and cruelty.

This sticky darkness would remain as long as he was still around.

Operation Handcuffs would continue forever and ever.

Kamijou had only one thing to say to that.

Risako wasn’t dead yet while she swayed from the tall, tall ceiling. Hope remained for her. That girl had accepted the pain because she didn’t want to hurt anyone else. If she could do that, then Kamijou knew what he had to say.

“No, I’ll end this before that happens. The people of this city will stop you here and now!!”

“Everyone says that after seeing a Kihara in action. The thing is, I’ve never seen any of them succeed.”

The deafening engine roar grew louder.

The raised right fist was so pitiful the old man actually laughed.

But so what?

Kamijou Touma would not be shaken no matter how tough that man tried to make himself look. Young Risako had been fighting all alone here not long before. Frillsand #G’s voice couldn’t reach her and Kihara Hasuu had cut her off from all else, but she had still rejected this Kihara’s words with only her own strength. She had told him to his face that she could never hurt others or disappoint those she cared about. The morality Drencher and Frillsand #G had tried to instill in her had reached her and it had not broken. Kamijou wouldn’t let anyone deny that achievement. And no one could save the young girl dangling from the ceiling unless he defeated this evil ghost.

That win condition was all he needed to know.

He had to save Risako.

As soon as possible.

This wasn’t like Alice’s world. The dead could not be brought back no matter what you tried. But he had caught a glimpse of those people while following in their footsteps today. They had reached out a hand to pull the children from Academy City’s darkness or to help a girl they had happened across. Maybe that was the wrong choice according to the cold rules of this world. Maybe that was why rejecting the most logical and safe option had removed them from the path of survival and ultimately taken their lives.

But.

Vivana and Drencher had made those selfless acts despite being scorned as villains and Kamijou Touma would remember them, even if he didn’t know the full story of what they had done.

They would have been enemies of each other during Handcuffs, but those villains had unwittingly passed the baton between them to save Risako. Kamijou was confident they wouldn’t have wanted the girl to now lose her life for the amusement of some ghost.

He couldn’t let the 29th end that way.

This wasn’t just about saving Risako. He was also fighting to reward the kindness of all of those who had helped the young girl and dragged her out of the darkness.

So…

(Who cares if he has a chainsaw?)

Kamijou instantly focused in on that point.

He would start with the most frightening aspect. He was through averting his gaze from the darkness.

(I know what I have to do. If he’s going to get in the way of that, I just have to steal her from him. I still don’t know how to defeat a ghost, but if I couldn’t interact with him at all, he wouldn’t be able to swing that chainsaw around. That means there has to be a way. This turntable has to have some method of defeating that electrical ghost!!)

That was simple enough to say, but he was risking his life here.

The lab coat man’s chainsaw was just that deadly. Its weight and vibrations tugged his matchstick-thin body around, but that made his movements harder to predict. The slightest contact meant death, yet his footing was unsteady. This was a different kind of terror from facing a master of kendo or fencing.

This time, the old man came at him.

Kihara Hasuu awkwardly swung the chainsaw around a few times, so Kamijou fell back while kicking up and catching a mop.

(The chainsaw is powerful, but it runs on a gasoline engine. If I hit its fuel tank and shake the fuel, it should form air bubbles and stall the engine. Really, it should be unstable already from him swinging it around every which way!!)

His theory might be accurate, but that was a real chainsaw. Even a kitchen knife was dangerous, so he had no idea if he could really suppress that mass of destructive force.

His thoughts were interrupted by the lowered chainsaw blade contacting the concrete ground. It wasn’t clear if the old man with the shadowy eyes had meant to do it. It was such a careless action it could have bounced the blade into his own body.

But a moment later, something exploded.

Sparks flew while the concrete shattered like stained glass and flew out like a scattershot.

“Gah!!”

Kamijou couldn’t do anything beyond cross his arms in front of his face.

Chunks the size of small rocks stabbed into him and his feet were lifted from the ground. The next thing he knew, he was flying backwards.

He rolled along the ground while clenching his teeth tight.

(What was that? Is it not just a normal chainsaw!?)

“Hee hee.”

The boy glared at the source of the violent scraping noise.

“Gee hee hee, ee hee ee hee hee hee hee!! Did you think a Kihara like me would ever use a ‘normal’ anything?”

That old man was doing something else. The chainsaw’s edge wasn’t enough to explain this, so was it an Academy City esper power? It took him a moment to realize what he was considering.

Could an old man – that is, a grown adult – really use an esper power? Could ghosts ignore all the rules and break all the limits like that!?

(Don’t panic.)

Kamijou let out a short breath and forced his mind to keep moving.

He readied his right fist again and quickly confirmed what he knew.

(Don’t stop thinking!! A wrong answer isn’t a bad thing. Risako defeated him all on her own. She made this Kihara decide she was too much trouble and change his plan!! So I can’t let him beat me. When such a young kid worked so hard to stay strong, I’ve got to show her that there is still hope in this city!!)

He didn’t have time to give much thought to Kihara Hasuu’s ''power''. He only had to keep in mind that the short old man had something he couldn’t underestimate. Even now, the man was approaching while swinging the running chainsaw side to side. Every time it carelessly contacted a concrete pillar, a coil of plastic rope, or something else, orange sparks would fly and pieces of the object were launched toward Kamijou.

It was like a small bomb.

“Dammit!!”

That made it nigh impossible to reach the chainsaw engine with his bare hand and switch it off. Even if he was fully covered by a steel suit of armor, he would end up bisected. Trying to stall the engine was a better plan, but he couldn’t calculate how many times he had to hit the fuel tank with the mop to produce the air bubbles. He couldn’t rely on that.

If he lost here, he couldn’t save Risako.

He had to be thankful she was dangling from the ceiling and thus wouldn’t be hit by the concrete scattershot or orange sparks.

Kamijou unwrapped the plastic sheet from his arm and threw it away before grabbing a bottle of detergent. If he opened the cap and squeezed the plastic bottle tight, the contents would shoot out like a water gun.

He still knew exactly what he needed to do.

(A gasoline engine has to take in air to burn the fuel. If I can block the air intake with mud, rain, detergent, or whatever else, the engine will stop! I can figure out how to deal with the electric ghost after that!!)

“Take this!!”

Just as he held his arm out to take aim, he froze in place. He found his foot buried up to the ankle in the concrete ground. It was like he had stepped through a dark, discolored floorboard.

Then realization hit him.

(No. He isn’t increasing the chainsaw’s power. That would work with the metal or concrete, but it wouldn’t let him produce sparks from and cut through soft synthetic fibers!)

The roaring weapon was raised high. The engine kept the chainsaw’s blade rotating.

But that wasn’t the real threat.

(''He never had any kind of esper power.'' This isn’t a normal space – it’s a strange place called Academy City’s Greatest Taboo. Is this one of the malfunctions he mentioned? It doesn’t just affect the ghosts – it effects this place itself. And Kihara Hasuu has stolen it from Frillsand #G, so can he alter and control the terrain and its materials!?)

He yanked his foot out of the dark and dry floor, but the time loss proved devastating.

If he died here, he could not save Risako.

He tried to roll behind a nearby concrete pillar and the chainsaw swung diagonally down to slice right through that thick pillar.

The color red flew.

===Part 5===

An unnatural amount of sparks scattered like a flamethrower and concrete fragments were launched out in a fan shape.

(He could actually negate the fragments with his right hand, but maybe there are too many for him to handle. Or did he get the wrong idea after touching the duct tape and mop without issue?)

Kihara Hasuu didn’t feel any need to check beyond the dust cloud.

He had wondered how much this boy could do since he had held a central position in the ''previous'' Board Chairman’s plan, but this was a real disappointment.

(The Taboo is a mixture of a physical space and the Imaginary Number District, but the items brought here are unaffected. I don’t know who had been in here, but Imagine Breaker won’t work on the regularly resupplied items like mops and detergent bottles.)

Or…

“In this case, Risako-kun’s special trait won out,” muttered Kihara Hasuu, all on his own now.

Operation Handcuffs had truly been hell on earth. He knew that all too well since he had lost his life at the very end. If anyone who played any role in those events managed to survive to the end, you had all the proof you needed that they were unusual.

And of all of those, Risako had the most impressive record since she had survived Handcuffs without fighting even once.

He had originally only wanted her to deter Frillsand #G, so now that she had refused to cooperate, he had no reason to include her in this.

Yet he had still done so.

Consciously or not, Risako changed something in her surroundings with her mere presence.

“Kihara Noukan was never seen emerging from the sewers.”

He whispered.

“Vivana Oniguma died protecting the child.”

He whispered.

“Drencher Kihara Repatri goes without saying.”

He whispered.

“Hamazura Shiage was shot accidentally at the very end.”

He whispered.

A smile spread across his face while he lifted the chainsaw in both hands.

Whether she wanted it or not, Risako’s weakness had dragged down everyone around her and given Handcuffs its ending. That was a fact. But if she picked up the plain power that was a chainsaw to overcome that weakness, she would become a new central point spreading even more death.

She had the drive to do what she set her mind to.

But she also accepted what people told her and obeyed the warnings strangers gave her.

She stayed true to herself while actively listening to others. Not many people could manage both like that. Not even professional journalists who made a living asking people questions and gathering information. For example, that dark side paparazzo had put too much emphasis on herself.

In terms of old stories, Risako was the honest person who benefited the most despite setting foot in another world.

Her actions must have seemed strange indeed on the dark side where everyone assumed ulterior motives in everyone else. Some of those villains and demons may have paid an unnecessary price there and then tilted their heads in confusion. Yes, a powerless and honest person could sometimes take down the strongest resident of the darkness. They would unwittingly eliminate their cruel neighbor using the rules of that other world.

Kihara Hasuu had wanted to destroy that here.

After she boiled her goodness down to the level of a complex and finally grasped the thread of hope, it would have only led her to the trap he had laid. Just like he had once told Ladybird she was an experiment for creating esper androids who could replace the children being harmed by Academy City. The look on her face when she learned she needed to consume other people’s brains to survive had been priceless.

He had learned so much leading up to this moment.

He had been looking forward to that ending, but Risako had ruined it all.

If not for that, she wouldn’t have needed to hang from the ceiling like a bagworm.

“Hee hee. ''But it’s all the same to me as long as it’s entertaining.'' Having a trump card like this is certainly interesting. And it’s such a minor factor, like sprinkling something into the pot to make it all boil. Risako-kun, you may have been the greatest monster in Handcuffs.”

That was when he heard a solid footstep.

In that moment, he forgot all about the brutal chainsaw he held.

He looked up without thinking and then froze in place.

That was how much of a surprise this was.

Handcuffs was not over yet.

[[Image:GT_Index_v05_BW9.jpg|thumb]]

This was a true continuation, with no need for the dead or for distorting the world.

The boy was sickly pale and looked to be at death’s door.

But he still jabbed his thumb back at his face and spat out the simplest logic necessary to break this spectral curse.

“''Guess who’s not dead.''”

The villainous Kihara was paid a visit by Hamazura Shiage, the very person who had killed him the first time.

One more boy had been reckless enough to put his one and only body into danger to protect the dignity of the young girl who had been struggling all alone against the worst possible dark side researcher.

He still wore a surgical gown and several tubes and cords hung from his arms and stomach. His lips were dry and cracked and his skin didn’t even have enough strength left to sweat.

Nevertheless.

Kamijou Touma was not the only one who had received Risako’s feelings and stood up to save her.

The failure of Handcuffs didn’t matter.

It was time for Academy City to grow and to let everyone know it had changed.

===Part 6===

In truth, Hamazura Shiage barely knew anything about the events of the 29th.

He didn’t know how difficult it had been to reach this familiar place or what kind of drama had played out to make it possible.

But he had heard a cry for help.

Maybe that cry had come from an artificial ghost whose anger had caused her to swallow up Academy City’s Greatest Taboo, which stood on the dividing line between science and magic and made her voice deadly to even listen to.

Still, Hamazura Shiage had survived the 25th.

He thought he had ended Operation Handcuffs himself, so if it was still ongoing and someone was still suffering down in the darkness, then the half-dead delinquent boy had more than enough of reason to get out of bed.

Especially after seeing Drencher Kihara Repatri’s lifestyle up close.

He couldn’t let harm come to something that man had risked his life to protect.

No matter what.

“Hee hee.”

Something was making noise.

It was that pitiful ghost that had been caught in the shadows of the living realm by some kind of mistake.

He spoke directly below the young girl hanging from the tall, tall ceiling like a bagworm.

“You of all people are here? Did getting one little move in on me go right to your head or something!? You’re a zero! A Level 0!! If you lost sight of that and decided to return to the darkness, it sounds a lot like you have a death wish and decided to throw out your undeserved good fortune!”

“None of that matters,” calmly said Hamazura Shiage.

Operation Handcuffs had been the worst of the worst, but he had caught a glimpse of something while running around trying to survive the disasters of that day.

He had learned something.

He could take a step forward now that he had inherited something from Vivana Oniguma and Drencher Kihara Repatri who had died before his eyes.

Would they have just watched while young Risako’s victory was denied and her resolve mocked?

“Esper level doesn’t matter here. Everyone who comes to this city takes their first step after finding a reason to motivate themselves. Maybe they want to be a Level 5, maybe they want to be the #1 at the top, and maybe they want to be an even greater monster. So I have the right to try. And this godforsaken darkness is what invited me onto the path of the undefeated champion by stubbornly clinging to life and dragging Risako into it all.”

“Is that old-fashioned ‘where there’s a will there’s a way’ argument really all you have? The very fact that this city separates people by level should tell you that trying harder doesn’t actually make you stronger. A zero will always be a zero, Level 0!! You will never amount to anything!!”

