Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 7===

Anna Kingsford’s method was quite simple.

She had not actually defeated Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass the day before. After fighting him enough to make it convincing, she had intentionally avoided a finishing blow and let him escape.

He belonged to Miss Sprengel.

By tracing his path, he would guide her right to Anna Sprengel.

“My, my.”

And Kingsford opted to spare the Predator Octopus for now and instead attack Mut Thebes first.

She had a clear and simple reason for this.

“You must ❌ do this, Transcendent. I don’t know what these ‘micro🌊’ things are, but you must ❌ harm the ordinary people who know nothing of 🪄.”

“What?”

Mut Thebes’s back was embedded in the side of a smashed tank and the white radome caught between her and the solid armor cracked before breaking apart.

Freed from the weight on her back, the brown girl extracted herself from the tank.

“Did you seriously pick a fight with a Transcendent over something like that?”

“🪄 was originally meant as a 🧰 to serve those around you,” replied Kingsford with a smile.

She was willing to bet her life on “something like that”.

Because she remained as dedicated to her magic name now as she had been a century before.

“…”

Mut Thebes’s silence did not mean she was overwhelmed by the great goddess of knowledge.

Her area of expertise was punishment.

And Transcendents could be heartless when someone did not fit their conditions for salvation.

She could separate herself from her emotions and present condition in order to coldly gather information on her target. In this case, she heard the rumble of a diesel engine driving away.

She used that to estimate her target’s location.

(I can’t use the AWACS anymore. And I don’t have direct line of sight, so I have to rely on sound. I will lose them if I can’t resume the pursuit within three minutes.)

“That is ❌ a good idea.”

Kingsford’s soft but smooth voice interrupted Mut Thebes’s thoughts.

She placed her finger on her slender chin.

“Do ❌ ignore the immediate threat to focus on your distant 🎯. For that matter, what makes you 💭 you can win this at all?”

“Are you Anna Kingsford?”

“I am indeed☆”

“''The original''?”

“''Of course ❌.''”

She didn’t even try to claim otherwise.

Casually abandoning that legend may have been something Miss Sprengel could never do.

“I am well past worrying about that. She too is an original. She has done a splendid job of achieving what I can ❌. Although she seems unaware of that fact. So I am willing to let her be the main ‘Anna’ in the history of Modern Western 🪄. I am ❌ more than a spell user. As long as I can serve those around me, I am ❌picky about what form that takes or what people call me.”

“Hm.”

Transcendent Mut Thebes’s behavior was unchanged.

With a dull sound, the color white burst from her right shoulder. She had absorbed the tank she had crashed into, so a 120mm gun suddenly emerged.

“I absorbed the shadows of the laser targeting and microwave radar this time.”

''Kaboom!!'' She didn’t hesitate to fire.

The shell tore through the air and was compressed to the absolute limit before its course veered to the side in front of Anna Kingsford. It looked so natural Mut Thebes nearly overlooked how odd it really was.

“?”

“True understanding is ❌ found in ⚔️.”

Anna Kingsford shook her head.

With that large witch hat on her head.

She was not bragging. The eyes behind her glasses displayed the look of a teacher marking a question wrong on her student’s test.

“Sadly, all you will find there is misunderstanding. I did ❌ do a thing. It was you that missed the shot, Transcendent, ❌ me.”

“Nonsense. That kind of pedantic argument can’t alter my spell.”

“My. My. We are both wielding the uncertain system of techniques known as 🪄, so how can you claim anything is reproducible or absolute, Transcendent?”

That meant Mut Thebes either had to overwhelm her with enough attacks or physically tackle her to break through whatever barrier had sent the shell off course.

But Mut Thebes was a moment too slow.

Kingsford clapped her hands together in front of her large chest.

“'' 🪄 power.''”

That was all.

There was no light, sound, color, or shape. But the brown girl sensed something – an unseen, unknowable field of oppressive density – appear between the two of them.

Anna Kingsford did not use flashy special attacks.

She took the common magic and ceremonies that even the beginners were sick and tired of and she honed them past the limit.

No more than that. But no one else could achieve this, so it allowed her to overwhelm all others.

It even let her gather up and harness the immorality, tragedy, and misfortune found all throughout this incomplete world.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing really. Hee hee. This rebuilt body appears to be more fragile than my original one. If I refined 🪄 power at my full 💪, it would destroy the ⚙️ parts. So I emit all the excess energy outside my body, which makes it easier for ‘nonexistent things’ to manifest. Think of it like how ⬆️-ing the humidity with a humidifier makes it easier for frost to form on the 🪟.”

A true expert did not normally say much.

So when the 2nd Anna did so, she was doing it for her opponent’s benefit.

The brown girl still didn’t understand, so the expert gave her a look of pity.

“''In other words, it is ❌ me who will defeat you.''”

A heavy footstep rang out.

It came from a blonde woman in a beige habit. …But was that really who this was? If so, how was her footstep powerful enough to shake the world around her?

The unknown entity approached with head lowered and radiating a bestial aura.

She held her hand straight out.

“Your number is 333, your nature is dispersion. You obstruct all bonds and I ask that you mercilessly tear apart this force building a tower of immorality and sacrifice.”

Something beat hard against the air.

A pair of bat wings had emerged from her back.

She slowly raised her head to pierce all with her gaze.

“Lend me your identity, ''Great Demon Coronzon''!!!”

“Kee kee ee ha ha! You would willingly use me, human? That’s quite the taboo you’re breaking. Feeling like naming yourself the wickedest man in the world again, Aleister!!?”

A series of bright lights and explosions followed.

An even more colorful spectacle had to be playing out in a territory invisible to human eyes.