Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume3 Phase04 (section)

===Part 4===

“Pant, pant.”

He dragged himself along.

He trudged.

President Umihiko Darkavenue breathed heavily while slowly walking along. He was honestly pushing himself too hard. His body wasn’t going to last.

But he didn’t care.

(Escal…rain)

One of his glasses lenses was broken and his brown hair was stained dark red. He was bleeding badly and his many broken bones caught inside him when he moved in certain ways. He focused his woozy mind on a single name.

(I need to that giant spear…capable of killing the Four Lords…of killing that monster.)

Who would imagine that weapon was hidden in the sky everyone looked up at every day? But ayone with a functional brain, should have considered the possibility. The Academy Towers’ alphabet grades created a hierarchy based on the height of the towers. So the most powerful person there belonged on a floating landmass hovering above even the tops of the towers.

This was past the Grade S zone.

The adult headmaster and board chairman were satisfied with their card-sized assassin handguns that acted as a second key, so they were unaware this higher level even existed.

Only the Student Council – the truly privileged class – knew of it.

Privileges were best kept hidden.

The tech involved was the same used by Sky City Celedileka. The Academy Towers were more advanced than them, so of course they could reproduce it.

Spies from the Ghost Investigation Club were apparently spending night after night peering through special photography devices to investigate something that felt off to them, but they would never arrive at the truth. Because the hints they were working off of were all controlled by the Council. The Council only had to use the Newspaper Club as an unwitting jammer since that club would simply regurgitate any of the Council’s official announcements.

There was a mass of mana-conducting silver there.

It was large enough to cover half the floating landmass.

The giant, six-legged thing formed a single spear launcher. By using the massive multistage acceleration firing device on the rear, the spear could theoretically pierce the moon in the night sky.

It had high mobility, heavy armor, and the ultimate destructive power.

The weapon was capable of challenging the lord of the impure demons to a duel and of winning that duel. A clean hit would pierce through the giant bodies of the Four Lords and the disposable shield held by the front two legs could protect against three direct blasts of Four Lords magic. So as long as the battle was kept short, it could win.

Yes.

This was what humans could do when they put their minds to it.

So surely they could put together a magic system with colorless mana once the elemental colors of the Four Lords were gone.

Yet the ignorant masses and even the sorcery researchers and teachers at the Academy Towers didn’t even dream of the possibility. They couldn’t look past the elemental paradigm and were forever trapped by the assumption that the Four Lords’ power was necessary. Because everyone could use magic so easily, they relied on the easy tricks and loopholes and never even considered creating a new path up the treacherous mountain.

So he would take that from them.

He would kill the Four Lords and eliminate all of the elements.

Would people give up on their lives of magic then? Of course not. Humans could never abandon a comfort once they came to take it for granted. Could you bear a life without a refrigerator or without a washer and dryer? So the people would complain to everyone from the downtown inventor to the court scholars. They would demand human-only magic that didn’t need the four elements. A noble cause couldn’t rouse them to action, but they would make short work of a world that didn’t satisfy their lowly desires. That was the true nature of humanity.

(I will activate the Genocide Motor even if it means destroying my body. As long as I replace my biological organs with replacements of mana-conducting silver, my mind will survive. I’d been considering the process already, so I know how. Oh, how I loathe those demons. They supposedly form a fundamental and irreplaceable part of the magic system, but is that really true? I’ll prove it isn’t. By breaking down those four pillars and eliminating all elements from the world. Then humanity will create a new magic system in a world with only colorless mana.)

The glasses boy glanced to the side.

He looked to the thing directly facing the Genocide Motor.

The poor lab animal had wounds and bruises all over and his four wings were bound by thick barbed wire and sharp hooks.

That was Escalrain, one of the Four Lords.

The giant horse with a wingspan of 200 esoule<ref>Approximately 240 meters.</ref> glared down at the President looking up at him.

He concluded what was happening right away.

“You wretched human.”

“?”

“The Genocide Motor? A noble experiment to expel the Four Lords from the system of magic? Admit it – you despise your own body for how readily it ages and how easily it dies. You hate mermaids, dark elves, and the like because they remain forever young like they are untouched by the stream of time. No amount of training can ever bring you to that point, so you are ready to rely on mana-conducting silver replacements. Are you a Sorcery Hacker who can’t even fight on his own? You are pathetic. You are motivated by no more than self-interest.”

“What are you-”

Umihiko Darkavenue muttered something blankly, but his rational mind slammed the lid shut on that.

Instead, he shouted with his face red.

