Sorcery Hacker:Volume2

Novel Illustrations

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Phase 00: Beyond the Continent

The azure ocean stretched as far as the eye could see.

A single thick line ran through that expanse. That artificial structure was a series of large arch bridges built from quarried stone. Identical structures continued endlessly beyond the horizon.

A rhythmic “kaclunk, kaclunk” came from those bridges.

They formed the main line of an intercontinental ocean railroad that was known as the greatest creation of humanity’s sorcery. A 13-car spirit engine train followed the rails atop the bridges, using many centipede-like legs to move the luxury sleeper train.

And inside…

“Why?” groaned a voice.

It belonged to Henrietta Split Destrius. She wore her blonde hair in a waist-length braid similar to a ponytail. Her tight skirt armor was made by adding monster leather and tendons to oxidized mana-conducting silver, which was colored a deep gray similar to the environmentally-destructive material known as asphalt. That beautiful girl and legitimate knight asked a horrified question of the boy across the table from her.

“Why would you wait until we are already onboard to mention we have no money, dangerous individual!?”

To reiterate, this was a luxury sleeper train.

It did not have seats lining the walls and it was not packed to 300% occupancy. The seats were ranked from 1st class to 3rd class, but they generally took the form of private sleeper rooms, the only food came from restaurants proudly displaying their number of stars, and the train even offered a pool, a casino, and a dance hall. This 7-day journey was going to take a fair amount of money. Buying enough tickets for everyone was not enough in this case.

And right now, Ayato Criminaltrophy, a black-haired boy in a blue blazer and with a sword at his hip, put on an exceedingly obedient look while the luxurious space was filled with the quiet music played from a needleless record player that read the disc using light.

“Not so loud, Miss Henrietta. We really do not want this information getting out.”

“…”

The straitlaced Striker looked awfully squirrel-like as she actually did clap both hands over her mouth.

Also, Ayato was the only one she was still calling a “dangerous individual”. She had started off applying the title to Teleria and Mamilis as well, but that seemed to have changed over the course of their journey. Ayato felt a little left out noticing the girls were drawing closer without him.

The sorcery network worked by sending out invisible mana mist along thin, spiderweb-like threads, so it generally only supported stationary devices. That meant pedestrians and sorcery vehicles could not use network devices, but that did not apply here. This train had a largescale spirit engine loaded in the very front, so it functioned as a single large server. It was very different from the city trains that ran using external energy. And since it followed a fixed route, the spirit engine could resonate with the manaflow sent along the course of the track, allowing those onboard to connect to the outside world. The Media Summoners that functioned as a TV, a radio, and a search engine all at once were usable here. That gave a Sorcery Hacker like Ayato a lot to focus on.

As a sorcery criminal who generally infiltrated a location and hijacked the circuits there, a spirit engine that forcibly carried a network base around with it was an impressive device.

“To be blunt, we don’t have what we don’t have. Sorry, but I’m a Sorcery Hacker, not an alchemist.”

“The point is you should have done something about this before we found ourselves in this predicament!”

The train’s interior contained scarlet carpeting, a deep wood grain reminiscent of a violin given coat after coat of varnish, and the occasional crystal or gold decoration shining here and there. It was a train and yet it had crystal chandeliers. The place felt more like a fancy mansion, yet this was only the train’s 2nd class restaurant. It was apparently for the casual passengers since it had no dress code and anyone was allowed in. There was of course no menu to be found. You apparently told the sommelier how you were feeling that day and they would prepare the best possible food and wine combination for you. Ayato did not even want to think about how much a small salad there would cost. Even taking a seat was bound to come with a hefty table charge.

“I was keeping this from you for your own good, but if you must know why, then so be it. As Forwards, our job is to pursue people with bounties on their heads, but, Miss Henrietta, you and your odd sense of righteousness keep getting in the way of our work, leaving us with no income.”

“…!?”

“Really, though. What are we going to do about this? This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all. At this rate, they’re going to find out we’re flat broke and they’re gonna tie our hands behind our backs while we have nowhere to escape on the running train.”

“Gh, b-but my chivalrous heart cannot bear to let some filthy outlaws chase down fleeing people with sorcery guns in hand. Those jobs should be left to the royally-authorized knights or, if I’m being generous, an organized law enforcement group formed by the local citizenry.”

“Don’t act like we’re bullying innocent people. They’re criminals. Wanted criminals.”

“If they are on the run, they have yet to be tried for their alleged crimes. I do not agree that suspected criminals are free game to abuse as you like.”

Where’s that presumption of innocence when it comes to me? wondered the Sorcery Hacker (who she absolutely despised) while about ready to hold his head in his hands. But he decided to stick to the topic at hand.

“I’m a guy, so if they find out I can’t pay, they’ll probably chuck me out into the ocean from the running train. I just have to hope they don’t decide to wrap a thick chain around me beforehand. But I imagine the unpleasantness will last a lot longer for you girls. I mean, this is a luxury train equipped with plenty of beds. People often look for exotic thrills on a trip and there are plenty of rich people here, if you catch my drift. Oh, and recall what I said about there being nowhere to escape on a running train.”

“Hgee! Wait, don’t you dare defile our honor by having such obscene fantasies about us!”

“Now, you brought this on yourself, but Miss Teleria and Miss Mamilis got a raw deal here. But maybe that’s just how it is with powerful knights. You refuse to accept a fall from grace without taking a few maids with you for company, huh?”

An unbelievably provocative bunny girl whose outfit shined a brighter red than her lipstick passed right by while weaving between the tables. The midday sun was shining bright outside, but her round silver tray contained colorful alcoholic drinks, the cleavage of her large chest was left exposed, and her butt wiggled side to side. As the straitlaced Striker’s eyes followed her, a cold sweat began to pour down her face. This was a new world for her. It did not look like she would be washing dishes in the kitchen if she was found unable to pay.

Yes.

And the honest people who could generally endure any pain or humiliation would never let someone else suffer for their own mistakes. The human heart was strange thing. The people who fought hardest to prevent suffering often saw themselves as the one exception.

“(No, no. This can’t be happening. A Striker like me cannot offer her body up to a bunch of strange men. That alone would be a terrible scandal for my family, but placing those innocent girls in danger with my own actions is even more unthinkable. I cannot let that happen. But what do I do? What can I possibly do? Is there any way to turn this around now and save everyone? Oh, no. Oh, no, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no!)”

Henrietta was applying the standards of a knight to her position of Striker, but that was her own personal high standards at play. If it gets too confusing, you can simply think of her as a privileged noble who still insists on fighting on the front lines at all times.

“S-s-so, dangerous individual.”

“Yes?”

“I have an earnest question for you. Heh…eh heh heh. That is to say, I am willing to be more frank with you than you really deserve, so I would appreciate it if you would answer me.”

“Hoping for a guy’s opinion on whether bunny girls or bikini armor would earn more tips?”

“Okay, sorry for being so rude, Lord Ayato, my Prince Charming. In your great wisdom, do you perhaps have an idea of how we can escape this crisis? Ugh, if you would lend me just a taste of your towering intellect, that would be more than this rustic noblewoman could possibly understand after wasting all her brain space on how to fight!!”

She truly was desperate. She leaned out over the table and clung tearfully to that sketchy guy she barely knew. The butlers and maids of her family home would have fainted had they seen it.

Meanwhile, there was something odd about Ayato.

He had a thin and androgynous face that looked young for his age, but there was a striking difference between his expression compared to Henrietta’s. He did not seem remotely worried despite the dire straits they found themselves in.

“Miss Henrietta, you can start by wiping away those tears. Blow your nose too if you can. Then can you listen calmly to what I have to say?”

“Yesh, sniff, yessss.”

“Listen, Miss Knight.” He casually pointed his thumb toward the adjacent car. “This train has a casino.”

Henrietta felt dizzy and came to a stop as soon as she set foot in the casino car.

“What’s wrong, Miss Henrietta? You’re blocking the entrance.”

“But, um…I…”

The Striker could only tremble while trying to say something, but her mind was swept away by a deluge of sound and voices.

“I’m the shooter now. Hand over those dice.”

“No more bets. The board remains as is, got that?”

“Raise. I still have a chance, so I raise!”

The classy clientele here was not speaking all that loud. In fact, the music and the sound of collapsing stacks of chips were louder. But take Henrietta’s mental state into consideration. This was like a storm. She had been adrift in a small boat for three days and now a gargantuan storm was blowing in. If she raised the sail, she might be blown back to land all at once, but she had no idea which direction was right.

So in the end, the straitlaced Striker looked up at Ayato with the eyes of a puppy dog in the rain and pleaded him with a tremor in her voice.

“I-I don’t think I can do this. I can’t make heads or tails of anything they’re saying! How am I supposed to win when I don’t even know the rules!? This get-rich-quick scheme will never wor-”

“Oh? Well, if you say so. Then you should probably start checking out the sample costumes they have on display. Oh, look. They’ve made a micro version of the traditional bikini armor. Hm? And it seems to have a special opening right here, Miss Henrietta. Ha ha ha. That extra ventilation should come in handy on a hot and sticky summer day.”

“Can we please discuss whose side you are even on, dangerous individual? I will do anything, so please stay on my side here!!”

“Then I would recommend a game that does not require competing against another player. Then you can use math to calculate out your odds of winning. There are no guarantees in gambling, but some strategies are better than others.”

“R-roulette? Hyah!”

Henrietta straightened her back and shrieked because Ayato had moved up behind her while she hesitantly approached the table. He almost looked like a boyfriend giving his girlfriend a hands-on lesson on how to play the game. Of course, this was a casino, so if two acquaintances were standing so close for any other reason, they would gather attention as possible cheaters.

The straitlaced Striker blushed and shrank down from the ticklish breath on her neck as she quietly protested.

“M-must you take advantage of the situation, dangerous individual?”

“I believe you were the one who asked me for help. Or do you want to give it a whirl on your own?”

“Please…”

“I can’t hear you.”

“I said please help me. But don’t think I’m going to forget this!”

“You say you will do anything and you also promise to never forget it? I am very excited to see where this is headed.”

Ayato was not cruel enough to immediately convert their limited remaining funds into chips and seat Miss Straitlaced down at the table. He had her start by watching a few rounds of the game from a short distance away.

“Now, I should probably explain the rules.”

“I have no idea what to make of all those numbers on the table.”

“You’ll get used to it. For this version of roulette, the wheel is divided into the numbers 0-36 and you want to predict which one the ball lands in. The payout is based on the odds of that particular result. So betting on red or black and even or odd pays back double, betting on the front, middle, or back sections containing a third of the 36 numbers pays back triple, and guessing the exact number pays back 36 times your bet.”

The dealer called out “no more bets”, the wheel slowed down, and the ball fell into a pocket.

This time, it was red 17.

“But guessing it exactly right like that pretty much never happens, so the normal way to play is to bet on multiple things at once during a single round. Like betting on 4 or 5 spots.”

“O-okay, I think I get it. So to go for a solid victory, I should bet on red or black or even or odd. That seems like the easiest to get right.”

“Don’t be dumb. Those only pay back double your bet when you win. When betting on 4 or 5 spots, you need to make back at least 4 or 5 times your bet to just break even.”

“Ugh…”

“The front, middle, and back sections won’t work for the same reason. Tripling your bet won’t make back what you paid out. By the way, you might try to win three bets at once by betting on red, odd, and 1-12, but those don’t all align as often as you would think. Going for that will only have you slowly losing money. Although you’ll feel kind of happy about it since you will be winning some here and there.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“The standard strategy is to go for the individual numbers. You bet on 4 or 5 of them at once. If any of them win, that’s 36 times the bet, giving you plenty to make up for all 4 or 5 bets.”

“B-but! Don’t I lose it all if none of them are right?”

“Of course.” Ayato whispered in her ear. He claimed to be helping her, but he was acting a lot more like a demon corrupting a virtuous person. “Don’t even think about trying to win every single round. This is all about statistics, so you want to lay out a barrage of bets. You might lose the first or second round, but that doesn’t matter as long as you average out in the positive after 10 rounds. A single win pays back 36 times the bet. Even when making multiple bets per round, you’re making money as long as you win by the 35th bet.”

“Eh? What? It’s that easy to win!?”

“It is. That’s why it’s such a popular strategy.”

“Then what was I so worried about? This is nothing more than a game, so maybe I should have tried to stayed calm.”

Now.

Nothing he had said was strictly wrong, but if there was such a surefire way of always winning in the end, every casino on the continent would have gone out of business ages go. But Ayato decide there was no good reason to tell her that part. There was one factor you should never get wrong while discussing probability and statistics. He had mentioned the odds of winning after 10 rounds, but that denominator was important. And doubling the value was a very different thing from squaring it.

“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner? And how long do you plan on holding onto my hips like that? It’s rude! Excuse me, dealer, is that seat open?”

Henrietta remained oblivious to that mathematical pitfall as she cheerfully took a seat at the table with her ponytail-like blonde braid swaying behind her. Ayato simply watched from behind. The straitlaced Striker was a good listener at least because she did exactly as he had told her.

“Hm, hm, hmm. I want to bet on 5 numbers at once, so…black 12, red 15, black 21, black 24, and red 36 should do it.”

“No more bets. …Red 19.”

He could have sworn he heard a cracking sound come from her smiling face.

The smile remained as sweat began to pour down her brow.

“Ha…ha ha ha. Not to worry. This is about probability and I am laying out a barrage of bets, so each individual round is of little consequence. As long as my 10-round average comes out on top, I have nothing at all to worry about, so I just need to keep it up.”

“No more bets. Black 8.”

The smile was now permanently frozen to her face as she looked down at the table to watch the chips vanishing before her eyes. She began to tremble. Was she picturing that bikini armor in her mind’s eye?

(Now, then.)

Meanwhile, Ayato viewed the rest of the casino from directly behind Henrietta – which also placed him in a blind spot for the most annoying watchdog here.

Meanwhile, the third round came to an end.

“Black 21!? I bet on that one last round, so why does it have to land there now!?”

Henrietta’s mind was boiling over now and tears were welling up in her eyes, so Ayato approached from behind in his blue blazer and whispered to her.

“Black 14.”

“?”

“I won’t say it again. Bet on that and all the numbers around it for good measure.”

Fortunately, she was not dumb enough to look back at him. He could sense an aura of distrust radiating from her back, but she did ultimately bet on black 14 while also going for a few of the numbers immediately preceding and following it.

“No more bets,” called the solemn dealer. And, “Black 14. Again, that’s black 14. Congratulations.”

“~ ~ ~☆♪○＊％〒~ ~ ~!!!???”

She leaped to her feet and shouted something that did not even qualify as language, but black-haired Ayato grabbed her slender shoulders and pushed her back into her seat.

“Henrietta-kun, you should understand the basics now.”

“Eh? What? I won, didn’t I? I won, so aren’t I done?”

“A single win is nowhere near enough to procure the funds we need. If you keep it up at this rate, you’re going to want…yes, about 5 wins. Remember, this is a luxury train, so if all four of us want to make it safely to our destination, we will need around 30 gold.”

“Hgeeee!!” she cried from the bottom of her gut now that she knew she could not leave the roulette table quite yet. Spectators were gradually gathering around, perhaps hoping to absorb some of the winning player’s luck.

(This place isn’t like a normal casino. There’s no such thing as a fair game when the train is shaking so much.)

Just once, the boy glanced over at the needleless record player that used light to read the disk.

The needleless variety had been chosen so the shaking would not cause the needle to scratch up the disk. And once the spectators formed enough of a wall, he slipped away from Henrietta.

(That means I only have to use some Sorcery Hacking to get the train to shake just like it did for that black 14. That should make the spinning ball hop and bounce in exactly the same way. Now, the trick is to give her a mix of wins and losses that won’t look suspicious.)

He did not want her interfering with his Forward bounty hunting work, so he had needed to tie her down somewhere.

With that done, it was time to get down to business.

He slipped out of the casino car and back into the 2nd class car. Unlike the city trains, the aisle was along the right wall instead of down the center. Why he had returned here went without saying. They had a large private room on the train and being surrounded by walls was perfect for doing a little hacking.

He placed the “do not disturb” card on the outside doorknob and slipped inside.

“Coach.”

The Dark Elf named Mamilis awaited him in the private room. She wore a faded leather vest and tight pants, along with a large leather belt floating around her like a planetary ring, perhaps to make her waist look skinnier. The belt was a type of sorcery fashion known as Expansion Armor. Her chest was small for her height and her overall build was slender. Her long, straight silver hair and healthy brown skin stood out, but her most noticeable feature, the long ears, were cleverly hidden by the magic in her earrings. Those were a Mimic Option that demons would use to blend into human society.

“We’re ready to go. Miss Henrietta is busy in the casino as planned.”

“I feel kind of bad doing that to her.”

“I wasn’t lying about us being in dire straits. Did you want to try working as a bunny girl or dancer, Miss Mamilis? If not, you’ll need to pay your way by working as a Forward.”

What they had to do was simple enough.

The boy opened the window that slid up and down and then he climbed on out. He wanted to reach the roof of that passenger car.

“Coach, that’s dangerous.”

“Which is why I’m going first. Give me your hand, Miss Mamilis.”

“Nh.”

Once on the roof, he got down on his stomach and reached down to help her up from the window. He pulled the nervous Dark Elf up onto the roof with him.

They could not let their guard down here.

The sea breeze blew up at them and the smoke blowing back from the spirit engine out front contained a faint bluish-green phosphorescence. If they got careless and let the summer sun up above the cumulonimbus clouds dazzle them, they would plunge into the ocean 50 esoule below. They were still on the train, but this was a deadly zone where the passengers’ safety was not guaranteed. He more or less held the brown girl in his arms to support her.

“Coach.” She twisted her body ticklishly. “Are we going with the front or the back?”

“That is a very philosophical way of putting that, Miss Mamilis. Especially when whispered so warmly into my ear by the lovely young lady I am holding in my arms.”

“?”

“And the correct answer is the very back. Once you stand up, make sure only to move while the train is going straight. If it curves in the slightest, crouch back down and wait. Feeling silly is always better than then being flung off to your doom. Got that?”

“Yes.”

“We will be facing to the back of the train, so do not forget to check behind you to see when a curve is coming up.”

“Got it. I will do anything you tell me to, coach.”

This student had a way of inspiring philosophical thoughts in him. If his brain expanded any further, he was certain he would see the unifying theory at the center of the world.

Ayato slowly stood up while making sure the wind and shaking did not affect him too much. Then he drew the double-edged crystal sword from the hip of his blue blazer. That Linkage Plug was the representative tool of a Sorcery Hacker and it worked alongside the crystal tarot Linkage Monitor he scattered in the air where the cards remained floating near his face.

Meanwhile, the Dark Elf raised the mana-conducting silver she wore with a sling belt. That sorcery gun was a full-auto shotgun model that had its ammo supply increased with a drum magazine.

“Rookie, you can’t aim well with that scattershot weapon since it self-replicates the magic and spreads it in a fan shape, so make sure you don’t panic and shoot me in the back.”

“Then I should be in front.”

The way she made no promises was due to her reluctance to show affection. Or so he hoped. Really, the unwavering lack of emotion on her face made his balls shrivel up.

He remained crouching to keep his center of gravity low and walked along the shaking train’s roof with Mamilis following after. Whenever they reached the connection between two passenger cars, he would stab his drawn blade into it and pull the trigger to release just the 0.5 esoule blade.

“Coach, does that really build up your level much?”

“That one got me up to about Level 30, I think.” He replied nonchalantly while pulling out a new blade that was compressed in the hilt. “I already needed to shake the entire train to keep Miss Henrietta in the casino, so I had torn away the wall in our bedroom to stick this thing into a bunch of stuff there. The higher the level the better after all.”

While they discussed that, they arrived at the rearmost four cars – which made up the back third of the train’s 12 non-engine cars.

“Is it really this hard to get into the 3rd class cars in the back?”

“The ordinary route was not an option. Didn’t you find it odd, Miss Mamilis? This is a luxury spirit engine train and we are very clearly short on money, so why were we placed in a 2nd class car? If not us, then who is in the 3rd class cars? Surely the conductor and engineer cabins don’t fill up all this space, right?”

He lay down on the roof and peeked inside a window below him, but it was covered by a thick metal mesh. No one could get inside or out and no one could see in. He had been right to stab his Linkage Plug into so many sorcery devices and resonate with their processing space to build up such a high level. He stabbed his sword into the roof and moved the floating crystal tarot cards with his fingers, causing a square metal door on the roof to spring up. It must have originally been an emergency exit in case the train fell into the water.

An almost sticky darkness lurked below.

“The 3rd class cars look even worse than I’d heard.”

Something was wrong with the world here.

He sensed an unpleasant level of heat and an oppressively powerful stench that may have been cooled and oxidized sweat.

“As a gentleman, I must warn you, Miss Mamilis. There is no need for you to follow me inside here.”

“Hurry it up or I’ll shoot you in the ass, coach.”

Now her reluctance to show affection was taking a violent turn. Or was the violent threat a sign of affection in and of itself? Ayato decided he needed to ponder these philosophical issues more once he had time, but for now he hopped down into that hellmouth.

Everything changed.

It was midday, but the blocked windows did not let in much light and the simple lights swaying at the ceiling were much like those used in mines. The pale orange light illuminated small rooms separated out by metal bars. Instead of beds, they were all laid out with smelly hay.

The jangling of thick chains was impossible to miss.

When Dark Elf Mamilis jumped down after him, she held a hand over her mouth, probably more due to the stench than the visual.

“This is unbelievable, Coach.”

“Yeah, business being booming isn’t always a good thing. Especially for doctors, executioners, and Forwards.”

The train had 1st class, 2nd class, and 3rd class cars.

The people thrown behind these bars and curled up on the damp hay appeared to be girls Ayato’s age or a little younger. There had to be 20 or 30 of them in this car alone. One was a Harpy with falcon wings in place of arms, one was a Cat Sith with feline ears poking up from her head, and one was a Dryad who wore tons of acorn accessories, but not one of them appeared to be a pure human girl.

“This is a luxury train and it’s crammed full of all the entertainment the wealthy might want: a pool, a casino, a dance hall, etc.” Ayato spoke like he was reciting a creepy nursery rhyme. “But people like that always want poor people most of all. The greatest entertainment for the rich is the social stratification that allows them to legally look down on the poor from a position of absolute safety. And if they can feel superior about their species while they do it, all the better. It unfortunately does not matter what the demons say when the authorities don’t recognize their rights.”

“…”

Mamilis looked unsure what to say. Dark Elves were officially classified as demons too. That was why she used a Mimic Option to hide her long ears in front of others. The girls here had lost all their possessions at the casino, so their Mimic Option had been taken from them and their secret had been revealed.

The new money rich on this train did nothing to them.

Because giving into desire and having their way with one of the girls would hurt her value as a product. They would keep their distance as if that preserved their own purity and they would laugh together as they looked down on that minority. Those behind the bars would be mocked and mocked and mocked some more until their dignity was reduced to tatters without anyone laying a finger on them. The people doing that to them made Ayato sick.

As a Forward, he would receive a quest completion reward if he freed those girls.

But he had to make a quick detour first.

He walked down the narrow aisle, checked inside each cage, and finally put on a cruel smile.

“Imagine finding you here, Miss Teleria.”

“Gulp!?”

“I am glad to see you are feeling well enough to actually say the word ‘gulp’ out loud. But you certainly do have bad luck. This wasn’t one of those fitting rooms where young women go missing, you know? What did you get mistaken for to get captured like this? I mean, everyone else in these cages is a demon of some sort.”

“Oh, no, no. Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. I’m a normal human! Y-you know that, don’t you!?”

The person tearfully holding her own body while seated on the hay beyond the metal bars was a girl with fluffy blonde hair, a blue blazer uniform similar to Ayato’s but with a pleated miniskirt, and black tights over her legs. As Expansion Armor over the miniskirt, she also had a princess-like long skirt floating in a C-shape around her hips. She pressed her lightly-clenched fists against her mouth and had tears in the corners of her eyes while she gave him the puppiest puppy dog eyes anyone had ever seen and she also had an unbelievably large chest for her short height. As a girl appraisal specialist, Ayato rated her a perfect 100 with no room for criticism whatsoever.

Incidentally…

“…”

Right next to the skinny boy, Dark Elf Mamilis formed a small triangle with her mouth while she stared strangely into the cage, but did Ayato even notice that?

While sinking down into the hay, the tearful blonde girl gave the slender brown girl an overly obvious series of winks to make eye contract.

“(I-I couldn’t help it. I can’t tell Ayato I’m a mermaid hiding my fish part with a Mimic Option! Eek, stop giving me that cold look, like I’m a liar! It makes me feel even guiltier!!)”

“(Hmm, I could really go for a tomato and cheese pizza today.)”

Their failure to communicate was honestly impressive.

Oblivious to that secret conversation(?), black-haired Ayato looked all around the dimly-lit passenger car.

“Miss Teleria, do you remember the original job the client gave us?”

“Um…investigate the ‘noble entertainment’ running rampant on this ocean railroad, rescue any prisoners, and eliminate any enemy forces for an extra bonus.”

“I have a feeling that ultra-militaristic client would rank those in the opposite order, but by those rules, we can complete the job by detaching these four 3rd class cars.”

“Wait!! You aren’t going to rescue me from this cage!?”

“Coach, wouldn’t that also leave Henrietta behind?”

“Exactly right. Which means, Miss Teleria, we need as many fighters capable of wielding sorcery guns as we can get. Are you willing to rejoin the fight?”

“Ummm, my guns are in that metal box in the aisle.”

Throwing the guns out the window into the ocean would have been safer, but knowing how nasty the rich could be, they had probably wanted to see their poor victim desperately reach through the bars to try to reach them despite knowing they were too far away.

“But, Coach, the box and her cage are locked.”

“Not a problem assuming these aren’t nonmagical artisan locks. I can force them open with my Sorcery Hacking.”

It was as easy as lopping off a fish’s head on the chopping block. He stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into the center of the metal box that came up to his hip height and the easily-unlocked lid popped up.

He pulled out two handguns, some blue glowing ammo, and a holster meant to be worn around the hip. Then he tossed them into the cage. The guns had a suppressor built in, a dot sight, a guide laser below the barrel, and a longish magazine that all made the weapons swell out like a snowman. Ayato watched through the bars as the blonde girl grabbed them.

“Miss Teleria, you were captured due to a baffling misunderstanding and we snuck across the roof to rescue you. If we had tried to force our way in directly, the military-equipped engineers would have repelled us.”

“Um.”

“Specifically, they use submachineguns, which are perfect for this narrow space. The power of each magic blast is reduced from normal, but the mobility and rapid-fire more than make up for that. The low range and accuracy are of no consequence on a train, after all. They can simply fire their magic blindly to keep us pinned behind cover while another group circles behind us to cut off our escape.”

“Coach, we have full-auto weapons too.”

“Not good enough. I refuse to accept odds of only 50/50. I will not allow any of you to lose your lives to such ridiculous scum during such a backwater case. Listen, I will not allow them to even scratch you.”

“Oh, come on,” grumbled Teleria behind the bars.

Did the boy notice the way she was looking at him or not?

He acted above it all and claimed he could not survive without rationally analyzing even the unwanted factors around him, but the boy in the blue blazer could be frighteningly cold when it came to such things.

“Thus, we must be stealthy about it. Miss Teleria, I will open your cage now, but do not make a fuss. We will use the roof to reach the casino car, open the ceiling emergency exit, snag Miss Henrietta with a wire to pull her up, and then release the rear four cars to escape safely.”

“Um, what is our role in that plan?”

“Miss Mamilis, you specialize in fire, so select Primary Flash. When I open the ‘lid’ above the casino, fire a bunch of nonlethal flashes to sow confusion. Miss Teleria, you specialize in water, so do you have any magic that can play the role of the wire?”

“Um, wouldn’t metal things like that be earth magic?”

“I thought you could maybe use a vine or something…but okay. If you can’t do it, you can’t do it. So with water, select Secondary Splash.”

“Hm? You fire that against the floor or ground to create a giant pillar of water. I thought it was used to deter enemies and destroy barricades.”

“Fire it at the floor below Miss Henrietta’s chair while the roulette wheel has her dizzy. The world’s largest bidet toilet will lift up her triumphant rear to instantly launch her to the roof.”

“Bff! U-um, Ayato, has no one ever explained the concept of dignity to you!? That knight treasures her honor, so she might refuse to ever get out of bed again if you do that to her!!”

“Miss Teleria, I will only accept complaints that are accompanied by an alternative plan. If you do not have one, then we continue with mine. Now, come with me.”

After the boy stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into the cage’s lock, a loud click came from it and the door slid to the side. A stir ran through the oppressive space, but they could not give those girls the freedom they desired quite yet. Stealth was key at the moment. They could never complete their job if they opened the rest of the cells now.

As they left, Mamilis and Teleria whispered toward those other cells.

“(Don’t worry. My coach will never abandon us.)”

“(Trust us.)”

Once they got started, the job did not take long.

They climbed onto the roof, walked to the casino car, and rescued Henrietta.

“………………………………………………………I have been defiled…………………………………………………………………”

“See, what did I tell you? That’s one of the things you should never make a girl say!”

“I will admit it was my plan, but you were the one who actually did it, Miss Teleria.”

“Hgh!? Wh-wh-what ever are you talking about!? Now, we have work to do, so let’s head on back and release the 3rd class cars to rescue everyone!”

“Also, that was a serious disappointment, Miss Henrietta. I was expecting a cute ‘kyah’ or ‘hyah’, but all you gave me was a ‘nwohhhh!!’ I get that you knights prize strength, but you went a little overboard there.”

For once, the combat-focused Striker was hunkered down and covering her face with her hands (with one part of her body soaking wet). The Dark Elf supported her shoulders from behind and asked an emotionless question.

“Coach, they have figured out where the Primary Flashes are coming from. There are more military-equipped conductors than I expected. And didn’t you say they have submachineguns, so we will only get repelled in a direct fight?”

“I did say that, yes.”

In the blowing wind of the roof, Ayato slid his floating crystal tarot cards in midair, causing a large tremor to run through the train itself. No, it was accelerating. The bluish-green phosphorescent smoke coming from the front had grown denser.

“Wh-what have you done now, dangerous individual!?”

“Level 55. That’s enough to hack the very spirit engine pulling the passenger cars along. They should be freaking out over the abnormal internal pressure in the engine right about now. And they won’t locate us right away since I’m remotely controlling it all. The conductors and engineers will gather at the front while we move to the back. Then we only have to release the four 3rd class cars. The soldiers left on the accelerating train won’t be able to pursue us while we vanish into the distance.”

Ayato explained his plans while casually making his way back along the cars. With the glaring exception of how he treated his female companions, he was pulling this job off flawlessly. Everything was following the initial timetable with no delays. He had the odd ability to make it feel like the situation was progressing as if he were running his finger along a map.

Or it should have worked that way.

Until, that is, they were caught in an explosion from directly below them.

Henrietta immediately drew the large-caliber bolt-action carbine from her hip while Ayato reached an arm each around Teleria and Mamilis’s hips to get them down on the roof. Someone would have been vaporized otherwise. That was just the type of magic it was.

Right next to them, in the position they had just vacated, the roof was torn up and blown away, leaving jagged edges.

“What was that, dangerous individual!? It most certainly was not a submachinegun that holds people in place by firing intentionally weakened magic at a higher rate! The power was obviously amplified, suggesting either an anti-materiel rifle or a magnum!”

“…”

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Ayato always had an answer ready to go, so his silence seemed unnatural.

“Ayato…this isn’t that magnum, is it?” asked Teleria.

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

He was not the only one acting weird. Teleria was pale and trembling while lying collapsed on the roof.

What did the two of them have in common?

The blue blazer.

The Academy Towers.

The boy was now a Sorcery Hacker who wielded a Linkage Plug and Linkage Monitor, but he had once been an incredibly skilled Forward. If the rumors were to be believed, he had been known as the Hexajinx because he would complete any job in 6 shots or less, so no one had ever seen him reload.

“I got rid of it. I dismantled that revolver and smashed, crushed, or otherwise destroyed each piece in turn. And I threw the wreckage into the furnace in the gem science tower.”

He could not believe what he was seeing.

He could not believe what weapon their enemy was wielding here.

“So how did the Queen Astaroth Revolver come back!?”

Another blinding light and deafening boom blasted the world up from below. The train’s roof might as well have been made of thin wet paper for all the protection it provided. A single hit would end it all, so Ayato’s group had no choice but to jump to the next train back.

“Are they using Primary Sting!?”

“Primary?”

“Yes, Miss Mamilis. Of the same fire element you use! Normally, it only provides enough force to open a fingertip-sized hole in an outdoor grilling panel.”

They heard the sound of creaking and straining metal. The monstrous revolver had blown a massive hole in the roof and someone was grabbing onto the jagged edges to climb up.

Ayato did not recognize the boy.

But the thick magnum was a different story.

To use both his hands to climb, the boy was holding the giant revolver in his mouth. After climbing up, he coated it with his sticky saliva as if trying to lick off the silver luster and he moved the gun to his right hand, holding the black grip tight.

He wore a distinctive blue blazer, but the jacket was tied around his waist.

He was someone from the Academy Towers, just like Ayato and Teleria.

He was a lot bigger and more muscular than Sorcery Hacker Ayato. His red hair was disheveled, but not necessarily because of the wind.

His identity and objective were unknown. He may or may not have had anything to do with what was happening on this sleeper train. Ayato only knew he was trying to take their lives. And while it was speculative, he was pretty sure the boy must know that he was the Hexajinx who had originally wielded that gun.

“That was two shots.” Ayato held his left arm out to protect Mamilis and raised his sword in his right hand. “Four to go!!”

“Wait, wait, wait. Are you hoping to attack while I reload?” The boy snorted with laughter. “Do you really think you can survive another four shots from firepower this deliciously great? Well, do you!?”

The boy’s right hand shot up.

Ayato immediately stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into the floor and the centipede-like train shook violently on its many legs.

When the boy pulled the trigger, a sinister red muzzle flash burst from the magnum. Mana shot through the center of the orderly sparks, forming supernatural magic.

The Primary Sting magic had been brutally enhanced, but the boy’s aim had been thrown off enough for the white light to pass right next to Ayato’s group. However, that trick would not work again.

“How many more tricks you got up your sleeve!? Answer me, buddy!!”

“You want to hit me? Then I recommend taking careful aim right here.”

Ayato pointed his thumb at the center of his chest.

The large boy unnaturally narrowed his eyes at a bright green light, but did he even realize Ayato had used a floating crystal tarot card to reflect the pale phosphorescence floating back from the spirit engine?

Ayato used that opening to get flat down on the roof. Behind him, Teleria held her twin handguns and Mamilis held her full-auto shotgun.

“I’m counting on you,” whispered the Sorcery Hacker.

The suppressor-equipped handguns and the ear-splitting shotgun produced a storm of fire and water magic that rushed toward the boy wielding the large revolver. The used red shotgun shells and the empty blue cartridges were ejected from the side of the firearms, but their colors faded even as they fell.

However…

“You’re nothing but small fries!!”

A single roar of Primary Sting was all it took to sweep aside the barrage and push back to attack the girls instead. Still down on the roof, Ayato spun around as if breakdancing to sweep Teleria and Mamilis’s feet out from under them, getting them out of the line of fire.

“And a school of small fries isn’t enough to trick the shark’s eyes. It’ll just tear through the school like it’s nothing. Don’t you know that!?”

“Miss Teleria, prepare Secondary Splash.”

Ayato had no intention of killing this fool who did not even know sharks searched out their prey using their sense of smell and electrolocation. But allowing the girls to come to harm was even less of an option.

With a muffled gunshot, a pillar of water burst violently up alongside them. The attacker’s revolver gave a roar at the same time. The barrier in between diverted the attack off course, but the boy did not seem to care.

