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Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and even the usually composed Good, Old Mary reacted. Kamijou couldn’t imagine why the opinion of a high schooler like him would matter. Or, as unlikely as it seemed, did they have some kind of strength ranking within their cabal? They seemed to have a rivalry in the same vein as Yarou web novels or VRTubers. |
Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and even the usually composed Good, Old Mary reacted. Kamijou couldn’t imagine why the opinion of a high schooler like him would matter. Or, as unlikely as it seemed, did they have some kind of strength ranking within their cabal? They seemed to have a rivalry in the same vein as Yarou web novels or VRTubers. |
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Latest revision as of 10:31, 22 March 2024
Chapter 2: So Much Like Tree Rings – Open_War,1st_Defense_Line.[edit]
Part 1[edit]
Sunset came early in the winter.
It was 5PM.
The first to notice the oddity in the red-dyed city was Anti-Skill.
The martial law declared across Academy City had yet to be removed. That meant Anti-Skill had established an alert network stricter than normal, so even the smallest oddity was immediately reported back to them.
The oddity was detected at the far eastern side of the city, in the strongly religious (by Academy City’s standards) District 11.
“Hey…what’s that?”
And.
Christian Rosencreutz, the silver-haired monster, wasn’t concerned with any minefields that might be in his path.
If he had somewhere to go, he would walk right on through, stepping on all the mines along the way.
“Ohh, oh, ohh?”
Presently, the silver-haired young man clad in red was focused on a plastic bottle.
Specifically, he was staring at the side where he had peeled away a small sticker.
“Hmm. This promises a gift of magic gems, but how do you claim this generous offer? I do not see any kind of contact information.”
“You there!! Show me your ID or residency permit!! Right now!!”
“Oh, I see. You must hold up one of those cleverphones, or whatever you call them, to read this square code here.”
A wet splat rang out.
Rosencreutz never even looked toward the Anti-Skill officer. He didn’t move a finger, but the shouting officer and his gun went spinning up into the air.
In this case, managing to hold onto his gun worked against him.
Because the bullets sprayed against his will struck the fellow officer standing nearby.
“Byah!!”
“Wahhhhhh!?”
The color red and a rusty scent created a brutal scene, but Christian Rosencreutz still ignored it all. With the sticker in hand, he tossed aside the bottle and folded his other hand’s fingers to count something.
“Acquire an ultra-rare trading card – check. Eat that restaurant’s frozen hamburger steak said to have a ‘new and improved flavor’ – check. Worn a heated napping eye mask – check. Tried that simple homemade mochi kit – check. Drank the new chemical pink flavor of energy drink – check. Oh, you there, could you lend me some fingers? Let’s see, where was I?”
“Ah, gah?”
“Won a stuffed toy poodle in the crane game – check. Tried the recommended shark fin cheese dumpling, hit a homerun in the batting cage – check and check. Scored a perfect 100 at karaoke – hm, that’s a check too. Which leaves…”
“Gghghghaghyghagyghagyhgaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!?”
Unrestrained cracking noises burst out again and again.
Rosencreutz had not laid a finger on him, but despite his desperate resistance, the Anti-Skill officer’s fingers bent in time with the list. The gun’s grip was crushed by unthinkable force and his index finger pulled the trigger against his will.
“~ ~ ~! Everyone, get down!!”
Something exploded.
Anti-Skill was finally making their counterattack. Snakehead self-destruct drones, which looked like isosceles triangles flying around like a flock of starlings, dropped straight down. Each Snakehead rivalled a shoulder-fired rocket and, when a group of them attacked as sharply as lightning strikes, they had enough firepower to wipe out a group of tanks.
But still Christian Rosencreutz ignored them.
Not a single hair on his head was singed.
“Hm.”
It was the same with him no matter what happened.
He obeyed only his desires when choosing what to do.
Nearly half a day had passed since Alice Anotherbible and Anna Kingsford’s deaths, but he remained in District 12 where he had been reborn.
He had a simple reason for this.
“I’ve tried everything that caught my interest, so maybe I should get moving now.”
CRC’s eyeballs rolled in his head. Everyone present could tell he was focusing on the outside world for the first time.
“You had better entertain me.”
Light was compressed.
Sound vanished.
All of a sudden, a 60ton tank was blasted straight up. Anti-Skill had no idea what had happened. Their most well-defended tank had been destroyed in the blink of an eye, so they knew their weaker armored trucks and powered suits wouldn’t stand a chance. The officers wearing military jackets meant to stop bullets and blades would be torn through like paper.
His gaze seemed to pierce right through them.
They knew every spot he turned his attention to would explode.
That wasn’t a logical conclusion.
It was more like a superstition. They were sure that was the rule and anyone who took the rule lightly would be blasted into the air. That was the world they lived in now.
An armored truck was squashed flat, pieces scattering in every direction and knocking over an armored prisoner transport bus being used as a barricade. After taking some kind of destructive damage, an attack helicopter fell toward the Anti-Skill officers fleeing in a panic. There were explosions, screams, and bestial growls.
But Anti-Skill was not broken.
“Surround him!! All units: the current coordinates are designated a max level risk zone, so set up multiple defense lines. This is your top priority!!”
By this point, Anti-Skill viewed the person before them as connected to a wanted criminal. Because they were already aware of another immensely powerful individual who had made fools of them with a supernatural power.
Something tore through the asphalt.
Their tank had been destroyed in an instant, but they weren’t through yet. They had 155mm field artillery, heavy mortars, and even shoulder-fired missiles. The ordinary Anti-Skill officers fired them with teeth gritted.
Orders were given.
“Calculate your line of fire! Keep the danger zone to a minimum!! Fire!!!”
Christian Rosencreutz responded with an exasperated sigh.
“How dull.”
He was hit by explosions from several directions at once.
Moments after massive shells were launched at supersonic speed, most of them was stripped away, focusing all the kinetic energy on the tungsten core. Those special warheads were designed to melt and break a hole through thick composite armor. Each one possessed enough force to punch through and blast apart a flesh-and-bone human, leaving only their collapsing lower body behind.
But…
“I said you bore me.”
He was unscathed.
That image broke the spirits of everyone watching. The silver young man did not hold back. Explosion after explosion blasted them into the air. The Anti-Skill officers screamed and couldn’t even continue the cycle of dragging their collapsed comrades to safety.
“…”
So.
That young Anti-Skill officer had not been abandoned.
No one around him was capable of moving any longer.
Christian Rosencreutz leisurely strolled through the world of screams, red, and explosive flames.
He stopped when he saw the young officer.
And this was in a world where anywhere that drew his attention would explode.
“Do you want me to stop? But what here could be more entertaining than crushing everyone in my path? If you know of something, I would love to hear about it.”
It all came down to that.
In his world, the mobile game sticker on a drink bottle was just as valuable as a human life.
For a brief moment, the smile vanished from CRC’s face.
“But if you do not, then this is the end for you.”
He slowly held out his hand.
The same hand that had easily blown up a tank and brought down an attack helicopter.
“Ah…ahh.”
There was nothing the Anti-Skill officer could do.
He tried to speak while trembling and unable to move, but…
“Not so fast,” someone else said.
A boy had arrived.
Part 2[edit]
There may have been one thing that gave Kamijou an advantage. He stood before an exceedingly powerful foe, so focusing on that problem helped distract him from his sorrow. Without that, the shock of losing Alice Anotherbible may have devasted him.
So should he be thankful?
Hell no.
“…”
The sunset dyed the city red.
Kamijou Touma vs. Christian Rosencreutz.
The collapsed Anti-Skill officers didn’t seem cognizant of the fact that a perfectly ordinary high school boy was confronting that silver monster one-on-one. Their minds had already yielded to the idea that such a thing wasn’t possible.
Kamijou kept his eyes on Rosencreutz but spoke to a nearby Anti-Skill officer.
“You can still move, right? Then drag the others to safety and get out of here. You need to move now if you don’t want to regret this.”
“Oh? And why should this old man just let him do that?”
“Because I won’t give you time to focus on them.”
The Anti-Skill officer got moving despite being weak in the knees. But not to run away – to find some way to get his injured and unmoving colleagues out of danger.
Christian Rosencreutz grinned.
