2_Chapter 2_ Roman Orthodoxy_1

Suddenly, he noticed excessively cold stares collected on him from nearby. More than one hundred nuns had directly labeled him as a man who makes completely naked young girls cry (not to mention their similarly naked, unconscious leader beside him). The color drained from his face. “Huh, wait, c-calm down, please, Miss Index! This isn’t your personality! Don’t you usually do something more like this? See, Mr. Kamijou’s head is right here! Just chomp it down as hard as you can already Wait, what? Stop, stop! Why do you look so unusually serious?! Th-that was just a figure of speech what are you doing with that saw you could slice up a huge cow with that thing wait a minute sto—Gyaaahhhh?!” “Didn’t I tell you not to make a nuisance of yourself? Hm? What are you clutching your head and crying for?” Stiyl, lying down, tiredly questioned the worn-out Kamijou upon seeing him return to their tent. The tent’s opening had been shut—he may have known something had happened, but he didn’t seem to realize it had to do with Index. If he found out, the crazy priest would end up chasing him all over the camp with a flaming sword in his hands. He would rather avoid any further trouble—after all, Agnes had just plainly condemned him, saying, “…I need to look over our plans. Please leave me alone.” So he crawled under his own blanket, still rubbing his stinging head. The sorcerer had said earlier that using even five or ten minutes of free time to get in a bit of sleep and rest your body was basic battlefield knowledge, but he didn’t think he’d be able to sleep until the pain in his head went away. “Hey, Stiyl?” “What is it? I am very irritated right now, so if possible, I would like you to leave this for later.” “I want to ask something.” “Everyone here has such bad crisis management. So what if it’s the Book of the Law, anyway? They’re running around like chickens with their fool heads cut off for one grimoire! Do they have any idea how many sorcerers are after the girl controlling 103,000 of them—?” “Is there a girl you like?” “Bwah?!” Stiyl’s breath caught in his throat and he broke out into a full-body shiver. Kamijou thought this was something you were supposed to ask at a sleepover. It seemed that was a Japanese-specific custom, however. “Hey, Stiyl. I want to ask something.” “I respect women like Elizabeth I, and St. Martha is a good example of the type I prefer. The anecdote where she exterminates an evil dragon using only prayers of love and charity mesmerizes me. Any other questions?” “The Amakusa-Style Crossist Church…That’s where Kanzaki used to be, isn’t it?” “…” Stiyl narrowed his eyes in thought and fell silent for a bit. He tried to take out a cigarette, but he must have figured that smoking in bed was bad, because his hands stopped halfway there. “Who did you hear that from? Kanzaki wouldn’t have gone into her personal history very easily. Was it Tsuchimikado?” “Yeah. He told me while you were busy being that guy at the beach.” Stiyl’s face basically became a question mark, but Kamijou left that aside and continued. “But, well…Aren’t they Kanzaki’s friends?” He paused, perplexed. “…Are we still doing this? Like the time with Misawa Cram School?” There was one other time when Kamijou and Stiyl had formed a united front in the past. That battle couldn’t be called pretty even in flattery. A lot of people had been hurt, and some had even died. He got the picture—that’s what clashes between sorcerers, or between groups or organizations of them, meant. Their professional world didn’t permit weakness, and that was what created specialists like Index and Stiyl. But… As a professional who knew how strict it was, wouldn’t he be extremely hesitant about this? “We are.” However, Stiyl Magnus gave a prompt decision, without even a second of hesitation. “Of course we are. Whether it’s obeying orders from above—or even if they’re trying to stop me, I already decided I’d do anything to protect her. I’ll kill anyone I need to. I’ll burn them alive. I’ll burn even their corpses to nothing. Whether it’s while she’s watching or while she isn’t.” His own words seemed to pain him. “Don’t get me wrong, Touma Kamijou. Everything I’m doing is for that girl. And if you did something to the contrary, I would turn your bones into ash at this very moment.” “…” Kamijou gulped. When all was said and done, that was the whole reason for the things this man, Stiyl Magnus, did. The fact that he was an English Puritan, the fact that he gained power to fight as a sorcerer, the fact that he came on orders to save the Book of the Law and Orsola—anything and everything. “I made an oath long ago—Relax, and go to sleep. Even if you forget everything, I won’t forget a thing. I will live and die for your sake.” His conclusion was enough to make him shudder. At the same time, a deep sense of human kindness was in his voice. Kamijou carefully chose his next words—he thought it would be rude if he didn’t. “But then why did you get Index involved in something like this?” “I’m not the one who planned this—if I had the choice, she wouldn’t be anywhere near this place,” answered Stiyl smoothly. “But I must not settle things on my own. They would judge her worthless then. If I cannot display value in using Index to my superiors, they might end up sending her back to London. Tearing her away from her life in Academy City would be the most unbearable thing that could happen to her right now.” His voice was casual. Given that Stiyl Magnus was her English Puritan colleague, Kamijou would think he’d be happier if she came back—but Stiyl Magnus spoke in a casual voice. “Go to sleep. We only have two hours until the assault. We’ll start to have nightmares if we talk for much longer.” Leaving it at that, the runic sorcerer shut his mouth and his eyes. How am I supposed to get any sleep when people could start killing one another in a few hours? he wondered. But after wrapping himself in a blanket and closing his eyes, drowsiness must have overtaken his body at some point. In other words, he was asleep before he knew it. Maybe he was a lot more tired from Daihasei Festival preparations than he’d thought. Mm…huh…? Kamijou then opened his eyes for a simple reason—because he felt a weight pressing down on him. Rustle—he perceived the weight of a grown person, saw some kind of swell in his blanket, and felt the soft, warm sensation of human skin. He began to hear a soft sleeper’s breathing from inside the blanket. Hey, wait. Crap, could this be…?! Damn, I just remembered that you can’t lock tents! Normally, Kamijou spent his nights locked in his bathroom, sleeping in his drained bathtub. For a simple reason, too—to stop Index from climbing into his sleeping space no matter what. He was always so thankful he had a long bathtub he could stretch his legs out in. Not only was the crime of invading someone’s sleeping space already having a terrible effect on the healthy young man, but Stiyl was also sleeping next to him right now (and he had just said some serious stuff about oaths before going to sleep). Depending on how this turned out, he could be quite literally beheaded for his crimes. And atop Kamijou’s body as it exuded a cold sweat, a fairly young girl’s body squirmed about. He came in contact with all kinds of defenseless parts of her—he thought his heart would stop. “…(Wh-whoa?! Wait, wait a minute, Index! Hey, sleeping next to me would be one thing, but taking up a position right on top of me—isn’t that going way too far?!)” protested Kamijou hurriedly in a low voice (though he thought he was practically yelling). “Mm…What is it, Touma…?” Then he heard a familiar voice from the entrance to the tent. He looked to see Index, her eyes half-closed in sleepiness, opening the zipper on the tent and about to creep into his blanket. Huh? Kamijou looked at her, aghast. “MghPapa…Lo non posso mangiare alcuno piu qualsiasi piu lungo” The one who came out of the blanket was Agnes Sanctis. She was probably half-asleep and so didn’t realize, but there were less than three inches between their lips. What?! Are you serious?! She has this sleepwalking-into-other-people’s-futons habit, too?! Wait, didn’t she just get done telling me at the shower to go away?! Eeeek! He averted his face from the small lips verging on touching him, then hastily crawled out from under Agnes. As he rolled, he pulled the blanket off of her. “Wha?!” Kamijou was dumbfounded. From out of the blanket appeared Agnes, wearing nothing but a white lace bra and panties with rope sides that were tied in bowknots. And as if she normally did so before sleeping, her habit was neatly folded up in a corner of the tent. Index, in a complete daze, looked at them both and spoke. “…Papa?” “Waaait! Index, I don’t know what’s going on, either! I absolutely did not force a young girl to call me such a particular name! I do not have a habit of wallowing in self-satisfaction like this” Kamijou attempted a vindication, trembling in fear from having gotten his head bitten in regards to Agnes just a little while ago. Index observed his expression of fear. “Ah-ha…Maybe this…is a dream?” “Huh?” “Yeah, even Touma would never be this unfaithful. So this is a dream.” She yawned. “Y-yeah, that’s it! This is a dream! You’re silly—Touma Kamijou is a woman-discarding bad-luck flag master who always runs away. He would never do something this shameless, would he?!” He had been attempting to lead the sleepyhead Index on as if through hypnotism, but… “Mmh. Okay, if this is a dream, then it’s okay. I can bite Touma as much as I want and it’s okay. Since this is a dream. And I can vent all my complaints from today on him and it’s okay. Mmh.” “Huh? Ah, what?! W-wait, Index No, this is all definitely re—?!” Kamijou frantically tried to correct himself, but he couldn’t stop her—she bit down onto his head with all her might. At the healthy male high school student’s shriek—no, scream—Agnes, still half-asleep in her underwear right next to him, jerked awake and sat up. Incidentally, when Stiyl Magnus, who had been sleeping in the same tent, had given one look to all the commotion, he had rolled over to face away from them and gone back to sleep. 