Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume2 Phase04 (section)

===Part 1===

The ship was destroyed and sank into the ocean.

Fleurelisia had far too much power for a being half dead from ship wreckage and shells. The Annihilator-class Predator Island was helpless with all its main cannons gone.

She honestly saved Ayato’s group there.

Even as a Sorcery Hacker, neutralizing the entire Predator Island singlehandedly would have been a challenge. Not to mention that damaging the ship was not guaranteed to deactivate the Crocodilia Mk. VIIs that protected the ship’s interior. If they had a chance to sink the whole ship at once, they had to take it.

They were forced to ride on the Water Lord’s back to return to Laguntreat. Straitlaced and inflexible Henrietta initially panicked and flatly rejected the idea, but Dark Elf Mamilis had smoothed things over as another demon. Besides, there was no guarantee the current would carry them back to land in an unpowered lifeboat and swimming back was out of the question.

“Uh,” groaned Teleria while resting her head on Ayato’s shoulder. He did not know what exactly it had been about, but after that explosion of emotion under the hot sun, she might very well faint now that the battle was over and she could relax.

Henrietta must not have been used to earthquakes or the rocking of boats after living so long in that sky city. She was pale in the face and her ponytail braid swayed side to side behind her as she stayed down on all fours.

“I-i-i-it’s shaking, it’s shaking, it’s shaking. B-but we never did get an explanation of what all that was about, did we?”

“It doesn’t matter. Not if Miss Teleria is not ready to tell us yet.”

That was Ayato’s only response as he viewed the island of Laguntreat up ahead.

Once back on the beach, the situation had changed.

They had revealed the locals’ misdeeds.

“Leonardo Halleys,” muttered the black-haired boy.

He did not speak loudly, but his voice contained a powerful tone of accusation.

He viewed the graceful older Mermaid who looked back at him, the Asrai working a food stand, and the Siren selling fruit. Now that the veneer of the gawdy tourist destination had been stripped away, the looks in their eyes could only be described as empty.

Meanwhile, the other human tourists were confused by this change.

Their response would be the correct one.

“Leonardo Halleys is the mastermind behind the attack on Fleurelisia and the driving force behind the purifying blood pool method. I saw a few different names on the plans for the Predator Island and its Media Summoners, but he’s famous enough to have the local train station named after him.”

He received no response.

The silence must have been creepy even to another demon because Dark Elf Mamilis edged closer to Ayato in slight fear. Henrietta was hurrying the repairs to her damaged armor.

“But that was such a big ship, Coach. Wouldn’t a whole bunch of people have worked on it?”

“The document approval process looked fairly complex. And Leonardo’s name appeared extremely infrequently for someone with the authorization of a manager. He is clearly the kind of person who only leaves a paper trail when absolutely necessary. I can understand wanting to preserve your own privacy, but very few people in a large organization could get away with that. He must be at the top.” Ayato summed things up for the others. “Once we get Miss Teleria somewhere safe to rest, we need to split up and start asking questions. Do you remember the location of our base in that forest cave?”

“Wait, dangerous individual,” cut in the Striker. “We are well on our way to solving our problems on this island and that cottage had an actual bed. And if we speak with the manager, they might share some medicine with us.”

“Have you forgotten already, Miss Henrietta? Our enemy is not the island’s mastermind. Leonardo Halleys is only the opening act.” Ayato sighed and continued. “We still do not know who stole away the ice coffin and hacked the Dextral Mk. IIs. Our true enemy is the Sorcery Hacker. They must be a skilled one too since we still have no information on them after all this. If we are going to let a defenseless girl get some rest, it is 100 times safer to place her in a survivalist environment devoid of sorcery devices than a fortress protected by hackable security.”

“…”

“But tracking down that Sorcery Hacker first requires dealing with the island’s mastermind, Leonardo Halleys. Not everyone here is innocent, but they will have all seen the Predator Island sink. Someone is bound to decide now is the time to abandon the figurative sinking ship that is their plan. We must ask around now, before they have time to get their story straight!”

Entering the tropical forest was meant to weaken their Sorcery Hacker enemy, but it would also greatly reduce Ayato’s effectiveness. After leaving unconscious Teleria with the Striker who specialized in direct combat, he and Mamilis went elsewhere.