It looked like Kamijou had successfully captured his attention.
“You cannot hold this old man’s attention if all you do is charge at me the same as before.”
“Don’t you worry. That won’t be happening.”
“How exciting☆ Simply killing you would be so boring.”
Hearing that, Kamijou Touma took a step forward.
Faint surprise showed on Christian Rosencreutz’s face.
He may have thought he would always be the one moving in first.
He too approached in amusement.
Now that they were both in motion, there was no stopping them.
Or so Kamijou thought.
“La la la la♪ To all you gentle cat lovers out there, we know you think your cat is cute, but don’t let them create lots of little kittens. Once you have too many to properly care for, it is the cats who will suffer.”
There was a pet shop nearby. It wasn’t actually open thanks to the martial law and the lack of animal cries suggested the employees had taken the animals home with them, but the LCD advertisement screen was still functioning. It may have been set to activate whenever someone walked by.
And a moment after it did…
Tears spilled from Rosencreutz’s eyes.
This was no mistake.
Kamijou watched as the tears joined together to form a line down each cheek and then dripped down from his slender chin like a waterfall.
“Hey, wait, what is with you!?”
“Didn’t you hear? The cats…and the cute kittens. Don’t you feel so sorry for them?”
Kamijou’s eyes opened wide.
Did that man not remember injuring Anti-Skill just a minute ago? How could someone wield that much violence and still feel sorry for some cats!?
He was terrifyingly distractable.
Legendary Magician Christian Rosencreutz sniffled like he had completely forgotten where he was.
But he hadn’t.
He did not have some grand goal related to the fate of the world or the future of humanity. He had no plan at all. He poured all of his energy into whatever drew his attention at the time.
But his power was immense.
He had enough power to one-shot Alice Anotherbible, yet there was no predicting where he would direct it next.
“The humans must die! Every last one of them!! If they can’t be trusted to keep their promises, the only solution is to go around slaughtering them all. Hwa ha ha! And then all the cats can be happy!!!”
“What the hell is wrong with- shit!?”
Kamijou started to shout back on reflex, but he quickly swung his head to the side.
He felt something wet on his temple: his own blood.
He could guess it was some kind of magic, but he couldn’t analyze it even after being hit by it. If he hadn’t moved at the last second, it would have taken off his head.
Still weeping, Rosencreutz shouted out loud.
He had not reduced his deadly strength.
“Death to all humans!!”
“~ ~ ~! Give a thought to how powerful you are, you dumbass!!!”
Kamijou clenched his right fist, but he couldn’t reach.
They were too far apart.
And his opponent was slightly faster.
With a “crash!!”, something heavy fell behind Rosencreutz.
It was a 2m silver orb.
At first, the sensible part of Kamijou’s brain identified it as a wrecking ball meant to tear down skyscrapers, but it wasn’t. This orb had a round handle just like on a submarine’s watertight doors.
“The Pneuma-less Shell…sniff, sob.”
CRC smiled even as he cried. He was full of emotion.
He moved his feet as if performing dance steps.
But this had nothing to do with magic.
He was simply avoiding the small flowers blooming on the ground.
“Uhh, sob. You may have encountered this when battling a magician who takes after me. It is a Rosicrucian spiritual item, after all. Stones and sharp blades will stab or slash. Plant ropes will strangle or squeeze. Not even this old man can control the random fluctuations that produce the world’s oldest tools related to each cause of death and they will produce the greatest attack based on that origin!”
(Tch!! So is he really at a more advanced level than Anna!?)
Kamijou could feel his heart hammering in his chest, but this was also his chance.
If Anna Sprengel and Christian Rosencreutz were the same sort of magician, then their spells would be similar, even if the scale was different. That meant he only had to remain calm and observe. He already knew this man’s attacks. CRC wasn’t from a completely unknown legend. Kamijou had already defeated Anna who had long ruled over and protected the Rosicrucian cabal, so he might notice some familiar magic in this fight. That would be his greatest opportunity. Rosencreutz had realized this and thus produced the randomized Pneuma-less Shell to prevent Kamijou from predicting what would happen next. That could mean the man was subconsciously afrai-
Kamijou’s optimism was shattered by a dull wrenching sound.
His right shoulder had become a solid mass of agony.
Rosencreutz smiled.
He gave a twisted smile while holding his palm out from a short distance away.
He had indeed summoned the Pneuma-less Shell, but he hadn’t laid a finger on its round handle.
The possibility of recognizing the attack – and the relief that thought brought – had been part of his strategy.
In other words…
(Spoilers aren’t enough to weaken him. He knew I would recognize that and used it against me!?)
“Gahhh!!”
The distance between them was irrelevant. CRC had only needed to hold his palm out toward Kamijou. That was all it took to tear into his right shoulder and produce scorching pain. Kamijou’s legs refused to support him. Unable to fight the force of the blow, his feet left the rubble-strewn ground and he spun through the air.
What was this? He didn’t know, but what was even happening to him!?
A second time.
And a third time the same attack assaulted him.
Since he had failed to resist the first impact, Kamijou let himself to be knocked backwards to try and avoid any further attacks, but it wasn’t enough. CRC corrected his aim for each new attack.
“Hm?”
The onslaught of destruction suddenly stopped.
CRC took a single step to the side.
Kamijou blinked in confusion even as he grimaced from the pain coming more from his bones than his skin.
Why had that man suddenly dodged? It didn’t make sense.
Was it based on some kind of rule? More importantly, was there some way of taking advantage of it?
The only thing on the road there was an old abandoned civilian car. The two round headlights and the plain bumper looked something like a smiling man.
(Really? It was that? It was really nothing more than that!?)
“Oh, how cute. Oops. I do have a bad habit of getting emotionally invested in things like this. I wonder if it was a habit I picked up from using hidden symbolism to interpret secret instructions and messages.”
Kamijou shuddered.
Logic and tactics came second. He really did do everything on a whim.
The next attack would arrive before long.
“Kh.”
Kamijou focused his mind on his right hand.
What was Imagine Breaker good for?
He clenched his teeth and his fist as tight as could be.
“Don’t try to defend, Touma!! Dodge by falling to the right!!”
Hearing a shout, Kamijou immediately swung his right fist.
But to the side, not the front. That shifted his center of gravity just enough to let him roll to the side and out of the way of the deadly attack.
It was a close thing.
He belatedly realized that, if he had relied on Imagine Breaker out of habit, he probably would have failed to fully negate the immense torrent of magic and his arm would have been twisted off at the shoulder or elbow.
And.
He recognized that voice.
“I-Index?”
Index was there with 15cm Othinus on her shoulder.
Kamijou forgot all about his pain and looked up from the ground.
Those two had no reason at all to risk their lives to save a villain like Anna Sprengel. Yet here they were.
No warm light had descended from heaven and no great sea had parted before his eyes.
But what was this if not a miracle?
“Do you think we have time to explain why we’re here or how we got here? Get back on your feet already!”
“Sorry, CRC, but I have too much pride as a god to quake in fear of your legend. I am the Norse war god, so my magic is not built with your rules at the foundation.”
And those two weren’t alone. Kamijou had trouble believing the next person he saw: Misaka Mikoto.
He was speechless.
She may have read the question in his eyes.
Mikoto averted her eyes a bit as she spoke.
“I-I never said I wouldn’t help. I only presented the problem from a different viewpoint. So don’t get all excited about this, idiot.”
Something else drew his attention.
“?”
For some reason, a complete stranger had shown up too.
Why had that middle school girl with long blonde hair come to this dangerous place?
“Don’t worry about me. Even if I explained my reason ability for risking my life here, you would forget it all soon enough anyway☆”
For some reason, Christian Rosencreutz waited for all of this to play out.
In fact, his eyes were sparkling.
A bad sign.
“Fascinating!!!”
“Watch out, everyone!! That idiot is about to attack!!”
They all scattered.
Whatever happened, the air in a straight line out from CRC rapidly heated and scorched. A pedestrian bridge far behind them was sliced apart and soared through the sky.
Apparently he wasn’t guaranteed a hit whenever he held out his palm.
Gathering his attention was far too dangerous.
That alone could mean death.
Even if the silver young man himself didn’t intend for it.
