Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter3 (section)

===Part 3===

“Here goes.”

“Gyahhhhhhh!?”

Familiar gravity vanished.

Mikoto leaped about 30m with Shokuhou clinging to the side of her hip. This was a vertical jump. Shokuhou had asked for this, but she blanched and screamed at the sudden weightlessness.

The jump took them toward the closest floating land.

…But did this world have any other people living in it? If so, how did they travel between floating landmasses? If they couldn’t cheat with magnetically-fueled jumps, this had to be a very inconvenient world. Or did they all live all their lives on the floating land they were born on and leaving their home was severely frowned upon?

“Pant, gasp! Th-there’s something over there!!”

Still clinging to Mikoto’s hip, Luggage Girl Shokuhou pointed somewhere with serious tears in her eyes.

Mikoto cut the magnetic assistance and came to a brief stop in midair.

Then she magnetically tugged herself horizontally to forcibly bring her to new footing.

It was more like a large hunk of rock than an island. It had to be one of the smallest of the “eggshell pieces”. Still, it was about the size of a school classroom. Something was flattened atop the barren piece of rock. It was hard to identify while squashed flat, but it wasn’t quite the same as a hot-air balloon. It may have originally been an airship shaped like a rugby ball.

“But that would only be 10m even when inflated, wouldn’t it? I thought airships weren’t very efficient unless you made them humongous.”

“The logic ability of our world might not apply. The atoms, molecules, and technology here could be completely different from in our world, so maybe there’s a light and stable incombustible gas here.”

Whatever the case, that didn’t look like the result of a proper landing.

If it had been caught in the fight against the giant dragon, Mikoto and Shokuhou could be partially responsible, so they decided it would be best to investigate the flattened airship.

There was indeed someone there.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow…”

A woman of about 20 crawled out from below the gasbag’s thick material. To the two middle schoolers, a woman who skipped right past the three years of high school looked quite a bit older than them. …Although she seemed a little sad that she lost to Shokuhou when it came to boobs.

“Are you really in middle school?”

“Are we still doing that?”

The young woman, who was their first encounter with a resident of this world, was wearing a red princess dress. Her long purple hair was worn in gorgeous ringlets.

Her hair and clothing were both colored dazzlingly bright.

After crawling out on all fours, she didn’t seem capable of getting back up and tearfully tapped her lower back.

“I-I can’t believe I took a direct hit from a Continent Blade. Not a good start to a long journey… Now I have to pay for the airship and they’ll demand I pay more for breach of contract. If I’d known this would happen, I would have just thrown around some more money and bought one instead of going with a rental.”

Mikoto and Shokuhou were actually relieved to find she sounded like a sheltered rich girl.

They had plenty of experience with those in Tokiwadai, so seeing someone so obviously out of touch with ordinary people was like finding some good miso soup while traveling overseas.

Mikoto reached out a hand to help her up.

“Are you alright? And what’s a Continent Blade?”

“Thank you very much. Continent Blades are vacuum blades that appear unpredictably as the paths of the floating lands move through the air. They generally weaken and disperse quickly, but what do you think happens if you run into one in midair?”

Did this world have giant guillotines flying through the air year round?

According to the bright-colored young woman, airships and winged bicycles were crucial means of transportation in this world where floating lands were arranged in multiple layers, but simply running into one of the naturally-occurring Continent Blades had caused this disaster. A hole had been torn in the airship and it had crashed, the impact flattening it.

“This world has dragons, magic, and flying continents, but I guess it can’t all be fun and games.”

“But as inconvenient as it is, I am glad I was born in such an interesting world.”

There was no lie in the woman’s smile. Mikoto was honestly envious.

She felt nothing but disgust for her home of Academy City.

But why had this woman embarked on such a risky journey?

“I am 20 now. I have completed my magical education, so it is about time I left home and started my own business.”

“Huh, is that how it works here? Flying continents and magic schools. I’d love to go to one of those.”

“?”

The way Mikoto put that made the young woman tilt her head.

“So will you be living on your own now? Not having a dorm manager sounds great, but no allowance and having to earn your own living sounds nerve-racking.”

“It is. I am still a complete novice, but I thought the easiest business to get into for now would be the slave trade!”

Hm?

Did she…?

Did she just say something extremely messed up?

“Um?”

“Yes?”

“What, uh, did you just say? The easiest business to get into would be…?”

“The slave trade, what else?”

She said it as casually as someone saying they were going to try online stock trading to learn about money.

There was no wicked smile on her face. She only looked confused.

“Yes, any real merchant must eventually be wealthy enough to finance a large elf hunting group and buy a large slave airship. Personally, I hope to run a major market myself one day. You will never hit it big without first dreaming big, after all.”

“Ugh…”

Someone else crawled out from the squashed airship.

