Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 2===

They were in a library filled with light.

Not a grand temple or castle. It was part of a certain boy’s school, which Alice Anotherbible had said she wanted to see. That was the reason she had chosen this as the final location.

There was no further significance there.

Alice had in fact offered up her entire being, including her life, there.

What had that small girl really wanted?

This had nothing to do with the fate of Academy City or the madness spreading across the world.

Kamijou had to sense what was deep inside Alice.

He quietly clenched his teeth.

Strongly.

The time had come to directly face that cornered girl’s feelings.

“Touma-”

“Don’t bother trying to analyze this with your 103,001 grimoires,” roared Kamijou, still facing Alice.

He intentionally ignited his heart.

“I know what I have to do regardless: punch Alice to bring her back to her senses!! Being the strongest doesn’t mean she has to carry it all on her own. I refuse to let her be alone for even a second longer!!”

Kamijou Touma.

Anna Sprengel. H.T. Trismegistus.

Those three faced the girl together. They glared at her without fleeing. Their positions, plans, and abilities were completely different, but they were all working toward a single goal here.

''Don’t forget.

''And if you have forgotten, we’ll show you.

“Don’t falter.”

''Alice Anotherbible.

''You aren’t alone.

''Your loneliness is no more than an illusion.

''There are still plenty of people out there who want to save you!!

“Let’s do thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis!!!”

Kamijou shouted to shake off the fear and raced forward. With his right fist still clenched tight.

Well before he made it in punching range, he heard a hard crunching sound.

It came from Alice.

No, down at her feet.

He knew better than to ask why or for what purpose.

Alice was already doing something.

Whatever this was, that irregular Transcendent had chosen to use her own body to act.

And she chose to attack.

“Fool!!”

Little Anna kicked him in the back of the knee from the side.

As soon as his view dropped straight down, something tore diagonally upwards through the air.

All sound vanished.

Five clawmarks were torn diagonally through the library wall directly behind Kamijou. Same for the many bookcases in between. Only after the fact did he realize the same would have happened to him if his head hadn’t lowered by a few dozen centimeters.

Claws.

Scratches.

That primitive attack had been amplified to the extreme.

“''If you die, it’s over.'' I know it’s obvious, but you can’t forget that absolute rule!! Good, Old Mary’s resurrection does not work against fatal wounds caused by Alice herself. If you really want to save her, then you can’t expect the world to do you any favors. You can only reach out your own hand to help her!!”

If the expert named Anna Kingsford were here, she would have easily seen through it.

The only one here who reached that level understanding was the Grimoire Library with access to 103,001 original grimoires.

“Was that magic?” asked Index in disbelief. While reaching out a hand to help Kamijou back to his feet. “Since people’s interior worlds are linked to the physical world outside them, anything you can do with your body can be used to reach a mystical power that changes the entire world. I get that, but still.”

“All those fancy gestures and ceremonies are only meant to purify and cleanse your will,” said Othinus.

Kamijou took this time to gently push the little god into Index’s hands.

Everything about Alice was the ultimate enigma, so he wanted to ensure the survival of anyone who could help explain it all. And he didn’t think he could protect Othinus if she was with him.

“But Alice Anotherbible has had her baseline purity ''forcibly increased'', so each and every one of her actions is pure without going through that process.”

“We should consider ourselves fortunate,” said H.T. Trismegistus.

That was the gloomy young butler’s assessment.

Because…

“We are in fact incredibly fortunate that Alice cannot ''kill her enemies with a thought or set the world in motion to kill her enemies if she wills it.'' This tells us she must take a physical action to trigger her attacks. Common sense says we are lucky indeed.”

But that also meant this wasn’t limited to her scratching claws.

The girl who had become a fully-grown woman faced Kamijou while tilting diagonally.

She took a step.

Just one.

“Touma, she’s coming!!”

“!!!???”

He understood that, but he couldn’t restrain his reflexes as a living being. Crossing his arms in front of his face was a definite mistake.

The sweet scent of tea filled the boy’s nose. Something was overpowering the library’s old paper smell.

