Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume16 Chapter3

==Chapter 3: The Name was Present from the Start – “SYSTEM”.==

===Part 1===

Not enough happens here to really call it an episode.

So it may be more accurate to call it a contemplation.



“Really, did you think you had the right to buy things at the store after you were sent to solitary confinement? Prisoner #1174 – Tessou Tsuzuri. You are not just a prisoner, but one whose very existence has a severe negative influence on the other prisoners. It was decided you would have a significant detrimental effect on order within the prison as a whole, so you are being treated as an especially dangerous criminal who must be isolated. Due to unavoidable circumstances (ha), you have been stripped of your rights as a human being.”

“Monster! Devil! All I wanted was to live a modest life in a corner of society nibbling on the end of a (low sodium) salted biscuit… Listen, you sexy long-haired busty tight miniskirt jailer whose very presence disturbs the order and morals of the prison in a sexual direction! Ha ha! Are those thigh-high high-laced boots meant to make you look cute!? You’re the busty type, not the cute type! Ha ha ha! Oh, my sides!!”

“Place your hands on the wall Prisoner #1174 – Tessou Tsuzuri. You’ve just earned yourself a body search.”

“This is the treatment I get for telling the truth? And where do you think you’re putting your hands? There’s no way I could be hiding anything there. Especially when you’re the one keeping me from buying anything at the store, you sexually harassing jailer! …Ah, ah, wait, ohh!? I-I’m being kneaded as thoroughly as convenience store somen!!”



The voices of a young female jailer and prisoner made it through the thick metal door.

Which showed just how much noise they were making.

No personal items were allowed. And in some cases, a prisoner would be stripped of the right to buy anything from the store.

Maybe that was to be expected.

Because Accelerator was in District 10, often said to be the most dangerous district.

And this was the thickest solitary confinement cell within the max security prison full of dangerous criminals.

(Or that was the idea anyway.)

A place as high risk as this should have banned possession of writing implements (because a tool that could stab someone to death without going to the trouble of sharpening it on the concrete wall was far too convenient for a brutal criminal), but this one room was an exception. Quiet scratching sounds had filled it for a while now. Besides, this one cell was overflowing with luxurious personal items, including a large TV and a spacious bed, because no one could see in from outside.

Accelerator had dragged out a simple table usually used for meals and was writing something.

Yes, writing.

Even though there was a giant LCD monitor on the wall and he could work on most any task with just the movement of his eyes.

“Master, what are you doing?”

Artificial Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 was floating around nearby, stealing looks at the papers.

Last Order, who looked like a girl of about 10, wagged her finger.

“Can you not see this stopwatch? asks Misaka as Misaka holds it out to you. He’s taking a test, so no talking.”

“But I want to play with master! Right now!!”

He was taking Academy City’s first general entrance exam.

Specifically, the university entrance exam.

His current answer sheet was for physics.

However, Accelerator wasn’t actually trying to get into a university somewhere.

“Why do you have to act like his shoulder devil? asks Misaka as Misaka tilts her head while playing his bright and shining shoulder angel.”

“Because even if I’m artificial, I really am a demon!

Accelerator was unfazed even as they shouted louder than a cheering soccer stadium.

He was Academy City’s #1 Level 5 and also the city’s new board chairman.

He was determining so many students’ futures using this entrance exam system. The results he gave could cause some to give up on the dream they had held since they were little. So it would be wrong if he couldn’t answer all these questions himself.

…The model answers provided by the cram schools and textbook publishers were actually created by their own instructors, but the ones published by the newspapers were prepared by Accelerator. He was writing those now. He was demanding people suffer through this, so it would be rude to the students who were betting their futures on these scraps of paper if he couldn’t get a perfect score in every single subject.

“…”

Yes.

The entrance exam system was built on the assumption that a certain number of people would fail and leave unhappy.

That might seem to be following in the footsteps of the old Academy City with all its misfortune and tragedy.

But as long as the results were not being distorted by wicked designs, then a proper exam was necessary.

The entire system of Academy City wouldn’t function without it.

If all the exam students’ dreams were granted by eliminating the exam system and accepting every student into the best schools, everyone knew it would not end well. The quality of those schools would plummet and then no one’s dreams would come true.

Of course, that wasn’t enough to satisfy those who failed their exam.

Accelerator sighed softly and heard the female jailer and prisoner’s voices from outside the thick metal door.

How loudly were they talking?

