Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:AgneseSS Chapter2 (section)

===Part 3===

The sea split and the mountains crumbled.

Or more accurately, the concrete embankment split and the mountains of metal containers crumbled.

“A-are you kidding me?” groaned Angelene while lying nearby.

She looked up to see the shockwave had twisted a sturdy gantry crane like a sugar sculpture.

She expected a crater or three to be visible with a satellite.

“Is this supposed to be a joke!? We’ll die! There’s no way we won’t! What is this garbage!? This is game over already! Isn’t it over from the moment France is attacked!!!???”

For some reason, Sister Agnese responded with a distant look in her eyes.

“Sister Angelene, you haven’t seen the worst of it yet.”

“Impossible. How could it get any worse?”

“If a few shots was enough to shatter all diplomatic ties and start an all-out war, England never would have left any of its people in France. They would have given up any hope of stopping it, withdrawn everyone, and prepared for war. So why didn’t they do that? Because this isn’t the final defensive line.”

If the Hood only wanted to fire on France, it didn’t need to continue charging toward the coast. It could stop once within firing range.

Then what did both England and France fear the most?

“''It’s going to continue on inland.''”

“…”

“The Hood is taking the shortest route and it has been seen passing right through areas it should have run aground on. So in the worst case, it might be able to continue going even after arriving on land. Maybe it will phase right through the land and maybe it will slide across the land like the ice ships did.”

The mention of the ice ships earned a short silence from Lucia and Angelene.

Agnese understood why.

“The problem is that its current course could take it straight to Paris. It still has around 300km to go, though. They say all roads lead to Rome, but France is a pretty big place too. I suppose that’s how it has enough land for all the wheat and grapes. France is letting England handle things for now, but they apparently intend to begin the next phase once the ship arrives on land.”

“W-wait, so the ship can phase through the land, but the shells still hit? How is that fair!?”

“Don’t ask me for the logic behind it, but ghosts can strangle you, right? If you want details, go ask the Russian Orthodox Church.” Agnese made a shooing motion while bringing the discussion back on topic. “Simply put, France is preparing for a defensive war under the assumption that England is trying to attack their capital. As you know, the Strait of Dover between the two countries is only 40km wide. An all-out war fought from that close range will do serious damage to both sides. So as you can see, they’re in quite the pickle☆”

“I-I’ve had enough of this!! Let’s just give up and leave! I’m not staying somewhere so dangerous!!!!!”

“And if England is destroyed, who’s going to protect us from that giant religious organization with 2 billion followers? We need that country that’s known for its tea and rock music but can’t make decent pasta to save its life. We’re in trouble if we lose its defenses, so we have to protect it. Do you get our situation now, Sister Angelene?”

The blonde braided girl groaned with a frown on her face.

“(I don’t know why she can’t just say she wants to repay them for taking us in,)” whispered Lucia. “(She just misses that women’s dorm, doesn’t she?)”

Agnese smiled and silenced the taller nun with a low kick.

Besides, if the Hood was going to arrive at Calais and trigger a war within an hour, they couldn’t escape the initial attack even if they decided to leave now. Even a conservative estimate said everything within a 200km radius was in danger. Driving an ordinary car fast enough to escape would burn out the engine and the highway did not conveniently take them directly outside of that range.

Lucia leaned back against the bent gantry crane with her giant wheel in hand.

“So that’s why we’re stopping the summoning ceremony instead of the Hood itself?”

“We don’t even know if that ghost ship can be sunk using conventional means. The Russian Orthodox Church might have a good method hidden away, but we don’t have time to negotiate them for it. If they knew we’re pressed for time, they’re sure to insist on some exorbitant price.”

“…”

“Which is why we want to make sure the Hood ''disappears before doing anything'' without us having to ever come in contact with it. Instead of attacking the Hood itself, we destroy the ceremonial ground supporting it, causing the ghost ship to disappear on its own.”

But Agnese had noted that this seemed like a weirdly small number of people to dispatch when war between the two countries was imminent. All the truly important people had probably prepared some nice excuse that let them escape outside the range of the initial wave of attacks once war broke out. There were 300km between Paris and Calais and the magical elites were probably busy defending the VIPs who lived there. Because if they acted as bodyguards, they got to escape to safety as well. …Agnese really wanted to cast a curse that would crash their private planes.

But regardless, they had to stop the Hood from reaching France and they could not predict when more shellfire would arrive. They had no choice but to take action here.

“The first shot is generally a test,” muttered intellectual Angelene who had apparently learned a lot from that war films anthology. “The second shot is the real one. We’re goners. The next shot is going to be perfectly aimed.”

The first shot had caused most of the stacked-up containers to collapse, but they had not received word of the ghost ship vanishing. That pointed toward one of the uncollapsed ones. With things narrowed down that far, Agnese adjusted her grip on her silver staff and spun around on the spot.

“Iron is Mars, lead is Saturn.”

Not just anyone could perform a summoning at any time and any place.

The appropriate direction, time, location, and more had to be precisely set up for the summoning target. Magic circles for summoning were so complex and intricate because they were essentially writing out a lengthy address to make sure they summoned their target.

