Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Chapter3
Chapter 3: A Single Lie, A Single Answer – Seat_the_Only_One.[edit]
Part 1[edit]
The situation had changed.
Anna Kingsford.
That absolute safe zone had been shaken.
No one was perfect.
No one was flawless.
…That should have been obvious. And since Kingsford had seemed that way until now, wasn’t it natural to suspect she was hiding something?
Was she a wholly good person?
Or was she a person who only let her good side show?
Stay calm. That would be dangerous in a different way from Rosencreutz who didn’t hesitate to let his dangerous and ugly side show. Kingsford was obviously hiding her true intentions. She kept everything perfectly clean, not allowing even the slightest stain or mistake. Why had he accepted what she said when it was more suspicious than a chemical bleaching agent?
He kept telling himself not to trust anything, but he had still entrusted everything to Kingsford.
He had been reunited with Kingsford and Rosencreutz.
And he had encountered this giant phenomenon called hell.
Had he actually made any effort to organize the information in his mind and come up with an explanation for it all?
Kamijou did not know what Anna Kingsford had actually done while she lived. He had a vague impression of her being with Aleister and Miss Sprengel in Shibuya and Academy City and giving them advice, but he had not been directly involved with any of that. So he had no chance at all of guessing what she had been doing behind the scenes.
She had simply guided them toward victory in the battle against Christian Rosencreutz.
And she had simply guided them toward victory in the battle against Alice Anotherbible.
…But could anyone actually explain why Kingsford lent a helping hand and what she had gained from it?
Kamijou couldn’t see even a hint of an ulterior motive there.
Which made her look like a good person without even the slightest dark side.
“CRC…” said Anna Kingsford.
Always a step ahead and still with her back turned.
Or to put it another way, keeping her face hidden from Kamijou.
“❌, I should call him Johann Valentin Andreae who took on that name and became one with the legend. Now, he did ❌ manage to live for 106 years and he could not resurrect himself 120 years after his ☠️. He extended his life as Rosencreutz, but eventually hit a limit and met his end as a human in 1654. He never managed to destroy the Rosicrucian illusion he had created and he ☠️ed wracked with disappointment and a grudge toward the people around the 🌍 who refused to see the truth.”
“…”
“Once Rosicrucianism had truly left its owner’s control, the term was free for anyone to use. New 🪄 cabals could give themselves clout by claiming to be the legitimate descendant of the Rosicrucian cabal and ❌ one could actually prove them wrong. Plenty of 🪄 cabals with nothing to do with Rosicrucianism used the title too. That is one reason it mutated into a massive collection of 🪄al methods that gathered spells and spiritual items from all over the 🌍. For better or for worse, it was used as the foundation of a wide variety of cabals.”
Her words flowed smoothly.
“This includes theosophist and Hermetic societies, the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, and the Golden cabal created by my students Westcott and Mathers, which went on to be known as the 🌍’s largest 🪄 cabal. The extent differs, but ❌ one of them escaped the influence of CRC who had been sent out into the 🌍 by Johann. Miss Sprengel seems to have felt guilty for using the concept for her disguised life, but she need ❌ have. Because there was ❌ true Rosicrucian cabal. Her guilt over calling herself their true descendant despite her lack of knowledge was entirely misguided. …Our efforts were wasted as we poured our strength into true emptiness while trusting that the foundation could be an illusion as long as we could save the 🌍 that way.”
This was news to Kamijou. He probably would have never learned this if he hadn’t been taken to hell along with these extraordinary experts.
Come to think of it, hadn’t Magic God Othinus sacrificed her eye or life to receive terrible knowledge after mastering her path?
High Priest, Nephthys, and Niang-Niang had done the same.
But…
(Why?)
Kamijou had a question.
His desires had gained visual form in this hell. Rosencreutz’s – no, Johann’s – past sins had been revealed.
But he hadn’t seen anything from Anna Kingsford.
Hell hadn’t reflected any of her inner thoughts, nor had she revealed her past or objective.
(Has she been avoiding that? Rosencreutz’s surprising truth came as a shock, but why were we shown that? It doesn’t seem directly related to our jailbreak from hell.)
In that sense, Kamijou needed to dig deeper on Kingsford.
And if this massive soul-processing device called hell wanted to prevent a (from its perspective) illicit jailbreak, reading Kingsford’s mind and calling up some past trauma would be a great way to obstruct them.
Yet that hadn’t happened.
That seemed odd. And unnatural.
When he looked at it rationally, Kamijou Touma realized he didn’t know Kingsford’s overall intentions, or even the slightest flaw, like what food or genre of music she disliked.
She was perfectly and flawlessly good.
That was all he could see there.
There had to be something more to her.
He just didn’t know if that something would help him or hurt him.
