3_Chapter 2_ Witch-Hunting with Fire

CHAPTER 2 Witch-Hunting with FireBy_the_Holy_Rood… 1 He decided to think about the girl named Index. Kamijou’s “knowledge” said that she had a trait called perfect recall, where she would never forget anything she learned. Using that trait, she had recorded 103,000 grimoires in her brain. It was a double-edged sword. Never forgetting meant that she would also never forget anything she wanted to. From a three-year-old supermarket flyer to each and every face of the people she passed by at the station during rush hour, every meaningless memory constantly accumulated in her head, since she couldn’t remove them from her brain. To deal with this, she had to use magic to erase all her own memories once a year. If she didn’t do that, her brain would blow out and she’d die. However, right now she was somehow relaxing next to Kamijou, smiling and such. According to her story, it was Kamijou himself who’d saved her from that hopeless situation. But he didn’t understand what he had felt at the time, and he didn’t know what he had done. Now then, thought Kamijou. He and Stiyl had parted for the time being. Kamijou had brought Index back to his dorm, but he had to leave again to head to the Misawa Cram School battlefield. Taking Index along was out of the question, so the smarter option would be to hide the fact he was going there altogether. But if he said he was going out for a while and didn’t give a reason, she would suspect something was up. She might insist on coming with him. “Touma?” Sweat was beading up on his palms. He might not return alive. Obviously, he could never, ever bring Index somewhere like that. “Hey, Touma?” So things were simple. For the moment, he swallowed his anxiety and made up his mind to start ranting like crazy. “I have to go to a super-high-tech primary culture institute for a bit. What, you want to come? You’d better not; you’re hopeless with machines, and you probably don’t even know how to work a super-magnetic cerebral cortex detector. Which would mean you would get trapped in there by the auto-locking doors, since they’re security Level Four. Plus, if you investigate basic solutions without registering the exons first, you’ll get shocked with electricity, like a zapping negative ion beeeeaaam” Just as he expected, Index let out a yelp, overloaded at the flurry of technical terms. It was understandable. This was Index. She had so little modern sense that she would involuntarily bow to the ticket vending machines at the station, saying, “Welcome!” “Then I’m going out. Dinner is in the refrigerator, so nuke it later to eat. And don’t stick your spoon in the microwave and play with the sparks, or open the fridge door to cool yourself off, or anything like that.” “Huh? Oh, uh…I think I might be bad at microwaves.” Some people might not understand what a person could possibly do wrong when using a microwave. Index, however, had shown him various ways of messing this up, like blowing up the dressing packet in a convenience store bento box by microwaving it while still in the wrapper, exploding soft-boiled eggs while trying to prepare them, melting a bento box by overheating it…Anyway, it always ended with a bang. Maybe she had mistakenly taught herself that microwaves are machines for making things blow up? …At least it doesn’t look like I need to worry about seeming suspicious. Kamijou sighed at Index, who was having a staring contest with the microwave, as if to say that this time she wouldn’t fail. And then he realized something. “Hey. What’s that you’ve got in your clothes? More precisely, around your stomach.” “Huh?” Index looked at Kamijou, startled. “I-I’m not hiding anything, okay? I promise you, in the name of our father in heaven, and nuns can’t tell lies, after all!” As soon as she finished saying that, he heard a kitten’s mew from Index’s stomach. “Graah! And you call yourself pious?! You totally just broke your promise! Whatever, just take out that stray cat you’re hiding in your clothes!” He hadn’t noticed it at the time because of the excitement during his talk with Stiyl, but now he got the feeling that Index had been in the alley for kind of a while. She had said something about runes, but she must have switched her mission to searching for the stray cat partway through. “Mgh. T-Touma, these clothes are called the Walking Church, okay?” “So what?” “Churches extend the hand of salvation to lost sheep without expecting anything in return. Therefore, I took in Sphinx, who was adrift in the streets, by the hand of the Church. Amen!” “…” Kamijou’s lips pulled back. “…So you’re gonna raise a stray cat inside there, then. Okay, got it. So I just pour the cat litter down your collar, I take it?” “…” “…” “I-it’s fine! I already decided that the Church will give shelter to Sphinx!” “Whoa, you really can’t plan anything, can you? At least think about your duty to another living creature’s life!” “If we raise it like family, then it’ll be fine!” “That cat has no right to call me Daddy!” It’ll leave a bad taste in my mouth, but I’ll probably have to dump the stray cat on my way to Misawa School, reflected Kamijou…But he was pretty sure if he did that, Index would 100 percent come after him in order to get the stray cat back. “Stupid! Stupid Touma! I already decided I’m definitely going to take care of this cat!” “…You should wait until you can earn money on your own to say dumb stuff like that.” “But don’t worry! You’re only stupid in hiragana!” “Listen to me! Wait, what the hell does that mean?!” On the other hand, though, he got the feeling that Index would back off if he decided she could keep the cat. …How should I put this…What rotten luck. Kamijou sighed in defeat. When he thought about what the stray cat’s food would cost, he realized he would have to go with one less dish at dinner per day from now on. He was seriously exhausted. Really, of all the things, of all the times, why did she pick up a stupid stray cat? he thought. “Okay.” “Huh? Touma, did you say something?” “I give up, so you can keep it, okay?” But, well… Index looked happy enough to shed a tear at that simple sentence. That made him think that, well, maybe it was okay. “O Lord in heaven! It seems that your warm light has finally reached the heartless, cruel, sadistic, snake-like Touma. I will never forget your blessing that saved this single cat’s innocent soul!” …That’s what he was thinking, but for some reason, he didn’t quite find this satisfying. 2 When he left his room, he saw Stiyl hanging up things that looked like trading cards around the hallway, even though he thought they had gone their separate ways earlier. “Uh, what are you doing?” “As you can see, I’m spreading a barrier and building up a temple here,” answered Stiyl without stopping his work. “Since we can’t be certain that some other sorcerer won’t make a move on Index while we’re preoccupied with Misawa. Well, I think it’s merely temporary peace of mind, but optimistically, leaving Innocentius here should at least buy her time to escape.” Innocentius, the Witch-Hunter King. Kamijou had no “record” of it. But his knowledge spoke of it. An ultimate weapon in the shape of a person, it had an automatic pursuit ability, and its form was made from flames burning at more than 3,000 degrees Celsius. Its weak point was— “—you can’t use it unless it’s inside the ‘barrier’ of the runes you spread, and it will fall apart if they’re destroyed, right?” “…Let me tell you something.” Stiyl’s ears twitched. “That definitely doesn’t mean that my power is inferior to yours. There just happened to be a geographic problem. If it had been somewhere without sprinklers…” “Huh? Have we gotten into a fight before?” Kamijou only possessed knowledge, not memory. He understood how to defeat Innocentius but not where he learned that information. “Ugh…It wasn’t even worth remembering in the first place? Is that what you’re saying?” Stiyl moved along the conversation, having misunderstood something. “Well, fine. Once I put up one last rune, the barrier will be fully prepared, and then we can head for our primary objective.…Man, what a pain. This is an anti-sorcerer barrier, but if I make it too strong, she’ll end up noticing it.” Despite Stiyl griping to himself, he looked pretty happy for some reason. That made Kamijou realize something. “Wait, are you in love with Index?” “Bwha?!” Stiyl’s face went beet red like his heart had been flipped over. “Wh-wh-what are you talking about all of a sudden?! Sh-she’s an object to be protected, a-and definitely not an object of romantic interest!” “Is that so?” Kamijou cut off the topic, grinning. He stopped because he detected that prying into this carelessly would mean his ruin. It wasn’t a matter of how Kamijou thought of Index right now, but he’d end up in a tight spot if there was a discrepancy between that and what he thought prior to his memory loss. He hadn’t the slightest idea how he’d felt about Index before his amnesia or how he’d treated her. If he was to say something carelessly and there was an inconsistency between that and what the old Touma Kamijou had said, it could reveal that he had lost his memories. It’s like there’re two of me…, he thought, agitated. “Two of himself” didn’t quite have the right connotation, either. He actually felt a sense of comedy, like he was a fake who had been swapped in, who was desperately pretending to be the real thing. “All right, then before we head for Misawa Cram School, I should fill you in on the enemy,” continued Stiyl, who might have been trying to redirect the conversation away from that topic to avoid further questioning. They exited the dormitories. As they walked through the streets in the evening light, Kamijou decided to hear him out. “The enemy’s name, see, is Aureolus Isard,” began Stiyl. “There’s only one person named Aureolus, but…Yes? What, surprised because it’s such a famous name? This one is only a descendant, though. He doesn’t have the kind of power you hear about in legends.” “? Wait, so who is this Arr-ray-oh-lus guy?” “…I see. I forgot you were completely oblivious to our affairs. But surely you’ve at least heard the term Paracelsus, right?” “?” “Argh…! It’s the name of one of the most well-known alchemists in the world!” Stiyl explained, exasperated. Kamijou listened as they walked through the dusky roads. “So, does that mean he’s crazy strong?” The windows of the buildings and the propellers on the wind turbines, along with everything else, were painted in orange, as if the August twilight were burning into them. Looks kinda like a faded photograph, Kamijou noted, perhaps because their own conversation was so out of this world. “It’s not a big deal in and of itself…But he did get his hands on something that’s letting him suppress Deep Blood, after all. And I don’t want to think this…but in the worst case, he might be using her to tame the creature.” That seemed to worry Stiyl more than Aureolus Isard. Kamijou couldn’t accept that, though. However unique this situation was, he didn’t feel like it was right to consider their actual enemy to be only secondary. “Hey, is it okay to think like that? I dunno how irregular these vampires or Deep Blood are, but shouldn’t we be focusing on the enemy leader? Say you’re fighting someone with fire all around you. If you let the fire distract you, you’ll get your face beaten in.” “Hm? Ah, no, that’s actually nothing to worry about. The Aureolus from myths might be top class, but his strength has waned. Alchemist isn’t a profession in the world of magic in the first place,” Stiyl pointed out, bored. “Astrology, alchemy, summoning…In your words, those are just language, mathematics, and history. Even language teachers study some math, right? If you’re a sorcerer, then first you sink your teeth into everything and then find a specialized field that suits you. That’s basic. “However, Aureolus Isard is only called an alchemist because he has no other talent besides that,” Stiyl said. “And also…alchemy itself isn’t even a completed field of study to begin with.” “…” Even after this explanation, Kamijou only had sort of a point on a historical time line about alchemy in his knowledge. It was a method of fraud used widely in the sixteenth century, where people took in large amounts of money by playing tricks on royalty and nobility. “Alchemy, particularly that of late Zurich, is an imitator of a subject called Hermeticism. In general, though, people know it as more like…something to turn lead into gold or to synthesize an elixir of immortality.” Stiyl didn’t sound interested. Maybe because it wasn’t his own vocation. “Those were nothing more than experiments. The reason scientists constantly consult testers is because they want to know about whatever theorem or law. Those testers aren’t in it to create something, right? Alchemists are the same—their essence isn’t one of creation but of knowing.” “…So it’s like how Einstein’s goal was to study the theory of relativity, and the nuclear bomb was just an extra by-product?” If that was the case, he felt like scholars were an arrogant bunch. They create things, and yet they never consider the effect they would have on the world. The term for that was madman. “That’s about right. But beyond studying formulas and theorems, they have another, ultimate goal.” Stiyl paused for a breath. “It’s to simulate the entire world inside their mind.” “…” “If you understand every law of the world, then you can create a perfect simulation in your brain. Of course, if you get even a single massive law wrong, it’ll distort your internal image.” “? What? You mean like theoretical modeling?” Something like, for example, how on southern islands like Fiji or Melanesia, a requirement to become its chief was to have the talent to accurately predict the next day’s weather. At first glance, this “weather forecast” seems like a supernatural ability. In reality, though, the person is unconsciously sensing wind currents, the shapes of the clouds, the temperature, the humidity, and other things. The forecast is simply the result of repeating massive calculations in your head. The island chiefs are totally ignorant of these unconscious measurements, so they accurately predict the next day’s weather just by “listening to the voices of the wind.” Stiyl was definitely saying something along those lines. The island chiefs were perfectly simulating the next day’s weather. However, the world they envisioned was imaginary—one which would crumble if those perfect calculations were even the slightest bit off. “…But what use would something like that have? Do they want some calculator that predicts the future? Like weather forecasting?” “Nope, that’s not it,” Stiyl said angrily. “What do you think would happen if, hypothetically, you could drag what you pictured in your head into the real world?” he asked. “Bringing something you picture in your mind into the real world, such as ectoplasm or using a telesmatic image to summon an angel, isn’t really an unusual method in the world of magic.” Stiyl folded his arms. “Therefore, the power to imagine an accurate world has huge consequences. In simple terms, you’d be able to use everything in the world like your own hands and feet, even gods and devils.” “…Wait.” “Of course, it is extremely difficult. The flow of water, the flow of clouds, the flow