Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume16 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 5===

Dawn had yet to brighten the sky.

Magicians had been positioned on the bank of the Thames to indirectly place them around the Tower of London.

Their numbers were far greater than the Anglicans were aware of.

They belonged to the Dawn-Colored Sunlight, the largest modern Western magic cabal in Europe.

“What a pain.”

A girl of around 11 sighed while guarded by men in black suits.

Leivinia Birdway observed the enemy ground without use of binoculars.

“And after I went to all the trouble of scattering the Sitra Achra. I never imagined someone might use sealing magic to condense it again.”

“Is that possible?” asked Mark Space, one of the men in black, sounding skeptical.

They were on the opposite bank of the Thames from the tower.

Specifically, inside a small slanted boathouse built into a filthy pier.

The view through the small window was depressing.

“Possible or not, she’ll do it if she has no other hope.” Birdway munched on the warm vegetable and roast beef sandwich she considered a necessity during lengthy missions. “It’s a bottle. Like that iced tea bottle you’re carrying. Hand it here, by the way. It’s not the bread that’s bad. There isn’t enough butter. Either way, it’s so dry eating it leaves my throat parched.”

“If you say so.”

“Gulp. There are several types of seals, but it’s probably easiest to think of them like trapping a demon in a bottle or box. That means a seal gathers some sort of power to a single location. It is all equally contained no matter how strong or large that power is. So it isn’t hard to more broadly interpret that gathering as a condensing of that power.”

The Sitra Achra that was Great Demon Coronzon’s remains had been scattered to the farthest reaches of the world by Birdway. You could call it a dilution. It left her too thinned out to maintain her mind.

If that was gathered back together to increase the density, then Great Demon Coronzon might indeed be resurrected.

Telesma was a troublesome substance.

Whether she was bisected, torn to pieces, or even blown to smithereens in an explosion…she was essentially a mass of energy just like heat or electricity. No matter how small of pieces she was split into, the total amount was the same once gathered in a single place. And that could mean operating as a great demon once more.

It might not be the Coronzon who Hamazura Shiage and Narthex knew who would make a reappearance, but it would at least be a great demon with the same appearance and function.

“Summonable lifeforms are such strange beings.”

“Of course they are. Even Lucifer was only chained up after being defeated by a sword-wielding archangel – he wasn’t actually killed. Despite his sin of disobeying god being plain to all. …Also, here.”

“The iced tea?”

“How many times do I have to tell you to fill the bottle with nitrogen when carrying it around, you fool? And you call yourself a Brit? Tea’s flavor and color changes in no time after it contacts oxygen.”

“This type of tea is meant to taste bitter. Perhaps it was too mature a flavor for a cheeky brat.”

They began trying to force the bottle with a thick straw into the other’s hands.

“If diluting it across the world isn’t enough to keep it safe, then the only option is to seal away the Sitra Achra and keep it nearby. Based on the idea that it’s safe as long as no one removes the lid… I went with the dilution plan because I don’t like that idea.”

“Yes, most anything that must be guarded to keep it safe can be broken at the slightest provocation.”

“We can’t let the real world be destroyed like something out of a storybook. We need to come up with a new idea. And to buy us the time for that, ''for now'' we need to get our hands on that Sitra Achra.”

This was what the Dawn-Colored Sunlight was after.

“We will manage the Sitra Achra. Which is why I want Narthex.”

She coldly spat out the words.

She was saying she wanted the girl as a tool.

After all, Narthex was a treasure just as valuable as Grimoire Library Index.

From the perspective of one of the largest magic cabals not just in the West but worldwide, it would be a shame indeed if she was executed by the hardheaded Anglicans.

“That said, we are talking about the Anglicans here. Worse, the highly guarded Tower of London. We won’t need Takitsubo Rikou to ''cause a diversion'' as an uncertain factor from Academy City here. I want to set this up so we can get by with only the logic of our magic side.”

“Meaning?”

“I have no interest in Hamazura Shiage of the science side.”

She said it plainly.

While breaking free of someone else’s feelings.

“Boss.” Mark made a suggestion while refueling himself with bite-sized fried fish. “If you really do want to secure Narthex, you need to get moving soon, knowing how sturdy the Tower of London is.”

“Yes. But will we be in time?”

Birdway’s tone was relaxed.

She didn’t seem concerned.

Because she had a completely different goal line here. She had known Takitsubo Rikou would cause a scene if she learned about this, so she had removed that girl from the picture before she could find out.

She had crushed the small possibility that the track suit girl had.

And with that done, she arrived at her conclusion.



“If Narthex has information information on a ''third or fourth'', then it doesn’t need to be Narthex we actually get our hands on. I’m interested in their magical talent, not their external appearance or inner personality as human beings. And information can be extracted from a corpse. So even if Narthex is executed, ''we can still win if we retrieve her body before it is burned'' to deprive her of the possibility of resurrection during the Last Judgment.”