Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter2

==Chapter 2: Goddess of the Night, the Moon, and Witches – “ARADIA”x03.==

===Part 1===

Kamijou Touma was dead.

If that hadn’t been a dream, then he must have died from having that bare hand pierce right through his torso.

Yet he still heard a voice.

“Really!? Good, Old Mary, I need to ''borrow two lives''. I’ll pay you back with interest later. I just cut off the boy’s right arm, so if you resurrect him now, I can take him back!!”

All of a sudden, he felt the pull of gravity again.

No, that wasn’t it. Something was pulling him in a different direction. Which direction? Into the sky. He suddenly found himself looking down from 10 or 20 stories up. His sense of height honestly vanished once he was high enough. It was still scary, though. He heard a loud sound like whipping bedsheets next to him.

They came from giant, thin batlike wings.

They were colored a light pink and looked horribly organic and lifelike.

A woman with a pair of goatlike pink horns sticking through her fluffy blonde hair was carrying him under one arm. If he had to guess her age, he would have gone with college aged. She had the curvy silhouette of a fully-grown woman. He was so close he had failed to notice at first, but on closer inspection, the only thing covering the bright skin of her torso was a lacy pink one-piece corset similar to what a bunny girl would wear. In other words, this was lingerie with rose thorn decorations. She also wore stockings and arm covers, but they did nothing to cover up her underwear.

“Wh-wh-what the hell!?”

“Oh, dear. Are you afraid of heights? Once we escape that scary woman, I’ll let you down on a rooftop, so just hold on tight until then.”

“Why do you sound like an old lady!? That’s a Japanese monster thing, but you look like a Western demon to me!!”

“Hm, is my common tone creation not working right? Japanese is a tricky language, so combining the Far Eastern Ocean version and the Altaic Language Family version might not be enough. Brlbrlgrlgrlbeeep!! Ahem, is this how y’all talk in this part o’ the world, dearie?”

“No, it isn’t!! But I am used to people talking weird thanks to Tsuchimikado and Tatemiya!!”

“Vrbbrjr! Then I’ll stick with the initial version since it introduces less lag into the real time speech synthesis. As long as you know what I mean, the details don’t really matter.”

She called this common tone creation.

Did that mean she was combining a few standard sounds to speak, much like mechanically synthesized voices? Kamijou had heard that the voices heard on the phone weren’t actually identical to the real person’s voice and his brain was simply interpreting it as if it were a human voice. It was a chilling thought.

And magical people didn’t use machines, so he could actually see when the voice coming from her mouth changed. That made it all the more frightening. But when he thought about it, he realized all the Western magicians he had met had been weirdly familiar with different world languages. Did they study them to travel the world and read grimoires?

He had a lot of questions. Like why he didn’t seem injured despite all the blood on his clothes, what had happened to Index and Kumokawa Seria, if Othinus was down on the ground since she wasn’t on his shoulder now, and who the woman attacker had been.

But all those questions were erased from his mind by a woman’s voice shouting up from the ground.

“Bologna Succubus!!”

The woman had white skin and long silver hair.

She wore a wimple so long it fell to her ankles and something like a modified bikini that left her navel exposed. The contradictory outfit made it hard to tell if she was a holy woman or a dancer. But she wasn’t like the ghost at the train station plaza who had clearly been cosplaying. It didn’t look artificial on her. She wore the skimpy outfit as comfortably as a sweater or coat and gave off an atmosphere all her own that easily pushed back the great pressure of the Shibuya shopping district around her. It was like she made no attempt to make herself a part of the ordinary world.

That was his attacker.

She was the woman who had shattered Kamijou Touma’s spine and destroyed his torso more than once.

“Oh, god. I can just tell she’s some monster from the magic side.”

“Ding, ding, ding! Correct☆ She’s Aradia, goddess of all witches, who rules over the night and the moon. You should probably keep that name in mind, laddie.”

The demon woman grinned (even though there was still an occasional issue with her language).

The long-haired woman remained on the ground, but she didn’t look particularly worried. That seemed to hint that flying in the sky wasn’t enough to escape a magician who could surpass the laws of physics.

Fortunately, it looked like the woman was so focused on her midair target she wasn’t paying any attention to Index and Kumokawa who were still on the ground. She spoke toward the flying demon with pure anger in her voice.

“You have strange tastes yourself. The Bridge Builders Cabal does not wish to derail Alice Anotherbible. Bologna Succubus, you and Good, Old Mary are only pretending to be peaceful and reasonable. You are only wasting what little chance you still have left. You belong to the Bridge Builders Cabal too, so you must know that killing that threat is the quickest way of correcting Alice’s condition!”

This came as a shock.

Kamijou was held high in the sky below that demon woman’s arm, so he knew breaking free of her grasp would mean plunging to his death.

But now he knew this Bologna Succubus was from some group called the Bridge Builders Cabal and the woman trying to kill him was as well. There was also someone called Good, Old Mary. They had even mentioned Alice Anotherbible. He was hit by a flood of new questions, most directly related to his own survival.

Meanwhile, the Bologna Succubus was undeterred and stuck out her tongue.

“Aradia? It goes without saying that this boy only has the one life. Even if Good, Old Mary fills in the gaps with her ability to control miracles using note compilation techniques. Killing him would be easy. Easier than bringing him back, anyway. But do that and you won’t have anything left to stop Alice if she goes completely berserk. I agree we need to stop her current deviation, but I oppose killing Kamijou Touma and simply hoping that works. I can’t agree to those methods.”

“You foolish Rescuers!!”

“I’ll take that title over Killer any day of the week.”

The woman apparently named Aradia gained a new tone to her anger: exasperation.

“Alice is a problem, but don’t you find it odd that our Bridge Builders Cabal has split into two factions like this? And that never would have happened if not for him!!”

“Are you sure about that? The real problem isn’t him or Alice. All the blame falls on Anna Sprengel if you- vwoovhsfa- ask me- vwoorl.”

“Also, all those weird noises are making you hard to understand! Is it supposed to be some kind of psychological warfare?”

“Sigh. How about a brief truce so I can borrow your common tones?”

The line went dead there.

Kamijou Touma shouted aggressively at the woman holding him under her arm.

“Anna Sprengel!? What is she up to this time!?”

“I can fill you in on all the dull details once we lose Aradia, so could you please keep your mouth shut for now?”

“But I need to know how Anna and Alice are involved in all this!!”

“I’ll drop you if you keep struggling!! If you won’t shut your trap, I’ll silence you myself by jamming my pointy tail right up your asshole, boy.”

The way she smiled told him that wasn’t an idle threat, so he obediently clamped his mouth shut.

At the same time, the scenery around them melted into flowing lines.

He managed to follow the first two and a half rotations, but his eyes couldn’t keep up with the rest.

But why was she performing these acrobatics?

Two and then three blinding beams of light shot from the ground and tore through sky, slicing off a corner of a nearby building rooftop. The skyscraper’s basic structure must have been damaged because all the windows shattered at once.

Kamijou had forgotten they were being targeted, so his throat dried up.

It was New Year’s Eve in Shibuya. He couldn’t even hazard a guess at how many people were walking around below, but now they were all going to be shredded by the shards of glass. It was so horrific Kamijou shouted out loud, entirely forgetting how close to death he was himself.

“Hey!!”

“Oh, dearie me,” said an exasperated Bologna Succubus after coming to a stop in midair.

Then all the sharp shards stopped in place. Now they wouldn’t reach the people below and injure them. Kamijou wasn’t sure what kind of magic the Bologna Succubus had used, but he was seriously impressed.

“Bloody hell. ''That wasn’t me''.”

“…”

Kamijou had a very, very bad feeling about this, so he clung tightly to the demoness’s hips as a tremor ran through the thousands or tens of thousands of glass shards. Someone’s willpower entered them and then they all rushed toward him.

The transparent blades attacked from all sides with the speed of bullets, but their guided routes actually gave the Bologna Succubus an opportunity. She flew to the right, pulling the many shards with her, and then flapped her wings to launch herself the other way, slipping herself into the gap created when they gathered on the right. She just barely managed to fit through the opening in the surrounding glass.

She escaped the 100% fatal downpour of razor sharp death.

Like some kind of joker that could manipulate the numbers themselves.

But she didn’t linger on her impressive feat and kept a casual tone.

“This could be a problem. Aradia’s ''Rule of Three'' spell is supposed to be hard to use in practice, but she isn’t having any trouble at all.”

“Rule of what?”

“It’s about time I landed over there. There’s nowhere to hide in the open air and my strength won’t last in an aerial battle against a real witch.”

That was a shock.

Kamijou glanced back from under her arm, but he didn’t see Aradia there.

“An aerial battle with a witch? Wait, wait, wait, wait!! Are you telling me that Aradia woman is going to wave a wand around and fly in the sky with lots of heart and star effects like Kanamin does!?”

“Witches can fly thanks to the ointment they coat their broom with, not the broom itself. Also, wands are like staffs and clubs – they’re a symbol of patriarchal power, so female witches don’t really use them.”

Kamijou’s thoughtless comment earned him a serious critique from an expert(?). It made him feel like an uneducated dimwit, so he really wished she would stop.

With a flutter of her wings, the Bologna Succubus landed on a large shopping mall’s roof. She gave Kamijou a squeeze before releasing him from under her arm.

The carefree (underwear) woman raised her arms and stretched.

“Nhh, so this the Miyashita Ark?”

“That’s supposed to be near Shibuya Station, isn’t it? So did we circle around back there!?”

“Ah ha ha. Indubitably! It’s the last place she’ll think to look☆”

The Bologna Succubus gave a smile she never could have gotten away with without her good looks and then snatched a windblown pamphlet out of the air between two fingers.

