Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Endymion Chapter3 (section)

===Part 5===

Kamijou and the others ended up entering a manga café. They paid for three private rooms (using Kamijou’s pocket money), but they all met up in one of them.

Stiyl had sent a large amount of image data to the prepaid phone.

They were all photographs of the faces of the magic cabal members who had been defeated and left behind by the mystery attacker.

As Sozty Exica checked through them all, she asked, “Is this all of them?”

“Looks like it. Have you figured anything out?”

“…There aren’t enough people,” she said after looking through the photos multiple times to be sure. “Aurodasa Ginzhana, Kereelty Tanabrook, Sumtalak Shandeva, Kipsila Endinia, Pancavani Uddasala, and Slasoma Anruda. …Well, I can understand why those six are missing. They were the decision-makers of the cabal. If someone attacked, the rest of the cabal would position themselves to let them escape first.”

“Is that it?”

“Seven people are missing in total,” muttered Sozty Exica. She spoke a new name through gritted teeth. “Ureapaddy Exica. My older sister. There is no real reason she would be protected above anyone else. If the other magicians were wiped out to let those six escape, my sister should have been wiped out as well.”

Kamijou looked at Sozty’s face from the side.

She stared at the small screen rather than looking at him as she continued to speak.

“And…these wounds. They are very similar to those caused by the Astras our cabal uses.”

“Astras?” repeated Kamijou in confusion.

Index replied, “Those are the weapons of the gods in Hindu mythology.”

“It differs a bit from the original meaning, but our cabal uses the term Astra to refer to all powers and weapons that use symbols of the gods’ characteristics,” said Sozty in a low voice “We refer to what I used against you as the Agni Astra. However, they have to be downsized quite a bit for humans to wield them. The Astras we use are nothing but the effects. Take a spear Astra for example. We can create stab wounds with it, but we cannot produce the form of the spear itself.”

That meant the term Astra could refer to many different things. It would not be mistaken to assume there were different Astras for each element that had been prepared by the gods: fire, water, wind, and earth

In that case…

What was the element of the Astra that Ureapaddy had secretly brought in and used to drive the Gate of the Gods Come from the Heavens to destruction?

“My sister is supposed to be using a Shiva Astra, but she originally specialized in a different line of Astra.”

“?”

“The project was supposedly frozen. It was not a downsized version that a magician could safely use with no recoil. This was a pure Astra that was built up into the proper form of a weapon rather than simply creating the stab wound. The project was meant to draw out the full power of an Astra despite the great burden that would produce.” Sozty clenched her teeth and seemed to be forcing out the words. “In the end, the Astra itself was a success, but it still failed because the reinforcement of the magicians using it did not go well. Most of the participants were blown to pieces by the recoil and my sister was badly wounded. It had supposedly messed with her physical body too much to have any proper defenses left!!”

“What…? What kind of Astra does your sister have?”

“The Astra held by my sister Ureapaddy Exica is…”