Alice Anotherbible already stood behind Kamijou.

''Walking

''In other words, she took action to move to her desired location.

She had not formed a special shape with her fingers, nor had she stepped in a complex pattern.

She had taken the same action anyone could.

She was blessed with a special result without having to focus on it.

The meaning extracted from her ordinary actions was just too pure!?

“Ali-!?”

She was already right there.

Kamijou spun around and swung his right hand back in something like a backhand blow.

But it found only air.

The grown woman pressed her four limbs down against the floor like an animal and lowered her head as far as it would go.

Crawling.

She had moved to his blind spot and then his last-second counterattack had missed. What this meant squeezed at his heart. He might as well have offered her the perfect chance to attack him.

The young butler did not hesitate to move.

Light flashed from his right hand as the blade hidden in his cane turned to light and sliced through the floor. The strange slash had an effect well beyond the length of the sword. And it struck right where crawling Alice’s lowered head was. It definitely hit. Except the metal blade passed right through her. Like she was intangible.

A specific meaning had been extracted from her ordinary action: evasion.

“It doesn’t matter if you hit her or not!?” hatefully spat Othinus.

As long as the adult woman moved to dodge, no external damage could affect her. Even if she took a direct hit from a nuclear missile. Alice showed no interest in H.T. Trismegistus even with his attempted decapitation of her. Still crawling, she raised her head and casually extended her hand toward Kamijou.

“''I was right.''”

Apparently the young butler’s attack had been to check something.

He had ended up cutting through the floor below Alice instead of her, so it fell.

That had been his intent from the beginning.

He had intentionally destroyed the floor so he could gather more information and survive.

Kamijou would die today.

''But he didn’t care about that anymore.

“Hey, wait, human!”

“(Keep Othinus with you, Index!)”

Just as he passed that message on with a look, the entire floor collapsed.

His feet were freed from gravity and his vision slid straight down. Along with the heavy bookcases held in place with quake-resistant screws.

“Gah!?”

Kamijou, Anna, and Trismegistus himself were caught up in it too, successfully distancing them from Alice’s hand.

They just barely escaped alive.

Instead of an ordinary classroom, they found themselves in a large space that must have been lined with steel office desks. Or the remains of it, anyway. The first term in the new school had yet to begin, but the desks already had some personal items on them. Was this the faculty room?

Only Alice wasn’t affected.

The grown woman’s long blonde hair swayed as she looked down at them from the upper floor. The floor only remained in the corners of the room and Alice alone stood there.

Like a wounded animal bleeding and furious while trapped by a fishing hook or some plastic tape that a human had thoughtlessly discarded.

Like a lonely animal.

One that’s threats and howls echoed with melancholy.

''This isn’t over,'' thought Kamijou as he forced his aching body back onto its feet. No matter how battered his body was – even if he was in such a bad state it would make a doctor scream in horror – he was still alive. For now, at least.

The power balance of Transcendents and whatnot no longer mattered. Just a person was good enough. As long as he still lived, even the puniest human had the right to change the course of the battle with his own conscious decisions.

And the extraordinary strongest being was only looking at him.

That much was a relief, at least.

(Index and Othinus are probably up there. And unlike Alice, they were by the door, so they can escape at any time. They don’t need to stay on the dangerous frontline. As long as I can call them, they can still provide information support!)

“She uses a variation on this, doesn’t she?”

Kamijou heard a dull “thud!!” and turned to see a 2m metal orb next to Anna. That was the Pneuma-less Shell, a spiritual item that produced tools from civilizations the world over and extracted the world’s oldest causes of death from them.

“But in Alice’s case, she doesn’t even rely on a tool. She draws out the meaning contained in the actions she takes and unleashes them as an attack. It’s a type of magic and also a type of miracle. She takes the ridiculous-sounding legends of holy men and woman producing miracles empty-handed and develops a logical way of actually doing it. Or that’s the sense I get from it, anyway.”