“Let’s see. This says the Miyashita Ark is a large shopping facility created from a park that used to be a major landmark in its own right. It has everything from restaurants and boutiques to hotels. It has several entrances and a lot of foot traffic and I bet the small stores crammed inside will give it lots of blind spots.”

“Um, why does that matter?”

“Wherever we end up going, I thought it would be best to hide here until she loses our trail☆”

She might sound like an excessively kind tutorial navigator, but she was in fact a demon with no common sense. For one, she had pink horns and wings. Just like with Alice, he couldn’t simply follow her instructions. He was afraid he would find himself in Antarctica or something if he did that.

He reminded himself to stand up for himself.

“Wait, you can read Japanese? I thought you could only speak it because you were combining different tones into a false voice.”

“These kanji, hiragana, and katakana are either pictograms or derived from them. I can estimate the general meaning based on the dot pattern.”

She snapped her fingers proudly, but he had no idea what she was talking about. He knew phone cameras recognize text nowadays, so was it something like that?

That was when he felt a tremor run down his spine. Having his feet on solid ground caused the fear to fade, so maybe the reality of the situation was finally catching up to him.

“Y-you have got to be kidding me. We were flying around all over the place, but you never set up a people clearing field, did you? I’m not going to worry about the magic side’s secrets, but this is Shibuya! Do you have any idea how many phone cameras there are here!?”

“''I don’t care about the magic side’s secrets either.'' But the crazier we make it, the less real it will seem to them. Humans will refuse to accept that someone was murdered by a yeti. Even if they glimpsed a furry shape in the blizzard, their rational mind will tell them it can’t be true, so they seal away the memory all on their own.”

“Maybe, but they’ll have camera footage of this.”

“So what?”

The Bologna Succubus folded up the pamphlet and stuffed it in Kamijou’s pocket. As sexy and alluring as she was, she must have been staunchly opposed to littering.

“No one knows what’s going to happen in Shibuya when everyone is waiting for the countdown. In fact, they would ''find it unusual'' if nothing ended up happening. Most people will assume this was either a phone company’s PR stunt or some kind of video prank. Videos can be altered in real time these days, after all. It’s true R&C Occultics briefly brought magic to the general public, but how many of the youths here will connect that to this? Plus, Japan has a shame culture. People will be too afraid of embarrassing themselves by falling for something so obviously fake, so there’s nothing at all to worry about.”

She was very blunt about it. Although she may just not have particularly cared if the general public started freaking out or not.

Kamijou was worried about Index, Kumokawa, and Othinus who he had left down on the ground. He could only pray that Aradia didn’t turn her attention toward them.

But why was he so reluctant to say so out loud? He wasn’t sure how much he could really trust this demoness.

The Bologna Succubus herself bent over, raised a finger, and gave the boy a bewitching smile.

“The first and greatest barrier clouding your vision is the common sense you don’t even remember being taught. That’s a lesson any magician will have heard ad nauseum.”

“Magician?”

Were these people ''really and truly'' magicians?

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and even the unseen Good, Old Mary ''used magic but didn’t seem like magicians'' to Kamijou. It was obvious at a glance how great their powers were. In fact, Aradia’s was so great she had to kill him more than once before he was even properly aware of it. He wasn’t sure how Good, Old Mary’s resurrection worked, but he was afraid to touch his chest and check. His caution was only natural when the bits and pieces of conversation he had overhead told him they were from the same group as Alice and Anna Sprengel.

“I’d really like an explanation now,” he said in a daze.

“And you’ll get one.”

“This isn’t the kind of thing where learning the truth makes me a target, is it?”

“Sigh. Now I see how even Alice was affected by you. I really need you to get it into your head that Aradia has already mercilessly killed you more than once and stepping peacefully down from the stage is not an option for you. Think of yourself as stuck up in a mountain mansion with a rockslide blocking the only road, a storm making hiking impossible, and the only bridge collapsed.”

She used a bewitching finger to gesture for him to follow her. As far as he could tell from behind, her wings and tail were entirely biological and moved all on their own. She did nothing at all to hide those unusual body parts or the rest of her lingerie body. She acted so superhuman that it felt strange she was leading him through an ordinary stainless-steel door into the building.

He watched her tail swishing side to side, wondering how it worked.

“Oh, you naughty boy. Do you mind not leering at my butt quite so much?”

“(What do I even say? This isn’t exactly what I would call an admirable way to live your life. They say you’re supposed to find something no one else can do, but I don’t think they meant things like showing up at the park at night in only a coat.)”

“I can hear every word of that.”

She didn’t turn around, but she did gently wrap her pink arrowhead tail around his neck. That may have been a demonic sign of affection, but it made him feel like she was leading him around on a leash. She was superhuman in more ways than one, but she appeared to enjoy being a target of attraction for the younger boy.

“Ooh, now you’re really staring something fierce. I take it you’re more of an arse man, then?”

“This is, ugh, only because, bleh, you’re pulling my head forward with your tail!”

The way she occasionally slipped into a variety of dialects continued to weird him out.

(Come to think of it, wasn’t Alice kind of similar? It was more her tone of voice, but she did seem to talk in different ways sometimes.)

Once through the door, she released him from his collar. The indoor heating warmed his entire body, reminding him just how cold it had been outside.

Customers weren’t supposed to enter from the roof, so they found themselves in a staff only passageway. A pushcart resembling a giant cage on tiny wheels was sitting by the wall.

This was the Miyashita Ark.

Kumokawa had mentioned it earlier, but what kind of shops did they have here?

The Bologna Succubus opened a random stainless steel door to reveal a women’s boutique. Some quiet screams followed. Yes, that mysterious demon still had her wings and tail out and she only wore a pink one-piece corset, stockings, and arm covers. To repeat, she was in her underwear.

But the Bologna Succubus actually posed with her hands behind her head.

“Yes, yes. If you’re going to snap some photos, just get it over with. This was all the boy’s idea, FYI. Sigh, why was I cursed to love younger boys so much I just can’t say no to anything they ask?”

“What the-!? Don’t even joke about that! They’re going to believe you! And Hell City Shibuya has so many phone cameras this kind of information spreads at the speed of light!”

Kamijou shoved on her back with both hands to get her out of there before the commotion grew to the point a security guard showed up. Although in this case, he was less afraid of getting arrested than he was of having the guard killed by this monster. Like a cat playing with a toy.

“Oh, dear. And where are you taking me for your next scandalous request I can’t ever seem to say no to? Eh heh. To the relative privacy of a dressing room, mayhap?”

“I can’t take any more of this! If you put any more pressure on me, I’ll start longing for a slow life in another world!”

The succubus let him push her through the hallway while everyone stared at them. She didn’t fight it, so she must not have had a destination in mind. While he hadn’t done it on purpose, pushing on her back with his palms caused her to arch her back and push out her chest, so every step she took caused her extra-large boobs to jiggle wildly. He was shielded from seeing them directly since he was behind her, but the glimpses he caught reflected in the show windows was enough to make him blush bright.

But no one made any real fuss about it since she didn’t protest or struggle. People must have been more willing to accept bizarre sights during a Shibuya New Year’s Eve because they were becoming no more than another piece of the background. (Did people think she was a lingerie model for a luxury boutique, or perhaps a model hired for part of a corporate event?)

The Bologna Succubus herself leaned back into his hands and let him lead her from behind while she talked.

“First of all, you can’t ask Good, Old Mary for any more help. I can understand your confusion after she brought you back from the dead a couple of times, but the next time you die, it’s for good. Keep that in mind.”

“?”

His sigh must have been enough for her to understand his confusion. She also happily let him push her around (they had to look like a lovey-dovey couple) and even smiled and waved to a small child staring at her, earning her a sharp glare from the boy’s mother.

“Hm, a detailed explanation of the alchemical formula lost in the 1st or 3rd century would probably just confuse you more. Simply put, Good, Old Mary can only repair your body’s injuries, but sealing up a wound doesn’t return the lost blood. Do you see where I’m going with this? If you’ve lost too much blood, healing your body doesn’t restart your mind. That would be meaningless.”

“Oh.”

Even if they intervened immediately after his death, it would be his third death in short succession.

And Aradia had already shattered his spine and torn a huge chunk out of his side. He had probably died of shock from the pain, but he would have lost a lot of blood too.

What happened to a human who had lost too much blood?

The Bologna Succubus spotted a rest area with a few chairs and tables near a shop with a seal mascot plastered on all their products. The lingerie woman stopped leaning against Kamijou and instead sat on a round table. Squishing her tail must have been painful or at least felt weird because she lifted her shapely butt a few times to subtly adjust its position.

“Good, Old Mary’s resurrection spell essentially repairs a dead human’s body to a clean, uninjured state at the moment of cardiac arrest. It might look like a miracle, but it is a purely medical phenomenon affecting only the physical body. She cannot directly bring back the soul itself. They will still need CPR afterwards. But repairing a body ''with all the blood missing'' is meaningless since their heart will not beat and they cannot breathe on their own. The great cost of the spell would be entirely wasted and all you would have is an intact hunk of flesh that would begin to slowly rot.”

“Seriously?”

She must have been restless because she pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table and made a doglike animal out of it.

“If you’re going to die, I would recommend a bloodless method such as suffocation or poisoning, but with homicide, you don’t exactly get to choose the method. And in your case, ''that right hand has to be severed each time so it doesn’t interfere with Good, Old Mary’s magic''. That requires some blood loss no matter how you die. It would be best to just assume you can’t die again.”
Kamijou knew it had been to save him, but he still shuddered at the thought of such a dangerous choice being made without his knowledge.

Anyway, the Bologna Succubus sitting on the small table meant some part of her feast of a body would be right in his face no matter which seat he chose, so he remained standing.

“Hey, wait a second.”

“Yes?”

“So the blood I lost doesn’t come back. I get that, but what about my clothes? I didn’t have any blood on my clothes after the first time I was killed. For some reason, they were brand new and even had a price tag attached. Does that mean what I think it does?”