of people, the flow of blood—the universe contains an endless number of laws governing such important things. If you get just one of those wrong, you can’t construct the world in your mind. A warped world is the same as a warped wing—as soon as you summoned it, it would destroy itself and vanish.” I guess that part is like a computer program, thought Kamijou. However beautiful the program is, forgetting to write just one line will cause an error and it’ll crash. “But on the other hand, wouldn’t we be completely helpless if he perfected it? You sure as hell can’t win against the entire world.” He could only state that opinion with relative ease because deep down, Kamijou didn’t believe any of this. However, a human doesn’t have the power to win against the entire world. Not because gods or devils are overwhelmingly strong or anything. It was because the entire world includes you, yourself, who lives there. It was a simple fact. Imagine a mysterious mirror that you could drag reflections out of. However strong Kamijou was to become, if he pulled out an exact copy, they’d just end up defeating each other. But despite that, Stiyl didn’t look that tense. “I already told you, it’s fine. As a field of study, alchemy is still incomplete.” “Huh?” “For example, consider everything in this world…from every single grain of sand on the beach to every last star in the night sky. If you wanted to talk about them all, how many years do you think it would take you? I don’t think it’s something you could finish doing in one or two hundred years.” “…” “That’s what I mean. The incantation itself is complete. But a human’s lifetime is too short to recite the whole thing,” Stiyl hissed. “Though there are people trying all sorts of things to accomplish it. For example, by trying to omit needless parts to shorten it as much as they can. Or by dividing one hundred spells into ten parts, then passing those down from father to child, and child to grandchild, chanting it a little at a time.” Despite that, there were apparently no examples of success. No needless parts exist in a finished spell in the first place, and passing it from parent to child and child to grandchild would distort the incantation like a game of telephone. “On the other hand—” For the first time, Stiyl seemed to be showing a spirit to battle. “—a creature without a life span can chant spells that are too long for humans. Yet another reason this creature presents an imposing threat to sorcerers.” Perhaps that is why he wanted a vampire, thought Kamijou. For scholars, it was probably agonizing to know the answer but not be able to prove it. And if it was a wish a person’s body wouldn’t grant… You just had to insert something outside the category of person into the magic. “Well, alchemy is certainly a threat, but Aureolus Isard doesn’t currently have the capacity to master it. The best he can do is make stuff…He’s got his hands full just fortifying Misawa School, the setting for all this, and setting up a million traps to deny intruders.” “…?” Stiyl said that with an awful lot of confidence. Kamijou got the feeling something was odd. “What, do you and Isard know each other?” “Well, yeah. We both belong to the same religion, after all,” he snarled. “I’m with English Puritanism, and he was with the Roman Orthodox Church…We belonged to different denominations, but we’re acquainted. We’re not friends, though.” The way church and sorcerer sounded didn’t quite fit for Kamijou. The Church of Necessary Evils, Necessarius, which Stiyl and Index belonged to, aimed to kill sorcerers by studying magic. But that was completely heretical. Even if English Puritanism recognized it, he didn’t think a different denomination—Roman Orthodox—would have the same kind of agency… When Kamijou expressed all this, Stiyl raised an eyebrow slightly. “Necessarius is an exception among exceptions. It’d be impossible for other churches.” Stiyl sighed as if bored. “If we’re an exception among exceptions, then he’s a special case among special cases: a Cancellarius. To sum it up, a Cancellarius is someone who writes grimoires for the Church. He’s creating the same kind of books, but they’re used in the opposite way. They’re instruction manuals that say things like ‘lately, witches have been using this sort of spell, so to combat it, read whatever page of the Bible.’” Stiyl fluttered his hand in the air. “It’s not strange for people of the Church to write books to warn people about these things. The grimoires of Pope Honorius III and James I are a couple of the really famous ones, I think.” “…I get it. So that’s why you keep on saying Aureolus Isard’s ability is no big deal.” “Right. He has knowledge in abundance, but none of it is suited for actual combat. He’s a bookworm, not a jock. But at the same time, he’s also an annoying opponent. He’s one of the few Cancellarii even within Roman Orthodox, and he has a lot of influence. The Roman Orthodox Church is actually getting up at arms in order to punish his betrayal.” “No, not that. Aureolus is, like, as important as popes and kings, right? Could you maybe be jealous of him?” “…So, in other words, you’re trying to pick a fight with me?” “I love myself a good brawl, but don’t mistake who we’re fighting here.” Kamijou looked ahead. “I can see the battlefield.” The two of them stopped. The building was prepared for them, illuminated by the evening glow. 3 “But, well…,” murmured Kamijou, looking up at the building. An “irregularly shaped building” would be a good way to put it. Well, the building itself was a perfectly ordinary, rectangular, twelve-story tower. However, there were four of them. An intersection sat in the middle, and the placement made the entire structure a square with a cross in the middle when looked at from above. Raised passages straddled adjacent buildings, connecting them to one another. That’s gotta be in violation of the Land Plot Town Planning Law, thought Kamijou as he viewed the aerial walkways. In general, the rights to the sky belong to the possessor of the land underneath. In other words, anything above the road should be public property. “Well, not like any of that matters,” he thought aloud, running his eyes over the four-building Misawa Cram School Academy City branch school again. Based on what he heard, as an outsider, it didn’t give him the unconventional impression he thought a scientific religion would. It was a totally normal university prep school, pure and simple. Even the students entering and exiting from time to time didn’t present anything that seemed out of the ordinary. “In any case, our first destination is the fifth floor in the south building—next to the cafeteria. There’s apparently a hidden room there,” grunted Stiyl, relaxed. The map sketches had been lit on fire after Kamijou had looked over them. Did that mean he had the whole thing all up in his head? “A hidden room?” “Yeah. I think that more than likely, it uses illusions or trick art to conceal itself from the people inside. That building has more holes in it than a house of building blocks made by a child.” Stiyl stared at the building. “…There’re seventeen, just from checking the plans. I’m trying to say that the closest one is on the fifth story of the southern building, beside the cafeteria.” “…Hmm. It doesn’t look like a suspicious ninja mansion or anything,” Kamijou grunted without any real reason. Stiyl muttered to himself alongside him, annoyed. “…It doesn’t look suspicious, huh.” “Yeah?” Kamijou looked at Stiyl. His eyes were on the buildings piercing up through heaven and earth, but he finally shook his head, like he was taking a breath. “Don’t worry about it. Even though I’m a specialist, I can’t spot anything dubious. I can’t spot anything dubious, even though I, a specialist, am looking at it quite carefully.” Despite saying that, Stiyl didn’t look too happy as he watched the school. It was like he was a doctor, clearly looking at something abnormal in an X-ray and yet unable to find the affected body part. “…” That was weird. He didn’t really know why, but it was really weird. Stiyl was saying, “I can’t spot anything dubious,” but that didn’t mean he was asserting that there were no dangerous places in this building. He actually couldn’t tell one way or the other. There could be tons of unseen land mines buried in there, or maybe there wasn’t anything at all. It was a black box. But if this facility was dangerous enough to light a fire in a master sorcerer’s heart, then should they really just be walking on in without a care in the world? “Of course, it’s not okay,” Stiyl answered quickly. “But we have to go in, don’t we? We’re here to rescue someone, not kill someone. I mean, if you told me it was okay to just burn the entire building down, that’d be a load off my shoulders,” he explained, doubtlessly more than half-serious. “We have to go in…Hey, wait a second. We’re gonna go pay them a visit through the front door? Don’t you have some kind of actual plan, like a way to invade without anyone noticing or a way to safely defeat the enemy?!” “What. Do you have any tricks up your sleeve?” “…Urgh! You…you actually just want to rush in like this?! We’re practically making a frontal assault on a building terrorists are hiding out in! Even characters in cheap action movies come up with one or two plans to outwit the enemy!” “…Hmm, well, if I inscribed ‘Ansuz Gebo’ on my body with a knife or something, I could at least conceal my presence.” “Then do that! I don’t wanna get hurt!” “Hear me out to the end,” Stiyl retorted. “Even if I suppressed my presence or became an invisible man, I would have still used magic. I can’t falsify that.” “…Huh?” “Since you don’t seem to be very used to the word mana, I’ll have to explain fully.” He sighed. “Here’s an example. Consider a painting done in only red, okay?” “…That sounds like a psychological nightmare.” “You’re not listening to me. Anyway, that red paint is Aureolus’s mana, and the whole building is teeming with it. If you smeared my blue paint onto a red painting, it would be clear to everyone, right?” “…I don’t really get it, are you saying you’re a walking transmitter?” “Something like that. It’s certainly preferable to being you, though.” Before Kamijou could ask why, he continued: “Your Imagine Breaker is a magic eraser that wipes away the red paint entirely, you know. Anyone would notice their own painting being steadily rubbed out. In my case, I just don’t have to use any magic, and he won’t detect anything odd. But in your case he’d see a whole flood of oddities!” “…Then what? Are you saying we’re gonna just go up to a building full of terrorists and politely ring the doorbell? Without any kind of plan? When we both have transmitters hanging from our waists?” “That’s why you’re here. If you don’t want to get shot full of holes, then make sure you shield yourself with your right hand for your life.” “You little—You’re saying it like it’s completely someone else’s problem! Now I’m the one paying the bill for your lack of planning, aren’t I?!” “Aha-ha. My, you do say some funny things. Your right hand is the only plan we need against that alchemist. It can even block an attack from Saint George’s Dragon. Besides, you really can’t rely on me for anything. I’m using Innocentius to protect that child, and I only brought along one flame sword this time.” “Whoa! This guy really isn’t thinking at all!” “So, what will you do? You wanna stay behind here or something?” “…!” Kamijou looked at the entrance. It was a thoroughly normal automatic glass door. Frankly, I don’t want to set foot in a place like that. Of course not. People in there are trying to kill me, and they booby-trapped the whole place. I don’t want to go there. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that this is the HQ of some strange cult. However… If that was the case, then it was wrong. An adult man would get goose bumps just looking at this entrance, and a single girl with a crazy name like “Deep Blood” is being locked up for a very long time in there. That was definitely wrong. “Let’s go,” whispered the sorcerer. Kamijou stood at the automatic door without a word. He passed through the glass entrance, but a fully ordinary sight greeted him. Many glass panes were placed throughout the whole lobby to let in a lot of sunlight. The lobby was fairly wide; it was about three stories tall, too. The building was a prep school, and this was its “outward” appearance. It wasn’t a facility for the students. It was a place to attract guests looking to matriculate. That made the extravagant decoration understandable as well. At the back of the lobby was a line of four elevators. The one on the end was a little larger than the others, so it was most likely used for bringing in luggage. A staircase was a few steps away from the elevators. It had few affectations, indicating that it was only there as a basic, minimal emergency stairwell. It seemed to be a long break period at the moment—about the same length as a normal school’s lunch break—the lobby was filled with students going outside to get some food. Kamijou and Stiyl didn’t draw much attention in particular. It wasn’t like they were paying attention to the face of each and every student, either. Besides, if the worst case was to happen and the students saw them as outsiders, then—well, this was the front lobby. Maybe they just came here to request enrollment information. …I’m one thing, but this guy doesn’t look anything like an exam student! Kamijou quietly sighed. The person standing next to him was certainly young, but he was also a ridiculous-looking, perfume-stinking priest whose hair was dyed red and whose ears and fingers were covered with earrings and rings. Preparatory schools were nevertheless businesses, though, so they couldn’t exactly refuse service to someone. For the time being, he couldn’t locate anything notable. Even the people coming and going didn’t appear the least bit strange. “Hm?” For that reason, there was one gaping hole that stood out uniquely. The line of four elevators. Between the first and second ones from the right, there was some kind of person-shaped robot thing leaning against the wall. Actually, it was more like it had been set against the wall. Its hands and feet were crushed and broken. Whatever it was, it was lying on the floor, having been reduced to a lump of metal reminiscent of a traffic accident. Its shape was close to that of western full-body armor. But its streamlined form was somehow more modern—yes, like a fighter jet, it had a calculated and functional beauty. Its silver shine gave him the impression that it wasn’t just iron, either. A giant bow, eighty centimeters in length, had fallen nearby, as if it was also part of the robot’s equipment. The word Percival was etched into the wrecked robot’s right arm. Maybe that was its name. However, it was clear to anyone who looked that this robot wasn’t performing to its capacity anymore. The hand and feet parts had been mauled and were bent back and forth, and a thick black oil that looked like coal tar was flowing from its damaged joints. Kamijou’s face instinctively scrunched up at the smell of rust. What is that? First, he didn’t know what that robot was. Security robots, cleaning robots, and other sorts of robots could be seen all over Academy City, but those all looked like oil drums. He had never heard of such humanlike, utterly inefficient robots wandering around. Second, he didn’t know why that robot was broken. He didn’t know how strong it was, but smashing it into something reminiscent of a car accident would take a lot of force. What in the world had taken place in this cram school lobby? And finally… …Why the hell is no one making a fuss about it? That was what baffled him the most. No one here was attempting to talk about the robot. They weren’t even making eye contact with it. It wasn’t like they were averting their eyes from something they didn’t want to see or something they didn’t want to remember. It felt like the machine was just a pebble lying in the road, something for which there was no need to go and pay any attention to. It was as if… …even that broken robot had fused into normality. “What’s wrong? There’s nothing here. Whether we’re looking for Himegami or going to crush Isard, I think it would be wise to get moving,” said Stiyl matter-of-factly. “R-right.” Kamijou finally took his eyes off the robot. No one was paying the least bit of notice to it, so he was under the illusion that he was looking at a ghost only he could see. But that couldn’t be right. Because that robot definitely existed in front of Kamijou. “What, are you worried about that? Well, I guess it would be unusual for you,” Stiyl remarked, finally noticing where he was looking. “W-well, I guess.