Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Chapter3

Chapter 3: Journey – Cut_a_Road_to_Allover_the_Goal.

Part 1

Technically speaking, this was Yomikawa Aiho’s apartment.

But she was currently busy with work, so Yoshikawa Kikyou was looking after the small girl instead. Last Order, who looked to be about 10, was sorting something in her room.

“Cute.”

That was her judgment of a crane game doll.

“Not cute.”

That rejection was passed on a flat, ruler-shaped magnet.

But she still had plenty more to sort. The cat-shaped potholder and the Christmas tree floor lamp would be judged too. Some might have judged it all as junk.

Yoshikawa held a hand to her forehead.

“Can’t you just throw it all out? Listen, mere objects don’t actually have souls. If you hug each and every thing and refuse to throw it away, your room will be full in no time.”

“But this one is so cute! And so is this one! says Misaka as Misaka hugs them.”

Last Order shouted loud and hugged an (empty) water dispenser bottle the size of a daruma doll. She had a very wide range of what she considered cute and they all brought back memories that kept her from throwing them out. Yoshikawa sighed and wondered if it would be easier to just find a cheap storage unit for her.

That was when she heard a smooth artificial voice.

It came from outside the apartment’s front door. It was polite but quite loud.

“Martial law has been declared for the entirety of Academy City. Ordinary citizens are asked to remain indoors unless you have an urgent need. Also, this building is not an authorized shelter. Please check your maps and move to the nearest disaster shelter as soon as possible.”

That had to be a drum-shaped cleaning robot and its instructions seemed contradictory.

But Last Order remained seated on the floor and made no move to get up. She didn’t even look in that direction.

“Not cute, says Misaka as Misaka presents a cruel truth.”

Apparently not all round things met her definition of cute.

Then something poked its head out from around the corner of the hallway inside the apartment.

It was a bipedal tanuki.

But instead of the mystical creature found in old folklore, this appeared to be a dance robot’s metal frame placed inside a stuffed animal.

This came as a shock to Last Order.

Yoshikawa vaguely recalled seeing something like this having fun on TV.

“That tanuki is…cute!!”

Part 2

From red to black.

The sun set and night fell.

The already chilly winter air had transformed into a wind that seemed to slash at Kamijou and the others’ cheeks. To be blunt, he wanted some way of protecting his ears.

District 23 was a unique district full of airfields and rocket launch sites. To keep the various aircraft safe, the district was usually surrounded by a tall fence and strictly guarded, but it was deserted now.

There was no earsplitting noise. Had the passenger planes been grounded due to the martial law, or for some other reason?

Kamijou could scarcely believe it.

“Did they really set their second defense line here? They thought Christian Rosencreutz would choose to pass through such a dangerous district?”

“That’s what they’re saying on the Anti-Skill radio channel. Do you think that Rosencreutz guy could rewrite those encrypted transmissions?” asked Mikoto while monitoring those transmissions.

But not even she was doing that directly through her head. She was using a radio she had picked up.

It was possible CRC wouldn’t change his route because security was strict here or laxer over there. If he took the shortest route to the District 7 hospital, he would end up crossing through Districts 23 and 18. In the worst case, it was even possible he would actively choose to cross a minefield and step on every mine along the way. Because he enjoyed the loud noises.

“Look over there. There’s light,” said the honey blonde girl.

“Sh! That’s Anti-Skill’s second defense line.”

There were a lot of tanks and armored vehicles there. Kamijou didn’t know much about military stuff, but even he recognized one vehicle type. The mobile combat vehicles resembling 8-wheel armored trucks with a tank gun on top were Predator Octopuses. Just the one had made things so much easier when fleeing with Anna, so seeing a whole line of them here sent a chill down his spine.

In addition to the vehicle headlights, Anti-Skill had gathered up the kind of big outdoor lightning used at construction sites. A maze of barricades had been set up with sandbags piled up in places to construct countless encampments of various sizes. Then there were the heavy machinegun and automatic grenade launcher emplacements set up by driving spikes into the asphalt using the power of pneumatics. Runways were supposed to be delicate areas where a single stray screw or nail could lead to disaster, so gathering all of this was quite something.

No, that had it backwards.

If you ignored the potential financial losses, the wide-open runway may have been the perfect spot for Anti-Skill to use their next-gen weaponry. It at least greatly reduced the risk of a student dorm being hit by a stray shot.

But was that their real reason?

If they were using the possibility of stray shots as an excuse for their helplessness at the first defense line, it meant they still hadn’t accurately judged the threat Rosencreutz presented.

“Oh? Misaka-san?”

“Wait a second. Onee-sama, what are you doing here!?”

“Ugh.” Mikoto uncharacteristically flinched.

She apparently knew some of the Judgment members working here. Kamijou recognized the girl with twintails. He knew her name was Shirai Kuroko. But the older girl in glasses was entirely unknown to him. Something about the super-serious glasses girl with black hair told him she would kill him if he cracked a joke here. She scared him. Her strict aura reminded him a lot of Fukiyose when she was in a bad mood. W-was she always like this? Didn’t it wear her out?

“Onee-sama, District 23 is off limits. What are you doing here?”

“Um, Kuroko? Hear me out before you chew me out. See, I am the #3 Level 5, so I thought I could lend a hand now that Academy City is in trouble.”

“Absolutely not! You don’t have the authority to just decide that! Wandering around an off-limits area is enough to have you taken into custody!! And when have I ever ‘chewed you out’!? Care to explain why you chose that phrasing in particular!?”

“Sigh, and there you go (sob).”

Meanwhile, Kamijou’s eyes were not drawn to the Predator Octopuses so like the one he had recently entrusted his life to. He saw a much more disturbing weapon.

“What…is that?”

It looked like a 70m steel snake, or like an enlarged version of the luggage carrier carts often used at airports. It was made up of 10 armored cars with ground-flattening metal wheels that might as well have been road rollers. They were linked in a long line by giant metal ball joints. Each one looked to be around 7m long, 3m wide, and 2m tall. That meant they were wide and flat, which made it look like a snake lying down on the ground.

Each car was armed with gun turrets on the sides, but these were very different from a tank or warship’s weapons. They looked more like antiair weapons. A self-destruct drone launcher and a Gatling gun rotated as a single set.

“You mean the XHsACV-15 Anaconda?”

Shirai Kuroko sounded more confused than exasperated.

Because…

“The X at the start means they’re sending prototypes out to the field.”

“It is an all-terrain armored combat vehicle. Two-car armored vehicles that can bend in the middle are already made in Finland and Singapore. You could view this as a more extreme version of that concept.”

The glasses Judgment girl held a hand to the temple of her glasses and seemed delighted to provide the explanation.

A prototype.

That would explain the green jungle camouflage that only made more conspicuous here.

That said, what was this city hoping to accomplish building that weird thing?

“Unlike a normal tank or armored truck, I doubt it’s supposed to fight while driving around.” Mikoto analyzed it with a sigh. “Is it more of a mobile barricade that can rush in when there’s a riot and use itself as a thick wall to protect one side of a school from the rioters? See how its turrets are on the sides? That means it’s designed to fight with its side to the enemy, not its front.”

“R-right.”

“But putting them on both sides doubles the cost, so no sensible designer would arrange them like that. A top-mounted turret with 360-degree rotation would be lighter and cheaper. The only reason to do it this way is if the weapons double as special armor to protect itself. So if a shell or missile hits it, it triggers an outward explosion to reduce the force of the enemy projectile trying to punch through the armor. And that’s a lot cheaper with a drone launcher than a big gun. It looks like the actual radar is split between the front and the rear. Unless you accurately shot between the weapons with something like my Railgun, the shot will be diverted at the cost of one of the modular, and thus replaceable, unmanned turrets.”

“Anything is fine as long as we have something defending us,” said the honey blonde girl.

She had a point.

After all, this was District 23. The flat runway gave a clear view out to the horizon in all directions, meaning there was nowhere to hide. They didn’t want CRC firing magic projectiles here. Having those five or ten units surrounding them to create a rough encampment would mean a lot.

Kamijou then listened in the two Judgment girls:

“It’s plenty long, but at only 2m tall, rioters can simply climb over it. But if they added rolls of barbed wire, I’d be afraid of injuring them. Well, those flaws are what make prototypes so cute.”

“Is that so? If they’re going to the trouble of using a computer for the complex calculations needed to sync the engine RPMs, I don’t see why they would bother with a giant snake that can’t even separate. Procuring 10 maneuverable armored vehicles would seem more convenient to me.”

“They must still be working out the kinks to discover its true charm as a product. Besides, don’t you love the sound of the phrase ‘mysterious prototype weapon’? Hee hee.”

“Not really. I don’t understand you biker girls who get all worked up whenever you see a mech that doesn’t even cover you up.”

That conversation hinted at a lot of effort going on behind the scenes, but the thick wall still felt unshakable to Kamijou.

But then another thought occurred to him.

(Can this traditional weaponry really stop Rosencreutz?)

It was a vague, meaningless question.

His thoughts never reached the part where he figured out what else to do.

Because he was interrupted by something floating down from the night sky.

It was colored a hot pink.

Since this was the second time, Kamijou felt more relief than surprise.

“You’re alive, Bologna Succubus!”

“Natch.”

