Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume16

Novel Illustrations

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  Full Cover
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  Page 001
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  Contents Page
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  Pages 003-005
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  Pages 006-008
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  Page 39
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  Page 73
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  Page 96
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  Page 139
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  Page 163
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  Page 222
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  Pages 248-249
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  Page 268

Prologue: The Third Term He Won – January.

“Index.”

It was January 15.

Kamijou Touma sat in the middle of the room.

He was serious.

“We can’t let these harsh conditions win. We’re hungry. Nothing we think here can change that fact. So enough emotional arguments – we need to physically stand up to this!!”

“I can’t… Touma, I can’t fight like this…”

“You can’t act like some frail maiden and fade away into nothing!! Don’t accept a moving defeat all on your own here. Listen, Index, we have a water heater! That means we can use the pasta sauce that only needs to be heated with hot water. We can’t keep the retort pouch curry boiling long enough to cook because the hot water will cool in no time after we remove it from the heater. But as long as we can heat the pasta sauce, there is hope and possibility left for us!!”

“Human. …That doesn’t give you any way to cook the pasta!! That’s just too much for our pathetically powerless group. We should have gone ahead and compromised on some crackers that are edible as is.”

“I happen to know some relevant survival trivia here, Othinus. Soak dry pasta in room-temperature water for half a day and you’ll have tasty spaghetti without any need for heat. So we haven’t done anything wrong at all! And I left them soaking overnight, so check it out: tah dah!!”

A giant plate sat before them.

It was loaded up with noodles.

Genovese sauce, mentaiko sauce, and a few more varieties of pasta sauce were separated out onto smaller plates, so it looked something like a Western version of somen or tsukemen. Why was Kamijou Touma, expert in student struggle meals, trying something so specialized today? Because pasta sauce is sold in small packets much like salad dressing!!

It was time to eat.

They had to eat or they would die. They would eventually die.

So they had to be thankful for the meal before them and enjoy it.

The trio prepared themselves.

It was time for the taste test!!

“Ubwoehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhgwehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhoghhhhehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhbjbjbeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhbbhhehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!?”

Which of three that was will be omitted for the sake of their honor☆

There was one thing they could say for sure.

“H-human. This is not spaghetti. This is a nameless horror that was once wheat. It’s an insult to the farmers who grew it!!”

“Bhh, bbhh…”

“Even Index…isn’t going back for a second bite? Wait! Wait!! Do you know how much 215g of dried pasta grows after soaking for half a day? I made enough for myself, Index, and little Othinus, so we all need to work together to eat it! I tried my best to make something good, so leaving me to eat it all seems like violence to me. And violence is wrong!!”

“Touma… Forcing this mass of gluten with a tough center and slimy surface onto someone with a perfect memory…is an unforgivable and unforgettable form of violence…”

“Quit using your special trait as a shield when it’s convenient for you!! Okay, fine, I’ll admit it! This is rough even for a normal person!”

The calico cat alone looked happy with his normal cat food.

He mewed and showed no inclination to stand up to help his owner in his time of need.

…Now, why were Kamijou and the others forced into this life or death battle on the morning of January 15?

There was a simple answer to that.

This room had no kitchen.

The sky was clear outside the window. A passenger plane flew through that sky. They could see clearly outside the window. That would never happen in the boys dorm where you could jump to the neighboring building if you tried.

Why had this happened?

Because they weren’t in the usual boys dorm.

Yes.

The school’s boys dorm had been partially destroyed (mostly due to Stiyl’s attack and Magic Gods Niang-Niang and Nephthys’s rampage), leaving people with nowhere to live.

So more than a hundred homeless boys had been sent here on a temporary basis.

“Oh, come on. Why is this bringing me misfortune too!? Life in the girls dorm was supposed to be a dream come true, not thiiiiiis!”

That was where he was.

In his school’s girls dorm.

Chapter 1: A New Life in the Girls Dorm – School_Life.

Part 1

He had actually moved into the girls dorm a few days earlier.

That was only natural because the move had happened when the third term began.

“Ohhh! Who could have predicted the boys who lost their home would get to set foot in the girls dorm? And I’m left out of this blessing because I rent a place at a bakery!?”

Aogami Pierce was causing a scene in the classroom, but that was no concern of Kamijou’s.

Yes, Kamijou Touma was in his classroom at school.

The third term really had begun.

(I was worried what would happen after my proof of life document went missing.)

“Okay, you silly students who still haven’t taken their seats after the bell rang, listen to teacher. It’s time for morning homeroom.”

Their 135cm teacher was in a dark mood this morning. It was a highly unusual situation. That smile meant a bird had probably pooped on her car in the parking lot or something. It was best not to defy Komoe-sensei when she had a dark smile on her face or when she was hungover. You know how it’s best not to mess with that famous teacher who has a weird mental switch? Like that.

“Mid January is when Academy City holds its first general entrance exam, which means this is entrance exam season for schools all across the city, from elementary all the way up to university. And don’t think that doesn’t affect you just because you’re first years. You need to support your upperclassmen in a spirit of mutual assistance.”

“Sensei, how exactly are we supposed to support them?” asked Aogami Pierce. “Snap photos of the reference books and send them to the older girls we like? In the middle of their exam?”

“That would look like cheating, so Anti-Skill would get after you and you wouldn’t be able to go home for a while, so I would not recommend it. According to Ms. Track Suit, you shouldn’t even be wandering around near school grounds with a phone in hand.”

Komoe-sensei was smiling.

How was that supposed to work when there were schools just about everywhere in Academy City?

“To be more specific, our school will be one of the exam sites, so a lot of the classrooms will be off limits to us. The limited space will likely mess with the class schedules, so we’re going to have to play things by ear! Make sure to check your school app frequently.”

Part 2

Thanks to this, Kamijou’s reclaimed school life was an unusually busy one.

“The chemistry lab is being used for the exams, so next period we will be running chemical change simulations in the computer lab. Don’t even think about ‘forgetting’ and trying to spy on the fresh young middle school girls nervous about their exams, you silly boys!!”

“Where are we supposed to carry these desks?”

“The exam takers get priority in the cafeteria and school store. The trains are also running outside their usual schedule for the exam takers, so just shut up and deal with it. You’re going to be their upperclassmen, so you can put up with an empty stomach for now!!”

It felt unfair to the third year middle schoolers attempting the life-or-death challenge of the entrance exam, but the energy in the school felt a lot like during the cultural festival. …Although the occasional Anti-Skill or Judgment members rushing down the hallway suggested there was a fairly serious cat-and-mouse game over cheating attempts going on behind the scenes.

Kamijou sighed softly.

(Smart cheating using electronics and substitute exam-takers using forged passports, huh? I’d get it with one of the actual good schools, but why would you bother cheating to get into an average school like this?)

Kamijou had lost his bitter exam memories along with the rest of his memories, so these difficulties were a foreign thing to him. …The fear of his memory loss remained like an indelible scar deep in his mind, but maybe there were some things he was better off having forgotten?

“That concludes today’s lessons.”

During the final homeroom, Komoe-sensei had a big smile on her face.

This time, it wasn’t a dark one.

…That had to be the smile of someone who had had a rough day but was about to go drinking. Bird droppings would eat through a car’s waterproofing if they weren’t washed off, but surely she wasn’t just going to ignore it? The desperation radiating from her 135cm body made it very hard to ask for details.

“Keep in mind that clubs and committees are on a reduced schedule during the exam period. For details, check the schedule in the individual social media groups. And I will be using homework to make up for the shortened class schedule, so be warned. This trial is for your own good, so enjoy your studies, students!! Bye bye☆”

Now Kamijou was feeling blue.

He felt like he had been thrown outside while chained up.

With the tri-blade wind turbines spinning and the drum-shaped security robots trundling along, the way home was peaceful.

Kamijou found himself drawn to the 100-yen shops and drug stores on the way. The girls dorm had no kitchen, so any food that only needed hot water to cook was extremely attractive right now. His eyes shined each time he saw cup noodles or miso soup…but wait.

(I could buy a big value multipack, but I have Index in my room.)

He could easily imagine a paranormal phenomenon in which it all vanished in a single night.

Also, all the cup noodle lids had puns on them. Apparently everyone thought they could attract exam takers by hinting at exam success like that. The stock of energy drinks and health drinks seemed unusually plentiful. Instead of individual bottles in the refrigerated section like in a convenience store, they were being sold in big cardboard boxes. Apparently that too was pandering to exam takers. But was it really safe for elementary and middle schoolers to drink so many of those?

A loud voice spoke from the next aisle over.

“Hurry up, Uiharu. Get this and this and this too. We need to bring some supplies to the upperclassmen and we can show how much we care by how much we bring!”

“Eh? By the box!? D-do they really need this many energy drinks, Shirai-san?”

“Get it together. Entrance exams are a war. Better to buy these now than run into trouble during the exams and find out they’re already sold out. Even Judgment has to take this seriously. Okay, today we can buy these super expensive health drinks! The bright gold ones in the small brown bottles! Wait for us, weary Konori-senpai!!”

“Eek! I’m starting to think school committees are the worst kind of exploitative job, not governed by the Labor Standards Act or the National Public Service Act…”

…Apparently some Judgment members drank them, but Kamijou had a feeling that wasn’t a good example. Mimicking them would leave you rotten to the core.

(Is this like all those puns I saw at the other convenience store? Is this one a pentagon because pentagon sounds like the word for passing an exam in Japanese? Are they selling these floats because float sounds like the word for being accepted into a school?)

It seemed weird for products like that to sell in a city of science. Then again, maybe it was like how everyone celebrated Valentine’s Day without thinking much about the legend it was based on.

He ended up leaving without buying anything.

The entrance exam frenzy was in full swing outside too. Because eating fish was supposed to make you smarter – because of DHA? – a restaurant had so many banners out there was barely room to walk on the sidewalk. The unusual number of fliers being handed out were for a sketchy one-night cram school in a multi-tenant building. Were the small groups clustered together on their way to karaoke trying to blow off some steam, or were they hoping to study English with Western music? Even his phone kept giving him messages advertising “life hacks” for exams. Those were entirely wasted on Kamijou since he wasn’t an exam taker, but the poor targeting was actually a little reassuring because it meant they had gathered less data on him than he had thought.

Kamijou passed by some middle schoolers as he walked.

“Oh, ohhhh. Ohhhhhhh. Qu-Queen… Why must the world be so cruel and heartless?”

“Remind me who it was who happily gave into that Kotatsu Syndrome nonsense and failed to study at all during the lead-up to the January exams? You need to get back to the dorm and start demonstrating your cramming ability!!”

He heard a meow of surprise just before a black cat ran off. The Misaka Sister was left with an expressionless but somehow dazed looking face, crouched down with some katsuoboshi (probably a limited time product related to the brain-boosting powers of DHA) still held between her fingers.

For a city full of countless schools, this could be seen as the greatest battle of the year. …But as a first year high schooler, Kamijou Touma didn’t have to worry about it himself.

Habit set him down the usual path, so he had to quickly stop himself.

Returning to the collapsed boys dorm wouldn’t accomplish much.

“Oops.”

He made sure to check his phone’s map app for the best route before turning onto a different street.

It would have been faster to take the train to the next station, but a poor student was going to walk. Each ride cost 150 yen and he had to go there and back, so how much would that cost for a full month’s worth of weekdays? It barely felt like paying money when using your train card, but it wasn’t an expense he could just ignore.

The girls dorm was up ahead.

Kamijou looked up at the stylish building.

“Hard to believe… This place was built for the girls, but it’s already starting to feel like home to me.”

Saying you could get used to living anywhere would be rude to the dorm, but it was scary what you could grow acclimated to.

The glass door auto-locked, but when Kamijou nervously operated it, it opened for him just fine.

“Ohhh…”

He had gone in and out of this door a few times now, but he still voiced his amazement. This was the girls dorm. It was holy ground. Was he really allowed in here? He still couldn’t rid himself of that small anxiety. And the entrance auto-locked! The entrance to the former boys dorm in the same district was always open, so weird smoker priests could just walk in!!

A small crowd had formed near the elevator hall.

Mostly boys.

…He was truly thankful there were so many other boys here. He thought his heart would have given out if he had to exist as the only boy in a girls-only world.

He didn’t recognize most of them.

They had been shoved into whatever rooms were available, so the boys had been split into a few groups and then placed in areas spread out across the girls dorm. Those boys were apparently a group on a different floor from Kamijou.

Also, this building only housed first years.

That meant he couldn’t see some of his female friends like Kumokawa-senpai here, which made him a little sad.

Speaking of the elevator, he remembered it had big mirrors inside.

Apparently those weren’t meant for one last check of one’s appearance on the way out. They were to ensure there wasn’t anyone unwanted on the elevator. …The entire building was protected by the auto-locking entrance, so who did they think would be hiding inside the elevator?

And despite that, there were no security cameras in the hallways or elevator hall. Was that for privacy reasons? Anything that would leave a record appeared to be centered around the auto-locking entrance. For Kamijou, the weird balance of the girls dorm felt like something from another dimension.

As a school dorm, most everyone returned home at the same time. That meant the elevator was crowded. Not everyone could board when the elevator arrived on the first floor. Kamijou debated whether he would wait here or take the stairs, but he ended up moving away from the line.

He heard some excited voices.

There was a small rest area with a bench and a vending machine partway down the long hallway and a few girls in a combination of their school uniform and a track suit were laughing there holding cold drinks in plastic bottles. When they noticed Kamijou’s hesitant gaze from a distance, they shrieked and ran off somewhere. …Apparently that was a forbidden outfit boys weren’t supposed to see. Even though Misaka Mikoto, who was from a much fancier school, wore shorts below her uniform skirt year round.

(That happens sometimes here. Like stepping out at night and running across a girl who just took a bath so she’s walking down the hallway in only her underwear and holding a coffee milk.)

Maybe that had been normal in this girls only world, but he really wished they would do a better job of remembering that the emergency arrival of the boys had transformed it into a real-world environment. It seemed especially cruel that he was treated like the bad guy when it happened.

“Surprise! Time for an inspection!! Pets are against the rules, so I sure hope none of you are keeping any in your rooms!”

“Whoa, Sensei!?”

“Yomikawa-sensei, you just want an excuse to eat the cheap food in the dining hall here, don’t you!?”

Kamijou heard a commotion in the distance.

Apparently that busty track suit gym teacher did irregular patrols of the girls dorm.

The irregularity was the problem there.

They were hard to predict. Without a set routine, you couldn’t prepare in advance.

Index and Othinus (plus the calico cat) were staying in Kamijou’s room. Without paying rent. And either way, he was sure to get in trouble if the teachers found out he had snuck a nun and a god in through the auto-locking entrance by hiding them in the collapsible containers he had used when moving in. He had to make a mental note of this.

Anyway, the track suit teacher’s surprise inspection didn’t seem to be the only cause of commotion. Some athlete girls were using the emergency stairs for some after-practice training. He also heard some wind instruments playing from upstairs, but he didn’t know what the local rules were for how late you could do that. Maybe they were gathered on the roof practicing.

It felt like an extension of being at school after classes let out.

That was the best way of describing the mood.

That mood seemed to change again after dinner, though.

(It would probably be faster to just use the stairs.)

“Huh, did you just get back? How did it take you this long when you’re not in a club?”

A familiar face appeared in this strange world: his classmate Fukiyose Seiri. What was she, the student dorm leader?

“Seven o’clock. Don’t forget,” said Fukiyose like it wasn’t a big deal. “Be in the dining hall by then. All the popular foods are often sold out if you’re even ten minutes late. And complaining won’t make more food appear.”

Part 3

The dining hall.

That was a unique aspect of the girls dorm.

However, even with dinner at 7 PM, they had free time up until then.

So he still had plenty of time.

(The problem is that Index and Othinus can’t use the dining hall.)

“Kamijou-kun.”

He looked over curiously to find his classmate Himegami Aisa.

She must have gotten back before him because she was already in her casual clothing.

Apparently she still chose to wear a shrine maiden outfit for casual clothing.

“We were assigned a ton of homework. Can you handle it all on your own?”

“Ugh.”

“The esper development terminology changes all the time due to arguments among the academics, so you can’t just rely on what you memorized in the past.”

He couldn’t laugh this off as “just some homework.”

Komoe-sensei had said she was using homework to make up for the classes being shortened due to the first general whatever, so there might be some kind of penalty if he didn’t do a good job.

For a normal student that would probably amount to little more than a slap on the wrist, but Kamijou was in a tricky situation. He was struggling to avoid being held back. A single mistake during the third term might mean having to tragically repeat the first year.

Kamijou Touma trembled.

“I keep overcoming the risk of being held back, but it never goes away? Am I caught up in some kind of grand conspiracy? Could that tiny teacher be trying keep Kamijou-san in her class forever out of some twisted kind of love?”

“Want to do our homework together?”

“!? God yes!!”

And so it was time for a group study session with Himegami Aisa.

He had returned from the dead and gotten back in school, but the risk of repeating the year remained. He had to make sure he wasn’t crushed by this mountain of homework, leading to the red light flashing again.

So Kamijou first rushed to his room.

He figured there was no point in changing out of his uniform. He pulled out the textbooks, reference books, and notebooks he needed for his homework and then tossed his cumbersome school bag inside the room.

“Touma, I’m bored. Can’t you even say hello?”

“Maybe if you said ‘welcome back’ first, freeloader!! And sorry, but Kamijou-san has to deal with a towering mountain of homework. School may be out, but that doesn’t mean I have time to play! If I don’t do this, I really will get held back!”

“Ehhh? But I’m hungry…”

“You need to stop associating boredom with eating. That devastating thought process is hell on your health, Index.”

Othinus, however, was unusually quiet.

“…”

Kamijou rushed out of his room and ran down the emergency stairs. When he arrived on Himegami’s floor, he found someone else there.

It was Fukiyose Seiri.

She was in her school uniform.

“What the hell are you doing here, Kamijou?”

“Why is Fukiyose here?”

He looked to Himegami who sighed softly with a blank expression on her face.

Apparently she had been caught on the way here.

Fukiyose glared over at Kamijou.

“What, did you think you could barge into a girl’s room and be alone with her? Are you stupid?”

…

Did she have to ask that? Now he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He had only been interested in getting his homework done to avoid being held back. That was almost certain to happen if he didn’t mend his ways, so it was a pressing issue. Yet he had a feeling that statement had just badly derailed that attempt.

All the doors along the hallway were identical, yet he suddenly felt a strange pressure coming from this one.

He was terrified.

Could they maybe visit a nearby library instead?

And just as Manly Kamijou Touma trembled and prepared to tearfully chicken out…

“Come on. Just come on in,” said Himegami.

She said it with a fair amount of force.

And with the room’s owner opening the door herself, there was no more room for argument.

When he looked to Himegami, she looked the other way.

Dammit, was she getting bashful?

Please someone take charge of this situation!!

“C-coming in…”

Kamijou kind of felt like he had to say something or the pressure of the girl’s room would have beaten him.

He noted a faint sweet aroma.

This was Himegami Aisa’s room.

There wasn’t much inside. That impression may not have been entirely due to any lack of hobbies on Himegami’s part. The lack of a bed in the room made the space look bigger. Apparently she was the futon type.

Then Himegami asked a question.

It was hard to tell with her general lack of expression, but her face looked a bit red.

“What is it? Is there something weird about my room?”

Fukiyose silently elbowed him in the side.

And pushed forward. But you were the one who got me all nervous about this in the first place!

Himegami said she would go buy something to eat and left the room.

With no kitchen space, the room didn’t even ave the bare minimum of a microwave or a fridge. Even with food available in the dining hall, it seemed inconvenient.

Left alone, Kamijou and Fukiyose sat around the tea table and pulled out their textbooks and reference books. The thickness of the stack of homework assigned by Komoe-sensei was enough to drain his willpower. Couldn’t they fit it all on a phone or something?

Kamijou was already fed up with it all.

“I just flipped through it, but why are Komoe-sensei’s questions always phrased so confusingly? Are they trick questions?”

“I think it’s an anti-AI measure. A lot of it is ways of keeping it from being summarized accurately.”

The forehead girl had a more reasonable explanation.

The door opened and Himegami returned.

She had brought cookies, chocolates, and a few 500mL bottles of barley tea. Even though it was midwinter January.

And with that it was time to grab their mechanical pencils and start the battle!

“Express the transformation of Maxwell’s demon. Focus on the phenomenon of data information being directly converted into energy. Describe the energy conversion cycle. Use a diagram. …We have to hand draw a diagram? Is this another anti-AI thing?”

“Quantum theory is based on observation, but telepathy and clairvoyance can be used to allow a single person to make observations from multiple points of view simultaneously. Explain what happens with the margin of error in the exceptional phenomena expected to affect the wave function of Particle A when it is observed simultaneously from multiple angles. …Hey, hold on. Dammit, Kamijou, are you already asleep?”

No, he was trying his best to stay awake because he knew he would have a math nightmare if he fell asleep now…

Observations were a sensory thing of seeing or noticing something, so why did they turn into wave functions, the Shrödinger equation, and other jumbles of letters and numbers that felt like a space alien language once they appeared on paper for a test? There were even letters in there you wouldn’t find anywhere between A and Z.

That aside.

While he didn’t at all understand the dark vortex of homework he had been cast into by the demon named Tsukuyomi Komoe, Kamijou did feel a strange sense of accomplishment.

This was everyday life in Academy City.

This was a normal school life with nothing threatening his survival and nothing dooming the world to destruction.

Kamijou stared into the distance, relishing this feeling of being alive.

And just then…

“(Oh? So this is the kind of thing you returned from the grave to experience?)”

The pointy-haired boy’s shoulders jumped.

He heard a voice coming from within his jacket. There was someone in his clothes!?

Kamijou Touma suddenly began squirming.

“(What are you doing here, Othinus!?)”

“(Keeping myself safe. You are only a guest in the girls dorm. You boys were only given a place here out of the kindness of the girls’ hearts because you had nowhere else to go, so they could kick you out at any time. A single problem could mean the end of this temporary peace. Not to mention that my divine self, the grimoire library, and the cat aren’t supposed to be living in the girls dorm at all. If you get in trouble related to the girls, we will be kicked out right along with you. I must keep that from happening. So this isn’t me meddling in your life. It is a necessary self-defense measure.)”

“(Thanks for the long-winded explanation, but what are you so worried abou-) shfh!?”

The two girls turned their attention to him. Giving him extremely curious looks.

He had felt a sharp pain under his clothes.

From a tiny fist hitting him right in the armpit. Under his clothes.

A deadly low voice reached him.

“(You think a god like me is worried?)”

“(T-try to behave if you don’t want Himegami and Fukiyose to find out.)”

“(Hmph. That’s my line.)”

“(Also, trouble related to the girls? Like what, Othinus? Kamijou Touma is a possessor of world-famous misfortune. There is no way in hell some unexplainable stroke of luck will get me on good terms with a girl.)”

“(You are even stupider than I thought, understander. Yes, you are plagued by misfortune, but this is one area where not even I can trust you. When it comes to girls, you have a tendency to assume the worst, bet against yourself, and fail miserably for it. You are having a study session in a girl’s dorm room. Why don’t you realize that alone puts you in ultra dangerous territory? Look, human. See what I mean?)”

There was something white below the low table.

It was made of cloth.

It was rolled up like a donut.

Kamijou Touma snorted with laughter.

“(What are you so afraid of, Othinus-san? Ah ha ha. Just because I’m in a sweet-smelling girl’s room doesn’t mean I’m going to just find her underwear lying around. That’s probably no more than a sock or a scrunchie. I know how things work when Kamijou-san’s generational bad luck is at work.) Hey, Himegami. What’s thi-”

It was not a scrunchie.

The black-haired shrine maiden had no use for one.

The garment in his hand really was underwear.

Under his clothes, a tiny fist drove itself into his navel. He dropped the garment below the table.

“Amyahpanteeeee!!!”

“?”

Himegami gave him a puzzled look.

He couldn’t let her find out.

He couldn’t let these sweet-smelling classmates know that, during a group study session in a girl’s room, he was secretly writhing around while toying with the girl’s panties beneath the low table and hiding a 15cm figurine girl below his clothes! That combination would have deadly results!!

“(See, it’s already happening. If I don’t keep an eye on this dumbass, who knows how many girls he’ll end up impregnating.)”

“(You’re so mad it actually calmed me down a little, but you seem excessively upset over nothing more than some underwear, Othinus. It’s the body that wears the underwear that matters! And that fact that it’s here means she must change in here instead of using the changing room. Ah ha ha h-)”

“Ohh?”

There wasn’t supposed to be anyone else here.

Yet he still heard a busty glasses girl’s whispered voice.

“I didn’t realize you had such a vivid imagination that a single piece of cloth could bring a scene like that to mind. And in such detail.”

“(Kaza…kiri-san? What are you doing here? Hold on. Is this girls dorm some kind of haunted building where supernatural people lose control or something!?)”

On the other side of the low table, Himegami and Fukiyose both tilted their heads.

Apparently they hadn’t noticed the unseen apparition.

“Stare…”

The pressure was incredible for something he couldn’t see. All of a sudden, he found himself trapped between the human girls and the divine and angelic type.

Was the apocalypse about to break loose?

For that reason, he couldn’t let Himegami and Fukiyose find out about the god (whose 15cm height let her hide under his clothes) and the angel who was fading into the air nearby. This mission was getting more challenging by the minute.

Kamijou slowly hid the garment below the low table.

He felt more trapped all the time.

“(Ehhhh? Wait, since when does Kazakiri use such an icy voice and lay on the pressure like that? I feel like we’ve entered new territory here.)”

“(By the way, why are you getting all excited by this icy reception from a normally nervous busty glasses girl?)”

“(Othinus, are you trying to turn me into a saint? Or are you a Trojan horse plotting to break down my mental barriers from the inside?)”

The study session meant to keep him from being held back had entered a new phase.

Actually, what was even going on? Having something to hide made it so much more nerve wracking!

“Um, let’s see. The next problem… Related to Physicist Young, the pinhole camera greatly contributed to humanity’s understanding of the wave theory of light. These work simply by letting light pass through a pinhole, but what is the optimal diameter for the pinhole? Dammit, Komoe-sensei just loves phrasing these confusingly.”

“It looks like a math problem at first, but it’s actually a memorization problem, right?”

“The answer is 0.4mm. …But look. You don’t get any points unless you justify your answer using the formulas for interference and diffraction.”

These anti-AI measures were such a pain!! Of course, if they didn’t have to follow instructions not found in the problem itself, then the AI could just do it all on its own.

“By the way, Fukiyose, what’s that? Isn’t there as small hole in your uniform? Like from a pin?”

“…Have you been staring at my chest?”

“Maybe you’re a perfect role model, but some of us can’t help it! Sexy boob moles are going to draw our attention!!”

And once it drew his attention, he got scared what Othinus might do to him.

After his shout of tearful desperation, Fukiyose sighed in annoyance.

“I don’t remember pinning anything there…but it’s on my chest. I was probably wearing a name tag or something. Those are common when working on things like festival committees.”

Himegami tilted her head.

And spoke.

“A 0.4mm pinhole. In other words. Even if we can’t see it. The optical image is being projected out from within? Like the underwear below the clothing?”

A loud commotion followed.

Fukiyose covered herself with both hands. Kamijou understood that was necessary. But he really wished she would do it in a way that didn’t look like she was squeezing her boobs together!

“Damn you, Kamijou.”

“That wasn’t me! Really, it’s not fair you didn’t headbutt Himegami for that one!!”

“It might be invisible to the naked eye. But a high spec smartphone might be able to see something.”

“~ ~ ~!!!?”

Was the forehead girl reacting more than usual because it had been a surprise attack from someone who normally didn’t say these things? Fukiyose would have kept her cool more if it were only Kamijou here. She was the kind of person who was unfazed even when he stumbled in on her changing. Of course, if he said that out loud, it would be enough of a bombshell to get his front teeth broken by her forehead.

Then Kamijou’s phone rang.

“Oh, dear. It’s your mother, Touma-san. Are you getting into some kind of trouble? A mother needs to keep her son from misbehaving, so I felt the need to give you a call.”

“…”

Kamijou Touma felt utterly bewildered with phone in hand. Hold on. He had already accepted that this girls dorm was a mysterious dimension that had a negative effect on 15cm gods and shy busty glasses angels, but wait a second. Since when were moms as super holy and invincible as gods and angels!?

A high school boy was hopelessly outmatched when it came to moms (without question), so Kamijou silently hung up and faced reality.

“Okay, okay. Everything’s all right, Fukiyose, so have something to drink and calm down. Here’s some barley tea.”

