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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GoldenSS

2025-02-16T13:40:10Z

Entei08: minor mistakes

==Genesis Testament – A Certain Magical Index SS==

It was the late 19th century.

The Isis-Urania Temple was located in a corner of the British capital of London. Or an apartment that went by that name was.

This is the story of the era before Aleister came knocking at that door. The story of, in some ways, a more peaceful time.

Mina could be succinctly described as a diligent and sheltered young lady who was therefore easily deceived.

Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman had always seen it that way.

That was, in fact, Annie’s impetus for joining the Golden cabal.

She was worried about Mina.

She couldn’t let that clueless girl get anywhere near the topics of Asian teas or New World harbor construction. She would undoubtedly fall prey to some get-rich-quick scam. She deserved to live a life free of those uglier parts of the world. Taking over the family business could fall to her older brother who loved all that complicated stuff while Mina married someone she truly loved. No, she didn’t even need to marry. ''She should just forget matters of gender and choose to spend her life with me instea-

“Mina, do you take Mathers to be your lawfully wedded husband and accept the new name of Mina Mathers?”

“I do. I am overjoyed that all of you in the Golden cabal would hold this ceremony for us.”

…

Annie puffed her cheeks out all on her own. She was also a bit teary-eyed.

A wonderfully blissful scene played out before her eyes.

(…)

It was dazzling. The light was so bright she thought it would kill her. At this point, she wished she could just turn into a slug.

(I didn’t join the cabal to hand my cute Mina over to that sketchy man!!)

William Wynn Westcott sternly read through the newspaper.

He was one of the three founders of the Golden cabal.

“Jack the Ripper, huh?”

That was also happening at this time. The gruesome serial killings had greatly stimulated the people’s baser emotions, but they ironically also helped ring the alarm about the British Empire’s stratified society. They proved that poverty and fear existed even in the country praised as the top of the world.

Jack the Ripper’s aims were of course unknown.

Psychology was still in its infancy, so they would have a hard time working out his identity.

“It’s sad, really. This has caused such an uproar, yet the famous Scotland Yard has no leads on a culprit. Even this article is only taking about it like it’s a thing of the past when the killer might still be walking these streets with us.”

Whatever his purpose, the explosive power of the killer’s wicked mind had shaken the public as he worked toward achieving it. He had created a colossal social phenomenon well beyond anything a single criminal was capable of. To put it in Golden terms, he was a dangerous creature who specialized in harnessing Qliphothic forces. The sooner he was caught, the better.

The Isis-Urania Temple – or the apartment that bore that name – was yet again thick with the scent of cheap oil burning. The lamp on the table had no deep meaning related to ancient Egypt or the rose and the cross – it was simply a way to cut down on operating costs. They wanted to pay as little as possible for electricity and other utilities.

The Lady of the Masquerade Ball, who wore a gaudy red party dress and kept her mask on even in the cabal’s secret base, lounged on the sofa and puffed on a long, skinny pipe. Her other hand held a brandy glass. It was still morning, but she had gone for a double. This was the side of the famous actress she kept hidden from the audience. The smooth mask had no eyes or mouth, yet the end of pipe and the edge of the glass somehow passed through. Almost like the mask itself were made of smoke or liquid.

She gained a Lilith-like glow when inebriated and she spoke while lying on the sofa like a feline beast.

“Oh? Mr. Coroner, I didn’t realize you were assigned to East End.”

“I’m not, which is why it’s so frustrating. I would get it if this was some one-man war against the wealthy or against the soldiers laying waste to the colonies, but he’s only targeting women who sell their bodies. They’re in a precarious enough position as it is, so this is absolutely unforgivable. How does getting rid of them improve the country? He must not understand the structural problems that force those women into that line of business in the first place.”

As you can see, Westcott had a generous and caring heart, had social status, liked detailed work, and had a ton of friends and acquaintances. His serious nature did lead to some awkwardness, such as bringing up the reasons women might sell their bodies when speaking to a young woman, but he had some ineffable quality that led those around him to only laugh and forgive him.

Simply put, he was made of charisma.

Without him, the collection of eccentrics that was the Golden cabal would have fallen apart before it got off the ground.

“Will this do, Annie?”

“If this were my theatre, I would want to place a crane on the ceiling.”

“Hee hee. We are still in the planning phase, you know?”

They were discussing the catacombs…which was a special room where only the VIP magicians would perform ceremonies.

However, they didn’t actually have to grab a shovel and dig out an underground space. “Catacombs” was only a name. They would be making it collapsible so it could even be transferred if they had to move locations.

Knowing this was the wold’s largest magic cabal’s ceremonial ground, one might picture some creepy stone ruins full of skeletons, like the Paris Catacombs, but instead the walls and floor were painted in primary colors and it was full of symbolic weapons made by attaching powerful magnets to the end of wooden sticks or coating clear glass with blue paint.

The light on the ceiling was electric.

They would use anything available to them. That was the way of things in an age before magic and science were split. Mina had graduated art school, so she gave form to the images in Mathers’s head, but they also had help from Annie and the Lady of the Masquerade Ball.

They created a ceremonial ground that used the logic of stage contraptions.

And this was no school play – those professional performers refused to cut any corners.

The Mathers couple’s home was in Paris, but they were visiting the London temple for this job. Annie couldn’t be more delighted at the chance to spend time with her old friend.

“I may have gotten a little carried away.”

“Oh? Mina, remembering your school days?”

“I made some daring alterations, so I hope the 1st temple in Germany won’t be mad.”

“It should be fine. There’s plenty of occult stories about high-tech things too, like cameras stealing your soul or absorbing your life energy, school anatomy models running around at night, or hearing strange voices on the telephone. And there are plenty of stories of ghosts appearing on the stage too.”

Not only that, but the Golden cabal weren’t the only ones to use a stage performance to boost a mystical ceremony. The Christian pipe organs and choirs wouldn’t have taken that form if someone hadn’t designed it for that purpose.

When a magician donned mythological garb and took the stage, they temporarily cast off the bonds of reality.

Here, they could become the disciples who discovered CRC’s preserved corpse.

“Mina, don’t you want a stage elevator? One of those things that lets an actor – bam! – shoot up from below the floor. Should I bring you the designs?”

“The landlord will cry if we modify the apartment that much.”

Lately, Arthur Edward Waite was the center of attention. In the name of testing out the accuracy of the tarot cards he was prototyping and improving, Edward Berridge, John William Brodie-Innes, and others would often gather around the table together. That Waite didn’t realize things were only running so smoothly because of Westcott’s assistance showed it would be some time before he caught up to the founder.

Waite was currently interpreting the card Mina had turned over. Westcott would respect his independence but provide a subtle hint if he ever ran into trouble.

“The obvious interpretation would be the lunar forces: dreams, fantasies, and the occult in general. The Hanged Man next to it refers to another plane of existence. In this case, perhaps the astral plane. And this card refers to a woman. Since it’s the High Priestess, probably one younger than yourself. Like a younger colleague or sister.”

“My.”

“But, madam, this Tower card worries me. It says to watch out for an apprentice. Destruction, disgrace…this may mean you will get into a fight later on. But the combination of another phase and a fight is an odd one.”

“Mina!!”

The door burst open and Mathers entered.

The idiot who stood out even among those eccentrics raised his voice.

“What is the meaning of this? I hate to say it, but you must be possessed by an evil spirit. How else do you explain this horrendous lack of red? I can’t bear to see it. The deplorable state of the eggs on this plate tells me the 5th sphere of Gevurah – that is the power of Mars – is weakening!!”

“Oh, dear, honey. I forgot you will only eat a fried egg if it has been cooked on both sides until the yolk is firm.”

“If you’re just going to complain, then make your own damn eeeeeeeggs!”

Why couldn’t that man just ask her to cook the eggs a little more? His dramatics gave Annie a headache.

“Mina, if you keep spoiling that unemployed loser, he’s only going to get worse.”

“But, Annie, nothing is more fun than looking after a husband who is deadly incapable of taking care of himself☆”

“You’ve taken the loving wife routine so far you’ve turned into a downward spirallllll!!!”

Mathers knew how to box and fence, he was fluent in both Latin and Hebrew, and he had mastered numerical codes. He was talented in just about every field, but he was nightmarishly lacking in common sense, cooperation, and the ability to earn money with a hard day’s work. Heaven had blessed him in one way while cursing him in more than one way, so with the exception of Mina and Westcott, he could only speak with people by sandwiching his words between arguments.

Anna Kingsford’s death had been a tragedy.

That expert was said to have been the only person capable of getting Mathers to obey her word and of silencing him with her fist.

If only she had passed on that secret before she died.

Recently, the Lady of the Masquerade Ball had invited a few members of the Golden cabal to form a smaller group of friends.

It was known as The Sphere.

Being the world’s largest magic cabal had its downsides. When enough people were gathered in a single large room, they tended to split into smaller groups.

In terms of the latest fad of psychology, this may have been the result of Thanatos, the mental drive to modify old traditions and organizations.

…And as dramatic as this might sound, this is a phenomenon commonly seen at pub tables.

One day, the great Mathers arrived at the Isis-Urania Temple (which reeked so bad of burnt lamp oil that they all might have died if not for the fireplace chimney).

What he said came out of nowhere.

“I am one of the chosen nobility meant to protect the common people.”

“You’re what???”

Sensible Annie’s (ice cold) retort did not lead him to correct himself.

The look in his eyes was concerning. Such a dark look.

His pupils were fully dilated.

''I shouldn’t have reacted,'' realized Annie, regret plain on her face. It was the late 19th century. The ironclad rule of just ignoring troublesome people had yet to be invented.

Besides, she had noticed before that man was doing something off separate from the cabal.

“Really, I can’t believe it took me so long to realize I have noble Highlander blood flowing through my veins. Oh, sorry if I confused you all, but you can rest easy and henceforth refer to me as the Count of Glenstrae!! Yes, show me the honor I am due, commoners!!!”

Nobility? What was this unemployed loser talking about???

…Perhaps his mind hadn’t been able to bear spending such a long time without a job.

But if so, why didn’t he just get a job?

Annie Horniman chose to discuss it with someone who would understand. She tugged on the woman’s clothing.

“Mina, excuse me, Mina, Mina. Um, I believe your husband is mentally worn out, so it would probably be a good idea to send him to some quiet old castle or retreat up in the mountains. Preferably forever.”

“Hee hee. Oh, my. Honey, you have such an active imagination. Look, your dreams and fantasies are dripping out. Do you even need your wife to wipe your mouth off for you, you spoiled thing?”

“Not even this breaks her loving wife routine? But if this gets out, it’ll do some real social damage!”

Annie’s family had made a fortune in the tea trade and she too had a talent for making money. Enough that she would go on to build a large theatre.

So she was the one funding the Mina couple’s lifestyle. Not for unemployed Mathers, but to support her adorable Mina! But if that unemployed loser started ranting about being royalty or nobility in public, it could damage Mina’s reputation, not to mention Annie’s for supporting them!!

Tarot cards had been around for a very long time. The names and the number of cards varied. Arthur Edward Waite must have been dissatisfied with the accuracy of his prototype version with altered numbers and symbols because he toyed with a few of the cards while sipping on a glass of whisky.

“The thing is, Westcott.”

“Hm?”

“I really like you.”

That alone was enough to know what kind of magician he was.

Overall, there were two lines of thinking within the Golden cabal.

But this wasn’t anything as cool as an inner circle and outer circle or a first legion and second legion.

Quite the opposite.

One group wanted to master magic and change the world. The other saw magic as an attractive topic to inspire enjoyable conversation within the group,.

As the world’s largest, the Golden cabal was not lacking in members. Some like Coroner Westcott and Doctor Berridge had official authority and social status. Some like Annie and the Lady of the Masquerade Ball were part of the gaudy world of the performance arts. They also had a few world-famous poets and scriptwriters. Even Mina Mathers was the daughter of the Bergson family (although the gentle wife was unaware of the privilege this brought her). Whatever industry one might be working in, involving oneself in a shared secret wasn’t a bad way to build up connections.

From that worldly viewpoint, Mathers was an exceptionally unattractive person to hold a central position in the cabal.

For him, magic was everything.

Calling him focused or dedicated sounded nice, but that magical genius had next to no official titles. He had no money and no social standing and his frequent bizarre behavior only served to cause a scene. But he wasn’t some mystical person who got by without working. Technically speaking, he did work. Because Annie would find open positions for him. But that never lasted long. He would be unemployed again in no time. And now he was claiming to be a descendant of Scottish nobility.

Westcott’s letters were actually of dubious validity, yet not a single person in the cabal believed Mathers’s bloodline delusions. Because nothing he said could change that he had been born to a middle class London office worker.

His wife Mina kindly went along with it, but there was no way of knowing what she actually thought. Knowing her, she might actually believe him. Then again, she was the daughter of the Bergson family who had thrown out that position by marrying Mathers, so she may not have cared at all about the class system of Queen Victoria’s British Empire.

“I can’t divorce myself from public life to pursue magic to the extent Count Glenstrae has. And I can’t pursue my dreams to the extent his wife does.”

“You shouldn’t compare yourself to them. Not everyone can live that kind of life. They are unusual even for the cabal.”

“It’s the same with these cards. I talk about using them to package or categorize the Sephiroth, but fortune telling is really all about utilitarian benefit, isn’t it? Pence, shillings, pounds… I am nothing more than a silly man who can’t stop thinking about numbers. No matter how hard I try, I doubt I can ever live as a magician like you.”

“Do you feel bad for living a comfortable life?”

“There is a 7=4 who insists any magician who focuses on worldly money is second-rate.”

“That’s just sour grapes over being unemployed.”

Only another 7=4 would openly talk about Mathers that way. And as a skilled magician who also had real social standing, Westcott was a different sort of monster.

Arthur Edward Waite shrank down like he wanted to disappear.

“I’m ashamed of it, but I just can’t stop making money. Once these cards are complete, they will make me a fortune. I am certain they will continue to be produced and sold long after I am dead. They will continue turning a profit until people no longer fear their vague fortunes and futures.”

He was approaching an invention that, in a way, was more incredible than some magic spell, but that didn’t mean he was proud of it.

This hinted at the real meaning behind what he had said.

Westcott and Mathers.

Two of the three founders.

“That’s why I like that the cabal is led by someone who can compromise with the real world.”

“No, no drinking.”

Mathers (who was a drinker but had no money) was despondent.

But Westcott did not back down.

“You can get drunk after we gather our thoughts on the Secret Chiefs. I have discovered and deciphered all of the original code books. You are supposed to create various ceremonies based on them that anyone can read. Wasn’t that the plan?”

The Secret Chiefs were mysterious beings said to grant permission to establish a magic cabal, and everyone had their own ideas about them. Westcott said one could borrow their power by asking a priestess in distant Germany. Mathers said they were incorporeal beings but boasted he could directly contact them. Some magicians even said they were ordinary people who walked on two legs and drank coffee in the city.

Old gentlemanly Westcott sighed.

“If using your head is so displeasing to you, then how about you visit remote Tibet and search for the Secret Chiefs in the physical world? Do that and I will buy you as much Scotch as you can drink.”

“Sh, shh!!” shushed Doctor Berridge, hastily raising his left index finger to his lips.

Only Westcott, who was on the same level as Mathers, could make jokes like that in the Golden cabal. In this age, magicians believed they would receive unfathomable wisdom and power if they made the long journey to Tibet, but Mathers loathed the way some people would throw out study and logic in order to rely on the “Mysterious East”.

“I say we forget about some single concept like the Secret Chiefs and instead study means of reaching and toying with the higher plane as a whole.”

“Either way, this isn’t a subject you can discuss over drinks. Besides, a drink is a reward for someone who has completed a day’s work. Now, Mathers, I will use your least favorite phrase in the entire world: get to work.”

Doctor Berridge stared at Westcott, plainly wanting to say something.

The priestess named Anna Sprengel was a mysterious figure who only ever appeared in Westcott’s letters. No one had ever actually seen her.

More than a friend of a friend, she was like that friend of a friend’s teacher.

Did that Secret Chief really exist?

This magician loved late-night walks.

Mathers was a troublesome genius who never went out and instead sponged off of his students when out of drinks and cheese, but there was one place even he would take the time to walk to: the British Museum. The many texts stored there were the one thing in the world that had complete power over him. As one of the founders, it perhaps went without saying he was a bookworm through and through. He only visited irregularly, but since he had slipped into the shadows of London, he wanted to read everything he could.

(Grimoires borrowing that king’s name have been more common of late. Now, it would do the world a great service if I could search out the oldest records I can find, sum up their main points, and create a simple checklist showing whether or not they are connected to that king.)

“The ability to gather all those texts into a single whole would be a truly great invention. Hm, but that would eliminate the fun of navigating the maze of bookcases.”

Mathers laughed as he strolled through the London night. He had apparently forgotten Annie’s warning that it was his meaningless evil laughter that gathered the patrolling authorities’ attention. Not that he had been listening to her in the first place.

It was late at night. The museum was no longer accepting ordinary visitors.

But such a truly skilled magician did not think he had to enter through the front door. Not when knowledge was calling his name. As a count, it was only polite to answer its invitation and accept its hospitality.

Mathers felt pain after taking three more steps along the dark street.

From a physical attack.

It felt like a hammer blow.

The heavy impact passed through his thick cloak and clothing to reach his right shoulder.

(It’s broken.)

He noticed only after he was hit.

Of course, Mathers wouldn’t normally make such a mistake. He would have instantly detected the assailant’s intent to attack and sent one of the seven demon lords after them.

“Hm.”

(That means this person knows my methods and found a loophole.)

Magicians were a type of technician Taking out his dominant arm first was a decent decision.

Mathers took a few more steps as if nothing had happened and then turned around.

If someone was there, this would have established a type of resonance that made them turn around too, but it didn’t work.

The dark street was deserted.

He had focused on the wrong place.

Aware of that, Mathers chuckled self-deprecatingly.

“So not even the British Empire is safe? If this attack had happened in broad daylight, I may have ended up in the papers as the victim of another theatrical crime.”

It was that era too.

It had likely made some good sample material for the latest fad of psychology. Some bored ripper had caused a bit of a stir, and that had been enough to distort the world. Crimes were growing and evolving to make the current level of excitement a thing of the past.

Mathers gave a snort of laughter.

Was this some magic being used to that end? It seemed familiar and then Mathers recognized it as an evocation spell he himself had expanded upon based on a certain code book.

“Being the biggest in the world really does have its downsides. There are far too many possible traitors.”

The Isis-Urania Temple was a grandiose name, but it was really just an apartment rented by the cabal. With the exception of the ceremonial ground, the only light came from an oil lamp. And there were shadows in the corners.

She had nothing solid to go off of.

But Mina Mathers’s eyes dropped to her ring as she spoke under her breath.

She was a top-rate magician whose greatest weapon was art and she had created several texts on various forms of visions and meditation as reference material for the cabal.

“Honey…no, it can’t be…”

The world was sliced apart by the shadows of the night, but Mathers’s confidence remained intact.

“Did you learn this from common society? Theatrical really is the best way of describing it. The way these crimes stimulate the people’s baser emotions in such a short period of time shows they were designed by someone who understands the basics of theatre.”

Didn’t one member of the Golden cabal hope to build a theatre? And wasn’t she the woman who wanted to tear apart Mathers and Mina’s relationship?

But Mathers wasn’t dense enough to end his search for the culprit there.

In fact, unlike a common play, the magician had no need to search for the culprit at all. Curses would return to their caster. Or could be set up to do so. If he defeated and eliminated this, it would also harm the magician responsible.

If he had some spare time, he could always search out the foolish traitor who would be writhing in pain from their own curse, but Mathers wasn’t that cruel. The worm could die in the gap between the filthy wall and wooden box where they were hiding.

Summoning and evocation might sound impressive (which was on purpose since Mathers and the other Golden magicians had given them those names for that exact reason), but there was no need to construct an entire angel or demon in order to produce deadly force. That would be a lot of wasted effort and giving it a head – and thus the ability to think – created the threat of revolt.

Sealing Telesma in a talisman or weapon was sufficient for most magic and it technically didn’t even require existing matter.

“Still, this is a makeshift version. I believe Waite is still trying to fine-tune it.”

Mathers only whispered.

Something floated in the air.

A single card. It had been there from the beginning. But in the dark night with only sporadic streetlights, an object the size of a leaf would go unnoticed floating in the breeze.

It was a tarot card from the Major Arcana: the Magician. It meant cleverness, an enemy trap, and willpower. It was the chance to begin something and the beginning of change.

(I see.)

That told him the purpose behind this curse.

And as soon as he accurately interpreted it, a line of light appeared on the ground directly below the floating card. The line bent in accordance with some kind of rules, drawing out a sharp, angular star on the ground. It was around 2m across. The eight-pointed star was drawn out in a single continuous stroke. Instead of specializing in a specific element, this symbol was a combination of all elements.

It was not being created anew.

This meaning had been included in the card from the start. You could say Mathers himself had given it a temporary external appearance with the power of his imagination. He was, after all, one of the cabal founders with a 7=4 grade. If he wanted, he could view the floating card as a heart, drape a thick cloak around it, and turn it into “false person” with a 3D silhouette…but after thinking it through that far, the obsessive man sighed. He consciously lessened his focus. He did not need to thoroughly analyze all the details here. Knowing the meaning and coordinates was enough.

The octagram symbolized the power of all of the elements. If intentionally used incorrectly, it could create a powerful blow to anything composed of the four elements formed from the four qualities.

That made this a colossal spring that could move freely along the ground. It would approach its target and, once their coordinates coincided, reject them, launching them straight up. There was no real altitude limit. If you only wanted to kill someone, you simply had to launch them from the planet. Mathers’s right shoulder had been crushed because the star had passed right next to his foot and only the arm sticking out past his leg had been hit.

“Is that all you have?” Mathers was exasperated. “How careless. You were reliant on the element of surprise and your initial attack failed to kill me, but you aren’t erasing all evidence and preventing me from sending it back at you? Did you not even consider the possibility of a counterattack?”

Did they refuse to listen, or did they lack the brains to understand? He doubted it.

Not if this was being controlled remotely.

The octagram zigzagged along the ground, approaching him. With speed surpassing a coal-powered automobile. As if it were dragged along or guided by the floating Magician card.

Annie Horniman’s grimace wasn’t just due to the burnt oil stench of the lamp on the table.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t considered the possibility. She had vaguely realized this might happen.

But not because she had used the tarot cards Waite was still so seriously working at readjusting the numbers and symbols for. No divination was necessary for anyone with ordinary sensibilities to sense interpersonal trouble brewing.

The problem was how few of the eccentrics in the magic cabal were capable of reading the room like that. They were all the overly intellectual type who needed to gaze into a crystal ball or flip over some cards to figure out something so obvious. So they wouldn’t notice someone’s anger until it exploded in their face.

Of course, Annie didn’t particularly care what kind of disaster befell Mathers.

If a coal-powered automobile hit him on the side of the street, knocking him into the Thames where fish swarmed around to consume his flesh, that was fine by her. Her arms would be open to comfort the newly-widowed Mina.

But…

“…”

Someone stood in a corner of the room.

Mina Mathers. But her eyes weren’t on Annie. She was staring at her ring, her thoughts only on her husband who had left and still hadn’t returned. She looked somehow smaller than usual.

(Well, if that’s how it is.)

Annie sighed softly and hefted something over her shoulders. She felt their weight bearing down on her. As much as she didn’t like it, she made her way to the Isis-Urania Temple’s exit.

After solving a numerical puzzle on the table, Westcott raised his head and gave her a puzzled look.

“Oh? Annie, is that your Jachin and Boaz? Where are you taking them?”

“To go kick someone’s ass☆”

“Evocation.”

It changed.

The people, the air, the presence, the world.

All it took was that word from Mathers.

For an opponent like this, he didn’t even need to pull out the four symbolic weapons his wife had made.

The evocation and the exorcism were two parts of a single technique.

All things that could be summoned by humans could be swiftly driven out by humans. Just like the person who set a train in motion needed to be able to stop the train too.

“I call on one of the seven deadly sins. On one who was once viewed as an even greater demon lord than Satan and Lucifer. On a god who has not lost his great power even after his true name was corrupted.”

This genius was not led astray by the impressive-sounding seven deadly sins.

He was not satisfied with just Beelzebub.

That was why he searched out so many undeciphered texts in the British Library and translated the Hebrew into Latin and the Latin into English so modern people could read them. That was why he reproduced, resurrected, and made use of ancient gods from an age before a certain holy man was hung on the cross. That was why he dug back up the powers that were buried long ago for the convenience of those in charge.

Even if this occasionally made him a target for the Anglican Church’s assassins.

The star which drew out eight sharp points with a single stroke veered off of its shortest attack route. It stopped right in front of Mathers and moved erratically to the sides. It was clearly being controlled by someone rather than being a simple guided weapon.

It seemed to be squirming. Or taking frozen evasive action.

But Mathers had finished.

“Come forth, Baal Zebul.”

It only took a single strike.

Unable to even touch Mathers, the collection of lines pasted to the ground were twisted and burned through while the floating card was forcefully flipped over before its ashes scattered in the wind.

It was in that moment that a certain genius forcibly overturned his deadly fate.

“Oh.”

A figure doubled over.

She was at the former site of one of the Thames’s innumerable wharves.

An altar, flags to the west and east, tablets of different metals, a few seats for each role… So much time had been spent decorating the place to make the temple look like a proper temple, but now it was all in a miserable state. No, that wasn’t quite accurate. A great power had burst from within or sliced through it all. Everything used for the curse was destroyed equally.

She felt intense pain and heat in her right shoulder.

She couldn’t claim ignorance there since she had sent the curse.

“Oh, ohh.”

(It’s…broken.)

This wasn’t like a spell that ended once it was launched from your palm.

A doll.

A dagger.

This was part of why Mathers had concluded he need not search for the culprit.

She had created her game piece by summoning a large quantity of Telesma and having it carry her mental image through the card. That image had been her deadly desire and it could be seen as part of her being. Controlling the monster with her own thoughts gave the attack much greater odds of success, but sending in a deadly monster still linked to her also created the risk of this happening.

Just like blocking off the long steam pipe providing power to a large factory would apply pressure to the central boiler and eventually cause it to burst.

An attack could travel back to her.

“Ohhhhh- gbh.”

Doctor Berridge and Coroner Westcott had once argued over Scotch that the inside of the body could not actually feel pain, but that was a lie. How else could she explain this excruciating pain that felt like having her entire body twisted apart?

A cold sweat formed on her brow.

She focused all her willpower on slowing her breathing and attempting to resume refining her life force into magic power, but she struggled to control her body.

Her thick shoulder bone had been broken. Far too easily.

“Gevurah, the fifth sephirah, the element of fire. That is, the 6=5 robe of the Egyptian role. Accept me as I free myself from the bonds of my physical body and depart. Purify the calamities and flaws of my soul with the flame spoken of in the records of the ancient gods. I will be reborn here, stripping off all my old wounds and pai-”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The figure shook.

Annie Horniman spoke casually to her.

“I get wanting to cast off your body and escape the pain and fear after having the recoiled curse break your shoulder, but astral projection is a form of mental manipulation used to surpass the limits of your surface consciousness. Using it too often can get you absorbed by your own subconscious, unable to return. The Sphere you’ve been secretly putting together knows how to do all the calculations, but you should really stop there.”

“Where did I give myself away?”

“Nowhere really. You just seem like the type who would like remote attacks. Taphthartharath, was it? I remember your plan to summon that symbol of Mercury. Oh, sorry. ‘Envoke’, right? I still don’t quite grasp that new definition Mathers and the others came up with one day out of the blue. Anyway, you were sitting around the table with a few of your apprentices planning a ceremony to call on that thing. Not that I think you can manifest the real deal.”

This had been a theatrical crime.

The threat had incorporated the logic of a play, but Annie Horniman wasn’t the only one with a connection to that industry.

Wasn’t there another?

The Lady of the Masquerade Ball. That magician was in fact a famous actress.

She had clearly been on edge back at the Isis-Urania Temple. She hadn’t participated in the conversation when Mathers caused a scene or when everyone was testing Waite’s prototype tarot. Not once. The only person she had openly spoken to was Westcott, whose charisma made him a contact point for any number of areas.

“It’s just no fun…”

At this point, she didn’t bother making excuses.

Had she given up on all mental activity?

The masked woman puffed on the long, skinny pipe that passed right through her smooth mask and breathed out a toxically sweet cloud of smoke.

“So many rules. So many restrictions. Creating the framework of a cabal may have been a necessary part of getting our secret club started, but that stage is over. The promises made to get it started only weigh us down now. I want to enjoy magic more lazily. I want to immerse myself in it, intoxicate myself with it, and forget all about real life.”

“We call ourselves the world’s largest magic cabal and now we’re falling to internal strife? It’s so human I want to laugh.”

“Oh? Don’t you also want that arrogant and dogmatic Mathers to die? Although in your case it has nothing to do with his influence over the cabal.”

“Well, yes. I would have killed that freak ages ago if that were an option.”

But she hadn’t. She hated his guts for selfishly throwing her life off track and for marrying Mina. Killing him just the once didn’t seem sufficient in her opinion. And yet.

Her reason couldn’t have been simpler.

A pair of heavy objects crashed noisily to the ground.

A white pillar and a black pillar.

Annie Horniman grinned belligerently with one of the long clubs in each hand.

They were from the same cabal.

She wouldn’t kill the woman, but she would rough her up a bit.

Until that beautiful throat and tongue sang that she would rather die.

“This is what happens when you even slightly harm the life my Mina chose for yourself, okay?”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter4

2024-10-03T14:07:16Z

Entei08: Mistranslation, this line is meant to reference Anna's conversation with Alice when they butted heads in part 2, how Alice must have wanted recognition, forgiveness and love just like she did.

==Chapter 4: The Unfortunate Boy’s Focus – Over_the_River.==

===Part 1===

H.T. Trismegistus looked at everything before him.

He had known the cause.

Which was why he had thought Alice would go back to normal if he killed Kamijou Touma.

He had thought he needed to punish Anna for messing with Alice.

He had always been on that small girl’s side.

Because he had thought ''common sense said'' it would be cruel to throw such a small girl out into the world alone. In that case, her tremendous power would not be an advantage. It would only be an omen of danger. She would be like a young child who inherited a vast fortune. She would be the perfect bait for all the scum lurking in the shadows. He had decided he should protect her and look after her. It wasn’t about logic. He thought anyone would decide the same thing after seeing her, which meant it was common sense. He had believed in the goodness of the world at large.

But in that case…

“Oooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

What was this?

Was this what he had wanted to see?

Wind blew wildly through the library, but this was no meteorological phenomenon. Great currents of a nonphysical power created ''tailwinds'' and ''headwinds'' in rapid succession.

As a regular Transcendent who had used Alice as an example to get where he was, he could not rescue the girl who was his starting point.

Attempting it was as meaningless as offering a hand to help her to her feet while also pinning her down below his foot. Pulling on her hand like that would only tear her arm off.

Thus.

CRC. Christian Rosencreutz.

He had thought the only way to save that lonely girl was with the help of a power not derived from Alice and that common sense told him was greater than hers.

That was the only option.

He couldn’t think up anything else.

But when the holy man was reborn, he was nothing like the common legends and he hadn’t been interested in saving the world, ''including Alice''.

Alice had smiled like normal after having her head crushed, but it had felt somehow off.

They had reached their limit.

Alice Anotherbible had.

The Bridge Builders Cabal, who wished to save the world but couldn’t make the attempt on their own, had.

The Transcendents, who had erased their own opinions and thrown out their own identities, had.

They all had.

They had made the wrong choice. H.T. Trismegistus had passed that fatal branch and started down a path to hell. He had finally realized that. There was no undoing what he had done, so what could he do to fight it now?

There was no optimal answer.

So what kind of compromise could he reach?

“…”

He had made a fatally mistaken decision, but H.T. Trismegistus was still a Transcendent. He dressed up in the appearance and abilities of the god he had chosen, he chose his salvation condition, and then he saved everyone that applied to. So even in this situation, he directed his question not to himself but to the thing that determined all his actions.

In other words, he asked it of the entire world.

What did common sense say?

Was it really right to ignore a crying girl?

===Part 2===

They were in a library filled with light.

Not a grand temple or castle. It was part of a certain boy’s school, which Alice Anotherbible had said she wanted to see. That was the reason she had chosen this as the final location.

There was no further significance there.

Alice had in fact offered up her entire being, including her life, there.

What had that small girl really wanted?

This had nothing to do with the fate of Academy City or the madness spreading across the world.

Kamijou had to sense what was deep inside Alice.

He quietly clenched his teeth.

Strongly.

The time had come to directly face that cornered girl’s feelings.

“Touma-”

“Don’t bother trying to analyze this with your 103,001 grimoires,” roared Kamijou, still facing Alice.

He intentionally ignited his heart.

“I know what I have to do regardless: punch Alice to bring her back to her senses!! Being the strongest doesn’t mean she has to carry it all on her own. I refuse to let her be alone for even a second longer!!”

Kamijou Touma.

Anna Sprengel. H.T. Trismegistus.

Those three faced the girl together. They glared at her without fleeing. Their positions, plans, and abilities were completely different, but they were all working toward a single goal here.

''Don’t forget.

''And if you have forgotten, we’ll show you.

“Don’t falter.”

''Alice Anotherbible.

''You aren’t alone.

''Your loneliness is no more than an illusion.

''There are still plenty of people out there who want to save you!!

“Let’s do thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis!!!”

Kamijou shouted to shake off the fear and raced forward. With his right fist still clenched tight.

Well before he made it in punching range, he heard a hard crunching sound.

It came from Alice.

No, down at her feet.

He knew better than to ask why or for what purpose.

Alice was already doing something.

Whatever this was, that irregular Transcendent had chosen to use her own body to act.

And she chose to attack.

“Fool!!”

Little Anna kicked him in the back of the knee from the side.

As soon as his view dropped straight down, something tore diagonally upwards through the air.

All sound vanished.

Five clawmarks were torn diagonally through the library wall directly behind Kamijou. Same for the many bookcases in between. Only after the fact did he realize the same would have happened to him if his head hadn’t lowered by a few dozen centimeters.

Claws.

Scratches.

That primitive attack had been amplified to the extreme.

“''If you die, it’s over.'' I know it’s obvious, but you can’t forget that absolute rule!! Good, Old Mary’s resurrection does not work against fatal wounds caused by Alice herself. If you really want to save her, then you can’t expect the world to do you any favors. You can only reach out your own hand to help her!!”

If the expert named Anna Kingsford were here, she would have easily seen through it.

The only one here who reached that level understanding was the Grimoire Library with access to 103,001 original grimoires.

“Was that magic?” asked Index in disbelief. While reaching out a hand to help Kamijou back to his feet. “Since people’s interior worlds are linked to the physical world outside them, anything you can do with your body can be used to reach a mystical power that changes the entire world. I get that, but still.”

“All those fancy gestures and ceremonies are only meant to purify and cleanse your will,” said Othinus.

Kamijou took this time to gently push the little god into Index’s hands.

Everything about Alice was the ultimate enigma, so he wanted to ensure the survival of anyone who could help explain it all. And he didn’t think he could protect Othinus if she was with him.

“But Alice Anotherbible has had her baseline purity ''forcibly increased'', so each and every one of her actions is pure without going through that process.”

“We should consider ourselves fortunate,” said H.T. Trismegistus.

That was the gloomy young butler’s assessment.

Because…

“We are in fact incredibly fortunate that Alice cannot ''kill her enemies with a thought or set the world in motion to kill her enemies if she wills it.'' This tells us she must take a physical action to trigger her attacks. Common sense says we are lucky indeed.”

But that also meant this wasn’t limited to her scratching claws.

The girl who had become a fully-grown woman faced Kamijou while tilting diagonally.

She took a step.

Just one.

“Touma, she’s coming!!”

“!!!???”

He understood that, but he couldn’t restrain his reflexes as a living being. Crossing his arms in front of his face was a definite mistake.

The sweet scent of tea filled the boy’s nose. Something was overpowering the library’s old paper smell.

Alice Anotherbible already stood behind Kamijou.

''Walking

''In other words, she took action to move to her desired location.

She had not formed a special shape with her fingers, nor had she stepped in a complex pattern.

She had taken the same action anyone could.

She was blessed with a special result without having to focus on it.

The meaning extracted from her ordinary actions was just too pure!?

“Ali-!?”

She was already right there.

Kamijou spun around and swung his right hand back in something like a backhand blow.

But it found only air.

The grown woman pressed her four limbs down against the floor like an animal and lowered her head as far as it would go.

Crawling.

She had moved to his blind spot and then his last-second counterattack had missed. What this meant squeezed at his heart. He might as well have offered her the perfect chance to attack him.

The young butler did not hesitate to move.

Light flashed from his right hand as the blade hidden in his cane turned to light and sliced through the floor. The strange slash had an effect well beyond the length of the sword. And it struck right were crawling Alice’s lowered head was. It definitely hit. Except the metal blade passed right through her. Like she was intangible.

A specific meaning had been extracted from her ordinary action: evasion.

“It doesn’t matter if you hit her or not!?” hatefully spat Othinus.

As long as the adult woman moved to dodge, no external damage could affect her. Even if she took a direct hit from a nuclear missile. Alice showed no interest in H.T. Trismegistus even with his attempted decapitation of her. Still crawling, she raised her head and casually extended her hand toward Kamijou.

“''I was right.''”

Apparently the young butler’s attack had been to check something.

He had ended up cutting through the floor below Alice instead of her, so it fell.

That had been his intent from the beginning.

He had intentionally destroyed the floor so he could gather more information and survive.

Kamijou would die today.

''But he didn’t care about that anymore.

“Hey, wait, human!”

“(Keep Othinus with you, Index!)”

Just as he passed that message on with a look, the entire floor collapsed.

His feet were freed from gravity and his vision slid straight down. Along with the heavy bookcases held in place with quake-resistant screws.

“Gah!?”

Kamijou, Anna, and Trismegistus himself were caught up in it too, successfully distancing them from Alice’s hand.

They just barely escaped alive.

Instead of an ordinary classroom, they found themselves in a large space that must have been lined with steel office desks. Or the remains of it, anyway. The first term in the new school had yet to begin, but the desks already had some personal items on them. Was this the faculty room?

Only Alice wasn’t affected.

The grown woman’s long blonde hair swayed as she looked down at them from the upper floor. The floor only remained in the corners of the room and Alice alone stood there.

Like a wounded animal bleeding and furious while trapped by a fishing hook or some plastic tape that a human had thoughtlessly discarded.

Like a lonely animal.

One that’s threats and howls echoed with melancholy.

''This isn’t over,'' thought Kamijou as he forced his aching body back onto its feet. No matter how battered his body was – even if he was in such a bad state it would make a doctor scream in horror – he was still alive. For now, at least.

The power balance of Transcendents and whatnot no longer mattered. Just a person was good enough. As long as he still lived, even the puniest human had the right to change the course of the battle with his own conscious decisions.

And the extraordinary strongest being was only looking at him.

That much was a relief, at least.

(Index and Othinus are probably up there. And unlike Alice, they were by the door, so they can escape at any time. They don’t need to stay on the dangerous frontline. As long as I can call them, they can still provide information support!)

“She uses a variation on this, doesn’t she?”

Kamijou heard a dull “thud!!” and turned to see a 2m metal orb next to Anna. That was the Pneuma-less Shell, a spiritual item that produced tools from civilizations the world over and extracted the world’s oldest causes of death from them.

“But in Alice’s case, she doesn’t even rely on a tool. She draws out the meaning contained in the actions she takes and unleashes them as an attack. It’s a type of magic and also a type of miracle. She takes the ridiculous-sounding legends of holy men and woman producing miracles empty-handed and develops a logical way of actually doing it. Or that’s the sense I get from it, anyway.”

“…”

“Supposedly she was created when some Teacher of Crowley went a step too far and modified Alice Pleasance Liddell, so maybe if you follow the path back from Magick to Golden magic and then Rosicrucian magic, you can see the essence of my spells in what she does.”

On the floor above, Alice ignored their conversation and moved.

She tapped her heel down.

Creating a vibration.

It didn’t matter that they were on separate floors.

Kamijou and the others went stiff. They were pinned in place.

Stomping.

It was a juvenile act of resistance and intimidation. A challenge and attempted reversal against someone who was clearly your superior. It was a threat meant to overpower adult logic with childish instinct and a primitive gamble that all humans attempted at some point.

It worked.

The adult Alice jumped down in the single second the world was frozen.

She aimed to land on Kamijou. On the top of his head.

A dull sound followed.

Alice again knocked something sharply to the ground.

That broke the spell and Kamijou quickly leaped toward Anna and rolled along the floor.

Alice’s heel dropped like a shooting star and smashed deep into the floor.

Little Anna smirked in Kamijou’s arms while they lay in a jumble on the floor.

As if she were bragging to Alice that, no matter how powerful Alice was, it was Anna the boy had done this for.

“Now, did you switch over to 1.5x speed because you thought it was just a boring exposition scene? The Pneuma-less Shell is not a demonstration-only show item. It is a spiritual item that randomly produces a cause of death and not even I can fully control what it does!!”

She held a staff.

The strange staff looked like a giant golden cross decorated with a red ruby rose.

“You should thank my excellent luck of the draw, fool. The gold cross and ruby rose – the world’s oldest ''human-made'' miracle of the rose is the destruction of the origin. It brings death through disillusionment. It supposedly has ancient origins, but it was first depicted in the middle ages and rediscovered in more recent times. It contains all the violence found in the magic of extreme growth and maturity!!”

Miss Sprengel raised the staff in her little hands.

That was all.

There was no fancy incantation or complex magic circle. Flames simply appeared in the empty air and were released from the staff. They shot toward Alice with a liquid motion. These were not ordinary flames. They were magic flames that scorched and burned away space itself regardless of the physical material, like an old photograph being burned from behind.

Alice grabbed her long hair as a single mass.

And she swung her head around.

In a move straight out of kabuki, the thick bundle of hair drew a large circle in the air, which narrowed down as soon as the crimson flames passed through it.

The orange flames stopped in midair.

Binding.

In other words, stopping all movement of a target. And separating the target out from all possible interference.

“Tch!!”

The Pneuma-less Shell was Anna’s spiritual item, but what weapon she acquired was a matter of chance. She wouldn’t receive the same weapon if she tried again.

But that brief moment of regret was a mistake.

Alice tugged on her hair binding the flames, causing little Anna to pitch forward and lose her balance.

At that same moment, the grown woman took a step forward. They had seen what this did already. Whatever the distance, Alice would have already arrived at her destination.

Which meant right in front of Kamijou.

For an instant, he lost all depth perception. Alice’s grown chest suddenly blocked his view and his pupils couldn’t focus in time.

She arrived straight up in front of him with a flowing motion.

By the time his eyes had finally caught up, Alice’s fingers – and their sharp claws – were extending lithely toward his throat.

Time stopped. He tried to swing his head to the side and dodge, but his body couldn’t keep up.

He couldn’t die yet.

He might die, but it couldn’t be now.

He thought that so hard it seemed to burn into his mind. After all, the girl who had forgotten how to cry and instead howled like an animal was right there in front of him. He couldn’t die until he had saved her.

Light pierced sharply in from the side.

Time resumed flowing.

Alice doubled over and rolled along the floor.

This first clean hit did not come from Kamijou, Anna, or H.T. Trismegistus.

They heard a voice.

“What the hell? Did I really just hit Alice? Not to mention I thought we couldn’t even approach this center area because we were cut off spatially and temporally in that labyrinth!”

It was Aradia, god of witches, the moon, and the night.

A short distance away, the Bologna Succubus was on the ground grappling with a bipedal hare. After absorbing the shadows of next-gen weapons until she was large enough to trample the school building underfoot, Mut Thebes was engaged in a direct fistfight with an equally gigantic cat.

Hadn’t Anna mentioned the other Transcendents had arrived at the school too?

Kamijou and the others must have fallen far enough to reach where those Transcendents were battling the Gryphon, the Executioner, and so on.

Unlike Kamijou, Alice had not invited them.

And they couldn’t slip past those defenses like Anna could.

They had forcibly entered a labyrinth with no goal. In there, they fought an endless battle against Alice’s brutal toys – which might look comical but were all monsters capable of overwhelming Academy City’s dark side. That they were still alive showed just how abnormal Transcendents were.

For a brief moment, the dark pressure of death vanished within Kamijou. He felt strength growing from the center of his being.

Alice really wasn’t alone.

The world was not such a heartless place.

Good, Old Mary, Aradia, and the others gained nothing by winning this battle, but they were still here risking their lives. Even though this battlefield was ruled by the ordinary and inviolable rule where death meant losing everything they had been working to achieve.

What motivated their desperate battle?

What could it possibly be other than kindness?

“Fool, this is bad sign. Encountering the bait meant to buy us time means we have more enemies to deal with. By which I mean the Gryphon, the Executioner, and the rest of the Alice Series.”

“You have some nerve running off on your own to flirt, you goddamn villain,” said Aradia. “Just so you know, I’m more than willing to employ spankings as punishment as long as you aren’t one of the witches I’ve sworn to protect.”

“My, my. Quite an outdated way of thinking for such a young-looking goddess. Makes me wonder how old you ''really'' are.”

“I don’t want to hear that from the preserved little girl from who-knows-how-many centuries ago.”

Alice extracted herself from the collapsed cabinets half-burying her.

Her eyeballs rolled in her head.

Even now, that enchantingly lithe woman only ever looked Kamijou’s way. She didn’t even glance over at Aradia who had delivered the attack.

“Kh. Anyway, let’s fall back. We need to put some distance between us!!”

A sharp voice rang through the broken faculty room. Aradia held out her palm and launched a scattershot of light to keep Alice back. Each shot moved like a sea snake as they tore through the air and targeted adult Alice from multiple angles.

The storybook girl said nothing.

She didn’t even look Aradia’s way.

She only extended a finger and rotated it once clockwise.

Like some kind of joke, all of the glowing projectiles veered away from the fully-grown woman, blasting through walls and pillars instead.

Cursing.

That one childish action easily confused every eye on her, bringing them under her spell.

“Kh.”

Aradia didn’t even have time to gasp in shock.

Alice really didn’t look her way the entire time. She simply changed the arrangement of her casually extended fingers. She curled up her middle finger and held it down with her thumb like she was preparing to flick something.

There was no light or sound.

It was a lot like returning the favor.

Aradia broke through the wall and flew off somewhere.

Kamijou’s face paled.

That had definitely hit.

Flicking.

What even was that?

What meaning had been extracted from that simple action anyone was capable of?

Warning bells rang loud in Kamijou’s mind.

''If you died, it was over.

''Death really and truly meant goodbye.

''Because Alice’s attacks were the one thing not even Good, Old Mary’s resurrection could cure.

“Aradiaaa!!”

“Don’t worry, fool. It looks like the two of them distributed the damage between them. But that ''would'' have caused her heart to burst if there hadn’t been two identical Aradias here.”

Kamijou knew now wasn’t the time to ask why that would have caused her heart to burst or what splitting that in half would mean.

He heard a dull impact and saw sparks.

After a short delay, he heard an explosion as a shockwave crashed into the distorted scene.

Something again intersected between Anna and Alice.

In the deadly battle against Alice, the value of each second was far greater than normal. Death was the end. Truly the end. The clock was always ticking in real time and everyone was moving at once.

He could not forget the fundamental rules revealed here.

“But that isn’t reason enough to relax. Splitting the damage in half means receiving the same attack twice will mean the end for both Aradias.”

“…”

So Aradia couldn’t do it.

Mut Thebes could grow endlessly by absorbing weapon shadows and Good, Old Mary could create any tool or chemical with her alchemy, including ones with great destructive power, but Kamijou couldn’t picture either of them stopping Alice.

The Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress spell could replace all pleasure with equal amounts of pain, regardless of the target’s physical toughness and endurance. That attack had made even Christian Rosencreutz grimace, but would it work here? Was this version of Alice in a mental state where she experienced that sort of human emotion?

Then would he give up?

He needed to give himself some credit for immediately answering that with a “hell no”.

He had a reason for saying that.

He needed to thank his past ordeals for preparing him for this.

“There is little meaning in analyzing each and every thing she does,” said Anna.

She raised her golden cross staff as if judging the distance between herself and Alice.

“We need to start with tearing down the idea that we can never defeat Alice. And it isn’t the Transcendents and their obvious strength that can do that. It needs to be the more unorthodox fighters like me or you who do that, fool!!”

The grown woman vanished.

The golden cross staff and the primitive and violent jabbing claws crashed together head-on.

Anna had reacted.

She was capable of it.

When the Executioner attempted to make his own attack from the side, Anna bisected him straight down the middle with only a glare. The ruby decorating her staff shined a moment later. Its role complete, a clump of compressed air burst, buffeting Kamijou’s hair and cheeks as a violent wind.

The monsters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland could actually die.

There were no absolutes in this world.

Kamijou realized it had been that way from the beginning. Alice had always been so absolute, but when Anna Sprengel showed up, the little villain toyed with the situation, laid traps, took control, and otherwise overshadowed Alice.

While Anna hadn’t managed any clean hits, being able to lock weapons with Alice was unusual in and of itself.

Anna and Alice.

Two irregular Transcendents.

Just like Alice Anotherbible brought everything to her side, including probability and insight, Anna Sprengel was manipulating some unseen factor in real time.

“Accept me, H.T. Trismegistus!! You regular Transcendents are based on Alice, so you can never harm her. But if you swap out foundations, you can bypass Alice’s precedence over you. Like comparing heights of the Tower of Babel and the World Tree Yggdrasil!!”

“I am in your debt.”

“I’m only doing this to make that fool smile. And you want Alice to smile in the same way, right? Then hurry!!”

An invisible change came over the air. A weight vanished.

New possibility had presented itself. If Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents also swapped out their connection, they could possibly overturn Alice’s absoluteness.

The young butler once more held his right hand to the staff at his hip in an iaido pose.

The meaning of his sword strikes had changed.

But he was a moment too slow.

With a dull thud, the equilibrium was broken. Anna’s small body took a powerful blow.

Even though they were supposedly equal.

With a single hand, Alice casually grabbed the beaten-up Gryphon to use it as a weapon.

As if it were a giant club.

Grabbing.

The act of denying an object its own will and applying her own will to it by unilaterally wielding it for its offensive or defensive functionality.

Anna could compete with Alice on her own, but that changed if Alice boosted her strength with something else.

That is, ''if Alice turned someone else into a weapon.

That absurdly powerful magic could boost her stats by forcibly equipping herself with something else: a sword, a shumai, a goddess – anything.

(Is that a superior version of Mut Thebes’s ability to absorb the shadow of any weapon!?)

“Gahh!?”

“Anna!!”

Alice made a further attack. The Gryphon extended her reach, so the little villain failed to dodge. She was pummeled hard enough to bend backwards.

Anna groaned and tried to raise her golden staff.

But Alice was again faster.

Alice was always a step ahead. To an unnatural degree.

She grabbed H.T. Trismegistus’s wrist as he tried to attack her from the side. She turned him into a weapon, equipped that weapon, and swung it artlessly to the side.

A direct hit.

A dull impact rang loud.

In this case, taking Anna’s side had been a mistake.

Or maybe he had been thwarted by Alice’s ''tailwind''.

That magic stole power from external sources. If H.T. Trismegistus had remained no more than one of Alice’s toys, he couldn’t have provided more power on top of her own.

The little villain struggled to breathe and a red clump splattered from the corner of her mouth.

The equilibrium was broken.

Despite dropping her golden cross staff, Anna clenched her teeth and stepped forward.

Another impact sounded.

But not from more of Alice’s unreasonable violence.

It didn’t end there.

This time it came from Anna.

Anna and Alice crashed foreheads together.

“You wanted recognition, didn’t you?”

With their foreheads pressed together, Anna spoke from extreme close range.

“You wanted forgiveness, didn’t you? And you wanted love!! Just like me!!! Then you shouldn’t give up. He didn’t care that I’m a villain. I’m here now because he didn’t hesitate to run away with me back then. As long as that fool continues to reach out his hand, don’t just assume all light has vanished from this world!!!”

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW6.png|thumb]]

Alice said nothing.

But a subtle tremor did run through the cheek of her bestial expression.

Kamijou thought that came from something other than her intense emotion.

Then Alice made her next move.

Smelling.

She sniffed out her target’s precise location. ''Which meant her next move was guaranteed to hit, no matter how poorly aimed it was.

Once again, Alice swung H.T. Trismegistus around with a single hand and struck Anna’s little body with her boosted attack. The force of the blow caused the gloomy young butler to slip from Alice’s grasp. No, his right wrist shattered like pottery. Only his hand remained in the grown woman’s hand.

This wasn’t like a home run in baseball or a strike in bowling.

The two of them were knocked away with a strange sound.

Neither one cried out.

Kamijou didn’t even want to think about how much damage that had done to Anna.

While collapsed in a daze, H.T. Trismegistus simply stared up at Alice as she tossed his hand aside. The lack of blood only made the scene more bizarre.

“I…”

Something spilled from the young butler’s lips.

They were words.

That magician had believed common sense would lead anyone to think the same thing after seeing that girl with an unwanted power forced upon her. And the words left his mouth now.

“I wanted to place a roof over her head and protect her from the threats of the world…but I failed.”

Alice Anotherbible wasn’t listening.

The fully-grown blonde woman tilted her head and spun around.

“''Teacher''.”

Toward Kamijou Touma.

As if he was all she could see.

He understood that Alice wasn’t in a normal state of mind.

She hadn’t been when a magician had altered her body, she hadn’t been when she was surrounded and protected by the Bridge Builders Cabal, she hadn’t been when Anna had given her a deep interest in Kamijou Touma, and she hadn’t been when Kamijou’s rejection had left her dazed.

She hadn’t been for so very long.

He understood that.

But that was not a statement she should have ignored.

She had become animalistic and irrational, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t talk. She had just spoken to Kamijou. But she had still chosen to brush off the young butler.

He didn’t interest her, so she wouldn’t speak to him.

Was that the only reason she didn’t react?

(Not yet.)

Don’t lose hope.

Don’t give up on Alice.

Choose to not let her madness grow.

If you began using personal misfortune as an excuse, that was the end for you. In a way, Kamijou understood that better than anyone.

The world was cruel, so he had seen plenty of people unfairly and unreasonably devastated by it.

But Kamijou hadn’t faltered with those people.

He had fought them.

“I was unlucky” was a convenient phrase applicable to most anything, but he knew relying it and overusing it would prevent you from ever finding the way out of the darkness and would meaninglessly force you into a life of misfortune. He knew in his bones that irresponsibly relying on your misfortune would mean rotting away in that filthy dead end forever.

So.

He would teach Alice the proper way to live with unreasonable misfortune.

“You can still fight, can’t you, teacher?”

“I can.”

Kamijou readied his one and only weapon. He clenched his fist.

Hard.

“But that doesn’t matter so the girl will overturn her prophecy because she will make sure to do something to help you and then make up with you and fight with you and be happy so she doesn’t believe what that incomplete library says because there must be a way to help you out there and she refuses to fail because the girl is Anotherbible so we can make up.”

“Sure!! But I hope you don’t think saying that will stop me, Alice!!”

===Part 3===

He couldn’t rely on Anna Sprengel or H.T. Trismegistus anymore.

The other Transcendents were a far way off too.

The ordinary faculty room was everything.

It must have been cut off from the rest of the world long ago.

So it was one against one.

Kamijou Touma vs. Alice Anotherbible, or someone who had once been Alice Pleasance Liddell.

This had been about them from the beginning, so there was no better two to settle it.

So.

“Ooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

“Ooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

They clashed head on.

Alice roared like an animal and spread her arms wide.

Hugging.

An act of reliance on another and using your full body to acquire a sense of fulfillment from the outside world.

Of course, a hug from her here would have easily torn Kamijou’s body apart.

A dull sound indicated a direct hit.

From Kamijou. He felt the solid impact of landing a punch.

The sensation in his fist was enough to clear his mind.

In a way, this was to be expected when Alice went all in on attack, spreading her arms and coming straight toward him without even considering defense.

“Kh.”

Beads of sweat flew from the grown woman as she bent back and left her “hugging” pose. With the trunk of her body still collapsed, she clawed at the air with her fingers bent like hooks.

The boy dropped his body down.

After just barely dodging a deadly attack that sliced through the walls and pillars, he threw another punch that Alice blocked with her other hand. But unlike with her “walking” or “binding”, there was no special effect here.

Alice didn’t have time to extract and refine a miracle out of that action.

They clashed a few more times after that, but still Kamijou was not dead.

They both took a step back.

“Curioser and curioser.”

Alice tilted her head.

The fully-grown bondage woman moved with the mannerisms of a 10-year-old.

It was strange and bizarre.

Everything about her was.

“You’re the only one still standing, teacher, but you’re moving in ways you shouldn’t be able to on your own.”

“Of course I am.”

When Alice was taking evasive action by “crawling”, any and all attacks would pass through her.

H.T. Trismegistus had proven this for everyone to see by not hesitating to bisect the girl he so adored.

Alice could extract miracles much like the Pneuma-less Shell but without relying on any tools.

That knowledge came from Anna Sprengel.

However.

“So why don’t you just keep on ‘crawling’ while you attack? Then you could remain untouchable the entire time you send your unfair attacks our way.”

“…”

“Since you aren’t doing that, I can only assume you’re limited to using one miracle at a time. For example, your ‘crawling’ causes any attacks to pass right through you, but it also keeps you from laying a finger on us, so you can never actually end the fight that way, can you? Your ‘walking’ and ‘cursing’ are the same. ''Your miracles are isolated things – they can’t be combined or used in parallel''! Which means I’ve found your weakness, Alice Anotherbible. I don’t know how tough you are, but you can’t make yourself untouchable while you attack. The damage will reach you then!!”

So he would aim for a cross counter.

It wasn’t much, but that was the one and only way out of this battle against Alice Anotherbible.

Alice could use any and all miracles with nothing more than her own body, but she had the mannerisms of a child. She was extremely powerful, but her attacks were all made “on a whim” or “on reflex”, which made it easy to match her timing.

Kamijou hadn’t realized this on his own.

He never could have.

He wouldn’t let anyone say the defeated people’s feelings had been any weaker than anyone else’s.

If Alice could “grab” any object, phenomenon, or person and make it her weapon, then he was supported by the strength of the feelings that had led him to this point.

He couldn’t let this end in tears at this point. He wouldn’t leave anyone behind in the darkness. He would grab Alice’s hand and drag her out of there.

Because that was the power of reality, something not even Imagine Breaker could eliminate.

“What does it matter if they’re not standing here with me? Anna, Trismegistus, and the others showed me the way. They risked their lives to test your abilities and I never would have made it this far without everything they learned. Don’t you get it? They’re still here fighting alongside me.”

“Then the girl will heal herself.”

That was all Alice said.

She was so powerful she had never had a chance to experience defeat and so didn’t worry too much about who won an individual battle. She didn’t fear the possibility of being beaten and dying.

If she did ultimately bury the enemy who stood in her way, it was no skin off her nose if she died once or twice first.

Because…

“Have you forgotten, teacher? The girl already had her head crushed by someone calling himself Rosencreutz. And yet here she is as good as new. So it doesn’t matter to the girl even if you do manage to kill her in exchange for severe damage on your part. ''The girl just has to resurrect herself a billion or even a trillion times if necessary and wait for you to finally wear yourself out''.”

“''But you can’t do anything else while you’re focused on healing yourself, can you''?”

He also had an immediate response.

This wasn’t enough to break him.

Kamijou did not fear that the wishes and feelings left with him would amount to nothing and that all his efforts would be negated in an instant.

She could heal herself?

It would all be for nothing?

So what?

Surprisingly, it was Alice who spoke next.

The fully-grown woman spoke with an oddly calm and quiet voice, like a pot on the verge of boiling.

“What do you think you can accomplish?”

“What, out of miracles already? Why not search through my mind yourself, Alice?”

Alice’s prophecy was accurate.

Kamijou Touma would die.

He had accepted that.

And he had decided he would save this girl using the power he gained in exchange.

So he took the first step forward.

They clashed.

===Part 4===

In a merciless head-on assault, Alice’s fist compressed the air and tore through the existing faculty room while the path of her five claws sliced through the entire building and space itself.

Dodging was meaningless against this.

If she made a single roundhouse kick, it would probably become an AoE attack that struck everything around her. When her attack was like a massive gale sweeping right to left, there was no way to avoid it just by moving your body out of the way.

So it hit.

(Gah…)

Kamijou’s body didn’t just strain.

His body produced dull cracking and popping noises he had never heard before.

He didn’t have time to assess what exactly had broken.

The dulling of his sense of pain was actually a blessing in this case.

Yes.

The difference between fortune and misfortune was ultimately a matter of viewpoint and usage.

He bit his lip so a bloody flavor wouldn’t spill from his mouth and he swung his fist again.

He wanted a cross counter.

But if all he wanted was to knock Alice down to stop her, he didn’t actually need to skillfully evade every attack launched by that fully-grown monster.

He was lucky if he could even get an attack in for each of hers.

“Rahh!!!” he shouted, completing the swing of his fist.

He placed his body weight behind it.

Even if she was up against a being known as a god or a demon, or a human who had trained themselves up to the point that everyone would see them as such a thing, this version of Alice would likely crush them underfoot without them even realizing they had been killed.

But that didn’t matter.

Kamijou did not stop.

No amount of willpower would let him avoid taking hits here. And each time one of Alice’s attacks hit him, critical sounds of destruction came from within his body. Red beads of blood swam through the air and even ordinary pain vanished behind a wave of scorching heat.

But none of that was any reason for Kamijou to falter as he clenched his teeth and fist.

He was up against an extremely deadly power.

But what did that matter when he was going to die anyway?

The prophecy had been made quite a while ago. Nothing he could do would change the fact that he was going to die. Since he didn’t have time to spend on that issue, he was approaching death with each tick of the clock. His fate was the same no matter who won this fight.

That was enough to know that his own life was a secondary concern here.

''Something else mattered more.

Namely, the girl right in front of him. The girl who was feared but also revered by so many. No one was interested in anything other than treating her like a monster, she had forgotten the proper way to lose, and she believed she could make others happy as long as she wielded her great power. And as a result, that lonely girl would lose everything she thought she had.

She was his top priority.

And this wasn’t limited to him.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents had to know what it meant to leave the Bridge Builders Cabal and oppose Alice. H.T. Trismegistus had stayed by Alice’s side to serve her to the end, but he had also chosen to turn his blade against her when necessary. And Anna Sprengel who viewed Alice as though she was her past self.

None of them were fighting because they could win.

Only the people who had chosen the option least likely to ensure their survival had stuck with Kamijou. And the Transcendents understood just how much of a threat Alice was, so it must have been a much harder decision for them than for ignorant Kamijou.

Even so…

He heard yet another dull impact.

Which meant he had again failed to avoid an attack.

His movements slowed with each consecutive hit. His body felt so heavy. But this was far better than having his body explode, leaving nothing but a stain on the floor.

Kamijou knew he didn’t have luck to thank for this.

Was Alice holding back?

He smiled a little.

How happy it would make him if that were it.

Their fists collided.

Sound vanished for a brief moment.

Creating a blank.

Perhaps some vital lines had been severed inside his body.

His fist felt hot. It may have already broken.

The world seemed to tilt around him.

But he still gathered strength in his legs to keep himself from falling.

Alice’s legs were shaking too. Her shoulders were heaving as she breathed and one eye was unnaturally closed. The eyelid may have been cut.

But she was still on her feet.

This wasn’t about right or wrong and it wasn’t about like or dislike.

Both of them simply refused to back down. No matter what.

So it wouldn’t end. Kamijou refused to die before he was through. He still held his ticket to change destiny.

It would be such a waste if he collapsed before he could use it.

He would stop her.

And save her.

Kamijou Touma forced his pain-numbed body to move and clenched his fist once more.

Another attack came.

Realizing where Alice was aiming, he immediately balled up to protect himself.

To protect his right arm.

If his arm was torn off, ''that thing'' would emerge. He had proven that when he severed the arm himself to summon it against Rosencreutz.

That would work if he was ''only'' interested in defeating her.

''That thing'' may have been the only remaining mystery in this world that rivaled Alice.

But Kamijou had made a decision back then.

He had made up his mind.

He would never use ''that thing'' again. Never against another person. Plus, a little thing like death wouldn’t be enough to stop Alice!!

He took the full brunt of the attack as payment.

He couldn’t see it, but he was pretty sure his back had split open.

He finally heard a rupturing sound within his own body.

It reminded him a lot of a water balloon.

He coughed up blood. Enough to feel like a solid clump.

That didn’t matter.

He refused to collapse.

He hadn’t saved Alice yet. So he would keep fighting until he had. No matter what anyone said – no matter what analysis had been made by the magician smart enough for Aleister to rely on and Anna to fear – whoever remained standing in the end was the winner.

So.

Kamijou ignored the red spilling from between his pursed lips and clenched his broken fist even tighter. He may have been further breaking his bones with his own strength, but he didn’t care in the slightest.

He used his knees to push Alice back a bit while feeling her warmth.

He secured the optimal position while right up in front of her.

Surprise colored her face.

It was the look of a child refused a hug.

He smiled a little.

Because he would never do that.

He swung his fist with all his might.

There was just one sound.

Alice’s fist finally swished through empty air while Kamijou’s found a solid cheekbone.

The impact rang dully out.

The blow actually broke his elbow and shoulder.

Nevertheless, he kept his full weight on his broken fist to the end.

He brought her down.

===Part 5===

“…”

Kamijou Touma was standing.

He had remained on his feet to the end.

Something appeared to have torn through his arm, but he felt no actual pain.

He saw white bone.

The skin and flesh had come away more easily than with chicken on the bone.

Maybe he was hallucinating it.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

He didn’t let it bother him. His sense of pain melted away within the growing heat and he lost all interest in his own injuries. To be blunt, they didn’t matter.

He took a step forward.

“Tea…cher?”

Alice Anotherbible was still down where she had fallen on her rear.

She was trembling.

She may have seen a bit of what she had done. It had come into focus for her. Who could say when it would all “cloud over” once more, but for this moment at least, her vision was clear.

She sounded more than a little dazed. The fully-grown woman spoke with unstable confusion in her voice.

Like she had finally caught on.

“It’s alright.”

Kamijou smiled.

The smile came to him naturally.

“You did enough to deserve that. But now we’re even. Aren’t we, Alice?”

“No…”

The fully-grown woman shook her head.

Like a small child.

Something floated in the air. The teacups and saucers had been flying around weightlessly, but now they vanished into thin air like fading sparks. Everything around them distorted as the illusion inside the girl crumbled away.

Alice’s dream was ending.

Kamijou could sense reality pushing its way in.

It wouldn’t be long now.

He had not put together any kind of response to the prophecy from that absolute being.

But he had accomplished a more important task.

He had saved her.

So.

It was time to pay the price.

“…”

Had it taken a long time, or a short one?

Reality had raised the white flag almost immediately, so maybe this hadn’t been a path that could be measured with time.

So many events had happened in such a condensed time period.

December 24.

In the middle of the Christmas season, R&C Occultics had suddenly risen to prominence and revealed the hidden existence of magic online.

And CEO Anna Sprengel had appeared in Academy City.

She had mouth-to-mouth delivered the body-hijacking St. Germain microbe to Kamijou, infecting him.

December 25.

Anna Sprengel had stood on center stage.

Kamijou had attempted to communicate with the St. Germain microbe infecting his body and had fought Anna using magic despite the side-effect it had on his body.

Kamijou had just barely managed to defeat Anna, but to protect Kamijou’s life, St. Germain had negated himself with Imagine Breaker. This made it a bitter event for Kamijou.

December 25.

Another incident occurred in Academy City that same day.

Defeated Anna was left in Anti-Skill’s custody, but the problem hadn’t ended there. A probability-manipulating spiritual item called the Coin of Nicholas had been spread around Academy City. The new Board Chairman’s plan to quietly correct the city’s darkness was hijacked and Anna easily left her cell.

Kamijou was barely involved in this incident.

But it was very significant that he encountered Alice Anotherbible after that incident full of so much death and defeat.

December 26.

The threat of R&C Occultics was not limited to Academy City. Los Angeles was suddenly engulfed in yellow sand and its tens of millions of residents disappeared. While pursuing this, it was revealed that Anna had caused such a large-scale incident just to acquire a skilled engineer.

At first glance, it looked like an arrogant act that ignored the costs and risks.

But thinking back, Anna had already been mentioning her “king” at this point.

December 29.

But the true center of the world’s problems was not Anna Sprengel.

Anna readily threw out her global IT company to join the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Alice Anotherbible, the mysterious girl at the top of that cabal, caused plenty of trouble for Kamijou in the darkness of Academy City.

This was the true starting point.

Alice had warned him thrice.

She told him he would die if the altered branch was returned to normal.

December 31.

In Shibuya, Kamijou began working to correct his extreme lack of funds. There he found the Bologna Succubus and Aradia waiting for him. Those magicians were known as Transcendents and possessed powers on another dimension entirely. A clash between just those two produced enough overflowing charisma to engulf the entirety of Shibuya in rioters.

January 1.

A building calling itself a consulate for the Bridge Builders Cabal suddenly appeared in District 12, which had a focus on mythology and religion. The greater focus on the idea of Transcendents further showed how unique Alice was.

Alice wanted to provide deadly punishment for H.T. Trismegistus and the other Transcendents who threatened Kamijou’s life, but Kamijou himself intervened, driving a decisive wedge between the two.

January 3.

Kamijou happened to rescue Anna Sprengel after she was captured by Aleister and fled around Academy City with Aradia, who they had happened across. They were pursued by Mut Thebes, a Transcendent in charge of punishment.

This was when Kamijou first heard Anna clearly talk about her “king”.

She wanted someone who would restrain her wickedness and protect her.

But she never had a chance to meet this person. She was doomed to die after being hit by the Shrink Drink, a special spear that borrowed a portion of Alice’s power.

Alice was the only one who could save Anna, but at the same time, the Bridge Builders Cabal was working to bring back a dead magician: CRC, Christian Rosencreutz. But when he was reborn, he was not the man seen in the legends. He obliterated the Bridge Builders Cabal just to stave off boredom and Alice Anotherbible was killed.

January 5.

The reborn Christian Rosencreutz began fighting his boredom.

Kamijou faced that ultimate threat to protect Anna who was on the verge of death in the hospital. As the ring of defenders grew, ultimately Academy City as a whole was working to stop CRC from taking that life.

Once it was all over, Alice got up like nothing had happened to her.

CRC was not the greatest monster.

And today.

It had been a long time.

Yes, a very long time.

Unbelievably long.

This wasn’t about the literal time it had taken.

Far too much had happened over winter break. Kamijou had been exposed to multiple new forms of threat and been badly beaten, but that had built up his unseen heart and soul enough to make it this far.

And.

He had dragged his heavy body far enough to stand before Alice Anotherbible.

He had stood right in front of her.

He could say that for certain.

Everything that had happened had been leading up to this moment.

He had arrived.

All the past storms seemed like a fantasy now.

It hadn’t been pretty and he had been badly delayed, but he had made it.

On his own two feet.

“I’m here, Alice.”

He barely got his voice out.

With all the blood clogging up his throat, he wasn’t sure if his voice was even audible.

“I made it here.”

“You can’t defeat the girl, teacher. If everything had gone as planned and the girl had used her full power, you might have been spared this death ''coming from the outside''.”

Alice could say what she liked, but the winner made the decisions.

That’s what he had been fighting for.

So he could tell her it would be alright.

The girl might not get what she wanted.

If Kamijou died here, Alice’s wish to make up with him would go forever unfulfilled. She had become a world-destroying storm to make that happen, but Kamijou himself had put a stop to it.

But.

He just hadn’t been able to leave her all alone and howling.

“…”

His limit had arrived.

He would die today.

But Alice still had her life. She still had plenty of happy paths left for her. She could meet so many people and surround herself with so many smiles she forgot all about today.

Surely he was allowed to wish for that.

She had been abducted, remade, worshipped, and rejected.

She had appeared free, but she had always been bound by something unseen. She had always been underneath someone’s foot. And no matter how powerful she was, she had ultimately been unable to change that herself.

So on the verge of death, surely Kamijou was allowed to imagine a world where she was happy enough to make up for all that with interest.

Allowed by who?

Not that bastard god.

Kamijou Touma would allow himself that happy wishful thinking.

He would celebrate this ending.

Slowly, fully-grown Alice once more got up from the floor. She stood up.

As if to cling to him.

“You will die if you move any more, teacher. You will die and leave nothing behind.”

“So...what?”

The pointy-haired boy dragged his body along and struggled to support himself.

He faced Alice head on.

The girl seemed unable to move beyond her incessant trembling. She was extraordinarily powerful. She had easily killed the reborn Christian Rosencreutz, who not even all the regular Transcendents working together had been a match for, but she was rendered motionless at the sight of this ordinary high school boy.

It wasn’t a physical matter.

But just this once, Kamijou Touma had defeated Alice Anotherbible.

He was an unfortunate person.

He had lost his memories, been placed in mortal peril more times than he could count, and actually died on occasion. Not even being killed had been enough to end it. There probably wasn’t any real reason why. He just so happened to be there, so he was dragged into it. His life was a series of those coincidences.

It hadn’t started here.

And it had probably happened plenty of times he couldn’t remember.

But.

Even so.

“I…”

He felt the grasping hand of death at the center of his chest.

He didn’t need to hold his hand to his chest to know his heart wanted to rest.

Wounds caused by Alice Anotherbible could not be healed with Good, Old Mary’s resurrection.

The tearing sound inside him was continuing.

Only he could hear it. Were those blood vessels tearing? Or maybe muscles?

It didn’t matter.

Some major arteries and even his heart had probably already ruptured.

But there was something he still had to say.

“…I…”

Maybe it was the blood loss, but the sweat on his brow was unusually cold. His tongue and cheeks were numb.

He had trouble speaking.

He prayed that he would get the words out. Failing to say this before the end would just be too cruel.

But what was he praying to?

Not to god, that was for sure. He knew better than to expect anything from that jerk.

So he chose to pray to himself. To the human being he was. Only he could change the world with his will. He would endure until the end. He just had to think back on the path he had taken and compare this to all that pain and suffering.

A little thing like death was nothing.

If he clenched his teeth, he could keep on moving for a little while longer.

He had a lesson for that girl.

If she understood this, she would be alright.

Alice Anotherbible could probably do anything.

But there were no absolutes for any human.

So he had to tell her.

No matter how extraordinary she might be, if she acted thoughtlessly and carelessly long enough, she would pay a painful price eventually.

And if she took it too far, that price could even be the life of someone she cared deeply for.

Alice could protect herself from anything. Even if she died, she could resurrect herself right away. She was so powerful it was fundamentally wrong to even think about defeating her. But could she protect other people?

Violence took important things from yourself and others.

She could fight and win, but would that even matter?

Had Kamijou gained anything at all when he released the mysterious dragon from his severed right arm and defeated Rosencreutz with it?

Violence was not a valid solution.

He had forever lost a future where he and CRC could smile together.

He had done it himself.

By giving up.

That wasn’t a solution.

He had realized that afterwards.

And he had stopped himself from making that mistake again.

“I don’t…”

So.

If Alice was greater than Rosencreutz – if her power was truly extraordinary – she had to think even deeper about strength and power.

Kamijou was just an ordinary high school boy. He wasn’t arrogant enough to think he was in any position to teach anyone anything. But if Alice realized this for herself, she could stop herself. She could learn to think about ''compromising with'' the wide world around her instead of focusing only on what she wanted.

That was Kamijou’s battle.

There was no avoiding death for him, so that was his one and only win condition.

So he made sure to keep speaking to the end.

Because he had to accomplish that.

He held the fully-grown woman’s face between his bloody hands.

He looked Alice straight in the eye.

And the ordinary high school boy got the words out.

''He made it in time.

“I don’t want to see anyone suffering from even more misfortune than me!! You got a problem with that!?”

From the start, they had both known how this would end.

There had been no changing it.

Alice fell back onto her rear. As if she were backing away from a truth she didn’t want to accept.

She had blood on her cheeks.

The faint red stains left by the boy’s fingers.

What little warmth was left in that blood was fading fast.

“Tea…cher?”

Her voice was scratchy.

It was a definite physical voice.

The voice of her original young form.

But no one answered her fearful, trembling question.

The boy had not fallen.

Whoever remained standing in the end was the winner. So he had refused to fall until he had saved Alice. This proved his resolve more than anything.

===Part 6===

Kamijou Touma was still standing.

He was no longer moving.

His brain, his heart, and everything that provided life had fully ceased functioning.

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW7.png|thumb]]

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter4

2024-09-26T10:42:58Z

Entei08: grammar

==Chapter 4: The Unfortunate Boy’s Focus – Over_the_River.==

===Part 1===

H.T. Trismegistus looked at everything before him.

He had known the cause.

Which was why he had thought Alice would go back to normal if he killed Kamijou Touma.

He had thought he needed to punish Anna for messing with Alice.

He had always been on that small girl’s side.

Because he had thought ''common sense said'' it would be cruel to throw such a small girl out into the world alone. In that case, her tremendous power would not be an advantage. It would only be an omen of danger. She would be like a young child who inherited a vast fortune. She would be the perfect bait for all the scum lurking in the shadows. He had decided he should protect her and look after her. It wasn’t about logic. He thought anyone would decide the same thing after seeing her, which meant it was common sense. He had believed in the goodness of the world at large.

But in that case…

“Oooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

What was this?

Was this what he had wanted to see?

Wind blew wildly through the library, but this was no meteorological phenomenon. Great currents of a nonphysical power created ''tailwinds'' and ''headwinds'' in rapid succession.

As a regular Transcendent who had used Alice as an example to get where he was, he could not rescue the girl who was his starting point.

Attempting it was as meaningless as offering a hand to help her to her feet while also pinning her down below his foot. Pulling on her hand like that would only tear her arm off.

Thus.

CRC. Christian Rosencreutz.

He had thought the only way to save that lonely girl was with the help of a power not derived from Alice and that common sense told him was greater than hers.

That was the only option.

He couldn’t think up anything else.

But when the holy man was reborn, he was nothing like the common legends and he hadn’t been interested in saving the world, ''including Alice''.

Alice had smiled like normal after having her head crushed, but it had felt somehow off.

They had reached their limit.

Alice Anotherbible had.

The Bridge Builders Cabal, who wished to save the world but couldn’t make the attempt on their own, had.

The Transcendents, who had erased their own opinions and thrown out their own identities, had.

They all had.

They had made the wrong choice. H.T. Trismegistus had passed that fatal branch and started down a path to hell. He had finally realized that. There was no undoing what he had done, so what could he do to fight it now?

There was no optimal answer.

So what kind of compromise could he reach?

“…”

He had made a fatally mistaken decision, but H.T. Trismegistus was still a Transcendent. He dressed up in the appearance and abilities of the god he had chosen, he chose his salvation condition, and then he saved everyone that applied to. So even in this situation, he directed his question not to himself but to the thing that determined all his actions.

In other words, he asked it of the entire world.

What did common sense say?

Was it really right to ignore a crying girl?

===Part 2===

They were in a library filled with light.

Not a grand temple or castle. It was part of a certain boy’s school, which Alice Anotherbible had said she wanted to see. That was the reason she had chosen this as the final location.

There was no further significance there.

Alice had in fact offered up her entire being, including her life, there.

What had that small girl really wanted?

This had nothing to do with the fate of Academy City or the madness spreading across the world.

Kamijou had to sense what was deep inside Alice.

He quietly clenched his teeth.

Strongly.

The time had come to directly face that cornered girl’s feelings.

“Touma-”

“Don’t bother trying to analyze this with your 103,001 grimoires,” roared Kamijou, still facing Alice.

He intentionally ignited his heart.

“I know what I have to do regardless: punch Alice to bring her back to her senses!! Being the strongest doesn’t mean she has to carry it all on her own. I refuse to let her be alone for even a second longer!!”

Kamijou Touma.

Anna Sprengel. H.T. Trismegistus.

Those three faced the girl together. They glared at her without fleeing. Their positions, plans, and abilities were completely different, but they were all working toward a single goal here.

''Don’t forget.

''And if you have forgotten, we’ll show you.

“Don’t falter.”

''Alice Anotherbible.

''You aren’t alone.

''Your loneliness is no more than an illusion.

''There are still plenty of people out there who want to save you!!

“Let’s do thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis!!!”

Kamijou shouted to shake off the fear and raced forward. With his right fist still clenched tight.

Well before he made it in punching range, he heard a hard crunching sound.

It came from Alice.

No, down at her feet.

He knew better than to ask why or for what purpose.

Alice was already doing something.

Whatever this was, that irregular Transcendent had chosen to use her own body to act.

And she chose to attack.

“Fool!!”

Little Anna kicked him in the back of the knee from the side.

As soon as his view dropped straight down, something tore diagonally upwards through the air.

All sound vanished.

Five clawmarks were torn diagonally through the library wall directly behind Kamijou. Same for the many bookcases in between. Only after the fact did he realize the same would have happened to him if his head hadn’t lowered by a few dozen centimeters.

Claws.

Scratches.

That primitive attack had been amplified to the extreme.

“''If you die, it’s over.'' I know it’s obvious, but you can’t forget that absolute rule!! Good, Old Mary’s resurrection does not work against fatal wounds caused by Alice herself. If you really want to save her, then you can’t expect the world to do you any favors. You can only reach out your own hand to help her!!”

If the expert named Anna Kingsford were here, she would have easily seen through it.

The only one here who reached that level understanding was the Grimoire Library with access to 103,001 original grimoires.

“Was that magic?” asked Index in disbelief. While reaching out a hand to help Kamijou back to his feet. “Since people’s interior worlds are linked to the physical world outside them, anything you can do with your body can be used to reach a mystical power that changes the entire world. I get that, but still.”

“All those fancy gestures and ceremonies are only meant to purify and cleanse your will,” said Othinus.

Kamijou took this time to gently push the little god into Index’s hands.

Everything about Alice was the ultimate enigma, so he wanted to ensure the survival of anyone who could help explain it all. And he didn’t think he could protect Othinus if she was with him.

“But Alice Anotherbible has had her baseline purity ''forcibly increased'', so each and every one of her actions is pure without going through that process.”

“We should consider ourselves fortunate,” said H.T. Trismegistus.

That was the gloomy young butler’s assessment.

Because…

“We are in fact incredibly fortunate that Alice cannot ''kill her enemies with a thought or set the world in motion to kill her enemies if she wills it.'' This tells us she must take a physical action to trigger her attacks. Common sense says we are lucky indeed.”

But that also meant this wasn’t limited to her scratching claws.

The girl who had become a fully-grown woman faced Kamijou while tilting diagonally.

She took a step.

Just one.

“Touma, she’s coming!!”

“!!!???”

He understood that, but he couldn’t restrain his reflexes as a living being. Crossing his arms in front of his face was a definite mistake.

The sweet scent of tea filled the boy’s nose. Something was overpowering the library’s old paper smell.

Alice Anotherbible already stood behind Kamijou.

''Walking

''In other words, she took action to move to her desired location.

She had not formed a special shape with her fingers, nor had she stepped in a complex pattern.

She had taken the same action anyone could.

She was blessed with a special result without having to focus on it.

The meaning extracted from her ordinary actions was just too pure!?

“Ali-!?”

She was already right there.

Kamijou spun around and swung his right hand back in something like a backhand blow.

But it found only air.

The grown woman pressed her four limbs down against the floor like an animal and lowered her head as far as it would go.

Crawling.

She had moved to his blind spot and then his last-second counterattack had missed. What this meant squeezed at his heart. He might as well have offered her the perfect chance to attack him.

The young butler did not hesitate to move.

Light flashed from his right hand as the blade hidden in his cane turned to light and sliced through the floor. The strange slash had an effect well beyond the length of the sword. And it struck right were crawling Alice’s lowered head was. It definitely hit. Except the metal blade passed right through her. Like she was intangible.

A specific meaning had been extracted from her ordinary action: evasion.

“It doesn’t matter if you hit her or not!?” hatefully spat Othinus.

As long as the adult woman moved to dodge, no external damage could affect her. Even if she took a direct hit from a nuclear missile. Alice showed no interest in H.T. Trismegistus even with his attempted decapitation of her. Still crawling, she raised her head and casually extended her hand toward Kamijou.

“''I was right.''”

Apparently the young butler’s attack had been to check something.

He had ended up cutting through the floor below Alice instead of her, so it fell.

That had been his intent from the beginning.

He had intentionally destroyed the floor so he could gather more information and survive.

Kamijou would die today.

''But he didn’t care about that anymore.

“Hey, wait, human!”

“(Keep Othinus with you, Index!)”

Just as he passed that message on with a look, the entire floor collapsed.

His feet were freed from gravity and his vision slid straight down. Along with the heavy bookcases held in place with quake-resistant screws.

“Gah!?”

Kamijou, Anna, and Trismegistus himself were caught up in it too, successfully distancing them from Alice’s hand.

They just barely escaped alive.

Instead of an ordinary classroom, they found themselves in a large space that must have been lined with steel office desks. Or the remains of it, anyway. The first term in the new school had yet to begin, but the desks already had some personal items on them. Was this the faculty room?

Only Alice wasn’t affected.

The grown woman’s long blonde hair swayed as she looked down at them from the upper floor. The floor only remained in the corners of the room and Alice alone stood there.

Like a wounded animal bleeding and furious while trapped by a fishing hook or some plastic tape that a human had thoughtlessly discarded.

Like a lonely animal.

One that’s threats and howls echoed with melancholy.

''This isn’t over,'' thought Kamijou as he forced his aching body back onto its feet. No matter how battered his body was – even if he was in such a bad state it would make a doctor scream in horror – he was still alive. For now, at least.

The power balance of Transcendents and whatnot no longer mattered. Just a person was good enough. As long as he still lived, even the puniest human had the right to change the course of the battle with his own conscious decisions.

And the extraordinary strongest being was only looking at him.

That much was a relief, at least.

(Index and Othinus are probably up there. And unlike Alice, they were by the door, so they can escape at any time. They don’t need to stay on the dangerous frontline. As long as I can call them, they can still provide information support!)

“She uses a variation on this, doesn’t she?”

Kamijou heard a dull “thud!!” and turned to see a 2m metal orb next to Anna. That was the Pneuma-less Shell, a spiritual item that produced tools from civilizations the world over and extracted the world’s oldest causes of death from them.

“But in Alice’s case, she doesn’t even rely on a tool. She draws out the meaning contained in the actions she takes and unleashes them as an attack. It’s a type of magic and also a type of miracle. She takes the ridiculous-sounding legends of holy men and woman producing miracles empty-handed and develops a logical way of actually doing it. Or that’s the sense I get from it, anyway.”

“…”

“Supposedly she was created when some Teacher of Crowley went a step too far and modified Alice Pleasance Liddell, so maybe if you follow the path back from Magick to Golden magic and then Rosicrucian magic, you can see the essence of my spells in what she does.”

On the floor above, Alice ignored their conversation and moved.

She tapped her heel down.

Creating a vibration.

It didn’t matter that they were on separate floors.

Kamijou and the others went stiff. They were pinned in place.

Stomping.

It was a juvenile act of resistance and intimidation. A challenge and attempted reversal against someone who was clearly your superior. It was a threat meant to overpower adult logic with childish instinct and a primitive gamble that all humans attempted at some point.

It worked.

The adult Alice jumped down in the single second the world was frozen.

She aimed to land on Kamijou. On the top of his head.

A dull sound followed.

Alice again knocked something sharply to the ground.

That broke the spell and Kamijou quickly leaped toward Anna and rolled along the floor.

Alice’s heel dropped like a shooting star and smashed deep into the floor.

Little Anna smirked in Kamijou’s arms while they lay in a jumble on the floor.

As if she were bragging to Alice that, no matter how powerful Alice was, it was Anna the boy had done this for.

“Now, did you switch over to 1.5x speed because you thought it was just a boring exposition scene? The Pneuma-less Shell is not a demonstration-only show item. It is a spiritual item that randomly produces a cause of death and not even I can fully control what it does!!”

She held a staff.

The strange staff looked like a giant golden cross decorated with a red ruby rose.

“You should thank my excellent luck of the draw, fool. The gold cross and ruby rose – the world’s oldest ''human-made'' miracle of the rose is the destruction of the origin. It brings death through disillusionment. It supposedly has ancient origins, but it was first depicted in the middle ages and rediscovered in more recent times. It contains all the violence found in the magic of extreme growth and maturity!!”

Miss Sprengel raised the staff in her little hands.

That was all.

There was no fancy incantation or complex magic circle. Flames simply appeared in the empty air and were released from the staff. They shot toward Alice with a liquid motion. These were not ordinary flames. They were magic flames that scorched and burned away space itself regardless of the physical material, like an old photograph being burned from behind.

Alice grabbed her long hair as a single mass.

And she swung her head around.

In a move straight out of kabuki, the thick bundle of hair drew a large circle in the air, which narrowed down as soon as the crimson flames passed through it.

The orange flames stopped in midair.

Binding.

In other words, stopping all movement of a target. And separating the target out from all possible interference.

“Tch!!”

The Pneuma-less Shell was Anna’s spiritual item, but what weapon she acquired was a matter of chance. She wouldn’t receive the same weapon if she tried again.

But that brief moment of regret was a mistake.

Alice tugged on her hair binding the flames, causing little Anna to pitch forward and lose her balance.

At that same moment, the grown woman took a step forward. They had seen what this did already. Whatever the distance, Alice would have already arrived at her destination.

Which meant right in front of Kamijou.

For an instant, he lost all depth perception. Alice’s grown chest suddenly blocked his view and his pupils couldn’t focus in time.

She arrived straight up in front of him with a flowing motion.

By the time his eyes had finally caught up, Alice’s fingers – and their sharp claws – were extending lithely toward his throat.

Time stopped. He tried to swing his head to the side and dodge, but his body couldn’t keep up.

He couldn’t die yet.

He might die, but it couldn’t be now.

He thought that so hard it seemed to burn into his mind. After all, the girl who had forgotten how to cry and instead howled like an animal was right there in front of him. He couldn’t die until he had saved her.

Light pierced sharply in from the side.

Time resumed flowing.

Alice doubled over and rolled along the floor.

This first clean hit did not come from Kamijou, Anna, or H.T. Trismegistus.

They heard a voice.

“What the hell? Did I really just hit Alice? Not to mention I thought we couldn’t even approach this center area because we were cut off spatially and temporally in that labyrinth!”

It was Aradia, god of witches, the moon, and the night.

A short distance away, the Bologna Succubus was on the ground grappling with a bipedal hare. After absorbing the shadows of next-gen weapons until she was large enough to trample the school building underfoot, Mut Thebes was engaged in a direct fistfight with an equally gigantic cat.

Hadn’t Anna mentioned the other Transcendents had arrived at the school too?

Kamijou and the others must have fallen far enough to reach where those Transcendents were battling the Gryphon, the Executioner, and so on.

Unlike Kamijou, Alice had not invited them.

And they couldn’t slip past those defenses like Anna could.

They had forcibly entered a labyrinth with no goal. In there, they fought an endless battle against Alice’s brutal toys – which might look comical but were all monsters capable of overwhelming Academy City’s dark side. That they were still alive showed just how abnormal Transcendents were.

For a brief moment, the dark pressure of death vanished within Kamijou. He felt strength growing from the center of his being.

Alice really wasn’t alone.

The world was not such a heartless place.

Good, Old Mary, Aradia, and the others gained nothing by winning this battle, but they were still here risking their lives. Even though this battlefield was ruled by the ordinary and inviolable rule where death meant losing everything they had been working to achieve.

What motivated their desperate battle?

What could it possibly be other than kindness?

“Fool, this is bad sign. Encountering the bait meant to buy us time means we have more enemies to deal with. By which I mean the Gryphon, the Executioner, and the rest of the Alice Series.”

“You have some nerve running off on your own to flirt, you goddamn villain,” said Aradia. “Just so you know, I’m more than willing to employ spankings as punishment as long as you aren’t one of the witches I’ve sworn to protect.”

“My, my. Quite an outdated way of thinking for such a young-looking goddess. Makes me wonder how old you ''really'' are.”

“I don’t want to hear that from the preserved little girl from who-knows-how-many centuries ago.”

Alice extracted herself from the collapsed cabinets half-burying her.

Her eyeballs rolled in her head.

Even now, that enchantingly lithe woman only ever looked Kamijou’s way. She didn’t even glance over at Aradia who had delivered the attack.

“Kh. Anyway, let’s fall back. We need to put some distance between us!!”

A sharp voice rang through the broken faculty room. Aradia held out her palm and launched a scattershot of light to keep Alice back. Each shot moved like a sea snake as they tore through the air and targeted adult Alice from multiple angles.

The storybook girl said nothing.

She didn’t even look Aradia’s way.

She only extended a finger and rotated it once clockwise.

Like some kind of joke, all of the glowing projectiles veered away from the fully-grown woman, blasting through walls and pillars instead.

Cursing.

That one childish action easily confused every eye on her, bringing them under her spell.

“Kh.”

Aradia didn’t even have time to gasp in shock.

Alice really didn’t look her way the entire time. She simply changed the arrangement of her casually extended fingers. She curled up her middle finger and held it down with her thumb like she was preparing to flick something.

There was no light or sound.

It was a lot like returning the favor.

Aradia broke through the wall and flew off somewhere.

Kamijou’s face paled.

That had definitely hit.

Flicking.

What even was that?

What meaning had been extracted from that simple action anyone was capable of?

Warning bells rang loud in Kamijou’s mind.

''If you died, it was over.

''Death really and truly meant goodbye.

''Because Alice’s attacks were the one thing not even Good, Old Mary’s resurrection could cure.

“Aradiaaa!!”

“Don’t worry, fool. It looks like the two of them distributed the damage between them. But that ''would'' have caused her heart to burst if there hadn’t been two identical Aradias here.”

Kamijou knew now wasn’t the time to ask why that would have caused her heart to burst or what splitting that in half would mean.

He heard a dull impact and saw sparks.

After a short delay, he heard an explosion as a shockwave crashed into the distorted scene.

Something again intersected between Anna and Alice.

In the deadly battle against Alice, the value of each second was far greater than normal. Death was the end. Truly the end. The clock was always ticking in real time and everyone was moving at once.

He could not forget the fundamental rules revealed here.

“But that isn’t reason enough to relax. Splitting the damage in half means receiving the same attack twice will mean the end for both Aradias.”

“…”

So Aradia couldn’t do it.

Mut Thebes could grow endlessly by absorbing weapon shadows and Good, Old Mary could create any tool or chemical with her alchemy, including ones with great destructive power, but Kamijou couldn’t picture either of them stopping Alice.

The Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress spell could replace all pleasure with equal amounts of pain, regardless of the target’s physical toughness and endurance. That attack had made even Christian Rosencreutz grimace, but would it work here? Was this version of Alice in a mental state where she experienced that sort of human emotion?

Then would he give up?

He needed to give himself some credit for immediately answering that with a “hell no”.

He had a reason for saying that.

He needed to thank his past ordeals for preparing him for this.

“There is little meaning in analyzing each and every thing she does,” said Anna.

She raised her golden cross staff as if judging the distance between herself and Alice.

“We need to start with tearing down the idea that we can never defeat Alice. And it isn’t the Transcendents and their obvious strength that can do that. It needs to be the more unorthodox fighters like me or you who do that, fool!!”

The grown woman vanished.

The golden cross staff and the primitive and violent jabbing claws crashed together head-on.

Anna had reacted.

She was capable of it.

When the Executioner attempted to make his own attack from the side, Anna bisected him straight down the middle with only a glare. The ruby decorating her staff shined a moment later. Its role complete, a clump of compressed air burst, buffeting Kamijou’s hair and cheeks as a violent wind.

The monsters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland could actually die.

There were no absolutes in this world.

Kamijou realized it had been that way from the beginning. Alice had always been so absolute, but when Anna Sprengel showed up, the little villain toyed with the situation, laid traps, took control, and otherwise overshadowed Alice.

While Anna hadn’t managed any clean hits, being able to lock weapons with Alice was unusual in and of itself.

Anna and Alice.

Two irregular Transcendents.

Just like Alice Anotherbible brought everything to her side, including probability and insight, Anna Sprengel was manipulating some unseen factor in real time.

“Accept me, H.T. Trismegistus!! You regular Transcendents are based on Alice, so you can never harm her. But if you swap out foundations, you can bypass Alice’s precedence over you. Like comparing heights of the Tower of Babel and the World Tree Yggdrasil!!”

“I am in your debt.”

“I’m only doing this to make that fool smile. And you want Alice to smile in the same way, right? Then hurry!!”

An invisible change came over the air. A weight vanished.

New possibility had presented itself. If Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents also swapped out their connection, they could possibly overturn Alice’s absoluteness.

The young butler once more held his right hand to the staff at his hip in an iaido pose.

The meaning of his sword strikes had changed.

But he was a moment too slow.

With a dull thud, the equilibrium was broken. Anna’s small body took a powerful blow.

Even though they were supposedly equal.

With a single hand, Alice casually grabbed the beaten-up Gryphon to use it as a weapon.

As if it were a giant club.

Grabbing.

The act of denying an object its own will and applying her own will to it by unilaterally wielding it for its offensive or defensive functionality.

Anna could compete with Alice on her own, but that changed if Alice boosted her strength with something else.

That is, ''if Alice turned someone else into a weapon.

That absurdly powerful magic could boost her stats by forcibly equipping herself with something else: a sword, a shumai, a goddess – anything.

(Is that a superior version of Mut Thebes’s ability to absorb the shadow of any weapon!?)

“Gahh!?”

“Anna!!”

Alice made a further attack. The Gryphon extended her reach, so the little villain failed to dodge. She was pummeled hard enough to bend backwards.

Anna groaned and tried to raise her golden staff.

But Alice was again faster.

Alice was always a step ahead. To an unnatural degree.

She grabbed H.T. Trismegistus’s wrist as he tried to attack her from the side. She turned him into a weapon, equipped that weapon, and swung it artlessly to the side.

A direct hit.

A dull impact rang loud.

In this case, taking Anna’s side had been a mistake.

Or maybe he had been thwarted by Alice’s ''tailwind''.

That magic stole power from external sources. If H.T. Trismegistus had remained no more than one of Alice’s toys, he couldn’t have provided more power on top of her own.

The little villain struggled to breathe and a red clump splattered from the corner of her mouth.

The equilibrium was broken.

Despite dropping her golden cross staff, Anna clenched her teeth and stepped forward.

Another impact sounded.

But not from more of Alice’s unreasonable violence.

It didn’t end there.

This time it came from Anna.

Anna and Alice crashed foreheads together.

“You wanted recognition, didn’t you?”

With their foreheads pressed together, Anna spoke from extreme close range.

“You wanted forgiveness, didn’t you? And you wanted love!! Just like me!!! Then you shouldn’t give up. He didn’t care that I’m a villain. I’m here now because he didn’t hesitate to run away with me back then. As long as that fool continues to reach out his hand, don’t just assume all light has vanished from this world!!!”

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW6.png|thumb]]

Alice said nothing.

But a subtle tremor did run through the cheek of her bestial expression.

Kamijou thought that came from something other than her intense emotion.

Then Alice made her next move.

Smelling.

She sniffed out her target’s precise location. ''Which meant her next move was guaranteed to hit, no matter how poorly aimed it was.

Once again, Alice swung H.T. Trismegistus around with a single hand and struck Anna’s little body with her boosted attack. The force of the blow caused the gloomy young butler to slip from Alice’s grasp. No, his right wrist shattered like pottery. Only his hand remained in the grown woman’s hand.

This wasn’t like a home run in baseball or a strike in bowling.

The two of them were knocked away with a strange sound.

Neither one cried out.

Kamijou didn’t even want to think about how much damage that had done to Anna.

While collapsed in a daze, H.T. Trismegistus simply stared up at Alice as she tossed his hand aside. The lack of blood only made the scene more bizarre.

“I…”

Something spilled from the young butler’s lips.

They were words.

That magician had believed common sense would lead anyone to think the same thing after seeing that girl with an unwanted power forced upon her. And the words left his mouth now.

“I wanted to place a roof over her head and protect her from the threats of the world…but I failed.”

Alice Anotherbible wasn’t listening.

The fully-grown blonde woman tilted her head and spun around.

“''Teacher''.”

Toward Kamijou Touma.

As if he was all she could see.

He understood that Alice wasn’t in a normal state of mind.

She hadn’t been when a magician had altered her body, she hadn’t been when she was surrounded and protected by the Bridge Builders Cabal, she hadn’t been when Anna had given her a deep interest in Kamijou Touma, and she hadn’t been when Kamijou’s rejection had left her dazed.

She hadn’t been for so very long.

He understood that.

But that was not a statement she should have ignored.

She had become animalistic and irrational, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t talk. She had just spoken to Kamijou. But she had still chosen to brush off the young butler.

He didn’t interest her, so she wouldn’t speak to him.

Was that the only reason she didn’t react?

(Not yet.)

Don’t lose hope.

Don’t give up on Alice.

Choose to not let her madness grow.

If you began using personal misfortune as an excuse, that was the end for you. In a way, Kamijou understood that better than anyone.

The world was cruel, so he had seen plenty of people unfairly and unreasonably devastated by it.

But Kamijou hadn’t faltered with those people.

He had fought them.

“I was unlucky” was a convenient phrase applicable to most anything, but he knew relying it and overusing it would prevent you from ever finding the way out of the darkness and would meaninglessly force you into a life of misfortune. He knew in his bones that irresponsibly relying on your misfortune would mean rotting away in that filthy dead end forever.

So.

He would teach Alice the proper way to live with unreasonable misfortune.

“You can still fight, can’t you, teacher?”

“I can.”

Kamijou readied his one and only weapon. He clenched his fist.

Hard.

“But that doesn’t matter so the girl will overturn her prophecy because she will make sure to do something to help you and then make up with you and fight with you and be happy so she doesn’t believe what that incomplete library says because there must be a way to help you out there and she refuses to fail because the girl is Anotherbible so we can make up.”

“Sure!! But I hope you don’t think saying that will stop me, Alice!!”

===Part 3===

He couldn’t rely on Anna Sprengel or H.T. Trismegistus anymore.

The other Transcendents were a far way off too.

The ordinary faculty room was everything.

It must have been cut off from the rest of the world long ago.

So it was one against one.

Kamijou Touma vs. Alice Anotherbible, or someone who had once been Alice Pleasance Liddell.

This had been about them from the beginning, so there was no better two to settle it.

So.

“Ooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

“Ooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

They clashed head on.

Alice roared like an animal and spread her arms wide.

Hugging.

An act of reliance on another and using your full body to acquire a sense of fulfillment from the outside world.

Of course, a hug from her here would have easily torn Kamijou’s body apart.

A dull sound indicated a direct hit.

From Kamijou. He felt the solid impact of landing a punch.

The sensation in his fist was enough to clear his mind.

In a way, this was to be expected when Alice went all in on attack, spreading her arms and coming straight toward him without even considering defense.

“Kh.”

Beads of sweat flew from the grown woman as she bent back and left her “hugging” pose. With the trunk of her body still collapsed, she clawed at the air with her fingers bent like hooks.

The boy dropped his body down.

After just barely dodging a deadly attack that sliced through the walls and pillars, he threw another punch that Alice blocked with her other hand. But unlike with her “walking” or “binding”, there was no special effect here.

Alice didn’t have time to extract and refine a miracle out of that action.

They clashed a few more times after that, but still Kamijou was not dead.

They both took a step back.

“Curioser and curioser.”

Alice tilted her head.

The fully-grown bondage woman moved with the mannerisms of a 10-year-old.

It was strange and bizarre.

Everything about her was.

“You’re the only one still standing, teacher, but you’re moving in ways you shouldn’t be able to on your own.”

“Of course I am.”

When Alice was taking evasive action by “crawling”, any and all attacks would pass through her.

H.T. Trismegistus had proven this for everyone to see by not hesitating to bisect the girl he so adored.

Alice could extract miracles much like the Pneuma-less Shell but without relying on any tools.

That knowledge came from Anna Sprengel.

However.

“So why don’t you just keep on ‘crawling’ while you attack? Then you could remain untouchable the entire time you send your unfair attacks our way.”

“…”

“Since you aren’t doing that, I can only assume you’re limited to using one miracle at a time. For example, your ‘crawling’ causes any attacks to pass right through you, but it also keeps you from laying a finger on us, so you can never actually end the fight that way, can you? Your ‘walking’ and ‘cursing’ are the same. ''Your miracles are isolated things – they can’t be combined or used in parallel''! Which means I’ve found your weakness, Alice Anotherbible. I don’t know how tough you are, but you can’t make yourself untouchable while you attack. The damage will reach you then!!”

So he would aim for a cross counter.

It wasn’t much, but that was the one and only way out of this battle against Alice Anotherbible.

Alice could use any and all miracles with nothing more than her own body, but she had the mannerisms of a child. She was extremely powerful, but her attacks were all made “on a whim” or “on reflex”, which made it easy to match her timing.

Kamijou hadn’t realized this on his own.

He never could have.

He wouldn’t let anyone say the defeated people’s feelings had been any weaker than anyone else’s.

If Alice could “grab” any object, phenomenon, or person and make it her weapon, then he was supported by the strength of the feelings that had led him to this point.

He couldn’t let this end in tears at this point. He wouldn’t leave anyone behind in the darkness. He would grab Alice’s hand and drag her out of there.

Because that was the power of reality, something not even Imagine Breaker could eliminate.

“What does it matter if they’re not standing here with me? Anna, Trismegistus, and the others showed me the way. They risked their lives to test your abilities and I never would have made it this far without everything they learned. Don’t you get it? They’re still here fighting alongside me.”

“Then the girl will heal herself.”

That was all Alice said.

She was so powerful she had never had a chance to experience defeat and so didn’t worry too much about who won an individual battle. She didn’t fear the possibility of being beaten and dying.

If she did ultimately bury the enemy who stood in her way, it was no skin off her nose if she died once or twice first.

Because…

“Have you forgotten, teacher? The girl already had her head crushed by someone calling himself Rosencreutz. And yet here she is as good as new. So it doesn’t matter to the girl even if you do manage to kill her in exchange for severe damage on your part. ''The girl just has to resurrect herself a billion or even a trillion times if necessary and wait for you to finally wear yourself out''.”

“''But you can’t do anything else while you’re focused on healing yourself, can you''?”

He also had an immediate response.

This wasn’t enough to break him.

Kamijou did not fear that the wishes and feelings left with him would amount to nothing and that all his efforts would be negated in an instant.

She could heal herself?

It would all be for nothing?

So what?

Surprisingly, it was Alice who spoke next.

The fully-grown woman spoke with an oddly calm and quiet voice, like a pot on the verge of boiling.

“What do you think you can accomplish?”

“What, out of miracles already? Why not search through my mind yourself, Alice?”

Alice’s prophecy was accurate.

Kamijou Touma would die.

He had accepted that.

And he had decided he would save this girl using the power he gained in exchange.

So he took the first step forward.

They clashed.

===Part 4===

In a merciless head-on assault, Alice’s fist compressed the air and tore through the existing faculty room while the path of her five claws sliced through the entire building and space itself.

Dodging was meaningless against this.

If she made a single roundhouse kick, it would probably become an AoE attack that struck everything around her. When her attack was like a massive gale sweeping right to left, there was no way to avoid it just by moving your body out of the way.

So it hit.

(Gah…)

Kamijou’s body didn’t just strain.

His body produced dull cracking and popping noises he had never heard before.

He didn’t have time to assess what exactly had broken.

The dulling of his sense of pain was actually a blessing in this case.

Yes.

The difference between fortune and misfortune was ultimately a matter of viewpoint and usage.

He bit his lip so a bloody flavor wouldn’t spill from his mouth and he swung his fist again.

He wanted a cross counter.

But if all he wanted was to knock Alice down to stop her, he didn’t actually need to skillfully evade every attack launched by that fully-grown monster.

He was lucky if he could even get an attack in for each of hers.

“Rahh!!!” he shouted, completing the swing of his fist.

He placed his body weight behind it.

Even if she was up against a being known as a god or a demon, or a human who had trained themselves up to the point that everyone would see them as such a thing, this version of Alice would likely crush them underfoot without them even realizing they had been killed.

But that didn’t matter.

Kamijou did not stop.

No amount of willpower would let him avoid taking hits here. And each time one of Alice’s attacks hit him, critical sounds of destruction came from within his body. Red beads of blood swam through the air and even ordinary pain vanished behind a wave of scorching heat.

But none of that was any reason for Kamijou to falter as he clenched his teeth and fist.

He was up against an extremely deadly power.

But what did that matter when he was going to die anyway?

The prophecy had been made quite a while ago. Nothing he could do would change the fact that he was going to die. Since he didn’t have time to spend on that issue, he was approaching death with each tick of the clock. His fate was the same no matter who won this fight.

That was enough to know that his own life was a secondary concern here.

''Something else mattered more.

Namely, the girl right in front of him. The girl who was feared but also revered by so many. No one was interested in anything other than treating her like a monster, she had forgotten the proper way to lose, and she believed she could make others happy as long as she wielded her great power. And as a result, that lonely girl would lose everything she thought she had.

She was his top priority.

And this wasn’t limited to him.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents had to know what it meant to leave the Bridge Builders Cabal and oppose Alice. H.T. Trismegistus had stayed by Alice’s side to serve her to the end, but he had also chosen to turn his blade against her when necessary. And Anna Sprengel who had viewed Alice the way people used to view her.

None of them were fighting because they could win.

Only the people who had chosen the option least likely to ensure their survival had stuck with Kamijou. And the Transcendents understood just how much of a threat Alice was, so it must have been a much harder decision for them than for ignorant Kamijou.

Even so…

He heard yet another dull impact.

Which meant he had again failed to avoid an attack.

His movements slowed with each consecutive hit. His body felt so heavy. But this was far better than having his body explode, leaving nothing but a stain on the floor.

Kamijou knew he didn’t have luck to thank for this.

Was Alice holding back?

He smiled a little.

How happy it would make him if that were it.

Their fists collided.

Sound vanished for a brief moment.

Creating a blank.

Perhaps some vital lines had been severed inside his body.

His fist felt hot. It may have already broken.

The world seemed to tilt around him.

But he still gathered strength in his legs to keep himself from falling.

Alice’s legs were shaking too. Her shoulders were heaving as she breathed and one eye was unnaturally closed. The eyelid may have been cut.

But she was still on her feet.

This wasn’t about right or wrong and it wasn’t about like or dislike.

Both of them simply refused to back down. No matter what.

So it wouldn’t end. Kamijou refused to die before he was through. He still held his ticket to change destiny.

It would be such a waste if he collapsed before he could use it.

He would stop her.

And save her.

Kamijou Touma forced his pain-numbed body to move and clenched his fist once more.

Another attack came.

Realizing where Alice was aiming, he immediately balled up to protect himself.

To protect his right arm.

If his arm was torn off, ''that thing'' would emerge. He had proven that when he severed the arm himself to summon it against Rosencreutz.

That would work if he was ''only'' interested in defeating her.

''That thing'' may have been the only remaining mystery in this world that rivaled Alice.

But Kamijou had made a decision back then.

He had made up his mind.

He would never use ''that thing'' again. Never against another person. Plus, a little thing like death wouldn’t be enough to stop Alice!!

He took the full brunt of the attack as payment.

He couldn’t see it, but he was pretty sure his back had split open.

He finally heard a rupturing sound within his own body.

It reminded him a lot of a water balloon.

He coughed up blood. Enough to feel like a solid clump.

That didn’t matter.

He refused to collapse.

He hadn’t saved Alice yet. So he would keep fighting until he had. No matter what anyone said – no matter what analysis had been made by the magician smart enough for Aleister to rely on and Anna to fear – whoever remained standing in the end was the winner.

So.

Kamijou ignored the red spilling from between his pursed lips and clenched his broken fist even tighter. He may have been further breaking his bones with his own strength, but he didn’t care in the slightest.

He used his knees to push Alice back a bit while feeling her warmth.

He secured the optimal position while right up in front of her.

Surprise colored her face.

It was the look of a child refused a hug.

He smiled a little.

Because he would never do that.

He swung his fist with all his might.

There was just one sound.

Alice’s fist finally swished through empty air while Kamijou’s found a solid cheekbone.

The impact rang dully out.

The blow actually broke his elbow and shoulder.

Nevertheless, he kept his full weight on his broken fist to the end.

He brought her down.

===Part 5===

“…”

Kamijou Touma was standing.

He had remained on his feet to the end.

Something appeared to have torn through his arm, but he felt no actual pain.

He saw white bone.

The skin and flesh had come away more easily than with chicken on the bone.

Maybe he was hallucinating it.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

He didn’t let it bother him. His sense of pain melted away within the growing heat and he lost all interest in his own injuries. To be blunt, they didn’t matter.

He took a step forward.

“Tea…cher?”

Alice Anotherbible was still down where she had fallen on her rear.

She was trembling.

She may have seen a bit of what she had done. It had come into focus for her. Who could say when it would all “cloud over” once more, but for this moment at least, her vision was clear.

She sounded more than a little dazed. The fully-grown woman spoke with unstable confusion in her voice.

Like she had finally caught on.

“It’s alright.”

Kamijou smiled.

The smile came to him naturally.

“You did enough to deserve that. But now we’re even. Aren’t we, Alice?”

“No…”

The fully-grown woman shook her head.

Like a small child.

Something floated in the air. The teacups and saucers had been flying around weightlessly, but now they vanished into thin air like fading sparks. Everything around them distorted as the illusion inside the girl crumbled away.

Alice’s dream was ending.

Kamijou could sense reality pushing its way in.

It wouldn’t be long now.

He had not put together any kind of response to the prophecy from that absolute being.

But he had accomplished a more important task.

He had saved her.

So.

It was time to pay the price.

“…”

Had it taken a long time, or a short one?

Reality had raised the white flag almost immediately, so maybe this hadn’t been a path that could be measured with time.

So many events had happened in such a condensed time period.

December 24.

In the middle of the Christmas season, R&C Occultics had suddenly risen to prominence and revealed the hidden existence of magic online.

And CEO Anna Sprengel had appeared in Academy City.

She had mouth-to-mouth delivered the body-hijacking St. Germain microbe to Kamijou, infecting him.

December 25.

Anna Sprengel had stood on center stage.

Kamijou had attempted to communicate with the St. Germain microbe infecting his body and had fought Anna using magic despite the side-effect it had on his body.

Kamijou had just barely managed to defeat Anna, but to protect Kamijou’s life, St. Germain had negated himself with Imagine Breaker. This made it a bitter event for Kamijou.

December 25.

Another incident occurred in Academy City that same day.

Defeated Anna was left in Anti-Skill’s custody, but the problem hadn’t ended there. A probability-manipulating spiritual item called the Coin of Nicholas had been spread around Academy City. The new Board Chairman’s plan to quietly correct the city’s darkness was hijacked and Anna easily left her cell.

Kamijou was barely involved in this incident.

But it was very significant that he encountered Alice Anotherbible after that incident full of so much death and defeat.

December 26.

The threat of R&C Occultics was not limited to Academy City. Los Angeles was suddenly engulfed in yellow sand and its tens of millions of residents disappeared. While pursuing this, it was revealed that Anna had caused such a large-scale incident just to acquire a skilled engineer.

At first glance, it looked like an arrogant act that ignored the costs and risks.

But thinking back, Anna had already been mentioning her “king” at this point.

December 29.

But the true center of the world’s problems was not Anna Sprengel.

Anna readily threw out her global IT company to join the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Alice Anotherbible, the mysterious girl at the top of that cabal, caused plenty of trouble for Kamijou in the darkness of Academy City.

This was the true starting point.

Alice had warned him thrice.

She told him he would die if the altered branch was returned to normal.

December 31.

In Shibuya, Kamijou began working to correct his extreme lack of funds. There he found the Bologna Succubus and Aradia waiting for him. Those magicians were known as Transcendents and possessed powers on another dimension entirely. A clash between just those two produced enough overflowing charisma to engulf the entirety of Shibuya in rioters.

January 1.

A building calling itself a consulate for the Bridge Builders Cabal suddenly appeared in District 12, which had a focus on mythology and religion. The greater focus on the idea of Transcendents further showed how unique Alice was.

Alice wanted to provide deadly punishment for H.T. Trismegistus and the other Transcendents who threatened Kamijou’s life, but Kamijou himself intervened, driving a decisive wedge between the two.

January 3.

Kamijou happened to rescue Anna Sprengel after she was captured by Aleister and fled around Academy City with Aradia, who they had happened across. They were pursued by Mut Thebes, a Transcendent in charge of punishment.

This was when Kamijou first heard Anna clearly talk about her “king”.

She wanted someone who would restrain her wickedness and protect her.

But she never had a chance to meet this person. She was doomed to die after being hit by the Shrink Drink, a special spear that borrowed a portion of Alice’s power.

Alice was the only one who could save Anna, but at the same time, the Bridge Builders Cabal was working to bring back a dead magician: CRC, Christian Rosencreutz. But when he was reborn, he was not the man seen in the legends. He obliterated the Bridge Builders Cabal just to stave off boredom and Alice Anotherbible was killed.

January 5.

The reborn Christian Rosencreutz began fighting his boredom.

Kamijou faced that ultimate threat to protect Anna who was on the verge of death in the hospital. As the ring of defenders grew, ultimately Academy City as a whole was working to stop CRC from taking that life.

Once it was all over, Alice got up like nothing had happened to her.

CRC was not the greatest monster.

And today.

It had been a long time.

Yes, a very long time.

Unbelievably long.

This wasn’t about the literal time it had taken.

Far too much had happened over winter break. Kamijou had been exposed to multiple new forms of threat and been badly beaten, but that had built up his unseen heart and soul enough to make it this far.

And.

He had dragged his heavy body far enough to stand before Alice Anotherbible.

He had stood right in front of her.

He could say that for certain.

Everything that had happened had been leading up to this moment.

He had arrived.

All the past storms seemed like a fantasy now.

It hadn’t been pretty and he had been badly delayed, but he had made it.

On his own two feet.

“I’m here, Alice.”

He barely got his voice out.

With all the blood clogging up his throat, he wasn’t sure if his voice was even audible.

“I made it here.”

“You can’t defeat the girl, teacher. If everything had gone as planned and the girl had used her full power, you might have been spared this death ''coming from the outside''.”

Alice could say what she liked, but the winner made the decisions.

That’s what he had been fighting for.

So he could tell her it would be alright.

The girl might not get what she wanted.

If Kamijou died here, Alice’s wish to make up with him would go forever unfulfilled. She had become a world-destroying storm to make that happen, but Kamijou himself had put a stop to it.

But.

He just hadn’t been able to leave her all alone and howling.

“…”

His limit had arrived.

He would die today.

But Alice still had her life. She still had plenty of happy paths left for her. She could meet so many people and surround herself with so many smiles she forgot all about today.

Surely he was allowed to wish for that.

She had been abducted, remade, worshipped, and rejected.

She had appeared free, but she had always been bound by something unseen. She had always been underneath someone’s foot. And no matter how powerful she was, she had ultimately been unable to change that herself.

So on the verge of death, surely Kamijou was allowed to imagine a world where she was happy enough to make up for all that with interest.

Allowed by who?

Not that bastard god.

Kamijou Touma would allow himself that happy wishful thinking.

He would celebrate this ending.

Slowly, fully-grown Alice once more got up from the floor. She stood up.

As if to cling to him.

“You will die if you move any more, teacher. You will die and leave nothing behind.”

“So...what?”

The pointy-haired boy dragged his body along and struggled to support himself.

He faced Alice head on.

The girl seemed unable to move beyond her incessant trembling. She was extraordinarily powerful. She had easily killed the reborn Christian Rosencreutz, who not even all the regular Transcendents working together had been a match for, but she was rendered motionless at the sight of this ordinary high school boy.

It wasn’t a physical matter.

But just this once, Kamijou Touma had defeated Alice Anotherbible.

He was an unfortunate person.

He had lost his memories, been placed in mortal peril more times than he could count, and actually died on occasion. Not even being killed had been enough to end it. There probably wasn’t any real reason why. He just so happened to be there, so he was dragged into it. His life was a series of those coincidences.

It hadn’t started here.

And it had probably happened plenty of times he couldn’t remember.

But.

Even so.

“I…”

He felt the grasping hand of death at the center of his chest.

He didn’t need to hold his hand to his chest to know his heart wanted to rest.

Wounds caused by Alice Anotherbible could not be healed with Good, Old Mary’s resurrection.

The tearing sound inside him was continuing.

Only he could hear it. Were those blood vessels tearing? Or maybe muscles?

It didn’t matter.

Some major arteries and even his heart had probably already ruptured.

But there was something he still had to say.

“…I…”

Maybe it was the blood loss, but the sweat on his brow was unusually cold. His tongue and cheeks were numb.

He had trouble speaking.

He prayed that he would get the words out. Failing to say this before the end would just be too cruel.

But what was he praying to?

Not to god, that was for sure. He knew better than to expect anything from that jerk.

So he chose to pray to himself. To the human being he was. Only he could change the world with his will. He would endure until the end. He just had to think back on the path he had taken and compare this to all that pain and suffering.

A little thing like death was nothing.

If he clenched his teeth, he could keep on moving for a little while longer.

He had a lesson for that girl.

If she understood this, she would be alright.

Alice Anotherbible could probably do anything.

But there were no absolutes for any human.

So he had to tell her.

No matter how extraordinary she might be, if she acted thoughtlessly and carelessly long enough, she would pay a painful price eventually.

And if she took it too far, that price could even be the life of someone she cared deeply for.

Alice could protect herself from anything. Even if she died, she could resurrect herself right away. She was so powerful it was fundamentally wrong to even think about defeating her. But could she protect other people?

Violence took important things from yourself and others.

She could fight and win, but would that even matter?

Had Kamijou gained anything at all when he released the mysterious dragon from his severed right arm and defeated Rosencreutz with it?

Violence was not a valid solution.

He had forever lost a future where he and CRC could smile together.

He had done it himself.

By giving up.

That wasn’t a solution.

He had realized that afterwards.

And he had stopped himself from making that mistake again.

“I don’t…”

So.

If Alice was greater than Rosencreutz – if her power was truly extraordinary – she had to think even deeper about strength and power.

Kamijou was just an ordinary high school boy. He wasn’t arrogant enough to think he was in any position to teach anyone anything. But if Alice realized this for herself, she could stop herself. She could learn to think about ''compromising with'' the wide world around her instead of focusing only on what she wanted.

That was Kamijou’s battle.

There was no avoiding death for him, so that was his one and only win condition.

So he made sure to keep speaking to the end.

Because he had to accomplish that.

He held the fully-grown woman’s face between his bloody hands.

He looked Alice straight in the eye.

And the ordinary high school boy got the words out.

''He made it in time.

“I don’t want to see anyone suffering from even more misfortune than me!! You got a problem with that!?”

From the start, they had both known how this would end.

There had been no changing it.

Alice fell back onto her rear. As if she were backing away from a truth she didn’t want to accept.

She had blood on her cheeks.

The faint red stains left by the boy’s fingers.

What little warmth was left in that blood was fading fast.

“Tea…cher?”

Her voice was scratchy.

It was a definite physical voice.

The voice of her original young form.

But no one answered her fearful, trembling question.

The boy had not fallen.

Whoever remained standing in the end was the winner. So he had refused to fall until he had saved Alice. This proved his resolve more than anything.

===Part 6===

Kamijou Touma was still standing.

He was no longer moving.

His brain, his heart, and everything that provided life had fully ceased functioning.

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW7.png|thumb]]

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter4

2024-09-26T10:34:52Z

Entei08: missed a line

==Chapter 4: The Unfortunate Boy’s Focus – Over_the_River.==

===Part 1===

H.T. Trismegistus looked at everything before him.

He had known the cause.

Which was why he had thought Alice would go back to normal if he killed Kamijou Touma.

He had thought he needed to punish Anna for messing with Alice.

He had always been on that small girl’s side.

Because he had thought ''common sense said'' it would be cruel to throw such a small girl out into the world alone. In that case, her tremendous power would not be an advantage. It would only be an omen of danger. She would be like a young child who inherited a vast fortune. She would be the perfect bait for all the scum lurking in the shadows. He had decided he should protect her and look after her. It wasn’t about logic. He thought anyone would decide the same thing after seeing her, which meant it was common sense. He had believed in the goodness of the world at large.

But in that case…

“Oooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

What was this?

Was this what he had wanted to see?

Wind blew wildly through the library, but this was no meteorological phenomenon. Great currents of a nonphysical power created ''tailwinds'' and ''headwinds'' in rapid succession.

As a regular Transcendent who had used Alice as an example to get where he was, he could not rescue the girl who was his starting point.

Attempting it was as meaningless as offering a hand to help her to her feet while also pinning her down below his foot. Pulling on her hand like that would only tear her arm off.

Thus.

CRC. Christian Rosencreutz.

He had thought the only way to save that lonely girl was with the help of a power not derived from Alice and that common sense told him was greater than hers.

That was the only option.

He couldn’t think up anything else.

But when the holy man was reborn, he was nothing like the common legends and he hadn’t been interested in saving the world, ''including Alice''.

Alice had smiled like normal after having her head crushed, but it had felt somehow off.

They had reached their limit.

Alice Anotherbible had.

The Bridge Builders Cabal, who wished to save the world but couldn’t make the attempt on their own, had.

The Transcendents, who had erased their own opinions and thrown out their own identities, had.

They all had.

They had made the wrong choice. H.T. Trismegistus had passed that fatal branch and started down a path to hell. He had finally realized that. There was no undoing what he had done, so what could he do to fight it now?

There was no optimal answer.

So what kind of compromise could he reach?

“…”

He had made a fatally mistaken decision, but H.T. Trismegistus was still a Transcendent. He dressed up in the appearance and abilities of the god he had chosen, he chose his salvation condition, and then he saved everyone that applied to. So even in this situation, he directed his question not to himself but to the thing that determined all his actions.

In other words, he asked it of the entire world.

What did common sense say?

Was it really right to ignore a crying girl?

===Part 2===

They were in a library filled with light.

Not a grand temple or castle. It was part of a certain boy’s school, which Alice Anotherbible had said she wanted to see. That was the reason she had chosen this as the final location.

There was no further significance there.

Alice had in fact offered up her entire being, including her life, there.

What had that small girl really wanted?

This had nothing to do with the fate of Academy City or the madness spreading across the world.

Kamijou had to sense what was deep inside Alice.

He quietly clenched his teeth.

Strongly.

The time had come to directly face that cornered girl’s feelings.

“Touma-”

“Don’t bother trying to analyze this with your 103,001 grimoires,” roared Kamijou, still facing Alice.

He intentionally ignited his heart.

“I know what I have to do regardless: punch Alice to bring her back to her senses!! Being the strongest doesn’t mean she has to carry it all on her own. I refuse to let her be alone for even a second longer!!”

Kamijou Touma.

Anna Sprengel. H.T. Trismegistus.

Those three faced the girl together. They glared at her without fleeing. Their positions, plans, and abilities were completely different, but they were all working toward a single goal here.

''Don’t forget.

''And if you have forgotten, we’ll show you.

“Don’t falter.”

''Alice Anotherbible.

''You aren’t alone.

''Your loneliness is no more than an illusion.

''There are still plenty of people out there who want to save you!!

“Let’s do thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis!!!”

Kamijou shouted to shake off the fear and raced forward. With his right fist still clenched tight.

Well before he made it in punching range, he heard a hard crunching sound.

It came from Alice.

No, down at her feet.

He knew better than to ask why or for what purpose.

Alice was already doing something.

Whatever this was, that irregular Transcendent had chosen to use her own body to act.

And she chose to attack.

“Fool!!”

Little Anna kicked him in the back of the knee from the side.

As soon as his view dropped straight down, something tore diagonally upwards through the air.

All sound vanished.

Five clawmarks were torn diagonally through the library wall directly behind Kamijou. Same for the many bookcases in between. Only after the fact did he realize the same would have happened to him if his head hadn’t lowered by a few dozen centimeters.

Claws.

Scratches.

That primitive attack had been amplified to the extreme.

“''If you die, it’s over.'' I know it’s obvious, but you can’t forget that absolute rule!! Good, Old Mary’s resurrection does not work against fatal wounds caused by Alice herself. If you really want to save her, then you can’t expect the world to do you any favors. You can only reach out your own hand to help her!!”

If the expert named Anna Kingsford were here, she would have easily seen through it.

The only one here who reached that level understanding was the Grimoire Library with access to 103,001 original grimoires.

“Was that magic?” asked Index in disbelief. While reaching out a hand to help Kamijou back to his feet. “Since people’s interior worlds are linked to the physical world outside them, anything you can do with your body can be used to reach a mystical power that changes the entire world. I get that, but still.”

“All those fancy gestures and ceremonies are only meant to purify and cleanse your will,” said Othinus.

Kamijou took this time to gently push the little god into Index’s hands.

Everything about Alice was the ultimate enigma, so he wanted to ensure the survival of anyone who could help explain it all. And he didn’t think he could protect Othinus if she was with him.

“But Alice Anotherbible has had her baseline purity ''forcibly increased'', so each and every one of her actions is pure without going through that process.”

“We should consider ourselves fortunate,” said H.T. Trismegistus.

That was the gloomy young butler’s assessment.

Because…

“We are in fact incredibly fortunate that Alice cannot ''kill her enemies with a thought or set the world in motion to kill her enemies if she wills it.'' This tells us she must take a physical action to trigger her attacks. Common sense says we are lucky indeed.”

But that also meant this wasn’t limited to her scratching claws.

The girl who had become a fully-grown woman faced Kamijou while tilting diagonally.

She took a step.

Just one.

“Touma, she’s coming!!”

“!!!???”

He understood that, but he couldn’t restrain his reflexes as a living being. Crossing his arms in front of his face was a definite mistake.

The sweet scent of tea filled the boy’s nose. Something was overpowering the library’s old paper smell.

Alice Anotherbible already stood behind Kamijou.

''Walking

''In other words, she took action to move to her desired location.

She had not formed a special shape with her fingers, nor had she stepped in a complex pattern.

She had taken the same action anyone could.

She was blessed with a special result without having to focus on it.

The meaning extracted from her ordinary actions was just too pure!?

“Ali-!?”

She was already right there.

Kamijou spun around and swung his right hand back in something like a backhand blow.

But it found only air.

The grown woman pressed her four limbs down against the floor like an animal and lowered her head as far as it would go.

Crawling.

She had moved to his blind spot and then his last-second counterattack had missed. What this meant squeezed at his heart. He might as well have offered her the perfect chance to attack him.

The young butler did not hesitate to move.

Light flashed from his right hand as the blade hidden in his cane turned to light and sliced through the floor. The strange slash had an effect well beyond the length of the sword. And it struck right were crawling Alice’s lowered head was. It definitely hit. Except the metal blade passed right through her. Like she was intangible.

A specific meaning had been extracted from her ordinary action: evasion.

“It doesn’t matter if you hit her or not!?” hatefully spat Othinus.

As long as the adult woman moved to dodge, no external damage could affect her. Even if she took a direct hit from a nuclear missile. Alice showed no interest in H.T. Trismegistus even with his attempted decapitation of her. Still crawling, she raised her head and casually extended her hand toward Kamijou.

“''I was right.''”

Apparently the young butler’s attack had been to check something.

He had ended up cutting through the floor below Alice instead of her, so it fell.

That had been his intent from the beginning.

He had intentionally destroyed the floor so he could gather more information and survive.

Kamijou would die today.

''But he didn’t care about that anymore.

“Hey, wait, human!”

“(Keep Othinus with you, Index!)”

Just as he passed that message on with a look, the entire floor collapsed.

His feet were freed from gravity and his vision slid straight down. Along with the heavy bookcases held in place with quake-resistant screws.

“Gah!?”

Kamijou, Anna, and Trismegistus himself were caught up in it too, successfully distancing them from Alice’s hand.

They just barely escaped alive.

Instead of an ordinary classroom, they found themselves in a large space that must have been lined with steel office desks. Or the remains of it, anyway. The first term in the new school had yet to begin, but the desks already had some personal items on them. Was this the faculty room?

Only Alice wasn’t affected.

The grown woman’s long blonde hair swayed as she looked down at them from the upper floor. The floor only remained in the corners of the room and Alice alone stood there.

Like a wounded animal bleeding and furious while trapped by a fishing hook or some plastic tape that a human had thoughtlessly discarded.

Like a lonely animal.

One that’s threats and howls echoed with melancholy.

''This isn’t over,'' thought Kamijou as he forced his aching body back onto its feet. No matter how battered his body was – even if he was in such a bad state it would make a doctor scream in horror – he was still alive. For now, at least.

The power balance of Transcendents and whatnot no longer mattered. Just a person was good enough. As long as he still lived, even the puniest human had the right to change the course of the battle with his own conscious decisions.

And the extraordinary strongest being was only looking at him.

That much was a relief, at least.

(Index and Othinus are probably up there. And unlike Alice, they were by the door, so they can escape at any time. They don’t need to stay on the dangerous frontline. As long as I can call them, they can still provide information support!)

“She uses a variation on this, doesn’t she?”

Kamijou heard a dull “thud!!” and turned to see a 2m metal orb next to Anna. That was the Pneuma-less Shell, a spiritual item that produced tools from civilizations the world over and extracted the world’s oldest causes of death from them.

“But in Alice’s case, she doesn’t even rely on a tool. She draws out the meaning contained in the actions she takes and unleashes them as an attack. It’s a type of magic and also a type of miracle. She takes the ridiculous-sounding legends of holy men and woman producing miracles empty-handed and develops a logical way of actually doing it. Or that’s the sense I get from it, anyway.”

“…”

“Supposedly she was created when some Teacher of Crowley went a step too far and modified Alice Pleasance Liddell, so maybe if you follow the path back from Magick to Golden magic and then Rosicrucian magic, you can see the essence of my spells in what she does.”

On the floor above, Alice ignored their conversation and moved.

She tapped her heel down.

Creating a vibration.

It didn’t matter that they were on separate floors.

Kamijou and the others went stiff. They were pinned in place.

Stomping.

It was a juvenile act of resistance and intimidation. A challenge and attempted reversal against someone who was clearly your superior. It was a threat meant to overpower adult logic with childish instinct and a primitive gamble that all humans attempted at some point.

It worked.

The adult Alice jumped down in the single second the world was frozen.

She aimed to land on Kamijou. On the top of his head.

A dull sound followed.

Alice again knocked something sharply to the ground.

That broke the spell and Kamijou quickly leaped toward Anna and rolled along the floor.

Alice’s heel dropped like a shooting star and smashed deep into the floor.

Little Anna smirked in Kamijou’s arms while they lay in a jumble on the floor.

As if she were bragging to Alice that, no matter how powerful Alice was, it was Anna the boy had done this for.

“Now, did you switch over to 1.5x speed because you thought it was just a boring exposition scene? The Pneuma-less Shell is not a demonstration-only show item. It is a spiritual item that randomly produces a cause of death and not even I can fully control what it does!!”

She held a staff.

The strange staff looked like a giant golden cross decorated with a red ruby rose.

“You should thank my excellent luck of the draw, fool. The gold cross and ruby rose – the world’s oldest ''human-made'' miracle of the rose is the destruction of the origin. It brings death through disillusionment. It supposedly has ancient origins, but it was first depicted in the middle ages and rediscovered in more recent times. It contains all the violence found in the magic of extreme growth and maturity!!”

Miss Sprengel raised the staff in her little hands.

That was all.

There was no fancy incantation or complex magic circle. Flames simply appeared in the empty air and were released from the staff. They shot toward Alice with a liquid motion. These were not ordinary flames. They were magic flames that scorched and burned away space itself regardless of the physical material, like an old photograph being burned from behind.

Alice grabbed her long hair as a single mass.

And she swung her head around.

In a move straight out of kabuki, the thick bundle of hair drew a large circle in the air, which narrowed down as soon as the crimson flames passed through it.

The orange flames stopped in midair.

Binding.

In other words, stopping all movement of a target. And separating the target out from all possible interference.

“Tch!!”

The Pneuma-less Shell was Anna’s spiritual item, but what weapon she acquired was a matter of chance. She wouldn’t receive the same weapon if she tried again.

But that brief moment of regret was a mistake.

Alice tugged on her hair binding the flames, causing little Anna to pitch forward and lose her balance.

At that same moment, the grown woman took a step forward. They had seen what this did already. Whatever the distance, Alice would have already arrived at her destination.

Which meant right in front of Kamijou.

For an instant, he lost all depth perception. Alice’s grown chest suddenly blocked his view and his pupils couldn’t focus in time.

She arrived straight up in front of him with a flowing motion.

By the time his eyes had finally caught up, Alice’s fingers – and their sharp claws – were extending lithely toward his throat.

Time stopped. He tried to swing his head to the side and dodge, but his body couldn’t keep up.

He couldn’t die yet.

He might die, but it couldn’t be now.

He thought that so hard it seemed to burn into his mind. After all, the girl who had forgotten how to cry and instead howled like an animal was right there in front of him. He couldn’t die until he had saved her.

Light pierced sharply in from the side.

Time resumed flowing.

Alice doubled over and rolled along the floor.

This first clean hit did not come from Kamijou, Anna, or H.T. Trismegistus.

They heard a voice.

“What the hell? Did I really just hit Alice? Not to mention I thought we couldn’t even approach this center area because we were cut off spatially and temporally in that labyrinth!”

It was Aradia, god of witches, the moon, and the night.

A short distance away, the Bologna Succubus was on the ground grappling with a bipedal hare. After absorbing the shadows of next-gen weapons until she was large enough to trample the school building underfoot, Mut Thebes was engaged in a direct fistfight with an equally gigantic cat.

Hadn’t Anna mentioned the other Transcendents had arrived at the school too?

Kamijou and the others must have fallen far enough to reach where those Transcendents were battling the Gryphon, the Executioner, and so on.

Unlike Kamijou, Alice had not invited them.

And they couldn’t slip past those defenses like Anna could.

They had forcibly entered a labyrinth with no goal. In there, they fought an endless battle against Alice’s brutal toys – which might look comical but were all monsters capable of overwhelming Academy City’s dark side. That they were still alive showed just how abnormal Transcendents were.

For a brief moment, the dark pressure of death vanished within Kamijou. He felt strength growing from the center of his being.

Alice really wasn’t alone.

The world was not such a heartless place.

Good, Old Mary, Aradia, and the others gained nothing by winning this battle, but they were still here risking their lives. Even though this battlefield was ruled by the ordinary and inviolable rule where death meant losing everything they had been working to achieve.

What motivated their desperate battle?

What could it possibly be other than kindness?

“Fool, this is bad sign. Encountering the bait meant to buy us time means we have more enemies to deal with. By which I mean the Gryphon, the Executioner, and the rest of the Alice Series.”

“You have some nerve running off on your own to flirt, you goddamn villain,” said Aradia. “Just so you know, I’m more than willing to employ spankings as punishment as long as you aren’t one of the witches I’ve sworn to protect.”

“My, my. Quite an outdated way of thinking for such a young-looking goddess. Makes me wonder how old you ''really'' are.”

“I don’t want to hear that from the preserved little girl from who-knows-how-many centuries ago.”

Alice extracted herself from the collapsed cabinets half-burying her.

Her eyeballs rolled in her head.

Even now, that enchantingly lithe woman only ever looked Kamijou’s way. She didn’t even glance over at Aradia who had delivered the attack.

“Kh. Anyway, let’s fall back. We need to put some distance between us!!”

A sharp voice rang through the broken faculty room. Aradia held out her palm and launched a scattershot of light to keep Alice back. Each shot moved like a sea snake as they tore through the air and targeted adult Alice from multiple angles.

The storybook girl said nothing.

She didn’t even look Aradia’s way.

She only extended a finger and rotated it once clockwise.

Like some kind of joke, all of the glowing projectiles veered away from the fully-grown woman, blasting through walls and pillars instead.

Cursing.

That one childish action easily confused every eye on her, bringing them under her spell.

“Kh.”

Aradia didn’t even have time to gasp in shock.

Alice really didn’t look her way the entire time. She simply changed the arrangement of her casually extended fingers. She curled up her middle finger and held it down with her thumb like she was preparing to flick something.

There was no light or sound.

It was a lot like returning the favor.

Aradia broke through the wall and flew off somewhere.

Kamijou’s face paled.

That had definitely hit.

Flicking.

What even was that?

What meaning had been extracted from that simple action anyone was capable of?

Warning bells rang loud in Kamijou’s mind.

''If you died, it was over.

''Death really and truly meant goodbye.

''Because Alice’s attacks were the one thing not even Good, Old Mary’s resurrection could cure.

“Aradiaaa!!”

“Don’t worry, fool. It looks like the two of them distributed the damage between them. But that ''would'' have caused her heart to burst if there hadn’t been two identical Aradias here.”

Kamijou knew now wasn’t the time to ask why that would have caused her heart to burst or what splitting that in half would mean.

He heard a dull impact and saw sparks.

After a short delay, he heard an explosion as a shockwave crashed into the distorted scene.

Something again intersected between Anna and Alice.

In the deadly battle against Alice, the value of each second was far greater than normal. Death was the end. Truly the end. The clock was always ticking in real time and everyone was moving at once.

He could not forget the fundamental rules revealed here.

“But that isn’t reason enough to relax. Splitting the damage in half means receiving the same attack twice will mean the end for both Aradias.”

“…”

So Aradia couldn’t do it.

Mut Thebes could grow endlessly by absorbing weapon shadows and Good, Old Mary could create any tool or chemical with her alchemy, including ones with great destructive power, but Kamijou couldn’t picture either of them stopping Alice.

The Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress spell could replace all pleasure with equal amounts of pain, regardless of the target’s physical toughness and endurance. That attack had made even Christian Rosencreutz grimace, but would it work here? Was this version of Alice in a mental state where she experienced that sort of human emotion?

Then would he give up?

He needed to give himself some credit for immediately answering that with a “hell no”.

He had a reason for saying that.

He needed to thank his past ordeals for preparing him for this.

“There is little meaning in analyzing each and every thing she does,” said Anna.

She raised her golden cross staff as if judging the distance between herself and Alice.

“We need to start with tearing down the idea that we can never defeat Alice. And it isn’t the Transcendents and their obvious strength that can do that. It needs to be the more unorthodox fighters like me or you who do that, fool!!”

The grown woman vanished.

The golden cross staff and the primitive and violent jabbing claws crashed together head-on.

Anna had reacted.

She was capable of it.

When the Executioner attempted to make his own attack from the side, Anna bisected him straight down the middle with only a glare. The ruby decorating her staff shined a moment later. Its role complete, a clump of compressed air burst, buffeting Kamijou’s hair and cheeks as a violent wind.

The monsters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland could actually die.

There were no absolutes in this world.

Kamijou realized it had been that way from the beginning. Alice had always been so absolute, but when Anna Sprengel showed up, the little villain toyed with the situation, laid traps, took control, and otherwise overshadowed Alice.

While Anna hadn’t managed any clean hits, being able to lock weapons with Alice was unusual in and of itself.

Anna and Alice.

Two irregular Transcendents.

Just like Alice Anotherbible brought everything to her side, including probability and insight, Anna Sprengel was manipulating some unseen factor in real time.

“Accept me, H.T. Trismegistus!! You regular Transcendents are based on Alice, so you can never harm her. But if you swap out foundations, you can bypass Alice’s precedence over you. Like comparing heights of the Tower of Babel and the World Tree Yggdrasil!!”

“I am in your debt.”

“I’m only doing this to make that fool smile. And you want Alice to smile in the same way, right? Then hurry!!”

An invisible change came over the air. A weight vanished.

New possibility had presented itself. If Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents also swapped out their connection, they could possibly overturn Alice’s absoluteness.

The young butler once more held his right hand to the staff at his hip in an iaido pose.

The meaning of his sword strikes had changed.

But he was a moment too slow.

With a dull thud, the equilibrium was broken. Anna’s small body took a powerful blow.

Even though they were supposedly equal.

With a single hand, Alice casually grabbed the beaten-up Gryphon to use it as a weapon.

As if it were a giant club.

Grabbing.

The act of denying an object its own will and applying her own will to it by unilaterally wielding it for its offensive or defensive functionality.

Anna could compete with Alice on her own, but that changed if Alice boosted her strength with something else.

That is, ''if Alice turned someone else into a weapon.

That absurdly powerful magic could boost her stats by forcibly equipping herself with something else: a sword, a shumai, a goddess – anything.

(Is that a superior version of Mut Thebes’s ability to absorb the shadow of any weapon!?)

“Gahh!?”

“Anna!!”

Alice made a further attack. The Gryphon extended her reach, so the little villain failed to dodge. She was pummeled hard enough to bend backwards.

Anna groaned and tried to raise her golden staff.

But Alice was again faster.

Alice was always a step ahead. To an unnatural degree.

She grabbed H.T. Trismegistus’s wrist as he tried to attack her from the side. She turned him into a weapon, equipped that weapon, and swung it artlessly to the side.

A direct hit.

A dull impact rang loud.

In this case, taking Anna’s side had been a mistake.

Or maybe he had been thwarted by Alice’s ''tailwind''.

That magic stole power from external sources. If H.T. Trismegistus had remained no more than one of Alice’s toys, he couldn’t have provided more power on top of her own.

The little villain struggled to breathe and a red clump splattered from the corner of her mouth.

The equilibrium was broken.

Despite dropping her golden cross staff, Anna clenched her teeth and stepped forward.

Another impact sounded.

But not from more of Alice’s unreasonable violence.

It didn’t end there.

This time it came from Anna.

Anna and Alice crashed foreheads together.

“You wanted recognition, didn’t you?”

With their foreheads pressed together, Anna spoke from extreme close range.

“You wanted forgiveness, didn’t you? And you wanted love!! Just like me!!! Then you shouldn’t give up. He didn’t care that I’m a villain. I’m here now because he didn’t hesitate to run away with me back then. As long as that fool continues to reach out his hand, don’t just assume all light has vanished from this world!!!”

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW6.png|thumb]]

Alice said nothing.

But a subtle tremor did run through the cheek of her bestial expression.

Kamijou thought that came from something other than her intense emotion.

Then Alice made her next move.

Smelling.

She sniffed out her target’s precise location. ''Which meant her next move was guaranteed to hit, no matter how poorly aimed it was.

Once again, Alice swung H.T. Trismegistus around with a single hand and struck Anna’s little body with her boosted attack. The force of the blow caused the gloomy young butler to slip from Alice’s grasp. No, his right wrist shattered like pottery. Only his hand remained in the grown woman’s hand.

This wasn’t like a home run in baseball or a strike in bowling.

The two of them were knocked away with a strange sound.

Neither one cried out.

Kamijou didn’t even want to think about how much damage that had done to Anna.

While collapsed in a daze, H.T. Trismegistus simply stared up at Alice as she tossed his hand aside. The lack of blood only made the scene more bizarre.

“I…”

Something spilled from the young butler’s lips.

They were words.

That magician had believed common sense would lead anyone to think the same thing after seeing that girl with an unwanted power forced upon her. And the words left his mouth now.

“I wanted to place a roof over her head and protect her from the threats of the world…but I failed.”

Alice Anotherbible wasn’t listening.

The fully-grown blonde woman tilted her head and spun around.

“''Teacher''.”

Toward Kamijou Touma.

As if he was all she could see.

He understood that Alice wasn’t in a normal state of mind.

She hadn’t been when a magician had altered her body, she hadn’t been when she was surrounded and protected by the Bridge Builders Cabal, she hadn’t been when Anna had given her a deep interest in Kamijou Touma, and she hadn’t been when Kamijou’s rejection had left her dazed.

She hadn’t been for so very long.

He understood that.

But that was not a statement she should have ignored.

She had become animalistic and irrational, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t talk. She had just spoken to Kamijou. But she had still chosen to brush off the young butler.

He didn’t interest her, so she wouldn’t speak to him.

Was that the only reason she didn’t react?

(Not yet.)

Don’t lose hope.

Don’t give up on Alice.

Choose to not let her madness grow.

If you began using personal misfortune as an excuse, that was the end for you. In a way, Kamijou understood that better than anyone.

The world was cruel, so he had seen plenty of people unfairly and unreasonably devastated by it.

But Kamijou hadn’t faltered with those people.

He had fought them.

“I was unlucky” was a convenient phrase applicable to most anything, but he knew relying it and overusing it would prevent you from ever finding the way out of the darkness and would meaninglessly force you into a life of misfortune. He knew in his bones that irresponsibly relying on your misfortune would mean rotting away in that filthy dead end forever.

So.

He would teach Alice the proper way to live with unreasonable misfortune.

“You can still fight, can’t you, teacher?”

“I can.”

Kamijou readied his one and only weapon. He clenched his fist.

Hard.

“But that doesn’t matter so the girl will overturn her prophecy because she will make sure to do something to help you and then make up with you and fight with you and be happy so she doesn’t believe what that incomplete library says because there must be a way to help you out there and she refuses to fail because the girl is Anotherbible so we can make up.”

“Sure!! But I hope you don’t think saying that will stop me, Alice!!”

===Part 3===

He couldn’t rely on Anna Sprengel or H.T. Trismegistus anymore.

The other Transcendents were a far way off too.

The ordinary faculty room was everything.

It must have been cut off from the rest of the world long ago.

So it was one against one.

Kamijou Touma vs. Alice Anotherbible, or what has become of Alice Pleasance Liddell.

This had been about them from the beginning, so there was no better two to settle it.

So.

“Ooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

“Ooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

They clashed head on.

Alice roared like an animal and spread her arms wide.

Hugging.

An act of reliance on another and using your full body to acquire a sense of fulfillment from the outside world.

Of course, a hug from her here would have easily torn Kamijou’s body apart.

A dull sound indicated a direct hit.

From Kamijou. He felt the solid impact of landing a punch.

The sensation in his fist was enough to clear his mind.

In a way, this was to be expected when Alice went all in on attack, spreading her arms and coming straight toward him without even considering defense.

“Kh.”

Beads of sweat flew from the grown woman as she bent back and left her “hugging” pose. With the trunk of her body still collapsed, she clawed at the air with her fingers bent like hooks.

The boy dropped his body down.

After just barely dodging a deadly attack that sliced through the walls and pillars, he threw another punch that Alice blocked with her other hand. But unlike with her “walking” or “binding”, there was no special effect here.

Alice didn’t have time to extract and refine a miracle out of that action.

They clashed a few more times after that, but still Kamijou was not dead.

They both took a step back.

“Curioser and curioser.”

Alice tilted her head.

The fully-grown bondage woman moved with the mannerisms of a 10-year-old.

It was strange and bizarre.

Everything about her was.

“You’re the only one still standing, teacher, but you’re moving in ways you shouldn’t be able to on your own.”

“Of course I am.”

When Alice was taking evasive action by “crawling”, any and all attacks would pass through her.

H.T. Trismegistus had proven this for everyone to see by not hesitating to bisect the girl he so adored.

Alice could extract miracles much like the Pneuma-less Shell but without relying on any tools.

That knowledge came from Anna Sprengel.

However.

“So why don’t you just keep on ‘crawling’ while you attack? Then you could remain untouchable the entire time you send your unfair attacks our way.”

“…”

“Since you aren’t doing that, I can only assume you’re limited to using one miracle at a time. For example, your ‘crawling’ causes any attacks to pass right through you, but it also keeps you from laying a finger on us, so you can never actually end the fight that way, can you? Your ‘walking’ and ‘cursing’ are the same. ''Your miracles are isolated things – they can’t be combined or used in parallel''! Which means I’ve found your weakness, Alice Anotherbible. I don’t know how tough you are, but you can’t make yourself untouchable while you attack. The damage will reach you then!!”

So he would aim for a cross counter.

It wasn’t much, but that was the one and only way out of this battle against Alice Anotherbible.

Alice could use any and all miracles with nothing more than her own body, but she had the mannerisms of a child. She was extremely powerful, but her attacks were all made “on a whim” or “on reflex”, which made it easy to match her timing.

Kamijou hadn’t realized this on his own.

He never could have.

He wouldn’t let anyone say the defeated people’s feelings had been any weaker than anyone else’s.

If Alice could “grab” any object, phenomenon, or person and make it her weapon, then he was supported by the strength of the feelings that had led him to this point.

He couldn’t let this end in tears at this point. He wouldn’t leave anyone behind in the darkness. He would grab Alice’s hand and drag her out of there.

Because that was the power of reality, something not even Imagine Breaker could eliminate.

“What does it matter if they’re not standing here with me? Anna, Trismegistus, and the others showed me the way. They risked their lives to test your abilities and I never would have made it this far without everything they learned. Don’t you get it? They’re still here fighting alongside me.”

“Then the girl will heal herself.”

That was all Alice said.

She was so powerful she had never had a chance to experience defeat and so didn’t worry too much about who won an individual battle. She didn’t fear the possibility of being beaten and dying.

If she did ultimately bury the enemy who stood in her way, it was no skin off her nose if she died once or twice first.

Because…

“Have you forgotten, teacher? The girl already had her head crushed by someone calling himself Rosencreutz. And yet here she is as good as new. So it doesn’t matter to the girl even if you do manage to kill her in exchange for severe damage on your part. ''The girl just has to resurrect herself a billion or even a trillion times if necessary and wait for you to finally wear yourself out''.”

“''But you can’t do anything else while you’re focused on healing yourself, can you''?”

He also had an immediate response.

This wasn’t enough to break him.

Kamijou did not fear that the wishes and feelings left with him would amount to nothing and that all his efforts would be negated in an instant.

She could heal herself?

It would all be for nothing?

So what?

Surprisingly, it was Alice who spoke next.

The fully-grown woman spoke with an oddly calm and quiet voice, like a pot on the verge of boiling.

“What do you think you can accomplish?”

“What, out of miracles already? Why not search through my mind yourself, Alice?”

Alice’s prophecy was accurate.

Kamijou Touma would die.

He had accepted that.

And he had decided he would save this girl using the power he gained in exchange.

So he took the first step forward.

They clashed.

===Part 4===

In a merciless head-on assault, Alice’s fist compressed the air and tore through the existing faculty room while the path of her five claws sliced through the entire building and space itself.

Dodging was meaningless against this.

If she made a single roundhouse kick, it would probably become an AoE attack that struck everything around her. When her attack was like a massive gale sweeping right to left, there was no way to avoid it just by moving your body out of the way.

So it hit.

(Gah…)

Kamijou’s body didn’t just strain.

His body produced dull cracking and popping noises he had never heard before.

He didn’t have time to assess what exactly had broken.

The dulling of his sense of pain was actually a blessing in this case.

Yes.

The difference between fortune and misfortune was ultimately a matter of viewpoint and usage.

He bit his lip so a bloody flavor wouldn’t spill from his mouth and he swung his fist again.

He wanted a cross counter.

But if all he wanted was to knock Alice down to stop her, he didn’t actually need to skillfully evade every attack launched by that fully-grown monster.

He was lucky if he could even get an attack in for each of hers.

“Rahh!!!” he shouted, completing the swing of his fist.

He placed his body weight behind it.

Even if she was up against a being known as a god or a demon, or a human who had trained themselves up to the point that everyone would see them as such a thing, this version of Alice would likely crush them underfoot without them even realizing they had been killed.

But that didn’t matter.

Kamijou did not stop.

No amount of willpower would let him avoid taking hits here. And each time one of Alice’s attacks hit him, critical sounds of destruction came from within his body. Red beads of blood swam through the air and even ordinary pain vanished behind a wave of scorching heat.

But none of that was any reason for Kamijou to falter as he clenched his teeth and fist.

He was up against an extremely deadly power.

But what did that matter when he was going to die anyway?

The prophecy had been made quite a while ago. Nothing he could do would change the fact that he was going to die. Since he didn’t have time to spend on that issue, he was approaching death with each tick of the clock. His fate was the same no matter who won this fight.

That was enough to know that his own life was a secondary concern here.

''Something else mattered more.

Namely, the girl right in front of him. The girl who was feared but also revered by so many. No one was interested in anything other than treating her like a monster, she had forgotten the proper way to lose, and she believed she could make others happy as long as she wielded her great power. And as a result, that lonely girl would lose everything she thought she had.

She was his top priority.

And this wasn’t limited to him.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents had to know what it meant to leave the Bridge Builders Cabal and oppose Alice. H.T. Trismegistus had stayed by Alice’s side to serve her to the end, but he had also chosen to turn his blade against her when necessary. And Anna Sprengel who had viewed Alice the way people used to view her.

None of them were fighting because they could win.

Only the people who had chosen the option least likely to ensure their survival had stuck with Kamijou. And the Transcendents understood just how much of a threat Alice was, so it must have been a much harder decision for them than for ignorant Kamijou.

Even so…

He heard yet another dull impact.

Which meant he had again failed to avoid an attack.

His movements slowed with each consecutive hit. His body felt so heavy. But this was far better than having his body explode, leaving nothing but a stain on the floor.

Kamijou knew he didn’t have luck to thank for this.

Was Alice holding back?

He smiled a little.

How happy it would make him if that were it.

Their fists collided.

Sound vanished for a brief moment.

Creating a blank.

Perhaps some vital lines had been severed inside his body.

His fist felt hot. It may have already broken.

The world seemed to tilt around him.

But he still gathered strength in his legs to keep himself from falling.

Alice’s legs were shaking too. Her shoulders were heaving as she breathed and one eye was unnaturally closed. The eyelid may have been cut.

But she was still on her feet.

This wasn’t about right or wrong and it wasn’t about like or dislike.

Both of them simply refused to back down. No matter what.

So it wouldn’t end. Kamijou refused to die before he was through. He still held his ticket to change destiny.

It would be such a waste if he collapsed before he could use it.

He would stop her.

And save her.

Kamijou Touma forced his pain-numbed body to move and clenched his fist once more.

Another attack came.

Realizing where Alice was aiming, he immediately balled up to protect himself.

To protect his right arm.

If his arm was torn off, ''that thing'' would emerge. He had proven that when he severed the arm himself to summon it against Rosencreutz.

That would work if he was ''only'' interested in defeating her.

''That thing'' may have been the only remaining mystery in this world that rivaled Alice.

But Kamijou had made a decision back then.

He had made up his mind.

He would never use ''that thing'' again. Never against another person. Plus, a little thing like death wouldn’t be enough to stop Alice!!

He took the full brunt of the attack as payment.

He couldn’t see it, but he was pretty sure his back had split open.

He finally heard a rupturing sound within his own body.

It reminded him a lot of a water balloon.

He coughed up blood. Enough to feel like a solid clump.

That didn’t matter.

He refused to collapse.

He hadn’t saved Alice yet. So he would keep fighting until he had. No matter what anyone said – no matter what analysis had been made by the magician smart enough for Aleister to rely on and Anna to fear – whoever remained standing in the end was the winner.

So.

Kamijou ignored the red spilling from between his pursed lips and clenched his broken fist even tighter. He may have been further breaking his bones with his own strength, but he didn’t care in the slightest.

He used his knees to push Alice back a bit while feeling her warmth.

He secured the optimal position while right up in front of her.

Surprise colored her face.

It was the look of a child refused a hug.

He smiled a little.

Because he would never do that.

He swung his fist with all his might.

There was just one sound.

Alice’s fist finally swished through empty air while Kamijou’s found a solid cheekbone.

The impact rang dully out.

The blow actually broke his elbow and shoulder.

Nevertheless, he kept his full weight on his broken fist to the end.

He brought her down.

===Part 5===

“…”

Kamijou Touma was standing.

He had remained on his feet to the end.

Something appeared to have torn through his arm, but he felt no actual pain.

He saw white bone.

The skin and flesh had come away more easily than with chicken on the bone.

Maybe he was hallucinating it.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

He didn’t let it bother him. His sense of pain melted away within the growing heat and he lost all interest in his own injuries. To be blunt, they didn’t matter.

He took a step forward.

“Tea…cher?”

Alice Anotherbible was still down where she had fallen on her rear.

She was trembling.

She may have seen a bit of what she had done. It had come into focus for her. Who could say when it would all “cloud over” once more, but for this moment at least, her vision was clear.

She sounded more than a little dazed. The fully-grown woman spoke with unstable confusion in her voice.

Like she had finally caught on.

“It’s alright.”

Kamijou smiled.

The smile came to him naturally.

“You did enough to deserve that. But now we’re even. Aren’t we, Alice?”

“No…”

The fully-grown woman shook her head.

Like a small child.

Something floated in the air. The teacups and saucers had been flying around weightlessly, but now they vanished into thin air like fading sparks. Everything around them distorted as the illusion inside the girl crumbled away.

Alice’s dream was ending.

Kamijou could sense reality pushing its way in.

It wouldn’t be long now.

He had not put together any kind of response to the prophecy from that absolute being.

But he had accomplished a more important task.

He had saved her.

So.

It was time to pay the price.

“…”

Had it taken a long time, or a short one?

Reality had raised the white flag almost immediately, so maybe this hadn’t been a path that could be measured with time.

So many events had happened in such a condensed time period.

December 24.

In the middle of the Christmas season, R&C Occultics had suddenly risen to prominence and revealed the hidden existence of magic online.

And CEO Anna Sprengel had appeared in Academy City.

She had mouth-to-mouth delivered the body-hijacking St. Germain microbe to Kamijou, infecting him.

December 25.

Anna Sprengel had stood on center stage.

Kamijou had attempted to communicate with the St. Germain microbe infecting his body and had fought Anna using magic despite the side-effect it had on his body.

Kamijou had just barely managed to defeat Anna, but to protect Kamijou’s life, St. Germain had negated himself with Imagine Breaker. This made it a bitter event for Kamijou.

December 25.

Another incident occurred in Academy City that same day.

Defeated Anna was left in Anti-Skill’s custody, but the problem hadn’t ended there. A probability-manipulating spiritual item called the Coin of Nicholas had been spread around Academy City. The new Board Chairman’s plan to quietly correct the city’s darkness was hijacked and Anna easily left her cell.

Kamijou was barely involved in this incident.

But it was very significant that he encountered Alice Anotherbible after that incident full of so much death and defeat.

December 26.

The threat of R&C Occultics was not limited to Academy City. Los Angeles was suddenly engulfed in yellow sand and its tens of millions of residents disappeared. While pursuing this, it was revealed that Anna had caused such a large-scale incident just to acquire a skilled engineer.

At first glance, it looked like an arrogant act that ignored the costs and risks.

But thinking back, Anna had already been mentioning her “king” at this point.

December 29.

But the true center of the world’s problems was not Anna Sprengel.

Anna readily threw out her global IT company to join the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Alice Anotherbible, the mysterious girl at the top of that cabal, caused plenty of trouble for Kamijou in the darkness of Academy City.

This was the true starting point.

Alice had warned him thrice.

She told him he would die if the altered branch was returned to normal.

December 31.

In Shibuya, Kamijou began working to correct his extreme lack of funds. There he found the Bologna Succubus and Aradia waiting for him. Those magicians were known as Transcendents and possessed powers on another dimension entirely. A clash between just those two produced enough overflowing charisma to engulf the entirety of Shibuya in rioters.

January 1.

A building calling itself a consulate for the Bridge Builders Cabal suddenly appeared in District 12, which had a focus on mythology and religion. The greater focus on the idea of Transcendents further showed how unique Alice was.

Alice wanted to provide deadly punishment for H.T. Trismegistus and the other Transcendents who threatened Kamijou’s life, but Kamijou himself intervened, driving a decisive wedge between the two.

January 3.

Kamijou happened to rescue Anna Sprengel after she was captured by Aleister and fled around Academy City with Aradia, who they had happened across. They were pursued by Mut Thebes, a Transcendent in charge of punishment.

This was when Kamijou first heard Anna clearly talk about her “king”.

She wanted someone who would restrain her wickedness and protect her.

But she never had a chance to meet this person. She was doomed to die after being hit by the Shrink Drink, a special spear that borrowed a portion of Alice’s power.

Alice was the only one who could save Anna, but at the same time, the Bridge Builders Cabal was working to bring back a dead magician: CRC, Christian Rosencreutz. But when he was reborn, he was not the man seen in the legends. He obliterated the Bridge Builders Cabal just to stave off boredom and Alice Anotherbible was killed.

January 5.

The reborn Christian Rosencreutz began fighting his boredom.

Kamijou faced that ultimate threat to protect Anna who was on the verge of death in the hospital. As the ring of defenders grew, ultimately Academy City as a whole was working to stop CRC from taking that life.

Once it was all over, Alice got up like nothing had happened to her.

CRC was not the greatest monster.

And today.

It had been a long time.

Yes, a very long time.

Unbelievably long.

This wasn’t about the literal time it had taken.

Far too much had happened over winter break. Kamijou had been exposed to multiple new forms of threat and been badly beaten, but that had built up his unseen heart and soul enough to make it this far.

And.

He had dragged his heavy body far enough to stand before Alice Anotherbible.

He had stood right in front of her.

He could say that for certain.

Everything that had happened had been leading up to this moment.

He had arrived.

All the past storms seemed like a fantasy now.

It hadn’t been pretty and he had been badly delayed, but he had made it.

On his own two feet.

“I’m here, Alice.”

He barely got his voice out.

With all the blood clogging up his throat, he wasn’t sure if his voice was even audible.

“I made it here.”

“You can’t defeat the girl, teacher. If everything had gone as planned and the girl had used her full power, you might have been spared this death ''coming from the outside''.”

Alice could say what she liked, but the winner made the decisions.

That’s what he had been fighting for.

So he could tell her it would be alright.

The girl might not get what she wanted.

If Kamijou died here, Alice’s wish to make up with him would go forever unfulfilled. She had become a world-destroying storm to make that happen, but Kamijou himself had put a stop to it.

But.

He just hadn’t been able to leave her all alone and howling.

“…”

His limit had arrived.

He would die today.

But Alice still had her life. She still had plenty of happy paths left for her. She could meet so many people and surround herself with so many smiles she forgot all about today.

Surely he was allowed to wish for that.

She had been abducted, remade, worshipped, and rejected.

She had appeared free, but she had always been bound by something unseen. She had always been underneath someone’s foot. And no matter how powerful she was, she had ultimately been unable to change that herself.

So on the verge of death, surely Kamijou was allowed to imagine a world where she was happy enough to make up for all that with interest.

Allowed by who?

Not that bastard god.

Kamijou Touma would allow himself that happy wishful thinking.

He would celebrate this ending.

Slowly, fully-grown Alice once more got up from the floor. She stood up.

As if to cling to him.

“You will die if you move any more, teacher. You will die and leave nothing behind.”

“So...what?”

The pointy-haired boy dragged his body along and struggled to support himself.

He faced Alice head on.

The girl seemed unable to move beyond her incessant trembling. She was extraordinarily powerful. She had easily killed the reborn Christian Rosencreutz, who not even all the regular Transcendents working together had been a match for, but she was rendered motionless at the sight of this ordinary high school boy.

It wasn’t a physical matter.

But just this once, Kamijou Touma had defeated Alice Anotherbible.

He was an unfortunate person.

He had lost his memories, been placed in mortal peril more times than he could count, and actually died on occasion. Not even being killed had been enough to end it. There probably wasn’t any real reason why. He just so happened to be there, so he was dragged into it. His life was a series of those coincidences.

It hadn’t started here.

And it had probably happened plenty of times he couldn’t remember.

But.

Even so.

“I…”

He felt the grasping hand of death at the center of his chest.

He didn’t need to hold his hand to his chest to know his heart wanted to rest.

Wounds caused by Alice Anotherbible could not be healed with Good, Old Mary’s resurrection.

The tearing sound inside him was continuing.

Only he could hear it. Were those blood vessels tearing? Or maybe muscles?

It didn’t matter.

Some major arteries and even his heart had probably already ruptured.

But there was something he still had to say.

“…I…”

Maybe it was the blood loss, but the sweat on his brow was unusually cold. His tongue and cheeks were numb.

He had trouble speaking.

He prayed that he would get the words out. Failing to say this before the end would just be too cruel.

But what was he praying to?

Not to god, that was for sure. He knew better than to expect anything from that jerk.

So he chose to pray to himself. To the human being he was. Only he could change the world with his will. He would endure until the end. He just had to think back on the path he had taken and compare this to all that pain and suffering.

A little thing like death was nothing.

If he clenched his teeth, he could keep on moving for a little while longer.

He had a lesson for that girl.

If she understood this, she would be alright.

Alice Anotherbible could probably do anything.

But there were no absolutes for any human.

So he had to tell her.

No matter how extraordinary she might be, if she acted thoughtlessly and carelessly long enough, she would pay a painful price eventually.

And if she took it too far, that price could even be the life of someone she cared deeply for.

Alice could protect herself from anything. Even if she died, she could resurrect herself right away. She was so powerful it was fundamentally wrong to even think about defeating her. But could she protect other people?

Violence took important things from yourself and others.

She could fight and win, but would that even matter?

Had Kamijou gained anything at all when he released the mysterious dragon from his severed right arm and defeated Rosencreutz with it?

Violence was not a valid solution.

He had forever lost a future where he and CRC could smile together.

He had done it himself.

By giving up.

That wasn’t a solution.

He had realized that afterwards.

And he had stopped himself from making that mistake again.

“I don’t…”

So.

If Alice was greater than Rosencreutz – if her power was truly extraordinary – she had to think even deeper about strength and power.

Kamijou was just an ordinary high school boy. He wasn’t arrogant enough to think he was in any position to teach anyone anything. But if Alice realized this for herself, she could stop herself. She could learn to think about ''compromising with'' the wide world around her instead of focusing only on what she wanted.

That was Kamijou’s battle.

There was no avoiding death for him, so that was his one and only win condition.

So he made sure to keep speaking to the end.

Because he had to accomplish that.

He held the fully-grown woman’s face between his bloody hands.

He looked Alice straight in the eye.

And the ordinary high school boy got the words out.

''He made it in time.

“I don’t want to see anyone suffering from even more misfortune than me!! You got a problem with that!?”

From the start, they had both known how this would end.

There had been no changing it.

Alice fell back onto her rear. As if she were backing away from a truth she didn’t want to accept.

She had blood on her cheeks.

The faint red stains left by the boy’s fingers.

What little warmth was left in that blood was fading fast.

“Tea…cher?”

Her voice was scratchy.

It was a definite physical voice.

The voice of her original young form.

But no one answered her fearful, trembling question.

The boy had not fallen.

Whoever remained standing in the end was the winner. So he had refused to fall until he had saved Alice. This proved his resolve more than anything.

===Part 6===

Kamijou Touma was still standing.

He was no longer moving.

His brain, his heart, and everything that provided life had fully ceased functioning.

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW7.png|thumb]]

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{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume10_Chapter3|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume10_Epilogue}}
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Chapter3

2024-06-01T08:07:12Z

Entei08: Mistranslation

==Chapter 3: Journey – Cut_a_Road_to_Allover_the_Goal.==

===Part 1===

Technically speaking, this was Yomikawa Aiho’s apartment.

But she was currently busy with work, so Yoshikawa Kikyou was looking after the small girl instead. Last Order, who looked to be about 10, was sorting something in her room.

“Cute.”

That was her judgment of a crane game doll.

“Not cute.”

That rejection was passed on a flat, ruler-shaped magnet.

But she still had plenty more to sort. The cat-shaped potholder and the Christmas tree floor lamp would be judged too. Some might have judged it all as junk.

Yoshikawa held a hand to her forehead.

“Can’t you just throw it all out? Listen, mere objects don’t actually have souls. If you hug each and every thing and refuse to throw it away, your room will be full in no time.”

“But this one is so cute! And so is this one! says Misaka as Misaka hugs them.”

Last Order shouted loud and hugged an (empty) water dispenser bottle the size of a daruma doll. She had a very wide range of what she considered cute and they all brought back memories that kept her from throwing them out. Yoshikawa sighed and wondered if it would be easier to just find a cheap storage unit for her.

That was when she heard a smooth artificial voice.

It came from outside the apartment’s front door. It was polite but quite loud.

“Martial law has been declared for the entirety of Academy City. Ordinary citizens are asked to remain indoors unless you have an urgent need. Also, this building is not an authorized shelter. Please check your maps and move to the nearest disaster shelter as soon as possible.”

That had to be a drum-shaped cleaning robot and its instructions seemed contradictory.

But Last Order remained seated on the floor and made no move to get up. She didn’t even look in that direction.

“Not cute, says Misaka as Misaka presents a cruel truth.”

Apparently not all round things met her definition of cute.

Then something poked its head out from around the corner of the hallway inside the apartment.

It was a bipedal tanuki.

But instead of the mystical creature found in old folklore, this appeared to be a dance robot’s metal frame placed inside a stuffed animal.

This came as a shock to Last Order.

Yoshikawa vaguely recalled seeing something like this having fun on TV.

“That tanuki is…cute!!”

===Part 2===

From red to black.

The sun set and night fell.

The already chilly winter air had transformed into a wind that seemed to slash at Kamijou and the others’ cheeks. To be blunt, he wanted some way of protecting his ears.

District 23 was a unique district full of airfields and rocket launch sites. To keep the various aircraft safe, the district was usually surrounded by a tall fence and strictly guarded, but it was deserted now.

There was no earsplitting noise. Had the passenger planes been grounded due to the martial law, or for some other reason?

Kamijou could scarcely believe it.

“Did they really set their second defense line here? They thought Christian Rosencreutz would choose to pass through such a dangerous district?”

“That’s what they’re saying on the Anti-Skill radio channel. Do you think that Rosencreutz guy could rewrite those encrypted transmissions?” asked Mikoto while monitoring those transmissions.

But not even she was doing that directly through her head. She was using a radio she had picked up.

It was possible CRC wouldn’t change his route because security was strict here or laxer over there. If he took the shortest route to the District 7 hospital, he would end up crossing through Districts 23 and 18. In the worst case, it was even possible he would actively choose to cross a minefield and step on every mine along the way. Because he enjoyed the loud noises.

“Look over there. There’s light,” said the honey blonde girl.

“Sh! That’s Anti-Skill’s second defense line.”

There were a lot of tanks and armored vehicles there. Kamijou didn’t know much about military stuff, but even he recognized one vehicle type. The mobile combat vehicles resembling 8-wheel armored trucks with a tank gun on top were Predator Octopuses. Just the one had made things so much easier when fleeing with Anna, so seeing a whole line of them here sent a chill down his spine.

In addition to the vehicle headlights, Anti-Skill had gathered up the kind of big outdoor lightning used at construction sites. A maze of barricades had been set up with sandbags piled up in places to construct countless encampments of various sizes. Then there were the heavy machinegun and automatic grenade launcher emplacements set up by driving spikes into the asphalt using the power of pneumatics. Runways were supposed to be delicate areas where a single stray screw or nail could lead to disaster, so gathering all of this was quite something.

No, that had it backwards.

If you ignored the potential financial losses, the wide-open runway may have been the perfect spot for Anti-Skill to use their next-gen weaponry. It at least greatly reduced the risk of a student dorm being hit by a stray shot.

But was that their real reason?

If they were using the possibility of stray shots as an excuse for their helplessness at the first defense line, it meant they still hadn’t accurately judged the threat Rosencreutz presented.

“Oh? Misaka-san?”

“Wait a second. Onee-sama, what are you doing here!?”

“Ugh.” Mikoto uncharacteristically flinched.

She apparently knew some of the Judgment members working here. Kamijou recognized the girl with twintails. He knew her name was Shirai Kuroko. But the older girl in glasses was entirely unknown to him. Something about the super-serious glasses girl with black hair told him she would kill him if he cracked a joke here. She scared him. Her strict aura reminded him a lot of Fukiyose when she was in a bad mood. W-was she always like this? Didn’t it wear her out?

“Onee-sama, District 23 is off limits. What are you doing here?”

“Um, Kuroko? Hear me out before you chew me out. See, I am the #3 Level 5, so I thought I could lend a hand now that Academy City is in trouble.”

“Absolutely not! You don’t have the authority to just decide that! Wandering around an off-limits area is enough to have you taken into custody!! And when have I ever ‘chewed you out’!? Care to explain why you chose that phrasing in particular!?”

“Sigh, and there you go (sob).”

Meanwhile, Kamijou’s eyes were not drawn to the Predator Octopuses so like the one he had recently entrusted his life to. He saw a much more disturbing weapon.

“What…is that?”

It looked like a 70m steel snake, or like an enlarged version of the luggage carrier carts often used at airports. It was made up of 10 armored cars with ground-flattening metal wheels that might as well have been road rollers. They were linked in a long line by giant metal ball joints. Each one looked to be around 7m long, 3m wide, and 2m tall. That meant they were wide and flat, which made it look like a snake lying down on the ground.

Each car was armed with gun turrets on the sides, but these were very different from a tank or warship’s weapons. They looked more like antiair weapons. A self-destruct drone launcher and a Gatling gun rotated as a single set.

“You mean the XHsACV-15 Anaconda?”

Shirai Kuroko sounded more confused than exasperated.

Because…

“The X at the start means they’re sending prototypes out to the field.”

“It is an all-terrain armored combat vehicle. Two-car armored vehicles that can bend in the middle are already made in Finland and Singapore. You could view this as a more extreme version of that concept.”

The glasses Judgment girl held a hand to the temple of her glasses and seemed delighted to provide the explanation.

A prototype.

That would explain the green jungle camouflage that only made more conspicuous here.

That said, what was this city hoping to accomplish building that weird thing?

“Unlike a normal tank or armored truck, I doubt it’s supposed to fight while driving around.” Mikoto analyzed it with a sigh. “Is it more of a mobile barricade that can rush in when there’s a riot and use itself as a thick wall to protect one side of a school from the rioters? See how its turrets are on the sides? That means it’s designed to fight with its side to the enemy, not its front.”

“R-right.”

“But putting them on both sides doubles the cost, so no sensible designer would arrange them like that. A top-mounted turret with 360-degree rotation would be lighter and cheaper. The only reason to do it this way is if the weapons double as special armor to protect itself. So if a shell or missile hits it, it triggers an outward explosion to reduce the force of the enemy projectile trying to punch through the armor. And that’s a lot cheaper with a drone launcher than a big gun. It looks like the actual radar is split between the front and the rear. Unless you accurately shot between the weapons with something like my Railgun, the shot will be diverted at the cost of one of the modular, and thus replaceable, unmanned turrets.”

“Anything is fine as long as we have something defending us,” said the honey blonde girl.

She had a point.

After all, this was District 23. The flat runway gave a clear view out to the horizon in all directions, meaning there was nowhere to hide. They didn’t want CRC firing magic projectiles here. Having those five or ten units surrounding them to create a rough encampment would mean a lot.

Kamijou then listened in the two Judgment girls:

“It’s plenty long, but at only 2m tall, rioters can simply climb over it. But if they added rolls of barbed wire, I’d be afraid of injuring them. Well, those flaws are what make prototypes so cute.”

“Is that so? If they’re going to the trouble of using a computer for the complex calculations needed to sync the engine RPMs, I don’t see why they would bother with a giant snake that can’t even separate. Procuring 10 maneuverable armored vehicles would seem more convenient to me.”

“They must still be working out the kinks to discover its true charm as a product. Besides, don’t you love the sound of the phrase ‘mysterious prototype weapon’? Hee hee.”

“Not really. I don’t understand you biker girls who get all worked up whenever you see a mech that doesn’t even cover you up.”

That conversation hinted at a lot of effort going on behind the scenes, but the thick wall still felt unshakable to Kamijou.

But then another thought occurred to him.

(Can this traditional weaponry really stop Rosencreutz?)

It was a vague, meaningless question.

His thoughts never reached the part where he figured out what else to do.

Because he was interrupted by something floating down from the night sky.

It was colored a hot pink.

Since this was the second time, Kamijou felt more relief than surprise.

“You’re alive, Bologna Succubus!”

“Natch.”

The blonde demon smiled as she spread her large batlike wings. While Kamijou’s honest reaction made her feel a touch bashful.

This time, she managed to land on the runway without running into anyone’s face with her crotch.

What had happened to Aradia and Good, Old Mary? The latter in particular had been knocked out by an attack from Christian Rosencreutz last Kamijou knew.

“Having a Transcendent with you should expand your strategic options. My Cold Mistress spell will probably only work on him once. It swaps out a human’s pleasure with pain no matter how physically tough they are, so it should work on someone ''who only acts out of passion and playfulness''. Still, it won’t work once he comes up with a countermeasure, so when to make use of that limited opportunity is the real key.”

And…

“A-a succubus?”

“Oui. You got a problem with that, mademoiselle middle schooler who still has a lot of growing up to do?”

Someone was trembling a short distance away.

The honey blonde girl ''whose name Kamijou didn’t know'' seemed to take issue with something about this.

Kamijou just wished those two with such nice bodies would avoid glaring at each other from so close together their big boobs were pushed together. Where was a high school boy supposed to look!?

“A sexy young woman with long blonde hair, an amazing figure, and a mysterious sparkle ability in the eyes who specializes in nonphysical attacks? A-am I a joke to her? She just copied everything about me! And you’re telling me she’s gotten to know him behind my back!? That’s as aggressive a move as building a big-name convenience store right next to a privately run shop!!”

“You missed ‘talks weird’ on that list of similarities,” said Mikoto.

“Talks weird?” “Talks weird?”

The blondes joined forces(?) to both glare at Mikoto.

“Anyway, who do you think you are? A young doll like you needs to wait at least a decade before she can call herself ‘sexy’. And historically and traditionally, a succubus is the orthodox choice for sexy, not a middle schooler. Seriously though, I really do recommend you wait ten years so you can truly fulfill that high school boy’s dream of a dorm manager lady.”

“Why am I getting advice from an exhibitionist pervert who walks around outside in her underwear!?”

[[Image:GT Index v09 BW4.jpg|thumb]]

It sounded like the Bologna Succubus had won the squishy battle.

This must have been quite a shock because the mystery honey blonde girl simply stood in place with tears in her eyes. …And had Kamijou ever told that demon about his dorm manager dream? Kamijou couldn’t remember in enough detail to be sure. He had legitimately died and passed out a few times during his December 31 in Shibuya, so had he mentioned it in his sleep at some point? He wasn’t sure how she had gotten the information, but he really wished she wouldn’t spread it around to other people. Because it was embarrassing!!!

And for some reason, Mikoto looked glum.

She was hanging her head with a look of belated realization.

“(Eh? Do I not even have the honor of participating in that battle? Because of the gap in chest size?)”

“?”

Kamijou got the feeling anything he said would make her want to die, so he opted to leave her be.

Just then, a pale-faced Anti-Skill officer began showing around her tablet without knowing who to ask for further instructions.

“W-we have footage from the drone… He’s coming!! He’s head straight here! Wh-wh-what do we do!?”

“We need to set all our complaints aside. Everyone, to your posts! You don’t want to let him cross this defense line without putting up a fight, do you!?”

The busty glasses Judgment girl clapped her hands and provided instructions. She was so good at it the adults of Anti-Skill were taken aback and simply obeyed. Anti-Skill was generally made up of the muscular gym teachers and guidance counselors, so how did that girl have the upper hand?

He had only been spotted by drone, but if they knew he was close enough to judge that he was headed this way, he couldn’t be that far away.

Christian Rosencreutz was coming.

Kamijou recalled how extraordinary Alice Anotherbible had been.

Nothing was going to just “work out for the best” here.

''If he lost this time, he really would die. As would the other people here. He wouldn’t be able to speak with any of them again.

The battle at the second defense line would soon begin.

===Part 3===

Mut Thebes stood alone in District 18.