“You’re running out of tricks up your sleeve, buddy. And once you’re out, you can kiss your ass goodbye. Can’t you hear the grim reaper creeping ever closer?”

“Two to go,” muttered Ayato.

“Why even bother keeping count!?” roared the large boy. “You’re gonna die helplessly either way!!”

“Wait, you fool! Stop firing!!”

“Why the hell should I listen to you!? Because you can’t stop me much longer, is that it!? I’m the legend now, cause I’m the one with the demonic revolver! So quit acting like you’re better than me!!” It was too late.

Another two blasts erupted out.

The fool must not have even been keeping count because he pulled the trigger again, producing an empty click.

The gunfire had stopped, but Ayato still cried out in despair.

“That gun requires a contract with that demoness, Queen Astaroth! If you haven’t killed your initial target after using up all 6 shots, then the wielder’s soul is devoured as payment!!”

The boy actually looked puzzled.

He must have never even considered the possibility that such great power came with a price. Or maybe it did not seem real even after it was explained to him.

But the result did not wait for him to catch up.

“Ugh.”

Several reddish-black lines extended from the revolver in his right hand and raced up toward his heart as if following the paths of his thick blood vessels.

He had entirely misinterpreted Ayato’s countdown.

Ayato had not been counting down until he could defeat his opponent. He had wanted to prevent this. His efforts had been in vain, though.

“Gwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

“Miss Teleria, select Secondary Taboo Sleep! Top priority!!”

“Eh? But that’s a forbidden cold sleep spell.”

“He’ll die if you don’t! So fire!!”

The magic gunshot surged forth. It hit the attacker’s chest before the contract’s punishment could reach there and something like transparent spikes exploded out in all directions, but they did not stab into him. They formed a block of ice resembling a giant snow crystal or the tetrapods used for breakwaters, and they instantly swallowed up the attacker’s body.

“Gh…kh.”

He must have finally realized he was freezing over and could not move like he wanted.

Only his head was still sticking out of the countless growing legs of ice and he shook that while groaning.

Each piece of the complex crystal sculpture branched out like ice covering a tree.

But those would shatter themselves as they continued to change form. The number of angles gradually reduced to simplify the shape in what seemed like a countdown.

“Dammit, they never told me about this. Was I just another pawn to them?”

But the boy still managed to raise his discolored right hand and aim the empty silver revolver at Ayato. That revolver would take something from its contracted user. Was that what had made this boy so unreliable?

The countdown of the giant crystal’s simplification was not done yet.

“The Academy Towers are watching you, buddy.”

“…”

“Because you’ve decided to start sniffing around where you aren’t wanted. That incident is over. Dig it back up and this is what you get. Sure, you survived today. But what about tomorrow? Or the day after that? Or the day after that? You will rue the day you made that foolish choice.”

“Who are the ‘them’ you mentioned earlier? And what incident do you mean? Since you mentioned the Academy Towers, do you mean the hostage situation I resolved in one of the towers there? Do you – and whoever you’re working for – know what else is lurking beyond that incident?”

He had already looked into that. When he had found nothing at the Academy Towers, he had figured someone might have pressured them into it and had started journeying around the world.

He heard a gasp from the blonde girl who was always with him.

“Wait, you can’t do this, Ayato! Digging too far into my stepbrother’s case will only land you in a bottomless bog!”

“Ha ha. She’s right, you know? You’ve already stepped one foot into it and you might think you’re still fine and can keep digging further, but you can never lift that foot back up again. It’s only gonna sink further and further!!”

“What the hell do you know!?”

“Heh. We’re both nothing but pawns. We’re just two guys who were both taken in by the same demoness. I’ll be waiting for you down in hell, buddy.”

With an ear-splitting sound, the rectangular ice coffin closed around the attacker.

The crystal structure’s simplification was complete.

The oblong block now fully contained his body from head to toe, effectively stopping time for him.

Ayato could not move for a while afterwards.

The demonic revolver had fallen to the boy’s feet, but the train was shaking too much and it slid off the edge and vanished into the ocean below. But what did that matter? He had dismantled it, smashed each part with a hammer, and chucked it into a furnace, yet it had found him again here. It would appear before him again this time too. In the hands of a new wielder. That much he knew for certain.

Ayato said nothing and Teleria remained silent.

Dark Elf Mamilis hesitantly spoke up.

“What…do we do now, coach?”

“Good question. First, we need to complete our initial job. Let’s detach the 3rd class cars to free those girls from those new money bastards.”

“Was that guy really working alone? I don’t want to find he has any accomplices hidden around here.”

Henrietta’s question was an obvious one. Anyone would want to avoid a surprise attack from such a powerful gun.

“Which is why we aren’t going to bother with any of that. Once we split the train in two, we can remain on the rear four cars. I doubt such a powerful attacker would simply have his sorcery gun confiscated and be thrown in jail and since we don’t know how much danger remains on the front nine cars, we can just let them continue on without us.”

“I more or less agree with that,” said Teleria after a moment of thought. “But.”

“Yes,” agreed Ayato. “This is enough for the client to pay us, but how this ends could still leave a bad taste in our mouth. If you want to make those people pay, we can always rig the spirit engine to run haywire, have the train derail going around a curve, and send it plunging right into the ocean.”

He received no response.

Evidently, no one here wanted to go that far.

Henrietta sighed half in exasperation, as if to say there was no end to trouble while traveling with Ayato.

“But, dangerous individual, the cars can’t move once they are separated from the engine. I resent that you hid this from me, but I can gather that you are working to rescue some harmless demons who have no intention of attacking anyone. …But this is an intercontinental ocean railroad. What are we or the rescued demons supposed to do once we are stranded out here? Did you give this no thought whatsoever?”

“It’s true the railroad crosses the ocean, but that ocean isn’t just an empty expanse of water. The railroad bridges generally run from island to island. And fortune would have it, the closest island is well within walking distance. We can wait on that island for another train to come by and ride that back to the Static Continent. The demons can choose what to do for themselves.”

“Hm, and what island might that be? No, wait…”

Teleria looked like she had just realized something she very much did not want to have realized.

Something leaped up above the ocean water in the far distance. The silhouette was reminiscent of a dolphin, but something was not quite right. She had the upper body of a human, but her lower body was formed by a large fish tail.

And she was not alone.

Oblivious to what was happening onboard, several forms were innocently matching the train’s speed to swim alongside it and occasionally jumping up either as a greeting or to show off.

Speaking of oblivious, Ayato failed to notice all the blood draining from Teleria’s face.

“Laguntreat, the island of mermaids and decursing. Thanks to its distance from the continent, it’s a rare place where humans and mermaids – in other words, demons – can coexist.”

“Ha, ah ha ha. A-are you sure that’s where we should go? I mean, um, there are plenty of fish in the sea, or islands in this case, so why not chose somewhere with better food, right!?”

“This is the island of mermaids and decursing, Miss Teleria.” Ayato placed emphasis on the one word. With the sun shining on his distinctive blue blazer, the boy pointed an annoyed thumb at the pillar of ice. “I want to learn everything this frozen fool knows, but the revolver’s punishment will kill him if we remove the cold sleep. We need to have the curse purified at Laguntreat before we can thaw him from that coffin. That is a must. No other island will do.”

“U-umm…”

Tears were welling up in Teleria’s eyes now. Meanwhile, brown-skinned Mamilis lightly elbowed Henrietta in the side.

“(Is Laguntreat a well-known place?)”

“Hm? In the medical and health fields, yes. Especially for their purification methods using water. You can forget your worries and relax there, so it also ranks highly as a tourist destination and a location for villas. In fact, it is favored by the Fifth Prince of the Static Kingdom’s Combined Royal Family. That is something of an open secret, but try not to mention it too openly.”

He would likely travel there on a royal cruiser instead of a luxury sleeper train. That would be above Level 2000 as a sorcery device, so the boat itself would qualify as a villa.

That said, Dark Elf Mamilis had trouble imagining much about the top of the human power structure, nor was she really all that interested in doing so. The real problem was what Henrietta said next.

“Also, I have heard it is the home of all mermaids. Of course, research on demons as a whole is not exactly a high priority, so that could only be a baseless legend.”

“(It’s true. It’s the home of all mermaids,)” added Teleria.

“Hey, what are you all whispering about?” asked Ayato. “You can talk more openly, you know?”

He did not know why they would be keeping secrets, so he was not going to play along.

“(I see.)” Mamilis placed a hand on her chin. “(An unexpected visit home, huh? That might present some challenges when it comes to hiding your identity.)”

Option 01: From Henrietta’s Journal

(*I know it is old-fashioned, but I will be gathering my information in a lockable journal since an analog format should be the best way of defending against a Sorcery Hacking specialist. It also reminds me of my late father who adored pocket watches and bottle ships.)

I do not know much about Sorcery Hacking, but based on what I have seen while traveling with Ayato Criminaltrophy, the items he uses are not all that unusual. To my chagrin, it seems they do sell fancier tools at sketchy shops on the surface.

His sword is known as a Linkage Plug and he uses that to hack into mist mana lines and the gemboards of sorcery devices.

His crystal tarot cards are known as a Linkage Monitor. They use the arcana to visualize the manaflow, allowing him to view stolen information and manipulate devices.

However, the shape and format used for these things varies from hacker to hacker. Some Plugs are launched using a slingshot and some Monitors are round horoscopes. A sword and tarot cards is the most popular combination, much like the umbrellas cheaply sold at the front of general stores.

My Striker instincts tell me this is the caution of a criminal. A crime committed with an ordinary kitchen knife found in any home makes it hard to trace the culprit using the weapon. And if the criminal’s tool is unexpectedly damaged or lost, they can easily acquire a new one. I imagine he also has his own unique logic behind the choice, but this means that dangerous individual has intentionally chosen to use an entry level product anyone can easily acquire.

He stabs the blade into a sorcery device and releases it from the grip so it can act as an antenna (according to him). More blades are supplied from within the grip, but that requires leaving the blades behind at the scene. That means he cannot use anything that could be traceable back to him.

The negative possibilities presented by Sorcery Hackers are incalculable.

They might begin by hacking a Level 1 alarm clock, but they will not stop there. That dangerous individual will go on to increase the upper level of sorcery device he can hack. By building up his level using the simple growth of “1+1=2”, “2+2=4”, etc., he could ultimately take control of a warship or fortress cannon.

As a Striker it is my duty to preserve the peace, so I must keep an eye on him.

The truly baffling part is how his blatant violations of the law have a strange way of bringing smiles to people’s faces, protecting people’s lives, and earning him the thanks of the villagers.

Phase 01: Laguntreat Decurse Island

Part 1

The sun was shining in a tropical paradise.

The sea was a beautiful mix of blue and green and the beach was covered with fine white sand and colorful flowers. Instead of normal conifer and broadleaf trees, the forest was mostly made up of mangroves growing directly up from the beach. The hermit crabs were larger than someone’s fist and the butterflies were a breathtaking blue. The rules governing this place were so strange, all the way down to the insect varieties never seen on the Static Continent.

The ocean seemed so different from the Static Continent where everything was built up into harbors.

Very few artificial objects could be seen in the pure and bright ocean here.

The only unnatural presence there were the leisure yachts and the giant railroad bridges connecting two continents. That and a bent metal tower sticking up from the island’s forest.

“What is that?” Mamilis tilted her head. “It’s bent.”

“One of the island’s famous lightning cloud cannons. When thick lightning clouds arrive, those blow them away. They should swivel like a construction arm.”

This would probably be a comfortable place for the Harpy, Cat Sith, and others freed from the 3rd class cars. Mermaids had great influence over the island of Laguntreat, so the oppression of demons was almost entirely absent here. Some might even decide to settle down here.

They saw a giant squid known as a Kraken and an enormous crab known as a Karkinos.

There were even some more unusual demons like a Nagaraja, Ketos, or Afanc that ordinary people would have a hard time picturing from the name alone.

Aquatic and decidedly nonhumanoid demons regularly appeared on the beach and in the ocean here. Despite looking like a picture book scene of a demonic world, the atmosphere was relaxed and everyone was taking it easy.

Of course, demons were not the only ones on the beach.

A young human man was staring blankly at a graceful older Mermaid lying nearby and a lost human child was clinging to a Lizardman’s leg and crying.

Most of the buildings that dotted the beach were built using wood from the palm trees and mangroves and a lot of them had an open design with the walls removed, allowing the wind through. That would make crime prevention difficult, but it created a relaxed and open atmosphere that made one think there was no strife here.

This was Laguntreat, the island of mermaids and decursing.

The remote island was located in the sea south of the Static Continent and it had gathered attention as a midway point to other continents ever since the age of ships.

But once the ocean railroad had opened and intercontinental travel had become a lot less risky, it had needed to find a primary industry other than trade.

“The answer they found was decursing using their pure spring water. In other words, medical and health treatments using sorcery. I believe the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute now manages all of the island’s spring water.”

Straitlaced Striker Henrietta explained what she knew while still wearing her hot armor even though this tropical paradise was better suited for swimsuits and tanned skin.

After walking along the bridge, they had arrived at Leonardo Station. Since it was not just called Laguntreat Station, it was probably named after a mayor, someone who helped get the railroad built, or someone else of note.

They had not seen any desert islands between the stopped 3rd class cars and here, but maybe they would have found one if they had walked long enough in the opposite direction.

Henrietta’s armor clanked heavily as she walked.

“You have heard of the hot spring towns built in volcanic regions on the Static Continent, I assume? This is similar to that.”

“Are you saying the mountain here will erupt someday?”

Dark Elf Mamilis did not quite get it and she looked vaguely uneasy, but that may have been due to living in a sky city all her life.

Henrietta shook her head, which also shook her blonde ponytail braid.

“No, the powerful demon at the mountain peak is the main factor here. Laguntreat has 143 officially registered springs, but they all come from that mountain.”

It was a fairly tall mountain. The top was surrounded by thick clouds and snow, which seemed unusual for the tropical climate. The colossal silhouette visible through the white curtain was obviously not a mountain ridge.

Henrietta seemed somewhat exasperated by the ridiculous scale of it all as she placed a hand on her hip and winked.

“That is Water Lord Fleurelisia, who is also known as the Ocean Queen. She is a giant winged fish that slithers on land like a snake. She uses her land, sea, and air forms to rule water in all of its forms: solid, liquid, and gas. I believe she measures at around 450 esoule She is powerful enough to be known as one of the demonic Four Lords. She has been inactive of late, simply lying motionless up there on the mountain peak for several combo-years now, but I have heard that has created permafrost toward the top of the mountain. No one can hope to predict when she will move again.”

“The Water Lord,” muttered the Dark Elf like she was viewing a clock counting down to the end of the world.

Did her fear come from her experience with another of the Four Lords, that gargantuan fire dragon? Or had she been reminded of nearly being captured by human traffickers when the dragon attacked?

The human tourists reacted much like her, but the local demons did not seem to care. They might see the Water Lord like a guardian deity.

“It would be simplest to think of her as similar to Fire Lord Blasthogg, the giant dragon that attacked the sky city. I am hesitant to blindly accept it as fact, but based on what those dangerous individuals said, they were apparently involved in the very origin of magic.”

Incidentally, short and busty Teleria Nereid Aquamarine was pale and trembling instead of listening to any of this.

“Ahhh…”

(How do I even describe this? It’s like a weird itch on my back. Why is someone I know talking about my mother with a solemn look on her face?)

It was fortunate that Henrietta did not remember the Water Lord’s middle name onward. That would have been bad. She had 98 excuses ready to go already, but it would be hard to explain away a matching middle and last name. And she was not at all confident she could convince Ayato once he grew suspicious.

Mamilis kept glancing over at her with an unreadable expression. That Dark Elf was one of the few people who knew her secret.

She placed a hand at the center of her large chest and took a deep breath.

(It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. I just have to avoid making him think I have any connection to the demons here. I am Sorcery Trainee Teleria from the Academy Towers and I am currently journeying with Ayato as a bounty-hunting Forward. Good, my roleplaying is flawless. I won’t let anything rouse his suspi-)

“Princess? Why didn’t you inform us you were returning for a visi- mgh!”

“Abwagwah!!!!!!”

A graceful older Mermaid sunbathing atop a woven grass mat (lying face down with her shell bikini strap undone) spoke up in puzzled surprised, so Teleria immediately placed a hand over her mouth to silence her.

Black-haired Ayato looked even more puzzled than the Mermaid.

“Princess?”

“Y-y-y-yes, that is a very strange thing for her to say, Ayato! They must have a local custom of calling travelers that. You know, like when we were in the commercial capitalist city of Drizzagrad and came across those weird cafes where they called everyone ‘master’ or ‘mistress’!”

Ayato’s head remained tilted and Teleria maintained her smile despite looking like she was about to cry.

Meanwhile, brown Mamilis kicked at something hard.

“More importantly, we need to deal with this ice coffin. Coach, let’s carry it to the spring or wherever to get him decursed. We’re way too conspicuous with this thing.”

“Good point. That might be why we are gathering salespeople,” said Henrietta, annoyed by all the people trying to sell her large, round striped fruits chilled with ice.

Yes.

They were dragging along the rectangular ice coffin using the ropes tied around it. It was certainly a bizarre sight, especially with the human silhouette vaguely visible through the frost.

Dark Elf Mamilis tilted her head.

“Coach, why is everyone on this island selling watermelons? Are they a local delicacy?”

“Yes, but that isn’t limited to Laguntreat. They’re a standard beach food. Especially for that thing where you put on a blindfold, spin around, and break them open with a stick.”

“Is that some kind of ritual???”

She now seemed to have more questions than before.

Henrietta shooed away a Harpy, a swimsuit girl with seabird wings, who was trying to sell her something.

“Dangerous individual, you seemed to know a lot about that sorcery gun’s curse. Oceavita Water Therapy Institute will select the best spring for you based on the type of curse. If they need to determine what kind of curse it is for you, you have to wait in line and it takes a long time, so it would be much faster if you told us everything you know.”

“The Queen Astaroth Revolver is essentially a contract with a devil. The world’s laws are distorted to your benefit, but that can also be turned back against you to destroy you. That is a popular form of curse, but this one is exceptionally powerful.”

“Isn’t that all the more reason to leave this in the hands of the experts?”

Mamilis was tall and cool, but she was a grandma’s girl deep down, which made her generally obedient.

There were apparently 143 officially registered springs. The many options explained all the simple wooden arrow signs seen all over the place.

“Ah!”

They ran across several children fully engrossed in bug catching.

Despite her Mimic Option, Dark Elf Mamilis immediately reached up to her ears as if to hide them. The kids of course did not notice at all.

While most of the stores and other buildings had an open design without walls, the therapy institute was built of white marble. It looked different on the most fundamental level.

Once inside, a mechanical cool breeze born of sorcery created a refrigerator-like chill. A shiver ran up brown-skinned Mamilis’s spine.

That may have been a luxury for the people of the island. They could see people lying on the lobby benches and it was unclear if all of them even had anything wrong with them. One girl had partially stripped off a seal-like costume, leaving her upper body almost entirely bare, so she must have been a Selkie. Surprisingly, that was a type of Mermaid. A large beaver-like Afanc was trying to hit on her, but she was not listening.

The boy’s group crossed the lobby to reach the reception counter.

The receptionist in a nurse cap, a long work dress, and an apron smiled as she jotted down notes based on Ayato’s description and the symptoms they had seen.

“Understood. This patient appears to have been part of some sort of criminal activity, so who is authorizing this treatment?”

“That would be Henrietta Split Destrius here. She is a knight from Sky City Celedileka.”

“Wait, dangerous individual. I never said you could use my name here.”

But Sorcery Hacker Ayato and his partner Teleria were on the run and Mamilis was a Dark Elf, so that straitlaced Striker was the only one who could safely use her name on this kind of paperwork.

In addition to the clipboard held to her chest, the receptionist held a hand over a spherical Media Summoner on the counter. It looked a lot like a fist-sized crystal container or a snow dome.

“Okay, your registration is complete. We will take the patient now.”

Once the ice coffin was in the institute’s care, this was a job for the sorcery medical professionals. They received a wooden block with a number carved into it, so they left the white marble building.

The tropical forest had plenty of shade, but all the moisture made it humid and buggy. That was enough for Ayato’s group to head back to the beach where Mamilis raised her arms and stretched her back.

“It’s weird how it feels cooler here.”

“It might be a humidity issue,” answered Ayato.

Nearby, a girl with countless snakes for hair was sunbathing while lying face down on a sheet made from an herbivore’s tanned skin. Was she an Echidna? A Medusa? No, she may have been a Nagaraja. Whatever she was, it was rare to see demons so relaxed and unguarded in public places. Her thick serpentine lower body was lazily wiggling side to side as she basked in the sun.

In her armor and tight skirt, Henrietta rubbed her fingers against her temples.

“It takes a full day before the first report back? And if they haven’t decursed him then, they will probably have to try another spring? We definitely need a hotel now.”

“Coach, what should we do? We spent a lot of time in our room on the train, so I’m sick of just sitting around.”

“Why not go sightseeing? It isn’t everyday you travel outside the continent.”

“Eek!” Teleria paled and trembled. “(Oh…oh, no, no. If we split up, I won’t be able to control things and they’ll figure it out. No, wait, I just have to solve each problem in turn! Don’t give up yet!! Mamilis already knows my identity, so she isn’t a problem. I only have to worry about what Ayato and Henrietta do, so if I can keep them together…)”

“Miss Teleria?”

“I’m fine! I’m definitely not acting weird! Why would you even think that!?”

The blonde girl straightened up a little too quickly, making her large breasts shake vertically.

“But, Coach.” Mamilis tilted her head. “Do we have the money for a hotel? I mean, the Henrietta casino plan was just you manipulating the odds with your Sorcery Hacking to delay her inevitable loss, so you weren’t really expecting anything from that, right?”

“What. Did. You. Just. Say?”

“Miss Mamilis, I think we need to have a chat about when to keep your mouth shut. But regardless, we will be fine. We completed our job as Forwards on that train, remember?”

Ayato snapped his fingers.

“Yes, yes. You want your reward, don’t you?”

Teleria shrieked at the sudden voice.

Their client – a long-haired woman – had traded her classic maid uniform for a purple bikini. She was lounging on a beach chair made from woven vines. The glass on the side table may have contained a mixed drink made from mango and pineapple juice. A glass straw leaned against the side of the large glass which was decorated with a red flower.

This was Micha Angelos.

Her actual age was unknown, but Ayato recalled that she did not drink alcohol. That apparently dated back to a bitter experience when her bull man of a master had offered her a glass of an amber liquid and a single test lick with the tip of her tongue had messed her up something fierce. Then again, with the tourist markup, that fruit drink had probably cost more than an entire bottle of an ordinary alcoholic drink.

She shooed away a girl carrying a silver halide camera used to try to sell people commemorative vacation photos.

“This is your glorious reward from His Excellency. Please accept it with appropriate joy.”

“Joy? While picturing that minotaur in my head?”

“Do it.”

“We were the victims here. I already have him to blame for feeling weird when I eat a 0.2 rayker rib roast. And medium rare ones were one of my favorite foods.”

While lying on her back in a way that seemed designed to show off her large chest, she grabbed a small bag of gold between two slender fingers and dropped it in his hand. The purple beauty then placed both hands behind her head as a pillow.

“Interested in another job?”

“Nothing interests me more than that sun oil on the side table there. Eh heh heh. I see it contains a stimulation dulling herb. Does that mean your fine skin reacts very sensitively to potions, Micha Angelos? Why didn’t you tell me you had such a cute side?”

“Sorcery Hacker, I will only state this merciful warning once, so listen very carefully. Lay a single finger on this skin I keep pristine for His Excellency and I will dismember you on the spot.”

“Aha, a loophole!! I am free to touch the swimsuit-covered parts as much as I want as I will not be touching your ski-”

“I was not kidding about the dismemberment.”

Her smile did not reach her eyes, so he decided to take her at her word and raised his hands away from her.

“In that case, I am in the mood for some time off.”

“If you say so. But once you are sick of taking it easy, you can come crying back, Mr. Workaholic. We both know you lack the mental complexity needed to enjoy a vacation.”

That was the end of it.

Ayato blinked and those sexy curves were nowhere to be found. Instead, a purple nocturnal butterfly made of adult lace and bright jewels was flying away. The scene was so calm it did not disturb the other sunbathing girls like a chilly Asrai or a Nagaraja with snake hair and a serpentine lower body.

They had some funds now.

Most of the hotels came in the form of raised-floor cottages on the beach. After checking in at the manager’s room, you would head to one of the villa-like cottages dotting the beach. The puppy-like mermaid waiting behind the counter greeted them while seeming unsure what to do with her long fish tail.

“Welcome back, Princess. You want the cheapest room we offer? I wouldn’t dare! I would be punished for providing such poor service to you of all people!”

“?”

“Ho…ho ho ho. It’s so cute how they call everyone princess instead of ma’am! Now, Ayato, stop letting their standard lip service get the better of you! We need to go!!”

When they received their room key in the manager’s room, Ayato could not help but check what level it was as a sorcery device. They walked along a pier-like wooden walkway to carry them out into the ocean instead of just on the beach. There was no ocean railroad bridge or other cottages to block the view of the sun setting over the horizon from here. It had to be the nicest cottage in the area. For some reason, the entire place was oddly luxurious and its Media Summoner was unusually large. A bottle in a bucket of ice sat on the table as a welcoming gift.

Silver-haired Mamilis’s eyes widened and she poked at the bottle full of a toxically bright pink liquid.

“Wow, is this alcoholic?’

“I doubt it. Alcoholic drinks have the cork sealed with a special sticker to let you know. Also, the chateau or distillery likes to advertise their brand, the production region, and the shipment date on the label.”

“You know a lot about this, Henrietta. You’re so mature.”

“Thanks to the nightly parties those nobles threw after losing the courage to fight. To be clear, I learned all this so I would not drink any by mistake.”

While Dark Elf Mamilis and Striker Henrietta discussed that, Teleria quietly observed the cottage. She checked each room in turn and found red flower petals scattered atop a large canopied bed. There was even a message card on the pillow: “I see you have finally captured a man in the outside world and brought him home with you. Since there are no male Mermaids, that is a trial we all must face if we intend to have a child, which is especially important for you given the line of succession. I should have known you would overcome that trial so easily, Princess! The drink we have provided has a fantastic effect on men, turning them into a runaway freight train, if you know what I mean. Good luck tonight, Princess!”

“What does that say, Miss Teleria?’

“Nwuhthing at all, Ayato!! Ha ha ha. Just some silly advertisement, so don’t bother looking at it. And don’t even think about touching that bottle!!”

She balled up the unwanted message card in record time while blushing bright and speaking at a rapid pace. She was starting to suspect this cottage might be littered with traps, so she would need to do a thorough cleaning of every single room.

“Coach.”

Then Dark Elf Mamilis poked just her head into the bedroom entrance. As a grandma’s girl deep down, she could behave oddly childishly despite her tall and slender build.

Since no one could see them here, she had removed her Mimic Option earrings to let her long ears show.

“Should we choose rooms now?”

“I vote we all share the same room, Miss Mamilis. Yes, let us all sleep in the very same bed!!”

“In that case, I will assign rooms to everyone. But once that is done, we need to find some way to kill time. A full day is a long time.”

“Miss Mamilis, the laws of nature tell us precisely what we must do here, do they not?”

The brown bare-midriff girl tilted her head and Ayato made an awfully powerful suggestion.

“This is a tropical paradise, so how about we swim in the ocean?”

Part 2

The humidity was lower out toward the ocean, but it was still plenty hot. The sun shined down from overhead and the fine white sand reflected it up from below, so the cool waves were a relief.

“Hold on. Are these really the rental swimsuits?”

“Hurry it up, Henrietta.”

“But these are no more than long, broad strips of cloth. At least tell me how I am supposed to wear it!”

“You only need two of them. Twist one around at the center and wrap it around your chest so it functions as cups. Like this, see? Then you can pass the other one vertically and horizontally while wrapping it around you to cover your butt.”

“This requires far too much creativity!”

Their cottage sat out over the ocean.

Did the girls realize their vivid silhouettes showed through the white curtain partition thanks to the sunlight shining through the window behind them? A conversation that did a lot to fuel the imagination was playing out beyond that thin curtain, but one voice was missing.

“Miss Teleria, why are you sitting over in the corner? You should join them.”

“Please just ignore meeee.”

The blonde girl was curled up with her arms around her knees and she rubbed her big toes together through the black tights she still wore. Those tights were actually a Mimic Option and removing them would reveal her mermaid parts. Unfortunately, she could not think of a swimsuit she could wear while still wearing tights.

However, Ayato rubbed his skinny chin in thought.

“Why would a girl sadly sit on the sidelines watching the others swim? …Oh!? How thoughtless of me. Forget I asked anything.”

“(I really, really want to punch him, but that would only make him ask further questions!!)”

With the sound of a flapping cloth, the thin curtain partition was pushed aside.

“We’re ready, Coach.”

Tall and slender Mamilis wore something akin to a bikini. White silk strips of cloth as thick as her arm were wrapped around her, covering her chest and hips. She had gone to the effort of twisting them at the center of the chest and the sides of her hips for a nice fashionable touch. Still, she really only had strips of cloth wrapped around her, so the angle around her hips seemed a bit sharp.

“Is it coming loose anywhere or did I leave any gaps?”

“Not that I can see.”

“But maybe I was too cautious because it’s a little tight. Nh, yeah, it rides up when I move my legs.”

“Miss Mamilis, you always put me in the most philosophical mood. You clearly know what makes a good swimsuit, even if you are not consciously aware of it. Good, you even know to bend your finger like a hook to fix the butt.”

Meanwhile, Henrietta had a strip of cloth hooked over her neck and then pulled down to cover the three important points of her two breasts and her crotch. Overall, it formed something like a V-shape. With his eyes on her, she held her arms around herself and twisted her body while trying not to look his way.

“What do you want, dangerous individual?”

“Well, Miss Henrietta, I was simply noting that people are full of surprises. That is a truly wonderful design that displays your inner self flawlessly.”

“One word more and I’m punching you! I couldn’t wrap it around me as skillfully as she could, so I had no choice but to do it this way!!”

“Wa ha ha! Perhaps we should call you Miss Jigglyetta from now on!”

She had started to attack him (with so much of her bright skin showing), but his comment made her gasp and then shriek as she quickly covered her chest with her hands. Yes, that V-shaped swimsuit was a little too playful. Or rather, it was much like a suspension bridge in how it turned the slightest movement into a lot of shaking.

“But it would seem you need more training in the way of the swimsuit, Rare Navel-Exposure Henrietta, so a word of warning. Bending over to cover your body is all well and good, but with a swimsuit like that, you are only letting the cloth go slack, widening the gaps. Can’t complain about the view, though.”

“Enough. If it comes to it, I will grab a stone and use this cloth as a sling. If I am going to die of embarrassment, I’m taking you with me.”

He seemed to have awoken the berserker’s wrath. Viewing everything through the lens of battle may have been her way of avoiding the reality before her. She seemed to be as much of a workaholic as Ayato.

Since the cottage was situated over the ocean itself, they did not need to head out onto the beach and set up a parasol. Ayato had discovered it while casting a fishing rod out the window, but the ocean was only hip deep here. That meant they could jump right off from the terrace.

And so Mamilis tilted her expressionless head in her bikini.

“You aren’t going to swim, Teleria?”

“Um, I couldn’t find a swimsuit I liked.”

“Henrietta, you grab her arms and I’ll grab her legs.”

“Wait, what are you two planning!?”

“We don’t want you to feel left out, so let’s forget all about swimsuits. Okay, swing her side to side and…go!”

After being swung like a pendulum and chucked out the window, the girl’s scream was drowned out by a loud splash.

Brown Mamilis followed after her by running to the end of the terrace with her arms raised horizontally.

“Yay!”

“Hey, dangerous individual. Is it just me or is that girl getting weirder by the day!? You’re clearly a bad influence on her!!”

“Coach, shut her up by shoving her into the ocean.”

“Eek!?”

A gentleman like Ayato could never wield that sort of violence, so he instead grabbed the back of her V-shaped swimsuit and tugged upwards. With the sound of cloth digging into flesh, she turned her legs inward, shrieked, and jumped up, causing her to fall off the edge of the terrace.

“Bwah!? D-d-dangerous individual!!”

“What about you, Coach?”

“Miss Mamilis, that is an extremely attractive offer, but unfortunately, there were no men’s swimsuits. Plus, a wet guy would be a public nuisance instead of a blessing. I was thinking of engaging in the truly cultured pastime of attempting to remove your swimsuits with this fishing rod, so how does that sound?”

“It sounds like you want me to climb back up there and punch you!”

“Ha ha ha. You say that, Miss Teleria, but what is that floating right next to you? Your blazer, blouse, and black tights are wet but otherwise untouched, so how in the world did landing in the water cause just your bra to come off and float away in the waves? And I was under the impression you always went with the pure white option, so I thank you for this correction.”

Teleria screamed and covered her chest with her hands while she ducked down to bring the water up past her mouth. She began blowing bubbles and looking tearfully up at him. He felt a little bad for her, but that reaction had earned an unbelievably high score in his book.

Needless to say, Ayato was so reluctant to enter the water because there was no such thing as absolute safety. There was the unsettling incident involving that ice coffin, but there was also a chance of a robbery, a mass shooting, or a random attacker arriving by pure coincidence. If they all set their weapons aside, they would have no way of responding to an unexpected attack, but the girls had different plans.

“W-we need to work together. Splash him with water! Especially in the face. Don’t give him a chance to swing that fishing rod!!”

“Got it!”

“Hm, this sounds fun. Get ready, Coach.”

The three girls began splashing at the hip-deep seawater with their hands, but while (happily) accepting their coordinated attack from one step back from the edge, he noticed something.

(Yes, I hadn’t imagined it. Their skin color is showing through an awful lot. Especially where the seawater has soaked into it.)

It was especially noticeable with Mamilis’s brown skin. The wet white cloth was plastered to her smooth curves in a way that suggested it had little to no waterproofing. That may truly have been ordinary silk.

“Agh! By the way, Miss Mamilis, where did you get these swimsuits?”

“Using the rental service offered on the Media Summoner. It contacted some young woman called a…coordinator, I think it was? Anyway, she brought them to the front door.”

“She brought the swimsuits?”

“She said we could wear them to look prettier.”

Ayato gained an incredibly soft expression.

Prettier. He could guess these were optional accessories meant to provide additional decoration, not swimsuits themselves. That meant they had zero protection against growing see-through when wet, but Ayato was a gentleman. There was no need to wound the sensitive maidens’ pride by pointing out their mistake.

“And letting them frolic in the water while mistaking that thin cloth for swimsuits will bring about much greater transparency-related happiness.”

“Hold it, dangerous individual! What did you just say!?”

Part 3

The cottage built from tropical logs was a lot like a rental villa, so unlike a normal hotel, it had a kitchen. Night had fallen and they were all feeling hungry. There were restaurants and food stands out on the beach and they could order room service from the Media Summoner, but all of that would come with the delightfully happy tourist markup. Their funds would not last forever, so Teleria ended up in the kitchen.

“(If we order a dinner to be delivered here, who knows what kind of unwanted ‘substances’ they’ll add in!)”

“?”

Ayato gave her a puzzled look while she wore a frilly white apron over her uniform, but she was not about to explain.

Mamilis must have had a lot of trust in her because the Dark Elf’s long ears were twitching as she made a bold statement.

“Teleria can cook anything, can’t she?”

“She can. Which has helped me out immensely.”

She supposedly had trouble with fire magic, but she looked right at home operating the stove with her sorcery gun. The household level magic must have been simple enough for her to manage.

“Come to think of it, Coach, I’ve never seen you cook.”

“I would always go to the dining hall or use the microwave. Anyone can cook if all it takes is placing the ingredients in a box and turning the dial.”

