Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume3 Phase02 (section)

===Part 1===

The door to the shower room in the back opened.

The Student Council Office was off limits to almost everyone

“Phew. I don’t see why you didn’t end it right there.”

A sexy girl with only a bathrobe covering skin flushed from the bath threw herself onto a long sofa. She was a princess with her red hair worn in ringlets. As in, a literal princess. Student Council Vice President Surace Bran Zorca Totalinus was 4th in line to the throne of the Combined Royal Family. She had no intention of donning her heavily modified school uniform until the heat had faded from her skin. But even that was being modest for her. As a royal, she should have been wearing a dress at all times.

“Do you have a job for me? Where do I need to make a bloodbath?”

The girl curled up on the floor like a cat sprang to her feet and spoke in an unnaturally bright voice. She was technically the Secretary, but she wasn’t wearing her blue blazer uniform. The somehow animalistic girl instead wore a short-sleeved gym shirt and athletic bloomers. Her real job was assassin, so she preferred clothing ''that didn’t restrict her movement and was cheap enough to just dispose of when she got her victim’s blood on it.'' The Student Council made sure to eliminate anyone who had made themselves too much of a nuisance for the Academy Towers. Sibell Wildcat was the one who silently completed those jobs.

“…”

The large silent boy would have been even more unsuitable for that kind of job. The quiet thunk of heavy metal came from the equipment on his hands. Gark Bryan was Treasurer, but he was also known as the strongest Bouncer under the nickname of Grapple Shields.

Even if Ayato picked up the devil revolver once more and reclaimed the title of Hexajinx, he would only be the strongest Forward and could not defeat this boy when it came to defense.

The Student Council were the greatest brains of the school but also its greatest fighting force.

One had the great firepower and armor needed for a direct battle, one had deceptive assassination techniques, and one had great political power and forbidden magical techniques.

But they had one more trump card on top of all that.

“Are you listening, President?”

When Princess Surace called to him, the brown-haired glasses boy seated in a leather chair only smiled thinly.

He was Umihiko Darkavenue, the ultimate Sorcery Hacker in the Academy Towers.

With him, they were a perfect fighting force.

The President did not even glance in the bathrobe princess’s direction.

A quiet bell rang before he could.

A remotely-printed newspaper popped up from the top of a boxy metal device that resembled a toaster.

But it wasn’t just that one bell.

''Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

On the Static Continent, the evening editions were often completed as early as the afternoon. Thanks to that, an orchestra of bells produced a deluge of sound from all the sorcery devices lined up along the wall. Every single newspaper on the continent, from the biggest continent-wide ones to the smallest regional ones, were produced for the Student Council President.

Vice President Surace gave him an exasperated look.

“Are you still reading paper newspapers?”

“This research is crucial.”

“You’re an ultra elite Sorcery Hacker.”

“The invisible mana network can be used to stimulate the great cloud of data out there and that can be used to greatly distort the information people receive. But if you want to track how exactly those distortions are playing out, it is best to rely on old-fashioned media. Look at this. It says a plesiosaur was sighted in the ocean late last night. Heh heh heh. All I wanted to do was cover up a witness account of one of our work ships dragging up something I would rather remains a secret, but the next thing you know, the ship’s crane has become a dinosaur’s neck.”

The President happily cut the article out with a pair of scissors and filed it away with similar articles, so the princess could only shrug.

There was no need to actually visit every corner of the world to control it.

Any and all facts could be altered from this one small room. The Academy Towers contained all of the data and technology that was distributed across the Static Continent. He only needed to let a drop fall from on high and watch the world below to see what kind of rain was released by the thick clouds he stimulated. Were the crops in the field growing, or had the river flooded?

The bathrobe Vice President pouted her lips like a small child.

“You don’t need to do all this pain-in-the-rear checking and double-checking when it’s happening here at school. Just kill him already.”

“It is a matter of timing. The gem science school tower contains a lot of gem and metal processing facilities. I could have killed Ayato fighting him there, but breaking through a single wall could have destroyed one of the blast furnaces used for our experiments. You wouldn’t want me to die along with him, would you?”

“Liar.” Surace giggled and rejected his claim. “You just don’t want it to end before you get to show off all the tricks you have ready for him. That’s a bad habit of yours. You could have killed all four intruders there, but then all that effort would be for nothing. So you just torment them until you have used everything to your satisfaction. And your target doesn’t even feel like they survived. It’s like capturing a bug, tearing off one of its legs, releasing it, and then recapturing it to repeat the process.”

“…”

Umihiko did not confirm or deny that accusation.

But he was smiling behind his glasses.

“You see, Ayato, we have someone helping us. The seeds were sown the first night you arrived. And they will blossom within your party before long.”

He raised a slim finger with a perfectly trimmed nail.

He smiled with the cruel joy of watching his prey pausing right in front of the pitfall because a jack-in-the-box had gone off and frightened them.

“''You have a traitor in your midst.''”