Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:AgneseSS Chapter2 (section)

===Part 5===

Fortunately, all five lived nearby.

Calais was France’s busiest naval traffic base, but it was a small city with a population of only a few ten thousand. There were plenty of other cities where magicians gathered, so only the locals would have been renting out the old man’s containers.

So…

“What’s going on!? Help! Take this burlap sack off my head!!”

“A-are we going to be sold off to some foreign country?”

“Mghh!! Mghghghghmgh!?”

But even if they lived nearby, taking the time to pay them all an individual visit would have taken too long, so the Anglican agents working secretly in France had “invited” that very energetic group to the harbor.

The first young man (who secretly adored mandrakes that looked like girls) was horrified by the sight. He had apparently realized what would happen to him if he was less than cooperative.

Isabella Theism, a beautiful woman with silver hair and brown skin who wore rags that faintly stank of death, clapped her hands together with a smile.

“Okay, okay! Quiet down, everyone! If you’re all magicians, you must be constantly considering the cost of life that goes into your magical pursuits. Whether that means your own life or others, you know you need to retire once the cost grows too high, right? Well, you might just need to rethink your life plan if you manage to make it through today alive. And that ‘if’ is entirely dependent on your choices here.”

The word “life” held a lot of weight when coming from a necromancer.

Most of them fell silent after that, but one of them apparently had an irritating amount of guts. He crossed his legs confidently with a sack over his head and his hands bound behind his back.

“I have nothing to tell you. A magician only reveals the success of their research by showing off the results thereof!”

“No matter what we might do to you?”

“Of course!! I will show you what it means to be a true magician!!”

Isabella moved her smiling lips toward the ear below the sack.

“Let’s see…I believe I forgot to introduce myself. I am a necromancer who works with corpses.”

Then she lowered her voice to a whisper and spoke in an almost apologetic way.

“(Are you aware what kind of skin that sack covering your head is made from and what ''other'' kind of skin that is binding your wrists? Let me tell you, this is a gruesome sight for those of us who can see.)”

Agnese grimaced at the vomiting she heard coming from within the enclosed space of that sack. This was a nonviolent example of overdoing it.

Isabella placed the back of one hand against her cheek and laughed like she was nobility.

“Oh ho ho! A cowhide sack and a snakeskin belt are too much for you? And you call yourself a ‘true magician’!? Now, everyone, welcome to the forest of confusion and doubts. Are any of you still feeling defiant?”

“Hey, if you don’t help him, he’s going to drown in his own puke!!”

“Does anyone still want to resist after hearing that?”

At any rate, they had all the suspects now.

It was time to figure out which magician had summoned the Hood.