“Prisoner #1174 – Tessou Tsuzuri. Get your ass into gear. It’s exercise time. Unlike that coldhearted cheater who got bored and quit her jailer job but still frequently shows up in the jailer building as part of her new job working for a bento shop, I am bighearted and generous. Yes, unlike that woman who can’t shake her jailer habits and spends each night patrolling some girls dorm somewhere! So, Tessou, I leave it up to you to choose between the exercise yard or the pool.”

“Wait, stop acting like you’re so much better than me. Besides, if I’m going to be working my body, I’d rather do prison labor so I’ll at least get paid some tiny amount for it. Also, does this prison keep men and women in the same building? Aren’t they normally split up?”

“That is because you have been sent to solitary confinement as a particularly dangerous prisoner. You are not a normal prisoner. Your gender doesn’t matter when you need to be isolated to avoid negatively influencing the other prisoners. And it isn’t like you will have any contact with the other prisoners here. Now get moving!”

“Eek! Is this part of the exercise?”

They made some good points.

This was certainly a solitary confinement floor that housed only dangerous criminals who would negatively influence the other criminals and could easily have a detrimental effect on order within the prison as a whole.

The new board chairman and the #1 who had laughed as he killed more than 10 thousand people could guarantee that.

(The entrance exam. I killed more than ten thousand for my own purposes…and still I feel some real pressure here. Because so many people are entrusting their futures to it.)

“Heh heh☆”

Last Order sounded smug for some reason.

But not because she was acting like the troublesome club manager who acted like they were the one who had earned the trophy won by the athletes.

“With your irreversible brain damage, you need support from the Misaka Network through your choker’s electrodes for language comprehension and to perform even simple calculations.”

“Huh?”

“To sum this up without worrying about any misunderstandings, you are basically taking this test while receiving advice from the nearly 10 thousand Misakas spread out across the world, aren’t you? Look, the ultimate cheater is acting all smug, says Misaka as Misaka tries rattling you.”

…As if that was enough to get him to make a careless mistake. His vector control power as the #1 meant he was the first one who would lose his life if he lost control of his powers. While he was always offloading a massive number of calculations onto the Misaka Network, it was up to him to determine what needed to be calculated to safely bring about what effect. Last Order had access to the same level of calculations, but she couldn’t control vectors.

Last Order quickly spoke up while looking at her stopwatch.

“Ten more minutes, says Misaka as Misaka gives a report.”

“I’m already done, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Miiisaaakaaa wants to say it!!”

“I think she wants to play with you more than I do, master.”

The #1 didn’t bother checking his answers.

He only had one shot when performing vector conversions during combat. A single error in his calculations would mean losing a limb or rupturing an internal organ. That was the world he had lived in.

And still did.

So what? Did he think walking a risky path and doing good deeds would reduce the burden he carried? Life was a one-way road and he couldn’t erase his past actions.

“Tiiiiimes up, says Misaka as Misaka tries saying it like a teacher!”

“That didn’t sound grown up at all!!” protested Qliphah Puzzle 545.

Having easily completed the physics section, which was rumored to be the hardest one, Accelerator breathed a sigh. He hadn’t even needed half the allotted time. It was hard for Academy City’s #1 to judge if it was too hard or too easy for a normal person.

“Great work, says Misaka as Misaka signals your work is over. Are you hungry?”

“Not really…”

“Are you hungry, exam student!? asks Misaka as Misaka leans forward to make sure!!”

…What is she doing now? He was the #1, which meant he had the greatest brain of the 2.3 million people in the city, but Accelerator still struggled to predict what Last Order would do.

This was a solitary confinement cell, but it was still crammed full of pricey furniture. A mini-fridge was hardly a surprise.

“If you want something sweet, just go and eat it.”

“That’s not the point!” she shouted. “When you look after an exam student, you’re supposed to make them a late night snack! proclaims Misaka as Misaka raises her voice. Leave it to Misaka!”

“How?”

He ignored the fact that it wasn’t late night.

Even with so much pricey furniture, this was still a cell and thus a single space. There was a mini-fridge for drinks, but there wasn’t a gas burner or a rice cooker. Besides, none of that was necessary when he could pick up the phone on the wall and get any food he wanted delivered.

But Last Order was not deterred.

“Wait a bit, okay?” she said before opening the cell’s metal door and stepping out into the hallway. Qliphah Puzzle 545 tilted her head while floating nearby and then vanished into thin air. She must have passed through the wall to go take a look.

Accelerator had no real reason to wait, so he looked down at the table.

