Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:AgneseSS Chapter8 (section)

===Part 3===

Nothing was more frightening than a lack of tricks.

Or rather, than being pushed to the point that all tricks were off limits. Magic was a logical system. It could be hard to tell since none of it was visible, but it was no different than sticking a branch below a big rock to lift it with leverage.

So if a magic user was pushed to the point that they could not use that kind of trick, they had truly been pushed to the limit.

Tu, Albert Dying, heard something soft being squashed.

He felt a dull sensation in his fingernails when it happened. In Roman mythology, Saturn was the king who usurped heaven, but before he was overwritten by Cronus of Greek mythology, he had been an ancient god named Satus. He was an agricultural god who controlled seeds and sickles. His name, his role, and even his world may have changed, but he had kept that weapon through it all. That suggested it was the only real thing he had left.

Thus, it retained the symbolism of the sickle that sliced open the earth and let a bountiful harvest grow.

However.

Tu’s gaze wavered somewhat.

He looked down at his own fingertips. The deadly nails were split open and his fingers were bent in disconcerting ways.

Simply put, he had been stopped.

By the silver staff Agnese Sanctis had pulled back toward herself.

“Gahhh!?”

“Oh, dear. Did what I say lead you to believe I had only analyzed your compass? You were the one who stabbed me with your Sickle of Saturn to mess with my inner world, remember?”

She grinned.

But she shouldn’t have been able to dodge this even if she understood it. His speed had been absolute. She could not have responded to his attack in time, so how had this happened?

“Saint…Amandus…”

Something had happened.

But the groaning whisper had not come from Agnese Sanctis.

“He was a regionary bishop without a diocese of his own. But he built more churches than anyone else and provided many people with a place to rest.”

It was Sister Lucia.

Angelene also recited the words from the floor.

They crawled because they could not even stand up with all the pain and agony filling their bodies.

But.

They clenched their teeth and set self-care aside in order to support the girl with whom they had shared the good times and the bad.

They spoke in unison now.

“His passion and powerful legs were second to none. Traveler with a worthy cause, feel the push at your back as you continue your journey. You will find your feet move quicker than anyone else’s!!”

That spell created a literal tailwind.

No matter which way you moved, the tiny miracle would summon a wind to assist you.

Agnese was not alone.

Their old home had relied on numbers for everything. And it was Tu who had called this three-against-one arrangement a “duel”.

He could not call it unfair now.

Lucia and Angelene had already fallen, but that did not make them insignificant. If this man would laugh them off as ignorable, Agnese would show him the power they had granted her.

She would show him that the very thing he had dismissed as insignificant could sometimes be the trigger needed to save the world!!

“''Telling the truth gains you nothing.'' Isn’t that a standard principle in magical combat?”

Whether it failed to activate or merely injured her, his foolproof attack had failed to kill her.

She had never before seen Theory: Saturn 0, yet it had not worked.

That surprising result led Tu to change his battle plan once more. He clung to what he knew had worked before. He forced his aching hand to pop open the compass’s glass cover in order to load the next needle, but…

“That movement is an illusion.”

The words cut him off before he could act.

“Now that I know that, I have nothing to fear from your spells. I can ignore the compass and your movements. If I wait for you to speak the incantation, I can get the timing right. It doesn’t even matter if you use your compass or sickle to activate it.”

With a distorted clang, the end of Agnese’s staff knocked the new needle from the young man’s bloody hand.

He thought he could keep going even without the Sickle of Saturn, but…

“Yes. The Lotus Wand is a Symbolic Weapon capable of controlling fire, water, wind, earth, and ether. And in my case, I’ve constructed a further spell on top of that.”

She crushed that possibility.

“You could say it’s like the wax dolls used for curses. If I hit the wall or a chair with this, the damage to the wand is transferred to the linked target.”

Agnese Sanctis did not make a second strike.

There was no need.

“So I don’t even have to do anything. The wand was hit, so it’s already over.”

After a short delay, a heavy impact rattled Tu’s head.

“Gah!?”

He fell hard to his knees. That was proof of greater damage than if he had been thrown backwards.

He glanced down at his spiritual items for a brief moment, but before he could do anything more, Agnese kicked the large compass from him and stepped down on the sickle lying on the floor.

“I said it’s already over,” she bluntly stated.

“I…” Even so, Albert Dying was not done moving. “I will win. I must always be winning. I will do…do anything to ensure it.”

“You must always be winning?” She seemed to spit out the words. “But you gave into your anger and executed the bloodline investigator named Brax Mizhine, didn’t you? Our research suggests he was a pathetic scammer, but killing him did nothing to affect your score, did it?”

“…”

“Did you really hate Stiyl Magnus that much? Admittedly, he’s a condescending asshole constantly polluting his surroundings with cigarette smoke, but that isn’t why you hate him. Then why?”

That question crossed a line.

There was no kindness in her voice.

“You blame them both for your failed ceremony that forced you to go into hiding.”

Agnese Sanctis was still inexperienced.

When slapped on the right cheek, she would reflexively throw a punch. And she had a smile on her lips as she said this.

“You claim you must ‘always be winning’, but that died long ago. If you ask me, revenge is the last resort of a loser.”

A disconcerting sound filled the chapel.

“Ah…kh…”

What happened next defied logic. Albert Dying had already been hit by the finishing blow, but he got back up. His hands and feet dug into the stone floor to rise up like a beast.

“This isn’t…this isn’t over!! No one ever protected me, so I had to protect myself. Do you have any idea how hard it is to always be winning? I came all this way because I couldn’t allow a single loss, so…so I…!!”

But…

“Loser.”

Agnese’s voice was ice cold.

He was threatening her, but there was no dignity behind it.

He leaped at her, presumably to take back the Sickle of Saturn pinned below her foot, but she caught his face on her elbow, slammed her silver staff into his back while he curled up holding his nose, and then stepped on the back of his head after confirming he had collapsed to the floor. Finally, the wand’s attack hit him again.

He was like a ghost who had forgotten how to return to the graveyard.

His rash attempt to never face a loss was a lot like a senile old fool forgetting when to stop and struggling for much too long. His greatest misfortunate was in not encountering anyone who was willing to end this earlier. So now he scrambled vainly at the floor.

Agnese sighed as she looked down at him struggling like a roach with a pin through it.

(Well, I might have shown more mercy if he hadn’t hurt Sisters Lucia and Angelene.)

“From here on, you can start counting up your losses. One by one.”