Difference between revisions of "Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Prologue"
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And if this was the final dumping ground for the lowest of the low souls… |
And if this was the final dumping ground for the lowest of the low souls… |
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“What’s this, what’s this?” |
“What’s this, what’s this?” |
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Revision as of 19:06, 1 October 2024
Prologue: Welcome – the_DIE_After_Tomorrow.
“You will die.”
“That doesn’t change my answer.”
The end result had been determined from the very beginning.
The result at the very end of the choice Kamijou Touma made so easily.
“Whatever it takes, I will end this so Index is safe and Alice is smiling.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“The girl wants…”
“…to make up…with you.”
“I…”
“I don’t…”
“I don’t want to see anyone suffering from even more misfortune than me!! You got a problem with that!?”
“January 6, 11:58 PM.”
“The transported patient has been confirmed deceased. There is nothing I can do when he’s already dead.”
“Could this be…?”
“The afterli-”
“My, my.”
“It is ❌ ⌚ for you to be here yet, is it?”
“Aren’t you the other one? Um, Kings…oh, right. Anna Kingsford?”
“🎯.”
“Or perhaps you did ❌ know in the first place.”
“Besides, I am meant to be ☠️.☆”
“You have indeed, Kamijou Touma.”
“And I am ❌ strong willed enough to sit idly by when someone is ❌ rewarded for their efforts.”
“What are you even trying to do in this literal dead end!?”
“I am trying to serve those around me.”
“As an expert, I have a secret technique you could call a Hell Tour.”
“…”
“My, my. If that does ❌ mean much to you, what if I called it a Jailbreak?”
“Now.”
“How about you kick out this shitty predetermined ending and join me in making a comeback?”
…So what part of this was a lie?
The unfortunate boy refused to fully believe this offer. To him, it sounded far too good to be true.
A woman stood before Kamijou Touma in the empty white space.
Anna Kingsford.
She had an elegant smile on her face.
And she held her right hand out toward him.
He was taken aback, but he took that hand for now.
For now?
No, this was all a definite “choice” made by Kamijou himself.
In that instant…
Fwoosh!!!
The white space changed.
The entire space became a dense forest filled with black rocks and damp trees. No, he technically couldn’t tell the color. Because it was all enveloped by thick shadow, letting darkness rule over it all. There was no moonlight and he could only see a vague orange light in the distance. But seeing that light in the darkness did nothing to allay his fears. His instincts told him that was a harmful light, like that of lava or a forest fire.
His body felt heavy.
He felt like he had been left behind in a narrow tunnel after a deadly accident. Simply staring into the darkness felt like a great weight bearing down on him.
“What is this place?”
“You could 💬 it the entrance to hell, I suppose.”
Hell.
So he had to start from the bottom.
He had died for his own selfish reason, so he hadn’t expected to get to go to heaven.
That much made sense, but what was that about a jailbreak?
He had consciously chosen death. Would the world really allow him to keep going from there?
Or was this some kind of test?
The other Anna did not even seem surprised.
Was this all part of what she had expected?
“Really, it is constructed from several different ideas mixed together, but having three dimensions to move in is more convenient, don’t you think?”
That explanation meant nothing to Kamijou.
She tugged on his hand, lifting his hips from the ground. He fully stood up.
He realized he could feel her warmth. And the soft, smooth sensation of a woman’s hand.
His breathing. His sweat.
The beating of his heart.
Everything that had been absent earlier came rushing back.
Was this real then?
He seemed to have defined it that way for himself.
But he was already dead…supposedly, anyway. So he had no clue at all what he was supposed to do from here. A hell tour? A jailbreak? Could he really return to life? He couldn’t picture it himself. That left him with only one choice: follow Kingsford’s lead. She was his guide through hell, so he was done for if he upset her and she abandoned him in this darkness.
The two of them walked through the dark, pathless forest.
Kamijou did not look back. He felt some kind of presence here and there in the darkness. He was terribly curious what was making those horrific noises, but he was afraid turning his head even once would end with him losing sight of Kingsford’s back just a meter ahead of him, leaving him lost in the woods with no sense of direction.
“Wh-where do we start?”
“From step one. In 🪄, that is the most basic rule and the deepest of secrets. I understand your impatience, but do ❌ even 💭 about skipping a step.”
When an expert said it, it was hard to tell if she was joking or not.
She really had passed between the worlds of the living and the dead while still human. Like she was returning to her hometown for the bon festival.
Kamijou focused all his attention in case some offhand comment of hers carried critical meaning.
“But to be more specific, we start by passing through the 🚪. The 🚪 to hell☆”
“To hell?”
They continued a while through the damp forest where each and every step felt so heavy. That might seem simple, but without Kingsford’s guidance, Kamijou might have rotted down to the soul and become a tree bearing an oddly face-like stain.
Something came into view.
It was made of stone, but it wasn’t a building.
The grand gate felt at odds with the word “hell”.
A pair of wooden doors were contained within a hemispherical arch of stone. There weren’t even stone walls on either side. Even so, it created a “border”. In that sense, it may have been similar to the torii at a Shinto shrine, but it felt wrong to liken this to them.
This led to hell.
It may have been a monstrous maw.
A metal plate was mounted at the top of the arching gate, but Kamijou couldn’t read what it said. It looked like the alphabet, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t English. He searched through his pockets, but he couldn’t find his phone to use its translation app.
But.
The plate wasn’t his main concern.
“I 💭 that would be ‘abandon all hope, ye who enter here’.”
Anna Kingsford commented on the metal plate, but Kamijou’s attention was elsewhere.
Someone sat in front of the half-open gate.
But this was no gatekeeper. He was casually seated on the flat steps leading to the gate. The closest comparison was a delinquent using the stone stairs next to the street or in a park as a bench.
Yes, the silver-haired man clad in red was calm enough to actually enjoy hell.
He was another expert.
Undoubtedly so.
And he was no stranger to Kamijou.
This was hell.
The most sinful of the dead were sent to this place.
This world.
This layer.
This phase.
And if this was the final dumping ground for the lowest of the low souls…
“What’s this, what’s this?”
Wasn’t this…
Wasn’t this a perfectly reasonable outcome!?
“This old man was so bored I was reluctant to keep going. But maybe I should rethink this world. It’s finally decided to offer up some real entertainment.”
CRC.
Christian Rosencreutz.
The greatest expert who brought nothing but death and destruction – the sinner who had supposedly died ahead of Kamijou – was grinning over at him.