(But…)
If so…
Kamijou had been guided deep into this unfamiliar world. He wondered if this was what it felt like to board a strange taxi in a foreign country where he didn’t know the language. He knew the driver was dangerous, but he really didn’t want to be abandoned in the middle of the jungle or desert. Even if they were a dangerous criminal, he had to pretend he was still fooled and wait until they arrived back in human civilization.
Their destination was the depths of hell.
But what did Kingsford gain by guiding Kamijou’s soul there?
Why had she gone to the trouble when he had already died and would disappear all on his own?
(If I only knew her ultimate objective, I could work backwards from there to escape her plans.)
He could only pray this wasn’t a case of a high school boy being unable to understand the thoughts of an expert.
And was their travel companion his one and only trump card here?
Christian Rosencreutz.
As terrifying as he was, he was still an expert. He should be able to properly determine the logic behind Kingsford’s actions.
Part 2[edit]
Lots of legs grew from the ground.
The ground was covered in them.
“Umm.”
“This is ❌ an unusual sight in hell. This is where the simoniacs, sinners guilty of simony, are punished.”
The glasses woman provided an explanation, but the high school boy had no idea what simony was. The sight was more surreal than frightening. With the victims flipped upside down with only their legs sticking out, it reminded Kamijou of a scene from a very famous mystery movie, but there were just so many of them. It went beyond looking like an aquatic performance done in a pool and looked more like some kind of farmland.
“🔥 burns at the bottom of the pits to burn the sinners’ heads while they are never able to escape.”
“That’s a lot more horrific than I was expecting!”
“We are approaching the bottom of hell, after all. We will be 👁️ing more facilities designed to punish more serious sins.”
But all Kamijou could do was shout.
He tried grabbing one set of legs and tugged on it like it was a daikon radish, but the legs started thrashing wildly. He heard a sound like something thin peeling away, a tremor ran through the legs, and they stopped moving. Kamijou felt like he had only made the situation worse for whoever that was.
He realized he had touched them with his right hand, but they hadn’t disappeared.
What did that mean?
(It’s probably bad if I get too accustomed to the cruel scenes here in hell.)
He felt like his common sense and the ordering of events was breaking down, just like in a hell.
If he couldn’t help those people, this place left him with only guilt. They couldn’t take a break, so Kamijou’s party continued across the simony punishment zone.
“Another river,” muttered Kamijou.
That was something he had seen a few times already.
“The Rivers Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon. Many rivers flow through hell. The idea of a river forming the boundary between life and ☠️ is ❌ unique to the 🗾ese Sanzu River. I 💭 this is the Phlegethon, but this is ❌ the original river. It should be red and flaming.”
“You don’t say,” said Kamijou offhandedly.
He was in fact listening very carefully.
Everything she said held so much more weight after Rosencreutz’s warning.
(Come to think of it, why does Kingsford know so much about the structure of hell?)
If you lived an honest life so you could go to heaven, you wouldn’t need to study how hell works. And Rosencreutz himself had said god didn’t give all that much thought to hell compared to heaven, which allowed people to imagine it in so many different ways.
Yet Kingsford knew so much about it.
Why?
And she had said the Qliphoth was a map of the realm of ghosts and curses. If she had gone to the trouble of studying that, she might be an expert in that sort of field.
She had learned it because it had felt necessary to her.
And if she knew more about it than anyone, she might have acted on that knowledge.
Kamijou was curious, but if he directly asked her about it, wouldn’t she just dodge the question? Especially if she was hiding something.
It was too soon to reach a conclusion based on her reaction, so there was no need to ask a question that would put her on guard.
Kamijou looked to the opposite bank of the river.
“But…how do we cross it? It looks too wide to swim.”
“🏊ing across would be suicide. We must use a boat. A simple raft should ❌ be too difficult to construct.”
Kamijou had pictured hell as rocky mountains and lava, but it actually had many different faces. It had forests and it had fields. The weather changed and it even rained. But he was still surprised to see Kingsford wander off and return with a toolbox she had found somewhere.
In fact…
“Um, that isn’t a torture box used for doing some DIY work on a human, is it? Y’know, like that girl in Gremlin with the silver hair and dark skin!!”
“You can’t remember her name?” growled Rosencreutz, but Kamijou chose not to react.
He wanted to hide that he had been about as serious about that comment as when watching a trivia show on TV. If the naked overalls girl with the glasses and braid found out, she would probably cry. But he could remember what she looked like at least!
“There are boats and villages in hell. And if it has been influenced enough by the Greek Tartarus, there should be an area protected by a bronze wall. So of course the tools used to build such things are lying around.”
This was the first Kamijou was hearing of this.
Were there weapon shops and inns in hell too?
“Hell will react to your unnecessary thoughts. Do you want to be pursued by obsessive oni who have boosted their deadly strength with the nonexistent legendary orichalcum series?”
