Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:AgneseSS Chapter7 (section)

===Part 2===

Every cloud has a silver lining.

Whoever invented that idiom had to either be the quintessential loser who would keep smiling no matter what was taken from them, or the ultimate sore loser who never gave up searching for a way to make a comeback no matter what hardship they faced.

At any rate, Agnese, Lucia, and Angelene were spared the worst of it. They had escaped the direct effects after returning to England for the investigating they were forced to do themselves.

“All of Europe’s ley lines have been contaminated.”

They were inside an inconspicuous London church.

They were not using official equipment provided by England. All the members of the Agnese Force had gathered silver candlesticks, stained glass, a pipe organ, and more so they could secretly connect to the Anglican equipment and magical symbols found around the city. By linking those together, they had created an observation post for themselves. It was similar to creating an access point to a government agency’s computers.

The pipe organ did the opposite of a normal one.

Instead of playing the notes written on the sheet music, pressing the keys caused information to appear on the blank sheet music.

Sister Agata, another girl in a Roman Catholic nun’s habit, was close to screaming.

“The unnatural tremor of plate movement has been detected centered on Mount Vesuvius and Mount Etna. It’s irregular but continuous. I can only imagine the plates are moving the opposite of normal!!”

“Like time is reversing?”

Agnese frowned.

The Sickle of Saturn’s effective range was being reset to the peak of the Roman Empire. She had assumed that meant altering a setting within the spiritual item, but was that not it? Was Guild Leader Tu trying to redefine his region of control to the Pax Romana at the beginning of the CE era by altering the position of the crust that determined the flow of ley lines?

But…

“Can he do that?” asked pale-faced Angelene. “I mean, the most he can control is Europe, not the entire planet, right!? If he does force the plates to move backwards, the distortion will concentrate at some point somewhere. That won’t just return the geography to what it was 2000 years ago. It will cause the land to rise up or fall away all over the place and cause tons of uncontrollable earthquakes! I bet it would also change the flow of water veins and crude oil. Those are a matter of life or death. It could even lead to an international war!!”

“I doubt he cares,” replied Agnese with her voice low. She was scared too, but she knew how to convert her fear into the strength needed to challenge it. “Tu’s only goal is ''the destruction of Christian society since its time has come''. He wins if he can spread Roman mythology across western Europe, northern Africa, and parts of eastern Europe, but it isn’t a problem for him if an unexpected cataclysm destroys Christian society as a whole instead. He doesn’t care how it happens.”

What would change if the current world was destroyed?

The power structure put in place would not last long.

But Tu was not considering those realistic problems. The destruction was all he wanted. What came next was none of his concern.

He was almost too perfect an incarnation of destruction. He silently hid out of sight, carefully prepared his plan, and then brought about absolute tragedy. And even if his entire plan was brought down by a duplicitous bloodline investigator, he could feign calm long enough to recover and get back on track. It was all so perfect he felt like a machine designed for that one end. It was so calculated he barely seemed human.

They did not know what had become of the Vatican. Italy had been swallowed up right away, but they had no idea how well the treacherous Alps would act as a breakwater. France and Germany were at risk.

Agnese sighed softly.

“Sister Agata.”

“I don’t have a secret weapon for you.”

“I’m not hoping for a risky one-shot comeback. I want to know the harsh but accurate numbers. If things continue as is, how long do we have?”

“Do you want the optimistic estimate or the pessimistic one?”

“Again, now isn’t the time for groundless hope.”

“In the worst case, around 5 hours. We won’t even be able to see the dawn.”

Angelene looked like her heart had stopped, but Agnese was different.

This was better than an “I don’t know”.

Having a solid grasp of the desperate situation was the same as a ticket toward facing it.

“What do we do, Sister Agnese?” asked Lucia.

“…”

If they sat around and waited, the Sickle of Saturn’s field of control would probably cross the Strait of Dover and engulf the UK. And even if it did not, the unnatural movement of the crust would grow too great and a cataclysm would strike a large part of the planet.

“We are indebted to this country.”

“We are.”

“I am worried about our home country of Italy, but we can’t ignore our debt and fight for ourselves.”

“The question is whether they will trust us.”

Lucia kept her eyes dead ahead. She only glanced over toward the stained glass on the wall for a brief moment.

The complexly cut glass reflected the church’s entrance.

And the dark figure visible there.

“The Anglican Church, I mean. And Necessarius in particular.”

This was not someone who had ''transferred in'' like Agnese Sanctis or Kanzaki Kaori. They were probably an elite magician who had been recruited from the Anglican Church.

They had assumed someone like that was around.

Outsiders would always be outsiders, so the transfers like the Amakusas and the former Catholics would always be tailed by their “keepers” to secretly monitor everything they did.

But it became a lot more obvious when those people ''allowed themselves to be seen''.

(A censer and a cross.)

Agnese took this as a warning. And from a nuclear state no less.

(Pretty standard for an area-of-effect attack, but not very flexible. They must usually be “dropped in” to wipe out a cabal on their own.)

“They probably fear we’ll use this moment of weakness to make an attack on the UK from within.” Lucia chose her words carefully. “They don’t think a group of around 200 can take out one of the major denominations, but they fear we could cause unnecessary losses.”

“…”

People could only believe their own eyes at times like this. No matter how much Agnese’s group insisted they wanted to fight for the UK, their supervisor would never listen. They saw very different things from their positions here.

(God must be weeping right about now.)

Agnese nearly looked up toward heaven, but she had to deal with this problem down in the real world.

The Anglican supervisor was telling them to stay put and watch, but that was useless if the world was destroyed in the meantime.

They did not carry a specific hatred of the former Agnese Force.

All the outsiders would be treated this way.

That meant they would be monitoring and wordlessly warning Orsola Aquinas in the same way even though she was harmless as could be. Talk about a waste of time. Orsola of all people would never pick up on a hinted warning like this. The fall of Christian society was spreading from a point in Europe to the entire world, but she was probably fast asleep in bed with a nightcap on her head. If the Anglicans had instead gathered those forces, they might have been able to sneak into Italy or the Vatican that the Sickle of Saturn was making so deadly.

What were they doing?

The Anglican higher ups were clearly in disarray if they had decided it was necessary to remind the outsiders of these misguided doubts.

Without some confusion at play, ''only someone who actually wanted to see the world destroyed'' would have given the go ahead on such a ridiculous plan. Besides, it was Agnese’s group that had pursued Tu all this time. It would be faster and safer for them to continue their mission than to have the elites work through all the documents to obtain the necessary information.

It was stupid.

Agnese began to wonder if this country was really worth protecting.

But.

Even so.

“Okay, fine!”

She raised her voice to cut off her endless thoughts.

She had worried over it and walked past this option, but then she had stopped and looked back.

That showed she did care. It showed she would feel sad if this country were lost.

“I’ll admit it!! London is a cluttered mess of old and new, but I enjoyed eating some bread in a park while listening to someone playing the guitar! I don’t care if it’s only for personal reasons and isn’t strategically or logically worth it! I don’t care about the Guild or Tu, but I’m not letting some bizarre ideology destroy all this!!”

“That settles it then.”

“I-I’ll accept the punishment with you. Even if I’m scared.”

Lucia smiled and Angelene gave a snort while clenching her fists.

It was time for more delightful service to the church.

Agnese Sanctis focused on the dark figure standing at the church’s entrance.

They would have to physically remove that obstinate Anglican from their path if they were going to repay their debt by saving the world real quick.