Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume1 Phase4 (section)

===Part 2===

The morning sun in the starry sky shined down on Earth Castle Town Grouviv, which was best known for having nothing special. It came as a surprise to the people who questioned that premise, but people who had grown exhausted from sightseeing would gather here and provide plenty of sightseeing income.

The blonde girl and the others were staying in a three-story inn where the first floor contained a simple restaurant. Ayato had already gone down, but Teleria and the others had further business to take care of.

Yes, they were girls!!

[[Image:SorceryHacker_v01_BW07.png|thumb]]

“Sigh…this mirror is too small.”

In fact, the entire bathroom was too small, but Teleria, Mamilis, and Henrietta were all crammed into a space that contained a sink and bathtub yet was too small to fit even a single horse. The water from the tap was cold thanks to the earth core’s destruction, but that was not the real problem. The three of them were pressing their soft cheeks against each other to fight for space in front of the small mirror while they did their hair and washed their faces. The silver-haired Dark Elf had a slight upper hand here, but that may have been because her distinctive long ears stuck out around her in a threatening manner.

“Hey, Teleria?”

“What is it, Mamilis?”

“Who are you prettying yourself up for? Coach sees you as soon as you wake up.”

“Bff!?”

She did not actually want him to see her then, but due to various circumstances, they generally could only afford the one room. Since they had started traveling together, he had seen her not just immediately after waking up but also after staying up all night while wandering through a cave or a forest. But she wanted to avoid the nightmarish jinx of becoming the sort of older woman who gave up on keeping up her looks. Even if it was meaningless and wasted effort, she wanted to continue her pursuit of constant cuteness!!

Teleria’s soul was shaken so bad she was left motionless, so Henrietta took that opportunity to lean out in front of the mirror. She toyed with her bangs while giving a complicated look toward Mamilis who was relaxing her shoulders to create some space…and who had been saved by a Sorcery Hacker instead of a Striker.

“By the way.”

“Ugh, why do we keep adding more girls to our party like that’s just the way these things work?”

“??? You seem to be familiar with that dangerous individual, so you might know. Last night, this bull man told me some things that may or may not have been true.”

“Oh, that was probably all true. The two Butterfly Effector swords and Micha Angelos seem real enough and even Ayato says he can’t find a way to fool her authorization. She seems to be one of the finest humanoid sorcery devices not just on the continent but in the entire world, but she says her energy efficiency is so bad mass production would suck the world dry.”

“Bff!? S-so he really was a prince!?”

The Striker leaned back in shock, so the Dark Elf moved in front of the mirror instead.

“So what did that bull say?”

“R-right. He claimed that dangerous individual did not start out as a Sorcery Hacker and used to use a sorcery gun. Um, he used a revolver and he was known as the Hexa…something or other.”

The other two had pushed her out of the way, so Teleria viewed the backs of their heads as she sighed.

Then she slowly moved her lips.

“I really shouldn’t mention this if he didn’t, but given the situation, maybe I should. It would be cruel to send you up against someone like Nirvelphany without answering your questions. Think of this as no more than a way of strengthening our teamwork, okay?”

“So what was that Hexa-whatever thing about?”

“Hexajinx. Ayato was originally a skilled Forward who specialized in using a magnum-style revolver. He had nothing to do with Sorcery Hacking back then. He earned that name from a legend saying no one had ever seen him reload because he would complete any job in no more than six shots. He had to have been the best sorcery gunner in the Academy Towers we attended. He would not simply go in guns blazing, but he was not a powerless phantom thief type either. He would avoid as much unnecessary fighting as he could, attack the target with as much power as he could manage from point-blank range, and vanish from the scene once it was abuzz with energy. People were impressed he could do what he did without passing through walls or turning invisible.”

An outsider like Henrietta knew of the Academy Towers as a hive of extreme geniuses and of eccentrics who could not be allowed out in public. They were always working up strange theories like that colorless mana was split into the four elements by aligning with the higher beings scattered in the four directions. Whatever their personality, standing at the peak of any specialty there had to be quite an accomplishment.

That was why an honest question occurred to her.

“…? If he was that skilled, why did he choose the path of a dangerous individual?”

“He failed his very last job,” whispered the blonde mermaid. Since she could explain this, she must have broken it down in her mind and finished verbalizing it. “He was to eliminate the criminal who had taken a hostage and holed up in the Gem Science Gemboard Processing Tower. As always, he settled everything in no more than six shots, but it turned out the hostage had convinced the criminal to surrender just beforehand. In other words, he shot the criminal when there was no need for it.”

“…”

“That counted as taking out his target and solving everything just fine, so he remains a top ranker without a single blemish on his record. But what he did hit him a lot harder. It did not matter that no one criticized him for it. That is why he swore to never again use a sorcery gun and started down the path of a Sorcery Hacker ''using the hidden aspects of what he had been taught''.”

It was unfortunate, but accidents and miscommunications were a problem everyone had to face in combat. But that boy had been unable to write it off as a probabilistic eventuality.

And what was it he had said?

''I’m not about to deny what I’ve done. Not that I’m going to sit around and let you arrest me for it either.

“On the outside, it might look like he got a fresh start, but I’m sure he is still pursuing the truth of what happened then and what went wrong in the chain of command. In fact, that is the entire reason he chose to become a Sorcery Hacker. What went wrong to let that happen? Or was it done intentionally and maliciously? He wants to reach a place much deeper than he could as a top ranker who works within the rules.”

He made sure he was aware of his body’s baseline weight so he could move exactly as he pictured it in his head. Even that was fueled by the need he felt to redo everything from the beginning before heading back into battle. Just as Teleria could not become a Sorcery Hacker, the muscles and thought processes needed for using a Linkage Plug were entirely different from those needed for using a sorcery gun. Instead of exchanging magic blasts from head on, he had to hide his true intent, focus on indirect attacks, and challenge an armed opponent while unarmed. Although all of this was only Teleria’s guesses from the position of someone who was not a Sorcery Hacker. Only he would know how much effort had gone into throwing out his specialty and relearning everything from the ground up.

“Then you are assisting that dangerous individual?”

“He never came to me asking for help. I decided to follow him myself.”

“Hm? You said Coach’s official record remains perfect, but you also seem to know an awful lot about what actually happened.”

The Dark Elf tilted her head in front of the mirror, so Teleria laughed.

She had a faint smile, but it was a complicated one that would be difficult to describe using only positive emotions.

“That is easily explained. I was the hostage in that school tower and my stepbrother was the criminal holing up there. So I saw it all happen.”

The other two fell silent at that.

Only Teleria continued with a faint, faint smile.

“No one is perfect. Not even a former top ranker.”

“…”

“But that is why I am more worried about Ayato ruining his life than I am about the truth of the incident that took my stepbrother’s life. Ayato and Nirvelphany are very similar in the sense that they have grown obsessed with a single mistake. They are willing to throw out their own life and use up every last bit of strength if it means making up for that mistake. And no matter how it happened, that incident already ended. It’s wrong to create a new incident or tragedy over it. So…so my purpose in this journey is to watch over him and make sure he does not do that.”

The girls finished their preparations.

Once Dark Elf Mamilis used her Mimic Option earrings to hide her long ears, the three of them left their room in the inn and walked down to the first floor restaurant.

The boy raised a hand in greeting from the table he had gotten for them.

“Hi, Miss Teleria. It looks like our last meal is going to be a fried egg on toast. The options are limited due to the earth core’s destruction. That said, it seems the legends were true: anything looks fancy if you put an egg on top.”

The girl responded with a smile.

“Don’t joke about things like that. Do you want me to hit you?”