CRC whispered a truly frightening idea into Kamijou’s ear. He could see that happening here. It was like the difference between a Yeti and a Yuki Onna. If the oni was a little girl oni in a tiger print bikini and with little horns growing from her head, or if it was a graceful and busty young woman oni with her kimono slipping off, he might be okay with it, but if it was a traditional muscle man oni with all the usual deadliness before even taking into account the ultimate gear, there was no upside to it at all.
But that aside, they had to build a raft.
Kamijou pictured a raft as several logs lined up side by side and tied together with rope, but apparently that wasn’t accurate.
Kingsford had also collected a few long, skinny sticks similar to clothesline poles.
Before tying them together with rope or nailing them together, she lined up the logs and poles on the ground in the general shape of the finished product. The long poles stuck out from the sides of the raft itself. And she was apparently going to tie something like empty jars or water jugs to the ends of the poles.
“What are those?”
“Tying together 🪵 will ❌ provide enough buoyancy or stability. Capsizing in a river of the ☠️ would be disastrous, don’t you think? So it’s safer to attach some extra crossarms.”
That made sense.
Jars and water jugs would act like floats using the same principle as the powerful resistance felt when trying to push a wash basin down into the bath. But where had she found those things?
The end result was shaped something like a water strider.
“Hold that 🪵 down for me. I will hold it down on this end. Oof.”
Crafting time had begun.
Kingsford lined up a few logs and tied them together with rotting rope, but that apparently wasn’t enough so she drove in a few long nails to fully fix the logs and poles together. Instead of the usual nails seen in a hardware store, she used giant nails shaped something like an upside down L. She said they were used for train tracks. Piercing the poles through would split them, so instead the horizontal protrusion of the upside down L held the thin pole tightly down instead.
However…
“Um, wait, Kingsford-san? Sensei!?”
“?”
They were jiggling.
When the racing swimsuit woman crouched down, held the nail in place with one hand, and held the hammer with her other hand, her large breasts were squeezed between her upper arms. And when she started hammering away, the jiggling began. Those huge boobs were out of control! Right in front of Kamijou!!
“I-I’m doing my best not to look, but you started doing this right in front of me, so it’s fair game for me to look, right, Sensei? You won’t be mad?”
“😠 about what?”
She looked confused.
He refused to believe she didn’t know. He took that as her hitting the “consent” button, so he replenished his mental health by enjoying the joyous view. No matter who they belonged to, big boobs were big boobs. Rejoice.
Now, the raft lacked a sail like a yacht might have.
They all pushed it down the riverbank.
From the look of it, the hell river had no current at all. The raft floated in water that seemed more like a stagnant swamp than a river. Then the three of them boarded it. Kingsford held an extra of the long poles which she stuck into the water to control the raft.
Just like in the old samurai movie Kamijou had seen while playing on TV at midday during summer break.
Instead of rowing in the water, she pressed the stick against the river bottom to push the raft forward.
And if that pole could reach the bottom, the river couldn’t be all that deep, could it?
“Falling in one of hell’s rivers would be quite the tragedy. But if you want to be stuck here for all eternity after being stained by someone else’s sin, be my guest.”
Slowly but surely, they crossed the…Phlegethon, was it?
“…”
Anyway…
This was a river.
The line between life and death was simple enough, but what did these borders within hell mean?
Kamijou had died and gone to hell, but were there any further lines he couldn’t afford to cross?
“I feel like I’ve already crossed some of those. Without really thinking about it.”
“We are aiming for a jailbreak. And we can ❌ achieve that just by doing as we are told.”
That wasn’t true.
Kingsford’s objective was the very center of the mortar-shaped hell, which was the furthest point from the gate at the entrance.
He didn’t know what she wanted to do there, though.
“There is nothing beautiful about this river 🌊, but the wind feels nice. …Phew.”
Kingsford stopped working the pole and ran a hand through her long hair shaped like a big fried shrimp.
Maybe it was from being a fiery hell, but gem-like beads of sweat scattered from her hair and a sweet aroma wafted back from her revealed nape.
“Long hair really is a pain at times like this. It gathers a lot of air, which creates a thermal insulation effect on your back.”
“Please show some restraint before a giant nape emerges from the middle of the river.”
“?”
Kamijou Touma gathered all his might to fight against his own adolescence.
The bastard sharing this raft with him began taking revenge yet again.
“The surface area on the front is far greater than on the back. You could compare it to a naked apron, or perhaps like a dorm manager? Focusing on the nape is all well and good, but do not ignore the bare shoulder blades or the line of her spine. And if you lower your gaze to the back of her hips, you can even make out the bump of her tailbone showing through the thin swim-”
“Oops, excuse me.”
“Bwohhhhhh!!” screamed CRC. The raft suddenly lost its balance just as something grabbed and tugged on his long silver beard. What did? Something that emerged from the filthy river. In fact, several giant canine heads emerged and chomped at the young old man’s beard.