“Now, then.”

After sending the girls off with their respective tasks, he walked off on his own. He was headed toward the forest, but not toward their cave base. The woman creeping through the empty darkness behind the food stands was a Rusalka. She was happily counting the gold<ref>Approximately 10,000 yen per coin.</ref> and silver<ref>Approximately 5000 yen per coin.</ref> she found in the many wallets she had probably pickpocketed from the humans.

When viewed from a different angle, tourist destinations of a certain level of popularity were always full of outlaws looking for easy marks.

Ayato made use of that side of things here.

He stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into a nearby parasol.

(I still have the Predator Island’s processing space now that it’s sunk?)

Still, he could lose that at any time, so it was best not to rely on it too much. He needed as much processing space as he could get, so he had to use his Linkage Plug sword every chance he got.

He needed the power to fight as a Sorcery Hacker and the strength to harm people.

With that mindset, the bent metal tower jutting up from the forest looked like a wonderful target. That was the lightning cloud cannon that worked with the other cannons on nearby uninhabited islands to blow away any thick lightning clouds.

Yes.

Despite what he had told the others, he was not expecting their questioning to turn up anything. Using his ordinary logic, he would never have let a rookie like Mamilis work alone, no matter how short on time they were. In other words, he was starting on a task that would have put her at greater risk accompanying him.

He had needed a convenient excuse to act alone.

“Oh?”

“Hm? Is that you, Miss Florence?”

He heard a rustling of the underbrush nearby and an extremely small girl in a thin white dress stepped out. Her short blonde hair was blowing in the tropical breeze.

“Are the others not with you right now?”

“No, they had other business to attend to.”

Florence approached him with an elegant smile, but something was off about her. She had a wristwatch around her ankle, perhaps as a fashion statement, but she was ''limping somewhat, favoring the other leg.

“Are you hurt?”

“Ah ha ha. I sat on my leg weird doing some knitting this morning, so I’m still feeling some pins and needles. That will go away soon, so don’t worry about it.”

She was apparently well-versed in certain feminine pastimes for someone so young.

She must have found his impressed look embarrassing because she smiled bitterly and waved her little hand in front of his face.

“Everyone on the island helps out like that. And we don’t just knit with yarn. We also use grass and palm fiber. This isn’t a big city with sorcery factories to automate that work, after all. We have to knit our own hats, baskets, beach mats, beach chairs, and even fishing nets, which are a crucial lifeline here.”

Their technology was developing in a different direction from Ayato who was entirely focused on Sorcery Hacking. And both paths were equally valid.

Ayato was a fairly twisted person (and he was aware of that himself), but he felt honest respect for anyone who could do something he could not. In that sense, this little girl was worthy of his respect.

“By the way, Miss Florence, are you familiar with the name Leonardo Halleys?”

“Of course I am. When this island was known as a hospital, he redeveloped it into a luxury resort and renewed our image. He isn’t that well known to outsiders since he never held an official position like mayor or lord, but he’s something of a celebrity here. The train station is even named after him.”

“I see.”

“Among the humans, he is known as an adventurer…or so I had heard, but maybe that isn’t true anymore. He built the foundation of the Ransackers who specialize in seeking out plant or animal materials and he greatly increased the accuracy of the maps for everything south of the Static Continent. This part of the sea used to be greatly feared, but he changed all that.”

Forwards specialized in combat, Bouncers specialized in bodyguarding, and Ransackers specialized in acquisition.

Ayato was a Forward rather than a Ransacker, but knowing this person had laid the foundation for one of those three categories was still concerning.

“So he’s a human, is he? Why would someone like that work so hard to support this island’s demons?”

“Because he was lonely. Completing that map took an inordinate amount of time and he did not have time to worry about a family until it was done. I would guess he no longer thought of the Static Continent as home, so he decided to preserve his position here on the island.”

Had she said she did not know the man, Ayato would have parted ways with the girl in the sheer dress, but she had instead shown off how knowledgeable she was. And she was so good at it he could not find an opening to end the conversation.