He had finished the test, but now he had to score it.

But circumstances didn’t allow for it.

He heard loud wheels rolling from beyond the cell door. Last Order must have been pushing some kind of cart.

He also heard voices from beyond the thick door.

Speaking quite loudly.

“Tah dah! This is the result of Misaka’s research project, says Misaka as Misaka holds her head high.”

“But what is it?”

“You can’t tell, you silly demon? This is a rice cooker, this is an induction cooker, this is a microwave that also works as an oven, this is a juicer, this is a large water server bottle, this is a food processor, and this on the lower level is big battery hooked up to them all! Altogether, it’s the world’s smallest food truck that can be taken anywhere inside the prison!! says Misaka as Misaka reveals her miraculous research.”

“You still haven’t given up on that!? Why are the Japanese so obsessed with serving homemade food to exam takers?”

“Misaka is making rice balls! Misaka is making fried eggs!!”

Accelerator ignored all the noise outside his cell. He generally wasn’t allowed to step outside of it. If she was cooking rice from scratch, it would take some time, but he did make a mental note to get after her if she gave up partway through and threw out the ingredients.

Also, the jailer and prisoner passed by on the way back from the pool.

And Last Order was working in front of the metal door – in other words, out in the hallway.

“Wait, they’re allowed to do that!? I thought all personal items were banned on this solitary confinement floor. A rice cooker, a microwave, and an induction cooker… That’s so much heat and EM, not to mention they could even connect to the outside internet if they’re IoT appliances!”

“J-just keep moving!”

“Wait!! Why are you doing your best not to look me in the eye? I smell something fishy going on here. And when you’re always finding the most absurd reasons to keep me from having things, like glasses temples being bent into a weapon or lock pick, or the salt on biscuits being used to rust the metal bars!”

Their voices faded into the distance. …So the jailer woman must have realized what was going on and dragged the yelling prisoner away by the arm.

“Hm, hm, hmm, hm, hmmm♪”

Last Order didn’t seem to mind at all.

She was humming while doing something with her hands.

…Now, food trucks were actually governed by a lot of rules, so setting one up was a lot of work.

And this was a maximum security prison.

To prevent riots, prisons were strictly designed to prevent fires, so what would happen if she started cooking in here? For example, what if even a slight wisp of smoke reached the ceiling?

The answer couldn’t have been more obvious.



The fire alarm exploded with noise.



“Ugh…”

After a while, Last Order’s shoulders slumped.

This was already a solitary confinement floor.

The fact that the sprinklers didn’t turn on across the building and flood the place and the fact that all the metal bars dividing the corridors into sections didn’t all open were proof of just how well made the situational awareness program was.

Looking over at dejected Last Order, the #1 spoke while grading his own answer sheet.

“So when can I eat?”

“Eh?”

“Don’t waste that food. You started the rice cooker, didn’t you? Then the rice’ll be done when the timer ends. And you can at least make rice balls in here.”

“…Yeah!”

If the prison’s situational awareness program was that well made, then the alarm wouldn’t have the same explosive reaction again after determining it to be a false positive. Cooking something with a frying pan would be one thing, but the steam from the rice cooker wasn’t going to trigger the fire alarm.

Eventually, he was served what really was just balled-up white rice without anything inside it or any seaweed. It was misshapen. It didn’t even have the bare minimum of a triangular shape.

“Hot hot hot…”

Last Order’s little hands were covered in rice. To get all that rice on her hands, she must have skipped a few steps in the process of making rice balls. Not that the #1 was in any place to complain when he never cooked at all.

“Hm.”

Accelerator ate it with one hand as he returned to the grading.

The work itself was simple.

He only had to check for any mistakes within the 100 tasks.

Once the self-grading was complete, he tossed the answer sheet toward a machine.

And threw himself into bed.

“…”

The new board chairman glared up at the ceiling and silently directed his thoughts.

Toward Hamazura Shiage.

That boy had bet on Great Demon Coronzon, lost, and been sent to England along with Narthex.

Most of Accelerator’s conversation with him had sounded like a baseless conspiracy theory. He’s said there was some great system or framework that manipulated people and society and that was why Coronzon had been called a great demon and killed. And that his goal was to reveal its identity.

Ordinarily, Accelerator may not have bothered committing it to memory.

But one part of it stuck with him.

''System.

Of course, there was no reason to think Hamazura Shiage had been thinking about it that deeply. The word “system” was a common one, so he may have just chosen it as a term to fit the vague idea in his head without basing it on anything in particular.