The place was completely dark thanks to the martial law.

(This iron sand hand warmer is nice. Nothing can beat the classics.)

That pointy-haired boy had given her the item before they parted.

So now the chilly girl warmed herself with that modern convenience.

Anti-Skill referred to this as the third defense line, but the District 7 hospital where Anna Sprengel slept wasn’t far from here. For that boy, this had to be the last line.

Mut Thebes was a special Transcendent who could absorb people’s and objects’ shadows using her own white shadow and then use them as she saw fit. The next-gen weapons belonged to the science side, but once she absorbed them, she could use them as part of her magic.

And she had discovered a fascinating weapon here.

The 41cm Trebuchet linear artillery.

The cannon replaced the power of explosives with electromagnets, but the shells it launched in a large arc like a long throw in baseball would reach the ozone layer before accurately striking a target 20 thousand meters away. In addition to targeting a single point and piercing deep underground, it could be switched to a secondary mode that used the great air friction to intentionally destroy the metal shell in the air above the target, blasting it into plasma that could obliterate an aircraft carrier fleet in the ocean, assuming they were packed in close enough. The result could be thought of as an artificial Tunguska event.

With the main weapon, the spare shells, the targeting unit, the antiair weaponry set up nearby to defend it, and everything else, it took up an entire schoolyard.

One of the Anti-Skill officers working in the schoolyard noticed her and yelled at her.

“You there! Martial law is in effect. Get back to your dorm immediately!”

“?”

“Wh-why do you look so confused?”

She had had a shootout with them just yesterday, but had they not distributed an accurate photo of her? That was the real source of her confusion, but she knew correcting him would only make things worse, so she kept quiet.

The schoolyard artillery looked like it had been set up in a hurry and a lot of Anti-Skill officers were moving all around it, but it didn’t appear to be ready to fire yet. If Rosencreutz wasn’t delayed at the second defense line, he would probably arrive here at the third before they were ready putting it together.

But that changed if Mut Thebes absorbed it.

(Although it will take me some time to absorb such a large shadow.)

She only needed contact the long shadow formed by the bright outdoor lights, so she didn’t even need to cross the fence surrounding the schoolyard.

She waited on the side of the road and thought in silence.

It would take some time to absorb it into her white shadow, but she had nothing to fear once that was done. Because she didn’t actually need to operate the weapon as it was designed to be used. In a recent battle, she had even shined lights on a warship from multiple angles and absorbed each of its shadows to create a giant monster out of them and march across Academy City.

“Hm. Which would mean…”

Mut Thebes nodded silently to herself.

With this, she could fortify the third defense line while also using the long-range artillery to participate in the battle being fought at the second defense line.

“Interesting.”

===Part 4===

Christian Rosencreutz strolled leisurely through District 12.

There were no people or cars here. That made it a strange alternate world.

“Oops.”

He stopped his foot in midair.

Something was pouring all its strength into running across the cold ground just below his shoe.

CRC’s eyes crinkled in a smile at the rat crossing the crosswalk on the deserted street.

Thanks to the martial law, the train station’s ticket gates were all closed. The convenience store and other shops were also deserted. But that wasn’t the small children he saw were interested in.

They were gathered around the capsule toy machines lined up in front of the train station convenience store.

“What are you kids doing?”

“Wah!?”

The way they jumped made it clear the children knew they weren’t supposed to sneak out of their dorms during the martial law. And it was nighttime.

“H-he’s a grownup.”

“But he doesn’t look like Anti-Skill.”

“If this old guy is out here, he’s breaking the rules as much as we are. So it’s fine.”

Fascinating. He hadn’t called himself “this old man” to them, so did they simply consider anyone to be “old” if they had a beard?

He stroked his silver beard.

Based on his observations, these capsule toy machines had you put coins inside to test your luck on what toy you would receive.

(I see. But why do people flock to these systems that give you no guarantee you will get what you want?)

Perhaps because they were morons.

Tears welled up in Rosencreutz’s eyes as he recalled the many forms of human foolishness he had witnessed in his far-from-short history.

He was quick to tears.

The children didn’t seem to care.

“I’m doing it! I’m getting a super rare one today!”

“But is there even a super rare Gekota color plane in here? I can’t tell looking in from the side.”

“I have heard rumors there isn’t a winner inside.”

Large tears spilled from CRC’s eyes.

He was quick to tears!!

“Is this a despicable machine designed to scam young children out of the limited allowance they worked so hard to save up? No, this old man must know the true odds!! How does it really work!? Urah!!”

A loud crash rang out.

The capsule toy machine itself had shattered.

Christian Rosencreutz lined the round capsules up on the hard tile floor.

“One, two, three, four, five…there it is. So there really is a Gekota color plane inside! Hah hah hah. Good, it wasn’t a-”

He paused midsentence.

The small children were nowhere to be found. Every last one.

They must have run away.

He scratched his head and sighed, stroking his silver beard.

If he wanted to, he could have quickly located them and attacked them, but…

“No reason to chase them down, I suppose.”

With that arbitrary decision, he abandoned the search.

He held the super rare Gekota color plane between two fingers.

He knew which route to take now.

“Yes.”

It had always been the shortest route anyway.

He turned toward District 23, which specialized in aerospace.

He casually chose that destination because now he wanted to see a real one.

He did not find a life-size Gekota color plane there.

He did find several bright lights shining out from the darkness. Were they headlights and roadwork lights?

Those Anti-Skill people must have built a second defense line. And as part of that, they must have removed all the passenger planes and tanker trucks packed full of highly flammable fuel.

Christian Rosencreutz squeezed the small toy in his hand and muttered to himself.

“You are in my way.”

===Part 5===

An Anti-Skill officer leaned out from behind cover and shouted with special binoculars in hand.

“Visual confirmation of top-priority target!!”

Thanks to the martial law, the runway was not properly lit. That allowed Anti-Skill and Judgment to take action before Kamijou got a clear view of the figure in question.

A battle broke out at the second defense line.

“Begin!!”

Frist, they launched mortars from the ground. To Kamijou, they seemed like bigger versions of the fireworks available at convenience stores and discount stores. And they were used in much the same way. The projectiles were launched into the sky above, but instead of falling back to the ground, they decelerated above the target’s head and scattered light even brighter than a car’s headlights. These were parachute-equipped flares. Anti-Skill wasn’t showering the enemy with explosives right away – they were first ensuring a clear view.

This allowed Kamijou Touma to see the small figure more than 500m away.

It was Christian Rosencreutz.

That confirmation froze his spine and legs with fear. This was someone who made him wish the veil of darkness had not been swept away.

And the initial flares had a secondary purpose.

Anti-Skill and Judgment were meant to preserve order in the city, so they had a process to follow.

“Warning shot achieved.”

Yes, no matter what the type of projectile, ''they would fire the first shot above the enemy instead of directly at him.

And since the target continued walking and did not put his hands up…

“The suspect is not surrendering! Repeat, the suspect is not surrendering! Conditions for use of force have been met! Open fire!!!”

The heavy machineguns and automatic grenade launchers began to fire, held in place by the metal stakes driven into the asphalt. Needless to say, Anti-Skill was holding nothing back. They fired in the enemy’s general direction while adjusting their aim to hold him in place before taking careful aim with their tank guns and mortars that could not fire quite so rapidly. If this wasn’t Academy City where they were trained to handle espers, they might have known this was the most efficient method, but they would have been hesitant to use it against a human.

Kamijou himself ''felt somehow relieved.

Because he knew Christian Rosencreutz could take this kind of attack.

Although that thinking may have meant he had begun to accept how strong the man was.

With such a dense barrage underway, Kamijou couldn’t rush in with fist clenched. His Imagine Breaker could not block fragments of everyday(?) bullets and shells, so a careless approach would only get him blown away by friendly fire.

Kamijou wasn’t the only one irritated by having to stand around.

“Argh, 500m? I can see him, but I can’t reach him. My Railgun would burn away in the air before it got there!!”

And.

Kamijou heard chuckling laughter coming from among the explosions and shockwaves.

CRC was mocking them.

While on the receiving end of such a concentrated attack.

More sandbags were piled up to reinforce their defenses. This robbed the tanks of their mobility and their guns creaked as if intimidated. Kamijou understood not wanting to die, but now the tanks were no more than 120mm gun emplacements.

Christian Rosencreutz’s face showed only scorn.

“Do you really think that can defeat this old man?”

“They’re risking their lives because they do, halfwit.”

A blonde demon interrupted.

Something else happened at the same time.

The Bologna Succubus’s spell was called Cold Mistress.

It did not produce any bright lights or loud sounds. It apparently replaced the target’s pleasure signals with excruciating pain.

But what did this attack mean for Christian Rosencreutz ''who was only motivated by passion and playfulness? The silver young man's eyebrow twitched, his body slightly shifted to the right.

A tank gun scored a direct hit.

Even CRC’s body had to be made of protein and calcium. He couldn’t stop shells because his body was unusually tough – he activated spells to repel them.

So.

What if he was stopped from activating those defense spells, even for a split second?

The explosive boom erupted a moment later and a cloud of gray dust swelled out.

But Anti-Skill was not foolish enough to celebrate quite yet.

“Not yet!!” shouted an adult holding special binoculars that used electronics to expand their functionality “He’s still in one piece and standing on his own two feet!!”

(Damn monster.)

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

He could only pray CRC had survived but had taken damage. The tank guns and grenade launchers fired again and again, not waiting for the dust to clear. This showed Anti-Skill’s fear that he would attack the instant they stopped firing.

“Kyahhhhh!!”

The honey blonde girl shrieked. Something other than deafening gunshots and sparks had grazed her at high speed. Probably a stray shot or a ricochet.

But Kamijou couldn’t do the obvious thing and duck down behind cover.

He was too worried.

The inability to see what was happening was wearing at his patience,.

He was intensely anxious that all of this was ultimately meaningless.

Ordinarily, they would have the upper hand here, but he was finding it harder and harder to trust that kind of judgment. Christian Rosencreutz was too much of a monster.

They were on the attack, yet they were the ones running out of options. Unable to bear this any longer, Kamijou shouted out loud.

“Is it still not over? Still!?”

“Damn, the target is walking. His shoulders are shaking… Is he laughing? He’s headed here! The dust is clearing! Wahhh!?”

The Anti-Skill officer sweatily peering through the binoculars screamed like he was having a nightmare.

With the “snap!!” of breaking metal, the heavy machinegun providing a dense barrage was suddenly destroyed and stopped moving.

It all happened in an instant.

Rosencreutz rushed in. Once he was inside the defense formation surrounded by the sandbag walls and barricades, their bullet-and-shell-based strategy would cease to function.

But Rosencreutz may have questioned what he found.

He had eliminated their optimal strategy and begun the hunt, but despite the terror on their faces, Anti-Skill and Judgment had not frozen up in fear.

“Everyone down!!” shouted a tough-looking Anti-Skill officer with something in his hand.

Kamijou wasn’t sure what he meant.

So he was slow to react.

The group of tanks and mobile combat vehicles all exploded ''from within''.

Kamijou hadn’t been anywhere near them, but his feet were still lifted from the runway.

And he was knocked backwards.

“Boy…………………!!”

The Bologna Succubus’s voice was too distorted to understand. It was so bad he couldn’t even judge how close she was.

But what had happened to CRC who had moved deep within the group of tanks and mobile combat vehicles?

The 8-wheel Predator Octopus and the rest of the military vehicles were designed to be operated remotely as ground drones. After the first defense line was destroyed so badly, no one thought CRC could be repelled with ordinary firepower. Which led to this strategy: triggering the self-destruct only after he had easily broken through the defense line and entered the defense formation.

They probably hadn’t used your average explosive either.

“Ah…gah?”

Kamijou’s retinas were scorched by a flash of light as white as welding.

Most likely, they had made use of a special reaction using aluminum or iron powder. At more than 3000 degrees, the blast could literally melt steel and it had hit the man at point-blank range.

Shirai Kuroko shouted over the boom while lying down on the runway, protecting her head.

“Did they really have to go this far!?”

“Seems that way. The suspect is still standing. He didn’t even duck!!”

The busty glasses Judgment girl must have had Clairvoyance or a similar power because she was directing her wide eyes toward the dust cloud.

“You’re…kidding.”

Mikoto had also frozen stiff. She may have detected something with her radar produced by reflecting weak microwaves off of things.

But Kamijou didn’t have time to see the truth for himself.

He heard a deafening tearing sound.

The XHsACV-15 Anaconda, the snakelike chain of armored vehicles, had started to move. It looked like the three units were going to run over Rosencreutz, but instead they formed the three sides of an equilateral triangle and came to a rapid stop.

First, they trapped him.

That 70m giant surrounded the same area as a schoolyard.

But it was not just a thick wall. The mobility to deploy as the situation demanded was the Anaconda’s greatest strength.

Down on the ground, an Anti-Skill officer shouted into a radio.

“Fire!!”

The guns on the sides of each unit opened fire on the interior of the giant triangle. Self-destruct drones were launched sharply out and 20mm Gatling guns sprayed bullets. The noise alone was terrifying. The barrage was so dense an ordinary human would have been turned into a bloody mist and splattered across the ground in less than a second.

But only an ordinary human.

And it didn’t end there.

Something fell from heaven to earth like a bolt of lightning. 120mm shells and 20mm Gatling guns were combined to create a manmade divine punishment of lead and powder.

Kamijou had seen this before.

A large transport plane had been converted into a mobile aerial gun platform called a gunship.

It flew in a large circle overhead, raining down a massive number of bullets.

An Anti-Skill officer shouted while crawling slowly along the ground.

“So the HsAC-03 Spotlight got here. 200m around the target point is a fragment warning zone! Fall back! Everyone fall back!”

“A 200m radius? That’s bigger than your average school or stadium. Which means it covers all of us here!” protested the honey blonde girl.

Several explosions erupted in quick succession.

The Anaconda’s wall was meaningless if the metal fragments and pieces of asphalt flew up in the air and poured down on their heads. This might as well have been a volcanic eruption on the surface.

Even with the martial law, they couldn’t have carried out a bombing this large in the more urban part of the city. This all-out firepower was only possible here in District 23 with its vast expanse of runways and not a school or dorm to be found.

Again, it didn’t end there.

Even higher up than the gunship ruling the skies, a star twinkled.

Or so it seemed just before a cylinder of ultra-heavy tungsten alloy dropped straight down from outside the atmosphere. It was 10m long and 80cm in diameter. It had been launched from Academy City’s giant satellite. The heavy metal pillar just barely missed the gunship circling overhead, nearly stalling out the 50m craft with the mass of air it brought with it, and dropped straight toward Christian Rosencreutz.

Sound was compressed.

Even light was trapped, unable to escape, before everything burst outward from a single point.

An artificial comet had struck. If the blast had been unmanaged and free to spread, it might have obliterated District 23 itself. Instead, the special grooves and angular points on the pillar’s side and the angle of its tip gathered the kinetic energy together, sending it piercing straight down into the ground. It easily dug up the experimental nuclear shelter spread out below the asphalt runway.

“!?”

While the vectors were concentrated to an extent, it wasn’t perfect.

The force that did escape was enough to twist and flip the 70m Anaconda all-terrain armored combat vehicle. Kamijou was nearly crushed by it, but it could easily have been worse. Without that wall there, the thick shockwave would have hit him directly and converted him into a clump of meat.

After gathering scrap metal into a giant shield, Mikoto muttered in a somewhat dazed way.

“Could they have dropped that on my head any time they wanted…?”

Rolling on the ground, Kamijou didn’t even have time for questions like that.

His aching head felt like it was going to split open.

But instead of a blow from the outside, it felt more like the pressure inside his skull had risen.

Just watching made him feel like his eardrums were going to burst.

In a subconscious urge to find anything at all to rely on, he ended up grabbing onto the Bologna Succubus who happened to be nearby. He looked a lot like a small child clinging to his mother in fear after a nearby lightning strike.

What did it matter if they weren’t special?

So what if they were all individuals and had no legends to their name?

These people had gathered for no other reason than to protect Academy City and they had demonstrated enough power to bring Kamijou to the ground just from watching.

The strange sticky sensation coming from his right ear scared him, but he managed a trembling voice.

“What happened…to Rosencreutz? After all this, he’s got to at least be limping, right?”

“''No,''” said an icily certain voice. It belonged to the Bologna Succubus as she held the boy close. “Remove your rose-tinted glasses and you’ll see. He can still move.”

His breath caught.

Was Christian Rosencreutz really this powerful? He was entirely unscathed after an attack so ferocious it literally altered the terrain? Then what could a measly right fist do?

Just then, a distorted voice came from an emergency speaker directly installed in the runway rather than a metal pole so it would be out of the way of takeoffs and landings.

Kamijou recognized the voice.

“Outta the way, third-rates. That was only the opening act meant to keep the bastard still for a second.”

===Part 6===

It had originally been a piece of research infrastructure built directly below the wall surrounding Academy City’s perimeter.

The giant facility used a massive amount of magnetism to trap a stream of electrons and protons, send them out at nearly the speed of light, and collide different particles to create a variety of phenomena, including the creation of brand new elements that do not exist in the natural world.

The Hula Hoop.

The world’s largest particle accelerator had just unleashed and launched a tremendously powerful electron beam.

It cut a straight line from District 3 in the north to District 10 in the south.

This was New Board Chairman Accelerator’s true trump card that he had been setting up ever since the Bridge Builders Cabal had suddenly constructed a consulate in District 12 and strutted around the city like they owned the place.

The intended target had been Alice Anotherbible.

This superweapon had been adjusted to kill her in a single shot if that became necessary, but now it had struck Christian Rosencreutz. This one shot was all it had. The circular particle accelerator’s forcibly-linked container-sized capacitors and transformers blew up one after another as the giant devices were fried by the massive energy they had gathered, but the deadly spear still accurately bisected Academy City north to south.

The light swept away the night and all the moisture in the air was vaporized. The heat melted the asphalt pavement back into a liquid and the remaining small abandoned jets exploded one after another. The twisted and flipped Anaconda half vaporized while it was burned apart.

And none of that had been directly hit.

Christian Rosencreutz had been, so how much damage had he taken?

Kamijou choked on the stench of melted asphalt. It took him a while to realize he was curled up on the ground. He must have thought a thick lightning bolt had struck nearby and reflexively moved to protect himself. Similar to a stun grenade blast.

So much preparation had gone into this single attack.

New Board Director Accelerator had remotely operated the city’s cleaning and security robots to search for anyone still in the predicted line of fire. If he found anyone, he had of course guided them to safety. His plans had hit a brief snag when Last Order hadn’t obeyed the robot, but he had solved that by drawing her attention with a tanuki pet robot.

So in this one moment, he had created a singular opportunity when all that energy could cut across Academy City without causing any human damage.

The #1 wasn’t soft enough to let a chance like that go to waste.

The already world-class Hula Hoop was pushed past its power limits to accelerate the electrons to more than 99.99% the speed of light, where they tore through the scenery and rushed toward Rosencreutz.

In a perfectly straight line, the asphalt runway was boiled orange.

Even the elements making up the air must have been rewritten because the beam’s wake was electrified and sparking.

“Ugh,” groaned the honey blonde girl. “I do not want to breathe that in. That air cannot be good for your health ability.”

Kamijou had bigger concerns.

A direct hit barely seemed necessary when just carelessly looking at that could blind you.

At this level, it felt like a scientifically-created form of the occult.

“Damn…it,” said Kamijou, somehow managing to get some air in his lungs and sweating in the midwinter night. “Did that…finally get him?”

The answer did not come from Anti-Skill, Judgment, Mikoto, or the Bologna Succubus.

But he did hear a voice.

“''You mean this old man''?”

Kamijou’s vision fell into darkness.

He regretted asking the question.

===Part 7===

“We were too late,” whispered Witch Goddess Aradia, watching from outside the range of the blinding beam.

“How are they?” asked a breathless voice.

That was Good, Old Mary. As the only person who could, albeit imperfectly, defend against Christian Rosencreutz’s attacks, a battlefield without her may have looked to her like an extra-large helping of suicide.

Her own sacrifice was of secondary importance.

She was a Transcendent who, more than anything, hated ordinary people being harmed by special miracles.

“Joining them blindly would only eliminate what little chance we have left.”

“I know that.” Good, Old Mary forcibly steadied her breathing and continued. “But holding cards in reserve is pointless if the people guarding the second defense line are slaughtered in the meantime. Mama doesn’t even need to use her sacrificial defense. My very presence on the battlefield will force Rosencreutz to be cautious, thus restricting his actions.”

Running away apparently wasn’t even an option as far as she was concerned.

Not that Aradia was one to talk there.

They got to work.

===Part 8===

The result was in.

All that effort had amounted to nothing.

Shirai Kuroko and the glasses girl from Judgment were speechless.

They had destroyed the barricades themselves.

Flat District 23 was the only place in Academy City where the horizon was visible. There was nowhere to hide and thoughtless running would only expose their backs to this nemesis. In real war, retreating from a disadvantageous position was the most difficult thing.

“Oh?”

Christian Rosencreutz made a quiet noise.

Past his outstretched palm, his spell failed to hit Kamijou’s head and tore harmlessly into the air next to it.

Kamijou Touma had not moved. Then why had CRC missed?

He sounded amused.

“Did you rotate the ground itself? The same way an illusionist causes large objects to disappear.”

“You have unexpectedly worldly tastes, Rosencreutz.”

Since she had set this up, she knew she couldn’t remain hidden.

The witch goddess slowly walked over and positioned herself to guard Kamijou Touma.

“Did you think a witch who lives with nature can’t manipulate asphalt? Nonsense. We can manipulate soil and minerals as easily as trees and flowers. Process and harm them as much as you like, a single touch of a witch’s finger is enough for them to respond.”

A 100m circle of the melted asphalt underfoot had rotated.

Just like a grand illusion where an idling passenger plane vanished before an audience’s eyes.

Rosencreutz’s shoulders shook with laughter.

“Did you think this secret talent of yours would continue to serve you?”

“Of course not. It only had to work once,” spat Aradia. “The point wasn’t for your deadly attack to miss Kamijou Touma. ''You didn’t bother checking what the attack did hit, did you''?”

Christian Rosencreutz briefly paused.

It took him less than three seconds to realize something.

“''I see.''”

He looked up.

A tremor ran through the ground like a kaiju stomping across the city.

The towering monster looked like a stadium-sized container supported by a trio of pylon-sized legs.

That was the Tribikos.

Good, Old Mary’s experimental tool was said to contain an entire universe inside and thus carried the possibility of producing anything. That ultimate container could produce nonexistent forms of death and destruction as simple playthings.

“Hm.”

Christian Rosencreutz mimed loosely holding something like a brandy glass.

But his hand remained empty.

“The paternal cross and the maternal flower are a little too convenient, so people have a tendency to rely too much on the red secret art and cease to work at coming up with their own plans.”

His corpse had remained unchanged for 120 years. He had created a perfect miniature world where he could reach any answer by recreating the past, present, and future. That sage among sages had produced the secret art that could heal the entire world.

''Which meant he was exceedingly similar to this experimental tool that had mastered the art of kitchen alchemy.'' The only real difference was that Good, Old Mary kept the miracle sealed inside like it was Pandora’s box while CRC let it out in his strong desire to interfere with the larger world. Alternatively, this would mean Good, Old Mary’s Tribikos was so powerful that she feared what would happen if the red secret art were released from it.

“One rule applies to the entire world,” whispered Good, Old Mary. “''When one person attacks, another takes revenge.'' This rule applies even to that which slumbers in the secret territories. Be destroyed by the divine punishment triggered by your own decision as per the law of action and reaction, CRC.”

===Part 9===

A sticky sound enveloped the world.

What…was it?

Cracks raced across the stadium-like Tribikos and it shattered just before filthy gray bubbles burst from within. But these bubbles did not have the cleansing feel of detergent or soap. These were small, hideous bubbles, reminiscent of human torment and death. They engulfed Rosencreutz like a deluge.

The bubbles would swallow all force and momentum before erasing them altogether.

Were they suppose to be the foam coming from the mouth of someone who had drunk poison, or were they supposed to be fire extinguisher foam?

No one wanted to see what happened if even one of those popping bubbles touched them. What this all meant was a mystery, but doing that had to be as suicidal as a slug fascinated by salt.

“Eeeeek!”

The honey blonde girl paled.

It was written plain on her face that being swallowed up by those bubbles was the very last thing she wanted to do.

And…

“We need to run away,” was Good, Old Mary’s immediate decision.

She was not shortsighted enough to determine her strategy based on a momentary advantage.

“It is miracle enough to have bought 600 seconds against CRC. If you do not escape through the sea I have parted, none of you will survive.”

“Hey, if you could do all this…?” said Kamijou, still in a daze.

“CRC’s world model is more accurate than mine, which creates a discrepancy between the two. I caught him off guard here, but he will break through as soon as he manages to calm down and respond. Then we will be caught by an even greater calamity.”

Something like a sandstorm obstructed the view.

The sand was yellow.

That was the color of defeat. Was time already up? Was the second defense line and District 23 about to be buried in Citrinitas just like District 12 had been? The Transcendents working together could only stop one of Rosencreutz’s attacks, but not repel him?

(If we run from here, are we supposed to go to the third defense line? And if District 18 falls, we’ll be back in District 7, where that hospital is. We can only fall back one more time!!)

Kamijou’s thoughts were interrupted by a voice coming from the mountain of bubbles even more horrific than the foam spilling from the corner of a human mouth.

Something flashed.

“More of the same? You bore me.”

This was not aimed at Kamijou or the others in front of him.

The massive deadly force flew over their heads like a long throw in baseball.

They felt a tremor below their feet.

“No…way,” muttered Kamijou.

Something had exploded in the distance and that had shaken the asphalt here.

The third defense line, where Mut Thebes waited, had been destroyed in the blink of an eye.

But the immediate threat wasn’t gone either.

“Kh!!”

Misaka Mikoto immediately placed an arcade coin on her thumbnail.

She had to already know the truth.

This was CRC.

''Even a direct hit at thrice the speed of sound wouldn’t kill him. Which was why she didn’t hesitate to ready this attack.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh!!”

She screamed to shake free of her own fear.

An explosive boom compressed the air.

Mikoto didn’t bother viewing the result.

“Go now!! Hurry!! Waste this chance and we really can’t get away!!”

The younger girl grabbed Kamijou’s hand and pulled him away.

What was happening over there?

The third defense line in District 18…was gone.

They weren’t even allowed a final chance.

From here, it was a straight shot to District 7. If they couldn’t find some other plan, Rosencreutz would reach the hospital!!

===Part 10===

And so.

No one could stop Christian Rosencreutz’s march across the city.

===Part 11===

The footsteps could not have sounded more normal.

The glass automatic doors were not meant to keep out intruders.

They opened with ridiculous ease.

The machine did not discriminate. It welcomed Christian Rosencreutz inside with no thought to the severity of the situation.

“Now, where did they put the Transcendent who was sent here? Was her name Anna Sprengel?” he said offhand.

Was that the extent of his thoughts about her? Despite being the inheritor of the Rosicrucian cabal he had started, she was not special to him. She was no more than one of the many Transcendents – another life to kill in the game he had defined.

“Hello, you there.”

CRC called out to a nurse.

Even though he could have read the residual thoughts easily enough if he wanted to.

He was clearly enjoying this.

“Is ICU the right term? Regardless, Anna Sprengel, or possibly an unidentified Girl A, should have arrived here. Where should I go to find her?”

“E-eek!”

The young male nurse fell onto his rear, pressed his back against the hallway door, and desperately shook his head in refusal, so he had to be a consummate medical professional.

Christian Rosencreutz viewed him in amusement.

And he slowly held out his palm.

“Heh heh. Believe me, you want as little to do with this old man as possible. Irritate me too much, ''and I might just take an interest in you''.”

“Enough,” said a new voice.

Something sat on the edge of one of the sofas lined up in the waiting room positioned in front of the hospital pharmacy. The translucent figure took a sip of the shiruko can he held in both hands.

That mysterious being had been called a Holy Guardian Angel and an extraterrestrial.

As well as a Secret Chief.

He was known as Aiwass.

“That man has done nothing wrong. If you have business related to the modern Western magic that spans the Rose and the Golden, then stay focused on that, CRC.”

“I truly do not envy you Secret Chiefs. That priestess’s lungs and heart are no longer functioning, but do those machines really prevent you from calling her dead? If she were fully killed, your contract would be null and void and you would be free once more.”

A strange cracking sound came from empty space.

Almost like hard plastic breaking.

“''Is that supposed to be a joke''?”

“The fate of the world exists to fulfill our playfulness and curiosity. A boring world where the jokers cannot joke would only sink into darkness.”

“You claim to have despaired of the world and now choose destruction purely to satisfy your passions without forcing the blame onto anyone else, CRC, but you are surprisingly unobservant. Fortunately, that gives us some hope.”

“?”

“As the Secret Chief who guards the First Temple, it is true only one official priestess can contact me, but that does not mean ''she is the only one with a personal interest in me''.”

A solid footstep sounded.

This was the sound of someone who, unlike Aiwass, had a physical body.

Christian Rosencreutz turned around and smiled.

“Oh?”

He showed great interest. Like he had just found a shred of amusement still remaining in this dreary world.

He saw a beige habit and blonde hair cut to shoulder length.

He saw a magician who had clung to the world of the living after his own death by hijacking a great demon’s body.

Human Aleister Crowley blocked his path.

===Part 12===

Shortly before the clash, the frog-faced doctor noted a mood of mounting tension.

(I take it this person isn’t the type to spare a hospital or a school.)

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

He was a doctor.

And the patient lying before him was on the verge of death – in fact, her breathing and pulse would cease without the help of the life support devices. Every last form of modern examination had failed to determine the cause and none of his thick medical texts or the disease research database had turned up a previous example, but he wasn’t sensible enough to give up because of that.

Without a doubt, throwing in the towel was the frog-faced doctor’s least favorite phrase. If someone felt it was acceptable for a medical expert to abandon their patient’s possibilities based on their own emotions or mood, he thought they had no business working in the medical field.

“Now, then.”

None of his test devices could identify the cause.

So he decided to focus on the records of those failures.

“I assume the blood sample tests found nothing?”

“Y-yes. All 5.”

The young technician glanced over at the test tubes sealed with different colors of rubber cap. Finding nothing was not a cause for celebration here. They had a patient on the verge of death. It was like running a malware scan and receiving zero detections despite the computer very obviously behaving strangely.

(Something is clearly wrong, but nothing turns up in the numbers.)

They hadn’t found anything in the blood sealed in the test tubes. Then what was happening inside that small girl(?) and how far had it progressed?

But something else caught his interest as well.

“Hm?”

With a patient in critical condition, there wasn’t time to wipe them down with ethanol to disinfect them. In some cases, they were transferred directly in from the emergency arrivals treatment room where the ambulance dropped them off. That meant an ICU could not be kept as sterile as an operating room. Instead, drum-shaped cleaning robots frequently moved through, keeping the space as clean as possible.

The frog-faced doctor held out a hand to stop one, opened the lid, and checked inside.

He found a long, strawberry blonde hair.

He touched it to find it unusually stiff. Its surface was badly damaged for having recently fallen out, almost like it had been left on the floor for years.

“…”

Nutrients and oxygen were supplied to the hair and the nails.

But as can be seen from the lack of bleeding when cutting your hair, the capillaries were connected to the roots and didn’t continue on through the rest of the hair.

He knew what to focus on now.

He wasn’t one to stop here just because he couldn’t prove anything scientifically.

“Wh-what do we do?”

“Prepare her for dialysis,” calmly instructed the frog-faced doctor.

Bacteria and toxins harmed people through a wide variety of methods. But one common method was to have a nature very similar to a component necessary for human life. For example, carbon monoxide. Its similar structure to oxygen allowed it to bond with the red blood cells, keeping out the oxygen that was meant to be carried through the bloodstream. And because humans needed oxygen, they would eventually collapse.

The cause was invisible and it was similar to a normal bodily function.

The connotations of the word “curse” had distracted them.

The culprit was a lot closer to home. You can think of it like a form of fatal pollen allergy that shows symptoms in response to “something thought of as occult” like a face, a name, hair, or nails.

Then how could it be prevented?

What could they block with a mask? Was there a preventative or a cure? Use whatever terminology you like.

By swapping out the words in his head, his thoughts began to race. No matter how strange it seemed, someone’s life was at risk. So how could he, as a doctor, stop working?

“History tells of someone who ate deadly potassium cyanide but didn’t die.”

“?”

“Rasputin. There are many dubious legends about the man, but the official records say he ate cakes laced with cyanide without dying. A normal person would have a 100% chance of death when it reacted with their gastric acid, so some theorize he survived because his gastric acid was extremely weak.”

That was one example of escaping certain death.

Even when the result appeared to be a miracle or nightmare, the method of cheating death could sometimes be explained scientifically.

What did it matter if this illness could not be scientifically explained?

All he had to do was remove the conditions causing it and science could handle that.

In other words…

“This illness appears to identify an individual based on their blood and attack their bodily tissue. So ''if we artificially replace all of her blood and temporarily change her blood type'', this ‘curse’ disease will lose its target. We will remove its ability to identify her. Got that?”

Many different devices were hurried into the ICU. The frog-faced doctor temporarily stepped out of the ICU to give them space.

He sighed.

Someone was standing there: Aleister Crowley.

They were old friends, so the frog-faced doctor didn’t bother turning around in surprise. He didn’t know how or why that human was here. He simply accepted that that human could do things he couldn’t explain.

With a golden retriever by his side, Aleister asked a simple question.

Everything was packed into so few words.

“What are you going to do?”

“As long as the patient wants to live, I will lend them every skill and resource available to me.”

“How did you ask Anna Sprengel if she wants to live? You can’t converse with her just by reading the pulses of her brain waves.”

“True. But someone risked his life to leave her in my care and bowed to me. I haven’t heard from her herself and it is possible she doesn’t even have the strength left to want anything. But I know that boy will draw it out of her. Maybe she has no more reason to want to live, but I know he will give her a new one. Not a bad possibility to bet on, don’t you think?”

The frog-faced doctor knew Christian Rosencreutz was on his way here. But no matter how many of this city’s secrets he knew, he was still just a doctor. Unlike the monsters of the former dark side, he did not have the power to fight and protect his sanctuary here.

So.

“Are you interested in lending a hand?”

“…”

“You’re just dying to finally use your full strength for someone other than yourself, aren’t you?”

They did not hold a lengthy or grand conversation This was not a sketchy politician’s speech or a TV informercial pressuring you to call by saying the deal only lasted for half an hour after it aired. These two understood each other well enough that theatrical gestures and the like would only get in the way.

Aleister spoke quietly, his head still lowered.

It was possible his question had not actually been directed at the frog-faced doctor in front of him.

“I created this city, but it is no longer mine. Why should I pour all my efforts into Academy City at this point?”

He received a single response.

The frog-faced doctor’s answer was a simple one.

As old friends, he knew exactly what words would stab him deepest.

“How about because it would make ''him'' happy?”

[[Image:GT Index v09 BW5.jpg|thumb]]

===Part 13===

And so.

Two magicians stood face to face.

After failing to work up the courage to fight or even to run away, the human was finally crossing the start line.

And once he made up his mind, the rest happened quick.

History proved how effective he was at taking action.

“Aleister.”

“Stay back. And don’t let anything that happens here surprise you.”

That was the extent of the human and golden retriever’s conversation.

Space itself vibrated.

Christian Rosencreutz looked to the space around him instead of at Aleister.

Everything looked the same.

“Did you shift the phase?” asked CRC, amused.

“Is that so surprising? Even Mathers and his lot played with the phases. They would use astral projection to spy on other phases or extract power from those other phases and give them temporary mass. …It all created so many unnecessary sparks and innocent people had to pay the price.”

This was already another world.

The golden retriever standing by his side was eternally cut off from him.

Now two magicians this powerful could directly clash without any fear of the hospital collapsing or the working doctors and immobilized patients coming to harm.

“I am the fool who attempted to suppress the creation of sparks by creating a new mythology as ''cushioning'' between the many phases. Unfortunately, it didn’t work because the Christian church wanted to protect their monopoly on the concept of god and sent their billions of followers against me. But since the theory itself was sound, I can at least spirit someone away.”

The stage had been set.

Aleister and Rosencreutz both took a step forward.

Space was compressed and light was distorted.

Christian Rosencreutz held an old lamp made of glass. It contained a collection of energy said to be ''an inextinguishable light''. Releasing only the smallest amount from the glass case transformed the gentle glow into a crimson serpent consuming all the oxygen in the air.

Aleister responded with two simple words.

“''Great demon.''”

“Kee hee hee! Ee hee hee hee hee, hee ha ha ha ha ha hah hah hah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!”

The red was twisted and bent.

It crashed into an invisible wall in front of Aleister and melted the concrete wall to the side.

The human did not bat an eye.

The initial clue had come from Kingsford. He knew how to control it.

“Do not rely on your past legends, CRC. Your true colors are showing.”

Rosencreutz sighed and tossed the eternal lamp over his shoulder like a child with a toy he had lost interest in.

Batlike wings flapped behind Aleister’s back and a deadly gale blew through the world.

It swept through every nook and cranny and everything it touched grew black and rotten.

The wind itself was colorless. The floor, walls, and ceiling gradually blackened, peeled away, and pursued Rosencreutz.

At some point, a flask of powder had appeared in CRC’s hand. No, it wasn’t clear if it truly was there. His mimicry of holding it may have been so perfect it created the illusion. Either way, the silver young man popped off the lid with his thumb and scattered the red powder. The legendary Rosicrucian cabal had not been pursuing anything as trivial as eternal life.

“Revolution.”

The world at large really did change.

The black color vanished. The air grew clean and full of negative ions, like deep in the forest. Control of this world repeatedly changed hands, like a tennis rally.

It was a casual thing.

A simple thing.

If this were in the outside world, the entire city would have rotted apart and then been buried in verdant trees.

“I see. You are not fighting on your own – you are boosting yourself by borrowing the power of another. Is that the source of the false confidence allowing you to speak so arrogantly to this old man?”

“''Holy Guardian Angel.''”

“And you have more than one helper. …But don’t you feel ashamed? This does not mean you have conquered anything. You have only hid behind the backs of those stronger than you while you fling rocks at me from safety.”

“What, you didn’t know?”

“?”

“Fine by me. Because that is what gives this conflict meaning.”

After a short pause, Christian Rosencreutz moved his eyes.

To view his own fingertip.

The pointer finger’s nail had split and it was bleeding.

“You claim to only need yourself, but you worked with your seven disciples to build the House of the Holy Spirit and you were placed in that special grave. So in the end, you were a magician who had to pay attention to symbols and colors with their origins in the land.”

Aleister didn’t hesitate to explain this.

Because it wasn’t worth hiding.

“So all I had to do was transport you to another world. You don’t have the land’s support anymore, CRC. You might as well be trying to use your phone’s GPS map on Mars. The rules change outside of the world you’re used to.”

“Hm.”

Christian Rosencreutz nodded. He honestly accepted his opponent’s claim.

But he didn’t stop there.

“But removing some of my functions does nothing at all to boost your strength, does it?”

Something exploded.

Rosencreutz had not moved a step. He only held his palm out. That was enough for something to go wrong inside Aleister’s chest. A rusty flavor rose up his throat, he couldn’t stop himself from coughing up red, and the female feet below the beige habit lifted from the floor.

It happened too fast for human senses and even for great demon and Holy Guardian Angel senses to follow. Aleister bounced several times down the hospital waiting room, knocking over the sofas and making a racket of destructive noises.

CRC looked at the back of his hand and his nail.

“Do you know what I did to you?”

This was not a cheap trick.

The very foundation was different.

Christian Rosencreutz blew boredly on his fingertip.

“Masters of the Rose never use a spell or magic circle as is. They extract whatever form of the mystical they require from the symbols hidden in the scene around them. The Rod of Asclepius, the cross, the Hippocratic Oath – hospitals are a treasure trove of miraculous symbols and elements.”

“I doubt…that’s what you really did.”

‘Heh heh. Because true experts do not talk at length? Why should I follow the rules set forth by that dead girl – Kingsford?”

The air was permeated by a flammability even more frightening than a dust explosion.

But nothing more happened. Aleister lacked the strength to fight back even when someone else was being ridiculed.

Something in the air changed.

The shifted phase had returned to normal. Christian Rosencreutz stood in an ordinary hospital waiting room – in an ordinary space where the swing of an arm would destroy a pillar or wall and kill someone.

Aleister was soaked with blood. He had been thrown across the waiting room, where he crashed through the sofas, rolled along the floor, and ended up seated with his back against a column.

“You fool! Just because you admire Kingsford’s way of life is no reason to let yourself meet the same end as her!”

Hearing Kihara Noukan’s voice told Aleister that his phase shift had been reverted. The human once known as the world’s wickedest man smiled weakly, unable to even get up.

CRC did not bother looking in his direction.

“Is that all the magicians of this era can do?”

But Aleister’s face showed no sign of panic or frustration.

Still collapsed among several broken sofas, the human smiled thinly and spoke.

“Did you forget why you’re here, CRC?”

“?”

After Kingsford, he was the second to place that look on CRC’s face.

Which meant those words were not for his own benefit.

He was leaving everything in the hands of the next challenger.

He had admired that expert and her way of life.

If he really did remind Kihara Noukan of her here, then he was honored.

“You want to kill time? You’re going to slaughter all of the Transcendents as punishment for reviving you into such a boring world?”

So he gave a snort of laughter.

Bloody Aleister’s eyes displayed obvious mockery.

Viewing anything greater than himself with skepticism had always been that human’s most defining trait. Even if it got him branded an eccentric and ostracized by the majority of the world.

And while people called him a lord of devils, he had discovered a truth no one else could understand.

In other words…

“I don’t know if you’re giving a plausible excuse to hide your true intentions or if you’re trying not to think about it yourself, but you’re afraid of the parents who brought you into this world, aren’t you? The Bridge Builders Cabal used a special method to revive you, so it’s entirely possible they could ''rearrange the ceremony’s process and symbols'' to instantly kill you again. You feared having your newfound freedom taken away, so you chose to attack your parents the instant you were reborn. You moved quick so you could catch those Transcendents off guard.”

Magical astral projection existed as a single spell with two processes: one that separated the mind from the body and another that returned the mind to the body. So by rearranging the separation process, one could achieve the return process. Necromancy and doll-based curses worked much the same. Very little magic only worked in one direction. It was much the same as an explosives technician placing as much emphasis on knowing how to cause explosions as on how to safely prevent them.

In an extreme example, the Anglican Church had created a grimoire library as a countermeasure against any and all magicians.

“The means of defeating you already existed. It was there from the beginning.”

“…”

“But you didn’t want to be bound once more, so you started by eliminating that. You wanted to avoid being a world-saving bike courier who had to listen to everything the Transcendents said and save a great multitude of strangers at their behest.”

His surprise attack on Alice Anotherbible, the greatest threat, had successfully killed her and the Bridge Builders Cabal had broken apart without her to hold it together. Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, or any of the others could never gather all of those Transcendents in one place again.

Exactly as CRC had hoped.

Peel away the theatric gestures and meaningless words and that was all he was.

Aleister could state it with such confidence because he always made sure to question the gods and charismatic leaders that the people of the world heaped so much unconditional praise on.

“I was never here to prove myself. My own survival isn’t even part of my win condition. You set the rules yourself, remember? Simply put, ''this is a battle over whether or not we can protect Anna Sprengel''.”

“You mean…?”

The human was calmly approaching the territory of a true expert.

He had approached the very entrance of the stairway available only to magicians that led to being a powerful individual while also respecting others and pouring all your efforts into helping someone else.

The great goddess of wisdom had left this task with him.

So the bloody human smiled and made his point.

“I win as long as the illusion slayer boy arrives in time.”

===Part 14===

And.

Kamijou Touma was frozen with fear.

He had just taken the first step into the front entrance of the frog-faced doctor’s hospital.

He found himself in an alternate world of red and black.

He had seen it all before. Everything around him was destroyed, someone he knew lay in a pool of blood, and only Christian Rosencreutz stood tall and unconcerned.

“He expects a lot out of you.”

“…”

“So what will you do? After all your losses, surely you do not think you can win this all on your own. Will you seek the help of your Transcendent companions? Will you stand back and play at being their commander to wear this old man down? Heh heh. This old man has no problem with that. None at all. My goal is to kill all of the Transcendents anyway. If you will send them to the front line – kee hee hee – I will gratefully accept the gift.”

“Don’t listen,” said Aradia, holding out a slender arm to stop Kamijou. “CRC would never say anything that benefits us.”

Kamijou didn’t even have time to glance over at her.

But he could sense the powerful aura of “don’t rise to the bait” radiating from her.

Mut Thebes was out of the fight, possibly dead.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and Good, Old Mary were the only Transcendents here now. If they didn’t make full use of everything they had, there was no winning this. In a way, Imagine Breaker was an even rarer trait than the Transcendents, so they couldn’t afford to have it taken out here.

“Kee hee hee. Ee hee, kee hee hee hee hee.”

He approached.

Christian Rosencreutz approached them from head on.

His fingers stroked through his silver beard.

“What, done already? No new options? No trump cards? No hopes that you will discover a power beyond all your known limits when backed into a corner while guarding someone behind you?”

This was not the action of someone fighting on the same level. It was a simple slaughter with a clear line drawn between predator and prey.

In those extreme circumstances, everything Kamijou had seen flashed before his eyes.

Was there no clue there?

Had he left any stone unturned?

He knew it was no use, but his instinct to never give up kept the gears of his mind fruitlessly turning.

*Alice Anotherbible and Anna Kingsford were dead.

*Anti-Skill and Judgment had accomplished nothing.

*The unmanned tanks with self-destruct drones and the mobile combat vehicles hadn’t stood a chance.

*The massive gunship hadn’t done any real damage.

*Index’s knowledge as a grimoire library and Othinus’s tactics as a Magic God weren’t enough to keep up.

*Academy City’s #3 Railgun and #5 Mental Out hadn’t worked either.

*The tungsten alloy bombing from satellite orbit and the particle accelerator cannon using the Hula Hoop hadn’t stopped him.

*The Transcendents’ biggest attacks, like the Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress and Good, Old Mary’s Tribikos, had failed to eliminate him.

*So had Aleister.

Even though it was just this one man.

Even though the monster named Christian Rosencreutz was only marching across the city on his own.

Run away, regroup, try again.

That was the most Kamijou’s group had managed. They had lost all three defense lines and now the battle had moved inside the hospital in District 7. There was no more room to fall back. They were right next to the ICU where Anna Sprengel was clinging to life thanks to all the medical equipment. If the silver young man set foot inside there, it was all over.

But.

Even so.

The boy realized something while viewing this nightmarish result.

Had he really, truly given this his all?

It was true this was on a larger scale than normal.

If he clenched his right fist and rushed onto the storm of bullets and bombs on the battlefield, he wouldn’t be any help and might even get shot in the back by friendly fire. Wielding the power to destroy illusions would do no good here.

However…

(What can I do?)

He pondered that.

Driven to the very edge, Kamijou Touma truly thought about it this time.

Could he really accept this?

Could he step out of CRC’s way and give up on Anna Sprengel because he couldn’t win this? They weren’t doing it because he had bowed his head or because they were only defending themselves. Anna was a villain, but those people had still stood back up because they could believe in her future. Was he going to stand here and watch them be slaughtered because he was out of cards and couldn’t stop CRC?

Kamijou sensed something deep in his chest.

It was his pulse.

He couldn’t do that.

Like hell he could.

So he had to lay the unfair methods out on the table too. He had to look to the options he wasn’t supposed to use. If he hadn’t done that, then he hadn’t really given this his all. He had only been watching. He hadn’t reached out his hand, so he didn’t know what cards were left in his deck. That wasn’t good enough. Kamijou, the one who had wanted to fight all alone for Anna, had strayed the furthest from that goal. He couldn’t let it end that way. No matter what.

(That’s right.)

He had to struggle.

Struggle harder!!

(''There is one more thing.'')

He wanted to save Anna Sprengel. He wanted to prevent innocent people from being killed along with her. The only way of making those things happen was to defeat Christian Rosencreutz here. He knew that. He didn’t see any errors in those premises. But what exactly could he do? What had he himself done up to this point?

He had the power to destroy any and all illusions.

But that was all his power could do.

He could do nothing against a harsh reality. Could he really accept that?

Wasn’t he still holding one option in reserve?

“…”

Kamijou Touma knew that this world was really and truly cruel and that people would die if a bad situation was left unfixed. Alice Anotherbible’s merciless death was proof enough of that.

So many people would die if things continued like this.

Aogami Pierce, who knew nothing of what was happening.

The frog-faced doctor who was working to save the unconscious wicked woman.

Human Aleister who had fought with all his might for nothing in return.

And.

Anna Sprengel who could no longer move her own lungs and heart.

''So.

“Misaka.”

Kamijou grabbed his phone and spoke into it.

Witch Goddess Aradia looked up in sudden realization.

“Stop, Kamijou Touma! You mustn’t do that!!”

“Fire on this GPS signal. Fire through the window to the left of the 1st floor’s front entrance. Do that and we can defeat Rosencreutz!!”

He got exactly what he wanted.

Outside the hospital’s walls, Misaka Mikoto likely had no idea what was going on in there.

But Aradia saw it all.

She saw the beam, heard the boom, felt the shockwave.

It blasted straight through the wall and it struck its intended target.

Everything played out as Kamijou had wanted.

The color red splattered out.

Kamijou Touma’s right arm was torn off at the shoulder and flew through the air.

Christian Rosencreutz raised his palm and turned his gaze toward the arm to obliterate it. A little thing like Imagine Breaker could never fully defend against his attack. In fact, its presence had limited Kamijou’s options.

So.

Kamijou clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut.

And he used his own willpower to force them back open.

At the same time, something shot from his right shoulder with a dull thud. The translucent mass was very obviously something other than blood. After grasping the concept of up and down, it audibly took shape. It became a great maw lined with ferocious fangs.

“Fine.”

In other words, a dragon.

Kamijou heard a voice from somewhere. It came from inside his own head.

''Another boy spoke clearly.

“I was just about fed up with him myself. No more holding back. If you didn’t do it, I was about to come out on my own!!!”

The boy spoke softly, the whites of his eyes dyed red from burst capillaries.

He sounded like he was casting a curse on someone.

“''I only needed that right hand gone.''”

===Part 15===

He had summoned it himself.

Just once in his life, he chose to cheat.

In that instant, the ordinary high school boy ceased to be a mere Level 0.

===Between the Lines 3===

Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany.

“Mistress, can’t we stop for lunch? It’s well past noon… And how do you plan a trip to Germany without including a chance to eat a Hamburg or a Frankfurt!?”

“What do you think we are here to do? And are you planning to tear up a map and eat it? Here, Lilith, your bottle.”

Dion Fortune complained about her empty stomach, but Mina Mathers only gave her an icy look while soothing the baby in the baby carrier.

The black cat witch was here to track down Anna Sprengel’s footprints, but she had known the answer before the investigation even began.

“If you look to the accepted knowledge in modern Western magic, the answer is obvious. Miss Sprengel was a nonexistent magician. At the time of the Golden cabal’s founding, Westcott wanted to give the new cabal greater history and legitimacy, so he invented the fictional magician so he could create the legend of receiving permission from a secret cabal. It was all a one-man show put on through the medium of letters.”

“And when they searched Europe in the usual way, they never could find the First Temple, right?”

“Felkin and others wanted to see the Secret Chiefs so bad they threw money around to wander all across Europe before finally traveling as far as New Zealand.”

“Why do men love endless adventures so much? Not that I like the idea of giving up before even attempting a search and concluding the legendary First Temple doesn’t physically exist and only existed in the hearts of everyone involved in the Golden cabal.”

“It’s just like how it’s far easier to write off paranormal phenomena as neurological or psychological illusions than to try to prove them as something physical. Just goes to show that people have always fallen back on the same excuses when presented with a challenging problem. But at the time, most members thought there was no point in searching out the physical address when they could simply astral project themselves to another phase and receive messages from the Secret Chiefs and their priestess there. Just like thinking remote work is good enough as long as you’re connected with your coworkers by a fiber optic network. All the while, they had no idea who that vague, faceless shadow really was.”

That was their starting point.

And with that in mind…

“Useless student. In that case, ''what is this''?”

“That’s a really good question, mistress.”

There was no building there.

Only stone blocks lined up on the ground in an L-shape. It was a portion of a building’s foundation. The supposedly nonexistent Licht Liebe Leben Temple had left behind physical evidence, just like any historical ruins.

“Mistress, what does this mean? I just want to drink a local beer already. One of those first-rate dark beers the Germans pride themselves in and are legendary for being cheaper than water.”

“We are not here to drink. Aren’t you supposed to be investigating at the British people’s expense?”

“Ehh? Why should you care about British finances?”

“Because Mina Mathers was originally a magician in London, my foolish student.”

The First Temple really did exist.

Or some remnant of it did.

What purpose was hidden behind this contradiction?

“Ugh. The Anna Sprengel in the secret letters was basically ''Westcott talking with his own sockpuppet, right?'' We aren’t going to discover that coroner was parading around Germany in women’s clothing, are we?”

“I honestly think that would be the funniest possible explanation, but I doubt it.”

Mina Mathers crouched down for a closer inspection of the L-shaped foundation.

Testing the carbon isotopes in the materials would provide their accurate age.

Just because they looked old didn’t mean they couldn’t be quite new.

And there were things that only showed up in a very detailed deception.

“Most likely, there was a magician called Anna who specialized in Rosicrucian magic. Anna isn’t exactly a rare name, after all.”

“Bweh? But if she was using a fake name, surely she could have come up with something better than Anna.”

“You would think that, wouldn’t you, Dion Fortune? Or should I say-”

“Cough, cough! How about we stay on topic, mistress? There’s no reason to bring that up!!”

“Violet Firth. It seems like a perfectly cute name to me.”

“Why would you go ahead and say my real name when I made it so obvious I didn’t want you too!?”

The girl who normally went by her super cool screenname was blushing, tearful, and upset. She must not have liked her name for some reason.

But ultimately, this may not have been a rare occurrence in the world of magicians where powerful individuals determined their own value.

If you worried too much what others would think of you and tried to correct yourself to their liking, you would never excel as a magician.

(If you want to go there, my husband was basically unemployed and claimed to be Scottish nobility. He got so obsessed with it he named his own bloodline and invented all sorts of other details to go along with it. He was living proof that if you have the passion, you can continue your teenage cringe well into adulthood.)

“Sigh…”

“Mistress, that was a heavy sigh. Is something wrong?”

“Oh, I was just thinking how tiring it is to be the only sensible person around.”

“Mercilessly delivering kitty claw attacks the instant you lose your temper is your idea of ‘sensible’?”

“I do not punch and I do not use the kitchen knives. That puts me well on the side of sensible.”

“I notice you didn’t mention palette knives. You’re always swinging those metal weapons around.”

“What makes you think you can criticize your own teacher, my hopeless student? Some gentle punishment is in order to swiftly correct such an unfortunately mistaken soror.”

“You’re proving my point! How is this ‘gentle’!? Ow, owww!?”

Mina Mathers immediately began some corporal punishment by shoving a metal spatula against Dion Fortune’s navel and rubbing it over her clothes, but the concept of a healthy educational environment was still a work in progress from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.

“Hee hee. This is only a wife finally reaching the end of her patience and making an adorable scratching attack with only her wrist. Meow, meow☆”

“Stop trying to pass your violence off as adorable! I was the primary victim and my back looked like a tiger had clawed it! Big cats are not the same as housecats! Your student nearly died!!”

The (according to the teacher) nonsensible student’s testimony was thrown out.

Before scraping off a sample, Mina Mathers made an accurate sketch rather than snapping a photo with her phone. All while she soothed Lilith in the baby carrier.

“But if we don’t know what Anna this Anna is, that means she is not a major magician. And not many people would have listened to what a no-name magician said. Even if this mystery Anna had proper Rosicrucian knowledge, she wouldn’t have had a way to pass it on.”

“That would explain why everyone looked down on her, decided to do things their own way, took shortcuts, and skipped pages in the thick grimoires.”

What happened afterwards went without saying.

What would happen if someone got bored after the first few pages of reading a flight manual more than 8cm thick, shut the book, and climbed into the cockpit? It didn’t take much thought to imagine the tragedy that would unfold.

The Rosicrucian cabal was also known as the unseen university.

All that knowledge was lined up in the way calculated to best foster learning, so you could not just cherry pick which parts interested you. But the hobbyists had grabbed only the most impactful and exciting terms and started using the magic without knowing what the incantations and symbols would actually do. They didn’t want to study, but they did want a degree and an academic history. The desire was understandable, but granting it would not make anyone happy. In some cases, it could even put lives at risk.

She must have despaired.

Both at the ignorant masses who refused to learn things in the proper order and at herself for being too unimportant to guide them properly.

The accuracy of her knowledge was not the issue.

No one trusted in her enough to think what she was saying was accurate.

So they looked down on her, so they failed spectacularly, so they suffered meaningless deaths and mental destruction. Again and again. When none of it would have happened if they had just listened.

And….

“She wanted a name for herself. The problem wasn’t her foolish students. Her own lack of fame had ultimately led to all the deaths and destroyed minds. If she were only someone important, she thought she could correctly guide the students who arrived in search of wisdom.”

“…”

“At the same time in England, Westcott wanted a fictional legend behind the creation of the Golden cabal, so he began his faked exchange of letters. It must have come as a shock to him when he sent a letter to an arbitrary address to help create his fictional persona and then received a real reply from someone claiming to be Anna Sprengel.”

“Yeah, that’d scare you.”

“To say the least. His face would also have been burning with embarrassment.”

In modern times, it would be like the ideal wife he had imagined in his head, or the girl he had created on the character creation screen, suddenly coming to life.

Had he felt fear, or joy? Westcott had not discussed the truth of the letters with anyone until the day he died. Not even with the other Golden magicians.

“Was it automatic writing or sleepwalking? Had another Golden magician peeked at his letter and responded as a joke? Or had the ceremonial act of writing fictional letters so many times ''created'' Miss Sprengel in distant Germany? As a magician and a coroner, he must have come up with several possible explanations.”

“Yeah, it was smart of him not to go to the church to confess or go running to a mental hospital.”

“Confessing involvement in magic to an Anglican priest would never end well and you can guess the quality of 19th century mental healthcare. He was one of the few sensible members of the eccentric Golden cabal. He cared about keeping up appearances. If he had confided with anyone, the talk of magic cabals and writing letters to himself would have made them think the man had never left his teenage fantasies behind.”

That explained why the foundation of the First Temple remained in Nuremberg.

Miss Sprengel was a role Anna had borrowed to put real weight behind her name.

Traveling all the way to Nuremberg and fabricating these ruins would have been a simple enough task to that end. She had created a surprise for any Golden magician who might travel all the way from England to southern Germany to check.

Dion Fortune sounded disgusted by it all.

“So you’re suggesting Anna read through Westcott’s letters and then altered a part of Nuremberg just to match his fictional story? That seems like a lot.”

“She must have wanted to be thorough. Westcott, Mathers, and the others believed in and respected this Miss Sprengel who appeared out of nowhere, but for Anna, the rise of the world’s largest cabal in London ''was no more than advertisement for her'' as a magician said to have played a role in its founding. The end of the 19th century was before World War One, so the center of the world at the time was the UK, not America. London would have been the best possible location for that kind of advertisement.”

However, this puzzle had proved too difficult and the Golden magicians who traveled Europe to meet the Secret Chiefs and their priestess never did find the trick set up in Nuremberg.

“Miss Sprengel was a complete lie,” whispered Mina Mathers. No matter what they found, that remained unchanged. “Even if she was named Anna, she was no more than a half-baked magician who could never hope to defeat Kingsford. But it is true she worried over her problems and poured her heart and soul into preserving and expanding the Rosicrucian cabal. And ultimately, that led to the creation of the Golden cabal in distant England. Most likely, Kingsford recognized Miss Sprengel as a true magician who had accomplished something she could not. No matter how it might have happened.”

Anna Kingsford was real.

Anna Sprengel was also real.

With those two facts established, Black Cat Witch Mina Mathers muttered under her breath.

“Then who exactly is the Christian Rosencreutz both of those legendary women believed in and dedicated themselves to?”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Chapter3

2024-06-01T06:45:22Z

Entei08: A line was missing

==Chapter 3: Journey – Cut_a_Road_to_Allover_the_Goal.==

===Part 1===

Technically speaking, this was Yomikawa Aiho’s apartment.

But she was currently busy with work, so Yoshikawa Kikyou was looking after the small girl instead. Last Order, who looked to be about 10, was sorting something in her room.

“Cute.”

That was her judgment of a crane game doll.

“Not cute.”

That rejection was passed on a flat, ruler-shaped magnet.

But she still had plenty more to sort. The cat-shaped potholder and the Christmas tree floor lamp would be judged too. Some might have judged it all as junk.

Yoshikawa held a hand to her forehead.

“Can’t you just throw it all out? Listen, mere objects don’t actually have souls. If you hug each and every thing and refuse to throw it away, your room will be full in no time.”

“But this one is so cute! And so is this one! says Misaka as Misaka hugs them.”

Last Order shouted loud and hugged an (empty) water dispenser bottle the size of a daruma doll. She had a very wide range of what she considered cute and they all brought back memories that kept her from throwing them out. Yoshikawa sighed and wondered if it would be easier to just find a cheap storage unit for her.

That was when she heard a smooth artificial voice.

It came from outside the apartment’s front door. It was polite but quite loud.

“Martial law has been declared for the entirety of Academy City. Ordinary citizens are asked to remain indoors unless you have an urgent need. Also, this building is not an authorized shelter. Please check your maps and move to the nearest disaster shelter as soon as possible.”

That had to be a drum-shaped cleaning robot and its instructions seemed contradictory.

But Last Order remained seated on the floor and made no move to get up. She didn’t even look in that direction.

“Not cute, says Misaka as Misaka presents a cruel truth.”

Apparently not all round things met her definition of cute.

Then something poked its head out from around the corner of the hallway inside the apartment.

It was a bipedal tanuki.

But instead of the mystical creature found in old folklore, this appeared to be a dance robot’s metal frame placed inside a stuffed animal.

This came as a shock to Last Order.

Yoshikawa vaguely recalled seeing something like this having fun on TV.

“That tanuki is…cute!!”

===Part 2===

From red to black.

The sun set and night fell.

The already chilly winter air had transformed into a wind that seemed to slash at Kamijou and the others’ cheeks. To be blunt, he wanted some way of protecting his ears.

District 23 was a unique district full of airfields and rocket launch sites. To keep the various aircraft safe, the district was usually surrounded by a tall fence and strictly guarded, but it was deserted now.

There was no earsplitting noise. Had the passenger planes been grounded due to the martial law, or for some other reason?

Kamijou could scarcely believe it.

“Did they really set their second defense line here? They thought Christian Rosencreutz would choose to pass through such a dangerous district?”

“That’s what they’re saying on the Anti-Skill radio channel. Do you think that Rosencreutz guy could rewrite those encrypted transmissions?” asked Mikoto while monitoring those transmissions.

But not even she was doing that directly through her head. She was using a radio she had picked up.

It was possible CRC wouldn’t change his route because security was strict here or laxer over there. If he took the shortest route to the District 7 hospital, he would end up crossing through Districts 23 and 18. In the worst case, it was even possible he would actively choose to cross a minefield and step on every mine along the way. Because he enjoyed the loud noises.

“Look over there. There’s light,” said the honey blonde girl.

“Sh! That’s Anti-Skill’s second defense line.”

There were a lot of tanks and armored vehicles there. Kamijou didn’t know much about military stuff, but even he recognized one vehicle type. The mobile combat vehicles resembling 8-wheel armored trucks with a tank gun on top were Predator Octopuses. Just the one had made things so much easier when fleeing with Anna, so seeing a whole line of them here sent a chill down his spine.

In addition to the vehicle headlights, Anti-Skill had gathered up the kind of big outdoor lightning used at construction sites. A maze of barricades had been set up with sandbags piled up in places to construct countless encampments of various sizes. Then there were the heavy machinegun and automatic grenade launcher emplacements set up by driving spikes into the asphalt using the power of pneumatics. Runways were supposed to be delicate areas where a single stray screw or nail could lead to disaster, so gathering all of this was quite something.

No, that had it backwards.

If you ignored the potential financial losses, the wide-open runway may have been the perfect spot for Anti-Skill to use their next-gen weaponry. It at least greatly reduced the risk of a student dorm being hit by a stray shot.

But was that their real reason?

If they were using the possibility of stray shots as an excuse for their helplessness at the first defense line, it meant they still hadn’t accurately judged the threat Rosencreutz presented.

“Oh? Misaka-san?”

“Wait a second. Onee-sama, what are you doing here!?”

“Ugh.” Mikoto uncharacteristically flinched.

She apparently knew some of the Judgment members working here. Kamijou recognized the girl with twintails. He knew her name was Shirai Kuroko. But the older girl in glasses was entirely unknown to him. Something about the super-serious glasses girl with black hair told him she would kill him if he cracked a joke here. She scared him. Her strict aura reminded him a lot of Fukiyose when she was in a bad mood. W-was she always like this? Didn’t it wear her out?

“Onee-sama, District 23 is off limits. What are you doing here?”

“Um, Kuroko? Hear me out before you chew me out. See, I am the #3 Level 5, so I thought I could lend a hand now that Academy City is in trouble.”

“Absolutely not! You don’t have the authority to just decide that! Wandering around an off-limits area is enough to have you taken into custody!! And when have I ever ‘chewed you out’!? Care to explain why you chose that phrasing in particular!?”

“Sigh, and there you go (sob).”

Meanwhile, Kamijou’s eyes were not drawn to the Predator Octopuses so like the one he had recently entrusted his life to. He saw a much more disturbing weapon.

“What…is that?”

It looked like a 70m steel snake, or like an enlarged version of the luggage carrier carts often used at airports. It was made up of 10 armored cars with ground-flattening metal wheels that might as well have been road rollers. They were linked in a long line by giant metal ball joints. Each one looked to be around 7m long, 3m wide, and 2m tall. That meant they were wide and flat, which made it look like a snake lying down on the ground.

Each car was armed with gun turrets on the sides, but these were very different from a tank or warship’s weapons. They looked more like antiair weapons. A self-destruct drone launcher and a Gatling gun rotated as a single set.

“You mean the XHsACV-15 Anaconda?”

Shirai Kuroko sounded more confused than exasperated.

Because…

“The X at the start means they’re sending prototypes out to the field.”

“It is an all-terrain armored combat vehicle. Two-car armored vehicles that can bend in the middle are already made in Finland and Singapore. You could view this as a more extreme version of that concept.”

The glasses Judgment girl held a hand to the temple of her glasses and seemed delighted to provide the explanation.

A prototype.

That would explain the green jungle camouflage that only made more conspicuous here.

That said, what was this city hoping to accomplish building that weird thing?

“Unlike a normal tank or armored truck, I doubt it’s supposed to fight while driving around.” Mikoto analyzed it with a sigh. “Is it more of a mobile barricade that can rush in when there’s a riot and use itself as a thick wall to protect one side of a school from the rioters? See how its turrets are on the sides? That means it’s designed to fight with its side to the enemy, not its front.”

“R-right.”

“But putting them on both sides doubles the cost, so no sensible designer would arrange them like that. A top-mounted turret with 360-degree rotation would be lighter and cheaper. The only reason to do it this way is if the weapons double as special armor to protect itself. So if a shell or missile hits it, it triggers an outward explosion to reduce the force of the enemy projectile trying to punch through the armor. And that’s a lot cheaper with a drone launcher than a big gun. It looks like the actual radar is split between the front and the rear. Unless you accurately shot between the weapons with something like my Railgun, the shot will be diverted at the cost of one of the modular, and thus replaceable, unmanned turrets.”

“Anything is fine as long as we have something defending us,” said the honey blonde girl.

She had a point.

After all, this was District 23. The flat runway gave a clear view out to the horizon in all directions, meaning there was nowhere to hide. They didn’t want CRC firing magic projectiles here. Having those five or ten units surrounding them to create a rough encampment would mean a lot.

Kamijou then listened in the two Judgment girls:

“It’s plenty long, but at only 2m tall, rioters can simply climb over it. But if they added rolls of barbed wire, I’d be afraid of injuring them. Well, those flaws are what make prototypes so cute.”

“Is that so? If they’re going to the trouble of using a computer for the complex calculations needed to sync the engine RPMs, I don’t see why they would bother with a giant snake that can’t even separate. Procuring 10 maneuverable armored vehicles would seem more convenient to me.”

“They must still be working out the kinks to discover its true charm as a product. Besides, don’t you love the sound of the phrase ‘mysterious prototype weapon’? Hee hee.”

“Not really. I don’t understand you biker girls who get all worked up whenever you see a mech that doesn’t even cover you up.”

That conversation hinted at a lot of effort going on behind the scenes, but the thick wall still felt unshakable to Kamijou.

But then another thought occurred to him.

(Can this traditional weaponry really stop Rosencreutz?)

It was a vague, meaningless question.

His thoughts never reached the part where he figured out what else to do.

Because he was interrupted by something floating down from the night sky.

It was colored a hot pink.

Since this was the second time, Kamijou felt more relief than surprise.

“You’re alive, Bologna Succubus!”

“Natch.”

The blonde demon smiled as she spread her large batlike wings. While Kamijou’s honest reaction made her feel a touch bashful.

This time, she managed to land on the runway without running into anyone’s face with her crotch.

What had happened to Aradia and Good, Old Mary? The latter in particular had been knocked out by an attack from Christian Rosencreutz last Kamijou knew.

“Having a Transcendent with you should expand your strategic options. My Cold Mistress spell will probably only work on him once. It swaps out a human’s pleasure with pain no matter how physically tough they are, so it should work on someone ''who only acts out of passion and playfulness''. Still, it won’t work once he comes up with a countermeasure, so when to make use of that limited opportunity is the real key.”

And…

“A-a succubus?”

“Oui. You got a problem with that, mademoiselle middle schooler who still has a lot of growing up to do?”

Someone was trembling a short distance away.

The honey blonde girl ''whose name Kamijou didn’t know'' seemed to take issue with something about this.

Kamijou just wished those two with such nice bodies would avoid glaring at each other from so close together their big boobs were pushed together. Where was a high school boy supposed to look!?

“A sexy young woman with long blonde hair, an amazing figure, and a mysterious sparkle ability in the eyes who specializes in nonphysical attacks? A-am I a joke to her? She just copied everything about me! And you’re telling me she’s gotten to know him behind my back!? That’s as aggressive a move as building a big-name convenience store right next to a privately run shop!!”

“You missed ‘talks weird’ on that list of similarities,” said Mikoto.

“Talks weird?” “Talks weird?”

The blondes joined forces(?) to both glare at Mikoto.

“Anyway, who do you think you are? A young doll like you needs to wait at least a decade before she can call herself ‘sexy’. And historically and traditionally, a succubus is the orthodox choice for sexy, not a middle schooler. Seriously though, I really do recommend you wait ten years so you can truly fulfill that high school boy’s dream of a dorm manager lady.”

“Why am I getting advice from an exhibitionist pervert who walks around outside in her underwear!?”

[[Image:GT Index v09 BW4.jpg|thumb]]

It sounded like the Bologna Succubus had won the squishy battle.

This must have been quite a shock because the mystery honey blonde girl simply stood in place with tears in her eyes. …And had Kamijou ever told that demon about his dorm manager dream? Kamijou couldn’t remember in enough detail to be sure. He had legitimately died and passed out a few times during his December 31 in Shibuya, so had he mentioned it in his sleep at some point? He wasn’t sure how she had gotten the information, but he really wished she wouldn’t spread it around to other people. Because it was embarrassing!!!

And for some reason, Mikoto looked glum.

She was hanging her head with a look of belated realization.

“(Eh? Do I not even have the honor of participating in that battle? Because of the gap in chest size?)”

“?”

Kamijou got the feeling anything he said would make her want to die, so he opted to leave her be.

Just then, a pale-faced Anti-Skill officer began showing around her tablet without knowing who to ask for further instructions.

“W-we have footage from the drone… He’s coming!! He’s head straight here! Wh-wh-what do we do!?”

“We need to set all our complaints aside. Everyone, to your posts! You don’t want to let him cross this defense line without putting up a fight, do you!?”

The busty glasses Judgment girl clapped her hands and provided instructions. She was so good at it the adults of Anti-Skill were taken aback and simply obeyed. Anti-Skill was generally made up of the muscular gym teachers and guidance counselors, so how did that girl have the upper hand?

He had only been spotted by drone, but if they knew he was close enough to judge that he was headed this way, he couldn’t be that far away.

Christian Rosencreutz was coming.

Kamijou recalled how extraordinary Alice Anotherbible had been.

Nothing was going to just “work out for the best” here.

''If he lost this time, he really would die. As would the other people here. He wouldn’t be able to speak with any of them again.

The battle at the second defense line would soon begin.

===Part 3===

Mut Thebes stood alone in District 18.

The place was completely dark thanks to the martial law.

(This iron sand hand warmer is nice. Nothing can beat the classics.)

That pointy-haired boy had given her the item before they parted.

So now the chilly girl warmed herself with that modern convenience.

Anti-Skill referred to this as the third defense line, but the District 7 hospital where Anna Sprengel slept wasn’t far from here. For that boy, this had to be the last line.

Mut Thebes was a special Transcendent who could absorb people’s and objects’ shadows using her own white shadow and then use them as she saw fit. The next-gen weapons belonged to the science side, but once she absorbed them, she could use them as part of her magic.

And she had discovered a fascinating weapon here.

The 41cm Trebuchet linear artillery.

The cannon replaced the power of explosives with electromagnets, but the shells it launched in a large arc like a long throw in baseball would reach the ozone layer before accurately striking a target 20 thousand meters away. In addition to targeting a single point and piercing deep underground, it could be switched to a secondary mode that used the great air friction to intentionally destroy the metal shell in the air above the target, blasting it into plasma that could obliterate an aircraft carrier fleet in the ocean, assuming they were packed in close enough. The result could be thought of as an artificial Tunguska event.

With the main weapon, the spare shells, the targeting unit, the antiair weaponry set up nearby to defend it, and everything else, it took up an entire schoolyard.

One of the Anti-Skill officers working in the schoolyard noticed her and yelled at her.

“You there! Martial law is in effect. Get back to your dorm immediately!”

“?”

“Wh-why do you look so confused?”

She had had a shootout with them just yesterday, but had they not distributed an accurate photo of her? That was the real source of her confusion, but she knew correcting him would only make things worse, so she kept quiet.

The schoolyard artillery looked like it had been set up in a hurry and a lot of Anti-Skill officers were moving all around it, but it didn’t appear to be ready to fire yet. If Rosencreutz wasn’t delayed at the second defense line, he would probably arrive here at the third before they were ready putting it together.

But that changed if Mut Thebes absorbed it.

(Although it will take me some time to absorb such a large shadow.)

She only needed contact the long shadow formed by the bright outdoor lights, so she didn’t even need to cross the fence surrounding the schoolyard.

She waited on the side of the road and thought in silence.

It would take some time to absorb it into her white shadow, but she had nothing to fear once that was done. Because she didn’t actually need to operate the weapon as it was designed to be used. In a recent battle, she had even shined lights on a warship from multiple angles and absorbed each of its shadows to create a giant monster out of them and march across Academy City.

“Hm. Which would mean…”

Mut Thebes nodded silently to herself.

With this, she could fortify the third defense line while also using the long-range artillery to participate in the battle being fought at the second defense line.

“Interesting.”

===Part 4===

Christian Rosencreutz strolled leisurely through District 12.

There were no people or cars here. That made it a strange alternate world.

“Oops.”

He stopped his foot in midair.

Something was pouring all its strength into running across the cold ground just below his shoe.

CRC’s eyes crinkled in a smile at the rat crossing the crosswalk on the deserted street.

Thanks to the martial law, the train station’s ticket gates were all closed. The convenience store and other shops were also deserted. But that wasn’t the small children he saw were interested in.

They were gathered around the capsule toy machines lined up in front of the train station convenience store.

“What are you kids doing?”

“Wah!?”

The way they jumped made it clear the children knew they weren’t supposed to sneak out of their dorms during the martial law. And it was nighttime.

“H-he’s a grownup.”

“But he doesn’t look like Anti-Skill.”

“If this old guy is out here, he’s breaking the rules as much as we are. So it’s fine.”

Fascinating. He hadn’t called himself “this old man” to them, so did they simply consider anyone to be “old” if they had a beard?

He stroked his silver beard.

Based on his observations, these capsule toy machines had you put coins inside to test your luck on what toy you would receive.

(I see. But why do people flock to these systems that give you no guarantee you will get what you want?)

Perhaps because they were morons.

Tears welled up in Rosencreutz’s eyes as he recalled the many forms of human foolishness he had witnessed in his far-from-short history.

He was quick to tears.

The children didn’t seem to care.

“I’m doing it! I’m getting a super rare one today!”

“But is there even a super rare Gekota color plane in here? I can’t tell looking in from the side.”

“I have heard rumors there isn’t a winner inside.”

Large tears spilled from CRC’s eyes.

He was quick to tears!!

“Is this a despicable machine designed to scam young children out of the limited allowance they worked so hard to save up? No, this old man must know the true odds!! How does it really work!? Urah!!”

A loud crash rang out.

The capsule toy machine itself had shattered.

Christian Rosencreutz lined the round capsules up on the hard tile floor.

“One, two, three, four, five…there it is. So there really is a Gekota color plane inside! Hah hah hah. Good, it wasn’t a-”

He paused midsentence.

The small children were nowhere to be found. Every last one.

They must have run away.

He scratched his head and sighed, stroking his silver beard.

If he wanted to, he could have quickly located them and attacked them, but…

“No reason to chase them down, I suppose.”

With that arbitrary decision, he abandoned the search.

He held the super rare Gekota color plane between two fingers.

He knew which route to take now.

“Yes.”

It had always been the shortest route anyway.

He turned toward District 23, which specialized in aerospace.

He casually chose that destination because now he wanted to see a real one.

He did not find a life-size Gekota color plane there.

He did find several bright lights shining out from the darkness. Were they headlights and roadwork lights?

Those Anti-Skill people must have built a second defense line. And as part of that, they must have removed all the passenger planes and tanker trucks packed full of highly flammable fuel.

Christian Rosencreutz squeezed the small toy in his hand and muttered to himself.

“You are in my way.”

===Part 5===

An Anti-Skill officer leaned out from behind cover and shouted with special binoculars in hand.

“Visual confirmation of top-priority target!!”

Thanks to the martial law, the runway was not properly lit. That allowed Anti-Skill and Judgment to take action before Kamijou got a clear view of the figure in question.

A battle broke out at the second defense line.

“Begin!!”

Frist, they launched mortars from the ground. To Kamijou, they seemed like bigger versions of the fireworks available at convenience stores and discount stores. And they were used in much the same way. The projectiles were launched into the sky above, but instead of falling back to the ground, they decelerated above the target’s head and scattered light even brighter than a car’s headlights. These were parachute-equipped flares. Anti-Skill wasn’t showering the enemy with explosives right away – they were first ensuring a clear view.

This allowed Kamijou Touma to see the small figure more than 500m away.

It was Christian Rosencreutz.

That confirmation froze his spine and legs with fear. This was someone who made him wish the veil of darkness had not been swept away.

And the initial flares had a secondary purpose.

Anti-Skill and Judgment were meant to preserve order in the city, so they had a process to follow.

“Warning shot achieved.”

Yes, no matter what the type of projectile, ''they would fire the first shot above the enemy instead of directly at him.

And since the target continued walking and did not put his hands up…

“The suspect is not surrendering! Repeat, the suspect is not surrendering! Conditions for use of force have been met! Open fire!!!”

The heavy machineguns and automatic grenade launchers began to fire, held in place by the metal stakes driven into the asphalt. Needless to say, Anti-Skill was holding nothing back. They fired in the enemy’s general direction while adjusting their aim to hold him in place before taking careful aim with their tank guns and mortars that could not fire quite so rapidly. If this wasn’t Academy City where they were trained to handle espers, they might have known this was the most efficient method, but they would have been hesitant to use it against a human.

Kamijou himself ''felt somehow relieved.

Because he knew Christian Rosencreutz could take this kind of attack.

Although that thinking may have meant he had begun to accept how strong the man was.

With such a dense barrage underway, Kamijou couldn’t rush in with fist clenched. His Imagine Breaker could not block fragments of everyday(?) bullets and shells, so a careless approach would only get him blown away by friendly fire.

Kamijou wasn’t the only one irritated by having to stand around.

“Argh, 500m? I can see him, but I can’t reach him. My Railgun would burn away in the air before it got there!!”

And.

Kamijou heard chuckling laughter coming from among the explosions and shockwaves.

CRC was mocking them.

While on the receiving end of such a concentrated attack.

More sandbags were piled up to reinforce their defenses. This robbed the tanks of their mobility and their guns creaked as if intimidated. Kamijou understood not wanting to die, but now the tanks were no more than 120mm gun emplacements.

Christian Rosencreutz’s face showed only scorn.

“Do you really think that can defeat this old man?”

“They’re risking their lives because they do, halfwit.”

A blonde demon interrupted.

Something else happened at the same time.

The Bologna Succubus’s spell was called Cold Mistress.

It did not produce any bright lights or loud sounds. It apparently replaced the target’s pleasure signals with excruciating pain.

But what did this attack mean for Christian Rosencreutz ''who was only motivated by passion and playfulness? The silver young man's eyebrow twitched, his body slightly shifted to the right.

A tank gun scored a direct hit.

Even CRC’s body had to be made of protein and calcium. He couldn’t stop shells because his body was unusually tough – he activated spells to repel them.

So.

What if he was stopped from activating those defense spells, even for a split second?

The explosive boom erupted a moment later and a cloud of gray dust swelled out.

But Anti-Skill was not foolish enough to celebrate quite yet.

“Not yet!!” shouted an adult holding special binoculars that used electronics to expand their functionality “He’s still in one piece and standing on his own two feet!!”

(Damn monster.)

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

He could only pray CRC had survived but had taken damage. The tank guns and grenade launchers fired again and again, not waiting for the dust to clear. This showed Anti-Skill’s fear that he would attack the instant they stopped firing.

“Kyahhhhh!!”

The honey blonde girl shrieked. Something other than deafening gunshots and sparks had grazed her at high speed. Probably a stray shot or a ricochet.

But Kamijou couldn’t do the obvious thing and duck down behind cover.

He was too worried.

The inability to see what was happening was wearing at his patience,.

He was intensely anxious that all of this was ultimately meaningless.

Ordinarily, they would have the upper hand here, but he was finding it harder and harder to trust that kind of judgment. Christian Rosencreutz was too much of a monster.

They were on the attack, yet they were the ones running out of options. Unable to bear this any longer, Kamijou shouted out loud.

“Is it still not over? Still!?”

“Damn, the target is walking. His shoulders are shaking… Is he laughing? He’s headed here! The dust is clearing! Wahhh!?”

The Anti-Skill officer sweatily peering through the binoculars screamed like he was having a nightmare.

With the “snap!!” of breaking metal, the heavy machinegun providing a dense barrage was suddenly destroyed and stopped moving.

It all happened in an instant.

Rosencreutz rushed in. Once he was inside the defense formation surrounded by the sandbag walls and barricades, their bullet-and-shell-based strategy would cease to function.

But Rosencreutz may have questioned what he found.

He had eliminated their optimal strategy and begun the hunt, but despite the terror on their faces, Anti-Skill and Judgment had not frozen up in fear.

“Everyone down!!” shouted a tough-looking Anti-Skill officer with something in his hand.

Kamijou wasn’t sure what he meant.

So he was slow to react.

The group of tanks and mobile combat vehicles all exploded ''from within''.

Kamijou hadn’t been anywhere near them, but his feet were still lifted from the runway.

And he was knocked backwards.

“Boy…………………!!”

The Bologna Succubus’s voice was too distorted to understand. It was so bad he couldn’t even judge how close she was.

But what had happened to CRC who had moved deep within the group of tanks and mobile combat vehicles?

The 8-wheel Predator Octopus and the rest of the military vehicles were designed to be operated remotely as ground drones. After the first defense line was destroyed so badly, no one thought CRC could be repelled with ordinary firepower. Which led to this strategy: triggering the self-destruct only after he had easily broken through the defense line and entered the defense formation.

They probably hadn’t used your average explosive either.

“Ah…gah?”

Kamijou’s retinas were scorched by a flash of light as white as welding.

Most likely, they had made use of a special reaction using aluminum or iron powder. At more than 3000 degrees, the blast could literally melt steel and it had hit the man at point-blank range.

Shirai Kuroko shouted over the boom while lying down on the runway, protecting her head.

“Did they really have to go this far!?”

“Seems that way. The suspect is still standing. He didn’t even duck!!”

The busty glasses Judgment girl must have had Clairvoyance or a similar power because she was directing her wide eyes toward the dust cloud.

“You’re…kidding.”

Mikoto had also frozen stiff. She may have detected something with her radar produced by reflecting weak microwaves off of things.

But Kamijou didn’t have time to see the truth for himself.

He heard a deafening tearing sound.

The XHsACV-15 Anaconda, the snakelike chain of armored vehicles, had started to move. It looked like the three units were going to run over Rosencreutz, but instead they formed the three sides of an equilateral triangle and came to a rapid stop.

First, they trapped him.

That 70m giant surrounded the same area as a schoolyard.

But it was not just a thick wall. The mobility to deploy as the situation demanded was the Anaconda’s greatest strength.

Down on the ground, an Anti-Skill officer shouted into a radio.

“Fire!!”

The guns on the sides of each unit opened fire on the interior of the giant triangle. Self-destruct drones were launched sharply out and 20mm Gatling guns sprayed bullets. The noise alone was terrifying. The barrage was so dense an ordinary human would have been turned into a bloody mist and splattered across the ground in less than a second.

But only an ordinary human.

And it didn’t end there.

Something fell from heaven to earth like a bolt of lightning. 120mm shells and 20mm Gatling guns were combined to create a manmade divine punishment of lead and powder.

Kamijou had seen this before.

A large transport plane had been converted into a mobile aerial gun platform called a gunship.

It flew in a large circle overhead, raining down a massive number of bullets.

An Anti-Skill officer shouted while crawling slowly along the ground.

“So the HsAC-03 Spotlight got here. 200m around the target point is a fragment warning zone! Fall back! Everyone fall back!”

“A 200m radius? That’s bigger than your average school or stadium. Which means it covers all of us here!” protested the honey blonde girl.

Several explosions erupted in quick succession.

The Anaconda’s wall was meaningless if the metal fragments and pieces of asphalt flew up in the air and poured down on their heads. This might as well have been a volcanic eruption on the surface.

Even with the martial law, they couldn’t have carried out a bombing this large in the more urban part of the city. This all-out firepower was only possible here in District 23 with its vast expanse of runways and not a school or dorm to be found.

Again, it didn’t end there.

Even higher up than the gunship ruling the skies, a star twinkled.

Or so it seemed just before a cylinder of ultra-heavy tungsten alloy dropped straight down from outside the atmosphere. It was 10m long and 80cm in diameter. It had been launched from Academy City’s giant satellite. The heavy metal pillar just barely missed the gunship circling overhead, nearly stalling out the 50m craft with the mass of air it brought with it, and dropped straight toward Christian Rosencreutz.

Sound was compressed.

Even light was trapped, unable to escape, before everything burst outward from a single point.

An artificial comet had struck. If the blast had been unmanaged and free to spread, it might have obliterated District 23 itself. Instead, the special grooves and angular points on the pillar’s side and the angle of its tip gathered the kinetic energy together, sending it piercing straight down into the ground. It easily dug up the experimental nuclear shelter spread out below the asphalt runway.

“!?”

While the vectors were concentrated to an extent, it wasn’t perfect.

The force that did escape was enough to twist and flip the 70m Anaconda all-terrain armored combat vehicle. Kamijou was nearly crushed by it, but it could easily have been worse. Without that wall there, the thick shockwave would have hit him directly and converted him into a clump of meat.

After gathering scrap metal into a giant shield, Mikoto muttered in a somewhat dazed way.

“Could they have dropped that on my head any time they wanted…?”

Rolling on the ground, Kamijou didn’t even have time for questions like that.

His aching head felt like it was going to split open.

But instead of a blow from the outside, it felt more like the pressure inside his skull had risen.

Just watching made him feel like his eardrums were going to burst.

In a subconscious urge to find anything at all to rely on, he ended up grabbing onto the Bologna Succubus who happened to be nearby. He looked a lot like a small child clinging to his mother in fear after a nearby lightning strike.

What did it matter if they weren’t special?

So what if they were all individuals and had no legends to their name?

These people had gathered for no other reason than to protect Academy City and they had demonstrated enough power to bring Kamijou to the ground just from watching.

The strange sticky sensation coming from his right ear scared him, but he managed a trembling voice.

“What happened…to Rosencreutz? After all this, he’s got to at least be limping, right?”

“''No,''” said an icily certain voice. It belonged to the Bologna Succubus as she held the boy close. “Remove your rose-tinted glasses and you’ll see. He can still move.”

His breath caught.

Was Christian Rosencreutz really this powerful? He was entirely unscathed after an attack so ferocious it literally altered the terrain? Then what could a measly right fist do?

Just then, a distorted voice came from an emergency speaker directly installed in the runway rather than a metal pole so it would be out of the way of takeoffs and landings.

Kamijou recognized the voice.

“Outta the way, third-rates. That was only the opening act meant to keep the bastard still for a second.”

===Part 6===

It had originally been a piece of research infrastructure built directly below the wall surrounding Academy City’s perimeter.

The giant facility used a massive amount of magnetism to trap a stream of electrons and protons, send them out at nearly the speed of light, and collide different particles to create a variety of phenomena, including the creation of brand new elements that do not exist in the natural world.

The Hula Hoop.

The world’s largest particle accelerator had just unleashed and launched a tremendously powerful electron beam.

It cut a straight line from District 3 in the north to District 10 in the south.

This was New Board Chairman Accelerator’s true trump card that he had been setting up ever since the Bridge Builders Cabal had suddenly constructed a consulate in District 12 and strutted around the city like they owned the place.

The intended target had been Alice Anotherbible.

This superweapon had been adjusted to kill her in a single shot if that became necessary, but now it had struck Christian Rosencreutz. This one shot was all it had. The circular particle accelerator’s forcibly-linked container-sized capacitors and transformers blew up one after another as the giant devices were fried by the massive energy they had gathered, but the deadly spear still accurately bisected Academy City north to south.

The light swept away the night and all the moisture in the air was vaporized. The heat melted the asphalt pavement back into a liquid and the remaining small abandoned jets exploded one after another. The twisted and flipped Anaconda half vaporized while it was burned apart.

And none of that had been directly hit.

Christian Rosencreutz had been, so how much damage had he taken?

Kamijou choked on the stench of melted asphalt. It took him a while to realize he was curled up on the ground. He must have thought a thick lightning bolt had struck nearby and reflexively moved to protect himself. Similar to a stun grenade blast.

So much preparation had gone into this single attack.

New Board Director Accelerator had remotely operated the city’s cleaning and security robots to search for anyone still in the predicted line of fire. If he found anyone, he had of course guided them to safety. His plans had hit a brief snag when Last Order hadn’t obeyed the robot, but he had solved that by drawing her attention with a tanuki pet robot.

So in this one moment, he had created a singular opportunity when all that energy could cut across Academy City without causing any human damage.

The #1 wasn’t soft enough to let a chance like that go to waste.

The already world-class Hula Hoop was pushed past its power limits to accelerate the electrons to more than 99.99% the speed of light, where they tore through the scenery and rushed toward Rosencreutz.

In a perfectly straight line, the asphalt runway was boiled orange.

Even the elements making up the air must have been rewritten because the beam’s wake was electrified and sparking.

“Ugh,” groaned the honey blonde girl. “I do not want to breathe that in. That air cannot be good for your health ability.”

Kamijou had bigger concerns.

A direct hit barely seemed necessary when just carelessly looking at that could blind you.

At this level, it felt like a scientifically-created form of the occult.

“Damn…it,” said Kamijou, somehow managing to get some air in his lungs and sweating in the midwinter night. “Did that…finally get him?”

The answer did not come from Anti-Skill, Judgment, Mikoto, or the Bologna Succubus.

But he did hear a voice.

“''You mean this old man''?”

Kamijou’s vision fell into darkness.

He regretted asking the question.

===Part 7===

“We were too late,” whispered Witch Goddess Aradia, watching from outside the range of the blinding beam.

“How are they?” asked a breathless voice.

That was Good, Old Mary. As the only person who could, albeit imperfectly, defend against Christian Rosencreutz’s attacks, a battlefield without her may have looked to her like an extra-large helping of suicide.

Her own sacrifice was of secondary importance.

She was a Transcendent who, more than anything, hated ordinary people being harmed by special miracles.

“Joining them blindly would only eliminate what little chance we have left.”

“I know that.” Good, Old Mary forcibly steadied her breathing and continued. “But holding cards in reserve is pointless if the people guarding the second defense line are slaughtered in the meantime. Mama doesn’t even need to use her sacrificial defense. My very presence on the battlefield will force Rosencreutz to be cautious, thus restricting his actions.”

Running away apparently wasn’t even an option as far as she was concerned.

Not that Aradia was one to talk there.

They got to work.

===Part 8===

The result was in.

All that effort had amounted to nothing.

Shirai Kuroko and the glasses girl from Judgment were speechless.

They had destroyed the barricades themselves.

Flat District 23 was the only place in Academy City where the horizon was visible. There was nowhere to hide and thoughtless running would only expose their backs to this nemesis. In real war, retreating from a disadvantageous position was the most difficult thing.

“Oh?”

Christian Rosencreutz made a quiet noise.

Past his outstretched palm, his spell failed to hit Kamijou’s head and tore harmlessly into the air next to it.

Kamijou Touma had not moved. Then why had CRC missed?

He sounded amused.

“Did you rotate the ground itself? The same way an illusionist causes large objects to disappear.”

“You have unexpectedly worldly tastes, Rosencreutz.”

Since she had set this up, she knew she couldn’t remain hidden.

The witch goddess slowly walked over and positioned herself to guard Kamijou Touma.

“Did you think a witch who lives with nature can’t manipulate asphalt? Nonsense. We can manipulate soil and minerals as easily as trees and flowers. Process and harm them as much as you like, a single touch of a witch’s finger is enough for them to respond.”

A 100m circle of the melted asphalt underfoot had rotated.

Just like a grand illusion where an idling passenger plane vanished before an audience’s eyes.

Rosencreutz’s shoulders shook with laughter.

“Did you think this secret talent of yours would continue to serve you?”

“Of course not. It only had to work once,” spat Aradia. “The point wasn’t for your deadly attack to miss Kamijou Touma. ''You didn’t bother checking what the attack did hit, did you''?”

Christian Rosencreutz briefly paused.

It took him less than three seconds to realize something.

“''I see.''”

He looked up.

A tremor ran through the ground like a kaiju stomping across the city.

The towering monster looked like a stadium-sized container supported by a trio of pylon-sized legs.

That was the Tribikos.

Good, Old Mary’s experimental tool was said to contain an entire universe inside and thus carried the possibility of producing anything. That ultimate container could produce nonexistent forms of death and destruction as simple playthings.

“Hm.”

Christian Rosencreutz mimed loosely holding something like a brandy glass.

But his hand remained empty.

“The paternal cross and the maternal flower are a little too convenient, so people have a tendency to rely too much on the red secret art and cease to work at coming up with their own plans.”

His corpse had remained unchanged for 120 years. He had created a perfect miniature world where he could reach any answer by recreating the past, present, and future. That sage among sages had produced the secret art that could heal the entire world.

''Which meant he was exceedingly similar to this experimental tool that had mastered the art of kitchen alchemy.'' The only real difference was that Good, Old Mary kept the miracle sealed inside like it was Pandora’s box while CRC let it out in his strong desire to interfere with the larger world. Alternatively, this would mean Good, Old Mary’s Tribikos was so powerful that she feared what would happen if the red secret art were released from it.

“One rule applies to the entire world,” whispered Good, Old Mary. “''When one person attacks, another takes revenge.'' This rule applies even to that which slumbers in the secret territories. Be destroyed by the divine punishment triggered by your own decision as per the law of action and reaction, CRC.”

===Part 9===

A sticky sound enveloped the world.

What…was it?

Cracks raced across the stadium-like Tribikos and it shattered just before filthy gray bubbles burst from within. But these bubbles did not have the cleansing feel of detergent or soap. These were small, hideous bubbles, reminiscent of human torment and death. They engulfed Rosencreutz like a deluge.

The bubbles lost force and momentum before vanishing altogether.

Were they suppose to be the foam coming from the mouth of someone who had drunk poison, or were they supposed to be fire extinguisher foam?

No one wanted to see what happened if even one of those popping bubbles touched them. What this all meant was a mystery, but doing that had to be as suicidal as a slug fascinated by salt.

“Eeeeek!”

The honey blonde girl paled.

It was written plain on her face that being swallowed up by those bubbles was the very last thing she wanted to do.

And…

“We need to run away,” was Good, Old Mary’s immediate decision.

She was not shortsighted enough to determine her strategy based on a momentary advantage.

“It is miracle enough to have bought 600 seconds against CRC. If you do not escape through the sea I have parted, none of you will survive.”

“Hey, if you could do all this…?” said Kamijou, still in a daze.

“CRC’s world model is more accurate than mine, which creates a discrepancy between the two. I caught him off guard here, but he will break through as soon as he manages to calm down and respond. Then we will be caught by an even greater calamity.”

Something like a sandstorm obstructed the view.

The sand was yellow.

That was the color of defeat. Was time already up? Was the second defense line and District 23 about to be buried in Citrinitas just like District 12 had been? The Transcendents working together could only stop one of Rosencreutz’s attacks, but not repel him?

(If we run from here, are we supposed to go to the third defense line? And if District 18 falls, we’ll be back in District 7, where that hospital is. We can only fall back one more time!!)

Kamijou’s thoughts were interrupted by a voice coming from the mountain of bubbles even more horrific than the foam spilling from the corner of a human mouth.

Something flashed.

“More of the same? You bore me.”

This was not aimed at Kamijou or the others in front of him.

The massive deadly force flew over their heads like a long throw in baseball.

They felt a tremor below their feet.

“No…way,” muttered Kamijou.

Something had exploded in the distance and that had shaken the asphalt here.

The third defense line, where Mut Thebes waited, had been destroyed in the blink of an eye.

But the immediate threat wasn’t gone either.

“Kh!!”

Misaka Mikoto immediately placed an arcade coin on her thumbnail.

She had to already know the truth.

This was CRC.

''Even a direct hit at thrice the speed of sound wouldn’t kill him. Which was why she didn’t hesitate to ready this attack.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh!!”

She screamed to shake free of her own fear.

An explosive boom compressed the air.

Mikoto didn’t bother viewing the result.

“Go now!! Hurry!! Waste this chance and we really can’t get away!!”

The younger girl grabbed Kamijou’s hand and pulled him away.

What was happening over there?

The third defense line in District 18…was gone.

They weren’t even allowed a final chance.

From here, it was a straight shot to District 7. If they couldn’t find some other plan, Rosencreutz would reach the hospital!!

===Part 10===

And so.

No one could stop Christian Rosencreutz’s march across the city.

===Part 11===

The footsteps could not have sounded more normal.

The glass automatic doors were not meant to keep out intruders.

They opened with ridiculous ease.

The machine did not discriminate. It welcomed Christian Rosencreutz inside with no thought to the severity of the situation.

“Now, where did they put the Transcendent who was sent here? Was her name Anna Sprengel?” he said offhand.

Was that the extent of his thoughts about her? Despite being the inheritor of the Rosicrucian cabal he had started, she was not special to him. She was no more than one of the many Transcendents – another life to kill in the game he had defined.

“Hello, you there.”

CRC called out to a nurse.

Even though he could have read the residual thoughts easily enough if he wanted to.

He was clearly enjoying this.

“Is ICU the right term? Regardless, Anna Sprengel, or possibly an unidentified Girl A, should have arrived here. Where should I go to find her?”

“E-eek!”

The young male nurse fell onto his rear, pressed his back against the hallway door, and desperately shook his head in refusal, so he had to be a consummate medical professional.

Christian Rosencreutz viewed him in amusement.

And he slowly held out his palm.

“Heh heh. Believe me, you want as little to do with this old man as possible. Irritate me too much, ''and I might just take an interest in you''.”

“Enough,” said a new voice.

Something sat on the edge of one of the sofas lined up in the waiting room positioned in front of the hospital pharmacy. The translucent figure took a sip of the shiruko can he held in both hands.

That mysterious being had been called a Holy Guardian Angel and an extraterrestrial.

As well as a Secret Chief.

He was known as Aiwass.

“That man has done nothing wrong. If you have business related to the modern Western magic that spans the Rose and the Golden, then stay focused on that, CRC.”

“I truly do not envy you Secret Chiefs. That priestess’s lungs and heart are no longer functioning, but do those machines really prevent you from calling her dead? If she were fully killed, your contract would be null and void and you would be free once more.”

A strange cracking sound came from empty space.

Almost like hard plastic breaking.

“''Is that supposed to be a joke''?”

“The fate of the world exists to fulfill our playfulness and curiosity. A boring world where the jokers cannot joke would only sink into darkness.”

“You claim to have despaired of the world and now choose destruction purely to satisfy your passions without forcing the blame onto anyone else, CRC, but you are surprisingly unobservant. Fortunately, that gives us some hope.”

“?”

“As the Secret Chief who guards the First Temple, it is true only one official priestess can contact me, but that does not mean ''she is the only one with a personal interest in me''.”

A solid footstep sounded.

This was the sound of someone who, unlike Aiwass, had a physical body.

Christian Rosencreutz turned around and smiled.

“Oh?”

He showed great interest. Like he had just found a shred of amusement still remaining in this dreary world.

He saw a beige habit and blonde hair cut to shoulder length.

He saw a magician who had clung to the world of the living after his own death by hijacking a great demon’s body.

Human Aleister Crowley blocked his path.

===Part 12===

Shortly before the clash, the frog-faced doctor noted a mood of mounting tension.

(I take it this person isn’t the type to spare a hospital or a school.)

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

He was a doctor.

And the patient lying before him was on the verge of death – in fact, her breathing and pulse would cease without the help of the life support devices. Every last form of modern examination had failed to determine the cause and none of his thick medical texts or the disease research database had turned up a previous example, but he wasn’t sensible enough to give up because of that.

Without a doubt, throwing in the towel was the frog-faced doctor’s least favorite phrase. If someone felt it was acceptable for a medical expert to abandon their patient’s possibilities based on their own emotions or mood, he thought they had no business working in the medical field.

“Now, then.”

None of his test devices could identify the cause.

So he decided to focus on the records of those failures.

“I assume the blood sample tests found nothing?”

“Y-yes. All 5.”

The young technician glanced over at the test tubes sealed with different colors of rubber cap. Finding nothing was not a cause for celebration here. They had a patient on the verge of death. It was like running a malware scan and receiving zero detections despite the computer very obviously behaving strangely.

(Something is clearly wrong, but nothing turns up in the numbers.)

They hadn’t found anything in the blood sealed in the test tubes. Then what was happening inside that small girl(?) and how far had it progressed?

But something else caught his interest as well.

“Hm?”

With a patient in critical condition, there wasn’t time to wipe them down with ethanol to disinfect them. In some cases, they were transferred directly in from the emergency arrivals treatment room where the ambulance dropped them off. That meant an ICU could not be kept as sterile as an operating room. Instead, drum-shaped cleaning robots frequently moved through, keeping the space as clean as possible.

The frog-faced doctor held out a hand to stop one, opened the lid, and checked inside.

He found a long, strawberry blonde hair.

He touched it to find it unusually stiff. Its surface was badly damaged for having recently fallen out, almost like it had been left on the floor for years.

“…”

Nutrients and oxygen were supplied to the hair and the nails.

But as can be seen from the lack of bleeding when cutting your hair, the capillaries were connected to the roots and didn’t continue on through the rest of the hair.

He knew what to focus on now.

He wasn’t one to stop here just because he couldn’t prove anything scientifically.

“Wh-what do we do?”

“Prepare her for dialysis,” calmly instructed the frog-faced doctor.

Bacteria and toxins harmed people through a wide variety of methods. But one common method was to have a nature very similar to a component necessary for human life. For example, carbon monoxide. Its similar structure to oxygen allowed it to bond with the red blood cells, keeping out the oxygen that was meant to be carried through the bloodstream. And because humans needed oxygen, they would eventually collapse.

The cause was invisible and it was similar to a normal bodily function.

The connotations of the word “curse” had distracted them.

The culprit was a lot closer to home. You can think of it like a form of fatal pollen allergy that shows symptoms in response to “something thought of as occult” like a face, a name, hair, or nails.

Then how could it be prevented?

What could they block with a mask? Was there a preventative or a cure? Use whatever terminology you like.

By swapping out the words in his head, his thoughts began to race. No matter how strange it seemed, someone’s life was at risk. So how could he, as a doctor, stop working?

“History tells of someone who ate deadly potassium cyanide but didn’t die.”

“?”

“Rasputin. There are many dubious legends about the man, but the official records say he ate cakes laced with cyanide without dying. A normal person would have a 100% chance of death when it reacted with their gastric acid, so some theorize he survived because his gastric acid was extremely weak.”

That was one example of escaping certain death.

Even when the result appeared to be a miracle or nightmare, the method of cheating death could sometimes be explained scientifically.

What did it matter if this illness could not be scientifically explained?

All he had to do was remove the conditions causing it and science could handle that.

In other words…

“This illness appears to identify an individual based on their blood and attack their bodily tissue. So ''if we artificially replace all of her blood and temporarily change her blood type'', this ‘curse’ disease will lose its target. We will remove its ability to identify her. Got that?”

Many different devices were hurried into the ICU. The frog-faced doctor temporarily stepped out of the ICU to give them space.

He sighed.

Someone was standing there: Aleister Crowley.

They were old friends, so the frog-faced doctor didn’t bother turning around in surprise. He didn’t know how or why that human was here. He simply accepted that that human could do things he couldn’t explain.

With a golden retriever by his side, Aleister asked a simple question.

Everything was packed into so few words.

“What are you going to do?”

“As long as the patient wants to live, I will lend them every skill and resource available to me.”

“How did you ask Anna Sprengel if she wants to live? You can’t converse with her just by reading the pulses of her brain waves.”

“True. But someone risked his life to leave her in my care and bowed to me. I haven’t heard from her herself and it is possible she doesn’t even have the strength left to want anything. But I know that boy will draw it out of her. Maybe she has no more reason to want to live, but I know he will give her a new one. Not a bad possibility to bet on, don’t you think?”

The frog-faced doctor knew Christian Rosencreutz was on his way here. But no matter how many of this city’s secrets he knew, he was still just a doctor. Unlike the monsters of the former dark side, he did not have the power to fight and protect his sanctuary here.

So.

“Are you interested in lending a hand?”

“…”

“You’re just dying to finally use your full strength for someone other than yourself, aren’t you?”

They did not hold a lengthy or grand conversation This was not a sketchy politician’s speech or a TV informercial pressuring you to call by saying the deal only lasted for half an hour after it aired. These two understood each other well enough that theatrical gestures and the like would only get in the way.

Aleister spoke quietly, his head still lowered.

It was possible his question had not actually been directed at the frog-faced doctor in front of him.

“I created this city, but it is no longer mine. Why should I pour all my efforts into Academy City at this point?”

He received a single response.

The frog-faced doctor’s answer was a simple one.

As old friends, he knew exactly what words would stab him deepest.

“How about because it would make ''him'' happy?”

[[Image:GT Index v09 BW5.jpg|thumb]]

===Part 13===

And so.

Two magicians stood face to face.

After failing to work up the courage to fight or even to run away, the human was finally crossing the start line.

And once he made up his mind, the rest happened quick.

History proved how effective he was at taking action.

“Aleister.”

“Stay back. And don’t let anything that happens here surprise you.”

That was the extent of the human and golden retriever’s conversation.

Space itself vibrated.

Christian Rosencreutz looked to the space around him instead of at Aleister.

Everything looked the same.

“Did you shift the phase?” asked CRC, amused.

“Is that so surprising? Even Mathers and his lot played with the phases. They would use astral projection to spy on other phases or extract power from those other phases and give them temporary mass. …It all created so many unnecessary sparks and innocent people had to pay the price.”

This was already another world.

The golden retriever standing by his side was eternally cut off from him.

Now two magicians this powerful could directly clash without any fear of the hospital collapsing or the working doctors and immobilized patients coming to harm.

“I am the fool who attempted to suppress the creation of sparks by creating a new mythology as ''cushioning'' between the many phases. Unfortunately, it didn’t work because the Christian church wanted to protect their monopoly on the concept of god and sent their billions of followers against me. But since the theory itself was sound, I can at least spirit someone away.”

The stage had been set.

Aleister and Rosencreutz both took a step forward.

Space was compressed and light was distorted.

Christian Rosencreutz held an old lamp made of glass. It contained a collection of energy said to be ''an inextinguishable light''. Releasing only the smallest amount from the glass case transformed the gentle glow into a crimson serpent consuming all the oxygen in the air.

Aleister responded with two simple words.

“''Great demon.''”

“Kee hee hee! Ee hee hee hee hee, hee ha ha ha ha ha hah hah hah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!”

The red was twisted and bent.

It crashed into an invisible wall in front of Aleister and melted the concrete wall to the side.

The human did not bat an eye.

The initial clue had come from Kingsford. He knew how to control it.

“Do not rely on your past legends, CRC. Your true colors are showing.”

Rosencreutz sighed and tossed the eternal lamp over his shoulder like a child with a toy he had lost interest in.

Batlike wings flapped behind Aleister’s back and a deadly gale blew through the world.

It swept through every nook and cranny and everything it touched grew black and rotten.

The wind itself was colorless. The floor, walls, and ceiling gradually blackened, peeled away, and pursued Rosencreutz.

At some point, a flask of powder had appeared in CRC’s hand. No, it wasn’t clear if it truly was there. His mimicry of holding it may have been so perfect it created the illusion. Either way, the silver young man popped off the lid with his thumb and scattered the red powder. The legendary Rosicrucian cabal had not been pursuing anything as trivial as eternal life.

“Revolution.”

The world at large really did change.

The black color vanished. The air grew clean and full of negative ions, like deep in the forest. Control of this world repeatedly changed hands, like a tennis rally.

It was a casual thing.

A simple thing.

If this were in the outside world, the entire city would have rotted apart and then been buried in verdant trees.

“I see. You are not fighting on your own – you are boosting yourself by borrowing the power of another. Is that the source of the false confidence allowing you to speak so arrogantly to this old man?”

“''Holy Guardian Angel.''”

“And you have more than one helper. …But don’t you feel ashamed? This does not mean you have conquered anything. You have only hid behind the backs of those stronger than you while you fling rocks at me from safety.”

“What, you didn’t know?”

“?”

“Fine by me. Because that is what gives this conflict meaning.”

After a short pause, Christian Rosencreutz moved his eyes.

To view his own fingertip.

The pointer finger’s nail had split and it was bleeding.

“You claim to only need yourself, but you worked with your seven disciples to build the House of the Holy Spirit and you were placed in that special grave. So in the end, you were a magician who had to pay attention to symbols and colors with their origins in the land.”

Aleister didn’t hesitate to explain this.

Because it wasn’t worth hiding.

“So all I had to do was transport you to another world. You don’t have the land’s support anymore, CRC. You might as well be trying to use your phone’s GPS map on Mars. The rules change outside of the world you’re used to.”

“Hm.”

Christian Rosencreutz nodded. He honestly accepted his opponent’s claim.

But he didn’t stop there.

“But removing some of my functions does nothing at all to boost your strength, does it?”

Something exploded.

Rosencreutz had not moved a step. He only held his palm out. That was enough for something to go wrong inside Aleister’s chest. A rusty flavor rose up his throat, he couldn’t stop himself from coughing up red, and the female feet below the beige habit lifted from the floor.

It happened too fast for human senses and even for great demon and Holy Guardian Angel senses to follow. Aleister bounced several times down the hospital waiting room, knocking over the sofas and making a racket of destructive noises.

CRC looked at the back of his hand and his nail.

“Do you know what I did to you?”

This was not a cheap trick.

The very foundation was different.

Christian Rosencreutz blew boredly on his fingertip.

“Masters of the Rose never use a spell or magic circle as is. They extract whatever form of the mystical they require from the symbols hidden in the scene around them. The Rod of Asclepius, the cross, the Hippocratic Oath – hospitals are a treasure trove of miraculous symbols and elements.”

“I doubt…that’s what you really did.”

‘Heh heh. Because true experts do not talk at length? Why should I follow the rules set forth by that dead girl – Kingsford?”

The air was permeated by a flammability even more frightening than a dust explosion.

But nothing more happened. Aleister lacked the strength to fight back even when someone else was being ridiculed.

Something in the air changed.

The shifted phase had returned to normal. Christian Rosencreutz stood in an ordinary hospital waiting room – in an ordinary space where the swing of an arm would destroy a pillar or wall and kill someone.

Aleister was soaked with blood. He had been thrown across the waiting room, where he crashed through the sofas, rolled along the floor, and ended up seated with his back against a column.

“You fool! Just because you admire Kingsford’s way of life is no reason to let yourself meet the same end as her!”

Hearing Kihara Noukan’s voice told Aleister that his phase shift had been reverted. The human once known as the world’s wickedest man smiled weakly, unable to even get up.

CRC did not bother looking in his direction.

“Is that all the magicians of this era can do?”

But Aleister’s face showed no sign of panic or frustration.

Still collapsed among several broken sofas, the human smiled thinly and spoke.

“Did you forget why you’re here, CRC?”

“?”

After Kingsford, he was the second to place that look on CRC’s face.

Which meant those words were not for his own benefit.

He was leaving everything in the hands of the next challenger.

He had admired that expert and her way of life.

If he really did remind Kihara Noukan of her here, then he was honored.

“You want to kill time? You’re going to slaughter all of the Transcendents as punishment for reviving you into such a boring world?”

So he gave a snort of laughter.

Bloody Aleister’s eyes displayed obvious mockery.

Viewing anything greater than himself with skepticism had always been that human’s most defining trait. Even if it got him branded an eccentric and ostracized by the majority of the world.

And while people called him a lord of devils, he had discovered a truth no one else could understand.

In other words…

“I don’t know if you’re giving a plausible excuse to hide your true intentions or if you’re trying not to think about it yourself, but you’re afraid of the parents who brought you into this world, aren’t you? The Bridge Builders Cabal used a special method to revive you, so it’s entirely possible they could ''rearrange the ceremony’s process and symbols'' to instantly kill you again. You feared having your newfound freedom taken away, so you chose to attack your parents the instant you were reborn. You moved quick so you could catch those Transcendents off guard.”

Magical astral projection existed as a single spell with two processes: one that separated the mind from the body and another that returned the mind to the body. So by rearranging the separation process, one could achieve the return process. Necromancy and doll-based curses worked much the same. Very little magic only worked in one direction. It was much the same as an explosives technician placing as much emphasis on knowing how to cause explosions as on how to safely prevent them.

In an extreme example, the Anglican Church had created a grimoire library as a countermeasure against any and all magicians.

“The means of defeating you already existed. It was there from the beginning.”

“…”

“But you didn’t want to be bound once more, so you started by eliminating that. You wanted to avoid being a world-saving bike courier who had to listen to everything the Transcendents said and save a great multitude of strangers at their behest.”

His surprise attack on Alice Anotherbible, the greatest threat, had successfully killed her and the Bridge Builders Cabal had broken apart without her to hold it together. Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, or any of the others could never gather all of those Transcendents in one place again.

Exactly as CRC had hoped.

Peel away the theatric gestures and meaningless words and that was all he was.

Aleister could state it with such confidence because he always made sure to question the gods and charismatic leaders that the people of the world heaped so much unconditional praise on.

“I was never here to prove myself. My own survival isn’t even part of my win condition. You set the rules yourself, remember? Simply put, ''this is a battle over whether or not we can protect Anna Sprengel''.”

“You mean…?”

The human was calmly approaching the territory of a true expert.

He had approached the very entrance of the stairway available only to magicians that led to being a powerful individual while also respecting others and pouring all your efforts into helping someone else.

The great goddess of wisdom had left this task with him.

So the bloody human smiled and made his point.

“I win as long as the illusion slayer boy arrives in time.”

===Part 14===

And.

Kamijou Touma was frozen with fear.

He had just taken the first step into the front entrance of the frog-faced doctor’s hospital.

He found himself in an alternate world of red and black.

He had seen it all before. Everything around him was destroyed, someone he knew lay in a pool of blood, and only Christian Rosencreutz stood tall and unconcerned.

“He expects a lot out of you.”

“…”

“So what will you do? After all your losses, surely you do not think you can win this all on your own. Will you seek the help of your Transcendent companions? Will you stand back and play at being their commander to wear this old man down? Heh heh. This old man has no problem with that. None at all. My goal is to kill all of the Transcendents anyway. If you will send them to the front line – kee hee hee – I will gratefully accept the gift.”

“Don’t listen,” said Aradia, holding out a slender arm to stop Kamijou. “CRC would never say anything that benefits us.”

Kamijou didn’t even have time to glance over at her.

But he could sense the powerful aura of “don’t rise to the bait” radiating from her.

Mut Thebes was out of the fight, possibly dead.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and Good, Old Mary were the only Transcendents here now. If they didn’t make full use of everything they had, there was no winning this. In a way, Imagine Breaker was an even rarer trait than the Transcendents, so they couldn’t afford to have it taken out here.

“Kee hee hee. Ee hee, kee hee hee hee hee.”

He approached.

Christian Rosencreutz approached them from head on.

His fingers stroked through his silver beard.

“What, done already? No new options? No trump cards? No hopes that you will discover a power beyond all your known limits when backed into a corner while guarding someone behind you?”

This was not the action of someone fighting on the same level. It was a simple slaughter with a clear line drawn between predator and prey.

In those extreme circumstances, everything Kamijou had seen flashed before his eyes.

Was there no clue there?

Had he left any stone unturned?

He knew it was no use, but his instinct to never give up kept the gears of his mind fruitlessly turning.

*Alice Anotherbible and Anna Kingsford were dead.

*Anti-Skill and Judgment had accomplished nothing.

*The unmanned tanks with self-destruct drones and the mobile combat vehicles hadn’t stood a chance.

*The massive gunship hadn’t done any real damage.

*Index’s knowledge as a grimoire library and Othinus’s tactics as a Magic God weren’t enough to keep up.

*Academy City’s #3 Railgun and #5 Mental Out hadn’t worked either.

*The tungsten alloy bombing from satellite orbit and the particle accelerator cannon using the Hula Hoop hadn’t stopped him.

*The Transcendents’ biggest attacks, like the Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress and Good, Old Mary’s Tribikos, had failed to eliminate him.

*So had Aleister.

Even though it was just this one man.

Even though the monster named Christian Rosencreutz was only marching across the city on his own.

Run away, regroup, try again.

That was the most Kamijou’s group had managed. They had lost all three defense lines and now the battle had moved inside the hospital in District 7. There was no more room to fall back. They were right next to the ICU where Anna Sprengel was clinging to life thanks to all the medical equipment. If the silver young man set foot inside there, it was all over.

But.

Even so.

The boy realized something while viewing this nightmarish result.

Had he really, truly given this his all?

It was true this was on a larger scale than normal.

If he clenched his right fist and rushed onto the storm of bullets and bombs on the battlefield, he wouldn’t be any help and might even get shot in the back by friendly fire. Wielding the power to destroy illusions would do no good here.

However…

(What can I do?)

He pondered that.

Driven to the very edge, Kamijou Touma truly thought about it this time.

Could he really accept this?

Could he step out of CRC’s way and give up on Anna Sprengel because he couldn’t win this? They weren’t doing it because he had bowed his head or because they were only defending themselves. Anna was a villain, but those people had still stood back up because they could believe in her future. Was he going to stand here and watch them be slaughtered because he was out of cards and couldn’t stop CRC?

Kamijou sensed something deep in his chest.

It was his pulse.

He couldn’t do that.

Like hell he could.

So he had to lay the unfair methods out on the table too. He had to look to the options he wasn’t supposed to use. If he hadn’t done that, then he hadn’t really given this his all. He had only been watching. He hadn’t reached out his hand, so he didn’t know what cards were left in his deck. That wasn’t good enough. Kamijou, the one who had wanted to fight all alone for Anna, had strayed the furthest from that goal. He couldn’t let it end that way. No matter what.

(That’s right.)

He had to struggle.

Struggle harder!!

(''There is one more thing.'')

He wanted to save Anna Sprengel. He wanted to prevent innocent people from being killed along with her. The only way of making those things happen was to defeat Christian Rosencreutz here. He knew that. He didn’t see any errors in those premises. But what exactly could he do? What had he himself done up to this point?

He had the power to destroy any and all illusions.

But that was all his power could do.

He could do nothing against a harsh reality. Could he really accept that?

Wasn’t he still holding one option in reserve?

“…”

Kamijou Touma knew that this world was really and truly cruel and that people would die if a bad situation was left unfixed. Alice Anotherbible’s merciless death was proof enough of that.

So many people would die if things continued like this.

Aogami Pierce, who knew nothing of what was happening.

The frog-faced doctor who was working to save the unconscious wicked woman.

Human Aleister who had fought with all his might for nothing in return.

And.

Anna Sprengel who could no longer move her own lungs and heart.

''So.

“Misaka.”

Kamijou grabbed his phone and spoke into it.

Witch Goddess Aradia looked up in sudden realization.

“Stop, Kamijou Touma! You mustn’t do that!!”

“Fire on this GPS signal. Fire through the window to the left of the 1st floor’s front entrance. Do that and we can defeat Rosencreutz!!”

He got exactly what he wanted.

Outside the hospital’s walls, Misaka Mikoto likely had no idea what was going on in there.

But Aradia saw it all.

She saw the beam, heard the boom, felt the shockwave.

It blasted straight through the wall and it struck its intended target.

Everything played out as Kamijou had wanted.

The color red splattered out.

Kamijou Touma’s right arm was torn off at the shoulder and flew through the air.

Christian Rosencreutz raised his palm and turned his gaze toward the arm to obliterate it. A little thing like Imagine Breaker could never fully defend against his attack. In fact, its presence had limited Kamijou’s options.

So.

Kamijou clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut.

And he used his own willpower to force them back open.

At the same time, something shot from his right shoulder with a dull thud. The translucent mass was very obviously something other than blood. After grasping the concept of up and down, it audibly took shape. It became a great maw lined with ferocious fangs.

“Fine.”

In other words, a dragon.

Kamijou heard a voice from somewhere. It came from inside his own head.

''Another boy spoke clearly.

“I was just about fed up with him myself. No more holding back. If you didn’t do it, I was about to come out on my own!!!”

The boy spoke softly, the whites of his eyes dyed red from burst capillaries.

He sounded like he was casting a curse on someone.

“''I only needed that right hand gone.''”

===Part 15===

He had summoned it himself.

Just once in his life, he chose to cheat.

In that instant, the ordinary high school boy ceased to be a mere Level 0.

===Between the Lines 3===

Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany.

“Mistress, can’t we stop for lunch? It’s well past noon… And how do you plan a trip to Germany without including a chance to eat a Hamburg or a Frankfurt!?”

“What do you think we are here to do? And are you planning to tear up a map and eat it? Here, Lilith, your bottle.”

Dion Fortune complained about her empty stomach, but Mina Mathers only gave her an icy look while soothing the baby in the baby carrier.

The black cat witch was here to track down Anna Sprengel’s footprints, but she had known the answer before the investigation even began.

“If you look to the accepted knowledge in modern Western magic, the answer is obvious. Miss Sprengel was a nonexistent magician. At the time of the Golden cabal’s founding, Westcott wanted to give the new cabal greater history and legitimacy, so he invented the fictional magician so he could create the legend of receiving permission from a secret cabal. It was all a one-man show put on through the medium of letters.”

“And when they searched Europe in the usual way, they never could find the First Temple, right?”

“Felkin and others wanted to see the Secret Chiefs so bad they threw money around to wander all across Europe before finally traveling as far as New Zealand.”

“Why do men love endless adventures so much? Not that I like the idea of giving up before even attempting a search and concluding the legendary First Temple doesn’t physically exist and only existed in the hearts of everyone involved in the Golden cabal.”

“It’s just like how it’s far easier to write off paranormal phenomena as neurological or psychological illusions than to try to prove them as something physical. Just goes to show that people have always fallen back on the same excuses when presented with a challenging problem. But at the time, most members thought there was no point in searching out the physical address when they could simply astral project themselves to another phase and receive messages from the Secret Chiefs and their priestess there. Just like thinking remote work is good enough as long as you’re connected with your coworkers by a fiber optic network. All the while, they had no idea who that vague, faceless shadow really was.”

That was their starting point.

And with that in mind…

“Useless student. In that case, ''what is this''?”

“That’s a really good question, mistress.”

There was no building there.

Only stone blocks lined up on the ground in an L-shape. It was a portion of a building’s foundation. The supposedly nonexistent Licht Liebe Leben Temple had left behind physical evidence, just like any historical ruins.

“Mistress, what does this mean? I just want to drink a local beer already. One of those first-rate dark beers the Germans pride themselves in and are legendary for being cheaper than water.”

“We are not here to drink. Aren’t you supposed to be investigating at the British people’s expense?”

“Ehh? Why should you care about British finances?”

“Because Mina Mathers was originally a magician in London, my foolish student.”

The First Temple really did exist.

Or some remnant of it did.

What purpose was hidden behind this contradiction?

“Ugh. The Anna Sprengel in the secret letters was basically ''Westcott talking with his own sockpuppet, right?'' We aren’t going to discover that coroner was parading around Germany in women’s clothing, are we?”

“I honestly think that would be the funniest possible explanation, but I doubt it.”

Mina Mathers crouched down for a closer inspection of the L-shaped foundation.

Testing the carbon isotopes in the materials would provide their accurate age.

Just because they looked old didn’t mean they couldn’t be quite new.

And there were things that only showed up in a very detailed deception.

“Most likely, there was a magician called Anna who specialized in Rosicrucian magic. Anna isn’t exactly a rare name, after all.”

“Bweh? But if she was using a fake name, surely she could have come up with something better than Anna.”

“You would think that, wouldn’t you, Dion Fortune? Or should I say-”

“Cough, cough! How about we stay on topic, mistress? There’s no reason to bring that up!!”

“Violet Firth. It seems like a perfectly cute name to me.”

“Why would you go ahead and say my real name when I made it so obvious I didn’t want you too!?”

The girl who normally went by her super cool screenname was blushing, tearful, and upset. She must not have liked her name for some reason.

But ultimately, this may not have been a rare occurrence in the world of magicians where powerful individuals determined their own value.

If you worried too much what others would think of you and tried to correct yourself to their liking, you would never excel as a magician.

(If you want to go there, my husband was basically unemployed and claimed to be Scottish nobility. He got so obsessed with it he named his own bloodline and invented all sorts of other details to go along with it. He was living proof that if you have the passion, you can continue your teenage cringe well into adulthood.)

“Sigh…”

“Mistress, that was a heavy sigh. Is something wrong?”

“Oh, I was just thinking how tiring it is to be the only sensible person around.”

“Mercilessly delivering kitty claw attacks the instant you lose your temper is your idea of ‘sensible’?”

“I do not punch and I do not use the kitchen knives. That puts me well on the side of sensible.”

“I notice you didn’t mention palette knives. You’re always swinging those metal weapons around.”

“What makes you think you can criticize your own teacher, my hopeless student? Some gentle punishment is in order to swiftly correct such an unfortunately mistaken soror.”

“You’re proving my point! How is this ‘gentle’!? Ow, owww!?”

Mina Mathers immediately began some corporal punishment by shoving a metal spatula against Dion Fortune’s navel and rubbing it over her clothes, but the concept of a healthy educational environment was still a work in progress from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.

“Hee hee. This is only a wife finally reaching the end of her patience and making an adorable scratching attack with only her wrist. Meow, meow☆”

“Stop trying to pass your violence off as adorable! I was the primary victim and my back looked like a tiger had clawed it! Big cats are not the same as housecats! Your student nearly died!!”

The (according to the teacher) nonsensible student’s testimony was thrown out.

Before scraping off a sample, Mina Mathers made an accurate sketch rather than snapping a photo with her phone. All while she soothed Lilith in the baby carrier.

“But if we don’t know what Anna this Anna is, that means she is not a major magician. And not many people would have listened to what a no-name magician said. Even if this mystery Anna had proper Rosicrucian knowledge, she wouldn’t have had a way to pass it on.”

“That would explain why everyone looked down on her, decided to do things their own way, took shortcuts, and skipped pages in the thick grimoires.”

What happened afterwards went without saying.

What would happen if someone got bored after the first few pages of reading a flight manual more than 8cm thick, shut the book, and climbed into the cockpit? It didn’t take much thought to imagine the tragedy that would unfold.

The Rosicrucian cabal was also known as the unseen university.

All that knowledge was lined up in the way calculated to best foster learning, so you could not just cherry pick which parts interested you. But the hobbyists had grabbed only the most impactful and exciting terms and started using the magic without knowing what the incantations and symbols would actually do. They didn’t want to study, but they did want a degree and an academic history. The desire was understandable, but granting it would not make anyone happy. In some cases, it could even put lives at risk.

She must have despaired.

Both at the ignorant masses who refused to learn things in the proper order and at herself for being too unimportant to guide them properly.

The accuracy of her knowledge was not the issue.

No one trusted in her enough to think what she was saying was accurate.

So they looked down on her, so they failed spectacularly, so they suffered meaningless deaths and mental destruction. Again and again. When none of it would have happened if they had just listened.

And….

“She wanted a name for herself. The problem wasn’t her foolish students. Her own lack of fame had ultimately led to all the deaths and destroyed minds. If she were only someone important, she thought she could correctly guide the students who arrived in search of wisdom.”

“…”

“At the same time in England, Westcott wanted a fictional legend behind the creation of the Golden cabal, so he began his faked exchange of letters. It must have come as a shock to him when he sent a letter to an arbitrary address to help create his fictional persona and then received a real reply from someone claiming to be Anna Sprengel.”

“Yeah, that’d scare you.”

“To say the least. His face would also have been burning with embarrassment.”

In modern times, it would be like the ideal wife he had imagined in his head, or the girl he had created on the character creation screen, suddenly coming to life.

Had he felt fear, or joy? Westcott had not discussed the truth of the letters with anyone until the day he died. Not even with the other Golden magicians.

“Was it automatic writing or sleepwalking? Had another Golden magician peeked at his letter and responded as a joke? Or had the ceremonial act of writing fictional letters so many times ''created'' Miss Sprengel in distant Germany? As a magician and a coroner, he must have come up with several possible explanations.”

“Yeah, it was smart of him not to go to the church to confess or go running to a mental hospital.”

“Confessing involvement in magic to an Anglican priest would never end well and you can guess the quality of 19th century mental healthcare. He was one of the few sensible members of the eccentric Golden cabal. He cared about keeping up appearances. If he had confided with anyone, the talk of magic cabals and writing letters to himself would have made them think the man had never left his teenage fantasies behind.”

That explained why the foundation of the First Temple remained in Nuremberg.

Miss Sprengel was a role Anna had borrowed to put real weight behind her name.

Traveling all the way to Nuremberg and fabricating these ruins would have been a simple enough task to that end. She had created a surprise for any Golden magician who might travel all the way from England to southern Germany to check.

Dion Fortune sounded disgusted by it all.

“So you’re suggesting Anna read through Westcott’s letters and then altered a part of Nuremberg just to match his fictional story? That seems like a lot.”

“She must have wanted to be thorough. Westcott, Mathers, and the others believed in and respected this Miss Sprengel who appeared out of nowhere, but for Anna, the rise of the world’s largest cabal in London ''was no more than advertisement for her'' as a magician said to have played a role in its founding. The end of the 19th century was before World War One, so the center of the world at the time was the UK, not America. London would have been the best possible location for that kind of advertisement.”

However, this puzzle had proved too difficult and the Golden magicians who traveled Europe to meet the Secret Chiefs and their priestess never did find the trick set up in Nuremberg.

“Miss Sprengel was a complete lie,” whispered Mina Mathers. No matter what they found, that remained unchanged. “Even if she was named Anna, she was no more than a half-baked magician who could never hope to defeat Kingsford. But it is true she worried over her problems and poured her heart and soul into preserving and expanding the Rosicrucian cabal. And ultimately, that led to the creation of the Golden cabal in distant England. Most likely, Kingsford recognized Miss Sprengel as a true magician who had accomplished something she could not. No matter how it might have happened.”

Anna Kingsford was real.

Anna Sprengel was also real.

With those two facts established, Black Cat Witch Mina Mathers muttered under her breath.

“Then who exactly is the Christian Rosencreutz both of those legendary women believed in and dedicated themselves to?”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter3

2024-04-25T12:05:10Z

Entei08: Undo revision 582032 by Entei08 (talk) No I was wrong, I've made the connection now. It WAS Alice suggesting Touma will die, as a part of bringing them closer, getting him reliant on her. So although the raw referred to someone in the third person, Anna is still subtly suggesting it was Alice herself here.

==Chapter 3: Prophecy – Last_Branch(of_Die).==

===Part 1===

Late at night in District 7, Anna Kingsford stood at the very top of an enormous crane.

She stood tall and simply directed her gaze overhead.

The night sky seemed blotted out by the lights of the city, but viewing the clear stars in the sky gave this expert access to more information than searching the world linked together by fiber optics.

And she only used this for just causes.

Which was what made her an expert.

(The ⭐s are in place. That boy should become aware of the branch he passed by now.)

She sighed.

That was a complete side issue.

For one, Kingsford had never directly met Kamijou Touma. Which made him no more than a stranger in the same city as her.

(But awareness does ❌ allow him to change it. It may be his life, but he can ❌ change the decision he made on a branch he has already passed. Just like CRC passed a crucial branch ''and was defeated in a ⚔️ he should have won easily.'' The greatest enemy in an individual’s life is their own karma.)

“Not that he can ignore it now that he knows.”

But she would not just abandon him.

That expert did not consider her own interests, the state of the battle, or even whether or not she knew the boy.

He was a complete stranger?

So what?

If anyone was troubled, uncertain, or suffering, she was already taking action.

Anna Kingsford had perfected that way of life.

A fool who had yet to reach that point spoke to her.

It was the human named Aleister.

“Where are you going, Kingsford?”

“To serve others.”

“That’s my job. There’s no reason for you to continue fighting!!”

Even her battle against Rosencreutz had essentially been a miracle.

She had not actually won the battle. CRC could instantly search for any information about the world, but he had ''just so happened'' to overlook the fact that Anna Kingsford was a preserved corpse. If not for that, he would have destroyed her more thoroughly and she couldn’t have recovered.

She was reliant on unpredictable miracles.

Even a magician who mastered the field to the point of being known as an expert would lose eventually.

She had to know that.

Alice Anotherbible had easily crushed and killed CRC and so thoroughly eliminated him from the world that he could never recover. She was a true monster.

Kingsford had not reached that point.

She had to understand that. She wielded great power using the correspondence between the microcosm within a person and the macrocosm of the physical world around them, so she would have thoroughly analyzed herself in that way.

But the woman with a proper understanding of magic’s essence smiled as she responded.

She was accurately viewing her own fate, but she didn’t hesitate to speak.

“This is 👋.”

“But!!”

Contact with the new Board Chairman had been lost.

They couldn’t hope for anymore cooperation, so they had to settle this on their own.

The situation was clearly worsening and Alice was even more powerful than CRC. Certain death awaited Kingsford. Alice waited in a land that brought death to all who set foot there.

“Aleister. You must have understood from the beginning that I am ❌ more than a preserved corpse. You are only using ⚙️s to move an already ☠️ body around, so I never was alive. I escaped the previous ⚔️ intact by pure luck, but ❌ even that can save me next time. This ☠️ body will find only ☠️.”

“…”

As an expert who understood the secrets of the world of the living and the world of the dead, she was not too attached to her own life.

The only ones who clung to life with such ugly desperation were the half-baked magicians who remained fixated on this one life.

Still, he understood in his own inexpert way.

Anna Kingsford was an expert through and through. She didn’t even think of clinging to life or staying in this world forever.

She was only interested in eliminating the unknown threat making someone suffer before her eyes.

She didn’t even consider whether or not she had ever met that person.

She had no intention of returning. Her win condition didn’t even take that into account.

She was an example of how far people could go if they mastered their field.

“What was my role meant to be? I was supposed to be a trump 🃏 for use against the unbeatable Anna Sprengel. Now that Miss Sprengel has been freed from her wicked ⛓️ and that ⚔️ need ❌ be fought, my purpose is complete.”

Aleister had no response to that.

Because she was exactly right.

This goodbye could not be avoided. This was Aleister Crowley’s reward for wielding superhuman knowledge, doing what no one else could do, and enduring trials normal people would never even know existed. Kingsford was correct that the greatest enemy in an individual’s life was their own karma.

He was already in checkmate.

And yet…

“That just means I have to do the work myself.”

He understood it intellectually but he still tried to fight it. Was that because Aleister was an inexpert and ugly human?

But you must never forget that, while that human had accumulated a lot of bad karma, he would never stop struggling for his own ends.

“Aleister Crowley officially died in 1947 and stubbornly clung to life until he actually died battling Great Demon Coronzon. I’m as dead as you are. If someone has to save that boy, I’ll do it. I can do it if necessary!! And I’m better suited for that role. The wickedest man in the world should be standing up to the world even after death, not a pure and proper holy woman!”

“But you are still fixated on this 🌍.”

She shot back.

A true expert did not bother arguing about secrets.

She had already seen into the depths of his mind that even he wasn’t consciously aware existed.

She did it naturally.

And kindly.

“Conscious or ❌, you hijacked that great 👿’s body to cling to life. Either you still have something you want to do in this 🌍, or there is something you are ❌ yet willing to give up here. Dying for him is not the same as living with him. It never can be. Either way, it is too soon for you. Everyone dies eventually, so there is no need to rush toward ☠️. Live out your life first, Aleister. You can prepare yourself for ☠️ once you have done that.”

Kingsford smiled as she said this.

Smiled faintly.

Aleister lightly clenched his empty right hand.

He felt the pressure of a staff so twisted his fingertips tingled at the mere sight of it.

Special numbers scattered from his hand like sparks.

“I’ve had enough. What if I said I would stop you by force?”

“I would knock you aside and continue on my way.”

“Kh.”

She didn’t even hesitate.

She said it gently, like it was a foregone conclusion.

Kingsford used no more than words to overpower the victor of the Battle of Blythe Road.

He couldn’t say she couldn’t do it. He was already well past his limit with Alice Anotherbible and Anna Sprengel. He had only so insolently decided to make use of this preserved corpse because he couldn’t handle them.

Trickery, betrayal, surprise attacks, intrigue, and – when necessary – direct confrontation.

He had used every trick in the book to drive the world’s greatest magic cabal to destruction at the Battle of Blythe Road, but none of it would work here.

He could not win in a direct one-on-one confrontation.

If Anna Kingsford went all out, Aleister had no way of opposing her. He knew she would simply prove how inexpert he really was. He would never manage to get his hands on the switch hidden below her skin.

“I do ❌ want you to ☠️ here. No number of previous ☠️s is any reason to accept ☠️ next time. So I will use all of my power to defeat you here. Soundly enough that you do ❌ have enough strength left to go out and ☠️.”

That was contradictory.

Kingsford kept saying she would not let people die so easily, but she was about to head out for her own death.

She was saying she would use up all of the tickets provided for her as a thinking and moving preserved corpse.

But that gentle smile of hers made the contradictory premise and conclusion seem to fit together with no problem.

It was strange really.

Was this the essence of magic known only to the few true experts – a position Aleister had yet to reach? This was the human-made miracle of protecting everyone you encountered and spreading smiles everywhere you went.

He couldn’t stop her.

This wasn’t the ''divine cosplay spell'' that simply let one dress up in the appearance and abilities of a god. Nor was it the reverse logic where one tried to divulge the workings of the world to rebel against the god they so hated.

With a quiet bump, the failure of a student buried his face in Anna Kingsford’s chest.

He sniffled like a child.

“I don’t want you to die.”

“I know.”

“You shouldn’t have to die.”

“That I met someone who feels that way and that I inspired these feelings in you, who felt betrayed by everything, tells me that I have won a victory against this 🌍.”

Clear drops spilled out.

Anna Kingsford held the lost child’s head to her chest and whispered gently to him.

She stroked the inexpert one’s blonde hair like a mother.

“I think you did have need of my preserved corpse. Especially on December 31. If no one had stopped Anna Sprengel, the 🌍 would have been thrown into chaos before CRC could even be reborn.”

One by one, the expert explained everything to the fool.

She taught him some terribly simple things that no one had ever before taught that human.

Not his parents who had thought meaningless strictness was a virtue, not his teachers who had failed to correct the social problem left in their care, and not the Golden magicians who had abandoned their pursuit of knowledge to spend their time on ugly internecine conflict.

Even though these should have been the first things he was taught.

“But you must ❌ toy with life. Because you are powerful enough to do so with ease, you have ❌ way to keep yourself focused other than using pure willpower to manage yourself. The ☠️ have their own dignity. Humans remain human even in ☠️. You ensured your own pain from the moment you disrespected the ☠️ for the sake of the living. Improve yourself, Aleister. If you do ❌ fear taking the long way around to avoid pain, there is much you can learn. Just like any magician.”

“…”

“And do ❌ worry, lost child of the living. You will not be alone. As an expert, I will do whatever it takes to save the one you care for. Even if it requires every trick in the 📖. So there is ❌ chance you will be crushed by loneliness.”

===Part 2===

Kamijou Touma heard a wet sound.

It came from inside his body.

He thought he must have imagined it.

But the sound of rotting flesh falling away was so distinct.

“…”

He was dying.

He was certain of it in that brightly lit classroom.

It was an unavoidable fate. No one had cruelly pushed him to this point. There was a chance he could have survived had he given up on saving others, but he had chosen this path for himself while on the dark side.

He felt an odd scraping.

Was that the wound from Aradia he felt in his right side and spine? The odd feeling in his neck would be H.T. Trismegistus.

Everything felt normal-ish, but that lack of extreme pain only terrified him more.

Something was definitely happening to him.

He couldn’t tell what was happening inside him. He only felt a vague disgust. It was like his silent organs were changing color without sending out any kind of alert. Death. The end. An invisible pressure. A cruel time bomb with the LCD timer omitted.

“Human…”

Even Magic God Othinus only groaned that word before falling silent.

There was no recovering from this.

''“You will die.”

''“That doesn’t change my answer.”

Thinking back, he had made that fateful choice when that god wasn’t with him.

He had carelessly made such an important decision on his own.

Of course he had screwed it up.

Everything had been wrong from the beginning.

How many times had he availed himself of Good, Old Mary’s resurrection? In other words, ''how many times had he died on the way here''? In just a few days’ time? Maybe you would survive certain death, as if by mistake, once over your long life. But he seriously doubted those bugs or errors would occur in his favor every single time like that. Not to mention that he was plagued by misfortune due to his right hand, so lady luck would never smile on him in that way.

The flaw wasn’t in Good, Old Mary.

Bringing him back to life even once was more than enough of a miracle.

The problem was him having her use it so many times in such a short period of time without considering the usage limits.

''He couldn’t fool death any longer.

''The corner of the mask was starting to peel away.

“Hey, teacher, why do you think the girl wanted the grimoire library?”

“…”

“Because the girl wanted to use the library’s knowledge to do something she couldn’t? To correct her broken head? No, the girl is already perfect and unbreakable. The answer is simple. ''The girl wanted to help you after you passed the final branch.'' The girl wanted to search through a library of all the world’s knowledge to find some method still remaining in this world. That was all.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………”

He had passed the fatal branch.

He had foolishly chosen to cross it and he had arrived at a mistaken destination.

Which one of them was really in need of help?

“If the girl found it, she would use it. If not, she would give up, deciding the world was just too shallow. There are billions of people in this wide world, so if not even one of them has a way to save you, it means they didn’t try hard enough and then the girl would have to punish them all with her power.”

H.T. Trismegistus had said he had always been one of the Killers.

He had said the swiftest and surest way to take Kamijou’s life was to have him meet Alice. He had been right.

It didn’t help the deathly ill to fear the doctor’s prognosis. Kamijou understood that. They had come down with the illness much earlier. The real problem may have been from their exercise, diet, or other life habits.

Nevertheless, that fear was real.

The tables had been turned.

The symbol of death had shifted from Alice Anotherbible to another girl Kamijou knew quite well.

White. Pure white. The all-knowing nun who was always by his side.

He felt no pain.

He wasn’t even given the right to writhe in agony as certain death approached.

The pressure mounted.

Like he was being slowly crushed by an incredibly thick invisible wall.

Which was more horrific: being turned to red and black spray by the world’s fastest linear motor train before you could even feel the fear, or having your body gradually drawn into the wheel of a local train as it pulled into the station?

With no malice, the girl spoke with an innocent smile.

“Well, teacher? Let’s go see the grimoire library! The girl can’t diagnose you, so we can have the all-knowing nun do that part☆”

===Part 3===

H.T. Trismegistus watched from a distance.

He had known Alice Anotherbible longer than any other member of the Bridge Builders Cabal. After all, he was the one who had discovered her in the modern day.

But there was a lot the young butler did not know.

Most notably, he did not know her origins.

Where was she born, where was she raised, where was she altered, and from where had she fled?

He didn’t have a single answer.

It had only been pure coincidence when he found her in a city abroad. She was in the shadows of a roofless shelter. She had tremendous value as an open-source spell, but he had not realized this until well after taking in the wandering girl.

At first, she had been like a wild animal.

She had gone so wild he had questioned what she had even eaten to survive.

It was nothing more than luck that Alice hadn’t known how to use her power. If she had chaotically wielded her power as Alice Anotherbible at that point, she probably would have destroyed the entire world.

Alice was smiling innocently next to someone else.

She wore an expression he had never seen before.

That much was fine.

The young man simply obeyed. Of course, this was for himself, not for Alice. H.T. Trismegistus was a Transcendent who had abandoned his magic name to dress up in the appearance and abilities of a god. He could only view the world and choose who to save based on the salvation condition he had set for himself. So the first person he had to save was not himself or Alice.

He was the guardian deity of common sense.

He protected the people against anything that altered people’s sense of normalcy: war, rioting, disaster, loneliness, disease, famine, financial panic.

He sought a master who would save the world.

''Or to put it another way,'' the only person he would allow to distort common sense was the bearer of the paradigm shift that would guide all of humanity to the next stage. He could not leave this in the hands of just any old charismatic leader.

Was Christian Rosencreutz the one he sought?

Or was it Alice Anotherbible?

His objective was clear, but a question occurred to the young butler.

He knew his salvation condition.

But who exactly did he want to save?

===Part 4===

On the District 7 bridge, the Transcendents vs. Transcendents battle was trending in one direction.

“Tch! Good, Old Mary!?” shouted Aradia, holding onto the railroad crossing barrier she had borrowed as a broom and clinging to the side of a steel beam distributing the bridge’s weight.

But the woman collapsed on the cold asphalt did not respond.

That was a bad sign.

Good, Old Mary was the foundation of their recovery magic, but she had suddenly collapsed.

This was worse than simply losing one of their number.

Vidhatri, the brown-skinned woman with model-like proportions, shook the arms and legs of the Dhatri ball-joint doll she wore on her back, intricately manipulating white thread and black hair as she whispered to Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

“Do you still need support?”

“Nope. Everyone can do their own thing. Instead of assigning as many Transcendents as we can to attacking a single point, it would help me if we increased the total number of attack points to fill up the processing power of their minds.”

Something hovered through the air.

Some teacups and saucers were slowly flying around

Those were symbols from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The Bologna Succubus noticed and groaned while breathing heavily with her hands down on the ground.

“Kssshhh, they’ve made it this far?”

“Ha ha☆ Of course they have.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet smiled calmly.

A single smile on that extremely lovable face summoned a great black dragon into the night sky. Was the twisting serpent actually tens of thousands of starlings? They were not venomous, but in great enough numbers, any creature was a threat to human life.

The instant the Bologna Succubus looked up at the black dragon filling the entire night sky, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet took a large step forward.

Without hesitation.

“Kh.”

Now was not the time to be overwhelmed by the intimidating numbers.

The Bologna Succubus flapped her wings to gather as much air as possible.

She launched herself straight to the side.

The coat-shaped blast-resistant suit covered in thick metal panels snapped shut like a ferocious beast’s jaws. It was a sweet-smelling iron maiden. The air inside that isolated space was compressed with no outlet, producing a strange sound much like a steam engine.

The Bologna Succubus had just barely avoided it.

If she had carelessly stayed in place, she would have been “devoured”.

Instead of feeling fear, she gathered offensive power between her brows.

(Argh. I can’t let this chaos be unleashed on the boy’s city.)

What were Kamijou Touma and Alice Anotherbible doing right now?

She couldn’t predict how few seconds a regular Transcendent would last against Alice if she were serious about fighting, but it was still much too dangerous to let that boy stand defenselessly before Alice.

The alluring demon smiled bitterly at that thought and focused her feelings on the battle at hand.

“Oh, what’s this?”

Smiling, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet again spread her arms wide. Slowly.

Almost like a solid wall, a stifling nectar scent emerged from the blast-resistant suit and pushed toward the Bologna Succubus. Even at this distance, she had to stay focused to avoid getting dizzy.

What was happening in that closed world?

The skinny girl(?) wearing an apron over her naked body giggled before speaking.

“This won’t hurt at all, so don’t worry. I’m more interested in creating a gentle world where even the unloved are loved equally. Did you really understand my salvation condition? Kee hee hee☆ I have love even for a filthy sex demon, so get over here and let me give you a hug!!”

“Killing with pleasure, huh?”

“Ah ha ha☆ This is Total Courtship! Welcome to the sweetest, most luxurious ending to a life♪”

Roaches could rapidly build up a resistance to deadly insecticides, so they couldn’t necessarily be killed by escalating the chemical suffering. Instead, there were products that ''tricked them'' into thinking ethanol, acetaldehyde, sotolon, or another chemical compound was delicious food, luring them into the trap where they would take a different chemical back to the colony to kill them all at once. Humans didn’t just use what their target disliked – they would also use whatever their target most liked.

This girl similarly used love to kill. She was a super sweet monster who had continually honed the emotion of love into a deadly weapon. If you simply increased your defenses to prevent pain and prepared ordinary attacks, she would ''slip past them all'' and kill you instantly.

She was a specialist in that.

This Transcendent was a different form of strongest, whose trump card was the complete opposite of the Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress which converted all forms of pleasure into pain.

Her victims were robbed of even the right to feel fear as they were filled with no more than ''happiness'' until they lost their life. In a trippy world where everything was vague, they would cross the final line without intent or resolve.

They were stranded.

She had complete control over them, not even giving them a chance to speak their final words.

She brought a death more certain than a .44 caliber bullet and its name was love.

“Yeah, I don’t think we could ever get along.”

“Kya ha ha☆ You’re only saying that because that makes it more exciting, aren’t you!?”

This must have been her combat form.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had her enormous blast-resistant suit spread wide to display the terrarium trapped within. The skinny naked-apron girl pushed out a nectar scent so powerful it caused heartburn. And she took a casual step forward.

“You didn’t find it remotely odd? We’re all regular Transcendents here. A clash between our two groups shouldn’t end so easily. Yet you’re being easily defeated in a one-sided game. Is it a bad matchup between the individual Transcendents? Do our spells combine so well it’s like we were dealt a royal flush? No, that could never happen.”

“…”

“''No one can defeat Alice Anotherbible.''”

For this alone, she took on a respectful tone.

Almost like she was reading off the handwritten creed only she believed in.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet thought only of her own blessings as she spoke euphorically.

“You underestimated the meaning of that statement. And that optimism has brought you certain death. It doesn’t just mean you won’t survive a direct physical fight against Alice. There’s no getting around it. We control all of the coincidences and all of our baseless hunches and inspirations will work out in our favor. We have the ''trends'' of the world on our side. That is what it means to ‘resonate’ with Alice and take the winning side. To be clear, we are only firing blindly from the hip. You’re the ones ensuring we hit you.”

Vidhatri.

2nd Saga.

And Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

The Bologna Succubus’s side was being worn down, but all three of them were unharmed. She had gotten a few clean hits in on them, so had they managed to shrug off the damage?

And she was slipping past their expectations and landing an attack they failed to dodge or defend against, so it made no sense for them to be changing their stance to reduce the damage with 100% accuracy.

That wasn’t their individual abilities.

It was their “resonance” with Alice Anotherbible.

“Defying her means death. You had lost from the moment you bet on there being an exception to that, like that you could move beyond her reach, hide where she couldn’t find you, or escape punishment if your defiance was indirect. Not that she would let you get away with this even if you had been correct.”

“How are you on Alice’s side when you only love yourself?”

“Isn’t it cruel to expect such a small child to judge everything so accurately? They say to let your child make mistakes to learn from them, but do you think that kind of harsh parental love will work on that girl? Alice is simpler than that. Which is what makes her so frightening. At her mental age, she probably sees anyone who praises her and spoils her as her ally.”

And it didn’t end there.

“Heyyy.”

Something enormous was parting the large river to approach.

It was a special warship measuring around 100m long.

That was small compared to a nuclear aircraft carrier of more than 300m long, but it was undoubtedly a warship.

Plus, this was not the ship itself.

It was made out of smooth white shadow.

A girl’s lazy voice played from the speakers probably meant for giving warnings or making threats.

Come to think of it, hadn’t one of them seemingly vanished?

“This took some time to prepare, but I’m back.”

The ship’s bridge stood taller than the iron bridge.

She must have torn down all the other bridges spanning the river to clear a path here. It made you wonder which side was doing more damage to Academy City.

Aradia’s eyes really did bug out as she shouted.

“Mut Thebes!? What is that thing!?”

“You don’t know? It’s the Academy City drone carrier Kagenui.”

An aircraft carrier had to carry multiple large aircraft, necessitating a great size. Submersible and aerial aircraft carriers could not be made because the size and weight affected their balance too much. ...But that accepted principle had been overturned by shrinking the aircraft down by eliminating the cockpit and turning them into drones. Even the maintenance work could be carried out by an unmanned maintenance factory within the ship.

As usual, Academy City loved making bizarre things.

But now wasn’t the time for exasperation.

That was a carrier.

“Go, everyone.”

A series of explosions rang out. The boxy canisters on the flat deck rose up and opened fire. There were electrically ignited guns that could fire at a rate of a million rounds a minute. It looked like a programmed fireworks show. In truth, the honeycomb-like holes on the front of the canisters were releasing a large number of flying objects. By spreading their movable wings in air, they gathered in orderly teams and flew in formation. Now both sides had a flying swarm. The drones clashed directly with the tens of thousands of starlings ruling the night sky.

The assumptions and superiority had been overturned.

One side was alive and the other was machine.

When they were both controlled remotely and were equal in number, it went without saying whether the small birds or the man-made meter-long aerial weapons would win.

Perhaps the counterattack was necessary.

But as the drones pursued the fleeing starlings, their machinegun fire stabbed into the skyscrapers built along the river and sent sparks exploding from walls as thick power cables were ruptured.

“Mut Theeeebes!!!”

Aradia roared in anger, but then she stopped.

The brown girl was acting weird.

“Yayyy. Who wants to take a killer selfie? Just tell me when and I’ll get the timing right for you. Yippee! Let’s keep this Alice Parade Party going☆”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet giggled.

She clearly welcomed this turn of events.

Mut Thebes wasn’t enemy or ally – she was losing all awareness that she was participating in the battle at all. She was throwing that aside to enjoy herself. And her actions were clearly working against the Bologna Succubus’s side.

They sensed a trend in the series of unpleasant coincidences.

“I believe it’s called Acute Kotatsu Syndrome. Basically, Alice affects the group psychology of an area when she stays there long enough. Did you think you were ''immune'' for some reason? Even magicians and Transcendents will be engulfed by Alice sooner or later.”

“…”

“That includes all of us. Yes, you are no exception, Bologna Succubus. And most likely, neither are we. We will all lose our sense of who is on whose side in this mad tea party. The world that people across the globe have worked so hard to create could end today, but in a way that could mean the arrival of an age of peace. If everything is engulfed and everyone is a victim, then the distinction between enemy and ally loses all meaning.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet made it sound so obvious.

But it didn’t add up.

They were using their all-important salvation conditions as an excuse to love themselves and preserve their power by protecting Alice, so they wouldn’t want an ending where they were engulfed by Alice’s madness and lost sight of who they were. Narcissists who cared about themselves more than anything else in the world would never seek out a form of satisfaction created by having their internal aesthetic sense altered.

“''Do you have any idea what you’re saying''?”

“Ha ha☆ What? Are you saying I’ve already broken too''?”

It didn’t sound like she cared.

Someone on her level had lost the right to feel fear and disgust, or even detect that anything was amiss.

This space was going mad.

It had started at a single point, but the entire world would be this way eventually.

Whether or not Alice Anotherbible wanted it.

This was ominous enough to make that prediction.

“It doesn’t really matter. No one can defy Alice whether they put up a resistance or not.”

“Are you shoving responsibility for the world onto Alice’s shoulders while you alone abandon the effort of living, like you’re just a tree, grass, or flower, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet!?”

“Hee hee☆ Total Courtship – ready for dissemination. Now, I think I’ll pack you so full of super-sweet love that all your veins burst. Alice hates it when you try to lecture people like that, which is why she’s striking back at you, you know?”

===Part 5===

“…”

Anna Sprengel saw it.

She had supposedly divined the location of Kamijou and Alice, but ''something had gone wrong'' and she ended up here instead. Were you not even allowed to walk in a straight line without the proper credentials in this wonderland?

Everything within a 400 radius of the iron bridge was a zone of death. Crowds who had never even seen Alice directly were filling the streets due to her influence, but not even they would approach that area.

It may have been a type of instinct.

Just like people’s homing instincts worked even when drunk, the boys and girls who had lost sight of reality still knew they should keep away.

Although even that instinct would probably melt away eventually.

Once that happened, the world really was over.

Anna wanted to rescue Kamijou Touma. She wanted to fight against Alice Anotherbible with him. She wanted to protect him.

But so much depended on that bridge where an ''unnatural amount'' of things had gathered.

If those Transcendents scattered across the city again, Kamijou alone wouldn’t be able to deal with them. Then his world would simply fall apart.

So.

Before that happened…

“What are you planning?”

“!?”

Anna heard a female voice.

From right by her ear.

She belatedly spun around.

But she did not find one of the Transcendents who relied on the easy ''divine cosplay spell''. This was an expert who carried a magic name in her heart, stood on her own two feet, and had chosen for herself to take on the wide world.

It wasn’t a logical thing.

But Miss Sprengel could not hide the trembling and the cold sweat that came from her very soul.

“Anna Kingsford!?”

“You really should ❌ try it. It is ❌ like you. Two groups of Transcendents are ⚔️ing and one side is winning. Adding one more fighter to the fray will ❌ make a significant difference. As a self-proclaimed villain, you should know that quite well.”

“Why would you stop me? It shouldn’t be any skin off your nose if the fake Anna dies.”

“It would be. Because I do ❌ want you to ☠️.”

Kingsford didn’t hesitate.

The true villain was not used to being told these things so directly.

(First that fool and now her.)

Taken aback, little Miss Sprengel lost her chance to strike back and Kingsford laughed elegantly before continuing.

That smile was so much like Miss Sprengel’s, but she could never imitate it.

“It does appear that the side of the ⚔️ supported by ❌, resonating with Alice has the advantage. Transcendents are, after all, the false gods created when modern magicians used the incomplete 🪄 they created by analyzing the one and only success case: Alice Anotherbible. They have always been incomplete and unstable. They have a model. It should be obvious they will be 💪er when supported by the completed Alice.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? If Aradia’s side loses, who will be left to help that fool? Even if the entire world joined forces against Alice, I’m not sure it would work! And if the Alice-addled Transcendents gathered here end up scattering across Academy City, they could completely destroy that fool’s cit-”

“You only need to supply a ⛰️ greater than Alice.”

It didn’t even take a full second.

Kingsford placed her index finger on her slender chin and gave the answer with a confident smile.

An expert was a powerful guide in and of herself.

Just like sailors lost at sea would rely on the sun and moon in the sky to find the way back home.

“Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, Vidhatri, and 2nd Saga… They are borrowing a special power by resonating with Alice. So we just have to supply the same condition. If someone else leads the Transcendents, this problem is easily solved.”

Anna Sprengel only showed exasperation on her face.

Preparing a rival even more powerful than Alice was Kingsford’s idea of easy?

“I suppose someone as special as you would have no problem doing that,” said Miss Sprengel.

“Me? ❌, the only one who can do this is you.”

This time, Miss Sprengel’s eyes opened wide.

This had to be a joke.

“W-wait. I-I am no more than a common 2nd-rate magician who expanded my appearance and abilities by borrowing your name but still had to boost my specs further with Aiwass!!”

“Belittle yourself all you like, you are still an irregular Transcendent. Plus, you borrowed someone else’s name, but you did ❌ acquire the necessary 🪄 by analyzing Alice. You did your research from the ground up and successfully ‘👗ed up as’ Anna Kingsford. Which puts you on equal 🦶ing. We must refer to you as an irregular Transcendent for the exact same reason we refer to Alice Anotherbible that way.”

“…”

“You can do it.” Kingsford made this point clear. “Both you and Aleister have accomplished so much, so I can ❌ fathom why you both insist on belittling yourselves at every turn… I am saying there is something only you can accomplish, Miss Sprengel. I can ❌ do it. No matter how unnecessarily ashamed you are of yourself, your 🪄 to 👗 up as someone else is something that never occurred to me. Using that to help others qualifies as praiseworthy service if you ask me, but do you disagree?”

Silence.

Eventually followed by a wet sound.

It was the sound of a sniffling nose.

“Don’t tell that fool.”

“Sigh. I really think it is ⌚ the world recognized your talents.”

“Don’t tell him.”

“As you wish.”

“Then come forth, Aiwass!! Come to me, the walking amplifier for my will that has a mind of its own!!”

“Took you long enough, my benevolent genius.”

Anna Sprengel and Anna Kingsford.

The long-held conflict between them had been resolved.

Now they stood side by side, wielding great magic to protect an innocent life.

===Part 6===

The massive bridge had clearly been bent by an impact from the side. Cracks ran through the asphalt, steel screws larger than golf balls popped forcefully from the metal beams, and the joints between the girders swelled upwards.

The black bass and bluegills seemed harmless at first, but even at 500g each, tens of thousands of them still amounted to a large weight.

With the most lovable face, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet only had to blow a kiss to control them all.

Good, Old Mary had already collapsed after taking one to the center of the chest.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet chose Aradia as her next target.

It didn’t matter that she was directly facing the Bologna Succubus right now.

She set her sights on the witch goddess who stood on the complex arrangement of metal beams used to distribute the bridge’s weight.

“Look!! The world’s most high-tech city will have any number of unloved creatures: black bass, bluegills, rats, stray cats, pigeons, and starlings to name a few. Now, false goddess, let’s see how you handle the love-starved laments of the unloved!!”

“Tch!!”

“''Hee hee☆ Or should I send the unloved humans your way''?”

As soon as Aradia stiffened, stopping her interception spell, a babbler soared sharply toward her unguarded flank. A direct hit would probably kill the wild bird, but it would go through its death throes while embedded deep inside the wound and its beak and feathers would spread contaminants around.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet stuck out her tongue.

But the night wind that reached her was no more than a night wind.

It did not carry a rusty scent.

“?”

Had it missed?

When the support from “resonating” with Alice Anotherbible should have acted as a ''tailwind'' for all her actions?

Even though simply firing blindly from the hip should have always hit the enemy?

Before Blodeuwedd the Bouquet could pursue that question, Vidhatri shouted from where she stood.

“2nd Saga!! Eliminate her now!”

“Hee hee.”

An alluring female face and limbs appeared in the dark night. She was around 18, at the midpoint between girlhood and womanhood.

But that was all that was visible.

The pieces floated separately. No, her torso had clearly been torn apart. It now contained strange hollow spaces. Had her human silhouette unraveled like bandages? Was it due to the thick ribbon that had been wrapped around her torso? The lights of the city were visible in the space beyond her partially eliminated body.

The space seemed somewhat distorted.

Or maybe it was a type of ''camouflage''.

Aradia faced this person who was strange even for a Transcendent. She had the face of a girl with short flaxen hair with the interior dyed bright blue.

“2nd Saga. Do you derive some special meaning from covering and hiding things?”

“I’ve always had trouble choosing just one thing. I never want to throw anything out, so my room always ends up a mess.”

Saga was a goddess from Norse mythology.

She was said to be extremely powerful and to manage the spring where Odin is gifted with poetry and wisdom.

But she is barely mentioned throughout all the Norse monuments and texts.

Barely anything is known about her other than that her home is called Sokkvabekkr.

Information on her was scarce.

She was a mysterious figure who is simply known to share drinks with the top Norse god.

This woman had gone out of here way to choose a god like that.

She had wanted to be her.

Aradia spat annoyed words with the yellow and black railroad crossing barrier in hand.

“If a single performer tries to forcibly dress up as multiple gods, the traits of the gods cancel each other out, diluting their presence. We normally have strict rules about what we can’t do if we want to stay in character and keep our costume authentic, but I didn’t expect one of us to take advantage of that fact.”

“By intentionally keeping a low profile, I can do things other gods can’t. I am not the star of the show. But if a tree or a bush does something they shouldn’t, the audience has no way of knowing if it was correct or not. This allows me to be a performer on the stage while also freeing me from the bonds of the script. I am the only one allowed to be myself.”

“…”

“I am the Transcendent ''who saves all the bit parts and understudies who never get any attention.'' I can’t look down on them if I’m to do that. I need to understand how they feel and be one of them first.”

She disappeared.

Did she unleash her skill to the point she became one with the air?

The bluish-white armor partially surrounding 2nd Saga’s limbs vanished into the air, causing what little of her skin and face were still visible to look unnaturally alluring.

The bright round skin of her face was like a device for giving off sex appeal.

The pupils of her blue eyes were colored an impossible bright red. Did she use a light-bending technique to pull that one off?

Even with her full body unraveled, the individual pieces were made of captivating feminine skin.

But if a member of the opposite sex were caught by her like this, it would probably break his mind.

The strange avant-garde woman sneered.

“My name is 2nd Saga, a fictional god created on the mischievous whim of the compiler. Which allows me to ''add on'' any magic I wish which is never actually found in Norse mythology. …Now, it is time you lost your one and only life. The divine curse – that is, the light of Brisingamen, necklace of infidelity – can even trigger a war between world-destroying kings. Do not assume an individual can escape that deadly fate!!”

It started at the center, where her chest had been.

The thick ribbon, which bound her skin and showed the city behind her, created a transparent distortion much like sugar water, which spilled beyond her outlines.

It forcibly gathered Aradia’s focus on a single point, much like having a finger jabbed between the eyes at close range.

Aradia sensed a definite deadliness in this unknown phenomenon.

Was she mistaken, or had that been the true trigger?

The impossible distortion became a large artillery shell that tore through the air.

This was an assassination spell.

It was guaranteed to take a life.

And the user could sidestep their own sin by saying they were only adoring the beautiful gold and jewels. The necklace brought doom, but it allowed the user to claim they didn’t know it was cursed and thought it was only a beautiful piece of jewelry. Was that to insure they would not be hit in the unlikely case that the curse was sent back the way it had come?

Aradia snorted with laughter.

The rails were laid out nicely, but it was all nonsense with no actual mythological basis. The sky is heaven, the gods shine bright, the workings of salvation and divine punishment, cats are capricious and dogs are loyal – by combining the common symbols found across cultures, anyone could fake apparent legitimacy.

Yes, this was faked.

''Her cosplay was sloppy.'' Gods were meant to draw a strict line between right and wrong, so they couldn’t accept – much less use – a loophole like this. A real god did not choose their words carefully for fear of backlash or controversy. Even the cruelest act could be written off as “divine punishment” if it was truly necessary.

And even if this curse would pursue Aradia to the ends of the Earth, there was only one thing she had to do.

“''There just have to be two Aradias''.”

“Wha-!?”

Immediately after 2nd Saga’s dumbfounded shock, the invisible curse tore itself apart with its own power.

The chilly moonlight shined on two identical people.

The black and yellow railroad crossing barriers resting on their shoulders crossed like swords mounted on a wall.

Aradia hadn’t actually done anything. The curse simply hadn’t been designed to handle an abnormal situation where two identical people existed. It was unable to deal with the situation it found, so the single shell attempted to pursue two targets at once, tearing itself apart from within.

It dissipated.

It disappeared.

“Don’t you dare call this cheating. This has always been our role – we’re the perfect performers. And it was all of you who created ''a second one'' and brought her here without even asking me.”

Right and left.

The identical Aradias launched wind magic that struck the formless Transcendent.

The tides were turning.

“…”

Vidhatri was dumbfounded.

But she wasn’t simply shocked that a Transcendent receiving a ''tailwind'' by “resonating” with Alice Anotherbible had been defeated by a Transcendent who had that link severed and was alone in the storm.

More than that…

“''Why did you have that idea just now''?”

“''What do you mean''?”

“It also doesn’t make sense that you avoided Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s initial attack. Even if there was a way for you to defeat 2nd Saga, it never should have occurred to you!! That kind of support comes from Alice. How did you break through the thought masking!?”

“I would assume conditions have changed somewhere away from here.”

“Tch!!”

Panic spread through the air, infecting the entire space.

Vidhatri seemed rushed by something unseen rather than her own will as she unspooled a lot of white thread and black hair from the ball-joint doll she wore on her back.

By intentionally omitting all mention of something, that spell let her erase anything she didn’t like from the small world set up around her. If she erased everything that could kill her, then no one could defeat her.

A moment later, a dull impact struck her cheekbone. Something flew in from the side and Vidhatri was launched spinning through the air. The impact permeated her. Before she could figure out what had happened, her ball-joint doll broke apart and her model-proportioned body soared over the pedestrian railing and toward the dark river below.

But Aradia hadn’t done anything.

“You were focused on the wrong person, dumbass.”

Aradia glanced over to see a small figure standing boldly atop a metal beam.

It was Anna Sprengel.

“Keh heh heh. Alice no longer rules this world. Worms, bow before me and beg for your pitiful lives. It wasn’t you who created the Shrink Drink – you needed Alice’s help for that. Yet all you worthless regular Transcendents had the nerve to look down on me and try to kill me!!!”

“Before she could figure out what had happened, huh?” the goddess of witches whispered in exasperation. “So Vidhatri could preemptively eliminate any threat, but she was defenseless against any threat that never occurred to her.”

If anything, that was a lot like the death of the immortal Norse god of light, Baldr. That similarity was ''not'' a case of cultural transmission between India and Europe. It was instead evidence of the Transcendents not actually being strictly bound to a single god or even a single mythology.

“Have you imagined your own fate yet, 2nd Saga?”

“Have you imagined your own fate yet, 2nd Saga?”

“!?”

Multiple beams of light flashed out at once.

The two Aradias held out their palms to launch projectile magic toward the figure leaping vigorously from beam to beam. The attacks actually hit 2nd Saga. It was hard to believe she had been so untouchable just a bit ago. She was knocked from the beam above to the bridge below.

Mut Thebes (who was on their side but had lost control of herself) had her drone carrier stopped by a three-legged object that appeared out of thin air. That was Good, Old Mary’s Tribikos.

The tides had turned in the blink of an eye.

The only one left was Blodeuwedd the Bouquet in her coat-like blast-resistant suit and naked apron.

Aradia approached her directly, the Bologna Succubus glared icily at her, and bloody Good, Old Mary slowly rose to her feet.

“Wai-”

The dull “thump!!” of pierced flesh rang out.

The Bologna Succubus had launched her sharp tail and caught Blodeuwedd the Bouquet in the shoulder.

Using a frontal attack with no tricks.

The force of the blow broke the iron-maiden-like blast-resistant suit and the double doors covered in metal panels fell to the asphalt. With her protection gone, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s bare skin was exposed to the frigid air while she scattered junk from her terrarium and UV LED lights. The night wind carried away the flower petals.

“This is already over,” said the Bologna Succubus.

Her voice was colder than it ever had been when that boy was present.

The naked apron girl backed away, but her legs tangled underneath her.

She fell like normal.

Her specialness was gone.

“You forgot about your salvation condition, you abandoned the people you should be saving, and you thought only of preserving your own power. And then you blamed Alice for it all. …So this is already over. You have nothing left. Nothing at all.”

“You’re going to win this...and take everything from me?”

With only her frilly apron left, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet held her wounded shoulder with the opposite hand and struggled to keep her breath.

The powerful sex appeal she gathered around her had dissipated, leaving behind only the fear of a small child.

“This is all we have. You can’t tell me the idea of losing your power doesn’t scare you.”

“I am a Transcendent. I choose who I should protect and then guard those people from the threat this world presents them. Which is why I abandoned my own identity to dress up as a god,” said Witch Goddess Aradia. “My salvation condition does not include myself. And I would never rob innocent people of their future just so I could keep my own shameful life.”

With a dull sound, the Transcendent ended things with the Transcendent.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was the last one.

There had been others, but they raised their hands in surrender when they saw the tides changing. That was about what you got with people who only worried about themselves.

But with Alice ''Anotherbible'' as an open-source example, more Transcendents could be created. Just like there were two Aradias here.

Remaking the city’s people into makeshift witches wasn’t an option here like it had been in Shibuya. If Academy City espers used magic, they would be harmed by the side effects and, if Alice wanted to, she could produce an unlimited supply of regular Transcendents. Those would be literally a grade above.

Any victories won fighting on the outer edges would only be temporary. And with only limited numbers to work with, they wouldn’t last if they were forced to fight the same battles over and over.

“This was no more than an opening skirmish,” said Anna Sprengel despite understanding that.

She was another host and open-source example who differed greatly from the Alice line.

They couldn’t stop here.

“Our real target is Alice. This rioting doesn’t end until she’s been stopped. The Queen of Hearts and Executioner waiting near Alice could easily be more powerful than the regular Transcendents.”

“If you have the time, could you deal with her too? Mut Thebes is shooting off ‘fireworks’ like this is some kind of party, so it would be great if you could bring that idiot back to her senses!!”

“Oh? Silly girl, are you sure you don’t want to take a video first?”

The giant white ship shook.

She must have been freed from the unseen physics that could be seen as Alice’s ''tailwind''.

Mut Thebes must have absorbed the weapon’s shadow, but where exactly was she attached to it?

“Bff!? Wait, wait, I’ll be good.”

“Finally come to your senses? Then take a look at the collapsed city around you. I can’t wait to see what kind of excuse you can come up with while dripping with sweat, God of Partying.”

“But if my partying was enough to destroy an entire city by accident, doesn’t that make me a super powerful goddess? And since we can all see how ultra-cute I am, can’t I get off the hook with a quick: ‘Oopsie. Tee hee’?”

“Good, Old Mary, use your Tribikos to step on that god of destruction, ship and all. It’s January, so dunking her to the bottom of the river ought to cool her head.”

Aradia icily passed judgment, but then a cracking voice came over the ship’s speakers.

“Oh, and the drone carrier’s antenna picked something up,” said Mut Thebes.

“?”

“It wasn’t encrypted or anything, so it was a lot like a radio transmission. Maybe it’s best to say this is being sent out all over the place. They might have been hoping we would pick it up. It’s being transmitted from ''a prison in District 10'' and it says it’s about Alice Pleasance Liddell.”

===Part 7===

After seeing off the little magician who had freed herself from her self-made bonds, Anna Kingsford sighed all on her own.

The end was nigh.

“Now, then.”

(I need to prepare for my part in this.)

===Part 8===

There were no subjective symptoms.

Kamijou wasn’t even allowed any obvious pain or bleeding.

Then was this a delirium or hallucination caused by all the stress he was under?

Except there was something there.

With each step he took down the long hallway, he heard a sound like thin threads snapping inside him. Like the creaking of bone or the beating of his heart, these were delicate sounds that shouldn’t have been audible outside his body.

He had heard on some trivia show that the simple action of walking concentrated a lot of weight and force on the leg bones. If that was true, then his body could no longer keep up with his movement. His insides were already breaking down to that extent.

Death.

The unavoidable destruction of the self.

Alice apparently wanted to ask Index if there was a way to heal him.

But Kamijou already knew the answer.

This was different from any of the previous times.

Or rather, this wasn’t a one-off failure. Everything he had done had pushed him too far. He was finally paying the price for it all. No one could escape the consequences of their own actions.

The end was nigh.

And it was only now that Kamijou realized something.

In a battle so severe, why hadn’t he noticed anything amiss? His survival this long had been the unnatural part.

“Hm, hm, hm☆”

Alice Anotherbible skipped out ahead of him.

She turned back, her skirt lifting disconcertingly high.

“C’mon, teacher. Everyone’s here now, so you need to hurry. Good or bad, you wouldn’t want it to end without ever learning the answer, would you?”

“…”

That was the opinion of someone watching from the outside.

It was clearly missing the viewpoint of the person on the verge of learning if their death was unavoidable.

They did not arrive at a normal classroom.

That was the door to the library.

That should have made for a poor prison. A solid kick would probably break open the sliding door and the outside windows were probably ordinary glass.

But since Alice had chosen this location, it was probably impossible to open from inside. Even with the knowledge of 103,001 grimoires at your disposal.

The door opened.

From the outside, it was surprisingly easy.

Kamijou doubted that was Imagine Breaker’s doing. He probably just had Alice’s permission.

“Touma!”

He heard a familiar voice.

She wasn’t bound with packing tape or zip ties. The windows and door were not reinforced. But there was definite relief on her face. That was the look of someone who just saw the thick door to their prison cell open.

And her smile froze in place.

The pure white sister was not concerned by Alice and H.T. Trismegistus’s presence. She was clearly looking at something else. The boy could tell that even with the mixture of truth, lies, and hallucination in his head.

“No...what is that?”

Her eyes widened because of Kamijou.

She had already detected something out of the ordinary.

Whether Alice was aware of that or not, she spoke in her childlike way.

“Okay, teacher. Ask her!”

The young butler clearly knew what was coming and struggled to suppress a grin.

Malicious words and actions were not the only way to hurt people.

Because he was bound by common sense, H.T. Trismegistus would never hurl abuse himself. The look on his face seemed to say there was no law against silence.

“I...won’t.”

“You have to,” said Alice.

“There’s no reason to force her to give an answer!!”

“Leaving the question unanswered solves nothing. Stopping here only lets the problem grow worse with time. She has 103,001 grimoires. With so much knowledge from all around the world available to her, the girl just knows she can find a way to heal you!!”

Was it even possible?

Had it been definitively proven, or was it only a theory?

Alice didn’t care about that.

It could be the geocentric theory, phlogiston, an ancient nuclear war, or that dinosaur farts caused the ice age. Of course, it could also be something accurate like universal gravitation or quantum theory. Accurate or not, if a theory had ever been proposed – if someone had thought it up and put together the logic behind it – she could build a bridge to it. She could choose ''whichever theories she wanted'' and link to them to wholly change the world. She was the ultimate conversion device. She could place Yamatai anywhere she liked, she could invent a perpetual motion machine of the first kind to produce unlimited energy, or she could remake the spherical Earth into a flat disk.

So there just had to be a single section in the more than 10 thousand grimoires.

Just one passage.

Even a single line would do.

No matter how absurd or difficult to achieve it was.

Alice could easily activate it and save Kamijou.

''But.

''Even then.

Index did not give a yes or no answer.

She kept her silence.

That was enough of an answer. If she wasn’t willing to say it out loud, she didn’t need to.

Her attempt at kindness was ineffective.

The verdict had been given.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Death.

That was the only option left.

Kamijou did not weep or rage.

He even forgot to fall to the floor.

In a way, he abandoned his humanity.

He simply stood there, stock still.

“Hu…man.”

Othinus’s quiet voice was enough for his head to wobble.

There was nothing there.

It wasn’t even emptiness that filled his mind.

He felt a heat surrounding him.

He simply stood there, forgetting even to collapse.

There was no way to save him.

The world had not developed that far.

It was underdeveloped.

People had studied what they liked and technology had branched off into countless directions, but never in this one.

The world didn’t care.

Time would continue on like normal even after he was gone.

And…

“Then let’s destroy it,” said a young voice.

Alice Anotherbible sounded the same as ever.

No, her voice sounded dried out.

Terrifyingly so.

This wasn’t part of the plan.

She sounded like her surprise party plan had fallen apart.

“We have our answer. And if this world can’t save you, teacher, than the girl is going to destroy it. The girl heard what you said, so she knows this world wouldn’t still be here if not for you. So it’s only fair the world goes away when you do, don’t you think?”

“Wait! Don’t, Touma!!” sharply shouted Index.

The knowledge of her grimoires must have told her Alice could do exactly what she claimed. And that she would do it the instant Kamijou gave her some kind of sign.

He would never do that under normal circumstances.

But it was wrong to assume he would behave normally now that he knew he would lose everything.

y/n.

The available options had been narrowed down as far as possible.

The fate of the world hinged on this one question.

“I do not agree.” H.T. Trismegistus finally spoke up, his shoulders shaking as he didn’t even bother to suppress his chuckling. “Destroying the world for a single individual is wrong. Maybe if this would save his life, but you should not destroy humanity if all you are doing is lashing out. Some might consider it moving, but common sense says it is not a benevolent act.”

Alice’s eyes widened like dinner plates.

And she lowered her voice.

“''H. T. Trismegistus''.”

“As you can see…”

The young butler raised his hands and kept speaking, undaunted.

He didn’t seem to care that the invisible muzzle of death was pressed unsteadily against his brow.

“I can tell Alice what common sense says, but I have no real way of stopping her. This is ultimately between you and her. No, make your own choice, Kamijou Touma. You cannot rely on Another Bible here and not even all the world’s grimoires contain a means of saving you. So what will you choose in the final moments now that your death is assured?”

Othinus gasped and looked up from his shoulder.

She was the only person who had just about achieved a perfect victory against Kamijou Touma.

She knew this ending.

She knew this dead end.

Because the one-eyed war god had intentionally set up a situation just like this to kill the boy when he refused to give up no matter what else she tried.

“I see what you’re doing. Hey, human, don’t listen to-!!”

“Yes, you could go crying to Alice and have her take the world out with you. In fact, you needn’t even say a word. If you remain silent, she might just be considerate enough to do it on her own. But common sense tells me that Alice’s ''only'' motivation is making you happy. ''So you could eliminate Alice’s motivation by taking your own life before she destroys the world on your behalf.'' You will die soon regardless, so why not move up the timetable just a bit to save so many people?”

Mere moments before H.T. Trismegistus completed his encircling argument, someone kicked down the library door from the outside.

With no difficulty.

“Fool.”

It was easy to miss by how easily it happened, but this should have been an unavoidable critical hit. Kamijou’s path should have ended.

But it hadn’t.

Because someone wouldn’t let it.

You could develop an attack specialized for a single individual, but that individual didn’t need to fight alone.

Just by setting foot in here, little Anna Sprengel had accomplished what no one else could.

She was probably the only person in the world not affected by Alice’s madness.

She deflected it.

