Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT SS (section)

===Part 8===

[[Image:Index_NTSS_006.jpg|thumb]]
But no matter how excellent Index’s perfect memory was, that was all she had. Even if she could analyze the 30 fps of animation or the 60 fps of a fighting game, she could not move around in a thirtieth of a second and slip past an attack from the king of beasts.

All she could manage was to determine what was happening and use the lip movements of ultra high speed incantation to transmit a short text to the Priestess of Sekhmet who had the speed of a beast.

However, that was enough.

She was the grimoire library that had gathered 103,000 grimoires.

She was a specialist in instantly determining a countermeasure for all types of magic and attacks.

(I just have to surprise her.)

The frighteningly intelligent part of her reached that answer.

All she could do was move her lips.

It was not that she ''did not'' even blink. She ''could not'' even blink.

However, it was enough to confuse the Priestess of Sekhmet.

Bit by bit, those little things would accumulate and bring fatal confusion to her mind.

(A trick creates an instantaneous gap in your opponent’s thoughts, but that instant will be a fatal delay for you. After all, your body will continue to move in that time.)

Ten seconds to a bicycle and ten seconds to a car were entirely different.

The same could be said of a car on the highway and a racecar on the circuit.

The difference was even more pronounced between a racecar at full speed and a supersonic fighter at full speed.

A moment of distraction or an instantaneous gap in one’s thoughts would have serious consequences if enough speed was involved.

“Gah.”

The girl cried out from close by.

As Index was moving at normal speed, the cry was distorted as if by the Doppler effect.

“aaaAAAAAaaaa! aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!?”

Index had not actually thrown her.

The gap in her thoughts had caused the Priestess of Sekhmet to lose control of her own body, misstep, lose her balance, and rotate as if she had slipped.

The claws that should have reached Index instead cut through the air a few millimeters away from her nose.

And that was as far as she got.

The Priestess of Sekhmet’s body flew through the air while rotating. Not only did she trip on her own, she flipped through the air at least twice and began to fall. Her back slammed into the hard ground.

This was not an aikido method using leverage or shifting body weight. It looked more like a strange qigong technique or a finishing blow in spirit sumo, a type of ritual dance in which a jujitsu specialist would enter the arena alone and play the role of being thrown by a god.

An explosive sound burst out after a short delay.

The Priestess of Sekhmet had difficulty breathing, but Index looked down on that lion who had a black cloak over her head.

“You are not the lion goddess Sekhmet.”

“Kh.”

Psychologically these words could easily become a fatal blow.

“If you were, you couldn’t have tried to use a cat to steal information in your original plan. That is why you must be Bastet, goddess of fertility and production. You are a priestess of the cat goddess, not the lion goddess.”

“…Ah…kah…!!”

The girl referred to as Bastet tried to argue, but she still could not breathe.

And so the nun continued giving her answers.

“And Sekhmet was actually inside my head. You constructed the Book of the Dead there. That is the grimoire buried with the mummies of the pharaohs, but unlike the Book of the Law or the Golden Bough, it is not a single book with a decided format. In order to allow the pharaoh to return from the underworld, each individual copy must be custom made in accordance with the specific pharaoh’s deeds and sins. For that reason, a new grimoire must be made each time a new person dies.”

“Si…lence!!”

“What were you hoping to do with this Book of the Dead?” asked Index. “Why did you want to read the deeds and sins of the dead person named Sekhmet?”