Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume1 Phase2 (section)

===Part 9===

In the end, it took until the afternoon for them to find information on the hideout of the mystery sniper who used the anti-dragon rifle called Critical Disaster.

As usual, Teleria Nereid Aquamarine’s skirt was swelling out and Ayato was pulling that tearful blonde girl along as they rode an updraft in Wind Castle Town Silphine. They slipped below a giant walkway and used a food stall on the way to their destination since they did not have much time to spend on lunch. However, this one was a multi-legged microbus shaped like a crayfish, so unlike at breakfast, they did not have to worry about the wind while they ate.

“That thing really is a landmark. You can still see the Continent Egg from here. Only through the gaps between buildings, though.”

“Here, Ayato. Let me fix your hair.”

“Nhh.”

“Whew, what do they do in this town if it rains? I can only imagine it starts pouring on you from every direction.”

“I don’t think it rains here since Celedileka is located above the clouds. I haven’t seen any rain since we got here. Unless a truly powerful blizzard breaks through the Guardian Umbrella atmospheric shield, you probably don’t even need to check the forecast.”

For lunch, they ate a strange experimental dish of fried pasta made as flat as a rice cracker topped with a dip made by mashing up different vegetables and meats. Different noodle dishes could end up being very different depending on how the noodles were used.

“C-carbs ''and'' it’s fried?”

“?”

The blonde girl looked disheartened, but it tasted fine.

Ayato, who was generally a gentleman but not necessarily polite, reached for the remote-printed newspaper sitting on the counter.

“Hm, there really is a strong Forturiana influence here. Isn’t the story here that a saint defeated the Demon Lord instead of a hero? They sure are on good terms considering that Temple Moving Ceremony hasn’t been held yet.”

“Ayato.”

Teleria lightly scolded him while gesturing toward a young Priest woman sitting a short distance away whose shoulders shook. But her priest robe had a different design from the Forturiana one, so they continued the conversation.

“It’s like that everywhere on the sky city, but how are things on the surface continent, Coach?”

Yes, the silver-haired Dark Elf seemed interested in the topic.

“Their influence is around third or fourth there. They’re still a pretty powerful sect, though.”

“Sigh, yes. And it seems like they’re growing through the proliferation of magic,” said Teleria. “They claim to not be working with deadly weapons, but they do donate to sorcery gun research.”

“In the name of designing ‘everyday household tools’ of course. But is that really true?”

“?”

“Forturiana claims to help people with magic recoil disease and mana allergies, but I’ve never heard of anyone having either one. They’re a large group and everything they do stands out, but I bet they’re actually in the red.”

After they filled their stomachs while discussing that, they began planning for their attack on the extraordinary sniper.

“Given her firepower, any barrier that can be activated at the pull of a trigger would only be blown through, so we shouldn’t even think about defending against it,” explained Ayato. “If you don’t actually dodge it, you will lose your life.”

“Th-this is Mamilis’s first battle, so won’t this be a little too hard for her!?”

“Good point. You don’t have to participate in this deadly battle if you only want to learn how to be a Forward. Our goal is to ruin this sniper’s plan that seems like it will have a critical effect on Sky City Celedileka as a whole given the secret information received from the urban design manager, but we’re doing that to clear our names. However, Miss Mamilis, you do not need to do that. To be honest, I can’t think of any reason why you should force yourself to come with us.”

“I’m still going.”

“Then I won’t stop you.”

It was as easy as that. Whether to keep going or pull back was an important decision for a Forward who had no backup to call in. Most everyone was self-taught in this field, so the habits picked up early tended to stick around to the bitter end. Removing these hurdles from Mamilis’s path now would not necessarily be in her best interest. Even if that meant more risk in the short-term. That was how Ayato saw it.

Once the food stall microbus approached their destination, they ended their long conversation and left.

Teleria futilely tried to hold down her skirt while the updraft blew up at them.

“S-so what are we going to do!?”

“The same as always: we do it Sorcery Hacker style. In other words, we end this before they can even get started!”

Luckily, Wind Castle Town Silphine had sorcery device traffic lights floating everywhere to handle the many artificial air currents, so securing processing space was not difficult. Ayato drew his sword as he flew around and started stabbing into those ball-shaped devices to increase his power.

He removed the crystal tarot cards from his blue blazer’s breast pocket, so they floated along with him.

“Level 9. Not quite the resonance I want.”