4 Eleven o’clock PM. The Amakusa vicar, Saiji Tatemiya, and his forty-seven subordinates assembled at the specified eddy point for the special movement method, Pilgrimage in Miniature. It was no mystical forest or mountain, however. It was in the corner of a huge theme park specializing in confectionery, above which hung a signboard reading PARALLEL SWEETS PARK. The result of a collaborative effort by four major confectionery companies, the power plant–sized site played host to seventy-five sweets shops representing thirty-eight countries from around the world. Several donut-shaped waterways overlapping one another like the Olympic rings formed the basis of its structure. The confectionery booths, which were small as food carts but clearly manned by skillful folk, lined the outer edge of each circular waterway. The spaces inside the waterways were open plazas and spaces for manufacturer exhibitions and events. At the moment, they appeared to be running a campaign involving chilled sweets and sherbets—perfect to battle the lingering heat of summer. The eddy positions established by Tadataka Inou remained fixed, but the development situation of the town changed on a daily basis. This place was still relatively usable. On some eddies, however, there were apartment rooms or bank vaults constructed on them, making this method of movement completely unusable. The members of Amakusa, already having infiltrated Parallel Sweets Park, immediately got to work preparing for their Pilgrimage in Miniature. The method could only be used starting at midnight, but it was an established tactic to prepare beforehand. They would only have five minutes to actually utilize it, after all. Beginning the preparations when that window opened wouldn’t give them enough time. And there was no rule saying they had to finish preparing at midnight exactly, either. They could finish up beforehand, then just flip the switch at midnight to activate it. And though they were preparing sorcery, they weren’t drawing suspicious magic circles or reciting spells or anything. Aside from sneaking into a theme park after closing, the young adults weren’t behaving particularly strangely. A group of four or five of them was having a chat. Some were opening up wrapped hamburgers or bags of potato chips and eating them. A few were pointing at the park map directions and arguing about them. Some were standing around and flipping through guidebooks. All of them were only doing very normal things. Even their clothing looked quite a bit more natural than Index’s or Stiyl’s. One girl was wearing a white camisole and denim shorts. One boy was wearing layered shirts and big, baggy black pants. One woman had taken off her suit jacket and had it hanging on her arms. If there was anything a little weird, it was that ten of them, at most, were carrying things like sports bags, cases for instruments and surfboards, and canvas cases—as transport for weapons. But those who were knowledgeable would understand. Their clothing and casual actions all, without omission, held calculated, magical meaning. The gender distribution. Their age variations. The combinations of clothing colors. The act of the four or five of them forming a circle. The details of their casual chat. The religious rites of eating. The ingredients and color of the hamburger and the ritualistic meaning of eating meat. The number of bites. The timing of taking drinks. The directions the men and women were walking. The positions they stopped at. The way they read their books. The total number of characters on each page. Every one of these aspects was disassembled into “characters” and “symbols” as the wriggling flow of people would form a single spell or magic circle. They picked up the few remaining religious practices in everyday life and reassembled them. Amakusa’s techniques wouldn’t leave a single trace of magic having been used. They had inherited all their ancestors’ history—of those who needed to always be on the run from the shogunate’s cruel oppression. Now then. Saiji Tatemiya, standing on his own, scythed his own sword horizontally. The metallic streetlight raining light below was sliced in half, and it fell to the ground. We’ll show you, Kaori Kanzaki—our priestess. We’ll show you what the diversified religious fusion of Crossism, the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church, has become! he said quietly to himself, tilting his head up to see the night sky. 5 Historic ruins, under the veil of a dark night. That’s what Kamijou thought of Parallel Sweets Park, where the special movement method would be carried out, when he saw it from far away. The man-made amusement center about two hundred meters in front of him was devoid of light. The buildings, normally adorned with the myriad of vivid colors befitting a theme park, were now smothered in blackness. All of the facilities had been designed for fun and entertainment, of course, but it only made it feel even more out of place. An awful, damp breeze began to wipe the sweat on his cheek. He looked away from Parallel Sweets Park. Dozens of sisters all clad in black had assembled in the big department store parking lot; that was a bizarre sight on its own. His eyes casually met with Index’s. She was writing something on her palm with her index finger—some kind of mental preparation, he guessed. She still didn’t seem to want to get him involved in a clash between sorcerers, and she looked more on edge than she had earlier this evening. Maybe her tension was due to the elevated danger; there were significantly fewer Roman Orthodox personnel present now than before. On the other hand, Stiyl, standing a few steps behind her, was smoking a cigarette like he always did. But he would have been coming up with all kinds of plans to protect her. Agnes’s platform sandals galloped over to Kamijou and the others. As one would expect given her age, she was pretty depressed before, during the shower thing and the half-asleep crawling-into-his-blanket thing. Now, though, he couldn’t see any of that on her face. She seemed to be the type who could forget about personal feelings for her job; he didn’t see any of the nervous wobbling from when they first met, either. “We’ve located Amakusa’s main force in Parallel Sweets Park as we predicted. But we can’t get a read on the Book of the Law or Orsola. I don’t believe this to be the case, but this could all be a diversion. Therefore, we haven’t loosened the perimeter our other units in the area are deployed in. Only those who are here will be doing combat.” Agnes spoke as if this was already decided, and she was just making sure they knew. Kamijou mulled over what she said for a moment. “Kinda sucks that we don’t know who in Amakusa has the Book of the Law. Or whether Orsola’s even in the park. Can we still save her? If it takes too long to find her, they could run away with her or take her hostage.” Actually, it would make more sense to use a hostage, since they’re at a disadvantage, wouldn’t it? he wondered. He recalled Orsola’s face. Ignorant of the ways of the world and ignoring the words of others—a girl he was pretty sure would wander off if you took your eyes off her for a second. He didn’t want to see blades or guns to her throat or villains using her as a shield. But Agnes wasn’t about to spend time worrying. “If they escape Parallel Sweets Park, then that’s what our perimeter’s for. As for the hostage bit…meh, I don’t think they’d use her as a shield.” Kamijou cocked his head to the side in confusion. “Amakusa’s number-one objective is to get Orsola to tell them how to decode the Book of the Law, right? If the worst happened and she died while they were using her as a shield, their whole plan would fall apart. If they’re this attached to the book, then Orsola will be safe.” Stiyl spoke up, his cigarette moving around as he did so. “Amakusa’s goal is probably to use the Book of the Law to fill the hole in their strength left by Kanzaki. The fact they’re being so stubborn here means they’re that desperate. If they fail to get their hands on the Book of the Law, it’s all over for them. So they should be treating Orsola like an ice sculpture.” “…Then again, that means we’ll need to find Orsola before Amakusa turns to self-abandonment,” said Kamijou, feeling the scales tipped in an odd direction. If they drove Amakusa’s backs against the wall before they found Orsola, they could self-destruct along with her. But if the Roman Orthodox Church went easy on them, they wouldn’t have the leeway to search for Orsola; given the difference in their forces, there wasn’t much room to hold back. Agnes, too, seemed to understand how difficult it would be to show mercy. “So I want to split our forces. Eighty percent of the Roman Orthodox Church personnel will be the main force and act as a decoy, smashing into Amakusa from the front. Meanwhile, you three will do a search of Parallel Sweets Park as a commando unit. If you locate the Book of the Law and Orsola, please secure them, got it?” She clapped one of her platform sandals on the ground. “If you can’t find her before the special movement method expires at 12:05, then we’ll have to treat her as not having been here. If that happens, please get yourselves out of Parallel Sweets Park. We’ll do a thorough investigation of the park ourselves after neutralizing Amakusa.” If they didn’t find Orsola before the time limit, and she also ended up being inside the park, that in itself would end up being dangerous for her. One had only to look at Parallel Sweets Park to realize it wasn’t very good for a manhunt. After all, from what Agnes had said, there were seventy-five stalls sitting in the park. Kamijou gulped audibly, and Index opened her mouth to speak. “There’s also the eddy itself. If we don’t destroy that, they might be able to run away with Orsola. Touma could easily get rid of it, but we’d need to wait until it opened at midnight in that case. To stop them before that, we could just break the physical items they used to set this up—but Amakusa would have camouflaged everything. Finding all that stuff would be hard.” “Searching for the book and Orsola, and destroying the point…Looks like our schedule’s going to get a little busy,” remarked Stiyl, spitting out his cigarette and crushing it underfoot. Agnes, having determined that they were ready, raised a hand. All the nuns behind her—seventy strong—hoisted their weapons in the same way, sending the ring of cold steel through