“My, my. It’s Cerberus again. I should have known he would do the 🐕y paddle. Perhaps we should have defeated him on the higher level while we had the chance.”
“Do dogs just really like CRC or something?”
That one had just been some silly nonsense.
There couldn’t have been any deeper meaning.
Rosencreutz hadn’t hidden any kind of code inside it…had he?
“Ghhhh. Question, boy,” said Christian Rosencreutz, who was in a very serious situation with his prized long beard being bitten and tugged on by giant canine jaws. He took the tone of a late night chat during a school trip. “Who do you have a crush on?”
“Um…”
“You…have to think about it? Wait, wait, wait. You mean it isn’t Anna Kingsford!? Then why the giant boobs and butt? Didn’t you dream of an older dorm manager in a naked apron? A-adolescence is so cruel. Are you telling me you were only ever interested in her body!?”
“Old man, you’re just trying to stir up trouble again, aren’t you? You want to increase Kingsford’s hate value and direct it this way so she’ll attack me in the middle of a river where I have nowhere to run!!”
“But none of that refutes my asser- bghbbhfgbfgh!?”
To silence this massive conspiracy, Kamijou crouched down and grabbed the red-clad old man’s ankles. He then flipped the man over, held him up by the ankles, and dipped his head into the stagnant river so he couldn’t say anything else. The world knew peace once more.
Anna Kingsford used the long pole to keep the raft moving along.
“And we’re there.”
They had arrived on the opposite bank.
They might need to turn back at some point, so they pulled the raft up onto the land so it wouldn’t float away. It looked light while afloat, but it was so heavy when dragging it along the ground. Which made sense when it was made from several logs. And the raft shape meant they couldn’t roll it along.
A question suddenly occurred to Kamijou.
In a way, there was no question where a horrific expert like Christian Rosencreutz would go when he died. Kamijou could accept his own destination too. He had selfishly chosen death and brought sorrow to quite a few people, so he wasn’t going to complain about winding up in hell.
But.
What was that purely good and benevolent expert doing here?
Maybe she could switch between life and death at will by switching off her preserved corpse. But wouldn’t someone so dedicated to goodness end up in heaven after death?
Yes.
What if Anna Kingsford was also the kind of person who would be damned to hell?
Part 3[edit]
Kamijou had pictured hell as dark, empty, and dry.
He had also associated it with heat and flames.
But he noticed things gradually changing as he followed carefully after Anna Kingsford.
He felt chilly.
He looked around and noticed he could see his breath.
“We are approaching the bottom of hell,” said Rosencreutz. His breath was visible too. “Boy, have you ever encountered the term Cocytus?”
“Isn’t it usually a kind of ice magic, or a magic sword?”
“But where did modern people find the term they now incorporate into their entertainment?” The young man stroked his long, long beard. “Cocytus is the name of the bottom level of hell. And Cocytus itself is divided into four areas like the rings of a tree stump: Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca. From outermost to innermost area, the severity of the sin grows and the very center area – Judecca – is where the world’s three most sinful people are eternally punished until the day the world ends.”
“…Wait. Did you say three?”
“My, what a predicament. This old man is quite concerned by how perfectly the numbers match up.”
Kamijou looked to Kingsford’s back as she continued walking through this frozen world.
The three of them were walking through hell. Toward the prison for the three most sinful people.
Could there be something there?
But wait…
(That logic would mean Kingsford was leading herself to her doom too. If she wanted to take us to the bottom of hell to trap us, she would need another person with us.)
Think as he might, he couldn’t figure out what she was after.
And without knowing that, he couldn’t prepare.
His anxiety grew.
Their surroundings became darker and the chill much more biting, hinting that something was changing. He had to do something soon, but he couldn’t even run off at random while he was guided deeper and deeper.
That was like running full tilt in a random direction inside a trap-filled pyramid because he couldn’t trust his guide.
He should have thought for himself more.
If he had at least kept track of the path they took, he could have turned back the way they had come. Then he could have at least safely reached the gate to hell.
He could tell he was being guided down a path.
A wide world was spread out around him, but he couldn’t escape that path.
That only worried him more.
“What is this place?”
The deepest depths of hell were covered in ice.
It looked a lot like a vast subterranean lake that had fully frozen, but he couldn’t tell if there actually was any water below the thick layer of ice. And that ice was a lot clearer than he had expected.
He had expected the center of hell to be a vortex of dark filth, but maybe this was like an isekai fantasy where the demon world was generally dark and creepy but the demon lord’s castle was bright and shiny inside.
That meant this was a special location.
Kamijou didn’t know much about the layout of the European hell, but he could tell that much.
Anna Kingsford came to a stop.
The benevolent expert had continued unstopping for so long, but here she stopped.
After leading them this deep with such confidence, he was afraid she was about to turn around with a smile and say she was lost, but apparently not.
“This is the place,” she said.
There was…
…something there.
Kamijou’s breath caught in his throat.