She didn’t answer him.

The sexy succubus seated on the round table with her long legs crossed looked the other way and whistled instead. She was so tense she crushed the dog in her hand, transforming it into a crocodile.

“Eek! Officer, this woman is a necrophile freak who loves stripping brutally murdered corpses and making them into her personal dress-up doll!!”

“Now hold on!!”

She sprang down from the table.

The superhuman didn’t care what society thought of her, but she liked to be in control of the conversation.

“B-but you would have been confuzzled if you woke up healed and found your clothes all bloody. And District 11 is a land route distribution base, so it wasn’t hard to search through the containers and find clothes from the same company. Think of it as a kindness from your all-knowing benefactor.”

“Then why do you look so flustered!?”

“I ain’t flustered!”

“There must have been a lot of blood after being pierced through the middle, so I honestly doubt it was limited to my shirt. Wait, wait. Don’t tell me you had to change my pants too.”

“…”

[[Image:GT_Index_v06_BW2.png|thumb]]


She silently refused to look him in the eye with a tinge of pink in her cheeks. She muttered to herself and awkwardly poked her index fingers together in front of her large chest.

Kamijou Touma’s adolescence finally exploded.

“Wahhhhhh!! You mean you saw everything from top to bottom!? And out in the bright morning sun!?”

“No, I- glrwrwr- I only- kshhh- you don’t under- hdfhliwrcw- verily I say- xcyq!?”

“Oh, shut up! All these weird noises are proof enough you’re badly shaken!! Just try and tell me you did nothing wrong while I record a video with this old persons smartphone!!”

“Ksshh!! But, wait, why would you want to record such a meaningless conversation!?”

As expected, the woman with a guilty heart covered her eyes with a hand and tried her hardest to stop him. She was willing to fight a fierce aerial battle with countless cameras aimed her way and she would walk through a crowded mall in nothing but her underwear, but she actually got flustered once it was one-on-one. And as much of a pervert as she was, she was still crazy strong. She had Kamijou Touma pinned to the floor in no time. With a very soft and squishy pinning technique.

After straddling a boy in her underwear at only 2 or 3 in the afternoon and stealing his phone, the woman worked to catch her breath.

“Pant, pant!! A-anyway, we need to stop Aradia now. We don’t have time for this poppycock. You do understand that, don’t you!?”

“I’m a little short on understanding at the moment, actually! For starters, who are you people and why is one of you trying to kill me!?”

That caught her by surprise.

Still straddling him, she placed a hand on her cheek and peered down at him.

“Really? This world never ceases to surprise me. But I guess it would take a natural to pull off such a feat.”

“What feat?”

“Alice Anotherbible.”

That name made him gasp.

The demon woman flapped her wings behind her and sighed in exasperation.

“I suppose I should ask: how much do you know about her?”

“She’s a weird, invincible girl who’s working with Anna Sprengel in some way.”

He heard the quiet slap of the Bologna Succubus smacking her palm against her forehead while still straddling him. Perhaps making such an extraordinary monster facepalm was worth a reward in and of itself.

“Cripes, you mean I have to tell you about the Bridge Builders Cabal and the Transcendents too?”

“In as much detail as possible please.”

She granted the request asked from beneath her.

Maybe she liked to talk and maybe she liked to help out those in need, but the demoness stretched on top of him and answered.

“Nhhh, okay! You don’t really have to understand what that girl is as long as you’re aware she possesses an ''extremely dangerous power.'' Alice is a step above the other Transcendents in the Bridge Builders Cabal. But I hear you’re her ‘teacher’. That makes you the only person in the world who Alice Anotherbible respects and will listen to. Do you really think the rest of us Transcendents in the cabal are going to sit idly by with someone that dangerous out there?”

Teacher.

Come to think of it, hadn’t she called him that all throughout the incident on the 29th?

And thinking back, why had someone so powerful been so fond of him and done everything he asked? He didn’t have a clear answer there.

But that aside…

“Alice directly rejected me. She said I didn’t need her.”

“The people who need her and the people who she respects are two very different things. Really, she only feels exasperation for the people who refuse to face reality, withdraw into a fairy tale world, and reveal their bright, selfish colors.”

“…”

This still left the fundamental question of what exactly Alice Anotherbible was.

The Bologna Succubus knew the answer, but she considered the imminent threat more important. And that threat was of course to Kamijou Touma’s life since he was weak this demon could pin him down with ease.

“This sent shockwaves through out cabal. We couldn’t decide on how to deal with Alice’s ‘teacher’.”

“So you split between the Rescuers and the Killers?”

“Right. The Killers want to kill the source of the change forthwith to return Alice to normal. It’s certainly a simple plan, but also a risky one since it leaves no way to influence Alice if killing you doesn’t return her to normal. Then there’s the Rescuers like Good, Old Mary and me. We want to leave you alive and monitor the situation because we don’t know how your death would influence Alice.”

“So you’re-”

“Not so fast.” She cut him off and placed a bewitching finger on his lips while still seated on him. “To be clear, that does not make us your allies. That is our plan ''for now''. If we run the numbers and discover that killing you wouldn’t influence Alice at all or that allowing her ‘teacher’ to live would exacerbate the situation, then that plan changes. The threat is Alice, so we have no reason to protect you personally or any obligation to never betray you.”

“…”

The Bridge Builders Cabal was their own side. The Transcendents (is that what she called them?) were acting in their own interests.

This was a group Anna Sprengel had chosen to join, so he shouldn’t have expected them to be decent people.

The Bologna Succubus returned his phone to him and finally lifted her hips from his stomach.

“We are using you to influence Alice who controls the future of our cabal, so you use me to protect your own life. Do you understand the rules now?”

“No.” He looked up at the ceiling in thought before continuing. “I’ll be doing this for Alice too. It doesn’t matter to me what you and your cabal think.”

“I see. So this is her ‘teacher’.”

She breathed an exasperated sigh and extended a slender hand. He took it and she pulled him to his feet.

“You and Alice certainly are incompatible. ''Fundamentally so.'' You might have as much desire as the next person, but you lack the openings she needs to get at you. But that may be why she sees something in you she lacks herself.”

“What are you talking about?”

He gave her a puzzled look and she bowed before rubbing his stomach with her mystery pink horns.

“Ugh, really?”

“Ow!! Those horns kind of hurt!? Enough with the cow attack!”

“Having big boobs doesn’t make a cow, you know? Demons traditionally have goat horns. And I’m not explaining any more of this because Alice would kill me if I ruined it for her.”

He only had more questions than when he had started, but something unrelated to him caught his attention.

Why were the supposedly transcendent Bologna Succubus and Aradia so afraid of Alice? Yes, she had fearsome power, but she had the personality of a cheerful girl and that didn’t seem so dangerous to him.

He asked and she reacted with utter disbelief.

After giving him the look Academy City residents gave the PR posters claiming Academy City was a clean and superb educational institute where you would know your child was safe and in good hands, Transcendent Bologna Succubus leaned her face in front of his and replied.

“You don’t actually believe Alice must be safe because she’s an innocent child, do you?”

“Eh? But she doesn’t seem to be hiding anything.”

“That’s not the point.” The demon woman shrugged. “I’m asking if you believe there is no danger in ''a young heart too innocent to even hold any interests or beliefs''. To be blunt, I think children are a violent and cruel lot. They flood anthills and laugh about it. So what happens if you give one of those tyrant tots enough power to destroy the universe?”

“…”

Was that part of being childish?

Had it just never shown itself with him because she was willing to do anything he asked?

“Alice is frightening,” said the Transcendent. She even held her own bare shoulders and shrank down like a lost child. “''Shit-your-pants terrifying even.'' Around her, her mood trumps everything else in the world. There is no surefire method or guaranteed strategy. The same exact thing could get a different reaction each and every time. She might have smiled about it yesterday, but what if she happens to be in a bad mood today? Speaking with her is like trying to dig up all the randomly-distributed mines in a minefield where the layout changes every day.”

“Seriously? I find it hard to believe we’re talking about the same Alice here.”

“That’s the thing. She seems entirely different to you because you didn’t even realize what you were doing. Getting through an off-the-cuff conversation with Alice Anotherbible and living to tell the tale is a miraculous tightrope walk. And you even scolded her when she did the wrong thing. That I’ve never seen before.”

She was innocent and pure

For better or for worse, Kamijou Touma was her favorite, but this was an interpretation of those traits he hadn’t considered.

He shook his heavy head and the Bologna Succubus continued while coiling her tail around her index finger.

“You might have a hard time believing it after we dragged you into this mess and killed you twice, but the Bridge Builders Cabal is a gathering of people who want to fulfill a selfless dream. And that includes Aradia.”

“Eh?”

“Over the long span of history, she has fought to save the persecuted witches, protect them from prejudice and discrimination, and give them a safe place to live. So she will do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal. The scary part is she won’t compromise with anyone fighting for a different goal. Because she doesn’t care what happens to anyone ''other than the witches she has dedicated her life to''.”

“Persecuted witches? But that’s ancient history. Why is she still fighting for that?”

“How would you respond if the goth girl who moved in next door came up to you, smiled, and introduced herself as a real witch?”

“…”

“You wouldn’t know how to respond, would you? And yet you wouldn’t mind at all if she was a shrine maiden, a nun, or any other identity that society has decided is legitimate, ''no matter how outdated and unscientific it is''. From that very first moment, you’ve built a big old wall in your head. You might not even be consciously aware of it, but the old prejudices still exist there on the subconscious level. It doesn’t matter how many smartphones, drones, and scientific espers the world has created.”

“Then…” Kamijou gulped before asking. “''You have a goal like that too''?”

