Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 3===

A light clanking sound continued endlessly.

It was a lot like ancient gears fitting together. But this lacked the precision of a clock. It moved sometimes fast and sometimes slow. This was an old machine supported by the tolerance of the viewers, from a time when the slight margin of error caused by the hand crank was thought to give it “flavor”.

This was a film projector.

In a flat world confined to a rectangle, something danced in grainy black and white. It was a boy walking across undulating dunes of scorching sand, a young man gathering students from across Europe, and an old man with a bald head and long beard writing silently at a desk.

“Christian Rosencreutz,” said Kingsford as she viewed the images. “He abandoned a privileged life to travel east where the great professors living in secret in the depths of the desert granted him wisdom, which he chose to distribute freely throughout his homeland of Europe after managing to bring it back with him. But the foolish European educated class – that is the ignorant religious leaders who ruled the Dark Ages that preceded the Renaissance – rejected his wisdom and silenced him. Eventually, he established the House of the Holy Spirit where he could learn along with the few students who shared his vision. He fought against vested interests while healing small human illnesses, correcting the great distortion of the world, and leading humanity as a whole toward goodness. He was a truly benevolent expert.”

“…”

Much like a children’s picture book, it was all so abstract and simple, but it didn’t sound anything like the red-clad young man standing silently next to Kamijou now.

Kamijou felt more like he was viewing images of a handsome prince charming.

That is, it was all so perfect it felt flimsy.

This didn’t feel like a living human being.

“But all of that was an illusion.”

Anna Kingsford left no room for doubt.

At the same time, the flimsy story projected by the projector shattered like glass. With a single statement, the thick stone wall acting as the white screen crumbled away, revealing a hallway on the other side.

The expert spoke while staring down that.

“The mysterious Rosicrucian cabal was first revealed to the 🌍 by a booklet, which only presented him with the mysterious initials CRC. The full name of Christian Rosencreutz did ❌ appear until much later. An individual by that name did ❌ yet exist, so it is more accurate to say Rosicrucianism was created by the person who ✍️ that booklet.”

Kamijou Touma had not been present when Alice took revenge on CRC, but he had been told that the mysterious Rosicrucian cabal didn’t actually exist. Really, he had just suddenly discovered the smart people like Othinus and Anna Sprengel were talking based on that assumption, so he had found it difficult to keep up.

He had also learned that the person named Christian Rosencreutz had been invented.

Kamijou wasn’t going to doubt the man’s power.

It didn’t matter to him if someone dressed up as the god or demon of their choice to draw on that figure’s abilities to reach out a helping hand to whoever they had decided to save. It didn’t matter to him if they didn’t actually throw out their magic name to become a Magic God. That was the foundation of the Transcendents like Aradia and the Bologna Succubus. That had also become the driving force for Anna Sprengel who monopolized so much power yet always fell short of Kingsford and who had pushed past all that to face Alice Anotherbible’s distortion and prevent the destruction of the world.

“…Johann…”

Kamijou heard a voice from down the hallway.

It belonged to a boy his own age. He doubted the boy was speaking Japanese, yet he could understand it even though he couldn’t even speak English well.

“Johann.”

It was a name.

The man next to him.

The silver-haired young man in red hadn’t said anything for a while now. His constant insults had vanished. Like he sat in the defendant’s seat in court. Was this what happened to anyone who was accused?

A step.

Kingsford took a step into the hallway beyond the screen as she spoke calmly.

“The legend of Rosencreutz is said to have begun in 1378, but the real 📅 is much later. It truly began in 1602. It happened here at the University of Tübingen, in what is now known as 🇩🇪. …It happened in a tiny room at one corner of that massive educational institution where people were free to learn the natural sciences thanks to the Renaissance but it also taught theology, in which people learned how to read the Bible in greater detail. It all began as nothing more than a single 💧 being added to the 🌍.”

So at this point, it didn’t matter if it was real or fake. There was something else they had to pursue further.

The false information was intentionally distributed.

What had someone hoped to accomplish by creating the fictional image of CRC – Christian Rosencreutz – as if he were a real person?

What were his intentions and goals?

Kamijou had already been told he was still only 15 at the time. Kamijou didn’t know anything about the educational environment of 17th century Germany, but he could guess it wasn’t something just anyone was allowed to attend.

The University of Tübingen allowed humans to learn about god in detail.

Including his mysteries.

This somewhat reminded Kamijou of Academy City, which looked like a peaceful city of children but actually had massive gears turning below the surface. However, this seemed even more blatant. Instead of enacting some kind of plan in secret, no effort was put into disguising the truth and all effort was dedicated to a single grand objective.

Rosicrucianism had caused so much trouble.

It had created all the foundational theory that had formed the basis for the Golden cabal.

There had to be something there.

There just had to.

So Kamijou prepared himself for the worst. He felt his heart pounding even though he wasn’t sure he really had a heart anymore.

They arrived at the end of the hallway.

There was a small door there.

It was a thick oak door in a stone wall, yet it had none of the grandeur of the door to a cathedral or to the audience chamber in the demon lord’s castle. It was smaller, more grounded, and something even a high school boy like Kamijou could picture.

The actual parts used were different, but the overall scene brought a term to Kamijou’s mind.

(A clubroom?)

No, it couldn’t be.

Kingsford threw open the oak door without knocking.

Johann Valentin Andreae.

His true form was finally revealed.

Voices flooded out from the small room.

“Johann, are you planning ''another'' prank? You only just got reprimanded for that phony newspaper saying Bacon and Shakespeare are one and the same. …What are you plotting now, writing up some weird booklet?”

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“You had better be ready, Christoph, because this one’s a doozy! Once this young man finishes writing this, I’ll finally get back at those professors lording it over us from their lecterns. This young man calls it the Great Rosencreutz Operation!!”