“Microwave?”

“That was a tool they had in the Academy Towers.”

The Academy Towers was an educational institution on the Static Continent. Some saw it as a collection of geniuses and others as a cage for eccentrics. Neither assessment was exactly wrong, but one was a lot more accurate than the other. It was the peak of magical research. It was said an endless supply of new magical methods bubbled up from there like water from a spring, but it was also a tower of disaster that had created all sorts of ruinous human knowledge.

Ayato and Teleria’s blue blazers were the uniforms of that school.

Henrietta gave them an exasperated look.

“This dangerous individual certainly fits the stereotype of the eccentrics that place is known for, but not Teleria. It’s hard to believe such a sensible person wound up there.”

“You might want to see the place for yourself before jumping to conclusions about it.”

“But I heard it is like a cursed box, so simply peeking inside will drive you mad.”

Unfortunately, that description was somewhat accurate, so he had no rebuttal.

Instead, he shrugged.

“Anyway, that just means this girl earned a spot in the Academy Towers through something other than eccentricity. It is high time you appreciated Miss Teleria’s skill.”

“Teleria’s a genius girl?”

“Be careful, Miss Mamilis, because that questioning tone makes it sound like you are doubting her intelligence.”

“Yeah, but…”

Mamilis did not hesitate to stare at the blonde girl standing in the kitchen. Teleria was humming and chopping something up with a knife and she did not have the look of a “genius girl”.

But looks could be deceiving.

“I cannot use a sorcery gun, so she always stands in harm’s way for me. That requires the skill to both protect me and herself from whatever danger we face. And I have rarely if ever seen someone control water magic better than her.”

“Now that you mention it.”

Mamilis preferred suppression tactics using her full-auto shotgun with fire magic. That was a cost-effective combination because it allowed even a rookie to do fairly well just by continuing to fire, but that was because she lacked the fine control needed to protect someone while she fought.

“Magical combat requires heavy use of the mind and body. So a powerful fighter must be smart too.”

On the other hand, Ayato could no longer use a sorcery gun.

That meant he could no longer display his intelligence that way.

“By the way, Miss Henrietta was right about me finding a place in the Academy Towers through something other than being a genius. I might look smart because of all the strategizing, Sorcery Hacking, and other intellectual work I do, but do not let the flashy appearances fool you.”

“If you are aware how dumb you really are, then work to improve yourself, dangerous individual.”

“If personal effort is enough to change someone, you can hardly call them a true eccentric.”

And.

Dark Elf Mamilis’s eyes widened when she saw the dishes lined up on the table.

“Wow, what is this? A white stew?”

“It’s just meat simmered in milk. That is similar to a stew, but the meat is the main dish, not the broth. It is common in tropical dishes for the strong-flavored ingredients to be lightly cooked with some spices before being simmered in coconut milk. Really, you can think of it as a relative of honey chicken, so it may be more like a white sauce than a soup. Drinking all of it would mean a lot of fat and sugar, so consider yourself warned.”

“You sure know a lot about the local cuisine.”

“Eh? Ha ha ha. No, no. Not at all, Henrietta! There was a collection of local recipes hanging from a string on the kitchen wall, so I used that!”

Instead of a bread or rice based diet, this used doughy steamed dumplings made from potato starch. There was plenty of water here, but the island may not have been able to grow any grains due to the high temperature.

Anyway, it was time to eat.

Henrietta’s classiness as a knight was evident at times like this. The way she held her knife and fork exuded fine manners.

“Hm. I was so sick of chicken I thought I never wanted to see it again, but it tastes so much different with these seasonings. I still have so much to learn.”

“Oh, that’s not chicken. It’s fruit bat.”

“?”

“You know, a bat. With wings.”

Henrietta Split Destrius very classily spat out the food in her mouth. Ayato looked unsure how to respond since he was sitting directly across from her. He knew he could not let it anger him, so this called for a more philosophical stance.

“Would it bring me happiness to view this as a long-distance version of feeding me mouth-to-mouth? Yes, instead of viewing it as a tragic accident, I can create a psychological cushion by viewing it as an avant-garde version of blowing a kiss.”

“Coach, I really think you should just sadly wipe off your face. Here’s a towel.”

Henrietta had not heard a word they said.

“Ugh, cough, you…bat!?”

“Yes, the texture makes it a lot easier to eat than snake or frog. It doesn’t fall apart as you chew it.”

“Dark Elf, I don’t care if those are only hypothetical alternatives! Just stop! My life is over if I can no longer trust what I’m eating!!”

Now, it was a mystery why Mamilis knew what it was like to eat snake and frog since she had lived on that urban sky city just like Henrietta. Perhaps all Dark Elves were forest dwellers deep down.

Teleria handed Henrietta a cup of ice water.

“Well, if you don’t like that, how about some seafood instead?”

“I know you worked hard to cook this and I do apologize, but thank you. By the way, what kind of fish is in this?”

“Eh? It’s not fish. That’s a boiled octopus and vegetable marinade.”

Henrietta crashed backwards in her chair. Evidently, the urban Striker could not stand eating slippery and slimy octopuses or squids either.

“Uh, ughhh.”

“You sure are a picky eater. Did you always get to eat what you wanted while growing up in a rich noble family?”

Mamilis was from the same sky city, but she had grown up as a commoner and was reacting very differently now. She was munching on the food without any problem. The Dark Elf’s analysis was biased, but the knight could not argue back since she indeed could not bring herself to eat this food. Still on the floor, she glared up at Ayato in a dejected way.

“From now on, I will only consume water and potatoes. Dangerous individual, that revolver boy’s decursing will be complete tomorrow, correct? And then we will have no more reason to stay on this island, correct!?”

“That is the soonest possible result and it assumes everything goes well. They might have trouble and need to try different springs. But the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute are decursing experts, so let’s hope they are successful before you grow sick of your potato diet.”

She might as well have been a bug flipped on its back.

She covered her face with her hands and started to sob, so she may have been feeling homesick already.

Part 4

Falling water could be heard in the ocean cottage, but not because a midnight squall was pounding on the roof. Henrietta was taking a shower.

Ayato Criminaltrophy shut his eyes and sighed while seated on a sofa in what would have been the living room of a normal villa.

He was beginning his mental sorcery experiment he called self-maintenance. That required no special tools or equipment, so any Sorcery Hacker would do that during any spare time. It may have been like a squirrel stuffing its cheeks full of nuts or a gymnast stretching to keep their body limber.

But.

“Coach.”

“Mgh!?”

He was hit by a surprise attack.

A weight plopped down on his thighs. He ended his work and opened his eyes to find the tall Dark Elf seated on his lap. She looked like a cool beauty, but she was quite the grandma’s girl, so she was very communicative once she opened up a bit with you.

She kicked her long legs.

She seemed to be toying with some kind of device in her hands.

“I want to know how this cartridge device works, so can you teach me?”

“Hm?”

Everyone could use sorcery guns for easy magic use these days, but that had indeed introduced the new troubles of maintaining and supplying ammo for those guns. A cartridge device was a tool used to create your own ammo.

“Yeah, they probably do have clay target shooting here, but I bet the wealthy have their own equipment brought in for that. The island’s shops probably don’t actually sell ammo.”

He had a feeling that was a hobby brought here by the 5th Prince. He was an indoorsy type who liked to tinker with sorcery devices and he used sports as a reason to get out of the house, but he would meekly smile and say he was not willing to shoot animals for sport. Ayato really wished a certain Minotaur could take a lesson from the guy.

On the other hand, sorcery guns were used as more than just weapons. They were also an ignition source for household stoves and heaters. However, there was a lot he did not know about how that equipment found its way to the island’s people.

“I want to learn how to do this while I have a chance, Coach. Where should I begin?”

“Let’s see.”

Mamilis was not a small child, so he had trouble seeing the device itself while she sat in his lap. He had to effectively embrace her hips from behind to use his sense of touch to check on the cartridge device she was toying with.

The device itself appeared to be a rectangular piece of steel about the size of a toaster.

Thumb-sized cylindrical holes were evenly spaced across the upper surface like a honeycomb, making it look something like a strange cooking appliance.

“First, check the knob on the side. Make sure the heat really is switched off.”

“Okay.”

“I can explain the basic principle behind it while you work. The standard bullets used by sorcery guns are made from mist mana.”

This reminded him of his time in the Academy Towers.

“First, the actual bullet,” he said while her long, twitching ears hit him on the cheek. “That is made from disintegrating lead. You generally want to make basic bullets that can be used for anything, but if you know what element you want from the beginning, you can use an arrangement specialized for fire, water, wind, or earth.”

“Everything I do is with fire.”

“The actual magic is formed by the muzzle flash that is given a specific pattern similar to a firework by carving grooves into the bullet with your willpower. Sending the power of mana through that creates the magic.”

But if that was all you wanted, you could simply pour dull gray powder inside and shape it by crushing it down with the rounded end of a wooden stick. A shotgun self-replicated a single type of magic and scattered it in a fan shape, which required focusing on multiple bullets instead of one even mass, but that was a separate issue.

The magical part of this job was coming up.

“Once the bullet portion has solidified, it’s time for the next step. Take concentrated and liquefied mana and rub it onto the inside of the tube.”

“You can touch mana with your finger? I thought you would pass right through it. Isn’t it called Intangible Mist?”

“Which is why you rub an impurity on the inside of the tube beforehand. It’s generally a powder, but the cream type might be easier for a beginner. Both options only keep the mana there for a short period of time, but you just have to get it heated and solidified before then.”

Mamilis’s movements were hesitant, but she was brimming with curiosity.

In terms of the Academy Towers, she seemed to see it like a summer break research project.

She leaned forward and rocked side to side, so his arms looked something like a seatbelt holding her in.

“Now turn the previous knob to heat up the entire device. For a shotgun, you’ll want to crank it up a little more. A thicker casing means more stability. Oh, and make sure you don’t touch the metal portions while it’s heating.”

“So this will create a tube, Coach?”

“Exactly. Mana generally passes through everything, but it can’t escape walls made of mana. The casing will quickly harden like a shell once you heat it and you can fill it with mist mana then. That you won’t harden. But overfill it and the high concentration will liquefy it, so be careful.”

“Okay.”

“Once you turn the knob back to stop the heating, you just have to shield the opening with a detonator and seal it up.”

When she pulled down the small lever on the side, a set of brand new bullet cartridges popped out of the cylinders. A cartridge device like this could make 20 rounds at a time. They popped out as easily as toast from a toaster.

Shops loved to sell “first class” sorcery gun ammo said to be made by specialists, but most people would just make their own. Especially Forwards who might not be able to visit a shop depending on their circumstances.

But anyway.

“I did it,” said Mamilis in a way that would probably have made her weapon developer grandma weepy.

The shotgun shells she had made all glowed red like jewels.

He had shown her through the standard method here, but the end product could vary significantly based on the creator’s quirks and the materials used. Teleria’s and Henrietta’s would shine with a unique light all their own.

“There is almost no chance of the creator being identified from a used cartridge since they lose their color and disintegrate on their own. But you could be in trouble if you drop an unused shotgun shell on a job, so be careful how you handle them.”

“Got it, Coach.”

“You have to wait for the device to cool before you can make another set, but you can use an incombustible gas for that. Submerging it in cold water would crack the device, so don’t do that. Regardless, I recommend doing it with me or Miss Teleria around for the time being.”

“Incredible. I can make as many bullets as I want with this.”

She sounded like a small child who had been given an ice cream maker that was more or less just a toy.

Back in the sky city, she had feared the weapons people wielded, but making them herself may have helped her conquer that fear by understanding how they worked.

“The experiment is not over until you have cleaned up your equipment. Once you finish that, you can take a shower and get to bed early. Even if we were using a sleeper train, we did just complete a long journey.”

“Hm? You don’t want me to review what I’ve learned now???”

“This is not quite the same as my self-maintenance work. One lesson I have learned the hard way is that you will accomplish nothing by trying to learn when you are feeling sleepy and your eyelids are growing heavy.”

Part 5

The ocean was enshrouded with the late-night darkness.

Since Laguntreat’s primary selling point was as a health retreat, the night was fairly peaceful for a tourist location. The giant crab Karkinos was flipped over, fast asleep. It had something like white bubbles coming from its mouth, but not because it was suffering.

A Lizardman must have shed their skin at some point because a skin shaped just like one was sitting there on the beach.

The moonlit ocean looked different than it had during the day. A faint and cold light rose from its surface and thin, pier-like walkways connected the cottages built over the water. Someone was slowly walking along one of those.

It was Teleria Nereid Aquamarine.

“…”

She had snuck out of their cottage and she doubted anyone had noticed. They had fought a hard battle on the ocean train during the day, they had played in the ocean, and they were staying in an unfamiliar place. Mamilis and Henrietta must have been exhausted, not to mention Ayato. It was hard to tell from the outside whether he was sleeping or performing that mental work of his, but one of his strongest points was his ability to sleep anywhere and quickly recover through that sleep.

That was why no one caught the blonde girl.

For a Mermaid, the ocean was best at night. The view from the walkway was so enticing she wanted to jump right on in, but the ocean at night was also heavily associated with death.

She was here to check on something.

She wanted to see again how she viewed herself.

“Ah.”

Her lips moved slightly when she saw the moon reflected in the dark ocean.

Once the figurative ball began rolling down the slope, there was no stopping it.

“Okay, fine!! How am I supposed to resist this!?

She stripped.

She started with her blue blazer and blouse, she skipped to her leather shoes for now, she took a detour to the twin holsters for her guns, and then she hesitated a moment before removing her white bra too. At that point, there was no use in waiting any longer, so she unzipped her skirt and stuck her thumbs under the sides of the black tights she wore. Those were actually a Mimic Option, so once she pulled them down, her hidden Mermaid lower body was revealed with a sticky sound.

The moonlight shined palely on her silhouette, which contained a combination of immature and mature.

“There.”

The rest came naturally to her.

She leaped into the ocean, traveling in a beautiful crescent moon arch from the pier-like walkway.

Any Mermaid would be itching to dive in after seeing that watery expanse before her. She had been resisting it the entire time they were on the ocean railroad and the beach cottage had been the last straw. The ocean was way too close by. The clear seawater, the strong scent of the sea breeze, the crashing of the waves, and the summer sun on her skin had all pierced directly into her instincts.

The dark water inspired fear in some, but it was more comforting than a bed sheet to her and she could not resist wrapping her entire body in it.

“Pwah. Maybe I overdid it.”

She made that belated realization after bringing her face above water. She had been starving for the ocean, but fulfilling that urge may have helped clear her mind. Even Laguntreat’s ocean had things floating through it, but all of that would break down naturally. Teleria grabbed a palm leaf floating in the waves and wrapped it around her ample chest with practiced hand. She had trouble with detailed needlework, but that was because Mermaids did not do much sewing.

“Nh.”

Mermaid clothing was generally made by wrapping waterproof fabric or giant leaves around their body or by drilling holes in shells and passing thick strings through that to create a shell bikini.

She lay on her back and spread out her arms to look up at the moon and float on the surface for a while.

She could live in human society with her Mimic Option, but using it for too long left her lower body bloated and the pressure of keeping secrets from people built up inside her like sediment. She wanted some kind of release. She wanted to blow off some steam. And the azure sea of her home ground was far too powerful. Not even visiting a cake buffet the day after a diet would have permeated the core of her being quite like this.

“Ayato, you dummyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!”

She had managed to fool him today, but what about tomorrow?

She also had to wonder why he could not see through her lies.

“He’s so dumb I can’t believe it,” she said much more quietly.

Achieving your goal did not always feel good. Keeping up her act for another day pricked at her heart like a small thorn. The foolish boy was left behind with his happy dreams while this girl continued to grow.

When would she finally be able to reveal this to him?

She was so very jealous of Mamilis who could reveal her long Dark Elf ears around him and even get him to rub her head. She knew that jealousy was an ugly thing, but she could have had that position for herself. If she had chosen differently back at the beginning, she was certain she would not have had to hide her Mermaid tail from him.

But she did not see that happening as things were. In the end, Teleria was Teleria. She could not do what Mamilis did at this point.

Too much time had passed.

The supposed trust she had built up with him only worked against her now.

She only had herself to blame. This was a comedy brought on by her weak will and her self-serving logic, so she knew all her resentment had to be directed at herself.

“Sigh.”

(I wish I could just go to sleep out here. I wish I could turn to sea foam and dissolve into the water.)

She knew that could never happen.

She even knew she would tearfully beg for her life if it did come to that.

And just then…

“…!?”

Her incoherent thoughts were dragged back to reality by an intense pressure. She flipped over from her back, dove down into the ocean, and then treaded water with her hips on down below the water.

This was not a blatant attack.

She could not sense any killer intent or even hostility.

She felt a violent “aura” like a wooden hammer to the heart, but it was more like someone stirring or rolling in their sleep than anything.

“It…can’t be.”

She could only think of one possibility.

Her gaze slowly rose from the ocean surface. The mountain visible from anywhere on Laguntreat was capped with thick clouds and white snow despite the tropical climate. All the island’s water came from there. Beyond the cloudy curtain was a silhouette of something very different from a mountain ridge.

It was 540 esoule long.

That gargantuan winged fish slithered along the land like a snake.

But the weird people who had been observing it for many long years would notice that its position had changed. It had clearly moved closer to the base of the mountain.

The blonde Mermaid spoke with extreme caution in her voice.

It was only a whisper, but her voice was quavering.

“Mother?”

That was Water Lord Fleurelisia Nereid Aquamarine.

That Ocean Queen was one of the Four Lords of the demons.

She was also like a horrific alarm clock that would trigger a collapse of balance for everything here.

The Water Lord, who was Teleria’s biological mother, was moving for the first time in several combo-years?

Phase 02: Oceavita Water Therapy Institute

Part 1

It was not just night.

It was the middle of the night.

“…”

That creature seemed out of place to Teleria even with her Mermaid side revealed. The pressure coming off that gargantuan winged fish was like a solid wall. That member of the Four Lords of the demons was said to control water in all three forms using her land, sea, and sky forms. Fleurelisia Nereid Aquamarine’s 450-esoule body had not moved for a very long time, but now she was slowly but surely slithering down from the mountain peak.

She spoke in a voice outside the audible range for humans.

She had no hostile intent, but her voice might as well have been a violent impact.

Regardless, Water Lord Fleurelisia spoke words that only her daughter Teleria could perceive.

“My, my, Teleria. I heard you brought a boy back with you and immediately rented out a room. Letting your hormones run wild is one of the best parts of life, but I really wish you had come by to introduce him to me first. I have no intention of opposing your choice; I am simply curious what kind of lovely person you have selected. Now, come tell me what kind of gentleman you snagged on the continent. No, that would take too long. I will come visit you with a homemade apple pie. I have so many questions. Hee hee. Including how the two of you met, of course.”

“Eek.” The short but busty blonde Mermaid’s throat tensed up. “You, um, you mean the Water Lord is moving for the first time in forever for that!?”

“Of course I am. This is a crucial moment in my daughter’s life. Why wouldn’t I cast aside the fate of the world in order to help out?”

Her mother was making a surprise appearance in front of her friends and a 450-esoule creature was slithering destructively down from the mountain. Which of those was a greater crisis for a teenage girl? Now was not the time to be sentimentally complaining about how dense that boy was. If someone was going to give him spoilers, she at least wanted it to be someone other than her colossal mama.

The mountain rumbled violently.

Needless to say, the giant form near the peak was starting to crash against it while slithering down toward the water.

Teleria paled and rushed toward the pier-like walkway.

She first grabbed just the holsters for her twin handguns with longish magazines.

“Hgee!! Why are you so dumb, dumb, dumb!? Get a clue, mother! Aren’t you supposed to be one of the Four Lords that rule the entire world!? Every fortuneteller in the world is going to faint when they hear about this!”

“Now, now, Teleria. Is that any way to speak to your mother? Impoliteness will only drive the gentleman away, so try to work toward your future happiness, okay? Don’t worry. I will help you.”

“I don’t want your help and your standards are too old-fashioned to be of any help anyway!!”

She had to put a stop to this.

She did not think she could defeat her mother, but she had to set up a defensive line in front of the cottage where Ayato and the others were sleeping. Her mother generally slithered along the land, but if she attacked the flying fish wings on either side of that colossal form, could she knock her mother off balance, and bring a stop to that combination of a snake and a seal? She would need to use her opponent’s momentum like a martial artist. She readied her sorcery guns and sweatily prepared to fight back.

“Learn to act your age, mother!!”

“Ho ho ho. Didn’t you know? All mothers have a young and childish side to them☆”

Part 2

The morning sun shined in.

On a tropical beach, the morning was not welcomed by the chirping of sparrows or the crowing of a rooster. Instead, it was the squawking of sea birds that awoke Ayato. The luxurious tropical log cottage had plenty of beds, so he had not needed to use a sofa for once.

However, he also heard an odd sound from below the covers.

Or was that a voice?

“Mgh.”

“Miss Mamilis, I am aware this is rude, but might I ask for as detailed an explanation as possible regarding why you have crawled into my bed?”

He moved his hand a bit to check and felt the contrasting textures of strange leather and a girl’s soft skin.

“To be honest, I underestimated you, Coach,” said the voice from the covers. “I thought I would wake you up this morning, but you pulled me down to roll along the floor with me and finally rolled right on back into the bed.”

The Dark Elf did not sound pleased.

Now, Ayato had not been sleeping. He had just returned from his self-maintenance work that only required shutting one’s eyes and meditating, but it seemed his body had been getting into trouble in the meantime.

He shook his heavy head and climbed out of bed.

He walked to the living room with Mamilis who was wearing her white leather vest and tight pants.

“Hm? Why do you look so exhausted, Miss Teleria? Is the heat getting to you?”

“I-it’sh nuffing. Maybe this bed is just too soft and fluffy.”

Teleria had shown off her cooking skills last night, but with her blonde hair a mess and her uniform disheveled, it was clear they would have to head out for some breakfast. Which was fine since they also had to stop by the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute to ask about the decursing of that attacker. The fact that none of them considered cooking in Teleria’s place showed just how reliant they were on the girl.

When they left the cottage and started strolling along the beach, it was nigh impossible to miss a major change to the scenery.

Namely, Water Lord Fleurelisia.

Her massive form on the peak came into view whether you were paying attention or not.

“Hm? Isn’t she a little further to the right than yesterday?”

“Ha ha ha. You must be imagining things, Ayato. That’s one of the legendary Four Lords, remember?”

“Dangerous individual, did you hear something like gunfire last night?”

“Probably those lightning cloud cannons! Those large sorcery devices are used to clear away thick lightning clouds. They’re all controlled from this island, but they have them set up on a few uninhabited islands to keep the people here safe!”

Small piles of something could be seen here and there, so someone must have created them and left them there during the night. A girl – probably a Scylla – was gathering those up in a large bag she was dragging around. Was she a volunteer gathering the remnants of fireworks? She was also lecturing a Lizardman who had left their shed skin out on the beach.

The morning sea was breathtaking.

There were no surfers or leisure yachts out this early, so the tourists must have all still been asleep. It was too soon to swim or to throw a party, but the true beauty of the tropical ocean may have been more evident now than any other time. The ocean glittered in the rising sun with an innocent shine reminiscent of an unpolished gemstone.

Henrietta looked around while passing by a Cat Sith girl going for an early morning jog in a healthy outfit that showed off her midriff.

“Aren’t we too early? The morning shift maids will only now be getting up, so I doubt any restaurants are open.”

“There’s one thing you can always count on while on the beach. Yup, there it is.”

It would cost a fair amount, but Ayato knew exactly what to go. The cheapest option for eating out now was the food stands lined up along the beach. They were probably meant for the fishermen returning to port at dawn. Most of them set the heat of a grill with a sorcery gun instead of using a portable stove.

Dark Elf Mamilis was fascinated by how the chilly Arai girl worked her double spatulas.

“Wow, what’s this, Coach? They’re serving noodles without any sauce, but it doesn’t look like pasta.”

“Hey, dangerous individual. I thought wheat was scarce here since they have to have it imported. Are these made from potatoes like those dumplings from yesterday?”

“Those are fried noodles, a classic beach food,” said Teleria. “Although people are very opinionated over whether they should be served with salt or with sweet and savory sauce, or if the noodles should be hard or soft.”

“?”

Henrietta gave an odd look to Teleria for knowing so much about this. They ended up getting some of those fried noodles, but the Striker had no problem with the dried and sliced sea cucumber served on top, despite collapsing back in her chair over octopus and squid. She stabbed them with a fork and ate them like normal.

“Hm, they seem to be fried instead of boiled, but the texture of the noodles seems about right. A little softer than I’m used to with the Static Continent’s pasta, though.”

“U-um. Henrietta, those things on the noodles are sea cucumbers.”

“These? They’re fairly chewy, but the more I chew them, the more flavor I get from them. They provide a nice accent to the flavor. So I take it these cucumbers grow near the sea?”

The Striker would not stop grinning. While sliced up and dried out, someone of her privileged background apparently thought they truly were a type of cucumber. If she saw a whole sea cucumber lying in the shallows around here, she would probably foam at the mouth and pass out, so Teleria decided not to elaborate further.

“Take a look at that over there, Miss Henrietta! Yes, that thing that looks like dog poop washed up onto the beach!”

“I just knew you would do this, Ayato! And I’m not letting it happen!!”

The short but busty blonde girl wrapped her arms around him to cover his mouth with her soft hands, but she seemed unaware that qualified as a flirty reward to him. He silently vowed to do this kind of thing more often.

Once they had eaten, they made their way to the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute.

The white sand extended well beyond the beach. The trees growing directly from it must have been a type of mangrove. A Dryad girl stretched her arms up and hummed while leaning up against a thick tree.

“Ah.”

Brown midriff-baring Mamilis cried out and clung to Ayato. She seemed to have tripped over something.

“Hm,” he said with a troubled look.

“Now is not the time to discuss ‘a happy sensation’ or whatever you call it, dangerous individual. We need to find out if that attacker has been decursed and complete our business here. You need to hear what he has to say, don’t you?”

“…”

A cloud fell over fluffy blonde-haired Teleria’s face. She did not want Ayato to continue obsessing over that past incident, but she could not change anything without working up the courage to speak up about it.

They arrived at the white marble building that acted as the general reception area for the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute. It was much cooler inside. This early in the morning, there was no line of other patients and the large lobby felt empty.

The smiling receptionist was like a cross between a maid and a nurse.

“You are #1034, registered under the name of Henrietta, correct?”

“Yes, that’s me,” said Ayato.

“(No, it’s me! Dangerous individual, you can’t just use my name like that.)”

“(Let me borrow your good reputation just this once. I need your noble and respectable name here. A crafty fox like me isn’t enough to pull this one off.)”

“(Hm, is that so? Heh heh heh. So you have finally found some respect for a Striker who fights day and night to preserve order and justice, have you? This is a good sign. I can rehabilitate you yet.)”

While the blonde braid girl started feeling awfully proud of herself, the Sorcery Hacker hid a smile so she would not notice.

She was so easy to manipulate he was a little worried about her future.

Whether the receptionist was aware of that interplay or not, she held a hand over the palm-sized spherical Media Summoner on the counter.

“#1034 is…oh?”

Looks of surprise were unusual in an institute of sorcery medicine. The unexpected could happen anywhere of course, but letting it show could trigger anxiety and fear within the patient or their family. No one wanted to go out of their way to invite customer complaints.

Henrietta quickly grew pale.

“Wait, so was the basic decursing not enough? Are you going to have to try out different springs until one works? How long will I be trapped on this island? Gwohh! But I don’t want to eat bats and octopuses!!”

“Um, no, it isn’t that.”

Blue blazer Ayato cocked an eyebrow at that. This was a local network using Media Summoners and the medical records were handled digitally. Why had he not considered the possibility sooner?

“Um, it seems #1034 just finished checking out earlier,” said the receptionist in a very troubled way. “We even have the virtual signature here from a Henrietta Split Destrius.”

“B-but that is my name! I never signed anything!!”

“If you are willing, we could, um, have the signature appraised.”

For those with significant status, fingerprints were not as important as the signature they used on letters and contracts. Enough so that people could make a living appraising signatures or forging them.

Ayato did not need to confirm anything with the Striker blinking in confusion next to him. She could not have split into two and acted independently of him.

He clicked his tongue.

“You’ve been sorcery hacked. Someone’s trying to take him away still encased in ice. The curse doesn’t matter if they only want to silence him!!”

The detailed exams and basic decursings would be performed back beyond the reception desk. The specialized springs were scattered across the island, but they had not reached the point of needing to try those. Black-haired Ayato pulled his Linkage Plug sword from his hip, hopped over the counter, and reached for the knob.

But before he could open it, the thick door was blown away from the other side.

It was a lot like a backdraft from a burning building. The receptionist screamed and crouched down. To make sure he did not hit her, Ayato stabbed his sword into the floor, altering the direction he fell, and he finally stopped after his hip slammed into the counter.

“Ah, ahhh. Ow, what was that?”

The receptionist was too dazed to notice her long skirt had ridden up enough to show off her legs in white tights, but he did not have time to look after her.

“Ayato!!” shouted Teleria.

“Draw your sorcery guns. This is a military-grade sorcery device!”

The sound of creaking metal joints reverberated from beyond the blazing door.

And it was not alone.

The polished white marble floor burst open and more and more giant masses emerged. They must have been hidden below the fine sand to begin with.

Teleria, Mamilis, and Henrietta moved in close together.

“That’s it, Coach,” said the Dark Elf. “The top of those things is what I tripped over in the forest.”

“H-have they been hacked?”

They dragged around armor shaped like spiral shells and the multiple metal legs, pincers, and crystal eyeballs all extended from a single opening, making them look something like car-sized hermit crabs.

Since Mamilis did not give a clear answer, her weapons developer grandma must not have designed these.

A warrior like Henrietta would be the next most familiar with such things.

“Are those Dextral Mk. IIs? I have worked alongside them in joint exercises with the surface city-states. They are unmanned amphibious weapons for landing operations. Stand in their way and you will be blown away by pure firepower!”

“Which means we have a chance if we circle behind them. Their thick armor will create a blind spot. Stay on the move and make sure they don’t surround you!”

With that, Ayato stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into the reception desk’s Media Summoner, the auto-watering device for the decorative plants, the air conditioner, and other devices.

The pincers apparently functioned as artillery. Electricity scattered from between the two blades, and…

“!!”

A mass of fire was launched toward Ayato, which he just barely managed to dodge. The blazing heat instead hit the marble, scattering rubble and explosive flames outwards. No, the airborne shards melted into liquid before they could reach the ground.

Ayato instantly analyzed it.

“Plasma fireballs? Was that Tertiary Taboo Gluon!?”

“The wind element? The Dextral Mk. II was designed to use the water element, dangerous individual! These are not the standard presets! Besides, military-grade devices are built for stability, so they would never be set to use taboo magic!!”

Had a Sorcery Hacker changed the settings? Henrietta must have wanted to whittle down their numbers before things grew even more chaotic because she spun around to sneak up next to one of the giant hermit crabs and raised her bolt-action carbine with an axe-like bayonet.

“Buff: Primary Ex Massive!!”

After pulling the trigger, she forcefully swung down the heavy blade. A direct hit from this close-quarters attack could smash the thick outer walls of the tall buildings of her native sky city. Cracks ran through the Dextral Mk. II’s spiral shell armor and a piece broke away.

Her sorcery gun’s faded empty cartridge only then hit the floor.

That was how fast her attack had been.

However.

“Oh, no.”

That frustrated comment came from Henrietta herself.

The Dextral Mk. II’s broken armor was repaired before she could make another attack, so she clicked her tongue.

“Is their armor made from packed sand? We can’t keep up with that. These are for landing operations, remember!? They were designed for use on sandy beaches, so their armor will endlessly regenerate there!!”

Henrietta’s range and accuracy might have been lacking, but she had the greatest destructive power of any of them. Teleria’s twin handguns and Mamilis’s full-auto shotgun could not supply as powerful a blow.

These weapons had the ultra-high firepower of plasma fireballs and this powerful endlessly-regenerating armor. The firepower might not be a threat if you were not directly in front of them, but constantly keeping yourself in their blind spot when more than one were targeting you would wear down your stamina in no time. And falling behind just a little would get you reduced to ashes.

They could not let this battle drag on, so the Sorcery Hacker made a decision.

“Miss Henrietta, can you safely draw their fire? I don’t think I can ask Miss Teleria or Miss Mamilis to do that.”

“Did you think a Striker like me would use others as a shield to protect herself? You have a plan, I assume?”

“I need to be at around Level 15 for this, so I will be borrowing that armor to bring my level up.”

“Hey!”

Henrietta wept as he casually stabbed his sword into her oxidized mana-conducting silver armor.

Electricity once more scattered from the hermit crab pincers.

“Here goes!!” roared Ayato as he leaped toward one Dextral Mk. II.

They aimed the pincers toward him at first, but Henrietta ran in from the other side to draw their attention and the plasma fireballs were launched toward her. Her feet squeaked on the floor as she zigzagged, causing her ponytail braid to flutter in an S-shape behind her.

She dodged the beams of light.

She made it look easy, but that was a testament to her skill. The slightest mistake here would have gotten her utterly vaporized, so it was a truly risky feat.

Meanwhile…

“Got you!!”

Ayato jumped on top of the armor made from sand or whatever. From the overhead blind spot, he stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into the opening full of weak points like the eyes, legs, and pincers.

He pulled the trigger to release the blade.

He was borrowing the processing space of the reception desk’s sorcery devices and Henrietta’s armor.

With a low roar, the one Dextral Mk. II began behaving erratically.

“Everyone, get down!!”

Plasma roared more than once.

The boy in the blue blazer that symbolized education had not aimed at one of the other hermit crabs. With equal specs, he could have at most defeated one before their greater numbers tore his one to pieces. So he had instead aimed for the floor below them. The plasma tore through the white marble, burning the fine sand found there.

“Miss Teleria, prepare Secondary Ex Icing!”

“Eh? But that’s recovery magic for cooling sprains.”

“You only need to cool the sand melted by the plasma! Hurry!!”

After some distinctive blue muzzle flashes and suppressed gunshots, the change became visible.

A distorted translucent mass covered the surface, like some melted candy had rehardened after falling to the ground.

When sand was melted, it would turn to glass.

The others launched their plasma fireballs, so black-haired Ayato quickly jumped down from the hacked one.

“The layer of glass will cut off their endless supply of sand from the ground, meaning they can’t regenerate their armor. But that won’t last long since it ends once it breaks. Miss Henrietta, this is in your hands!!”

“!!”

It did not take long then.

Teleria and Mamilis occasionally provided distractions with their magic, but it was generally all up to Henrietta’s great strength. She would circle around to the sides, break open the spiral shell armor, and slam her axe-like bayonet into the Dextral Mk. II’s “guts” to finish it off.

“That should about do it.”

She slammed her gun’s stock against the glass ground and elegantly wiped the sweat from her brow with a handkerchief. She was surrounded by the remains of her foes and her own faded empty cartridges. Not one of the machines was still moving. However, black-haired Ayato did not look pleased.

“A-Ayato?” asked Teleria.

“They could have called in reinforcements if they wanted, so if this is the end of them, they must have played their role. The ice coffin must have been taken away.”

Even if they were up against another Sorcery Hacker here, where had they gotten those Dextral Mk. IIs from? Hackers hijacked control; they did not bring the devices in themselves.

This seemed to suggest a hidden side to the island of Laguntreat, but the Sorcery Hacker who had stolen the ice coffin had to come first.

That had to be their focus.

But Teleria and Mamilis had noticed something else. The receptionist was poking just her head above the crumbling counter and viewing them with undeniable fear.

Specifically, she was looking at the Linkage Plug sword that Ayato held.

That was a symbol of Sorcery Hacking.