And that villain mercilessly stomped her way into Alice’s territory.

No one could stop her.

“Hmph. So only I made it this far in? I feel a little bad leaving Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the others stuck fighting an endless battle. You basically asked us to come and even showed us the way, but then you drove your guests away? When you think about it, that’s hilariously pathetic.”

“You?”

“You haven’t figured it out yet, you gloomy microdick? You should have known better than to trust your assumptions from the moment you couldn’t kill me with the Shrink Drink filled with Alice’s power.”

Anna chuckled and Othinus gave her a look more of exasperation than admiration.

“I see. So if you had actually killed that shitty villain, we wouldn’t be dealing with this nonsense about her ''outdoing Alice''.”

“Are you saying the world switched rails back then?” asked Index.

“That’s right, you dregs of a god and you pathetic loafer,” said Anna, giving Othinus and Index a scornful look. Then she spread her little hands. “The fool changed things. He moved many people’s hearts with his own actions rather than having Alice cheat for him. I did not achieve this miracle on my own. Don’t you think the first person to receive its blessings should be the one who worked so hard to make it happen?”

Yes.

No one had invited Anna. She did not have Alice’s permission. That meant she had faced Alice’s madness without fear, repelled it, and forced her own actions through.

She faced that tremendous charisma without being engulfed.

She had the brand name of the mystery woman behind the founding of the world’s largest magic cabal.

This villain carried a legend of equal value.

“Honestly. You always let everyone push you around when it comes to Alice, fool. Do you seriously believe in the nice-sounding but scientifically-baseless and perverted jinx that the unclouded eyes of young children reflect truths the adults have long forgotten? If you ask me, you should learn to ignore it all as ''the words of an ignorant little kid''.”

“Anna…?”

“You might die, fool.”

Kamijou’s breath caught in his throat.

The thick invisible wall once more intruded on the ordinary scene around him.

Death.

The end.

It was approaching second by second, yet he felt no pain. Like a cruel time bomb with the LCD screen omitted.

What was wrong with feeling fear?

But Anna wasn’t done talking.

“I said ‘might’. None of this is set in stone, but Alice is acting like it’s 100% going to happen. Why?”

Othinus caught on first.

Almost like the thought had been unnaturally blocked until now.

“Oh, I get it. Everyone would prefer the opposite outcome, but she was enjoying telling everyone that he was definitely going to die.”

“It’s simple really. What did a certain monster need to do for him to drop his guard and let her in? What about showing him a greater threat so she doesn’t seem so bad? Just like I came off as a harmless companion when faced with the greater threats of CRC and Alice. But there is no threat greater at present than the Anotherbible. So a certain someone suggested the fool’s death.”

“Wait.”

“You should already know the answer. Alice Anotherbible only gets so assertive when it comes to Kamijou Touma. In a way, this is to be expected since I imprinted the fool’s past actions in her mind.”

It wasn’t her fault she had been deceived.

Anyone that little villain took advantage of already had an opening in them.

Or you could call it a vulnerability.

She could not create something from nothing. She pried open a small existing hole and then controlled them as she saw fit.

She was a reasonable but contemptible miracle-worker.

“The central factor for her has always been loneliness. Yes, I am the one who deceived her. Wherever she came from, I know the current Alice Anotherbible’s mind better than you.”

So?

What was that supposed to mean?

What was she imagining when she said that?

A cold sweat poured from Kamijou’s body.

For a brief moment, even his very real fear of death vanished from his mind.

“Hold on!! You’re not making sense. Alice means no harm. For better or for worse, what you see is what you get with her. Wasn’t that our initial assumption here? She can’t set people up, plot out some grand plan, or any other intellectual stuff like that!!”

“True,” agreed H.T. Trismegistus. “She is too powerful to do anything of the sort. Common sense says that someone capable of killing a dinosaur with a barehanded punch would never even think of inventing a gun, correct?”

“Shut up, you gloomy butler. And, fool, remind me who you came here to save?”

Anna sounded exasperated.

That was their initial assumption.

Kamijou had said that himself, but he had somehow forgotten it.

“I thought that issue had nothing to do with whether or not you will survive.”

“…”

He wanted to rescue Index and save Alice too.

That was why he had decided to fight Alice. That had been his initial objective.

And yet.

Why was he now seeking salvation from Alice?

Alice was the same as always. She was alive and well. It didn’t matter that her head had been crushed by Rosencreutz.

So shouldn’t he be rejoicing?

Shouldn’t he be weeping and laughing while hugging Alice?

Why was he being driven into a dead end?

''When had his objective been replaced?

''Who had caused that switch?

No.

…But…

It couldn’t be? Could it?

“Fool. I agree that Alice isn’t calculating enough to put together a long-term plan to fool people. Even telling her to ‘sit’ or ‘stay’ in front of a feast wouldn’t last very long. She may only be honestly saying what she believes to be right.”

That was a weirdly indirect phrasing.

Which suggested that phrasing was somehow necessary.

Othinus gave a snort.

“Yeah, I thought that was strange for a grimoire library whose job is to provide answers. Is this why she hesitated to give a response? Because she couldn’t easily reach a yes or no answer?”

The white nun, who was the polar opposite of the villain, spoke up quietly.

“But if Alice’s mind is too badly broken to tell what is and isn’t accurate, she might not be doing the right thing. Touma, you can’t trust that the things she tells you are accurate.”

Everyone’s eyes gathered on a single point.

Even H.T. Trismegistus, who had been taking advantage of the situation.

They heard a creaking sound.

Sounds like thick, straining leather came from within the girl as she hung her head.

“Those magicians could not change the world the way they wanted, nor could they follow their own rules after coming up with lofty salvation conditions,” said Anna Sprengel in a singsong way. “It probably was pure chance that very average group discovered the artificial miracle that is Alice Anotherbible before they began dressing up as gods. But they realized something.”

“…”

“In a mishmash of fiction and reality, a real girl had been remade into the storybook Alice and the storybook Alice had been created in the real world. They extracted a portion of those ‘plans’ and applied it to themselves. By customizing themselves as they liked with pieces of the preexisting open-source spell, they could abandon their individuality to dress up as any god or demon with extraordinary precision.”

The Transcendents really had transformed themselves that way.

At the cost of their own individuality.

For the Bridge Builders Cabal, the ''Anotherbible'' was a priceless text, but Alice was no more than a target of their worship. So they feared her and respected her, but they did everything they could to avoid third parties contacting her.

What had that lonely girl really wanted?

Or, more accurately, who?

“I see,” said Othinus on Kamijou’s shoulder. Sounding somewhat exasperated. “''This human was perfect for the role.'' I see now why that little monster was so obsessed with him.”

“Alice Pleasance Liddell listened to Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, the prototype for it all, and was the one clear model for the protagonist. But in a later era, she was abducted by a ‘Teacher of Crowley’ and thoroughly modified to create the Alice seen in the story.”

Little Anna herself proved that one’s apparent age wasn’t necessarily reliable.

Even if she was already an adult when she was abducted, the magician would have made the necessary adjustments. Very physical adjustments using a scalpel and saw. It may have taken cutting through bone, sewing together skin, and rearranging organs, but they would have kept working and adjusting until she had the exact same height and adorable appearance as the fictional girl.

That could not have been an enjoyable experience.

But after being freed from the mystery magician and finding a place in the center of the Bridge Builders Cabal, Alice had not been able to live the innocent life of the storybook. Even though she was already free and more powerful than anyone. She had given up on any life other than fulfilling other people’s interests.

And she really had become an innocent child.

She probably wasn’t even aware of her own humiliation and resignation.

Anna sighed softly and dug into the ugly side of humanity.

That was something Kamijou couldn’t do.

This was a territory only allowed for a worldwide villain.

She would carry the burden of everyone’s ire as she revealed the necessary truth.

“A parent who values logic has no dreams to share with their child.

“When Mathematician Lewis Carroll later began creating the world’s greatest fantasy, he laid out symbols and meanings, discovered a special child, and used her as a model to tell the prototype of it all: Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.

“A self-proclaimed Teacher of Crowley saw value in you as no more than the one and only specimen to know of the uncorrected original version, so they remade you by rearranging everything from your bones to your organs into the optimal color, shape, and size.

“When the Bridge Builders Cabal ‘rediscovered’ the girl still wandering in the shadows of the modern world, they only saw you as an open-source spell of great power. They feared and respected you in something more like worship than anything.”

And so the girl had been craving more.

Starving for it.

It mattered little if it was a conscious or subconscious thing.

Alice was always surrounded by so many people, but none of them were really looking at her.

Her reputation had preceded her.

With one exception.

There was one boy who did not want her power as a Transcendent, had rejected the “happiness” brought by her ultimate power, and faced her with nothing but his own fist no matter how many times he was killed.

It all began there.

Like dreaming of something from a storybook, a certain girl had thought that was her last chance there.

So she wanted it no matter what.

“Touma, stand back.”

“Ah.”

“Stand back! Now!!”

Hesitantly, Kamijou got his voice out from his parched and trembling mouth.

While asking himself what it was he was so afraid of.

“Al...ice?”

“Yes?”

''The girl raised her head.

''Except she no longer had anything above her neck.

===Part 9===

Aradia had finally caught up.

She walked through the high school’s front gate, setting foot inside its grounds.

Or so she thought.

“Tch!!”

She immediately swung her black and yellow railroad crossing barrier and was answered with a dull crack. It suddenly broke at about the middle. Even with the power of the goddess of witches, she was forced back.

Good, Old Mary, who was woozy from blood loss, muttered quietly.

“It looks like a rabbit, but it doesn’t have a watch. It must be the March Hare from the tea party.”

“One of the Alice Series!?”

The flamingo bats. The hedgehogs.

The Gryphon, the Executioner, the Cook.

These were Alice’s raw and unstoppable toys which magicians had not yet turned into tools.

They seemed to be fighting as two opposing armies, but here it looked like the enemy of your enemy wasn’t your friend. The flamingo bats and hedgehogs would sometimes attack the Transcendents without provocation, so they couldn’t be trusted.

The March Hare had apparently attacked just now, but which side was he on?

For that matter, why were different monsters born from Alice fighting each other in the first place!?

“What are we supposed to do?” asked the Bologna Succubus.

“We should have Good, Old Mary stay back. We shouldn’t rely too heavily on her resurrection, but we shouldn’t waste her by sending her up against an even more dangerous enemy either!!”

The school was a rather large place.

Where was that boy?

And while they were only regular ones, it was strange that a group of several Transcendents couldn’t get past this one position.

They supposedly each wielded strange spells capable of taking on the entire magic side single-handedly.

The Gryphon, the Executioner, the bipedal hare, and the Cook throwing irons and pots.

They were all Alice’s toys with their origins in Wonderland.

But while they were only toys, they had been directly injected with a portion of Alice’s power. As seen with the Shrink Drink, that power made these far from your normal foe.

Ultimately, the Bridge Builders Cabal did not exist for Alice.

It was the result of the regular Transcendents, who sought and feared her great power, struggling to find some way of managing her.

All on her own, Alice was more powerful than countless armies.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and Mut Thebes.

Those four Transcendents gathering here was no problem at all for Alice. She probably hadn’t even decided to fight against the Transcendents. This could be seen in how the toys continued fighting each other instead of driving out the intruders.

“By the way, where did Anna get off to!?” asked Aradia.

“Did that slut use mama and the rest of you as bait for these pain-in-the-ass opponents while she went on ahead? She did, didn’t she?”

They said nothing more.

First, they sensed a great pressure. Only a moment later did they feel the powerful tremor in the ground.

It was Dinah the cat.

The fluffy white and black beast had grown larger than the gym, so a single step caused the entire space to shake. The flamingo bats and hedgehogs ran around in a panic and the Gryphon failed to get away in time and had its front leg crushed underfoot.

It didn’t matter if they were on Alice’s side.

And the culprit – Dinah – wasn’t even aware she had done it.

She was the greatest force in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

She carried such great firepower that the mice and birds who caused Alice so much trouble had fled at the mere mention of her name.

If this really was her, then she might cause destruction greater than Alice intended for.

That meant there was a risk of her crushing the entire school building with Kamijou and Alice inside.

Which was exactly what happened.

With her back to the school building, Aradia briefly froze up, so the Bologna Succubus had to flap her bat wings and tackle Aradia from the side to send them both tumbling across the ground. A gust of wind blew past them like a subway train had passed by nearby. That thing was much too large for anyone human-sized to take a direct hit from it. Aradia didn’t have time to celebrate her survival. She roared up toward the heavens while still tangled up with the Bologna Succubus.

That was the most prized of Alice’s toys.

Deadly Dinah.

Only one Transcendent could hope to battle that giant that rivaled a school gym in size.

“Mut Thebes, stop that thing immediately!!”

“It is too soon for me to attack. Wait 15 minutes for me to absorb enough shadows to create a body that can safely face the cat.”

Aradia’s eyes widened.

Mut Thebes wasn’t going to be any help.

Dinah was charging head-first toward the school building.

And just before she crashed into it, a deafening roar rang out.

Dinah was knocked rolling back, gouging large pieces of dirt out of the schoolyard and sending tons of dust into the air. It made no sense. There was no thick barrier there and no steel warship had appeared.

There was only a single human silhouette.

It looked downright minuscule compared to Dinah, who was large enough to look down at the gym.

Nevertheless, it was Dinah whose max-speed charge had been repelled, sending her rolling backwards.

“Wha-?”

Aradia was speechless.

This wasn’t even a Transcendent.

“Honestly.”

A voice came from the cloud of dust.

Aradia’s group did not recognize the voice. But the female voice inspired a compulsion that prevented even the Transcendents from taking it lightly.

“Alice Anotherbible has fallen apart more than I 💭. All of these things are a 🧩 of her – they are the many opinions she has ❌ been able to reconcile. I did ❌ expect her to be so overwhelmed with emotion that she nearly crushed her own 🏰 with her inside.”

This was Anna Kingsford.

The magician stood there on her own two feet without borrowing anyone’s appearance or abilities.

A moment later, the dirt thrown high into the sky was pulled back down by gravity.

It was like a dry rain.

Kingsford casually directed her index finger skyward and something invisible became a large umbrella. She alone was left without a speck of dust in her hair or on her clothes.

Something sliced sharply through the dusty veil.

It was a flamingo bat and the Cook.

Both sides of the conflict arrived at once.

Kingsford extended a single finger and drew out a few patterns in empty air.

They were constellations.

Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces.

The sharp sound was a moment delayed.

A scattershot of compressed water tore through the Cook like a cookie cutter through dough. When her blue-glowing fingertip turned toward the flamingo bat, the bat began to tremble while hovering in the air. Despite being inorganic, it clearly shrank two sizes.

The basics of astrology were to assign various elements and symbols to the 7 planets and 12 constellations of the horoscope and then experiment to see what effects were produced on yourself and others when they were applied from different angles and combinations. There were even tricky ways of building them into attack spells.

So by combining only the water element constellations, you could greatly amplify the power of ordinary water.

Instead of simple addition, it worked through multiplication, so it was like shifting up a gear in a car.

That expert did not bother coming up with impressive special attacks.

By earnestly working at the basic fundamentals that anyone could do and that novices tended to look down on, any magic could be brought to the point of a one-hit kill.

But none of that was particularly important.

For one, that wouldn’t be enough to kill Dinah.

“I will ❌ let you destroy the things you care about, Alice. That would be much too 😢 to see. I assure you on my name as an expert, being special does ❌ cut you off from the supply of ☺️.”

Just then…

“…?”

Anna Kingsford looked down at her right hand.

A red liquid was dripping from it.

She only had a slight cut on her fingertip, but the amount of blood was not the issue.

She shouldn’t have been harmed at all in that situation.

That expert never made mistakes.

So if something unexpected occurred regardless, it meant the problem was with the initial data she was working with, not her calculations.

In other words…

“Is this body reaching its limit?” she whispered, holding her fingertip in her mouth.

Her voice itself was a lot “rougher” than it had been when she was first booted up in Shibuya’s Miyashita Ark. It wasn’t limited to her outward appearance. This proved the injury and deterioration was also progressing where it couldn’t be seen.

She didn’t show the slightest hint of fear as she looked out ahead.

In fact, she took a step forward.

The cat large enough to crush the gym rose to her feet again.

Kingsford couldn’t continue on and leave this with the regular Transcendents. She had never figured out how to pick and choose who she saved.

These were Alice’s raw toys, which had yet to be turned into easy-to-use tools like the Shrink Drink. And this cat was the greatest of them. She was a mass of violence and destruction that wouldn’t bat an eye as she trampled all the other toys.

Dinah.

The expert faced the cat head on, holding the brim of her large hat between her fingertips.

She doubted her body would last to the end.

For that matter, it was unnatural for a preserved corpse her to be moving around at all.

(But I can accept that.)

So she decided on a more realistic goal: injuring Dinah enough to create an opening or weak point the Transcendents could take advantage of to defeat Dinah on their own.

The expert knew her doom was closing in on her, but she still spoke with her usual smile.

“⌚ to serve others.”

===Part 10===

She was a headless girl.

A little corpse.

Yet she was also standing up and looking at Kamijou.

He distinctly felt the pressure of her gaze.

The atmosphere in the library changed. The scales were rapidly tilting in a direction he did not like at all.

“!?”

Without thinking, he stepped back away from her.

This was an expression of malice that shouldn’t have been necessary.

Which proved it had been intentional.

It was true after all.

No matter how you looked at it, the center of the problem was right there.

It always had been.

Kamijou pushed past the fear of death he knew was coming and shouted.

“Alice!!”

He heard a sound like tearing cardboard.

No, not like. The headless girl really did tear down the center. And something else emerged, sticky with a translucent fluid.

This had happened before.

But this was not the little girl dressed in profane red and black leather.

This form could never have fit in that small body.

But she wasn’t accepting questions.

At the top of the vertical tear, near where the head should have been, an arm jutted straight up, but this arm belonged to a captivatingly beautiful woman. With a splat, she collapsed forward to crawl like a dog. The translucent slime left behind strings that stained the floor. She squirmed like a fluffy red boa. The leather bound her bright, wet body more tightly than necessary and her long blonde hair was so wet it writhed on the ground as a single clump. After instantly becoming a woman of about 18, she crawled forward and swung her head upwards. The wet hair covering her face swung back behind her, revealing her beautiful face.

“Touma!!”

Alice Anotherbible.

Or maybe Alice Pleasance Liddell.

Her true form.

“Did you use yourself as the ingredients to recreate the ideal version of yourself?” said Othinus in disgust.

Alice worked her alluring throat to release growls and her fingers scratched at the floor like an animal with sharp and sinister claws. She could not have been farther removed from reason, intelligence, and innocent adorableness.

Violence.

Battle.

Killing.

That was all she was.

She shined with the same light as a sword that had had been made so deadly it gained an odd beauty.

The fear of death was gone.

Even that thick invisible wall had vanished.

Kamijou felt a tingling in the back of his head. With the sharp claws, the large canine teeth emerging from her lips, and the fearsome light in her eyes, he knew there was so much he needed to focus on, yet he couldn’t read even a hint of deadliness from her. But he knew this wasn’t Alice doing anything special. His own mind had numbed the fear. Because if he accurately understood the threat here, his heart would stop of its own accord. His heart would raise the white flag before his mind did.

The animal rose to her feet.

The fully grown body of an alluringly beautiful woman straightened her legs and stood up like she had only just remembered she could.

She took a fighting stance.

“Teacher…”

That one word created a distortion.

But not in Alice. The bookcases, the reading desks, the floor, the walls, and everything else Kamijou could see looked like a child had scribbled out their outlines in white and black.

“The girl…wants…only one goal. She will…have this…no matter…matter what.”

He could have understood if she said she would kill him just for fun.

Or if she said she deeply resented him.

Even if she said she would destroy the world based on some inscrutable logic, he might have decided that made sense for someone so very different.

But.

“The girl wants...to make up...with you.”

Everything froze.

Inside Kamijou Touma, time ground to a halt.

Was that it.

Was that really and truly all there was to it?

At the Bridge Builders Cabal consulate in District 12, Kamijou and Alice had disagreed over her attempted punishment of H.T. Trismegistus, who had tried to kill him, and Good, Old Mary, who had failed to protect him.

CRC had killed her and she had regained her lost head.

She had driven the world mad and might destroy it as soon as tomorrow.

But this had never changed.

She only wanted to mend that broken bond.

No matter what it took.

Even if her methods were seen as unfair.

That little girl didn’t care. Kamijou should have bowed his head and apologized, but he had completely forgotten after learning about his imminent death.

Nevertheless, she was trying to achieve it on her own, even if it meant dirtying her hands.

So they could smile together again.

“So.”

It all took a turn.

Her behavior was distorted.

Only in Alice’s mind did it all fit together smoothly.

“The girl will make up with you. She will fight you because a serious fight allows people to make up. But it has to be serious, so what can the girl do to get you to fight her? This city, this country, and this world can wait. It has to be serious. The girl understands you, teacher, so she knows you will fight her and make up with her.”

She said it all in a terribly ''drawn out'' and flat, emotionless voice. Her emotions were so intense it was all destroyed, like the recording medium itself was being burned from below by a lighter.

Alice probably really could do that.

And what would happen?

Would the world really end over this?

Maybe Alice could no longer make logical connections between the different pieces of data.

Kamijou had thoroughly broken that girl’s mind.

Issues of right and wrong or like and dislike were trivial at this point. They would no longer provide a dividing line between enemy and ally. This wasn’t like mantises that were programmed so the female would always eat the male. Perhaps it was closer to spiders where the female would sometimes suddenly leap at and devour the male in the middle of the male’s courtship display. Even with the same species facing each other one-on-one, and even with the male expressing his love and the female accepting it, she might mercilessly devour him on a whim. She would only realize she had done it after the fact. You couldn’t predict what would happen even a second into the future with a being like that.

She was such a close but distant being.

She was different.

She was a predator beautifully made by stretching out the muscles, laying out the nerves, hardening the bones.

Kamijou didn’t find her frightening anymore.

He felt sorrow instead.

“Stand back, fool,” coldly insisted Anna Sprengel.

The look she gave Alice was unusual for that villain.

Alice was another irregular Transcendent – another open-source path to power – but one who would never stand on the same side as Anna. Anna gave her a look of pity.

“You understand, don’t you? She’s a lot like an unstable animal. If you approach her now, she might turn you to mincemeat without even meaning to. In the worst case, she might decide that, if she can’t have you alive, she will tear off your head and take that away with her.”

Kamijou shook his head.

Would he battle Alice?

And defeat her?

“I can’t do that.”

This wasn’t about the size of the threat. He couldn’t picture it. It felt wrong. He wanted to trust in that part of himself.

He recalled that giant dragon.

When he had punched CRC away and given up on his possibilities, he had felt a disgusting sensation.

A future where he and CRC could stand side-by-side smiling had been lost. Kamijou had made sure of it.

And the fear caused by his prophesied death made him feel this way all the more.

Would he use that against Alice this time?

Like hell he would.

“Because I can’t save Alice that way. Isn’t there some other way!?”

Index and her 103,001 grimoires were here. So was Othinus, who had once been a Magic God. Not to mention Anna Sprengel, who was familiar with Rosicrucianism and the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Combining those three’s knowledge could reveal a way of saving Alice.

But…

“That really depends on your definition of ‘save’,” said Othinus. “Human, would you really be saving her if you grabbed that oversized head and shoved it back inside the small body? Back inside that shed skin?”

She was a god who had once destroyed the world and been pursued by all of humanity as a great criminal.

That Magic God was saying this about ''another monster capable of ending the world''.

She said it clearly, without averting her gaze from reality.

This was nothing as over-the-top as saving humanity or protecting the world.

It was a more personal miracle.

But she was speaking to the boy who really had risked his life to save a lonely god.

“You are here, human. So make your own choice. This here is the real Alice. She isn’t pure or innocent, but if the world can accept her this way, that would be one way of saving her.”

“Oh,” said Kamijou, sounding exasperated.

He just had to bring Alice back to her senses.

He kept that in mind while ignoring the issue of how difficult that would be to actually pull off.

“So if I risk my life, a path opens up?”

That was the best news he’d heard all day.

In that instant, an explosion erupted out.

Something twisted and scattered around right in front of his eyes. It took him a moment to realize they were fake roses.

Or that he would have been decapitated if not for them.

Alice had attacked.

He didn’t know why.

It was possible she didn’t either.

She was a captivatingly beautiful monster, but she was not a villain.

He had to believe that.

How deadly she looked had nothing to do with whether she was good or bad. She would bare her fangs whether it was right or wrong and whether she liked you or not. She was an unstable collection of power with only that function.

So he couldn’t falter.

He couldn’t turn Alice into a monster. He couldn’t accept that conclusion.

“Fool, the rose is a symbol of change. This applies to the Golden brooch that can create any sigil through the orderly arrangement of the 22 Hebrew letters and it applies to white and red roses colored with paint in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. ''By forcibly altering the interpretation and building a bridge,'' I can divert at least one of her attacks.”

Anna Sprengel stared straight ahead as she said this, but she had a red wound running across her cheek.

That had only been a villain’s trickery.

Kamijou couldn’t expect it to work forever.

But he should be plenty thankful it had worked at all in this real confrontation.

And while deflecting the attack was all well and good, he had no idea what Alice had done even after being on the receiving end of her attack.

The animal roared loud.

“Oooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Was that magic?

It was an apocalyptic roar.

A great energy grounded in something other than intelligence and reason spiraled out. The roar reflected off the walls and floor before gathering unnaturally on a single point in space.

Anna swept her little hand from left to right.

That was all it took for a thick shockwave to bend like a bow and knock over a few bookcases.

It was actually Alice who paused for a beat.

With her right hand still jabbing out with the fingers together. Perhaps that would have knocked off Kamijou’s head and then stabbed through his corpse’s heart before it could even fall to the floor.

''Slap!!

Little Anna, who would look better than anyone delivering a double slap, sent another attack sweeping up from below.

This may have been a first.

Alice Anotherbible’s attack wasn’t deflected or redirected – it was stopped from head on by an attack of equal power.

“Kh.”

“Why do you look so surprised?”

The little villain grinned and exchanged a glare with Alice at close range. Anna accepted Alice’s gaze without trying to escape.

She was a Transcendent not based on Alice.

She was another irregular Transcendent.

“Did you think you were special? There’s no such thing in the world of magic. I’m a magician who dressed up as Kingsford so I could stop my foolish students from ignoring my teaching and attempting self-destructive magic. I built my secret art from the ground up with the hands I had bloodied attempting to protect those lovable fools. Did you really think my way was inferior to the secret art you were simply given and have no real use for!?”

Alice’s hand was fully deflected.

She spun around, her partially-retracted arm blurring into streamlines. She chose a new target to attack. Index was chosen first, so Kamijou shoved the nun out of the way.

Fingers capable of tearing through steel rushed toward Kamijou.

Flashes of light intersected like a cross.

The fingers and claws sent horizontally toward Kamijou’s throat were stopped at the last second by an extremely thin blade.

Courtesy of H.T. Trismegistus.

No…

“My right hand contains Zeus. My left hand contains Indra. Thus I am renewed. Z.I. Trismegistus conversion complete!!”

Blinding white flashed from the point of contact between the struggling sword and fingers.

That was probably a high-voltage current.

The electrical energy was powerful enough to burn through a metal panel thicker than a thumb.

Of course, this wouldn’t be enough to defeat Alice. But dazzling her eyes for a moment meant a lot.

It gave Kamijou time to fall back.

“What the hell!? Can you just pick a side and stay on it!?” complained Othinus.

“Common sense says…”

The young butler hung his head.

He clenched his fist hard enough for his sword cane to creak.

“Common sense says I cannot expect Christian Rosencreutz to show up and save us here and now. And not just him. No one who isn’t present can do anything to help. I was wrong to place my hopes on people like that. No matter how complex and challenging the world’s problems, it is up to the people living in it to solve them.”

Now that he was freed from his bonds, H.T. Trismegistus spoke clearly.

“It is the people with us now who will decide how this ends. So it would be foolish in the extreme to not make use of that right. So says common sense!!”

Alice Anotherbible had tremendous power.

That power led a great many people to gather around her. But the Transcendents who had wanted to use her to make themselves special may have seemed like a stale and uninteresting bunch to Alice.

But that wasn’t all.

It couldn’t be.

In addition to the power someone had forced her to carry, Alice had drawn quite a few people to herself in a different way. No matter what anyone might say, as much as she might resent the magician who had created “Alice Anotherbible” and however she saw things herself, Alice had not been alone. She had been loved.

Because if she wasn’t, Kamijou Touma, Anna Sprengel, and H.T. Trismegistus – people with such different positions and intentions – wouldn’t have all gathered here like this.

They wouldn’t have been working together to save Alice.

“Hey, Alice.”
She didn’t say anything, but Kamijou still smiled.

He was certain that Alice had the wrong idea of what it meant to be an adult.

When adults ran into problems, they asked for help. They would rely on and depend on others. They simply did their best to hide this in front of the small children.

Trying to do it all yourself and thinking you could solve anything if you had a special power was a child’s way of thinking.

So he had a lesson for her.

And for the world’s greatest illusion.

He would teach her that letting her ugly side show wasn’t going to destroy her world.

Alice Anotherbible wouldn’t be a lonely monster.

He wouldn’t let her.

An invisible wall had shattered inside Kamijou Touma.

He could deal with the deadly prophecy later. Because he had found something more important.

“If you think you can use your power to twist everything to your will… If you think you can take everything you loathe and make it everyone else’s problem…”

A perfectly ordinary high school boy clenched his right fist.

Tightly.

“Then I’ll destroy that illusion!!!”

None of the problems had been resolved. The boy had only adjusted his internal priorities.

Kamijou Touma would die today.

''But so what?

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter3

2024-04-24T13:44:06Z

Entei08: Looking at the raw, Othinus wasn't suggesting Alice enjoyed telling everyone Touma will die, she was referring to a third party, which would be H.T. Trismegistus because he still planned to have Touma killed at this point. This links to Anna's second line that "a certain someone suggested the fool’s death"

==Chapter 3: Prophecy – Last_Branch(of_Die).==

===Part 1===

Late at night in District 7, Anna Kingsford stood at the very top of an enormous crane.

She stood tall and simply directed her gaze overhead.

The night sky seemed blotted out by the lights of the city, but viewing the clear stars in the sky gave this expert access to more information than searching the world linked together by fiber optics.

And she only used this for just causes.

Which was what made her an expert.

(The ⭐s are in place. That boy should become aware of the branch he passed by now.)

She sighed.

That was a complete side issue.

For one, Kingsford had never directly met Kamijou Touma. Which made him no more than a stranger in the same city as her.

(But awareness does ❌ allow him to change it. It may be his life, but he can ❌ change the decision he made on a branch he has already passed. Just like CRC passed a crucial branch ''and was defeated in a ⚔️ he should have won easily.'' The greatest enemy in an individual’s life is their own karma.)

“Not that he can ignore it now that he knows.”

But she would not just abandon him.

That expert did not consider her own interests, the state of the battle, or even whether or not she knew the boy.

He was a complete stranger?

So what?

If anyone was troubled, uncertain, or suffering, she was already taking action.

Anna Kingsford had perfected that way of life.

A fool who had yet to reach that point spoke to her.

It was the human named Aleister.

“Where are you going, Kingsford?”

“To serve others.”

“That’s my job. There’s no reason for you to continue fighting!!”

Even her battle against Rosencreutz had essentially been a miracle.

She had not actually won the battle. CRC could instantly search for any information about the world, but he had ''just so happened'' to overlook the fact that Anna Kingsford was a preserved corpse. If not for that, he would have destroyed her more thoroughly and she couldn’t have recovered.

She was reliant on unpredictable miracles.

Even a magician who mastered the field to the point of being known as an expert would lose eventually.

She had to know that.

Alice Anotherbible had easily crushed and killed CRC and so thoroughly eliminated him from the world that he could never recover. She was a true monster.

Kingsford had not reached that point.

She had to understand that. She wielded great power using the correspondence between the microcosm within a person and the macrocosm of the physical world around them, so she would have thoroughly analyzed herself in that way.

But the woman with a proper understanding of magic’s essence smiled as she responded.

She was accurately viewing her own fate, but she didn’t hesitate to speak.

“This is 👋.”

“But!!”

Contact with the new Board Chairman had been lost.

They couldn’t hope for anymore cooperation, so they had to settle this on their own.

The situation was clearly worsening and Alice was even more powerful than CRC. Certain death awaited Kingsford. Alice waited in a land that brought death to all who set foot there.

“Aleister. You must have understood from the beginning that I am ❌ more than a preserved corpse. You are only using ⚙️s to move an already ☠️ body around, so I never was alive. I escaped the previous ⚔️ intact by pure luck, but ❌ even that can save me next time. This ☠️ body will find only ☠️.”

“…”

As an expert who understood the secrets of the world of the living and the world of the dead, she was not too attached to her own life.

The only ones who clung to life with such ugly desperation were the half-baked magicians who remained fixated on this one life.

Still, he understood in his own inexpert way.

Anna Kingsford was an expert through and through. She didn’t even think of clinging to life or staying in this world forever.

She was only interested in eliminating the unknown threat making someone suffer before her eyes.

She didn’t even consider whether or not she had ever met that person.

She had no intention of returning. Her win condition didn’t even take that into account.

She was an example of how far people could go if they mastered their field.

“What was my role meant to be? I was supposed to be a trump 🃏 for use against the unbeatable Anna Sprengel. Now that Miss Sprengel has been freed from her wicked ⛓️ and that ⚔️ need ❌ be fought, my purpose is complete.”

Aleister had no response to that.

Because she was exactly right.

This goodbye could not be avoided. This was Aleister Crowley’s reward for wielding superhuman knowledge, doing what no one else could do, and enduring trials normal people would never even know existed. Kingsford was correct that the greatest enemy in an individual’s life was their own karma.

He was already in checkmate.

And yet…

“That just means I have to do the work myself.”

He understood it intellectually but he still tried to fight it. Was that because Aleister was an inexpert and ugly human?

But you must never forget that, while that human had accumulated a lot of bad karma, he would never stop struggling for his own ends.

“Aleister Crowley officially died in 1947 and stubbornly clung to life until he actually died battling Great Demon Coronzon. I’m as dead as you are. If someone has to save that boy, I’ll do it. I can do it if necessary!! And I’m better suited for that role. The wickedest man in the world should be standing up to the world even after death, not a pure and proper holy woman!”

“But you are still fixated on this 🌍.”

She shot back.

A true expert did not bother arguing about secrets.

She had already seen into the depths of his mind that even he wasn’t consciously aware existed.

She did it naturally.

And kindly.

“Conscious or ❌, you hijacked that great 👿’s body to cling to life. Either you still have something you want to do in this 🌍, or there is something you are ❌ yet willing to give up here. Dying for him is not the same as living with him. It never can be. Either way, it is too soon for you. Everyone dies eventually, so there is no need to rush toward ☠️. Live out your life first, Aleister. You can prepare yourself for ☠️ once you have done that.”

Kingsford smiled as she said this.

Smiled faintly.

Aleister lightly clenched his empty right hand.

He felt the pressure of a staff so twisted his fingertips tingled at the mere sight of it.

Special numbers scattered from his hand like sparks.

“I’ve had enough. What if I said I would stop you by force?”

“I would knock you aside and continue on my way.”

“Kh.”

She didn’t even hesitate.

She said it gently, like it was a foregone conclusion.

Kingsford used no more than words to overpower the victor of the Battle of Blythe Road.

He couldn’t say she couldn’t do it. He was already well past his limit with Alice Anotherbible and Anna Sprengel. He had only so insolently decided to make use of this preserved corpse because he couldn’t handle them.

Trickery, betrayal, surprise attacks, intrigue, and – when necessary – direct confrontation.

He had used every trick in the book to drive the world’s greatest magic cabal to destruction at the Battle of Blythe Road, but none of it would work here.

He could not win in a direct one-on-one confrontation.

If Anna Kingsford went all out, Aleister had no way of opposing her. He knew she would simply prove how inexpert he really was. He would never manage to get his hands on the switch hidden below her skin.

“I do ❌ want you to ☠️ here. No number of previous ☠️s is any reason to accept ☠️ next time. So I will use all of my power to defeat you here. Soundly enough that you do ❌ have enough strength left to go out and ☠️.”

That was contradictory.

Kingsford kept saying she would not let people die so easily, but she was about to head out for her own death.

She was saying she would use up all of the tickets provided for her as a thinking and moving preserved corpse.

But that gentle smile of hers made the contradictory premise and conclusion seem to fit together with no problem.

It was strange really.

Was this the essence of magic known only to the few true experts – a position Aleister had yet to reach? This was the human-made miracle of protecting everyone you encountered and spreading smiles everywhere you went.

He couldn’t stop her.

This wasn’t the ''divine cosplay spell'' that simply let one dress up in the appearance and abilities of a god. Nor was it the reverse logic where one tried to divulge the workings of the world to rebel against the god they so hated.

With a quiet bump, the failure of a student buried his face in Anna Kingsford’s chest.

He sniffled like a child.

“I don’t want you to die.”

“I know.”

“You shouldn’t have to die.”

“That I met someone who feels that way and that I inspired these feelings in you, who felt betrayed by everything, tells me that I have won a victory against this 🌍.”

Clear drops spilled out.

Anna Kingsford held the lost child’s head to her chest and whispered gently to him.

She stroked the inexpert one’s blonde hair like a mother.

“I think you did have need of my preserved corpse. Especially on December 31. If no one had stopped Anna Sprengel, the 🌍 would have been thrown into chaos before CRC could even be reborn.”

One by one, the expert explained everything to the fool.

She taught him some terribly simple things that no one had ever before taught that human.

Not his parents who had thought meaningless strictness was a virtue, not his teachers who had failed to correct the social problem left in their care, and not the Golden magicians who had abandoned their pursuit of knowledge to spend their time on ugly internecine conflict.

Even though these should have been the first things he was taught.

“But you must ❌ toy with life. Because you are powerful enough to do so with ease, you have ❌ way to keep yourself focused other than using pure willpower to manage yourself. The ☠️ have their own dignity. Humans remain human even in ☠️. You ensured your own pain from the moment you disrespected the ☠️ for the sake of the living. Improve yourself, Aleister. If you do ❌ fear taking the long way around to avoid pain, there is much you can learn. Just like any magician.”

“…”

“And do ❌ worry, lost child of the living. You will not be alone. As an expert, I will do whatever it takes to save the one you care for. Even if it requires every trick in the 📖. So there is ❌ chance you will be crushed by loneliness.”

===Part 2===

Kamijou Touma heard a wet sound.

It came from inside his body.

He thought he must have imagined it.

But the sound of rotting flesh falling away was so distinct.

“…”

He was dying.

He was certain of it in that brightly lit classroom.

It was an unavoidable fate. No one had cruelly pushed him to this point. There was a chance he could have survived had he given up on saving others, but he had chosen this path for himself while on the dark side.

He felt an odd scraping.

Was that the wound from Aradia he felt in his right side and spine? The odd feeling in his neck would be H.T. Trismegistus.

Everything felt normal-ish, but that lack of extreme pain only terrified him more.

Something was definitely happening to him.

He couldn’t tell what was happening inside him. He only felt a vague disgust. It was like his silent organs were changing color without sending out any kind of alert. Death. The end. An invisible pressure. A cruel time bomb with the LCD timer omitted.

“Human…”

Even Magic God Othinus only groaned that word before falling silent.

There was no recovering from this.

''“You will die.”

''“That doesn’t change my answer.”

Thinking back, he had made that fateful choice when that god wasn’t with him.

He had carelessly made such an important decision on his own.

Of course he had screwed it up.

Everything had been wrong from the beginning.

How many times had he availed himself of Good, Old Mary’s resurrection? In other words, ''how many times had he died on the way here''? In just a few days’ time? Maybe you would survive certain death, as if by mistake, once over your long life. But he seriously doubted those bugs or errors would occur in his favor every single time like that. Not to mention that he was plagued by misfortune due to his right hand, so lady luck would never smile on him in that way.

The flaw wasn’t in Good, Old Mary.

Bringing him back to life even once was more than enough of a miracle.

The problem was him having her use it so many times in such a short period of time without considering the usage limits.

''He couldn’t fool death any longer.

''The corner of the mask was starting to peel away.

“Hey, teacher, why do you think the girl wanted the grimoire library?”

“…”

“Because the girl wanted to use the library’s knowledge to do something she couldn’t? To correct her broken head? No, the girl is already perfect and unbreakable. The answer is simple. ''The girl wanted to help you after you passed the final branch.'' The girl wanted to search through a library of all the world’s knowledge to find some method still remaining in this world. That was all.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………”

He had passed the fatal branch.

He had foolishly chosen to cross it and he had arrived at a mistaken destination.

Which one of them was really in need of help?

“If the girl found it, she would use it. If not, she would give up, deciding the world was just too shallow. There are billions of people in this wide world, so if not even one of them has a way to save you, it means they didn’t try hard enough and then the girl would have to punish them all with her power.”

H.T. Trismegistus had said he had always been one of the Killers.

He had said the swiftest and surest way to take Kamijou’s life was to have him meet Alice. He had been right.

It didn’t help the deathly ill to fear the doctor’s prognosis. Kamijou understood that. They had come down with the illness much earlier. The real problem may have been from their exercise, diet, or other life habits.

Nevertheless, that fear was real.

The tables had been turned.

The symbol of death had shifted from Alice Anotherbible to another girl Kamijou knew quite well.

White. Pure white. The all-knowing nun who was always by his side.

He felt no pain.

He wasn’t even given the right to writhe in agony as certain death approached.

The pressure mounted.

Like he was being slowly crushed by an incredibly thick invisible wall.

Which was more horrific: being turned to red and black spray by the world’s fastest linear motor train before you could even feel the fear, or having your body gradually drawn into the wheel of a local train as it pulled into the station?

With no malice, the girl spoke with an innocent smile.

“Well, teacher? Let’s go see the grimoire library! The girl can’t diagnose you, so we can have the all-knowing nun do that part☆”

===Part 3===

H.T. Trismegistus watched from a distance.

He had known Alice Anotherbible longer than any other member of the Bridge Builders Cabal. After all, he was the one who had discovered her in the modern day.

But there was a lot the young butler did not know.

Most notably, he did not know her origins.

Where was she born, where was she raised, where was she altered, and from where had she fled?

He didn’t have a single answer.

It had only been pure coincidence when he found her in a city abroad. She was in the shadows of a roofless shelter. She had tremendous value as an open-source spell, but he had not realized this until well after taking in the wandering girl.

At first, she had been like a wild animal.

She had gone so wild he had questioned what she had even eaten to survive.

It was nothing more than luck that Alice hadn’t known how to use her power. If she had chaotically wielded her power as Alice Anotherbible at that point, she probably would have destroyed the entire world.

Alice was smiling innocently next to someone else.

She wore an expression he had never seen before.

That much was fine.

The young man simply obeyed. Of course, this was for himself, not for Alice. H.T. Trismegistus was a Transcendent who had abandoned his magic name to dress up in the appearance and abilities of a god. He could only view the world and choose who to save based on the salvation condition he had set for himself. So the first person he had to save was not himself or Alice.

He was the guardian deity of common sense.

He protected the people against anything that altered people’s sense of normalcy: war, rioting, disaster, loneliness, disease, famine, financial panic.

He sought a master who would save the world.

''Or to put it another way,'' the only person he would allow to distort common sense was the bearer of the paradigm shift that would guide all of humanity to the next stage. He could not leave this in the hands of just any old charismatic leader.

Was Christian Rosencreutz the one he sought?

Or was it Alice Anotherbible?

His objective was clear, but a question occurred to the young butler.

He knew his salvation condition.

But who exactly did he want to save?

===Part 4===

On the District 7 bridge, the Transcendents vs. Transcendents battle was trending in one direction.

“Tch! Good, Old Mary!?” shouted Aradia, holding onto the railroad crossing barrier she had borrowed as a broom and clinging to the side of a steel beam distributing the bridge’s weight.

But the woman collapsed on the cold asphalt did not respond.

That was a bad sign.

Good, Old Mary was the foundation of their recovery magic, but she had suddenly collapsed.

This was worse than simply losing one of their number.

Vidhatri, the brown-skinned woman with model-like proportions, shook the arms and legs of the Dhatri ball-joint doll she wore on her back, intricately manipulating white thread and black hair as she whispered to Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

“Do you still need support?”

“Nope. Everyone can do their own thing. Instead of assigning as many Transcendents as we can to attacking a single point, it would help me if we increased the total number of attack points to fill up the processing power of their minds.”

Something hovered through the air.

Some teacups and saucers were slowly flying around

Those were symbols from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The Bologna Succubus noticed and groaned while breathing heavily with her hands down on the ground.

“Kssshhh, they’ve made it this far?”

“Ha ha☆ Of course they have.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet smiled calmly.

A single smile on that extremely lovable face summoned a great black dragon into the night sky. Was the twisting serpent actually tens of thousands of starlings? They were not venomous, but in great enough numbers, any creature was a threat to human life.

The instant the Bologna Succubus looked up at the black dragon filling the entire night sky, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet took a large step forward.

Without hesitation.

“Kh.”

Now was not the time to be overwhelmed by the intimidating numbers.

The Bologna Succubus flapped her wings to gather as much air as possible.

She launched herself straight to the side.

The coat-shaped blast-resistant suit covered in thick metal panels snapped shut like a ferocious beast’s jaws. It was a sweet-smelling iron maiden. The air inside that isolated space was compressed with no outlet, producing a strange sound much like a steam engine.

The Bologna Succubus had just barely avoided it.

If she had carelessly stayed in place, she would have been “devoured”.

Instead of feeling fear, she gathered offensive power between her brows.

(Argh. I can’t let this chaos be unleashed on the boy’s city.)

What were Kamijou Touma and Alice Anotherbible doing right now?

She couldn’t predict how few seconds a regular Transcendent would last against Alice if she were serious about fighting, but it was still much too dangerous to let that boy stand defenselessly before Alice.

The alluring demon smiled bitterly at that thought and focused her feelings on the battle at hand.

“Oh, what’s this?”

Smiling, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet again spread her arms wide. Slowly.

Almost like a solid wall, a stifling nectar scent emerged from the blast-resistant suit and pushed toward the Bologna Succubus. Even at this distance, she had to stay focused to avoid getting dizzy.

What was happening in that closed world?

The skinny girl(?) wearing an apron over her naked body giggled before speaking.

“This won’t hurt at all, so don’t worry. I’m more interested in creating a gentle world where even the unloved are loved equally. Did you really understand my salvation condition? Kee hee hee☆ I have love even for a filthy sex demon, so get over here and let me give you a hug!!”

“Killing with pleasure, huh?”

“Ah ha ha☆ This is Total Courtship! Welcome to the sweetest, most luxurious ending to a life♪”

Roaches could rapidly build up a resistance to deadly insecticides, so they couldn’t necessarily be killed by escalating the chemical suffering. Instead, there were products that ''tricked them'' into thinking ethanol, acetaldehyde, sotolon, or another chemical compound was delicious food, luring them into the trap where they would take a different chemical back to the colony to kill them all at once. Humans didn’t just use what their target disliked – they would also use whatever their target most liked.

This girl similarly used love to kill. She was a super sweet monster who had continually honed the emotion of love into a deadly weapon. If you simply increased your defenses to prevent pain and prepared ordinary attacks, she would ''slip past them all'' and kill you instantly.

She was a specialist in that.

This Transcendent was a different form of strongest, whose trump card was the complete opposite of the Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress which converted all forms of pleasure into pain.

Her victims were robbed of even the right to feel fear as they were filled with no more than ''happiness'' until they lost their life. In a trippy world where everything was vague, they would cross the final line without intent or resolve.

They were stranded.

She had complete control over them, not even giving them a chance to speak their final words.

She brought a death more certain than a .44 caliber bullet and its name was love.

“Yeah, I don’t think we could ever get along.”

“Kya ha ha☆ You’re only saying that because that makes it more exciting, aren’t you!?”

This must have been her combat form.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had her enormous blast-resistant suit spread wide to display the terrarium trapped within. The skinny naked-apron girl pushed out a nectar scent so powerful it caused heartburn. And she took a casual step forward.

“You didn’t find it remotely odd? We’re all regular Transcendents here. A clash between our two groups shouldn’t end so easily. Yet you’re being easily defeated in a one-sided game. Is it a bad matchup between the individual Transcendents? Do our spells combine so well it’s like we were dealt a royal flush? No, that could never happen.”

“…”

“''No one can defeat Alice Anotherbible.''”

For this alone, she took on a respectful tone.

Almost like she was reading off the handwritten creed only she believed in.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet thought only of her own blessings as she spoke euphorically.

“You underestimated the meaning of that statement. And that optimism has brought you certain death. It doesn’t just mean you won’t survive a direct physical fight against Alice. There’s no getting around it. We control all of the coincidences and all of our baseless hunches and inspirations will work out in our favor. We have the ''trends'' of the world on our side. That is what it means to ‘resonate’ with Alice and take the winning side. To be clear, we are only firing blindly from the hip. You’re the ones ensuring we hit you.”

Vidhatri.

2nd Saga.

And Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

The Bologna Succubus’s side was being worn down, but all three of them were unharmed. She had gotten a few clean hits in on them, so had they managed to shrug off the damage?

And she was slipping past their expectations and landing an attack they failed to dodge or defend against, so it made no sense for them to be changing their stance to reduce the damage with 100% accuracy.

That wasn’t their individual abilities.

It was their “resonance” with Alice Anotherbible.

“Defying her means death. You had lost from the moment you bet on there being an exception to that, like that you could move beyond her reach, hide where she couldn’t find you, or escape punishment if your defiance was indirect. Not that she would let you get away with this even if you had been correct.”

“How are you on Alice’s side when you only love yourself?”

“Isn’t it cruel to expect such a small child to judge everything so accurately? They say to let your child make mistakes to learn from them, but do you think that kind of harsh parental love will work on that girl? Alice is simpler than that. Which is what makes her so frightening. At her mental age, she probably sees anyone who praises her and spoils her as her ally.”

And it didn’t end there.

“Heyyy.”

Something enormous was parting the large river to approach.

It was a special warship measuring around 100m long.

That was small compared to a nuclear aircraft carrier of more than 300m long, but it was undoubtedly a warship.

Plus, this was not the ship itself.

It was made out of smooth white shadow.

A girl’s lazy voice played from the speakers probably meant for giving warnings or making threats.

Come to think of it, hadn’t one of them seemingly vanished?

“This took some time to prepare, but I’m back.”

The ship’s bridge stood taller than the iron bridge.

She must have torn down all the other bridges spanning the river to clear a path here. It made you wonder which side was doing more damage to Academy City.

Aradia’s eyes really did bug out as she shouted.

“Mut Thebes!? What is that thing!?”

“You don’t know? It’s the Academy City drone carrier Kagenui.”

An aircraft carrier had to carry multiple large aircraft, necessitating a great size. Submersible and aerial aircraft carriers could not be made because the size and weight affected their balance too much. ...But that accepted principle had been overturned by shrinking the aircraft down by eliminating the cockpit and turning them into drones. Even the maintenance work could be carried out by an unmanned maintenance factory within the ship.

As usual, Academy City loved making bizarre things.

But now wasn’t the time for exasperation.

That was a carrier.

“Go, everyone.”

A series of explosions rang out. The boxy canisters on the flat deck rose up and opened fire. There were electrically ignited guns that could fire at a rate of a million rounds a minute. It looked like a programmed fireworks show. In truth, the honeycomb-like holes on the front of the canisters were releasing a large number of flying objects. By spreading their movable wings in air, they gathered in orderly teams and flew in formation. Now both sides had a flying swarm. The drones clashed directly with the tens of thousands of starlings ruling the night sky.

The assumptions and superiority had been overturned.

One side was alive and the other was machine.

When they were both controlled remotely and were equal in number, it went without saying whether the small birds or the man-made meter-long aerial weapons would win.

Perhaps the counterattack was necessary.

But as the drones pursued the fleeing starlings, their machinegun fire stabbed into the skyscrapers built along the river and sent sparks exploding from walls as thick power cables were ruptured.

“Mut Theeeebes!!!”

Aradia roared in anger, but then she stopped.

The brown girl was acting weird.

“Yayyy. Who wants to take a killer selfie? Just tell me when and I’ll get the timing right for you. Yippee! Let’s keep this Alice Parade Party going☆”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet giggled.

She clearly welcomed this turn of events.

Mut Thebes wasn’t enemy or ally – she was losing all awareness that she was participating in the battle at all. She was throwing that aside to enjoy herself. And her actions were clearly working against the Bologna Succubus’s side.

They sensed a trend in the series of unpleasant coincidences.

“I believe it’s called Acute Kotatsu Syndrome. Basically, Alice affects the group psychology of an area when she stays there long enough. Did you think you were ''immune'' for some reason? Even magicians and Transcendents will be engulfed by Alice sooner or later.”

“…”

“That includes all of us. Yes, you are no exception, Bologna Succubus. And most likely, neither are we. We will all lose our sense of who is on whose side in this mad tea party. The world that people across the globe have worked so hard to create could end today, but in a way that could mean the arrival of an age of peace. If everything is engulfed and everyone is a victim, then the distinction between enemy and ally loses all meaning.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet made it sound so obvious.

But it didn’t add up.

They were using their all-important salvation conditions as an excuse to love themselves and preserve their power by protecting Alice, so they wouldn’t want an ending where they were engulfed by Alice’s madness and lost sight of who they were. Narcissists who cared about themselves more than anything else in the world would never seek out a form of satisfaction created by having their internal aesthetic sense altered.

“''Do you have any idea what you’re saying''?”

“Ha ha☆ What? Are you saying I’ve already broken too''?”

It didn’t sound like she cared.

Someone on her level had lost the right to feel fear and disgust, or even detect that anything was amiss.

This space was going mad.

It had started at a single point, but the entire world would be this way eventually.

Whether or not Alice Anotherbible wanted it.

This was ominous enough to make that prediction.

“It doesn’t really matter. No one can defy Alice whether they put up a resistance or not.”

“Are you shoving responsibility for the world onto Alice’s shoulders while you alone abandon the effort of living, like you’re just a tree, grass, or flower, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet!?”

“Hee hee☆ Total Courtship – ready for dissemination. Now, I think I’ll pack you so full of super-sweet love that all your veins burst. Alice hates it when you try to lecture people like that, which is why she’s striking back at you, you know?”

===Part 5===

“…”

Anna Sprengel saw it.

She had supposedly divined the location of Kamijou and Alice, but ''something had gone wrong'' and she ended up here instead. Were you not even allowed to walk in a straight line without the proper credentials in this wonderland?

Everything within a 400 radius of the iron bridge was a zone of death. Crowds who had never even seen Alice directly were filling the streets due to her influence, but not even they would approach that area.

It may have been a type of instinct.

Just like people’s homing instincts worked even when drunk, the boys and girls who had lost sight of reality still knew they should keep away.

Although even that instinct would probably melt away eventually.

Once that happened, the world really was over.

Anna wanted to rescue Kamijou Touma. She wanted to fight against Alice Anotherbible with him. She wanted to protect him.

But so much depended on that bridge where an ''unnatural amount'' of things had gathered.

If those Transcendents scattered across the city again, Kamijou alone wouldn’t be able to deal with them. Then his world would simply fall apart.

So.

Before that happened…

“What are you planning?”

“!?”

Anna heard a female voice.

From right by her ear.

She belatedly spun around.

But she did not find one of the Transcendents who relied on the easy ''divine cosplay spell''. This was an expert who carried a magic name in her heart, stood on her own two feet, and had chosen for herself to take on the wide world.

It wasn’t a logical thing.

But Miss Sprengel could not hide the trembling and the cold sweat that came from her very soul.

“Anna Kingsford!?”

“You really should ❌ try it. It is ❌ like you. Two groups of Transcendents are ⚔️ing and one side is winning. Adding one more fighter to the fray will ❌ make a significant difference. As a self-proclaimed villain, you should know that quite well.”

“Why would you stop me? It shouldn’t be any skin off your nose if the fake Anna dies.”

“It would be. Because I do ❌ want you to ☠️.”

Kingsford didn’t hesitate.

The true villain was not used to being told these things so directly.

(First that fool and now her.)

Taken aback, little Miss Sprengel lost her chance to strike back and Kingsford laughed elegantly before continuing.

That smile was so much like Miss Sprengel’s, but she could never imitate it.

“It does appear that the side of the ⚔️ supported by ❌, resonating with Alice has the advantage. Transcendents are, after all, the false gods created when modern magicians used the incomplete 🪄 they created by analyzing the one and only success case: Alice Anotherbible. They have always been incomplete and unstable. They have a model. It should be obvious they will be 💪er when supported by the completed Alice.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? If Aradia’s side loses, who will be left to help that fool? Even if the entire world joined forces against Alice, I’m not sure it would work! And if the Alice-addled Transcendents gathered here end up scattering across Academy City, they could completely destroy that fool’s cit-”

“You only need to supply a ⛰️ greater than Alice.”

It didn’t even take a full second.

Kingsford placed her index finger on her slender chin and gave the answer with a confident smile.

An expert was a powerful guide in and of herself.

Just like sailors lost at sea would rely on the sun and moon in the sky to find the way back home.

“Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, Vidhatri, and 2nd Saga… They are borrowing a special power by resonating with Alice. So we just have to supply the same condition. If someone else leads the Transcendents, this problem is easily solved.”

Anna Sprengel only showed exasperation on her face.

Preparing a rival even more powerful than Alice was Kingsford’s idea of easy?

“I suppose someone as special as you would have no problem doing that,” said Miss Sprengel.

“Me? ❌, the only one who can do this is you.”

This time, Miss Sprengel’s eyes opened wide.

This had to be a joke.

“W-wait. I-I am no more than a common 2nd-rate magician who expanded my appearance and abilities by borrowing your name but still had to boost my specs further with Aiwass!!”

“Belittle yourself all you like, you are still an irregular Transcendent. Plus, you borrowed someone else’s name, but you did ❌ acquire the necessary 🪄 by analyzing Alice. You did your research from the ground up and successfully ‘👗ed up as’ Anna Kingsford. Which puts you on equal 🦶ing. We must refer to you as an irregular Transcendent for the exact same reason we refer to Alice Anotherbible that way.”

“…”

“You can do it.” Kingsford made this point clear. “Both you and Aleister have accomplished so much, so I can ❌ fathom why you both insist on belittling yourselves at every turn… I am saying there is something only you can accomplish, Miss Sprengel. I can ❌ do it. No matter how unnecessarily ashamed you are of yourself, your 🪄 to 👗 up as someone else is something that never occurred to me. Using that to help others qualifies as praiseworthy service if you ask me, but do you disagree?”

Silence.

Eventually followed by a wet sound.

It was the sound of a sniffling nose.

“Don’t tell that fool.”

“Sigh. I really think it is ⌚ the world recognized your talents.”

“Don’t tell him.”

“As you wish.”

“Then come forth, Aiwass!! Come to me, the walking amplifier for my will that has a mind of its own!!”

“Took you long enough, my benevolent genius.”

Anna Sprengel and Anna Kingsford.

The long-held conflict between them had been resolved.

Now they stood side by side, wielding great magic to protect an innocent life.

===Part 6===

The massive bridge had clearly been bent by an impact from the side. Cracks ran through the asphalt, steel screws larger than golf balls popped forcefully from the metal beams, and the joints between the girders swelled upwards.

The black bass and bluegills seemed harmless at first, but even at 500g each, tens of thousands of them still amounted to a large weight.

With the most lovable face, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet only had to blow a kiss to control them all.

Good, Old Mary had already collapsed after taking one to the center of the chest.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet chose Aradia as her next target.

It didn’t matter that she was directly facing the Bologna Succubus right now.

She set her sights on the witch goddess who stood on the complex arrangement of metal beams used to distribute the bridge’s weight.

“Look!! The world’s most high-tech city will have any number of unloved creatures: black bass, bluegills, rats, stray cats, pigeons, and starlings to name a few. Now, false goddess, let’s see how you handle the love-starved laments of the unloved!!”

“Tch!!”

“''Hee hee☆ Or should I send the unloved humans your way''?”

As soon as Aradia stiffened, stopping her interception spell, a babbler soared sharply toward her unguarded flank. A direct hit would probably kill the wild bird, but it would go through its death throes while embedded deep inside the wound and its beak and feathers would spread contaminants around.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet stuck out her tongue.

But the night wind that reached her was no more than a night wind.

It did not carry a rusty scent.

“?”

Had it missed?

When the support from “resonating” with Alice Anotherbible should have acted as a ''tailwind'' for all her actions?

Even though simply firing blindly from the hip should have always hit the enemy?

Before Blodeuwedd the Bouquet could pursue that question, Vidhatri shouted from where she stood.

“2nd Saga!! Eliminate her now!”

“Hee hee.”

An alluring female face and limbs appeared in the dark night. She was around 18, at the midpoint between girlhood and womanhood.

But that was all that was visible.

The pieces floated separately. No, her torso had clearly been torn apart. It now contained strange hollow spaces. Had her human silhouette unraveled like bandages? Was it due to the thick ribbon that had been wrapped around her torso? The lights of the city were visible in the space beyond her partially eliminated body.

The space seemed somewhat distorted.

Or maybe it was a type of ''camouflage''.

Aradia faced this person who was strange even for a Transcendent. She had the face of a girl with short flaxen hair with the interior dyed bright blue.

“2nd Saga. Do you derive some special meaning from covering and hiding things?”

“I’ve always had trouble choosing just one thing. I never want to throw anything out, so my room always ends up a mess.”

Saga was a goddess from Norse mythology.

She was said to be extremely powerful and to manage the spring where Odin is gifted with poetry and wisdom.

But she is barely mentioned throughout all the Norse monuments and texts.

Barely anything is known about her other than that her home is called Sokkvabekkr.

Information on her was scarce.

She was a mysterious figure who is simply known to share drinks with the top Norse god.

This woman had gone out of here way to choose a god like that.

She had wanted to be her.

Aradia spat annoyed words with the yellow and black railroad crossing barrier in hand.

“If a single performer tries to forcibly dress up as multiple gods, the traits of the gods cancel each other out, diluting their presence. We normally have strict rules about what we can’t do if we want to stay in character and keep our costume authentic, but I didn’t expect one of us to take advantage of that fact.”

“By intentionally keeping a low profile, I can do things other gods can’t. I am not the star of the show. But if a tree or a bush does something they shouldn’t, the audience has no way of knowing if it was correct or not. This allows me to be a performer on the stage while also freeing me from the bonds of the script. I am the only one allowed to be myself.”

“…”

“I am the Transcendent ''who saves all the bit parts and understudies who never get any attention.'' I can’t look down on them if I’m to do that. I need to understand how they feel and be one of them first.”

She disappeared.

Did she unleash her skill to the point she became one with the air?

The bluish-white armor partially surrounding 2nd Saga’s limbs vanished into the air, causing what little of her skin and face were still visible to look unnaturally alluring.

The bright round skin of her face was like a device for giving off sex appeal.

The pupils of her blue eyes were colored an impossible bright red. Did she use a light-bending technique to pull that one off?

Even with her full body unraveled, the individual pieces were made of captivating feminine skin.

But if a member of the opposite sex were caught by her like this, it would probably break his mind.

The strange avant-garde woman sneered.

“My name is 2nd Saga, a fictional god created on the mischievous whim of the compiler. Which allows me to ''add on'' any magic I wish which is never actually found in Norse mythology. …Now, it is time you lost your one and only life. The divine curse – that is, the light of Brisingamen, necklace of infidelity – can even trigger a war between world-destroying kings. Do not assume an individual can escape that deadly fate!!”

It started at the center, where her chest had been.

The thick ribbon, which bound her skin and showed the city behind her, created a transparent distortion much like sugar water, which spilled beyond her outlines.

It forcibly gathered Aradia’s focus on a single point, much like having a finger jabbed between the eyes at close range.

Aradia sensed a definite deadliness in this unknown phenomenon.

Was she mistaken, or had that been the true trigger?

The impossible distortion became a large artillery shell that tore through the air.

This was an assassination spell.

It was guaranteed to take a life.

And the user could sidestep their own sin by saying they were only adoring the beautiful gold and jewels. The necklace brought doom, but it allowed the user to claim they didn’t know it was cursed and thought it was only a beautiful piece of jewelry. Was that to insure they would not be hit in the unlikely case that the curse was sent back the way it had come?

Aradia snorted with laughter.

The rails were laid out nicely, but it was all nonsense with no actual mythological basis. The sky is heaven, the gods shine bright, the workings of salvation and divine punishment, cats are capricious and dogs are loyal – by combining the common symbols found across cultures, anyone could fake apparent legitimacy.

Yes, this was faked.

''Her cosplay was sloppy.'' Gods were meant to draw a strict line between right and wrong, so they couldn’t accept – much less use – a loophole like this. A real god did not choose their words carefully for fear of backlash or controversy. Even the cruelest act could be written off as “divine punishment” if it was truly necessary.

And even if this curse would pursue Aradia to the ends of the Earth, there was only one thing she had to do.

“''There just have to be two Aradias''.”

“Wha-!?”

Immediately after 2nd Saga’s dumbfounded shock, the invisible curse tore itself apart with its own power.

The chilly moonlight shined on two identical people.

The black and yellow railroad crossing barriers resting on their shoulders crossed like swords mounted on a wall.

Aradia hadn’t actually done anything. The curse simply hadn’t been designed to handle an abnormal situation where two identical people existed. It was unable to deal with the situation it found, so the single shell attempted to pursue two targets at once, tearing itself apart from within.

It dissipated.

It disappeared.

“Don’t you dare call this cheating. This has always been our role – we’re the perfect performers. And it was all of you who created ''a second one'' and brought her here without even asking me.”

Right and left.

The identical Aradias launched wind magic that struck the formless Transcendent.

The tides were turning.

“…”

Vidhatri was dumbfounded.

But she wasn’t simply shocked that a Transcendent receiving a ''tailwind'' by “resonating” with Alice Anotherbible had been defeated by a Transcendent who had that link severed and was alone in the storm.

More than that…

“''Why did you have that idea just now''?”

“''What do you mean''?”

“It also doesn’t make sense that you avoided Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s initial attack. Even if there was a way for you to defeat 2nd Saga, it never should have occurred to you!! That kind of support comes from Alice. How did you break through the thought masking!?”

“I would assume conditions have changed somewhere away from here.”

“Tch!!”

Panic spread through the air, infecting the entire space.

Vidhatri seemed rushed by something unseen rather than her own will as she unspooled a lot of white thread and black hair from the ball-joint doll she wore on her back.

By intentionally omitting all mention of something, that spell let her erase anything she didn’t like from the small world set up around her. If she erased everything that could kill her, then no one could defeat her.

A moment later, a dull impact struck her cheekbone. Something flew in from the side and Vidhatri was launched spinning through the air. The impact permeated her. Before she could figure out what had happened, her ball-joint doll broke apart and her model-proportioned body soared over the pedestrian railing and toward the dark river below.

But Aradia hadn’t done anything.

“You were focused on the wrong person, dumbass.”

Aradia glanced over to see a small figure standing boldly atop a metal beam.

It was Anna Sprengel.

“Keh heh heh. Alice no longer rules this world. Worms, bow before me and beg for your pitiful lives. It wasn’t you who created the Shrink Drink – you needed Alice’s help for that. Yet all you worthless regular Transcendents had the nerve to look down on me and try to kill me!!!”

“Before she could figure out what had happened, huh?” the goddess of witches whispered in exasperation. “So Vidhatri could preemptively eliminate any threat, but she was defenseless against any threat that never occurred to her.”

If anything, that was a lot like the death of the immortal Norse god of light, Baldr. That similarity was ''not'' a case of cultural transmission between India and Europe. It was instead evidence of the Transcendents not actually being strictly bound to a single god or even a single mythology.

“Have you imagined your own fate yet, 2nd Saga?”

“Have you imagined your own fate yet, 2nd Saga?”

“!?”

Multiple beams of light flashed out at once.

The two Aradias held out their palms to launch projectile magic toward the figure leaping vigorously from beam to beam. The attacks actually hit 2nd Saga. It was hard to believe she had been so untouchable just a bit ago. She was knocked from the beam above to the bridge below.

Mut Thebes (who was on their side but had lost control of herself) had her drone carrier stopped by a three-legged object that appeared out of thin air. That was Good, Old Mary’s Tribikos.

The tides had turned in the blink of an eye.

The only one left was Blodeuwedd the Bouquet in her coat-like blast-resistant suit and naked apron.

Aradia approached her directly, the Bologna Succubus glared icily at her, and bloody Good, Old Mary slowly rose to her feet.

“Wai-”

The dull “thump!!” of pierced flesh rang out.

The Bologna Succubus had launched her sharp tail and caught Blodeuwedd the Bouquet in the shoulder.

Using a frontal attack with no tricks.

The force of the blow broke the iron-maiden-like blast-resistant suit and the double doors covered in metal panels fell to the asphalt. With her protection gone, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s bare skin was exposed to the frigid air while she scattered junk from her terrarium and UV LED lights. The night wind carried away the flower petals.

“This is already over,” said the Bologna Succubus.

Her voice was colder than it ever had been when that boy was present.

The naked apron girl backed away, but her legs tangled underneath her.

She fell like normal.

Her specialness was gone.

“You forgot about your salvation condition, you abandoned the people you should be saving, and you thought only of preserving your own power. And then you blamed Alice for it all. …So this is already over. You have nothing left. Nothing at all.”

“You’re going to win this...and take everything from me?”

With only her frilly apron left, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet held her wounded shoulder with the opposite hand and struggled to keep her breath.

The powerful sex appeal she gathered around her had dissipated, leaving behind only the fear of a small child.

“This is all we have. You can’t tell me the idea of losing your power doesn’t scare you.”

“I am a Transcendent. I choose who I should protect and then guard those people from the threat this world presents them. Which is why I abandoned my own identity to dress up as a god,” said Witch Goddess Aradia. “My salvation condition does not include myself. And I would never rob innocent people of their future just so I could keep my own shameful life.”

With a dull sound, the Transcendent ended things with the Transcendent.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was the last one.

There had been others, but they raised their hands in surrender when they saw the tides changing. That was about what you got with people who only worried about themselves.

But with Alice ''Anotherbible'' as an open-source example, more Transcendents could be created. Just like there were two Aradias here.

Remaking the city’s people into makeshift witches wasn’t an option here like it had been in Shibuya. If Academy City espers used magic, they would be harmed by the side effects and, if Alice wanted to, she could produce an unlimited supply of regular Transcendents. Those would be literally a grade above.

Any victories won fighting on the outer edges would only be temporary. And with only limited numbers to work with, they wouldn’t last if they were forced to fight the same battles over and over.

“This was no more than an opening skirmish,” said Anna Sprengel despite understanding that.

She was another host and open-source example who differed greatly from the Alice line.

They couldn’t stop here.

“Our real target is Alice. This rioting doesn’t end until she’s been stopped. The Queen of Hearts and Executioner waiting near Alice could easily be more powerful than the regular Transcendents.”

“If you have the time, could you deal with her too? Mut Thebes is shooting off ‘fireworks’ like this is some kind of party, so it would be great if you could bring that idiot back to her senses!!”

“Oh? Silly girl, are you sure you don’t want to take a video first?”

The giant white ship shook.

She must have been freed from the unseen physics that could be seen as Alice’s ''tailwind''.

Mut Thebes must have absorbed the weapon’s shadow, but where exactly was she attached to it?

“Bff!? Wait, wait, I’ll be good.”

“Finally come to your senses? Then take a look at the collapsed city around you. I can’t wait to see what kind of excuse you can come up with while dripping with sweat, God of Partying.”

“But if my partying was enough to destroy an entire city by accident, doesn’t that make me a super powerful goddess? And since we can all see how ultra-cute I am, can’t I get off the hook with a quick: ‘Oopsie. Tee hee’?”

“Good, Old Mary, use your Tribikos to step on that god of destruction, ship and all. It’s January, so dunking her to the bottom of the river ought to cool her head.”

Aradia icily passed judgment, but then a cracking voice came over the ship’s speakers.

“Oh, and the drone carrier’s antenna picked something up,” said Mut Thebes.

“?”

“It wasn’t encrypted or anything, so it was a lot like a radio transmission. Maybe it’s best to say this is being sent out all over the place. They might have been hoping we would pick it up. It’s being transmitted from ''a prison in District 10'' and it says it’s about Alice Pleasance Liddell.”

===Part 7===

After seeing off the little magician who had freed herself from her self-made bonds, Anna Kingsford sighed all on her own.

The end was nigh.

“Now, then.”

(I need to prepare for my part in this.)

===Part 8===

There were no subjective symptoms.

Kamijou wasn’t even allowed any obvious pain or bleeding.

Then was this a delirium or hallucination caused by all the stress he was under?

Except there was something there.

With each step he took down the long hallway, he heard a sound like thin threads snapping inside him. Like the creaking of bone or the beating of his heart, these were delicate sounds that shouldn’t have been audible outside his body.

He had heard on some trivia show that the simple action of walking concentrated a lot of weight and force on the leg bones. If that was true, then his body could no longer keep up with his movement. His insides were already breaking down to that extent.

Death.

The unavoidable destruction of the self.

Alice apparently wanted to ask Index if there was a way to heal him.

But Kamijou already knew the answer.

This was different from any of the previous times.

Or rather, this wasn’t a one-off failure. Everything he had done had pushed him too far. He was finally paying the price for it all. No one could escape the consequences of their own actions.

The end was nigh.

And it was only now that Kamijou realized something.

In a battle so severe, why hadn’t he noticed anything amiss? His survival this long had been the unnatural part.

“Hm, hm, hm☆”

Alice Anotherbible skipped out ahead of him.

She turned back, her skirt lifting disconcertingly high.

“C’mon, teacher. Everyone’s here now, so you need to hurry. Good or bad, you wouldn’t want it to end without ever learning the answer, would you?”

“…”

That was the opinion of someone watching from the outside.

It was clearly missing the viewpoint of the person on the verge of learning if their death was unavoidable.

They did not arrive at a normal classroom.

That was the door to the library.

That should have made for a poor prison. A solid kick would probably break open the sliding door and the outside windows were probably ordinary glass.

But since Alice had chosen this location, it was probably impossible to open from inside. Even with the knowledge of 103,001 grimoires at your disposal.

The door opened.

From the outside, it was surprisingly easy.

Kamijou doubted that was Imagine Breaker’s doing. He probably just had Alice’s permission.

“Touma!”

He heard a familiar voice.

She wasn’t bound with packing tape or zip ties. The windows and door were not reinforced. But there was definite relief on her face. That was the look of someone who just saw the thick door to their prison cell open.

And her smile froze in place.

The pure white sister was not concerned by Alice and H.T. Trismegistus’s presence. She was clearly looking at something else. The boy could tell that even with the mixture of truth, lies, and hallucination in his head.

“No...what is that?”

Her eyes widened because of Kamijou.

She had already detected something out of the ordinary.

Whether Alice was aware of that or not, she spoke in her childlike way.

“Okay, teacher. Ask her!”

The young butler clearly knew what was coming and struggled to suppress a grin.

Malicious words and actions were not the only way to hurt people.

Because he was bound by common sense, H.T. Trismegistus would never hurl abuse himself. The look on his face seemed to say there was no law against silence.

“I...won’t.”

“You have to,” said Alice.

“There’s no reason to force her to give an answer!!”

“Leaving the question unanswered solves nothing. Stopping here only lets the problem grow worse with time. She has 103,001 grimoires. With so much knowledge from all around the world available to her, the girl just knows she can find a way to heal you!!”

Was it even possible?

Had it been definitively proven, or was it only a theory?

Alice didn’t care about that.

It could be the geocentric theory, phlogiston, an ancient nuclear war, or that dinosaur farts caused the ice age. Of course, it could also be something accurate like universal gravitation or quantum theory. Accurate or not, if a theory had ever been proposed – if someone had thought it up and put together the logic behind it – she could build a bridge to it. She could choose ''whichever theories she wanted'' and link to them to wholly change the world. She was the ultimate conversion device. She could place Yamatai anywhere she liked, she could invent a perpetual motion machine of the first kind to produce unlimited energy, or she could remake the spherical Earth into a flat disk.

So there just had to be a single section in the more than 10 thousand grimoires.

Just one passage.

Even a single line would do.

No matter how absurd or difficult to achieve it was.

Alice could easily activate it and save Kamijou.

''But.

''Even then.

Index did not give a yes or no answer.

She kept her silence.

That was enough of an answer. If she wasn’t willing to say it out loud, she didn’t need to.

Her attempt at kindness was ineffective.

The verdict had been given.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Death.

That was the only option left.

Kamijou did not weep or rage.

He even forgot to fall to the floor.

In a way, he abandoned his humanity.

He simply stood there, stock still.

“Hu…man.”

Othinus’s quiet voice was enough for his head to wobble.

There was nothing there.

It wasn’t even emptiness that filled his mind.

He felt a heat surrounding him.

He simply stood there, forgetting even to collapse.

There was no way to save him.

The world had not developed that far.

It was underdeveloped.

People had studied what they liked and technology had branched off into countless directions, but never in this one.

The world didn’t care.

Time would continue on like normal even after he was gone.

And…

“Then let’s destroy it,” said a young voice.

Alice Anotherbible sounded the same as ever.

No, her voice sounded dried out.

Terrifyingly so.

This wasn’t part of the plan.

She sounded like her surprise party plan had fallen apart.

“We have our answer. And if this world can’t save you, teacher, than the girl is going to destroy it. The girl heard what you said, so she knows this world wouldn’t still be here if not for you. So it’s only fair the world goes away when you do, don’t you think?”

“Wait! Don’t, Touma!!” sharply shouted Index.

The knowledge of her grimoires must have told her Alice could do exactly what she claimed. And that she would do it the instant Kamijou gave her some kind of sign.

He would never do that under normal circumstances.

But it was wrong to assume he would behave normally now that he knew he would lose everything.

y/n.

The available options had been narrowed down as far as possible.

The fate of the world hinged on this one question.

“I do not agree.” H.T. Trismegistus finally spoke up, his shoulders shaking as he didn’t even bother to suppress his chuckling. “Destroying the world for a single individual is wrong. Maybe if this would save his life, but you should not destroy humanity if all you are doing is lashing out. Some might consider it moving, but common sense says it is not a benevolent act.”

Alice’s eyes widened like dinner plates.

And she lowered her voice.

“''H. T. Trismegistus''.”

“As you can see…”

The young butler raised his hands and kept speaking, undaunted.

He didn’t seem to care that the invisible muzzle of death was pressed unsteadily against his brow.

“I can tell Alice what common sense says, but I have no real way of stopping her. This is ultimately between you and her. No, make your own choice, Kamijou Touma. You cannot rely on Another Bible here and not even all the world’s grimoires contain a means of saving you. So what will you choose in the final moments now that your death is assured?”

Othinus gasped and looked up from his shoulder.

She was the only person who had just about achieved a perfect victory against Kamijou Touma.

She knew this ending.

She knew this dead end.

Because the one-eyed war god had intentionally set up a situation just like this to kill the boy when he refused to give up no matter what else she tried.

“I see what you’re doing. Hey, human, don’t listen to-!!”

“Yes, you could go crying to Alice and have her take the world out with you. In fact, you needn’t even say a word. If you remain silent, she might just be considerate enough to do it on her own. But common sense tells me that Alice’s ''only'' motivation is making you happy. ''So you could eliminate Alice’s motivation by taking your own life before she destroys the world on your behalf.'' You will die soon regardless, so why not move up the timetable just a bit to save so many people?”

Mere moments before H.T. Trismegistus completed his encircling argument, someone kicked down the library door from the outside.

With no difficulty.

“Fool.”

It was easy to miss by how easily it happened, but this should have been an unavoidable critical hit. Kamijou’s path should have ended.

But it hadn’t.

Because someone wouldn’t let it.

You could develop an attack specialized for a single individual, but that individual didn’t need to fight alone.

Just by setting foot in here, little Anna Sprengel had accomplished what no one else could.

She was probably the only person in the world not affected by Alice’s madness.

She deflected it.

And that villain mercilessly stomped her way into Alice’s territory.

No one could stop her.

“Hmph. So only I made it this far in? I feel a little bad leaving Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the others stuck fighting an endless battle. You basically asked us to come and even showed us the way, but then you drove your guests away? When you think about it, that’s hilariously pathetic.”

“You?”

“You haven’t figured it out yet, you gloomy microdick? You should have known better than to trust your assumptions from the moment you couldn’t kill me with the Shrink Drink filled with Alice’s power.”

Anna chuckled and Othinus gave her a look more of exasperation than admiration.

“I see. So if you had actually killed that shitty villain, we wouldn’t be dealing with this nonsense about her ''outdoing Alice''.”

“Are you saying the world switched rails back then?” asked Index.

“That’s right, you dregs of a god and you pathetic loafer,” said Anna, giving Othinus and Index a scornful look. Then she spread her little hands. “The fool changed things. He moved many people’s hearts with his own actions rather than having Alice cheat for him. I did not achieve this miracle on my own. Don’t you think the first person to receive its blessings should be the one who worked so hard to make it happen?”

Yes.

No one had invited Anna. She did not have Alice’s permission. That meant she had faced Alice’s madness without fear, repelled it, and forced her own actions through.

She faced that tremendous charisma without being engulfed.

She had the brand name of the mystery woman behind the founding of the world’s largest magic cabal.

This villain carried a legend of equal value.

“Honestly. You always let everyone push you around when it comes to Alice, fool. Do you seriously believe in the nice-sounding but scientifically-baseless and perverted jinx that the unclouded eyes of young children reflect truths the adults have long forgotten? If you ask me, you should learn to ignore it all as ''the words of an ignorant little kid''.”

“Anna…?”

“You might die, fool.”

Kamijou’s breath caught in his throat.

The thick invisible wall once more intruded on the ordinary scene around him.

Death.

The end.

It was approaching second by second, yet he felt no pain. Like a cruel time bomb with the LCD screen omitted.

What was wrong with feeling fear?

But Anna wasn’t done talking.

“I said ‘might’. None of this is set in stone, but Alice is acting like it’s 100% going to happen. Why?”

Othinus caught on first.

Almost like the thought had been unnaturally blocked until now.

“Oh, I get it. Everyone would prefer the opposite outcome, but there was someone that enjoyed fueling the idea that he was definitely going to die.”

“It’s simple really. What did a certain monster need to do for him to drop his guard and let her in? What about showing him a greater threat so she doesn’t seem so bad? Just like I came off as a harmless companion when faced with the greater threats of CRC and Alice. But there is no threat greater at present than the Anotherbible. So a certain someone suggested the fool’s death.”

“Wait.”

“You should already know the answer. Alice Anotherbible only gets so assertive when it comes to Kamijou Touma. In a way, this is to be expected since I imprinted the fool’s past actions in her mind.”

It wasn’t her fault she had been deceived.

Anyone that little villain took advantage of already had an opening in them.

Or you could call it a vulnerability.

She could not create something from nothing. She pried open a small existing hole and then controlled them as she saw fit.

She was a reasonable but contemptible miracle-worker.

“The central factor for her has always been loneliness. Yes, I am the one who deceived her. Wherever she came from, I know the current Alice Anotherbible’s mind better than you.”

So?

What was that supposed to mean?

What was she imagining when she said that?

A cold sweat poured from Kamijou’s body.

For a brief moment, even his very real fear of death vanished from his mind.

“Hold on!! You’re not making sense. Alice means no harm. For better or for worse, what you see is what you get with her. Wasn’t that our initial assumption here? She can’t set people up, plot out some grand plan, or any other intellectual stuff like that!!”

“True,” agreed H.T. Trismegistus. “She is too powerful to do anything of the sort. Common sense says that someone capable of killing a dinosaur with a barehanded punch would never even think of inventing a gun, correct?”

“Shut up, you gloomy butler. And, fool, remind me who you came here to save?”

Anna sounded exasperated.

That was their initial assumption.

Kamijou had said that himself, but he had somehow forgotten it.

“I thought that issue had nothing to do with whether or not you will survive.”

“…”

He wanted to rescue Index and save Alice too.

That was why he had decided to fight Alice. That had been his initial objective.

And yet.

Why was he now seeking salvation from Alice?

Alice was the same as always. She was alive and well. It didn’t matter that her head had been crushed by Rosencreutz.

So shouldn’t he be rejoicing?

Shouldn’t he be weeping and laughing while hugging Alice?

Why was he being driven into a dead end?

''When had his objective been replaced?

''Who had caused that switch?

No.

…But…

It couldn’t be? Could it?

“Fool. I agree that Alice isn’t calculating enough to put together a long-term plan to fool people. Even telling her to ‘sit’ or ‘stay’ in front of a feast wouldn’t last very long. She may only be honestly saying what she believes to be right.”

That was a weirdly indirect phrasing.

Which suggested that phrasing was somehow necessary.

Othinus gave a snort.

“Yeah, I thought that was strange for a grimoire library whose job is to provide answers. Is this why she hesitated to give a response? Because she couldn’t easily reach a yes or no answer?”

The white nun, who was the polar opposite of the villain, spoke up quietly.

“But if Alice’s mind is too badly broken to tell what is and isn’t accurate, she might not be doing the right thing. Touma, you can’t trust that the things she tells you are accurate.”

Everyone’s eyes gathered on a single point.

Even H.T. Trismegistus, who had been taking advantage of the situation.

They heard a creaking sound.

Sounds like thick, straining leather came from within the girl as she hung her head.

“Those magicians could not change the world the way they wanted, nor could they follow their own rules after coming up with lofty salvation conditions,” said Anna Sprengel in a singsong way. “It probably was pure chance that very average group discovered the artificial miracle that is Alice Anotherbible before they began dressing up as gods. But they realized something.”

“…”

“In a mishmash of fiction and reality, a real girl had been remade into the storybook Alice and the storybook Alice had been created in the real world. They extracted a portion of those ‘plans’ and applied it to themselves. By customizing themselves as they liked with pieces of the preexisting open-source spell, they could abandon their individuality to dress up as any god or demon with extraordinary precision.”

The Transcendents really had transformed themselves that way.

At the cost of their own individuality.

For the Bridge Builders Cabal, the ''Anotherbible'' was a priceless text, but Alice was no more than a target of their worship. So they feared her and respected her, but they did everything they could to avoid third parties contacting her.

What had that lonely girl really wanted?

Or, more accurately, who?

“I see,” said Othinus on Kamijou’s shoulder. Sounding somewhat exasperated. “''This human was perfect for the role.'' I see now why that little monster was so obsessed with him.”

“Alice Pleasance Liddell listened to Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, the prototype for it all, and was the one clear model for the protagonist. But in a later era, she was abducted by a ‘Teacher of Crowley’ and thoroughly modified to create the Alice seen in the story.”

Little Anna herself proved that one’s apparent age wasn’t necessarily reliable.

Even if she was already an adult when she was abducted, the magician would have made the necessary adjustments. Very physical adjustments using a scalpel and saw. It may have taken cutting through bone, sewing together skin, and rearranging organs, but they would have kept working and adjusting until she had the exact same height and adorable appearance as the fictional girl.

That could not have been an enjoyable experience.

But after being freed from the mystery magician and finding a place in the center of the Bridge Builders Cabal, Alice had not been able to live the innocent life of the storybook. Even though she was already free and more powerful than anyone. She had given up on any life other than fulfilling other people’s interests.

And she really had become an innocent child.

She probably wasn’t even aware of her own humiliation and resignation.

Anna sighed softly and dug into the ugly side of humanity.

That was something Kamijou couldn’t do.

This was a territory only allowed for a worldwide villain.

She would carry the burden of everyone’s ire as she revealed the necessary truth.

“A parent who values logic has no dreams to share with their child.

“When Mathematician Lewis Carroll later began creating the world’s greatest fantasy, he laid out symbols and meanings, discovered a special child, and used her as a model to tell the prototype of it all: Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.

“A self-proclaimed Teacher of Crowley saw value in you as no more than the one and only specimen to know of the uncorrected original version, so they remade you by rearranging everything from your bones to your organs into the optimal color, shape, and size.

“When the Bridge Builders Cabal ‘rediscovered’ the girl still wandering in the shadows of the modern world, they only saw you as an open-source spell of great power. They feared and respected you in something more like worship than anything.”

And so the girl had been craving more.

Starving for it.

It mattered little if it was a conscious or subconscious thing.

Alice was always surrounded by so many people, but none of them were really looking at her.

Her reputation had preceded her.

With one exception.

There was one boy who did not want her power as a Transcendent, had rejected the “happiness” brought by her ultimate power, and faced her with nothing but his own fist no matter how many times he was killed.

It all began there.

Like dreaming of something from a storybook, a certain girl had thought that was her last chance there.

So she wanted it no matter what.

“Touma, stand back.”

“Ah.”

“Stand back! Now!!”

Hesitantly, Kamijou got his voice out from his parched and trembling mouth.

While asking himself what it was he was so afraid of.

“Al...ice?”

“Yes?”

''The girl raised her head.

''Except she no longer had anything above her neck.

===Part 9===

Aradia had finally caught up.

She walked through the high school’s front gate, setting foot inside its grounds.

Or so she thought.

“Tch!!”

She immediately swung her black and yellow railroad crossing barrier and was answered with a dull crack. It suddenly broke at about the middle. Even with the power of the goddess of witches, she was forced back.

Good, Old Mary, who was woozy from blood loss, muttered quietly.

“It looks like a rabbit, but it doesn’t have a watch. It must be the March Hare from the tea party.”

“One of the Alice Series!?”

The flamingo bats. The hedgehogs.

The Gryphon, the Executioner, the Cook.

These were Alice’s raw and unstoppable toys which magicians had not yet turned into tools.

They seemed to be fighting as two opposing armies, but here it looked like the enemy of your enemy wasn’t your friend. The flamingo bats and hedgehogs would sometimes attack the Transcendents without provocation, so they couldn’t be trusted.

The March Hare had apparently attacked just now, but which side was he on?

For that matter, why were different monsters born from Alice fighting each other in the first place!?

“What are we supposed to do?” asked the Bologna Succubus.

“We should have Good, Old Mary stay back. We shouldn’t rely too heavily on her resurrection, but we shouldn’t waste her by sending her up against an even more dangerous enemy either!!”

The school was a rather large place.

Where was that boy?

And while they were only regular ones, it was strange that a group of several Transcendents couldn’t get past this one position.

They supposedly each wielded strange spells capable of taking on the entire magic side single-handedly.

The Gryphon, the Executioner, the bipedal hare, and the Cook throwing irons and pots.

They were all Alice’s toys with their origins in Wonderland.

But while they were only toys, they had been directly injected with a portion of Alice’s power. As seen with the Shrink Drink, that power made these far from your normal foe.

Ultimately, the Bridge Builders Cabal did not exist for Alice.

It was the result of the regular Transcendents, who sought and feared her great power, struggling to find some way of managing her.

All on her own, Alice was more powerful than countless armies.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and Mut Thebes.

Those four Transcendents gathering here was no problem at all for Alice. She probably hadn’t even decided to fight against the Transcendents. This could be seen in how the toys continued fighting each other instead of driving out the intruders.

“By the way, where did Anna get off to!?” asked Aradia.

“Did that slut use mama and the rest of you as bait for these pain-in-the-ass opponents while she went on ahead? She did, didn’t she?”

They said nothing more.

First, they sensed a great pressure. Only a moment later did they feel the powerful tremor in the ground.

It was Dinah the cat.

The fluffy white and black beast had grown larger than the gym, so a single step caused the entire space to shake. The flamingo bats and hedgehogs ran around in a panic and the Gryphon failed to get away in time and had its front leg crushed underfoot.

It didn’t matter if they were on Alice’s side.

And the culprit – Dinah – wasn’t even aware she had done it.

She was the greatest force in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

She carried such great firepower that the mice and birds who caused Alice so much trouble had fled at the mere mention of her name.

If this really was her, then she might cause destruction greater than Alice intended for.

That meant there was a risk of her crushing the entire school building with Kamijou and Alice inside.

Which was exactly what happened.

With her back to the school building, Aradia briefly froze up, so the Bologna Succubus had to flap her bat wings and tackle Aradia from the side to send them both tumbling across the ground. A gust of wind blew past them like a subway train had passed by nearby. That thing was much too large for anyone human-sized to take a direct hit from it. Aradia didn’t have time to celebrate her survival. She roared up toward the heavens while still tangled up with the Bologna Succubus.

That was the most prized of Alice’s toys.

Deadly Dinah.

Only one Transcendent could hope to battle that giant that rivaled a school gym in size.

“Mut Thebes, stop that thing immediately!!”

“It is too soon for me to attack. Wait 15 minutes for me to absorb enough shadows to create a body that can safely face the cat.”

Aradia’s eyes widened.

Mut Thebes wasn’t going to be any help.

Dinah was charging head-first toward the school building.

And just before she crashed into it, a deafening roar rang out.

Dinah was knocked rolling back, gouging large pieces of dirt out of the schoolyard and sending tons of dust into the air. It made no sense. There was no thick barrier there and no steel warship had appeared.

There was only a single human silhouette.

It looked downright minuscule compared to Dinah, who was large enough to look down at the gym.

Nevertheless, it was Dinah whose max-speed charge had been repelled, sending her rolling backwards.

“Wha-?”

Aradia was speechless.

This wasn’t even a Transcendent.

“Honestly.”

A voice came from the cloud of dust.

Aradia’s group did not recognize the voice. But the female voice inspired a compulsion that prevented even the Transcendents from taking it lightly.

“Alice Anotherbible has fallen apart more than I 💭. All of these things are a 🧩 of her – they are the many opinions she has ❌ been able to reconcile. I did ❌ expect her to be so overwhelmed with emotion that she nearly crushed her own 🏰 with her inside.”

This was Anna Kingsford.

The magician stood there on her own two feet without borrowing anyone’s appearance or abilities.

A moment later, the dirt thrown high into the sky was pulled back down by gravity.

It was like a dry rain.

Kingsford casually directed her index finger skyward and something invisible became a large umbrella. She alone was left without a speck of dust in her hair or on her clothes.

Something sliced sharply through the dusty veil.

It was a flamingo bat and the Cook.

Both sides of the conflict arrived at once.

Kingsford extended a single finger and drew out a few patterns in empty air.

They were constellations.

Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces.

The sharp sound was a moment delayed.

A scattershot of compressed water tore through the Cook like a cookie cutter through dough. When her blue-glowing fingertip turned toward the flamingo bat, the bat began to tremble while hovering in the air. Despite being inorganic, it clearly shrank two sizes.

The basics of astrology were to assign various elements and symbols to the 7 planets and 12 constellations of the horoscope and then experiment to see what effects were produced on yourself and others when they were applied from different angles and combinations. There were even tricky ways of building them into attack spells.

So by combining only the water element constellations, you could greatly amplify the power of ordinary water.

Instead of simple addition, it worked through multiplication, so it was like shifting up a gear in a car.

That expert did not bother coming up with impressive special attacks.

By earnestly working at the basic fundamentals that anyone could do and that novices tended to look down on, any magic could be brought to the point of a one-hit kill.

But none of that was particularly important.

For one, that wouldn’t be enough to kill Dinah.

“I will ❌ let you destroy the things you care about, Alice. That would be much too 😢 to see. I assure you on my name as an expert, being special does ❌ cut you off from the supply of ☺️.”

Just then…

“…?”

Anna Kingsford looked down at her right hand.

A red liquid was dripping from it.

She only had a slight cut on her fingertip, but the amount of blood was not the issue.

She shouldn’t have been harmed at all in that situation.

That expert never made mistakes.

So if something unexpected occurred regardless, it meant the problem was with the initial data she was working with, not her calculations.

In other words…

“Is this body reaching its limit?” she whispered, holding her fingertip in her mouth.

Her voice itself was a lot “rougher” than it had been when she was first booted up in Shibuya’s Miyashita Ark. It wasn’t limited to her outward appearance. This proved the injury and deterioration was also progressing where it couldn’t be seen.

She didn’t show the slightest hint of fear as she looked out ahead.

In fact, she took a step forward.

The cat large enough to crush the gym rose to her feet again.

Kingsford couldn’t continue on and leave this with the regular Transcendents. She had never figured out how to pick and choose who she saved.

These were Alice’s raw toys, which had yet to be turned into easy-to-use tools like the Shrink Drink. And this cat was the greatest of them. She was a mass of violence and destruction that wouldn’t bat an eye as she trampled all the other toys.

Dinah.

The expert faced the cat head on, holding the brim of her large hat between her fingertips.

She doubted her body would last to the end.

For that matter, it was unnatural for a preserved corpse her to be moving around at all.

(But I can accept that.)

So she decided on a more realistic goal: injuring Dinah enough to create an opening or weak point the Transcendents could take advantage of to defeat Dinah on their own.

The expert knew her doom was closing in on her, but she still spoke with her usual smile.

“⌚ to serve others.”

===Part 10===

She was a headless girl.

A little corpse.

Yet she was also standing up and looking at Kamijou.

He distinctly felt the pressure of her gaze.

The atmosphere in the library changed. The scales were rapidly tilting in a direction he did not like at all.

“!?”

Without thinking, he stepped back away from her.

This was an expression of malice that shouldn’t have been necessary.

Which proved it had been intentional.

It was true after all.

No matter how you looked at it, the center of the problem was right there.

It always had been.

Kamijou pushed past the fear of death he knew was coming and shouted.

“Alice!!”

He heard a sound like tearing cardboard.

No, not like. The headless girl really did tear down the center. And something else emerged, sticky with a translucent fluid.

This had happened before.

But this was not the little girl dressed in profane red and black leather.

This form could never have fit in that small body.

But she wasn’t accepting questions.

At the top of the vertical tear, near where the head should have been, an arm jutted straight up, but this arm belonged to a captivatingly beautiful woman. With a splat, she collapsed forward to crawl like a dog. The translucent slime left behind strings that stained the floor. She squirmed like a fluffy red boa. The leather bound her bright, wet body more tightly than necessary and her long blonde hair was so wet it writhed on the ground as a single clump. After instantly becoming a woman of about 18, she crawled forward and swung her head upwards. The wet hair covering her face swung back behind her, revealing her beautiful face.

“Touma!!”

Alice Anotherbible.

Or maybe Alice Pleasance Liddell.

Her true form.

“Did you use yourself as the ingredients to recreate the ideal version of yourself?” said Othinus in disgust.

Alice worked her alluring throat to release growls and her fingers scratched at the floor like an animal with sharp and sinister claws. She could not have been farther removed from reason, intelligence, and innocent adorableness.

Violence.

Battle.

Killing.

That was all she was.

She shined with the same light as a sword that had had been made so deadly it gained an odd beauty.

The fear of death was gone.

Even that thick invisible wall had vanished.

Kamijou felt a tingling in the back of his head. With the sharp claws, the large canine teeth emerging from her lips, and the fearsome light in her eyes, he knew there was so much he needed to focus on, yet he couldn’t read even a hint of deadliness from her. But he knew this wasn’t Alice doing anything special. His own mind had numbed the fear. Because if he accurately understood the threat here, his heart would stop of its own accord. His heart would raise the white flag before his mind did.

The animal rose to her feet.

The fully grown body of an alluringly beautiful woman straightened her legs and stood up like she had only just remembered she could.

She took a fighting stance.

“Teacher…”

That one word created a distortion.

But not in Alice. The bookcases, the reading desks, the floor, the walls, and everything else Kamijou could see looked like a child had scribbled out their outlines in white and black.

“The girl…wants…only one goal. She will…have this…no matter…matter what.”

He could have understood if she said she would kill him just for fun.

Or if she said she deeply resented him.

Even if she said she would destroy the world based on some inscrutable logic, he might have decided that made sense for someone so very different.

But.

“The girl wants...to make up...with you.”

Everything froze.

Inside Kamijou Touma, time ground to a halt.

Was that it.

Was that really and truly all there was to it?

At the Bridge Builders Cabal consulate in District 12, Kamijou and Alice had disagreed over her attempted punishment of H.T. Trismegistus, who had tried to kill him, and Good, Old Mary, who had failed to protect him.

CRC had killed her and she had regained her lost head.

She had driven the world mad and might destroy it as soon as tomorrow.

But this had never changed.

She only wanted to mend that broken bond.

No matter what it took.

Even if her methods were seen as unfair.

That little girl didn’t care. Kamijou should have bowed his head and apologized, but he had completely forgotten after learning about his imminent death.

Nevertheless, she was trying to achieve it on her own, even if it meant dirtying her hands.

So they could smile together again.

“So.”

It all took a turn.

Her behavior was distorted.

Only in Alice’s mind did it all fit together smoothly.

“The girl will make up with you. She will fight you because a serious fight allows people to make up. But it has to be serious, so what can the girl do to get you to fight her? This city, this country, and this world can wait. It has to be serious. The girl understands you, teacher, so she knows you will fight her and make up with her.”

She said it all in a terribly ''drawn out'' and flat, emotionless voice. Her emotions were so intense it was all destroyed, like the recording medium itself was being burned from below by a lighter.

Alice probably really could do that.

And what would happen?

Would the world really end over this?

Maybe Alice could no longer make logical connections between the different pieces of data.

Kamijou had thoroughly broken that girl’s mind.

Issues of right and wrong or like and dislike were trivial at this point. They would no longer provide a dividing line between enemy and ally. This wasn’t like mantises that were programmed so the female would always eat the male. Perhaps it was closer to spiders where the female would sometimes suddenly leap at and devour the male in the middle of the male’s courtship display. Even with the same species facing each other one-on-one, and even with the male expressing his love and the female accepting it, she might mercilessly devour him on a whim. She would only realize she had done it after the fact. You couldn’t predict what would happen even a second into the future with a being like that.

She was such a close but distant being.

She was different.

She was a predator beautifully made by stretching out the muscles, laying out the nerves, hardening the bones.

Kamijou didn’t find her frightening anymore.

He felt sorrow instead.

“Stand back, fool,” coldly insisted Anna Sprengel.

The look she gave Alice was unusual for that villain.

Alice was another irregular Transcendent – another open-source path to power – but one who would never stand on the same side as Anna. Anna gave her a look of pity.

“You understand, don’t you? She’s a lot like an unstable animal. If you approach her now, she might turn you to mincemeat without even meaning to. In the worst case, she might decide that, if she can’t have you alive, she will tear off your head and take that away with her.”

Kamijou shook his head.

Would he battle Alice?

And defeat her?

“I can’t do that.”

This wasn’t about the size of the threat. He couldn’t picture it. It felt wrong. He wanted to trust in that part of himself.

He recalled that giant dragon.

When he had punched CRC away and given up on his possibilities, he had felt a disgusting sensation.

A future where he and CRC could stand side-by-side smiling had been lost. Kamijou had made sure of it.

And the fear caused by his prophesied death made him feel this way all the more.

Would he use that against Alice this time?

Like hell he would.

“Because I can’t save Alice that way. Isn’t there some other way!?”

Index and her 103,001 grimoires were here. So was Othinus, who had once been a Magic God. Not to mention Anna Sprengel, who was familiar with Rosicrucianism and the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Combining those three’s knowledge could reveal a way of saving Alice.

But…

“That really depends on your definition of ‘save’,” said Othinus. “Human, would you really be saving her if you grabbed that oversized head and shoved it back inside the small body? Back inside that shed skin?”

She was a god who had once destroyed the world and been pursued by all of humanity as a great criminal.

That Magic God was saying this about ''another monster capable of ending the world''.

She said it clearly, without averting her gaze from reality.

This was nothing as over-the-top as saving humanity or protecting the world.

It was a more personal miracle.

But she was speaking to the boy who really had risked his life to save a lonely god.

“You are here, human. So make your own choice. This here is the real Alice. She isn’t pure or innocent, but if the world can accept her this way, that would be one way of saving her.”

“Oh,” said Kamijou, sounding exasperated.

He just had to bring Alice back to her senses.

He kept that in mind while ignoring the issue of how difficult that would be to actually pull off.

“So if I risk my life, a path opens up?”

That was the best news he’d heard all day.

In that instant, an explosion erupted out.

Something twisted and scattered around right in front of his eyes. It took him a moment to realize they were fake roses.

Or that he would have been decapitated if not for them.

Alice had attacked.

He didn’t know why.

It was possible she didn’t either.

She was a captivatingly beautiful monster, but she was not a villain.

He had to believe that.

How deadly she looked had nothing to do with whether she was good or bad. She would bare her fangs whether it was right or wrong and whether she liked you or not. She was an unstable collection of power with only that function.

So he couldn’t falter.

He couldn’t turn Alice into a monster. He couldn’t accept that conclusion.

“Fool, the rose is a symbol of change. This applies to the Golden brooch that can create any sigil through the orderly arrangement of the 22 Hebrew letters and it applies to white and red roses colored with paint in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. ''By forcibly altering the interpretation and building a bridge,'' I can divert at least one of her attacks.”

Anna Sprengel stared straight ahead as she said this, but she had a red wound running across her cheek.

That had only been a villain’s trickery.

Kamijou couldn’t expect it to work forever.

But he should be plenty thankful it had worked at all in this real confrontation.

And while deflecting the attack was all well and good, he had no idea what Alice had done even after being on the receiving end of her attack.

The animal roared loud.

“Oooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Was that magic?

It was an apocalyptic roar.

A great energy grounded in something other than intelligence and reason spiraled out. The roar reflected off the walls and floor before gathering unnaturally on a single point in space.

Anna swept her little hand from left to right.

That was all it took for a thick shockwave to bend like a bow and knock over a few bookcases.

It was actually Alice who paused for a beat.

With her right hand still jabbing out with the fingers together. Perhaps that would have knocked off Kamijou’s head and then stabbed through his corpse’s heart before it could even fall to the floor.

''Slap!!

Little Anna, who would look better than anyone delivering a double slap, sent another attack sweeping up from below.

This may have been a first.

Alice Anotherbible’s attack wasn’t deflected or redirected – it was stopped from head on by an attack of equal power.

“Kh.”

“Why do you look so surprised?”

The little villain grinned and exchanged a glare with Alice at close range. Anna accepted Alice’s gaze without trying to escape.

She was a Transcendent not based on Alice.

She was another irregular Transcendent.

“Did you think you were special? There’s no such thing in the world of magic. I’m a magician who dressed up as Kingsford so I could stop my foolish students from ignoring my teaching and attempting self-destructive magic. I built my secret art from the ground up with the hands I had bloodied attempting to protect those lovable fools. Did you really think my way was inferior to the secret art you were simply given and have no real use for!?”

Alice’s hand was fully deflected.

She spun around, her partially-retracted arm blurring into streamlines. She chose a new target to attack. Index was chosen first, so Kamijou shoved the nun out of the way.

Fingers capable of tearing through steel rushed toward Kamijou.

Flashes of light intersected like a cross.

The fingers and claws sent horizontally toward Kamijou’s throat were stopped at the last second by an extremely thin blade.

Courtesy of H.T. Trismegistus.

No…

“My right hand contains Zeus. My left hand contains Indra. Thus I am renewed. Z.I. Trismegistus conversion complete!!”

Blinding white flashed from the point of contact between the struggling sword and fingers.

That was probably a high-voltage current.

The electrical energy was powerful enough to burn through a metal panel thicker than a thumb.

Of course, this wouldn’t be enough to defeat Alice. But dazzling her eyes for a moment meant a lot.

It gave Kamijou time to fall back.

“What the hell!? Can you just pick a side and stay on it!?” complained Othinus.

“Common sense says…”

The young butler hung his head.

He clenched his fist hard enough for his sword cane to creak.

“Common sense says I cannot expect Christian Rosencreutz to show up and save us here and now. And not just him. No one who isn’t present can do anything to help. I was wrong to place my hopes on people like that. No matter how complex and challenging the world’s problems, it is up to the people living in it to solve them.”

Now that he was freed from his bonds, H.T. Trismegistus spoke clearly.

“It is the people with us now who will decide how this ends. So it would be foolish in the extreme to not make use of that right. So says common sense!!”

Alice Anotherbible had tremendous power.

That power led a great many people to gather around her. But the Transcendents who had wanted to use her to make themselves special may have seemed like a stale and uninteresting bunch to Alice.

But that wasn’t all.

It couldn’t be.

In addition to the power someone had forced her to carry, Alice had drawn quite a few people to herself in a different way. No matter what anyone might say, as much as she might resent the magician who had created “Alice Anotherbible” and however she saw things herself, Alice had not been alone. She had been loved.

Because if she wasn’t, Kamijou Touma, Anna Sprengel, and H.T. Trismegistus – people with such different positions and intentions – wouldn’t have all gathered here like this.

They wouldn’t have been working together to save Alice.

“Hey, Alice.”
She didn’t say anything, but Kamijou still smiled.

He was certain that Alice had the wrong idea of what it meant to be an adult.

When adults ran into problems, they asked for help. They would rely on and depend on others. They simply did their best to hide this in front of the small children.

Trying to do it all yourself and thinking you could solve anything if you had a special power was a child’s way of thinking.

So he had a lesson for her.

And for the world’s greatest illusion.

He would teach her that letting her ugly side show wasn’t going to destroy her world.

Alice Anotherbible wouldn’t be a lonely monster.

He wouldn’t let her.

An invisible wall had shattered inside Kamijou Touma.

He could deal with the deadly prophecy later. Because he had found something more important.

“If you think you can use your power to twist everything to your will… If you think you can take everything you loathe and make it everyone else’s problem…”

A perfectly ordinary high school boy clenched his right fist.

Tightly.

“Then I’ll destroy that illusion!!!”

None of the problems had been resolved. The boy had only adjusted his internal priorities.

Kamijou Touma would die today.

''But so what?

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Chapter3

2024-02-03T17:14:51Z

Entei08: I have checked the raw and this line should actually be Touma calling Mut out on her hypocrisy instead.

==Chapter 3: Relying on R&C Occultics – Secret_DB.==

===Part 1===

''Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

The siren was deafening.

The Six Wings attack helicopters were approaching.

Aradia was straddling the gun barrel and the 8-wheel mobile combat vehicle had been interpreted as an unidentified flying object violating restricted airspace.

Anna Sprengel had made a mess of Academy City, so they had plenty of reasons to want to kill her.

“Can’t you destroy that stupid tech with the weapons!?” asked Aradia.

“All I have is this flat console monitor, but it doesn’t say what controls what! And Anna still isn’t responding!!” shouted back Kamijou, holding the dead-eyed little wicked woman along with her chair back.

And that wasn’t the only threat.

A giant shape passed by unexpectedly close overhead.

On the flat monitor, Aradia looked up.

“What now? Come to think of it, there has to be real one of that AWACS thing flying around for Mut Thebes to use its white shadow.”

“No! That’s a…transport plane!!”

Kamijou didn’t know the details. He only shouted the text displayed over the footage on the command seat’s monitor.

The craft’s large, wide shape resembled a whale and the cargo door at the rear sat open. It was in flight, but roofless unmanned military 4-wheel-drive vehicles slid out into the air as if on rails.

The mobile combat vehicle’s armor did nothing to protect Aradia while she was outside making the 20ton vehicle fly. If one of those landed on her, she would be squashed between the two vehicles!

“Aradia!!”

“I…know!!”

The inertial force shifted to the side as the flying mobile combat vehicle curved in an S-shape to avoid the falling metal. After a vehicle missed its target, it fell a bit further before deploying a trio of parachutes that blossomed like flowers. The transport plane continued pursuing them from overhead, dropping air cargo containers like dice. Maybe they were full of fuel and maybe ammo, but they weren’t guided air-to-air weapons and they couldn’t reach their target.

For a brief moment, everything was still, like the eye of the storm. The interior lights returned to the ordinary LED lighting.

But it wouldn’t last.

Something slowly arrived at an even greater altitude than the transport plane.

“Another large shape?” said Aradia. “C’mon, your sketchy tech can’t bring us down if it wasn’t designed for air combat.”

“No, this is something different. What, I’m not sure, but it’s bad news!!”

At first glance, its shape looked similar to the transport plane.

But it was not the same.

A portion of the fuselage slid open and a Gatling gun, a grenade launcher, and a tank gun emerged.

A strange term appeared on the console monitor: gunship.

Kamijou wasn’t sure what to make of the English term, but then the interior lights turned red again.

That was a lock-on warning. Did that mean this attack would be guided!?

“Evasive action! You can’t let this hit us!!!”

“Don’t boss me around when you’re just sitting inside yelling! I’ll obey this particular instruction, though!!” shouted back Aradia, forcing the mobile combat vehicle to swerve side to side.

A storm of destruction rained down on them. In addition to the bombing, the Gatling gun opened fire. It was like a searchlight made of lead and explosives. Each speck was a piece of lead larger than a thumb and they attacked at a rate of between 6000 and 8000 per minute. Aradia swung the Predator Octopus around to avoid the line of fire sweeping side to side from overhead. She slipped them right underneath one of the Six Wings still in pursuit.

The line of gunfire contacted the unmanned attack helicopter.

The fearsome Six Wings was torn to pieces and exploded in mere moments.

But they had survived.

Unfortunately, their umbrella made of composite armor and an aluminum and stainless steel frame had been shredded.

“Make sure you don’t bite your tongue!!” warned Aradia.

“Yikes!!”

Kamijou clenched his teeth hard while pulling in Anna who still sat limply in the command seat.

The screen showed Aradia running her hands along the gun barrel she was straddling. As soon as she took a forward-leaning pose like she was riding a motorcycle, the ground rapidly approached.

The explosion of the attack helicopter must have briefly blinded the gunship overhead.

They quickly passed the 4-wheel-drive vehicles still floating down on their parachutes. When the pursuing Gatling gun fire pierced one of the containers, tracer rounds scattered in every direction with the force of a firecracker. An ammo case must have been ignited. The way the container’s contents continued to go off while it floated down on its parachute was terrifying. It was like a disco ball of death.

Aradia made quick evasive action to the sides while nervously shouting to Kamijou.

A major road was quickly growing to life size.

“Here goes. 3, 2, 1!”

They fell.

The 20ton Predator Octopus had flown from the giant District 6 amusement park, passed right over District 5, and now set its thick tires down on a District 7 road.

Instead of crashing straight down, they landed diagonally as if sliding down onto the road.

The screech of the tearing and burning rubber sounded like a broken whistle.

Kamijou could feel the tires and ground below them for what felt like the first time in forever.

“We’re falling!!”

“Don’t worry. You have a witch’s guidance – and the goddess of all witches at that. I won’t screw up this landing.”

The Gatling gun fire pouring down from the sky easily chewed up the hard asphalt and drew out an S-shape like an approaching serpent.

If the landing killed their ordinary momentum, the gunfire would catch up. Aradia twisted her hips atop the barrel to push the Predator Octopus toward a side road. Technically, it wasn’t really a road. It looked more like a large common utility duct…or maybe a disaster shelter.

The metal sign indicating the sloped entrance burst like a balloon, but it ended there. The downpour of lead could not reach them underground.

“Incredible,” gasped Kamijou.

“What is? You had better not be complimenting those hunks of metal over me.”

Aradia twisted around on the barrel to glare back toward him.

Magic was convenient, but they would still be too conspicuous if they paraded down a major road with a lovely young woman straddling the thick gun barrel. She had chosen to do it herself, but it looked more like some kind of punishment.

The siren was still going.

The enemy remained on alert.

The slope provided a small view outside.

The Six Wings continued circling overhead for a bit, but they eventually flew off elsewhere. Had they decided they were no use with this terrain? An urban area filled with buildings of various sizes reduced radar accuracy in the first place and they must have had an even harder time scanning an underground space.

(But how long will it take for Anti-Skill to collect the vehicles and containers they sent parachuting down? We can’t stay here forever!)

The disturbing siren finally ended.

The actual threat remained, but Kamijou still breathed a reflexive sigh of relief.

Aradia reopened the hatch and climbed back in.

“So has Anna recovered? We need her back by the time we reach District 15 so she can explain the cabal’s secret for us. Is she still trembling in nightmare mode?”

“She’s better than before…I think.”

Anna’s head was lolling to the side in the command seat, but when Kamijou waved his hand in front of her face, her eyes did follow it. She hadn’t fully recovered from the shock, but she did seem conscious.

Kamijou put on his best “helping a lost child” smile.

“Everything is going to be alright, Anna. That weird Kingsford person is gone now.”

“Eep!?”

“You probably shouldn’t say that name out loud,” sighed Aradia.

Anna was behaving like a small child after a nightmare.

“It’ll be alright! She was certainly a scary lady, but she hasn’t caught up to us here. We got away.”

“She’s gone? That monster is really gone?”

“Absolutely.”

“Sniff, uh. Wahhhh…”

Anna Sprengel clutched Kamijou’s jacket with her small hands and rubbed her forehead against him. It was actually quite disturbing coming from her.

[[Image:GT_Index_v08_BW4.jpeg|thumb]]

Given her past behavior, that is.

Kamijou stared into the distance.

“Hold on. Could we nip a lot of problems in the bud by saying ‘Kingsford is coming to get you’ whenever she misbehaves?”

“Yeep!?”

“Bh!? She’s not here!! She really isn’t! You’ll always be our choice for the #1 Anna!!!”

“Don’t you dare cause a relapse. Even if I do understand the desire to get even with her,” complained Aradia (while missing the mark a bit on his intentions).

Climbing a mountain was slow-going, but falling back down happened in an instant.

Consoling crybaby Anna felt like stacking up rocks at Sai-no-Kawara.

“Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?” asked Aradia, sounding somehow exasperated.

“Because I have. I mean, all Transcendents – not just Alice – are basically selfish brats who never pay any attention to their surroundings, so getting along with them is a real pain in the- ow!? U-um, Aradia-san? Present company excluded, of course.”

All in all, it took longer than expected.

The passage of time was hard to notice in the windowless vehicle, but it had to be well past midday by now.

That said, Aradia’s flight had broken all the rules. Academy City hadn’t expected it at all, so they had made a significant shortcut.

The pursuers had to be confused and it would take time for them to piece together the information and track down Kamijou’s group, so they had to make what progress they could in that time.

And finally…

“Sniff.”

Anna of all people was sniffling.

But she still glared past her tears to view the command seat’s console monitor.

She hadn’t fully recovered, but she had raised her head and was facing forward again.

“Let’s keep going. As much distance as we gained, we’re still in the same city. If we spend too long here, Kingsford will catch up again.”

“Thank goodness. Anna’s back to normal.”

“I was not crying!! I was never anything but ‘normal’!!”

The 8-wheel mobile combat vehicle slowly resumed driving and emerged on the surface.

There was no sign of the adults who had gone to collect the roofless 4-wheel-drive vehicles.

Had they gone elsewhere afterwards, or were they having more trouble than expected separating the parachutes? Kamijou could imagine the vehicles being immobilized because their own equipment got all tangled up in the tires and steering wheel.

The streets weren’t quite deserted. The group wearing their school uniforms during the break were likely Judgment members sent out on patrol or assigned to keep critical areas organized. The distinctive armbands confirmed it. But Kamijou also saw the occasional boys and girls wearing casual clothing. They were aiming their phones at the city from elevated locations, so they may have been getting footage of the empty streets to go viral on social media. Maybe they wanted to transmit to the world that they had violated the rules, but Kamijou could only pray their accounts weren’t banned for it.

“Aren’t those adults part of that Anti-Skill group?” asked Aradia while playing with the periscope-like device meant for Kamijou’s seat.

“What about it?”

“They keep looking at us. Let’s hope our license plate doesn’t tell them we weren’t assigned to this area.”

That was a worrying theory, but not one they could verify.

Even if they were rousing some suspicions, no one was making a radio call and sending in a tank or attack helicopter, so it was best to continue obeying the traffic laws and leave before those suspicions grew to certainty.

District 7 bordered District 15. District 7 was longer north-to-south, so it would be fastest to travel to the southwest end of the district.

Which brought them to…

“I recognize that out-of-place European architecture. Is that the School Garden?” wondered Kamijou while watching the monitor.

That said, all he could see was an extremely tall wall and metal fence. But even the outer wall looked fancy in that exclusive territory of girl’s schools.

He stared at that European style.

Since he fled the consulate without a word of warning, he couldn’t help but worry about Misaka Mikoto when he saw anything associated with Tokiwadai. But if he pulled out his old folk’s smartphone and gave her a call, he would have to worry about her using Academy City’s #3 Level 5 power to track him down.

That probably wouldn’t end well for Misaka Mikoto herself.

Meanwhile…

“Fool, how long is Academy City’s winter break?”

“Huh? I think it depends on the school, but…generally until the 8th or the 10th maybe? Oh, but I have no clue when it comes to the universities. Then again, winter break can’t be that different can it? Unlike summer break.”

“Then is that some kind of club activity?”

He finally noticed thanks to Anna’s warning.

A few girls were standing in front of one of the gates. They all wore Tokiwadai uniforms and coats.

“Uh, oh,” groaned Kamijou.

Was that Shirai Kuroko of Judgment and a few of the Sisters? That was an unusual combination, but apparently the new year meant new rules.

Also, they were all looking this way.

Aradia tilted her head while viewing the monitor.

“Can’t we just ignore them and leave?”

“You must be joking! Underestimating Japan’s middle school girls is a bad idea. Shirai there is a teleporter. We couldn’t escape her driving full speed in a sports car. In the worst case, she could even teleport right inside the vehicle with us!!”

This was so frustrating.

He knew Shirai Kuroko and the Sisters weren’t bad people, but he couldn’t ask them for help.

The overly broad category of “Academy City” was such a nuisance.

The external microphone picked up their voices.

“Isn’t that an Anti-Skill vehicle?” asked a Sister.

“So what if it is? This street is still off limits to large vehicles due to its weight limit. We should warn them all the same,” replied Shirai

One Sister wore a heart necklace, so she was likely #10032.

“Hm.” Misaka Sister stared expressionlessly into the distance. “Involving ourselves in those grownup problems is inefficient. Misaka is more interested in the dashi vending machine she saw earlier, says Misaka as she pours all her efforts into distracting you.”

“Hey! Where do you think you’re going!? You have been tasked with preserving order, so you can’t just leave your post!!”

“Oh, shut up. Perhaps a hug will silence you, says Misaka as she attempts a stronger approach.”

“You must be joking. Onee-sama is my one and only goddess, so- ohhhhh, I’m being smothered in hugs by girls with Onee-sama’s face! My brain is glitching out!?”

Kamijou saw the Misaka Sister bow his way while they left.

(Did she know this was me?)

He had no way of confirming that.

After passing by the School Garden, they kept driving the Predator Octopus. The attack from Mut Thebes that morning felt like it had only just happened, but it was already late evening.

They passed below a blue road sign crossing the wide main road like a pedestrian bridge.

The scenery soon changed.

Looking up showed rows of high-tech high-rise buildings. Looking at the ground level showed trendy accessory shops that looked straight out of a fashion magazine. The signs seemed to reject ordinary customers by saying they had no space for products that were simply meant to sell. Kamijou had never had much reason to visit this district during his time living in the city.

This district contained the cutting edge of fashion, but it was currently deserted.

Maybe the people who frequented this district were so accustomed to breaking the rules to stand out that they knew how much you could get away with before getting in real trouble.

“We’ve finally arrived, fool,” said Anna Sprengel, tapping her finger on the command seat’s console monitor. “This is District 15.”

===Part 2===

The sun had fully set.

It was already dark out.

And the mobile combat vehicle had come to a complete stop.

“Another standstill?”

“Not to worry, fool. No one has found us this time. This is District 15, the most well-known shopping district in the city, so Academy City is being more careful defending it.”

Anna Sprengel kicked her little feet below the command seat while observing things outside through the screen.

She appeared to have recovered some from her previous panic.

“Also, this doesn’t look like your average security. It’s probably a patrol by unmanned ground vehicles. After using their map app to follow their preprogrammed course, they should move elsewhere.”

They were in a back road just off of the main road where the military vehicles were holding a parade.

The Predator Octopus had been installed with a drone, so they were using that now. Kamijou was kind of impressed. Safety was a wonderful thing. The way they had a top-down view of things outside while hiding behind cover reminded him of a video game minimap. This way they didn’t have to worry about emerging nervously from around a corner, running into Anti-Skill, and having that eerie siren start up again. There was of course a risk of Anti-Skill spying on them from above in the same way and the control signal could always be traced back to its source.

Also, Kamijou was alone with Anna right now.

Aradia had left the vehicle again. The witch goddess loved the forests and nature, so she found it stifling to go without fresh air for too long. When Kamijou rotated the rooftop camera – the periscope? – he saw the scantily-clad woman stretching on the pavement.

Kamijou wished she would stay inside because he feared someone would happen to see her while she was out there.

With her back to the camera, Aradia raised her arms overhead and stretched upwards and then smoothly bent her upper body from side to side.

She was also saying something.

“Ah, eh, ee, uh, eh, oh, ah, oh.”

Was that voice training? Maybe that was necessary for reciting incantations.

She was probably aware of the camera, but had she realized the microphone would pick up her voice too? She was so weirdly unguarded that Kamijou felt like he was peeping on her bathing even though she wasn’t doing anything indecent.

“On second thought, this is pretty indecent. Twisting her hips and arching her back while dressed like that in public qualifies if you ask me. Curse that flexible banana woman.”

“What are you watching, fool?”

Little Anna got after him. And she sounded miffed instead of her usual exasperation, so the boy felt ice down his spine. He quickly moved away from the periscope.

(Aradia’s the one who went out there dressed like that! I didn’t do anything wrong!!)

The silence in the vehicle suddenly felt extremely awkward.

“Man, you can’t see anything out there. See, I was trying to keep an eye on things outside, but it’s completely dark out thanks to the martial law, so there’s nothing to even see. Talk about a waste of ti-”

“To interrupt your suspiciously fast explanation there, were you aware this vehicle includes a crew recorder? It automatically activates upon detecting a voice, so everything said inside here is logged.”

“Please keep this a secret! I’ll do anything, Anna!! If Aradia hears what I said, she’ll kick me right through the gut, killing me instantly!! And I know she can do it!!!”

“Then hand over what you’re hiding.”

Little Anna smiled her wicked woman grin while holding out her little palm.

“When we were stocking up at the discount store, you bought some junk food you kept hidden from that nature witch, didn’t you? The extremely processed kind. That store had the customer bag their own purchases, so anything you didn’t want Aradia knowing about you could easily slip out of the bag and – for example – hide it in the pockets of your new jacket.”

“Ugh.”

“The high school mind is little more than an explosion of hunger and lust, so it isn’t hard to predict. When you have extra money, you would never stick to just meals. I can see right through you, so if you want my silence, you had better fill my mouth with junk food. Trick or treat☆”

Kamijou gave in and emptied his new jacket’s pockets. Anna licked her lips and began making her selection.

She had made fun of him for it, but apparently she too would die without the occasional junk food.

“What is this? It’s so thin and crispy. Is it a ham cutlet?”

“Trying it is faster than attempting to logically work out what it must be. But as surprising as it might seem, that is in fact fried fish. Never underestimate the quality of Japanese snacks, Anna.”

“Heh heh. I see. This is excellent. Hee hee. A wonderfully cheap and depraved flavor.”

Anna could be awfully honest at times like this. She grabbed the junk food bag in both hands and began nibbling at the cutlet-like food that emerged from one end.

With mystery gummies made with 0% fruit juice and ultra-sweet sugar-free chocolate, everything here would have caused nature-loving Aradia to evolve from kind older sister to furious mother.

Kamijou began munching on a round snack called Mr. Cabbage, which didn’t look like it had cabbage in it at all.

“Anna. What’s your plan after this is over?”

“After it’s over?”

She sounded puzzled, like she hadn’t even considered that possibility.

And eventually…

“Search for a king.”

“You mean to rule over you?”

“Of course, fool,” quietly confirmed Anna Sprengel.

One snack wasn’t enough for her, so she grabbed a large spiral lollipop.

“A king who will bind my wicked nature. I don’t know if someone like that exists, but if they do, I can make a compromise with this world. As you can plainly see, I bring only ruin and destruction when I am left free.”

“If you know that…”

“If I could quit on my own, I wouldn’t be searching for a king to force me.”

She laughed and narrowed her eyes in amusement.

Kamijou could sense something was wrong here.

“I am sick of reigning supreme.”

The wicked woman pulled her legs up into the command seat to take up less space.

When she spoke, it seemed directed at herself more than Kamijou.

“I am sick and tired of trying to teach people things. I keep explaining it for them and I even write it down in letters anyone can understand, but no one ever even bothers to try and achieve the correct answer. They want to know the secret art of miracles so badly, but they want it faster and simpler and they end up skipping steps and taking shortcuts. I have shown them step by step how to take the safe and certain path, but they omit the fundamentals and ultimately fail in devastating ways.”

Anna Sprengel was enshrouded in mystery.

What exactly was the Rosicrucian magic cabal? How could she be the original owner of Aiwass when Aleister was supposed to be his master? And why was she so terrified of that mystery woman named Anna Kingsford?

Of course, Kamijou knew he wouldn’t receive an answer if he asked her here.

She would undoubtedly rebuke him for taking the easy route.

So he instead touched on a core point he already knew about.

“I hope you find your king.”

“Yes.”

While curled up in her seat, she rested her chin on her knees and narrowed her eyes in a smile.

“I do hope they are out there somewhere, fool.”

===Part 3===

“Now, I 💭 it is ⏱️ to get moving,” whispered Anna Kingsford.

Miss Sprengel, Mut Thebes, and Kamijou Touma. When she had asked who to target and pursue with her divination, her injured student had given the following answer.

“It is ⏱️ to find ''the one we must defeat''.”

===Part 4===

After confirming with the drone that the patrolling vehicles on the main street had left, Kamijou called Aradia back into the mobile combat vehicle.

“Huh? Why are you so warm, Aradia?”

“You should try getting some exercise too. The heater isn’t enough to warm the core of your body.”

They drove slowly through the shopping district night, obeying the traffic laws within the wild military vehicle.

“Wait, wait, wait. Everything’s dark. And we’re on District 15’s main street. This is supposed to be a terrifyingly bright and shining land of fashion. District 15 should be a poison zone for me. I should be taking damage each step I take.”

“This is nothing compared to true martial law, fool. Japan really is a peaceful country. The higher ups have declared martial law, but they still have the traffic lights running for the people sneaking out into the city. And they haven’t shut down communications like TV, radio, phones, and internet.”

“If they shut all that down, it would cause a panic.”

“Yes, fool, but declaring martial law is supposed to mean you are prepared to handle the consequences like that.”

They drove slowly through the dark and silent city.

“Stretchy, stretchy.”

Aradia was again stretching her cheeks while staring into Kamijou’s old folk’s smartphone. She even pushed up on the corners of her mouth with her fingers to form a smile. Kamijou felt as awkward as seeing a schoolgirl set up her phone by the train window and start dancing when she thought the car had emptied out.

A staticky voice came from the console monitor Anna was messing with.

“Delta here. Do you read me?”

“Whisky. The encryption is working perfectly. It does introduce lag to the conversation, though.”

Kamijou tilted his head.

“What are you doing? Accessing the Anti-Skill radio?”

“This is amateur radio. Some students questioned the safety of smartphones since everything passes through a large server somewhere, so they appear to have set up a radio forum. This isn’t much safer, though,” said Anna as they drove by a 10m-tall mobile interception antenna tower.

They may have used an outdated term like “forum” because they were trying to distance themselves from cutting-edge smartphones.

“Tango here. Take a look through your telescopes. Something huge is blocking the moon.”

“Charlie. That’s not standard orbit. Are they doing something on the space station?”

Maybe that was accurate and maybe not, but the thought of something happening in space was pretty scary. Kamijou decided it was best to end this before an even more dangerous trigger could be pulled. They were already inside District 15. He wanted to avoid being hit by a major attack at this point.

“This is the place,” said Anna.

That phrase carried a lot of weight.

The Predator Octopus had arrived at a certain location.

A large shape loomed overhead.

The mass of concrete weighed tens of thousands of tons.

But…

“''This'' is?” asked Kamijou after sticking his head out of the hatch.

He had been imagining something like a secret military base, but he instead found something completely ordinary, even if he didn’t recognize it.

It was…

“Um, this is a cinema complex?”

“Yes, it’s a collection of movie theaters. An unusually large collection, but still.”

The skyscraper was so tall that panning the screen up with the camera wasn’t enough to see the top and it was entirely filled with movie theaters. This was such a popular place that it was rumored the results here determined which movie was considered the year’s most popular. It was also famous for having the director and cast make an appearance on opening night.

Little Anna Sprengel sighed at the other two.

“Why would I hide my secret in a blatantly suspicious fortress? A sturdy safe would only draw attention. To win on the intelligence front, you need an inconspicuous location that will blend into the background.”

Was that how it worked?

Kamijou remained nervous and Anna laughed wickedly.

“In Academy City, most movies are not played by shining light through film. With an adequate optical network, you don’t even need to distribute physical media to each movie theater. Heh heh. It’s sad really. Hee hee. Video aside, the analog audio is superior to a digital signal, but the people traveling all the way to the theater can’t even tell the diff-”

“Huh, that’s fascinating. And it’s a lot more convincing coming from a wicked woman who was once turned into a human film canister.”

Little Anna’s shoulders jumped.

Aradia had rudely interrupted her, but she forgot all about being angry.

She really did behave better when someone mentioned Kingsford. You could probably get her to eat her vegetables by telling her Kingsford could come to get her if she didn’t.

District 15 was Academy City’s largest shopping district, so it was short on land. Similar to an area with tons of convenience stores but no parking lots. So the cinema complex apparently had its staff parking built underground.

“Won’t someone question a military vehicle entering here?”

“Not to worry, fool. This was only meant to bring us to the magic database. It doesn’t matter much now that we’ve arrived.”

Apparently Kamijou’s worries were unnecessary.

They entered the staff parking without permission, but no guard got after them. The place was deserted. The parking garage’s fluorescent lights weren’t even on.

Kamijou doubted they were just closed for the holiday. The martial law had to be the cause. The confusion of that declaration was obvious from how the lights and air conditioning were deactivated, but the shutters remained open.

“Let’s go, fool and rural witch. …I-I said let’s go!”

Anna Sprengel grabbed the smart glasses that let her operate the mobile combat vehicle from outside, but she seemed somehow nervous as she exited. But wasn’t this where she had hid her secret?

“Uhh.”

She clung to Kamijou’s left side.

Was arrogant Anna Sprengel really trembling as she stared into the darkness ahead? Almost like a child afraid to walk outside at night.

“Anna?”

“Shut up! You saw Kingsford, fool. Anything goes with her – in a bad way. The thought of her smiling face emerging from the shadows is just- ugh.”

Telling her she was overreacting wouldn’t help.

This reaction was based in fear, but that woman had inspired this much fear in Anna. She had to be extraordinary. It was best to assume she wouldn’t enter through the door like a normal person.

And…

“…”

Kamijou felt a soft weight on his other side.

Witch Goddess Aradia had taken his right arm.

Tears formed in the corners of Anna’s eyes.

“Hey! Leave the fool’s right hand free so he can use it at a moment’s notice, you lewd seductive banana woman!! What if Kingsford appears without warning!?”

“Shut up, you lonely crybaby wicked woman,” Aradia replied quietly but sharply.

Kamijou felt a strange pressure of a sort only a higher being could understand.

“Wait, the elevators still work with the power shut down?”

“My, my. D-don’t let that surprise you, fool. This is far easier than hijacking an online military weapon. Hee hee hee. I can close someone in and send it plummeting to the ground from outside.”

(Maybe because she was doing her best to distract herself from her fear of Kingsford,) Anna Sprengel’s voice was unusually unstable and hyper. Kamijou also had a feeling he needed to give her a talking to later on. Although if he used the Special Kingsford Attack too often, he feared it would lose its effectiveness.

Meanwhile, Aradia sounded thoughtful in her own way.

“The theater…the stage.”

“?”

The giant cinema complex had countless movie theaters stacked on top of each other, but Anna wasn’t taking them to any of those. She opened a plain metal door and stepped into a behind-the-scenes control room.

Kamijou had seen something similar on TV.

Specifically, he saw an audio console lined with more a hundred sliders, just like at a TV station or a recording studio. Monitors showing what was being played in each theater were lined up like in a security room and several industrial computers larger than refrigerators were lined up along the wall.

“This is the central theater control room. I’m sure you know they don’t hand-crank a projector nowadays, but if you extended the fiber optic cable to your home, you could watch it from there.”

“So this is the place?”

“Correct, fool. This equipment is used to download the movie file from a central server located elsewhere and then play it on the appropriate screens. But they can’t afford for the line to be busy, so they have more than 5 large capacity lines running in parallel to ensure they won’t experience even 0.2 seconds of lag. Which makes this a treasure trove of unused space the theater staff isn’t even aware of.”

Maybe magicians just liked to explain things because Anna talked on and on as she walked further in. She sat in a chair much too large for her and started up the equipment like she knew what she was doing.

As usual, Aradia’s dislike of Academy City had her over by the wall where she could keep her distance from the monitors. She apparently wasn’t aware that “wall” was actually the large computers. Was she trying to master the careless older sister class?

“More strange tech? Can you really reveal the world’s secrets with this?”

“Oh? Isn’t all magic much the same?”

Surprisingly, the equipment looked like an ordinary computer as it booted up.

But before that boot up was complete, Anna pressed a key combination Kamijou didn’t recognize and a different screen popped up. It was only white text on a red background. This was either an industrial mode or a special mode the computer’s actual owners weren’t aware of. Anna selected a few options written in English and directly typed in what appeared to be a command to search through the data she had hidden in the unseen space of that vast storage device.

The screen became a lot more understandable then.

It was the R&C Occultics homepage that Kamijou had seen on his old folk’s smartphone. Maybe this was an older version, but she had apparently kept a full backup.

The little wicked woman typed a language other than Japanese and English into the search box. She had probably switched modes in some way, but Kamijou was surprised to see she could use the keyboard to type characters that looked like the ancient writing from an other world fantasy.

(Then again, maybe Japanese keyboards look just as strange to everyone else in the world. They let you type hiragana, katakana, kanji, numbers, the alphabet, symbols, and even emoticons with the one device.)

The screen arrived at a certain entry in the magic database.

“Here we go. This is it, fool. Reviewing the material leads to the same result.”

Anna was speaking under her breath, so she probably wasn’t really trying to explain anything to Kamijou or Aradia.

Her eyes followed the text on the coldly glowing screen and she spoke her knowledge aloud in order to compare the past with the present.

“The Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal. H. T. Trismegistus is most likely from BCE times. Good, Old Mary is from around the 3rd century at the latest. Yet the spells they receive from their Secret Chiefs display hints of Magick.”

The R&C Occultics magic database came from all the secret knowledge and techniques Anna Sprengel had typed up herself.

She was only relying on her own reference material because she wanted solid confirmation outside of her own head. This was similar to reading back through her mountain of notes in chronological order to organize her thesis.

This meant something had that wicked woman so concerned that she needed to check each and every little thing to put her mind at ease.

“Fool. The first thing you have to keep in mind is that the Transcendents exist to protect others. Just like Aradia there.”

“…”

Aradia didn’t respond to the mention and remained by the wall with her arms crossed.

Anna shrugged.

“But they each want to protect a different group. It could be persecuted witches, the falsely accused, anyone not in the privileged class, or the people unseen among the masses who are satisfied with their current lives. There might be some overlap, but never a perfect match. If any one of them tries to protect someone, they will bring harm to the people another Transcendent is attempting to protect. So none of the Transcendents is allowed to act on their own.”

The Bologna Succubus had already explained this to Kamijou.

That was why the Transcendents had gathered and started talking things out. They had wanted to create a world where all of them could save their targets of salvation without interfering with each other. It was like an extremely complex puzzle, so they had talked on and on in search of an answer.

Alice Anotherbible was independent and capricious, so she threatened to ruin all of that.

Alice was still young(?), so she likely hadn’t decided on her conditions for salvation yet. So she might wield extreme violence on a whim, or she might save the innocent on a whim.

Did they save people based on a list of rules?

Or did they save people on a whim?

Kamijou still couldn’t decide which was more ordinary and human.

“''So they decided to create a certain person.''”

“?”

This deviated from what Kamijou knew.

It gave him a discordant feeling like the record needle had just skipped to a different song.

What kind of corroborative evidence did Anna have of this? She slowly scrolled down the screen and viewed the many formulas displayed there to reinforce her knowledge.

“They concluded they could never reach the answer on their own. No matter how hard they tried to solve the complex puzzle, someone would inevitably bring harm to someone else’s salvation target. ''But if they could create someone capable of solving that problem, they concluded they could save the entire world.''”

“What…are you talking about?” asked Kamijou, astonished.

They were dumping the problem on someone else?

Something was wrong with the world and the people they cared for would die if they didn’t start fixing the problem immediately. They understood that perfectly, but they ultimately let go of the world’s lifeline and handed it off to someone else entirely?

But when he thought about it, the very idea of there being Transcendent people tasked with saving the world was based on the assumption that there were ''special geniuses'' who were superior to everyone else. Unlike the Magic Gods, the Transcendents did not expect to be worshipped. Was it H. T. Trismegistus who had said that? That meant they didn’t seek the understanding or sympathy of those below them. The decision of the majority was final and they didn’t bother to explain to the 7 or 8 billion people how they were being saved.

Take that reasoning further and the Transcendents themselves formed a pyramid hierarchy with a special being at the very top.

They believed they could save the entire world if they created that one person.

“Think back, fool. I said they displayed hints of Magick, didn’t I? That is the Crowley brand of magic.”

“You mean ''that'' Crowley?”

Kamijou was of course very familiar with the name.

Anna sighed.

“Correct. Aleister theorized that what you could call a soul enters a baby’s body three months after conception and he released a spell based on that theory. His theory implies ''there is no soul there until the 90th day of pregnancy, so he thought you could guide whatever soul you wanted into the body during that time.'' That would allow you to give a physical body to a superhuman beast or spirit and then ''manage'' it as your own child.”

Kamijou had known Aleister had a bad reputation as a magician, but had he really gone that far?

“Specifically, you impregnate a woman using a special method, place her in the center of the ceremonial ground, and arrange the appropriate magical symbols around her. Cursed gems, a special magic sword – things like that. Then you use purification and barrier spells to thoroughly clean away all forces that would have an unnecessary influence on the process. An empty place like a desert is convenient there. That way the child in the woman’s uterus receives only the necessary forces, so the magician has complete control over the creation and growth of the body and they can create exactly the child they want.”

“Wait…you’re dressing it up in a lot of magic terminology, but how is that any different from taking a delicate pregnant woman and pumping her full of nasty chemicals based on some human recipe you created!?”

“Did I ever say it was different, fool? Keep in mind that Aleister Crowley was known as the wickedest man in the world and the 20th century’s greatest villain because his magic research included the use of young boys and drugs in his ceremonial grounds. That magician ignored the moral issues in pursuit of what he wanted, so do you really expect him to make an exception because someone is pregnant or not even born yet?”

“…”

“By violating that taboo, you can acquire a beast or spirit beyond human understanding. ''Of course he would do it.'' This is the human who created a temple known as Academy City in the Far East, developed esper powers by using drugs and electrodes on children as young as 1st grade, and created more than 20 thousand human clones only to have them killed.”

After all that, Anna Sprengel shrugged. She must have seen the look on Kamijou’s face.

“He completed the logic of the spell. That much is true. But, fool, you should already know how emotional Aleister could be about his family. The annoying thing about that human is how his outward actions don’t tell you everything about who he is.”

Kamijou recalled when Aleister had held the baby Lilith and wept in the UK. Or the reason he had begun the Battle of Blythe Road all on his own.

From a young age, he had been persecuted by those who claimed to be good and moral, so he had sought familial love more than anyone else. But at the same time, he had also carried out heartless experiments and research. He was an extremely complicated person.

Perhaps that was why he was so thoroughly hated by the majority of people who needed no excitement in their lives and, for better or for worse, sought a peaceful life. They had seen him as an unstable and incomprehensible detonator for the world.

“But…”

Why had she brought up Aleister Crowley’s spell here in the first place?

What did it have to do with the mysterious Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal?

Seeing how puzzled Kamijou was, Aradia spoke up.

“We chose a method that doesn’t use a pregnant woman.”

“''So''? You were still messing with the fertilized egg undergoing cleavage in the test tube. Even in the original Crowley version, the mother remained an ordinary human. Birthing a special child did not remake her into a holy mother who could cause miracles.”

The little wicked woman patted her own stomach while laying out her accusations.

And she winked.

“Crowley used the word karma in reference to the current or directionality of the force that binds the soul. And he said that karma could not be judged good or evil – high or low.”

“You mean…?”

Kamijou looked over at Aradia by the wall.

Anna laughed as she continued.

“The Transcendents were the people who could not find a perfect form of salvation even with their connections to the powerful Secret Chiefs. I said an empty desert would work best, but they attempted to grasp perfect righteousness by surrounding their sterile container with imperfect good. Whether we are talking about a Saint, a Magic God, or a Great Demon, any perfected form of good will not function as the karma needed to draw in a different sort of being. The Transcendents theorized their imperfection and incompleteness would allow them to function as the unique trigger capable of drawing in their savior like a magnet. Hee hee. You were willing to use anything, weren’t you?”

“…”

“But in the end, the sin is the same. They blotted out an existing life to bring an inhuman being to this physical world. That is merely another form of human sacrifice – an exchange ceremony used to obtain the mystical.”

What had the Bridge Builders Cabal wanted badly enough to do that?

Or rather, who exactly had they created?

There was only one candidate.

“''Alice-''”

“''It was not Alice Anotherbible,''” quietly interrupted Witch Goddess Aradia.

She was still leaning against the equipment by the wall and refused to look at Kamijou.

While Anna was an irregularity and a traitor, Aradia was a pure and genuine Transcendent. She had to know what their plan was.

Anna Sprengel had messed with Alice because she wanted to stop that plan. That was why Alice adored Kamijou as her “teacher” despite him never having met her before. But if Alice was the core of the Transcendents’ plan, Anna would have had other options.

She could have directly harmed Alice to remove her from the picture.

Or if killing her wasn’t an option, she could have embedded a poison-like spell in the girl’s body to immobilize her.

Someone as wicked as her was bound to know some tricks for defeating an opponent too powerful for a traditional attack to work.

Kamijou had always thought she seemed to prefer indirect methods.

Alice Anotherbible certainly stood out as unusual in the cabal, so she probably could have done considerable damage to the cabal’s plan if she opposed their decision regarding Kamijou.

But was that enough to say the plan’s destruction was a sure thing?

Anna had turned Kamijou into Alice’s controller(?). Now, Kamijou didn’t know if the Transcendents’ plan to save the world was good or bad, but what would Anna have done if they had explained their plan to him and he decided it wouldn’t be a problem and they should go through with it?

In other words…

Alice Anotherbible was an important part of this, ''but she was not the very center.

So who was?

Who was this monster capable of pushing aside Alice of all people?

“Fool, you already have the answer. The name has been right there in front of us all along.”

Anna’s next statement was brief but tense.

“''Which is why I want to stop their plan.''”

“?”

Anna did not give any further answer and instead worked at extracting the data from the audio console. However, that did not mean searching out a port and inserting a USB memory stick. She took out an aluminum-looking device resembling the heated tobacco products Kamijou had seen in convenience store ads and simply placed it atop the console. It apparently read and forcibly saved the faint magnetic field produced when a computer sent electronic signals back and forth. Which meant she didn’t have to consider passwords or security when copying it over.

Either the data she wanted didn’t require much space or that extraction device was incredibly efficient. After seeing the LED flash a few times, Anna picked the device back up.

“Would H. T. Trismegistus be the best one to contact? He is something of a manager. Either way, this lets us directly negotiate with that cabal of Transcendents. As long as we know the details of their ceremony, we only need to remove one of the many conditions needed for success and the rest of the plan will come crashing down. …Also, this isn’t the only bombshell I have on them.”

Anna toyed with the metal device, but made no attempt to explain further. She shut off the large computer screen since she no longer needed it.

But just before she did, Kamijou’s eyes happened on a certain piece of text.

Alongside the symbol of a special cross, he saw the name of the person the Transcendents had unanimously chosen to recognize.

Their savior was named…

…Ch…s………ut…

“''Chris''…?”

===Part 5===

Meanwhile, Transcendent Mut Thebes whispered to herself.

She was focused on some distinctive tire tracks left on the cold road.

''But she was observing them from a large distance.

“Found you.”

===Part 6===

''Kathoom!!!

A tremor thrust up at them from below. Kamijou seriously did lose his balance and fall to the floor before he heard the sound of snapping metal. The anti-earthquake supports broke and the refrigerator-size computers by the wall began to topple, one after another.

“Whoops.”

Aradia tugged on little Anna’s hand and then picked her up to protect her from the falling machinery.

And…

“The trouble I go through for you.”

Kamijou heard a high-pitched sound.

As soon as Aradia ran her bare feet across the floor, a circular shockwave formed around her. The professional computers had to weigh at least several dozen kilos each, but all of them were smashed against the wall.

“Saving this little wicked woman despite her misdeeds counts as a good deed. So as a witch, you owe me thrice the benefit in return, world.”

Kamijou stared in astonishment after she saved him from the group of machines that possibly weighed as much as a ton.

“Th-thank-”

“Hmph. It is only natural for the witch goddess to save you,” interrupted Aradia, brushing her silver hair back from her shoulder with her empty hand.

She then released Anna whose face had been pressed into Aradia’s chest.

“Also, we don’t have time to discuss it. What caused the tremor matters more than the tremor itself. This reinforced concrete building has to weigh 150 thousand tons, so it would take more than a traffic accident to shake it that badly.”

The deep siren ended suddenly.

Unnaturally suddenly.

That meant Academy City likely hadn’t used their online controls to shut it off for some reason. Most likely, all of the outdoor speakers had been destroyed.

All of them? Over how wide an area?

“What’s happening?”

Kamijou was creeped out, but he wasn’t going to find an answer in this small room. It had no windows.

While on the run, that siren had been a symbol of death, but it was still part of the infrastructure meant to warn the city’s people of danger.

If that had been destroyed…

“This isn’t Academy City’s next-gen tech. Why did the siren cut out like that?”

This meant someone was here.

But who?

Was it Transcendent Mut Thebes of the Bridge Builders Cabal? Or was it Anna Kingsford who was working with Aleister? Either option was about as bad as it could get.

The instant Kamijou kicked open the bent door and rushed out into the hallway, he found he had wandered into another world.

Everything had changed.

The cinema complex was well soundproofed since it was designed for screening movies. Now Kamijou knew why he had suddenly heard the siren through that soundproofing.

“!?”

He heard an endless series of dull sounds like something hard being chewed apart.

He moved to guard little Anna who was clinging to him.

He didn’t need to investigate the source of the noise.

The thick wall of reinforced concrete had collapsed. The piercing cold wind of the January 4 night blew in, but Kamijou was beyond sensing such things. What he saw was too overwhelming for that.

He saw Mut Thebes.

The brown-skinned girl whose long, wavy blonde hair spread out behind her.

A massive white flower was spread out behind that hair. Armor and gun turrets stretched out for dozens – no, hundreds – of meters. This was a large cinema complex, so each floor was extremely tall. This floor was the equivalent of dozens of floors up on an ordinary building, but Mut Thebes was at his eye level. And not because she had used a flight spell.

''She was standing''. On the ground.

That Transcendent could absorb any shadow cast on the ground and use it as her weapon. It worked for a tank, an attack helicopter, a security robot, and even an AWACS aircraft.

But this?

Could this be real?

“A…warship!?”

“It is called an aircraft cruiser. Its exact name and specs were given, but I don’t remember what they were. Ask a military nerd if you care.”

The brown girl was careless even with this.

She felt no attachment to it.

She treated this even more casually than selecting a hot snack next the convenience store register. She saw a new product and didn’t know what it was or if it was any good, but decided to buy it just because. But for her, that meant absorbing the shadow of a 300m…aircraft cruiser?

And not just one.

Five of them formed legs arranged around her like a long skirt. Another four were spread out behind her like wings. Another continued on behind her like a bird’s body or tailfeathers. Altogether, 10 aircraft cruisers formed a giant white bird. Didn’t that mean she had an entire carrier group with her!?

“I absorb shadows,” casually explained Mut Thebes. “So by providing multiple light sources, I can increase the number of shadows on the ground and absorb multiple copies of a single weapon. The number of physical objects is irrelevant. Admittedly, it did take some time to absorb multiple 300m shadows at once.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Goddamit.”

She had previously used multiple tank guns at once. Did this mean she hadn’t necessarily stolen the shadows of multiple weapons for that?

And these weapons were on another level altogether.

The giant bird she formed even had legs with a proper avian backwards joint. That meant the white aircraft cruisers were forcibly bent near the center.

If you sliced apart a tanker, aircraft carrier, or other ship measuring several hundred meters long and then painstakingly welded all the parts back together like that, you could indeed construct a similar silhouette. Just like forming a long cylinder from stacking coins. But even so, no one would think to bend a ship down the center to produce a walking joint.

She would use any weapon she came across, but she only saw them as materials for her white shadows.

She didn’t care how they were meant to be used.

Was that because she was ultimately a magician?

How many main guns and antiair guns did she have in all? What did the aircraft part of the name mean?

It was bound to have cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, but based on the flight deck, it might also have stealth craft.

The weapon specs were frightening enough, but at the same time…

“How did you do it?”

“?”

“Where did you acquire that and how did you get here from there!?”

“''I walked''. It should be fine. Thanks to the martial law, I probably didn’t step on anyone while walking here.”

Kamijou shuddered.

Should be?

Probably?

How could she talk about people’s lives like that?

They were speaking. Probably using the strange technique known as common tones. But the conversation did nothing to help him understand Transcendent Mut Thebes.

And even if they did find common ground, she was bound to put her own convenience first in the end. She would pursue them when necessary and kick them aside when they were in the way. No matter how much she praised peace and benevolence beforehand.

If no discussion came with a guarantee, then he couldn’t trust anything she said.

She was likely the reason the creepy siren had suddenly ended.

It didn’t matter if she had meant to do it or not. Had she directly stepped on them, or had the tremor of her footsteps knocked them over? The countless temporary speakers for the siren must have been destroyed more on accident than intentionally.

And the damage wasn’t going to end there.

With those white “wings” spread, that white colossus was over 600m wide.

''That had walked through the city.

What had happened to Index, Mikoto, and the city they called home!?

This was on another level entirely. She wasn’t even attacking people with a powerful intent to kill. In all seriousness, what had happened to Academy City when that thing simply walked across it? The Transcendent hadn’t tried to hide what she was doing, so some people would have tried to run away in fear but tripped and some people would have stood up on trembling legs and tried to defend their city. What had happened to them? How far did the damage spread? Some of the casualties could be people Kamijou knew. No, this was beyond that!!!

The Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal could singlehandedly fight the entire magic side and emerge victorious if the conditions were right.

Mut Thebes definitely qualified there.

The entire building raised a groaning cry. The earthquake countermeasures at the base must have reached their limit. Mut Thebes had smashed a hole as large as a theater in the building, but some armor or a gun still caught when she tried to enter.

But that wouldn’t last long.

If she made a powerful horizontal sweep with her massive wings or fired with the guns sticking out from them like feathers, she could probably destroy the entire cinema complex building.

Kamijou shouted to her on reflex.

If he let his momentum die here, he would be paralyzed by fear. Or so it felt to him.

“Mut Thebes!!”

“Yes?”

The brown girl at the center of the armor flower was surprisingly responsive.

She tilted her head like this was only a casual chat.

Was that because she didn’t feel a single twinge of guilt over the violence she was causing?

“We know what your cabal wants! You’re inserting a special soul in a fetus to create a savior, right!?”

“Is that all you know? Then I have no reason to stop. The best way to achieve our goal is to swiftly and surely eliminate the source of our information leak. As the Transcendent in charge of punishment, I will fairly carry out the will of the cabal.”

What did Mut Thebes want to protect as a Transcendent? H. T. Trismegistus had said she would do anything to protect whatever she had defined as her territory. Aradia had said she was the goddess and queen who protected her country.

Was she an ancient Egyptian god, or was she a human?

Was she a Transcendent who protected Transcendents?

Or was she a Transcendent who changed what group she would save from one moment to the next?

He couldn’t get caught up in this.

Better to keep speaking than be overwhelmed into silence. Otherwise, her fierce attack would begin.

“That’s not my point!! Your plan should need all of the cabal’s Transcendents. ''Which includes Aradia''! That’s right. Won’t your plan fail if you let her die here!?”

His logic was sound…he thought.

The Transcendents had to surround the container holding the fertilized egg with their imperfect good to distort things in just the right way to give physical birth to the ultimate being they were willing to bow their heads to.

''But.

(Huh? But wait.)

Something cold ran down Kamijou’s spine as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

(If that were true, why were the Bologna Succubus and Aradia trying to kill each other on the 31st? And what about when Good, Old Mary and H. T. Trismegistus fought and when Alice knocked them all down on the 3rd? I get how I could be a hindrance to their plan, but ''if any one of the Transcendents is lost in trying to save an outsider like me, wouldn’t that ruin everything for them''?)

Or had they decided any of their own members that died could be brought back with Good, Old Mary’s resurrection?

That was Kamijou’s best guess, but he was completely wrong.

The truth was much worse.

“That is not a problem.”

Transcendent Mut Thebes remained entirely expressionless and tilted her head as she explained.

''We already have a ''new'' Aradia.”

Kamijou heard footsteps.

But these were not the sound of solid shoes. It was the lighter sound of bare feet on the floor.

“Ah.”

Kamijou couldn’t believe it.

“Ahhh.”

Or maybe it was better to say he had believed a little too much about the enemy.

He had believed that there couldn’t be all that many Transcendents out there since they were so powerful. He had believed they must be special, irreplaceable beings like Academy City’s Level 5s or the magic side’s Saints.

He had been naïve.

A woman with pale skin and long silver hair emerged from the shadows in the same cinema complex and joined Mut Thebes at the broken wall. She wore an ankle-length wimple and an unusual purple bikini. That Transcendent could create various witch ointments by rubbing together her outfit’s decorations to sprinkle metal powder in with the chemicals at her feet and mix that with the sebum from her bare feet.

In other words, she was the witch goddess who ruled the night and the moon.

She was ''a second Aradia?

[[Image:GT_Index_v08_BW5.jpeg|thumb]]

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

Kamijou Touma felt faint.

Was that allowed?

Could they really get away with cheating like that!?

That witch goddess had nearly destroyed Shibuya all on her own. She had killed Kamijou multiple times in the process and he had only managed to defeat her and reach an understanding with her thanks to lots of help from the Bologna Succubus and Good, Old Mary.

And another one could just appear like this?

It was true the Bridge Builders Cabal was a group. He knew there were Transcendents other than Aradia out there. But this was something different. It entirely changed the level of the threat.

What if Aradia could be duplicated or mass-produced?

What if, with effort or training, a second or third could be produced?

Wouldn’t that mean it was even possible ''an Aradia Squad'' existed out there!?

“…”

But.

On the other hand, it had been strange.

Anna had said H. T. Trismegistus was from BCE times and that Good, Old Mary was from the 3rd century at the latest. And that Aleister was the wickedest man in the world and the greatest villain of the 20th century.

How did that work?

''How could a legendary person from around 2000 years ago have their magic based on Aleister’s magick when he was active in the 20th century?'' The timeline didn’t work.

It was also puzzling that the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Russian Orthodox Churches had never noticed any sign of the Bridge Builders Cabal’s existence. Not to mention that Othinus, High Priest, Nephthys, Niang-Niang, and the other Magic Gods from the underside of the world hadn’t known anything about the Transcendents.

For that matter, Aradia hadn’t seemed to know about the Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress spell until she was hit by it in Shibuya on the 31st.

In the consulate on the 3rd, H. T. Trismegistus and Good, Old Mary had only then been working out what each other’s secret techniques were.

How could you explain that if they really had been working together in the Bridge Builders Cabal for centuries, if not millennia?

Which suggested…

“''I had it wrong?''” blankly muttered Kamijou Touma.

He looked back and forth between the Aradia standing with him and Anna and the perfectly identical silver-haired girl standing with Mut Thebes.

“The Bridge Builders Cabal ''wasn’t'' a legendary magic cabal going back millennia? The Bologna Succubus and Aradia, ''are magicians who only started using those names recently''!?”

“It’s called ceremonial magic, fool. They play parts in the ceremony.” Anna Sprengel smiled softly. “By systematically positioning the necessary symbols and an imperfect good around the sterile container holding the fertilized egg, an inhuman beast or spirit’s soul will enter the human child and manifest in the physical world. And in their case, they seek their savior. I explained that was the point of the cabal’s spell, didn’t I? So the Transcendents are just more symbols for the ceremony. But the colors and forms are what they need, not the actual goddess Aradia or the actual sage Trismegistus. So each member of the cabal has changed form by dressing up in the appropriate costumes and truly dedicating themselves to their respective conditions for salvation. Using a borrowed power gives them a strong sense of how imperfect their goodness is, right? And it is all to perfect the ceremony meant to summon a special high-level soul.”

Kamijou felt faint all over again.

Hadn’t H. T. Trismegistus himself said ''the Transcendents were not like Magic Gods''? Kamijou should have thought harder back at the consulate about how they differed!

Their names and appearances were only costumes.

Their spells were all connected to the Secret Chiefs, weren’t they? In other words, they were borrowed.

Each of them had tremendous power, but they were entirely different from Othinus in every conceivable way!!

“But…but…”

Kamijou was at a loss for words.

Why did this shock him so much?

He should have been happy to have the enemy’s illusion broken. Had he started to hope that the Transcendents were higher beings than him at some point?

He found himself shouting at Anna in defense of his supposed enemies.

“Th-that can’t be true! Oh, right. The Bologna Succubus said she wants to save the falsely accused because of an incident that happened centuries ago!”

“Don’t modern people feel their heart ache when they read articles about wars and crimes from the distant past? Fool, how old does she look to you? You aren’t going to tell me you think she’s more than 500, are you?”

Come to think of it, what was it the Bologna Succubus had said in Shibuya on December 31? She could never forgive the people who executed a man for the absurd charge of running a brothel full of succubi.

He had accepted that reasoning at the time, but thinking back, it didn’t add up.

He still didn’t know for sure if the Bologna Succubus he knew was a human or a demon, but if she had been in Bologna hundreds of years ago, she would be the living proof that beings known as succubi really had existed there. So whether or not the charge was true, it at least wouldn’t be “absurd”. If the Bologna Succubus had really existed back then, she would have looked down at herself and thought, “yeah, I could see that happening”.

But…

Even then…

“What about Witch Goddess Aradia!? If she didn’t exist in ancient times, who were the real witches worshiping back then!?”

“Forget it, fool. The goddess named Aradia almost certainly didn’t exist and was a legend invented on the spot by a witch in Tuscany, Italy. The story only got out of hand after Gardner, the top witch researcher, included the story in his own theories. So why does the magician using the name now need to actually be that goddess?”

“…Um…”

“Despite the danger we were in, Aradia was picky about what she ate and made sure to leave the cramped confines of the vehicle to stretch. Those unnatural actions were a continuation of her daily routine to keep up the Aradia persona. You could think of it as training to prevent her behavior from slipping. She needs daily corrections to ensure the margin of error doesn’t reach a noticeable level.”

Kamijou couldn’t find anything to say.

Harsh truths sounded better coming from a wicked person’s mouth.

“Why was she doing voice training? The witch goddess’s spells are based on her witch ointments, so incantations aren’t all that important to her. Why was she so upset about falling out of her exercise routine during the few days you had her tied up? My guess is it came from the fear that her Aradia persona would fall apart.”

Kamijou stopped breathing and his head wobbled atop his neck.

Not even Aradia – either Aradia – said a word.

Was this true of Good, Old Mary and H. T. Trismegistus too?

Thinking back, Good, Old Mary had called herself the one who ''rules over'' the Tribikos, Kerotakis, and the other experimental tools that had built the foundation of alchemy, but she had never said she was the person who had ''invented them'' in the 3rd century.

According to Othinus, Trismegistus was ''only a throwaway penname'' used for ancient academics to release texts anonymously. That had never been someone who needed to be declared real or fictional.

“Then…”

Hesitantly – for a different reason this time – Kamijou looked to a certain girl.

“Mut Thebes too?”

“Fool, I have heard that true military nerds will weep upon seeing an old map of Greece or Egypt – they don’t even need to visit the ruins of an old castle. Just like a train nerd seeing a regional train schedule.”

Aradia had explained that Mut was an Egyptian goddess, but ''she had never said that about Mut Thebes.

The blonde-haired, brown-skinned girl tilted her head.

Like a small bird.

Her secret was revealed, yet…

“Why does that matter?”

That was all.

She acted like it had never been a secret to begin with.

“You’re kidding…right?” asked Kamijou, dazed.

That meant they chose the clothing that fit their goal.

That meant they watched what they ate.

That meant they used exercise and stretching to achieve the ideal body down to the muscles and skeletal structure.

That meant they carefully watched the people of every job they came across.

That meant they made sure to look in the mirror and practice their expressions.

That meant they monitored their condition every single day so they wouldn’t overlook even a slight error.

That meant they used even swelling, bloating, and emaciation to change their appearance.

That meant their morning voice training was not for magic incantations.

That meant they had memorized a detailed and accurate script just like a phone scammer.

That meant it was all thorough training to perfectly rearrange who they were, even on the inside.

That meant the Bridge Builders Cabal ''had not'' recruited the people needed for their ceremony – they had created them from scratch?

They probably had originally loathed false accusations. Or deeply hoped to save all the witches around the world. So those ordinary people had chosen a demon or goddess that would most strongly emphasize that incomplete goodness needed to draw in the desired soul like a magnet. They had ''dressed up'' as those identities and become Transcendent.

“…”

It was hard to believe.

How was he supposed to believe something so ridiculous?

But there had been statements that caught his attention.

From time to time, Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other cabal members had referred to “irregular Transcendents”. They had spoken the term with annoyance, but also with an envy of ''those who could reach out and save or accuse others without having to follow a detailed flowchart''.

One of those was the pure Alice Anotherbible.

The other was the wicked Anna Sprengel.

They were the only two who couldn’t be reproduced.

No third party could replace them. They existed outside the usual rules for Transcendents.

Or to put it another way, the rest were ''regular Transcendents''. Did that mean all of them could be mass-produced and managed and were willing to follow the original calculations?

Their irregularity – that they didn’t fit the usual definition – may have been what allowed Alice and Anna to criticize the ''ordinary Transcendents'' from an outside perspective.

''Come to think of it…'' Kamijou had no way of knowing if there was any basis to it, but he had sensed something on an instinctual level removed from logic.

(I thought something was weird. I thought they were different from normal magicians. Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents all wear those costumes. And ''it’s almost like they tell each other apart using those flashy costumes instead of by their faces''.)

That wasn’t how it usually worked. Magicians were extreme individualists. They carved their way of life into their hearts. So no matter what might happen, they would never place the core of their being in something they could simply remove.

“The old Aradia is no longer necessary,” plainly stated Mut Thebes.

Even though this meant rejecting her own purpose.

Something was terribly different between the Transcendents and the magicians Kamijou had encountered before.

“Anna Sprengel was not originally part of the cabal. She was a last-second addition of dubious origin. A guest performer may have brought the performance to new heights, but she has gone beyond some unasked-for adlibbing. So we have decided to return the plan to its original form. By preparing the sterile container as the irreplaceable target of our performance and by promoting Alice Anotherbible as our lead, we will complete our parade with only the original cast. Old Aradia, you have been too affected by Anna Sprengel’s influence. And as internal distortions cannot be seen, we can never know for sure if we have removed them all. Since you are easily replaced, we can reduce our odds of failure by placing a fresh Aradia on the stage.”

To the audience, the big star of the parade at the center of everyone’s attention was a unique and irreplaceable performer. They ''were'' the world of the performance to the point that you couldn’t imagine anyone else there.

But to those managing the parade, the star was just one more person who could be fired and replaced if they weren’t providing the desired performance or effect. No matter how many dreams an event or festival performer inspired in people, they were little different from the person inside a mascot costume.

But how could she do it like it was nothing?

“You would throw out your fellow cabal member that easily?”

“Did I confuse you with my use of ‘old’ and ‘new’? That Aradia by you was only ''chosen to be Aradia'' by proving her skill and outdoing the other candidates. I did the same. I only stand here now as Mut Thebes because I took my own audition and won the position I wanted.”

“What do you want enough to do that!?”

“To bring unbiased salvation to the world.”

Her answer was quick and certain.

These people had big dreams because, unlike Saints or Magic Gods, they had only managed to create an imperfect righteousness. They were permeated by the temporary worldview they shared as performers on the stage where they would perfect their magic.

“We want someone who can really and physically – not philosophically or hypothetically – bring about a salvation that aligns with all of our hopes. ''We want the holy bearer of the cross.'' Unlike us Transcendents, that man can truly save the entire world, so we wish to invite him back through the process of rebirth.”

Kamijou could not sense personal conviction or a personal cry of the soul – yes, he could not sense a magic name there.

To achieve this one goal, they had thrown out their insignificant individuality to become a part of the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Just like a type of destructive cult.

“Satisfied now? I have a job to complete: punishing the traitor Anna.”

“Do you really think I’ll let you?”

“Do you think I care? You are blameless and thus not my target. This is a staff-only backstage matter. I would prefer not to involve ''an outsider'', so I would prefer if you ran away.”

The wind stirred like a solid mass.

No, that was a side effect of Mut Thebes moving her giant wings. The countless guns of various sizes installed on the 300m aircraft cruisers all turned to accurately take aim.

Kamijou expected an explosion.

But giant cannons unleashed a scattershot of throwing spears from muzzles measuring more than 30cm across.

Every single spear was a spiritual item designed to kill Transcendents.

They were all the Shrink Drink.

Hadn’t that weapon been created to slay even the most irregular Transcendent?

“Anna!!!” shouted Kamijou, leaping forward.

He felt like a wall of spikes was approaching fast. His right hand couldn’t handle so many at once. But at the same time, the Shrink Drink was ''only'' designed for use against Transcendents. If he used his full body as a shield, he might be able to protect Anna.

The wicked woman spoke in an uncharacteristically weak voice behind him.

“Thank you…”

That was good enough for him.

He wished he could negate them all with his right hand, but he figured he could survive being pierced by one or two of them. At the very least, doing this was better than standing by and watching the tragedy play out.

Or so he thought.

But he was knocked away by a hard blow from behind.

“Wha-?”

From behind.

That meant it had to have been Anna Sprengel.

“''But, fool, that is the one thing I cannot accept.''”

She had put her full weight behind her little foot to forcibly kick away the boy protecting her. She kicked him toward Aradia.

She had a point.

These spiritual items were designed to kill only Transcendents, but that meant Aradia was as much at risk as Anna. Mut Thebes did not show any concern for the cabal member she had already given up on. Kamijou had completely forgotten about her, but at the same time…

There was still the irregular Transcendent.

That little wicked woman could do things normal Transcendents couldn’t.

While everything else moved in slow motion, Anna Sprengel cutely stuck out her tongue.

Written on her face was a refusal to let herself be rescued and turn into a good person. She would instead keep her true intentions hidden to the very end and go on deceiving people.

She was saying she would walk the path of the wicked woman to the bitter end.

A moment later, everything sped back up.

The Shrink Drink spears crashed into the world as if filling up the entire space around her.

There was no dodging that. Anna Sprengel might be a Transcendent – albeit an abnormal one – but maybe not even her defense spells could have stopped the onslaught.

The countless spears pierced her small form.

Strangely, not a drop of blood was shed as the sharp glass tips shattered inside her. The toxic pink liquid contained in all those spears permeated her from the inside out. Something unhealthy circulated through her little body.

Yet Kamijou, who had ended up guarding Aradia instead, remained standing even though his right hand wasn’t enough to block them all.

Anna didn’t scream. She didn’t even writhe in pain. She simply lay motionless on the ground.

If what he had been told was correct, Anna Sprengel was beyond saving.

Just like he couldn’t resurrect an incinerated corpse by touching it with his right hand.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Kamijou screamed.

Almost like he was screaming in Anna’s place since she couldn’t even express the pain.

Maybe he had started to sympathize with her while traveling with her. Maybe her wicked side was easy to forget now that she couldn’t display it any longer. Maybe he had actually found her cute in some ways. The reason didn’t matter. He just had to gather up whatever strength he could find inside him, no matter how small, and use it to break through this worst case scenario and save that little wicked woman!! That was the only thought in Kamijou’s shaky head.

But none of that could alter the reality.

He was too weak.

He crumbled to the ground after protecting Aradia and he couldn’t get back up.

Sure, she was a wicked woman.

''But what did that matter,'' goddammit!!?

“My job is now complete,” said Mut Thebes, all business.

She was a punishment expert. She knew not to let her emotions interfere and to avoid causing any unnecessary harm.

She played her role with the accuracy of turning gears.

“But since we have ''updated'' Aradia, the retired one is no longer needed, so I will kill her. This isn’t meant to be my job, but better safe than sorry. Once that is done, I can bring the new one back with me and order will have been restored to the cabal.”

“No, not yet.”

“You would resist me? You are no longer Aradia. What can a retired nobody do in the professional world? Any attempt to survive is doomed to fail.”

“No, I am the goddess who always finds a way to rescue a witch in need. So I figured I might as well save Anna Sprengel.”

When he heard that, Kamijou slowly looked up.

The silver-haired woman had lost her position as a regular, but she still hadn’t given up.

She stood in the way, just like a goddess.

“Save her?” asked the slumped and battered boy, his voice scratchy.

He looked to that faint light that continued to shine like the moon in the darkness of fear and rejection.

“She can still be saved?”

“Yes, so don’t worry. This is not a loss or a dead end. You don’t need to give up on anything. The goddess of all witches will turn it all around. Wandering good witch child, behold a miracle.”

Mut Thebes stared at the light protecting the boy who looked ready to blow away in the night breeze.

She stared at the person whose skin shined a pale white after bathing in the moonlight for so long.

The punishment expert expressionlessly tilted her head.

“That is not possible. The Shrink Drink borrows a portion of Alice’s power, so not even Good, Old Mary’s resurrection can heal Anna Sprengel. It would violate the cabal’s order.”

Deep, dark resignation threatened to blot out Kamijou’s vision again.

But the goddess would not allow it.

''Aradia, goddess of witches, the night, and the moon,'' spoke clearly.

“Silly girl. You just gave the answer right there.”

The brown girl clearly didn’t know what Aradia meant.

Goddess Aradia gave the answer to raise the light of hope in the darkness.

The shadow of magic was not a depthless darkness.

The night was meant to be a kinder and gentler thing.

“''We just have to get Alice’s help.'' If Good, Old Mary can do it, you can’t tell me Alice can’t. And if Alice does it, the quality is bound to be better. So as long as we get Alice on our side, we can avoid the Shrink Drink’s death sentence. It might be cheating, but there is still room to save Anna Sprengel.”

This didn’t even feel like the logic of magic anymore.

It was entirely based on the Transcendent ''belief'' that Alice Anotherbible was the most frightening thing imaginable.

But Mut Thebes’s response was immediate.

“I will not let you.”

Which meant ''it would work''.

Her confidence was gone.

Something about her voice was different from before. She forgot all about the air of stability she always carried with her. She remained expressionless, but she showed some panic that said this really would work if she didn’t do whatever it took to stop it.

“Alice is the biggest irregularity there is, but she is one of the main performers and has the charisma to match. Traitor Anna and Retired Aradia, you have been purged from the stage and are no longer permitted back in. Hand over your cabal member passes and begone. We cannot have outsiders disturbing the order of the cabal any longer.”

“But you can’t tell Alice Anotherbible what to do. There’s no actual rule saying it has to be a professional member of our field. The one and only key lies elsewhere, like the performer’s lover rather than the performer herself. And ''that'' is why you are panicking, isn’t it, Mut Thebes?”

“…”

Everyone’s eyes gathered on a single point.

The tension was so dense an ordinary person might have suffocated.

But.

That brought a quiet thought to a certain boy’s mind.

''Oh, right.'' If they were that cautious…

(Then it really would work.)

Of course, this wasn’t the result of Kamijou’s own efforts.

He held the final key to saving the girl he had thought was lost. So he didn’t have to curse his own life here. This was the unique treasure that none other than Anna Sprengel had given him.

He was the only one in the world.

This was about as selfish as it got after hurting her and making her cry. He knew that. But what if he still had some slight connection left with that girl?

Then a miracle was still possible.

Kamijou Touma could change Alice’s mind and have her save Anna Sprengel.

That knowledge was all it took.

The perfectly ordinary high school boy stood back up on his own two feet.

He clenched his right fist as hard as a rock and rejudged the size of his foe.

“Aradia.”

“Just to be sure, you do mean me, right?”

The witch goddess who had protected Kamijou stood alongside him and glared at the woman dressed identically to her.

Yes, they had more than one enemy now.

It was two-against-two.

“''Can I leave her to you?''”

“''Of course. I will take care of the other Aradia. Witches operate on the threefold return. If that wicked witch did a good deed, then the least I can do is return her life to her.''”

Thinking back, Kamijou had always died instantly when he tried to fight a Transcendent.

Good, Old Mary wasn’t around this time. Even if she was, he couldn’t expect her to save him when their interests weren’t aligned.

He wouldn’t be resurrected.

If he died here, that was the end.

But Kamijou Touma had zero intention of falling back.

Anna Sprengel was an indefensibly wicked woman.

She had deceived Kamijou to the end with a smile.

''So what?

Morality could get lost. That was a measuring stick invented by someone else. This was his life. It was up to him to decide who in this world he would save and whether or not he would risk his own life to do it.

Mut Thebes quietly tilted her head while surrounded by weapons weighing hundreds of thousands of tons.

She looked to Kamijou Touma and asked him a question.

“Are you saying you will fight me?”

“I am.”

“But you’ll die?”

“Probably!!”

She wasn’t being ironic.

The blonde-haired, brown-skinned Transcendent really was worried for the reckless boy.

“Oh, dear. But I have no real reason to fight an innocent boy.”

“After everything you've done and you expect me to believe that!?”

It was two-against-two.

Kamijou Touma vs. Mut Thebes.

Aradia vs. Aradia.

Power through it. No matter how impossible it seemed, if they didn’t win here, there was no saving Anna Sprengel, who had refused salvation and been pierced with a smile on her face.

This was the best result?

She had done well for the ultimate wicked woman?

If that girl would sneer and say she couldn’t escape her wicked ways – if Anna truly thought that while lying all alone on the ground…

“I’ll destroy it.”

Kamijou Touma clenched his teeth and chose to challenge certain death once more.

He wouldn’t be bound by the morality invented by someone he’d never met. If he felt any doubt at all, he only had to hold a hand to his heart and ask himself what he should do. That would tell him what was really and truly important.

Yes.

So the perfectly ordinary high school boy raised his head.

“I’ll smash that illusion until not even the tiniest piece is left!!!”

If the right person were to hear this, they surely would have been reminded of a certain theory.

The theory that a certain human had advocated until the moment he vanished from the known world, even as he was rejected by all and called a demon.

''Do what thou wilt.

They had parted ways, but that power did still reside within this boy.

[[Image:GT_Index_v08_BW6.jpeg|thumb]]

===Between the Lines 4===

Anna Sprengel was a bad person.

There was no wiggle room on that point. She had admitted to it herself.

She had of course done what she could as a wicked woman to survive. She had detected a plan she couldn’t allow to continue and put together a concrete plan to stop it.

But.

Deep down, she had known all of her efforts ''would never bear fruit.'' Or you could say she had resigned herself to her fate. She hadn’t known when exactly it would happen. But she had known her hopes and prayers would be smashed to pieces at some point. They would be destroyed at the worst possible point. She had spread her arms and done so much in this attempt, so she had known the retaliation would be coming sooner or later.

In a way, that despair may have been the core of who Anna Sprengel was.

So she had frozen up when Anna Kingsford – something capable of threatening her very existence – had shown up. She had forgotten all about enjoying the situation as a wicked woman and had grown aware of how much she disliked loss. It wasn’t an issue of skill with spells or the amount of magic power they could refine at once. She had been shaken at a more fundamental level.

That had to be it.

In the end, she couldn’t live free without being disrespectful.

So the more that little wicked woman struggled, the worse things got for her.

It had been all too obvious. Simply put, the bad guy is meant to make a memorable exit when it was time for their defeat.

(Well.)

She felt cold.

Ice cold.

This wasn’t the biting chill of the January air or of the floor she was lying on. It was a more intense cold coming from her spine. It was the invisible hand of death spreading through her from the inside out.

Anna Sprengel slowly narrowed her eyes.

(I already told them about the Bridge Builders Cabal’s grand plan. The line between Alice Anotherbible and Kamijou Touma has only been bent not broken. Really, I’m not strictly necessary…anymore…)

So maybe this was good enough.

She had advanced the game pieces far enough for the next move, so maybe she was the most expendable one in the group. If Kamijou Touma received Witch Goddess Aradia’s help and smashed the Bridge Builders Cabal’s ambitions, wouldn’t that qualify as a happy ending?

And in a way, maybe she could call herself lucky this had ended before Anna Kingsford could reveal everything.

But.

Even so.

“Are you saying you will fight me?”

“I am.”

She heard that voice.

It reached her.

“But you’ll die?”

“Probably!!”

She heard the voice of someone who refused to accept that ordinary ending.

She heard the voice of the boy who would stand back up as many times as it took while he clenched his teeth and fought back against this unfair world.

“Oh, dear. But I have no real reason to fight an innocent boy.”

“How the hell am I innocent after everything I’ve done!?”

It was not a voice of anger.

It was the cry of a boy who was fighting to suppress the tears and struggling with all his might to keep from trembling.

So the wicked woman found herself biting her lip while collapsed on the ground.

(Damn. And I was all ready to accept this. I had eliminated my fear by wrapping it all up with me smiling and dying, wicked to the end.)

The Shrink Drink was a special product made with the help of extraordinary Alice Anotherbible. That spiritual item had been created for the sole purpose of killing a traitor and its lethal effect was already at work within her.

There was no saving her.

She knew that.

(But how can I die when he says that?)

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Chapter4

2023-12-18T16:32:21Z

Entei08: spelling

==Chapter 4: At the Center – Duel_and_Struggle,CRC.==

===Part 1===

The hospital’s 1st floor hallway was a straight path to the ICU where Anna Sprengel slept.

“Heh heh.”

The red-clad silver young man’s shoulders shook with laughter.

He mocked the foolishness of Kamijou Touma whose shoulder was gushing blood where his arm should be.

“I wondered what trump card you would rely on in the end, but all you did was break the glass container? That one normally sleeps within his coffin, but he naturally awakens when he locates the disease plaguing this world and returns to his coffin once he is no longer needed. Producing the world-healing elixir is all well and good, but how long can you last like this? Given the rate of blood loss, I would guess 10 minutes at the mo-”

Kamijou Touma wasn’t listening.

A single step covered all the necessary distance. He softly sent the translucent dragon emerging from his right shoulder toward CRC.

It didn’t feel like punching with a fist or biting and tearing with great jaws.

It was probably a miniscule attack like a forehead flick.

A mass of compressed sound erupted a moment later.

That was all it took to launch Rosencreutz several dozen meters down the hospital hallway.

“Oh, ohh!”

This result shouldn’t have been possible.

Misaka Mikoto, the other #5 girl, Academy City’s next-gen weaponry, the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal, the grimoire library, the Magic God, and even legendary magicians like Aleister and Kingsford had failed to achieve this.

This was the very first clean hit against him.

And it happened almost too easily.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!?”