“Gunpowder includes sulfuric acid, making it sulfur, so that’s earth. And since it’s a ship, would that be quicksilver? No, the salt would make it ether, I think. Now I need to apply the current latitude, longitude, and date to those four symbols and check the positions of the planets. The flow of energy most likely to interfere with the planetary movements is the path that enters from the south and leaves to the west-northwest. Which means…”

This was much like using the hands of an analog clock and the sun’s position to determine the direction.

If you knew how, you could work out the location of your target.

“It must be a container 400m ahead and with an unobstructed wall facing the ocean!!”

They did not have time to chase after a fleeing magician this time. If they did not destroy it the instant they found it, they could not stop the Hood from arriving. Agnese ran with her fellow nuns while holding her Lotus Wand tight. They only had one shot at this. If they screwed it up and war broke out, they were dead and so were a lot of people who had trusted in them.

They had to avoid that no matter what.

“There, that’s it!!” she shouted.

The container they wanted was in one of the stacks that had not fully collapsed. Part of the pyramid remained and one of the containers on the second level up looked suspicious. Fortunately, magicians did not have to worry about the height.

(Gravity is but an illusion. Everything past the ground is air-filled outer space. Eliminate the earth’s influence and you can fly.)

Eliminating the power of the planet was the foundation of creating a magical lab as well.

“Okay.”

Agnese hopped up on top of a container in a single bound.

As short as that was, it still qualified as flight, so she could not forget the risk of being brought down by the spell the Apostle Peter had used to rebuke the Magician Simon Magus when he had used a demon to fly.

Lucia flew up after her while holding her large wooden wheel in both hands. Angelene remained on the ground to provide support. Angelene used a guided projectile, so she had the best bet of hitting a runaway magician in such a wide open area.

Agnese and Lucia exchanged a silent nod as they faced the metal double doors.

It was finally time.

They were up against the magician who had summoned the Hood to have it run aground at Calais and ignore how ships supposedly worked to keep cruising along the land to attack Paris. The resultant war between the two nations may have been part of their plan too. If they were still working here, one of the first places to be enveloped by the flames of war, then their own survival must not have been part of the plan. This did not seem like the end result of purely logical thought processes. People like that could cause far more damage than their base skill level suggested if things went south. And they could also have a high level of skill to begin with, so the nuns could not to let their guard down even in a two-against-one battle.

“(Let’s do this.)”

Agnese placed her hand on the large lever used to open the door.

Tension ran through them.

If the enemy was currently preparing a spell to blast through the door, they would be reduced to mincemeat. They wanted to believe they were a step ahead of the enemy, but there was no way to plan for the bizarre insights illogical people could have.

[[Image:AgneseSS_2.jpg|thumb]]

Agnese inhaled and exhaled.

And she gathered her resolve.

She used her full weight to lower the lever and then flung open the door.

The loud bang of the door pounded on her eardrums.

“Put your hands up and get down on your knees!! Or we'll murder your ass, you magic nutjob!!!!!!”

A whole world seemed contained within that space.

In the criminal world, specialized containers filled with the machinery needed to manufacture drugs or guns were apparently sold as “factories”. That let the buyer endlessly create new products, so they were an even bigger problem than normal smuggling. This was the magical version of that. If you knew the accurate name of what you wanted to summon, you could calculate out all the necessary numbers, colors, circles, directions, dates, and more using the many sliders lined up along the wall. The boxy space looked something like a planetarium and the many lines displayed in the darkness showed where to paint in order to draw out intricate magic circles on the floor, walls, and ceiling.

This could become any temple and it could prepare the optimal environment for anything you might want to summon.

Even a near amateur could use this to calculate out everything they would need.

But…

“Wah! Wah!! Waaahhh!? Wh-wh-wh-who are you!? This is a lab, s-so I’m not illegally living here or anything. I’m not using it as a residence!!”

A twig of a young man raised both hands in a corner of the container and began making excuses about a different issue altogether.

Lucia looked skeptical.

“Wait a second, Sister Agnese. Are you sure this is the right place?”

“Absolutely.”

Her certainty did not seem to quell Lucia’s doubts.

She viewed the circle covering the container and then the sliders on the wall that spelled out the initial summoning request.

“We’re after whoever summoned the Hood battlecruiser, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“But this is set for ‘mandrake’.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Agnese’s mind went blank.

That was entirely different.

And sure enough, a small potted plant sat at the center of the makeshift magic circle.

“D-did I do something wrong? Okay, I’ll admit it! If I’m going to research a plant, I would prefer for it to look like a beautiful woman, but is that so wrong!?”

They ignored the self-styled researcher who was shouting at them about something irrelevant.

This was definitely where the Hood had been summoned.

But the container was currently being used to summon something else entirely and the young did not seem to know anything about the ghost ship. If he knew this coastal area would be engulfed in flames once the chaos caused by the Hood led to war between England and France, it seemed unlikely he would be here engrossed in his botanical love. France’s leadership had implicitly stated that they had set up a defensive line along the 300km between the coast and Paris. That meant they had abandoned this area to the fighting.

What did all this mean?

What?

What?

What?