Ayato, Teleria, and Mamilis circled behind a group of high-rise buildings and clung to the wall of one. They were at least 1000 esoule<ref>Approximately 1200 meters.</ref> from the ground, but that was fairly low down in this wind town.

“We need to be careful.”

They slipped in through a window, but this was not the dangerous sniper’s hideout. The artificial wind was convenient, but the silence provided by the barrier of stone and glass was still nice.

Ayato cut across an empty room with no furniture to speak of and no sign of being lived in. He moved from the back to the front window. After confirming the position, he nodded.

“Okay, the sniper’s hideout is on the other side of the road there.”

That was about 40 esoule<ref>Approximately 48 meters.</ref> away. That was not close range even for a sniper, but the real problem was all the people, things, and vehicles moving every which way through that space. If they fired any magic now, they could easily hit the ordinary people at the accessory shops or mobile restaurants serving seafood pasta.

“What do we do?”

“I hacked a few traffic lights on the way here, so I can use those to keep people away when we make the shot.”

With that, Ayato stepped away from the window and slipped past Mamilis who had deactivated her Mimic Options to reveal her distinctive long ears. Those must have been restrictive because the Dark Elf seemed to free herself from them whenever she was outside of the public eye.

The empty room had no furniture, but the insides of the walls were not empty. After making some estimations from the locations of the pillars and ducts, he drew his Linkage Plug sword and faced the wall covered in simple wallpaper. When he stabbed the tip in and pulled it vertically down, the wall “opened” like he had removed a large panel.

Inside was a long vertical space and some pipes running in straight lines.

“This should work. There’s a restaurant above here, so they have a largescale fire system in case of emergency. I’ll resonate with its processing space. If it’s Level 5 that should be about right.”

“Hm? Hmm???”

“You two wait here. I’m going to borrow a ballista crane from a rooftop around here.”

While releasing a new blade from the ones compressed in the hilt, he returned to the back entrance.

“And Miss Teleria, you have trouble with fire magic, don’t you?”

“Why would you bring that up when you already know the answer? Uhh.”

“Then we will have to bet on Miss Mamilis’s debut battle. Prepare your full-auto shotgun.”

“???”

The Dark Elf’s mind went blank when she was suddenly selected for what seemed like a major role, but Ayato had more to tell her.

“First, I will tie a bundle of steel beams to the end of the ballista crane and send that crashing into the hideout being used by Critical Disaster’s owner. That should make her escape through a different window.”

“Coach, what is a ballista crane?”

“That.” Ayato pointed to the giant crossbow-like machine at the top of a building under construction. “These are ultra-high-rise buildings with wind blowing every which way, right? A normal crane would be useless. The walkways giving everything that uneven jungle gym look can apparently be raised like drawbridges, but that can only do so much. They use a ballista – a type of siege weapon – to launch a thick wire, the sorcery device wings on either side of the hook catch the wind, and it accurately weaves its way between the jungle gym arrangement here. They are modeled after bees, so they should be able come to a complete stop at the desired floor and even return to their original location without tangling everything up like you would if you simply reeled it back in. Of course, they’re still sending a wire out through this town where aerial movement is so common, so they still have to be careful.”

Mamilis’s face clouded over. Just because she loved her weapon designer of a grandmother apparently did not mean she unconditionally liked all sorcery devices. She also appeared unsure what kind of stance to take with the shotgun she held. He felt bad putting the Dark Elf through this kind of dilemma, but he preferred seeing this than seeing her innocently grab and accept the weapon without giving it any real thought.

“I’ll be stealing that from the construction site over there. As a diversion. If we know what route she’ll take, you can’t miss. Now, Miss Mamilis, I would like for you to end this with your magic. You do not have to worry about the window. Just prepare to take the shot while indoors and I will throw open the window when the timing is right.”

“Eh? But, Coach, will it really work that well my very first time???”

“You don’t have to hit. That’s a shotgun, after all. You just have to pull the trigger, so it’s no different from lighting the kitchen stove.”

Ayato specialized in Sorcery Hacking and did not use an obvious sorcery gun.

But despite that…

“If you prepare the magical spark, I can do the rest with the traffic lights. You may have forgotten, but that isn’t just ordinary wind blowing around here. It’s magically-created wind. If I keep that massive manaflow from being converted into wind and then concentrate it and send it into the road as a liquid spray, it will fuse with the magical fire you create and trigger a huge explosion. And this explosion will rival that dragon in Flared.”