Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume13 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 7===

A creepy rustling sound filled the street.

Golden crabs and octopuses automatically tracked Kihara Goukei’s movements and rushed toward her, but each of them was sliced through and broke apart in turn.

In the night, a bone saw and forceps sharply reflected what little light remained from the streetlights.

Kihara Goukei had hoped to end Isabella’s life before her forcibly boosted muscular strength destroyed her joints and cartilage, but Isabella was a lot nimbler than she had expected.

Specifically, Kihara Goukei’s current state gave her enough speed to easily dodge out of the way of a bullet flying straight toward her, but…

(Hm? Ordinary réflexes shouldn’t be able to respond to this.)

That meant her enemy was being boosted somehow.

Come to think of it, there was something odd about the brown woman’s rags. Given the way it fluttered in a way that ignored the wind currents, it appeared to play a muscle-like role similar to externally-attached springs.

“She also seems immune to anesthésiques. What kind of crazy body does she have?”

“You need to ask that of a necromancer?”

Something whooshed by over Kihara Goukei’s head.

It was a filthy rag so stained yellow and brown that its original color was impossible to determine.

It spiraled around high in the air and then stretched out as it fell straight down from heaven to earth. Almost like a guillotine or something.

“What are you, Ittan-Momen 2.0?”

Kihara Goukei considered how to dodge this, tilted her head, and settled on simply jumping back a step.

She heard something slice through the air.

Followed by a heavy crash.

The asphalt was easily smashed and even the dark soil below was thrown into the air. It went without saying what would happen if that hit a human.

Western European necromancy was not about controlling a rotting corpse to sic it on your enemy and it didn’t harness the grudges of the dead to kill people. It’s true identity and essence was the summoning of dead souls using the clothing and other possessions dug up from graves and the revealing of secrets about the world and about individuals using divination (mancy) of the dead (necro). …Simply put, it had been a secret fad among the bored upper classes because there was very little risk in trying it out (because opening a coffin was not a crime if it belonged to a family member).

This meant controlling the clothing of the dead was their specialty.

Of course, this didn’t apply to necromancers from other regions and cultures.

“That isn’t just a piece of cloth. Is it hardened with glue or something?”

“A human body is nothing. With a bit cleverness and creativity, I can slice through a tree branch with this.”

The deadly guillotine dropped from up high a second and third time, but Kihara Goukei intercepted it and knocked it to the ground with her giant forceps, bone saw, and other torture tools.

“Release ocular muscles – boost kinetic vision 500%.”

(Based on the impacts reaching my wrists, its weight is several times that of the heaviest bowling balls. I see. So the problem is the height from which it drops.)

“Ugh, I’m feeling dizzy. Urp. Oh, right. I should have boosted my stomach first…”

“Vomit inside your mask if you like. I will kill you while you do, though.”

The number of rags flying overhead suddenly exceeded the number fingers on both hands.

And they weren’t all guillotines. The one that looked like a large rake may have been a Cat’s Paw that was used to tear at the surface of someone’s body. The one a lot like a crane game with pointy tips was probably a Spanish Spider that was stabbed into someone’s back so they could be suspended from the ceiling and have their flesh torn by their own weight.

Their forms had a historical flavor to them rather than focusing on efficiency.

Was that just the necromancer’s poor taste?

Kihara Goukei muttered under her breath.

(Of course, it says something about me that I can recognize them all on sight.)

Isabella grinned thinly.

“You have some skill – or more likely are using some kind of trick – but there is only so much you can handle with just the two arms. I don’t need anything special. I can simply overwhelm you with numbers!!”

“Yes, excellent logique.”

With the sound of tearing clothing, Kihara Goukei’s number of arms suddenly grew to six.

The opposite could happen too. A pure pursuit of function could take on an appearance straight out of myth.

“Adding on more arms isn’t that hard. It’s adjusting the position of the shoulder joints that takes some doing.”

They clashed regardless.

The arms spread out like wings were completely expendable. The very first strike tore away one of Kihara Goukei’s arms along with the torture device it held. The second strike meant the sacrifice of another arm. They were more broken off than severed. Had it worked against the brown woman that she was using a mixture of different weapons? Kihara Goukei didn’t particularly care as long as the guillotine didn’t slice through her face or torso along with an arm. And the third strike was blocked with a grinding noise.

It had hit something hard.

The flat, rectangular object at her palm was a giant shield. Except it was made of something more biological than steel or plastic.

“Hwa ha ha ha! Countermeasure complete! My monster of the week name is Crab Shell Man!!”

“?”

In the brief moment Isabella’s movement was stopped, Kihara Goukei sent in a sharp right hook. And that arm had already become a human-sized crab pincer, so a direct hit would crush and sever her neck like a chain tool.



''Splat!!



The bloody sound came from the center of Kihara Goukei’s chest.

Several objects like white guitar picks had pierced through from her back.

An unharmed Isabella smiled bewitchingly.

Kihara Goukei’s eyes widened.

“…Eh?”

“Did you already forget what I called myself? I do believe I introduced myself as a necromancer.”

What was the weapon?

What had stabbed through Kihara Goukei’s back and burst out from the center of her chest?

…It was her own broken and severed arm. Or really, the crushed bone in the mutilated cross section?

“And no one ever said I could ''only'' do the Western European version☆”

“…”

“I didn’t expect you to scatter your own dead flesh around. Thanks for the assist. You might as well have been asking me to use it.”

“Gh…ph.”

Kihara Goukei tried to speak, but only fresh blood filled her mask. A large hunk of blood.

She had been stabbed in a very bad location.

“You can use your tricks and cheat death as many times as you like.”

Necromancer Isabella Theism grinned and sprinkled something from her fingers.

It wasn’t visible, but it smelled like blood. Like spotting a crushed frog on the roadside on a rainy day.

“''But all flesh that has died once is my domain.'' Now that you’ve died, you have lost the right to your own body.”

A moment later, all the blood, flesh, and bone separated as it rushed toward its original owner from all directions.