“Thanks…”

“I added three sugars just the way you like it.”

“Bfff! What is wrong with you!? Y-you can’t pump a girl full of wasted calories just for some stupid joke!”

“I wouldn’t talk about ‘pumping a girl full of’ something if I were you. It sounds indecent.”

“Dbhhbfbhhhh!!?”

Was this like that fountain? You know, the one in Singapore that looks like a lion but isn’t one.

Kamijou stared into the distance, but he also felt movement inside his jacket.

It was the 15cm god.

“(…)”

“(Whoa!? Hey, Othinus, don’t pinch me there! That’s Kamijou-san’s right nipple! Stop it, god. If you make me twitch like this, Himegami’s rolled up cloth will slip out from under the table!!)”

Himegami and Fukiyose both tilted their heads.

Part 4

Time passed as all this went on.

“It’s almost seven,” said Fukiyose, calling the study session to an end.

It was dinner time.

Yes, the girls dorm had a dining hall on the first floor.

That may have been why the rooms, as comfortable as they were, didn’t have a kitchen. They looked more like hotel rooms because of it.

…How could Index and Othinus eat when they were stuck in his room?

That had been his big worry of late, but he couldn’t let anyone else know.

No one could find out he had a white nun, a calico cat, and a 15cm god living in his room!

And so (after dropping his study things and Othinus off at his room) Kamijou joined the crowd forming at the first floor dining hall.

The dining hall worked by buying a ticket at the machine and then receiving a tray of food at the counter, but the machine only had a single giant LCD screen. It didn’t use buttons.

“Ugh,” groaned Kamijou.

He didn’t like these very much.

(Ordering from a touchscreen like this is such a pain because you have to search through several layers of folders to find the dish you want. If you start down the wrong path, you can end up lost forever. Still, it’s better than a phone app that’s stealing who knows how much of your personal data.)

As a petty bourgeois who got scared of the line behind him whenever he took too long, his focus was immediately drawn to the “new items” tab prominently displayed on the top page.

It had been updated. The menu had changed since yesterday.

One item must have been really new because it didn’t even have a photo.

Egg curry.

“Wait. That’s too broad to even guess what it really is. What would I even be ordering? What’s the point of this huge screen?”

While Kamijou stood dumbfounded in front of the ticket machine, Himegami and Fukiyose joined the conversation directly behind him. They stood up on their toes and hopped to see the screen over his shoulders. All well and good for Himegami, but that was fairly dangerous for Fukiyose at such close range. …How could he tell how close she was when he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, you ask? Thanks to his other senses that could detect pressure, touch, and softness!

Othinus (who was still hiding inside his clothes) whispered to him.

“(She has her chest against your back, doesn’t she?)”

How could that god know when she couldn’t possibly see from inside his uniform?

The high school girls (who were too focused on the new menu item to realize what they had done) discussed the item.

“Maybe it’s normal curry rice. With a fried egg on top?”

“It might just be a spicier curry with a raw egg dropped inside. That would keep the flavor milder, which is a plus in my book. And the flavor ends up different from just ordering mild curry to begin with.”

…Now, Kamijou himself had been imagining curry rice with a thick rolled omelet on top. But maybe that would be called omelet curry instead?

The line behind him had grown long enough to make him nervous. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had a disease where his heart would explode if he had more than ten people waiting on him, so he went ahead and bought the egg curry currently displayed on the screen. The way you had to unlock your phone, bring up the right app, press it against the screen, and wait for the tone was an annoying amount of work! He understood technology was advancing, but was the earth really becoming a more convenient place!?

“Hmm. I guess I’ll get the egg curry.”

“I skipped lunch, so I’m fairly free to order whatever I want. I think I’ll try the egg curry too.”

Looking back, he saw Himegami, Fukiyose, and more of those behind him in line ordering the egg curry. Were they just easily influenced, or was the fear of a line behind you built into the system’s design for business purposes?

But what really was the egg curry anyway?

He couldn’t imagine the combo being anything bad, but it also didn’t sound like the heartiest of meals. It didn’t sound like as perfect a pairing as a fried egg on top of a hamburger steak. He still couldn’t come up with a solid mental image for the thing, so what was he actually going to find on his plate?

A young woman in an apron was working busily behind the counter.

Kamijou’s first time seeing her, he had nearly died on the spot from the “Gasp! Does the girls dorm have a dorm manager!?” effect, but it turned out she was a contractor. She apparently worked for a bento shop. Which wasn’t quite the same thing as a dorm manager. About as different as a kunoichi outfit from a Western-style Taisho-era waitress. Were there really no dorm managers in this world!?

“Here you go. Egg curry.”

That was fast.

He had his food immediately after handing in his ticket. Like 1.5 seconds after. Zero effort on her part.

Also, he had caught a glimpse of the apron woman’s hand beyond the counter just now. She appeared to wearing a knit sweater or a turtleneck, but he couldn’t see her face because of the barrier with only a small opening like from a pawn shop in a gun culture. The painted nails had the look of a grown woman, but the design had been more gyaru-ish than high society. They were shining with lamé and beads.

Curry made by a gyaru?

He had a bad feeling about this.

The curry rice had scrambled eggs on top. So much that the curry was completely obscured.

Every single person who had paid money for this had the same thought.

“This isn’t what I wanted!!”

Part 5

Nevertheless, the time had come to eat it.

(It’s not all that bad really. I mean, curry rice and scrambled eggs are both fine. So why does it feel like disappointing reheated leftovers?)

Kamijou munched on the egg curry that was maybe better called “curry rice topped with an omelet that has already been destroyed before you can spit it open with your own spoon”.

He still had a mission left to complete.

He could fill his own belly by eating the food here, but he still had to secure food for Index and Othinus waiting back in his room. However, it would be far too conspicuous if he bought a ticket and then brought the tray up to his room.

(I guess I’ll have to do what I did yesterday. I’m just afraid they’ll get tired of eating the same thing day after day.)

Humans had a tendency to go back to a solution that has worked once before. As long as Index and Othinus didn’t protest.

And so he focused on one corner of the dining hall.

Fortunately, they had breads and such for sale there separate from the meals meant to be eaten in the dining hall. Based on the handwritten display, they were meant as snacks for anyone studying late into the night.

Each item cost 100 yen.

There was a collection box like for a charity as well as a phone reader.

They all looked cheap piled up like that, but maybe you had to choose carefully to get your money’s worth.

Regardless, he was glad to have items you didn’t have to eat in the dining hall since he couldn’t bring Index and Othinus to the dining hall to eat. There were a wide variety of breads, but Kamijou selected the larger ones that looked like they had a lot of veggies inside. Like the stir fried meat and vegetables bread. …He didn’t think of stir fried meat and vegetables as something you ate with bread, but then yakisoba wasn’t really something you ate with bread either.

He felt a tug at his shirt inside his uniform.

Courtesy of Othinus.

“(Grab the whipped cream French bread. I want to eat that. Not the chocolate bread or the cream bread. It has to be the whipped cream French bread!)”

“(What are you planning to do with a bread about as big as you are, Othinus? Hold it like a body pillow while you eat it? Now that’s a form of divine entertainment mankind would never even dream of.)”

But whatever.

He also grabbed a croquette bread and a curry bread before noticing eyes on him.

And not just from one person.

“?”

He shouldn’t have turned around.

The girls were glaring at him.

He had noticed a lot of pressure on him, but was this why?

He looked down at the bag of breads he was holding. He knew Index’s gluttonous appetite well, so he had at least five in there…

Fukiyose Seiri kept her voice low, speaking on behalf of them all.

“Weight. Do you have any idea how much we have to deprive ourselves for that cursed word? And then this damn inconsiderate boy has to show up and start stuffing his face. And to make matters worse, he doesn’t even hesitate to go for the whipped cream French bread that all of us want to eat but can never actually let ourselves eat…”

(They have the wrong idea here, but I can’t exactly tell them these are for Index and Othinus in my room!!)

“Honestly, I force myself to take long baths every day to sweat off as much weight as I can and then this growing boy has to do this in front of me.”

“That’s just a sexy woman who loves bathing. Are you trying to take beauty so far you turn yourself into a dried shiitake? Besides, what’s the point of spending hours naked in the bath when drinking a single glass of water will cancel it all out?”

They started throwing things.

Part 6

While steadily losing some kind of points, Kamijou Touma returned to his room carrying several breads.

There was no reaction even as he opened the door.

Someone half-starved lay collapsed in the middle of the floor.

“Oh. Ohhh… T-Touma. I’m hungry…”

“Stop playing the victim when you’re the one who polished off three days’ worth of supplies in a single day. I’m the obvious victim here,” said an exasperated 15cm Magic God Othinus, wriggling on out from Kamijou’s clothes.

The god’s crossed arms and raised voice suggested Index really had eaten every last crumb. And apparently that god was still reluctant to eat cat food even at 15cm tall.

But Index ignored that entirely.

“That’s not fair, Touma! I want to crawl inside you too!”

“Let’s not make this more confusing than it already is!!”

The breads Kamijou had bought (under the immense pressure of the weight-conscious girls’ glares) vanished in record time.

It was a concerning speed because he had no real solution if this wasn’t enough.

The auto-locking entrance was the most obvious example, but this girls dorm was a lot more security-conscious than the boys dorm had been. It had a lot more strict rules.

That included managing everyone’s meals with the dining hall instead of letting them cook for themselves.

According to the rules, anyone who failed to get enough nutrients in the dining hall just had to put up with their empty stomach. Not getting enough or missing the meal weren’t taken into consideration. That meant night owls would have to battle their empty stomachs each night. Of course, the teachers would probably just say to get to bed earlier.

Then again…

(That’s the official story. But our school isn’t all that strict. Are they really enforcing those rules? I bet people who don’t get enough at dinner make convenience store runs all the time.)

But betting wasn’t the same as having proof.

And if he carelessly pondered this out loud, he knew Index or Othinus would demand he make one of those runs, so he kept his mouth shut!

(Buying all those breads stands out too much, so I need to find some other way of getting them food. What can I do?)

Or was the food even the real problem here?

Was there nothing he could do about the fact that any food in the room would be devoured by Index? Like storing chips and curry bread in a big safe? How expensive were safes exactly???

He had to come up with something.

“Touma. I feel like all I did today was take a bath and brush my teeth.”

“And what’s wrong with that? There’s always tomorrow.”

He might be a high school boy thrown into the foreign world of the girls dorm, but the daily routine continued unabated.

The clock continued to tick as he ate meals, bathed, and so on.

“Guess I should get some sleep,” muttered the pointy-haired boy as he prepared for bed.

First, he reached into his pajamas.

“Othinus.”

“How did you know?”

Why did she think he wouldn’t notice something inside his clothes?

“We already understand each other on such a deep level, so why shouldn’t we sleep in the same space? Besides, the bathroom is a lot safer for me when that feline carnivore named Calico still tries to eat me any time he can- ahhh!!”

He (literally) threw her out.

Also, Calico was not the cat’s name.

And yes, Kamijou Touma slept in the bathtub. Because the bathroom door locked! This was a rule he had followed even back in the boys dorm. So after giving Index the bed and drying out the used bathtub, he climbed in with a blanket in hand. Why was it the place still smelled like girls? Was it the shampoo and body soap provided in the girls dorm? He used the same stuff, but the end result was completely different for some reason.

But…

“I-I can’t sleep.”

This was a girls dorm, not a boys dorm.

That meant some things were different.

Such as…

“The tub is smaller. I can’t stretch out my legs!!”

He tossed and turned inside the cramped tub in the pitch black bathroom for a while.

He had nothing to do.

He was bored.

He felt like he was wasting his time like crazy.

He had read somewhere that your sense of time changed as you aged.

A high schooler’s limit had to be less than an hour.

“This isn’t working.”

Kamijou got up, but he couldn’t go and sleep in the same room as the girls. After some thought, he walked to the front door.

The dorm had a lot more security than the boys dorm had.

Maybe he could lie down and sleep on a bench next to a vending machine in the hallway.

Chapter 2: As Far as You Can Get from Misfortune – Home.

Part 1

“Dammit, why do we have to have boys in the girls dorm? I can’t stand it… Now we have to put on makeup just to step out into the hallway.”

“No one asked you to do that. And Kamijou-san doesn’t mind at all if you’re kind to your skin and don’t bother.”

“I wasn’t asking your opinion! Do you think being some impartial observer makes you untouchable? Not letting boys see me without makeup is a matter of pride!!”

“Then could you stop sighing and acting like I’m to blame? How is that fair!?”

With that, Kamijou fled at full speed. He was just about to receive a cat scratch attack from a girl he didn’t even know first thing in the morning. A cat punch from a tanned schoolgirl sounded more like a reward, but not when the nails were involved. And those sharp plastic nails were long enough you could probably play guitar with them! Kamijou Touma had not yet reached the level where he could take that with ecstasy on his face.

Yes, nothing could prevent the morning from arriving.

(I thought I was going freeze to death.)

Had he been immersed in battle for so long he had lost track of time to the point he sometimes forgot it was January? Forgetting the day of the week seemed bad enough, so even he thought it was truly worrying that he could forget the month.

He found a blue blanket draped over him when he woke up.

Someone must have given it to him in the night, but he really might have never woken again without it. He would have been trapped in that weird nightmare where he was locked in a cold storage warehouse and tried to endure the hunger by eating frozen desserts while waiting for rescue.

This attempt had been a failure.

Where to sleep remained a problem to be solved. A fairly high priority one.

And there was something he had to do first now that the day had begun. He didn’t have time to waste in the morning crowd around the elevator.

He first returned to his room, quickly left again, and took the emergency stairs down to the surface level.

“Crap, crap, crap…”

Kamijou was carrying a translucent trash bag filled to bursting.

Today was burnable trash day.

He had gotten careless since this was still District 7. It was probably a matter of the garbage truck’s route, but trash collection happened a little earlier here than at the boys dorm. A few minutes might not seem like much, but if he missed the truck, he would be forced to spend the night with the full trash bag.

(Eek. Why do people make so much trash just by living? We’re developing our creative spirits in exactly the wrong direction!)

Without kitchens in the rooms and meals eaten in the dining hall, the girls dorm did not have a kitchen garbage day. Did that lifestyle explain why the girls who attended his same school seem to shine so much more than the boys?

Everyone put their full trash bags in a big metal container immediately outside the girls dorm. The heavy lid was probably meant to keep cats and crows out, but the dial padlock had to have some other purpose. With receipts and online shopping packing slips, there were a lot of avenues for attack with a girls dorm. Time to provide some camouflage by dumping in a bunch of boy trash.

Someone was already there.

“Good morning.”

With a thud, Himegami dropped a trash bag in the container.

It appeared to be…what had once been a big pillow.

It was torn all over, the stuffing was sticking out, and it was crammed inside a translucent trash bag.

Kamijou felt a cold sweat down his back.

“H-Himegami? Um, Himegami-san, what is that trash? How did it end up like that?”

“?”

She cutely tilted her head at him.

He got the feeling girls’ rooms contained a lot of secrets.

For now, he could only pray what happened yesterday was not the cause.

Then Fukiyose called out to her classmates with a trash bag in each hand.

“Hey, you! Feeding the stray cats around here teaches them to hang around the trash dump, so quit giving the kitties bad habits! Yomikawa-sensei, what are you sneaking around for!? You can’t love on the cats here just because your apartment doesn’t allow pets!!” A mewing followed after. A drum-shaped cleaning robot showed up and cleared out the gathering of cats. The busty track suit gym teacher was cleared out along with them. Was this why she had made a habit of showing up at the girls dorm? And of all things she had unsealed a long, skinny package of Mule, the kitties’ favorite, which would really keep them coming back here.

“Does that sexy pair of boobs ever stop causing trouble?”

“What did you say?”

“Don’t react to that, Fukiyose-san, I wasn’t talking about you. I meant the teacher on the run over there!!”

…Also, were the kitties around the girls dorm acting weird lately because they had detected his calico cat? It may have triggered their territorial instincts.

With her job complete, Fukiyose stretched.

“By the way, have you heard the rumors of an intruder in the second year girls dorm?”

“Hold on. We’re going for some real psychological horror first thing in the morning? That’s terrifying. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Apparently they used a delivery code to get through the auto-locking front entrance. You’re supposed to give that code when you order something so they can deliver it to the dorm, but that means you can’t really trust the lock anymore.”

Why were things suddenly feeling so post-apocalyptic?

Were the world’s morals collapsing, starting with the girls dorms?

Part 2

“…”

Kamijou Touma was in the dining hall.

With his time-sensitive trash work complete, he had hoped for a relaxed and leisurely breakfast, but then he froze up.

When he faced the ticket machine’s LCD screen, he saw another new item under the new tab.

Vegetable curry.

“Y-you’re kidding!! What am I even supposed to imagine here!? Vegetable is just too broad a category!”

This was that gyaru-ish young woman’s doing. She wasn’t quite a dorm manager. There were unconfirmed reports going around that she would strip down and float in the dorm’s large bath when she got bored during the day. …But that didn’t fix this problem.

Yes, the pointy-haired boy knew how to cook, so he wasn’t going to go easy on her. In fact, he wouldn’t have to bother the bento shop woman at all if he just had a kitchen in his room!

Also, why didn’t this one have a sample photo either?

Vegetable curry.

Kamijou had a fair amount of experience analyzing the abilities of magicians and espers in life-or-death battles, but he was helpless here. He couldn’t even hazard a guess.

Plopping a single giant oden daikon radish on top of curry rice would technically count! If he was served curry with a ton of sliced onion instead of rice, he wouldn’t have any right to complain!! All it said was vegetable curry, so there was no guarantee it would even have rice. Of course, he could be overthinking it. But there was that egg curry from yesterday. They all would have happily accepted it if it had been a sliced boiled egg, a rolled omelet, or a fried egg on top, but instead of going sweet or salty, that woman had gone with scrambled eggs! With a culinary sense like that, how could he hope to predict what this would be!!?

He couldn’t work up the resolve here. And if he couldn’t bring himself to take the safe path up the mountain, a courageous withdrawal was the only option. While you did only live once, that didn’t mean you had to adopt a dangerous spirit of accepting any and all challenges. There had to be other options. Like a safe ginger pork set or oyakodon!!

With some trouble, Kamijou searched out the set tab among the mountain of categories, skimmed through it, and couldn’t believe his eyes.

“T-the screen is so dark. And covered in red Xs. Everything normal is sold out!?”

“Probably from everyone avoiding the vegetable curry.”

It violated the spirit of capitalism.

He was only a little late and this was what he had to deal with? He had money but no freedom to choose. How was this any better than a ration system!?

With Himegami and Fukiyose watching over him from behind, Kamijou chose the vegetable curry with a trembling finger. And why was it so hot in here!? Having teenage girls gathered close enough he could feel their breaths on his ears came as a real shock!

Please let it be something like a summer vegetable curry packed full of potatoes and carrots! Kamijou shut his eyes and made a wish. He belatedly realized it was the opposite of summer and all hope shattered in his heart.

“Here you go.”

“That was fast!! Only having time to speak a few words is so worrying!”

He was handed his food from beyond the counter. In 1.5 seconds again.

He couldn’t make sense of what he was looking at.

“???”

He followed the flow of the crowd, carrying his tray to the table, where he gave it another look.

Vegetable curry.

“What…is this? It just looks like brown roux to me.”

“Wait. There’s some small yellow lumps inside the curry. It’s hard to tell because it melted from the heat, but these aren’t spices.”

“It’s quinoa. This is the super food quinoa!!”

Detective Fukiyose revealed the truth.

It wasn’t fair. Didn’t one of so-and-so’s ten commandments say quinoa couldn’t be the culprit!?

“Wait, does that even count as a vegetable!? Sure, it’s a plant, but like with millet, isn’t it categorized more as a grain than a vegetable? Isn’t it something like a friend of rice!? Not that I have any idea how quinoa is grown!!”

“Kamijou Touma, that argument isn’t going to work. Quinoa is used in salads too, so we have no way of denying that it can be called a vegetable!”

“That’s absurd. Dammit, Fukiyose, are you going to say potato salad and macaroni salad count as vegetable salads just because they use plants!? Ham salads exist, but you’d better not be telling me ham is a vegetable. We have a real case this time!!”

“No, we don’t. This isn’t a detective story. This is the real world. No matter how unbelievable a situation we find ourselves in, we have to face the truth before us.”

So solving the mystery didn’t make anyone happy? Now that was a merciless sort of perfect crime.

Kamijou stuck his spoon in it.

There was no resistance.

He tried a bite.

It was like eating curry with nothing in it. The roux was thinner, like a soup curry, so it didn’t feel like he was eating anything at all. He knew it wasn’t anatomically possible, but it went down so easily he thought it was skipping right past his stomach.

How could this possibly have 800 Calories? That was a lot! Kamijou shuddered. What was the quinoa even doing? Was it a mass producer of obesity!? This wouldn’t keep him feeling full for even an hour. He just knew he’d be visiting a convenience store and snacking on all sorts of things later!!

Kamijou hung his head and trembled.

But then he raised his head with renewed conviction.

“That’s enough! Let Kamijou-san borrow that kitchen real quick!! I can cook, so I’ll show you how you can feed students on the cheap!!!”

Himegami and Fukiyose had to hold him back.

Apparently fire safety and sanitation rules didn’t allow for guest cooks.

But wasn’t that bento shop woman a guest here too!?

Part 3

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

At school, Aogami Pierce was lying dead on his desk.

That boy who lived for moe and 2D was taking it hard that he couldn’t join them in their girls dorm life.

Komoe-sensei ignored him entirely.

“Today is the second day of the first general entrance exam. The newspaper and textbook publisher websites have posted the first day’s answers for people to see how they did. Every year, this leads to exam students losing all hope and running amok in the streets, so be careful you aren’t caught up in that. When a high level esper lashes out, a single hit could be the end of you, so really do be careful.”

“Is telling people to be careful the only thing being done to prevent that?”

If those students wanted to show off their power, they should have just bent a spoon or whatever during an entrance interview.

Talent was meaningless if it wasn’t used well.

“And I have a reminder for you first years who are enjoying your peaceful week because you think the exams are no concern of yours: do not forget your third term final exams are approaching fast. February is right around the corner. If you fail to study during these lulls, you will be left behind before you know it.”

Desks shook all across the classroom. A fair number of students staring at their phones as they completed their dailies in some game or another must have thought better of it. If they could quit now, they weren’t too far gone yet.

And so their life-or-death school life had begun.

Today they had gym class. Even professional baseball didn’t play during midwinter to avoid player injuries, so what were Academy City’s educators thinking?

“Why do they actually prefer to play soccer and rugby in the winter? I hope there’s a unified theory behind it and they aren’t just going on vibes.”

Kamijou had plenty of complaints, but that was what a high school first year was supposed to do. And most mysteries and unreasonable matters weren’t going to solve themselves just because a high schooler complained.

The boys ended up playing soccer outside.

They split between even and odd student numbers to make two teams.

It wasn’t a serious game, so they weren’t strict about positions. The gym teacher wouldn’t say anything as long as they didn’t end up with three or four goalies.

“I really don’t want the sound of my Achilles tendon snapping to ring around the world… Life is long, so what’s wrong with taking a quick break? Hey, Aogami Pierce, come be my accomplice☆”

Kamijou casually roped his friend into it but received no response.

Aogami Pierce’s head was lowered.

A cursed voice pressed in on Kamijou.

“Why is it always Kami-yan, why is it always Kami-yan, why is it always Kami-yan? It should be me living the dream in the girls dorm. When did your life enter this bonus stage? Let me punch youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!”

Why was this guy suddenly throwing hands when they were playing soccer!?

Part 4

Kamijou Touma did not show (much) mercy.

Humans tended to attack stronger in retaliation than as the aggressor.

(We aren’t getting special treatment. You just did something different on your own.)

Kamijou Touma had already decided he needed something good for lunch.

He had decided this back when he was surprised by the vegetable curry at breakfast.

He would die on the inside if he wasn’t satisfied at lunch.

However, the exam takers had priority at the cafeteria and the school store, so he had to leave school grounds and visit a nearby convenience store. That flagrant violation of the rules would normally get him attacked and detained by the gorilla teacher or the track suit teacher, but they were too busy dealing with the exams today. But don’t copy his example here, future freshmen. That was a good way of corrupting your soul.

The streets full of tri-blade wind turbines were full of temptations, but the family restaurants and burger shops visible in the distance had long lines. Lunchtime was a hell of a thing. The flow of time felt a little different between school and the outside world, so standing in line there could mean not getting back in time for his next class. A nearby convenience store would probably be best. Even if there was a line at the register, it didn’t take long to get each customer served.

So he stepped inside the store.

“Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh!? There’s a wicked woman corrupting her soul at one of the eat-in seats. Senpai, I thought you didn’t have to do this!”

“Mgh!?”

Kumokawa Seria choked, eyes wide, in a counter seat by the window. The busty black-haired forehead upperclassman was breaking the school rules to chow down on a fish burger. And wasn’t that kind expensive when you had them cook it in the store!? To make matters worse, that devil had three whole convenience store sweets too. What was she preparing for? Climbing a mountain somewhere!?

Kumokawa Seria sipped on her hot tea to avoid suffocating.

“Wh-what do you want, boy? I would be willing to give you a fry.”

“No, I’m not asking for anything like that.”

Which meant that beautiful upperclassman really didn’t need to hold his hand between hers, give him an upturned look, and try to negotiate. Her hands were so soft and smooth. So was this a form of persuasion? Kamijou had learned something new.

But that aside.

Kumokawa’s tray didn’t look all that attractive to him. Even though each individual item was fine.

Why was that?

“You have awful taste, Senpai. Burgers and tea don’t really go together, do they? Especially hot black tea. And the lack of any empty packages around it means you’re drinking it straight, doesn’t it? Why?”

“Huh? Wait just a second. They sell coffee and tea at just about any burger shop!”

“That’s for the people who want to stick to a cup of tea while their friends eat a burger set. You aren’t supposed to drink the tea with a burger.”

“Huhh!? Then what’s your idea of a good pairing for a burger!?”

A soda.

Kamijou wasn’t as wealthy as that busty black-haired rich girl, so the most he could do was head to the bread section, grab a bun that could be roughly torn apart by hand, and combine it with the fried chicken sold next to the register. The new flavor was nacho cheese and chili sauce flavor. He could never keep up with the convenience store fried chicken flavors because they were always coming up with new ones. And they sometimes brought back old flavors, which really messed with his memory.

But even this looked better to him than Kumokawa’s combination.

Tastiness wasn’t a matter of the price tag.

And the busty girl pouted her lips like a little girl and shouted.

“You’re a child! Only children like sodas!!”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s not like burgers are a grownup food. Why did you think you could win this by acting more mature?”

“~ ~ ~!”

“Here, try mine. The fried chicken burger is the better option when you eat it with a soda, Senpai.”

“Ghh. Y-you’re right…”

Kumokawa Seria always used her allure to toy with the teenage boy, but here she bit her lip and trembled. It was a rare sight.

…He also didn’t think hot tea was something to order in a giant L-size bottle and he didn’t think the convenience store yokan went well with a burger or black tea…but letting that slide was the kind thing to do. As a first year, he didn’t want to see this usually confident upperclassman crying any longer.

“(Hmm. Would it be best to assume the confusion comes from a beautiful and rich upperclassman not knowing how to use a convenience store like the common folk? This is so bad that’s about the only defense she has.)”

“You don’t have to make me feel better by making things up!!! (sob)”

If she ended up consuming the whole thing from stress, none of Kamijou’s lunch would be left for him, so he stopped her from eating any more.

The lunch break was the same for them both. If they weren’t back on school grounds by the time the bell rang, the gorilla teacher or the track suit teacher would definitely notice their absence.

“Oh, I ate part of that, so that’s an indirect kiss.”

“Bffhbbhf!!!?”

…No, he would never be able to come out on top against her!! Kamijou Touma wasn’t one to give up, but he did so here. It was too much for him.

Part 5

“This seven veggie smoothie is so good.”

It was evening.

Shokuhou Misaki spoke to herself on a bench near a food truck. It was apparently a limited edition exam season product meant to boost brain power.

She was recharging.

The world was dyed orange. School was out for the day. She was waiting for someone who would be exhausted after finishing their first day of exams.

(Acute Kotatsu Syndrome, was it? Such a stupid name for a social phenomenon, but we can’t forget that it really did affect people’s lives.)

Hokaze Junko, #2 of her clique, was a third year in middle school, so the first general entrance exam applied to her. Yet she had apparently spent January neglecting her studies and relaxing. Shokuhou was terribly worried for her.

