Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume13 Chapter1

Chapter 1: A Change – Magician, Witch, Wizard, and…

Part 1

Suddenly.

Something caused the sound of the cold rain to vanish.

Only nothingness remained.

The air temperature must have fallen below freezing. A red – strangely red – snow fell from the leaden sky.

“…”

Kamijou Touma didn’t bother mentioning it.

If he shifted his gaze away from dead ahead for even a split second, Great Demon Coronzon would use that instant to kill him. He was certain of it.

Kamijou, Alice Anotherbible, Great Demon Coronzon, and Vidhatri lying limp and passed out by his side.

He couldn’t see a single positive element to this.

In that silent world, the “kathunk, kathunk” of a subway train passing by sounded deafening loud.

“What’s the matter, human?” whispered the great demon, slowly spreading her arms and wings.

Her long, long blonde hair tangled around her wings and fingertips like spider web.

“Surely, surely you aren’t planning to thoughtlessly charge right at me? You might still be able to get away. Or maybe if you could use that right hand of yours properly. Kee hee hee. At the very least, falling back would improve your chance of survival over a blind charge.”

“Teacher,” sharply warned Alice Anotherbible. “These are the words of a great demon. They might sound kind, but she would never say anything out of concern for someone.”

Something crackled.

From very close by.

The violently flashing orange light resembled the sparks produced by steel striking steel.

…Sparks?

“Don’t tell me…”

“Magic usage causes slight fluctuations in this world and the collisions between the unseen overlapping phases produce sparks which can at times be deadly. They are the source of the tragedy that sent Aleister Crowley down his path of carnage. What you see now is the result of my power bringing them down to this lower physical world and giving them form,” explained Coronzon, enjoying herself.

This wasn’t the only thing the great demon could do. She had purposefully chosen this from the near endless cards in her deck.

Kamijou heard another unpleasant sparking sound.

A drum-shaped security robot had burst from within.

It was possible Accelerator was monitoring this from afar and he was using the unmanned machines to search out an escape route through the minefield.

It went without saying what would happen if a human body contacted that…unless it was worse than it seemed.

“The surface-level destruction is a mere trifle. Contact that and you will die. I am not talking about the surface-level shock or destruction. It will ensure your death at the more fundamental level of destiny.”

Yes.

Aleister Crowley had failed to overturn this at his peak, so he had lost his wife and daughter. This was that same tragedy.

“And I have another warning. That third tree? Clonoth, was it? That caught me off guard in the UK and stripped my essence from my physical body, but that will not work again.”

The remaining security robots wavered a little.

“After all, I am not a pure demon anymore. Human Aleister’s symbols have been mixed in with me.”

The great demon curled her lips upward and laughed from deep in her throat.

Aleister.

She looked amused to no end that he was disturbing the human world even after he was gone.

“So what will you do, Kamijou Touma?”

She was a great demon, so she didn’t believe in benevolent coincidences or divine miracles to begin with.

“There are only two options in this world: a merciless death void of miracles, or a false miracle formed by human hands.”

“…”

“I know you know what happens if you stop thinking and pray to god without preparing anything yourself. How severe was the cost of crawling back up out of hell, Kamijou Touma? But all that will be for nothing if you fail to make the smart move here.”

(Well, this could hardly be worse.)

Kamijou felt like he had been abandoned in the middle of a minefield.

He was surrounded in all directions by invisible mines that would kill him on contact. And he didn’t even know how far they were distributed, so he had no sense of how far he had to flee in order to survive.

“Ugh, really? Just for your information…”

Coronzon had set all this up, but she still looked somehow displeased.

Even though she supposedly had an absolute advantage here.

As if the grand surprise she had spent so much effort preparing was going unappreciated, so she had to explain it for him.

“I didn’t just lay these out there. I can move them at will. So that is not a minefield you are standing in – it is a monster’s gaping maw. If I close it, you will be crushed between its jaws. I know you puny humans of this lower world only understand the things you can see, but surely that is enough for you to appreciate your situation.”

In other words, staying still wasn’t enough to save him.

He had been doomed from the beginning.

Kamijou’s right hand contained Imagine Breaker. He might be able to break one or two of the invisible fangs. But would that be enough to defeat the monster? If it ignored the pain and forced its mouth shut, he was dead. It would be over in an instant.

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

…He didn’t stand a chance.

What would he accomplish by charging in recklessly? He had previously fought Great Demon Coronzon in the UK. His right arm and the rest of his body had been smashed right away that time.

Imagine Breaker…was not enough.

He heard a footstep on metal grating rather than asphalt.

Great Demon Coronzon must have noticed the fear and confusion that hearing that single footstep caused because an amused smile spread across her face.

“Why are you doing this now? We already settled this back in the UK!”

“Why?”

Coronzon snorted.

It grew into full-on mocking laughter.

“Of all things, you’re asking for my purpose and objective!? Kamijou Touma, do you want a similar explanation for how you came back to life? You didn’t turn back from hell because you calmly completed the items on a to do list!! You sought life because the state of life is natural for you and you never questioned that idea. It’s no different for me! This is what I have always been!!”

“So you’re really going to bring countless people to tears just because you never had a particular reason to stop!?”

“I have been true to myself no matter what happened.”

She said it so lightly.

Like someone humming the popular song playing on endless loop in a restaurant.

“Natural decomposition – tearing apart all things and returning them to nothing – is my role of dispersion. How could I trust in myself if I was one thing one day and another thing another day? You puny beings seem capable of that, but perhaps it is the result of your excess of free will.”

“…”

“It was that side of you that ended up tormenting Aleister to the bitter end. To be clear, I will be the one to destroy the world, but it was you who opened the box, Kamijou Touma.”

A grin split Coronzon’s face as she said this.

She was finally back in the outside world.

She couldn’t seem to contain her amusement.

“My value is 333 and my meaning is dispersion. I rule over one line on the great tree, yet I induce discord and betrayal to tear apart the bonds between people and obstruct human evolution. Do you really think I am going to stop? Now that I have been freed, of course I am going to work toward that end with every second available to me!!”

“Teacher,” interrupted Alice Anotherbible.

She looked unusually grim.

As if to say her role as a Transcendent, essentially a part in divine school play, were being stripped from her by the alarm ringing from the audience seating.

Was that young-looking girl perceiving something Kamijou couldn’t see?

“You can’t hold a conversation with Great Demon Coronzon. Not the way you’re doing it anyway. She can’t be won over by what’s right. In her mind, all things falling apart and all people suffering through pandemonium is the most healthy and active state for the world. She only sees your kindness and compassion as a toxin that will cool and solidify the world.”

“!!”

“And she loathes that toxin in her own way. That is why your words can never stop her.”

So did he have to fight?

Countless unseen sparks had been placed around him.

Standing within a monster’s gaping maw was nothing but suicide.

And even if he did escape that, he would only have managed to reach the same playing field as her. Being able to defeat full-power Coronzon was another matter entirely.

He was looking at a battle with a higher being who had easily forced Aleister into submission. He couldn’t imagine how to get started, much less win. Fight or flee, anything he tried seemed like it would only work against him.

But.

“I won’t die…”

Even so, Kamijou Touma’s lips were trembling.

So he forced the words out through clenched teeth.

“I won’t die again!! I was already saved from hell once, so I won’t give up my life so easily!!”

Great Demon Coronzon grinned, but was she mocking how obviously terrified he was or how he had nothing to back up those words.

But in fact, Kamijou Touma did not die.

Because something pierced a straight through that space.

It tore apart the area between Kamijou and Coronzon.

That meant it hadn’t been aimed at Coronzon. Was this clearing a route by intentionally triggering the invisible mines laid out all around him?

(A tear…beam? It can’t be!!)

“Much better. You’ve finally got the right attitude, Kamijou Touma.”

“Ha ha. Boy, did your death put a damper on your hot-bloodedness?”

Nephthys.

And Niang-Niang?

“You mustn’t throw your life away. I see you finally arrived at the simplest answer that no one in the real world seems capable of following, Kamijou Touma.”

“I like this version of you better than your weird recklessness. It’s a lot more reassuring for those of us saving your ass.”

Magic Gods.

They were not a new side to this battle.

They were clearly taking Kamijou’s side and taking up positions to cover him.

Kamijou stared in shock.

Did they just say they were saving him?

From this!?

“Hey, wait. You’re under no obligation to help me out of this mess!!”

They didn’t even bother turning around.

The Magic Gods were facing Great Demon Coronzon in a more casual way, but they were also unwavering.

Even though they had to have a better grasp of the situation than Kamijou.

Yet they still spoke firmly.

“My, my. Have you forgotten that I am Nephthys, a god?”

“And I’m Niang-Niang. How about you let us take over for once? You died and came back, but you didn’t get Magic Godded by it. That means you’re nothing special. Live or die, you’re just a normal human. …And you ordinary people don’t need to deal with creeps like this. The monsters can slay the other monsters.”

Alice held her silence for a while.

But she finally opened her mouth.

“The girl will go with her teacher.”

“Good idea. It’ll be safer if he keeps a trump card with him. To be honest, if softhearted Kamijou Touma escaped on his own, I’d half expect him to be back before long. So go show him to the exit, little miss monster. But if you let him die, I will hunt you down.”

“Hey, quit deciding everything for me!”

Nephthys gave a simple answer to his protest.

“Risking your own skin is all well and good, but if you fall here, then who will bring that girl there to safety?”

Only then did Kamijou remember.

That’s right.

He and Alice weren’t the only ones here.

A Transcendent had collapsed before his eyes while trying to inform Alice of the threat.

Vidhatri.

If she was still alive, he couldn’t just abandon her here. If everyone here tried to fight and were wiped out, there would be no one left to help her. Then she would certainly be killed by Coronzon too.

After reminding him of his responsibility here, Nephthys spoke kindly.

“Make sure she gets away.”

“…Thanks!!”

This was only an excuse, of course. A ritual used to rid Kamijou of his guilt and allow him to act freely.

Nephthys ordinarily acted so irresponsible, but she really did seem godlike here.

“I have a question.”

Someone spoke.

Great Demon Coronzon was smiling.

“What logical reason do I have to let them get away after you held your strategy meeting right in front of me? Not much is more challenging than a retreat when you are at a severe disadvantage!!”

Something new emerged.

This time, it wasn’t even human. It was a golden retriever.

The dog spoke human language.

“Drop straight down!!”

A loud noise followed.

Alice Anotherbible’s small hands had torn up part of the metal grating below their feet. Kamijou, carrying Vidhatri, and Alice didn’t hesitate to jump down onto the roof of the subway train passing through the tunnel below.

An impact.

Continuous shaking. Slipping to the side. But he somehow managed to get a grip on the roof.

He didn’t seem to have hit any of those sparks. They had surrounded him in all directions, but apparently only in two dimensions.

“Looks like we barely escaped with our lives.”

The golden retriever was with them.

What was his name again? Whatever his name, that cute doggy was in fact connected to the infamous Kihara family.

But now wasn’t the time to worry about that.

Kamijou groaned as he adjusted his grip on limp Vidhatri atop the train’s roof. That was all he could manage.

“I went to the trouble of coming back to life…and all I can do is run away? Dammit.”

“Staying alive is an accomplishment in and of itself, if you ask me,” said the dog. “At the very least, you overturned that Coronzon person’s expectations.”

“…”

“Dammit,” cursed Kamijou again. He wasn’t about to give up here.

The train was on the move.

This small seam gave him a new start.

Part 2

Kamijou Touma, Alice Anotherbible, and the rest had left.

That left Magic Gods Nephthys and Niang-Niang and Great Demon Coronzon.

The higher beings faced each other as red snow fell around them.

“Oh, right.”

The first to speak was Nephthys, the bandaged beauty with silver hair and brown skin.

“I will be killing you here, but I wanted to ask you something first.”

