Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:AgneseSS Chapter6 (section)

===Part 1===

A worldwide hunt had begun.

The spell book acquired by Agnese’s group could be used to locate and capture the guild members hidden all over Europe. But this spread beyond just Europe or even the Eurasian continent There were nearly 16 thousand members scattered around the globe. Looking at pure numbers, they may have rivalled the enigmatic Dawn-Colored Sunlight which was mostly known from its legends. That was far too much for three nuns to deal with on their own.

Leaving even a single guild member would allow it to all happen again. They would spread like weeds, whisper secrets, and grant their harmful power to more troubled magicians. And the victims would be ordinary people, not expert magicians.

So they would end this here.

A thorough reaping was needed and the Anglican Church could pull that off.

But that did not lead to a happily ever after. Let us return to the island’s underground room where the spell book was found.

“We still haven’t identified the leader,” said Stiyl Magnus, a priest with long hair dyed red.

His exhaled cigarette smoke floated through the subterranean space and filled an empty spot.

That felt symbolic.

Stone legs stood upon a pedestal where a statue had been destroyed from the knees on up. It had not been shattered. The stone had been vaporized and blasted against the stone wall.

As a flame magician, Stiyl seemed to have his thoughts on that firepower.

Someone had clearly worked to thoroughly destroy the statue.

“Tu. That name is the only information the spell book revealed on their boss. The voice sample was incomplete and those two letters are not enough to track down their real name. Since they abandoned this base so readily, they must still have a foundation for their plan. They have the funding, connections, equipment, and land plus the knowledge needed to bring all those things together as an organization. We cannot let them escape. We need to assume that they will create a new guild if all we do is destroy their hideout. Then this will all happen again, creating more unnecessary victims all the while. So you must end this before that can happen.”

“Are you telling us to search them out?” Agnese shrugged. “We don’t have any hints to go off of. Using two letters to search out a specific person who could be anywhere in the world isn’t possible. You can’t expect us to accomplish anything and everything just by giving us a goal and a deadline.”

“What was that statue?”

Stiyl was of course asking about the one with only the lower legs remaining. Based on the size of the white marble legs, it must have stood about 2m tall. And the muscular calves looked vaguely masculine.

Agnese sighed.

“They went to the trouble of destroying it so thoroughly when they needed to escape as quickly as possible, so it must have been something they couldn’t let us see. But what do you expect us to do with that information? Do you know how many male gods there are in polytheistic Roman mythology???”

Being unable to identify a god was unthinkable for monotheistic Christianity, but it was natural enough for the guild.

“Oh, my, my.”

Then an oddly relaxed female voice reached their ears. The carefree mood clashed with the violent scene and it came from Sister Orsola whose thick habit could not hide the curves of her body.

She elegantly placed a hand on her cheek as she spoke.

“Then how about I ''connect you to it''? The statue should be coated in its owner’s thoughts or their desire to conceal it through destruction. Someone should be able to see something if they dive into those residual thoughts.”

“Um…are you serious? I’m almost certain that would be a trap. Only the pedestal and legs are left, but Tu must have known someone would investigate them. Investigating the residual thoughts could get your mind drawn into a dream world.”

“Wait, really!? Like where making a mistake in the dream causes your heart to stop!?” Silver-haired and brown-skinned Isabella Theism leaned forward in excitement. And she was breathing awfully heavily. “Eh heh heh. Now, this is getting interesting. A fresh corpse with no external injuries is rare indeed. Drool. And this isn’t just a pickled Hand of Glory or a body compressed into a diamond! It’s a full corpse I could do anything I want with!! I need as much reference material as I can get for the corpses I construct out of animal meat and bones and I was hoping to try out some new things. This really gets my imagination running wild! Ahh, the ideas just won’t stop! Is this further proof that I’m a genius? I could do so many cool things with this!!”

“…”

(This sounds like an even worse idea than playing roulette with a round – no, two rounds – loaded in the revolver.)

That woman did not mind at all if they failed. In fact, she seemed to want them to fail.

Agnese gave her a look of extreme displeasure with her mouth a small triangle, but she knew it was the outsiders like her who would be forced to do this. Stiyl was smoking his cigarette with a relaxed look that said he knew it would never be him.

Oblivious to that, Orsola grinned and kneeled on the stone floor. Then she sat back on her heels in the Japanese seiza style. She even patted on her lap.

“Now, who shall I connect?” asked that master of unintentional temptation. “Eh heh heh. I’m no good at all that chaotic fighting, but I can always help guide you into a hypnagogic hallucination.”

Agnese was fairly sleep deprived, so she staggered over and nearly gave in to the temptation of the older girl’s soft lap pillow heaven, but she snapped herself out of it. Now was not the time to let her drowsiness get the better of her, so she shook her head to shake free of that near miss.

Then she turned toward Lucia and Angelene.

They appeared to be thinking much the same thing.

There was a traditional solution to this sort of problem.

Namely…

“Rock paper scissors!!”

“Oh, my.”

Orsola interrupted their game while offering up her lap free of charge.

Agnese had just grimaced after playing scissors when the other two played rock, so she quickly hid her hand behind her back and put on the biggest smile she could manage.

“Wh-what is it, Sister Orsola? Did you discover something new? Why, that changes everything, so we’ll just have to redo our game, which means that one didn’t count!!”

The rock players loudly lodged their complaints, but she ignored them while watching Orsola point toward the statue’s feet from the lower view point of her seiza.

“Isn’t this statue’s pedestal oddly new?” she asked with her head childishly tilted.

“I see.” The cigarette waggled in the corner of Stiyl’s mouth. “That means it was removed from its original pedestal and brought here. Which suggests it was not made by one of their guild craftsmen. Did they steal it from somewhere?”