There was nothing like that in the world of the living. That was a monster you had to die and go to hell to see. It was bad news. It was somehow different from powerful foes like Othinus and Aleister. He could tell just coexisting in the same place as it would lead to his destruction.
Before he could even grasp its true nature, he saw just a vague silhouette.
What would happen if he did get a direct view of it?
He usually thought of darkness as something that brought unease and fear to the human heart. This wasn’t just his view. Giving the light side the position of the good guys was common across the globe.
But things worked differently here.
Was the deep darkness a comfort here? Because he wanted to avoid viewing the thing that lurked beyond that thick veil before he was ready.
Kingsford had said Greek mythology had Nyx, goddess of the night.
So had there been an age when this sort of comfort was valued to the point it was worshiped as a god?
He must not see that.
Seeing it would mean his demise.
No one had told him that and he hadn’t actually checked for himself, but he could just tell. No matter what power might reside in his right hand, he could never even stand up to that thing.
“The 👑 of the demons…or the 👑 of hell,” said Anna Kingsford.
Was this her goal?
To contact that thing?
“Some 💬 he is Satan, some 💬 Beelzebub, and others 💬 Lucifer, but he has only one role. To provide the ultimate punishment by eternally gnawing on the three greatest sinners. In this view of hell, the demon 👑 has rebelled against god and gathers strength in the depths of the earth, yet he is still doing the will of god by tormenting the sinners damned by god.”
“What…?”
Kamijou was dumbfounded.
What did Kingsford hope to accomplish here? Kamijou had been led down here by deception, but she had come here of her own free will. She had come to this extremely dangerous place where a great monster lurked in the shadows. If Kamijou had full control of the situation, he never would have come here no matter his goal and no matter what benefits it might provide. So why had Kingsford come here?
“What are we supposed to do here, Kingsford!? I thought you said our journey would take us from hell and return us to the world of the living!!”
“I did.”
The benevolent expert – or the woman wearing that mask – immediately nodded.
With a smile.
Would she offer Kamijou and Rosencreutz’s souls to that giant thing lurking in the shadows so it would send her back to the living world? That useless idea came to Kamijou’s mind. But no amount of speculation would give Kamijou any kind of useful answer or countermeasure.
However.
“Like I 💬d back at the beginning, hell is shaped like a mortar,” she said.
…?
Nothing had changed?
She spoke in the same gentle way she always did.
But now that she had the other two in the depths of hell, she no longer needed that good guy act.
“So if you wish to take the shortest route from hell to the living world, the answer is obvious: You secure a ↕️ starting at the very bottom and climb up. That is the only way.”
“Oh.”
“When people 💭 up this structure of hell based on the limited depictions in Revelation and other sources, elevators, 🚁s, and 🚀s did ❌ yet exist. Only the 🪽ed angels in charge of hell could take that vertical route. They used it as a shortcut.”
Something sparkled in front of her.
It looked like tiny particles.
But it wasn’t. It was something made of highly transparent glass. A thick pane. And more of them floated in the air with a regular pattern. It looked like a spiral staircase to Kamijou. But as his gaze traveled up the clear staircase, perspective threw off the sense of scale and it ended up looking like a single line of light shining down from heaven.
“The gate to hell is often mentioned, but it is never mentioned that turning back there will bring you back to life. When standing on the outer edge of a mortar, what good is walking further outwards? If you try that, you will end up forever wandering in the dark forest at the top level of hell.”
So…
What did that mean?
When Anna Kingsford led him from the gate to the very bottom of hell, she hadn’t had any kind of ulterior motive? She had simply chosen the shortest and quickest route to escape straight up from the bottom?
She hadn’t been hiding anything.
Was that really all it was?
“The Qliphoth references the territory stretching from the living world to hell. If you contact it while viewing it as a heretical thing that specializes in 👻s and curses, it will bring disaster, but the Crowley faction has a fully-equipped expert very carefully contact it to acquire countless tricks and loopholes ❌ found in the proper methods.” Kingsford stared at the sparkling staircase as she presented a miracle, free of charge. “And the standard meditation technique of the Crowley faction says the one and only way to travel between worlds is to ascend vertically while ❌ being tempted to either side by existing standards of morality. …If you were to directly visualize the modern theory, it might look something like this.”
There was nothing more to Anna Kingsford.
She really had stopped her own functioning to leave the living world and descend into hell for no other reason than to save Kamijou Touma. Free of charge. She gained nothing at all from this.
Kamijou was the one being saved, but he had still doubted her.
It was like red cabbage indicator.
Or like this hell.
What someone thought when faced with Kingsford’s true benevolence revealed how shameful they were. There was no hiding it before that true expert. In the face of the ultimate righteousness, the very act of feeling shame and trying to hide something would reveal that something.
Yes.
Now that he knew Anna Kingsford was innocent, a new question came to Kamijou’s mind.