“I’m not here to fulfill your final request. I’m planning on killing billions after this. I can’t give individuals too much attention. It’s a waste of resources.”

“That isn’t what I meant. Is that human still inside you? Or has he been fully destroyed?”

“Did you think a great demon like me would bother using a pathetic hostage?”

“That still isn’t what I meant. I just want to know if I should feel even a little bad after I kill you.”

She made it sound so simple.

And certain.

The Magic God was not swayed by the great demon title. Just like during their previous battle in the UK.

“To be clear, we will be killing you either way,” said Niang-Niang, hiding her mouth behind her modified China dress’s baggy sleeve.

But she wasn’t smiling.

Not now.

“I know this might sound weird coming from Magic Gods who are willing to die to accomplish our goals, but you really should have let it end after you lost last time. Digging this all back up is just a waste of time.”

A tear spilled from Nephthys’s right eye. An unnaturally large tear.

While she laughed and spoke.

It could be easy to forget since she was too powerful, but battle was not that bandaged beauty’s forte. This was her greatest trait as an Egyptian Magic God.

“I weep for you, Niang-Niang.”

The propagating tear.

In other words, a power boost.

A Magic God’s already ultimate power was being boosted further by another Magic God.

Boosting, raising, buffing, multiplying – none of those words were sufficient to describe this.

This was on another level entirely from their playtime at the student dorm.

“It’s the same for Aleister and Coronzon.”

“You’ve already tried this a few times, so you could say history has already proven the futility of it. Digging it all back up like this isn’t going to end well for you.”

All expression suddenly vanished from Coronzon.

On her noh mask of a face, words gathered in her mouth.

“These are the intruders who impede natural decomposition. Can false gods who began as no more than human never progress beyond this point?”

“Huh?”

“Not that it matters,” muttered Coronzon, already back to herself.

She did not answer Niang-Niang’s question.

What Coronzon did say was simple.

“By the way, how much did you hear? Having to explain it all over and over again is a pain, so I’d like to skip what I can.”

“You expect understanding from gods? And really, what right does a demon have to judge us? We’re the ones testing you, dumbass.”

“I see. So you understand none of it. Then I will keep it simple, so even your single brain cell can comprehend.”

The crackling of sparks came from around Nephthys and Niang-Niang.

All 360 degrees around them.

“This is not a minefield. It is a gaping maw lined with countless fangs.”

Part 3

Still being atop the subway train when it pulled into a station would probably cause a panic and they would get in trouble for riding without paying. The train happened to stop before the next station because one of the signals indicated some minor trouble, so Kamijou’s group took that chance to climb down from the roof. It seemed lucky…but with Kamijou Touma that wasn’t an option. It was the result of how badly damaged Academy City was.

Climbing down from the roof was a challenge when carrying someone unconscious. Kamijou was walking it to the end of the tunnel with Vidhatri on his back when the golden retriever asked a question. That the dog spoke human language went without saying at this point.

“Where are you headed?”

“Phew. District 12. The old Bridge Builders Cabal consulate.”

He couldn’t let Great Demon Coronzon kill him. But what could he actually do? She had only been defeated last time at the end of a battle that dragged the entire world into it. Would he have to go through that again? Academy City was already damaged and repairs were slow in coming, so a battle on that scale could easily reduce the entire city to a pile of rubble.

An emergency exit led to a narrow stairway up to the surface. The creepy but bewitching red snow continued to fall. But his breath was white like normal. While viewing the strange scene, Kamijou pulled his phone from his pocket with Vidhatri still on his back.

It was 4 PM, the weather was snowy, and the temperature was -3 degrees.

(It’s no use. I don’t know who would be safe to contact.)

He had a communication device, but he was hesitant to use it. Because he was still officially considered dead. Contacting a classmate or friend would only cause a panic and ordinary Anti-Skill was out of the question. He had only just escaped those Bio Secure people chasing after him with flamethrowers. Not much time had passed at all.

“Teacher, let’s get to the consulate. You can think and call someone after getting some rest.”

“Good point…”

Yes, the consulate.

He wanted time to calm down and think. He couldn’t even come up with any ideas right now. The appearance of Great Demon Coronzon had radically changed things, but he still needed to get to the Bridge Builders Cabal consulate in District 12.

His breath was white.

And that wasn’t all.

“By the way, what is this red snow?”

That had been bugging him.

It didn’t seem to be something Coronzon had done. He reached out just his right hand with Vidhatri supported with his left arm and let some land on his fingertip, but the ice crystal only melted into a drop of water like normal. There was no sign of anything being negated. In that case, had some strange impurity in the air gotten mixed in when the ice crystal was solidifying? He had heard of things like smog and yellow sand changing the color of snow. Maybe it was related to the gas and dust caused by the shells and explosives used in all the recent large-scale battles.

When the snow melted on his fingertip, the resultant drop was clear. So it didn’t seem like blood or some other red liquid had frozen into snow. That was another point toward his theory it was an impurity in the crystal.

…In that case, as bewitching as the red snow looked, it might not be very clean. What did the color red represent? And aside from that, this was city snow which would be full of exhaust.

“Alice, don’t eat the snow.”

“Ehhh!?”

“Why is that so shocking!? There are plenty of other good things to eat!”

“Ugh, fine.”

“You either, doggy.”

“I would hope you could expect a little more intelligence and romance from me.”

At any rate, walking out in the open didn’t seem like a good idea. Kamijou was known as a walking corpse and carrying limp Vidhatri on his back made him look he was committing some kind of crime. Not to mention the little girl and the large dog not on a leash. Their party was practically asking to be taken in for questioning.

“Uh, oh…”

Someone was dancing on the street up ahead.

She looked to be…middle school aged, maybe?

She had a small collapsible umbrella to keep the red snow off of her and her phone was propped up against the edge of a shrubbery, so she must have thought the unusual weather was an opportunity of some kind.

Was it late enough for school to be out already?

Then again, it was the first day back after winter break, so maybe most schools were only having half days.

(I don’t even know when school lets out anymore. I’m drifting further and further from a peaceful life…)

That was a life-or-death problem. For a high schooler anyway.

Snow was accumulating and it wasn’t Christmas. Maybe there just wasn’t much traffic and maybe all the confusion had prevented the snow from being cleared, but the streets were starting to be covered by the red snow and even the trains were having to stop fairly frequently but irregularly. Not many people would want to head out on a day like this, but as someone who was officially dead, Kamijou still wanted to do his best to avoid being seen. That meant avoiding the person jumping and dancing on the sidewalk with no concern for her short skirt and even walking to the center of a big intersection and slowly turning in a full circle to get a 360-degree shot. The cheerful girl’s extrovert energy pushed Kamijou Touma away, forcing him into the narrow side streets. As the kind of person who preferred to take the far corner seat on the train even when no one else was aboard, he really didn’t mind all that much. Although he was somewhat disgusted with himself for how little it bothered him.

“I really don’t want to make a habit of taking my walks in the shadows.”

“It’s not so bad. Do it enough and it stops feeling weird.”

The dog’s advice did not help improve his mood.

He wanted to do something about it before he reached that point.

But while he was choosing the more deserted paths, it was still midday on a weekday. And he was carrying an unconscious girl on his back, but no one was stopping him. Was ordinary Anti-Skill not functioning well? That was fine as long as no one realized the gravity of it, but this could get bad if some devious people took notice.

Their destination was District 12. It was the most religious district and located on the east side of the city.

They had to take a wide detour around District 23 since it was generally off limits, so it ended up a long walk.

“Phew.”

A lot of time had passed by the time they arrived. It was just past 5 PM or thereabouts. In January, the sun would have been setting at this time, but the clouds were blocking it today.

They had arrived at the familiar consulate…sort of.

It was unrecognizable.

It seemed to have collapsed even more than when Kamijou had seen it last. Had a stray shot hit it at some point?

Several of the spires had broken and the garden was covered in rubble and black soil with a dusting of red snow starting to cover it. Over half of a building larger than the average school had been squashed. From the looks of it, the rainwater had to be getting in. Not many rooms would still be usable, but having a roof above your head still meant a lot.

“May I come in?” he asked Alice without thinking.

That made her squeal with delight. Because he was still treating this as her house maybe?

But…

“I-it’s chilly in here…”

Kamijou shivered. It had to have been colder outside, but he felt it all the worse once he was inside. Maybe his senses were returning to him.

A sofa in the corner of the huge lobby was so fancy he wasn’t sure if it was meant to be used or just decorative, but he lay Vidhatri on it regardless. Even that was difficult with the weird doll attached back-to-back with her. How did you remove it? And he felt like the cold was getting even worse. No, could it be he had been receiving warmth from the brown beauty on his back? Talk about a spoiled way to make use of a young woman. As unscientific as it was, he was afraid he had earned some kind of divine punishment there.

They had somehow arrived at the consulate, but now he had to figure out what to do next.

“F-for now, we need to do something about injured Vidhatri. She still hasn’t woken up, but is she okay? If it requires more than a first-aid kit, then we’re out of luck.”

His first thought was the frog-faced doctor.

Yes, a doctor.

“…”

The main goal of his original plan was to prevent Academy City from pursuing him as the living dead. So by escaping to a consulate belonging to another country(?) where the adults couldn’t touch him, he had hoped to buy enough time to call the frog-faced doctor to him and receive professional confirmation that Kamijou Touma was still alive. And with his status as alive confirmed, he would automatically be preserving Index and Othinus’s home too.

He didn’t know if that Condro-whatever country still officially recognized the consulate, but the actual international effectiveness didn’t really matter. He only needed the powerful adults in Academy City to hesitate.

But Great Demon Coronzon’s appearance had destroyed that plan. Utterly.

To be blunt, she wouldn’t care at all about the consulate. If she didn’t like Kamijou’s group, she would march right in to kill them. After all, she was willing to declare herself one who tore apart human bonds and obstructed their evolution. On a larger scale, there was a real possibility of her doing something to Academy City as a whole. If it came to that, then Kamijou’s group would be killed along with the rest of the city.

(Seriously, what are we supposed to do? However we stop Coronzon, I do still want to prove I’m alive so I can move through the city more easily…but do I have time for a detour like that?)

What was Index doing right now? Othinus and the calico cat too. It was below freezing outside. He couldn’t leave them out there in the frigid air and red snow and there was always the horrific chance that they would happen across Coronzon out there.

“I guess we can’t just come to a stop. We need to decide on where to start…”

Just as he said that, he heard a weird clattering noise from overhead.

Was someone there?

“Alice, get behind me.”

“Teacher, you don’t need to worry about that.”

Hm? Alice seemed awfully certain about that.

Nervous Kamijou sensed something off.

It came from his sense of smell.

Was that the familiar scent of some extremely ordinary chemical seasonings?

Then someone emerged from the second floor. The underwear woman with large wings on her back was walking while working at a cup of instant noodles with a silver fork.

“Hm? Boy, wherefore are you here?”

She was the Bologna Succubus, one of the Transcendents.

Part 4

For Kamijou the Bridge Builders Cabal consulate had seemed like a secret base of evil, but for the Bologna Succubus it was a temporary home in a foreign country. Even if it was falling apart, maybe it was best to just return here.

Kamijou tilted his head.

“What are you normal Transcendents doing now?”

“Normal? That’s a new one, boy. Then again, maybe it was inevitable when you’ve been hanging out with ultra extraordinary Alice so much.”

Standing still, the blonde underwear woman gave him an exasperated look while eating her Japanese cup noodles. Maybe it came from being Western, but he didn’t hear any slurping sounds as she ate the noodles.

“Horrifying. You might as well be eating a cup full of salt,” said the golden retriever.

“Well, this pup feels right out of a fairy tale. The best medicine when you’re tired, if you ask me.”

The tragic state of her diet suggested Good, Old Mary and H. T. Trismegistus were not here since the former was proud of her cooking skills and the latter was picky about manners. …Then again, Kamijou was more at home with cup noodles that would be ready in 3 minutes and eaten in 5 minutes than he was with a full-course dinner that took more than two hours from appetizer to dessert.

