Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 3===

They were deep, deep underground in District 10.

Few people would think too much about the layout of the subway tunnels below the city. They might know a track took an unnatural curve at one point, but no one would question the online news article about them running across some kind of ruins during construction.

An underground passageway was surrounded by cold concrete and supported by the pillars positioned at even intervals.

The few fluorescent lights on the walls were not enough to fully sweep away the darkness.

That underground blind spot had become the biggest hot spot in the world. A great many people had gathered there. They had not all arrived along the same route. They had each gathered the hints scattered around the city and started to question the city’s biggest assumption. Academy City was surrounded by thick walls, but it was not in fact sealed off.

The brawny men in work jumpsuits were a courier group called Secret Express. The men and women in dress clothes were Concierge, a group that provided hideouts to meet a criminal’s demands. The girls in plain clothing and hiding their faces with sunglasses and hunting caps may have been an extremely popular idol group. The parade of scum included Controller, who used personal information and fictitious bills to threaten the girls he targeted until he had them in digital chains, and Flare, who left behind harmless powder identical to the real deal in order to confuse criminal investigations.

A ruler of the back alleys was there.

A major corporation’s lawyer was there.

A university headmaster was there.

A major entertainment producer was there.

And a few Kiharas from different fields were there.

All sorts of people flooded that underground passageway. People did not end up on the dark side because they were low class, poor, stupid, or criminal. It took all types. The dark side had reached every class of person equally. From worlds no one knew existed to industries everyone envied.

Some had fallen before making it this far and others had attempted a different route instead. In a way, finding this tunnel and setting foot inside made them the chosen ones.

And.

Every last one of them were obstructed and crushed by a certain figure.

The woman had long blonde twintails and she wore a skintight light blue dress and a long loose skirt.

Frillsand #G was like an impassable wall.

All who challenged her crashed into that wall with the intensity of their challenge. After seeing a few of them turned to hunks of flesh and splattered blood, the others must have started wondering if she literally was a solid wall because all of those dark side members had come to a stop. They were pushed back even though she had not taken a single step.

Of course, the ghost was not going to spare them just because they gave up now.

“Next stop: skewering. Repeat: skewering.”

With a wet sound, a muscular man in black was destroyed from groin to head. But he may have been one of the lucky ones. He was gone before he even knew what had happened to him.

“Please look out for the burning and severing.”

Screams of pain echoed through the tunnel. Before long, the dark side members were fighting amongst themselves too. They appeared to have begun an ugly struggle over the concrete column they could use as a shield. However…

“We will arrive at gouging soon.”

Just as the ghost silently circled behind the column, a wet sound exploded out. The victors and losers of the struggle were all turned to mincemeat together while Frillsand #G looked on in disinterest.

“Ah…gahh,” someone groaned.

It was one of the idol girls. Her bottom half was gone and the bottom of her torso was sticking to the floor like a slug.

“But…why? We found the taboo…so aren’t we part of the dark side too? Can’t we all use…the path out together?”

“I have children to take care of. A lot of them.” Frillsand #G did not even look in her direction. “Inviting all of you in with us would only put them at risk.”

“Just…” It was already too late for her, but the top half of a girl still clawed at the concrete floor. “Just in case? You took people’s lives for no more than that!?”

“Next stop: running over. I repeat: running over.”

With a wet splat, the complaints were silenced.

The ghost seemed to be rejecting the idea that grudges lacked the power to kill.

“The rear guard is an important job,” she said in a singsong voice. “But I cannot let that crybaby see this. Knowing of it and seeing it are two very different things.”

The artificial ghost glanced over at something else.

But she soon lost interest, turned around, and vanished into the darkness.



A mere ten meters away, Hamazura Shiage was hiding behind a column and holding his hand over the track suit girl’s mouth.

If she noticed them, they were dead. He felt like his heart, his breathing, his body odor, and the slight static electricity on his clothing could all give them away. He could not even wipe the unpleasant sweat from his cheek as he desperately waited for time to pass.

That ghost really was an enemy.

She had some kind of plan of her own and had saved them on a whim before, but that did not mean he could trust her. If she had saved them on a whim, then she could also choose to throw them out on a whim. And they only had the one life.

This was worse than a sea of blood.

Flesh and blood had lost any hint of their original form, fingers extended into empty space, facial skin was frozen in a look of agony while plastered to the wall. At this point, they were only “things”, not people. There was no dignity remaining.

Each of them was a dark side member who had arrived at ''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo'' along a different route than him.

Their endless possibilities had been reduced to zero.

Or so it felt to him.

Was this tunnel really the right path? The further they went, the more likely they were to encounter that ghost woman, so he began to wonder if it would be safer to turn back now and return to the surface.

“Pwah.”

His girlfriend escaped his hand. He was holding her from behind, so she leaned her head back to look him in the eye.

“Hamazura, I don’t sense her presence anymore. We can keep going now.”

“…”

“We can’t give up after coming so far. Blindly returning to the surface won’t save us. We’ll never find peace if we don’t go through here.”

“R-right.”

He would have long since broken if he were alone.

But when she pulled on his hand, he managed to work up some small semblance of courage.

Even with the evenly-spaced fluorescent lights, the tunnel was dark. And they had no idea who was in charge of that sparse lighting. What if the ghost could shut off the power? His phone felt all the more important to him now.

“This is a long tunnel.”

“Yeah.”

They were not speaking much anymore.

This was ''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo'', but did this tunnel really lead toward hope? No matter how far they went, the darkness never went away. As they trudged deeper and deeper, he felt like they had passed a point of no return. Also, who had built this enormous underground facility? Someone must have drawn up the plans, dug the hole, set the foundation, and brought in the rebar and concrete. This was a far bigger project than a bank robber’s hand-dug tunnel into the vault. Such a vast and well-made underground space could not have been built without the involvement of a major construction company.

Who had done it?

It might be a company whose ads he saw on TV every day.

Would all of this come to light one day? But those meaningless thoughts were cut off by Takitsubo.

She had noticed first because she was not holding the light.

“Hamazura, there’s a door.”

“…”

It was a thick metal door.

Just the one door sat at the end of the long, long tunnel. There may have been another route, but he did not recall seeing any other paths branching off along the way.

He slowly approached.

It did not appear to be locked. He doubted there were any grenades or other “gifts” left for them.

But that was not what scared him. He had seen all of those corpses along the way. The sight had left him so terrified he barely had it in him to keep his heart beating. He had started to view their fallen predecessors as no more than a piece of the scenery. Because otherwise that shadowy murder scene would have overwhelmed him too much to continue on.

The taboos were piling up.

He and Takitsubo had started this simply wanting to survive, but they too had been corrupted along the way.

Hamazura Shiage reached his fingers toward the doorknob.

He touched it. He squeezed it.

He turned it.