Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Virtual On Chapter3 (section)

===Part 1===

“Ehh? What does that mean???”

Kamijou was not the only one thrown into chaos.

Night had fallen and all of the day’s tournament matches were over, so it was time to head home. At the same time, a group was holding a meeting about the following day’s finals.

Aogami Pierce and the other employees were in complete disarray on the center’s main floor.

The man who seemed to be in charge gave a troubled look.

“Like I said, a reinvestigation of the Virtuaroids’ actions shows that quite a few units are making actions theoretically impossible even with the publicly available Material Analyze. Simply put, they are using Defected PDs. …We hadn’t noticed until now, so I can only assume they have been using body doubles, sealed cradles, or other tricks to hide it. There also seems to be a strange rumor that Defected players disappear during the Ring Scan.”

That was of course cheating.

Once it was discovered, they could punish them. And that meant disqualifying them.

However…

“I said there were quite a few, right?”

“Don’t tell me…”

“23 teams participated in the main tournament, but we discovered something in over half of them. Someone on those teams is using a Defected device. And it makes sense. The Defected units are bound to be stronger than the legal Virtuaroids, so of course a lot of them will show up in the tournament.”

“But if we punish all of them…”

“Yes, the tournament will fall apart. Even if a few teams remain, what good is sending them to the finals? People just won’t care.”

But they could not continue as is either because it would look like a farce.

It may not have been his place as a part-timer, but Aogami Pierce opened his mouth without thinking. That was just how much he loved Virtual-On.

“Whatever we do, don’t we have to contact them first? We need to settle this with them somehow.”

“About that.”

Another dark look came over the man in charge.

''There’s more?'' gloomily wondered Aogami Pierce.

“''We can’t reach them.''”

“Huh?”

“We can’t contact them. I’ve tried a few times already, but they aren’t responding. I thought they might be avoiding our calls or ran off because they think we’re onto them. But I still got worried, so I tried contacting the few safe teams left. And here’s the thing, I couldn’t reach them either. Since they haven’t Defected, they wouldn’t need to avoid the call or run off.”

“You mean…wait, what does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” The man shrugged. “All I know is that the tournament participants are disappearing. It’s almost like they’re being hunted down by a ghost or something.”

This was no longer just about the tournament.

Without the contestants, the entire event was dead in the water.

There was sure to be a major panic tomorrow. Even as a part-timer, Aogami Pierce was sure to have a crowd demanding an explanation. It might even develop into a heated argument.

But something was pressing in on them that overshadowed that normal sort of problem.

Aogami Pierce gulped as he thought about whatever was lurking within the failed tournament.

(What is going on in this city?)