“Around half of us were knocked out trying to restrain Aleister when he suddenly went nuts. Vidhatri there was one of them. But we scattered afterwards. After all, our grand plan of saving the world with a resurrected CRC didn’t pan out. And organizations are fragile when they lose their central pillar.”

“Aleister did it?” asked Kamijou because he had thought Coronzon was responsible.

The Bologna Succubus sighed softly.

“There’s something wrong with him. No ordinary human should be able to defeat a group of Transcendents. Maybe that’s just the Crowley living up to his reputation as the exception among exceptions.”

“Wait.”

Kamijou called for a time out.

Something wasn’t right.

“If Aleister alone could have solved the Transcendent problem with Anna Sprengel and such, he wouldn’t have relied on Kingsford in the first place.”

“You have a point,” said the golden retriever. “Thinking back, that preserved corpse was an odd choice for Aleister. It isn’t like him to so wholly rely on someone else like that.”

“This talk of corpses is hitting home a lot more than it did before… But anyway, it sounded like he found some dangerous thing, modified it, and forced it to move.”

“Boy, did you forget?” The Bologna Succubus sounded exasperated. “Aleister is no ordinary human. He has crossed a line much like we have. No, it felt more like he was wielding Great Demon Coronzon’s power.”

“…”

“I doubt he could use all that power to begin with, so maybe something caused him to lose control and break through the limiter?”

“Something? Like what?”

“Kamijou Touma’s death and everything related to Anna Kingsford. You can’t tell me you’ve forgotten about that.”

In other words.

Did it all go back to that?

Just gathering up and using that power was enough to defeat a group of Transcendents. Then what could Great Demon Coronzon herself do now that she was back in control?

The Bologna Succubus shrugged.

“The Bridge Builders Cabal is no longer functioning as a magic cabal.”

“I see…”

“I don’t even know what happened to the other members. Some may still be hiding in Academy City, but I bet most of the Transcendents are leaving now that their reason for being here is gone.”

“…”

Is that why the Bologna Succubus was referring to him as “boy” here?

Alice Anotherbible was no longer her top priority.

In that school on that night, they had seen their pitiful master accidentally kill Kamijou Touma and lose sight of herself. The regular Transcendents must have been disillusioned when Alice didn’t even give them a glance after they served her so thoroughly.

Alice Anotherbible had lost her violent charisma.

And what happened when they also learned that summoning CRC to save the world was nothing more than a pipe dream?

“Nothing but hardtack to eat is murdering my mouth☆ Hey, lewd succubus, was there any canned food anywhere? …What’re they doing here?”

Someone else descended from the second floor.

To her, Alice Anotherbible was just one member of a “they”.

Who was this girl anyway? Kamijou was pretty sure he had never seen her before. The blonde was fully covered by what might have been a copper blast-resistant suit or might have been an iron maiden.

The two began conversing without any kind of introductions.

“We have an injury to deal with, so we’ll have to do something about Vidhatri. Ugh, it’s so inconvenient without Good, Old Mary around. Why does Blodeuwedd the Bouquet have to be the only one left? She’s useless.”

“Kyahah. That’s a neat trick if standing around complaining will heal her wounds. But if not, then we’ll have to figure something out with the people we’ve got, whore demon.”

…The strained atmosphere between those two bothered Kamijou, but it was they who brought a first-aid kit from deeper in the building.

The two Transcendents opened the kit and argued as they opened the manual contained in a waterproof package along with the medicines and bandages.

“First, we need to make sure we use this stuff right☆ Start by disinfecting the wound with alcohol.”

“Don’t be stupid. You need to wash the wound with water first and then disinfect it.”

“This swelling is a bruise, not internal bleeding. That means a compress will do.”

“That’s a hot compress. Are you trying to exacerbate the symptoms? You need a cool compress here, trash.”

“That idiot can be safely ignored. Now, let’s see☆ I need to tie the bandage tight to stop the bleeding.”

“If you want the bleeding to stop fast, you have to let the air contact it. Tying the bandage loose to let it breathe is best, dung beetle girl.”

Left all alone on the sofa, Vidhatri began moaning in her sleep.

Those two were practically at each other’s throats.

The Bologna Succubus and…Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was it? Those two were in fact literally butting heads. Which begged the question of why they were staying here together.

“They must be good friends.”

“Huh?” “Huh?”

Kamijou’s comment earned him a pair of fairly serious glares. A girl’s “huh?” was a frightening thing.

Kamijou couldn’t say which of their claims were correct. He secretly did some searching on his phone and found plenty of agreement in either direction. It was funny that too many opinions could be a problem too. He decided to just assume a Transcendent’s body would be tough enough to endure whatever those two did. Or wait…were Transcendents’ bodies tough?

“Damn, I really shouldn’t have stayed in Academy City. I know I have a habit of sticking around in unloved places, but I always regret not getting out sooner than I do☆”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was complaining under her breath and Kamijou concluded this really was his first time seeing her.

And the Bologna Succubus was generally welcoming and cheerful no matter what, so it was unusual to see her detest someone so much. She didn’t seem like a bad person to Kamijou, so what made the Bologna Succubus dislike her to this extent?

He asked and the Bologna Succubus reacted with complete exasperation.

In fact, she held a hand to her forehead.

“Boy, um…you are a hopelessly bad judge of character. It’s like you go out of your way to be tricked so you can destroy it all.”

“Oh, c’mon. Ha ha. An ‘evil plot’ by a little girl like this could only be something adora-”

“She was one of the Killers who wanted to murder you in order to control Alice.”

Apparently this was much more serious than he had thought.

…And yet the girl herself held a hand to her cheek while staring at him.

Hm? This seemed quite different from what he had been told. Was that a spellbound look?

“But…now that I’ve met him for myself, he’s nothing like I was expecting. I was imagining an easy-going piece of shit who, y’know, carelessly presses fire alarms and blows up fire extinguishers. But instead he’s more like, well, the shunned and ostracized kid who sits alone in a corner of the classroom. Ahh☆ I, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, am the Transcendent who protects the unloved. And the negative aura coming off of him is more than enough. Pant, pant. Oh, I can’t stand it. Kyahah, unloved one, leap into my arms!!”

“I’d rather not be accepted for that reason!!”

Was she the type to insult people when trying to be kind!? Kamijou bristled and yelled at the skinny girl whose thick armor opened like double doors. And was she entirely naked except for an apron under there!?

The naked apron was real!!

The depressed aura coming from Kamijou was probably the result of dying, coming back from the dead, being treated as a zombie, being rejected by Aleister for baffling reasons, and then having the resurrected Great Demon Coronzon try to kill him. If he let himself be taken into that soothing shelter, he just knew he would never again be able to leave that sweet-smelling girl’s thick coat!!

(But on the other hand…)

He had died and come back and was now being viewed as a zombie. It was nice finding some people who would ignore all that and actually listen to him.

Great Demon Coronzon.

He couldn’t just ignore that threat, but he needed far more fighters than this to deal with her. He didn’t even know what had happened to Magic Gods Nephthys and Niang-Niang after he left.

Even they had said they would “take over” for him, not that they would defeat her or solve the problem. It had seemed like the Magic Gods were choosing their words carefully.

He didn’t know how that had turned out, but it hadn’t seemed like leaving it with them was the end of it. And if they hadn’t ended it, then he had to assume the Coronzon problem persisted.

The Bologna Succubus put a hand on her hip and spoke.

“Anyway, we’ll treat Vidhatri. We’ll need to take her to another room.”

“I’ll help,” said Kamijou.

“This will mean removing her clothing, so you stay away. As the resident expert on sexiness, I cannot condone non-consensual nudity.”

When put that way, there was nothing Kamijou Touma-chan could do.

“Don’t look so dejected. I’ll let you see me naked later.”

“Could you not make this so awkward to agree with!?”

“Don’t worry. Even if everyone else treats you like a filthy insect, I will be there to hug you☆”

“I don’t like the sound of that future either!!”

The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet began a friendly(?) argument as they moved Vidhatri to another room

Then the golden retriever made a request in a very dandy voice.

“As a dog whose body requires several nutrients to continue functioning, I would really like to be fed soon.”

Had he not eaten?

But this consulate wasn’t Kamijou’s home. He was reluctant to start searching around for food without permission.

He looked to Alice and she only smiled up at him. Apparently this was fine.

He began searching of the half-destroyed building.

“Come to think of it…I don’t remember seeing a dog last time I was here. I don’t think they have any actual pet food.”

“Such an uncivilized place. But it is what it is. Are there any chicken tenderloins?”

“The premade ones are already seasoned, so won’t they be pretty dangerous? For your kidneys and such? I’ve heard human food has too much sodium for most animals.”

“Of course. Really, only humans are capable of digesting that much salt in daily life. Even the fish swimming the sea show more restraint. Parboil it in water to remove all the excess fat and seasoning. And be thorough.”

As pressing as the situation was, having some work to do helped him calm down.

Or maybe that was just his body being heated by the steam coming from the pot of boiling water on the induction cooker. It wasn’t warming him all that much in this chill, though.

How much could a dog that size eat? He decided to just pile up the boiled tenderloins on a plate until the dog himself said it was enough, placed that and a bowl of water on the floor, and asked a question.

“Are you okay in this cold?”

“This is my winter coat, thankfully. And unlike a cat, my coat resists water. Hot!”

The dog couldn’t handle hot foods any better than cats.

Kamijou badly needed to do something about his freezing body. The dog seemed docile enough, but would he get mad if Kamijou hugged him for warmth?

Then Alice walked over and grabbed his hand.

“Over there, over there. You can warm up with that.”

Something rarely seen in Japan was installed in a one of the cracked walls.

Petty bourgeois Kamijou was used to his dorm’s air conditioning, so the idea of starting a roaring fire inside your home was a fairly exciting one, but Alice seemed to find it normal. Was fire not frightening if it had a partitioned area and was well managed?

And Japan did have its irori.

“Just turn the valve and let the gas out!”

“Wait, fireplaces aren’t for burning chopped wood?”

Apparently the firewood was mostly decorative. So many things evolved with time. Even lanterns used LEDs these days, so apparently nothing was safe.

Also, the building was half destroyed, so was the chimney safe? He was afraid it might be broken partway up or have a hole or crack that would change the flow of smoke in devastating ways…

“Damn, staring at a fire calms you down whether you like it or not, huh? No, that’s a dangerous idea. I need to be careful I don’t Little Match Girl myself… Can you not cook fish or dango on skewers in a fireplace? Like you do with an irori?”

“Ohh, nice and warm…”

Kamijou turned around to ask and heard a sleepy voice next to him.

Alice must not have been satisfied without drying every single part of her wet clothing because she stood facing the fireplace fire with her skirt lifted in her hands.

“Stop that! It’s indecent! There’s a boy here. You’re only supposed to let someone you truly care for see inside your skirt!”

“Ehh? Someone the girl truly cares for?”

“No, stop!!”

Don’t turn this way.

Also, she was wearing some kind of white tights, but was it really safe to heat those so close to a fire? Kamijou didn’t know much about old-fashioned materials, but was that something non-synthetic surrounding her legs? He wasn’t certain. He was a little afraid the heat would suddenly melt it, leading to tragedy.

And as they warmed themselves (“Lower your skirt already!”), someone returned from deeper into the building: the Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. They had returned together…which meant they didn’t need to leave anyone with Vidhatri.

“Was the treatment a success?”

“Nyahah, for now.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet gave a brief response to Kamijou’s question.

So they weren’t completely out of the woods there yet.

Kamijou found this drafty building too cold for his liking, but wearing that thick coat indoors must have been too warm. The skinny apron girl occasionally opened it and fanned it to let some heat out as she gave him a skeptical look.

“We have a question for you.”

“?”