He bounced repeatedly, producing the sounds of physical destruction, the screams of muscle and bone, and the wet hacking of bloody coughs.

But none of that explained CRC’s trembling.

He was looking down at his own left hand.

Still seated on the floor, the silver young man viewed his own hand pressed against the floor and he trembled.

“You made this old man…''touch the floor''?”

This was a first.

It hadn’t been allowed to happen even once before now.

He had always stood tall on the battlefield. His march across Academy City had continued unabated even during the satellite’s heavy metal bombing and the Hula Hoop’s largescale particle accelerator cannon. With that in mind, just how much power had this small result required?

''This far surpassed human limits.

''The boy had chosen to cross that line.

Because he had sworn he would save the greatest wicked woman who could only wait for death.

“…”

Kamijou Touma provided no response.

He did not speak up in triumph and he kept his head lowered, hiding his expression.

A change came over the boy’s own shadow at his feet.

''It flickered.

''Unnaturally, like a dying fluorescent light.

What had this power cost him?

It was like the boy, who supposedly had a physical body, was shifting into the realm of shapeless and weightless illusion.

“………………………………………………………………………”

He took another step.

That was enough for the world to distort and strain. The space around him definitely sank. If he had stepped with greater purpose, it might have triggered an inwards gravitational collapse in that space, creating an irreparable hole.

The wordless action conveyed a single purpose.

Kamijou Touma was stepping forward to approach CRC once more.

This wasn’t over.

He wouldn’t let it end with just the one attack.

He would tear CRC apart, chew him up, and fully eliminate him from the world. He would save the people he considered important, even if it meant staining his hand with blood.

He had made the decision.

“I see.”

Rosencreutz did not speak at length here.

When taken to their absolute limit, formulas became beautifully simple.

Just like E=mc2, CRC’s conclusion was a concise one.

Cracking sounds came from all across his body as he stood back up. He lifted his hips from the floor, placed a hand on the wall, and allowed himself all the unsightly actions it required.

“I admit it. You have convinced this old man: this world is a fascinating place☆ Eh heh heh heh! I truly did not think it had anything left to satisfy my playfulness and eliminate my frustrations. Ah hee hee hee!?”

His eyes were directed straight at the dragon boy.

Drowning in his own passions, the holy man finally viewed that single boy as an enemy.

Kamijou Touma and Christian Rosencreutz.

A clash between superhumans had begun.

===Part 2===

The air was strongly compressed.

There was no need to hold anything back.

Kamijou approached from straight ahead, so Christian Rosencreutz held out his palm.

That was an invisible attack capable of destroying anything.

That brutal spell was clearly magic, but not even Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker could have stopped it and it would have torn the arm off instead.

The compression of the air passed a certain point and it rumbled out like an explosion.

But Kamijou did not speak a word.

He instructed what lay beyond his nonexistent right arm and the invisible dragon moved slightly. That was enough to overturn all the assumptions.

The dragon’s maw – and its razor-sharp teeth – bit a black object, stopping it in its tracks.

The object was a bit larger than a golf ball.

“''A…projectile''?” muttered Aradia, her eyes widened in shock as she watched from the sidelines.

This was the identity of the extremely powerful magic that supposedly made defense impossible.

There was no mystery or miracle there. In fact, if a projectile was given a lethal amount of destructive force, it would naturally be moving too quickly to see with the naked eye. That unchangeable rule remained the same even when magic had influenced the logic. It was only a common parlor trick.

Kamijou did not bother with mockery. For that matter, he showed no human reaction at all. He only swung his arm dragon horizontally, tossing the annoyance of an object aside.

Why waste time on ordinary emotion when he could dedicate that time to devouring his prey?

That was the only thought behind his actions.

“Hee hee. So you can finally fight back and let me have some fun.”

Rosencreutz continued firing.

Annoyed and irritated by the identical attacks, Kamijou’s dragon released a deafening roar.

It was possible the boy couldn’t control it himself. The sloppily swung jaws deflected CRC’s projectiles to the side, sending them ricocheting toward hospital rooms with no connection to the fight.

The silver young man grinned.

As if to say he had guided things in that direction.

But the fearsome attacks vanished into thin air before contacting the wall.

“Oh?” breathed CRC in fascination.

He had sensed something worthy of his interest.

“You eliminated my attacks without permission? No, this is a simple matter of willpower. Any attack launched without a powerful intent to kill will be swallowed up and destroyed. And any attack that misses its mark swiftly loses all meaning.”

“…”

“After experiencing an improbably uniform amount of misfortune, you loathe lucky shots from your enemy. And this old man loathes all coincidental actions that go against my passions and playfulness. I see. Our clashing wills have distorted space on the macro level. But,” said Rosencreutz with a mocking grin. He held his palm out to the side, casually aiming at the wall there. “Kee hee hee, ee hee, hwa ha ha ha ha ha!! That leaves me plenty of room to play. ''As long as this old man directs his intent to kill toward those strangers, I can still hit them''!”

Space was immediately sliced through over a distance of more than 100m.

But not because CRC had sliced through the innocent hospital patient beyond that wall.

A moment before he could, Kamijou Touma jabbed his dragon jaws forward and had it exhale a violent beam of light. Then he swung the jaws straight up to slice CRC’s right arm off at the shoulder.

Rosencreutz showed no interest in his own right arm spinning through the air.

“''Mend''.”

As soon as he spoke that one word, the nearby rubble gathered around and formed something like the smooth arm of a mannequin to stop his bleeding. This was not a resurrection that returned him to normal. He was only mending by creating something new. After traveling the world, gathering all sorts of knowledge, and going around teaching people the secret art to create a human from scratch inside a still, this was a simple task for him. He didn’t even bother checking the movement of the arm that was lither and more beautiful than a real human arm. Instead, he raised his gaze straight up.

The ceiling had split.

But not because it had been sliced through.

Like custard or gelatin, the hospital’s walls and ceiling had separated themselves to the left and right to avoid Kamijou’s attack. Including the beds, the medical equipment, and the wiring in the walls. It all forgot its original texture, spread apart at the center like a slime, and then reconnected like nothing had happened.

It was like the building itself had a mind and a life of its own.

Christian Rosencreutz drew on his vast wisdom to instantly explain it.

This was not creation or destruction.

It was…

“''Did you command it''? The intimidation of the crowned dragon king can command all living things, but also all inanimate objects?”

Those words carried deeper meaning than it initially seemed. And not just the silly risk of CRC himself obeying the command if he got careless.

Stray shots, hostages, other’s lives?

With this ultimate power, Kamijou wouldn’t have to worry about any of that.

Which meant…

''There truly was no one in the world who could stop Kamijou Touma after this monstrous transformation!!

He attacked again. But this time, it wasn’t just a beam flying from the dragon’s jaws.

The dragon itself detached from his right shoulder and flew out.

“Hwa ha ha hah!!”

CRC laughed loud, swung his body upwards, and dodged by breaking through the ceiling.

He had reacted to the real threat rather than let it hit him and see what happened. And at this point, he had finally quit relying on magic. He had needed to move faster than he could put together a spell.

The battlefield spread beyond the one long hallway.

They moved to a rehabilitation room, a break room, an operating room, and finally a nurse station on one of the higher floors.

It all looked the same, so Kamijou couldn’t tell what floor he was on. But the boy taking a step beyond humanity did see a familiar face down the hallway.

It was Aogami Pierce.

He was a powerless high school boy. But he was standing protectively in front of a small girl in pajamas who was holding a picture book. His legs were shaking, but he hadn’t frozen in place. He had purposefully chosen to stand there.

Whether he was more interested in the young girl or her mother was unclear, though.

Right and wrong didn’t matter here. He wasn’t bound by that.

Seeing that his awful friend had meant what he said, the boy who had partially fallen into illusion briefly smiled like he always did in the classroom, but then he renewed his resolve. Kamijou Touma forced his gaze away and viewed his powerful foe instead.

CRC – Christian Rosencreutz.

He could not let that monster go free and focus on that boy and girl.

No matter what.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

“Oh? Kee hee hee, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

They clashed head on.

Kamijou swung the silver young man to the side.

He kicked him away and then tossed him up into the floor above.

He didn’t stop there, of course. He had already begun his next action.

The air froze.

The giant maw gnashed its teeth intermittently, creating a disturbing sound not even a guillotine or bear trap could have mimicked.

“Kh.”

While clinging magnetically to the hospital’s outside wall and trying to pursue the fight up to the upper floors, Mikoto found her feet pinned to the outside of a window. Pinned by fear. Her instincts were running wild and weighing heavily on her reason.

“What…is this? A psychological form of paralysis?” gasped the blonde girl with her arms around the #3’s hips.

If they would ensure that even the next attack would hit no matter how long the leadup, then the intimidation of those gnashing fangs could be called a surefire attack.

But it didn’t work on the silver young man.

An unpleasant sweat wet his brow, but he was still smiling

He acted out of playfulness and a desire to blow off some steam, so this could not bind him. After all, not even the #5 power had worked on him when it was used by ''its mysterious owner''. CRC was a monster with the mentality needed to continue smiling in this situation.

And Kamijou didn’t care.

Something flew from the dragon maw like a whip. It was a long, chameleon-like tongue. CRC stepped back before it could ensnare him, but then he realized something.

“Hm?”

''He was gone.

''Kamijou Touma had disappeared in the brief moment CRC’s eyes were off the boy.

But he could sense him.

A great pressure was approaching from the front!!

“You are a poikilotherm – that is, you have the ability to blend into the surrounding environment. But did you really think that would work against this old man?”

CRC swung a single arm, not hesitating to strike a point of empty space.

A cross with several sharp rose vines tangled around appeared there. It was more than a meter tall and it was entirely made of heavy gold.

It didn’t matter. A disturbing sound of bending metal rang out.

Kamijou and the dragon maw appeared out of thin air. The fangs and the cross struck each other.

The result was a series of snapping sounds.

“Kh.”

Seeing the cross bending, CRC kicked a nearby stretcher into the shutting jaws. It could be hard to tell since they were made so light for greater portability, but the stretcher was made of sturdy stainless steel to ensure it didn’t drop a critical patient. It wasn’t going to break in a crocodile’s jaws or in a brown bear’s grasp.

But the jaws were not slowed.

They closed at the exact same speed, the row of fangs approaching Rosencreutz’s hand holding the cross.

That cross was not magic.

Nor was it an illusion, but the arm jaws still chewed it up and erased the intruding wreckage from the world.

Those jaws would destroy even unshakable reality.

This was a new power Kamijou Touma had acquired at the cost of his own destruction.

It was an attack that allowed no response.

And most likely, it was a tragic power gained when someone gave up on someone else.

“I see.”

Rosencreutz smiled while dripping with a sweat of both tension and a desire to fight.

That smile contained an unusual heat as he shouted.

“Tell me. Why go to such lengths to protect Anna Sprengel? Hee hee, how much longer do you have left? What did you discover by accepting your own assured destruction?”

Only now did human language leave Kamijou Touma’s lips.

In a situation which screamed that doing so was the abnormality here.

“I will…protect Anna.”

But these were definitely his words.

Because…

“I…wrong to…search out…reason…excuse to fight…”

That was the final humanity left inside the boy who had become a monster.

It was like a tiny stone rattling around inside him, but it was something he couldn’t afford to lose.

So he refused to lose it.

That ordinary boy would never again hang his head and overlook a magical atrocity.

“Interesting – kee hee – but not good enough!”

Rosencreutz held his empty palm out toward the boy’s face.

While their weapons were locked.

That attack had already been identified as a projectile. But in this moment, the invisible dragon could not move to stop the point-blank projectile attack.

With the unpleasant sound of the air being compressed, Kamijou Touma’s entire head was obliterated.

He didn’t even have time to blink.

Kamijou took another step forward like nothing had happened. His head had already regenerated. A dragon tail appeared out of thin air and twirled away as a substitute. That was likely a lizard’s tail that would take on any damage he took. But Kamijou knew without being told that it was a move he could only use once.

Now that he knew he had that option, he wished he had held onto it for longer.

His gaze shifted to the side. The action showed some lingering regret. It all felt like it was happening to someone else. Single use and not knowing the effect until you used it was a devastatingly bad combination.

And with his eyes still in that direction, he casually sent the Dragon Strike straight toward CRC.

“Tch.”

Rosencreutz immediately fell back.

He escaped beyond the reach of the snapping jaws, but Kamijou did not bat an eye.

The entire surface of the invisible dragon jaws ''erupted''. All its razor-sharp scales shot out. They rushed out to pummel Rosencreutz’s entire body like a point-blank shotgun blast.

“Ohhhhh!” shouted CRC just before a white steam explosively filled the space.

In the Rosicrucian cabal, clouds were an important symbol of covering up wisdom and truth to prevent the unworthy from viewing it. Inside that cloud, no attack could hit him even if made from 0cm away. The entire space could be filled with a dense scattershot, but it would be as useless as trying to attack a cat that may or may not be there because no one could observe it.

Kamijou swept the dragon horizontally to tear the thick cloud apart in an instant and then the color red sprayed out.

The cloud didn’t matter at all.

The dragon released its breath.

It looked like a sharp purple-shining blade, but was that actually the poison stored in an evil dragon’s body being released at extreme pressure?

The box was shredded, the cat was forced out to establish its existence, and then it was killed.

“Kee hee.”

CRC laughed and took immediate evasive action, but also ignored the deadly toxin traveling through his bloodstream.

That silver young man had many legends told of him, but he was an alchemist at heart. He used alchemy as a starting point for all of his miracles, from the artificial life within the crystal to the red elixir.

So…

“You would use a nonexistent toxin against this old man? All poisons and harmful substances can be converted into medicines and beneficial substances if handled properly. Just like radiation can induce the cancerization of cells, but it is also used to treat cancer. It would be rude to not present you with my own wisdom in return!!”

Rosencreutz produced a deck of cards in his hand.

He fanned them out and went on to rotate them in a full circle in violation of gravity.

“The secret spell of Rota can be flipped around to make Taro, thus it can be converted into the cards that indicate the 10 spheres and the 22 pathways. Awaken, 78 cards. You are the one and only proper entrance to the light pouring down from beyond the tree – that is, the Ain Soph Aur, Ain Soph, Ain!!”

A violent white light exploded from the emptiness at the center of the card circle.

A beam of light sharper than a razor scorched the air as it rushed toward Kamijou’s right arm. The all-destroying dragon maw was split in two. While he was dragged around by the chaotically thrashing dragon, even more blood gushed from the boy’s shoulder.

The toxic red splattered across the floor and walls.

Christian Rosencreutz scoffed at the colorful artwork.

“Hee hee hee hee hee! How much longer now? Feeling lightheaded? Can’t stop the cold sweat? Worried by your pulse pounding in your chest? Nothing you do can reach this old man!! Even if you wring out every last drop from the depths of your heart!!”

A moment later, beams of light rushed out from seemingly every direction.

“Wha-!?”

CRC realized the boy’s bloodstains had drawn out strange patterns.

The instant he gasped in realization of what those patterns meant, the ''magic circles'' glowed with a disturbing light.

The floor and walls bubbled redly. It wasn’t just the white beams. Crimson serpents that should have been controlled by a lamp emerged, as did the yellow Citrinitas sand that had engulfed Los Angeles.

They surrounded CRC and came at him all at once.

His right arm was already fake, so he sacrificed that while backing away from the deadly chaos, his eyes widening at witnessing what shouldn’t have been possible.

“A scientific esper like you has entered the realm of magic?”

That was no longer CRC’s exclusive territory. Kamijou had intruded on the legend of the rose and the cross.

But how could this be?

Christian Rosencreutz was no ordinary magician. His very existence had become a legend. He refused to accept that even a Rosicrucian expert could understand and immediately make use of the spells he used.

But the fact remained that the red blood splattered on the walls and floor crawled, glowed, and bubbled.

It all drew out secret texts and magic circles known only to CRC. Even though these were the most secret of spells that he had never even shared with the others at the House of the Holy Spirit where they had all shared so much knowledge like they were sharing a meal. Not even the grimoire library would have been able to find these spells if she searched for them.

Had Kamijou Touma already evolved into a monster who could access the world itself and automatically use the magic he found there?

Something occurred to Rosencreutz once he considered that possibility.

…Known ''only'' to CRC?

“I get it now. ''This is a Rorschach test.''”

He should have caught on quicker.

An esper like Kamijou was using magic but showing no side effects.

“The magic knowledge did not come from within this broken esper. He showed this old man indistinct bloodstains, which I interpreted as the secret texts and magic circles I knew, unwittingly drawing out their magic!”

But however it had been done, the magic known only to Rosencreutz had still bared its fangs against him. Knowing the logic behind it did not stop his mind from imagining those shapes when he saw the bloodstains.

Of course, there was risk to Kamijou as well. He had no way of guiding what Rosencreutz imagined when he saw the bloodstains. This was a double-edged sword that could just as easily capture Kamijou himself in a powerful magical blast.

“Trithemius!!” shouted CRC, intricately moving his fingers.

Immediately, the magic light approaching him froze in place and stopped moving. He had made use of the encryption method that Westcott had coincidentally discovered. Rosencreutz had applied a random encryption to the bloodstains which had become secret texts and magic circles, eternally locking them so they could never be used. Much like ransomware encrypting a hard drive.

Rosencreutz felt a sizzling sensation at his temple.

This wasn’t like before. This emotion was anger.

The silver young man’s internal state had shifted up a gear.

“You dare force this old man to use magic out of something other than passion or playfulness? You continue to prove yourself to be my greatest nemesis!!!”

So what?

Kamijou ignored that and took action.

Something grew from the base of the great jaws that had replaced his right arm. It resembled a giant cape, but it was actually a sinister bat wing. The single wing gathered the air and then flapped.

The air became a solid mass and then became an extraordinary projectile that flew through the hospital.

At the same time, all the windows frosted over, the air electrified, and thick bolts of lightning rushed toward Rosencreutz from every direction. Was this what would happen to someone if they were thrown inside a large, swollen cumulonimbus cloud?

“You have not just created wind. The air pressure obeys your will, allowing you to control the weather!?”

This was well within divine territory, making it a legit miracle.

It could be blessed rain, or it could be electric divine punishment.

And CRC could also control clouds. He brought two fingers to his mouth and blew between them. One cloud struck the other, the weather conditions were forcibly altered, and the lightning changed course.

Kamijou Touma was already there.

He had rapidly covered the space between them, arriving right in front of Rosencreutz.

“Kh.”

The silver young man split the floor below him and broke through every floor below that, ending up in the hospital’s basement.

He wasn’t afraid of a ''normal'' punch.

He only realized after the fact that this had been a downwards strike from directly above.

But the hospital itself hadn’t been damaged. All of the floors in the way had parted like gelatin all on their own. After dragon-tamer Kamijou jumped down after him, the holes silently closed back up on their own too.

CRC held his palm out toward a thick metal door.

“The red elixir can conquer all deadly disease and even manipulate the lifespan!”

With a series of solid clanking sounds, the door, a cart, a scanning device larger than a fridge, and various other things gathered together and took the shape of a giant doll. It didn’t matter that they were all inorganic items. A liquid nitrogen tank must have burst because a thick white frost covered it all.

But Kamijou took action before it could actually do anything. In fact, Kamijou had punched Rosencreutz down here because he wanted something down here: the medical waste incinerator.

That special electric furnace could reach temperatures as high as 3500 degrees Celsius.

“…”

The wall right next to Kamijou audibly broke.

The following crunching sounds did not come from the invisible dragon maw.

''Kamijou Touma was chewing it in his own mouth.

And the boy raised his right arm. The front-facing dragon jaws opened as wide as possible. This was something new. Something massive and brutal filled the depths of that mouth with a dangerous light.

He didn’t hesitate to unleash it.

Magnetron Dragon Breath.

All the dust and moisture in the air burned as a fearsome white torrent tore away at Christian Rosencreutz.

Another taboo was revealed and that monster was backed even further into a corner.

===Part 3===

Light was compressed, sound was released in all directions, and yet no third party was affected.

Not one.

The girls had their hands full simply keeping up with the constantly moving battlefield. Misaka Mikoto moved freely along the hospital’s outer wall with her magnetism and Shokuhou Misaki held onto Mikoto’s hips, but both of them could only watch the intense fighting play out. That had to be the same for Aradia and the Bologna Succubus who were probably outside flying in the sky. No one could intervene in this direct clash between superhumans. Attempting to would cause it all to fall apart. Just like any stimulus to calmly simmering water could cause an explosive boil. No, that wasn’t it. That was only an excuse for their own inaction. Their real reasons were nothing so noble.

(It was me.)

Mikoto clenched her teeth at the thought.

She was staring pale-faced at where the boy’s right arm should have been.

(I pulled the final trigger!)

''She was simply afraid to do anything more.

She felt a deep aversion, like she were facing an unknown curse. But this wasn’t a gloomy cruse born of an individual’s grudge or hatred. She was overpowered by the same sense of wrongness people had toward viewing or touching something holy and inviolable.

“What am I supposed to do about this?” she muttered distractedly.

This may have been the same feeling Level 0 Kamijou Touma had felt when it was Anti-Skill, Judgment, the Level 5s, and the Transcendents doing the fighting.

Their roles had reversed.

Now that boy alone had complete control of the battlefield.

Only he could face this enemy.

Titles had lost all meaning.

And the situation was still underway. This was no time to be stuck at a standstill. Kamijou was not a fount of unlimited possibility. Nor did he have a hidden power or special ability.

His shadow was flickering unsteadily. This power was bought at the cost of his own destruction.

Which meant there had to be a time limit.

===Part 4===

Kamijou and Rosencreutz clashed head on and the boy broke through a wall, flying across the hallway leading to the elevator. He was knocked up the elevator shaft and rolled along the floor before coming to a stop.

He found himself in a large cafeteria.

He felt an unpleasant sensation below him.

He could barely see it without straining his eyes, but the culprit was yellow sand.

The color of defeat had permeated the area.

Even though a hospital needed to be as clean and sterile as possible.

“…”

Kamijou Touma silently stood up and then wobbled to the side.

As if he were struggling to support the weight of the massive jaws.

Blood was still gushing from the shoulder where his arm had been torn away. He was not going to last long like this. In just a few more minutes, he would collapse from blood loss and he would not be getting back up again.

He stared at CRC. At that man driven by playfulness and curiosity who was now smirking with sweat soaking his face.

“Oh.”

So.

Kamijou didn’t care what happened to himself. His own destruction had been part of the plan from the beginning.

He had to find some way of ending this before he ran out of time.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Guessing a major attack was coming, CRC grabbed something out of thin air.

Whatever it was, it glowed red.

“The ruby’s shine points to the pure red of the rose. That female symbol is a pair to the cross and can produce anything and everything. So mass-produce monsters of death and destruction here and now!!”

A tremor ran through the building.

And not just one. More and more 2m silver orbs known as Pneuma-less Shells appeared, until they had filled the space.

The giant silver bubbles all opened at once. Not even Rosencreutz knew what would emerge. Still holding the mother device – the symbol of the red rose – CRC only laughed.

These things absorbed mystical power like a shaman.

They mechanically decoded it.

And they released it into the world.

“Stone tools – the oldest form of deadly bludgeoning. Wooden sticks – the oldest form of deadly whipping. Uranium – the oldest form of radiation poisoning. The oldest form of drowning. The oldest form of deadly gunshot. The oldest form of deadly burning. The oldest form of vigilante killing. The oldest form of hanging. The oldest form of decapitation, of skewering, of deadly vibration, of crushing, of electrocution, of poisoning, of vehicular homicide, of karoshi, of mincemeat death, of explosive death, of death from being buried alive!!!”

They split open.

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

And he released a brutal purple breath from the dragon.

Mutual death was fine by him.

“Gahhhhhhh!?”

There were legends of that sort.

For example, Norse mythology told of a great serpent that had grown until it could surround the entire world. During the final battle of Ragnarok, that dragon even managed to defeat the #2 god at the cost of its own life.

“Jormungand from…Norse mythology? Did you use the weight that not even Thor could lift to forcibly crush your own wound and stanch the bleeding?”

Kamijou didn’t understand any of that.

And it didn’t matter if he did or not.

There was precedent. In exchange for losing a possibly deadly amount of blood, this dragon that emerged from his right hand had robbed all power from a girl after she became a lightning god.

“Kh.”

The right arm – the invisible dragon – gained further control over the boy.

The shadow at his feet flickered unsteadily. It looked ready to flicker out permanently at any moment.

But an iron will of “that’s fine with me” could be seen within the boy.

If he could protect Anna Sprengel and the people who had helped try and save her, he was willing to move beyond the boundaries of humanity here.

So when Kamijou Touma raised his head, the light in his eyes did not waver one iota.

“~ ~ ~!”

Tears formed in Rosencreutz’s eyes.

He had not succumbed to fear.

CRC took an objective view of his own crisis and was moved to tears like he was watching a movie.

“Ha ha.”

And that cheap and irresponsible emotion was what allowed that passion-driven wicked holy man to draw on his greatest power.

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha!! Incredible, simply incredible☆ This old man has actually being driven into a corner? Death has drawn so close? Hee hee. This is where it all begins. Once this old man pulls off a miraculous comeback and escapes alive, I will truly drown in my tearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs!!!”

That was like a trigger.

No matter how twisted and rotten he was, his playful side could resist the temptation of achieving mutual destruction with his nemesis.

And once he shifted fully toward survival, only one option remained.

Namely…

“''Run away''!!!”

He didn’t hesitate.

He broke a still-intact window and jumped out through it.

As much power as Kamijou now possessed, he had lost a lot of blood from his severed arm. There was no need to actually fight him. By moving far away, CRC could wait until Kamijou ran out of time and collapsed.

Kamijou would die on his own as things were and, if he were to try to use first aid to recover, CRC only had to slice off the boy’s head or tear out his heart.

Rosencreutz never would have allowed this before. Not because he was too proud. His playfulness and desire to blow off steam simply wouldn’t have accepted it.

But his objective had already changed.

Pride was just one form of enjoyment. Now that he had changed his objective from “victory” to “survival” and he longed for the pleasure of achieving that, he knew fleeing was the best option.

“Hee ha ha!! We will meet again after the barrier of time has crushed you and stolen everything from you!!” he shouted.

The very next moment, something exploded.

Rosencreutz was forced back inside the hospital.

It wasn’t a mysterious barrier or a never-before-seen ultimate attack spell.

It was no more than a 45cm piece of plastic.

An isosceles triangle flew just outside the window. It was a Snakehead drone and it wasn’t alone. A large group of them flew together like a flock of starlings or bats. The writhing mass of machines looked like a black serpent flying through the sky.

These were by no means elite crafts. All they did was locate their target, ignite their solid fuel, tackle their target at high speed, and detonate their internal explosives.

But they had still stopped Rosencreutz’s escape.

These were only mass-produced weapons, but CRC was only human. If he didn’t respond in some way, his body would be obliterated and he would lose his life. This wasn’t a decisive blow, but it still forced him to respond, limiting his options.

A voice spoke from their small speakers.

“Don’t try to carry the fate of this city on your own, you monstrous freak.”

This wasn’t about catching up or standing on the same field.

A group of disposable pawns was enough.

“You’re still human and one of Academy City residents I’m responsible for as Board Chairman. Don’t you dare forget that!!”

More and more drones ignited.

Each blast was no more powerful than a shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket and they didn’t do any real damage to CRC. But this was never meant to defeat that man. He had to throw out his pride as the #1. If these seemingly useless attacks could keep Rosencreutz still long enough for Kamijou Touma to deliver his own attack, that was more than enough of a win.

===Part 5===

It all began there.

Without that one act, they probably never would have had another opportunity.

Shokuhou Misaki bit her lip, made a decision, and aimed her TV remote.

“Don’t underestimate the power of a girl in love.”

She didn’t have to catch up.

But she still decided to make herself a part of this battle.

“Category 909: Preserve Consciousness. I will support you as much as it takes☆ So I’ll never forgive you if you relinquish your mind ability over something as silly as blood loss!!”

Kamijou Touma had been wobbling unsteadily side to side, but now he stood straight and solid.

This may not have had much of an effect on the boy when he had his right hand, but things had changed.

The Bologna Succubus joined in too.

“Oops, you beat me to it. But I’ll just add my rad Cold Mistress on top of that. The pleasures of death and resignation will reach you as the most excruciating pain, so don’t let your guard down, kid!!”

“Again she’s stealing my bit.”

“I have no idea what you mean♪”

Something had clearly shifted.

It was all turning against Christian Rosencreutz.

Maybe none of them could defeat him. They couldn’t carry such a major role. But stopping his cowardly flight was another matter. As long as it would lead to the ending that boy had shortened his own lifespan to achieve.

''They still had options.

''And that realization ignited the hearts of everyone there.

''They gathered all their power here to make sure his spirit would not be broken!!

“Tch!!”

Rosencreutz clicked his tongue in that antlion pit of a situation.

If he stropped struggling and was swept toward the center, those uniquely deadly jaws awaited him.

“What’s this, CRC?”

Ashamed of herself for relying on this, Witch Goddess Aradia danced as if sliding along the floor. Her bare feet mixed the ointment needed to prepare her Triple Reload.

“You seem awfully angry for someone who planned to slaughter us Transcendents to stave off boredom. Is that because the world you find before you is anything but boring? Yes, this is a colorful world of powerful stimuli where anything is possible – life, death, victory, and defeat.”

“!?”

“In the end, you are the kind of holy man who can only talk big when he has an overwhelming advantage. Someone like that can never understand that boy’s depths,” whispered Good, Old Mary. That Transcendent’s resurrection spell would mean she had seen all the many ways people met their deaths. “In truth, he is not all that powerful. In fact, he lost his life several times on the way here. But each of those deaths was the end result of living his life to its fullest – not once did he pull his punches when it came to living. He was constantly struggling to win, but when he did lose, he would pick up the pieces and continue forward anyway. He could not be more different from you, who grew bored with his strength but still clung shamefully to your current status.”

A quiet metal clink sounded.

Misaka Mikoto had flicked an arcade coin into the air.

When it landed back on her thumbnail, she took aim.

And she roared.

“I’m shooting a Railgun. Everyone, clear the line of fire!!!”

The air was compressed.

This normally would have been no threat to CRC. But in this one moment, the silver young man definitely frowned. He was annoyed. Which meant this was effective.

Altogether, they couldn’t have bought more than a minute of time.

But that was enough. Without a word, Kamijou Touma approached once more.

Half-dragging the giant dragon maw with him.

And…

===Part 6===

In the ICU, little Anna Sprengel was lying in a bed and surrounded by cold, hard machinery. Her expression looked peaceful at first, but it would have burdened a medical expert with great anxiety. She was not being given any kind of anesthesia, so the lack of response to the pain was not a good sign.

The color red flowed through several clear tubes.

There were a lot more of those tubes than normal.

“How is the dialysis going?” asked the frog-faced doctor with uncharacteristic tension in his voice.

“The process itself is going smoothly.”

Anna’s hair was unnaturally damaged. Blood did not flow through the hairs themselves, but they still received oxygen and nutrients to stay healthy.

That meant something was wrong with the patient’s blood.

“The processing of the blood before it is returned to her body is working too. Her blood type is being temporarily altered.”

The technician and a nurse were busily working even now.

Providing someone with the wrong blood type would put them in critical condition. That was undeniable. But it was also true that some people’s blood type had changed after a transplant for the bone marrow that created the blood.

So if all of the blood was changed and not just a portion of it, there was a chance of survival.

“This so-called ‘curse’ carries out its fatal attack after identifying an individual by their blood.”

The frog-faced doctor was a science-side physician.

But even if he couldn’t explain it with his own knowledge, he was not the kind of person to tell a suffering and dying patient that their pain couldn’t be real because none of the medical texts described anything like it.

He would save everyone suffering from disease.

Even if the disease had not yet been written down in any medical texts.

“So if the blood type flowing through her veins changes, this ‘curse’ should lose sight of its target and cease to function. I just hope that ends this.”

The word “curse” gave it an archaic and exaggerated impression, but he only had to think of it like a form of pollen allergy that reacted to an individual’s face or name.

(I do hope this “curse” can’t last forever without a target.)

Bacteria harmed people in order to survive and toxins harmed people because they took the place of a necessary substance. So if they could not function correctly, they would eventually be broken down, ejected from the body, and naturally disappear. They were neither good nor evil. It was no more than a struggle for survival.

“At this rate,” muttered the frog-faced doctor.

That was when ''a dull tremor shook the building.

''And the overhead lights flickered.

While this wasn’t a complete blackout, it was highly unusual. The hospital always had multiple power sources to ensure the survival of its critical patients. So instead of a problem with the power generation facility itself, this had to be something wrong with the wiring in the wall or ceiling.

Something had changed.

Critically changed.

===Part 7===

Kamijou Touma slowly collapsed forward.

No one could stop it.

He had lost too much blood.

His time limit had always been 10 minutes at the longest.

Not even Shokuhou Misaki and the Bologna Succubus’s psychological support could get him around the limits of his physical body.

The only trump card capable of defeating Rosencreutz had broken.

He fell to the floor.

The dragon vanished into thin air.

“Ha ha.”

Laughter echoed out.

Of course, it came from none other than Christian Rosencreutz.

“Now your defeat is assured,” said the silver young man, looking down to the floor. Calmly. “There never was an answer. You never could have found a way of defeating this old man. But this result is still a doom born of your own choices. ''You sought strength as a human, but you still grasped at inhuman power once you were desperate.'' Everyone watching this must have thought the same thing: ‘Oh, Kamijou Touma has deviated from his usual ways.’ And that deviation is what brought this result. You made a mistake and you were never going to find real power in that mistake. None at all.”

Wicked violence had won out in the end.

And.

''Death swept out.

The Bologna Succubus was blasted away like an artillery shell and Witch Goddess Aradia was embedded in a wall. Misaka Mikoto’s microwave radar wasn’t enough to detect what caused her to spin through the air and slam into the floor. Shokuhou Misaki pressed a TV remote against her own temple, but something impacted the back of her head before she could boost her eye movement. This wasn’t like someone being knocked out in a movie or drama. Something unseen clearly broke and split inside her head.

Accelerator could only watch while remotely controlling the Snakehead drone swarm.

Their time was up and defeat led to this.

“Kee hee, ee hee. Hee ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

Death.

Killing.

And red.

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! …Whew.”

Christian Rosencreutz once more appeared from the background. No, he had finally come to a stop after moving so fast he had become no more than flowing lines.

His only remaining enemy was Good, Old Mary.

Had he intentionally left her until last, or was it only a coincidence? It could also be that she had partially defended against his attack.

“''Now, joker. Who will you resurrect with that single-use trump card''?”

“…”

“Do not expect this old man to sit idly by and watch. You will only be able to resurrect one of them at the cost of your own life. …And, Good, Old Mary, I seriously doubt you can defeat this old man on your own. Your only value is in your resurrection. So who will you entrust your dreams with? Who will you choose to turn this all around?”

Would it be Misaka Mikoto or Shokuhou Misaki?

Or would it be Aradia or the Bologna Succubus?

Each of them possessed tremendous power. Not one of them was an ordinary human. With the Ace, the Queen, and so many others with varied talents available, who would Good, Old Mary choose?

“Take your time and think about it.”

He laughed.

He scoffed.

Because the answer was obvious from the start.

“Hee ha ha!! But there is no real answer! No matter who you bring back to life, they cannot defeat this old man. If human death were absolute, you could have given up. But because you possess that resurrection trump card, you are now trapped in my prison, kitchen alchemist. Will you agonize over it for eternity, or will the pressure be too much to bear so you make a careless choice only for this old man to tear you both to shreds!? Watch as your own actions reveal just whose side you have taken and who you have made your enemy. Kee ha ha ha ha ha. Regret your own choices as you search in vain for an answer!!!”

In response, the final remaining Transcendent breathed a soft sigh.

And Good, Old Mary spoke.

“''No one''.”

“?”

“''I will not bother resurrecting anyone at this point. You are the one who has run out of time. A second before, you might have managed it. But you lost sight of what truly matters here, you continued to ignore the life you should have been focused on taking, and you carelessly crossed the final crossroads. It is too late to put things back the way they were. No matter how much you try.''”

He tilted his head.

CRC expressed pure confusion.

But the silver young man should have shuddered in fear at that simple truth. He was drawing a blank. He could not come up with anything that fit the situation presented to him. But if whatever it was could slip his mind, how much of a threat could it really be?

He still didn’t understand, so Good, Old Mary pointed elsewhere.

The answer was there.

Aleister Crowley.

The magician CRC had defeated and proceeded to ignore had stood back up.

He was badly injured.

It was incredible he was still alive.

If he had feigned death, he might have had a greater chance at survival.

But he had instead clenched his teeth and stood up. Who out there had inspired him to do that? Why could that human challenge CRC over and over with the golden retriever by his side?

''Who did that human really, truly aspire to emulate?

“I don’t care…how many times you fail.”

Words spilled from his cracked lips.

The person he had entrusted this fight to had already collapsed.

And as a result, 99% of the people who had trusted that boy enough to gather here were now dead.

That was a defeat.

Kamijou Touma had failed to meet their expectations.

But despite the red and black stains covering his body, that human’s spirit was not broken.

Because…

“I will not lose hope in you, no matter how many times you lose or fall. I swear it. Thinking back, it was rare that you found an easy victory from beginning to end. But you always made sure to collect someone’s life before it was lost. That was no illusion. So I will believe in you. …You expect me to accept that a little thing like defeat is enough for you to give up? No matter how many times you fall to your knees, I know for a fact you will stand back up again.”

“Young one?”

“So consume me if need be. Great Demon Coronzon! Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass!! You monsters were always too much for a constant failure like me to handle. But just this once, support me. Help me buy the time we need. Give me the power to uphold my promise!!”

“You think he will get back up? Based on nothing? That loser is soaking in his own bloody vomit and you would still place all your hopes in him? Good, Old Mary could perhaps resurrect at least one person here if she were willing to sacrifice herself to my attack, but you won’t even do that!?”

“That is not what it means to believe in someone,” stated Good, Old Mary. She directly cut down that unbeatable adversary’s words. “You do not believe in someone because it is logical or because the odds are favorable. Human beings believe in and pray to the people they truly want to believe in. You were once a target of that sort of belief. If you have forgotten this, then you really are ''unworthy''. Unfortunately, the savior that mama and the rest of the Transcendents prayed to was not at all what we hoped for.”

So Good, Old Mary had chosen to believe in that boy instead.

Truly believe.

''If she sacrificed herself to resurrect one person here, it ended there. Once she died, her resurrection could never be used again. But if she was patient, survived, and believed that this deadly battle would be overcome without choosing the easy option of self-sacrifice, she could use her resurrection on each and every one of them. Only then was the possibility of saving everyone available.

That was what it meant to believe in someone.

Such belief was never spoken of in terms of “at least”.

Not everything came down to superhuman actions. There were options that became available if you wished for them hard enough.

No one was discussing logic or odds. The thread of possibility was so very thin, but Good, Old Mary chose to believe in the future she most wanted to believe in. Because she knew the foolish compromise of forcing herself to believe in something she didn’t want to believe in would never lead to a gentle and happy world.

“And no matter how absurd it might seem, there are times when our selfish expectations and beliefs are answered. There are people who will crawl through the mud and do whatever it takes to make that happen, no matter how poor their chances. And sometimes they will ultimately reach what they were struggling for.”

“…”

“People value such things as ''miracles''. CRC, I am certain you were once capable of that. You might have done so even in the modern world. But while you let your passions and playfulness guide you, you passed the final crossroads and reached a point from which you can never return.”

In the very corner of his vision, Christian Rosencreutz saw something rise up.

Whatever it was, it was stained red and black. It was someone who should not have still been alive.

The answer was obvious.

This was what the living and the dead had all believed in.

Kamijou.

Kamijou Touma.

“Impossible…” blankly muttered Christian Rosencreutz, suddenly trembling. “You never had a chance to use your resurrection. This old man would never have missed it.”

“True. But mama did not use it on anyone. Not even him.”

“Then this can’t be happening! A normal human had his arm severed and was left to bleed out for 10 minutes. Do you have any idea how much blood he would have lost in that time!? The answer is in liters! And you expect me to believe he overcame that because of some nonsense about believing in him!?”

“Should you really be spouting nonsense at the moment, CRC? Need I remind you that you are the corpse the Bridge Builders Cabal once believed in?” solemnly stated Good, Old Mary. “He answered our call. Unlike you, he did not run from the power of belief. The rules have changed. You completely missed the crossroads you couldn’t afford to cross and you walked right on through. The legend so many people believed in and prayed to is long gone. You are no more than bait now. Bait used to show off a new legend that has accepted the power of belief and is working to create a better future. You allowed yourself to be reduced to this, CRC.”

Kamijou made a horizontal swing of his nonexistent right arm.

The invisible dragon burst out.

It emerged once more.

That was the answer.

Kamijou Touma and Aleister Crowley stood side by side, both bloody and battered. They didn’t need to exchange any words. This team up should have been impossible, but it was possible within the legend of this moment.

There was no cue.

Aleister simply gave a thoughtful look.

A moment later, they both raced forward.

Straight toward their greatest enemy – Christian Rosencreutz.

“Ohhh!!” “Ohhh!!”

In response, CRC gulped and calmly worked out the answer in his head.

“The scientific angel Kazakiri Hyouka and the artificial demon Qliphah Puzzle 545.”

And the person behind those two.

New Board Chairman Accelerator.

“That particle accelerator cannon that gathered all the city’s power was not aimed at this old man.”

Using the Hula Hoop particle accelerator to launch a deadly attack within the city was all well and good, but what happened at the other end? They couldn’t have it pierce through the outer wall on the opposite side of the city and then burn down Shinjuku and Yokohama beyond. This group was too soft to accept that level of sacrifice. So what had they done?

His miniature model was useful for running searches, but there was one thing he had to watch out for.

It only provided the information he actively worked to search for.

Which meant he could miss something.

Especially when it came from a blind spot he hadn’t considered.

“You were holding two nonhumans in reserve, but you knew they could not defeat this old man if you simply sent them after me. So you found a way to inject them with a massive amount of energy without me noticing. ''Angels and demons are effectively collections of energy, so this boosted their raw strength and energized them''?”

They had sided with Kamijou Touma.

Realizing they couldn’t defeat CRC even in their boosted forms, had the scientific angel and magical demon instead opted to assist Kamijou?

As the leader at the top, the question for Accelerator wasn’t who achieved the victory. As long as he could eliminate the threat of Rosencreutz and bring peace back to the city, nothing else mattered.

It wasn’t an issue of logic or odds.

People believed in the person they wanted to believe in.

So while he wasn’t physically present, the #1 had not hesitated to focus on that particular trump card.

“Did you use the absence of his right hand to sneak them into his body? So that their invisible hands could squeeze his stopped heart and start it beating once more!?”

Thus, it wasn’t just two people approaching Rosencreutz.

Far more people had believed in that boy. They had entrusted him with their lives, their futures, and the fates of Academy City and the world.

“''Rosencreutz. It doesn’t matter how hopeless a reality you are.''”

“''Yes, and it doesn’t matter how much of this world you destroy.''”

Kamijou Touma would not run away.

He carried all those things on his back as he poured all his strength into the invisible dragon.

“''If you insist we can’t save anyone here''…”

“''Yes, and if you insist the good and the wicked cannot be equally saved''…”

The hits landed simultaneously.

“''Then we will destroy that illusion!!!''”

The God Purifying Demon Destroyer and the Conqueror of the Battle of Blythe Road.

Two inhuman fists flew and mercilessly launched Christian Rosencreutz beyond District 7’s borders.

===Part 8===

When the little wicked woman opened her eyes, she had no idea where she was. She saw a white ceiling, detected a chemical scent in the air, and noticed a great quantity of medical equipment surrounding her. The hard plastic mask over her lower face irritated her. But she was hesitant to move. She didn’t think she even could move right away and, given the tugging sensation from beneath her skin, she could guess she had several needles piercing her blood vessels and had tubes and electric cords attached all across her body.

Nevertheless, she was alive.

Anna Sprengel was alive.

“Where…am I?”

Peering down at her was a doctor with a froggy face.

He gave her a gentle smile.

This doctor had lived up to the belief a certain boy had placed in him.

Heaven Canceler spoke in the same way he always did.

“You’re going to be fine. It’s all over now.”

Some who saw this might have praised it as a miracle.

The commonplace miracle of life.

===Between the Lines 4===

“''Ugh, is this for real, mistress''?”

“''Yes. As much as I would prefer not to believe it, it appears so.''”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Chapter4

2023-12-18T15:22:06Z

Entei08:

==Chapter 4: At the Center – Duel_and_Struggle,CRC.==

===Part 1===

The hospital’s 1st floor hallway was a straight path to the ICU where Anna Sprengel slept.

“Heh heh.”

The red-clad silver young man’s shoulders shook with laughter.

He mocked the foolishness of Kamijou Touma whose shoulder was gushing blood where his arm should be.

“I wondered what trump card you would rely on in the end, but all you did was break the glass container? That one normally sleeps within his coffin, but he naturally awakens when he locates the disease plaguing this world and returns to his coffin once he is no longer needed. Producing the world-healing elixir is all well and good, but how long can you last like this? Given the rate of blood loss, I would guess 10 minutes at the mo-”

Kamijou Touma wasn’t listening.

A single step covered all the necessary distance. He softly sent the translucent dragon emerging from his right shoulder toward CRC.

It didn’t feel like punching with a fist or biting and tearing with great jaws.

It was probably a miniscule attack like a forehead flick.

A mass of compressed sound erupted a moment later.

That was all it took to launch Rosencreutz several dozen meters down the hospital hallway.

“Oh, ohh!”

This result shouldn’t have been possible.

Misaka Mikoto, the other #5 girl, Academy City’s next-gen weaponry, the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal, the grimoire library, the Magic God, and even legendary magicians like Aleister and Kingsford had failed to achieve this.

This was the very first clean hit against him.

And it happened almost too easily.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!?”

He bounced repeatedly, producing the sounds of physical destruction, the screams of muscle and bone, and the wet hacking of bloody coughs.

But none of that explained CRC’s trembling.

He was looking down at his own left hand.

Still seated on the floor, the silver young man viewed his own hand pressed against the floor and he trembled.

“You made this old man…''touch the floor''?”

This was a first.

It hadn’t been allowed to happen even once before now.

He had always stood tall on the battlefield. His march across Academy City had continued unabated even during the satellite’s heavy metal bombing and the Hula Hoop’s largescale particle accelerator cannon. With that in mind, just how much power had this small result required?

''This far surpassed human limits.

''The boy had chosen to cross that line.

Because he had sworn he would save the greatest wicked woman who could only wait for death.

“…”

Kamijou Touma provided no response.

He did not speak up in triumph and he kept his head lowered, hiding his expression.

A change came over the boy’s own shadow at his feet.

''It flickered.

''Unnaturally, like a dying fluorescent light.

What had this power cost him?

It was like the boy, who supposedly had a physical body, was shifting into the realm of shapeless and weightless illusion.

“………………………………………………………………………”

He took another step.

That was enough for the world to distort and strain. The space around him definitely sank. If he had stepped with greater purpose, it might have triggered an inwards gravitational collapse in that space, creating an irreparable hole.

The wordless action conveyed a single purpose.

Kamijou Touma was stepping forward to approach CRC once more.

This wasn’t over.

He wouldn’t let it end with just the one attack.

He would tear CRC apart, chew him up, and fully eliminate him from the world. He would save the people he considered important, even if it meant staining his hand with blood.

He had made the decision.

“I see.”

Rosencreutz did not speak at length here.

When taken to their absolute limit, formulas became beautifully simple.

Just like E=mc2, CRC’s conclusion was a concise one.

Cracking sounds came from all across his body as he stood back up. He lifted his hips from the floor, placed a hand on the wall, and allowed himself all the unsightly actions it required.

“I admit it. You have convinced this old man: this world is a fascinating place☆ Eh heh heh heh! I truly did not think it had anything left to satisfy my playfulness and eliminate my frustrations. Ah hee hee hee!?”

His eyes were directed straight at the dragon boy.

Drowning in his own passions, the holy man finally viewed that single boy as an enemy.

Kamijou Touma and Christian Rosencreutz.

A clash between superhumans had begun.

===Part 2===

The air was strongly compressed.

There was no need to hold anything back.

Kamijou approached from straight ahead, so Christian Rosencreutz held out his palm.

That was an invisible attack capable of destroying anything.

That brutal spell was clearly magic, but not even Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker could have stopped it and it would have torn the arm off instead.

The compression of the air passed a certain point and it rumbled out like an explosion.

But Kamijou did not speak a word.

He instructed what lay beyond his nonexistent right arm and the invisible dragon moved slightly. That was enough to overturn all the assumptions.

The dragon’s maw – and its razor-sharp teeth – bit a black object, stopping it in its tracks.

The object was a bit larger than a golf ball.

“''A…projectile''?” muttered Aradia, her eyes widened in shock as she watched from the sidelines.

This was the identity of the extremely powerful magic that supposedly made defense impossible.

There was no mystery or miracle there. In fact, if a projectile was given a lethal amount of destructive force, it would naturally be moving too quickly to see with the naked eye. That unchangeable rule remained the same even when magic had influenced the logic. It was only a common parlor trick.

Kamijou did not bother with mockery. For that matter, he showed no human reaction at all. He only swung his arm dragon horizontally, tossing the annoyance of an object aside.

Why waste time on ordinary emotion when he could dedicate that time to devouring his prey?

That was the only thought behind his actions.

“Hee hee. So you can finally fight back and let me have some fun.”

Rosencreutz continued firing.

Annoyed and irritated by the identical attacks, Kamijou’s dragon released a deafening roar.

It was possible the boy couldn’t control it himself. The sloppily swung jaws deflected CRC’s projectiles to the side, sending them ricocheting toward hospital rooms with no connection to the fight.

The silver young man grinned.

As if to say he had guided things in that direction.

But the fearsome attacks vanished into thin air before contacting the wall.

“Oh?” breathed CRC in fascination.

He had sensed something worthy of his interest.

“You eliminated my attacks without permission? No, this is a simple matter of willpower. Any attack launched without a powerful intent to kill will be swallowed up and destroyed. And any attack that misses its mark swiftly loses all meaning.”

“…”

“After experiencing an improbably uniform amount of misfortune, you loathe lucky shots from your enemy. And this old man loathes all coincidental actions that go against my passions and playfulness. I see. Our clashing wills have distorted space on the macro level. But,” said Rosencreutz with a mocking grin. He held his palm out to the side, casually aiming at the wall there. “Kee hee hee, ee hee, hwa ha ha ha ha ha!! That leaves me plenty of room to play. ''As long as this old man directs his intent to kill toward those strangers, I can still hit them''!”

Space was immediately sliced through over a distance of more than 100m.

But not because CRC had sliced through the innocent hospital patient beyond that wall.

A moment before he could, Kamijou Touma jabbed his dragon jaws forward and had it exhale a violent beam of light. Then he swung the jaws straight up to slice CRC’s right arm off at the shoulder.

Rosencreutz showed no interest in his own right arm spinning through the air.

“''Mend''.”

As soon as he spoke that one word, the nearby rubble gathered around and formed something like the smooth arm of a mannequin to stop his bleeding. This was not a resurrection that returned him to normal. He was only mending by creating something new. After traveling the world, gathering all sorts of knowledge, and going around teaching people the secret art to create a human from scratch inside a still, this was a simple task for him. He didn’t even bother checking the movement of the arm that was lither and more beautiful than a real human arm. Instead, he raised his gaze straight up.

The ceiling had split.

But not because it had been sliced through.

Like custard or gelatin, the hospital’s walls and ceiling had separated themselves to the left and right to avoid Kamijou’s attack. Including the beds, the medical equipment, and the wiring in the walls. It all forget its original texture, spread apart at the center like a slime, and then reconnected like nothing had happened.

It was like the building itself had a mind and a life of its own.

Christian Rosencreutz drew on his vast wisdom to instantly explain it.

This was not creation or destruction.

It was…

“''Did you command it''? The intimidation of the crowned dragon king can command all living things, but also all inanimate objects?”

Those words carried deeper meaning than it initially seemed. And not just the silly risk of CRC himself obeying the command if he got careless.

Stray shots, hostages, other’s lives?

With this ultimate power, Kamijou wouldn’t have to worry about any of that.

Which meant…

''There truly was no one in the world who could stop Kamijou Touma after this monstrous transformation!!

He attacked again. But this time, it wasn’t just a beam flying from the dragon’s jaws.

The dragon itself detached from his right shoulder and flew out.

“Hwa ha ha hah!!”

CRC laughed loud, swung his body upwards, and dodged by breaking through the ceiling.

He had reacted to the real threat rather than let it hit him and see what happened. And at this point, he had finally quit relying on magic. He had needed to move faster than he could put together a spell.

The battlefield spread beyond the one long hallway.

They moved to a rehabilitation room, a break room, an operating room, and finally a nurse station on one of the higher floors.

It all looked the same, so Kamijou couldn’t tell what floor he was on. But the boy taking a step beyond humanity did see a familiar face down the hallway.

It was Aogami Pierce.

He was a powerless high school boy. But he was standing protectively in front of a small girl in pajamas who was holding a picture book. His legs were shaking, but he hadn’t frozen in place. He had purposefully chosen to stand there.

Whether he was more interested in the young girl or her mother was unclear, though.

Right and wrong didn’t matter here. He wasn’t bound by that.

Seeing that his awful friend had meant what he said, the boy who had partially fallen into illusion briefly smiled like he always did in the classroom, but then he renewed his resolve. Kamijou Touma forced his gaze away and viewed his powerful foe instead.

CRC – Christian Rosencreutz.

He could not let that monster go free and focus on that boy and girl.

No matter what.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

“Oh? Kee hee hee, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

They clashed head on.

Kamijou swung the silver young man to the side.

He kicked him away and then tossed him up into the floor above.

He didn’t stop there, of course. He had already begun his next action.

The air froze.

The giant maw gnashed its teeth intermittently, creating a disturbing sound not even a guillotine or bear trap could have mimicked.

“Kh.”

While clinging magnetically to the hospital’s outside wall and trying to pursue the fight up to the upper floors, Mikoto found her feet pinned to the outside of a window. Pinned by fear. Her instincts were running wild and weighing heavily on her reason.

“What…is this? A psychological form of paralysis?” gasped the blonde girl with her arms around the #3’s hips.

If they would ensure that even the next attack would hit no matter how long the leadup, then the intimidation of those gnashing fangs could be called a surefire attack.

But it didn’t work on the silver young man.

An unpleasant sweat wet his brow, but he was still smiling

He acted out of playfulness and a desire to blow off some steam, so this could not bind him. After all, not even the #5 power had worked on him when it was used by ''its mysterious owner''. CRC was a monster with the mentality needed to continue smiling in this situation.

And Kamijou didn’t care.

Something flew from the dragon maw like a whip. It was a long, chameleon-like tongue. CRC stepped back before it could ensnare him, but then he realized something.

“Hm?”

''He was gone.

''Kamijou Touma had disappeared in the brief moment CRC’s eyes were off the boy.

But he could sense him.

A great pressure was approaching from the front!!

“You are a poikilotherm – that is, you have the ability to blend into the surrounding environment. But did you really think that would work against this old man?”

CRC swung a single arm, not hesitating to strike a point of empty space.

A cross with several sharp rose vines tangled around appeared there. It was more than a meter tall and it was entirely made of heavy gold.

It didn’t matter. A disturbing sound of bending metal rang out.

Kamijou and the dragon maw appeared out of thin air. The fangs and the cross struck each other.

The result was a series of snapping sounds.

“Kh.”

Seeing the cross bending, CRC kicked a nearby stretcher into the shutting jaws. It could be hard to tell since they were made so light for greater portability, but the stretcher was made of sturdy stainless steel to ensure it didn’t drop a critical patient. It wasn’t going to break in a crocodile’s jaws or in a brown bear’s grasp.

But the jaws were not slowed.

They closed at the exact same speed, the row of fangs approaching Rosencreutz’s hand holding the cross.

That cross was not magic.

Nor was it an illusion, but the arm jaws still chewed it up and erased the intruding wreckage from the world.

Those jaws would destroy even unshakable reality.

This was a new power Kamijou Touma had acquired at the cost of his own destruction.

It was an attack that allowed no response.

And most likely, it was a tragic power gained when someone gave up on someone else.

“I see.”

Rosencreutz smiled while dripping with a sweat of both tension and a desire to fight.

That smile contained an unusual heat as he shouted.

“Tell me. Why go to such lengths to protect Anna Sprengel? Hee hee, how much longer do you have left? What did you discover by accepting your own assured destruction?”

Only now did human language leave Kamijou Touma’s lips.

In a situation which screamed that doing so was the abnormality here.

“I will…protect Anna.”

But these were definitely his words.

Because…

“I…wrong to…search out…reason…excuse to fight…”

That was the final humanity left inside the boy who had become a monster.

It was like a tiny stone rattling around inside him, but it was something he couldn’t afford to lose.

So he refused to lose it.

That ordinary boy would never again hang his head and overlook a magical atrocity.

“Interesting – kee hee – but not good enough!”

Rosencreutz held his empty palm out toward the boy’s face.

While their weapons were locked.

That attack had already been identified as a projectile. But in this moment, the invisible dragon could not move to stop the point-blank projectile attack.

With the unpleasant sound of the air being compressed, Kamijou Touma’s entire head was obliterated.

He didn’t even have time to blink.

Kamijou took another step forward like nothing had happened. His head had already regenerated. A dragon tail appeared out of thin air and twirled away as a substitute. That was likely a lizard’s tail that would take on any damage he took. But Kamijou knew without being told that it was a move he could only use once.

Now that he knew he had that option, he wished he had held onto it for longer.

His gaze shifted to the side. The action showed some lingering regret. It all felt like it was happening to someone else. Single use and not knowing the effect until you used it was a devastatingly bad combination.

And with his eyes still in that direction, he casually sent the Dragon Strike straight toward CRC.

“Tch.”

Rosencreutz immediately fell back.

He escaped beyond the reach of the snapping jaws, but Kamijou did not bat an eye.

The entire surface of the invisible dragon jaws ''erupted''. All its razor-sharp scales shot out. They rushed out to pummel Rosencreutz’s entire body like a point-blank shotgun blast.

“Ohhhhh!” shouted CRC just before a white steam explosively filled the space.

In the Rosicrucian cabal, clouds were an important symbol of covering up wisdom and truth to prevent the unworthy from viewing it. Inside that cloud, no attack could hit him even if made from 0cm away. The entire space could be filled with a dense scattershot, but it would be as useless as trying to attack a cat that may or may not be there because no one could observe it.

Kamijou swept the dragon horizontally to tear the thick cloud apart in an instant and then the color red sprayed out.

The cloud didn’t matter at all.

The dragon released its breath.

It looked like a sharp purple-shining blade, but was that actually the poison stored in an evil dragon’s body being released at extreme pressure?

The box was shredded, the cat was forced out to establish its existence, an then it was killed.

“Kee hee.”

CRC laughed and took immediate evasive action, but also ignored the deadly toxin traveling through his bloodstream.

That silver young man had many legends told of him, but he was an alchemist at heart. He used alchemy as a starting point for all of his miracles, from the artificial life within the crystal to the red elixir.

So…

“You would use a nonexistent toxin against this old man? All poisons and harmful substances can be converted into medicines and beneficial substances if handled properly. Just like radiation can induce the cancerization of cells, but it is also used to treat cancer. It would be rude to not present you with my own wisdom in return!!”

Rosencreutz produced a deck of cards in his hand.

He fanned them out and went on to rotate them in a full circle in violation of gravity.

“The secret spell of Rota can be flipped around to make Taro, thus it can be converted into the cards that indicate the 10 spheres and the 22 pathways. Awaken, 78 cards. You are the one and only proper entrance to the light pouring down from beyond the tree – that is, the Ain Soph Aur, Ain Soph, Ain!!”

A violent white light exploded from the emptiness at the center of the card circle.

A beam of light sharper than a razor scorched the air as it rushed toward Kamijou’s right arm. The all-destroying dragon maw was split in two. While he was dragged around by the chaotically thrashing dragon, even more blood gushed from the boy’s shoulder.

The toxic red splattered across the floor and walls.

Christian Rosencreutz scoffed at the colorful artwork.

“Hee hee hee hee hee! How much longer now? Feeling lightheaded? Can’t stop the cold sweat? Worried by your pulse pounding in your chest? Nothing you do can reach this old man!! Even if you wring out every last drop from the depths of your heart!!”

A moment later, beams of light rushed out from seemingly every direction.

“Wha-!?”

CRC realized the boy’s bloodstains had drawn out strange patterns.

The instant he gasped in realization of what those patterns meant, the ''magic circles'' glowed with a disturbing light.

The floor and walls bubbled redly. It wasn’t just the white beams. Crimson serpents that should have been controlled by a lamp emerged, as did the yellow Citrinitas sand that had engulfed Los Angeles.

They surrounded CRC and came at him all at once.

His right arm was already fake, so he sacrificed that while backing away from the deadly chaos, his eyes widening at witnessing what shouldn’t have been possible.

“A scientific esper like you has entered the realm of magic?”

That was no longer CRC’s exclusive territory. Kamijou had intruded on the legend of the rose and the cross.

But how could this be?

Christian Rosencreutz was no ordinary magician. His very existence had become a legend. He refused to accept that even a Rosicrucian expert could understand and immediately make use of the spells he used.

But the fact remained that the red blood splattered on the walls and floor crawled, glowed, and bubbled.

It all drew out secret texts and magic circles known only to CRC. Even though these were the most secret of spells that he had never even shared with the others at the House of the Holy Spirit where they had all shared so much knowledge like they were sharing a meal. Not even the grimoire library would have been able to find these spells if she searched for them.

Had Kamijou Touma already evolved into a monster who could access the world itself and automatically use the magic he found there?

Something occurred to Rosencreutz once he considered that possibility.

…Known ''only'' to CRC?

“I get it now. ''This is a Rorschach test.''”

He should have caught on quicker.

An esper like Kamijou was using magic but showing no side effects.

“The magic knowledge did not come from within this broken esper. He showed this old man indistinct bloodstains, which I interpreted as the secret texts and magic circles I knew, unwittingly drawing out their magic!”

But however it had been done, the magic known only to Rosencreutz had still bared its fangs against him. Knowing the logic behind it did not stop his mind from imagining those shapes when he saw the bloodstains.

Of course, there was risk to Kamijou as well. He had no way of guiding what Rosencreutz imagined when he saw the bloodstains. This was a double-edged sword that could just as easily capture Kamijou himself in a powerful magical blast.

“Trithemius!!” shouted CRC, intricately moving his fingers.

Immediately, the magic light approaching him froze in place and stopped moving. He had made use of the encryption method that Westcott had coincidentally discovered. Rosencreutz had applied a random encryption to the bloodstains which had become secret texts and magic circles, eternally locking them so they could never be used. Much like ransomware encrypting a hard drive.

Rosencreutz felt a sizzling sensation at his temple.

This wasn’t like before. This emotion was anger.

The silver young man’s internal state had shifted up a gear.

“You dare force this old man to use magic out of something other than passion or playfulness? You continue to prove yourself to be my greatest nemesis!!!”

So what?

Kamijou ignored that and took action.

Something grew from the base of the great jaws that had replaced his right arm. It resembled a giant cape, but it was actually a sinister bat wing. The single wing gathered the air and then flapped.

The air became a solid mass and then became an extraordinary projectile that flew through the hospital.

At the same time, all the windows frosted over, the air electrified, and thick bolts of lightning rushed toward Rosencreutz from every direction. Was this what would happen to someone if they were thrown inside a large, swollen cumulonimbus cloud?

“You have not just created wind. The air pressure obeys your will, allowing you to control the weather!?”

This was well within divine territory, making it a legit miracle.

It could be blessed rain, or it could be electric divine punishment.

And CRC could also control clouds. He brought two fingers to his mouth and blew between them. One cloud struck the other, the weather conditions were forcibly altered, and the lightning changed course.

Kamijou Touma was already there.

He had rapidly covered the space between them, arriving right in front of Rosencreutz.

“Kh.”

The silver young man split the floor below him and broke through every floor below that, ending up in the hospital’s basement.

He wasn’t afraid of a ''normal'' punch.

He only realized after the fact that this had been a downwards strike from directly above.

But the hospital itself hadn’t been damaged. All of the floors in the way had parted like gelatin all on their own. After dragon-tamer Kamijou jumped down after him, the holes silently closed back up on their own too.

CRC held his palm out toward a thick metal door.

“The red elixir can conquer all deadly disease and even manipulate the lifespan!”

With a series of solid clanking sounds, the door, a cart, a scanning device larger than a fridge, and various other things gathered together and took the shape of a giant doll. It didn’t matter that they were all inorganic items. A liquid nitrogen tank must have burst because a thick white frost covered it all.

But Kamijou took action before it could actually do anything. In fact, Kamijou had punched Rosencreutz down here because he wanted something down here: the medical waste incinerator.

That special electric furnace could reach temperatures as high as 3500 degrees Celsius.

“…”

The wall right next to Kamijou audibly broke.

The following crunching sounds did not come from the invisible dragon maw.

''Kamijou Touma was chewing it in his own mouth.

And the boy raised his right arm. The front-facing dragon jaws opened as wide as possible. This was something new. Something massive and brutal filled the depths of that mouth with a dangerous light.

He didn’t hesitate to unleash it.

Magnetron Dragon Breath.

All the dust and moisture in the air burned as a fearsome white torrent tore away at Christian Rosencreutz.

Another taboo was revealed and that monster was backed even further into a corner.

===Part 3===

Light was compressed, sound was released in all directions, and yet no third party was affected.

Not one.

The girls had their hands full simply keeping up with the constantly moving battlefield. Misaka Mikoto moved freely along the hospital’s outer wall with her magnetism and Shokuhou Misaki held onto Mikoto’s hips, but both of them could only watch the intense fighting play out. That had to be the same for Aradia and the Bologna Succubus who were probably outside flying in the sky. No one could intervene in this direct clash between superhumans. Attempting to would cause it all to fall apart. Just like any stimulus to calmly simmering water could cause an explosive boil. No, that wasn’t it. That was only an excuse for their own inaction. Their real reasons were nothing so noble.

(It was me.)

Mikoto clenched her teeth at the thought.

She was staring pale-faced at where the boy’s right arm should have been.

(I pulled the final trigger!)

''She was simply afraid to do anything more.

She felt a deep aversion, like she were facing an unknown curse. But this wasn’t a gloomy cruse born of an individual’s grudge or hatred. She was overpowered by the same sense of wrongness people had toward viewing or touching something holy and inviolable.

“What am I supposed to do about this?” she muttered distractedly.

This may have been the same feeling Level 0 Kamijou Touma had felt when it was Anti-Skill, Judgment, the Level 5s, and the Transcendents doing the fighting.

Their roles had reversed.

Now that boy alone had complete control of the battlefield.

Only he could face this enemy.

Titles had lost all meaning.

And the situation was still underway. This was no time to be stuck at a standstill. Kamijou was not a fount of unlimited possibility. Nor did he have a hidden power or special ability.

His shadow was flickering unsteadily. This power was bought at the cost of his own destruction.

Which meant there had to be a time limit.

===Part 4===

Kamijou and Rosencreutz clashed head on and the boy broke through a wall, flying across the hallway leading to the elevator. He was knocked up the elevator shaft and rolled along the floor before coming to a stop.

He found himself in a large cafeteria.

He felt an unpleasant sensation below him.

He could barely see it without straining his eyes, but the culprit was yellow sand.

The color of defeat had permeated the area.

Even though a hospital needed to be as clean and sterile as possible.

“…”

Kamijou Touma silently stood up and then wobbled to the side.

As if he were struggling to support the weight of the massive jaws.

Blood was still gushing from the shoulder where his arm had been torn away. He was not going to last long like this. In just a few more minutes, he would collapse from blood loss and he would not be getting back up again.

He stared at CRC. At that man driven by playfulness and curiosity who was now smirking with sweat soaking his face.

“Oh.”

So.

Kamijou didn’t care what happened to himself. His own destruction had been part of the plan from the beginning.

He had to find some way of ending this before he ran out of time.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Guessing a major attack was coming, CRC grabbed something out of thin air.

Whatever it was, it glowed red.

“The ruby’s shine points to the pure red of the rose. That female symbol is a pair to the cross and can produce anything and everything. So mass-produce monsters of death and destruction here and now!!”

A tremor ran through the building.

And not just one. More and more 2m silver orbs known as Pneuma-less Shells appeared, until they had filled the space.

The giant silver bubbles all opened at once. Not even Rosencreutz knew what would emerge. Still holding the mother device – the symbol of the red rose – CRC only laughed.

These things absorbed mystical power like a shaman.

They mechanically decoded it.

And they released it into the world.

“Stone tools – the oldest form of deadly bludgeoning. Wooden sticks – the oldest form of deadly whipping. Uranium – the oldest form of radiation poisoning. The oldest form of drowning. The oldest form of deadly gunshot. The oldest form of deadly burning. The oldest form of vigilante killing. The oldest form of hanging. The oldest form of decapitation, of skewering, of deadly vibration, of crushing, of electrocution, of poisoning, of vehicular homicide, of karoshi, of mincemeat death, of explosive death, of death from being buried alive!!!”

They split open.

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

And he released a brutal purple breath from the dragon.

Mutual death was fine by him.

“Gahhhhhhh!?”

There were legends of that sort.

For example, Norse mythology told of a great serpent that had grown until it could surround the entire world. During the final battle of Ragnarok, that dragon even managed to defeat the #2 god at the cost of its own life.

“Jormungand from…Norse mythology? Did you use the weight that not even Thor could lift to forcibly crush your own wound and stanch the bleeding?”

Kamijou didn’t understand any of that.

And it didn’t matter if he did or not.

There was precedent. In exchange for losing a possibly deadly amount of blood, this dragon that emerged from his right hand had robbed all power from a girl after she became a lightning god.

“Kh.”

The right arm – the invisible dragon – gained further control over the boy.

The shadow at his feet flickered unsteadily. It looked ready to flicker out permanently at any moment.

But an iron will of “that’s fine with me” could be seen within the boy.

If he could protect Anna Sprengel and the people who had helped try and save her, he was willing to move beyond the boundaries of humanity here.

So when Kamijou Touma raised his head, the light in his eyes did not waver one iota.

“~ ~ ~!”

Tears formed in Rosencreutz’s eyes.

He had not succumbed to fear.

CRC took an objective view of his own crisis and was moved to tears like he was watching a movie.

“Ha ha.”

And that cheap and irresponsible emotion was what allowed that passion-driven wicked holy man to draw on his greatest power.

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha!! Incredible, simply incredible☆ This old man has actually being driven into a corner? Death has drawn so close? Hee hee. This is where it all begins. Once this old man pulls off a miraculous comeback and escapes alive, I will truly drown in my tearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs!!!”

That was like a trigger.

No matter how twisted and rotten he was, his playful side could resist the temptation of achieving mutual destruction with his nemesis.

And once he shifted fully toward survival, only one option remained.

Namely…

“''Run away''!!!”

He didn’t hesitate.

He broke a still-intact window and jumped out through it.

As much power as Kamijou now possessed, he had lost a lot of blood from his severed arm. There was no need to actually fight him. By moving far away, CRC could wait until Kamijou ran out of time and collapsed.

Kamijou would die on his own as things were and, if he were to try to use first aid to recover, CRC only had to slice off the boy’s head or tear out his heart.

Rosencreutz never would have allowed this before. Not because he was too proud. His playfulness and desire to blow off steam simply wouldn’t have accepted it.

But his objective had already changed.

Pride was just one form of enjoyment. Now that he had changed his objective from “victory” to “survival” and he longed for the pleasure of achieving that, he knew fleeing was the best option.

“Hee ha ha!! We will meet again after the barrier of time has crushed you and stolen everything from you!!” he shouted.

The very next moment, something exploded.

Rosencreutz was forced back inside the hospital.

It wasn’t a mysterious barrier or a never-before-seen ultimate attack spell.

It was no more than a 45cm piece of plastic.

An isosceles triangle flew just outside the window. It was a Snakehead drone and it wasn’t alone. A large group of them flew together like a flock of starlings or bats. The writhing mass of machines looked like a black serpent flying through the sky.

These were by no means elite crafts. All they did was locate their target, ignite their solid fuel, tackle their target at high speed, and detonate their internal explosives.

But they had still stopped Rosencreutz’s escape.

These were only mass-produced weapons, but CRC was only human. If he didn’t respond in some way, his body would be obliterated and he would lose his life. This wasn’t a decisive blow, but it still forced him to respond, limiting his options.

A voice spoke from their small speakers.

“Don’t try to carry the fate of this city on your own, you monstrous freak.”

This wasn’t about catching up or standing on the same field.

A group of disposable pawns was enough.

“You’re still human and one of Academy City residents I’m responsible for as Board Chairman. Don’t you dare forget that!!”

More and more drones ignited.

Each blast was no more powerful than a shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket and they didn’t do any real damage to CRC. But this was never meant to defeat that man. He had to throw out his pride as the #1. If these seemingly useless attacks could keep Rosencreutz still long enough for Kamijou Touma to deliver his own attack, that was more than enough of a win.

===Part 5===

It all began there.

Without that one act, they probably never would have had another opportunity.

Shokuhou Misaki bit her lip, made a decision, and aimed her TV remote.

“Don’t underestimate the power of a girl in love.”

She didn’t have to catch up.

But she still decided to make herself a part of this battle.

“Category 909: Preserve Consciousness. I will support you as much as it takes☆ So I’ll never forgive you if you relinquish your mind ability over something as silly as blood loss!!”

Kamijou Touma had been wobbling unsteadily side to side, but now he stood straight and solid.

This may not have had much of an effect on the boy when he had his right hand, but things had changed.

The Bologna Succubus joined in too.

“Oops, you beat me to it. But I’ll just add my rad Cold Mistress on top of that. The pleasures of death and resignation will reach you as the most excruciating pain, so don’t let your guard down, kid!!”

“Again she’s stealing my bit.”

“I have no idea what you mean♪”

Something had clearly shifted.

It was all turning against Christian Rosencreutz.

Maybe none of them could defeat him. They couldn’t carry such a major role. But stopping his cowardly flight was another matter. As long as it would lead to the ending that boy had shortened his own lifespan to achieve.

''They still had options.

''And that realization ignited the hearts of everyone there.

''They gathered all their power here to make sure his spirit would not be broken!!

“Tch!!”

Rosencreutz clicked his tongue in that antlion pit of a situation.

If he stropped struggling and was swept toward the center, those uniquely deadly jaws awaited him.

“What’s this, CRC?”

Ashamed of herself for relying on this, Witch Goddess Aradia danced as if sliding along the floor. Her bare feet mixed the ointment needed to prepare her Triple Reload.

“You seem awfully angry for someone who planned to slaughter us Transcendents to stave off boredom. Is that because the world you find before you is anything but boring? Yes, this is a colorful world of powerful stimuli where anything is possible – life, death, victory, and defeat.”

“!?”

“In the end, you are the kind of holy man who can only talk big when he has an overwhelming advantage. Someone like that can never understand that boy’s depths,” whispered Good, Old Mary. That Transcendent’s resurrection spell would mean she had seen all the many ways people met their deaths. “In truth, he is not all that powerful. In fact, he lost his life several times on the way here. But each of those deaths was the end result of living his life to its fullest – not once did he pull his punches when it came to living. He was constantly struggling to win, but when he did lose, he would pick up the pieces and continue forward anyway. He could not be more different from you, who grew bored with his strength but still clung shamefully to your current status.”

A quiet metal clink sounded.

Misaka Mikoto had flicked an arcade coin into the air.

When it landed back on her thumbnail, she took aim.

And she roared.

“I’m shooting a Railgun. Everyone, clear the line of fire!!!”

The air was compressed.

This normally would have been no threat to CRC. But in this one moment, the silver young man definitely frowned. He was annoyed. Which meant this was effective.

Altogether, they couldn’t have bought more than a minute of time.

But that was enough. Without a word, Kamijou Touma approached once more.

Half-dragging the giant dragon maw with him.

And…

===Part 6===

In the ICU, little Anna Sprengel was lying in a bed and surrounded by cold, hard machinery. Her expression looked peaceful at first, but it would have burdened a medical expert with great anxiety. She was not being given any kind of anesthesia, so the lack of response to the pain was not a good sign.

The color red flowed through several clear tubes.

There were a lot more of those tubes than normal.

“How is the dialysis going?” asked the frog-faced doctor with uncharacteristic tension in his voice.

“The process itself is going smoothly.”

Anna’s hair was unnaturally damaged. Blood did not flow through the hairs themselves, but they still received oxygen and nutrients to stay healthy.

That meant something was wrong with the patient’s blood.

“The processing of the blood before it is returned to her body is working too. Her blood type is being temporarily altered.”

The technician and a nurse were busily working even now.

Providing someone with the wrong blood type would put them in critical condition. That was undeniable. But it was also true that some people’s blood type had changed after a transplant for the bone marrow that created the blood.

So if all of the blood was changed and not just a portion of it, there was a chance of survival.

“This so-called ‘curse’ carries out its fatal attack after identifying an individual by their blood.”

The frog-faced doctor was a science-side physician.

But even if he couldn’t explain it with his own knowledge, he was not the kind of person to tell a suffering and dying patient that their pain couldn’t be real because none of the medical texts described anything like it.

He would save everyone suffering from disease.

Even if the disease had not yet been written down in any medical texts.

“So if the blood type flowing through her veins changes, this ‘curse’ should lose sight of its target and cease to function. I just hope that ends this.”

The word “curse” gave it an archaic and exaggerated impression, but he only had to think of it like a form of pollen allergy that reacted to an individual’s face or name.

(I do hope this “curse” can’t last forever without a target.)

Bacteria harmed people in order to survive and toxins harmed people because they took the place of a necessary substance. So if they could not function correctly, they would eventually be broken down, ejected from the body, and naturally disappear. They were neither good nor evil. It was no more than a struggle for survival.

“At this rate,” muttered the frog-faced doctor.

That was when ''a dull tremor shook the building.

''And the overhead lights flickered.

While this wasn’t a complete blackout, it was highly unusual. The hospital always had multiple power sources to ensure the survival of its critical patients. So instead of a problem with the power generation facility itself, this had to be something wrong with the wiring in the wall or ceiling.

Something had changed.

Critically changed.

===Part 7===

Kamijou Touma slowly collapsed forward.

No one could stop it.

He had lost too much blood.

His time limit had always been 10 minutes at the longest.

Not even Shokuhou Misaki and the Bologna Succubus’s psychological support could get him around the limits of his physical body.

The only trump card capable of defeating Rosencreutz had broken.

He fell to the floor.

The dragon vanished into thin air.

“Ha ha.”

Laughter echoed out.

Of course, it came from none other than Christian Rosencreutz.

“Now your defeat is assured,” said the silver young man, looking down to the floor. Calmly. “There never was an answer. You never could have found a way of defeating this old man. But this result is still a doom born of your own choices. ''You sought strength as a human, but you still grasped at inhuman power once you were desperate.'' Everyone watching this must have thought the same thing: ‘Oh, Kamijou Touma has deviated from his usual ways.’ And that deviation is what brought this result. You made a mistake and you were never going to find real power in that mistake. None at all.”

Wicked violence had won out in the end.

And.

''Death swept out.

The Bologna Succubus was blasted away like an artillery shell and Witch Goddess Aradia was embedded in a wall. Misaka Mikoto’s microwave radar wasn’t enough to detect what caused her to spin through the air and slam into the floor. Shokuhou Misaki pressed a TV remote against her own temple, but something impacted the back of her head before she could boost her eye movement. This wasn’t like someone being knocked out in a movie or drama. Something unseen clearly broke and split inside her head.

Accelerator could only watch while remotely controlling the Snakehead drone swarm.

Their time was up and defeat led to this.

“Kee hee, ee hee. Hee ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

Death.

Killing.

And red.

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! …Whew.”

Christian Rosencreutz once more appeared from the background. No, he had finally come to a stop after moving so fast he had become no more than flowing lines.

His only remaining enemy was Good, Old Mary.

Had he intentionally left her until last, or was it only a coincidence? It could also be that she had partially defended against his attack.

“''Now, joker. Who will you resurrect with that single-use trump card''?”

“…”

“Do not expect this old man to sit idly by and watch. You will only be able to resurrect one of them at the cost of your own life. …And, Good, Old Mary, I seriously doubt you can defeat this old man on your own. Your only value is in your resurrection. So who will you entrust your dreams with? Who will you choose to turn this all around?”

Would it be Misaka Mikoto or Shokuhou Misaki?

Or would it be Aradia or the Bologna Succubus?

Each of them possessed tremendous power. Not one of them was an ordinary human. With the Ace, the Queen, and so many others with varied talents available, who would Good, Old Mary choose?

“Take your time and think about it.”

He laughed.

He scoffed.

Because the answer was obvious from the start.

“Hee ha ha!! But there is no real answer! No matter who you bring back to life, they cannot defeat this old man. If human death were absolute, you could have given up. But because you possess that resurrection trump card, you are now trapped in my prison, kitchen alchemist. Will you agonize over it for eternity, or will the pressure be too much to bear so you make a careless choice only for this old man to tear you both to shreds!? Watch as your own actions reveal just whose side you have taken and who you have made your enemy. Kee ha ha ha ha ha. Regret your own choices as you search in vain for an answer!!!”

In response, the final remaining Transcendent breathed a soft sigh.

And Good, Old Mary spoke.

“''No one''.”

“?”

“''I will not bother resurrecting anyone at this point. You are the one who has run out of time. A second before, you might have managed it. But you lost sight of what truly matters here, you continued to ignore the life you should have been focused on taking, and you carelessly crossed the final crossroads. It is too late to put things back the way they were. No matter how much you try.''”

He tilted his head.

CRC expressed pure confusion.

But the silver young man should have shuddered in fear at that simple truth. He was drawing a blank. He could not come up with anything that fit the situation presented to him. But if whatever it was could slip his mind, how much of a threat could it really be?

He still didn’t understand, so Good, Old Mary pointed elsewhere.

The answer was there.

Aleister Crowley.

The magician CRC had defeated and proceeded to ignore had stood back up.

He was badly injured.

It was incredible he was still alive.

If he had feigned death, he might have had a greater chance at survival.

But he had instead clenched his teeth and stood up. Who out there had inspired him to do that? Why could that human challenge CRC over and over with the golden retriever by his side?

''Who did that human really, truly aspire to emulate?

“I don’t care…how many times you fail.”

Words spilled from his cracked lips.

The person he had entrusted this fight to had already collapsed.

And as a result, 99% of the people who had trusted that boy enough to gather here were now dead.

That was a defeat.

Kamijou Touma had failed to meet their expectations.

But despite the red and black stains covering his body, that human’s spirit was not broken.

Because…

“I will not lose hope in you, no matter how many times you lose or fall. I swear it. Thinking back, it was rare that you found an easy victory from beginning to end. But you always made sure to collect someone’s life before it was lost. That was no illusion. So I will believe in you. …You expect me to accept that a little thing like defeat is enough for you to give up? No matter how many times you fall to your knees, I know for a fact you will stand back up again.”

“Young one?”

“So consume me if need be. Great Demon Coronzon! Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass!! You monsters were always too much for a constant failure like me to handle. But just this once, support me. Help me buy the time we need. Give me the power to uphold my promise!!”

“You think he will get back up? Based on nothing? That loser is soaking in his own bloody vomit and you would still place all your hopes in him? Good, Old Mary could perhaps resurrect at least one person here if she were willing to sacrifice herself to my attack, but you won’t even do that!?”

“That is not what it means to believe in someone,” stated Good, Old Mary. She directly cut down that unbeatable adversary’s words. “You do not believe in someone because it is logical or because the odds are favorable. Human beings believe in and pray to the people they truly want to believe in. You were once a target of that sort of belief. If you have forgotten this, then you really are ''unworthy''. Unfortunately, the savior that mama and the rest of the Transcendents prayed to was not at all what we hoped for.”

So Good, Old Mary had chosen to believe in that boy instead.

Truly believe.

''If she sacrificed herself to resurrect one person here, it ended there. Once she died, her resurrection could never be used again. But if she was patient, survived, and believed that this deadly battle would be overcome without choosing the easy option of self-sacrifice, she could use her resurrection on each and every one of them. Only then was the possibility of saving everyone available.

That was what it meant to believe in someone.

Such belief was never spoken of in terms of “at least”.

Not everything came down to superhuman actions. There were options that became available if you wished for them hard enough.

No one was discussing logic or odds. The thread of possibility was so very thin, but Good, Old Mary chose to believe in the future she most wanted to believe in. Because she knew the foolish compromise of forcing herself to believe in something she didn’t want to believe in would never lead to a gentle and happy world.

“And no matter how absurd it might seem, there are times when our selfish expectations and beliefs are answered. There are people who will crawl through the mud and do whatever it takes to make that happen, no matter how poor their chances. And sometimes they will ultimately reach what they were struggling for.”

“…”

“People value such things as ''miracles''. CRC, I am certain you were once capable of that. You might have done so even in the modern world. But while you let your passions and playfulness guide you, you passed the final crossroads and reached a point from which you can never return.”

In the very corner of his vision, Christian Rosencreutz saw something rise up.

Whatever it was, it was stained red and black. It was someone who should not have still been alive.

The answer was obvious.

This was what the living and the dead had all believed in.

Kamijou.

Kamijou Touma.

“Impossible…” blankly muttered Christian Rosencreutz, suddenly trembling. “You never had a chance to use your resurrection. This old man would never have missed it.”

“True. But mama did not use it on anyone. Not even him.”

“Then this can’t be happening! A normal human had his arm severed and was left to bleed out for 10 minutes. Do you have any idea how much blood he would have lost in that time!? The answer is in liters! And you expect me to believe he overcame that because of some nonsense about believing in him!?”

“Should you really be spouting nonsense at the moment, CRC? Need I remind you that you are the corpse the Bridge Builders Cabal once believed in?” solemnly stated Good, Old Mary. “He answered our call. Unlike you, he did not run from the power of belief. The rules have changed. You completely missed the crossroads you couldn’t afford to cross and you walked right on through. The legend so many people believed in and prayed to is long gone. You are no more than bait now. Bait used to show off a new legend that has accepted the power of belief and is working to create a better future. You allowed yourself to be reduced to this, CRC.”

Kamijou made a horizontal swing of his nonexistent right arm.

The invisible dragon burst out.

It emerged once more.

That was the answer.

Kamijou Touma and Aleister Crowley stood side by side, both bloody and battered. They didn’t need to exchange any words. This team up should have been impossible, but it was possible within the legend of this moment.

There was no cue.

Aleister simply gave a thoughtful look.

A moment later, they both raced forward.

Straight toward their greatest enemy – Christian Rosencreutz.

“Ohhh!!” “Ohhh!!”

In response, CRC gulped and calmly worked out the answer in his head.

“The scientific angel Kazakiri Hyouka and the artificial demon Qliphah Puzzle 545.”

And the person behind those two.

New Board Chairman Accelerator.

“That particle accelerator cannon that gathered all the city’s power was not aimed at this old man.”

Using the Hula Hoop particle accelerator to launch a deadly attack within the city was all well and good, but what happened at the other end? They couldn’t have it pierce through the outer wall on the opposite side of the city and then burn down Shinjuku and Yokohama beyond. This group was too soft to accept that level of sacrifice. So what had they done?

His miniature model was useful for running searches, but there was one thing he had to watch out for.

It only provided the information he actively worked to search for.

Which meant he could miss something.

Especially when it came from a blind spot he hadn’t considered.

“You were holding two nonhumans in reserve, but you knew they could not defeat this old man if you simply sent them after me. So you found a way to inject them with a massive amount of energy without me noticing. ''Angels and demons are effectively collections of energy, so this boosted their raw strength and energized them''?”

They had sided with Kamijou Touma.

Realizing they couldn’t defeat CRC even in their boosted forms, had the scientific angel and magical demon instead opted to assist Kamijou?

As the leader at the top, the question for Accelerator wasn’t who achieved the victory. As long as he could eliminate the threat of Rosencreutz and bring peace back to the city, nothing else mattered.

It wasn’t an issue of logic or odds.

People believed in the person they wanted to believe in.

So while he wasn’t physically present, the #1 had not hesitated to focus on that particular trump card.

“Did you use the absence of his right hand to sneak them into his body? So that their invisible hands could squeeze his stopped heart and start it beating once more!?”

Thus, it wasn’t just two people approaching Rosencreutz.

Far more people had believed in that boy. They had entrusted him with their lives, their futures, and the fates of Academy City and the world.

“''Rosencreutz. It doesn’t matter how hopeless a reality you are.''”

“''Yes, and it doesn’t matter how much of this world you destroy.''”

Kamijou Touma would not run away.

He carried all those things on his back as he poured all his strength into the invisible dragon.

“''If you insist we can’t save anyone here''…”

“''Yes, and if you insist the good and the wicked cannot be equally saved''…”

The hits landed simultaneously.

“''Then we will destroy that illusion!!!''”

The God Purifying Demon Destroyer and the Conqueror of the Battle of Blythe Road.

Two inhuman fists flew and mercilessly launched Christian Rosencreutz beyond District 7’s borders.

===Part 8===

When the little wicked woman opened her eyes, she had no idea where she was. She saw a white ceiling, detected a chemical scent in the air, and noticed a great quantity of medical equipment surrounding her. The hard plastic mask over her lower face irritated her. But she was hesitant to move. She didn’t think she even could move right away and, given the tugging sensation from beneath her skin, she could guess she had several needles piercing her blood vessels and had tubes and electric cords attached all across her body.

Nevertheless, she was alive.

Anna Sprengel was alive.

“Where…am I?”

Peering down at her was a doctor with a froggy face.

He gave her a gentle smile.

This doctor had lived up to the belief a certain boy had placed in him.

Heaven Canceler spoke in the same way he always did.

“You’re going to be fine. It’s all over now.”

Some who saw this might have praised it as a miracle.

The commonplace miracle of life.

===Between the Lines 4===

“''Ugh, is this for real, mistress''?”

“''Yes. As much as I would prefer not to believe it, it appears so.''”

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Failing Witch:Volume1 Episode4

2023-12-04T11:27:36Z

Entei08:

==Episode 4: Save a Definite Friend==

===1===

“Eh?”

It began with a confused voice.

Viocia was still slumped down on the floor, not looking his way. She had gone limp as she simply stared at the utterly destroyed Moloch.

But it wasn’t over yet.

Myousou Yagoro refused to accept this ending. For one thing, he was a witch tutor. He had traveled all the way to a world full of magic, so why should he have to give up here?

That spring, he had seen a girl standing in shock after seeing her failure on the exam result board.

But instead of crying or lashing out when faced with that harsh reality, that lonely girl bit her lip, suppressed the tears, and chose to face the next gloomy year head on.

That was when he decided to choose her.

Yagoro had his own objective.

But more than that, he knew he couldn’t bear for that girl, who had something he didn’t, to be worn down by reality before she managed to get back on her feet.

“Hee ha ha!! Why are you getting all worked up over that scrap heap? Moloch’s completely broken and you still think you can ‘save’ the thing? Don’t make me laugh!!!”

“That’s it, don’tcha think?”

Arbamini cackled, but the blond boy snapped his fingers.

He couldn’t avert his eyes. They could never escape this crisis if they shut out crucial information just because it was painful to hear.

In fact, he needed to thank that witch for her wickedness and cackling. It was time to turn this around in a single blow.

It was time to prove that anything was possible with witchcraft.

“Moloch is ''broken''. He’s a bipedal bronze statue, so you can smash up his body as much as you want – he won’t ''die''. Now, which parts are broken? If we open him up, determine the source of the problem, and fix or replace the broken parts, he’ll be as good as new!!”

“S-so what?”

“R-right? In case you forgot, Moloch’s under our control because it ate the pomegranate seeds.”

“Hee hee. Fixing it will only give us another pawn, so that’s fine by us. We’ll make that ugly thing kill itself hundreds or even thousands of times if you make us!!”

“Again, that’s it, don’tcha think?”

The trio looked taken aback by his repeated response.

This time, they had no idea what he could be getting at.

“Anyone who eats the fruit of the underworld is bound to the world of the dead and can no longer leave. You’re right about that. ''But that only applies to ordinary humans like us.''” Yagoro grinned. “But like I said, Moloch is ''a bipedal bronze statue''. You say he ate a special fruit? But what does ‘eat’ even mean? If you put something in a box or pot, would you call that eating? Metal Moloch doesn’t eat in the sense of absorbing nutrients through a stomach and intestines!! No bronze statue can do that!!!”

Being different from others wasn’t necessarily a negative thing.

If you accepted it as part of what makes you unique, it could open new paths for you.

In this case, bronze Moloch could be saved when an ordinary person would have died.

That was undeniable.

Those differences were a blessing that should be greeted with applause and utilized to their fullest!!

“Don’t give up.”

Which meant hope was not yet lost. They could still repel this tragedy.

A single thin thread of light remained.

If they replaced his broken parts and removed the pomegranate caught in his joints, they really could save him this time.

“Didn’t you want to be his friend, Viocia!?”

Checking on every little thing was a pain.

He didn’t need to question it. He could make the call himself at this point.

A tutor’s job was to supply his student with all the necessary knowledge. He knew that. But before even that, he had sworn to himself he would show his student the way when she was unsure of herself!!

“It doesn’t matter if he’s alive or not or even if he never was alive. He still believed he had something inside him he couldn’t bear to have insulted, didn’t he, Viocia!? So don’t let it end here. Who do you think you are giving up on a friend’s possibilities like this? You decided you wanted to be his friend, so don’t give up on that just because it’s a little harder than you thought!!”

Someone audibly gnashed their teeth.

It was Arbamini in the red waitress uniform.

“That thing’s fine if he’s broken cause its bronze? The pomegranate curse wasn’t perfect? S-saying it doesn’t make it true.”

“The magic I teach my students isn’t so cheap. I didn’t teach you witchcraft so you could give up on something. I mean, didn’t you come to Temple School City to learn ''how to make the impossible possible''? Isn’t that why you want to go to Maleficium!? Then use all the power you have. Viocia, what kind of witch do you want to be? Do you want to learn the kind of fashionable and clever magic that lets you skillfully avoid dealing with anything hard, abandon people in need to die, and live a happy life all on your own!? Like hell you do!!!”

A dull thud rang out.

That was the response Yagoro was waiting for.

Viocia still had her head lowered, but she worked her trembling legs to stand back up. She pressed the end of her Formula Broom against the floor to prop herself up like a cane.

And she raised her head.

When she was looking at what truly needed protecting, the girl stopped being a dunce.

“Teacher. If that’s true – if we can still save Moloch – then I’m through hesitating. In fact, I’ll do this even if you tell me not to.”

“You think you can beat us? Don’t be stupid, you failing witch!! You won’t even earn any real points on this practice exam after spending all this time dealing with Moloch. You talk big for a failure who isn’t on our list of people to sabotage or recruit!!” shouted Arbamini, red in the face, but Yagoro simply shook his head.

That wasn’t how witchcraft worked.

People didn’t have any convenient magic power inside them. All they had was their willpower. So no one was born a genius at witchcraft and no one was granted all the necessary abilities by a goddess. There was no easy mode for the witch entrance exam, allowing you to pass on your first try.

Furthermore, witchcraft was not so cheap that it could be wielded based ''only'' on exam scores.

What you needed was…

(The right situation.)

That wasn’t limited to magic. For example, how many people who passed a proficiency test in gardening or mental arithmetic could hold onto those skills forever? Wouldn’t a lot of people only remember it long enough to get through the special “situation” that was the test?

A professional always kept themselves in an appropriate situation and made sure to complete daily training to continually hone their skills.

And on a more emotional side, there were people whose skills could be temporarily heightened by the right situation. Like someone who could only play a video game at a certain level when trying to help out their struggling friend.

There was nothing wrong with being average.

Not as long as you ha the strong willpower to attempt the exam despite not having the skill.

Viocia’s broom demanded an estimated rank of S3.

So what?

''Don’t arrogantly assume witchcraft can truly be analyzed as nothing more than arithmetic.'' Magic gives people dreams, so it isn’t that simple.

When she said she could still save Dorothea, she was relying on the fact that her tutor was there to help if she failed. But that wasn’t an option here. Which created an extreme “situation” where she had to act now or lose this friend forever.

Witches did not reject the desires that could instead drive them.

In a situation where you wanted to obtain something no matter what, harnessing that desire transformed it into the greatest fuel.

Not everyone who wanted to be a top-level witch had been an extraordinary genius from birth.

But everyone had moments when they could push past their standard specs and become a genius.

The girl could pull it off if she had the willpower.

(Now if only she could maintain this kind of focus.)

“Moloch, don’t worry. I won’t let anyone trample on your wish. I won’t let anyone laugh at you. I won’t let them make fun of you. …And please, my broom, lend me the strength I need to keep my word.”

Someone moved past Myousou Yagoro. It was Melehe Superlative who had gotten back up despite her injuries.

She was joined by another girl who was trembling but had never let go of her Formula Broom. Dorothea Rockpool. The two stood side by side and exchanged a quick fist bump. This had nothing to do with the entrance exam. Pouring their heart and soul into this wouldn’t earn them even one extra point. But it was written plain on their faces that they didn’t care.

In fact, the same thing may have been written on Yagoro’s face.

Viocia raised her head and her voice.

They refused to leave her alone when she was willing to say this with no hesitation whatsoever.

They were all with her.

“Formula Broom – Wittenberg!! Help me with my task!!!”

The pitch black broom roared and golden light slipped across the surface of its handle.

Even mysterious Mephistopheles, who had kept his silence until now, had responded.

''Protect that feeling. Maybe he isn’t human and maybe he isn’t alive.

''But, witch, save your suffering friend using awesome magic that is linked to all things.

===2===

The room was lined with metal tanks that may have been larger than carriages.

The place may have originally been meant to cook enough stew or porridge at once to feed hundreds of people.

The room was even larger than a tennis court. The broken ceiling gave it vertical space as well, but it would still be difficult to fly around on brooms.

For a normal witch, anyway.

The chocolate parfait of a sky pirate girl shot straight up without even an approach run. One of the techniques she had mastered in order to teach the witches of Private Striga was a vertical takeoff that lacked the usual approach run.

“Grab on!!”

She reached out a hand and grabbed someone’s hand, taking Dorothe and Viocia in with a chain of linked hands. Then she pushed her broom forward and accelerated. As seen with taking off from the diving board, no approach run was necessary when already in midair, even if they were just barely off the ground.

Viocia and Dorothea got their brooms flying too. Formula Brooms could instantly break the sound barrier but still turn as sharply as a bicycle.

“Convert the seven notes to nine and intoxicate the world here, Orpheus!!”

“Will do, milady. Yes, there is no greater music than helping those in need. And a clear goal is a wonderful thing!”

Melehe created whistle-like spaces with her left hand’s fingers and shouted when the water pump burst. The water that sprayed forth defied gravity as it formed several spears and shot out toward Arbamini specifically.

Blue Holibre and green Lampans intervened.

“Stay put, Arbamini! Holibre and I will intercept them! Don’t let her provoke you into flying!!”

“Right? Do they really think they can beat us when it comes to attack magic? This thoughtlessly launched attack isn’t a threat. We’ll blow away those water spears and send it back at her!!”

But that wasn’t the real attack.

Another voice rang out.

“Th-the Aspect of Amorality gathers wind power in the knots of the thread and releases it when the knots are untied. Eep. The first, a pleasant breeze. The second, a powerful gust. The third, a raging storm!!”

When no-bake cheesecake bandage zombie girl Dorothea touched her bandages, her willpower reached the stagnant air. A massive invisible sphere targeted Holibre who had stepped out front from a different angle.

Dorothea made it sound simple, but her storm summoning had required using the same magic three times. A normal witch would have gone dizzy from attempting it, but not her.

A student’s exam struggles, whatever form they took, became her power.

That included the dieting, jogging, and memorization Dorothea had kept up on her own.

A sulking voice spoke up. Coming from Formula Broom – Lyceum.

“Tch. Quit that stupid trembling. Adjusted assessment: you’re not half bad when you put your mind to it.”

At first, Dorothea’s eyes widened in surprise, but then she smiled a little. And she gripped her broom all the tighter.

Meanwhile, things were still happening.

“Fall back, Holibre!! Arbamini, are you ready yet!?”

“Almost…there!!”

Red, blue, and green. The trio in colorful waitress uniforms began to show concern in their voices. And someone else made a move against them.

The creaking of bronze shook the room.

“Moloch!? Don’t force yourself! I’ll help you, so please don’t break!!” shouted pumpkin tart witch Viocia by gathering strength in her gut.

Nevertheless, the fallen and crumbled bronze statue opened its torso wide. A beam shot out from the floor. The flames, heat, and shockwave expanded quick. Arbamini, Holibre, and Lampans all tried to escape in different directions, but they were all engulfed by the massive explosion full of orange embers.

Dust hung in the air.

Small pieces of the ceiling poured down. Any flight at all risked crashing in these conditions, so Viocia’s trio landed on the floor.

Dorothea nervously fidgeted with her broom.

“Th-they aren’t…fighting back? Eep.”

“Those three create one big magic spell between the three of them,” said Viocia. “So if one of them is knocked out, they can’t use their magic!”

“No, don’t let your guard down!” shouted Yagoro.

A deep rumble tore through the air.

Everything was blown out from within. Jagged metal and large rocks scattered about, so Viocia’s group quickly ducked. The rubble would have hit them otherwise.

“That wasn’t very nice. If we didn’t have a trick up our sleeve, we’d’ve been badly hurt.”

The trio emerged like nothing had happened. Arbamini, Holibre, and Lampans raised their Formula Brooms, pressed the ends together, and laughed as one.

Something crawled.

The fried shrimp braid, the twintails, and the ponytail swayed side to side with the movement of their bodies. Come to think of it, didn’t a witch’s long hair hold a special meaning in the Black Mass of the Aspect of Amorality?

Melehe gripped her broom with eyes wide.

“You’re kidding. All that and they aren’t even scratched!?”

With a tearing sound, the trio removed some kind of talisman that had been pasted to the handles of their brooms.

Then the three brooms spoke one after another.

“The first proclamation of the formless one: Nothing need concern you save for the Aspect of Adoration.”

“The second proclamation of the formless one: None of woman born shall harm you.”

“The third proclamation of the formless one: You shall never be vanquished until the old meal center to the hill outside of town shall come against you.”

“Ah ha ha. Made it, made it, we actually made it.”

A crescent-moon smile split across Arbamani’s face.

“Nothing can hurt us now. Which means you can’t possibly win!! We can take our time making you suffer before you die!!!”

(That was the witches that led Macbeth astray? That’s an alteration of the prophecies spoken through the apparitions’ voices, don’tcha think!?)

This was a guaranteed victory curse that made the target invulnerable through the combination of multiple conditions. But in the play, they had been truthful statements that were used to gain Macbeth’s trust and then lead him to his doom. Casting that one yourself was about as reckless as it got.

The next voice sounded out of place here.

“Right? Lampans, lend me your ointment.”

“Really? Here, Holibre. What kind of girl doesn’t have her ointment with her at all times?”

Yagoro detected a faint scent.

(That ointment contains scopolia, borage, and some other ingredients. As a witch ointment, that would be a thorough acceleration boost, but as big as this place is, we’re still indoors. They really don’t give any thought to the burden they place on their bodies, do they? Are they willing to crash full-speed into the wall!?)

Melehe shot more water spears every which way, but the trio didn’t even try to dodge them. Just by standing in place, the pressurized water weapons turned to spray and vanished. They all hit, but the trio wasn’t damaged. They didn’t even flinch or bat an eye.

“Direct attacks aren’t going to work!! We need to overturn the fundamental magic structure!”

“Oh, you fancy-schmancy prep school ace. Do you really think we’ll give you the chance?”

Arbamini laughed and twirled her Formula Broom in one hand.

Even Viocia readied her broom in response. She may have thought a powerful magic attack of light or darkness was coming. But she still wasn’t thinking about this on the right level.

The enemy had created a situation where they would never be vanquished or harmed no matter what.

“Viocia, Melehe, Dorothea. Can the three of you drag bronze Moloch away if you work together?”

“Teacher?”

“You expect us to retreat before they’ve even attacked? You don’t think much of our skill, do you?”

“'''Trick question warning: ''They can’t be harmed no matter what'', which puts this on another level altogether!!'''”

Arbamini laughed and then spoke.

“Now, Formula Broom – Glamis.”

That curse eliminated all forms of bodily damage.

So no matter how risky the trick, that trio didn’t need to hesitate.

Which was why they gave no concern for the danger it presented to them.

“Witches who led Demon Lord Macbeth astray! Take control of my body!!”

A thick, massive explosion instantly changed the flow of battle.

===3===

The location itself audibly strained from the pressure. The several layers of dust cloud obscured the view, but there had to be cracks running through the floor and walls.

There was nothing Viocia could have done. Dorothea’s legs had frozen in fear and Melehe had to have been caught in the blast before she could work out a concrete countermeasure.

The trio’s invulnerability had only been the setup for accepting in a Voland and wielding its power with no risk to themselves.

Recall when Dorothea was manipulated by Demon Lord Aristotle. The prep school’s instructors and even Maleficium’s Benandanti had been powerless to defeat that monster.

The same thing was happening here, but what if a monster had found a way to retain control of her body?

So Viocia’s group had something else to thank for their survival.

“Was that you, Moloch!?” shouted Viocia, unable to get up and covered in soot and dust.

The bronze joints screamed in protest.

They were broken and falling apart.

But the joints remained connected by something like countless threads, they forced themselves to move, and Moloch – who had been feared by so many students as a killer pot – crawled forward to guard the fallen girls.

But this defense was far from perfect.

That giant was nearly a scrap heap already and he was unsteady. So unsteady he looked ready to collapse at any moment.

“Kee hee hee, kee hee, ee hee hee.”

Arbamini, with the red fried shrimp braid, slowly approached. Her vertical serpentine pupils glowed crimson, but something was different than when it was Dorothea.

It likely helped that Holibre and Lampans were magically supporting her.

Arbamini cackled with unhinged laughter, but she was still herself.

The human had taken control of the Voland.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes!! Who should I beat to a pulp first? I can wield even the most powerful magic without worrying about dying. A Voland? Power run wild!? So what!? Ah ha ha, ''none of it can hurt me.'' I’ll wield all this power and crush you all with no risk to me!!”

She had negated the magical risk. She had transformed the Voland’s uncontrollable power into a tool for her own violence.

Melehe kept her cool the best.

“We need to fall back for now.”

“But…but. Oh, I know. Teacher will do something about this.”

“We might could manage, but Dorothea is too terrified to last long! Not to mention Moloch who is bearing the burden for all our shortcomings!!”

The “snap!!” of breaking metal rang out.

It came from directly in front of them. Arbamini had arrived at the bronze heap that had been Moloch and mercilessly jabbed her slender arm into his body, which should have contained a scorching furnace.

She stirred up his insides and dragged them out.

She now held a red-hot metal pipe. Probably something like a bellows that efficiently delivered air to a fire. She held it in her bare hand, but she didn’t look remotely bothered.

It was Viocia who covered her face with her hands and screamed.

The panic of his initial defeat came rushing back.

“Ahhh, Moloch!?”

“Hmph, that’s not what I wanted. Outta the way, trashcan pot.”

Orange light swept through horizontally. Dorothea and Melehe both tackled Viocia to the ground as the giant bronze mass was blasted to the wall.

Melehe bit her lip until it bled, but she still kept calm and arrived at the optimal decision.

[[Image:Failing_Witch_v01_BW07.jpg|thumb]]

“Run away!!!”

Her vertical takeoff allowed her to take flight without an ultra-low-altitude approach run.

Melehe and Dorothea took flight at the same moment. Viocia was still being dragged along by the sky pirate girl. She kept looking back, shouting Moloch’s name.

(Kh!! But it has to be done!)

Melehe clenched her teeth. Flying so close to the floor caused the air compressed by her flight to push up from below, so keeping her balance was a challenge. And having a ceiling overhead made it all feel so different from normal. She felt like she was constantly flying below a bridge.

And…

“Melehe, o-over here! Eep. Hold my hand!!”

Ordinarily timid Dorothea spoke with strength in her voice. As soon as Melehe obeyed, her Formula Broom obtained a firm stability.

“What did you do?”

“W-well, I’m no good at flying fast and high. Eep. I’m better suited for the ground than the sky. Maybe because I do so much jogging?”

She had this backwards. This wasn’t about what she was “no good” at. This was a strength she had developed for herself.

Formula Brooms were meant to soar high in the sky. The ease with which Dorothea had mastered low-altitude flight was an overwhelming “weapon” in her arsenal.

“But, um. Eep. I-it’s so different when the three of us are together.”

“Yes. Even if one of us is just weighting me down back there.”

“Those three realized this a lot faster than w-we did. Eep. They must be smart, so why?”

Dorothea may have been asking why they only seemed capable of using their talents to hurt people.

During their high-speed escape, Melehe and Dorothea held an impromptu strategy meeting.

“We’re in serious trouble if they have complete control of Macbeth’s witches and the apparitions’ prophecies. That curse generally makes its target undefeatable no matter what.”

“B-but isn’t Macbeth a tragedy? There must be a loophole.”

“Either of you born through caesarian section?”

“Oh, right. Eep. That’s how the story goes.”

“Born from an egg or created in a test tube would work too. They can’t be vanquished by anyone ‘of woman born’, so they can’t defeat someone who was removed from her mother in a special way. So if none of us meet the condition set up in Macbeth, we can’t defeat that trio!!”

Sounds of destruction followed after them. The trio were invulnerable thanks to the witch prophecies, so unlike Melehe’s group, they didn’t need to make any minute course corrections while flying. They would occasionally bump into the walls or ceiling and sometimes break right through those things to take a straighter line in pursuit.

“Ah ha ha!! Run faster. Fly faster. A single hit from us and you’ll be in a real tragic state!!”

Several sounds of bending metal rang out.

A tremor ran through Viocia’s back just before some things flew rapidly after the fleeing group. They were a smashed-up three-legged dishwasher and a food carrying cart, ripped open from within. Each of them was a monster that had driven so many students to abandon the will to fight, but they also had to be items that had wandered the abandoned old meal center while carrying as many feelings as Moloch.

Mocking laughter stabbed into them from behind. From disturbingly close. Instead of standing still and working her violence, Arbamini had mounted her broom to pursue them while grabbing and throwing everything within reach. Ordinarily, her arm would have been torn off the instant it made contact.

“Ah ha ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

“How…how can she do this?”

Viocia was dazed. She didn’t seem fully aware of the reality before her eyes.

Was that a fragment of bronze she was squeezing in her hand?

“Moloch is a big pot and he only wanted to feed everyone tasty food. The others are probably also only walking around the abandoned building looking for a place for themselves. So how can she laugh like that while she destroys them?”

“Viocia!!” shouted Melehe. “This violence will continue until we stop that trio. So are you only going to freeze up because you ‘can’t believe it’? All you’re doing is abandoning Moloch and withdrawing into yourself!!”

Viocia gasped and raised her head. She squeezed her Formula Broom tight once more. They were already at speed, so she only had to drift away from Melehe to take flight.

She had decided for herself to save Moloch, so she couldn’t give up on him now.

“Where can we make a U-turn!? We can’t leave him like this!!”

“We need to do something about the Macbeth witch magic first.”

“Th-there’s a big, multilevel room over there. Eep! Fly clockwise around it and we can return the way we came!!”

“Ugh!! This dunce of a witch is a pain even after she’s recovered!!”

Melehe complained, but she still followed after Viocia. They circled around the vast, cylindrical space and made their way back down the long, straight hallway.

“What now?” asked Melehe. “They’re monsters who can use the power of a Voland with no risk to themselves!”

“There must be something we can do!!” insisted Viocia. “We use witchcraft, which is so tricky you need to pass such a hard exam to learn more about it. There’s no way you can use a supernatural power so convenient it really makes you invulnerable, so there must be some kind of loophole we can use. The only reason we haven’t found it yet is because we don’t have all the information. So we need to keep at it until we have that information!”

Arbamini came into view down the hallway. As did Holibre and Lampans. They were riding their brooms straight toward Viocia’s group. Arbamini was out front and she had her arms spread as if in welcome.

That was when it happened.

Just before Viocia’s group crashed into them, Arbamini was struck by a powerful blow from the side, tossing her from the hallway into a side room.

Lots of crashing and exploding came from that room.

Something was happening to Arbamini’s trio. Something the Voland-transformed wicked girl hadn’t expected.

“Was that…teacher?”

===4===

Viocia’s group weren’t the only ones who were pissed.

He couldn’t bear to see Moloch disrespected any longer. And if that spell had overpowered even a Voland, he couldn’t let it be used against his student and her friends. No matter what.

“Give it a rest.”

“?”

“You damn brats!!!”

Myousou Yagoro threw everything he had into a blow from the side.

The metal pipe dragged out of Moloch, and later discarded, had stabbed into the wall, so he grabbed that in his hands and swung it toward Arbamini’s head with all his might.

He directly attacked Arbamini.

When she flew, she collided with Holibre and Lampans, taking them with her.

He had forcibly struck a witch from the side during her high-speed flight. As long as he didn’t care about the damage to his own body, that was a surefire way of causing considerable damage.

In this case, the trio broke through the outer wall and then through the window of another part of the building running parallel to this one.

“That worked well enough. Arbamini, Holibre, and Lampans need to form a triangle regardless of distance, so the last thing they want is to move independently and have someone attack them separately.”

He couldn’t fly like a witch, so attacking them had taken quite a detour.

But he had finally managed a counterattack.

Yagoro felt the powerful chill of the metal pipe in his hands.

(Thanks, Moloch, for lending me the strength I needed to help Viocia and her friends after you risked everything to protect them.)

“…Ugh…”

He grimaced and then the world seemed to tilt at an angle for him.

He had physically contacted a witch flying at speed. He had been holding the pipe in both hands, but the damage to his dominant hand had been serious. Something felt disconcertingly off in his right wrist and shoulder.

But he wasn’t done yet.

His body was slumped diagonally, but he used the bent pipe to prop himself up.

It didn’t matter how much of a detour it took. He was the one who had pushed his student to save Moloch, so he couldn’t afford to slip into pleasant unconsciousness now. Plus, he couldn’t let that trio get away with treating the bronze statue that way either. Even if it wouldn’t help with the practice exam and even if it wouldn’t improve his student’s score.

If she lost her desires, her hopes, and her dreams, passing the exam would lose all meaning.

He would make his way around to the other part of the building even if it meant limping or crawling there.

The battle wasn’t over yet.

===5===

“Teacher!!”

“Idiot, you need to eliminate the threat first! Even if we can fight these witches, we can’t protect your unflying tutor while we do it!!”

Viocia reflexively tried to go help Yagoro, so Melehe had to stop her.

“B-but. Eep. How exactly do we fight them?”

“If we can’t defeat them because of that invulnerability spell, we need to find a way around it! Maybe that means getting their feet caught in quicksand and maybe it means paralyzing them – I don’t know!!”

Their brooms let them fly around the cluster of buildings that continued to branch out complexly like a tree growing in fast-forward. These girls could easily beat the tutor to the large room he had knocked that trio to.

Viocia and Dorothea got Melehe’s help landing on the floor.

They heard a clanking sound.

The room was probably used to wash dishes and kitchen tools. The window was broken, the interior was smashed up, and Arbamini was embedded in the opposite wall, holding…something other than her Formula Broom. Pieces of the crumbling wall spilled to the floor along with a crystal flask containing a smashed-up wooden doll.

If they didn’t end this here, they couldn’t save their friend Moloch.

So they had to end it here.

The tutor had said he would teach Viocia how to make the impossible possible. He had told her they could still save Moloch and she shouldn’t give up on her friend so easily. Her grandma had told her not to go to too much trouble and her parents had been strongly opposed to it. When she told strangers she wanted to be a witch, they had all laughed at her. But her tutor had believed in her this whole time, so she knew she had to live up to his belief in her.

And she wasn’t alone.

Melehe and Dorothea also faced their enemy with brooms in hand.

Arbamini had destroyed several washtubs after crashing into the dishwashing room and now she was curled up by a broken wall, holding her nose and muttering to herself. Red blood dripped between her fingers.

She didn’t seem to be thinking about anything other than the tutor who had directly harmed her.

In a way, it was the purest possible reaction, which only made it more terrifying.

“Th-thad baftard. Who…who does he think is he is hitting a girl in the face!?”

Her red serpentine eyes wandered in search of a target.

Viocia realized something while she faced the girl who had taken in a Voland and remained in control.

Yes, something wasn’t adding up.

“Wait… The apparition’s prophecy was supposed to make her invulnerable, so why is she holding a bloody nose???”

“!?”

Yagoro must have figured something out.

He had already made the impossible possible.

And that wasn’t a special move only he could pull off. Anyone here could do it too.

Yes, that was right. Why had he attacked with a piece of Moloch instead of using ''that weird-shaped stick'' he always used?

“ ‘None of woman born shall harm you’,” muttered Melehe. “In the play, the loophole was that Macduff was born by caesarean section, so he didn’t count as ‘of woman born’.”

“Oh,” gasped Dorothea. “''And Moloch is a cooking tool made from bronze, so he didn’t have a mother at all.'' So you don’t even need the caesarean section. Eep. The loophole for her invulnerability was right there!”

And in this case, Arbamini and her glowing red snake eyes weren’t what mattered.

“Holibre and Lampans,” pointed out Melehe.

“!?”

“The three of you can draw on such great power by having each of you handle one of the Three Aspects. An invulnerability curse capable of containing a rampaging Voland isn’t your average spell. So you two are the keys here, not Arbamini herself. If we remove your support, Arbamini will be powerless to stop the Voland’s rampage!!”

The blue and green witches quickly readied their Formula Brooms, but it was too late.

They were only just starting to fight, but Viocia had already started.

“The Aspect of Admiration. ATU 0500, the Supernatural Helper’s Name. The imp can wield the greatest power as long as no one can guess his long name of Rumpelstiltskin.”

“That girl… Does she think she knows how our Three Aspects setup works?”

“Right? She can’t do anything. ''They don’t even know our family names''!!”

All witchcraft followed some form of logic. Usually regarding the Three Aspects. Macbeth’s witches weren’t enough. And as powerful as the Three Aspects were, they also provided a broad, shallow weak point to target.

Viocia Modestlucky was no longer a failing witch. Not in this situation.

She wouldn’t end this as an ignorant failure.

Because her tutor had taught her so much!!

“The Aspect of Antiquity! Faust was a tragic magician who had failed miserably at alchemy, but his life would never have gotten so bad if he hadn’t made a wicked deal with a demon. …That means the one thing all Three Aspects have in common with Macbeth’s prophecy is phony immortality. They’re all illusions created by pushing death away with a complex combination of conditions. So if we can take all of those away, you’re powerless!!”

Knowing how it worked wasn’t enough. Viocia had to put together her own Three Aspects magic to fight back.

The prophecy of Macbeth’s witches had already been defeated by the discovery that they could use pieces of bull-like Moloch since he was not “of woman born”. …For Viocia’s Aspect of Immorality, she decided to use the one that stole power away by making noise. For the Aspect of Admiration, she had a text in mind already. And for the Aspect of Antiquity, she chose Isis’s sistrum. That musical instrument kept the entire world in motion, which meant its sound could break free of a deadlocked situation.

Would that work?

Had she overlooked anything in her chosen countermeasure?

Viocia, Melehe, and Dorothea suppressed their nerves and raised their voices as one.

“ATU 0510a, Cinderella!! The bell signaling the ball’s end negates any and all magic, revealing the spellcaster’s original form!!!”

Viocia slammed a bronze piece of Moloch against the wall, producing a dull metallic clang.

That was all.

There was no massive explosion. No light flashed out and no noise boomed forth.

The silence felt strange.

“Bff.”

“Arbamini!!”

“Hey, Arbamini!?”

Arbamini doubled over.

She tried to calm her breathing but couldn’t.

“You used Cinderella’s bell? And church bells already have the legend of robbing a witch’s broom the power to fly. That’s a near-fatal blow for any magic that dresses you up to make you look more impressive.”

Arbamini honestly admitted its effectiveness, but she also slowly straightened up from her doubled-over position.

The serpentine red eyes shined and the Voland was still smirking.

They had failed to stop her.

“But did you forget? The official practice exam began ''after midnight'', which means you can’t use the end-of-ball bell that rings at the end of the day!!”

Something exploded.

The one attack blasted Melehe to the wall behind her. It didn’t matter that she was Carraway Cs’s ace with a practice exam rank of A. Dorothea paled now that their trump card was gone. Something flew in from a different direction and struck the girl, knocking her to the floor. Her glasses came off and skittered across the floor.

“Melehe!! And Dorothea too!?”

Viocia was the only one left, but it wasn’t over yet.

The entire place exploded. The usually-necessary approaching run didn’t matter. She couldn’t see anything, not even an afterimage. She assumed Voland-ized Arbamini was flying around, but she was wrong.

“Ah ha ha. Pass it here!!”

“Right? You gonna try using a Voland too, Lampans?”

“Pass me the control. We’ll be here all day if it’s up to you two.”

Macbeth’s witches passed between Arbamini, Holibre, and Lampans. More accurately, they traded out who played the role with the red serpentine eyes. Witness reports of the Witch’s Sabbath mentioned a dance between the Voland and the witch using a broom. The tearing wind that was stirred up with a short delay revealed the great spiral being drawn around the poor victim.

She was beyond saving.

And since she couldn’t cover for the other two at the same time, she couldn’t ensure her friends’ lives either.

They were using some kind of projectile.

Since these were Macbeth’s witches, they may have been launching cauldron-boiled poison from their palms. But no matter what it was made of, simply being struck by a boiling liquid at ultra-high speed could be fatal.

Witches ruled the skies by flying at supersonic speed while remaining as maneuverable as a bicycle.

But that meant Arbamini, Holibre, and Lampans were capable of attacking with sufficient speed to bring down that kind of witch.

Masses of scorching death attacked from multiple directions at once.

But Viocia still didn’t give up. She worked her brains like never before.

Raising a shield of the ointment that protected her body during supersonic flight would be meaningless. They were just too destructive. Any attempt at stopping their attacks head on would be easily breached.

So…

(I need to throw off their aim! Lead them astray!!)

“It’s not…too late!!”

Viocia scattered wax dolls smaller than chess pieces to create around a dozen phantom copies of herself.

She wasn’t aware, but her idea was more like the Earth concept of a flare than chaff.

It was a miracle she had managed to come up with this idea and act on it in such a short time. Her tutor was stingy with praise, but he might have rubbed her head for this one.

It was instantly neutralized.

But not by revealing which one was real. The dozen phantoms were shot through simultaneously, rendering them pointless.

“Ah ha ha!!” laughed the trio. “Got any other tricks up your sleeve to try and save your life!?”

Viocia really was the only one left.

And it was obvious she had been left for last to fill her with even greater fear.

She had refused to give up before, but now her throat dried up.

(Te-)

Tears welled up in her eyes.

She squeezed her eyes shut and shouted for help she knew wasn’t coming.

“''Teacher''!!”

“Oh, pipe down. ''You don’t need to ask every single time''!”

It really happened.

She received a response.

It didn’t matter how much damage he would take.

Myousou Yagoro actually thought he was lucky. If Arbamini, Holibre, and Lampans had split up and attacked all three students at once, he really would have been out of options.

But they had chosen to focus on Viocia alone.

So if he protected her, he could prevent any of them from being lost. For that, he was willing to offer them his battered and slanted body.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

===6===

He always felt like he had been too successful.

It kept happening. He had been lifted up as a genius boy, but he had known that had earned him grudges from so many people. He should have only taken a one-man trip into space, but something must have gone wrong and he ended up here instead.

Was this Earth’s afterlife, or had he somehow been sent somewhere else altogether? Either way, he thought he might not have a place on Earth anymore since he was considered dead there. Someone was obviously hindering his attempts to return, but it was possible that was only someone taking pity on him after seeing him attempting the impossible.

He had no proof of any of it, but the possibility still made him tremble with fear.

But that fear was overpowered by his worry for the people he had left on Earth.

His mother. His sister.

The last thing he wanted to do was leave them hanging. Over and over, he had regretted leaving behind so many questions about his fate. If he had definitively died, they wouldn’t have hesitated to get a new start on life.

So he wanted to provide closure.

He wasn’t trying to return to Earth. Because there was ''something'' blocking the way between the two worlds. But he might be able to send a message. After all, Formula Brooms managed to sneak Earth knowledge past the goddess’s watchful eye and store it here. But what kind of message could he send? If he told them to stop waiting for him, wouldn’t that only make them more impatient for his return?

He never did find an answer there.

But if his current situation really was an abnormality, then couldn’t he break free of that halfway position by dying for real in this world? The end result would be no different from if he had died in that accident back at Earth. Then his family could start on a new life.

He pondered that idea.

He could see his life flashing before his eyes.

Meeting a glorious end while protecting his student seemed like a good use of this unnatural continuation of his life. The idea sorely tempted him.

He stood on the precipice of death.

He could sense it so clearly.

“But this isn’t over yet.”

“!?” “!?” “!?”

He rejected it.

He clenched his teeth and shook free of the deceptively sweet resignation.

If he evaded the attack with a sidestep, he would be putting his student at risk. Dedicating part of his willpower to defense magic would only hurt his chances.

He took the attack straight to the center of his back while covering for his student.

The high-pressure shot of poison felt as heavy as a bowling ball. The cracking of pressure damage came from his torso.

The sweet release of death rushed in.

But he still refused to take that easy way out.

Yagoro stood and faced the harsh reality once more.

He thought only of offense. He needed to eliminate the threat as soon as possible to save those future witches.

He knew he couldn’t return home and sending a message wouldn’t help. He was doomed to forever worry and trouble his loved ones.

But that was why he had to do this.

If he was going to repay those people for worrying about him, he had to find happiness in this world. He was only an empty shell or the dregs of his former self, but that girl seriously believed he could give her a future, so he couldn’t abandon his tutoring job before it was complete.

Which meant he couldn’t die yet.

He refused to die here.

“Lampans, pass the Voland my way.”

The witch trio weaved their midair courses together and then one of them shot out ahead.

The red waitress uniform meant the Voland was in Arbamini right now.

“Quit trying to act tough. You’re wearing some kind of armor below that sailor uniform, aren’t you?”

She was right. But armor made by combining parchment like a book wouldn’t even come close to protecting him here.

A line of red blood dripped from the corner of Yagoro’s mouth.

“But ''that’s all you have.'' You stopped the burns? Maybe, but it still hurt you. Macbeth’s witches can make all sorts of potions, so we have an intimate knowledge of how the human body works. You can’t even stay on your feet much longer, can you? …This next one will finish it. Because we’ll hit you with a rapid barrage.”

Yagoro smiled a little at the icy voice that contrasted the previous mockery.

Apparently Arbamini was finally taking this seriously.

Now, could he put the magic together quick enough? Viocia still had her broom. With that…

“Viocia…”

“Teacher?”

“Listen, you three weren’t wrong. ATU 0510a, Cinderella, was the right choice, so don’t beat yourself up over that. You just didn’t quite land on the right way to use it.”

He was a tutor, so he had to teach her this.

Drawing on all your knowledge and wielding magic to protect a friend had not been a failure or a mistake. It was a praiseworthy act that only a good witch was capable of.

The trio scoffed.

They had reduced themselves to ugly, despicable witches who could do nothing else.

“How stupid are you? You’re her tutor? If you’d only thrown out your silly feelings, you could’ve played dead and maybe survived this.”

“Right? Now, pass it here. I’ll finish them off, so could you give me the Voland?”

“Nope. It’s scarier for them if they don’t know who the finishing blow is coming from.”

Light blossomed wildly. It seemed at first like they had used invisibility magic, but they were only moving too fast to be seen by the naked eye. The trio soared and looped through the air. They spiraled around the pair like part of the Witch’s Sabbath dance. Both Dorothea and Melehe had failed to avoid that surefire dance.

What did he have to work with? What could he construct with it? The tutor boy knew the answers. So he forced his limp and bloody hand to move and grasp the baton that had fallen nearby. He planted his feet solidly on the floor littered with glass shards.

He couldn’t move anymore, so Viocia propped him up. He would protect that student no matter what might happen. He poured all his focus onto that situation.

He would not deny his desires. Myousou Yagoro moved his bloody lips to speak with his willpower behind the words.

“ATU 0510a, Cinderella…”

“Ah ha ha!! Weren’t you listening!? You can’t use the ball-ending bell anymore!!!”

A trio of distorted voices danced around him.

They surrounded him, weaved together, and then charged him at the same moment.

He could ignore all that.

“'''+1 point. We don’t need the ending bell. We need the (___)'''”

“?”

Viocia gulped in that moment.

The glass shards underfoot were so hot he could feel the heat through the soles of his shoes.

Yagoro twirled his baton and roared one last thing.

“I activate the (glass slipper)!! ''After the ball is over,'' the bullying stepmother and stepsisters tried to lie about their importance but had their selfishness revealed by that one item!!”

That was all. The illusionary power vanished, the trio lost control in midair, and they all crashed into the wall or the floor.

===7===

Let’s work together so we can all pass.

Arbamini, Holibre, and Lampans once had a friend they could smile and say that with. They would always gather in the same place to study. They would quiz each other on memorization questions. When they didn’t have enough money, they would buy a single textbook and share it until it was falling apart.

One day, they made a great find in a flea market. The wooden talisman was about the size of a playing card, but Arbamini noticed how unusually smooth the reverse side was. The surface had been covered by a thin layer of wax and an incantation was sealed within using the same concept as a phonograph. The discovery had excited them all. It resembled known incantations, but something about it sounded different. They speculated the gaps of the challenging musical scale had been filled in to reduce the difficulty. And if that was truly possible, it was bound to be useful in their practical lessons.

The practice exam was approaching. Everyone was desperate to earn even one more point.

They had all discovered the talisman together.

But it had only taken an instant for one of them to steal it away.

She had smiled as she walked all over Arbamini, Holibre, and Lampans, taken it away from them, used it to confidently attempt he Maleficium entrance exam, and vanished to heights beyond their reach. All that trio had left afterwards were the deep physical wounds and the humiliation.

The exam results were everything.

No one had listened to their pleas.

They had effectively been exiled to the worst of the prep schools, where the students and even the instructors told them it was their fault for letting a phony friendship blind them like that.

That set them on their current path.

Doing the right thing no longer mattered to them. They had just one goal left in mind: become even stronger than the stolen talisman, pass the rigorous exam, and make that bitch pay once they arrived in Maleficium.

===8===

At first, only a quiet crackling was heard.

Then the pile of rubble was blown away by a tremendous force from the inside. A pair of glowing red snake eyes emerged.

“Oh, oh…”

Arbamini roared while slanted diagonally. She seemed to be threatening her opponent with bloody teeth bared, but she also seemed to be protecting the other two lying within the rubble. Either way, that was not the face of an undefeated elite. Her entire body radiated the pressure of an animal afraid of feeling more pain.

“Oaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!”

A thought floated up in Yagoro’s mind. They were supposed to be Macbeth’s witches. Arbamini, Holibre, and Lampans always acted as a trio, but he realized something was missing there.

Where was traitor Macbeth himself?

“Was there ''a fourth''?”

“Aspect of Admiration: ATU 0500. The imp Rumpelstiltskin demands my child’s life in exchange for helping with a difficult task. Aspect of Antiquity: Faust. That is the name of the man who met a mysterious and tragic death after carelessly making a deal with an unknown being. Aspect of Amorality: the witches who lead Macbeth astray. That trio of bewitching shades lures him to certain doom with sweet-sounding prophecies.”

Yagoro couldn’t help but smile a little when he saw a broom moving through empty air as if stirring an invisible cauldron and heard an unsteady incantation mixed with blood.

She was following the basic form. Even Demon King Aristotle, who fancied himself a wise man, had forgotten about the Three Aspects and attempted a brute force attack when he was pushed too far.

“The Three Aspects rotate to propel us toward a single goal. This ritual of death cares not if it used for good or evil.”

The fallen prep school ace glared at Yagoro.

Her breathing was shallow and she couldn’t hold her shoulders at the same height, but still…

“This is our power.”

The witch bared her bloodstained teeth and let a low, low voice spill forth.

Arbamini’s oxygen-deprived face was slanted as she thrust her broom handle toward him and roared.

“Macbeth’s witches bring about absolute ruin!! To life, to status, and to the will to fight! This is who we are. This is the source of our power!! Have you ever cursed someone as strongly as thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssssssssssssssssssss!!?”

Her resentment was like a solid shockwave.

Maybe Melehe and Dorothea were lucky they were unconscious on the floor. Yagoro could feel Viocia squeezing him tighter as she helped support his body that seemed as limp as a broken doll.

With a shattering sound, the colors red and black burst from the handle of Arbamini’s Formula Broom. Several magic circles larger than umbrellas were drawn out in the air, covering the space around her, and a pitch black power swelled out beyond the limit. Once it passed a certain point, the tip of her broom would launch the resentment and dark magic with more force than an arrow loosed from a drawn bowstring. It would be like a sudden downpour directed at Yagoro.

But a small smile was his only reaction.

He had gone through so much, but it was true he had never cursed anyone with such pure intensity.

“ATU 0510a, Cinderella…”

“Kh.”

He held his 70cm baton out as if in response.

''While reaching his other hand around the nearby girl’s hip and pulling her close.

He released his final trump card.

“I activate the wedding. After passing the trial of the glass slipper, the pure maiden is wed to the prince, bringing her great blessings and happiness!! Listen up, wicked and malicious family, no matter how powerful your onslaught, you can never surpass and outdo this pure one!”

A torrent swallowed up and eliminated the approaching darkness with even greater force.

Something invisible scraped at the air, blazing orange. It looked a lot like a sugar sculpture, but it was in fact melted glass that shot from the tip of the baton. It burned away the incoming dark magic and rushed toward Arbamini.

“I trust your Voland strength to keep you alive in the 1400+ melting point of glass!!”

“!?”

A tremendous explosion and deafening roar fought for supremacy while the tutor boy distinctly saw a grimace on Arbamini’s face past the remnants of the darkness.

Did she envy him his ability to keep his morals and continue to worry about others while on the verge of death?

(If so, you’ve got it all wrong, don’tcha think?)

Yagoro had his own objective. On that day too early to call spring, he had reached out a helping hand to a girl who looked lost in front of the posted list of people who had passed the exam. At first, he hadn’t done so out of kindness.

(At the very least, I’m not as strong as you three who found a way to prevent any infighting because you didn’t want to walk the same path as ''the fourth''.)

“Hey, Arbamini.”

They all wanted to pass together.

Accomplishing that by sabotaging everyone else to lower the passing line was absurd, but the tutor boy thought their solid friendship was something that surpassed logic and was worthy of respect.

And because they had something respectable that he did not, he wanted them to enter a beautiful and friendly rivalry with Viocia.

He wanted them all to compete against each other so they could all improve.

But that meant thoroughly tearing down their ugly wickedness here.

Do not deny your desires.

If he wanted to call himself Viocia’s tutor, he needed to trust in himself and do what was in her best interest.

And that meant changing that trio’s “situation” before they traveled any further toward the darkness!!

“''This is magic. Study enough and you can find the answer''!!!”

Did his words reach them even as they were drowned out by the cacophony of destruction?

The muddy orange stream burned away the deadly power and slammed the Voland-tamer girl into the wall.

===Today’s Quiz 4===

Viocia: Teacher…

Yagoro: I know lot has happened, but you need to learn what you can from that trio.

Viocia: Maybe, but we’re still in the middle of the official practice exam. And this is actually the second quiz you’ve given me during it.

Yagoro: I wasn’t asking for complaints. Now, this time ''the hints were scattered around the old meal center.'' And not just in this area. You should return to where I first entered the building too.

Question: Fill in the blanks to explain what magical methods the human Myousou Yagoro used to defeat Arbamini and her powerful attack magic. (10 points per blank, 100 points total)

First, the Aspect of Admiration. Needless to say, I used ATU (___)a – in other words, Cinderella. Specifically, the part that happens after the (___) fits perfectly on Cinderella’s foot. The wicked women have no role after that. But the spellcaster is an almighty and untouchable figure in this story, so I had to make sure I didn’t draw on that part. The key was to have the trio correspond with (___).

Next, the Aspect of Amorality. I referenced the story of Isobel Gowdie. When leaving for the (___), she placed her (___) in her (___) so her (___) wouldn’t suspect she was gone. But you have to be careful with this story because she used her broom to avoid or repel danger, not to fly.

Lastly, the Aspect of (___). I used a dreamcatcher. The Be Silent Spell Bottle would have worked too. A dreamcatcher is an (___) you hang by the window to catch bad dreams. If it can easily stop formless malice and (___), it can physically defend against them, don’tcha think?

The end. Any questions, Viocia?

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Epilogue

2023-11-03T15:58:24Z

Entei08: missed a line

==Epilogue: Beyond Optimism – Catastrophe_XXX.==

“Gh…”

“You need to wake up.”

When he heard Aradia’s soft voice, Kamijou focused on his intermittent vision.

He must have passed out for a few minutes, probably because of the oxygen-deficient air. He felt a lot better after taking a few deep breaths on Aradia’s prompting.

The battle was finally over.

He had received Aradia’s full support throughout, but he still thought he had done quite well for a fight against a Transcendent. After all, he had directly fought an official Transcendent and he hadn’t died even once.

(Is there something wrong with me when that feels unusual? Good, Old Mary has me a little too accustomed to dying.)

But winning wasn’t the end of it. In fact, the real challenge began now.

“Where’s Anna Sprengel!?”

“I collected her. She was caught on a partially collapsed floor.”

Aradia was resting her mic stand on her shoulder.

She used that witch’s tools in place of a broom.

Magic flight seemed quite useful when there wasn’t a magician around to interfere.

Aradia placed unconscious Anna and the limp enemy Aradia at her feet and set down the mic stand. Kamijou realized he had completely forgotten about the defeated Aradia, which could have been bad later on. She could do everything Aradia could, after all.

After crouching once to lower her luggage, the Transcendent tossed Kamijou something she picked up from the ground.

“Here you go. It’s the Shrink Drink.”

“Um!?”

“You’re going to negotiate with the Bridge Builders Cabal, aren’t you? Which means you’ll be raiding them. Can’t hurt to have a trump card.”

That special weapon was designed for use against Transcendents. Aradia was in trouble if the spear tip hit her, but she didn’t seem worried while handling it. Kamijou had nervously caught it in his left hand, but he wasn’t sure what to do with it now.

(How do you use it? Mut Thebes always launched it like a guided weapon. For that matter, I can’t refine magic power or anything like that, so is it even possible for me to use it?)

The witch goddess with a loop of duct tape around her right ankle tilted her head.

“What are you going to do about the defeated Aradia and Mut Thebes?” she asked.

“As dangerous as they are, we’re not stabbing them with this spear.”

Kamijou Touma held the spear shaft between his neck and shoulder like a phone while taking out a roll of sturdy duct tape and pulling out a long piece.

Aradia held a hand to her forehead with sorrow on her face.

“Oh, no. Is this what it looked like when you did it to me? The embarrassment and humiliation are way worse seeing it so objectively.”

“We need to start with binding the second Aradia’s arms and legs and then covering the bottom of her feet so she can’t use her magic, but what’s the source of Mut Thebes’s magic? What can we take from her that would make her harmless?”

“Based on my objective observations, she can lay claim to the shadow of any object that her own shadow touches.”

“Right.”

“So what defines ‘her shadow’? At the very least, I doubt she could ride a jumbo jet and use its shadow on the ground to absorb all the shadows on the ground.”

Kamijou Touma took another look at the girl sprawled out on the ground. It didn’t stand out because so many of the Transcendents chose not to wear much clothing even in winter, but was she showing so much of her skin for a reason?

“Could the condition be only the shadow cast by her bare skin works?”

“Probably so.”

Then he would have to fully wrap her up. Mut Thebes could be neutralized by turning her into a bagworm to cover up all of her skin. But if he turned her into a tape mummy with even the face covered, she would suffocate, so he grabbed a full-face helmet that happened to be lying nearby.

With both defeated Transcendents bound, it was time for Anna. She had been hit by the Shrink Drink, a spiritual item containing the essence of the Alice in Wonderland item labeled “drink me”. Supposedly, not even Good, Old Mary could save her now. The only hope remaining was Alice, the extreme irregular. But this wasn’t going to be easy. He had hurt Alice’s feelings and he wasn’t sure if the consulate even existed anymore. If the cabal had already crossed Academy City’s walls and gone into hiding in the wide world outside, any chance they had evaporated.

“We need to get Anna to Alice. We have Aradia and Mut Thebes tied up, so…oh, I know. Let’s stick them inside a random tank or armored vehicle. Those don’t have windows and they can’t climb the ladder and open the hatch while tied up.”

“Aradia? That’s accurate, but I’d prefer if you came up with names that distinguish her from me.”

“Then how about I call you Dia-chan?”

“Please don’t. It’s scary when a guy comes on too hard.”

The minorly depressed goddess grew a bit flustered. She wasn’t sure what to do with her hands.

“Um, so would you prefer something more respectful? Like ‘the great grand goddess of goodness’?”

“Does it have to be alliterative? Maybe I was wrong to expect any good ideas out of you.”

Mut Thebes’s eyelids trembled a bit just before Kamijou put the helmet on her.

He flipped her over and grabbed the Shrink Drink spear lying on the ground. The long shaft was really hard to control with just his left hand.

“Th-the fight is already over! We can subdue you before you can absorb any new shadows!!”

“My loss does not matter.”

Mut Thebes’s voice remained calm even after being punched out and wrapped up like a bagworm. As a punishment expert, she may have had a detached view to winning and losing and to life and death.

Or so Kamijou thought, but he was wrong.

The girl had more to say.

“The 2nd Aradia and I had already completed our task.”

For a brief moment, Kamijou couldn’t respond. Or rather, his mind had gone blank. Until Aradia tapped his shoulder, he forgot even to breathe.

But when he thought about it, Mut Thebes had said it from the beginning.

They already had a ''new'' Aradia.

They would not have Anna join the ceremony as an irregular guest performer.

In other words…

“You…already did it?” asked an astonished Kamijou Touma.

Then his voice grew louder.

“''You Transcendents completed your important ceremony before going after us''!? Is that what you mean, Mut Thebes!?”

“Hmm.”

Anna Kingsford raised her arms and stretched her back. Her arms hit the wide brim of her witch-like hat, nearly knocking it off of her, so she had to quickly grab it.

It was late at night on January 4.

Three figures walked through the streets emptied by the martial law declaration: Aleister, Anna Kingsford, and Kihara Noukan the golden retriever.

“It took some ⏱️ to search them out since the consulate was abandoned, but there are ❌ many places they could carry out a ceremony on that scale. We may still arrive in ⏱️.”

“What are you doing?” asked Aleister, sounding extremely displeased.

Nevertheless, the great goddess of knowledge held a hand to her mouth in an elegant fashion and laughed quietly.

“Several Transcendents were reported crossing the wall from the outside. There is ❌ doubt in my 💭 that they are all gathering in Academy City to perform their ceremony. I wonder what has them rushing it so much. Do they believe they can ❌ allow any further accidents now that Alice has ''frozen''?”

“I asked what you are doing! That boy is risking his life in battle somewhere else right now!!”

Aleister finally raised his voice to a shout.

Kingsford did not stop walking.

“Mr. 🐕.”

“Yes?”

“We are about to touch on the depths of 🪄. You could also call it an unsightly private matter. If you are ❌ part of the occult, I recommend you leave now.”

“Not happening.”

“Then without further ado☆” The great goddess of knowledge clapped her hands together in front of her chest. “''I am working to find the enemy we must defeat.'' Aleister, that was your request.”

“And you’re way off! What does attacking that cabal now have to do with that boy!?”

“Do you know who it is the 🌉 Builders Cabal is attempting to create?”

“…?”

Aleister started to yell again, but paused.

“''Who'' they are attempting to create?”

“✔️.”

“You mean it is ''a person''? They went out of their way to prepare an entire fetus for a ceremony designed to summon the soul of a superhuman beast or spirit. It could be Nuit, Hadit, Thoth, Hoor-paar-kraat, or Choronzon. If you are willing to bear the risk of violating the ethics of life in the preparation phase, surely you would choose to summon a god or demon for maximum efficiency.”

“The efforts of all of the cabal’s Transcendents influence the fertilized 🥚. Thus, we only need to speculate who they would all be willing to leave in charge of the 🌍. This is not even about 🪄 – it is a matter of the psychoanalysis begun by Freud. Focus on their actions and it should become obvious who they are attempting to create to save the 🌍. What they long for can be 👁️ from the outside.”

Then who exactly was it?

“But then why the fancy ceremony? If they only need to resurrect an individual, isn’t that a job for their Good, Old Mary?”

“My, my. ❌ even that Transcendent can do a thing when there are ❌ accurate records regarding the location of the person’s body. Her 🪄 appears to require physical contact.”

Anna Kingsford believed simple answers were the most beautiful, so she did not drag things out longer than necessary. Whenever she talked at length, it was to place herself on the listener’s level.

So she soon gave the answer.

It was a legendary holy man symbolized by a cross.

He was someone who journeyed through the desert and healed the people suffering from disease, curses, and sin.

He was the wisest of wise men who would at times hold out his hand and at times provide a mystical potion to work extraordinary miracles and then leave without asking for anything in return.

He was a miracle worker who had fought the world’s ignorance and gathered disciples who shared his goals.

He had healed individual people and ultimately attempted to fight the sickness infecting the entire world, from its philosophies to its nations.

He was a magician of such great skill that no one could ignore him.

Not even Aleister Crowley or Anna Kingsford.

In other words…

“''CRC''.”

The alluring movements of Kingsford’s lips spelled out those initials.

At the same time, something blared in the sky.

''Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

That siren indicated a threat to the city.

Anna Kingsford rephrased the answer as if pushed on by that din.

“''Christian Rosencreutz''. That is who the 🌉 Builders Cabal is attempting to create by gathering their Transcendents and performing a large Crowley-style 🪄 ceremony.”

In the most secure cell of the District 10 prison, new Board Chairman Accelerator glared silently at the wall.

No, he didn’t even need to view the large screen there.

His cell was sealed so tightly that not even an ant – or even a gas – could get in or out. Nevertheless, he could sense something when he switched on his choker’s electrode.

The vectors were straining.

Like they were gathering on a certain point in the world.

The satellite footage showed nothing.

But there had to be something there when he could sense such a great distortion and straining.

The large screen embedded in the wall displayed a map with a red X at one point.

Accelerator switched back off the electrode while seated on his luxurious bed.

(I know the location, but who should I send in? These aren’t people Anti-Skill or Judgment can handle.)

So should he rely on the more toxic darkness? For example, there were the brutal criminals locked up in this very prison: the sisters Hanatsuyu Kaai and Youen, Rakuoka Houfu, Benizome Jellyfish, Tessou Tsuzuri, etc. Or should he recruit the help of Ladybird, Frillsand #G, or one of the other inhuman monsters still wandering the city’s darkness?

“''No,''” he said under his breath.

This was nothing as simple as ethics or righteousness. A more grounded sense pleaded with him.

“''They won’t do.'' They aren’t right for the job, like bringing a mahjong cheat tile to a poker game. They would be crushed before they could make use of their advantages.”

What would the old board chairman have done?

Accelerator had no intention of using the same scummy methods as that bastard, but it was true that human had used the cards available in Academy City to fight against ''the other set of rules'' found beyond the city walls.

He had to outdo him.

He had to dig deep into that human’s methodology and reach for an option not even that human could choose.

A weak voice came from the machinery.

“Um, sorry. If only you hadn’t had to waste time on me.”

He didn’t need to consider the possibility that she had taken too long recovering Qliphah Puzzle 545.

If he had sent the scientific angel named Kazakiri to attack the enemy, she would only have died in vain. He would have lost another game piece without receiving a report. That was the worst case scenario he had needed to avoid at all costs.

Those two were his greatest secrets, different again from Academy City’s dark side.

The angel and demon were the rook and bishop he could play directly.

But for that very reason, if he played them too readily, the situation on the board could rapidly change and fall apart.

He could not win just by being coldhearted.

He had to be aware of the limited pieces available to him.

Every man and woman here had a purpose.

Nothing on the board was meaningless. If a great enemy had gathered here for their objective, each and every one of them had to contain an unseen cycle. They were all advancing toward their goal. To put it another way, if he knew where those rails were, he could interfere in that to cause it all to come crashing down.

(I thought the key to that was that shitty woman called Anna Sprengel, but I don’t have time to collect her since those idiots spent so long running all over the city.)

“…”

He was up against at least a few dozen of those mysterious Transcendents.

They all served something.

That meant someone who had not yet made an appearance had even greater power than them.

As powerful as his angel and demon were, this was too great a burden for ''only'' them.

“We can’t stop it,” said Kazakiri through clenched teeth.

Accelerator again glared intently at the screen in the wall.

The situation was advancing to the next phase.

“We can’t stop it!!”

Think. Do not move at random.

Accelerator was no longer ''just the #1''.

He had given up fighting all alone. He was sick of drenching everything in blood and mud.

He was the top of Academy City – the board chairman. How many game pieces did he have left?

[[Image:GT_Index_v08_BW7.jpeg|thumb]]

Many containers were lined up in a storage unit lot.

''This was where the Bologna Succubus had first used her divination.

But that worldly scenery had been swept away.

Even the siren of doom could not distract their focus.

The siren playing across this entire area meant Academy City had finally detected something was amiss.

But it was too late.

They had purified with water.

They had altered the air with incense.

They had used a magic circle to divide the interior from the exterior.

They had carefully arranged specific items in accordance with the cardinal directions and the constellations.

All of this cut the designated coordinates off from the outside world, turning it into a ceremonial ground.

That was the stage for the performers known as Transcendents.

No matter where they were located, the coordinates calculated out by the Bridge Builders Cabal would be accurate. No matter what the world built here, they had priority. By exciting the land in the proper way, it would reveal its true form as a holy ground.

“We cast our magic here.”

They all spoke together, their voices sounding like a low rumbling of the ceremonial ground as a whole.

The stage was divided such that there were two stages. The inner stage would use the strange karma of their imperfect goodness to intentionally influence the soulless child. The other stage surrounded that one. It would thoroughly eliminate any exterior elements or colorations so they could not corrupt the inner stage.

This ceremony was not directed outwards.

It was more like it compressed everything toward the center.

“Nothing in the world is good or evil – nothing is good or bad. You must not look away from the miracles of the great all-birthing mother. You must accept that essence.”

The ceremony had continued for more than a day and a night.

It had taken a lot of time and effort, but they had continued it like a parade in this trunk room even as they moved from the consulate. And not all of them were present at all times. This time, Mut Thebes and the new Aradia had left early to track down Kamijou Touma. That meant their role had been completed at the start of the ceremony.

“The number of danger is 11. It is the number of imbalance. But that does not make it evil. Evil is naught but a lesson guiding us toward righteousness. How empty the word when used as an excuse for violence and prejudice. The morals and teachings of the outside world are chains that bind freedom and only through breaking free and rising above them can you find the transcendent light. The miracle of life is already present before us, so we need only reach a new understanding by sensing it for ourselves.”

H. T. Trismegistus.

That young butler was the timekeeper managing the Transcendents’ movements down to the second, including who should and shouldn’t be on the stage at any given time. After all, this major performance required more than 30 Transcendents to intricately move in and out. It would never work without someone dedicated to keeping track.

The young butler was a Transcendent who protected the common people.

Specifically, the common people who did not veer too far toward good or evil.

He was not interested in titles like Imagine Breaker or the Magic God’s understander.

Taking action without worrying about the protests of those around you was enough to gain great power. Those people were the ones who set events in motion and left their names in history. But not everyone could make that choice.

There were the evil who couldn’t quite abandon the good.

There were the good who sympathized with the evil.

Those indecisive people were the normal, common ones, but he believed they were the ones who most easily lost their lives in this world. More so than the dangerous criminals who left the humane path without looking back. But that was why H. T. Trismegistus adored them. That ''common majority'' was easily shaken and easily swayed but still poured all of their efforts into their everyday lives while fighting the anxiety filling their hearts.

So by protecting the common sense and averages that influenced those people’s actions, the young butler did everything in his power to prevent the unknown masses from heading in a dangerous direction.

Although he had to strongly shake off the sneaking suspicion that Kamijou Touma might be one of those people.

“…”

And in that sense…

(Alice.)

They had begun the ceremony now because of her condition. H. T. Trismegistus silently clenched his teeth while he managed the whole and sent out Vidhathri when the time was right. Good, Old Mary raised a lily flower and flowery Blodeuwedd was blindfolded with her hands tied behind her back with rope, but the star of this enormous ceremony should have been Alice. She stood weakly and perfectly still at a corner of the stage. She was ''frozen''. Almost like a bit part who was only on stage to play a tree or rock. He had trouble even looking at her, but the ceremony would fail without all of the Transcendents taking part.

And Alice’s transformation might not end here. If her condition worsened, it would become difficult to even have her on the stage with them.

What had happened to her?

H. T. Trismegistus had obeyed Alice out of the fear that she was as far from “normal” as could be and had the power to throw the definition of “common” and “average” off a cliff. By carefully observing the actions of someone who was essentially his polar opposite, he had hoped to detect subtle omens of how the world would change.

But now she was only an empty shell standing still except when she swayed in the wind.

He found it hard to believe it had even been possible to damage her.

“…”

A straining sound came from the young butler’s back teeth.

Only the powerless common people were allowed to be swayed like that. Transcendents saved people based on their strict conditions, so they could not waver. Their roles would break down if they did.

Also, a solid object was positioned at the center of the stage.

It was a glass cylinder almost the size of a two-liter thermos. It contained the seed of life and their external influence would seal the desired soul within. If an inhuman being could be captured and forced to do your bidding, then you could also create one for yourself. This was the ultimate spell created by Aleister Crowley’s arrogance.

It was born of that human’s cold side.

It was a symbol of the complexity that existed alongside the heart that had shed tears for his family.

“Be born and appear before us, life.”

The young butler stepped up onto the stage last of all.

When the timekeeper made his appearance, the ceremony was approaching its end.

He no longer needed to manage everyone else’s appearances.

“With magick, a body less than 90 days from its creation does not yet contain a fixed soul, so that sleeping body, ignorant of gravity, functions as a container for a superhuman being, allowing this child to surpass the limits of humanity. We Transcendents guide our savior here, so be born and appear before us, you miracle carrying your own will! Take a human body, boast in your unique thoughts, shine the light of the sun on reality, and cast your shadow on the earth, our great king!!!”

The glass container shattered from within.

The mass inside was growing.

The size and weight were increasing. No, the terms height and body weight may have been more accurate. First from a microscopic speck to a fetus and then to a mature body. In a span of about 30 seconds, ''he'' became a naked young man of about 18 with silver hair and a beard.

Success.

This was CRC.

Christian Rosencreutz.

The Transcendents were about as eccentric as could be, but they were all rendered speechless by his appearance before them. The harsh magic ceremony had continued both day and night, but their exhaustion was instantly forgotten.

This was their savior for the world.

They felt joy at his successful creation, but they also felt deep emotion and surprise that the man spoken of in legend really did exist.

This group had used the incomplete goodness of their fictions and costumes as a weapon.

But even they were able to invite in this one greater miracle.

This was the true essence of magic.

The feat of magic was all about finding a loophole in the proper contract or deal to gain more than the actual item was worth. It was like shorting a stock. Thus, magic may have been a detestable thing to a righteous god.

“At long last we meet, Christian Rosencreutz, our savior.”

H. T. Trismegistus ignored the deafening siren and reverently held out a red robe.

The Bridge Builders Cabal was fundamentally different from the Magic God, so creating clothing was no challenge for them.

“We are the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal. We have attempted to save the entire world based on each of our search conditions, but common sense shows that we are nothing but failures whose plans are so tightly intertwined none of us can do much of anything. Please lend us your wisdom and strength as a savior, CRC. Please save the many people suffering in this imperfect world.”

“Bzz, zwrrr.”

The response was impossible to make out.

He was not using a strange code or an ancient language. His common tones likely just hadn’t been properly adjusted yet. But that would not last for long.

“Zwrgrklyurr. Ksssh, kwirrrzhh. Hm, is this better?”

When he did speak actual words, it was with a wrinkled old man’s voice that did not match his young appearance.

But other than that mismatch, it was a completely normal voice.

“It is perfect,” said H. T. Trismegistus, bowing reverently.

“Very good.”

CRC donned the provided red robe without even glancing at the young butler.

His tone was that of someone who had prodded their fried egg at breakfast and found the yolk to have firmed up to their satisfaction. In other words, it was an unconcerned assessment. And immediately after that moment of peace…

A flash of light exploded out.

No one even remotely expected this.

Every one of the gathered Transcendents was toppled by the single attack. The only way for so many powerful Transcendents to be knocked helplessly from their feet was for none of them to understand the meaning of this sudden impact. That meant this was fundamentally beyond their comprehension. The very idea of understanding it may have seemed disrespectful to them. This was a secret power. The thick wall radiating out from that man carried so much power and meaning.

H. T. Trismegistus had once torn his own body apart in extreme emotion.

''But even he was helpless.

''And there had to be Transcendents with a greater specialization in defense than him.

They did not understand what had happened to them. This was a matter of life or death for them, but it had happened so fast they could have entirely missed it if they weren’t paying attention. After it was over, they stared in awe. It was that impressive to them.

They could only say this had influenced the root of their being which they had remade to become Transcendents.

This was more than just brute strength.

It was unknown wisdom. Or to use more common terms, it was a cheat code or a vulnerability.

To those who didn’t understand, it looked like, well, magic.

The being in a young man’s body spoke with a sneer.

“''Why should this old man save anyone''?”

He spread his arms and spoke loud.

“''Why shouldn’t this old man ask for something in return''?”

But no one remained to hear his operatic speech.

Because they had all been knocked out.

“''Who invented those rules? Did you really think this old man would be bound by them? You are no more than a flock of weaklings hoping to rely on someone stronger than yourselves, so why would you ever think you could restrict this old man’s freedom''?”

They had erred.

The legend they had heard had been too good to be true.

Christian Rosencreutz may indeed possess enough power to save the entire world. But that did not mean he would supply that salvation free of charge.

He was no savior.

He was a small-minded person.

He was an individual possessing such great power.

Why had they never considered the possibility that he would ignore all rules and morality, wield his power as he saw fit, and rule the world as the greatest tyrant history had ever seen?

CRC and Miss Sprengel were somehow different. Despite both being Rosicrucian.

This monster’s conflict had much, much deeper roots. And he found enjoyment in a different way from Anna Sprengel who capriciously approached people or pushed them away.

For Christian Rosencreutz, it was found in thorough destruction.

He had no interest in sweetly corrupting – he wanted to find relief through destroying everything.

Although it wasn’t that one was better than the other. It was more like they had different forms of harmful desires.

The siren had been correct. It had accurately warned of a coming threat, but the Transcendents had been too excited to heed it. They had failed to realize what it was they had brought into this world.

“Ahh…”

So when the young butler squeezed out some words, it may have come from his utter disbelief.

His disbelief that CRC – Christian Rosencreutz – still possessed raw humanity.

“I thought common sense dictated…you were meant to bring salvation to all people by healing this sick world, from its philosophies to the structure of its nations.”

“Why should I do that?”

He was not puzzled. His face displayed only cruelty.

It was the twisted opposite of the ''invented'' legend of the holy man.

In a way, it was an extreme presentation of his raw humanity.

“Why should this old man make an exception of the humans and save only them? Why should I ever go to the effort? That is not to say I have an aversion to the act of salvation itself. But aren’t you disrespecting my existence as an individual if you demand I unconditionally save all of humanity? And if you wish to take a truly philanthropic view, then you must consider all life on the planet as equally valuable. When you view humanity as just one of many species, it is clearly the most sinful of the bunch. Kah kah kah. Bah!? Philanthropy!? Hwa ha ha ha ha ha!! How much wisdom did you draw on to kill the fearsome tigers and crocodiles for their skins? You say it is wrong to hunt elephants for their ivory, but tell me what humanity has done while this old man has slept!? Humanity has scattered its sin across the face of the planet, humanity has run around attempting to clean up its own mess, and after all is said and done, humanity has criticized its own actions as if ''that alone'' is enough to redefine the concepts of good and evil!! What of this species am I meant to protect? What of this species is worth supporting with my actions? The concept of righteousness is no longer worth discussing and the form humanity has taken in its extreme foolishness leaves nothing I consider worth following. If righteousness and goodness had maintained their simple and noble definitions of becoming no one’s slave, none of this would ever have happened. Perhaps the original mistake was when god temporarily left the concept of righteousness in the hands of humanity. Humanity wisely banned the pronunciation of god’s name to avoid using it too readily, yet the concepts of goodness and righteousness are treated with so little respect anyone and everyone speaks of them without a second thought! Hee hee. Although if you follow the tearjerking logic that all life is equally valuable, then you must also consider the invisibly small life forms used to create wine and cheese. Is the current human population 6 billion? 7 billion? Or has it reached 8 billion by now? Whatever the case, all life is not equal. Human arrogance is plain to see from the very fact that they invented the word ‘primate’ to describe their own classification. Have you no shame? Humanity, recall what it was that Adam ate and what it was he learned!! Humanity will not find perfection in this era. So the only way to claim equality with the other forms of life is to regress to the level of apes and return to nature. Even an ape that carelessly touches fire pulls back its hand and never repeats that mistake, meaning they are capable of feeling regret. A feat wholly beyond the abilities of humanity. Or what? Are you going to make me split my sides and laugh myself to death with that absurd claim that the special thought patterns not found in other life forms are just that important? Pff heh heh. I tell you that is a suicidal conclusion that wholly negates your own purpose. Cats and dogs feel familial love, birds and fish communicate with words, and ants and bees have a group society. Hee hee hee. Romance? What life form does not seek out reproduction? In fact, any life form that neglects to reproduce will be left behind by the currents of time. But if you tell me humanity has nothing that cannot be discarded with such shallow thinking, I have no choice but to believe you. …Thus, the conclusion is far too simple: humanity has no purpose. I have considered the issue from every direction, both physical and psychological, but this old man feels no value in working myself to the bone to save mere humans.”

He spoke on and on, but he likely wasn’t all that serious about it. Anyone with a knowledge of higher magic would notice right away.

Yes, wasn’t it said that a true expert ''did not make longwinded speeches''?

This was a failure.

There was only one conclusion: it had all been a complete lie. They had been fools to trust in such a bogus legend.

“Al…ice…Alice.”

After all this, the young butler was fixated not on his own life but on Alice Anotherbible. ''Unlike the other Transcendents, she alone could not be replaced.'' Or to be more accurate, the Transcendents had analyzed the already-existing Alice to determine how to overwrite their own humanity. So she alone could not be lost here.

His injuries were not the only reason he could not raise his voice to call out to her. Any careless speech here could direct Christian Rosencreutz’s attention to Alice.

But his efforts were in vain.

For one, that girl was the only one who had not fallen from the earlier attack. She wobbled as unsteadily as an ear of wheat blowing in the wind, but it was still a miracle that she remained standing here.

And.

That inevitably led to the next misfortune and tragedy.

‘''Hm.''”

She drew Rosencreutz’s attention.

But frozen Alice did not react. She unsteadily viewed the man approaching her, but she did not run or hide.

“No,” groaned H. T. Trismegistus.

He was collapsed on the ground and his face and tailcoat were filthy, but he still crawled and reached his hand out toward the distant girl.

“Noooooo!”

His cry accomplished nothing.

[[Image:GT_Index_v08_BW8.jpeg|thumb]]

The man took swift action.

He destroyed her.

His arm grabbed the girl’s small face and shattered her entire head.

Something scattered before the young butler’s eyes.

Something colorful but broken.

Altogether, it should have been beautiful, but as individual pieces, it was horrifically grotesque.

''“Tah dah!! This is the place!”

She had definitely been a tyrant.

For a Transcendent who guarded ordinary common sense, each of her actions was enough to inspire a cold sweat.

''“Yes!! H. T. Trismegistus is amazing. He makes the best tea in the world. He also folds the girl’s clothes and puts her shoes away!”

But the girl herself had been endlessly pure and innocent.

On the inside, she was the normal and common sort of person the young butler had to protect.

Alice was Alice.

Her actions only seemed so unusual because her power was unusually great.

''“H. T. Trismegistus! The girl wants to show her teacher around her secret base!”

The girl’s excited voice in the consulate still rang in the Transcendent’s ears.

But he would never hear it again.

The memories crumbled away. They vanished beyond some rapidly growing noise.

She had thrown a tantrum about wanting to go to Academy City, her plan to surprise her teacher had transformed into a consulate, and she had rehearsed her lines over and over with the young butler.

But now all of that was no more than some inanimate pieces scattered across the ground.

''“Ohh, that sounds like fun. Then should the girl share her power with the winner? You’re the best, H. T. Trismegistus!”

Alice Anotherbible.

Never again would he see her ''overly'' normal and ordinary smile.

Never again.

Never, ever again!!!

“I do not want the strongest power.”

There was no scream.

Alice Anotherbible did not react even as her skull was shattered. The rest of her remained upright, her small limbs dangling down.

The scattered blonde hair, the skull shards looking so much like egg shells, and the few remnants of her face still showing an incomplete picture of her adorable features.

After a short delay, the small girl finally collapsed backwards. A dark red liquid belatedly puddled on the ground.

But that was all.

With his hope dashed before his eyes, H. T. Trismegistus collapsed fully to the ground once more.

The young butler forgot to even feel anger.

One of the world’s bright lights had just been snuffed out.

“I do not need the unexpected.”

CRC.

Christian Rosencreutz.

The legends said that young man would save the world for nothing in return, but he instead gave a careless swing of his arm and stared hatefully at the sticky red that remained on his fingers and palm.

Even though no one had asked this of him and he had done it on his own.

The Bologna Succubus and Good, Old Mary could not move any more than the young butler.

Almost like he had announced that every last one of the Transcendents had already served their purpose in creating him in this day and age.

“This old man will simply do what he likes. I will tolerate no interference and I will actively hunt down anyone with even the slightest possibility of doing so.”

With that, he slowly turned around.

The light shining in the frigid darkness was not silver – it was gold.

Surrounded by the eerie siren, Aleister Crowley’s hair blew in the night breeze.

“I see what you mean,” he spat.

He could tell.

Because he too stood on the side of evil.

Aleister and Kingsford had no idea if they could survive this fight.

But if those two extraordinary magicians fell, how much ferocity would this man turn toward Academy City or that boy on a whim?

So Aleister would crush him.

He would thoroughly defeat him no matter what it took.

“Anna Kingsford. You were right. This is undoubtedly ''his'' enemy and we cannot ignore him.”

“Aleister, should I prepare the AAA?” asked Kihara Noukan. “The distortion known as magic is a tragedy found in the gaps left by science. If you would eliminate it, I am willing to again act as your pawn.”

This had to be the reason behind Anna Sprengel’s scheming.

It had all been leading to this.

There was the incident Anna herself caused, R&C Occultics had fallen, and then she had interfered with the Bridge Builders Cabal full of Transcendents. All of it had been in opposition to this very outcome.

She had definitely been wicked to begin with. She had enjoyed indulging in that wickedness during each of those incidents. But this was still at the root of it all.

Miss Sprengel was, after all, a high-ranking member of the Rosicrucian magic cabal.

How could she stand idly by when she learned that a group was working to locate her cabal’s founder’s grave and then use him for their own purposes?

And what if she were secretly aware of Christian Rosencreutz’s true nature which contradicted the commonly known image of the holy man?

He was just another human.

He could not be allowed to go free.

He was an archenemy who all living things should be deeply grateful does not live in the same age as them.

To an outside observer, Anna might not seem much better.

But there was no hesitation in CRC’s actions. While Anna Sprengel walked the world as she saw fit and corrupted only the things she took a liking or disliking to, Christian Rosencreutz would not be satisfied until he had returned the entire world to a blank slate. He would not tolerate even a single spot of color remaining in the world.

He did not act on a whim. He would not stop until he had destroyed everything. He would set fire to the entire mountain as casually as someone else would weed their garden.

Aleister knew people like that.

The “righteousness” that had oppressed him for so long had always come from people like this.

These monsters never gave anything much thought, never created a better future, and always poured a terrifying amount of passion into eliminating anyone who opposed them.

“I know your type. You do not fight for a purpose. You do not even feel hatred. You simply love the action of destruction itself.”

“This is only the human world. Do you even need some grand purpose to crush it underfoot?”

“''Mathers and Westcott were corrupted by desire, but even they were better than you.''”

“''Hee hee. Do not compare this old man to those others, girl.''”

It had only been natural for that wicked woman to try and stop this at all costs. And without telling anyone. Even if she had always made the choices born from Anna Sprengel’s wicked nature.

Meanwhile, CRC tilted his head.

It was the look of a man who had been witnessed committing a murder and was now offended to be seen as a bad person.

“You would fight me? With your feeble skills?”

Then he smiled a little.

The smile split wickedly across his face.

“You people are…how would I describe it? The descendants of Western mysticism and a cabal variant claiming to be the Golden? But I can already see how this ends. Your mere child’s play cannot defeat this old man.”

That was true.

At first glance, the Rosicrucian and the Golden seemed like wholly different types of magic cabal, but they were linked deep down. Or rather, the Golden cabal’s initial 0=0 ceremonies drew strongly on Egyptian mythology and the members would then go on to learn tarot and tattva. Once a member reached the 5=6 level, the Rosicrucian name began to appear unhidden in the ceremonies. How did it end up like that? All three of the founding members, including Westcott and Mathers, were magicians with a Rosicrucian foundation. So by baring his fangs against Christian Rosencreutz, Aleister was threatening his founder’s founder’s founder.

The same was true of Kingsford who was Mathers and Westcott’s teacher and was said to have laid the groundwork for the Golden cabal’s creation. She had had her own cabal, but she originally belonged to the Theosophical Society, a gathering of Kabbalah experts, psychics, and Rosicrucians. Thus, their magic techniques and ideology had their roots in the rosy cross – in Christian Rosencreutz.

Of course, Anna Kingsford was a legend in her own right.

And in a way, she was a superior legend since she had been a “living person” whose path in life could be traced in newspaper articles and academic theses published in the 1800s. But in another way, Christian Rosencreutz’s legend was deeper. Much deeper. Much, much deeper. Nothing about his reality could be confirmed from the official histories. He reigned supreme in a different, more unusual way.

Plus, he was the man who had easily killed ''the'' Alice Anotherbible.

The legend of Rosencreutz had to be more solid than the legends of Aleister or Kingsford.

What would happen if they thoughtlessly attacked him head on?

But Anna Kingsford was still the one who took a step forward.

“How disappointing.”

“You are disappointed in this old man?”

“❌,” said the great goddess of knowledge, head lowered.

The brim of her large hat hid her face from view. But her voice was terrifying enough for even the deafening siren to seemingly take a step back.

“That I did nothing but 👁️ as that girl was 💀ed. If I had arrived just three seconds sooner, this would ❌ have happened.”

Her voice was low.

The weight behind it grew endlessly.

“And that Miss Sprengel’s efforts amounted to nothing. She could only view the 🌍 through her ideas of good and wicked, but she still poured all of her efforts into preventing this catastrophe from being released upon the 🌍. Your very existence has trampled her determination under🦶.”

“Silence, preserved doll. Illusionists are meant to remain silent. That is all we magicians are: wielders of substanceless illusions. Opening your mouth serves only to break the illusion.”

That was the extent of their conversation.

Kingsford silently raised her head and glared at Rosencreutz through her glasses.

''To serve those around you.

She muttered someone’s forgotten ideal under her breath.

But on the other hand, that was all she said. A true expert did not give longwinded speeches. They did not self-aggrandize or defend their actions. They could overwhelm others with their simple presence, so they failed to see the benefit of such performances.

In that sense, they were the exact opposite of the Transcendents, the performers who had swept across the world.

The same was true of Anna Kingsford and Christian Rosencreutz.

They existed on the same field.

They both took another step forward.

This was not a large action.

But the frigid winter wind dropped further in temperature.

This was a critical point for the current world.

Something ignited between them.

Even the roar of the siren was noticeably warped.

The two legends wordlessly clashed.

<noinclude>
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Failing Witch:Volume1 Episode1

2023-10-11T06:23:50Z

Entei08: This line was actually Yagoro thinking aloud to himself as shown by the lack of quotation marks in the raw.

{{Incomplete|parts=2|tparts=9}}
==Episode 1: The Broom, the Unfortunate Witch, and the Demon Lord==

===1===

The stone apartment got too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.

It was early in the morning, before all the newspapers had even been delivered, when a loud voice called his name through the apartment window.

“…goro. Myousou Yagorooooo!!!”

“You’re being a public nuisance, don’tcha think!?”

He shouted toward the window, nearly causing the bipedal black cat familiar to fall off of the roof sheathing. He quickly opened the window and rescued the kitty (who moved in a weirdly human way) carrying a waterproof cloth delivery bag. But on the ground below his 2nd-floor window, a gentle young woman with brown skin was smiling up at him.

She owned a nearby used book store, which primarily dealt in grimoires.

“My, my. Yagoro, you were the one who asked me to check in on you if you didn’t respond at this hour because it could mean you had died from overwork or from a botched meditation.”

“…”

Apparently he had been too focused on coming up with quiz questions. This seemed like a lot of fuss for a short nap. The ''smartphone'' sitting on the side table displayed the current time. Maybe he should have set an alarm.

He got the feeling the silver-haired, brown-skinned bookseller would continue to call for him if he took too long, so he couldn’t take his time making breakfast. He grabbed some hard bread that kept at room temperature and ate that while tossing his phone and a different manual into an empty water tank where the former was “dismantled”. Once it gained the color, shape, and function of an ''electric toothbrush'' in accordance with the paper manual, he washed his face and brushed his teeth. It was fortunate he could use these things without a power source in this world.

He lived in an HEA house. The enclosed water tank contained lots of wooden ants. By tossing in one of the thick ''handwritten'' manuals, the ants would rearrange and dig up the colorful dirt they lived in to create any number of home appliances. But if he got too lazy, his room would be full of devices unknown to this world, so he generally only let them eat one manual at a time and he would let the device return to dirt before he left the house.

(I would love to share these inventions with the neighborhood because it’s a lot more convenient than cooking over a wood fire, but a lot of people would make a fuss if I messed with the cultural level. Like the Benandanti.)

He covered his upper body with armor made of bound parchment, wore his male sailor uniform over that, attached extra armor over that, and attached his “weapon” at his hip. He had to wear a tight leather corset around his waist because the parchment armor would give him a noticeable gut if he didn’t.

Then he heard another call from the window.

“Yagorooo!!”

“Yes, yes, I’m coming, shut up!!”

He grabbed his key and rushed out of the room. He ran down the hallway and out of the building to find the used bookseller smiling. She had done so much to help him he should really be more polite with her, but she always got angry when he was overly polite. A cute kind of angry, but still.

“Hee hee. That was quick for someone who only just woke up. How did you get ready so fast?”

Using his home electrical appliances, or HEA. But he couldn’t tell her about that.

She was a gentle young woman of indeterminate age. She had long fluffy silver hair and healthy brown skin and, as evidenced by the broom with a shiny silver handle and gold grapevine decorations she held, she was most likely ''a self-taught witch''. The apron embroidered with a bunny rabbit clashed with the traditional black dress she wore below it. Also, when she wore it, the animal on the chest was rendered nearly unrecognizable. Why? Because a certain part of her anatomy had grown to an extent some might call excessive.

The brown woman, who had a way of raising Yagoro’s blood pressure so early in the morning, smiled gently as she greeted him.

“Good morning, Yagoro.”

“A pleasant morning to you, ma’am.”

“My, my. Are you tired after staying up all night?”

His overly polite greeting didn’t even faze her. She only smiled with a hand on her cheek.

For that matter, he had never seen her even remotely flustered.

“Oh, dear. Yagoro, your knee protector is out of place. It isn’t going to protect you at all like that. Here, I will fix it for you. There, all done.”

She didn’t even give him time to fix it himself. Her chest seemed all the more excessive when looking down at her while she crouched in front of him. Specifically, he couldn’t see her stomach at all. But he wasn’t ungrateful enough to say any of this out loud.

“Hee hee. I see you are still carrying that illusionist’s wand with you. The one that grows when you wave it. Do you put on a show for people on the street corner? You’re a lot more adorable than you look.”

The bookseller poked at the stick he wore at the side of his hip.

He couldn’t tell her it was in fact an extendable baton. This shiny world of swords and sorcery apparently had bandits not just in the fields and caves but in the towns too, but he didn’t feel safe using a bladed weapon to keep them away. And as long as he could draw up a diagram, the local blacksmith did a great job of making whatever he needed. Although when he thought about it, it was very frightening that this fantasy society let him just buy one of those without even having to register it as a weapon.

(It’s honestly strange they can make something like this but can’t make guns. But maybe it’s for the best they haven’t invented those in this world.)

As far as Myousou Yagoro was concerned, it just had to be something sufficiently long and heavy that ''didn’t include any magical symbols like a sword or knife would''.

The young woman slowly straightened her legs to stand back up.

“Are you sure you’re ready to head out for the day? You seem emptyhanded to me.”

“?”

“Hee hee. Today is garbage day, remember? Old parchment day only comes twice a month, so if you miss it, won’t you end up with a lot piled up? Parchment is such a pain because it gets heavy when you have too much of it. And even when it’s preserved, it must have some kind of nutrients because you end up with mold and bugs when you leave it out too long.”

He had completely forgotten.

Not that it was garbage day, but the amount of parchment.

The manuals he used for his HEA house (which he had to keep a secret from the entire world) were all handwritten on parchment using a quill made from a goose or swallow feather, but using so much seemed unusual to anyone who didn’t know that.

“Well, I’ll be fine if I use the backs of fliers.”

“Oh? Yagoro, are you an artist?”

He heard a bleating from the ground near the gentle and very curvy witch.

That was a Sketchgoat, a goat bred in this world to support the parchment-dependent society.

(Just like a fluffy sheep, it lives symbiotically with humans because it can’t survive without periodic shearing. In that sense, you could call it a sacrificial scapegoat, don’tcha think?)

“This goat really seems to like having his outer layer of skin ‘sheared’, doesn’t he? I wonder of it’s like peeling away a sunburn.”

“Hee hee. You were so nervous your first time shearing him with that reed knife. Had you always used storebought parchment instead of supplying your own?”

The bookseller used one hand to lift a pile of parchment tied together with string. With parchment, each piece was thicker than with plant-based paper. Which meant it was heavier too.

“Why don’t you create your own familiar?” asked Yagoro. “To help out with your magic. Or you could buy a cheap used one.”

“A domestic familiar, you mean? Don’t you have to draw out the temporary muscles and fat with an incantation and then create the details using a 3D jigsaw puzzle that takes the place of its skeleton? I prefer real animals because they’re so cute.”

The bookseller looked somewhat troubled while she petted the Sketchgoat to answer its bleats for attention.

The texts from Earth said a demon gave a witch a familiar at her first Sabbath and she could then sell it to or give it away to another witch, but in this world, several witches had to be gathered for an objective and impartial safety check based on a thick manual to ensure it was all right for a witch to go through the puzzle-like familiar construction process in a populated area. Even the trainees still struggling with the entrance exam would know the necessary technique, but you had to go through that ritual if you wanted to use it outside.

Yagoro recalled the black cat delivery worker he had rescued at his window.

“Are they really that creepy? I mean, it’s not like you’re creating an entirely fictional creature. The puzzle is focused on their skeleton and joints, so they’re identical to a real animal from the outside.”

“That you can’t tell them apart is what scares me.”

A massive dragon loudly flapped its wings to fly by in the blue sky overhead. But that wasn’t an artificial familiar. It was a giant monster born from a test tube in Maleficium. Chimaera and kraken fossils had been discovered in older strata, but there were no natural monsters in modern times. There were reports of elf sightings deep in the distant forests, but they had never been officially confirmed. Much like the Japanese wolf.

“Also, Yagoro, did you check your hair? Here, I’ll do it for you.”

“I redyed it recently, so it should still be fine.”

Yagoro teased his bangs with his fingers. The bookseller also viewed his unnatural blond hair.

“My, my. Natural black hair is used as a dye in the most powerful curses, so if you aren’t careful, you could end up bald after being attacked by scissors-wielding madwomen out in the streets at night.”

“I’ll be careful.”

(Madwo''men'', huh? Now there’s a scary thought. You would have to be mad to attack someone to cut off their hair.)

Misinformation ran rampant even this large city of swords and sorcery. It didn’t help that “boiling pig hair to make it rain” was real magic.

That was one way his life in this world was very much supported by the bookseller. She had saved him many times over with her trivia about living her and with her rare books of useful magic.

After parting ways with her, the tutor boy walked from the stone apartment building to the main street.

He saw white and black.

The tiered city was designed with a chessboard pattern of orderly marble and obsidian. That was the best way to describe Temple School City. The red pieces of metal shaped like giant scales were the elevators that had become quite popular recently. The elevators were little more than a cage with a railing that was suspended by a single thick chain, so they were terrifying to use.

(Their size is hard to judge from a distance, but the scale supports are more than 100m tall. Of course, that height is necessary to rotate well above any of the roofs in this tiered city.)

Overall, the city resembled a diamond-shaped bowl. Or you could call it a reverse pyramid. It made a tiered descent the closer you got to the center. And at the center of the arena-like city was a massive artificial lake with a radius of more than 5km. At the very center of the lake, past the white diamond dust that hovered over the water no matter the temperature, was the dream of all witches – Summon Restricted Magic School Maleficium.

Yagoro’s apartment was located in Red District, Block C. His destination, Caraway Cs Preparatory School, was in Green District, Block R. He was near the outer perimeter, which meant at the top tier. But there were a lot of tall buildings, so the buildings looked fairly normal even when viewed from here.

“Good morning, Elen.”

“Good morning, Blancmange. Those commercial Nap Sheep are dangerous. The entire idea is for them to give you a ''nap'', but I slept for 8 hours straight. My head still feels so heavy…”

The various girls around were reciting “Happy Halloween” as an incantation and giving a quick wave of their Formula Brooms before pulling out crepes and donuts so early in the morning. The wave was necessary because the incantation alone would have no effect. Technically speaking, they were mixing a potion that would instantly create a snack. None of the food stands were selling actual food. They instead sold plates carrying parchment recipes held between clear glass panels. The quantity of flower shops were for the witches who frequently used herbs in their ceremonies. There were also shops selling cards and various sizes of crystal ball.

Most of the people on the street were girls between the ages of 15 and 18.

In this world, hopeful witches were thrown to the extremely harsh entrance exam immediately after completing their compulsory education, which covered what would be called elementary and middle school on Earth. Failing the exam was the assumed result, so people ordinarily began working after graduating from their compulsory education. But it was common for girls to try at the entrance exam for around three years, so there were also some sexy young woman who were definitely past 20.

(That said…hmm. I never know where to look.)

One girl wore a vampire costume that amounted to a cloak over her naked body, another wore a prisoner costume of thick chains wrapped around her bare skin, and a third wore a succubus costume of black leather clothing with fake horns and tail. The morning rush hour was flooded with girls in what looked a lot like Halloween costumes. Including a giant pumpkin lantern rolling around nearby.