Leonardo had arrogantly believed he could defeat Water Lord Fleurelisia with the Predator Island, but that also meant he had been in a position to reach that level of power. He knew how to acquire everything he needed in a concrete form. Those were the sharp senses of a Ransacker who would visit any risky location to acquire whatever item they were hired to retrieve.

Ayato could guess this would take more than sticking a blade to the old man’s throat while he sat in a leather chair. There was more to it. He sensed a great risk that would obliterate some young whippersnapper who thoughtlessly rushed in without even a sorcery gun.

(Hm? That little girl was awfully familiar with the island’s history. She almost sounded like she had ''seen it herself''.)

He had some questions remaining, but he was not about to say he was an expert on the behavior of girls that age. She may have been relaying what she had heard as if it were her own experiences.

Florence stared up at him with the look of someone plotting mischief.

“See? Having a local with you is convenient. I can help out a lot.”

“I guess.”

He really wanted to deal with this on his own, but Florence was not going to let that happen. She was bound to follow him even if he ditched her. Putting a small child in danger was out of the question, but he could not knock her out with a chop to the back of the neck either.

If what she had said about Leonardo Halleys was accurate, that great man had started as a Ransacker and broke open this dangerous area of sea by creating accurate maps and sea charts.

The man’s actual skill was still an unknown, but he was clearly not as wonderful a person as the islanders thought. There was no defending his actions. He had claimed to be fighting for the island, but he was the one who had chosen to use the purifying blood pools and to kill the Water Lord.

The girl would sneak after him if he told her to leave now and he could not have her wandering around who-knows-where when he ran into an enemy. The best way to avoid having her hit by a stray shot was to have her by his side.

He brought a hand to his forehead as a sign of resignation and resumed walking.

“I will respect your freedom, but following me will not be a pleasant experience. Do not blame me if it traumatizes you.”

“Well, I certainly can’t leave you alone if things are that dire☆”

Florence smiled back at him, but he was still curious about her right leg.

“Are you sure you can do this? I will be walking for a while yet. And I mean on the sand and in the forest, not on a paved path.”

“Ah ha ha. Like I said, ''the pins and needles'' will be gone soon enough, so don’t worry about it.”

“If it is too much to bear just tell me. I will carry you.”

“Oh, dear. Maybe I should have pretended to need that.”

She continued to favor her left leg as she walked alongside him and pressed her soft cheek and short blonde hair against his arm.

“Where are we headed?” she asked.

“The Oceavita Water Therapy Institute.”

“Why do you think you will find him there?”

“This is a small island, so had you already heard of the warship called the Predator Island sinking? He was controlling it remotely.”

“My, my. But I doubt you could trace the signal back using the manaflows.”

“Look at it the other way around. What location on this island has a sorcery facility with enough processing power for that task and also allows him to erase any trace of having done so? With Sorcery Hacking, you could do it with the washing machines, water boilers, and such in the cottages, but checking over the household and leisure items on the beach and in the cottages showed no sign of anyone but me hacking them. That means the villain has gathered all his toys in one location to increase his level all at once. Where on the island could he do that? There are not many options. The next most likely is the lighting cloud cannon in the forest.”

“My.”

She was a strange girl. Even her surprise was expressed elegantly and a tempo late.

“What do you think will happen to Laguntreat?” she asked while limping across the white sand in the colorful forest.

“Whatever happens, happens. That’s all I can say. Emotions without an outlet will not cause an explosion. Someone has to gather them together and provide them with a target if they are to be abused as a frightening motivation.”

“…”

“They had indeed planned to replace Fleurelisia’s springs with purifying blood pools, but they had not actually done so. That means they were doing their best to hold off on that option, right? So we only have to eliminate whoever gave them reason to actually take action. That will end the current incident. I do hope we can eliminate all of the anxieties and fears that drove them in that direction, though.”

While following a sandy walking path that seemed to part the colorful flowers and the grass, Ayato and Florence approached a white marble building that stood out from everything else on the island.

But the situation did not wait for them to arrive.

He noticed something out of the ordinary much earlier than that.

“What is that?” “Shh, quiet!”

He heard the whispered voices of a young man and woman.