“What are your plans concerning Great Demon Coronzon? This situation looks pretty bad, so we kind of have to play the Alice Anotherbible card, don’t we?”

The central pillars of Alice Anotherbible’s violent charisma and CRC’s world salvation had been broken, and yet…

The Transcendents had begun as a gathering of individuals who wanted to protect the kind of people they personally wanted to help. That meant the Bologna Succubus had people she wanted to help and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had her own.

Great Demon Coronzon.

Kamijou had no idea what she might do, but it made sense those two would be concerned about the appearance of someone who would bring harm to anyone and everyone.

And they would be concerned about the enormous bomb that was Alice Anotherbible.

Blowing up over half the world in a fight to protect the world was meaningless.

Those thoughts were written plain on Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s face.

“It is probably time I decided on a general plan as well.”

The dog was right.

They only had so much time. Doing nothing and avoiding the issue would only be placing the rope around their own necks.

Kamijou organized his thoughts.

And with a deep breath, he spoke.

“I will have Alice fight.”

“Oh,” said Alice, hopping a bit at being brought up in the conversation.

“I had a feeling you would,” said Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, sounding somehow annoyed.

But…

“The problem is she’s too powerful, right? No, I guess the problem isn’t really the size of her power but its instability since you never know where she’ll direct it on a whim. …So we just have to convince the world that Alice is is a good guy because she’s the one who saved the world.”

“…”

Kamijou’s explanation caused the skinny apron girl’s sulky look to freeze on her face.

“For real?”

“Great Demon Coronzon is trying to destroy the world. …To be blunt, a threat that over-the-top actually helps us out here. With a half-baked bank robbery or mummy’s curse, we’d be ignored since someone other than Alice could have dealt with it just fine. We need a threat no one else could stop so we can let the entire world know that it was Alice Anotherbible who saved them and that the world would have ended if not for her. Right?”

Fortunately, there was no connection between Great Demon Coronzon and Alice Anotherbible. They both referenced Crowley-style magic, but that wasn’t anything like a personal connection.

That meant it wouldn’t be viewed as the same side splitting between enemy and ally and putting on a show.

“I see,” said the Bologna Succubus, grinning.

She provided criticism and counterarguments as an ally. Like a skilled secretary providing practice before the debate.

“But will it really work out so nicely? Humans are heartless. Once the threat is gone, they might completely forget that someone saved them and start attacking Alice like it’s a demand for disarmament. Because at the end of the day, she’s still a threat for being able to do what she did.”

“I’m aware of that. In that case, we just have to support her. With support from someone who controls the world’s goodness and justice, there won’t be a witch hunt and Alice can become a symbol of victory and peace.”

“Oh? And who did you have in mind?”

“Hey, you’re no diplomat, so stop trying your hand at dangerous diplomatic negotiations, layman.”

A voice suddenly interrupted.

It didn’t come from Kamijou’s phone and the large TV’s LCD screen was badly cracked and broken. It seemed to becoming from the cylinder sitting on the bent table. Kamijou had thought it was a trendy aromatherapy device or something, but…

“The AI speaker is talking on its own!” exclaimed Alice.

Apparently that’s what it was.

Academy City Board Chairman Accelerator.

He had kept silent since the rain turned to red snow, but now he had butted in.

“But how did you…?”

“Consulates that represent a country or region are ordinarily installed with hotlines to the local country.”

He tried to make it sound so obvious, but what did he mean “ordinarily”?

And…

“Academy City, huh?”

The Bologna Succubus sounded surprised.

Apparently she could recognize the massive organization’s leader by his voice. Kamijou was pretty sure the two had never actually met, anyway.

Then the blonde underwear woman winked.

“I thought for sure you were going to go ask the Anglicans.”

“Go to England since this is about magic? I get the idea, but you haven’t forgotten, have you? The original Alice and Aleister Crowley are both from England.”

With that said, Kamijou sighed softly.

Meanwhile, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet seemed to have finally recovered from her freeze.

She pouted her lips and gave her opinion (in a weirdly serious way for a naked apron wearer).

“I see☆ So if Alice’s activities benefited England, it would look too much like it was all a setup?”

“And I doubt we can go to the Roman Catholic or Russian Orthodox Churches. In fact, that would probably end up with the Anglicans claiming original ownership and demanding she be returned to them, so it could just cause further conflict. Really, it will cause the least trouble if we leave Alice with the science side since they know nothing of magic. Intentionally ensuring that treasure goes to waste will ensure the magic side VIPs don’t get jealous as they watch on from the shadows.”

“How do we know that works?”

“It has with Index, the grimoire library.”

Yes, there was an example very close to home for him.

If the magic side was so afraid of having a specific magician or magic cabal control her, they just had to isolate her in another world where no one could reach her. The same could be said of Alice as well.

Alice had far too much power for an individual and analyzing her body could reveal the open source plans for creating “regular Transcendents”. Handing her over to someone on the magic side who knew how to make use of her sounded far too dangerous no matter who it was.

“Are tenderloins that good?”

“Munch, munch. Alice, these are mine. As a human, you should eat human food.”

“Is the girl still human?”

Talk of the power balance in the world of magic went over Kihara Noukan’s head, so he was busying himself with the big plate of tenderloins on the floor. Or rather, he was fighting for them with Alice who had taken an interest in them.

She definitely needed to be left with someone who didn’t know how to make use of her.

“To sum up, we first need to deal with Coronzon somehow or another. After that, we need to make it so that credit for saving the world goes to Alice. And lastly, we leave her with Academy City to avoid any further conflict. Its mostly a vague outline with no concrete details, but does that sound like a good overall plan?”

“Hey,” said Accelerator. “You aren’t forgetting that Alice girl is one of the reasons the city is in such a bad state, are you?”

“The Coronzon problem comes first.”

“Ugh,” groaned the #1, falling silent.

That was unusual.

“Keep your priorities straight. Coronzon rates higher than Alice,” clearly stated Kamijou. “We don’t have many cards in our deck right now. We can’t afford to lose even one trump card. If we focus on Alice first and end up fighting each other while ignoring Coronzon, whatever it is she’s going to do, Academy City will be destroyed first. If you really want to protect this city, then it’s your job to make sure Alice can fight at full strength, Board Chairman.”

“You make it sound so easy. You don’t think you’re free of responsibility just cause you’re not the guy at the top, do you?”

“And I do think there’s room for leniency with Alice. It’s true the damage was done by her great power, but she had no idea what she was doing and it was everyone else around her who pushed her into doing it. And that includes me. Judge her if you must, but I’m not about to let her face the world’s judgment alone. I sacrificed my life saving her, so I will make sure I save her to the very end.”

“…Tch.”

The board chairman at the very top clicked his tongue for some reason, but he said nothing more.

Kamijou wasn’t sure what part of his argument had hit home.

And then.

He heard a ring as if from a deep bell.

Was that the doorbell?

“…Wait.”

Kamijou tensed.

The only one still relaxed was Alice as she hopped on the sofa.

Meaningless misfortune often paid Kamijou a visit, so he had a very bad feeling about this. In the absolute worst case, this was Great Demon Coronzon ringing the doorbell as a joke.

Kihara Noukan looked up from his plate of tenderloins and spoke quietly.

“I do not know much about that magic stuff, but is there a chance she has detected us here?”

“A big chance. After all, she was sealed inside Aleister all that time. So anything Aleister saw or heard, she would have observed from inside him!”

This was the only real option, but had it been a mistake to choose a known building as a shelter?

Hiding deep in the damaged building and waiting for a chance to strike…would be one option, but this was Coronzon they were talking about. If they didn’t respond, she might not even enter the crumbling building. If she decided to instead blast the entire structure from outside, all of them would die in vain.

So they had to respond.

“Bologna Succubus, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”

“Yes? Are you giving us the dangerous job since you beat us and we have nothing left to live for?”

“Don’t be dumb. Vidhatri is sleeping in the back, right? I’ll deal with whoever’s at the front door, so you two take her out the back way and escape if it looks bad.”

“…”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet fell silent, looking surprised, and the Bologna Succubus patted her on the shoulder. Except she didn’t release the shoulder of that thick coat and squeezed it with a vise-like grip.

“(I found him first. Try anything and you are dead, you naughty spoiling goddess.)”

“(Ehh, that’s no fun. Well, you have my word, but I can’t guarantee my body won’t act of its own accord when the moment comes☆)”

“(Then your word is worthless!)”

“(Who does this man milker think she is looking down on me? Does this nocturnal lesser demon think she’s his guardian or something!?)”

They started struggling against each other, but Kamijou chose to believe it was a sign of friendship.

He had to go answer the front doorbell.

Kihara Noukan accompanied him.

“Do you have any kind of weapon? With the fireplace, there should at least be a poker.”

“It would only get in the way of my right hand.”

He knew reflexively holding out his right hand was a dangerous move with anyone at the level of an angel or demon, but he still needed to focus on occult countermeasures. This wasn’t like the battle against Stiyl where they both knew each other’s moves.

Alice joined him too.

And he wasn’t even given time to prepare.

He didn’t even have time to think about opening the front door because the outer wall near the door was broken. And so he saw the answer before he could even get nervous. The hole provided a big spoiler.

“Hi.”

Someone stood there.

Dion Fortune…and two others behind her.

No, he recognized them. Wasn’t that Hamazura Shiage and Takitsubo Rikou?

The group was introduced to him as follows:

“It’s the Anglican Archbishop and her jolly friends.”

Part 5

Coronzon had moved location.

She didn’t need to prepare any supplies. Everything she needed was right here in the city. Each individual would use the puzzle pieces differently, but the great demon chose to use them purely for destruction.

Yes.

Destruction.

But that meant she did need control of the necessary locations first.

And so despite being known as a great demon, she was forced to do something she would have preferred not to.

Move.

“Pros can become cons, advantages disadvantages, and strengths weaknesses. Really, Aleister would have loved it.”

But at this point, she couldn’t screw this up.

It wasn’t possible.

She had passed the challenges she could not fully calculate for. That is, she was past the point of gambling. For her, whether or not Aleister would self-destruct and release her had been the greatest obstacle.

Now she just had complete the rest of the job.

The spell she was preparing was on an enormous scale and would take time, but she still swore on her name as a great demon that it would not fail.

No matter what anyone did from here on, it would be launched.

Great Demon Coronzon spoke quietly to herself.

“Time to begin.”

Part 6

“Adikalika,” began Dion Fortune, seated on the sofa.

Five seconds after taking a seat, she was already recrossing her legs.

“Great Demon Coronzon is preparing a massive piece of magic in this city. It’s called Adikalika.”

Come to think of it, why were Hamazura and Takitsubo of Academy City working with Dion Fortune of the UK? Maybe Kamijou wasn’t one to talk, but their circle of friends was a bit of a mystery.

However, there was no threat here.

They had moved to the parlor which just was barely still intact. The kitchen was apparently still functional, so Kamijou boiled some water and made some tea. He hadn’t the foggiest idea how to to make proper British tea, but since Fortune happily held the cup between her hands, he figured he had done well enough.

“Ohh, it’s nice and warm!”

“Hot water really helps calm you. I noticed that with my cup noodles earlier.”

It was below freezing outside. With red snow falling.

…So maybe even boiled tap water would have been fine if it warmed her.

Regardless, Dion Fortune got down to business.

About Adikalika.

“Our grimoire library is still being lent out to someone I could mention, but Orsola Aquinas did a brilliant research job. She tracked it down to a booklet packaged with a strange book not even found in London’s national library. Apparently a used bookstore had bought it from a certain Loch Ness mansion.”

Everything since the funeral had left Kamijou starved for human warmth, so he was pleased to hear this mention of someone he knew, but that wasn’t the main point.

So what exactly was this Adi…whatever-it-was? It sounded foreign to Kamijou’s ears, but also didn’t seem English.