“''I wasn’t talking to you, you empty ghost,''” spat Hamazura. His voice carried the slight irritation of having TV static interrupt an important conversation. Yes, he was facing the ghost, but he was speaking to someone else. “I’ll say it again: esper level doesn’t matter here” He almost seemed to be singing. Or maybe declaring war. “Everyone who comes to this city takes their first step after finding a reason to motivate themselves. Maybe they want to be a Level 5, maybe they want to be the #1 at the top, and maybe they want to be an even greater monster.”

It may have been the same for Risako. It was true she had failed to defeat him. Her resistance had accomplished nothing and Kihara Hasuu had ultimately overpowered her. But she had not been fooled by his words. To the end, she had held onto what Drencher Kihara Repatri had given her. Kihara Hasuu’s open anger about it proved how strong her will was. Her reluctance to hurt Sodate or the ghost lady hid a small light that would one day grow into a great power.

Drencher was gone and the dead were not so easily brought back. But in a more figurative sense, he had to be smiling when he saw Risako now. He would have learned that his efforts had been more than just self-righteousness.

Hamazura Shiage had dealt with him enough to feel certain of that.

“So I have the right to try.”

So Hamazura did not criticize the result.

For one thing, he was not directing his question toward Risako.

“And this godforsaken darkness is what invited me onto the path of the undefeated champion by dragging Risako into it all.”

So when he asked the question, it was directed toward someone else with the same right to try.

“What about you, ''Sodate''?”

He turned toward the area behind one of the concrete pillars.

Yes. There was another survivor of Operation Handcuffs. Maybe he had failed in everything he tried and never defeated anyone, but survival alone was enough of a win for that day. After experiencing everyone being manipulated by the Coins of Nicholas, Hamazura knew all too well how difficult that simple accomplishment had been.

At the very least, he wasn’t accepting any argument from the cheater who had failed to survive yet been so furious about losing he had flipped over the game board and clung to life.

With the slightest of sounds, a small boy in gym clothes stepped out from behind the pillar. He never should have been here and should have been the first one to keep away from that brutal chainsaw.

“I…”

But Hamazura didn’t stop him. Because that boy had the right to try.

The boy stepped up alongside Hamazura, tensed his trembling legs, and clenched his small fists tight.

All so he could resist the world’s cruelty and save someone he cared about.

“''I also want to become an esper who can surpass any Level 5, even the unbeatable #1''!!”

===Part 7===

“Hah.”

The new Board Chairman laughed quietly inside his unusually well-furnished cell.

The white monster sat on the king-size bed and removed his mouth from his can of coffee to speak to no one.

“You’ve already done that.”

===Part 8===

With a roar like a motorcycle engine, Kihara Hasuu swung his chainsaw side to side. Hamazura and Sodate both wanted to silence him as soon as possible, but they couldn’t rush the chainsaw without any kind of plan. If they suffered a fatal wound, Risako would blame herself and they couldn’t let that happen.

“Kee hee.” The chainsaw-wielding old man laughed. “Hee hee hee, ah ha ha ha ha!! You think you can reject logic with hogwash you lack the power to back up? Emotion cannot make up for a poor argument. And it’s time you learned firsthand what happens when your argument is lacking!!”

Hamazura spat back a response.

No, it wasn’t just him. That man was no longer with them, but several people here had inherited his spirit. So Hamazura would not be broken by mere malice.

“We lack the power to back it up? Of course we do!! Drencher and Frillsand #G stood out from the pack during Handcuffs, but even they agonized over their inability to protect those children. It all began there and ultimately led to him fooling the entire dark side while remaining a good person!!”

“Mister died in the end, but he didn’t just give up on everything from the beginning. Pain and suffering can give you the strength needed to keep moving. It doesn’t just break you and distort you – it can be used to push you in the right direction! That conversion was mister’s greatest strength. So I will never give up on finding a way for everyone to return alive. We might not have what it takes and we might suffer defeats along the way, but we will still search for a way to make everyone happy!! Just like mister did!!!!!!”

So they didn’t need an unnatural method of bringing back the dead.

Drencher Kihara Repatri’s determination, spirit, and powerful kindness lived on as the solid core supporting these other people. And they would use it to drag Risako up from the darkness. His life may have been lost, but he was still with them. No one could replace Drencher, but they could inherit his mission. Could they feel his pulse when they held a hand to their chest? Hamazura and Sodate didn’t need to confirm that with each other.

Could they risk their lives to protect someone?

They wouldn’t have appeared in this subterranean world unless they could give the same answer as that man.

''Kihara Hasuu.

''We will exorcise your ability to stubbornly cling to the world of the living.

“!”

Hamazura kicked up a tarp as a distraction while he grabbed Sodate and hid behind a nearby pillar. With the rattling of a chain, the tarp mysteriously erupted with orange sparks as it was shredded.

Sodate glared into the distance, biting his thumbnail.

They were helpless to fight back, but the small boy did not turn away from the threat.

Just like that young man had once challenged the depths of a great darkness.

He was willing to fight back if it would help them find happiness.

“What now? I swore to myself I wouldn’t embarrass myself in front of Risako again! So I’ll do whatever it takes. If we can’t get that chainsaw from him, could we keep running away until it runs out of gas?”

Running away wasn’t embarrassing. It was a solid tactic.

That implication showed that Sodate really had inherited Drencher’s spirit. No one was talking about flimsy pride here. If they really wanted to win and rescue Risako from this nightmare without making her sad, they had to protect their own lives too. This time, they would reward that man who had fought against the city’s darkness because he couldn’t allow a world where children were set up to “bravely” die in the name of scientific advancement and expansion of the city.

But even though running away was a valid tactic, they would almost certainly be caught and shredded before the gasoline ran out. Their opponent was an old man, but the limited underground space worked against them.

(If only there was a way to immediately and safely stop that chainsaw.)

The delinquent boy worked his mind. He wasn’t out of his element here. He knew a lot about engines after his days of stealing cars and robbing ATMs.

“Hamazura!!” shouted another boy from further away.

It sounded like he wanted to convey something even if it meant coughing up blood.

Like he wanted to tell Hamazura something even if it meant giving his position away to Kihara Hasuu. He too was risking his one and only life for Risako.

Hamazura couldn’t see him, so he may have been behind a pillar or container.

“''That’s where I screwed up''!! Kihara Hasuu is using something else too. Cough! Something that amplifies the chainsaw’s sparks. I think it takes advantage of this Taboo place, but don’t forget that the chainsaw isn’t the only threat!!”

''I see,'' thought Hamazura.

“Oh, it’s just flint.”

“?”

It was understandable for young Sodate to tilt his head here. It was actually unusual for a high schooler like Hamazura to be this familiar with how lighters worked.

“Everyone should know that rubbing flint makes sparks, but you can’t actually make sparks with just flint. You need a metal to strike the flint with.”

“Eh? Really?”

“Technically, it’s the carbon mixed in with the powder of the crumbling metal that glows orange from friction.”

This amplified that.

It also let the chainsaw slice right through the pillars and floor made of concrete.

In that case…

“Does it absorb the carbon in the object to produce more sparks? And with the carbon removed, the object is a lot weaker than before?”

That meant the concrete pillar wouldn’t shield them. Unlike Frillsand #G, Kihara Hasuu had overcome an artificial ghost’s compatibility issues with Academy City’s Greatest Taboo and he even used them to his advantage. The weak old man’s chainsaw only worked inside the Taboo, but it could slice through and break any object, launching the pieces like a shotgun blast.

Hamazura picked up Sodate’s small body, turned around, and fled behind a nearby pillar.

No, he pretended to.

The crackling of electricity exploded from nearby. After luring the ghost in, Hamazura had dumped a bucket of water on an emergency power transformer among the nearby train equipment.

The untouchable immortal ghost clearly ''blurred''.

“Gbbbhladfghbh!?”

“The ghost lady could pass through walls and pillars, but she always avoided the microwave in the container kitchen. I don’t know why, but if you work like her, that has to be a weakness!!”

“Tch!! E-e-e-electromagnetic waves!?”

An electromagnetic pulse attack made by detonating a nuclear bomb outside the atmosphere was an incredibly effective way of destroying electronic equipment and networks, but receiving the go ahead on using a nuke was no easy task. That was why a cheaper E-bomb had been developed to scatter powerful microwaves from its detonation point.

Sodate wasn’t just another target needing protection. He threw down his cards and challenged their enemy himself.

“I don’t need any special power. I’ve lived with a ghost long enough that I know more about them than ''a beginner'' like you!!”

They had to stop thinking of a ghost as something special.

If their enemy was supported by electricity, then he would carry all the corresponding weaknesses. It was best to think of him like an exposed wire with no waterproofing. Saltwater, static electricity, microwaves, EMPs – he might even have more weaknesses than an ordinary human. They had just been going about it the wrong way until now.

They had found a way out.

Or had they?

A moment later, the entire underground space shook with a deep tremor.

“Hey, um, you said he’s been removing the carbon from everything, right? And that makes it all weak?”

“Y-yeah. What about it?”

“Then.” Sodate gulped and looked to something. “''Is this pillar we’re leaning against going to last''?”

Several thick cracks ran through it. The carbon may have been removed, so they couldn’t blindly trust in the safety of reinforced concrete. And what happened once the pillar couldn’t take the weight of the ceiling?

A burst of heavy air pressure passed by from top to bottom. It reminded Hamazura of the arrival of a great mass when he was waiting for a train on the subway platform.

That interpretation wasn’t inaccurate.

Several chunks of concrete larger than a big truck fell from above.

“Watch out!!”

He had no choice but to pick up Sodate and roll away.

(This is bad!! Risako is still dangling from the ceiling. She isn’t going to fall from that height without warning, is she!?)

The ceiling split and dropped pieces a few more times, so their footing was far from stable. The firm turntable now felt like a bed with bad springs.

No, that wasn’t it.

The tremors weren’t just from the falling concrete. The ground was also bucking up below them.

“D-don’t tell me…”

“Oh, god!! How far does this space go!? He hasn’t removed the carbon from the crust here to release the earthquake energy, has he!?”

The tectonic plates found deep underground were always pushing against each other, so if one were made more fragile than the other, all that force could be released like a spring snapping back.

(At least he’s limited to the objects in this space. Humans are made of carbon, so if it worked on us, he could extract all the carbon from any organ he wanted!!)

But the exact conditions were still unknown. There might be something that would make them a valid target, like the mythological rule that anyone who ate the fruit of the underworld would become a resident of the underworld.

By the way, looking up at the ceiling during an earthquake was apparently a unique trait of the Japanese since hanging cords and chains for adjusting the brightness of ceiling lights and floor lamps were ubiquitous in Japan. In other countries, people would focus on other things, like the ripples in a cup of water or the shaking of a candle flame, so maybe those reactions were a reflection of someone’s time period and nationality. For example, the way people recently began associating “everyone’s phone going off at once” with danger.

Anyway, Hamazura and Sodate’s immediate reaction to their anxiety was to look up to the ceiling.

Almost like someone had intentionally guided their eyes there.

With their eyes directed up and away from the space directly in front of them, Kihara Hasuu appeared from behind the pillar and held his chainsaw to the side. A horizontal sweep would be enough to bisect the both of them.

But a blinding flash of light from above made the attacker flinch just beforehand.

Should they be surprised that a ghost could be blinded, or impressed by how occult it was for ghosts to recoil from bright lights?

The cylindrical underground space resembled an ancient colosseum. Someone stood on the catwalk running along the perimeter. They had shined a light down.

“Use this. Hurry.”

The blinding light pointed elsewhere.

It shined on a fire extinguisher – a foaming model meant for chemical fires.

Hamazura leaped toward it.

Gasoline chainsaws were simply designed, so they lacked a water radiator. They used air cooling, just like a motorcycle, so they would burn themselves out with their own heat if the engine was covered in something fluffy like cotton. A bubbly chemical fire extinguisher compound would work just as well. The chemical bubbles would readily pop and cling to the engine, so Kihara Hasuu couldn’t just wipe them away as long as he was prepared to burn himself. (Could ghosts even suffer burns?)

There were other threats, like the structure’s collapse and the earthquake, but it would mean a lot to safely rob the old man of that deadly weapon.

The ghost wielding the roaring engine briefly directed his attention upwards and away from his soon-to-be victims.

“You? Are you another Kihara?”

“Sorry, but I owe Risako up there after Handcuffs. Damn, I knew she had a good heart, but I never imagined faking my death would come back to bite me like this. So this time, I’m going to set aside my own interests and give it my all. Because I could never forgive myself otherwise.”

A small orange flame waggled up on the catwalk by the wall.

It burned at the end of the cigar held in a golden retriever’s mouth.

“Also, I was never someone who would hold back just because my opponent is another Kihara. Kihara Hasuu, I don’t see a shred of romance in you. You are killing for no reason – not for science and not for Academy City. Which makes this something I must deal with.”

“So you decided to rely on this ragtag group? Then you bet on the wrong horse. I don’t care if my opponent is a Kihara any more than you do. If you get in the way of my fun, then I will kill you. I’m not going to complain if you operate under the same rules.”

Hamazura realized he couldn’t just look back and forth between the two sides of this incomprehensible discussion like he was a tennis referee.

(The entire conversation is a distraction to give us time to act. Nice one, you big dog!!)

He pulled out the extinguisher’s safety pin and aimed the hose toward Kihara Hasuu. Specifically, at the chainsaw’s engine. This projectile was entirely harmless, but if its big bubbles covered up the air-cooled engine, its heat wouldn’t be able to escape and the engine would stop.