The blonde demon smiled as she spread her large batlike wings. While Kamijou’s honest reaction made her feel a touch bashful.

This time, she managed to land on the runway without running into anyone’s face with her crotch.

What had happened to Aradia and Good, Old Mary? The latter in particular had been knocked out by an attack from Christian Rosencreutz last Kamijou knew.

“Having a Transcendent with you should expand your strategic options. My Cold Mistress spell will probably only work on him once. It swaps out a human’s pleasure with pain no matter how physically tough they are, so it should work on someone who only acts out of passion and playfulness. Still, it won’t work once he comes up with a countermeasure, so when to make use of that limited opportunity is the real key.”

And…

“A-a succubus?”

“Oui. You got a problem with that, mademoiselle middle schooler who still has a lot of growing up to do?”

Someone was trembling a short distance away.

The honey blonde girl whose name Kamijou didn’t know seemed to take issue with something about this.

Kamijou just wished those two with such nice bodies would avoid glaring at each other from so close together their big boobs were pushed together. Where was a high school boy supposed to look!?

“A sexy young woman with long blonde hair, an amazing figure, and a mysterious sparkle ability in the eyes who specializes in nonphysical attacks? A-am I a joke to her? She just copied everything about me! And you’re telling me she’s gotten to know him behind my back!? That’s as aggressive a move as building a big-name convenience store right next to a privately run shop!!”

“You missed ‘talks weird’ on that list of similarities,” said Mikoto.

“Talks weird?” “Talks weird?”

The blondes joined forces(?) to both glare at Mikoto.

“Anyway, who do you think you are? A young doll like you needs to wait at least a decade before she can call herself ‘sexy’. And historically and traditionally, a succubus is the orthodox choice for sexy, not a middle schooler. Seriously though, I really do recommend you wait ten years so you can truly fulfill that high school boy’s dream of a dorm manager lady.”

“Why am I getting advice from an exhibitionist pervert who walks around outside in her underwear!?”

It sounded like the Bologna Succubus had won the squishy battle.

This must have been quite a shock because the mystery honey blonde girl simply stood in place with tears in her eyes. …And had Kamijou ever told that demon about his dorm manager dream? Kamijou couldn’t remember in enough detail to be sure. He had legitimately died and passed out a few times during his December 31 in Shibuya, so had he mentioned it in his sleep at some point? He wasn’t sure how she had gotten the information, but he really wished she wouldn’t spread it around to other people. Because it was embarrassing!!!

And for some reason, Mikoto looked glum.

She was hanging her head with a look of belated realization.

“(Eh? Do I not even have the honor of participating in that battle? Because of the gap in chest size?)”

“?”

Kamijou got the feeling anything he said would make her want to die, so he opted to leave her be.

Just then, a pale-faced Anti-Skill officer began showing around her tablet without knowing who to ask for further instructions.

“W-we have footage from the drone… He’s coming!! He’s head straight here! Wh-wh-what do we do!?”

“We need to set all our complaints aside. Everyone, to your posts! You don’t want to let him cross this defense line without putting up a fight, do you!?”

The busty glasses Judgment girl clapped her hands and provided instructions. She was so good at it the adults of Anti-Skill were taken aback and simply obeyed. Anti-Skill was generally made up of the muscular gym teachers and guidance counselors, so how did that girl have the upper hand?

He had only been spotted by drone, but if they knew he was close enough to judge that he was headed this way, he couldn’t be that far away.

Christian Rosencreutz was coming.

Kamijou recalled how extraordinary Alice Anotherbible had been.

Nothing was going to just “work out for the best” here.

If he lost this time, he really would die. As would the other people here. He wouldn’t be able to speak with any of them again.

The battle at the second defense line would soon begin.

Part 3

Mut Thebes stood alone in District 18.

The place was completely dark thanks to the martial law.

(This iron sand hand warmer is nice. Nothing can beat the classics.)

That pointy-haired boy had given her the item before they parted.

So now the chilly girl warmed herself with that modern convenience.

Anti-Skill referred to this as the third defense line, but the District 7 hospital where Anna Sprengel slept wasn’t far from here. For that boy, this had to be the last line.

Mut Thebes was a special Transcendent who could absorb people’s and objects’ shadows using her own white shadow and then use them as she saw fit. The next-gen weapons belonged to the science side, but once she absorbed them, she could use them as part of her magic.

And she had discovered a fascinating weapon here.

The 41cm Trebuchet linear artillery.

The cannon replaced the power of explosives with electromagnets, but the shells it launched in a large arc like a long throw in baseball would reach the ozone layer before accurately striking a target 20 thousand meters away. In addition to targeting a single point and piercing deep underground, it could be switched to a secondary mode that used the great air friction to intentionally destroy the metal shell in the air above the target, blasting it into plasma that could obliterate an aircraft carrier fleet in the ocean, assuming they were packed in close enough. The result could be thought of as an artificial Tunguska event.

With the main weapon, the spare shells, the targeting unit, the antiair weaponry set up nearby to defend it, and everything else, it took up an entire schoolyard.

One of the Anti-Skill officers working in the schoolyard noticed her and yelled at her.

“You there! Martial law is in effect. Get back to your dorm immediately!”

“?”

“Wh-why do you look so confused?”

She had had a shootout with them just yesterday, but had they not distributed an accurate photo of her? That was the real source of her confusion, but she knew correcting him would only make things worse, so she kept quiet.

The schoolyard artillery looked like it had been set up in a hurry and a lot of Anti-Skill officers were moving all around it, but it didn’t appear to be ready to fire yet. If Rosencreutz wasn’t delayed at the second defense line, he would probably arrive here at the third before they were ready putting it together.

But that changed if Mut Thebes absorbed it.

(Although it will take me some time to absorb such a large shadow.)

She only needed contact the long shadow formed by the bright outdoor lights, so she didn’t even need to cross the fence surrounding the schoolyard.

She waited on the side of the road and thought in silence.

It would take some time to absorb it into her white shadow, but she had nothing to fear once that was done. Because she didn’t actually need to operate the weapon as it was designed to be used. In a recent battle, she had even shined lights on a warship from multiple angles and absorbed each of its shadows to create a giant monster out of them and march across Academy City.

“Hm. Which would mean…”

Mut Thebes nodded silently to herself.

With this, she could fortify the third defense line while also using the long-range artillery to participate in the battle being fought at the second defense line.

“Interesting.”

Part 4

Christian Rosencreutz strolled leisurely through District 12.

There were no people or cars here. That made it a strange alternate world.

“Oops.”

He stopped his foot in midair.

Something was pouring all its strength into running across the cold ground just below his shoe.

CRC’s eyes crinkled in a smile at the rat crossing the crosswalk on the deserted street.

Thanks to the martial law, the train station’s ticket gates were all closed. The convenience store and other shops were also deserted. But that wasn’t the small children he saw were interested in.

They were gathered around the capsule toy machines lined up in front of the train station convenience store.

“What are you kids doing?”

“Wah!?”

The way they jumped made it clear the children knew they weren’t supposed to sneak out of their dorms during the martial law. And it was nighttime.

“H-he’s a grownup.”

“But he doesn’t look like Anti-Skill.”

“If this old guy is out here, he’s breaking the rules as much as we are. So it’s fine.”

Fascinating. He hadn’t called himself “this old man” to them, so did they simply consider anyone to be “old” if they had a beard?

He stroked his silver beard.

Based on his observations, these capsule toy machines had you put coins inside to test your luck on what toy you would receive.

(I see. But why do people flock to these systems that give you no guarantee you will get what you want?)

Perhaps because they were morons.

Tears welled up in Rosencreutz’s eyes as he recalled the many forms of human foolishness he had witnessed in his far-from-short history.

He was quick to tears.

The children didn’t seem to care.

“I’m doing it! I’m getting a super rare one today!”

“But is there even a super rare Gekota color plane in here? I can’t tell looking in from the side.”

“I have heard rumors there isn’t a winner inside.”

Large tears spilled from CRC’s eyes.

He was quick to tears!!

“Is this a despicable machine designed to scam young children out of the limited allowance they worked so hard to save up? No, this old man must know the true odds!! How does it really work!? Urah!!”

A loud crash rang out.

The capsule toy machine itself had shattered.

Christian Rosencreutz lined the round capsules up on the hard tile floor.

“One, two, three, four, five…there it is. So there really is a Gekota color plane inside! Hah hah hah. Good, it wasn’t a-”

He paused midsentence.

The small children were nowhere to be found. Every last one.

They must have run away.

He scratched his head and sighed, stroking his silver beard.

If he wanted to, he could have quickly located them and attacked them, but…

“No reason to chase them down, I suppose.”

With that arbitrary decision, he abandoned the search.

He held the super rare Gekota color plane between two fingers.

He knew which route to take now.

“Yes.”

It had always been the shortest route anyway.

He turned toward District 23, which specialized in aerospace.

He casually chose that destination because now he wanted to see a real one.

He did not find a life-size Gekota color plane there.

He did find several bright lights shining out from the darkness. Were they headlights and roadwork lights?

Those Anti-Skill people must have built a second defense line. And as part of that, they must have removed all the passenger planes and tanker trucks packed full of highly flammable fuel.

Christian Rosencreutz squeezed the small toy in his hand and muttered to himself.

“You are in my way.”