“That’s a question for after the sun sets, boy. My hot and steamy secrets are a little too spicy for the daytime crowd☆”

She refused to answer him while holding her hands to her cheeks, twisting her body restlessly, and smiling like this was all a big joke.

Could he track down what it was she wanted to protect if he learned where the name “Bologna Succubus” came from?

“The point is we all have our reasons to want to change the world.”

“…”

“That would be fine on its own, but the problem is we all have to agree how the world needs to change. You see, each and every one of us Transcendents is powerful enough to rival the entire magic side on our own.”

That casual revelation left Kamijou speechless.

The claim was absurd, but the way she looked weirdly proud of it made it sound real, which scared him.

“Hence, the Anglicans and the Roman Catholics can’t stop us in their usual ways. Well, some of us may be closer to what the Russian Orthodoxes are used to dealing with. But anyway.” She threw out that topic like it wasn’t important. “If one of us forces what we want on the rest, another one won’t be happy and they might just obliterate the ideal world we had spent so much time and effort creating. Because ''destroying a world is so much easier than creating or protecting one.'' So whatever we end up doing with the world, the entire cabal needs to be onboard before we can start working on it.”

Was it similar to two countries with fundamentally different religions and economies discussing their plans for the future with massive armies staring each other down?

If either side got fed up and left the negotiating table, the world could be torn to shreds.

The button triggering war sat within reach of them all.

“Which is why Aradia isn’t the biggest threat in the cabal. Her goal of protecting the witches gives you a carrot you can dangle in front of her to control her. Maybe you can’t fully control her that way, but you at least know what landmine to avoid stepping on at all costs with her. In other words, she might be hard to bring to your side, but you can challenge her any number of times without her causing too much trouble. The more we talk, the better my chances with her. Because once I know the trick to avoiding that landmine, I can avoid it no matter what.”

In that sense, there was one joker who couldn’t be controlled and didn’t even have a clearly-marked minefield.

“And then there’s Alice, huh?”

“She is innocent, capricious, and endlessly cruel and merciless toward anything she doesn’t like. The rules with her are poorly defined in both directions, so it’s hard to work out how to handle her. And the going rate is so absurdly high that a single mistake could mean losing your life. But no matter how hopeless it looks, we have to speak with her. Because without everyone’s approval – even hers – any world we make will fail and be destroyed.” The Bologna Succubus’s tail swayed side to side. “That is why we have decided to have Alice create the new world herself. Because no matter what complaints she might have, we can press her to look after her own creation.”

“She’ll be doing it herself?”

“Who makes it doesn’t really matter. As long as the new world gives us all what we want.”’

Was that similar to how everyone just let America take the lead at international conferences as long as it helped create a peaceful world?

“Once god creates a world, he won’t give up on it and create a second one next door just because the humans living there keep screwing up and polluting the land. He might wash it clean with a massive flood or something, but that’s just god making some adjustments. He’s still sticking with the world he created in the first place. That’s basically the cabal’s plan for crossing the verbal tightrope walk that is the Alice problem. ''Or it was.''”

But it hadn’t worked out.

Anna Sprengel had barged into the Bridge Builders Cabal and done something to Alice. Something that made her unnaturally attached to Kamijou Touma despite having never met him before.

This was on a completely different dimension from the cold military and financial calculations.

Kamijou Touma’s importance had skyrocketed like the first lady whispering in the president’s ear to take control of the international conference.

This was why she scared them.

Alice’s unpredictable innocence truly terrified them.

They could have everything 99.9% settled in their discussions and then some last-second emotion could send it all tumbling down, shattering the world they were trying to build. So even if they inspired some short term anger in Alice Anotherbible, those transcendent beings had decided it was worth taking the long view and killing this source of instability before he caused any real problems.

Actions born of a grudge or desire might eventually fade away on their own.

But actions fueled by fear would never spontaneously disappear.

They were two very different things. Just like the exact same number in a bankbook would mean very different things if it was in the savings column or the debts column.

“Do you see how ridiculously important you are now, boy? Think of it like you hold a big button in your hand. You can whisper in Tyrant Alice’s ear to manipulate her actions, so you are capable of obliterating the entire world along with our cabal. Of course, that would mean absolute extinction where no one wins.”

“You can’t be serious. Alice was basically dragging me around everywhere. And what makes you think I can just control her like that? I’m not that #5 I’ve heard rumors about.”

“Oh, it would be very possible for you. And frankly, it doesn’t matter if you personally intend to do so nor not. ''Whether we’ve sided with the Killers or the Rescuers, every single Transcendent in the Bridge Builders Cabal is prepared to pull out all the stops over how we should deal with the kind of ordinary high school boy you can find anywhere.''”

“You must be joking.”

“Now, we need to come up with a plan. Aradia is coming and I remind you ''she is one of the Transcendents who singlehandedly rivals the entire magic side.'' Losing her for the time being isn’t enough to declare yourself safe. She can search us out and make another attack.”

“How can you be so sure she’s coming? What can she even do when she doesn’t know where we are?”

“I reckon she’s already workin’ on that.” The Bologna Succubus shrugged in apparent unconcern and spoke in a tone that didn’t hint at her true feelings. “She’s already preparing her attack using a Wiccan spell named Triple Reload.”

===Part 2===

In the Shibuya shopping district, another Transcendent, Aradia, was the center of attention.

That was to be expected when she didn’t bother concealing herself with a people clearing field. It didn’t take any knowledge of how magic worked to tell this witch goddess was firing beams and trying to shoot down a flying object.

However, this didn’t trigger a panic with people shoving or even trampling each other.

“Wow.”

An eyepatch ghost girl wearing a translucent raincoat over a swimsuit-based costume was standing a short distance away and aiming her phone’s camera toward the woman with long silver hair swaying side to side. The excitement had begun without warning, so the girl had failed to record the climax. That was a common enough problem for video posters, but she had still tapped the record button even if just to provide a timestamp for the event. A video that missed the crucial moment people most wanted to see could still gather enough attention to get some serious numbers.

(That is really high quality. Is this a corporate PR stunt combining live magic tricks with a video zooming through the sky? This is professional stuff. There must be a film crew somewhere around here because she wouldn’t dare walk around in that modified bikini otherwise. Really, her bare feet are the most impressive part. I mean, it’s New Year’s Eve. But I thought Blau said the Magical Powered Kanamin stuff was going down in Ariake today.)

“Damn, grownups have such big boobs. Oops.”

Something dripped onto her screen.

The bright yellow drop covering one corner of the LCD screen appeared to be melted cheese. It must have fallen from a hot snack someone in the crowd was eating. Probably a mysterious Korean item being sold at one of the food trucks in the area.

“Ugh, really?”

She reached for her pocket on reflex, but the translucent raincoat was for streaming. It would be a buzzkill to have a handkerchief or tissues visible in her pocket, so she didn’t have any. She also couldn’t wipe the drip off with the baggy sleeves. The melted cheese stretched stickily down the entire screen, but if she got even the sleeve of this costume dirty, the stain would still be there during the countdown.

Just as she was trying to figure out what to do, someone held out a pack of tissues.

That someone was the silver-haired witch dressed like a dancer plus an ankle-length wimple.

“Take one.”

“Um!?”

She had been recording this person from afar in order to post a video just for the hell of it, but now the woman was right next to her. The pressure coming from the woman was powerful indeed and the girl was frankly terrified. She had a bad feeling about this.

The woman must have been used to gathering attention because she ignored the rest of the crowd.

“Don’t worry about it. I only just received them over there.”

“I-I see.”

The eyepatch ghost was surprised to learn even this otherworldly professional(?) would accept the packs of tissues people handed out. The ad on the pack said they were recruiting women and provided a location and time without any further description, which set off her sexual harassment alarm. She felt like a model’s manager was supposed to prevent people from approaching you for a job like this on the street.

But a voice interrupted that thought.

“Listen, that is melted cheese, not mustard. The heat can damage the protective film and maybe even the liquid crystals if you don’t wipe it up soon.”

“Yikes, really!? But this is the top-of-the-line model that only came out this fall!!”

The fuzzy unreality of the situation vanished and she took one of the tissues. It was a similar feeling to hearing a disaster alert from her phone while trembling within a haunted house. Now that she had taken the tissue on reflex, she balled it up and wiped off her phone’s screen.

The skimpily-dressed witch was already wandering off somewhere else. From behind, her ankle-length wimple hid her silhouette and even her long silver hair. She might as well have been wrapped in a bedsheet.

The raincoat eyepatch ghost called out to her as she left.

“Th-thank you?”

“No need to thank me.” The woman didn’t even look back. “''I have already been rewarded with triple interest.''”

“…?”

The ghost didn’t like the sound of the word interest there.

She felt like it was a little rude after what just happened, but she aimed her freshly cleaned phone toward the alluring witch again.

That woman was up to something.

The ghost watched it all through her phone camera.



“Thanks!”

At one point, she pulled a dropped train card out from under a vending machine and received the thanks and smile of a small child.



“My, my. How kind of you.”

At one point, she separated two fighting dogs and received a polite bow from the elderly couple who were having trouble holding onto the leash of their powerful Doberman.



“Wait, how did you do that? This truck doubles as a temporary stage, so it has to weigh more than 10 tons.”

At one point, she used a mysterious barrier of light to push back a truck about to plow into the scramble crossing, turning the truck half to scrap, saving the lives of the pedestrians, and earning a fearful look from one of the young men she had just saved.



Eventually, the ghost looked up from her phone’s screen.

She was unable to believe what that brand-new LCD screen was showing her, so she had wanted to see it for herself.

“What the heck?”

And the Shibuya girl had seen something truly unexpected.

It was often said that seeing is believing, but that wasn’t always the case.

''She had seen it for herself, but she still couldn’t believe it or even understand it.