But not because Shokuhou was a good person.

She had a rational enough view of herself to make that self analysis.

(I can only worry about someone else during this exam season because of my own mental relaxation ability.)

Shokuhou Misaki was Academy City’s #5 Level 5, Mental Out.

She was the strongest of the pure psychological espers. It was said there was nothing related to the mind that monster couldn’t do. So the entrance exam war effectively didn’t exist for her. She had countless ways she could pass every single subject with a perfect score or pass the exam without even showing up at the exam site. She had so many options that three and even four digits wasn’t enough to count them.

(If Junko-san looks down when she leaves the exam site, I need to give her an energy boost. Still, no matter how she did on her first day, she isn’t the type to just go to bed without checking the provided answers.)

Just then, she felt a heavy vibration pass through the bench.

Someone had sat down next to her.

Shokuhou glanced over (with a bit of irritation to be honest) and then froze.

He was there.

A boy. A first year high schooler. With pointy hair!?

(Wh-wh-wh-wh-what is he doing here!?)

Her spine tensed. Her face grew hot. Wait, calm down. Shokuhou immediately aimed her TV remote at some passersby, hijacked a sample of five points of view, and checked her face, but her cheeks were not noticeably flushed! And her eyes were not spinning in her head!!

Making a move herself was easy.

Because whatever she might do, he would forget it all a moment later. That created a unique kind of confidence

But things were different when he came to her.

Wait, I’m not weady!!

(Bwah!! Ababwah, what is going on here? Is some terrible trap waiting for me here? Is Misaka-san nearby? No. What about the clique members? Also no. But wait, without any of them to hold me back, I won’t be able to stop!!)

After thinking(?) through that far, Shokuhou Misaki noticed something.

He wasn’t looking at her.

She followed his gaze and didn’t see anything of note. The cars driving by, some students talking about taking a detour, a drum-shaped cleaning robot moving out of their way, etc.

Why had the pointy-haired boy sat next to her in the first place?

It wasn’t because he had seen Shokuhou Misaki and decided to say hi to a friend.

That would never happen.

Then what had Kamijou Touma been thinking when he sat on this bench?

“Excuse me.”

The next thing she knew, she was hesitantly asking a question.

Even among the 2.3 million people of the city, he was the extremely rare person who could turn the #5 Level 5 into nothing more than “a younger girl”. Which was why she obediently scooted toward him.

She knew this was a weird thing to ask if they had never met before.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing really,” briefly replied the older boy without even looking in her direction. “Just looking at the city.”

“…”

The street hadn’t been blocked off and there was no parade marching down it.

The scene laid out before him was no more than an ordinary afterschool evening.

Kamijou Touma gently narrowed his eyes and didn’t speak a word as he really did just watch the orange-dyed world. As if to say this day and all the things that each new day brought were more valuable than Halloween or winter break.

“I’m not about to say I’ve lived a perfect life.”

He wasn’t staring blanking into the middle distance.

His voice contained heartfelt relief at being able to share this world with everyone.

“But no matter how many mistakes I made, I’m glad I never gave up.”

To Shokuhou, it looked like he was reaffirming something.

Reaffirming that the boring times and the silly things were not something you could take for granted. Reaffirming that it could all crumble away if you failed to put in the work for even a moment. And that was why he was savoring this day that had been built on a foundation of that work.

Part 6

School was out for the day.

During an uneventful walk home, Kamijou Touma’s shoulders slumped.

The online news appearing on his phone was as crazy as ever.

“Today’s traffic news: A 2km traffic jam has formed on District 7’s south main road. It is the result of nearby criminal activity, so it shows no sign of clearing up soon. If you are in a hurry, we recommend taking the train.”

“We have several reports of mysterious figures sighted off the road in the mountain forest of District 21. During entrance exam season, there tend to be more people climbing to the summit to pray for their friends’ exam success, but do not grow complacent just because it is a relatively short mountain. Make sure to submit a climb plan beforehand.”

“Real time tragedy! Excitement near the District 7 train station! Watch out for a rampaging exam student!!”

“Ugh. It’s even on the online news. Some student going nuts in front of the station single-handedly knocked over the statue everyone uses as a meetup spot. The damage has gone beyond a slasher film and reached the level of a disaster film. Can I even get back to the girls dorm with that educated kaiju on the loose?”

The same news was scrolling by on the large screen of the airship floating in the evening sky. The reporters were clearly getting lazy if they were relaying the online news instead of heading out to report on it themselves.

But since Kamijou wasn’t in a club, if he stayed at school for too long, he might gather the attention of Anti-Skill or Judgment. He doubted the exams were still being taken, but they might suspect he was a “technician” trying to sneak into a classroom being used for the exams tomorrow so he could hide illicit notes or a small device. And Mr. Misfortune’s nerves about those false accusations would only make him act weirdly, which would get him caught for sure! It was time to head home!!

Academy City had schools all over.

This area felt so quiet he felt a little lonely. There was no one around even after school had let out.

Was that because of the entrance exam season?

He heard some voices shouting in the distance. Was that a sports team jogging around the school grounds? That was his guess, but then an indoorsy group carrying a ton of camera equipment ran past him with Anti-Skill in hot pursuit. They were running full tilt. He guessed they were a manga club who had braved the unfamiliar outdoors in search of reference photographs and then set off their camera’s flash toward the engineer’s cabin of a moving train.

All of the afterschool clubs had a shortened schedule during the entrance exam period, but apparently some of them were continuing their activities outside the schools. And that wasn’t just the athletic clubs.

Kamijou Touma realized he had just accepted his lack of a club as normal.

He apparently hadn’t been in one even before losing his memories, so he guessed he was just the type who couldn’t stick with anything for long…

“Can I just return to the girls dorm now? No, I can’t.”

His room in the girls dorm had no kitchen. A single microwave oven would probably change his life in that room considerably. But a quick search on his phone told him prices on those had skyrocketed with the addition of new features like grilling and toasting, so buying one on a whim wasn’t feasible.

Once out on the main street, the city was flooded with people. Maybe a lot of them were wandering around without a clear destination in mind like he was.

“Oh.”

He spotted someone familiar from behind in the crowd.

Someone he knew so well he didn’t need to see her face.

One was a small student council president with a bunny-like ribbon on her head. The person walking next to her was harder to recognize from behind, but that was probably the glasses boy.

They were from another high school where his school had borrowed some unused classrooms when their own school was destroyed.

(That school feels like home too. When I picture it in my mind, it feels so familiar.)

He didn’t find a chance to call out to them and just watched them go.

But if he needed to talk with them, he could call them up on his phone. He didn’t have pressing enough business to search them out after they vanished into the crowd.

Just as he thought that, his eyes met those of another familiar face.

This wasn’t Misaka Mikoto.

The weird goggles on her head, the absence of any emotional light in her eyes, and her harmless and obedient behavior told him this was probably the Misaka Sister.

She was a mass-produced military model of Academy City’s #3 Level 5, Railgun. But those clone girls had failed to reach the original’s level of power output and were forced to live a challenging life. This one in particular was Sisters Serial Number 10032.

After meeting her eyes, he couldn’t just watch her go like he had with the others.

He was drawn to her.

Come to think of it, hadn’t he seen her on the streets around this time yesterday?

“What are you doing?”

“It is the black cat’s walk time, explains Misaka.”

“…Again, what are you doing? Cats return home on their own after patrolling their territory. You don’t put them on a leash and go on walks with them.”

“Nevertheless, the cat does not return to the hospital where we live, rebuts Misaka. Because the cat is stupid.”

“Is that a sign of affection or an insult, Misaka Sister?”

Kamijou stared into the distance.

…Was she following the cat as it walked through narrow alleys and along fences? What a waste of her athletic abilities. Maybe she just had nothing better to do.

But at the moment…

“Now stand by Misaka’s side so we can walk arm in arm, says Misaka as she requests permission and approval.”

“Why!?”

“Misaka has always wanted to walk home from school with a friend, says Misaka as she explains her objective.”

“Well, if that’s all…”

The Misaka Sister wore a school uniform, but she didn’t actually attend school.

Kamijou might think nothing of it, but not everyone had the opportunity. So he couldn’t rob her of the opportunity when it did come.

Not everyone valued treasures the same.

Not everyone would feel the same happiness when given a giant diamond.

She wanted to walk home from school with a friend.

Some treasures took that form. That was true.

Kamijou Touma needed to understand how precious these normal, natural, and ordinary things were. Because he had already died to protect them. And that death hadn’t been to protect only the perfect and flawless answers.

“That makes this a date between lovers,” said the Misaka Sister with a firm expression. “Without a doubt.”

“Bff!! Why do you have to think about everything in such extremes!?”

The pointy-haired boy was shaken to his core, but the Misaka Sister was being her usual self.

She wrapped her arm around his and wouldn’t let go.

And she was extremely soft and warm!!

“What roundabout route will we be taking today? Surely you aren’t going to suggest we will not be grabbing something to eat, says Misaka as she checks on every last thing. Yes, yes.”

“Is your idea of ‘walking home’ to wander the streets forever? …But if we are going to stop somewhere, let’s make it a home appliance shop. Or maybe a discount store where they would sell the super cheap models that have been stripped down to the bare minimum functions.”

“Thinking of purchasing a 180 thousand yen clone girl?”

“I’m talking about a microwave!!”

Besides, a high school first year wouldn’t have an extra 180 thousand yen in his budget.

To continue his life in the girls dorm, he badly wanted a microwave oven in his room for cooking retort pouches and frozen foods. And as cheap of one as he could find. Which store would be best to check?

When he was about to change course, the black cat mewed while obediently following after them.

And something exploded.

Or so it seemed to Kamijou.

“Hold on…”

A cloud of smoke rose in the distance.

No, that was probably a person.

A boy.

(Come to think of it, didn’t Komoe-sensei explain that exam students often start running amok in town after checking the answers published in the newspapers and online?)

Someone flailing his arms around had flipped over a mid-sized truck illegally parked in the station plaza. It was a thoroughly decorated truck, so the destruction sparked a lot more than necessary. If this was his answer to a single illegally parked truck, that guy must have been hell bent on showing off his righteous spirit no matter what. When a man who appeared to be the driver stepped out of a convenience store, he stared in shock. He held nothing in his hands. No matter how pressing it had been, Kamijou thought he shouldn’t have used the store’s bathroom without buying anything.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!! What the hell, you rampaging exam student. Attacking trucks isn’t going to improve your score, you know!?”

Then the Misaka Sister spoke, as expressionless as ever.

“If he comes this way, Misaka will blow him away with a 12.7mm anti-materiel rifle, says Misaka as she prepares for self-defense. Keeping the cat safe is Misaka’s top priority.”

“That’s taking it too far. Pets might be family, but I don’t think the law lets you kill someone to save a cat. Besides, assembling an illegal weapon doesn’t count as self defense!! You don’t actually have one, do you? Please tell me you’re not carrying around an illegal gun. Look me in the eye and tell me, Misaka Sister!”

Also, hadn’t the bunny president and the glasses boy walked in that direction? Just a bit before? They hadn’t been caught in this and sent to heaven, had they!?

Something flew over Kamijou’s head and toward the center of the issue. Probably an amateur news streamer’s camera drone. Sending them out in a densely populated area was against the rules, so professional reporters actually wouldn’t do it. Someone so focused on views they had nothing else to lose was a scary thing.

And the rude camera lens must have displeased the rampaging exam student because the sounds of destruction only grew.

The bigger the story the better for the news streamer, so that might have even been intentional. Kamijou just wished they wouldn’t get everyone in the area involved too.

Kamijou had hoped to check out the closest discount shop for a super cheap microwave, but now he had to turn around. He had no desire to approach that hopeless disaster zone full of death and destruction. The drum-shaped security robots were really nothing more than moving security cameras, so they weren’t much use when the good citizens of the city were caught in some kind of physical trouble.

(Well, it’s happening near the train station, so there should be an Anti-Skill station nearby.)

“This is Anti-Skill!! Put your hands up and get down on your knees! You can’t escape with so many cameras on you!”

Kamijou breathed a sigh of relief when one of the justice bringers came running and raised her voice.

But the rampaging esper suddenly changed direction.

Kamijou’s eyes met with the Japanese Boy’s.

And if the fleeing criminal was looking right at him…wait? Was he coming in this way!?

“I get it’s too dangerous to fire with so many people near the station…but please Anti-Skill! There are plenty of small side roads you could be guiding him onto!”

Was this the result of Kamijou’s misfortune?

The running boy shouted with spittle flying.

“Ohh, outta way, damn, move, asshole!!”

It saddened Kamijou that he managed to understand what should have been a meaningless string of words. Did this mean he was the same as that guy?

The rampaging esper powerfully raised his right arm. The motion was more like swinging down a big blunt object than throwing a punch.

The pointy-haired boy’s bangs fluttered up.

Because the air had moved in front of him. …Was that really something you could do with a single arm?

“Khh.”

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

His life was fairly seriously at risk.

(What kind of power is that exactly? He flipped a truck by hand, but is this really just a simple case of boosted strength? If it’s actually telekinesis, he might be able to use it as a projectile.)

“Noo!?”

Kamijou shoved the Misaka Sister out of the way.

He heard a voice from overhead.

He rolled along the ground with the clone girl. To the side. It was important to carry a spirit of compromise.

Then the pursuing Anti-Skill officer reached for her holster and drew a handgun loaded with rubber bullets.

“Oh, no. I can’t let him harm any civilians. Eh heh heh. So I have no choice but to fire!!”

“Wha- are you stupid!? Why would you actually fire on the ground!? And why do you look so excited about it!? This is supposed to be a peaceful country!!”

Scared by the sound of gunfire, the rampaging exam student took a hopping slide to the side.

Which brought him straight toward Kamijou and the Misaka Sister.

Thanks to Anti-Skill’s unnecessary action (while thoroughly enjoying this official duty), the rampaging esper was headed straight toward them even though they had actually rolled out of the way.

Don’t hop! You don’t have a bunny theme going on, do you, you violent exam taker!?

Kamijou couldn’t let the clone girl or the black kitty get caught up in this!!

It was time for the usual: putting himself in harm’s way to make sure things worked out.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, such misfortuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuune!!!”

Part 7

Afterschool time came for everyone the same.

The School Garden was also inside District 7, so there was nothing at all unusual about the middle school girl named Misaka Mikoto being there with phone in hand.

“Onee-sama,” said the voice on her phone. “You should probably head back early today.”

“Did something happen, Kuroko? The dorm manager only just did a surprise inspection, so we should be fine there for a while.”

“Because nothing good ever happens when you run into a big seasonal event like Halloween or the New Year’s mad dash on the shrines. And Judgment has a duty to prevent incidents before they occur.”

“Do you actually expect me to listen to a warning when you put it like that?”

She hung up, her expression blank.

She was Academy City’s #3 and knew very well how to operate electronics. There was no way Shirai Kuroko could use her phone’s GPS data to track her down.

(Entrance exams, huh?)

She did have her thoughts seeing the signs for snacks and sports drink presenting themselves as weird good luck charms for the exams. Entrance exams were all about the future. Thinking about them worried her. But she didn’t have anyone she could discuss this with. Shirai was a fellow Tokiwadai student, but second years and first years felt very different about these things.

And she would rather die than discuss this kind of vulnerability with that big-boobed brainwashing monster.

“Hm.”

Entrance exams were still relevant to a middle school second year.

The third years were currently going through hell and it would be her turn next year. She would be in trouble if she didn’t start thinking about her plans for the future soon. …She would end up like that busty ringlet curls girl.

Of course, Academy City’s #3 Level 5, Railgun, would have countless options available to her. She probably wouldn’t even need to tie herself to her desk and study for hours on end. She could get into any of the finest schools, including Nagatenjouki Academy and Kirigaoka Girls Academy, on a recommendation alone.

So that wasn’t what was worrying her.

The issue occupying the majority of her mind was something no one else would consider a big deal at all.

“…”

She was worried about somewhere far removed from that struggle over the most elite options. She was thinking about a completely ordinary coed school.

She did of course wonder if she could really decide her path forward based on this.

But without a specific occupation in mind for her future, she couldn’t say clearly what school would be right for her.

This was about her future.

What did Academy City’s #3 hope to learn and where did she hope to go?

And while she was worrying over this, she heard some voices.

“What’s wrong with you!? I’ve got nothing against you, so why are you getting in my way, you stupid idiot!? Stop thiiiis!!”

“Why do I have to be called an idiot by a criminal whose causing trouble just cause he did bad on his exam!? Does my misfortune really mean I deserve being made fun of!?”

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“Wh-what the hell is he doing?”

Someone had jumped out and started playing at a fleeing criminal’s feet.

Did he think he was the Youkai called a Sunekosuri?

If this continued, he would definitely get kicked like a soccer ball.

Electricity scattered from Mikoto’s bangs.

“Ugh, really!?”

Part 8

Light flashed and sound boomed.

Far more than before.

“………………………………………………………………………………………For real?”

Kamijou Touma watched it all in a daze.

The rampaging exam student had been knocked over.

That electric Tokiwadai girl had actually knocked over that guy who was stomping around like a kaiju! With a single hand!?

Had she saved Kamijou?

When she was providing covering fire, the #3 was great to have on your side. Unfortunately, that coin didn’t always take flight to help him.

The girl spoke with her voice pitched ultra low.

It didn’t sound very rewarding.

“…What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

Then Kamijou noticed.

The Misaka Sister lay collapsed on the pavement. On her back. And Kamijou lay right on top of her. The clone girl was supposed to look exactly like the original in every way, but for some reason she wasn’t wearing shorts below her Tokiwadai uniform. How did he know she wasn’t? Because her skirt had pulled up quite spectacularly.

Her head was tilted, directing her dead eyes in an arbitrary direction.

But that wasn’t because he had done anything inappropriate here. Her eyes never had any light in them. But it still made the situation extremely easy to misinterpret.

Tears formed in Kamijou’s eyes.

“Wait. Wait, wait.”

Um, I have always wondered why Tokiwadai’s skirts are so short when it’s supposed to be one of Academy City’s most prestigious girls schools. All I did was try to save her and now it’s doing nothing to hide those stripes!!

But none of those thoughts ever made it out of his mouth.

A girl with an identical face was trembling.

Yeah, and she was just as electric as ever.

Kamijou stared into the middle distance as he heard a crackling sound a lot like the air splitting.

This was probably a lot more powerful than the power lines running above the train tracks.

“I have to say. As their older sister, I really don’t think I can ignore what I’m seeing here…”

“Oh, the cat ran away. Misaka can’t afford to lose track of it, so we need to hurry, says Misaka as she tugs on your arm and gets moving. While showing off plenty of body contact between us.”

The animal had probably fled from the electromagnetic waves scattered around by the #3.

And running off now would probably make her impression of him plummet!

“You’re running!? That’s what they call consciousness of guillllllllllllllllllllllllllttttttttttttttttttttt!!!”

“Nooo, scientifically-created lightning is chasing after meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”

A depressing game of tag had begun.

Just like a stealth horror game where you could only run away from the unbeatable boss character. And it was the type where the chase began after the invincible boss had already seen you! In the kind of game with lots of gross gore!!

Part 9

He somehow managed to escape☆

“But did I really? This isn’t one of those things where they get you to let your guard down right before they jump scare you, is it?”

….Misaka Mikoto was supposed to be a middle school girl, but so why was he imagining a scene from a horror game? Specifically, one where you explored an abandoned village where all the residents had gone mysteriously missing.

He realized the Misaka Sister and the black cat weren’t with him.

Had Mikoto chased after them instead?

(Well, she won’t do anything to her sister. Or to the kitty.)

That said. He had a feeling the #3 monster was still wandering around somewhere nearby, but he appeared to have found an unexpected blind spot.

The girls dorm.

It made sense. If Mikoto wasn’t aware of the circumstances at his school, how could she predict a boy like him would escape here?

(I just hope she doesn’t use some weird hacking ability to find the truth.)

Kamijou prayed to something unseen as he hid in front of the auto-locking entrance.

Although it scared him that hope seemed so fleeting he was resorting to prayer.

Also, the girls dorm did have its bright and shining auto-locking entrance, but he had heard there were plenty of loopholes there. For example, you could apparently leave the dorm by climbing out the second floor hallway rest area window and climbing down one of the trees growing along the sidewalk. Why had that route come to be? Because a surprising number of girls would develop a sudden compulsion to sing at the top of their lungs in the middle of the night, so they needed a way to go out and do karaoke!! But if they used the main entrance, it would create a record they had left.

(So it isn’t just boys who want to do something even more if it’s against the rules.)

His school really was different from a prestigious one like Tokiwadai.

A rebellious phase was apparently important for developing a personality, but was climbing up and down a tree like a monkey night after night really good for your mental health? Seemed like that would mess you up a lot.

Kamijou opened the auto-locking entrance and walked inside.

There was no real reason to rush, so he decided to check on something he had been curious about.

But.

She was sleeping with her belly exposed.

“…”

There was no lapse in his memories.

This was the direct result of following the timeline in Kamijou Touma’s head.

Who was that woman?

He had wondered what the dining hall was like outside of mealtime. He hadn’t noticed a “keep out” sign on the entrance, so he had taken a peek inside and been hit with a major question.

A young woman, probably in her twenties, was lying face up on three dining hall chairs lined up in a row.

She wore a knit turtleneck and a short skirt. Her ears were covered in many piercings. She must have just put in whatever struck her fancy because the number on each ear didn’t match.

She wore fluffy slippers on her feet.

Her fluffy hair appeared to be bleached and dyed blonde, but it was currently tied back with a bandanna. It looked like she had fallen asleep in the middle of cleaning. But what was an adult woman doing in a high school girls dorm? It was baffling.

She looked like the pale kind of gyaru who never visited a tanning salon.

Maybe it was the visible navel and short skirt, but she sort of reminded Kamijou of a cheerleader.

Her mouth was opened wide.

She was enjoying her nap.

The apron folded up on a nearby long table reminded him of something. As did the lamé and beads sparkling on her painted nails.

…Was she the dining hall woman? Who normally worked at a bento shop?

Kamijou was honestly surprised to find she looked like this.

(Not that it really matters.)

A blanket had fallen onto the floor next to her.

A blue one.

It looked familiar. Wasn’t that the same as the one he found over him when he woke up this morning?

“So she gave it to me.”

This part did matter because he needed to thank her next time he saw her. He didn’t want to wake her just for that, so he couldn’t do it this time.

That aside, he now knew the dining hall was not open off hours. Apparently he couldn’t just pop in and grab a small thing of soba for a snack. That would’ve been ultra convenient, but that would be asking a lot of a place that wasn’t a 24-hour gyudon shop or family restaurant.

He quietly slipped out of the dining hall so as not to wake her.

The elevator was always busy in the evenings, so he used the emergency stairs instead. …He didn’t like how doing that made him feel segregated.

“Listen uuuuup. What’re you all having for dinner tonight? Want to come up with a menu with Demoness Mayu-chin?”

A few groups had formed in corners of the hallway.

Those were probably the boys who had taken severe damage from the real power of the real girls. A fake-sounding soprano voice was playing from their landscape-oriented phones. Hopefully they weren’t so desperate they would send tons of money to that anime-style 3D avatar.

And someone approached from the emergency stairs.

“Kamijou?”

Fukiyose Seiri held a large plastic bucket in her hands. Whether you imagined she was cooling a bunch of bottled or canned drinks in ice water or dumping a bunch of trash in the back alley said a lot about what kind of person you were. The point was the blue bucket had a lid and was large enough to hide in if you really tried.

“Oh, they’re resting on it,” commented Kamijou without thinking.

“?”

Fukiyose tilted her head in puzzlement, but he said nothing more because he knew he would be in trouble if she realized what he meant. Holding a giant plastic bucket seemed to have a way of pushing up a girl’s boobs.

“So what are you doing? I thought you’d get in trouble if you left your trash outside all night.”

“This isn’t trash. I’m cleaning and needed a stool. It wobbles, so will you hold it steady for me?”

“Cleaning what?”

Was that why the bucket’s lid had a dry rag on it?

He would understand if she meant her room, but who was supposed to clean the public hallways? That seemed like it should be a job for the drum-shaped cleaning robots to him.

Fukiyose adjusted the position of the bucket while looking up at the ceiling and sighed in exasperation.

“The robots only clean the floor. If you don’t clean the rest for too long, you end up with clumps of dust falling down on your head. Do you want that?”

And so Fukiyose intended to step up onto the giant bucket and clean the ceiling. The fluorescent lights were her first priority.

“I also wanted to try out this Ultra Electroduster. It uses static electricity to create a plasma blaster that collects all the dust in a single wipe. I want to see it in action for myself.”

“Buying more weird mail-order products, huh?”

If you had to search out a chance to use it, it didn’t sound very useful in everyday life.

“That aside, shouldn’t you find an actual stepladder?” Kamijou looked a little worried. “What if you break right through that flimsy bucket?”

“Why would I need to worry about that?” asked Fukiyose in honest confusion.

Kamijou was reminded that girls were as light as cotton candy.

If sturdy and heavy Mr. Misfortune tried this, he was certain he would break through right away.

“Okay.”

The black-haired girl placed her hands on the bucket and climbed up on her knees.

However, it was a light bucket.

“It’s wobbling a lot… Kamijou, hold it down for me.”

“Ehh? I’m not going to be stuck here helping you the whole time, am I?”

He obeyed even as he complained, so maybe it was too late for him.

He placed his hands on the bucket lid and placed his weight on it.

That steadied it enough for Fukiyose to slowly extend her legs below her. Kamijou naturally followed the movement with his eyes, but then he quickly looked away. Oh, right. She was still in her school uniform, which meant she was in a skirt.

“Whoa, hey. It’s still wobbling. Kamijou, hold it down bett- eek!”

Apparently it was fairly frightening for the person wobbling on top of it.

Her cries sounded a lot more pressing.

“Why aren’t you even looking this way? That’s why you can’t hold it steady. Look this way and focus!”

“You’re why I can’t!”

“I said look! If you don’t focus, it’s going to keep wobbling. You need to shift your weight when I do, so you need to watch me!!”

“Well, if you insist.”

…Kamijou had to wonder why a girl would attempt this kind of work while wearing a skirt. Because this was a girls dorm?

Then Fukiyose also noticed something.

She stopped her cleaning.

“…Kamijou.”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you looking up at me?”

“A certain classmate gets very angry when I do not obey her every command, so I had no choice in the matter.”

She stomped on his face.

With her shoes on.

Part 10

Night had fallen.

“Hm, hm, hmmm. Bath time, bath time, splash!!”

“Hey, stop, you fool! That big wave nearly capsized my washbasin!”

Index and Othinus were taking a bath. The tub was small, but the 15cm god could still drown in it, so she apparently had to get creative. Still, could she really handle it? He just hoped a moment of carelessness didn’t get her washed down the drain.

The calico cat was curled up in the best spot next to the heater. Apparently he had completely abandoned his nocturnal side.

Kamijou Touma was using this free time to speak with his family on the phone.

They had called him.

They had completely ignored him when he was in the boys dorm, so why the sudden change?

“As your mother, I am just so worried about you living in the girls dorm, Touma-san. I do hope isn’t going to lead to a rash of pregnancies.”

“…”

She was worried all right, just not for him.

The lack of concern for her son found in her ultra hands-off form of education remained unchanged.

“Sigh, learning to take part in the modern digital lifestyle is all well and good, but I really shouldn’t try to be a demoness at my age. My throat is so hoarse… I should start adjusting the tone with a slider instead of pitching my voice up myself.”

“?”

After a moment of thought, a chill ran down Kamijou’s spine. He was reminded of Demoness Mayu-chin, whose sugary voice, small 3D body, and succubus costume had captured the hearts of high school boys around the world…but surely not, right?

Once the call from the unbeatable mommy had ended, Kamijou hung up.

He could still hear the shower running.

Waiting for Index and Othinus to leave the bath would be a waste of time, so he wanted to get some of the built-up housework done. Going to classes during the day and doing housework at night took a lot out of you.

“Right now I can do…the laundry, I guess.”

So he grabbed the basket piled full of laundry and walked to the front door.

The curled-up cat hopped up. He knew the cat was plotting an escape, so he used his feet for defense as he stepped alone out into the hallway.

“Phew.”

Silence.

The girls dorm did have a lights out time after which you weren’t allowed to leave the building, but movement within the building was relatively unrestricted. So Kamijou walked stealthily through the dark.

“Uh, oh.”

He held his breath and slowly hid behind a nearby pillar.