He pulled on young Florence’s hand to hide behind a nearby tree just in time to avoid being seen by a departing couple rapidly putting their swimsuits back on. They must have slipped away in search of some privacy in the middle of the day and found this location was less deserted than hoped.

Something was there.

The looks on their faces said they had spotted something unpleasant.

“What was that about?” asked Florence.

“I hear an odd noise.”

This was the tropical forest leading to the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute and he heard what sounded like something being washed in water beyond the underbrush here.

With each step he took, he felt more of an atmosphere that reminded him of when he was known as the Hexajinx. It was heavy and sticky, like his feet were sinking into a bloody bog. It was the first hints of this bad feeling that had made him send the others away from here.

“This is fine. Everything is fine.”

The quiet splashing was accompanied by a girl muttering to herself in a weak and flat voice. Ayato crouched down and reached for the Linkage Plug sword at his hip. It would not be much use in the forest without any sorcery devices to hack, but it was better than nothing.

“(I recognize that voice. Is it the Oceavita receptionist?)” whispered Florence while clinging to him and still favoring her left leg.

Ayato detected a rusty scent.

“(Miss Florence, you should wait here.)”

Without waiting for a response, he tightly grabbed her shoulder to show he meant it.

He left Florence there since she was a young child and because she was having difficulty with her right leg after her knitting. He could not expect her to take quick action on his command if something happened.

He parted the branches alone and saw what lay beyond.

With the leafy barrier removed, the receptionist’s voice grew much clearer.

“This is fine. I mean, this is Laguntreat. We’re known for our decursing springs, so…so this will turn out just fine no matter what has happened.”

She did not turn toward him. She was curled up by the water with her back to him. The wet washing sound continued as she repeatedly dunked something large and round in the pure water to wash it off like a raccoon.

But instead of food, this was a severed head.

An elderly man’s head danced unblinking in the cold water, seemingly having been chopped off with a sharp blade. There was no dignity there. She almost seemed to be playing with it like some kind of sick toy.

“My, my.”

“Miss Florence.”

“That is Leonardo.”

He tried to speak more strongly to the small girl when she limped over despite his warning, but the receptionist still did not respond to their presence.

“This is fine. Everything is fine. The power of the springs can cure him.”

Something had obviously happened, but she did not seem to be in any state to explain it for them. In fact, she might never again be. It was possible she had been spared as a way of punishing her with a fate worse than death.

By who?

That much was obvious.

By the mysterious Sorcery Hacker who had stolen away the ice coffin containing the shooter. Ayato had dug into the island’s secrets in his pursuit of them, so who else would want to cut away that lizard’s tail?

That man was a Ransacker who would visit any dangerous place to acquire the flower or animal someone wanted.

In fact, he had laid the very foundation for that job and even completed the maps and sea charts of the southern sea.

Yet here he was so blatantly dead. If the stories told on the island were true, what had the Sorcery Hacker hijacked to pull this one off?

It was also possible the stories relayed by Florence were not true, but to Ayato, that looked like the easy way out – a choice that would let him escape the great pressure he felt here.

If he went that way and let his guard down for no reason, he was certain his own head would soon leave his shoulders in the same way. He had no real basis for that belief, but he was confident all the same.

His method was to list out the possibilities in his head and assume the worst of them to be true.

So now he had to assume he was up against the kind of jaws capable of taking the life of a legendary man known for his survival skills.

“What should we do?” asked Florence.

“Does she look in any state to choose to flee like a rational person? Getting her to leave this place would probably take a lot of doing. We need to take this one step at a time and that means checking Oceavita first.”

“Sure.”

“One other thing, Miss Florence. The next time you ignore my warning, I will strike the back of your neck to knock you out. Is that clear?”

“Will you wake me back up with a kiss?”

“I am serious.”

“Oh, dear. You are seriously going to kiss me? I think I might blush.”

That small girl was an expert of throwing him off balance. That was unusual for him. And the fact that he was resorting to threats of violence showed he had already lost the battle.

The two of them continued on and arrived at the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute.

It was wrapped in silence.

Far more so than during his last visit. The silence was so painfully intense it increased the scent of death hanging over this area of forest. It was easy to forget this was a place for decursing and healing.

He opened the door.