It did not matter that they had saved her life. She was viewing them like they were escaped prisoners. That was simply how ordinary people viewed sorcery criminals.

Ayato summed up the situation for them.

He accepted their plight before the woman could let out an ear-splitting scream of rejection.

“We have now revealed ourselves to be an illegal Sorcery Hacking gang. There is but one course of action for us here: run away!!”

Part 3

The luxurious circumstances of the previous day were nowhere to be found. Now that they were on the run, they could not use that fancy cottage.

“Phew.”

Now that they were far enough away from civilization, Mamilis removed her earrings to reveal her long ears. Those signs of her Dark Elfhood twitched from a strange sense of liberation and she seemed happy enough, but Henrietta was a different story.

“Could you not refer to me as part of your ‘gang’!? You are the only illegal Sorcery Hacker here! This is all a misunderstanding! The rest of us have nothing to do with it!!”

“Let’s hope the guard patrol out there agrees with you, Miss Henrietta. Care to return to the crowded beach? Having small children jeer at you while throwing mud and raw eggs at you can be a scarring experience. I am curious to see if a noble knight has what it takes to endure that sort of humiliation.”

The straitlaced Striker groaned and bit her lip. The upper classes were a land of appearances and pride. Those things could be more valuable than money at times. With her values, an experience like that could make her suicidal.

They were in a tropical forest, which none of them were particularly familiar with.

Staying on the walking path would have been suicide. They hid in the bushes while a half-naked Selkie girl passed by with a seal costume pulled down to her waist. She may have been on her way to hang out in the air-conditioned water therapy institute lobby.

They walked a long way through the tropical forest while staying off the walking path.

They saw a bent metal tower sticking up from the colorful trees. That was one of the lightning cloud cannons that Teleria had previously said worked with the others installed on uninhabited islands to blow away dangerous storm clouds. The high-tech device was attractive to the Sorcery Hacker, but for once it was better to hide out in nature. It was best not to approach a sorcery facility that likely had plenty of security installed.

“Let’s set up our base here for now,” said Ayato after peering inside a cave they found.

But this cave was not an underground labyrinth full of bats and centipedes.

It must have connected to some other exit because the wind blew through it and it was strangely bright inside. A vein of crystal and of water must have reflected the sunlight through the cave, making it sparkle.

Ayato was enveloped by a chilly sensation as soon as he set foot inside.

It was gentler and less harsh than the forced chill of the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute.

Henrietta was a pro, but she was also a city dweller who could not eat bat or octopus, so she hid behind Ayato’s back and trembled while glancing around.

“I-I don’t see any weird animals. But why not? It’s such a nice spot.”

“For humans, yes. I bet it’s too cold for the tropical animals that are used to the heat.”

Meanwhile, Teleria, who could eat those things, seemed concerned by the lack of animals.

Because…

“What are we going to eat?”

“There’s plenty of water on Laguntreat. I’m not familiar with the wildlife here, but gathering some small leafy branches, attaching them to a tree trunk with string, and placing them in a river should be enough to catch some small crayfish. We can eat those, or we can use them as bait to catch something larger. Setting up large traps could help people track us down, though, so we should limit ourselves to that.”

Ayato already had a plan as they left the cave.

It helped to have someone like him who was used to being on the run. Moving from that cottage suite to some hole in the ground was not that much of a shock to him.

Mamilis let out a grunt of effort that sounded too flat to be genuine as she gathered palm leaves longer than she was tall. By tying them together, she soon had something like a large parasol.

“I saw things like this on the beach. A beach chair might be too tricky, though. Still, we can place some of the large leaves on the sand to lie on.”

Gathering up too many plants created a trail for pursuers to follow while on the run and they could not leave too many personal items lying around outside the cave, but Ayato must have decided it was best not to let their frustrations build up by nixing every idea they had.

The straitlaced Striker carefully observed Ayato and the others more than the cave itself.

“A-am I the only one having a hard time adapting to this?”

“Your noble lifestyle in the city left you unprepared for this. Just keep at it.”

The forest seemed to cheer up the Dark Elf and she provided an entirely matter-of-fact assessment of Henrietta.

They had to escape and survive, but if they focused all their efforts on this one place, they would never make any progress. They could not forget they had a goal to pursue.

“It really is hard to get over your first impressions of something. But anyway…”

After being told she would be no help in this survival lifestyle, Henrietta decided to use her city-born skills as a hunter. She placed a hand on her skinny chin.

“I am worried about the survival of that frozen man.”

“Miss Teleria.”

“Um, that magic is forbidden, so I doubt he can be thawed out that easily. It should take around three days to break through it by brute force. He will be safe from the curse until then.”

“Coach, are we going after that ice coffin?”

Mamilis the grandma’s girl kept working on her home crafts and she sounded somewhat disappointed in that idea. Ayato understood why she might be reluctant to go after that thing. It contained some creepy guy who was a crazy mass shooter.

“If only it was a flower goddess sealed for a thousand combo-years. Y’know, she looks young and smells sweet, but she’s actually really old and clever but is also just a little bit sweet when it counts. Oh, but she would also need a nice rack. And she would definitely want to repay you for freeing her, of course.”

“Give up on your disturbingly detailed fantasies, dangerous individual. Anyway, we know a Sorcery Hacker even more dangerous than you is out there. It is my duty to preserve order and justice, so I cannot ignore that. If those Dextral Mk. IIs are released indiscriminately on the beach, we will have a massacre on our hands.”

“But I didn’t see anyone suspicious there, Coach.”

Mamilis seemed more interested now. Although she might roll over and go to sleep if it turned out the mystery Sorcery Hacker was some filthy old man.

Ayato nodded.

“They might think of themselves as a hacker and a sniper. I mean, we’re on the run now because I carelessly revealed what I am. In that sense, they’re better than me. And if they have business with that ice coffin, they must know what’s going on. Because they’re trying to cover up the truth. For now, let’s pursue that unseen Sorcery Hacker. …Which means we need a clue to follow.”

The question was how to lure out the Sorcery Hacker hiding on this island.

“Done. Here are the crayfish traps.”

“Oh, thanks, Miss Teleria.”

“Hee hee. I know it’s wrong to think this way, but this is kind of fun. Camping out together isn’t bad at all.”

“Hmm, if you say so.”

A troubled “wait, um” came from Teleria but from a completely different direction than before. She was addressing the boy who had been too distracted to pay much attention to what he was responding to.

“A-Ayato, that isn’t me.”

“Eh? Then…whoa! Who is this girl!?”

Ayato, an expert in the illegal world, jumped up in surprise and Henrietta, a born warrior, frantically reached for the sorcery gun at her hip a moment later.

Dark Elf Mamilis only tilted her head a bit.

“So who is she?”

“My, my.”

The voice sounded like a gentle young woman, but the small girl clinging to Ayato’s hip was a head shorter than even Teleria. She had short, fluffy blonde hair and wore a loose-fitting white dress. Her silhouette would probably show through with the sun behind her. In what may have been a fashion statement, she wore something like a small wristwatch on her right ankle.

Mamilis’s Dark Elf ears were still out in the open, but she did not sense any real danger. Probably because she had seen humans and Mermaids sharing the same space without issue here on Laguntreat.

Meanwhile, the little girl held a hand to her mouth while giving off an aura that put even cautious Mamilis at ease.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you. I am Fleure-”

“Dabrabchcgwhe!!”

All of a sudden, Teleria had moved behind the girl and covered that small mouth with her hands.

They began whispering to each other at extreme close range.

“(Get a clue, mother! Also, you can’t send your core out, leaving your main body behind! That body doubles as a safety device to keep your Water Lord power from leaking out and losing control, doesn’t it!?)”

“(My, my, but can you really blame me? You were having so much fun here I just had to slip out to join you.)”

“(Are you sure this wasn’t you hearing Ayato talk about wanting to meet a little monster hag and getting all excited about it!? Oh, no! You’re exactly like the flower goddess from his fantasy!! Well, except for the chest.)”

“(I am neither a monster nor a hag! And if you average my chest size between this core and the outer shell, then I have one of the greatest bust sizes in the world☆)”

“(That method would also give you a shockingly large waist measurement!!)”

“Miss Teleria, do you know this girl?”

The blonde girl’s shoulders jumped.

Yes, Fleurelisia was her mother. Not her ancestor, her actual parent. Over the course of her unfathomably long life, that sole female member of the Four Lords would find a new first love (how does that work!?) in each successive era and flirt with them even in that gargantuan body. She was a proactive and carnivorous woman to the core. But for a teenage girl, not much was worse than a mother who would make a move on her crush just because the boy mentioned some silly fantasy! If people found out that was her mother, no one would want anything to do with her anymore!!

“N-not really, ha ha ha. I just happened to meet her while out on a walk last night. Her name is Florence! She lives on this island!!”

“Hm?” Brown Mamilis’s long ears twitched. “But didn’t she say Fleur or Flu or something? …Fleur? That sounds oddly familiar.”

“No, no! Florence is right! The locals just pronounce it a little differently, I guess!!”

The blonde girl was so glad they were on the other side of the island from the beach cottages. The giant form on the mountain slope would have been a dangerous reminder for the Dark Elf.

“This must be a peaceful island indeed if a small child like this is allowed to walk around alone at night. All the more reason to keep any Sorcery Hackers away. And that includes you, dangerous individual!”

“Is that what you think, Miss Henrietta? Well, I know just the thing to clear up all these needless misunderstandings between us: intimacy! And with a justification established, let us strip off these cumbersome clothes and frolic in the water, au naturel!!”

“Why does my criticism only excite you further, dangerous individual!? Innocent girl, this boy is a threat to us all, so keep a safe distance from him! I thought it was odd you could live happily with one of the demonic Four Lords up on your mountain, but do you just not know how to recognize danger?”

Teleria was sweating profusely now. She realized it would be more suspicious if she kept covering the little girl’s mouth, so she let go but kept her hands solidly on those skinny shoulders and spoke with as full a smile as she could manage.

Her squeezing hands were a clear message of “say too much and you’re dead”.

“S-s-so what brings you here, Florence?”

“I am here to give you all some advice, of course.” Florence(?) must have been raised well because her smile seemed too graceful for her young appearance. “I know what happened at the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute as if I had seen it myself. After all, this is a small island and word travels fast. You want to pursue that unseen Sorcery Hacker, but you aren’t sure where to begin, right? But wasn’t there another curious factor about that attack?”

“…”

“Where did the hacked Dextral Mk. IIs come from in the first place?”

Ayato fell silent and Florence raised a small finger.

“You will have a hard time pursuing someone on this island if you do not understand the entire island’s layout. Much like pursuing someone through a maze with no exit without realizing the floor is littered with manholes. At the very least, the Sorcery Hacker you seek understands the island and is using that knowledge against you. You will have a hard time outdoing them if you do not have the same information they do.”

Henrietta in her armor and tight skirt reacted more strongly to this than black-haired Ayato.

“Wh-who is this girl? She’s awfully rational and weirdly knowledgeable.”

“Hee hee. A relaxed island with no locked doors presents some unique opportunities.”

“Then why not try to drive out that member of the Four Lords? That enormous thing is sure to wreak havoc if it starts moving again. Just because it hasn’t moved yet does not mean it won’t move tomorrow.”

The small girl responded to that with no more than a faint smile. Tinged with a hint of sadness.

Just then, a purple light fluttered by in front of Ayato.

It was a night butterfly decorated with bewitching lace and gems. In the blink of an eye, it transformed into a beautiful woman in a classic maid uniform.

“This young lady here is more or less correct, Sorcery Hacker. Do you recall that I offered you a further job yesterday?”

“…I do.”

“You are to investigate what is secretly underway on this island and, if necessary, put a stop to it through sabotage. So how about it? You will be rewarded if you accept it as a job. And if you have to do it regardless, I recommend profiting from it as well.”

Ayato clicked his tongue, but not at Micha Angelos.

He was probably picturing the person(?) she served instead.

“I don’t like this. It feels like we were set up from the beginning.”

“Attempting to understand His Excellency’s carefully laid-out plans with your puny brain is foolish in the extreme, so you should give up immediately. Unless you would like to waste your life on the fool’s errand, of course. So lay aside this absurd paranoia.” Her words were like a slap to the hand of a child reaching into the cookie jar. “I will take this to mean you accept the job. Because revealing the secret of Laguntreat is the only option remaining to you regardless. Work yourself to the bone for His Excellency and the Static Continent, Sorcery Hacker. I will see you again once that is done.”

“Oh? What is this about?”

Florence tilted her head and looked up at the tall woman.

Micha did not bat an eye in her classic maid uniform.

“As I have no authority to command those from outside the continent, I will merely provide some advice: The best way to achieve the result you desire is to let these workaholics do their thing. Tying them down will only make things worse.”

“I will keep that in mind☆”

Whether or not Micha Angelos had seen through to the girl’s true nature, she exhaled through her perfect nose and then flew off as a night butterfly not found in nature.

Mamilis and Henrietta were lost in watching her go, but…

“Huh? Coach, where did that girl go? Um, Florence, was it?”

“Wh-wh-who knows!? She’s one of the islanders, so it’s not like she had to stay with us! Besides, her parents were probably worried about her!”

The girl in the white dress had vanished at some point.

She may have been obeying Micha’s advice.

Part 4

No matter how pressing the situation, the basic necessities were still, obviously, necessary.

“Okay, that should about do it.”

“Coach, what are you doing?”

Mamilis bent over and tilted her head in a curious way.

“Making a water filter. You’re used to filtered city water, right?”

“Yeah, but is it really necessary here? I mean, we’re on a tropical island where the spring water is used by doctors.”

“That’s true, but still.”

The water in the streams may have been potable on Laguntreat since it had so many purifying springs, but better safe than sorry. He had created a simple filter by packing gravel, sand, and sponge-like palm fiber into a container. Use that while also boiling the water before use and they would have plenty of potable water.

The container he had found in the forest. In case of hurricanes, there were small huts scattered through the forest and they were filled with waterproof bags for making sandbags.

“That solves the water problem. How is the crayfish catching going, Miss Mamilis?”

“We’re about to get started, but we’re not sure what to do.”

She sniffed her shapely nose in a way that made her seem even fuller of life than in the sky city. Perhaps a Dark Elf really was meant for life in the great outdoors.

Teleria and Henrietta dragged in the trap they had made.

A few leafy branches had been bound together with string. It looked something like a poorly-made broom, but it was supposed to look that way. By letting that float in the river, the small crayfish would mistake it for a new home and gather inside.

Teleria wiped sweat from her brow with her empty hand.

“Ayato, where should we put this?”

“A short distance from the cave. You saw those disaster huts, right? Set it up near there and anyone who finds it won’t suspect the cave right away.”

“Knowledge of these criminal methods will come in handy when I have to pursue people like you in the future.”

“Ha ha ha. That’s the same excuse all the dirty cops make. Anyway, let’s go find a good river for this.”

With that, Ayato took the crayfish trap from the girls.

Partially out of a spirit of lady’s first, but also because dragging that across the sand was not the best idea for people on the run. He wanted to avoid leaving a trail for any pursuers.

Mamilis liked doing things for herself, so she puffed her cheeks out like a child.

“No fair, Coach. You don’t let us do anything.”

“Then I will leave you in charge next time.”

Laguntreat was blessed with over a hundred springs, so it also had plenty of rivers running in every direction from the large mountain the water came from. The countless streams were almost like a spider web or veins.

Ayato pointed toward one of those.

“That should do nicely.”

He had chosen a small and clear stream less than 5 esoule wide. The riverbed was clearly visible through the water. Small freshwater crabs were scurrying about down there and it appeared to be only about knee height.

Also, tropical trees leaned out over the water from the bank there.

“The weaker the creature, the more they worry about being seen. Both by other water creatures and by birds soaring through the sky. That is why they will gather in places like this. They might think of it as a smart move, but if you understand how the cowardly forest creatures think, catching them is a simple task.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Oh?”

“Miss Mamilis, why are you glaring at me like that?”

Their group also wanted to hide their trap from view, so the obstructing trees were useful in that sense too.

“We don’t want the current carrying it away, so we should probably tie it to a tree with rope. Okay, Henrietta?”

“Why do you just assume that is my job?”

Teleria answered the straitlaced Striker’s question by grabbing her skirt and waving it a bit. She was indicating the black tights that covered her legs.

“As you can see, I am, um, not suited for the water. I do apologize, but this seems like a job for you since you can take off your boots and wade in barefoot.”

“Dammit, why do you always get the short end of the stick when you dress practically?”

“I will cook for you, do your laundry, and do any other housework you want, okay?”

Henrietta apparently could not say no when the girl clasped her hands in front of her large chest. She was a knight duty-bound to protect the common folk, so she had a tendency to act on reflex when she saw people in need. …And Ayato already knew how destructive a cocktail it was when Teleria gave you the puppy dog eyes, clasped her hands together, and begged you. That she was unaware what she was doing added the finest spice to the mix, taking it to a truly devilish territory.

“Nhh, mhh?”

Meanwhile, Dark Elf Mamilis was pouting her lips like a child. As the outdoorsy type, she must have wanted to try setting up the crayfish trap herself, but the tight leather pants covering her long legs made that difficult. And with such a tight fit, it was unlikely she could roll up the legs to wade in.

Teleria decided to give her some advice.

“Mamilis, you probably shouldn’t do that. The water might be clean, but leather takes a lot of upkeep, right? You don’t want any weird stains or discolorations, do you?”

“Curse my practical outfit!!”

Henrietta shouted in desperation as she entered the river, but she seemed in a better mood than her lament let on. This was a tropical island and she had been in her armor this whole time, so the cool water on her feet must have felt nice.

“That’s it.” Mamilis put her hands on her hips. “I’m taking off my pants.”

“Bff!?” spat Teleria with her large chest jiggling.

Then the blonde girl heard the quiet sound of a zipper being undone. The tall and slender grandma’s girl was gathering strength in her thumbs after giving in to the allure of playing in the water, so Teleria had to quickly stop her.

“You…you all-around idiot!! A-A-Aya-Aya-Ayato is right here!”

“Coach.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll look the other way.”

“See? Nothing to worry about. Coach is a perv, but he is true to his word.”

Ayato kept his back turned.

He did, however, have a few crystal tarot cards floating in the air.

“I rarely use this feature, so let’s see if I remember how. Hm, was this how you record a video?”

“See!? Everything to worry about! Sorcery Hackers live through deception, so their promises don’t mean squat!!”

Powerful Henrietta punched the wanted criminal once before tying his hands behind his back. The Striker was thankful to have had rope ready for tying the trap in place. And Teleria was assigned to watch over the idiot.

He could hear splashing sounds behind him for a while after that.

“Does it go like this? Hey, Henrietta, is the trap supposed to float up at the surface like this? Or is it supposed to sink to the bottom?”

“Do we even need the trap? I bet I could reach down and grab those small crabs.”

“Hmm. Well, when you don’t know, it’s best to ask Coach about it.”

“Have you no self-preservation instincts at all!? Why would you give that moron an excuse to turn around right now!?”

“Wait, Henrie- wah!”

“Why are you falling on your rear, Dark Elf!? What happened to being outdoorsy!?”

“Ugh, my underwear is all wet.”

There was nothing but girliness there.

It did not matter that they were isolated and on the run from the entire island; the world was still packed full of happiness. Sorcery Hacker Ayato could not stop smiling even with his back turned.

“Yes, this is giving my imagination a workout. Life is just one lesson after another. This is a joy I could never experience with access to a Media Summoner that lets me look up any information I want at any time. For example, I just realized my bound hands do nothing to prevent me from rolling onto my side to get a view. Having to discover the answers for yourself is so much more fulfilling.”

“Do I need to pistol whip you this time? So which will it be: from the right or left?”

While he was curious about the color of Mamilis’s wet underwear (confirmed wet by the Dark Elf herself), that threat convinced him to leave it up to his imagination. If they would grant him this wonderful experience if he simply sat here, then sit here was what he would do. After all, Teleria’s choice was not a game of roulette since both options were essentially the same.

“By the way, Miss Teleria.”

“What is it, Mr. Pervert?”

“I quite like the sound of that name and request you call me that from now on. Anyway, we are downstream of Miss Mamilis and Miss Henrietta, are we not?”

“What does that matter?”

“I would like to do some research to ensure this will not push me beyond even the category of pervert, so answer me this: would drinking the water flowing toward me be completely over the line?”

“Yes, it would be, you used-bath-loving ultra pervert!!!!!!”

Part 5

With a delighted shout, a ball about the size of Ayato’s head flew through the air.

A cloth bag had apparently been inflated with air and then covered with a palm leaf to shape it.

In lieu of a net, a makeshift line was made by drawing a rope taut between two palm trees. Teleria and Mamilis were pursuing the handmade ball on either side of that. Instead of a real game of one-on-one beach volleyball, they were simply having fun by keeping a rally going.

The shape of Mamilis’s butt showed through the skintight leather and she remained expressionless as she pursued the ball.

“It feels weird not having any underwear on. The leather sticks to my skin.”

“Let’s focus on the game right now, okay!?”

Playing around might seem negligent given their situation, but it was actually important.

When forced to wait because the ball was in the other side’s court, the trick was finding a way to reduce stress. It was a sniper’s mindset. Forcing themselves to move around could help a lot.

The islander girl named Florence had disappeared, but they had several escape routes through the forest and cave in case she had contacted the adults and the adults came to surround them. They did not need to pack up and move elsewhere right away. Sensing anyone’s approach and choosing an escape route were simple enough tasks for Mamilis since she had an affinity for the great outdoors and was timid by nature. If the Dark Elf tried to escape from them, it was possible the city-dwellers like Ayato and Henrietta would be unable to track her down.

However, the Sorcery Hacker did not enjoy leaving things in the hands of an enemy for too long.

It was about time to go on the attack.

(Now, then. I can leave the girls with Miss Mamilis.)

“Hey, dangerous individual.”

When he slipped away from the girls without saying a word, Henrietta called out to him from behind. He shrugged.

“You aren’t going to join them, Miss Henrietta?”

“ ‘Play’ is not something I know how to do. People in the sky city always told me I was bad at taking vacations.”

She was straitlaced and a hard worker.

Her defenses looked impregnable, but people like that tended to collapse from stress fairly quickly.

“For that matter, what are you doing?”

“I have some minor business to attend to.”

“Planning to go fishing with that full set of Sorcery Hacking tools?”

Ayato pointed forward as he continued to walk.

“Sorcery Hacking is a lot like stage magic. You can’t steal data and hijack control of sorcery devices without setting the stage for yourself first.”

“And?”

“And investigations require advance preparations too. To be clear, you won’t find anything of interest if you follow me. Watching my preparations will be like sitting next to a fisherman without a rod of your own.”

“I am not following you to amuse myself. You must be monitored, so I will accompany you if you are going anywhere.”

“Don’t complain to me when you’re bored out of your mind.”

He sounded exasperated.

And he was telling the truth.

He did not sneak into any special facilities and he did not attack anyone from behind. He stayed within the tropical forest covered in white sand and he hid behind the trees when a winged Harpy girl and Siren girl flew by overhead squabbling over something, maybe a territorial dispute. He would occasionally check on the direction and his current location while paying especial attention to the ground. Finally, he stopped at a certain point, crouched down, and dug into the ground where he stabbed his Linkage Plug sword as if laying the blade down.

“What are you doing?”

“Like I said, boring stuff.”

He pulled the trigger to separate the blade, covered it up with sand, and brushed the sand from his hands.

“I’ll be going around the full perimeter doing this, just so you know. I doubt anyone will find us, but do keep your head low just in case. Your blonde hair will stand out in the forest.”

“I have no intention of stopping you, but a full perimeter of what?”

“Of the target I’m surrounding.”

“?”

He did not attack anyone or destroy anything. Henrietta had probably accompanied him in the hopes of catching him red handed in some kind of undeniable crime, so she must have been disappointed. She seemed fed up with it all by the time they had walked three or four times around the same course through the forest.

“Hey, can you at least tell me what you’re doing?”

“You’ll see tomorrow at around this time.”

“You’re going to keep this up until tomorrow!?”

“Of course not. Once the perimeter is established, I’m leaving. Good things come to those who wait. Once things are set up, the information will be gathered automatically.”

He continued working with such enthusiasm that he had to make a conscious effort not to hum cheerfully. But this was not an innocent act. He had the look of someone who enjoyed setting people up for failure.

“Miss Henrietta.”

“What is it, dangerous individual?”

“You should be used to the outside world by now, so how has it been so far?”

“…”

He likely did not just mean the world outside of the sky city.

Striker Henrietta crossed her arms and breathed from her nose.

“Were you hoping I would say it is more virtuous than I expected?”

“The thing is, I just know you would make an excellent Forward if you could find a way to compromise with yourself.”

“Me? A bounty hunter? Hmph. I will never become your vanguard for a handful of gold. For one thing, it is wrong for vigilantes without royal authorization to wield weapons and pursue criminals.”

“Even if you see someone in need?”

“Gh.”

“There will not always be a knight or other authorized peacekeeper available to come running. Miss Henrietta, remember that statue in the main square of that regional city that made your jaw drop? The one of the queen who became a protector of pub strippers.”

“Surprise is the normal response to learning that the queen ruling over an entire region was promoting sex work. Worse, everyone was praying to her and throwing money into the fountain like it was normal. None of them questioned it just because she was a queen.”

“You misunderstand.” Ayato smiled a little while toying with the grip of the sword at his hip. “If no one reaches out a helping hand for the strippers, they have no choice but to rely on criminal organizations to survive. So the kingdom supports them to ensure that does not happen. By accepting occupations you personally might find unsavory, you eliminate an opening for actual dangerous criminals to establish themselves.”

“…”

“Someone considered what could realistically be done to protect the rights of people who work those jobs. Instead of pushing them away out of moral outrage, that queen worked to actually help them. Which is why that openminded queen is so popular with the commoners. In fact, they’re told not to throw money in that fountain, but they do it anyway.”

Ayato explained it all while continuing with his work.

And then he returned to their initial topic.

“So what about you, Miss Henrietta? If you see some people in trouble but you do not agree with some of their life choices, what will you do? That is what I am talking about.”

“Hmph,” snorted Henrietta. She fell silent for a moment but then continued. “Be that as it may, I am a Striker. I will not do the work of a Forward.”

“Is that so?”

“I will not do things in an underhanded way. I will march in through the front entrance and save them with my head held high. I will always be able to do that as long as I never feel guilty about my actions. I will make the world a better place as a Striker. They might be a stripper or they might be cheating on their spouse, but I still want to be the first person that comes to mind when they need help. If I can do that, then there will be no work left for people like you who insist on working outside the law.”

“…”

“What is that smile for? I rejected your offer. I am saying I won’t join you.”

He chose not to answer that one.

Henrietta was hardheaded and uncompromising, but she showed great promise. At the very least, she would not become the kind of government official that divided people into categories to decide who deserved help and who did not.

Were they virtuous or sinful?

Were they human or demon?

The kind of person who limited salvation based on those questions could not be called straitlaced. Her path might never cross with Ayato’s, but they had the same destination in mind.

“Last one. I’m done now.”

“I still have no idea what you were doing.”

“You will see tomorrow. But not if we’re caught here, so let’s make ourselves scarce.”

“Tomorrow again?”

Ayato pressed a finger to his lips and started on the path back.

Henrietta turned to the side just once. Ayato had said he was establishing a perimeter, so she only had to look to the center to get a vague idea of what his target was.

Once back at their cave hideout while making sure not to leave any kind of trail behind, they found some furniture that had not been there when they left. A hammock woven from thin rope was hanging between two trees and swaying in the tropical breeze and a simple stove had been built by placing two parallel sticks over the firewood so a small pot could be set down on it.

However…

“Where did Teleria and Mamilis go?” asked Henrietta.

Yes, the pair who had been playing with the ball were nowhere to be seen. Their makeshift parasol and beach towel made of palm leaves were just sitting out.

And something was fluttering in the wind.

A blue blazer and faded leather pants were draped over the rope they had been using for their volleyball game.

They could also hear voices.

And splashing.

“Oh, c’mon. Did we really need to wash everything?”

“We didn’t have time to return for the rest of our clothes when we escaped out here. And with the tropical sun beating down on us, we need to wash everything thoroughly or it will smell. Besides, Teleria, you were the one who said leather takes a lot of upkeep, remember?”

“But like you just said, we have no change of clothes! What do we do until these dry!?”

“This is leather, so it needs to dry in the shade.”

“That’s not the point!!”

“We had to make use of this opportunity, though, don’t you think?”

“Um…”

“We have to do this now while Coach is gone. You know better than me this would never end well otherwise. I can already hear you screaming and calling him a pervert.”

Ayato Criminaltrophy nodded.

He had but one task remaining: find a good excuse for the straitlaced Striker who was silently drawing her bolt-action carbine from her hip.

They were a long way away from that amicable conversation just a few minutes earlier.

The boy had only one thing on his mind.

(How could I be so careless!? If I hadn’t so casually allowed her to accompany me, Miss Teleria and Miss Mamilis would have gotten Miss Henrietta to remove her armor and all three of them would be by the river and entirely defenseless! Life is so tricky. A single mistaken choice ruins everything!!)

And what had happened to the Dark Elf being a wild girl of the forest?

If that islander girl had called for the adults and those adults had showed up now, those two would have been helplessly surrounded (sans clothing). Clearly the only option was for Ayato to supervise. As a Sorcery Hacker, it was his job to take over their lax security job!!

So Ayato Criminaltrophy made a suggestion with a meaningful expression on his face.

“Listen, Miss Henrietta. I had nothing to do with this one. There is no conspiracy here. They did this on their own, knowing full well it could end badly, and I just so happened to return before they were done. My arrival falls within their reasonable expectations upon making the choice, so I more or less have their consent here.”

“Wait, dangerous individual.”

“I have won the right to hide in these bushes and watch! So unless you are looking for unnecessary conflict, leave me be!!”

“I will count to five. Either take back that absurd argument, or I will bludgeon you to death.”

Part 6

Oceavita Water Therapy Institute < Internal Local Network < Reception Desk Media Summoner

Sorcery Encryption Method < Sulfur Fire

Result < This network is safe

“The Dextral Mk. IIs? Why would they be attacking us!? Those are our devices for construction and security!”

“That is under investigation.”

“And you say a Sorcery Hacker was involved? Is it possible he set it all up himself? In the hopes that we would make a mistake?”

“Hard to say. It looks more like there are two or more groups at odds here, but either one could be after our information.”

“I will send people after them through the official channels.”

“I doubt that will accomplish much. The guards here are only meant to sit around on a peaceful island, so they’re useless. But don’t blame them because we were the ones that defanged them. That’s how we managed to plant our roots so deep here.”

“So should we head out to find them ourselves?”

“That is part of what we are discussing at the moment. If we make too much of a scene, it could reveal the island’s underground, which would ruin all our plans.”

“Indeed.”

“Instead of acting on our own, we need to bolster our mutual surveillance. The biggest threat here is internal paranoia, not an external enemy. I want to avoid having any of our own people making a critical mistake for no reason.”

“Hm, I see.”

The next day, Ayato snuck up as close to the half-destroyed marble building as he could get and adjusted the position of the crystal tarot cards floating around him. The vibration of the thin cards produced voices.

“That receptionist sounds like far more than a simple receptionist to me.”

The water therapy institute’s network was air-gapped to preserve their patients’ privacy, but since that meant it had to reject all connections with the natural manaflows found almost everywhere, he only had to locate the isolation devices buried in the white sand around the building like the numbers on a clock face and stab his Linkage Plug sword into those to hack them.

Meanwhile, the grandma’s girl was fidgeting her butt below the white leather.

“Ohh, it is so much more reassuring to have underwear on.”

“How did you manage to find such a simple phrase capable of entirely ruining the mood Ayato was so smugly setting there!?”

Dark Elf Mamilis did not seem bothered by Teleria’s tremor of fear.

She instead got back on topic while munching on a toxically red fruit cooled in the spring water. It may have functioned like a water bottle.

“Coach, what made you suspicious of Oceavita?”

“Nothing really. I just have a bad habit of assuming there’s a dark underside to everything that looks pure and innocent.”

“…”

The brown cutie’s mouth formed a small triangle.

Ayato did not seem to care as he munched on a breakfast similar to a rice cracker. They had gathered up the small crayfish they caught and fried them in the plant oil they acquired by squeezing out the giant brooch-like seeds found in a tropical fruit.

“There doesn’t seem to be any other powerful force on Laguntreat, so if there’s a Sorcery Hacker on the island, Oceavita would have to be either the culprit or the victim. It wasn’t hard to figure out I’d find something by investigating them.”

The straitlaced Striker had accompanied him when he set this up, but when she heard that short exceprt from a day’s worth of recorded conversations, Henrietta gave the crystal tarot cards a look of disgust.

“I-I had never really given it much thought, but I need to focus more on sorcery security from now on.”

“An excellent idea. It’s never too late to take security seriously. I could teach you if you like.”

“Hm. Y-you would do that for me? Ah!! Wait, no, I can’t get help from a Sorcery Hacker!! Who knows what kind of backdoors you would have me install!!”

Their intention here was to gather enough information to figure out their next step, not to make an attack on the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute. With that goal complete, it was time to return to the tropical forest.

They had already learned something concerning.

“Coach, they said the Dextral Mk. IIs belonged to Oceavita, didn’t they?” said Mamilis.

“And they seem to be hiding something about the island’s underground,” added Henrietta. “Which may be related to why they need the Dextral Mk. IIs for ‘construction and security’.”

“Does that mean this goes beyond Oceavita?” asked Teleria. “Are they expanding throughout the entire island’s underground to do something?”

Ayato considered their opinions and connected them all together. Wine and cheese were about the only delightful things people stored underground. If this was true, some sinister plan was probably underway.

Ayato hid behind the trees while a human couple with large baskets on their backs walked by, presumably to gather some mountain plants.

“Those are some interesting ideas. Are you suggesting we would arrive at their secret if we began digging anywhere on the island? If so, we should be able to have some fun just by hacking a random construction device.”

(The Sorcery Hacker who stole the ice coffin must be abusing this island’s hidden system since they already used those Dextral Mk. IIs as a diversion. To dig deeper into this, we need to know how the entire system works first.)

Seeing Ayato lost in thought must have reminded Teleria of something from the past because she began to panic. She really was a wonderful girl who could pick up on his feelings without him needing to say anything. He would absolutely love to have her as his wife.

“Um, uh, we don’t know how deep it is. And even if it does cover the entire island’s underground, it might have just the one entrance.”

“I was never hoping to dig our way in.” The Sorcery Hacker in a blue blazer pointed toward their feet. “It does not matter if that method would reach their underground secret. If we start digging with some construction equipment, someone is sure to show up to stop it. Then we just have to follow them.”

Part 7

Boom boom boom boom! Clang clang clang clang!!

The machinery was probably meant to dig wells. A triangular pyramid was formed from three pillars and a heavy blade was repeatedly dropped from the peak to dig into the sand. Excavation machinery like that could be found anywhere on Laguntreat since it was known for its many springs.

“Bingo. Here they come.”

The effect was even greater than expected.

But it was not people who showed up. Several of those giant hermit crab Dextral Mk. IIs rushed over and knocked down the hacked excavation equipment.

“Looks like they really are sensitive when it comes to the underground,” said Mamilis while watching from behind cover.

“Indeed it does, Miss Mamilis. And as expected, they do not seem to be using those forbidden plasma fireballs while their owner has control of them. That must have been unique to the Sorcery Hacker.”

However, the Dextral Mk. IIs could move freely through the sand. They dug into the fine sand and buried themselves while Ayato’s group watched. This was no real surprise since the enemy never could have planted their roots across the entire island if their plan would fail the instant anything at all went awry or their soldiers were spotted. They would have made a critical mistake earlier than this in that case.