But.

There was a reason the new board chairman couldn’t just ignore it.



SYSTEM. The one who arrives at heaven’s intentions in a non-divine body.



“…”

Accelerator narrowed his eyes a little.

Anyone who didn’t know him may have felt their heart stop if they saw the look in his eyes.

Because that was another name for Level 6. Which made it the original sin behind wanting Academy City’s #1 Level 5 to kill the 20 thousand Sisters.

That experiment had been meant to reach the never-before-seen Level 6.

Without that ridiculous idea, Accelerator wouldn’t be in prison now and more than 10 thousand lives wouldn’t have been taken. Some might think the Sisters and Last Order wouldn’t have been born in the first place without that experiment…but that was sophistry. A plan to clone the #3 had existed before that. It had only been hijacked by the Level 6 Shift experiment after the fact. That meant there was a decent chance those more than 20 thousand clone girls would have been born even without the experiment.

And Accelerator had another question.

He understood the concept of surpassing Level 5. For one, he himself had only been placed in the category of Level 5 because Academy City only ranked espers into six levels from zero to five. He had always been more than the #2 or #3 who had needed all their efforts to even reach Level 5. So if someone said there was a Level 99 or Level 256 beyond that, he could have accepted it.

However.

(Then what if I do surpass Level 5?)

Accelerator continued thinking while seated in bed.

(What could I do at Level 6? In fact, why did the previous board chairman pour so much money and so many lives into reaching it?)

Some mental noise interrupted his thoughts.

Yes. There was another problem that lowered the priority of that issue.

Great Demon Coronzon’s remains.

Ordinarily, he would have given them with the Anglicans of the magic side to get that problem out of his hair, but he had delayed the decision. Since those people had temporarily been manipulated by a magician on Coronzon’s side, it was possible her remains could go missing if left with them. And that would be a problem.

Because there were ways of scientifically moving a preserved corpse.

So who could say there wasn’t a magical way of doing it?

And her remains could be used in other ways too. During the recent incident involving Hamazura Shiage and Narthex, the possibility of a Church of Coronzon had come up.

“…”

So her remains remained in Academy City.

It wasn’t clear whether Academy City or England had a right to them. So if he incinerated them or let them rot, it could develop into a diplomatic problem. So he had had them preserved and then frozen.

(If all you do is avoid the wrong choice, you don’t necessarily arrive at the right answer. This is our city, yet there’s something right smack in the middle we can’t do with as we see fit. I can’t say I like that.)

“C’mon, it’s shower time, prisoner! Don’t make me do it for you!!”

“Wh-why are you using the prisoner shower? And with a full bath set under your arm? Are you just lonely?”

His thoughts were interrupted there.

Was it that jailer and prisoner again? …No, a lot of time must have passed while he was thinking.

“If you’re done with your exam, master, I want to play with you!”

It wasn’t that either.

“Something’s beeping, says Misaka as Misaka points.”

Something was happening on the giant wall monitor.

He was receiving a call.

“I received your scanned answer sheet.”

It was from the researcher named Yoshikawa Kikyou. Although “former researcher” would be more accurate.

“Did you actually find at least one mistake this time?”

“Here I am scoring a university entrance exam. You never know where life will take you. And I used to be a heretical scientist who ''used biology to bring suffering to so many''.”

“It’s a necessary job. And I am paying you.”

“Is there any reason for me to grade these? The answers are all more accurate than any machine’s, so grading them all makes me feel like I’m the one being tested.”

That was what it was like to be an educator.

Someone who always looked down on their pupils and thought they could teach anything was not suited to teach. Because that meant they had abandoned any chance to update themselves.

(But that’s not something for a half-reformed criminal to say.)

“Now that you’ve taken it, what did you think of the university entrance exam? Found anything you’d like to say?”

“Nothing other than it’s too easy.” Accelerator breathed a frustrated sigh. “This is Academy City, right? So why is the normal physics section harder than the esper development one?”

“Normal physics” were still important since esper powers were based in quantum theory, but the exam Accelerator had just taken had covered the older classical physics. From the world where Newton had wasted food by watching an apple fall to the ground.

“Oh? You should know why that is. The problems for these exams are made by a group of ‘ordinary’ people, including university professors, textbook publishers, and cram schools. They don’t have a full understanding of the truly cutting edge research that is highly classified.”