After all, not even Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker could fully negate CRC’s magic. Defense was out of the question. Evasion was the only option. If your legs froze up in fear of the approaching deadly attack, you would be instantly consumed.
And it wasn’t just dumb luck that there were no victims from Kamijou’s group.
Kamijou had experienced too much misfortune to believe in that.
There had to be a real reason they had been saved.
“TBSR – TCKU (Thy body shifts right – thou cannot keep up)!!”
“Oh?”
Index had folded her hands and raised her voice in what sounded like a song, but it wasn’t.
That was Spell Intercept.
By analyzing the structure of the enemy magician’s spell and randomly rearranging the incantation or symbols into something extremely similar but with an entirely different meaning, Index could throw off the enemy’s focus.
She had only diverted his aim by the smallest amount this time.
But when she really worked at it, she could cause the magic to malfunction or even harm the enemy magician.
“Kee hee hee. Oh, how delightful! Such fun!! Is this what modern magic is like? It is missing a lot, but I see you have made a number of changes to make up for that. You could even call it a brand new genre of original recipes. This type of creativity is far more interesting than Kingsford who continued to use the musty old secret arts!!”
Christian Rosencreutz was probably being entirely honest.
But Index still clenched her teeth.
He was saying she had insufficient data and that all her knowledge was a distorted version of the original. She had dedicated her life to memorizing more than 103,000 grimoires, so his words were a humiliating insult to her.
He might as well have tried the finest dish of a chef who had worked his ass of training in French cuisine and then scoffed, calling it an amusing Japanese twist on the dish.
That man had to be well versed in ways to make people suffer.
And he used them for no more than his own amusement.
But reality could not keep up.
“Gh!?” groaned Mikoto.
She had magnetically pulled over an electric car as a shield, but now it exploded. The whitish explosion of the giant lithium-ion battery slammed into her, throwing her backwards.
Index’s instructions weren’t enough to avoid this.
Her Spell Intercept wasn’t enough to throw off Rosencreutz’s aim!?
“Hm? Weird. This doesn’t match my grimoires!?”
“Kee hee hee. Of course it doesn’t.”
CRC cackled gleefully.
He looked like he was resisting the urge to hold his sides.
“Does flipping through a recipe book make you a chef? You are a library, a collection of book knowledge, while this old man is steeped from head to toe in real knowledge and skill. We may be drawing on the same wisdom, but there is a vast gulf between what we can actually use. Hee hee ha ha ha. Did you think your lines of text on paper could outdo what this old man truly performs!?”
“Shokuhou!!!”
Collapsed on the ground, Misaka Mikoto called a name that had a terribly familiar ring to it.
The honey blonde girl immediately pulled a TV remote from her handbag. But then she froze. Not even her widened eyes blinked.
Something inside her had suddenly broken.
“What? No…way.”
“Did you really think that child’s play would work on this old man?”
He didn’t provide any further explanation.
But everyone could tell that was an absolute truth that brooked no objection. The result was plain to see. The #5’s power did not work on him and that was all that mattered.
With their attack stopped, it was Rosencreutz’s turn.
The negative trend would not stop.
“Kh!!”
Kamijou stepped out in front of the girls and held out his right hand.
But a chill ran down his spine.
Hadn’t he done this exact thing after Alice Anotherbible died and his mind went blank? Index had used the full knowledge of all her grimoires and told him not to use Imagine Breaker here. It didn’t matter what had worked in the past – she had concluded that method wouldn’t work here.
Christian Rosencreutz slowly held his palm out toward Kamijou.
“Ahhhh!!” roared dusty Misaka Mikoto.
She must have harnessed a great magnetic force because the highway overpass crossing the road collapsed and a skyscraper on either side collapsed to block the road. An artificial gale blew through. How many people would have died if everyone hadn’t been evacuated from the area by the martial law?
But Kamijou didn’t even consider that question.
The world quaked. A single attack caused the towering pile of rubble to crumble away. Hearing the cacophony was enough to know it would soon no longer function as a barrier.
The original rule stood before him.
Evasion was the only option.
It didn’t matter what had worked in the past – he must not think of trying defense this time.
A pair of eyes shined bright beyond the collapsing pile.
He was smiling with amusement.
“Is that all you can do? You gather all your strength and it buys you a measly 10 seconds?”
“!!??”
Terror squeezed at Kamijou’s stomach.
Before they could try anything else, that abnormal joy pinned Kamijou and the girls’ feet to the ground.
Rosencreutz’s approach could not be stopped.
He was coming to them!?
“Heh heh. No, no. Surely you can do more than that. You bothered to stand in this old man’s path, so you had better entertain me a while longer!!!”
Part 3[edit]
When Christian Rosencreutz shouted, the color white filled the world.
Part 4[edit]
For a moment, Kamijou’s memories refused to link together.
Like film cut apart with scissors that wouldn’t fit together again.
Had CRC’s great attack influenced him mentally as well as physically?
No.
“Gh,” Kamijou groaned, a dull ache in his temples. Yes, this reminded him of the pain felt when looking at the sun for too long.
In other words…
(A powerful flash of light? Did Misaka produce some powerful sparks to try and dazzle Rosencreutz’s eyes?)
Evasion was the only option. They mustn’t even think about defense.
This move didn’t violate that rule. And since Kamijou wasn’t dead, it must have been effective in this battle against Rosencreutz. But now that Rosencreutz had seen it, Kamijou seriously doubted it would work a second time.
He didn’t see Index, Mikoto, or the others.
He felt a strange weight in his clothing. He looked down the neck of his shirt to see a metal plate larger than his hand. Had Mikoto used that to magnetically fling him as far away as she could?
He hadn’t had time to do anything on his own.
That was fine.
Feeling fear wasn’t a bad thing. Because the fear motivated him to observe as much as he could, think through it all on a deeper level, and find an opportunity. True defeat was only found if he stopped analyzing that fear and let the trembling take over.
“But where am I?”
Still curled up in a ball, Kamijou slowly turned his head.
Had this originally been a trendy laundromat that doubled as a café? He must have subconsciously hidden himself behind the collapsed building.
He didn’t know his exact location.
But it seemed like Rosencreutz had lost track of him.
That didn’t mean he could relax, however.
With no one left to stop him, that man would resume his march toward the District 7 hospital. That endangered Anna Sprengel and the hospital staff who were working so hard to save her even though they knew she was a villain.
Kamijou couldn’t place that burden on their shoulders.
This was his selfish desire. He should carry the burden and the risk. He clenched his teeth, placed a hand on the wall, and slowly stood up.
He could still do this.
(Where are Index, Mikoto, and the rest? I just hope Rosencreutz didn’t go after them.)
Just then…
“Hey. I can’t help but notice you’re risking your life by repeatedly throwing yourself against an unrivaled monster, so I’m here to help out, laddie.”
He heard an oddly relaxed female voice. And it came from the open sky overhead.
And a moment later…
“Oops, botched my landing.”
“Bwahh!?”
Kamijou went blind. It took him several seconds to realize the Transcendent Bologna Succubus had descended from the sky above with her batlike wings and then caught his face between her two thighs and something else. I’d rather not explain what exactly that something else is. Simply put, it was like a backward and upside-down piggyback ride. Using the alphabet, it was something like an S.
“Bwbhbh, get, bhbhj, off of, bhehb, me!?”
“Nhh… Don’t breathe on me there, you jackaninny.”
“Agh, I said get off!!”
While the succubus was being extremely succubus-like, more sets of footsteps approached. After somehow extricating himself from the crotch trap(!?), Kamijou observed the new arrivals with his recovered vision.
“Is it in a demon’s nature to act so inappropriately? Or was the boy responsible for this one?”
“I think they’re having fun.”
Good, Old Mary and Mut Thebes were here.
So was Witch Goddess Aradia.
“Did you call them here?”
“Those of us with nowhere to go gathered together on our own,” simply stated Aradia, not looking him in the eye.
But these Transcendents were not like Alice Anotherbible or Anna Sprengel. They did not act on a whim. They would mechanically list out their salvation conditions and only save whoever met them. Since they were all acting together, these survivors must have been working toward a single goal, which would have required untangling the many threads and solving a challenging puzzle.
For example, there was Mut Thebes.
