Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter5 (section)

===Part 26===

The battle was not won yet.

The next enemy staring them down was the Mjolnir Subcontinent of the Mjolnir Hegemony.

Mikoto and Shokuhou had toppled a kingdom over their system of slavery, so nearby kingdoms that also worked their slaves to the bone would be concerned they might be next. Freeing the enslaved elves and unblocking the flow of information on the roads had shaken multiple foundations on which this world’s society was built.

It also meant a vast ungoverned land existed right in front of them. They might consider invading on the pretext of “helping restore order” to easily take the territory for themselves.

“The elder’s grimoire ended up in the Mjolnir Subcontinent, right?” asked Shokuhou.

They needed that to return to Earth.

Did they have no choice but to fight?

They only had the one enemy to fight, so maybe it was best to be thankful they didn’t have to worry about an attack on more than one front.

Effectively, they just repeated the strategy they had used for the first kingdom. The scale was larger, but the population, equipment, and military force that Mikoto and Shokuhou had to work with had also increased, so the relative amount of effort remained about the same. It especially helped that they could trigger hyperinflation in a specific territory exactly when they wanted it by mass-producing fulgurites.

The hyperinflation did a lot more damage to the side that didn’t know it was coming.

Any currency backed by fulgurites become completely unreliable. Mikoto’s side could prepare for that in advance. For example, they could establish a barter system in advance to keep things running. Their top priority was food, followed by clothing and other daily necessities that they could stockpile before the fulgurite crash. At the same time, they could also maintain fields and farms to remain self-sufficient, but getting all that working would take at least half a year.

“If only there was magic to make vegetables grow faster. What good is this fantasy world?” complained Mikoto.

“Whether they grew in a day or a week, wouldn’t you be afraid to eat vegetables with that kind of growing ability?” replied Shokuhou, sounding truly exasperated.

And yet the vegetable factories in Academy City’s agricultural buildings could be harvested more than 20 times a year.

Mikoto placed her hands on her hips.

“Whatever the case, I’m glad this world hasn’t developed nuclear weapons. We want to return to Earth as soon as possible, so I’d rather not be stuck with both sides staring each other down in a cold war.”

“Endlessly throwing troops against each other in trench warfare doesn’t sound much better to me.”

They were used to life outdoors by now.

Before it got dark, they made sure to find a place by the water to sleep. It was surprisingly important to keep some distance from the water to avoid animal attacks or being caught in a flash flood. Even if it wasn’t raining here, the water level could still suddenly rise based on conditions upstream.

When starting a fire, they found it was important to clean up the area around it first so the fire wouldn’t spread.

“There, our campfire spot is ready. Okay, Patissiet, let’s go find some food for today. What can we hunt in these-”

Mikoto turned around to get an eyeful of bare skin.

The elf had stripped off all her clothing.

“Rub, rub.”

“Hold on, Patissiet! Why are you getting naked outside!?”

“Eh? When you need to wake yourself up quick, there’s nothing like rubbing yourself with a dry cloth!”

“Do the elves here have to include a risque element to everything they do!?”

A short distance away, Shokuhou held a hand to her forehead, wondering if long-lived elves naturally tended toward the habits of the elderly.

Tonight’s dinner was not meat. Patissiet informed them that yams grew at the base of big trees in this area, so they dug some of those up by hand. Instead of grating them (since there was no rice), Mikoto sliced them with an iron sand sword and they cooked them over the fire. Oh, how wonderful it was to have salt.

The trip ended up taking four or five days.

As they approached their destination, they naturally began discussing strategy.

Patissiet and the others Mikoto had pushed up to Level 9999 would launch a frontal assault to draw the enemy’s attention while Mikoto and Shokuhou snuck into the enemy castle, sabotaged the armory and food stores, and brainwashed the king and commanders to shred the enemy chain of command.

They would repeat that as many times as necessary.

First, the Mjolnir Hegemony’s Mjolnir Subcontinent.

Then the superpower ruling the Tir na nOg Continent.

They made quick progress.

When Mikoto and Shokuhou looked back, they had trouble remembering what exactly they had done at each place.

There was a very simple reason why they had attacked the Tir na nOg Continent after the Mjolnir Subcontinent.

Patissiet’s face lit up.

“Th-there it is! That’s the grimoire’s lost page. Now we have the full book!”

“That idiot prince wanted to prove he wasn’t an idiot and win the people’s adoration by hunting down some big monsters, right? So he snatched up all the useful information from this valuable grimoire and then made sure no one else could get their hands on it. In the end, he only gave the Demon Lords another victim, so he really was an idiot.”

“But we kind of overdid it in the process,” said Shokuhou, awkwardly scratching her head for once. Then she clarified what she meant: “''World domination''.”

“Yeah, we kinda did.”

They had defeated the powerful hegemony and even an unmatched superpower. There were some smaller kingdoms left, but none of them had any intention of opposing Mikoto and Shokuhou at this point. They had all effectively raised the white flag without fighting. No pro-slavery state was left. The world had been split between several different governments, but the actual rules and order had been determined by the top kingdom or two.

Having your entire kingdom collapse ''because you wanted to take the easy route'' would be putting the cart before the horse.

All of this had effectively taken about a month.

It had helped a lot that word of their Academy City esper powers had not gotten out, but more than that, this world was basically designed for Misaka Mikoto.

But whether that was a long time or not depended on the context.

For example…

“A month. Thirty days. Um, aren’t the limits of CPR measured in minutes?” asked Mikoto.