The girl of about 10 had long blonde hair. Her pointy ears were twitching, but her threadbare green dress was a lot more noticeable. It was sleeveless and had a mini tight skirt, but it was so filthy it was hard to focus on any of those details. The accident couldn’t have caused this. Those were stains that had accumulated over a long period of time. A jangling sound came from her. She had a thick steel collar around her skinny neck with a thick chain loosely attached to her emaciated ankles.

She was a slave.

The woman hadn’t been using slang or a dialectic term. She really sold people?

“My, my.”

And she didn’t even try to hide it.

This was perfectly normal as far as she was concerned.

They really were in another world.

“Can you do nothing right, slave?”

“…I-I’m sorry…”

Such a heavy apology should never have come from such a small child.

Her sluggish movement may have been the result of extreme exhaustion weighing on her body.

Her tiny hands held onto a large trunk made of thick leather.

She tried several times to lift it, but it simply wasn’t possible. Before Mikoto could hurry over and assist her, the girl was overpowered by the weight and toppled forward, causing the trunk to fall over with her.

Someone sighed.

It was the gaudy young woman.

“I explained the ''punishment'' for getting my precious clothing bag dirty, didn’t I? And it’s such a pain to do. Why must you waste so much of my time over something so silly?”

“…Ah…”

“The first three mistakes are a simple whipping, but the fourth means losing an ear. Those are the standard rules for slave elves, which you should know quite well as a slave so useless she wasn’t even worth putting on the market.”

The young woman grabbed one of the long, twitching ears, and yanked hard.

In her other hand, she all of a sudden held a large razor like a barber would use.

''She wasn’t even angry.

''She pressed the blade against the base of the ear just like someone might head to the front door after hearing the doorbell ring.

The small elf girl didn’t resist.

Her lifeless eyes carried the resignation of someone who had decided the destruction of her body and the death that followed would at least mean an end to the suffering.

But that was no mercy or kindness. It was the same as the illusionary warmth felt if you kept your hand buried in the cold snow long enough.

“…”

Mikoto knew nothing about this world.

She didn’t know its history, its culture, or its values.

But.

She couldn’t bear to see eyes without the spark of life in them.

Everything she saw here dug up painful memories. Memories of other girls who were treated as throwaway tools for a loathsome experiment and who obeyed without a word of complaint as they were slaughtered one after another.

She was reminded of the mass-produced military clones known as the Sisters.

''Of the more than 10 thousand girls she had failed to save.

“Hey, there must be plenty of other jobs out there. Why would you go out of your way to be a slaver?”

“Because it’s so easy.”

The young woman didn’t even need to think about her answer.

“You don’t need any kind of qualifications or license to start. And if you want to start a big business, you need a quick way of earning enough money to get it off the ground, right? Anyone can do a job as simple as this, so it’s no more than the first step on the path toward greater success.”

“You cruelly rob people of their freedom, you force them to work against their will, and you wear them down to the bone… Haven’t you ever felt just a little bad about that?”

“''Why in the world would I? Slaves are meant to be worked hard. If a slave is tough enough to last longer, that just means you have to push them even harder so you won’t have to continue feeding them! Keeping around healthy slaves for too long would only bankrupt me''!!”

She sounded just like she was explaining that it was cheaper to throw out and replace an old, inefficient air conditioner.

It wasn’t any more than that in her mind.

…This wasn’t her crime alone. That was how this world worked. The real culprit was the environment that had raised the young woman to think this way.

Mikoto understood that intellectually.

But she was at her limit.

In a number of ways.

“I see,” muttered Mikoto under her breath.

She was getting sidetracked.

This trip to another world was likely the result of a mistake, so her top priority had to be investigating this world and finding a way back to Earth while this out-of-body experience was still only that. What to do about this slave elf had nothing at all to do with that goal.

She understood that.

But for some reason, Shokuhou didn’t try to stop her despite taking a cynical view of human nature and prioritizing efficiency.

Shokuhou’s silence didn’t mean she was opposed to Mikoto’s choice.

In fact, Shokuhou gently hugged the dazed little elf to her chest. And she did it so smoothly the master with the large razor just let it happen. So the young woman probably hadn’t even realized ''she had given up her hostage''. Even though that had been to ensure the elf wouldn’t be hit on accident.

The #5’s look of silent approval told Mikoto she was free to do whatever she wanted.

“They look like us, they think like us, and they speak like us, but just because they’re ‘not human’ you think it’s okay to chain them up, buy and sell them, and work them to the bone? And even worse, you think it’s more economical for the master to work them literally to death? I see, I see.”

“?”

The slaver woman tilted her head.

There was no hostility or caution on her face. She truly could not figure out what about this was bothering Mikoto so much.

And.

Misaka Mikoto loathed this sort of unjust killing.

''Crash!!!

A flower of light blossomed.

Thick electricity scattered, a rapidly-vibrating iron sand whip sliced through the air, and a Railgun scorched the air at three times the speed of sound.

The battle had begun.