It seemed like a fundamental contradiction for that punishment expert to be fighting for Anna Sprengel. She was the very person who had chased Anna down before.
Although Mut Thebes herself only quizzically tilted her head.
“My Shrink Drink attack on Anna Sprengel is complete.”
“Kh.”
Those words seemed to tear sharply into Kamijou Touma’s heart.
They stated a fact that could never be overturned.
But she wasn’t done there.
“Which means my task as a punishment expert has concluded. Whatever happens to her now is none of my concern – even if she does find a way to live happily ever after. She is no threat to the Bridge Builders Cabal with her cardiopulmonary function ceased and I doubt she can leak information as H. T. Trismegistus and the others feared she might. I use punishment to protect the group I have chosen for myself. And at the moment, the much greater and more direct threat to the cabal is Christian Rosencreutz.”
“Y-you mean you’ll help us for now?”
“No? You do not fit my salvation conditions.”
So whose side was Mut Thebes really on?
But Kamijou truly felt he would be spared her deadly blade no matter how many times he failed to meet her mechanical search conditions.
However, that it was impossible to know where all that power would be directed was frightening in a different way from a capricious beast that simply obeyed its instincts. There was no chance of escaping her interest by playing dead or taming her so she wouldn’t attack. If anything, she was even more inhuman – like a drone weapon. He felt like he was being followed around by a faint chill that carried great power but could kill based on a sensor error no matter what her personal feelings might be.
In this case, a neutral stance was someone who might shoot you in the back at any time.
Mut Thebes-chan had effectively come running to his aid, but she still scared him.
However, she hadn’t malfunctioned yet, so she only looked confused.
Mut Thebes was the Transcendents’ punishment expert.
They probably had the least in common and convincing her would be challenging, but there wasn’t time for Kamijou to let that scare him into being more withdrawn.
Rosencreutz wanted to slaughter all of the Transcendents.
And only as a way of entertaining himself because he was bored.
If Kamijou failed to tell that girl some critical information, he would be responsible if she lost her life as a result. So as scared and nervous as he was, they had to work together and share their information for now.
“A-are you aware Christian Rosencreutz is wandering around somewhere nearby?”
“More or less.”
“He isn’t someone you can beat in a normal fight. But that’s your specialty as Transcendents, right? Mut Thebes, having you here is especially important. I want you to immediately fall back to District 18. You at least need to head to the second…no, the third defense line.”
Kamijou was beginning to sound like a weather forecaster during a typhoon.
“His shortest route will take him through Districts 12, 23, 18, and 7. Even if he does go through Districts 12, 6, 5, and 7 instead, you can still blast him from District 18. Your Dead Phoenix lets you absorb the shadows of people and things, converting them into your own power, so you have a lot more options than the rest of us. It would be better for you to fire on him from a safe distance than to attempt a close-range battle with that monster!!”
Mut Thebes displayed no malice.
Her head tilt came from pure confusion.
“Why should I do that?”
“Because you’re the strongest here when it comes to pure firepower. Dead Phoenix lets you absorb any shadow and make its power your own, so you can use all the next-gen weaponry you want. That’s perfect for being in Academy City. You’re the only one I can rely on here!!”
She froze in place for a moment.
After blinking twice she puffed out her flat chest.
And for some reason, she looked not to Kamijou in front of her but to the Transcendents to her side.
“Heh heh. I’m the strongest. I shine the brightest. Heh heh heh♪”
“Hmph☆” “Hmph☆” “Hmph☆”
Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and even the usually composed Good, Old Mary reacted. Kamijou couldn’t imagine why the opinion of a high schooler like him would matter. Or, as unlikely as it seemed, did they have some kind of strength ranking within their cabal? They seemed to have a rivalry in the same vein as Yarou web novels or VRTubers.
Mut Thebes-chan’s eyes were as emotionless as ever, but she couldn’t keep the grin off of her lips.
“If you want me to deliver an effective blow to CRC, then I’m willing to help. My current salvation conditions are to protect the Bridge Builders Cabal as a separate entity from the rest of the world. If CRC is after the Transcendents, then defeating him would be the fastest way to accomplish my goal.”
“Huh? Hold on. Are you saying I bowed down for no reason?”
“If you don’t ask me properly, I will launch my own attack.”
Kamijou Touma went past 45 degrees and bowed to a full 90 degrees. The salaryman spirit carried by his Japanese blood had suddenly awoken within him.
Mut Thebes put her hands on her slender hips and gave a satisfied snort from her little nose.
“I will fall back to the third defense line, but absorbing a large weapon will take time. And if it is unwieldy enough, it would be more efficient for me to act as a stationary turret rather than try to lug it around.”
“And?”
Kamijou had to admit he didn’t want her to be stompnig along with something hundreds of meters tall like she had before. She would become the real threat to the city then.
“The question is what I do about targeting. Either I will need to absorb a targeting device capable of tracking CRC, or you will have to instruct me from the front line while you- brr, it’s freezing.”
She gave up before finishing her thought.
And she started tugging at him. He looked down to see what that was about and saw her wrap herself in his coat to warm herself.
The Bologna Succubus’s eyes widened at this display of even more brazenness than an ill-behaved high school girl unplugging the electric display in front of a convenience store to charge her phone.
“What’s this, are you his girlfriend now? I’m a lewd succubus and even I resisted the urge to steal his coat!”
But if the Japanese winter was too cold for Mut Thebes, why had she skipped right past a bikini (difficulty level: normal) and worn that even more revealing costume (difficulty level: hara-kiri crazy nightmare)? Since Magic God Nephthys had walked around outside in nothing but bandages, did ancient Egyptians have something against wearing sufficient clothing?
Mut Thebes had nerves of steel.
The cold girl was entirely unbothered by sharing someone else’s coat without asking.
“I do not dress this way because I enjoy it. I can only activate my spell by casting my own shadow on the ground, so this is merely the logical choice. Do not confuse me with those exhibitionists who have chosen to take off most of their clothing in this frigid January weather for no good reason.”
“Mama would prefer if you did not place her in the same category as the witch goddess and the horny demon. Mama dresses perfectly normally. She has never stooped to cheap exhibitionism or sex appeal.”
“Huh? How can you say that when we all bathed together back at the consulate?”
Sparking tension grew between the Transcendents.
From multiple directions.
“She pretends to be the only one who knows how to behave, but I bet she’s wearing some really sexy underwear below that chaste long skirt! Keeping that composed look when she’s secretly wearing the naughtiest panties you’ve ever seen makes her way more of a pervert than us!!”
“Stop it with the baseless speculation. Mama is nothing like you superhuman perverts; she is just as pure and adorable as she looks.”
“If you take a gander at everything from my one-piece corset to the leather outfit of Alice’s punishment mode, it doesn’t take long to notice what all us Transcendent women have in common.”
“Oh? And have you ever seen below mama’s skirt? You have not, so your words are powerless. Accusations made without solid evidence can only lead to the false accusations you despise.”
“Gh!?” The Bologna Succubus flinched back for once.
Kamijou stared into the middle distance, worried this group was going to tear itself apart before they even fought CRC.
“I never said I would save Anna. The accusations against her aren’t false. She is the villain everyone says she is,” said the Bologna Succubus, with the bluntness of a Transcendent. She laid out her conditions with frightening precision. “But if we focus on Christian Rosencreutz’s attempt to kill all the Transcendents, then I have no issue with helping. …It turns out he isn’t going to save the world. If nothing is done, it’s obvious he will destroy the entire world along with all of our salvation conditions. So I’m willing to give my all to this fight.”
Salvation conditions.
It worried Kamijou that she still hadn’t removed that self-imposed constraint, but he needed as many allies as he could get right now.
She would give her all to fight for those weaker than her.
If that was all it was, she may have been a greater example of justice than the puny boy.
Then Kamijou’s attention turned toward another Transcendent: Good, Old Mary.
It happened suddenly.
“What about Alice? Can you-”
He left the question unfinished, realizing too late that it was a meaningless question.
She silently shook her head.
Her big hat wobbled sadly.
Not even Good, Old Mary could save Anna from the Shrink Drink’s effects. Because a mere Transcendent could not resist even a fragment of Alice Anotherbible’s power.
He doubted she would be able to interfere with Alice herself so easily, especially to overturn the girl’s death.