Something felt wrong and his hope was shattered in an instant.

The lever had bent in his hand.

Kihara Hasuu ruled this territory and he had the power to extract all the carbon from objects.

“Shit!!”

Hamazura clicked his tongue and threw the extinguisher itself. If the old man swung the running chainsaw, the canister itself would burst and scatter its bubbles along with its nonflammable pressurized gas. He would end up coated with the stuff all the same.

But that hope was shattered too.

The extinguisher’s metal canister burst in midair before it could touch the blade. With the carbon removed, it hadn’t been able to withstand the internal pressure.

(That’s worse than I thought!! Did I rely too much on the extinguisher!?)

An impact hit him from the side.

Sodate had tried to tackle him out of the way, but as desperate as he was, he failed to move the high schooler. Kihara Hasuu raised the chainsaw diagonally in preparation to slice them both in two.

There was no time to think.

The red extinguisher had been shredded and flew their way like metal blades. Hamazura used his body to guard Sodate from that, but he was painfully aware he couldn’t stop the chainsaw. He knew that, but he had no other option either. A direct hit from the scattershot meant to pin them down could be fatal to Sodate.

All he could do was shut his eyes and clench his teeth. He heard the violent roar of the chainsaw swinging diagonally down toward him.

And.

The dull sound of destruction continued on and on.

Yet the pain never arrived.

He slowly opened his eyes to find something standing up to the chainsaw. Long hair too brightly orange to be human spread out before his eyes. A special fiber suit resembling a racing swimsuit covered a slender body powered by electricity and filled with an electrified machine oil gel.

Since she was inorganic and existed here, Kihara Hasuu should have been able to alter the distribution of carbon inside her.

Yet her joints did not collapse and her raised arms were not sliced through like tofu.

She was clearly more than just a machine.

Which was why her slender arms were enough to match the chainsaw!!

“La-”

Hamazura Shiage knew her.

The girl had wanted to prove her worth as an esper android who could free Academy City’s children from all the dangerous experiments. Yet she was a product of tragedy because that cruel researcher had designed her so she required human brains to survive.

With a dull clang, the chainsaw blade was knocked back.

“''Ladybird''!?”

The android built by this Kihara had resumed functioning to stop him.

===Part 9===

In truth, Kamijou Touma hadn’t had time to think about it that much.

He was bleeding and battered.

He had lost way too much blood over the course of the day, so he could barely think straight. He couldn’t get up, so the most he had managed was to crawl while clinging to his last shreds of consciousness. The harmless mold(?) Youen had given him had burst, so the bullet wound in his gut would not stop bleeding.

But he knew there had to be more he could do.

A tarp or some detergent would work. He just needed something that would stop Kihara Hasuu’s chainsaw, but he found something else behind a metal drum.

It looked like a girl.

But she was made of artificial muscles surrounding a heavy metal skeleton, she had exposed wiring, her head was missing, and some kind of door sat wide open on her back.

He was willing to use anything that might work.

He relied on his own memories.

He was pretty sure he had passed out for a few seconds after the chainsaw attacked the pillar he was hiding behind, hit him with a shotgun blast of concrete, and launched him several meters through the air.

When he had opened his eyes again, he had noticed himself leaking blood and grimaced. It wasn’t just the bullet wound on his stomach. Way back at the beginning, he had been stabbed by pieces of a
plastic jungle gym and forced to stitch himself back up.

(Damn, I wish I’d brought the train’s first aid kit with me instead of assuming the tragedy ended there. I miss that handheld sewing machine.)

“Gh.”

He placed his hand against a concrete pillar and tried to get up, but his hand slipped and he fell back down. He hated how slick his hands were. His vision was somewhat faded and his legs were convulsing unnaturally, preventing him from getting up.

He had lost too much blood.

There was no way he could dodge a chainsaw like this, even if it was wielded by an elderly ghost.

(But there has to be something I can do.)

Would he really give up just because he had ample reason to say it was hopeless?

How could he ever accept there was nothing he could do for the people still suffering?

He had to end Handcuffs.

He had to end the chain of tragedy and misfortune.

There had to be a chance left.

He had passed out for a few seconds without getting chainsawed. He realized Kihara Hasuu had lost sight of his target thanks to all the debris and sparks. Maybe the weapon was ''too'' powerful. He
could only crawl at this point and he clicked his tongue at the realization he left a trail of blood wherever he went. He pulled in a nearby tarp and rolled himself up like a spring roll before using just his arms to crawl along the filthy floor.

His fingers were in agony. He thought his nails were going to break.

But this was his one and only chance. He would be sliced in two as soon as the old man noticed, so he might not have another opportunity to act. He decided to bet on that metal drum, so he crawled around it and collected that girl.

He would have a hard time closing up his wounds and running around at this point, but that didn’t mean he was helpless. Introducing an unexpected fighter – yes, unexpected for Kihara Hasuu – could lead to rescuing Risako.

It looked to him like the racing swimsuit girl ''was broken''.

He doubted sticking her severed head back on her body would get her running again, so he used his bloody fingers to pull out his old folks smartphone and called for some help.

(Oh, no. I only have 49 yen, so I hope international calls aren’t too expensive when you both have smartphones. Aren’t mobile phones supposed to let you travel the world with them?)

He didn’t have his Transla-Pen, so he had to use an unreliable translation site to get his words into English. He wanted to reach the woman from outside Academy City whose inspiration, according to
Othinus, had surpassed even the Kiharas.

In other words…

“Please, ''Melzabeth''!! I want to know how to wire her back up. I need your help!!”

===Part 10===

The girl glared past the chainsaw that continued to produce a disconcerting grinding sound.

“Back then…”

Ladybird didn’t let it bother her.

She understood the threat all too well, so she took a powerful step forward instead of fleeing. She did not dodge the attack because it scared her – she challenged it because it scared her. She had always wanted to be a protector and she had finally achieved that goal.

“I thought the same thing. Even someone as filthy as me. I decided dying in that drum explosion wouldn’t be so bad when the alternative was killing the children and extracting their brains. But I never want to do that again. Because I…even I ''want to surpass the #1''!!”

She had found her reason.

Kihara Hasuu did not remember inputting this data into her.

So in that moment, she had truly broken free of her bonds.

She had been given a mission and pushed in the right direction.

It was time for her to leap into the flames to protect someone. And as an android, she could do that quite literally. So she didn’t need to belittle herself and agonize over what she was.

Maybe she had only found a goal to work toward and maybe she hadn’t made up for the crimes she had committed without even questioning them, but she had still taken her first step into a larger world.

The manufactured girl had finally become her own person.

“Yes.”

She reached toward the back of her hip.

She did not hesitate to draw a machete so heavy a normal person could never even lift it.

But this time it was to protect people’s lives, not to deceive and to kill.

Maybe she could only do it once, but that was enough.

She glared directly at the old man who had created her.

“Finally. I have finally found who I want to be, Sensei.”

“Hah! You’re nothing but a filthy murder weapon!!”

When the weapons clashed, the violent chainsaw blade bent along with the guide for the chain. The chain could never rotate now.

That threat had been removed.

“Oh? The android turns on her own creator? I thought you were no more than a toy, but you are brimming with romance, Ladybird-kun. And you are motivated by good, so you are not just a rampaging monster. I give you a perfect score for this.”

The golden retriever up on the catwalk sounded somehow impressed.

These were the words of a researcher who viewed the world from an angle other than ordinary ethics.

“So many people died because they were all at the mercy of ''a power too great for them to handle''. This is the sort of reward the villains who met their ends on the 25th so desperately needed.”

But Kihara Hasuu didn’t bother responding to the fellow Kihara’s semiserious words.

He was preoccupied.

“How are you still functioning ''so well''?”

His voice carried a confused anger.

He had acquired his artificial ghost existence as a new toy to play with, but now he shouted enviously at the old toy he had thrown out.

He held onto the broken chainsaw and the roar of its engine distorted into something like a human voice.

“You fully ceased to function here on the 25th!! Even if an amateur somehow managed to get you running again temporarily, it couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds at the most. Not to mention that you must consume human brains. So how are you moving so nimbly!? This exceeds the limits of my specs for you!!”

“''Does it now''?”

That plain answer came from Ladybird’s mouth, but the voice was not hers. This was a grown woman speaking in English.

She had been connected to someone else.

This was the genius woman named Melzabeth Grocery.

“It’s true her cellulose nanofiber brain would grow abnormally quickly, exceed the capacity of her artificial skull, and collapse in on itself. And I can see how a constant supply of human brains would trigger the rejection needed to disconnect it and keep its size down. But you could avoid all of that if you didn’t use cellulose nanofibers in the first place.”

“What?”

“Ever heard of the Logistic Hornet system? I designed it, R&C Occultics made it their toy, and now its mobile bases are floating in the oceans around the world. But there was one piece of equipment inside those 5000m containers we never ended up using: fully autonomous optical neurocomputers codenamed Secret. In other words, they’re massive computers ''designed to mimic the structure of the human brain''.”

Ladybird had once cursed the fact that she was an incomplete machine. She had cursed her very existence as something that needed to kill espers and extract their brains.

But there were paths to salvation open only to machines.

“They’re too big to fit in someone’s skull and maybe they can’t use those Academy City esper powers…but they also don’t require any of that cruelty. Simply linking her head to a big enough computer with a wireless network is enough to free her from her malfunctions, from the fear of death, and from needing to commit any more crimes. The only problem is ''the idea never occurred to you.'' You were so eager to leap at the immediate profit and indulge in the ironic cruelty that you failed to notice you had wandered into a dead end with no solution.”

There was scorn in her voice.

Melzabeth Grocery was a mother. Her daughter might even be with her at the moment. And that was why she could never forgive this man’s actions. Ladybird had looked up to her creator, but he had answered his ''daughter''’s adoration with mockery and abuse.

So Melzabeth did not hesitate to speak the words she knew would tear into a skilled researcher’s heart more painfully than any other.

“Kihara Hasuu. You’re not as smart as you think you are.”

===Part 11===

What was he feeling in that moment?

Maybe only a Kihara would know. It was possible not even another Kihara could have understood.

“No.”

The old man’s outlines blurred.

Something about his incorporeal form had visibly changed.

“No! You are not a Kihara or even from Academy City. A wannabe-scientist like you does not get to talk to me like this. Yes, I get it now. I don’t need eternal life. Forget about the earth’s core. I will reject your theory, your thesis, and your way of life!! I will take everything from you and tear it all down to reject it for all time!!!!!!”

“''Is that so? Kee hee hee. Then I’ll be taking cute Risako-chan from you.''”

Something was taken from Kihara Hasuu with a sparking sound.

It looked so easy.

“What?”

Did that exclamation of surprise come from Kamijou Touma or Hamazura Shiage?

A new form floated up at the colosseum-like space’s tall, tall ceiling – a place everyone could see but no one could reach.

The “cocoon” surrounding the unconscious little girl was sliced through to extract her. She wore gym clothes a lot like Sodate’s.

Risako’s limp form was held in the arms of another girl.

But this one was very different. She seemed even more vaguely defined than an artificial ghost as she descended to the floor as weightlessly as a cotton ball or a leaf.

The slender silhouette of a girl had wings and a tail reminiscent of marine creatures. No mention of this hidden being could be found in the texts of any mythology or religion.

“A demon?” groaned Kihara Hasuu. “A real demon!?”

“What? You’re how old and you still don’t know your demons? I’m Qliphah Puzzle 545, a UK-made fake. Oh, and don’t you dare claim this came out of nowhere. Really, you’re the one that decided to intrude on ''the peaceful city that boy wants to protect''.”

Someone else was doing everything they could to protect a complete stranger.

The new head of the city was even reaching beyond the bounds of science.

But Kihara Hasuu couldn’t even try to take back Risako after she was laid down on the cold floor.

Kamijou Touma and Hamazura Shiage passed the demon on either side, taking a step toward the distorted collection of electricity.

Their limits didn’t matter. They had both been close to death before they even arrived.

“Hah. I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Same. But I do know that buying some time by delaying him here is all we need to save Risako!!”

The two boys wiped blood from their cheeks and mouths with no idea if they could really win or even survive this.

''They had no idea what was going on,'' but they still grabbed a coil of plastic rope to protect their fist or lifted a wooden hammer in both hands before approaching. Even Kihara Hasuu had to hesitate when he saw that. They weren’t afraid of all his electricity. They would try whatever it took to break down his silhouette. There was even a belligerent light of hope in their eyes.

Frillsand #G had used the logic of a ghost photo or a curse, keeping her distance from her enemy and overwhelming them with a great army.

She was still doing that now.

The demon girl showed off her ratty dress made of English newspapers held together by tape.

The articles began to wriggle and change.

The demon spread her arms to display the text personalized for Risako.

Almost like there was no reason to hide any of it even with the girl’s eyes still closed.

“Demons like me are sensitive to people’s desires. And I’m the Qliphah Puzzle 545 who used the mood of war to confuse the people of an entire country, so the dark parts of people lives are like my backyard. If I want to know the history of my target, I just have to take a look at my dress’s articles.”

If his chainsaw was still working, Kihara Hasuu would have attacked the demon girl’s back. He was especially fond of the kind of malice that overturned scenes like this.

But the chainsaw was bent and broken. The roaring of the engine did nothing to turn the chain covered in short teeth.

And the racing swimsuit girl who had broken the weapon stood in his way. Almost like she was moving between him and the reckless Level 0s.

Ladybird wanted to protect the children from the city’s cruelty.

She must have seen those bloody brawlers as two of those children.

That android had been born from the infamous Kihara family, but she had found who she wanted to be and was taking her first step in that direction.

