Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter5 (section)

===Part 11===

Mikoto and Shokuhou had defeated the lord.

But what they really wanted was the grimoire that shitty lord had stolen from Elf Elder Bakerian. Without that, they had no way of searching out the three Demon Lords they needed to defeat and could not prepare the three treasures ceremony necessary to send them back to Earth.

“Oh, this looks like the library.”

Once they found the correct room, Patissiet suddenly climbed up onto a bookcase and searched the shelves while hopping from bookcase to bookcase like they were stones in a pond. While elves probably liked high places since they lived in the trees, Mikoto really wished she wouldn’t do that when wearing a short skirt. It was inappropriate!

“Hm.”

Mikoto also searched the shelves (from the floor of course), but the books were not written in Japanese or English. It could be easy to forget since they used decimal numbers and they could understand each other’s spoken language, but this really was another world. She thought maybe she just had to give up, but then she noticed something.

(Huh? I feel like there’s a pattern to the titles on the spines.)

The titles were written with an angular otherworld language that wasn’t quite the English alphabet or the Cyrillic alphabet. Mikoto couldn’t even guess whether this was an alphabet where each symbol was a meaningless sound or if it was like kanji and each symbol was a word with multiple possible meanings. Still, she could swear there was a system to the overall arrangement of symbols and spaces. It reminded her of old Morse code or the braille seen on train station ticket machines.

“Hey, Patissiet. What does this say? Something like ‘The Relationship Between the Four Types of Magic’?”

“Hm? Um, it more accurately says ‘Illustrated Comparison Chart of the Four Great Elements’,” answered Patissiet, seated atop the bookcase with her legs dangling down.

That was more or less what Mikoto had guessed.

So she could grasp the general idea, but it would be safer to get the elf to provide the details. But if all of this world’s language worked this way, why had they gone to so much effort for no apparent reason? Of course, Mikoto knew Patissiet, who could read it like normal, would only be confused by the question.

To practice this world’s writing, Mikoto carefully ran her finger along the spines of the titles as she searched, but she couldn’t find any that seemed like a grimoire with details about the three Demon Lords.

“Wouldn’t it be faster for you to search that lord’s mind with Mental Out?”

“I have already brainwashed him, but we have to wait until he comes to before we can question him☆ You don’t want to put such a great burden ability on him that it breaks his brain before we can get the information out of him, do you?”

…Break his brain, she said. And if his brain was physically damaged, was even the #5 powerless to fix it?

Mikoto spread her arms impatiently.

“Then how about we carry all these books out and ask Elder Bakerian which one it is!?”

“I’d estimate around 2000 books in this small room.”

“Use Mental Out to learn how to operate those giant Anubis and Gargoyle things and have them do the work.”

“(Wait, could I get one of those to carry me around instead of doing all this walking? Finally, I’ve found a replacement for Hokaze-san in this world!)”

“She would cry if she heard that, you scheming queen.”

While they were discussing this, something happened without warning.

After a weird “zap!!” sound, Mikoto’s bikini armor and Shokuhou’s dancer outfit both burst off of their bodies.

Time froze for a moment.

It took them a few seconds to think back and realize what had happened.

Since they didn’t use any weapons, leveling them down couldn’t strip them of the ability to fight, but this would still happen to their armor since it required a certain level to equip.

The sneakthief lord’s request had finally gone through.

(I see, I see, I see. That makes sense.)

“What did we do to deserve this!?”