Was there any crueler irony than her own great strength preventing her from being saved?
“I see,” said Kamijou Touma.
He had already known it, but having it stated by someone else was like a knife to the heart. Good, Old Mary’s resurrection could revert the dead to the exact moment of their death, providing a chance for CPR. But not even that could save Alice. Or Anna.
The row of falling dominos had suddenly stopped.
The frog-faced doctor was fighting to save Anna’s life.
Kamijou had his own task to complete. He could not allow Christian Rosencreutz to reach the hospital.
He noted that H. T. Trismegistus was not here.
Had he been killed when Rosencreutz first appeared? Or did he no longer see any purpose in the Bridge Builders Cabal now that he had lost his master Alice Anotherbible?
For that matter, there were so few Transcendents here given that Good, Old Mary could resurrect people. The Bridge Builders Cabal had pooled their combined strength into that ceremony. Kamijou didn’t know how many there were in all, but there had to have been a large number of Transcendents in Academy City.
Had the CPR failed after their bodies were returned to the moment of death?
Or had the CPR succeeded but they had lost the will to fight and fled?
He had no way of knowing.
“We’ve already lost to him once, so we know just how much of a threat Christian Rosencreutz is,” said the Bologna Succubus.
“But we can’t just let him go free.”
“We are aware,” said Good, Old Mary. “And since we know a direct attack will not work, what we need is observation and preparation. We must make ourselves disappear, find safety, and get a fresh start. So before Rosencreutz notices us, we must leave here, keep our distance, and find cover.”
Their argument was logical.
They had not given in to their fear.
The Transcendents were not like Kamijou. It wasn’t that they didn’t know. They had lost and they had experienced the fear of death, but they still used their reason and knowledge as weapons to challenge their greatest enemy.
“Mut Thebes. You too.”
Aradia spoke to the most dangerous of the bunch.
But maybe being known as the most dangerous actually made her the safest one when it came to the problem of a malfunction in her salvation conditions.
Good, Old Mary looked like the gentlest and calmest, so if she suddenly shot him in the back, Kamijou wouldn’t know what to believe anymore.
“What kind of weapon shadows should I absorb? Or should I absorb your Transcendent shadows now as insurance in case something happens? Given this battle’s difficulty level, it would be best if we had multiple copies of Good, Old Mary’s resurrection.”
Just then, Kamijou felt a chill.
He turned toward it without even thinking. But that didn’t mean looking left, right, or even behind. He looked up.
He was speechless.
And a voice responded to his unvoiced question.
“Found you☆”
“Dammit!!!”
The voice was peering down from the top of a wall still standing among the rubble.
Kamijou immediately rolled away just before the entire scene was obliterated. Christian Rosencreutz dropped like a meteor, blowing away the unnaturally-standing concrete wall.
The silver young man stood at the center of the resultant crater.
He displayed a joyful smile at discovering new prey.
They needed a fresh start.
They had to escape before he found them.
It was the thinnest of threads, but they had finally found a definite chance they could reach for.
It had shattered from a single blow.
“Kh.”
Fear clutched Kamijou’s heart.
But he wasn’t even given time to freeze up.
Kamijou glared at red-clad Christian Rosencreutz and swept a hand out to the side to protect Mut Thebes standing by his side. Then he shouted to her.
“Hurry to the third defense line and stock up on as many next-gen weapons as you can! A simple close-quarters battle will only wear you out, so we’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you get away!!”
“Kyun☆”
He heard a strange sound.
No, was it a voice? Kamijou looked over in shock to see the girl clasping her hands in front of her flat chest. And for some reason her cheeks were flushed pink.
What had happened?
The Bologna Succubus snapped at Mut Thebes whose eyes were wavering on her otherwise expressionless face.
“Now is not the time to let the suspension bridge effect pierce your heart! I know this is basically your first time speaking with a boy, but how about you get to know him a little before you fall for him!?”
“Wait, is that what this is? I’m flatt-”
“Mut Thebes’s specialty is hunting people down, so if she is in love with you, she’ll probably pursue you to the ends of the earth. Lucky you, if you’re into that. And with a passionate stalker loaded with a limitless supply of blades and firearms, you never have to worry about her cheating on you and you know she’ll accept your love.”
This clarification by Big Sis Aradia (whose eyes looked unnecessarily icy for some reason) made Kamijou’s shoulders jump. The gravity of Mut Thebes’s love was apparently on par with a black hole. If you got too close and let it catch you in its pull, time and space would lose all meaning and you would find escape to be impossible.
Also, based on the way they had phrased some things, he got the feeling H. T. Trismegistus didn’t count as a boy in the eyes of the female Transcendents. That young butler was getting caught in the crossfire despite having gone missing.
How did this all look to Christian Rosencreutz who wielded violence on a whim?
At the very least, he didn’t interrupt their conversation with an attack.
“The Transcendents, hm? The group that lost sight of their own selves through excessive and mistaken roleplaying. I have already defeated the lot of you once. …A repeat of that would be a disappointment. You had better have developed some new special attack now that you have chosen to stand in this old man’s way again.”
There were multiple Transcendents here.
As hard as Kamijou found it to believe, CRC did not appear to view them as a threat.
“Why?” asked Witch Goddess Aradia. “Why dedicate yourself so thoroughly to violence? Our Bridge Builders Cabal has chosen to abandon the self to take up roles that will help others and we even completed a major spell through that. Even for us, we had to define our values to wield our power without causing collateral damage.”
He was not someone to hold an ordinary conversation.
She had to know that, but she couldn’t help but ask.
And.
He gave a response.
“Passion.”
A sharp explosion erupted and Kamijou’s group each rolled in their own direction to distance themselves from it.
The blast must have hit a jeweler’s shop because lots of gold and jewelry rained from the sky.
Christian Rosencreutz traced his fingers through empty space.
He displayed no interest in the sparkling precious metal.
He delicately used two fingers to catch a small white flower carried in by a crosswind and gently inserted its stem in the gap on the door of a crushed and twisted luxury car.
He prioritized appreciating nature over strategy or his own interests.
“Playfulness, whims, letting off steam – call it what you like. Kee hee hee. This old man is well aware how great a power I hold in my hands. So I will never blame its results on anyone else. I will not say I did it for justice, for an individual, to save someone, or even to save the world. With power this great, shifting the blame onto someone else could very well break them. No matter what anyone might say, only I am capable of bearing the burden of this power. And I wield my power only to fulfill my passion and my playfulness. Because that is ultimately the kindest option for the world at large.”
“That’s all?”
This question came not from Aradia herself but from Kamijou.
He couldn’t help but ask.
“That’s your only reason!? It isn’t about right or wrong? It really is all about your own momentary whims? So you don’t even hate the Transcendents who brought you into this world? It isn’t that you can’t bear to see what the world has become!?”
“When did this old man say a single word about hating the world? The world remains as immature as it was millennia ago and its people continue to attempt a deeply flawed but adorable resistance against it. Heh heh. You thought I would solve everything for you? Ah hah hah hah!! Oh, how adorable. What other word is there for it!? This old man is only choosing who to fight based on how much they amuse me. Which is why I want in!!!”
Sordid emotion erupted from the silver young man.
He could kill because he liked the person.
He could destroy out of pure playfulness.
He was not a stalker who grew violent when the target of his affections didn’t do what he wanted. Did he threaten the world a lot like a sadistic killer who had been handed the nuclear launch controls?
“…”
Aradia fell silent.
As did the rest of the Transcendents.
They really did think only of saving the world. The Bridge Builders Cabal had resurrected someone it turned out they wanted nothing to do with. A great monster who could only be sealed by a vast span of time had been revived in the modern world.
The Transcendents understood this on a deep level because they were the ones responsible.
What had they prayed for and how much had they hoped to leave in his care?
He had trampled on all of that, but they hadn’t let that stop them. Because they needed to bring an end to the foolishness they had caused. So that this disaster could not reach the people they had vowed to protect. That was Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the rests’ reason for fighting.
“That too is just another silly passion,” said Rosencreutz, chuckling and holding his own body. He had seen right through them. “All this old man is doing is consciously making use of those passions. Which is why I will not say you are wrong. Ah ha hya. Because it would bore me if you tried to make excuses and shift the blame onto someone else!!!”
