Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter5
Chapter 5: Returning and Taking Over
Part 1
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OOOOXOOXXOOXXXOXOXOXOXXXXXX XXOOXXXXXXOXOOXOXXOX△△△OXOOOOXOOXXXXX. OOOOXOOXXXXOOXXXXXOOOOXXXXXXXXX. OXXOOXOO OOOXXXXXXXX OX△△△△OOXXXOXXXXXOOXXXXXXXOXXXXXXXXXXXXe. A famous (or infamous) crabbing ship supposedly supplied its workers with plenty of white rice but only white rice.
For the moment, the elves needed to rebuild their strength even if it meant eating rolls and corn soup.
?
???
It happened so suddenly.
Misaka Mikoto and Shokuhou Misaki opened their eyes to find themselves in a small village redolent of vegetation. It couldn’t have been more different from the sterile spaceship.
The unkempt elves with big collars and thick chains between their ankles were gathered there. The small girl among them was Patissiet.
They were back.
They had returned to the world of Celesaqphere.
Now they could fight to the end without having to abandon the elves!!
“Um, what’s wrong, Ladies Misaka and Shokuhou? Kyah!?”
The both hugged her on reflex.
Tightly.
Lives were taken without a second thought in this world, but nothing dangerous had happened while Mikoto and Shokuhou were away. They were thankful for that miracle.
The solid sensation at her chest told Mikoto her Tokiwadai summer uniform had become bikini armor again. Shokuhou was again in her frilly dancer’s outfit with her handbag worn diagonally across it.
Patissiet and the other elves didn’t seem aware that Mikoto and Shokuhou had even disappeared.
They hadn’t noticed anything amiss.
Mikoto and Shokuhou no longer had the electrification device and controller. They had given up their one surefire way of returning to Earth, but Mikoto didn’t regret it. She knew she wasn’t willing to give up on this before she was finished.
The hug continued for a bit as she confirmed her and this neighbor’s presence in this world and felt the solid ground below her feet…but then Shokuhou ruined the mood.
She must have noticed the elves’ food.
That health nut chose this moment to glare over at them.
“Carbs with carbs?”
“How do you enjoy life when you’re so picky about your food?”
Thinking back, they had been snatched away by Reincarnation Goddess Salinagaritina after they had freed the elves from the village and begun preparing the bone-weary elves some food.
The elves were eating rolls and corn soup.
That should have been about right since they needed to rebuild their strength as quickly as possible.
The lady who was apparently the elf elder bowed her head.
The way she refused to let go of her bowl as she did made her look rather cute.
“Patissiet told me everything. As I told you before, I am the elder. My name is Bakerian.”
“So from baker? Another dessert maker name.”
“?”
The head tilt suggested she wasn’t aware where her name came from.
Elder Bakerian, who had a strong girl-next-door vibe, cleared her throat before continuing.
“You are interested in the three treasures ceremony, correct? And so you wish to know about the three Demon Lords who guard them?”
“Yes!!”
This was exactly what they needed to know.
Mikoto and Shokuhou needed to do things the Celesaqphere way now. After rescuing the elves, they needed some clues to that ceremony that could return them to Earth.
But Elder Bakerian’s face clouded over.
“I apologize for getting your hopes up, but I do not have the answers you seek. I did have a grimoire that collected such myths and legends, but the cursed humans- oh, sorry. That is, the humans took it from me when they captured me. I imagine it is buried in the local king or lord’s collection now.”
“So we’d have to go there?”
“Yes.”
That meant they needed to visit the lord of this region. That lord would hold the key to returning home.
The elder nodded once and…
“But the scope of your fight changes drastically with a lord. A single territory includes over a hundred towns and villages and the lord manages and controls them all. Your brute force tactics will not work forever.”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
Bikini armor Mikoto sighed softly and dancer Shokuhou winked.
They already knew where this was going.
So they wanted to make it work, even if that meant deceiving both sides of a great space war fought across the entire Solar System.
Even if it meant giving up their one ticket home.
“Besides, even if we stopped here, this lord wouldn’t leave us alone, would they?”
Part 2
The change in the mood was obvious.
The travelers and merchants moving between the eggshell shards of floating islands were nowhere to be found. They wouldn’t be protected by the village, so they were sensitive to danger. And they had started to see more of the adventurers who could sniff out that kind of danger and the bandits who saw it as an opportunity.
Mikoto sighed.
They were holding a strategy meeting in the inn’s kitchen.