Yes, Halloween. Needless to say, All Hallows’ Eve and the Celtic festival did not exist in this world. Was this another piece of culture born from the influence of the knowledge taken from Earth? If Yagoro thoughtlessly let people see his HEA house, it could have a similar result.

“Did you hear? A witch singlehandedly bombed some knights-turned-bandits in the great forest. Maleficium graduates really are next level.”

“Hey, you’re absentmindedly lighting a fire in your hand again! Hot! You’re burning my hair!!”

While two girls who looked like sisters were playfully arguing, other girls slapped their cheeks. Each time they did, the look of their face changed. They were literally using magic to instantly change their makeup. Was it a form of transformation magic using ointment or an incantation?

Changing the color or pattern of an object was a classic form of stage magic, most commonly seen with handkerchiefs, but this was different. These differences couldn’t be explained away as simply applying a thin sheet or removing paint from the skin.

“I wish I could pull off a more mature look, but this makeup makes my face so tired. It’s so thick and heavy I doubt my sensitive skin can stand it for a full day.”

“Ha ha ha. A sporty look is more true to who you are and everyone seems to like it better too.”

Magic could be used to do just about anything. It completely changed the options available in everyday life.

But that was only true if you had fully acquired the skills needed to pull off what you wanted.

“I just have to get into Maleficium. Then I’m guaranteed a spot among the super elite witches who even the castle and public agencies rely on. I swear I’m passing the exam this year and earning a life of luxury that even makes the nobility jealous!”

(You would think I wouldn’t need a ''weapon'' to walk around town in a fantasy world full of girls showing off so much skin, but you’d be wrong. Not having one brings its own troubles, so everyone displays just enough of a threat to deter anyone else from trying anything. Kind of a heartless world, don’tcha think?)

And…

“Good morning, teacher. What’s with the focused look first thing in the morning? Oh, I know. You’re checking out the girls around here.”

“Good morning, Viocia. But could you not make comments that lead to devastating misunderstandings? Especially when men’s social status is already shrinking year by year because it’s thought we can’t use magic.”

“What, old friends can’t make jokes?”

“We only met a month ago. Not exactly old, don’tcha think?”

Myousou Yagoro sighed and slumped his shoulders when the nearby naked cloak girl glared at him. His flashy male sailor uniform was not his preferred way of dressing. It was as far as he was willing to go to blend into this city of constant partying. Or to be more accurate, it was an outfit the silver-haired, brown-skinned used bookseller had prepared for him when he wasn’t sure what to do. In this flashy world, a thick suit of armor or a tuxedo only looked like someone handing out fliers on the street corner or like a café waiter.

“I’ve been meaning to ask: what’s with the weird wand? Is it an illusionist’s prop?”

He opted not to comment on that one. He couldn’t let anyone know what the extendable baton really was.

All the girls wore such revealing outfits because of how openminded the Aspect of Antiquity was and because the Aspect of Amorality took advantage of the malicious stories invented about witches. But things could have been worse. Without the Aspect of Admiration acting as a brake, the view on the city streets would have been even more shocking.

“Hmm, hm, hmm. Breakfast. Yummy, yummy breakfast☆”

“What are you doing, Viocia?”

“I bought a recipe at that stand, so now the food is just a broom wave away. I’m having a cupcake for breakfast today! Tah dah! Happy Halloween!!”

A puff of colorful smoke burst out and a cake with the color and scent of a banana appeared in her hand. Yagoro’s reflex was to ask if a cake really counted as a meal, but bananas were a standard choice for a quick breakfast. It was a borderline case.

That said, “new and improved” was a standard marketing phrase in this world too, so there was always a new version of the instant recipes to buy.

“Why don’t you visit the more witchy stands selling flower seeds and seedlings? You only ever bother with the dessert magic.”

“Eh heh heh. That’s cause you taught me this magic, teacher!”

It was hard to win when she honestly failed to pick up on the criticism implied by his words.

No matter how great a witch’s mastery of magic, they never suppressed their desires.

It was thought those desires could drive them to reach their goals when consciously controlled.

The ever-disappointing girl put her Formula Broom, which resembled a hero’s sword, on her back. She wore her long dress that looked like a pumpkin tart thanks to its autumn colors of orange, red, and purple. She was a witch who still could not fly without close guidance. Thet fact that she could approach Yagoro in that pointy hat without him noticing showed just how colorful the girls of this city were. And with all the bare skin they showed off, he never knew where he was supposed to look.

This was an incredible city where half the population had previously taken and failed the exam. That created a unique pattern to the flow of foot traffic, so the peak time for the streetside stands was the commute to and from school.

“Try the Rabbit Gardening Service! Miss, miss, are you having trouble with your home garden? Just dump the contents of this cauldron on it and those vegetables will be ready to pick in no time!”

“Witch exams are all about motivation and focus! Do not forget that potion mixing and synthesis can give you a leg up in our competitive society. With this homemade aphrodisiac kit, you can create the ''circumstances'' you need to truly ‘fall in love’ with studying and test taking. The key to victory is right here!!”

“Limited time offer! Wouldn’t you like a collection of questions from past Maleficium entrance exams? Study these and you’re guaranteed to pass. When you know what kinds of questions to expect, how can you not rise to the top? Kee hee hee.”

A certain stupid girl was so tempted she literally had a finger in her mouth, so Yagoro decided he had to intervene.

“Viocia.”

“Aweh? But…but, teacher, past exam questions would be so useful. That’s like a treasure!”

“Every single one of the countless prep schools across the city has to be doing everything they can to get their hands on what kinds of questions you’ll find on the exam, don’tcha think? Because if any one school managed it, it would unbalance the entire city’s economy. At the very least, you’re not going to find them for sale on the side of the road.”

Not to mention that no one remembered the questions from their Maleficium entrance exam. The elites who had passed all kept their silence on the subject, but the majority who failed all lost their memories of the exam just like the memory of a dream fades after you wake up.

Witches weren’t the only people hawking their wares on the streetside. There were also plenty of men and plenty of women who had given up on being witches. No one knew better what sales pitches would sound ''tempting'' than someone who had attempted that path in life and failed.

So if any of the stands were offering something that sounded too good to be true, it was.

“There’s no such thing as a perfect diet guide. Because once you sold that, you could never sell another one again. Exam study guides work the same way, don’tcha think? There’s no easy way out, so don’t listen to their enticing promises.”

“Uhh.”

He called Viocia’s name again. Had she made that last awkward groan because she had fallen for the diet guide scam before?

(Understandable when the rules for broom-riding witches are the complete opposite from the rules for knights and martial artists. The lighter a witch, the bigger her advantage.)

The face-to-face transactions like that were bad enough, but there were also fliers passed out for correspondence communities where people shared their exam worries or shared the new textbooks that went for sale each week. There were even fliers advertising cheating teams. The entrance exam city was rife with a wide variety of scams.

“Oh, it’s Dorothea.”

The girl hopped up and down, earning her an annoyed look from a water seller carrying water buckets hanging from a long stick balanced over his shoulders, but she ignored that and called out with a smile.

The girl who answered her call had light blonde wavy hair fluffily spread out at shoulder blade length. Every witch had her own way to carry her broom and Dorothea simply held the center of the handle in a hand. In Earth terms, it was a lot like how a salaryman would carry around a folded umbrella like a sheathed sword. (This was actually somewhat dangerous for whoever walked behind her.)

She was dressed as a zombie girl, which meant bandages wrapped around her bare skin. But the glasses girl herself was very cute, so it made her look like a white no-bake cheesecake.

Of course, zombie powder and voodoo were not a natural part of this world.

Her name was Dorothea Rockpool.

The shy bookish girl attended the same prep school as Viocia. Just like Viocia, she had failed the exam once and was 15. When the two girls walked side by side, Dorothea stood a head taller than Viocia and she may have even been about as tall as Myousou Yagoro. In the same way(?), her chest was quite large.

She was shy, but costumes were the norm in this world and she only smiled timidly at her friend.

“Hee hee. G-good morning, Viocia.”

“Huff puff.”

A handshake wasn’t enough for Viocia, so she hugged Dorothea from the front and breathed deep at her chest. The plain but curvy girl was only wearing the bandages on her upper body and they looked dangerously close to unraveling.

“Dorothea, help me eat this banana cupcake!”

“Eh? Ehh? You shouldn’t eat instant food, Viocia. It’s bad for you.”

As her tutor, Yagoro felt like he had to intervene here.

“Viocia, skirt check. Hugging your friend is fine, but her broom caught and lifted your skirt. I swear you’re a miracle worker when it comes to clumsiness.”

“Eh? Y-yikes!?”

Viocia blushed and quickly covered up.

There was a werewolf girl in a fur bikini and a vampire girl in a naked cloak walking nearby, but for some reason having your panties seen was still considered embarrassing (and she was weirdly dedicated to the magical look, so the butt was printed to look like a pumpkin). It made Yagoro wonder why she bothered wearing them at all, but then he recalled a more fundamental issue. He couldn’t let this place confuse him. The naked cloak was obviously the stranger thing here.

''Or is naked+1 article of clothing considered the norm here?'' he wondered.

Then the busty bandages glasses girl noticed his presence.

“Eh? Oh. G-g-g-good morning, Mr. Tutor. Eep.”

(Speak up. Why are you so quiet!? Not to mention the tears and the blushing cheeks. What happened to no one here caring how skimpy they’re dressed? Are my eyes the only ones that bother her!?)

Viocia may have sensed something from her suddenly-shy friend.

She looked back and forth between Yagoro and Dorothea.

“Hmph. He’s my teacher. We signed a tutoring contract, so he’s my exclusive tutor! Don’t even think about stealing him away with your big boobs, Dorothea.”

“Try to remember we’re outside on a sunny morning, idiot.”

The failing witch puffed out her cheeks, held her arms behind her back, and tackled Yagoro. While positioned so she would hit him with her flat chest.

“What now? That kind of hurts when you’re so flat, you know?”

“Why would you say that after a pure maiden worked up her courage!?”

Some deep clanking sounds passed them by from behind. They came from a fancy carriage that looked something like a teacup, but wheels were even less suited for this tiered city than horse hooves. The shaking had to be unbearable. Curtains blocked their view of who was inside, but the elderly coachman looked like his back was killing him. That had to be the result of some rich girl showing off her wealth.

That was not the mode of transportation everyone in the city hoped to use.

“Wow!” “Wow!”

Viocia and Dorothea cried out together while looking up into the early morning sky.

A witch on a broom flew by overhead. And she wasn’t alone. Formations of several witches – sometimes more than 10 – flew together, traveling from the perimeter of the diamond-shaped city toward a certain point in the giant lake. Leisurely soaring over the difficult-to-navigate tiered city and passing through the diamond dust covering the lake was a privilege granted only those accepted into Summon Restricted Magic School Maleficium.

They were practically legends, but they had their own daily routines and commute times, so the Maleficium witches flying together in the morning had become one of the city’s famous sights. There were even sightseeing tours scheduled to catch it from location with a good view. Even the Halloween costumed exam prep students stopped and looked up despite seeing it every single day. Most watched with a jealousy bordering on a hunger, but even they couldn’t hide the light of admiration in their eyes.

They all wanted to soar through the sky.

And that gave them the motivation they needed to crawl along the ground for now. For the not-insignificant period of time called a year.

“Incredible. I wish I could get those witches’ autographs.”

“I know. W-we live in the same city, eep, but they have a completely different aura.”

Excited Dorothea used her bandages to wipe off her fogged-up glasses.

The Maleficium students slept in the same city as everyone else. And there was an unspoken understanding among the entrance exam students that the Maleficium witches didn’t even seem real. Even though those witches flying above them now had all been entrance exam students at one point.

Pass rates and lists of passed students were the best advertisements for prep schools.

Even the sample images for the instant recipes used silver halide photographs or lithographs, but even if you had photos of the Maleficium students and searched all around the city, you would never find one. Did they disguise themselves, or did they distort other people’s perception? Whatever the case, they used some kind of magical camouflage to avoid causing a scene.

But this was not a cruel distinction that would forever be out of reach.

It was a legend with a very real path to reach it.

So maybe it was only natural for the girls to get so excited.

“H-hey, Viocia. Eep. Do you think we can be witches like that next year?”

“Of course we can, Dorothea. Heh heh☆ Let’s study hard and pass the exam together!”

Myousou Yagoro sighed too quietly for them to hear.

''He might just have to give her a talking to later on.

===2===

Green District, Block R.

Quite a few witches studied at Caraway Cs Preparatory School and it had a lot of practical lessons.

The boxy building stood 10 stories tall. It looked as generic as the nearby apartment buildings, but keep in mind that it was only “normal” by the standards of Temple School City, where everything was flashy. Much like a government building or courthouse in America, the front entrance was lined with several decorative columns. Not that anyone in this world would know what an American courthouse looks like.

“It’s weird how the letters in the prep school names change sometimes.”

“That’s because climate change changes the region and climate conditions where the herbs grow on Earth.”

Viocia tilted her head at Yagoro’s answer.

Viocia, Dorothea, and so many other girls gathered in a large garage-like space. That was the cauldron classroom. The layout brought back some old memories for Yagoro. Large work tables were lined up at even intervals to give each team plenty of space to work in. It was a lot like a workshop or cooking classroom. The witches formed teams of three where one created, one used, and one spoke. They would each handle one of the Three Aspects when using the cauldron.

As a witch prep school, all the students were girls, so the atmosphere seemed somehow sweet. In fact…

“(Hey, Viocia. You’re sneaking snacks during class again, aren’tcha!?)”

“(I-I’m studying. I’m experimenting by testing new recipes.)”

Myousou Yagoro was not a student here.

He was only sneaking in to support Viocia’s studies. Since he was only 17, he didn’t stand out too much in the school.

“(I still think they’d get mad at you if they realized you were here, teacher.)”

“(I’m not the only one. There are tutors, fortune tellers, and other outsiders mixed in. While classes are fixed for the year in compulsory education, this is a prep school. I doubt anyone really knows everyone they’re sharing a classroom with.)”

That wasn’t the only reason, though.

There was one crucial difference between a prep school and a normal school.

“Okay, before your practical lesson, I need all of you to totally open up your Formula Brooms. I need you to remember this part. Long ago, men who used magic with their own power were called wizards and women who used magic by borrowing power from nature or others were called witches. Witch powers were, like, really powerful, but they were a real pain in the ass if the witch lost control. Those failures were blown way out of proportion and witches were totally seen as walking disasters at one time.”

Schanze Dwelling.

The instructor standing at the lectern and guiding the students through the interior maintenance work was a woman in her 20s.

“But things totally changed after all knowledge of this world’s magic was lost. That’s why all new magic is based on the knowledge, like, dragged out of another world called Earth. That means it can only be used by borrowing someone else’s power. In other words, the only magic that can for real be used anymore is the female witch magic. But remember – the risk of losing control is totally still there, so you need to be careful. Everyone takes Formula Brooms for granted, but they’re not just super convenient witchcraft devices.”

Her brown skin tone likely wasn’t its natural color. She had thoroughly tanned it all using Sunlight Seals, a type of talisman infused with the power of sunshine. Her long blonde hair was wrapped several times atop her head, giving it a lot of body. Her large chest was covered by a black vest and a leopard-print show-off bra, she wore a scrunchie on her wrist, and her hips were surrounded by a tight ultra-miniskirt. She also wore a necktie, fishnet stockings held up by a garter belt, and bright red stilettos. A blouse was not erroneously omitted from that description – she really wasn’t wearing one. That meant her smooth shoulders and oblong navel were uncovered and what should have been a teacher-like suit ended up making her look more like a casino dealer. Altogether, the gyaru-style instructor had Mont Blanc colors.

“(Ugh, I’ll totally do any job as long as it pays, but I’m a self-taught witch who never graduated from Maleficium, so what the hell am I doing teaching kids how to pass the entrance exam?)”

“We can hear you say that, you know?” whispered Myousou Yagoro.

Yes. Self-taught witches could still use magic even if they hadn’t gotten into Maleficium.

All they needed was a Formula Broom, whether it was bought at a store or inherited as a family heirloom. And once it was hers, she could take it apart and perform some level of maintenance and adjustments.

But Maleficium witches could go a step further and ''remodel'' their Formula Broom.

That was a taboo that went beyond simple maintenance, which only ensured it was safe to use, or even minor adjustments, which were used to optimize it and fully harness its original specs. By crossing that line and altering the core, they could draw out power well above the design specs and even change the element and nature of the broom. But the core was considered off limits for good reason. Opening it up created the risk of the broom losing all power.

Only the witches who passed the entrance exam could cross that line.

Would you rely on borrowed power, or would you push that world of magic to new heights?

Getting into Maleficium greatly expanded a witch’s options.

“I totally don’t care as long as I get my money. So pay me please. Anyway, let’s start by reviewing the basics of a witch and her broom. These days, the Formula Broom is totally the standard partner for a witch, but there are old stories of some crazy witches who flew around on a fencepost, a giant mortar, or even a pig.”

This was one clear difference between compulsory education and a prep school. At a prep school, the student paid to be taught how to pass the exam. ''None of the teachers here were thoughtful educators who cared at all about instilling healthy ways of thinking into their students or teaching them communication skills instead of just cramming the lessons into their minds''.

So as long as it didn’t interfere with their pay, the instructors here wouldn’t question or kick out an outsider like Yagoro. Sadly, the teachers at Carraway Cs Preparatory School weren’t going to put themselves at risk to protect their students from trouble.

Whispered voices could be heard in the cauldron classroom, which used the gentle lighting of Moonlight Seals to avoid damaging all the old books and antiques inside. The boy mixed in with them was being observed from a distance.

“(That’s the famous Navigate Exam.)”

“(I hear any student who signs a tutoring contract with that sailor is guaranteed to get into Maleficium.)”

He really wished they would stop spreading those rumors. He only wore the white sailor uniform to fit into a world with naked cloak vampires and bandaged zombie girls walking around. And he had never asked anyone to use that silly nickname.

“(So he’s the Prince Charming who helps you pass the exam, huh?)”

(Wait, a prince now!? I know I'm dressed in white, but since when did I become royalty? And where did the charming come from!?)

Myousou Yagoro shuddered, but…

“(But is it really true? His name isn’t on any of the prep school lists of successful students, so he must be self-taught.)”

“(Forget self-taught – he’s a boy. He can’t be a witch at all, so he can’t be a graduate. It’s all a bluff.)”

He finally laughed at that one.

Blending into the background to support Viocia was no easy task, but it was easier when the other people around thought he was just a liar. Unlike a sports tournament, the entrance exams were a highly anonymous competition. With the exception of referrals and non-academic admissions, a famous name was more of a hindrance than anything.

And the oblivious girl was already resting her head on her desk and pouting her lips.

“Hmph. Who cares about all this boring theoretical stuff. I want to awaken to unmatched magic power and go zooming off into the night sky.”

“Viocia.”

Had she really taken the exam once already?

Yagoro needed to correct this mistake since it made her sound more like a dreaming 5-year-old than anything.

“''As convenient as it would be, the human body does not contain any magic power.'' All we have is our willpower, so we need the appropriate knowledge to reach into another world and draw out the power we want to wield. That’s a common misconception, so do be careful.”

“Hweh?”

“Witches in particular borrow all their power. That’s subtly different from using or controlling your power. No matter how powerful your results, you will never grow any further if you lose sight of that fact, don’tcha think? So if you don’t want to be one of the witches who dies plummeting from the sky, make sure you never forget that.”

This was a good opportunity, so the blond tutor spoke to Viocia who was passing folded parchment notes (“Stop that!”) with Zombie Girl Dorothea seated at a different work desk.

“Viocia, how do you view your classmates here?”

“Eh? Well, since we ended up in the same class, we might as well help each other study, right? I wish everyone in Carraway Cs could all pass the exam together.”

“No, that’s not going to cut it.” Yagoro bluntly rejected her interpretation. He kept his voice low but his tone was firm. “Prep schools are not like compulsory education. Everyone paid the hefty price for the same basic textbooks, but everyone has different supplementary materials. Some people don’t have the money and others don’t have the time or focus to read all of the books they bought. And whoever doesn’t have that extra help will lose. That’s how the entrance exam works.”

“But that gives the people with lots of time and money an unfair advantage.”

“And you chose to rely on a tutor yourself, right? You have me this year. That’s a special trump card only you have access to. At the very least, I know I’m not helping anyone else study.”

Viocia groaned awkwardly.

But that she felt guilty about it showed she still had the wrong mindset. If he didn’t correct this soon, it would mentally trip her up down the road. This was even more of a threat than if she let the results of each and every practice exam influence her too much.

“With entrance exams, it simply isn’t possible for everyone to pass. You aren’t in the last place group in a marathon. You need to be secretly doing more than everyone else around you to give you the leg up to win.”

The girl still didn’t look convinced.

Yagoro thought her way of thinking was virtuous, but she needed to learn that wasn’t enough to win here.

“You can’t just be first in this prep school when there are countless prep schools across the city. And there are plenty of students who don’t rely on a prep school after their first failure. Not to mention the students aiming to pass the exam on their first try, even if that’s basically unheard of. Viocia, you need to think of this as competing against every last one of them and aiming for the top spot. More than 99.9999% of hopeful witches fail the exam, so getting into Maleficium isn’t going to be a cakewalk, don’tcha think?”

That was where studying came in. Before flight training with her Formula Broom, she needed to perform maintenance in the cauldron classroom lined with shop tools. She also needed to learn about the interior structure of the broom, so this killed two birds with one stone for the prep school.

All the students began to work within their teams, filling the room with the buzz of chattering voices.

A surprised voice rang across the entire classroom.

Sadly, it was Yagoro’s dunce focusing on someone in another team altogether.

“Ehh!? D-Dorothea, your Formula Broom can talk!?”

“Eep? Um, yes. M-my Formula Broom – Lyceum can talk. I-I think everyone’s can?”

“I do indeed speak human language. Question: why do you ask, little girl?”

A somewhat awkward but sullen male voice came from Dorothea’s broom. Was it in a bad mood, or was it always like this?

Viocia’s eyes widened and she tapped at the handle of her own Formula Broom. It of course did not respond.

“Uhhh, Mephistopheles…”

She tearfully rubbed her cheek against it, but the broom she had acquired at a concerningly low price still showed no sign of responding. Even though witches who relied too heavily on their tools usually met an unfortunate fate.

Formula Brooms tended to be named after magical locations in the other world called Earth.

Or more accurately, after the people of this world lost their magic, they had used special lights and vibrations to probe different parts of their world to detect alternate terrain on “the other side”. It sounded a lot like nondestructive testing to Yagoro. The distance between this world and Earth could not be measured in meters. There was some uncertainty what exactly “the other side” even meant, but that vagueness had been used to ''treat it as if'' it were close by and gather a vast amount of knowledge from it.

So magical knowledge was based on terrain and thus the magical locations of Earth. It may have been a more expansive version of the counseling technique that viewed someone’s miniature garden to assess their psychology. This meant each Formula Broom could access more than just magical knowledge. They could also access people’s “thoughts” and the “atmosphere” of the location itself. However, no one here considered this creepy. The brooms were treasured as the guides who allowed witches to easily search through massive and inscrutable collections of knowledge.

“You’re so lucky, Dorothea.”

“Um, I think yours is more impressive, Viocia. I mean, how do you even, eep, work with a Formula Broom that won’t communicate with you?”

Viocia pouted her lips and booed while poking at the Formula Broom that had its tip held firmly in place by a giant clip attached to a movable arm installed on the work table.

And she spoke a simple phrase.

“''Break the seal.''”

The broom’s thick handle immediately ''unraveled''.

Like a book’s pages or a scroll, but more accurately like a three blade propeller, it unraveled in a spiraling circle. Each individual page was a map of an area on Earth. Tablets covered in orderly squares of symbols, sigils, and letters were included in places. This was the massive and complex guidepost drawn out by a witch viewing her destination. Since she used the map and not the terrain itself, she could customize it by adding various things to it.

And witches flew through the sky by surpassing the boundaries found on the map.

It was a technique – a miracle – that let them freely and instantly fly across the terrain and borders drawn on the map.

It was the insolence to easily soar over the head of the king who ruled an entire kingdom.

Now, a map of the entire United Kingdom, a map of England, a map of London, and a map of Blythe Road were all treated the same. The scale of the map used had no bearing on the strength or level of the magic. Each map did something different and a witch could not wield all forms of magic by using a full world map. Just like a world map that omitted all the details was no help when treasure hunting in a local field.

(The Flying Scroll, huh?)

Myousou Yagoro wondered just how much of their knowledge and concepts they had imported from Earth. The scary part was how some of it had lost its original meaning, like in a game of telephone.

“Admiration, Antiquity, and Amorality,” continued the gyaru-style prep school instructor named Schanze.

She stepped away from the lectern and slowly walked around each team’s work table.

“A witch’s broom is, like, an invisible whirlpool creating all three of the Three Aspects. That rotational power produces some crazy propulsion that totally harms the world as it pushes the broom forward. So generally speaking, a witch’s broom is constantly moving forward. Making it hover in place or move vertically is totally not possible, so watch out for that.”

“('''Trick Question Alert: That’s not quite accurate, don’tcha think? Just because it’s hard doesn’t make it impossible.''' This could be used as a trap on a practice exam, so be careful, Viocia.)”

“Hweh?”

The dunce’s focus had faded before the trap could even affect her.

It was true a witch’s broom almost always continued forward for stability, just like a paper airplane, but there were some witches who excelled at hovering in place like a helicopter or skimming across the surface like a ground-effect craft. But instead of being seen as a rare skill, they were more seen as acrobats or weirdos.

“Hm, hm♪ Mephistopheles is cool, but I bet it would feel great to fly around on a big dragon or griffin.”

“Yeah, that’s not possible.”

She must not have expected a response. Viocia just about jumped out of her skin and was answered by a wink from Schanze while she checked on each of the teams.

“None of the monsters you see nowadays are natural. They’re totally all Maleficium creations that went wild, which means they were super unfriendly and found a way to run off. There’s no way you could tame one of them☆”

And…

“Huh? Um, th-this is supposed to go…what? Eep.”

Yagoro heard the damp voice of someone on the verge of tears.

It was the glasses zombie girl named Dorothea Rockpool. Unlike Viocia, her broom had a ship’s wheel on the end of the handle. She had gotten Formula Broom – Lyceum’s handle opened like a propeller, but she hadn’t reached the point of tuning her map.

“Aristotle’s philosophy tried to, like, explain all things in the world using only four elements. And that totally led to modern witchcraft and alchemy.”

Schanze spoke smoothly while slowly walking around the cauldron classroom, but that was all she did. She spoke on and on like a record, but she did not give specific advice for individual students (although she would tease the students who had captured her interest). Prep schools were not compulsory education. In the world of the entrance exam, it was assumed the failures simply hadn’t been paying attention.

Yagoro was a tutor. He had only snuck into the prep school to watch over Viocia’s studies.

But.

But.

But.

(Ugh, fine.)

“The Lyceum was a Greek garden surrounded by castle walls. So is your guide Aristotle?”

“Eep! Eh? Eh?”

“But that ''alone'' isn’t what matters. A tool is only a tool. Don’t let the name and the reputation trick you. When you focus your mind using a broom, there’s always a risk of getting confused. Witch flight requires focusing on the Three Aspects to ignore time and distance and soar above the terrain. How are you handling the other two Aspects? That is, the textual Admiration and the Amorality that takes advantage of biased assumptions.”

“Um, uh, C-Cinderella and a crop failure curse.”

“So including Aristotle’s four elements, is the central formula you’re using ‘transformation’? And the animal acting as the core linking the Three Aspects would be a rat. Check through the text again and you should figure out what parts need maintenance, don’tcha think?”

“Wow,” she said like she had just opened a present.

She drew out just the right symbol on her map to link everything together, so she must have solved her problem.

“Th-thank you, eep, Mr. Tutor!”

She innocently bowed, but Yagoro wasn’t so sure what to think.

In fact, he was kicking himself for this.

Why would he help out another student? Helping one of Viocia’s rivals get a better score would only reduce his student’s odds of passing!

===3===

===4===

===5===

===6===

===7===

===8===

===Today’s Quiz===

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| Forward to [[Failing_Witch:Volume1 Episode2|Episode 2]]
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Chapter2

2023-05-18T14:46:37Z

Entei08:

{{Incomplete|parts=4|tparts=9}}
==Chapter 2: Transcendent Mut Thebes – The_Death_Penalty_WH.==

===Part 1===

It was all right there in her head.

When you got down to it, the old R&C Occultics magic database was no more than a collection of notes jotted down by Anna Sprengel herself. So journeying to District 15 and searching the database would only turn up Anna’s own knowledge.

The lights were off inside the cold metal box and the little wicked woman didn’t look away from the screen as she whispered to someone.

“What do you want, Aiwass?”

“Nothing really. Just noting how uncharacteristically patient you’re being.”

“Come to see me because I haven’t stepped on you recently, fool?”

After that, little Anna laughed but otherwise ignored him.

So only the unknown being’s voice continued.

“You finally have your body back from Madame Horos, so you can perceive this world as you like and go wherever you desire within it. I assumed you would be rejoicing in your newfound freedom, so I found this odd.”

Miss Sprengel clenched and unclenched her little hand.

“In this body?”

“You don’t seem all that fixated on fully reclaiming your original power and form.”

“Hmph,” snorted Anna.

Bull’s eye.

That being was meant to deliver divine knowledge to humanity, after all.

She wanted something else.

Something not found inside her.

“I will start with the Bridge Builders Cabal.”

“Not with Anna Kingsford?”

“I am starting with what I know I can do.”

She knew the Bridge Builders Cabal’s plan and was in the unique position to stop it, so she could negotiate (or threaten) them.

Furthermore, Academy City needed her for the same reason.

So traveling to District 15 was her best option.

On the other hand…

“I currently ''have no countermeasure for Kingsford.'' Even with the full power of my Secret Chief.”

Aiwass was supposed to be her trump card, but he hadn’t been enough to defeat Kingsford. What would have happened if she confidently used him to escape her human film canister form? The thought sent a small chill down her spine.

However…

“Maybe I can’t do it, but maybe that cabal of Transcendents can. And unlike Kingsford, I can take control of them. Either by manipulating Alice or by using the Shrink Drink that contains a portion of her power. They’ve left me a lot of openings for such a powerful group.”

“I see. Just as wicked a plan as I would expect from you.”

‘I wish I could have sent Alice Anotherbible against that woman, but how would that have influenced my current partnership with Kamijou Touma? Still, there are other Transcendents with bizarre specialties. Perhaps one of them is such a poor match for Kingsford that she goes down easily to them. Like a necromancer or a machine killer. Giving up doesn’t improve my situation, so my best bet is to keep struggling no matter how ugly it gets.”

So she would start with what she knew she could do.

She most likely had her Bridge Builders Cabal countermeasure constructed in her mind.

But that was why she wanted absolute certainty.

That meant comparing the idea in her mind with the database she had created.

She felt some nagging doubt because of how extraordinary the cabal’s plan was.

Even seen through Miss Sprengel’s eyes.

“Do you think they can pull it off?” asked Aiwass.

“I don’t know. But it’s never a good idea to immediately reject something because it sounds crazy. That reflex isn’t about a lack of validation or credibility – it’s you trying to deny the worst case scenario. When there is a very real threat out there, what could be more foolish than letting your fear take hold and shutting yourself away for peace of mind?”

That was why she wanted more than her own thoughts and emotions – why she wanted to rely on the cold, hard data.

She wanted objective corroboration that her prediction was in fact correct. Even if it was so horrifying that even a wicked woman like her didn’t want to think about it.

To repeat, Anna most likely had the answer already.

Now she only needed the final confirmation.

Then she only had to download it onto a physical medium she could present to a third party.

“It’s times like this that I curse my lack of a perfect memory.”

“It seems to me that would bring its own problems.”

Whether a disk or nonvolatile memory, all physical media deteriorated and eventually grew unreadable as time passed, but if she kept the information in her own mind, the pressure of her own self-restricting questions would distort the answer. And unlike someone with a perfect memory, her memories provided no objective trust or proof.

She knew their plan.

She was familiar with all of their Achilles heels, so she could crush them at any time.

“But you can’t negotiate with the cabal’s Transcendents unless you can ''objectively'' prove it,” said Aiwass.

“Isn’t that your specialty? You are a messenger who provides oracles while pretending to be some secret divine messenger. It all began when you borrowed Rose’s mouth. That message was then written down in a form anyone could read. And it became known as the Book of the Law.”

“But that was all a new seed you had me plant because you were so disgusted by the Golden cabal’s rapid decline after the Battle of Blythe Road. But…”

“Yes, fool.” Miss Sprengel sighed. “Negotiation is not my primary goal here.”

“That plan must not be brought to fruition. In your mind, anyway. I am honestly mildly surprised you see any room for negotiation left.”

That was why she had installed a backdoor in that unseen organization so she could throw them into disarray and crush them from within. All she had to do was tell Alice Anotherbible the “personal legend” of Kamijou Touma and make sure the girl adored him like a character from a children’s book.

(So what am I doing now?)

“Keep in mind I can hear your thoughts, Miss Sprengel. Because I am your Secret Chief and you are my priestess.”

She kicked her little foot at that.

But Aiwass was right. If she were focused primarily on destroying the cabal’s extremely dangerous plan, negotiation would be meaningless. It would be much faster to slash their Achilles heels without warning.

Was she here to save the world? Nonsense.

She had only just reclaimed her physical freedom from one of the greatest frauds in the history of Modern Western Magic. The little wicked woman should have been living it up and greedily taking everything she wanted from the world around her. So her battle against the cabal and her drive to crush their plan could not be classified as good deeds.

So what did she hope to protect?

What did she want most?

“My king,” whispered Anna Sprengel.

===Part 2===

January 4. Early morning.

Kamijou Touma awoke to a light slap on his cheek.

He first thought the calico cat had play swatted him, but he quickly realized that couldn’t be it.

It was Aradia.

“Wake up.”

“Ugh.”

He opened his eyes to find they were at a gas station. There was no clerk there thanks to the martial law, so they had refueled and he had taken a nap on the bench by the vending machines. Aradia was crouching next to the wooden bench and teasing him, so her face was a lot closer than strictly necessary. Her silver hair spilled down and tickled his cheek.

But that aside…

“It’s already 5:30. Based on the work schedule posted in the office, a manager normally arrives at about this time. If the concept of martial law is enough to make the ordinary citizens nervous, the manager might drop by to make sure their workplace is safe.”

“Wah, wamh, ah, arh?”

“Are you trying to be cute?”

He was simply so sleepy his tongue wasn’t working right, but she coldly criticized him for it.

(It’s January 4 and I’m being told it’s “already” 5:30 in the morning? Has the world gone crazy?)

“Hurry up. Your mind will clear once you get up.”

“Mhh.”

If she said he had to get up, that’s what he would have to do.

But right as he did, Aradia stuck her lithe hand between his back and the bench.

The timing was unfortunate.

Kamijou’s lips contacted something: Aradia’s cheek, which had moved unexpectedly close.

At first, he thought he had to still be dreaming.

“Hm? H-huh!? Wait, did I really just do that!?”

The fog in his mind instantly cleared away.

He doubted she would be kind enough to let him off with a simple head chomp. This was the Great Aradia who had already killed him more than once on December 31.

And yet…

“Relax. That was clearly an accident.”

“?”

Confused, Kamijou froze with his arms crossed in front of his face.

Aradia was avoiding his gaze a bit, but that was all.

The lack of any repercussions scared him in a different way. Like he was building up an unseen debt somewhere.

“You still need to get up. We can’t stick around here forever.”

They were on the run.

He had chosen this path for himself, so he couldn’t complain now.

His head felt super heavy, but he somehow managed to get up on his own. Thanks to the wooden bench, he ached all over. He left the vending machine area which had a blind pulled down over it and was greeted by the biting cold. He saw a white haze outside.

“Why do you seem wide awake at this hour, Aradia? I don’t know what country you came from, but are you jetlagged?”

“Witches follow a strict schedule and receive the blessings of nature – I just haven’t been able to do so recently because you had me tied up. It shouldn’t surprise you to see me up before sunrise.”

Aradia threw the response at him like a slap.

Then the witch goddess winked.

“What? You look like you have several things to say.”

That wasn’t true at all, but if Aradia had read too deep into his expression and opened the door to questions, he couldn’t pass up the chance.

Because wait.

Did this mean he could have her clear up the mysteries surrounding the Transcendents and the Bridge Builders Cabal?

“Um, uh! I-if you insist!!”

“Calm down. I’m not going anywhere, so relax your shoulders and try that again, boy.”

“A-are you actually a red android?”

“You’re starting there!? I suppose it’s best to be careful, but still!!” shouted Aradia, bristling at his question.

But she no longer had that air of a cool witch lady. Didn’t she seem more open to anything, and even a bit indulgent?

“Um, then to cover a more immediate issue, what do you know about Mut Thebes? I could be killed without knowing that. But I understand if you don’t want to give up info on a fellow cabal member.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Not anymore anyway.” Aradia shrugged and sighed, the breath appearing white in the January morning. “Then I will start with the basics. Mut is a goddess found in Egyptian mythology.”

“Right.”

He was pretty sure H. T. Trismegistus had told him that at the consulate.

He wanted to know more than that.

“She is a war goddess who uses the vulture as her symbol. While the other gods promise happiness in a vaguely defined afterlife, she is a ‘physical goddess’ who actually fought on Earth and protected her people from their enemies. She is specifically said to have defended the ancient city of Thebes from an outside enemy.”

“Seriously? So she’s a god who specializes in war ''and nothing else''?”

“It was believed that was one of the many abilities of a protective mother,” Aradia subtly corrected. “Mut was special in that she was both a goddess and the wife of the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh. Technically, the queen and Mut were seen as one and the same. Of course, that would mean each pharaoh’s wife was Mut again, which would make her the pharaoh’s mother, wife, and daughter all at once.”

That sounded very confusing, but Kamijou decided it was silly to apply a modern conception of romance to Ancient Egypt which existed millennia ago.

“Also, some suspect that she was created later on because Amun, the top god, needed a wife. Of course, I’m Aradia, so I’m not one to talk there.”

“…?”

That was something that had bothered him for a while now.

Index had said the goddess Aradia was thought to have been invented by an Italian witch. Then what was this Aradia here?

What was the point of borrowing the name of someone who never even existed?

Had the witch actually been telling the truth, but the story had been so extraordinary that the man writing it down hadn’t recorded it properly?

“What’s wrong?” asked Aradia.

“Nothing…”

Why did he hesitate? She was willing to answer his questions. And even if she refused to answer, the fact that she had openly refused could act as a major hint.

Or was he afraid of receiving confirmation?

He felt like the temporary peace they had established would crumble before his eyes.

Anna walked in from outside and grinned as soon as she saw the witch.

“''Nice ankle.''”

“''I don’t want a word out of you.''”

“?” Kamijou tilted his head.

Come to think of it, why was she still doing that? Thanks to Kamijou’s hesitation, Aradia had switched modes. And given how prickly she was being now, he doubted she would answer even if he asked.

The fuel pumps were of dangerous since they worked with gasoline. And they were located outside, so they would have been locked down separately to the office. But that hadn’t been much of an obstacle to Anna Sprengel’s technology.

The wicked woman gave a snort of laughter.

“In the end, single use passwords and two factor authentication are still patterns. Once you decode the pseudorandom number generator, it might as well not be locked at all. At least they seem aware that biometric data like fingerprint or eye scans are a lot less safe given how high quality cameras are these days.”

“I’m suddenly glad my dorm room uses an old-fashioned analog key.”

“Trying to set a new record for foolishness? That’s an even simpler combination of patterns. The best security system a fool like you can manage is being too poor to own anything worth stealing.”

Meanwhile…

Kamijou spotted an old-fashioned payphone nearby.

Even a high schooler like him knew using his phone was a bad idea while on the run, but since a payphone wouldn’t leave a record of who made the call, couldn’t he contact Index or Misaka Mikoto that way?

Little Anna glared up at him.

“Again, don’t even think about it, fool. Get us in trouble by trying it and I will kick your ass headfirst into a doghouse.”

“Alright, alright.”

It looked like he had to abandon that idea. She refused to explain why, but this must have been riskier than he thought. Anna had singlehandedly built up R&C Occultics as a global IT company, so he doubted he could outdo her when it came to computer knowledge. Academy City technology was 20 or 30 years ahead of the outside world, but Kamijou hadn’t designed that technology himself.

(I hope they’re okay. It’s so frustrating when they’re in the same city as me.)

He had to believe that the pursuers’ attention on him meant less focus on Index, Mikoto, and the others.

The mobile combat vehicle stood out thanks to its 8 wheels and swiveling tank gun, but they had shoved it inside the carwash on Anna’s suggestion. Apparently no one would notice it as long as it fit inside.

Little Anna unfolded a large paper map on the concrete ground. She and Aradia stared at the map through a magnifying glass they had found somewhere.

“Let’s see. Based on my scrying, it should look something like this.”

“Anyone’s spell would reveal the same thing. And it seems to be showing water-based danger on the horizon.”

They didn’t seem to be reading miniscule text or setting down small game pierces to simulate the enemy(?) formation. This sounded like occult divination. When Aradia slid the magnifying glass across the map, Kamijou noticed small flashes of light dancing inside the distorted lens.

“Don’t be shy. If you want to see the map, move in closer.”

Still crouching, Aradia scooted a bit aside.

Kamijou did as she suggested, but he still couldn’t tell what he was supposed to be seeing. He just didn’t want to be standing behind her because he felt guilty seeing her butt while she crouched like that.

The oblivious woman was still focused on the map.

“I’m using crystal divination. It’s a common enough technique in Wicca. You stare into the crystal and ''decode'' the information you want from the vision you see within. This is a variation on it. I bet you didn’t know the crystal doesn’t actually have to be a ball, did you?”

He was more interested in what she had discovered than the method she was using.

Aradia removed the magnifying glass from the map and raised it like an old-fashioned detective.

“Lend me your right hand.”

“?”

Kamijou held out his hand as asked and she touched the rim of the magnifying glass to it. It made a high-pitched cracking sound.

Aradia was apparently done with the magnifying glass now, so she spun it in her hand and brought her lips to the rim like it was a giant lollipop she was about to lick.

“Imagine Breaker makes this so much easier.”

“It does,” agreed Anna. “It lets you omit the entire process for exorcising the summoned power. And you don’t have to worry about the backlash if you screw up. The Golden cabal was a sorry excuse for a cabal that kept growing more bloated until it ruptured, but I can see why they had it stored deep within Blythe Road as a last resort.”

Kamijou wasn’t sure how to interpret this assessment. Should he view this like the young woman next door asking him to get a stubborn lid off of a bottle?”

…If so, he wasn’t going to complain.

“Wipe that smirk off your face, fool. And we should keep the divination to a minimum. Academy City might not know much about magic, but Mut Thebes or Kingsford might notice and use it to track us down. Like suddenly noticing a presence in some abandoned ruins.”

Little Anna pouted her lips and swiftly folded up the map.

“We are in District 6 now, so we still need to cross Districts 5 and 7. So, fool, let’s continue on toward District 15.”

“I get that,” said Kamijou while climbing for the hatch on top of the gun.

The interior was still cramped and the seats even more so. There was a reason they had refused to spend the night inside there.

“But I still can’t believe we got an armored vehicle inside the amusement park district. I would have thought they had a solid gate at the entrance to make sure no one gets in without a ticket.”

“You really are a fool. This is a mobile combat vehicle.” Anna made sure to correct him every time. “If you refuse to learn, I’ll start shoving the vocabulary sticks up your asshole.”

“…”

What was a vocabulary stick?

Whatever the case, he got the feeling she would also get furious over the debate regarding whether corn was a grain or a vegetable.

“Also, fool. Amusement parks have industrial vehicle entrances located out of sight of the guests. How do you think they receive all the food and souvenirs they sell across the entire park? Or what about replacing the heavy metal rails and thick wires for upkeep of the thrill rides? You didn’t think it was all carried in by hand, did you?”

“That’s not what I meant. District 6 is one giant amusement park, right? It just feels like the end of the world to see a military vehicle intruding on this land of hopes and dreams.”

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Do not interrupt me again.”

“Most fairy tales are more like horror stories if you follow them back to their roots,” added Aradia.

Was that supposed to be helpful?

Also, the expert on witch stories spoke down from above the other two. The nature-loving mountain girl couldn’t stand being cooped up in that tin can all day, so she had her upper body sticking out of the hatch to enjoy the breeze. Which meant she had one leg on the ladder up to the hatch.

“Bwah, Aradia!? Have you no sense!? Don’t just show off that angle!!”

“?”

“If she isn’t aware, don’t bother her. And it’s her decision to do it or not. I know you are a hopeless fool, but you don’t have to tackle every single problem you come across with fists flying.”

A skirt-wearing girl version of a kasa-obake was staring down at them from above, but Anna Sprengel seemed a lot more interested in trying the mentaiko, corn, and mayo bread she had bought at a bread vending machine earlier. Even though they had stocked up inside the vehicle just yesterday. She was also enjoying a health drink that claimed to contain a trillion lactobacilli, which sounded to Kamijou like a battle manga with so much power level inflation nothing had any meaning anymore.

Generally, the other two let Anna operate the Predator Octopus.

Kamijou was still in high school, so he wouldn’t know how to operate a steering wheel. And this used a touchscreen, so it didn’t even have a steering wheel. Aradia was skeptical of technology, so she was out of the question too. That meant Anna was the one swiping her hand across the console monitor in front of the commander’s seat.

Kamijou Touma continued to pour all of his willpower into ignoring Aradia’s crotch that seemed unnecessarily conspicuous only a meter over his head. (Was this some kind of mental training!?)

“So is the plan for today the same as yesterday: look out for Mut Thebes while avoiding Anti-Skill’s checkpoints?”

“Thank you for pointing out the obvious, fool. Do I need to shove enough things up your asshole you look like a restaurant’s chopstick holder?”

She may have been even more foulmouthed than that human.

Kamijou couldn’t help but sigh, but…

“I notice you failed to mention Aleister’s group who have been concerningly silent. Do you want to die?”

The mood clearly changed when she mentioned Aleister.

Surprisingly, the majority of the tension came from Anna herself.

“Unlike a fool like you, Anna Kingsford seeks certainty. She goes beyond never making a wasted move. If any of her moves fails to accomplish anything, she will change her point of view to transform it into a useful card in her deck,” whispered Anna.

That little wicked woman was revealing her own weakness to someone else.

Kamijou didn’t see that as regression. It was only one step, but she was making progress.

“Even if she does locate us through divination, she wouldn’t launch an attack on that alone. She will increase the certainty of her information by relying on multiple sources, work out the most meaningful move she can make, and then make that move.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes, fool. We fought a highly conspicuous artillery battle to escape Mut Thebes last night. Word of that must have spread through Academy City. Assuming she intercepted those reports and has been analyzing the situation based on them, ''it won’t be long now.'' Kingsford will make her move soon.”

===Part 3===

Aleister Crowley, Anna Kingsford, and Kihara Noukan.

Since they looked like a foreign nun and a mysterious near-future glasses woman out walking a large dog (after martial law was declared), they had to make for quite a bizarre sight. Except they didn’t. When they walked right in front of an armed Anti-Skill group, not one person demanded they stop.

Was it Kihara Noukan who had said they were bound to be caught if they snuck into Academy City again?

Aleister sighed.

(This simple recognition manipulation won’t work on anyone with a deep knowledge of magic. That of course applies to the Transcendents, but also to the artificial demon working for Academy City – Qliphah Puzzle 545.)

He could imagine all this so easily, but he could never make sense of the human mind.

He was constantly making mistakes.

Meanwhile, Anna Kingsford curiously viewed the vehicles parked on the curb. The tanks and armored vehicles were all painted dark because they were meant for use in an urban environment.

They were closer than expected. Much too close.

The great knowledge goddess took small steps up to within a meter of one, looking just like a tourist with one of the red guards at a certain English palace.

If not for their magic, they would have been instantly discovered and forced to fight.

“Oh, how fun. It’s like a parade.”

“Don’t place too much faith in that preserved corpse. It might look just like a living body, but it’s still only a corpse being forced into motion. You can’t use any magical defenses, so if you were held in place by the ground collapsing below your feet or exposure to a high voltage current, an ordinary tank gun could blast you to smithereens.”

“Then am I relatively safe from the ones ❌ in a vehicle?”

“How did you find a way to ‘look on the bright side’ of that warning?”

When Kingsford pointed at an Anti-Skill group from less than a meter away, Aleister shut an eye and held a hand to his forehead.

That she went unnoticed was proof that she was the spell expert Aleister was not.

A true expert did not neglect these fundamental of magic.

Or rather, it was all part of a single large system. There were no unnecessary gears in the world of magic.

So instead of learning a single special move, you increased your overall strength by thoroughly honing your skills in all the most common spells until they were their own special moves.

An expert like Kingsford probably resented the very act of designing a spell exclusively for killing.

The golden retriever sniffed at the cigarette smoke exhaled by an Anti-Skill officer on break and reacted with disgust when he detected the vanilla additive.

”Explain it to her, Aleister. I would understand if you had explained it over and over and she refused to learn, but she can’t be blamed for her ignorance.”

“I know that, but still.”

The great knowledge goddess’s knowledge stopped in the 1800s, so while her magic knowledge was unmatched, she didn’t know much about the threat posed by science. The lack of knowledge wasn’t necessary a problem, but her inability to appreciate the threat was. She was too innocent, like a young child who had never touched a hot kettle.

Eventually, Aleister pointed up into the early morning sky.

“Academy City has developed 200mm self-propelled grenade launchers and multistage rocket launchers with a range of more than 30km. They can accurately drop a grenade on you anywhere in the city. And if they don’t care about damage to civilian facilities, a single Anti-Skill officer can give a signal by radio, laser, or even smoke to summon a downpour of explosives. A single volley of the rocket launchers will cover the designated area with ten thousand bomblets. Do you still feel safe?”

A sound like an electric shaver passed by overhead.

This one was not for aerial photography.

The 45cm plastic isosceles triangle was joined by hundreds more clustered together like a flock of starlings. From a distance, they appeared to undulate like a great serpent. These were self-destruct drones designed to spread out in the sky, locate their target, gather overhead, lock on, ignite their solid fuel, drop toward their target, and explode.

Aleister sighed.

“Each of those Snakeheads is loaded with as much explosive as an anti-tank rocket. The sky above is the hardest place for a ground vehicle to attack, so if those things attack from there, the tanks and armored vehicles don’t stand a chance. A person outside of a vehicle even less so.”

“My, my. The 🌍 has become a very ☠️ place in my absence.”

Anna Kingsford held a hand to her cheek and elegantly tilted her head.

She had lived in the late 1800s. That was before World War One, which meant a world without tanks, aircraft, and poison gas, so some might call it a nice place to live. Especially in an age where war without nuclear weapons sounded like something from an impossible fantasy world.

Of course, small drones commonly lost control and crashed due to signal interference and crosswinds. What would happen if those armed explosives were constantly flying through the city? As the numbers went up, what seemed like small odds of an accident would rise as well. Instead of launching a missile or artillery shell in response to a threat, explosives were ''already'' filling the sky above. Instead of avoiding the small odds of an accident, the city had ordered its people to stay home to avoid anyone coming to harm by the accidents. These next-generation weapons could only be used with martial law in place.

“What’s the plan for today?” asked Aleister right in front of the enemy.

“I 💭 it is about ⏰ to take this seriously☆”

===Part 4===

Kamijou’s group slowly drove the mobile combat vehicle through the District 6 amusement park.

There was a biting chill outside, but the cramped vehicle was filled with the sweet warmth of girls.

In the commander’s seat, Anna made occasional adjustments to the self-driving while she messed with the communications. Kamijou thought she was accessing a civilian frequency to listen to the radio, but she was apparently watching an online TV station displayed in a corner of the touchscreen. How much could she access with that thing?

“Today is January 4. Good morning and welcome to the Children’s Q&A Advice Show. You’re in for a treat because today’s New Year’s special is two hours long☆ Now, our first Scype call is a question from Azumi-chan, a 2nd grader from District 13. Happy New Year, Azumi-chan. What is it you want to know?”

“H-Happy New Year. Um, why do you catch a cold when it’s cold out?”

“That’s actually a really interesting question, Azumi-chan. But first I need to correct a misunderstanding there. It’s hard to tell because they’re too small to see, but colds are caused by germs you can find floating in the air any time of year. We see more cold patients in the winter because the air is dryer. See, people have something called an immune system and…”

“Hee hee,” someone laughed.

It was Anna Sprengel with her hand over her mouth. It was an unusually gentle laugh for her how harsh she tended to be. It lacked her usual edge.

“Excellent. She honestly asks the question on her mind and then listens to the answer. She earns a perfect 100 as a student.”

“Really?”

“You need to be careful, you dull fool. All of you fools like to ask the question before even trying to think for yourselves. Instead, you need to listen, work to comprehend what you have learned, and – if you still do not understand – gather up what you know, put it in your own words, and feel no shame about asking. That is what I call perfect.”

So did he have to learn to act like a 7 or 8 year old to please Miss Sprengel? That honestly sounded way too hard.

“The problem isn’t how much or how little knowledge you have.”

Anna elegantly crossed her legs in the highest seat, rested her elbow on the armrest, and her head in her hand.

And she whispered in Demon Lord mode.

“Knowledge you never use grows rusty. If you avoid writing a word for fear of misspelling it, you really will forget how to spell it before long. So the greatest barrier to true knowledge is the silly pride that believes you are too good to study and master the fundamentals. Feel no shame, learner. The textbook lies before you. It might look intimidating, but your predecessors have proven that you will eventually achieve mastery if you take it slow and complete each step in turn. You must not skip past the basics and immediately attempt the practical side. Even worse is to fail to realize you have given up on thinking, fail to learn a single thing, and find all you have left is an inflated sense of pride.”

This advice had arrived unexpectedly.

He needed to listen, work to comprehend, and if he still didn’t understand, gather his knowledge, put it in his own words, and ask without shame.

Kamijou decided to put Anna’s advice to practice.

“So…what were you hoping to accomplish?”

“I didn’t have a lofty goal like guiding all of humanity in the right direction.”

Miss Sprengel’s thoughts had been transported elsewhere while she listened to that innocent exchange on the radio.

And the words spilled from her lips now.

“I wanted to share what I had if it could quench people’s thirst for knowledge. But only if they sought that knowledge in the proper way. In the end, that never came to pass. The incomplete knowledge I brought them only created hopeless conflict and self-proclaimed geniuses who arrogantly mocked everyone they met.”

“Let’s see,” continued the radio show. “Next we have Shunta-kun, a 4th grader from District 7.”

“Gyah! Wah!!”

“U-um, Shunta-kun? Shunta-kuuun?”

“What- ah ha ha! Wait, it’s about to start- (wham thud!!) Did you hear that!? Kya ha ha! Ah ha ha ha!!”

“…”

“You don’t have to get that upset!” shouted Kamijou. “It’s not like he’s your kid!!”

Kamijou quickly restrained little Anna who looked so furious she might utter a mysterious curse that not even the Anglicans were familiar with.

“That pissed me off almost as much as those self-proclaimed geniuses in the Golden cabal.”

“I’m really not sure what to say about that, but should I update my mental image of them?”

“Pant, pant. M-Miss Host,” said a new voice on the radio. “I’m a 47-year-old baby. Hee hee. C-can you tell me where babies come from? Bweh heh heh heh.”

“Yikes!” shouted the host. “H-how did this call get past the screening!? Producer!!”

“Anna? Him you can curse,” said Kamijou, staring into the distance and feeling very glad he didn’t have to deal with a live broadcast.

Maybe everyone just had too much time on their hands while forced to stay home all day. Choosing to stay home during the holiday and being told you couldn’t leave the house were two very different things.

(This martial law thing is scary. I never thought being able to go where you want could feel like a luxury.)

Anna wasn’t driving their vehicle at full speed, but not because she was focused on the online TV show playing on the screen.

“I don’t trust the quality of the pavement on private property. Worse, this looks like tile, not asphalt. I hope we don’t break through all of a sudden.”

“Break through to where?”

“That question earns you 0 points. You didn’t even try to think first.” The little wicked woman’s voice was ice cold. “There is more to an amusement park than what meets the eye. There is a lot built underground like the giant motors and industrial power transformers for the thrill rides. For example…yes. Just imagine it, fool. Have you ever seen an amusement park with power lines strung up overhead? Any realistic equipment that would break the illusion are buried underfoot.”

Was that how it worked?

Kamijou took a look at the monitor Anna was messing with.

“But it looks like the Ferris wheel and the other rides are all stopped. Is it just too early in the morning?”

“You have a fool’s imagination. The attractions are put through test runs before the park opens to ensure safety, so amusement parks are actually quite busy early in the morning.”

Anna poked at the touchscreen as she answered. The exasperated sigh was quickly becoming her default state. She was probably making an adjustment to the self-driving, but the lack of a steering wheel made it hard to think of her as operating a vehicle.

Their motionless surroundings made it look like the giant amusement park had frozen in the winter cold.

But did that mean the martial law was to blame? The amusement park was district-wide private property, so if the people at the top – the management? – decided to shut it down, it could be shut down in a matter of seconds.

“But aren’t there a lot of people here? This has facial recognition boxes popping up all over!”

“Do not breathe on me in your panic, fool. Do it again and I will shove yellow mustard paste down your dickhole.”

“I would’ve thought a wicked woman would understand male anatomy better than that! Do that and it would explode!!”

“It makes sense to me,” said Aradia, also sounding exasperated.

Kamijou bristled at the thought of her shoving something in there too, but that wasn’t what she was talking about.

“You can demand people stay home all you want, but some people are going to head out regardless.”

It was before the park even opened, so these people weren’t breaking the rules to enjoy a day at this land of dreams. They appeared to be here for work. About half seemed to be park staff and half seemed to be truckers. The sudden declaration of martial law hadn’t shut down District 17’s unmanned factories (because no one had to show up for work there) and what were they supposed to do about the cakes, twisted donuts, and other park exclusive foods they had prepared the day before? Maybe it was a good thing Kamijou’s group had left the gas station early on Aradia’s suggestion.

Anna shut off the online TV show and displayed the outside footage on the full monitor.

“Wow. Hey, Anna, what are things like outside? The lack of windows scares me.”

“Foolish fool. There is a periscope linked with a camera at your seat. That is the loader’s seat, so it has secondary 360-degree observation equipment separate from the gunner’s.”

“If you say so.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………………You’re the one who asked.”

“Wait, no, put that yellow tube away! You lost me at the peri-whatever part!! And unlike with my phone, I can’t exactly learn how this equipment works through trial and error! I could press the wrong button and launch some weapon or another!!”

“It’s called a periscope. You know, like on a submarine? Oh, are my words converting properly here?”

Aradia was actually speaking a mystery language called “common tones” rather than Japanese, but she still helped him out like a kind older sister. The way he could actually hear her saying two different things at once was kind of scary.

“Coddle him like that and his foolishness will only grow.”

“I didn’t start it. You can blame a certain Magic God for that one.”

Anna had no interest in a child with no drive to learn, so she ended up doing everything on her own. She poked her fingers boredly at the thin touchscreen from the commander’s seat.

“I’m still scared, Anna. Can’t you let me see outside too?”

“Sigh. Do you never shut up, fool? Here.”

Anna stood up from the commander’s seat and let him take it. He was worried about her leaving the controls, but she seemed find reaching in from the side to make the necessary adjustments.

So the spiky-haired boy sat in the warm commander’s seat.

Then something happened.

Little Anna sat down in his lap.

What now? He was seriously unsure where to put his hands.

He ended up holding them overhead.

She also seemed weirdly smooth, so he looked down to discover she only had her baggy dress held up at her chest. This was more than he could have imagined. Her defenses from the rear were as nonexistent as with a naked apron!

His eyes widened further when Miss Sprengel did not hesitate to lean back against him.

“Um, Anna-san?”

“I’m kind of busy right now, so stay still. I don’t have time for questions. Besides, I doubt a fool like you would learn much from looking at the screen.”

“I thought you were being unusually accommodating, but you’re still upset, aren’t you?”

“Oh? Finally figured something out on your own, did you? Good job. I’ll have you know I am the type to hold a grudge.”

Kamijou felt a kick at the base of the seat bolted to the floor.

He looked over to see Aradia refusing to look his way. Nothing he did got any reaction out of her.

But he had bigger worries.

He took a look at the screen past Anna’s head and noticed a shocking development.

Ice filled his stomach.

“Those aren’t workers, are they? I knew Anti-Skill would be here. Yikes, that’s a lot!! And they have tanks!!”

The deep rumble of diesel engines approached from up ahead. One would be bad enough, but this was several lined up in a column.

Little Anna sighed in a bored way.

“Those are not tanks. They are infantry fighting vehicles.”

“What’s the difference? And that longer name sounds stronger if you ask me!”

“How many times must I remind you to think before you ask a question, fool? These are only about half the weight of a tank and they only use smaller guns with barrels the size of a clothesline pole. Those are 35mm autocannons. They might as well be peashooters compared to a 120mm. And the armor is aluminum to keep them lightweight enough for air transport.”

“Y-you mean they’re lower grade than ordinary tanks?”

“Yes, I do. Although they can still punch right through the Predator Octopus’s armor since it’s only armored vehicle class.”

“So I should still be terrified!!”

A sweet tremor ran through small Anna’s back while she sat in his lap. The wicked woman was apparently willing to be riddled with bullets if it let her torment Kamijou like this.

A convoy of tanks(?), armored vehicles, and military trucks arrived from up ahead. But they must have already been here. If not for the many military vehicles driving around this private property like they owned the place, the Predator Octopus would have aroused suspicion among the workers.

If Kamijou’s group was discovered, it would mean a battle, but the amusement park employees were all around. Not to mention that the Anti-Skill officers were all teachers.

If that deep siren began to sound, it was all over.

Aradia rubbed her bare feet together while still occupying the gunner’s seat. That was how she used her magic. The look on her face said she was willing to take action at a moment’s notice.

Kamijou gulped, but Anna casually flashed the headlights. Drawing attention to themselves like that sent ice down Kamijou’s spine, but the other vehicles returned the greeting in kind.

And they continued on.

The siren remained silent.

Apparently their identity wasn’t apparent from the vehicle’s exterior.

Did that mean it was better to move around like they belonged than to sneak in the shadows like a ninja?

Kamijou took another look around and saw a lot of Anti-Skill beyond the fixed checkpoints. They were stopping their vehicles in the area and receiving large artillery shells from the gunless tanks.

“Those are specialized ammo supply vehicles, fool. I believe they reused the same frame.”

“I feel like it would be more efficient to do this in the city.”

Was the risk of accidents lower if they kept things simple?

Anti-Skill was also gathering carts loaded with the kind of metal trays seen at all-you-can-eat buffets. More than hold food, they appeared to also heat the food with a heating element, allowing for cooking. The adults were gathering around and receiving breakfast from a strange vehicle that Anna smugly explained was a field kitchen. Unlike the students at school, they formed an orderly line without any fighting. ''This martial law thing is just like being at war,'' thought Kamijou (one of their prime targets), which would have angered certain people had they heard it. Anti-Skill really did look more like soldiers than schoolteachers here.

After nonchalantly driving by, Anna bit her thumbnail in his lap.

“Don’t relax yet, fool. They will discover who we are eventually. A military vehicle not found on the central datalink’s timetable is wandering around and loaded with live ammunition, after all.”

And there was no real reason they had to get through this without being discovered.

The fuse had already been lit. They only had to reach District 15 before the explosion.

“?”

The Predator Octopus came to a slow stop.

Not even Kamijou had to ask why.

He lowered Anna from his lap and grabbed the ladder. He opened the hatch and poked his head out to view the 50m-wide obstacle blocking their way.

“A river.”

“Failing to find the right answer while looking right at it is unusual indeed, fool. That is technically a canal since it was intentionally dug by the amusement park.”

Anna’s voice pursued him through the hatch smaller than a manhole.

River or canal, the 20tn mobile combat vehicle could not float in water. Crossing would require using one of the bridges and bridges were crucial for transportation. There was of course more than one, but even from here he could tell Anti-Skill had checkpoints set up on all of them.

They had built barricades from steel beams and barbed wire and they were shining large construction site lights. They also had the firepower of tanks and armored vehicles at their disposal. Were those stacks of boxes full of ammunition?

Approaching any of those bridges would be a bad idea.

Kamijou looked down into the vehicle which had become an oddly warm and sweet girl zone.

“Could we drive right by them in this vehicle like we did before?”

“That may have looked simple to an ignorant fool, but that was a risky gamble. And at an official checkpoint, they will not even let their own people through without an ID check for the vehicle and its occupants. Try it there and we will be exposed and forced to fight. …Which will lead the Bridge Builders Cabal and Kingsford right to us.”

Anna was right. If they could drive right through, they wouldn’t have had such a hard time last night either.

“If they’re watching all the bridges…oh, I know. Could we create a floating bridge or something?”

“With some wooden boxes and ropes we find lying around? I do appreciate the attempt to think for yourself, but anything sturdy enough to allow a 20tn vehicle across would be extremely conspicuous, fool.”

Aradia seemed unusually happy given he was letting the cold air in through the open hatch.

“Ugh, I can’t resist any longer. Move aside so I can get some fresh air too.”

“Wait, Aradia, there’s no room!”

With two of them, the small hatch was cramped indeed. There was only one ladder to stand on, so it was a lot like having two people crammed onto the same side of a kotatsu. What was she, a kind but weirdly careless big sister?

They were practically in each other’s arms while Aradia took a deep breathe of the chilly air.

But…

“What are you looking at, Aradia?”

“The park workers. They do us a great service by giving witches a positive image of magic and dreams, so I need to make sure they’ll be alright.”

''But you don’t care about Anti-Skill?'' wondered Kamijou, but did that mean he was too distracted by their surroundings? When he thought about it, if a normal person came to the amusement park, they wouldn’t be here to see the armed enemy force.

“For me, people watching is more than just a hobby.”

“?”

Kamijou looked puzzled, so Aradia changed the subject to the main topic at hand.

“Couldn’t we abandon this vehicle, cross the river on our own, and steal a different military vehicle on the opposite bank? This 8-wheeled thing can be remotely controlled to an extent, can’t it? We can send it into one of those dangerous bridge checkpoints as a diversion.”

“That can be our last resort,” said Anna. “I want to avoid stealing another vehicle if possible to reduce the odds of them noticing I hacked the datalink. Both because it robs us of transportation and because I don’t want to give them even the slightest hint that our goal is data related – that is, accessing the magic database in District 15.”

Kamijou felt they should also spend some time addressing the fact that crossing the river without a bridge during the middle of winter meant jumping into water that was near freezing and giving off a white steam. And wasn’t this river more than 50m across? The Transcendents might be fine going for a celebratory New Year’s swim since they were walking around in what might as well have been swimsuits, but an ordinary high school boy like Kamijou would freeze and be swept away before he made it across.

Anna kicked the ladder with her small foot as a warning, so the other two ducked back down and shut the hatch.

Kamijou heard the rhythmic sound of a Six Wings helicopter passing by overhead.

“We need to think up a way to safely cross the river.”

“I already told you it’s a canal. Get it right or I’ll drag you around town with a nose hook, fool.”

The other two tilted their heads with “what’s a nose hook?” written on their faces and Anna cleared her throat for some reason.

The girl(?) had stepped on the gas a little too hard, so she stammered a bit before continuing.

“But Academy City aren’t the only ones we have to worry about. Let’s just hope Mut Thebes and Kingsford are polite enough to wait for us to find a solution.”

===Part 5===

===Part 6===

===Part 7===

===Part 8===

===Between the Lines 3===

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Chapter4

2023-02-11T15:47:00Z

Entei08: typo

==Chapter 4: Hear the Name of Thy Ruin, World – Call_“XXXXX”.==

===Part 1===

Kamijou felt the entire world raise a groaning cry in that moment.

===Part 2===

The gloomy young butler known as H. T. Trismegistus pushed his cane sword up with a thumb and attacked.

They had more than 10m between them, but it didn’t matter. The boy only saw it as something like a tremendous explosion.

A silver explosive blast formed a sharp, straight line.

That wasn’t possible when swinging an ordinary blade, so it had to be some kind of twisted magic.

“!!!???”

Kamijou felt a tension strike him on the cheek. A moment later, the air burst, blasting him in the right eardrum. He couldn’t even tell if that was a sound or a rapid pressure distortion.

But he had dodged it.

Kamijou Touma had just barely dodged it.

At the last second, he had concluded Imagine Breaker and its ability to negate all supernatural powers wouldn’t be enough. A memory he shouldn’t still have throbbed in the back of his mind. Had something happened long ago that gave him a powerful fear of ''iaijutsu and other sword-drawing techniques''?

He could hear something.

Despite the vibration of his aching eardrum, some distorted common tones reached him from head on.

He knew he couldn’t afford to miss this.

“''No more holding back. Risk 4: Releasing the numberless seal – leaving human territory. Rapidly renewing myself using a trio of great beings.''”

“…”

Kamijou gasped, forgetting even to frown.

It wasn’t exactly the same, but he recognized those words. When Witch Goddess Aradia was pushed to the limit in Shibuya on the 31st, she had attempted to draw on something.

Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker had shattered it that time before it was complete.

But not this time.

“My right hand contains Zeus. My left hand contains Indra.”

''From the very first move, Transcendent H. T. Trismegistus was taking this to the level of tearing down half of the world supported by science and magic!?

“Thus I am renewed. ''Z. I. Trismegistus'' conversion complete.”

“Really!?”

“Think about it.”

The young butler silently pushed his thumb up against the head of the cane that hid a blade.

A few millimeters of the deadly glint emerged once more.

“Common sense says I have no reason to hold back. If an enemy is being a nuisance, you should kill them right away, don’t you think?”

“…”

“The drowning man grasps at straw. An excellent saying. The proverbial man is earnest about survival and, no matter how pathetic he might appear, he is not causing anyone else any trouble. …But with a plank of Carneades, the drowning man must snuff out the life of another in the fight over the plank floating in the ocean.”

That was probably what led him down this path. Or a small glimpse of it.

Hadn’t he said that, no matter how logically you explain your academic theories, there is nothing you can do when people brush them aside based on emotion?

But using that reasoning to ban people from having emotions wasn’t going to create an ideal world.

“Have you heard that people once believed madness was caused by a stone of folly inside the head and victims actually had their heads cut open in a serious attempt at medical treatment? How about the baseless legend that all medieval castles have cruel dungeons or long, hidden escape routes? This is not unique to any one era. Superstitions always find their way into the world of academia and they are extremely hard to extricate once they have taken root. They cause so much harm to the human world. So someone must prevent these farces from altering common sense. And the distortions that my Alice would bring to the world are the greatest such example. Someone must put a stop to it.”

This probably wasn’t about Carneades. If he simply hated that story about a plank, he wouldn’t be trying to solve this by killing Kamijou. Trismegistus was a throwaway penname shared by academics in an older age. So who was this guy?

Kamijou stepped on a frozen puddle.

He didn’t have time to prepare for the impact.

They had more than 10m between them, but since Aradia had been cut down in front of him, he could tell the length of the cane sword and the range of the actual attack did not match.

From there, Kamijou Touma recalled something else.

He had to set aside the intense fear of death trying to numb the back of his mind and the uncontrollable racing of his heart. He couldn’t forget what really mattered. What did he need to focus on most here?

Transcendent Aradia.

First and foremost, he needed to prevent any further attacks on her while she lay motionless on the ground.

It was distorted.

To Kamijou, the deadly slash flying straight toward him looked a lot like an exploding firework.

The roar of bursting air arrived after a short delay. The explosive sound crashed into his right eardrum as he just barely dodged to the side. The green grass was torn through and a zigzagging line of destruction sent dark soil soaring into the sky.

This time, he had done it with his own willpower.

Time had seemed to stretch out infinitely, but it soon returned to normal.

The rose hedge behind him was torn through.

(Damn, I can’t let this scare me so much. Aradia’s in trouble if I don’t move in and negate this with Imagine Breaker!!)

“Tch!!”

“I feel like clicking my tongue as well. I clearly have a long way to go as a Transcendent if I fail to kill my target with the first attack, even if outdoor battles do add in many complicated environmental factors. I cannot look my Alice in the eye after this.”

More small explosions followed. And some shattering glass sounds. The garden’s streetlights and bug zappers were scattering sparks, but Kamijou knew he was dead the instant he looked toward them.

He didn’t have time to stand around.

He kept his momentum going as he charged toward the small woods in the garden. They were only decorative and would not even function as a windbreak, but this was still better than out on the open grass.

Kamijou ducked down after just barely surviving, but he was also smiling.

(H. T. Trismegistus is focused on me, which means he won’t attack Aradia again.)

Some words were already escaping the young butler’s mouth.

“Shall I call Alice?”

Kamijou heard the young butler’s footsteps from beyond the thicket. He also heard the rubbing of metal hinges, so the man was presumably opening a storage case and pulling out a notebook or pocket watch or something.

He was confident.

But that made Kamijou smile even more. ''What luck.'' Even Mr. Misfortune himself couldn’t help but think that.

H. T.? Or was it Z. I. now? Whatever it was, Trismegistus was pursuing Kamijou. Luring him away from collapsed and unmoving Aradia was the right thing to do here. What was this if not a silver lining to his predicament?

“There is no common sense at all in your attempt here, but I suppose it is the only option that could possibly allow you to defeat me. But either way, I will have this dealt with before Alice arrives.

Common sense.

Kamijou hadn’t heard the details, but was that the starting point for this Transcendent calling himself Z. I. Trismegistus? It was possible he had seen the moment when a major ''disturbance'' in that concept had led to a vast tragedy.

Just like Witch Goddess Aradia had roared after witnessing the persecution of so many witches.

Just like the Bologna Succubus’s soul had been burned by the false accusations her name pointed to.

Z. I. Trismegistus was the same.

“…”

Was it Zeus and Indra?

But Kamijou didn’t have Index with him. And he had thrown 15cm Othinus to go seek help. On his own, Kamijou was only a high school boy, so he didn’t know what these magical words meant. Even though he knew they had to contain the key to a miraculous upset here.

He heard a metallic sound at his feet.

His throat went dry. He had stepped on the stainless steel cover over a drainage ditch.

He sensed his impending death.

“''There you are.''”

“''!!!???''”

The instant after he rolled to the side, a long-range slash lashed out. In fact, it circled around the large tree he had been leaning against and sliced right through the stainless steel cover, sending sparks flying.

(That didn’t even move in a straight line!? This is bad. I can’t even imagine what kind of path it can take!!)

The young butler’s voice came from somewhere in the windy artificial woods.

“Hm, so I missed. Then I should visually confirm your location first instead of relying solely on intuition. I do not want to destroy the beautiful garden I created for Alice.”

(Does that mean he wasn’t using any kind of clairvoyance or precog? No, wait. He’s a Transcendent. He might just be trying to trick me into lowering my guard that way!!)

Hiding behind the trees was relatively useless if the slashes could move around obstacles. But running out into the open garden would be suicide. So…

(I need to get inside the consulate!!)

He tackled the back entrance opening out into the woods and tumbled inside. If he had knocked or even grabbed the knob, a slash from behind probably could have sliced horizontally through him along with the door and the stone wall.

But he had survived. He got back up and ran down the long hallway.

(I don’t like the idea of relying on this.)

Kamijou gulped and pulled out his old folk’s smartphone while still crouched low.

He used the device to connect to R&C Occultics’s official website.

And to the magic database that had been leaked to the public.

If you typed in a term and ran a search, it would pull up a list of webpages, especially ones selling related products, but when Kamijou tapped the link now, he only got a simple “this service has been shut down” message. He realized he should have expected that after he destroyed the giant IT company during the incident in Los Angeles.

But a few external sites apparently still had cached versions of the website. That would only contain fragments of the vast database, but it was better than nothing.

Staying on the 1st floor too long could get him killed by a horizontal attack since that slash’s range was unknown, so Kamijou made his way to the nearest stairway before the young butler made an appearance.

(Zeus at least sounds vaguely familiar. He’s some kind of god, right?)

He ran a search and found Zeus was a Greek god.

He was the final child of Cronus and Rhea. He was the ruler of heaven and symbolized by the blessing of the rain. On the other hand, he was also known for the lightning bolt he held in his hand which obliterated all of the gods’ enemies and meted out divine punishment.

(A lightning bolt?)

He tapped another link in the explanation to delve deeper, but none of it was very clear. He could tell Zeus had an ultimate weapon symbolized by lightning, but nothing said whether it was a spear, a bow, a sling, or a magic bullet. One sculpture of Zeus showed him holding something rodlike, but that was only meant to be the lightning itself and other art depicted various designs for his weapon.

A formless weapon.

Bright light, an explosive sword drawing, streetlights and bug zappers destroyed just because they were nearby…

“!?”

Outside the window, a slash suddenly flew Kamijou’s way.

If he had left the stairs and entered the 2nd floor hallway lined with windows, that would have hit him. He fell on his rear and the horizontal line sliced through the walls just above his head. Was the attack aimed solely on a vague figure visible through the window? But the windows remained shut and the glass intact.

How ''disturbing'' that was belatedly crawled up Kamijou’s back.

(How does that work!? Is it not just the blade extending out through space!?)

Z. I. Trismegistus must have been able to see him from outside, so he needed to move elsewhere. He quickly turned around and fled further up the stairs.

(Dammit, I can’t do that. If I hide on the 3rd floor, I’m putting the Bologna Succubus at risk!!)

He turned around again.

Surrounding the consulate’s White House-style mansion were several walls and towers straight out of a fairy tale castle. If he wanted to keep anyone else from getting hurt, he had to avoid the main structure and escape into one of the towers.

Indra.

When he typed that other foreign term into his old folk’s smartphone, he found that was a god from the Hindu religion spread across the Indian region. That felt like it had nothing to do with Zeus, but apparently there was a cultural connection. For example, the names of the Indian god Dyaus, the Greek god Zeus, and the Roman god Jupiter all came from the same name. And Indra used lightning too. But Kamijou doubted the pair had been chosen for that alone.

Most likely, there was some other rule at play. Something that would be obvious if he could only look it up in some kind of magic or occult ''dictionary''.

(Do Zeus and Indra have something in common?)

The site said the form of the Hindu lightning weapon was just as unclear. For example, Indra’s weapon was known as the Vajra. When the stories arrived in China and Japan, the Vajra was said to be shaped like a five-pronged club or a pestle with a blade on the ends. But those were only exorcism weapons designed by Indian artists and priests because “lightning is difficult to explain without giving it some kind of shape”.

Both traditions incorporated the same name.

Both had weapons symbolizing formless lightning.

Weapons that could later be given form by someone else – even mere humans.

(Is that it!?)

Kamijou ran up a tower’s spiral stairs and exited through the skylight leading to the roof. At first glance, the height made this a dead end, but there were still a few paths he could take, like the tall castle walls or the roofs of the elevated passageways. And useful items could be found anywhere.

For example…

“A solar power cable!!”

Z. I. Trismegistus could freely change his name and his attacks were undeniably frightening. Both for their simple power and range, but also because the slashes could change direction and circle around cover. They moved too quickly to react to, so they would be deadly when combined with iaijutsu, which could be so hard to predict.

But those attacks had to follow some kind of rules.

(That stainless steel ditch cover in the artificial woods.)

What connected the Greek Zeus and the Hindu Indra?

(I’m pretty sure the window frames on the 2nd floor were metal too. That means his sword strikes follow paths of electrical conduction!!)

“And if his weapon is lightning, I should be able to redirect it!!”

“Sigh.”

The young butler’s voice softly but bluntly interrupted him.

“''This is not Zeus.'' Common sense should have told you that right away.”

How – and when – had he arrived on the tower’s roof?

Something flashed. The person using the Trismegistus name had flicked up a clear plastic cocktail pin with his thumb.

Then the cane sword was released from its scabbard and light surged out.

Kamijou held his right hand out, but it wasn’t enough. He definitely felt something being negated, but when the blade’s light hit the cocktail pin overhead, the light scattered as if from a disco ball.

That light carried the sword strike.

This didn’t follow the rules of electricity at all.

The victim didn’t even have time to feel a chill on his spine. More than eight glowing slashes rushed toward his neck from different directions.

His death was a silent one.

His vision spun around.

It wasn’t Zeus’s lightning bolt or Indra’s Vajra.

And he was punished for his wrong answer.

After failing to find the key to a miracle, the boy could only look back up at his own headless body, still standing there.

(Aradi-)

===Part 3===

Kamijou’s vision restarted.

===Part 4===

The best Kamijou could describe the feeling was having the film of his memories forcibly linked together. And he only knew one person capable of something so absurd. She was so convenient she could eliminate the very tragedy of death, but she would utterly destroy your world the instant you started to ''assume you would receive her help''. This monster – this Transcendent – had complete control over an artificial miracle.

“Good…” he groaned.

His right shoulder felt funny. Had she severed that arm again?

He couldn’t even get up, so he held his throat and looked up at the woman in a large hat and a maternity dress who stood next to him like shimmering heat or a ghost.

“Good, Old Mary?”

“Do not worry.”

Good, Old Mary did not assume she would give her help either.

And she knew what that puny boy most wanted to hear.

She remained entirely motionless even in the biting wind.

“Aradia is safe. Since you managed to distract H. T.? Z. I.? ABC? Random Letters Trismegistus, mama could complete the process in peace.”

That was all it took.

Kamijou Touma felt so much relief he nearly let go of the consciousness he had reclaimed.

But he couldn’t do that.

Z. I. Trismegistus – that monster who was not Zeus and did not wield a lightning bolt – was still out there. Leaving him be would give him a chance to use his cane sword against Aradia again.

So Kamijou had to do something.

Even if nothing he had done had worked so far!!

“Mama said not to worry.”

Kamijou’s anxiety motivated him to try and force himself up on the tower roof, but Good, Old Mary bluntly interrupted.

“You have met mama’s conditions for salvation. By managing that, you and Aradia’s gamble paid off. So stay here and accept your victory prize. Mama will defeat him. You are not needed.”

“Really? First Aradia and now Kamijou Touma? You would give your miracles out to just anyone, wouldn’t you? I can’t let Alice see this.”

On a different roof, the young butler gently returned the sword to its scabbard and tapped his finger against the hilt like he was timing something.

The air between the two Transcendents seemed to electrify.

“Good, Old Mary. Your conditions are too broad and lax. Do not forget that we are the Transcendents who accompany Alice. Did you think you could avoid the ‘monster’ label if you played at being a doctor?”

“Have you gone so senile you cannot tell the difference between a proud doctor who pours all of their efforts into helping any suffering people they come across and mama who blurs the line between life and death for her own purposes?”

Her sigh sounded exasperated.

Z. I. Trismegistus’s fingers toyed with his cane sword.

“''Common sense says not everyone deserves these grand miracles.''”

“''Who says miracles only belong to a chosen privileged class, you fuck.''”

[[Image:GT_Index_v07_BW5.png|thumb]]

These were their starting points.

The very cores of these Transcendents clashed head on.

A moment later, something shining exploded from the distant young butler’s cane sword, but it was clearly thrown off course. That wasn’t lightning or light. It was pressurized water. The deadly water jet targeted Kamijou’s neck while he was unable to get up, but its path changed when it hit something else and sliced diagonally through a different tower.

A huge explosion of orange sparks occurred a moment later.

The leaves floating in the air were all sliced through when the splashing droplets hit them.

If Kamijou had tried to block that with Imagine Breaker, the main water jet would have exploded, drenching him. And if each drop could slice through solid objects, his entire body would have been shredded.

Kamijou couldn’t tell what Good, Old Mary had done.

He only saw her slender fingers occasionally toy with the camping kitchen tools hanging from her belt ''which looked vaguely weaponlike'': the tea kettle, the gas burner, the multitool, the sandwich toaster, etc.

“Random Letters.”

“Please state my identity accurately. Alice is going to start calling me that.”

“That name is too long. But you have nothing to worry about. Mama will resurrect you even if you die. However, mama must punish you, so you will be resurrected into a state with all your bones removed and your organs crushed. It is time you crawled this earth like a worm in a state of constant, undying pain, Transcendent. Maybe then you will understand what it feels like for those who can only look up from below.”

“…”

“Do you understand the consequences if you lose? Then do take this seriously. Life is such a wonderful thing, so make sure to thank mama, Random Letters.”

“I don’t even care if you get it wrong, at least try to say my name right!!”

Good, Old Mary was still toying with the kitchen tools in her hands.

She did not actually use any of them or try to hit him with any of them.

Yet far below, a massive fissure formed in the ground and orange lava erupted sharply upwards. It looked like a disturbing glowing serpent. The young butler jumped up to avoid it, but then a mass larger than a dump track crashed into him from the side. The massive blunt object might as well have been one of the wrecking balls used by cranes to demolish buildings, but it was actually a hunk of ice weighing more than 30 tons.

A deadly attack split the ice into three pieces.

Trismegistus didn’t even wait to reach the ground. He landed on one piece of ice and continued slicing through the bed and desk that crashed through a window and the storm of pebbles torn from the white wall, ''before solidifying it all.'' What even was that? Clear crystals jutted from where he sliced through the objects, linking together Good, Old Mary’s projectiles, and pinning them in place in midair.

Based on what Kamijou had seen, those sword strikes came in more than one variety.

Lightning.

Light.

Water.

Crystal.

How did it have so much variety? The young butler himself had said ''it wasn’t Zeus'', but even knowing that, Kamijou couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Aradia and the Bologna Succubus’s spells were supposedly powerful enough to fight the entire magic side on their own. Same for Good, Old Mary’s resurrection.

Was Trismegistus the same?

He could infuse his sharp blade into any phenomenon, so if he wasn’t afraid of cutting himself, could he fill this entire universe with ''miniscule'' death and destruction?

“Do not worry. Mama has a scorching hotplate double slap with that gloomy butler’s name on it.”

“I’m thankful that you’re helping me, but how am I even supposed to respond to something like that!?”

Kamijou trembled and shouted back at her, but the Transcendent didn’t seem to care.

As if this wasn’t enough to surprise Good, Old Mary.

“Trismegistus. Who is currently in your right hand? And who do you have serving within your left hand? Did you attack Aradia before your top priority target because she uses a similar spell and you were afraid she would see through it?”

''Flash.

''Boooooooooom!!!

This time, it wasn’t a long range slash. Was it lightning? With cane sword in hand, Trismegistus himself dropped sharply down like a flash of light. But he was forcibly stopped right in front of Good, Old Mary who stood atop the tower with her large hat swaying.

There was an invisible wall there.

The one Transcendent revealed the other’s secrets from such close range.

“Mama knows your trick. You are not borrowing a portion of a god’s power and you are not making yourself identical to a god to wield their power. You place one god in your right hand and another in your left. Including you, that creates a large triangle that implants the world with ''a false definition'' saying you yourself are a god too. That is your method of leaving human territory. So instead of borrowing an existing god’s name, you create a brand new god and make yourself that god. You use the correspondences of the Liber 777 to accomplish this. Thus, you are not Zeus or Indra and you were not Hermes or Thoth. In the end, you never could love anyone other than yourself.”

“Tch!! “My right hand contains Odin. My left hand contains-”

“Mercury? Or maybe Anubis or Loki?”

“!?”

“Weren’t you listening? Mama knows your trick. Anyone who understands Crowley’s correspondence table can predict your next move. And that means your sword is no longer a threat. You cannot freely transform your blade into whatever you want. It operates on a predictable pattern.”

Aradia had mentioned the triple goddess in Shibuya.

Kamijou still didn’t know what that meant, but Trismegistus was another Transcendent whose power was based on the number 3.

“I too am a Transcendent who serves Alice. I know you do not have as much an advantage as you claim to.”

The young butler’s trick had been revealed, but he still smiled and pressed his sword against the invisible barrier.

“Your surefire plan has already failed from the moment I got this close. Not too surprising really since you are no more than the kitchen manager. Food is meant to be carried out to the guests; you do not want them entering your territory.”

A slight cut ran down Good, Old Mary’s cheek visible below the brim of her hat. A few red drops formed and dripped down to color her face.

The young butler could apparently ''infuse'' his sword strikes into a variety of ordinary phenomena like light and water. So could he apply a cutting edge to the an electric ''field'' and not just to a lightning strike?

“Good-”

Kamijou gasped just before an explosion burst out.

Trismegistus was sent spinning away. He forcibly applied the brakes by stabbing his cane sword into the flower garden on the roof of a midair passageway connecting the sharp tower to the large mansion. A storage case similar to a tackle box spilled from his cloak and he couldn’t return it to its pocket. He tilted to the side with his right half covered in blood, but he was definitely smiling.

He was focused on Good, Old Mary’s right hand back on the tower.

She held an ordinary sandwich toaster like it was weapon.

“Ha ha ha!! I’ve peeled back another layer, Good, Old Mary! How many more until I break through that calm façade? You might be the kitchen master who can create a microcosm contained to a glass container, but not even the greatest chef can cook without her tools. I will keep peeling back those layers. And with each tool I take from you, the more powerless you will be!!!”

The previous rules no longer applied.

Good, Old Mary took a step forward.

“''Steam.''”

The word came after the fact.

Her tall body suddenly disappeared.

It wasn’t a simple issue of speed. Unlike with Saints such as Kanzaki or Acqua, there was no roar or blast of wind as she tore through the air. Maybe this was the light physically bending and maybe she had constructed some kind of trick that placed her in a preexisting blind spot found in human vision, but she must have surrounded herself in something that prevented anyone else from seeing her.

(You’re kidding, right?)

Kamijou recalled how Good, Old Mary had appeared out of nowhere when called back Shibuya on the 31st. What if she hadn’t teleported from afar and had already been standing in that scramble crossing?

By the time the powerless boy realized a blade had been against his throat at the end of the previous year, Good, Old Mary had approached Trismegistus.

She was already making her next move.

“!?”

Transcendent clashed with Transcendent.

They reduced the distance between them to zero, several explosions erupted, and each time, a tea kettle or gas burner dropped to the ground far below.

It looked a lot like Good, Old Mary was overwhelming her opponent while appearing from and vanishing into the background. With each explosion, Trismegistus took a powerful blow and the rusty scent in the air grew stronger. The flurry of attacks was too great to block with a cane sword alone.

But who was really making progress here? Hadn’t Trismegistus said his goal was to take away all of her tools?

Kamijou Touma was concerned, but his imagination proved insufficient.

“Mama is going to allow herself a risk of 4. Releasing the singular seal – leaving human territory,” said Good, Old Mary. “Show yourself, Tribikos – the tool mama used to contain a complete universe.”

Kamijou felt some shaking.

He thought it was an earthquake, but apparently not.

“…”

He looked up toward the sky without thinking, but in this case, the foolish pointy-haired boy hadn’t been hopelessly left behind.

Trismegistus did it too.

He reacted just like Kamijou even as he sneered despite his battered body. He silently looked overhead. Yes, even though ''they were at the top of a tower or in a rooftop flower garden.''

Three distorted legs – each one taller than the average transmission tower – supported a squashed sphere resembling a domed baseball stadium. Was it supposed to resemble chemistry equipment like beakers and flasks? Or was it supposed to resemble a living, breathing creature? Kamijou wasn’t sure, but the very core of his body was ruled by a dreadful shaking. Even at the top of a tower, the sky overhead was entirely blotted out.

It was as hard as thick porcelain.

But it was also clearly pulsating from the inside.

What did it contain? A collection of energy as massive as the sun or even the big bang? An all-consuming black hole? Good, Old Mary had called it a universe. Was that a metaphor, or was it literally true? Looking up at it, Kamijou could no longer tell what was a joke and what wasn’t.

“The red stone, a panacea that provides immortality, pure control over the five elements, rearranging the universe.”

Good, Old Mary accepted what she had summoned like it was nothing. She did not even glance up at it.

That Transcendent calmly viewed her enemy from below the brim of her hat.

Calmly but strongly.

“But a creator must do more than complete their research. They cannot make any progress without first inventing the necessary tools. Mama is Good, Old Mary. The Bain-marie insulated pot, the Kerotakis reflux device, and the Tribikos distiller are all the basic tools needed to create a universe, so do not underestimate the one who rules ''the very foundation'' of those tools, long-named one.”

The giant mass did not attack.

She was going to use the brand new death and destruction contained within.

How far did it go? This was something from a brand new category than all the types of magic and elements Kamijou had seen before. What if it pushed even a bit past the limits of what the 103,001 grimoires covered? Wouldn’t this be magic that ''not even Grimoire Library Index could defend against''?

Did this simply make Good, Old Mary frightening, or was the real threat Trismegistus for requiring something so powerful to deliver the finishing blow?

“Ha…ha ha ha. Good, Old Mary, you are rebelling against Alice at this point.”

“You are a Transcendent, making you more powerful than the average person, but mama heard what you childishly said to this high school boy, knowing he is forced to walk a path of greater-than-average misfortune because he lives in this city and is unfairly shunned by god’s miracles. You said common sense says you have no reason to hold back and, if an enemy is being a nuisance, you should kill them right away.”

“There, that’s the final layer. Once I survive this, you are done forrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!”

“Mama sends those words right back at you. Since you wield your own miracles to trample on the less fortunate, you do not meet mama’s conditions. Thus, she will not hold back. So bring it on, you depressing butler. Mama will kill you quickly like the worm you are.”

There was a sharp clash of metal. Trismegistus had remade himself into a brand new being by swapping out the names of the gods wielded by his hands and he rushed toward Good, Old Mary, slicing through even the wind with his cane sword. Whatever he planned on infusing his sword strike into, he pushed the sword up from its scabbard with his thumb and tons of rusty sewing needles spilled from the blade.

Good, Old Mary had told him to come to her, so she was unfazed. A massive piece of lab equipment covered the sky overhead and she only needed to release what it contained. All she did was pull back her index finger while standing in the flower garden.

This time, they both attacked in a straight line.

The two Transcendents clashed after tearing through the seals which kept them human.

And…

===Part 5===

Light flashed.

A wet explosion rang out.

===Part 6===

“…”

It took Kamijou Touma a moment to realize nearly all sound had vanished.

Was that short rhythm he heard his own shallow breathing?

The destruction was so bad he just about forgot he was on the roof of a tower on the consulate grounds. The ground was torn up, orange lava spewed out, and a few of the other towers had collapsed. It looked like the end of the world. He was all the way at the top of a tower, but he felt dark soil on his head.

His entire body was stiff and he had trouble simply moving his head. So he instead moved just his eyes while slumped on the roof.

The wind blew and dust scattered through the air.

He saw a silhouette through that dust cloud. It was lying on an elevated passageway that looked ready to collapse at any moment. Kamijou gasped when he noticed how dark the silhouette was, but he could make out some other features too. It wasn’t feminine. It only looked dark because of the old-fashioned tailcoat and cloak it wore. It looked a lot like a crushed cicada. A tiered storage case similar to a tackle box sat partially open and crushed.

That was Trismegistus.

Kamijou couldn’t say whether he was H T, Z I, O M, or whatever other combination at the moment.

He wasn’t moving anymore.

But Kamijou Touma remained frozen. He couldn’t relax yet. Of course he couldn’t. Not when he could see another silhouette collapsed a short distance away from the motionless young butler.

That one was Good, Old Mary.

The giant Tribikos’s three legs had shattered, its smooth squashed sphere was split in two, and its pieces leaned against the consulate.

But this wasn’t a case of mutual destruction. If the threat was gone, Kamijou’s paralysis would have gone with it. He would have found some way to run to Good, Old Mary and see if she needed medical care. And if she was fine, he would have tried to restrain Trismegistus.

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t bring himself to move while on the top of the tower. The deadly paralysis showed no sign of going away.

Because something else had happened here.

This ''was not'' two Transcendents attacking and defeating each other simultaneously.

“Court, court, court.”

Far below, a small silhouette walked along the ground. And the girl was saying something.

Her words formed a rhythm like she was humming an improvised song.

Hers was the last voice Kamijou had wanted to hear right now.

“The girl’s court is in session.”

This was Alice Anotherbible, the true tyrant who had obliterated those ''ordinary'' Transcendents in the blink of an eye.

With a roar, the tower and the rooftop flower garden collapsed. Kamijou could tell grabbing onto something wasn’t going to be enough here, so he steeled himself and aimed for a body of water that had survived the devastation. He couldn’t re-aim after being thrown into the air. So instead, he leaped from the crumbling tower himself to reach a garden pool that was even more bent than a gourd.

“Gahh!?”

He landed in the water, but he still ended up bloody. The extreme chill seemed to slice through his skin. But he had made the right choice. He couldn’t let the pain or chill stop him now. He didn’t have time to safely run down the spiral staircase.

Because Good, Old Mary and Trismegistus were in danger if he didn’t reach them immediately.

What would happen to them if Alice reached them while they were helpless?

(Ugh. Not to mention…)

He realized he should have seen this coming.

Trismegistus had been using his cane sword to produce supernatural blades ''not found in any mythology'' and Good, Old Mary had produced a piece of lab equipment so massive it covered the sky. With that going on, there was no way the young master of the consulate would fail to notice.

The idea of “ordinary Transcendents” was absurd, but she was so overwhelmingly unusual that he felt the need to apply that “ordinary” qualifier to Trismegistus and Good, Old Mary. She was so extraordinary that even other Transcendents feared her.

(It’s not use.)

Kamijou forgot to even breathe.

He was entranced.

(Mut Thebes is an execution expert and has that “drink me” item capable of killing Transcendents, but not even she can defeat Alice. Even thinking about fighting her is the wrong move!!)

Alice’s cute lips had uttered the words “court is in session”.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was a global best seller, but Kamijou was ashamed to admit he didn’t know that much about it. He knew there was a tea party with a hatter and a march hare, he knew there was a cricket game at the castle with the queen of hearts, and he thought there might be a court scene too. Was that related to the hysterical queen who yelled “off with their head” at the drop of a hat?

That would mean this trial meant death for the accused.

The odds of a guilty verdict and immediate death were greater than 99.9% and any other result had such slim odds it deserved to be called a miracle. On the other hand, there was no possibility at all of harming Alice herself. Not even a 0.1% chance.

It was that unilateral of a massacre.

“A-Alice?”

“Yes, teacher?”

“That’s enough. This is already over. So you need to calm down and-”

“''No.''”

A dull popping sound followed.

But it was wetter than an explosive going off.

The young girl hadn’t even directed her small palm in that direction. She hadn’t even glanced that way.

But Trismegistus was still launched from the ground. His already injured body twisted further in midair, crashed helplessly back to the ground, and kept rolling.

“Alice!!!”

Was he alright? Not the physical impact or pressure. Was he alright on the level of the fundamental definition of a Transcendent!?

And it didn’t end there.

Alice’s shadow pulsated at her feet. She wanted another sacrifice.

She wanted the other Transcendent lying motionless on the ground.

“The Trismegistus stuff is over!! Good, Old Mary didn’t do anything! In fact, she saved my life! So-!!”

“''No.''”

Kamijou moved between them.

Alice’s usual smile was gone. She kept the blank expression of a noh mask as she silently tilted her head.

That was far more terrifying than if her face was red with fury.

She opened her eyes unnaturally wide and spoke without blinking.

“Teacher. There is blood on the ground. It smells like you.”

“…”

“Good, Old Mary was too slow. She did not risk her life to protect you. She failed to see the threat coming and then patched things up afterwards. That ''isn’t good enough.'' She neglected her duties. The girl told everyone in this secret base – consulate? – that you are an invited guest and they were not to harm you. But these two failed to keep the most basic of promises: ''don’t kill people''.”

More pulsating.

But this time it came from inside Alice’s children’s book dress.

She could not restrain her power anymore. Kamijou clenched his teeth knowing what lay at the foundation of it all.

Alice was frustrated.

She was frustrated that someone she cared for had come to harm. She was frustrated that the Transcendents who lived with her had done it. And she was frustrated that she had failed to stop them and save his life.

I’ve come to play, teacher.

What if Alice’s first words to him had really and truly been ''the whole story'' for her?

The thought made him grimace.

This wasn’t good.

It went beyond Trismegistus and Good, Old Mary. Based on Alice’s current rules, Shibuya on the 31st was a problem too.

Aradia had killed him and the Bologna Succubus had failed to prevent it.

This one seam threatened to tear down everything around her.

Hence the tyrant title.

That immature ruler had tremendous power but could not protect the world because she was too easily manipulated by her emotions.

“You can’t, Alice,” said Kamijou without thinking.

She was acting entirely on a child’s logic, so he maybe could have chosen to simply hear her out instead of rejecting what she was feeling. But he still made his move since it looked like the tiny tyrant was ready to explode at any moment.

And losing everything here would be far too painful.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and Trismegistus. If he was being honest, none of the Transcendents had been perfect. He couldn’t fully accept the inhuman way they each set their own conditions for saving people.

But they still cared deeply for the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Trismegistus had been utterly terrifying, but even he had only wanted to eliminate Kamijou so he could protect Alice. He had been willing to bloody his hands and take Kamijou’s life because he cared about the home he had found in the Bridge Builders Cabal more than anything.

Maybe he had gone about it the wrong way. But now the man who had gone to so much misguided effort, and the woman who had tried so hard to stop him but just barely failed, had both been badly injured. There was no reason to punish them further.

The young tyrant needed to learn that forgiveness was another option.

“You can’t do it this way, Alice.”

“Are you going to fight the girl? To protect Good, Old Mary who is lying there close to death?”

But with her head still tilted, noh mask Alice immediately rejected her own question.

“No, teacher. The girl can tell from your eyes. You are also looking at Trismegistus. That means ''you’re talking about saving them both.''”

Good, Old Mary had saved his life, so it made sense with her.

But he had no reason to insist on saving the young butler known as Trismegistus. Even if he had done it for Alice, he had cruelly cut down Aradia and attempted to do the same to Kamijou.

But Kamijou didn’t even need to think about his response.

“So what if I am?”

“Why would you do that?”

“If I don’t have a reason, I’ll find one. At the very least, I don’t have it in me to abandon someone to die and then smile like nothing happened.”

He directed his right fist toward her.

There was a dull cracking sound, but not from his fist.

It came from Alice Anotherbible’s tilted head. The angle of the tilt had passed a certain threshold. Her thin neck continued making strange cracking noises, but no hint of pain was visible on her face.

She spoke from that abnormal angle and from the noh mask that seemed entirely devoid of life.

“You too, teacher?”

Something more frightening, and much more painful, than tears of blood spilled from her eyes.

“''You’re afraid of the girl and her power just like all the others? But the girl hasn’t said anything wrong. The girl hasn’t done anything wrong.''”

That was probably close to the very core of that young girl.

This was something Anna Sprengel’s whisperings had implanted in her and something she had ended up clinging to.

“I’m sorry…Alice.”

It was true Kamijou had kept his eyes on both Good, Old Mary and Trismegistus to ensure no stray shots would hit them. And Alice had seen right through him.

But did she realize that it wasn’t ''only'' those two.

They were confronting each other head on. They were clearly enemies. But it was an indisputable fact that Kamijou Touma had kept that young girl in the very center of his vision this entire time.

He would save Alice too.

If he didn’t have a reason to, he would find one.

He was making the choice that none of the Transcendents had dared make.

“The Bologna Succubus and Good, Old Mary told me about this too.”

“…Did they?”

Their eyes met.

He couldn’t look away now.

“They said I was the only person in the world who could hold an ordinary conversation with you and the only one who could get you to accept your mistakes if you did the wrong thing. If that’s true, then this is my job. Alice Anotherbible, it doesn’t matter if you hate me now or not. Don’t ever think that’s enough to stop Kamijou Touma!!!”

“Enough, teacher. ''Just shut up.'' You’re completely helpless once you get caught up in a few ''wonders''. That puny fist of yours would shatter if you tried to break through the wall you’re facing now, so don’t think the girl is going to start bawling just because you threaten her with it!!!”

Her picture book dress completely tore away, revealing soft skin and leather overflowing with immorality.

The psychedelic sight would destroy the souls of all who ignored their instincts and attempted to attack her. Alice Anotherbible’s fury had easily dealt with the entirety of Academy City’s dark side, but now it was manifesting in full to crush just one boy.

He realized this may have been the first time Alice had ever directed real hostility in his direction.

It scared him.

People trying to survive a bombing or shelling could apparently feel so much fear they bled from their heart. The pressure bearing down on Kamijou was reaching that level.

Nevertheless, the puny boy chose to fight back against this deadly barrage. He knew that, deep down, Tyrant Alice wasn’t looking for someone unnaturally kind who would bake her a birthday cake every single day. She wanted someone who would do this without hesitation.

He had to believe that.

''If he wasn’t sure what to do, he only needed to listen to his will.

He could not take a single step away. He was certain he stood in the position needed to save Alice.

And that had to be enough to give him the strength to fight against such great power!!!

===Part 7===

Alice Anotherbible.

Bits and pieces of her power had been seen in Academy City on December 29. There were the direct examples like the hedgehog balls and flamingo bat, there was the Executioner with unknown attack conditions, and even the Bridge Building that constructed bridges between the world’s logic and laws to distort the world as she saw fit. Seeing as she had created a reality where the dark side’s survivors all worked together to fight a powerful foe, her power had reached the point of forcibly creating impossible results.

Also, her body was immune to bacteria, bugs, curses, and all other forms of internal damage, both scientific and magical. As for external damage, she would always remain unscathed thanks to the hedgehogs and flamingo protecting her. Moreover, this didn’t come from a fear of shedding blood. She protected herself that way because if anything obstructed her actions, she might get angry and kill someone.

It was unknown if it was even possible to defeat her.

Kamijou couldn’t guess what punching her with Imagine Breaker would accomplish.

And with all that in mind…

(My top priority is that world-distorting power.)

Kamijou set his sights on that.

(I have to avoid ''being sucked into a fake happy ending where I forget all about fighting.'' But as long as I can avoid that, I can at least continue to fight back. That means-)

“''Gryphon, clean this up.''”

Everything blurred.

Kamijou’s vision grew distorted as he was tossed more than 20m backwards. Alice’s already small form looked so much smaller due to the greater distance.

Horrific snapping and cracking sounds came from inside his body. He belatedly realized he was basically being squeezed within a giant press.

Giant feathery wings spread wide before his eyes. That was definitely a sharp beak and talons holding him. Overall, it reminded him of a hawk or eagle, but that was no bird. When his eyes finally managed to focus again, he realized he was pinned down by a lithe body covered in feline muscles.

Hadn’t Alice mentioned a gryphon?

He estimated it was more than 7m long. The spread wings made it look nearly three times as large. A lion was 2.5m and a Siberian tiger could reach 3m, so how strong was this beast!?

(Damn, I’m not sure what a gryphon is supposed to be! And since this came from Alice, is it a specific one from that children’s book? I need Index’s knowledge here!!)

“Bh?”

''He hadn’t known about this.

''Kamijou hadn’t heard a thing about this trump card!

“Gahh!! Cough, cough, agh! Alice!!!”

Held between a giant beak and pressed roughly to the ground, “cornered” didn’t adequately describe Kamijou’s plight.

“Gryphon.”

Alice wasn’t even looking his way with her leather and soft skin exposed.

She only held out a hand and observed her nails.

“The girl is bored. Entertain her with the usual lobster dance.”

“!?”

Kamijou’s vision turned to flowing lines and gravity seemed to vanish.

It took him a few seconds to realize the giant monster was shaking its head side to side with him still in its beak. By then, he had already been slammed into the dark soil. He heard a disconcerting cracking sound deep inside him. He couldn’t have survived a second or third time, but he instead slipped from the beak, flew through the air, and tumbled along the ground. Thankfully, the beak wasn’t good at gripping. With a jaw with rows of teeth or fangs, he would have been pummeled until he didn’t even look human anymore.

Some kind of massive vortex approached him with rumbling sounds reminding him of artillery fire.

Was that the lobster dance?

That told him nothing! He couldn’t even predict what was flying his way! He was up against incredible power wielded in seemingly meaningless ways, so he had the feeling anything he tried to do to escape would backfire!!

He put off worrying about his inability to breathe. He instead rolled to the side to escape.

It didn’t help.

He felt something catch on his back and then the world around him lost shape again. By the time he realized, a birdlike talon had caught him, he slammed into the ground, tearing up the grass. He forgot all about breathing. He couldn’t resist in the slightest as the sharp break grabbed him again.

Kamijou couldn’t win. Or more accurately, ''he couldn’t even start to fight.'' He had badly misjudged this. After running around Academy City’s darkness with Alice on December 29, he had tricked himself into thinking he understood the girl.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, Trismegistus, and all the other Transcendents were each said to rival the entire magic side on their own, so did he really think what he had seen before was enough to terrify them?

How many more trump cards did Alice have?

In fact, this giant monster with a lion’s body and a bird of prey’s beak, wings, and talons – had she called it a gryphon? – had been tossed out so thoughtlessly he wondered if Alice Anotherbible even considered it to be a trump card. Could this be her idea of ''teasing him'' with her little finger instead of one-shotting him like she had the others?

“Teacher.”

Cold wasn’t the right word.

Alice’s words were empty, like she didn’t care at all if he lived or died, which tore into Kamijou’s heart.

“You don’t need to worry about that. There is no way you can escape the Gryphon.”

“Aghhh!?”

“Do not underestimate the girl’s Gryphon. He is an embodiment of destruction who insists everything is a boring illusion and strips all things of value.”

Alice made it sound like no concern of hers. The Gryphon may have been the one who got rid of any nuisances bothering her.

It appeared whenever Alice didn’t feel like playing and it swiftly cleaned up whatever was ruining her fun. No, it was more than that. That monster would also perform the aforementioned lobster dance to cheer up the small girl. It destroyed only the simplest of hurdles. Its job was to give her a change of pace when she was done playing with someone and wanted them removed in a hurry.

The Gryphon hadn’t made an appearance on December 29.

Because Alice hadn’t felt the need.

Did that mean, ''in Alice’s opinion anyway,'' the Gryphon was even more dangerous than Academy City’s entire dark side!?

(A-)

Still in its mouth, Kamijou reached out his hand.

Toward the girl in the unsuitable leather outfit who was trying to display no interest in him.

He couldn’t reach her.

He knew that.

But if he died here, what would happen to her?

(Al…ice.)

A dull crunch rang out.

The gruesome sound of crushed flesh and bone echoed across the area.

He had known this. He had known Imagine Breaker wasn’t enough to battle a Transcendent without anything else prepared. That was an undeniable fact when he had already been killed multiple times by Transcendents like Aradia and Trismegistus. And he doubted Good, Old Mary was going to conveniently get up and resurrect him right now.

If he died, it was all over.

That basic fact of life applied to everyone equally…but it did not bare its fangs against Kamijou Touma here.

He was not dead.

The crunch had not been the Gryphon mercilessly shutting its giant beak. The gruesome sound of crushed flesh and bone had contained another sound as well.

''An explosive blast.

The flesh and bone belonged to the Gryphon, not to Kamijou.

But this wasn’t just a sniper shot. The abnormal bird of prey was more than 7m long and it was blasted so hard from the side that it forcibly spat Kamijou from its beak. That couldn’t have been a simple 12.7mm anti-materiel rifle. It had to be something large enough to deserve the title of “cannon” rather than “gun”.

“Bwah!! Cough, cough. Ughh!?”

Kamijou rolled along the ground trying to get air in his lungs again, but all he found was a rusty flavor. He heard definite cracking sounds from inside his body. He may have broken a few ribs.

Alice looked away from her nails.

And she spoke in a dry, emotionless voice.

“Hm. An antique.”

===Part 8===

Identical clone girls were focused on their binoculars at a position about 1.5km from the Bridge Builders Cabal Consulate.

“The target was hit, reports Misaka #10777.”

“Hitting without an initial test firing is not easy, says Misaka #15000 to boost morale through self-praise. Even if it was a test shell without any explosive inside.”

“The hot combustion gas is constantly changing the metal barrel, repeats Misaka #18009 while preparing the next shell. Adjust the targeting grid up and right by 25 degrees for the 2nd shot.”

One of the Sisters held a giant hammer over her shoulder.

But it was not meant to break down a building wall or work in a mine.

It was used to drive in the metal spikes needed to secure an old weapon to the ground.

And unlike a department store or shopping mall during a good sale going on, the public museum was relatively quiet during the New Year’s holiday. This was often when the displays were maintained and aired out.

“Flak 18,” whispered the hammer Sister, her breath visible in the cold.

That was an oft-romanticized weapon that had once been used for both antiair and antitank combat.

“If you need to shoot something, you can’t go wrong with an Acht-Acht, says Misaka #19090, wiping sweat from her brow.”

Misaka Mikoto, still not used to the Japanese clothes she was wearing, was taken aback on a building rooftop.

And here she had thought she could enjoy a peaceful time with the Sisters over the holiday.

“H-how can you fire an 8.8cm cannon horizontally through an urban area, you stupid sisters!?”

“Misaka doesn’t want to hear that from the girl who starts blasting railguns everywhere the instant anything irritates her, calmly retorts Misaka #10032.”

“Gh. Th-that’s different…”

“Also this right here is the maintenance plan for the Acht-Acht given to us by the District 2 Firearm Museum, says Misaka, smugly showing off a fancy tablet since we live in a paperless era. We were asked to keep it in fireable order, so we have done so. And they do say that a machine must be used periodically if you want it to remain functional.”

“That’s a superstition! And I thought these things had internal parts severed to prevent them from being fired!? Curse that new board chairman. Why would he approve something like this? He’d better not be doing everything you ask out of guilt.”

“(Misaka thinks his approval had more to do with ''him'' than with us.)”

“?”

“…says Misaka while running a meaningless simulation based on fictional parameters to have fun with the Misaka Network. Some might call it fantasizing about amusing scenarios.”

Anyway.

There was of course only one possible destination for the two identical girls.

Misaka realized it was unusual for the two of them to accompany each other like this.

“We got that thing to spit ''him'' out, but this is still a crisis situation. The details and size of the enemy force are unknown. And the known enemy appears unharmed by an artillery blast to the side, reports Misaka, sharing the information taken from the other observers.”

“So what is it? I’m reluctant to fight a fluffy animal for different reasons than a human. But if it’s as big as you say it is, I’ll probably get over that reluctance real quick once I see it for myself.”

“The best tactic with monsters is to avoid making contact with them in the first place, says Misaka, trying her hand at counseling. So what should we do? This monster did not shed a single drop of blood after a direct hit from an Acht-Acht.”

Misaka Mikoto’s answer began with a quiet metallic sound.

She had flicked up an arcade coin with her thumb.

“Then we’ll have to try a cutting-edge railgun.”

In the blue sky above, an irregular demon girl floated in defiance of gravity. She did have wings reminiscent of marine animals on her back, but they clearly weren’t large enough to provide enough lift for her to fly.

“Kee hee hee. Look at ‘em go. Well, he’s not the type to let someone go through with murder just because they’re in a consulate protected by international law.”

A consulate represented an entire country, so attacking one wasn’t that simple.

But a consulate could also freely move around within the host country. And once it had moved, the former site of the consulate was no longer bound by the same legal restrictions.

So that was what he had done.

In exchange for some economic support, the new board chairman had gotten the consulate moved to Academy City’s District 1, a much nicer part of the city.

This was a gray zone.

The original Condroniard Republic had been bought by the Bridge Builders Cabal. Their bureaucrats would behave very differently depending on who came out on top here – Academy City or the cabal. Instead of ending the legal protections once the move was complete, they were holding off on doing anything for today, waiting to see how it turned out.

But the board chairman only needed this one day.

Academy City could deal with the rest.

Floating next to Qliphah Puzzle 545 was her opposite: a scientifically-created angel.

“What do we do now?” asked the busty glasses girl.

“Well,” said the demon in a newspaper dress, grinning. A demon’s logic was always the same: “We do whatever we want.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’s looking like our current job is to deal with anyone who steps outside the bounds of humanity,” whispered Qliphah Puzzle 545, her tail whipping side to side.

The teacher’s pet and the mischievous girl.

They held opposite positions, but they were already forming a new bond between themselves.

“And in that sense, Alice Anotherbible has made herself an obvious target. ''Sometimes being too powerful invites further danger.'' Now, let’s show her how we do things here in Academy City!!”

There was also movement on the consulate’s grounds.

“Hey, have you managed to analyze Alice Anotherbible yet? Without that, heading out there will only get you killed! It’s meaningless!!”

“Sphynx, bite that pagan god the next time she says anything pessimistic.”

“Yikes, yikes, yikes!!” shouted 15cm Othinus, her hair bristling.

“I’m close. So close,” said Index sullenly.

“So are you ready to accept it now? The Index Librorum Prohibitorum doesn’t mention any of the spells used by the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal.”

“No, not that,” interrupted Index.

Never underestimate her. They had seen a lot of special types of people – Saints, God’s Right Seat, angels, demons, Magic Gods, and now Transcendents – but none of them made the grimoire library any less valuable.

“This isn’t just about Alice Anotherbible. I’m so close to seeing a common factor between them all. I’m so close to having a definition for what a Transcendent is!!”

“…”

“If I get closer and actually confront her, I might get the last piece of the puzzle. And we can’t wait any longer anyway. Touma’s going to die!!”

“Yes, I’ll grant you that one. And none of this means anything if that human dies. But let me ask one last time: are you sure this is the choice you want to make? Don’t regret this after the fact, human girl!!”

[[Image:GT_Index_v07_BW6.png|thumb]]

===Part 9===

Someone was coming. Kamijou’s woozy mind managed to hear several footsteps approaching. They were on their way despite the laws and treaties protecting the consulate and despite the fact that it was a monstrous place guarded by countless Transcendents, including Alice herself.

They were on their way to bring an end to all this trouble.

They were on their way to protect Kamijou Touma.

“Damn.”

(I appreciate it, but I can’t get them involved in the battle against Alice. If they go up against her without any real chance of winning, who knows what kind of trick she’ll reveal she still has up her sleeve!!)

That meant he only had one option.

He couldn’t rely on kindness, warmth, or the good of the world.

He had to crawl back to his feet if he wanted to protect them himself.

And if he wanted to prevent Alice from becoming that kind of enemy!!

“Bh.”

He had no way of knowing what was going on inside his body.

A rusty flavor filled his mouth.

Maybe this was what it meant to fight a Transcendent without a plan. With Aradia, Trismegistus, and Alice, simply being with them meant risking your life and directly facing them meant unavoidable death.

All the more reason why he couldn’t let anyone else get involved.

He moved his body despite the disturbing sounds it made when he did so and he dug his fingers into the dark soil.

He was painfully aware of the birdcage his ribs formed in his chest. Something hot was exploding inside that cage.

He had pushed himself too hard.

The blood went wild in the core of his being and he collapsed back to the ground.

“Gahh!?”

How much longer would he be able to move?

10 minutes? 5? Maybe not even 1.

But.

He gathered strength in his deteriorating body once more.

He was willing to cough up blood, break some bones, or damage his internal organs if that was what it took.

As long as he could keep himself moving for another minute.

As long as he could stand back up and clench his fist again.

His right hand wandered.

He touched Trismegistus’s sword on the ground and it shattered. With Good, Old Mary’s outdoor kitchen tools, he wasn’t sure how they were even used as weapons.

Nevertheless…

“Gahh!!”

He stood up.

He threw his right fist forward.

Toward the giant monster rushing toward him. The difference in their strength had already been proven beyond a doubt. The Gryphon opened its large beak and bit at the boy’s right arm.

He heard an unpleasant tearing sound.

He felt searing heat.

But.

His arm exploded.

''Something'' burst from within his torn-off right arm and rapidly expanded within the bird of prey’s mouth.

The Gryphon’s silhouette burst like a balloon.

“Ah, ahh, ahhh, ahhhh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

(This isn’t over.)

He staggered to the side.

His vision faded due to all the blood gushing from his arm.

(Alice is still there.)

He still had to deal with the hedgehog balls, the flamingo bat, the executioner, and the small girl herself.

He knew that.

He wasn’t going to last much longer.

Defeating the giant Gryphon wasn’t the end of it. it probably didn’t even qualify as one of the main cards in Alice Anotherbible’s deck. Kamijou was already battered before even arriving in front of her. If he couldn’t defeat her at his best, what hope did he have in his current state?

Still.

Kamijou Touma used his remaining arm and his mouth to tie a handkerchief tightly around the shoulder just above where his arm had been torn off.

He couldn’t afford to pass out yet.

He knew people were rushing to his aid, but he couldn’t expose them to the threat that was Alice. If this had all begun with the two of them meeting on that adventure in the dark side, he had to be the one to end it.

“Al…ice.”

He couldn’t even straighten his slanted stance.

But he still clenched his bloody teeth and took a step forward.

“Forget about the others. Pretend they’re not even here.”

He moved forward.

He moved of his own free ''will'' to stand before that young monster whose innocence was what made her so terrifying.

“''So fight me!! Alice Anotherbible!!!''”

And…

“…”

Alice looked away from him in her inappropriate leather outfit. She was instead focused on the many footsteps surrounding them.

On all the people attempting to eliminate her to protect Kamijou.

Then she let out a visible breath with resignation on her face. It was the look of a child who had been so excited about going to the amusement park but, once she arrived, got lost, was taken into custody by the park officials, waited and waited for her parents to come get her, and as the sun began to set, finally realized that her parents had abandoned her.

That face stabbed into Kamijou Touma’s heart far more painfully than anger or the noh mask ever could.

“Forget it…”

''Uh, oh,'' realized Kamijou, but it was too late.

He had already seen the clear drops growing in the corners of her eyes as she pouted her lips and turned away.

And the girl said one last thing now that she was truly alone.

“Stupid teacher.”

[[Image:GT_Index_v07_BW7.png|thumb]]

===Between the Lines 4===

The girl thought she would be happy if she became something special.

She thought she wasn’t happy now because she hadn’t done enough to set herself apart.

Maybe she could be like Cinderella. Or like Snow White.

So she specialized herself more and more and more. To a dangerous degree.

She innocently improved herself.

She became someone who did what no one else could.

Now, let’s take a peek at the answer.

How did that turn out for the girl?

<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume7_Chapter3|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume7_Epilogue}}
</noinclude>

Apocalypse Witch:Volume 5

2022-09-20T14:08:32Z

Entei08: the wrong ending was linked

===Novel Illustrations===
{{:Apocalypse_Witch:Volume5_Illustrations|Illustrations}} 
{{:Apocalypse_Witch:Volume5_Prologue|Prologue}} 
{{:Apocalypse_Witch:Volume5_Chapter1|Chapter 1}} 
{{:Apocalypse_Witch:Volume5_Chapter2|Chapter 2}} 
{{:Apocalypse_Witch:Volume5_Chapter3|Chapter 3}} 
{{:Apocalypse_Witch:Volume5_Chapter4|Chapter 4}} 
==Epilogue==
{{:Apocalypse_Witch:Volume5_Epilogue|Epilogue}} 
==Afterword==
{{:Apocalypse_Witch:Volume5_Afterword|Afterword}} 
==?==
{{:Apocalypse_Witch:Volume5_Ending|?}} 

<noinclude>
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|-
| Return to [[Apocalypse_Witch:Volume_4|Volume 4]]
| [[Apocalypse_Witch|Main Page]]
{{#ifexist:Apocalypse_Witcht:Volume_6 | {{!}} Forward to [[Apocalypse_Witch:Volume_6|Volume 6]] }}
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter4

2022-07-31T14:13:34Z

Entei08: It's the other way round

==Chapter 4: What’s Wrong With Being Only Human? – Save_the_Stray_Devil.==

===Part 1===

20 minutes.

If Transcendent Aradia wasn’t defeated and Shibuya wasn’t freed in 20 minutes, the Bologna Succubus would die even if she did reach the hospital.

But that meant she could still be saved if Kamijou Touma ended it here.

He stood at the center of the scramble crossing surrounded by the rioters who had even climbed onto the roofs of the abandoned donut truck and red fire truck.

“Each good deed goes rewarded and add triple strength.”

The witch goddess with just the one shadow sneered at him.

Her long silver hair and enormous wimple spread out behind her.

She twirled the index finger pointed his way.

“Defeating the Bologna Succubus counts as a good deed because it will free Shibuya from these rioting witch hunters. Thus, Triple Reload will reward me. So feel the power of my triple-boosted good magic, root cause!!”

An explosive boom shook the air.

But it ''did not'' come from the beam of light launched from Aradia’s hand.

It came from directly in front of Kamijou Touma where his right fist had obliterated that attack.

“You say it was ''good'' that the Bologna Succubus collapsed from her injuries?”

He was fully confident now.

He held his fist out and roared with something entirely different from a solid strategy.

“I’m gonna destroy that shitty illusion right this instant!!”

That was their cue.

Kamijou made the first move, leaning his weight forward and taking off running.

A motley mixture of people surrounded the scramble crossing. He would normally have been crushed to death by the 100 thousand witches and a lot of the witches would have been killed along with him.

But that didn’t happen.

The Bologna Succubus was on death’s door, her body was disconcertingly cold, and she couldn’t support her own weight, but she hadn’t released the subtle version of Cold Mistress she was applying to Shibuya as a whole. The witch hunters held back the witches, giving Kamijou Touma freedom to move. The timing was so perfect it felt like a miracle.

And why cower in fear when he could fight?

He had to repay her.

They had never met before today and she shouldn’t have known anything about him, but she had still decided he was innocent and trusted in him. He had to repay her for that and help her survive! Surely that would end far better than listening to the tempting words of a witch who toyed with the concepts of good and evil for her own benefit!!

“Ohhh!!”

He ran right up to her.

Aradia swung her lithe right hand. She snatched an empty sweet roll wrapper from the wind. That counted as picking up litter – a ''good deed''. Instead of stepping back out of his range, she had chosen to reload and keep her chain of good deed attacks going.

His own actions had guided her in that direction.

She could fire projectile attacks and the Bologna Succubus said she was skilled at aerial battles. That meant his best chance was to move into punching range before she could use any of the many cards in her deck.

He had not set this up. The Bologna Succubus had.

Both of those Transcendents could fly, so the fact that they had been staring each other down in the scramble crossing meant they had both already taken a decent amount of damage.

He wasn’t going to waste that.

No matter what.

All he could do was slam his fist into her face!!

“''Wind.''”

“!?”

A dry popping sound diverted the course of his fist.

Aradia had pressed two fingers against her lips like she was about to whistle. He had seen magic that produced an explosive gust of wind before.

Imagine Breaker could destroy any magic.

But at the same time…

(I see what she did.)

He had been overwhelmed by extreme numbers before.

Othinus had even tried to break his right arm with magic too powerful for him to fully negate.

But this was different. This was no more powerful than the magic the witches serving her had recorded in their looseleaf papers.

(She ''used'' the negation to alter the path of my fist!)

It was similar to how a bullet fired through a thick tank of water would have its ballistic path altered. Destroying the magic had caused his fist to waver just a bit.

And it didn’t end there.

“I let you avoid that ‘collision’.”

His fist swung right past her face while she stepped up past his wrist and placed her palm on his chest.

“Wasn’t that kind of me? Now take that good deed back at triple strength.”

“!?”

The simple “collision” energy was multiplied by three, so an impact far more powerful than his original punch tried to shatter every bone in his body.

At the last second, he twisted his body to avoid a direct hit. His jacket was caught in the wind and it was shredded like a hail of gunfire had hit it. A direct hit from that would have smashed up his ribs and stabbed them into his organs.

However…

“I’m not done yet.”

“Damn you!!”

“''I let you avoid that ‘collision’.'' Hee hee. Good deeds are still praised no matter how many times you do them. Hit or miss, my Triple Reload keeps the chain going.”

A direct hit could be fatal.

But every miss tripled the risk from the next attack. And it had all begun when he allowed her to snatch an empty sweet roll wrapper from the wind.

There was only one path to survival.

“Then I’ll stop that snowball from rolling any further!!”

“''I thought you’d say that.''”

She made it sound like she had read his mind.

He didn’t have time to tense his body. He had already started swinging his fist.

Aradia instead gently spread her arms as if welcoming her enemy. Then she tapped her bare foot against the ground.

Almost like she was popping an invisible balloon underfoot.

The boom sounded like a bomb going off. A thick wall of wind spread out around her in all 360 degrees.

There was no defense against it. The donut-shaped shockwave hit Kamijou and he doubled over like he had been hit by an invisible tackle. The breath was knocked out of him and he flew several meters back before hitting the ground. Even though he had been leaning forward with his full body weight.

“Kah, gwah!! Agh!?”

He couldn’t get up from the hard, cold crosswalk.

While he was struggling to get new air in his lungs, an alluring voice slipped into his ears.

“The overall power should be tripling each time, but that didn’t seem as powerful, did it? It isn’t as deadly against an individual when I spread that power out over a wide area, is it?”

Kamijou’s breaths were still shallow.

He knew where Aradia was going with this.

The witch goddess removed her finger from her chin, gently spread her arms, and smiled thinly at the center of the cracked scramble crossing.

She spoke below the moonlight distorting the nightscape behind her.

“''Aren’t I such a merciful witch for sparing your life like that? Another good deed to be tripled.''”

===Part 2===

The riot never ended no matter where they went.

Kumokawa Seria and Index worked together to carry the Bologna Succubus who kept bleeding despite the handkerchief against her wound, but there was so much violence everywhere that they didn’t stand out much.

(Really, keeping her upright where gravity drags the blood down to her legs is a bad idea when her blood pressure is so unstable.)

“Ugh,” groaned the Bologna Succubus.

But not because she had regained consciousness. The words leaving her mouth were complete nonsense. Her pink wings were asymmetrically half-opened like a broken umbrella and she appeared to be having a terrible nightmare while on the verge of death.

Yes, she managed to speak even with her voice breaking apart at times.

“You need to run away, boy. Kshrrrr. Aradia is coming…”

(Damn, now we definitely have to save her!!)

Kumokawa operated her phone with just one hand while supporting the injured demoness.

“A general hospital accepting emergency outpatients would be best, but where even is one near here?”

“What about that arrow sign pointing toward a Centroid General Hospital!?”

“It’s too far! It’s around a kilometer from the scramble crossing, but that’s a long way at the moment. Do you have any idea how long traveling just 100m will take in this riot!?”

They heard a deluge of angry voices as loud as a roaring stadium.

It came from nearby.

Kumokawa ducked while supporting the limp Bologna Succubus, glanced down at her phone, and clicked her tongue.

“The other side of the station has been completely swallowed up by people. And there was a large hospital with a cross mark on it there.”

“What about an ophthalmologist? Or a dermatologist?”

“Or a dentist? I doubt they would have enough fluid for a transfusion, though. Damn, should I eliminate the one-room clinics from my search?”

The woman in a long maternity dress and a large hat interrupted their discussion.

“Use that.”

“?”

The first to react was not Index, but Kumokawa.

An ambulance was parked on the curb below the toxic neon sign for a club.

The driver’s side door, passenger side door, and the back door all sat open. It was empty. It must have been caught in the riot without an emergency patient inside, so the crew had been forced to abandon it.

Index’s face lit up as she supported the Bologna Succubus from behind with the cat still on her head.

“I know what an ambulance is! It might have tools for treating hurt people!”

“I have my doubts. Just look at it.”

Kumokawa was skeptical, but she still approached the ambulance.

“I don’t think it has any of that fluid you were talking about,” said Index.

“No saline and no Ringer’s solution. Only disinfectant for washing wounds. Damn, and an ordinary blood pack doesn’t help us here.”

The driver and EMTs must have felt they were in serious danger when they abandoned the ambulance. The doors were still open and the glove box sat unnaturally open.

“The ambulance’s registration and radio were both stolen.”

Kumokawa Seria checked through it all before looking in a completely different direction.

Then she smiled.

“But this might be our chance.”

“?”

She led everyone to a nearby coin-operated parking area. It was full of boxy light vehicles with sleeping bags inside and four-wheel-drive vehicles full of audio equipment, so they likely belonged to club workers who couldn’t get a parking space. But there was one big truck that didn’t fit in. Kumokawa circled to the rear container and whispered a suggestion to Good, Old Mary.

“(I don’t know how exactly you people do what you do and I don’t care. Just tell me whether or not you ''can'' do one thing.)”

“What might that be?”

“(There are two people inside. If you can incapacitate them through the door, then do it.)”

It didn’t even take a second.

Good, Old Mary stood entirely still, so it wasn’t clear what she even did. She didn’t pull out any obvious weapon or even touch the camping kitchen tools hanging from her thick belt.

Several loud explosions sounded from within the rectangular container, the metal double doors on the back bent outwards, and one of them was blown off, spinning toward the girls. Kumokawa and Index quickly dodged out of the way. It stabbed deep into the hood of a car parked behind them and its alarm started blaring.

Good, Old Mary had not moved a millimeter the entire time, but now she tilted her head and large hat.

“All done.”

“Okay, maybe it was my fault for not specifying you do it quietly, but I thought that went without saying!!”

“What is this?”

Index peeked inside the truck and tilted her head enough the cat had to scramble to avoid slipping off. A man in a white coat and a sexy nurse lay collapsed and motionless inside the container. Something violent had clearly happened in there, yet nothing other than the targets received so much as a scratch.

Kumokawa didn’t remove her coat or her shoes. She just climbed inside, started to step over the unconscious man, remembered she was wearing a skirt, and opted to walk around him instead. The walls and ceiling were covered with thick tarps and a movable chair similar to a dentist’s sat in the center.

Lots of medical equipment was installed all around it.

“This is probably a back alley doctor’s base of operations,” said Kumokawa with some exasperation in her voice. “An ambulance’s radio uses the same special standards as the police and fire fighters. Someone might steal that to call the police for help since their phone doesn’t work. But they wouldn’t have any use for the ambulance registration. Only someone who needs an example to counterfeit their own would have any use for it, so I knew someone like that had to be nearby.”

“But how did you know that back alley doctor would be in this truck?” asked Index. “There were a lot of buildings around.”

“These people from the underside of society love their metal containers. There are a lot of container labs and homes in Academy City too. Although those workaholics on the dark side may have seen their lab and their home as one and the same.” Kumokawa shrugged and got to the point. “Anyway, we just need something that won’t trigger a rejection. Where do they keep a kit of usable fluid? This place is meant for surgery. Whether they’re setting bones, burning off fingerprints, remaking a face, or handling a runaway criminal’s cavity or appendicitis, they would need some way of cleaning the wound.”

Good, Old Mary commented while standing tall and motionless.

She spoke plainly but managed to sound friendly.

“There is no need to hurry. The quality of the preparations and work matter more than the time. As long as you get her blood pressure stabilized, mama’s resurrection will work even if you were injecting the fluid into a very recently deceased corpse. So it is not too late even if the Bologna Succubus has been declared dea-”

“Shut up a moment.”

“…”

She really did shut up.

That Transcendent was weirdly obedient, although it may have been a way of teasing people or of demonstrating her superiority. Kumokawa herself found it kind of awkward because it made her feel like the bad guy.

They tilted the chair back as far as it would go before laying the Bologna Succubus in it. Then Kumokawa faced the wall, opened the fridge there, and found several thick plastic bags full of fluid.

“Here we go.”

“Hm? Is that the fluid?” asked Index. “But it isn’t red at all.”

“It doesn’t have to be blood. The shock of blood loss is actually caused by the rapid change in blood pressure. It’s better if the fluid can transport oxygen and nutrients, of course, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

Kumokawa pulled out a pack of a translucent and somewhat yellowish fluid. The truck only had one in stock, which was just like a back alley doctor. They weren’t a general hospital prepared for emergency patients 24 hours a day.

“This is an iron distribution fluid. Really, any fluid that wouldn’t trigger rejection would work if all we need is to keep the blood pressure from dropping too much. You there, find a vein in her elbow. Wipe her skin off with some ethanol and then-”

''Bang!!

Kumokawa Seria was cut off by the blast of an explosive.

It came from the back alley doctor’s handgun.

She held the right side of her face and shouted with all her might.

“Good, Old Mary! Do it right this time!!”

“Sigh. (Mama incapacitated him just like you asked. If you wanted him dead, you should have said so.)”

“Hurry! And don’t kill him!!”

With a wet splat, the plastic handgun burst and the man’s futile attempt to get up from the floor ended. His groaning meant he was still alive…for now anyway. His body seemed weirdly distorted, like a roach that refused to die after being partially squished by a slipper.

(Does everyone named Mary or Maria have to be a troublemaker? My sister also gets carried away and never plans anything out properly.)

Index looked at the hand Kumokawa was holding to her face.

“A-are you okay?”

“Yes. That’s not my brains splattered on my face. It’s the package I was holding.”

But Kumokawa did not look happy. With the pack of fluid blown away, they couldn’t heal the Bologna Succubus. A fluid full of salt, iron, and electrolytes could be created with kitchen tools, but she had severe doubts they could disinfect it enough to be safe for transfusion.

That meant they had to find a replacement somewhere.

And a properly sealed product with guaranteed professional quality.

“Damn, I guess we need a proper medical facility after all. The closest hospital is- oh, hell! The fluid is all over the screen! Let’s see…”

“It has to be closer than Centroid General Hospital,” said Index.

“I know that,” muttered Kumokawa.

There was another large hospital with a large cross mark on it, but there had been a largescale riot in that direction. Breaking through the rioters while carrying an injured woman wouldn’t be possible.

“This looks like the only place that would have everything needed to keep her blood pressure from dropping and save her life.”

“?”

Index peered at the screen and tilted her head. Kumokawa understood the confusion, but it was their last option.

The level of service at such a place was wildly variable. This one could be little more than a tanning salon, but there were more of them of them in Shibuya than there were gyudon shops.

The problem was if they would be open during the riot. Breaking the glass door was always an option, but not causing the workers unnecessary trouble would be preferable.

Kumokawa glanced over at the Transcendent.

(Having an overpowered fighter is convenient, but I don’t want to get too reliant on her. That back alley doctor with a handgun is one thing, but I don’t want to leave decent people twitching on the floor like that.)

“Do you need something?”

“No, not really.”

“(Mama didn’t kill him just like you asked. Mama kept her promise, so why look at her like she’s a monster? It hardly seems fair.)”

“What is this mama nonsense? Are you lonely because your daughter is in a rebellious phase? Anyway, we need to try everything we can. This is Shibuya and it’s New Year’s Eve. If this riot settles down, the building should open its doors.”

The Transcendent was dejectedly poking at the cat’s forehead and radiating a desire for soothing, but Kumokawa just lifted the Bologna Succubus onto her back again.

And then she noticed something.

“Hold on. Where did that little one go?”

===Part 3===

Kamijou was spinning.

He had twisted out of the way of the beam, but it had caught his clothes.

He and the bright beam flew through the air and he slammed back down into the asphalt. He rolled across the scramble crossing a while after that before slamming back first into the side of the donut truck abandoned in the riot.

“Gah!!”

But if Othinus hadn’t tugged on his ear to tell him when to dodge, he wouldn’t have managed even that. And letting the beam catch at his clothes a bit had caused this much damage. He felt a dull, twisting pain in his hip and his right leg only twitched when he tried to get back up.

“Human!!”

“I’m- I’m fine…gahh.”

He heard a light clapping sound a short distance away.

Aradia had pressed her palms together in front of her shapely chest. He knew that had to have some kind of magical meaning.

“You survived that thanks to my decision. Such a wonderful good deed, don’t you think?”

“…”

Transcendent Aradia gave him no openings. Had the small snowball already grown lethally large? Was it too big to possibly stop it by waiting for it at the foot of the snowy mountain?

The witch goddess sang with her long silver hair and large wimple blowing in the night breeze.

“Did you hear that, world? Did you hear that, flashing interphasal sparks? My good deed deserves a blessing thrice as powerful. Because a good witch must not come to harm.”

“Human.”

Just then, Othinus whispered on his ear after managing to cling to his clothing during that violent spin.

She was the god of magic, war, and deception.

“Remember what the grimoire library said.”

“?”

“The Wiccan Triple Reload spell is admittedly capable of overwhelming the entire magic side if used correctly, but Aradia’s magic is not based on words. The grimoire library already told you that a witch’s supernatural feats of healing, divination, flight, crop growth, and assassination are all based on the use of natural ‘potions’ extracted from plants and minerals.”

“Wait a second.”

“Cinnamon, garlic, vanilla, ginger, cacao, lavender – the herbs used by witches aren’t necessarily obscure deadly poisons. It is possible that they are much more ordinary and thus, human, we overlooked their presence.”

That would mean it wasn’t just about her phony judgments of good and bad. Did she have a physical tool she used for her magic? Did she have a spiritual item like a fortuneteller’s crystal ball or a witch’s broom? And hadn’t Aradia said it herself? Her spell was a triple ''reload''. Didn’t that mean there was ''an actual weapon'' she was loading those “bullets” into?

All the blood gathered at a single point in Kamijou’s head.

What was his true target for Imagine Breaker?

He had to lean against the metal truck and couldn’t even get up, but he desperately observed his surroundings. What was Aradia’s spiritual item? Was it the ankle-length wimple? Or the noisily clanking gold clasps? The midriff-baring modified bikini? He could ignore her feet since they were bare. He had just reached that point in his thoughts when Aradia made her next move.

“Now.”

She slowly separated the hands held together in front of her shapely chest.

But they enclosed a blinding light that seemed to fill the 1cm space between.

The light blew away all of the darkness lurking in the scramble crossing.

“Are you quite done? Killing you will stabilize Alice. And with Alice stabilized, we can bring peace to the world. Who can argue with the goodness of that deed?”

That was when he noticed.

The light Aradia was producing was his biggest hint. He lowered his gaze once more.

And he confirmed what he saw there.

“Aradia.”

“?”

She gave him a somewhat puzzled look.

She would have understood if he broke into tears and begged for his life. Or if he desperately hurled invectives at her. But she found it very odd for him to speak rationally, steadily, like they were equals.

“I want to make one thing very clear up front: I have rotten luck. You could say I’m made of misfortune. So I can promise you this wasn’t my doing.”

“What are you blathering about?”

“Good or bad, witch spells are returned to their user at triple strength, right? Then maybe your attempts to make everything you do look good are starting to fail.”

“Are you trying to stall for time until someone can come rescue you!?”

Aradia spread her hands another centimeter apart.

That released the light within.

The deluge of light shot straight toward Kamijou.

“So.”

But ''that was exactly why'' Kamijou Touma smiled.

“It was you who carelessly knocked me over to this food truck, Aradia! And can’t a witch’s herbs be found all over the place!? Like mint and cinnamon!”

He did not use Imagine Breaker.

Despite the risk, he just barely dodged the beam by rolling to the side. The food truck he had been leaning against was blown away, but its contents were also scattered everywhere.

That jiggly call girl had sung an improvised song after seeing the ''red pickled ginger'' in her gyudon.

The eyepatch ghost had been afraid her Japanese pasta might have ''shiso'' in it.

Index had stared enviously at the donuts covered in ''cinnamon'' and ''mint'' powder.

None of it had been a waste of time. All of his experiences in Shibuya had returned to aid him. But unlike with Aradia, this wasn’t about mysterious charisma or proselytization. His own actions had created connections with other people and those connections had become a real strength he could use.

Even this donut truck counted.

He had mentioned the mint and cinnamon himself, but vanilla and cacao had also been known as medicines in an older age.

And the coffee and tea available as drink options were made from beans and leaves containing stimulants.

What if all of those things were spread across the area?

“It’s your shadow.”

“Kh.”

Aradia froze just before making her next attack.

She must have noticed that her Triple Reload spell had suddenly ''jammed''.

“Your shadow never changed no matter how much light shined from your hands! And it was always just the one shadow even though all the headlights around us should have given you several!! That dark shadow was always waiting right at your feet, regardless of the actual light source. That’s the true identity of your power. It’s also why you’re barefoot. You mixed your sweat or sebum or whatever other oil with some herbs at your feet to create an ointment whenever you used your magic!”

“I’ll add that I expect your ‘palette’ of chemical compounds is stored in the gold decorations you wear across your body.” Othinus smiled fearlessly on his shoulder. “Gold is malleable. If you kneaded the herbs into the gold for storage, you would only need to rub the clasps together to produce the powder you needed. Gravity would bring that to your feet, so you just needed to step on that barefoot to mix in your sweat or sebum and create that ‘shadow’. Those clasps are shaped like keys. Perfect for creating the chemical palette that acts as your entrance into magic.”

So what happened if vanilla, mint, and other extra herbs are rudely mixed into her “canvas” on the ground?

That goes without saying.

“This isn’t enough to stop me!!”

“Probably not. She’s going to recover soon enough, human!!”

Aradia had already recovered a bit from the damage. She stomped her bare feet on the ground twice to purify it and used her big toes to remake the witchcraft ointment in what looked like a bewitching dance. In the few seconds that took, Kamijou ran toward the other truck abandoned on the scramble crossing: the red firetruck.

More specifically, he ran to the valves on its size.

He again relied on his memory. Why was it the Bologna Succubus had always relied on baths and saunas like the hot spa and capsule hotel with Aradia as her enemy?

Oils, herbs, powders, and ointments.

These witch potions wouldn’t play well with water.

“Ohhh!!”

“Tch!?”

Aradia clearly clicked her tongue when the firehose explosively unleashed a stream of water. Chemical cleanup was usually done by using a liquid, be it water or ethanol. If he wanted to keep Aradia from mixing her ointment by rubbing together the metal clasps, creating a powder, and letting it fall to the ground, his best bet was catching the invisible metal powder in the air and blasting it far away.

For some reason, Othinus smiled coldly from his shoulder.

“Ha ha. The Christians do say wicked women have a weakness to holy water. Are you trying to prove them right, witch god!?”

“Gahh! I don’t want to hear anything from the lingering remnants of a god who forgot to protect the forest-dwelling priestesses!!”

There was a dull snap as a thick piece of metal broke.

Aradia had thrown a roundhouse kick. Her big toe’s nail had torn through the air along a beautifully circular path and sliced through the base of the pedestrian traffic signal located alongside the scramble crossing. She spun it in both hands as lightly as a baton, spun herself around, and sat on it.

She had completed the storybook image.

By the time the tension crackled through Kamijou’s body, the witch’s feet had already left the ground.

Herbs and water were effective, but keeping his distance had been a mistake. Aradia was apparently even better at aerial combat than the Bologna Succubus. Kamijou had to fight with his fist, so vertical distance was devastating for him. She could just stay in the air and kill him with falling objects and projectiles.

“A witch mixes her sebum and sweat with powdered herbs and minerals to create the ointment we need.”

Something flashed.

It came from Aradia as she sat on the severed pedestrian signal like it was a witch’s broom.

Lines of light filled the night sky around her like a planetarium. A satellite viewing the earth may have seen it as a glowing net capturing the planet itself.

“So I will claim the assistance of everything floating in the air! Around 10 thousand tons of cosmic dust pour down on the planet ever day after burning up in the atmosphere. With invisible pieces of the moon in hand, I can even absorb all of the carbon dioxide out of the earth’s atmosphere. The witch goddess will use her ointment to save humanity from global warming! ''And the good deed of saving the world will be returned to me at triple strength.'' Then I will concentrate all of that power on a single point to obliterate the enemy before my eyes!!”

There shouldn’t have been any way for him to win.

Spraying around a firehose could never spray all of the extraterrestrial dust from the planet’s atmosphere.

If she was absorbing carbon dioxide, would her actual weapon be related to the wind or air? Whatever the case, not even any dust would remain of him after she crushed him with triple the power needed to save the world.

Othinus whispered up at the witch seated on the pedestrian signal.

“So a witch uses the same ointment to make her broom fly, huh? But you do realize you’re showing off your weak point this way, don’t you?”

She showed no mercy.

“There you have it, human. End this already.”

Kamijou tossed aside the firehose and clenched his right fist.

Yes.

''No matter how high Aradia flew, the shadow that provided her power remained on the ground.

“Gah!!”

The shadow shattered and she fell from the sky.

The pedestrian signal she was using as a broom loudly bent and the Transcendent rolled along the pavement.

Back down at the center of the scramble crossing, Aradia trembled within the large cloth that had gotten wrapped around her. She groaned from the first physical damage done to her.

She looked so pitiful and seemed to be in pain.

But this pain was nothing compared to the suffering the Bologna Succubus had gone through after throwing out her own life without hesitation.

It was nothing compared to the pain she would have felt at having to fight a fellow member of her cabal.

Othinus crossed her arms and sneered from atop Kamijou’s shoulder.

“Never forget the first rule of magical flight: it’s easily thwarted. Let’s not forget what happened to Simon the Magician when he foolishly challenged one of the 12 Apostles: he lost the protection of his demon, fell from the sky, and died.”

===Part 4===

“Gh, gah.”

Aradia had fallen and hit the ground hard.

She worked to keep her woozy mind in focus.

She wasn’t going to let mere pain stop her. She clenched her bloody teeth and sent strength back into her legs.

She wanted to be someone who could protect all witches.

Some might mock that as an outdated idea. In the age of smartphones and the internet, anyone could do a quick search and see that the witch hunts had been wrong. They would assume no one would ever do that again.

But they were wrong.

This wasn’t a fantasy from centuries ago.

The emotional witch hunts had never ended.

The words and framework used had changed with the times, but similar social attacks could be seen in the real world and on the internet all the time. Even today at this very moment.

Now, this violence was not led by the pros of the Anglican Church. It wasn’t part of a system for carrying out investigations and meting out punishments for magical crimes.

But that didn’t mean they weren’t involved.

It was easy enough to say the witch hunts had been wrong and they were a terrible mistake made in the distant past.

But no one ever went on to say who had been in the wrong or why they had made that mistake. They sealed it away as a thing of the past and avoided talking or thinking about it. That let the people feel no responsibility and didn’t allow any feelings of guilt to take root, so by swapping out the names and framework used, the same social phenomena could continue forever in new forms.

The true violence came from the ordinary people who had no real power and were ready to believe just about anything. It came from the common folk who raised their crosses high and clung to “history” and “tradition”. It was always those “innocent” people who didn’t think twice before burning to death a little old lady who lived a short distance from their village and raised small birds because she liked cute things! It was those pieces of shit who, after it was over, would shrug it off as “mass hysteria” and return to their lives like nothing had happened!! They’re just normal people? Those “peaceful” and “carefree” slaughterers think “we didn’t mean to kill an innocent person” is an adequate excuse. Are those rotten sadists trying to say laughing as you burn a woman to death is acceptable if she really was a witch!?

So Aradia would protect them even in the modern day.

She would protect the people accused of being witches, no matter how much power they did or didn’t have.

She would become someone who would hear the lonely cries of the person isolated behind a solid wall of “common sense”.

She would become the last defense of those who had been ostracized from all other systems meant to provide help.

She would become the goddess of all witches.

And she was willing to dirty her hands if it was to that end.

She might fall from the sky, cough up blood, curl up in a miserable ball, and tremble.

But she would not stop here.

She was a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal. It was time she demonstrated the ''strength'' of a magician with a wish she would make sure came true even if it required dealing with that fearsome tyrant Alice!!

===Part 5===

As expected, the long silver hair and giant wimple continued to tremble.

Aradia was still moving.

She wouldn’t be broken so easily. Her trick had been revealed, but she would not step down from the stage. She trembled and squirmed, but she finally, slowly got up from the ground.

She wanted to save the witches.

She wanted to create a world that would protect the people ostracized from society.

Kamijou didn’t know the exact conditions or the details of her goal, but he knew the basics.

But he did not back down.

“I can’t help but like the Bologna Succubus better.”

“?”

Aradia could tell this wasn’t just a joke or provocation.

A single mistake or a single moment looking the wrong way would mean instant death for him.

Anyone, even the Transcendent, could tell he was placing his life in these words.

“She doesn’t ''just'' want to reach out a helping hand to the persecuted witches. She doesn’t need to limit herself like that before rushing toward certain death with a smile. It’s way less realistic and I like it way more.”

And.

Kamijou Touma was willing to risk his one and only life to save her.

How much time did she have left now?

She had to still be fighting on the verge of death while Index’s group helped her. She wasn’t a cold demon who could only provide pain. He refused to let her die after she underwent so much abuse to rescue a complete stranger like him. He wouldn’t allow it.

He still couldn’t reach the depths of Transcendent Aradia’s heart.

But peering into her darkness and reaching out a helping hand could wait until after he had saved the Bologna Succubus.

“The night, the moon, and the witches. Hecate, Isis, the Morrígan, Freyja. The ancient goddesses of wisdom have always viewed the world from three perspectives while providing a powerful protection for the priestesses serving them.”

Aradia spread her arms and raised her voice even as she coughed up blood from the fall.

“No more…holding back! Risk 4: Releasing triple seal – leaving human territory. Activating the ''triple goddess'' within my flesh!!”

Aradia’s shadow stretched out in three different directions.

They spun around her in a circle, dyeing the glowing pavement like an ink stain. It may not have had a fixed shape and it looked something like a Rorschach test that held a different meaning to everyone who viewed it.

This was something inhuman.

The beautiful woman standing there may have only been a temporary form and this was the true essence of the Transcendent.

What had happened to Triple Reload? And the ointment at her feet?

Perhaps she had thrown all of that away and a completely new transcendent magic was about to come his way.

He couldn’t say anything for certain.

The rules of the battle had suddenly ''blurred''.

The flow of battle normally would have changed here.

[[Image:GT_Index_v06_BW7.png|thumb]]

In an ordinary battle between magicians, the poor victim would have been overwhelmed and torn to shreds by the Transcendent before even managing to analyze her new magic.

But.

Something shattered before Aradia’s eyes and her extreme mystical power was negated.

It ended far too easily.

“?”

“Allow me to introduce you to Imagine Breaker, false goddess.”

Othinus’s whispered words were like a death sentence.

Her first mistake had been allowing a certain boy to get this close to her. Her last mistake had been thinking she could fight back with the occult. After all, his right fist was the greatest enemy of that sort of thing.

“The more you rely on magic…”

“~ ~ ~!?”

“The more I’ll destroy that harmful illusion!!”

With a dull impact, an ordinary boy’s fist caught Transcendent Aradia’s cheekbone.

And he swung through with his full body weight.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Chapter2

2021-12-16T05:25:51Z

Entei08: checked with the original text, small typo

==Chapter 2: The Rescue Puzzle Sits Before You – Travel.==

===Part 1===

Kamijou Touma forgot to breathe.

It happened instantly.

After blinking his eyes once, the middle school girl, Shirai Kuroko, was standing in front of him. He was lucky to even remember the word “teleportation” in that time. But if he relied on that, he would only make things worse for everyone.

The Imagine Breaker power in his right hand would interfere with the teleportation.

So instead, he pushed Alice forward from his lap and raised his voice.

“Go!! Take Alice!”

He didn’t have time to wait for Shirai’s response.

His action must have caught her by surprise because she flinched before she and Alice vanished into thin air. A terrifying roar and impact followed. Kamijou was in the café on the 2nd floor of the Delivery Go Round’s 9th car, but the force of the impact traveled from the flattened first car all the way to the last car in an instant, lifting his feet from the floor. He really was thrown all the way to the neighboring 8th car before he hit the floor again.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

He rolled through what looked like a deserted childcare center, breaking through and scattering a plastic jungle gym and slide before coming to a stop.

He had trouble breathing.

He couldn’t believe the horror before his eyes.

But his shock ''did not'' come from the pain piercing his body.

“Th-the chicken…” he groaned, forgetting to get up from the floor.

His reusable shopping bag had been thrown from him and the sales items he had bought with his last remaining money were scattered across the floor. The plastic wrap had burst, the soft tray had broken, and the contents were cruelly splattered around. The oatmeal spread across the floor was already soaking up the moisture and getting soggy.

“Eh? Eh? The radish broke? And there’s shards of glass in it all. Wait, why were there mice on this train!? And what is that smushed against the wall there…red cabbage? Nooooo!! The big hard clams were cheaper than the normal ones, but now they’re all broken! And so is the miracle 90yen pack of eggs!? Ah, ahh. Gwaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

Holding his head and wailing wasn’t going to change reality.

Clear tears fell from the corners of his eyes.

That was it. He was going to die. He had failed his attempt at the New Year’s Tokyo survival life. He didn’t have it in him to accept this cruel reality. He only had 49 yen left in his wallet, so how was he supposed to replace all of this? How many times had he mentioned that the ATMs didn’t start back up until January 4!? How would he survive the New Year’s season now? Was he going to have to starve starting today!?

He heard a racket from outside.

“Argh!! These people after the high bounties are just getting in the way. Go move them over into a corner or something! We will pursue the fugitives. Uiharu, you check through the camera records and try to track them down that way as best you can!!”

“…”

Kamijou Touma sat up in the deserted space.

Just before the crash, that twintails girl had mentioned a prisoner transport train. And based on her panicked voice, some of the prisoners onboard must have escaped.

That had been the purpose behind the entire incident.

He took a look out the window and nodded.

''He didn’t know who they were, but he would make sure they died for this.

And there was a high bounty on their heads? Then he would use that to build himself a house out of chicken and green onion!!

He grabbed just the can of caviar that had survived with only a few dings and stood up like a man possessed.

He was on the second floor of the train, but the metal stairs down appeared to have been destroyed. But he didn’t care. He just needed to reach the platform. He rushed toward a fully broken window.

“I-I am giving them such a punching,” he muttered to himself. “Someone needs to teach them life doesn’t reward food wasterrrrrrrrrrs!!!!!!”

His rage and sorrow exploded out as a great roar and he didn’t even hesitate to jump out the 2nd floor window to the station platform below.

Except the platform was gone.

“Eh?”

This he hadn’t expected.

His mind went blank, but he couldn’t change his course in midair regardless.

“Um, excuse me!?”

The floor below had crumbled away, leaving a hole large enough to swallow up a small truck. He had lost sight of his landing point, but before he could do anything more, gravity took hold and dragged him down toward the pit of hell.

He screamed as he felt his stomach rising.

“Gyahhhhhhhhh!!”

He probably fell two stories’ worth.

The length of the fall had suddenly grown on him like he had casually hopped over a hurdle to find it was actually a balcony railing.

He might break a bone or two from this.

The fear took hold, but then he hit something with a sticky splat.

“???”

He had…survived?

But what was this? With the floor broken through, he had assumed he would find jagged rubble below, but he instead found a pile of black sludge. He appreciated it since it had cushioned his fall, but he would have preferred something he could identify.

(Does this mean ''the platform melted''? You have got to be kidding me. That thing is made of concrete and a steel frame. This isn’t harmful to touch, is it!?)

After some struggling, he managed to extract himself from the sludge pile and rolled away from it.

The regret rushed in after the fact.

When stranded on a mountain or in other emergencies, people’s stress and exhaustion would give them extreme tunnel vision and they would make overly optimistic predictions. For example, they wouldn’t want to be stuck out in the dark after sunset, so they might think they could make their way down the slope if they felt along the nearby trees and watched their step. But if they actually attempted it, they would end up slipping and falling off a cliff.

In hindsight, jumping from the Delivery Go Round’s 2nd floor window just because the stairs were blocked had been a dumb decision. There had to have been plenty of better options, like moving to the next car and searching for some surviving stairs.

The station platform was on an upper level to match the height of the elevated railway, so the lower level was a clean station concourse containing accessways and shops.

However, the number of customers and employees in evidence was unnaturally low.

Was that due to the break alert? The strange sort of convenience store only found in train stations, the standing soba shop, and the mall-like sales area that combined a gift shop with a bento shop were all abandoned. The excessive number of lights felt unusually bright. The way the automatic glass doors opened on their own and the way an announcement repeatedly asked an empty café to download their official app only made the place feel lonelier.

It wasn’t just the train.

Was something ''still underway'' on a large enough scale to affect the entire station building?

“…”

Kamijou gulped.

He waved at the security camera on the ceiling, but there was no sign of any adults coming running.

A special train had crashed and the criminals contained inside had escaped. That was enough to sound like a minor fantasy to a high schooler like him, but what if that hadn’t been a coincidence? The station platform was melted. He didn’t know if an esper power or some kind of technology was to blame, but if someone wanted to make sure they escaped, would they really rely on that alone?

(This sounds bad. Maybe I should have stayed put and waited for Alice and that Judgment girl.)

If the culprit had managed to set up this accident, couldn’t they have hidden some tools inside the building? Or maybe they had emergency kits hidden across all 23 districts of the city?

Those could contain money, a change of clothes, false IDs…and maybe even deadly weapons.

He heard a sound.

He could tell the burden on his heart right now was bad for his health.

He was scared. But trying to ignore this would only cause the anxiety in his chest to grow. He slowly turned around and tiptoed toward the sound, being careful not to make any noise. He passed through a gift shop laid out like a luxury supermarket and reached a corner of the corridor. He was pretty sure the sound had come from around that corner. He bit his lip and hesitantly peeked around it.

He saw some coin-operated lockers lined up on the wall.

A girl of about 10 with long black hair stood facing them. But the sound had not been her opening and closing one of the thin metal doors. He could see her pulling a flat business bag from the gap between the bookcase-like sets of lockers.

What was she doing? Why hadn’t she run away with everyone else?

She set the bag on the floor, checked its contents, and then reached for her clothes. It looked like a thick work jumpsuit, but it wasn’t. By the time Kamijou realized that was a prison uniform, she had stripped it off in the middle of the station corridor.

He instinctually looked away from her carelessly exposed skin, but then realized now wasn’t the time to be a gentleman.

He had seen something more concerning.

(What is that? ''A gasmask and a white coat stained with paint''?)

When she put on the coat and fastened the collar so it covered a chest unusually large for her height, it weirdly looked sort of like a yukata. She wore the gasmask on the side of her head like a mask at a shrine festival.

Then she pulled out several test tubes filled with colorful liquids.

He didn’t know what those were, but he could easily imagine they were dangerous chemicals.

It may have been one of them that had melted the steel and concrete station platform into black sludge. This girl had been wearing a prison uniform. He didn’t know what crime had gotten her a ride on that prisoner transport train, but he doubted it was safe to directly sniff at those chemicals. And if they really were only chemicals, then Imagine Breaker wouldn’t be any help.

He couldn’t afford to underestimate her just because she only looked to be 10. A gun held by a baby in a stroller was still a gun and a grenade thrown by an old man with a cane was still a grenade. A tool’s power was a constant, so the correct choice here was to remember her location and get away from here. Then he could pull out his phone and tell Anti-Skill or Judgment what he had seen.

He was nervous, but he was afraid to even gulp.

He held his breath and tried to calmly take a step back.

His butt bumped into something in this deserted world.

“Teacher☆”

“Kyahhhhhhhhh!!!???”

He screamed and immediately regretted it.

Smiling Alice stuck out her small arms and grabbed at him from behind while the mystery chemical girl spun around at the lockers.

The situation was on the move.

And it was headed in a deadly direction.

===Part 2===

Shirai Kuroko had only taken her eyes off her for a second.

(Argh, where did that blonde girl go!?)

Panic filled her on the station platform.

As much as she disliked that wretched ape, he had left that girl in her care.

She finally heard some sirens approaching in the distance. She had been doing paperwork in the station by pure chance, so it was going to take a while before Anti-Skill could get to work preserving the scene. There was probably an Anti-Skill station in a train station this large, but they were probably overwhelmed helping people evacuate.

The crash between the Overhunting prisoner transport train and the Delivery Go Round shopping train was horrific to behold. The shopping train in particular had a few of its cars bent upwards like an inchworm and its platform doors had broken so they jutted outwards.

She had to try to find the ape who had been left onboard, but at the same time…

“Uiharu, start up a new priority task and share this information with Anti-Skill and Judgment! Put in a search request for a girl named Alice!! She looked to be around 12, she has long blonde hair and blue eyes, and she is wearing what appears to be a costume dress. A short-sleeved dress despite the season. I can’t let her be forgotten in the confusion!!”

“Eh?” replied the girl on the phone. “Can’t you give me a photo, Shirai-san?”

“If you need one, find it in the station or train’s surviving camera footage! It’s too dangerous to leave her unsupervised here!!”

The Overhunting was going to gather most of the attention since it carried dangerous prisoners, but the Delivery Go Round included a café, a restaurant, and even a spa with hoses to supply its hot water, so it was packed full of flammable materials. She couldn’t ignore the crashed train either.

(She didn’t return to the train to search for her friend, did she?)

It seemed unlikely, but it was still a possibility. Shirai couldn’t delay the search and then have the girl get caught in a gas explosion. She carefully walked along the platform and checked through the broken windows to see if anyone was onboard.

Her efforts were wasted and she found no one.

Not Alice and not the ape.

She didn’t notice any sounds or heat sources either.

After walking far enough along the platform, she moved past the Delivery Go Round and reached the Overhunting that had crashed into it. She tilted her head, but if those two weren’t in the shopping train, they may have gone elsewhere.

“Uiharu, what data do you have on the Overhunting?”

“Pretty much just the name. Wow, it’s like the entire train just popped into existence today.”

The front car had been crushed like an empty can, but she heard someone groaning from the driver’s compartment. The damage to the platform door actually helped her here. She couldn’t tell how crushed things were inside, so she couldn’t teleport in. Instead, she searched around the door until she found the emergency release lever.

It didn’t do anything when she turned it, but the heavy metal clunk told her where the hinges were located. She pulled two metal darts from the belts on her thighs and teleported them to destroy the metal hinges. The bent door collapsed out onto the platform.

She pulled the two drivers out and noticed two black synthetic leather holsters at their hips. Those held handcuffs and revolvers.

(They don’t look like Anti-Skill who would be authorized to carry those.)

“Uiharu.”

“I already said I don’t have any data for you.”

The young man groaned and provided a report.

“Ugh…this is a special prisoner transport train.”

“I am aware. You were carrying Rakuoka Houfu, Hanatsuyu Youen, and Benizome Jellyfish. They were all survivors of Operation Handcuffs, weren’t they? I am from Judgement. I was called here to provide support.”

“I can stand on my own. Please help me organize what information we have. Ow.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know. We suddenly lost control of the train. It is true the Overhunting is special and prioritizes manual control over the ordinary ATS system, but that’s why it has multiple safety devices like the air brakes and the EM brakes.”

(EM brakes?)

The older woman was still unconscious. After checking her pulse and breathing, Shirai lay her down on a platform bench and wrapped something like a thick plastic zip tie around the woman’s wrist like a watch. It was a rescue tag that shared its GSP data with the firefighters. The presence of the gun was worrying, but it appeared to be fixed to her with a special strap. Just to be safe, Shirai removed the ammunition, borrowed a tool from the young man, removed the firing hammer from the gun itself, and left it all with the younger driver. She didn’t like leaving it with him, but her training and education weren’t enough to let her carry around a gun and live ammunition.

“Y-you seem awfully comfortable with this,” said the young man.

“''I use more dangerous projectiles.''”

The Overhunting’s special design could be seen in how everything but the first car remained relatively intact. She even saw some prison guards slowly emerging onto the platform. She was afraid the strange weapon cars would explode, but that fear never came to pass.

(Her name was Alice, wasn’t it? It seems unlikely she would have snuck aboard the prisoner transport train, but you can never say anything for certain when it comes to a curious child.)

“The prisoners were only on the 4th and 5th cars,” groaned the younger driver with a hand on his head.

“Not what I wanted to hear. Those doors appear to be open.”

She checked inside and found a few wheeled cages that reminded her of the ones used to transport animals. Their locked doors sat open and the floor was littered with handcuffs, fetters, and other restraints.

They must have all escaped.

The destruction of the first car had cushioned the rest of the train enough that the prisoners had the strength needed to escape.

Shirai Kuroko checked each name on the tags pasted to the cages.

Rakuoka Houfu, Hanatsuyu Youen, Benizome Jellyfish.

She narrowed her eyes while picturing the criminals who had been aboard the Overhunting. Each of them had played an important role in Operation Handcuffs.

(Rakuoka.)

She bit her lip.

That former Anti-Skill officer had ultimately been arrested as part of the harmful dark side. During Operation Handcuffs, the bitterness had built in her chest the longer she pursued the criminals with him.

He too had escaped the prisoner transport train.

Had he seen it as an opportunity?

But Shirai made the rational decision.

“No, he isn’t the biggest threat. That would be Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier, who uses other lifeforms to transport harmful substances.”

“Th-three hundred million? Her bounty is well above the rest.” The younger driver stared at the tablet he had kept in an industrial shock-resistant case. The disbelief in his voice told Shirai he had not witnessed Handcuffs. She wouldn’t have wanted to get involved for a hundred times that much.

He looked up with confusion written on his face.

“But she’s only a 10-year-old girl and doesn’t have any special esper power?”

“Did you miss what I said about her using other lifeforms?”

Shirai Kuroko pointed at the large hole in the platform a short distance away. She recognized the dark melted structure. The Carrier had not waited around for law enforcement to make the first move.

“Mosquitos, fleas, ticks, flies, hornets, snakes, rats, crows, stray dogs, black bass, snapping turtles – the list goes on. That monster can control most any urban pest or vermin. That means her weapons are found in every part of the city and her supply is near limitless. With her, you can never assume she has been neutralized just because you have confiscated all of her tools. In a way, she uses the city itself as a weapon.”

“…”

“And there is no controlling her once she has the attractants needed to control animals and the highly toxic chemicals and microbes those animals can carry. The real problem is that ''she might be able to create those things from the exhaust gasses and waste waters found across the city.'' If you don’t want that biochemical warfare specialist committing war crimes throughout the city, you need to set up a blockade to keep her from-”

Shirai never finished her sentence.

The platform and the entire station building around it shook violently.

She immediately leaned against the side of the bent platform door. She heard the sparking of severed wires from all around and then she was enveloped in darkness. The lights had gone out across the entire platform.

It was currently 5:20 PM.

This late in the year, it would be dark out by then.

(Hm? I can’t reach Uiharu. But I doubt the base station on the surface is down.)

Shirai Kuroko was isolated down here. She felt her tension rapidly rising.

An explosion didn’t sound like the work of Youen the Carrier who specialized in toxins and bacteria, but during Handcuffs, Shirai had seen her use microbes to produce a methane explosion.

When his tablet lost its signal too, the younger driver complained with the backlight illuminating his face from below.

“Wh-what the hell!? What’s happened now!?”

“Something we would much rather not witness. Unfortunately, we will be forced to do so regardless.”

===Part 3===

The lights flickered worryingly but ultimately stayed on. Thanks to that, Kamijou Touma was finally forced to see the horrors crawling in the depths of Academy City.

It began with a light.

He heard a popping of air far more violent than a bug zapper and saw a white light far more brutal than welding.

“Eh?”

But this ''did not'' come from the white coat girl further down the corridor.

The flickering malice came from the side.

He reflexively held his right hand out toward the unidentified threat.

“Teacher, you mustn’t use ''that''.”

Someone grabbed his hand and shoved him to the side.

It was Alice.

A moment later, something brutal indeed shot past in a horizontal line at his chest height. It bent and broke four or five of the thick decorative pillars lined up along the concourse. This wasn’t a strange laser weapon or beam cannon. It only moved in straight lines, but it bent in a zigzag pattern. And it had been launched by a shaky silhouette?

“Ligh-”

After Alice tackled Kamijou out of the way, they both tumbled behind an elevator protected by reinforced glass. Alice was in short sleeves, so the softness of her upper arms reached him directly. The elevator itself was transparent, so it wouldn’t have hidden them if not for a magazine rack covered in free travel brochures. Kamijou sat on the floor staring in disbelief at the scorched empty space where his eyes still saw an afterimage.

He felt a stinging pain in his little finger.

It hadn’t hit him directly, but some kind of secondary effect had discolored the finger a bright red. It was probably burned.

That might not seem like much, but it told him what would have happened if Alice hadn’t protected him.

The pain was minimal, but it meant a lot.

(Imagine Breaker doesn’t work on this!?)

“Lightning?”

For just an instant, he saw a bloody young man sitting on a concrete floor with a smile on his face.

''“Do you…reason to…one? Of…you…”

Something scorched the back of his mind like a camera flash.

But he wasn’t sure what it meant. Unlike a dream, it remained so vivid in his mind.

“?”

What was that?

His right hand defense hadn’t worked on the attack or on the afterimage lingering in the back of his mind. Did that meant it could all be explained with ordinary science, like some kind of electrical signal linked to his brain?

He shook his head, pulled his old folk’s phone from his pocket, and held it sideways.

He couldn’t trust his eyes anymore, so he would view his surroundings through the camera app.

The distant silhouette was twisted into something like an S-shape. And for some reason, seven different facial recognition boxes popped up on different parts of it.

In this age where people were forgetting how to even write kanji, it was unusual to lose faith in the answer presented by your phone.

“Wh-what the hell am I even looking at?”

The phone picked up the crackling of electricity. When the phone started converting that into something like a flat Buddhist chant, he immediately switched off the screen. He shoved the phone into his pocket and felt an odd heat on his thigh. It creeped him out as much as having someone’s severed hand in his pocket.

He held Alice protectively against his side and she shrieked in delight.

Something was very wrong here, but the destructive power of that electricity was real. The lightning itself and the concrete and rebar it blasted into the air could both tear large chunks from his body.

“What now, teacher?”

Alice never seemed to notice the danger despite having the uncanny sixth sense of a small child, so she was still smiling innocently. Maybe she could see some deeper meaning behind all this, or maybe she was just enjoying being held by him.

“Shush, Alice. That thing already knows where we are, but I don’t want to give away our timing from our breathing or something.”

“Is this a secret? Wow…a secret for just the two of us.”

He wasn’t sure how, but the way she held her hands to her cheeks suggested he had tugged very forcefully at her heartstrings.

He heard something, so he held Alice close, held his breath, and pressed against the magazine rack by the elevator wall. He slowly poked his head out around the corner to look further down the corridor.

There was definitely a silhouette there.

It was wavering side to side.

“…is F…san…chan. I am…hind you.”

It was nearly impossible to make out at first.

The mass of noise was too messy to recognize as a voice.

But his instincts screamed that he couldn’t ignore it. Even though anyone in Academy City should scoff at the very thought of something like this.

“Hel…thi…rill…d #G…curr…be…you”

He couldn’t do it.

No one could claim this was an illusion, they were imagining it, or they had misinterpreted what they had seen and heard.

A doll-like woman wore a special dress that clung to her figure but spread out around her ankles.

Her curvy body and blonde twintails were at odds, giving her an unbalanced appearance.

Her head swayed irregularly side to side with long bangs covering her eyes.

The hem of her blue dress was absorbed by the base of a destroyed pillar. No, that wasn’t it. Her unsteady feet were buried in it. ''She was passing right through the solid object.''

Anyone who saw this would reach the same conclusion.

Yes.

No one could say how this could exist in a world ruled by solid physical laws and inundated with artificial tools, but this was undoubtedly something not of this world.

Or more bluntly, a ghost.

“Hello, this is Frillsand #G-chan. I am currently behind you.”

Kamijou knew this had to be bad.

That phrase acted as some sort of trigger. A much worse trigger than the words “kill” and “die” that back alley delinquents used so habitually. He sensed killer intent passing right by him after being released along a path straighter than a bullet.

It wasn’t aimed at him or Alice.

Which meant…

(The white coat girl in front of the lockers!?)

Grinning Alice had asked him “what now” earlier.

This ghost had launched an electric current powerful enough to break through several concrete pillars, even if they were only decorative, and she had also passed through a wall. Worse, his Imagine Breaker hadn’t worked against her attack. That proved she ''was not an occult being', but that was no reason to relax.

“Hee hee. That’s a ghost. Since she’s making an appearance at this busy time of year, could she be a Kallikantzaros?”

“You’re kidding, right? Are you saying she looks like a ghost to you too?”

He didn’t know what that Kalli-whatever was, but she had definitely said “ghost”. This could not be described with a different word like hallucination, hologram, or retinal projector. It was one of those things where “you know it when you see it” and he now had confirmation that it wasn’t just him who thought so.

But a ghost? Most likely, no one had an exact definition there. But since she was walking through Academy City, could she have been artificially created with the power of science!?

“You have got to be kidding me. Finding a scientific explanation for a ghost doesn’t make this one any less dangerous. In fact, that only makes her more of a threat for me!”

“Mhh, that dress-up doll has really big boobs. Finding a dress that fits her can’t be easy.”

Alice was worried about something else entirely.

This ghost existed here as a scientific, physical phenomenon. That objectivity only made her more dangerous. This wasn’t just the placebo effect and it wasn’t just an illusion or hallucination meant to kill him from shock. She caused very real harm.

There was no point in trying to fight and eliminate her.

Losing would mean his death, but winning wouldn’t accomplish anything. And if that victory meant destroying something or killing someone, then he would be seen as a common criminal. It felt silly to bring it up when discussing a ghost, but that was how real incidents worked. It was all a waste of time. The best plan was to find cover and escape outside the station as quickly as he could.

And since his right hand didn’t work, Kamijou had only one option in mind.

“Alice.”

“Yes?”

“Let’s get out of the station to escape this ghost. You can see the sign pointing to the north exit, right? We’ll run straight down the concourse following those signs and get out of here as fast as possible. But I’m taking that girl with me!!”

He grabbed a bundle of free travel brochures from the nearby magazine rack and tossed it to the other side.

With a dreadful zapping noise, a high-voltage current was released in the wrong direction, shattering a bakery’s window. ''I’m damaging people’s property already!?'' lamented Kamijou as he tensed in preparation. A rotting stench reached him from a smoking flatscreen LCD monitor and the speaker on the ceiling swayed side to side like it was cackling. Something was very wrong here, but he couldn’t let it slow him down.

Don’t falter. Shake it off. If they didn’t use this noise as their cue, they would never manage to leave this spot.

“Alice!! Go!!”

Alice’s unnatural affection for him worked in his favor here. He gestured for her to go and she looked delighted to start running with the white fluffball on the back of her apron shaking. He pulled away from the elevator wall too and ran across the concourse. Everything around him scared him at this point because he never knew what would carry the high-voltage current to him. Several of the pillars had broken, so it was even possible the ceiling would collapse without warning. He couldn’t even trust the reinforced concrete. It felt like he had been swallowed up into ''another world'' entirely.

Their goal was the ticket gate for the north exit, which was located about 50m away, but Kamijou did not take the most direct route. He instead approached the wall, bringing him toward the coin-operated lockers. He wanted to reach the 10-year-old girl in a white coat stained with colorful paint. That was why he had put Alice down.

He charged in headfirst.

The girl’s surprised face grew to fill his vision.

He spread his arms and rushed at the girl by the lockers in what amounted to a headfirst slide more than a tackle.

And a moment later, he passed right through her.

The girl’s silhouette crumbled away.

The shoulders that looked so slender they would break if he held them too tight, the chest much too large for her age, and the young face that wore a cruel smile surprisingly comfortably all faded away.

He lost his balance like he had crashed into a pile of snow or sand and he collapsed to the floor before he could figure out what happened.

“Eh?”

His mind went entirely blank.

The 10-year-old girl simply wasn’t there. Nor was there a large LCD panel or anything like that. The image came apart into countless small specks that crawled all over his hair and skin and even got in his mouth.

“Ew!? Peh, peh. ''The hell? Why bugs!?''”

===Part 4===

Hanatsuyu Youen had been cautious.

Of course she had. The 10-year-old girl with a prison uniform resembling a thick work jumpsuit was pressed against the exit of a station convenience store located right next to the lockers.

She hadn’t been careless enough to march on over and collect her emergency supplies right away. She had instead created a 3D image of herself using the bugs and pests she controlled with synthetic nectar and chemical compounds and then kept an eye out for any possible pursuers.

(Dragonflies and clearwing moths are just two examples of insects with clear wings. The human eye is easily fooled if you can bend light. So by using the transparency of their wings, it isn’t hard to display an image of myself a short distance away. Combine that with animal fur and feathers and, similar to an AR fitting room, I can even display clothing that isn’t really there.)

Simply put, she had in fact removed her prison uniform, but not in front of the lockers. The white coat and gasmask had been additional data she created by adding extra colors on top of the 3D image created from reflected light. Jewel beetles and morpho butterflies were just two examples of creatures that used structural coloration to manipulate light like the grooves of a CD. If she wanted to, she could display an adult version of herself or even a giant version who towered over the skyscrapers.

However.

This situation went well beyond anything she had expected.

First of all, what was that ghost?

She knew the Overhunting’s crash was no accident and someone had caused it on purpose. So whether she stayed on the train or tried to escape, she couldn’t escape that person’s plans if she didn’t make a real effort to do so.

But what was this?

She had been expecting to be the target of Academy City’s higher ups, Anti-Skill, or some other goody-goody spouting nonsense about justice and hoping to score some points, but this came as a complete surprise.

If anything, this supernatural being reeked of ''the shadows'' just like she did.

(This isn’t just an image. Could they have been a part of Handcuffs too?)

Hanatsuyu Youen had not seen the madness on December 25 through to the end. She and her twin Kaai had tapped out early in District 18, so she didn’t know the full picture. This thing may have reached ''a deeper darkness'' on that day.

But more than that, what was wrong with that incomprehensible pointy-haired boy!?

He was the exact opposite.

He was like a bright and shining sun, so she feared she would get burned if she approached too carelessly. He had just tackled the false image she had placed in front of the lockers, but surely he hadn’t been trying to protect a complete stranger from that artificial ghost’s attack, right?

The atmosphere changed.

The sticky darkness was cleared away.

“Eww!? I won’t deny I was a little excited to see a naked girl outside all of a sudden, but did she have to be an illusion filled with bugs!? Is this some kind of divine punishment? Peh peh. Not in the mouth!! They’re so scaly!! Ugh, bleh, bleh!!”

“Hee hee. The girl wants to hug you too☆”

Youen could not believe what she was seeing.

The mystery high school boy was writhing on the floor and a picture book blonde girl named Alice was leaping at him with a beaming smile and arms spread. She didn’t seem to care he was crawling with bugs.

Then Youen’s eyes met the boy’s.

This had all been a shock, but she had still been careless.

And. Still swarmed with clear-winged creatures and a picture book girl, he yelled to her from the floor.

He directed no anger or fear her way.

“Cough, cough!! Y-you there. I don’t know what’s up with that ghost or these bugs, but this place is dangerous!! The north exit is right there, so get out of here if you can still run!!”

For a moment, she wasn’t sure how to react.

He was serious.

This dyed-in-the-wool idiot was telling a prisoner he had never met before to escape. He didn’t even seem to realize she was the one who had chemically gathered the bugs to create that false image.

Her twin Kaai wouldn’t have hesitated to give an additional order that decomposed his entire body. Kaai shuddered with joy when she defiled herself by accepting the city’s corruption, so she hated nothing as much as an embodiment of the sort of hotblooded masculinity that forced his fastidious idea of justice onto everyone else.

But Youen was not Kaai.

She had always wanted them to melt away together, but Kaai had already left her. And not because some third party had torn them apart. Kaai had left of her own free will.

(…)

Youen bit her small lip.

She thought a moment about why her twin had left her.

“Okay, fine!!”

She sprinkled around a chemical compound made from the wastewater found around here and sent another command to those decomposers. With a sound like adzuki beans rolling inside a tilted box, she sent the swarm of bugs away from the mystery boy and toward the electrified artificial ghost. She put her prisoner uniform back on while shouting to the boy.

“This way, normal person. If you don’t want to die, then grab that business bag and coat and follow me!!”

Something so small could still alter someone’s destiny.

===Part 5===

The situation was on the move.

The clear-winged bugs swarming Kamijou peeled away from him like iron sand being drawn to a magnet. The creepy, spine-tingling feeling immediately vanished.

“Don’t go, buggies!”

For some reason, Alice reached her small hands out after them. On closer inspection, the insects fluttering in front of her were a type of moth. It was hard to believe, but were fairy tale girls not afraid of bugs? Kamijou grabbed her wrists to keep her from accidentally crushing the bugs in her grasp.