The silver young man took action while laughing.
He casually held out his palm.
A deadly attack that ignored the concept of distance was coming!!
With a solid clang, the air glowed bluish-white.
There was a barrier there.
Good, Old Mary held her hands together and crushed a 500mL glass container. It was an aroma water maker that extracted the scents of herbs using evaporation and cooling.
“A still contains an entire world within. Whether the life of the homunculus created in the transparent bottle or the enchanting potion that can dissolve all materials, it is all contained within. So by preparing one side and then defining the seen and the unseen – the interior and the exterior – your attack cannot reach us, CRC.”
“Oh, really? I take it you are a kitchen alchemist?”
“CRC. To a master of a single path like you, this may appear a simple and unrefined ceremony, but that is what makes it of a system older even than your own. Its influence on you is imperfect, but mama can still remove a portion of your magic and receive it from head on.”
“An alchemist wife? Heh heh. How very interesting!! All magic is an illusion, so it would be a shame to strip it of all dreams and comedy!!”
“Listen to me. Mama is unmarried, so you should address her with Ms., you imbecile.”
For the very first time, a Transcendent did not flee from Christian Rosencreutz’s outstretched palm. She received the attack head on and deflected it away.
Evasion was the only option. They mustn’t even think about defense.
That rule crumbled away and their possibilities seemed to spread out infinitely.
“But.”
Rosencreutz scoffed.
Good, Old Mary wobbled to the side. The color red stained her mouth.
“You can only remove a portion. That is not nearly enough to repel this old man.”
“Dammit!!!”
The rule remained unbroken.
Evasion was still the only option. There were no exceptions for those who attempted defense.
Kamijou clenched his teeth.
(But even if it was just once and incomplete, she still stepped off of the rails he set up for us. There really is something different about the Transcendents. But he knows that, which is why he’s targeting them first. That’s all the more reason I can’t let him do that!!)
“Aradia!! And Bologna Succubus!!!”
The boy addressed those two because of something they had in common: they could both fly.
The Bologna Succubus flapped her wings to take flight. While carrying Good, Old Mary after snatching her up before she could fall unconscious to the ground. Aradia grabbed the sign leaning diagonally against an electric car charging station, placed blankly-standing Mut Thebes on that makeshift broom, and then soared up higher than the skyscraper roofs.
“Oh, I wanted to absorb Good, Old Mary’s shadow to have her resurrection on hand.”
“Now isn’t the time. That kind of greed will get you killed!!”
Evasion was the only option.
They had to stick to their best option.
Absorbing CRC’s shadow might have turned everything around, but that kind of greed probably would also have gotten her killed. There seemed to be a short lag before Mut Thebes could lay claim to something as her white shadow, so she would have to stand defenseless before their nemesis for a few seconds. He was sure to kill her in that time. Death was closer than ever before, so they didn’t even have those few seconds to spare.
Rosencreutz did not even look up into the sky.
The look on his face said he wasn’t interested in such a poor plan.
But it seemed unlikely he was going to just let them escape either.
“Flying is a simple task for a magician, but so is bringing them back down to Earth. Surely you know that.”
“Do you think we’ll give you the time?”
“You said that last time. You bore me.”
Even as he said that, the silver young man chuckled and stared straight ahead.
He was apparently interested in Kamijou.
“Thought up any new special moves?”
Kamijou’s vision exploded.
Part 5[edit]
District 7.
In the frog-faced doctor’s hospital, Anna Sprengel’s clinical records were finally ready.
This included CT and MRI scans.
An ultrasound.
And blood tests using a variety of reagents.
“You didn’t find anything?”
“Weird, isn’t it? Even an electric shock would leave burn marks on her skin.”
The lead medical technician tilted her head.
She would have simply looked puzzled if not for the tension of fear in her cheek.
This wasn’t surprising.
An attack using toxins or chemicals, drowning, and even carbon monoxide poisoning would have caused abnormalities somewhere in the girl’s body. It might be invisible damage to blood vessels or organs and it might be a microscopic change, but some part of her body had to be broken. If there really wasn’t any detectable harm to her skin or her organs, then there was only one diagnosis a doctor could give: natural causes.
Even though no patient had ever been more unnatural.
“…”
There had to be a cause somewhere.
But the doctor couldn’t spot it despite his thorough understanding of the human body.
That had to mean…
“Are we looking at this wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“We are all medical practitioners here, which means we all hold the same worldview. What if that worldview is blinding us to something here?”
Part 6[edit]
The term “martial law” gained greater weight within Hamazura Shiage.
Not long ago, he had been able to stop by the local discount store, but now it took courage to even open the front door. This was different from Anti-Skill or Judgment lecturing him. He most feared the watchful eyes of their neighbors in this same apartment building.
Mugino Shizuri and Kinuhata Saiai were self-centered enough to just walk on out regardless, but they weren’t around at the moment.
What were they even doing out there when everything was so dangerous?
Knowing them, they may have seen value in that danger itself.
“I keep tapping, but the video always stops a second or two in… The phone network has really slowed down, hasn’t it?”
“Hamazura, I think everyone is messing around on their phones and tablets because they don’t have anything else to do.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t have a connection at all, but even a slight slowdown was frustrating when he was so used to more comfortable speeds. Thanks to that, he had left the old-fashioned TV on. As long as you didn’t use any of the net-connected channels, the TV always ran smoothly.
If only there was any useful information there.
When the city was under martial law, it didn’t do anyone any good to tease the audience with a special on the top 10 restaurants in the city. He understood they were just using up all their stockpiled shows, but it still felt so out of place. Didn’t they know no one could head out to visit these places?
What all was happening out there while he was stuck in here?
He was caught in the middle of it, but he could barely find any information.
“Will we be okay staying here?” asked track suit girl Takitsubo with an absentminded tilt of her head.
“It was whoever’s in charge that told us to stay in here. I’m all for having an officially-sanctioned excuse to keep the lazy holiday going.”
“Do we have enough food?”
“If not, the government will bring us some. They started this, so it’s on them.”
As soon as Hamazura said that, he heard a gentle electronic bell.
He checked the intercom screen and saw a drum-shaped cleaning robot slowly crossing the path. The machine spoke with an artificial feminine voice.
“This building is not an authorized shelter. Please check your maps and move to the nearest disaster shelter as soon as possible. Remaining here would be exceedingly dangerous to your lives and your property.”
“Ehhh!? But they’re the ones who told us to stay at home! They could at least run an emergency news broadcast telling us what’s going on out there!!”
“Let’s hope there are no hordes of zombies wandering around, Hamazura.”
Part 7[edit]
Kamijou couldn’t steady his wobbly vision.
The color beige seemed to have taken over the world. He was seeing a Tokiwadai duffel coat.
That was enough to guess he was being dragged along by Mikoto.
But when had she picked him up?
“What are you doing, Shokuhou?”
“You can’t tell? I’m only cleaning myself off with the wet tissues I found in here. I had concrete dust dumped over my head, so it’s all inside my clothes. You really are a wild thing to not even bother with basic cleanliness, Misaka-san. You might as well live up on the fences with the alley cats☆”
“There is a boy here, you know?”
“Bfgwah!!? Cough, cough!! You could have told me sooner he was with you!!”
Kamijou thought he had caught a glimpse of something, but he was still too woozy to comprehend what he was seeing.
It took a while, but he finally realized where he was. It was partially collapsed and dust filled the air, but this was…
“Ugh, a convenience store?”
“Are you awake now?” quickly asked Mikoto.
She looked as bad as he felt. She had gray dust covering her head on down and her cheeks and uniform were covered in mud.
(Where’s Index and Othinus? What happened to everyone else?)
A stranger was here too.
The girl with long blonde hair wore a Tokiwadai uniform, so was she Mikoto’s friend?
“You can see now that facing him head on isn’t going to work, I hope. It’s a miracle ability you weren’t torn to bits and strewn across the city.”
Why was he alive?
He knew it wasn’t his own doing.
Mikoto and this stranger must have been fighting hard too. These people had reduced their own lifespans to save him from his own reckless actions.
He understood that.
He was intensely thankful, but the situation didn’t allow him to stop here.