He had sensed a presence.

A short distance away he saw…

(There’s an older gyaru there. The one from the dining hall. I thought she worked for a bento shop, so what’s she doing here so late?)

She had placed a blanket over Kamijou during the night. …Thinking back, that had been strange. He had also heard rumors that she would float naked in the large bath when she had nothing better to do, so did she see this as her second home? She might even have moved into an empty room somewhere.

“Then she should just go ahead and become an actual dorm manager. Paradise is right there, so why won’t she reach out and grab it?”

Was she patrolling in the night?

He had forgotten to thank her for the blanket at dinner, but if he approached her now, she would probably scold him and make him go back to his room. Letting her pass and thanking her tomorrow morning would probably be best. Nothing would be more foolish than causing trouble for someone when trying to thank them for saving his life.

(They even have an adult patrolling the place at night. The girls dorm really does do things differently.)

Or maybe it was the absolute freedom of the boys dorm that was out of the ordinary.

He heard a gentle electronic tone.

The elevator door must have opened and closed.

After waiting until he couldn’t sense her presence anymore, Kamijou resumed moving.

He arrived at a room with both walls lined with drum-style washing machines. The room was lit up as bright as a hospital. And the washing machines were split into two levels, one above the other.

The small LCDs next to the round doors suggested they could be locked with a number code.

It was a lot like a laundromat, except that it was free.

“A laundry room, huh?” said Kamijou half in exasperation while carrying a large quantity of laundry.

Like with the dining hall, the girls dorm had all sorts of perks the boys dorm didn’t. It really didn’t seem fair when they all went to the same school!!

(But I guess that’s how dorm life is. The focus is on protecting the girls, so the boys dorm only exists as “somewhere to put the boys that keeps them away from the girls”.)

Anyway, he wasn’t familiar with this manufacturer’s washing machines. It was a little daunting. He knew he just had to dump his laundry inside, shut the door, and press the button, but his eyes were drawn to the warning label on the machine.

First, he placed his laundry basket on the floor and sat on the bench.

There was a giant detergent bottle on the floor…but was that for refills? The label said Miracle Enzyme Z. In big, bright writing. …Had Fukiyose mail-ordered this out of her own pocket and left it in the laundry room?

(Our new and improved catabolic enzyme removes even the stubborn oil stains on ventilation fan… If I use that on my clothes, will it bleach them all white?)

What looked like a manga magazine sat on one end of the bench. Someone must have been reading it while waiting and then left it here.

“What’s this?”

Kamijou Touma was more than a little familiar with Japanese culture and thus knew how to read manga…but he had never heard of this manga magazine before. A long list of titles was given on the cover, but he focused on the title of the manga depicted on the cover.

Yuri-

Kamijou quickly covered the cover with the blanket lying nearby.

He hid it.

Hold on.

Just to be sure, he was in a girls dorm right now, wasn’t he?

So this probably wasn’t a shounen magazine. And the target demographic was probably a little higher than shoujo manga. Was this really something an ignorant boy should be intruding upon?

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

What was that thing? He was tempted to remove the blanket and take a look inside the magazine, but he couldn’t.

The pressure was too powerful.

He felt a pain prickling his skin.

No, that was only a magazine and it wasn’t radiating any kind of energy.

He belatedly realized what he was feeling.

He was nervous.

(It can’t be. Kamijou-san has the blood of an otaku coursing through his veins…yet I’m too intimidated to even try this!?)

He could read and enjoy a cheerful 4koma manga about a group of girls, but would this really fall into that simple category? …He suspected it wouldn’t. That wasn’t what real girls did. He expected to be hit by something from a different angle altogether. What if it was like one of the ads that appeared frequently while he watched videos on his phone? The psychological damage would be too great if it was a manga where an average-looking office lady had her heart snagged by a host and was dragged down to rock bottom. Although with the Yuri in the title, it might be a gaudy hostess who snagged the average-looking office lady’s heart.

But yuri, huh?

The magazine appeared to carry only that kind of manga, but what was it doing here in a girls dorm?

“…”

The next thing that caught Kamijou’s attention was a scent.

It came from the blanket he had used to cover the magazine. It was faint but familiar. Yes, it smelled just like the blue blanket he had found covering him when he woke up during the freezing morning!

Besides, it was weird to find a blanket sitting in the laundry room.

Why was it here?

If it wasn’t meant to be here, then had it been forgotten here by the same person as the magazine?

“Hm? In that case…did the dining hall woman leave them here?”

Maybe it would be best to stop thinking about this.

Alarm bells were ringing deep in his instincts. Or so it seemed. This cast an entirely different light on that woman floating in the large bath during the day and prowling the dorm at night…

“Wait. No, no, wait.”

He had to think about this rationally. He understood wanting to focus on this at Mach speed after finding it in a girls dorm, but that was just his otaku blood running wild. He needed to step back and simulate this. If she had left the magazine here, the magazine’s owner clearly didn’t try to hide her interests. Which meant she wasn’t too serious about it. Ha ha ha. It was like seeing the ghost’s true identity. If this was actually targeted toward a more casual audience, then there would be nothing wrong with him taking a look at that Yuri-

“Kamijou? What are you doing here?”

“Yikes!?”

“?”

A suspicious look from the entrance pierced into him.

It was Fukiyose Seiri.

She wasn’t carrying a basket or bag full of laundry, so was she here to collect her clean laundry?

She was currently wearing brightly colored unisex sweats. He didn’t know if it was loungewear or sleepwear, but it was a new sight for Kamijou who always saw her in her uniform.

It was 10 PM on a weekday.

…On that note, it felt a bit like a fantasy to see a female classmate at this time of night at all.

Fukiyose, however, didn’t seem bothered by it. For her, it may have been like having a boy mixed into her ordinary life.

The black-haired forehead classmate watched him like he was a strange creature.

“Why are you just sitting around in the laundry room? Your phone will tell you when your laundry is done, so you can just hang out in your room and come collect it in two hours. Are you afraid you’ll fall asleep?”

“No, I just kind of zoned out in here… Maybe it looks too much like a laundromat.”

“Hm.”

Fukiyose started to accept that, but then she froze.

“Wait, are you the kind of guy who finds it soothing to watch girls’ clothing and underwear spinning around in the washing machine?”

“Hey, what even made you think of that? Can you stop being needlessly cautious and explain that to Kamijou-san?”

Now that she had mentioned it, how could he not be curious!? Kamijou ended up further troubling himself for no reason. When he took a look at what was spinning around nearby, he noticed it was leopard print. What high schooler was walking around secretly wearing that? Could it be Himegami!?

“Anyway, if you’re washing your clothes, be quick about it. No one likes a machine hog.”

Kamijou honestly found this strange.

He looked to the two levels of drum-style washing machines lining both walls.

“You’re spoiled. You have this many machines and it still isn’t enough?”

“Of course it isn’t. How many hundreds of students do you think our school has? The girls dorm is split into a few different buildings, but it still isn’t anywhere near enough. A lot of girls get tired of waiting and head out to a laundromat instead.”

That did make sense.

But in that case, why didn’t the girls buy their own washing machine and install it in their room? He didn’t quite understand dorm life here, but it was a lot like living on your own. Wasn’t a washing machine a necessity on the level of a refrigerator?

Kamijou sighed softly.

“Come to think of it, there’s a big bath here too, isn’t there? Why does the girls dorm have so much more infrastructure built in? Although it all seems like a half-measure that actually restricts you more in the end.”

“This is the only dorm life I’ve known, so how should I know? Oh, but an upperclassman did talk about this before.”

“?”

Apparently girls can start spending lots of money on health and beauty products to compete with each other. If someone buys a fancy dryer that emits some kind of ions or whatever and uses it to show off, the others will start buying even more expensive dryers. And that back and forth destroys the basic idea that dorm life is supposed to be cheap.”

“You girls are terrifying.”

So had they had no choice but to add the dining hall and laundry room?

Health and beauty was a realm Kamijou knew nothing about since all he did in the mornings was wash his face with tap water. So appliances designed specifically for that purpose were not a part of his world. If he did have the money to buy them, he would probably end up buying a new game or pair of sneakers instead.

“Also, most people rarely use the big bath. During the day, the dining hall woman floats there naked. And at night, the athletes who go jogging after practice ends at school turn it into their own exclusive bath.”

Kamijou had no desire to approach that bath.

…Because as a girls dorm, there had been no need to make a division between a boys bath and a girls bath when it was built. That meant there was just the one big bath. If he carelessly ran into someone there, he might just end up beaten up by every single girl in the building.

Besides, the individual rooms all had their own small bathrooms.

What was even the point of the big bath?

The school had felt the need to build it, but that didn’t mean the students were going to use it. Hopefully Komoe-sensei wasn’t crying somewhere over it.

“Well, the garbage rules here are the same as at the boys dorm at least.”

“Those are determined by District 7, so they have nothing to do with the dorm.”

“Hm? Does that mean it would be the same for Tokiwadai too?”

“Why do you know anyone from Tokiwadai? Isn’t that a middle school?”

“Well, those rich girls all have maids, so I bet they would say they have no clue about the garbage rules.”

“Why do you know that middle school has maids?”

Because a maid riding a cleaning robot used to visit the boys dorm.

Kamijou and Fukiyose continued chatting and laughing about pointless things.

Except they weren’t talking the entire time.

There were times when they ran out of things to say.

And fell silent.

But then something would come to mind and one or the other would bring up a new topic.

And the process would repeat.

“…”

“…”

Silence again.

The rumble of the large washing machines was the only sound for a while.

But these lulls in conversation were not an uncomfortable thing.

When battling CRC or Coronzon, each and every second had looked like a chance for action. That level of pressure had continued on and on, where even a single step in the wrong direction felt like it would cause everything to fall apart.

And he hadn’t even gotten through it all.

He had in fact died after his battle with Alice.

In that sense, it was truly incredible that he could enjoy this kind of pointless waste of time again.

No longer did he have to gamble it all on each and every action.

He could say whatever he wanted without needing to worry about the source of his information or have any guarantee of its accuracy.

…Time like this was so important.

Kamijou gently narrowed his eyes in appreciation.

It wasn’t obvious treasure. It wasn’t immortality or world domination. But what he found before him here was definitely worth risking his life and facing near certain death to fight for.

The battle itself wasn’t his goal.

There was something he had been clenching his fist and fighting for.

A simple electronic tone sounded.

Kamijou’s laundry was done and even completed the drying phase.

Fukiyose blinked hard in realization.

“Oops, I got lost in conversation there. My laundry was done before I even got here.”

“And after you told me not to hog the machine.”

With that exasperated comment, Kamijou punched the single-use code into the small LCD keys. He couldn’t let anyone know he had set it to 000 because he was afraid he would forget what he had chosen otherwise.

Would laundry here become a new part of his routine?

(The lines and securing a machine is going to be a pain, but I guess it’s still a win since we can use them for free. The cost of the water is actually more than the detergent. That really adds up day after day.)

With that on his mind, he pulled his laundry out through the round door. It was all weirdly warm thanks to the dryer.

And…

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

Fukiyose was acting strange.

She had frozen while partially bent over. She should have been taking her own laundry out of another machine, but for some reason her head was turned this way. With a look of shock frozen on her face.

“?”

He followed her gaze.

His gaze landed on the laundry basket in his own arms.

His laundry had been through the dryer, so surely a bee hadn’t gotten into it. A bee that could survive the water, detergent, and drying would be terrifying, though.

But then what was it?

Something seemed off at the very top of the unfolded laundry piled up in his laundry basket. It took him a moment to recognize it.

It was a balled-up white cloth.

With a small ribbon on it.

It was a pair of girls panties.

Death filled the air.

“Why?”

She was astonished.

Unable to process the information before her eyes, Fukiyose simply spoke her question aloud.

“Why is there girls underwear in your laundry?”

(Ahhh, this is Index’s, but I can’t tell anyone I have a nun, a god, and a cat secretly living with me! But what happens here if I can’t explain this!?)

“Wait, wait! Remember the peaceful mood we had going here. We were just reaffirming how important these peaceful and conflict-free days are. Please remember!! We can’t let that fall apart here!”

He tried his best to convince her, but she wasn’t listening.

He expression was entirely blank.

“Did you grab that from another machine?”

“No!”

“Then did you buy it to wear yourself!? No, I just can’t seem to simulate what’s going on in his brain…”

“Eek, it’s not that either!!”

Part 11

A word entered Kamijou’s mind as he was blown away by a headbutt of fury.

Misfortune.

He accepted it as normal nowadays…but what exactly was the principle behind his misfortune?

Chapter 3: The Name was Present from the Start – “SYSTEM”.

Part 1

Not enough happens here to really call it an episode.

So it may be more accurate to call it a contemplation.

“Really, did you think you had the right to buy things at the store after you were sent to solitary confinement? Prisoner #1174 – Tessou Tsuzuri. You are not just a prisoner, but one whose very existence has a severe negative influence on the other prisoners. It was decided you would have a significant detrimental effect on order within the prison as a whole, so you are being treated as an especially dangerous criminal who must be isolated. Due to unavoidable circumstances (ha), you have been stripped of your rights as a human being.”

“Monster! Devil! All I wanted was to live a modest life in a corner of society nibbling on the end of a (low sodium) salted biscuit… Listen, you sexy long-haired busty tight miniskirt jailer whose very presence disturbs the order and morals of the prison in a sexual direction! Ha ha! Are those thigh-high high-laced boots meant to make you look cute!? You’re the busty type, not the cute type! Ha ha ha! Oh, my sides!!”

“Place your hands on the wall Prisoner #1174 – Tessou Tsuzuri. You’ve just earned yourself a body search.”

“This is the treatment I get for telling the truth? And where do you think you’re putting your hands? There’s no way I could be hiding anything there. Especially when you’re the one keeping me from buying anything at the store, you sexually harassing jailer! …Ah, ah, wait, ohh!? I-I’m being kneaded as thoroughly as convenience store somen!!”

The voices of a young female jailer and prisoner made it through the thick metal door.

Which showed just how much noise they were making.

No personal items were allowed. And in some cases, a prisoner would be stripped of the right to buy anything from the store.

Maybe that was to be expected.

Because Accelerator was in District 10, often said to be the most dangerous district.

And this was the thickest solitary confinement cell within the max security prison full of dangerous criminals.

(Or that was the idea anyway.)

A place as high risk as this should have banned possession of writing implements (because a tool that could stab someone to death without going to the trouble of sharpening it on the concrete wall was far too convenient for a brutal criminal), but this one room was an exception. Quiet scratching sounds had filled it for a while now. Besides, this one cell was overflowing with luxurious personal items, including a large TV and a spacious bed, because no one could see in from outside.

Accelerator had dragged out a simple table usually used for meals and was writing something.

Yes, writing.

Even though there was a giant LCD monitor on the wall and he could work on most any task with just the movement of his eyes.

“Master, what are you doing?”

Artificial Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 was floating around nearby, stealing looks at the papers.

Last Order, who looked like a girl of about 10, wagged her finger.

“Can you not see this stopwatch? asks Misaka as Misaka holds it out to you. He’s taking a test, so no talking.”

“But I want to play with master! Right now!!”

He was taking Academy City’s first general entrance exam.

Specifically, the university entrance exam.

His current answer sheet was for physics.

However, Accelerator wasn’t actually trying to get into a university somewhere.

“Why do you have to act like his shoulder devil? asks Misaka as Misaka tilts her head while playing his bright and shining shoulder angel.”

“Because even if I’m artificial, I really am a demon!

Accelerator was unfazed even as they shouted louder than a cheering soccer stadium.

He was Academy City’s #1 Level 5 and also the city’s new board chairman.

He was determining so many students’ futures using this entrance exam system. The results he gave could cause some to give up on the dream they had held since they were little. So it would be wrong if he couldn’t answer all these questions himself.

…The model answers provided by the cram schools and textbook publishers were actually created by their own instructors, but the ones published by the newspapers were prepared by Accelerator. He was writing those now. He was demanding people suffer through this, so it would be rude to the students who were betting their futures on these scraps of paper if he couldn’t get a perfect score in every single subject.

“…”

Yes.

The entrance exam system was built on the assumption that a certain number of people would fail and leave unhappy.

That might seem to be following in the footsteps of the old Academy City with all its misfortune and tragedy.

But as long as the results were not being distorted by wicked designs, then a proper exam was necessary.

The entire system of Academy City wouldn’t function without it.

If all the exam students’ dreams were granted by eliminating the exam system and accepting every student into the best schools, everyone knew it would not end well. The quality of those schools would plummet and then no one’s dreams would come true.

Of course, that wasn’t enough to satisfy those who failed their exam.

Accelerator sighed softly and heard the female jailer and prisoner’s voices from outside the thick metal door.

How loudly were they talking?

“Prisoner #1174 – Tessou Tsuzuri. Get your ass into gear. It’s exercise time. Unlike that coldhearted cheater who got bored and quit her jailer job but still frequently shows up in the jailer building as part of her new job working for a bento shop, I am bighearted and generous. Yes, unlike that woman who can’t shake her jailer habits and spends each night patrolling some girls dorm somewhere! So, Tessou, I leave it up to you to choose between the exercise yard or the pool.”

“Wait, stop acting like you’re so much better than me. Besides, if I’m going to be working my body, I’d rather do prison labor so I’ll at least get paid some tiny amount for it. Also, does this prison keep men and women in the same building? Aren’t they normally split up?”

“That is because you have been sent to solitary confinement as a particularly dangerous prisoner. You are not a normal prisoner. Your gender doesn’t matter when you need to be isolated to avoid negatively influencing the other prisoners. And it isn’t like you will have any contact with the other prisoners here. Now get moving!”

“Eek! Is this part of the exercise?”

They made some good points.

This was certainly a solitary confinement floor that housed only dangerous criminals who would negatively influence the other criminals and could easily have a detrimental effect on order within the prison as a whole.

The new board chairman and the #1 who had laughed as he killed more than 10 thousand people could guarantee that.

(The entrance exam. I killed more than ten thousand for my own purposes…and still I feel some real pressure here. Because so many people are entrusting their futures to it.)

“Heh heh☆”

Last Order sounded smug for some reason.

But not because she was acting like the troublesome club manager who acted like they were the one who had earned the trophy won by the athletes.

“With your irreversible brain damage, you need support from the Misaka Network through your choker’s electrodes for language comprehension and to perform even simple calculations.”

“Huh?”

“To sum this up without worrying about any misunderstandings, you are basically taking this test while receiving advice from the nearly 10 thousand Misakas spread out across the world, aren’t you? Look, the ultimate cheater is acting all smug, says Misaka as Misaka tries rattling you.”

…As if that was enough to get him to make a careless mistake. His vector control power as the #1 meant he was the first one who would lose his life if he lost control of his powers. While he was always offloading a massive number of calculations onto the Misaka Network, it was up to him to determine what needed to be calculated to safely bring about what effect. Last Order had access to the same level of calculations, but she couldn’t control vectors.

Last Order quickly spoke up while looking at her stopwatch.

“Ten more minutes, says Misaka as Misaka gives a report.”

“I’m already done, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Miiisaaakaaa wants to say it!!”

“I think she wants to play with you more than I do, master.”

The #1 didn’t bother checking his answers.

He only had one shot when performing vector conversions during combat. A single error in his calculations would mean losing a limb or rupturing an internal organ. That was the world he had lived in.

And still did.

So what? Did he think walking a risky path and doing good deeds would reduce the burden he carried? Life was a one-way road and he couldn’t erase his past actions.

“Tiiiiimes up, says Misaka as Misaka tries saying it like a teacher!”

“That didn’t sound grown up at all!!” protested Qliphah Puzzle 545.

Having easily completed the physics section, which was rumored to be the hardest one, Accelerator breathed a sigh. He hadn’t even needed half the allotted time. It was hard for Academy City’s #1 to judge if it was too hard or too easy for a normal person.

“Great work, says Misaka as Misaka signals your work is over. Are you hungry?”

“Not really…”

“Are you hungry, exam student!? asks Misaka as Misaka leans forward to make sure!!”

…What is she doing now? He was the #1, which meant he had the greatest brain of the 2.3 million people in the city, but Accelerator still struggled to predict what Last Order would do.

This was a solitary confinement cell, but it was still crammed full of pricey furniture. A mini-fridge was hardly a surprise.

“If you want something sweet, just go and eat it.”

“That’s not the point!” she shouted. “When you look after an exam student, you’re supposed to make them a late night snack! proclaims Misaka as Misaka raises her voice. Leave it to Misaka!”

“How?”

He ignored the fact that it wasn’t late night.

Even with so much pricey furniture, this was still a cell and thus a single space. There was a mini-fridge for drinks, but there wasn’t a gas burner or a rice cooker. Besides, none of that was necessary when he could pick up the phone on the wall and get any food he wanted delivered.

But Last Order was not deterred.

“Wait a bit, okay?” she said before opening the cell’s metal door and stepping out into the hallway. Qliphah Puzzle 545 tilted her head while floating nearby and then vanished into thin air. She must have passed through the wall to go take a look.

Accelerator had no real reason to wait, so he looked down at the table.

He had finished the test, but now he had to score it.

But circumstances didn’t allow for it.

He heard loud wheels rolling from beyond the cell door. Last Order must have been pushing some kind of cart.

He also heard voices from beyond the thick door.

Speaking quite loudly.

“Tah dah! This is the result of Misaka’s research project, says Misaka as Misaka holds her head high.”

“But what is it?”

“You can’t tell, you silly demon? This is a rice cooker, this is an induction cooker, this is a microwave that also works as an oven, this is a juicer, this is a large water server bottle, this is a food processor, and this on the lower level is big battery hooked up to them all! Altogether, it’s the world’s smallest food truck that can be taken anywhere inside the prison!! says Misaka as Misaka reveals her miraculous research.”

“You still haven’t given up on that!? Why are the Japanese so obsessed with serving homemade food to exam takers?”

“Misaka is making rice balls! Misaka is making fried eggs!!”

Accelerator ignored all the noise outside his cell. He generally wasn’t allowed to step outside of it. If she was cooking rice from scratch, it would take some time, but he did make a mental note to get after her if she gave up partway through and threw out the ingredients.

Also, the jailer and prisoner passed by on the way back from the pool.

And Last Order was working in front of the metal door – in other words, out in the hallway.

“Wait, they’re allowed to do that!? I thought all personal items were banned on this solitary confinement floor. A rice cooker, a microwave, and an induction cooker… That’s so much heat and EM, not to mention they could even connect to the outside internet if they’re IoT appliances!”

“J-just keep moving!”

“Wait!! Why are you doing your best not to look me in the eye? I smell something fishy going on here. And when you’re always finding the most absurd reasons to keep me from having things, like glasses temples being bent into a weapon or lock pick, or the salt on biscuits being used to rust the metal bars!”

Their voices faded into the distance. …So the jailer woman must have realized what was going on and dragged the yelling prisoner away by the arm.

“Hm, hm, hmm, hm, hmmm♪”

Last Order didn’t seem to mind at all.

She was humming while doing something with her hands.

…Now, food trucks were actually governed by a lot of rules, so setting one up was a lot of work.

And this was a maximum security prison.

To prevent riots, prisons were strictly designed to prevent fires, so what would happen if she started cooking in here? For example, what if even a slight wisp of smoke reached the ceiling?

The answer couldn’t have been more obvious.

The fire alarm exploded with noise.

“Ugh…”

After a while, Last Order’s shoulders slumped.

This was already a solitary confinement floor.

The fact that the sprinklers didn’t turn on across the building and flood the place and the fact that all the metal bars dividing the corridors into sections didn’t all open were proof of just how well made the situational awareness program was.

Looking over at dejected Last Order, the #1 spoke while grading his own answer sheet.

“So when can I eat?”

“Eh?”

“Don’t waste that food. You started the rice cooker, didn’t you? Then the rice’ll be done when the timer ends. And you can at least make rice balls in here.”

“…Yeah!”

If the prison’s situational awareness program was that well made, then the alarm wouldn’t have the same explosive reaction again after determining it to be a false positive. Cooking something with a frying pan would be one thing, but the steam from the rice cooker wasn’t going to trigger the fire alarm.

Eventually, he was served what really was just balled-up white rice without anything inside it or any seaweed. It was misshapen. It didn’t even have the bare minimum of a triangular shape.

“Hot hot hot…”

Last Order’s little hands were covered in rice. To get all that rice on her hands, she must have skipped a few steps in the process of making rice balls. Not that the #1 was in any place to complain when he never cooked at all.

“Hm.”

Accelerator ate it with one hand as he returned to the grading.

The work itself was simple.

He only had to check for any mistakes within the 100 tasks.

Once the self-grading was complete, he tossed the answer sheet toward a machine.

And threw himself into bed.

“…”

The new board chairman glared up at the ceiling and silently directed his thoughts.

Toward Hamazura Shiage.

That boy had bet on Great Demon Coronzon, lost, and been sent to England along with Narthex.

Most of Accelerator’s conversation with him had sounded like a baseless conspiracy theory. He’s said there was some great system or framework that manipulated people and society and that was why Coronzon had been called a great demon and killed. And that his goal was to reveal its identity.

Ordinarily, Accelerator may not have bothered committing it to memory.

But one part of it stuck with him.

System.

Of course, there was no reason to think Hamazura Shiage had been thinking about it that deeply. The word “system” was a common one, so he may have just chosen it as a term to fit the vague idea in his head without basing it on anything in particular.

But.

There was a reason the new board chairman couldn’t just ignore it.

SYSTEM. The one who arrives at heaven’s intentions in a non-divine body.

“…”

Accelerator narrowed his eyes a little.

Anyone who didn’t know him may have felt their heart stop if they saw the look in his eyes.

Because that was another name for Level 6. Which made it the original sin behind wanting Academy City’s #1 Level 5 to kill the 20 thousand Sisters.

That experiment had been meant to reach the never-before-seen Level 6.

Without that ridiculous idea, Accelerator wouldn’t be in prison now and more than 10 thousand lives wouldn’t have been taken. Some might think the Sisters and Last Order wouldn’t have been born in the first place without that experiment…but that was sophistry. A plan to clone the #3 had existed before that. It had only been hijacked by the Level 6 Shift experiment after the fact. That meant there was a decent chance those more than 20 thousand clone girls would have been born even without the experiment.

And Accelerator had another question.

He understood the concept of surpassing Level 5. For one, he himself had only been placed in the category of Level 5 because Academy City only ranked espers into six levels from zero to five. He had always been more than the #2 or #3 who had needed all their efforts to even reach Level 5. So if someone said there was a Level 99 or Level 256 beyond that, he could have accepted it.

However.

(Then what if I do surpass Level 5?)

Accelerator continued thinking while seated in bed.

(What could I do at Level 6? In fact, why did the previous board chairman pour so much money and so many lives into reaching it?)

Some mental noise interrupted his thoughts.

Yes. There was another problem that lowered the priority of that issue.

Great Demon Coronzon’s remains.

Ordinarily, he would have given them with the Anglicans of the magic side to get that problem out of his hair, but he had delayed the decision. Since those people had temporarily been manipulated by a magician on Coronzon’s side, it was possible her remains could go missing if left with them. And that would be a problem.

Because there were ways of scientifically moving a preserved corpse.

So who could say there wasn’t a magical way of doing it?

And her remains could be used in other ways too. During the recent incident involving Hamazura Shiage and Narthex, the possibility of a Church of Coronzon had come up.

“…”

So her remains remained in Academy City.

It wasn’t clear whether Academy City or England had a right to them. So if he incinerated them or let them rot, it could develop into a diplomatic problem. So he had had them preserved and then frozen.

(If all you do is avoid the wrong choice, you don’t necessarily arrive at the right answer. This is our city, yet there’s something right smack in the middle we can’t do with as we see fit. I can’t say I like that.)

“C’mon, it’s shower time, prisoner! Don’t make me do it for you!!”

“Wh-why are you using the prisoner shower? And with a full bath set under your arm? Are you just lonely?”

His thoughts were interrupted there.

Was it that jailer and prisoner again? …No, a lot of time must have passed while he was thinking.

“If you’re done with your exam, master, I want to play with you!”

It wasn’t that either.

“Something’s beeping, says Misaka as Misaka points.”

Something was happening on the giant wall monitor.

He was receiving a call.

“I received your scanned answer sheet.”

It was from the researcher named Yoshikawa Kikyou. Although “former researcher” would be more accurate.

“Did you actually find at least one mistake this time?”

“Here I am scoring a university entrance exam. You never know where life will take you. And I used to be a heretical scientist who used biology to bring suffering to so many.”

