Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Virtual On Chapter2 (section)

===Part 20===

The short-haired girl named Marika used her esper power to hover in the orange sky as she gave a displeased click of her tongue.

The Apharmd boy was not contacting her.

He did not respond when she called him and his information had vanished from the cursor.

“Was he taken out…?”

However, she felt no danger. She assumed one of her many missiles had hit him.

Grys-Vok’s missiles could only display their true strength when in a wide open space like a park. They were easily avoided in these labyrinthine alleyways since the target only had to hide behind a wall after they were fired. The guided weapons were convenient, but not very smart.

So she had wanted to finish off the target by firing down from the sky to ensure her safety before searching for Furashina Ririn on the ground. But…

“Lilina, ammo check.”

“Y-yes. With the Material Analyze customization, the shoulder missile launchers have a total of 30 missiles together. Once you have fired those, the left and right weapon gauges will need to reload.”

(That should be enough.)

She glared at the ground.

She focused on the FCS cursor.

And she launched plenty more explosives.

Immediately afterwards, a missile detonated right in front of her, swallowing her up along with the Grys-Vok launchers.

“Wha-…!?”

In Virtual-On, the explosive blast of your own attack would not affect your endurance. It was only intense light and noise and thus only worked as a smokescreen, but it still squeezed at her heart when it was so unexpected.

And what had happened?

A Virtuaroid’s weapons could not detonate prematurely, jam, or otherwise malfunction. Instead of reducing the odds of a malfunction as much as possible, it was more like malfunctions were simply not an option in the first place. Just like a polygon doll could not catch cold. This should have been the same.

Some kind of black cloth fluttered across the corner of her vision.

“What happened…?”

Marika muttered the question in a daze, but she soon realized this was not time for that.

Whatever kind of phenomenon or trick that had been, what she had to do remained the same: pursue the two who had fled. And she was up in the sky. No matter where they hid, she could remain locked onto them as long as they were somewhere in her field of vision.

This was not a problem as long as she knew where they were.

She only had to fly above them and send down another downpour of missiles.

Or so she thought.

However…

“…?”

This time, Marika saw something truly unbelievable.

What had happened?

She felt foolish for asking that question earlier.