Editing Leviathan:Volume 1 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 4===

After the late lunch at the park, Hal and Asya made their way to the station.

Including the Yamanote Line or the Chūō Main Line, the majority of the rail lines formerly managed by business conglomerates had stopped running a long time ago. Nowadays, local residents were left with only the loop line encircling Tokyo New Town as well as what was left of the subway system as options for mass transit.

Hal and Asya’s destination was Shin-Kiba in the Kōtō ward.

While the train carried them along the New Town Loop Line, they were instantly presented with the striking scenery. This was because the Sumida River was visible from the elevated railway where the train was traveling.

"Oh right, it’s possible to see that side from these parts," mumbled Hal softly while holding onto the train’s ring-shaped handgrip.

Stretched out on the opposite shore of the Sumida River was the scenery formerly known as the Asakusa district.

Furthermore, there was the black pillar of stone, standing upright on the other end&mdash;

It was shaped as an equilateral triangular prism. The color was completely pitch-black without any impurity, giving off a lustrous gleam like obsidian.

This pure-black triangular prism was standing upright in a corner of what used to be the Chiyoda ward.

Despite its location, the stone pillar was still clearly visible even from the window of a train running along the Sumida River. Standing at over a kilometer in height, the stone pillar was a landmark dwarfing all tall buildings in Japan.

"As expected of a Monolith. These things stand out so much no matter what country they're in."

"That being said, it's not a pleasant scene by any stretch."

Hal and Asya sighed together after remarking quietly.

Concession territories ceded to dragonkind were scattered all over the world, numbering more than two hundred. Erected at each of these locations was the same type of ominous black pillar&mdash;the Monolith.

"Old Tokyo" consisted of what used to be Tokyo's hub area back when the city was still Japan's capital.

The special wards of Shinjuku, Chiyoda, Chūō, Bunkyō, Taitō, Shibuya, Minato, etc...

No longer inhabitable, this area was currently just an expanse of deserted wasteland as far as the eye could see, a "dead city."

Currently displayed before Hal and Asya on the opposite shore of the Sumida River was also Old Tokyo.

A cityscape was visible from the train window.

There was not even a single pedestrian outside. Every building was derelict.

All glass had been shattered. The streets were quite messy overall because there was no one to clean up. There was a lack of vitality but the sight of this unusual scenery gradually grew distant...

Because the train was leaving Sumida River and approaching Shin-Kiba.

Hal and Asya alighted at the Shin-Kiba Station.

Ever since the destruction caused by the dragons suddenly flying in ten years ago, this area had turned into land marked for redevelopment. This maritime territory essentially consisted of empty land as far as the eye could see.

Hal and Asya walked in silence.

Their destination was roughly ten minutes away from the station on foot.

Specially planted cedar and cypress trees formed a small patch of forest where a building, their destination, had been built. Its appearance resembled a small library.

However, there were no signs or direction boards to explain what kind of facility this was.

"Here is my identification."

At the reception, Asya presented a card that was the size of a business card.

There was nothing written on the card. Whether front or back, both sides were completely black. However, any person possessing magical sight would be able to see the blue and white pattern that was drawn on the black card.

An emblem consisting of two staves crossed with each other, surrounded by a circle formed from a serpent devouring its own tail&mdash;

This was precisely SAURU's symbol.

This mark belonged to the secret association and research organization that dedicated itself towards the research and proliferation of magic.

SAURU was the world's one and only think tank capable of establishing covenants between witches and serpents. This card served as proof of identification for SAURU's members.

The middle-aged man at the reception desk was dressed in an exceedingly ordinary suit.

Furthermore, he was wearing silver-rimmed glasses whose lenses were supposed to be enchanted. Hal also possessed something similar.

Witches were able to activate magical sight by using their naked eyes alone.

On the other hand, commoners must rely on enchanted tools in order to obtain magical sight temporarily. As expected, the middle-aged man simply glanced at Asya's card once before nodding to authorize her entry into the building.

"It'd be so much easier if facial recognition could be used almost all the time. But it's possible that people might not want to associate with suspicious characters like us," remarked Hal not long after entering the building, prompting Asya to respond immediately.

"Please don't include me so nonchalantly. Speaking of first impressions, mine are definitely much better than yours, Haruomi."

"Yeah. After all, you're an extremely cute girl."

"Eh... Jeez&mdash;Haruomi... Fufu."

Asya suddenly made an expression of delight as the corners of her lips curled adorably in a smile.

She had this weird habit of getting unusually elated whenever Hal complimented her appearance.