…Hey, wait. Robots are our territory, science, aren’t they?” “Hm?” Stiyl frowned at Kamijou’s words for a short moment. “What are you saying? That’s just a corpse,” he told him. “Huh?” I don’t…get it. “Divine protection from a Surgical Armor and a Heaven’s Bow replica—he’s probably one of the Roman Orthodox Church’s Thirteen Knights. It’s nice that they came for the traitor’s head, but from his condition, it looks like they were all wiped out. For heaven’s sake. Knight squads are English Puritanism’s forte. That’s what you get for plagiarizing it so badly.” Stiyl wiggled the cigarette at the end of his mouth. “…Damn. At any rate, that formaldehyde bastard sure did a number on them. That person set it up so they’d attack in a scattered way while members of other churches were all there. Was that guy purposely aiming for them to fail…? Everyone who came to clean up afterward would surely be the Church’s best. Thinning those ranks by even one person would probably be a godsend for that person, but…” Stiyl was grumbling something to himself in vexation, but Kamijou didn’t understand any of it, so he ignored him. Instead, he looked at the thing collapsed on the wall next to the elevators one more time. At that lump of metal that looked like it was hit by a truck, its limbs all shattered. At the wreckage of the robot, spilling out dark red oil, its silvery metallic body destroyed. No. What if that wasn’t dark red oil—what if it was fluid of an even deeper color? No. What if that wasn’t a robot—what if it was simply a human wearing armor? “What are you surprised about?” asked Stiyl, as if it was completely reasonable to see. “This is a battlefield, isn’t it? What’s so strange about one or two dead bodies lying around?” “…” Kamijou searched for something to say. He had known. He should really have known all along. This was a war zone, where people killed one another. The enemy would set up traps to kill the intruders Kamijou and Stiyl and lie in wait for them. Even Kamijou, on the offensive side, wasn’t actually thinking that talking to an enemy pointing his sword at him would resolve anything… Yes, he needed to have an understanding of that. But while he understood it, he couldn’t stay silent about it. “Damn…it!” He ran. He didn’t know how running would help. The most he could do was wrap bandages; real first-aid treatment methods were beyond an amateur like Kamijou. First and foremost, he didn’t know whether the person inside the brilliantly destroyed armor was even alive. He also couldn’t think of a way to drag the person out of the thing. Despite all that, there was still no clear evidence that the person inside was dead. So if he hurried, he might manage somehow. Kamijou dashed across the broad lobby in ten seconds. With the armor covering the person’s face, he couldn’t even tell what kind of expression they had. However, the faint sound of air escaping from the gap in the lump-like iron helmet reached his ears. Still breathing…! As he was grateful of his good fortune, he realized another fact: that meant he couldn’t move the person hastily. He thought, I need to call an ambulance, but then the elevator doors nearby abruptly made a sound and parted to the sides. A handful of boys and girls about the same age as him began to alight from it. They paid no mind to the near-dead person right next to them, as if it was an ordinary sight. They were laughing, talking about things like how expensive the school lunches were, how bad they were, how quickly they got tired of them, and how it would be a better idea to buy convenience store bento boxes instead. “Y…you…” The most important thing he needed to do was to rescue this smashed armor. He understood that. But while he understood it, he couldn’t stay silent. Kamijou emphatically grabbed the shoulder of one of the students nearby without thinking. “What the hell are you doing?! Call an ambulance, right now” His words ceased in the middle of his sentence. Because in return, Kamijou’s arm was pulled away from him really hard. No. It wasn’t simply being “pulled away.” It was as if his hand had caught on a moving dump truck. The impact was on an entirely different level. “Wha?” He thought his shoulder would come out of its socket. But that’s not why Kamijou was speechless. The student he grabbed hadn’t been holding on to Kamijou’s arm or anything. The hand he had placed on the student’s shoulder had been pulled, like a balloon caught on a car. On top of that, the student didn’t even seem to notice that Kamijou had put his hand on his shoulder. And it wasn’t just him. Nobody in the lobby seemed to hear him, despite yelling so loudly. Just like the smashed suit of armor in front of him. “What just happened?” Kamijou recalled the sensation in the palm of his hand. The fabric of the student’s clothing should have been soft, but it was as hard as if it had been soaked in instant glue that then solidified. No—he wasn’t even close to pulling on the student’s body, he wasn’t even able to press his fingers down onto the fabric. “That’s what the barrier does. This place is like a coin; it has a front and a reverse side. Those living on the ‘front of the coin,’ the students who don’t know anything, won’t notice a sorcerer on the ‘back of the coin.’ And those residing on the back of the coin—we, the external invaders—can’t interfere one bit with the clueless students. Look at that,” sung Stiyl, pointing out the feet of a girl coming out of the elevator. The floor. The dark red blood flowing out of the armor was spreading like a puddle, and the girl proceeded over it like she was walking on water. “…” Kamijou kept his eyes on her as she passed by. There weren’t any stains on the bottoms of her shoes, nor did they leave red footprints. That sea of blood had been treated like it was hard plastic. “Hmm.” Stiyl casually took the cigarette from the corner of his mouth and pressed the lit end of it firmly against the plastic button for the elevator. But it didn’t leave a single bit of soot behind, much less any sign of the button melting. “I see. The building itself is on the front of the coin, it seems like. Well, that is more fitting for a bastion of anti-magical warfare. Touma Kamijou, it seems we’re no longer able to open even a door with our own strength. Same goes for the automatic door at the entrance, so we’re basically trapped in here.” “…” A barrier. Kamijou certainly didn’t have much familiarity with the term, living in a scientific world. But if it was an abnormal power, then wasn’t this Touma Kamijou’s time to shine? He clenched his hand into a tight fist. The Imagine Breaker. It would even nullify miracles just by touching them. It was the most unusual among the unusual supernatural abilities. He brought his fist into the air… And as if to shatter the barrier itself, he slammed it down on the floor with all his might! …Well, he slammed it, but all he got was a dull thud noise. “Bah! Myaah! Migyaahhh?!” “…What on earth are you doing?” Stiyl sighed in aggravation at the writhing Kamijou. “It’s probably the same as my Innocentius. We can’t break this barrier unless we crush the spell’s core. And this is just a theory, but…the core itself is probably placed outside the barrier. That way, he can be sure that people locked on the inside can’t turn the tables on him. Troublesome, indeed.” “…Damn it.” Kamijou was a bit perplexed at how to deal with that but asked, “Then what do we do? There’s a wounded person right in front of us, but we can’t call for a doctor or even get him out of here…” “There’s no particular need to do anything. He’s already dead.” “Quit the crazy talk, and check his breathing for yourself! He’s still alive, you know!” “Yes, well, if we’re only going by whether his heart is beating, then yeah, he’s alive. But his broken ribs have punctured his lungs, his liver has collapsed, and the veins in his hands and feet are long gone.…These aren’t wounds he can be saved from. There’s a word for people like him. It’s a corpse.” Maybe he had investigated that with his runic magic, too. Stiyl’s words were mercilessly clear, like a doctor giving the cruel truth to a patient suffering from an incurable disease. “…” “Why are you making that face? You really knew at first glance, didn’t you? Even if he is still breathing, he’s definitely hopeless.” A moment later, Kamijou was grabbing Stiyl’s collar with both hands. He didn’t get it. He didn’t understand one bit. How could this man remain so calm? How could he talk like that in front of someone who is about to die?! “Move it. He doesn’t have any time left” However, he simply brushed away Kamijou’s hands. “We also don’t have time to push our one-sided sympathy onto a corpse. Sending off the dead is my job as a priest. Greenhorns should shut up and watch.” “…” An odd enthusiasm came from Stiyl’s words. Kamijou removed his hands without thinking and finally figured it out. He stared after the priest, who had turned his back to face the crushed and broken “knight,” whose flame of life seemed about to be extinguished… Is he…angry? It was a face unimaginable from his normal face full of sarcasm and scorn. But it couldn’t have been anything else. Right now, Stiyl Magnus was not a sorcerer. That back of his, wrapped in something like static electricity that might repel Kamijou if he touched it, belonged without a doubt to Stiyl Magnus the priest. He didn’t do anything special. “ ” He said just one thing. It was in a foreign language, so Kamijou didn’t know what it meant. Those were Stiyl Magnus’s words as a priest, not as a sorcerer. There must have been a lot of meaning in those words. Despite not raising a finger at all until now, the knight’s right hand started moving unsteadily. He brought the hand up toward Stiyl as if grasping something floating in the skies… “ . ” …and said something. Stiyl nodded slightly. Kamijou still didn’t understand how much weight those words held. However, the tension in the knight’s entire body melted like he had told the priest everything he needed to tell him. There was a contented, satisfied relaxation in him, as if to say that he had given up all his lingering regrets. The knight’s right hand fell. Gonk. The steel-clad hand rang against the floor like a funeral bell. “…” At the end, Stiyl Magnus the priest made the sign of the cross at his chest. A ritual to send off a single human, regardless of whether they were of English Puritanism or Roman Orthodox. There, Kamijou finally caught on to one fact… This was unmistakably a genuine battlefield. “Let’s go” Stiyl Magnus said in the voice of a sorcerer, not as a priest. “It looks like we’ve got another reason to fight.” 4 He felt dour. Their goal for the moment was to search for rooms hidden in the gaps throughout the building. The closest one was in this south building, next to the cafeteria on the fifth floor, so they were ascending the cramped emergency stairs. As they climbed, Kamijou got to thinking. At first, he thought it was because of that knight, and then he thought it was because of this dimly lit, narrow staircase. But there was one physical problem apart from those mental ones. “My feet…” He looked down at his legs. They were already showing signs of exhaustion. The rules of the front and back of the coin. Sorcerers (and himself) who came in knowing everything weren’t able to obstruct the residents blindly going about their lives on the front. The building itself belonged to the front as well, according to Stiyl. What this meant was that every bit of the shock that came from stepping on the floor rebounded back to his feet. In simple terms, it was like the difference between punching people and concrete. The floor was so overly tough that it was tiring him out two or three times more quickly. “I guess…we just have to pray…that the enemy’s gotta deal with this, too, huh?” Stiyl seemed to be distressed at the rapid onset of fatigue as well. He had a large body, but apparently he hadn’t trained it for jumping or leaping in the first place. “Damn…If it’s gonna be like this anyway, then wouldn’t taking the elevator have been a better idea?” “We’re on the back of the coin, so if you know some way of pressing the button on the front of the coin, I’d love to hear it.” “…” “Even if we mixed in with the students on the front coming and going and slipped in through the open door, where would that lead us? If a whole bunch of people boarded on the next floor, we’d be squeezed to death.” The people on the back of the coin can’t interfere with the people on the front of the coin. Apparently all this meant was that even if a car on the back of the coin rammed full speed into someone on the front of the coin, the car would be the one to get wrecked, and the person wouldn’t have a single scratch on them. If they ended up being packed like sardines in the elevator… Then their bodies would be squashed in no time, just like a raw egg brought on to a train car packed to the limit. …Ugh, I think I’m actually in full-out depression mode now. Kamijou sluggishly looked down. Now his dark thoughts were clashing with his accumulated weariness. It made him feel like his mind was about to split in half. Something fun…Can’t there be something fun? Kamijou asked himself, greedily desiring repose. And there was. “That’s right. What about phones?” “What?” “Well, I’m talking about the front and back of the coin. I was just wondering if phones wouldn’t be able to connect,” he said, bringing out his cell phone from his pants pocket. Though he said this, Kamijou himself realized it was a facade. Strange things were happening one after the other. He felt like he needed his phone to bring him back to reality lest he would be driven insane. He didn’t hesitate on whom to call. He would call his room—in other words, the room a girl was waiting in. As he was about to, though, he suddenly thought of something. “…Wait. The bad guy won’t detect me using my phone and come attack