He was a collection of electrical energy using High Voltage Cutting, but Ladybird was not an ordinary human. No matter how much of her body was destroyed, she would continue to carry out her objective without batting an eye. Because she understood the strength of being an android.

“I won’t let you.” That manifestation of malice clenched his teeth, groaned, and roared. “Risako-kun said she doesn’t want to hurt ‘Sodate-chan’ or ‘the ghost lady’. But! She has yet to say how she does intend to stand up to this cruel world!! She has simply stopped thinking. Once she is finally forced to reach an answer, she will say she wants the power to fight and to kill so she can protect her loved ones!!”

“Are you sure about that?”

The gym clothes girl’s shoulders jumped.

Her eyes were still closed, but for some reason, those words reached her.

The newspaper articles surrounding Qliphah Puzzle 545 may not have really meant anything. Everyone probably saw something different, like with a Rorschach test. The words were changing like a living creature in front of Risako.

“I’m a demon, so I can see your desires. But I’ll ask the question anyway.” Qliphah Puzzle 545 moved her face toward Risako’s, her smile growing. “Refusing to think about it wasn’t enough to push back Kihara Hasuu. That’s why you lost to that mean old man in the end. So let’s keep going from there. Instead of hesitating and putting it off, it’s time to reject his answer with an answer of your own. Show him there’s an answer other than asking for the power to fight.”

A whisper designed to speak directly to people’s desires sank deep into Risako’s hardened heart. Even though emotionally rejecting a logically sound argument should have felt horribly violent to her and caused her to harden her heart further.

“No one wants other people to suffer because of their own weakness, so they seek out strength by any means necessary. It’s a fine thing to want, but can you really achieve it by shutting your heart up tight, clouding your vision, and swinging a blade just because someone tells you to?”

No, that was the wrong way of looking at it.

The term “desires” could make it sound like they were talking about something emotional.

But there were plenty of logical desires. This was most readily apparent in the financial world where people’s interests could be mathematically calculated. Sports medicine and biomechanics, where scientist in lab coats spoke of the human body in numerical terms, was rooted in the same word. People wanted to win first place. What was that if not a desire?

And what was it Risako had said in the illusion shown by Frillsand #G?

She wanted to conquer her weakness and become strong, no matter what it took. It was a flimsy logic, lacking quite a bit, but it mattered that Risako had been thinking of strength ''as a numerical thing that could grow and existed in a hierarchy.''

It looked at first like she was rejecting Kihara Hasuu’s idea, but she could not fully reject it. Because if she did have the #1’s vector control, she could have changed how Handcuffs ended. She could have saved those people. That much was certain.

People were free to think Vivana Oniguma and Drencher Kihara Repatri wouldn’t have wanted to see her like that.

But she was the one who had watched them die, so there was a part of her that wished she had a more obvious sort of power. She had managed to hold that part of her in check and reject Kihara Hasuu’s tempting words, but she had not been able to rid herself of that part.

And.

Since she wanted to measure things with a numerical hierarchy, there was room for desire there.

One’s instincts and reason did not always need to be in conflict. In fact, your mind would fall out of balance if one or the other ceased to function. That would be like using hypnotism to reduce activity in the brain’s dorsal anterior cingulate cortex to get someone to obey any command without question or resistance.

“But what you really desire isn’t a number.”

That was Qliphah Puzzle 545’s greatest weapon and only opening, but she rejected it herself.

Think about it rationally. Wanting to feel good and wanting to make others happy were both examples of shameful desires.

In that case, wasn’t this odd?

What desire would be met by relying on this Kihara and picking up that heavy chainsaw?

What part of the human heart was satisfied by a power that could only maim and kill?

If the girl could not answer those questions herself, then something was seriously wrong there.

“I get that you want power. But is the power you want a lonely thing that hurts and pushes away everyone who talks back to you? Of course not. What did you think when you saw Kihara Noukan, when you saw Vivana Oniguma, when you saw Drencher Kihara Repatri, and when you saw Hamazura Shiage!? Did you want to cause even more bloodshed in a world where only you could survive? Of course not. You wouldn’t find any peace in a boring argument over who’s the strongest or in showing off your specs. Your true desire has to be somewhere else!!”

The demon girl pressed her forehead against the other girl’s forehead and shouted at point-blank range.

“So tell us, Risako!! Remember what your original desire was!!!!!!”

Without a sound, the young girl slowly opened her eyes.

“I want…to be strong.”

There was a tremor in her voice, but it definitely filled the people gathered here with strength.

“But I don’t want a strength that hurts people.”

Maybe it didn’t really mean anything. Maybe it had nothing to do with their actual abilities.

But there was a real strength in her voice.

Her clouded eyes cleared up and her hardened heart opened.

This wasn’t Imagine Breaker or Accelerator, but the strength the demon had inspired in that small heart – that young desire – left no room for any malice!!

“I want the gentle kind of strength that puts a smile on the ghost lady and Sodate-chan’s faces and lets everyone draw on 120% of their strength when we’re in trouble.”

===Part 12===

With a deep rumble, Kihara Hasuu was suddenly launched somewhere. Someone from a certain world might have called it a different phase. The people who had long lived in the deepest parts of Academy City might have called it the Imaginary Number District.

Either way, he had been cut away from the ordinary world while standing right alongside the others.

Had it only happened because he had left the confines of humanity, or had he been swallowed whole by the fluctuations caused by toying with the unstable Taboo?

Qliphah Puzzle 545 stood in that lonely world. The only other inhuman being was the only other person here.

“No.”

Kihara Hasuu himself had to be the most surprised.

First, a demon had suddenly shown up and rescued Risako, the only one capable of keeping Frillsand #G, the original owner of the Taboo, wandering up on the surface, and now his fortress was collapsing.

His logic was in tatters and the young girl’s emotions had rejected him.

He himself had said he had reproduced his mind based on Frillsand #G but several of the details differed. He said if he linked himself to the earth’s core, he could leave the Taboo without being destroyed and frying the city. He said he could avoid destroying all of the lab equipment he might want to use with his newfound immortality. So he had used Risako to stop Frillsand #G from interfering.

An important fact was hidden in all that.

He did not have complete control over himself. Once Risako was taken from him, he could not stop her from summoning Frillsand #G to forever interfere with his plans. Once that happened, he could never again restrain her and incorporate her into those plans.

His territory had always been this place deep underground. In fact, he had failed to develop a method of escaping the Imaginary Number District. The demon girl slowly approached the trapped ghost.

She was a higher-level spiritual being than him.

But more than that…

“N-no…”

He shook his head, forgetting all about the fear of being annihilated.

He was brimming with rage over something that made no sense to him.

He was still a scientist, so he could not let this slide.

“I did not implant her with a false desire!! The chainsaw, the bloodshed, the deadly force – that really was the kind of strength Risako-kun wanted. That’s what gave me an opening in the first place!! So what is this about making people smile? How did she reach that false answer!?”

“Kee hee hee. Yeah, I guess I shouldn’t expect much more from ''a mere ghost''.” The demon laughed. The being who had twisted the girl’s answer grabbed her newspaper skirt and curtsied. “FYI: humans have more than one desire. Their one heart contains several desires, both large and small. It’s kind of like a bunch of grapes, really. They’re always in conflict and whichever one wins guides their actions in the end. A part of Risako did want to protect her loved ones even if it meant cutting down the villain attacking them. But so what? Another part of her wanted to reject any and all violence. Just like a part of you might want to wear pants today, but another part might want to wear a skirt.”

“You mean you tricked her, you…you demon?”

“Maybe this was too complicated for you sciency types who get all whiny when something doesn’t have a single clear answer. But keep in mind that I’m the demon who controls the mood of war. Demons are experts at twisting people’s desires ''to trick them into thinking a specific desire will bring them happiness'', right?”

That was why god would never forgive the devil no matter how many smiles he created.

God just could not bear to watch the people smiling happily while clutching the leaves they thought were money.

“Also.”

“?”

“Now that Risako has rejected you and your plan to mess with the core is stalled, you’re basically already defeated. But do you really think ''she'' is going to leave that kind of loose end unresolved? Now that the original owner of the unstable Taboo has regained control, that scary young lady will be coming for you.”

Kihara Hasuu looked to his surroundings. He knew exactly who his enemy was this time: Frillsand #G. She wanted Risako’s safe return more than anything and had been doing everything she could to attack the Taboo from the outside.

With that protection gone and his fortress walls breached, he could easily imagine what would be rushing toward him.

(This isn’t a problem.)

After dying once, he knew the fear of annihilation.

You were hit with a sense of loss very different from mere pain. And it wasn’t even the lower-level animalistic instincts that provide a fear of losing blood, an inability to endure suffering, or a rejection of losing your life.

''He couldn’t continue his research.

''The ideas he carried inside would vanish into the ether, never to be realized.

What greater fear was there? He refused to again feel the great loss of knowing he could never enjoy the greatest entertainment there was.

The fear at the very core of his being squeezed at his heart once more.

And in a way, fear had a way of fanning the flames of people’s fighting spirit.

So he would take this as seriously as possible.

(Frillsand #G and I are both artificial ghosts, so it will not end immediately! And if the conditions are right, I can stop her without using Risako-kun. For example…yes, Sodate-kun is in a similar situation, so if I drive him to the edge and place him up on the ceiling instead…!!)

He may indeed have had the perfect plan for fighting Frillsand #G.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had evaded him thus far, but if he intentionally summoned Frillsand #G here and got that demon caught in the middle of the artificial ghost battle, he might be able to use the resulting confusion to buy himself some time. Sure, he would break apart and fry the city or the entire world if he left the Taboo, but Frillsand #G might not be able to take back complete control of the endlessly-expanding Taboo right away. If he bought enough time, he could use the magnetosphere to link himself to the massive dynamo in the earth’s core and take control of it for himself. Then he could leave the Taboo and travel anywhere in the world.

That plan was wiped from his mind by what happened next.

Several radiant objects pierced through his back and out from his chest.

They were logs with the ends sharpened like pencils. They were bound by rope in a crisscrossing pattern to create what was originally used as a brutal fence. They pierced the ghost’s body and tore apart the wreckage of the chainsaw he still held. Rainbow flames flickered from his wounds, perhaps due to interference from the soot created as the logs burned.

This was a yarai.

Instead of a weapon, it was actually used by ''torture and execution experts'' to surround an execution ground.

One had even made an appearance on the 25th. It had been used by a hakama girl with long curly silver hair who had sacrificed her life to save an unfamiliar child and some unexpected companions.

Kihara Hasuu muttered in utter shock.

[[Image:GT_Index_v05_BW10.jpg|thumb]]

“An…”

He ignored the pain.

The surprise won out. He had never known the simple act of turning his head to look behind him could be so supremely difficult.

Had the decision to fight for a stranger finally summoned a being like this?

Was he finally that close to death?

“''An angel''?”

The girl wore the blazer uniform of some school or another.

The girl had long hair with one thin stand worn up on the side.

The girl was known for her timid glasses and her large chest.

Her name was Kazakiri Hyouka.

This was not Vivana Oniguma, the actual owner of the yarai.

Because no matter how much anyone might want it, the dead could not be brought back.

Because the real world was not that convenient.

But someone had watched the 25th from the background, picked up on that girl’s feelings, and stood up to deliver the finishing blow in her place.

Kihara Hasuu’s ignorance of this girl proved just how low-level a Kihara he was.

The demon grinned.

“It’s true Frillsand #G might take back control of the Taboo, ''but I never said she was the scary young lady.'' I mean, have you forgotten that you already defeated and neutralized her back during Handcuffs? Hee hee. Whether she takes back control or not, she can’t defeat you.”

So she had instead relied on the girl who knew the Taboo better than anyone and called the Imaginary Number District her home.

In a clash against more malice, Kihara Hasuu may have survived.

That had nothing to do with logic or skill. On an instinctual or conceptual level, a Kihara’s evil may have been enough to survive an attack from a demon or ghost.

But this was different.

Kazakiri Hyouka was a collection of the AIM diffusion fields produced by the city’s people. She could be seen as the collective will of Academy City and she had given a clear answer to this evil: ''Go away. We don’t want you here.

“An artificial angel feels like cheating to me. And she’s really strong now that it’s all gone public and she can directly ask the Sisters for permission to place a burden on them. Hmm, but she’s apparently the type to worry over things all on her own, so if you’d never turned yourself into a ghost, maybe you wouldn’t have had to encounter this kind of terror. Oh, and don’t you dare claim this came out of nowhere.”

The demon smiled thinly at the twisted ghost as he vanished.

That endlessly cruel expression was the perfect last sight for such an evil man. There was no promise of salvation in that smile.

“She’s been here in Academy City from the very beginning. Really, you’re the one who doesn’t belong after deciding to intrude on the peaceful city that boy wants to protect☆”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:Virtual-On SS

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==A Certain Magical Virtual-On: Vooster’s Cup, The Day Before==

[[Image:Index_VO_SS1_Cover.jpg|thumb]]

“Kamijou-san, Index-san, this way, this way.”

At a time when school was out but the sky was still blue, a clear girl’s voice rang out in a corner of Academy City’s District 7. She must not have been the type to raise her voice much because you could tell she was making an effort to speak loudly. Her voice contained a strange power that kept it from being drowned out by the surrounding hustle and bustle.

The monument commemorating the opening of the subway station was commonly used as a meet-up point, but it had been swapped out for a bronze statue of Temjin for a limited time. That caused some brief confusion.