What had happened to Christian Rosencreutz?
“But how does that man’s brain ability work if my Mental Out doesn’t work at all? You aren’t going to tell me he actually wasn’t human to begin with, are you?”
Mental Out.
Kamijou had heard that esper name before.
It belonged to Academy City’s #5.
But he didn’t know who used that power or what they looked like.
He did wonder if a psychological esper power would work on the Transcendents like Anna and Alice.
A high school boy like Kamijou didn’t know even a fraction of the legends surrounding Christian Rosencreutz, but if he really was the kind of person found in a children’s book, then he would have gone through intense training and obtained near inhuman power. That process could have altered his mind to an extent that not even the #5 Level 5 could control it.
That playful magician was only interested in fulfilling his passions and blowing off some steam. It was only by chance he had been depicted as a wielder of benevolent miracles like someone from a children’s book.
He had explained all that with a smile, but could this really be described using the familiar emotions that Kamijou and the others knew so well?
Deep tremors shook the area even now.
Staticky voices spoke within the partially broken store.
Wherever she had gotten it, Misaka Mikoto held a small Anti-Skill radio.
“Ksh! Escape route Cv1 secured using B2 as a decoy. Make sure Judgment gets away first! Also that military clone staring blankly into space over there! However she was born, she’s still a child!!”
“Wait! I can still fight. If you check the Bank, you will see I am a Level 4 Teleporter, so I can help rescue- argh, listen to me!”
Christian Rosencreutz had not simply lost sight of Kamijou’s group. When Kamijou wasn’t fighting, it meant Rosencreutz was fighting someone else somewhere else.
That could mean Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the rest of the Transcendents.
Or it could mean Index and Othinus.
“Damn.”
“Rushing in without a plan won’t help them.”
With that exasperated comment, Mikoto tossed him something.
He caught it to find it was a jelly drink.
“Hey, I hope you paid for this.”
“Idiot. There aren’t any employees here, but the phone-based self-checkout still works.”
Mikoto breathed a long sigh and grabbed a matcha iced latte from the drink section. People’s personalities showed through at times like this. With the store partially destroyed and the power out, she had chosen a drink that would give her an immediate energy boost and didn’t need to be cold to taste good. Kamijou understood why she would avoid the jelly drink since its chemical flavor got a lot more noticeable at room temperature. And yet that was still what she’d given him, dammit.
The honey blonde girl gave Mikoto an icy look.
She had opted to go without a drink.
“Misaka-san, how can you rummage through these convenience store shelves? The place is nearly destroyed and the cooling systems are down, but none of this food has gathered any bugs. Doesn’t that scare you?”
“It’s early January, so all the little critters are hibernating. Kuroko runs a major convenience store chain, so she’s told me all the actual facts about the additives and preservatives they put in their food. How net illiterate do you have to be to actually believe all the sensationalized stories passed around online?”
After purchasing her drink, Mikoto stuck the straw into the drink box and took a sip.
“It’s not just the artificial things you have to worry about, though. How about this, Misaka-san? Do you know where they get the matcha green coloring for lattes and chocolates?”
“Hm? That smug look on your face is enough to know it isn’t tea leaves. So what, is it some kind of chemi-”
“Caterpillar dung☆”
They really did get into a fight with hair-pulling and everything.
Kamijou stared into the middle distance. It seemed to him health nuts like that were only torturing themselves by looking up all that unnecessary information. It sounded like a difficult life, but maybe it was a trial meant to bolster themselves mentally.
Something urgent and worsening was playing out on the radio.
“We can’t waste our forces like this! All remaining forces, fall back to the 2nd line!”
“Got it. We won’t let this end here. This isn’t about our pride. The fate of the city rests on our shoulders!!”
They hadn’t given up yet.
But if they thoughtlessly challenged CRC again, it would all happen again.
(Damn, not even a professional magician or a group of Transcendents could defeat him. I just hope Anti-Skill realized magic exists during the business with R&C Occultics.)
It really sounded to Kamijou like it would be best if he went back out there.
He doubted Imagine Breaker would work against Rosencreutz, but it had to give him a major advantage over anyone else out there.
“So if you do save that Anna Sprengel, what then?” asked Mikoto, unsure what to do with her opened maccha iced latte. “I mean, if she’s connected to that Rosen-whatever guy, she might know his weak point. But she nearly killed you with those mysterious microbes called…St. Germain, was it? Then she toyed with me using that giant capsule machine full of execution items she called the Pneuma-less Shell. And it wasn’t just in Academy City. Didn’t she nearly destroy the entire city of Los Angeles? Was there some secret in common between all of that? Wouldn’t surprise me if there was, but do you really think that wicked woman will give you accurate information?”
What then?
What was his goal? The boy considered the battle he had begun out of necessity.
Eventually, Kamijou responded.
He kept his head lowered, but he spoke clearly.
“Anna says she’s searching for a king.”
“?”
“A king who will protect her without asking why she does what she does. She said she had spent so much time protecting and guiding other people, but no one ever lived up to her expectations and she has grown sick of it all. So she said it’s time she got someone to protect her instead.”
Kamijou didn’t know what exactly had happened during that process.
Something had had caused the immensely arrogant Anna Sprengel to turn away from the world and give up on life. Had it been some shocking event, or had it been a complete lack of change? The puny boy couldn’t even imagine what it might have been.
However.
“But I don’t think she really needs that. She doesn’t need a king. So I want to tell her she can open up and be a part of the world without relying on someone special. I want to tell her no one’s going to hurt her.”
Silence fell for a while.
Both girls sighed.
But those sighs carried something subtly different from exasperation.
“Telling us who she is as a person is hardly fair,” said Mikoto. “It would be nice if she could just be ‘a villain’ – nothing more than a symbol. But once I know her as a person, it’s not so easy to abandon her.”
Misaka Mikoto and the honey blonde girl exchanged a glance.
The resignation was written plain on their faces.
They heard a strange noise.
It resembled raindrops on glass, but the individual sounds were quieter than that. It was more like static on an old TV.
Something flowed in from the broken glass door.
It was the kind of fine sand found in a desert or on a beach.
Instead of pure white, it was colored a faint yellow that stimulated Kamijou’s memory. He recognized this.
The voices on Mikoto’s radio grew a lot more disordered. They were dyed in confusion and panic.
“Dammit, is this the yellow sand from the reports on Los Angeles!?”
“Fall back!! Don’t let it capture you!! Fall back to the 2nd line!!”
“I can’t agree to that. There are still quite a few civilians left in District 12!!”
“Get back here, idiot! …Dammit!!!”
“Citrinitas!” exclaimed Kamijou.
“You can’t reach them in time.”
Unsteady Kamijou was stopped by the honey blonde girl whose name he didn’t know.
“District 12 is a big place, so the distance ability is too great. It would be too late by the time you arrived.”
“…”
“And the rest of Anti-Skill and Judgment have already withdrawn from District 12. These are the facts. And the martial law means no ordinary people will be out on the streets anyway.”
This wasn’t just about the official fighting force.
This would also affect Index, Othinus, Aradia, Mut Thebes, and the rest of those fighting to stop CRC.
District 12 was a lost cause.
With the Citrinitas here, it was best to assume no one was left moving.
“You could see this as a stroke of good luck,” said the honey blond girl.
“How is this-?”
Kamijou reached the answer before finishing his question.
If this was the same as in Los Angeles, then the people who had disappeared into the yellow sand were essentially trapped within it. This was still checkmate against them, but that was better than being killed with their bodies split apart like Alice Anotherbible or Anna Kingsford. It was possible Christian Rosencreutz had decided going around killing all of the unresisting people would be a boring waste of his time.
If they stayed put, he might let them live.
But that gave them no way of stopping his march across the city. Then he would make his way to District 7 and arrive at the frog-faced doctor’s hospital.
Once that happened, there was no saving Anna Sprengel.
The monster who only ever obeyed his own playfulness and intellectual curiosity would tear it all apart and take her life.
“Sorry. We don’t have many people left, but I still let you die for nothing. I don’t think I can get any closer…”
“Don’t worry about it. If you’d come running here, you’d have met the same fate.”
“Take care of the rest. If this is like in LA, then you should be able to drag the survivors from the yellow sand once the source is defeated.”