the night. Their weapons weren’t all the same. There were obvious ones like swords or spears in the crowd, then there were those that Kamijou supposed could be used, like silver staffs and giant crosses. And then there were some crazy things: a giant cogwheel as tall as him and a pine torch. He couldn’t even take a stab at what they were for. Agnes herself had been given a silver staff by one of the sisters. “…This can’t be forgiven,” she said odiously into the darkness, resting her staff against her shoulder. “When Crossism first spread, it was with the goal of saving everyone. And they’re using that power for this? They wield their violence for something so stupid, and they’re forcing us to use even more stupid violence against them. Why can’t they realize such a simple chain of events?” “…” The answer to that was simple—all you had to do was take a step back and think about it—but Kamijou felt like it was a very difficult problem for the people concerned. Of course, he agreed with her opinion as much as the next guy. “Well, maybe this isn’t the right way of putting it…But it’s not only Amakusa—this is why I don’t like sorcerers. It’s people like this. Especially those modern western sorcerer societies that popped up at the start of the twentieth century. They all use Crossist techniques that are underhanded or split hairs with the ideology. I mean, they even typically use the names of the archangels for their magic circles, like the Likeness of God, Michael, and the Power of God, Gabriel. “Even besides the twentieth century, like during the witch-hunting days, alchemists contracted to royalty would always make these declarations. ‘This is a secret technique in Crossism, so it isn’t actually witchcraft. I am no more than another one of God’s faithful sheep,’ they said.” Agnes stomped her feet. They made a clip-clop noise. “They meticulously comb through the Bible from start to finish, scrutinizing every single word from the mouth of God. They plumb it for contradictions and holes while sipping their sweet honey. Their black magic goes against the will of God. That is the identity of our true enemies—not the terrible ones without, but the abominable ones within. Sorcerers are like the politicians who bring countries to ruin by exploiting loopholes in the law. People like us obey the rules and stand in a single-file line to receive our daily bread—and they cut in front of us in line, acting all innocent and stuff. “That’s why all this weird trouble keeps happening. I would not tell them not to partake of their bread—I’d tell ’em to get to the back of the line like they’re supposed to, you know?” Kamijou heard all this and was understandably a little dubious of what sounded like a policy of Crossist supremacy. But the important part was that she couldn’t forgive Amakusa for breaking the rules when everyone else was obeying them (or so Agnes believed). As a side note, Stiyl Magnus, a sorcerer by trade, was smirking and ignoring Agnes’s indignation; Index looked slightly worried. Well, Necessarius is full of sorcerers, so they probably feel offended, huh? But still, Agnes…Girls can really change their expressions a lot. She was all nervous and wobbling around before. What strange creatures. When he glanced around him to change the subject, he only saw Roman Orthodox sisters in every direction. “Still, though. For someone saying all those modest things about not being able to spare all her forces, you got this many people to gather up with a single word,” he remarked in slightly shocked admiration. Agnes smiled. “It is our privilege to outnumber all. We have comrades in 110 countries around the world, you know. Even in Japan there are plenty of churches. In fact, a new house of the lord is being constructed as we speak—the Church of Orsola. I think it was somewhere around here, actually. Right nearby. I think they were bragging that when it was finished, it would be the largest church in Japan. It was supposedly as big as a baseball stadium.” Agnes’s soles softly clipped and clopped. “Orsola?” “Yes. She has quite a record, you know. She spread the teachings of God to three heretic nations, earning her the special privilege to have a church built in her name. She was very good at speaking, wasn’t she?” Now that she mentioned it, Kamijou figured she might have been right. It was just that all the Japanese-speaking foreigners coming out of the woodwork tonight lessened that sense for him. He was grateful for it, of course—Japanese was the only language he could speak. “Once the church is finished, we’ll send you some invitations. But before that, we should settle the issue at hand. Let’s pray for a splendid conclusion with a good aftertaste.” Agnes gave an intrepid grin, hoisted her heavy-looking silver staff on her shoulders, and clapped the heels of her feet twice on the ground. The twelve-inch-high platforms slid off and they turned into normal sandals. It seemed that they were made to come on and off at will, just like the fasteners on their habits. “…Umm. I understand it’s easier to move around like that. But why don’t you keep those off normally?” “Shut up. It’s called fashion. I’m very particular about it.” 6 11:27 PM. Kamijou, Index, and Stiyl arrived at the chain-link fence near Parallel Sweets Park’s employee entrance. Though they had yet to set foot on the battlefield, Kamijou could feel electricity tingling his skin. Someone could have been watching them from the vast expanse of darkness beyond this fence, and they wouldn’t know. Their enemies probably had to limit their hiding places to a single part of the park—but the whole thing was already looking like a giant enemy breadbasket. And she’s in the middle of it… How hard must it have been for Orsola to be left behind, alone? He considered what he’d feel like if dozens of villains with swords and spears were surrounding him. Like shit, he thought bitterly. If I knew this was gonna happen, I would have just forced Orsola into Academy City in the first place… “Hey, Stiyl.” “What?” “Do you think we can really do everything we need to before time runs out? We have to destroy the point, search for the book, and rescue Orsola—all of those things.” Stiyl remained silent for a moment at his question. Index, too, looked between them nervously. After a pause, the sorcerer answered. “Honestly, it’s going to be tough. We don’t even know where in the park the Book of the Law or Orsola is. Plus, there’s actually one piece of information I didn’t tell the Roman Orthodox Church.” Kamijou tilted his head in confusion. “Right before this incident occurred, Kaori Kanzaki, who should have been in England, disappeared. She’s probably acting on behalf of her former subor—Her friends. If we try to deal major damage to Amakusa, the saint might attack.” Kamijou was taken by such surprise and nervousness that he thought his mouth would dry up like a desert. Kaori Kanzaki was such a strong sorcerer that she could suppress a real angel, as she had during the Angel Fall incident. He hadn’t personally seen her in battle, but he found it easy to imagine how dangerous she would be as their enemy. And even he understood clearly that Stiyl’s prediction could very probably end up as reality. “So don’t think about accomplishing all our jobs. The plan was bound to fail in the first place—and we’ve got enough danger on our plate right now. The worst thing that could happen is them deciphering the Book of the Law, so try to prevent that.” “Well, then…” Kamijou looked between Stiyl and Index before continuing. “Then can we make Orsola our top priority?” “I don’t care one way or the other. The book is a complete waste without the decoder. This girl here has all the knowledge of the book itself in her head, so we’re not interested in the original copy, either. And the Roman Orthodox Church is the one that owns it, so even if it’s lost, it’s no skin off the English Puritans’ back.” “I think it’s a good idea, too. And if we told you no, you’d just go charging in there anyway! We’re already short on people, so we all need to stay together.” Both Index and Stiyl, the English Puritan sorcerer, answered without much worry. They probably had their own issues as professionals, but they still accepted the opinion of an entirely ignorant amateur. “All right. Thanks!” They both made rather bewildered faces. Index exaggerated her facial expressions from the start, so that was normal—but Stiyl, depending on your point of view, almost looked comical. He clucked his tongue. “Don’t go cramping my style before we go charging in. The diversion starts at eleven thirty. We’ll be infiltrating when that happens, so we should—” “Touma, don’t relax once we’re inside, okay? Make sure you hide behind me and listen to what I tell you to do, or you’ll be in danger.” “Hah? What are you saying, you silly sister? When it comes to sorcerers, my right hand is like an iron wall. You should be the one hiding behind me and taking my advice.” “…” Kamijou and Index hushed up at their difference in opinion. “—We should be going in soon, so I’d appreciate it if you focused on this. Seriously,” said Stiyl calmly, feeling excluded from the conversation. And right that moment… …there came a bang from the distant admission entrance. “…Hey. Is that really the diversion?” murmured Kamijou, a little dazed at the sight of the giant, burning, roaring pillar of flame. “It means they’ll lose unless they use things like that, Touma. Don’t let down your guard!” said Index. “And it’s not causing an issue. They’re combining sorcery to keep people away and to interrupt. But I don’t feel the mannerisms of Roman Orthodoxy in the technique—I don’t feel that unique accent…It must have been Amakusa. Rather annoying that they have techniques this powerful.” Either way, the time had come. Index pressed herself against the chain-link fence and focused on something past it. After confirming there were no magical traps set up, the three of them jumped the fence and snuck into the unlit park. The park lights were off, making it a dark bubble within a bustling city. Kamijou even felt like the starlight here was stronger than it usually was. They had entered from outside the actual viewing course. Once they passed between a gelato stand and an almond jelly stand, neither of which was much bigger than a mobile home, they entered