Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume3 Phase01 (section)

===Part 1===

“Gwohhhh!? Wait, dangerous individual!? Is this more of that mysterious mental training!?”

“Coach☆”

The sun had risen, signaling the arrival of morning.

Fluffy blonde-haired Teleria shook the frying pan on the stove while hearing Mamilis and Henrietta’s voices through the thin wall. ''She was back after so long'' and the stove’s heat was as inadequate as she remembered. She piled plates full of tropical-style stir-fried vegetables with an accent of lemon while noting that the dark elf almost sounded like she was enjoying herself. Even though she must have been pulled into the blanket with Ayato while he rolled around during his “self-maintenance”.

Instead of placing the used frying pan in the dishpan, she reused it by adding some shrimp sauce and pasta. It was wrong to assume every kind of pasta should be cooked al dente. With a thick, seafood sauce, the noodles would be overpowered if they were too delicate. That was why she pressed them against the bottom of the frying pan to ''fry'' them. The occasional crunchy parts which provided a small surprise were the secret to making the tropical-style really stand out.

She added the pasta to everyone’s plates, but she still had one last job for the frying pan before placing it in the dishpan full of water. She was going to get all the use out of it she could.

She was in newlywed wife mode with a lacey apron over her blue blazer uniform and she grabbed the frying pan and spatula before moving to the other room. She banged the two metal objects together.

“That’s enough, Ayato. Breakfast is ready, so you need to wake up. Yes, I mean actually wake up.”

“Gwuh?”

“I-if you are done with that frying pan, hand it here, Teleria! I will split open this dangerous individual’s head with it!!”

Striker Henrietta blushed and shouted at the attacking human-sized amoeba (Ayato had his arms around her hips, his nose rubbing against her navel, and the top of his head pushing up her breasts), but Teleria didn’t want a funeral to ruin the breakfast she had put so much effort into making. Perhaps the eaters couldn’t understand how much work went into preparing the food.

At any rate.

Ayato rubbed his eyes with one hand, placed his other hand against the wall, and unsteadily walked toward the food he could smell. The thin wall made disconcerting sounds when he leaned his weight against it. Instead of pure mana-conducting silver, this was an inferior product made by mixing in scrap metal. There was a simple fireplace that burned bluish-white solid fuel, but the early morning chill still managed to sneak in through the thin walls.

Now, you are probably wondering something at this point.

Where are they right now?

“Wow,” childishly exclaimed Dark Elf Mamilis, her long ears twitching.

The fluffy blonde-haired girl kind of wished that was in response to seeing her breakfast.

The silver-haired girl had her fingertips on the windowsill and her eyes directed outside.

“That’s incredible. It’s called the ''Academy Towers'', right? It’s so much more impressive now that the sun is out.”

A bell rang in the distance.

It was still too early for classes, so that would be the bell for morning training. Instead of a single giant bell in a belltower, a simple melody played from all the Media Summoners installed around.

“I don’t see what’s so impressive about this place compared to the sky city built atop a 100 thousand esoule<ref>Approximately 120 kilometers.</ref> area of floating land. Is this an example of ‘the grass is always greener’ phenomenon?”

Sleepy Ayato was more interested in Teleria’s cooking.

Behind the black-haired boy with bedhead, the dark elf was glued to the glass to view the distinctive scene outside. That angle was in fact one use for the photos in the pamphlets and website for prospective students.

A ring of mountains formed a natural fortress.

Several stone towers rose high into the sky at the center. Each tower was the finest school on the continent for a specific field of study and there were walkways connecting the towers at various levels. Viewed from above, it might have looked like a strange constellation.

The towers were different heights, but the tallest one was more than 1000 esoule<ref>Approximately 1200 meters.</ref>. The place was the ultimate toy for the world’s geniuses, a research facility for the Static Continent’s greatest sorcery technology, and a collection of all the most unmanageable eccentrics.

Ayato and Teleria had once gone here.

It was a collection of schools for sorcery guns, mist mana networks, and every field of magic.

“I’m surprised,” said Striker Henrietta after sitting at the table and saying a prayer. “With all those big towers, I thought for sure they would include student dorms or at least some kind of residential area on the higher floors.”

“The towers are no more than schools, so they don’t include dorms. Although admittedly, there are plenty of students and teachers who abandon a comfortable lifestyle to spend all their time in the labs and special classrooms.”

“Yeah, I used to see a fair number of people sleeping curled up under a desk. When the deadline for sorcery projects was approaching or just before the demonstration of everyone’s original sorcery devices, there would be so many people in the towers I would see people sleeping near the entrances of the bathrooms.”