Why had he begun doubting her in the first place?
However it had started, that doubt was his own. He wasn’t going to blame his own ugliness on someone else. But it had started somewhere. There had been an initial push that had led him to doubt that benevolent expert who had thrown out her own life for pure volunteerism.
It wasn’t a difficult question.
The process of elimination was enough to solve it.
It hadn’t been benevolent Kingsford. It was the ugliness in Kamijou’s heart that let him be influenced, but he had only been influenced. It was someone else who had guided him in that wicked direction.
Who else was here in hell?
When the two of them were removed from the three, who remained?
Kamijou Touma spoke the name of the culprit.
“Christian…Rosencreutz?”
Part 4[edit]
Time froze.
Kamijou Touma couldn’t believe it.
But maybe that disbelief was proof that he had already been taken in.
There was precedent.
Rosencreutz was the opposite of benevolent expert Kingsford. Unlike the common legend, he was an expert who selfishly and capriciously spread death.
Had Kamijou forgotten how dangerous he was?
Had he forgotten what had happened in Academy City?
He had been deceived by the idea of a truth that couldn’t be found by simply following the righteous path, a cynical view, a possibility of using a trick or a loophole.
Hadn’t Kingsford said that the Qliphoth could only be used by a fully-equipped expert? And that any normal person contacting it would simply be engulfed by disaster?
This was the stereotypical example.
If Kamijou had doubted Kingsford enough to part with her, what would have happened to him in this hell?
Demons did not rely on simple physical strength or shoot fire from their mouth. They used apparent kindness and tempting words to send people racing toward a mistaken ending. Everyone knew demons were dangerous, but they assumed they alone were built different and could take advantage of the world’s hidden rules to escape unscathed.
Kamijou had been directed toward his own doom to eliminate him without Rosencreutz having to dirty his own hands.
Was that why Anna Kingsford had responded so coldly to Christian Rosencreutz when compared to Kamijou?
“That expert was back at work even if he had to do so from beyond the 🪦. Just ☠️ing you once was never going to be enough, was it, CRC?”
Kamijou had thought it was just the difference between an amateur high school boy and a professional expert.
But the answer was simpler: CRC was the villain from the very beginning. Kamijou had completely forgotten, but the benevolent expert had seen right through him all along.
Anna Kingsford revealed people’s true nature in a different way from hell.
Not only had she revealed Kamijou Touma’s shameful side like a red cabbage indicator, but she had also stripped away the demon’s kind and pretty makeup to reveal the true nature hidden below.
The one and only villain had been obvious from the very beginning: Christian Rosencreutz.
“This hell…”
He was shaken. The silver-haired young man in red trembled and raised his voice.
Was this some kind of irony?
Or did hell flip everything on its head?
The death-dealing man was pleading his own righteousness.
“This hell is a great device meant for this old man. This old man made it himself!! It is not for the two of you who showed up later!”
“?”
Kamijou didn’t understand.
“🎯.”
But the benevolent expert did.
Generally speaking, there was nothing she did not know. Nor did she stray from righteousness. To oppose her was a truly terrible idea. Not because of her strength in battle. No matter who you were, if you opposed her, that alone was proof that your being or thoughts were not righteous.
“This is ❌ the real hell,” said the benevolent expert. “It is a temporary space created by combining different 🖼️es of hell. It covers up a supposedly ☠️ soul with a phony hell to shuffle its destination and forcibly convert its affiliation to a vague near-☠️ state that is neither wholly alive nor wholly ☠️. It exists solely to fake the qualifications needed to return a ☠️ soul to the living world. Simply put, it provides a miraculous survival after the fact.”
This was not the real hell.
Kamijou had seen figures flitting through the shadows and legs sticking upside-down from the ground. But he had mostly passed them by as just a part of hell instead of trying to save those suffering people. Thinking back, that felt unnatural, but did this explain why?
Everything here, including those figures, had been hollow, so none of it sparked any emotion in him.
But…
“Are you saying you created this resurrection zone?”
“❌.”
Kingsford immediately rejected that idea.
Unlike the masses who had once been swept up by the Rosicrucian movement, she would not bend the truth for her own advantage.
“This hell was inserted by Johann Valentin Andreae who is currently going by Christian Rosencreutz.”
“You mean…?”
Come to think of it…
If Kingsford had created this hell, how had Rosencreutz ended up here? If she had only wanted to save Kamijou, only the two of them needed to be here.
Rosencreutz was a mystery addition.
Except he wasn’t.
“We found Rosencreutz at the gate – at the very starting point of hell. But we never saw when he arrived here.”
“Of course you didn’t. This old man arrived here first. It’s you two who arrived later who don’t belong here!!”
“🎯, that is true.” The righteous one never made any attempt to hide anything. “But I made a promise to Aleister that I would save Kamijou Touma ❌ matter how much I must break the rules. So I must keep that promise. CRC, I will do so even it means breaking your pure but destructive ambition and using it for my own ends.”