Henrietta must have finally been feeling the effects of wearing armor in the tropical heat because she had started fanning some of her softer parts to maintain the bare minimum of comfort as a girl.

“We can’t pursue them if they do that, dangerous individual.”

“Are you sure about that?”

They repeated similar experiments a few times, changing location each time.

This did tell them one thing.

“The island’s underground is more complicated than I thought,” summarized the skinny boy. “There’s the secret hidden below the entire island, there’s the passageways for the Dextral Mk. IIs to move through, and there’s the water veins descending from the mountain to provide a source for the springs. They appear to be complexly intertwined on multiple levels.”

“But you don’t know exactly where each of them are, do you?”

“I do, though.”

Henrietta’s eyes widened at Ayato’s response.

He winked and raised a finger.

“There is a way of mapping the underground by sending out a vibration and detecting the amplitude that returns to you. It’s generally used to check for veins of water and ores or to check for a solid foundation on which to build a house.”

That much was common knowledge in the Academy Towers.

“But to get back on topic, those three complexly-intertwined subterranean worlds can’t accidentally dig a hole in between each other. If the first and second worlds were linked, the Dextral Mk. IIs meant to keep the secret hidden would in fact guide outsiders to that secret. And a connection to the third world would flood the other two.”

“What is your point, dangerous individual?”

“I believe I already mentioned what method would cause them the most trouble.”

Blonde braid Henrietta blinked for a moment, but then she paled.

“You mean…” muttered the straitlaced Striker.

“Miss Henrietta, use your monstrous strength to attack the ground at the point I give you. That will be where I suspect all three routes line up vertically. If the impact causes a crack, it will flood their secret base. Panicked people will in turn flood from their secret door, wherever it is hidden. There will be so many of them it will be unavoidably conspicuous.”

“I am not creating a catastrophe like that!!”

As a rational and sensible person, Henrietta was apparently opposed to acting like a cruel child pouring a watering can over an anthill.

However.

“Then I will have Miss Teleria use her water magic to directly rupture the water vein. Or I could have Miss Mamilis use her fire magic to attack a weak point in the ground. I am counting on you two.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Leave it to me, Coach. Keep the jobs coming.”

“Hgee! Wait, you two! Don’t just do what he says!! C-can I not stop this on my own? W-wait, okay! I’ll do it!! So please let those two preserve their innocence!!”

A large empty cartridge was ejected and lost its golden color before hitting the sand.

With a muffled sound, the river flowing nearby grew the color of sand. The large bubbles rising to the surface meant a ton of water was pouring into a vast space directly below.

“Now to continue watching.”

“What you’re doing here is no better than that Demon Lord.”

They walked all over the island. Sending out some unmanned weapons and calling it a day was apparently not enough this time. When they looked out from the forest to the beach, they saw a door fly open on a small hut that looked something like a fisherman’s hut but had no apparent purpose there. People rushed out, but in far too great a number to have actually fit in that small structure. The puppy-like Mermaid must have been taking a break from working at the cottages because she was lying on a sheet laid out on the white sand, but she jumped up in surprise when this crowd rushed out.

Ayato spoke as casually as if he were writing an X on a map.

“And we’ve found the secret underground entrance. I just hope the ice coffin is down there.”

“Ah, ahhh…”

Henrietta (who was directly responsible) had her mouth hanging open and Dark Elf Mamilis used her hands to hide her ears.

“But, Coach, there’s a ton of people here. Won’t they see us if we go in through there?”

“Miss Teleria, select a nonlethal attack magic. They ran full-speed up the stairs from deep, deep underground without pacing themselves, so they will be exhausted and they will be feeling relief at having escaped to safety. …Even that Florence from yesterday could defeat them now. I am counting on you – fire.”

“Y-you monster!”

Henrietta’s shouted insult was of no consequence. The blonde girl used the support of her dot sight and laser to fire pressurized water that mercilessly knocked out the people collapsed on the beach gasping for breath. She then used a mass of water to push back at the group still trying to escape to the surface. Her guns produced blue muzzle flashes and several empty cartridges fell while fading like a withering flower. The job was especially simple when they ran across someone climbing the stairs within the small hut. With so many people packed into such a limited space, they had no way of avoiding Teleria’s magic.

“All done.”

“Wh-why did I even bother doing the dirty work earlier?”

“(But, um, if I didn’t do this, Ayato would have started suggesting all sorts of nasty alternatives.)”

After seeing the men and women collapsed everywhere, Dark Elf Mamilis decided not to attach her Mimic Option earrings. But not because they were all unconscious.

“Look, Coach. They have Mimic Options.” The brown girl pointed at the people(?) one by one. “This one is a Lorelei, this one is a Sea Bishop, and I think she’s a Scylla. They’re all demons with a part of their body hidden.”

“Hey, dangerous individual. Isn’t this underground area connected to the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute?”

“Then that receptionist might be a demon too. She’s cleverly hidden it, though.” Black-haired Ayato sighed. “Listen, Miss Henrietta. Demons are no different from us humans. Oppressing them for no reason is of course out of the question, but weirdly glorifying them is also wrong.”

There were cases, like with Elves and Pixies, where human advocates had spread impossibly idealistic ideas about their beauty, such as that they only consumed flower nectar and thus never needed to use the bathroom. When the actual Elves and Pixies could not live up to those ideals, humans would sometimes feel tricked and even attack them. That could lead to humans wielding weapons and persecuting them as a group, all while insisting they themselves were the victims. The behavior was not that far off from jumping in front of a car to extort the driver for insurance money.

“It might sound weird because of the word we humans have chosen to describe them, but there are good demons and there are bad demons. We still do not know which category these belong to.”

“Yet you still had someone shoot them. That puts you squarely in the ‘bad’ category, dangerous individual.”

“Oh? Are you trying to claim good people never hurt others? Miss Henrietta, remind me of your occupation which leads you to keep a large sorcery gun on the edge of the tub while stretching your legs in the bath???”

“Why in the world do you know I do that?”

“Hm, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that. Miss Teleria, how I wish you would let your defenses down as much as her.”

The stairs leading underground had grown silent. Mamilis and Henrietta were aiming their guns at the collapsed demons to ensure it was safe while Ayato stepped over an unconscious demon to slowly descend further.

“Miss Mamilis, make sure to pace yourself. You already saw what happened to them after they ran full-speed up the stairs.”

“Coach, why did you only caution me? Because I’m a rookie?”

“Because you are cute. Obviously.”

His joke earned him an expressionless glare and a full-auto shotgun aimed his way. Now was apparently not the time.

“How troubling. Could it be that time of the month?”

“Do you want all three of us to shoot you, Coach?”

The stairs were entirely made of cold white marble.

The stairs continued on and on, turning back at landing after landing. The air also grew chillier. Enough so to forget this was a tropical island.

And finally…

“Wow.”

Mamilis spoke up in pure surprise.

They found an enormous limestone cavern. It was 4 or 5 stories deep to the bottom and too far across to see its full scope. The very bottom formed an underground lake and there was no land in evidence. After descending from a large hole in the ceiling, Ayato’s group found themselves standing on something like construction scaffolding made from palm wood columns and boards.

But that was not the main attraction.

“Hold on,” said Ayato. “What did we just find?”

“It certainly doesn’t appear to be that ice coffin the Sorcery Hacker stole, Coach.”

It was a ship.

A massive warship.

“It’s never anything but trouble with you, dangerous individual.”

It seemed too big to be a boat. It had to be at least 950 esoule long. Also, it was equipped with a ton of gray cannons forged from mana-conducting silver with a special chloride treatment to protect against the sea breeze.

Overall, it appeared to be a hybrid between a high-speed sailing ship and a steamship. In addition to a row of large sails, it had a waterwheel-like paddlewheel propulsion device on either side.

Scarily enough, despite the great size of the ship, its surface looked cramped. That showed just how many cannons it had onboard. The three-barrel main cannons were loaded on the bow and stern, but it also had side decks built up in a stepped fashion and they were lined with machineguns and antiaircraft guns that aimed upwards like fishing rods.

With the bridge, the smokestacks/masts, and the countless guns of various sizes, it looked something like a pincushion. It resembled a menacing mountain when compared to a flat cargo ship and there seemed barely enough room to stand on the deck.

“What in the world?”

Henrietta looked puzzled as she viewed the warship from the scaffolding above. Her blonde ponytail braid swayed as she tilted her head.

“Is this the secret the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute was trying to hide? But how is this at all related to decursing and sorcery medicine?”

“Are they planning to hurt people to drive up business, Coach?”

“Ugh, that adorable grandma’s girl has started to think like Ayato does,” lamented Teleria. “What a sad day.”

“…”

Ayato tapped his sword’s hilt in thought.

And then he spoke.

“It must not be complete yet.”

“How can you tell?”

“If it could float, they could have boarded the ship when water started flowing into the cave. But whether those were workers or ship’s crew, they did not do that. Yet a ship of that size should have been able to hold all of them.”

Plus, they were underground here. Even if they built their ship in secret, they could not sail it away without lifting it up to the ocean. If it could float, the easiest method would be to raise the water level below it like some special canals did. That must not have been functioning yet.

The unseen Sorcery Hacker must have used this and the rest of the island’s secrets to steal that ice coffin. It felt like they had a new hint, but they had not caught up yet. They would never reach the Sorcery Hacker making use of this unless they figured out what was going on here.

“Oh, look, Coach. There are bags attached to the side of the ship like floats.”

“But, dangerous individual, does that mean the ship’s basic structure is still incomplete? Even though the armor and weaponry appear to have already been attached?”

“It’s possible everything is built, but the ship ended up tilting because it’s poorly balanced. I remember my grandma saying that could be really tricky with her models.”

Which was more difficult: building something up from scratch, or taking a completed product and removing parts to fix it? The engineers and craftsmen may have been working at a truly unsolvable puzzle here. They might think it would be faster to destroy the whole thing and try again from the ground up, but they could not bring themselves to throw out what they had already done. Hence the dilemma.

“Everyone here was a demon hiding their distinctive traits with a Mimic Option.”

“Wh-what about it?” nervously asked fluffy blonde Teleria while fidgeting her legs in their black tights.

Ayato was too lost in thought to notice, though.

“This resort is a rare location where humans and mermaids – and demons as a whole – can coexist and the decursing and medical therapies using the springs provide a stable income. There is no friction with other kingdoms and there is no rampant poverty and hunger on the island. I can’t think of any pressing reason for them to start a war. In fact, a superweapon would only hurt their image with the tourists they rely on.”

Ayato was not speaking to anyone in particular. He was simply thinking aloud.

Then he scratched at his chin.

“No, wait.”

“Coach?”

“Miss Teleria, you were always a good student. Do you remember in our Academy Towers classes when we learned about a theory that the Four Lords hold positions at the four ends of the world?”

“Wh-what!? Th-th-the Four Lords!?”

“?”

Ayato gave a curious look to the girl in the same blue blazer uniform as him.

“But where are the ‘four ends of the world’ located? I doubt this small island just barely away from the Static Continent qualifies. The world is a truly large place. The ocean railroad leads to another continent even further out, after all.”

“Hm? What does that matter, dangerous individual? Remember the Fire Lord…Blasthogg, was it? He left his post to attack our sky city.”

“Yes, but there must be people who don’t like that.”

Black-haired Ayato casually climbed over the scaffolding’s railing and hopped down to the next level.

Blonde Teleria followed in a rushed but nervous way.

“W-wait.”

“Miss Teleria – and the others too – you can take it slow if you like.”

“If we let you go ahead of us, you’re bound to peek up our skirts.”

“!?”

Henrietta quickly held down her tight skirt. Meanwhile, Ayato climbed down the scaffolding level by level until he arrived on the warship’s deck.

It really was cramped with all the weaponry installed there.

Plans for the entire ship and for each piece of equipment and rigging were scattered about and looked trampled on.

(Ainber Mincis, Leonardo Halleys, Bryan Nongar…hm? Those sound familiar.)

He focused on the names visible on the plans while picking up one for the main cannons. He formed an L-shape with the thumb and forefingers of his hands to create a rectangular frame he used to look all around the ship.

Henrietta shouted down from the scaffolding above while blushing and holding her legs close together.

“D-dangerous individual! What do you think you’re looking at!?”

“Worry not, Miss Henrietta. I have serious work to do. I may have caught a glimpse of a black garment that was surprisingly risqué for such a straitlaced individual, but that is what we call force majeure.”

“So you did look!!”

“Can we focus on what matters, Miss Lacy Thong? Hm, so these 0.5 esoule cannons have three barrels each and there are three sets in the front and two in the back.”

The cannon barrels were as wide around as a beer barrel.

Thin Ayato could have climbed right on into one of them.

The units were not the most intuitive in the world, but for comparison, Teleria’s handguns were only 0.75 sub-esoule. Also, it was wrong to assume that twice the diameter meant twice the power.

Henrietta grew pale when she heard that.

“Y-you must be kidding, dangerous individual! The sky city’s fortress artillery only went up to 0.25 esoule. That’s way too much for a ship’s gun! A high-angle volley from those could bring an entire city to its knees!!”

“That is all I needed to know. Miss Teleria must have been the type to nap through class because she is not much help in this field. I hate to ask it of you, Miss Henrietta, but can you assist me with the calculations?”

“How? I know nothing about specialized sorcery research.”

“Stop thinking about magic for the time being; this is about war. So a question: if you used these 0.5 esoule ship’s guns to fire masses of lead and explosives, could they pierce a 450 esoule mass of muscle and bone?”

“Four hundred and fifty…wait just a second.”

“These main cannons are meant to kill Water Lord Fleurelisia from the sea while she rests atop that mountain.”

Part 8

Teleria Nereid Aquamarine gasped.

The words she was hearing were utterly baffling to her.

“W-wait, wait, wait! How does that make any sense?”

She did not want to smile, but funnily enough, she found something akin to a smile plastered to her face.

“I mean Laguntreat is known for the decursing and medical therapy it provides with the spring water, right!? I thought humans and Mermaids could coexist here because human society couldn’t give up the blessings that provides. Wouldn’t they lose all that if they got rid of the Four Lord on the mountain!?”

“She’s right, Coach. This secret facility belongs to Oceavita and they gain more from that Four Lord’s power than anyone. If the source of the water is gone, their business no longer functions.”

“Exactly,” cut in Ayato. “That’s why they hate the fact that they’re so reliant on that water source.”

“Eh?”

The girls’ eyes all said “Isn’t that backwards?”

The boy in the blue blazer slowly sighed.

“Listen, everyone. Water Lord Fleurelisia is supposed to live at the southernmost end of the world. You can check any number of history books and still be unsure how long she’s been staying on this island, but it’s still only a temporary stay. Just like the Fire Lord so readily left the sky city. No one can predict when she will return to the sea on a whim and the humans and demons on the island can’t stop her once she decides to do so. Because she’s too damn big.”

“I see. And the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute has earned a vast fortune and a solid position in society using the springs, so they can’t have their water source moving elsewhere.”

“On the continents, I have heard of desert cities dying out when an oasis moves. Fleurelisia might see it as no more than returning home after a brief vacation, but the other demons won’t survive traveling all the way to the end of the world. It would be like a death march for them.”

“And if they stay on the island, they lose the privilege that was supported by the Four Lord’s presence. Don’t they, Coach?”

A cloud fell over Dark Elf Mamilis’s face. The vague anxiety and fear of persecution from humans may have faded out here, but it had not disappeared altogether.

Without the Four Lord’s backing, the Mermaids and other demons on the island were done for.

And they had already come out as demons, so a Mimic Option would not be enough to hide their identity.

“Th-then that warship is only a threat meant to keep mom- I mean, keep the Water Lord here and not actually meant to attack her?”

“Mom?”

“Y-you know how you sometimes call your teacher that by mistake!?”

Teleria forced a smile and Ayato gave her a somewhat skeptical look.

“Anyway, I do hope it remains no more than a threat, but that won’t rid them of their anxieties. Their best bet is to find a way to run the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute without relying on Fleurelisia.”

“Coach, that makes no sense.”

“No, it doesn’t. Which is why they would resort to some desperate measures to overcome that. Enough so that our client would feel the need to act.”

Ayato doubted they would find anything else of use on the deck, so he opened a watertight door and slipped inside the ship.

The interior was made of wood. Instead of a ship built of steel and mana-conducting silver, it appeared to be a wooden ship with armor panels attached on the outside.

He saw some odd things here and there inside.

Baby bottles, rattles, and cylindrical glass incubators. None of that would be out of place in an ordinary clinic, but this was a threatening warship. And there were a lot of them.

Some large cabins were packed full of cribs, like cabbages in a field. One of them would have been a happy sign, but with this many, it looked more bizarre.

“Hey, what is this, dangerous individual?”

“There’s a document on the wall.”

It looked a bit like a tournament diagram, but not quite.

“Miss Teleria, do you remember the medical experiments using pigs and cows back at the Academy Towers? After selectively breeding them so they would produce blood identical to a human’s, they began to carry organs identical to human ones in their guts.”

“Y-yes. It was honestly not a pleasant thought.”

“They are trying to do the same thing with humans and demons.”

Ayato was abnormally calm at times like this.

However, that did not mean there was no anger in his soul.

“They are crossbreeding humans with demons like Mermaids, Elves, Valkyries, Muses, and Apsaras to create something similar. This is a body part factory where they can produce the exact blood type requested of them and, once they have the type of being they need, they can freely cut and paste the necessary parts.”

“Urp!”

Dark Elf Mamilis brought a hand to her mouth and fought the nausea rising within her. Henrietta held her slender shoulders from behind to support her.

What looked like a tournament diagram was the guidelines for what males and females would be bred together. By filling in the blanks with humans, demons, half-demons, quarter-demons, and so on, they tried to create the ideal blood type they wanted.

“Miss Mamilis, if this is too much for you, you can leave the room.”

“No, please continue, Coach.”

Was she trying to teach herself when to withdraw and when to push on as a Forward? Ayato decided to respect her decision here.

“This would let them continue their work without using the springs created by Water Lord Fleurelisia’s power. Although that would require something as absurd as entire purifying pool of blood made to cure the type of curse or illness the person had. That way the formless curse that had worked its way deep inside the patient’s body could be safely removed by transferring to an external decoy.”

“We can discuss the details of the process later.” Henrietta clenched her teeth. “For now, I have to know: is this place up and running yet or not!?”

“Probably not. The incubators and cribs all look pristine and without any wear and tear. The extremely friendly Mermaids sunbathing in their swimsuits may have been a honey trap meant to lure in the ‘materials’ they need for this project.”

Henrietta breathed a sigh of relief, but for some reason, fluffy blonde Teleria looked close to fainting.

“But the Mermaids…this island is the home of all Mermaids and their life here is supported by the Four Lord.”

“They are at a crossroads that could lead to their doom. Every demon we have met in our journeys has been faced with similar troubles. I will admit the answer they arrived at here is perhaps the worst I have seen, but still.”

Ayato was as dry as ever.

That may have been why he was so needed yet also feared.

“Your disease or curse is removed from you by forcing it into an outside container. If this purifying blood pool method is established, Fleurelisia will become no more than a nuisance to the demons living on Laguntreat. Two standards would bring chaos to the island’s power balance and a business rival could be established if Fleurelisia moved to another island where a decursing facility was set up. The demons on this island are allowed their exceptional lifestyle here because there are curses that can only be broken here. If the same thing can be achieved elsewhere and without any risk, they lose that value. Then extinction at the hands of the humans is almost guaranteed for them.”

They were driven by fear.

And of course they were afraid.

The most frightening move that Water Lord Fleurelisia could take was not to exact revenge or to purge them. If those smaller demons took the threat seriously, they could negotiate or threaten her.

But what if she got bored?

And yawned?

If she left the island, all life on Laguntreat would dry up. That was up to her whims and could not be controlled. It did not matter whether or not she had any intention of heading home. The fact that the possibility existed was enough to burn at their hearts.

Pleasure and fear.

Superiority and inferiority.

Gluttony and starvation.

Which side of the coin would soul-bearing beings to take the most extreme and horrific actions?

“Isn’t this Laguntreat?” asked Henrietta with an exasperated hand on her forehead.

“It is. What about it?”

“This resort has the special favor of the Combined Royal Family’s Fifth Prince. It gives me a headache to think all this is going on underground here.”

Fleurelisia’s long stay on the mountain was probably driven by the fact that she could easily put off until tomorrow what she could do today. That might have continued forever. But the less powerful could not understand that relaxed attitude, so they grew anxious, burned with impatience, and gave in to their fear.

Just then, a deep rumble ran through the gray warship Ayato’s group stood inside.

“Wah!”

“H-hey. Did the ship just start to move!?”

Long silver-haired Mamilis and blonde braid ponytail Henrietta were from the sky city, so they were not used to earthquakes and tremors. However, Ayato could not focus on them at the moment. He heard some disconcerting static as the clear spherical Media Summoners installed around the ship activated a voice chat function.

There was no way this would be from someone not connected to all this.

“I am impressed you worked your way all the way in here.”

“Fear not. We still have not seen who you are.”

The speaker sounded like an elderly man, but a Media Summoner could be used to alter one’s voice. And if this was a demon, their apparent age would not mean much.

“That is fortunate, but I am still going to get rid of you here. Tradition and precedent are crucial in all things, so I would have loved to stick with Laguntreat if possible, but we are willing to move to another island if need be. What matters is developing the purifying blood pools to a functional level while continuing to hold the top spot as a decursing and medical therapy institute. If it is not too far away, swimming to another island and starting fresh there can work.”

Henrietta’s eyes widened at that. The villain was not compromising in the slightest on that bloody methodology.

Ayato sighed.

“That won’t work. Your plan would require getting rid of Fleurelisia since she acts as a pillar of the old, safer method. Your method would never work if the competition is effective, risk free, and a lot less gross.”

No one would want to enter a purifying blood pool.

But they might do it anyway if it was the only way to break a curse. For themselves or for someone even more important to them. But what if a spring of pure water could break the curse just as well? With the exact same effect, who would ever choose the grosser method?

“That is why we are preparing to slay the Water Lord. The Annihilator-class Predator Island can be controlled remotely, just like the Dextral Mk. IIs. It requires more personnel to pull off, however.”

“You call this ship the Annihilator-class Predator Island? That’s an impressive name, but it isn’t complete yet, is it? I doubt you could defeat Fleurelisia if you used it now.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said whoever this was. “Now, did you think your provocation would anger me and get me to start some grand speech about my plans? Did you think I would say this was all to give the island’s demons a future and that I would fight back tears to slay the very Four Lord that supported our island and brought peace and tranquility back to our lives? Did you think I would tell you all about my background and brag about the detailed specs of the Predator Island I spent so long to build? In front of a Sorcery Hacker who values information above all else? Ridiculous. I am not some regional king or powerful merchant showing off his evil plans in a theatre production.”

“So you actually understand that speech is silver and silence is golden, huh?”

“Flattery will not get me to speak either.”

None of Ayato’s attempts bore fruit.

Trying to rattle this man psychologically was not going to work, so Ayato finally clicked his tongue. This person seemed to have learned the bare minimum of courtesy as a villain. A single careless statement made to praise himself or disparage someone else could have been used to reveal his identity, but Ayato could not shake a single hint out of him.

When you knew who your enemy was, they were no more than a target.

It did not matter how powerful they were – even a wicked Demon Lord or a tyrannical emperor. The person standing at the top of the pyramid to stand out as much as possible was the perfect target for a hacker or a sniper. Their definition of a formidable foe differed from that of a hero or a knight.

They feared a unilateral attack coming from an unseen location.

The absolute worst-case scenario would be to have their party members being picked off one by one by an unidentified curse.

There was no way to reach the attacker then.

The unseen and unnamed villain’s words rang through the shuddering ship.

“It is true we would not stand much of a chance against Fleurelisia with the ship supported by floats and unable to remain afloat on its own. As I am sure you can tell, our great fear of the Water Lord led us to add on so much weaponry and armor that the ship has grown tragically top heavy. But what if that ship carried something she cared about more than her own life?”

“…!?”

Someone crouched down in fear behind Ayato.

It was Teleria Nereid Aquamarine.

The fluffy blonde girl shook her head as if trying to shake free of something.

“Y-you can’t. You couldn’t possibly!!”

“Miss Teleria?”

“I-I mean the Four Lords provide an elemental color to the colorless mana floating in the atmosphere. Humans or demons use that power for their magic, so they can’t possibly defeat one of the Four Lords who give that power its color.”

“With pure magic, that would be true. However, the magic is only used to supply an explosive force within the cannon and that is used to launch an ordinary shell of lead and explosives. And those cannons are more than large enough to fatally wound Fleurelisia.”

He was not shaken at all.

He continued in the worst possible way.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It may be even more valuable than the 0.5 esoule cannons. This is well worth forcibly deploying an unfinished weapon. She cannot sink our ship now. No matter what. Now, my friends, it is time to set out on a hunt that will go down in history. This voyage shall end the life of Water Lord Fleurelisia.”

Option 02: From a Conversation Between a Queen and Princess

“Teleria.”

“…”

“Teleria, are you angry again?”

“Of course I am.”

“You gave me this tail as part of my identity as a Mermaid, mother. It pains me to use a human tool to hide it.”

“Pride will get you nowhere.”

“But.”

“Humans rule this world. Ever since Demon Lord Nirvelphany was badly wounded in a battle with a human and chose eternal sleep. We supported her, placed her on her throne, and prospered under the long peace provided by her protection, so we have no right to resent her decision. Or are you going to prove your claim by rallying the others and eradicating the humans?”

“Well…”

“If you cannot immediately agree, then you will be fine. You can keep going like this, Teleria. So get along with the humans in their world.”

“Everything will work out in the end.”

“How so, mother?”

“One day, you will meet someone who you can be completely open with. The world is a large place, Teleria. Far, far larger than you think. So it won’t hurt to keep your hopes up.”

“And until you find that wonderful person, I will make sure to protect you.

“…”

“No matter what.”

Phase 03: Predator Island

Part 1

With a great crash of parting water, the giant gray warship named the Predator Island emerged into the bright sunlight. It was not all that different from the beetle-shaped autonomous weapons or the self-driving sorcery taxis. It moved on its own, so Ayato’s group was actually helpless to stop it while the only ones onboard. Tugging on the rigging to affect the sails or grabbing at the wheel while shouting “hard to starboard” would accomplish nothing.

The Kraken and Cetus feared by human navies for their great size fled the region of sea to avoid being caught in this conflict.

Ayato’s group climbed up to the deck to see what was going on. They found themselves at the center of the port side.

“Hey, dangerous individual! Can’t we just jump overboard!?”

“Not so fast, Miss Henrietta.”

Ayato grabbed a metal screwdriver from the deck and tossed it from the side deck.

The instant it made contact with the water, bluish-white electricity surged out.

“Wha-?” Henrietta was speechless.

“That is excessive even for a ship still under construction. I bet they are intentionally letting lightning energy, a subset of the wind element, leak out to transform the ship into a cage,” explained Ayato.

What would happen if the salty seawater was exposed to lightning? As a combat professional, Henrietta would understand the implications. Her oxidized mana-conducting silver armor would not be enough to survive that. Not to mention that a military swimming style would only get you so far while so heavily equipped.

“This ship has not lost control; an unknown mastermind is controlling it. We should expect to find several layers of countermeasures against us.”

The wheel-like propulsion device spinning nearby was parting a large area of water below. A truly enormous waterwheel was needed to push such a heavy warship forward.

“We are at risk on the ship, but it also functions as a temporary safe zone. You can think of it like a cage dangling over a precipice.”

“…”

He could not see any small uninhabited islands around here. Teleria had said the lightning cloud cannons were also located on a few uninhabited islands and controlled from Laguntreat, but they must have been located in a different direction.

“Jump into the ocean and you will be electrocuted. While that might not kill you, the cannons or the entire ship ramming you will. Your thick armor should weaken the magic to some extent, but is that equipped with a highly-specialized anti-electricity system equivalent to a 4-star rating from the Static Continent’s Armament Distribution Common Standards Board? And do you think you can outswim the Predator Island while so heavily equipped? If not, I recommend coming up with another method, Miss Henrietta!”

Ayato looked up to see the rows of anti-aircraft guns and autocannons glaring at the sun and the right triangular sails catching the wind created by the spirit engine smokestacks spewing phosphorescent smoke.

“U-um, Ayato? Um.”

The fluffy blonde girl in black tights clearly wanted to say something, but she could not get it out.

This was a head-on clash between a colossal warship and one of the Four Lords. Whichever one emerged victorious, anyone caught in the crossfire would never survive. Not Ayato’s group on the ship and not the people on the nearby island. Ayato knew he had to stop this no matter what.

(Why wouldn’t Fleurelisia be able to attack?)

That was of course the first thought on his mind.

But the Sorcery Hacker rationally chose to adjust his priorities.

(No. I don’t know what size or shape it is and this ship is too big, so I would never find it right away. Besides, the villain freely gave us that information. I probably shouldn’t assume it’s even true.)

Speaking of the villain, the ship’s Media Summoners had fallen silent.

The largescale spirit engine apparently absorbed the manaflow from the atmosphere to force a connection, so that connection should not have been broken yet, but the communication records had been erased, including the hidden logs. Without a record of their address, he could not contact them.

Right now, it all came down to securing a processing space to resonate with.

The level he had used back on the island was nowhere near enough to take on a warship of this size. The scale of this problem was rapidly snowballing out of control.

(The only hints I have are the fragments of names remaining in the system: Iron Gain, Leonardo Halleys, Jane Dresser. I need to save all of these.)

“Coach, we can use the Media Summoners to inform the island of the danger, right? We need to get them to evacuate.”

“It’s no use. That would only trigger a needless panic and get people trampled. They’re doomed no matter what if a 0.5 esoule cannon is fired on the Four Lord at the summit. We’re not talking about blasting a crater in the island here; a few shots from those will erase the entire island from the map. They might be firing pure explosives instead of magic, but even fleeing underground won’t save you. It’s hard to believe this ship was really created for the island’s demons.”

Did the self-styled privileged class think the island’s population could recover as long as they survived? If so, then the demons were just as shitty as the humans.

“Dangerous individual, this is a product of sorcery, is it not? Can’t you hack the entire ship like you did with that Dextral Mk. II!?”

“What’s this, Miss Henrietta? I am glad to see the proud and pure knight has finally learned to rely on the filthy Sorcery Hacker. This is a memory I will truly cherish.”

“…”

“Do not offer me your head while letting it hang so sadly, Miss Henrietta! I do not know how to respond to that!!”

Just then, a powerful inertial force pushed at them from the right and they would have fallen without grabbing onto something for support. The ship was lined with so many cannons of varying sizes that the entire ship looked like a hedgehog and the decks were stepped to secure a line of fire for them all, making each individual deck not all that large. At the very least, they would not have to worry about finding nothing to grab onto and being tossed out into the electrified sea.

This seafaring cage was a temporary safe spot for them.

If they were thrown from the ship, the lightning energy leaking from the ship would kill them. Even after it stopped their heart, they would end up convulsing like a frog’s legs.

After sailing out to sea, the Predator Island was apparently making a wide turn to face Laguntreat again.

Its actual target would be Water Lord Fleurelisia on the island, but precise aim was meaningless when using enough firepower to kill her. If the shells hit, the entire mountain would be annihilated and the secondary shockwave would obliterate the village at the base.

(I’ll estimate it’s at Level 4000 to 5000. Hacking the entire warship before it can attack simply isn’t realistic.)

“What do we do, Coach?”

“We destroy as many of the cannons as we can. The fifteen 0.5 esoule main cannons in particular. If they remain operational, Laguntreat’s destruction is unavoidable!”

The slender Dark Elf looked alternately between her full-auto shotgun and the distant main cannons before giving Ayato a troubled look.

“Is that really possible?”

“Warship guns aren’t as scary as you would think. Miss Teleria. And Miss Henrietta too. I will show you how it is done, so come with me!!”

“Okay, fine! But only because it is an emergency!”

“…”

He received no response from the blonde girl who was his constant companion, so he gave her a puzzled look.

“Miss Teleria?”

“What are we supposed to do?” She looked on the verge of tears. “The ship is moving on its own and the Four Lord will strike back when attacked. Either Fleurelisia, the island’s lifeline dies, or the ship we’re on is sunk! There’s no other option!”

“Teleria, it’ll be okay.”

That response came from Mamilis rather than Ayato.

What had allowed her to respond sooner than him?

“Because Coach is fighting to make sure of it. So we will not have to choose between those two options.”

“…”

“Teleria, jumping into the sea won’t change anything, right? This isn’t a normal ship. Even if you revealed your ‘true form’, the electricity in the water would probably still zap you.”

Mamilis gave her a gentle hug and whispered in her trembling ear so Ayato and Henrietta could not hear.

“(And if you did that, I doubt anything could stop Fleurelisia, not even herself. So you need to avoid that no matter what. If you want to protect your mother, then find another exit with us.)”

“Uhh,” she groaned.

Nevertheless, she gave a nearly imperceptible nod while clinging to Mamilis’s chest. She grabbed the Dark Elf’s slender shoulders to slowly push her away and then wiped the fearful tears away with the back of her hand. She parted ways with those feelings and turned toward Ayato while drawing the twin handguns from their holsters.

The barrels had built-in suppressors, they were equipped with a dot sight and a laser sight below the barrel, and the magazine had been made extra long. She gripped those customized weapons tight.

“We need to stop this. Ayato, please tell us what we can do!”

“Will do.” Ayato peered into his partner’s eyes. They were still wavering for some reason or another, but she was considerably more stable than before. “The people of Laguntreat have set an odious plan in motion. We need to figure out what to do about that eventually, but we cannot let them slaughter everyone just because we have yet to find an answer. Do you agree with that?”

Teleria Nereid Aquamarine gave a solid nod in response.

Then they just had to do it.

“I will demonstrate on the closest main cannon. We have no time to spare, so ask any questions you have since you need to memorize exactly how to destroy those things with this one demonstration. This way.”

As a ship, the Predator Island shook a lot despite its great size. On the port side deck near the center of the gray warship, the four of them ran toward the bow.

“I should build up my level while I can. You three stay on this side deck!”

Ayato drew his Linkage Plug sword from his hip and climbed to the next level up. He stabbed the blade into the anti-aircraft guns and autocannons to hack them. He had to build his Level up as much as he could now. He stole as much obvious power as he could in this short time. The anti-aircraft gun turrets contained two guns each and the autocannon turrets contained three each.

Short Teleria shouted up from the lower side deck.

“Ayato, they’ll shoot you if you get that close!”

“He’s fine, Teleria. Those guns look like they have a pretty limited range of movement. They’re meant to aim up into the sky like a fishing rod, so I doubt they can fire horizontally.”

“You have a good eye, Miss Mamilis. Okay.”

The boy in the blue blazer hopped back down to the side deck and returned to leading the girls.

He could not hijack the entire warship, but he could change some of the smaller customizations.

“Hacking those is all well and good, but shouldn’t we be destroying them?”

“Those are primarily interception weapons, so they can wait until later. Our top priority is the main cannons that can blow away the entire island!”

Three sets of three massive cannons were arranged in a stepped formation on the bow. Running up from the center of the ship brought them right up to the highest set. They arrived behind them, on the opposite side of where they were aimed.

Just one of the cannons was the size of a small cabin.

Tall and slender Mamilis’s jaw dropped as she came to a stop and viewed the back side of that cannon.

“Wow.”

“It is tall, isn’t it? Probably the same as three or four story building.”

“That could prove a challenge for you, Miss Henrietta, since you can only fight close range. But Miss Teleria and Miss Mamilis can manage just fine. You only have to fire on them.”

“B-but a single shot in return would destroy us,” said Teleria.

“Do you remember what Miss Mamilis said earlier? The cannons have a limited range of movement. They probably only cover the 150 degrees in front of them since their purpose is to fire away from the ship. They wouldn’t want a design that allowed them to accidentally fire on their own bridge when pursuing an enemy that circled behind them, right?”

