Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:AgneseSS Chapter2 (section)

===Part 4===

“A-a shared ceremonial ground!? That’s a thing!?” exclaimed Angelene after the other two emerged and explained the apparent situation.

Agnese found it hard to believe too.

Magicians traditionally constructed their own magical items and temples and refused to let anyone else touch them. That strengthened your connection with the items and reduced any noise from other people. However, none of that had been done with this container. You could say it was so coated with other people’s grubby fingerprints no one could tell who it belonged to.

They could not investigate the residual thoughts like they had before. Too many people had been in there, so they would have a hard time determining whose thoughts they were detecting.

“I really wish you’d come to me sooner if there was a problem.”

The plant-loving twig of a young man introduced them to a gray-haired old man. He was short but had thick muscles covering his entire body.

He apparently ran the container yard’s hidden side while officially working for the harbor.

“The magic world has settled into its own bloc economy these days. You have the wide influence of the powerful cabals like the Dawn-Colored Sunlight to thank for that one. As time passes, the people forced out of those cabals have had a harder time constructing their own ceremonial grounds, which creates a market for shared ones like this.”

A market.

Basically, he was lending out rooms to shady people and receiving money under the table for it.

“It’s necessary.” The old man did not seem to feel any guilt for being involved in the magic world for such a worldly reason. “When you’re trying to stay hidden, the last thing you want is to stand out. So to avoid that, I have to participate in the economy using worldly money. If you never eat any food like an Asian Xian, the neighbors are gonna get suspicious. If you never leave to shop or put out any trash, they’ll wonder if you’ve died.”

“So it’s only for camouflage?”

“Being ‘normal’ is harder than you would think. I do my best to roleplay the boring old man with no real interests for the most part, but the world out there just isn’t pure enough for that to be enough.”

The aboveground part of the world (if you could really call it that) also had secretly rented rooms for runaway criminals preparing to flee the country or to hold illegal workers. In more recent years, there were apparently also rooms used to create guns with 3D printers or grow illegal plants with UV lights.

Instead of keeping the container ceremonial ground in one place, it was apparently moved around the yard at irregular intervals to make it harder to track down.

The person running that business could not let anyone see the room or even hear rumors of it. At a glance, the place looked like a yard with over ten thousand containers. If they were shuffled at random, there was no real threat of a third party figuring it out.

“And?”

“For the past month, only 5 magicians have used that container. Including that customer there. If that container was used to summon the Hood, then it must have been one of those five.”

Agnese wanted to scream.

This was like knowing which rental car had hit someone but not knowing who was driving it at the time. Identifying the car did not identify the culprit. And since the whole point of the container yard was to ensure its own secrecy, there would not be any guards or security cameras.

Their only option was to investigate those five.

And all the while, time was passing and the Hood was drawing ever closer to France.

“Just to be sure, destroying that container wouldn’t make the ghost ship out at sea disappear, would it?”

“It would not.” The old man shook his head. “As I’m sure you know yourself, summoning ceremonies like this have a corresponding exorcism ceremony. Forcibly stopping the summoning ceremony isn’t the same thing as completing the exorcism ceremony. And since the ship is still out there after the magician left the ceremonial ground, this summoning must have grown autonomous. The Hood won’t disappear until the corresponding exorcism ceremony is completed. And you’ll actually need the ceremonial ground intact for that.”

This principle could be seen in the Asian folk belief of the Kokkuri-san. If the human got bored and ended the ceremony partway through, what they had summoned would not just go away. To safely end it, you needed a magical charm made from the scrap of paper or coin used in the summoning.

(Is it possible the Hood is headed to Calais so it can destroy the container that could be used to exorcise it? No, that may be reading too much into this.)

“Let me guess, the only person who would know how to perform the exorcism ceremony is the magician who summoned it, right?”

“Right you are.”

Angelene began scratching at her head with both hands.

“Are you kidding!? Rent out the containers if you want, but can’t you at least have them write down what they’re summoning!?”

“They could just lie and it’s not like I’d get paid any more if I monitored every ceremony at all times. In a business like this, you make money by providing a location, not an actual service. You don’t want to call over a waiter every time you want a drink at the self-serve station, do you?” said the old man. “Besides, the people renting out a ceremonial ground are generally trying their hand at some dangerous spell beyond their level, so I’m not going to risk my life by sitting in on that gamble. It’s like the people who head out to an internet café to look at foreign porn because they’re afraid their mom will check their browser history. Oh, but maybe that’s not the most relatable example for some nuns.”

“Anyway, if those 5 are the suspects, we’ll just have to speak with all of them.” Lucia did not look happy about any of this. “The names they gave you aren’t fake, I hope?”

“There’s a decent chance they are, but I have ways of tracking them down. I’m fine with them having their secrets, but I’d be out of business pretty quick if they could skip out on paying me that easily.”

The plant admirer gave a start at that one, so the muscular old man grinned.

“I only take payments in cold, hard cash. Most people assume that’s to not leave a paper trail, but that physical handoff means you can’t fully eliminate your residual thoughts from the euros. It might not tell me what you summoned or how, but it will give me your name and appearance.”

They had less than an hour.

The Hood battlecruiser was moving at a constant speed and there was no sign of that changing as the Anglicans altered the weather and ocean currents, laid explosive traps, and otherwise tried to stop it. At this rate, that heavily-equipped ghost ship would arrive at Calais on schedule.

Even if they were able to contact all five (which included the mandrake guy they had found earlier) without any delays, they could only speak with each one for about 10 minutes. And there was no guarantee the culprit would be cooperative once identified. This was not over until they had fought the culprit, defeated them, and gotten the Hood eliminated.

Lucia leaned toward Agnese and whispered in her ear.

“(If necessary, we might have to take desperate measures.)”

“…”

“(We know it was one of those five, so it would be fastest to load them all onto a small boat and send it toward the ghost ship. Whichever one summoned it will have to stop it to protect themselves. That’s the most surefire way to avoid a meaningless war between England and France.)”

However.

That would mean letting all 5 die if the culprit wanted to die and the Hood remained after their death.