Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 5===

Imagine Breaker meant nothing here.

Even if he could negate the sand with a punch, this big wave could swallow up LA, so the wall of sand would only collapse on top of him. He was done for if the sand enveloped him, so he could not survive that way. In fact, he might be crushed by the pure mass before the magic even took effect.

He had to make up his mind.

“Human!!”

“Kh!?”

He turned away from the enemy. He gestured to the clone girls, but he didn’t know if the message reached them.

He just had to avoid letting the sand reach him directly. And he needed to hide somewhere Citrinitas would not expect, the sturdier the better. That meant the nearby yachts and cruisers were out of the question. There was nowhere to run in those small boxes, so the enemy only had to tear them open from the outside.

He needed something bigger.

Something complex enough to overwhelm Citrinitas enough that they got lost inside.

“Over there!!”

“I see,” said Othinus. “I will trust your judgment here!!”

Something much larger than the yachts and cruisers could be found along the concrete oceanside. But it was not a cruise ship or a tanker.

The ship was 270m long and built to hold a maximum of nearly 3000 people.

Running up the slanted ramp was not easy. He ignored the pain in his thigh and clenched his teeth as he approached a thick metal door on the deck. Tackling it did nothing. A loud thud echoed out and the impact raced through his body, reminding him of the scorching heat in his thigh and back. The wounds had started to clot, but now they reopened.

He somehow managed to get the watertight door open and collapsed bloodily inside.

This was the USS Iowa. After being retired, the battleship had been opened as a floating museum. The powerful ship had to be even tougher than a reinforced concrete building.

Still lying on the corridor floor, Kamijou kicked the door shut behind him.

A moment later, the outside world was filled with sand.

“Hurry and pull the lever to seal the door!!” shouted Othinus.

“Damn, what happened to the Sisters? I can’t keep up with all this.”

“Worry about yourself for once!”

“I’m the one that thought I’d be trapped like a rat in those yachts and cruisers… They gathered from around the world to save me!! They said they wanted to save Melzabeth and Helcalia after hearing about them! And now…dammit, is there really nothing I can do for them!? Goddammit!!”

“Listen, human.” Othinus did not give him kind looks at times like this. She would not corrupt her understander that way. “If I am caught in their sand and trapped by the ‘fermentation’, I don’t want you to blame yourself and give up. I want you to find a way to defeat Citrinitas as soon as possible and pull me back out from the sand. Got that!?”

“…”

“You can’t change the past, so you have to aim for the best option remaining in the present. Fortunately, those clones are in the same state as LA’s 30 million. They aren’t dead yet and there is a way to save them. As long as you, the final survivor, don’t join them there!!”

That finally got Kamijou Touma back on his feet.

He clenched his teeth and forced himself to lift his sinking head.

The USS Iowa was now a museum.

It seemed to tower over you like a mountain from the outside, but it felt cramped on the inside thanks to the narrow passageways and complex arrangements of pipes. He guessed the passageways were half as wide as a school’s hallways.

He heard a horrible scraping from outside.

That would be Citrinitas.

Kamijou’s shoulders jumped and he ducked low, but then he realized the walls were holding. Apparently not even that sand magic could slice through a warship’s hull so easily.

“You can’t just hang around. Get some distance between you, hurry.”

Othinus rushed him from his shoulder, but he could not put her valuable advice to use.

Maybe it was one of the watertight doors, or more it was a vent, but some weaker area was forced open and two large shapes tumbled into the passageway: a doll and a crawling woman.

They did not seem at all worried about the metal shards sharper than glass scattered across the floor.

Not even a real battleship could defend against that sand.

The entire ship was creaking disconcertingly. That had to be more than surface damage. The entire ship may have been bending, with some walls breaking apart like a rotting monster’s stiches.

What would that kind of attack do to a person?

This went beyond simply disappearing when the sand enveloped you.

“Citrinitas…”

“Who decided I would be saving people?”

The magician borrowing a mother’s face cackled while crawling on the floor and howling like a dog.

“In fact, what merit does it provide?”

“Kh.”

Their sticky malice showed through even through the mechanical Transla-Pen.

“I only need to steal away any place for Melzabeth Grocery and have her give in to R&C Occultics. Hostages not necessary. Killing the 30 million would make me go more viral(■Possible mistranslation?).”

This was something they had discussed while searching the frozen city.

The owner pulled the pet along and the pet led the owner around. Each Citrinitas fought for control with the same leash. But why had they only made people disappear? Killing them would have been easier.

“They’re bluffing,” concluded Othinus, her arms crossed. “If it was really that hopeless, they wouldn’t need to say it out loud to rattle you. If you had no way of avoiding that dead end, they could just ignore you. So why rattle you? Why try to get you to change your mind? Because we’re on the right track. It’s like pushing up one of your cards when playing old maid. This means you’re afraid, doesn’t it, Citrinitas? You’re afraid our hand will move right past the old maid. You wouldn’t bother with these tricks if you really had the upper hand.”

“…”

“You didn’t ''choose'' not to kill. You ''could only'' make people disappear. Sorry, but it’s a theory we already considered. You just aren’t suited for group battles. And I’m the god of magic, deception, and war. You’ll have a hard time slipping a lie past me if all you do is use silly arguments to distract from your own weaknesses.”

“Hee hee.”

Fine sand fell from the mouth of the woman crawling like a dog.

She was cornered, but she sounded delighted.

“I see it, I see it. I see the weak link. If I squish that little one on your shoulder, then your spirit breaks!!”

The air outside began to move again.

The wind was as unnatural as when a train passed through a subway tunnel. The Logistic Hornet could alter the atmospheric conditions as much as it liked by scattering naphtha or liquid nitrogen. A powerful wind blew in from an impossible direction and the deluge of sand moved to cover Los Angeles once more.

At this point, it didn’t matter if they were indoors or outdoors.

The watertight doors were not perfect. Citrinitas had already broken through one of the weaker points to enter the ship. Even without the Logistic Hornet’s assistance, they could slice through a concrete building with that sand magic, so they could create a hole wherever they wanted to call in their sand. Not even a giant battleship could survive multiple attacks like that.

And yet…

“Huh?”

That confusion came from Citrinitas.

Something was wrong in the world visible through the “torn stitch” in the metal wall where the groaning and twisting had burst open a weld.

The thick sand wall, which was hundreds of times larger than a good surfing wave, suddenly collapsed. It was like watching fog clear out. Long before it arrived at the ship, the massive wall could no longer support itself and it scattered in the far distance.

“What happened? Was the Logistic Hornet’s dissemination calculation erroneous? No, the numbers would be correct. Then why did the atmosphere control fail!?”

A low roar could be heard in the distance.

It was the sound of fire consuming oxygen.

That was enough to explain it.

The Logistic Hornet’s atmospheric control was based on altering the density of the air through temperature differences. This was accomplished by scattering naphtha or liquid nitrogen at precisely-calculated coordinates.

So what if something could produce flames even greater than ones made by the 5000m aerial spacecraft launch pad?

A blinding light broke through the cold night’s shadows.

Kamijou knew someone whose magic could grow endlessly powerful as long as he had sufficient rune cards.

“Stiyl?”