“…”

“Supposedly she was created when some Teacher of Crowley went a step too far and modified Alice Pleasance Liddell, so maybe if you follow the path back from Magick to Golden magic and then Rosicrucian magic, you can see the essence of my spells in what she does.”

On the floor above, Alice ignored their conversation and moved.

She tapped her heel down.

Creating a vibration.

It didn’t matter that they were on separate floors.

Kamijou and the others went stiff. They were pinned in place.

Stomping.

It was a juvenile act of resistance and intimidation. A challenge and attempted reversal against someone who was clearly your superior. It was a threat meant to overpower adult logic with childish instinct and a primitive gamble that all humans attempted at some point.

It worked.

The adult Alice jumped down in the single second the world was frozen.

She aimed to land on Kamijou. On the top of his head.

A dull sound followed.

Alice again knocked something sharply to the ground.

That broke the spell and Kamijou quickly leaped toward Anna and rolled along the floor.

Alice’s heel dropped like a shooting star and smashed deep into the floor.

Little Anna smirked in Kamijou’s arms while they lay in a jumble on the floor.

As if she were bragging to Alice that, no matter how powerful Alice was, it was Anna the boy had done this for.

“Now, did you switch over to 1.5x speed because you thought it was just a boring exposition scene? The Pneuma-less Shell is not a demonstration-only show item. It is a spiritual item that randomly produces a cause of death and not even I can fully control what it does!!”

She held a staff.

The strange staff looked like a giant golden cross decorated with a red ruby rose.

“You should thank my excellent luck of the draw, fool. The gold cross and ruby rose – the world’s oldest ''human-made'' miracle of the rose is the destruction of the origin. It brings death through disillusionment. It supposedly has ancient origins, but it was first depicted in the middle ages and rediscovered in more recent times. It contains all the violence found in the magic of extreme growth and maturity!!”

Miss Sprengel raised the staff in her little hands.

That was all.

There was no fancy incantation or complex magic circle. Flames simply appeared in the empty air and were released from the staff. They shot toward Alice with a liquid motion. These were not ordinary flames. They were magic flames that scorched and burned away space itself regardless of the physical material, like an old photograph being burned from behind.

Alice grabbed her long hair as a single mass.

And she swung her head around.

In a move straight out of kabuki, the thick bundle of hair drew a large circle in the air, which narrowed down as soon as the crimson flames passed through it.

The orange flames stopped in midair.

Binding.

In other words, stopping all movement of a target. And separating the target out from all possible interference.

“Tch!!”

The Pneuma-less Shell was Anna’s spiritual item, but what weapon she acquired was a matter of chance. She wouldn’t receive the same weapon if she tried again.

But that brief moment of regret was a mistake.

Alice tugged on her hair binding the flames, causing little Anna to pitch forward and lose her balance.

At that same moment, the grown woman took a step forward. They had seen what this did already. Whatever the distance, Alice would have already arrived at her destination.

Which meant right in front of Kamijou.

For an instant, he lost all depth perception. Alice’s grown chest suddenly blocked his view and his pupils couldn’t focus in time.

She arrived straight up in front of him with a flowing motion.

By the time his eyes had finally caught up, Alice’s fingers – and their sharp claws – were extending lithely toward his throat.

Time stopped. He tried to swing his head to the side and dodge, but his body couldn’t keep up.

He couldn’t die yet.

He might die, but it couldn’t be now.

He thought that so hard it seemed to burn into his mind. After all, the girl who had forgotten how to cry and instead howled like an animal was right there in front of him. He couldn’t die until he had saved her.

Light pierced sharply in from the side.

Time resumed flowing.

Alice doubled over and rolled along the floor.

This first clean hit did not come from Kamijou, Anna, or H.T. Trismegistus.

They heard a voice.

“What the hell? Did I really just hit Alice? Not to mention I thought we couldn’t even approach this center area because we were cut off spatially and temporally in that labyrinth!”

It was Aradia, god of witches, the moon, and the night.