Kihara Noukan and Accelerator on the AI speaker seemed pretty smart, but neither of them tried to take charge of the conversation. Were they waiting to have all the information because magic was outside their areas of expertise? Kamijou could think of any number of questions to ask, but he couldn’t narrow it down to just one.

“What is Adikalika?”

Fortune had brought Takitsubo here, but it was she who asked from the sofa with a blank stare and tilt of the head.

Had Fortune not explained it to her own group?

The science side and magic side were so different she must not have expected them to understand right way, so she gave a quick explanation.

“Right, Adikalika. When written in the alphabet instead of the Sanskrit script, it becomes a Crowley term. Originally, I guess you could say it’s a Magick reinterpretation of the Indian goddess Kali as a being who absorbs all things and make them her own. Using the 11th letter – that is, K. So the key to understanding it is Kali.”

“Wait, not so fast,” interrupted Kihara Noukan. “If you assume your audience already understands everything, your explanation is worthless. Simplicity and ease of understanding should be your goal here.”

Kamijou tilted his head.

“Hm? An Indian goddess, huh?”

For Kamijou, the word “goddess” brought to mind a kind and gentle young woman. Uh, oh. Now he was letting himself be influenced by the earlier mention of Orsola! Goddesses weren’t dorm mangers who always wore aprons and carried around brooms!!

And apparently that was way off in this case.

According to Dion Fortune:

“The original Kali is a fairly dangerous god. She started out as a representation of a certain goddess’s fury, so there’s not a hint of kindness found in her. She is a goddess of death and bloodshed and she is openly introduced as a god who has lost her sanity. But instead of a god of death for individuals, she’s more like a god of destruction for nations and the world. Also, destruction itself is not her final goal. One legend says the world was nearly destroyed by the impacts and tremors caused by her dance of joy after defeating her enemies.”

This was sounding bad already.

Hamazura was having trouble keeping up, so he asked a question.

“This is just a case of using a mythological name or symbol for a major project, right?”

“That does happen sometimes. Like with space exploration rockets or submarine missiles.”

Kamijou knew what Hamazura and Kihara Noukan were trying to say.

He decided to take over for them. …Even though he wasn’t exactly a magic expert himself.

“This spell is simply borrowing that goddess’s name, right? …Right? Surely you’re not going to say that goddess herself is going to be physically summoned here.”

That idea sounded absurd, but the Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet were right over there. The two of them were fighting over a variety pack of cookies that had been left in the consulate. The pack had six different kinds of cookies, but they were both only interested in the chocolate chip ones.

Yes, there were people here with names taken from myth.

After seeing the Magic Gods and Transcendents, Kamijou couldn’t just laugh this off. Vidhatri sleeping in the back had an Indian-sounding name, so anyone familiar with those myths would probably recognize her name. Plus, the Dion Fortune in front of him now wasn’t the real one – she had been created with a magical trick.

“It’s not that bad, but the end result isn’t much better.”

Kamijou felt like he had been trying to hold the conversation back when it suddenly slipped out of his hands entirely.

“As a spell, Adikalika sends the goddess of death and bloodshed to the caster’s chosen coordinates in the world,” continued Dion Fortune. “Specifically, the spell takes the catastrophic destruction that the four-armed black goddess would likely bring and transfers it to a specific land. Only the people in that chosen territory can know what happens there, but I can guarantee you that they will all die. Just assume that it’s all over if the spell is activated.”

The world, catastrophic destruction, chosen territory, all die…

This was sounding worse and worse, but this wasn’t quite enough to picture it. Among the mixture of people from different factions, Kamijou, Hamazura, and Takitsubo had the exact same distinctive look on their faces.

Dion Fortune noticed the way Kamijou was looking at her.

“If you want a description that’s easier for your science brains to understand, I guess you could think of it like an ICBM loaded with a really dangerous poison gas or germ. …But with Adikalika, it cannot be blown up after it is launched. And once it hits, all life within the land assigned the chosen human name will die. It is predicted that the people will be reduced to a mass of blood, flesh, and bone. That is, they will be crushed and sliced into what looks like a giant hunk of gore while still alive.”

That was even more gruesome than expected.

Of course, it was always going to be bad if Great Demon Coronzon felt it was worth the time and effort to use. But still.

At this point, Accelerator spoke through the AI speaker, keeping his voice low.

“What does Coronzon hope to do with that thing?”

“Hm? Isn’t she going to attack Academy City with it?”

Takitsubo answered his question with a question.

Was that really the answer, though?

Attacking Academy City sounded straightforward at first, but it felt wrong somehow. For one, she was in the city. If the spell was that destructive, she wouldn’t want to be caught in the destruction herself.

Dion Fortune recrossed her legs on the sofa and responded.

“I bet she has a different target.”

“?”

“I said the target was defined by a name assigned by humans, remember? To be blunt, the global Achilles heel she’s aiming for will probably be related to the Anglican Church or the Roman Catholic Church.”

“They are both foundations of the vast magic side☆” added Blodeuwedd the Bouquet with a cackle.

It sounded like even the Transcendents saw it that way. Now, anyway. Not long ago, they had acted like they were the center of the world.

Dion Fortune nodded and then said more.

“But I expect she’ll choose the headquarters of the Catholics in the end. So the Vatican…no, she’ll probably expand the scope to the entire Italian Peninsula.”

Kamijou had a question.

“But why? Wouldn’t she have a grudge against the UK?”

“I imagine she does. But she can’t attack us.”

Dion Fortune didn’t hesitate there.

But not because she was optimistic.

She had a bitter grimace on her face. As if to say the problem would be a lot smaller if the UK would just be chosen as the target.

“I mean, if she could use that against us, she would have done so last time. …If you follow her actions then, she attacked Board Chairman Aleister in Academy City before returning to Britain, stealing a treasure in Scotland, and attempting a major spell. If she could have launched Adikalika from Academy City and turned the entire United Kingdom into a sea of blood and mincemeat, she would have done so already. But that wasn’t what happened.”

Feeling a chill down the spine here may have been the natural human reaction, but it was also a meaningless reaction.

They had to focus on constructive topics, not the past. Even if they had to force their thoughts in that direction.

Then why didn’t it happen that way?

Dion Fortune sighed.

“Crowley is a British magician. Ignoring his work could damage the UK’s reputation, so they put in a lot of work analyzing his spells.”

The Bologna Succubus commented while munching on the edge of a chocolate chip cookie (that she had swiped at the end of a battle of scratching nails with Blodeuwedd the Bouquet).

“I see. So do you have some kind of powerful resistance against Crowley-style magic, including Adikalika?”

“Right. At the very least, for the spells he created before his official death in 1947. …That’s why Coronzon tried to use a royal treasure to destroy the UK from within last time.”

“But the Roman Catholics are a different story?” asked Kamijou.

Dion Fortune shrugged.

“When it comes to Crowley, Italy had the huge bomb that was the Abbey of Thelema. But it sounds like Italy threw everything out of the country – including documents and spiritual items – when they ordered Crowley to leave.”

So If the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church had no Crowley resistance, would they have no way of preventing this attack from turning the entire country into a sea of blood, flesh, and bone?

And if that happened…

Takitsubo slowly blinked before asking a question.

“I’m not familiar with the different powers of the, um, magic…side? What happens in the worst case?”

“If nothing is done and this plays out to the end, Adikalika will first trigger all-out war between the magic side and science side. Because Academy City could have stopped it, but Great Demon Coronzon is a being who can only be explained by the magic side.”

“I see, I see. So even though Academy City wasn’t involved in the attack, the magic side will still blame them for not stopping Coronzon. But Academy City will fire back, saying Coronzon is from the magic side. Both sides will have a point, so there will be no end to the argument.”

When the Bologna Succubus spoke up, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet apparently felt a need to so a well.

Because they were rivals, or because they were friends?

“The Roman Catholic Church has 2 billion followers, right? Even with all of Academy City’s unmanned weapons, how much can its 2.3 million people do with the city so exhausted?☆”

“…”

And what good was defeating those 2 billion anyway?

The point wasn’t to pit humans against each other to create an even bigger ocean of blood and dye the entire earth red like one big disturbing candy apple.

Would the world really let a single demon drive them that far over the edge?

“And despite being part of the magic side, the Roman Catholics will attack the Anglicans too. Because Crowley is a British magician. Not to mention how closely connected England and Academy City have been. And if the UK does have anti-Crowley tech, the Catholics would want it.”

Takitsubo cut in here.

“We’re talking about war, right? Could they really choose to fight on two fronts like that?”

“As we said, the problem with a war where both sides have a point is it’s hard for either side to stop.”

Things were reaching a large scale here.

But Kamijou knew the same had happened with World War Three, Gremlin, the Crowley’s Hazards, and R&C Occultics.

The global balance was a perilous thing, so even a small trigger could lead to an age of global war.

Great Demon Coronzon herself had said that she was a being who tore apart people’s bonds and obstructed human evolution. And that her method of doing that was the natural decomposition of her dispersion.

That meant Coronzon was intentionally trying to trigger a war like that. It was not a deterrent, a necessary cost, or a single step in some master plan. The war and chaos itself was her goal. The Adikalika spell was no more than the trigger for that.

…They had to stop something like that from happening again.

This was no longer just about Academy City.

Kamijou wanted to know more details. He wanted as broad and deep an understanding as he could get.

“How long does this Adikalika spell take to prepare?”

“By my estimate, the world will be headed toward its doom by midnight tonight. Assuming we don’t do anything to stop it.”

Midnight.

“But that’s a fairly optimistic estimate.”

So there was a chance it could end before then.

It was nearly 6 PM.

They had less than 7 hours remaining. The beginning of disaster was imminent.

“She’s moving awfully fast,” groaned Kihara Noukan. “This Coronzon person has only been in control for less than two hours, right? I don’t see how she could have made any large-scale preparations for this.”

“She doesn’t need any. How long was she sealed inside Aleister? I bet she’s been making full use of her great demon mind that entire time, running simulation after simulation. And as a fellow Golden magician, it was obvious at a glance that Academy City is littered with pieces of Crowley’s legacy. This isn’t like a poison gas weapon she has to smuggle into the country or a nuclear bomb she has to manufacture. She’s surrounded by items she can use.”

“Oh? So to look at it in reverse…”

“I like the way you think, golden retriever. Yes, Adikalika can only be readied inside Academy City. You can think of it as an issue of feng shui or the terrain if you want.”

Even so…

(Aleister, huh?)

What had become of him?

Was he trapped inside that body with Coronzon in control now, or had he been annihilated when she emerged? Kamijou still didn’t know.

At the very least, he knew Aleister, the man who had grieved for the people he lost, was human. For better and for worse. On an instinctual level, he wouldn’t want to construct this Adikalika spell and destroy the world with it.

That human had lost his family and, due to that one factor, decided to declare war on the Golden magic cabal.

At his peak, that human would have been on the side trying to stop this.

No matter how much he would probably deny it.

“…”

Kamijou had Imagine Breaker in his right hand.

Its ability to negate any supernatural ability should be able to stop Coronzon’s Adikalika. However, relying on that alone would be suicide. For one, he couldn’t win a one-on-one fight against Coronzon, so even approaching the core of her plan would be a challenge.

Imagine Breaker was important, but it wasn’t enough.

“W-we do have a trump card, don’t we?”

This came from Hamazura.

He might seem far removed from magic, but he apparently had an idea.

“Dion Fortune’s…whatever it’s called. That black box!”

“Oh… I really wouldn’t recommend using the Archetype Processor here.”

“Why not!? Can’t it…what was it? Eat any magic and then break it apart and…transform it? Into something else? You were forced to use it in the UK, so I know what it can do!”

This carried a lot of meaning.

Yes.

Great Demon Coronzon was painstakingly constructing some unprecedented magic. This spell was on such a scale that not even she could whip it up in a flash, so it had to be quite complex. …So with Dion Fortune’s black box(?), couldn’t they mess it up and ruin the entire plan?

