Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume3 Phase04 (section)

===Part 5===

The air bent.

Shockwaves spread in every direction like thick walls, causing the school’s irregularly placed towers to groan. Cracks ran through walls and items fell from shelves.

“Kyah!!”

The intense shaking made Teleria crouch and scream, so Ayato gently supported her.

Something was happening.

“Dangerous individual!”

“Yes, it may have begun.”

There were no windows here, so Ayato’s group left the Student Council Office and entered the hallway. Shards of glass littered the dark hallway. This was the top floor of the tallest tower at the top of the mountain. An intense chill had taken hold and not even the heated floors helped.

But they couldn’t afford to shiver in the cold.

“Coach, look!”

Dark Elf Mamilis pointed out the window.

A figure large enough to be seen from just about anywhere floated in the night sky.

Lord Escalrain.

Maybe because he was the lord of wind, his four hooves were not planted on the ground. The massive horse with four wings slowly circled a fair distance away from the towers.

The giant horse’s voice was like a deep tremor in the air.

He probably hadn’t seen Ayato’s group, so this had to be addressed to the entire human species.

“Hear me, you loathsome humans.”

“?”

“Academy Towers, you are a collection of wicked knowledge which corrupts the world and tears natural life asunder. As one of the Four Lords, I shall clear away the filthy smoke your sins have created. Such is my duty as Escalrain, lord of all the world’s winds.”

“Hey, something isn’t right.” Henrietta whispered to Ayato while crouching by the window. “I thought the President had captured him. I would understand if he was being forced to fight with that superweapon used as a threat against him, but that ''mysterious organization'' called the Student Council wouldn’t want to destroy their own fortress here!!”

Ayato could not logically explain this either.

Which led to a separate concern.

One of the connecting walkways was destroyed with a dull crash.

Something like a shooting star had collided with it, but that something was a giant hunk of smashed-up mana-conducting silver. There was no telling what its original shape had been, but it had to be the wreckage of something. It wasn’t clear if that was the whole thing or just a part. And it was covered with someone’s blood.

The Sorcery Hacker clicked his tongue.

“That bastard screwed up. His anti-Four-Lords weapon must have been destroyed. Really, the Four Lords are just too big. He was wrong to think they could be captured and killed by human hands. You were a classical fool, Umihiko.”

The superweapon had ended in failure.

And now that Escalrain had broken free of the restraints humans had put on him, what would that wind lord do?

It seemed unlikely he would just leave.

After being so thoroughly exposed to the arrogant side of arrogant humanity and the dangerous side of dangerous knowledge, just how deep would his hatred run?

“Wait!!”

The one to shout and recklessly stand up was Dark Elf Mamilis.

The brown girl leaned out of the tower’s top floor window, removed the Mimic Option earrings hiding her long ears, and looked up another 300 esoule<ref>Approximately 360 meters.</ref>.

“I’m a demon too, so I understand. Humans do have a scary and unpleasant side. But there’s more to them than that. So please don’t say you’re going to destroy them!!”

For the first time, the Four Lord seemed to focus on an individual here. His eye clearly looked in Mamilis’s direction.

And he asked a question.

“You are a demon, yet you choose to walk with humans?”

“Yes, so-”

“''Then you too are my enemy.''”

He was not willing to converse.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen Mamilis with her face scrunching up.

The giant, four-winged horse was looking right at her as he spoke.

“I will kill the humans and I will kill any who coddle them. I will kill you all. I will clear away the filthy smoke blotting out the sky and I will eliminate its source. I must return this world to its rightful state and the existence of the humans prevents that. Thus, removing any foolish traitors is the only way to save demons as a whole. That means you, dark elf girl. You must die here for the good of the world.”

“It’s no use, Miss Mamilis.”

“But…”

“We must not unjustly look down on demons, but we must not place them on a pedestal either. Just as there are good humans and bad humans, there are good demons and bad demons. He is beyond reasoning with. And it was the Academy Towers – us humans – who pushed him to that point.”

Escalrain likely was justified to feel the way he did.

