Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume3 Phase04 (section)

===Part 2===

Ayato’s group left the infirmary and saw the curved hallway’s windows letting in the colors of night.

It was a bit chilly even with the heated floors.

“Heh…heh heh.”

“What’s so funny, Ayato?”

“Just that you are lending me your shoulder when you normally throw a fit if I so much as hold your hand. Perhaps I should get injured more often.”

“You are ''not'' allowed to make a habit of this. I can’t believe you…”

They had rewritten their front sights to Grade S and acquired the assassin handguns that functioned as a secret second key, so they didn’t need to circumvent the gates with rockets or space armor this time.

They simply used the elevator to reach the top of the gem tower.

And on the way…

“What happened to the Rocket Club?” asked Ayato.

“They left us a message for you: ‘If you do us the courtesy of dying, we will laugh and post on our social media journals that this was the best day of our lives.’ Although I got the feeling this was a joke based on the assumption you would pull through,” answered Henrietta, sounding somewhat exasperated.

It sounded like that bunch were their usual selves. They would probably be released soon.

They had to switch elevators every 10 floors, so it was still an exhausting climb. But they eventually boarded the final elevator.

They arrived at the true top floor past the Grade S zone.

They stepped off the elevator, walked to the Student Council Office, and approached the leather sofa. They lifted the cushions, glared at the coffin-like metal box made of mana-conducting silver, and inserted the four keys.

They opened the door to find the box was packed full. The bottled scraps of paper and shards of metal may have been material evidence for some incident or another and the large document envelopes may have been full of some kind of secret information. The human fingernails and skin collected below plastic like a photo album was a less than pleasant discovery. Those may have been materials to use (imperfect) magic for searching out the students or teachers’ locations.

Henrietta looked disappointed.

“Is that all? It’s so businesslike. I was expecting a ''mysterious organization'' to be hiding jewels and bars of gold.”

“Their Vice President is a real princess, remember? They don’t need money. Misappropriating some taxes is all they need to fund just about anything.”

The straitlaced Striker froze. She may still have had trouble accepting that a princess was involved in filthy criminal activity.

But more than that…

“Coach, this is a lot. Which files are we supposed to read?”

“All of them.”

They split up and got to work on the mountain of document envelopes.

However, these were secret documents from the Academy Towers, which was second to none when it came to sorcery R&D. Ayato told Mamilis and Henrietta to hand him anything that was too scholarly for them to understand.

That meant most of it ended up with Ayato.

“Theoretical plans for constructing a colossal sorcery gun capable of launching intercontinental attacks. Strategic manipulation of public opinion of an expedition into the Furthest Reaches of each cardinal direction. Scrapping any fragmentary reports of devil sightings. It’s all interesting, but not what we’re looking for.”

“Hold it, dangerous individual. Is this really worth hiding so thoroughly? Are you sure this isn’t decoy information? This right here looks like the results of a survey about sorcery gun grips.”

“Oh, that’s probably the groundwork for experiments in the artificial evolution of humans on the skeletal level.”

“Evolution…on the skeletal level?”

“For example, if all weapon grips have a standardized length and width, people’s stances and tactics will naturally change and become standardized for easiest use of those guns. As people train with those guns day in and day out, it will influence how their muscles and bones grow. That can change the average height, weight, and even lifespan of humans across the Static Continent. This is about doing that on purpose. Making the masses a size the elites find easier to control. Don’t ask me if the point is to make people less disease prone to cut medical costs or to make people too frail to ever stage a successful rebellion, though.”

“…”

“Still, this ''isn’t very important''. You can probably find similar plans in the Academy Towers faculty room. We’re looking for something much more important.”

Henrietta’s mouth flapped and she failed to get any words out this time. After all, this was a research paper by President Umihiko Darkavenue. Despite what Ayato had said, each and every piece of paper in here was worth an endless supply of gold. Not that he needed to say that out loud and deliver the finishing blow against the Striker.

Ayato was accustomed to secrets like these, but he eventually found something that made even him frown.

“What the hell?”

The boy’s concerning comment led the three girls to gather around him.

He explained while seated on the floor and reading through the document.

“It looks like the Academy Towers were running a few unofficial projects. This one received a very large sum of funds that circumvented the usual budget process. My guess is that money came from the princess.”

Ayato flicked one of the pages of the document.