A blonde girl wearing a white blouse, a frilly miniskirt, and a dark blue vest was hopping up and down and waving both hands in the station plaza. It was cute, but she could have been a little more conscious about the length of her skirt. She had the unique silhouette of a ballerina or figure-skater, yet she was perfectly approachable. She was a strange girl with the atmosphere of a small animal.

Her name was Furashina Ririn.

Just like with Kazakiri Hyouka, an aggregation of the city’s AIM diffusion fields, Index had a habit of befriending the strangest people.

The spiky-haired high school boy named Kamijou Touma jogged over to her.

“Ohh, Furashina. …You really are here.”

“Why would I stand you up when I was the one that invited you?”

Furashina Ririn placed a hand over her mouth and laughed quietly, but that was not what Kamijou had meant. They had communicated a bit via portable devices since ''that incident'', but they had not met in person.

Doubt had gnawed at the back of his mind.

What if she only existed in the data?

He could not help but wonder after just how unrealistically ''that incident'' had ended.

Index, a silver-haired girl in a nun’s habit colored white and gold like a fancy teacup, spoke with a calico cat on her head.

“Ririn, what are we going to do today?”

“Well, I would rather not discuss this on our feet, so let me show you to somewhere we can take a seat.”

From the moment she had asked to meet them here, it had been obvious Furashina Ririn had some kind of plan. Kamijou decided to go along with it. Since they did not board a train or bus, their destination had to be in District 7.

They walked along the road together.

Everyone did that, but it seemed incredibly valuable right now.

80% of Academy City’s population was some kind of student, so morning and afterschool were the main rush hours. A crowd of many types of people had formed below the slowly-turning wind turbines. The crowd would look different depending on whether elementary school, middle school, high school, or college just let out, but this was the time when the crowd was changing from elementary to middle school.

Some men in work jumpsuits were swapping out a billboard in front of the station. Kamijou watched a group of elementary schoolers with portable devices strapped to their backpacks walking below the shocking pink Fei-Yen on the billboard.

“Oh, yeah. You’ve settled on a name, haven’t you?”

“Yes. It will be called the Vooster’s Cup. I thought using the tournament’s name itself would help get people accustomed to the new rules and regulations. And there was no plan to auction off the naming rights to a major corporation.”

Furashina sounded casual enough, but she was apparently good at reading the flow of people. She took short steps like a baby chick, but she slipped smoothly through the smallest gaps in the crowd, so Kamijou would have been left behind if he had not kept a careful eye on her blue back.

“Dammit, and when I was trying to be sentimental too! This is when we’re supposed to walk slowly while remembering everything that happened! You’re acting too natural here!!”

“W-wait, Ririn!” shouted Index.

“?”

The spiky-haired boy managed to catch up when the crosswalk light turned red and he finally arrived by her side while holding Index’s hand so she did not get separated too.

“Doesn’t that frilly clothing cause problems? I’m surprised people’s bags and stuff aren’t catching on it in this crowd.”

“Eh heh heh. Kamijou-san, you would understand if you tried wearing a skirt. Girls are always aware of their surroundings while walking around.”

…That seemed at odds with how the gust of wind from a passing Garayaka ''itasha'' blew her miniskirt dangerously high, but Kamijou decided it was safer not to point that out. It was said that fires and fights were the flowers of Edo and Kamijou was the type to dump a bucket of water over his head and rush to the scene as soon as something happened, but he was not suicidal. Did he want to be bitten to death by Index? No, he did not.

The crosswalk light turned green.

While nearly losing sight of her a few more times, he somehow managed to keep up with Furashina as they left the main road. Areas of perpetual shade were another side of District 7. If he lost sight of her swaying blonde hair and her small butt, he would have been left behind in a strange dungeon made of concrete and asphalt.

“Wahp!?”

“Pant, pant. Okay, Furashina just tripped over nothing at all, so we won’t be stranded here. Let’s use this to catch up, Index!”

Like someone who had spotted a desert oasis, Kamijou gathered his last few ounces of strength and rushed over. There, he found Furashina lying flat on her face with her arms held out forward. She finally managed to raise her head and pout her lips.

“U-uuh. And I was hoping to make myself look good today…”

“Yes, that was a real disaster, but just get up, Furashina. I can see everything.”

“!? Y-you saw my true face…?”

“If you have time to cover that half of your face, I think you should really do something about your short skirt. You were really dedicated to the ‘blue with white frills’ look, weren’t you!? And didn’t you just say girls are always aware of their surroundings!?”

This would take a turn for the worse if Index saw, so he quickly patted her butt to pull her skirt down. Index had a perfect memory, so any points lost with her would not be coming back any time soon! Despite the confusion, the calico cat calmly hopped down from the nun’s head and rubbed himself against the damp wall to mark his territory. He was trying to win the territorial fight of feline society.

“How much further, Ririn?” asked Index.

“W-we’re almost there.”

That was what she said.

And yet once she got up and resumed walking, they nearly lost sight of her two or three more times. They nearly lost her when she tripped again, her panties were visible again, and Index bit Kamijou on the back of the head. But that was when she turned back toward them.

“Oh, this is the place. Hm? What’s the matter?”

“Pant, pant… Let’s take her to the supermarket during a limited-time-only sale sometime. Or to the fight over ''fukubukuro'' during New Year’s. She would be unstoppable there…”

They had arrived at a small shop in a back alley.

Not only did the small path get little sunlight, but the shop’s entrance was to the north. That reminded them of something.

Index tilted her head.

“Are they intentionally avoiding the sunlight? Ririn, does this place sell old books?”

“Something similar. Now, come in.”

When Furashina smiled and opened the cheap plywood door, a soft and muffled bell rang. …For a complete commoner like Kamijou, not being able to see inside the store from outside was a bit frightening, but it seemed to be a familiar safe zone for Furashina.

Kamijou hesitantly peered inside, worried it was the kind of intellectual place where mathematicians sat around discussing sines, cosines, and tangents.

“Huh? Is this a café? But…”

“There are lots of toys!!”

Index excitedly rushed inside.

It felt like a place that took good care of its wood. It was not that large a place, but the layout and color scheme made it feel oddly spacious. There were few counter seats, but there were a lot of square 4-person tables instead. And in another odd choice, there were no partitions between the tables. They must have known there would be no sunlight because the space was dimly lit by gentle indirect lighting as if from a fireplace. They had probably adjusted the wavelength or something to not damage their “products”, but Kamijou did not need to remember any of that since there would be no battle this time. The entire space contained a scent similar to old paper, but it was completely different from that of a used bookstore.

And Kamijou had a question.

“Do they allow cats in here?”

“It shouldn’t be a problem. Their policy is to never reject a customer.”

Plus, they had already gone inside.

The most noticeable trait was the one Index had shouted about before. Thick books, colorful dice, wood-carved game pieces, and analog calculators that would look at home with a typewriter or an old cash register were contained in what looked like a bookstore’s picture book section or the special glass cases in seal stores that showed off some samples on a rotating pillar. Just like the tables, the glass cases were lined up at set intervals and gave the entire place an odd atmosphere.

“This is a specialty store for TRPGs. Oh, and that means tabletop role-playing games.”

“I’ve heard of them, but that’s all…”

RPGs were usually a type of video game, but Kamijou had heard from Tsukuyomi Komoe that RPGs which used paper, pencils, and dice had existed before home computers were common. But when he had asked that 135cm teacher how old she was, she had teared up and cutely hit him with her fists.

Furashina Ririn showed them to a random table and sat down while flattening out the butt of her miniskirt to make sure it did not get wrinkled.

When Kamijou sat down too, he found the cushion to be softer than expected.

He was not quite sure what a TRPG was, but he began wondering if they took a long time to play.

“This store apparently started out selling imported German board games, but they have since expanded to things like TRPG starter manuals and TCGs – trading card games.”

“Magic cabals use these things too! Board games and doll houses are convenient to explain ritual magic before actually setting the real stage!!”

“What does that matter, Index?”

When his life was not on the line, Kamijou did not need to burn the details of magic into his neurons. …''Or do I?'' he worried as he let those facts slip by him. It was similar to the feeling of regret when you left the bookstore and realized you should have bought that manga volume after all. Whenever that happened, you would always have trouble finding it when you went back later.

They were likely premade, but the elderly manager carried over some ice water and a small naporitan as an appetizer. People could be picky about their pasta being al dente or whatever, but there were people who insisted that the Japanese-born naporitan was actually best when the noodles were a little soggy.

Kamijou summed up what he had learned.

“So this place is like an analog game version of a book café?”

“It is a TRPG version. You can play any of those options for free. And as long as they have a copy in stock, you can even buy the game to bring home with you.”

“Just like with smartphone manga, the whole system gets confusing when the basic version is free. Maybe this is just the way of the future…”

The lack of partitions between tables was apparently so everyone could gather around and watch a game in progress. It may have been similar to the multiplayer games in an arcade.

While the calico cat sat at their feet devouring some mincemeat boiled in water and with the oil removed, Kamijou glanced toward the retro manuals and game mats lined up by the wall.

“Can we really use these? Do you call it premium? Or vintage? Regardless, these look like valuable antiques, so I don’t like the idea of using them while we eat. I can’t pay if I spill something on them.”

“Slurp, slurp.”

“Wait, Index!! You’re British, so why are ''you'' the one slurping up the noodles!? This…this is naporitan! You can’t be that careless with the great demon king that reigns alongside curry udon!!!!!!”

He may have gone too far in teaching her how to eat the commoner’s food of soba.

But perhaps because she wore a white habit on a daily basis, Index could eat or drink any kind of food in a hurry without getting any of it on her clothes. It was not really something she could brag about, but Kamijou felt like her technique was so impressive that uploading it to a video site would get her treated like some kind of expert.

Furashina spread out a paper napkin on her lap and giggled.

“The ones used at the tables are like the sample cellphones at the front of a store, so don’t worry. You’re meant to enjoy playing the games without worrying about damaging or staining them. With analog games, the first challenge is gathering enough people to play, so it is not unusual for specialty shops to have play spaces like this. Whether a game is fun or not is what really matters, so demonstrating how fun they are is more important than design or price when it comes to getting sales.”

“Is that how it works?”

“Webcams are common these days, so it is almost always possible to gather players if you really want to. Even if it means rolling the dice through a screen. This kind of thing may be more of a psychological restraint.”

“Munch, munch. Huh? The food’s already gone.”

Index had devoured her small plate of pasta, so Furashina spoke quietly to place an order with the manager without ever opening the small notepad of a menu.

“Oh, you’re fine with my recommended drink, I hope?”

“Does this monster look like she’s even remotely picky?”

Since Furashina’s small animal aura had receded and her shoulders were much more relaxed, she apparently visited here a lot.

Kamijou was relieved to see it.

''That incident'' had been resolved, but that had not been the end. Life went on, so there was more to the story. Furashina Ririn would have been tossed into Academy City without any idea what to do, but she had apparently figured out how to make a place for herself.

Tea and coffee took time to make when done right, yet the manager was back quite soon. But Kamijou doubted he had this premade too.

And Kamijou looked surprised when he saw what was carried to them.

“Huh? Cocoa?”

“It is hot chocolate. This is my recommendation. They stock cacao as a secret flavor, but they don’t normally serve it as its own drink. You could call it part of a secret menu.”

Furashina smiled gently and explained while lifting the mug with both hands.

This may have used different oils and sugar than normal cocoa.

Kamijou did not know much about the varieties and brands of chocolate, but there had to be a lot to it if a professional café had prepared it.

Kamijou took a sip.

“Hmm, it just tastes like cocoa to me.”

“I said it’s hot chocolate, didn’t I?”

Furashina may have been the kind of person that got angry if you referred to pancakes as hotcakes.

“Ririn, coffee jelly was the most you could drink, right?”

“Wha-!? That’s not why! This is an adult luxury…!”

Furashina panicked, so was this “secret menu item” actually something the manager had whipped up because she could not drink the normal tea or coffee?

The sweet drink left them wanting food. But it was not that Kamijou and Furashina were slow. Index’s starting dash had simply been nonsensical. He and Furashina finally started on their small plates of pasta.

“Do you come here often?”

“Yes, I practically live here, so I even wanted to work here if I could. But I have no way of proving my age and I don’t have an Academy City ID, so that was off limits.”

“Eh?”

“Eh?”

Mugs in hand, Kamijou and Index spoke up in unison.

They had realized that the white nun’s age was similarly unknown, she had no Academy City ID, she did not attend school, and she simply lived in Kamijou’s dorm, eating food and lazing around.

And Furashina seemed to only now realize that space was available.

“What? Wait… That was an option!? Why didn’t you say so!? I wouldn’t have had to work so hard finding somewhere to sleep!!”

“That last part has me worried! Where have you been spending the night until now!? You haven’t been buried in the garbage bags at a park again, have you!?”

“…”

“Touma, what do you make of Ririn’s silence?”

The way she immediately clammed up could not have been more worrying, but a look at her hair and clothes was enough to know she was not actually living under a bridge or in the station plaza. Kamijou could only pray there was no deep meaning to the fact that she had not invited them to her home.

Furashina seemed to intentionally construct a dividing line within herself.

“Ahem. I used this shop while building up a new Virtual-On after the ''previous incident''. In that way, you can think of it as my second home.”

“Hm? You made that cutting-edge VR game in this retro place?”

Virtual-On had been rereleased as a free game and both Kamijou and Index had already downloaded it. Some functions, like the Material Analyze, had been removed, but it had grown quite popular as an even more addictive game than before.

That seemed like the polar opposite of these analog games that used dice and pencils…

“It’s pretty unusual for that digital disaster Index to touch anything electronic without fear.”

“It’s even more unusual for Mr. No Hobbies to make time for just having fun.”