Dark Elf Mamilis fired a burst of bullets from her full-auto shotgun. Those disintegrating lead bullets produced red muzzle flashes and the mana piercing those created the standard explosive flames of Primary Blaze. Several small explosions slammed into the round back of the cannons. The set of three main cannons circled a bit to the side, but they could not actually aim at a target on the deck directly behind them.

However…

“Those things are tough! I don’t think this is going to work, Coach!!”

“You must not fire randomly at a large target. Their thick armor will deflect all your shots. But take a closer look, Miss Mamilis. Do you see the metal rails on the deck below this set of three?”

“I do.”

“There is no escaping the law of action-reaction. Especially not with 0.5 esoule cannons. Fire those without thinking and the recoil will tear the turret from the deck. There are a number of ways to eliminate the recoil of firing, but the Predator Island apparently uses the back guide method. That means explosives are detonated to send a weight out in the opposite direction of the cannon shot. It looks unnaturally patched on, so I’m guessing this was something extra they added after realizing the recoilless method of sending mist mana in the opposite direction of the shot was not enough to fully suppress the force. If we attack that to rattle the entire cannon, either the explosive warhead or the liquefied mana will detonate inside the cannon. Your rapid-fire weapon is perfect for that!!”

Mamilis fired some more with her long silver hair blowing in the sea breeze. She slowly walked along the side deck below the giant cannons and persistently attacked at the bottom of the three barrels lined up like a fork’s tines.

Once her attacks crossed a threshold, the turret at the base of the barrels swelled out like a balloon.

“Defense, Miss Teleria!!”

Suppressed gunshots rang out, blue muzzle flashes appeared, and a thick roof of ice covered Ayato’s group.

But even that was not perfect.

Just as black-haired Ayato ran over and grabbed at Mamilis’s skinny waist, the entire turret exploded like an erupting volcano and countless shards poured down like rain, slicing through the barrier of ice.

“Kyah!!”

“As you can see, you should keep your guard up throughout. This is a warship made by attaching chloride-treated mana conducting silver armor to a wooden ship to both strengthen it and prevent rusting. It holds up well against external attacks, but it should be resistant to internal fires. So be on the lookout out for fires and explosions lest you be caught in the flames yourself!”

Blowing up the one turret eliminated all three of its cannons. This just left the other two turrets on the bow and the two at the stern. This was looking very doable.

Except…

“Hey, dangerous individual.”

Henrietta was looking somewhere other than the turret with a gaping hole blown in it.

She was looking at a waterproof hatch that should have been perfectly ordinary on a warship.

However, it opened on its own and something silently swarmed out. They looked something like crocodiles with torsos made of clear glass, giant jaws on the front, a stomach and a thick tail on the back, and four short legs for walking. Except they looked somehow familiar. There were 10, 20, 30…no, even more than that. They flooded out like sewage regurgitated from the drain on an especially rainy day. Anything looked creepy with numbers like that. From head to tail, their artificial bodies measured at 1.5 esoule long, so Teleria felt a tremor down her spine as she aimed her twin handguns at them.

She also identified what these military sorcery devices really were.

“Th-the baby incubators!?”

The crocodile parts had been hidden before by curling up like an armadillo to provide the incubator’s base.

“Did they build their greatest treasure as a weapon to protect itself? Anyway, Miss Henrietta, you protect us since your close-quarters combat is no use against the cannons.”

“Why should I protect a dangerous individual?”

“Leave a filthy criminal like me to die if you like, but Miss Teleria and Miss Mamilis are defenseless! A striker like you carries a sorcery gun to protect those in need, so do not tell me cannot do it!!”

The blonde braid Striker groaned with a lopsided frown on her face, but she still pulled the bolt-action carbine from her hip. The two of them were like water and oil, but Ayato was figuring out how to make use of her.

Fortunately, the incubators were not yet in use.

Without babies in them, there was no need to hold back.

These crocodilian sorcery devices with transparent torsos were designed after amphibious predators, much like the Dextral Mk. IIs. Electricity flashed from their mana-conducting silver fangs and artificially-created acid dripped from between their glass scales, creating disconcerting smoke wherever they landed.

“Self-buff: Primary Ex Massive!!”

Just as Henrietta firing a single deep gunshot straight up, the onslaught of crocodiles rushed in. Instead of keeping a safe distance and picking off the enemy with magic, Henrietta strengthened her own body and wielded her axe-like bayonet to directly crush the enemy with physical force.

Ayato readied his Linkage Plug sword while Henrietta transformed herself into a heavy metal tornado.

“Miss Henrietta! I can only guess, but those crocs probably fight by burning holes in your armor using the acid capsules in their scales and then directly zap your exposed flesh to knock you out!! Do not rely too heavily on your armor!!”

“That just means I have to beat them down before they can move.”

“Now, Miss Teleria and Miss Mamilis, you need to attack the remaining main cannons! This enemy’s presence is proof that our attack is working. Stopping will only give them what they want!!”

Ayato stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into the gut joint of one of the incubators and found it surprisingly easy to take control. Each one had a low level, so he spread out his crystal tarot cards in the air, flicked them with his fingers, and moved the four creepily stubby legs.

(These are known as Crocodilia Mk. VII? Hm, other than pinning you down and biting you, they can…yeah, that’s what I wanted.)

“Hyah!?”

He heard a shriek.

Scattering the scales as anti-personnel mines just to try it out may have been a mistake. A few of the capsules of powerful acid hit the latches on the back of Striker Henrietta’s armor and the chest of her armor fell away.

She blushed, covered her chest with her left arm, and glared at him.

The tears he had not expected.

“I don’t know what made me think I could trust you to watch my back even for a second, but thanks for the reminder of just what kind of dangerous individual you are.”

“Wait, I am not the one you should be aiming that sorcery gun at!! Also, this taught us exactly how the Crocodilia Mk. VIIs’ projectiles work! Aren’t you glad it happened in this nonlethal fashion!?”

Meanwhile, Mamilis seemed worried about Ayato and Henrietta who were putting themselves in greater danger by moving closer to the dangerous waterside predators.

“(They melt through thick clothing and zap your bare skin to knock you out? Even those jaws are meant to pin you down, not to tear you to pieces. Those things were not designed to kill. I don’t know when we were set up here, but whoever did it was clearly focused on you, Teleria.)”

“…”

Teleria said nothing.

She dedicated herself to the job given to her, as if that would let her forget all about the fundamental problem here.

The pillars of ice created by Teleria’s twin handguns struck the back guide portion located below the distinctive gray cannons on the middle level of the bow and that safety feature was blown away.

But they must have taken too much time.

Before they were done, the turret on the bow’s lowest level rotated with obvious intent.

It was aimed at…

“Laguntreat!? Dangerous individual, they are preparing to attack!!”

“Miss Teleria, aim straight down! Blast the float on the side!!”

Ayato shouted instructions while using a hacked incubator to attack the other crocodilian sorcery devices that used electric jaws and acid capsule scales.

The blonde girl placed her navel on the side deck railing and leaned over dangerously far. She was aiming near the ocean surface. With a muffled gunshot, an ice spear popped a waterproof leather bag larger than the average bus and the entire giant ship tilted.

A moment later, their world was thrown into chaos.

Ayato had known it was coming, but he was still thrown to the side deck. A shockwave slammed into him and he gathered strength in his trembling fingertips to desperately keep a grip on his Linkage Plug sword lest it slide across the floor and fall into the sea.

“Wah!”

“Miss Teleria!!”

The blonde girl had already been leaning over the railing, so she was about to fall into the ocean. Ayato clenched his teeth and forced himself to rush over to her. In the nick of time, he got his arms around her hips and the long skirt Expansion Armor, so the two of them rolled along the side deck together.

As a direct combat expert, Henrietta clicked her tongue but managed to stay on her feet throughout. Her legs and hips were a lot stronger than the others. In fact, she had apparently used the shaking of the ship to take a step toward the enemy. A huge chunk of the dangerous Crocodilia Mk. VIIs were gone. Instead of destroying them, she had used the tilting of the enormous warship to send them tumbling over the railing. They now littered the once pristinely beautiful ocean. The giant waterwheels and the lightning energy leaking out into the sea must have been destroying those unmanned weapons.

She used her bayonet axe to split the glass tube crocs.

“What happened to the island? Hey, dangerous individual!?”

“It’s fine. Popping that float threw off its aim just before firing. But that method will not work again.”

“Coach, the Four Lords are directly connected to the magical elements, right? I thought our ordinary magical attacks were powerless to defeat them.”

“Come to think of it, Teleria mentioned that earlier.”

Henrietta was far from a magic expert, so she was confused by that point.

It was true the colorless mana flowing through the atmosphere was transformed into one of the four elements when one of the four peaks gave it color. So a human or demon manipulating that mana as magic could not defeat one of the Four Lords who gave it that color.

“This isn’t actually attacking with the magic. A magical explosion is triggered in the thick barrel to launch a giant shell filled with explosives and lead. It’s a ridiculously inefficient method, but since the direct hit is nonmagical, it can harm one of the Four Lords.”

“Hey, dangerous individual. How about we pop all of those floats? This ship can’t balance itself without them, right?”

“Go for it if you want, but do you have the stamina need to swim back to the island if you’re thrown out into the empty ocean in that heavy armor? And unless we deactivate the ship, it might continue filling the ocean with lightning as it sinks.”

The surviving main cannons were of greater importance.

Given how many incubators they had seen lined up within the ship, the crocs they had seen had to be a small fraction of the total available. The next wave of Crocodilia Mk. VIIs would arrive before long.

With Teleria supporting her, the long silver-haired Dark Elf held a hand to her head as if dealing with a headache and then she readied her full-auto shotgun. With the cacophony of her rapid-fire, an attack slammed into the recoil-restraining back guide, causing the bow’s last main cannon turret to swell out from within and explode. Knife-like shards sliced through the air.

The straitlaced Striker held a hand to her head to hold her hair down against the blast.

“Ugh, I hate how I’m getting used to all these explosions.”

“That finished the bow, but there’s still the two turrets to stern. The main cannon attack has already begun, so don’t let your guard down!”

The ship was 950 esoule long, so moving from one end to the other was an ordeal. They ran along the side deck as if heading back they way they had come.

One of the waterproof hatches opened nearby even though none of them had touched it.

“Dangerous individual!” shouted Henrietta when Ayato immediately kicked the door to hold it shut.

“We don’t need to deal with all of the Crocodilia Mk. VIIs! Don’t destroy the door, Miss Henrietta!!”

They may have been designed as guards for the ship because they showed no sign of breaking through the walls or hatches to attack. If the terrain or layout of the ship could be used to avoid a fight, there was no reason not to take advantage of it. He stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into the hatch’s handle and removed the grip. Hacking the door’s controls was bound to make a difference.

“There were five turrets in all and we’ve already destroyed three.” Teleria was talking more to herself than anyone else. “We’re past the halfway point. We just have to keep doing what we’re doing, so we’ll be fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”

(I wouldn’t be so sure about that.)

The blue blazer boy did not say it aloud, but he remained highly cautious. At the very least, they could not just keep doing what they were doing. The situation had changed. Even if their interference had thrown off its aim, the Annihilator-class Predator Island’s main cannons had fired with the intent of crushing the island of Laguntreat.

It had provoked her.

He could not imagine Water Lord Fleurelisia letting that slide.

“Taking out the main cannons is all well and good, but how do you intend to actually end this, dangerous individual?”

“That is up to what the Four Lord does. If she does not attack, then we will need to consider providing a finishing blow to the spirit engine that serves as the core of the ship.”

Just as he said that, a great shadow was cast over them.

That was not a cumulonimbus cloud.

“But if she decides to attack, just focus on not getting caught in the crossfire!!”

That giant winged fish slithered along the land like a serpent.

Her 450 esoule form was attacking from the sky as if to break the extraordinary warship in two.

Something like a gargantuan ice spike jutted from the end of the giant fish’s nose.

Yes.

To directly pierce the ship.

Part 2

The 950 esoule warship tilted like a seesaw. The entire front half of it did. If Ayato’s group had still been there, they would have been crushed along with the stepped array of cannons.

With a deafening boom, the crocs trying to reach the side deck via a different route were thrown out into the air before falling down into the pure tropical ocean with only the intercontinental stone bridge intruding on nature.

From here, it was impossible to tell whether the ship had been pierced through or the ice spike had shattered.

“Kyah!!”

“Miss Henrietta, you take care of Miss Mamilis! I will handle Miss Teleria!!”

He grabbed the blonde girl’s hand in midair and let momentum carry him back-first into a right triangle sail to absorb the shock. But it was not over yet. They were now more than three stories up from the deck, which was a problem. The partner he held in his arms aimed her sorcery guns toward the ship’s large sail and fired several instances of ice magic. Instead of fully freezing, she left the masses in a sherbet-like state that caught them and reduced their speed as they dropped.

“Wow,” said tall and slender Mamilis from Henrietta’s arms.

The giant winged fish had failed to break the Predator Island in two with a single attack. The ice spike emerging from the tip of her nose had shattered. However, the bow was almost entirely nonfunctioning.

The steam must have detonated because Fleurelisia herself bounced up from the crushed deck and flew to port.

That was enough to create a massive wave that threatened to capsize the warship.

The Crocodilia Mk. VIIs were the least of their worries now. That was the Water Lord and she did not seem at all bothered by the lightning energy that would have fatally electrocuted a human in the blink of an eye.

A different atmosphere hung over the place.

“Kh!”

“Ayato, hold on tight!!”

Hadn’t the villain said they loaded on too much chloride-treated mana conducting silver weaponry and armor because they so feared the Water Lord? That was no exaggeration. Ayato would want that too if he were seriously planning to fight Fleurelisia.

The gray ship was still sliding to the side.

But not just due to the massive wave. This had more to do with the sails than the rudder. It was doing everything it could to get away from there.

Unfortunately, a ship’s width to the side was the most it could manage.

The ocean parted and that colossal form flew high into the sky once more.

If the Predator Island had not taken evasive action, it may have been pierced through from below and torn to pieces. The Water Lord’s belly only grazed against it, but the giant waterwheel on one side of the ship was torn away and thrown into the air while falling apart.

The wreckage of that military weapon was scattered across the pristine ocean.

Ayato honestly felt silly for having spent so much energy fighting those Crocodilia Mk. VII weapons made from the incubators.

Fleurelisia was not specifically focusing on any of the threats on the deck. She was simply rampaging around, which was enough for the army of sorcery devices to be thrown into the sea where they vanished into the depths.

“The scale of this fight is insane,” groaned Striker Henrietta with bolt-action carbine in hand.

Missing the ship as a whole while rising from the ocean did not actually hurt Fleurelisia any.

She simply rotated around in midair.

Would she attack next with an ultra-heavyweight body slam? It was all over once she crushed the surviving aft half of the ship. The stepped array of anti-aircraft guns and autocannons began a magical barrage resembling an eruption, but it was too late. Not to mention that ordinary magic could not seriously harm one of the Four Lords. It was not an issue of her dodging it or not; her thick muscles would forcibly contain the damage while she crushed the insolent warship before it could damage her.

The only injuries she would receive were from the ship’s wood and armor piercing her as it split apart beneath her. The ordinary cannons could not leave a scratch on her.

Only two sets of three main cannons remained at the stern.

They aimed as high into the sky as they could manage, but six felt terribly insufficient. Plus, each set had to attack as a group, so they only really provided two chances. That was less than a revolver. If their two opportunities were evaded, that was that.

A high-pitched cracking sound erupted from the sky.

Ice spears as long as Fleurelisia herself appeared in the air around her. She clearly intended to destroy that ship no matter which way it tried to flee.

So.

When that Four Lord was stopped, it was not by any kind of firepower.

It could not have been.

Her colossal body twisted as she descended.

Almost like she had spotted something on the aft end of the ship and did not want to crush it.

Her great mass crashed into the ocean nearby.

As did the giant spears she had prepared as insurance.

The ship violently shook and seawater was dumped down on Ayato’s group. They had been entirely helpless to intervene in that battle between two titans and they were honestly relieved to find that seawater had not been electrified. But by the time they finally regained their balance, they found Fleurelisia had inexplicably moved away from the gray Annihilator-class Predator Island.

The water parted in the far distance and that giant emerged on the surface. She created a circular rail of ice with a diameter of about 8500 esoule around the Predator Island and propelled herself along it using steam to move quickly around. All while picking up speed along that circular track. When a single tackle could sink the warship, that sight could only be described as a threat.

However…

“What?”

Just to be sure, Ayato stabbed his Linkage Plug into a crocodile still managing to cling to the deck, hacked it, and sent it inside a nearby hatch, but there did not appear to be any other Crocodilia Mk. VIIs left. His fingertips completed hat work on autopilot because his mind had gone entirely blank.

The main cannons roared.

They failed to hit the Water Lord, but the ice rail was stationary and thus easily destroyed. Meanwhile, Fleurelisia made a quick step to the side. She had apparently created more than just the one ice ring. She had prepared several so she could jump to an adjacent one if need be.

Since she had moved away from the island, the artillery shells produced towering pillars of water in the empty ocean. There was less chance of the shells hitting Laguntreat’s village now, but she still gained nothing from drawing this battle out. Even at her size, a direct hit from one of those 0.5 esoule cannons would do considerable damage. Those were legitimately deadly weapons even to one of the Four Lords and drawing out the battle would increase the risk of being hit.

The sets of three main cannons mercilessly fired.

The blast was powerful enough for the entire giant gray warship to slide to the side.

More than a blow to the eardrums, Ayato’s group felt it like a hand grabbing their spine and shaking them.

Meanwhile, Fleurelisia made a rapid trip around the warship, constantly rotating around it near the horizon while swinging around some kind of impossibly long straight line. She had used ultra-pressurized water to launch a band of finely shattered ice. It was like a chainsaw capable of slicing right through a fortress. With a pleasant popping sound, the 0.5 esoule shell most on a direct course for her was sliced in two. Massive pillars of water rose on either side of her.

That had required godlike skill, but the Four Lord should not have had to resort to that in the first place.

Ayato blinked in confusion while clinging to the side deck railing.

“Why did she move away? She was safest as close to the ship as she could get. The lightning energy leaking out into the ocean should only be a slight tickle at her size.”

If she had a goal in mind, she could use brute force to have her way.

Based on what Fire Lord Blasthogg and Demon Lord Nirvelphany had done at the sky city, that was the way lords handled things. Yet she was not doing that.

Maybe she was worried about torpedoes being scattered from the side deck like fish bait, but even that should not have been a concern. If she truly would take very little damage from anything other than the main cannons, her safest bet would have been to smash through the ship’s hull as soon as possible.

What was the downside for her there?

Or was this a product of frustration and compromise?

Ayato recalled how the unseen villain had claimed the ship contained something Fleurelisia could never destroy.

“…”

Meanwhile, right next to the boy, Teleria had grown very pale while holding a hand to her large chest. She looked like she very much wanted to say something but could not bring herself to do so.

Henrietta pushed the dazed girl aside to make a realistic suggestion to Ayato.

“Dangerous individual, I know all of this came as a surprise, but will standing and staring fix anything!?”

“You’re right. We need to destroy those aft main cannons before this develops into a colossal brawl!”

He squeezed his Linkage Plug sword again and made up his mind on that one point. Fleurelisia was a threat, but that did not mean they could let this warship run amok.

The Water Lord began to make her next move in the distance.

She hopped upwards while circling around the Predator Island.

She was changing direction.

After building up her momentum, she was diving back into the ocean.

And Ayato seriously doubted it would end there.

She had to be moving swiftly through that water to target the Predator Island while unseen.

“Ah, look, Coach!”

With a sharp sound, three enormous ice sculptures rose up from the ocean. They rose up much like the ski jumps seen on the north end of the continent. Then a thick pillar of water erupted explosively upwards.

But not because Fleurelisia had jumped out.

“That was a feint!?”

Henrietta’s eyes widened.

The ice jumps and the blast of water vapor had both been bluffs. This Four Lord was not some simple beast. She was intelligent and had constructed the optimal strategy for this situation. While the Annihilator-class Predator Island fell for it and fired into the empty air, a massive shadow swam silently through the water.

The warship’s shellfire was finally catching up.

Those shells were absurdly large for Ayato, but they had to be mere specks for that Four Lord. The smallest cannons were still large enough for him to stick his arm down the barrel, but she did not seem at all concerned about that barrage. The only real threat was the two sets of three main cannons, but since those were all on the rear of the ship, they could not turn toward her if she was near enough to the bow.

It was too late for them now.

Fleurelisia must have known she was in a safe zone because she burst up above the water. The water resistance must have been a nuisance even for a ruler of water. She skipped across the surface a few times like a flat rock on a river and then she made a powerful leap straight up.

She curled up in the sky like a crescent moon and Ayato’s group could hear all of her muscles straining.

Shockingly, she was going for a kick with plenty of strength built up.

A dolphin kick like that would probably obliterate everything on the deck.

Her position suggested she was aiming for the opposite side of the ship from Ayato’s group.

Was she going for the side she had already crushed and damaged with her great size?

“Eek!?”

There was no stopping her from the Predator Island, so Teleria quickly grabbed the side deck railing again with both hands.

Just then, the giant cannons briefly fell silent and the two turrets began to rotate with obvious intent behind the action.

But not toward Fleurelisia as she began to deliver a roundhouse kick with her extra-large fish tail.

No, they were turning toward the island.

Toward Laguntreat, where a single blast would crush everyone in the village.

“What!?”

Teleria frantically aimed her twin handguns that way, but she was too far away and the angle was off. She could not blast the barrel with magic to destroy it from within.

Fleurelisia had moved out to sea before fighting instead of remaining on the island.

Did the villain controlling the Predator Island conclude she was not willing to let the islanders come to harm over this?

The giant form in the sky bent at an even more unnatural angle. She had forcibly used her massive wings.

The bottom level of the stern was hit by a great roar that sounded like space itself rupturing.

She would have unleashed a powerful dolphin kick attack, but she instead struck the empty air with her colossal fish tail to unnaturally change direction in midair and cross over the entire warship.

She used the bottom of her belly to crush one of the main cannon turrets on the stepped layout of the Predator Island’s stern. Flattening the turret must have been more important to her than power or efficiency because she was positioned perpendicular to the warship, forming a cross shape with it.

The back guide weakness no longer mattered.

She did this with pure brute force.

It was a lot like the mixed martial arts jumps seen in seedy shopping districts back on the Static Continent.

With the sound of bending metal, the thick turret was flattened like a paper box underfoot. However, that triggered a large explosion from within the main cannons. Fleurelisia seemed to have created a thick ice shield below her belly, but the point-blank blast tore through the shield and struck the Water Lord. A ton of shrapnel must have stabbed into her as well. She twisted around and roared in agony.

She could have easily avoided that pain if she had simply let the attack happen.

“The Four Lord – that monster – protected the island!?”

Striker Henrietta squeezed out a voice of utter shock.

But this was not over yet.

The surviving set of three main cannons on the stern’s middle level was aimed at the defenseless island. For no other reason than to draw out the Water Lord.

They fired with an explosive boom.

There was no time to set up an ice shield this time. Fleurelisia slammed her large wings against the deck protected by chloride-treated mana conducting silver armor to force herself back into the air. She leaped to the side to place herself in the path of the main cannons and protect something precious from those deadly shells.

A scream echoed out and it began to rain red.

“––––––––––!!”

Short Teleria clasped her hands to her mouth, but it was not enough. Desperately suppressing her voice did nothing to stop the tears. She staggered to the side in her black tights, so Mamilis had to grab her slender shoulders. Except she must not have been able to fully support her because both of them collapsed onto the side deck.

Water Lord Fleurelisia was unshaken.

Instead of fleeing into the ocean, she remained in the line of fire while surrounding one enormous wing with ice and prepared to slice through the remaining main cannons and the ship below with that makeshift guillotine.

The cannons fired again.

The shells did more than stop that icy blade. The entire raised wing was torn from her and launched into the air.

Part 3

That was no mere roar.

It was no mere scream.

It may have sounded that way to human ears, but in the vocal range of a Mermaid, there was more to it. Teleria Nereid Aquamarine clearly heard her aquatic mother’s voice as she lay slumped down on the deck.

The bloody rain covered everything around her.

Her own mother’s red blood poured down on her head.

It was too late. She could tell that much already. The wound was too large and the blood loss too great for a human-sized sorcery gun’s recovery magic to even make a dent in it.

“I am…fine, Teleria.”

Her mother’s voice was scratchy and oddly distorted but still as kind as ever.

“As long as I avoid a hit to my core…as long as I shift the point of impact elsewhere, I can survive this. So do not cry. Do that and your sweetheart will notice something is up.”

That could not be true.

In no world was she fine.

For one thing, what mother would tell her child she was not fine and ask for help?

“I have some trouble moving, so I had a hard time searching out what was happening behind the scenes on the island. I had hoped you would cause them enough trouble for them to make a mistake so I could strike. Ta ha ha. I never imagined you were enough of a tomboy to go rushing into the center of the danger yourself. Maybe this is what I get for trying to manipulate my own daughter like that…”

The explosive cannon blasts continued.

They were truly from right in front of her nose, at point-blank range, but even as she was intermittently shaken, Fleurelisia did not go in for the kill. She could have easily reached out and ended this, but she chose not to. She was further and further battered by the splinters and shards of the ship and by the massive artillery shells.

Would it be the warship’s main cannons or the Water Lord’s ice?

All of a sudden, Teleria noticed her constant companion was standing in front of her while she lay collapsed on the deck. He held his Linkage Plug sword at the ready to protect her.

“What a lovely boy,” whispered Fleurelisia in response to his misguided hostility even as she was hit by more cannon blasts. “Teleria, do not let him get away. Isn’t that the happiness you found for yourself? So wipe away those tears and keep a stiff upper lip. You still have time before he turns around, so hurry.”

Teleria shook her head.

She could not say anything out loud, but she shook her head as hard as she could.

If Fleurelisia had only wanted to survive, she could have let the islanders die. Especially since they had been trying to achieve a loathsome sort of stability by sacrificing her. Or she could have recalled her position in the world for a just a moment and attacked the ship, giving up on the girl who wore a Mimic Option to hide what she had inherited from her mother.

But she did neither.

“I cannot.” She spoke firmly. “A mother can never do that in front of her precious daughter.”

That was what pushed the girl beyond her limit.

“No.”

Her throat shook on its own despite her attempts to suppress her voice.

She was in tears and collapsed on the deck, but she just could not keep it up.

She could not continue with that silly act.

“No!! Don’t…don’t do this to me!!!!!”

Crying like a child throwing a tantrum, she pulled the trigger of her sorcery guns. Blue muzzle flashes shined and empty cartridges littered the deck. She knew this would accomplish nothing, but she still fired her recovery magic.

That was when it all fell apart.

Her world was shattered.

She found Ayato Criminaltrophy had turned her way with his drawn sword in hand. In that moment, the meaning of that protective sword changed.

He had seen her.

He had seen the truth.

No matter what they had been through together, he was a human and she was a demon.

“Miss Teleria.”

“Ahh.”

She was trembling too much to move.

Strength left her uncooperative fingers and her twin sorcery guns with long magazines fell to the deck.

She thought he might kill her here.

She vaguely thought that might be her punishment for lying to the partner she relied on and abandoning her family for self-preservation.

“I want to know one thing for certain, Miss Teleria. I want to hear it directly from you.”

“Ahh, I…I am Fleur-”

“Not that.”

But what he said made no sense.

What else could he be talking about?

“Right now, whatever connection you have to that Four Lord is irrelevant. If you do not want to tell me, I will not pry. What I want to know is nothing so trivial. I just want to hear your answer to the most important question here.”

“What – sob – what’s that?”

“The usual.” The black-haired boy pointed his empty hand’s thumb toward the giant dying form behind him. “If I save her, will it bring a smile to your face? As long as I know that, nothing else matters.”

Time truly seemed to stop for Teleria as tears and snot stained her face.

It did not matter if she was human or demon.

It did not even matter if they were talking about one of the Four Lords. He did not care what secrets she kept. His decision was based on just the one factor: would it or would it not stop her tears and bring back her smile.

Could she rely on him?

Would he not brush off her hand?

“(Don’t worry.)”

Mamilis whispered in her ear while gently supporting her from behind.

She did not provide some lovely ideal or comfort.

She stated only cold, hard facts.

“(Coach rescued a Dark Elf like me in the sky city. He knew I was a demon and didn’t care. So he won’t reject your plea for help. No matter what.)”

She hung her head.

She bit her lip.

“…Yes.”

And she looked up again. She was still collapsed on the deck and she did not bother wiping away her tears, but she raised her voice with real power behind it this time.

“Yes…please save her, Ayato. Save that Four Lord! Save Fleurelisia!!!!!”

Part 4

The very next moment, it was like an azure flash of light exploded from the ship.

Part 5

Ayato Criminaltrophy seemed to spin his body in the blue blazer like a whirlwind and he leaped up the stepped rows of anti-aircraft guns and autocannons in the blink of an eye. Climbing was not the right word for it. He planted his fingers and shoes on the wall with slightly raised friction thanks to the sea breeze and he detected the saltier spots to choose a route that let him maintain his momentum as he leaped on up. Once he arrived at the main cannon turret up top, he stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into the gap of the swivel joint and released the blade. Then he jumped atop the gray turret to arrive at the base of one of the barrels. There, he shoved his sword into the joint providing vertical movement.

He was not hacking it.

He had not reached a high enough level to hijack control of the entire turret.

He was simply wedging the blades into the joints to block the turret’s movement.

“That won’t last, Sorcery Hacker!!”

Henrietta’s close-quarters combat skill did not allow her to follow after him and she had to shout up at him from below, but it did not really matter if those replaceable blades were broken. They only had to last for a count of ten.

Ayato ran along the thick turret with his eyes on the muzzle.

It had a diameter of 0.5 esoule.

Yes.

Which meant a skinny boy could crawl directly inside it!!

“Ohhhh!!”

He threw his Linkage Plug sword in first and dove inside the main cannon as if stepping on it. The inside was hot from the friction, but it was still bearable since the cannon did not actually use powder or other explosives to fire. The warship was sturdy against external attack, but it was easily destructible from within. Its vulnerability to Sorcery Hacking worked similarly.

He had been right to build up his level somewhat with the anti-aircraft guns and autocannons.

He forcibly jabbed the blade in, hacked the lock, and forced open the metal door to tumble out inside the turret.

There were indeed no humans or demons directly operating it.

He found a small room containing plenty of spare explosives, an auto-loading device, and the system that operated along with the back guide. More than 200 small military sorcery devices were gathered here. Their combined level was too great to hack the turret as a single device from the outside, but each individual part’s level was fairly low when he could choose them individually like this.

His sword audibly stabbed into more and more of them to hack them each in turn.

After forcing open the escape hatch that was designed to never open from the outside, he flicked one of the floating crystal tarot cards with a finger to trigger the finishing blow.

That girl had tearfully begged him to save the Water Lord.

“What right do you have to make someone cry?”

His own safety was of secondary importance.

He spoke with his back to the machine.

“You hunk of junk!!!???”

It exploded not 10 seconds later.

Part 6

Even Fleurelisia had heard the legend of the Forward in the distant Academy Towers who had mercilessly shot a certain boy to death.

The victim had been Teleria’s stepbrother, which also made him Fleurelisia’s stepson.

She had always had a habit of taking in anything she saw and refusing to throw any of it out. That was why she had stayed on Laguntreat for so long. But that did not mean she felt no attachment for the many things she had gathered.

She had wanted to see what kind of person that Forward was.

If he had done it because of the boy’s relationship to Fleurelisia, she had considered tearing him away from Teleria and giving him a watery grave.

But.

“I called him a lovely boy and I meant it.”

The turret was blown away.

A life was saved.

That boy lived in a world above the division between human and demon. If he could overcome that with so little hesitation, she knew he would never have pulled the trigger for fame or fortune or due to bias or discrimination.

He must have had a much deeper reason.

Something even deeper than the sea.

“You dodged a bullet there, Teleria. If he had visited the island without you, I might have claimed him for myself.”

Option 03: From a Warning about Taboo Magic (Since Withdrawn)

Magic belongs to the four basic elements of fire, water, wind, and earth, but it can be further divided based on its application and derivations. The most obvious example of this are the spells with Ex in the middle. For example, the Primary Ex fire element spells are a specialized category of buffing spells. The most well known of those is Primary Ex Massive, a muscle buffing spell.

Taboo magic is also marked with a middle name added to the standard Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary pattern.

Taboo magic is commonly thought of as magic banned from use because it is too destructive, but that is actually a groundless misunderstanding. The power and range of magic is defined by the sorcery gun or other device being used, so that is not the deciding factor.

The actual definition is as follows: magic with an extremely uncertain elemental classification, creating an exceedingly high risk of the caster losing control even with the assistance of a sorcery gun.

In other words, it has very little to do with the power of the individual magic.

The most obvious example there would be Secondary Taboo Sleep. That magic rapidly freezes a living being and seals them in an ice coffin, but the water element alone cannot accomplish that. It actually uses a combination of water and wind to create a flash freezing effect that works much faster than ordinary freezing and prevents the body’s cells from even noticing they are being frozen.

Magic is no more than a technique that humans have developed to control the mystical by using the four elements created by the colors that the Four Lords provide the atmospheric manaflows. On the other hand, humans have no way of directly converting pure, uncolored mana into magic. An attempt to use magic outside those four classifications will end in failure, but that failed attempt to control the mystical in that way could mean losing control in a destructive fashion. Some even theorize that the craters seen pockmarking the moon’s surface when using a telescope are the scars left by some ancient accident of that nature.

Now, the cleverer among you will have some questions about all this.

What about the network of pure mist mana and the Media Summoners that use it? Or what about the Sorcery Hackers who abuse such things? Those of you living in a peaceful city devoid of deadly magic may actually be standing in the middle of the most dangerous minefield of all.

Phase 04: Classified Information: Academy Towers

Part 1

The ship was destroyed and sank into the ocean.

Fleurelisia had far too much power for a being half dead from ship wreckage and shells. The Annihilator-class Predator Island was helpless with all its main cannons gone.

She honestly saved Ayato’s group there.

Even as a Sorcery Hacker, neutralizing the entire Predator Island singlehandedly would have been a challenge. Not to mention that damaging the ship was not guaranteed to deactivate the Crocodilia Mk. VIIs that protected the ship’s interior. If they had a chance to sink the whole ship at once, they had to take it.

They were forced to ride on the Water Lord’s back to return to Laguntreat. Straitlaced and inflexible Henrietta initially panicked and flatly rejected the idea, but Dark Elf Mamilis had smoothed things over as another demon. Besides, there was no guarantee the current would carry them back to land in an unpowered lifeboat and swimming back was out of the question.

“Uh,” groaned Teleria while resting her head on Ayato’s shoulder. He did not know what exactly it had been about, but after that explosion of emotion under the hot sun, she might very well faint now that the battle was over and she could relax.

Henrietta must not have been used to earthquakes or the rocking of boats after living so long in that sky city. She was pale in the face and her ponytail braid swayed side to side behind her as she stayed down on all fours.

“I-i-i-it’s shaking, it’s shaking, it’s shaking. B-but we never did get an explanation of what all that was about, did we?”

“It doesn’t matter. Not if Miss Teleria is not ready to tell us yet.”

That was Ayato’s only response as he viewed the island of Laguntreat up ahead.

Once back on the beach, the situation had changed.

They had revealed the locals’ misdeeds.

“Leonardo Halleys,” muttered the black-haired boy.

He did not speak loudly, but his voice contained a powerful tone of accusation.

He viewed the graceful older Mermaid who looked back at him, the Asrai working a food stand, and the Siren selling fruit. Now that the veneer of the gawdy tourist destination had been stripped away, the looks in their eyes could only be described as empty.