That woman used her bare hands to separate two fierce dogs and then to deflect an enormous truck without even touching it. She was clearly doing something here and that power was growing at an accelerating rate.

Now that something was clearly wrong here, the Shibuya crowd kept their distance, giving the creepy witch enough space to wander around on her own. That distance was usually a terrible insult for anyone living in Shibuya, yet the witch somehow managed to shine brighter than anyone else there. And something strange and unseen began to swirl around her.

All she ever did was small good deeds.

But each new kindness expanded the spatial distortion around her. It was like a small snowball growing ever bigger as it rolled down a snowy mountain.

''“No need to thank me.”

The witch’s concerning words replayed in the ghost’s head.

''“I have already been rewarded with triple interest.”

She looked down at her own hands and clenched and unclenched them a few times. Almost like she was checking on the strength they contained.

The phone’s lip-reading function drew a box around her lips and tracked their movement with greater precision than human senses ever could.

That told the ghost what the silver-haired witch said with a thin smile.

“Yes, this should do nicely.”

===Part 3===

Inside the Miyashita Ark, the demon wearing a one-piece corset similar to a pink bunny suit costume stopped absentmindedly massaging Kamijou’s earlobe and looked to the side.

“Here it comes.”

“?”

Kamijou didn’t even have time to tilt his head.

''Splat!!

A realistic human face was pressed up against the large window in that fashion space.

The sticky ochre color formed an expression of agony.

The features were distorted like someone with a stocking over their head.

It was an entrails-like liquid that felt out of place in the shiny, artificial Miyashita Ark. Terror crawled along Kamijou’s spine as he watched it change color into something even less pleasant, like bile or rotten butter.

Gravity gradually pulled the human face goop down the glass.

Or so it seemed.

In truth, a more complicated force was at work. It formed a neck, a torso, and finally limbs. As the shape grew like dripping ink spreading across a surface, it gradually formed a full human silhouette.

“We need to skedaddle, boy.”

“Eh? But what is that?”

“Aradia has begun her ''search''! If that catches us, the witch goddess will know where we are and attack!!”

The yellowish silhouette began to move like a shadow sliding across the floor or wall. It moved faster than the average car. The Bologna Succubus didn’t wait for him to respond. She held him to her large chest and placed her butt on a nearby round table, removing her feet from the floor. As soon as the sticky silhouette slid across the floor below them, she tugged on his hand and ran in the opposite direction.

It immediately turned back around.

Almost like their feet had touched the surface of a river teeming with piranhas.

“Tch! Can the spell detect anything that contacts the same surface, be it the floor or a wall!?”

The Bologna Succubus picked Kamijou up again and caught the air with her pink bat wings.

She took flight.

Kamijou felt their tremendous acceleration while he heard screams erupting from all around. The Bologna Succubus made sure not to contact the floor, the walls, or the ceiling. She soared down the center of an empty passageway with the precise control of a fighter jet skimming just off the ground to fly below an overpass.

The yellowish silhouette on the floor seemed to hesitate for a moment.

The next stage was already underway.

Splat, splat, splat, splat!! More sticky faces appeared on the walls and ceiling around them to pursue the fleeing Bologna Succubus. They were like the line of bullet holes from a machinegun. And each one of those faces drew out a new silhouette.

“They’re chasing us! Doesn’t that mean she already knows where we are!?”

“If she did, she wouldn’t use this search spell that gives us advance warning. Once she knows our coordinates in 3D space, she would fire an insect repellant spell that tears through all the buildings in between us and her current location.”

“Insect what???”

“Insect repellant. Controlling nature to help crops grow is one of the most common jobs for witches. Although Aradia’s version locates all of the insects and exterminates them.”

Kamijou had no words. Magic was always absurd and unfair, but he had never expected to be killed by the cousin of a scarecrow or one of those big eyeball balloons.

But the Bologna Succubus wasn’t done yet.

“So don’t get the wrong idea, boy. I doubt this is limited to the Miyashita Ark!”

“What?”

“''These faces and silhouettes will be inside every single indoor space in Shibuya!'' We were simply caught in her thorough search!!”

That meant leaving the Miyashita Ark wouldn’t be enough to escape the search. Once their location was discovered, Aradia would attack with her full power. And that woman had already demonstrated her ability to tear through Kamijou’s body with her bare hands and to fire brutal beams of light at the flying demon.

“Then what’s happening to Index or Kumokawa-senpai right now!? And Othinus too!”

“Imbecile! Worry about yourself first!!”

The Bologna Succubus must have realized the same thing as him because she landed on the model blimp decorating the central area. The model hung in midair with its weight distributed over several hundred wires thinner than hairs. It looked a lot like a balloon, but it had to weigh as much as a small truck.

Yes, the face and silhouettes were on the floor, walls, and ceiling, ''but everywhere else was safe.

The yellowish goo silhouettes slid along the walls and ceiling around them, but none of them arrived at the blimp. But none of them went away either. The flat figures moved endlessly around the area as if to surround the two of them.

“Doesn’t look like this will fool them forever. There are so many people in Shibuya, but they’re waiting here and ignoring all those other people.”

“Indeed. But this gives us some time to think. A few minutes at least.”

“So these are Aradia’s eyes and ears, right? If we can’t escape them, I could always destroy them with my right hand.”

“Think of them like security cameras. If they start failing in one specific area, Aradia will notice. That would bring her straight here.”

Maybe it was to keep wingless Kamijou from falling off the unsteady footing, but the Bologna Succubus sat on the balloon-like blimp, wrapped her arms around his head, and pulled him to her chest.

“Witchcraft includes plenty of divination using water or fire as well as wind spells using rope knots, but use of ointments is far more common. From the look of things, I would guess Aradia is using bear grease.”

“Mgh.”

“I believe it was in May of 1940 during World War Two that some British witches attempted to curse Germany in order to protect their homeland. Stripping nude in the freezing forest and dancing throughout the night sounds like suicide, but they attempted to fight the cold by covering their bodies in an ointment made of bear grease. Although in the original ceremony, some of them froze to death along with the old woman who had volunteered to be their sacrifice.”

“Mghghgh, bghghghgh.”

“But how did she transform that into a searching spell? Bear grease is meant for defense, so did she designate us as the human skin it needs to cover in order to protect us from the cold? If so, what exactly is she using to search us out? Oil, grease, wax? I know witches can curse someone by placing the target’s blood or fingernail in a wax doll and piercing it with a nail. No, that isn’t it. Then what is it? And what is with you, boy?”

“Bwah, cough, cough! Are you trying to suffocate me to death with these bags of happiness!!”

Kamijou finally managed to extract his red face from the young woman’s very large chest. She must have been doing it subconsciously like she was holding a stuffed animal, so she simply smiled politely and waved a hand dismissively.

“My bad. When a cute and sexy young woman like me sees a head right in front of her, she can’t help but start patting it.”

“I don’t care what you’re into and this isn’t about the hands on the back of my head – it’s about the suffocation of my face!!”

“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it. Besides, I already apologi- hm?”

The red of his face was probably more than just embarrassment. It was a more serious SOS signal sent from his oxygen-deprived brain.

However.

“I see. I didn’t think of that.”

“Wh-what now? Why are you staring at me?”

“I’m just realizing that worrying over things on your own doesn’t solve anything. The secret to a long life is listening to others☆”

===Part 4===

''Splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat!!

The thick and sticky white and yellow was reminiscent of rotten slugs.

It was in fact raw animal grease.

An unbelievable number of those disgusting faces were plastered to the windows and walls where they dripped down to form bizarre silhouettes. The process was disgusting to watch. Screams erupted from all around and a crowd fled from a shopping building offering excellent New Year’s Eve bargains. There were some young people holding clothing not in a bag and some of them may have used the panic to avoid paying.

“Phew.”

Aradia, goddess of witches and ruler of the night and the moon, sighed below the night sky.

The Wiccan world operated under the Rule of Three.

That rule stated that any magic used by a witch – whether it was used for a good deed or a bad – would be returned to the user at thrice the strength.

So a witch that used magic to steal money would lose three times as much and a witch that used magic to kill someone would receive a wound three times as lethal.

Aradia heard a dull thud.

She looked down with her long silver hair swaying and saw a small boy on the verge of tears. She also saw a crepe-like stain on her ankle-length wimple.

“''I see.''”

Someone must have stolen some clothing using the panic caused by her magic and now she was paying for it. The sartorial loss had returned to her three times larger.

The witch goddess placed her hand on the boy’s head and soothed his tearful emotion.

(I should really consider myself fortunate three times the negative result wasn’t any worse than that. The biggest concern is people getting trampled in the commotion. Even if I do have a spell prepared to dodge any trouble caused by these events.)

Aradia existed to save all witches, so her own personal issues were secondary. Her priority was Kamijou Touma who was indirectly guiding Alice and could end up ruining the Transcendents’ plans for his own personal ends. She knew he meant no harm, but with the entire world at stake, he was more dangerous than a wicked temptress leading a king astray.

In the area known as Shibuya, there were 38,020 buildings with 5,030,750 rooms. She only knew the exact numbers because the bear grease had told her.

She had eliminated all the artificial blind spots, but she still hadn’t found Kamijou Touma and the Bologna Succubus.

“I suppose they wouldn’t just be standing out in the open.”

That meant her next task was to see if there were any faces or silhouettes caught in an unnatural loop anywhere. Half of half of half of half of them were. She used that additional search condition to narrow things down. If the Bologna Succubus was somehow deceiving the search, her quarry had to be near the grease behaving oddly.

“Time for some good deeds.”

If she wanted to find someone, she just had to invite in that result.

If she found someone that someone else was searching for, she would be repaid threefold.

The crepe boy appeared to have gotten separated from his parents in the panic. ''How fortunate.'' She crouched down to his eye level, smiled, and worked at “reloading” her spell. The good deed of finding the boy’s parents would return to her but three times as powerful.