“That’s because you never help with the housework!!”

“Don’t say that!!”

Kamijou and Index started grappling. It was interesting how what sounded the world like an argument never developed into a normal argument.

A few different dice sat in the center of the square table along with the salt and pepper shakers. They were made of translucent glass, so if you failed to notice the numbers carved into each face, you might confuse them for interior decoration.

Furashina’s slender fingertips grabbed a 10-sided dice – numbered from 1 to 10 – which was an unusual sight for the Japanese.

“Ones numbered from 0 to 9 might be more common,” she said. “But the entirety of a game is contained in here.”

“?”

Their grappling had just about stripped away the habit held together by no more than safety pins and the white monster’s maw was beginning to widen, but the hero and dragon focused on Furashina instead.

“Of course, that isn’t to say the outcome of the dice is everything.” She lightly rolled the oddly-shaped die in her soft-looking palm. “Analog dice and dice reproduced in a digital space do not actually produce identical results. …This one has the number carved into it instead of simply painted on. That creates a difference in weight, changing the results from a digital die that uses the pure random probability.”

“Hmm. Is that how it works?”

Kamijou gave a noncommittal response because he did not really get her point.

Then the elderly manager carried out some more food. Despite the chic atmosphere of the shop, it was a pile of thick sandwiches. They may have been what were commonly known as club sandwiches. Three slices of bread had plenty of ingredients placed between them, so there was a lot of thinly-sliced boiled egg, tomato, fried chicken, and more. This really was not the kind of place a pretentious person could use to pass the time with an English newspaper in one hand. It looked perfect, but the details were overpowering.

“Munch, munch, chomp, chomp!!”

“W-watch out! She’s already making her attack! If not for the chaff and flares, would that have happened to my head…!?”

With her maw opened wide, Index shifted her aim from Kamijou’s head to the sandwiches.

Kamijou recalled hearing the theory that these had been developed so people could eat without getting their fingers dirty when playing cards. Did that mean the shop also had ''tekka maki'' on the menu?

Kamijou was not suicidal enough to interfere. He sipped at his cocoa…no, hot chocolate, but he felt like he was finally starting to appreciate it. It had cooled with time, but it still tasted good. Whatever the food or drink, the best ones kept their flavor when the Hot-Hot Magic wore off.

“So what does that die have to do with Virtual-On?”

Furashina smiled a bit at that and tossed the glass die onto the table. Her one visible eye followed it as it noisily rolled along the table, avoiding the large plate of sandwiches.

“The theory alone is simple enough, but perfectly recreating this is no easy task. There is so much more you have to calculate: the difference in center of gravity based on the grooves on each face, the friction with your hand, and so on. For example, even fictional video game worlds have gravity. Have you ever found yourself oddly irritated by an action game even though the graphics and sound were not bad? That might be because the unseen physics calculations are not set up properly.”

Furashina Ririn paused there.

The die had stopped on 5. It was neither a good nor a bad result for a 10-sided die numbered from 1 to 10.

“The problem here is that perfectly recreating the real world’s laws of physics does not necessarily make a fun game.”

She poked at the die with her slender fingertip.

The extra force gave it one more roll that conveniently placed the 10 face on top.

“The entertainment business throws around the word ‘realism’ like it’s an ''inro'' from a ''jidaigeki'', but they must never forget that realism is only useful when it is used to make the product more entertaining. When you run, jump, and slide for the transition, you want to feel a rhythm that makes pulling a single lever a lot of fun. Before worrying about the polygon density or number of vertices, you need the fictional equations for what you can call the ‘meta physics calculations’. Of course, to make a world that is more fun than the real world, you need to perfectly recreate the gravity and fluid dynamics of the real world and then tweak the parameters from there.”

“Uhhh, uweh?”

Index seemed confused by all of this. It was rare for that incarnation of hunger to freeze in place while holding a sandwich.

Kamijou gave the frozen nun a sidelong glance before responding.

“Oh? The laws of physics for a fictional game, huh? That sounds like a lot of wor-…”

“Oh, it really is! But it’s the most fun part! You’re not just creating a bunch of code and flowcharts! You’re creating an entire world!! It’s easy to forget, but the most important part is the ‘sliding’ calculations. When you take an action like swinging a sword or firing a gun, players feel more like they actually did something when there’s a follow-through motion or recoil that causes the character to freeze and leave their control! It might seem like it would be best to increase freedom and never take control away from the player, but it’s quite the opposite! The lack of freedom between periods of freedom is what gives the player a real feel for the action they took! This might be confusing, so let me give an example! Yes, how about this!? All the foreign big-budget urban open world games have unfortunately caused a decline in racing games, but let’s focus on them. Now, racing games feature a wide variety of vehicle types: F-1, motorcycles, carts, off-road, streetcars, and even decotora and flying cars. But the most important aspect is not simply using the accelerator and brake! The real fun comes from the curves and steering! The horizontal slipping of the tires is a form of restriction, but how that works is a never-ending problem! Drifting is even used as a selling point on the packages, but the various physics calculations are whittled down in order to turn more realistic drifting into something more extreme that allows you to make clean turns with simple inputs! I focused on that with the sliding known as ‘transitions’ in Virtual-On, so I made sure you could do everything from protect yourself by dodging enemy shots or attack by moving into your opponent’s blind spot with a single action! Woof, woof!!”

The hot chocolate in their mugs had completely lost its steam.

While she clenched her fists and leaned forward, Furashina must have noticed that Kamijou was staring blankly at her small nose instead of focusing on her words because that developer blushed and lowered her butt back into her seat.

She hung her head a bit so her blonde hair hid her flushed cheeks and made a barely audible statement.

“…S-sorry about that. I got too focused on myself.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I could watch your nose whistling like that all day.”

“Y-you don’t have to unwittingly provide a finishing blow with such a bright smile, you know? M-moving on…!”

The whistling had stopped. She had grown a lot shyer suddenly.

Kamijou took some time to work through the mountain of knowledge even if it took him longer than everyone else.

“So to put it simply, it’s easier to make an exciting game out of a beam cannon that aims on its own than a strict handgun that never seems to hit?”

“Y-yes. That said, it comes down to personal taste, so there is no one right answer. You can end up with any number of results by fine-tuning it for the target demographic. Based on my research, Americans generally prefer things to be stricter and more realistic while the Japanese prefer things to be more fun even if that means distorting reality. And there are apparently some cases where the same title has its hidden parameters adjusted when it crosses borders. The urban legends of the American version of a game being brutally hard may come from that difference in how the games ‘feel’.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen some articles on games sites talking about the differences in gaming culture. Like how female characters end up being square-jawed and macho, or why the Japanese love legendary swords so much.”

“Hmm. When the Japanese design them, everyone ends up with such big heads. And there are no wrinkles on their faces, so they look like smooth Martians.”

“Index, you’re not supposed to say that, dammit.”

No one wanted visible laugh lines on the faces and no one was interested in graphics so detailed you could see all the dirt in every pore on the characters’ skin. Please understand this.

Furashina did not seem to take either side here.

“Well, Americans love ninjas and samurai to death, so everyone has their oddities. They don’t seem satisfied with a game world unless someone with a katana can slice through a Vulcan cannon bullet from head on. They must think karate and kendo are types of psychic powers.”

“And the Japanese practically worship magnums.”

“In games, .44 calibers carry a god of destruction inside. Even though a normal assault rifle would have a higher muzzle velocity and has rapid fire.”

Their discussion was losing focus.

Kamijou pushed aside his glass of ice water, which had been supplied separately from the mug of hot cocoa, to make sure the condensation did not drip down onto the die.

“So you were talking about physics calculations, right? If it’s just about things like gravity and friction, couldn’t you have used something other than dice to explain?”

“I mentioned German board games earlier, but these analog games also have differences between Japanese and foreign versions. And TRPGs tend to be more foreign. They were a convenient tool to study what makes a game fun.”

“Hm? I’ll admit karuta and sugoroku get all the focus in Japan, but there’s a lot more than just that!”

As a self-styled highly literate boy, Kamijou wanted to protest this, but a gambling manga would not begin without explaining the rules in advance. Sadly, it might be best to return to the basics. Even with hanafuda or roulette, it was worth going over the rules first.

But even the basics had been improved with time.

It was too simple to think that video games were fun because they were video games. They had become fun after the underlying values were thoroughly adjusted. During the debugging phase, they remained “plain” and playing them was like endlessly chewing flavorless gum. …Although Kamijou only knew about this from Aogami Pierce when he had returned dead-eyed from a labor camp.

But that was not Furashina Ririn’s point as she shook her mug to swirl around the cooled hot chocolate.

“The Virtual-On spread by the Blue Stalker during the ''previous incident'' was based on weapons of war. That was quite well done. You could say they were the perfect tool for enjoying the thrill of murder with none of the guilt. That was why everyone grew so hooked on that unknown experience. Only a few people like Academy City’s #1 had a resistance to that feeling and thus questioned it.”

“…”

The being known as the Blue Stalker had originally lived in a world of war and ruin.

He may not have chosen that out of malice. It may simply have been the first thing that came to mind when trying to figure out what people would find fun and thus play.

That thought made Kamijou incredibly sad.

The aggregation of delusion that had tried to resist the course of ''a completely different'' era had also been bound by that same era.

“When redistributing it as a free game, I of course couldn’t rely on that same thrill. I had to overturn all of those completed equations and build up a new form of fun. The only part I hoped to retain was the idea of it being a sport rather than a war.”

Index left her seat and shouted excitedly that there were some Virtuaroids. As all of you wise people have surely surmised, the large plate of club sandwiches had been fully consumed.

The Virtuaroids were probably game pieces for a board game.

Index spun around one of the glass cases lining the shop like square pillars and grabbed a small figurine. The figurines were about thumb-sized and made of a material halfway between plastic and papier-mache. They were small, but their proportions were not deformed and all the small details were present. They were likely hand-made pieces that did not belong to a specific game. It was obvious who must have made and painted them.

“Neat. They stand up without a pedestal or other support.”

“Look, it’s detailed in here too.”

“Don’t flip Fei-Yen upside down, Index!!”

“My Bal-Rloon is here too!” shouted the nun while ignoring him entirely.

That was not a standard model. It was Index’s original Virtuaroid that was altered to use her Boost Weapon. Only someone who knew her well could have reproduced the details that well.

“Virtuaroids were originally used as weapons of war, so the center of gravity and balancing were fine-tuned from the start. I was the one that made those and it surprised even me.”

Was she impressed or exasperated?

Furashina breathed a gentle sigh.

“Meanwhile, Virtuaroids are materialized from data, so they can simply ignore forces like inertia. That makes them very different from stealth aircraft that end up looking the same no matter what country makes them. That’s why a single jump provides such a unique movement that differs from a long throw of a baseball.”

“Hmm. Well, it is kind of amazing that Dordray and Fei-Yen are in the same category, now that I think about it. Did that take a lot of work?”

“…Yes, a ''lot'' of work…”

A distant look entered her eyes and a low voice escaped her lovely lips. She seemed to be expressing her resentment for the Blue Stalker who had retired ahead of her. This might be the ultimate fate of a programmer who worked until they had withered up like dried squid.

Since she could create Temjin or Cypher by kneading some putty, she may have worked with the Virtuaroids to the point that they showed up in her dreams. If so, she had been working much too hard.

“I had to create a new kind of fun distinct from the original weapons of war, so it was a good opportunity to look into the origins of video games and learn what makes them fun.”

“Oh?”

“Want to try it out? There are plenty of short games that can be played in 5 or 10 minutes and don’t require creating a full character sheet.”

With that, Furashina pulled out one of the paper napkins supplied on the table and spread it out. She drew out a house plan with practiced hand.

Kamijou frowned.

“Hmm? Why are you drawing a diagram? And this looks like it has a shower, bathroom, kitchen, and bed all in the same room. That’s pretty crazy.”

“This is a masterpiece for beginners known as ‘RV’. The players wake up inside an RV and find that a special lock has them trapped inside, so they investigate the RV to find a way to escape. Unlike a fantasy or space opera, there’s no expansive world to learn about and the limited space makes it easy to imagine. All you need to play are two 10-sided dice and enough game pieces for everyone.”

“Hm. Is that how it works?”

“Um, these games require a player known as the GM who keeps the game going, so I will be the GM for-…”

Furashina trailed off when the shop’s manager approached them.

Since there were no other customers, he would apparently take the GM role.

“Ririn, we use these? Then I choose Bal-Rloon!”

Index carried a variety of small game pieces to the square table and Kamijou grabbed the Temjin. It was kind of amusing imagining the Virtuaroids desperately working to escape an RV. Furashina had trouble choosing between Apharmd and Dordray, but then…

“Cypher?”

“It just feels right.”

With that casual response, Furashina picked up Index’s Bal-Rloon instead of her Cypher.

“Now, let’s decide on the initial positioning. Take another player’s piece and place it wherever you like. That is where he or she will wake up.”

“Okay, then I’ll do Touma! …Hmm, I’ll place him outside the RV.”

“Wait, Index! You have no idea what an escape game is, do you!?”

“That is fine. This level of freedom and how the GM responds to a player’s pranks is part of what makes tabletop games so much fun. You can place him on the roof, below the RV, or in New York if you want. However, there is no guarantee that the outside of the RV is safe, so a player on the outside may not be able to return to the danger zone and help the other players.”

“I have a bad feeling about this…!”

At Kamijou’s desperate insistence, Index placed his piece inside the RV. He ended up in the crazy position of waking up in a cross-legged Zen meditation pose right on top of the gas burner, but he did avoid being taken out of the game as soon as it began.

