Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:AgneseSS Chapter5 (section)

===Part 4===

The Guild base on Thira was quickly taken.

So quickly they had time leftover before dawn.

(That was too fast.)

Agnese still carried anxiety in her heart.

It had all gone too smoothly.

After leaving the circular water storage pool, she rapidly organized the information in her head. There was something they had to do even after this battle was complete.

“There is one person who is only listed in the records by an alias. As the only person important enough to ignore the usual rules, they must be the boss.” Agnese swiftly explained her thoughts after meeting up with Stiyl and Isabella. “They’re only known as Tu. I have no idea what that means, but do you get the impression we defeated them?”

“No, I don’t,” replied Stiyl. “Everyone on the front line felt like disposable pawns meant to buy time. They may have been fighting to win, but it didn’t feel like they were fighting to survive. A VIP with an alias would have cared about their own life more than that.”

“Where does that name come from? Is Tu a chemical symbol???”

Isabella smiled while making a non-magical suggestion, prompting Agnese to sigh. She could not believe these superiors of hers. They really had not discovered anything themselves.

(Does that mean this Tu escaped the island during all the fighting? We must have had ships surrounding the island, so that couldn’t have been easy.)

“I also noticed a few curious facts about the Guild,” said Agnese.

They had acquired the spell book from Sister Monica, but they had discovered some other things along the way and there had been other interesting documents in the room where Monica had died.

Had Monica failed to destroy them, or was the Guild confident they could not be stopped even if that information got out?

“Their encryption uses a Caesar cipher. I would have expected the use of a scytale, a cylindrical strip of parchment developed in ancient Greece, but they used a method developed later in ancient Rome.”

“I see.”

“Sister Lucia. When we destroyed that watchtower, the sniper dropped their weapon, remember? That bow and arrow fills anyone it hits with a deadly disease and it has its origins in a goddess of the moon and virgins. We never let it hit anyone, though, so we can’t say if it only works on women or not.”

“Yes, ''it appeared to be the bow and arrow of Diana.''”

Not of Artemis.

There was an obvious reason for a different god to be seen here.

“Roman mythology?” muttered Stiyl while exhaling cigarette smoke.

Roman mythology was very similar to Greek mythology, but it provided a position for a few emperors and heroes to grant legitimacy to the Roman Empire. Rome did have its own original indigenous religion, but that had mostly been lost as the stories of Zeus were applied to Jupiter, the stories of Hera to Juno, and so on.

Agnese continued her explanation.

“Furthermore, we were confronted by Sister Monica who was originally Christian. Since they managed to recruit her without being detected, the Guild must have a means of contacting Catholics in secret, right? That means the Guild has adapted with the times to work within a Greek, Roman, and Christian society. Just like the influenza virus develops a new strain every year to defeat the existing vaccines.”

This was not an outdated fossil clinging to life on the edges of society.

Quite the opposite.

They had maintained a network across all of Europe since the days of ancient Greece and they could still remain hidden wherever they went. That explained why they were so difficult to track down. When the Christian priests and nuns arrived after the fact to view things from the surface, they had a hard time seeing the Guild’s territory spread out deep underground.

They lived on the underside of society.

And they would change the names of their gods to match the current age to pull it off.

They were willing to compromise.

This group seemed fundamentally incomprehensible to Agnese and the others who worshiped the Son of God. They could apparently use the full set of Roman spells, but it was doubtful they truly worshiped Jupiter from the bottom of their hearts.

“What matters here is the relationship between Greek, Roman, and Christian. If you look back in history, it looks like there’s a direct progression between them, but it wasn’t actually that simple.” Agnese sighed. “For example, when the Greek age led into the Roman age, the name of Rome swallowed up the weakened Greek lands. But by absorbing Greek culture, the Roman gods had a large portion of themselves overwritten by the Greek ones. Like Zeus and Jupiter becoming essentially the same. So you could say Rome won politically but was conquered culturally. Their views of good and evil weren’t consistent. The Roman Empire did not at all understand early Christianity and oppressed it like a new cult. That becomes all too clear when you look back on the legends of the martyred saints.”

“…”

“But once Christianity was accepted by one of the emperors, it was the Christians who began oppressing all other religions. Like the witch hunts. Any priest or priestess that worshiped any of the ancient gods was accused of being a witch, but those were the very people who had branched off from Roman mythology and developed their beliefs from there, right? The Christians ended up doing exactly the thing their ancestors had so decried.”

Was it simply human nature to be corrupted by power?

But that was not what mattered here.

“The Guild was searching for a way to survive while all this was going on.” Agnese explained it all as if confirming it for herself. “So they threw out their own religion and blended in with the masses. When Rome absorbed Greece, they became Roman. When Roman mythology was oppressing Christians, they joined in. And when Christians began oppressing the traditional witches, they threw stones at their own friends. When the witches who failed to escape in time were burned at the stake, they laughed along with the Christians. When Greek and Roman sculptures were the new hot thing during the Renaissance, they criticized the overly strict Christian culture of art. …As you can see, nothing about them ever remained consistent. They only wanted to be on the side of whoever was currently winning. They might know the winning side was wrong, but they would still join in without making any criticism. They readily spat on everything they held dear. Doesn’t that raise questions about whether they really are Roman magicians deep down?”

The whole idea was unbelievable for the nuns who believed in the Son of God and were willing to fight for their faith, but the Guild had used that method to survive.

“So they have nothing to protect. Good and evil are meaningless to them. Myths are mere tools to them, culture no more than a battery, and the world just a consumable product. Once one is too worn down to be of any use, they move on to the next. ''Once the time comes, they simply do it.'' It happened with Greece, it happened with Rome, and now it’s Christianity’s turn. The Guild is working to destroy Christian society. But only because Christianity has reached its zenith. They are willing to do this simply because the time has come to change out the battery. They have pulled the trigger on so much violence not due to an issue of good and evil, but because they truly believe ''the current age is forcing it upon them.''”

The Guild’s violence was not based on a powerful grudge or depthless hedonism.

When the time came, they would act.

It was simple and unshakeable. There was no room for negotiation there.

The only solution was to slaughter them all.

“(This really is a job for me,)” muttered Stiyl below his breath. “(Kanzaki could never do it.)”

Then he spoke loud enough for the others to hear.

“That is the standard form for violence with no real ideology behind it. They go on a rampage of killing and looting and, when accused with the crimes they have so obviously committed, they blame the age of war and insist they are not responsible. But it all comes from their personal desires, not the age they live in.” After that exasperated assessment, Stiyl got to the crux of the issue. “This apparent boss of theirs known as Tu has disappeared. If that was not just for self-preservation, then they must have something left to do that was worth abandoning this base for. That is the real problem at hand.”

Before, the Guild had been adding fuel to the fire that motivated criminals around Europe, but that had not been enough.

So now they were attempting to accomplish something themselves.

Stiyl’s assumption carried another implicit question.

What exactly where they planning?

Agnese shrugged.

“The Guild can hide anywhere in Europe. And they intend to obliterate the Christian society as casually as you might throw out a dead battery. They thought they could accomplish it from here, but they failed. They may be feeling some frustration from that. Just like someone when their internet connection suddenly goes down or their train is stopped for hours on end.”

She breathed in and out.

Agnese was not just an impartial observer in this. It was directly tied to her own identity.

Yet she did not hesitate to make her next suggestion.

“So the obvious move would be to dress themselves up as Roman magicians and destroy the Vatican that guides its 2 billion believers around the world. What could be faster or more effective than that?”

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