the course. It was a giant circular path. Right in the middle, there was a waterway—actually, more like a moat—and the surface of the water was about three meters under the walkway. He couldn’t tell how deep it went. There were tons of little stands along the outer edge of the course, on the outer circumference. All they had were counters like the ones on food carts—they weren’t made so that people could eat inside them. The space on the inside part of the waterway had been made into a plaza. There were many tables and chairs there, so that must have been where people took their treats. According to Agnes, there was more than one ring—there were several adjacent ones, forming a shape similar to the Olympic rings. “…” It would have been a whale of a time had they come in the afternoon, but Kamijou knew they were in a different world right now. Without any lights, all the tiny stalls with their rustic, closed shutters easily felt like they were refusing them. The place felt eerie, like a person’s face lit up by a flashlight from below. Even the ravenous Index, normally the merriest of them all, was just looking into the darkness in tension. “Touma, Touma. We don’t have time. If we’re gonna look for Orsola, we have to start.” “Right—we only have thirty minutes. We could also set up an ambush if we found the eddy, but given the situation I’d say the odds of that are pretty low,” said Stiyl, who, unusually, wasn’t smoking so that he could blend into the night. They started to hear the sounds of angry roaring, shouting, things breaking, and explosions. It seemed the Roman Orthodox and Amakusa had clashed in earnest. “R-right. Got it.” The moment the words left his mouth, they heard a metallic thump. Huh? he thought, inadvertently turning his head upward toward the source of the noise, when… …from the roof of the gelato specialty shop came four boys and girls leaping through the air. All of them were gripping western-style swords. “?!” Kamijou pushed Index out of the way and Stiyl caught her neck and pulled her in to him. A moment later… Slice came the blades swinging straight down, leaving vestiges of reflected moonlight in their wakes. Like a bolt of lightning, they struck at the point Index had just left. One young man and three young women. All were about the same age as Kamijou. Instead of eccentric habits, they wore what you would if you were going for a walk through downtown. Their ordinary clothing, however, made the sinister glistening of the swords in their hands feel intensely out of place. In an annoyed tone, Stiyl said, “A hand and a half sword, a bastard sword, a boar tuck, and a dress sword. Man, the people in this country really have a thing for our culture, don’t they?!” Kamijou thought to himself that those names were right out of a fantasy role-playing game. Their designs were diverse, their sizes ranging from a little more than a meter to a little less than two. And one of them, he had no idea what it was designed for—it looked like a rapier, except the very tip of it was a ball. Damn…it. The diversion didn’t pull them away one bit, did it?! The four of them landed, separating him from the other two. Considering how narrow the path was, he couldn’t just go around them and join back up with his comrades, either. Stiyl scattered a few rune cards and whipped out a flame sword, saying, “Take this. Keep it close if you don’t want to die!” He removed something from inside his clothing and threw it to Kamijou. He frantically caught it—it was a silver cross on a necklace. “This is…” …What do I do with it? As he brought his face up to ask, though, one of the Amakusa girls silently sent the tip of a slender, double-edged sword about the length of a deck brush (apparently called a “dress sword”) roaring toward him. “Whaa?!” Panicking, Kamijou jumped backward to dodge it. But then the girl charged, and he couldn’t deal with it. The only reason he was able to dodge the next horizontal stroke was because he tripped over his own feet and fell onto his back. “Watch out, Touma” A moment after hearing Index’s shout, he saw the girl bringing the dress sword down like a guillotine. He didn’t break his fall; instead, he continued his backward roll and managed to evade it. She didn’t look like she’d used any magic at all. The Imagine Breaker in his right hand wouldn’t help him at all in a situation like this. As soon as he tried to do anything with it, she’d cleave it right off. “Index!” shouted Kamijou, but there were four weapon-wielding assassins in the way, so he couldn’t leap in carelessly. Stiyl was standing in front of Index with his flame sword in order to protect her, but two of the assassins went charging at them, intent on piercing both the shielding Stiyl and Index’s delicate body with their swords. Then there was a dull boom “—…?!” Kamijou thought his heart was going to stop when he saw what was happening, but upon observing calmly, he saw that not a single drop of blood had been spilled. In fact, the two assassins who had rammed into Stiyl had gone straight through him. A mirage. The false image swayed, struck a sarcastic smile, and disappeared into the void. For some reason, the smile wasn’t directed at the Amakusa assassins—it kind of seemed like his eyes were locked right on Kamijou’s. He no longer saw either of them anywhere. The four assassins all turned their gazes to Kamijou. Hey, wait…A-aren’t you supposed to agree on a signal or a meeting place when we have to run?! Are they making me the decoy again?! Something like this happened before, too. Back during the whole alchemist thing Dazed and confused and now on his own, Kamijou turned his back to the enemy and began to run as fast as he could. His sudden decision seemed to catch them off guard. He looked behind him as he ran to see that three of the assassins had spread out. Maybe they were searching for the disappeared Index and Stiyl. And the last one… Only the girl who had pointed her sword at him before was pursuing him. And she was fast. She was catching up to him, fast as a bird, despite holding such a heavy sword. Agh…shit…! I won’t get away from her by running straight! In panic, he strayed from the circular viewing course and dove into a cramped space not seventy centimeters wide between two shops. It wasn’t even an alleyway—it was just a gap. He tried to run through the narrow gap, but he tripped over something and fell spectacularly to the ground. Apparently they had planned to renovate the shops, because there were signboards on the wall and a box of construction materials on the ground. That’s what Kamijou had tripped over. Gah…! Don’t leave your crap lying out like this! Even if he continued to run away, he’d find the girl’s sword sticking through his back. He gave a quick glance at the contents of the scattered toolbox, looking for something that could serve as a weapon. But he quickly realized it was futile—he didn’t think he’d be able to beat a real sword by swinging around a hammer. His assailant was quite capable of slicing in two anything he found to throw at her. …Slicing them? In that case Then, the girl holding the dress sword slid around the corner on her shoe soles and entered the gap as if she were a car drifting around it. He grabbed a toothpaste-like bottle from the various tools littering the ground and immediately threw it behind him at her. The girl, without realizing what was coming, swung her sword to cut it down and dove into the gap. “” He rose right away and crossed his arms in front of his head to protect it. Her sword didn’t stop. Her strike came roaring down perfectly vertically, cutting the wind itself, and closed in to slice both him and his upraised arms in two. Thump. There was a dull noise, but the sword that struck his arms didn’t even make it past one layer of skin. Inside the toothpaste-like tube had been grease used for construction. The sticky substance had completely dulled the sword’s sharpness like blood or animal fat stuck to a katana. If her weapon had been as heavy as a Japanese katana, then even with a dulled blade, it probably would have broken his arm. But he couldn’t expect a dress sword—a rapier, extravagantly adorned with precious stones—to do that. “?!” The girl panicked and tried to ready her dress sword again… “Too slow” …but before she could, he waved both hands to get the sword off of him and tackled the girl right in the stomach, bringing his arms around her. His entire body weight was enough to send her falling to the ground on her back. Kamijou was too much of a softie, though, not to put his hands around her head to prevent it from slamming into the ground. As they collided, the girl went oof as the air left her lungs, and she hadn’t moved since then. She had essentially been hit with a judo throw without being able to take the fall, so there was really no helping it. “…Goddamn it. That hurt.” After just checking to make sure the girl wasn’t hurt, Kamijou sank to the ground. When he looked up, he saw a night sky, enclosed on four sides by building walls. It was a sight he was used to seeing in alleys. Back-alley brawls in Academy City didn’t obey general Japanese common sense—they were far different from the normal, the average, the standard references. There were people who flung around strange powers that could be as dangerous as a handgun depending on how they used them. And there were also plenty of delinquents with special weapons meant to fight against such espers. Kamijou had still been able to move his body without being overtaken by fear when he saw the blade because it was just something else he’d gotten used to. He stayed there for a few moments to catch his breath, but finally grabbed the dress sword the girl was carrying. It was slender but felt oddly heavy—maybe it had something to do with its center of gravity. He thought for a moment about whether or not he would be able to use it, but he gave up on that. He didn’t even know how to hold a sword properly, so he didn’t think he’d be able to deal an effective blow with one. And even if he did strike well with this real sword, just thinking about what it would do to the opponent made his spine freeze. It may have lost a lot of its sharpness, but he didn’t want to go swinging it around. Still, if he left the sword here, he’d have a problem when the Amakusa girl woke up. He decided to