Thick sheets reminiscent of ship’s sails were draped all over the lobby, perhaps as a makeshift solution to the damage caused by the Dextral Mk. IIs. Construction sorcery devices for carrying stone and for rolling up and wrapping the sheets were sitting out.

Ayato clicked his tongue.

He should have seen this coming, but he failed to cover Florence’s eyes.

The headless body of an old man in a fancy gentleman’s suit lay on the floor in the middle of the lobby. His clothes looked disturbed, so assuming the killer was not an extreme pervert, they had probably checked through his pockets for something after killing him.

“Leonardo,” said the small girl in a somehow sad and terribly mature voice.

There were no humans or demons in evidence, so the place felt like a creepy abandoned house where someone had dumped a corpse.

“…”

Ayato silently drew his Linkage Plug sword.

Florence shook her head as if to shake free of something, and…

“Has anything important already been taken away?”

“If it was that easy to find, they wouldn’t have had to check below the insole of his shoes.”

“Then was he not carrying whatever it was with him?”

“If the killer wasn’t certain he was, I doubt they would have gone to the effort of searching his corpse. It feels more like they had heard he carried whatever it was with him, but they couldn’t find it when they actually tried to find it.”

“Then where should we look?”

Ayato had already stabbed the tip of his sword into a certain point on the corpse.

The dress girl tilted her head.

“A vape?”

“I’m more interested in the disposable vapor cartridges you insert into that sorcery cigarette. What better place to hide something than among something you can carry a lot of without arousing suspicion? He just has to mark the special one with a scratch or something.”

Ayato extracted the information contained in that ordinary device.

After transferring the necessary data to the floating crystal tarot cards, he pulled the Linkage Plug sword from the smoking device’s cartridge, spun it around, and used its tip to grab at the thick sheet draped over a nearby wall. He covered the poor corpse with the sheet.

Florence gave the floating crystal tarot cards a curious look.

“Um, did you figure anything out or not?”

“I found a few names of accomplices. When he could not create a piece of technology needed for the purifying blood pools and for the Predator Island, he paid a Sorcery Hacker to steal it for him. In exchange, the Sorcery Hacker used the island’s hidden underground cavern as a safe home base for their sorcery crimes.”

“Hm?”

“I also found a log of him using a great many operators to control the Predator Island. So we know Leonardo was guilty and that another villain remains hidden in the shadows.”

However, this meant the other villain had been planting roots in this island for a quite a while now.

Ayato’s group had gotten involved in the class warfare business on that luxury sleeper train, an assassin wielding that devil’s revolver had appeared there, he had been hit by the curse, Teleria had just so happened to know a cold sleep spell that she used on him, they had decided to use Laguntreat’s decursing springs, Florence and Micha Angelos’s comments had led them to learn of the secret hidden below the island, they had ended up on the giant Annihilator-class Predator Island, and they had been caught in the attack on Fleurelisia, one of the Four Lords.

How many layers of coincidence was that?

Was it really possible to predict all of that in detail when setting up some master plan?

Or…

(Was this just one thread from a vast web of possibilities? Did they have roots planted in countless locations, so we would be caught in the web no matter what we did – ''even if we never even visited Laguntreat at all''?)

He shook his head.

When your steps forward showed no results, it was best to come to a stop and reassess the situation instead of charging blindly onward. Building up speed with insufficient information would only lead to fantasies and conspiracy theories. For the moment, he had to focus on what he knew for a fact and use that to work out the big picture and which direction to head next.

Yes.

“The name,” muttered Ayato while flicking one of the floating crystal tarot cards.

The vape cartridge left by that dead man had contained the following name.

“Jennifer Evening.”

“?”

The answer only made Florence tilt her head, which was hardly surprising since information on Ayato’s former home rarely became public knowledge.

There was no escaping the smell of blood now.

“She was part of the Student Council Executive Committee at the Academy Towers, a sorcery educational institute run by the Static Continent’s Selected Kingdoms Combined Royal Family.”

She did not even manage her usual “my, my” this time.

Apparently even kids her age were aware that place was known as a den of geniuses and eccentrics.

But he was not done yet.

There was more to tell.

“Specifically, she is the Student Council Advisor. Making her one of the teachers.”