“This old man will be resurrected.”
“So you can remove all trace of Rosicrucianism from the present 🌍?”
“This old man has things he must do in the living world!! So I cannot remain here!!”
“Even if that would result in the direct destruction of the 🪄 side’s countless 🪄 cabals and the resultant chaos would indirectly cause the science side to collapse as well?”
The hell this group had walked through all this time was a temporary space created by Rosencreutz so he his dead soul could return to the realm of the living.
But Kamijou and Kingsford had broken into it.
That was the accurate view here.
That was why Johann’s past and sins had been revealed along the way. The path had been tuned to him from the very beginning.
And Rosencreutz wouldn’t have cared as long as he could achieve his jailbreak. And if he had only paid the smallest possible cost to escape this hell, Kamijou could guess at something else.
That is…
“This hell was only made to return a single soul to life.”
“…Are you going to take it from me?”
“After the damage it took, Academy City is in ❌ state to endure another attack by CRC. A second attack would truly finish it. Johann, your resurrection must be 🛑ed at all costs.”
“You are going to steal this old man’s seat!? By giving the resurrection ticket to Kamijou Touma who so conveniently died, you will waste that one and only ticket so that this old man can never be resurrected!!!”
“The boy’s ☠️ was inevitable. Nothing at all could be done to prevent it. So the best option was to take that ☠️ into account and find a way to still save him. And it is my responsibility for making use of him to send his young soul back to the living 🌍 where there is so much he has left undone.”
That was all of it.
But this did not account for two things: Anna Kingsford and Christian Rosencreutz.
“❌ matter how powerful we are, we are 🧙s who have already ☠️ed. I will not allow either of us to foolishly and shamefully resurrect ourselves at the expense of a still-living boy. The 🎟️ to survival should go to the living, CRC. So with just the one 🎟️ available, we should hand it to the boy. It is ❌ our place to intrude.”
Kingsford did not hesitate.
From the very beginning, she had not even considered the possibility of her own resurrection.
“Young lady…are you really satisfied by that?”
“I am.”
“By that silly argument!!!? T-this isn’t just about this old man. You really can reach the door to the realm of the living. If you were to abandon that boy and resurrect yourself, you could save far more people. Since you name yourself an expert, you must be able to perform the actual calculation. So why give him the ticket!? Why throw out your life for such foolishness!?”
“Everything I do is in service of those around me. Even if that was all nonsense you wrote for a prank and even if the groups naming themselves followers of the 🌹 and the ✝️ were something else entirely, there were indeed experts who believed in the ideals ✍️en there and dedicated their lives to upholding them. Those true experts saved people in secret and many people reclaimed their ☺️s thanks to them. I am merely joining their ranks. As long as there is a lost one before me and I have been blessed with the opportunity to provide a helping ✋, it makes little difference if it all began as a truth or a lie.”
“…”
“CRC did ❌ actually exist? Rosicrucianism was a made up story? You can tell me that all you like, but there is ❌ need for me to come up with some clever trick to counter it. I need only 💬 that I truly believe in the great deeds carried out in Rosencreutz’s name. Christian Rosencreutz – or the illusion of him – has moved many 🧙s’ ❤️s into saving so many people. And so I wish to become one such 🧙 and join the ranks of my predecessors.”
“…………………………………………………………………………………………”
Silence.
Even Rosencreutz was driven to silence.
“Blessed with,” Kingsford had said. If not for the excess baggage that was Kamijou, she could have used this to resurrect herself. In fact, she wouldn’t have had to visit hell in the first place.
But she felt no hesitation or reluctance.
She was really and truly looking only toward sending Kamijou Touma back to life.
And by preventing CRC’s resurrection here, she could save Academy City and the world as a whole.
Even if he had been cleverly tempted into doubting her.
The complete lack of doubt in her eyes made Kamijou feel his own foolishness all the more vividly.
“This old man won’t let you.”
The expert who spread death and destruction had failed.
He had said death was the default state for the dead and that Kingsford must have some kind of ulterior motive. But after all that whispering in Kamijou’s ear, this was his true nature.
He was only interested in himself.
Once you knew that, the truth or fiction of the rest of the information fell into place nicely.
“This old man created this hell!! So whatever you say, this old man will be using it! You wretched thieves. Act as benevolent as you like, this old man holds the legitimate claim here!!”
“Weren’t you 👂ing, CRC?”
“Kh.”
“I promised to save Kamijou Touma ❌ matter how much I must break the rules.”
CRC. Christian Rosencreutz.
Or Johann Valentin Andreae.
His true nature was dangerous through and through. Kamijou couldn’t forget what he had done in Academy City. But at the same time, that silver-haired young man in red had never once lied to himself. Even if that worked against him and led to his own downfall.
He had in fact wandered between the realms of life and death for more than 400 years.