leave the area, dragging the sword behind him. Damn, are Index and Stiyl all right? What about Orsola? Should I meet up with them first or go search for her by myself? This was all definitely because they hadn’t decided on how to contact one another or on a meeting point to get to later. But he had never even thought they might end up taking separate paths, so what was he supposed to do? As he mulled over what course to take, he left the gap between shops, sword dragging behind him, and returned to the circular viewing course— —when just then, someone suddenly rammed into him from the side. “?!” It was the perfect sneak attack, launched from the shadow cast by the wall of a shop. He lost his balance, then immediately threw his sword to the side—he at least wanted to avoid impaling himself the instant he fell over. Things had completely switched around from just a minute ago as he was tackled to the ground. He was able to take the fall, though, so he didn’t suffer as heavy damage as the girl had. He clenched his fists to defend against being straddled and attacked further… “…What?” …but he opened them back up. If this were an enemy, something was odd. A black hood, a black habit, and not a single inch of skin exposed from finger to toe despite this heat…The sister’s arms were behind her back, with her right hand and left elbow—and vice versa—stuck together, all wrapped up with white sticky tape. Her mouth had been sealed with the same tape, too. He looked closer to see that it was like cloth, and there were tons of strange symbols written all over it that looked kind of like slightly misshapen Japanese characters. And, well, anyone could have looked to see it was Orsola Aquinas. Slump. Kamijou could feel his whole body draining of strength at the overwhelming relief. “Mgh! Mghh-mgh mhhff mggh mffh mgh mmmm mgh mmmmgh mgh ffffm mmmff!” Orsola, her mouth covered by the strange-looking amulet thing, was looking at him, desperately trying to convey something to him. “Huh? You came all the way to Japan, so you want to go see real-life sumo wrestlers, you say? You know, not every single person in this country does sumo wrestling. You really are an old lady, aren’t you?” “Mgghhh” “What? Hey, wait, that was a joke” Before he could defend himself, a fairly serious head-butt crashed into the pit of his stomach. He fell onto the ground with Orsola. At first he just coughed a few times, but then he noticed his hand on something soft. She didn’t seem to realize it, but it was her large, warm, pulse-conveying chest. Buh! Bghahh?! His face turned bright red as he crawled out from underneath her, then ran his right index finger along the talisman thing covering her mouth. She looked surprised for a moment—he had touched her, though indirectly, on the lips—but a moment later, when she saw how the talisman thing had come off so naturally, her surprise was multiplied by a factor of ten. “E-excuse me. You are the one who I met at the bus stop earlier, aren’t you? But, why…?” “I came to rescue you, obviously! Ah, shit, I’ll explain what’s going on later. Let’s just get out of here!” Kamijou looked to and fro, and after making sure nobody was around, he picked up the dress sword he had thrown to the ground before. Orsola was gaping a little. She spoke—not to him but to herself. “Wh-what? “Are you really…here to rescue me? And it has nothing to do with the Book of the Law…?” “Like I give a shit about something that stupid! Do I look weird enough to you that I’d come all this way for one old book?!” He madly scratched at his head and shouted, causing Orsola’s shoulders to quiver. “I-I see. Umm, well…Thank you for taking care of me.” “…Sure. I don’t really need thanks or anything. Anyway, what are you doing out here? What happened to Amakusa?” “Th-they appear to be fighting with the Roman Orthodox Church. I managed to escape in the chaos…Amakusa does not seem to be familiar with this sort of restraining and confinement, however.” Dress sword in hand, he went behind her and destroyed the seals on her arms as well. Orsola rubbed her now-freed hands and said, “Th-thank you very much. But, hmm…How did you…?” “Hm? I just have that kind of ability…But it’s complicated, so maybe I shouldn’t bother with any weird explanations. You’d be stumped if I suddenly started rambling about scientific ability development, right? And by the way, you sure do seem calm in this situation. You’ll need to be a little more serious than that if we’re going to get away.” “Nevertheless, they have been fighting near the entrance, and I was unable to go over the fence because my hands were tied—what should I have done? I had no choice, so I was searching for another…ex—?” Before Orsola could finish, he grabbed her arm and dove into the narrow space between the two shops again. She nearly screamed when she saw the Amakusa girl lying there, but… “…Quiet!” …he hissed a warning and covered her mouth with his right hand. They ran through the space and pressed themselves against the back wall of one of the shops. The pitter-patter of multiple sets of footsteps echoed from the front of the circular viewing course, then went away. It felt to him like they had realized Orsola had escaped and were looking for her rather than trying to follow him or Index and Stiyl. Them gripping strange swords and axes and hurling orders every which way struck him as extremely ominous. When he heard their footsteps grow distant, Kamijou slid down the wall onto the ground. Orsola did the same, sitting elegantly next to him. 7 The place where Kamijou and Orsola took a seat seemed to be in a blind spot for Amakusa. There was a handful of low-hanging trees in the area behind the shop, and if they kept themselves low, they wouldn’t be seen from afar. But on the other hand, now that they’d found themselves a little hiding place, they were now unable to make a move. They heard the footsteps of the young men and women of Amakusa running around the viewing course just nearby intermittently, so if they were to leave they would be spotted right away. He was worried about Index and Stiyl. Now that he’d secured Orsola’s safety, if they were stuck in the park unable to escape, they would be in needless danger. But there was no way for him to contact them, and it would be reckless to leave this place and look around the park for them. “That special movement method thing can only be used from 12:00 to 12:05, so if we just stay put, it would ruin Amakusa’s plan, but…” He went to check the clock on his cell phone, but the liquid crystal display backlight would stand out in this darkness, so he decided against it. It’d be real nice if I could use this to contact them, though, he thought. Index’s cheapo phone was in their cat’s mouth, and there was no way for him to know Stiyl’s number. When he stretched his legs, still sitting, they met the hilt of the dress sword he’d put on the ground. The sound and feeling brought Kamijou’s attention from the inside back to the outside. And that made him finally notice how heavy his breathing was. He wiped his forehead and his hand came back with a lot more sweat than normal. Perhaps it was because of the tension—but just moving his body a little had made him break out into a sweat like he’d just run a marathon. Oh? noticed Orsola, who took the lace handkerchief out of her sleeve. Kamijou tried to back away from her on the ground—he had a bad feeling about this. “N-no. Don’t worry, it’s not a problem and look it will get your handkerchief dirty and this happened at the bus stop too didn’t it and mgh?!” Before he could finish, he found the flower-scented handkerchief pressed against his face despite his argument. “If you do not wipe it properly, you could come down with a summer cold. Now, then. Come to think of it, I get the feeling I did this sort of thing at the bus stop, too.” “I just said that same thing eight seconds ago, you know! You’re just like an old lady—you never listen to people, and wait that hurts, that hurts Please, could you not stuff it in my mouth and no—grgh?!” Kamijou, suffocating a little, desperately tried to repel this handkerchief assault, but he came up empty. Once Orsola had thoroughly deployed her handkerchief, she gave such a brilliant smile that he could almost see the nimbus behind her. “Excuse me, but you were a citizen of Academy City, were you not?” He coughed and groaned. “…Hm? Well, yeah.” “Then forgive me for asking, but what would someone from Academy City be doing in a place like this? It doesn’t seem to be unrelated to the Roman Orthodox Church’s movements, but I was of the impression there were no churches in Academy City.” Her voice sounded mystified. His answer, on the contrary, made it sound unimportant. “Well, it’s a little special in my case. I know a couple English Puritans. I just got wrapped up all of a sudden in this, and now they’re making me help them with God knows what.” Her shoulders twitched. Her action looked like she had heard something she couldn’t ignore. “Umm, should I not have? You were part of Roman Orthodoxy, right? Do the Roman Orthodox and English Puritans not get along with each other?” “No, that isn’t it at all.” She made a slow movement, as if she were thinking about something. “I would like to make certain—you are helping now because you were requested to cooperate by the English Puritan Church, yes?” “That’s right.” Kamijou nodded along, and Orsola stopped for a moment in thought. “Oh? You are sweating a bit, aren’t you?” “No, seriously, I’m fine already!” “So then you are of English Puritan descent, not Roman Orthodox?” “Urgh, now we’re back on topic?! W-well, no, it’s nothing crazy like that. Oh, and just so you know, I don’t have any pull with them. I’m from Academy City, after all.” “I…see.” For some reason, she smiled in relief. “Indeed you are. It is obvious that one like you is better off having no connection to our world of the church.” “…That right? Hmm. Then I guess there’s really no point in my holding on to this,” he said, looking at the cross Stiyl had given to him when they parted ways. He didn’t know what kind of power it had, but he’d caught it with his right hand, so it probably didn’t do anything anymore. “Oh. Did you receive that from your English Puritan acquaintance?” “You can tell?” “Crossism may be one religion, but there are various forms and types