Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 3===

Kamijou had pictured hell as dark, empty, and dry.

He had also associated it with heat and flames.

But he noticed things gradually changing as he followed carefully after Anna Kingsford.

He felt chilly.

He looked around and noticed he could see his breath.

“We are approaching the bottom of hell,” said Rosencreutz. His breath was visible too. “Boy, have you ever encountered the term Cocytus?”

“Isn’t it usually a kind of ice magic, or a magic sword?”

“But where did modern people find the term they now incorporate into their entertainment?” The young man stroked his long, long beard. “Cocytus is the name of the bottom level of hell. And Cocytus itself is divided into four areas like the rings of a tree stump: Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca. From outermost to innermost area, the severity of the sin grows and the very center area – Judecca – is where the world’s three most sinful people are eternally punished until the day the world ends.”

“…Wait. ''Did you say three''?”

“My, what a predicament. This old man is quite concerned by how perfectly the numbers match up.”

Kamijou looked to Kingsford’s back as she continued walking through this frozen world.

The three of them were walking through hell. Toward the prison for the three most sinful people.

Could there be something there?

But wait…

(That logic would mean Kingsford was leading herself to her doom too. If she wanted to take us to the bottom of hell to trap us, she would need another person with us.)

Think as he might, he couldn’t figure out what she was after.

And without knowing that, he couldn’t prepare.

His anxiety grew.

Their surroundings became darker and the chill much more biting, hinting that something was changing. He had to do something soon, but he couldn’t even run off at random while he was guided deeper and deeper.

That was like running full tilt in a random direction inside a trap-filled pyramid because he couldn’t trust his guide.

He should have thought for himself more.

If he had at least kept track of the path they took, he could have turned back the way they had come. Then he could have at least safely reached the gate to hell.

He could tell he was being guided down a path.

A wide world was spread out around him, but he couldn’t escape that path.

That only worried him more.

“What is this place?”

The deepest depths of hell were covered in ice.

It looked a lot like a vast subterranean lake that had fully frozen, but he couldn’t tell if there actually was any water below the thick layer of ice. And that ice was a lot clearer than he had expected.

He had expected the center of hell to be a vortex of dark filth, but maybe this was like an isekai fantasy where the demon world was generally dark and creepy but the demon lord’s castle was bright and shiny inside.

That meant this was a special location.

Kamijou didn’t know much about the layout of the European hell, but he could tell that much.

Anna Kingsford came to a stop.

The benevolent expert had continued unstopping for so long, but here she stopped.

After leading them this deep with such confidence, he was afraid she was about to turn around with a smile and say she was lost, but apparently not.

“This is the place,” she said.



There was…

…something there.



Kamijou’s breath caught in his throat.

There was nothing like that in the world of the living. That was a monster you had to die and go to hell to see. It was bad news. It was somehow different from powerful foes like Othinus and Aleister. He could tell just coexisting in the same place as it would lead to his destruction.

Before he could even grasp its true nature, he saw just a vague silhouette.

What would happen if he did get a direct view of it?

He usually thought of darkness as something that brought unease and fear to the human heart. This wasn’t just his view. Giving the light side the position of the good guys was common across the globe.

But things worked differently here.

Was the deep darkness a comfort here? Because he wanted to avoid viewing the ''thing'' that lurked beyond that thick veil before he was ready.

Kingsford had said Greek mythology had Nyx, goddess of the night.

So had there been an age when this sort of comfort was valued to the point it was worshiped as a god?

He must not see that.

Seeing it would mean his demise.

No one had told him that and he hadn’t actually checked for himself, but he could just tell. No matter what power might reside in his right hand, he could never even stand up to that thing.

“The 👑 of the demons…or the 👑 of hell,” said Anna Kingsford.

Was this her goal?

To contact that thing?

“Some 💬 he is Satan, some 💬 Beelzebub, and others 💬 Lucifer, but he has only one role. To provide the ultimate punishment by eternally gnawing on the three greatest sinners. In this view of hell, the demon 👑 has rebelled against god and gathers strength in the depths of the earth, yet he is still doing the will of god by tormenting the sinners damned by god.”