“It’s an anti-mimic project,” said the Sorcery Hacker. “They’re developing a largescale sorcery facility that can see right through the Mimic Options demons use to hide their demonic traits.”

It wasn’t Mamilis who jumped in surprise. It was Teleria.

“Wh-why would they want to do that?”

“Looks like they’ve seen Mimic Options as a threat for a while.” Ayato pointed at a different document. “There’s a lot of human sorcery tech here at the Academy Towers, but ''what if a demon who was indistinguishable from a human managed to enroll''?”

“Oh.”

“Humans don’t win against demons because of our strength or numbers. It all comes down to our advanced sorcery tech. Or so the Council thinks, anyway. Of course, there’s also the fact that our magic is supported by the Four Lords and other higher demons.”

“Wait, that’s what the Council thinks? So do you think differently, coach?”

Ayato responded with an unreadable smile.

Humans never could have wielded the technological system called sorcery to this extent without their endless thirst for violence, their drive to invent new ways to kill, and their bigoted cruelty that made them feel joy in the abuse of others. But there was no need to explain that unfortunate side of humanity to Mamilis when she was so easily scared.

Not everyone would go in for the kill because they had the upper hand. In fact, wasn’t it more “normal” to feel sorry for someone when they were so much weaker than you? Like how people would be hesitant to strike an abandoned kitten or puppy.

“The Council does not want demons to get their hands on human sorcery tech. So to make sure that doesn’t happen, they need to eliminate any possible demons from the Academy Towers. And it has to be precise enough to eliminate even the smallest possibility of a demon slipping through.”

They hated the Mimic Options that let a demon masquerade as a human.

Hadn’t Demon Lord Nirvelphany been slain by the human hero (who was unwittingly set up by the royals and aristocrats) for that same reason?

Human history refused to change.

They kept making the same mistakes. The powerful and tolerant demons only wanted to hide their horns and tails so they could live in peace, but the weak and underhanded humans could not eliminate their fear of those demons. So they would reveal those demons and drive them out. Even though no one had ever said the world belonged to humans alone.

“But, coach, was that anti-mimic magic or facility actually completed? If it was, I would think us demons would have been wiped out already.”

“It looks like they have the theory complete in a lot of detail, but they haven’t actually made it yet.”

“Of course they haven’t,” bluntly stated Mamilis even though the scholarly stuff was supposed to be beyond her education.

Ayato wondered if her weapons developer grandma had told her something, but apparently not.

“Magic works by getting help from the Four Lords and the Demon Lord, right? They would never allow magic that would lead to the elimination of demons.”

It wasn’t that simple. The Demon Lord and the Four Lords had once lost a war to human magic (and technology). That meant their power could be drawn out without their permission. The ultimate form of that was the sorcery hacking used by Ayato and Umihiko.

However…

“It looks like they have a few ideas concerning that.”

“?”

“They’ve considered using a completely manmade facility to apply elemental color to the colorless mana or creating null-element magic that can control the mana itself without needing to use the four elements.”

“I’ve never heard of that before. Have you?” asked Mamilis, bending over to peer down at the documents.

“No,” replied Ayato from the floor.

That suggested those ideas hadn’t worked.

None of that had reached the practical stage ''yet''.

Which in turn meant this wasn’t enough to assume the plan would be forever stalled.

“But another dangerous project has reached the practical stage.”

“What…is that?”

“You experienced a portion of it yourself back in Laguntreat, Miss Teleria. This is where Jennifer, the Student Council Advisor, got her tech.”

A cloud fell over the blonde girl’s face at the mention of the mermaid island.

Teleria couldn’t manage to speak, so a pale-faced Henrietta did so for her.

“W-wasn’t that plan about sorcery hacking Fleurelisia of the Four Lords as a stepping stone to controlling one of the Combined Royal Family’s swords?”

“But that Vice President girl is a princess and used one of those swords all on her own, right? Why would they need magic to control those swords?”

Mamilis’s pure question helped guide Henrietta to a different answer.

The straitlaced Striker’s face grew even more pale.

“Y-you mean the Academy Towers intends to control one of the Four Lords to attack us!?”

“No.”

Ayato softly rejected that idea.

Henrietta had wanted that rejection, but she didn’t look any happier now.

The bad feeling she felt proved accurate.

He went on to give the worst possible answer.

“It looks like he’s been researching how to make a strategic sorcery weapon that can kill the Four Lords and eliminate their elements. That would render all existing magic unusable, but he believes they could create a new magic system based on colorless mana, which would allow them to eliminate all demonic involvement in the magic system.”