A short distance away, the Bologna Succubus was on the ground grappling with a bipedal hare. After absorbing the shadows of next-gen weapons until she was large enough to trample the school building underfoot, Mut Thebes was engaged in a direct fistfight with an equally gigantic cat.

Hadn’t Anna mentioned the other Transcendents had arrived at the school too?

Kamijou and the others must have fallen far enough to reach where those Transcendents were battling the Gryphon, the Executioner, and so on.

Unlike Kamijou, Alice had not invited them.

And they couldn’t slip past those defenses like Anna could.

They had forcibly entered a labyrinth with no goal. In there, they fought an endless battle against Alice’s brutal toys – which might look comical but were all monsters capable of overwhelming Academy City’s dark side. That they were still alive showed just how abnormal Transcendents were.

For a brief moment, the dark pressure of death vanished within Kamijou. He felt strength growing from the center of his being.

Alice really wasn’t alone.

The world was not such a heartless place.

Good, Old Mary, Aradia, and the others gained nothing by winning this battle, but they were still here risking their lives. Even though this battlefield was ruled by the ordinary and inviolable rule where death meant losing everything they had been working to achieve.

What motivated their desperate battle?

What could it possibly be other than kindness?

“Fool, this is bad sign. Encountering the bait meant to buy us time means we have more enemies to deal with. By which I mean the Gryphon, the Executioner, and the rest of the Alice Series.”

“You have some nerve running off on your own to flirt, you goddamn villain,” said Aradia. “Just so you know, I’m more than willing to employ spankings as punishment as long as you aren’t one of the witches I’ve sworn to protect.”

“My, my. Quite an outdated way of thinking for such a young-looking goddess. Makes me wonder how old you ''really'' are.”

“I don’t want to hear that from the preserved little girl from who-knows-how-many centuries ago.”

Alice extracted herself from the collapsed cabinets half-burying her.

Her eyeballs rolled in her head.

Even now, that enchantingly lithe woman only ever looked Kamijou’s way. She didn’t even glance over at Aradia who had delivered the attack.

“Kh. Anyway, let’s fall back. We need to put some distance between us!!”

A sharp voice rang through the broken faculty room. Aradia held out her palm and launched a scattershot of light to keep Alice back. Each shot moved like a sea snake as they tore through the air and targeted adult Alice from multiple angles.

The storybook girl said nothing.

She didn’t even look Aradia’s way.

She only extended a finger and rotated it once clockwise.

Like some kind of joke, all of the glowing projectiles veered away from the fully-grown woman, blasting through walls and pillars instead.

Cursing.

That one childish action easily confused every eye on her, bringing them under her spell.

“Kh.”

Aradia didn’t even have time to gasp in shock.

Alice really didn’t look her way the entire time. She simply changed the arrangement of her casually extended fingers. She curled up her middle finger and held it down with her thumb like she was preparing to flick something.

There was no light or sound.

It was a lot like returning the favor.

Aradia broke through the wall and flew off somewhere.

Kamijou’s face paled.

That had definitely hit.

Flicking.

What even was that?

What meaning had been extracted from that simple action anyone was capable of?

Warning bells rang loud in Kamijou’s mind.

''If you died, it was over.

''Death really and truly meant goodbye.

''Because Alice’s attacks were the one thing not even Good, Old Mary’s resurrection could cure.

“Aradiaaa!!”

“Don’t worry, fool. It looks like the two of them distributed the damage between them. But that ''would'' have caused her heart to burst if there hadn’t been two identical Aradias here.”

Kamijou knew now wasn’t the time to ask why that would have caused her heart to burst or what splitting that in half would mean.

He heard a dull impact and saw sparks.

After a short delay, he heard an explosion as a shockwave crashed into the distorted scene.

Something again intersected between Anna and Alice.

In the deadly battle against Alice, the value of each second was far greater than normal. Death was the end. Truly the end. The clock was always ticking in real time and everyone was moving at once.

He could not forget the fundamental rules revealed here.

“But that isn’t reason enough to relax. Splitting the damage in half means receiving the same attack twice will mean the end for both Aradias.”