He had heard someone ask him to follow her.

He grabbed the requested items and obeyed.

“Let’s go, Alice!!”

“Okay!”

It was faster to hold smiling Alice under his arm than to pull her along by the hand. She flailed her arms and legs the entire time, but she was clearly enjoying herself. On his way to the station convenience store’s entrance, he crashed into the black-haired little girl in a colorful prison uniform. They collapsed inside and landed in a pile.

A high-voltage current shot by like an optical weapon, blowing away a vending machine and capsule toy machine in front of the store and shattering all of the windows. Kamijou’s mind dulled as the fear of death took over, but that actually helped keep him moving. Maybe a paranormal phenomenon had caused the air conditioning to malfunction, but he didn’t have time to worry about the warm air that felt like the inside of someone’s mouth. They crouched low as they cut across the inside of the store, pushed open a staff only door with a shoulder, and escaped into the staff only space in the back. He was scared, so he wanted the unfamiliar girl’s opinion on the matter.

“Do you have any idea what that ghost woman is!? When I aimed my phone at her, the facial recognition went haywire!!”

“Sigh. This is Academy City and she seems electrical, so I would suspect some kind of virus or cyber attack.”

Could that really explain all of this?

The attacks that looked like ultra-high-voltage electricity seemed more like strange masses of data to him. His malfunctioning phone and the images that appeared in his head when it shocked him seemed like a small part of what was happening here.

''“Do you…reason to…one? Of…you…”

What was that partial phrase burned into the back of his mind? Who was that bloody young man he had seen?

It was like the ghost pursuing them didn’t realize she was leaking some kind of message.

As far as he could tell, being hit by Frillsand #G’s lightning attacks burned a scene into the back of your mind. If that artificial ghost couldn’t converse in the normal fashion, that might be one of the few ways she had of conveying information. But all of this was speculation. None of it seemed worth stepping in front of that high-voltage current that could easily cause his entire body to burst.

They still weren’t safe. The back of a convenience store was a curious place for Kamijou who had no part-time work experience, but the rows of drinks kept behind the glass doors apparently continued on back to here. The cans and bottles would slide down a gentle slope to restock the shelves.

The high-voltage current pierced right through those glass doors and plastic bottles. It was on a collision course.

“Ugh!?”

He groaned and felt a pain in his heart, but he belatedly realized nothing had happened to him.

Something was dancing through the cramped space. It was floating in the air as if to protect Alice who he held under his arm, but what was it? A weapon? An oar? It was a long flat panel painted pink.

“A cricket bat,” muttered Youen in a puzzled voice. “Were you ''hiding that under your apron''?”

A second and third blast of electricity flew their way, but the bat(?) soared this way and that to block them with sparks flying. Every time, pink feathers scattered from the bat and it squawked like a bird. At times, the oar-shaped bat’s outlines started to distort.

Kamijou had not seen it emerge, but if Youen was to be believed…

“Um, hey.”

“What do you need, teacher?”

“Alice, are you doing this?”

“?”

She smiled and tilted her head in his arm.

Bending at all would be nearly impossible with that large board under her apron and he hadn’t noticed her having any trouble moving before. Had she actually pulled it out at some other time like with a stage magician’s handkerchief, or could she manipulate space like Shirai Kuroko? He couldn’t say when he didn’t know anything about Alice.

Regardless, they couldn’t stay here. Deflecting the attacks wasn’t the same thing as shutting them off at the source. With another earsplitting boom, a beam of light shot right past them and scorched the wall.

“Yikes!!”

“It’s electricity. That means we need to avoid anywhere that’s flooded. This way.”

In that case, Kamijou didn’t like the idea of any water on the floor at all or any twisted wires. He also wanted to avoid stepping on the broken glass. He never really thought about how sturdy the soles of his shoes were.

But he also had a more fundamental question.

“Who are you? I’m super afraid of the answer, but isn’t that a prison uniform?”

“I am Hanatsuyu Youen. I am glad you don’t recognize me because it means you’re one of those ignorant normal people. One piece of advice: do not search my name online. You will regret it if you do. Checking the news articles won’t be too bad, but if you dig deeper than that, your search history might get you put on a watchlist of dangerous individuals.”

With a cruel smile that looked weirdly at home on her face, Youen crouched low and approached another metal door. It apparently led to a corridor for workers to transport supplies. The narrow windowless concrete corridor felt so much like an underground tunnel that it was easy to forget how far above the ground they were.

Kamijou set down Alice so she could walk alongside him and she spoke to him with a smile.

“You seem accustomed to electric attacks, teacher.”

She wasn’t wrong since he happened to know an electric girl with a short temper, but he had never imagined that girl’s dysfunctional communication style would one day save his life from something as crazy as a ghost.

“Ideally, we could escape outside the station with this corridor not found on the public diagrams, but I doubt it will be that easy. Whether or not we can defeat her, we need to be ready to break past that ghost called…Frillsand #G was it?” suggested Hanatsuyu Youen, sounding only mildly concerned.

Then Kamijou heard a rustling sound.

He looked over to see the black-haired girl of around 10 had unzipped her thick prison uniform and stripped it off in the middle of the corridor.

She did it so naturally he nearly overlooked it, but then he jumped.

“Whoa!? Wh-what the hell are you doing!?”

“Just return that coat and mask. Oh, and the bag.”

“So there really was a girl naked outside? It wasn’t just a weird hologram made with bug wings?”

“I guess that was a horrific way for it to end for you. You can overwrite the memory with this.”

[[Image:GT_Index_v05_BW3.png|thumb]]

He couldn’t tell how serious she was as she pulled something like a thick belt from her business bag. It looked like the ammunition for a machinegun in an action movie, but it instead contained countless test tubes carrying colorful liquids.

Alice jumped up from behind Kamijou and (imperfectly) covered his eyes and spoke with a tremor in her voice.

“S-she is shorter than the girl but still has big boobs!?”

“Heh heh. Sexy, aren’t I?”

Youen wrapped the belt around her body (which was unnaturally curvy for a girl of her age), pulled the white coat’s collar together like a yukata, and used a medical corset to fasten it in place like a thick sash.

“There, now I’m ready to fight. And the color of the reagents suggests the chemicals are unaltered.”

“Really?”

“I don’t have to worry about money either. Cash is easily acquired by selling rare insects in violation of the Washington Convention. Or I could soak some random weeds in hallucinogenic insect venom and sell it in the back alleys for at least 100 thousand yen a gram. Heh heh. I have everything I need to earn some running away money.”

“Why do you have to add these lengthy and very concerning explanations?”

It might have been cute if she wore a black lace eyepatch and gothic lolita fashion, carried a “demon sword” decorated with black roses, and was at the age where kids loved Legendary Ultimate Eternal Almighty Magic more than food, but this girl didn’t seem so harmless. Youen wasn’t trying to steal the initiative away from an older boy like Kamijou. She was speaking to herself and checking over each of her abilities to ensure she would be safe.

“Sigh. I thought I was over this, but now that I’m out in the city, there’s so much I want to eat. Like Red Town’s kiwi gyoza.”

“Is Los Angeles just taking over my life now? I don’t have many good memories of that city.”

Anyway, they needed to get outside.

This hidden corridor had no windows and it took a few right-angle turns along the way. It was probably laid out to weave between the rectangular stores bordering the concourse. The twists and turns made it hard to see very far ahead, so they were forced to nervously peak around the corners. Fortunately, they never found any kind of ambush.

After a few turns, they came across something different: a metal shutter and a human-sized metal door alongside it.

Kamijou’s face lit up and he approached it.

“There, that’s it! We can get outside from here!!”

“?”

But one of Youen’s eyebrows shot up like she had felt her phone vibrating in her cleavage. She chose one of the colorful test tubes and pulled it from within her coat. She viewed the surface of the neon yellow liquid inside.

“Wow, it’s rippling,” said Alice in delight.

“Microwaves? No, the reagent’s coloration colloid particles are reacting, so it must be terahertz waves. That’s not good. Hey, you! Get away from that shutter immediately!!”

“?”

For some reason, Youen glared harshly at the concrete next to the shutter instead of the shutter itself. Kamijou had taken a step ahead of her, so he looked back her way in confusion.

Just then, two loud noises tore into the thick security shutter.

The cause appeared to be a pair of metal darts.

The destruction was focused on the top of the shutter. The upper left and right. That destroyed either the device to roll up the shutter or the latches holding it in place because the shutter dropped to the floor like a dramatic unveiling ceremony.

The view outside opened up.

A girl with twintails stood in front of them wearing strange goggles over her eyes.

“Who is this girl?” shouted Alice on reflex. “She has strong pervert energy!!”

“At the very least, I’m not as weird as you and your short sleeves this time of year!!”

She twirled the short metal darts rapidly between her fingers, keeping them in constant motion.

“I was right to leave that driver back at the platform.” That middle school girl – ''Shirai Kuroko of Judgment'' – readied several metal darts that could destroy even the toughest and strongest material when she teleported them through space. “Hanatsuyu Youen!! You are under arrest for escaping custody and on suspicion of property damage to the station building!!”

Terahertz waves were special electromagnetic waves that could be used to scan through objects, so they were used in airports in place of magnetic metal detectors and X-ray scanners that could cause health problems. The special waves had an extremely high frequency and a nature midway between light and radio waves, so they could easily search out the number and locations of people on the other side of a wall.

No toy could be so dangerous in the hands of a teleporter who could ignore all three-dimensional restrictions to directly attack any point in space. Currently, there was no hiding from Shirai Kuroko.

The situation could hardly have been worse, but Youen actually smiled savagely and shoved Kamijou to the side. Her other hand held several test tubes full of colorful liquids.

Before she even popped the rubber caps off with her thumb, the city’s shadows were already ''crawling'' through the ceiling duct and the drain at the edge of the floor.

“My, my. You survived December 25 but still didn’t learn a single thing from the darkness?”

“Do not attempt to resist. My darts can break through any and all defenses.”

“Can they? That inability to ‘strike with the back of the blade’ as it were sounds like trouble for a justice exhibitionist like you. I doubt you use those goggles all the time, so how long does the battery last? A few minutes perhaps? But I’m one of the bad guys, so I won’t hesitate. You really should have considered what it means to oppose the Carrier who controls every last urban pest and vermin. Oh, right. You had to tap out back on the 25th, didn’t you? Abandoning your partner in the process.”

“Hanatsuyu Youen!!”

“You stole Kaai from me. Did you think I would just let you get away with that? No matter how powerful your attack is, destroying individual ''points'' isn’t enough to hold back a torrent of death. I will sweep you away with a solid ''wall''☆”

They both held deadly weapons at the ready and they both stepped forward as if to provoke the other.

Kamijou didn’t like the look of this. This wasn’t a clash between a sword and a shield. It was sword against sword. When two people who protected themselves with a deadly force clashed and neither side got scared and put their weapon away, there was no stopping a battle where one side or the other ended up in a pool of their own blood.

Even if they were only trying to defend themselves and had no intention of killing the other.

Even if they would look down at their bloodstained hands and let out a bloodcurdling wail of sorrow once it was all over.

He couldn’t let this happen. He had to find some way of stopping it.

(Oh.)

He wasn’t sure why he made the decision he did.

But the moment after he shoved Youen aside, the metal dart appeared out of thin air and stabbed into his body.

===Part 6===

The point of scorching heat rapidly spread until his entire body was on fire.

Kamijou collapsed to the ground. He clenched his teeth, but he couldn’t hold in the scream. His body felt like a vortex of agony, so he wasn’t even sure where the injury was on him.

“Gah, ahhhh. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

He couldn’t even get up and the hand holding his shoulder was mostly a reflexive thing. It was only then that he realized the metal dart had pierced his shoulder.

The disgusting feeling of the metal sticking in where it didn’t belong was more powerful than the simple pain.

Hanatsuyu Youen’s jaw dropped as she stared at him screaming and shedding meaningless tears. Shirai Kuroko pushed her terahertz goggles up to her forehead and rushed over.

Alice may not have understood the gravity of the situation because she laughed and mimicked his screams in genuine delight.

“Wh-what do you think you’re doing, you ape!?”

“Don’t ask me. But if you feel even a twinge of regret after seeing this blood, then stop teleporting those things at people. You’re both using way too much deadly force! Why does Academy City insist on bringing everyone closer to death the higher you go!? I’m starting to think it’s the ordinary Level 0s who are the safest and most at peace!!”

Meanwhile, Youen finally regained her composure and whistled with her hands clasped behind her head.

“Wow, this wasn’t my fault. Maybe I should go tattle to the teachers.”

“You villain!!”

“Here’s the thing, justice exhibitionist. If you don’t want him to die because of you, then you’d better step aside right now. I’ll fix this silly blunder of yours.” Youen held a hand to the center of her unnaturally large chest and winked. “If you need sterilization or disinfection, I can produce some ethanol or Bifidobacterium. If you need a pain relief chemical, I can extract it from a mosquito or tick. The quickest way to stop bleeding is to control the coagulation and sewing up a blood vessel requires some sturdy animal thread, right? There are so many options there, from silkworm silk to spider silk. The silkworm is praised as the most plentiful beneficial bug in the world, but it’s really just a grotesque moth larva. This is sounding a lot like my area of expertise, isn’t it?”

“You…?”

Shirai Kuroko couldn’t find the words.

She seemed to know Youen form somewhere and it appeared to come as a complete shock that Youen would ''choose to save an injured person’s life''.

However…

“N-no!! Unlicensed medical procedures are against the law! Especially if we are talking about unhygienic surgery using urban pests and vermin!!”

“Sigh. Yet again, justice proves it kills more people than us villains ever could. I can’t imagine why this softhearted idiot would protect me, but this means ''I owe him twice''. And I don’t care what you say – I’m not going to let him die until I’ve repaid him with interest.”

“…”

“Paying back your debts sounds like a system unrelated to good and evil to me.”

The two girls’ gazes clashed while they crouched on either side of collapsed Kamijou.

But they didn’t have all day.

Kamijou was still groaning in agony from the deep wound and the unsettling feeling of the metal in his shoulder, but he still managed to reach out an empty hand to draw Youen’s attention by tapping her on the side of the hip.

He couldn’t get his voice out even though the wound was in his shoulder.

His position lying on the floor had allowed him to notice something before the others.

The artificial ghost’s face had just appeared out from a nearby concrete wall.

Whether it was natural or artificial, that was a real ghost. That meant the laws of physics might not apply. But could she really just pass through solid walls? That was cheating in a different way from teleportation. A foe that could do that without warning could sneak up on even by the most experienced combat veteran!!

Did Shirai and Youen even notice the bug zapper sound?

Unlike with the train crash, there wasn’t time to leave Alice and Youen with the teleporter.

Frillsand #G released a massive high-voltage current in all directions.

The white light was brighter than welding at close range and the rumble of the concrete walls and ceiling coming down shook the boy’s eardrums.

“Shi…rai!!”

All he could do was shout her name and give her a shove.

A moment later, something blurred and he saw another scene on top of reality. He wasn’t sure why, but the phone in his pocket heated up so much he feared it would burn him.

He had misinterpreted what happened last time. It wasn’t being hit by the high-voltage current that sent the strange hallucination into his mind. Yes, his phone and the station’s devices hadn’t malfunctioned because they received a direct hit from that thick beam of electricity.

The entire area around the artificial ghost was faintly electrified.

(My…hair? So that’s it. Static electricity or something is surrounding the entire surface of my head.)

The scene played out in hellish slow motion, but he still had no way of avoiding the ghost’s attack. Imagine Breaker couldn’t negate it. It was possible he could reduce the risk of death from the agonizing shock if he let the hallucination take over. Even if it only increased the odds he could get back up and fight back next time.

A moment later, the mass of high-voltage electricity pierced straight through the center of Kamijou Touma’s body.

===Part 7===

An old man’s voice rang through a dizzyingly vast but suffocatingly claustrophobic concrete space.

“''The Vanishing Tunnel does not actually exist.''”

He was answered by a young man who seemed threatened and driven to the edge.

“Do you want my research notes on Frillsand #G?”

Whose memory was this?

It wasn’t the old man’s or the young man’s. Neither one seemed to consider the presence of whoever’s eyes were watching them. Like they thought that person had already left the scene.

Maybe they weren’t entirely wrong.

The scene felt like a dream. Like the viewer didn’t have the ability to interfere in what they were watching.

“I’m no barbarian.”

Maybe that was why that person could only watch. Even though they knew the scene was headed toward disaster.

“A few of them.”

The old man pointed toward several small children in gym clothes. In the realm known as the dark side, those lives would be consumed in the name of combat or research.

“Just select a few at random.”

The young man had challenged the city’s darkness in order to protect them.

He had even pretended to be a Kihara to bolster his insufficient strength.

Even giving physical form to a pipedream like an artificial ghost and finetuning it as a weapon may have been a part of that goal.

So.

Even if he was backed up to the precipice of death, he had only one possible answer here.

“''Go to hell, you son of a bitch.''”

The observer had known from the beginning how this would end.

Finally, a dry gunshot rang out before their eyes.

They couldn’t do anything to stop it.

Not one thing.

===Part 8===

The ringing noise filling Kamijou Touma’s mind rapidly faded and reality rushed back in.

The high-voltage current might have actually stopped his heart for the few seconds his sense of time had been out of order.

“Gah!!”

The white light was replaced by color.

Sound crept back into the great pressure.

His limbs trembled. If he didn’t clench his teeth, he was afraid his convulsions would make him bite off his own tongue.

Something was messing with his mind. This was very bad. He had underestimated the risk. If this kept happening, he was afraid he would lose track of what was his own memory, what was a meaningless hallucination, and what was external data placed in his head.

In the instant of the blast, his senses had been so confused he forget whether he was standing up or lying down. Everything felt fake, like he was swimming through a strange liquid. But even in that state, what little of his mind was still functioning worked to rejoin reality.

The destruction of the concrete wall was very real.

However, that was not the result of the electric storm released from Frillsand #G’s body.

“Gwoahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!”

A deep roar shook the ground below them.

The concrete wall across from the one the ghost had emerged through was smashed apart by some great force. It must have been a punching fist or a tackling shoulder. The giant mass of muscle that emerged grabbed Frillsand #G and smashed through the opposite wall to disappear again. The attack made it easy to forget this was a straight corridor. It felt more like a crash at an intersection.

But aside from that, Kamijou forgot all about the pain in his shoulder while lying on the floor.

He was truly shocked.

That had been nothing but muscle.

Pure muscle had overpowered a scientific ghost?

What even was that monster? It looked like someone had taken the body of a storybook ogre and pasted on the head of a skinny middle-aged man with a combover and glasses. There probably were girls who read shoujo manga as a child and honestly wanted a sparkly guy who was disproportionally tall for the size of his handsome face, but there was no way anyone wanted that macho body with a tiny middle-aged head on top.

Yet someone seemed to recognize that otherworldly image.

Shirai Kuroko rubbed her eyes and grimaced before shouting into the hole in the wall.

“''Rakuoka Houfu''!! What do you think you’re doing!?”

She was only answered by repeated flashes of light and deep zapping sounds coming from the hole. The battle must have been fairly one-sided. A vending machine equipped with AI and a camera malfunctioned such that a female voice kept repeating “Facial recognition failed. Please take a step back.” while drink bottles spewed from the bottom.

Alice approached dazed Kamijou with a smile. She bent over and rubbed the top of her little blonde head against his stomach. The two pointy curls that resembled animal ears actually hurt a fair bit.

“Teacher.”

“Yes, that girl’s intuition is correct. The ghost is the greatest threat, so escaping the station is our top priority if we want to survive.” Youen spoke on Alice’s behalf. “I say we let the justice exhibitionist play her stupid role while we do the smart thing and get the hell out of here. Can you stand? If not, I can surround you with bees or ants and force you onto your feet with them. Go, creepy-crawly powered suit☆”

“No need!!” he insisted, springing to his feet. Having tens of thousands of ants and bees covering him too thoroughly for cutaneious respiration and tugging his arms and legs around like a puppet was the stuff of nightmares. But it turned out intense fear worked great to eliminate less-important pain and suffering. He doubted his sanity was going to last long like this, though.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going!?”

“Tch. The goody-goody freak noticed. But an emergency evacuation comes first right now!!”

They hurried him along, but Youen and Alice were too small to lend Kamijou a shoulder. He was forced to clench his teeth and walk forward under his own power.

They had to get through the broken shutter and outside the station.

Then they could escape this deadly nightmare.

Or so he thought.

After hearing a sharp “zing!!”, they ducked back toward building.

“What?”

Kamijou noticed orange sparks and a shallow scrape in the asphalt near his feet.

Someone was firing on them from a distance.

===Part 9===

Kamijou’s group weren’t the only ones shocked.

(What is that? A flamingo bat? That animal ears girl must be some kind of weirdo to choose a non-baseball bat in this country.)

The sniper wore a cowboy hat and a red China dress. You couldn’t find that kind of clothing at an ordinary store, so she must have stolen it back from the confiscated items being transported along with her in the Overhunting. She gulped at what she assumed that picture book dress girl must have done. A pink oar-like object had floated into the air and blocked the ricocheted bullet.

(Is she an esper, or is that a next-generation weapon? No, I can worry about the exact definition later! I just hope it isn’t something ''truly incomprehensible'' like that Coin of Nicholas.)

She lay on her stomach atop a store building on the other side of a major road from South District 7 Station. A semiauto sniper rifle’s stock was pressed against her shoulder and a plastic case bearing the Anti-Skill logo sat nearby.

(Sigh. Anti-Skill must not get paid very much. Wait, do they even get a special bonus beyond their ordinary teacher’s pay?)

A whirring motor hovered overhead.

“Yeah, these drones are more convenient than I expected. I honestly thought anything was fine as long it had a camera and could store images.”

She used a mirrorless multifunction scope that displayed both the moisture and EM waves in the air to check around the destroyed metal shutter again, but she displayed a different window at the same time. With those small drones, she wouldn’t miss the crucial moment even if it happened inside the giant closed room that was the station building.

“You can’t tempt a scoop junkie like me with such a juicy incident. Now I’ve just got to get a really shocking pic☆”

Yes. Benizome Jellyfish was a paparazzo who was willing to kill if it would get her what she wanted and nothing would ever change that. She even licked her lips as she kept whispering to herself.

“Don’t give me that. I can’t have you escaping to safety, you little chicks. I went to the trouble of hiding out with my camera at the ready, after all. I’ll give you some chaos to start with, but I need to you to grow this into an incident with a shockingly high body count☆”

===Part 10===

More orange sparks scattered from the asphalt. This time, it was less than 30cm from Kamijou’s shoe. Shirai shouted “Benizome”, which he assumed to be a name.

The mysterious sniper fire kept them from leaving the station.

“Th-this is bad.” Kamijou had gone entirely pale. “And the worst part is I’m barely even questioning the presence of a real sniper rifle here in Japan.”

“Wow, it’s already night outside. The girl wants to spend the night with her teacher. She wants to talk about things she can’t tell anyone else!!”

Alice rejoiced for entirely unrelated reasons, so he grabbed the back of her collar to restrain her while walking back into the station building. He was afraid she would run out into the sniper fire with a big smile.

There were two large holes in the corridor walls. Sparking light came from one, suggesting the battle between the ghost and the muscles was still ongoing. That meant it would safer to try the other hole, the one Rakuoka Houfu had come from.

But Youen was still calm enough to think rationally. Which he found unbelievable.

“The accuracy of those shots suggests the sniper can see the moisture and electricity in the air. Bullets weren’t exactly rare in Operation Handcuffs, so I would rate them a lower-middle threat maybe? The biggest threats were all bizarre nonsense.”

“You are imagining things,” insisted Shirai. “It is the 29th. That nightmare ended on the 25th!!”

“For example, this justice exhibitionist’s teleportation. But I never saw that ghost back then.”

Could they confuse the sniper with Youen’s 3D images? No. No matter how many false images they created, it was still up to luck who the sniper actually targeted. That wouldn’t eliminate all risk of the girls being shot.

The hole in the wall led to a shower room. That seemed like an odd thing for a train station, but it may have been for the station workers. They couldn’t return home in their uniforms, so maybe they needed a place to change and freshen up. With the wall broken through, it was impossible to tell where the general public was and wasn’t supposed to go.

They walked across the tile floor and found a locker room. There was a bench with a back, so Kamijou finally got to sit down.

Low tremors continued to shake the floor.

Hanatsuyu Youen was focused on his shoulder.

“I should probably treat your shoulder wound now.”

“Eh? What?”

“First, I will remove the dart.”

The agonizing pain made stars dance before his eyes.

It honestly felt like the wound had swollen to several times its size.

He let out an incomprehensible shout, but he wasn’t sure the sounds leaving his mouth and the ones entering his ears were actually the same.

He was glad the dart didn’t have a barb. Removing what was plugging up the wound definitely caused the bleeding to increase, but the wicked 10-year-old wasn’t concerned.

“I need to disinfect the wound before I stop the bleeding. Come on out, you adorable maggots!”

“What? What did you just say, you horrible girl!?”

“Have you never heard of maggot therapy? Ignorant, hotblooded, and short-tempered is so not a good combination.”

She intertwined spider silk around a hornet stinger and used that to sew up a thick blood vessel and then used a coagulating mixture of snake venoms to seal up the wound itself. The difference between poison and medicine was mostly in how the substance was used, so there may not have been a strict boundary between the two. Of course, an amateur attempting it would only get the patient killed.

In other words, this small Carrier didn’t lack the skills to help instead of harm and it wasn’t that the option had never occurred to her.

She could do it, but didn’t.

The option was right there in front of her, but she didn’t choose it. Was that due to her personal interests and preferences? Or had she lived a life where her situation never allowed for that option?

It didn’t seem to bother her any and she patted her small hand on the closed wound.

“There, all done. When I decide to heal someone, I make sure not to leave a scar. You’d better cry your eyes out in thanks.”

She blew him a kiss and then pointed her small thumb toward a tall machine tucked into the gap between two sections of lockers.

“The bleeding has stopped, but you’ll still want some vitamin C or folic acid. I’ll buy you some vegetable juice from that vending machine, so hand over some change.”

“Vitamins?”

“As ingredients for a hematinic drug. Closing up the wound doesn’t bring back the blood you lost.”

That made perfect sense.

Needing blood made him think of iron-rich foods like liver or spinach, but if an expert in the field (what field?) said this was best, he wasn’t going to argue. Blood had several different components, so maybe there were ways beyond directly ingesting iron.

However…

“I-I only have 49 yen.”

“Garbage. Human garbage,” spat the white coat girl, giving him the look of a girl when her worthless date left her with the entire bill.

Kamijou’s shoulders drooped at his utter failure in the New Year’s Tokyo survival life, but then he felt something crinkle at his feet.

It was a rolled up 10000yen bill.

“Good fortune does exist!!”

“It’s lying near a change machine, so take it and I’m handcuffing you for theft,” warned Shirai.

“Fine, whatever. You can let the fugitive criminal take care of it.”

Youen swiped the money from terrified Kamijou’s hand and inserted it into the vending machine. She ignored Shirai’s protests and bought all of the vegetable and fruit drinks shown on the display.

“Go, creepy-crawly fusion☆”

“You aren’t just going to give me the drink as-is!?”

“I said they were only ingredients, didn’t I? Now say ‘ah’♪”

“Wait, no! I’ll drink it, I’ll drink it! I won’t waste your home cooking, so at least let me decide when I do it!”

“Shut up, you.”

“Hm? Why did you just put it in your mouth!? I really don’t have any good memories when it comes to receiving sketchy drugs mouth-to- mghmghmghgmgh!!!??”

The mystery liquid allowed Kamijou Touma to realize the male dream of a cute girl giving him his medicine mouth-to-mouth. And unlike with Anna, this wasn’t even poison. For some reason, Alice stared jealously with her mouth forming a small triangle.

This was supposed to help with his blood, but his mouth tasted like a grassy soup.

After pulling away and letting out a breath, Youen held a finger to her lips in realization. The gloomy but hard-to-read girl whispered to herself.

“Oops. That was my first kiss, wasn’t it?”

His male dream received an added bonus. This was reaching legendary levels on par with warming each other’s naked bodies with a cute girl while snowed into a mountain cabin. (Q1. By what miracle would a guy end up snowed in alone with the kind of girl he would normally be too nervous to even talk to?) At this point, he was terrified a horrifying catch was about to reveal itself.

“(And here’s half the change.)”

“(Why do I get a 5000yen bill while you get four 1000yen bills and 520yen in coins? The way you can combine substances into just about anything, I don’t like the idea of you carrying around several different metals like that.)”

She placed the money in his hand and he whispered back with a shadow on his face. If he didn’t get that money back from her, he feared she would use it to create a chemical that could melt through anything. But if he did take it from her, he feared she would claim he owed her a debt.

“So is all that stuff with bugs and snakes really safe? The area around the wound feels hot. I’d swear it’s swollen to twice its size.”

“You’re just imagining things. But if the pain bothers you that much, I could inject the affected area with a medicinal leech’s anesthetic. The stuff makes sure you don’t feel a thing while the leech tears through your skin with saw-like teeth and gorges on your blood, so it’s more effective than the morphine issued by the military. Although if I did use hirudin, your blood wouldn’t clot and the wound would open back up.”

“No, thanks!! I don’t want to rely too much on drugs!!”

Shouting made his shoulder throb with heat.

He grimaced and groaned, which created a heavier mood.

He told himself to be more careful about that. They were already in a bind, so the most badly injured person’s mood could affect the overall mood.

“Let’s review what we know.”

He had refused the easy help of anesthesia himself, so he would have to accept the pain in his shoulder. He tried not to let it show on his face as she got talking.

“The station is deserted, a weird ghost is wandering around, and she got in a fight with some mass of muscles. We were right to conclude this place is dangerous, but when we tried to leave, a sniper fired warning shots to push us back in. If we tried to force our way out, I bet they really would have shot us.”

Shirai Kuroko sighed.

“At 17:20 today, the Overhunting prisoner transport train issued a break alert within South District 7 Station. That means criminals from Operation Handcuffs are loose in and around this station. The muscles, the sniper, and this pest here are the fugitives who triggered the break alert. But the ghost I have no information on. The Overhunting’s EM brakes and a few other safety devices malfunctioned, so I would imagine the ghost played a role in the crash, though.”

“Ee em brakes?” asked Alice, tilting her head and smiling. She was harmless as long as her attention was on that, but Kamijou feared she would start poking at his treated wound if he let his guard down.

“It’s an emergency brake system that uses electromagnets to clamp down on the trains wheels,” explained Shirai. “But contrary to what you might think, it doesn’t send electricity to the device to produce the magnetism needed to stop the train. The magnetism is always on to keep the brake pads open and the electricity is cut off in an emergency, freeing the brake pads’ springs.”

“Wait, but how could that malfunction?”

If the electromagnets were used to stop the heavy wheels, a lack of power would cause a malfunction. But when the electromagnets were preventing the springs from returning to their original position, electrical trouble would cause the brakes to activate.

That wouldn’t lead to the train crashing at full speed.

“That is why I think that ghost is behind it. Really, it’s scary to think that anyone other than Onee-sama can control such a deadly amount of electricity. But this doesn’t tell us who they are or why they attacked the Overhunting.”

“It has to be someone involved in Operation Handcuffs,” said Youen. “And the whatever tech that ghost is using doesn’t seem to be standard issue Anti-Skill or Judgment gear.”

“Are you suggesting it’s a criminal neither of us are familiar with?”

“My guess is she was the final boss of that crazy bloodbath. ''If we had seen Handcuffs through to the end, we might have encountered her then.''”

“There it is again,” muttered Kamijou.

Good Shirai Kuroko and bad Hanatsuyu Youen both turned his way and innocent Alice followed suit without appearing to understand what this was about.

He continued now that their attention was on him.

“You keep mentioning that term. What is that Operation Handcuffs thing?”

His question earned a sigh from both the good and the bad. They narrowed their eyes as if to criticize him for being so behind the times, but also with some envy of his ignorance.

Then they both explained it for him.

Operation Handcuffs.

It had started as the ''new'' Board Chairman’s sweep of Academy City’s dark side.

The initial focus had been on shining sunlight on all that darkness, so it was a long-term plan that included rehabilitating the arrested criminals so they could be released as productive members of society.

But that had fallen apart somewhere along the way.

The information had gotten confused and the cause was still under investigation. Some claimed that the damage had grown beyond anyone’s expectations when some criminals slipped past Anti-Skill ''with an uncanny level of luck'' and furious Anti-Skill had drawn their lethal weapons and relied on deadly force. There had been heavy losses on both sides.

The two girls made a point of mentioning the Coins of Nicholas as a key item.

They took about an hour to charge, but if you held one in your hand and prayed, a locked door would open, you would win the lottery you were playing, or ''something else bordering on miraculous would occur''. That was apparently how the criminals had escaped the smart encirclement and gotten in an unexpected “lucky punch”.

“Hold on,” interrupted Kamijou, pale in the face. “Coins of Nicholas? Those have got to be spiritual items. There’s no way they’re a product of the science side’s research. Why was a magic side toy being passed around in Academy City’s darkness!? In a way, that’s one of the biggest taboos out there!!”

“?”

“?”

Shirai and Youen both tilted their heads. They weren’t playing dumb to hide something from him – they simply weren’t familiar with the terms “spiritual item” or “magic side”.

But that was a major problem in and of itself. What if those coins were given to people with no understanding of how they worked and they kept using them with no knowledge of the risks and downsides?

(Was there something magical going on this city and I didn’t even know about it?)

His anxiety spiked.

The Coins of Nicholas were extremely effective and creepy, but no one would give them away for free like that. He didn’t know who, but someone had benefited from it.

(So that operation was the ''new'' Board Chairman’s plan? I sure hope he wasn’t letting R&C Occultics or someone trick him. Setting aside what their exact domains are, ''the magic side and science side do not get along.'' Hopefully he understands that.)

“Yawwwn.”

His thoughts were interrupted by a weirdly lengthy yawn.

It came from Alice who leaned against him on the bench and helped herself to his lap pillow. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“How are you sleeping when we’re still at risk here?”

“No! The girl was not asleep! Because she is staying up all night with you!!”

She tried to sound very awake, but she was still slumped down in his lap pillow. The most she could manage was waving her little hands up from the bench. She always seemed overly careless for the situation. She rubbed her eyes while muttering something.

“Guh. The only actual occult element of Operation Handcuffs was the Coins of Nicholas. But ghosts are occult too, so does that mean the ghost is connected to the coins?”

“I…don’t think so?” Kamijou looked down at his right hand. “Alice, I know you know this.”

It wasn’t just the electricity that pierced him to the core. His little finger still hurt from its burn. That meant Imagine Breaker did not work on the ghost. How was still a mystery, but that ghost had to be something scientific. She had to be separate from the purely magical Coins of Nicholas.

It was Alice’s immediate realization of that fact that let her shove him out of the way and save his life.

“Hm, then it’s a lot more straightforward. She would count as an ordinary robber, so wouldn’t there be a record somewhere?”

“But that justice exhibitionist and I didn’t see Handcuffs through to the end. We don’t know what went down later on.”

“…”

Could they be making a crucial misunderstanding here?

That concern suddenly crossed Kamijou’s mind. It wasn’t that they had made the wrong decision back at the beginning. It was more like ''there was someone else they should have been more worried about''. Like they had mistaken the fundamental cast of characters and now they would never find some of the basic information they needed to reach the correct answer. That worthless fantasy rapidly grew in his mind.

Shirai had remained silent for a bit now, but she finally pulled out her phone.

“Uiharu. Can you hear me, Uiharu!? Yes, yes. I’m sure it’s because Frillsand #G is producing so much electricity, but you’re supposed to be one of the best in the IT field, so use some trick of yours to get me a connection. Right this instant!!”

“Geez. Ksh. Why do so many people think hackers are basically witches?”

The girl on the other end complained but still got Shirai a connection right away.

Kamijou and the others couldn’t believe it, but Shirai just gave her next instructions.

“Gather all the records you can find on December 25.”

“What are you looking for? There were so many deaths that wouldn’t narrow it down much. I mean, around half of Anti-Skill is either dead or resigned due to mental issues. They’re trying to keep up appearances, but I doubt they’re really functioning as an organization anymore. They haven’t touched this Winter Cleaning stuff.”

Youen leaned forward with a “tell me more” look on her face, so Kamijou held her back. Shirai Kuroko glanced over at them before continuing.

“Then give me data on any criminals who managed to destroy an Anti-Skill branch or caused equivalent damage.”

“Coming right up,” said the girl on the phone. “Two girls thought to be the twins who call themselves the Decomposer and the Carrier attacked the South District 7 General Anti-Skill Station. More than 99.9% of the personnel inside were killed or injured. The majority of the dead were decomposed to the point that their genetic information was destroyed, which has made identifying the bodies a challenge. Shirai-san, you were there when it happened, weren’t you?”

“Oh, that’s about me. I’m the Carrier one.”

“Bff!?” spat Kamijou.

Youen didn’t sound particularly proud. She made it sound as casual as reporting on the results of a grocery run.

“Kaai and I also destroyed the Anti-Skill Chemical Analysis Center in District 18’s twin towers, but that turned out to be bait so I guess you can call it a draw.”

This explained the harsh looks Shirai Kuroko had been giving the girl.

And the report from the phone wasn’t done yet. They were only getting started.

“The District 1 General Anti-Skill Station was attacked by Kihara Hasuu and a girl known as Ladybird using a prisoner transport vehicle. They wiped out the ordinary Anti-Skill officers and some special forces known as Anti-Skill Aggressor and appear to have sabotaged the station’s server to shut down the network. I find it hard to believe, but the girl is reported to have deflected full-auto gunfire with only a heavy metal machete and thrown herself on top of a grenade to protect her surroundings. Not to mention the Anti-Skill Aggressor radio records include the phrase “She’s a machine, so how the hell can she use telekinesis?” There isn’t enough information to say whether that claim is legitimate or not.

“This is unconfirmed, but a few Anti-Skill officers in a District 8 street were apparently found dead due to friendly fire. No detailed records remain, but reports from people in the area suggest a girl named Vivana Oniguma was involved.

“20 Anti-Skill officers were killed or left in a state of confusion after attempting to raid a dark side mobile trailer base in the unmanned industrial section of District 17. The direct cause appears to be a supposed artificial ghost named Frillsand #G, but she was apparently acting as a hyper-aggressive decoy so a researcher named Drencher Kihara Repatri and some unidentified children referred to as ‘specimens’ could escape.”

That was a lot of information.

It included some names not present here in this station. It also didn’t explain the sniper or the mass of muscles they knew were inside or near the station.

Kamijou guessed some of the mentioned people were already dead.

This much was already complicated and it didn’t even touch on the magic side plot that spread the Coins of Nicholas, so he doubted they were even looking at the whole picture of what had happened on the night of the 25th.

However, one part stuck out to him.

“Frillsand #G. That’s the ghost who’s been causing trouble here, isn’t it? But…”

He trailed off.

Shirai Kuroko continued for him.

“Uiharu. Give us details on everyone connected to Frillsand #G. For example, who is this Drencher Kihara Repatri? It sounds like he was involved in Handcuffs, but he wasn’t aboard the Overhunting and he isn’t in this station.”

“Yes, well, doesn’t that suggest ''a certain possibility''?”

A short silence followed.

No one wanted to say it out loud.

“No body was found for Drencher Kihara Repatri. It seems like the criminals were attempting to escape outside of the city toward the end of Handcuffs, but I doubt any of them succeeded. If he wasn’t on the Overhunting and isn’t in a hospital’s ICU, we should assume he didn’t survive. He just hasn’t been found yet.”

“…”

A young man whose corpse hadn’t been found. And he had a connection to Frillsand #G.

Could he be the man from the scene that burst into the back of Kamijou’s mind whenever those electric attacks were flying?

“Umm, Shirai-san? Hello, you’re breaking up. Kssshhh, Shira- kssshhh!!”

The connection suddenly died.

A source of signal interference was slowly approaching. Just like the TV or radio signal growing staticky as a large typhoon or thick thunderclouds blew in.

The artificial ghost had been willing to act as a decoy against a squad of Anti-Skill officers to help Drencher and the children escape safely. But Drencher was nowhere to be found, Frillsand #G was running wild, and she was wandering around attacking any Handcuffs survivors. Kamijou was starting to get what the ghost was fighting for.

Vengeance.

Perhaps all ghosts were bound to the world of the living for some tragic reason.

Something exploded.

The nearby concrete wall burst apart and several metal lockers were knocked over as a huge mass of muscle rolled into the room.

“Rakuoka!” shouted Shirai, eyes wide. Strangely, she had the tone of someone worried about a friend’s wellbeing.

But the others had bigger concerns.

“Hello. This is Frillsand #G-chan.”

A face emerged from the hole in the wall, swaying irregularly side to side.

“Next stop: fried to a crisp. Repeat: fried to a crisp.”

Something was slowly but surely approaching.

“Po. Popopopopopo, popo…po………po………popopo…………po………po.”

Slowly but surely approaching them.

“Am I pretty?”

They heard the sound of gathering electricity and all the shower nozzles burst open at once.

Frillsand #G.

They had no way of avoiding her. But the water soaking the floor and walls must have come as a surprise for the ghost as well. A fearsome lightning bolt was redirected so it flew right past Kamijou.

Corrupted text appeared on the shower temperature displays until “42 degrees” glowed from all of them in a red light. Wasn’t that the dividing line between life and death with a fever?

Kamijou lowered his static-covered head to look at his right hand, but Imagine Breaker couldn’t negate this. An invisible force enveloped his head and data gradually seeped into his brain from outside his skull.

A scene from the past began to play.

“They’re just kids. And it’s not like I’m asking for all of them. Just two or three will do.”

“I wanted to protect them from the dark side scum who think like that.”

A young man had lost his life in a place no one in the world recognized.

For some reason, ''she'' had been helpless to do anything but watch.

It wasn’t an issue of courage or motivation. Her nature as an artificial ghost had gotten in the way. So she had been helpless to do anything. But that didn’t mean she had accepted what happened.

That young man had spent his life to protect those small children and successfully found someone in the dark side worth handing the children over to. He had breathed his last with a smile on his lips.

''She'' had watched it all.

“How could you throw away your own life over this!? When you get down to it, those kids are just strangers! How could a goddamn harmful go this far just because you ‘wanted to save them’!? How!? Tell me!?”

“Do you need a reason to protect someone? Of course you don’t.”

So he had lost his life.

And ''her'' inability to do anything about it had broken something deep inside her.

Kamijou Touma’s mind resurfaced as a blinding light flashed before his eyes.

“Agh!!”

He lost his equilibrium and nearly fell to the side, but he managed to stay on his feet.

He could tell there was some connection between the electricity and his brain, but he couldn’t explain what exactly was going on in his head. He felt the same fear as being cursed and then suffering from a mysterious fever or finding a wound shaped like a human face. It was the same horror as seeing the doctor try everything they could think of and then throw in the towel.

But the passion swirling inside him was enough to sweep aside that fundamental fear.

What had he just seen?

Frillsand #G was not doing this because she hated Kamijou’s group or was after the bounty on the fugitives. But that was why she wasn’t really viewing the reality around her. Her rampage was on a deeper level, so she could not be reasoned with.

A good person had been killed and she had been unable to stop it, so she had lost sight of who she was and now continued to cause further damage. Wasn’t that the whole story here!?

He wanted to speak with her. To exchange words with her.

But he doubted that was possible anymore. That point had passed before he even met her. The keyhole was right there in front of him, but the key had already been broken and thrown away.

With her blonde twintails, white skin, and doll-like blue dress, she looked European, but Frillsand #G was ''a very Japanese kind of ghost''. She couldn’t be destroyed by holding up a holy cross and sprinkling holy water on her. Writing a Buddhist sutra all over your body would do nothing to stop her from ripping your ears off. She was a different sort of paranormal being.

There was only one person in the world who could possibly stop her now: Drencher Kihara Repatri.

Anyone could come up with that answer, but no one could make it happen.

She was like the vengeful ghosts in many stories who were doomed to eternally wander the earth because they had lost the one solution to their problem. Like someone forever searching for their body after it was mistakenly cremated while they were astral projecting, like a stalker ghost who was forever attempting to pursue a woman who had already died by suicide, or like the spirit of a serial killer’s victim who pursued their killer without realizing they had already been executed. Frillsand #G was searching for something she could never find, yet no one among the living could ever inform her of that.

(''Wait.'')

But.

Kamijou Touma had a fundamental question about all this.

Operation Handcuffs had rocked the shadows of Academy City. It would leave its name in scientific history due to the countless tragedies that he was sure the simple reports did nothing to adequately describe.

Anyone would want to cover their eyes at what they were seeing. But what if?

Handcuffs was something you wouldn’t hear about if you lived an ordinary life in Academy City. And a lot of strange technology had been at play there.

Frillsand #G was the perfect example, since she was an artificial ghost.

Then there were Youen and her twin Kaai with their roles as the Carrier and Decomposer.

There was that mass of muscles Rakuoka Houfu and the unidentified sniper. Even the Vivana Oniguma who had only been listed as a name had likely used some kind of technology all her own.

There was some other puzzle here.

He had to throw out his preconceptions that this was nothing but unmitigated tragedy. He had to focus on all the technology laid out on both sides of the field. The night of December 25 had already passed. He could not return to that time. But those events had led directly to this on the 29th, so the same technology, or remnants of it, had to still be in the city.

Was it really true that the mysterious dark side could only cause death and destruction?

He couldn’t let those assumptions lead him astray.

Technology didn’t take sides.

Military martial arts were designed to kill, but that same knowledge could be used to provide first aid. A chef license and nutritional science were used to support a healthy diet, but that same knowledge could be abused to include enough salt and sugar to shorten someone’s lifespan or to create a torturous dish that was unbearably foul to taste.

This was the same.

The question was how all these different technologies would be used.

He had to rethink this horrific puzzle and take another look at Operation Handcuffs. Was there really no salvation left in that incident? Was there really nothing there they could still use now?

Really???

(''No.'')

This grudge came from an artificially-created ghost.

So could that same artificial method be used again?

Was it possible?

“''It might just work.''”

===Part 11===

“Hello, this is Frillsand #G-chan. I am currently behind you.”

A deep, unsteady female voice echoed across a flooded shower room with a broken wall and pipes.

The source had long, blonde twintails and a doll-like dress.

She took step after step through the puddles without making a sound and she passed through the walls and pillars with ease.

High Voltage Cutting.

With both ion sheaths and shock diamonds, releasing powerful enough energy for long enough would create unusual interference and overlapping. Intentionally creating and manipulating this to make someone nonexistent appear in the physical world was the foundation of artificial ghost technology, but Frillsand #G in particular used a giant civilization battery constructed from a combination of the copper, zinc, and other metals found wherever people lived and the acid rain produced by the carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide constantly produced by human society.

Ultimately, that energy source could come from an entire city, an entire country, or the entire world. She was an artificial ghost who would never disappear unless humanity abandoned every last one of its civilizations.

Attempting to exorcise her was a fool’s errand.

You could build a solemn shrine and desperately worship her as a god, but whether or not she stopped was entirely up to her mood.

She was like a natural disaster supported by chemistry and physics.

“…Drencher.”

Someone had said Operation Handcuffs was already over.

They had said the dark said was no more.

But if so…

''“Besides, I have a secret weapon prepared for this special day.”

''“Tah dah!! It’s foie gras. I’m going to sauté it in the frying pan.”

They hadn’t had anywhere near enough money. They may have gathered more than average, but anyone would have trouble making ends meet when looking after so many children.

But he had never let his weak smile fade.

She knew that fool had scraped together whatever he could to give the children a feast so they could have something special for Christmas.

“Oh, Drencher…”

Drencher Kihara Repatri.

That infamous Kihara name had been a complete lie.

The usual justice and charity weren’t enough to save the children swallowed up by the dark side, so that endlessly caring man had mastered the worst of worst, built up a position for himself, and then saved those young lives from the darkness.

The artificial ghost bit her lip that did not biologically exist.

He was no more.

If his ultimate sacrifice had caused the dark side to disintegrate, then the small place he had left behind would vanish along with it.

Could she really let that happen?

She knew, of course, that Drencher Kihara Repatri had loathed the city’s darkness more than anyone and had wanted to save as many lives from it as possible, so the destruction of the dark side had been the thing he longed for and dreamed of.

But.

Even so.

Frillsand #G could not accept it. That man was such a fool and so kind and he had worked so hard and even sacrificed his life to protect those children. How could she let all record of his life be swallowed up by the waves of time until he might as well have not existed at all?

No one wants to remember what happened? So what?

People are better off not knowing? Why should she care?

Maybe the people in charge had cleverly covered it up and maybe the masses had obediently looked away, but if she wasn’t satisfied, she would pry open the seal they had placed on that hell. She would show them that her rage came from their attempt to bury all evidence of that man’s life.

Some of the criminals remained.

Operation Handcuffs was not over.

If she fought with them and resumed the fight to the death, surely she would be back in the same world as that man.

Surely.

''Please someone tell me it’s true.

''I don’t care if I’m wrong about it all. Just don’t tell me to deny how I feel.

“Ah, ahhh.”

''God, please save that kind fool.

''And if you do not, please allow me to rip this pain from my heart.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!”

===Part 12===

Fearsome electricity surged in every direction.

It radiated out from a central figure.

Finding some kind of shield wasn’t enough this time. Thick reinforced concrete broke like styrofoam and the row of metal lockers exploded. The vortex of destruction was so great it was a miracle the entire station and adjoining buildings didn’t collapse.

Imagine Breaker would not negate this

If not for the long pink cricket bat that popped out from below Alice’s apron and flew around her, Kamijou would have been hit and killed by the lightning. In fact, the bat wasn’t alone this time. Several balls dropped down from below her apron and then sharp needles shot out in every direction.

The effect was unclear. Or rather, he didn’t have time to watch what they did.

He was too busy escaping the locker room even if he had to roll along the ground.

“Ahhhh!?”

He couldn’t afford to worry about the wound Youen had treated and sewn up. He grabbed smiling Alice under his other arm (because she didn’t seem to grasp the situation and didn’t try to escape) and pushed open the metal door on the opposite end of the room. There he found a few office desks lined up with one wall covered in LCD monitors. Those would be for displaying the security camera footage from the station building and platforms. Some unfamiliar machines were lined up along another wall. He tilted his head until he realized what they were. They were ticket machines. He could remember a few times when his change or smart card had gotten stuck and a worker had opened a metal slit to speak to him from the other side of the wall.

Youen listened to the explosions through the wall while she took a look at her test tubes and pulled out a few that contained a muddy brown liquid. She threw them away.

“Tch. A few of my artificial pheromones are ruined. The test tubes have an airtight seal, so is that ghost using electrolysis? No, this may be photolysis, which only needs a bright enough light. If we keep running away, I’m going to lose more and more of my stock.”

Shirai Kuroko wasn’t sure how to react. She liked the idea of a criminal losing her weapons, but she didn’t like the idea of losing the weapons they needed to survive.

Then the twintailed Judgment girl turned toward Kamijou.

“Anyway, ''what ‘just might work’''?”

“Teacher, you did say that.”

Alice nodded repeatedly. She seemed eager to join any conversation related to him.

“No one can defeat that ghost called…Frillsand #G was it?” He glanced over at some grainy security camera footage. “But I do know why she’s doing this: Drencher Kihara Repatri. If he was here, he could convince her to stop.”

“That doesn’t do us much good.”

“Right. He wasn’t in the Overhunting’s records and there’s no record of him being hospitalized either, so the odds are good he died during Handcuffs. I know that.”

Kamijou did not deny how bad their situation was.

However.

“But we know this is an ''artificial ghost'' since my right hand doesn’t work. And if it’s possible to create a ghost purely with technology, then couldn’t you drag a dead man back to the realm of the living?”

“…”

“…”

No one responded for a while. That wasn’t a surprise from good Shirai Kuroko, but it also applied to Hanatsuyu Youen who would throw out certain possibilities because she saw herself as a bad person.

He understood this wasn’t an easy thing to agree with.

This would be an unthinkable kind of violation. He felt a solid taboo in his hands. He knew all that, but he still couldn’t abandon this possibility he had discovered.

“I mean, what happened is so sad.” He found himself speaking without meaning to. “All of Handcuffs was. So many people died and it didn’t accomplish anything. But I’m thinking about Frillsand #G who we’re all treating like a villain just because she’s grieving someone’s death.”

Kamijou Touma had not been involved on the night of the 25th. He had fought a different deadly battle on the 24th and 25th and been left groaning in a hospital bed.

But what did that matter?

“Don’t you want to change this tragic ending?”

Just say it.

It’s not about whether or not you’re qualified.

Anyone would do. Raise an objection against that tragedy!! Don’t turn away and say you can’t bear to look at it. Face it head-on and figure out if there’s anything you can do to help now!!!!!!

“I don’t care what kind of trick we have to use. Don’t you want to use everything found through Handcuffs to actually save her and give the finger to the god in heaven who let all this happen?”

All technology could be reproduced.

When a new tank, mine, rocket, or other weapon appeared on the battlefield, the enemy would be using the exact same thing before long.

Finally, one of the girl’s sighed.

“The ethical and moral aspects don’t matter to me. I just don’t want to explode from all that electricity. If you have a plan to avoid that, I’m all ears.” The exasperated comment came from Youen the Carrier. “We can set up a ghostly date if we want, but do you have any guarantee a second ghost based on this one will last very long? It won’t be much of an emotional reunion if he only exists for a few nanoseconds. I also hope they don’t blow up the whole city as soon as their powerful electrical energy bodies tearfully embrace.”

“Yeah, a hug might not be all that satisfying between two intangible ghosts,” agreed Kamijou.

This was a puzzle, so he hadn’t expected a single piece to solve it.

“But the artificial ghost wasn’t the only piece of bizarre tech seen at Handcuffs. There was that Ladybird android who could use an esper power despite being a machine. If she really exists, couldn’t we give the intangible ghost a tangible body?”

“…”

“I don’t know how we would attach the ghost to the machine body, but there might be some tech we could use. Youen, maybe your chemicals or microbes. Or, Shirai, maybe that quantum 11th dimensional awareness you can handle like it’s nothing!”

Operation Handcuffs had been more than just death and destruction.

If they combined the technologies used by both sides of the conflict, they could even obtain the ability to overturn a decisive tragedy.

They had to cast out their biases.

They couldn’t let their assumptions and preconceptions lead them astray.

They had to remember that Handcuffs was originally envisioned as a way to tear down the dark side and help the people found there. For every piece of death and destruction, there had to be a corresponding piece of life and salvation.

What did the dark side label matter?

Was that any reason to just shrug and give up?

''I’m sick of your shit, misfortune. Sure, I didn’t make it in time on the 25th, but it’s not too late.

''I’ll show you how Kamijou Touma does things.

“We can’t know how Frillsand #G works just from observing her. And we have nothing beyond Ladybird’s name. So is there anything we can do!? You were both involved in Handcuffs, so do you have any ideas? Like where any of them had their hideouts or labs!? Anywhere the plans or equipment for their tech could be hidden!!”

“Yes, yes, yes.” Youen casually raised her hand. “I had some small connection with Ladybird – or really, Kihara Hasuu who created her. That old man was connected to the corpse disposers you can find crawling all throughout the District 10 landfill. Those disposers would periodically receive corpses from the Kiharas and remove anything of value they could find. Those disposers would sometimes pay Kaai and me a lot of money to help melt down the parts they didn’t need. Following the path of bodies back should lead us to Kihara Hasuu…and his android lab.”

Kamijou and Shirai were horrified by the flood of disturbing words in that explanation, but Youen only shrugged with a “don’t let that shock you” look.

But why would someone building a mechanical android need human corpses?

“Frillsand #G is a complete unknown for me, though. Judgment, what about you? The official announcements claim Operation Handcuffs is over. That wasn’t a lie, was it?”

“How would I know? I haven’t seen any records related to Drencher or Frillsand #G, so we should assume an entire group participating in Handcuffs went overlooked.” Shirai Kuroko sighed in disgust. “But if we want information on the dark side, wouldn’t it be best to ask someone else from the dark side?”

Kamijou’s eyes wandered through the air.

No, he had turned toward something on the other side of the building walls.

He could only think of one other person they could ask.

“That sniper. They’re a Handcuffs survivor too, right?”

“Her name is Benizome Jellyfish, a paparazzi willing to kill to get a scoop. But she is basically a professional peeping tom, so she probably would know a lot about ''other people’s secrets''.”

===Part 13===

A woman in a China dress and cowboy hat frowned while holding a sniper rifle on a building rooftop located near the train station in south District 7.

She was Benizome Jellyfish.

The directional mic installed on a surveillance drone had picked up the sound of a staff-only door opening.

“…?”

(They haven’t given up? Don’t give me that. Why would you try to escape after I already fired on you?)

She had drones monitoring all the exits, but she could only shoot at one exit at a time. The last thing she wanted them to do was split up and escape from different exits, but they must not have been that smart. Even if they had been brought together by chance, once the camaraderie grew, they would find it difficult to choose to sacrifice someone.

Benizome was not here to kill.

Nor did she have a grudge against the normal(?) people with the bad luck to end up working with the Handcuffs people.

She wanted to get the perfect photo of the moment someone died. And the more gruesome and shocking a death it was, the better. To get that, she was willing to shoot out the leg of someone being chased by a lion.

“Hm.” The woman wearing a fusion of Japanese, Western, and Chinese exhaled quietly. “If the warning shots weren’t enough, who should I actually shoot? Well, I’m watching the entire group, so I can still get my scoop with one of them missing.”

The metal door was already open.

Whoever was there, she would shoot the first one to terrify the rest. She would go through with it. The cricket girl could apparently stop the bullets, but it would still scare them and stop them.

A dark shape emerged.

She let the drones handle taking photos while she held her breath and placed her finger on the trigger.

Immediately, a blinding flash stabbed into her retina.

She could only see the color white.

Sharp pan ran through her temples and she jerked her head away from the mirrorless multifunction scope that even display EM waves and electrical noise.

“Tch!? Was that a subway bug zapper!?”

Snipers were terrifying.

But if you knew you were being watched, you could strike back.

She grimaced and waved a hand to send an instruction to the drones. It took five seconds before the afterimage burned into her retina faded. She had to ensure her target didn’t use that time to run outside and escape behind cover. Her 7.62mm bullets could easily break the sound barrier, so even if she was a little delayed, she could still push them back with gunfire as long as she knew where they were.

Or so she thought.

Benizome still believed she was the hunter here.

She heard something like a burst of wind.

“!?”

With a series of dull thuds, her long sniper rifle broke apart. The pieces fell to the rooftop along with several metal darts. She recognized those weapons. During Handcuffs, it had been the law enforcement agencies of Judgment and Anti-Skill that had dealt with Benizome in the end.

Her caution was meaningless.

A moment later, a 50kg weight surpassed the restrictions of 3D space to land on top of her. This was teleportation. A middle school girl appeared 3m above the roof and then landed butt-first on the sniper as she attempted to twist around to look up.

“Gah!?”

“Could you not react like I’m really heavy? I am at least two sizes slimmer than you.”

“Agh, y-you!?”

“Hello, dark side. I know this is sudden, but you will be handing over all your information!!”

===Part 14===

The rooftop sniper had been dealt with.

That meant Kamijou’s group was no longer restricted to the District 7 station building.

“What!? Then why are we descending into the subway!?” protested Shirai Kuroko.

“Because of Frillsand #G,” said Kamijou “We can’t run through the crowded streets with her chasing us!! Who knows how many people we’d get hurt or worse!!”

The train accident had been at an elevated platform, but the large station served more than just one line. Kamijou held incautious Alice under his arm and Shirai carried tied-up Benizome over her shoulder while they ran down the stairs to reach the subway platform.

Shirai Kuroko made sure to hold her phone out for the ticket gate, but then her eyes widened and she shouted at the others.

“Hey! Don’t jump over the ticket gate like it’s a hurdle! If you don’t have a subway card, then go buy a ticket!!”

“Does she really think we’re going to do that!?” asked Kamijou.

“That justice exhibitionist can’t help it. She’s the sad kind of person who would obediently stop at the red light and let the pursuing wave of lava engulf her car. She is best ignored if you prefer staying alive.”

“Kya ha ha☆ The girl is playing tag with her teacher!”

Alice slipped out from Kamijou’s arm and jumped down an entire flight of stairs despite wearing a skirt. Unbelievably, she stuck her legs out in front of her so she would land on her butt. Kamijou’s eyes widened in fright, but then several balls made from curled-up hedgehogs spilled from below her apron. They gathered together into a cushion and she bounced softly off of them. Their flattened spines seemed to act like bed springs, but surely that still had to hurt, right!?

The disconcerting zap of busting air came from somewhere. The speaker used to inform of arriving trains exploded from within and a bundle of cables stuck out like a long tongue.

That was the artificial ghost.

The deadly being had no weaknesses. That powerful grudge could maybe even destroy all of humanity singlehandedly. If she caught up and placed a hand on their shoulder, they would be killed instantly by the powerful energy. Her chaotic electric storm could break through walls and pillars, so they wouldn’t fare well if that hit them either.

But now that Kamijou knew the reason behind it, it all held a different meaning for him.

This wasn’t just a deadly weapon. It was a vortex of uncontrollable emotion.

(I will save you.)

He clenched his teeth, but kept his eyes forward and his feet running.

He couldn’t let himself die here. If he did, he couldn’t save this woman who had been dragged into a great tragedy, lost the man she loved, and continued to weep and wail.

(This isn’t just about us anymore, so I swear I’ll save you too, ghost!!)

Youen still wasn’t out of breath, so she may have used an enzyme or chemical to boost her abilities. The bad girl looked entirely unaffected by the running as she asked a question.

“Are we running through the tunnels all the way to District 10?”

“Please, isn’t there a legit railfan in here who can drive one for us!?”

“Don’t ask for the impossible.”

The soles of Kamijou’s shoes lifted from the floor.

Surprised, he held onto young Alice who was running nearby.

After floating up in defiance of gravity, they shot down the subway tunnel with the speed of a bullet.

Based on his shadow cast on the wall, it looked like he had sprouted giant fairy wings. No, that wasn’t it. He was extremely hesitant to look at his back, but he was pretty sure a winged bug over a meter long had grabbed onto his back like a crane game!

“What? Eh? How is it so big!?”

“It’s called parasitic enlargement. That’s one of my toys.”

Youen’s calm voice came from unexpectedly close by. She was moving just as fast as him.

Young Alice rejoiced at being princess carried by the pointy-haired boy and tried to reach out her small hands. Toward what? Toward the thing on his back.

“Wow, it’s all black and hard and shiny! I’ve never seen such a big roa-”

“Stop, Alice! Do not confirm anything for me here!! There are all sorts of flying bugs, right!? I-I am never looking back. I will never confirm which of the giant bugs from the Hanatsuyu Youen Collection is holding onto my back!!”

“Fun fact: In the bug world, particularly among beetles, a male getting up another one’s back is a symbol of a live-giving ceremony. Hee hee. By which I mean mating!”

“Stoooooooop!!!!!!!”

He saw a blue shine. Youen was wearing a giant morpho butterfly like a backpack as she amused herself by whispering insect trivia to him. Of course that gloomy mini-villain had given herself the most beautiful option.

Alice was so delighted she kicked her legs around in her thick white tights.

“Hm, hm♪ The girl really does love you, teacher.”

“Where did that come from!?”

“Your arms are the best seat. If anyone is going to hold the girl, it has to be you. Heh heh☆”

Apparently she thought he was a memory foam pillow or something. Maybe it was like how a boy’s shaved head or broad chest was briefly popular with the girls but then abandoned at Mach speed.

Shirai Kuroko had refused to be equipped with a bug at all. Maybe Tokiwadai girls couldn’t understand the romance of bugs. She carried bound Benizome Jellyfish over her shoulder like a sack of rice and repeatedly teleported to move down the subway tunnel faster than a sports car.

A flashing white beam shot past them from behind.

That meant the artificial ghost had descended into the subway tunnel too.

They had avoided a direct hit, but that was no reason to relax.

Frillsand #G’s lightning could destroy steel and concrete with ease. If the metal rails or concrete pillars up ahead were blown up, the airborne fragments would become obstacles for the fast-moving group. Given their relative speeds, a direct hit would be enough to tear an arm off at the shoulder.

Resentment, sorrow, rage, regret, and what else?

Maybe human emotions weren’t meant to be named and organized like that.

Even a single screw or bolt was a threat here.

“Ahhh!?” Kamijou shouted in reflex.

He couldn’t even cover his face with Alice in his arms.

The tunnel was a lot less straight than he had expected and went through several curves, but the wings on his back made the turns for him and he didn’t feel like he was in control at all. Perhaps this was what it felt to ride a rollercoaster in a country with extremely lax safety standards.

With his life solidly in someone else’s grasp, he raised his eyes with real tears in them.

“Shirai!! Did you get any information out of that China dress woman!? I want a destination. We know abut that Kihara guy’s lab where he built Ladybird, but I also want to know where the artificial ghost was made!!”

“You heard him. Got any ideas?”

“…”

Benizome Jellyfish was not unconscious.

She had intentionally chosen to remain silent. The sparking and flashing lights behind them suggested Frillsand #G had noticed their escape and started moving down the tunnel. It was obvious what would happen if Shirai got sick of the woman and abandoned her here, so that silence took guts.

Pain probably wasn’t going to get her to talk either.

But…

“Those are some pretty sexy modifications to your dress there. That tells me you’re the type to use your femininity as a weapon. It means you think you’re hotter than average,” said Hanatsuyu Youen while flying alongside them using the shiny blue wings of a morpho butterfly. She pulled out a test tube and shook it, creating motion in the surface of the neon green liquid within. “Did you know spiders break down their prey’s tissue – in other words, the protein – and uses their stomach like a pump to suck it all up? Doing some real-life character creation work to the face and figure is pretty simple. But don’t worry. After melting your boobs away, I’ll make sure to give you five or even ten of them in a grape-like cluster. Got a specific number you want?”

“O-okay, I’ll talk!! Don’t give me that!!”

Benizome panicked with her arms and legs bound by rope.

That paparazzo was all about spreading people’s information around, so maybe she didn’t have it in her to hide anything for long.

“Go to the abandoned leisure spa in District 10!! The people occupying it now have built a ton of illegal cardboard, plywood, and prefab houses in the empty pools, creating something like a Little Kowloon Walled City!! It’s a criminal area where anything goes and even I have a hideout there!”

“The District 10 slums?” asked Shirai.

“Your comparison is pretty out of date, isn’t it?” added Youen. “That high-rise residential area has already been demolished. Why not compare it to Johannesburg? Well, whether you’re talking about Russia or Mexico, you have to watch out in any major city of a country where the people don’t trust the police and unregistered guns are plentiful. So you’re saying the hideout we want is there?”

“A few large trucks were abandoned in the old employee parking lot out back where they would be relatively inconspicuous. I don’t know who they belong to, but a few groups of garbage collectors were killed in horrific ways when they got close. It must have been this ghost who did it!!”

“Are you saying those trucks are the lab where she was made?”

The group exchanged a glance while flying down the tunnel.

What a ''stroke of good fortune.'' Kamijou would have loved to gather some more bizarre tech involved in Handcuffs, but they didn’t have time to travel the full length of Academy City multiple times. Frillsand #G wouldn’t give them the chance. But fortunately, the artificial ghost tech and android tech were both located in District 10.

“How does she pull off the China dress so perfectly?”

Alice sounded somewhat depressed while focused on something else entirely.

If they could pull this off, they could save Frillsand #G from her eternal rampage!!

===Part 15===

In District 10, Kamijou’s group ran up the stairs from the subway station. A thick bolt of lightning shot past them and caused a section of the asphalt road to collapse like an antlion pit.

“Damn, that’s scary!!”

“Is that the abandoned leisure spa Benizome mentioned?”

Youen pointed at a large shape looming above them.

It must have been a landmark at first. It was right next to the subway entrance and the giant waterslide proved it wasn’t just a bath. Was it more like an outdoor heated pool than a spa? It was located next to a trash incinerator, so it may have reused the incinerator’s heat. The building hadn’t collapsed, but the rust and stains showed it hadn’t been cleaned or otherwise maintained in a while. It looked just plain gross and the air there felt heavy.

It was a wonder it wasn’t covered in spraypainted graffiti.

The local delinquents may have had an agreement to never carelessly approach the place.

The inside was apparently known as a Little Kowloon Walled City or Johannesburg, but they didn’t have any business in the illegal houses built in and around the pools.

Driven on by the storm of lightning behind them, they circled around to the rear entrance where trucks could make deliveries while remaining inconspicuous.

There they were.

A few large trucks were lined up in the parking area there. That wasn’t too strange on its own, but they looked unusually clean compared to the collections of abandoned materials forming everything else here.

“Found it! That’s the artificial ghost lab!!”

“Is this safe? Didn’t the garbage collectors who tried to take the trucks away get killed?”

Youen popped off the rubber cap of a test tube.

A black carpet rippled around them. It was formed from tens of thousands of ants. The ground itself seemed to be moving, so Kamijou felt like he was moving backwards despite standing still. On the Carrier’s instructions, the ants marched toward the trucks, but nothing happened. They were not blown away by a high-voltage current.

“No traps.”

“Then let’s end this before Frillsand #G catches up!!”

Kamijou, Alice, and Youen circled to the back of the closest truck. The door to the metal container had a keyhole, but Youen summoned a thumb-sized ant that melted the metal inside.

“The inner workings of a lock tend to be an aluminum or brass alloy, so my ants can destroy them easy.”

“What would those toxins do to a human?”

Kamijou shuddered at the thought while he undid the latch and threw open the double door.

They didn’t get the correct one right away. This one was lined with bunkbeds and toys littered the floor. They tried a few more, but they had been converted into a kitchen and a bath. It all reminded Kamijou of the specimen children mentioned in relation to Drencher and Frillsand #G.

None of it looked like an experimental lab.

It was mostly an ordinary living space. It likely qualified as abandoned, but it didn’t feel remotely creepy. In fact, it was the first thing to put Kamijou at ease in a while.

Did something of the people who lived here still linger?

Was the sorrow all the greater the more comfortable the life that led up to it?

“…”

Eventually, Kamijou found the right one. One of the containers wasn’t like the others. As soon as he opened it, the scent of sterilizing ethanol rushed into his nose.

“This must be it,” he muttered.

The container floor was situated very high up. Alice tried to pull herself up with her young hands, but she had trouble and a pink bat and some spiny balls fell from below her apron. Those things were still a mystery, but they would make the occasional weird noise, which made it painful to watch them being used as a stepping stool for those patent leather shoes. The fluffball on the back of the apron wiggled side to side but the picture book girl couldn’t manage to get her legs up high enough, so Kamijou finally pushed her little butt up from behind.

The lab had apparently been used to create that embodiment of electricity, but he didn’t see any of the metal equipment found at transformer substations. A transparent oblong box sat in the center of the container. Round holes covered in thick rubber were placed at even intervals, so it was apparently designed to let you could manipulate what was inside without directly touching it.

Since she specialized in microbes and chemicals, Youen took a look around, assessing what kind of lab it was.

“A clean box, huh? The duct by the wall is used to prevent the passage of impurities and the sink is pretty secure too. Was the ghost research more biological than I thought?”

The box sort of looked like a clear coffin to Kamijou.

“Isn’t that more the kind of thing you’d see on a TV show about science-themed ghost stories? Y’know, like the model skeleton running around at night or a pool of formaldehyde used to wash dead bodies.”

“Not those old cliches.”

She rejected his ideas. He bit his lip and hung his head, but she must have thought he was crying because she actually looked unsure what to do.

Alice was more interested in the equipment around the clear box. Several video cameras were set up on tripods. She smiled and made a peace sign in front of one.

“Yay☆”

“Also, what are with those cameras?” asked Kamijou. “You wouldn’t need this many to record the experiments. I mean, this is just a truck container. With this many, I feel like they would get in the way of the research.”

“To record what happens, you would only need to install a few on the ceiling where they wouldn’t be in the way,” agreed Youen. “You wouldn’t need 12 of them arranged in a circle like this.”

“Meaning?”

“The cameras were part of the experiment. If observation was a crucial component, quantum physics may have been involved.”

Kamijou pressed a switch on the wall and the room’s lights changed. Just like a dark room in an old movie, the container filled with an orange light similar to sunset. A change came over the clear coffin. Glowing lines appeared inside, similar to the human outline at a crime scene. He also saw several stud-like electrodes there. Were those the acupuncture points that were also used in moxibustion? That was just his impression, but he couldn’t say for sure. The points may have been something unique Drencher had come up with. Regardless, the hundreds of electrodes were divided into small blocks that could be rearranged to alter their number and position.

It was like a wire diagram for a human body.

That may have determined the individual traits of the artificial ghost.

Youen leaned forward curiously, so she may not have had many opportunities to view someone else’s lab.

“For that ghost – Frillsand #G was it? – you only have to create an initial ‘spark’ in the lab. No matter how small it is, releasing it into the outside world will let it grow endlessly from there. Reminds me a biological weapon. No, that isn’t quite right. The biology, quantum physics, and weaponization research are like different colored pencils in a single set – they’re just elements used to create her. A ghost shouldn’t have any clear outlines, but she was forcibly divided into existing categories to create something humans could easily perceive.”

“What matters is we can create a ghost by turning this machine on.”

“We need some personality data on Drencher Kihara Repatri first. Maybe an oil-eating black mold would work. The distribution of fingerprints and footprints would tell us if he was meticulous, neurotic, or whatever else.”

“Y-you can learn how people think like that?”

“You think that’s strange? There’s an esper out there who reads people’s ‘residual thoughts’ from the electricity and moisture left on objects.”

With a few dull thuds, Shirai Kuroko teleported out of thin air and dropped some duralumin cases larger than she was.

“I found a ‘base model’ in the lab buried in garbage! I honestly find it hard to believe this faceless mannequin can be transformed into something indistinguishable from a human.”

“We need to get those cases open! And we need to figure out how it works! Are there any texts or manuals!?”

They opened the latches thicker than the ones on the truck containers and lined up the contents of the cases on the floor. Shirai Kuroko was right. It looked vaguely feminine since it was wearing something like a one-piece racing swimsuit, but there were no actual gendered features. It was a smooth ball joint doll with no hair and no face.

“Wait, what happened to Benizome?” asked Kamijou.

“I left her tied up in that lab buried under more than three million tons of garbage. She loves scoops so much she should enjoy being buried alive with ''a burnt corpse''.”

Alice started trembling all on her own.

“Th-three million tons?”

“That might sound like a lot, but a single domed stadium weighs 370 thousand tons,” said Shirai. “Are younger children just more sensitive to the term ‘million’?”

But the “doll” was heavy.

Unlike the artificial ghost that barely seemed to be scientific at all, the android was fully physical. It was a machine seemingly made by wrapping a heavy metal skeleton frame with artificial muscles and silicon. Kamijou tried moving the shoulder or knee and felt a dull grinding sensation. The skeleton frame may have been somewhat adjustable to fit the desired body type. The power of science could now create the kind of magical girl who transformed from a child to an adult and back again.

Youen pulled out a few test tubes.

“If the exterior is silicon, I can form the details with an organic solvent. I’ll need a photo of this Drencher person for that. Also some of his clothing to learn his body size. Check the drawers over there. He lived here, so surely there’s a photo somewhere.”

“I’ll check, but this is only a machine, right!?” said Kamijou. “It’s basically a self-driving car shaped like a human, so will the artificial ghost really attach to it even if we do create one successfully?”

“If the ghost is electrical in nature, the powerful currents we’ve seen from the one chasing us would just fry all the circuit boards.”

“Then we just need to find a tech that will reduce its power. For example…”

They heard the low zap of bursting air, so everyone but Alice stopped blinking.

“(Here she is,)” whispered Kamijou.

“(I can’t believe it took her this long,)” said Shirai. “(Given her previous speed, she should have attacked well before this. Could she have hesitated after seeing the lab she used to call home?)”

If so, he felt kind of guilty for doing this.

But now that the attack had started, it wasn’t going to stop.

Youen pulled out a photo and some clothes while the sound of breaking glass rang loud. The windows and streetlights had to be bursting. The sounds of destruction continued as the container lab itself tilted. The truck’s tires must have ruptured from exposure to the high-voltage electricity.

What did that decision mean to Frillsand #G?

What was she thinking while destroying a place filled with so many memories to get at the people trampling on a treasure from her past?

Kamijou got down on the floor and protected carefree Alice while biting his lip. It pained him to see Frillsand #G run wild like this. That was the thought on his mind when he reached out to support one of the camera tripods that was about to fall. He didn’t have the specialized knowledge to know which equipment was important. It was possible the artificial ghost technology was something only Drencher could understand.

The cacophony of destruction would not stop.

Their plan would fail if the interior of the lab was destroyed too. Their own survival wasn’t the only thing on the line here. Frillsand #G would eliminate her only chance to ever see Drencher Kihara Repatri again.

She fit in so well with the city’s darkness, but he didn’t want to give her that kind of ending.

Kamijou Touma stared into a video camera that’s lens was focusing despite not being switched on and he shouted into it without considering the risk to himself.

“Give it a rest, Frillsand #G!! What is it you really want? Just this one last time, picture the face of the person want to see more than anyone else in the world!!”

Did his voice reach her or not?

A blinding white light raged violently outside. A mass of lightning finally flew inside the container. The ghost’s sorrow hit them directly and orange sparks flew everywhere. A shelf drawer broke, sending documents and photos fluttering through the air. Hanatsuyu Youen rushed to the device and flipped the sparking switches there. With a low hum, the clear coffin started to glow.

“The electrical energy is too great,” shouted Shirai Kuroko, eyes wide. “Even if we do create the artificial ghost, the android will only explode if we try to place the ghost in it!!”

But if they did not present Drencher Kihara Repatri to the vengeful spirit, she would never stop attacking. Then the truck would explode with all of them inside.

Frillsand #G would be doomed to forever weep and wail in the wreckage of her one chance at salvation.

“That’s where…”

A scratchy voice spoke over the loud electric noises.

A small girl could be seen popping the rubber cap off of a test tube in the gaps between flashes of light.

Hanatsuyu Youen was not a good person.

But Kamijou knew better than anyone that she had chosen to save people’s lives on several occasions today.

“…this comes in!!!!!”

The electricity exploded.

The stench of burning plastic assaulted Kamijou’s nose.

===Part 16===

Of course, Frillsand #G knew exactly what that place was.

This was the collection of trucks where Drencher Kihara Repatri had spent so much time with those children. It was his mobile lab. And it was a large daycare center where he collected the specimen children who had vanished into the dark side.

She had mercilessly destroyed some garbage collectors who tried to collect the abandoned trucks. Very literally so. Their body tissue had exploded from within.

She had wanted to protect that place even if it meant spreading grudges and curses.

“…”

But now some Handcuffs criminals had made it inside, so she no longer hesitated. An all-out attack would not leave much of the lab intact.

She might blow away the very core of her memories.

She would probably be hit by intense regret afterwards, but this might let her break free of her current situation.

With that in mind, she held a skinny arm toward the trucks. This was not an indiscriminate, omnidirectional attack. She took precise aim to blow up the survivors of Operation Handcuffs.

Prioritizing destruction over her memories may have shown she had now become ''a true vengeful spirit''.

But a moment beforehand…

“Good grief. I wake up and this is what I find? Fate can be cruel, can’t it?”

“What?”

It was deflected.

It was bent.

Her torrent of electricity could bring down a skyscraper, yet it was easily repelled with a single hand.

[[Image:GT_Index_v05_BW4.jpg|thumb]]

With the exception of the time some unidentified ''interference'' had caused her to malfunction, no one had managed to escape her grudge and curse during Operation Handcuffs.

But without breaking a sweat, he once more protected some children who had fallen into the darkness.

“Why? What are you doing here!?”

Surprise appeared on her face for the first time. Her eyes may have finally focused on reality again. Something about the opponent before her eyes would not let her wander through a nightmare any longer.

This person shouldn’t have been here.

But she also wanted him to be here more than anything.

“You know exactly what I’m doing here and why, Frillsand #G-kun. How can I sit idly by while the dark side continues to devour lives? Even if it means losing my own life.”

“That’s not what I meant. This is so much more than that! How are you here? This world stole everything from me, so why is it going back on that tragedy now!?”

Her own beam vanished.

Her ghostly face silently crumpled.

An indistinct figure appeared before her.

It took the form of someone so foolish and so kind.

“Do you need a reason to protect someone? Of course you don’t.”

It only took those words.

It only took that simple whisper.

“Ah.”

She stopped.

Frillsand #G came to a stop.

Her thoughts ground to a halt and refused to function.

Attempting to exorcise her was a fool’s errand. You could build a solemn shrine and desperately worship her as a god, but whether or not she stopped was entirely up to her mood. She was like a natural disaster supported by chemistry and physics.

“Drench…er?” she muttered, eyes wide.

She just about clung to him, but then she bit her lip.

She shook and held her head.

“You can’t trick me!! I won’t be fooled!!”

Perhaps she refused to accept the possibility because it felt too good to be true. Perhaps she feared there was some malicious trick hidden somewhere. The events of Handcuffs had been so cruel they had emotionally scarred even a ghost.

So when she spoke again, there was a tremor in her voice.

The invincible artificial ghost was terrified that simply touching this man would cause him to pop like a bubble.

“You died.”

“That I did.”

“I was never supposed to see you again!!”

“Says who?”

Drencher took a step forward. Frillsand #G shook her head, but she did not step back.

What she wanted above all was vengeance. It was supposed to be an eternal battle.

But was that really true?

Weeping like a child, she leaped into the chest of the dead man once more.

He accepted her into his arms.

Even if his body was fake, he would still have a pulse.

“Everything will be alright.” He gave her a trouble smile. “Everything will be alright now. I’m not going anywhere, Frillsand #G-kun.”

No matter who got in the way and no matter how much they said this kind of patchwork happy ending couldn’t happen, there was no stopping the pursuit of happiness.

===Part 17===

“Ha.”

A breath that was half sigh and half laugh left Kamijou Touma’s mouth.

They had cut this one extremely close.

But the electrical damage stopped right in front of the collapsed boy’s feet. It had been like diving headfirst into a thick thundercloud and all the lab’s equipment had burst from within, but he had somehow avoided losing his life.

“I provided a ground.” Hanatsuyu Youen was collapsed in the same lab. “Since the electricity was too powerful for the circuit boards, I just had to divert the unnecessary power into the ground. That prevented the artificial ghost from frying the android’s innards.”

She shook an empty test tube and raised her thumb even though the rubber cap was already gone.

“Now, this might alter the soil’s acidity a little, but no one around here has to worry about being electrocuted. Electricity flows along the path of least resistance and this wasn’t powerful enough to ignore the ground and race up to someone’s brain or heart.”

“Electrical stuff doesn’t sound like your area of expertise, so I’m betting you found a way to make this biological. What did you use this time? A bug? Or maybe some kind of mold?”

“Gallionella iron bacteria.”

“…”

“Don’t stare at me like that. It’s a microbe that oxidizes iron and manganese ions. They take metal inside themselves all on their own, so they’re perfect for constructing an invisible wire between the android and the ground.”

“Don’t tell those two. It would ruin the romantic mood.”

The boy realized he had recovered enough to complain about that.

He gave the embracing couple a silent look while still collapsed on his rear.

Then he sighed and spoke up.

 

“''Alice, what is this?''”

===Between the Lines 3===

“Oh, you noticed?”

Time froze.

Only Kamijou Touma and short-sleeved Alice remained facing each other in the slanted and scorched truck. The girl’s presence seemed to rule this space – both the shine of her golden hair and her warmth that drove out all loneliness.

As usual, the blonde girl of about 12 cutely tilted her head like a storybook girl.

“What part made you suspect?” she asked with a smile.

“All of it. From the beginning,” spat Kamijou.

Then he listed off what he meant by “all of it”.

“How did I escape nearly unscathed from a head-on collision between two trains?

“I jumped from the train’s 2nd floor, fell through the hole melted in the platform, and didn’t know where I was going to land, so it makes no sense I didn’t break a single bone.

“Frillsand #G built up an overwhelming pile of victims during Handcuffs. Did she really attack using something as immediately obvious as electricity?

“Even if that is what she used, I should have basically exploded if that high-voltage current even grazed me. It also doesn’t make sense she could share her memories with me using electricity. Our brains aren’t constructed the same like with the cloned Sisters.

“Is Shirai Kuroko of Judgment really the kind of person to do what a fugitive criminal says even if it’s necessary to solve the problem at hand?

“I don’t know how skilled that Uiharu girl is, but does she really know enough about the underside of the city to give us a list of Handcuffs mysteries just because someone asks her to run a search real quick? For that matter, does she have the mental fortitude needed to just smile and describe those dark side tragedies even if her search did turn them up?

“What about Benizome Jellyfish? Wasn’t it a bit much to just assume she had to know where Frillsand #G’s lab was? We had nothing to suggest that.

“Does the technology to link an artificial ghost with an android really exist? Can you really resurrect the dead by cobbling together Academy City tech?

“Why did Frillsand #G wait to attack until after we had found everything we needed in Drencher’s lab?

“Then there’s Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier. This was my first time meeting a Handcuffs criminal, but is she really the kind of girl who would grow so attached to someone she just met even if we had a common goal? I mean, she changed in front of me and fed me a drug mouth-to-mouth. Being from the dark side doesn’t mean she’s that unguarded.

“But the most glaring error was me finding 10 thousand yen on the ground and all the other times I was insanely ''lucky''.”

Alice sighed.

“The girl’s magic ''forces all of those things to work''.”

“Magic?”

“Ah ha ha. Did you think it was an esper power? Like the #6 who you can’t see clearly?”

He was curious why Alice sounded so knowledgeable about that, but he was more interested in a different question.

''Could Alice really be described using just the magic side?

“Do you modify probability so you could always win the lottery or at bingo? No, that isn’t it. That wouldn’t let you include nonexistent possibilities.”

“Correct. It is not that☆”

Alice slowly pointed her finger toward Kamijou.

But not at him. She pointed past him. He noticed something there and slowly emerged from the tilted truck.

The frozen outside world was not the world he knew.

A giant towered into the heavens above the abandoned leisure spa and enormous pumpkins shaped like human faces broke through the asphalt to grow from the ground all over the place. A five-pointed shooting star drew a trail behind it in the night sky and incomprehensible ancient characters and diagrams danced about like neon signs.

Time remained frozen.

Kamijou was honestly glad for that. If time resumed now, ''something awful would happen to Shirai, Youen, and everyone else who wasn’t here.

“Teacher.”

The voice behind him remained entirely innocent. She hopped around in front of him.

That girl there had done all this.

She could end the current world with a snap of her fingers.

“It doesn’t matter if your real-world theories have broken down. Even if there is no direct connection between two ideas, a bridge can always be built if the girl ''goes on an adventure'' and creates a new path.”

“A bridge?”

“Hmm, like this: ‘There are four emotions and four elements, so when roleplaying, you can draw on a special power by intentionally drawing on a specific emotion in yourself.’ ”

People would normally call that “a stretch” or “sophistry”. It might sound reasonable at first, but there was no existing mythology or law behind it. In this case, the idea of the four emotions was an Eastern thing and the idea of the four elements was a Western thing commonly seen in fantasy RPGs.

But if you could build a bridge between the two and it would give you power with 100% reliability, you would have a legitimate miracle on your hands.

It reminded him a bit of the way the Amakusas combined Shinto, Buddhism, and Christianity, but this was completely different. Alice didn’t need to find points in common between the two things to form a logical connection. She could notice that a paint set on sale had 12 colors, associate that with the 12 numbers on a clock, and ''with nothing more than that'' gain a complete control over time. Except it wouldn’t just apply to Alice herself. The moment she decided that was true, all the paint in the world would gain the same power.

“Burning something requires phlogiston, observing one of a pair of separated particles determines the spin of the other one no matter the distance between them, neutrinos can travel faster than light. It might sound ridiculous, but if the girl links together the surrounding theories to build up a solid basis and makes it convincing enough, she can create an actual functioning theory. Even if the idea she started with was flawed and even if the values she started with came from faulty measurements.”

“You mean…?”

“It works even if the theory is how to resurrect the dead. After all, ''magic is meant to give people joyous hopes and fun dreams.''”

By forcibly connecting entirely separate theories, she had created a single path to this destination.

Even if she hadn’t created anything herself and was journeying around by peering into someone else’s mind.

If he had continued traveling through that comfortable world without questioning it, all of the pieces would have intertwined and become real.

Like a board game where surrounding your opponent’s pieces captured all of those pieces for yourself.

Kamijou noticed a straining sound.

It came from within Alice.

Specifically, from her blue storybook dress with a white apron over it. It tore in a way such solid fabric never should have. The entire center of her body tore to either side like it was a thin stocking.

The ripping noise sounded somehow suggestive.

“Now.”

Immorally bright skin emerged from within.

The transformation was like a childish mint candy becoming a sticky honey dripping onto the skin.

The thing contained in the storybook dress came into view. Metal buckles shined and red and black belts glistened with oil while digging into a slender body.

Alice spread her arms wide without showing any concern for the empty shell left behind.

“Please guide the girl, teacher. She wants to ''go on an adventure'' inside you. You weren’t satisfied with this ending? Then what kind of ending would you accept? Just tell the girl and she will join the theories together, fill in the gaps, establish the necessary facts, and give you the world you want.”

“Is that so?” muttered Kamijou.

However it had happened, it was difficult to think of a happier ending than someone being reunited with a loved one who had died. And when it was done with a technology so closely connected to herself, that had to have saved Frillsand #G.

Not everything about Operation Handcuffs had been bad.

If you avoided taking a one-sided view of that night and rearranged things like a puzzle, it could even be used to save a life.

That answer was sure to save all the people who had been dragged into that mess.

Alice wasn’t doing anything wrong here.

He understood that.

So Kamijou Touma answered her just like she asked him to.

“Then return everything to the way it was, Alice. If I use your power like this, I can never truly reach the end.”

She looked confused.

She looked dreadfully psychedelic covered in belts that moved all on their own and loosely bound her legs together. She looked like she had stepped out of another world altogether as she tilted her head with so much of her soft skin showing.

“Umm, are you sure you want that?” she asked.

“I am.”

“The girl connects the unconnected, stabilizes impossible theories and ideas, and creates a ''better than'' optimal reality. To be blunt, you will not survive without the girl’s help, teacher.”

“It’s still what I want. You filling in the gaps keeps me from seeing what I really need to do.”

“The girl didn’t give Frillsand #G a power she doesn’t really have. That was simply the result of emphasizing just one aspect of her. Once she has access to all of her power, you don’t stand a chance against her.”

“Probably not. But I’m not trying to overpower her.”

“Hanatsuyu Youen, Rakuoka Houfu, and Benizome Jellyfish escaped from the train. You aren’t naïve enough to think they aren’t a threat just because they aren’t as powerful as the ghost, are you? Each one of them is a difficult enough enemy to take you out the instant you encounter them.”

“I know that.”

“''You will die.''”

“''That doesn’t change my answer.''”

“Hm.” Alice placed her index finger on her chin and stared into empty space. “One of them wanted to become a god, one of them wanted to be immortal, and one of them wanted to get back at academia for making fun of him. The girl has gone on a lot of strange ''adventures'', but this is a first.”

“?”

[[Image:GT_Index_v05_BW5.jpg|thumb]]

“Ah ha ha. Curiouser and curiouser. You reject the girl, but not because you have no desires inside you. The girl has never encountered this kind of desire. …This sounds ''delicious''.”

Alice smiled.

But this smile looked subtly different from before.

Perhaps it had a touch of loneliness.

“New command from Alice Anotherbible. Immediately cease all modified kabbalah bridge linking within Live Adventures in Wonderland.”

The deep thunk that followed sounded just like a thick metal lock opening.

Kamijou Touma was enveloped in white light.

His senses gradually faded until nothing felt real anymore, but he definitely heard the girl’s sad but hopeful voice.

“Teacher. Please don’t let yourself die too easily, okay?”

<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume5_Chapter1|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume5_Chapter3}}
</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Epilogue

2021-05-27T16:34:03Z

Entei08: Accelerator is more expressing how long it took for justice to finally catch up to him.

==Epilogue: That Human Returns – Science_Side,Interrupt.==

“Watch as a Japanese high school boy and some identical clone girls fight over giant burgers in LA.”

“Geh!? They’re looking great here!!”

“I’m so glad we stood up for them. I’d have had nightmares if these adorable girls had been sent off to be killed.”

Academy City resumed its trial with a scattering of similar conversations outside.

One look at the internet and social media showed the clones were generally being received favorably. That meant people saw them as fellow humans. Maybe people had a hard time ostracizing others, no matter what they said. Just like people would avoid tearing the face when opening a snack container with the mascot’s face printed on it.

It was still unknown what would happen with them, but with so many empathizing with them, it seemed unlikely they would simply be killed. However, that introduced another problem.

“You say you killed people not for money and not out of anger but simply to increase your power?”

“Correct.”

“You killed more than 10 thousand like this? And you would have killed 20 thousand if no one had stopped you?”

“It was fun. I could feel myself growing day by day. Those are the facts.”

“My, my, how frightening. Those weren’t just lab rats, you know? ''They may have been born through a different method, but they clearly have the same human lives and hearts as us.''”

The white-haired red-eyed monster smiled on the inside.

The world had finally caught up with him.

Which was why they would show no lenience on the #1 and new Board Chairman.

“Order, order. We will now begin the final tally.”

His defense attorney looked nervous, but he had not hired the man. The system required it, but it had been unlucky for him to be given this unwinnable case.

There was no way to overcome the disadvantage of the defendant himself planning to lose.

“Accelerator – real name unknown.”

The judge’s icy eyes stared down at the monster.

He was the executor of justice.

But did the old judge notice Accelerator mouthing the words “took you long enough”?

The world was rejoicing in their victory, but the person who had most wished for that victory would be sent to hell.

Exactly as the new Board Chairman had planned it.

The judge who controlled the scales of justice spoke with ice in his voice.

“You have been found…”

“The last of the Logistic Hornets has apparently landed in the South Atlantic. That means all 12 have been neutralized.”

“I see,” replied Roberto Katze. The President barely seemed to be listening to the report with his feet up on his Oval Office desk. Roseline Krackhart would normally have berated him for it, but she let it slide this once.

Something was clearly missing here. There was an empty gap where the Vice President normally stood.

“Darris…”

Roberto spoke his comrade-in-arm’s name while leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling.

The regret in his voice was palpable.

“I thought for sure I would never see you again, so don’t just go get arrested in LA, you idiot!! What am I supposed to say when I see you next!!!???”

Roseline slapped her forehead and groaned like she was cursing the entire world.

“Would it count as discrimination if I called all men immature children who don’t know how to actually finish anything? Yes, I know an American politician is supposed to be pro-diversity. I know I shouldn’t be saying this, but to hell with it: every single man is utter trash!!!!!! Do you have any idea how many fires I’ve had to run around putting out because of the silly battles you fight over your stupid pride!? I’m going to be taking something for indigestion and then staying up all night ''again''! It’s already the 26th and I’m nowhere near finishing my work for the year!!!!!!”

“Hey, that’s part of my collection.”

“It is a piece of evidence!!”

The President moved to stop his beautiful aide after she grabbed his semiauto shotgun. Fortunately, she was not a gun person and forget to load the first round. Otherwise, several rounds would have gone off accidentally during their struggle.

It was a fairly risky battle, but the next thing they knew, he had the aide’s back pressed against the top of his large desk. Almost like he had laid her down on a bed.

It was a highly unnatural position to find herself in, but Roseline did not cry out.

Roberto set aside the shotgun.

“Not a day goes by you don’t save my ass.”

“Don’t do this, President.”

“I could never make a gamble like that if I didn’t have you watching my back.”

“We don’t have any interests in common, so there simply isn’t a scandal to be had with me. Isn’t that supposed to be our greatest weapon?”

But she did not resist it.

This was undeniably the wrong decision, but they may have both been hoping that someday they would make that mistake.

Just then, a message came over the speakerphone.

“Excuse me, we have a sex worker out here calling herself Jane and swinging around a used condom. What should we do about her? She insists we will find she is a friend of the president’s if we check the chromosomes inside, so should we send it to the CDC for testing?”

The aide smiled a little.

She smiled and kicked the President in the crotch so hard he lifted off the floor a little. Then she snatched up the semiauto shotgun that still smelled of gunpowder and actually remembered to load the first round into the chamber this time.

“I’m here, darling!! Now where’s this enemy of the USA who wants to meet the working end of my shotgun!?”

“Nooo, you burned out my Harley’s engine!?”

Life had returned to Los Angeles. Whether it was English or not, there was so much talking going on that it only sounded like incomprehensible chatter to a Japanese ear. It was currently night. It was said stores closed surprisingly early outside of Japan, but today was an exception. Maybe everyone wanted to share their joy, or maybe they wanted to feel like their ordinary lives were back even if it meant going back to work when they didn’t have to.

In one corner of a burger restaurant, Kamijou Touma, Index, Othinus, and several identical clone girls were crammed into a single booth seat.

Kamijou felt like he was going to be crushed by the soft skin, soft skin, body weight, and more soft skin surrounding him, but his primary complaint was something else.

“We are being way, way, way too conspicuous here!! Gweh, what even is this? I thought you tried to hide your presence from the world? What happened to that!?”

He could not help but blush.

The interest was of course with the Sisters, but he felt like a panda at the zoo with all the cameras snapping photos of them. The rapid flashing made him feel a little dizzy.

But the sisters did not mind. They had gathered together like a single dumpling-like monster and spoke in their emotionless voice.

“Misaka has stopped hiding, explains Misaka #16360 while clinging to you from the front row.”

“Whoever contributed most to the battle is to be rewarded with a hug and a head pat, says Misaka #19559 while making sure to catch your attention.”

“Being the center of attention is the most important thing in the fucking world. Misaka doesn’t care about the fucking serial numbers any more. Time to share this elation and exhilaration with the Misaka Network!”

The Sisters all had their own unique traits despite being connected via the network, but he felt like randomly sprinkling the word “fuck” into your sentences wasn’t exactly accurate to American speech. He didn’t know what number she was, but he guessed it was an issue of her personal tastes and interests. In fact, didn’t they avoid using the word here since it was offensive?

“Okay, okay! So I just have to choose the MVP, right? But can’t I just shake hands with one of you and then you share that experience over the Misaka Network?”

“…”

“…”

“…”

Terrified by their silent pressure, Kamijou turned to the nun (who was also being crushed by clones due to sitting next to him) for help.

“Grr… Th-they are Legion. Touma, be careful. Now is the time – striped – to use your – panties – right hand – so many stripes.”

“What’s wrong, Index? You’re letting the visual information confuse you. Wait, why is your face all red!? Are you overheating? I-is this that special attack bees do to kill a hornet with heat!?”

“I could see the #5 developing a deadly special attack like that and giving it some bee-related name,” muttered Othinus while showing no intention of helping Kamijou.

The clones’ hands approached like a sea anemone in their desire for a reward, so Kamijou decided to just eat everything on the table while he still could. With their intensity and their stomachs of growing girls, there wouldn’t be a single fry or even parsley garnish left if he waited much longer

But…

“Eh? Is this soy? No, it isn’t. But then what have I been eating!? The worst part is how much like meat it is!!”

“Don’t worry, human. Meat substitutes aren’t unusual. You know the little cubes of meat in the cup noodles you eat at night when you think no one is watching? Made of soy. And the drinks you can never resist buying at the convenience store generally don’t have any real fruit juice in them. They’re nothing but mystery chemicals.”

“That doesn’t tell me what this is! It has fatty parts and actually tastes good!!”

They were not the only ones there.

A silver-haired brown-skinned mother and daughter sat together across the table. The Sisters were only swarming one side of the box seat, so those two were not being crushed.

“I want to eat soybeans. Vegetables are the extreme of healthy.”

With another awkward translation, Helcalia got to work on the giant hamburger she had to hold in both hands. She was happily kicking her legs below the table while sitting in the one seat available only to her: Melzabeth’s lap. She kept hitting Kamijou’s shins, which was legitimately painful.

Also…

“I’m surprised to find you speak Japanese.”

“I can get by in Japanese, Russian, and English. The space industry is smaller than you would think. And just like so many medical terms are in German, you really need to know those languages if you hope to make it far.”

He realized the video message Melzabeth had left in her mobile home had not been meant for him to find. If she had known someone Japanese would find it, she would have made it in Japanese.

“I am so sorry you got caught up in our problems here,” she added.

“Hm? What are you talking about?”

“My, my. You’re surprisingly mature about these things. But still, I want to reward you in some way. Yes…how about this?”

“Ah!” cried Helcalia while placing her hands over her eyes.

And.

Kamijou felt a brief, soft sensation on his cheek. He was fairly certain it wasn’t her finger.

The mother pulled her face away with a gentle smile.

“?”

Helcalia was still staring, but when her mother wiped the burger sauce (made from who knows what) from around her mouth, the girl resumed innocently kicking her legs.

The daughter may have been placated, but Othinus had seen it from right on his shoulder. The dumpling of clones had seen it too.

Not to mention Index.

“Wait, wait, wait! If you’re going to be nice, try to do it right! Can you please explain to them that this is no more than a normal greeting in the West, Melzabeth!? Wait, why are you blushing now!? What do you mean it’s embarrassing when I use your first name!? This isn’t the time for that!”

He was a step away from death when his old folks phone began to ring on the edge of the table.

He snatched it up, checked the screen, and frowned.

“What now? Withheld numbers are always scary, but it’s even worse when I’m overseas!”

The idiot (who failed to realize he could receive calls from anywhere in the world no matter where his phone was physically located) hesitantly answered his phone.

“We’re…done here.”

“Huh? What is it, Stiyl? Weren’t you on your way to the R&C Occultics HQ? And you said you didn’t need the USB memory. What, the fighting’s already done? Well, Citrinitas was the foundation of their defenses and we already took him out, so was the rest a cakewalk?”

“They were…”

The scratchiness of the voice was not due to a poor signal.

Stiyl could not keep his own voice steady. Kamijou frowned as Stiyl started again.

“They were already dead. We found all the R&C Occultics executives in pools of blood.”

When he heard that, Kamijou Touma finally noticed a numb tingling feeling at the back of his head.

He could not accept it. The clear Japanese words had entered his ears, but his mind would not process them. So his face stiffened and he asked a silly question.

“Wait, what does that mean? Like, it was an illusion or something? Do you need a specialist there? Like Inde-”

“No, do not bring her here. She might seem naïve, but she’s actually quite perceptive. Because once something enters her head, her perfect memory lets her review it over and over again. So don’t let her know about this.”

Stiyl Magnus was a master of the witch hunt and he had overcome so much fierce fighting, but he groaned here.

This one had to be bad.

Kamijou could not see it over the phone, but that may have been a blessing. Did the tall priest even realize he was speaking more to himself than to Kamijou?

“She can never forget anything, so I can’t let her see this hell.”

Earlier in Los Angeles, the magician sent to defend the R&C Occultics HQ had been defeated. With Citrinitas out of the picture, the 30 million residents and the Academy City and Anglican members of the joint force were dragged back out of the sand.

A final showdown was imminent.

The company executives held an emergency meeting inside the HQ building.

“Hey, what are we going to do about this!?”

“Has the drone management server been dismantled for transport yet? As long as we get R Rose out of here, we can abandon this building and use the Logistic Hornets to maintain our control of the skies!!”

“You’re still hung up on those useless toys that reject our commands!? We have primary income divisions beyond online shopping. Right now, we need to go into hi- !?”

The woman’s shoulders jumped in her fancy suit.

And not just because of her mental state.

That global VIP had been hit by a multitude of attacks, so by the time she collapsed to the floor, her entire body had swollen. It was so bad her expression was unreadable. In fact, something appeared to be moving underneath her swollen skin.

“Good, good.”

With a single footstep, someone gathered the dumbfounded executives’ eyes and walked right into their sanctuary.

It was a woman in a beige habit with her blonde hair cut unevenly at the shoulders.

“I considered using tsetse flies, but tachinid flies really are the best choice for research. They’re bigger, tougher, faster, and – with the right modifications – can even break through human skin and lay their eggs inside. Also…”

That woman pointed her finger at the executives as they desperately tried to flee. No, was that a small water gun? Whenever the jelly-like substance hit a target, a swarm of killer flies would take a sharp, curving path toward them with an afterimage resembling a black or silver beam.

Flies could easily distinguish between different scents, so they were actually one of the easiest insects for people to control.

“When they’ve been customized to fly at 50km/h, you can’t hope to outrun them. I’ve outdone myself this time. I think these are even more convenient than bullets. Not even hiding behind cover or wearing bulletproof equipment will save you from this.”

“Good grief.” Everyone was shocked to see what was obviously a golden retriever answer the mysterious woman. “Did you choose to make your deadly toy out of the universally-disliked fly as a tribute to the Decomposer and the Carrier?”

“Those twins did not have exclusive rights to such things. Director Yakumi Hisako used bugs too, if you recall.”

The golden retriever sighed and cut a new cigar.

You could maybe accept being killed by a venomous bug, like a wasp, spider, or scorpion, but having countless maggots devouring all of the soft tissue below your skin had to be a horrific way to go. It was an obvious case of using empathy in a more detached fashion.

“''He said he doesn’t want any of it anymore'',” casually replied the woman, twirling the small gas-powered water gun. She winked and tapped her temple with her other hand. “So I’ll be taking all that ‘dark side’ technology for myself. That means all the technology needed for Five Overs, military clones, androids, nanodevices, artificial ghosts, artificial muscle enhancement, AIM diffusion fields, and even making dogs speak. But most importantly, that includes esper development. I don’t even need the Bank. I have all the official and unofficial Academy City tech stored ''right in here''. The only thing not in the palm of my hand would be that right hand.”

“There is very little romance in a mid-boss who shows back up for a second round, or in a special boss who has gathered up all the previous gadgets. And this isn’t about their actual stats. Fighting the same enemy again lacks impact and a Demon King who can use all of the Four Generals’ abilities is easily defeated.”

“What if called it using just the old, outdated tech to confront the smug new boss?”

“Oh? Putting it like that is cheating. My romance sense is tingling just a bit. Do you mean like using an old German 88mm to blast the high-tech composite armor tanks coming at you like a parade of death?”

“That isn’t possible and you know it.”

“That’s the entire point, though. The romance is found in attempting the impossible.”

“Wait, it can’t be…” groaned one of the executives who could not even get out of his chair. With intruders in this deep, they had to assume the HQ building’s guards had been wiped out.

They had to assume a single person had done that.

“It can’t be!?”

“Yes, it isn’t just your cowardly personality keeping you from getting up from your seat. But don’t feel bad. ''It’s already happened to you all.''”

They could not move.

And not just their arms and legs. They even had trouble blinking and breathing.

“Gah!”

Then something moved at the back of the woman’s head.

“Gbwakhah!!”

There was something there. ''A face-like shadow'' was visible in the golden glow, looking uncomfortably cramped in that short hair. And it wailed in human language, its voice sounding like it was drowning in the air.

“Hey, you there! All of you! Somebody fight back!! If you don’t, he’ll get cocky. This is Aleister, the ‘human’ who lived a life of failure and setbacks! Don’t let him have this! Tear him down! He must have left any number of openings!! So…!!”

“Ha ha ha. Lola Stuart, Great Demon Coronzon, and my constant companion. You are such a tsundere. I know you only say these things because you love me.”

“The very idea sickens me!!!!!!”

“Sorry, but just this once, I have won a flawless victory. The inevitable defeat can wait until next time.”

It was a ridiculous conversation, but no one could stop it. They were already paralyzed down to the finger. The woman(?) had more than one trick up her sleeve. The killer flies were just one card in her deck.

In fact, every type of scientific technology was her toy.

“Allergens have a much more dramatic effect when absorbed through the skin than ingested orally, so things not identified as food allergies can still affect you. And this method does not give you a chance to sense the danger and take measures to avoid it until it has already taken effect. It lets me bring people down while they remain defenseless. And unlike cyanide or monkshood, nothing out of the ordinary will be found in the autopsy. Even the professional investigators will conclude it was an unfortunate accident where the victim consumed something without realizing their allergy to it.”

“Gah…”

Anaphylactic shock was a cause of death no medical or police investigator would question, so the executives were shocked a second time to learn ''it could be induced externally.

The woman took a disinterested glance around the room.

“I see CEO Anna isn’t here. Not that I expected her to be.”

“You just called it a flawless victory, yet a flaw has already presented itself.”

The dog’s exasperated comment did not bother the woman.

She was used to unfortunate coincidences.

She smiled. What did you do when the person you wanted was out? You left a message.

“You know, Miss Sprengel, if you get in the habit of staying home from work, you will find it harder and harder to ever leave the house again. And I think I should start getting to work as well.”

The Academy City and Anglican joint force would be arriving at the HQ building before long, so she had to write out an obvious message that no one could erase and then leave in a hurry. Nothing here was related to Academy City, so they were bound to transmit it around the world without hiding anything. That meant the message would reach Anna Sprengel.

Too easy.

The woman grabbed a dull letter opener from the gorgeous table and touched it to the tip of her soft index finger. Harming someone with that would require ''a lot'' of force. Then she slowly turned toward the poor victim who was dripping with sweat and unable to move.

She held the letter opener with a backhand grip and readied it like it was a stake.

And she smiled.

It was an oddly refreshing smile, but it was a thoroughly “dark side” smile that seemed to split her mouth apart.

“Aleister Crowley, the human whose life came to an end at Blythe Road, is on his way to kill you.”

<noinclude>
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter1

2020-11-09T15:22:45Z

Entei08:

{{Incomplete}}
==Chapter 1: A Scab Torn Away – City_Warfare.==

===Part 1===

Hamazura Shiage did not know much about the Coin of Nicholas.

On Christmas morning, he had woken up to find it in his hand. That was strange, but he had seen several similar accounts on message boards and social media. Some had even claimed to have taken it to a pawn shop and learned it was real gold.

That meant this was not just a surprise from Mugino Shizuri or Takitsubo Rikou.

After that, a detailed user’s guide had appeared on R&C Occultics’ official site and that had quickly spread across the internet. It happened fast enough that it took him a bit to realize it came from that side of the world.

As a resident of a city of science, he had been skeptical, but the coin had in fact opened that rusted-shut door. Whether years of rust had filled the gap or the door had itself had been warped, ''there had to have been some physical reason why the door would not budge, yet all of that had been ignored to grant him his wish.

Yes, he had been skeptical, but he had also tested it out before that.

While holding the coin in his hand and praying, his roommate Mugino Shizuri’s bra hook had come undone. As a result, he had been nearly killed by his girlfriend Takitsubo Rikou instead of Mugino.

The same method had failed to undo the hook on his other roommate Kinuhata Saiai’s bra. Not even the mysterious coin could unhook a bra that did not exist. He had nearly been killed by Kinuhata herself for that one, but he had learned that the coin could not do the impossible.

These were the rules as far as he knew:

*The Coin of Nicholas fixes an action’s success rate at 100%.

*After a use, it requires an hour to recharge. That time limit is fixed regardless of the quantity or quality of the action performed.

Those rules were straight from the R&C Occultics manual and he had confirmed them himself.

And he could add another rule to the list since he was from Academy City, even if he was a Level 0.

*Espers can use the coin without any penalty or side effects.

(I am curious why such a useful item was given out for free. Was this just a Christmas present from those magic people? Come to think of it, that weird kid I met during the day mentioned R&C too.)

“!?”

A loud siren blared and the brown-haired delinquent boy cut off that line of thought. He hid behind a car parked on the road. Even he was disgusted with himself. He was outside during the midwinter, yet the paper bag containing the medicine seemed soaked with his sweat.

(It isn’t just a localized thing.)

Hamazura looked inside the Anti-Skill vehicle passing by. He saw a distinctive device in the back seat.

(An NB20 close-range arresting gun. Wasn’t that net rifle recalled for causing so many accidents? Shoot a kid with a handgun and it’s a big deal, but kill them with the weight used to spread out the net and they call it an accident. Anti-Skill is serious about this. They plan to tear down the dark side even if it means slaughtering us all!!)

“Hey, that’s Anti-Skill, Etzali!”

“That is not a problem thanks to our borrowed faces. Or it wouldn’t be if you would stop panicking, Xochitl. We need to get to the hospital to collect Tochtli.”

Hamazura waited until a boy and a girl walked past.

(One hour.)

He pulled the Coin of Nicholas from his pocket. The brightness at the edge seemed thicker than it had been before. It looked a lot like a donut-shaped pie graph filling in clockwise, but it was not even a quarter of the way full yet.

It would take a while before it was fully charged.

(I can’t rely on its power for another hour. I’ll have to survive on my own. Wait, isn’t this first hour the most dangerous time!? Damn, maybe I shouldn’t have used it right off the bat like that!)

At any rate, he worked his panicked mind to try and think. He felt frustrated and angry, but he could not protect anyone by challenging Anti-Skill or Judgment head on. That would change nothing even if he could cheat with the Coin of Nicholas. He knew that much.

He did not have time to explain to them that he was no longer part of the dark side.

It was all or nothing.

How could he stand in front of them and talk when a single mistake would mean taking a bullet to the head? He had to pessimistically assume he would be taken out along with the others. That was the only way he would survive this.

His goal was ''to escape to safety''. And that meant crossing Academy City’s borders to leave the city.

There was not a moment to lose, but running around blindly would also put his life at risk. He had already seen all too well what would happen to him if he did the wrong thing. He could not survive if he stayed in Academy City where so many cameras were watching everything that happened in the city’s limited space. He would be cornered before he could recover from even a single mistake.

He needed to meet up with the track suit girl named Takitsubo Rikou.

Then they could really get started.

He reflexively pulled out his cheap phone, but then he froze.

His fingers had moved on autopilot, but for some reason an error appeared on the lock screen.

“Aneri?”

He gasped in realization after seeing the cold error message.

That support AI had no real physical form. She had temporarily joined with the massive Bank database, but she was generally creating a connection back to her friend in England and moving freely between the devices around Hamazura. But now she had clearly rejected him.

(Oh, right. I can’t use this thing!!)

As soon as he realized how careless he had been, he held down the switch on the side. The few seconds it took to shut off stretched on for what felt like an eternity. Even loan sharks these days would steal a phone’s location data or social media’s facial recognition to track down a target who had skipped town. And he was up against Anti-Skill and Judgment who preserved order in Academy City. They would have full use of the city’s data infrastructure, including the unknown millions of security cameras, the cleaning and security robots, and the massive Bank database.

He breathed a sigh of relief once the thin screen finally went dark, but then a different sort of pressure hit him. He was cut off and overwhelmingly alone. Not even a child separated from their parents at a crowded amusement park would feel quite so much crushing pressure.

How could he let that girl know about the threat without his phone? Plus, he had no idea where she was and had no way of giving her a rendezvous point.

Aneri was not telling him anything. Which made sense since she had urged him to turn off the phone.

(Dammit, I didn’t realize how dependent on this phone I was.)

He cursed his own weakness. He started by thinking over what he could do. He could return to their apartment. If his girlfriend had not been caught in any similar trouble, she would be lazily waiting for him there.

He was unsure if that was a good thing or not.

He had to be swift and certain. If he could catch up to her before tragedy struck, she would not be harmed. He would make sure of it. He kept repeating that to himself like he was willing it to be true as he stepped out from behind the car.

He heard an odd sound from overhead.

Someone fell from the building and squashed the parked car to half its original height.

“Ahh, ahhh!! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

He only now realized the odd sound had been someone screaming. He screamed himself and fell on his ass because all of the car’s windows had shattered. The person embedded in the steel roof did not seem to have it in him to get up, so he turned just his head toward Hamazura while lying on his back.

He could not open one of his eyes due to the blood flowing from a head wound.

“…Ha…”

He was a young man older than Hamazura.

He wore a thick coat and fancy slacks. What he wore below the coat was unclear, but the practical sneakers on his feet clashed with the classical outfit. He also wore a synthetic fabric sling bag over the coat. The mismatched look made it look like he was skipping town.

Who was that weak and cynical smile meant for?

“I might not look it…but I used to boss the likes of you around over the phone.”

(Wait…)

Still down on his butt, Hamazura gulped. He had never met this man before, but he had seen someone similar when he was working as a dark side underling. Well, ''seen'' was the wrong word. The woman who had bossed Item around had ensured her own safety by only ever calling them over the phone. She had gone to great lengths to keep her appearance and real name a secret.

So…

“''The voice on the phone''? This is reaching people on that level!?”

That meant there were no exceptions. The young man crushed on the car roof did not nod or shake his head. He may not have had the strength left.

“The…charm.”

“What?”

“She lives…outside the city. Return it to…my little sister.”

“Wait, don’t say that. I have my hands full already!! Don’t give me another burden! I mean it!!”

The young man was no longer listening. After an especially large convulsion, he stopped moving altogether. He did not even shut his eyes like they did in dramas and movies. He simply stopped blinking and blood oozed from his unfocused eyes.

Hamazura sensed someone inside the building.

A charm.

A little sister living outside the city.

“Dammit!!” he spat as he reached for the young man despite the risk.

He unhooked the sling bag that was too small to fit much more than a wallet and phone and he pulled it toward himself. Then he rushed into a narrow alley between buildings with the extra baggage.

The road was growing busy now, but he had to check something before blindly running away.

He checked through the small sling bag and found a few tools inside. A passport as a form of ID, a smartphone, some paper money carelessly balled up with some rubber bands, a Shinto shrine’s charm that felt out of place with everything else, and a handgun seemingly made out of plastic. Almost all of it was sketchy as could be. He started by powering off the phone and opening the passport. School Boy. That was very obviously a fake name. In fact, it was one that showed up on a lot of example documents in banks and government offices here in Academy City.

There was no Coin of Nicholas in the sling bag.

Maybe they had been handed out randomly so not everyone had one and maybe the young man had not believed it worked and left it behind. Hamazura had kind of been hoping for another one so he could shorten the lag between uses, similar to Nobunaga’s rotating three-line formation.

(So is this the charm?)

Vermilion fabric had the shrine’s name and the charm’s effect stitched in gold: wish fulfillment. He was surprised to see that category existed. If that would fulfill whatever wish you had, it felt like an almighty joker that rendered the academic achievement and prosperous business ones unnecessary.

Maybe he was sensitive to such things after seeing the Coin of Nicholas work so well, but he still doubted the charm had any special effects. It was only a local souvenir, no different from a keychain or phone strap.

(Are these mass-produced in a factory, or are they handmade? If they’re different for each shrine, I might be able to work out the general area where his sister lives and search for more personal information from there.)

At any rate, he was glad this had not fallen into Anti-Skill’s hands.

His own life came first, of course. He could not determine how much he would be able to do about the charm, but he still felt an obligation to search for that sister outside of Academy City now that he had taken it.

The handgun was only meant for self-defense, so it only had two spare magazines despite being full-auto. Hold the trigger down and it would last less than 10 seconds. Carrying that around would probably give the Anti-Skill officers flooding the streets an excuse to kill him, but he would be operating in the middle of the dark side from here on. Just like vitamin supplements and silver ion anti-bacterial spray, he felt like letting go of it would only make things worse.

Especially today.

Anti-Skill was supposed to stand for justice, but they were out of control. It was more frightening than a zombie outbreak.

(He doesn’t have a security buzzer, a mobile router, or anything else that could be used to track me. Good.)

There were no sirens this time.

He only heard the scraping of tires against the road. Those were probably electric cars, but right now they felt like assassination weapons that could silently sneak up on him.

“Another one. The suspect died at 4:10 PM. Send the paperwork to the prosecutor.”

“It’s just one surprise after another. I guess that’s the dark side for you. Our usual methods just aren’t working.”

Hamazura pressed his back against the filthy concrete wall and held his breath.

He could not believe what he was hearing. Based on their tone of voice, they were not being sarcastic.

(Does Anti-Skill not realize what they’re doing? But they’re hunting us down and killing us!)

What about what happened in that abandoned building?

He had not seen exactly what the man had done to kill Aoumi Karei when she should have been protected by the repellent…but what if he had not done anything?

But that did nothing to put his mind at ease. This was frightening in a way other than a serial killer wielding an axe or chainsaw with intentional malice. This was like a necessary gear was missing or like an automated process was running while malfunctioning. He imagined a bedridden old person being mercilessly folded up in a defective nursing bed while a faux music box melody played. If the people doing this did not realize their mistake, they would keep doing it. It was like a murder factory where Anti-Skill loaded the people up on the conveyer belt that carried them off to be folded up and stuffed in boxes.

The usual rules did not apply in Academy City today.

Anti-Skill would not protect them.

Both Item and the voice on the phone would die when the time came.

He put the sling bag diagonally across his chest, turned his back on the road full of adults, and continued further into the alleyway.

He had to reach Takitsubo Rikou.

He could not let her be swallowed up into this hell again. No matter what.

===Part 2===

“What is the meaning of this!?” Shouted Shirai Kuroko after returning to the logistics vehicle the size of a large bus. “You’re just going to continue with the operation!? I requested an internal investigation to determine if my own actions there were inappropriate!! Whoever they might have been, a life was lost on the scene. If you refuse to thoroughly investigate that, you might as well be admitting we are doing something wrong here!!”

“Sh-Shirai-saaan.”

The combover and glasses man nervously called out to her from behind, but the cowardly and obedient teacher did not have the guts to grab a middle school girl’s shoulder.

The operators in front of the large computers spoke with voices colder than the machines they operated.

No one was even looking in Shirai Kuroko’s direction.

“For Phase 1, we have completed 1700 surprise attacks made on the targets’ hideouts and everyday spheres of activity. The neutralized dark side targets make up about 40% of the total in Outrank – less than initially hoped. We will now use Response B. Please correct the flowchart to make up for this delay.”

“Prepare for Phase 2. The targets will be on the run after abandoning their hideouts, so target their predicted destinations. While Phase 1 went after individual targets, Phase 2 will likely allow them to gather into groups as they rush toward the same few safe spots, but the dark side is not a monolith.”

“With more of them around, they might fight each other for the one plank. They will not attack with their apparent numbers, so show off the power of our high-level organization to bring us back on schedule.”

The same thing was happening all across Academy City.

The deadly operation was continuing without delay to cover all of Academy City with something like a giant invisible spider web.

“Was that really an accident?” quietly asked Shirai.

“?”

The man only tilted his head and wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. The large baby birds printed on it seemed unusually cutesy for a middle-aged man, so it may have been bought for him by a family member.

“The dark side supposedly has a beneficial side and a harmful side. The beneficial side is relatively pleasant and acts as a necessary evil for society to exist. The harmful side is rotten to the core and is filled with unmanageable villains.”

Rakuoka Houfu began to explain something she had not asked about.

It may have been more for his benefit than hers.

“But I believe that way of thinking is a trap laid by the dark side. We can worry about whether our targets are from the beneficial side or the harmful side after they have been arrested. Worry about that now and they will stab us in the back. What happened back there was unfortunate, but we were doing the right thing. Lose sight of that and you will never recover.”

(This would be so much easier if I had Uiharu with me.)

“Rakuoka-sensei, I have requested an internal investigation into myself. If you will do the same for yourself, I will continue to work with you.”

That thought was cut off by a shaking.

The logistics vehicle had started to move. The Pet Breeder case was closed thanks to the suspect’s death, so there was no point in staying here any longer.

“Where are we headed?”

None of the operators answered her.

When she looked to their cold faces illuminated by the glow of the flat screen monitors, she could practically see the message of “Your voice command was not recognized. Please speak more clearly.”

“W-we are probably on our way to a large Anti-Skill station,” said the nervous middle-aged man. “Because that will have a heliport on the roof. We will likely wait until Phase 1 ends at 17:00 and then rush wherever we are needed during Phase 2.”

“…”

The girl could tell a large gear was turning, but what lay at the center of that gear? Was it spinning fruitlessly because a neighboring gear was missing, or had it been linked with a malicious gear?

Did she simply need to blame the middle-aged man who had rushed in to save her?

Could she change this by hating the operators who felt they were in charge and scoffed at everything she said?

(Where are you, Onee-sama?)

“We have a report from Bizen in District 8. His suspect has died, so he is asking us to send the relevant paperwork to the prosecutor. We have accepted his request and HQ will send the paperwork over in short order.”

That cold report told of another life lost.

If she made her attack in the wrong direction, she would only waste her time while many more lives followed.

===Part 3===

Hamazura Shiage had returned to the apartment building he normally stayed at.

It barely felt like home because he felt so out of place there. He shared it with his girlfriend Takitsubo Rikou, Level 4 Kinuhata Saiai, and Level 5 Mugino Shizuri, so they had ended up in a fairly fancy apartment. The new Item had gathered there. He could never have paid that rent himself. In fact, 80-90% of it was paid by the girls with money they had gotten from who knows where.

In other words…

(Anti-Skill will see this as just another loathsome hideout bought with dirty money.)

He entered through the main entrance’s auto-locking door and walked to the elevator hall like usual, but he stopped just before hitting the elevator button. After some thought, he used the emergency stairs instead. The floor he wanted was a long way up. He would normally take the elevator unless he had a very solid reason to think that was a bad idea, but he chose the stairs this time.

He suppressed his impatient heart as he climbed the stairs one at a time. It felt more like mountain climbing than sprinting. He did not want his legs to be too worn out to move by the time he reached the top.

Why?

Because he had no idea what he might find there.

“…”

He arrived at the floor he wanted.

He slowly took a breath and pulled the gold coin from his pocket to check. The previously dull outer edge had regained its shine all the way around. The Coin of Nicholas was fully charged. That also meant an hour had passed since he used it. This would help him tell the passage of time with his phone off.

A lot could happen in an hour.

He walked down the long hallway to reach his apartment’s door. He started to grab the knob but thought better of it. He instead picked up a vase sitting on a table in the public space and poured out its water.

As soon as the metal door grew wet, bluish-white sparks scattered.

Then the door flew open from within.

A muscular man dressed all in black and equipped with a helmet and steel toe boots burst out. He must have realized his surprise attack had failed.

Even Hamazura found it strange how little he hesitated. He slammed the vase down on the Anti-Skill officer’s head and ''while the man let his guard down due to his helmet'' aimed the handgun from close range.

The man must have assumed a vase was this best an amateur delinquent boy could manage, but then Hamazura repeatedly pulled the trigger while aiming at the center of his chest. With a deafening noise, the fully-equipped Anti-Skill officer was blown backwards. He must have gone limp because his bizarrely-shaped submachinegun fell to the floor.

“Takitsubo!!”

Even after all that, the masked Anti-Skill officer only fell on his ass and coughed. Not that Hamazura wanted to have killed him. He kicked the man’s helmeted jaw from the side and then left the entranceway to reach the rest of the apartment.

This was his territory – a sort of sanctuary.

There was no more assumption of safety here now that he had seen a fully-equipped Anti-Skill officer inside.

The shoe box in the entranceway, the cabinets in the living room, the square trapdoor in the floor leading to who knows what, and everything else had all been opened. How could they call themselves the heroes? They were acting like burglars. He checked each room with the gun still at the ready, but he did not find anyone else inside.

Not even any of the girls who should have been here.

“Dammit!!” he spat while stomping his feet in frustration.

Demanding himself to calm down only made it worse.

(Anti-Skill works as a group, so I doubt that bastard would have come here alone. He must have been the last one left behind to check over things after the attack. They ransacked the place because they wanted information. That means they don’t know where their targets are.)

He looked around the disastrous state of the room. He tried to find any information he could. He and his roommates had established a way to leave messages in case of emergencies. Those techniques were part of the reason the stench of the darkness continued to cling to them, but he still checked above the bathroom ceiling and behind the sink’s mirror.

He found a few folded up notes.

“I’ll get some help from a makeup specialist. The plastic surgery route super scares me. -Kinuhata.”

“I’m getting out of here. Try to follow me and you’re dead meat. -Mugino.”

Nothing got those two down.

He was confident they were fine. The problem was the name he had not seen.

His girlfriend’s name.

(Mugino and Kinuhata weren’t here when Anti-Skill arrived. Whether they would have won in the end or not, the walls and ceiling would not be intact if they had fought here. That’s just how it is with a Level 4 and a Level 5. So nothing has happened yet. Anti-Skill broke into our apartment and found nothing, so they started opening all the drawers and gathering what data they could to make up for the delay. It’s fine. Everything is fine. Nothing’s happened ye-)

That was when he hard some static. He looked over to see the Anti-Skill officer lying unconscious in the entranceway. The static had come from the radio attached to his shoulder.

“We’re pushing the schedule up. Hatsuoka, forget that apartment. End your search early and rejoin the main unit. Meltdowner and Offense Armor are big names, but

Apocalypse Witch:Volume3 Chapter1

2020-10-15T05:11:45Z

Entei08: one line was missed

{{Incomplete|parts=6|tparts=10}}
==Chapter 1==

===Part 1===

The boomerang-shaped passenger plane, Flight JSL-710, landed at a floating general airport built off the coast of Osaka as an entrance to Kansai.

The usual passenger planes, businessmen waiting to board, and tourist groups were nowhere to be seen. From the moment the Four Living Gods disembarked, this changed from being a civilian international airport to a frontline marine base rented out to the world’s strongest fighting force.

“This is Osaka. This floating airport is about 30km by sea from the Port of Kobe.”

Amaashi Marika, a girl with her twintails hair dyed strawberry blonde, looked down at her waterproof map while descending to the runway with the many other students. That was more dangerous than walking around looking down at your phone.

“We’re lucky to have approached even this far unharmed. Hey, Karuta! You split them up into teams cause I’m no good at that. Ugh, I just want to get moving ASAP!”

“30km? Um, i-isn’t that too close? Can’t those lasers reach us here?”

That nervous comment came from Natlena Blast, a girl with short and wavy blonde hair. She had been the young avenger attempting to get back at them for her sister’s death, but now she was on their side.

She had never been the type to do anything wrong, but now that she had stopped forcing herself to be bad, she could no longer hide her adorable side. She was too pure to look at for Karuta, ''a truly bad person'' who had killed five people and received nothing but praise from the world at large.

He absentmindedly spoke to that underclassman who descended to the runway a step below him.

“You really are the puppy type, Natlena.”

“Mh, what is that supposed to mean? Um, there are other animals you could compare me to.”

“Huh? Why are you mad? I meant it as a compliment.”

“How stupid are you, Senpai? Only weirdos like being called a dog!”

He was pretty sure she was indeed the puppy type since she would bite at any rubber ball waved it in front of her small face, but there was no use arguing the point.

That aside, it might seem odd for a 12-year-old girl who could not drive a car or motorcycle to think of 30km as “close”, but Crystal Magic flight was superior to a fighter craft. ''With nothing in the way,'' 30km would take them less than a minute.

“We don’t have to worry about the Threat’s projectiles while on the surface because the horizon acts as a range limit. We haven’t heard anything about their lasers curving or bending in midair.”

Karuta was holding the handles of a wheelchair as he descended the stairs behind Natlena. He was turned backwards so he descended first to make sure Omotesandou Kyouka did not accidentally fall down the stairs.
Out on the runway, they were already in their public mode.

They were outside. From now on, they had to assume that their every action would influence the 5.5 billion nervous people out there.

“Also, the grownups are really eager to do ''something'', so they’re helping out. And unlike that reckless bombardment, their help will actually be useful this time.”

''3, 2, 1,'' counted down Karuta.

Then an unnatural downpour fell down from the evening sky like a shower had been turned on.

Natlena held down her beret with both hands.

“Wah!! Wh-what is going on!?”

“Artificial rain. I believe it uses silver iodide. The weather was looking iffy already, but it’s safer when we can switch it on and off ourselves. This should weaken those lasers and also divert the course of the light much like a prism or filled fish tank. Of course, that’s all assuming the beams fired by the Threat ''really are physical light.''”

Karuta, Marika, and the others used magic powered by occult high and low pressure fronts, so they knew supernatural powers did exist in the world and could be systemized into a form of technology. They still knew nothing about the real Threat, so it would be naïve to assume their enemy could not do something they themselves could do.

“And Marika, try to keep that map folded up. The airport itself is locked down, but modern devices can still see us from a rooftop or other elevated location past the bridge here. Not to mention how high quality satellite cameras are. The world might be in danger, but there will still be people who ''see that as an opportunity.''”

“Oh, is that so? Since when are you so duty-focused, Karuta? And if that’s true, you should probably try to dress nicer for the cameras. Oh ho ho. Your appearance is a disgrace to the name of the Four Living Gods who are meant to put the people’s minds at ease.”

“?”

He gave her a look that said “but we’re all wearing the same uniforms”.

Natlena, their mascot of a middle school girl, looked up at him while fidgeting her small fingers.

“Um, Senpai, your tie is a bit crooked, so if you don’t mind, I could fix it for-”

“Stand back, flirting brat! You’re interrupting childhood friend quiz time! Why would you just give him the answer like that!? This is the problem with you newcomers that don’t know how the game is played!”

The two girls just about got into a fight in front of Karuta, but then Hashizaki Tayori, one of the girls in his class, reached over with an exasperated sigh. She quickly untied and retied his crooked tie with just the one hand.

“C’mon, try to look sharp, world’s strongest. You yourself said there are cameras watching us, right? Those paparazzi love nothing more than scandals of the romantic variety, so stop giving them fuel for the fire yourself.”

“R-right. Thanks?”

The cutting-edge magicians screamed “She stole my job!” and “Senpai!”, but no one was paying any attention to them anymore.

That gyaru-type was one of Marika’s friends, but Karuta himself had rarely interacted with her. A friend of a friend was just another term for a stranger, but Tayori winked at the confused boy.

“What, curious why I know how to handle guy’s ties? That conversation might be a little too grownup for you.”

Not only did she know how to tie one around someone else’s neck, but Karuta could not tie his own with just one hand. However, it seemed almost second nature to her. The capable girl waved as she walked off into the orange sun shower.

Matsuda Imi, the other girl always hanging out with Marika, held a hand to her mouth as she grinned.

“Did that inspire some indecent fantasies? Like a romance with an older man?”

“Bff!?”

“Ah hah hah! Don’t worry! Tayori’s just used to looking after her brothers. She has the gyaru look down, but she’s the caretaker type on the inside. She’s a veteran of the bargain hunting wars and she can sew and mend clothing with both speed and quality. But maybe that just makes her more of a catch? Oh, and Marika?”

“What?”

“We can see through your blouse. Wow, that is a really plain bra. Did you grow careless?”

Marika screamed while soaked with the artificial rain and hid her large chest with her hands. Karuta blushed and looked away like normal, but the girls apparently did not see this as sexy. It was an unforgivable crime.

Matsuda Imi sighed as she continued.

“That’s about what I would wear while lazing around in the kotatsu shortly after New Year’s, but you’re not in your dorm room right now. At least tell me the top and bottom are matching colors.”

“But, um, Imi-sensei! I have a good reason for this. I didn’t have anything to wear after losing my suitcase in the confusion caused by those decoy Threats, so I was forced to tearfully buy something at the duty-free shop in the airport at Iceland!!”

“Wow, that is just sad. I’d want to crawl in a hole and die if I were you. You do realize that’s just as bad as being so busy you forgot to do laundry, running out of clean clothes, and rushing out to a 24-hour discount store to buy some underwear? Without any underwear on at the time? Peh heh heh☆”

“Well, what did you do, Imi? That duty-free shop had to be the only real opportunity for any of us. If you didn’t buy any underwear there, are you saying you’re a sweaty girl who hasn’t changed her underwear?”

“Huh? You never know what’s going to happen on an overseas trip, so you’re supposed to carry around a separate bag with spare underwear, menstrual products, deodorant, and a small bath and toothbrushing set. Oh, what’s this? Why are you hanging your head and trembling, Marika-chan? What, did this never occur to you? Bwa ha ha! You really need to up your girl power!!”

Trembling, Marika looked over in search of help, but for some reason both Kyouka and Natlena would not look her in the eye. The looks on their faces said they had overcome that feminine crisis with their own forms of ingenuity, so they could not assist her here. On that note, where ''had'' Kyouka gotten that swimsuit?

Also, Karuta could not at all keep up with this crazy girl’s talk. Anyone who said they wanted to spy on girls’ secrets was living in a fantasy world. Karuta was not confident he could maintain his own fantasies after learning the truth. Those fantasies were shattering before his eyes. Really, he just wanted them to stop openly talking about sweat and menstruation in front of him like this. Talk of lazing around in the kotatsu was too real! It was going to make the boys cry!!

Meanwhile, small Natlena was covering her small chest with one arm, hanging her head, and pouting her lips after being caught in the crossfire due to the misfortune of choosing the same color as Marika.

“Wh-what’s wrong with white?”

“Oh, it’s still perfectly fine for you. It suits you. In fact, I’m impressed you have a real wire bra instead of a sports bra. That’s pretty mature for an AA. Wa ha ha ha!!”

“Mine are an A!! Not an AA!!”

That unnecessary correction made Karuta blush all the more and Kyouka (whose size spoke for itself) smiled bitterly with her head resting in her hand.

If you were proud enough of what you were wearing, you apparently felt no need to hide it. Matsuda Imi (who had been looking down on her friend while wearing a kiddy striped bra herself) spread her arms at her sides to enter airplane mode as she chased after her gyaru friend who was on her way to the terminal.

“…”

It was hard to believe they were about to begin a major battle.

It felt more like a scene out of a peaceful school.

They were about to give their all toward reclaiming Second Grimnoah, but even that was only viewed as taking back what was rightfully theirs.

If the Crystal Magicians known as the world’s strongest were to fail here and lose their base, all human hope would crumble. In the worst case, the 5.5 billion could be gradually worn down into extinction without ever finding their next strongest.

And Karuta’s group had no guarantee they would return from this alive.

This was the real deal. Their opponent’s specs were unknown, but the coming battle could easily be even worse than the one against the decoys at the Crystal Beach.

The general assumption that you would survive did not apply in real battles. It was Karuta’s group’s job to put together a realistic plan of action that would make that assumption a reality. They could not rely on the adults either. If they did not do this themselves, their plan would fall apart and they would all be slaughtered. And yet…

(I know it’s better than being traumatized, but ''is our previous success making them overconfident''?)
“It’s better this way,” whispered Omotesandou Kyouka (who was wearing a surprisingly cute pastel color).

She was trying to encourage her fellow outcast.

“If they were feeling the real fear of battle, they would break before the fighting even began.”

===Part 2===

The real Threat’s strength was unknown, but they did know one thing for sure at this stage.

They were about 30km away, but flying in and attacking the Port of Kobe from the air was not an option.

Thanks to the Sparkle’s lasers, they would all be shot down before arriving.

That was why they were using large tour buses to travel from Osaka to Hyogo, traveling north along a curving highway. A convoy of camouflaged military trucks would be too conspicuous, so it could gather the attention of the Threat and even the bored media.

Natlena Blast fidgeted nervously in the next seat over.

“A-are you sure this is a good idea, Senpai? It’s true the Threat might not notice us like this, but aren’t we using the city buildings as a shield!?”

“An evacuation order was put out quite a while ago and I doubt anyone will choose to ignore that with the Threat here. Word will be spreading that the city will be destroyed overnight.”

“Evacuate to where? Um, don’t the prefectures bordering Osaka Bay contain more than 10 million people?”

The blonde girl knew an awful lot about Japan for a US citizen. And things like this went more smoothly when following an existing process than when attempting something new and unprecedented. For example, Fukui had the highest concentration of nuclear power plants in Japan and Nara was a mountainous region famous for its hot springs, meaning it was also an active volcano. With several possible causes for concern, a largescale disaster response manual had been developed to cover the entire Kansai region.

In another seat, his classmates Yamane Deiri and Nekoumi Hirosuke were looking out the window.

“Noo! How did we visit Osaka without getting any of the local specialties!? I at least wanted to try some akashiyaki!”

“Farewell, Osaka, and hello, Kobe. What other part of Kansai is known for its beauty at night? Sapporo?”

“Senpai,” said Puppy Girl Natlena while dying to correct those two, but Karuta placed a hand on her shoulder from the next seat over to restrain her. She had to learn to not chase after every single ball that flew past her.

Karuta was getting a mild headache from his high school classmates who were exposing their idiocy a little too freely in front of the middle schooler, but he had to focus.

They did not drive down from the interchange to the ordinary roads. The Port of Kobe was right in front of them – he could already see its tall gantry cranes. The tour buses parked in a row at a nearby service station and Karuta stepped out into the sun shower. He detected the salty sea breeze mixed in with the rain. He flicked the Crystal Blossom on his chest and sent out a transmission to let everyone know what was happening.

He of course switched over to his public mode for this.

“We will continue as planned, but I cannot guarantee you that following your training will be enough to overcome this. We have all already experienced the cruelty of real combat. So let us protect Second Grimnoah, protect the Port of Kobe, and protect the world to show the bored media the pride of true veterans. Begin!!”

Several high-pitched sounds followed.

Around 100 middle and high school students had been gathered here. The boys and girls all shattered the Crystal Blossoms on their chests to cover themselves in translucent armor. They could not fly high in the sky thanks to those anti-air lasers, but they could still ignore the paths of the roads as they jumped straight down from the service area to the ordinary road below.

Natlena had already donned her armor, so she checked on the ski-like parts on her feet before looking back toward Karuta.

He alone could not wear amor like the other students. Nor could he fly.

“Um, uh, what about you?”

“Power up. Come on out, Aine.”

His Crystal Blossom shattered, his shirt pulled up, and a pale-skinned crystal girl crawled out from his stomach.

This was the irregularity he alone possessed.

Aine tilted her head while awaiting orders.

“What shall I do?”

“Well, first you can- wah!?”

“?”

Aine was puzzled by his shout.

The crystal girl had no center or core. Everything from the tip of her sword to her heart was an equal part of her and she had been wearing that white garment the first time she emerged.

But at the moment, it was raining.

In that downpour, well, the dress grew see-through. It clung to her fine skin, revealing the shape of her relatively uncurvy body. It was the white fabric’s fault!!

Aine herself did not bat an eye.

“Is something wrong, Sacri-sama?”

“Okay, I guess I have to make this an order. Listen, Aine, please hide your body. Immediately! It’s just that, um, are you unfamiliar with the concept of a bra!?”

The crystal girl silently lowered her gaze to check on her own disastrous state.

“But keeping my clothing constantly dry in this continuing rain is unrealistic and it would be highly inefficient to cover my body with my hands while I- byah!”

“You’re squeezing your eyes shut, blushing, trembling, and you even bit your tongue just now! I can tell you’re embarrassed too, so please stop pretending otherwise! There must be some solution to this!!”

Their field trip to the Icelandic Crystal Beach had not been a fun experience, but it had not been a total failure. For example, he had gotten Aine to feel embarrassment about her own nudity.

Another of his few victories there had been Natlena Blast, but she was now giving him a cold look.

“Senpai, um, why did you react so differently to her than to me?”

She was imagining things.

In fact, he also felt awkward looking at Natlena when she was so thoroughly soaked in the rain.

“Countermeasure: unknown. This particular problem must be put on hold.”

“Okay, fine. Then let’s get to work, Aine!”

After giving that command half in desperation, a pleasant slapping sound reached his ears.

Aine had swept him off his feet, flipped him around in midair, and grabbed him in a princess carry.

Then the crystal girl notices something.

“Oh, my hair covers it pretty well.”

“Don’t get careless, Aine. A hair bra is not generally accepted as covering up. That still counts as defenseless.”

Her movements remained precise as they discussed it. She did not hesitate to jump gently down to the hard asphalt 15m below the elevated service area with him in her arms.

It could be hard to tell with how easily she did it, but that was as tall as a school’s roof. It was a deadly height that was dangerous to jump from with or without a parachute. Natlena ended up watching it in a daze, but then she frantically activated her flight.

“W-wait, Senpai!”

“Never fly for more than 5 seconds, Natlena. We’re already within lethal range of the Sparkle’s lasers, so it’s over the instant it notices you.” After that quick rebuke, Karuta left Aine’s arms and planted his feet on the rain-wet road. “And we’re less than 500m from the Port of Kobe. If you count the adjacent airport, the Port of Kobe covers 10km of the coast, but we have to start here. Let’s go, Natlena. Real or decoys, we need to take the Second Grimnoah back from the Threat.”

“R-right. Um, to take back humanity’s mobile base!”

“…”

(Gekiha.)

He tried to keep it off his face.

But he was not at all confident he had succeeded.

He made all these valiant statements, but his real motives were much more personal. He was only interested in the dead dream of those lethally-wounded crystal statues, but working to rescue them had to be nothing but a nuisance to the rest of humanity. He doubted anyone would understand if he was honest about his motives. Not just the outsiders who knew nothing of Crystal Magic, but the other Grimnoah students and teachers too. If they knew, they would all tell him to get lost and they would abandon the fight. They would say the first ship’s problems were meaningless to their second ship. And they were right about that.

Was that his reason ''for not telling them''? Was that really a valid justification?

But…

Even so…

(I don’t care if it’s wrong. I will save my friends even if it makes me a lying sack of shit!!)

Aine used her sword to slice through the tall fence and Karuta silently stepped into the Port of Kobe’s grounds.

It was finally beginning.

The world’s strongest magicians were about to contact the true and legitimate Threat.

===Part 3===

Osaka’s floating general airport was located 30km to the south and Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka was humming as she operated the equipment in the control tower there. The number of buttons and dials there reached the quadruple digits and even licensed professionals had trouble dealing with it all, but Kyouka managed it more casually than searching for videos on a phone or tablet.

“Will that actually tell you anything?” asked Marika in exasperation.

“A number of things. For example, that the stubborn coalition force is preparing a nuclear launch.”

Marika did a shocked double take, but Kyouka did not look back her way. She only waved a headset in one hand.

“Care to take a listen? They’re talking about filling a landing ship with armored trucks and spacesuits for those shut-ins, about their remaining supply of iodine chemical, and about how a big old missile would be too noticeable and get shot down by a laser so they want to drag a field gun near the city and fire a nuclear warhead into the Port of Kobe from close range. What ever happened to the three non-nuclear principles, I wonder? Besides, thinking nukes will solve all the world’s problems is such an ''old'' way of thinking. Maybe those military officials are still upset they never got to fire a single one during the Cold War, so they’re hoping to finally do so before they retire.”

“Wh-wh-what coalition force?”

“All the usual suspects – America, China, Russia, France, and the UK – but India and Australia have decided to join in the fun this time. That’s strange, though. Since when does Australia have nukes? Sigh, I suppose this means the Southern Hemisphere has finally entered the age of nuclear weapons.”

Marika’s mouth flapped wordlessly because Karuta and the others would be entering the Port of Kobe right about now.

The President laughed without even looking back.

“I am making some adjustments to ensure they don’t interfere, so there is nothing to worry about. You focus on your job, Marika-san.”

“Um, Miss President? I assume you’re aware of this, but…”

“Yes?”

“That’s the smile of someone powerful hoping to receive something in return. ''But I don’t know what has you worried or what you’re hoping to get me to say.'' Not without you telling me first.”

Kyouka chose to remain silent.

She gave no answer and did not look back.

Eventually the President once more spoke without showing her honest side even to that fellow avenger.

“Don’t worry.”

“…”

“I won’t let the grownups have their way. The first ship may have been built for their purposes, but not the second one. We reclaimed that Crystal Magic academy for our own selfish reasons, so it will be us who settle things here. I will not allow the grownups to barge in and interfere when they don’t really care about any of this – it’s all just a job for them.”

“Fine, whatever works,” was all Marika said.

It was already known that the scope of what Marika would protect was extremely narrow. If something would help her protect what she cared about, she would go along with it no matter how dangerous it might be. Her stance was exceedingly simple in such things.

The curly twintails girl sighed too quietly for the President to hear.

(I almost wish she wasn’t someone I wanted to protect.)

Also, she did not have time to stand around in the airport control tower all day.

Karuta had gone to the front line and Kyouka had found something to do. And as always, Aine would put the boy’s orders first.

In the same way, Amaashi Marika had her own job to do.

She stretched out the equipment that had been supplied to her and gave it an extremely skeptical look.

“Can I really put ''this tight thing'' on by myself?”

“I have heard that the banned shark skin racing swimsuits required the help of someone else to put on. Eh heh heh. Marika, would you like some help getting changed?”

===Part 4===

The Port of Kobe in Hyogo had received an evacuation order.

But some workers had remained because the fuel pipelines running through the port continued to transport 20 tons of flammable material every minute. The pipelines could not be shut down so quickly and the flammable materials had to be removed from the pipes or else damage to the pipes could trigger a largescale oil fire. The many safety checks built into the usual auto-controlled system were not going to finish in time, so workers in jumpsuits were relying on the old-fashioned methods. Their only option was to run all over the port and forcibly turn the giant metal wheels to complete the emergency shutdown.

“Pant, pant.”

One large man gasped for breath while pressing his back against a metal wheel taller than he was at the foot of a gantry crane.

(The oil refinery section’s sea berth was shut down. That just leaves the LNG storage section’s pipe that cuts through here.)

He stared at a notebook-sized tablet and operated it with trembling fingers.

A flat four-wheel drive vehicle began to move a short distance away. It was as long and wide as a large bus, but it was only about a meter tall. It was an automatic transport vehicle meant to carry containers around the port. Designate a location and it would carry a container there with a margin of error of only 2cm, so it could be used as a decoy or a shield.

However.

He heard several deep metallic crashing sounds in a row.

A nearby stack of containers had collapsed. Worse, a young worker was caught below one of the rolling metal containers.

The large man stuck his head out from behind the metal wheel taller than an adult and his face immediately stiffened. He pressed his back against the wheel, squeezed his eyes shut, and clicked his tongue.

He felt a powerful pressure from directly above. From above the roof of the simple prefab three-story office/breakroom. Something was up there and staring down at the ground. It was like a thick and invisible wall that left less room for escape than the falling ceiling in some ancient ruins. It was not actually staring at the large man, though. If it had spotted him, he would be dead already. That thing was staring at the young man pinned below the container.

It was a monster.

A monster simply known as the Threat. He had never seen the Threat before and no one had told him that was indeed what this was, but the large man had known at a glance. What else could you call that thing?

“…”

The shape alone was something like a tadpole with legs.

But it was not.

Tadpoles were not so large they could easily step over a 20-ton truck.

Tadpoles could not knock over a pyramid of metal containers by tackling it.

Tadpoles would not form a group to block off all escape for the humans.

And tadpoles did not split apart their round body made of black metal to reveal a horrific array of crocodile-like teeth. Nor did they have plasma jets more terrifying than a welding torch crackling in their mouths.

It did not have an obviously fearsome appearance like a tiger or T-rex. Slaughter by an almost humorous-looking creature was a brand new sort of fear.

There was no dignity in death here.

Dying to that would feel as pathetic as being drugged and placed on the ground so you could not resist as pigs devoured you, starting from the extremities.

The large man felt entirely helpless.

The automatic transport vehicle he had hoped to use as a decoy or shield had been flipped over as a mere side effect of the collapsing containers.

During his brief glimpse earlier, the younger man had been shaking his head while crushed below the metal container. The younger man’s face had been pale with terror, but he had desperately pleaded the large man not to come out and try to rescue him.

(Dammit.)

He heard a noise.

That sound of strength gathering in metal somewhat reminded him of straining muscles. After an ominous silence similar to a bowstring being drawn, a heavy crash destroyed the prefab roof.

The legged tadpole had leaped from the roof toward its prey.

“Dammit!!”

A dull sound soon followed.

Yes.

The automatic transport vehicle had flown in from the side and knocked the airborne tadpole away.

Meanwhile, something was heard whizzing through the air. It was Natlena Blast’s legs. Her ski-like armor had fanned out and ultra-thin wires emerged from each piece.

Those were the scales of Anubis, Egyptian god of judgment.

With every roundhouse kick, side flip, and breakdance-like rotation of her body, the metal flowers at the end of the wires opened up and those grab buckets “grabbed” various obstacles. They grabbed them and swung them around. The 12-year-old girl wielded a storm of metal to make an additional fierce attack against the legged tadpole.

“Aine,” said a boy’s voice.

A much cleaner sound of destruction followed. It came from a sword. Several lines ran through the metal container pinning the younger man down so solidly, orange sparks flew, and the container fell apart. It happened so cleanly the rescued younger man was taken aback.

The boy who had commanded the pale-skinned crystal girl walked calmly up from a short distance away.

He walked toward the large man hiding behind the gantry crane’s metal wheel.

“You need to evacuate. More Grimnoah students are at the northern gate, so they will guide you out.”

“I…”

The large man shrank down like a scolded child even as the rain hit him.

But not because of fear.

“I was in charge of keeping him safe. And yet…”

Utagai Karuta sighed.

Karuta too had failed to save people when the first ship met its doom. His pride had been left in tatters and he had felt like his entire being had been denied, but he had still clenched his teeth in the depths of incompetence and figured out how to crawl back up again.

But this man could redo things without needing to rely on revenge.

Revenge had been the only option for the boy, so he crouched down to match the seated man’s eye level.

“I just saved one life. There is no denying that.”

“…”

He peeled back the mask of his public mode. Or ''he made it look like he had.

“So you only have to save three lives over the rest of your life. You can easily outdo the world’s strongest that way. But to do that, you can’t let yourself die here. So get out of here. Hurry!!”

He slapped the man on the back to urge him on and the large man ran from the collapsed container yard while lending a shoulder to the injured younger man. He looked back several times to lower his head in thanks as he did so.

Aine approached with sword in hand and whispered too quietly for the men to hear.

“That math does not add up.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

A pyramid scheme did not have to be a bad thing. If someone saved three people, those three people saved three more each, and so on like that, it was bound to improve this shitty world more than all the efforts of a single world’s strongest.

Karuta brushed up his wet bangs in an irritated way and turned around.

He and Aine faced the battlefield. Visibility was poor with several of the container piles collapsed, but the scent of the sea was strong. They were not far from the Second Grimnoah academy ship now.

He flicked the Crystal Blossom on his chest and gave an order using its communication function.

“Send a few people to make sure the LNG pipeline is shut down!”

He heard several heavy clanging sounds.

Clear drops of water scattered from the short skirt of Natlena’s uniform while she used the wires on her legs to “grab” and swing around containers, trucks, water, and even the air itself. Rapid-fire attacks sounded good, but they also meant a single hit was not enough to finish off your enemy.

This was the real Threat.

''As expected,'' they would not die so easily.

And if they could do the same thing the decoys at the Crystal Beach had done, then any that did die would only have their remains taken in by the others to create even more formidable monsters. Karuta was beyond being surprised by things not going as planned. After surviving two intense battles, he had learned that god was not going to grant you divine salvation no matter how much you pleaded for it. That was a lesson he would much rather not have learned.

He breathed in and out while gathering his resolve.

“We can’t leave this to Natlena alone. I’ll need your help here, Aine.”

“All that leadup is unnecessary. Simply give me my orders.”

===Part 5===

Crystal Magic was known as the world’s strongest.

That remained true even when it took the form of a small girl.

First, Aine rushed in with her clear sword at the ready. Natlena’s lengthy battle against the legged tadpole was like playing round after round of Russian roulette, but she failed to realize her odds of death rose with each move she made.

Her survival one moment was no guarantee of her survival the next. Aine’s long silver hair scattered water droplets as she bought some slight time, so Karuta spoke into his Crystal Blossom while behind cover.

“If it bites you, you’ll be burned through. You need to fall back behind cover, Natlena!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Senpai! I can still-!!”

“That tadpole isn’t the only one!! You’ll be surrounded!!”

He shouted back at her and pulled a modified military flashlight from his uniform. Blinding an enemy with its extra amps and powerful IR was effective against biological eyes and mechanical sensors.

(The problem is I’m not sure where those tadpoles’ “eyes” even are. Should I assume it’s the same as in a kid’s animal encyclopedia? Can I really entrust my life to a mere ''assumption''?)

Another transmission cut in.

It came from his classmates Yamane Deiri and Nekoumi Hirosuke.

“Hey, Karuta, can we save her!? She’s moved out too far on her own. I’m not into skinny little bodies like that, but it’s scaring me seeing her do this!!”

“Hee hee hee. Now’s my chance to show off to a s-sexy middle school girl!”

Yamane was at the base of a container pile and Nekoumi was searching for a sniping point at the top.

The Crystal Magicians all had their own traits and specs and the tadpoles were gathering after hearing the commotion. Karuta rationally analyzed their fighting force in his head. Taking too optimistic a view could lead to things unraveling and people dying.

He could only ask them to do what they could actually do.

“Understood, Yamanen. You can tackle Nat- ''Jane Ignition-san'' if you need to, but get her away from the front line! Plea-”

His breath caught in his throat.

An unnatural green beam of light had blasted through the container yard after being fired toward the ground at a very shallow angle. It pierced through the foundation of a metal pyramid and melted the asphalt ground into an orange liquid.

Yamane Deiri had been using that pyramid as a shield, so his right arm was torn off at the shoulder.

Which was more frightening: the fact that the blast was powerful enough to break right through the Crystal Magic barrier, or the hippo-like Threat that was in the line of fire but shrugged off the blast?

“Yamanen!!”

(A laser!? Did it come from Second Grimnoah!?)

They were about 500m away.

The special three-hull cruise ship was visible from here and something stood on the roof of the middle school building located on one of the decks.

It was larger even than the metal containers.

It was a pitch black lion with a mane and with several long cylindrical containers swept backwards from either side of its neck. Those containers may have been vacuum tubes or capacitors. Impossibly, they also looked like a flying fish’s pectoral fins.

That was the Sparkle.

Those pectoral fins were spread out like wings, their tips glowed green, and a mysterious energy gradually gathered toward its throat. With its four legs planted firmly on the artificial footing, the lion opened its great maw.

Light the color of a neon sign filled the back of its throat.

It stared straight at Utagai Karuta.

“Shit!!”

He frantically spun around and dove toward the rain-slick road just as the stack of metal containers he had been using as a shield was pierced through. The few drops of scorching orange spray that hit him caused enough pain that he thought he might pass out. Was that what it felt like to be hit by a bullet? If that high-power laser had directly hit him, he would have been vaporized and killed instantly with no chance for regeneration.

The burned skin of his arm was rapidly covered by pointed crystals. The regeneration process had begun, but if even the slightest attack caused the wound to shatter, it would never heal again.

(The artificial rain isn’t working at all!! If we don’t shut that thing down soon, it’ll just keep firing on us. We need to think up a safe way of approaching Second Grimnoah!!)

That was when he heard something odd.

“Ah ha ha.”

Laughter.

It came from the classmate whose arm had been burned off, but this was not an attempt to look tough or the result of confusion. It was the perfectly ordinary laughter you might hear in the classroom.

He casually swung around his right arm covered in pointed crystal while the rain poured down on him.

“The thing tore my damn arm off!! Not bad, Threat. Wa ha ha ha ha! How bout I attach an electric drill or pile bunker!?”

Karuta felt an unpleasant sensation crawling up his spine.

Before the battle began, he had wondered ''if their previous success was making them overconfident''.

(This isn’t right. This isn’t right at all, Yamanen!!)

He thought he could not feel any more fear than he already was, but while he clenched his teeth behind cover, Aine approached, tilted her head, and provided an even more horrifying opinion without bothering to fix the hair plastered to her cheek.

“They might be copying you.”

“Huh?”

Karuta did not even notice as the 30 seconds passed, the crystal shattered, and his skin was as good as new.

“It was you at the Crystal Beach that showed them the optimized fighting style where you ignored all pain and fear and incorporated the destruction of your own body into your tactics. You proved those tactics to be effective while eliminating the decoy Threat, so is it really surprising that the other students who saw you fight that way would want to incorporate the world’s strongest’s tactics into their own tactical flowchart?”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

He was truly speechless this time.

(I…I made Yamanen and the others like this???)

Still soaking wet, Aine glanced over at him before continuing.

“They taught themselves to do this from their own observations. You seem displeased with the result, but I do not see why the structure of their tactical flowcharts should bother you so much.”

“Of course it bothers me.”

He also realized that the world’s strongest Four Living Gods could not simply fight and win. ''How'' they won would set history in motion. What if they saved the world from a great crisis with a suicide attack? They might be perfectly satisfied as they died, but the people who survived would learn from that action. ''It would teach them that sacrificing their own lives was effective.'' They might have plenty of other options, but their admiration of those four would give them tunnel vision and they would continue making suicide attacks. It would lead to an age where everyone gave up on trying to win without sacrificing their own lives.

The invisible pressure of being the world’s strongest weighed down on him.

He shook his head before speaking.

“Getting Natlena to fall back comes first right now. Once she’s safe, we can search for a route to approach Second Grimnoah. Aine, any ideas?”

“Yes, about Miss Natlena.”

Aine pointed her crystal-like sword toward Natlena from a distance.

Technically, she was pointing it toward one of the metal containers Natlena was swinging around.

The crystal girl’s sword had a jitte-like branch where a short laser gun unit was attached. She used that projectile to burn through one of the grab bucket wires.

When Natlena suddenly lost her balance, her small body was pulled by the weight of the remaining containers and unmanned transportation vehicles, tossing her through the air. She looked a lot like a fish being pulled from the water by a fishing rod.

“Wah!?”

Her feet were lifted from the wet ground and she flew like a long throw in baseball. Karuta quickly spread his arms to catch the 12-year-old in a princess carry, but her momentum was too great and both of them flew backwards. They ended up rolling along in a tangle, but they ended up behind a large truck. That was their next cover.

“Sacri-sama.” Aine slipped below the truck to join them and gave an expressionless report. “The lion Threat tentatively known as the Sparkle remains on Second Grimnoah’s roof. We require a fundamental countermeasure for its anti-air lasers. If you have no plan at the moment, our only options are to temporarily withdraw or to force our way to the ship, losing lives all the while.”

“…”

“But since that Threat accurately intercepted more than 100 missiles at once, I am skeptical the latter option would even work. Plus, the Sparkle is not the only Threat, so the death rate would rise even further if those tadpole ones slowed us down. Shall we attempt it?”

They could already see it.

It was only 500m away. With the flight of the ordinary Crystal Magic that Natlena, Yamane Deiri, and the others could use, that distance would take less than a second at full speed.

But.

That would mean demanding the students of the second ship sacrifice their lives for the dead first ship.

He squeezed Natlena in his arms to feel the body heat within her soaked uniform.

There was a definite life there.

They had already taken damage. Yamane Deiri’s right arm had been blown clean off by the Sparkle’s anti-air laser and he had only survived because the heat of the laser had instantly cauterized the wound, preventing any bleeding. In other words, it was only dumb luck. With a railgun or coilgun, he would have hemorrhaged blood and his full body would have crystallized.

Would it be the treasure ship that seemed within arm’s reach, or would it be the lives of his fellow students?

He had to choose.

(Dammit!!)

He had to think back.

What kind of strongest had he wanted to be when he first arrived at Grimnoah that spring and his life had still been peaceful? If he lost sight of that, he would end up no different from Anastasia Blast and the rest of the Problem Solvers.

He heard the ominous sound of fire consuming oxygen.

It was far from here, but an attack must have hit a giant tank of crude oil or liquefied natural gas. The workers had been in a rush to shut down the giant pipeline to prevent a largescale conflagration, but that did not help when the actual tanks themselves were destroyed. He could see the orange flames and black smoke. The fire was not spreading inland. It was spreading out toward the ocean which should not have been able to burn.

“That is fortunate.”

He could not believe what Aine had just said, but she apparently did have a logical reason for it.

“If the fuel burns away, there is no risk of it vaporizing and blowing in toward the city. Extinguishing it before the point of leakage is fully shut off could actually lead to the city’s destruction, so be careful.”

The city was safe, but the flames and smoke were spreading into the deserted port and would likely arrive here before long.

There was no time, so Karuta shut his eyes and took a deep breath.

One of the Four Living Gods made up his mind.

He grabbed his underclassman’s shoulders and crouched to her eye level in the rain.

“Listen, Natlena. We’re going to reorganize our forces.”

The fight would not end just because the humans wanted it to. The Threat did not understand their circumstances.

So…

“''We will temporarily withdraw from the Port of Kobe and bring our data and firsthand experiences back to Omotesandou-san and the others.'' We can work out a countermeasure for the Sparkle’s anti-air lasers then. Allowing everyone to withdraw safely requires forming a rear guard unit, so will you fight with us?”

“B-but if the fire spreads across the ocean, um, it will reach our ship!”

“It isn’t a wooden sailing ship, so a fire on the ocean surface won’t get through its cutting-edge hull. Ship fires are mostly caused by internal equipment. It rarely ever happens from an external source.”

“But…”

Natlena Blast forgot all about how soaked with rain she was as she opened her eyes wide, but he was not budging on this. The Threat’s anti-air lasers had greater specs than they had thought. They could not board Second Grimnoah by forcing their way through the storm of lasers.

(And the others like Yamanen are acting weird. I can only stand here and watch right now, but the way they’re acting, they’ll get themselves killed when they could have won!)

Or they would magically bomb the Threat without thinking of the consequences and end up sinking the academy ship. Light and flames could not be shot down with lasers, but it was unknown if plunging the Threat into the ocean would be enough to kill them. Plus, that would almost certainly shatter Gekiha and the rest of the crystallized people.

(Who do you care about more? Natlena’s group or Gekiha’s group?)

Utagai Karuta hated himself for even briefly weighing those two on the scales.

He could not get greedy.

He could not get fixated on winning. Survival was their top priority.

“Is that okay with you, Aine?”

“I do not mind, so do what you want to do. But while you can possibly fool the media on the ground, the military satellites are another story. Have you considered how the world’s strongest turning tail and running will influence society?”

“Yes. I was the one that got their hopes up, so they can place all the blame on me.”

“Senpai,” said Natlena in an accusatory way, but his mind was made up. Every move he made would influence the entire world. He had already seen that in his classmate Yamane Deiri.

He had to show them the sort of strongest he wanted to be.

Was Utagai Karuta’s idea of the strongest someone who would be broken by one measly loss?

“The real disaster would be if I got so afraid of some imagined accident that I got myself killed. If the strongest can’t lose, then their life has to be treated with the utmost care. We can just ignore all the international criticism on the TV news.”

“Understood,” said Aine. “If this is a rational choice made after serious thought, then I shall obey.”

On the roof 500m away, green light once more glowed from the capacitors spread out from the black lion’s neck like a flying fish’s pectoral fins. The energy gathered on a single point and filled its throat.

But the straight line of destruction unleashed by the Sparkle was not aimed at Karuta and the other Crystal Magicians. In the slight gap between the concrete wharf and the ship itself, the mooring ropes and anchor chain holding Second Grimnoah in place were severed.

Was even the Threat bothered by environmental pollution?

Second Grimnoah was now loose in the waves, so it slowly drifted away from the port.

Utagai Karuta clenched his teeth and forced out a command.

Was it thanks to his initial defeat against the wielders of God Worshiping Magic that he now had the strength to admit defeat as the world’s strongest?

“Withdraw.”

===Part 6===

“Nh, kh,” groaned a voice back on the floating general airport about 30km south of the frontline.

More specifically, it was inside a flight attendant locker room.

Amaashi Marika tried to suppress her voice, but she could still feel it escaping through her nose. She made one final effort while feeling her entire body squeezed tight from the outside.

“Nhhhhh!!!!!!”

“Yes, yes. There aren’t any teenage boys around to excite, so you can stop making all that noise. Look, all done.”

She had cleared the final barrier with the help of her more mature classmate Hashizaki Tayori. A special synthetic material less than a millimeter thick now covered her all the way up to her shoulders.

She blushed when she saw herself in the large mirror.

[[Image:ApocalypseWitch_v03_06.jpg|thumb]]

The skintight, waterproof, and heat insulating material covered her arms, legs, and torso equally, leaving only her head exposed. It was apparently a cutting-edge silent diving suit, but the shape of her breasts, butt, collarbones, and even navel showed through.

She twisted around to get a look at her back in the mirror.

“Yikes. I knew this would show off my figure, but not this much.”

“You always sleep in the nude, so why does this bother you so much? Anyway, if you’re done, then help me out.”

“Sure thing, Imi.”

Cutting-edge or not, Marika thought there was something wrong with a suit so tight you could not get it on by yourself. Matsuda Imi had managed to get it on her legs by herself, so Marika and Tayori stood on either side of her and worked together to tug the thin material up over the girl’s shoulders. It felt a lot like struggling with a thick rubber panel stuck to the ground.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow!!”

“Bear with it.”

“I…I think it’s kinda caught on my boobs! Ow! I-it’s rubbing!”

“You’re imagining it. It’s perfectly smooth on the inside.”

With a solid snap, Imi was dressed.

“So now the oxygen tanks and our luggage?” asked Tayori who had gotten into hers first.

“Ugh, will this thing really work? I feel like the crotch is going to rip as soon as I spread my legs a little.”

“If you’re worried, then why not test it out? Do some gymnastic stretches, Marika.”

That was a good point, so Marika cautiously moved her body while Tayori supported her. She knew it was designed to allow this kind of movement, but she was still scared since she found that hard to believe.

“First, lower your hips like normal.”

“Okay.”

Tayori placed her hands on Marika’s shoulders while standing in front of her. The two of them bent their knees to lower their hips.

“Once your butt is on the floor, keep your knees bent and slowly spread your legs to the sides.”

“Nh, like this?”

“And with your legs still spread, I just have to flip you over and lift your butt up high. Tah dah! Now you’ve mastered that embarrassing pose they do in porn all the time!”

“Bffhhh!!!??? What is wrong with you, Tayori!?”

“It didn’t tear, did it?”

Marika blushed and struggled (while flipped upside down) and Tayori laughed while still holding the girl’s legs in place.

Meanwhile, Matsuda Imi was restlessly rubbing her thighs together.

“Um, uh.”

“What, is it tighter than you expected and you’ve taken a liking to it? Y’know, like a bike seat?”

“It’s not that…ahh, I can’t take it. I’m so nervous it’s about to leak out on its own. Marika, Tayori, help me get this thing off! I need to use the restroom.”

“What a pain. We just got it on you!!”

Marika complained while stripping the teenage girl bare. Once she was naked again, Imi left the room, but this was actually a problem that fighter pilots and astronauts had yet to fully solve. The best solution was to avoid drinking very much fluids while on standby, just like a small child afraid of wetting the bed.

(It’s going to be cold in the water, so we need to look after our health on this mission.)

The other two sensitive teenage girls kept that thought on their minds as they awaited their friend’s return.

Yes.

Marika grabbed some thick goggles and used her other hand to flick the Crystal Blossom on the chest of her suit.

“Okay, Omotesandou-san. We’re about to leave.”

“Understood. Once you’re in the ocean, avoid any communications other than short-range ones with your team. Long-distance communications are off limits both with your Crystal Blossom and your phone.”

“Do you really think the Threat can intercept those? Not even research lab quantum computers have been able to analyze how Crystal Blossom communications work. And the Threat might not even understand the concepts of encryption and transmissions.”

“The trick to survival is to always assume the worst when you aren’t confident about something. And do you remember the observation reports of a sea urchin Threat covered in moving rods that looked an awful lot like TV antennas? Plus…”

“Plus?”

“This is more of a jinx than anything with real data to back it up, but they swear the manned high-altitude spy planes that don’t send out any signals last longer than the unmanned spy drones that are constantly sending signals back to their base. The Sparkle’s anti-air lasers supposedly fire more often with the latter. Of course, the altitude, speed, material, size, and shape are all different, so it’s hard to say if the signals are really what’s causing it.”

Last longer.

That meant the manned and unmanned ones were both shot down in the end. Even the professional soldiers had thrown in the towel without finding a workable strategy. The apocalypse had arrived at the Port of Kobe – most people were just not aware of it yet.

Kyouka continued like they were only having a casual chat.

“By the way, Karuta-kun and the others seem to be having a harder time than expected as they make their attack on the surface. He says they’re going to withdraw and bring back their raw data and experiences.”

“What is he doing?”

“We had a feeling this might happen, didn’t we? ''Which is why you need to do your part down there in the ocean. That is our real attack, after all.''”

Imi returned naked and with a bashful smile, so it was time to get that annoyance of a skintight suit back on her.

“I bet that President says the same thing to everyone,” commented gyaru-ish Tayori while they worked at Imi’s suit.

“Really? She seems surprisingly naïve deep down to me.”

Tayori and Marika were of split opinions on this, but that was not a problem.

The three girls grabbed some metal tanks that felt heavy out of the water and placed them over their backs. They grabbed some waterproof bags before moving outside. Even with the special suits on, the rain still felt unpleasant. They walked across the flat megafloat to the straight-line edge.

Imi put on some large goggles and looked down toward the water.

“Wow, I didn’t realize we were so high up. Is that about three meters?”

“Less talking, more jumping.”

“Hey, don’t push on my butt, Tayori…gyaaahhh!?”

Imi was shoved off into the ocean by a hand on her butt (that had avoided the tank on her back) and then Marika and Tayori jumped into the water dyed orange by the light.

With their cutting-edge silent diving suits, they could ignore the water temperature and pressure and the slight bumps on the surface reduced the noise of their movement through the water as much as possible. Supposedly anyway. They had no way of knowing if any of that was really happening.

“Ugh, I hear a lot of bubbling when I breath out. Are you sure this thing’s working?”

“Quite complaining, Imi. We need to follow the fiber optic cable on the ocean floor to reach the Port of Kobe.”

“If only things were still going as planned. I really wish Karuta had actually done his job as a diversion and drawn their attention more.”

The girls spoke using the short-range communications of their Crystal Blossoms while they began to move just off the ocean floor. Since they could swim straight there and ignore the land route, it was about 30km north from the floating general airport to the Port of Kobe. That would eat away their stamina more than a full marathon if they swam like normal, so they would be too exhausted to fight once they arrived. That was why they needed to surround themselves in crystal armor and take advantage of the flight that provided.

Yes, they could use Crystal Magic underwater.

This was a nonstandard usage, though, so there were a few things they had to watch out for.

“Power up. …Imi, Tayori, don’t move too quickly. The water creates a lot of resistance, so you would only crush yourself with your own speed.”

“And with the goggles and mouthpiece on. I’m afraid of hurting my teeth by flying with this thing in my mouth.”

“The tank is dangerous too, but we still need it. If the wall of water causes our preset barrier to activate, all our luggage will be deflected away from us.”

However, the points of the crystal armor rendered the silent diving suits mostly useless as far as water resistance was concerned.

And of course, this required some level of caution. They were approaching the Metal-Derived Autonomous-Origin Higher Lifeform Combat Weapons commonly known as the Threat. No one knew if they were biological or mechanical. If they did not need oxygen or had gills, they would be able to move through the water just fine.

And in fact…

“Be careful,” said Marika while they advanced through the ocean.

There was a large mass up ahead. A hemispherical umbrella of black metal was floating in the seawater. Perhaps it was meant to look like a jellyfish. The 2m object was attached to the ocean floor with a thick chain and had long tentacles thinner than hairs flowing freely in the current. It looked more like a sea mine meant to obstruct travel through the ocean than it did a predator with a mind of its own.

That jellyfish Threat slowly wobbled side to side in the orange ocean, but it was not alone. When looking off into the distance, red lights could be seen slowly flashing like the lights on top of skyscrapers at night.

“Mines? They have red lights, but they don’t seem to have eyes.”

“How can you tell, Tayori?”

“If they could locate us with lenses, they would have surrounded us by now. Hey, Imi, can you think of any reason for the Threat to spare a human? And these real ones attacked Second Grimnoah for some reason. That suggests they know the value of Crystal Magic.”

The girls made sure to avoid touching the long tentacles as they swam past the black jellyfish along the ocean floor. Luckily, none of them suddenly opened a large mouth or exploded as they passed by.

“What do we call those?” asked Imi while looking back a few times. “Does the discoverer get to name them???”

“Don’t use your long-range communications to ask the President. The Threat would notice and surround us immediately.”

But Marika was not ready to celebrate having successfully avoided them.

“It isn’t just the Port of Kobe. The Threat has spread over a much wider area of ocean. How far has their contamination spread?”

“We can only pray they don’t already have the entire Japanese Archipelago surrounded.”

The fact that no one could laugh at Tayori’s melancholic statement showed just how bad the situation was.

For one thing, the Threat had supposedly come from the bottom of the ocean when they attacked Second Grimnoah, so the girls could not let their guard down.

They kept their speed low so as not to be crushed between their own speed and the water resistance as they followed the underwater fiber optic cable to the Port of Kobe. Even with the water resistance reducing their speed, it only took them 45 minutes to cover the 30km.

They saw a few oddities other than the jellyfish at the bottom of the bay.

Giant red flowers were blossoming on the ocean floor.

“What are those?” asked Imi. “Sea urchins? No, these look softer.”

“They might be sea anemones,” said Tayori.

The smaller ones had a diameter of 10m and the larger ones had a diameter of more than 100m. Countless tentacles were spread out in a circle, almost like a sunflower. The tentacles looked too soft to be made of metal as they expanded and contracted to envelop their fellow Threats that dropped down from the ocean.

(Why are they so jiggly? Are they a liquid despite being made of hard metal? No, maybe they’re a collection of small hard pieces, like a beanbag cushion.)

Most of the sea anemones were glowing red, but some were emitting a green light instead. Those ones were spreading their tentacle flowers wide and sending out the tadpole Threats contained within them. And those tadpoles were the size of a large truck.

Imi’s eyes widened behind her thick goggles.

“Their tentacles are stabbing into the other ones.”

The red light would then turn green.

That reminded Marika of something. Even if it was not accurate.

“Are they charging the others up???”

“They do seem to be throbbing in places. But that’s making an awful lot of noise for transporting a liquid. It may be some kind of solid, like a jelly or blocks of something. Whether you would call it fuel or food would depend on the exact mechanism they use, but I bet they are securing some kind of power source.”

Destroying those underwater gas stations may have dealt a blow to the Threat, but Marika stopped that line of thinking. The jellyfish and sea anemone Threats may not have had eyes and ears, but the ones on the surface would. Vision in the seawater was not great, but they would still be noticed if they moved too close. Plus, they had no data on how many of these gas stations existed in the ocean. If they were everywhere, then destroying just what they could see here would not be enough to stop the Threat as a whole.

They would be needlessly revealing their presence with no guarantee of any real effect.

In that case, it was not worth changing their plan for.

Marika shook her head to shake off the temptation.

“Let’s go, Imi, Tayori. That isn’t our target.”

“Understood.”

They knew those red and green glowing sea anemone gas stations were carrying other Threats, so they made sure they did not run into any other Threats moving to and from the ocean’s surface as they swam upwards.

Their heads silently emerged from the orange surface of the ocean.

“Pwah.”

Imi lifted her goggles to her forehead and removed the oxygen tank’s mouthpiece from her mouth while salty-smelling water dripped from her bangs.

“We’re back, Second Grimnoah. My phone contract is still in my dorm room, so I can’t have you kicking me out. I’ve already forgotten the PIN I was given in case I had any trouble.”

A giant wall towered up before them.

The wall of laminated material had an angle of more than 90 degrees, so it was leaning out toward them. Needless to say, that was the hull of the Second Grimnoah academy ship’s special three hull structure.

Tayori stared into the distance instead of at their objective. There was some obvious black smoke there.

“The ship has drifted away from shore. The port is all the way over there.”

“There’s an oil fire on the ocean near the port, so we’re actually lucky it’s drifted away.”

Marika looked up from the water. They could not fly up on top of the ship since it had to be crawling with Threats of all shapes and sizes, but that was not what she was interested in.

“Where’s that laser one?”

“The Sparkle was up on the flat roof, so it shouldn’t be able to see us unless it intentionally looks out over the edge. And as an anti-air weapon, it’s probably more interested in what’s at a distance than at its own feet.”

The Threat would find them if they carelessly flew into the sky, so Marika put her mouthpiece back in and gestured downwards.

She added more with her Crystal Blossom’s short-range communications.

“We can move freely in the water, so let’s dive back down. They’ll have a harder time finding us there.”

“Eh? Is there even an entrance below the water level? Wouldn’t the ship sink with a hole there???”

“Imi, a ship of this size doesn’t move around with just the rudder and propeller on the back. It’s bound to have side thrusters.”

Side thrusters were propellers that pushed seawater out of holes on the sides of the ship. They were used when leaving port or to spin the ship like a turntable by sending water out of the front right side and the rear left side or vice versa.

The motionless propeller was twice as tall as Marika.

After using their oxygen tanks to swim into the tunnel, they entered the ship through a maintenance airlock that used a pressurized pump. It felt a lot like opening a manhole cover and crawling out onto the street.

“Pwah! That was…the worst!!”

Marika spat out her mouthpiece, pulled up her goggles, and shook her head.

The weight of the thick tank weighed down on her again now that the water’s support was gone.

She was also worried about her hair. It was even more soaked with salty seawater than she had expected.

She saw metal pipes, stairs, and strange machinery. There were of course no windows. The place looked more like a workshop than a school. Second Grimnoah looked very different belowdecks than abovedeck.

This was her school and the dorm where she lived, but she did not at all feel the relief of coming home. The pressure squeezing at her heart may have been even greater than in the blizzard at the Crystal Beach. This was an extreme battlefield crawling with the true Threat. They could not be spoken to and the war treaties did not apply. If they were cornered in a dead end and raised their hands to surrender, they would only be swarmed and slaughtered. The tension was on a much greater level.

Now, why had the girls taken such a great risk to sneak into enemy territory with just the three of them?

They had already mentioned the answer.

Marika brushed up her wet bangs and looked to the heavy ceiling.

“That anti-air laser one is on the roof, right? I just hope it hasn’t moved from there.”

“The Sparkle can’t see us in here.”

“Just to be sure, let’s climb up from within the school building. If we can just take out the Sparkle in a surprise attack, the others can fight their way here. We’ll have our school back in no time.”

Of course, this plan fell apart if the Threat found them before that surprise attack succeeded. They understood the power and accuracy of that green laser all too well. They wanted to approach from a blind spot and finish it off in a single attack, not allowing it any attacks of its own.

The middle school building was directly above them.

Gyaru-ish Tayori put a hand on her hip.

“Do we take the stairs like normal?”

“I’m betting they’re watching all the ordinary routes.”

They still did not know why the Threat had attacked Second Grimnoah and occupied it instead of sinking it, but they knew there were some Threats inside here.

Something large and round was slowly rolling near a distant bulkhead.

“Shh!”

Imi immediately reached for her Crystal Blossom, so Marika quickly grabbed at her slender wrist and dragged her behind cover. Tayori slipped behind a different piece of machinery.

Marika held her friend in her arms while silently checking on whatever that was. It had a nearly spherical body with something like TV antennas sticking out in every direction. Each of those wriggled independently from the rest to push its body forward. It was maybe 2m tall if you counted out to the ends of the spines.

Was it…a slate pencil urchin?

Those lived among the tropical fish and coral reefs of the tropical seas, so Marika had often seen them on the first ship.

Of course, this only resembled one and behaved nothing like them.

The power of this Threat was unknown. Would it crush them with its giant body, would it shoot those spines like spears, or would it roast them with invisible EM waves? And even if they could defeat it, how many more Threats would rush in afterwards? They would gain nothing from trying to fight here.

“Gah. Marika, your boobs are too big.”

“How is that my fault?”

“What is that thing, anyway? One of the sea urchins they were talking about at the airport???” Imi tilted her head while not looking all that upset about drowning in her friend’s chest. “It’s pretty small compared to the tadpoles and that lion. And isn’t this the engine room – well, sub engine room. We’re right in the heart of their fortress.”