Meanwhile, the other human tourists were confused by this change.

Their response would be the correct one.

“Leonardo Halleys is the mastermind behind the attack on Fleurelisia and the driving force behind the purifying blood pool method. I saw a few different names on the plans for the Predator Island and its Media Summoners, but he’s famous enough to have the local train station named after him.”

He received no response.

The silence must have been creepy even to another demon because Dark Elf Mamilis edged closer to Ayato in slight fear. Henrietta was hurrying the repairs to her damaged armor.

“But that was such a big ship, Coach. Wouldn’t a whole bunch of people have worked on it?”

“The document approval process looked fairly complex. And Leonardo’s name appeared extremely infrequently for someone with the authorization of a manager. He is clearly the kind of person who only leaves a paper trail when absolutely necessary. I can understand wanting to preserve your own privacy, but very few people in a large organization could get away with that. He must be at the top.” Ayato summed things up for the others. “Once we get Miss Teleria somewhere safe to rest, we need to split up and start asking questions. Do you remember the location of our base in that forest cave?”

“Wait, dangerous individual,” cut in the Striker. “We are well on our way to solving our problems on this island and that cottage had an actual bed. And if we speak with the manager, they might share some medicine with us.”

“Have you forgotten already, Miss Henrietta? Our enemy is not the island’s mastermind. Leonardo Halleys is only the opening act.” Ayato sighed and continued. “We still do not know who stole away the ice coffin and hacked the Dextral Mk. IIs. Our true enemy is the Sorcery Hacker. They must be a skilled one too since we still have no information on them after all this. If we are going to let a defenseless girl get some rest, it is 100 times safer to place her in a survivalist environment devoid of sorcery devices than a fortress protected by hackable security.”

“…”

“But tracking down that Sorcery Hacker first requires dealing with the island’s mastermind, Leonardo Halleys. Not everyone here is innocent, but they will have all seen the Predator Island sink. Someone is bound to decide now is the time to abandon the figurative sinking ship that is their plan. We must ask around now, before they have time to get their story straight!”

Entering the tropical forest was meant to weaken their Sorcery Hacker enemy, but it would also greatly reduce Ayato’s effectiveness. After leaving unconscious Teleria with the Striker who specialized in direct combat, he and Mamilis went elsewhere.

“Now, then.”

After sending the girls off with their respective tasks, he walked off on his own. He was headed toward the forest, but not toward their cave base. The woman creeping through the empty darkness behind the food stands was a Rusalka. She was happily counting the gold and silver she found in the many wallets she had probably pickpocketed from the humans.

When viewed from a different angle, tourist destinations of a certain level of popularity were always full of outlaws looking for easy marks.

Ayato made use of that side of things here.

He stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into a nearby parasol.

(I still have the Predator Island’s processing space now that it’s sunk?)

Still, he could lose that at any time, so it was best not to rely on it too much. He needed as much processing space as he could get, so he had to use his Linkage Plug sword every chance he got.

He needed the power to fight as a Sorcery Hacker and the strength to harm people.

With that mindset, the bent metal tower jutting up from the forest looked like a wonderful target. That was the lightning cloud cannon that worked with the other cannons on nearby uninhabited islands to blow away any thick lightning clouds.

Yes.

Despite what he had told the others, he was not expecting their questioning to turn up anything. Using his ordinary logic, he would never have let a rookie like Mamilis work alone, no matter how short on time they were. In other words, he was starting on a task that would have put her at greater risk accompanying him.

He had needed a convenient excuse to act alone.

“Oh?”

“Hm? Is that you, Miss Florence?”

He heard a rustling of the underbrush nearby and an extremely small girl in a thin white dress stepped out. Her short blonde hair was blowing in the tropical breeze.

“Are the others not with you right now?”

“No, they had other business to attend to.”

Florence approached him with an elegant smile, but something was off about her. She had a wristwatch around her ankle, perhaps as a fashion statement, but she was limping somewhat, favoring the other leg.

“Are you hurt?”

“Ah ha ha. I sat on my leg weird doing some knitting this morning, so I’m still feeling some pins and needles. That will go away soon, so don’t worry about it.”

She was apparently well-versed in certain feminine pastimes for someone so young.

She must have found his impressed look embarrassing because she smiled bitterly and waved her little hand in front of his face.

“Everyone on the island helps out like that. And we don’t just knit with yarn. We also use grass and palm fiber. This isn’t a big city with sorcery factories to automate that work, after all. We have to knit our own hats, baskets, beach mats, beach chairs, and even fishing nets, which are a crucial lifeline here.”

Their technology was developing in a different direction from Ayato who was entirely focused on Sorcery Hacking. And both paths were equally valid.

Ayato was a fairly twisted person (and he was aware of that himself), but he felt honest respect for anyone who could do something he could not. In that sense, this little girl was worthy of his respect.

“By the way, Miss Florence, are you familiar with the name Leonardo Halleys?”

“Of course I am. When this island was known as a hospital, he redeveloped it into a luxury resort and renewed our image. He isn’t that well known to outsiders since he never held an official position like mayor or lord, but he’s something of a celebrity here. The train station is even named after him.”

“I see.”

“Among the humans, he is known as an adventurer…or so I had heard, but maybe that isn’t true anymore. He built the foundation of the Ransackers who specialize in seeking out plant or animal materials and he greatly increased the accuracy of the maps for everything south of the Static Continent. This part of the sea used to be greatly feared, but he changed all that.”

Forwards specialized in combat, Bouncers specialized in bodyguarding, and Ransackers specialized in acquisition.

Ayato was a Forward rather than a Ransacker, but knowing this person had laid the foundation for one of those three categories was still concerning.

“So he’s a human, is he? Why would someone like that work so hard to support this island’s demons?”

“Because he was lonely. Completing that map took an inordinate amount of time and he did not have time to worry about a family until it was done. I would guess he no longer thought of the Static Continent as home, so he decided to preserve his position here on the island.”

Had she said she did not know the man, Ayato would have parted ways with the girl in the sheer dress, but she had instead shown off how knowledgeable she was. And she was so good at it he could not find an opening to end the conversation.

Leonardo had arrogantly believed he could defeat Water Lord Fleurelisia with the Predator Island, but that also meant he had been in a position to reach that level of power. He knew how to acquire everything he needed in a concrete form. Those were the sharp senses of a Ransacker who would visit any risky location to acquire whatever item they were hired to retrieve.

Ayato could guess this would take more than sticking a blade to the old man’s throat while he sat in a leather chair. There was more to it. He sensed a great risk that would obliterate some young whippersnapper who thoughtlessly rushed in without even a sorcery gun.

(Hm? That little girl was awfully familiar with the island’s history. She almost sounded like she had seen it herself.)

He had some questions remaining, but he was not about to say he was an expert on the behavior of girls that age. She may have been relaying what she had heard as if it were her own experiences.

Florence stared up at him with the look of someone plotting mischief.

“See? Having a local with you is convenient. I can help out a lot.”

“I guess.”

He really wanted to deal with this on his own, but Florence was not going to let that happen. She was bound to follow him even if he ditched her. Putting a small child in danger was out of the question, but he could not knock her out with a chop to the back of the neck either.

If what she had said about Leonardo Halleys was accurate, that great man had started as a Ransacker and broke open this dangerous area of sea by creating accurate maps and sea charts.

The man’s actual skill was still an unknown, but he was clearly not as wonderful a person as the islanders thought. There was no defending his actions. He had claimed to be fighting for the island, but he was the one who had chosen to use the purifying blood pools and to kill the Water Lord.

The girl would sneak after him if he told her to leave now and he could not have her wandering around who-knows-where when he ran into an enemy. The best way to avoid having her hit by a stray shot was to have her by his side.

He brought a hand to his forehead as a sign of resignation and resumed walking.

“I will respect your freedom, but following me will not be a pleasant experience. Do not blame me if it traumatizes you.”

“Well, I certainly can’t leave you alone if things are that dire☆”

Florence smiled back at him, but he was still curious about her right leg.

“Are you sure you can do this? I will be walking for a while yet. And I mean on the sand and in the forest, not on a paved path.”

“Ah ha ha. Like I said, the pins and needles will be gone soon enough, so don’t worry about it.”

“If it is too much to bear just tell me. I will carry you.”

“Oh, dear. Maybe I should have pretended to need that.”

She continued to favor her left leg as she walked alongside him and pressed her soft cheek and short blonde hair against his arm.

“Where are we headed?” she asked.

“The Oceavita Water Therapy Institute.”

“Why do you think you will find him there?”

“This is a small island, so had you already heard of the warship called the Predator Island sinking? He was controlling it remotely.”

“My, my. But I doubt you could trace the signal back using the manaflows.”

“Look at it the other way around. What location on this island has a sorcery facility with enough processing power for that task and also allows him to erase any trace of having done so? With Sorcery Hacking, you could do it with the washing machines, water boilers, and such in the cottages, but checking over the household and leisure items on the beach and in the cottages showed no sign of anyone but me hacking them. That means the villain has gathered all his toys in one location to increase his level all at once. Where on the island could he do that? There are not many options. The next most likely is the lighting cloud cannon in the forest.”

“My.”

She was a strange girl. Even her surprise was expressed elegantly and a tempo late.

“What do you think will happen to Laguntreat?” she asked while limping across the white sand in the colorful forest.

“Whatever happens, happens. That’s all I can say. Emotions without an outlet will not cause an explosion. Someone has to gather them together and provide them with a target if they are to be abused as a frightening motivation.”

“…”

“They had indeed planned to replace Fleurelisia’s springs with purifying blood pools, but they had not actually done so. That means they were doing their best to hold off on that option, right? So we only have to eliminate whoever gave them reason to actually take action. That will end the current incident. I do hope we can eliminate all of the anxieties and fears that drove them in that direction, though.”

While following a sandy walking path that seemed to part the colorful flowers and the grass, Ayato and Florence approached a white marble building that stood out from everything else on the island.

But the situation did not wait for them to arrive.

He noticed something out of the ordinary much earlier than that.

“What is that?” “Shh, quiet!”

He heard the whispered voices of a young man and woman.

He pulled on young Florence’s hand to hide behind a nearby tree just in time to avoid being seen by a departing couple rapidly putting their swimsuits back on. They must have slipped away in search of some privacy in the middle of the day and found this location was less deserted than hoped.

Something was there.

The looks on their faces said they had spotted something unpleasant.

“What was that about?” asked Florence.

“I hear an odd noise.”

This was the tropical forest leading to the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute and he heard what sounded like something being washed in water beyond the underbrush here.

With each step he took, he felt more of an atmosphere that reminded him of when he was known as the Hexajinx. It was heavy and sticky, like his feet were sinking into a bloody bog. It was the first hints of this bad feeling that had made him send the others away from here.

“This is fine. Everything is fine.”

The quiet splashing was accompanied by a girl muttering to herself in a weak and flat voice. Ayato crouched down and reached for the Linkage Plug sword at his hip. It would not be much use in the forest without any sorcery devices to hack, but it was better than nothing.

“(I recognize that voice. Is it the Oceavita receptionist?)” whispered Florence while clinging to him and still favoring her left leg.

Ayato detected a rusty scent.

“(Miss Florence, you should wait here.)”

Without waiting for a response, he tightly grabbed her shoulder to show he meant it.

He left Florence there since she was a young child and because she was having difficulty with her right leg after her knitting. He could not expect her to take quick action on his command if something happened.

He parted the branches alone and saw what lay beyond.

With the leafy barrier removed, the receptionist’s voice grew much clearer.

“This is fine. I mean, this is Laguntreat. We’re known for our decursing springs, so…so this will turn out just fine no matter what has happened.”

She did not turn toward him. She was curled up by the water with her back to him. The wet washing sound continued as she repeatedly dunked something large and round in the pure water to wash it off like a raccoon.

But instead of food, this was a severed head.

An elderly man’s head danced unblinking in the cold water, seemingly having been chopped off with a sharp blade. There was no dignity there. She almost seemed to be playing with it like some kind of sick toy.

“My, my.”

“Miss Florence.”

“That is Leonardo.”

He tried to speak more strongly to the small girl when she limped over despite his warning, but the receptionist still did not respond to their presence.

“This is fine. Everything is fine. The power of the springs can cure him.”

Something had obviously happened, but she did not seem to be in any state to explain it for them. In fact, she might never again be. It was possible she had been spared as a way of punishing her with a fate worse than death.

By who?

That much was obvious.

By the mysterious Sorcery Hacker who had stolen away the ice coffin containing the shooter. Ayato had dug into the island’s secrets in his pursuit of them, so who else would want to cut away that lizard’s tail?

That man was a Ransacker who would visit any dangerous place to acquire the flower or animal someone wanted.

In fact, he had laid the very foundation for that job and even completed the maps and sea charts of the southern sea.

Yet here he was so blatantly dead. If the stories told on the island were true, what had the Sorcery Hacker hijacked to pull this one off?

It was also possible the stories relayed by Florence were not true, but to Ayato, that looked like the easy way out – a choice that would let him escape the great pressure he felt here.

If he went that way and let his guard down for no reason, he was certain his own head would soon leave his shoulders in the same way. He had no real basis for that belief, but he was confident all the same.

His method was to list out the possibilities in his head and assume the worst of them to be true.

So now he had to assume he was up against the kind of jaws capable of taking the life of a legendary man known for his survival skills.

“What should we do?” asked Florence.

“Does she look in any state to choose to flee like a rational person? Getting her to leave this place would probably take a lot of doing. We need to take this one step at a time and that means checking Oceavita first.”

“Sure.”

“One other thing, Miss Florence. The next time you ignore my warning, I will strike the back of your neck to knock you out. Is that clear?”

“Will you wake me back up with a kiss?”

“I am serious.”

“Oh, dear. You are seriously going to kiss me? I think I might blush.”

That small girl was an expert of throwing him off balance. That was unusual for him. And the fact that he was resorting to threats of violence showed he had already lost the battle.

The two of them continued on and arrived at the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute.

It was wrapped in silence.

Far more so than during his last visit. The silence was so painfully intense it increased the scent of death hanging over this area of forest. It was easy to forget this was a place for decursing and healing.

He opened the door.

Thick sheets reminiscent of ship’s sails were draped all over the lobby, perhaps as a makeshift solution to the damage caused by the Dextral Mk. IIs. Construction sorcery devices for carrying stone and for rolling up and wrapping the sheets were sitting out.

Ayato clicked his tongue.

He should have seen this coming, but he failed to cover Florence’s eyes.

The headless body of an old man in a fancy gentleman’s suit lay on the floor in the middle of the lobby. His clothes looked disturbed, so assuming the killer was not an extreme pervert, they had probably checked through his pockets for something after killing him.

“Leonardo,” said the small girl in a somehow sad and terribly mature voice.

There were no humans or demons in evidence, so the place felt like a creepy abandoned house where someone had dumped a corpse.

“…”

Ayato silently drew his Linkage Plug sword.

Florence shook her head as if to shake free of something, and…

“Has anything important already been taken away?”

“If it was that easy to find, they wouldn’t have had to check below the insole of his shoes.”

“Then was he not carrying whatever it was with him?”

“If the killer wasn’t certain he was, I doubt they would have gone to the effort of searching his corpse. It feels more like they had heard he carried whatever it was with him, but they couldn’t find it when they actually tried to find it.”

“Then where should we look?”

Ayato had already stabbed the tip of his sword into a certain point on the corpse.

The dress girl tilted her head.

“A vape?”

“I’m more interested in the disposable vapor cartridges you insert into that sorcery cigarette. What better place to hide something than among something you can carry a lot of without arousing suspicion? He just has to mark the special one with a scratch or something.”

Ayato extracted the information contained in that ordinary device.

After transferring the necessary data to the floating crystal tarot cards, he pulled the Linkage Plug sword from the smoking device’s cartridge, spun it around, and used its tip to grab at the thick sheet draped over a nearby wall. He covered the poor corpse with the sheet.

Florence gave the floating crystal tarot cards a curious look.

“Um, did you figure anything out or not?”

“I found a few names of accomplices. When he could not create a piece of technology needed for the purifying blood pools and for the Predator Island, he paid a Sorcery Hacker to steal it for him. In exchange, the Sorcery Hacker used the island’s hidden underground cavern as a safe home base for their sorcery crimes.”

“Hm?”

“I also found a log of him using a great many operators to control the Predator Island. So we know Leonardo was guilty and that another villain remains hidden in the shadows.”

However, this meant the other villain had been planting roots in this island for a quite a while now.

Ayato’s group had gotten involved in the class warfare business on that luxury sleeper train, an assassin wielding that devil’s revolver had appeared there, he had been hit by the curse, Teleria had just so happened to know a cold sleep spell that she used on him, they had decided to use Laguntreat’s decursing springs, Florence and Micha Angelos’s comments had led them to learn of the secret hidden below the island, they had ended up on the giant Annihilator-class Predator Island, and they had been caught in the attack on Fleurelisia, one of the Four Lords.

How many layers of coincidence was that?

Was it really possible to predict all of that in detail when setting up some master plan?

Or…

(Was this just one thread from a vast web of possibilities? Did they have roots planted in countless locations, so we would be caught in the web no matter what we did – even if we never even visited Laguntreat at all?)

He shook his head.

When your steps forward showed no results, it was best to come to a stop and reassess the situation instead of charging blindly onward. Building up speed with insufficient information would only lead to fantasies and conspiracy theories. For the moment, he had to focus on what he knew for a fact and use that to work out the big picture and which direction to head next.

Yes.

“The name,” muttered Ayato while flicking one of the floating crystal tarot cards.

The vape cartridge left by that dead man had contained the following name.

“Jennifer Evening.”

“?”

The answer only made Florence tilt her head, which was hardly surprising since information on Ayato’s former home rarely became public knowledge.

There was no escaping the smell of blood now.

“She was part of the Student Council Executive Committee at the Academy Towers, a sorcery educational institute run by the Static Continent’s Selected Kingdoms Combined Royal Family.”

She did not even manage her usual “my, my” this time.

Apparently even kids her age were aware that place was known as a den of geniuses and eccentrics.

But he was not done yet.

There was more to tell.

“Specifically, she is the Student Council Advisor. Making her one of the teachers.”

Part 2

Did everything have to link back there?

Even the final incident, in which Ayato had shot a friend and abandoned the Hexajinx name, had happened at the Academy Towers. He had suspected there was more to that case than met the eye and looked into it, but when he had never found anything conclusive, he had decided the pressure keeping the Academy Towers silent was coming from an external source.

Had he been naïve?

Had his initial investigation been insufficient?

Since the case had occurred there, maybe he should have just assumed anything further would be found in that location or organization.

But he had not expected the Student Council Executive Committee.

And a teacher at that.

The shooter with the devil’s revolver had mentioned the Academy Towers as well, but that may have been no more than a bluff.

However, this no longer felt like simple conflict between individuals or friction between factions. If the Student Council was involved, he had to assume this came from the Academy Towers as a whole.

But if so, why?

Ayato’s good friend had holed up in a school building and he had shot the other boy.

What further meaning could be found there?

In that space where the chilled air escaped through the holes lazily patched up with thick sheets, he turned his back on the construction equipment to think.

“Um.”

But while he was lost in thought…

“Um!”

He might not have survived if Florence had not been with him.

A sweeping horizontal attack flew by with the sound of scraping metal and he just barely moved his head out of the way in time. He had only managed to focus back on reality in time due to Florence’s voice. Otherwise, he would have been decapitated just like Leonardo.

He heard bewitching laughter and a sweet breath oozing with a toxic ripeness very different from Florence’s voice.

It was Jennifer Evening.

“Oh, what a shame.”

“You were hiding inside the construction equipment!?”

“If you had only continued to ponder the grand plan surrounding you, it would have been so easy to catch you off guard.”

The slicing attack had come from within one of the machines used to roll up the thick sheets. Had she been hiding within the empty space inside one of the rolls?

That representative of the teachers wore intellectual glasses contrasted by the wild state of the blonde hair spread out behind her. She controlled the top of the Student Council. She was a barrier of power that no child could hope to surpass. That woman in her mid-twenties licked her lips. Instead of a blue blazer like Ayato wore, she wore a tight skirt suit colored beige and chocolate brown. In her hand, she held the weapon that had supposedly fallen into the ocean from the roof of the train running along that never-ending stone bridge.

“The Queen Astaroth Revolver!?”

“You can’t help but notice that first, can you? I hate to admit it, but it is more well known.”

But Jennifer shook the weapon in her left hand to emphasize it instead. It was a skinny, rapier-style sword. Ayato was impressed she managed to use that to slice through that machinery from within, but then…

“Wait. What is that?”

“You don’t know? Really? What a shame. It really does deserve more respect. Especially after I went to the trouble of hacking it for my own purposes.”

There were a few ultra-secure systems that not even Ayato Criminaltrophy could hope to break.

For example, there was that unnatural night butterfly.

There were the two swords worn by that Minotaur who claimed to be a prince – the Butterfly Effector. Wielding those was proof one belonged to the bloodline of the Selected Kingdoms Combined Royal Family of the Static Continent and not even Ayato had been up to the task of breaking that lock.

Yes, they were supposed to be unhackable.

But what was that there that Jennifer Evening used to draw a circle in the air with a flip of her wrist?

“This is Fermiliquidio, the freezing blade. At only fifth in line to the throne, I suppose this is all you’re going to get.”

(She hacked it!!!???)

Hadn’t Striker Henrietta mentioned that the 5th prince favored Laguntreat and would secretly vacation there from time to time?

This woman had the Queen Astaroth Revolver and Fermiliquidio.

That explained it.

That explained how Leonardo Halleys, the greatest Ransacker of all time, had been eliminated so easily!!

Ayato did not have time to discuss the finer points of how exactly she had hacked Fermiliquidio. He knew Leonardo’s head really had been removed from his body, so he knew Jennifer could use that devil’s revolver and the 5th’s sword. His only option was to turn around and cover Florence’s small body.

When Jennifer swung the sword along a diagonal path, it produced an oddly light slicing sound.

A liquid appeared along the path of the sword, but who could have imagined it existed at less than 200 embers below freezing?

It was like a sharp reef tearing through a ship’s hull.

It was a symbol of death.

Like a cruel crack opening in the air, that fearsome ultracold quantum fluid burst out toward Ayato.

Part 3

Ayato’s vision went dark.

He somehow managed to remain conscious and picked up Florence’s small body.

A direct hit from that would have killed him instantly.

He immediately stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into the machinery meant to repair the lobby wall and then actually chucked the machinery backwards. It was instantly frozen, but the distortion in the heat distribution caused a portion of the ultracold liquid to explode. It had taken a straight and stable course like water from a hose, but now it curved sharply.

Pain clutched at his heart, but it was too soon to breathe a sigh of relief. He could not rely on Florence’s limping pace, so he held her under an arm and ran for Oceavita’s exit.

“Take aim.”

He heard a voice from behind and frowned as he focused on that devil’s revolver, but…

“On second thought, this would be faster.”

With that casual comment, she once more released a torrent of liquid that refused to freeze even at 0 embers.

Ayato immediately jumped to the side in front of the exit. The door and wall no longer mattered. The ultracold stream missed him and instead froze the wall, which cracked and then shattered like an ephemeral crystal.

Now was not the time to let it entrance him.

He carried Florence outside while being very careful not to touch any of the frozen wreckage. He hacked the various sorcery devices in the area while fleeing into the tropical forest.

That bespectacled teacher was on another level.

The Queen Astaroth Revolver would kill its wielder with a curse if they failed to kill their target within 6 shots. If she had already hacked such a powerful sword, she should not have had to show off such a dangerous gun, but maybe he should have expected that kind of excessive power from someone connected to the Academy Towers.

“That’s right. You need to think, Ayato Criminaltrophy.”

He heard a very teacher-like comment coming from Oceavita behind him.

He flicked one of his crystal tarot cards just as she stepped out from the hole in the wall there.

The nail gun at her feet activated.

But she did not even glance down at it.

Several sharp nails shot out with the sound of compressed air, but their trajectory made no sense. They all veered off course.

(Did she rapidly cool the air to change the density? I can’t get a stable ballistic course like that!!)

It could be hard to imagine, but the air you breathed could be converted from a gas to a liquid or solid if cooled far enough. At the Academy Towers, that liquid air was further separated into oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and other elements for use in experiments.

That meant the density and traits of the air could be changed.

Since projectiles tore through the air to fly, they were greatly affected by the air’s density. Think of it like placing a thick water tank between the weapon and the target.

With a sinister shattering sound, the nail gun covered in white frost and then shattered without her so much as touching it. She was singlehandedly rejecting the tropical climate.

“Why do you think this revolver continues to appear before you? Do you really think you can escape it? There is no leaving the path set out for you.”

“…”

“Ah ha ha. Fermiliquidio really is a piece of junk. Maybe I should have been less modest and aimed higher. I might have had better luck if I had the Butterfly Effector at my disposal.”

Giving away their position would be a bad idea all around, but Florence almost casually spoke up from his arms.

“What happened to the continental prince that sword belongs to? Y’know, the 5th in line to the throne. I had heard he loved traveling and often came here in secret.”

“Don’t be silly, little girl. Wielding this is proof of one’s position in the line of succession, so this means I am 5th in line now. I’m a little embarrassed the number is so pathetically high, though.”

“(You’re the one that damaged my outer shell.)”

“I know what you are thinking, but I am honestly surprised it only affected your right side.”

The conversation had taken an odd turn.

It felt like listening to a record when the needle skipped, so Ayato gave the girl in his arm a puzzled look.

“Miss Florence?”

But he did not have time to pursue that question at the moment.

The next attack came without hesitation. The ultracold stream branched irregularly each time it pierced a tree since that disturbed the heat distribution, but that also tore up the thick palm trees and mangroves from their roots. Despite the sun beating down on them, a salty stream instantly froze over.

If the 5th prince had a habit of sneaking away on his royal cruiser, then the royal guards and servants in the castle would not have always known where he was. That opened up the possibility that he had indeed gone missing in this southern sea.

“Are you sure you want to spend all your time focused on this second-rate sword that’s never winning first place in anything? You haven’t forgotten about this devil’s revolver here, have you?”

“Kh.”

Ayato clenched his teeth and tensed while carrying Florence.

As a category of sorcery gun, magnums forcibly amplified the power of the magic without taking recoil into consideration. And if that one did belong to the devil Ayato knew, it could be even more destructive than the Predator Island’s main cannons depending on what magic was used.

Jennifer was a magic specialist capable of easily taking over the Fermiliquidio.

She was no amateur.

Amplifying the magic that far was liable to tear her body to pieces with the recoil, but she might know some trick for suppressing that recoil.

Ayato finally understood why Micha Angelos had guided him to that train and this island even though it meant paying him twice back to back.

This woman was from the Academy Towers.

Now, Ayato was not one to talk since he was officially still a student there, but could one of the teachers really take things this far? This seemed excessive even for a den of freaks and obsessives. She had hacked a system involved in the royal line of succession, so this was more than the Combined Royal Family could control. This also introduced a risk of Micha herself being hacked, so it would be difficult for the dual-wielding Minotaur to solve this himself. It made sense that he was so desperate to get some help from a Sorcery Hacker.

(That poker face in a purple bikini can go straight to hell. She just put all our lives at risk again. If only I’d realized how desperate they were sooner. Then she couldn’t have said no to the sun oil.)

Ayato was very serious about that. He had risked his life each step of the way: the train, the shooter, the hermit crabs, the warship, the Four Lord, and now a prince’s sword and a devil’s revolver. A rough estimate said 40 gold was nowhere near enough to cover it all. And since he also had to divide that sum four ways, he would probably have made more money working part-time at a souvenir shop.

(But how much processing space would you need to hack something equivalent to Micha Angelos? It would have to be 5000 or even 10,000. She might have established herself here on Laguntreat, but where did she get that many sorcery devices?)

“Wait, don’t tell me.”

“Oh, finally catching on? I really didn’t expect to be able to hide it after all this.”

Ayato gathered his thoughts while pushing Florence behind cover.

Jennifer Evening had used the island’s underground as a base.

And what had been stored down there?

(The Annihilator-class Predator Island. Is she using that as Sorcery Hacking boost server?)

However, not even that would be enough to reach quintuple digits. He could guess that warship was only somewhere between 4000 and 5000.

But he just had to think back to what had happened in the sky city. What had he done at the end there to strike back at the greedy high priest?

He had jabbed the end of his Linkage Plug into the forehead of Level 9999 Demon Lord Nirvelphany.

Or more accurately, into the local network embedded into her body via various parts. That acted as the antenna and safety device for accessing the Zodiac Bright Eater sorcery cannon floating in satellite orbit.

The control system built into a powerful demon’s body could be used to raise one’s level when hacked.

“The Predator Island’s main cannons…no, the wreckage of the broken ship function as a Linkage Plug, don’t they?”

“Yes, and I have your efforts to thank for stabbing it in there so deep.”

“Are you saying you used that to hack into Water Lord Fleurelisia!?”

“And that is why that girl there is limping.”

The girl jumped at that.

Jennifer did not bother explaining her strange comment.

“The warship provided 5000 and the Four Lord provided 5000 more. Well, I really only hacked the outer shell that protects the core, but I didn’t need the core to reach the level I needed. The local mastermind didn’t seem to understand her value, so I made sure to corrupt the entire island myself.”

“The ship wasn’t enough?”

“This is the 5th prince’s sword after all. Stealing her was easy enough, but she went into randomized hibernation. I couldn’t break the encryption and fully hack her without doubling my level using the Four Lord.”

Ayato dodged an explosive torrent and the palm tree he had been hiding behind was blown away.

Fleurelisia had sunk the warship, but were its sorcery systems, including the spirit engine, still running?

It was fortunate Fleurelisia herself had been damaged a fair bit by the splintered wood and artillery. If either the ship or the Four Lord had been unharmed, Ayato would have been exposed to several of these attacks simultaneously.

His time was finally up.

With the devil’s revolver, Fermiliquidio, and a Sorcery Hacking level of 10,000, Jennifer was untouchable on this island.

“Miss Florence.”

“Yes?”

“Be honest with me.”

“You mean about my right leg?”

“I can tell you are hiding something, but the reason does not really matter.”

The mysterious Florence actually looked taken aback.

But Ayato continued nonetheless.

“Your life comes first and everything else comes second. So tell me – how much can you move? Can you run like normal?”

“I can.”

He had no way of knowing if that was true or not and he did not have time to argue, so he had to trust her.

“Then on my signal, you run left while I run right. It might be worrying with seemingly nothing around, but if you keep going without looking back, you will find a cave. My friend is waiting there, so you have nothing to worry about. She has a truly powerful drive for justice, so if you ask for help, she is sure to protect you.”

“I don’t like that plan.”

“I do hate having to scare a young lady like you, but like I said: I really do not have it in me to accept any requests beyond your survival.”

“But.”

She started to argue, so he lightly flicked her bright right leg.

That seemed to send an unpleasant tingling through it.

“Nyah!?”

“Again, I will not ask what caused this, but you cannot possibly remain on the front line like that.”

“A-ahem! I can’t let my guard down around you for a second, can I?”

She must have been embarrassed she jumped like that since her face was bright red and she cleared her throat unnecessarily. Ayato smiled and continued.

“And once you do arrive at the cave, there is something I would ask of you. The situation could hardly be worse, but I would like for you to give me some small chance.”

“What can I do?”

He summed it up as simply as he could.

It was not that difficult a thing for her, but…

“But what will you do?” she asked.

“I will defeat that.”

Still crouched down in his blue blazer, Ayato pointed his thumb at the monster in the tight skirt.

“That rapier controls a quantum fluid that remains stable at -200 embers, but no matter how extraordinarily powerful it is, it is still technology being boosted with Sorcery Hacking. Unlike that Four Lord, Jennifer herself is not especially powerful.”

“…”

“Get ready. I will give you a count of three, so you focus on what you need to do. Three, two, one.”

Ayato used his Linkage Plug sword to rustle the underbrush and branches around him as he took off running.

He drew the predator’s attention while the little girl favored her left leg as she limped off into the forest in the other direction.

“Oh, such valiance.”

(You know I’m luring you away from her and you still follow me!?)

A horizontal geyser shot toward him. The attack was made in the opposite direction from limping Florence. Maybe Jennifer did not want to lose sight of him and maybe she had someone else who could search out Florence for her.

It did not really matter which.

As long as he could defeat that glasses teacher during this turn, that stolen sword could not take anyone’s lives.

“Ha ha. You’re wide open☆”

“!?”

She sniped at him with the ultracold quantum fluid.

He practically rolled along the sand to dive behind the overturned boats lined up in the forest for use in the river.

“Why bother dodging? You’re only drawing out the pain.”

“…”

“This forest has very few of the artificial devices you need to fight. Not that hacking a bunch of household appliances would help you when I’m at Level 10,000. Do you enjoy chess, foolish king? If you really have it in you to challenge a full set of pieces with only your king, then bring it on.”

Nothing he was doing here would save him.

Sorcery Hackers fought by hacking devices and resonating with the gathered processing space to increase their level and expand their options. His opponent had reached the quintuple digits, so hacking everything on the island would not be enough to fight back now.

He had no chance as long as he remained on the island of Laguntreat. And Jennifer was not going to let him leave the island to try again later. This isolated island was surrounded by the southern sea on all sides. He had no idea how far it was to the next closest island and that island would be uninhabited anyway.

So was it over?

Was he out of options?

Jennifer Evening was still only using her left hand. She had yet to even place her finger on the revolver’s trigger. What would happen if she killed Ayato here? Was there any guarantee that Teleria, Mamilis, Henrietta, Florence, and the other islanders would be safe? When she had so readily decapitated Leonardo Halleys, the influential old man who had been helping her?

He could not just sit idly by and watch.

He also had that previous promise to keep, so he had to focus on any chance he had, no matter how flimsy.

(Yes.)

He looked up while still hiding behind cover. He thought he had no chance on this isolated island, but was that really true? How had all this begun? What was the very first landmine he had stepped on at the bidding of that cruel intermediary Micha Angelos?

He looked up at the sun.

He was interested in its angle.

“Which direction is that uninhabited island?”

Part 4

Academy Towers Student Council Advisor Jennifer Evening squinted one eye unhappily behind her glasses.

Fermiliquidio was certainly powerful, but its aim was poor. A hit from that -200 ember liquid would shatter a human like glass, along with any trees and stone walls nearby, but she had so far failed to kill that one boy running away from her.

She wished she had written out some correction parameters in advance.

“Now, then.”

With a swish of her long blonde hair, she focused on her right hand. The devil’s revolver held there would not betray her expectations, but she would actually have a harder time using it.

Just as Ayato could not use a sorcery gun and his Linkage Plug sword with equal proficiency, the skills to openly use magic and the skills to hijack it behind the scenes were separate things. It required very different kinds of mental and physical work. And just like pouring ice water into hot water, mixing the two would make both less effective.

(I should probably pursue him with Fermiliquidio and switch to the revolver once he is cornered.)

“Oh?”

She tilted her head a bit as she walked through the forest.

She saw a bright light, like she had reached the end of a tunnel.

Ayato had evidently left the forest to reach the crowded beach. And she knew a cunning Sorcery Hacker would not panic and start running around randomly without a plan in mind.

He was aiming for something with watchful eye.

Except for the tourists and Oceavita patients visiting the island, no one on Laguntreat was innocent. And based on Ayato Criminaltrophy’s past actions, it was simple enough to conclude he divided the world around him into two categories and would readily make use of those he categorized as evil.

Was he going to use the Mermaids as living shields while building up his level bit by bit with their everyday devices?

(Does he think he can combat my Level 10,000 that way?)

The teacher in the beige and chocolate tight skirt suit adjusted her grip on her gun and sword while licking her lips. She picked up her pace to a brisk walk and finally to a run.