“It’s a necessary job. And I am paying you.”

“Is there any reason for me to grade these? The answers are all more accurate than any machine’s, so grading them all makes me feel like I’m the one being tested.”

That was what it was like to be an educator.

Someone who always looked down on their pupils and thought they could teach anything was not suited to teach. Because that meant they had abandoned any chance to update themselves.

(But that’s not something for a half-reformed criminal to say.)

“Now that you’ve taken it, what did you think of the university entrance exam? Found anything you’d like to say?”

“Nothing other than it’s too easy.” Accelerator breathed a frustrated sigh. “This is Academy City, right? So why is the normal physics section harder than the esper development one?”

“Normal physics” were still important since esper powers were based in quantum theory, but the exam Accelerator had just taken had covered the older classical physics. From the world where Newton had wasted food by watching an apple fall to the ground.

“Oh? You should know why that is. The problems for these exams are made by a group of ‘ordinary’ people, including university professors, textbook publishers, and cram schools. They don’t have a full understanding of the truly cutting edge research that is highly classified.”

“…”

And being an Academy City university professor did not necessarily mean someone was a dangerous eccentric messing with DNA or mysterious quantum theory. This city also had harmless professors who adored classic literature more than anything modern. And there were some who would get mad at you for lumping all classic literature into a single category like that.

“Simply put, these problems are made by people who only understand the basics, so that’s all you’re going to get. You won’t find anything too in-depth here. It would be a problem if their knowledge was too in-depth. Of course, just like how knowing E=mc² isn’t enough to know how to build a nuclear bomb, the knowledge alone probably isn’t a risk, but the fear that maybe it could be is deep rooted.”

It was a necessary form of information defense.

However, Accelerator knew all too well that even systems built for a good purpose could rapidly grow twisted if corrupt adults intervened and abused them.

“Yoshikawa.”

“What? Feeling like taking a university entrance exam for real?”

“Shut up, no. …How much do you know about the Level 6 Shift experiment?”

“No more than you do.”

She sounded surprised by the question.

Especially because he asked it in front of Last Order.

That said, the person with the greatest mental strength here was probably the puzzled-looking girl. …Or more accurately, the Will that included her.

“I worked with Amai Ao…wow, that’s a name I haven’t used in a long time. Anyway, I worked with him and some others on secondary aspects of the experiment. Things like the Sisters, constructing the Misaka Network, and developing new safety devices. I did receive some information on the more fundamental aspects of the experiment, but not all of it. Instead of a planner who gives a briefing on an overarching business plan at company headquarters, I was more like an engineer who does actual on-site work.”

Yoshikawa said this with self-deprecation, but Accelerator couldn’t have been more envious.

She had created those lives, but she hadn’t directly killed them.

That meant she wasn’t as corrupted as the #1 who had done all the killing.

“The core of the experiment is a mystery to me. That information was never released and there are even rumors that it was being secretly run by one of those infamous Kiharas…but that’s probably false. With a business that size, there probably was at least one Kihara involved somewhere, but not at the true center of it. I expect the true core of the project was positioned somewhere that no one doing the real work on the experiment would ever know about it.”

Accelerator agreed.

Because otherwise, Kihara Amata, who had boasted about directly raising Accelerator, wouldn’t have been as resentful as an abandoned dog.

“In that case…”

“Yes. Ultimately, taking a peek inside the old board chairman’s head might be the only way to find out. Although I hear that might be a challenge.”

He was gone now.

He had chosen on his own to die along with Great Demon Coronzon.

That human, who had carried both good and evil inside him, had quit being a villain in the very end.

And death had come to Coronzon’s physical body.

“To be honest, I have a hard time picturing what you mean when you use terms like ‘soul’ and ‘demon’. Was Board Chairman Aleister the kind of person who took science so far it brought him to the occult? Like Edison who was obsessed with communicating with the dead or that mystery author from the kingdom of tea who believed in fairies.”

Accelerator guessed it was the other way around.

There had been no division between science and magic to begin with. There had only been “scholarship”. It was Aleister himself who had drawn a clear line between the two.

“Yes!! I’m down a full kilo! Everything is going exactly as planned! Heh heh☆”

“D-don’t tell me this is why you’ve been eating the nasty prison food with us prisoners every day. When you can buy whatever you want outside. It’s true the prison food is nutritionally balanced to greatly reduce hunger, but still.”

Hearing the excited voices of the jailer and prisoner (who must have just left the bath) from beyond the metal door, Accelerator mentally organized the information. He was on the extra secure solitary confinement floor of a maximum security prison, but there was nothing wrong with some cheerful conversation there. Because a prison was meant to give people a new chance at life.

(Hm.)

Scholarship instead of science or magic.

Hints of this could be seen in the old literature of the 19th century during the official part of Crowley’s life. There were only a handful of examples, like the horror novel Frankenstein, that consciously focused on the division between science and all else.

Fascinatingly, the basic idea of “building a human using technology too advanced for ordinary people to understand” was a topic found in plenty of old stories around the globe. In fact, it could even be found in myths the world over.

Even the stories that sounded scientific had been myths. That was how they had been received as they spread.

But by the time a Czech playwright wrote a story about an uprising of mechanical dolls in the 20th century, the category of science definitely existed.

That way of thinking became normal and scientific stories were given a scientific genre all their own.

Only some real eccentrics who love to read unnecessarily deeply into stories would view those SF stories as pure myths.

So at some point, scholarship became more than just scholarship.

Something had changed the world.

So surely and swiftly that no one in the world had protested the change.

(In Academy City, he created the most efficient city in the world for studying while actually sealing away knowledge. That’s exactly the kind of malicious game he would like.)

“What was the experiment from your point of view?” asked Yoshikawa.

“…You’re actually asking me that?”

“This entire line of questioning is meaningless if you aren’t prepared to take a hard look at your own scars.”

He simply wanted to be strong.

…Oh, how badly he wanted to knock down and throttle his past self, but his goal when participating in the experiment had been nothing more than a personal fixation.

But Board Chairman Aleister would have seen it differently.

He had poured into it everything the massive and multifaceted institution of Academy City had to offer. There was no esper development competition with anyone outside of Academy City and, unlike the rocket and AI development races held between powerful nations, increasing the city’s own technology to deter their rivals wasn’t enough of an explanation. There just wasn’t a pressing enough reason to insist on such a large loss of life.

That had been odd.

It wasn’t like the world would be destroyed if they didn’t produce a Level 6 and humanity wasn’t facing some great enemy or disaster that couldn’t be stopped with only Level 5s to work with.

After all, the experiment had been halted and Aleister was missing, but the world kept on spinning.

(Before giving me the master key, he told me to create the kind of world I wanted.)

Accelerator thought back.

(He wouldn’t have said that if the world couldn’t go on without a Level 6. In that case, he would have threatened me, saying something like, “Do what you want, but make sure you reach Level 6.” But he didn’t.)

What had Aleister ultimately wanted to accomplish with that experiment?

Was it meant to intentionally fail to change the #1’s nature?

Had Level 6 just been a pretext to build the Misaka Network?

Had the goal been the completion of Dragon through Fuse Kazakiri?

…That made sense. But was that really all of it?

Board Chairman Aleister.

The two of them had fought alongside each other a few times because the circumstances demanded it…but his deeply held beliefs and ideas remained a mystery. Perhaps even more so than with Great Demon Coronzon.

“Damn him…”

Board Chairman Aleister was gone now.

He had apparently only been borrowing Coronzon’s body temporarily, but even that had ended when the great demon died. Now that he was truly dead, there was no way to ask him about the true purpose of SYSTEM.

Of course, Accelerator was the board chairman now. That meant his official privileges gave him access to all of Academy City’s data.

However…

(He kept all that data separate from the front-facing Bank.)

Accelerator glanced over at the giant LCD monitor on the wall and clicked his tongue.

This was the one thing missing. To a strange degree.

Underline, the currently deactivated nanodevices that had been distributed all across Academy City to monitor people, had apparently formed an invisible network that stored secret data, but that might not include anything related to Level 6.

The data could be hidden in some corner of the Misaka Network formed by the clone girls’ shared brainwaves, where not even they themselves knew about it.

Mina Mathers – that is, Reading Thoth 78 which had always supported the old board chairman’s plan – was now wandering the world somewhere, but she might have that data.

“…”

He could come up with several possibilities, but he couldn’t push too hard without a guarantee.

He could ignore the lives and futures sacrificed each time he guessed wrong as long as he found the right answer in the end.

…But he didn’t want to run this new Academy City in that despicable way.

He had already made that decision.

“Yawwwn… I’m sleepy.”

“Hold on, why are you walking into my cell? If you sleep here, it’ll look like I lured you in here to steal your keys and escape!!”

His thoughts were interrupted by silly voices.

…And if he could hear this, that jailer and prisoner must have been his fairly close neighbors.

They were certainly saying some silly things.

But he didn’t think of it as worthless.

They were following the process to return criminals to life in ordinary society. He saw this as viewing the back of someone several steps ahead of him on that road.

Anyone who thought it made them look cool to take everything super seriously was still a risk.

They hadn’t lost their fangs or claws.

They couldn’t be returned to the city like that.

(Besides…)

The new board chairman sighed.

(I might not find the answer even after flipping over all the cards. The information I want might never have existed anywhere in the form of text or data. It’s entirely possible that all information on SYSTEM only ever existed in Aleister’s head.)

Then something cut off Accelerator’s thoughts completely.

A girl’s voice had hesitantly interrupted.

It was Artificial Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545.

Floating freely in defiance of gravity, she could easily move her face into his field of view even when he was staring up at the ceiling from the bed.

“U-um…master?”

“What?”

“You just received a call. …From London, England.”

Come to think of it, Hamazura Shiage and Narthex’s “punishment” would be starting soon, wouldn’t it?

Chapter 4: Roar into the Dark Night – Death_Sentence_for…

Part 1

The Tower of London was one of England’s most famous tourist destinations. Did people want to see something frightening, or did they want to gawk at a shameful part of the world-famous British Empire? Despite its gloomy image, the number of tourists hoping to experience some history there was so great that entrance restrictions had been put in place to avoid overtourism.

But most of the people listening to the tour guide with their wireless earphones and snapping photos with their phones were shown to the exit without ever learning the truth.

The Tower of London was full of labyrinthine corridors blocked off with “keep out” signs and ropes. …And in the deepest depths, it was still being used for the same purpose it had in its heyday.

That is, as a secret prison for magicians run by the state.

Another location in London could not have been more different.

Within gorgeous Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizard was relaxing.

Specifically, she was wearing a track suit and lying on a fancy sofa.

Knight Leader, standing nearby, was a thoroughly trained warrior, so he did not bring a hand to his forehead. Because his tough mind could drive out any temptation!

“The Anglicans have made some moves and I thought you should know.”

“Right,” said a lazy voice.

For the queen, Buckingham Palace was simply her home. She must have felt free to lie around in whatever outfit she liked.

“You mean about those Asians…the Amakusas, was it? That they’ve disappeared.”

“After their terrible failure in Academy City, they have gone into the mountains to rethink themselves. Their letter came with a paper charm linked to their priestess. In an emergency, we can curse that to inform her.”

“What kind of people do the Japanese think the British royal family are? The world-famous Queen of the United Kingdom will not use any sinister curses.”

Elizard sighed.

That group took everything unnecessarily seriously.

The pure Anglican magicians like Stiyl and Isabella would be hanging around in a Westminster cafe or something as if nothing had happened.

“The other notable action by the Anglicans would be Dion Fortune. She is still their Archbishop, but she is effectively boycotting her job. She is not responding to any of our calls.”

“They’re starting the trial without their leader signing off on it. I can understand her annoyance.”

“This is not a slight against Fortune’s own abilities. The suspects include a personal friend of hers. So unfortunately she cannot be considered an impartial judge this time.”

Knight Leader’s calm explanation was well reasoned.

But at the same time, he was aware it was a gentle slope where the path ahead continued to narrow down as only the least risky options were taken. A shadow hung over the young man’s face.

Elizard also sighed.

(What a pain. The one who tears apart the bonds between people and obstructs their evolution, huh? You’re still going strong even after death, Lola Stuart.)

“So what happens now?”

“Given the severity of the issue, they cannot allow the Archbishop to issue an indulgence and acquit him. In order to eliminate Fortune’s personal influence…the eleven will handle this one.”

Queen Elizard grimaced at Knight Leader’s response.

This was unusual for the queen who would calmly laugh off any international problem and eagerly seek a resolution.

“I don’t like them very much.”

“But they are necessary. This must be done fairly and impartially, with no loopholes. Isn’t that why you still haven’t gotten rid of them?”

That was true, but she didn’t have to like it.

Elizard got up from the fancy sofa.

She glanced outside the window, but she couldn’t see the Tower of London from here.

“Narthex, was it?”

“Yes.”

“And Hamazura Shiage.”

Knight Leader said nothing further.

Because he simply had trouble grasping what the queen was getting at. He was mildly surprised that she even knew the name of a foreigner like Hamazura Shiage.

Her eyes still out the window, Elizard spoke with sorrow in her voice.

“Then today’s witch trial could be nothing but misfortune and disaster for those two.”

Part 2

She wasn’t foolish enough to descend directly into a British airport.

So her plan was to first enter France under a fake name and then pass through the Channel Tunnel to reach London.

It was late at night.

She didn’t think she had taken even ten steps from the train.

Takitsubo Rikou found Leivinia Birdway standing in front of her on the giant station platform.

“Way too obvious. On the magic side, England has long seen France as its greatest enemy. Why would you try to sneak in on the most watched route? You should have at least tried stowing away aboard a ship from Spain or the Netherlands. Although those holes will be filled given another two weeks.”

She was speaking English of course.

And with a proper British accent that would sound out of place in America or Australia. Birdway had no obligation to speak Takitsubo’s language.

The confident blonde girl took a sip of the drink a subordinate handed her and then stared at the bottle’s label in disbelief.

She demonstrated her lack of concern by taking her eyes off of the enemy directly in front of her.

“Ew, gross… Hey, Mark, what the hell are you making me drink? It tastes like the paint used to make glass bottles shine.”

“It is mineral water, boss. And a luxury Swiss product. It costs more than a cup of the tea you love to give trivia about despite not making it yourself.”

“Natural water? You mean water from the ground!? European groundwater is far too dangerous to drink without boiling it first. At the very least, no self-respecting Brit would touch the stuff. No wonder my body instantly rejected it. We might be outdoors and on the streets, but the correct choice is to prepare a safe and tasty cup of tea. And I mean you should do that, Mark, since you’re just standing around stealing your wages.”

“Look at all this work I am doing, boss. Every last thing crammed into the pages of my notebook is something that should be your job as head of the cabal.”

Apparently that man in black did not demand his mistaken boss change her ways. Simply pointing out the mistakes and letting shame do the work apparently wasn’t just a tool of Japanese bureaucracy.

Takitsubo ignored all that and interrupted in Japanese.

“If I would have been caught regardless, why did you take the risk of contacting me? Are you also planning to-”

“Nah, I don’t really care about Hamazura Shiage.”

“…”

“Don’t give me that look. And don’t try to bluff without even a two of a kind in your hand. Making threats without any idea how to fight is also known as suicide. Also, you seem to be staring intently at the cards in your hands, but are we even playing European poker here? Or is it Japanese seven bridge? You can’t even guess at the rules for how you battle a magic cabal.”

Birdway chuckled.

That was all.

But the next thing Takitsubo knew, she was surrounded. By men dressed in identical black suits.

Their numbers alone weren’t the problem.

(I’m a tracking expert, but I didn’t even notice their approach.)

This was what happened to an information expert skilled enough to slip out of Academy City.

It was like the relationship between an old-fashioned radar facility and a strategic stealth bomber. She had been shown the truth before the fight even began: if she tried to resist, she would be unilaterally slaughtered.

They were right in front of her, yet they had had so little presence it was like watching shadows stand up from the ground.

They were being managed on that level.

It was that sort of game.

“I understand being worried from your point of view. You might not know what exactly a witch trial entails, but it isn’t a term that inspires optimism. Especially when a friend of yours is involved and you can’t just watch on pretending you know what’s happening.”

“You make it sound like you do know what it means.”

“Because that is the world I fight in.” Birdway shrugged. “For example, have you heard of a tool called the Spanish Spider?”

“?”

“It’s a set of metal hooks that open and close like scissors or pliers. The four sharp points stab into someone’s back and then they’re lifted up using a pulley on the ceiling. The poor victim’s back muscles and fat are torn through by their own weight. And, of course, it isn’t just some bluff – it was actually used.”

“You…”

“There’s also a torture device modeled after millstones. The victim’s body is placed between a pair of stone pieces designed to rotate in the opposite direction of each other and are then slowly rotated until they confess. Torture devices are not some unique form of technology. They’re based on objects found in everyday life.”

“…”

“The rack, the garrote, Lissa's iron coffin – there are so many other cruel options. There are as many ideas as there are stars in the sky, yet not a one of them is a benevolent tool. It really is cruel. People love to say human nature is good, but this is a wonderful example of what humans produce when they gather together and lose control. If you want a detailed explanation of any of them, just let me know. Unlike those holy men and women, we aren’t bound by any requirement to always remain good. So unlike those arbiters of justice who go to so much trouble, we won’t underestimate the cruelty of the actions or the number of victims. We will tell you the unvarnished truth. And that is the path that Narthex and Hamazura Shiage are headed down now.”

It was true Birdway knew more about this than Takitsubo.

And yet Birdway had said she didn’t care about Hamazura.

“We in the Dawn-Colored Sunlight are interested in The Girls – Narthex in this case. Those presents were left by Great Demon Coronzon and rival Grimoire Library Index Librorum Prohibitorum. That sealing magic user would be a tremendous asset if we could get her. …That said, she is a superweapon created by the Anglican traitor Lola. She belonged to their enemy, so it isn’t entirely clear that she belongs to the Anglicans. Nevertheless, they took her back from Academy City and are attempting to get the death penalty for her in the Tower of London. Right before my eyes!! What a waste it would be to execute a genius like that!”

“You make it sound like you wouldn’t care if she was executed if she weren’t a genius.”

“Because it’s true. I’m not opposed to the death penalty, but I don’t actively support it either. If you want to avoid the death penalty, then show me how it would benefit me and I’ll help you out. But I see personality as a part of someone’s talent and I don’t need a duplicate trump card. And I already have one exception who can pleasantly manipulate me. Oh, and I don’t mean my sister. Little sisters are a category all their own.”

It wasn’t that Leivinia Birdway didn’t know who Hamazura Shiage was.

Yet she didn’t even need to think about it.

These were the words of someone who chose people based on a hierarchy. In a way, that coldhearted side was necessary to lead an organization.

“You want to save Hamazura Shiage. He’s getting a trial, but it’s effectively a fixed game and it’s been predetermined he’ll be executed, so I understand you’re impatient. But you don’t even know where he’s waiting for execution, do you? Ha ha ha. Searching the ordinary police and court records online from France isn’t going to turn anything up. This is being done under another system entirely: magic. The people who can’t be judged by ordinary laws won’t be managed by the public institutions that operate under ordinary laws, now will they? But someone still needs to punish them for the sake of peace and safety. Let me guess: you couldn’t even find the name Hamazura Shiage in the immigration database.”

“…”

“Is that silence your habit when you can’t find an answer for me? If so, it’s pretty cute.”

“I doubt you will tell me the answer. It doesn’t benefit you any.”

“Right you are.”

Takitsubo heard a quiet sound.

From the side of her neck.

“I can’t help you. Because I’m not all that interested in Takitsubo Rikou of Academy City.”

She couldn’t resist.

Not when one of the men in black – the one named Mark – had chopped her at the perfect angle with the perfect speed.

Part 3

“…”

Hamazura Shiage heard a scratching sound.

He was facing the wall.

The musty stone wall was extremely hard and also unpleasantly damp.

He sat in a prison cell straight out of a storybook. A proper prison wouldn’t have been allowed to keep its inmates in such unsanitary conditions.

“Ahh.”

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.

Plus, he hadn’t been given any kind of trial. He didn’t know where he was, but he had never heard of a defendant being thrown in prison before being found guilty or not guilty. In fact, no one had even told him what country’s laws he had violated.

But when cut off from the rest of the world by these metal bars, no one would hear him if he complained about the unfair treatment. …Not that anyone would bother listening to what a villain had to say.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

SYSTEM.

System, system, sisstum!!”

Hamazura dug his nails into the wet stone wall, but not because he was trying to dig through the wall and escape. Information was spilling from his mind. Rapidly. Just like it was hard to explain your dream to someone no matter how wonderful it had been.

He had seen it.

In that final moment, he had seen something behind Kamijou Touma.

Yet it kept spilling away. Only the clear word SYSTEM remained as the information broke down like flesh sloughing off the bone.

Even though he couldn’t afford to forget that information.

Was it a mechanism, a framework, or a hierarchy? Was the definition so large it couldn’t all fit inside his tiny human brain? Or did the great system running the entire world have the power to mess with the contents of his mind?

He didn’t know.

He didn’t understand.

He couldn’t answer.

He couldn’t comprehend.

If he could only remember what he had seen behind Kamijou on that day, he could have given the answer so easily!! Even though this was crucial information he couldn’t afford to forget!

“Are you alright?”

“Kh.”

The scratching had stopped.

He heard a voice.

He wasn’t imagining it…he thought. Because this wasn’t coming from inside his cell. It was a physical voice vibrating the air and reaching his eardrums from the cell across the stone corridor.

He recognized the voice.

The girl seated on the cold stone floor looked terribly chilly. Something about her seemed different from when he had seen her before. After some thought, he realized something was missing: the coat she had worn. Her second brain. Had she had her brains confiscated as a dangerous weapon?

She was curled up and trembling.

It looked like the cold was gradually draining her life away.

But even in that state, she had called out to Hamazura.

Even she couldn’t stand to see him like this.

“Narthex…was it?”

“Yes. I am mother’s sister.”

He didn’t know what that meant exactly.

But he could imagine it was important enough to her she had to restate it.

“Mother put you through a lot. Since she is gone, I will apologize for her. Hamazura Shiage, you were an ordinary person with no part in this, so you shouldn’t have ever seen this hidden side of the world.”

Aneri…was gone.

No, she might be hiding somewhere on the network even now, but this musty prison made of thick stone walls and metal bars didn’t have any electronics capable of using her. His cracked phone was gone and, hard as it was to believe, the place didn’t even have electronic locks on the doors or basic security cameras.

Instead of being lax about security, it meant they regularly did things they didn’t want to leave any record of for even their own people to see.

That idea brought a bone-chilling dread.

This place was fully cut off from civilization. No one in the world would find out what happened here.

Here he would learn all too well how the toxic torture and execution devices only seen in storybooks were ‘'actually used.

The powers of civilization could do nothing in this locked room.

It was a bad match for Aneri.

Escaping with help from technology was less than a dream.

“I did have a part in it.”

“?”

“Coronzon saved my life. No, mine isn’t the one that matters. She saved Dion Fortune and Takitsubo Rikou, my friend and my girlfriend. It was probably only on a whim, but I can’t just pretend it didn’t happen. Without her help, I would’ve lost two things I value more than my own life. So I did have a part in it.”

“Even I find it hard to believe that mother would save someone for nothing in return.”

“Weren’t you taken in and raised by Coronzon?”

“Because she had a definite purpose for me. I am Narthex Coded Cathedral, an expert in seals and encryption. Mother wanted me as a candidate for creating a nemesis for all magicians. Even as her sister, I never did see her truly save someone. That is super rare.”

Maybe so.

When they were in Scotland, Coronzon had told Hamazura that he was free to follow her, but that she intended to use him as bait or a diversion.

“But.”

“What, Hamazura?”

“I’ve also never seen her really and truly abandon an ally and run off.”

Now it was Narthex’s turn to gasp. She may have searched through her memories and arrived at a belated realization.

Yes, Coronzon had lost and Hamazura was alive.

She had not used him as a sacrificial pawn.

She had said she would, but she hadn’t even at the very end.

“…”

Eventually, Narthex spoke in a sulking way.

“…This is a weird feeling.”

“What is?”

“I hated the people who called mother a great demon despite not knowing her. But it’s also annoying to listen to the person who didn’t call her a great demon.”

“Ha ha.”

“What?”

“I was just wondering what Coronzon herself would think if she heard that.”

Was she jealous?

That sounded like the last word one would associate with the being known as Great Demon Coronzon.

But here someone was feeling that way.

Coronzon was gone. That was an indisputable fact. But the survivors were free to wish it weren’t so.

Even the losers had that right.

“Tell me about the Coronzon you knew.”

“You don’t know anything about magic. I don’t even need to encrypt the dangerous information because you wouldn’t understand a word of it.”

“Still.”

Narthex was right.

Was this practice, training, or abuse? Try as he might to comprehend the long strings of words leaving the small girl’s mouth, Hamazura couldn’t make heads or tails of it. If even the most violent lesson would guarantee a win in a global sports tournament if you overcame it, then maybe the many acts of violence could be praised as acts of good. Conversely, if kindness would only lead a child to waste their life after growing up, then that reckless love could be criticized as violence. This was the same. Besides, Hamazura didn’t understand the value of magic, so he had trouble judging what he heard about their relationship as mother and sister.

But Narthex herself sounded proud as she spoke.

That was what mattered.

It was most important that she got out what she was holding inside.

(Man…)

Hamazura sat with his back against the metal bars and listened to what wasn’t even Japanese anymore.

(We really didn’t know anywhere near as much about Coronzon as we thought.)

He heard a wet sound.

One that could easily be described as filthy.

But he said nothing.

Because this seemed far more human than trying to always remain clean and pretty.

“…again…”

“Yeah.”

“I wanted to see mother again. I wanted to hear her voice, rub her head, and tell her it was going to be all right. That’s all I wanted…”

“I know what you mean. It’s the same for me.”

Punching Kamijou Touma and getting back at him wasn’t going to physically change the world.

Coronzon was dead and gone, so it wouldn’t make her happy.

But he had wanted to do it.

Separate from issues of what was right or just, he had wanted to see through his own decision.

“They’re probably going to do something terrible to us.”

“…”

“But memories are easily twisted. We can whitewash them, they can degrade, or we can forget them altogether. They might not stay safe if held by a single person. But if we have several points of view – so we can all remember her from several different directions – then couldn’t we remember who Coronzon was?”

Narthex remained silent for a while.

She may have been suppressing something. A different face than the one she had shown while fighting Kamijou Touma.

But that kind time did not last long.

“…Kh…”

“Hey, Narthex?”

She was doubled over.

Her body looked so small beyond the bars.

Hamazura felt it creeping up on him.

The unease.

Society, standards, common knowledge – all the unseen threats with which the unjust clashed.

“What is it? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine…”

“No, you’re not. What happened!?”

“It’s most like…a form of gestaltzerfall…”

Narthex’s brow was furrowed and she held a hand to her head.

From Hamazura’s ignorant perspective, it looked like she was suffering from a headache.

He saw some red on her face.

She had a nosebleed.

Narthex must have noticed because she moved her small hand from her temple to her mouth.

Her reaction was noticeably delayed.

“My mind is specialized for constructing and breaking codes. Sometimes it flashes in my vision… When I look at a single character, it breaks down into its constituent shapes without any meaning entering my mind, or I see complex meaning in meaningless patterns or stains on the wall… Even though I know it’s pointless. Like figuring out a piece of trick art, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”

What did that mean?

Was she okay?

What kind of headache caused a nosebleed?

Not knowing worried him, but he was also suddenly afraid to find out.

…During the airport incident, Narthex had said she was an unchosen ultimate weapon created by Coronzon. But being immobilized by a headache in the middle of battle like this would be a critical flaw. Then again, she hadn’t ended up like this when she fought Kamijou Touma.

Hamazura thought a bit and then realized why this was happening.

“Your second brain?”

“…”

“Do you need that coat or you suffer from headaches and dizziness so bad you can’t move!? That’s not good. That means the pain won’t pass if you clench your teeth and bear it, will it!?”

Curled up and trembling from the cold?

How stupid was he? She had been enduring this pain the entire time! She had put up with having her life worn down by the time wasted inside her cell!!

Hamazura honestly didn’t know what her second brain was, but he thought of it as something that handled mental calculations for her. And he guessed she wouldn’t suffer from this problem as long as it was handling those calculations.

But it had been taken from her.

By the Anglicans who had seen it as a deadly weapon.

“Don’t…blame…mother.”

She had a tremor in her voice.

Even as she curled up on the cold floor and endured the pain, Narthex was worried about the honor of someone who was no longer with them.