They could use that.

If they had two trump cards, Coronzon would have to split her focus. Which could create an opening. And more importantly, even if Kamijou’s right hand failed to reach her, it helped immensely to have another trump card available.

But something bothered Kamijou.

That item belonged to Dion Fortune, so why hadn’t she brought it up as an option?

“First of all, don’t expect much from it. My toy isn’t as convenient as your right hand.”

Dion Fortune sighed and raised her index finger. A box the size of a soccer ball twirled atop it. Alice stared at it, wide eyed.

She seemed confident in her control.

So her concern wouldn’t just be whether she succeeded or failed.

“All this thing does is convert an existing spell into ‘an unpredictable form’. That means the magic in front of me doesn’t just disappear.”

“But that’s not nothing,” said Hamazura. “If it can at least stop that world-destroying Adikalika magic, then it’s worth using.”

“The massive amount of magic power gathered to activate Adikalika will remain untouched.”

The atmosphere strained.

So would it be like causing a top-of-the-line race car to explode just before the race began?

“After the spell is fully dismantled and converted into something else inside the box, not even I can predict what form it will take when it reemerges into the world. Listen, Hamazura. If we’re unlucky, it could even blow away Academy City. And even if we aren’t unlucky, it could still have a major downside. There is technically a chance it could result in a fantastically lucky phenomenon like burying Academy City in candy, but you’d have better odds of winning the lottery. Are you willing to bet on those odds? When it means putting so many other people’s lives at risk?”

“Uh…”

Hamazura groaned, but Kamijou glanced over at Alice.

Alice Anotherbible might be able to “adjust” the entire structure of the world to force a jackpot…but that would be a whim on her part.

Getting Alice’s help was fine.

But they couldn’t rely entirely on her when they had no other chance of winning. If she failed and was attacked for bringing about the end of the world, it could turn her into a monster again.

“It’s an interim position until the next one is officially chosen, but I am currently the archbishop in charge of the entire Anglican Church. I intend to live up to the trust placed in me. So I am not willing to make a choice that might protect the world but would be like killing 2.3 million people. How about you?”

The rest fell silent.

Kamijou, Hamazura, Takitsubo, Kihara Noukan, the Bologna Succubus, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, Accelerator, and even Alice.

Their unwillingness to speak meant they were conflicted. They each had two weights: one on the yes side of the scales and one on the no side. It was a matter of extent and size and also proof that none of them was willing to give up on Academy City so readily.

But at the same time, Kamijou had a thought.

…This was probably something she could only say at this point.

If Adikalika’s preparations really were complete and the final seconds were ticking down until the 7 or 8 billion people around the globe were dragged into a massive war, he thought Dion Fortune probably would make the decision. She would choose to force a resolution by putting 2.3 million lives at risk. Because she had said she would live up to the trust placed in her as the archbishop of the Anglican Church which protected the people from wicked magic.

Kamijou breathed in and out.

Stop thinking so negatively. Dion Fortune had said herself she didn’t want to do that. And because the situation was so pressing, he needed to come up with more positive ideas.

“Let’s just think of that as a last resort available just in case. If we try everything else and none of it works, then it’s up to Dion Fortune. If we think of it as a lifeline during this tightrope walk, it should help our mental state.”

“Hey, I said I wasn’t going to-”

“And we’re risking our lives so you won’t have to. That’s why we’re here, right?”

And speaking of having someone to support you, Kamijou Touma recalled his fight against Stiyl Magnus.

“I’m so glad I know the board chairman…”

It helped immensely to have Academy City’s new board chairman on their side. The city wasn’t in the best state, but holding full authority over it changed things considerably from fighting as individuals.

“I doubt it will be that easy.”

But.

It was Dion Fortune who immediately shot down that hope.

“I can only guess, but I bet she’ll be making her move soon.”

Part 7

“What?”

Accelerator frowned.

An alarm was buzzing.

This wasn’t just a single window or popup displaying a dangerous error. They were popping up too fast to read. He would have to check the log for that, but that was scrolling by endlessly like a realtime chat.

And the “unknown error” messages weren’t exactly helpful.

He still held the master key that took the form of a smartphone, yet his commands were being rejected. There shouldn’t have been privileges higher than that, but something else was obviously intervening and hijacking control.

This wasn’t anything like hacking or a cyber attack.

No one was breaking in by spoofing their credentials.

He didn’t sense that sort of logic here.

And, of course, these weren’t just unintentional failures or malfunctions.

Which meant…

Was there some command structure entirely separate from the scientific technology?

“I-isn’t this really bad?”

“…”

“This isn’t just the satellites and comms. There’s a chain reaction of malfunctions in the electric, gas, and water systems! It’s January and it’s snowing outside. Who knows how many people will starve or freeze if the pipes freeze and the power stops!!”

Most of Academy City’s food came from agro-buildings and clone meat, but a failure in the RFID-tag-based transportation instructions could create a situation where plenty of ingredients were being produced but none of it could be processed or reach the stores and restaurants. And in fact the bases responsible for that were going down one after another.

“C-could this also be why false alarms keep coming in? Even from the germ lab, the petrochemical plant, and the radiation testing lab… N-n-now there’s no way to tell a real major incident from all the false alarms!”

Were all the automatic reports meant to paralyze Anti-Skill, the firefighters, the hospitals, and everyone else who preserved the peace?

No, this was too roundabout a method for that.

(This is clearly more than just some unfortunate trouble, but the methods are really inconsistent for an intentional attack. It also doesn’t feel like someone acquired the city’s emergency response manual and used that to reverse engineer a method of paralyzing the city.)

He could tell this was an emergency, but that was why he couldn’t act rashly.

“So this isn’t meant as an attack. So is it a side effect of something? But of what?”

As Accelerator glowered into the screen, attempting to grasp the situation, Qliphah Puzzle 545’s shrill voice pierced his ears. She was kind of annoying. …Although that was, in a way, unavoidable when she had been designed as an agitator meant to create a mood that would lead to war.

“Can’t you artificially stop the rain…no, it’s snow now, isn’t it? Anyway, can’t you change the weather? This snow did start out as artificial rain, didn’t it?”

“Stopping the snow’d be easy, but clear skies would only bring the temperature down further. You’ve heard of radiative cooling, haven’t you? That accumulated snow won’t melt right away.”

And if the temperature dropped, more people would die.

The map of Academy City displayed on a wall monitor was gradually changing color.

Yellow indicated areas where ordinary living would be a challenge. Red indicated areas where survival would be a challenge.

Around half was already marked one or the other.

“So within 72 hours, it’s estimated this many will die? More than 100 thousand?”

In urban life, snow accumulation made travel difficult and isolated households. If the power and water stopped in that situation, people would soon start to die. Before even considering transportation, the city’s food was almost entirely reliant on the agro-buildings and clone meat. They wouldn’t be able to grow much of anything without water or electricity.

To prevent such a situation, Academy City had decentralized its power generation using the wind turbines distributed around the city, but even that was useless if the central facilities controlling the power system went down.

And…

“This estimate is assuming everyone obediently stays home as their told and dies there.”

“…”

“If they start rioting or looting, these calculations don’t mean shit. Then we could see several times as many victims.”

It was said the Japanese were relatively less likely to do such things, but that didn’t mean they would just sit tight at home and wait for death. With their lives on the line, they would try to survive. Accelerator felt that was the natural reaction for any living thing.

But…

(I thought this city was designed to avoid this kind of large-scale infrastructure trouble. I know there’s no such thing as absolute safety, but this number of loopholes feels intentional.)

These times were complicated by the fact that he had inherited the city from someone else instead of building it from the ground up himself. He held the smartphone master key, but he hadn’t designed the structure and layout of every single facility and piece of equipment.

However, the previous board chairman had been Aleister. He had been able to shrug it off every time the dark side took a shot at him, so it seemed unlikely he would leave foolish holes like this unplugged for long.

In fact, with holes this large, wouldn’t some hacker from inside or outside the city have used them to bring down the city already?

In that case…

(These loopholes are no mistake. Someone placed them there on purpose.)

He thought in silence.

But he could only come up with unpleasant ideas.

(But no one except Aleister could make use of them. They use some kind of system that the hackers, crackers, and others who make ordinary science their plaything couldn’t even imagine.)

The screen suddenly changed.

No, someone had taken control of it. Even here in the board chairman’s headquarters.

The voice that spoke from it was familiar.

“Hello again. Have you started to catch on, Mr. New Board Chairman?”

“…Is this your doing?”

“This is nothing more than a side effect. I am not trying to destroy the infrastructure for everyday necessities. The destruction I am after is on a much larger scale. Then again, seeing peaceful people starving, resenting each other, and beginning a chain reaction of violence could make for an amusing, if unintentional, show. But it is nothing more than a bit of entertainment.”

“You’re only using a backdoor. You haven’t actually taken full control.”

“Give up. It’s a fundamentally different system. You can’t influence the side I’m on no matter how much you type away on your keyboard. Can you keep up with this? Here’s a hint: the science side has no way of explaining the problem plaguing Academy City. Magician Aleister Crowley designed the city that way from the beginning. He took the laws and rules of our magic side and hid them below a veneer of cutting-edge science.”

“…”

Accelerator intentionally remained silent.

So it was Qliphah Puzzle 545 who carelessly opened her mouth and continued the conversation.

“What do you mean…and how far…does it go?”

“How far? Everything. Everything!! For example, the dam in the mountains, the flow of the rivers, and even the culverts hidden below ground! And it isn’t just the water supply either. The railroad lines, the broadcast facilities, the main roads, the highways, and even the layout of the districts!! Which is why I can so easily remove them from your control and place them under mine!!! …This is a city of learning created by Aleister Crowley, so it is nothing more than a rehash of the Abbey of Thelema he once built in Italy in order to drag talent out of young lives by drowning them in the supernatural and drugs!!”

After all that, Coronzon cooled down.

In fact, it was uncertain if she had even really felt all that emotion deep down.

“But none of that matters… Academy City appears to detest me for the chaos I bring, but are you sure that’s a good idea, my enemy? Have you perhaps forgotten something?”

“Like what?”

“That I am no longer your only enemy.”

Coronzon did not use hints and insinuations at this point.

Likely because she knew a direct statement would cause a greater shock and more chaos.

“The world will be split in two. Because Academy City named itself a city of science and the sole representative of one side of the world, the rest of the world had no choice but to categorize itself as the magic side. But now it is coming out that Academy City is chock full of magical symbols. …Do you really think the people forced so unfairly to keep their heads down are going to let that go?”

Part 8

They didn’t hesitate.

Kanzaki Kaori, Itsuwa, and the other Anglican magicians had been waiting outside Academy City near the wall, but as soon as they detected an unfavorable sign, they immediately crossed the wall none of them had been able to cross before.

They didn’t even bother masking their footsteps or presences.

The outsiders of the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Forces took the lead and paved the way for the second wave made up of the main Anglican team. It was their usual method.

The total number that crossed the wall in that series of actions exceeded ten thousand.

“Wh-who are you people!?”

When an Anti-Skill officer reacted to the unexpected group in a fluster, Tatemiya Saiji approached and swiftly took control of his consciousness. This meant more than just putting him to sleep on his feet. Tatemiya dragged out every last piece of information the man knew: the names and faces of his colleagues and superiors, the location of crucial facilities, passwords, and so on. Complete brainwashing was too much of a challenge, but searching out information was doable.

Then they only had to repeat the process.

It helped that Academy City was severely shorthanded. Drum-shaped security robots, eight-legged Predator Octopuses, Six Wings attack helicopters, and other unmanned weapons were being used to make up for the lack, but they weren’t much use against the magicians. The magicians passed right by them without being detected.

Perhaps this was the result of England’s long relationship with Academy City.

The Anglicans already had countermeasures ready.

“We Amakusas will head to District 2. The Former Agnese Forces should head first to District 1 and move on to the retrieval job once you finish there.”