She didn’t want anything from the boy.

She only wanted ''the simple act'' of performing a good deed.

She used her conversational skills to earn the boys trust, so he held onto the side of her hip while she performed a simple divination to find his parents and walked through the streets of Shibuya.

“Now, is this the destiny of the world handing out fortune and misfortune? Or is it the sparks of disaster created from the interphasal pressure caused by the magic I use? Either way, I will be taking back my action with an exorbitant amount of interest.”

===Part 5===

A clear change came over the yellowish silhouettes moving along the walls and ceiling.

Their endless looping ended and now they were focused on their target.

“Drat,” said the Bologna Succubus while spreading her wings.

A moment later, the disgusting grease rushed in along the thin wires supporting the model blimp. They would have been trapped if the demon woman holding Kamijou didn’t have wings.

“Did she increase the quality of the search!?” asked Kamijou.

“Clearly so! This is going to be rough flight, so hold on tight and don’t let your embarrassment stop you!!”

But it wasn’t going to end with just that.

It no longer mattered that they were in the air. The Bologna Succubus took a zigzagging path akin to a lightning bolt to avoid touching the floor, walls, or ceilings while she flew across a space containing a matcha cafe and a boutique. The number of yellowish silhouettes pursuing them was growing by the second. Did that mean the search spell was almost certain they were here now?

“But I’ve figured out some things myself.”

“?”

“Aradia’s ointment is bear grease. That was originally a defensive ointment meant to protect a naked witch from the winter chill. But if she had set the search to simply attach itself to any human skin it was meant to protect, all the girls around here would be coated in the sticky stuff. But she only wants to track us down, so she must have given it a more specific search condition. No doubt about it.”

“But what is that condition!?”

“Something that would mix with the animal grease rubbed on the witch’s body: the microscopic ecosystem of germs and bacteria found on anyone’s skin! That is also what determines your skin quality and the scent of your hair, so it will always differ between two people. The witches have always known a lot about handling medicinal herbs, so they used nothing but their own experiences to figure out fermentation and decomposition!!”

“But that means there’s no escaping it!”

“Does it, though? Heh heh heh☆”

The Bologna Succubus used her full speed flight to break through an aluminum alloy door and rolled across the floor, using her arms and wings to doubly protect Kamijou. He felt like they must have rolled all the way across one room and into another. He groaned and extracted his face from her chest.

He saw a tile floor.

Triple sets of faucets, showerheads, and mirrors lined one wall. And the intense humidity came from a bath so large it could be mistaken for a small pool.

The room they rolled right through must have been the dressing room.

Which made this…

“Is this a hot spa!?”

“I was already interested in Japan’s strange bath culture, so this kills two birds with one stone!”

Instead of getting up, the Bologna Succubus used her tail to pull the closest faucet’s lever.

“You might be interested to know that this is the women’s bath.”

“Is now really the time!?”

At least there wasn’t anyone else there.

Scalding hot water poured down on their heads just as several yellowish silhouettes passed through the door they had broken through and crawled along the tile floor and walls.

The room was twice the size of a classroom, but it was taken over in no time.

According to the Bologna Succubus, Aradia’s search spell was pursuing its targets using the microscopic ecosystem on their skin. That meant it could perhaps be evaded by either washing that off or by covering themselves in a liquid film.

“…”

Kamijou and the demoness soaked themselves in water above 40 degrees and rolled into the large tub.

Then they watched the silhouettes crawling along the wall nearby.

This was terrifying. Too terrifying to even gulp.

With white steam filling the air, the silhouettes of yellowish grease moved stickily around like they were dripping down the walls toward the mirrors. And just as it looked like they would reach the mirrors, they slipped into the gap between wall and mirror. Kamijou was so close he could hear the gross sounds of the bear grease moving. He also noticed a stench similar to rotten butter.

The movement stopped there.

At precisely Kamijou Touma’s eye level, something wriggled out from behind the mirror and onto its surface. Water and oil didn’t mix, so even after washing himself off with water so hot it hurt his skin, he wouldn’t have gotten rid of the entire threat. But the yellowish silhouette staring at him was only a shape, so it did not have any functional eyes. Nevertheless, he imagined the pressure of its gaze.

He wanted to fight back.

He wanted to shout at the top of his lungs and slam his right fist into the mirror. He wanted to be freed from this situation.

His body writhed unnaturally along with his heartbeat, but the demoness held him tight.

“(Be strong. You’re a boy, aren’t you?)”

That clued him into something.

The yellowish grease silhouette at his eye level did not react to her whispered voice. It lacked any auditory organs. The bear grease did not react no matter how close it was. If they lacked eyeballs and eardrums, they probably lacked every other senses as well.

This one was right in front of him and shared the same space as him, but that wasn’t what mattered.

The landmine would not trigger unless they touched it.

(Bear with it.)

He heard a sticky sound.

The yellowish grease on the mirror slid to the side and away from them like it had finally lost interest.

“Phew.”

And just as Kamijou let out the breath he had been holding the entire time, something dripped onto his head.

“………………………………………………………………………………”

It had an ochre coloration.

A yellowish silhouette was stuck to the ceiling and a single drop had fallen onto his head. And he touched it. First with his head and then with his right hand when he thoughtlessly reached up to see what he had felt on his head.

The gross liquid burst with a quiet popping sound.

And just like with security cameras, its destruction would be relayed to Aradia.

“Uh, oh.”

Not a moment later, the concrete wall was blown away as a witch beam shot their way.

===Part 6===

It was actually a pair of lips.

But Kamijou only identified the 10m squished elliptical shape torn in the wall after blowing away the beam with his right hand.

He was looking at a massive, deadly kiss mark.

Even her attacks had a somehow sexual aspect to them, perhaps because she was a witch.

The slender woman appeared in the hot spa like she had passed through a natural cave, but even that was odd.

Her long silver hair and giant wimple were spread wide behind her.

Maybe it was the temperature difference with the outside air, but the bath’s white steam was even more noticeable now.

Still soaked, Kamijou raised his fist and his voice.

“H-how the hell did you get in here!? We’re nowhere near the ground floor!”

“What kind of witch can’t fly?”

The yellowish grease silhouettes gathered around Aradia’s feet on the wet floor. They surrounded her like a strange flower or like cultists bowing toward the statue of their goddess.

The Bologna Succubus joined the conversation with her feet planted on the floor covered in bathwater, rubble, and filthy grease.

“Aradia!! How do you plan to survive the massive triple return for all this destruction!? All your bad deeds are turned back on you, so any magic you use here will only come back to destroy you in the end!”

“Will it? Then how am I standing here ''after killing him more than once''?”

“?”

Kamijou gasped.

Aradia pressed two fingers against her lips and blew gently through the gap between them. That was enough to produce an earsplitting high-pitched roar and an invisible shockwave passed right by Kamijou and the Bologna Succubus, breaking down the hot spa’s wall.

“Tch! The witches of the forests can control the winds to shake the royal ships! But doing this will only hurt you in the end!”

“It is true I am destroying this building, but who says that counts as a bad deed?”

“Hold on a tick. Aradia, don’t tell me…”

“What about someone who holds a grudge against the spa after being refused entrance? I bet the environmentalists worried about CO2 emissions would inwardly rejoice and claim I was saving the future by destroying a large bath that runs its giant boiler nonstop. Whether an act qualifies as a good or bad deed ''depends entirely on your point of view.'' So all I have to do is acquire the necessary point of view or interpretation needed to make me the good guy in everything I do. After that, Triple Reload loses its thorns.”

In that case, Aradia wouldn’t be affected by the triple return of her bad deeds that usually ensured witches did the right thing.

She snapped her fingers and several lights and sounds burst out.

Kamijou froze after realizing that was the gas pipe rupturing, but a soft sensation had already surrounded his mind by then. Aradia herself had tightly surrounded his body with her ankle-length purple fabric to protect him.

But he knew what that had to mean.

“''I have protected an innocent life from an explosion.''”

“Dammit. Dodge, Bologn-!!”

The Bologna Succubus had not been protected from the blast, so she flinched just long enough for Aradia’s long leg to jab her barefoot heel into the center of her gut. It didn’t look like an ordinary kick. The demoness had already been hit by the gas explosion, but then it was like a thick invisible wall slammed into her with three times the force. She was flung through the air and rolled all the way into the dressing room.

Aradia gently rubbed Kamijou’s head and gave him an adoring smile.

“This is what it means to receive triple the blessing of your own good deeds. Hee hee. And that triple can be stacked on top of itself as many times as necessary. Give me the chance and it will snowball far beyond anything you can handle. All I have to do is perform good deeds throughout my everyday life – ''or set things up so my actions are interpreted that way'' – and my power will eventually grow to the point that I can one-shot a Magic God or a Transcendent.”

“Kh.”

“And that judgment is made by the invisible monster known as the local ‘mood’. Or maybe you could call it the general consensus. Just like a class rep can criticize students for breaking the rules, but that very class rep can be labeled a tyrant if an outsider who doesn’t care if they are criticized manages to tilt the class’s consensus in their direction. All I need to do is monitor the current local ‘mood’ and adapt my actions accordingly. Then everything will be judged good.”

She saved people for malicious reasons.

She used people’s appreciation of good deeds and kindness to obtain the power needed to take lives.

Or in other words, she was a witch.

“Aradia!?”

“Killing you would be easy.”

Shouting her name was all Kamijou could manage.

He felt like his arms and torso were being squeezed by a thick crane wire or something, but that wasn’t the case. The constriction came from the two slender arms contained within the giant piece of cloth that fell to her ankles. Had kicking away the Bologna Succubus somehow been interpreted as a kindness or a good deed? He couldn’t break free. He heard a disconcerting creaking coming from his body, but was that his arms, his ribs, or his spine?