Part 5

An Anti-Skill officer leaned out from behind cover and shouted with special binoculars in hand.

“Visual confirmation of top-priority target!!”

Thanks to the martial law, the runway was not properly lit. That allowed Anti-Skill and Judgment to take action before Kamijou got a clear view of the figure in question.

A battle broke out at the second defense line.

“Begin!!”

Frist, they launched mortars from the ground. To Kamijou, they seemed like bigger versions of the fireworks available at convenience stores and discount stores. And they were used in much the same way. The projectiles were launched into the sky above, but instead of falling back to the ground, they decelerated above the target’s head and scattered light even brighter than a car’s headlights. These were parachute-equipped flares. Anti-Skill wasn’t showering the enemy with explosives right away – they were first ensuring a clear view.

This allowed Kamijou Touma to see the small figure more than 500m away.

It was Christian Rosencreutz.

That confirmation froze his spine and legs with fear. This was someone who made him wish the veil of darkness had not been swept away.

And the initial flares had a secondary purpose.

Anti-Skill and Judgment were meant to preserve order in the city, so they had a process to follow.

“Warning shot achieved.”

Yes, no matter what the type of projectile, they would fire the first shot above the enemy instead of directly at him.

And since the target continued walking and did not put his hands up…

“The suspect is not surrendering! Repeat, the suspect is not surrendering! Conditions for use of force have been met! Open fire!!!”

The heavy machineguns and automatic grenade launchers began to fire, held in place by the metal stakes driven into the asphalt. Needless to say, Anti-Skill was holding nothing back. They fired in the enemy’s general direction while adjusting their aim to hold him in place before taking careful aim with their tank guns and mortars that could not fire quite so rapidly. If this wasn’t Academy City where they were trained to handle espers, they might have known this was the most efficient method, but they would have been hesitant to use it against a human.

Kamijou himself felt somehow relieved.

Because he knew Christian Rosencreutz could take this kind of attack.

Although that thinking may have meant he had begun to accept how strong the man was.

With such a dense barrage underway, Kamijou couldn’t rush in with fist clenched. His Imagine Breaker could not block fragments of everyday(?) bullets and shells, so a careless approach would only get him blown away by friendly fire.

Kamijou wasn’t the only one irritated by having to stand around.

“Argh, 500m? I can see him, but I can’t reach him. My Railgun would burn away in the air before it got there!!”

And.

Kamijou heard chuckling laughter coming from among the explosions and shockwaves.

CRC was mocking them.

While on the receiving end of such a concentrated attack.

More sandbags were piled up to reinforce their defenses. This robbed the tanks of their mobility and their guns creaked as if intimidated. Kamijou understood not wanting to die, but now the tanks were no more than 120mm gun emplacements.

Christian Rosencreutz’s face showed only scorn.

“Do you really think that can defeat this old man?”

“They’re risking their lives because they do, halfwit.”

A blonde demon interrupted.

Something else happened at the same time.

The Bologna Succubus’s spell was called Cold Mistress.

It did not produce any bright lights or loud sounds. It apparently replaced the target’s pleasure signals with excruciating pain.

But what did this attack mean for Christian Rosencreutz who was only motivated by passion and playfulness?

A tank gun scored a direct hit.

Even CRC’s body had to be made of protein and calcium. He couldn’t stop shells because his body was unusually tough – he activated spells to repel them.

So.

What if he was stopped from activating those defense spells, even for a split second?

The explosive boom erupted a moment later and a cloud of gray dust swelled out.

But Anti-Skill was not foolish enough to celebrate quite yet.

“Not yet!!” shouted an adult holding special binoculars that used electronics to expand their functionality “He’s still in one piece and standing on his own two feet!!”

(Damn monster.)

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

He could only pray CRC had survived but had taken damage. The tank guns and grenade launchers fired again and again, not waiting for the dust to clear. This showed Anti-Skill’s fear that he would attack the instant they stopped firing.

“Kyahhhhh!!”

The honey blonde girl shrieked. Something other than deafening gunshots and sparks had grazed her at high speed. Probably a stray shot or a ricochet.

But Kamijou couldn’t do the obvious thing and duck down behind cover.

He was too worried.

The inability to see what was happening was wearing at his patience,.

He was intensely anxious that all of this was ultimately meaningless.

Ordinarily, they would have the upper hand here, but he was finding it harder and harder to trust that kind of judgment. Christian Rosencreutz was too much of a monster.

They were on the attack, yet they were the ones running out of options. Unable to bear this any longer, Kamijou shouted out loud.

“Is it still not over? Still!?”

“Damn, the target is walking. His shoulders are shaking… Is he laughing? He’s headed here! The dust is clearing! Wahhh!?”

The Anti-Skill officer sweatily peering through the binoculars screamed like he was having a nightmare.

With the “snap!!” of breaking metal, the heavy machinegun providing a dense barrage was suddenly destroyed and stopped moving.

It all happened in an instant.

Rosencreutz rushed in. Once he was inside the defense formation surrounded by the sandbag walls and barricades, their bullet-and-shell-based strategy would cease to function.

But Rosencreutz may have questioned what he found.

He had eliminated their optimal strategy and begun the hunt, but despite the terror on their faces, Anti-Skill and Judgment had not frozen up in fear.

“Everyone down!!” shouted a tough-looking Anti-Skill officer with something in his hand.

Kamijou wasn’t sure what he meant.

So he was slow to react.

The group of tanks and mobile combat vehicles all exploded from within.

Kamijou hadn’t been anywhere near them, but his feet were still lifted from the runway.

And he was knocked backwards.

“Boy…………………!!”

The Bologna Succubus’s voice was too distorted to understand. It was so bad he couldn’t even judge how close she was.

But what had happened to CRC who had moved deep within the group of tanks and mobile combat vehicles?

The 8-wheel Predator Octopus and the rest of the military vehicles were designed to be operated remotely as ground drones. After the first defense line was destroyed so badly, no one thought CRC could be repelled with ordinary firepower. Which led to this strategy: triggering the self-destruct only after he had easily broken through the defense line and entered the defense formation.

They probably hadn’t used your average explosive either.

“Ah…gah?”

Kamijou’s retinas were scorched by a flash of light as white as welding.

Most likely, they had made use of a special reaction using aluminum or iron powder. At more than 3000 degrees, the blast could literally melt steel and it had hit the man at point-blank range.

Shirai Kuroko shouted over the boom while lying down on the runway, protecting her head.

“Did they really have to go this far!?”

“Seems that way. The suspect is still standing. He didn’t even duck!!”

The busty glasses Judgment girl must have had Clairvoyance or a similar power because she was directing her wide eyes toward the dust cloud.

“You’re…kidding.”

Mikoto had also frozen stiff. She may have detected something with her radar produced by reflecting weak microwaves off of things.

But Kamijou didn’t have time to see the truth for himself.

He heard a deafening tearing sound.

The XHsACV-15 Anaconda, the snakelike chain of armored vehicles, had started to move. It looked like the three units were going to run over Rosencreutz, but instead they formed the three sides of an equilateral triangle and came to a rapid stop.

First, they trapped him.

That 70m giant surrounded the same area as a schoolyard.

But it was not just a thick wall. The mobility to deploy as the situation demanded was the Anaconda’s greatest strength.

Down on the ground, an Anti-Skill officer shouted into a radio.

“Fire!!”

The guns on the sides of each unit opened fire on the interior of the giant triangle. Self-destruct drones were launched sharply out and 20mm Gatling guns sprayed bullets. The noise alone was terrifying. The barrage was so dense an ordinary human would have been turned into a bloody mist and splattered across the ground in less than a second.

But only an ordinary human.

And it didn’t end there.

Something fell from heaven to earth like a bolt of lightning. 120mm shells and 20mm Gatling guns were combined to create a manmade divine punishment of lead and powder.

Kamijou had seen this before.

A large transport plane had been converted into a mobile aerial gun platform called a gunship.

It flew in a large circle overhead, raining down a massive number of bullets.

An Anti-Skill officer shouted while crawling slowly along the ground.

“So the HsAC-03 Spotlight got here. 200m around the target point is a fragment warning zone! Fall back! Everyone fall back!”

“A 200m radius? That’s bigger than your average school or stadium. Which means it covers all of us here!” protested the honey blonde girl.

Several explosions erupted in quick succession.

The Anaconda’s wall was meaningless if the metal fragments and pieces of asphalt flew up in the air and poured down on their heads. This might as well have been a volcanic eruption on the surface.

Even with the martial law, they couldn’t have carried out a bombing this large in the more urban part of the city. This all-out firepower was only possible here in District 23 with its vast expanse of runways and not a school or dorm to be found.

Again, it didn’t end there.

Even higher up than the gunship ruling the skies, a star twinkled.

Or so it seemed just before a cylinder of ultra-heavy tungsten alloy dropped straight down from outside the atmosphere. It was 10m long and 80cm in diameter. It had been launched from Academy City’s giant satellite. The heavy metal pillar just barely missed the gunship circling overhead, nearly stalling out the 50m craft with the mass of air it brought with it, and dropped straight toward Christian Rosencreutz.

Sound was compressed.

Even light was trapped, unable to escape, before everything burst outward from a single point.

