Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 5===

The sand laser tore through the air as it repeatedly flew straight toward Kanzaki. The sand magic compressed the sand and shot it out like an industrial cutter, but it failed to slice apart her flesh and blood.

She repeatedly zigged and zagged out of the way before it could.

A Saint could break the sound barrier in an instant.

“Are you trying to pin me here by forcing me to block your attacks?”

She even had time for a puzzled frown.

The R&C Occultics HQ was within view, so weren’t they afraid of a stray shot hitting them? Or were they getting desperate now that she had gotten so close?

It was safe to assume they knew Kanzaki was a Saint after their initial clash. Still, it made no sense for them to attack from head on like this. If they relied on long-distance sniping because they weren’t confident in their own skill, she would have expected them to stay out of reach and prepare an attack from a blind spot to catch her by surprise.

There was only one conclusion.

“(Cutting me with the sand laser ''isn’t their goal''!?)”

Also, what was this sand magic? As the R&C Occultics name so clearly indicated, they were a Rosicrucian magic cabal. That meant their members’ spells came from the legend represented by the ruby rose and the golden cross.

Kanzaki could only think of a few Rose legends related to sand.

“Black, white, yellow, and red. It is a cycle of the four stages: death, bonding, fermentation, and rebirth.”

30 million people had ''disappeared'' in Los Angeles?

Why go to the effort of making them disappear instead of just leaving them alive or killing them?

“This is Citrinitas.”

It all clicked into place once she figured that out.

For example, ''the yellowish sunlight.

The sunrise came relatively late in LA, but that was not enough to explain this. It was unnaturally yellow. And Kanzaki was familiar with a certain natural phenomenon. More severe desert sandstorms could blot out the sun. When that happened, the brightness and color of the sky could change, making it look like evening.

For example, ''the sparkling she saw in the air when the sun shined on it.

Could that be fine sand, not the frozen moisture of diamond dust?

“This is the third stage in creating the miracle stone. There must be a spell that fills the compound with yellow sand and ‘ferments’ it just the right amount. R&C Occultics has not killed the people or hidden them. They were decomposed to change their shape. Instead of leaving them alive or killing them, you ''preserved them'' by converting them into formless nutrients that soaked into all this sand!! That is the truth behind the disappearances!!”

Anyone the sand fell on would be dissolved and made a part of the sand. The victims were neither alive nor dead. They were buried on the assumption that they would eventually be retrieved in some different form. Their flesh and blood were converted into simple nutrients and then absorbed into the soil to trap them. It was almost like a form of cold sleep.

That was why R&C Occultics needed no cages for survivors or dumping grounds for corpses.

That was why R&C Occultics had only been able to make the people disappear, whether it was necessary or not.

“Your long-distance pressurized sand attack and the water and ice you sent at us were not meant to cause direct bloodshed. It’s also why carrying the rune cards in the drone didn’t work. ''You win from the moment you can dump sand on your target’s head''!! Isn’t that right!?””

She finally knew what would make her lose.

She just had to think of the sand like a powerful acid or magma. She doubted the LA residents had figured out the details of the spell, but the weatherstripping on the doors and windows had been a response to their fear of the sand, not to keep out the cold or violent attackers.

Once she knew how it worked, it could no longer control her. Kanzaki took a few steps back to accurately escape the curtain of fine sand that dropped toward her.

She could hear what may have been footsteps beyond the thin curtain. Visibility was poor, but someone was definitely there. She could sense a faint shadow and a barrier of pressure.

Her first impression was something entirely out of place. She initially saw it as someone going for a walk. The ''feminine'' silhouette she saw was holding a large dog on a leash and walking through the LA streets.

Next, she wondered if the dog was a well-trained military dog.

But that guess was not cautious enough.

It delayed the realization by two whole seconds.

“''That’s a person?''”

She was not focused on the figure standing straight and holding the leash.

She was focused on the large figure down on the frigid asphalt on all fours.

[[Image:GT_Index_v04_137.jpg|thumb]]

In fact…

“''Could that be the real magician!?''”

That was when the figures moved.

It looked like a poorly-trained dog dragging along the poor woman who owned it. The figure in the collar forcibly dragged the figure holding the leash to continue the fight. With their wrist pulled hard by the leash, the “owner” recited an incantation that sounded more like a scream and something gathered deep in the throat of the “pet” as they opened their mouth wide.

“!!!???”

Kanzaki only managed to dodge the head-on attack because she was a Saint. The sand laser tore through the air and then swung to one side and the other, slicing through the buildings lining the major thoroughfare.

Most notably, a 100m broadcast tower collapsed. It was not large enough to be a tourist attraction, so it may have only been a sub or support tower used to preserve the quality of the TV or radio signal within the high EM density of the big city.

When it crashed down, a great cloud of sand would billow up from the ground.

If she was caught in that, she was done for.

Conversely, if she avoided being caught in it, the spell could not affect her. There was no need to make this complicated. If she simply assumed that cloud could dissolve the human body, she could think of any number of countermeasures.

“Okay!!”

The answer was simple.

While the tower fell and came apart in midair, Kanzaki used her legs to leap straight up. She kicked off pieces of the collapsing tower and used that falling footing to climb ever higher.

That much mass would create a great cloud of dust when it collided with the ground. It would look like a massive cumulonimbus cloud at 0 above sea level. Normally, the sand would have covered the entire sky above the target and they could not have avoided being reduced to nutrients.

But.

“''I just have to climb higher than the cloud.''”

A Saint could break the sound barrier in no time. The way she kicked off of midair steel beams and surviving building walls to jump to ever higher footing looked a lot like a rocket blasting off into space.

“If I climb higher than your cloud of dust, your spell loses all meaning!!”

She made it 300m above the ground.

That was higher than the falling tower. With a Saint’s leg strength, she could even make stepping stones out of the leaves and shopping bags blowing in the wind.

No matter how much sand flooded the surface, none of it could capture Kanzaki Kaori as she soared through the sky.

Or so she thought.

But she could not shake a sense of foreboding even after finding the answer.

If the spell ''really was that simple'', why hadn’t ''the'' Grimoire Library Index been able to analyze it?

Then a massive shadow blotted out the sun.

Something new was slowly flying by even higher in the sky than her.

“Wha-?”