Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 9===

Torturing the information out of her would be easy.

But the problem was Index. She had a perfect memory and would never forget anything she saw, so he wanted to avoid going too far with her around.

It was already dark out and they had moved from the gun shop to a British-style pub. Stiyl Magnus sighed.

(What am I doing here? I thought I had already made my decision here.)

“Ahh!” screamed Helcalia.

But only because she had spilled a cup of water while playing with Index. She snatched up a small box and held it up high while the water spread out across the table and then spilled down onto her thighs and lower stomach.

“Wh-what do I do? Won’t my wet clothes freeze?”

“Come here.”

“I don’t have any other clothes, though.”

“I know a way to dry the ones you have. It just takes some guts!”

Index took Helcalia’s small hand and led her to the back of the pub. Maybe it was because Index had complimented the birthday present’s wrapping paper and maybe it was because she seemed like less of a threat than Stiyl, but Helcalia had grown attached to Index despite fearing her so much before.

Stiyl watched them go and only realized a second later that he had let Index leave his sight alone with the daughter of their biggest suspect.

(I’m surprised with myself. Am I not as worried about her as I thought?)

After a bit, he heard the whirring of a motor running.

“Gyah!? I-I think it’s going to blow up!!” shouted Index.

“Driers don’t blow up,” insisted Helcalia. “But I bet it would be bad for my skin to do this while I’m wearing the clothes. I should take them off first.”

“Wow!? Th-that is some mature underwear…”

“Mama’s is see-through.”

“…What are they doing?” grumbled Stiyl.

But he could not let himself go back and forth on this issue. If he did not fully commit himself, he could not build up enough speed and would plummet into the canyon without reaching the other side.

He had chosen to shoot Kamijou Touma and not tell that girl about it.

Had he really thought they could be friends after that?

He did not mind if his own dependence on her led to his failure, but he could not let it bring harm to her.

(I need to focus on just the one task. I need to choose one thing and pour all of my energy into that.)

First of all, the sand magic being used on LA was Citrinitas. It was the third stage of the four said to create the red stone in the Rose tradition.

R&C Occultics had used the dark web to reveal to everyone around the world how they could use magic. But he had checked those sites and none of them mentioned Citrinitas. That meant this was someone the IT company had sent in, not an LA resident who had seen those sites.

So…

(They should be an originalist. Well, they are modifying it with the Logistic Hornet, but when making a cocktail, you want your ingredients to be as close to the original as possible.)

And in this case, the original grimoire would be written in German.

“No, wait…”

Things were different than before.

Once the two girls returned, they would probably be making a lot of noise again, so he needed to search Helcalia’s things while he could.

Kamijou Touma had managed to dig up a birthday present for her.

Stiyl did not care what was inside. He only needed the card.

''Happy birthday, Helcalia.

It should have been nothing more than some flowing cursive writing.

But Stiyl gulped.

(The handwriting has no German elements to it?)

Could you really tell someone’s language history from the idiosyncrasies of their handwriting? Couldn’t handwriting analysis only ''maybe'' determine if it was really by a specific person or not? Most any Asian would ask those same questions. But European culture generally used signatures instead of seals and signatures were used to authorize everything from marriage to war, so they put a lot more focus on handwriting.

In fact, handwriting played a role in a well-known story on the magic side. Yes, the story of the letters regarding the establishment of the Golden cabal. Westcott insisted they showed his correspondence with Miss Sprengel who lived in Nuremburg, Germany, but Ellic Howe and other skeptics had some handwriting analysis done, which revealed the spelling used in the letters were those of a Brit pretending to be a German, not an actual German.

It was the same as native pronunciation. A Brit who learned German later in life and one who learned German from birth would have subtle differences in their pronunciations.

“…”

Stiyl Magnus pulled out an invisible dye.

He had managed to read some residual thoughts from the Academy City printouts, so with handwritten text, he would be able to hear an actual voice like he was playing back a record.

He breathed in and out to refine the lifeforce circulating through his body into magic power.

He reached something unseen hidden within the message card’s handwriting. An unfamiliar woman’s voice played in his head like he had set the needle down on a record.

“Let’s see, I want this s-sach…? Oh, forget its name. I want this chocolate cake here. No, I don’t want a Christmas message on the chocolate plate. This is a birthday cake! How big would be best for two? Eh? It’s pronounced sachertorte? Spelled like that?”

Stiyl just stared, entirely forgetting to end the ceremony.

“Ha ha.”

That conversation had been nothing more than a mother preparing to celebrate her daughter’s birthday.

But it was devastating to Stiyl Magnus.

The Citrinitas spell had to have been learned by decoding a German original grimoire. That was a requisite step to use the magic directly or to indirectly support it with the Logistic Hornet. Magic and science working together might sound simple enough, but it was actually a risky bit of acrobatics. It required both sides to know exactly what the other would be doing.

And yet.

Sachertorte was as standard a German word as Kaiser. For that matter, if you pronounced A-B-C as ay-bee-see, you had the foundations of German entirely wrong. She probably pronounced Hamburg the American way too.

Residual thoughts could not lie.

No one could escape an answer they had found themselves.

“Melzabeth Grocery…”

Admitting to your own mistakes was a form of strength. If you stubbornly bent the truth instead, you were truly lost.

Kanzaki had sacrificed herself to entrust him with this.

But he refused to lose his cool.

In that sense, he was still the same priest he always was. He wrinkled his brow, bit down on the cigarette filter, and spoke under his breath.

“Damn, this means she can’t possibly be involved in the Citrinitas. I was 100% wrong there. And I can’t let ''an innocent person'' die because of it!!”