“What…?”

Kamijou was dumbfounded.

What did Kingsford hope to accomplish here? Kamijou had been led down here by deception, but she had come here of her own free will. She had come to this extremely dangerous place where a great monster lurked in the shadows. If Kamijou had full control of the situation, he never would have come here no matter his goal and no matter what benefits it might provide. So why had Kingsford come here?

“What are we supposed to do here, Kingsford!? I thought you said our journey would take us from hell and return us to the world of the living!!”

“I did.”

The benevolent expert – or the woman wearing that mask – immediately nodded.

With a smile.

Would she offer Kamijou and Rosencreutz’s souls to that giant thing lurking in the shadows so it would send her back to the living world? That useless idea came to Kamijou’s mind. But no amount of speculation would give Kamijou any kind of useful answer or countermeasure.

However.

“Like I 💬d back at the beginning, hell is shaped like a mortar,” she said.

…?

Nothing had changed?

She spoke in the same gentle way she always did.

But now that she had the other two in the depths of hell, she no longer needed that good guy act.

“So if you wish to take the shortest route from hell to the living world, the answer is obvious: You secure a ↕️ starting at the very bottom and climb up. That is the only way.”

“Oh.”

“When people 💭 up this structure of hell based on the limited depictions in Revelation and other sources, elevators, 🚁s, and 🚀s did ❌ yet exist. Only the 🪽ed angels in charge of hell could take that vertical route. They used it as a shortcut.”

Something sparkled in front of her.

It looked like tiny particles.

But it wasn’t. It was something made of highly transparent glass. A thick pane. And more of them floated in the air with a regular pattern. It looked like a spiral staircase to Kamijou. But as his gaze traveled up the clear staircase, perspective threw off the sense of scale and it ended up looking like a single line of light shining down from heaven.

“The gate to hell is often mentioned, but it is never mentioned that turning back there will bring you back to life. When standing on the outer edge of a mortar, what good is walking further outwards? If you try that, you will end up forever wandering in the dark forest at the top level of hell.”

So…

What did that mean?

When Anna Kingsford led him from the gate to the very bottom of hell, she hadn’t had any kind of ulterior motive? She had simply chosen the shortest and quickest route to escape straight up from the bottom?

She hadn’t been hiding anything.

Was that really all it was?

“The Qliphoth references the territory stretching from the living world to hell. If you contact it while viewing it as a heretical thing that specializes in 👻s and curses, it will bring disaster, but the Crowley faction has a fully-equipped expert very carefully contact it to acquire countless tricks and loopholes ❌ found in the proper methods.” Kingsford stared at the sparkling staircase as she presented a miracle, free of charge. “And the standard meditation technique of the Crowley faction says the one and only way to travel between worlds is to ascend vertically while ❌ being tempted to either side by existing standards of morality. …If you were to directly visualize the modern theory, it might look something like this.”

There was nothing more to Anna Kingsford.

She really had stopped her own functioning to leave the living world and descend into hell for no other reason than to save Kamijou Touma. Free of charge. She gained nothing at all from this.

Kamijou was the one being saved, but he had still doubted her.

It was like red cabbage indicator.

Or like this hell.

What someone thought when faced with Kingsford’s true benevolence revealed how shameful they were. There was no hiding it before that true expert. In the face of the ultimate righteousness, the very act of feeling shame and trying to hide something would reveal that something.

Yes.

Now that he knew Anna Kingsford was innocent, a new question came to Kamijou’s mind.

Why had he begun doubting her in the first place?

However it had started, that doubt was his own. He wasn’t going to blame his own ugliness on someone else. But it had started somewhere. There had been an initial push that had led him to doubt that benevolent expert who had thrown out her own life for pure volunteerism.

It wasn’t a difficult question.

The process of elimination was enough to solve it.

It hadn’t been benevolent Kingsford. It was the ugliness in Kamijou’s heart that let him be influenced, but he had only been influenced. It was someone else who had guided him in that wicked direction.

Who else was here in hell?

When the two of them were removed from the three, who remained?

Kamijou Touma spoke the name of the culprit.

“''Christian…Rosencreutz''?”