An artificial comet had struck. If the blast had been unmanaged and free to spread, it might have obliterated District 23 itself. Instead, the special grooves and angular points on the pillar’s side and the angle of its tip gathered the kinetic energy together, sending it piercing straight down into the ground. It easily dug up the experimental nuclear shelter spread out below the asphalt runway.

“!?”

While the vectors were concentrated to an extent, it wasn’t perfect.

The force that did escape was enough to twist and flip the 70m Anaconda all-terrain armored combat vehicle. Kamijou was nearly crushed by it, but it could easily have been worse. Without that wall there, the thick shockwave would have hit him directly and converted him into a clump of meat.

After gathering scrap metal into a giant shield, Mikoto muttered in a somewhat dazed way.

“Could they have dropped that on my head any time they wanted…?”

Rolling on the ground, Kamijou didn’t even have time for questions like that.

His aching head felt like it was going to split open.

But instead of a blow from the outside, it felt more like the pressure inside his skull had risen.

Just watching made him feel like his eardrums were going to burst.

In a subconscious urge to find anything at all to rely on, he ended up grabbing onto the Bologna Succubus who happened to be nearby. He looked a lot like a small child clinging to his mother in fear after a nearby lightning strike.

What did it matter if they weren’t special?

So what if they were all individuals and had no legends to their name?

These people had gathered for no other reason than to protect Academy City and they had demonstrated enough power to bring Kamijou to the ground just from watching.

The strange sticky sensation coming from his right ear scared him, but he managed a trembling voice.

“What happened…to Rosencreutz? After all this, he’s got to at least be limping, right?”

“No,” said an icily certain voice. It belonged to the Bologna Succubus as she held the boy close. “Remove your rose-tinted glasses and you’ll see. He can still move.”

His breath caught.

Was Christian Rosencreutz really this powerful? He was entirely unscathed after an attack so ferocious it literally altered the terrain? Then what could a measly right fist do?

Just then, a distorted voice came from an emergency speaker directly installed in the runway rather than a metal pole so it would be out of the way of takeoffs and landings.

Kamijou recognized the voice.

“Outta the way, third-rates. That was only the opening act meant to keep the bastard still for a second.”

Part 6

It had originally been a piece of research infrastructure built directly below the wall surrounding Academy City’s perimeter.

The giant facility used a massive amount of magnetism to trap a stream of electrons and protons, send them out at nearly the speed of light, and collide different particles to create a variety of phenomena, including the creation of brand new elements that do not exist in the natural world.

The Hula Hoop.

The world’s largest particle accelerator had just unleashed and launched a tremendously powerful electron beam.

It cut a straight line from District 3 in the north to District 10 in the south.

This was New Board Chairman Accelerator’s true trump card that he had been setting up ever since the Bridge Builders Cabal had suddenly constructed a consulate in District 12 and strutted around the city like they owned the place.

The intended target had been Alice Anotherbible.

This superweapon had been adjusted to kill her in a single shot if that became necessary, but now it had struck Christian Rosencreutz. This one shot was all it had. The circular particle accelerator’s forcibly-linked container-sized capacitors and transformers blew up one after another as the giant devices were fried by the massive energy they had gathered, but the deadly spear still accurately bisected Academy City north to south.

The light swept away the night and all the moisture in the air was vaporized. The heat melted the asphalt pavement back into a liquid and the remaining small abandoned jets exploded one after another. The twisted and flipped Anaconda half vaporized while it was burned apart.

And none of that had been directly hit.

Christian Rosencreutz had been, so how much damage had he taken?

Kamijou choked on the stench of melted asphalt. It took him a while to realize he was curled up on the ground. He must have thought a thick lightning bolt had struck nearby and reflexively moved to protect himself. Similar to a stun grenade blast.

So much preparation had gone into this single attack.

New Board Director Accelerator had remotely operated the city’s cleaning and security robots to search for anyone still in the predicted line of fire. If he found anyone, he had of course guided them to safety. His plans had hit a brief snag when Last Order hadn’t obeyed the robot, but he had solved that by drawing her attention with a tanuki pet robot.

So in this one moment, he had created a singular opportunity when all that energy could cut across Academy City without causing any human damage.

The #1 wasn’t soft enough to let a chance like that go to waste.

The already world-class Hula Hoop was pushed past its power limits to accelerate the electrons to more than 99.99% the speed of light, where they tore through the scenery and rushed toward Rosencreutz.

In a perfectly straight line, the asphalt runway was boiled orange.

Even the elements making up the air must have been rewritten because the beam’s wake was electrified and sparking.

“Ugh,” groaned the honey blonde girl. “I do not want to breathe that in. That air cannot be good for your health ability.”

Kamijou had bigger concerns.

A direct hit barely seemed necessary when just carelessly looking at that could blind you.

At this level, it felt like a scientifically-created form of the occult.

“Damn…it,” said Kamijou, somehow managing to get some air in his lungs and sweating in the midwinter night. “Did that…finally get him?”

The answer did not come from Anti-Skill, Judgment, Mikoto, or the Bologna Succubus.

But he did hear a voice.

“You mean this old man?”

Kamijou’s vision fell into darkness.

He regretted asking the question.

Part 7

“We were too late,” whispered Witch Goddess Aradia, watching from outside the range of the blinding beam.

“How are they?” asked a breathless voice.

That was Good, Old Mary. As the only person who could, albeit imperfectly, defend against Christian Rosencreutz’s attacks, a battlefield without her may have looked to her like an extra-large helping of suicide.

Her own sacrifice was of secondary importance.

She was a Transcendent who, more than anything, hated ordinary people being harmed by special miracles.

“Joining them blindly would only eliminate what little chance we have left.”

“I know that.” Good, Old Mary forcibly steadied her breathing and continued. “But holding cards in reserve is pointless if the people guarding the second defense line are slaughtered in the meantime. Mama doesn’t even need to use her sacrificial defense. My very presence on the battlefield will force Rosencreutz to be cautious, thus restricting his actions.”

Running away apparently wasn’t even an option as far as she was concerned.

Not that Aradia was one to talk there.

They got to work.

Part 8

The result was in.

All that effort had amounted to nothing.

Shirai Kuroko and the glasses girl from Judgment were speechless.

They had destroyed the barricades themselves.

Flat District 23 was the only place in Academy City where the horizon was visible. There was nowhere to hide and thoughtless running would only expose their backs to this nemesis. In real war, retreating from a disadvantageous position was the most difficult thing.

“Oh?”

Christian Rosencreutz made a quiet noise.

Past his outstretched palm, his spell failed to hit Kamijou’s head and tore harmlessly into the air next to it.

Kamijou Touma had not moved. Then why had CRC missed?

He sounded amused.

“Did you rotate the ground itself? The same way an illusionist causes large objects to disappear.”

“You have unexpectedly worldly tastes, Rosencreutz.”

Since she had set this up, she knew she couldn’t remain hidden.

The witch goddess slowly walked over and positioned herself to guard Kamijou Touma.

“Did you think a witch who lives with nature can’t manipulate asphalt? Nonsense. We can manipulate soil and minerals as easily as trees and flowers. Process and harm them as much as you like, a single touch of a witch’s finger is enough for them to respond.”

A 100m circle of the melted asphalt underfoot had rotated.

Just like a grand illusion where an idling passenger plane vanished before an audience’s eyes.

Rosencreutz’s shoulders shook with laughter.

“Did you think this secret talent of yours would continue to serve you?”

“Of course not. It only had to work once,” spat Aradia. “The point wasn’t for your deadly attack to miss Kamijou Touma. You didn’t bother checking what the attack did hit, did you?”

Christian Rosencreutz briefly paused.

It took him less than three seconds to realize something.

“I see.”

He looked up.

A tremor ran through the ground like a kaiju stomping across the city.

The towering monster looked like a stadium-sized container supported by a trio of pylon-sized legs.

That was the Tribikos.

Good, Old Mary’s experimental tool was said to contain an entire universe inside and thus carried the possibility of producing anything. That ultimate container could produce nonexistent forms of death and destruction as simple playthings.

“Hm.”

Christian Rosencreutz mimed loosely holding something like a brandy glass.

But his hand remained empty.

“The paternal cross and the maternal flower are a little too convenient, so people have a tendency to rely too much on the red secret art and cease to work at coming up with their own plans.”

His corpse had remained unchanged for 120 years. He had created a perfect miniature world where he could reach any answer by recreating the past, present, and future. That sage among sages had produced the secret art that could heal the entire world.

Which meant he was exceedingly similar to this experimental tool that had mastered the art of kitchen alchemy. The only real difference was that Good, Old Mary kept the miracle sealed inside like it was Pandora’s box while CRC let it out in his strong desire to interfere with the larger world. Alternatively, this would mean Good, Old Mary’s Tribikos was so powerful that she feared what would happen if the red secret art were released from it.

“One rule applies to the entire world,” whispered Good, Old Mary. “When one person attacks, another takes revenge. This rule applies even to that which slumbers in the secret territories. Be destroyed by the divine punishment triggered by your own decision as per the law of action and reaction, CRC.”

Part 9

A sticky sound enveloped the world.

What…was it?

Cracks raced across the stadium-like Tribikos and it shattered just before filthy gray bubbles burst from within. But these bubbles did not have the cleansing feel of detergent or soap. These were small, hideous bubbles, reminiscent of human torment and death. They engulfed Rosencreutz like a deluge.

