Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Virtual On Chapter1 (section)

===Part 7===

He ended up losing that set too.

He fought 7 or 8 more 3-set games after that.

His losing streak continued, but none of them were wasted. He learned to move his unit as he fired, to shift from a dash into a jump, and when to cancel both of those to intentionally throw out his speed and height. If he came up with his own objective or task and focused on “learning”, an idea always came to him. The button layout had initially seemed unintuitive and it had slowed him down, but he could feel himself starting to control the Virtuaroid more on instinct now.

Even so, Index was on another level.

She did not limit herself to a single strategy. Each set, she would weave together a different pattern of the various options available to her: midair attacks, ground attacks, horizontal movement, wavelike movement, sticking close, sniping from a distance, etc. That hinted at the great variety of situations she had experienced. She had played this game a lot. And her perfect memory may have been helping out too.

The end arrived suddenly.

Kamijou pushed the ultra-thin goggles up from his eyes.

“Stop, stop!! Ugh, I can’t go on. There’s a prickling in my temples… I don’t think this is 3D motion sickness, but let me take a break…”

“Ehhh!? But I haven’t tried out my special whipped milk cream yet!!”

“How am I supposed to know what command that is when name it something like that!?”

The two of them were causing a scene, but no one paid them any attention.

There were a lot of boys and girls using portable devices around the center. Coming all the way here yet not going inside may have been an issue of style. Or perhaps they had felt an urge to play once they saw the preliminary matches on the screens.

When they put on the goggles and operated their portable devices, something like a ring of pale light appeared over their head. It resembled a hula hoop and it moved down from their head to their feet before vanishing.

(I couldn’t tell with the goggles on, but did those appear with us too?)

“Index, do you know what that is?”

“No, but it seems to be scanning their body in some way.”

“???”

He was a little curious about that, but it was not worth thinking about it too much.

Besides, Kamijou’s goal was to refill his portable device’s electronic credits. The Next Generation Game of Virtual-On was listed as F2P. Kamijou did not really know what that stood for, but it apparently meant he did not have to pay anything to play the game. But the device could be used for almost anything and some of those things required money. In Kamijou’s case, that meant when he was riding the train or subscribing to a recipe magazine.

“I’m going to take a break by running my errand, but I’ll play some more once I get back.”

“Mhh. Then I’ll find a free challenger around here. Even during the tournament, they can’t all be registered for the preliminary battles and there are a lot of spectator players in front of the center. If I send them a message saying I want to see how my portable device is doing, most anyone will play a few rounds.”

After watching Kamijou wave and duck inside the center, Index puffed out her cheeks a little.

(There’s no point if I can’t show off to Touma…)

The calico cat on her head uttered a leisurely meow.

That said, there was something she wanted to try out, so she sent out a portable device transmission.

She let it search for an opponent.

With a light beep, the first result appeared.

“Hm?’

Index tilted her head at the name given.

It was not written in fancy German and it was not full of unusual kanji.

In fact, the name field was entirely corrupted.

“Who is that…?”

It may have been that Index was just fundamentally bad with machines. It may have been that her curiosity won out over her unease and so she reached for it without worry.

Normally, no one would have hit the accept button.

But Index took that step forward with her head still tilted.

And.

That girl’s world immediately changed.