“Shut the hell up! You can’t even pretend to be human and infiltrate society! The times have left you behind! You think I want to be like you? Don’t make me laugh, you inhuman monster! Is that what passes as a brain for you demons!?”

Umihiko knew of an unfortunate boy who had ended up like that.

He had been a member of the Student Council.

But he was a traitor who had gotten too involved in the mermaids and Fleurelisia, felt sorry for them, and said he was looking for a path to reconciliation.

Umihiko had thought showing him the truth would bring the boy back to his senses.

Showing him the truth that even those foolish and arrogant demons with their eternal youth would still die if a human put a bullet through their head. And that they were no more than a hunk of meat that would rot away once dead. And thus, they were worthless and not worth protecting.

But then the boy had shoved Teleria Nereid Aquamarine out of the way at the last second, betraying Umihiko’s expectations to the bitter end.

(Ayato Criminaltrophy. That idiotic Forward screwed everything up. People’s lives were on the line, but he pulled the trigger without even questioning it!! I should’ve given more thought to using him as a pawn!!! I never should have relied on some freak who was so taken by that devil he was only interested in building up his score!!!!)

“None of this matters to me,” said Escalrain.

“It doesn’t matter to me either. Whatever nonsense you might spout, my decisions are final. The Genocide Motor has entered the final testing phase. I have been very, very careful this whole time, but it is effectively already complete. First up will be that thorn in my side Ayato and his friends. After that, each of you Four Lords in order. None of you will survive. That will usher in a new era that encourages wide development of human-only magic!!”

“You say this Genocide Motor is a colossal sorcery device guaranteed to kill the Four Lords.”

Escalrain skillfully tilted his giant horse head.

He followed up the human-like motion with a clear question.

“You think this puny thing can do that?”

It was such a simple sound, like someone stepping on an empty can fallen on the side of the road.

He had only casually reached out his right foreleg.

That was all it took to reduce a twisted dream to wreckage.

It was like a dropped piece of porcelain sending pieces scattering in all directions. Except each piece of mana-conducting silver scrap was bigger and heavier than a puny human. Umihiko was dumbfounded. He was too badly injured to dodge nimbly out of the way. The piece casting a shadow on him from overhead fell and crushed him beneath.

The real tragedy may have been that he wasn’t killed instantly.

“Gahh!?”

“You gave me plenty of time to think about it. What ‘passes as a brain’ for a demon was more than enough to solve the puzzle presented to me. A power capable of killing the Four Lords? That thing is no more than a trick disguised as a direct attack. It’s no more than an issue of technology. It’s a cheat, like saying running and running while looking at a calendar will never take you to tomorrow.”

He wasn’t aware.

He had only seen what was in the reports.

Once, at Laguntreat to the south, Lord Fleurelisia was nearly killed by the Predator Island. While the Student Council had provided some technology through their advisor Jennifer Evening, a group outside of the Academy Towers had accomplished that. So he assumed they could accomplish something even greater. That assumption had made him confident that the Council was on the right track here.

But since he hadn’t been there personally, he wasn’t aware of a crucial fact.

Fleurelisia had only hesitated to attack because her daughter was aboard the Annihilator-class ship. In a pure 1-on-1 battle, Fleurelisia would have turned that humanmade junk into ocean wreckage in no time.

Someone with something to protect was indeed powerful.

But someone without that had a different sort of freedom.

“Kah!”

Umihiko was trapped below the wreckage and unable to get back up. Rather than being pinned by its weight, more than half his body had been crushed too badly to move. But he seemed to find that hard to believe while he lay there on his stomach.

“Wha-? The puzzle? You expect me to believe…a demon…a mere demon…figured out the Academy Towers’ greatest secret?”

He may have been so twisted he had started to worship the science that supported him and those like him.

The giant horse gave a mocking laugh and spread his wings.

“Correct.”

A new shadow was cast on the President.

It came from Esacalrain’s right foreleg, its enormous hoof ready to drop.

“We lent the power of mana to you in the first place. Who could understand it better than its rightful owners?”

A tremor ran through the floating landmass.

Puny red and black splattered out and everything went silent. No one was going to weep for the President’s death. Because no one even knew this place existed. No one would give him a funeral and his body would remain here, rotting and desiccating.

A voice spoke much like a lonely wind blowing through the ruins of a city.

“I cannot speak for the Demon Lord or the other Four Lords.”

Given how he had been treated, this may have been the natural conclusion.

The lord shaped like a giant horse spoke to himself.

“''But I do not see how I can forgive these creatures known as humans.''”

New hatred was budding.

And this time, it came from the demons whose hearts were just as sensitive as the humans.