"Oh dear, but in your case, one begins to understand increasingly that the first impression is nothing more than an illusion as time goes by. Maybe you'd better work on addressing that a little."

"No, Haruomi, you're the one who should work on fixing your bad habit of elevating others with compliments before cruelly dropping them from great heights!"

Asya always flew into an instant rage whenever this subject was broached.

But today, she immediately calmed her fury and changed the subject.

"Ease of entry into this place would be good and all, but I think it's better to adhere more to procedure. After all, this is a precious Witch Mansion."

"But aren't Mansions in regional cities or villages mostly like this?"

At the moment, there was only one mage-serpent team defending Tokyo New Town.

Asya was present too, but since her partner was currently facing certain difficulties, she probably should not be included in the count.

"A region fortunate enough to have three or four witch-serpent teams would probably show more vitality. But looking at the current state of affairs around the world, the vast majority of cities don't even have a single team, right? In fact, this city's serpent apparently needs to venture all over the Kantou region when dragons attack."

"The shortage of manpower is severe everywhere..."

"Thanks to that, there is no shortage of work for us. But Asya&mdash;"

Hal and Asya made their way into the depths of the facility.

Walking to the corridor from the reception desk, they then took the elevator down to the second floor underground.

After keying in the code to open the automatic door at the far end, they made their way down the staircase behind the door, finally arriving at the deepest level, the fifth floor underground&mdash;

This was a library where all sorts of books recording taboo knowledge were kept.

Just by stepping in there, one would feel their back and the soles of their feet stiffen from the cold.

The cold air-conditioning and especially the spiritual energies residing in the large number of "tomes with power" went as far as to mercilessly steal warmth from Hal and Asya's bodies.

"Those people in Europe will likely get mad if they heard 'shortage of manpower' coming from your lips. All things considered, your Rushalka was still a summoned "serpent"&mdash;a ''leviathan''&mdash;of the strongest class over there until three months ago."

Despite Hal's hobby and lifelong goal of saving money...

His childhood friend had actually outstripped him in terms of progress in this area.

Asya was one of Europe's top magi. For the past few years, she had fought dragons persistently by drawing out the maximum potential of her partner, Blue Rushalka.

Her bank account should have accumulated the remunerations and contract payments from the many battles she had experienced.

"Didn't they approach you repeatedly with courtesy, asking you to return as soon as possible?"

"Indeed... But Rushalka's problem is still unresolved and I also have research I'd like to conduct here in Tokyo."

This was reportedly Asya's second visit to this library.

As eastern Japan's largest vault of grimoires, this place was built so that the "tomes with power" gathered by civilian volunteers could be used with effectiveness by people knowledgeable in magic like Hal or outstanding witches like Asya.

This was a source of knowledge, both mysterious and dangerous.

Being that kind of place, this library was nowhere near comfortable. The arrangement of the excessively abundant bookshelves was difficult to navigate, being as complicated as a labyrinth. Furthermore, in consideration of the fact that old books were susceptible to degradation from light, illumination was limited to the brightness level of candlelight at exceedingly sparse numbers.

Thanks to that, the library was virtually pitch black.

For the sake of finding their targeted books more efficiently, Hal and Asya decided to split up to search separately.

Carrying their own flashlights, they wandered the labyrinth of books on their own.

Asya searched for the wanted books in the catalog while Hal worked from the ground up and confirmed the names of the books kept on the shelves.

Foreign books included ''The Secret Manuscript of the Terrifying Ogdoad'', ''Commentaries on the Dark Goddess of Magdala'', ''The Mutual Action between Earth and Water in the Universe'', ''The Various Aspects of Hermes' Alchemy'' and others. Japanese books included ''The Handy Guide to Curse Magic'', ''Secret Collections of the Mystical'', etc. In addition, there were Buddhist treatises such as ''Discourses on the Golden Light Sutra'' and ''Presentation of Ākāśagarbha's Esoteric Doctrine Method''. There was also a full assortment of Chinese classics including ''Forbidden Truths of Divine Talismans'', ''The Compendium of Roots, Herbs and Longevity Practices'', ''Divine Technique of the Sky'', ''Secret Records of the Grand Supreme Lord'', ''Secret Guide to the Normal Course for Rulers and Kings''...

But none of these were what Hal and Asya sought.

Reading grimoires of this level without prior preparation would result in terrifying results.

One would likely hallucinate immediately after reading them? Monsters would definitely appear in dreams if one were to fall asleep. Then growing more haggard and emaciated with each passing day, one would walk along a path of mental chaos, eventually reaching insanity...

This time, what Asya wanted was information on unorthodox magic research.