The bubbles lost force and momentum before vanishing altogether.

Were they suppose to be the foam coming from the mouth of someone who had drunk poison, or were they supposed to be fire extinguisher foam?

No one wanted to see what happened if even one of those popping bubbles touched them. What this all meant was a mystery, but doing that had to be as suicidal as a slug fascinated by salt.

“Eeeeek!”

The honey blonde girl paled.

It was written plain on her face that being swallowed up by those bubbles was the very last thing she wanted to do.

And…

“We need to run away,” was Good, Old Mary’s immediate decision.

She was not shortsighted enough to determine her strategy based on a momentary advantage.

“It is miracle enough to have bought 600 seconds against CRC. If you do not escape through the sea I have parted, none of you will survive.”

“Hey, if you could do all this…?” said Kamijou, still in a daze.

“CRC’s world model is more accurate than mine, which creates a discrepancy between the two. I caught him off guard here, but he will break through as soon as he manages to calm down and respond. Then we will be caught by an even greater calamity.”

Something like a sandstorm obstructed the view.

The sand was yellow.

That was the color of defeat. Was time already up? Was the second defense line and District 23 about to be buried in Citrinitas just like District 12 had been? The Transcendents working together could only stop one of Rosencreutz’s attacks, but not repel him?

(If we run from here, are we supposed to go to the third defense line? And if District 18 falls, we’ll be back in District 7, where that hospital is. We can only fall back one more time!!)

Kamijou’s thoughts were interrupted by a voice coming from the mountain of bubbles even more horrific than the foam spilling from the corner of a human mouth.

Something flashed.

“More of the same? You bore me.”

This was not aimed at Kamijou or the others in front of him.

The massive deadly force flew over their heads like a long throw in baseball.

They felt a tremor below their feet.

“No…way,” muttered Kamijou.

Something had exploded in the distance and that had shaken the asphalt here.

The third defense line, where Mut Thebes waited, had been destroyed in the blink of an eye.

But the immediate threat wasn’t gone either.

“Kh!!”

Misaka Mikoto immediately placed an arcade coin on her thumbnail.

She had to already know the truth.

This was CRC.

Even a direct hit at thrice the speed of sound wouldn’t kill him. Which was why she didn’t hesitate to ready this attack.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh!!”

She screamed to shake free of her own fear.

An explosive boom compressed the air.

Mikoto didn’t bother viewing the result.

“Go now!! Hurry!! Waste this chance and we really can’t get away!!”

The younger girl grabbed Kamijou’s hand and pulled him away.

What was happening over there?

The third defense line in District 18…was gone.

They weren’t even allowed a final chance.

From here, it was a straight shot to District 7. If they couldn’t find some other plan, Rosencreutz would reach the hospital!!

Part 10

And so.

No one could stop Christian Rosencreutz’s march across the city.

Part 11

The footsteps could not have sounded more normal.

The glass automatic doors were not meant to keep out intruders.

They opened with ridiculous ease.

The machine did not discriminate. It welcomed Christian Rosencreutz inside with no thought to the severity of the situation.

“Now, where did they put the Transcendent who was sent here? Was her name Anna Sprengel?” he said offhand.

Was that the extent of his thoughts about her? Despite being the inheritor of the Rosicrucian cabal he had started, she was not special to him. She was no more than one of the many Transcendents – another life to kill in the game he had defined.

“Hello, you there.”

CRC called out to a nurse.

Even though he could have read the residual thoughts easily enough if he wanted to.

He was clearly enjoying this.

“Is ICU the right term? Regardless, Anna Sprengel, or possibly an unidentified Girl A, should have arrived here. Where should I go to find her?”

“E-eek!”

The young male nurse fell onto his rear, pressed his back against the hallway door, and desperately shook his head in refusal, so he had to be a consummate medical professional.

Christian Rosencreutz viewed him in amusement.

And he slowly held out his palm.

“Heh heh. Believe me, you want as little to do with this old man as possible. Irritate me too much, and I might just take an interest in you.”

“Enough,” said a new voice.

Something sat on the edge of one of the sofas lined up in the waiting room positioned in front of the hospital pharmacy. The translucent figure took a sip of the shiruko can he held in both hands.

That mysterious being had been called a Holy Guardian Angel and an extraterrestrial.

As well as a Secret Chief.

He was known as Aiwass.

“That man has done nothing wrong. If you have business related to the modern Western magic that spans the Rose and the Golden, then stay focused on that, CRC.”

“I truly do not envy you Secret Chiefs. That priestess’s lungs and heart are no longer functioning, but do those machines really prevent you from calling her dead? If she were fully killed, your contract would be null and void and you would be free once more.”

A strange cracking sound came from empty space.

Almost like hard plastic breaking.

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“The fate of the world exists to fulfill our playfulness and curiosity. A boring world where the jokers cannot joke would only sink into darkness.”

“You claim to have despaired of the world and now choose destruction purely to satisfy your passions without forcing the blame onto anyone else, CRC, but you are surprisingly unobservant. Fortunately, that gives us some hope.”

“?”

“As the Secret Chief who guards the First Temple, it is true only one official priestess can contact me, but that does not mean she is the only one with a personal interest in me.”

A solid footstep sounded.

This was the sound of someone who, unlike Aiwass, had a physical body.

Christian Rosencreutz turned around and smiled.

“Oh?”

He showed great interest. Like he had just found a shred of amusement still remaining in this dreary world.

He saw a beige habit and blonde hair cut to shoulder length.

He saw a magician who had clung to the world of the living after his own death by hijacking a great demon’s body.

Human Aleister Crowley blocked his path.

Part 12

Shortly before the clash, the frog-faced doctor noted a mood of mounting tension.

(I take it this person isn’t the type to spare a hospital or a school.)

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

He was a doctor.

And the patient lying before him was on the verge of death – in fact, her breathing and pulse would cease without the help of the life support devices. Every last form of modern examination had failed to determine the cause and none of his thick medical texts or the disease research database had turned up a previous example, but he wasn’t sensible enough to give up because of that.

Without a doubt, throwing in the towel was the frog-faced doctor’s least favorite phrase. If someone felt it was acceptable for a medical expert to abandon their patient’s possibilities based on their own emotions or mood, he thought they had no business working in the medical field.

“Now, then.”

None of his test devices could identify the cause.

So he decided to focus on the records of those failures.

“I assume the blood sample tests found nothing?”

“Y-yes. All 5.”

The young technician glanced over at the test tubes sealed with different colors of rubber cap. Finding nothing was not a cause for celebration here. They had a patient on the verge of death. It was like running a malware scan and receiving zero detections despite the computer very obviously behaving strangely.

(Something is clearly wrong, but nothing turns up in the numbers.)

They hadn’t found anything in the blood sealed in the test tubes. Then what was happening inside that small girl(?) and how far had it progressed?

But something else caught his interest as well.

“Hm?”

With a patient in critical condition, there wasn’t time to wipe them down with ethanol to disinfect them. In some cases, they were transferred directly in from the emergency arrivals treatment room where the ambulance dropped them off. That meant an ICU could not be kept as sterile as an operating room. Instead, drum-shaped cleaning robots frequently moved through, keeping the space as clean as possible.

The frog-faced doctor held out a hand to stop one, opened the lid, and checked inside.

He found a long, strawberry blonde hair.

He touched it to find it unusually stiff. Its surface was badly damaged for having recently fallen out, almost like it had been left on the floor for years.

“…”

Nutrients and oxygen were supplied to the hair and the nails.

But as can be seen from the lack of bleeding when cutting your hair, the capillaries were connected to the roots and didn’t continue on through the rest of the hair.

He knew what to focus on now.

He wasn’t one to stop here just because he couldn’t prove anything scientifically.

“Wh-what do we do?”

“Prepare her for dialysis,” calmly instructed the frog-faced doctor.

Bacteria and toxins harmed people through a wide variety of methods. But one common method was to have a nature very similar to a component necessary for human life. For example, carbon monoxide. Its similar structure to oxygen allowed it to bond with the red blood cells, keeping out the oxygen that was meant to be carried through the bloodstream. And because humans needed oxygen, they would eventually collapse.

The cause was invisible and it was similar to a normal bodily function.

The connotations of the word “curse” had distracted them.

The culprit was a lot closer to home. You can think of it like a form of fatal pollen allergy that shows symptoms in response to “something thought of as occult” like a face, a name, hair, or nails.

Then how could it be prevented?

What could they block with a mask? Was there a preventative or a cure? Use whatever terminology you like.

By swapping out the words in his head, his thoughts began to race. No matter how strange it seemed, someone’s life was at risk. So how could he, as a doctor, stop working?

“History tells of someone who ate deadly potassium cyanide but didn’t die.”

“?”

“Rasputin. There are many dubious legends about the man, but the official records say he ate cakes laced with cyanide without dying. A normal person would have a 100% chance of death when it reacted with their gastric acid, so some theorize he survived because his gastric acid was extremely weak.”

That was one example of escaping certain death.

Even when the result appeared to be a miracle or nightmare, the method of cheating death could sometimes be explained scientifically.

What did it matter if this illness could not be scientifically explained?

All he had to do was remove the conditions causing it and science could handle that.