“Makes you wonder if we’re even still alive, doesn’t it?” said Shokuhou. “I hope we aren’t setting a new world record ability for an out of body experience.”

Had their real bodies back on Earth been taken to the hospital where they were hooked up to life support systems? Or did time pass at a different rate in Celesaqphere than on Earth?

After establishing an effective strategy in that first kingdom, there wasn’t too much worth remembering.

But one thing had bothered Mikoto.

Mikoto and Shokuhou had marched across a wasteland with a large group of elves, scyllas, dark elves, empusas, tengu, succubi, dryads, and human soldiers and knights.

Then, seemingly without warning, a strange trend had begun.

“Th-the goddesses!”

“It really is them… Then what have we been doing!?”

Mikoto could have understood if they ran away scared after seeing the destructive force of her Railgun or lightning spear, but the enemy army had panicked before the fighting even began. Just from seeing Mikoto and Shokuhou.

“?”

“It sounds to me like they think it’s blasphemous to be our enemy,” said Shokuhou.

“But we’re fighting a war. Would a concept like blasphemy really be enough to stop an entire army?”

“When a Spanish conquistador crossed the ocean, the Aztec emperor mistook him for a legendary god and handed the capital over without fighting. Even though the survival of their empire and civilization was at risk.”

“…”

“And during the advent of tanks and planes in World War One, rumors spread that an army of angels appeared on a Belgian battlefield and attacked the German troops, causing a panic that ultimately stopped an invasion that very likely would have been successful. Like I said before, wars are won with intelligence, not power.”

If the enemy was going to lose the will to fight and flee, Mikoto wasn’t going to argue with it.

However…

“They really are the goddesses,” someone said.

But this wasn’t the foolish enemy out ahead. It came from the army following behind Mikoto and Shokuhou.

“The two goddesses are supposed to break through the invisible barrier and appear in our world during a time of war. The legends were true!!”

A chill ran down Mikoto and Shokuhou’s spines.

They felt a rumbling like from a cheering stadium.

“Hey, Shokuhou, isn’t this getting out of hand!? I’m not going to argue about the importance of intelligence, but are you sure you can control this!?”

“What are you looking at me for? I’m not responsible for any trouble caused by these people’s thunder goddess!”

And so, unable to draw on their full strength, one major kingdom had fallen after another, but Mikoto couldn’t help but notice that the outcome seemed mostly determined in advance. The hyperinflation from mass-producing fulgurites played a role there too, of course.

She was now aware that she hadn’t done enough preparation when she challenged Academy City to rescue the Sisters.

She had already partially lost when she rushed in without a real plan.

“I can control all the electronic data, so I could have altered the prices of vegetables, grains, precious metals, jewels, and crude oil. Sigh, even those sketchy labs need money to run, so there had to have been tons of better ways to apply pressure to the adults at the top of Academy City.”

“Misaka-saaan, do you realize how dangerous that line of thinking is?”

At any rate, they had the full grimoire now, so they could finally see what it said.

They needed to complete the three treasures ceremony to return to Earth.

To do that, they first needed to defeat the three Demon Lords and retrieve their three treasures, but they didn’t know what those Demon Lords looked like or even what their names were.

That was why they needed Elf Elder Bakerian’s grimoire.

They had ended up fighting from beginning to end. But since this was a swords and sorcery fantasy world, maybe it was designed so they would need to use those swords and sorcery.

“Let’s see, how about we start with the names of the three Demon Lords?”

“It gives those right here,” Patissiet cheerfully informed them, reaching out her small finger from the side.

Mikoto could grasp the gist of the text like she was decoding Morse code or braille, but it would be faster to let the elf do it since she could fluently read the text.

“It says the three Demon Lords rule over the land, the sea, and the sky.”

“And their names?” pressed Mikoto to avoid getting sidetracked.

The elf read the first one out loud.

“The ruler of the sky is the Brain Edge Dragon.”

“Hm?” said Shokuhou, completely freezing up.

Mikoto hadn’t caught on, so she urged Patissiet onward.

“Huh. And the sea one?”

“Wait just a second and remember what I explained to you, Misaka-san!! Remember when we first left Academy City and I read the residual thoughts from that slate?”

“You expect me to remember that never-ending explanation!?”

“The relevant part was in the very first line! It started with ‘slaying the Brain Edge Dragon’!!”

Time froze.

Mikoto had a bad feeling about this. She forced a smile and hesitantly addressed the elf.

“Um?”

“Yes?”

“P-Patissiet, Just to be certain, can you tell us the name of the sea Demon Lord?”

“That’s right here. The ruler of the sea is the Absolute Water Kraken.”

The elf tilted her head and went “huh?” even as she read it.

Mikoto didn’t recognize that name.

But that was no reason for relief. It did sound familiar. What about the thing that grabbed Shokuhou’s ankle, dragged her into the lake, and was ultimately sliced up by Mikoto and turned into grilled squid? Hadn’t that been a kraken?”

Mikoto was afraid to continue.

“Um, then...who rules the land?”

“The ruler of the land is the Multi Predator Chimera. Oh, I know that one. That’s the one Lady Misaka skinned and turned into a blanket while half asleep!!”

Mikoto hung her head.

And trembled.

Then what was the point of all this fighting? They had never needed the grimoire.

Misaka Mikoto and Shokuhou Misaki raised their heads and shouted as one.

“Are you telling me we already defeated them all our first time here!!!?”