Kamijou placed Furashina’s Cypher in the shower space and Furashina placed Index’s Bal-Rloon on top of the sofa bed.

The blue girl raised one slender finger.

“There is only one rule. This is a role-playing game, so the fun is found in really getting into the role. Do not hold back any ideas that come to mind. Try anything and do whatever you want. A program-controlled game doesn’t allow for that, so it is the best part of a game between people.”

They had to escape the mystery RV.

And with that goal in mind, it was time to begin.

“Yawwwn… Nnn, I sure feel rested. And I’m a bit hungry, so let’s find some food.”

“…Just make yourself at home there, Index. So why won’t the door open? Let’s try grabbing the doorknob.”

When Kamijou approached the stainless steel door, the store manager told him to roll two dice.

He got a 1 and a 1.

“Oh, that is a fumble.”

Right off the bat, a high-voltage current flowed through the doorknob and the Temjin piece was knocked onto its side. Also, the manager rolled up Kamijou’s sleeve and struck his wrist with two fingers.

“Um, what!? If there were punishments, you could have said so!!”

The blow to his right hand may have been a way of syncing him to his character grabbing the doorknob. The old man was thorough and seemed like an expert finger-striker. He was really good at it, so it hurt!!

“What kind of escape game explains the tricks in advance? There are a number of ways to judge a dice roll: even or odd, more or less than the midpoint, doubles or not. The worst result is double 1s, so that’s a fumble where you always fail. The best result here is double 10s, so that’s a critical where you always succeed.”

Furashina smoothly explained it all, but then she made another remark.

“By the way, I drew up the original plan, but the location of the traps was redrawn on a different napkin by the GM when he took over, so I don’t know where they are.”

Furashina apparently could not leave the shower space. The room was as small as a phone booth, but it was locked and could not be opened from the inside or outside.

“Hmm, then maybe the fridge,” said Index. “Drool. I bet there’s a big secret there!”

“There are more important things here, like escaping the RV or rescuing Furashina! And opening the fridge is a bad idea! I bet you’ll find a black mass of hair covered in roaches or something!!
It’ll be the remains of the previous victim that failed to escape!!”

Index ignored Kamijou’s warning and opened the fridge. The GM had her roll two 10-sided dice.

5 and 6. The total was odd.

“Oh. It seems there is some rotten turkey inside.”

“Gwahhh!? This cheese smells like a wet shoe sole!”

The manager took a chunk of a smelly dairy product for experts only and tossed it into Index’s mouth. It seemed to affect her eyes more than her tongue as she writhed in pain. This seemed silly, but no source of edible food meant they had a definite time limit for their search. It now came down to how long a human being could last on water and salt. A single dice role could put them in real danger.

Once those two had recovered from the electric shock and horrific odor, they found they could not break the stainless steel door or wire-reinforced windows with their bare hands.

“What do we do? I don’t think we can dismantle these with just a screwdriver.”

“Oh, is it a Phillips head? The shower uses a metal pipe on the wall instead of a rubber hose, so we could get a metal pipe if I had that screwdriver.”

“Ohh, then we could break the window and escape!”

The shower space’s door could not be opened from within. According to the shop manager, it had a 3-digit dial lock.

“Come to think of it, there was a memo held to the fridge door with a magnet. Oh, I see. So the combination is 072!”

“You idiot. A number placed in plain sight is obviously going to be fake!”

As soon as the idiot entered the number, a trap activated.

The nozzle inside the closed shower space sprayed out sugar water at full blast.

“…”

“…”

“…”

The three players fell silent because they had no idea what that punishment would mean. Their confusion naturally produced a more relaxed atmosphere.

Now, let us think about what has happened thus far. What causal relationship has there been between the players and the roles they are playing? Except these were merely suggestions and were not required. Yes, they were not required.

And yet…

Furashina Ririn poured sugar in her glass of ice water and then dumped it over her head.

Kamijou Touma trembled in fear of her bizarre action.

“You…what!? Do you think you’re standing on the winner’s podium or something!?”

“Tremble tremble… Th-this is a lot worse than I was expecting. Not only is it really cold, but it sticks to your skin more than normal water. I’m all sticky now, so this might be a lot like the punishments using mosquitos and lacquer.”

Was playing a role in a tabletop game really this harsh?

Water dripped from Furashina’s long blonde hair as it plastered to her small face. Her white blouse must have stuck to her skin because her bright flesh color showed through. She was wearing a blue vest over her blouse, but it was designed for form over function because it only covered her stomach area. It left the modest bulges of her breasts completely unguarded. In fact, they were resting on top of the vest. If not for the large blue ribbon at her neck, it would have been a lot worse. …And Index nearly chomped down on Kamijou rather than Furashina who was trembling in displeasure.

Anyway, the girl’s blue lips reminded them this was a tense death game.

To rescue Furashina from the sugar water shower, Kamijou and Index searched all over the RV and eventually focused on the rotten turkey the nun had found. They placed it on a cutting board and chopped it open. They found a second memo in there, entered its combination into the dial lock, and finally freed soaked Furashina from the shower.

“…If this wasn’t rotten, Index would’ve just eaten it all and we would’ve been screwed…”

“W-w-w-w-well, that’s how these games work. Anyway, is there a towel anywhere? I want to get out of these wet clothes…”

They assumed Furashina meant in the game, but then she actually reached for her wet blouse. Kamijou and Index rushed over and stopped her.

The avatar in the fictional RV left the player behind as she dried off with a towel and warmed up with a hair dryer.

“…No fair…”

“Don’t curse your own game character! Anyway, I removed the shower pipe with the screwdriver, so let’s break through this reinforced glass.”

But in the tabletop dimension, everything was decided by the roll of the dice.

It was a mistake to leave their final attempt in the hands of ''the'' Kamijou Touma.

“1 and 1…”

[[Image:Index_VO_SS1_BW1.jpg|thumb]]

“Why do you have to fumble here, Touma!?”

He did succeed in breaking the window, but the small impact caused the entire RV to wobble. Half the RV was jutting out over the edge of a cliff, so it tilted like a seesaw and fell into the ravine. Kamijou and the others were transformed into waste material and their lives came to an end.

“Oh, c’mon!! All our effort and that’s what happens!? Such…wahhh, such misfortuuuuuuuune!?”

“Hmm. Dice are such devilish things.”

Once they finished their game of the eternal masterpiece known as RV, the elderly manager was no longer needed as GM, so he left the table.

Furashina had a towel on her head and held a new mug of hot chocolate while lovingly sipping at the contents. (Meaning she had not actually solved the whole see-through problem.)

“As you can see, the ability to adlib through a series of unexpected events is the highlight of tabletop. Modern open world games allow for a large variety of choices and freedom, but they still can’t hope to match a serious TRPG.”

“Freedom, huh?”

Furashina smiled while blowing on the source of the steam.

“That is the all-in-one for games. Even in Virtual-On, you have to find your own way to enjoy it. A developer shows off their skill by seeing how far they can take that within the limited space, materials, and code available. The meta physics calculations I mentioned are directly connected to what you want to experience when playing a game. Do you want to run, jump, slash, or shoot? When constructing it as a game, you have to create an experience you could never find in reality. No matter how realistic it looks, a game is essentially another world entirely. Even with foreign war games and crime action games, the parameters of the physics calculations have been tweaked, so you see a world where the atmosphere and gravity are composed differently from reality.”

“Hm? Even when the game is played within the real Academy City as an AR game?”

“You seem to have a strong belief in realism, but making a game that is truly identical to reality would mean to force all the restrictions and restraints of reality into your leisure time as well. There is generally no market for ‘mere reality’ with no alterations whatsoever. Well, that might not be true if you were the president of a superpower or the CEO of a multinational corporation, but there is no point in creating a game for a single person.”

Furashina made her entire argument quite smoothly.

Some spite entered her words toward the end, but that may have been her long days of exhaustion catching up to her. People were fragile when soaked with sticky sugar water.

She must have researched all of this. She was saying that actual realism and valuable “realism” were different things.

When taking a photo for a restaurant menu, the food would be allowed to cool so there was no steam in the way, it would be covered in paint and wax, and lights would be set up at multiple angles to really make it shine. It would be completely inedible if served that way, but the photo still inspired hunger.

And as odd as it might sound, if you took the secret menu hot chocolate that Furashina so adored and snapped a photo of it in the mug as soon as it was made, it would not look all that delicious.

This may have been the same as how the front-on expressionless photos taken for student IDs and driver’s licenses made the person look like a criminal. When taking selfies with a smartphone, someone would pay careful attention to the angle, make a duck face, and even alter it with photo-editing software.

True realism was quite bland.

Now that she had warmed up, Furashina breathed a heated sigh.

“In that sense, the inclusion of the Boost Weapons might have been the most troublesome part. Still, I had to include a new system to make up for the elimination of the dangerous defections and the Material Analyze.”

“Oh, you mean the system that lets you include your powers or physical abilities into the Virtuaroid?”

“Yes, except those powers and abilities are not included ‘as is’. Do that and Academy City’s hierarchy would simply be transferred into the game, making it a mere copy of boring reality. After going out of my way to tweak the laws of physics to create the meta physics calculations that only exist in the game world, it would have been a waste to let reality creep back in. However…”

“If it strays too far from reality, the espers would feel something off about their powers in the game?”

Furashina watched Index use her Bal-Rloon figurine to kick a 10-sided die across the table.

“That requires a delicate balance. To an outsider like me, esper powers look meta, but to the residents of Academy City, they’re a familiar part of reality. For everything else, I went for the extreme of either fiction or realism, but I felt the need for something different here.”

Was that how it worked?

Well, what seemed familiar and what seemed strange differed from person to person. For example, the spread of dryers meant no one hung their clothes out to dry in sunny California and restaurants automatically served ice water in Japan even though water was plentiful.

“For this, you have to feel out what seems right,” bluntly stated Furashina Ririn. She also used the notepad-sided menu to keep the 10-sided die from falling off the table as Index’s Virtuaroid kicked it. “I redistributed Virtual-On as a free game, but that was limited to Academy City. Powers are normal here and the general public wants a world where they can overturn the real hierarchy. Once I figured that out, tweaking the parameters wasn’t that difficult.”

“Yeah, the higher the level, the fewer espers there are…”

There were only seven Level 5s in all of Academy City. When weighing 2.3 million people against 7, it was obvious which one to prioritize.

“And for that…”

Furashina caught the 10-sided die kicked by Index’s Virtuaroid. She then took another color of glass die from the container that also held the salt and pepper shakers. The small animal of a girl rattled them together in her hand and casually rolled them onto the square table. The jewel-like dice came to a stop at the Virtuaroid’s feet.

The result was two 1s.

…If that was not a coincidence, then did she have some way to control the result?

“I took inspiration from the concept of fumbles found in TRPGs. Even experts can die instantly if the dice don’t like them. But that disadvantage maintains the tension and makes the game more fun. Forcing a disadvantage on the player does not necessarily make it no fun to play. Adding that in took a lot of courage on my part, but it helped to have such a successful precedent.”

“I can’t really say anything since I’ve never made a game, but does it make that much of a difference?”

“Yes. I considered a lot of other things as well. For example, TRPGs have NPCs controlled by the GM – the game master. You know, characters like Villager A who help guide the players along. Well, other than them, there are no recurring characters prepared, like a protagonist or heroine. The players in each game get to decide where they come from and even whether they will take part in the adventure. …Well, there is no need to reveal that Virtuaroids were originally weapons of war. And when the player has provided their own coloring to a Virtuaroid and added in a Boost Weapon based on their own traits, they are meant to provide their own text and play the part they have written for themselves.”

Kamijou did not know much about where the fun of modern games had originated, but with cards and dice, there had to have been a time long ago when people thought it was fun simply to flip over a card or roll a dice. Of course, cards were not fun just because they were cards. They were fun because so many people had helped develop them and gradually worked out the kinks in the rules. There might be a single continuous line of development stretching from the past to the future. Furashina had arrived at these retro analog games because she had wanted to get a look at that full line.

“Virtual-On only functions as a game when people interact with it,” she said.

The small figurine Index held only looked like a soccer striker because she was moving it around to kick the die. On the other hand, the result of the rolling die was irrelevant and might as well have been a meaningless pattern. Even though that same “meaningless pattern” had held a crucial meaning that determined the fates of their characters during the RV game.

Of course, they would both be no more than a trinket decorating the store if no one did anything with them.

“The spread of portable devices and wireless networks means people don’t have to physically meet up anymore, but this may have originally been the kind of thing to play at a physical location like an arcade. That was why board games and TRPGs that are played around a single table were such good reference materials.”

However.

Everything she said relied on a certain assumption.

And it was something that Kamijou had not quite worked out yet.

“We played one just now, but are different TRPGs really that different?”

“Hee hee.”

Furashina Ririn covered her mouth and laughed quietly.

The elderly manager must have picked up on something about her behavior because he removed a game set from one of the rotating glass cases and carried it to the table.

It was probably a recommended game.

“I gave you a simple lecture on dice rolls before, remember?” Furashina lifted up a manual the size of a small encyclopedia and smiled. “Then how about we try a more serious game this time?”

The sun had completely set.

The café was set up to avoid the sun in order to preserve the retro analog games, so it was hard to keep track of time. Time seemed to fly by in that shop while playing a vintage game rarely seen anymore even in America or Germany, but Kamijou and Index were no longer there.

Furashina had enjoyed the time they had spent there.

The elderly manger worked to restrain himself while on the job, but now he smiled and spoke to her.

“That is the first I’ve ever seen you talk so much, Ririn-chan.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

She was aware how talkative she had been.