He had just one goal: take responsibility for what he had done.
That was all.
So the man who had once been a 15-year-old boy had turned himself into a monster.
He had achieved this after so much hardship, so what was the point? He wasn’t gathering wealth or fortune for himself.
That didn’t matter to him.
He hadn’t done it for his own happiness.
He had continued on while thinking only of punishing himself.
He had thrown out his name of Johann Valentin Andreae and dressed up as the person he most loathed: the fictional Christian Rosencreutz. He had poured all his energies into eradicating the Rosicrucian legend spreading through the public consciousness, but he had failed to keep up with the self-replication rate of the story spread by word of mouth and the story’s own inventor had ultimately become a corpse and vanished from history.
“This old man will be resurrected.”
This identity.
And his sins.
They had both been revealed by the benevolent mirror, but Rosencreutz still gnashed his teeth and roared.
“It will happen, no matter the damage to my reputation and even if this old man must abandon himself to do it!! Can you do that, boy? You cannot even have a dream for your future or a picture of what occupation you will take up. But do you still claim to have a reason to crave resurrection that surpasses this old man’s 400 years of regret and resentment!!?”
The words pushed in.
Like a great invisible wave.
Kamijou Touma was in fact a mere high school boy who hadn’t even decided if he would continue on to college or get a job after graduating. Presented with the 400 years of persistence and righteousness of Christian Rosencreutz after becoming one with a legend, he could easily lose sight of his position and have his soul shattered.
“Are you kidding me?”
But he managed to speak.
He didn’t even need to use his right fist. His words alone shattered a 400-year-old illusion.
He wouldn’t doubt himself anymore.
It was easy to listen to tempting words. At times, joining the dangerous one in skepticism could look more clever than trusting as the benevolent one did. But that was wrong. The truth was straightforward. Always choosing the clever and sly path was not guaranteed to take you to a happy future. Trusting a shady expert could make you a laughing stock, but that did not mean that always doubting anything and everything would make you happy. Forcing yourself to always take a cynical view accomplished nothing.
You had to decide for yourself.
Focus your mind there and you would feel a great power in your heart.
No one was asking you to choose based on what was more solid, more clever, more savvy.
To put it another way, what was wrong with making the flimsy, silly, and foolish choice?
So.
The words seemed to come to Kamijou Touma’s lips of their own accord.
He did not lower his head.
He stared straight ahead and accepted the deadly expert’s gaze head on.
“I want to talk with Index again.”
“I want to return to Academy City and apologize to Misaka and the others I worried so much. As many times as it takes for them to forgive me.”
“I want to see Aogami Pierce, Fukiyose, and the others at school during the third term and discuss our winter breaks. I want to enjoy our time together at school now that we’re second and third years!”
“I want to wipe away Alice Anotherbible’s tears with this hand – this fingertip – right here!! I want to tell her I died because of my own choice and it wasn’t her fault! 400 years of regret and resentment? Sure, I don’t have anything on that grand a scale. But that doesn’t mean it’s any better than my reasons, CRC!!!”
Anna Kingsford said nothing, but she did appear to be smiling.
She may have seen a small, pale light.
All people had the right to live and hope.
All people had the right to work toward bettering themselves.
Kamijou Touma would use all of his rights here. He would throw out the arrogant idea that he should back down or give up in advance due to some kind of hierarchy or ranking. He would return to the living world no matter what. And if Rosencreutz was trying to once more bring ruin to Academy City and the rest of the world, he would do whatever it took to put a stop to it.
CRC.
This wasn’t like before.
He couldn’t rely on everyone else in Academy City.
This time, just the puny boy had to challenge that man and win.
So what?
If it had to be done, then it was up to whoever was here to save the world.
Strongly.
Kamijou Touma clenched his right fist very, very strongly.
“Christian Rosencreutz.”
“Why did that power choose you? Why can you have it without any kind of objective or direction for it?”
But this received an odd reaction.
It came from CRC’s expression.
His face crumpled up, but not in rage or resentment. The faintest hint of envy was displayed there.
“if you believe you can achieve your dream by trampling everyone else underfoot…”
“If this old man only had that…if my hand only possessed that one supernatural power…”
“And if you intend to continue destroying the world once you return there…”
“This old man wouldn’t have had to wander for 400 years! I could have destroyed the illusion of the rose and the cross back theeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!!!”
The boy made his announcement all the same.
He trusted that it still remained in his right hand.
It too must have stuck around because he wasn’t really dead yet.
So he came out and said it.
“Then I’ll destroy that illusion!!!”
Monsters[edit]
Lord of Demons
The demon lord found at the center of hell’s bottom level. Has six wings and three faces used to gnaw on the three most sinful people. Referred to by different names, such as Satan, Lucifer, and Beelzebub. When he fell from heaven, even the ground bent and fell away to avoid him, producing the great crater now known as hell.