“Maybe the bigger ones simply can’t move around in the ship very well,” suggested Tayori.

Marika listened to those two while silently expanding her pointed crystal armor again.

But not to fight.

She could fly using Crystal Magic. She floated up from the floor using a thick pipe as a shield and slipped inside an emergency smoke vent near the ceiling. They did not need to follow the map or blueprint of the ship. And they did not have to worry about being shot down by the Sparkle’s high-power lasers while inside the ship.

“Wait, Marika, how did you fit inside there? My armor’s catching on the entrance.”

“Put your armor away. I know it’s a pain to power it up every time you need it, but just do it.”

This smoke vent was for emergencies, so it was rarely if ever used and thus nice and clean inside. Using this, they could easily reach the school building or dorm up above the deck.

Except…

“Argh, this suit is clinging to my skin. And the tank and goggles are in the way!”

Marika clicked her tongue at herself for only noticing that now, but she could not change inside the cramped smoke vent. After arriving in an area above the deck, she removed the metal grate on the ceiling and looked down into the hallway.

She gasped.

They were already in the middle school building. A tingling fear crawled up from her fingers now instead of when they had entered the ship. It was like being forced to stick your hand into a drain that was not just covered in sticky goop but coated with small unidentified bugs.

The school was awfully dark.

But not just because tons of Threats were covering the windows. Something like metal panels had been pasted onto the outside with some kind of adhesive. Those had apparently been taken from Second Grimnoah’s repair materials and deck-top equipment. The girls could hear claws scratching at the other side.

“Are they making nests? Do they have a bagworm type?”

(How lived-in this place looks makes it so much worse.)

That thought came to Marika’s mind as she hung upside down from the ceiling. Finding yourself in a strange forest at night would be a disaster, but finding yourself in a familiar hospital or amusement park at night would become a test of courage. This was the same.

The school looked entirely different now.

Marika gulped, but the fear remained below her throat.

Unlike a famous suicide spot, the darkness here could be swept away. She forced herself to focus on that fact. If they only got rid of the Threat, the usual Second Grimnoah would be back. She knew what was causing the problem, so she knew where to go. She would at least not be wasting her time.

Which meant…

(Hm.)

The classroom windows were covered with scrap material too, so they were full of scratching noises from outside. Was the metal over the windows meant to give the Threats footholds, not to provide armor?

“Now’s our chance to get changed.”

“In there? In what world, Marika? Could you sleep soundly in a mortuary freezer just because it’s about the same size as a sleeping bag?”

Imi’s eyes widened in shock, but this was enemy territory – there was no such thing as a safe zone here. With that metal covering the windows and thus blocking the inside of the room from view, this was as close to safe as they were going to get. In fact, building a sturdy but conspicuous shelter would only draw attention and get them surrounded.

First, Marika dropped down from the ceiling into the hallway and then she supported Imi from below while the girl’s legs flailed.

Once inside the empty classroom, Marika silently lowered the oxygen tank from her back and pulled her usual school uniform from the waterproof bag she had been carrying. The silent diving suit was useful in the water, but it would only get in the way while trying to fight on the ship. And if the Threat was intelligent enough to notice unnatural drops of water on the floor and investigate, the wet diving suits would get them tracked. The three girls balled up their used suits and stuffed them in their bags before sticking the bags, oxygen tanks, and goggles in the cleaning supply lockers lined up by the wall.

They lacked the guts to use a loud dryer, but wiping down their wet hair with a towel helped a lot. Marika tied her uniform’s tie with practiced hand.

“Note where this empty classroom is. If we screw up and have to withdraw, we’ll need to retrieve our equipment.”

“I’d rather not think about that possibility.”

They were keeping their tone light to avoid being swallowed up by fear, but one of the girls remained silent.

Marika and Tayori looked over in confusion.

“Imi?”

“…”

The girl did not respond even as they called her name.

She had not even finished changing. The salty water was dripping from her bangs and her short skirt remained haphazardly caught on her hips because she had not zipped it up as she stared at something. Whatever it was, it was not in the classroom. Her eyes were on the glimpse of the hallway visible through the not-quite-closed sliding door.

There was something there.

A slender hand beckoned at them through that gap in the door.

It eerily drew the attention of whoever that looked at it.

“Wait, Imi!?”

Imi started to stagger toward the classroom door with her underwear and soft skin still not fully covered. This was strange. Something was not right. Marika and Tayori grabbed at her shoulders to stop her, but they were dragged out of the classroom too.

Immediately, their eyes met those of a naked girl.

The younger girl’s long blue hair fluttered behind her despite the lack of wind. Her skin was so bright it was almost painful to look at, but something really was not right about this. The Threat had occupied this ship and Marika’s group should have been the only three who had snuck onboard.

Then whatever this was, it should not be categorized as human.

It may have been a lure like an anglerfish’s luminescent organ. In fact, the blue-haired girl lacked feet, just like a ghost. Instead of ankles, her legs extended down and attached to the hallway floor.

The thing that looked like a blue-haired girl never stopped smiling.

They did not have time to regret it.

(Oh, no.)

The camouflage was removed from the walls, floor, and ceiling and sea anemone tentacles blossomed out in all directions. The many tentacles rushed in toward the prey that had been lured into the center of its territory.

===Part 7===

===Part 8===

===Part 9===

===Part 10===

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| Return to [[Apocalypse_Witch|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Apocalypse_Witch:Volume3_Chapter2|Chapter 2]]
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The Weakness of Beatrice the Level Cap Holy Swordswoman:Volume6 Chapter 4

2020-10-08T08:44:17Z

Entei08: been possessed by WQ here are we?

==Chapter 4: Challenging an Utterly Impossible Obstacle==

===Part 1===

As evening turned to night, the ground shook.

Upon learning the Reds were no longer active, the humans raised a battle cry of victory that shook the distant mountain where Boo Boo and the others were. The solid ground was shaken by nothing more than human voices and the emotion of excitement. Dry bursting sounds, cheers, and laughter blended together. They may have been having a celebration with special food and drink brought from the partially-repaired inn town.

However.

Boo Boo did not have time to even look in the party’s direction.

Time was the enemy.

There was some variance between individuals, but a few days was the limit. And Beatrice had already used up a lot of that time on dealing with the Red Iberian Orcs. They did not have a single minute or second to spare. Their only option was to rack their brains and list out every idea they could think of.

Armelina looked overhead.

“The artificial atmospheric barrier has been silent ever since. Did that attack bring it to a stop, or was that an irregular situation even for it? But I guess that’s fine since we’d have bigger problems than treating Beatrice if it kept firing those.”

“Squeal. What is a Shining Weapon? Can’t she borrow one of the ones all of you are using?”

“Each Shining Weapon is limited to a single person, so you can’t borrow someone else’s. It would also be difficult to bring a new Shining Weapon from Earth to Ground’s Nir because the authentication work is generally done using machines on Earth. They really are your lifeline, so you’re screwed if you lose yours.”

“Ch-chief. Is there no way to repair a Shining Weapon?”

“…It is technically possible, but we’re talking about a collection of precision machinery. We would have to construct a handmade semiconductor factory with full sterilization. We only have a few days left, so there simply isn’t enough time.”

“What about the bottom of the Labyrinth? Ultimate Weapon Abyss is a mechanical doll, right?”

“That uses entirely different standards from what we use on Earth. It seems we can connect our Shining Weapons with Abyss using a cable, but that only works because Abyss is adjusting her registry to match. Her normal methods would not work.”

“I-if it comes to it, I could get Ileana’s help to create a powerful resurrection potion. We could always just resurrect her every few days…”

“Only you could do that, glasses freak. A normal human would go mad.”

With that, Armelina scratched at her hair.

Then she breathed a heavy sigh.

“…Sorry.”

“No, we are not looking for solace through nice-sounding words. We need a realistic solution, so we cannot run from the severe hurdles.”

They were discussing it like this because Beatrice was unconscious.

Who could directly tell her that she could no longer Sign Out and she could only wait for death as her body and mind were slowly eaten away?

The man known as Omega, who had reigned at the top of the Western forces during the Cold War, had lost his life due to a plot abusing the inability to Sign Out. And even with Demon Lord Tselika by his side, he had been unable to alter his fate. That showed how dire the situation was.

This was not something that could be overcome with great historical deeds or cheap, dime-a-dozen miracles.

The battered girl’s chest quietly rose and fell in Boo Boo’s large hand.

After hearing what Ice Waterfall Princess Wildefrau had said, Gruagach hesitantly raised a hand.

“Tselika, you fought against this exactly problem before, didn’t you?”

“…I am not aware of any method to truly transfer a human-sized object between worlds.”

A translucent demon woman with an angel’s halo and large horns floated next to Gruagach.

She held her bewitching body in her arms like she did not know what to do with it.

“More importantly, if you have people with high-level potion and freezing skills, I would suggest using cold sleep. It will only delay the inevitable, but it will remove the time limit of a few days. If all you need to do is prepare a semiconductor factory, then you can build one even if it takes years.”

“That really is ''the last resort'', isn’t it?” responded Armelina with a heavy sigh.

Rusalka, whose long blonde ponytail formed a gorgeous ringlet curl, spoke up while tugging on Gruagach’s leather outfit.

“Onee-sama, can’t we get help from the Sage? She seems familiar with Shining Weapons and she looks just like Beatrice. Um, couldn’t it be possible for them to use the same Shining Weapon?”

Everyone except for unconscious Beatrice glanced over at the Sage who was sitting with her back against a broken tree trunk.

That person, who looked a lot like Beatrice but was completely different, shook her head.

“It depends on the amount of damage, but from the look of things, it’s unrepairable. The internal structure being fried hurts a lot more than the blade breaking off. In fact, I’ve never seen one destroyed like that before. Also, Beatrice and I are similar but not identical. We cannot use the same Shining Weapon.”

“You hacked our Shining Weapons at the Underworld, right!? Surely there’s some kind of trick you can use!!”

“Simply remote controlling one is entirely different from altering the administrative permissions. In fact, you would have better luck asking Omega who increased the strength of his by having his men open up shared settings on theirs.”

“Huh? But what about Sibyl’s Shining Weapon?” asked Filinion. “And wasn’t your patchwork rapier made by rewriting the permissions of those stolen weapons?”

“Yes, that’s right. Miss Titties is exactly right. But doing that requires wiping the contents. Try to fix her broken Shining Weapon with a clean install and you’ll only wipe out all the files that survived. When you get down to it, what Omega did was just plain crazy.”

That must have reminded her of someone important to her because the translucent Demon Lord with an angel halo and large horns softly shut her eyes. Almost like she was offering a silent prayer.

Another insurmountable hurdle had been placed in their path.

Upon the annihilation of the Underworld Lord, the souls of the dead had been released. They could never again summon that veteran hero. The cowboy hat skeleton was technically only a simulation of his personality, so he would not necessarily have the same technical information as Omega.

Armelina gulped.

“…So we’re finally stuck.”

“You should think about what options are available. Especially with such a short time limit.” The Sage sounded unconcerned. “One, you can run high-level VR experiments using Ultimate Weapon Abyss. Two, based on that bombing used in the battle against the elder, Sibyl must have acquired something. If she has the power to see everything, she might be able to use that to find a starting point.”

However.

A certain possibility came to mind and Boo Boo worriedly asked about it.

“…What if that isn’t enough?”

“A perfect virtual reality and the power to see everything are cruel in their own ways, Boo Boo.”

The Sage remained callous even now.

It may have been her ability to provide cruel opinions at all times that allowed her to be the Sage.

“They may present us with the fact that nothing we can do will work.”

===Part 2===

He knew all he could do at the moment was wait, but he could not just sit around.

Burning heat erupted inside his body and he could not sit still.

“Boo…”

Boo Boo walked through the dark forest.

He scraped his large tusk against a nearby tree.

“Let Beatrice get better soon.”

With that statement, he moved to the next tree.

“Let Beatrice get better soon.”

Then to the next tree. And the next. And the next.

“Let Beatrice get better soon.”

He looked like he would mark every tree in the forest if left to his own devices.

And someone was watching him from a short distance away.

It was silver-haired Fairy Queen Sutriona and blonde-haired Vampire Kallikantzaros.

They were both Break News with incredible power.

“Anyway, Vampire, did you never notice the color of the sky before? Don’t you claim to control lunar eclipses?”

“Make no mistake. The moon was always shaped like that. In fact, the culprit may have based the false sky and sun on it.”

The skinny silver-haired girl in a black ribbon dress breathed an exasperated sigh.

“…More importantly, what is Boo Boo doing?”

“Probably an Iberian Orc good luck charm,” smoothly responded the Vampire who was connected to the Iberian Orcs in a different way from the Sage.

Kallikantzaros, who wore a red negligee over a body far too alluring for her childish appearance, continued.

“But if it actually worked, the Iberian Orcs would not have been afflicted by that Redness.”

“Hm.” Sutriona gave her old Vampire acquaintance a sidelong glance. “You sure have strange tastes to accompany him when you know it’s meaningless.”

“Night is the Vampire’s time. Although it seems I too was manipulated by that false sun. Still, there is not always something I can do. …Besides, Fairies are active in the day and sleep at night, so it seems far more unusual for one of them to be wandering around at this hour.”

Sutriona coughed to avoid responding.

“You are even simpler than the Iberian Orcs,” sighed Kallikantzaros. “But I believe that good luck charm requires carving the mark into 1000 trees. Surely he doesn’t really plan to do that.”

“Oh, he’ll do it. Even if it’s just for peace of mind, he’ll still set up that defensive line.”

“…”

The Vampire in a red negligee and nightcap fell silent.

She watched the nearly-4m giant scraping his tusk against another tree, she crossed her arms such that they squished her large breasts, and she winked.

“…Is it that serious?”

“Is what?”

“I had thought that young Iberian Orc was so fond of that human because she was convenient for him. The humans threw rocks at him, but she would actually speak with him. So to put it another way, it could have been anyone he could speak with. I thought that was all it was.”

“Kallikantzaros.”

A voice called her name.

The light in the Fairy Queen’s eyes had changed entirely at some point.

“Do you want me to punch you for real?”

“…I see. So there was a reason why it had to be that girl. Very well.”

“?”

“Life and the sunlight are your territory, but death and the shadows are mine. There is an option that opens up for me.”

Vampire Kallikantzaros turned her gaze toward the distance once more.

Most likely, that Iberian Orc would not stop until he really had completed it. And even if he did leave marks on 1000 trees, he could not shake the forlorn feeling of having his mother or someone even more important let go of his hand.

And the Vampire knew of an extremely quick solution that amounted to cheating.

The Fairy Queen sounded somewhat exasperated as her silver hair fluttered behind her.

“I thought you didn’t answer people’s prayers.”

“Only if they are seeking some kind of reward. I am not narrow-minded enough to abandon a child lost in the night.

===Part 3===

White Witch Filinion’s Recovery Potion was perfectly made.

“Nn. Nhh…”

When Beatrice sat up and stretched her arms like normal, a strong foliage smell reached her nose. She looked around and found a somewhat nostalgic sight. It looked just like Boo Boo’s original house, the triangular tent made of large, folded leaves that he had used before the log and brick ones.

And she realized something.

“Gh.”

When she got up and the blanket fell away, she found she was only wearing a single white cloth. It looked a lot like a swimsuit since the top and bottom were connected, but it was basically underwear. Think of it like a bodysuit that bared the midriff.

The armor covering her limbs and chest and the miniskirt around her hips were nowhere to be found.

(…Oh. So that’s what happened.)

The Holy Swordswoman jumped a bit when she belatedly noticed a slender form lying right next to her in the darkness. It was a girl with one arm entirely missing and her head tilted at a slightly odd angle. Two strands of mottled silver hair passed in front of her shoulders, so this was apparently Ultimate Weapon Abyss. Beatrice had not sensed her presence because she did not need to breathe or even stir.

And one other thing.

“Beatrice, are you okay? Do you hurt anywhere?”

“Wah, wah! B-Boo Boo?”

Beatrice frantically pulled the blanket up to her chest and blushed a little.

The air that snuck in was somewhat chilly and the darkness was swept away by the gentle light of a simple lamp made by filling a porcelain bowl with plant oil and adding a twisted scrap of cloth as a wick. The girl guessed it was nighttime.

It did not have the obvious shape of a bra and panties, but she was only wearing underwear. Beatrice restlessly held the blanket to her chest and looked around.

“Where are we?”

“My house was destroyed, so I made a new one.”

Those words alone brought a slight cloud to the Holy Swordswoman’s face. There had been more than exhaustion and pain from the intense battle. She was worried about the way Boo Boo thought it was only natural that his things were taken from him or destroyed.

Meanwhile, when looking at it from a different perspective…

…That made Boo Boo sad.

This was not the time for her to worry about others. She had always worried about him and helped him in every way she could, but he also understood that she had a tendency to neglect herself in the process.

He could not let it show on his face.

Worrying her here would not solve anything.

“Squeal. If you’re awake, you can eat something. Eat a bunch and get better! I saved the tastiest meat for you!!”

“Ah, ah ha ha. It’s always meat first thing after waking up with you…”

Filinion’s Recovery Potion had healed the direct injuries and burns, so she had no trouble moving around. She reached for her hip out of habit and then sighed.

“What happened with the elder and the others?”

“Gruagach stopped all of them, so it’ll be okay. They’re working with the Sage to remake the village right now. The effects of the Redness have left their bodies, but they said they wanted to work with someone on some strength-focused work and details-focused to make sure everything is in order. They all said it’s thanks to you destroying the…artificial atmospheric barrier? Or something like that.”

“Where are Filinion, Armelina, and the others?”

“They should be in the human inn town. After all the confusion, they said they needed to explain some things to everyone. They’re apparently having a festival there, so they might bring some tasty snacks back!”

The girl who had spent so much time with Boo Boo held a hand to her mouth and giggled at his excitement.

Was she simply happy to see the Iberian Orc celebrating, or was she happy to see him interested in the humans?

“Hey, Boo Boo.”

“Yeah?”

Beatrice gave a plain smile.

And she asked.

“…So have you heard how much time I have left?”

He had been careless.

Even though he knew little of Magic, he should have noticed.

Beatrice had reached for her hip out of habit. She had been checking for her Shining Weapon rapier. It was a casual movement of her fingers, but that had told her the truth: her Shining Weapon had been destroyed and she could not return to Earth.

She also lacked her equipment.

It was not that she was not producing the armor to cover her body. She could not produce it.

“Beatrice…”

“It’s okay, Boo Boo. You don’t need to give me that look.”

Boo Boo gasped and patted his large face, but Beatrice shook her head. She was always the mature one. Hiding it from her may have been impossible from the get-go.

The girl in her underwear still held the blanket to her chest.

“I don’t have to explore the Labyrinth or save the world from a crisis. That gives me more time to simply spend with you. I feel like I never made time to just take it easy in Ground’s Nir. Looking at it that way, it’s not all bad.”

“…”

“And I’m not going to keel over right away. I still have time. So tell me, Boo Boo. I want to know the specifics if I’m going to face this. Will you help me find a way out of this situation?”

“Okay.”

Boo Boo nodded again and again.

He seemed to be trying to convince himself more than anyone.

“I’ll help you. The elder and the others were only saved because of your efforts. I can’t just sit around and fret. There’s no time, so we have to do what we can. So I’ll work super hard for you this time!!”

“Boo Boo.”

“Right. According to Abyss and Sibyl, you have about 2 days left! There’s still time, so we’ll do everything we can and save you. And the first step is to eat!!”

The leaf house had no stove, so he was probably cooking the food at a campfire outside. He rushed out of the house.

For that brief moment, Beatrice was alone with only deactivated Abyss for company. She reached for her hip out of habit and then slowly sighed.

“Well.”

No one was listening, but the words softly spilled from her lips.

“…I guess this time there really is no hope.”

===Part 4===

Beatrice and Boo Boo sat around the campfire for a late dinner.

She was still only in her underwear, so she had wrapped the blanket around herself before stepping outside.

When he cooked, you were lucky if you got a giant hunk of cooked mystery meat and he would not even add salt unless you asked. He did not focus much on the cooking, so there was always a chance of getting something half raw. …But today there were also a few vegetables he had presumably taken from his garden. He may have been thinking about her health.

“Beatrice, this one and this one are the tastiest. You can have them.”

“Hm? You can have the tastiest ones. You’re the one that made it all.”

“No! You need to eat right now!!”

“Whoa, but all this fatty meat is a little much for a maiden like me…!!”

It had taken some doing to get to this point, but as long as he added some rock salt, his cooking was good in a plain sort of way. Salt and grease had a way of soaking into your body.

“I made some dessert today too.”

“Oh? That’s unusual for you.”

“I chilled it in the river, so I has to be good. Jewel Melons are rare and I know you’ll be surprised when you see it!”

Boo Boo left for the river where the fruit was chilling.

Once she was alone, Beatrice breathed a soft sigh with the blanket wrapped over her underwear.

And just then…

“I will be joining you.”

“?”

The Holy Swordswoman turned toward that soft voice and saw someone who looked completely at home in the night.

It was a childish blonde girl who wore a pitch black swimsuit visible through a bright red negligee. No, she was quite short, but her body may have been even curvier than Beatrice’s. …Especially when it came to chest size.

She was a Vampire and a Break News.

It was Kallikantzaros.

She kept a set distance from the campfire as if she disliked non-natural lights.

“Sutriona told me what happened. I could not join the fight as it occurred while the sun was at its peak. The Iberian Orcs are special to me as well, so I thank you for risking your life to stop their rampage.”

“I see… Based on that, I take it I can trust what Boo Boo said about the other Iberian Orcs. I passed out before the end, you see.”

“So what will you do?”

The Vampire held a gray pig doll, spoke with a cunning voice, and gently looked the girl in the eye.

“Let us discuss the concept of life. The undead have no interest in unstable souls, but I am willing to make an exception since you used your one-and-only life to fight for the Iberian Orcs. You cannot return to Earth without your Shining Weapon. And you have no chance of survival without returning to Earth. Boo Boo and the others will of course forgo sleep as they spend the next two days attempting to find a solution, but there is no guarantee they will find one before the time limit arrives.”

[[Image:BooBoo_v06_317.png|thumb]]

“And you have approached me. So do you have a suggestion?”

“I am a Vampire.”

Kallikantzaros stuck the index finger of her empty hand between her lips. She bent the finger like a hook and tugged her small mouth to the side.

That might sound like a child’s teasing, but it held a very different meaning here.

She revealed a sinister weapon that was far sharper than a human canine tooth.

That fang was the symbol of her kind.

“Your human body cannot endure staying in this world for an extended period of time due to a slight margin of error in the atmospheric composition and the planetary rotation and revolution. ''Then you only need to become something other than a human of Earth.'' I try to only target Iberian Orcs since I dislike the flavor of human blood, but as I said, I am willing to make an exception here. I can bear with the flavor. If you ask for it, I will turn you into a Vampire right here and now.”

Beatrice thought about it for a while.

This gave her a backup plan. In her current state, she should have wanted that more than anything.

However.

After taking her time, she slowly shook her head.

“…I have to reject your offer.”

“Why?”

“I apologize if this sounds like an insult, but the person who Boo Boo can rely on without worry isn’t ‘Vampire Beatrice’.”

Boo Boo’s worried look was burned into her mind’s eye.

She saw him telling those painfully obvious lies.

But that was exactly why.

She could not just compromise on this. If she rewrote it all with such a simple decision, there would be no going back. That was the way she saw it. Being a human born on Earth must have held more meaning for her than she thought.

Kallikantzaros smiled thinly.

And she showed respect for that resolve.

“This will not be easy.”

“I know that.”

“Very well. I will not force it upon you, but I have provided the temptation. Knowing and not knowing are two very different things. As you humans apparently say, a drowning man will grasp at straws. I will be watching from behind the scenes to see if your resolve wavers as you are slowly crushed beneath the pain and fear.”

A quiet sound followed.

By taking a single step back, Kallikantzaros truly withdrew into the shadows, but she did leave one last statement.

“However.”

“?”

“…Even if you do break and pathetically cling to this option, I will not laugh at you. Because I definitely owe you one for the Iberian Orc incident. For this one time only, I will promise you that.”

That was all.

The Vampire faded into the pitch black shadows and Beatrice was alone once more.

“Squeal! Look, look, Beatrice! This is a Jewel Melon!!”

“Oh, Boo Boo?”

“Hm? What’s with you? Did something happen?”

“No, it’s nothing,” she answered with a smile and a shake of the head.

Yes.

Because of her resolve, nothing had happened.

===Part 5===

Of course, Boo Boo did not rest after putting Beatrice to bed in the leaf house. White Witch Filinion and Fighter Priest Armelina had set up a new base in the Cave of Tears opened in the coastal cliff face. Even with the celebration bringing everyone’s guard down, they could not bring Boo Boo to the human-filled inn town, but they also could not hold a planning meeting in front of Beatrice whose life was on the chopping block. Since neither of their usual meeting spots was usable, they had needed a new one.

…Boo Boo wondered how he had lived such an aimless life up until now.

He had built a house of large leaves, searched for food in the forest, and spent any extra time napping. Had he really been making the most of his life? If he had done other things and made more valuable use of his time, could he maybe have found an immediate solution when someone important to him was in a crisis?

He had grown complacent.

So much had happened in the past, so he should have known that his current environment was not guaranteed to last forever. Yet he had been satisfied with what he was given. He had been so happy on that day when he had been reunited with Beatrice and he had failed to keep working after that.

“Squeal… I need to do something.”

That ocean cave also contained Demon Lord Tselika’s collection of treasures. The entrance area received the full brunt of the advancing and receding waves and it could flood at any time, but there were more slopes further in and the seawater had almost no effect there. Since there was no way in from the Labyrinth, it was a rare blank spot where no one else on the small island could reach them.

The outside moonlight reflected off the seawater and rock walls, so the inside was filled with a faint bluish light. It gave the scene a strange shine different from a fire or luminous moss.

“So you’re here, Boo Boo.”

He was addressed by someone who looked an awful lot like the red-armored Holy Swordswoman. It was the Sage. Slender Royal Elf Sibyl stood alongside her.

“I was just explaining my investigation of the problems we face. No one else here is worth explaining things to, so this is perfect.”

The glasses White Witch and police officer Fighter Priest clearly grimaced at that, but it was unusual for these former enemies to be meeting together at all.

The red of embers was added to the bluish light of the Cave of Tears.

The Sage snapped her fingers and the cave scene changed. Even the clinging darkness and the pale blue light that blocked one’s view like a backlight functioned as a veil to hide the answer before one’s eyes.

The walls and ceiling were crammed full of geometric patterns drawn in black lines seemingly made with charcoal. Naturally, this was not just graffiti. Each point at the intersection of two lines was labeled with a symbol and it seemed to control some kind of “current”.

“Well, to put it simply, this is the circuit diagram of Beatrice’s Shining Weapon,” smoothly explained the Sage.

The handle of Beatrice’s rapier had contained the circuitry that filled every surface of the cave.

“Keihin Seibi’s Etranger D-508ex. Since she was confined to the impressive-sounding Detached Magic Palace, I was surprised to find she uses a customized version of a commercial product, but that may have been to ensure ease of replacing parts in case of a malfunction. She apparently has some capable maids, so its specs have been greatly improved from clocking up the software side of things.”

“…You’ve made that much progress? Then what were those two hours of cynicism and sarcasm for???”

The young glasses woman gave an exhausted comment, but it was not the time for that.

The Sage remained composed after having wasted so much time because she was not interested in starting until Boo Boo showed up.

“I retrieved the diagram from the manufacturer on Earth and Sibyl used her secret treasures to view the broken rapier. Comparing the two revealed what portions are missing. The worst damage is here.”

She breathed a gentle sigh and a few sparks spilled from her palm and circled around a certain point on the circuit diagram covering the cave’s surfaces. The college girl shrine maiden known as Filinion saw it like a laser pointer on a lecture room’s whiteboard.

“That’s the personal authentication area that manages administrative privileges…in other words, who the Shining Weapon belongs to. In cellphone terms, it’s something like the SIM card that contains all the profile settings. Unless we fix this, Beatrice cannot return to Earth.”

“Squeal?”

Boo Boo tilted his head with a large hand over his mouth, but that did not mean he had stopped thinking. Iberian Orcs used their supercomputer-like brains to control each individual muscle fiber so they did not destroy their own body with their overly powerful muscles. He might not understand it now, but he was sure to learn. He only had to reach that understanding before they ran out of time. The Sage had lived with the elder and the others, so she understood that and was trying to fill him with as much data as possible.

But was the Sage leading that brilliant brain to the answer?

Even though Boo Boo did not understand at all, clenched his teeth, and struggled to make up for how far behind he felt?

“Hey.” Armelina put a hand on her hip. “So you’re saying the transfer function survived?”

“If ''that was all we needed'', we wouldn’t need to rely on her broken rapier. That blunt weapon hanging at Boo Boo’s hip is a Shining Weapon too, after all.”

But he could not save anyone by giving Beatrice his partner that resembled a log or a steel beam.

The management was not lax enough to let her just borrow one.

She could not just head home and be done with it. There was a reason they used terms like Sign In and Sign Out. The technology to move between worlds only qualified as a transfer system once a safe arrival was guaranteed. That meant there would naturally be powerful safeties to ensure who was being sent in addition to the origin point and destination point. Because they needed to transfer exactly 100% of a person, not 99% or 101%.

Boo Boo desperately worked his mind with his head still tilted.

“You mean Beatrice’s name is written inside her sword? And that was erased, so we have to write it in there again?”

“Exactly right, Boo Boo.”

The Sage applauded with a smile she would never give any of the others.

“Rewriting the settings profile from scratch would be difficult, so we’ll have to extract the damaged data and recover it. Of course, the data left inside the damaged rapier is incomplete, so we can’t just use that. But that means we only have to fill in the gaps.”

“I sometimes see ads for services that recover lost data from your cellphone or flash memory, but does it really work that well?”

“Since you had the courage to admit your own ignorance, I will explain. Even if there are pieces missing, it is possible to fill that in by estimating the contents using the strings of data preceding and following it. It might be simpler to think of it like the frames of a movie or cartoon. Ten minutes or a full hour missing would be one thing, but if it’s just a frame or two here and there, it isn’t a major problem. You can fill in the gaps.”

But on the other hand…

“To recover the data, we must first extract detailed information on how much of the data is left inside the broken rapier.”

“Squeal? But I thought we could see everything with Sibyl’s treasure?”

The long-eared slender girl sighed and answered Boo Boo’s question.

“I can see it, but I cannot explain it. If I draw out the miniscule grooves of the circuit diagram, the Sage can create a proper diagram using her own rules, but this concept of an…electronic program? That is something else entirely.”

“Well, yes. Long ago, there were apparently people with the shocking ability to read the do-re-mi scale by looking at the grooves on a record, but no matter how much they stared at the smooth surface of a smartphone, they could never learn anything about a song contained in a compressed file on the device. Poo hoo hoo.”

“…I have no idea what that means, but I can still tell you’re making fun of me…”

“Heh. Eh heh heh. Whatever gives you that-…owwwww!? This flat Amazon warrior elf just hit my boobs with her bowstring!”

“I hit my own long ears a lot when I was first learning to use it, so I know its power. …And that insult has earned you another hit.”

The hunter pursued her fleeing prey and Armelina sounded somewhat exasperated as she watched.

“Are you saying we can’t directly check the software, so we have to start by reconnecting the fried hardware circuits to access it?”

“Precisely. So the ignorant have reached an understanding in their ignorance.”

The Sage nodded and brought a hand to her hip.

The patchwork rapier in the scabbard there had its processing power forcibly increased by connecting together the remains of multiple Shining Weapons, so she would know how to connect to the broken Shining Weapon.

The red-armored and white-miniskirted Sage twisted the corners of her mouth into a smile.

“There is no need to be so pessimistic. The area needing repairing is smaller than a postage stamp.”

“But like with microfilm, how much space does that fill when it’s expanded to a size visible to the human eye? …You make it sound simple, but at the semiconductor level, it’s dozens of times smaller than a hair, right? Or maybe hundreds of times? Even if Sibyl’s treasure lets us cheat our way to the abilities of an electron microscope, the work won’t be that easy.”

“That is true, but I do have an idea.”

The Sage snapped her fingers and the sparks that burst out circled around above Boo Boo’s head.

“Boo Boo, you are friends with the palm-sized Fairies, aren’t you? Contact them immediately and ask for their help.”

“Squeal? Are you going to have them make a potion?”

“The contents of a Shining Weapon are a collection of wires made from pure gold thinner than a hair. A normal human cannot hope to work with them and, as your friend there said, the sensory boost from Sibyl’s treasure might not be enough to pull off the work. However. The Fairies are skilled at handicrafts. They can even weave a full ribbon dress out of Ground Spider silk, so they should not have difficulty working with something thinner than a hair. They may not like working with iron or silver, but they should not feel any revulsion toward gold.”

With that said, the Sage laughed.

“Boo Boo, you are the only one who can contact those cautious Fairies. For that matter, you are also the only person who can contact the Sage who works behind the scenes of history. This is the power you built up with the path you walked. Feel free to use those trump cards here.”

“But…”

Armelina traced her fingertip along her slender chin and thought deeply.

And as negative as it was, she opened her mouth. She had known it would come down to this from the beginning, so there was no point in acting smug about the knowledge after the fact.

“We have a strict time limit. I mean, we don’t even have two days left. I’m fine with relying on the Fairies, but shouldn’t we be working on some insurance in parallel, just to be sure?”

“I suppose I’ll ask. What exactly do you propose?”

“The Fairies aren’t the only ones who are skilled with their hands. There are a lot of different people gathered in the inn town. How about we rely on them? With the excitement of solving the Red problem, the people with nothing better to do might help us pretty readily.”

Also, it was humans who used the Magic represented by the Shining Weapons. It made the most sense to use human hands to solve this.

But the Sage shook her head.

“I won’t stop you if you go try that on your own, but I’m not going to help you with your wasted effort. I am only here now out of respect for your efforts in revealing the cause of the Redness and freeing the elder and the others from it. Do not expect unlimited and bottomless assistance from me.”

“Wasted effort…?

“I have no issue with their technical skills and the manpower would be useful, but Beatrice is a Level Capper, which comes with its plusses and minuses. People will recognize her achievements when she is rising in the ranks, but once she starts to decline, they will focus only on the negative side and work against her. Ask for help and I doubt anyone will give it. In the worst case, they might pretend to help so they can poison her.”

“…But…”

Armelina had suggested the idea, but she fell silent.

The human inn town was ruled by the interests of organizations as much as by what individuals wanted. There were definitely nations and corporations that would benefit in the power balance if the striker of the Japanese government’s Detached Magic Palace was removed.

What would happen if her compromised state became widely known?

In the worst case, someone could even plan an attack on the leaf house where she slept. None of them wanted to think about the possibility of interference when the rescue attempt was a tightrope walk already.

Looking at it like that, it would indeed be more efficient to put together a team of Ground’s Nir Nonhumans who were tied by simple bonds of gratitude.

The Sage had seen a sickening amount of the desire that gathered around Magic, so she laughed scornfully before continuing.

“This isn’t about whether or not it will actually happen. The inability to eliminate doubt would consume some of our work costs. Didn't you just say we have no time? I really don’t think we can afford to bother with secret plots.”

“…”

Armelina had no rebuttal, but she did not seem satisfied either.

Meanwhile, Boo Boo spoke up.

“So I need to ask the Fairies for help. But is that all I can do? Is there nothing else I can do?”

“Hm…” The Sage thought for a moment. “Even if it will be thinner than a hair, we will need a lot of pure gold to lay out the new wiring. Ground’s Nir is a small enough island to walk the perimeter in only three days and the greedy humans use gears taken from the Labyrinth’s Gimmicks as currency instead of gold. I don’t know how much is buried on the island, but unlike Earth, where you can buy it by the gram at an exchange, it will likely be difficult to procure. Boo Boo, can you take care of that?”

===Part 6===

Beatrice might grow suspicious if she woke up and found he was not there.

He lacked the knowledge and the skill, but Boo Boo had to make up for that with what he could do. With so little time left, he could not just sit around without any ideas whatsoever.

When he left the Cave of Tears, the sun had already risen.

He parted ways with Filinion and Armelina who had to rest back on Earth and he hurried back to the leaf house partway up the mountain.

He grabbed some Full-Belly Apples and Filling Bananas he found growing on trees along the way and he found Beatrice outside the house with the blanket wrapped around her.

He had been too slow.

He was only a few seconds late, but he gently clenched his teeth at how worthless it made him feel.

“Good morning, Boo Boo. Where were you?”

“Squeal. I woke up hungry. So I went to gather some food for today.”

Boo Boo had always lived a life where half his day was spent procuring food. Even during an emergency like this, he still needed food and water to function. So this was a necessary thing, but a closer inspection would show that he mostly had fruits that grew on trees instead of animals that he had to hunt in an eat-or-be-eaten battle of wits.

He did not have time for that now.

Even the time spent procuring food felt wasted.

“What are you doing, Beatrice? If you woke up because you’re hungry, I’ll give you the biggest one.”

“…Girls need to take a bath on a daily basis. I can dig a hole by the river over there to produce a hot spring and use the river water to control the temperature, right?”

“Yes. You can go take a bath, Beatrice.”

“That dream was shattered when you showed up to stare at me like that.”

A fruit-only breakfast felt lacking to Boo Boo, but he had bigger things to worry about now. And he noticed that Beatrice seemed to enjoy the fruit a lot. That amount may have been about right for her.

“The letter, the letter…”

“?”

Beatrice watched in confusion as Boo Boo placed a thin piece of wood near the leaf house’s ceiling. He could barely write and the message was almost entirely communicated via illustration, but the palm-sized Fairies would read it when they showed up. The situation could hardly be worse, but the counterattack was beginning.

“Boo Boo. What are we going to do today?”

“Boo. Let’s go to the beach.”

He of course had a reason for this.

The two of them walked down the gentle slope of an unpaved mountain path. They discussed pointless things along the way: it would be neat to lay out mine cart rails along here, Ileana wouldn’t like that, and so on.

Once they left the forest and arrived on the beach, Boo Boo raised his voice without thinking.

“Ah! It was almost all washed away!!”

“Hm?”

Beatrice gave him a curious look and he frantically covered his mouth with both hands.

The rotting corpse of the Underworld’s giant marine creature should have been on the beach. He had gathered large seeds from there to reach the sky, but there was almost no sign left of the black rotting flesh he had seen then. He doubted it had all been the work of the small lobsters and crabs cleaning up the beach, so the crashing waves must have grabbed them and swept them out to sea.

Beatrice brushed the hair off the side of her face and looked out to the sea that sparkled with the morning sun.

“This area has been cleaned up a lot, but it still doesn’t look like a great place to swim.”

“Squeal. It’ll have to be cleaned up bit by bit. The fish are an important food source too.”

With that, Boo Boo approached one hunk of rotting flesh that still remained on the beach.

He thought back to what the Sage had said in the Cave of Tears before dawn:

''“There are always the mountains to the north. Sibyl’s treasure should be able to accurately locate any veins of gold, but we don’t have time to dig it out. …The Underworld would be the better bet. The Underworld Lord forcibly reinforced that rotting marine creature to keep it alive. That means it must have had a mechanical side that included a lot of pure gold wiring. We need gold, but not a huge amount of it. It would probably be faster to gather some of that junk and extract it from there.”

The beach cleaners could not eat hard things like this.

It would have been nice if nothing but a lot of strange machine parts had remained on the beach, but he was not that lucky. He stuck his hands into the black pile and felt around for anything that felt out of place. Something like thick cables, thin computer chips, or connectors made of heavy metal. He did not know what would be usable, so he pulled out everything that seemed artificial and gathered it all together.

“Oh, honestly! I can’t bear it any longer!!”

He heard a flapping sound.

“B-Boo Boo? There’s no one else here, right? It’s just you, right!?”

It was the sound of Beatrice removing the blanket she had wrapped around herself. The girl now only wore the one-piece underwear, but she seemed to be enjoying herself as she kicked at the crashing and receding waves.

She laughed like a child and spoke to him.

“Boo Boo! There are seabirds flying awfully close by. There might be a school of fish nearby. Maybe that’s thanks to the Underworld too!!”

“Then you can use this.”

Boo Boo held out something like a small-holed net. It was something he had pulled out of a black pile. It may have originally surrounded and supported some kind of giant internal organ, but its purpose was unclear.

Beatrice had said it did not look like a great place to swim, but she held the net in both hands and moved solidly into the water. The waves must have placed more resistance on her feet than she had expected because she pitched forward, tripped, and threw the net while soaking wet.

And just then…

“Boo Boo.”

“!”

Boo Boo’s shoulders jumped when he heard a female voice from directly behind him.

When could someone have approached him on the wide-open beach? While hiding behind one of the black piles so that the Holy Swordswoman could not see her, the Sage held her index finger to her lips and winked.

“…This would get complicated if Beatrice found me, so stay as you are.”

“Squeal.”

“You seem to have collected a fair amount. We should be able to extract all the pure gold we need from this. I will take care of the rest and you can let me handle the fire.”

“Thank you, Sage.”

Those words caused the Beatrice lookalike to briefly lose her calm.

Her eyes widened and then she formed a smile anew.

“No, thank you. I thought I would never again hear those words from an Iberian Orc. I also appreciate what you did for the elder and the others.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I will take this pile of junk away with me, but I do not want Beatrice to see me. Distract her and then find a good opportunity to take her away from the beach.”

[[Image:BooBoo_v06_336.png|thumb]]

“?”

“Simply put, I want you to play with Beatrice. Go on.”

The Sage pressed on his back and he was pushed out from behind the black pile with strength one would never expect based on her appearance.

Beatrice smiled at him while holding the net on the beach.

“Look, Boo Boo. There really is a school of fish gathered near the beach! This is going to be a big catch, so you chase them over to me from there. Hurry!!”

“Right.”

The term “big catch” reminded him of the day the village was attacked. That had been the day that Beatrice taught young Boo Boo how to fish and that had coincidentally saved him. If not for the attack, Beatrice may have been accepted by the villagers much sooner.

And to reiterate, procuring food was a constant requirement. The rules of nature cared not for your personal convenience and the icy fingertip of starvation and death would point at everyone the same.

If you had food, you did not have to worry.

And you could take the time usually spent on procuring food and spend it on something else.

“Squeal! Gather together, fish!!”

“Ah ha ha! Boo Boo, they’re escaping between your legs!!”

===Part 7===

A single gram of pure gold could be pounded out to more than 3 kilos. That of course meant the length of kilometers, not the weight of kilograms. Because it was soft, metal fatigue was not a concern like it was for steel and silver. It would not rust in the room temperature air and it would not be harmed by most chemicals other than aqua regia or an amalgamator.

After the Sage dissolved all the waste material and extracted just the pure gold, there was less than 10 grams in all. The world of semiconductors was a microscopic one, so that was hardly surprising.

However, the nature of gold worked in their favor.

It was not easily altered, so they did not have to worry about it being rendered useless and they could reuse the same gold to practice as many times as necessary before doing it for real.

“Rub-rub…”

A voice came from the Fairy village in the forest.

Palm-sized Meridiana was using her even smaller palms to apply pressure to the gold-glittering precious metal as if spinning it like a drill. Gold’s melting point was 1063 degrees Celsius, but it was already soft enough that there was no need to heat it.

With just one piece of gold thinner than a hair, it would blend into the background and even the small Fairies would lose sight of it if they were not careful. It caught the air like a wing, ignored gravity, and wandered aimlessly side to side in the air.

“Whoops.”

Her sister, Alice, grabbed the gold in her hands and wrapped it around her wrists. As the gold thread intersected like crisscrossing lines of sauce atop a luxurious meal of white flesh fish, its shine grew. It gained a board-shaped thickness it had not had as a single thread. And while this was delicate metalwork, they could not let the thread break. It all had to be connected together like a one-stroke drawing.

This produced a ring large enough for a human finger.

The breathtaking product had both the shine of pure gold and the beauty of a translucent insect wing, but as Elder Morgan flew around and inspected the ring as it dangled from a tree branch with Ground Spider silk…

“It’s broken in some places.”

“Hweh!?”

“Don’t let it get you down, Alice. It isn’t entirely your fault. Look here. There was a lump when the gold thread was made. That makes it unusable. It needs an even thickness throughout.”

“U-uuuh!! Stop insulting Meridiana’s handiwork!!”

They of course had to redo it until they got it right.

And a single miraculous success was not good enough. They needed the reliable skill to repeat it thousands of times without a single mistake.

If the gold thread broke, the signal could not get through. If the thickness was not even, there would be a discrepancy in the electrical resistance and it could overheat or start a fire. Just like a sudden narrowing of a road would cause a traffic jam, the flow of electricity also required traffic control. The history of the semiconductors used in Shining Weapons was a competition to place as many “roads” and “traffic lights” as possible on a single chip to provide the greatest traffic control. Incidentally, a simple lighter made from a battery and aluminum foil took advantage of this by intentionally causing a traffic jam to start the fire.

The Fairies lived in the natural world and did not understand the detailed theories behind the semiconductors that controlled the flow of electricity to perform massive amounts of calculations, but they knew their skill was needed and being tested.

They threw the failed ring in a large coal pot over the fire to melt it down. Of course, the pot was only large at their sense of scale, so it was only about the size of a can of food.

They did not have time to wait for it to cool naturally, so they tossed the melted lump into a bucket of water. With a unique steaming sound, lots of water vapor rose from the bucket. One large advantage of pure gold was that, unlike glass, it would not be damaged on the microscopic level even when exposed to extreme temperature differences.

They had repeated this countless times already.

They had been given this task because of their products made from weaving Ground Spider silk, but the pure gold changed shape fare more easily than the thin but sturdy spider silk. If the thread breaking was the only issue, the work would only require extra care, but the even thickness seemed to get harder the more they focused on it. Just like with traditional craftsmen, getting a “feel” for it through repetition was more important than a simple theory.

“Meridiana, are your hands okay? You aren’t hurting them, are you?”

“I’m fine. More importantly, Alice, we need to stay focused. Once we get a feel for this, we’ll have made a major breakthrough. We can’t see them, but we’ve been stacking up the stones of progress. As long as we don’t let that stack collapse, we can do this. It has to be within reach now.”

“Uuh. If you say so, I guess I’ll work at it a little longer…”

In truth, the time spent waiting for the gold to melt and cool was far harder on their psyches than the time spent focusing on the work. It may have been like how you did not feel at all tired while leaning over your desk as you pulled an all-nighter, but as soon as you leaned back in your chair, you felt like you could never get back up again.

It was better to have no mountains or valleys.

Because there was a chance they could never crawl back up if they rolled down into a valley.

“Rub-rub-rub… Or is it more of a rub-rubbity-rub?”

So instead of just waiting, Meridiana continued practicing the drill-spinning movement with her empty hands.

And her sister had a thought about that diligent behavior.

“…Meridiana, you look kind of like a Leftovers Rainbow Fly.”

“Alice!! You shouldn’t have said that!!!!!”

===Part 8===

The sun had set and night had arrived.

Beatrice had little time left since she had lost her Shining Weapon and could not return to Earth, but they could not perfectly fill their schedules with new tasks. Gathering materials, learning the proper techniques, and the other jobs took time to complete. And if they tried to do too much at once, they would only overwhelm themselves.

“So.”

After crawling from her ghost ship coffin, short but curvy Vampire Kallikantzaros spoke within the mangrove-filled southern forest.

“So the humans of the inn town are not going to act. Even after she saved their world.”

“Well, the problem itself is being kept quiet,” replied Fairy Queen Sutriona.

The silver-haired girl was little different from a human when she kept her power contained, so she had a bad habit of sneaking into the inn town and swiping human toys and snacks. She had simply expanded on her usual route to observe the humans.

Filinion or Armelina could have monitored the festive inn town, but they were human themselves. Sutriona was confident they would fight back if a battle did unfold, but there would be some “hope” contaminating their observations. They would subconsciously overlook some of the malice because they did not want to believe it was there. If anyone was going to observe the inn town while it healed the wounds of the Underworld battle, it had to be someone with an outside perspective. A third party was the most effective option.

“For the time being, I have not caught wind of an attack plan to directly target Beatrice while she is helpless. But some of the more informed are beginning to realize no one can contact Beatrice on Earth or Ground’s Nir ever since the Iberian Orc battle. Of course, they will initially assume she returned to Earth to rest after that major battle. But there is no sign of her back at the Detached Magic Palace she calls home and she is not enjoying the festival at the inn town. And no one would think she was working hard at exploring the Labyrinth so soon. …Someone may put those rumors together and notice something is off.”

Beatrice did have human acquaintances, but Filinion, Armelina, Wildefrau, Huldra, Gruagach, Rusalka, and any other humans that would be concerned for her had all fought on the front line in the battle against the elder.

If anyone was unaware what had happened at the end of that battle but was also persistently pursuing Beatrice’s whereabouts, an unfriendly motive had to be assumed.

It was the same way the humans treated the Break News.

They did not investigate them because they liked them. They feared and hated them, so they could not rest easy until they had as much information as possible. And if they showed any weakness, it was time to deliver a finishing blow. It was a familiar state of affairs for Sutriona and Kallikantzaros.

The Vampire in a red negligee lightly brushed back her long blonde hair.

“For better or for worse, the actions of the Level Cappers stand out. How is the work going?”

“The real work begins tonight.” Sutriona readily spoke words that carried great meaning. “There is still time left, but this will be the first and last chance. If it doesn’t work, I doubt there will be time to come up with another idea. The failure would cause the thread of tension to snap, so I doubt we could expect top performance from them afterwards.”

It was harder for a group to change plans than an individual.

Even if the Sage and Sibyl had a steely resolve, not everyone could keep up with their speed. And in a pressing situation where they had no spare personnel and every gear was necessary, they could not afford to lose a single person. The Sage and the others had stood at the peak for so long that it was unclear how they would handle a need to accommodate their ''weakest link''.

So they had to succeed in this initial attempt when morale was high.

Beatrice’s rescue hinged on whether or not they could accomplish this before losing the assumption that they only needed to look to the peak and do what that person said.

Whether or not they could fix the Shining Weapon rapier and save Beatrice depended on the skill of those performing the work.

But that was not what the Break News could do.

“It is fortunate this is happening at night. Especially so soon after the Iberian Orc incident so inconsiderately occurred during the day.” In her night cap and negligee, Kallikantzaros stroked the gray pig doll in her arms and spoke expressionlessly. “So where will you place the ''breakwater''? Since they only have one shot at this, you don’t want anyone interfering with their work, do you?”

“Fighting the entire inn town won’t be necessary. I said it was only some of the more informed that were catching on, didn’t I? We can suppress this by ensuring that information is not spread to the rest of them. Let’s head to the inn town. We can buy plenty of time by using the raucous partying to sneak up to each of those clever individuals and ''give them a warning''.”

===Part 9===

After making sure Beatrice was sound asleep in the leaf house, Boo Boo made his way to the coastal Cave of Tears. The ecosystem differed between day and night and he was afraid of ghosts, but he had to bear with it.

There was no reason to rush.

In fact, it was important to take their time to repair the rapier right.

“Squeal… Is everyone here?”

His searching voice was answered by something flying toward him from the depths of the bluish glowing cave. He caught it in his large hand to find it was a triangular flask containing a colorful bubbling liquid.

A busty young woman in glasses, White Witch Filinion, explained.

“I doubt you’re accustomed to pulling all-nighters, so use that energy drink. I couldn’t stand being told I couldn’t make one, so I had to prove her wrong.”

“What does that mean?”

“Um, an energy drink is, well…huh? It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s a strange drink that improves your brain efficiency with sugar and various nutrients, that uses artificial sweeteners, artificial flavoring, and carbonation to mask the flavor of the chemicals, and that really just lets caffeine do all the work.”

Doubt darkened Boo Boo’s face as the explanation continued.

It may have been the same as trying to describe the most popular carbonated drink to a Martian and making it sound more like a poison than anything: “It’s a dark, sweet, cold, and bubbly, it’s super popular yet no one really knows how to make it, and it’s strangely addictive.”

Next to the glasses girl, Armelina popped off the lid of an identical triangular flask and chugged the contents.

“It isn’t harmful, so drink up.”

“Okay.”

After having given her lengthy description, Filinion rubbed her forehead against the cave wall, but sometimes actions spoke louder than words.

Boo Boo copied Armelina’s actions to tilt his head back and drink the contents of the triangular flask and then he blinked his eyes.

“Khh… Wh-what is this…?”

“Oh, she took advantage of being in another world when she Mixed it, so it might be a bit much for a beginner. Japan’s safety standards would never let you cram that much caffeine into a single drink.”

“Please stop implying I simply threw a bunch of caffeine into some sugar water. The perfect distribution just so happened to include a lot of it and I didn’t mention all the effort that went into the recipe because I wanted to maintain my image as a cool mature woman, but this really is something only a strongest Level Capper healer could have made. Besides, this is far better than those imported drinks that might as well be mild poisons!! I can’t believe you!!”

“You’re the one that said the caffeine does all the work.”

Those two continued arguing as they walked deeper into the Cave of Tears where they found the preparations well underway. The Sage, Sibyl, Meridiana, and Alice were all present. Beatrice’s broken rapier and its blade were lying on the ground and everyone stood in a circle around them. They had all brought their own “weapons”. The Sage drew her patchwork rapier, Sibyl put on the triple-jeweled circlet, and the palm-sized Fairies held pure gold in their hands.

The Sage turned toward the new arrivals.

“…Perfect timing. How about we get started?”

“What should we do?”

“The White Witch will keep this area clean from a sterilization and disinfection standpoint. The Fighter Priest will use a large obstacle to adjust the flow of air in the cave to adjust the temperature and humidity. Together, you should be able to construct a clean room for handling semiconductors.”

The Sage had mastered all Magic of all Elements, so she could do anything that Filinion or Armelina could. She did not because she had to focus on extracting and recovering the data on Beatrice’s broken rapier.

Also…

“Boo Boo, you can be our record keeper. Beatrice’s survival hinges on her ability to Sign Out and safely return to Earth. She can easily repair her Shining Weapon or get a new one once back on Earth, but I want to provide as much support as possible just in case. Learn all of the steps here so we are prepared in case something happens at a later date. If something does go wrong, you would be the first to notice since you are always by her side.”

It was not over once they rescued her.

So that she could keep going, they wanted to be prepared enough that they could easily handle the same situation again.

If she repaired her Shining Weapon and kept using it, they would have to monitor it afterwards. If she replaced it with a new one, it could always be destroyed in the same way again. If something had happened once, it could always happen again.

Human and Iberian Orc intelligence and brain capacity were fundamentally different. With the full use of his supercomputer-level brain, he would be able to respond to this situation on his own, even if he could not find the Sage or the Fairies. Creating that kind of insurance and leaving a possibility for the future removed some of the psychological pressure from Sibyl, Meridiana, and the others participating this time. It seemed like a simple thing, but it meant a lot. Just like with a tightrope walk, the greater the height and the more important the moment, the less of your normal skill you could draw out. Telling yourself to relax was not enough to actually relax. Including a ''guaranteed effect'' was like having a trump card.

Boo Boo understood that.

He did, but he still gently clenched his fists at not being any immediate use. He just wished his knowledge and skills could do something – anything – on the front line here. Armelina lightly elbowed him while changing her metal staff into a giant box and placing it in the cave passageway with a thud.

“I’ve captured the flow of air. I’ll alter the design to preserve the current stagnation and store air in the work area.”

“I’ve begun distribution as well. Sterilization and disinfection will take effect in 4, 3, 2, 1. Currently cleaning. Sterilization is holding at greater than 99.9%. You can begin at any time.”

The air seemed to cool down all of a sudden.

The Sage placed her patchwork rapier on the ground and reached for Beatrice’s rapier lying parallel to it. She removed a few special screws that looked like snow crystals, opened the cushioning that was shaped something like a crab shell, and revealed a few thin plastic panels within. The ends were discolored and melted with exposed gold wiring in places. It was tricky work, but the Sage’s fingertips moved with perfect precision. This task would require the same delicacy as defusing a bomb.

“…Found it. Sibyl.”

“Yes. I am ''looking''.”

The Royal Elf replied with a calm voice, but she had already shut her eyelids which were decorated with thin eyelashes. The three jewels in her circlet could be seen glowing palely in the darkness. She was likely revealing a different circuit diagram from what was simply on the surface.

“Fairies, to ensure mutual understanding, I will use the numbers derived from the circuit diagram on the cave walls: Focus on #3 and #8 and on #12 and #19. Connect those with gold thread without allowing it to touch anything else.”

“Alice.”

“I’m on it!”

Meridiana produced gold thread thinner than a hair and Alice followed Sibyl’s instructions to connect the damaged wiring sticking out from the breaks in the circuit boards. In semiconductor factories, the wiring was printed using something like a sewing machine, but Alice’s arms rivaled that in speed.

If the miniscule threads touched anything other than the terminal points in the air, it could cause a short and damage further data, but there was no hesitation in the movement of Alice’s fingers. She repaired the broken circuits by bridging the gaps according to Sibyl’s instructions.

There was nothing the Sage could do until the hardware was complete.

She would occasionally use a cotton swab to wipe sweat from the Fairies’ brows, but before too long, Sybil opened her eyes.

She looked to her companion and spoke.

“The preparations are complete, Sage. It is your turn now.”

“Understood.”

With the wiring complete, the Fairies used their clear bug wings to flutter away as the Sage’s fingers traced across the patchwork rapier lying on the ground. Immediately, several rectangular frames appeared in the darkness.

During the Underworld battle, she had remotely accessed Beatrice and the others’ Shining Weapons without a wired connection in order to view the Screenshot photographs contained inside. The Holy Swordswoman had used a cable when connecting to Abyss, but the Sage had no such requirement.

She could access the data with a wireless connection.

If she could access it, she could boot up Beatrice’s broken rapier.

Alice tilted her head while viewing the strings of alphanumeric text scrolling rapidly through the rectangular frames.

“Hmm? So is it working?”

“Alice.”

Her sister, Meridiana, placed a hand on her shoulder to pull her back.

At the same moment, the Sage’s eyebrows trembled slightly.

“…''What is this''?”

That might have been the expected response from a normal person.

But this did not bode well.

A question from the Sage’s mouth and a situation she had not expected were enough to predict the beginning of a catastrophe.

The alphanumeric text scrolling across the frames was unfamiliar to Boo Boo, Meridiana, and the others from Ground’s Nir. No, it may have been just as incomprehensible to Filinion and Armelina from Earth. But Boo Boo noticed something odd as he viewed it. These were definitely strings of alphanumeric text, but there were some areas that only contained dots. And the amount of non-numeric and non-alphabetic characters was increasing. There were meaningless gaps in the scrolling data.

The Sage clearly clicked her tongue.

"Too much of the data is corrupted...At this rate, even if the contents were extracted, we wouldn't be able to fill in the gaps by estimating what comes before or after that data!!"

This should have been a success.

There should have been no mistakes throughout the entire process.

But even so, there was no smile to be found.

Even if everything was done perfectly, there was no saving Beatrice.

"Th-then."

Boo Boo's mind had frozen.

He couldn't see the answer. No, he may have actually understood it after all. Even if he could not make his way to the front line, even if he could only foolishly look to his surroundings. But, even so, he wanted someone smarter that could dispel this foolish sense of unease he was feeling.

"Then, what does this mean?"

Nobody could answer his question.

As the sickening silence continued, the alphanumeric text rapidly scrolling across the floating windows came to a stop.

Even though all of the work is now finished, nobody spoke a word.

There had been an unspoken understanding among them.

They only had one shot at this.

If they did not succeed while morale was high, it would break them and they could never recover.

===Part 10===

The Sage had said they would try everything available to them.

But that implicitly said she did not know how to recover the lost data.

They left the Cave of Tears without coming to any definitive conclusions.

Could they save Beatrice or not?

They had no guarantee.

“…”

“I-it’ll be okay, Boo Boo.”

Late at night, Filinion spoke gently to Boo Boo who was silently trudging back home below the cloudy sky.

“We’re not out of time yet. We have a whole day left, so we have plenty of chances to turn this around. So it’ll be okay. Please don’t let it get you down.”

“Right…”

He wanted to believe her.

Letting his negative thoughts trap him would be meaningless. It worried him endlessly that they had no actual plan. He knew that, but he could not stop the bad feeling growing inside him. He could tell he was being swallowed up by a large but invisible current. He sensed a coming loss. His spine tingled with that familiar sense that reminded him of when so much had been taken from him or destroyed.

His head felt heavy.

He felt a weight in his stomach.

His tear ducts threatened to loosen if he let his guard down. He wanted to yell at the top of his lungs and just run around aimlessly.

“The one thing we know is that we can’t fix this by doing nothing,” said Armelina. “This isn’t the time to feel down, Boo Boo. We need to pull ourselves together even more than before. We’re going to save Beatrice, right? So we don’t have time for shock. We can’t waste any time with the limit approaching.”

Yes.

That was right.

No matter what happened, the limit would approach all the same. If they did not want to simply wait for the coming disaster, they had to keep struggling no matter the situation.

They were not fighting because they knew they could win. The burden on their shoulders was not so light that they could give up just because they were losing.

They had to count themselves lucky for learning this so early on. They had to force themselves onto the next plan.

They had not been faced with this information at the last second. They still had a day. Even if the end was guaranteed to arrive if they did nothing, they still had a whole day to work with. So it would be okay. Beatrice was not going to disappear immediately. If he returned to his leaf house, he would find Beatrice sleeping peacefully there. There was a definite existence there.

So.

So.

So.

“…I’ll head home. Squeal, I need to refocus myself.”

“That’s right. We still have tomorrow, so we don’t need to waste that opportunity.”

“Ha ha. Seeing Beatrice’s face will rid you of your worries. When you’re afraid of some formless anxiety, nothing calms you like something with a definite form.”

The three of them discussed that on the way up the mountain to the leaf house. Boo Boo gradually regained his smile along the way.

“Then…then we still have a chance. Beatrice will still be okay. Squeal, I hope she gets better soon. I want to play with her. I’ll show her how good I’ve gotten at fishing!”

They were too naïve.

Beatrice was collapsed on the ground as if she had tried to drag herself out of the leaf house.

Her limbs were convulsing slightly as she suffocated on the blood she had coughed up.

===Part 11===

The next thing he knew, the sun was in the sky.

Boo Boo could no longer remember what had happened in the meantime.

''“Hey, what’s going on!? Can damage to the autonomic nerves really do this much!? She didn’t bite her tongue, did she? Beatrice, open your mouth. Hurry up and open it, you idiot!!”

''“If she’s coughing up blood, does that mean she has internal bleeding? Did irregular movement of her diaphragm harm her lungs? No, is it a stress ulcer? Armelina, out of the way. I know what Recovery Potion she needs, so hold her jaw and keep her windpipe clear until I’m finished administering it! Just don’t let her suffocate!!”

Some fragmentary memories remained, but he was only really knew that he was glad Filinion and Armelina had been with him. He could not have done anything on his own. Without Filinion’s Recovery Potion and Armelina’s first-aid skills, Beatrice might have lost her life right there.

Why hadn’t he considered it?

If he left Beatrice on her own, who would look after her if her condition worsened? She could not rely on Abyss who could not move. If Boo Boo had been with her…or if he had asked Ileana, Wildefrau, or someone else to help, they could have prevented it from getting this bad in the first place.

“Uuuh…”

It had only been a small hurdle that anyone could have cleared.

But foolish Boo Boo had not even considered it. He had been too naïve. He had not taken the threat seriously.

“Owwwaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

He hated it.

He hated his own hopeless ignorance.

It felt like the result of living such a carefree life. It was his punishment for wasting so much time and learning nothing. But if so, why wasn’t the punishment directed at him? It was always like this for him. Only he survived while everyone he cared for collapsed around him.

Why was the world like this?

It was like unrelated people were sent to hell so that he would suffer.

Deep in the forest, he shoved his forehead against a large boulder and shed large tears. It was not the time for this. They had less than a day left, so the time limit really was approaching. He knew that, but there was nothing else he could do.

Then he heard the rustling of underbrush from behind him.

“You sure are making a racket this morning, Boo Boo. Well, I suppose that girl must be satisfied if you care for her this much.”

“…Sage?”

“Anyone on the island could find you after you yelled like that. I’ve more or less figured everything out, so I’ll give you a report.”

That person who looked so much like Beatrice sat on a nearby stump and snapped her fingers. Sparks scattered like her fingers were made of flint and a rectangular frame of red light appeared in the air.

“After extracting the data from Beatrice’s Shining Weapon, I found that too much is damaged to recover it as-is. I told you that much in the cave last night.”

“Is there…is there some other way of saving Beatrice? If so, please tell me! I’ll do anything!!”

This was not the time for crying.

He did not care if it made him stupid or foolish. If there was anything he could learn, he would do so. He approached the Sage as if grabbing at her, but she only calmly shook her head.

“No. Repairing the Shining Weapon’s personal authentication section is the only way to return Beatrice to Earth and save her.”

“Then…?”

“We will have to change our repair method. I had wanted to predict the contents of the blanks using the files immediately preceding and following them, but entire blocks are missing and that isn’t feasible.” The Sage raised a slender index finger covered in jointed metal. “Beatrice’s Shining Weapon has entire blocks of data missing, so we have to find a way to fill those gaps. Since we can’t rely on the surrounding data, we will need a different hint.”

“What is it? Is this leading in a good direction or a bad direction? Just tell me that up front!”

“That’s hard to say. There are a few different formats for a Shining Weapon’s contents, but Beatrice uses a customized version of a commercial model. That means it will be structured similar to the ones used by other people.”

The Sage opened a new frame and placed it behind the one filled with holes. That filled the holes in from behind.

“We compare Beatrice’s worm-eaten data with someone else’s full set of data and then fill in what is missing. That should let us easily repair the full blocks of missing data.”

“Th-then we can save Beatrice, right!? I don’t have to worry about anything, right!?”

“However.”

The Sage cut him off.

The word filled his chest with an ominous feeling.

“…This would require samples from more than just five or ten people. We would need to gather as many samples as possible to average them out and dilute them down into plain and average data that is something like an artificial organ that is compatible with anyone. Yes, my guess is it would take the Shining Weapons of more than 1000 people. Just getting help from her friends will not be enough here.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Boo Boo silently stared in a certain direction.

He did not need to check the map. He looked to the partially-repaired inn town where the humans gathered. It was a symbol of peace where celebrations continued now that the Red menace was gone.

With no knowledge or skills, that was the only candidate Boo Boo could think of.

“Boo Boo, that would not be easy.”

“But…”

“This isn’t about what they think of Beatrice.”

The Sage must have predicted several things from the moment she had seen the new repair method, so she rejected his idea.

“As you can see from her state, Shining Weapons are the strongest weapon and final lifeline of the humans visiting this world. Lose it, and they will slowly die, no matter how high their Level. No one will just lend you theirs if you ask. Giving you their Shining Weapon is like leaving their life in your hands.”

Yet they needed to see 1000 people’s Shining Weapons. And only the inn town had that many humans.

…If he could not expect their cooperation, what else could he do?

Could he only sit around and wait for Beatrice to die? Could she not rely on anyone for help as she crawled along the ground and coughed up blood, even though a method had already been proposed?

“I will go to Earth,” said the Sage. “The corporations leisurely awaiting results on Earth may be more lax than the Level Cappers who feel at home on the front lines of this world and view their Shining Weapon as their partner. Since I don’t have time to make a gradual approach while applying pressure, it will require a fairly reckless cyber-attack, but if it succeeds, I might be able to steal enough plans directly from the manufacturer’s servers.”

If it succeeds.

Might.

…Not even the Sage could guarantee results. For the arrogant Sage, it was quite timid to consider the possibility that things would not go as planned.

Boo Boo had seen Beatrice coughing up blood on the ground.

He had to consider the possibility that it would not work.

“Boo Boo, I would like to make a suggestion. I wanted to leave this as a last resort, but we really are reaching that point. You know Wildefrau, that Water Element expert, right? I’ll take my time on Earth to make sure I succeed, so there is something I want you to do here.”

“?”

“You can set up some ''definite insurance'' for Beatrice.”

===Part 12===

He was unsteady on his feet.

Boo Boo had failed to meet the basic requirement of procuring food, so he staggered back to the leaf house while holding his stomach which still did not feel any hunger.

It was not enough. That was all he could think about: it was not enough.

So he should have celebrated the reply the Sage had given him. It had made up for what Boo Boo lacked.

The White Witch Filinion and Fighter Priest Armelina were gathered around the campfire doing something.

“Hey, glasses girl. Is this really edible? It looks like a giant booger.”

“How dare you challenge my knowledge of the human body. And it’s not a booger!! It’s just that including only the necessary nutrients isn’t very satisfying, so just like with diet foods, I made it swell out in your stomach so you feel full. And the chocolate, yogurt, and strawberry flavors have my seal of approval. All that’s missing is the patent submission.”

“Ehh? For this giant booger solidified at the bottom of a pot?”

“Fine, let’s take this out back!! Must you ruin all of my efforts because your poor body development makes you view everything in a negative light!?”

As the glasses girl got all heated up, the police officer sighed, raised the wooden spatula she was using to stir the pot on the fire, and whacked the White Witch lightly on the forehead. Filinion screamed and rolled around on the ground.

“…Squeal. What are you doing?”

“Oh. I asked Filinion for some breakfast and she gave me this mystery space food, so we’re discussing what to do with it.”

“I’m pretty sure your reaction was overkill just now! That went far beyond channeling a domineering husband who overturns the tea table! Right!?”

The tearful glasses girl had not learned her lesson, so the police officer treated her to another spatula hit. An infinite loop was setting in, but Boo Boo entered the leaf house because he did not have time to watch.

Beatrice was lying peacefully within.

Who appeared in worse shape: her or Abyss lying deactivated next to her?

“Boo…Boo…”

“Beatrice.”

He slowly bent his legs and sat by her pillow, intentionally suppressed the powerful emotion in his throat, and spoke in short sentences.

“It will be okay. We found a way to save you. So it will be okay. This time…this time for real. We really will save you.”

“…”

“There’s nothing to worry about. The pain and suffering will be gone soon. This time tomorrow, you’ll be running around just fine. So rest easy and get to sleep. Everything will be solved when you wake up…”

She was lying on the floor in only underwear and a blanket and she looked up at him with half-lidded eyes.

She breathed in and out and spoke in a scratchy voice.

“Did the Sage say something to you, Boo Boo?”

“…”

“That’s it. I’m going to punch her for putting that look on your face…”

“No, Beatrice!!”

The Holy Swordswoman seriously tried to get up, so he quickly kept her on the ground. The difference between human and Iberian Orc strength did not matter here. Beatrice was so weak he was afraid just touching her would break her.

After being almost forcibly knocked down, Beatrice looked up at Boo Boo’s face.

“You say it’ll be over if I go to sleep. So did she bring up Wildefrau?”

“…”

“I’m guessing the Sage suggested cold sleep. Well, it makes sense as a form of insurance in case you can’t solve this within the time limit. With years or even decades to work, you’re sure to find several solutions…”

“Beatrice…”

“I’m sorry, Boo Boo. But I won’t use that method.”

“But…but! You can’t just reject it because it was the Sage’s idea! If we have something we know will work, then…!!”

“I’ve already rejected a form of insurance that is guaranteed to work, Boo Boo. It wasn’t cold sleep, though.” Beatrice smiled thinly. “Hey, Boo Boo. Cold sleep comes with its own risks. I assume the Sage explained those to you.”

“Uuh…”

“Yes, that’s the reason for the sad look in your eyes. …I want to punch her so bad.”

“But…even so, I want to save you…”

The girl sighed.

She could barely move, but she released an oddly warm breath as she got to the crux of the issue.

“''Even if it means remaking me so that you are my greatest enemy''?”

A large tremor ran through his body.

He was unable to move for a while.

“Cold sleep sounds nice, but it requires a lot of adjustments. It’s a delicate process where the slightest mistake would cost me my life.” Beatrice looked this precious person in the eye. “And even if you can prepare my body so I will survive, what about the other life forms? I bet my germs, gut flora, and immune system would be wiped out and reset. Once I woke up from my long sleep, I wouldn’t be able to live in a normal environment. I wouldn’t be able to touch you since you live in the forest. My immune system might recover after spending a long time on Earth, but it also might never recover.”

“…”

“Ah ha ha. Is it confusing to talk about things that are too small to see? Regardless, I will not accept that. I feel chills at the mere thought of remaking myself so you’re a deadly enemy. I don’t know what the Sage told you with that thin smile on her face, but that isn’t a gamble I’m willing to make.”

Boo Boo had been told all that.

It would not happen tomorrow or the day after that. That risk would occur if it took them years or decades to find a solution.

“…But.”

Of course he was afraid.

He was no longer alone. But that red-and-silver-haired girl had always been pulling on his hand at the center of that circle of people. The thought of losing Beatrice was even more painful than having his heart torn to shreds. But being something that would kill her would also make him sad.

“But I still want you to live.”

“If you can’t be with the person you love, you can’t really call it living.”

“I just want you to be happy, no matter what form that takes…!!”

“If you really think that would be a happy fate, then you’ve let the Sage influence you. Maybe you need a harsh lecture…”

“It might not be possible to solve this without losing anything. It might be necessary to give up something!!”

The slender girl was unfazed by the monster’s shouting.

In fact, she narrowed her eyes like a mother watching her child throw a tantrum.

“Listen, Boo Boo. The memories of our time together aren’t yours alone.”

“…”

“If I have to give up something, then my life is of secondary importance. I will protect the time we spent together and the bonds we built. I will protect them and die. I don’t care if it’s the Sage or you; I will not let anyone take away the right to be with the person I love… That is my dignity and my pride. I will never distort the Beatrice you took such good care of. If I had to view you with fear, then I wouldn’t be me anymore…”

Then what were they supposed to do?

Was there any way to extend the time limit without the cold sleep trick?

“Let’s do what we can.”

“Beatrice…”

“Let’s fight as hard as we can and accept the result. Let’s settle this fair and square. Whether it succeeds or fails. I will remain true to myself to the end, so don’t worry, Boo Boo. I won’t go anywhere.”

Persuading her with words was simply not happening.

She would never agree to give up on her current life and go elsewhere.

“Uuh.”

His vision blurred.

Crying in front of that suffering girl would only worry her more. It was like telling her he had given up before even trying. But no matter how tightly he clenched his teeth, he could not remain calm.

He was such a fool.

He was so stupid, stupid, stupid and he could not forgive himself for letting this happen.

Was he really so dumb that he did not realize he needed to learn as much as possible in the limited time remaining in the hopes of finding more cards to play?

“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh…!!”

“Ha ha. There’s no way I could leave behind a crybaby like you, Boo Boo…”

All the while, time was passing.

The true sun was already at its peak, indicating that half of the day had gone by.

===Part 13===

Boo Boo stood atop a hill.

The humans who had come from the distant Earth had built up the inn town as a base for their Labyrinth exploration. Some scars remained from the Underworld battle, but it was still the most active part of the island.

Many humans were gathered there, which in turn meant many Shining Weapons.

Everything needed to save Beatrice would be there.

“…”

But as he stood there, a dry sound reached his ears.

A skeleton in a cowboy hat had walked up. It was Skull Wave who gathered the remains of the many people who had lost their lives in this world.

“You aren’t considering a very bad idea, are you?”

“Boo. …Hey, Skull Wave.” Boo Boo continued staring into the distance. “How does it feel to die?”

“Couldn’t tell you. I’m really just an emulation of a dead person’s personality. I was constructed after death, but I haven’t actually passed the point of death myself. And if secondhand information is good enough, you could get it from anyone.”

“…”

“Were you going to accept her fate if I said it wasn’t that bad? To be clear, that’s not the real issue here. Boo Boo, this is your life. Instead of thinking about the person facing death, you should think about how you’ll feel being left behind.”

“Beatrice says she would rather die than live on without me.”

“She’s a strong girl. And you aren’t helping matters there, but that’s not what anyone was talking about.” The skeleton put his hands on his fleshless and skinless hips. “Listen, the Underworld is no more. That means I control all the humans who died in Ground’s Nir.”

“…?”

“I’m not saying I’ll create an emulation of Beatrice’s personality. Look at it more simply. If she dies, her body will turn to bone and become a part of me. She’ll be drawn to me and be known as Skull Wave. Would you be able to bear that?”

Boo Boo said nothing.

But a clear pressure emanated from his giant body and that seemed to satisfy the cowboy hat skeleton.

“…''So you do understand''.”

“S-squeal? What do you mean?”

“You don’t want anything to take Beatrice from you, right? Even if that’s fate and it can’t be helped, you just can’t accept it, can you? You managed to recover after your village was attacked and your entire family was killed, but this alone you can’t bear. Even when you feel like having things taken from you is inevitable, there is a definite threshold when it’s just too much. So that feeling is real. And what in this world is more powerful than that? Even if the god in heaven has decreed it and even if she’s given up on herself, why do you have to stand aside in the life you were given? Be honest with yourself. Be honest and you’ll know what it is you have to do.”

It was a dark feeling.

It was muddy and unpleasant.

To eat and to live.

Boo Boo had rejected violence for any other purpose, so this feeling never should have existed in his heart.

“To hell with that,” said Skull Wave. “What’s wrong with this?”

The monster trembled in fear, thinking this was a result of the exhaustion that came rushing back now that he felt cornered, but Skull Wave laughed.

He held the cowboy hat down with one hand and said it clearly.

“''What could be wrong with a man falling in love with a woman?''”

Time stopped.

The confusing thing boiling inside him had been named and categorized, so he could finally begin processing it accordingly. Unable to bear the uncomfortable silence, the feeling raged around Boo Boo’s entire body but had no outlet.

That was how love worked.

If you could control the feeling, it would never be called love in the first place.

“Good and bad and all those concerns don’t matter,” said the being who existed beyond death. “It doesn’t matter if you’re stupid, foolish, or lacking. As long as you have ''that'' inside you, you’re standing at the top of the world. You’re a winner. Even if someone else tries to deny it, nothing was wasted on the way to gaining ''that''. Not one thing. After all, there’s no set path to reach it. Everyone has their own path and they’re all the most perfect answer for that person.”

“…”

I don’t get it. I don’t get it. I don’t understand.

Just a few seconds earlier, Boo Boo might have responded like that. Just as he had countless times before during his aimless days.

But that had changed.

He was no longer falling behind. He stood on the front line of the world.

“Are you afraid of losing her? Do you want to run wild when you even imagine the moment she’s taken from you? Then think about what it is you really need to do. I’m not talking about a haphazard rampage or emotional resignation. Everyone knows men are willing to throw away their own lives for love. So set aside what’s possible and impossible, line up all the cards you have, and think about what you can do for the person you love.”

“…”

“I’m not talking about figuring out which card to choose. Have you divided them between those you can choose and those you can’t? Then you already know some cards you couldn’t choose. If you could have helped with her suffering but you pulled back your hand before even trying because the walls of reality got in the way, you’ll never forgive yourself. Now, let’s shuffle them all together again. Let’s lay them all out and view them all. …What will you choose? Whatever you reached for now that you’re feeling that anger is what you really want to do.”

Boo Boo sniffled his nose.

He rubbed his eyes and looked to the human-filled inn town once more.

“Have you found what you really, truly want to do?”

“Yes. Beatrice said to do what we can, but I know that isn’t the right answer. It wouldn’t satisfy anyone.”

He no longer had the look of a lost child.

The light in his eyes did not waver.

“…''I’ll try doing what I can’t do.'' That has to be my right answer.”

===Part 14===

A low tremor ran through the ground.

The people looked around in confusion and then spotted the abnormality.

“Boo…”

It was a pig-faced giant who stood nearly four meters tall. The gray Iberian Orc with incredibly powerful muscles was walking straight toward the inn town.

The inn town acted as the humans’ base, but it was not surrounded by tall walls. There were exceptions like the Break News, but the humans trusted the firepower of their Magic enough to forego a wall. Instead of defending with shields, they eliminated threats with their weapons. That was the general policy concerning Nonhumans for the people who used and protected the inn town.

And that Iberian Orc was not just a wild beast. You could say he had a criminal record. Even if he had been fighting to save Beatrice, Filinion, and Armelina from Elkiad’s fierce attack, he had not been given a chance to explain the circumstances.

At the time, Fairy Queen Sutriona had used her disaster-level power to leave the result unclear, but if he went out of his way to pick at that old wound, the humans would have little trouble piecing the memories back together.

The festive mood vanished almost instantly.

The town was still scarred by the Underworld battle and a panic filled it like someone had poked a hornet’s nest.

“Stop! Stop right there!!”

“Trying to convince him his useless. Shouting will only get him worked up. Shield unit, to the front!! Once you stop him, we’ll fire. Just follow your training. And if it comes to it, we can always use Recovery Magic as long as you don’t die!!”

“That’s the Dragon Eater. He can move a lot faster than you would think. Do not let your guard down and always keep him in your sights. Don’t forget to use Curse homing!!”

He had yet to enter the inn town.

He had not done anything, but so many Shining Weapons were already aimed at him.

Shining Weapons.

He needed as many of those as possible to protect someone he cared for.

“I want to save Beatrice…”

How much courage had it taken to force out those words?

He had always kept his distance even during the festivals that had looked like so much fun, but he had broken his own policy to approach these strangers and bow his head. Just how madly had that choice made his heart pound in his chest?

“Please help me!! It doesn’t have to be for long, but I need to see your Shining Weapons. That’s all I need to save someone important to me!!”

Naturally, there was no response.

Several lightning-like flashes of light approached from dead ahead. This was warning Magic that had no destructive power behind it. The intense light was only meant to blind the target and the real attack would come from the fully-equipped knights who held shields so large they could hide their entire body behind it.

The shield unit charged forward in a row to form a single wall.

They used the slight time available to approach their target.

Of course, blinding an Iberian Orc was not enough to stop him from fighting. With his ears and nose, he had plenty of other senses to use. If he swung around the thick Shining Weapon hanging from his hip, he could take out all of the approaching knights in a single blow.

But he did not.

He suppressed the fear and clenched his teeth while allowing the several large shields to charge straight toward him.

He ignored them and raised his voice.

“I was told how important Shining Weapons are for humans!! I was told giving them to someone is like giving that person your life. I was told no one would lend theirs to me if I asked!! So I won’t just ask. I’ll risk my life to earn your trust! I’ll show you it’s safe to let me see them and that I won’t take your lives!! So-…!!”

His words were cut off early.

Even large shields could be used for fierce attacks if the wielder hit the target with the corner. But the shield unit was only meant to hold him in place.

The real attack was a barrage from behind them.

With an explosive boom, a giant ball of flames slammed into Boo Boo between the eyes. Even the powerful muscles of an Iberian Orc could only do so much if he did not dodge at all. His head wobbled. He desperately tried to hold onto his consciousness and blood flowing from his split forehead covered his right eye.

He had lost half his field of vision, but he still shouted.

“Help her. Please help Beatrice!!!!!!”

A second and third attack mercilessly flew his way.

The shield unit gathered around him was blown away in some friendly fire as the major Magic techniques continually shook Boo Boo’s giant body. His thick skin was torn away and his blood sprayed out.

…Fighting and stealing the Shining Weapons may have been an option.

But Boo Boo had not chosen that route. Even if all those sacrifices saved Beatrice, she still had a life to live afterwards. He could not let her future be crushed by grudges and regret.

Beatrice had said her life was of secondary importance.

Boo Boo felt the same.

If he could give her a bright future, he was willing to sacrifice his own life.

“…Your…Shining…Weapons…”

The explosive roars continued on and on.

More and more major attacks were fired at him, the firing squad began to breathe heavily from the psychological burden, a rusty flavor spread through his mouth, and yet Boo Boo still got the words out.

“Lend me your Shining Weapons…just for a little while. I swear…I will bring them…back…”

There was a tremor.

He had finally reached his limit.

“…Save…”

His words trailed off.

The monster’s giant body toppled forward.

“…Beatri…”

Meanwhile, the palm-sized Fairy Meridiana grew pale and shouted while she watched from afar.

“L-Lady Sutriona!! Boo Boo is…hurry…do something…ahh…you only have to distract…just draw the humans attention elsewhere!!”

“Wait.” The Break News spoke that one word with an exasperated sigh. “While I do need to punch that bony bastard later, this is the obstacle Boo Boo set up for himself. So he has to overcome it himself. Reach out a helping hand here and it will only cause his heart to rot.”

“This isn’t about that psychological stuff!! None of that matters if he’s killed right here and now!!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

Sutriona was right.

After the gray monster collapsed face down, the person who had fired that final shot actually looked confused while wiping sweat from their chin. The inexperienced rookies were celebrating, but the veteran Level Cappers could tell something was not right. If he was that tough, he could have charged straight through their barrage and reached them. Each of their powerful attacks took time to activate, so they were done for if he got close. And yet he had stayed in one place. He had wasted his opportunity. He had never drawn the Shining Weapon at his hip and he had continued rambling. It was said a drowning man would grasp at straws, but did this monster not have that biological instinct? It should not have been possible to not draw your weapon when faced with certain death, so everyone who had seen that impossible courage felt a tremor run down their spin, like they had seen someone commit suicide in only the water in a wash basin.

No one delivered a finishing blow.

It would be hard to find a part of him that was not wet with blood. They could not even tell if he was still breathing. But for some reason, no one approached even after he had collapsed defenseless onto the ground. No one thought about discarding his corpse in some more distant location. It was a small island, but the rules of survival of the fittest still applied outside the inn town. Since this animal could no longer stand under his own power, did they assume some other beast would take care of the cleanup for them?

No.

Perhaps they simply did not want to end it.

Perhaps they wanted to see what would happen next.

“…”

One of the people who had formed the impromptu shield unit remained in place without speaking a word.

He was a man known as the Pure Knight.

He stood there a while staring at the bloody beast.

“What’s with you? It’s over, ain’t it?”

“Let’s get back and get drunk again.”

Even when some others wielding large shields called out to him, the Pure Knight did not move. He was of much lower rank. Even after a frank comment from someone with a clear position in the hierarchy, he ignored them and stayed put. He felt a slight prickle of guilt.

This monster had been faced by such hostility.

The Pure Knight wondered what the monster had been trying to accomplish. Unless it was a diversion of some kind, there was no good reason to suicidally take it all head on. And even if it had been a diversion, there would have been no reason not to use the Shining Weapon at his hip.

Could there really have been nothing more to it?

He had said he wanted to borrow everyone’s Shining Weapons to rescue Beatrice.

That made no sense whatsoever, but was that really all there was to it?

“What is it? Looking for some way to profit from this? Or do you want his head as a trophy?”

“This damn pig is wearing a Shining Weapon like he thinks he’s human. Heh heh heh. I wonder how many gears I’d get if I sold that thing at the pawn shop.”

There was a loud sound of metal on metal. Not even the Pure Knight knew why he had punched his friend in the face.

===Part 15===

“Boo Boo.”

The Iberian Orc slowly opened his eyes when he heard his name.

His surroundings had already grown dark.

And with the unchanged moon behind her, Vampire Kallikantzaros peered down at his face with her short but curvy body dressed in a red negligee and night cap.

“…What a shame. If you had taken just a little longer to wake, I would have had an excuse to sink my fangs into you.”

It was unclear how serious she was about that.

For some reason, the small girl was seated on a simple cart made of wood.

When injured Boo Boo sat up, he realized he was in the location of the previous conflict.

And there was something odd there: swords, spears, axes, bows, clubs, hammers, whips, staffs, and shields.

All the different weapons and armor that humans used formed a pile larger than Boo Boo himself.

They were Shining Weapons.

Those were the control devices for the technological system known as Magic. Leaving these with someone in this foreign world should have been the same as leaving your life in their hands.

“Why are these here…?”

“I do not know what happened during the day,” said the blonde girl in a red negligee who sat on the cart presumably prepared to transport the Shining Weapons. “But it seems Demon Lord Tselika did something behind the scenes. That toxic woman is apparently worshiped like a god by a portion of a group on their Earth…Over the Wall, was it called? The power balance on Earth is directly linked to that of the inn town. If she is worshiped by a secret society that manipulates Earth from behind the scenes, then she can also control what is seen as right and wrong in the inn town. She laid the groundwork needed to control the majority.”

“???”

“…Still, that means she managed to get them to cooperate after they attacked you so much while you were defenseless. She gave an extra push to the ones she could trust after they were already shaken by what had happened. Almost like a psychological pincer attack. To the ones affected, it probably felt like a twinge of guilt. …That toxic woman really is a Demon Lord to the core. A certain queen I know almost looks cute in comparison.”

“Squ-squeal… I’m not sure what you’re saying – cough – but you think Sutriona is cute?”

“Bfff!? Wh-wh-what would possess you to reach that conclusion!? Who would…who would ever like her!? Cough, cough!!”

The Vampire blushed bright red and shouted angrily, so Boo Boo ignored her and looked to the pile of Shining Weapons.

He had cleared the impossible task the Sage had left him with.

Now they could finally fix Beatrice’s Shining Weapon and get her back to Earth. Then Beatrice would not have to suffer any longer.

It was in sight.

It was coming down to the wire, but it was in sight.

“Now, a question concerning what comes next. Like I said, Tselika possesses great power on Earth by controlling a portion of Over the Wall. There was one thing she did not have the answer to when I contacted her, so I want your opinion too, Boo Boo. Given what I have heard, you were likely the last one to see her.”

“?”

“Where is the Sage?”

That symbol of death spoke clearly.

Boo Boo had finally started to see hope, but her words seemed to indicate a depthless darkness.

“Not even Tselika’s information network can find her. That may not be too surprising for the Sage, but where on Earth did she disappear to? And just to be sure, she will return before the time limit, won’t she?”

===Part 16===

The wooden wheels groaned as they rolled up the mountain.

Boo Boo pulled the cart full of Shining Weapons back to his house on the slope.

The Cave of Tears was also Tselika’s treasure trove.

If that white Demon Lord did not know the answer, then the only other possibility was here.

But there was no sign of her.

There was no campfire lit and the tent-like leaf house was wrapped in silence.

“…”

It was hopeless now.

It had all crumbled around him.

…The Sage had left for Earth after suggesting they put Beatrice in cold sleep. She may have intended to ignore the time limit and take her time. If so, the misunderstanding was partially Boo Boo’s fault. He had failed to change the Sage’s mind or Beatrice’s mind, so he had ended up just wandering around meaninglessly.

If he had shown more courage then, this crucial branch may have occurred sooner.

Struggling against the current of destruction was useless after it already had you in its grasp.

“Why…?”

He felt truly hopeless.

He could only sniffle and cry as he leaned on the handle used to pull the cart.

“…Why!!!???”

There was no invisible destiny. There was no cruel god. No matter how much he burned with regret and trembled, this was who he was. It had been the same with the attack on his village. It had all happened without his knowledge and it had been over by the time he noticed. The final decision had been made long, long before he realized what was happening. It was always like that. Was it simply his fate to have things taken from him and destroyed? It was his fault for not taking action to prevent it before it happened. He cursed how slow he was. He could not forgive his mind for never being able to keep up.

He could not come to a stop, but he had nowhere to go either.

He simply followed his homing instinct and trudged back to his tent-like home made from large leaves.

It remained the same.

Beatrice was sleeping in her underwear and a blanket as she waited for the time limit which was not provided as an obvious number.

There was no convenient change.

“What…is it, Boo Boo?”

“Beatrice…”

He had no idea what look he had on his face.

He simply clung to her and failed to hide the shaking of his voice.

“It’ll be okay.”

He said it.

He had no choice but to say it.

“Look, I spoke with everyone at the inn town and they all lent me the Shining Weapons that are more important than their lives. So everything will be okay. The Sage will take care of it now. There’s nothing to worry about. You’ll definitely get better now.”

That solution was no longer viable.

Due to a tiny misunderstanding, they had no idea where the Sage was.

Boo Boo was scared.

He was known as the Dragon Eater, but he was utterly terrified.

There’s nothing I can do. I tried everything I could think of, but it wasn’t enough.

His entire body was wrapped in the vague terror that speaking those words would make them true.

“Yes…”

Beatrice could not even sit up, but she smiled a bit while lying down.

“I’m really glad.”

“…Beatrice.”

“You’ve gained the courage to speak with other humans, haven’t you? Look how beat up you are. It couldn’t have been easy. But I’m really glad that you’ve made that kind of progress.”

“Beatrice?”

“…This way you won’t be lonely without me. Boo…Boo…”

She was smiling.

Her head wobbled a bit with that fleeting smile on her face.

And then her brief period of consciousness faded.

Almost like this was her natural state.

“…Of course I will be.”

Finally.

Boo Boo bit his lip and spoke.

“Of course I will be.”

Once he started, he could not stop.

Some kind of dam may have broken inside him.

“Of course I’ll be lonely!! I don’t want anyone else!! It has to be you, Beatrice! No one else can replace you!! I…I…”

There was no one to respond.

He had carved a symbol into 1000 trees, he had gathered all those people who were smarter than him, and he had convinced everyone from the inn town to leave their Shining Weapons with him.

And yet.

Cruel reality still insisted on taking everything from him.

He could only shout and yell.

He could only gather all his strength to lament how unfair it was.

“''I like you best. It has to be you smiling there''!!”

And.

Just then.

“…?”

He suddenly raised his head.

A faint light was flashing. It was inside the same leaf tent. And he was pretty sure it had not been there before. The red light was small, but it was unstable. It may have been a fire. Beatrice could not protect herself right now, so her life would be at risk if a lamp fell over and started a fire.

However, what he found was not at all what he had expected.

It was not a lamp full of oil.

The light came from Ultimate Weapon Abyss who had supposedly been deactivated next to Beatrice. A red triangular symbol was appearing and disappearing below her chest. It may have been some kind of warning. The lines on her black, skintight clothing also turned red.

“Abyss…?”

It happened as soon as he spoke her name.

He could not take his eyes off of the flashing red light. It had the same rhythm as the beating of his heart. No, the light may not have actually existed. A voice reached his brain while he stared at the red warning triangle that seemed burned directly into the back of his mind.

Abyss// I must apologize. I had calculated this would happen from the beginning.

He could not fight it.

He could not move a single finger.

Boo Boo did not know that Beatrice, Filinion, and Armelina had once used a virtual reality to experience the end of the world in advance, so he did not know that Abyss was capable of linking directly to living brains.

Abyss// I had hoped I was wrong, but it seems I expected too much from the world’s kindness.

Abyss// This will be a difficult topic.

Abyss// Boo Boo, do you wish to save Beatrice?

“If there’s a way…”

A straining sound came from all the muscles in his body.

He was still being controlled in some way, but the pig-faced giant still slowly but surely nodded his large head.

“…If there’s a convenient way of doing that, then I’ll do anything!”

Abyss// It is a horrible and very cruel thing.

Abyss// You will be unable to see the world after she has been saved.

Abyss// Knowing that, do you still wish to save her?

That went without saying.

The ultimate weapon took his silence for an answer and continued on.

Abyss// If you cannot fix Beatrice’s Shining Weapon, you must provide her with a new one.

Abyss// You have always been able to do that.

Abyss// That weapon at your hip is a Shining Weapon.

Abyss// You will create a new settings profile for that free Shining Weapon that no one is using.

Boo Boo did not understand the details of the technology, but he had a question. He was pretty sure the Sage had said that was not possible.

But there was no hesitation in Abyss’s voice.

Abyss// The fact that you can hear me is proof that you are qualified.

“…Qualified?”

Abyss// Normally, contacting me requires a high-level data terminal such as a Shining Weapon.

Abyss// However, you are accessing me with nothing of the sort.

Abyss// How did you determine I was attempting to commit suicide in the Labyrinth’s central shaft?

Abyss// How did you know the method of dueling Disaster who was created from dead flesh?

Abyss// How did you sense the sadness of the Underworld Lord who used artificial signals to control a vessel of flesh?

Abyss// No words were necessary.

Abyss// You possess the power to directly control faint electric currents.

Abyss// You are equipped with that function.

There was no way this explanation would feel real to him.

At any rate, Abyss was smarter than him and was giving him her guarantee.

That was all he understood.

Abyss// In the simulation, the other Iberian Orcs predicted a lightning strike.

Abyss// How did the souls in the Shining Weapon take control of your body?

Abyss// Did you sense an odd crackling feeling when the artificial atmospheric barrier was destroyed?

Abyss// Everything that happened was meaningful.

Boo Boo had no way of knowing, but the Red Iberian Orcs had attempted to use their supercomputer-level brains to perform calculations equivalent to a Shining Weapon so they could hack the Gates and invade Earth. But simply performing the calculations in their head was not enough. If they could not exchange actual signals, they could not control the Gates.

Abyss// This was probably originally part of their role as a secret weapon against me.

Abyss// The Iberian Orcs absorbed the strong points of many lifeforms in order to battle me.

Abyss// I can only assume one of those lifeforms was some kind of electric fish that could produce electricity.

Abyss// Although I do not know if it was meant to understand the electricity that controls me or if it was meant to directly destroy me.

Even after being told this, Boo Boo did not suddenly know how to control it.

It was possible no one knew.

Iberian Orcs controlled each of their own powerful muscle fibers to avoid destroying themselves, but this may have been the greatest of secret techniques even for them.

Abyss// You only need to hold that free Shining Weapon and strongly will it to be.

Abyss// You need to register Beatrice as its owner.

Abyss// You can solve this by taking the image of Beatrice in your head and sending it into the Shining Weapon.

Abyss// After observing her from close by for so long, you should be able to do this.

But that could not be all it was.

Abyss had said at the beginning that he would be unable to see the world after Beatrice had been saved.

Abyss// The electric fish is just one possibility that was ultimately rejected and faded away.

Abyss// You only possess the degenerated bud and your body is not specialized for its use.

Abyss// If you forcibly use that power, your body will be exposed to the electric current you yourself create.

Abyss// The fate of a High Voltage Eel with no way of allowing its electricity to escape is clear as day.

Abyss// Thus, this is a double-edged sword.

Abyss// You will destroy your own body.

Abyss// That sacrifice is the only way to save Beatrice.

There was a way to save her.

If Boo Boo made that decision.

Knowing and not knowing were two very different things.

A drowning man would grasp at straws.

“…”

He thought about what this meant.

But Boo Boo softly smiled.

Abyss// I am sorry.

For some reason, she apologized.

And a moment later, he was freed from her bonds.

There was no more light coming from Ultimate Weapon Abyss. Not even Boo Boo himself knew whether she had really been glowing or if it had been an illusion only he could see.

Her voice no longer filled his head.

“It’s okay…”

This was all he said.

“You have nothing to apologize for. I am very grateful.”

He had no time.

Now was not the time to tremble and hesitate.

He had a way to save Beatrice.

He slowly breathed in and then drew the Shining Weapon which looked like a log or a steel beam.

“Boo…Boo…?”

He heard a voice.

He finally understood why Abyss had apologized. The girl’s consciousness had been rising and falling, and it had just risen once more. He did not know if Beatrice had heard the voice he had heard in his head, but Boo Boo’s words had been spoken aloud normally. That was only a fragment of the conversation, but she may have sensed something ominous about it.

“There’s nothing to worry about now.” He smiled. “This time I really will save you. So you don’t need to tremble in pain any longer…”

Beatrice slowly shook her head.

She may have gathered all of her remaining strength to tell him she did not want that.

He already knew that, but he did not listen.

He would remain true to himself to the end, just as she had. He would use his own strength to race to the finish line in order to protect something more important to him than his own life. He had made that decision.

Skull Wave had revealed that this feeling was love.

He started to say so, but he gulped and fell silent. It only mattered that he knew it. He had not embraced this feeling in order to indulge in something and worry over it. So he swallowed the words. He trampled and crushed the small feeling growing inside him and took the last step.

He would save her.

He would save the life of the person he cared for more than anyone else in the world.

Was this a small miracle?

Or was it an act of the devil?

With the giant Shining Weapon’s grip in both hands, Boo Boo held it vertically, pressed his forehead against the striking portion, and shouted from the bottom of his gut.

Once he started, it did not take long.

It seemed to pour down. Something shot from the top of his head to the bottom of his butt. Several strange bluish-white flashes filled the leaf house and he sensed the unpleasant smell of his own flesh frying.

He had no way of checking on his own condition. His entire vision had whited out. Each of his organs wriggled on its own and moved so violently he thought he was being torn apart from skin to core.

He felt no pain.

His muscles would not stop convulsing. He could not even tell if he was breathing. His heart pounded irregularly and his mind seemed to be falling apart. When a piece fell away, he could not remember what it was no matter how hard he tried. No, he may not have been able to even try to remember. What was being destroyed: his muscle fibers, his ganglia, his skeleton, his organs, his heart, his life? He felt so horribly impatient, but he still focused his mind so very strongly on the image of that most important person. That became the only pillar of his world. He was already on the verge of forgetting his initial goal. Before he lost sight of everything, he had to fill the giant Shining Weapon with that girl’s smile which remained in the core of his soul.

He heard some kind of phantom noise.

He felt a pressure like there was something on the other side of the raised Shining Weapon that resembled a log or steel beam. It was a quadrupedal beast, a giant scaly fish, and a monstrous bird that ruled the skies with its wings. It transformed again and again to show all the lifeforms the Iberian Orcs had incorporated into their genetic line and it spoke with a voiceless voice. The meaning of the words did not reach him, but the emotion contained within vividly pierced him.

''Stop.

''Turn back.

That may have been the thick pillar that supported his life. All lifeforms literally were forms of life. Life came first and foremost. He could not overcome the will to use his own power to keep living. Being the strongest may have made that pressure to live even stronger. The drive that had served him well during his previous battles was now working against him.

But. Even so.

He sensed some faint presences outside the tent-like leaf house. There were more than a thousand presences there. Boo Boo quickly realized those were the Shining Weapons the humans at the inn town had lent him. They had listened to his request and lent him that power so that Beatrice could live.

He was currently connected to the Shining Weapon that resembled a log or steel beam.

So why would he be unable to connect to the others?

“I won’t stop…”

He tore apart the idea of being strongest as an individual.

He was no longer alone and he could continue on with everyone’s help!

“I will protect her. That’s the path I chose! This…this decision is the strongest thing I can think of!!”

He would die. He knew that. But that was why he wished so hard to fill the Shining Weapon with the image, smile, and wonders of the person he cared for most. If he did that, he could leave something behind. Just like a flower scattering to drop its fruit.

He would not become nothing. He was not afraid.

He filled it in.

He filled in that blank space.

After seeing beyond the strongest that supported him, there was nothing left inside Boo Boo. His head wobbled and it would never rise back up. His powerful bones and muscles were no help at all with supporting his weight. As he collapsed backwards, he could not even think of a reason why he needed to keep his balance.

His entire body had been fried.

It was over.

The shouting sounded different now. His throat had long since forgotten how to vibrate, so it probably now came from the girl lying on the floor. But he felt no fear. He did not understand why he was hearing that shrill cry.

If he collapsed, it would be over.

It would shatter the remaining shreds of his mind.

He knew that, but he did not fight it.

He no longer had the strength to fight it.

But.

However.

Just before he completely collapsed, he looked to the girl whose face was crumpled up like a bawling child and he smiled ever so slightly.

He could not remember why he was smiling.

But in the moment he truly vanished from the world, a string of sounds he did not understand spilled from his mouth:

''It’ll be okay now.

===Part 17===

It was a small enough island for humans to walk the perimeter in three days.

With the scenic land and sea, it was a calm but never boring place.

A single form walked there.

That Holy Swordswoman had distinctive red and silver hair, red armor, and a white miniskirt. However, she did not wear her usual rapier at her hip.

Instead, she carried something on her back that was large enough to mistake for a log or steel beam.

The blunt weapon was clearly too large for her, but there was no pain on her face.

…She had wondered what the best place would be.

She had looked at a number of different spots, but there had always been only one real answer.

It was a small hill partway up a mountain.

He had always stood in that spot that overlooked the inn town the humans used as a base.

There was a quiet sound there.

The girl had stabbed the tip of a large shovel into the ground.

“Oh, Beatrice? Should you really be out and about so soon?”

That question came from White Witch Filinion, the girl’s friend.

The Holy Swordswoman did not remove the tip of the shovel from the ground as she dragged it along the hill.

“I wanted to come to Ground’s Nir and see how much I had recovered.”

“…Not that. Are you okay?”

The Fighter Priest held another shovel and she had a strange mixture of worry and exasperation in her voice.

The girl’s movement nearly stopped, but in the end, the red-armored Holy Swordswoman drew the line to the very end.

“Of course I’m not okay.”

She looked back at the lines she had drawn in the ground.

It was a large, large rectangle capable of containing a nearly-4m form.

“…But I have to do this. I have to look after him and see him off.”

Once that was decided, the rest did not take long.

The sounds of digging continued for a while. Thanks to the Percentage-type Magic that took the form of the clothing they wore, they had the strength of construction equipment, so they quickly constructed a rectangle made of artificial straight lines not seen in nature.

“It doesn’t just end with death…”

She seemed to reflect on each word individually.

No one knew what was in that girl’s heart as she dug that large hole. Filinion and Armelina had stood by her side and fought back-to-back with her, but not even they could be certain.

At times, shaking your head and saying you did not know was the greatest form of compassion.

And Holy Swordswoman Beatrice said one last thing.

“Because Boo Boo told me to keep on living.”

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| Back to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume6_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
| Return to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume6_Epilogue|Epilogue]]
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</noinclude>

The Weakness of Beatrice the Level Cap Holy Swordswoman:Volume6 Chapter 4

2020-10-07T14:22:26Z

Entei08: There was a page missing in the translation

==Chapter 4: Challenging an Utterly Impossible Obstacle==

===Part 1===

As evening turned to night, the ground shook.

Upon learning the Reds were no longer active, the humans raised a battle cry of victory that shook the distant mountain where Boo Boo and the others were. The solid ground was shaken by nothing more than human voices and the emotion of excitement. Dry bursting sounds, cheers, and laughter blended together. They may have been having a celebration with special food and drink brought from the partially-repaired inn town.

However.

Boo Boo did not have time to even look in the party’s direction.

Time was the enemy.

There was some variance between individuals, but a few days was the limit. And Beatrice had already used up a lot of that time on dealing with the Red Iberian Orcs. They did not have a single minute or second to spare. Their only option was to rack their brains and list out every idea they could think of.

Armelina looked overhead.

“The artificial atmospheric barrier has been silent ever since. Did that attack bring it to a stop, or was that an irregular situation even for it? But I guess that’s fine since we’d have bigger problems than treating Beatrice if it kept firing those.”

“Squeal. What is a Shining Weapon? Can’t she borrow one of the ones all of you are using?”

“Each Shining Weapon is limited to a single person, so you can’t borrow someone else’s. It would also be difficult to bring a new Shining Weapon from Earth to Ground’s Nir because the authentication work is generally done using machines on Earth. They really are your lifeline, so you’re screwed if you lose yours.”

“Ch-chief. Is there no way to repair a Shining Weapon?”

“…It is technically possible, but we’re talking about a collection of precision machinery. We would have to construct a handmade semiconductor factory with full sterilization. We only have a few days left, so there simply isn’t enough time.”

“What about the bottom of the Labyrinth? Ultimate Weapon Abyss is a mechanical doll, right?”

“That uses entirely different standards from what we use on Earth. It seems we can connect our Shining Weapons with Abyss using a cable, but that only works because Abyss is adjusting her registry to match. Her normal methods would not work.”

“I-if it comes to it, I could get Ileana’s help to create a powerful resurrection potion. We could always just resurrect her every few days…”

“Only you could do that, glasses freak. A normal human would go mad.”

With that, Armelina scratched at her hair.

Then she breathed a heavy sigh.

“…Sorry.”

“No, we are not looking for solace through nice-sounding words. We need a realistic solution, so we cannot run from the severe hurdles.”

They were discussing it like this because Beatrice was unconscious.

Who could directly tell her that she could no longer Sign Out and she could only wait for death as her body and mind were slowly eaten away?

The man known as Omega, who had reigned at the top of the Western forces during the Cold War, had lost his life due to a plot abusing the inability to Sign Out. And even with Demon Lord Tselika by his side, he had been unable to alter his fate. That showed how dire the situation was.

This was not something that could be overcome with great historical deeds or cheap, dime-a-dozen miracles.

The battered girl’s chest quietly rose and fell in Boo Boo’s large hand.

After hearing what Ice Waterfall Princess Wildefrau had said, Gruagach hesitantly raised a hand.

“Tselika, you fought against this exactly problem before, didn’t you?”

“…I am not aware of any method to truly transfer a human-sized object between worlds.”

A translucent demon woman with an angel’s halo and large horns floated next to Gruagach.

She held her bewitching body in her arms like she did not know what to do with it.

“More importantly, if you have people with high-level potion and freezing skills, I would suggest using cold sleep. It will only delay the inevitable, but it will remove the time limit of a few days. If all you need to do is prepare a semiconductor factory, then you can build one even if it takes years.”

“That really is ''the last resort'', isn’t it?” responded Armelina with a heavy sigh.

Rusalka, whose long blonde ponytail formed a gorgeous ringlet curl, spoke up while tugging on Gruagach’s leather outfit.

“Onee-sama, can’t we get help from the Sage? She seems familiar with Shining Weapons and she looks just like Beatrice. Um, couldn’t it be possible for them to use the same Shining Weapon?”

Everyone except for unconscious Beatrice glanced over at the Sage who was sitting with her back against a broken tree trunk.

That person, who looked a lot like Beatrice but was completely different, shook her head.

“It depends on the amount of damage, but from the look of things, it’s unrepairable. The internal structure being fried hurts a lot more than the blade breaking off. In fact, I’ve never seen one destroyed like that before. Also, Beatrice and I are similar but not identical. We cannot use the same Shining Weapon.”

“You hacked our Shining Weapons at the Underworld, right!? Surely there’s some kind of trick you can use!!”

“Simply remote controlling one is entirely different from altering the administrative permissions. In fact, you would have better luck asking Omega who increased the strength of his by having his men open up shared settings on theirs.”

“Huh? But what about Sibyl’s Shining Weapon?” asked Filinion. “And wasn’t your patchwork rapier made by rewriting the permissions of those stolen weapons?”

“Yes, that’s right. Miss Titties is exactly right. But doing that requires wiping the contents. Try to fix her broken Shining Weapon with a clean install and you’ll only wipe out all the files that survived. When you get down to it, what Omega did was just plain crazy.”

That must have reminded her of someone important to her because the translucent Demon Lord with an angel halo and large horns softly shut her eyes. Almost like she was offering a silent prayer.

Another insurmountable hurdle had been placed in their path.

Upon the annihilation of the Underworld Lord, the souls of the dead had been released. They could never again summon that veteran hero. The cowboy hat skeleton was technically only a simulation of his personality, so he would not necessarily have the same technical information as Omega.

Armelina gulped.

“…So we’re finally stuck.”

“You should think about what options are available. Especially with such a short time limit.” The Sage sounded unconcerned. “One, you can run high-level VR experiments using Ultimate Weapon Abyss. Two, based on that bombing used in the battle against the elder, Sibyl must have acquired something. If she has the power to see everything, she might be able to use that to find a starting point.”

However.

A certain possibility came to mind and Boo Boo worriedly asked about it.

“…What if that isn’t enough?”

“A perfect virtual reality and the power to see everything are cruel in their own ways, Boo Boo.”

The Sage remained callous even now.

It may have been her ability to provide cruel opinions at all times that allowed her to be the Sage.

“They may present us with the fact that nothing we can do will work.”

===Part 2===

He knew all he could do at the moment was wait, but he could not just sit around.

Burning heat erupted inside his body and he could not sit still.

“Boo…”

Boo Boo walked through the dark forest.

He scraped his large tusk against a nearby tree.

“Let Beatrice get better soon.”

With that statement, he moved to the next tree.

“Let Beatrice get better soon.”

Then to the next tree. And the next. And the next.

“Let Beatrice get better soon.”

He looked like he would mark every tree in the forest if left to his own devices.

And someone was watching him from a short distance away.

It was silver-haired Fairy Queen Sutriona and blonde-haired Vampire Kallikantzaros.

They were both Break News with incredible power.

“Anyway, Vampire, did you never notice the color of the sky before? Don’t you claim to control lunar eclipses?”

“Make no mistake. The moon was always shaped like that. In fact, the culprit may have based the false sky and sun on it.”

The skinny silver-haired girl in a black ribbon dress breathed an exasperated sigh.

“…More importantly, what is Boo Boo doing?”

“Probably an Iberian Orc good luck charm,” smoothly responded the Vampire who was connected to the Iberian Orcs in a different way from the Sage.

Kallikantzaros, who wore a red negligee over a body far too alluring for her childish appearance, continued.

“But if it actually worked, the Iberian Orcs would not have been afflicted by that Redness.”

“Hm.” Sutriona gave her old Vampire acquaintance a sidelong glance. “You sure have strange tastes to accompany him when you know it’s meaningless.”

“Night is the Vampire’s time. Although it seems I too was manipulated by that false sun. Still, there is not always something I can do. …Besides, Fairies are active in the day and sleep at night, so it seems far more unusual for one of them to be wandering around at this hour.”

Sutriona coughed to avoid responding.

“You are even simpler than the Iberian Orcs,” sighed Kallikantzaros. “But I believe that good luck charm requires carving the mark into 1000 trees. Surely he doesn’t really plan to do that.”

“Oh, he’ll do it. Even if it’s just for peace of mind, he’ll still set up that defensive line.”

“…”

The Vampire in a red negligee and nightcap fell silent.

She watched the nearly-4m giant scraping his tusk against another tree, she crossed her arms such that they squished her large breasts, and she winked.

“…Is it that serious?”

“Is what?”

“I had thought that young Iberian Orc was so fond of that human because she was convenient for him. The humans threw rocks at him, but she would actually speak with him. So to put it another way, it could have been anyone he could speak with. I thought that was all it was.”

“Kallikantzaros.”

A voice called her name.

The light in the Fairy Queen’s eyes had changed entirely at some point.

“Do you want me to punch you for real?”

“…I see. So there was a reason why it had to be that girl. Very well.”

“?”

“Life and the sunlight are your territory, but death and the shadows are mine. There is an option that opens up for me.”

Vampire Kallikantzaros turned her gaze toward the distance once more.

Most likely, that Iberian Orc would not stop until he really had completed it. And even if he did leave marks on 1000 trees, he could not shake the forlorn feeling of having his mother or someone even more important let go of his hand.

And the Vampire knew of an extremely quick solution that amounted to cheating.

The Fairy Queen sounded somewhat exasperated as her silver hair fluttered behind her.

“I thought you didn’t answer people’s prayers.”

“Only if they are seeking some kind of reward. I am not narrow-minded enough to abandon a child lost in the night.

===Part 3===

White Witch Filinion’s Recovery Potion was perfectly made.

“Nn. Nhh…”

When Beatrice sat up and stretched her arms like normal, a strong foliage smell reached her nose. She looked around and found a somewhat nostalgic sight. It looked just like Boo Boo’s original house, the triangular tent made of large, folded leaves that he had used before the log and brick ones.

And she realized something.

“Gh.”

When she got up and the blanket fell away, she found she was only wearing a single white cloth. It looked a lot like a swimsuit since the top and bottom were connected, but it was basically underwear. Think of it like a bodysuit that bared the midriff.

The armor covering her limbs and chest and the miniskirt around her hips were nowhere to be found.

(…Oh. So that’s what happened.)

The Holy Swordswoman jumped a bit when she belatedly noticed a slender form lying right next to her in the darkness. It was a girl with one arm entirely missing and her head tilted at a slightly odd angle. Two strands of mottled silver hair passed in front of her shoulders, so this was apparently Ultimate Weapon Abyss. Beatrice had not sensed her presence because she did not need to breathe or even stir.

And one other thing.

“Beatrice, are you okay? Do you hurt anywhere?”

“Wah, wah! B-Boo Boo?”

Beatrice frantically pulled the blanket up to her chest and blushed a little.

The air that snuck in was somewhat chilly and the darkness was swept away by the gentle light of a simple lamp made by filling a porcelain bowl with plant oil and adding a twisted scrap of cloth as a wick. The girl guessed it was nighttime.

It did not have the obvious shape of a bra and panties, but she was only wearing underwear. Beatrice restlessly held the blanket to her chest and looked around.

“Where are we?”

“My house was destroyed, so I made a new one.”

Those words alone brought a slight cloud to the Holy Swordswoman’s face. There had been more than exhaustion and pain from the intense battle. She was worried about the way Boo Boo thought it was only natural that his things were taken from him or destroyed.

Meanwhile, when looking at it from a different perspective…

…That made Boo Boo sad.

This was not the time for her to worry about others. She had always worried about him and helped him in every way she could, but he also understood that she had a tendency to neglect herself in the process.

He could not let it show on his face.

Worrying her here would not solve anything.

“Squeal. If you’re awake, you can eat something. Eat a bunch and get better! I saved the tastiest meat for you!!”

“Ah, ah ha ha. It’s always meat first thing after waking up with you…”

Filinion’s Recovery Potion had healed the direct injuries and burns, so she had no trouble moving around. She reached for her hip out of habit and then sighed.

“What happened with the elder and the others?”

“Gruagach stopped all of them, so it’ll be okay. They’re working with the Sage to remake the village right now. The effects of the Redness have left their bodies, but they said they wanted to work with someone on some strength-focused work and details-focused to make sure everything is in order. They all said it’s thanks to you destroying the…artificial atmospheric barrier? Or something like that.”

“Where are Filinion, Armelina, and the others?”

“They should be in the human inn town. After all the confusion, they said they needed to explain some things to everyone. They’re apparently having a festival there, so they might bring some tasty snacks back!”

The girl who had spent so much time with Boo Boo held a hand to her mouth and giggled at his excitement.

Was she simply happy to see the Iberian Orc celebrating, or was she happy to see him interested in the humans?

“Hey, Boo Boo.”

“Yeah?”

Beatrice gave a plain smile.

And she asked.

“…So have you heard how much time I have left?”

He had been careless.

Even though he knew little of Magic, he should have noticed.

Beatrice had reached for her hip out of habit. She had been checking for her Shining Weapon rapier. It was a casual movement of her fingers, but that had told her the truth: her Shining Weapon had been destroyed and she could not return to Earth.

She also lacked her equipment.

It was not that she was not producing the armor to cover her body. She could not produce it.

“Beatrice…”

“It’s okay, Boo Boo. You don’t need to give me that look.”

Boo Boo gasped and patted his large face, but Beatrice shook her head. She was always the mature one. Hiding it from her may have been impossible from the get-go.

The girl in her underwear still held the blanket to her chest.

“I don’t have to explore the Labyrinth or save the world from a crisis. That gives me more time to simply spend with you. I feel like I never made time to just take it easy in Ground’s Nir. Looking at it that way, it’s not all bad.”

“…”

“And I’m not going to keel over right away. I still have time. So tell me, Boo Boo. I want to know the specifics if I’m going to face this. Will you help me find a way out of this situation?”

“Okay.”

Boo Boo nodded again and again.

He seemed to be trying to convince himself more than anyone.

“I’ll help you. The elder and the others were only saved because of your efforts. I can’t just sit around and fret. There’s no time, so we have to do what we can. So I’ll work super hard for you this time!!”

“Boo Boo.”

“Right. According to Abyss and Sibyl, you have about 2 days left! There’s still time, so we’ll do everything we can and save you. And the first step is to eat!!”

The leaf house had no stove, so he was probably cooking the food at a campfire outside. He rushed out of the house.

For that brief moment, Beatrice was alone with only deactivated Abyss for company. She reached for her hip out of habit and then slowly sighed.

“Well.”

No one was listening, but the words softly spilled from her lips.

“…I guess this time there really is no hope.”

===Part 4===

Beatrice and Boo Boo sat around the campfire for a late dinner.

She was still only in her underwear, so she had wrapped the blanket around herself before stepping outside.

When he cooked, you were lucky if you got a giant hunk of cooked mystery meat and he would not even add salt unless you asked. He did not focus much on the cooking, so there was always a chance of getting something half raw. …But today there were also a few vegetables he had presumably taken from his garden. He may have been thinking about her health.

“Beatrice, this one and this one are the tastiest. You can have them.”

“Hm? You can have the tastiest ones. You’re the one that made it all.”

“No! You need to eat right now!!”

“Whoa, but all this fatty meat is a little much for a maiden like me…!!”

It had taken some doing to get to this point, but as long as he added some rock salt, his cooking was good in a plain sort of way. Salt and grease had a way of soaking into your body.

“I made some dessert today too.”

“Oh? That’s unusual for you.”

“I chilled it in the river, so I has to be good. Jewel Melons are rare and I know you’ll be surprised when you see it!”

Boo Boo left for the river where the fruit was chilling.

Once she was alone, Beatrice breathed a soft sigh with the blanket wrapped over her underwear.

And just then…

“I will be joining you.”

“?”

The Holy Swordswoman turned toward that soft voice and saw someone who looked completely at home in the night.

It was a childish blonde girl who wore a pitch black swimsuit visible through a bright red negligee. No, she was quite short, but her body may have been even curvier than Beatrice’s. …Especially when it came to chest size.

She was a Vampire and a Break News.

It was Kallikantzaros.

She kept a set distance from the campfire as if she disliked non-natural lights.

“Sutriona told me what happened. I could not join the fight as it occurred while the sun was at its peak. The Iberian Orcs are special to me as well, so I thank you for risking your life to stop their rampage.”

“I see… Based on that, I take it I can trust what Boo Boo said about the other Iberian Orcs. I passed out before the end, you see.”

“So what will you do?”

The Vampire held a gray pig doll, spoke with a cunning voice, and gently looked the girl in the eye.

“Let us discuss the concept of life. The undead have no interest in unstable souls, but I am willing to make an exception since you used your one-and-only life to fight for the Iberian Orcs. You cannot return to Earth without your Shining Weapon. And you have no chance of survival without returning to Earth. Boo Boo and the others will of course forgo sleep as they spend the next two days attempting to find a solution, but there is no guarantee they will find one before the time limit arrives.”

[[Image:BooBoo_v06_317.png|thumb]]

“And you have approached me. So do you have a suggestion?”

“I am a Vampire.”

Kallikantzaros stuck the index finger of her empty hand between her lips. She bent the finger like a hook and tugged her small mouth to the side.

That might sound like a child’s teasing, but it held a very different meaning here.

She revealed a sinister weapon that was far sharper than a human canine tooth.

That fang was the symbol of her kind.

“Your human body cannot endure staying in this world for an extended period of time due to a slight margin of error in the atmospheric composition and the planetary rotation and revolution. ''Then you only need to become something other than a human of Earth.'' I try to only target Iberian Orcs since I dislike the flavor of human blood, but as I said, I am willing to make an exception here. I can bear with the flavor. If you ask for it, I will turn you into a Vampire right here and now.”

Beatrice thought about it for a while.

This gave her a backup plan. In her current state, she should have wanted that more than anything.

However.

After taking her time, she slowly shook her head.

“…I have to reject your offer.”

“Why?”

“I apologize if this sounds like an insult, but the person who Boo Boo can rely on without worry isn’t ‘Vampire Beatrice’.”

Boo Boo’s worried look was burned into her mind’s eye.

She saw him telling those painfully obvious lies.

But that was exactly why.

She could not just compromise on this. If she rewrote it all with such a simple decision, there would be no going back. That was the way she saw it. Being a human born on Earth must have held more meaning for her than she thought.

Kallikantzaros smiled thinly.

And she showed respect for that resolve.

“This will not be easy.”

“I know that.”

“Very well. I will not force it upon you, but I have provided the temptation. Knowing and not knowing are two very different things. As you humans apparently say, a drowning man will grasp at straws. I will be watching from behind the scenes to see if your resolve wavers as you are slowly crushed beneath the pain and fear.”

A quiet sound followed.

By taking a single step back, Kallikantzaros truly withdrew into the shadows, but she did leave one last statement.

“However.”

“?”

“…Even if you do break and pathetically cling to this option, I will not laugh at you. Because I definitely owe you one for the Iberian Orc incident. For this one time only, I will promise you that.”

That was all.

The Vampire faded into the pitch black shadows and Beatrice was alone once more.

“Squeal! Look, look, Beatrice! This is a Jewel Melon!!”

“Oh, Boo Boo?”

“Hm? What’s with you? Did something happen?”

“No, it’s nothing,” she answered with a smile and a shake of the head.

Yes.

Because of her resolve, nothing had happened.

===Part 5===

Of course, Boo Boo did not rest after putting Beatrice to bed in the leaf house. White Witch Filinion and Fighter Priest Armelina had set up a new base in the Cave of Tears opened in the coastal cliff face. Even with the celebration bringing everyone’s guard down, they could not bring Boo Boo to the human-filled inn town, but they also could not hold a planning meeting in front of Beatrice whose life was on the chopping block. Since neither of their usual meeting spots was usable, they had needed a new one.

…Boo Boo wondered how he had lived such an aimless life up until now.

He had built a house of large leaves, searched for food in the forest, and spent any extra time napping. Had he really been making the most of his life? If he had done other things and made more valuable use of his time, could he maybe have found an immediate solution when someone important to him was in a crisis?

He had grown complacent.

So much had happened in the past, so he should have known that his current environment was not guaranteed to last forever. Yet he had been satisfied with what he was given. He had been so happy on that day when he had been reunited with Beatrice and he had failed to keep working after that.

“Squeal… I need to do something.”

That ocean cave also contained Demon Lord Tselika’s collection of treasures. The entrance area received the full brunt of the advancing and receding waves and it could flood at any time, but there were more slopes further in and the seawater had almost no effect there. Since there was no way in from the Labyrinth, it was a rare blank spot where no one else on the small island could reach them.

The outside moonlight reflected off the seawater and rock walls, so the inside was filled with a faint bluish light. It gave the scene a strange shine different from a fire or luminous moss.

“So you’re here, Boo Boo.”

He was addressed by someone who looked an awful lot like the red-armored Holy Swordswoman. It was the Sage. Slender Royal Elf Sibyl stood alongside her.

“I was just explaining my investigation of the problems we face. No one else here is worth explaining things to, so this is perfect.”

The glasses White Witch and police officer Fighter Priest clearly grimaced at that, but it was unusual for these former enemies to be meeting together at all.

The red of embers was added to the bluish light of the Cave of Tears.

The Sage snapped her fingers and the cave scene changed. Even the clinging darkness and the pale blue light that blocked one’s view like a backlight functioned as a veil to hide the answer before one’s eyes.

The walls and ceiling were crammed full of geometric patterns drawn in black lines seemingly made with charcoal. Naturally, this was not just graffiti. Each point at the intersection of two lines was labeled with a symbol and it seemed to control some kind of “current”.

“Well, to put it simply, this is the circuit diagram of Beatrice’s Shining Weapon,” smoothly explained the Sage.

The handle of Beatrice’s rapier had contained the circuitry that filled every surface of the cave.

“Keihin Seibi’s Etranger D-508ex. Since she was confined to the impressive-sounding Detached Magic Palace, I was surprised to find she uses a customized version of a commercial product, but that may have been to ensure ease of replacing parts in case of a malfunction. She apparently has some capable maids, so its specs have been greatly improved from clocking up the software side of things.”

“…You’ve made that much progress? Then what were those two hours of cynicism and sarcasm for???”

The young glasses woman gave an exhausted comment, but it was not the time for that.

The Sage remained composed after having wasted so much time because she was not interested in starting until Boo Boo showed up.

“I retrieved the diagram from the manufacturer on Earth and Sibyl used her secret treasures to view the broken rapier. Comparing the two revealed what portions are missing. The worst damage is here.”

She breathed a gentle sigh and a few sparks spilled from her palm and circled around a certain point on the circuit diagram covering the cave’s surfaces. The college girl shrine maiden known as Filinion saw it like a laser pointer on a lecture room’s whiteboard.

“That’s the personal authentication area that manages administrative privileges…in other words, who the Shining Weapon belongs to. In cellphone terms, it’s something like the SIM card that contains all the profile settings. Unless we fix this, Beatrice cannot return to Earth.”

“Squeal?”

Boo Boo tilted his head with a large hand over his mouth, but that did not mean he had stopped thinking. Iberian Orcs used their supercomputer-like brains to control each individual muscle fiber so they did not destroy their own body with their overly powerful muscles. He might not understand it now, but he was sure to learn. He only had to reach that understanding before they ran out of time. The Sage had lived with the elder and the others, so she understood that and was trying to fill him with as much data as possible.

But was the Sage leading that brilliant brain to the answer?

Even though Boo Boo did not understand at all, clenched his teeth, and struggled to make up for how far behind he felt?

“Hey.” Armelina put a hand on her hip. “So you’re saying the transfer function survived?”

“If ''that was all we needed'', we wouldn’t need to rely on her broken rapier. That blunt weapon hanging at Boo Boo’s hip is a Shining Weapon too, after all.”

But he could not save anyone by giving Beatrice his partner that resembled a log or a steel beam.

The management was not lax enough to let her just borrow one.

She could not just head home and be done with it. There was a reason they used terms like Sign In and Sign Out. The technology to move between worlds only qualified as a transfer system once a safe arrival was guaranteed. That meant there would naturally be powerful safeties to ensure who was being sent in addition to the origin point and destination point. Because they needed to transfer exactly 100% of a person, not 99% or 101%.

Boo Boo desperately worked his mind with his head still tilted.

“You mean Beatrice’s name is written inside her sword? And that was erased, so we have to write it in there again?”

“Exactly right, Boo Boo.”

The Sage applauded with a smile she would never give any of the others.

“Rewriting the settings profile from scratch would be difficult, so we’ll have to extract the damaged data and recover it. Of course, the data left inside the damaged rapier is incomplete, so we can’t just use that. But that means we only have to fill in the gaps.”

“I sometimes see ads for services that recover lost data from your cellphone or flash memory, but does it really work that well?”

“Since you had the courage to admit your own ignorance, I will explain. Even if there are pieces missing, it is possible to fill that in by estimating the contents using the strings of data preceding and following it. It might be simpler to think of it like the frames of a movie or cartoon. Ten minutes or a full hour missing would be one thing, but if it’s just a frame or two here and there, it isn’t a major problem. You can fill in the gaps.”

But on the other hand…

“To recover the data, we must first extract detailed information on how much of the data is left inside the broken rapier.”

“Squeal? But I thought we could see everything with Sibyl’s treasure?”

The long-eared slender girl sighed and answered Boo Boo’s question.

“I can see it, but I cannot explain it. If I draw out the miniscule grooves of the circuit diagram, the Sage can create a proper diagram using her own rules, but this concept of an…electronic program? That is something else entirely.”

“Well, yes. Long ago, there were apparently people with the shocking ability to read the do-re-mi scale by looking at the grooves on a record, but no matter how much they stared at the smooth surface of a smartphone, they could never learn anything about a song contained in a compressed file on the device. Poo hoo hoo.”

“…I have no idea what that means, but I can still tell you’re making fun of me…”

“Heh. Eh heh heh. Whatever gives you that-…owwwww!? This flat Amazon warrior elf just hit my boobs with her bowstring!”

“I hit my own long ears a lot when I was first learning to use it, so I know its power. …And that insult has earned you another hit.”

The hunter pursued her fleeing prey and Armelina sounded somewhat exasperated as she watched.

“Are you saying we can’t directly check the software, so we have to start by reconnecting the fried hardware circuits to access it?”

“Precisely. So the ignorant have reached an understanding in their ignorance.”

The Sage nodded and brought a hand to her hip.

The patchwork rapier in the scabbard there had its processing power forcibly increased by connecting together the remains of multiple Shining Weapons, so she would know how to connect to the broken Shining Weapon.

The red-armored and white-miniskirted Sage twisted the corners of her mouth into a smile.

“There is no need to be so pessimistic. The area needing repairing is smaller than a postage stamp.”

“But like with microfilm, how much space does that fill when it’s expanded to a size visible to the human eye? …You make it sound simple, but at the semiconductor level, it’s dozens of times smaller than a hair, right? Or maybe hundreds of times? Even if Sibyl’s treasure lets us cheat our way to the abilities of an electron microscope, the work won’t be that easy.”

“That is true, but I do have an idea.”

The Sage snapped her fingers and the sparks that burst out circled around above Boo Boo’s head.

“Boo Boo, you are friends with the palm-sized Fairies, aren’t you? Contact them immediately and ask for their help.”

“Squeal? Are you going to have them make a potion?”

“The contents of a Shining Weapon are a collection of wires made from pure gold thinner than a hair. A normal human cannot hope to work with them and, as your friend there said, the sensory boost from Sibyl’s treasure might not be enough to pull off the work. However. The Fairies are skilled at handicrafts. They can even weave a full ribbon dress out of Ground Spider silk, so they should not have difficulty working with something thinner than a hair. They may not like working with iron or silver, but they should not feel any revulsion toward gold.”

With that said, the Sage laughed.

“Boo Boo, you are the only one who can contact those cautious Fairies. For that matter, you are also the only person who can contact the Sage who works behind the scenes of history. This is the power you built up with the path you walked. Feel free to use those trump cards here.”

“But…”

Armelina traced her fingertip along her slender chin and thought deeply.

And as negative as it was, she opened her mouth. She had known it would come down to this from the beginning, so there was no point in acting smug about the knowledge after the fact.

“We have a strict time limit. I mean, we don’t even have two days left. I’m fine with relying on the Fairies, but shouldn’t we be working on some insurance in parallel, just to be sure?”

“I suppose I’ll ask. What exactly do you propose?”

“The Fairies aren’t the only ones who are skilled with their hands. There are a lot of different people gathered in the inn town. How about we rely on them? With the excitement of solving the Red problem, the people with nothing better to do might help us pretty readily.”

Also, it was humans who used the Magic represented by the Shining Weapons. It made the most sense to use human hands to solve this.

But the Sage shook her head.

“I won’t stop you if you go try that on your own, but I’m not going to help you with your wasted effort. I am only here now out of respect for your efforts in revealing the cause of the Redness and freeing the elder and the others from it. Do not expect unlimited and bottomless assistance from me.”

“Wasted effort…?

“I have no issue with their technical skills and the manpower would be useful, but Beatrice is a Level Capper, which comes with its plusses and minuses. People will recognize her achievements when she is rising in the ranks, but once she starts to decline, they will focus only on the negative side and work against her. Ask for help and I doubt anyone will give it. In the worst case, they might pretend to help so they can poison her.”

“…But…”

Armelina had suggested the idea, but she fell silent.

The human inn town was ruled by the interests of organizations as much as by what individuals wanted. There were definitely nations and corporations that would benefit in the power balance if the striker of the Japanese government’s Detached Magic Palace was removed.

What would happen if her compromised state became widely known?

In the worst case, someone could even plan an attack on the leaf house where she slept. None of them wanted to think about the possibility of interference when the rescue attempt was a tightrope walk already.

Looking at it like that, it would indeed be more efficient to put together a team of Ground’s Nir Nonhumans who were tied by simple bonds of gratitude.

The Sage had seen a sickening amount of the desire that gathered around Magic, so she laughed scornfully before continuing.

“This isn’t about whether or not it will actually happen. The inability to eliminate doubt would consume some of our work costs. Didn't you just say we have no time? I really don’t think we can afford to bother with secret plots.”

“…”

Armelina had no rebuttal, but she did not seem satisfied either.

Meanwhile, Boo Boo spoke up.

“So I need to ask the Fairies for help. But is that all I can do? Is there nothing else I can do?”

“Hm…” The Sage thought for a moment. “Even if it will be thinner than a hair, we will need a lot of pure gold to lay out the new wiring. Ground’s Nir is a small enough island to walk the perimeter in only three days and the greedy humans use gears taken from the Labyrinth’s Gimmicks as currency instead of gold. I don’t know how much is buried on the island, but unlike Earth, where you can buy it by the gram at an exchange, it will likely be difficult to procure. Boo Boo, can you take care of that?”

===Part 6===

Beatrice might grow suspicious if she woke up and found he was not there.

He lacked the knowledge and the skill, but Boo Boo had to make up for that with what he could do. With so little time left, he could not just sit around without any ideas whatsoever.

When he left the Cave of Tears, the sun had already risen.

He parted ways with Filinion and Armelina who had to rest back on Earth and he hurried back to the leaf house partway up the mountain.

He grabbed some Full-Belly Apples and Filling Bananas he found growing on trees along the way and he found Beatrice outside the house with the blanket wrapped around her.

He had been too slow.

He was only a few seconds late, but he gently clenched his teeth at how worthless it made him feel.

“Good morning, Boo Boo. Where were you?”

“Squeal. I woke up hungry. So I went to gather some food for today.”

Boo Boo had always lived a life where half his day was spent procuring food. Even during an emergency like this, he still needed food and water to function. So this was a necessary thing, but a closer inspection would show that he mostly had fruits that grew on trees instead of animals that he had to hunt in an eat-or-be-eaten battle of wits.

He did not have time for that now.

Even the time spent procuring food felt wasted.

“What are you doing, Beatrice? If you woke up because you’re hungry, I’ll give you the biggest one.”

“…Girls need to take a bath on a daily basis. I can dig a hole by the river over there to produce a hot spring and use the river water to control the temperature, right?”

“Yes. You can go take a bath, Beatrice.”

“That dream was shattered when you showed up to stare at me like that.”

A fruit-only breakfast felt lacking to Boo Boo, but he had bigger things to worry about now. And he noticed that Beatrice seemed to enjoy the fruit a lot. That amount may have been about right for her.

“The letter, the letter…”

“?”

Beatrice watched in confusion as Boo Boo placed a thin piece of wood near the leaf house’s ceiling. He could barely write and the message was almost entirely communicated via illustration, but the palm-sized Fairies would read it when they showed up. The situation could hardly be worse, but the counterattack was beginning.

“Boo Boo. What are we going to do today?”

“Boo. Let’s go to the beach.”

He of course had a reason for this.

The two of them walked down the gentle slope of an unpaved mountain path. They discussed pointless things along the way: it would be neat to lay out mine cart rails along here, Ileana wouldn’t like that, and so on.

Once they left the forest and arrived on the beach, Boo Boo raised his voice without thinking.

“Ah! It was almost all washed away!!”

“Hm?”

Beatrice gave him a curious look and he frantically covered his mouth with both hands.

The rotting corpse of the Underworld’s giant marine creature should have been on the beach. He had gathered large seeds from there to reach the sky, but there was almost no sign left of the black rotting flesh he had seen then. He doubted it had all been the work of the small lobsters and crabs cleaning up the beach, so the crashing waves must have grabbed them and swept them out to sea.

Beatrice brushed the hair off the side of her face and looked out to the sea that sparkled with the morning sun.

“This area has been cleaned up a lot, but it still doesn’t look like a great place to swim.”

“Squeal. It’ll have to be cleaned up bit by bit. The fish are an important food source too.”

With that, Boo Boo approached one hunk of rotting flesh that still remained on the beach.

He thought back to what the Sage had said in the Cave of Tears before dawn:

''“There are always the mountains to the north. Sibyl’s treasure should be able to accurately locate any veins of gold, but we don’t have time to dig it out. …The Underworld would be the better bet. The Underworld Lord forcibly reinforced that rotting marine creature to keep it alive. That means it must have had a mechanical side that included a lot of pure gold wiring. We need gold, but not a huge amount of it. It would probably be faster to gather some of that junk and extract it from there.”

The beach cleaners could not eat hard things like this.

It would have been nice if nothing but a lot of strange machine parts had remained on the beach, but he was not that lucky. He stuck his hands into the black pile and felt around for anything that felt out of place. Something like thick cables, thin computer chips, or connectors made of heavy metal. He did not know what would be usable, so he pulled out everything that seemed artificial and gathered it all together.

“Oh, honestly! I can’t bear it any longer!!”

He heard a flapping sound.

“B-Boo Boo? There’s no one else here, right? It’s just you, right!?”

It was the sound of Beatrice removing the blanket she had wrapped around herself. The girl now only wore the one-piece underwear, but she seemed to be enjoying herself as she kicked at the crashing and receding waves.

She laughed like a child and spoke to him.

“Boo Boo! There are seabirds flying awfully close by. There might be a school of fish nearby. Maybe that’s thanks to the Underworld too!!”

“Then you can use this.”

Boo Boo held out something like a small-holed net. It was something he had pulled out of a black pile. It may have originally surrounded and supported some kind of giant internal organ, but its purpose was unclear.

Beatrice had said it did not look like a great place to swim, but she held the net in both hands and moved solidly into the water. The waves must have placed more resistance on her feet than she had expected because she pitched forward, tripped, and threw the net while soaking wet.

And just then…

“Boo Boo.”

“!”

Boo Boo’s shoulders jumped when he heard a female voice from directly behind him.

When could someone have approached him on the wide-open beach? While hiding behind one of the black piles so that the Holy Swordswoman could not see her, the Sage held her index finger to her lips and winked.

“…This would get complicated if Beatrice found me, so stay as you are.”

“Squeal.”

“You seem to have collected a fair amount. We should be able to extract all the pure gold we need from this. I will take care of the rest and you can let me handle the fire.”

“Thank you, Sage.”

Those words caused the Beatrice lookalike to briefly lose her calm.

Her eyes widened and then she formed a smile anew.

“No, thank you. I thought I would never again hear those words from an Iberian Orc. I also appreciate what you did for the elder and the others.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I will take this pile of junk away with me, but I do not want Beatrice to see me. Distract her and then find a good opportunity to take her away from the beach.”

[[Image:BooBoo_v06_336.png|thumb]]

“?”

“Simply put, I want you to play with Beatrice. Go on.”

The Sage pressed on his back and he was pushed out from behind the black pile with strength one would never expect based on her appearance.

Beatrice smiled at him while holding the net on the beach.

“Look, Boo Boo. There really is a school of fish gathered near the beach! This is going to be a big catch, so you chase them over to me from there. Hurry!!”

“Right.”

The term “big catch” reminded him of the day the village was attacked. That had been the day that Beatrice taught young Boo Boo how to fish and that had coincidentally saved him. If not for the attack, Beatrice may have been accepted by the villagers much sooner.

And to reiterate, procuring food was a constant requirement. The rules of nature cared not for your personal convenience and the icy fingertip of starvation and death would point at everyone the same.

If you had food, you did not have to worry.

And you could take the time usually spent on procuring food and spend it on something else.

“Squeal! Gather together, fish!!”

“Ah ha ha! Boo Boo, they’re escaping between your legs!!”

===Part 7===

A single gram of pure gold could be pounded out to more than 3 kilos. That of course meant the length of kilometers, not the weight of kilograms. Because it was soft, metal fatigue was not a concern like it was for steel and silver. It would not rust in the room temperature air and it would not be harmed by most chemicals other than aqua regia or an amalgamator.

After the Sage dissolved all the waste material and extracted just the pure gold, there was less than 10 grams in all. The world of semiconductors was a microscopic one, so that was hardly surprising.

However, the nature of gold worked in their favor.

It was not easily altered, so they did not have to worry about it being rendered useless and they could reuse the same gold to practice as many times as necessary before doing it for real.

“Rub-rub…”

A voice came from the Fairy village in the forest.

Palm-sized Meridiana was using her even smaller palms to apply pressure to the gold-glittering precious metal as if spinning it like a drill. Gold’s melting point was 1063 degrees Celsius, but it was already soft enough that there was no need to heat it.

With just one piece of gold thinner than a hair, it would blend into the background and even the small Fairies would lose sight of it if they were not careful. It caught the air like a wing, ignored gravity, and wandered aimlessly side to side in the air.

“Whoops.”

Her sister, Alice, grabbed the gold in her hands and wrapped it around her wrists. As the gold thread intersected like crisscrossing lines of sauce atop a luxurious meal of white flesh fish, its shine grew. It gained a board-shaped thickness it had not had as a single thread. And while this was delicate metalwork, they could not let the thread break. It all had to be connected together like a one-stroke drawing.

This produced a ring large enough for a human finger.

The breathtaking product had both the shine of pure gold and the beauty of a translucent insect wing, but as Elder Morgan flew around and inspected the ring as it dangled from a tree branch with Ground Spider silk…

“It’s broken in some places.”

“Hweh!?”

“Don’t let it get you down, Alice. It isn’t entirely your fault. Look here. There was a lump when the gold thread was made. That makes it unusable. It needs an even thickness throughout.”

“U-uuuh!! Stop insulting Meridiana’s handiwork!!”

They of course had to redo it until they got it right.

And a single miraculous success was not good enough. They needed the reliable skill to repeat it thousands of times without a single mistake.

If the gold thread broke, the signal could not get through. If the thickness was not even, there would be a discrepancy in the electrical resistance and it could overheat or start a fire. Just like a sudden narrowing of a road would cause a traffic jam, the flow of electricity also required traffic control. The history of the semiconductors used in Shining Weapons was a competition to place as many “roads” and “traffic lights” as possible on a single chip to provide the greatest traffic control. Incidentally, a simple lighter made from a battery and aluminum foil took advantage of this by intentionally causing a traffic jam to start the fire.

The Fairies lived in the natural world and did not understand the detailed theories behind the semiconductors that controlled the flow of electricity to perform massive amounts of calculations, but they knew their skill was needed and being tested.

They threw the failed ring in a large coal pot over the fire to melt it down. Of course, the pot was only large at their sense of scale, so it was only about the size of a can of food.

They did not have time to wait for it to cool naturally, so they tossed the melted lump into a bucket of water. With a unique steaming sound, lots of water vapor rose from the bucket. One large advantage of pure gold was that, unlike glass, it would not be damaged on the microscopic level even when exposed to extreme temperature differences.

They had repeated this countless times already.

They had been given this task because of their products made from weaving Ground Spider silk, but the pure gold changed shape fare more easily than the thin but sturdy spider silk. If the thread breaking was the only issue, the work would only require extra care, but the even thickness seemed to get harder the more they focused on it. Just like with traditional craftsmen, getting a “feel” for it through repetition was more important than a simple theory.

“Meridiana, are your hands okay? You aren’t hurting them, are you?”

“I’m fine. More importantly, Alice, we need to stay focused. Once we get a feel for this, we’ll have made a major breakthrough. We can’t see them, but we’ve been stacking up the stones of progress. As long as we don’t let that stack collapse, we can do this. It has to be within reach now.”

“Uuh. If you say so, I guess I’ll work at it a little longer…”

In truth, the time spent waiting for the gold to melt and cool was far harder on their psyches than the time spent focusing on the work. It may have been like how you did not feel at all tired while leaning over your desk as you pulled an all-nighter, but as soon as you leaned back in your chair, you felt like you could never get back up again.

It was better to have no mountains or valleys.

Because there was a chance they could never crawl back up if they rolled down into a valley.

“Rub-rub-rub… Or is it more of a rub-rubbity-rub?”

So instead of just waiting, Meridiana continued practicing the drill-spinning movement with her empty hands.

And her sister had a thought about that diligent behavior.

“…Meridiana, you look kind of like a Leftovers Rainbow Fly.”

“Alice!! You shouldn’t have said that!!!!!”

===Part 8===

The sun had set and night had arrived.

Beatrice had little time left since she had lost her Shining Weapon and could not return to Earth, but they could not perfectly fill their schedules with new tasks. Gathering materials, learning the proper techniques, and the other jobs took time to complete. And if they tried to do too much at once, they would only overwhelm themselves.

“So.”

After crawling from her ghost ship coffin, short but curvy Vampire Kallikantzaros spoke within the mangrove-filled southern forest.

“So the humans of the inn town are not going to act. Even after she saved their world.”

“Well, the problem itself is being kept quiet,” replied Fairy Queen Sutriona.

The silver-haired girl was little different from a human when she kept her power contained, so she had a bad habit of sneaking into the inn town and swiping human toys and snacks. She had simply expanded on her usual route to observe the humans.

Filinion or Armelina could have monitored the festive inn town, but they were human themselves. Sutriona was confident they would fight back if a battle did unfold, but there would be some “hope” contaminating their observations. They would subconsciously overlook some of the malice because they did not want to believe it was there. If anyone was going to observe the inn town while it healed the wounds of the Underworld battle, it had to be someone with an outside perspective. A third party was the most effective option.

“For the time being, I have not caught wind of an attack plan to directly target Beatrice while she is helpless. But some of the more informed are beginning to realize no one can contact Beatrice on Earth or Ground’s Nir ever since the Iberian Orc battle. Of course, they will initially assume she returned to Earth to rest after that major battle. But there is no sign of her back at the Detached Magic Palace she calls home and she is not enjoying the festival at the inn town. And no one would think she was working hard at exploring the Labyrinth so soon. …Someone may put those rumors together and notice something is off.”

Beatrice did have human acquaintances, but Filinion, Armelina, Wildefrau, Huldra, Gruagach, Rusalka, and any other humans that would be concerned for her had all fought on the front line in the battle against the elder.

If anyone was unaware what had happened at the end of that battle but was also persistently pursuing Beatrice’s whereabouts, an unfriendly motive had to be assumed.

It was the same way the humans treated the Break News.

They did not investigate them because they liked them. They feared and hated them, so they could not rest easy until they had as much information as possible. And if they showed any weakness, it was time to deliver a finishing blow. It was a familiar state of affairs for Sutriona and Kallikantzaros.

The Vampire in a red negligee lightly brushed back her long blonde hair.

“For better or for worse, the actions of the Level Cappers stand out. How is the work going?”

“The real work begins tonight.” Sutriona readily spoke words that carried great meaning. “There is still time left, but this will be the first and last chance. If it doesn’t work, I doubt there will be time to come up with another idea. The failure would cause the thread of tension to snap, so I doubt we could expect top performance from them afterwards.”

It was harder for a group to change plans than an individual.

Even if the Sage and Sibyl had a steely resolve, not everyone could keep up with their speed. And in a pressing situation where they had no spare personnel and every gear was necessary, they could not afford to lose a single person. The Sage and the others had stood at the peak for so long that it was unclear how they would handle a need to accommodate their ''weakest link''.

So they had to succeed in this initial attempt when morale was high.

Beatrice’s rescue hinged on whether or not they could accomplish this before losing the assumption that they only needed to look to the peak and do what that person said.

Whether or not they could fix the Shining Weapon rapier and save Beatrice depended on the skill of those performing the work.

But that was not what the Break News could do.

“It is fortunate this is happening at night. Especially so soon after the Iberian Orc incident so inconsiderately occurred during the day.” In her night cap and negligee, Kallikantzaros stroked the gray pig doll in her arms and spoke expressionlessly. “So where will you place the ''breakwater''? Since they only have one shot at this, you don’t want anyone interfering with their work, do you?”

“Fighting the entire inn town won’t be necessary. I said it was only some of the more informed that were catching on, didn’t I? We can suppress this by ensuring that information is not spread to the rest of them. Let’s head to the inn town. We can buy plenty of time by using the raucous partying to sneak up to each of those clever individuals and ''give them a warning''.”

===Part 9===

After making sure Beatrice was sound asleep in the leaf house, Boo Boo made his way to the coastal Cave of Tears. The ecosystem differed between day and night and he was afraid of ghosts, but he had to bear with it.

There was no reason to rush.

In fact, it was important to take their time to repair the rapier right.

“Squeal… Is everyone here?”

His searching voice was answered by something flying toward him from the depths of the bluish glowing cave. He caught it in his large hand to find it was a triangular flask containing a colorful bubbling liquid.

A busty young woman in glasses, White Witch Filinion, explained.

“I doubt you’re accustomed to pulling all-nighters, so use that energy drink. I couldn’t stand being told I couldn’t make one, so I had to prove her wrong.”

“What does that mean?”

“Um, an energy drink is, well…huh? It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s a strange drink that improves your brain efficiency with sugar and various nutrients, that uses artificial sweeteners, artificial flavoring, and carbonation to mask the flavor of the chemicals, and that really just lets caffeine do all the work.”

Doubt darkened Boo Boo’s face as the explanation continued.

It may have been the same as trying to describe the most popular carbonated drink to a Martian and making it sound more like a poison than anything: “It’s a dark, sweet, cold, and bubbly, it’s super popular yet no one really knows how to make it, and it’s strangely addictive.”

Next to the glasses girl, Armelina popped off the lid of an identical triangular flask and chugged the contents.

“It isn’t harmful, so drink up.”

“Okay.”

After having given her lengthy description, Filinion rubbed her forehead against the cave wall, but sometimes actions spoke louder than words.

Boo Boo copied Armelina’s actions to tilt his head back and drink the contents of the triangular flask and then he blinked his eyes.

“Khh… Wh-what is this…?”

“Oh, she took advantage of being in another world when she Mixed it, so it might be a bit much for a beginner. Japan’s safety standards would never let you cram that much caffeine into a single drink.”

“Please stop implying I simply threw a bunch of caffeine into some sugar water. The perfect distribution just so happened to include a lot of it and I didn’t mention all the effort that went into the recipe because I wanted to maintain my image as a cool mature woman, but this really is something only a strongest Level Capper healer could have made. Besides, this is far better than those imported drinks that might as well be mild poisons!! I can’t believe you!!”

“You’re the one that said the caffeine does all the work.”

Those two continued arguing as they walked deeper into the Cave of Tears where they found the preparations well underway. The Sage, Sibyl, Meridiana, and Alice were all present. Beatrice’s broken rapier and its blade were lying on the ground and everyone stood in a circle around them. They had all brought their own “weapons”. The Sage drew her patchwork rapier, Sibyl put on the triple-jeweled circlet, and the palm-sized Fairies held pure gold in their hands.

The Sage turned toward the new arrivals.

“…Perfect timing. How about we get started?”

“What should we do?”

“The White Witch will keep this area clean from a sterilization and disinfection standpoint. The Fighter Priest will use a large obstacle to adjust the flow of air in the cave to adjust the temperature and humidity. Together, you should be able to construct a clean room for handling semiconductors.”

The Sage had mastered all Magic of all Elements, so she could do anything that Filinion or Armelina could. She did not because she had to focus on extracting and recovering the data on Beatrice’s broken rapier.

Also…

“Boo Boo, you can be our record keeper. Beatrice’s survival hinges on her ability to Sign Out and safely return to Earth. She can easily repair her Shining Weapon or get a new one once back on Earth, but I want to provide as much support as possible just in case. Learn all of the steps here so we are prepared in case something happens at a later date. If something does go wrong, you would be the first to notice since you are always by her side.”

It was not over once they rescued her.

So that she could keep going, they wanted to be prepared enough that they could easily handle the same situation again.

If she repaired her Shining Weapon and kept using it, they would have to monitor it afterwards. If she replaced it with a new one, it could always be destroyed in the same way again. If something had happened once, it could always happen again.

Human and Iberian Orc intelligence and brain capacity were fundamentally different. With the full use of his supercomputer-level brain, he would be able to respond to this situation on his own, even if he could not find the Sage or the Fairies. Creating that kind of insurance and leaving a possibility for the future removed some of the psychological pressure from Sibyl, Meridiana, and the others participating this time. It seemed like a simple thing, but it meant a lot. Just like with a tightrope walk, the greater the height and the more important the moment, the less of your normal skill you could draw out. Telling yourself to relax was not enough to actually relax. Including a ''guaranteed effect'' was like having a trump card.

Boo Boo understood that.

He did, but he still gently clenched his fists at not being any immediate use. He just wished his knowledge and skills could do something – anything – on the front line here. Armelina lightly elbowed him while changing her metal staff into a giant box and placing it in the cave passageway with a thud.

“I’ve captured the flow of air. I’ll alter the design to preserve the current stagnation and store air in the work area.”

“I’ve begun distribution as well. Sterilization and disinfection will take effect in 4, 3, 2, 1. Currently cleaning. Sterilization is holding at greater than 99.9%. You can begin at any time.”

The air seemed to cool down all of a sudden.

The Sage placed her patchwork rapier on the ground and reached for Beatrice’s rapier lying parallel to it. She removed a few special screws that looked like snow crystals, opened the cushioning that was shaped something like a crab shell, and revealed a few thin plastic panels within. The ends were discolored and melted with exposed gold wiring in places. It was tricky work, but the Sage’s fingertips moved with perfect precision. This task would require the same delicacy as defusing a bomb.

“…Found it. Sibyl.”

“Yes. I am ''looking''.”

The Royal Elf replied with a calm voice, but she had already shut her eyelids which were decorated with thin eyelashes. The three jewels in her circlet could be seen glowing palely in the darkness. She was likely revealing a different circuit diagram from what was simply on the surface.

“Fairies, to ensure mutual understanding, I will use the numbers derived from the circuit diagram on the cave walls: Focus on #3 and #8 and on #12 and #19. Connect those with gold thread without allowing it to touch anything else.”

“Alice.”

“I’m on it!”

Meridiana produced gold thread thinner than a hair and Alice followed Sibyl’s instructions to connect the damaged wiring sticking out from the breaks in the circuit boards. In semiconductor factories, the wiring was printed using something like a sewing machine, but Alice’s arms rivaled that in speed.

If the miniscule threads touched anything other than the terminal points in the air, it could cause a short and damage further data, but there was no hesitation in the movement of Alice’s fingers. She repaired the broken circuits by bridging the gaps according to Sibyl’s instructions.

There was nothing the Sage could do until the hardware was complete.

She would occasionally use a cotton swab to wipe sweat from the Fairies’ brows, but before too long, Sybil opened her eyes.

She looked to her companion and spoke.

“The preparations are complete, Sage. It is your turn now.”

“Understood.”

With the wiring complete, the Fairies used their clear bug wings to flutter away as the Sage’s fingers traced across the patchwork rapier lying on the ground. Immediately, several rectangular frames appeared in the darkness.

During the Underworld battle, she had remotely accessed Beatrice and the others’ Shining Weapons without a wired connection in order to view the Screenshot photographs contained inside. The Holy Swordswoman had used a cable when connecting to Abyss, but the Sage had no such requirement.

She could access the data with a wireless connection.

If she could access it, she could boot up Beatrice’s broken rapier.

Alice tilted her head while viewing the strings of alphanumeric text scrolling rapidly through the rectangular frames.

“Hmm? So is it working?”

“Alice.”

Her sister, Meridiana, placed a hand on her shoulder to pull her back.

At the same moment, the Sage’s eyebrows trembled slightly.

“…''What is this''?”

That might have been the expected response from a normal person.

But this did not bode well.

A question from the Sage’s mouth and a situation she had not expected were enough to predict the beginning of a catastrophe.

The alphanumeric text scrolling across the frames was unfamiliar to Boo Boo, Meridiana, and the others from Ground’s Nir. No, it may have been just as incomprehensible to Filinion and Armelina from Earth. But Boo Boo noticed something odd as he viewed it. These were definitely strings of alphanumeric text, but there were some areas that only contained dots. And the amount of non-numeric and non-alphabetic characters was increasing. There were meaningless gaps in the scrolling data.

The Sage clearly clicked her tongue.

"Too much of the data is corrupted...At this rate, even if the contents were extracted, we wouldn't be able to fill in the gaps by estimating what comes before or after that data!!"

This should have been a success.

There should have been no mistakes throughout the entire process.

But even so, there was no smile to be found.

Even if everything was done perfectly, there was no saving Beatrice.

"Th-then."

Boo Boo's mind had frozen.

He couldn't see the answer. No, he may have actually understood it after all. Even if he could not make his way to the front line, even if he could only foolishly look to his surroundings. But, even so, he wanted someone smarter that could dispel this foolish sense of unease he was feeling.

"Then, what does this mean?"

Nobody could answer his question.

As the sickening silence continued, the alphanumeric text rapidly scrolling across the floating windows came to a stop.

Even though all of the work is now finished, nobody spoke a word.

There had been an unspoken understanding among them.

They only had one shot at this.

If they did not succeed while morale was high, it would break them and they could never recover.

===Part 10===

The Sage had said they would try everything available to them.

But that implicitly said she did not know how to recover the lost data.

They left the Cave of Tears without coming to any definitive conclusions.

Could they save Beatrice or not?

They had no guarantee.

“…”

“I-it’ll be okay, Boo Boo.”

Late at night, Filinion spoke gently to Boo Boo who was silently trudging back home below the cloudy sky.

“We’re not out of time yet. We have a whole day left, so we have plenty of chances to turn this around. So it’ll be okay. Please don’t let it get you down.”

“Right…”

He wanted to believe her.

Letting his negative thoughts trap him would be meaningless. It worried him endlessly that they had no actual plan. He knew that, but he could not stop the bad feeling growing inside him. He could tell he was being swallowed up by a large but invisible current. He sensed a coming loss. His spine tingled with that familiar sense that reminded him of when so much had been taken from him or destroyed.

His head felt heavy.

He felt a weight in his stomach.

His tear ducts threatened to loosen if he let his guard down. He wanted to yell at the top of his lungs and just run around aimlessly.

“The one thing we know is that we can’t fix this by doing nothing,” said Armelina. “This isn’t the time to feel down, Boo Boo. We need to pull ourselves together even more than before. We’re going to save Beatrice, right? So we don’t have time for shock. We can’t waste any time with the limit approaching.”

Yes.

That was right.

No matter what happened, the limit would approach all the same. If they did not want to simply wait for the coming disaster, they had to keep struggling no matter the situation.

They were not fighting because they knew they could win. The burden on their shoulders was not so light that they could give up just because they were losing.

They had to count themselves lucky for learning this so early on. They had to force themselves onto the next plan.

They had not been faced with this information at the last second. They still had a day. Even if the end was guaranteed to arrive if they did nothing, they still had a whole day to work with. So it would be okay. Beatrice was not going to disappear immediately. If he returned to his leaf house, he would find Beatrice sleeping peacefully there. There was a definite existence there.

So.

So.

So.

“…I’ll head home. Squeal, I need to refocus myself.”

“That’s right. We still have tomorrow, so we don’t need to waste that opportunity.”

“Ha ha. Seeing Beatrice’s face will rid you of your worries. When you’re afraid of some formless anxiety, nothing calms you like something with a definite form.”

The three of them discussed that on the way up the mountain to the leaf house. Boo Boo gradually regained his smile along the way.

“Then…then we still have a chance. Beatrice will still be okay. Squeal, I hope she gets better soon. I want to play with her. I’ll show her how good I’ve gotten at fishing!”

They were too naïve.

Beatrice was collapsed on the ground as if she had tried to drag herself out of the leaf house.

Her limbs were convulsing slightly as she suffocated on the blood she had coughed up.

===Part 11===

The next thing he knew, the sun was in the sky.

Boo Boo could no longer remember what had happened in the meantime.

''“Hey, what’s going on!? Can damage to the autonomic nerves really do this much!? She didn’t bite her tongue, did she? Beatrice, open your mouth. Hurry up and open it, you idiot!!”

''“If she’s coughing up blood, does that mean she has internal bleeding? Did irregular movement of her diaphragm harm her lungs? No, is it a stress ulcer? Armelina, out of the way. I know what Recovery Potion she needs, so hold her jaw and keep her windpipe clear until I’m finished administering it! Just don’t let her suffocate!!”

Some fragmentary memories remained, but he was only really knew that he was glad Filinion and Armelina had been with him. He could not have done anything on his own. Without Filinion’s Recovery Potion and Armelina’s first-aid skills, Beatrice might have lost her life right there.

Why hadn’t he considered it?

If he left Beatrice on her own, who would look after her if her condition worsened? She could not rely on Abyss who could not move. If Boo Boo had been with her…or if he had asked Ileana, Wildefrau, or someone else to help, they could have prevented it from getting this bad in the first place.

“Uuuh…”

It had only been a small hurdle that anyone could have cleared.

But foolish Boo Boo had not even considered it. He had been too naïve. He had not taken the threat seriously.

“Owwwaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

He hated it.

He hated his own hopeless ignorance.

It felt like the result of living such a carefree life. It was his punishment for wasting so much time and learning nothing. But if so, why wasn’t the punishment directed at him? It was always like this for him. Only he survived while everyone he cared for collapsed around him.

Why was the world like this?

It was like unrelated people were sent to hell so that he would suffer.

Deep in the forest, he shoved his forehead against a large boulder and shed large tears. It was not the time for this. They had less than a day left, so the time limit really was approaching. He knew that, but there was nothing else he could do.

Then he heard the rustling of underbrush from behind him.

“You sure are making a racket this morning, Boo Boo. Well, I suppose that girl must be satisfied if you care for her this much.”

“…Sage?”

“Anyone on the island could find you after you yelled like that. I’ve more or less figured everything out, so I’ll give you a report.”

That person who looked so much like Beatrice sat on a nearby stump and snapped her fingers. Sparks scattered like her fingers were made of flint and a rectangular frame of red light appeared in the air.

“After extracting the data from Beatrice’s Shining Weapon, I found that too much is damaged to recover it as-is. I told you that much in the cave last night.”

“Is there…is there some other way of saving Beatrice? If so, please tell me! I’ll do anything!!”

This was not the time for crying.

He did not care if it made him stupid or foolish. If there was anything he could learn, he would do so. He approached the Sage as if grabbing at her, but she only calmly shook her head.

“No. Repairing the Shining Weapon’s personal authentication section is the only way to return Beatrice to Earth and save her.”

“Then…?”

“We will have to change our repair method. I had wanted to predict the contents of the blanks using the files immediately preceding and following them, but entire blocks are missing and that isn’t feasible.” The Sage raised a slender index finger covered in jointed metal. “Beatrice’s Shining Weapon has entire blocks of data missing, so we have to find a way to fill those gaps. Since we can’t rely on the surrounding data, we will need a different hint.”

“What is it? Is this leading in a good direction or a bad direction? Just tell me that up front!”

“That’s hard to say. There are a few different formats for a Shining Weapon’s contents, but Beatrice uses a customized version of a commercial model. That means it will be structured similar to the ones used by other people.”

The Sage opened a new frame and placed it behind the one filled with holes. That filled the holes in from behind.

“We compare Beatrice’s worm-eaten data with someone else’s full set of data and then fill in what is missing. That should let us easily repair the full blocks of missing data.”

“Th-then we can save Beatrice, right!? I don’t have to worry about anything, right!?”

“However.”

The Sage cut him off.

The word filled his chest with an ominous feeling.

“…This would require samples from more than just five or ten people. We would need to gather as many samples as possible to average them out and dilute them down into plain and average data that is something like an artificial organ that is compatible with anyone. Yes, my guess is it would take the Shining Weapons of more than 1000 people. Just getting help from her friends will not be enough here.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Boo Boo silently stared in a certain direction.

He did not need to check the map. He looked to the partially-repaired inn town where the humans gathered. It was a symbol of peace where celebrations continued now that the Red menace was gone.

With no knowledge or skills, that was the only candidate Boo Boo could think of.

“Boo Boo, that would not be easy.”

“But…”

“This isn’t about what they think of Beatrice.”

The Sage must have predicted several things from the moment she had seen the new repair method, so she rejected his idea.

“As you can see from her state, Shining Weapons are the strongest weapon and final lifeline of the humans visiting this world. Lose it, and they will slowly die, no matter how high their Level. No one will just lend you theirs if you ask. Giving you their Shining Weapon is like leaving their life in your hands.”

Yet they needed to see 1000 people’s Shining Weapons. And only the inn town had that many humans.

…If he could not expect their cooperation, what else could he do?

Could he only sit around and wait for Beatrice to die? Could she not rely on anyone for help as she crawled along the ground and coughed up blood, even though a method had already been proposed?

“I will go to Earth,” said the Sage. “The corporations leisurely awaiting results on Earth may be more lax than the Level Cappers who feel at home on the front lines of this world and view their Shining Weapon as their partner. Since I don’t have time to make a gradual approach while applying pressure, it will require a fairly reckless cyber-attack, but if it succeeds, I might be able to steal enough plans directly from the manufacturer’s servers.”

If it succeeds.

Might.

…Not even the Sage could guarantee results. For the arrogant Sage, it was quite timid to consider the possibility that things would not go as planned.

Boo Boo had seen Beatrice coughing up blood on the ground.

He had to consider the possibility that it would not work.

“Boo Boo, I would like to make a suggestion. I wanted to leave this as a last resort, but we really are reaching that point. You know Wildefrau, that Water Element expert, right? I’ll take my time on Earth to make sure I succeed, so there is something I want you to do here.”

“?”

“You can set up some ''definite insurance'' for Beatrice.”

===Part 12===

He was unsteady on his feet.

Boo Boo had failed to meet the basic requirement of procuring food, so he staggered back to the leaf house while holding his stomach which still did not feel any hunger.

It was not enough. That was all he could think about: it was not enough.

So he should have celebrated the reply the Sage had given him. It had made up for what Boo Boo lacked.

The White Queen Filinion and Fighter Priest Armelina were gathered around the campfire doing something.

“Hey, glasses girl. Is this really edible? It looks like a giant booger.”

“How dare you challenge my knowledge of the human body. And it’s not a booger!! It’s just that including only the necessary nutrients isn’t very satisfying, so just like with diet foods, I made it swell out in your stomach so you feel full. And the chocolate, yogurt, and strawberry flavors have my seal of approval. All that’s missing is the patent submission.”

“Ehh? For this giant booger solidified at the bottom of a pot?”

“Fine, let’s take this out back!! Must you ruin all of my efforts because your poor body development makes you view everything in a negative light!?”

As the glasses girl got all heated up, the police officer sighed, raised the wooden spatula she was using to stir the pot on the fire, and whacked the White Witch lightly on the forehead. Filinion screamed and rolled around on the ground.

“…Squeal. What are you doing?”

“Oh. I asked Filinion for some breakfast and she gave me this mystery space food, so we’re discussing what to do with it.”

“I’m pretty sure your reaction was overkill just now! That went far beyond channeling a domineering husband who overturns the tea table! Right!?”

The tearful glasses girl had not learned her lesson, so the police officer treated her to another spatula hit. An infinite loop was setting in, but Boo Boo entered the leaf house because he did not have time to watch.

Beatrice was lying peacefully within.

Who appeared in worse shape: her or Abyss lying deactivated next to her?

“Boo…Boo…”

“Beatrice.”

He slowly bent his legs and sat by her pillow, intentionally suppressed the powerful emotion in his throat, and spoke in short sentences.

“It will be okay. We found a way to save you. So it will be okay. This time…this time for real. We really will save you.”

“…”

“There’s nothing to worry about. The pain and suffering will be gone soon. This time tomorrow, you’ll be running around just fine. So rest easy and get to sleep. Everything will be solved when you wake up…”

She was lying on the floor in only underwear and a blanket and she looked up at him with half-lidded eyes.

She breathed in and out and spoke in a scratchy voice.

“Did the Sage say something to you, Boo Boo?”

“…”

“That’s it. I’m going to punch her for putting that look on your face…”

“No, Beatrice!!”

The Holy Swordswoman seriously tried to get up, so he quickly kept her on the ground. The difference between human and Iberian Orc strength did not matter here. Beatrice was so weak he was afraid just touching her would break her.

After being almost forcibly knocked down, Beatrice looked up at Boo Boo’s face.

“You say it’ll be over if I go to sleep. So did she bring up Wildefrau?”

“…”

“I’m guessing the Sage suggested cold sleep. Well, it makes sense as a form of insurance in case you can’t solve this within the time limit. With years or even decades to work, you’re sure to find several solutions…”

“Beatrice…”

“I’m sorry, Boo Boo. But I won’t use that method.”

“But…but! You can’t just reject it because it was the Sage’s idea! If we have something we know will work, then…!!”

“I’ve already rejected a form of insurance that is guaranteed to work, Boo Boo. It wasn’t cold sleep, though.” Beatrice smiled thinly. “Hey, Boo Boo. Cold sleep comes with its own risks. I assume the Sage explained those to you.”

“Uuh…”

“Yes, that’s the reason for the sad look in your eyes. …I want to punch her so bad.”

“But…even so, I want to save you…”

The girl sighed.

She could barely move, but she released an oddly warm breath as she got to the crux of the issue.

“''Even if it means remaking me so that you are my greatest enemy''?”

A large tremor ran through his body.

He was unable to move for a while.

“Cold sleep sounds nice, but it requires a lot of adjustments. It’s a delicate process where the slightest mistake would cost me my life.” Beatrice looked this precious person in the eye. “And even if you can prepare my body so I will survive, what about the other life forms? I bet my germs, gut flora, and immune system would be wiped out and reset. Once I woke up from my long sleep, I wouldn’t be able to live in a normal environment. I wouldn’t be able to touch you since you live in the forest. My immune system might recover after spending a long time on Earth, but it also might never recover.”

“…”

“Ah ha ha. Is it confusing to talk about things that are too small to see? Regardless, I will not accept that. I feel chills at the mere thought of remaking myself so you’re a deadly enemy. I don’t know what the Sage told you with that thin smile on her face, but that isn’t a gamble I’m willing to make.”

Boo Boo had been told all that.

It would not happen tomorrow or the day after that. That risk would occur if it took them years or decades to find a solution.

“…But.”

Of course he was afraid.

He was no longer alone. But that red-and-silver-haired girl had always been pulling on his hand at the center of that circle of people. The thought of losing Beatrice was even more painful than having his heart torn to shreds. But being something that would kill her would also make him sad.

“But I still want you to live.”

“If you can’t be with the person you love, you can’t really call it living.”

“I just want you to be happy, no matter what form that takes…!!”

“If you really think that would be a happy fate, then you’ve let the Sage influence you. Maybe you need a harsh lecture…”

“It might not be possible to solve this without losing anything. It might be necessary to give up something!!”

The slender girl was unfazed by the monster’s shouting.

In fact, she narrowed her eyes like a mother watching her child throw a tantrum.

“Listen, Boo Boo. The memories of our time together aren’t yours alone.”

“…”

“If I have to give up something, then my life is of secondary importance. I will protect the time we spent together and the bonds we built. I will protect them and die. I don’t care if it’s the Sage or you; I will not let anyone take away the right to be with the person I love… That is my dignity and my pride. I will never distort the Beatrice you took such good care of. If I had to view you with fear, then I wouldn’t be me anymore…”

Then what were they supposed to do?

Was there any way to extend the time limit without the cold sleep trick?

“Let’s do what we can.”

“Beatrice…”

“Let’s fight as hard as we can and accept the result. Let’s settle this fair and square. Whether it succeeds or fails. I will remain true to myself to the end, so don’t worry, Boo Boo. I won’t go anywhere.”

Persuading her with words was simply not happening.

She would never agree to give up on her current life and go elsewhere.

“Uuh.”

His vision blurred.

Crying in front of that suffering girl would only worry her more. It was like telling her he had given up before even trying. But no matter how tightly he clenched his teeth, he could not remain calm.

He was such a fool.

He was so stupid, stupid, stupid and he could not forgive himself for letting this happen.

Was he really so dumb that he did not realize he needed to learn as much as possible in the limited time remaining in the hopes of finding more cards to play?

“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh…!!”

“Ha ha. There’s no way I could leave behind a crybaby like you, Boo Boo…”

All the while, time was passing.

The true sun was already at its peak, indicating that half of the day had gone by.

===Part 13===

Boo Boo stood atop a hill.

The humans who had come from the distant Earth had built up the inn town as a base for their Labyrinth exploration. Some scars remained from the Underworld battle, but it was still the most active part of the island.

Many humans were gathered there, which in turn meant many Shining Weapons.

Everything needed to save Beatrice would be there.

“…”

But as he stood there, a dry sound reached his ears.

A skeleton in a cowboy hat had walked up. It was Skull Wave who gathered the remains of the many people who had lost their lives in this world.

“You aren’t considering a very bad idea, are you?”

“Boo. …Hey, Skull Wave.” Boo Boo continued staring into the distance. “How does it feel to die?”

“Couldn’t tell you. I’m really just an emulation of a dead person’s personality. I was constructed after death, but I haven’t actually passed the point of death myself. And if secondhand information is good enough, you could get it from anyone.”

“…”

“Were you going to accept her fate if I said it wasn’t that bad? To be clear, that’s not the real issue here. Boo Boo, this is your life. Instead of thinking about the person facing death, you should think about how you’ll feel being left behind.”

“Beatrice says she would rather die than live on without me.”

“She’s a strong girl. And you aren’t helping matters there, but that’s not what anyone was talking about.” The skeleton put his hands on his fleshless and skinless hips. “Listen, the Underworld is no more. That means I control all the humans who died in Ground’s Nir.”

“…?”

“I’m not saying I’ll create an emulation of Beatrice’s personality. Look at it more simply. If she dies, her body will turn to bone and become a part of me. She’ll be drawn to me and be known as Skull Wave. Would you be able to bear that?”

Boo Boo said nothing.

But a clear pressure emanated from his giant body and that seemed to satisfy the cowboy hat skeleton.

“…''So you do understand''.”

“S-squeal? What do you mean?”

“You don’t want anything to take Beatrice from you, right? Even if that’s fate and it can’t be helped, you just can’t accept it, can you? You managed to recover after your village was attacked and your entire family was killed, but this alone you can’t bear. Even when you feel like having things taken from you is inevitable, there is a definite threshold when it’s just too much. So that feeling is real. And what in this world is more powerful than that? Even if the god in heaven has decreed it and even if she’s given up on herself, why do you have to stand aside in the life you were given? Be honest with yourself. Be honest and you’ll know what it is you have to do.”

It was a dark feeling.

It was muddy and unpleasant.

To eat and to live.

Boo Boo had rejected violence for any other purpose, so this feeling never should have existed in his heart.

“To hell with that,” said Skull Wave. “What’s wrong with this?”

The monster trembled in fear, thinking this was a result of the exhaustion that came rushing back now that he felt cornered, but Skull Wave laughed.

He held the cowboy hat down with one hand and said it clearly.

“''What could be wrong with a man falling in love with a woman?''”

Time stopped.

The confusing thing boiling inside him had been named and categorized, so he could finally begin processing it accordingly. Unable to bear the uncomfortable silence, the feeling raged around Boo Boo’s entire body but had no outlet.

That was how love worked.

If you could control the feeling, it would never be called love in the first place.

“Good and bad and all those concerns don’t matter,” said the being who existed beyond death. “It doesn’t matter if you’re stupid, foolish, or lacking. As long as you have ''that'' inside you, you’re standing at the top of the world. You’re a winner. Even if someone else tries to deny it, nothing was wasted on the way to gaining ''that''. Not one thing. After all, there’s no set path to reach it. Everyone has their own path and they’re all the most perfect answer for that person.”

“…”

I don’t get it. I don’t get it. I don’t understand.

Just a few seconds earlier, Boo Boo might have responded like that. Just as he had countless times before during his aimless days.

But that had changed.

He was no longer falling behind. He stood on the front line of the world.

“Are you afraid of losing her? Do you want to run wild when you even imagine the moment she’s taken from you? Then think about what it is you really need to do. I’m not talking about a haphazard rampage or emotional resignation. Everyone knows men are willing to throw away their own lives for love. So set aside what’s possible and impossible, line up all the cards you have, and think about what you can do for the person you love.”

“…”

“I’m not talking about figuring out which card to choose. Have you divided them between those you can choose and those you can’t? Then you already know some cards you couldn’t choose. If you could have helped with her suffering but you pulled back your hand before even trying because the walls of reality got in the way, you’ll never forgive yourself. Now, let’s shuffle them all together again. Let’s lay them all out and view them all. …What will you choose? Whatever you reached for now that you’re feeling that anger is what you really want to do.”

Boo Boo sniffled his nose.

He rubbed his eyes and looked to the human-filled inn town once more.

“Have you found what you really, truly want to do?”

“Yes. Beatrice said to do what we can, but I know that isn’t the right answer. It wouldn’t satisfy anyone.”

He no longer had the look of a lost child.

The light in his eyes did not waver.

“…''I’ll try doing what I can’t do.'' That has to be my right answer.”

===Part 14===

A low tremor ran through the ground.

The people looked around in confusion and then spotted the abnormality.

“Boo…”

It was a pig-faced giant who stood nearly four meters tall. The gray Iberian Orc with incredibly powerful muscles was walking straight toward the inn town.

The inn town acted as the humans’ base, but it was not surrounded by tall walls. There were exceptions like the Break News, but the humans trusted the firepower of their Magic enough to forego a wall. Instead of defending with shields, they eliminated threats with their weapons. That was the general policy concerning Nonhumans for the people who used and protected the inn town.

And that Iberian Orc was not just a wild beast. You could say he had a criminal record. Even if he had been fighting to save Beatrice, Filinion, and Armelina from Elkiad’s fierce attack, he had not been given a chance to explain the circumstances.

At the time, Fairy Queen Sutriona had used her disaster-level power to leave the result unclear, but if he went out of his way to pick at that old wound, the humans would have little trouble piecing the memories back together.

The festive mood vanished almost instantly.

The town was still scarred by the Underworld battle and a panic filled it like someone had poked a hornet’s nest.

“Stop! Stop right there!!”

“Trying to convince him his useless. Shouting will only get him worked up. Shield unit, to the front!! Once you stop him, we’ll fire. Just follow your training. And if it comes to it, we can always use Recovery Magic as long as you don’t die!!”

“That’s the Dragon Eater. He can move a lot faster than you would think. Do not let your guard down and always keep him in your sights. Don’t forget to use Curse homing!!”

He had yet to enter the inn town.

He had not done anything, but so many Shining Weapons were already aimed at him.

Shining Weapons.

He needed as many of those as possible to protect someone he cared for.

“I want to save Beatrice…”

How much courage had it taken to force out those words?

He had always kept his distance even during the festivals that had looked like so much fun, but he had broken his own policy to approach these strangers and bow his head. Just how madly had that choice made his heart pound in his chest?

“Please help me!! It doesn’t have to be for long, but I need to see your Shining Weapons. That’s all I need to save someone important to me!!”

Naturally, there was no response.

Several lightning-like flashes of light approached from dead ahead. This was warning Magic that had no destructive power behind it. The intense light was only meant to blind the target and the real attack would come from the fully-equipped knights who held shields so large they could hide their entire body behind it.

The shield unit charged forward in a row to form a single wall.

They used the slight time available to approach their target.

Of course, blinding an Iberian Orc was not enough to stop him from fighting. With his ears and nose, he had plenty of other senses to use. If he swung around the thick Shining Weapon hanging from his hip, he could take out all of the approaching knights in a single blow.

But he did not.

He suppressed the fear and clenched his teeth while allowing the several large shields to charge straight toward him.

He ignored them and raised his voice.

“I was told how important Shining Weapons are for humans!! I was told giving them to someone is like giving that person your life. I was told no one would lend theirs to me if I asked!! So I won’t just ask. I’ll risk my life to earn your trust! I’ll show you it’s safe to let me see them and that I won’t take your lives!! So-…!!”

His words were cut off early.

Even large shields could be used for fierce attacks if the wielder hit the target with the corner. But the shield unit was only meant to hold him in place.

The real attack was a barrage from behind them.

With an explosive boom, a giant ball of flames slammed into Boo Boo between the eyes. Even the powerful muscles of an Iberian Orc could only do so much if he did not dodge at all. His head wobbled. He desperately tried to hold onto his consciousness and blood flowing from his split forehead covered his right eye.

He had lost half his field of vision, but he still shouted.

“Help her. Please help Beatrice!!!!!!”

A second and third attack mercilessly flew his way.

The shield unit gathered around him was blown away in some friendly fire as the major Magic techniques continually shook Boo Boo’s giant body. His thick skin was torn away and his blood sprayed out.

…Fighting and stealing the Shining Weapons may have been an option.

But Boo Boo had not chosen that route. Even if all those sacrifices saved Beatrice, she still had a life to live afterwards. He could not let her future be crushed by grudges and regret.

Beatrice had said her life was of secondary importance.

Boo Boo felt the same.

If he could give her a bright future, he was willing to sacrifice his own life.

“…Your…Shining…Weapons…”

The explosive roars continued on and on.