“…”

And being an Academy City university professor did not necessarily mean someone was a dangerous eccentric messing with DNA or mysterious quantum theory. This city also had harmless professors who adored classic literature more than anything modern. And there were some who would get mad at you for lumping all classic literature into a single category like that.

“Simply put, these problems are made by people who only understand the basics, so that’s all you’re going to get. You won’t find anything too in-depth here. It would be a problem if their knowledge ''was'' too in-depth. Of course, just like how knowing E=mc<sup>2</sup> isn’t enough to know how to build a nuclear bomb, the knowledge alone probably isn’t a risk, but the fear that ''maybe it could be'' is deep rooted.”

It was a necessary form of information defense.

However, Accelerator knew all too well that even systems built for a good purpose could rapidly grow twisted if corrupt adults intervened and abused them.

“Yoshikawa.”

“What? ''Feeling like taking a university entrance exam for real''?”

“Shut up, no. …How much do you know about the Level 6 Shift experiment?”

“No more than you do.”

She sounded surprised by the question.

Especially because he asked it in front of Last Order.

That said, the person with the greatest mental strength here was probably the puzzled-looking girl. …Or more accurately, the Will that included her.

“I worked with Amai Ao…wow, that’s a name I haven’t used in a long time. Anyway, I worked with him and some others on secondary aspects of the experiment. Things like the Sisters, constructing the Misaka Network, and developing new safety devices. I did receive some information on the more fundamental aspects of the experiment, but not all of it. Instead of a planner who gives a briefing on an overarching business plan at company headquarters, I was more like an engineer who does actual on-site work.”

Yoshikawa said this with self-deprecation, but Accelerator couldn’t have been more envious.

She had created those lives, but she hadn’t directly killed them.

That meant she wasn’t as corrupted as the #1 who had done all the killing.

“The core of the experiment is a mystery to me. That information was never released and there are even rumors that it was being secretly run by one of those infamous Kiharas…but that’s probably false. With a ''business'' that size, there probably was at least one Kihara involved somewhere, but not at the true center of it. I expect the true core of the project was positioned somewhere that no one doing the real work on the experiment would ever know about it.”

Accelerator agreed.

Because otherwise, Kihara Amata, who had boasted about directly raising Accelerator, wouldn’t have been as resentful as an abandoned dog.

“In that case…”

“Yes. Ultimately, taking a peek inside the old board chairman’s head might be the only way to find out. Although I hear that might be a challenge.”

He was gone now.

He had chosen on his own to die along with Great Demon Coronzon.

That human, who had carried both good and evil inside him, had quit being a villain in the very end.

And death had come to Coronzon’s physical body.

“To be honest, I have a hard time picturing what you mean when you use terms like ‘soul’ and ‘demon’. Was Board Chairman Aleister the kind of person who took science so far it brought him to the occult? Like Edison who was obsessed with communicating with the dead or that mystery author from the kingdom of tea who believed in fairies.”

Accelerator guessed it was the other way around.

There had been no division between science and magic to begin with. There had only been “scholarship”. It was Aleister himself who had drawn a clear line between the two.

“Yes!! I’m down a full kilo! Everything is going exactly as planned! Heh heh☆”

“D-don’t tell me this is why you’ve been eating the nasty prison food with us prisoners every day. When you can buy whatever you want outside. It’s true the prison food is nutritionally balanced to greatly reduce hunger, but still.”

Hearing the excited voices of the jailer and prisoner (who must have just left the bath) from beyond the metal door, Accelerator mentally organized the information. He was on the extra secure solitary confinement floor of a maximum security prison, but there was nothing wrong with some cheerful conversation there. Because a prison was meant to give people a new chance at life.

(Hm.)

Scholarship instead of science or magic.



Hints of this could be seen in the old literature of the 19th century during the ''official part'' of Crowley’s life. There were only a handful of examples, like the horror novel Frankenstein, that consciously focused on the division between science and all else.



Fascinatingly, the basic idea of “building a human using technology too advanced for ordinary people to understand” was a topic found in plenty of old stories around the globe. In fact, it could even be found in myths the world over.

Even the stories that sounded scientific had been myths. That was how they had been received as they spread.



But by the time a Czech playwright wrote a story about an uprising of mechanical dolls in the 20th century, the category of science definitely existed.

That way of thinking became normal and scientific stories were given a scientific genre all their own.

Only some real eccentrics who love to read unnecessarily deeply into stories would view those SF stories as pure myths.



So at some point, scholarship became more than just scholarship.

Something had changed the world.

So surely and swiftly that no one in the world had protested the change.

