Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 5===

“She’s not here?” muttered Kamijou.

They were in District 3, a dead office area where even the traffic signals were off. It was a district for adults, so a high schooler like Kamijou didn’t know it very well. The message Aleister had left by hijacking Coronzon’s body had definitely pointed in this direction. And yet…

“The scent trail ends here,” said Kihara Noukan, sniffing at the ground.

“Confirmed,” said Takitsubo Rikou, her phone in hand.

They were in an empty plaza with nothing there but red snow.

Index tilted her head.

“Did Coronzon notice what was happening and wash it off?”

“Could she wash it off completely enough?”

“She didn’t need to.” Mourning clothes Mikoto breathed a white sigh. “Scents become something entirely different when they mix together. Which is why I really wish they would stop using cheap floral scents in shampoos and body soaps. It reacts with perfumes, ruining their scent.”

Apparently there were other opinions too.

Some were concerned that this hadn’t been Coronzon’s doing.

“Could the message from Aleister itself have been a bluff? I mean, this is Aleister we’re talking about.”

Agnese may have been pushed forward by the many other nuns. She expressed this suspicion as their representative, but Kamijou rejected it.

He had no proof, of course.

But he didn’t want to think that the Aleister who had answered his call would then take Coronzon’s side and try to destroy the world with her.

(What if?)

Kamijou lowered his head.

He pondered the issue with a hand on his chin and his eyes staring down toward his shoes.

(If the message from Aleister was correct and we still lost sight of Coronzon…then one of our assumptions must be wrong. But what could that be?)

Then it hit him.

“I forgot. One basic fact completely slipped my mind.”

“?”

Kanzaki gave him a puzzled look, but he didn’t even glance her way.

He used his foot to scrape the red snow away from the ground, but it wasn’t asphalt below.

He found a thick metal manhole.

All that thought hadn’t been necessary. The answer was so simple!

The loud roar of water rushing by below meant this probably wasn’t an ordinary sewer. It had to be an artificial waterway flowing by below the city.

Humans could not swim in a half-frozen river in January.

Humans could not breathe underwater.

So this couldn’t be called a route. The river wasn’t usable.

Yes, ''if'' you were human.

“''But Great Demon Coronzon isn’t human''!!”