Whose throat gave a twitch, pushing out a weird noise? It may have been Ayato himself.

Yes.

At the mermaid island, Student Council Advisor Jennifer Evening had stabbed several sharp objects into Fleurelisia’s massive body and sorcery hacked her. Then Jennifer had used the massive processing space that gave her to hack the Fermiliquidio sword.

But hold on.

Ignore how shocking and unusual that was and think back to the original assumptions. Hadn’t the Annihilator-class Predator Island been designed to kill Fleurelisia?

Humans could build something like that all on their own.

And the current age of human supremacy was built atop the past war against and defeat of the demons.

“But…”

Henrietta raised her voice to try and break through the solidified atmosphere that had set in.

It didn’t work.

“If they are constructing a massive weapon on the same scale as the Predator Island, what is it!? The President has gone missing, but if he is alive, he has to be pretty desperate. And we still might run into him here!!”

“I can’t say for certain, but it looks like they were taking practical data. That means this isn’t just a theory. The R&D is based on data taken by actually attacking a captured Four Lord and seeing how much it injured them.”

“They captured…one of the Four Lords?”

Mamilis couldn’t believe her ears.

Fire Lord Blasthogg and Water Lord Fleurelisia.

Restraining a true monster like that was extraordinary enough on its own. And this said the Academy Towers were researching a way to kill them.

Whether that was to actually kill them or to use the possibility as a threat, it would require tremendous power.

But it didn’t sound like Ayato was joking.

“Wind Lord Escalrain is supposedly a giant horse with four wings. Those wings produce the east, west, south, and north winds and the rest of him supposedly determines the weather. He supposedly weaves the air currents as if on a loom. He moves the world’s atmosphere, he decides the weather on a whim, and his anger causes natural disasters. The rise and fall of civilizations, gluts and famines, floods and droughts, and all other good and bad trends in the human world are determined by him.”

“That’s so poorly defined I’m having a hard time imagining it.”

Henrietta was astonished, but this probably wasn’t an exaggeration. They had already seen the Fire and Water Lords. If the Wind Lord was at their level, he had to do at least that much. If they actually encountered him, they would be witnessing something straight out of the ancient stories.

And there was something out their capable of injuring and killing him.

Ayato shrugged.

“For us, having to go up against a superweapon capable of killing one of the Four Lords is a failure in and of itself. It might be too late already, but I want to find Umihiko before he reaches the weapons development factory. …How far behind are we? How far has he made it while we’re spending our time on this?”

“Ayato, um.”

Teleria was hesitant to interrupt, but she appeared to have found something.

Ayato gasped when he read the title of the document she handed him: The Conclusion of the Gem Science Gemboard Processing Tower Incident and How To Use Ayato Criminaltrophy.

“…”

This was what he had most wanted to know.

But he responded with a puzzled frown. Most of the document was covered up by black pen, preventing him from reading the details. And when he held it up to his face and gave a sniff, he could still detect an oily scent.

There was a single stain inside the oblong space within the sofa. It looked an awful lot like an ink drop.

Except it wasn’t black.

It was red. Whoever had opened the sofa had been bleeding. Not that any of the curses one could use from a drop of blood would be enough to defeat that person.

(That bastard still had enough life in him to pull this off?)

Yet again, Ayato was a step behind.

The more he wanted an answer, the further away it felt.

Very recently, someone bloody had opened the four locks, blotted out this document, and then put it back. The culprit shouldn’t have even been alive, but he had prioritized tormenting Ayato by ensuring this was what he found.

It was extremely cruel, but also a very Sorcery Hacker thing to do.

The culprit played the part much more thoroughly than Ayato who had only become one later on in life out of necessity.

And this also announced that the culprit didn’t particularly care if Ayato learned about the superweapon to kill the Four Lords. If he did, he would have covered up that document or taken it with him.

And this was only possible if a master key existed.

There was only one possible suspect.

If the Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer had known about the spare keys, they wouldn’t have worked so hard to protect theirs.

This could only have been done by that boy who had no qualms about keeping secrets or sacrificing the comrades who trusted him. No one was threatening him like he had Teleria. He felt no guilt over keeping secrets and betraying people.

He thought a true Sorcery Hacker should delight in such things.

Ayato ground his teeth.

“This means he’s at least far enough ahead to make a detour. Dammit!!”