In other words…

“This illness appears to identify an individual based on their blood and attack their bodily tissue. So if we artificially replace all of her blood and temporarily change her blood type, this ‘curse’ disease will lose its target. We will remove its ability to identify her. Got that?”

Many different devices were hurried into the ICU. The frog-faced doctor temporarily stepped out of the ICU to give them space.

He sighed.

Someone was standing there: Aleister Crowley.

They were old friends, so the frog-faced doctor didn’t bother turning around in surprise. He didn’t know how or why that human was here. He simply accepted that that human could do things he couldn’t explain.

With a golden retriever by his side, Aleister asked a simple question.

Everything was packed into so few words.

“What are you going to do?”

“As long as the patient wants to live, I will lend them every skill and resource available to me.”

“How did you ask Anna Sprengel if she wants to live? You can’t converse with her just by reading the pulses of her brain waves.”

“True. But someone risked his life to leave her in my care and bowed to me. I haven’t heard from her herself and it is possible she doesn’t even have the strength left to want anything. But I know that boy will draw it out of her. Maybe she has no more reason to want to live, but I know he will give her a new one. Not a bad possibility to bet on, don’t you think?”

The frog-faced doctor knew Christian Rosencreutz was on his way here. But no matter how many of this city’s secrets he knew, he was still just a doctor. Unlike the monsters of the former dark side, he did not have the power to fight and protect his sanctuary here.

So.

“Are you interested in lending a hand?”

“…”

“You’re just dying to finally use your full strength for someone other than yourself, aren’t you?”

They did not hold a lengthy or grand conversation This was not a sketchy politician’s speech or a TV informercial pressuring you to call by saying the deal only lasted for half an hour after it aired. These two understood each other well enough that theatrical gestures and the like would only get in the way.

Aleister spoke quietly, his head still lowered.

It was possible his question had not actually been directed at the frog-faced doctor in front of him.

“I created this city, but it is no longer mine. Why should I pour all my efforts into Academy City at this point?”

He received a single response.

The frog-faced doctor’s answer was a simple one.

As old friends, he knew exactly what words would stab him deepest.

“How about because it would make him happy?”

Part 13

And so.

Two magicians stood face to face.

After failing to work up the courage to fight or even to run away, the human was finally crossing the start line.

And once he made up his mind, the rest happened quick.

History proved how effective he was at taking action.

“Aleister.”

“Stay back. And don’t let anything that happens here surprise you.”

That was the extent of the human and golden retriever’s conversation.

Space itself vibrated.

Christian Rosencreutz looked to the space around him instead of at Aleister.

Everything looked the same.

“Did you shift the phase?” asked CRC, amused.

“Is that so surprising? Even Mathers and his lot played with the phases. They would use astral projection to spy on other phases or extract power from those other phases and give them temporary mass. …It all created so many unnecessary sparks and innocent people had to pay the price.”

This was already another world.

The golden retriever standing by his side was eternally cut off from him.

Now two magicians this powerful could directly clash without any fear of the hospital collapsing or the working doctors and immobilized patients coming to harm.

“I am the fool who attempted to suppress the creation of sparks by creating a new mythology as cushioning between the many phases. Unfortunately, it didn’t work because the Christian church wanted to protect their monopoly on the concept of god and sent their billions of followers against me. But since the theory itself was sound, I can at least spirit someone away.”

The stage had been set.

Aleister and Rosencreutz both took a step forward.

Space was compressed and light was distorted.

Christian Rosencreutz held an old lamp made of glass. It contained a collection of energy said to be an inextinguishable light. Releasing only the smallest amount from the glass case transformed the gentle glow into a crimson serpent consuming all the oxygen in the air.

Aleister responded with two simple words.

“Great demon.”

“Kee hee hee! Ee hee hee hee hee, hee ha ha ha ha ha hah hah hah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!”

The red was twisted and bent.

It crashed into an invisible wall in front of Aleister and melted the concrete wall to the side.

The human did not bat an eye.

The initial clue had come from Kingsford. He knew how to control it.

“Do not rely on your past legends, CRC. Your true colors are showing.”

Rosencreutz sighed and tossed the eternal lamp over his shoulder like a child with a toy he had lost interest in.

Batlike wings flapped behind Aleister’s back and a deadly gale blew through the world.

It swept through every nook and cranny and everything it touched grew black and rotten.

The wind itself was colorless. The floor, walls, and ceiling gradually blackened, peeled away, and pursued Rosencreutz.

At some point, a flask of powder had appeared in CRC’s hand. No, it wasn’t clear if it truly was there. His mimicry of holding it may have been so perfect it created the illusion. Either way, the silver young man popped off the lid with his thumb and scattered the red powder. The legendary Rosicrucian cabal had not been pursuing anything as trivial as eternal life.

“Revolution.”

The world at large really did change.

The black color vanished. The air grew clean and full of negative ions, like deep in the forest. Control of this world repeatedly changed hands, like a tennis rally.

It was a casual thing.

A simple thing.

If this were in the outside world, the entire city would have rotted apart and then been buried in verdant trees.

“I see. You are not fighting on your own – you are boosting yourself by borrowing the power of another. Is that the source of the false confidence allowing you to speak so arrogantly to this old man?”

“Holy Guardian Angel.”

“And you have more than one helper. …But don’t you feel ashamed? This does not mean you have conquered anything. You have only hid behind the backs of those stronger than you while you fling rocks at me from safety.”

“What, you didn’t know?”

“?”

“Fine by me. Because that is what gives this conflict meaning.”

After a short pause, Christian Rosencreutz moved his eyes.

To view his own fingertip.

The pointer finger’s nail had split and it was bleeding.

“You claim to only need yourself, but you worked with your seven disciples to build the House of the Holy Spirit and you were placed in that special grave. So in the end, you were a magician who had to pay attention to symbols and colors with their origins in the land.”

Aleister didn’t hesitate to explain this.

Because it wasn’t worth hiding.

“So all I had to do was transport you to another world. You don’t have the land’s support anymore, CRC. You might as well be trying to use your phone’s GPS map on Mars. The rules change outside of the world you’re used to.”

“Hm.”

Christian Rosencreutz nodded. He honestly accepted his opponent’s claim.

But he didn’t stop there.

“But removing some of my functions does nothing at all to boost your strength, does it?”

Something exploded.

Rosencreutz had not moved a step. He only held his palm out. That was enough for something to go wrong inside Aleister’s chest. A rusty flavor rose up his throat, he couldn’t stop himself from coughing up red, and the female feet below the beige habit lifted from the floor.

It happened too fast for human senses and even for great demon and Holy Guardian Angel senses to follow. Aleister bounced several times down the hospital waiting room, knocking over the sofas and making a racket of destructive noises.

CRC looked at the back of his hand and his nail.

“Do you know what I did to you?”

This was not a cheap trick.

The very foundation was different.

Christian Rosencreutz blew boredly on his fingertip.

“Masters of the Rose never use a spell or magic circle as is. They extract whatever form of the mystical they require from the symbols hidden in the scene around them. The Rod of Asclepius, the cross, the Hippocratic Oath – hospitals are a treasure trove of miraculous symbols and elements.”

“I doubt…that’s what you really did.”

‘Heh heh. Because true experts do not talk at length? Why should I follow the rules set forth by that dead girl – Kingsford?”

The air was permeated by a flammability even more frightening than a dust explosion.

But nothing more happened. Aleister lacked the strength to fight back even when someone else was being ridiculed.

Something in the air changed.

The shifted phase had returned to normal. Christian Rosencreutz stood in an ordinary hospital waiting room – in an ordinary space where the swing of an arm would destroy a pillar or wall and kill someone.

Aleister was soaked with blood. He had been thrown across the waiting room, where he crashed through the sofas, rolled along the floor, and ended up seated with his back against a column.

“You fool! Just because you admire Kingsford’s way of life is no reason to let yourself meet the same end as her!”

Hearing Kihara Noukan’s voice told Aleister that his phase shift had been reverted. The human once known as the world’s wickedest man smiled weakly, unable to even get up.

CRC did not bother looking in his direction.

“Is that all the magicians of this era can do?”

But Aleister’s face showed no sign of panic or frustration.

Still collapsed among several broken sofas, the human smiled thinly and spoke.

“Did you forget why you’re here, CRC?”

“?”

After Kingsford, he was the second to place that look on CRC’s face.

Which meant those words were not for his own benefit.

He was leaving everything in the hands of the next challenger.

He had admired that expert and her way of life.

If he really did remind Kihara Noukan of her here, then he was honored.

“You want to kill time? You’re going to slaughter all of the Transcendents as punishment for reviving you into such a boring world?”

So he gave a snort of laughter.

Bloody Aleister’s eyes displayed obvious mockery.

Viewing anything greater than himself with skepticism had always been that human’s most defining trait. Even if it got him branded an eccentric and ostracized by the majority of the world.

And while people called him a lord of devils, he had discovered a truth no one else could understand.

In other words…

“I don’t know if you’re giving a plausible excuse to hide your true intentions or if you’re trying not to think about it yourself, but you’re afraid of the parents who brought you into this world, aren’t you? The Bridge Builders Cabal used a special method to revive you, so it’s entirely possible they could rearrange the ceremony’s process and symbols to instantly kill you again. You feared having your newfound freedom taken away, so you chose to attack your parents the instant you were reborn. You moved quick so you could catch those Transcendents off guard.”