“Gah!?”

The squeezing of his ribs may have been applying pressure to his lungs because he had trouble breathing.

But he doubted he was going to suffocate to death. If he was going to die here, it would be from his flesh, bones, and organs all being crushed together.

“I must protect the witches.”

Aradia, on the other hand, was smiling thinly.

She displayed the unique joy of someone who had completed their task and was freed from all that tension.

“You would lead Alice to ruin our cabal’s plans and possibly even destroy the world we already have, so killing you is the same as saving the world – making it a very good deed indeed. So rest in peace. You have no chance of a comeback now. If you give in and let yourself pass out, it will be quick and painless. I do hope you accept ''this kind advice I am offering you''.”

“No chance of a comeback? You have a pretty poor opinion of your fellow Transcendents.”

Someone else interrupted.

They didn’t throw a punch or a kick and they didn’t send out a beam of light or a shockwave.

Nevertheless.

“Bh?”

The next body to squirm wasn’t Kamijou’s. Transcendent Aradia had been trying to crush a full human’s worth of weight with her arms, but now Kamijou felt an irregular tremor coming from her.

(What the hell?)

Again, there was no obvious injury.

The only thing he noticed was…

(''Goose bumps?'' But what is she so afraid of? Or is she feeling sick and nauseous? Yes, like from a crawling sensation along her skin.)

“Jgbwh!?”

It was like she couldn’t help herself.

Her seeming invincibility had vanished. She weakly shoved Kamijou away from her with her palms and then staggered back. No, she failed to do even that and collapsed to the filthy tile floor. Her legs lay weakly below her while she covered her mouth with a hand. Her face was pale. And not just her cheeks and forehead. The lips visible between her fingers were as well.

The Bologna Succubus stepped over the broken wall to reenter the spa. She used her spread wings and her tail to prop herself up like a tripod or a crutch, but she had a grin on her exhausted face.

She still made no attempt to cover up her underwear with rose thorn decorations.

“My Cold Mistress spell is nothing like your Rule of Three magic, but that’s why you’re helpless against it, isn’t it? After all, if used right, this could make me the only Transcendent in the cabal who could ''fight back against Alice''!!”

“Ba…lo…gna!?”

“And the cat’s out of the bag now that you’ve experienced it, so there’s no point in hiding what it does. …Here’s a history lesson for you, my pure boy. During the Inquisition so long ago, there were quite a few sinners who claimed to have slept with an incubus or a succubus. Of course, these were confessions extracted with torture. Still, their recorded confessions generally come in one of two flavors. Either it provided pleasure too great to be of this world or it was painful, cold, and disgusting.”

“…”

“Cold Mistress ''is a spell that replaces any and all pleasure signals with pain.'' The desires for food, sex, and sleep are all instructions meant to efficiently guide people toward survival and reproduction through their attempts to fulfill those animal desires. My magic turns that on its head. All pleasure is converted into pain, so I can easily kill anyone through starvation or sleep deprivation. And I’m sure you know what happens if everyone in the world stops having sex.”

Was that why?

Victory had been within reach, so Aradia would have been awash with the pleasure of achieving her goal. And all of that had been flipped around and replaced by the greatest agony. The greater someone’s happiness, the greater the hell the Bologna Succubus could condemn them to.

Aradia’s ability to intentionally misuse good deeds and kindness was horrific itself, but the Bologna Succubus’s magic carried the sweet scent of the profane.

Both the witch and the demon would never be known as good people no matter how great their deeds were.

“Bh.”

Nevertheless, Aradia slowly stood back up with her legs trembling below her. Her face was pale and her shoulders were slanted, but she had not lost her will to fight.

She was the goddess of all witches.

No matter how twisted her methods, the weight she carried may have been very real.

“I will save the witches who continue to suffer around the world. No matter what it takes.”

“I have no issue there.”

“So I will kill this dangerous boy who could lead Alice to destroy the world. It does not matter if he intends it or not. The fact remains that he could very well direct that innocent tyrant in the wrong direction. So he cannot be allowed to survive.”

“That is where our views differ. The real threat is Alice, not Kamijou Touma. No matter what he might think himself, he is no more than the kind of ordinary high school boy you can find anywhere. Thus, you are attacking him over a false accusation.” The usual flightiness in the winged demon’s voice was gone. “And I am the Bologna Succubus, the demoness who appears in the story of a death sentence handed down over history’s most absurd charge: running a brothel full of wanton succubi. This is no April Fools joke – someone actually died over it. Thus, ''my purpose in life is to protect the reputation of the falsely accused.'' I can never bring myself to overlook your barbaric and deadly false accusations here. Even if it means battling a fellow cabal member.”

“Ah…”

As unsteady as she was, Aradia glared at the boy.

No matter what, he was her actual target here.

“Aradia, my goal overlaps with yours some. If you would calm down and recall the absurd excuses for a trial that brought such hell to so many witches long ago, perhaps you could have become the benevolent goddess of the peaceful night who would actively shield Kamijou Touma from these very accusations. …Boy, I will assist you here, but if you wish to survive, you will need to settle this with your own fist.”

“Grahhhhhhhhh!!!!!” roared the goddess.

Kamijou took a step forward at the same moment.

Maybe Aradia’s intimidation was actually directed at the contradiction within herself rather than at someone as puny as Kamijou. She was telling that voice in her head to shut up and just let her mind break apart if that was what it took. In the face of that self-loathing, she chose to instead become an empty shell that continues to save the witches who rely on her.

Aradia’s bestial fingers started to cross with Kamijou Touma’s right fist.

But even under the effects of the Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress, the witch goddess carried the greater weight on her shoulders. She clenched her teeth, ignored the extreme pain, transformed herself into a wicked being for selfless reasons, and took careful aim.

She did not bother blocking the fist.

Even if his fist found her jaw, her nails would slice right through his torso. And if she could power through all the pain, then there would be no convenient accident to save him. If nothing else shook her even further, the vast gap in power between a high school boy and a Transcendent would become all too apparent.

However.

“''Gotten used to the pain yet,'' you masochist witch?”

“Gah!!!???”

A tremor ran through Aradia’s body.

Kamijou could guess what had happened. The Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress spell converted all pleasure signals into pain. With hunger, lust, drowsiness, and all other desires sealed off by that pain, any human or other lifeform would be trapped.

To take that step forward and continue to fight for the witches, Aradia had needed to accept so much pain it led people to reject the very act of living.

So what if the Bologna Succubus ''switched off'' that magic at the last second?

This didn’t shake her in the way the pain did by stealing away her concentration. The twisted agony vanished and all the pleasure and joy she should have been feeling came rushing back into her mind at once, so she found herself unable to control her emotions.

It only created less than a second of lag, but that was enough for Kamijou’s fist to catch up.

Kamijou Touma’s fist smashed through her approaching fingers and slammed dead center into her face.

===Part 7===

With a dull thud, Aradia crashed to the wet tile floor with her long silver hair and giant wimple spread out around her.

Kamijou Touma remained standing.

He was out of breath and covered in aches and pains, but he was still on his feet.

He kicked a small piece of concrete on the floor so it hit Aradia’s arm, but she didn’t noticeably react.

At long last, Kamijou Touma brushed a hand through his wet bangs.

“Phew.”

“No!! Do not let your guard down, boy!”

He tensed at the Bologna Succubus’s shout.

“Aradia is a stubborn one, so you need to punch her again and tie her up or whatever it takes. We can’t give her another chance at this, so if she manages to escape- gh!?”

She made a weird sound, so he spun around to find that seemingly invincible woman collapsing to the side. No, the pink wings and tail she was using to prop herself up like a tripod or crutch had given out. She couldn’t get her hand on the nearby wall, so she crashed down to the filthy tile floor.

And face down at that.

She had her mouth in the gray dust-filled bathwater, but there wasn’t a single twitch of movement from the hair spread out on top of her.

That reminded him of a question that had occurred to him earlier.

The Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress rejected all desire by replacing the pleasure signals with pain. That did sound powerful enough to singlehandedly fight against the entire magic side. But at the same time, it did nothing to defend against enemy attacks. So how had that demon defended herself from Aradia’s attack after using the gas explosion to power her Rule of Three magic?

''Had she'' defended herself?

“Hey!!”

Kamijou had misinterpreted what exactly a Transcendent was. Alice probably shouldn’t have been the first one he saw. He had ended up applying her extraordinary standards to the others as well.

The Bologna Succubus was a Transcendent, but what if ''she could still get injured and bleed like any human?'' If so, why had she gone so far to protect a complete stranger like Kamijou!? Why had she risked her life to leave herself exposed to a gas explosion and then take Aradia’s attack head on!?

“Listen. Gh, you need to deliver the finishing blow to Aradia! Cough, cough. Grlhwfy- let her escape and you may not have another chance at this.”

Kamijou looked alternately between Aradia and the Bologna Succubus.

But there was only one real answer.

The floor was soaked and people could drown in a puddle if they were too weak to get up. Plus, that demoness might as well have been hit by a car, so he had no idea what her condition was like on the inside.

He didn’t even have to think about it.

“''Bologna Succubus''!!”

“Are you daft?”

The injured demoness cursed under her breath when she saw the boy running her way, but he thought he noticed a slight smile on her face. She might complain about his decision, but she must have been in serious need of help.

Aradia had vanished from the floor.

Had she escaped outside through the broken wall? If so, she would treat her wounds and prepare to take Kamijou’s life again. But that was fine with him. As long as he could assist the Bologna Succubus now. Because she had no reason to even be here. If she had given up on Kamijou’s life, she never would have had to fight anyone. But after seeing a stranger being attacked over ''false accusations'', she had felt compelled to travel all the way to Shibuya, Japan, and stand in her fellow cabal member’s way.

He couldn’t let someone with such a good heart die.

He could never live with himself if he did.