“Understood.”

“And take this just in case.”

“A duralumin case? What’s in it? An Anglican-tuned spiritual item would actually be a poor match for us.”

“There are British flags inside. Raise them around the city if you need to reduce the morale of the enemy remnants.”

“What a pain.”

Agnese Sanctis sounded truly annoyed.

She didn’t know whose idea this was, but did they not consider the possibility of it angering the enemy into rebelling?

Then again, her own use of the word “rebelling” may have been a sign of her subconsciously looking down on them. This was their city, so the science side was ostensibly the one in charge.

“So we’re already thinking of Academy City as nothing more than remnants?”

“They did fail to stop us at the wall.”

No matter how much security had been beefed up using science, it was powerless against magic. The magicians could drag out any information someone knew and, if they needed biometrics like a fingerprint or iris scan, they could send the approved person trudging over to the scanner and get it unlocked that way.

District 1 contained Anti-Skill headquarters and District 2 contained the unmanned weapon communication data center disguised as a gunpowder testing lab.

With classified information like that, it would ordinarily take years to confirm the facility even existed, much less determine its location. But a group of magicians had no trouble taking control.

And once they held the location, they wouldn’t even need to use magic to deceive the unmanned weaponry.

They were even gradually identifying the locations of the 12 directors. All the information that had been kept so unnaturally under wraps had to be hidden somewhere in the facilities they were taking. Also, Kanzaki and the others didn’t even need any knowledge or skills with machines. By placing the necessary symbols on the devices in question and holding out their hands, they could read the residual thoughts left by the people who had operated them.

Science side telepathy and magic side spells worked entirely differently.

Which meant there was no defense against this unknown form of attack.

(Aleister. …Given who he was, I doubt this approach would have worked back when he was in charge. But things have changed.)

The R&C Occultics affair had partially exposed the existence of magic to the world, but based on the response from the city, the exposure hadn’t been serious enough to launch a specialized attack against a professional magician. Did information that spread through fads not stick around long? Not only did people simply stop paying attention, but any knowledge could be distorted into uselessness as it spread.

They had already secured a few of the directors, so it looked like they could stick to the current plan while staying on the lookout for any surprise attacks.

Kanzaki and the rest had won.

(This just leaves the District 10 prison. The biggest hurdle will be whether we can checkmate him without directly approaching that most crucial point, but it looks like this will end without giving them a chance to send out the science side’s angel.)

“Other teams have taken District 15’s broadcast station and smartphone data center. Anti-Skill, was it? We can now block the drive recorders and tablets they use. Apparently arrest warrants are all digital nowadays, so this effectively leaves them powerless. Does this make phase 1 a success, Priestess?”

“I suppose it does.”

Kanzaki Kaori did not look pleased by Tsushima’s report.

This had been their plan of course, but…

(It was too easy. Was the science side really already on its last legs?)

The world-renowned Anglican Church had deployed a large number of personnel for this, but it had still only been a blitzkrieg strike of less than half an hour.

What had happened to the power balance between science and magic? The two sides being too evenly matched for any kind of attack had supposedly been the best way to keep the peace, but now it looked like one side would endlessly push back the other.

Monotone beeping sounded within the vast structure with no workers or supervisors.

A communication device had received a call.

“Are you the dumbasses making a mess of an already messy situation?”

“Just a moment,” said Kanzaki as she made a few operations on the data center’s devices. “I just set this facility to handle some of the processing that had grown unstable. Of course, I only mean I followed the instructions on the warning window. I hope that stabilized communications somewhat.”

“What are you after?”

“We could not allow Academy City to remain in charge after discovering the city itself breaks the treaty between magic and science. And if the city still contains some secrets after Aleister left, then the best way of ensuring a solid foundation for the fight against Coronzon is for our Anglican Church to temporarily take over management of the city.”

“The treaty…” said Itsuwa, sounding somewhat worried.

“Take over management, my ass. You know what you’ve done is an invasion, don’t you? Besides, I’ve never even heard of this treaty you’re referencing.”

“That goes back to before you took over. And now that we know Lola Stuart of the Anglican Church was Great Demon Coronzon and Academy City’s board chairman was Crowley, that agreement likely was a meaningless and empty thing. Plus, both Archbishop Lola and Board Chairman Aleister are officially considered dead. It is very unclear if any agreement made between the two holds any power anymore.”

And of course, it provided the new board chairman with no defense here.

In a way, it may have helped him that he hadn’t played a part in it.

“If we don’t do anything, Coronzon will continue to take over Academy City’s functions. We need to stop her Adikalika spell as much as anyone. Plus, we cannot allow large numbers of innocents to die of starvation, freezing, accidents, or the general chaos.”

“Tch.”

But Kanzaki Kaori did not gloat here.

She simply spoke calmly to the many magicians on her side.

“We will manage Academy City. That means the safety of the city’s residents and their property is our responsibility. Do not forget that we are rightfully to blame if a single person in the city starves during a blackout or dies in a traffic accident. Each team is to distribute personnel across the city to restore order and, if necessary, clear snow or guide traffic.”

In truth, Kanzaki Kaori did not have a clear view of it all.

Their original mission had been to retrieve Index.

The plan to take control of Academy City had only been if the city refused to return her. It had simply been reworked for use in the fight against Coronzon.

It was all the result of chance.

In this, she was the opposite of Kamijou Touma and his misfortune.

Was it Kanzaki Kaori’s unnatural level of luck that had allowed it all to come together so well?

(I always get first prize all on my own. And by holding the spot at the top, my luck sends my neighbors down toward hell. It makes me sick.)

Great Demon Coronzon was attempting to use the entire city to construct a single massive spell.

The fact that Academy City could use magic was a major problem in and of itself, but Kanzaki thought making that accusation now would be misjudging their priorities. Doing that now would be playing right into the demon’s hands as she prepared Adikalika.

They could not give her time.

Fighting back against Coronzon was the more urgent task.

So if the Anglicans used magic to try and take back the city the demon was using magic to hijack, they could establish an evenly-matched tug-of-war.

“All we have under our control are the bare minimum of electricity, gas, and water… But the Adikalika described by the current archbishop would instantly blow away this brief calm. In fact, it would plunge the entire world into the fires of war. We must avoid a meaningless three-way war between the Anglican Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and Academy City. By any means necessary.”

She doubted they could take complete control back from Coronzon at this point, but they could at least delay her.

They had done all this just for that.

They had even pressed their blades and magic against the people they were supposed to be helping.

Kanzaki Kaori clenched her teeth.

“I hope this will slow her at least a little…but even then it will only buy some time. This crisis will not end unless something is done about Coronzon herself.”

Part 9

Back inside the half-destroyed consulate…

“A large Anglican group…just took over the city and are keeping order for the city?”

A dazed Kamijou parroted what Accelerator had just told them.

This was a new turn of events.

Academy City was on the verge of death with no means of fighting back, but still.

And even if it looked like the Anglicans were providing friendly cooperation, it sounded a lot like they had concluded the city no longer had the strength left to keep its own peace.

It was looking like the very framework of Academy City could collapse from conflict between humans before Great Demon Coronzon even did anything.

“Dion Fortune, was it?” asked Accelerator. “Do something about this. You’re their boss, aren’t you!?”

“Well…”

This should have been a basic question and request.

Yet Fortune seemed reluctant to respond.

“If I had to guess, I really don’t think my power would be very effective here. I mean, the previous archbishop was Lola Stuart…in other words, Great Demon Coronzon, right? After being betrayed by the person at the very top, they’re going to be skeptical of anything coming from the next person in that role. And technically speaking, I’m not even human. I started out as a scout created by Coronzon.”

The Anglican Church couldn’t leave their top spot empty and they had needed someone to fill the role, but did that not mean they actually had much trust in the chosen individual?

They ordinarily did what she said, but that might not hold once the world was on the verge of destruction.

“Damn,” Kamijou muttered under his breath.

Yet again things were looking worse.

His plan to get Alice Anotherbible accepted by the world by advertising her as the hero who had saved the world by defeating Coronzon was already falling apart.

Academy City had been the perfect place to send the magic side’s greatest tinderbox because the place had no connection to magic.

But now that Academy City itself was known to be steeped in magic, the Anglican Church would never agree to leave Alice Anotherbible there. In fact, there would be fears that adding Alice’s incredible power to Academy City’s arsenal could lead to the creation of a third faction that could wield both magic and science.

And in fact, R&C Occultics had used both as a weapon and had caused great chaos during its short time in business.

Then Dion Fortune spoke from the sofa.

“Wait. Hold on.”

“What now?”

“Well, there’s another operation being carried out in parallel to that one.”

“What exactly is it!?”

Kamijou’s strong question did not get an answer out of Fortune.

After a while, she finally spoke quietly and quickly without looking him in the eye.

“If my people aren’t interested in obeying me…that one might actually be even more dangerous?”

Part 10

“That’s it. That’s Academy City’s outer wall,” said Index, holding the calico cat.

She had been communicating with the Anglican Church using carrier pigeons instead of EM signals or fiber optic cables. With no home in Academy City and magicians the world over after the grimoire library in her head, she had no option but to return to England.

She heard a sudden voice.

But she couldn’t see anyone around.

Index had made a friend here in Academy City.

Kazakiri Hyouka.

“So you’re going…”

“I am.”

“I’ll miss you, but if this is the path you’ve chosen, I won’t stop you.”

Index was glad they got a chance to talk before she left.

But that wasn’t all.

Kazakiri had one more thing to say.

“But be careful. Don’t let your guard down until the very end.”

“?”

The disembodied voice stopped there.

Othinus, the 15cm girl on Index’s shoulder, sighed.

“I know I’m not one to talk, but you meet the strangest people.”

Maybe so.

Index continued through the red snow to approach the city wall.

“Oh, there you are.”

She heard a voice.

It was Agnese Sanctis.

Sisters Lucia, Angelene, and more were there as well. The Amakusas would be better acquainted with Japanese geography, but apparently the Roman Catholic unit that had joined the Anglicans was here as well.

“That’s odd,” whispered Othinus up on Index’s shoulder.

Come to think of it, wasn’t the Anglican unit supposed to be waiting just outside the wall?

The cat mewed. Apparently he wasn’t bothered.

With Index’s perfect memory, she knew she wasn’t misremembering the plan. They were supposed to protect her after she left the city…

“Everything’s gotten all confused. This Great Demon Coronzon – I think it was? – has appeared in Academy City, so we’re dealing with that before taking you back home.”

“Really?”

Index tilted her head.

Was it really safe to wait around like that?

Wasn’t the idea to get her out of Academy City and to England as quickly as possible?

“We could just head back to England I guess, but, um, if we don’t do anything about Coronzon, the country might not be there when we get back. Or something like that? Anyway, follow me.”

Agnese took the lead. And moved back into the city.

This really was strange.

“(Hey.)”

“?”

“(Be cautious. A last-minute change of plans is more dangerous than the grim reaper on the front line.)”

Othinus kept her voice low so Agnese and the rest couldn’t hear.

Which meant she was working to hide their doubts.

This had been odd from the start. The idea had been to meet Index secretly and help her escape the city, yet Agnese’s group didn’t seem concerned about discovery. Even though Academy City could easily view this as a betrayal. It was almost like they weren’t at all worried about being caught.

“For now, let’s get you to District 2. Letting you see Kanzaki would be best.”

Part 11

“(E-excuse me. We have a report from the Former Agnese Forces. They say they’ve brought Index-san here.)”

The room was so quiet that Itsuwa’s modest whisper to Kanzaki managed to permeate the entire space.

A strange air hung over the District 2 unmanned weapon data center.

And this air was no metaphor.

The odor of death hung over the place.

Just as human sweat and the smell of a beast were different things, the stench of your own species decomposing was somehow different. The brain warned you to be on your guard and not to overlook anything.

It said danger was approaching.