But she hadn’t wanted to just sit around, so until anything actually happened, she was making a variety of desserts (in the strange outfit of an apron worn over bikini armor). This world didn’t allow any enjoyment in its food – it was all about nutrition. She wished she could leave some recipes for them, but while they could understand each other’s speech, could the people here read Japanese text?
“Liberating the one village was a good thing,” said Mikoto. “It’s obviously good for the enslaved elves, but there also had to be some humans who only went along with it for fear of being ostracized from the community they need to survive.”
“But the lord isn’t just going to let this stand,” said Shokuhou. “An entire village in their territory has fallen. They are going to move to suppress this rebellion or uprising.”
The unfamiliar system of technology known as magic was frightening, but Mikoto and Shokuhou had proven their ability to easily take on an entire small village.
But they had no answer to a more fundamental question.
How many people were in this kingdom? A war against a kingdom of ten thousand was nothing at all compared to a war against a kingdom of a billion. They were facing the troublesome fact that Celesaqphere had an entirely different social structure to Earth. It was entirely possible that kingdoms here were superpowers with a population of ten billion.
“This is so good,” said a smiling Patissiet while trying a small cubical dessert a little more solid than gelatin. It was commonly known as nata de coco.
Mikoto had made them, but even she was a little surprised.
Why?
“P-Patissiet? N-nata de coco is, well, a really old-fashioned kind of thing, so you really don’t have to eat it.”
“Eh? But it’s the best thing you made.”
“S-surely you’d prefer these colorful donuts or this sumptuous cheesecake.”
“Look, the elder and the others are all eating it too. That proves it’s the best one.”
Mikoto had made the nata de coco more as a joke and something simple she could eat herself without depriving the elves of anything good, but you could never predict what would explode in popularity among people with no preconceptions. Like how the axe murderer under the bed or the woman from hell became trendy in Japan long after they had become tired clichés overseas.
But anyway…
“Starting a strategy game before you know the map or the balance of power is a mistake,” said Shokuhou.
“But if you win anyway, you can get really hooked,” said Mikoto.
“Still, we can’t just let that slaver freak of a lord attack us.”
“Dammit, then let’s prepare for battle! The first wave of this endless battle is about to begin!!”
Their prediction was correct.
Unfortunately, this was the kind of prediction they really wanted to be wrong.
Part 3
The change came without warning.
The rolling green field outside the village continued all the way to the horizon, but that horizon was suddenly annihilated.
Yes, annihilated.
An area of the horizon several kilometers across exploded. But this wasn’t just one explosion. Countless bombs – more than just 100 or even 200 – exploded simultaneously, creating a wall of explosions stretching left to right. It was like an approaching printer of death.
“Eek!”
The elf shrieked in terror.
It was like going over the area with a fine-tooth comb, except with bombs. The long row of explosions slowly approached them. The entire land would be obliterated and it was obvious what would happen once it arrived at the village.
It was important to remember that Celesaqphere was made up of floating land.
These bombs were not being launched from a distance. They were being dropped from above. A floating land was passing by a layer above the one Mikoto and Shokuhou were on. Soldiers were lined up on the edge of that higher land and dropping bombs.
That was enough to set up a carpet bombing.
“I-it’s like they’re plowing the entire floating land from one end to the other,” said Patissiet. “If they continue this from the west end to the east end, the entire floating land will be blown away – and this village along with it!!”
“Misaka-san, what do you think?”
“Hm. They’re not very smart, are they?”
Those two didn’t sound concerned.
They sounded more like they were looking at the shape of the clouds and discussing whether it would rain overnight.
Maybe it was an improvement that the elf could actually pale at the thought of her impending doom. At the very least, that was more than those clone girls had been able to do. Her mouth flapped wordlessly, so Mikoto rubbed her head to comfort her while making a few observations.
“If they can drop bombs on any part of this land, they could have dropped their first bomb right in the middle of the village. The only reason to bomb the entire land from one end to the other is to inspire terror. Telling us the village will be bombed if we wait around is the same as telling us we have some time before the village is at risk.”
“And a carpet bombing also tells us they can’t send in any of their human troops until they’ve finished flattening everything. How many soldiers do they have up there? 500? Maybe 1000? Bringing all their armed troops to the front line and then having them sit around is like asking us to demonstrate our preemptive strike ability☆”
The enemy was on a higher layer.
An ordinary human would have no way of reaching another land 30m above them. Having the high ground was a decent advantage. Dropping things down was easy, but sending things up was a lot more difficult.
But those rules did not apply to the #3 Level 5.
“Don’t worry, Patissiet.”
“Why not?”
“1000 troops is nothing. We’re used to fighting against a city of 2.3 million.”