“…”

So Aradia couldn’t do it.

Mut Thebes could grow endlessly by absorbing weapon shadows and Good, Old Mary could create any tool or chemical with her alchemy, including ones with great destructive power, but Kamijou couldn’t picture either of them stopping Alice.

The Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress spell could replace all pleasure with equal amounts of pain, regardless of the target’s physical toughness and endurance. That attack had made even Christian Rosencreutz grimace, but would it work here? Was this version of Alice in a mental state where she experienced that sort of human emotion?

Then would he give up?

He needed to give himself some credit for immediately answering that with a “hell no”.

He had a reason for saying that.

He needed to thank his past ordeals for preparing him for this.

“There is little meaning in analyzing each and every thing she does,” said Anna.

She raised her golden cross staff as if judging the distance between herself and Alice.

“We need to start with tearing down the idea that we can never defeat Alice. And it isn’t the Transcendents and their obvious strength that can do that. It needs to be the more unorthodox fighters like me or you who do that, fool!!”

The grown woman vanished.

The golden cross staff and the primitive and violent jabbing claws crashed together head-on.

Anna had reacted.

She was capable of it.

When the Executioner attempted to make his own attack from the side, Anna bisected him straight down the middle with only a glare. The ruby decorating her staff shined a moment later. Its role complete, a clump of compressed air burst, buffeting Kamijou’s hair and cheeks as a violent wind.

The monsters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland could actually die.

There were no absolutes in this world.

Kamijou realized it had been that way from the beginning. Alice had always been so absolute, but when Anna Sprengel showed up, the little villain toyed with the situation, laid traps, took control, and otherwise overshadowed Alice.

While Anna hadn’t managed any clean hits, being able to lock weapons with Alice was unusual in and of itself.

Anna and Alice.

Two irregular Transcendents.

Just like Alice Anotherbible brought everything to her side, including probability and insight, Anna Sprengel was manipulating some unseen factor in real time.

“Accept me, H.T. Trismegistus!! You regular Transcendents are based on Alice, so you can never harm her. But if you swap out foundations, you can bypass Alice’s precedence over you. Like comparing heights of the Tower of Babel and the World Tree Yggdrasil!!”

“I am in your debt.”

“I’m only doing this to make that fool smile. And you want Alice to smile in the same way, right? Then hurry!!”

An invisible change came over the air. A weight vanished.

New possibility had presented itself. If Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents also swapped out their connection, they could possibly overturn Alice’s absoluteness.

The young butler once more held his right hand to the staff at his hip in an iaido pose.

The meaning of his sword strikes had changed.

But he was a moment too slow.

With a dull thud, the equilibrium was broken. Anna’s small body took a powerful blow.

Even though they were supposedly equal.

With a single hand, Alice casually grabbed the beaten-up Gryphon to use it as a weapon.

As if it were a giant club.

Grabbing.

The act of denying an object its own will and applying her own will to it by unilaterally wielding it for its offensive or defensive functionality.

Anna could compete with Alice on her own, but that changed if Alice boosted her strength with something else.

That is, ''if Alice turned someone else into a weapon.

That absurdly powerful magic could boost her stats by forcibly equipping herself with something else: a sword, a shumai, a goddess – anything.

(Is that a superior version of Mut Thebes’s ability to absorb the shadow of any weapon!?)

“Gahh!?”

“Anna!!”

Alice made a further attack. The Gryphon extended her reach, so the little villain failed to dodge. She was pummeled hard enough to bend backwards.

Anna groaned and tried to raise her golden staff.

But Alice was again faster.

Alice was always a step ahead. To an unnatural degree.

She grabbed H.T. Trismegistus’s wrist as he tried to attack her from the side. She turned him into a weapon, equipped that weapon, and swung it artlessly to the side.

A direct hit.

A dull impact rang loud.

In this case, taking Anna’s side had been a mistake.

Or maybe he had been thwarted by Alice’s ''tailwind''.

That magic stole power from external sources. If H.T. Trismegistus had remained no more than one of Alice’s toys, he couldn’t have provided more power on top of her own.