Was she becoming more like the original L’Ln Plajiner, or was she moving in the opposite direction? Furashina Ririn could never answer that question because she had not gone to “the other side” as the Tangram’s control device.

Now.

Had she talked so much because she had been enjoying herself or because she had not wanted them to realize what she was really up to?

“Manager.”

“Yes?”

That shop seemed left behind by time and the manager probably assumed the same cycle would continue tomorrow and the day after that.

That meant the girl had to be the one to leave.

She had to leave this gentle cycle that swirled around like hot chocolate in its mug and she had to enter the outside world.

She bowed with the accuracy of a clockwork doll and accurately pronounced the words she had to say.

“Thank you for everything.”

Before he could ask what that meant, she opened the thin plywood door and set foot in the outside world.

Into a world where the sun had set and night had fallen.

Now.

It was finally time for the Vooster’s Cup Virtual-On Tournament to begin.

<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT19 Bonus|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Virtual-On SS2}}
</noinclude>

File:Index VO SS1 BW1.jpg

2026-06-01T10:45:37Z

Ultranova17:

File:Index VO SS1 Cover.jpg

2026-06-01T10:45:30Z

Ultranova17:

Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item3 Ending

2026-05-31T17:51:43Z

Ultranova17: adding missing illustration

“Memo, memo. I can just convert my voice to text for my report.”

That would lead to a festival of mistakes, so instead of relying on the automatic speech recognition, I would prefer you typed out your report by hand.

Please do not make reading your unfortunate grasp of Japanese any harder than it already is.

“Oh, shut up. You’re not the top of this city – you’re just just the Board Chairman’s secretary. So stop trying to boss me around. Fuck, you’re not even human.”

My speech algorithm has applied your usage of the word “fuck” to my deep learning.

And just so you know, you foolish drunk with a beer in hand, word of this will reach the Board Chairman.

“Wait, wait, wait! I’m sorry!! Eek! I’ll sober up real quick and get my prostration on in front of the webcam, so anything but that, you superhumanly perfect AI secretary!!!”

So you view the Board Chairman as someone who warrants tears over a minor infraction like this? Then I recommend creating your report in the proper format. Strongly recommend.

“I’m doing it now, okay!? ...Huh? I’m trying to transmit my report, but it’s being rejected. First the higher ups ask for it and now this?”

Warning!

The Windowless Building’s security level has just been increased.

The Windowless Building will no longer allow access from this sloppy and unstable communications route. Please use the official process going through Spark Signal.

“Wait, does that mean the higher ups are still on alert?”

I do not possess the authority to answer that question. Also, I do not recommend a fucking agent like you attempt any valueless and reckless speculation. Fuck you.

“Does this mean it isn’t over yet? …''It’s always like this, I swear''.”

It was the middle of the night.

More specifically, this was an empty street in District 1.

“Hey, Mugino. In the end, the Criminal Real Estate just contacted us. Our runaway lives are finally over. We should be able to find a place to sleep.”

“It’s 3 in the morning. Does the real estate industry really operate that late?”

“Website forms are scary things. They completely eliminate the concept of business hours,” said track suit girl Takitsubo with no noticeable expression.

It was just business for the Criminal Real Estate. They hadn’t been able to do business with Item before due to an unnatural warning icon appearing on their account, but Item had originally been excellent customers who rented plenty of ultra-pricey apartments and resorts. Now that Item had done enough work to get that warning icon removed, there were plenty of recommended locations for them.

“Super what should we do for our next hideout?”

“I want somewhere convenient for shopping,” said Takitsubo. “We should be able to get most anything in District 7.”

“Ehh? In the end, can’t we just use online shopping and bike delivery services for all that? Keep in mind it’s nearly September and fall. I want a district with plenty of good food!! By which I mean District 4!!”

“Academy City is a densely-populated walled city, so if you need something, you can easily head out and go there. Isn’t there anywhere quiet we can stay?” said Mugino.

Item had lost most of their support team delinquents during the execution squad’s thermobaric bombardment. No one had died at the Reserve Meal cold storage warehouse, but there was still plenty of evidence they had to cover up.

(It’s going to be expensive, but I guess we can hire an outside cleanup crew. There was that corpse specialist Hanatsuyu Kuchikusa. It’ll probably be fastest to contact her first and have her introduce us to other people she knows.)

Mugino was working out some calculations in her head, which caused her to lag behind the others.

Frenda waved from a bit up ahead.

“Mugino! In the end, can I come up with a schedule for viewing possible new hideouts?”

“Go ahead.”

With that, Mugino looked up into the night sky.

(Hey.)

She didn’t say anything out loud, but she was speaking to someone in her head.

She pictured someone who wasn’t here right now.

(I managed to survive, you shitty Class Rep. Is that what you wanted?)

Mugino sighed.

And the very next moment, her right knee went limp and her vision dropped straight down.

This was not a case of the accumulated damage catching up to her or some bleeding inside her skull.

Something had clearly happened right this instant.

And despite all her experience as a Level 5, Mugino couldn’t figure out what had happened.

The threat wasn’t over yet. In fact, the true threat had only just arrived.

“Kah…”

She couldn’t even get out a shout. Her eyes were the only thing she could still move.

She spotted a strange silhouette. It had the outlines of a small child, but those outlines were wavering and distorting, never staying put for long. She tried staring at it but could only see darkness.

Was there really something there?

There hadn’t been any footsteps. She hadn’t even sensed anyone’s presence until right before it happened.

How had they gotten so close? Had they used a teleportation power? Or a psychological power capable of messing with perception or memories?

They hadn’t touched her and nothing had flown in from long distance. Mugino had simply fallen to her knee. Something was wrong with her equilibrium. Was the change in the outside world or deep within her brain?

But aside from all that…

(It’s them…)

“Are you the Dark Side’s Bane!? The #6!!??”

“I did not approach you.”

They spoke with a voice of disinterest.

Was that shadow really even looking at Mugino?

“You came to me. Mugino Shizuri, you thoughtlessly entered a territory you should have stayed out of. I am the Dark Side’s Bane. You knew that, so you should have kept your distance. This tragedy is the natural result of your actions.”

“Gahh!!!” roared Mugino.

Violent beams of light surged from her wounded palm.

That was all.

Meltdowner veered off course shortly before reaching the strange shadow and burst into particles.

This was not the imitation justice she had fought before.

Evil’s attacks could not even reach true good.

“Wha-?”

“You are the strongest when it comes to simple destructive force, but that also means you only have one card in your deck.”

They did not brag.

Others might bow before the Level 5s, but as another Level 5, the #6 was not cowed.

“You have no surprising tricks or clever applications. So once someone breaks free of the initial fear, they only need to learn that one attack. You are the most tedious of the Level 5s. Even the Railgun and Mental Out scare me more than you.”

“Kh.”

“''Which is why you will be destroyed by betrayal from one of your own.''”

That was a dangerous prophecy.

It had no basis, but when it came from the #6, it did bring some fear.

“Humans can adapt to any stimulus. One-note, unchanging fear cannot mentally bind people forever. The time will come when it all unravels. The only question is whether it will happen sooner or later.”

What was their power?

Mugino doubted it was ''only'' some kind of defensive power. That had only been an uninteresting sliver of their power. But in that case, ''what did the #6 see right now''?

This was the fear they had mentioned.

A bottomless fear.

“Do you see now why you are taken lightly and will one day be betrayed?” asked the #6. It wasn’t even clear where that small shadow’s mouth was. “Traitors will themselves be betrayed. You are ruling everything around you with fear, but there is no trust there. No one sees enough value and weight in it to keep their promises.”

“…”

She wasn’t able to respond to these accusations. The #6’s attack was probably already complete. Otherwise, she doubted the #6 would so readily appear before a target, even as this indistinct shadow.

Their appearance and name were unknown. The #6 had always been so careful that they had practically become a legend.

So when they showed up, it was best to assume this was checkmate.

“Now, after I crush you, what should I do with the rest of Item?”

Takitsubo, Frenda, and Kinuhata were nowhere to be seen.

She had fired so many beams and torn away pieces of the city, yet no one seemed to have noticed. Not even Takitsubo who excelled at searching out enemies and gathering intel.

Was it a strange coincidence?

Or was this an application of the #6’s power?

“Are you entirely to blame for this case growing to the point that I had to make an appearance, or is Item as a whole to blame?”

Mugino’s focus rapidly grew to a boil.

“Do I need to wait for the next case to make a decision? But letting innocent people come to harm for that would violate my justice. In that case, it would be safest for the world as a whole if I eliminated all four of you now.”

“Go…”

Mugino clenched her teeth.

And she finally got out a roar.

“…to helllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!”

Thick beams flooded not just from her palm but from her entire body. They melted asphalt, cut down a wind turbine at the base, and flew right past the #6.

That small shadow could not react.

She was prepared to lose control.

She was willing to obliterate her own body if necessary.

“Justice? Is that what you call it when you choose whose lives to take? Good and evil don’t matter to you! You just care about your peace of mind!! I’m not about to call myself one of the good guys. That’s never happening. But because I’m on the bad side, there’s one thing I’m certain of: ''you’re nothing but a killer''!”

“Hm.”

“Billions of people might love you and history might praise your name, but that fact will never change. I’m not letting someone like you get at my teammates!!”

The #6 responded with great interest.

“Come to think of it, you chose not to kill at the very end this time. Meltdowner is a tedious Level 5 power that relies entirely on the initial impact, but perhaps you still have a minuscule chance of receiving an unexpected blessing.”

This result may have been a possibility left to her by someone who was now dead.

The detective.

No, the Class Rep. Shiratori Okibi.

A possibility Mugino had killed herself.

“Foster that feeling. With great care.”

The #6 said something strange.

Almost like they sympathized with Mugino.

“If you do, something could possibly change. Meltdowner, you possess an incredible amount of energy. ''You only need make good use of it.'' The odds are extremely poor and it may be easier on you if I did not present you with this hope that will almost certainly amount to nothing.”

To put it another way, their emotion of disappointment had ''shifted'' for just a moment.

“The path you four walk is far too dangerous to be relying on luck and asking for a miracle. If you do that, ''you all could lose your lives at an even earlier point''. But on the other hand, there is a chance…”

“Shut your trap, you killer who doesn’t even have the decency to be a villain!!”

This time, Meltdowner directly struck the #6’s small shadow.

She broke through the mysterious defenses without actually understanding them.

The shadow spiraled around.

And that was it.

It vanished into thin air.

Mugino could tell the beam hadn’t actually burned through or destroyed anything.

There was no questioning it.

They were clearly better than her.

“''I’ll fight back.''”

So the loser howled alone in the darkness.

It didn’t matter what was awaiting her.

It didn’t matter what the #6 – the Dark Side’s Bane – was after.

It didn’t matter what kind of cruel tracks Academy City had laid out for her.

“''Railgun!? Mental Out!? Who gives a shit about those rankings and hierarchies!? Maybe it means turning my back on the changing times and going down in history as an irredeemable villain! But I’m Meltdowner, one of Academy City’s seven Level 5s! Whatever you might try, Item will use our own power to protect our hoooooooooome''!!!”

Her statement was entirely meaningless.

Quantum theory said an individual human’s observations could influence microscopic physics and the macroscopic world was composed of such things.

Academy City could freely wield that theory, but the result here had already been determined.

''Everyone already knows how it ends.

[[Image:Item3_BW7.jpeg|thumb]]

<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Item3_Afterword|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Item4_Illustrations}}
</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:Railgun Illustrations

2026-05-28T18:13:07Z

Ultranova17: adding full cover and page numbers

<gallery>
Image:Railgun_000.jpg|'''Full Cover'''
Image:Railgun_003.png
Image:Railgun_004.png
Image:Railgun_005.png
Image:Railgun_006.png
Image:Railgun_007.png
Image:Railgun_008.png
Image:Railgun_009.png
Image:Railgun_contents.png|'''Contents Page'''
Image:Railgun_BW1.jpeg|'''Prologue'''
Image:Railgun_BW2.jpeg|'''Chapter 1'''
Image:Railgun_BW3.png|'''Page 045'''
Image:Railgun_BW4.jpeg|'''Chapter 2'''
Image:Railgun_BW5.png|'''Page 063'''
Image:Railgun_BW6.png|'''Chapter 3'''
Image:Railgun_BW7.png|'''Page 130'''
Image:Railgun_BW8.png|'''Chapter 4'''
Image:Railgun_BW9.png|'''Page 209'''
Image:Railgun_BW10.png|'''Page 229'''
Image:Railgun_BW11.png|'''Page 252'''
Image:Railgun_BW12.png|'''Pages 304-305'''
Image:Railgun_BW13.png|'''Epilogue'''
Image:Railgun_BW14.png|'''Page 317'''
</gallery>

<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:AgneseSS_Chapter8|next=Toaru Majutsu no Index:Railgun Prologue}}
</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Illustrations

2026-05-28T18:12:03Z

Ultranova17: adding full cover and page numbers

<gallery>
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 000.jpg|'''Full Cover'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 001.jpg|'''Page 001'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 002.jpg|'''Contents Page
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 003-005.jpg|'''Pages 003-005'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 006-008.jpg|'''Pages 006-008'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 005.png|'''Page 009'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 006.png|'''Page 019'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 007.png|'''Page 052'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 008.png|'''Page 059'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 009.png|'''Page 131'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 010.png|'''Page 176'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 011.png|'''Page 210'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 012.png|'''Page 277'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 013.png|'''Page 389'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 014.png|'''Page 483'''
Image:Mikoto vs Misaki SS 015.png|'''Page 505'''
</gallery>

<noinclude>
{{Toaru Nav|next=Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Prologue}}
</noinclude>