“This is my fault for being unable to handle it all. This wasn’t part of mother’s calculations.”

“…”

But.

Hearing this preemptive defense helped clear Hamazura’s mind.

He hadn’t considered this possibility at all until now.

Had Coronzon’s continual honing of Narthex’s abilities actually embedded a fragile vulnerability inside her?

Or…

…Did she create this vulnerability on purpose? To more easily control the powerful joker so near her side. As if placing a collar on her.

(I can think about that later. Finding the truth isn’t going to make Narthex’s headache go away!)

“Hey! Can’t you hear Narthex suffering in here!? Surely this prison has a medical room. I’m not just saying to give back her second brain. One of your magic experts has to know some other way of getting rid of this pain, right? If you want to claim you’re the just ones, then you’d damn well better look after the sick! You can’t call it a fair trial otherwise!!”

Hamazura grabbed at the bars and shouted, but there was no response.

This was a prison.

They had to have guards who wouldn’t overlook the slightest anomaly.

A headache.

That one word could have many different causes and symptoms, but that was why you couldn’t just overlook a headache with no known scientific cause. There were headaches that led to death, like subarachnoid hemorrhages and brain tumors.

And this was a headache that caused a nosebleed. …Could that mean whatever was going on in her head was causing bleeding?

“I’m…fine.”

“…”

“It isn’t bad enough yet for the noise to consume my brain. There must be a great number of meaningless corrupted files in my head, but I can live like this. For now.”

Hamazura had a vague idea that Narthex had a special power. An idiosyncratic power different again from Academy City espers. But how far had Coronzon pushed that tiny body to specialize it for that ability? And what had she done to accurately control that power from the outside!? If that had gone far enough, wouldn’t that mean her life was at risk!?

He had wanted to be friends with Coronzon. And couldn’t.

But that didn’t mean she was a good person.

“This is a real power mother gave me. So I will not give it up. No matter what.”

“Narthex.”

Just then, he heard footsteps.

His head snapped around to look in that direction, but he still wasn’t aware what was happening. Because his mind jumped to the idea that they had finally noticed something was amiss and were here to provide help.

As if they would care.

This prison existed to keep Hamazura and Narthex locked up.

These footsteps of the prison’s managers were orderly to the point of mockery. Did the jangling sound come from a ring of keys, or from strange torture devices?

This meant it was finally beginning.

“Unlocking Unconvicted Prisoner Holding Ward of Special Examination Building. Entering ward.”

“Entrance confirmed. Relocking.”

They were called Beefeaters, weren’t they? The guards who entered wore red uniforms straight out of the photos on a tourist website. Hamazura couldn’t say if these were the real ones or if they were something else disguising themselves as part of history.

“Checking on Defendant Narthex.”

“Checking on Defendant Hamazura Shiage.”

He couldn’t understand a word since they were speaking English, but he had definitely heard his name. They were calling him. He knew better than to think it was for anything good.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

That name briefly appeared in the back of his mind…but he couldn’t rely on her.

For one, the Transcendents were too capricious.

If she hadn’t approved of his treatment here, she already would have broken into the Tower of London and dragged him out. Since she hadn’t, she couldn’t be sticking with him anymore. She was probably helping some other hated person somewhere else in the world.

It was a miracle she had assisted him even once in his life.

He didn’t expect her to continue protecting him a second and third time.

If he wanted save Narthex, he would have to do it himself.

(I need to at least save her.)

A small flame was kindled within Hamazura.

He had a new objective.

There was nothing he could do after discovering it here. But because he had been pushed to the brink of death, he badly wanted a new motivation for action here.

Back in Academy City, he might have mocked this tiny conviction as a drowning man grasping at straw.

(I need to at least save Narthex. She didn’t choose this the way I did. She was closed off from the world and only ever had Coronzon until now. So she lost control after losing the only thing she ever knew. And unlike me, she had enough power to actually accomplish something there. So it’s wrong to accuse her of the same crime as me. The only sensible thing is to give her a lighter punishment. I’ll make sure it works out that way. Somehow. I don’t know what kind of trial we’ll get, but I need to find some way to save her.)

One of the guards spoke.

“Once the defendants have been restrained, take them to the witch trial.”

Part 4

A heavy jangling rang through the darkness.

They had been made to walk a long way with their arms and legs bound by metal chains.

Over and over, the corridor took right angle turns, they ascended and descended spiral staircases, and he had completely lost his bearings.

Was this even still part of the Tower of London? Or were they below some other place?

Hamazura couldn’t make any sense of it.

Eventually, they arrived in a large square room.

It had no windows.

But that didn’t necessarily mean it was underground.

“A…courthouse?”

“Indeed,” someone said from up above. With no expression. “This is a court for divulging and judging magical crimes which must remain undocumented. It has long served as a location for witch trials.”

“Defendants Narthex Coded Cathedral and Hamazura Shiage, we have gathered here to weigh the sins of your souls.”

“Frank, Sheila, Tsumoru, Flourish, Fourier, Serre, Sonnet, Elise, Noel, Thomasia, Eleanor. Judicial role call complete. Eleven Court Officers, take your seats. Court is now in session.”

Eleven Court Officers.

The only part of that Hamazura understood was the number eleven. They appeared to be a mix of genders and races. Or maybe a group like that had been gathered intentionally. And Hamazura had no clue how British courts worked. Was it American judges who used the wooden hammer? They didn’t seem to use them in Japan at least. And what was a witch trial?

So many people gathered with emotionless masks for faces was intimidating on its own.

He would have found it more of a relief if they were all hiding their faces behind masks like at a masquerade ball

Maybe that was why.

In his extremely confused state, it took him a while to realize he could understand what the Eleven Court Officers were saying.

The trial had already begun.

Tsumoru, was it? Tsumoru Judicial. The one who appeared to be Japanese spoke.

“Narthex Coded Cathedral. Magicians deserve death. For they are magicians.”

“No objection.”

“It is the natural conclusion. With the exception of the few who serve our United Kingdom, it is only fitting for wicked magicians to atone through death.”

“No objection.”

It sounded like a meaningless exchange.

At first, Hamazura had no idea what they had said.

Weren’t they supposed to explain the defendant’s history and the charges against them at length?

“D-death?” he muttered without thinking.

Narthex herself said nothing.

“Did you just say death!? Without even giving this child a second chance at life!?”

Fitting?

To atone through death?

That was natural?

How could they say that to a young life that could probably live another eighty years if she worked at maintaining her health? She should at least be given the chance to turn over a new leaf and live the rest of her life regretting what she had done!

Hamazura’s eyes widened as the court officers moved onto the next part.

This time it was a tall redheaded woman. He remembered her being Sheila, the second one to be named.

“Hamazura Shiage. He is not a magician and did not properly understand Great Demon Coronzon’s value. Thus, he should not be judged under magic law.”

“No objection.”

“An outsider who assisted her without appropriate awareness of the threat and danger she posed cannot be held accountable for that crime. However, a full acquittal could reinforce the misapprehension that ignorance of the law excuses all crime. Thus, I propose he be released after 30 days of disciplinary imprisonment.”

“No objection.”

It all happened so fast.

Like they didn’t want to give him a word in edgewise. And it didn’t look like any of them was going to argue against these decisions.

“Are there no defense attorneys…or witness testimonies?”

“Why should we waste our time with that?”

“Because we have rights!! This trial started less than five minutes ago! I haven’t even had time to learn all you eleven whatevers’ names!!”

“There is no causal relationship between your learning our names and the administration of justice. Thus, it can be omitted.”

He didn’t understand.

It made no sense.

He had helped Coronzon. So he was guilty. But weren’t they at least going to explain what he had done, how it had helped her, and why that had influenced the incident in Academy City!? He didn’t even understand on what basis one of them was sentenced to death and the other would be released!

“W-wait.”

Doing this wouldn’t help his case in this trial.

He could tell that, but Hamazura still set aside those calculations and raised his voice.

Because if this continued, Narthex would be killed.

Even though her crime should have been lighter than his.

“But why am I being released while Narthex is guilty? And why is she being sentenced to death? What the hell is wrong with you!? I was free to choose whatever I wanted and I chose for myself to bet on Coronzon. So I’d get it if you called that a crime. But Narthex was raised without knowing anything other than Coronzon and she was only trying to get that back! So how is it fair for her crime to be heavier than mine!?”

They didn’t bat an eye.

Not the silver-haired brown-skinned man named Frank, not the tall redheaded woman named Sheila, not the Asian man named Tsumoru, not the blonde Hispanic woman whose name he didn’t remember, and not the rest of the eleven. They didn’t even seem to feel any displeasure toward the villains they were judging.

They were not fighting an enemy.

They were determining the fates of human lives as dispassionately as they might complete paperwork at their desk.

Judicial.

The Eleven Court Officers who had all been given that surname spoke impartially.

“Redundant claims are meaningless. If you would like to raise an objection, you must submit additional evidence and counterarguments to add to those we have already prepared.”

But they hadn’t prepared anything.

Plus, how was he supposed to submit additional anything.

He had no lawyer and they had even confiscated his phone. He had been trapped behind bars, unable to contact anyone. He had no way of acquiring any “new evidence” that had to exist out there somewhere in the world! Besides, they hadn’t even said what that new evidence was even supposed to prove!

“Otherwise, our decision will stand and this court will be adjourned,” flatly stated Frank Judicial.

“Coronzon was all Narthex ever had. Her feelings over not arriving in time to see Coronzon’s final moments turned to anger inside her! Surely that counts as extenuating circumstances. But you’re just going to ignore all that and sentence her to death!? Did you forget your human emotions at home!?”

“You could say that. We have no emotions.”

One of the court officers – Elise – brushed back her hair with a hand, revealing a gruesome scar running behind her ear. It was a surgical scar.

“That needless fat has long since been physically removed.”

Hamazura fell silent.

He needed to say something, but the shock and panic were too much for his brain to function.

These people would go that far for their idea of justice?

Meanwhile, the conversation was advancing.

“We eleven have no sense of camaraderie or solidarity. In fact, we exist to monitor each other’s opinions and provide rebuttals.”

“Yet here even we are in agreement. That makes it unanimous.”

Hamazura had fundamentally misread the situation.

They were a precise microbalance. They were a machine that could only review the end result and the material evidence and accurately weigh the crime.

Noel and Thomasia joined the conversation.

“Even if a conclusion hurts our own case, we are willing to accept it if it is correct.”

“Indeed. And mutually understood language is one aspect of impartiality.”

“I do not like that we could not sentence Hamazura Shiage to death, but I cannot ignore the correct conclusion at which I have arrived.”

“If you believe our treatment of Defendant Narthex to be unjust, then proclaim your own justice. If you cannot, then our conclusion cannot change.”

That sounded fair at first, but their tone was dripping with the confidence of one who knew they were asking the impossible.

They were the judges and they were fundamentally cut off from those being judged. They saw the judged as residents of another world, so nothing they did to them could pain them. They were sentencing someone to death, but they had set aside their sense of guilt somewhere. They were following a truly irresponsible flowchart.

“The sentence has been given.”

So the Eleven Court Officers did not ask about motive.

There was no waver or hesitation in Tsumoru Judicial’s voice.

Crime was crime and punishment was punishment.

It was a single definition. So they had no interest at all in the bitter path a criminal had taken before committing their crime.

To them there was no difference between someone attacking and killing a passerby for money to enjoy and someone fighting back and accidentally killing the person about to kill their family.

They had lost track of the fundamental reason that people judged people.

Sheila made a loud pronouncement.

“This sentence cannot be overturned unless new evidence is submitted.”

Crime was crime and punishment was punishment.

These microbalances took the privileged view that no decent person would ever commit a crime over the course of their entire life.

Frank settled it.

“The sentence is death. If no objections are raised, it will be carried out today. Court is now adjourned.”

Part 5

Dawn had yet to brighten the sky.

Magicians had been positioned on the bank of the Thames to indirectly place them around the Tower of London.

Their numbers were far greater than the Anglicans were aware of.

They belonged to the Dawn-Colored Sunlight, the largest modern Western magic cabal in Europe.

“What a pain.”

A girl of around 11 sighed while guarded by men in black suits.

Leivinia Birdway observed the enemy ground without use of binoculars.

“And after I went to all the trouble of scattering the Sitra Achra. I never imagined someone might use sealing magic to condense it again.”

“Is that possible?” asked Mark Space, one of the men in black, sounding skeptical.

They were on the opposite bank of the Thames from the tower.

Specifically, inside a small slanted boathouse built into a filthy pier.

The view through the small window was depressing.

“Possible or not, she’ll do it if she has no other hope.” Birdway munched on the warm vegetable and roast beef sandwich she considered a necessity during lengthy missions. “It’s a bottle. Like that iced tea bottle you’re carrying. Hand it here, by the way. It’s not the bread that’s bad. There isn’t enough butter. Either way, it’s so dry eating it leaves my throat parched.”

“If you say so.”

“Gulp. There are several types of seals, but it’s probably easiest to think of them like trapping a demon in a bottle or box. That means a seal gathers some sort of power to a single location. It is all equally contained no matter how strong or large that power is. So it isn’t hard to more broadly interpret that gathering as a condensing of that power.”

The Sitra Achra that was Great Demon Coronzon’s remains had been scattered to the farthest reaches of the world by Birdway. You could call it a dilution. It left her too thinned out to maintain her mind.

If that was gathered back together to increase the density, then Great Demon Coronzon might indeed be resurrected.

Telesma was a troublesome substance.

Whether she was bisected, torn to pieces, or even blown to smithereens in an explosion…she was essentially a mass of energy just like heat or electricity. No matter how small of pieces she was split into, the total amount was the same once gathered in a single place. And that could mean operating as a great demon once more.

It might not be the Coronzon who Hamazura Shiage and Narthex knew who would make a reappearance, but it would at least be a great demon with the same appearance and function.

“Summonable lifeforms are such strange beings.”

“Of course they are. Even Lucifer was only chained up after being defeated by a sword-wielding archangel – he wasn’t actually killed. Despite his sin of disobeying god being plain to all. …Also, here.”

“The iced tea?”

“How many times do I have to tell you to fill the bottle with nitrogen when carrying it around, you fool? And you call yourself a Brit? Tea’s flavor and color changes in no time after it contacts oxygen.”

“This type of tea is meant to taste bitter. Perhaps it was too mature a flavor for a cheeky brat.”

They began trying to force the bottle with a thick straw into the other’s hands.

“If diluting it across the world isn’t enough to keep it safe, then the only option is to seal away the Sitra Achra and keep it nearby. Based on the idea that it’s safe as long as no one removes the lid… I went with the dilution plan because I don’t like that idea.”

“Yes, most anything that must be guarded to keep it safe can be broken at the slightest provocation.”

“We can’t let the real world be destroyed like something out of a storybook. We need to come up with a new idea. And to buy us the time for that, for now we need to get our hands on that Sitra Achra.”

This was what the Dawn-Colored Sunlight was after.

“We will manage the Sitra Achra. Which is why I want Narthex.”

She coldly spat out the words.

She was saying she wanted the girl as a tool.

After all, Narthex was a treasure just as valuable as Grimoire Library Index.

From the perspective of one of the largest magic cabals not just in the West but worldwide, it would be a shame indeed if she was executed by the hardheaded Anglicans.

“That said, we are talking about the Anglicans here. Worse, the highly guarded Tower of London. We won’t need Takitsubo Rikou to cause a diversion as an uncertain factor from Academy City here. I want to set this up so we can get by with only the logic of our magic side.”

“Meaning?”

“I have no interest in Hamazura Shiage of the science side.”

She said it plainly.

While breaking free of someone else’s feelings.

“Boss.” Mark made a suggestion while refueling himself with bite-sized fried fish. “If you really do want to secure Narthex, you need to get moving soon, knowing how sturdy the Tower of London is.”

“Yes. But will we be in time?”

Birdway’s tone was relaxed.

She didn’t seem concerned.

Because she had a completely different goal line here. She had known Takitsubo Rikou would cause a scene if she learned about this, so she had removed that girl from the picture before she could find out.

She had crushed the small possibility that the track suit girl had.

And with that done, she arrived at her conclusion.

“If Narthex has information information on a third or fourth, then it doesn’t need to be Narthex we actually get our hands on. I’m interested in their magical talent, not their external appearance or inner personality as human beings. And information can be extracted from a corpse. So even if Narthex is executed, we can still win if we retrieve her body before it is burned to deprive her of the possibility of resurrection during the Last Judgment.”

Part 6

They were returned to their cells.

They were given no freedom.

After a short rest, the sentence would be carried out.

Hamazura Shiage couldn’t understand why they were given this rest. With people so deficient in emotion, everything felt malicious. He began to suspect they hadn’t killed Narthex on the spot because locking them up where they were helpless to do anything to stop the inevitable execution would draw out as much fear as possible before the execution.

This was the least fair part of it all.

He would stay in his cell like it was a hotel for 30 days and then be set free?

Narthex would be executed this very day?

It was crazy. Completely insane. If their crime was siding with Coronzon, then why was the outcome so different? Hamazura couldn’t celebrate his own result. There was no way this was a fair trial. Coronzon was gone. He knew that, but abandoning Narthex and returning alone to Japan would be no different from spitting on her grave!

It was true prison existed so people could atone for their crimes.

But it was also meant to help people remove the burden of those crimes from their shoulders and get a second chance at life. So they wouldn’t be crushed under the weight of too great a crime! This musty collection of stone was missing something. Something fundamental. Was this place really built and run by the state? It felt more like a cruel lynch mob!!

(Is there nothing I can do?)

He didn’t think there was any way of winning a not guilty verdict in that bizarre trial. Trying to win in court had been the wrong tactic from the start.

Because it was actually true that they had committed a crime. Siding with Coronzon in that situation probably had been wrong. Listing out the accurate information and measuring the weight of their crimes was fine with him. But they hadn’t even been given a proper trial.

They weren’t even given a chance to reject the most oppressive errors.

He had no obligation to go along with that.

Not if the law wasn’t functioning properly here.

He couldn’t let Narthex be consumed by this rogue form of justice.

He wanted to know the exact means by which the death sentence would be carried out. At the very least, he doubted it would be done behind these metal bars. She would be taken to some other place. There might be an opening then.

(I need something. Anything!! I need to at least get Narthex out of this…Tower of London, was it? She’s the sister Coronzon left behind. She’s the kind of person who knows who Coronzon really is and doesn’t call her a great demon!! I need to find some way of getting her out of here!)

“Ha…mazura…”

Narthex looked so small curled up and trembling within the metal bars across the corridor.

Seeing her now, it was hard to believe this was the villain who had used both science and magic to cause so much trouble in District 23.

Hamazura was reminded of a baby bird falling from its nest and dying in silence.

They wouldn’t even need to execute her at this rate.

“I know. I won’t let this stand! There was no justice in that trial! And with that not working right, I have to get you out of here. I’m coming up with a way to do that now, so give me a little longer, Narthex!!”

“You can’t. You’re being released, so trying anything now will only add to your charges and get your release withdrawn.”

“I don’t care!! You don’t call Coronzon a great demon! You’re a living witness of the real Coronzon, not the twisted and distorted version everyone talks about!! So I won’t let you die. Coronzon is dead, but I won’t let what she left behind be taken too!”

“Don’t worry…about that.”

She spoke gently.

Why had she accepted this absurd death sentence?

He had to stop her from talking.

He sensed something.

Something tremendously wrong here.

“I have a trick up my sleeve.”

“Does this look like the kind of cell where you can pick the lock with a wire?”

“You don’t need to grieve mother’s loss anymore. You can hear her name without spitting or weeping, so you need to be happy. So I will make that happen.”

“Hey?”

Something wasn’t adding up.

Something was out of place in a way that filled him with a strange sense of disgust.

Why was Narthex so calm?

She had been unfairly sentenced to death while the Asian arrested for the same crime was being set free. She could easily have felt betrayed and like she had been abandoned in the depths of hell.

Just then, he heard footsteps.

“Kh.”

Many footsteps.

A crowd of them.

It was that incomprehensible group. The atmosphere pushed in at him like an invisible wall or pressure.

Something bad was happening.

That certainty filled his chest.

“You again, Eleven Court Officers?”

“Indeed,” replied Tsumoru Judicial.

There were thorns in Narthex’s voice.

Understandable when they had spat on her “mother” and given her a death sentence.

“What do you want now? I assume you’re already preparing to carry out your idea of justice.”

“Of course,” stated Frank.

It didn’t sound like they were preparing a last meal for the death row prisoner.

“But the most important topic of debate for this court is the existence of Sitra Achra. That is, do the remnants and influence of Great Demon Coronzon still linger in this world? It is our duty in the Anglican Church to manage the magic world and protect the people’s peace, so we must reject every piece of that great demon’s influence. For justice.”

“So executing me isn’t enough? What are you hoping to torture me into confessing?”

“Narthex Coded Cathedral.” This time it was Fourier who spoke. “Unlike that grimoire library, you are a foolish collection of power that failed to contribute to the state, to society, and to the people. You must admit to the fact that you were raised by Great Demon Coronzon and you failed to contribute to society…in other words, that you are not a necessary evil. You failed to improve upon the role given to you and thus the power you bear can only distort our beautiful world. You must admit that you were educated in a unique way and yet you used that power to selfish ends and harmed many people.”

“…”

The redheaded white woman named Sheila took over here.

As if the eleven were a single wriggling mass.

“And as the child of Coronzon, you must admit that the Sitra Achra that are the great demon’s remnants are an impurity that can only harm this divinely-created world and that the survival of even a single fragment would cause many malfunctions in a world that should function flawlessly.”

“And as a criminal, you must contribute to society by fully eliminating that Sitra Achra,” summed up the Asian-looking Tsumoru.

They made it all so overblown, overbearing, and overcomplicated that Hamazura had a hard time working out what they were actually saying.

Hamazura saw Narthex give a quiet snort of laughter.

That was when he realized they were telling her to spit on the grave of her mother.

Great Demon Coronzon was dead.

The dead could not be physically attacked.

The Eleven Court Officers found that so terribly frustrating they had decided to insult Coronzon’s dignity instead. Were they demanding Coronzon’s “child” spit on her grave to take something precious from her and prevent the dead from resting in peace?

But Narthex sounded unimpressed as she spoke from behind the bars.

“Do you really think I can do that?”

“No matter the circumstances, we will acquire the necessary confession from the suspect. That is our job and duty as the Eleven Court Officers.”

“So you’re meant to get a politically and diplomatically convenient confession no matter what the truth might be?”

Narthex’s response to Noel’s answer carried a tone of self-deprecation.

Her young eyes may have been viewing the entire Anglican Church including herself.

“But it’s meaningless. I am Narthex Coded Cathedral. I am a grimoire coder whose job and duty is to prevent the spread of chaos through the world by applying advanced and complex encryption to the unneeded knowledge scattered across the world. I wouldn’t be very good at my job if a little torture was enough for me to cough up the decryption key. The boot, the rack, the cat’s paw – it doesn’t matter what you use. It won’t change my mind.”

The sound of clenching teeth was audible from Hamazura’s cell.

“Besides, I will never accept that mother’s lingering power could destroy the world. And I will never eliminate every last fragment of it. Mother is already gone. I will not let you defile her slumber.”

“Narthex Coded Cathedral – impure egg hidden in the great demon’s hand.” Asian Tsumoru Judicial replied more flatly than a machine. “While we are torture device specialists, we never said we would be using them on you.”

“…? You don’t mean!?”

The small girl’s shoulders shook as if struck and she turned toward Hamazura for some reason.

He didn’t understand.

He heard a metallic click. And felt a metallic chill on his thumbs. Only then did he realize his hands had been pulled together by a steel device positioned around his thumbs.

There hadn’t been anyone in his cell.

And yet.

Two metal panels about the size of a stick of gum were linked by a nut and bolt.

His thumbs were held in the narrow space between the metal panels.

“?”

At first.

Hamazura thought it was a kind of handcuffs. Academy City did in fact have tiny handcuffs that immobilized the wearer’s arms by binding their thumbs together. So he thought this was similar.

But it wasn’t.

He thought it had zapped him.

The thick nut connecting the two panels rotated on its own and incredible pain raced through his thumbs.

Bone pain was unique. It wasn’t like taking a simple punch or kick.

Hamazura was reminded of the pain he felt when he forgot to pull his fingertips out of the way while lowering a heavy wooden box to the floor and caught his fingers between the box and the floor. But this was far worse.

If he had reached his hand into a small gap to try and stop a collapsing stone wall and had his fingers pinched between the stones, this is probably the kind of pain he would have felt.

“Gah!!”

“The thumbscrew is a standard torture device used during witch trials. It was considered so mild it was not even recorded as torture in the official records,” explained Frank with a know-it-all air. “There is less risk of the suspect dying before they can confess than with the strangling garrote or with Lissa's iron coffin that crushes the full body, so you could call it a torture device with greater assurance of confession. Even if the thumb bones shatter like glass, it will not directly cause death. And the screw can continue to be tightened even after the bones have broken and the flesh has been crushed.”

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Gyahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Unable to bear the pain, Hamazura fell to the side and rolled on the floor.

It hurt. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt!! Were his thumbs now nothing more than pain producers!?

No matter how hard he tried to pull his thumbs out from the two metal panels, they wouldn’t budge. And he could see the thick nut continuing to turn all on its own. The panels closed further. He screamed and slammed his hands against the floor, but that did nothing to free him. It only caused a further explosion of pain.

No flashy explosions or dismemberment were needed to cause pain and agony.

The fingers.

They were no more than the furthest extremities of the body. Those small bits of flesh and bone couldn’t account for even 1% of his full body weight. Yet this was enough to feel like his entire body was breaking apart. It shouldn’t have been as bad as being punched and kicked on the pavement, yet this explosion of pain was something else entirely. This caused the maximum pain with the minimum action, it couldn’t be escaped, and the victim wasn’t even allowed to die. This was how the pros caused pain. It wasn’t just a physical matter. It was meant to force a confession. It was a controller that twisted their will and made them speak the words you wanted.

He shouted.

He flailed his legs meaninglessly. All wasted effort.

The quiet straining sound would not stop. No matter what.

“–––––––!!!!”

He could hear Narthex shouting something in the distance. But with the bars in the way, she couldn’t reach him.

The Eleven Court Officers observed his ugly state without batting an eye.

None of them would save him.

His vision blurred.

It took him a moment to realize he was shedding large tears.

He didn’t even have time to feel pathetic. He was well past the point of being able to mentally suppress that. The tears would not stop, as if he had taken poison gas to the face.

This was considered mild? It didn’t even count as torture?

The straining sound was accompanied by his thumb bones being hit by a pain dozens of times worse than a dental cavity. The disturbing pulsation was probably his blood going wild once it had nowhere to go thanks to the crushed blood vessels. His incomprehensible screams would not stop. He could not escape the pain and agony. No matter what he did.

He even considered biting his tongue.

But his jaw was trembling too much to move it.

It was only his thumbs being squeezed, yet his entire body ignored his commands like he was being zapped by electricity. He rolled on the floor and wildly kicked his legs.

“Your encryption saves the innocent people from magicians? Absurd. It is you who are making one of those people suffer here, Narthex.”

“Kh.”

“We eleven have chosen to free Hamazura Shiage. We said so at the start. So the only reason for his suffering is your unnecessary stubbornness.”

Don’t listen to them, willed Hamazura.

You don’t have to listen.

They’re guiding your thoughts. They’re removing all your other options and giving you a shove forward to get you to walk down the path you didn’t want to take. This is the worst form of mind control that changes living people into puppets.

Yet Narthex frantically raised her voice.

“Wait! This is an internal Anglican problem, so stop hurting Hamazura! He isn’t one of us! He isn’t even a magician!!”

“So what?”

“Isn’t the Tower of London meant to accuse wicked magicians!? You have no reason to inflict violence on Hamazura Shiage who isn’t a part of the magic world and isn’t even a British citizen!”

“What does that have to do with our job and duty as the Eleven Court Officers?”

“What happened to your human hearts!?”

“Oh, that?”

Hamazura saw something odd in his tear-blurred vision.

Tsumoru Judicial brought a hand to his ear.

No.

To the worm-like scar behind his ear.

Yes.

It wasn’t unfair. They had been shown this once before.

“We eleven had already had that removed to ensure impartiality in our work and duty.”

Hamazura heard a gasp.

Narthex now knew they wouldn’t listen on a fundamental level.

This wouldn’t end with just his thumbs.

They would destroy Hamazura’s body one part at a time without batting an eye.

They wouldn’t stop.

Not until Narthex confessed.