us or anything, right?” “Who knows? But either way, I’m sure he already knows we’ve invaded. We just broke in through the front.” “So why doesn’t he come to get us?” “Not a clue. Maybe he’s got some leeway, or maybe he wants to kill us with one swift, certain blow. Well, this is that alchemist we’re talking about. He’s more than likely setting up preemptive measures to quash our counterattack.” “…” Then why does this guy have so much leeway? Kamijou pondered dubiously. If the enemy had already noticed them, though, there was no point in trying to be quiet. He boldly decided to make the call. The ring sounded three times. So it won’t work after all…? The ring sounded six times. …Guess I’ll give up. The ring sounded nine times. Damn it, pick up already! he cursed to himself, oddly enough not in the mood to hang up. While he waited, he had another notion. What if it didn’t have anything to do with the front or back of the coin, and Index just wasn’t answering the phone? And hypothetically speaking, what if it wasn’t that she wouldn’t, but that there was a reason she couldn’t? What if… What if something happened to Index? In! Goose bumps. The moment after an unfamiliar chill began scraping its way up out of his stomach… …the phone connected. “He-hellooo! This, um, this is Index Librorwait, no, that’s not it, this is the Kamijou residence, um, hello! Whooo is it?!” …And then he heard Index’s voice, sounding completely freaked out. “Umm, I just need to ask something—” Kamijou said with the exhaustion of someone trying out a wrong diet, “—but is this the first time you’ve ever answered a phone?” “Yes?! Wait, huh? That’s Touma’s voice. Huh? Does everyone on the telephone have the same voice?” Gonk-gonk. That was probably the sound of Index hitting the receiver, her head slanted in confusion. “Index, don’t start hitting the machine just because you think it isn’t working! That’s, like, exactly how old ladies fix televisions.” “…That’s strange. Only Touma could have said something that dumb.” Hey! Kamijou retorted to himself. No doubt about it. This was Index’s first time using a phone (though she knew to say “hello” and seemed to have at least seen or heard other people doing it). She probably panicked when the ringing didn’t stop no matter how long she waited. Then, finally, without any other recourse, she prepared herself and picked up the receiver. Something like that. For a magic specialist possessing 103,000 grimoires, Index didn’t even have basic common sense when it came to science or technology. Kamijou thought that trait was charming, but it gave him something to think about at the same time. He knew from his knowledge… …that Index had no memories from before last year. Actions that seemed charming at a glance were actually deformities caused by her amnesia. It was pretty painful when he looked at it that way. “Nyai? So, Touma, what’s wrong? Why are you using the phone—this excessive, gaudy, bothersome thing that’s bad for your heart? You must be really worried about something.” “Ah, no” Apparently, Index didn’t consider phones to be commonplace. “Ah! There were two things of lasagna inside the refrigerator, could one of them have been for you?!” “You ate it? Well, whate” “Ah!”ver. Before he could say that, she exclaimed again, “There was some pudding inside the refrigerator…!” “You ate it?! You ate it! You really ate it, didn’t you!” “But there was only one in there!” “Don’t you have any regard for your landlord?! Those Kuromitsu House Bakery puddings were seven hundred yen a piece! Gyaah!” shouted Kamijou. “Urgh! W-well, fine. We’re getting off topic. Anyway, everything’s A-OK if my phone connects.” “? Touma, you didn’t need anything?” “Nah. I just wanted to see if a call got through. I’m hanging up now.” “?” Kamijou pictured Index, whose head must have been cocked in bafflement. He said, “Oh, right, right. Did you know, Index? Apparently, for every minute you talk on the phone, your life span goes down a day.” “Gyawah!” came a shout as the phone suddenly cut off. She probably slammed the receiver into the cradle. “…What a simpleton,” Kamijou said to himself as he turned his phone off, his retaliation for the pudding complete. And… “…” For some reason, there was a sorcerer looking at him like he really wanted to say something. “Wh-what?” “Nothing.” Stiyl exhaled a sigh. “I was just thinking you lack a bit of tension. Man, this is a battlefield after all, and here you are without a care in the world, chatting it up with a girl, so if pride is your own downfall, then you know what, I don’t care, I’d be jumping for joy, but if you start holding me back, then I’ll be—” “Are you jealous?” “Gh…Urgh…?!” Stiyl fell silent, like 60 percent of the vessels in his body had ruptured. I feel like I’m steadily figuring out how to manage this guy, thought Kamijou. “…Yeah, I am.” Kamijou felt his heart being pierced more than he thought it would at that phrase. He didn’t know why it shocked him so much, but Stiyl continued on. “…Don’t get me wrong. I don’t view that girl as an object of affection or anything.” Stiyl wasn’t looking at Kamijou. “I mean, you know, don’t you? Until now, she had a body that couldn’t survive unless all her memories were erased at yearly intervals. So you get it, right? You at least know that many other people have stood in your position before.” “…” “There was someone who tried to be her father. There were people who tried to be her siblings. There were people who tried to be her friends. There was someone who tried to be her teacher,” Stiyl said as if singing alone. “That’s it. That’s all it is. In the past, I failed, and you succeeded. That’s the only difference between us.” Stiyl looked Kamijou in the eyes. It was as if he was staring at a dream—a future—that would never again be within his grasp. “Although, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have any regrets.” Stiyl gave another sigh. “After all, it’s not like Index has actually turned us down. She just doesn’t remember. If she did, she’d come jumping to embrace us.” “…” Kamijou couldn’t give him a response. If he had someone important to him…if that important someone lost all their memories…What if a completely different person was boldly staying at that clueless someone’s side? Would I even be able to stay sane? thought Kamijou. No, it wasn’t just that there was a total stranger sticking with them. Wouldn’t he feel betrayed by that important person who had forgotten it all? But right now, he was looking at someone who, despite all that, had faith in himself and was trying to follow through with his convictions. That was real strength. Kamijou looked at his cell phone. It was just a five minute or so casual conversation. Someone had given up everything just for that, to protect someone precious to him, even though he knew he’d never reach her again. The feelings of all those people… Did the current Kamijou have the right to trample on all of those feelings and keep her to himself? …I don’t know. If that was the one and only thing Index wished for, then he knew he would defend that to the end. But the Index in question had only forgotten about those people. She didn’t even know that she had a choice in the first place, so making her choose something was fundamentally unreasonable. I don’t know, but…If they say Touma Kamijou saved Index, then… …yes, I at least need to fulfill my responsibility for saving her. Giving food to an abandoned cat on a whim and not taking it home, even though you know it’ll die of starvation, was more wicked than the despair caused by rashly giving it the hope of maybe being picked up. However… The one who saved her isn’t the “current” me Whenever he thought about it all the way through, it always came back to here at the end. Index is looking for someone else…the Touma Kamijou from before his loss of memory. 5 After ascending some five flights of stairs, Kamijou and Stiyl stepped out into a hallway. Stiyl had the sketched map of the Misawa Cram School memorized. There was a proper meaning for them coming up here. It was on this floor that there was an apparent discrepancy between the building’s paper blueprints and its actual size measured externally via infrared and ultrasonic waves. Meaning they thought there was a secret room here. “According to the blueprints, it should be nearby.” Stiyl lightly knocked on the completely ordinary wall in the middle of the straight hallway. “…It should be, but if it ends up not opening, then we’re shit out of luck.” “Yep.” They couldn’t open a single door on the front of the coin even if it wasn’t a secret one in the first place, since the two of them were on the back of the coin. Entering and leaving rooms would require them to slip through the gaps left by students opening the door, but of course there wouldn’t be anyone frequenting the hidden rooms. “But it’s best to verify their locations. However strong this barrier is, Aureolus is the one who made it. Dealing with the barrier is as simple as threatening him…We could just kill him if it comes to that.” “…” Kamijou unwittingly glanced at Stiyl. He understood that this was a battlefield, and that Aureolus was an enemy they needed to defeat. The situation wasn’t frivolous, and all it took to know that were the fallen knight in the lobby and the fact that Aisa Himegami was being held prisoner. Even so, part of Kamijou couldn’t outright assert that he’d “kill” Aureolus, because it was also possible that Aureolus had taken down that knight in legitimate self-defense. However, this sorcerer was a different story. He said “kill.” He didn’t use a vague word like defeat or beat; he had declared he would kill him. They searched for the room closest to where the hidden room seemed to be. It turned out to be a cafeteria. It was probably an illusion, a psychological trick—you messed with people’s perspective by setting up a big room. That way, you could hide the existence of a small hidden space next to it. The entrance to the cafeteria didn’t have any particular doors. Kamijou and Stiyl entered, cautious not to let themselves be swallowed up by the waves of people. As it turned out, places with a lot of people were fairly problematic. After all, those on the back of the coin couldn’t intrude upon those on the front. Boys were playing musical chairs as they moved around what few seats there were. Crowds of girls were walking with their trays and talking to one another. They were all basically raging bulls charging at Stiyl and Kamijou. On top of that, the size of the cafeteria made it hard to predict people’s movements, compared to in the hallways. They needed to strain their nerves to the limit just to avoid the flow. It being evening, the cafeteria was filled with students. No one was looking at him—that sensation was fresh in a way. It was completely different from walking through a bustling train station like normal. When he was faced with this sight, he understood that people unconsciously avoid others normally so they didn’t end up running into one another. There was a counter on the wall behind the hidden room, and over the counter was a cramped kitchen. The industrial-sized refrigerators and cookware made matters worse, forcing the already-tight kitchen to feel even more confined. I get it. As long as you don’t know the original size of the room, that would make it hard to figure out how much open space is on the other side of the wall, thought Kamijou, impressed. “…Hmm. This is my first time seeing a scientific religion, but from the looks of it, it doesn’t look like all that much. I thought there would be framed pictures of the founder’s face decorating the place or something.” Stiyl inspected his surroundings with boredom. “…It definitely doesn’t seem dangerous, but…” Kamijou looked around as well. In the science world, there was something called a “cultic danger level list.” It included, among others, a cult’s “income” level, or to what extent it would collect possessions from its followers; its “expansion” level, or how forcibly it made new followers; its “absolute obedience” level, all the way to the point where even suicide bombing was a possibility; and its “dangerous material-refining” level, like poison gas, explosives, and so on. Points would be assigned to each of those items, and the ones with a lot of points would be classified as religions that presented a threat to science. From a purely scientific standpoint, he didn’t think that the Misawa Cram School was all that dangerous. Since its subjects were students, the school couldn’t easily collect a large amount of money from them, and prep schools weren’t the best-suited places for refining poison gas or bacteriological weapons. But… “…No. This place is definitely a scientific religion,” he said under his breath with spite. Strangely, although the cafeteria was brimming with students, there was an oppressive air present in the room, like the kind in an elevator. That’s understandable, Kamijou thought. Everyone in here was just making noise—they weren’t having enjoyable conversations. For example, they discussed how much more one’s grade had gone up after a mock exam, having outsmarted their fellow schoolmates, or how they just couldn’t understand the trash that hadn’t been studying whatever subject at this time of year. They could only laugh with one another by saying degrading, scornful things about others. Kamijou looked at the posters hanging on the walls of the cafeteria. They were pretty conventional for preparatory schools and university advancement cram schools. Lined up on the walls were illustrated, dichotomous statements along the lines of “Study now, pass the test, be happy. Don’t study now, fail the test, be unhappy.” It’s like a more positive version of a chain letter, he thought. The sort of thing that would say, “If you send this to seven people within seven days, you’ll find happiness.” Which, on the other hand, is a threat that if you don’t, you will become unhappy. That was the part that really stunk of cultism. “…Hmph. The whole ‘we’re the smart ones for studying here right now’ thing is religious belief itself, isn’t it? After all, even during lectures, professors are always spouting stuff like ‘these are the essential points for this exam that you can only learn here. The only ones who don’t study here this summer are unintelligent, inferior beings.’” It makes me sick, he said to himself. It seriously makes me sick. He himself was what made him sick for being able to understand this, if even a little bit. To top it off, all in all, exams end up involving superstition. People try out weird foods that are claimed to improve your concentration despite a complete lack of empirical evidence, and people bring lucky charms in to pass tests all the time. The tiny chasm named “anxiety”… Misawa Cram School was a scientific religion that slid the tip of a knife into that hole. “Hm. You seem to be stricken by the cult’s virulence, but I trust you haven’t forgotten our original goal, yes? For now, I want to see if we can just find the entrance to the hidden room.” “Uh, yeah. Right. I got it!” Kamijou took a deep breath, trying to somehow calm his nerves. After that, he took one final look around the cafeteria. Suddenly, all eighty students in the room had their eyes on Kamijou. At first, Kamijou mistook this for him having raised his voice. “This…could be bad.