He picked her up from the wet tile floor and lent her his shoulder. He clenched his teeth at how weirdly soft her limp form felt.

“Listen, Bologna Succubus. We need to get away from here for now. I can’t lay you down and treat your wound in this damp hot spa.”

“Aradia will be…back soon.”

“I understand that.”

“No, you really don’t.”

She was weak, but she got her words out clearly.

She was very obviously displeased with his decision.

But not because she was letting her emotions get the better of her.

That kindhearted demon knew harshly scolding him would improve his odds of survival even a little, so it was a show put on for his benefit.

She was the Cold Mistress, a scorned being who brought a painful death to everyone she held in her embrace. Or that was the claim made by all the “educated” people talking about her behind her back.

Kamijou thought they could all go to hell.

“Aradia has her own pride as a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal. The two of us have left that pride in tatters. Both her pride in her combat abilities and in her ideology. Yet we failed to deliver the finishing blow to truly end this conflict. We cannot expect her to hold anything back now. She will pull out all the stops next time. Witch Goddess Aradia really will tear apart Shibuya and the rest of Tokyo – which includes Academy City – in order to kill you and you alone. And you will die for good next time.”

She might show exasperation, she might criticize his decisions, she might tease him, and she might insult him, but the Bologna Succubus never once attempted to abandon Kamijou. She had lost the only pathway to victory she could think of, but she was still determined to fight alongside him to protect him.

She was worried for him, so she couldn’t bring herself to abandon this complete stranger.

That was the only reason.

His newfound understanding of that allowed him to detect the feelings packed into the core of her rebuke.

“That was our one and only chance to peacefully end this battle against Aradia, but you threw it out. That was the worst decision you could have made. Ugh, and I too am a magician of the Bridge Builders Cabal, remember? I am one of the Transcendents attempting to change the world to fit my personal ideal and I am sure we would find ourselves in conflict over how to deal with Alice. So you should have let your future enemy die- ksh- and dealt with Aradia!”

“Shut up,” he bluntly cut in.

Each and every member of that extreme cabal supposedly rivaled the entire magic side. To Aradia and the Bologna Succubus, Kamijou Touma probably was a truly puny being. Whether they wanted to kill him or protect him, they simply expected to have their way there, so his fate wasn’t in his own hands here.

But he said it anyway.

If she intended to stab him in the back, she should have kept her mouth shut, but that kindhearted magician had openly called herself his enemy.

So he spoke plainly to the woman who had selflessly saved his life.

“Do you really think I could have done that?”

Transcendent Aradia would be back. And soon.

But he wanted to be the kind of person who wouldn’t even hesitate to say he had made the right decision here.

===Between the Lines 1===

The two of them walked through the automatic door, fully ignoring the “no pets allowed” sticker on the tempered glass.

That door led into the Miyashita Ark, a large shopping mall in Shibuya.

A golden retriever stuck his tongue out next to a blonde woman in a beige habit.

“The place is deserted.”

“Not surprising after a commotion like that. We’re talking about a battle between two Transcendents here. Even the ''guards'' fled for their lives.”

A dull clattering sound came from the two stuffed duffel bags the human was carrying.

Aleister, the magician who had hijacked Great Demon Coronzon’s body, showed no hesitation in his gait. There were more than 90 small shops in the mall, but he led the golden retriever straight to a multinational restaurant.

He viewed the photo of French ramen with shrimp and cheese and a toxic neon orange soup displayed on a poster that would provide further information on your phone.

“This half-assed campaign is challenging people to eat an XXL serving of ramen, but the best dish they make is the fish & chips. And that’s coming from someone who was born in England and eventually came to hate the place, so you know it has to be good.”

“So is the multinational thing ''a bluff'' and it’s actually an English restaurant?”

“Oh, the entire restaurant is a front,” he casually responded on his way inside.

There was no one inside the restaurant either. Which was perfect. Aleister wouldn’t shy away from bloodshed, but he would prefer to avoid wasting perfectly good food.

“Now this is a surprise,” he said. “This really is convenient.”

“Is it really that much help? You had already checked the place out, hadn’t you?”

“Even so. ''They'' are generally a group of wandering treasure keepers who don’t even give their group a name to keep people from tracking them. It is highly unusual for them to stay in one place for so long. A restaurant isn’t the only place you find largescale refrigeration equipment: labs, factories, harbor warehouses, refrigerated trucks, cargo ships, wood dryers, and so on. So they can change their disguise as often as necessary.”

“But why would they run away? Even if these treasures are small enough to carry with you, that seems like all the more reason they would stay here and defend them with their lives.”

“The people onsite don’t even know what they’re storing, so why would they throw away their lives away for it? Ha ha. For once, the extreme information restrictions set in place by their central group has come back to bite them.”

They crossed the deserted restaurant to the very back.

The vibe given off by the wallpaper and lighting changed once they were inside the professional kitchen. It was all cold fluorescent lights and sterile tile. Aleister found this more comfortable. The large silver countertop was so systematically organized it was reminiscent of a hospital’s autopsy table. It was hard to imagine any food prepared here making a pleasant meal that put a smile on people’s faces.

This was the place’s true face.

By adding on more and more camouflage to keep this icy atmosphere from escaping the confines of the tiled space, a popular restaurant had eventually formed.

“''They'' were originally an organization tasked with eternally preserving the remains of holy men and women deep in the snowy British mountains. Of course, these people couldn’t come back to life and disappear like the Son of God. They were a little more grounded.”

“Eternally preserved corpses? I occasionally hear that legend from the former Soviet Union, but it looks to me like they just froze their dead people. That does not qualify as preservation on the microscopic level. The cells will be constantly breaking down.”

“That doesn’t really matter to them. I know you haven’t lost your love of romance in your old age, so would you be interested in seeing Robin Hood’s corpse? What about Jack the Ripper’s? That’s the kind of person ''they'' now specialize in preserving. But the death of someone that charismatic can be a powerful thing. A nearly eternal amount of time is needed to soften the blow and lesson the people’s sorrow.”

“You know an awful lot about this.”

“I dabbled in the topic ''in relation to the previous Imagine Breaker.'' Although that was something the Golden cabal stole and modified for their own purposes.”

Aleister was referencing the weapon stored in a certain armory that he had used to deliver the finishing blow to Mathers.

But he also hung his head for some reason.

“And back in 1947, I was very nearly made a part of ''their'' collection. And I only avoided that fate because that perfectionist of a doctor put me in ''too perfect'' a state of suspended animation.”

Several pieces of industrial equipment were lined up by the wall. No ordinary home would have one so large or one that only had a freezer with no refrigerator.

There were seven in all and Aleister stopped in front of the fifth one.

“But not even a group dedicated to preservation can do so indefinitely. It became clear that all forms of sanctuary were being ransacked during World War Two.”

Aleister lowered his two duffel bags to the tile floor.

“So the occult sphere was so ''overwhelmed by anxiety'' that some British witches even performed a strange cursing ritual in the nude until some of them froze to death. British witches fighting the approaching German army with curses sounds like something from a B-movie, but it was very real.”

“So this group needed to evacuate their ‘treasures’?”

“Ever since, their most dangerous stash has only ever been kept in temporary locations. Because that war taught them that the national borders are not a trustworthy defense. If you want to hide something, you spread it around and constantly move it around instead of keeping it all in a single secure building. Heh heh. The Miyashita Ark, huh? ''They'' claim to be travelers, but I get the feeling ''they'' were the ones behind the opening of this new shopping mall. If I missed them here, it might have been decades before I tracked them down again.”

He used both hands to fling open the doors to a refrigerator larger than a drink vending machine.

A white chill pushed out at him.

At first glance, it only looked like it contained frozen blocks of shrimp soup, a curry separated into frozen blocks of meat and a frozen paste, and other restaurant food. If a chef who didn’t know the truth happened to open the door, they would likely find nothing amiss. But after moving that camouflage out of the way, Aleister spotted the true prize found in the very back.

He saw a 49kg mass measuring about 150cm long.

A modern preserved corpse was wrapped in several layers of plastic wrap and coated with a layer of frost.

“Found her.”

“So do we now make a swift withdrawal?”

“I would love to, but I am not lugging 49kg of frozen corpse home with me.”

“Sigh. You’re getting old, Aleister.”

“I think I’m doing pretty good for someone born in 1875.”

Meanwhile, Aleister pulled out the solidly frozen mass (using the great demon’s youthful body). He laid it on the silver countertop with a dull thud.

Then he unzipped the heavy bags he had placed on the floor. They contained a roll of thick plastic sheets, ethanol disinfectant in a spray bottle, and a UV light so powerful direct exposure to the skin would be dangerous.

By disinfecting the entire space – including floor, walls, and ceiling – and forcing the air to swell out from within, he could create an isolated space on the same level as an emergency operating room during a disaster or a field hospital on the battlefield.

Next, he pulled out some precision equipment nicer than anything found inside a smartphone and lined it up on the countertop.

“So I’m at least going to fiddle with the contents before taking her back to my lab. That way she can walk back herself – no carrying necessary.”

“With battery power?”

“Wireless power. Fueling the human body with the nutrients found in their food is terribly inefficient, really. We live in a more ecofriendly world now, so let’s turn this legendary magician into a sustainable something-or-other.”

The golden retriever pulled out a cigar, but Aleister snatched it away. The thorough sterilization of the room would be meaningless with the dog puffing away on that.

The dog looked upset, but started chewing on the bone-shaped gum he was given instead.

“So this is a ‘she’ to you? Sounds like you think this corpse still has a personality.”

“This is all a waste of time if I can’t ''rebuild her'' that way.”

Aleister sounded so casual as he turned to face the 150cm mass.

And the human who created the very concept of the science side spoke to it.

“Rise and shine, Anna Kingsford, our true starting point.”

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