(No.)

Hamazura was superfluous.

If he weren’t here, Narthex could have preserved her pride.

(It’s probably over once she speaks. It will trigger the end and there will be no taking it back. I don’t want to be a burden on anyone. That’s the last thing I want. Someone help me. Cover Narthex’s mouth right this instant!! Hanzou…Kuruwa… Takitsubo. Anyone!!)

Thomasia chuckled before continuing.

She had a smile on her lips, yet she didn’t appear to carry any human emotion at all.

“Hurry up and confess or this Japanese boy will never use his hands again. He will be reminded of you constantly in his everyday life. Whenever he can’t hold a glass, write with a pen, or even zip up his pants. He will regret ever letting his feelings get the better of him and assisting a villain.”

“Kh.”

“Or the shock of the pain could cause him to bite his tongue. After all, the pressure of the metal panels on his bones sends any external impact there directly to the bone and nerves. He knows that, but with pain this severe he will be unable to stop writhing. People have no way of enduring pain they have never imagined or experienced before. The pain should be several times worse than drilling into a severe dental cavity. And he has not gone through special anti-torture training where he is exposed to as many varieties of pain as possible to expand his repertoire of experience there. He is not you. I doubt your average person off the street could endure this.”

“So you admit it, Eleven Court Officers. The person you are torturing isn’t even a magician – he’s a normal person!!”

“You are the one torturing him, Narthex Coded Cathedral – you impure leftover of Great Demon Coronzon. You and your wickedness have made him a part of this. We are no more than one face of good. Necessary measures are only necessary as long as something necessitates them.”

“Khh. Then…I’ll say…it.”

Narthex’s face plainly displayed an uncertainty not seen there before.

People have no way of enduring pain they have never imagined or experienced before.

Tsumoru Judicial was right.

If the girl named Narthex had been raised alone by Coronzon, that meant Coronzon had designed her so she would be strongest while alone.

Now that she wasn’t alone, the young girl’s bulwarks had crumbled.

This was a vulnerability Narthex had never had before.

Just like with the thumbscrew, people could not resist a type of pain they had no experience with.

It wasn’t the Eleven Court Officers.

Hamazura was the one who had pushed the girl to this point.

He had supported her.

And thus defiled her soul.

Or so it seemed to him.

Frank did not react in the slightest.

“What exactly will you say?”

“Kh. I confess to every thing you want me to say, even if it’s nothing but lies!!”

“Excellent.”

It happened the very next moment.

It truly was less than a second later. It happened so smoothly.

There was a weird noise.

“Gyu!?”

It came from Narthex.

Hamazura looked her way without thinking, but she wasn’t there. Had she suddenly vanished from her cell? No, she hadn’t. He looked up. There she was. Her small body had floated upwards.

It took him a moment to realize the truth.

She was hanged. She was hung up by her neck.

And to repeat.

It was Hamazura who had pushed her to this point.

Part 7

She was in a terribly small and endlessly dark space.

It may not have even been a room.

It could have been a mansion closet or a car’s trunk.

Takitsubo Rikou didn’t have any way of finding out.

She knew Hamazura Shiage was here in London. She knew he had to be in trouble. And yet she couldn’t go save him.

Even though every second that passed could mean she missed the crucial crossroads.

There was no help here.

Both in that she couldn’t help him and that no one was coming to help her.

(Hama…zura…)

Part 8

The Tower of London.

A prison for locking away prisoners.

Frank Judicial spoke.

“Defendant Narthex knew Coronzon was a great demon but still worshiped her wicked power and chose herself to take the path of depravity. Thus, I have decided she is a wicked magician deserving of death. But she will not receive an official execution. She will suffer an unexplained death in her cell.”

“No objection.”

Hamazura felt the sweat on his face dry up.

Every last drop of it.

“Wait…”

What was this?

When he looked up at Narthex holding her hands to her throat and kicking her small feet so wildly, he thought she was being strangled by her own chestnut hair wrapped around her neck like a scarf. He wondered why she was being killed by her own hair.

But that wasn’t what this was.

A closer look showed an indentation in the hair around her neck. Something as thick as a thumb was wrapped around her skinny neck. Firmly. Tightly. With an unpleasant straining sound. There was no scream. Because her trachea was being compressed.

The color of the young girl’s face changed.

First to a bluish shade, but that gradually grew darker.

She was being strangled.

Hamazura forgot all about his own pain.

“Wait!! What is that? Are you using some kind of invisible rope!? You have to stop! She’s going to die!!”

“She is not dying,” replied Noel offhandedly. While calmly looking up at dangling Narthex. “We are killing her. This is not an accidental death. It is an intentional killing. That is what an execution is. We manage magic law. There is no room for error.”

“Are you insane, you bitch!? This is just a lynching. You’re just forcing your own rules on her and labeling her as deserving of death! What kind of trial is this, goddammit!!!?”

He had hoped hitting them in the face with the volume of his voice would wake them up.

He didn’t know how long Narthex could last hanging like that.

It wasn’t an issue of how long until she died of asphyxiation.

If her neck broke, it would be over instantly.

So he wanted to get Narthex down from there right away even if it meant angering this lynch mob that held absolute power.

And yet…

“We thank you, helper from a different world.”

Sheila spoke plainly.

Hamazura heard a smooth sound coming from his hands. The thumbscrew that had been crushing his thumbs like a vise had relaxed. The piece of metal not even 10cm across loosened and fell to the floor. It had caused so much pain and pushed the girl to this point, but the bones weren’t even broken.

Sheila was not being sarcastic.

He even sensed the kindness toward a hard worker in her voice.

“It was your pain, suffering, and the pity you inspired that allowed us to receive such a swift confession. Your weakness dragged out Narthex’s wicked nature. As weak, pathetic, and ignorant as you are, you can still be useful. There is no direct link between being powerless and being just. We thank you for your cooperation in swiftly exacting justice here.”

“What…the hell?” muttered Hamazura in a daze.

All expression vanished from his face.

He couldn’t breathe.

His throat was dry.

Tears spilled from his eyes for a different reason than before.

Why was he so weak?

If only he were one of Academy City’s seven Level 5s.

Or if only he had a special power in his right hand.

Then this wouldn’t have happened!!

“You mean…she did this for me?”

“Correct,” coolly confirmed Tsumoru.

Hamazura shouted back, trembling from the guilt he felt.

“So Narthex was forced to make an entirely meaningless confession…to end my pain, keep me from suffering, and keep me safe!!?”

“It was meaningful. Because it allows us to kill a wicked magician according to the just law. Whether she took the shortest route or took a lengthy detour, there was only one answer from the start. So the shortest route is preferable. And we could all pave the way to that death for her.”

Fourier described settings things up to kill someone like it was nothing.

Hamazura had never mattered to them.

It hadn’t mattered if he screamed from the torture or stoically endured it. It hadn’t mattered if he survived to the end or if he died before it was done.

If there were a hundred different options here, they had set it up from the start so that they all ended in Narthex’s death. Hamazura’s pain and suffering had only been one point along that path, so it had neither been the means nor the ends.

And a change came over Narthex.

Tears flowed from below the hanged girl’s eyelids.

Except they were black.

And they weren’t even a liquid.

They were a filthy black.

With a speck of red in the center.

They were blacker than soot built up in an engine muffler and they were more sinister than blood spilled on a murder scene. They were some kind of powder finer even than the pollen blowing from the forest into town in early spring. As the black and red powder flowed from Narthex’s eyes, it spilled down her young body.

Once it fell past her feet to the floor, it rapidly spread out.

It drew out an intricate pattern over a diameter of more than three meters. Hamazura didn’t understand the individual symbols and lines, but the term “magic circle” came to mind.

“We have finally found it. The remnants of Great Demon Coronzon – Sitra Achra,” said Fourier Judicial, spreading his arms.

The others spoke as well.

Frank and Noel and Tsumoru and Thomasia.

“It was not stored within Narthex’s body. It would be more accurate to say this young criminal secretly gathered the Sitra Achra that was spread across the world after the great demon’s death. While imprisoned by us.”

“She likely thought Coronzon could be returned to this world if her scattered remnants were regathered.”

“Less a possession and more a summoning. Sitra Achra… You have composed a spell that will turn any substance coated with this black powder into a tool for summoning Coronzon.”

“Were you ultimately planning to break down the wall between phases? Did you think no one could take away Coronzon’s life and presence as long as you created an environment in which she could be eternally re-summoned even if she was killed or destroyed? Ridiculous.”

It was running wild.

The young girl had said she had a trick up her sleeve.

Was this what she had meant?

She had prioritized a world with Coronzon over her own life.

And risked her life to do it.

Narthex may have thought this would happen to her sooner or later once she was brought to the Tower of London.

So she may have wanted to do something in the very end.

Do something for Coronzon who had raised her.

But.

Even that final wish was easily crushed.

“What does that look like to you, Hamazura Shiage?”

“…”

“Black soot is not an accurate description. You can see a red core in the grains less than a millimeter across, can’t you? They are essentially similar to tiny fish eggs. This is the Sitra Achra spreading endlessly as it awaits its wicked budding.”

“Angels and demons can reside in anything: weapons, charms, clothing, magic circles. Because they are a form of energy that can be contained in objects. Those black and red fish eggs are the result of a wicked plan to spread that concept to the entire world. All objects that come in contact with that black and red – an ordinary kitchen knife, a cutting board, a pencil, an eraser – will be remade into a spiritual item for summoning Coronzon until such things cover the entire planet. No, it will spread even beyond the planet.”

He didn’t care.

None of this mattered.

How could they so calmly discuss this kind of trivia when a young girl was kicking her legs as she was hanged!?

Narthex…was a villain.

No one could erase what she had done in Academy City.

She had to atone for that.

She had to suffer through it herself.

But she was also the kind of person who would agree to give a false confession after seeing a stranger like Hamazura hurt and tortured.

She was a broken and rotted tree, but a young bud had emerged at the base.

Was scoffing and crushing that bud underfoot really the just thing to do!?

Did it even matter if she was a villain to them?

Weren’t they just looking for someone they could get away with attacking?

They had their safe position, protected by the state, so they wouldn’t receive any criticism for any lies and violence on their part. Even as they laughed and attacked as a group!!!

“No…”

Hamazura forced out a scratchy voice.

The unjust would be ostracized. Continuing down the wrong path would only lead to more wounds. That was how the world worked. In a state similar to resignation, Hamazura grasped a vague view of the system of society. He was beginning to accept it. But even so.

“I don’t want to see this kind of justice…”

Would no one save Narthex!? Those Eleven Court Officers were in this hell and there were plenty of guards and other officials, yet not even one of them thought to reach out a helping hand!?

He glared out through the bars of his cell with bloodshot eyes and the young guards looked away.

…Did they really think this was just?

This twisted act of enjoying the sight of a young girl being hanged?

If they thought it was wrong deep down, then why didn’t they do anything to stop it?

They had proclaimed their justice and hurt people so much before.

They had even taken lives.

But now they were going to turn around and say justice wasn’t there’s to uphold!?

“You bet your life on this last resort and it is a spell that fully relies on another?”

“Did you think we Eleven Court Officers wouldn’t notice this?”

“We counted on this from the start. That is why, Narthex, we killed you here rather than in court. The Tower of London’s cells are more easily sealed up in a magical sense. Unconnected to the visible metal bars, each room has been fully sealed. Produce these black and red fish eggs all you like – not a one will leave this room. The foolish plan you bet your life on will be fully decontaminated within this room.”

“So this is the girl raised incorrectly by a great demon. We now know how twisted a life becomes when it is never given any true love. The child of a villain will too be a villain.”

“In a way, doesn’t raising a villain such as this prove that Coronzon was no more than a terrible parent?”

This was a first.

They weren’t in court.

So did they think they were no longer bound by their job and duty?

The Eleven Court Officers emitted a wave of emotion very unlike when they were focused on their job and duty.

They were in full off-duty mode.

There was delight.

There was mockery.

There was hatred.

There was scorn.

Even though they had said they had such things removed.

Or was this the result of having those things so thoroughly removed?

These were the emotions of the kind of human who could look up at a hanged girl and call it a job well done.

“–––––! ……!!”

No words left the hanged girl.

What was Narthex thinking now?

She had no way of letting anyone know.

She was being hanged.

Her voice couldn’t leave her.

She had been silenced.

Her complexion wasn’t right either. She couldn’t even produce facial expressions.

Also.

With the black and red grains spilling from her eyelids, the young girl wasn’t even able to shed tears in accordance with her emotions.

Strangled and unable to speak, her right hand left the invisible rope. It dangled down. Hamazura nearly let an indescribable emotion push him to scream, but then he noticed the index finger of her otherwise limp right hand was curved into a hook. That finger alone still carried the strength of her will. And the finger moved to rub along her thigh. It formed words. In Japanese. She was trying to communicate with Hamazura.

He didn’t care what it was.

Even if it was “this is your fault” or “why aren’t you helping me?” The words written there might express resentment or curses he struggled to face, but he swore he would accept whatever it was.

But that wasn’t what he read there.

Her finger wrote out the following message:

I will bring mother to you, Hamazura.

So can you pass a message on to her?

The time I spent with her was the happiest in my life.

“Stop…” he said.

His voice rose to a shout.

“Stop already!! Narthex, Coronzon wouldn’t want this kind of self-sacrifice. A hell where the weak are tormented and forced to carry all the burdens of the world wasn’t her idea of a beautiful world!!”

The hanged girl smiled.

Her finger moved again. This was the desperate cry of a girl who couldn’t speak with her throat crushed. Hamazura strained his eyes to read it.

…I shall verify the truth through sigillography. A seal is a means of protecting a secret and acts as the essence and heart of all magic. Falsehoods, begone. All mankind desires the faultless truth. Here, I use my own body to complete the seal that ensures the truth.

He didn’t understand.

More than that, this wasn’t even a message to him. It was likely only a portion of her self-sacrificial magic.

She hadn’t listened.

She was being hanged. Her neck in the invisible rope was bearing her full weight. She couldn’t have had much more time.

And.

There was a terribly ominous sound.

And that was that.

The last ounce of strength had left Narthex Coded Cathedral’s young body. Her body swayed slowly side to side like an old clock’s pendulum.

(What…)

Hamazura couldn’t even find his voice.

Nothing he said would mean a thing in the face of this overwhelming result.

(What was the point of risking your life like this? Did you think this would make Coronzon happy!? Coronzon hated her wicked nature and you wanted to bring her back to a cold world where she’s labeled a sister-killer!? There’s no way your mother would have wanted that! Narthex, why would you sacrifice your life for something so wrong!?)

She was a young girl.

She hadn’t even lived as long as Hamazura.

Hers was an immature life that hadn’t had a chance to spread her wings and sour through the larger world of her own will.

She never woke up in the morning to go to school, she never sought the credentials that would let her help people, she never went to see her favorite band live, she never worked a part-time job to save up for something she wanted to buy.

She never played and laughed with a friend and thought about the bright future ahead of her, while never doubting she would grow up, get the kind of job she wanted, and marry someone she loved.

She had never had a chance for any of those normal, natural, and ordinary things.

And yet.

This…this had been her final hope?

If she was going to be killed either way, her idea of the ultimate happiness was to sacrifice herself to summon Coronzon again?

It was rotten.

Twisted.

Messed up.

Disgusting.

“…”

She didn’t care about herself anymore.

She had given up.

She made it look like she had made her own decision, but really she had had her own will stripped from her.

By those eleven.

They had ganged up on her.

Just like a worker being seated over to the window in order to pressure them into retiring.

This was not a trial meant to tell good from evil.

It had been fixed from the start.

To force death onto Narthex as the final efforts of a villain.

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

Everything was silent.

Or it should have been.

But a shrill noise played endlessly in Hamazura’s head.

A nonexistent ringing in his ears.

What was this?

What was justice?

Had he played a part in this? Had he pressured Narthex by giving into the pain and putting on an unsightly show by pathetically shouting and rolling around? Had he forced her to confess something she didn’t believe…leading to her hanging?

“It is done.”

“It is finished.”

“Another job well done.”

“We must again thank our weak helper for assisting us in the swift execution of justice.”

They were saying something.

And wriggling along.

Those residents of a world Hamazura found so hard to believe in were speaking as a single mass.

Instead of sarcasm or mockery, they sounded truly relieved.

Intense anger burned within him, but what did that matter?

What could he change by yelling and lashing out now?

Coronzon was dead. Narthex was beyond saving too.

If the magic behind that black and red sandy stuff was really so easy to use, Narthex wouldn’t have bothered coming to Academy City in search of Kamijou Touma after his journey through hell with that preserved corpse called Anna something. She would only have had to prepare this stuff in secret.

Most likely, it was a risky form of magic.

Something she was only willing to use once she was being hanged and knew there was no hope for her.

As Narthex swayed side to side beyond the bars of her cell, there had to be more than just the external damage. She was probably broken deep inside as well.

So badly that escaping into death was the only way to bear it.

In addition to her death, she had been badly corrupted from within.

What could possibly be done for her at this point?

“It remains a mysterious death in a locked room.”

“Clean up the Sitra Achra. Do not leave a single grain.”

“We must eliminate all evidence that Great Demon Coronzon existed.”

“Just to be safe, leave Narthex Coded Cathedral hanging for ten more minutes. Stopping her heart is not enough. We will only begin the final disposal after her brain has been fully destroyed.”

“All that leaves is to incinerate Narthex’s unclean body. What an easy job this was.”

Hamazura heard something burn through and snap in his mind.

This time, he was actually calm to the very core – so deep down he didn’t know he had these depths within him.

…What kind of final hope was that?

…Narthex was supposed to win if she could break down the barrier between the phases and create a permanent environment where it was easier to summon Coronzon?

To hell with that, world.

Could it really be that the very goal she was working toward was a mistake?

None of this would bring happiness to Narthex.

And Coronzon wouldn’t want a never-ending ending where she was forever stuck resurrected as a sister-killer and then unable to die. That would just force Coronzon to forever suffer in her own impurity!

He wanted to see Coronzon again.

But not like this.

Narthex had been forcibly labeled a villain without anyone giving any thought to why she had committed the crime she had. And she was being given a horrific end befitting that label. But conforming to that framework would not bring happiness to mother or sister!!

The invisible outlines that had blurred and vanished into mental oblivion suddenly regathered and grew distinct in Hamazura’s head. He was certain of it. And he wouldn’t let it escape this time.

Yes, that’s right.

Hamazura Shiage knows what you are.

He knows all about this thing that passes off grotesque death and destruction as a happy ending.

SYSTEM.

The disquiet hovering over the world and society. Now that he knew what hurdle he had to clear, he could begin on the next step. He knew what needed to be done to put together a countermeasure and act on it.

I don’t care what you want.

I won’t let it happen that way. No matter what.

Narthex’s heart had stopped.

It wasn’t just going to restart now.

But her brain was still trying to remain active. Brain cells would become damaged only a few minutes after their oxygen supply is cut off, but there was still time there.

And the Eleven Court Officers had said they wouldn’t even overlook that.

They would keep her hanging until brain death had occurred and, after confirming resuscitation was impossible, they would incinerate her body and dump the ashes somewhere.

That.

That alone he couldn’t let happen.

Despite the extreme situation, the final moment was so very quiet.

And he took one step more.

He passed the limit.

“I’ve had enough of you sadistic murderers wearing masks of justice.”

Part 9

Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

The metal bars were noisily blasted away.

Part 10

The bent remnants of metal bars and what had once been a thick stone wall were strewn across the cold prison corridor.

The sound of heavy steel bouncing across the stone floor continued for a while.

Narthex had…not done this.

She hadn’t done anything at all.

The stone wall and metal bars imprisoning Hamazura Shiage had been blasted out from the cell to the corridor. Which only made sense if…it was done by the person inside that cell.

“…”

Slowly, Hamazura stepped out into the damp, musty corridor.

It looked a lot like he had grabbed the sturdy metal bars and pushed them forward. But he hadn’t. This was a Tower of London cell. The bars here wouldn’t be destroyed so easily.

The distinction between cell and corridor had vanished.

It had all been destroyed.

It was all a single box now.

Narthex suddenly fell from where she had been hanging from something invisible. Hamazura caught her in his arms. As lightly as a feather.

“Khah!”

A choking sound.

A choke of restored breath.

It came from the mouth of the girl he held: Narthex Coded Cathedral. She didn’t seem to understand what had happened to her. And she looked up at the face of the boy who held her.

In utter consternation.

“Ha…ma…? Cough…krjaiv, buyanrl…”

Part of her statement was incomprehensible. But not because her voice was shaking or hoarse. She may have used words unpronounceable by humans.

“…giebdod. qgtisnkgbikl…”

The black and red sandy stuff had stopped.

Hamazura had reclaimed the girl who could cry actual tears.

But he hadn’t saved Narthex yet.

There had to be something lurking within.

He couldn’t just clean her up on the outside. Those black and red fish eggs had come from within her.

And for that matter, there were the standards, the society, the world, the common knowledge – the SYSTEM – that wouldn’t leave a villain be. The giant gears keeping the world in motion were tormenting this small body.

If he wanted to save her, he had to act.

He had to do something.

Yes.

Narthex was not the one in control here.

Hamazura Shiage stood at the center.

The Eleven Court Officers were observing the phenomenon as the executors of justice.

But what had happened here? Needless to say, it was the Eleven Court Officers who ensured the Tower of London’s court operated correctly. The job and duty given to them required they manage it in that way. So how had control of this scene been taken from their hands by the puny helper who was only here to make Narthex suffer!?

Besides, it didn’t even make sense.

He broke the metal bars?

This court and prison had been built with the Anglicans’ world-class abilities in the field of imprisoning wicked magicians. This was something not even an expert magician could manage. There was no other explanation.

Sheila Judicial of the Eleven Court Officers spoke.

“Answer us. What did you just-”

“Shut your mouth, worm.”

That was exactly what happened.

Those arrogant Eleven Court Officers were briefly intimidated into silence.

By no more than a puny boy.

They pressured people with their strength and their numbers. Their system decided on a sentence with no concern for the truth of what had happened. If this was the true essence of justice, then Hamazura had no need for it.

He didn’t care if none of the 8 billion people out there supported his decision.

He would do what it took to save this girl who was about to be killed.

(How long…)

He was at his limit.

He felt like his anger would fry his brain.

Anger at the Eleven Court Officers? Or the Anglican Church? No.

None of them mattered.

The anger burning his brain was directed at Narthex.

He wasn’t going to accept that as a way to live your life.

He wouldn’t accept this as a favor for Coronzon.

Space itself seemed to pulsate. The black patterns scattered across the walls, floor, ceiling, and everything else here began to contract on their own, making it all look like a giant heart. Like it was trying to swallow limp Narthex whole.

Sitra Achra.

Sealing magic – the magical encryption used to hide the world’s wisdom – had been used to gather it from across the world. It was in fact a crystal of the Telesma that formed Coronzon.

The idea had been to break down the barrier between phases and create an environment where the great demon was more easily summoned, hadn’t it?

Something would happen soon.

By sacrificing the life of the girl named Narthex.

…Even though Coronzon had tried to destroy the current cruel world and make a new just world in its place because she hated and couldn’t allow things like that to happen. But Coronzon’s feelings were being trampled on as it called out to forcibly awaken her from the depths. Against her wishes.

He couldn’t let that happen.

This was forcing something that shouldn’t be.

A Coronzon resurrected this way wouldn’t be the same.

If she couldn’t lament the world and proclaim her own justice from the side of evil…then she really would be an incomprehensible monster.

(How long, how long?)

Narthex trembled irregularly in his arms.

Something beyond human understanding left her lips.

“lpb…no… Wklhdmyuc…run…”

She writhed.

It didn’t feel like he was holding a young girl. She felt more like a bag packed full of hot mud.

Narthex had done this herself after being pushed so hard by those eleven.

This was Coronzon’s power.

There was probably no distinction between her and the Sitra Achra now.

Even the close relationship between mother and sister would not protect her life here. Because her power had been remade into this spell. The idea had been to turn everything in this world into a tool for the summoning, so the process here would consume the walls, the air, the people, and even the small girl herself equally.

Hamazura was beyond being surprised by the worst case scenario.

Yeah, it figures.

He spat the words quietly.

This wasn’t the ending Coronzon had wanted.

It wouldn’t bring happiness to Narthex either.

A human being had drawn on all her strength and even decided to sacrifice her life, but the world or society had shut it all out, only allowing this one possible ending.

No matter how hard anyone tried, it would only amount to this.

With no exception or special dispensation.

Even the last shred of goodness left within a villain would be stamped out without a moment’s hesitation. Any attempt at atonement would be viewed as a nuisance and rejected.

(How long, how long, how long?)

He was a Level 0?

He was of no scientific help whatsoever?

So what?

If no one else would save Narthex, then it was up to him to face her. No matter what rules he had to break, no matter tricks he had to use, and no matter how much he had to cheat.

He wouldn’t ask permission from justice. He would do what he wanted.

He had decided so.

(How long was I going to continue clinging to the very system that abandoned me, hoping it would toss me some scraps? This world, its society, its systems, and its people aren’t going to save us. If I do that, there’s no possible way a bunch of coincidences are going to come together just right to save Narthex. That’s not how life works, is it?)

Of course, none of Hamazura’s convictions would change that he was a Level 0.

Those scientific measurements could not be shaken. Nothing he did now could change them. He could pour all his efforts into it, but his esper power would never grow beyond where it was.

But.

He had met Dion Fortune. He had encountered Magic Gods Nephthys and Niang-Niang. And he had taken Coronzon’s hand in order to save Fortune after she was scattered in the wind as a deck of tarot cards.

So he had to get it by this point, didn’t he?

You didn’t need inborn talent.

He knew there was another form of the supernatural that operated an an entirely different logic from the esper development supported by scientific knowledge.

He had even been personally taught about it. By none other than Coronzon!!

So.

“…name…not…”

While holding the limp girl.

He clenched his hand as if clutching his heart through his clothes.

He completely ignored the rusty flavor spreading from deep in his throat.

And the boy roared.

“Choronzon333 – My name does not reject absolute evil!!!”

Part 11

If you truly wish to save this manipulated girl and you truly wish to overturn this predetermined outcome.

Then gather your resolve.

Your resolve to become a magician named Hamazura Shiage.

Epilogue: Deepest Depths – Lady_Number_03.

Dawn was still a long way off.

London sat below the purple sky.

Some would picture a stone city built upon a foundation of history…but those were the happy outsiders who were looking at tourist websites as they planned a vacation.

Those who actually lived there knew London was actually a mixture of old and new. The historical stone churches and palaces existed right alongside cutting-edge high-tech skyscrapers. London had public wireless LAN antennae, graffiti on the walls, and filthy abandoned building surrounded by handmade barricades that had been effectively occupied by gangs. Needless to say, the capital of the United Kingdom was flooded with metal, plastic, semiconductors, and so many other ordinary things. The winding River Thames was no exception. During the day, the HMS Belfast gathered tourist attention. At night, the dark water’s surface shined bright in the electric lights of a Ferris wheel.

So it wasn’t hard to find a skyscraper providing a view of the Tower of London from above.

One of those was located across the Thames from the tower.

“I see, I see.”

One of The Girls was monitoring the situation from the roof of that building.

Her dark wine-red nun’s habit would have drawn the eye regardless, but it was also quite revealing in places. The skirt had bold slits in the sides, much like a China dress.

The pale-skinned girl’s long blonde hair blew in the night breeze.

She looked to be around ten, but apparent age probably wasn’t a reliable indicator here. Not when she had been thoroughly modified by a great demon.

Of course.

Most of what was happening was in the vast underground space unknown to the public, so this view from above wouldn’t normally reveal anything.

“29% of my talismanic Agathions have been lost. No, the damage just grew to 31%. 19% of those are trembling from loss of motivation and the rest are wandering in the wrong location entirely. But this is about what I expected. The focus on stealth meant reducing each one’s power. Still, they are going down easy just from exposure to the side effects.”

She wasn’t just gathering up the final images sent by the things crawling around underground. By investigating the distribution of the location and the timing of their destruction, she could reach a general understanding of what was happening in that closed underground space.

(I had expected Narthex to get self-destructive from the pressure, but this I didn’t foresee. Hamazura, was it? Ordinarily, a silly esper would have his body’s blood vessels and nerves shredded by the side effects of straight up using magic like that. It would just mean instant death. Besides, it’s a devastatingly bad idea to try and use magic to solve a problem related to Narthex and the Anglicans who specialize in anti-magician combat.)

But.

It still caught her interest.

