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

===Part 2===

“…”

The “match” was finally over.

Temjin disappeared and Kamijou Touma was left all alone in the airport.

The girl who had supposedly been there before was gone.

There was only silence.

And an unbearable chill.

The spiky-haired boy could no longer stand on his own two feet. He lost his balance and staggered 2 or 3 steps to the left. He bumped into the side of a fuel tanker truck. He then slid down to the ground like drool pulled down by gravity.

Where had he gone wrong?

What could he have chosen to avoid this future?

He thought and thought but found no answer. It was so unreasonable and had happened so suddenly that he could not perform any self-analysis.

He had an enemy to defeat: the Blue Stalker.

But even that thought did not light a fire in his chest. He could tell something dark and soot-like was caked over his heart, but that did not give him the power needed to cheer himself up.

The sense of loss was so great that he did not even shift into proper anger.

He could not.

Kamijou Touma had nearly forgotten how to form emotions.

“…This is just painful to watch.”

He heard a voice.

For a while, he did not even look in that direction. The speaker did not move either. They were waiting for him to move. Finally, Kamijou ever-so-slowly turned his head as stiffly as a doll to view the source of the voice.

He saw a white-haired, red-eyed monster.

This was Academy City’s #1, the peak of the seven Level 5s.

That shadow named Accelerator supported his weight on a modern-style cane and waved some papers that looked like some kind of report.

“I just have one question: do you have it in you to keep going?”

“…”

Kamijou sluggishly but desperately tried to understand those words. All while thinking no amount of sleep deprivation would slow his mind this much.

“Why should I keep going?” he muttered after finally giving up on processing it all. “I can fight and fight and fight…but what does that get me? I might trip along the way, or even at the very beginning, and then lose something I can’t afford to lose…”

“Don’t ask me,” cruelly spat out the monster. “Only someone who’s actually reached the end can tell you that. At the very least, someone who gave up during the ascent can’t talk about the scenery from the mountain peak.”

The next thing Kamijou knew, Accelerator held a large scythe in the hand not holding his modern-style cane. It seemed to have appeared from thin air and it was Ifleesa, Specineff’s weapon.

This was the same as the Apharmd and Grys-Vok that had attacked Furashina Ririn.

In that case, what did Specineff specialize in?

“If you want, I can contaminate your mind and ''erase'' your memories. How about it? Do you want to live out your life oblivious to the gaping wound in your back thanks to some strange anesthetic?”

“————”

He felt a slight pain deep in his head.

That pain insisted that it would never be healed no matter what he did, continue on or give up. So the only question was what kind of pain he could bear.

Would he continue on and be wounded?

Or would he smile and be wounded?

Which would you prefer, Kamijou Touma?

“…That’s…right.”

He felt like some gears had finally locked together in his chest.

He silently moved away from the filthy wall he was leaning against. He once more fought gravity. Strength filled his legs and he gradually stood up.

“I can sit around worrying after I’ve seen this through to the end. There has to be more I can do.”

Accelerator did not offer him his hand.

The #1 simply waited until the end.

“You weren’t supposed to need this.” He shoved the report into Kamijou’s chest. “But you do now that you’ve taken this step. Don’t forget your position here.”

“What is this…?”

“An internal investigation report on that insane bastard known as the Blue Stalker. Although I’m not sure how much of it can be trusted given how out there a lot of it is.”

“…”

Kamijou had few good memories when it came to secret reports. Most of them felt like a bog that dragged you down into depthless darkness. And that was bound to be even truer when it was given to him by the peak of Academy City who existed in the underside of the city.

“How did you get this?”

“I simply got involved in a different way but ended up in the same place as you.”

“…?”

Kamijou briefly thought about the dark world Accelerator lived in, but…

“If it had to do with that, I would’ve just ignored it.”

Kamijou heard several dry clattering sounds as Accelerator carelessly threw multiple electronic devices to the ground.

They were portable devices.

Their LCD screens were broken, their interior chips were exposed, and they were clearly all dead.

“You…”

“I’ve already smashed up all of ''that kind of thing''. There were a lot of dangerous people hanging around the administrator of that underground site who saw himself as a kind of prophet and around the old man who had given up on life thanks to his own unnecessary efforts.”

He implicitly revealed that there had been a completely separate path to this incident and that Kamijou Touma simply had not seen it. He had overcome as much hardship as Kamijou to come this far.

“It seems Virtual-On was spread to benefit the Blue Stalker in some way. I investigated the guy spreading the information, the guy paying for it all as a sponsor, and more, but it looks like I ultimately didn’t make it in time.”

Then what else had happened?

Did this monster live in a world beyond what was seen in the light of day?

Was there something that could link them together?

Kamijou gave him a look of pure doubt, but it did not seem the #1 intended to give all the answers.

Accelerator looked away in annoyance and clicked his tongue before speaking.

“To put it another way, that’s what make this such a pain in the ass. Now that the original’s been turned into an NPC, the only way to grant ''that brat''’s wish is to switch my focus over to helping the losers recover.”

The #1 did not try to say anything more.

He too must have had something he had to prioritize above all else.

And it was something he could achieve by working with Kamijou.

“…”

Even so, Kamijou grabbed the report, looked down, and scanned through all of the text found there.

And he did it of his own free will.