Henrietta appeared to regret her observation after receiving an explanation from the two in blazer uniforms. It didn’t take a mind reader to know whether she considered the students here to be geniuses or eccentrics.

Mamilis turned around and sat at the table.

“That’s why all these boxes litter the ground below the towers, right?”

“They are known as mobile homes, Miss Mamilis. Learning things already?”

Mobile homes were marginally better than an RV. And since this was a stationary “village”, they were all hooked up to gas, water, and the sorcery network.

“Let’s review the basics,” began Ayato while poking at his citrusy stir-fried vegetables with a silver fork. “There are signs of criminal activity within the Academy Towers. I investigated it myself, so there is little room for doubt. I do not know what is hidden here, but if nothing is done about it, we will see more incidents like the one at Laguntreat. So instead of running around putting out each new fire, I have decided to infiltrate the Academy Towers and cut it off at the source.”

This was of course directly related to his own past.

Unlike Henrietta, he was not currently fighting for any kind of public good. He had chosen the path of a Sorcery Hacker who broke the rules to reach the truth, so he couldn’t paint such a pretty picture of himself.

But while he wanted to continue researching his personal past, he also wanted to avoid causing any more major incidents that harmed other people through the attempts to obstruct him and cover up the secrets.

Enough with cutting off the branches and leaves.

It was time to take an axe to the trunk.

But not even that was enough. If there were deep roots to this disaster, he would have to dig up the dirt and sever those too.

“I’m sure a Sorcery Hacker like you is going to sneak around and steal some information through illicit means, so do I just get to sit this one out?”

Henrietta gave him a displeased look while twirling up the seafood pasta on her fork. She must have liked the pasta because she ate far more of it than the vegetables. Teleria made a mental note to not split the pasta and vegetables into two different dishes like that next time.

Ayato shrugged.

“Sky City Celedileka was one thing, but the revolver guy and Jennifer at Laguntreat appeared to be targeting us in particular. Dealing with this as soon as possible is our best course of action. Miss Henrietta, I would greatly appreciate it if you would assist me in preventing the next tragedy before it begins.”

“What about me, Coach?”

“I have plenty for you to do as well, Miss Mamilis.”

When he rubbed her head, the tall and slender dark elf held her head high and wiggled her long ears like a proud child, but Henrietta did not look pleased. She looked like a grandmother seeing her naïve granddaughter falling in with a bad crowd.

Teleria asked a question while using a handkerchief to wipe the tropically-flavored shrimp sauce from Mamilis’s mouth.

“But, Ayato. Where are you going to check? The Academy Towers are a big place. There are more than 10 towers in all.”

Ayato had an immediate answer to that.

“The Gem Science Gemboard Processing Tower.”

“…”

Mamilis held her fork in her mouth and gave Ayato and Teleria a puzzled look. The carefree way she kicked her legs below the table showed she did not understand the meaning behind this short silence.

The Sorcery Hacker smiled.

“It sounds like you have already informed them, so I will just come out and say it: ''that is the last place I ever wielded that revolver.'' That is also where I dismantled it and threw all the parts into a blast furnace. But now it seems that devil revolver holds a central position to something much bigger. I don’t know if someone repaired it or if there are spares, but that is where I will find information related to it. Not only was it the scene of that incident, but it is also where sorcery guns are produced and processed. It can’t hurt to sneak in there and perform some detailed research.”

“Makes sense.”

The silver-haired girl expressed her understanding, but she was more focused on the breakfast in front of her. Her long ears twitched happily as she began dumping the stir-fried vegetables on top of the seafood pasta for a custom dish all her own. They had very different flavors, but they went together well when she added plenty of cheese powder. It worked so well that Teleria’s eyes widened when she made a small test serving of it on a small plate for herself.

The dark elf girl may not have remembered the details of the incident.

But Striker Henrietta was a different matter. She had belonged to a law enforcement team that specialized in criminal investigations in the sky city. Any information remotely crime-related would never escape her memory.

She had been given crucial information regarding Ayato and Teleria’s past during a girl’s talk session back in a sky city inn.

“(Teleria.)”

“(Yes, he means that.)”

They did not speak out loud.

They communicated with only eye contact and lip movements.

“(That is also the school tower where I was taken hostage and Ayato shot my brother with that devil revolver.)”

That was the crux of the matter.

The Sorcery Hacker had come here in order to reclaim the past he had abandoned himself.