Magical astral projection existed as a single spell with two processes: one that separated the mind from the body and another that returned the mind to the body. So by rearranging the separation process, one could achieve the return process. Necromancy and doll-based curses worked much the same. Very little magic only worked in one direction. It was much the same as an explosives technician placing as much emphasis on knowing how to cause explosions as on how to safely prevent them.

In an extreme example, the Anglican Church had created a grimoire library as a countermeasure against any and all magicians.

“The means of defeating you already existed. It was there from the beginning.”

“…”

“But you didn’t want to be bound once more, so you started by eliminating that. You wanted to avoid being a world-saving bike courier who had to listen to everything the Transcendents said and save a great multitude of strangers at their behest.”

His surprise attack on Alice Anotherbible, the greatest threat, had successfully killed her and the Bridge Builders Cabal had broken apart without her to hold it together. Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, or any of the others could never gather all of those Transcendents in one place again.

Exactly as CRC had hoped.

Peel away the theatric gestures and meaningless words and that was all he was.

Aleister could state it with such confidence because he always made sure to question the gods and charismatic leaders that the people of the world heaped so much unconditional praise on.

“I was never here to prove myself. My own survival isn’t even part of my win condition. You set the rules yourself, remember? Simply put, this is a battle over whether or not we can protect Anna Sprengel.”

“You mean…?”

The human was calmly approaching the territory of a true expert.

He had approached the very entrance of the stairway available only to magicians that led to being a powerful individual while also respecting others and pouring all your efforts into helping someone else.

The great goddess of wisdom had left this task with him.

So the bloody human smiled and made his point.

“I win as long as the illusion slayer boy arrives in time.”

Part 14

And.

Kamijou Touma was frozen with fear.

He had just taken the first step into the front entrance of the frog-faced doctor’s hospital.

He found himself in an alternate world of red and black.

He had seen it all before. Everything around him was destroyed, someone he knew lay in a pool of blood, and only Christian Rosencreutz stood tall and unconcerned.

“He expects a lot out of you.”

“…”

“So what will you do? After all your losses, surely you do not think you can win this all on your own. Will you seek the help of your Transcendent companions? Will you stand back and play at being their commander to wear this old man down? Heh heh. This old man has no problem with that. None at all. My goal is to kill all of the Transcendents anyway. If you will send them to the front line – kee hee hee – I will gratefully accept the gift.”

“Don’t listen,” said Aradia, holding out a slender arm to stop Kamijou. “CRC would never say anything that benefits us.”

Kamijou didn’t even have time to glance over at her.

But he could sense the powerful aura of “don’t rise to the bait” radiating from her.

Mut Thebes was out of the fight, possibly dead.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and Good, Old Mary were the only Transcendents here now. If they didn’t make full use of everything they had, there was no winning this. In a way, Imagine Breaker was an even rarer trait than the Transcendents, so they couldn’t afford to have it taken out here.

“Kee hee hee. Ee hee, kee hee hee hee hee.”

He approached.

Christian Rosencreutz approached them from head on.

His fingers stroked through his silver beard.

“What, done already? No new options? No trump cards? No hopes that you will discover a power beyond all your known limits when backed into a corner while guarding someone behind you?”

This was not the action of someone fighting on the same level. It was a simple slaughter with a clear line drawn between predator and prey.

In those extreme circumstances, everything Kamijou had seen flashed before his eyes.

Was there no clue there?

Had he left any stone unturned?

He knew it was no use, but his instinct to never give up kept the gears of his mind fruitlessly turning.

• Alice Anotherbible and Anna Kingsford were dead.

• Anti-Skill and Judgment had accomplished nothing.

• The unmanned tanks with self-destruct drones and the mobile combat vehicles hadn’t stood a chance.

• The massive gunship hadn’t done any real damage.

• Index’s knowledge as a grimoire library and Othinus’s tactics as a Magic God weren’t enough to keep up.

• Academy City’s #3 Railgun and #5 Mental Out hadn’t worked either.

• The tungsten alloy bombing from satellite orbit and the particle accelerator cannon using the Hula Hoop hadn’t stopped him.

• The Transcendents’ biggest attacks, like the Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress and Good, Old Mary’s Tribikos, had failed to eliminate him.

• So had Aleister.

Even though it was just this one man.

Even though the monster named Christian Rosencreutz was only marching across the city on his own.

Run away, regroup, try again.

That was the most Kamijou’s group had managed. They had lost all three defense lines and now the battle had moved inside the hospital in District 7. There was no more room to fall back. They were right next to the ICU where Anna Sprengel was clinging to life thanks to all the medical equipment. If the silver young man set foot inside there, it was all over.

But.

Even so.

The boy realized something while viewing this nightmarish result.

Had he really, truly given this his all?

It was true this was on a larger scale than normal.

If he clenched his right fist and rushed onto the storm of bullets and bombs on the battlefield, he wouldn’t be any help and might even get shot in the back by friendly fire. Wielding the power to destroy illusions would do no good here.

However…

(What can I do?)

He pondered that.

Driven to the very edge, Kamijou Touma truly thought about it this time.

Could he really accept this?

Could he step out of CRC’s way and give up on Anna Sprengel because he couldn’t win this? They weren’t doing it because he had bowed his head or because they were only defending themselves. Anna was a villain, but those people had still stood back up because they could believe in her future. Was he going to stand here and watch them be slaughtered because he was out of cards and couldn’t stop CRC?

Kamijou sensed something deep in his chest.

It was his pulse.

He couldn’t do that.

Like hell he could.

So he had to lay the unfair methods out on the table too. He had to look to the options he wasn’t supposed to use. If he hadn’t done that, then he hadn’t really given this his all. He had only been watching. He hadn’t reached out his hand, so he didn’t know what cards were left in his deck. That wasn’t good enough. Kamijou, the one who had wanted to fight all alone for Anna, had strayed the furthest from that goal. He couldn’t let it end that way. No matter what.

(That’s right.)

He had to struggle.

Struggle harder!!

(There is one more thing.)

He wanted to save Anna Sprengel. He wanted to prevent innocent people from being killed along with her. The only way of making those things happen was to defeat Christian Rosencreutz here. He knew that. He didn’t see any errors in those premises. But what exactly could he do? What had he himself done up to this point?

He had the power to destroy any and all illusions.

But that was all his power could do.

He could do nothing against a harsh reality. Could he really accept that?

Wasn’t he still holding one option in reserve?

“…”

Kamijou Touma knew that this world was really and truly cruel and that people would die if a bad situation was left unfixed. Alice Anotherbible’s merciless death was proof enough of that.

So many people would die if things continued like this.

Aogami Pierce, who knew nothing of what was happening.

The frog-faced doctor who was working to save the unconscious wicked woman.

Human Aleister who had fought with all his might for nothing in return.

And.

Anna Sprengel who could no longer move her own lungs and heart.

So.

“Misaka.”

Kamijou grabbed his phone and spoke into it.

Witch Goddess Aradia looked up in sudden realization.

“Stop, Kamijou Touma! You mustn’t do that!!”

“Fire on this GPS signal. Fire through the window to the left of the 1st floor’s front entrance. Do that and we can defeat Rosencreutz!!”

He got exactly what he wanted.

Outside the hospital’s walls, Misaka Mikoto likely had no idea what was going on in there.

But Aradia saw it all.

She saw the beam, heard the boom, felt the shockwave.

It blasted straight through the wall and it struck its intended target.

Everything played out as Kamijou had wanted.

The color red splattered out.

Kamijou Touma’s right arm was torn off at the shoulder and flew through the air.

Christian Rosencreutz raised his palm and turned his gaze toward the arm to obliterate it. A little thing like Imagine Breaker could never fully defend against his attack. In fact, its presence had limited Kamijou’s options.

So.

Kamijou clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut.

And he used his own willpower to force them back open.

At the same time, something shot from his right shoulder with a dull thud. The translucent mass was very obviously something other than blood. After grasping the concept of up and down, it audibly took shape. It became a great maw lined with ferocious fangs.

“Fine.”

In other words, a dragon.

Kamijou heard a voice from somewhere. It came from inside his own head.

Another boy spoke clearly.

“I was just about fed up with him myself. No more holding back. If you didn’t do it, I was about to come out on my own!!!”

The boy spoke softly, the whites of his eyes dyed red from burst capillaries.

He sounded like he was casting a curse on someone.

“I only needed that right hand gone.”

Part 15

He had summoned it himself.

Just once in his life, he chose to cheat.

In that instant, the ordinary high school boy ceased to be a mere Level 0.

Between the Lines 3

Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany.

“Mistress, can’t we stop for lunch? It’s well past noon… And how do you plan a trip to Germany without including a chance to eat a Hamburg or a Frankfurt!?”

“What do you think we are here to do? And are you planning to tear up a map and eat it? Here, Lilith, your bottle.”

Dion Fortune complained about her empty stomach, but Mina Mathers only gave her an icy look while soothing the baby in the baby carrier.

The black cat witch was here to track down Anna Sprengel’s footprints, but she had known the answer before the investigation even began.

“If you look to the accepted knowledge in modern Western magic, the answer is obvious. Miss Sprengel was a nonexistent magician. At the time of the Golden cabal’s founding, Westcott wanted to give the new cabal greater history and legitimacy, so he invented the fictional magician so he could create the legend of receiving permission from a secret cabal. It was all a one-man show put on through the medium of letters.”