…Are we going through checkpoint number one or what?” So even when he heard Stiyl’s urgent voice, he couldn’t react to it. “Uh, huh?” “Don’t space out. There’s no way people on the front of the coin can see the sorcerer on the other side. I see. This means there are automatic warning systems in place near the hidden rooms like this.” “…” Kamijou looked around him. The students, eighty in number, were definitely staring at the two of them. Gone were their humanlike gestures; they simply stood there like poles, their eyes like lenses—inorganic. “C-could they” He glanced around…at the dozens of students who were now unmistakably standing on the back of the coin. If they were on the back of the coin, then what that meant was “Sorcerers!” Stiyl had already taken a step back without him by the time Kamijou shouted in incredulity. However… “The seraph’s wings are a shining light, the shining light is the immaculate white, which exposes sin” A single student, stiff as a pole, alone, started to murmur something he didn’t know the meaning of. “The immaculate white is the ‘proof of purification, that proof is the result of’ motion” A second person’s voice overlaid the first. “The ‘result is the future, the future’ is ‘time, time is’ uniform” And along with the second person, a third person, a fourth person, a fifth person, a sixth person, a seventh person, an eighth person, a ninth person, ten people, eleven people, twelve people, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen “Uniformity is all ‘things, all things are created by the past, the past is the’ origin, the origin is ‘a singularity,’ the singularity is ‘sin, sin is man, man’ ‘fears punishment, fear’ is ‘crime, crime is’ within the self, if ‘within the self lies something to be avoided, then by the seraph’s wings’ ‘the crimes of the self are’ exposed and must burst out from within!” A grand chorus, eighty strong, arose—nay, it was a vortex of words born of every human in the building, more than a thousand people, that could shake the entire battlefield itself. A bluish-white light about the size of a Ping-Pong ball appeared at the brow of one of the students. Maybe it really was a ball—it flew through the air, its aim unclear, and dropped to the floor right next to Kamijou. Fshhhh. It made a noise a strong acid might produce and a chemical smoke rose slightly. Maybe you could get away with only a burn if it were just one of those… “All right, Imagine Breaker, you’re up!” “What?…Wait?!” He turned back around, and suddenly there were hundreds of bluish-white orbs coming at him so that they blotted out his vision. “Uh, ahhthere’s no way I can deal with all of this!” Kamijou ran toward the exit to try and beat Stiyl there. The sorcerer pursued him, flustered, and they burst out of the cafeteria. He had thought Kamijou would be his shield. “Wha…Hey, don’t run! What do you think your shield is for?! That right hand can defend against Dragon’s Breath, but you’re not even using it! You’re turning your defenseless back to them! Are you insane?!” “What the hell?! How dare you say that when you tried to use me as a shield, asshole! I don’t care how strong those are, there’s a hopeless number of them! I can’t deal with them all with one hand!” It was like a boxing match with a four-armed opponent. Even if you put up a defense around your face when looking out for two arms, the other two would penetrate through to your wide-open stomach. This gang was too big for a loner to handle. Roar! Tons of spheres surged out of the cafeteria toward them. Like the cafeteria had been filled with water and a door was opened, that’s how it looked. The two of them had no choice at the moment but to flee down the hallway. “Damn. All things considered, he managed to make a Gregorian Choir, albeit a fake one…I may have underestimated this Aureolus Isard creature.” “What the heck is a ‘gregorio’ whatever?!” “It was originally the ultimate weapon of the Roman Orthodox Church. They’d assemble 3,333 monks into a temple and gather their prayers for one huge spell. It would cause the magic power to skyrocket, just like focusing sunlight through a magnifying glass.” Stiyl gritted his teeth. “There were only what, two thousand students here? It’s like that expression this country has. Dust that piles up can become a mountain.” Kamijou was startled. He was aware that he didn’t understand half the things Stiyl said, but in the enddidn’t that mean they were surrounded by and fighting, like, two thousand people? His brain knew that this building was a battlefield and that they had assaulted the very center of the enemy’s camp. But as soon as he thought about two thousand people turning on him all at once, his despair inflated. “There’s no way I could win against them all at the same time The building may be big, but we’re still inside it, you know! You’re gonna get caught eventually if you play hide-and-seek with two thousand people!” But Stiyl, still looking forward, answered, “That’s not for certain yet. The core…You need to control all two thousand people at once, or else the spell will fail. If we can destroy the key to that synchronization, we’ll be able to put an end to the Gregorian Choir.” They continued to run down the long, straight hallway. When they finally got close to the stairwell, they could see another flood of blue orbs coming to attack them from the front. They had been caught in a pincer attack. “The stairsLet’s go!” Kamijou and Stiyl promptly dove into the stairwell next to them. Kamijou tried to ask for Stiyl’s opinion on whether to run up or down, but all of a sudden he noticed something out of place. “You…! You’ve been looking awfully relaxed this whole time! You’ve got some kind of plan, don’t you?!” Yes—despite basically walking the line between life and death at the moment, Stiyl was far too calm. “Hmm. I do have a secret plan, but I’m not sure I should use it at a time like this.” “Wha—? If you did, then use the damn thing already” “You think so?” said Stiyl, turning a deeply mischievous grin at Kamijou. The smile was way too ill suited for the situation; he took caution and unwittingly gulped, but at that moment… Thump! Stiyl shoved Kamijou down the stairwell to the flight below. “Wha…” Before Kamijou could even think, he lost his balance and hurtled down the stairs. A searing pain ran through his body as if he were being beaten by four or five people. He couldn’t even scream. If he did, he’d bite his tongue. “Bad luck, scarecrow. ” So came Stiyl’s cheerful voice from overhead. In a daze, he looked above and saw Stiyl dashing up the stairs—in the exact opposite direction. Right after that, the flood of orbs rushed in as if to split off the upper levels from the lower ones. Like a raging river, as if completely natural, they settled their sights on Kamijou and stormed toward him! “That bastard…!” Kamijou forced his aching body to move and ran farther down the stairs. Stiyl’s words popped up in the back of his mind. This was Aureolus’s base of operations, so it was apparently chock-full of the guy’s mana. Supposedly it was like a picture painted only in red; if Stiyl was to use his blue-colored magic, Aureolus would detect it happening. However, he’d notice nothing as long as Stiyl didn’t do anything. On the other hand, Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker was progressively erasing the red paint. Unlike Stiyl, who had an on/off switch, he essentially had a transmitter hanging from his waist at all times. The important point was that Stiyl had brought him all this way just to use as a disposable decoy. He knew Stiyl had far too little in the way of plans to be attacking an enemy fortress, but he actually had this up his sleeve the whole time. …Damn it! But wait. Isn’t that strange? An alarm was blaring inside Kamijou, but he couldn’t figure out what it was indicating. He didn’t even have any ideas. If there was something he had no idea about as an amnesiac, then that meant… The Kamijou from before he lost his memories was… His “knowledge” was warning him about something. As if to cut his thoughts short, a new set of footsteps came into earshot. And they were from downstairs, like they were obstructing the way. “…!” The torrent of spheres was approaching him from above. He couldn’t stop running at this point. He checked what was down there as he sprinted downstairs at full speed. There was a lone girl, standing there like she was waiting for him. He’d never seen her before. He also didn’t know where her uniform was from, but she was probably a student preparing for exams and one or two years older than him. With round glasses and black hair tied into braids, the girl looked far and away removed from sorcery, let alone a fight. “Crimes are punished by flame. Flame is governed by purgatory. Purgatory is made to burn sinners. It is the only violence recognized by God—” However, what escaped from those sweet lips was an unpleasant voice that sounded like rusted gears. Each time she formed a word, the pale blue orb at her forehead grew larger. The ball waited, eagerly and anxiously, for the moment it would exceed critical mass and shoot off like a balloon whose mouth was released. The front and back of the coin must have been reversed. This girl should have been on the front, but now she stood on the back as a sorcerer. That probably applied to every student currently inside Misawa Cram School. On the other hand, that meant if he moved immediately, Kamijou would easily be able to take her down. I can do it…! Kamijou clenched his right hand. He wouldn’t be able to keep up with dozens or hundreds of them, but one or two orbs wouldn’t present any threat. He gripped his fist as tightly as he could as if to reaffirm his power, the Imagine Breaker— Bazzt. The girl’s cheek blew off like a firecracker had exploded underneath her skin. “Wha—?!” As Kamijou stood there dumbstruck, the girl’s fingers, her nose, and inside her clothing all made small bursts, one after the other. Each one of the ruptures was small, and they were ripping a few centimeters of skin off at most. However… “Violence is…affirmation of death. Affir-matio—is, awareness. Aware…ne” The girl’s body ruptured with every syllable she formed. The very lips forming those words ripped, and blood dripped from her mouth because even her insides might have been bursting apart. In spite of that, the girl didn’t stop saying words. No—she couldn’t stop. It was like she was a frog being shocked with electrodes, and its leg muscles were moving independently of its will. Could that be… The dread inside Kamijou nearly got up out of his stomach. His knowledge was speaking to him. He didn’t know where he had learned it, but this strange knowledge was saying something. Espers cannot use magic. It was stating that supernatural abilities and magic were both abnormal powers, but their substances were entirely different. Espers have different brain circuits than normal people, so even though they do the same things as sorcerers, they can’t perform sorcery. However, this was Academy City. Every student living in this city, no matter who it was, would be undergoing a Curriculum for Ability Development. So, what if… What would happen if an esper, who can’t use magic, was forced to utilize it anyway? “St…op” Kamijou mumbled in spite of himself, forgetting what situation he was in. Their circuits were different. That’s what his knowledge told him. He didn’t know jack about the inner workings of the occult, but maybe it would be like trying to force a battery-powered Walkman to connect to a wall socket? Since electricity was passing through it, the circuits would activate, but… Wasn’t that just unreasonably forcing the circuits to function while burning them out? “Stop it! Hey, you must understand that your body is being ruined!” At this point, he was forgetting to clench his fists. He forgot everything, despite looking down the end of a metaphorical handgun barrel, and darted all the way down the stairs. “…ss, isinside, yourself. Inside, isthe world. Connect, your inner self with, the outer world.” The girl went on muttering something and then was suddenly silenced by a sharp splitting sound. Her forehead split open, and the light blue sphere she had called forth vanished. What remained in its wake was only an open wound, out of which flowed crimson blood. Maybe that did it. Her body shuddered, angled itself toward the steps of the staircase, and began to decline. Something inside him whispered. The human body is heavy, even if it belonged to a petite girl. If it turned into luggage, things would be different. It told him that he wouldn’t be able to escape from the deluge of orbs while carrying dozens of kilograms along. Something inside him whispered. Besides, this girl was the enemy. He’d get nothing in return for saving her, and it would also put him at risk of getting shot in the back. It was insisting that if he wanted to save himself, he must leave the enemy behind here. Something inside him whispered. And above all, it said, there was no more saving someone who had sustained all those injuries. Her wounds were fatal by anyone’s measure, and the scientific religion had tainted her very soul. … Kamijou silently chewed on his back teeth at the echoes of the voice in his mind. “Shut…up” In spite of all that, he used all his might to reach a hand toward the girl about to tumble down the stairs. The girl was certainly heavy. There was no reason he’d be able to escape the flood of orbs with a person on his shoulders when he already couldn’t get away. He knew she was the enemy. He knew her body’s wounds were deep and her heart’s wounds graver still. That all went without saying. But still… There was absolutely no reason to allow this girl to be dumped into the deluge of globes approaching them from the rear. There would never be a reason for that no matter where in the world you looked. She obviously wasn’t doing all this because she enjoyed it. She had enrolled here thinking it was just a prep school, and before she knew it, the scientific religion had corrupted her. In the end, she was being treated like a disposable tool before she understood what was going on. Kamijou remembered the knight collapsed at the elevators. If he had learned anything back there, it was that he couldn’t possibly abandon someone about to die, whether they were an enemy or not! “Guh…Damn…!” The girl who fell into his chest with a thump was lighter than he had expected. However, he meant that in human terms. As an encumbrance, she was quite heavy. Adding to that, they were in the middle of a flight of stairs, so the footing was bad. He was about to plummet down them. As he tried to hurry down the stairs holding on to the bloodied girl, he threw a quick glance behind him. There was… … Fwshhhh. Like a surging flash flood, the rain of orbs was right in front of his face. Kamijou immediately deflected the orb in front of his nose with his right hand, used his left to grab the girl’s waist, and dashed down the remaining stairs all at once. Well, he tried to run down them. Unfortunately, the unconscious human body was surprisingly weighty. It was like he was being told to swim with an iron ball attached to his feet. He thought to just jump, but gravity pinned his body down. Not letting that slight loss of time