“Fall back!! The fight continues at the 2nd line!! Do not forget the words of those fools who joined the sand!!!”
Kamijou and the girls silently listened to the radio.
No.
Was silently observing really all they could do?
They heard an explosive sound from somewhere.
“?”
The wet explosion was different from one caused by explosives or gas. Kamijou hesitantly poked his head out from the destroyed convenience store and found the street covered by yellow sand. Furthermore, something was pushing in from the distance.
“What…is that?”
“Water,” said the honey blonde girl. “It’s water. District 12 is known for all its religious facilities, so it has more firefighting equipment than most districts. Instead of each building having its own, it has a Central Firefighting Tank managed by the district as a whole. That must have ruptured!”
Kamijou looked puzzled. He couldn’t figure out why Christian Rosencreutz would attack there. Wasn’t that basically a giant pool buried underground? He wondered if the man was eliminating all means of extinguishing a fire before starting a great conflagration.
But that wasn’t it.
“We need to get out of here. Immediately,” said the honey blonde girl.
“Why?”
“Did you forget it’s January!? Getting soaked by that sherbet-cold water is enough to kill!!”
Rosencreutz had used the Citrinitas to dissolve District 12’s survivors in the sand. And after that, he was attacking every last alley to ensure he didn’t miss anyone.
Getting caught in that would never end well.
If they were drenched and then exposed to the biting wind, they might just freeze into pillars of ice.
“Run!” shouted Mikoto. “Before it reaches us!!”
The water covered a wide area, but it fortunately wasn’t very deep. If they were caught in the watery zone and their shoes got soaked, they might lose a toe to frostbite, but they could escape the invasion of frigid water by jumping onto a higher ledge or onto a car. It helped that the yellow sand had created a lot of small dunes.
“Pant, pant. Wait…wait for me, Misaka-saaan.”
All the ups and downs quickly wore out the stranger and left her out of breath. The soft sand below their feet made it all the more challenging. Kamijou would have felt bad leaving her behind, so he took the honey blonde girl’s hand to pull her along with him. For some reason, that immediately silenced her complaints. She was surprisingly meek.
“What now!?” bluntly asked Mikoto, inexplicably irritated all of a sudden.
Kamijou Touma had only one answer to give.
“We fall back.”
It didn’t matter how hopeless the situation was.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t have a single idea of how to defeat Christian Rosencreutz and rescue the people dissolved by the sand.
The hospital was still a long way off.
“We attack him at the next defense line.”
The Transcendents had said the first thing they needed to turn things around and strike back was observation and preparation. That meant slipping away without him noticing, keeping their distance, hiding behind cover, and ensuring they could observe him from safety.
So with the right mindset, this was their chance.
“We lost this round, but it was a meaningful loss.”
The honey blonde girl gasped and looked up.
She was their brainpower and Kamijou had muttered something that had caught her attention.
This was undoubtedly a retreat.
But they could transform it into the first step toward victory.
Their resistance wasn’t over yet.
“If you use up all your trump cards this early, you’ll regret it later on, Rosencreutz.”
Part 8[edit]
Don’t underestimate the weeds.
If you fail to eliminate that last thin root growing deep into the dirt, your guaranteed victory has already begun to collapse.
Between the Lines 2[edit]
A trip from England to Germany could be done as a daytrip.
Of course, that was only if you weren’t interested in taking time to enjoy the trip.
“Pant, pant, gasp. W-wait, mistress. Please have mercy…”
“Just hurry up with the luggage, Fortune. This should have been a leisurely railroad trip, but you used British tax money to fly here. It would be rude to the British people if you didn’t do enough work to justify the expense.”
This was how it began that morning as soon as the two met up at Nuremberg’s international airport.
Black Cat Witch Mina Mathers spoke icily to Dion Fortune whose silhouette was swollen by multiple suitcases, a backpack, and sling bag.
Mina Mathers had a story involving her friend Annie Horniman that could easily be interpreted as belonging to the world of lilies and she was the legendary wife who had supported her (eccentric and brilliant) husband MacGregor Mathers. Dion Fortune also had her relationship with her female teacher, so even for the otherworldly lives of the Golden magicians, those two’s lives were especially rife with 2D-sounding stories. …Which made it strange that Mina alone didn’t have a particularly strange personality and even came off as a kindhearted and sensible person.
“Lies. It’s all lies. Pant, gasp. In what world can that violent back-slasher of a teacher be called kindhearted or sensible? Bleh, the winner of the war has been rewriting the history books again…”
“Did you say something Soror Fortune, my hopeless student?”
Over half of the luggage was Mina’s, so Dion chose to ignore that.
At the very least, Mina Mathers and Dion Fortune were perfectly decent and sensible magicians when compared to MacGregor, the unemployed man who one day began ranting about being a legitimate descendent of Scottish nobility based on precisely zero evidence, or Aleister, the handsome gentleman with the troubling habit of crashing high society parties with a metal butterfly attached to the crotch of his pants.
Mina Mathers had already been separated from Academy City, but she could still choose for herself to support Aleister as the transformed Thoth Tarot.
Nuremberg was an inland industrial city in southern Germany. At this time of year, the low was around -3 degrees. Since it was January, everything was covered by a light dusting of snow, but this wasn’t that far from Denmark where the story of the Little Match Girl was born. While not as large as Munich, which was also in the south, it was a large city with a population in the hundreds of thousands. It had water transportation using the canal connected to the Danube, which flowed through multiple countries, and it provided direct air transportation from its international airport. This was also proof of just how active the city was in producing semiconductors and mechanical components for cars and aircraft.
It was also a historical city.
For better and for worse.
For example, anyone with even a little knowledge of torture and executions would know what the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg referred to. That strange legend had gained a life of its own in different parts of the world, but this city was home to the world’s only extant iron maiden (in the publicly available official records, anyway).
Dion Fortune, who had spread Golden spells across the world with her remote learning correspondence courses, looked curious even through her exhaustion.
“Phew. By the way, mistress, since when did you manufacture a child? Those mourning clothes must only be for show because it looks like you’ve really been quite busy, you lewd funeral beauty.”
“Do not refer to living people as being ‘manufactured’. Besides, she is not mine.”
“?”
“Good girl. If you’re hungry, you can drink this bottle. Do not turn away because you are sick of that flavor. I know you can actually speak.”
A delighted “goo-goo ga-ga” came from the baby carrier.
Mina Mathers was keeping a baby fed. That showed an extreme evolution from when she was so hungry while wandering Academy City that she stuck a power cable in her mouth.
The cat ears mourning clothes woman(?) had used her skill as an artist to design a ceremonial ground and most of the props that complemented the texts and formulas of a magician’s logic, so Dion Fortune skeptically viewed the baby the other woman was holding and soothing. “Then where did that baby come from?” was written plain on her face.
She might have fainted if she were told that was Aleister’s daughter Lilith, though.
To reiterate, Nuremberg was a rare city that perfectly blended a dark history with cutting-edge tech. That may have been why the Rosicrucians had built their largest base there. The old phonographs and silver halide cameras people feared could record the voices and faces of the dead had once been ordinary scientific inventions. Until natural science usurped the throne of the world’s common knowledge by replacing the geocentric model with the heliocentric model and proving that objects consumed oxygen as they burned, magic had been an ordinary field of study.
“Now. Where is Anna Sprengel’s base, the Licht Liebe Leben Temple?”
“How about we check into a hotel first? P-please? Nooo! I’d rather die than begin this lengthy investigation dragging all this luggage around, mistress!!”
Mina Mathers brushed her tearful student away with an annoyed hand and calmly continued.
“We should agree on a plan before we get started, Fortune.”
“Ugh. Can’t our plan be to check into a hotel and leave the luggage there first? Sob.”
“Do I need to scratch you? Dion Fortune, as a Golden magician, you must understand the Rosicrucian ideology at our cabal’s foundation. With that in mind, which side do you take?”
“?”
“I mean.” Black Cat Witch Mina Mathers paused while holding the baby. “Do you believe the legends of the mysterious Rosicrucian cabal as literal stories, or do you think they are some kind of metaphor or code? I am asking what your stance you take as a magician regarding the rose, the cross, the ruby, and the gold.”
