Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Crossover Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 7===

The boy walked across a vast stretch of land.

The pitch-black tree was majestic enough to weigh on the hearts of everyone in the world who saw it, but no matter how far he walked, he could not reach it. It felt like trying to chase the sun or moon on foot. This was because it towered up from around Hel on a scale rivaling the sun or moon.

Even so, he was approaching bit by bit.

He continued on using his two feet.

“I’ll save Hel.”

He checked the weight of the bag on his back and faced forward again.

“I want to draw with Hel, so I won’t let her say goodbye.”

And then the boy reached it.

He reached that land of swirling despair located at the furthest reaches of the world.

He had travelled to a few of the nine worlds already. For better or for worse, he was a dreadfully good walker and this time it was most definitely for the worse.

After all, if he had not arrived here, he would not have learned what he did.

After all, if he had given up on the way, he would not have run across this.

“…?”

All too twisted blackness existed before his eyes. It may have looked like a massive vortex when viewed from heaven, but it only looked like a massive wall from his perspective.

He could not grasp the full scope of the black vortex or tree located ahead of him, so his eyes locked onto something else.

Deep in the blackness, he saw something other than colored wind. He felt countless gazes staring back at him from beyond the sandstorm. Something prickled in his ears. It felt like insect eggs on the verge of hatching. It felt like they could burst at any moment and an uncountable number of “something” would spill out.

“What…is this?” he muttered.

According to the old shaman, Hel stood at the center of this.

But the boy had not realized just how repulsive a thing it would be to simply stand there.

In fact, the shaman probably had not known either. It was even possible that not even the gods knew despite claiming to know everything.

They had called this a collection of all the sin extracted from the sinners cast down into the underworld.

''But it was not.

Or rather, the substance swirling around Hel was indeed the concentrated form of the sin flowing from those sinners, but what peered out from within clearly surpassed that.

It was not of this world.

It seemed to have come from somewhere else.

It was far more repulsive and beyond understanding. It seemed unlikely that anyone looking it in the eye could share their emotions with that horrible grotesque swarm.

“Hel…”

The boy looked up at the black tree once more.

Hel was inside. She had been surrounded, blotted out, and swallowed up by that grotesque swarm.

“Hel!!”

He had no arrows or shield.

The boy simply called her name and tried to charge inside the black vortex.

But a powerful grip reached his shoulders from behind.

He was forcefully pulled back and away from that blackness before anyone could learn what would happen if he touched it.

And then Kamijou Touma slowly breathed out.

“Sorry about stopping you like that, but if you’re going to do this, do it right. You can’t just charge blindly in and accept failure if it comes. Hel’s life is resting on your shoulders right now.”

“Eh? What?” The boy blinked in confusion. “I thought Waltraute guided you home.”

“We thought about that,” answered Quenser. “But it would have left a bad taste in our mouths. We’ll deal with our own problems somehow, but the girl named Hel comes first. I saw you try to charge in there without a second thought, so I think I already know, but I still want to check. What do you want to do about Hel?”

The boy briefly fell silent and then gave a quick answer.

“I want to save Hel.”

“Sounds good to me.” Higashikawa Mamoru smiled. “I don’t care if it ruins Hel’s own determination or if it isn’t what the gods up in heaven want. We want to do the same and that’s why we’re here. In that case, we can be friends.”

“But this was a problem that we couldn’t solve on our own,” said Nanajou Kyouichirou. “We may have people who ended World War Three, who go around destroying the ultimate weapons that can withstand nuclear weapons, who confront cruel incidents even as they’re tossed about by the world’s Absurdity, or who live on while fighting natural-born killers, but we’re still only strangers in this world. Even if we solved each incident as it came, we still need to head home eventually. So…”

The leaf swimsuit Zashiki Warashi continued from there.

“If we truly want to solve this world’s problems, we need to get the help of someone who lives here. We can help, but we can’t end this. Are you prepared to do that in our stead?”

The boy looked up at the Zashiki Warashi and nodded.

“It’s not that I want to save her,” he immediately replied. “I ''will'' save Hel.”

“Okay.” Kamijou nodded. “Then you’re our final trump card. Whether you call it the preliminary match, paving the way, clearing the path, or whatever else, we’ll prepare the route you need to reach Hel.”

Kamijou Touma tightly clenched his right fist.

This time, Index, the girl wearing only a cape, opened her eyes wide to analyze the enemy.

Similarly, Misaka Mikoto, with the bare minimum of protection provided by the bikini armor, scattered electricity while flicking a large coin up into the air with her thumb.

The relatively immoral Quenser and Heivia began preparing their military explosives or assault rifle.

The Princess who resembled an ice doll lightly stroked the levers that operated her colossal weapon.

The Zashiki Warashi in a leaf swimsuit simply smiled calmly.

The Yuki Onna embracing Jinnai Shinobu’s frozen form in her impish bondage bikini began freezing her surroundings with her usual look of ecstasy.

College student Anzai Kyousuke prepared himself to face the Absurdity of the world.

Higashikawa Mamoru let his special ability blossom so he could win any gamble.

The bunny girl released her murderous ability.

Nanajou Kyouichirou thanked his ability to always avoid fatal injuries no matter what happened.

Satsuki in her dancer outfit pulled out the special rubber rope that symbolized crushing death.

Finally, Kamijou Touma spoke for them all.

“Okay, let’s get this started.”

Their enemy was the queen of the underworld, the souls of all the humans unfairly cast down into that underworld, and all the sin they had borne.

This was the story of a girl who had wished to save them all and had been broken.

“Prepare yourself, Hel! We’re about to destroy every last piece of that illusion!!”

There were no side characters here.

With this many protagonists, anything was possible.

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