escape, hundreds, thousands of orbs came swirling toward him… “” Kamijou shut his eyes tightly out of reflex. I’ll at least be a shield for her. Okay, fine. But while he could defend against one or two of the spheres, hundreds of them would be a different story. His body would be eaten alive by the innumerable orbs, little by little, as if by countless insects, and he would melt like they were a strong acid— “…?” He wasn’t being melted. No matter how long he waited, nothing happened. He was under the illusion that time had stopped. He could no longer open his eyes out of carelessness. The strange delusion imprisoning him said that time would resume the moment he did. But if he didn’t open his eyes, nothing would happen. He cracked them open, with all the terror and caution of snipping a wire on a time bomb. “…Huh?” His eyes were now open, but he couldn’t comprehend what he saw. He was under a weird illusion that time had halted. Because that was the only explanation. The balls had come right up to his nose. He was about to be swallowed up by hundreds of them. So why exactly was the deluge of orbs stopped dead in midair like a paused video? At last, the orbs resumed their movement, like taut strings attached to them had been cut. However, they didn’t move to swallow Kamijou up in their fierce current. Instead, every one of the countless orbs fell straight down as if they were apples being slowly released from a hand. When they hit the floor, they melted into the air and completely evaporated. Click-clack came footsteps. Kamijou didn’t know what was going on…but the noise was coming from the lower level. At any rate, he looked down from the landing toward where he heard them, as if he was investigating for an answer. Downstairs, there was an exit to a hallway, and the light of the evening sun was shining into the poorly lit emergency stairwell. And there… …stood Deep Blood, Aisa Himegami, as if she were looking up at him from the bottom of a well. 6 At that time, Stiyl Magnus watched as his used-up flame sword disappeared. A single rune card bobbed through the air like a petal of a cherry blossom. This was the hallway on a floor higher than Kamijou. It was a straight, long passage, and nothing about it was out of the ordinary, but Stiyl had figured out that the core of the Gregorian Choir was concealed here. He was a sorcerer. With that being his own expertise, he could easily see the flow of mana. Despite the students here having a meager amount of magic power, the core was gathering and controlling the mana of two thousand people. It was hard for him not to pinpoint its location. “…I see, so that’s how he ‘hid’ it.” Stiyl spoke under his breath, fiddling with his cigarette, relaxed. Hiding something on the front of the coin equated to absolute defense on the back of the coin, because those on the back could never even tear the wrapping paper on a Christmas present if it was on the front. For example, sealing the core inside the ordinary walls would give it an impenetrable bastion. Even if an enemy sorcerer found it, he thought there would be no problem if he couldn’t do anything about it. “However, that’s only if he was able to completely cover it up.” Stiyl exhaled smoke with a lack of interest. His flame was formless. If there was a hole less than a millimeter wide born from the slightest warp in a wall or window, for example, flooding through it with 3,000 degree Celsius fire would be a piece of cake. Common sense on the front of the coin didn’t work on the back. If he had wanted to perfectly protect the thing, then he should have stuffed it into a vinyl bag or something and bound the opening shut. Thus, Stiyl decided he’d try and destroy the core without even having seen what it was. As a result, it seemed that he was able to stop the Gregorian Choir. “…Still, though,” he said to himself, waggling the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “This is his way out? Alchemists really have twisted since the last time I saw them. An escape route should be made by shedding your own blood, not that of other people.” The brain wiring differs between espers and sorcerers. If you force an esper with different neural pathways to use magic, the mana would run rampant, tearing their blood vessels and nerves to pieces. In actuality, even in this hallway, even at his very feet, there were numerous students collapsed on the floor. Some were still moving, and some were no longer able to do so. In addition, a dense, metallic smell wafted over to him from somewhere. If he peered into one of the rooms around him, there would doubtlessly be a hell dozens of times worse there to greet him. The fact that his own words made mention of the young ones surprised him. It was like there were still humane parts of him left to do so. …Is he contagious? Stiyl remembered the face of a certain young esper and grimaced. Then his ears began to pick up the sound of very audible footsteps from the other side of the hallway. They were not in a hurry, nor were they trying to be silent. They were not concealing malice, and yet they weren’t trying to assassinate him with a single, certain strike from the shadows. If he had to describe it, it was like an opponent knocking on the door to his house before attacking. The smell of bold fearlessness, of absolute confidence in certain and total victory, was a declaration of war and a triumphant proclamation. The footsteps spoke. “It was inevitable. No matter where you might have hid yourself, I had conviction that I could lure you out to the core by utilizing the Gregorian replica.” The footsteps did not cease. “It is obvious. There were two intruders…Where is the other? It is manifest. Has your familiar been swallowed by the Gregorian replica?” “If he did get swallowed up, that’d be a load off my shoulders,” Stiyl sung back. “Unfortunately, he’s quite a bit more stubborn than you’d imagine. And he’s not really cute enough to be called a familiar, either.” The footsteps stopped short about ten meters down the passage from him. Stiyl grinned once. Then he focused directly ahead. Those eyes were not smiling in the least. The footsteps’ identity was the soles of a pair of Italian-made leather shoes. The tall legs stretching out from them and the slender body achieving two meters in height were both arrayed in an expensive, pure white suit. His gender was male, his age was eighteen, and his name was Aureolus. The color of his hair was green. The dyed color was a symbolic one representing earth, one of the five elements he controlled. His combed-back hair was the only thing that made the man, whose skin and clothes were both white, stand out. His outfit was gaudy enough to be an object of ridicule. However, it was transformed into something very natural by the androgynous beauty the man possessed. “Anyway, what’s a guy not even meant for battle trying to lead me here for? You do know you wouldn’t even be able to slow me down, right? Or are you perhaps hiding some dozens of magic items in there today, Curio Dealer?” “…” That was close to taboo for Aureolus. Alchemists weren’t meant for combat in the first place. In order for one to stand on the front lines, he would need to strengthen himself with weapons or Soul Arms. Aureolus had to use dozens, if not hundreds of magical items to finally be able to stand face-to-face with Stiyl. “That is incorrect. Can you not even discern, knave, that at present, I bring no magic items with me?” “I’ll bet. After all, this building is a sanctuary in and of itself. It’s one huge lump of a magic item. The environment supplements you on its own, so you don’t even have to use any to power yourself up. Hmph. So what? What is it you want to do? Even if you stay quiet, the sanctuary will fight for you on its own. You just have to borrow its power to get rid of party crashers. So just what did you come here to do? Or, should I say, what can you do?” “You cur!” “Your face is telling me that rubbed you the wrong way, but unfortunately, I have no need for you. So get out of my way. Your parenting style does irritate me somewhat, but there’s no point in blaming you, is there? After all, it’s the sanctuary that committed that sin. It would be cruel to demand retribution from you, wouldn’t it?” “You blasted knave” Slip. With a motion like a snake slithering out of a hole, a golden blade leaped forth from the right sleeve of Aureolus’s suit. An arrowhead…? Stiyl furrowed his brow. It was certainly shaped like an arrowhead, but it was as big as a smallish knife. The moment he concluded that it was a hidden weapon made for throwing… “Limen” Aureolus’s right hand swung upward. The edge of the blade stared Stiyl in the face like a viper raising its head. “Magna” Instantly, the thing shot out to attack Stiyl, flying straight as a bullet, aimed right at his eyeballs. “…?!” The only reason he was able to instantly twist his body and avoid it was that he had guessed it was a throwing weapon but a moment prior. Had he thought it was just a knife, it would have pierced his skull. Likewise, a golden chain was attached to the tail of the giant arrowhead. As he swiveled, he looked at where the knife, now more like a giant golden snake, was headed. The chain was coming out of Aureolus’s suit sleeve, cutting through the air, and passing right by Stiyl’s face. Shlick. The tip of the arrowhead stabbed into the back of a fallen student with a sound like fruit being sliced. … Before Stiyl could think of something… …?! Pop. As if he had thrust the knife into a water balloon, the student’s body turned into fluid and exploded. It almost looked like the body had been melted by a strong acidic solution, but no, that wasn’t just any fluid. It sparkled in a golden color—it was none other than pure, smelted gold. The chain rewound itself with a voosh, and the arrowhead danced back to Aureolus’s sleeve. “It was natural. Do tell me what surprises you so.” Aureolus raised his right hand again. “My position is that of an alchemical master. Of course, I shall not allow you to claim ignorance of my name’s origin.” Stiyl could not speak. The very technique that symbolized alchemy, the transmutation of lead into gold, certainly existed. But even if you were to use modern materials for such a grandiose technique, it would cost close to seven billion Japanese yen and would require more than three years to perform. It was truly a hyperbole of magic. But right before his eyes, Aureolus had brought it to fruition in less than one second. It was the fastest ever—No, it was godlike speed, like a track record no one would ever be able to break again. “My Instantaneous Alchemy, Limen Magna, automatically transmutes anyone it harms, even slightly, into pure gold in the blink of an eye. Any defense is ineffective, and any escape is impossible. Now bring out your weapon, Innocentius, scoundrel. I have strong interest in learning whether or not it can transmute that formless incarnation of flame of yours.” The golden blade poked its head out of the alchemist’s right sleeve like a cobra. “…” However, Stiyl did not give a reply. He stood there frozen in place, like he was struck dumb by what he had just seen happen. “Hmm. It is inevitable; you must be amazed before my Limen Magna, but do not end it here. I have not yet had my fill. Ten thousand deaths are not enough to repay your attitude five seconds ago, knave.” “…Don’t be surprised? Well, that’s just impossible,” murmured Stiyl Magnus, dazed, like a child who had just seen a ghost. “Why on earth have you been doing something so pointless?” “Wha…?” The alchemist stopped moving. “What are you surprised for? Sorcery is all in the experiment, not the results, right? Hmm. For example, let’s say there’s a craftsman who creates medicine in five seconds. But there’s still no variation whatsoever in the effects of that medicine.” Stiyl sighed at him with ridicule. “That’s what you’re doing. Limen Magna? How pathetic. My point is, what does something like that do any differently from spreading strong acid on a human and melting them?” “…It is inevitable.” “I get that you’ve tried really hard, but setting Innocentius on this would practically be bullying a weakling. Besides, it’s at home. I don’t have the free time to use it in a place like this.” “…It is inevitable. You make me laugh!” As if to erase Stiyl’s scornful voice, Aureolus fired the Limen Magna from his right suit sleeve. His roar in itself could have supplied the force at which he fired it. It turned into a golden laser and left a stream of afterimages because its launch-rewind speed was just too fast. He may have been a sorcerer, but Stiyl still had a human body. He could never follow the storm of bullets. It was reaching ten shots per second. As a result, six shots out of ten penetrated through him all over, from his face to his ankles, like a sewing machine. The rune cards he was holding scattered and blew through the air. However… “And what is this? Don’t you realize that you’re just one of the magic items yourself?” Despite his upper body being littered with holes, despite the arm-width hole straight through his face, he kept on speaking like he was bored. “Wh…at…is this?” Aureolus, stunned, fired yet another Limen Magna. His bladed bullets, firing at ten per second, aggressively carved up not only Stiyl’s already-shredded upper body but also his lower body, which was holding it up. However… “Yes, a telesmatic clump using a Celtic cross for a focus is indeed an obscure model. Certainly fitting for a former Roman Orthodoxy bishop. But the one I’m looking for is Aureolus Isard. I’m sorry, but could the dummy Aureolus please stand down?” Stiyl flickered. His body was now transparent enough that it seemed like it would disappear at any moment, but nevertheless, he was still standing. “What do you mean? It is natural. I shall dissect your argument, beginning with its premise. It is obvious: The Limen Magna is my alchemic technique, and one I developed. It is evident; if that was not the case, then what would you say was the source of my power?” “The real Aureolus Isard, of course. Though I think it’s about time you yourself started to realize that something’s wrong. Well, it’s of no consequence. Then I have one question for you, Dummy Aureolus. What exactly was your reason for studying alchemy?” “…That is simple.” Aureolus readied his Limen Magna. “The purpose of alchemy is nothing other than an investigation into truth. My own particular specialty is humans. How high can a human climb while maintaining his human form? It is to search for that I knocked at the gates of the schoolhouse.” If one were to paint his body with the illusory plant belladonna, then he could raise his spell building and incantation speed by several degrees in exchange for destruction. He could even live for thousands of years if he buried himself in the Antarctic permafrost. However, Aureolus pursued alchemy not as a way to exceed his limits via this abandonment of humanity, but instead to search for how far someone could ascend while retaining his shape and dignity as a human. Aureolus was a descendant of Paracelsus, the magic doctor. He made that his raison d’être and wore it proudly. The sorcerer, though, broke all that to pieces with his next words. “Then why are you trying to make contact with something as inhuman as a vampire?” “…” “Hmph. See, you