The field included archaeology, folkloristics and comparative mythology, etc.

Books in this area were quite plentiful and many rare and precious volumes, normally impossible to obtain, were casually placed around here.

For quite a while, Hal worked steadily and persistently, alone at his task&mdash;

But just at this moment, a gust of cold air suddenly blew across the back of his neck.

Due to the nature of his line of work, Hal could be described as what one would call a person with sharp senses. Furthermore, this place was filled with large amounts of ghostly and spiritual energies.

There were many cases when people would be affected by them and end up possessed by "unclean things" with endless occurrences of paranormal phenomena as well. In fact, Hal had also experienced it a number of times in the past.

"Please just be an ordinary spirit, without any additional prefix of 'evil' or 'vengeful,' I beg you..."

Grumbling like an expert, Hal turned his head to look back at the same time.

&mdash;There. Hal saw a pair of gleaming eyes in the depths of the darkness.

Just eyes, nothing more. The pupils were golden. Despite looking like human eyeballs for the most part, they carried a reptilian air about them.

Intimidated and stunned by the air of mystery exuded by the golden eyes, Hal could not help but gasp.

(Hoh... To possess something so interesting despite being just an ordinary human&mdash;)

It was not very clear, but Hal seemed to hear a girl's quiet whispers.

He waited cautiously in an attempt to catch the continuation clearly, but&mdash;

"...It already left?"

Failing to hear more of the voice after waiting for roughly two minutes, Hal sighed.

The mysterious spiritual being had apparently left, but it was probably still lurking somewhere in the library...

Hal shrugged and resumed his task.

Surviving in his line of business would be impossible if one were to become neurotic over occurrences of this level.



Dozens of minutes after the spirit(?) encounter, Hal met up with Asya in a corner of the library.

Of the childhood friend's list of books she wanted to have a look, they managed to find three of them today&mdash;''The History of East Asian Legends of Dragon Gods'', ''Ancient Korea and Collective Rites of Secret Cults'' and ''Theory of Equestrian Tribal Dynasty and the Second Coming of Japan's Mythical Age''.

In addition, when Hal brought up his spirit encounter just now, the childhood simply remarked: "Oh, these occurrences are commonplace."

Had their roles been reversed, Hal would surely have said the same thing.

"Then let's start."

"Understood. It's really quite convenient that rare ancient books can be digitized."

Hal took out his portable terminal while replying to Asya.

The two of them flipped the books open and took pictures with a cellphones. Turning the pages from cover to cover and repeatedly photographing, they converted the contents into digital data stored using information technology.

This act would be meaningless if these were grimoires imbued with power.

That type of book possessed magical power (one could also call it a curse) that pulled the reader into special mental states. It was only possible to understand those books' true meaning by reading with full attention, under the effects of these abnormal emotions, regardless whether they were happiness, anger, sadness or even madness.

Although the text could be digitized through scanning or photographing, magical properties could not be recreated.

Asya was responsible for turning the pages while Hal snapped photo after photo to record the data.

The two of them worked for a full three hours, interspersed with breaks in between. Just as their work was winding down to an end, Hal and Asya suddenly heard footsteps.

Thud, thud, thud, thud. The sound of leather soles striking the floor.

The footsteps were very stable and steady, yet filled with a rhythmic sense of musicality.

It felt as though the person walking must possess an excellent sense of rhythm and athleticism in order to make such spectacular footsteps. Furthermore, the person's murmurings could be heard.

"This place is really quite outrageous... I think it needs to be organized a bit, or rearranged in consideration for ease of use... I guess I'll talk to Hazumi about it next time."

Hal was greatly surprised. He had heard this voice before.

"A witch? But somehow I get the slight feeling that..."

Next to Hal, Asya cocked her head in puzzlement. She probably felt that the visitor seemed greatly out of place, not like a witch who would come to this type of disreputable den. It was only natural for Asya to think that. Hal nodded.

This girl looked glamorous, gallant and radiant with an extremely wholesome air.

However, this was a pitch-black and depressing space filled with ghostly energies.

No matter how one wrapped their mind around it, she did not match this place at all. That being said&mdash;

"This is actually my first time meeting other visitors in this place. Please excuse my intrusion. But if it is agreeable with you, I would be most grateful if you could tell me how to use this library effectively. Although I've been here a number of times, I still haven't gotten used to it&mdash;Eh, Haruga-kun?"

The third person arrived before Hal and Asya. Just as Hal thought, he had recognized her correctly.

Standing before them was the classmate who had left the deepest impression upon him, the one and only Juujouji Orihime in the flesh.