The Academy Towers had wronged him, so he had the right to vengeance. More than that, smashing the Academy Towers to smithereens now would likely prevent future demons from being captured and subjected to the same treatment.

Now, these misdeeds had only been committed by the Student Council and the majority of the students and teachers hadn’t had a hance to ''actually'' do anything to any demons.

But that was irrelevant as far as Escalrain was concerned. The humans were at fault for failing to notice their leaders’ misdeeds and punish them for it. If they could not police their own, then an outside source had to tear the organization down at the source. It was the obvious conclusion for him.

What did a human do when they found a hornet nest by their front door? Did they worry about the hornet’s family?

This was the same.

But Ayato wasn’t about to give up and accept it.

Mamilis shook her head.

“You can’t,” she said. “Escalrain hasn’t done anything wrong. It was the humans that did all the bad stuff!”

“But it’s the demons who will be destroyed if this continues.”

Mamilis’s eyes widened to the limit when she heard that.

Her breath caught in her throat, so Ayato explained.

“If he defeats the humans here and destroys the Academy Towers which act as a symbol of sorcery research, it will encourage the demons who have been living in hiding. Most likely, a lot of them will support Escalrain and start a war for independence. Whether or not he wants that, it’s bound to happen. But it won’t last. Remember, the demons couldn’t defeat the humans even when they had the Demon Lord and the Four Lords together. With just one of the Four Lords rampaging, they will lose in the end. But only after so very many unnecessary deaths on both sides.”

“…”

“All that will remain is an even greater hatred of demons among the humans. Repeat that mistake a second time and the humans will explode. They will start talking about eradicating every last demon. Maybe Escalrain is right, but what if doing the right thing leads to mass death on both sides? I can’t accept that kind of ‘right’. Forcing your own self-destructive act onto those around you is a twisted form of ‘right’ that has lost sight of what it truly means to be right.”

The victim was becoming the attacker.

As sad as it was, this happened a lot in human society. And since demons also had minds of their own, similar trouble must have occurred in their society. It was only natural. But the human heart was not noble enough to unconditionally accept that sort of attack.

If someone raised a blade to strike you down, you had to do everything you could to defend yourself, no matter what conditions led the attacker to do it. Humans would grit their teeth and do exactly that to protect their current society.

If they knew a tragedy was coming, they would stop it.

Even if it meant unfairly intervening in someone else’s decisions and keeping them from doing what they believed was right. Ayato was a Sorcery Hacker, a position that required ignoring the line between right and wrong. He had accepted the title of criminal so he could protect something.

Escalrain had to know he was going too far. He had to know how wretched he was for letting himself go through with it regardless. So he could only hope for the most thorough of tortures.

Humans and demons were the same.

So it came as no surprise that there were bigots among the demons too. And not all of them had been born as cruel sadists.

There were those who couldn’t live any other way after being damaged by the pain and suffering they received as victims.

Ayato understood that.

He really did.

But he would still defeat this demon. Ayato had turned his back on the sunny side of the world and become a Sorcery Hacker so he could protect something that couldn’t be saved with the simple arithmetic of right and wrong. He had chosen to become someone who had a solution when an unfair system or situation got in the way.

He would carry the weight of those sins.

As long as he could save just one more life.

“Miss Mamilis. Miss Henrietta.”

His right half still felt odd.

Nevertheless, he drew the Linkage Plug sword from his hip.

This was not a time for the devil’s revolver that was guaranteed to take a life whether it succeeded or failed.

“And Miss Teleria.”

He spoke clearly.

This had nothing to do with their client. This went far beyond revealing the misdeeds of the Student Council that had worked its way even into the Combined Royal Family’s system of succession. Winning this fierce battle would not reveal some truth about a past incident. But Ayato stared straight at his enemy.

Becoming a Sorcery Hacker would have been meaningless if he was willing to look the other way now.

“Give me your help. We will stop Lord Escalrain here. We cannot let him give into his anger and kill all the humans and all the demons who wish to get along with humans. So ''I’m counting on you.'' We need to show Escalrain that being one of the Four Lords does not give him the right to trample on people’s lives!!”