“And when they searched Europe in the usual way, they never could find the First Temple, right?”

“Felkin and others wanted to see the Secret Chiefs so bad they threw money around to wander all across Europe before finally traveling as far as New Zealand.”

“Why do men love endless adventures so much? Not that I like the idea of giving up before even attempting a search and concluding the legendary First Temple doesn’t physically exist and only existed in the hearts of everyone involved in the Golden cabal.”

“It’s just like how it’s far easier to write off paranormal phenomena as neurological or psychological illusions than to try to prove them as something physical. Just goes to show that people have always fallen back on the same excuses when presented with a challenging problem. But at the time, most members thought there was no point in searching out the physical address when they could simply astral project themselves to another phase and receive messages from the Secret Chiefs and their priestess there. Just like thinking remote work is good enough as long as you’re connected with your coworkers by a fiber optic network. All the while, they had no idea who that vague, faceless shadow really was.”

That was their starting point.

And with that in mind…

“Useless student. In that case, what is this?”

“That’s a really good question, mistress.”

There was no building there.

Only stone blocks lined up on the ground in an L-shape. It was a portion of a building’s foundation. The supposedly nonexistent Licht Liebe Leben Temple had left behind physical evidence, just like any historical ruins.

“Mistress, what does this mean? I just want to drink a local beer already. One of those first-rate dark beers the Germans pride themselves in and are legendary for being cheaper than water.”

“We are not here to drink. Aren’t you supposed to be investigating at the British people’s expense?”

“Ehh? Why should you care about British finances?”

“Because Mina Mathers was originally a magician in London, my foolish student.”

The First Temple really did exist.

Or some remnant of it did.

What purpose was hidden behind this contradiction?

“Ugh. The Anna Sprengel in the secret letters was basically Westcott talking with his own sockpuppet, right? We aren’t going to discover that coroner was parading around Germany in women’s clothing, are we?”

“I honestly think that would be the funniest possible explanation, but I doubt it.”

Mina Mathers crouched down for a closer inspection of the L-shaped foundation.

Testing the carbon isotopes in the materials would provide their accurate age.

Just because they looked old didn’t mean they couldn’t be quite new.

And there were things that only showed up in a very detailed deception.

“Most likely, there was a magician called Anna who specialized in Rosicrucian magic. Anna isn’t exactly a rare name, after all.”

“Bweh? But if she was using a fake name, surely she could have come up with something better than Anna.”

“You would think that, wouldn’t you, Dion Fortune? Or should I say-”

“Cough, cough! How about we stay on topic, mistress? There’s no reason to bring that up!!”

“Violet Firth. It seems like a perfectly cute name to me.”

“Why would you go ahead and say my real name when I made it so obvious I didn’t want you too!?”

The girl who normally went by her super cool screenname was blushing, tearful, and upset. She must not have liked her name for some reason.

But ultimately, this may not have been a rare occurrence in the world of magicians where powerful individuals determined their own value.

If you worried too much what others would think of you and tried to correct yourself to their liking, you would never excel as a magician.

(If you want to go there, my husband was basically unemployed and claimed to be Scottish nobility. He got so obsessed with it he named his own bloodline and invented all sorts of other details to go along with it. He was living proof that if you have the passion, you can continue your teenage cringe well into adulthood.)

“Sigh…”

“Mistress, that was a heavy sigh. Is something wrong?”

“Oh, I was just thinking how tiring it is to be the only sensible person around.”

“Mercilessly delivering kitty claw attacks the instant you lose your temper is your idea of ‘sensible’?”

“I do not punch and I do not use the kitchen knives. That puts me well on the side of sensible.”

“I notice you didn’t mention palette knives. You’re always swinging those metal weapons around.”

“What makes you think you can criticize your own teacher, my hopeless student? Some gentle punishment is in order to swiftly correct such an unfortunately mistaken soror.”

“You’re proving my point! How is this ‘gentle’!? Ow, owww!?”

Mina Mathers immediately began some corporal punishment by shoving a metal spatula against Dion Fortune’s navel and rubbing it over her clothes, but the concept of a healthy educational environment was still a work in progress from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.

“Hee hee. This is only a wife finally reaching the end of her patience and making an adorable scratching attack with only her wrist. Meow, meow☆”

“Stop trying to pass your violence off as adorable! I was the primary victim and my back looked like a tiger had clawed it! Big cats are not the same as housecats! Your student nearly died!!”

The (according to the teacher) nonsensible student’s testimony was thrown out.

Before scraping off a sample, Mina Mathers made an accurate sketch rather than snapping a photo with her phone. All while she soothed Lilith in the baby carrier.

“But if we don’t know what Anna this Anna is, that means she is not a major magician. And not many people would have listened to what a no-name magician said. Even if this mystery Anna had proper Rosicrucian knowledge, she wouldn’t have had a way to pass it on.”

“That would explain why everyone looked down on her, decided to do things their own way, took shortcuts, and skipped pages in the thick grimoires.”

What happened afterwards went without saying.

What would happen if someone got bored after the first few pages of reading a flight manual more than 8cm thick, shut the book, and climbed into the cockpit? It didn’t take much thought to imagine the tragedy that would unfold.

The Rosicrucian cabal was also known as the unseen university.

All that knowledge was lined up in the way calculated to best foster learning, so you could not just cherry pick which parts interested you. But the hobbyists had grabbed only the most impactful and exciting terms and started using the magic without knowing what the incantations and symbols would actually do. They didn’t want to study, but they did want a degree and an academic history. The desire was understandable, but granting it would not make anyone happy. In some cases, it could even put lives at risk.

She must have despaired.

Both at the ignorant masses who refused to learn things in the proper order and at herself for being too unimportant to guide them properly.

The accuracy of her knowledge was not the issue.

No one trusted in her enough to think what she was saying was accurate.

So they looked down on her, so they failed spectacularly, so they suffered meaningless deaths and mental destruction. Again and again. When none of it would have happened if they had just listened.

And….

“She wanted a name for herself. The problem wasn’t her foolish students. Her own lack of fame had ultimately led to all the deaths and destroyed minds. If she were only someone important, she thought she could correctly guide the students who arrived in search of wisdom.”

“…”

“At the same time in England, Westcott wanted a fictional legend behind the creation of the Golden cabal, so he began his faked exchange of letters. It must have come as a shock to him when he sent a letter to an arbitrary address to help create his fictional persona and then received a real reply from someone claiming to be Anna Sprengel.”

“Yeah, that’d scare you.”

“To say the least. His face would also have been burning with embarrassment.”

In modern times, it would be like the ideal wife he had imagined in his head, or the girl he had created on the character creation screen, suddenly coming to life.

Had he felt fear, or joy? Westcott had not discussed the truth of the letters with anyone until the day he died. Not even with the other Golden magicians.

“Was it automatic writing or sleepwalking? Had another Golden magician peeked at his letter and responded as a joke? Or had the ceremonial act of writing fictional letters so many times created Miss Sprengel in distant Germany? As a magician and a coroner, he must have come up with several possible explanations.”

“Yeah, it was smart of him not to go to the church to confess or go running to a mental hospital.”

“Confessing involvement in magic to an Anglican priest would never end well and you can guess the quality of 19th century mental healthcare. He was one of the few sensible members of the eccentric Golden cabal. He cared about keeping up appearances. If he had confided with anyone, the talk of magic cabals and writing letters to himself would have made them think the man had never left his teenage fantasies behind.”

That explained why the foundation of the First Temple remained in Nuremberg.

Miss Sprengel was a role Anna had borrowed to put real weight behind her name.

Traveling all the way to Nuremberg and fabricating these ruins would have been a simple enough task to that end. She had created a surprise for any Golden magician who might travel all the way from England to southern Germany to check.

Dion Fortune sounded disgusted by it all.

“So you’re suggesting Anna read through Westcott’s letters and then altered a part of Nuremberg just to match his fictional story? That seems like a lot.”

“She must have wanted to be thorough. Westcott, Mathers, and the others believed in and respected this Miss Sprengel who appeared out of nowhere, but for Anna, the rise of the world’s largest cabal in London was no more than advertisement for her as a magician said to have played a role in its founding. The end of the 19th century was before World War One, so the center of the world at the time was the UK, not America. London would have been the best possible location for that kind of advertisement.”

However, this puzzle had proved too difficult and the Golden magicians who traveled Europe to meet the Secret Chiefs and their priestess never did find the trick set up in Nuremberg.

“Miss Sprengel was a complete lie,” whispered Mina Mathers. No matter what they found, that remained unchanged. “Even if she was named Anna, she was no more than a half-baked magician who could never hope to defeat Kingsford. But it is true she worried over her problems and poured her heart and soul into preserving and expanding the Rosicrucian cabal. And ultimately, that led to the creation of the Golden cabal in distant England. Most likely, Kingsford recognized Miss Sprengel as a true magician who had accomplished something she could not. No matter how it might have happened.”

Anna Kingsford was real.

Anna Sprengel was also real.

With those two facts established, Black Cat Witch Mina Mathers muttered under her breath.

“Then who exactly is the Christian Rosencreutz both of those legendary women believed in and dedicated themselves to?”

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