of the cross—like the Latin cross, the Celtic cross, the Maltese cross, Saint Andrew’s cross, the pectoral cross, and the papal cross.” “Huh, I see. But there’s no point in my hanging on to this. I’d feel bad holding it as someone, er, outside the profession. So I’d like to give it to you, if that’s okay.” He thought he’d said it casually, but Orsola nearly jumped off the ground. “Oh, my, is that all right?!” “Um, yeah, sure. I don’t know why Stiyl gave it to me at all, but it probably doesn’t have much meaning. I mean, he knows I can’t use magic…He likes being sarcastic, so he could have just given it to me as a prank. Also, I don’t think this cross has any value anymore. I don’t have a clue about sorcery, but my right hand already touched it, after all,” said Kamijou, handing the cross necklace over to Orsola. But then for some reason, she grabbed his hand like she was giving him a handshake. Then, she covered it with her other hand. “I have just one request to make of you.” “Eh, uh…what?” The blundering Kamijou’s voice nearly cracked at the sensation—her hands were softer than he’d imagined. “Would you be willing to put this around my neck yourself?” “Huh? Well, sure, I don’t care.” At his answer, Orsola closed her eyes and raised her chin to make it easier to put the necklace on her. It almost seemed kind of like she was looking for a kiss, and he dropped his gaze in a fluster. But that only brought into view her chest—which was ample already, now emphasized even further by her upturned chin. Bgah?! He nearly exploded. “? Is there something the matter?” “N-no…Nothing’s wrong! Seriously, nothing!” “?” Orsola seemed confused, her eyes still closed. Flustered, he undid the thin necklace clasp. And then he brought it around Orsola’s throat, which was covered by white cloth. After doing that, he realized he should have just gone behind her. When he did it from the front like this, it looked like he was trying to embrace her. It immediately set him on edge. His fingers touched the back of her neck. After his hands rattled a few times in nervousness, he finally managed to link the necklace chain back together. Looking satisfied, she ran her fingers over the cross at her chest a few times. He watched them nonchalantly, and then realized his eyes were being sucked in by the swelling of her chest and quickly looked away. Even paying the least bit of attention to it would bring him to ruin. Unable to endure the silence, he groped around for any topic at all to talk about. “By the way, you knew how to read the Book of the Law, didn’t you?” “The way to read it—well, it’s more like the way to decode its encryption, but…” During the first part of her sentence she looked carefree, but then her body tensed up. “Uhh, no, that’s not it. I don’t want you to tell me. I just kind of wanted to know why you were investigating that book in the first place. It’s pretty dangerous, isn’t it?” Orsola stared at him for a little while but finally loosened up. “It would not be wrong to say that I desired power from it,” she said, shaking her head. “Do you know about the original copies of grimoires? Or how they cannot be destroyed by any means?” “Mm. Yeah. I only heard it from someone, though. What was it? The characters, phrases, and sentences in a grimoire are like magic circles or something?” “Yes. A grimoire is like a blueprint. It means that grimoires that show how to control lightning will end up also having safety measures that create lightning. With ones as strong as the original copies, even if a person has no mana, it amplifies the minute energies flowing from the earth, becoming a self-defense magic circle that continues to work almost permanently.” She briefly looked like she was thinking about something. “With current technology, it is impossible to get rid of grimoires that have reached this state. The most that can be done is to seal it so that nobody may ever read it. “However,” she continued, “that is with current technology. If the original text is a kind of magic circle, then by appending characters and phrases to certain places to break the magic circle, like using a lever to switch rails on a train track, one should be able to use the magic circle against itself—in other words, to force the original text to destroy itself.” And at the end, she said clearly, “The power of grimoires doesn’t bring anyone happiness. The only thing they create is conflict. That’s why I was investigating its inner workings—in order to destroy these kinds of grimoires.” Kamijou looked at Orsola again. She had worked out a method to decode the Book of the Law, so he had thought her mind was swimming with eagerness to obtain the book’s power—but it was actually the exact opposite. She wanted to rob the book of its dangerous powers—that’s the only reason she researched grimoires. He felt very slightly relieved at that, and then— —there was a dull bang! In front of the shop—near the viewing course, he thought. But before he could stand up in a hurry, something came into sight. Whoosh—something was dancing in the night sky. It looked like a person. It was a priest, with red hair and black clothing. “St…Stiyl?!” Before Kamijou could say anything, Stiyl Magnus fell quickly toward the ground. He crashed straight into the ground on his back, ruining the low shrubbery that had been concealing them. There were cuts all over his clothing, made by a bladed object, and blood was dripping from his skin. There was a loud noise in front of the shop, and he got blown all the way here—did he come over all that?! As Kamijou imagined the unimaginable, Stiyl, on the ground, said, “Damn…it. Touma…Kamijou? What are you doing? Run away, now” No sooner had he thought Huh? than the two side walls of the shop he had his back to began to swell outward like a living being. “?!” In front of Kamijou, who couldn’t understand what was happening, almost as if a killer whale were piercing the ocean surface and jumping, the shop walls smashed into a thousand pieces and someone jumped out. Behind the person, the building collapsed, its supports gone. Pieces of the building as thick as a human arm came clattering down right next to him—but he didn’t move a muscle. In fact, he was smiling. The man had a slender build, and yet he was wearing a T-shirt and jeans that didn’t fit him—they were so big a sumo wrestler could have worn them. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties. There were red crosses on his T-shirt’s white fabric, centered on his right arm. His hair looked like it had been intentionally spiked up with gel or something, but the most striking feature was its color. It was overwhelmingly black. His hair, which was probably black already and then dyed black, had an odd, beetle-like luster. The laces on his basketball shoes were abnormally long—more than a meter. With laces that length, Kamijou didn’t think you would trip over them even if you mistakenly stepped on them because of how much leeway you had. There was a necklace around his neck that looked like a leather strap, and four or five ten-centimeter-long battery-powered fans hung from it. His fashion sense was strange, and Kamijou couldn’t quite tell what he was going for. But of course, the most inexplicable thing about him was what he was holding in his right hand. A flamberge. A two-handed French sword from the seventeenth century more than 180 centimeters in length. The undulations on the surface of the blade were its main characteristic—the curves were made to make wounds larger. Originally they were metal, or, if they were being used ceremonially, made of beaten gold. But this blade was pure white. It was like a plastic model one step away from completion. Maybe he had shaved a dinosaur bone down to use for it, or maybe it was a unique cluster of carbon—or maybe an aerospace material. Kamijou was a simple high school student, so he couldn’t make the guess just by looking at it a little. At the very least, though, it didn’t look like metal. The large sword didn’t fit with modern society no matter how you looked at it, but this man was holding it lightly with one hand. “Heh-heh. What are you doin’, mister Puritan priest? Come on—where’d your pride as an English gentleman go? Show it to me—show it to Saiji Tatemiya. Man, you wouldn’t even be able to protect one girl like this.” Stiyl swore bitterly under his breath and took out rune cards. He wasn’t looking at the danger in front of him, this man with the sword. He was looking beyond that—at a single sister in white, standing ready on the viewing course on the other side of the destroyed shop. Her fate was his top priority. “Did you fight this whole time while protecting her…?” muttered Kamijou absently. Stiyl’s sorcery was like a game where you had to secure control points. He could only use powerful magic in places he had his rune cards hung up. For someone like him, this battle was something to be avoided. If he had to fight while moving the whole time, he wouldn’t have time for his control-point-securing game. And if he had to fight in that situation while protecting Index on top of that, he had no choice but to literally use anything, even his body, as a shield. “Don’t…waste time thinking about things you don’t need to,” said Stiyl in a voice like he was going to spit up blood. “…All right, we’ve got Orsola Aquinas secured. As always, I can’t tell whether that luck of yours is good or bad…Anyway, now we just need to make an opening and escape. We don’t need to defeat that guy—if we can get away, we’ll win.” Stiyl tried to stand up on his trembling feet, but he didn’t seem able to put much strength into them. Saiji Tatemiya watched him merrily for a moment, then switched his gaze to Orsola. “And why do we have to butt heads with each other at a time like this, anyway? I explained this about a million times. Orsola Aquinas…We have no intention of harming you.” The one explaining spoke in a flimsy tone that didn’t seem to have much in the way of persuasive power. It even sounded like he was implying disappointment at his own subordinates for having let Orsola escape. Orsola looked at the destroyed shop, the wounded Stiyl, and then Tatemiya’s flamberge, then said, “I am certainly aware that your words are filled with hope. However, I cannot have faith in peace gained through the use of weapons.” “That’s a