She left the tropical forest and the view around her opened up.

She quickly concluded she had been mistaken.

This was a station.

She found the train station for the intercontinental ocean railroad.

This place did not fit in with the rest of the island. The large station building was more than 5 stories tall and built with a stone roof and metal columns. The tracks arriving from either side descended toward their respective platforms, giving it all a flattened V-shape. That was to be expected when the ocean railroad was built 50 esoule up to allow large ships to pass below.

And.

Sure enough, this would provide many more sorcery devices than from stabbing his Linkage Plug into the parasols and coolers used by the Mermaids sunbathing on the beach.

Ayato looked back her way while still running toward the giant station building. He moved his Linkage Plug sword just enough to scoop up a tough construction sheet folded up on the beach. The large sheet spread out in the air, briefly blocking her view, but he once more grabbed the sheet, which was likely a recycled ship’s sail, and ran inside the building.

“Are you kidding me!?”

He was not within arm’s reach, so Jennifer immediately raised Fermiliquidio in her left hand, but she stopped herself.

A beautiful Rusalka, who probably saw the crowds here as perfect for pickpocketing, and an Undine girl, who was carrying a large paper bag, screamed when they saw the glittering blade. A rich human tourist threw some gold on the sand and begged for their life, but Jennifer ignored it all and thought to herself.

Destroying him would be simple enough.

But if she did bring down the entire building on top of him, how hard would it be to dig out the corpse and confirm his identity? And would she ever actually believe he was dead if it happened where she could not see him? How long would it take her to prove he had not switched places with a complete stranger?

This was not an issue of whether or not Ayato would actually do that.

It was about Jennifer keeping her own excessive suspicions at bay.

She had already eliminated Leonardo Halleys and she doubted she could stay on Laguntreat for long with his backing gone. Sorcery Hackers worked best while still hidden, but she was sick of killing time in the cave she had found for herself here.

She wanted to get this all over with and return to the Academy Towers.

That was the natural conclusion for the powerful.

“Dammit!”

She clicked her tongue and ran into the station building to find a large lobby. However, the design seemed to ignore the regional climate. The glass ceiling let the afternoon sun shine through and the rapidly-rising temperature was held in check by blasting the sorcery air conditioning. The structure used a lot of metal columns, but the designer had not accounted for the tropical ocean. Rustproof paint was not enough to prevent damage from the sea breeze and metal would also expand, especially in a hot climate.

The round clock on the wall of the station created a stark contrast from the relaxed atmosphere of the island outside.

Jennifer caught sight of a thick material flapping out of the corner of her eye. It was that construction sheet. It was just outside the range of her glasses, so she could not make out the detailed shape, however.

“There are you are, Hexajinx!”

The glasses teacher took off running once more.

Unlike a commuter station in a big city, this station was fairly empty for its size. Perhaps because the island was a health resort. Only people headed home after a long vacation and nerds excited by the train itself would come here. A half-naked Selkie girl with her seal costume only pulled up to her hips was lying on a bench to take advantage of the human-made air conditioning. A boy with a silver halide camera in hand seemed to legit be here for the train. He entirely ignored the half-naked girl less than an esoule from him.

Everyone here gaped at Jennifer’s weapons and then fled behind the columns or below the benches. Some demons were not near enough to either of those and simply crouched down on the floor.

Ayato’s blue blazer fluttered as he crossed the ticket gate and made his way to the platform.

(You fool. What good will all the miniscule devices here do you? You could hack every household appliance on the island and not even reach Level 1000, while I have 5000 from the sunk warship and another 5000 from Fleurelisia. I have an insurmountable lead here!)

“Out of ideas, problem child!?”

Just as she rushed onto the long and narrow platform, the boy made a move from right next to her. As if he had been pressed up against the wall next to the entrance, waiting for her.

“What?”

Only after making contact did she catch on.

This was not about the Sorcery Hacking battle or slicing at her with his Linkage Plug sword. She immediately swung her own sword and sent out some ultracold liquid, but he had thrown something transparent at her.

The fist-sized object was a snowdome-like Media Summoner, which caused the ultracold liquid to burst at close range. It was going to splatter down on her head at this rate.

“Gah!?”

She frantically jumped back and fell down onto her butt. She had tumbled right off the platform.

She was equipped with the Queen Astaroth Revolver and the Fermiliquidio, but even with those fearsome weapons, she was still a Sorcery Hacker who worked behind the scenes. She had not been trained like a knight or a guard. If she had been given time to count to three, Ayato would have been torn to pieces, but when it came down to a split second, Jennifer was the one defeated by a simple crystal ball.

She clenched her teeth at the ordinary pain and got to thinking.

(I’m impressed he had the guts to approach me!! Did he not consider the possibility of being frozen solid by the quantum fluid!?)

However, Jennifer Evening should have been focused on something else. There were not many, but there were people in the station. They were either returning home after completing their treatment or they were nerds who loved coming to see the trains themselves. But the intercontinental ocean railroad only ran once every few days.

So.

So.

So.

“Huh?”

That teacher turned from Ayato to view something else while still fallen on her rear on the track one level down from the platform.

A great mass was approaching.

A deafening whistle belatedly stabbed into her ears.

Part 5

The train had a fairly plain exterior compared to the sleeper train that Ayato’s group had taken.

It was probably a freight train.

The people who had come to the platform without knowing if it would stop or simply pass through may have been hoping for a shipment of some continental ingredients that could not be found on the tropical island. Like grains such as wheat.

“Kh.”

It would have been nice had that ended things, but Ayato doubted it would be that easy.

At the instant of impact, he twirled on the spot while holding the construction sheet he had picked up from the beach. He flapped the thick material at the air.

But not because he was afraid of getting some blood on him.

The edge of that sturdy waterproof cloth, which was recycled from a ship’s sail, caught on the lock holding shut the side door of a container car on the freight train rushing past the platform. That tugged on Ayato as well and the sudden force was like a powerful blow to the back.

(Agh, ah…ghhh!!)

But it could have been worse.

Movies and plays often had scenes of people jumping onto a speeding train from a bridge, but whether you hit the side wall or landed on the roof, a train was a train. Touching it would tear off your limb.

He had needed to wrap himself in something soft to distribute the force across his entire body.

If a giant grabbed you around the torso and chucked you with all their strength, would you prefer to hit a solid brick wall or a stretchy ship’s sail? It was the same principle here.

“I should count myself lucky if that didn’t damage any of my bones or organs.”

He clenched his teeth, grabbed the window frame, and climbed up. He could not count on his aching body’s stamina reserves lasting long, so he climbed to the roof all at once.

He heard a dull sound and looked up while on all fours to see the woman in the beige and chocolate suit walking back from the front of the train, despite the train supposedly hitting her head on. Her glasses were cracked and her clothing was torn in places. He could only guess she had produced that ultracold quantum fluid just before the train hit and let that burst at her feet from the temperature difference to launch her up onto the train. That stable quantum fluid was as cold as -200 embers, so it would explosively vaporize when placed in this tropical environment.

She had harmed herself to survive.

Even after nearly colliding with someone, the centipede-like train did not stop. Ayato hoped the ultracold temperature had not harmed the controls or safety devices in any way.

“Are you done yet?”

“…”

“You cannot defeat me with anything on the island, so this train from outside the island was your best bet. So just try it. Go around sticking that Linkage Plug into everything you like. Keep fighting and see how far that takes you.”

He did not have much choice in the matter.

He could not challenge Jennifer to a head-on fight when she held both the Fermiliquidio and the devil’s revolver, so he could only drag his aching body back along the train.

“Yes, you can start by resonating with the simple things – the lights, the balancers, the shock absorbers.”

He could not simply stab the sword into the roof below him. She was following along behind him, so she would pull out any Linkage Plug blades she could reach. So he went for the walls. When he saw an opening, he would lean out from the roof as if crawling and stab his sword in.

“And after building up a high enough level, you plan to aim for something larger.”

She understood perfectly.

Had she not just killed him yet because the train was too unsteady? If the wind blew in or the train shook unexpectedly when she was swinging Fermiliquidio, she would only end up destroying herself.

Her plan was to corner him at the end of the train.

“I wonder what’s in those freight containers. Ah ha ha! Seawater filters!? Well, lucky you!! You can build up your level quick with those!!”

He knew what she was doing, but he was already on the precipice.

He had arrived at the very back and had nowhere else to go. He would never survive if he dropped down to the track below.

She was grinning.

“So what level did you reach? Maybe 3000 using the entire freight train? But what good is that against my 10,000!?”

He stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into the roof below him.

A high-pitched blast pounded on his eardrums.

It was the train’s whistle.

The glasses teacher looked surprised at first, but then she held her sides and guffawed.

“Pff. Ah hah hah hah hah hah!!”

“…”

“Couldn’t you have at least slammed on the brakes to try and unbalance me!? Have you learned nothing about Sorcery Hacking since switching jobs?”

“What makes you so sure I haven’t?”

The blue blazer that symbolized his position as a pupil flapped wildly in the wind as he grabbed the hilt of his Linkage Plug sword.

“The Fermiliquidio is proof that someone is 5th in line to the throne and I’m sure you’re feeling awfully proud of yourself for hacking it, but you’re just tricking it into giving you authorization, aren’t you? If control is retaken through the proper route, you’ll be bitten by the very weapon you’re relying on.”

“And how do you expect to do that!? I will admit this intercontinental spirit train is large and its cargo of filters and such might bring your level up to around 3000, but I have 10,000! I have the devil’s revolver and the prince’s sword!! You can’t lay a finger on me!!”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Ayato was still smiling. “This train is constantly on the move. And moving quite quickly along the ocean railroad, I might add. Level 5000? Level 10,000? That only applies back on the island, so what does it matter here?”

Jennifer frantically looked back at Laguntreat behind her, but it was already vanishing into the distance.

“Oh, no.”

Instead, she could see smaller dots of land moving toward them. Those would be the uninhabited islands. The bent metal tower sticking up from the vegetation of one would be what Teleria had called a lightning cloud cannon.

“You’ve proudly claimed to have stolen that from the 5th prince, but what happened to him after that, I wonder?”

“You think he’s still trying to reclaim it from somewhere? Nonsense!! He couldn’t have survived that much blood loss! Besides, do you have any idea how long its been since I set this plan in motion!?”

“Fermiliquidio manipulates an ultracold quantum fluid, which puts it on the level of Secondary Taboo Sleep, if not even higher. What if the sword put her master in cold sleep to preserve his life at the last moment?”

“…”

“Now, that’s probably much easier said than done, but that 5th prince is well-known for spending so much time messing with sorcery devices he never sets foot outside. He might not be on the level of a Sorcery Hacker, but he would understand the basic system behind it. Now, a question: what level would a royal cruiser be? He might be new at it, but with that as a starting point, he would be able to control all sorts of sorcery devices.”

“I sank that ship!!”

“Why would that matter? Hell, you’re using the Predator Island’s processing space right now and it’s sunk.”

The scales were tipping.

She could sense something major developing here.

“And the 5th prince enjoys clay target shooting. He wanted to find a hobby that got him outside more often, but he stubbornly refused to shoot live animals. …Now, maybe he is dead. Or maybe he’s frozen and asleep. But if he managed to set up a certain trick with the last of his strength, he just might have been able to do something like this.”

Ayato pointed over with his thumb.

Instead of turning that way, Jennifer Evening held the Fermiliquidio tight. She intended to end this before anything more could happen.

Which was why she failed to see it.

The lightning cloud cannon protruding from the uninhabited island’s forest slowly turned to aim toward something other than the sky. Its bent joint folded up even further to aim down at the ground.

There was no such thing as truly unmanned magic, but that giant sorcery device would function as long as someone’s mind was there to operate it, even if they were licking up every last drop of water to avoid dying of thirst and even if they were frozen in ice.

Ayato gave another blast of the train’s whistle.

He intentionally triggered the auto-attacking system.

“I’m counting on you.”

The actual projectile was an enormous hunk of ice.

It hit midway between Ayato and Jennifer, tearing up the roof, and embedding itself in the train.

That cannon was supposed to blow away thick lightning clouds, but this did not seem to be a malfunction.

Ayato had speculated the prince had remade it into an auto-sniping system that would act as a dying message upon detecting his attacker, but apparently not.

The 5th prince had instead adjusted its power.

“I see. He’s even more of an old softy than I’d heard.”

Had the triggering condition been detecting a Sorcery Hacker combating Jennifer? The ice shell launched in response to the hacked train’s whistle split open to reveal a device within and Ayato stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into that.

It was a complex sorcery key used to operate the royal cruiser.

When viewed as a single large system, hacking it would provide a level of…

“About 2500!!”

“!?”

The impact hit them both just as hard, but knowing it was coming meant a lot. Jennifer was knocked off balance and Ayato managed to rush toward her and strike with his Linkage Plug sword.

They had locked blades, but Jennifer laughed while holding her sword in just her left hand.

“So what? Adding 2500 to 3000 still won’t reach my level. 10,000 is literally an order of magnitude higher!!”

“…”

“Did you think this weapon was made so a momentary boost could overwhelm it? It’s time you were torn limb from limb by a torrent of -200 embers!!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

Part 6

The clock continued to tick off of the train as well.

The white dress girl called Florence kept her aching right leg moving while pulling on straitlaced Striker Henrietta’s hand.

Yes, she had been left with a job.

The boy fighting on that train had asked her to do something.

“This way, hurry!”

“W-wait just a moment. I am supposed to be watching over my friend while she sleeps.”

“I do appreciate that, but the Jennifer woman has left the island. No one here will harm that girl now, so this is more important!”

“Why would you appreciate that???”

They left the tropical forest and arrived on the white beach.

Water Lord Fleurelisia’s gargantuan body awaited them there. She had been peppered with pieces of the ship and the Predator Island’s shellfire had torn off an entire wing, so the beach was stained with her blood.

“Remove those.” The girl pointed. “I want you to remove the armor shards and wood splinters from that wound. I call them shards and splinters, but they’re bigger than you and I need your great strength to pull them out. So please, won’t you help this powerless girl?”

Henrietta saw the Four Lord as a target of fear, but the girl must have been a different story. Henrietta had heard about those horrific purifying blood pools on the warship, so if Florence respected the Four Lord as a guardian deity and wanted to heal her wound, Henrietta could view that as a way to help the girl.

But.

(Hm? Did I ever use my magic in front of her???)

“Maybe a Static Continent knight is not duty-bound to protect the residents of this distant island, but if you have any kindness in your heart, please save this life before it is lost!”

“Hmph.”

Henrietta did not like how that was phrased. It made her feel like she was being set up.

But she still drew the bolt-action carbine from her hip.

“Listen, girl. When you truly want help, you can skip all of that rationalization. Just ask for help.”

“Oh.”

“And I, Striker Destrius, will never shy away from danger when it will assist my king or the people. Where exactly I am in the world is but a minor detail. Or to put it another way, don’t worry about a thing.”

The blonde Striker raised her large sorcery gun toward the sky and loosed a roar as she pulled the trigger.

“Primary Ex Massive!!”

Part 7

The white torrent of ultracold quantum fluid was nowhere to be seen.

“What…what happened!?”

“Your biggest mistake was trying to do this all on your own. There are other people out there fighting just like I am here. And those small actions can link together.” Ayato gave her a rough smile while pouring strength into his Linkage Plug sword. “For example, if the Linkage Plug is removed from Fleurelisia, you lose that processing space. You can’t control the Fermiliquidio with just the Predator Island’s 5000. In fact, who do you think’s gonna win if it comes down to a 5000 vs. 5000 tug-of-war!?”

She was repelled.

Ayato held his sword two-handed and Jennifer held hers one-handed, so there was an unavoidable difference in strength. And he jabbed his Linkage Plug forward just as she staggered back.

He stabbed it into the prince’s sword she held.

“Oh, no.”

Several 0.1 esoule knives fell from her thighs inside her tight skirt. Were those her Linkage Plugs? He could see what looked like a trigger on the grip, so they may have been rigged to launch the blade out with a spring.

“Now, then.”

But what about this time?

Jennifer’s trick had failed and Ayato had contacted the prince’s sword with his blade’s processing space greatly expanded.

“Can you maintain control?”

A low buzz came from Jennifer’s left hand, but not because the weapon was preparing to launch its quantum fluid.

In fact…

“Normal functioning of Fermiliquidio restored. Illegal access by unauthorized user detected. Executing emergency defensive procedures in accordance with the special laws regarding protection of the Selected Kingdoms Combined Royal Family.”

A stiff feminine voice came from it.

And…

“Ugh.”

A light slicing sound followed.

“Agh!?”

If Jennifer Evening had been even a moment slower to let go, the ring of quantum fluid emitted by the sword would have frozen her shoulder and severed her arm. Her suit split open a bit and something like a crystal pendulum fell out. That was her Linkage Monitor. Without that, she could not use her Sorcery Hacking.

The rapier stabbed into the freight train’s roof and a dragonfly landed on its pommel. That unnatural insect was made of pure white silk and silverwork.

Once Ayato blinked, it had become a little girl in a classic maid uniform whose silver hair was worn in gorgeous ringlet curls. The maid’s luxurious appearance clashed with her tiny stature and countless sorcery guns of various sizes emerged from her back.

“What is your name?” bluntly asked Ayato.

“Angela Messenger. Not that I have any obligation to answer questions from the likes of you.”

He could detect a combination of harshness and kindness in that one short response. Exactly the high quality he would expect from a royal maid. Maybe it was because they had a shared enemy and maybe she was thankful his plan had restored her to normal, but she seemed to have set the boy very low on her threat priority list despite him being as much of a Sorcery Hacker as Jennifer.

With blatant irritation on her face, Angela brushed off her maid uniform to remove the Linkage Plug blades like they were dry leaves.

Had she decided his Sorcery Hacking was more benevolent than Jennifer’s?

Perhaps the difference was his intent to eventually return control to her compared to Jennifer’s intent to keep the maid under her control forever.

Whatever the case, Angela’s top priority was Jennifer Evening.

That woman had stolen a proof of royalty, wielded its power without permission, caused needless conflict, and murdered someone on that island.

That guardian maid would very likely conclude that was worthy of the death penalty.

“Kh!!”

All of a sudden, Jennifer’s right hand hopped up while wielding that revolver that could rival a ship’s gun, but her trigger finger froze in place.

She might have been able to drive away the 5th’s guardian if she had used that devil’s revolver to its fullest. Angela was only herself and she could not use Fermiliquidio’s power. Now that the sword had left Jennifer’s control, that ultracold quantum fluid was no longer a factor, unless the prince – its rightful owner – were here. The number of guns spread out behind Angela was impressive, but the battle would remain in the realm of a sorcery gun shootout.

But Jennifer had already set Ayato Criminaltrophy as her initial target. She was done for if she used up all 6 shots and, even if she did destroy the ringlet curls maid with some shots remaining, Ayato would only have to run away and wait for her to waste the rest of her ammo.

Yes.

That teacher had hacked herself some weapons to give herself power beyond her actual skill. She was not a sorcery gun specialist like Teleria or Henrietta. Ayato himself knew how hard it was to master both skills at once. That large gun would be hard enough to use at the best of times and the roof of an unsteady freight train with lots of wind blowing through was far from being the best of times. With the fear of death thrown into the mix, a gun amateur like her would never be able to shoot straight.

In fact, she had not fired that sorcery gun even once this whole time.

If she had shot Ayato when their blades were locked earlier, she might have been able to kill him. But the fear had stopped her. If she fired that enormous revolver with just one hand, she might lose her balance atop the speeding train. And she feared the revolver’s curse as well.

“C’mon, do it.”

So Ayato provoked her.

He was injured and exhausted, but he still slowly shifted to a position that did not leave him and the silver ringlet curls maid both in Jennifer’s line of fire.

“With the Queen Astaroth Revolver, who wins is really a matter of chance, but it will let you fight well enough that it comes down to luck. I’ve used it, so I know.”

“Nonsense,” insisted the maid. “Must I prove you wrong with a personal demonstration of my ability?”

He ignored the maid’s mixture of positive and negative.

“If you’re worried about the ammo situation, then you can start with me. That lets you use all 6 shots for taking out the target you’ve set. Kill me in that time and you earn the right to reload. Then you’ll have another full set of 6 to challenge this dangerous maid. That sounds fair, don’t you think?”

“…!?”

She clenched her teeth so hard he could have sworn it was audible from where he was.

He was not exactly wrong, but it was not that simple. She had no idea if she could match that maid with 100% of her focus, so what would happen if she shifted her focus to deal with someone else? The battle would be over in the blink of an eye.

Defeating them both with three shots each was not possible, so Ayato’s logic should have been correct, but her physical body could not keep up with that.

“Maybe something happened in my past. Maybe I’ve made an enemy of the entire Student Council or even the Academy Towers as a whole. I don’t even know why that devil’s revolver is obsessed with me.”

He raised his Linkage Plug Sword which was no better than an ordinary metal pipe when not being used to hack something.

Ayato Criminaltrophy put on a vicious smile while viewing this from a different angle than when he was the Hexajinx.

“But this isn’t about you. You’re just a courier.”

She had held Level 10,000 processing power.

She had wielded the freezing blade of the Combined Royal Family.

She had wielded the devil’s revolver.

But when just one of the pieces collapsed, a dreadful domino effect was set in motion. The perfect scenario she had set up for herself was working to trap her now that she had lost her sword and had dropped her Linkage Monitor pendulum.

Ayato and Angela stepped to either side to approach poor Jennifer from both sides at once.

It really did not matter how many shots she had left.

Right now, she was at Level 0.

Jennifer Evening had never been skilled at direct combat, so she never stood a chance.

A single blow was all it took for her world to explode with a dull thud.

Phase XX: To the Continent

The freight train finally came to an emergency stop on the long stone bridge. That would be a problem for the engineer and the armed conductors, but it was necessary. Ayato would have to dodge responsibility by using the authority of the Static Continent’s Combined Royal Family.

“What?”

But young-looking Angela Messenger looked quizzically up at him while carrying unconscious Jennifer over her shoulder like a sack of wheat.

“We have no authority out here since it is not part of our continent. I am touched you thought to rely on me, though.”

“That leaves just one option: run away!!”

Even a child would be vaguely aware that the fee for stopping a train would be steep. Even more so in the world of the ultra-wealthy that was an intercontinental train. If he was caught, his life was essentially over right then and there.

There was nowhere to run to on that single long railroad across the ocean, but it paid off to run back the way the train had come. In other words, toward Laguntreat. The train had just the one spirit engine loaded into the front car, so it was not made to back up except for small adjustments. The journey was peaceful save for the fire and wind magic fired back at him by the armed human conductors.

“How did I end up defeating a villain and restoring peace to the world!? All I wanted to do was find that damn ice coffin!!”

“That is a standard feature of adventure stories, so just accept it,” said the little maid. “But if it would make you feel better, I am willing to give you a head pat.”

Evening was approaching by the time they arrived back at the island, but this was a tropical climate and the sun was still beating down on them. If he did not have that long straightaway to thank for his victory, the journey back would have broken his spirit.

Having to take that direct, straightforward path was rough on a Sorcery Hacker who loved searching for detours and loopholes. Still, he somehow made it back to the oceanside train station and walked through the building to reach Laguntreat’s beach once more.

An Undine girl was filling a liquor bottle with water from a beach shower booth, so she may have been in the business of bumping into people, dropping the bottle, and demanding they repay her for the “expensive drink”. Was that a trick she had inherited from the previous generation? At this point, Ayato was starting to feel like he and the demons of Laguntreat were birds of a feather.

In one of the shower booths, a woman in a purple bikini was washing the sand and salt from her skin and twisting her soft body to check on her tan.

“You only barely squeaked by with a passing grade there, Sorcery Hacker,” said the person who had done nothing at all besides lie around sipping at cold drinks. “You caused far too much monetary loss.”

“What will happen to Jennifer?”

“She has made herself a direct threat to the entire system behind the Combined Royal Family, so I will be taking her away, of course. Is that a problem?”

The Academy Towers Student Council Advisor had come all the way out here with the devil’s revolver and the 5th’s sword to deal with Ayato.

She had to know something about the truth behind the incident in which he shot his former friend.

But Micha Angelos had too much firepower for him to argue the point. Defying her here could easily get him obliterated on the spot.

(I should have gotten Jennifer to tell me exactly how she hacked that maid.)

“That glint in your eye is a sign of dangerous criminal thoughts. If you have any hope at all for a long life, I would recommend reconsidering.”

She had her back turned and her eyes closed while taking a shower, yet she still saw right through him. She truly had no blind spots. She was currently fixing the butt of her purple bikini with a finger, but he could not let his guard down.

After turning off the shower, the purple woman grabbed a nearby towel, placed it over her head, and turned toward him.

“I will pay you as promised, but you must personally send an official report from a Media Summoner. Angela, I must speak with you concerning the disappearance of the 5th prince. Where exactly did Jennifer Evening steal you? I trust someone of your skill managed to put him in hibernation, but we must begin the search from those coordinates. Based on the range of Jennifer’s activities, I would guess it was somewhere in this region of ocean or on one of the smaller uninhabited islands.”

“…”

“Angela, I am not going to lecture you, so stop silently clinging to that boy’s back. Befriending that sort of unfaithful gigolo will only lead to sorrow.”

He came dangerously close to obtaining another party member. The silver ringlet curls maid carrying Jennifer gave a regretful look back toward Ayato, but Micha Angelos grabbed her hand and led her away.

The purple bikini woman dropped a small bag of gold in Ayato’s hand and whispered a question.

“Is that everything you wished to discuss?”

“It is.”

“You are being awfully obedient for something related to your past, Sorcery Hacker. I await your report.”

This time, it really was goodbye.

Ayato watched the two humanoid sorcery devices weave through the crowd of human and demons and then he brought a hand to his head and sighed.

(She let it slide. I bet she was so insistent on an official report because she secretly wants me to eliminate any unnecessary information from the official version of the story. Her kind side is a lot harder to notice than with Angela.)

Yes.

Jennifer Evening was an important information source, but she was not the only option. For one thing, Ayato’s group had arrived on Laguntreat in pursuit of a different clue in the first place.

Ayato also walked away, but in a different direction.

He pulled the crystal tarot cards from his pocket, fanned them out, and then lined them up again.

Micha Angelos had taken the enemy’s Linkage Plug and Monitor, but he had copied the data from them first. He used that to locate a specific cottage on the beach, circled behind it, and snuck in through the window.

He opened a large closet to find an unmelting ice coffin standing upright inside.

It was the initial shooter.

“This can’t have been fun for you either. Well, I it can’t be too bad while you’re asleep.”

Had Jennifer left him alive because she knew him personally or because he could be used as insurance?

His reasons for attacking had also been related to the Academy Towers, so he would know whatever secret Jennifer did. Once the curse had been removed and Teleria melted the ice, he was sure to have a fascinating story to tell. If he was told Student Council Advisor Jennifer had been captured and he would meet a similar fate as her accomplice, he was sure to spill the beans.

Laguntreat’s Oceavita Water Therapy Institute had been destroyed, but the springs used for the decursing still existed. He would have to download a map of the springs from the half-destroyed facility and try them each in turn.

He had not told Micha Angelos about this part.

Unlike Jennifer, the initial shooter had no skill as a Sorcery Hacker, so he would be low priority to that night butterfly. She must have been willing to let him have that small fry now that Jennifer had been removed from the equation.

He would continue his investigation from there.

(The Academy Towers.)

The incident had happened there, so he had already looked into everything there. When he had not found anything conclusive, he had considered the possibility of pressure or interference from an external source and started traveling the world.

Had he been wrong?

Was the depth of his investigation the problem, not the breadth?

(The Academy Towers.)

His thoughts were interrupted by a loud thunk. It came from directly behind him. Even though he had already checked to make sure he was alone here. He slowly turned around and found a heavy mass of mana-conducting silver lying on the glass table.

It was the Queen Astaroth Revolver.

There was nothing else there.

“…”

It was like a symbol of his past that pursued him no matter how far he tried to run from it.

Teleria gently opened her eyes.

She seemed to be in the forest cave instead of the beach cottage. Her body protested the dull pains she had developed with only a simple towel blanket to lie on, but it was also true she simply missed that luxurious bed.

“Are you awake?”

It was not Mamilis or Henrietta who spoke to her.

It was a girl in a thin dress who looked even younger than Teleria.

She was just wringing out a wet towel soaked in the spring water gathered in a container made by splitting a coconut in two.

“Mother?”

“You look like you’re seeing a ghost. I mean, yes, I did get hit by a few main cannon blasts, but that doesn’t matter as long as this core remains intact. Besides, I’m a healer, so I was never any good at combat. If I rest on the mountain and focus on managing the springs, my missing wing should regenerate before too long.”

A human might have found that shocking. This was different from Demon Lord Nirvelphany who excelled at turning even the worst situation on its head. The Four Lords had a fixed, strongest power defined by a set role. Their accumulated power was truly outrageous.

The small girl tapped her fingers on her thigh while sitting on the ground.

Her right thigh, specifically.

She was confirming it was back to normal now that the effects of the Sorcery Hacking had been removed.

“You’re in luck because it seems he still hasn’t caught on. I hung out with him in this form a while longer, but he really doesn’t seem to know I am Fleurelisia Nereid Aquamarine. He might know of Nereid as an ancient word carved into some ruins, but he should never imagine it applies to someone living in the modern day.”

“…”

“The decision is yours, but I think you should be fine staying with him. He has that Dark Elf girl with him already and he was willing to save one of the Four Lords when it was necessary, so you should be able to come clean with him.”

Yes.

Teleria had done a horrific job of keeping her secret back on the Annihilator-class Predator Island, but it had not bothered Ayato. He had not asked her any further questions about her lies and he had accepted her, lies and all.

She knew she was lucky to have this as her biggest problem.

But.

She had lost her chance. It now felt different from when the issue was being found out or not. The situation had stabilized, so she now feared that anything she did would be destroying that stability.

Would she be stuck like this for the rest of her life? Would she always have to carry this secret with her if she wanted to be by his side?

“Don’t worry.” Her small mother laughed. “That is a common concern carried by all demons. But it is also a hurdle anyone can clear when they fall in love.”

“What? You have no proof of that.”

“Your very existence is the proof.”

Water Lord Fleurelisia was one of the Four Lords.

She was the ruler of water who was currently hiding her nature as a Mermaid with the wristwatch Mimic Option worn around her slender ankle. She had lived an unfathomably long life unbound by the restrictions of time that bound all humans.

A woman who had lived a very long time while carrying a large secret looked her daughter in the eye.

“But that small miracle cannot be achieved on your own. Even I found someone who I could open up to and who accepted me for who I am. …Surely you don’t still believe you were brought to me by a stork.”

Somewhere on the distant Static Continent, someone in a blue blazer spoke while lounging at an ordinary cafeteria table.

“So not even Sensei was up to the task, huh?”

“You knew this would happen, didn’t you? She’s only a teacher – an outsider meant to watch over us.”

The girl who answered also wore a distinctive blue blazer.

That uniform meant they belonged to a certain organization. And instead of sitting across from the initial speaker, the girl leaned against them from behind with her arms around them.

That girl was not the only other person there.

An enormous boy sat on the floor yet still maintained an eye level above everyone else there and a girl was curled up below the table and glaring out at the world like an animal that feared the light.

Some of them excelled at conspiracies and some did not.

For example, the enormous boy and the animalistic girl were the type to kill first and ask questions never.

So they were each given the tasks suited to their specialties.

The girl draped over the initial speaker was fulfilling her duties as a member of the Student Council.

She whispered in a sweet yet toxic voice.

“In fact, this means no more observer holding back the Student Council Executive Committee. I’m sure the teachers will send someone else to replace her, but why should we wait around for some newcomer to get their bearings? Let’s turn them into our puppet.”

They would flip the ordinary power structure on its head.

The Student Council would be at the top, not the teachers.

That was why they had taught her how to hack and how to steal the 5th’s sword. Adults loved power. Be it direct money and violence or indirect influence and status, they loved receiving it and could be easily led astray with it.

But.

That one weapon was different.

They had not given her the Queen Astaroth Revolver. That devil’s revolver was the one thing constantly plaguing the Student Council’s plans.

It had in the past.

And it still did now.

“That incident was a failure for us as well, Ayato,” whispered the initial speaker. “When you broke into that school tower, it was not the shooter you were meant to kill. You were supposed to accidentally kill Teleria, his sister and hostage.”

Afterword

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

That was Volume 2 of Sorcery Hacker. For this one, I focused on Teleria’s secret and set the story at the Mermaid island she calls home. I hope that gave it a different feel than the urban sky city.

Are swimsuits allowed in a fantasy world?

I think that is a gray zone, much like plumbing and modern word usage, but since I chose to make the heroine an ocean-based Mermaid instead of an Echidna, I knew I had to make it a world where swimsuits existed, be they made of shells or cloth! I also had the Academy Towers students wear blue blazer uniforms, so I decided it would be weird to allow that but not allow swimsuits. If I was going to take one step in that direction, I might as well go full throttle, right? In Volume 2, I think I managed to figure out Teleria, Mamilis, and Henrietta’s respective roles.

When introducing a new setting, I want to use it as much as possible, so I used the prologue’s ocean railroad for the final trick. …Although I did end up never using the mountain where Fleurelisia normally rests. Maybe a queen’s bedroom is an off-limits sanctuary. Or should I have used the vacation theme to have them fly a paraglider from the mountain to reconnoiter Oceavita?

The Academy Towers were mentioned in Volume 1, but I gave them much more of a presence this time. In Index under another label, the conspiracies are generally run by bad adults, but I placed the spotlight on the Student Council here. Introducing a Student Council is an attractive idea for a number of reasons, but their power is hard to use in a place like Academy City since it’s a collection of multiple schools. The Academy Towers is one giant school, so I knew this was my chance to place a Student Council at the top.

I also shined some light on the Combined Royal Family weapons like Micha Angelos. I hope you enjoyed how I wrote Jennifer as a power inflation boss character. After having Demon Lord Nirvelphany show off in Volume 1 by announcing she is equivalent to Level 9999, I knew I had to leave an impact this time by instead ending the fight by bringing Jennifer down to Level 0.

Micha said she would dismember Ayato if he touched her, but what is her stance there regarding the Minotaur? Perhaps I should have included that as a comparison.

Now, I know what you might think after what I did regarding Fleurelicia’s true(?) form, but that does not mean all of the Four Lords have a humanoid form like that. For example, Fire Lord Blasthogg from Volume 1 really is only a giant dragon.

When you introduce a mother character, you’ve got to have a scene of her protecting her child, right? I tried to emphasize that in the battle against the warship.

It was also important that Ayato went alone to settle things with Jennifer after that.

He left the girls with a tear-jerking and heartwarming conclusion and then went to deal with the secret final boss on his own. I was hoping to draw out the charm of the current passionate Ayato and the colder version of himself that he becomes when the Academy Towers are involved.

Anyway, I had some trouble with my tendency to give fantasy girls names that end with “ia”. Is that a common trait of Western names or something? Sophia, Maria, Cinthia, Alicia, Elina, Jessica, Anastasia, Olivia, Claudia, Ekaterina – the list goes on. Maybe I need to be more careful when naming characters from now on. There are plenty of non “ia” names, like Alice, Jane, and Isabelle.

I give my thanks to my illustrator HIMA-san and to my editors Miki-san, Nakajima-san, Yamamoto-san, and Mitera-san. Mentioning unusual tropical vegetation is simple enough in text, but it must be a lot of work in the illustrations. Thank you so much!

And I give my thanks to the readers. How did you like Volume 2, which gave more hints about the characters’ pasts than in Volume 1? That only works because I could write another volume, which is thanks to all of your support. I am truly grateful.

And I will end this here.

I think having Micha dress up in the local attire is going to be a thing from now on.

-Kamachi Kazuma

Translator's Notes and References

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