“Hello, hello. I’m Isabella Theism of Necessarius. My specialty is necromancy.”

There was a stark difference between the carefree smile and the words it produced.

Necromancy.

“I know it has a sketchy reputation, but fortunetelling and the impurity of death are really about the only two superstitions that remain in the depths of ordinary people’s hearts even in a world of science. Like seeing a house as special because someone was killed there, or seeing a rope as special because it was used to hang someone. See what I mean? It’s something you can’t rid yourself of with equations. You might find it silly, but it’ll still be there inside you. That is what I make use of☆”

A stir spread around Kanzaki Kaori.

The Amakusas had been developed (by Kanzaki herself) to be pure and straightforward in that regard. They couldn’t so easily accept someone who called herself a necromancer.

And the woman appeared accustomed to the reaction.

She herself was a beautiful woman with silver hair and brown skin, but all she did was smile in rags permeated with the odor of death.

Agnese, who must have come all the way to District 2 to escort Index, joined the conversation while brushing red snow off her shoulders.

“She has experience as a team leader. I’ve heard she had cleaned up several troublesome messes on a global scale, like the Cadaver Island Struggle and the Necropolis Calamity. …Which means she was hiding who she really is last time we worked together.”

“Oh, yeah. I did do those things, didn’t I? But I wasn’t hiding it exactly. I just forgot is all. Why bother remembering incidents once they’re over?”

“Then did you solve those with necromancy too?”

“Everyone starts off in their own unique way, but they all end up wailing by the end. ‘I wish I’d never been born’, and stuff like that. So I can’t say who was who. They all blur together in my memory☆”

This was no laughing matter.

Both of those had been true wars with, even looking just at the official count, over a thousand combatants. And these had all been the professional magicians of top-level magic cabals. If the count went past the official members and included the workers building barricades, the lookouts and spies hidden here and there, and the mercenaries (from the magic side of course) who were invited in to bolster their personnel, who could say how many more it was. And they had all ended up much the same.

Only Isabella herself continued smiling emptily.

“Hee hee. Did I scare you?”

An “eep” escaped someone.

Itsuwa jumped at suddenly being the target of the woman’s attention, so Tsushima, who was the big sister type, instinctually inserted herself between the two of them.

“Unfermented wine and flavorless brown bread – both symbols of death,” sang Isabella regardless. “The name necromancy sounds frightening, but that’s all it really comes down to. It did used to involve drawing magic circles on dead bodies, but nowadays everyone uses imitations so they don’t gather the attention of the police. This country has ceremonies where you burn or bury a doll in place of a person, doesn’t it? It’s like that.”

“Eh?” Itsuwa sounded surprised. “You mean you don’t actually work with dead bodies?”

“I suppose the closest thing I do would be borrowing their clothing. Although different factions are split on whether that’s to search for the deceased’s soul so you can summon it or if you use it to remind someone of the deceased so you can extract the related memories and testimony from their mind.”

To be blunt, there were ways in the modern age to legally (although only by abusing loopholes in the law) acquire a full dead human body, but Isabella did not do that.

She had a simple reason.

She didn’t see any real purpose in having a real corpse.

At least in Western European necromancy, the actual ceremonies were very different from the public conception.

“Going grave digging and making a servant out of the dead body? Resurrecting a mummy from an ancient sarcophagus? No, no, I would never. Nobody uses those methods anymore – they’re too inefficient. Besides, the essence of necromancy is communicating with the spirits of the dead. So instead of shutting off their physical limiters to provide superhuman strength, it’s about acquiring information you shouldn’t have by using spirits who have been freed from the physical laws. So really you could say it’s like an uglier version of divination.”

From a Japanese perspective, it was like a version of the Kokkuri-san that used the dead.

The technique was only used to learn.

You couldn’t expect to intentionally mimic the cases where the necromancer screwed up and ended up possessed, allowing a mysterious entity into their body so they could surpass the laws of physics and shoot fire from their hands. That was far too dangerous.

As long as you understood the proper methods, you could complete the ceremonies without an actual dead body.

It could be the room where someone died, the rope used to hang someone, or clothing covered in death odor. How much of “the air of death” an item required to guide you to a special mental state depended on the individual magician, but in this case the level of the technique came from how cost efficient it was.

Isabella Theism had reached the point that she could do this:

“Really, it’s best to have a recipe for a dead body where all the ingredients can be found at the average supermarket or home improvement store. You take some pork or beef and then you make a skull out of lumber and so on.”

“Th-that’s how it’s done? That sounds more like a shop class project.”

Itsuwa’s comment made Isabella clap her hands together in delight.

“It all depends on the quality. Back before CG was so easy to use, splatter films had all sorts of tricks to make convincing fake guts. The poor image quality helped, but the end result was a lot more grotesque and disturbing than what you see in modern horror.”

Kanzaki sighed and spoke up.

“I don’t know if we will have any use for you. For now, I imagine the tug-of-war over the city against Coronzon will continue as we try to delay the activation of Adikalika, but magic to artificially consume lives doesn’t sound very useful there.”

“You think you’re in control of the entire city?” quietly asked Isabella. In a mocking tone. “Do you really believe that? Take as much of the surface-level infrastructure and important facilities as you like, you won’t fully stop the city from functioning. There’s so much more still hidden below the surface. Not to mention you haven’t even captured half of the 12 directors and have no idea where the rest are. You can’t stop Coronzon’s work by desperately trying to plug all the holes. Academy City has more than one map. It looks like a peaceful city at first, but the things hidden by the multiple overlapping maps are what make it so horrifying.”

It wasn’t Kanzaki who immediately replied.

Itsuwa made the first rebuttal while trembling.

“H-how can you know that? Academy City is supposed to be an unknown world for you too.”

“I can smell death here. The city is thick with it, so there has to be more we aren’t seeing.”

She made it sound obvious.

Or maybe this was a sense unique to necromancers.

Kanzaki asked a careful question.

“Finding fault is easy, but if you were in charge, what exactly would you do to solve the problem?”

“I will answer that with my first job as a necromancer.”

Isabella turned her attention toward something other than Great Demon Coronzon or Academy City.

She focused on the girl who they had supposedly been asked to retrieve and protect.

“The grimoire library, hm? Quite a troublesome thing to be left in Academy City with all this going on. It was miraculous good fortune that Coronzon didn’t secure her before we found her. Coronzon will not leave someone so dangerous free. Dealing with that must be our top priority.”

“What are you going to do with Index!?”

“For now, locking her up should work. She shouldn’t be a problem as long as Coronzon can’t abuse her knowledge, so the situation isn’t pressing enough to require silencing her more permanently. But to be clear, that’s only for now.”

Isabella Theism was saying she would do it if it became necessary.

She viewed the current Adikalika as the borderline with the worst case. She was saying they had to keep those 103,001 grimoires from being used to either greatly abbreviate Adikalika’s preparation period or to create magic even more troublesome than Adikalika.

She was correct.

While also twisted at a fundamental level.

“The other uncertain factor would be Kamijou Touma.”

Isabella Theism actually sounded amused.

The brown necromancer continued.

“The effects of his right hand are certainly fascinating, but whoever they might be, someone who has died once already is part of my domain. He is dead meat. That is a resource that should be utilized for maximum effectiveness. And I mean toward resolving the Coronzon and Adikalika problem, of course.”

“That is unaccep-”

“Oh? And who exactly can protect someone who is still considered dead on paper?”

“Wait.”

The interruption came from the white nun.

Despite the situation, Index’s concern wasn’t for herself.

“D-do you mean Touma?”

“…Sigh, what a pain.”

“Why are you talking about him that way? Died once already? Why would you phrase it that way? What exactly happened to Touma!?”

Index heard a sticky splat.

From her shoulders.

They had been grabbed by discolored corpse hands with visible bone and a rotting stench.

She didn’t even have time to scream. Rotting corpses too melted and swollen to even tell their sex had grabbed her shoulders and pinned her down on the floor.

“Agh!!”

“Don’t worry. These are decoy bodies made from sanitary ingredients,” said a cool-faced Isabella.

But no matter what they were made from, these were “dead bodies” professionally made to be indistinguishable from real ones. The shock of unexpected contact with one was no different.

“I came all the way to Japan to do my job. I am not interested in your home drama.”

Index had a perfect memory.

So she could never forget anything she saw or felt.

So.

“Don’t…you dare.”

A new voice joined in.

Stiyl Magnus’s.

Unlike with Index, there had been no report of his arrival. Kanzaki was supposedly in charge here, but she had no idea why he was here or how he had gotten so injured and weakened.

But something must have happened for him to be so badly hurt.

Stiyl gasped for breath and practically had to drag his body over as he approached.

“What do you think you’re doing, Isabella Theism? You want to lock her up? Stop that this instant. You aren’t fit to command the Anglicans… As a Saint, Kanzaki is the one in command here. If you’re going to insist otherwise, I will punish you!!”

“Ehh? You’re really going with that? The guy who betrayed Kanzaki the first chance he got really shouldn’t be talking about the sanctity of rules.”

A large mass dropped from the necromancer’s rags, landing at her feet.

It was a thoroughly dried, and thus lightweight, corpse.

Had it been pasted to the inside of her rags, arranged just right to be hidden despite the many holes?

It was likely only an imitation made from a mixture of cow bones, pork, ceramic, and more.

“Is this really a job to outsource and leave in the hands of a subcontractor? Obviously the on-site leader should be an actual Anglican. And I would say you’ve disqualified yourself after rushing off on a personal vendetta.”

The hunk of death lying at her feet suddenly absorbed all the moisture around her.

It grew to nearly three meters and lost its humanoid shape.

Kanzaki realized what was happening.

“Wait, Isabe-!?”

A wet pop followed.

The blood and innards were red. Beads of death were scattered evenly in all 360 degrees. Each one could eat through glass used to store nearly any chemical and plastic that wouldn’t decompose even after buried for 100 years. And there were tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of them.

“!?”

Even Kanzaki Kaori flinched before that contaminant. She sharply strung out invisibly thin wires to sacrifice them to the goop. To protect the Amakusas behind her, not herself.

Which created the tiniest of openings.

The Saint who insisted she would save everyone could only watch as Stiyl Magnus and Isabella Theism both took a step forward.

The tall priest’s eyes displayed contempt.

“Is that all?”

He spread out his rune cards.

A flame sword extended from his clenched right hand.

“Did you really think that could stop me, Isabella!?”

Death by burning symbolized purification in Christianity. But it did not mean salvation for the object being burned. Instead, it annihilated the object to eliminate it from the world. Some even believed that a body burned according to a certain ritualized procedure lost the right to participate in the Last Judgment.

It was a matter of compatibility.

Any amount of that contaminant could be eliminated by Stiyl’s flame sword.

Thus, the necromancer’s trick proved meaningless as the priest’s sword sliced through that unclean space. Along with the magician who had scattered the deadly contaminant in the first place.

The flame roared loud as it sucked in oxygen. More than just toss fire at her from without, the brown necromancer’s slashed body was burned from within.

It was thorough and swift.

But she put up too little resistance for someone being burned alive.

Eventually, Stiyl caught on.

“Is this another imitation made from different ingredients!?”

By the time the words had left him, he was surrounded by brown women.

All imitations.

But he didn’t have time to gasp.

Directly behind him, Isabella Theism hid among the imitations.

The action she took wasn’t even all that difficult.

It was gentle even.

She simply placed a hand on the priest’s shoulder.

Stiyl Magnus’s eyes rolled back in his head.

He coughed up something dark. A clump of blood. More of the hideous color spilled from his eyelids and ears. But most importantly, his two-meter form crumpled straight down.

Even the veteran Necessarius members who were world-renowned for their skill in battle against magicians couldn’t tell what had happened.

“Unlike you, I came all the way to Japan to do my job.”

Only the expert in death – the brown necromancer – chuckled and spoke.

“I am not interested in your adolescent escapades.”

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