shame. I mean, it’s not like it will do you any good to go back to the Roman Orthodox.” Tatemiya swung the sword in his right hand around a bit, as if checking his shoulders. “…” Kamijou silently moved in front of Orsola to cover her. He didn’t have a weapon. He couldn’t win against this opponent by swinging around something he was unfamiliar with. It would probably be better not to go with any weapon rather than a sword that was really heavy and he couldn’t use. Tatemiya first looked at Kamijou’s face, then at the dress sword at his feet. “No martial arts stance, and no Soul Arm. And no magical symbols hidden in your clothes, either. Completely unarmed, in the purest sense of the word, eh? Hah, I didn’t intend to cross swords with an amateur, but…well, we can’t all have what we want. Did you steal that sword from Uragami?” He was emitting a chilling, invisible pressure that seemed to be twisting and warping the outline of his body. Kamijou didn’t recall any name like that, but… “If you mean your lackey, she’s sleeping over there. I made sure she didn’t hit the back of her head, though, so she’s alive.” “…What, and that makes it all right? You makin’ fun of us or something?” Tatemiya’s tone now sounded anything but lighthearted. Kamijou felt like it gave him a glimpse of the man’s humanity. His opponent wasn’t just a monster—he was a person who would get angry over the safety of a friend. “Then if you’re still able to fight for someone else, could you please put that sword down? I don’t want to fight someone like you if I don’t have to.” “Oh, sure, I’d be all for it, but we’ve got our own problems, y’see. Our main enemy might be the Roman Orthodox, but if you English Puritans are connected to this, then we can’t let you off the hook, either. Plus, we can’t give Orsola to anyone like that.” Tatemiya swung his big, nearly six-foot sword lightly up in the air like a cheerleader baton before continuing. “That means you’re already a target, too. ’Course, if you drop to your knees right now and surrender, you won’t have to see any blood you don’t want to.” He was smiling, but his voice sounded apologetic. He probably predicted how Kamijou would answer before he even made the proposition. Kamijou was scared, for sure. He knew what professional sorcerers were like. The ones who gave the most trouble were those who didn’t overestimate magic. People with absolute power, like Aureolus’s alchemy, would only prepare one trump card. On the other hand, those without an excessive faith in trump cards, like Motoharu Tsuchimikado, would instead set up their hand with enough cards, countless cards, to make up for it. Saiji clearly belonged to the second group. He could probably send Kamijou’s head flying with one sweep of that flamberge, even without using magic. One look at his ability to take down Stiyl without suffering a single wound (protecting Index though the sorcerer may have been) spoke volumes of the man’s depth. Kamijou shuddered—this wasn’t someone he could beat squarely. It was like telling a relatively quick-footed child to race an Olympic track-and-field athlete. Would it be better…to obey and surrender? He couldn’t match the man’s skill, nor had he set anything up beforehand to get around that. Still… What would happen to Stiyl? The priest, still bent over, was glaring at Tatemiya, his breathing ragged. Stiyl had his own goals—and he was here because he believed they would do Index good. For him, failure just wasn’t an option. Neither the hopeless reality nor any words Kamijou could give would be enough to hold Stiyl Magnus down. And if Kamijou couldn’t stop him… …then it was pretty evident what was waiting for him. What would happen to Index? Even now, the girl looked like she’d spring between Kamijou and Tatemiya given the slightest opportunity. If Stiyl and Tatemiya clashed, if they exchanged blows even once, they wouldn’t be able to play the surrender card anymore. If it came to that, she’d probably do anything to let Kamijou, a sorcery amateur, escape. No matter how little strength they had—no matter how clear the gap in their power was—no matter how much Kamijou hoped against it. And finally… What would happen to Orsola? The Roman Orthodox sister was uneasily glancing back and forth between Kamijou and Tatemiya. Saiji Tatemiya desired the knowledge, the technique, the power that the Book of the Law possessed. So long as that was true, then Orsola wouldn’t be killed here. In fact, they would probably even make sure any stray bullets didn’t strike her. But if Orsola were taken away from here, she’d be brought to Amakusa’s base. If she were to refuse to instruct them on the way to decode the Book of the Law, then it was pretty clear what would be in store for her. Tatemiya and Amakusa weren’t looking for Orsola Aquinas herself, but rather the way to decipher the Book of the Law. He didn’t want to think about what would become of her after they got the information they needed. “The way to read it—well, it’s more like the way to decode its encryption, but…” —And she never even wanted the book’s power. “It would not be wrong to say that I desired power from it.” —And she was trying her hardest not to cause this to happen. “One should be able to use the magic circle against itself—in other words, to force the original text to destroy itself.” —These people smiling before him were scorning all her tireless efforts, ignoring her feelings, and trying to use her as a tool for their own greed. “The power of grimoires doesn’t bring anyone happiness. The only thing they create is conflict. That’s why I was investigating its inner workings—in order to destroy these kinds of grimoires.” Kamijou pushed the dress sword aside with his foot and took a step forward. Whether it be unsightly or comical, Kamijou was the only one here who could clench his fist and stand up to them. Did he have a reason to loosen those five tightened fingers? “…Don’t look down on me,” said Kamijou lowly, putting even more force into his tightly gripped right fist. Saiji Tatemiya, who had been watching him, gave a sigh that sounded sincerely regretful. “Those’re some eyes you’ve got there. Glaring at me like that’s gonna make me feel sorry for you. No, no, I’m seriously sorry about this. I know what I gotta do, but that straightforward response—it’s starting to make me not want to kill ya.” Tatemiya shook his undulating flamberge lightly. “But if you say so, then who am I to refuse? It’s your funeral.” Right as those words left his mouth… Kamijou heard the loud bang of an explosion. The sound of Tatemiya’s feet hitting the ground alone had explosive energy. Before Kamijou’s body could even freeze in tension, his opponent took his first step forward. One more step until his blade would reach. When he saw the light glinting off the sword blade, conveying the man’s brute force, Kamijou’s mind was stunned, like a frog in a snake’s gaze. He reflexively thought to cover his face with his hands, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough to protect him. Gh, gah…! Don’t fear…just move Kamijou commanded his quivering body in desperation and finally took his first step of a run. Not backward but forward. Tatemiya saw Kamijou charge at him from a little bit to the right and actually gave a dubious expression. He probably couldn’t figure out why an amateur was jumping straight into his attack range. “Hah” Exhaling, Tatemiya brought his sword straight down over him like a bolt of lightning. There was a roaring crack as it split the quiet night air. A single, decisive attack meant to split Kamijou, speeding at him like a bullet, in two. “…!” This time, it wasn’t just a little bit—he devoted his entire body and jumped at a ninety-degree angle to the right. The giant blade cleaved through the droplets of sweat dancing in the air. Jumping in a way that completely ignored all of his momentum put a huge load on his ankles. Kamijou failed to land, lost his balance, and crashed into the back wall of a store beside them. “Shh” Then, Tatemiya, rotating his entire body, whipped his blade to the side in a straight horizontal sweep. But it seemed like he noticed it after he started the swing…that Kamijou, his back against the wall, was smiling fearlessly. I can do this… Kamijou crouched down as far as he possibly could. He knew that if he fled to the side when his opponent brought the sword down, he’d normally follow up with a horizontal slash. Bringing the sword up again would have created an additional step. With his body as low as he could get it, he charged Tatemiya, his face low enough that he could lick the ground. He didn’t need to think about anything but a horizontal slashing attack. Even if Tatemiya had tried to unleash a top-to-bottom one, he’d be a beat too late. If he did that, then Kamijou’s fist would reach him before he could swing his sword completely. So Saiji Tatemiya had gone with a directly horizontal sweep, just as Kamijou had predicted from the beginning. Kamijou let the sword graze right over his head, and though his heart was in the iron grip of terror… “Woh…ohh” he shouted, clenched his fist, and lunged right into Tatemiya. Even Orsola, his ally, gulped at his drive. Right after Tatemiya swung his powerful, two-handed stroke, he couldn’t do anything about Kamijou’s fist… And then… Saiji Tatemiya vanished. Tatemiya had been right in front of him, but now he was about one meter back. And his sword, which had completed a horizontal strike, was somehow already prepared over his head. It was like he had turned back time and redone it. No—as if he had used an illusion or something to lure Touma Kamijou out. “Ah…?—?!” A chill came over him, and he rolled to the side, when… Roar The vertical attack split the ground in two like a piece of paper being torn apart. Because of all the friction, the hollowed-out earth glowed orange like magma. No one could look at this and think it obeyed any physical laws. Magic?