The little villain struggled to breathe and a red clump splattered from the corner of her mouth.

The equilibrium was broken.

Despite dropping her golden cross staff, Anna clenched her teeth and stepped forward.

Another impact sounded.

But not from more of Alice’s unreasonable violence.

It didn’t end there.

This time it came from Anna.

Anna and Alice crashed foreheads together.

“You wanted recognition, didn’t you?”

With their foreheads pressed together, Anna spoke from extreme close range.

“You wanted forgiveness, didn’t you? And you wanted love!! Just like me!!! Then you shouldn’t give up. He didn’t care that I’m a villain. I’m here now because he didn’t hesitate to run away with me back then. As long as that fool continues to reach out his hand, don’t just assume all light has vanished from this world!!!”

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW6.png|thumb]]

Alice said nothing.

But a subtle tremor did run through the cheek of her bestial expression.

Kamijou thought that came from something other than her intense emotion.

Then Alice made her next move.

Smelling.

She sniffed out her target’s precise location. ''Which meant her next move was guaranteed to hit, no matter how poorly aimed it was.

Once again, Alice swung H.T. Trismegistus around with a single hand and struck Anna’s little body with her boosted attack. The force of the blow caused the gloomy young butler to slip from Alice’s grasp. No, his right wrist shattered like pottery. Only his hand remained in the grown woman’s hand.

This wasn’t like a home run in baseball or a strike in bowling.

The two of them were knocked away with a strange sound.

Neither one cried out.

Kamijou didn’t even want to think about how much damage that had done to Anna.

While collapsed in a daze, H.T. Trismegistus simply stared up at Alice as she tossed his hand aside. The lack of blood only made the scene more bizarre.

“I…”

Something spilled from the young butler’s lips.

They were words.

That magician had believed common sense would lead anyone to think the same thing after seeing that girl with an unwanted power forced upon her. And the words left his mouth now.

“I wanted to place a roof over her head and protect her from the threats of the world…but I failed.”

Alice Anotherbible wasn’t listening.

The fully-grown blonde woman tilted her head and spun around.

“''Teacher''.”

Toward Kamijou Touma.

As if he was all she could see.

He understood that Alice wasn’t in a normal state of mind.

She hadn’t been when a magician had altered her body, she hadn’t been when she was surrounded and protected by the Bridge Builders Cabal, she hadn’t been when Anna had given her a deep interest in Kamijou Touma, and she hadn’t been when Kamijou’s rejection had left her dazed.

She hadn’t been for so very long.

He understood that.

But that was not a statement she should have ignored.

She had become animalistic and irrational, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t talk. She had just spoken to Kamijou. But she had still chosen to brush off the young butler.

He didn’t interest her, so she wouldn’t speak to him.

Was that the only reason she didn’t react?

(Not yet.)

Don’t lose hope.

Don’t give up on Alice.

Choose to not let her madness grow.

If you began using personal misfortune as an excuse, that was the end for you. In a way, Kamijou understood that better than anyone.

The world was cruel, so he had seen plenty of people unfairly and unreasonably devastated by it.

But Kamijou hadn’t faltered with those people.

He had fought them.

“I was unlucky” was a convenient phrase applicable to most anything, but he knew relying it and overusing it would prevent you from ever finding the way out of the darkness and would meaninglessly force you into a life of misfortune. He knew in his bones that irresponsibly relying on your misfortune would mean rotting away in that filthy dead end forever.

So.

He would teach Alice the proper way to live with unreasonable misfortune.

“You can still fight, can’t you, teacher?”

“I can.”

Kamijou readied his one and only weapon. He clenched his fist.

Hard.

“But that doesn’t matter so the girl will overturn her prophecy because she will make sure to do something to help you and then make up with you and fight with you and be happy so she doesn’t believe what that incomplete library says because there must be a way to help you out there and she refuses to fail because the girl is Anotherbible so we can make up.”

“Sure!! But I hope you don’t think saying that will stop me, Alice!!”