don’t know. You don’t know anything. You really don’t know anything—what Aureolus Isard is doing or what Aureolus Isard is trying to do. You are a dummy who was only input with data beforehand. It’s impossible for you to comprehend the error that’s making the real thing twist around his own beliefs for. “Could you call something like that Aureolus Isard a true alchemist?” he asked. He should have been completely destroyed, but for some reason, the sorcerer asserted this like he had already beaten the alchemist. “And that Limen Magna. Even though it’s a magical experiment for performing research, Aureolus Isard would never boast about the experiment itself instead of the results. Taking medicine makes a cold go away, but only children can rejoice at just that fact, no? Wasn’t it the duty of an alchemist to investigate which ingredients inside the medicine cured the cold?” “Ugh, ah…” If he wanted to deny it, he could have done so at any point. Aureolus, however, had made the mistake of listening to him. Each of the sorcerer’s words fit perfectly inside him like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He found himself unable to ignore them. “So I’ll say it as many times as I need to, you fake. The one I’ve got a bone to pick with is Aureolus Isard, not you. It would be easy to break one or two of his security devices, but doing so to something with the same face as an acquaintance puts me ill at ease. If you would leave, then you should do so quickly.” Dummy Aureolus couldn’t take this anymore. At this point, he didn’t even care if he was a fake. He had finally acquired this one and only trump card by his own hands, and yet even that was borrowed goods? That’s what he couldn’t stand. He readied the Limen Magna in order to wipe the enemy before him off the face of the earth… “And besides, you actually understand, don’t you? You know that the alchemist Aureolus Isard isn’t weak enough to lose this easily.” He heard the voice from behind him. In that moment, he felt warm air, like that of a heater, stroke his cheek. Suddenly, Stiyl Magnus appeared out of nowhere. A mirage…?! Aureolus immediately attempted to back away. A mirage is a phenomenon in which air is heated and expands, changing its refractive index. It’s possible to hide yourself like melting into the air and, vice versa, to appear where there is nothing, like an image coming up on a screen. The one at the mercy of Limen Magna the whole time was a fake. The real one had melted into the air to hide himself and had moved in behind Aureolus. At that point, he perfectly saw through Stiyl’s tactic. If he had spaced himself properly, he would have been able to avoid the attack. However… The fake illusion he impaled with the Limen Magna. Feeling empathy for that being, even for just a moment, not even a second, was his mistake. Blank spaces in a person’s thought processes leave fatal openings. By the time Aureolus finally snapped out of it, Stiyl had already created a flame sword in his right hand. Not only that, he had also brought it straight down on him, cutting off his left arm and left leg altogether. The smooth motion cut into his flesh like a knife slicing through butter. Roasted by a 3,000 degree Celsius flame, the surface of his skin carbonized. It couldn’t even bleed. “Ugh, gah…” But something other than the physical pain was dominating Aureolus’s mind. “And besides, you actually understand, don’t you? You know that alchemist Aureolus Isard isn’t weak enough to lose this easily.” The sorcerer’s words rattled his brain like a giant bell had gone off in his head. Yes. That’s how it should have been. Aureolus Isard should have been absolute, should have been invincible, should always win, should utterly crush his enemies, should know nothing of fleeing, should be devoid of the very concept of escape—he should have been an overwhelmingly perfect saint. Then what was this unsightly display? This was a coward. Hiding behind countless instruments, being frightened every time it’s poked. “Ga-aahh” That was the end of Dummy Aureolus’s reasoning mind. While missing an arm and a leg, Aureolus whipped the Limen Magna around. “?!” Stiyl readied his flame sword to guard against the golden arrowhead. However, the Limen Magna flew off in an unexpected direction and stabbed through the students collapsed in the area one after another. Splosh. The entire floor was awash with golden lava. Aureolus thrust the Limen Magna toward the melted pure gold once again, and then he swung it around from there. As if it could also be used to manipulate that gold, the liquid was shaken from its singular pool by centripetal force and splashed out in all directions, much in the same way that a magnet can attract iron filings. Of course, that included where Stiyl Magnus was standing. “Damn” He brushed away the golden spray flying at his face without much thought. At the same time, he made his flame sword explode. The hundreds of drops of pure gold were far too many to take down one by one, but the force of the explosion blasted them all away in one go. He sliced through the smoke that screened his surroundings with a newly created flame sword. But Dummy Aureolus was nowhere to be found—he had escaped, likely taking advantage of the explosion. Stiyl thought to follow him but gave up on it a moment later. Because the superheated gold he had swept aside was lying across the hallway before him like a puddle of magma. It was only about five meters long, but he’d be set on fire if he failed a running jump. It seemed his only recourse was to find a way around it. Fortunately, the Misawa School was made up of four buildings, each linked by raised walkways. There’s nowhere I can’t get to if I take the long way around, Stiyl thought to himself rather calmly. 7 “It only looks bad. Her wounds aren’t deep. She’ll be fine if we treat them,” said Deep Blood, Aisa Himegami, calmly to Kamijou after he dragged the Misawa Cram School student, the girl with glasses and braids, through the corridor with him. “B-but she’s all covered in blood!” He shouted back before he could think, staring at the girl lying on the hallway floor. He couldn’t tell what school her summer uniform was from, since it was dyed over with crimson. On her face, arms, and other parts, skin was visible; there were even places with torn skin clinging to her like a plastic bag. “Her skin ripping only damaged her capillaries. If an artery had been severed, it would be far worse. Blood would come out like a geyser.” “Wha…Well, but why—” She’s not even a doctor—no, even doctors wouldn’t know this without a detailed examination. How can she declare all this so smoothly? thought Kamijou. “Regarding blood flow. I know more than most.” Kamijou was dumbfounded. Because he suddenly remembered the name of Aisa Himegami’s ability. “Give me a hand.” But Aisa Himegami didn’t even seem to notice him. In order to care for her wounds, she abruptly began to remove the girl’s clothes, right in front of Kamijou, a male. “Wah, wa—” “Keep calm. It’s rude to the injured.” He didn’t mean it like that, but when he considered it calmly, he thought being conscious of the naked body of a girl is maybe morally wrong in this situation. A doctor would get fired on the spot if he got excited in an operating room, after all. The subsequent events were truly the handiwork of a doctor, an emergency responder. Himegami meticulously stopped the bleeding with a handkerchief. For the bleeding on the girl’s wrist that didn’t look like it would stop by pressing a cloth to it, she used Kamijou’s pants’ belt to constrict her whole arm and completely cut off the blood flowing from her artery. Unbelievably, she used the wounded girl’s hair and a needle from a sewing kit to stitch her torn stomach flesh closed. Kamijou couldn’t do much. All he did were things like lifting the wounded girl’s arms to a position above her heart or pressing the handkerchief to the mouth of the wound, all at Himegami’s instructions. His hands were covered in blood just from that. It gave him a strange sort of feeling when he thought about it being the blood from someone he was trying to save, rather than from someone he hurt. “We’re done for now.” Himegami made this declaration, paying no attention to the fact that her shrine maiden garments were soaked in blood. “Hemostasis is complete. Her blood will coagulate in fifteen minutes. Then her wounds will close. But the disinfecting is incomplete. She’ll be fine for about two hours. Bringing her to a hospital for further treatment would be ideal.” “…” Once again, Kamijou looked at the wounded girl lying on her side. She was about the same age as Kamijou, but her body, and likely her heart as well, had been ripped asunder to such an unimaginable extent. Experiencing joy at the fact that they saved her life wasn’t wrong, but… They couldn’t avoid the reality that she had lost everything else. “We did what we can, so now…we just have to leave it to the city’s power of science, huh?” Kamijou made the remark, looking at the girl’s face. The tattered skin was hanging from it like torn vinyl from the internal rupturing. “Plastic surgery will be fine. It will heal if they use skin from her butt.” “…” Well, Aisa Himegami had only given an answer based on modern medicine, but Kamijou wasn’t quite in agreement with it being okay to bring the skin on her butt to her face. “Anyway, that was some serious skill right there. Are you some famous, unlicensed doctor or something?” “I’m not a doctor.” Before Kamijou could ask, “Then what are you?” she said: “Actually. I’m a magician.” “…” I feel like I’ve heard that before, thought Kamijou, but it was true that she did rescue the wounded girl, so he brought to bear the biggest compromise he could manage. “Err, which part of you is a magician?” “I have a magic wand.” “Uh-huh…Hey! Isn’t that a nightstick with a stun gun buried in it?!” “It’s made with a new material.” “No, no, no!” Kamijou cried somewhat stupidly before finally realizing something a moment later. The injured girl in front of them had healed to the point they could take their eyes off her. Flop. It was something so simple, but it caused Kamijou’s entire body to drain of strength. It felt good. It felt so good he wondered why he wasn’t crying. People had died. There were probably a lot of people who died in places he couldn’t see. For every one or two they saved, the jaws of hell were unquestionably open and waiting for many times that number. Despite that…it should be okay to feel proud about having saved just one person. “Well, then…” Whatever the situation, he couldn’t leave this girl to die. Before doing something about Misawa Cram School and Aureolus Isard, he should leave for a moment and call an ambulance. “I’m going home. Can’t leave a wounded person in a place like this. And it’ll probably be easier to have an ambulance waiting outside.” “Okay. That sounds good. There is more than one wounded. If you prepare an ambulance ahead of time, you can make their trip to the hospital shorter.” “…Don’t talk like it’s someone else’s problem. You’re leaving here with me!” “?” Himegami looked at Kamijou, pure mystification plastered on her face. Was it because she had been imprisoned for so long? Maybe she couldn’t even think about running away anymore. “Sigh. I said, ‘Let’s not stay locked up in a place like this; let’s go outside.’ Actually, that’s the whole reason I came all the way out here!” Himegami didn’t say anything. She only stood petrified, like she was surprised. “What? Did I say something weird?” “…” Himegami asked quietly, “…Why?” “Why? Do I need a reason to save someone?” “…” Once again, Himegami stiffened in bewilderment. Only this time, was her face getting red?…He was seeing a weird illusion. “But I…” Aisa Himegami tried to say something. But then she was cut off by the sound of something slippery being hauled across the floor coming from the direction of the stairs. Ragged breathing, too. He couldn’t hear a voice, but he could feel negative emotions like hatred and fury just from its breath, like they were nails being hammered through his ear into his brain. “Damn it, damn it! What is this weight? It is not acceptable. To think this mere raw material is dragging my feet…Keh-heh, feet? Have you come to drag me by the feet, Aureolus Isard?! There aren’t even any feet left on me for you to drag! Aha-aha-ha…If every single damned one of them is making a fool of me, then it is inevitable. I will melt them all…” It was the voice of a man gone mad. It was grating, like the audio feedback caused by extreme volume. Then, just like that. Slosh. Along with that dragging noise, the man walked out of the stairway entrance and into the hallway. “Uh…” Kamijou couldn’t help but be speechless. It was a foreigner with green hair in a white suit. However, his left arm and left leg were missing from the sockets, and some kind of twisted golden poles had been forced into the open wounds to serve as fake limbs. He must have been experiencing a great deal of pain, but there was no sign of suffering on the man’s face. It was as if the floodgates of endorphins and dopamine had been opened in his brain. He wore a magnificent and oily expression, which mixed fury with anger and ecstasy with insanity, all to prevail over the pain. The man’s right hand and the distorted prosthetic left arm. They were holding the napes of the necks of a baffling six bloody boys and girls, like he were carrying garbage bags, three in each hand. “Hah, what is this?” The man looked at Kamijou with bloodshot eyes. “Why are you here, boy? Only sorcerers should be here, right? Are you an intruder as well? Perhaps a friend of that flame?” The man shouted from three meters away, as if he was spitting. Kamijou, however, didn’t move. “You…They’re…” “It is obvious. They are only materials. Alchemy requires materials. So why are you looking at these materials? How strange. You are within the sight of my Limen Magna. I should be perfect. Why do you have such composure? Am I at fault for something?” Kamijou jerked back at the words “Aureolus Isard,” which formed in his mind. But next to him, Aisa Himegami’s expression didn’t change. With the one who was holding her captive—the alchemist who should have been the very symbol of absolute terror. “How sad.” She spoke, her face still perfectly stony. “If he hadn’t realized it. He could have stayed as Aureolus Isard.” “Guh…?! Y-you wench” Aureolus’s howl was accompanied by a giant, somewhat gold arrowhead flying out of his right arm’s sleeve. The arrowhead quickly revolved around the alchemist, and the strung-out golden chain stretched out to form something that looked like a shield as it pierced through the bloodstained students Aureolus had been carrying. The gold arrowhead melted the six pierced students into liquid in a flash, and their bodies turned into a yellow fluid. It wasn’t just any liquid. It boasted a metallic sparkle reminiscent of mercury and released burning-hot vapor into the air with a bestial hiss, proving it was metal smelted by high temperatures. “Wha…What the hell?! Do you have any idea what you just did?!” But. Even faced with that sight, Touma Kamijou was only looking at the melted students. Aureolus shuddered at the fact that the boy wasn’t even noticing his killing move. “It is only natural—death!” With a shout, the