Hamazura Shiage shouldn’t have known anything about magic, yet he had suddenly shouted a magic name and awoken. That meant he already had the magic knowledge. It all went back to Great Demon Coronzon planting unnecessary information in the science side boy’s head. From a wider view, this was the supposedly dead Coronzon’s influence returning to the playing field.

She was not a fan of that.

Even as one of The Girls, she was very much not a fan.

“I had planned to just watch Narthex self-destruct, but I suppose I should intervene. I need to ensure every last shard of Coronzon’s lingering influence is eliminated.”

It didn’t matter that the building was dozens of stories tall.

The girl leaned over the edge of the roof and shifted her body weight in preparation to drop.

“Reflex Gesang Klingen.”

She stopped.

A string of words sounding like an incantation froze this one of The Girls in her tracks.

She turned just her head to view the rooftop like a bird of prey perched in a tree.

That had been a name.

This was no mistake or coincidence. Very few people in the world could speak that series of words as a name.

“Reflex Gesang Klingen.”

It came from a shadow.

The voice emerged from a shadow that kept the speaker just out of view from Reflex’s position – which meant the speaker had emulated her field of view before choosing that spot.

“Index was Latin, Narthex was English, and now we have German. How many more of The Girls are there?”

“Oh, are you actually angry for once? But didn’t you slaughter so many magicians from your own cabal at the Battle of Blythe Road and rob children of their future through so many conspiracies in Academy City, Aleister Crowley?”

The dark shadow did not respond.

That magician had temporarily extended his life by borrowing Great Demon Coronzon’s body.

He was supposed to have died along with Coronzon in Academy City…but clearly it wasn’t going to be that easy.

“I can’t imagine why you would care. It’s not like you knew Narthex.”

“Maybe not, but if this disaster is left unchecked, it will spread from this one point in England to engulf the entire world. And then he will be dragged into it.”

“Oh?”

“I told him to kill her along with me. It is my fault his hand has been stained with blood. The sin of death is not his, so he deserves to enjoy the peace he protected. I will not let him suffer any longer.”

At that point, the shadow grew sharp. It carried obvious hostility.

“Besides, this is not a pleasant thing to see. Whether I know her or not.”

(Is this also Coronzon’s influence in a sense? She is supposed to obstruct people’s evolution. Honestly, even after death she’s finding new ways to get in our way.)

She felt some irritation deep in her mind, but letting it show wouldn’t help.

She stepped away from the edge of the roof. And walked. Reflex had a grin on her lips as she spoke into the shadow.

“Given the life you lived, I knew for a fact you wouldn’t be going to heaven after you died with Coronzon. But here you are. How did that happen? Don’t tell me. Did even hell label you persona non grata, forcing you to wander the world of the living forever? Ah ha ha! Sounds about right for a dead Englishman!!”

Just hearing this girl’s young voice was enough to tell one thing.

This girl was not Narthex.

She would not cause trouble for the reason Narthex had.

“So the third has chosen to reject Great Demon Coronzon.”

“Of course I have! She’s absolute evil! No, thank you!! Just thinking about the fact she raised me makes me loathe my own flesh and blood. But here I am, so I have to live my life. So I’ll reject everything about my own parent. I can’t build a life for myself otherwise.”

The shadow sighed softly.

Genius magicians generally had their origins in tragic and unfair circumstances like that.

After all, magicians were a collection of the talentless, unblessed, and incapable.

Even a legendary magician like Aleister could be seen as the end result of a child raised under the restrictions placed on him in the name of good by a hysterical mother.

So he understood.

“Rebelliousness is the foundation of mind control.”

“?”

“It is an emotion easily produced in anyone by forcing them to perform an action that violates their principles. And if you already know they will rebel, you can predict where they will go when they run away from home. More than that, unlike resentment and hatred, rebelliousness is guaranteed to resolve itself from the moment it appears. A runaway child will eventually return home on her own, take the bath drawn by her parents, and resentfully put on her pajamas, right?”

“That was Narthex’s controller. But that idiot couldn’t even bring herself to rebel and ended up calling Coronzon her mother.”

Yes, if they couldn’t rebel properly, maybe there were cases where it resolved into a mother complex.

But then what had been expected of Reflex and how had it failed?

That failure had already happened. Because Index had the top spot.

Also…

“Who are you siding with now?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m just curious why Coronzon rushed the activation of Adikalika. Surely she wasn’t trying to eliminate you along with the rest of the world because you were too dangerous a failure.”

Grimoire Library Index Librorum Prohibitorum was a good example.

Index had memorized 103,001 grimoires, making her a highly irregular part of the magic side. It was even said she could become a Magic God if she could actually use all that knowledge.

But that was a hard thing to imagine.

Index could not conquer the world on her own.

She had incredible power, but she wasn’t untouchable or invincible.

That was why Index had stayed on the run when magicians were pursuing her and why she had in fact been captured by magicians a few times even after meeting Kamijou Touma.

So in the same way, no matter how extraordinary Narthex Coded Cathedral was, it was highly unnatural that she could attack Academy City all on her own.

If that hadn’t happened naturally, then someone else must have unnaturally set it up. Someone had used her outside her proper specifications, or even intentionally driven her to self-destruction.

Reflex.

In that same way, it seemed unlikely the girl here would be acting on her own.

Just like Grimoire Library Index Librorum Prohibitorum was designed to perform best when under the Anglican Church’s protection, Reflex needed the backing of something large.

“Kingsford told me to live.”

“And you felt some kind of meaning in that?”

“No. She would say the same to anyone and I know she wouldn’t have sat idly by as the coming threat arrives. She was telling me to live and save everyone from vices like you.”

Hostility stabbed from the shadow like an invisible spear.

Reflex snorted in laughter.

She had a definite reason to do so.

“I am one of The Girls – one of the anti-magician trump cards prepared by Coronzon. Sure, I was rejected, but that doesn’t mean my skill is in any way inferior to the grimoire library. I can’t believe a mere magician would actually try to challenge me! Hee hee hee. Sounds like suicide to me!”

“Oh, it’s very possible. For a grimoire library specialized for anti-magic combat. Or for a right hand that negates all illusions. …Still, there’s no guarantee you would face them using over-the-top magic. So when you’re up against a wicked magician, it’s best to let another corrupt magician handle it.”

“Oh? An interesting idea.”

He was broken.

Yes. There were times when the thought in your head was correct but saying it out loud would get you shunned from the classroom.

He easily stepped over that life-or-death line.

Aleister Crowley had never been able to hold his tongue in those moments.

No matter how hard it was for the rest of the world to understand him.

So…

“Aufeinander legen.”

A young voice spoke.

This was supposedly an open building rooftop.

Yet the girls’ voice echoed over and over again, like a shout in a chilly cave, growing into a great mass of sound.

This was one of the reasons people have always feared the mountains as a dwelling place of gods or monsters until they began viewing the mountains themselves as holy. Her voice became a mass of air and sound.

“Identifizieren, Beginn. …All numbers are infinite, so it cannot be proven that the number derived by one plus one will always equal the same number known as two. Water cannot be boiled twice and no experiment is reproducible. One plus one produces a different box known as two depending on the time, place, and circumstances at the moment of calculation. No problem can be proven with nothing more than hackneyed mathematics. Thus numbers hold no meaning. Accept my voice as it is, world. I command thee. Numerical limitations have no meaning to a duplicated voice, so the incantation soon to be produced by an individual has no upper limits!!”

This was Reflex’s inborn power.

Her throat.

The magic side gave power to the broken struggles of the untalented, so proving her great worth based on inborn talent made her a truly bizarre monster.

She was not like Index who could store the world’s knowledge using her perfect memory or Narthex who unilaterally determined who could and couldn’t view the world’s knowledge by applying complex, high-level encryption.

She was the third member of The Girls.

Only Reflex possessed this unique talent-dependent skill.

“Ancient deity – that is, the world’s guide wielding lightning as a weapon of divine punishment. Thou art heavenly father and creator of all who also fears his own wife. I contact a portion of thy power through the protection of Jupiter. Temporary Telesma, draw out the ripples and reveal the form I wish.”

Light shined.

From below Reflex’s feet.

Like a giant lifting its head from the water’s surface, a bizarre 10m shadow rose up. Its silhouette resembled a storybook dragon. Except it was colored pitch black.

The third girl spread her arms and roared.

Her loud voice echoed over and over again despite being in the open outdoors.

All numbers were infinite.

Thus, it didn’t matter if she was up against a magic cabal or a global religious sect. Any group that relied on its numbers could be crushed by Reflex’s power to echo and duplicate an individual.

Ordinarily, gathering up ultra-high density Telesma and summoning a great demon required a truly extraordinary magic ceremony. A group of tens of thousands would spend decades before finally earning the right to make the attempt. And even then they had no guarantee of success. And yet.

This one girl had set foot in that great world here and now.

Number had no meaning.

She only needed a tiny fragment of knowledge.

From there, she could hone those words into a deadly weapon and explosively amplify them.

“Ha ha HA HA HA HA!! Pay us a visit, False Jupiter Optimus Maximus! Thou art the wicked deceiving dragon that claimed the name of the ancient deity in the fourth experiment and lured mankind toward blood and violence. Thy actions need no longer be bound. Here I grant thee true freedom, so wield thy fangs and claws to thy heart’s content tonight!!!”

A dragon was the ruins of a corrupted angel.

This was a different approach from Narthex’s attempt to revive and eternally summon the malicious angel that was Great Demon Coronzon.

Thus this power must not be underestimated.

This demon used the ancient deity’s name despite having no connection to Roman mythology. To challenge False Jupiter Optimus Maximus was to battle a demon lord. That meant to regather all of the power that had come together to defeat Great Demon Coronzon. And if you couldn’t manage that, then your death was guaranteed. 100% guaranteed.

“What will you do now?”

The multiplied girl’s voice carried a sneer.

The countless voices surrounded the human and insulted him like the masses influenced by the third-rate newspapers had once tormented him.

“I’m asking what you’ll do now, Aleister!? Ah ha ha HA HA!! You had great power, but that very talent kept you from getting along with anyone, leading to all your world-class organizations crumbling. You are not Kamijou Touma. No reassuring companions will be gathering around you! Now, how will you struggle against False Jupiter Optimus Maximus all on your lonesome!!?”

“…”

There was no response.

There was only one answer.

Zwoosh!!!

A hole opened in the 10m giant towering up behind Reflex.

A meter wide hole.

And it didn’t end there. The roar of death continued unabated. The giant was filled with holes until it couldn’t maintain its form and fell apart. That which had been False Jupiter Optimus Maximus vanished as if fading into the air. Not even a shred remained.

This was more than a temporary miracle. It happened in an instant. Using an individual’s power, without gathering any companions.

It had only taken a single raised hand in the shadow. From a distance.

“Wha-?”

The echo had vanished from Reflex’s voice.

Her magic had been interrupted. The logic behind it had left her mind.

She turned around, saw not a fragment remained, and stared in a daze.

Even though her enemy wasn’t behind her.

He was out ahead.

“What…was that? What happened?”

“…”

But Aleister hadn’t done anything special while standing in the darkness.

He had only taken a single step out of the shadow.

And that was all it took.

“You…no. That body!?”

For the first time, Reflex was truly at a loss for words.

The figure that stepped out from the shadow was a woman with long, long silver hair.

But anyone who knew even a piece of that legend would see the truth at a glance.

This was…

“Anna Kingsford? Of all things, you’re borrowing that preserved corpse, Aleister!?”

In that instant, the “center point” clearly shifted.

Something more abnormal than the third of The Girls had appeared from the shadow.

Everything in the world had accepted that.

“Kingsford has not been resurrected in the present day. It is more accurate to say her dead body has been installed with precise machinery to reanimate it.”

These words were spoken by a magician who looked exactly like her.

Thanks to a technological trick.

“All the necessary signals to animate Kingsford’s body can be monitored by my mobile device. Now, this was quickly begun in secret after her apparent death during the fight against CRC. It didn’t last long, but we did spend time together. So I have gathered sufficient data on an expert magician’s breathing, pulse, muscle movements, nerve impulses, brainwaves, and brain chemicals while using her magic. In precise detail. So by feeding that data back into myself…I too can achieve a portion of her expert magic.

“But only in part,” added the human with a thin smile.

This was highly unusual for that ever-arrogant human who never feared being misunderstood.

…He didn’t understand how Anna Kingsford achieved her expert feats, but he only had to achieve a partial understanding.

She could even retrieve and save souls that had died and gone to hell. That was the sort of power Aleister had obtained.

The various machines installed in her body provided thorough data. Analyzed it. Formulated it. Fed it back into himself to overwrite the numerical values inside himself.

In ways a standard magician could never even consider.

“Thanks to this, I can now use a limited portion of expert magic. All of us in the Golden cabal sought after this but could never achieve it. If even one of us had achieved this kind magic, the tragedy known as the Battle of Blythe Road may never have happened.”

This magic came from the legendary expert who Westcott and Mathers, two of the Golden cabal’s three founders, had looked up to as their teacher.

Thus…

“But kindness toward one can appear as hardship to another. …I do hear that Westcott and Mathers were often brought to tears as her students. Even those selfish geniuses were helpless before Kingsford’s corporal punishment. A mere demon lord battle is nothing for the woman who trekked across hell and faced its many monsters to return a single boy to the world of the living.”

“…”

“So prepare yourself, Reflex.”

The silver-haired expert’s words weren’t even a declaration of war.

They were a death sentence.

“It is all to serve others. I will teach you the culmination of the many struggles of the weak and untalented who kept their eyes on heaven and never gave up – that is, magic. …No longer will I be trapped by the foolish idea that malice and ruin are cool.”

Afterword

If you picked them up one at a time, welcome back. If you bought them all at once, welcome.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

This time I shined the spotlight on Kamijou Touma’s school life. With the Transcendents, CRC, Alice, and Coronzon, he fought a great many battles, but it was all for this. After returning from the dead and being faced with the threat of being held back, it’s about time that pointy-haired boy was rewarded at least once, right!? So I stuck with his school life the whole time. This time it really was a reward with nothing going on behind the scenes! So I let him enjoy a dream-like life with everyone in the girls dorm.

Now, the novels always focus on the serious battles, but this school life is what he should be experiencing every single day. It felt like Kamijou had been fighting for so long he could forget what he was fighting for, so I actually put the most effort into writing the normal, everyday life parts of this one. What is normal? Isn’t the everyday actually the most difficult thing!? It was a trial and error process. That dream-like world shines so bright…

It seems right for Kamijou to have a chance to reconfirm the importance of the things he risked his life to protect, doesn’t it? So much had been going on he needed this time to sort things out.

And while it looked like a normal school life, it also highlighted again the misfortune that has been around since Volume 1.

And since Kamijou had to be living a stress free life, I had Accelerator organize the ominous information related to SYSTEM hinted at in the previous volume. That term appeared frequently way back at the beginning but hasn’t appeared recently, but you did still remember it, didn’t you? Everyone knows about Kamijou Touma’s misfortune, but why does he have so much misfortune? When looking more closely into that, something spanning the entire world may came into view.

Then there was the Hamazura part. He’s the third protagonist who isn’t Kamijou Touma or Accelerator. …So doesn’t this seem like a good path for him? That’s why I had him unleash a roar at the end. He already used magic once to save manipulated Takitsubo and shattered Dion Fortune. I had a lot of ideas for his magic name, but I ended up going with her name. Hamazura doesn’t seem like he would have a wide vocabulary, so I thought something simple would be best.

One idea was for him to go through a flashy awakening last volume and use magic against Kamijou, but Kamijou himself used magic with St. Germain… It didn’t seem like it would have much of an impact there. If I was going to do this, I wanted to do it where it would shine brightest! So I had him use it against the eleven, who had confused the means with the ends, and with Narthex, who was being manipulated by Coronzon’s power.

In the last volume, I described the source of Hamazura’s sharpened senses as a power bringing him closer to death.

Hamazura can’t partially regenerate himself the way Tsuchimikado can. Acting cool and using magic as a secret trick is great and all, but he will have to face the cost of his actions, so you can look forward to that.

Then there’s Aleister. Yay, I finally did a German language supernatural battle! …I knew this had to happen eventually when I introduced Anna Sprengel. The Girls come from a variety of different languages, so I went with a German one for the third. This one tramples over all forms of numbers-based violence. If you think of the power wielded by the Roman Catholic Church in the latter part of the old series, it should give you a good idea of how irregular she is.

On the other hand, Index actually directly boosts her strength through the large numbers with her 103,000 grimoires. It might be a fun mental exercise to consider the pros and cons of The Girls who have been revealed so far: Index, Narthex, and Reflex.

I give my thanks to my illustrators Haimura-san and Itou Tateki-san and my editors Miki-san, Anan-san, Nakajima-san, and Hamamura-san. Draw an enjoyable and uneventful school life. That seems like a difficult task in and of itself. Thank you for sticking with me again.

And I give my thanks to the readers. Turning the stomachache-inducing entrance exams into a sort of festival seems very Academy City, don’t you think? So I wrote that super busy mid-January time in my own way, but what did you think? Thank you so much for reading this far.

It is time to close the pages for now while praying that the pages of the next book will be opened.

And I lay my pen down for now.

Remember, everyone! This series is supposed to be a school story!!

-Kamachi Kazuma

Ending

Eventually.

An eerie windy noise echoed down the stone prison corridor.

The Unconvicted Prisoner Holding Ward of the Special Examination Building was strictly guarded even for the Tower of London. It was not built sloppily enough to allow in a draft.

So this was something other than actual wind.

It may have been closer to a failed attempt at whistling.

It came from Hamazura Shiage’s lips.

The Eleven Court Officers recognized it. Really, any professional magician would know it all too well.

The boy holding Narthex in his arms had begun an imitation of the real thing. He had started interfering with his life force using his respiration and circulation.

Which meant he was refining magic power.

Sheila Judicial of the eleven opened her mouth.

“Where are the Necessarius executioners?”

“They are here in London, but it will still be five to ten minutes before they arrive. We only need to buy that much time. No, it would be faster if we just slaughtered him ourselves,” replied an exasperated Frank.

A solid footstep sounded.

Hamazura had not moved forward or back.

He showed no intention of fleeing.

He whispered to Narthex while preventing any other use of his hands by holding her.

That seemed like suicide.

“Listen, Narthex.”

He spoke from his lowered head.

The eleven were mildly surprised to find he was not begging for his life.

“This has just gotten complicated and we don’t have time to talk it out, so I have just one thing to say: you don’t have to cry anymore. You have nothing to worry about. Do you want to go to school? Do you want to be an idol? Do you want a peaceful life? Do you want to make friends and hang out with them? It doesn’t matter what it is – just picture some goal like that in your head. Whatever it is, coming up with a way of making it happen and actually doing it…is a job for a magician like me.”

Was it Noel Judicial who scoffed?

He was talking to Narthex?

In that state, there was no way she could understand a word he was saying.

So what if he had stopped the eruption of minuscule black and red fish eggs? She had been ejecting Sitra Achra, the source of evil, from her body. It was horrifying to even imagine the state of that young body on the inside. Plus, Narthex may not have escaped the influence of the Sitra Achra. The Japanese boy ignorantly holding that dangerous object could be consumed a moment later, his entire body engulfed by the black and red sandy stuff.

Not to mention.

That boy had chosen the wrong thing to rely on in front of the Eleven Court Officers who judged magical crimes.

They hadn’t been able to touch him before.

Yet Hamazura had now made himself a valid target.

Now that he was using wicked magic, they need not hold back.

Hamazura hung his head, dropped his gaze to the polluted thing in his arms, and whispered.

“I didn’t understand.”

His voice was terribly dry.

His voice was terribly melancholy.

But there was a glint of hope there. He wasn’t out of options. This was the voice of someone who had noticed the choice remaining to him.

“Before becoming a magician, I didn’t understand how it worked. And I was afraid of what I didn’t understand. I saw it as an unexplainable supernatural power suddenly appearing and taking people’s lives. So, Eleven Court Officers, I feared you from the bottom of my heart. But not so now that I’m a magician and now that I understand. I understand now: you aren’t important. You’re just a bunch of jobbers.”

Frank Judicial snorted with laughter.

Let the boy talk.

He had apparently received enough of a hint to refine his life force into magic power. So what? He had no grimoire knowledge or a spiritual item fine-tuned over a long time. He might have magic power now, but he couldn’t do anything without any spells. He was a freak who was getting all excited messing with a lithium battery even though he didn’t know how to actually use it.

“If,” said Frank. Giving death sentences no one else wanted to give was one duty given to the eleven. “If you think you can use Great Demon Coronzon’s knowledge against us, you are sorely mistaken. We Anglicans are specialists in anti-magician combat. Every spell Coronzon has ever used has been meticulously recorded. Thus, relying on Coronzon is not enough to defeat us.”

“And,” continued Thomasia Judicial. No matter which one announced it, only death and doom awaited those two fools. “We know a great many things of which you are ignorant. Like this for example.”

Thomasia Judicial was not holding any obvious weapons.

There were no incantations and no magic circles.

Nothing at all provided any hint to the exact spell being used.

She simply extended her thumbs and index fingers and formed a frame out of the two L shapes.

And she trapped Hamazura inside the frame.

That was all.

Something audibly sliced through the air.

But there was no visible blade. Not only was there no steel blade, but there was no wind blowing even a single hair on his head.

He didn’t understand.

His comprehension couldn’t keep up.

So there was nothing he could do.

The sound sliced through.

Something unseen flew in to slice through Hamazura’s neck, torso, and arms.

With tremendous speed.

It passed right through him.

The delinquent boy didn’t shed a single drop of blood.

In fact, even Narthex in his arms remained unscathed.

“Wha-?”

Did Thomasia Judicial really have time to express surprise?

Who had granted her that?

Hamazura’s hands were full. He truly hadn’t been able to move a finger in that moment.

And yet.

Boom!!!

The right half of Thomasia’s body was engulfed in fire. She had burst into flame. This wasn’t like a flambe where brandy is poured into a heated frying pan to produce a brief blaze. It persisted. The sound of burning hair and scorching skin were plain to hear. Her skin burst and the moisture and fat within could be heard popping from the heat.

Of course, this wasn’t enough to kill one of the Eleven Court Officers.

The guardians of the law had to remain impartial at all times. Giving into internal or external threats or violence and altering a verdict was simply out of the question. Thus, they had been distanced from death. You could say the Eleven Court Officers were those who had these human aspects removed so they could “justly” maintain order in their country and the world from a magical viewpoint and so they could maintain a pure focus on their job. Merely carbonizing 50% of their body weight could not possibly lead to their death. But it was still plenty to leave those magic experts speechless.

What was that?

When Tsumoru Judicial spoke, his voice was quaking with fear.

And this was the same asshole who hadn’t batted an eye at sentencing someone to death.

“What the hell did you do?”

“I used one of the methods that fills the gap between my objective and the result.”

“Silly word games will be viewed as wicked perjury. Answer me: what did you just do here!?”

That foolish question already contained one answer.

They didn’t understand. They couldn’t comprehend.

Hamazura Shiage was an amateur among amateurs, yet not one of those eleven magic experts could say what he had done.

Not even the Eleven Court Officers lurking in the depths of the Anglican Church could reveal the logic of what happened! What was that? Gathering a small amount of magic power in his grasp couldn’t have activated in some kind of fluke. Magic was a strict field of study. It operated on an intricate logic ruled by formulae, laws, and definitions! So an uneducated boy couldn’t just start using it!! And yet he had snatched a specialized spell from somewhere without a grimoire or sorcerer to guide him? And the Tower of London had world-class specialization for imprisoning magicians, so how had this unauthorized spell activated without any attenuation? They were confident that not even Great Demon Coronzon’s spells could have done that!!!

“Heh…”

Meanwhile, Hamazura had just one response.

He had no ventilator, no AED, and no epinephrine. So why hadn’t they realized something was up from the moment Narthex had so easily regained consciousness in his arms after her vital functions had stopped from her hanging? Had they not asked how Hamazura had managed to destroy the metal bars?

Of course, the Eleven Court Officers weren’t the only problem. Defeating them was not enough to save Narthex. There were the headaches plaguing her, her second brain, and those tiny fish egg things that corrupted the world. Coronzon’s Sitra Achra. The source of evil. Once they learned Narthex was in this state, the Anglican Church as a whole and Necessarius in particular weren’t just going to ignore it. And there might be other forces beyond the UK who would become a threat in their desire to claim weakened Narthex for themselves. The two of them were on their own, yet more and more problems kept appearing from new angles.

He couldn’t solve them all at once.

But throwing in the towel was out of the question.

The people who truly needed help couldn’t always ask for it so easily. Hamazura knew that all too well. So he would never abandon Narthex. It no longer mattered if the girl in his arms spoke the words or not. He didn’t want to regret his actions. He was sick of foolishly mourning a lost life after letting other people’s ideas of good and justice take charge.

So what if she was evil?

So what if she was powerful?

So what if she was special?

Other people’s assessments didn’t matter. He would decide for himself whether or not he would save her.

He would risk his life to choose for himself.

…It was fine if he was weak. No longer would he wish for a special power he could never have. But that didn’t mean he had to let that deficiency crush him. He would start as one of the untalented who looked up with longing. He would build his way up from the very bottom, step by step. Until the heavens were finally in reach.

He was a magician.

He would follow his own will and live a life he would not regret.

So Hamazura Shiage had decided.

If countless problems were tangled around Narthex, then he would just have to undo that tangle one thread at a time. That was simple enough. He raised his head and glared straight ahead again. At the Eleven Court Officers who stood in the prison corridor, blocking the way to the exit and thus freedom.

He would deal with the easiest problem first.

With that look in his eyes, he gave his answer.

“What do you think I did?”

Untalented Hamazura had made one of his wishes come true.

He would speak his mind.

That amounted to a declaration of war from this magician.

Now.

Listen up, you eleven who abuse justice for your own personal reasons and unfairly doom people to die.

You’re no more than an ugly and meaningless hurdle that torments the weak and untalented to the point of death.

Well now it’s your turn to have no idea what’s happening.

Takitsubo Rikou lay in a dark, unrecorded place.

She groaned softly and slowly opened her eyes.

The track suit girl spoke without even sitting up.

“…Hamazura?”

It was pressing in on her like a ripple.

A danger signal that only she could recognize.

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Depth 8 - Depth 7 - Depth 6 - Depth 5 - Depth 4 - Depth 3 - Depth 2 - Depth 1 - Epilogue - Ending Toaru Kagaku no Railgun: Cold Game Toaru Jihanki no Fanfare Toaru Majutsu No Index: Love Letter SS Toaru Kagaku no Railgun SS: A Superfluous Story, or A Certain Incident’s End Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament SS Toaru Majutsu no Index: Shokuhou Misaki Figurine SS Toaru Majutsu no Index: A Certain Midsummer Return to the Starting Point Toaru Majutsu no Index: Using Final Bosses to Determine a Sociological Threat Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament Bonus Short Story Toaru Majutsu no Index: Thus Spoke the Kumokawa Sisters Toaru Majutsu no Virtual-On: Vooster's Cup, The Day Before Toaru Majutsu no Virtual-On: Misaka Mikoto's Dangerous Tea Party Toaru Majutsu no Index: Birthday Through the Glass Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament 20 Bonus Short Story Toaru Majutsu no Index: Misaka Mikoto’s Teamwork A Certain Magical Index: Genesis Testament SS A Certain Scientific Mental Out: The Queen’s Play A Certain Magical Index: Genesis Testament SS2 [v d e]Official Parody Stories A Certain Prophecy Index A Certain Academy Index A Certain Gift Exchange A Certain March 201st Novel I Don't Want This First Story of A Certain Magical Index!! or I Don't Want This Final Story An All-In "World" Tour of Academy City, the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion, and Ground's Nir Kamijou-san, Two Idiots, Jinnai Shinobu, Gray Pig, and Freedom Award 903, Listen Up! …Fall Asleep and You Die, But Not From the Cold☆ We Tried Having a Group Blind Date, but It was an All Stars Affair and a World Crisis Will the Spiky-Haired Idiot See a Piping Hot Dream of His Wife? Dengeki Island: A Girl’s Battle (Still Growing) Kamijou Touma Visits Another World Toaru Majutsu no Index X Apocalypse Witch Crossover SS Toaru Majutsu no Index X Apocalypse Witch X Heavy Object Crossover SS I Still Want to Do a Summer Fair A Certain Collaboration Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 Kamachi Crossover Illustrations - Preface - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - A.E. 02 - Afterword Durarara Crossover Preface - Academy City Chapter - Ikebukuro Chapter	Next