(In Academy City, he created the most efficient city in the world for studying while actually sealing away knowledge. That’s exactly the kind of malicious game he would like.)

“What was the experiment from your point of view?” asked Yoshikawa.

“…You’re actually asking me that?”

“This entire line of questioning is meaningless if you aren’t prepared to take a hard look at your own scars.”



He simply wanted to be strong.



…Oh, how badly he wanted to knock down and throttle his past self, but his goal when participating in the experiment had been nothing more than a personal fixation.

But Board Chairman Aleister would have seen it differently.

He had poured into it everything the massive and multifaceted institution of Academy City had to offer. There was no esper development competition with anyone outside of Academy City and, unlike the rocket and AI development races held between powerful nations, increasing the city’s own technology to deter their rivals wasn’t enough of an explanation. There just wasn’t a pressing enough reason to insist on such a large loss of life.

That had been odd.

It wasn’t like the world would be destroyed if they didn’t produce a Level 6 and humanity wasn’t facing some great enemy or disaster that couldn’t be stopped with only Level 5s to work with.

After all, the experiment had been halted and Aleister was missing, but the world kept on spinning.

(Before giving me the master key, he told me to create the kind of world I wanted.)

Accelerator thought back.

(He wouldn’t have said that if the world couldn’t go on without a Level 6. In that case, he would have threatened me, saying something like, “Do what you want, but make sure you reach Level 6.” ''But he didn’t''.)

What had Aleister ultimately wanted to accomplish with that experiment?



Was it meant to intentionally fail to change the #1’s nature?



Had Level 6 just been a pretext to build the Misaka Network?



Had the goal been the completion of Dragon through Fuse Kazakiri?



…That made sense. But was that really ''all of it''?



Board Chairman Aleister.

The two of them had fought alongside each other a few times because the circumstances demanded it…but his deeply held beliefs and ideas remained a mystery. Perhaps even more so than with Great Demon Coronzon.

“Damn him…”

Board Chairman Aleister was gone now.

He had apparently only been borrowing Coronzon’s body temporarily, but even that had ended when the great demon died. Now that he was truly dead, there was no way to ask him about the true purpose of SYSTEM.

Of course, Accelerator was the board chairman now. That meant his official privileges gave him access to all of Academy City’s data.

However…

(He kept all that data separate from the front-facing Bank.)

Accelerator glanced over at the giant LCD monitor on the wall and clicked his tongue.

This was the one thing missing. To a strange degree.



Underline, the currently deactivated nanodevices that had been distributed all across Academy City to monitor people, had apparently formed an invisible network that stored secret data, but that might not include anything related to Level 6.



The data could be hidden in some corner of the Misaka Network formed by the clone girls’ shared brainwaves, where not even they themselves knew about it.



Mina Mathers – that is, Reading Thoth 78 which had always supported the old board chairman’s plan – was now wandering the world somewhere, but she might have that data.



“…”

He could come up with several possibilities, but he couldn’t push too hard without a guarantee.

He could ignore the lives and futures sacrificed each time he guessed wrong as long as he found the right answer in the end.

…But he didn’t want to run this new Academy City in that despicable way.

He had already made that decision.

“Yawwwn… I’m sleepy.”

“Hold on, why are you walking into my cell? If you sleep here, it’ll look like I lured you in here to steal your keys and escape!!”

His thoughts were interrupted by silly voices.

…And if he could hear this, that jailer and prisoner must have been his fairly close neighbors.

They were certainly saying some silly things.

But he didn’t think of it as worthless.

They were following the process to return criminals to life in ordinary society. He saw this as viewing the back of someone several steps ahead of him on that road.

Anyone who thought it made them look cool to take everything super seriously was still a risk.

They hadn’t lost their fangs or claws.

They couldn’t be returned to the city like that.

(Besides…)

The new board chairman sighed.

(I might not find the answer even after flipping over all the cards. The information I want might never have existed anywhere in the form of text or data. It’s entirely possible that all information on SYSTEM only ever existed in Aleister’s head.)

Then something cut off Accelerator’s thoughts completely.

A girl’s voice had hesitantly interrupted.

It was Artificial Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545.

Floating freely in defiance of gravity, she could easily move her face into his field of view even when he was staring up at the ceiling from the bed.

“U-um…master?”

“What?”

“You just received a call. …From London, England.”



Come to think of it, Hamazura Shiage and Narthex’s “punishment” would be starting soon, wouldn’t it?

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