—Then I’ll…! He put energy into his right hand. If that sword was a magical article, then he might be able to destroy it by touching it with his right hand. So he went to thrust his fist toward the blade coming at him. “No…! Don’t do it! Touma” He just barely stopped his fist at Index’s shout. Defenselessly, he spotted the young girl thoughtlessly running out to him out of the corner of his eye. No way…You mean it’s not magic?! Tatemiya’s behavior. That downward swing, so fast he couldn’t see it, and that powerful attack that had split the ground open. Were all of those simply feats of strength? He shuddered. “No, don’t! Index, don’t come over here” he shouted, but it didn’t sway her. Tatemiya’s blade severed even the sound as it swung down. Kamijou had figured an attack with his right hand would deal with this and hadn’t thought of any alternatives. And he didn’t have the time to anymore. His eyes ballooned as he watched the blade closing in on him. “AOF, TMIL—ASTPGW, ATDSJ, TM! (An original flame, thy meaning is light—a sword to protect gentle warmth, and to deliver strict justice, to me!)” At the same time as Stiyl’s shout, there was a boom as a flame sucked in oxygen and exploded. The flame sword he gripped sliced through the dark of night, and Tatemiya was forced to divert his attention to it for a moment. “Shit!” Meanwhile, as Tatemiya was facing to the right, Kamijou jumped the other way, barely managing to get out of range. Or at least, he tried to. Tatemiya, looking in the wrong direction, slid in the same direction Kamijou was running. His legs weren’t moving. It was an unnatural movement, as though he were slipping on ice. Sor…cery…?! Kamijou’s spine froze, and just then… Swoosh The sword whirled around like a tornado, going for a straight horizontal cut. Kamijou immediately ducked to try and avoid it… …but wham came a heavy impact striking the evading Kamijou’s flank. He looked carefully and saw a soccer ball–like object made of clear ice buried in his body. The instant he realized it, the ice ball disappeared strangely, like it was being painted over. Kamijou was sent flying into the ground by the ice attack and began to roll over. —Let’s go back to when Kamijou had just clashed with Tatemiya. The instant the young man looked like he would be killed, Index couldn’t help but start running. So that’s…Amakusa… Index shivered as she ran. And though she shivered, she found herself in admiration. The techniques Amakusa used were, in and of themselves, quite commonplace. At the very least, they weren’t flashy or unique and didn’t possess vast attack power—like Stiyl’s Innocentius or Aureolus’s Ars Magna. However, they used that fact against itself. Kaori Kanzaki’s wire technique, Seven Glints, stood out the most here. Amakusa’s basic strategy could be summed up with one word: deceit. If you thought it was a magic attack, it would just be a simple trick—and if you thought it was a trick, then real magic meant to kill would come at you. Index ran. Kamijou and Tatemiya felt strangely far away. Obviously you would take entirely different defensive measures based on whether something was magic or not. If you misread it, you’d end up taking quite a bit of damage. Index had a way of preventing sorcery with her spell interception technique. Sorcery started from a person’s thoughts—so by acting and speaking in such a way to disrupt the mind of someone casting a spell, you could cause it to go out of control. For example, whispering nonsensical words into the ear of a person trying to say tongue twisters to induce mistakes. However, spell interception didn’t work on Amakusa-Style techniques. Generally speaking, their spells, charms, and magic circles were unique—hidden within casual, everyday actions and words. They picked out subtle religious rituals and built techniques out of them. And this Tatemiya person had performed actions with magical meaning in a split second and was activating magic ten or twenty techniques at a time in the middle of combat. With Index’s voice and skill, she couldn’t slip spell interception into a single motion that took only a split second to complete. By the time she thought to do something, Tatemiya’s single motion was already finished. If she wanted to obstruct his sorcery, she would need to keep up with his swordplay movements, which he’d built into his techniques’ activation conditions. But Index obviously didn’t have any way of using such masterful martial arts abilities. As a result of all this, Index jumping in wouldn’t be able to force Saiji Tatemiya to retreat. Index, being a magical professional herself, realized the difference in their strength—and not in terms of simple quantity, but also the fact that his kind of power was overwhelmingly mismatched with her. Touma Kamijou took the magical ice-bullet attack and fell to the ground. Saiji Tatemiya whipped his flamberge up into the air as though he were about to hit a nail with a hammer. Index didn’t have any way of stopping that attack. Her spell interception wouldn’t do much against Amakusa-Style techniques, either. “Touma” But Index didn’t stop running. She didn’t think any longer of what would happen afterward. Stiyl Magnus thought his heart would stop when he saw the defenseless Index jump out. She had no fighting power. If she stood up to Tatemiya, she would be sliced in two within seconds. “Gah…” He had one flame sword in each hand. He didn’t have enough time to place all the rune cards to activate Innocentius again. If he jumped out now, Stiyl would get to Tatemiya before Index. He might be able to distract him by attacking with the flame swords and blowing them up the moment they clashed with the opponent’s sword. But Kamijou stood between Stiyl and Tatemiya. If Stiyl pointed his sword at Tatemiya, it would pierce Kamijou’s body as well. For just a moment, the flame priest’s face warped into a bitter expression. For a few moments, he was conflicted. And when that ended, the light of determination was already in his eyes. I made an oath long ago… Stiyl Magnus desperately worked his bleeding mouth to steady his breathing. …“Relax, and go to sleep. Even if you forget everything, I won’t forget a thing. I will live and die for your sake” In order to protect that which he held most dear, he focused on the young man’s back and readied his flame swords. All the air vented from his body, and his consciousness wavered. He looked at Tatemiya, bringing his sword up in front of Kamijou. He frantically restrained himself from passing out and tried to somehow get a handle on the situation. His feet trembled. It would be impossible for him to avoid Tatemiya’s next attack. Index had already started running, and in a few seconds, when she ran into Tatemiya, she’d be killed instantly. He glanced behind him—Stiyl had his flame swords up, but Kamijou was a wall in the way of him using them. Touma Kamijou revved his mental engine to full before even a second had passed. So that nobody would be missing. So that nothing would be lost. So that everyone could go home smiling. “…Do it.” He clenched his fist. “Attack us both, Stiyl” He rallied every last bit of strength in his body and charged for Saiji Tatemiya without hesitation. Those few words confused Saiji Tatemiya. The English Puritan sister was approaching him from behind, but he could easily slice her in two. The young man had jumped for him, his fist clenched, in order to stop that, but there was still more than enough time for him to cut the boy down and then deal with the sister. But behind that young man… The English Puritan priest had burst into a sprint, his flame swords at his hips. “?!” However one looked at it, if that priest kept charging, he would end up having to go through the young man with his swords. But there was no hesitation in the priest’s eyes. They were sharp as a knife blade, and there was a savage smile on his lips, as if calculating how to defeat his enemy were the only thing on his mind. Tatemiya tried to ready his flamberge to defend against the flame swords. But when he did, the young man brought his right arm behind him and went to deliver a rock-hard punch. “Crap…?!” He wouldn’t have enough time to deal with his punch and then defend against the flame swords’ attack afterward. Plus, those flame swords weren’t for slashing—they were for exploding. If he screwed up on how he responded to them, he’d be in mortal danger. If he didn’t prioritize them and inject an anti-fire technique into his flamberge, the sacrificial boy could be engulfed in the explosion. It’s just a punch from an amateur—no problem; I’ve had a basic shock-absorbing technique on me since this battle began. I only need to worry about those flame swords, so I’ll compose a technique for them right now! Tatemiya brought his sword down into a horizontal stance. The flamberge was flame aspected, given the origin of its name—a flame-like sword—and his horizontal leveling of it was the code for “suppress,” giving him the impromptu technique that would suppress flames. Fine, got you, finished! When your careless flames come to hit me, I’ll counter them with everything I’ve got… Saiji Tatemiya’s tongue came out of his mouth. It wriggled around and licked his lips greedily. The priest charged at the young man’s back, as if to assault him. The flame swords in his hands were aiming straight through the boy’s body and right at Tatemiya’s center. I win —Or so he thought. Tatemiya tried to use a flame-resistant technique to try and blow back the heat and flames that were supposed to come at him when the flame swords exploded, but contrary to his expectations, nothing happened. The young man’s right fist was all the way behind his body, like a hammer about to drive into him. And the priest’s flame swords had stabbed right up to that fist and nearly into it. Bang! With a sound like a balloon popping, the flame swords in the priest’s hands scattered into little embers and disappeared. “Wha…? Nnh, gahh…?!” Saiji Tatemiya, who had only been considering his counterattack timing after he’d used his flame-resistant technique to defend, didn’t understand what had just happened. Boom came the ear-splitting roar as the young man’s fist plunged right into Saiji Tatemiya’s face. Ga, bah… Wh, ah, it went through…the shock-absorbing tech…?! Tatemiya’s body bent all the way backward. Before he could regain his lost balance, the young man and priest both rammed into his body at full speed. Their pressure and weight made Saiji Tatemiya feel like he’d been hit with a battering ram—he flew horizontally through the air and slammed into the ground hard. That’s when Tatemiya appeared to lose consciousness. The flamberge flew from his hands and came down to the ground with a clatter. Word Count: (15337)