More and more major attacks were fired at him, the firing squad began to breathe heavily from the psychological burden, a rusty flavor spread through his mouth, and yet Boo Boo still got the words out.

“Lend me your Shining Weapons…just for a little while. I swear…I will bring them…back…”

There was a tremor.

He had finally reached his limit.

“…Save…”

His words trailed off.

The monster’s giant body toppled forward.

“…Beatri…”

Meanwhile, the palm-sized Fairy Meridiana grew pale and shouted while she watched from afar.

“L-Lady Sutriona!! Boo Boo is…hurry…do something…ahh…you only have to distract…just draw the humans attention elsewhere!!”

“Wait.” The Break News spoke that one word with an exasperated sigh. “While I do need to punch that bony bastard later, this is the obstacle Boo Boo set up for himself. So he has to overcome it himself. Reach out a helping hand here and it will only cause his heart to rot.”

“This isn’t about that psychological stuff!! None of that matters if he’s killed right here and now!!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

Sutriona was right.

After the gray monster collapsed face down, the person who had fired that final shot actually looked confused while wiping sweat from their chin. The inexperienced rookies were celebrating, but the veteran Level Cappers could tell something was not right. If he was that tough, he could have charged straight through their barrage and reached them. Each of their powerful attacks took time to activate, so they were done for if he got close. And yet he had stayed in one place. He had wasted his opportunity. He had never drawn the Shining Weapon at his hip and he had continued rambling. It was said a drowning man would grasp at straws, but did this monster not have that biological instinct? It should not have been possible to not draw your weapon when faced with certain death, so everyone who had seen that impossible courage felt a tremor run down their spin, like they had seen someone commit suicide in only the water in a wash basin.

No one delivered a finishing blow.

It would be hard to find a part of him that was not wet with blood. They could not even tell if he was still breathing. But for some reason, no one approached even after he had collapsed defenseless onto the ground. No one thought about discarding his corpse in some more distant location. It was a small island, but the rules of survival of the fittest still applied outside the inn town. Since this animal could no longer stand under his own power, did they assume some other beast would take care of the cleanup for them?

No.

Perhaps they simply did not want to end it.

Perhaps they wanted to see what would happen next.

“…”

One of the people who had formed the impromptu shield unit remained in place without speaking a word.

He was a man known as the Pure Knight.

He stood there a while staring at the bloody beast.

“What’s with you? It’s over, ain’t it?”

“Let’s get back and get drunk again.”

Even when some others wielding large shields called out to him, the Pure Knight did not move. He was of much lower rank. Even after a frank comment from someone with a clear position in the hierarchy, he ignored them and stayed put. He felt a slight prickle of guilt.

This monster had been faced by such hostility.

The Pure Knight wondered what the monster had been trying to accomplish. Unless it was a diversion of some kind, there was no good reason to suicidally take it all head on. And even if it had been a diversion, there would have been no reason not to use the Shining Weapon at his hip.

Could there really have been nothing more to it?

He had said he wanted to borrow everyone’s Shining Weapons to rescue Beatrice.

That made no sense whatsoever, but was that really all there was to it?

“What is it? Looking for some way to profit from this? Or do you want his head as a trophy?”

“This damn pig is wearing a Shining Weapon like he thinks he’s human. Heh heh heh. I wonder how many gears I’d get if I sold that thing at the pawn shop.”

There was a loud sound of metal on metal. Not even the Pure Knight knew why he had punched his friend in the face.

===Part 15===

“Boo Boo.”

The Iberian Orc slowly opened his eyes when he heard his name.

His surroundings had already grown dark.

And with the unchanged moon behind her, Vampire Kallikantzaros peered down at his face with her short but curvy body dressed in a red negligee and night cap.

“…What a shame. If you had taken just a little longer to wake, I would have had an excuse to sink my fangs into you.”

It was unclear how serious she was about that.

For some reason, the small girl was seated on a simple cart made of wood.

When injured Boo Boo sat up, he realized he was in the location of the previous conflict.

And there was something odd there: swords, spears, axes, bows, clubs, hammers, whips, staffs, and shields.

All the different weapons and armor that humans used formed a pile larger than Boo Boo himself.

They were Shining Weapons.

Those were the control devices for the technological system known as Magic. Leaving these with someone in this foreign world should have been the same as leaving your life in their hands.

“Why are these here…?”

“I do not know what happened during the day,” said the blonde girl in a red negligee who sat on the cart presumably prepared to transport the Shining Weapons. “But it seems Demon Lord Tselika did something behind the scenes. That toxic woman is apparently worshiped like a god by a portion of a group on their Earth…Over the Wall, was it called? The power balance on Earth is directly linked to that of the inn town. If she is worshiped by a secret society that manipulates Earth from behind the scenes, then she can also control what is seen as right and wrong in the inn town. She laid the groundwork needed to control the majority.”

“???”

“…Still, that means she managed to get them to cooperate after they attacked you so much while you were defenseless. She gave an extra push to the ones she could trust after they were already shaken by what had happened. Almost like a psychological pincer attack. To the ones affected, it probably felt like a twinge of guilt. …That toxic woman really is a Demon Lord to the core. A certain queen I know almost looks cute in comparison.”

“Squ-squeal… I’m not sure what you’re saying – cough – but you think Sutriona is cute?”

“Bfff!? Wh-wh-what would possess you to reach that conclusion!? Who would…who would ever like her!? Cough, cough!!”

The Vampire blushed bright red and shouted angrily, so Boo Boo ignored her and looked to the pile of Shining Weapons.

He had cleared the impossible task the Sage had left him with.

Now they could finally fix Beatrice’s Shining Weapon and get her back to Earth. Then Beatrice would not have to suffer any longer.

It was in sight.

It was coming down to the wire, but it was in sight.

“Now, a question concerning what comes next. Like I said, Tselika possesses great power on Earth by controlling a portion of Over the Wall. There was one thing she did not have the answer to when I contacted her, so I want your opinion too, Boo Boo. Given what I have heard, you were likely the last one to see her.”

“?”

“Where is the Sage?”

That symbol of death spoke clearly.

Boo Boo had finally started to see hope, but her words seemed to indicate a depthless darkness.

“Not even Tselika’s information network can find her. That may not be too surprising for the Sage, but where on Earth did she disappear to? And just to be sure, she will return before the time limit, won’t she?”

===Part 16===

The wooden wheels groaned as they rolled up the mountain.

Boo Boo pulled the cart full of Shining Weapons back to his house on the slope.

The Cave of Tears was also Tselika’s treasure trove.

If that white Demon Lord did not know the answer, then the only other possibility was here.

But there was no sign of her.

There was no campfire lit and the tent-like leaf house was wrapped in silence.

“…”

It was hopeless now.

It had all crumbled around him.

…The Sage had left for Earth after suggesting they put Beatrice in cold sleep. She may have intended to ignore the time limit and take her time. If so, the misunderstanding was partially Boo Boo’s fault. He had failed to change the Sage’s mind or Beatrice’s mind, so he had ended up just wandering around meaninglessly.

If he had shown more courage then, this crucial branch may have occurred sooner.

Struggling against the current of destruction was useless after it already had you in its grasp.

“Why…?”

He felt truly hopeless.

He could only sniffle and cry as he leaned on the handle used to pull the cart.

“…Why!!!???”

There was no invisible destiny. There was no cruel god. No matter how much he burned with regret and trembled, this was who he was. It had been the same with the attack on his village. It had all happened without his knowledge and it had been over by the time he noticed. The final decision had been made long, long before he realized what was happening. It was always like that. Was it simply his fate to have things taken from him and destroyed? It was his fault for not taking action to prevent it before it happened. He cursed how slow he was. He could not forgive his mind for never being able to keep up.

He could not come to a stop, but he had nowhere to go either.

He simply followed his homing instinct and trudged back to his tent-like home made from large leaves.

It remained the same.

Beatrice was sleeping in her underwear and a blanket as she waited for the time limit which was not provided as an obvious number.

There was no convenient change.

“What…is it, Boo Boo?”

“Beatrice…”

He had no idea what look he had on his face.

He simply clung to her and failed to hide the shaking of his voice.

“It’ll be okay.”

He said it.

He had no choice but to say it.

“Look, I spoke with everyone at the inn town and they all lent me the Shining Weapons that are more important than their lives. So everything will be okay. The Sage will take care of it now. There’s nothing to worry about. You’ll definitely get better now.”

That solution was no longer viable.

Due to a tiny misunderstanding, they had no idea where the Sage was.

Boo Boo was scared.

He was known as the Dragon Eater, but he was utterly terrified.

There’s nothing I can do. I tried everything I could think of, but it wasn’t enough.

His entire body was wrapped in the vague terror that speaking those words would make them true.

“Yes…”

Beatrice could not even sit up, but she smiled a bit while lying down.

“I’m really glad.”

“…Beatrice.”

“You’ve gained the courage to speak with other humans, haven’t you? Look how beat up you are. It couldn’t have been easy. But I’m really glad that you’ve made that kind of progress.”

“Beatrice?”

“…This way you won’t be lonely without me. Boo…Boo…”

She was smiling.

Her head wobbled a bit with that fleeting smile on her face.

And then her brief period of consciousness faded.

Almost like this was her natural state.

“…Of course I will be.”

Finally.

Boo Boo bit his lip and spoke.

“Of course I will be.”

Once he started, he could not stop.

Some kind of dam may have broken inside him.

“Of course I’ll be lonely!! I don’t want anyone else!! It has to be you, Beatrice! No one else can replace you!! I…I…”

There was no one to respond.

He had carved a symbol into 1000 trees, he had gathered all those people who were smarter than him, and he had convinced everyone from the inn town to leave their Shining Weapons with him.

And yet.

Cruel reality still insisted on taking everything from him.

He could only shout and yell.

He could only gather all his strength to lament how unfair it was.

“''I like you best. It has to be you smiling there''!!”

And.

Just then.

“…?”

He suddenly raised his head.

A faint light was flashing. It was inside the same leaf tent. And he was pretty sure it had not been there before. The red light was small, but it was unstable. It may have been a fire. Beatrice could not protect herself right now, so her life would be at risk if a lamp fell over and started a fire.

However, what he found was not at all what he had expected.

It was not a lamp full of oil.

The light came from Ultimate Weapon Abyss who had supposedly been deactivated next to Beatrice. A red triangular symbol was appearing and disappearing below her chest. It may have been some kind of warning. The lines on her black, skintight clothing also turned red.

“Abyss…?”

It happened as soon as he spoke her name.

He could not take his eyes off of the flashing red light. It had the same rhythm as the beating of his heart. No, the light may not have actually existed. A voice reached his brain while he stared at the red warning triangle that seemed burned directly into the back of his mind.

Abyss// I must apologize. I had calculated this would happen from the beginning.

He could not fight it.

He could not move a single finger.

Boo Boo did not know that Beatrice, Filinion, and Armelina had once used a virtual reality to experience the end of the world in advance, so he did not know that Abyss was capable of linking directly to living brains.

Abyss// I had hoped I was wrong, but it seems I expected too much from the world’s kindness.

Abyss// This will be a difficult topic.

Abyss// Boo Boo, do you wish to save Beatrice?

“If there’s a way…”

A straining sound came from all the muscles in his body.

He was still being controlled in some way, but the pig-faced giant still slowly but surely nodded his large head.

“…If there’s a convenient way of doing that, then I’ll do anything!”

Abyss// It is a horrible and very cruel thing.

Abyss// You will be unable to see the world after she has been saved.

Abyss// Knowing that, do you still wish to save her?

That went without saying.

The ultimate weapon took his silence for an answer and continued on.

Abyss// If you cannot fix Beatrice’s Shining Weapon, you must provide her with a new one.

Abyss// You have always been able to do that.

Abyss// That weapon at your hip is a Shining Weapon.

Abyss// You will create a new settings profile for that free Shining Weapon that no one is using.

Boo Boo did not understand the details of the technology, but he had a question. He was pretty sure the Sage had said that was not possible.

But there was no hesitation in Abyss’s voice.

Abyss// The fact that you can hear me is proof that you are qualified.

“…Qualified?”

Abyss// Normally, contacting me requires a high-level data terminal such as a Shining Weapon.

Abyss// However, you are accessing me with nothing of the sort.

Abyss// How did you determine I was attempting to commit suicide in the Labyrinth’s central shaft?

Abyss// How did you know the method of dueling Disaster who was created from dead flesh?

Abyss// How did you sense the sadness of the Underworld Lord who used artificial signals to control a vessel of flesh?

Abyss// No words were necessary.

Abyss// You possess the power to directly control faint electric currents.

Abyss// You are equipped with that function.

There was no way this explanation would feel real to him.

At any rate, Abyss was smarter than him and was giving him her guarantee.

That was all he understood.

Abyss// In the simulation, the other Iberian Orcs predicted a lightning strike.

Abyss// How did the souls in the Shining Weapon take control of your body?

Abyss// Did you sense an odd crackling feeling when the artificial atmospheric barrier was destroyed?

Abyss// Everything that happened was meaningful.

Boo Boo had no way of knowing, but the Red Iberian Orcs had attempted to use their supercomputer-level brains to perform calculations equivalent to a Shining Weapon so they could hack the Gates and invade Earth. But simply performing the calculations in their head was not enough. If they could not exchange actual signals, they could not control the Gates.

Abyss// This was probably originally part of their role as a secret weapon against me.

Abyss// The Iberian Orcs absorbed the strong points of many lifeforms in order to battle me.

Abyss// I can only assume one of those lifeforms was some kind of electric fish that could produce electricity.

Abyss// Although I do not know if it was meant to understand the electricity that controls me or if it was meant to directly destroy me.

Even after being told this, Boo Boo did not suddenly know how to control it.

It was possible no one knew.

Iberian Orcs controlled each of their own powerful muscle fibers to avoid destroying themselves, but this may have been the greatest of secret techniques even for them.

Abyss// You only need to hold that free Shining Weapon and strongly will it to be.

Abyss// You need to register Beatrice as its owner.

Abyss// You can solve this by taking the image of Beatrice in your head and sending it into the Shining Weapon.

Abyss// After observing her from close by for so long, you should be able to do this.

But that could not be all it was.

Abyss had said at the beginning that he would be unable to see the world after Beatrice had been saved.

Abyss// The electric fish is just one possibility that was ultimately rejected and faded away.

Abyss// You only possess the degenerated bud and your body is not specialized for its use.

Abyss// If you forcibly use that power, your body will be exposed to the electric current you yourself create.

Abyss// The fate of a High Voltage Eel with no way of allowing its electricity to escape is clear as day.

Abyss// Thus, this is a double-edged sword.

Abyss// You will destroy your own body.

Abyss// That sacrifice is the only way to save Beatrice.

There was a way to save her.

If Boo Boo made that decision.

Knowing and not knowing were two very different things.

A drowning man would grasp at straws.

“…”

He thought about what this meant.

But Boo Boo softly smiled.

Abyss// I am sorry.

For some reason, she apologized.

And a moment later, he was freed from her bonds.

There was no more light coming from Ultimate Weapon Abyss. Not even Boo Boo himself knew whether she had really been glowing or if it had been an illusion only he could see.

Her voice no longer filled his head.

“It’s okay…”

This was all he said.

“You have nothing to apologize for. I am very grateful.”

He had no time.

Now was not the time to tremble and hesitate.

He had a way to save Beatrice.

He slowly breathed in and then drew the Shining Weapon which looked like a log or a steel beam.

“Boo…Boo…?”

He heard a voice.

He finally understood why Abyss had apologized. The girl’s consciousness had been rising and falling, and it had just risen once more. He did not know if Beatrice had heard the voice he had heard in his head, but Boo Boo’s words had been spoken aloud normally. That was only a fragment of the conversation, but she may have sensed something ominous about it.

“There’s nothing to worry about now.” He smiled. “This time I really will save you. So you don’t need to tremble in pain any longer…”

Beatrice slowly shook her head.

She may have gathered all of her remaining strength to tell him she did not want that.

He already knew that, but he did not listen.

He would remain true to himself to the end, just as she had. He would use his own strength to race to the finish line in order to protect something more important to him than his own life. He had made that decision.

Skull Wave had revealed that this feeling was love.

He started to say so, but he gulped and fell silent. It only mattered that he knew it. He had not embraced this feeling in order to indulge in something and worry over it. So he swallowed the words. He trampled and crushed the small feeling growing inside him and took the last step.

He would save her.

He would save the life of the person he cared for more than anyone else in the world.

Was this a small miracle?

Or was it an act of the devil?

With the giant Shining Weapon’s grip in both hands, Boo Boo held it vertically, pressed his forehead against the striking portion, and shouted from the bottom of his gut.

Once he started, it did not take long.

It seemed to pour down. Something shot from the top of his head to the bottom of his butt. Several strange bluish-white flashes filled the leaf house and he sensed the unpleasant smell of his own flesh frying.

He had no way of checking on his own condition. His entire vision had whited out. Each of his organs wriggled on its own and moved so violently he thought he was being torn apart from skin to core.

He felt no pain.

His muscles would not stop convulsing. He could not even tell if he was breathing. His heart pounded irregularly and his mind seemed to be falling apart. When a piece fell away, he could not remember what it was no matter how hard he tried. No, he may not have been able to even try to remember. What was being destroyed: his muscle fibers, his ganglia, his skeleton, his organs, his heart, his life? He felt so horribly impatient, but he still focused his mind so very strongly on the image of that most important person. That became the only pillar of his world. He was already on the verge of forgetting his initial goal. Before he lost sight of everything, he had to fill the giant Shining Weapon with that girl’s smile which remained in the core of his soul.

He heard some kind of phantom noise.

He felt a pressure like there was something on the other side of the raised Shining Weapon that resembled a log or steel beam. It was a quadrupedal beast, a giant scaly fish, and a monstrous bird that ruled the skies with its wings. It transformed again and again to show all the lifeforms the Iberian Orcs had incorporated into their genetic line and it spoke with a voiceless voice. The meaning of the words did not reach him, but the emotion contained within vividly pierced him.

''Stop.

''Turn back.

That may have been the thick pillar that supported his life. All lifeforms literally were forms of life. Life came first and foremost. He could not overcome the will to use his own power to keep living. Being the strongest may have made that pressure to live even stronger. The drive that had served him well during his previous battles was now working against him.

But. Even so.

He sensed some faint presences outside the tent-like leaf house. There were more than a thousand presences there. Boo Boo quickly realized those were the Shining Weapons the humans at the inn town had lent him. They had listened to his request and lent him that power so that Beatrice could live.

He was currently connected to the Shining Weapon that resembled a log or steel beam.

So why would he be unable to connect to the others?

“I won’t stop…”

He tore apart the idea of being strongest as an individual.

He was no longer alone and he could continue on with everyone’s help!

“I will protect her. That’s the path I chose! This…this decision is the strongest thing I can think of!!”

He would die. He knew that. But that was why he wished so hard to fill the Shining Weapon with the image, smile, and wonders of the person he cared for most. If he did that, he could leave something behind. Just like a flower scattering to drop its fruit.

He would not become nothing. He was not afraid.

He filled it in.

He filled in that blank space.

After seeing beyond the strongest that supported him, there was nothing left inside Boo Boo. His head wobbled and it would never rise back up. His powerful bones and muscles were no help at all with supporting his weight. As he collapsed backwards, he could not even think of a reason why he needed to keep his balance.

His entire body had been fried.

It was over.

The shouting sounded different now. His throat had long since forgotten how to vibrate, so it probably now came from the girl lying on the floor. But he felt no fear. He did not understand why he was hearing that shrill cry.

If he collapsed, it would be over.

It would shatter the remaining shreds of his mind.

He knew that, but he did not fight it.

He no longer had the strength to fight it.

But.

However.

Just before he completely collapsed, he looked to the girl whose face was crumpled up like a bawling child and he smiled ever so slightly.

He could not remember why he was smiling.

But in the moment he truly vanished from the world, a string of sounds he did not understand spilled from his mouth:

''It’ll be okay now.

===Part 17===

It was a small enough island for humans to walk the perimeter in three days.

With the scenic land and sea, it was a calm but never boring place.

A single form walked there.

That Holy Swordswoman had distinctive red and silver hair, red armor, and a white miniskirt. However, she did not wear her usual rapier at her hip.

Instead, she carried something on her back that was large enough to mistake for a log or steel beam.

The blunt weapon was clearly too large for her, but there was no pain on her face.

…She had wondered what the best place would be.

She had looked at a number of different spots, but there had always been only one real answer.

It was a small hill partway up a mountain.

He had always stood in that spot that overlooked the inn town the humans used as a base.

There was a quiet sound there.

The girl had stabbed the tip of a large shovel into the ground.

“Oh, Beatrice? Should you really be out and about so soon?”

That question came from White Witch Filinion, the girl’s friend.

The Holy Swordswoman did not remove the tip of the shovel from the ground as she dragged it along the hill.

“I wanted to come to Ground’s Nir and see how much I had recovered.”

“…Not that. Are you okay?”

The Fighter Priest held another shovel and she had a strange mixture of worry and exasperation in her voice.

The girl’s movement nearly stopped, but in the end, the red-armored Holy Swordswoman drew the line to the very end.

“Of course I’m not okay.”

She looked back at the lines she had drawn in the ground.

It was a large, large rectangle capable of containing a nearly-4m form.

“…But I have to do this. I have to look after him and see him off.”

Once that was decided, the rest did not take long.

The sounds of digging continued for a while. Thanks to the Percentage-type Magic that took the form of the clothing they wore, they had the strength of construction equipment, so they quickly constructed a rectangle made of artificial straight lines not seen in nature.

“It doesn’t just end with death…”

She seemed to reflect on each word individually.

No one knew what was in that girl’s heart as she dug that large hole. Filinion and Armelina had stood by her side and fought back-to-back with her, but not even they could be certain.

At times, shaking your head and saying you did not know was the greatest form of compassion.

And Holy Swordswoman Beatrice said one last thing.

“Because Boo Boo told me to keep on living.”

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| Back to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume6_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
| Return to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume6_Epilogue|Epilogue]]
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter4

2020-09-22T15:30:02Z

Entei08:

==Chapter 4: The Phenomenon of Kamijou Touma — Not_Right_Hand.==

===Part 1===

It was two against two.

“Hmm.”

The small girl smirked.

She was the monster who would simply travel along a straight line to her destination, destroying all that stood in her way.

“Now, this is a little more interesting. Can you expand on this unexpected turn of events and send it my way?”

On one side, Kamijou Touma and St. Germain.

On the other, Anna Sprengel and Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass.

“One step.”

The naked little girl who looked about ten held the red cloth to her skin below the falling snow and smiled confidently with the bizarre angel by her side.

She seemed to threaten the hospital’s front gate like it was a mystical barrier.

She began to walk with an unbelievable amount of strength for someone who looked like you could blow her over with your breath. And that strength was not just figurative. The snow at her feet really was blown away, the asphalt sank down slightly, and cracks formed around her.

“If you’re going to talk big, then stop me from taking this one step. R&C Occultics is a new trend the world over. If you can’t push back a mere global trend, I will be sorely disappointed. And you can figure out for yourself what that would mean.”

“…”

Kamijou Touma silently clenched his right first.

But that was not all he did.

He pressed his other palm against the center of his chest and spoke toward that point.

“St. Germain, can you do this?”

“Who do you think I am? Leave the ley line landmines to me. You only need to fight the threat before your eyes.”

Two different statements came from the same mouth.

Kamijou saw Anna Sprengel’s eyebrows move ever so slightly.

That other voice was audible to other people and it was accompanied by a visible breath.

And it was Kamijou Touma who readied his fist now. He would not hold back no matter what form his enemy took. In fact, something inside him was telling him it was abnormal for an enemy so great to be contained in a body so small.

He could not ignore what R&C Occultics was doing. Or that the girls who had stood up for him were collapsed on the ground here.

He could work to understand this person after he had punched her and settled this.

They were still a good bit apart.

Kamijou would have to take five steps to reach her even when running at full speed.

But…

“Aiwass.”

The instant Anna’s young lips whispered that name, the angel next to her was gone.

No. She had clenched and unclenched her small hand and gently swept it to the side like she was using a fan.

And she made an announcement.

“Open the pathway from Gevurah to Hod ''and reside in my right arm.''”

The distance did not matter. That was all it took for the distant skyscraper that formed a crucial corner of the scenery to be sliced through by five slashes and drop to the ground like a poorly-made Daruma Otoshi. Since the building had no windows, it must have been an automated agricultural building that could be harvested more than twenty times a month.

“Structure Breaker,” said her small mouth.

That great firepower had been entirely unpredictable.

That kind of unfair attack would normally kill you before you even realized what it was.

Yet Kamijou Touma remained alive.

“!!”

He had dropped straight down.

He got face-down on the ground with his limbs spread out, grabbed at the ground with his arms and feet, and then launched himself toward Anna Sprengel while down on all fours like a beast.

Right hand clashed with right hand.

Of course, the ''symbolism'' brought in by the Rosicrucian leader was worse than the actual destructive power.

“''Shall I take over?''” asked St. Germain. “The slightest hesitation will lead to death here, esper!!”

“Not yet!!”

Anna apparently had no intention of keeping her distance and wearing him down with a barrage of attacks. It was possible that over-the-top attack had only been a way of shocking Kamijou into moving in closer since he had no projectile attacks of his own.

She had only moved her opened hand as casually as swinging a tennis racket.

That was all it had taken to mercilessly slice through space itself with no regard for distance or material. ''The mere touch of her palm would negate the world, tearing through whatever was there along with the dimension and space itself.'' Kamijou felt impatience burning at the back of his mind, but he was now within a meter of Anna Sprengel.

He took aim at her small jaw with an attack that tore upwards from below.

“Ohhhh!!”

That fist could return all magicians to being mere humans. That attack stole their means of fighting back against the cruel world and threw them out into the wilderness with no way of defending themselves. But Anna calmly took a step toward that critical attack. That was all it took to avoid it.

She seemed to be nestling herself up against the boy’s chest.

Moving even closer than the swinging fist naturally kept it from hitting her.

And.

With her other hand, the left one, she held a perfectly ordinary but deadly knife.

Kamijou Touma could negate all forms of the supernatural, but he had no way of defending against those fatal ten centimeters.

“Hee hee.”

“''St. Germain''!!”''

There was a loud clang, but the knife held by the little girl was not equipped to make that sort of noise.

So what had caused it?

“A diamond? Is that eternal light a variation on the lamps that illuminate the tomb?”

“…”

They had traded places.

An unseen baton had changed hands.

And in that moment, the weapon used by the pointy-haired boy changed from his right hand’s fist to his left hand’s magic.

Specifically, some kind of glittering particles were scattered in the few millimeter gap between the boy’s chest and the bare-skinned monster’s palm.

It was said diamonds were so hard that they were in fact easily breakable, but that did not mean the blade that hit one would escape intact. The knife’s tip broke off and the blade chipped when it split the stone.

“You were never planning to block that with the strength of the diamond. Was it more like a matador’s cape? That glitter throws off my visual aim and the chipping of the blade diverts the speed and vector of destruction. Still, Academy City must have very polluted air if you can manipulate that air to produce diamonds.”

“So what if I did?”

St. Germain’s magic did not require a special sword or cards.

He could create anything with just ordinary carbon.

“I would call it inefficient,” said Anna. “Using magic with that body requires circulating his lifeforce throughout the body and refining it into magic power, right? You will always have a large chunk of that precious magic power negated before you can use it.”

“True enough. This boy’s right hand is powerful indeed and it is not something I can fully control even with his permission.”

St. Germain could not use Imagine Breaker.

Kamijou Touma could not use diamond magic.

No matter how hard they tried, they had to support each other as they fought.

So their best bet was to switch back and forth between those two sides based on what was currently needed to fight the conflagration before them. Even if something was deadly to one of them, the other might be able to break through it. They switched back and forth like they were moving a tennis racket from one side to the other during a high-speed match. It sounded convenient, but their opponent was Anna Sprengel. One wrong decision and the ball of survival would slip past them and they would lose the game.

“But even if the Sephirah and the channels between them correspond to parts of the human body, you never hear of someone who can no longer use magic after being injured or falling ill,” said St. Germain. “Magic is a means of making up for what we lack and making our dreams come true, so a lot of students enter the world of magic after just such an injury or illness.”

“Are you saying you can separate out his right hand or divert around it?” asked Anna.

St. Germain’s words contained fear and respect, but he still bared his fangs.

“I was always a lowly magician who refused to be defined solely by the two characters of RC. I instead worked to make my mark on high society under the individual name of St. Germain. There is a considerable loss in power from diverting the flow around that hand, but I am accustomed to wasted effort and this is not enough for my diamond spells to fail. The acute version of me you created appears to be even more powerful than you thought.”

The boy’s body veered to the left while those two spoke.

But not because they had any kind of plan.

A sticky sound splattered against the ground, decorating the road with a Christmasy red.

“Gh, bh!!”

“Yes, the side effect. And let’s not act like you can do that a set number of times or anything like that. Just like Russian roulette, one unlucky round and you die instantly.” The little girl gave a cruel smile at close range. “So I think it’s about time I did this by force.”

She swung her small hand around, but she was not going for an occult attack. Her fingers tore through the gas pipe running through a nearby wall.

St. Germain had to fight against this sort of physical danger.

If this kept up, Kamijou could not rejoin the battle. And if this remained a magician vs. magician battle, it could not have been more obvious who would win between St. Germain and Anna Sprengel.

“Tch!!”

Even so, an attack based on ordinary physics would obey the well-known rules found in ordinary textbooks. St. Germain created a double layer of diamond sheets thinner than an umbrella. That was not for attack or defense. Any obstacle would change the direction of the wind, just like buildings did. And if the wind direction changed, the invisible but highly flammable gas would be diverted elsewhere.

They had avoided an explosion, but Kamijou coughed up blood due to the internal injuries.

“I was hoping to buy some time for you to catch your breath, but perhaps I spent too long talking. This isn’t over yet, esper. ''Back to you!!''”

Something whooshed through the air.

And a supernatural attack meant it was his turn.

A powerful light returned to the point-haired boy’s eyes. As a small hand swung down toward him, he leaped to the side with all his might despite not being able to stand up straight. He ended up falling to the ground. Normally, he would have failed to avoid the next horizontal swing of her arm and he would have been sliced through.

But that was not what happened.

After a dull sound, he had all of a sudden jumped several meters straight up into the air.

“St. Germain, ''take care of this''!!”

“Fine, but switching back and forth like this will only shorten your life. ''Back to you!!''”

Instead of jumping up with his legs, it was more like he had been hit by a car. A diamond hexagonal pillar had thrust up from below him, launching him about three meters into the air. Anna’s fingers missed the human torso and instead sliced through the thick mass of diamond.

The two minds took turns controlling the single body by switching between right and left.

They really could overcome it this way. Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker was weak against multiple simultaneous attacks, but St. Germain’s diamonds could defend against them all. St. Germain’s magic could not fully stop Anna’s brute force attacks, but Kamijou’s right hand could forcibly blow them away.

“Ohhh!!”

The right fist clenched tight, so this was clearly Kamijou Touma in control.

It was the ordinary boy’s turn to attack from midair.

He held the blood back in his mouth while clenching his fist again. Anna should have had no way of stopping this since she was already in the middle of casually swinging her palm to the side.

The little girl looked up with just her eyes and smiled.

Her fingers had been gently bent like claws, but now she extended them straight. That spread out the angle of her deadly fan without changing the force of the swing.

As a result, the snow and asphalt at her feet were torn through and the ground collapsed below her. She was taken down along with it.

Changing the height of the ground greatly threw off Kamijou’s aim from midair.

There appeared to be a subway platform directly below.

That counted as indoors, but the chill grew even worse.

He did not recall there being a subway entrance nearby, so this appeared to be a fairly complex underground structure. Or maybe it carried some kind of secret, like it was connected to the basement of ''that hospital''.

“Gah!?”

Kamijou failed his landing and rolled along the rubble-covered floor, but he did not have time to writhe in pain. He spat blood from his mouth while diving behind a drink vending machine with its clear cover broken.

He and St. Germain could keep up with the fight, but that still had not allowed them to actually strike back.

Anna had already swung her right palm to the side.

“Oh?”

But then she sounded somewhat impressed.

She had come across something slightly unexpected.

As soon as the little girl sliced through the boxy mass of metal she had been guided toward, the chemical coolant that preserved a temperature well below zero came in contact with the ordinary air. Only a brief moment later, white steam resembling a cumulonimbus cloud expanded in every direction like a smoke bomb had gone off.

It was an obvious smokescreen.

Attack, escape, hide, rest, or think.

With the flow of battle delayed, Kamijou and St. Germain now had endless possibilities.

===Part 2===

Things had crossed a dangerous line.

The ICUs, the operating rooms, and even the treatment rooms for new arrivals were at max capacity.

The ambulances just kept bringing in too many patients.

“Get back!! Authorized personnel only!!”

“Get some extra sheets over here so we can block them from view! Don’t leave them exposed to the phone cameras!!”

Angry yelling and shouting were traded back and forth and the tension had spread even to the Christmas-decorated main lobby.

But it could have been worse.

This hospital had been receiving so many ambulances because the others had already stopped functioning altogether and this one still had its personnel and supplies in some semblance of order. What would happen to the patients if they were turned away here as well? Every second counted in EMT work, so they would know all too well that these people could not just be handed off to someone else.

But there was no saving them without solving the fundamental problem.

Closing up their wounds and stopping the bleeding would only buy some time unless the patients stopped doing what was causing them new wounds.

“Use localized anesthetic. Don’t knock them out. If they go under now, they might never come out of it!!”

“What is all that shaking outside?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care as long as it doesn’t knock this patient from their stretcher. But do make sure to be extra careful with the IV needle due to the shaking. Don’t harm their blood vessels!”

The elevator hall looked like a battlefield, but then a small set of footsteps cut across it.

For some reason, no one paid any heed to the white nun while everyone else was running around in a hurry.

“Wait, what was that?”

When they turned around again, she was already gone.

The young doctor looked to the patient on the stretcher and then stared at the medical monitors lined up alongside it.

“''Why did their vitals just stabilize? What just happened!?''”

Hearing that, the girl walked to another stretcher.

She was Index the Grimoire Library.

“Hm, hm, I see, hm.”

“They have this all backwards. But they don’t have the necessary information, so it’s not really their fault.” The fifteen centimeter god seated on the nun’s shoulder remained somewhat cautious of the calico cat on Index’s head. “As long as they remain conscious, their anxieties remain, as long as their anxieties remain, they can’t stop using magic, and as long they continue using magic, their wounds will remain. It’s all part of that pattern.”

It was like someone who obsessively washed their face over and over to calm themselves. If they rubbed their face bloody and saw that bloody face in the mirror, they might just decide they needed to wash their face some more because it was still dirty.

The simplest forms of magic did not require tools or a specific location.

They were terrified of dying, so they could not relax without continuing to use the good luck charms and fortunetelling methods they had been taught.

And that ended up destroying their esper bodies.

They only had to stop using the magic, but they had no idea what was causing it, so they would either use magic to figure out what it was or they would conclude it would only get worse if they stopped using magic.

Left like this, their lives would eventually run out.

“It doesn’t matter how much you try to bail out a sinking boat with a bucket if more and more holes are opening in the hull. It doesn’t matter how skilled the doctors are – if the patients don’t cooperate with the cure, their injury or illness will never heal. That lead doctor has done a hell of a job for someone who looks so silly. Without his instructions, these students would probably already be dead.”

“They’re all breathing with a unique rhythm. That means they’re refining their lifeforce into magic power.”

“We need to start by confiscating the spiritual items hidden in their pockets, but the simplest forms of magic don’t rely on tools. We really will need to put them to sleep to level out their ''conscious breathing method'' to accomplish anything here.”

“It would only weaken them to keep them asleep for too long.”

“We only have to break the rhythmic breathing they’re using to refine magic power. Let’s find an arbitrary reason to hook them up to a ventilator.”

Magic was the latest fad in scientific Academy City.

Even an Anglican nun who knew how to properly manage magic could tell how abnormal this was. She had never heard of it spreading like this before, yet Index and Othinus did not make their way to the center of the explosion.

They had a clear reason for remaining in the hospital.

“That human will not consider this a win if he simply defeats Anna in a fight. If all these people die in the process, he will place the burden of their deaths on his own shoulders. Even though they are not his responsibility.”

“…”

“That colossal idiot did not rush out there to protect his own life. He says he’s scared, but he still finds the destruction of this hospital or us to be worse. Refusing anything but zero deaths against a monster of that level is about as insolent as it gets, but just this once, that fool is correct. When things get truly hopeless, downgrading your goals will only mean being swallowed up by the situation. Compromise? Adapting to reality? The opinions of the wise? They can all go eat shit. There’s clearly something wrong if people are dying. If you can’t bring your self to shout that obvious fact, you’ll only drag everything into a long, drawn out war with many more deaths to come.”

This one hospital in District 7 could not take in all of the victims across Academy City. Index and Othinus had all the necessary knowledge, but neither one could use convenient healing magic on their own.

But not being able to do that one thing was not the same as being helpless.

“Anyone could solve this if they only had a manual telling them espers can’t use magic. We need to make one and distribute it through this hospital. If they see it work once, they’ll start using it even if they don’t know how it works. That will stop the city from spinning its wheels on this issue.”

“But the people of this city might not officially recognize that magic exists.”

And there were ceremonies that managed to spread despite being unofficial.

In this country’s case, the most obvious example would be the Kokkuri-san. Because the adult organizations had taken so long to accept its existence, they had been slow to react and it had caused real damage such as mass hysteria.

“We have a source we can use,” replied Othinus with a smile. That god of deception based her answer on Academy City’s bizarre situation at present. “We use R&C Occultics. The material they’ve spread around can be used to show magic is dangerous. Anything we say might be rejected outright, but official information from a well-known giant IT company will seem more reliable. We can use that to our advantage. That information is meant to get people to use magic, but we can use it to show people the risks and keep them away from it.”

“You mean…?”

“We just have to create something that bridges the gap. An extra text that explains the problems that occur when an esper uses magic.”

Index and Othinus would have preferred to be on the front line of this fight.

Magic was their area of expertise, so they were confident they would be of some help there.

But.

They turned away from that temptation.

They had chosen to fight alongside him, so they had to do everything they could to face the problems they had found. So they could avoid the horrific conclusion where that boy dragged his battered body back to the hospital only to find after the fact that everything had fallen apart.

“Listen, we can’t let anyone die.”

“Right.”

They would protect Academy City, the people who lived there, and the home he would return to.

“This hospital is a sanctuary. We start here, establish a methodology, and then spread that sanctuary out until it covers Academy City as a whole. And that will also help that softhearted human.”

“I know that already!”

So this was their battle.

It was fought in a different place and in a different way, but those girls were giving their all just like Kamijou Touma was.

===Part 3===

The biting cold swept across the platform of the District 7 subway station.

As soon as Anna’s vision was obscured by the white steam, Kamijou rolled across the platform and through the broken platform screen door to drop onto the tracks. The landing added another dull pain to the already lengthy list, but now was not the time to be counting up his injuries.

This had not bought them much time, but even thirty seconds would be more valuable than a jewel at the moment.

He clenched and unclenched his right fist.

It was Kamijou Touma’s turn right now.

“As I imagine you have noticed by now,” began St. Germain.

“Oh, don’t worry. I don’t understand a damn thing about this.”

“''Anna Sprengel’s spells are not pure Rose spells.''”

Like any wise saying, that one carried several different pieces of important information at once.

A sizzling like water on a hot griddle echoed through the area. The white steam curtain made from hydrofluorocarbon had unnaturally burst into flames and holes spread through it like a paper photo exposed to a flame from behind, correcting the distorted scene.

Anna Sprengel was smiling atop the platform while gently spreading her burning right hand.

She was the master of a different right hand.

“Found you☆”

“!!”

Trying to run away along the tracks would accomplish nothing.

She placed two fingers horizontally against her soft lips and blew out like this was a sort of whistle. The air immediately expanded at an explosive rate. Just like a picture book dragon, sticky orange flames left her mouth to cover the tracks a step lower than the platform.

This did not seem like normal fire. The way it moved like a sticky liquid was reminiscent of a flamethrower or napalm. It filled every nook and cranny of the train track like a sudden downpour filling the ditches and waterways.

“Ohhhh!?”

“Your right hand, esper.”

St. Germain pointed out the obvious solution.

The one without, the one looking up from below, and the one that yearned for it urged the Level 0 boy to action.

“Panicked or not, that is the only card in your deck, so master its use!! Just like I focused on mastering the manipulation of diamonds and carbon!!”

He could only swing his right hand around wildly in a struggle to survive. He negated the massive sea of flames that splashed up the concrete wall and ran along the groove of the track.

A power created by a right hand could be destroyed by a right hand.

But he had something else on his mind.

(''That was different from before''!?)

“Aiwass,” called Anna with a snap of her small fingers. “What shall I call this one? Item Breaker perhaps?”

Bluish-white sparks scattered like when an electric lighter failed to ignite, but that ephemeral flashing did not go away. Once it grew as bright as a blowtorch, the LCD signs, the lights, the air conditioning equipment, the train’s power line, and all other electrical equipment was transformed into a bomb.

It was like a cluster bomb had been dropped into this small space.

And Kamijou had a phone in his pants pocket.

“Gahh!?”

It happened just as he ran from the platform area and into the tunnel.

Excruciating pain jabbed down all the way to his thigh bone and it rattled his consciousness.

“Not yet, esper. The bone is not broken. And even if it was, I would support you with a diamond exoskeleton, so you can keep going regardless!”

The biggest problem was their location: an underground facility. With all electronics dead, a veil of darkness had fallen, preventing him from seeing his hand in front of his face.

And he heard a singsong voice within that dense darkness.

“Hee hee hee. You are in my grasp now.”

“!?”

She was holding out her small hand and accurately targeting him even in the darkness.

Would it be Escape Breaker next? Or Shield Breaker?

''Whatever it was, she would have changed her right hand to something else now.

Kamijou always had to rely on fistfighting, so he had no way of fighting in this darkness.

She was coming.

She had jumped down onto the track and was slowly walking toward the tunnel.

She gave a casual swing of her palm and it sliced through something. A high-voltage power line danced madly about while scattering electricity.

This was a physical attack.

“St. Germain, ''take care of this''!!”

Something flipped around at his left hand.

A light as bright as a camera flash filled the tunnel with a deafening “zap!!”, but the boy survived.

Carbon conducted electricity.

Mechanical pencil lead and diamonds could both be used as lightning rods that redirected electricity.

Also…

“Summon the spears here. The seven-walled secret room has protected its secrets for 120 years and allows no unauthorized intruders!!”

The pointy-haired boy’s body staggered over and pressed its back against the tunnel wall just before a high-pitched sound rang out. Anna held her small palm as if in pain. There was a sound like cracks running through a hard object, but that was all. Transparent spears – seven in all – had broken through the concrete wall behind him such that they passed over his shoulders and head.

“The depths of the earth are my territory,” said the man known as a count while gesturing like he held an invisible wand. His words carried both respect and hostility. “St. Germain controls diamonds. Even the master of the No. 1 Temple in Germany will run across a compatibility issue there. When performing a major ceremony, you must first focus on the stars and terrain. But worry not, this insolent result was not due to your own skill level.”

“Shut it, you imposter who only used our cabal’s name to increase your own prestige. You can control diamonds, can you? Did you think the true and legitimate Rose would care about some mere pebbles just because the common world attaches value to them?”

This exchange of emotions was inscrutable to the people of the present day.

It only made sense to those who had become legends simply by breathing, eating, working, reading, writing, and walking.

“Why do you deceive, Fräulein?”

“It is a form of defragging—an optimization.”

“I do not know how that works, ''but your right hand is very clearly not the same thing as Kamijou Touma’s''.” St. Germain stated that with confidence. And, “Using your words to inspire others to action instead of doing it yourself is St. Germain’s way. It does not suit you. The Miss Sprengel who once ruled in the depths of the No. 1 Temple in Germany was the goal of all magicians. Everyone wished to be like Anna Sprengel who was closer to a god than anyone without actually being one and who had taken the authority to contact the superhuman Secret Chiefs while maintaining her human emotions! Perhaps you find it difficult to trust a magician who can freely swap out his own memories and ideals for fun, but I was not the only one who thought that way. The Golden cabal, the Theosophists, and the witches all set you as their goal, not god!!”

“But.” The words that spilled from the little girl’s lips sounded somehow dry. “Not one cabal actually understood my words. They all distorted the meaning for their purposes.”

St. Germain noticed something and briefly forgot all about their plan. He started to step closer like someone who had spotted a soaked child out in the rain, but then a horn sounded from the side.

It was a freight train.

The unmanned train was being used to meet the Christmas demand.

“So you will never understand me either!!” shouted Anna. “Never, ever!!!!!!”

“Tetractys, numerical triangle formed from ten points. Grant me ascension with your perfection!”

St. Germain sent carbon fiber threads from Kamijou’s fingers to jump up to the roof of the high-speed mass of metal, but Anna simply stuck her small right hand out toward the front of the freight train.

The entire space shook as the front car was crushed and lifted up and the eight cars after that stacked up against each other in a zigzag pattern.

The front car hopped up at an angle, breaking through the metropolis road and the layer of snow atop it before jutting up into the snowy winter sky.

They had emerged at a different point.

They were likely still in the vicinity of that hospital. A sign identified a nearby building as a large subway station that linked together a few different lines.

The place was already abandoned. A code red may have been issued, which indicated either a largescale terrorist attack or a devastating underground chemical fire linked to a chemical plant.

(This body really is tricky to use.)

The need to forcibly divert the lifeforce circulation around the right arm while refining magic power created a time lag before he could complete his spells. And even when he did complete them, he lost a considerable amount of the magic power. It felt as unstable as flying an airplane that had parts falling off of it and had a severe fuel leak.

But at the same time, St. Germain knew all too well what would have happened if he had hijacked a non-esper adult who would give him full use of his magic.

He would have died instantly.

Thoughtlessly pitting magic against magic with Anna would never work. That would be like an overexcited soldier loading up with a ton of ballistic missiles to challenge the sun to battle.

Light could not be used to battle light.

You needed something else entirely. Defeating the sun would require a blackhole that could swallow even light.

“…”

The pointy-haired boy focused on regulating his white breathing before jumping from the twisted roof to the main road below, but he looked at his own palm before anything else.

It was stained red and black.

(The wounds have widened too far. The esper’s body will not last much longer.)

Relinquishing control right now would be cruel, but St. Germain could not have the boy’s body tearing apart from within either.

“''Back to you,'' esper. Are you prepared to hold the baton again?”

“Ahh, cough!”

The focus shifted from the left hand to the right hand. The pointy-haired boy coughed up a dark red color even as he tightly clenched his fist once more.

“St. Germain, you are no more than a collection of microbes I could kill by scrubbing you out with disinfectant soap. But you talk big, I’ll give you that. You’re still listening over there, aren’t you?”

The footsteps they heard this time were a lot rougher than before. A small figure walked through the train sticking diagonally up from the ground to crawl out onto the surface.

“I had power from the beginning, but what would I accomplish?” she spoke slowly in a low voice that made it sound like she was uttering a curse. “To save people? I’m so sick of that. To master the fields of study? I can find all the answers so easily. To destroy this hateful world? It was already destroyed from the beginning. To fulfill my desires? I have done that more than you can imagine.”

That small body swayed side to side with that powerful right hand casually lowered at her side.

A bright light shined in her eyes and a smile tore across her lips as she approached.

“''A life of fulfillment is such a bore.''”

Her movements seemed so coldly robotic.

And dry.

“''I want someone to support me instead.''”

She demonstrated the ultimate form of wastefulness where even achieving immortality became an eternal prison of boredom.

But there had to be some hints of truth within her insolent statements.

“What do you get from a power that distorts the rules and renders the game meaningless by its very existence? Creation? Destruction? Enhancement? Reduction? Friendship? Rejection? Gluttony? Restraint? What does it mean to live? What goal am I supposed to live for? How can I find fulfillment?”

The footsteps stopped.

Anna Sprengel had taken the final step and arrived aboveground once more.

She stood below the frigid falling snow and on the same level as the others.

“The exchange of words only distorts the truth, so no words are needed here. I want to know how much people can understand from instinct alone. Hence the optimization. Kamijou Touma, the One who Purifies God and Slays Demons. What will remain once everything has been stripped from you and you are laid bare? When exposed to the supernatural with no prior knowledge, what side of you becomes most active? Show me the answer.”

“…”

Kamijou remained silent for a while.

Was he even aware his shoulders were crooked?

“Y’know,” he finally said.

“?”

“I think I kinda get why you can’t find fulfillment.”

“I might understand you, but you can never understand me. Because I contain so much more than you.”

“''Still putting up your defenses like that? After we’ve been baring our hearts in this deadly battle?''” spat out Kamijou. “You want others to give you fulfillment instead of finding it yourself? Don’t make me laugh. You’d just find things to complain about and keep going. You’ll never escape that feeling of unfulfillment even if you try to let go of your own life and take it easy. But you wouldn’t be able to accept that even if you grew angry with that other person, hated them, and took revenge on them. You want someone else to support you? Those are the words of someone who doesn’t know the fear of having that other person suddenly let go. You don’t have to fear their betrayal because you already know you can support your own weight if you have to. You might claim to be supporting ‘each other’, but you already have everything you need for yourself.”

“Wait.”

“And you know that that means?”

“I said wait.”

“It means…”

Anna had said she was hoping to observe herself.

And that was exactly what happened.

“You have your super-secret techniques that you refuse to actually teach anyone, but you still want to show them off. That’s nothing special. It’s what everyone dreams about every single day.”

A dull thud burst out.

“Really, why do idiots insist on using their heads when no one wants them to?”

She was showing signs of definite irritation, which was a stark contrast to the mysterious joy from before.

“Do not think you understand me, boy.”

Would this one be called Gravity Breaker?

Anna Sprengel raised a single finger and spun it around. That was all it took for something invisible to rotate around her, gather together the metal trashcans, cleaning robots, streetlights, and wind turbines into a single large mass, build up plenty of centrifugal force, and fling them at Kamijou Touma. It was like they were attached by an invisible chain she was swinging around.

“Kh.”

He could not fully block this with Imagine Breaker.

Fighting her right hand with his would not work here.

But he did not switch to St. Germain.

If he only negated the supernatural power, he would be crushed by the force gathered by the mountain of scraps. But physics was physics. He could already see the general path they would take as they swung around his way.

And Anna herself had shown him the answer earlier. If he moved further in than the radius of the rotation, he could not be touched by that outward-swinging path.

He only had to step forward.

He clenched his right fist as hard as rock and moved toward the little girl. He could ignore that morning star now. He only had to forget about their difference in body types and throw his full weight behind a merciless punch right into that small face.

A dull impact followed.

But not from a clean hit. His punch had been stopped.

Stopped by…

“My left hand.”

“Kh.”

She only wrapped her small hand around his fist to defend, but that was enough to stop him.

However, she had broken her pattern.

That was critically important, so Kamijou Touma put on a belligerent smile.

“What kind of ‘Breaker’ was that? Honestly, who cares? You keep going so over the top that it all starts to look cheap, so I can’t help but wonder. ''You’re not even using that Aiwass you made a point of showing off earlier, are you?'' Since you broke your own rules to stop me with your left hand, let me guess: getting punched hurts like hell even for a legendary magician, doesn’t it? Am I wrong, Anna Sprengel?”

“''Who gave you permission to speak?''”

This time, she pressed her right palm against the boy’s stomach.

He had swung his fist and had it blocked, so he was defenseless at the moment.

The girl with the wounded pride widened her eyes as far as they would go.

“''Do not get carried away. You should be dead already.''”

A human-sized mass was blasted backwards as if by a point-blank shotgun blast.

“Esper!!”

“Shut up, Germain. I’m staying in control. I can keep going.”

“No, not that. You need to get up before the next attack arrives!!”

He was not even given time to lie sprawled out in the snow.

Kamijou rolled across the cold asphalt and two things entered his vision.

He could hear the straining of her skeleton even from here. Anna Sprengel had changed from a fragile-looking ten-year-old little girl to a voluptuous yet toxic woman.

She moved her right hand’s index and middle fingers together in a scissors gesture.

“Break… Breaker… you know what? I’m sick of coming up with these names. Maybe this is how women lose their charm.”

Anna gave up on naming her right hand.

But that did not mean its destructive power was in any way reduced.

“''Since it’s Christmas, how about I treat you to a show?''”

The other thing he had seen was an airship that had been slowly floating across the white sky above.

Its rugby-ball-shaped gasbag had ruptured, transforming it into an orange shooting star. It scraped along the walls of the skyscrapers as it fell straight toward him.

Ironically, the large LCD screen on the side of the shooting star displayed a large image of white-bearded Santa Claus aboard his sleigh.

“Merry Christmas☆,” whispered Anna while viewing that giant face falling toward the surface.

(Dammit!!)

Kamijou slowly got up and made his way to a nearby building. He pushed open the glass door with his shoulder and collapsed inside. The world outside of the thick reinforced glass was consumed by flames and heat.

This was a department store, but not a fancy one.

They must have tried to make it look fancy to earn shoppers during the Christmas season, but that had only emphasized how unfancy it was. It was the kind of store even Kamijou would feel comfortable entering alone.

His ability to sense warmth must have broken because he did not feel at all comfortable even though the heat had to be on in here. Did that mean the trembling of his fingertips was not caused by the cold?

The first floor seemed to be for jewelry, glasses, and musical instruments. The rows of glass showcases with gentle music playing in the background was somehow reminiscent of a museum.

After a freight train bursting out from the ground and a burning airship crashing down, there were of course no people around. All the customers, employees, and even guards had left.

Only the gentle music remained.

''Good,'' thought Kamijou.

They might not have survived if they had decided to stay here to protect the jewels or the money in the till.

“…”

He still did not know what Anna was doing.

But something about it seemed wrong to him.

She drew in external power, rearranged it how she liked inside her body, and then fired it back out. Her attacks were definitely deadly and destructive, but when he thought about it, they seemed more centered ''on the productive side of things.

Kamijou had fought a great number of magicians over his right hand. Maybe this was just another part of that. They had all provided their own view of things. During all those exchanged words, some had said his Imagine Breaker was a reference point for the world. Magic put everything in flux, so those who wielded magic could put their minds at ease by focusing on a single immovable point that would never change. In that sense, the idea of adding more to it ''was incredibly unusual.

It did not fit.

He felt certain that Anna Sprengel’s method was incorrect.

So…

(Magic.)

He shifted the focus of his mind.

St. Germain had said Anna’s ''spells'' were not pure Rose spells.

(She’s using some kind of method to manipulate the mystical and miraculous. I can’t let the focus on my hand lead me astray. She’s only using ''ordinary methods'' that even Stiyl or Kanzaki could use if they knew how!!)

However, he was not currently with Index, who had memorized at least 103,001 grimoires, or Othinus, a true god given a new form. So even if he could make some guesses, he could not find the answer.

There was also the time she had used her left hand. Her power must not have actually been limited to her right hand, but that did not tell him what she ''was'' doing. He felt like someone questioning what the doctor said, but not sure what the actual cure was.

But…

“…”

He came to a stop.

He had seen something.

The jewelry section of the department store had a lot of showcases. The employees must have put in more effort than usual since it was Christmas because there were a few handmade signs inside the glass cases, perhaps hoping to catch the eye of customers who were on a date.

Kamijou had noticed one of those:

“Check out our December Gematria Special☆ An available employee will convert your name into numbers and find which gem is a must-have for you. The process is free of charge! Are you a couple that feels they don’t have enough in common? Dig deeper and you’re bound to find a stronger connection there!!”

He could not believe his eyes.

Had magic always been stuff like this?

“Engrave your favorite rune into a pure gold ring! Some civilizations used to carve these holy symbols into gold coins and cups to bring themselves wealth or avoid poison. And…”

“Would you like to add an extra something to your usual yoga lessons? By creating your own personal incense, you can more easily picture the breaths moving through your body, so…”

“Crystal healing isn’t just a Western thing! Even something you have lying around the house can work! Prayer beads are a hot choice at the moment!! You can even select stones other than crystals to…”

Kamijou had been vaguely aware that jewelry stores would use this kind of thing to sell birthstones and healing crystals.

But this was too much. This kind of jargon and equations was knowledge meant to be strictly stored in an ancient library or in that white nun’s head. That info should not have been advertised on handmade signs cut out of cardboard and written with a felt-tip pen.

How had this happened?

There was only one possible answer.

“R&C Occultics has gotten to places like this too!?”

He heard the reinforced glass shattering. The road out front should have been consumed by orange flames, but it had instead frozen white. The thick glass wall had failed to withstand the temperature difference, so the entire thing shattered and rained down like a waterfall.

The sexy woman took a single step into the department store.

She did not seem at all worried about the sea of glass she had created. You would be hard-pressed to find a woman better suited to be surrounded by jewelry and musical instruments.

Kamijou silently raised his right fist again.

“Are you…” He gulped but still faced that blatant threat. “Are you using something to switch between different kinds of ‘power’? What you’re doing isn’t like my right hand. That’s the magic of the outside world that lets you control a variety of supernatural powers by default!!”

“This is the rose and the cross.”

The sexy woman waved her right hand with a sadistic smile.

And she said one more thing as she approached.

“Not that I expect you to understand what that means.”

===Part 4===

Losing his phone was a heavy blow.

The answer was somewhere out there. And it would be so easy to find that an amateur might accidentally stumble across it. But Kamijou Touma currently had no way of accessing that site.

“Tch!!”

“Hee hee.”

With each casual swing of the sexy woman’s long hand, a powerful gust of wind would blow through, caustic acid would spread out like an amoeba, or a bright light would flash.

The movement of her hand was more like a pliant whip than a solid fist. She put on the smile of a sadist while mercilessly producing deadly slap after deadly slap.

Instead of trying to kill him with the occult, she was trying to kill with him with physical attacks. She would shatter a glass showcase to kill him with the shards flying toward him.

His fist ''alone'' was not enough to deal with that.

“St. Germain, ''switch''!!”

“I will keep you alive.”

They reversed hands.

Of course, St. Germain could not overwhelm Anna on his own, so they would switch back and forth.

They called each other’s names like partners fighting back to back. The right hand deflected the blowing wind, a diamond pillar burst diagonally from the floor to hold back the flood of acid, Kamijou ran along the transparent pillar like a steep slope, and he leaped at Miss Sprengel from midair.

The one body played the roles of magic and science.

But…

“You’ve reached your limit, haven’t you?”

“!!”

She swung her right hand horizontally and the light that burst out slammed into Kamijou’s side. He was knocked away from his downward path toward her. He flew to the side and crashed into a showcase, sending ruby rings, emerald necklaces, and more scattering around with the shattered glass.

“Kahh!?”

Sharp glass stabbed into his thigh.

But he did not have time to grimace in pain.

“It might look like you are holding your own with that bizarre fighting style, but surely you know better. In a clash between magic, the theory behind it matters far more than the quantity. And after all this, you still do not understand what I am doing.”

“…”

He did not need to admit to it out loud, but Anna was right. Kamijou only knew that she could change her right hand’s power at will, but he did not actually know what spell it was or what category of magic it belonged to.

He could negate all kinds of supernatural powers by brute force, but that was not enough to get by with someone like this.

Rushing blindly in at a magician was like running into a densely-packed minefield. You could even say a magician’s standard strategy was to set things up so a direct attack like that could never work.

“St. Germain.”

“You aren’t going to get an answer back when you don’t even know what question to ask,” said Anna.

She casually swung her open palm from a distance and three explosions appeared in quick succession.

Kamijou swallowed the blood that had gathered in his mouth and let out a roar.

“''Take over!!''”

Once St. Germain was in control, he moved back while blocking the attack with a diamond shield and pillar. It was a solid defense, but that was all it was. Relying on magic was clearly only going to get them backed into a dead end. Kamijou alone could not defeat Anna and neither could St. Germain.

So they swapped out.

Never relying on only one of them was the only way to stay alive.

“''Back to you.'' Alter your timing a bit next time. Don’t let her predict our actions!!”

“St. Germai-!!”

“''No.'' I said alter the timing, esper!!”

A broken square pillar was spinning Kamijou’s way, but he would have to deal with it himself. He frantically dodged the giant blunt weapon that knocked aside the entire register counter and eye test machine.

While they frequently switched back and forth, Kamijou’s fist threw off the destructive rhythm.

He had no choice but to confront her head on.

Any cover he tried to hide behind would only get destroyed along with him and moving over by the wall left him without enough room to swing his right arm.

While buying time like that, he had to ask about everything he had seen. Whether or not it would be helpful, he did know that this jewelry section had already been influenced by Rose magic.

He did not have to hit the jackpot right away. In fact, he doubted that was possible.

He swung his bloody fist while asking his inner partner some questions.

“What’s crystal healing!? I know I’ve heard the term a lot!”

“It is believed that jewels can gather up the power of the constellations and return it to their wearer. It is also said the harder the stone, the more power it absorbs, making diamonds the most extreme example. That is why it is thought they can be used for a great many specific goals such as detoxing and exorcisms, not just vaguely providing good fortune.”

“What’s this about engraving runes on treasures like gold coins and cups?”

“Engraving the rune for victory into a coin is a way of praying for wealth and engraving the rune for suffering into a cup is a way of detecting poisoned drinks. You could think of them as protective charms with specific effects.”

“Then what’s the connection between yoga and incense!?”

“Yoga is not technically a form of training done at the gym. It is actually a method of controlling your inner body through your breathing to have an effect on the outside world. Tools are generally not needed. In fact, you are supposed to rid yourself of all worldly possessions and thoughts, but beginners would probably find it easier to focus on their breathing if the air were given a color or aroma. Of course, using a guide means only following the rails laid out for you, so the act loses all meaning.”

“What about gold and silver!?”

“Seven metals were given a position of importance in ancient times, but since that included iron and lead, they were not all precious metals. On that note, the idea of silver weapons being effective against monsters is mostly the influence of folklore and entertainment, so I would not rely on it if I were you. There might be some effect, but a truly pious person would not melt down a silver cross to create a knife or bullet in the first place.”

“Argh, what else was there? Prayer beads!?”

“They are a type of spiritual item used in Buddhism. The term generally refers to seeds of the bodhi tree strung into a loop by a single thread, but beads of crystal are also used. The number of beads is usually 108, but there are other versions. The Christian rosary is the same basic idea.”

None of it was very specific and they were getting off topic.

Even now, the boy’s life was being shortened for every second of freedom. He bled more each time he and St. Germain switched out, but they kept it up. He had to pick up every single hint he could get from the handmade signs and the occult code(?) conversion chart pasted on the side of the register.

“Then what about birthstones!?”

“Each of the twelve months is given a different gem, but there are several different versions. The version most well-known now was created by the American National Association of Jewelers.”

That one was a complete bust. They might have used some older source when deciding on their list, but he doubted a centuries-old tradition would have been passed down with perfect accuracy. At best, it would have partially incorporated some of it. He felt an urge to lash out at the half-assed system here. This was like the stores telling you to give chocolate on Valentine’s Day just to sell their products. He could not entrust his life to that.

He heard a disconcerting zapping sound.

It was not aimed directly at him, so he was slow to react. The electricity instead crashed into the showcase in front of him, causing it to burst from within. The wall of sharp glass pummeled his entire body and he was knocked to the floor.

“Hit.”

“Ah…kah…”

“I think I see how this works now. You’re nimble, but it dulls your intuition when your life is not directly targeted.”

There were countless types of magic.

And Anna Sprengel was in the deepest depths of that world. Was he just not going to find the answer by looking through some random bits and pieces of magical knowledge?

But.

St. Germain spoke from within Kamijou while the boy clenched his fist.

“I see. You cannot find the answer right away, but you can arrive at the answer by eliminating each wrong answer in turn.”

“…?”

“The runes are not necessary and we can eliminate the yoga and Buddhism as well. R&C Occultics has spread all forms of magic. That may have made the occult harder to detect, just like the city lights hiding the stars in the sky, but if you understand the Rose’s methods, the knowledge requiring our focus makes itself readily apparent.”

Kamijou Touma did not know enough to take issue with that conclusion.

He had to rely on St. Germain’s senses since he still knew the Rose, just like people never forgot how to hold chopsticks or ride a bike.

“The answer is three.”

Kamijou felt so woozy, but he was guided to that specific answer, not four or five.

St. Germain went on to explain.

“The Rose often used Kabbalah, which says the entire world can be explained using the twenty-two Hebrew characters. You merely need to subtract the seven metals and the twelve constellations from twenty-two. If you remove each of the petals on the outside, you are left with the number hidden in the center of the flower. You are left with three characters.”

Come to think of it, hadn’t Anna herself mentioned the rose and the cross?

“Shin is fire, Mem is water, and Aleph is wind. The rose symbol represents the world by surrounding those three elements with a ring divided into sevenths and with the twelve colors.”

Kamijou managed to keep breathing, but it felt like breaking through a sticky barrier.

Was that due to being torn up on the outside or eaten away on the inside?

It was hard to tell anymore.

“Then…is Anna using that to create different things out of the energy produced by that angel named Aiwass?”

“Yes, but that does not simply mean 22 different attack patterns in all. Kabbalah has a code system known as Gematria. The characters are assigned numbers and two words with the same number are considered to have the same meaning.”

“But…”

If she only started with three characters, weren’t there only so many combinations she could use?

But St. Germain got ahead of that question.

“For example, Shin’s numerical value is 300, but Gematria adds the digits together to reach a single-digit number. That gives you an answer of 3. But that can be read simply as three, aka Gimel, or it could be read as 1+2, aka Aleph and Bet. So depending on how you break it down, the possibilities are endless. That is why a powerful grimoire can be such a hotbed of misreadings.”

“I was wondering about that, but it wasn’t my main question. Where is Anna hiding her rose accessory!?”

He doubted it was the decorations in her fried shrimp hair.

Nor would it be her thin dress.

She would need a detailed symbol that accurately placed the twenty-two Hebrew characters on as many rose petals, but Kamijou could not see anything like it.

The sexy woman grinned and raised her right hand from a short distance away.

“This will never end unless we destroy that. We’ll be killed if we can’t rob Anna of her power!!”

===Part 5===

“Found it!” Index shouted excitedly in the District 7 hospital.

If basic magic could be constructed from magic words, gestures, and hand signals with no need for a spiritual item, it might seem like there was no way to save the espers from the side effects.

But that assumption was wrong.

“The stars, the three prophets, a link to the date, and it only activates on the 25th.”

“So it’s a curse that takes advantage of Christmas’s date!?”

That might sound ridiculous, but at some point, Christmas became more than just an enjoyable festival. Either a very twisted person had spread the idea or a lot of people had wanted to believe it because there were traditions of that sort out there. For example, there were mysterious figures who generally only appeared on Christmas and who you never wanted to so much as encounter, like the dark Santa Claus that abducted bad children or the Kallikantzaros that was only active during the end of the year.

And human psychology had a fascinating tendency to spread stories of misfortune more than ones of fortune. For example, everyone would immediately forget an urban legend that still remembering the keyword ‘silver mirror’ when you turned twenty would bring you happiness, but no one could bring themselves to forget the urban legend that still remembering the keyword ‘purple mirror’ when you turned twenty would mean your death.

So the happier a time Christmas was, the more the dark joy spread of wondering about the people for whom Christmas was an unhappy time. Yes, joy. When people at a large party started wondering about the people who had no date to share Christmas with, they were generally imagining someone worse off than them to make themselves feel better about their own situation. There may have been a magician that provided that with a concrete effect at some point. Either to ruin Christmas or to make sure the event would never be forgotten.

In fact, it was not uncommon in the world of magic for experts to give concrete form to something they encountered and thought was neat. Othinus ''who once destroyed the entire world'' was not one to talk, but magicians had a tendency to cross some lines generally considered taboo.

Take, for example, everything related to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Or the Rosy Cross that Andreae claimed to have invented himself.

“A good luck charm meant to confirm your own happiness, huh?” Othinus sounded disgusted. “And it ends up destroying their body as they keep using it. Self-doubt really is the greatest poison. Besides, if you need something to objectively tell you you’re happy, then you’re not really happy at all.”

“But now that we know this…”

“Yes, we can bring the party to an end. Let’s leave a present by the patient’s pillow while they sleep and before they can start using that magic while emptyhanded. Santa’s visit is considered the highlight of Christmas in this country, so once they have their present, Christmas is over, right?”

“A spell to end Christmas.”

“Once it’s ready, search out an adult among the visitors. If they aren’t an esper, we can get them to use the magic without any side effects.”

Normally, they might not find anyone willing to cooperate with that. Especially in Academy City. They might even get yelled at for asking for something so extremely inappropriate.

But things were different now.

It was R&C Occultics who had lowered the barrier toward magic.

And the god of war, deception, and magic would use everything available to her. If the enemy was going to give her a gift, she would use that gift to bring the enemy to their knees. That was Othinus’s style.

“Then let’s settle this,” said the god without hesitation.

===Part 6===

Anna Sprengel considered what to do with her right hand next. But only with the tension of someone pondering what to make for dinner that night.

She had well over a million attack options.

(The optimization should be done soon and the boring result has already shown itself.)

She had made her choice.

40 + 300. Each digit was split out separately and summed together, so that came out to a 7. That meant the true character she had extracted was Z or Zayin. That corresponded to The Lovers in tarot and it was the channel that connected the spheres of understanding and beauty in the Sephiroth.

It meant a sword or armor.

That determined the nature of her right hand.

(The emotion of irritation is a rare one for me, but I do experience it from time to time. If this result is not to my liking, maybe I should dispose of him and move on to my next objective.)

Anna Sprengel gently stretched out her slender hand. Her right hand could use just two fingers to slice through anything. In other words, simply closing those two fingers would create a massive invisible maw with her target’s head between the jaws.

Just then, Kamijou Touma took an unusual action.

“''Change''!!”

He did the opposite of his usual move of suicidally rushing in with fist clenched. In fact, he jumped backwards to move away from her.

That was still suicidal, but the boy did not have any projectile attacks.

Which meant…

(St. Germain!!)

Anna smiled.

It might look at first like Kamijou Touma had acquired a great variety of options here, but it was actually the opposite. When it came to the essence of Rosicrucianism, no magician knew more than the master of the No. 1 Temple in Germany. No one had any chance of defeating her if they challenged her on that field. They might put up a decent fight, but they could never win. They would only be postponing their inevitable death.

It could not have been more apparent that the only way to defeat this magic was to destroy the illusion.

(Attempting to keep your distance and wear me down with projectiles after all this is just pathetic.)

St. Germain specialized in creating diamonds.

That meant carbon manipulation.

(Then all I need to do is absorb all forms of carbon, both solid and gaseous, to remove it from this space.)

Something gathered in her small left palm. It was a filthy black ball a little larger than a pill.

(Now St. Germain is helpless. Or will he use his host’s own body to create a diamond? Based on the optional services offered by funeral homes, an entire human body’s worth of carbon should only get you a diamond no larger than the tip of your fingernail!!)

Anna laughed, but then she silently grimaced.

No matter what she said, she clung to success and victory more than anyone. To the point that she could not maintain herself without them.

The boy’s words were coming back to her and they were accompanied by pain.

However.

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

A brief pause followed.

After falling back—and thus gathering Anna’s attention as she pursued—Kamijou Touma lightly tossed something into the air.

It was a symbol made from cheap gold plating and it was only a few centimeters long. Instead of a number or a letter of the alphabet, this symbol looked sort of like an ‘n’ with a loop at the end.

The symbol stood for Capricorn.

Its essence was femininity, activity, Saturn, longing, and prosperity.

As well as…

(The element of earth.)

Yes.

The twenty-two characters were broken out into three, seven, and twelve. With only three in the center, the rose symbol managed by the twenty-two Hebrew characters had no place for earth in the center of the flower.

And while it was a magical symbol, it had no magic power within it. In fact, it felt like someone trying to use what little knowledge they had without any practical skills to back it up. This could not be St. Germain who did have those skills.

In other words…

“Was this Kamijou Touma?”

She knew that, but human thoughts were so easily altered by your assumptions.

Something extra had been thrown into the mix.

Capricorn was a symbol of the earth element.

How things looked in a red room was very different from how they looked in a blue room, so a train’s driver’s compartment had its coloration chosen carefully.

Because the wrong coloration could be distracting.

(This could be ''bad''!!)

===Part 7===

''December’s birthstone is either turquoise or lapis lazuli.

''All you Capricorns out there, don’t feel too bad about being the earth element. Christmas is your season. Today’s the day to ask for a special gift!

“!!”

Kamijou clenched his teeth while kicking aside one of the handmade signs scattered across the floor.

Up ahead, Anna Sprengel grimaced and held her feminine right wrist with her other hand. He doubted that had actually accomplished anything and, even if it had, it would still give him the opening he needed.

He just needed a large enough opening to take one big step.

He cut powerfully forward as if defying the white light expanding explosively in front of him. He gathered up the very last of his strength to move right up to her.

Anna must have no longer cared about losing control because she tried intercepting him with her right palm even as it continued to produce a blinding blowtorch-like light.

“But how!?” roared the bewitching woman who seemed to corrupt everything around her with her very presence.

Yes. Kamijou Touma had fought plenty of magicians, but he could not construct a spell himself. He would be able to use magic if he let St. Germain take control, but St. Germain would not rely on the fist that would kill him.

But the answer was simple.

“R&C Occultics.”

“…”

“You spread this knowledge yourself. If you hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have been able to fight back!!”

Anna gave up on trying to control her right hand.

She broke her own rules by raising her other hand.

Yes, ''Anna Sprengel’s right hand was not actually special in any way.'' That was only an unnecessary restriction she was placing on herself. She had cheated like this once before, so Kamijou did not hesitate.

He took action.

But if he used his right fist here, it would only be a repeat of last time. While his right hand clashed with her left, she could use her right hand to blow him away.

So…

“Wha—!?”

He bit at her alluring hand. At her long, slender fingers. It was such a primitive choice from the perspective of an intellectual well-versed in all forms of magic, but it was certainly effective.

Because…

(''Her fingers.'')

Kamijou Touma clenched his teeth.

It made sense that a jewelry store would focus on something like this.

Because if wearing a ring on a finger other than your left hand’s ring finger gave it a special meaning, that might give them another way to advertise to people.

Yes.

Anna did not need to carry around a full rose symbol.

A scrap of paper on the floor – probably some notes for speaking with customers – explained which elements each finger corresponded to.

(Starting with the thumb, they’re ether, water, fire, earth, and wind. So by bending her index, middle, and little fingers as a command, she can switch the basic elements of fire, water, and wind on and off, creating whatever Hebrew character she wants in her palm. That’s how Anna was controlling her angel. That’s her magic! Which means…!!)

However he did it, he only had to keep her from moving her fingers.

That would let him seal away Anna Sprengel’s Hebrew-based rose spell.

And with his right fist still free to use, of course.

“…!!”

Kamijou Touma and St. Germain had arrived at this point along very different paths. One of science, the other of magic. They were very different people with nothing in common.

But at this moment, the two of them stared in the exact same direction.

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_333.jpg|thumb]]

It did not matter if they were dropouts or if they were considered disappointments.

Any being living here and now still had the freedom to change what happened to them.

No matter what form that being took.

They only had to act upon their desire to protect the people and feelings they held dear.

Then they could fight on equal footing with anyone in the world!!

(Kamijou Touma.)

(St. Germain.)

He had used his mouth.

With his teeth clenched tight, they could not speak aloud.

So they faced their single enemy and attempted to end this in silence.

They had both only ever wanted to do one thing about Anna Sprengel’s tyranny.

To clench that fist as hard as can be.

To gather everything that woman had done to them, place it in that fist, and send it…

(''Back to you''!!)

(''Back to you''!!)

This time, those two battered wills caught Miss Sprengel square on the cheekbone.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter4

2020-09-22T13:37:15Z

Entei08: Anna is talking about herself here

==Chapter 4: The Phenomenon of Kamijou Touma — Not_Right_Hand.==

===Part 1===

It was two against two.

“Hmm.”

The small girl smirked.

She was the monster who would simply travel along a straight line to her destination, destroying all that stood in her way.

“Now, this is a little more interesting. Can you expand on this unexpected turn of events and send it my way?”

On one side, Kamijou Touma and St. Germain.

On the other, Anna Sprengel and Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass.

“One step.”

The naked little girl who looked about ten held the red cloth to her skin below the falling snow and smiled confidently with the bizarre angel by her side.

She seemed to threaten the hospital’s front gate like it was a mystical barrier.

She began to walk with an unbelievable amount of strength for someone who looked like you could blow her over with your breath. And that strength was not just figurative. The snow at her feet really was blown away, the asphalt sank down slightly, and cracks formed around her.

“If you’re going to talk big, then stop me from taking this one step. R&C Occultics is a new trend the world over. If you can’t push back a mere global trend, I will be sorely disappointed. And you can figure out for yourself what that would mean.”

“…”

Kamijou Touma silently clenched his right first.

But that was not all he did.

He pressed his other palm against the center of his chest and spoke toward that point.

“St. Germain, can you do this?”

“Who do you think I am? Leave the ley line landmines to me. You only need to fight the threat before your eyes.”

Two different statements came from the same mouth.

Kamijou saw Anna Sprengel’s eyebrows move ever so slightly.

That other voice was audible to other people and it was accompanied by a visible breath.

And it was Kamijou Touma who readied his fist now. He would not hold back no matter what form his enemy took. In fact, something inside him was telling him it was abnormal for an enemy so great to be contained in a body so small.

He could not ignore what R&C Occultics was doing. Or that the girls who had stood up for him were collapsed on the ground here.

He could work to understand this person after he had punched her and settled this.

They were still a good bit apart.

Kamijou would have to take five steps to reach her even when running at full speed.

But…

“Aiwass.”

The instant Anna’s young lips whispered that name, the angel next to her was gone.

No. She had clenched and unclenched her small hand and gently swept it to the side like she was using a fan.

And she made an announcement.

“Open the pathway from Gevurah to Hod ''and reside in my right arm.''”

The distance did not matter. That was all it took for the distant skyscraper that formed a crucial corner of the scenery to be sliced through by five slashes and drop to the ground like a poorly-made Daruma Otoshi. Since the building had no windows, it must have been an automated agricultural building that could be harvested more than twenty times a month.

“Structure Breaker,” said her small mouth.

That great firepower had been entirely unpredictable.

That kind of unfair attack would normally kill you before you even realized what it was.

Yet Kamijou Touma remained alive.

“!!”

He had dropped straight down.

He got face-down on the ground with his limbs spread out, grabbed at the ground with his arms and feet, and then launched himself toward Anna Sprengel while down on all fours like a beast.

Right hand clashed with right hand.

Of course, the ''symbolism'' brought in by the Rosicrucian leader was worse than the actual destructive power.

“''Shall I take over?''” asked St. Germain. “The slightest hesitation will lead to death here, esper!!”

“Not yet!!”

Anna apparently had no intention of keeping her distance and wearing him down with a barrage of attacks. It was possible that over-the-top attack had only been a way of shocking Kamijou into moving in closer since he had no projectile attacks of his own.

She had only moved her opened hand as casually as swinging a tennis racket.

That was all it had taken to mercilessly slice through space itself with no regard for distance or material. ''The mere touch of her palm would negate the world, tearing through whatever was there along with the dimension and space itself.'' Kamijou felt impatience burning at the back of his mind, but he was now within a meter of Anna Sprengel.

He took aim at her small jaw with an attack that tore upwards from below.

“Ohhhh!!”

That fist could return all magicians to being mere humans. That attack stole their means of fighting back against the cruel world and threw them out into the wilderness with no way of defending themselves. But Anna calmly took a step toward that critical attack. That was all it took to avoid it.

She seemed to be nestling herself up against the boy’s chest.

Moving even closer than the swinging fist naturally kept it from hitting her.

And.

With her other hand, the left one, she held a perfectly ordinary but deadly knife.

Kamijou Touma could negate all forms of the supernatural, but he had no way of defending against those fatal ten centimeters.

“Hee hee.”

“''St. Germain''!!”''

There was a loud clang, but the knife held by the little girl was not equipped to make that sort of noise.

So what had caused it?

“A diamond? Is that eternal light a variation on the lamps that illuminate the tomb?”

“…”

They had traded places.

An unseen baton had changed hands.

And in that moment, the weapon used by the pointy-haired boy changed from his right hand’s fist to his left hand’s magic.

Specifically, some kind of glittering particles were scattered in the few millimeter gap between the boy’s chest and the bare-skinned monster’s palm.

It was said diamonds were so hard that they were in fact easily breakable, but that did not mean the blade that hit one would escape intact. The knife’s tip broke off and the blade chipped when it split the stone.

“You were never planning to block that with the strength of the diamond. Was it more like a matador’s cape? That glitter throws off my visual aim and the chipping of the blade diverts the speed and vector of destruction. Still, Academy City must have very polluted air if you can manipulate that air to produce diamonds.”

“So what if I did?”

St. Germain’s magic did not require a special sword or cards.

He could create anything with just ordinary carbon.

“I would call it inefficient,” said Anna. “Using magic with that body requires circulating his lifeforce throughout the body and refining it into magic power, right? You will always have a large chunk of that precious magic power negated before you can use it.”

“True enough. This boy’s right hand is powerful indeed and it is not something I can fully control even with his permission.”

St. Germain could not use Imagine Breaker.

Kamijou Touma could not use diamond magic.

No matter how hard they tried, they had to support each other as they fought.

So their best bet was to switch back and forth between those two sides based on what was currently needed to fight the conflagration before them. Even if something was deadly to one of them, the other might be able to break through it. They switched back and forth like they were moving a tennis racket from one side to the other during a high-speed match. It sounded convenient, but their opponent was Anna Sprengel. One wrong decision and the ball of survival would slip past them and they would lose the game.

“But even if the Sephirah and the channels between them correspond to parts of the human body, you never hear of someone who can no longer use magic after being injured or falling ill,” said St. Germain. “Magic is a means of making up for what we lack and making our dreams come true, so a lot of students enter the world of magic after just such an injury or illness.”

“Are you saying you can separate out his right hand or divert around it?” asked Anna.

St. Germain’s words contained fear and respect, but he still bared his fangs.

“I was always a lowly magician who refused to be defined solely by the two characters of RC. I instead worked to make my mark on high society under the individual name of St. Germain. There is a considerable loss in power from diverting the flow around that hand, but I am accustomed to wasted effort and this is not enough for my diamond spells to fail. The acute version of me you created appears to be even more powerful than you thought.”

The boy’s body veered to the left while those two spoke.

But not because they had any kind of plan.

A sticky sound splattered against the ground, decorating the road with a Christmasy red.

“Gh, bh!!”

“Yes, the side effect. And let’s not act like you can do that a set number of times or anything like that. Just like Russian roulette, one unlucky round and you die instantly.” The little girl gave a cruel smile at close range. “So I think it’s about time I did this by force.”

She swung her small hand around, but she was not going for an occult attack. Her fingers tore through the gas pipe running through a nearby wall.

St. Germain had to fight against this sort of physical danger.

If this kept up, Kamijou could not rejoin the battle. And if this remained a magician vs. magician battle, it could not have been more obvious who would win between St. Germain and Anna Sprengel.

“Tch!!”

Even so, an attack based on ordinary physics would obey the well-known rules found in ordinary textbooks. St. Germain created a double layer of diamond sheets thinner than an umbrella. That was not for attack or defense. Any obstacle would change the direction of the wind, just like buildings did. And if the wind direction changed, the invisible but highly flammable gas would be diverted elsewhere.

They had avoided an explosion, but Kamijou coughed up blood due to the internal injuries.

“I was hoping to buy some time for you to catch your breath, but perhaps I spent too long talking. This isn’t over yet, esper. ''Back to you!!''”

Something whooshed through the air.

And a supernatural attack meant it was his turn.

A powerful light returned to the point-haired boy’s eyes. As a small hand swung down toward him, he leaped to the side with all his might despite not being able to stand up straight. He ended up falling to the ground. Normally, he would have failed to avoid the next horizontal swing of her arm and he would have been sliced through.

But that was not what happened.

After a dull sound, he had all of a sudden jumped several meters straight up into the air.

“St. Germain, ''take care of this''!!”

“Fine, but switching back and forth like this will only shorten your life. ''Back to you!!''”

Instead of jumping up with his legs, it was more like he had been hit by a car. A diamond hexagonal pillar had thrust up from below him, launching him about three meters into the air. Anna’s fingers missed the human torso and instead sliced through the thick mass of diamond.

The two minds took turns controlling the single body by switching between right and left.

They really could overcome it this way. Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker was weak against multiple simultaneous attacks, but St. Germain’s diamonds could defend against them all. St. Germain’s magic could not fully stop Anna’s brute force attacks, but Kamijou’s right hand could forcibly blow them away.

“Ohhh!!”

The right fist clenched tight, so this was clearly Kamijou Touma in control.

It was the ordinary boy’s turn to attack from midair.

He held the blood back in his mouth while clenching his fist again. Anna should have had no way of stopping this since she was already in the middle of casually swinging her palm to the side.

The little girl looked up with just her eyes and smiled.

Her fingers had been gently bent like claws, but now she extended them straight. That spread out the angle of her deadly fan without changing the force of the swing.

As a result, the snow and asphalt at her feet were torn through and the ground collapsed below her. She was taken down along with it.

Changing the height of the ground greatly threw off Kamijou’s aim from midair.

There appeared to be a subway platform directly below.

That counted as indoors, but the chill grew even worse.

He did not recall there being a subway entrance nearby, so this appeared to be a fairly complex underground structure. Or maybe it carried some kind of secret, like it was connected to the basement of ''that hospital''.

“Gah!?”

Kamijou failed his landing and rolled along the rubble-covered floor, but he did not have time to writhe in pain. He spat blood from his mouth while diving behind a drink vending machine with its clear cover broken.

He and St. Germain could keep up with the fight, but that still had not allowed them to actually strike back.

Anna had already swung her right palm to the side.

“Oh?”

But then she sounded somewhat impressed.

She had come across something slightly unexpected.

As soon as the little girl sliced through the boxy mass of metal she had been guided toward, the chemical coolant that preserved a temperature well below zero came in contact with the ordinary air. Only a brief moment later, white steam resembling a cumulonimbus cloud expanded in every direction like a smoke bomb had gone off.

It was an obvious smokescreen.

Attack, escape, hide, rest, or think.

With the flow of battle delayed, Kamijou and St. Germain now had endless possibilities.

===Part 2===

Things had crossed a dangerous line.

The ICUs, the operating rooms, and even the treatment rooms for new arrivals were at max capacity.

The ambulances just kept bringing in too many patients.

“Get back!! Authorized personnel only!!”

“Get some extra sheets over here so we can block them from view! Don’t leave them exposed to the phone cameras!!”

Angry yelling and shouting were traded back and forth and the tension had spread even to the Christmas-decorated main lobby.

But it could have been worse.

This hospital had been receiving so many ambulances because the others had already stopped functioning altogether and this one still had its personnel and supplies in some semblance of order. What would happen to the patients if they were turned away here as well? Every second counted in EMT work, so they would know all too well that these people could not just be handed off to someone else.

But there was no saving them without solving the fundamental problem.

Closing up their wounds and stopping the bleeding would only buy some time unless the patients stopped doing what was causing them new wounds.

“Use localized anesthetic. Don’t knock them out. If they go under now, they might never come out of it!!”

“What is all that shaking outside?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care as long as it doesn’t knock this patient from their stretcher. But do make sure to be extra careful with the IV needle due to the shaking. Don’t harm their blood vessels!”

The elevator hall looked like a battlefield, but then a small set of footsteps cut across it.

For some reason, no one paid any heed to the white nun while everyone else was running around in a hurry.

“Wait, what was that?”

When they turned around again, she was already gone.

The young doctor looked to the patient on the stretcher and then stared at the medical monitors lined up alongside it.

“''Why did their vitals just stabilize? What just happened!?''”

Hearing that, the girl walked to another stretcher.

She was Index the Grimoire Library.

“Hm, hm, I see, hm.”

“They have this all backwards. But they don’t have the necessary information, so it’s not really their fault.” The fifteen centimeter god seated on the nun’s shoulder remained somewhat cautious of the calico cat on Index’s head. “As long as they remain conscious, their anxieties remain, as long as their anxieties remain, they can’t stop using magic, and as long they continue using magic, their wounds will remain. It’s all part of that pattern.”

It was like someone who obsessively washed their face over and over to calm themselves. If they rubbed their face bloody and saw that bloody face in the mirror, they might just decide they needed to wash their face some more because it was still dirty.

The simplest forms of magic did not require tools or a specific location.

They were terrified of dying, so they could not relax without continuing to use the good luck charms and fortunetelling methods they had been taught.

And that ended up destroying their esper bodies.

They only had to stop using the magic, but they had no idea what was causing it, so they would either use magic to figure out what it was or they would conclude it would only get worse if they stopped using magic.

Left like this, their lives would eventually run out.

“It doesn’t matter how much you try to bail out a sinking boat with a bucket if more and more holes are opening in the hull. It doesn’t matter how skilled the doctors are – if the patients don’t cooperate with the cure, their injury or illness will never heal. That lead doctor has done a hell of a job for someone who looks so silly. Without his instructions, these students would probably already be dead.”

“They’re all breathing with a unique rhythm. That means they’re refining their lifeforce into magic power.”

“We need to start by confiscating the spiritual items hidden in their pockets, but the simplest forms of magic don’t rely on tools. We really will need to put them to sleep to level out their ''conscious breathing method'' to accomplish anything here.”

“It would only weaken them to keep them asleep for too long.”

“We only have to break the rhythmic breathing they’re using to refine magic power. Let’s find an arbitrary reason to hook them up to a ventilator.”

Magic was the latest fad in scientific Academy City.

Even an Anglican nun who knew how to properly manage magic could tell how abnormal this was. She had never heard of it spreading like this before, yet Index and Othinus did not make their way to the center of the explosion.

They had a clear reason for remaining in the hospital.

“That human will not consider this a win if he simply defeats Anna in a fight. If all these people die in the process, he will place the burden of their deaths on his own shoulders. Even though they are not his responsibility.”

“…”

“That colossal idiot did not rush out there to protect his own life. He says he’s scared, but he still finds the destruction of this hospital or us to be worse. Refusing anything but zero deaths against a monster of that level is about as insolent as it gets, but just this once, that fool is correct. When things get truly hopeless, downgrading your goals will only mean being swallowed up by the situation. Compromise? Adapting to reality? The opinions of the wise? They can all go eat shit. There’s clearly something wrong if people are dying. If you can’t bring your self to shout that obvious fact, you’ll only drag everything into a long, drawn out war with many more deaths to come.”

This one hospital in District 7 could not take in all of the victims across Academy City. Index and Othinus had all the necessary knowledge, but neither one could use convenient healing magic on their own.

But not being able to do that one thing was not the same as being helpless.

“Anyone could solve this if they only had a manual telling them espers can’t use magic. We need to make one and distribute it through this hospital. If they see it work once, they’ll start using it even if they don’t know how it works. That will stop the city from spinning its wheels on this issue.”

“But the people of this city might not officially recognize that magic exists.”

And there were ceremonies that managed to spread despite being unofficial.

In this country’s case, the most obvious example would be the Kokkuri-san. Because the adult organizations had taken so long to accept its existence, they had been slow to react and it had caused real damage such as mass hysteria.

“We have a source we can use,” replied Othinus with a smile. That god of deception based her answer on Academy City’s bizarre situation at present. “We use R&C Occultics. The material they’ve spread around can be used to show magic is dangerous. Anything we say might be rejected outright, but official information from a well-known giant IT company will seem more reliable. We can use that to our advantage. That information is meant to get people to use magic, but we can use it to show people the risks and keep them away from it.”

“You mean…?”

“We just have to create something that bridges the gap. An extra text that explains the problems that occur when an esper uses magic.”

Index and Othinus would have preferred to be on the front line of this fight.

Magic was their area of expertise, so they were confident they would be of some help there.

But.

They turned away from that temptation.

They had chosen to fight alongside him, so they had to do everything they could to face the problems they had found. So they could avoid the horrific conclusion where that boy dragged his battered body back to the hospital only to find after the fact that everything had fallen apart.

“Listen, we can’t let anyone die.”

“Right.”

They would protect Academy City, the people who lived there, and the home he would return to.

“This hospital is a sanctuary. We start here, establish a methodology, and then spread that sanctuary out until it covers Academy City as a whole. And that will also help that softhearted human.”

“I know that already!”

So this was their battle.

It was fought in a different place and in a different way, but those girls were giving their all just like Kamijou Touma was.

===Part 3===

The biting cold swept across the platform of the District 7 subway station.

As soon as Anna’s vision was obscured by the white steam, Kamijou rolled across the platform and through the broken platform screen door to drop onto the tracks. The landing added another dull pain to the already lengthy list, but now was not the time to be counting up his injuries.

This had not bought them much time, but even thirty seconds would be more valuable than a jewel at the moment.

He clenched and unclenched his right fist.

It was Kamijou Touma’s turn right now.

“As I imagine you have noticed by now,” began St. Germain.

“Oh, don’t worry. I don’t understand a damn thing about this.”

“''Anna Sprengel’s spells are not pure Rose spells.''”

Like any wise saying, that one carried several different pieces of important information at once.

A sizzling like water on a hot griddle echoed through the area. The white steam curtain made from hydrofluorocarbon had unnaturally burst into flames and holes spread through it like a paper photo exposed to a flame from behind, correcting the distorted scene.

Anna Sprengel was smiling atop the platform while gently spreading her burning right hand.

She was the master of a different right hand.

“Found you☆”

“!!”

Trying to run away along the tracks would accomplish nothing.

She placed two fingers horizontally against her soft lips and blew out like this was a sort of whistle. The air immediately expanded at an explosive rate. Just like a picture book dragon, sticky orange flames left her mouth to cover the tracks a step lower than the platform.

This did not seem like normal fire. The way it moved like a sticky liquid was reminiscent of a flamethrower or napalm. It filled every nook and cranny of the train track like a sudden downpour filling the ditches and waterways.

“Ohhhh!?”

“Your right hand, esper.”

St. Germain pointed out the obvious solution.

The one without, the one looking up from below, and the one that yearned for it urged the Level 0 boy to action.

“Panicked or not, that is the only card in your deck, so master its use!! Just like I focused on mastering the manipulation of diamonds and carbon!!”

He could only swing his right hand around wildly in a struggle to survive. He negated the massive sea of flames that splashed up the concrete wall and ran along the groove of the track.

A power created by a right hand could be destroyed by a right hand.

But he had something else on his mind.

(''That was different from before''!?)

“Aiwass,” called Anna with a snap of her small fingers. “What shall I call this one? Item Breaker perhaps?”

Bluish-white sparks scattered like when an electric lighter failed to ignite, but that ephemeral flashing did not go away. Once it grew as bright as a blowtorch, the LCD signs, the lights, the air conditioning equipment, the train’s power line, and all other electrical equipment was transformed into a bomb.

It was like a cluster bomb had been dropped into this small space.

And Kamijou had a phone in his pants pocket.

“Gahh!?”

It happened just as he ran from the platform area and into the tunnel.

Excruciating pain jabbed down all the way to his thigh bone and it rattled his consciousness.

“Not yet, esper. The bone is not broken. And even if it was, I would support you with a diamond exoskeleton, so you can keep going regardless!”

The biggest problem was their location: an underground facility. With all electronics dead, a veil of darkness had fallen, preventing him from seeing his hand in front of his face.

And he heard a singsong voice within that dense darkness.

“Hee hee hee. You are in my grasp now.”

“!?”

She was holding out her small hand and accurately targeting him even in the darkness.

Would it be Escape Breaker next? Or Shield Breaker?

''Whatever it was, she would have changed her right hand to something else now.

Kamijou always had to rely on fistfighting, so he had no way of fighting in this darkness.

She was coming.

She had jumped down onto the track and was slowly walking toward the tunnel.

She gave a casual swing of her palm and it sliced through something. A high-voltage power line danced madly about while scattering electricity.

This was a physical attack.

“St. Germain, ''take care of this''!!”

Something flipped around at his left hand.

A light as bright as a camera flash filled the tunnel with a deafening “zap!!”, but the boy survived.

Carbon conducted electricity.

Mechanical pencil lead and diamonds could both be used as lightning rods that redirected electricity.

Also…

“Summon the spears here. The seven-walled secret room has protected its secrets for 120 years and allows no unauthorized intruders!!”

The pointy-haired boy’s body staggered over and pressed its back against the tunnel wall just before a high-pitched sound rang out. Anna held her small palm as if in pain. There was a sound like cracks running through a hard object, but that was all. Transparent spears – seven in all – had broken through the concrete wall behind him such that they passed over his shoulders and head.

“The depths of the earth are my territory,” said the man known as a count while gesturing like he held an invisible wand. His words carried both respect and hostility. “St. Germain controls diamonds. Even the master of the No. 1 Temple in Germany will run across a compatibility issue there. When performing a major ceremony, you must first focus on the stars and terrain. But worry not, this insolent result was not due to your own skill level.”

“Shut it, you imposter who only used our cabal’s name to increase your own prestige. You can control diamonds, can you? Did you think the true and legitimate Rose would care about some mere pebbles just because the common world attaches value to them?”

This exchange of emotions was inscrutable to the people of the present day.

It only made sense to those who had become legends simply by breathing, eating, working, reading, writing, and walking.

“Why do you deceive, Fräulein?”

“It is a form of defragging—an optimization.”

“I do not know how that works, ''but your right hand is very clearly not the same thing as Kamijou Touma’s''.” St. Germain stated that with confidence. And, “Using your words to inspire others to action instead of doing it yourself is St. Germain’s way. It does not suit you. The Miss Sprengel who once ruled in the depths of the No. 1 Temple in Germany was the goal of all magicians. Everyone wished to be like Anna Sprengel who was closer to a god than anyone without actually being one and who had taken the authority to contact the superhuman Secret Chiefs while maintaining her human emotions! Perhaps you find it difficult to trust a magician who can freely swap out his own memories and ideals for fun, but I was not the only one who thought that way. The Golden cabal, the Theosophists, and the witches all set you as their goal, not god!!”

“But.” The words that spilled from the little girl’s lips sounded somehow dry. “Not one cabal actually understood my words. They all distorted the meaning for their purposes.”

St. Germain noticed something and briefly forgot all about their plan. He started to step closer like someone who had spotted a soaked child out in the rain, but then a horn sounded from the side.

It was a freight train.

The unmanned train was being used to meet the Christmas demand.

“So you will never understand me either!!” shouted Anna. “Never, ever!!!!!!”

“Tetractys, numerical triangle formed from ten points. Grant me ascension with your perfection!”

St. Germain sent carbon fiber threads from Kamijou’s fingers to jump up to the roof of the high-speed mass of metal, but Anna simply stuck her small right hand out toward the front of the freight train.

The entire space shook as the front car was crushed and lifted up and the eight cars after that stacked up against each other in a zigzag pattern.

The front car hopped up at an angle, breaking through the metropolis road and the layer of snow atop it before jutting up into the snowy winter sky.

They had emerged at a different point.

They were likely still in the vicinity of that hospital. A sign identified a nearby building as a large subway station that linked together a few different lines.

The place was already abandoned. A code red may have been issued, which indicated either a largescale terrorist attack or a devastating underground chemical fire linked to a chemical plant.

(This body really is tricky to use.)

The need to forcibly divert the lifeforce circulation around the right arm while refining magic power created a time lag before he could complete his spells. And even when he did complete them, he lost a considerable amount of the magic power. It felt as unstable as flying an airplane that had parts falling off of it and had a severe fuel leak.

But at the same time, St. Germain knew all too well what would have happened if he had hijacked a non-esper adult who would give him full use of his magic.

He would have died instantly.

Thoughtlessly pitting magic against magic with Anna would never work. That would be like an overexcited soldier loading up with a ton of ballistic missiles to challenge the sun to battle.

Light could not be used to battle light.

You needed something else entirely. Defeating the sun would require a blackhole that could swallow even light.

“…”

The pointy-haired boy focused on regulating his white breathing before jumping from the twisted roof to the main road below, but he looked at his own palm before anything else.

It was stained red and black.

(The wounds have widened too far. The esper’s body will not last much longer.)

Relinquishing control right now would be cruel, but St. Germain could not have the boy’s body tearing apart from within either.

“''Back to you,'' esper. Are you prepared to hold the baton again?”

“Ahh, cough!”

The focus shifted from the left hand to the right hand. The pointy-haired boy coughed up a dark red color even as he tightly clenched his fist once more.

“St. Germain, you are no more than a collection of microbes I could kill by scrubbing you out with disinfectant soap. But you talk big, I’ll give you that. You’re still listening over there, aren’t you?”

The footsteps they heard this time were a lot rougher than before. A small figure walked through the train sticking diagonally up from the ground to crawl out onto the surface.

“I had power from the beginning, but what would I accomplish?” she spoke slowly in a low voice that made it sound like she was uttering a curse. “To save people? I’m so sick of that. To master your field of study? I can find all the answers so easily. To destroy the world you so resent? It was already destroyed from the beginning. To fulfill your desires? I have done that more than you can imagine.”

That small body swayed side to side with that powerful right hand casually lowered at her side.

A bright light shined in her eyes and a smile tore across her lips as she approached.

“''A life of fulfillment is such a bore.''”

Her movements seemed so coldly robotic.

And dry.

“''I want someone to support me instead.''”

She demonstrated the ultimate form of wastefulness where even achieving immortality became an eternal prison of boredom.

But there had to be some hints of truth within her insolent statements.

“What do you get from a power that distorts the rules and renders the game meaningless by its very existence? Creation? Destruction? Enhancement? Reduction? Friendship? Rejection? Gluttony? Restraint? What does it mean to live? What goal am I supposed to live for? How can I find fulfillment?”

The footsteps stopped.

Anna Sprengel had taken the final step and arrived aboveground once more.

She stood below the frigid falling snow and on the same level as the others.

“The exchange of words only distorts the truth, so no words are needed here. I want to know how much people can understand from instinct alone. Hence the optimization. Kamijou Touma, the One who Purifies God and Slays Demons. What will remain once everything has been stripped from you and you are laid bare? When exposed to the supernatural with no prior knowledge, what side of you becomes most active? Show me the answer.”

“…”

Kamijou remained silent for a while.

Was he even aware his shoulders were crooked?

“Y’know,” he finally said.

“?”

“I think I kinda get why you can’t find fulfillment.”

“I might understand you, but you can never understand me. Because I contain so much more than you.”

“''Still putting up your defenses like that? After we’ve been baring our hearts in this deadly battle?''” spat out Kamijou. “You want others to give you fulfillment instead of finding it yourself? Don’t make me laugh. You’d just find things to complain about and keep going. You’ll never escape that feeling of unfulfillment even if you try to let go of your own life and take it easy. But you wouldn’t be able to accept that even if you grew angry with that other person, hated them, and took revenge on them. You want someone else to support you? Those are the words of someone who doesn’t know the fear of having that other person suddenly let go. You don’t have to fear their betrayal because you already know you can support your own weight if you have to. You might claim to be supporting ‘each other’, but you already have everything you need for yourself.”

“Wait.”

“And you know that that means?”

“I said wait.”

“It means…”

Anna had said she was hoping to observe herself.

And that was exactly what happened.

“You have your super-secret techniques that you refuse to actually teach anyone, but you still want to show them off. That’s nothing special. It’s what everyone dreams about every single day.”

A dull thud burst out.

“Really, why do idiots insist on using their heads when no one wants them to?”

She was showing signs of definite irritation, which was a stark contrast to the mysterious joy from before.

“Do not think you understand me, boy.”

Would this one be called Gravity Breaker?

Anna Sprengel raised a single finger and spun it around. That was all it took for something invisible to rotate around her, gather together the metal trashcans, cleaning robots, streetlights, and wind turbines into a single large mass, build up plenty of centrifugal force, and fling them at Kamijou Touma. It was like they were attached by an invisible chain she was swinging around.

“Kh.”

He could not fully block this with Imagine Breaker.

Fighting her right hand with his would not work here.

But he did not switch to St. Germain.

If he only negated the supernatural power, he would be crushed by the force gathered by the mountain of scraps. But physics was physics. He could already see the general path they would take as they swung around his way.

And Anna herself had shown him the answer earlier. If he moved further in than the radius of the rotation, he could not be touched by that outward-swinging path.

He only had to step forward.

He clenched his right fist as hard as rock and moved toward the little girl. He could ignore that morning star now. He only had to forget about their difference in body types and throw his full weight behind a merciless punch right into that small face.

A dull impact followed.

But not from a clean hit. His punch had been stopped.

Stopped by…

“My left hand.”

“Kh.”

She only wrapped her small hand around his fist to defend, but that was enough to stop him.

However, she had broken her pattern.

That was critically important, so Kamijou Touma put on a belligerent smile.

“What kind of ‘Breaker’ was that? Honestly, who cares? You keep going so over the top that it all starts to look cheap, so I can’t help but wonder. ''You’re not even using that Aiwass you made a point of showing off earlier, are you?'' Since you broke your own rules to stop me with your left hand, let me guess: getting punched hurts like hell even for a legendary magician, doesn’t it? Am I wrong, Anna Sprengel?”

“''Who gave you permission to speak?''”

This time, she pressed her right palm against the boy’s stomach.

He had swung his fist and had it blocked, so he was defenseless at the moment.

The girl with the wounded pride widened her eyes as far as they would go.

“''Do not get carried away. You should be dead already.''”

A human-sized mass was blasted backwards as if by a point-blank shotgun blast.

“Esper!!”

“Shut up, Germain. I’m staying in control. I can keep going.”

“No, not that. You need to get up before the next attack arrives!!”

He was not even given time to lie sprawled out in the snow.

Kamijou rolled across the cold asphalt and two things entered his vision.

He could hear the straining of her skeleton even from here. Anna Sprengel had changed from a fragile-looking ten-year-old little girl to a voluptuous yet toxic woman.

She moved her right hand’s index and middle fingers together in a scissors gesture.

“Break… Breaker… you know what? I’m sick of coming up with these names. Maybe this is how women lose their charm.”

Anna gave up on naming her right hand.

But that did not mean its destructive power was in any way reduced.

“''Since it’s Christmas, how about I treat you to a show?''”

The other thing he had seen was an airship that had been slowly floating across the white sky above.

Its rugby-ball-shaped gasbag had ruptured, transforming it into an orange shooting star. It scraped along the walls of the skyscrapers as it fell straight toward him.

Ironically, the large LCD screen on the side of the shooting star displayed a large image of white-bearded Santa Claus aboard his sleigh.

“Merry Christmas☆,” whispered Anna while viewing that giant face falling toward the surface.

(Dammit!!)

Kamijou slowly got up and made his way to a nearby building. He pushed open the glass door with his shoulder and collapsed inside. The world outside of the thick reinforced glass was consumed by flames and heat.

This was a department store, but not a fancy one.

They must have tried to make it look fancy to earn shoppers during the Christmas season, but that had only emphasized how unfancy it was. It was the kind of store even Kamijou would feel comfortable entering alone.

His ability to sense warmth must have broken because he did not feel at all comfortable even though the heat had to be on in here. Did that mean the trembling of his fingertips was not caused by the cold?

The first floor seemed to be for jewelry, glasses, and musical instruments. The rows of glass showcases with gentle music playing in the background was somehow reminiscent of a museum.

After a freight train bursting out from the ground and a burning airship crashing down, there were of course no people around. All the customers, employees, and even guards had left.

Only the gentle music remained.

''Good,'' thought Kamijou.

They might not have survived if they had decided to stay here to protect the jewels or the money in the till.

“…”

He still did not know what Anna was doing.

But something about it seemed wrong to him.

She drew in external power, rearranged it how she liked inside her body, and then fired it back out. Her attacks were definitely deadly and destructive, but when he thought about it, they seemed more centered ''on the productive side of things.

Kamijou had fought a great number of magicians over his right hand. Maybe this was just another part of that. They had all provided their own view of things. During all those exchanged words, some had said his Imagine Breaker was a reference point for the world. Magic put everything in flux, so those who wielded magic could put their minds at ease by focusing on a single immovable point that would never change. In that sense, the idea of adding more to it ''was incredibly unusual.

It did not fit.

He felt certain that Anna Sprengel’s method was incorrect.

So…

(Magic.)

He shifted the focus of his mind.

St. Germain had said Anna’s ''spells'' were not pure Rose spells.

(She’s using some kind of method to manipulate the mystical and miraculous. I can’t let the focus on my hand lead me astray. She’s only using ''ordinary methods'' that even Stiyl or Kanzaki could use if they knew how!!)

However, he was not currently with Index, who had memorized at least 103,001 grimoires, or Othinus, a true god given a new form. So even if he could make some guesses, he could not find the answer.

There was also the time she had used her left hand. Her power must not have actually been limited to her right hand, but that did not tell him what she ''was'' doing. He felt like someone questioning what the doctor said, but not sure what the actual cure was.

But…

“…”

He came to a stop.

He had seen something.

The jewelry section of the department store had a lot of showcases. The employees must have put in more effort than usual since it was Christmas because there were a few handmade signs inside the glass cases, perhaps hoping to catch the eye of customers who were on a date.

Kamijou had noticed one of those:

“Check out our December Gematria Special☆ An available employee will convert your name into numbers and find which gem is a must-have for you. The process is free of charge! Are you a couple that feels they don’t have enough in common? Dig deeper and you’re bound to find a stronger connection there!!”

He could not believe his eyes.

Had magic always been stuff like this?

“Engrave your favorite rune into a pure gold ring! Some civilizations used to carve these holy symbols into gold coins and cups to bring themselves wealth or avoid poison. And…”

“Would you like to add an extra something to your usual yoga lessons? By creating your own personal incense, you can more easily picture the breaths moving through your body, so…”

“Crystal healing isn’t just a Western thing! Even something you have lying around the house can work! Prayer beads are a hot choice at the moment!! You can even select stones other than crystals to…”

Kamijou had been vaguely aware that jewelry stores would use this kind of thing to sell birthstones and healing crystals.

But this was too much. This kind of jargon and equations was knowledge meant to be strictly stored in an ancient library or in that white nun’s head. That info should not have been advertised on handmade signs cut out of cardboard and written with a felt-tip pen.

How had this happened?

There was only one possible answer.

“R&C Occultics has gotten to places like this too!?”

He heard the reinforced glass shattering. The road out front should have been consumed by orange flames, but it had instead frozen white. The thick glass wall had failed to withstand the temperature difference, so the entire thing shattered and rained down like a waterfall.

The sexy woman took a single step into the department store.

She did not seem at all worried about the sea of glass she had created. You would be hard-pressed to find a woman better suited to be surrounded by jewelry and musical instruments.

Kamijou silently raised his right fist again.

“Are you…” He gulped but still faced that blatant threat. “Are you using something to switch between different kinds of ‘power’? What you’re doing isn’t like my right hand. That’s the magic of the outside world that lets you control a variety of supernatural powers by default!!”

“This is the rose and the cross.”

The sexy woman waved her right hand with a sadistic smile.

And she said one more thing as she approached.

“Not that I expect you to understand what that means.”

===Part 4===

Losing his phone was a heavy blow.

The answer was somewhere out there. And it would be so easy to find that an amateur might accidentally stumble across it. But Kamijou Touma currently had no way of accessing that site.

“Tch!!”

“Hee hee.”

With each casual swing of the sexy woman’s long hand, a powerful gust of wind would blow through, caustic acid would spread out like an amoeba, or a bright light would flash.

The movement of her hand was more like a pliant whip than a solid fist. She put on the smile of a sadist while mercilessly producing deadly slap after deadly slap.

Instead of trying to kill him with the occult, she was trying to kill with him with physical attacks. She would shatter a glass showcase to kill him with the shards flying toward him.

His fist ''alone'' was not enough to deal with that.

“St. Germain, ''switch''!!”

“I will keep you alive.”

They reversed hands.

Of course, St. Germain could not overwhelm Anna on his own, so they would switch back and forth.

They called each other’s names like partners fighting back to back. The right hand deflected the blowing wind, a diamond pillar burst diagonally from the floor to hold back the flood of acid, Kamijou ran along the transparent pillar like a steep slope, and he leaped at Miss Sprengel from midair.

The one body played the roles of magic and science.

But…

“You’ve reached your limit, haven’t you?”

“!!”

She swung her right hand horizontally and the light that burst out slammed into Kamijou’s side. He was knocked away from his downward path toward her. He flew to the side and crashed into a showcase, sending ruby rings, emerald necklaces, and more scattering around with the shattered glass.

“Kahh!?”

Sharp glass stabbed into his thigh.

But he did not have time to grimace in pain.

“It might look like you are holding your own with that bizarre fighting style, but surely you know better. In a clash between magic, the theory behind it matters far more than the quantity. And after all this, you still do not understand what I am doing.”

“…”

He did not need to admit to it out loud, but Anna was right. Kamijou only knew that she could change her right hand’s power at will, but he did not actually know what spell it was or what category of magic it belonged to.

He could negate all kinds of supernatural powers by brute force, but that was not enough to get by with someone like this.

Rushing blindly in at a magician was like running into a densely-packed minefield. You could even say a magician’s standard strategy was to set things up so a direct attack like that could never work.

“St. Germain.”

“You aren’t going to get an answer back when you don’t even know what question to ask,” said Anna.

She casually swung her open palm from a distance and three explosions appeared in quick succession.

Kamijou swallowed the blood that had gathered in his mouth and let out a roar.

“''Take over!!''”

Once St. Germain was in control, he moved back while blocking the attack with a diamond shield and pillar. It was a solid defense, but that was all it was. Relying on magic was clearly only going to get them backed into a dead end. Kamijou alone could not defeat Anna and neither could St. Germain.

So they swapped out.

Never relying on only one of them was the only way to stay alive.

“''Back to you.'' Alter your timing a bit next time. Don’t let her predict our actions!!”

“St. Germai-!!”

“''No.'' I said alter the timing, esper!!”

A broken square pillar was spinning Kamijou’s way, but he would have to deal with it himself. He frantically dodged the giant blunt weapon that knocked aside the entire register counter and eye test machine.

While they frequently switched back and forth, Kamijou’s fist threw off the destructive rhythm.

He had no choice but to confront her head on.

Any cover he tried to hide behind would only get destroyed along with him and moving over by the wall left him without enough room to swing his right arm.

While buying time like that, he had to ask about everything he had seen. Whether or not it would be helpful, he did know that this jewelry section had already been influenced by Rose magic.

He did not have to hit the jackpot right away. In fact, he doubted that was possible.

He swung his bloody fist while asking his inner partner some questions.

“What’s crystal healing!? I know I’ve heard the term a lot!”

“It is believed that jewels can gather up the power of the constellations and return it to their wearer. It is also said the harder the stone, the more power it absorbs, making diamonds the most extreme example. That is why it is thought they can be used for a great many specific goals such as detoxing and exorcisms, not just vaguely providing good fortune.”

“What’s this about engraving runes on treasures like gold coins and cups?”

“Engraving the rune for victory into a coin is a way of praying for wealth and engraving the rune for suffering into a cup is a way of detecting poisoned drinks. You could think of them as protective charms with specific effects.”

“Then what’s the connection between yoga and incense!?”

“Yoga is not technically a form of training done at the gym. It is actually a method of controlling your inner body through your breathing to have an effect on the outside world. Tools are generally not needed. In fact, you are supposed to rid yourself of all worldly possessions and thoughts, but beginners would probably find it easier to focus on their breathing if the air were given a color or aroma. Of course, using a guide means only following the rails laid out for you, so the act loses all meaning.”

“What about gold and silver!?”

“Seven metals were given a position of importance in ancient times, but since that included iron and lead, they were not all precious metals. On that note, the idea of silver weapons being effective against monsters is mostly the influence of folklore and entertainment, so I would not rely on it if I were you. There might be some effect, but a truly pious person would not melt down a silver cross to create a knife or bullet in the first place.”

“Argh, what else was there? Prayer beads!?”

“They are a type of spiritual item used in Buddhism. The term generally refers to seeds of the bodhi tree strung into a loop by a single thread, but beads of crystal are also used. The number of beads is usually 108, but there are other versions. The Christian rosary is the same basic idea.”

None of it was very specific and they were getting off topic.

Even now, the boy’s life was being shortened for every second of freedom. He bled more each time he and St. Germain switched out, but they kept it up. He had to pick up every single hint he could get from the handmade signs and the occult code(?) conversion chart pasted on the side of the register.

“Then what about birthstones!?”

“Each of the twelve months is given a different gem, but there are several different versions. The version most well-known now was created by the American National Association of Jewelers.”

That one was a complete bust. They might have used some older source when deciding on their list, but he doubted a centuries-old tradition would have been passed down with perfect accuracy. At best, it would have partially incorporated some of it. He felt an urge to lash out at the half-assed system here. This was like the stores telling you to give chocolate on Valentine’s Day just to sell their products. He could not entrust his life to that.

He heard a disconcerting zapping sound.

It was not aimed directly at him, so he was slow to react. The electricity instead crashed into the showcase in front of him, causing it to burst from within. The wall of sharp glass pummeled his entire body and he was knocked to the floor.

“Hit.”

“Ah…kah…”

“I think I see how this works now. You’re nimble, but it dulls your intuition when your life is not directly targeted.”

There were countless types of magic.

And Anna Sprengel was in the deepest depths of that world. Was he just not going to find the answer by looking through some random bits and pieces of magical knowledge?

But.

St. Germain spoke from within Kamijou while the boy clenched his fist.

“I see. You cannot find the answer right away, but you can arrive at the answer by eliminating each wrong answer in turn.”

“…?”

“The runes are not necessary and we can eliminate the yoga and Buddhism as well. R&C Occultics has spread all forms of magic. That may have made the occult harder to detect, just like the city lights hiding the stars in the sky, but if you understand the Rose’s methods, the knowledge requiring our focus makes itself readily apparent.”

Kamijou Touma did not know enough to take issue with that conclusion.

He had to rely on St. Germain’s senses since he still knew the Rose, just like people never forgot how to hold chopsticks or ride a bike.

“The answer is three.”

Kamijou felt so woozy, but he was guided to that specific answer, not four or five.

St. Germain went on to explain.

“The Rose often used Kabbalah, which says the entire world can be explained using the twenty-two Hebrew characters. You merely need to subtract the seven metals and the twelve constellations from twenty-two. If you remove each of the petals on the outside, you are left with the number hidden in the center of the flower. You are left with three characters.”

Come to think of it, hadn’t Anna herself mentioned the rose and the cross?

“Shin is fire, Mem is water, and Aleph is wind. The rose symbol represents the world by surrounding those three elements with a ring divided into sevenths and with the twelve colors.”

Kamijou managed to keep breathing, but it felt like breaking through a sticky barrier.

Was that due to being torn up on the outside or eaten away on the inside?

It was hard to tell anymore.

“Then…is Anna using that to create different things out of the energy produced by that angel named Aiwass?”

“Yes, but that does not simply mean 22 different attack patterns in all. Kabbalah has a code system known as Gematria. The characters are assigned numbers and two words with the same number are considered to have the same meaning.”

“But…”

If she only started with three characters, weren’t there only so many combinations she could use?

But St. Germain got ahead of that question.

“For example, Shin’s numerical value is 300, but Gematria adds the digits together to reach a single-digit number. That gives you an answer of 3. But that can be read simply as three, aka Gimel, or it could be read as 1+2, aka Aleph and Bet. So depending on how you break it down, the possibilities are endless. That is why a powerful grimoire can be such a hotbed of misreadings.”

“I was wondering about that, but it wasn’t my main question. Where is Anna hiding her rose accessory!?”

He doubted it was the decorations in her fried shrimp hair.

Nor would it be her thin dress.

She would need a detailed symbol that accurately placed the twenty-two Hebrew characters on as many rose petals, but Kamijou could not see anything like it.

The sexy woman grinned and raised her right hand from a short distance away.

“This will never end unless we destroy that. We’ll be killed if we can’t rob Anna of her power!!”

===Part 5===

“Found it!” Index shouted excitedly in the District 7 hospital.

If basic magic could be constructed from magic words, gestures, and hand signals with no need for a spiritual item, it might seem like there was no way to save the espers from the side effects.

But that assumption was wrong.

“The stars, the three prophets, a link to the date, and it only activates on the 25th.”

“So it’s a curse that takes advantage of Christmas’s date!?”

That might sound ridiculous, but at some point, Christmas became more than just an enjoyable festival. Either a very twisted person had spread the idea or a lot of people had wanted to believe it because there were traditions of that sort out there. For example, there were mysterious figures who generally only appeared on Christmas and who you never wanted to so much as encounter, like the dark Santa Claus that abducted bad children or the Kallikantzaros that was only active during the end of the year.

And human psychology had a fascinating tendency to spread stories of misfortune more than ones of fortune. For example, everyone would immediately forget an urban legend that still remembering the keyword ‘silver mirror’ when you turned twenty would bring you happiness, but no one could bring themselves to forget the urban legend that still remembering the keyword ‘purple mirror’ when you turned twenty would mean your death.

So the happier a time Christmas was, the more the dark joy spread of wondering about the people for whom Christmas was an unhappy time. Yes, joy. When people at a large party started wondering about the people who had no date to share Christmas with, they were generally imagining someone worse off than them to make themselves feel better about their own situation. There may have been a magician that provided that with a concrete effect at some point. Either to ruin Christmas or to make sure the event would never be forgotten.

In fact, it was not uncommon in the world of magic for experts to give concrete form to something they encountered and thought was neat. Othinus ''who once destroyed the entire world'' was not one to talk, but magicians had a tendency to cross some lines generally considered taboo.

Take, for example, everything related to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Or the Rosy Cross that Andreae claimed to have invented himself.

“A good luck charm meant to confirm your own happiness, huh?” Othinus sounded disgusted. “And it ends up destroying their body as they keep using it. Self-doubt really is the greatest poison. Besides, if you need something to objectively tell you you’re happy, then you’re not really happy at all.”

“But now that we know this…”

“Yes, we can bring the party to an end. Let’s leave a present by the patient’s pillow while they sleep and before they can start using that magic while emptyhanded. Santa’s visit is considered the highlight of Christmas in this country, so once they have their present, Christmas is over, right?”

“A spell to end Christmas.”

“Once it’s ready, search out an adult among the visitors. If they aren’t an esper, we can get them to use the magic without any side effects.”

Normally, they might not find anyone willing to cooperate with that. Especially in Academy City. They might even get yelled at for asking for something so extremely inappropriate.

But things were different now.

It was R&C Occultics who had lowered the barrier toward magic.

And the god of war, deception, and magic would use everything available to her. If the enemy was going to give her a gift, she would use that gift to bring the enemy to their knees. That was Othinus’s style.

“Then let’s settle this,” said the god without hesitation.

===Part 6===

Anna Sprengel considered what to do with her right hand next. But only with the tension of someone pondering what to make for dinner that night.

She had well over a million attack options.

(The optimization should be done soon and the boring result has already shown itself.)

She had made her choice.

40 + 300. Each digit was split out separately and summed together, so that came out to a 7. That meant the true character she had extracted was Z or Zayin. That corresponded to The Lovers in tarot and it was the channel that connected the spheres of understanding and beauty in the Sephiroth.

It meant a sword or armor.

That determined the nature of her right hand.

(The emotion of irritation is a rare one for me, but I do experience it from time to time. If this result is not to my liking, maybe I should dispose of him and move on to my next objective.)

Anna Sprengel gently stretched out her slender hand. Her right hand could use just two fingers to slice through anything. In other words, simply closing those two fingers would create a massive invisible maw with her target’s head between the jaws.

Just then, Kamijou Touma took an unusual action.

“''Change''!!”

He did the opposite of his usual move of suicidally rushing in with fist clenched. In fact, he jumped backwards to move away from her.

That was still suicidal, but the boy did not have any projectile attacks.

Which meant…

(St. Germain!!)

Anna smiled.

It might look at first like Kamijou Touma had acquired a great variety of options here, but it was actually the opposite. When it came to the essence of Rosicrucianism, no magician knew more than the master of the No. 1 Temple in Germany. No one had any chance of defeating her if they challenged her on that field. They might put up a decent fight, but they could never win. They would only be postponing their inevitable death.

It could not have been more apparent that the only way to defeat this magic was to destroy the illusion.

(Attempting to keep your distance and wear me down with projectiles after all this is just pathetic.)

St. Germain specialized in creating diamonds.

That meant carbon manipulation.

(Then all I need to do is absorb all forms of carbon, both solid and gaseous, to remove it from this space.)

Something gathered in her small left palm. It was a filthy black ball a little larger than a pill.

(Now St. Germain is helpless. Or will he use his host’s own body to create a diamond? Based on the optional services offered by funeral homes, an entire human body’s worth of carbon should only get you a diamond no larger than the tip of your fingernail!!)

Anna laughed, but then she silently grimaced.

No matter what she said, she clung to success and victory more than anyone. To the point that she could not maintain herself without them.

The boy’s words were coming back to her and they were accompanied by pain.

However.

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

A brief pause followed.

After falling back—and thus gathering Anna’s attention as she pursued—Kamijou Touma lightly tossed something into the air.

It was a symbol made from cheap gold plating and it was only a few centimeters long. Instead of a number or a letter of the alphabet, this symbol looked sort of like an ‘n’ with a loop at the end.

The symbol stood for Capricorn.

Its essence was femininity, activity, Saturn, longing, and prosperity.

As well as…

(The element of earth.)

Yes.

The twenty-two characters were broken out into three, seven, and twelve. With only three in the center, the rose symbol managed by the twenty-two Hebrew characters had no place for earth in the center of the flower.

And while it was a magical symbol, it had no magic power within it. In fact, it felt like someone trying to use what little knowledge they had without any practical skills to back it up. This could not be St. Germain who did have those skills.

In other words…

“Was this Kamijou Touma?”

She knew that, but human thoughts were so easily altered by your assumptions.

Something extra had been thrown into the mix.

Capricorn was a symbol of the earth element.

How things looked in a red room was very different from how they looked in a blue room, so a train’s driver’s compartment had its coloration chosen carefully.

Because the wrong coloration could be distracting.

(This could be ''bad''!!)

===Part 7===

''December’s birthstone is either turquoise or lapis lazuli.

''All you Capricorns out there, don’t feel too bad about being the earth element. Christmas is your season. Today’s the day to ask for a special gift!

“!!”

Kamijou clenched his teeth while kicking aside one of the handmade signs scattered across the floor.

Up ahead, Anna Sprengel grimaced and held her feminine right wrist with her other hand. He doubted that had actually accomplished anything and, even if it had, it would still give him the opening he needed.

He just needed a large enough opening to take one big step.

He cut powerfully forward as if defying the white light expanding explosively in front of him. He gathered up the very last of his strength to move right up to her.

Anna must have no longer cared about losing control because she tried intercepting him with her right palm even as it continued to produce a blinding blowtorch-like light.

“But how!?” roared the bewitching woman who seemed to corrupt everything around her with her very presence.

Yes. Kamijou Touma had fought plenty of magicians, but he could not construct a spell himself. He would be able to use magic if he let St. Germain take control, but St. Germain would not rely on the fist that would kill him.

But the answer was simple.

“R&C Occultics.”

“…”

“You spread this knowledge yourself. If you hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have been able to fight back!!”

Anna gave up on trying to control her right hand.

She broke her own rules by raising her other hand.

Yes, ''Anna Sprengel’s right hand was not actually special in any way.'' That was only an unnecessary restriction she was placing on herself. She had cheated like this once before, so Kamijou did not hesitate.

He took action.

But if he used his right fist here, it would only be a repeat of last time. While his right hand clashed with her left, she could use her right hand to blow him away.

So…

“Wha—!?”

He bit at her alluring hand. At her long, slender fingers. It was such a primitive choice from the perspective of an intellectual well-versed in all forms of magic, but it was certainly effective.

Because…

(''Her fingers.'')

Kamijou Touma clenched his teeth.

It made sense that a jewelry store would focus on something like this.

Because if wearing a ring on a finger other than your left hand’s ring finger gave it a special meaning, that might give them another way to advertise to people.

Yes.

Anna did not need to carry around a full rose symbol.

A scrap of paper on the floor – probably some notes for speaking with customers – explained which elements each finger corresponded to.

(Starting with the thumb, they’re ether, water, fire, earth, and wind. So by bending her index, middle, and little fingers as a command, she can switch the basic elements of fire, water, and wind on and off, creating whatever Hebrew character she wants in her palm. That’s how Anna was controlling her angel. That’s her magic! Which means…!!)

However he did it, he only had to keep her from moving her fingers.

That would let him seal away Anna Sprengel’s Hebrew-based rose spell.

And with his right fist still free to use, of course.

“…!!”

Kamijou Touma and St. Germain had arrived at this point along very different paths. One of science, the other of magic. They were very different people with nothing in common.

But at this moment, the two of them stared in the exact same direction.

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_333.jpg|thumb]]

It did not matter if they were dropouts or if they were considered disappointments.

Any being living here and now still had the freedom to change what happened to them.

No matter what form that being took.

They only had to act upon their desire to protect the people and feelings they held dear.

Then they could fight on equal footing with anyone in the world!!

(Kamijou Touma.)

(St. Germain.)

He had used his mouth.

With his teeth clenched tight, they could not speak aloud.

So they faced their single enemy and attempted to end this in silence.

They had both only ever wanted to do one thing about Anna Sprengel’s tyranny.

To clench that fist as hard as can be.

To gather everything that woman had done to them, place it in that fist, and send it…

(''Back to you''!!)

(''Back to you''!!)

This time, those two battered wills caught Miss Sprengel square on the cheekbone.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter4

2020-09-21T16:18:00Z

Entei08: should be referring to St Germain giving Touma his body back

==Chapter 4: The Phenomenon of Kamijou Touma — Not_Right_Hand.==

===Part 1===

It was two against two.

“Hmm.”

The small girl smirked.

She was the monster who would simply travel along a straight line to her destination, destroying all that stood in her way.

“Now, this is a little more interesting. Can you expand on this unexpected turn of events and send it my way?”

On one side, Kamijou Touma and St. Germain.

On the other, Anna Sprengel and Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass.

“One step.”

The naked little girl who looked about ten held the red cloth to her skin below the falling snow and smiled confidently with the bizarre angel by her side.

She seemed to threaten the hospital’s front gate like it was a mystical barrier.

She began to walk with an unbelievable amount of strength for someone who looked like you could blow her over with your breath. And that strength was not just figurative. The snow at her feet really was blown away, the asphalt sank down slightly, and cracks formed around her.

“If you’re going to talk big, then stop me from taking this one step. R&C Occultics is a new trend the world over. If you can’t push back a mere global trend, I will be sorely disappointed. And you can figure out for yourself what that would mean.”

“…”

Kamijou Touma silently clenched his right first.

But that was not all he did.

He pressed his other palm against the center of his chest and spoke toward that point.

“St. Germain, can you do this?”

“Who do you think I am? Leave the ley line landmines to me. You only need to fight the threat before your eyes.”

Two different statements came from the same mouth.

Kamijou saw Anna Sprengel’s eyebrows move ever so slightly.

That other voice was audible to other people and it was accompanied by a visible breath.

And it was Kamijou Touma who readied his fist now. He would not hold back no matter what form his enemy took. In fact, something inside him was telling him it was abnormal for an enemy so great to be contained in a body so small.

He could not ignore what R&C Occultics was doing. Or that the girls who had stood up for him were collapsed on the ground here.

He could work to understand this person after he had punched her and settled this.

They were still a good bit apart.

Kamijou would have to take five steps to reach her even when running at full speed.

But…

“Aiwass.”

The instant Anna’s young lips whispered that name, the angel next to her was gone.

No. She had clenched and unclenched her small hand and gently swept it to the side like she was using a fan.

And she made an announcement.

“Open the pathway from Gevurah to Hod ''and reside in my right arm.''”

The distance did not matter. That was all it took for the distant skyscraper that formed a crucial corner of the scenery to be sliced through by five slashes and drop to the ground like a poorly-made Daruma Otoshi. Since the building had no windows, it must have been an automated agricultural building that could be harvested more than twenty times a month.

“Structure Breaker,” said her small mouth.

That great firepower had been entirely unpredictable.

That kind of unfair attack would normally kill you before you even realized what it was.

Yet Kamijou Touma remained alive.

“!!”

He had dropped straight down.

He got face-down on the ground with his limbs spread out, grabbed at the ground with his arms and feet, and then launched himself toward Anna Sprengel while down on all fours like a beast.

Right hand clashed with right hand.

Of course, the ''symbolism'' brought in by the Rosicrucian leader was worse than the actual destructive power.

“''Shall I take over?''” asked St. Germain. “The slightest hesitation will lead to death here, esper!!”

“Not yet!!”

Anna apparently had no intention of keeping her distance and wearing him down with a barrage of attacks. It was possible that over-the-top attack had only been a way of shocking Kamijou into moving in closer since he had no projectile attacks of his own.

She had only moved her opened hand as casually as swinging a tennis racket.

That was all it had taken to mercilessly slice through space itself with no regard for distance or material. ''The mere touch of her palm would negate the world, tearing through whatever was there along with the dimension and space itself.'' Kamijou felt impatience burning at the back of his mind, but he was now within a meter of Anna Sprengel.

He took aim at her small jaw with an attack that tore upwards from below.

“Ohhhh!!”

That fist could return all magicians to being mere humans. That attack stole their means of fighting back against the cruel world and threw them out into the wilderness with no way of defending themselves. But Anna calmly took a step toward that critical attack. That was all it took to avoid it.

She seemed to be nestling herself up against the boy’s chest.

Moving even closer than the swinging fist naturally kept it from hitting her.

And.

With her other hand, the left one, she held a perfectly ordinary but deadly knife.

Kamijou Touma could negate all forms of the supernatural, but he had no way of defending against those fatal ten centimeters.

“Hee hee.”

“''St. Germain''!!”''

There was a loud clang, but the knife held by the little girl was not equipped to make that sort of noise.

So what had caused it?

“A diamond? Is that eternal light a variation on the lamps that illuminate the tomb?”

“…”

They had traded places.

An unseen baton had changed hands.

And in that moment, the weapon used by the pointy-haired boy changed from his right hand’s fist to his left hand’s magic.

Specifically, some kind of glittering particles were scattered in the few millimeter gap between the boy’s chest and the bare-skinned monster’s palm.

It was said diamonds were so hard that they were in fact easily breakable, but that did not mean the blade that hit one would escape intact. The knife’s tip broke off and the blade chipped when it split the stone.

“You were never planning to block that with the strength of the diamond. Was it more like a matador’s cape? That glitter throws off my visual aim and the chipping of the blade diverts the speed and vector of destruction. Still, Academy City must have very polluted air if you can manipulate that air to produce diamonds.”

“So what if I did?”

St. Germain’s magic did not require a special sword or cards.

He could create anything with just ordinary carbon.

“I would call it inefficient,” said Anna. “Using magic with that body requires circulating his lifeforce throughout the body and refining it into magic power, right? You will always have a large chunk of that precious magic power negated before you can use it.”

“True enough. This boy’s right hand is powerful indeed and it is not something I can fully control even with his permission.”

St. Germain could not use Imagine Breaker.

Kamijou Touma could not use diamond magic.

No matter how hard they tried, they had to support each other as they fought.

So their best bet was to switch back and forth between those two sides based on what was currently needed to fight the conflagration before them. Even if something was deadly to one of them, the other might be able to break through it. They switched back and forth like they were moving a tennis racket from one side to the other during a high-speed match. It sounded convenient, but their opponent was Anna Sprengel. One wrong decision and the ball of survival would slip past them and they would lose the game.

“But even if the Sephirah and the channels between them correspond to parts of the human body, you never hear of someone who can no longer use magic after being injured or falling ill,” said St. Germain. “Magic is a means of making up for what we lack and making our dreams come true, so a lot of students enter the world of magic after just such an injury or illness.”

“Are you saying you can separate out his right hand or divert around it?” asked Anna.

St. Germain’s words contained fear and respect, but he still bared his fangs.

“I was always a lowly magician who refused to be defined solely by the two characters of RC. I instead worked to make my mark on high society under the individual name of St. Germain. There is a considerable loss in power from diverting the flow around that hand, but I am accustomed to wasted effort and this is not enough for my diamond spells to fail. The acute version of me you created appears to be even more powerful than you thought.”

The boy’s body veered to the left while those two spoke.

But not because they had any kind of plan.

A sticky sound splattered against the ground, decorating the road with a Christmasy red.

“Gh, bh!!”

“Yes, the side effect. And let’s not act like you can do that a set number of times or anything like that. Just like Russian roulette, one unlucky round and you die instantly.” The little girl gave a cruel smile at close range. “So I think it’s about time I did this by force.”

She swung her small hand around, but she was not going for an occult attack. Her fingers tore through the gas pipe running through a nearby wall.

St. Germain had to fight against this sort of physical danger.

If this kept up, Kamijou could not rejoin the battle. And if this remained a magician vs. magician battle, it could not have been more obvious who would win between St. Germain and Anna Sprengel.

“Tch!!”

Even so, an attack based on ordinary physics would obey the well-known rules found in ordinary textbooks. St. Germain created a double layer of diamond sheets thinner than an umbrella. That was not for attack or defense. Any obstacle would change the direction of the wind, just like buildings did. And if the wind direction changed, the invisible but highly flammable gas would be diverted elsewhere.

They had avoided an explosion, but Kamijou coughed up blood due to the internal injuries.

“I was hoping to buy some time for you to catch your breath, but perhaps I spent too long talking. This isn’t over yet, esper. ''Back to you!!''”

Something whooshed through the air.

And a supernatural attack meant it was his turn.

A powerful light returned to the point-haired boy’s eyes. As a small hand swung down toward him, he leaped to the side with all his might despite not being able to stand up straight. He ended up falling to the ground. Normally, he would have failed to avoid the next horizontal swing of her arm and he would have been sliced through.

But that was not what happened.

After a dull sound, he had all of a sudden jumped several meters straight up into the air.

“St. Germain, ''take care of this''!!”

“Fine, but switching back and forth like this will only shorten your life. ''Back to you!!''”

Instead of jumping up with his legs, it was more like he had been hit by a car. A diamond hexagonal pillar had thrust up from below him, launching him about three meters into the air. Anna’s fingers missed the human torso and instead sliced through the thick mass of diamond.

The two minds took turns controlling the single body by switching between right and left.

They really could overcome it this way. Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker was weak against multiple simultaneous attacks, but St. Germain’s diamonds could defend against them all. St. Germain’s magic could not fully stop Anna’s brute force attacks, but Kamijou’s right hand could forcibly blow them away.

“Ohhh!!”

The right fist clenched tight, so this was clearly Kamijou Touma in control.

It was the ordinary boy’s turn to attack from midair.

He held the blood back in his mouth while clenching his fist again. Anna should have had no way of stopping this since she was already in the middle of casually swinging her palm to the side.

The little girl looked up with just her eyes and smiled.

Her fingers had been gently bent like claws, but now she extended them straight. That spread out the angle of her deadly fan without changing the force of the swing.

As a result, the snow and asphalt at her feet were torn through and the ground collapsed below her. She was taken down along with it.

Changing the height of the ground greatly threw off Kamijou’s aim from midair.

There appeared to be a subway platform directly below.

That counted as indoors, but the chill grew even worse.

He did not recall there being a subway entrance nearby, so this appeared to be a fairly complex underground structure. Or maybe it carried some kind of secret, like it was connected to the basement of ''that hospital''.

“Gah!?”

Kamijou failed his landing and rolled along the rubble-covered floor, but he did not have time to writhe in pain. He spat blood from his mouth while diving behind a drink vending machine with its clear cover broken.

He and St. Germain could keep up with the fight, but that still had not allowed them to actually strike back.

Anna had already swung her right palm to the side.

“Oh?”

But then she sounded somewhat impressed.

She had come across something slightly unexpected.

As soon as the little girl sliced through the boxy mass of metal she had been guided toward, the chemical coolant that preserved a temperature well below zero came in contact with the ordinary air. Only a brief moment later, white steam resembling a cumulonimbus cloud expanded in every direction like a smoke bomb had gone off.

It was an obvious smokescreen.

Attack, escape, hide, rest, or think.

With the flow of battle delayed, Kamijou and St. Germain now had endless possibilities.

===Part 2===

Things had crossed a dangerous line.

The ICUs, the operating rooms, and even the treatment rooms for new arrivals were at max capacity.

The ambulances just kept bringing in too many patients.

“Get back!! Authorized personnel only!!”

“Get some extra sheets over here so we can block them from view! Don’t leave them exposed to the phone cameras!!”

Angry yelling and shouting were traded back and forth and the tension had spread even to the Christmas-decorated main lobby.

But it could have been worse.

This hospital had been receiving so many ambulances because the others had already stopped functioning altogether and this one still had its personnel and supplies in some semblance of order. What would happen to the patients if they were turned away here as well? Every second counted in EMT work, so they would know all too well that these people could not just be handed off to someone else.

But there was no saving them without solving the fundamental problem.

Closing up their wounds and stopping the bleeding would only buy some time unless the patients stopped doing what was causing them new wounds.

“Use localized anesthetic. Don’t knock them out. If they go under now, they might never come out of it!!”

“What is all that shaking outside?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care as long as it doesn’t knock this patient from their stretcher. But do make sure to be extra careful with the IV needle due to the shaking. Don’t harm their blood vessels!”

The elevator hall looked like a battlefield, but then a small set of footsteps cut across it.

For some reason, no one paid any heed to the white nun while everyone else was running around in a hurry.

“Wait, what was that?”

When they turned around again, she was already gone.

The young doctor looked to the patient on the stretcher and then stared at the medical monitors lined up alongside it.

“''Why did their vitals just stabilize? What just happened!?''”

Hearing that, the girl walked to another stretcher.

She was Index the Grimoire Library.

“Hm, hm, I see, hm.”

“They have this all backwards. But they don’t have the necessary information, so it’s not really their fault.” The fifteen centimeter god seated on the nun’s shoulder remained somewhat cautious of the calico cat on Index’s head. “As long as they remain conscious, their anxieties remain, as long as their anxieties remain, they can’t stop using magic, and as long they continue using magic, their wounds will remain. It’s all part of that pattern.”

It was like someone who obsessively washed their face over and over to calm themselves. If they rubbed their face bloody and saw that bloody face in the mirror, they might just decide they needed to wash their face some more because it was still dirty.

The simplest forms of magic did not require tools or a specific location.

They were terrified of dying, so they could not relax without continuing to use the good luck charms and fortunetelling methods they had been taught.

And that ended up destroying their esper bodies.

They only had to stop using the magic, but they had no idea what was causing it, so they would either use magic to figure out what it was or they would conclude it would only get worse if they stopped using magic.

Left like this, their lives would eventually run out.

“It doesn’t matter how much you try to bail out a sinking boat with a bucket if more and more holes are opening in the hull. It doesn’t matter how skilled the doctors are – if the patients don’t cooperate with the cure, their injury or illness will never heal. That lead doctor has done a hell of a job for someone who looks so silly. Without his instructions, these students would probably already be dead.”

“They’re all breathing with a unique rhythm. That means they’re refining their lifeforce into magic power.”

“We need to start by confiscating the spiritual items hidden in their pockets, but the simplest forms of magic don’t rely on tools. We really will need to put them to sleep to level out their ''conscious breathing method'' to accomplish anything here.”

“It would only weaken them to keep them asleep for too long.”

“We only have to break the rhythmic breathing they’re using to refine magic power. Let’s find an arbitrary reason to hook them up to a ventilator.”

Magic was the latest fad in scientific Academy City.

Even an Anglican nun who knew how to properly manage magic could tell how abnormal this was. She had never heard of it spreading like this before, yet Index and Othinus did not make their way to the center of the explosion.

They had a clear reason for remaining in the hospital.

“That human will not consider this a win if he simply defeats Anna in a fight. If all these people die in the process, he will place the burden of their deaths on his own shoulders. Even though they are not his responsibility.”

“…”

“That colossal idiot did not rush out there to protect his own life. He says he’s scared, but he still finds the destruction of this hospital or us to be worse. Refusing anything but zero deaths against a monster of that level is about as insolent as it gets, but just this once, that fool is correct. When things get truly hopeless, downgrading your goals will only mean being swallowed up by the situation. Compromise? Adapting to reality? The opinions of the wise? They can all go eat shit. There’s clearly something wrong if people are dying. If you can’t bring your self to shout that obvious fact, you’ll only drag everything into a long, drawn out war with many more deaths to come.”

This one hospital in District 7 could not take in all of the victims across Academy City. Index and Othinus had all the necessary knowledge, but neither one could use convenient healing magic on their own.

But not being able to do that one thing was not the same as being helpless.

“Anyone could solve this if they only had a manual telling them espers can’t use magic. We need to make one and distribute it through this hospital. If they see it work once, they’ll start using it even if they don’t know how it works. That will stop the city from spinning its wheels on this issue.”

“But the people of this city might not officially recognize that magic exists.”

And there were ceremonies that managed to spread despite being unofficial.

In this country’s case, the most obvious example would be the Kokkuri-san. Because the adult organizations had taken so long to accept its existence, they had been slow to react and it had caused real damage such as mass hysteria.

“We have a source we can use,” replied Othinus with a smile. That god of deception based her answer on Academy City’s bizarre situation at present. “We use R&C Occultics. The material they’ve spread around can be used to show magic is dangerous. Anything we say might be rejected outright, but official information from a well-known giant IT company will seem more reliable. We can use that to our advantage. That information is meant to get people to use magic, but we can use it to show people the risks and keep them away from it.”

“You mean…?”

“We just have to create something that bridges the gap. An extra text that explains the problems that occur when an esper uses magic.”

Index and Othinus would have preferred to be on the front line of this fight.

Magic was their area of expertise, so they were confident they would be of some help there.

But.

They turned away from that temptation.

They had chosen to fight alongside him, so they had to do everything they could to face the problems they had found. So they could avoid the horrific conclusion where that boy dragged his battered body back to the hospital only to find after the fact that everything had fallen apart.

“Listen, we can’t let anyone die.”

“Right.”

They would protect Academy City, the people who lived there, and the home he would return to.

“This hospital is a sanctuary. We start here, establish a methodology, and then spread that sanctuary out until it covers Academy City as a whole. And that will also help that softhearted human.”

“I know that already!”

So this was their battle.

It was fought in a different place and in a different way, but those girls were giving their all just like Kamijou Touma was.

===Part 3===

The biting cold swept across the platform of the District 7 subway station.

As soon as Anna’s vision was obscured by the white steam, Kamijou rolled across the platform and through the broken platform screen door to drop onto the tracks. The landing added another dull pain to the already lengthy list, but now was not the time to be counting up his injuries.

This had not bought them much time, but even thirty seconds would be more valuable than a jewel at the moment.

He clenched and unclenched his right fist.

It was Kamijou Touma’s turn right now.

“As I imagine you have noticed by now,” began St. Germain.

“Oh, don’t worry. I don’t understand a damn thing about this.”

“''Anna Sprengel’s spells are not pure Rose spells.''”

Like any wise saying, that one carried several different pieces of important information at once.

A sizzling like water on a hot griddle echoed through the area. The white steam curtain made from hydrofluorocarbon had unnaturally burst into flames and holes spread through it like a paper photo exposed to a flame from behind, correcting the distorted scene.

Anna Sprengel was smiling atop the platform while gently spreading her burning right hand.

She was the master of a different right hand.

“Found you☆”

“!!”

Trying to run away along the tracks would accomplish nothing.

She placed two fingers horizontally against her soft lips and blew out like this was a sort of whistle. The air immediately expanded at an explosive rate. Just like a picture book dragon, sticky orange flames left her mouth to cover the tracks a step lower than the platform.

This did not seem like normal fire. The way it moved like a sticky liquid was reminiscent of a flamethrower or napalm. It filled every nook and cranny of the train track like a sudden downpour filling the ditches and waterways.

“Ohhhh!?”

“Your right hand, esper.”

St. Germain pointed out the obvious solution.

The one without, the one looking up from below, and the one that yearned for it urged the Level 0 boy to action.

“Panicked or not, that is the only card in your deck, so master its use!! Just like I focused on mastering the manipulation of diamonds and carbon!!”

He could only swing his right hand around wildly in a struggle to survive. He negated the massive sea of flames that splashed up the concrete wall and ran along the groove of the track.

A power created by a right hand could be destroyed by a right hand.

But he had something else on his mind.

(''That was different from before''!?)

“Aiwass,” called Anna with a snap of her small fingers. “What shall I call this one? Item Breaker perhaps?”

Bluish-white sparks scattered like when an electric lighter failed to ignite, but that ephemeral flashing did not go away. Once it grew as bright as a blowtorch, the LCD signs, the lights, the air conditioning equipment, the train’s power line, and all other electrical equipment was transformed into a bomb.

It was like a cluster bomb had been dropped into this small space.

And Kamijou had a phone in his pants pocket.

“Gahh!?”

It happened just as he ran from the platform area and into the tunnel.

Excruciating pain jabbed down all the way to his thigh bone and it rattled his consciousness.

“Not yet, esper. The bone is not broken. And even if it was, I would support you with a diamond exoskeleton, so you can keep going regardless!”

The biggest problem was their location: an underground facility. With all electronics dead, a veil of darkness had fallen, preventing him from seeing his hand in front of his face.

And he heard a singsong voice within that dense darkness.

“Hee hee hee. You are in my grasp now.”

“!?”

She was holding out her small hand and accurately targeting him even in the darkness.

Would it be Escape Breaker next? Or Shield Breaker?

''Whatever it was, she would have changed her right hand to something else now.

Kamijou always had to rely on fistfighting, so he had no way of fighting in this darkness.

She was coming.

She had jumped down onto the track and was slowly walking toward the tunnel.

She gave a casual swing of her palm and it sliced through something. A high-voltage power line danced madly about while scattering electricity.

This was a physical attack.

“St. Germain, ''take care of this''!!”

Something flipped around at his left hand.

A light as bright as a camera flash filled the tunnel with a deafening “zap!!”, but the boy survived.

Carbon conducted electricity.

Mechanical pencil lead and diamonds could both be used as lightning rods that redirected electricity.

Also…

“Summon the spears here. The seven-walled secret room has protected its secrets for 120 years and allows no unauthorized intruders!!”

The pointy-haired boy’s body staggered over and pressed its back against the tunnel wall just before a high-pitched sound rang out. Anna held her small palm as if in pain. There was a sound like cracks running through a hard object, but that was all. Transparent spears – seven in all – had broken through the concrete wall behind him such that they passed over his shoulders and head.

“The depths of the earth are my territory,” said the man known as a count while gesturing like he held an invisible wand. His words carried both respect and hostility. “St. Germain controls diamonds. Even the master of the No. 1 Temple in Germany will run across a compatibility issue there. When performing a major ceremony, you must first focus on the stars and terrain. But worry not, this insolent result was not due to your own skill level.”

“Shut it, you imposter who only used our cabal’s name to increase your own prestige. You can control diamonds, can you? Did you think the true and legitimate Rose would care about some mere pebbles just because the common world attaches value to them?”

This exchange of emotions was inscrutable to the people of the present day.

It only made sense to those who had become legends simply by breathing, eating, working, reading, writing, and walking.

“Why do you deceive, Fräulein?”

“It is a form of defragging—an optimization.”

“I do not know how that works, ''but your right hand is very clearly not the same thing as Kamijou Touma’s''.” St. Germain stated that with confidence. And, “Using your words to inspire others to action instead of doing it yourself is St. Germain’s way. It does not suit you. The Miss Sprengel who once ruled in the depths of the No. 1 Temple in Germany was the goal of all magicians. Everyone wished to be like Anna Sprengel who was closer to a god than anyone without actually being one and who had taken the authority to contact the superhuman Secret Chiefs while maintaining her human emotions! Perhaps you find it difficult to trust a magician who can freely swap out his own memories and ideals for fun, but I was not the only one who thought that way. The Golden cabal, the Theosophists, and the witches all set you as their goal, not god!!”

“But.” The words that spilled from the little girl’s lips sounded somehow dry. “Not one cabal actually understood my words. They all distorted the meaning for their purposes.”

St. Germain noticed something and briefly forgot all about their plan. He started to step closer like someone who had spotted a soaked child out in the rain, but then a horn sounded from the side.

It was a freight train.

The unmanned train was being used to meet the Christmas demand.

“So you will never understand me either!!” shouted Anna. “Never, ever!!!!!!”

“Tetractys, numerical triangle formed from ten points. Grant me ascension with your perfection!”

St. Germain sent carbon fiber threads from Kamijou’s fingers to jump up to the roof of the high-speed mass of metal, but Anna simply stuck her small right hand out toward the front of the freight train.

The entire space shook as the front car was crushed and lifted up and the eight cars after that stacked up against each other in a zigzag pattern.

The front car hopped up at an angle, breaking through the metropolis road and the layer of snow atop it before jutting up into the snowy winter sky.

They had emerged at a different point.

They were likely still in the vicinity of that hospital. A sign identified a nearby building as a large subway station that linked together a few different lines.

The place was already abandoned. A code red may have been issued, which indicated either a largescale terrorist attack or a devastating underground chemical fire linked to a chemical plant.

(This body really is tricky to use.)

The need to forcibly divert the lifeforce circulation around the right arm while refining magic power created a time lag before he could complete his spells. And even when he did complete them, he lost a considerable amount of the magic power. It felt as unstable as flying an airplane that had parts falling off of it and had a severe fuel leak.

But at the same time, St. Germain knew all too well what would have happened if he had hijacked a non-esper adult who would give him full use of his magic.

He would have died instantly.

Thoughtlessly pitting magic against magic with Anna would never work. That would be like an overexcited soldier loading up with a ton of ballistic missiles to challenge the sun to battle.

Light could not be used to battle light.

You needed something else entirely. Defeating the sun would require a blackhole that could swallow even light.

“…”

The pointy-haired boy focused on regulating his white breathing before jumping from the twisted roof to the main road below, but he looked at his own palm before anything else.

It was stained red and black.

(The wounds have widened too far. The esper’s body will not last much longer.)

Relinquishing control right now would be cruel, but St. Germain could not have the boy’s body tearing apart from within either.

“''Back to you,'' esper. Are you prepared to hold the baton again?”

“Ahh, cough!”

The focus shifted from the left hand to the right hand. The pointy-haired boy coughed up a dark red color even as he tightly clenched his fist once more.

“St. Germain, you are no more than a collection of microbes I could kill by scrubbing you out with disinfectant soap. But you talk big, I’ll give you that. You’re still listening over there, aren’t you?”

The footsteps they heard this time were a lot rougher than before. A small figure walked through the train sticking diagonally up from the ground to crawl out onto the surface.

“You had power from the beginning, yes, but what was your goal?” she spoke slowly in a low voice that made it sound like she was uttering a curse. “To save people? I’m so sick of that. To master your field of study? I can find all the answers so easily. To destroy the world you so resent? It was already destroyed from the beginning. To fulfill your desires? I have done that more than you can imagine.”

That small body swayed side to side with that powerful right hand casually lowered at her side.

A bright light shined in her eyes and a smile tore across her lips as she approached.

“''A life of fulfillment is such a bore.''”

Her movements seemed so coldly robotic.

And dry.

“''I want someone to support me instead.''”

She demonstrated the ultimate form of wastefulness where even achieving immortality became an eternal prison of boredom.

But there had to be some hints of truth within her insolent statements.

“What do you get from a power that distorts the rules and renders the game meaningless by its very existence? Creation? Destruction? Enhancement? Reduction? Friendship? Rejection? Gluttony? Restraint? What does it mean to live? What goal am I supposed to live for? How can I find fulfillment?”

The footsteps stopped.

Anna Sprengel had taken the final step and arrived aboveground once more.

She stood below the frigid falling snow and on the same level as the others.

“The exchange of words only distorts the truth, so no words are needed here. I want to know how much people can understand from instinct alone. Hence the optimization. Kamijou Touma, the One who Purifies God and Slays Demons. What will remain once everything has been stripped from you and you are laid bare? When exposed to the supernatural with no prior knowledge, what side of you becomes most active? Show me the answer.”

“…”

Kamijou remained silent for a while.

Was he even aware his shoulders were crooked?

“Y’know,” he finally said.

“?”

“I think I kinda get why you can’t find fulfillment.”

“I might understand you, but you can never understand me. Because I contain so much more than you.”

“''Still putting up your defenses like that? After we’ve been baring our hearts in this deadly battle?''” spat out Kamijou. “You want others to give you fulfillment instead of finding it yourself? Don’t make me laugh. You’d just find things to complain about and keep going. You’ll never escape that feeling of unfulfillment even if you try to let go of your own life and take it easy. But you wouldn’t be able to accept that even if you grew angry with that other person, hated them, and took revenge on them. You want someone else to support you? Those are the words of someone who doesn’t know the fear of having that other person suddenly let go. You don’t have to fear their betrayal because you already know you can support your own weight if you have to. You might claim to be supporting ‘each other’, but you already have everything you need for yourself.”

“Wait.”

“And you know that that means?”

“I said wait.”

“It means…”

Anna had said she was hoping to observe herself.

And that was exactly what happened.

“You have your super-secret techniques that you refuse to actually teach anyone, but you still want to show them off. That’s nothing special. It’s what everyone dreams about every single day.”

A dull thud burst out.

“Really, why do idiots insist on using their heads when no one wants them to?”

She was showing signs of definite irritation, which was a stark contrast to the mysterious joy from before.

“Do not think you understand me, boy.”

Would this one be called Gravity Breaker?

Anna Sprengel raised a single finger and spun it around. That was all it took for something invisible to rotate around her, gather together the metal trashcans, cleaning robots, streetlights, and wind turbines into a single large mass, build up plenty of centrifugal force, and fling them at Kamijou Touma. It was like they were attached by an invisible chain she was swinging around.

“Kh.”

He could not fully block this with Imagine Breaker.

Fighting her right hand with his would not work here.

But he did not switch to St. Germain.

If he only negated the supernatural power, he would be crushed by the force gathered by the mountain of scraps. But physics was physics. He could already see the general path they would take as they swung around his way.

And Anna herself had shown him the answer earlier. If he moved further in than the radius of the rotation, he could not be touched by that outward-swinging path.

He only had to step forward.

He clenched his right fist as hard as rock and moved toward the little girl. He could ignore that morning star now. He only had to forget about their difference in body types and throw his full weight behind a merciless punch right into that small face.

A dull impact followed.

But not from a clean hit. His punch had been stopped.

Stopped by…

“My left hand.”

“Kh.”

She only wrapped her small hand around his fist to defend, but that was enough to stop him.

However, she had broken her pattern.

That was critically important, so Kamijou Touma put on a belligerent smile.

“What kind of ‘Breaker’ was that? Honestly, who cares? You keep going so over the top that it all starts to look cheap, so I can’t help but wonder. ''You’re not even using that Aiwass you made a point of showing off earlier, are you?'' Since you broke your own rules to stop me with your left hand, let me guess: getting punched hurts like hell even for a legendary magician, doesn’t it? Am I wrong, Anna Sprengel?”

“''Who gave you permission to speak?''”

This time, she pressed her right palm against the boy’s stomach.

He had swung his fist and had it blocked, so he was defenseless at the moment.

The girl with the wounded pride widened her eyes as far as they would go.

“''Do not get carried away. You should be dead already.''”

A human-sized mass was blasted backwards as if by a point-blank shotgun blast.

“Esper!!”

“Shut up, Germain. I’m staying in control. I can keep going.”

“No, not that. You need to get up before the next attack arrives!!”

He was not even given time to lie sprawled out in the snow.

Kamijou rolled across the cold asphalt and two things entered his vision.

He could hear the straining of her skeleton even from here. Anna Sprengel had changed from a fragile-looking ten-year-old little girl to a voluptuous yet toxic woman.

She moved her right hand’s index and middle fingers together in a scissors gesture.

“Break… Breaker… you know what? I’m sick of coming up with these names. Maybe this is how women lose their charm.”

Anna gave up on naming her right hand.

But that did not mean its destructive power was in any way reduced.

“''Since it’s Christmas, how about I treat you to a show?''”

The other thing he had seen was an airship that had been slowly floating across the white sky above.

Its rugby-ball-shaped gasbag had ruptured, transforming it into an orange shooting star. It scraped along the walls of the skyscrapers as it fell straight toward him.

Ironically, the large LCD screen on the side of the shooting star displayed a large image of white-bearded Santa Claus aboard his sleigh.

“Merry Christmas☆,” whispered Anna while viewing that giant face falling toward the surface.

(Dammit!!)

Kamijou slowly got up and made his way to a nearby building. He pushed open the glass door with his shoulder and collapsed inside. The world outside of the thick reinforced glass was consumed by flames and heat.

This was a department store, but not a fancy one.

They must have tried to make it look fancy to earn shoppers during the Christmas season, but that had only emphasized how unfancy it was. It was the kind of store even Kamijou would feel comfortable entering alone.

His ability to sense warmth must have broken because he did not feel at all comfortable even though the heat had to be on in here. Did that mean the trembling of his fingertips was not caused by the cold?

The first floor seemed to be for jewelry, glasses, and musical instruments. The rows of glass showcases with gentle music playing in the background was somehow reminiscent of a museum.

After a freight train bursting out from the ground and a burning airship crashing down, there were of course no people around. All the customers, employees, and even guards had left.

Only the gentle music remained.

''Good,'' thought Kamijou.

They might not have survived if they had decided to stay here to protect the jewels or the money in the till.

“…”

He still did not know what Anna was doing.

But something about it seemed wrong to him.

She drew in external power, rearranged it how she liked inside her body, and then fired it back out. Her attacks were definitely deadly and destructive, but when he thought about it, they seemed more centered ''on the productive side of things.

Kamijou had fought a great number of magicians over his right hand. Maybe this was just another part of that. They had all provided their own view of things. During all those exchanged words, some had said his Imagine Breaker was a reference point for the world. Magic put everything in flux, so those who wielded magic could put their minds at ease by focusing on a single immovable point that would never change. In that sense, the idea of adding more to it ''was incredibly unusual.

It did not fit.

He felt certain that Anna Sprengel’s method was incorrect.

So…

(Magic.)

He shifted the focus of his mind.

St. Germain had said Anna’s ''spells'' were not pure Rose spells.

(She’s using some kind of method to manipulate the mystical and miraculous. I can’t let the focus on my hand lead me astray. She’s only using ''ordinary methods'' that even Stiyl or Kanzaki could use if they knew how!!)

However, he was not currently with Index, who had memorized at least 103,001 grimoires, or Othinus, a true god given a new form. So even if he could make some guesses, he could not find the answer.

There was also the time she had used her left hand. Her power must not have actually been limited to her right hand, but that did not tell him what she ''was'' doing. He felt like someone questioning what the doctor said, but not sure what the actual cure was.

But…

“…”

He came to a stop.

He had seen something.

The jewelry section of the department store had a lot of showcases. The employees must have put in more effort than usual since it was Christmas because there were a few handmade signs inside the glass cases, perhaps hoping to catch the eye of customers who were on a date.

Kamijou had noticed one of those:

“Check out our December Gematria Special☆ An available employee will convert your name into numbers and find which gem is a must-have for you. The process is free of charge! Are you a couple that feels they don’t have enough in common? Dig deeper and you’re bound to find a stronger connection there!!”

He could not believe his eyes.

Had magic always been stuff like this?

“Engrave your favorite rune into a pure gold ring! Some civilizations used to carve these holy symbols into gold coins and cups to bring themselves wealth or avoid poison. And…”

“Would you like to add an extra something to your usual yoga lessons? By creating your own personal incense, you can more easily picture the breaths moving through your body, so…”

“Crystal healing isn’t just a Western thing! Even something you have lying around the house can work! Prayer beads are a hot choice at the moment!! You can even select stones other than crystals to…”

Kamijou had been vaguely aware that jewelry stores would use this kind of thing to sell birthstones and healing crystals.

But this was too much. This kind of jargon and equations was knowledge meant to be strictly stored in an ancient library or in that white nun’s head. That info should not have been advertised on handmade signs cut out of cardboard and written with a felt-tip pen.

How had this happened?

There was only one possible answer.

“R&C Occultics has gotten to places like this too!?”

He heard the reinforced glass shattering. The road out front should have been consumed by orange flames, but it had instead frozen white. The thick glass wall had failed to withstand the temperature difference, so the entire thing shattered and rained down like a waterfall.

The sexy woman took a single step into the department store.

She did not seem at all worried about the sea of glass she had created. You would be hard-pressed to find a woman better suited to be surrounded by jewelry and musical instruments.

Kamijou silently raised his right fist again.

“Are you…” He gulped but still faced that blatant threat. “Are you using something to switch between different kinds of ‘power’? What you’re doing isn’t like my right hand. That’s the magic of the outside world that lets you control a variety of supernatural powers by default!!”

“This is the rose and the cross.”

The sexy woman waved her right hand with a sadistic smile.

And she said one more thing as she approached.

“Not that I expect you to understand what that means.”

===Part 4===

Losing his phone was a heavy blow.

The answer was somewhere out there. And it would be so easy to find that an amateur might accidentally stumble across it. But Kamijou Touma currently had no way of accessing that site.

“Tch!!”

“Hee hee.”

With each casual swing of the sexy woman’s long hand, a powerful gust of wind would blow through, caustic acid would spread out like an amoeba, or a bright light would flash.

The movement of her hand was more like a pliant whip than a solid fist. She put on the smile of a sadist while mercilessly producing deadly slap after deadly slap.

Instead of trying to kill him with the occult, she was trying to kill with him with physical attacks. She would shatter a glass showcase to kill him with the shards flying toward him.

His fist ''alone'' was not enough to deal with that.

“St. Germain, ''switch''!!”

“I will keep you alive.”

They reversed hands.

Of course, St. Germain could not overwhelm Anna on his own, so they would switch back and forth.

They called each other’s names like partners fighting back to back. The right hand deflected the blowing wind, a diamond pillar burst diagonally from the floor to hold back the flood of acid, Kamijou ran along the transparent pillar like a steep slope, and he leaped at Miss Sprengel from midair.

The one body played the roles of magic and science.

But…

“You’ve reached your limit, haven’t you?”

“!!”

She swung her right hand horizontally and the light that burst out slammed into Kamijou’s side. He was knocked away from his downward path toward her. He flew to the side and crashed into a showcase, sending ruby rings, emerald necklaces, and more scattering around with the shattered glass.

“Kahh!?”

Sharp glass stabbed into his thigh.

But he did not have time to grimace in pain.

“It might look like you are holding your own with that bizarre fighting style, but surely you know better. In a clash between magic, the theory behind it matters far more than the quantity. And after all this, you still do not understand what I am doing.”

“…”

He did not need to admit to it out loud, but Anna was right. Kamijou only knew that she could change her right hand’s power at will, but he did not actually know what spell it was or what category of magic it belonged to.

He could negate all kinds of supernatural powers by brute force, but that was not enough to get by with someone like this.

Rushing blindly in at a magician was like running into a densely-packed minefield. You could even say a magician’s standard strategy was to set things up so a direct attack like that could never work.

“St. Germain.”

“You aren’t going to get an answer back when you don’t even know what question to ask,” said Anna.

She casually swung her open palm from a distance and three explosions appeared in quick succession.

Kamijou swallowed the blood that had gathered in his mouth and let out a roar.

“''Take over!!''”

Once St. Germain was in control, he moved back while blocking the attack with a diamond shield and pillar. It was a solid defense, but that was all it was. Relying on magic was clearly only going to get them backed into a dead end. Kamijou alone could not defeat Anna and neither could St. Germain.

So they swapped out.

Never relying on only one of them was the only way to stay alive.

“''Back to you.'' Alter your timing a bit next time. Don’t let her predict our actions!!”

“St. Germai-!!”

“''No.'' I said alter the timing, esper!!”

A broken square pillar was spinning Kamijou’s way, but he would have to deal with it himself. He frantically dodged the giant blunt weapon that knocked aside the entire register counter and eye test machine.

While they frequently switched back and forth, Kamijou’s fist threw off the destructive rhythm.

He had no choice but to confront her head on.

Any cover he tried to hide behind would only get destroyed along with him and moving over by the wall left him without enough room to swing his right arm.

While buying time like that, he had to ask about everything he had seen. Whether or not it would be helpful, he did know that this jewelry section had already been influenced by Rose magic.

He did not have to hit the jackpot right away. In fact, he doubted that was possible.

He swung his bloody fist while asking his inner partner some questions.

“What’s crystal healing!? I know I’ve heard the term a lot!”

“It is believed that jewels can gather up the power of the constellations and return it to their wearer. It is also said the harder the stone, the more power it absorbs, making diamonds the most extreme example. That is why it is thought they can be used for a great many specific goals such as detoxing and exorcisms, not just vaguely providing good fortune.”

“What’s this about engraving runes on treasures like gold coins and cups?”

“Engraving the rune for victory into a coin is a way of praying for wealth and engraving the rune for suffering into a cup is a way of detecting poisoned drinks. You could think of them as protective charms with specific effects.”

“Then what’s the connection between yoga and incense!?”

“Yoga is not technically a form of training done at the gym. It is actually a method of controlling your inner body through your breathing to have an effect on the outside world. Tools are generally not needed. In fact, you are supposed to rid yourself of all worldly possessions and thoughts, but beginners would probably find it easier to focus on their breathing if the air were given a color or aroma. Of course, using a guide means only following the rails laid out for you, so the act loses all meaning.”

“What about gold and silver!?”

“Seven metals were given a position of importance in ancient times, but since that included iron and lead, they were not all precious metals. On that note, the idea of silver weapons being effective against monsters is mostly the influence of folklore and entertainment, so I would not rely on it if I were you. There might be some effect, but a truly pious person would not melt down a silver cross to create a knife or bullet in the first place.”

“Argh, what else was there? Prayer beads!?”

“They are a type of spiritual item used in Buddhism. The term generally refers to seeds of the bodhi tree strung into a loop by a single thread, but beads of crystal are also used. The number of beads is usually 108, but there are other versions. The Christian rosary is the same basic idea.”

None of it was very specific and they were getting off topic.

Even now, the boy’s life was being shortened for every second of freedom. He bled more each time he and St. Germain switched out, but they kept it up. He had to pick up every single hint he could get from the handmade signs and the occult code(?) conversion chart pasted on the side of the register.

“Then what about birthstones!?”

“Each of the twelve months is given a different gem, but there are several different versions. The version most well-known now was created by the American National Association of Jewelers.”

That one was a complete bust. They might have used some older source when deciding on their list, but he doubted a centuries-old tradition would have been passed down with perfect accuracy. At best, it would have partially incorporated some of it. He felt an urge to lash out at the half-assed system here. This was like the stores telling you to give chocolate on Valentine’s Day just to sell their products. He could not entrust his life to that.

He heard a disconcerting zapping sound.

It was not aimed directly at him, so he was slow to react. The electricity instead crashed into the showcase in front of him, causing it to burst from within. The wall of sharp glass pummeled his entire body and he was knocked to the floor.

“Hit.”

“Ah…kah…”

“I think I see how this works now. You’re nimble, but it dulls your intuition when your life is not directly targeted.”

There were countless types of magic.

And Anna Sprengel was in the deepest depths of that world. Was he just not going to find the answer by looking through some random bits and pieces of magical knowledge?

But.

St. Germain spoke from within Kamijou while the boy clenched his fist.

“I see. You cannot find the answer right away, but you can arrive at the answer by eliminating each wrong answer in turn.”

“…?”

“The runes are not necessary and we can eliminate the yoga and Buddhism as well. R&C Occultics has spread all forms of magic. That may have made the occult harder to detect, just like the city lights hiding the stars in the sky, but if you understand the Rose’s methods, the knowledge requiring our focus makes itself readily apparent.”

Kamijou Touma did not know enough to take issue with that conclusion.

He had to rely on St. Germain’s senses since he still knew the Rose, just like people never forgot how to hold chopsticks or ride a bike.

“The answer is three.”

Kamijou felt so woozy, but he was guided to that specific answer, not four or five.

St. Germain went on to explain.

“The Rose often used Kabbalah, which says the entire world can be explained using the twenty-two Hebrew characters. You merely need to subtract the seven metals and the twelve constellations from twenty-two. If you remove each of the petals on the outside, you are left with the number hidden in the center of the flower. You are left with three characters.”

Come to think of it, hadn’t Anna herself mentioned the rose and the cross?

“Shin is fire, Mem is water, and Aleph is wind. The rose symbol represents the world by surrounding those three elements with a ring divided into sevenths and with the twelve colors.”

Kamijou managed to keep breathing, but it felt like breaking through a sticky barrier.

Was that due to being torn up on the outside or eaten away on the inside?

It was hard to tell anymore.

“Then…is Anna using that to create different things out of the energy produced by that angel named Aiwass?”

“Yes, but that does not simply mean 22 different attack patterns in all. Kabbalah has a code system known as Gematria. The characters are assigned numbers and two words with the same number are considered to have the same meaning.”

“But…”

If she only started with three characters, weren’t there only so many combinations she could use?

But St. Germain got ahead of that question.

“For example, Shin’s numerical value is 300, but Gematria adds the digits together to reach a single-digit number. That gives you an answer of 3. But that can be read simply as three, aka Gimel, or it could be read as 1+2, aka Aleph and Bet. So depending on how you break it down, the possibilities are endless. That is why a powerful grimoire can be such a hotbed of misreadings.”

“I was wondering about that, but it wasn’t my main question. Where is Anna hiding her rose accessory!?”

He doubted it was the decorations in her fried shrimp hair.

Nor would it be her thin dress.

She would need a detailed symbol that accurately placed the twenty-two Hebrew characters on as many rose petals, but Kamijou could not see anything like it.

The sexy woman grinned and raised her right hand from a short distance away.

“This will never end unless we destroy that. We’ll be killed if we can’t rob Anna of her power!!”

===Part 5===

“Found it!” Index shouted excitedly in the District 7 hospital.

If basic magic could be constructed from magic words, gestures, and hand signals with no need for a spiritual item, it might seem like there was no way to save the espers from the side effects.

But that assumption was wrong.

“The stars, the three prophets, a link to the date, and it only activates on the 25th.”

“So it’s a curse that takes advantage of Christmas’s date!?”

That might sound ridiculous, but at some point, Christmas became more than just an enjoyable festival. Either a very twisted person had spread the idea or a lot of people had wanted to believe it because there were traditions of that sort out there. For example, there were mysterious figures who generally only appeared on Christmas and who you never wanted to so much as encounter, like the dark Santa Claus that abducted bad children or the Kallikantzaros that was only active during the end of the year.

And human psychology had a fascinating tendency to spread stories of misfortune more than ones of fortune. For example, everyone would immediately forget an urban legend that still remembering the keyword ‘silver mirror’ when you turned twenty would bring you happiness, but no one could bring themselves to forget the urban legend that still remembering the keyword ‘purple mirror’ when you turned twenty would mean your death.

So the happier a time Christmas was, the more the dark joy spread of wondering about the people for whom Christmas was an unhappy time. Yes, joy. When people at a large party started wondering about the people who had no date to share Christmas with, they were generally imagining someone worse off than them to make themselves feel better about their own situation. There may have been a magician that provided that with a concrete effect at some point. Either to ruin Christmas or to make sure the event would never be forgotten.

In fact, it was not uncommon in the world of magic for experts to give concrete form to something they encountered and thought was neat. Othinus ''who once destroyed the entire world'' was not one to talk, but magicians had a tendency to cross some lines generally considered taboo.

Take, for example, everything related to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Or the Rosy Cross that Andreae claimed to have invented himself.

“A good luck charm meant to confirm your own happiness, huh?” Othinus sounded disgusted. “And it ends up destroying their body as they keep using it. Self-doubt really is the greatest poison. Besides, if you need something to objectively tell you you’re happy, then you’re not really happy at all.”

“But now that we know this…”

“Yes, we can bring the party to an end. Let’s leave a present by the patient’s pillow while they sleep and before they can start using that magic while emptyhanded. Santa’s visit is considered the highlight of Christmas in this country, so once they have their present, Christmas is over, right?”

“A spell to end Christmas.”

“Once it’s ready, search out an adult among the visitors. If they aren’t an esper, we can get them to use the magic without any side effects.”

Normally, they might not find anyone willing to cooperate with that. Especially in Academy City. They might even get yelled at for asking for something so extremely inappropriate.

But things were different now.

It was R&C Occultics who had lowered the barrier toward magic.

And the god of war, deception, and magic would use everything available to her. If the enemy was going to give her a gift, she would use that gift to bring the enemy to their knees. That was Othinus’s style.

“Then let’s settle this,” said the god without hesitation.

===Part 6===

Anna Sprengel considered what to do with her right hand next. But only with the tension of someone pondering what to make for dinner that night.

She had well over a million attack options.

(The optimization should be done soon and the boring result has already shown itself.)

She had made her choice.

40 + 300. Each digit was split out separately and summed together, so that came out to a 7. That meant the true character she had extracted was Z or Zayin. That corresponded to The Lovers in tarot and it was the channel that connected the spheres of understanding and beauty in the Sephiroth.

It meant a sword or armor.

That determined the nature of her right hand.

(The emotion of irritation is a rare one for me, but I do experience it from time to time. If this result is not to my liking, maybe I should dispose of him and move on to my next objective.)

Anna Sprengel gently stretched out her slender hand. Her right hand could use just two fingers to slice through anything. In other words, simply closing those two fingers would create a massive invisible maw with her target’s head between the jaws.

Just then, Kamijou Touma took an unusual action.

“''Change''!!”

He did the opposite of his usual move of suicidally rushing in with fist clenched. In fact, he jumped backwards to move away from her.

That was still suicidal, but the boy did not have any projectile attacks.

Which meant…

(St. Germain!!)

Anna smiled.

It might look at first like Kamijou Touma had acquired a great variety of options here, but it was actually the opposite. When it came to the essence of Rosicrucianism, no magician knew more than the master of the No. 1 Temple in Germany. No one had any chance of defeating her if they challenged her on that field. They might put up a decent fight, but they could never win. They would only be postponing their inevitable death.

It could not have been more apparent that the only way to defeat this magic was to destroy the illusion.

(Attempting to keep your distance and wear me down with projectiles after all this is just pathetic.)

St. Germain specialized in creating diamonds.

That meant carbon manipulation.

(Then all I need to do is absorb all forms of carbon, both solid and gaseous, to remove it from this space.)

Something gathered in her small left palm. It was a filthy black ball a little larger than a pill.

(Now St. Germain is helpless. Or will he use his host’s own body to create a diamond? Based on the optional services offered by funeral homes, an entire human body’s worth of carbon should only get you a diamond no larger than the tip of your fingernail!!)

Anna laughed, but then she silently grimaced.

No matter what she said, she clung to success and victory more than anyone. To the point that she could not maintain herself without them.

The boy’s words were coming back to her and they were accompanied by pain.

However.

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

A brief pause followed.

After falling back—and thus gathering Anna’s attention as she pursued—Kamijou Touma lightly tossed something into the air.

It was a symbol made from cheap gold plating and it was only a few centimeters long. Instead of a number or a letter of the alphabet, this symbol looked sort of like an ‘n’ with a loop at the end.

The symbol stood for Capricorn.

Its essence was femininity, activity, Saturn, longing, and prosperity.

As well as…

(The element of earth.)

Yes.

The twenty-two characters were broken out into three, seven, and twelve. With only three in the center, the rose symbol managed by the twenty-two Hebrew characters had no place for earth in the center of the flower.

And while it was a magical symbol, it had no magic power within it. In fact, it felt like someone trying to use what little knowledge they had without any practical skills to back it up. This could not be St. Germain who did have those skills.

In other words…

“Was this Kamijou Touma?”

She knew that, but human thoughts were so easily altered by your assumptions.

Something extra had been thrown into the mix.

Capricorn was a symbol of the earth element.

How things looked in a red room was very different from how they looked in a blue room, so a train’s driver’s compartment had its coloration chosen carefully.

Because the wrong coloration could be distracting.

(This could be ''bad''!!)

===Part 7===

''December’s birthstone is either turquoise or lapis lazuli.

''All you Capricorns out there, don’t feel too bad about being the earth element. Christmas is your season. Today’s the day to ask for a special gift!

“!!”

Kamijou clenched his teeth while kicking aside one of the handmade signs scattered across the floor.

Up ahead, Anna Sprengel grimaced and held her feminine right wrist with her other hand. He doubted that had actually accomplished anything and, even if it had, it would still give him the opening he needed.

He just needed a large enough opening to take one big step.

He cut powerfully forward as if defying the white light expanding explosively in front of him. He gathered up the very last of his strength to move right up to her.

Anna must have no longer cared about losing control because she tried intercepting him with her right palm even as it continued to produce a blinding blowtorch-like light.

“But how!?” roared the bewitching woman who seemed to corrupt everything around her with her very presence.

Yes. Kamijou Touma had fought plenty of magicians, but he could not construct a spell himself. He would be able to use magic if he let St. Germain take control, but St. Germain would not rely on the fist that would kill him.

But the answer was simple.

“R&C Occultics.”

“…”

“You spread this knowledge yourself. If you hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have been able to fight back!!”

Anna gave up on trying to control her right hand.

She broke her own rules by raising her other hand.

Yes, ''Anna Sprengel’s right hand was not actually special in any way.'' That was only an unnecessary restriction she was placing on herself. She had cheated like this once before, so Kamijou did not hesitate.

He took action.

But if he used his right fist here, it would only be a repeat of last time. While his right hand clashed with her left, she could use her right hand to blow him away.

So…

“Wha—!?”

He bit at her alluring hand. At her long, slender fingers. It was such a primitive choice from the perspective of an intellectual well-versed in all forms of magic, but it was certainly effective.

Because…

(''Her fingers.'')

Kamijou Touma clenched his teeth.

It made sense that a jewelry store would focus on something like this.

Because if wearing a ring on a finger other than your left hand’s ring finger gave it a special meaning, that might give them another way to advertise to people.

Yes.

Anna did not need to carry around a full rose symbol.

A scrap of paper on the floor – probably some notes for speaking with customers – explained which elements each finger corresponded to.

(Starting with the thumb, they’re ether, water, fire, earth, and wind. So by bending her index, middle, and little fingers as a command, she can switch the basic elements of fire, water, and wind on and off, creating whatever Hebrew character she wants in her palm. That’s how Anna was controlling her angel. That’s her magic! Which means…!!)

However he did it, he only had to keep her from moving her fingers.

That would let him seal away Anna Sprengel’s Hebrew-based rose spell.

And with his right fist still free to use, of course.

“…!!”

Kamijou Touma and St. Germain had arrived at this point along very different paths. One of science, the other of magic. They were very different people with nothing in common.

But at this moment, the two of them stared in the exact same direction.

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_333.jpg|thumb]]

It did not matter if they were dropouts or if they were considered disappointments.

Any being living here and now still had the freedom to change what happened to them.

No matter what form that being took.

They only had to act upon their desire to protect the people and feelings they held dear.

Then they could fight on equal footing with anyone in the world!!

(Kamijou Touma.)

(St. Germain.)

He had used his mouth.

With his teeth clenched tight, they could not speak aloud.

So they faced their single enemy and attempted to end this in silence.

They had both only ever wanted to do one thing about Anna Sprengel’s tyranny.

To clench that fist as hard as can be.

To gather everything that woman had done to them, place it in that fist, and send it…

(''Back to you''!!)

(''Back to you''!!)

This time, those two battered wills caught Miss Sprengel square on the cheekbone.

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