arrowhead and chain spun swiftly around the alchemist again. The golden mud surrounding him whipped up into the air as if by the violent gale winds of a tornado. It was both a wall and a tsunami. It created a blossoming tidal wave moving in all directions and reaching up to the ceiling, with Aureolus in the center, like a meteorite dropped into the sea. Suddenly, in his peripheral vision, he saw Himegami move. She crouched down on the floor without a sound, then proceeded to retreat, holding the collapsed girl. She was wobbling unsteadily, but she was not in a panic. It was like she knew just backing up a few meters would put her out of range of his attack. Fortunately, the melted metal was more viscous than a liquid; it was like melted chocolate. He got the impression that it wouldn’t spread around the floor very much if the tsunami was to crash. Kamijou followed Himegami, who was holding the girl, and took a step back. But just then, the arrowhead pierced through the heart of the golden tsunami, leaving a perfectly circular hole behind. It rushed toward him with incredible force. “…?!” He wanted to avoid it, but his body was already in the process of backing up. At this point, he couldn’t recover his posture. The only method he had of dealing with the attack shooting right at the middle of his face was to use his right hand to immediately grab hold of it. The sound of flesh ripping came from inside his hand. Not wanting to be caught, the golden arrowhead withdrew back into the golden tsunami again. His right hand, sliced into two layers, felt as hot as if a cooked sheet of metal had been held against it. A moment later, the tidal wave fell apart and surged toward him at a stretch. He leaped backward and rolled onto the floor, and somehow he managed to escape from the scorching sea of metal. Kamijou and Aureolus—the golden lake separating them was roughly three meters long. …Damn…it. I can’t feel my hand…! He ground his back teeth at the pain; it was already difficult for him to ball his fingers into a fist. It could nullify God’s miracles, but it couldn’t even compete with a freaking hobby knife. “It is…disheartening. What…is that?” Standing beyond the drawn curtain of golden tsunami, Aureolus was actually even more flustered than Kamijou. It had gone beyond confusion and into the realm of stupefaction. The golden arrowhead in the man’s hand broke to pieces like a crumbling sand castle. It had reacted to the Imagine Breaker in Kamijou’s right hand. Did that blade contain some kind of unnatural power? If that was the case, then Kamijou’s palm would have been wounded because of the slight time lag between when the blade responded to his hand and when it crumbled apart. “It is impossible. What is that right hand? It should be unmistakable. Why is it not transmuted? It is evident. My Limen Magna is the ideal form of the many variations of alchemy. Even the schools of Bohemia and Vienna gave it up as hopeless, impossible to realize. Then it is utterly peculiar. By what illegality does it reject my theories?” Limen…Magna…? Kamijou thought vaguely, scowling at his open wound pulsating to the rhythm of his heartbeat. The alchemist said “transmute.” Was he talking about the golden, metallic lava? “Hah, what pleasure. Ha-ha, what pleasure! You interest me, boy! Just what mysteries hide within that body? Allow this magic doctor to open up your body and reveal everything about it!” Aureolus waved his right hand horizontally and produced a new golden arrowhead. Eyes sparkling with animosity, the alchemist aimed the tip of the bladed tool right between Kamijou’s eyes. Here it comes…?! Kamijou instantly readied his right hand over his face; the arrowhead had already closed to within a hair’s breadth of his forehead. He had wanted to hit the thick of the arrowhead right away, but an acute pain shot straight through his fist. “Tsk!” In an attempt to at least deliver a counterattack, he tried to grab the golden chain, but before that, it reacted to his right hand and shattered like a glass ornament. The apex of yet another golden arrowhead appeared from out of Aureolus’s right sleeve. Before Kamijou could even think of escaping forthwith… Aureolus began to fire a continuous stream of the blades, as if his sleeve were a machine gun. They were fast. The time it took for Aureolus to fire, the arrowhead to break, and for him to ready the next shot was under a fifth of a second; it was impossible for a human to keep up. But Kamijou couldn’t carelessly flee, either. He knew that averting his attention for a split second, to speak nothing of turning his back on it, would give the arrowheads the chance to puncture vital spots on his chest and face. Fortunately, their speed was ridiculous but their trajectories were simple. The rapid-fire arrowheads could only shoot in a straight line. They were easy to read compared to a boxer mixing hooks in with straights. “Ggh-ahh” Therefore, Kamijou had no alternative but to use his right hand to rid himself of the arrowheads, even though it meant he would be slashed. As far as he could tell from the previous “transmutations,” he’d just turn into melted gold if he used anything but his right hand. As a result, it didn’t take long before Kamijou found himself surrounded by the wreckage of broken arrowheads and chains. “Ha-ha-aha-ha-ha! What a delightful specimen you are. It is neither a magic-devouring curse nor equipped with the Lance of Longinus. You really do use just your bare hands to crush my Limen Magna!” On the other hand, Aureolus was laughing from the bottom of his soul, without caring that he couldn’t annihilate his enemy despite swinging at him his best move ten or twenty times. He was like an explorer who had arrived in an untrodden, uncharted land. “Not enough. Ha-ha! Boy, I do not have enough moves to measure your limits!” As one was crushed, another one formed anew and accelerated toward Kamijou. It sliced through the air, trying to pierce his body. Kamijou’s right hand was already covered in blood; he couldn’t even clench it properly. This…is ba—! It could cleave off a finger. He stiffened up as fear crawled down his back, but the golden arrowhead unexpectedly drilled right past Kamijou, who was late on his reaction. Had Aureolus missed? No, he had no such optimism. Aisa Himegami was standing behind Kamijou, holding the wounded girl. “Hime—” He twisted around immediately and started to shout to her, but he was far too slow to counteract the passing bullet. The arrowhead was already on a precise collision course with the center of Himegami’s forehead. Deep Blood should have been the object of Aureolus’s ambitions, but he must have lost his ability to tell who was who in his delusional state. He saw Aisa Himegami’s face before him, surprised at something. Kamijou tried to call to her… Squish. The sound of the golden arrowhead tearing through flesh rang out. “Ah—” Did that voice come from Kamijou himself? Or was it someone else’s? Even that was beyond his comprehension—that was how gruesome and unexpected the sight before him was. The golden arrowhead didn’t strike Aisa Himegami. The tattered girl Himegami had been supporting…It seemed difficult for that wounded girl to lift even a finger, but she had immediately reached out her hand to defend Himegami’s face. The golden arrowhead was stabbing deeply into the palm of her soft hand. And yet the girl lightly tapped Himegami’s chest with the other hand without showing a hint of pain. The shrine maiden faltered a little, then took a step away from the girl. The girl whispered something quietly. It was very weak, and he couldn’t tell what she was saying. But she was smiling. It wasn’t a smile for herself—it was a weak smile made to reassure someone else. And just like that, the girl whose name he didn’t even know was transmuted into melted gold. In that moment, Kamijou yelled. He didn’t even know what he shouted. The roar was enough to tear a hole in his throat. For better or worse, the alchemist stopped what he was doing in surprise and took an extra moment to rewind the golden chain. Kamijou grasped it with his hand. Yes—not with his right hand, but with just his left. His intuition. It was telling him that the arrowhead was the only part that performed Limen Magna. The chain wouldn’t have the kind of power to transmute anything into gold. If it did, then he wouldn’t be launching the arrowheads straight at him—he’d be swinging the chain around. He could cover a much larger area that way. “Nuh…?!” Naturally, Aureolus tried to pull the chain back to his hands. It was pulled taut like a game of tug-of-war. In a crazy twist, Kamijou stomped his foot down onto the tense chain. Thomp. Aureolus was pulled a little bit toward him. And in front of him was that which he had made himself—the sizzling lake of melted gold! “Graaahhh” Aureolus had involuntarily taken a step into the golden puddle, and he immediately tried to jerk away. But he couldn’t. The chain had become a chain to bind him, and it wouldn’t let him back up. Screaming, he extended the long chain hidden in his suit even farther. In doing so, he finally succeeded at removing his foot from the gold lava. His foot had only been buried for two seconds. However, his right foot—the only one he still had—had already been burned so much that everything from his ankle down was emitting hissing smoke. Kamijou released the golden chain from his bloody hand. Perhaps he realized that it no longer bound him. Would it be wiser to flee or to attack? It was only for a moment, but Aureolus hesitated—and in that moment, he witnessed something unbelievable. Kamijou lowered his body slightly. It was like he was trying to spring as far as possible on his legs…to vault over the golden pool, then to rush at the alchemist. He had let go of the chain, but that act had nothing to do with it holding him down or not. It was only to clench his fist, so he could beat down his enemy. He had forsaken it just because it would hamper that movement. But no matter how you looked at it, that would be impossible. A straight line drawn across the pool would be three meters long. It would be one thing if he got a running start to leap the gap, but he could never cross it without that. Despite that, Kamijou’s eyes did not waver. It was as if he was asserting that even in the case of failure, even if his body was to sink into the golden lava and burn up, he would spend what was left of his time tearing his enemy apart. Those naked emotions, driven to a peak, alerted Aureolus to the danger… A moment later, and without hesitation, Kamijou bounced into the air. While his leap looked like self-destruction, it wasn’t aimed at Aureolus. A window frame in the hallway, letting in the setting sun… He placed his feet on that tiny ledge and dashed straight for him! “…!” Aureolus immediately attempted to respond, but Kamijou had already leaped off the window frame, from the very highest position, as if to fall upon him. His survival instincts screamed, Intercept him! They implored, Shoot him down with a golden arrowhead right now! The alchemist immediately aimed his Limen Magna—then realized. Touma Kamijou had jumped overhead and was about to crash down. If he shot him down with the Limen Magna…the boiling golden lava would rain down upon him! “How dispiriting! A mistake…” He had no time to pay any mind to how he looked, his pride, or even the burn on his foot. Aureolus instantly rolled back, dodged Kamijou’s attack, and turned to run. He felt pain at turning tail on an ordinary person, one who wasn’t even a sorcerer. However, that was entirely overshadowed by an even bigger sense of dread. He fled for now, tumbling on his ravaged feet into the darkness. 8 The dummy Aureolus slowly bumbled down a long, long hallway that seemed to go on forever. The boy grabbing the Limen Magna was all it took to make it lose power and break to pieces. However, that wasn’t the issue. The golden arrowhead was nothing more than a terminal, a body of hardened aether; the actual Limen Magna was the fortress Misawa Cram School itself. Even if a terminal’s mana stock was depleted, the fortress just needed to resupply it and prepare a new aetheric form. Therefore, that was not the reason Dummy Aureolus was running away. It was that boy’s right hand. He couldn’t see the bottom of its power. He felt like no matter how much mana he poured from the main body to the terminals, it would all be eaten. If the arrowheads kept breaking like that, then would it not drain the fortress of all its mana at some point? That was how strong the danger at his back felt. “Damn…it…” However, Dummy Aureolus could still think. Both Stiyl and that boy, despite Limen Magna being ineffective against them, were avoiding the golden lava itself. “…Which means I need enough gold so they cannot avoid it, even if they understand where it’s going. Hah, I have 1,982 people on hand. It is evident. There is no reason that wouldn’t defeat them.” However spacious it happened to be, they were still inside a building. It wouldn’t be hard to wash a large amount of gold down from the top floor, causing the lower floors to all be swallowed up by the muddy stream, just like a dam break. He enjoyed that image. The mere act of imagining it seemed able to drive away his unpleasant mood. “Ha-ha. Destruction, destruction! Destroying destructive destruction with destructiveness! Yes, I shall not die yet. Deep Blood—yes, with such a splendid research specimen within my reach, I cannot possibly die! Ha-ha, no! Not only that—there are still thousands of people worthy of investigation, hiding in this world, are there not?! Ha-ha, how wasteful it is that that boy must die before I unveil the truth behind the mysteries of his body!” Fortunately, he had already called all the school’s students onto the back of the coin. All he had to do now was assemble all that material into one place. I can pierce them all at once after that, he thought, before suddenly realizing something. The core of the Gregorian replica, which had been manipulating the students, had been destroyed by Stiyl’s flames. “Lord. Wherever I go, there’s something in the way…!” His roar cut through the air like a heated sword. But then, he heard the click-click of footsteps from behind him, and they were even sharper than his cry. “…?!” If there was someone watching, they would have seen the illusion of Aureolus’s back shrinking visibly in the blink of an eye. In normal situations, human psychology will cause one to avert one’s eyes from fear. Of course. Nobody wants to be close to something unpleasant or painful, nor do they want to accept it. So they try to pass it by, even avoiding letting it into their sight. However, these footsteps would not allow even the most natural of physiological reactions. An almost hopeless murderous intent dwelled within them. If he averted his eyes and displayed weakness for but a moment, he would end up dismantled into a hundred pieces. Therefore, Aureolus’s only choice was to turn around. He wanted to run for his life. He couldn’t endure any more pain—and yet he was forced to turn around with a creak, as if someone were manipulating him like a puppet. There…over there was… Ten meters away stood Touma Kamijou, like a wild beast who broke out of its test cage. “What…on?” Aureolus couldn’t comprehend it. He believed he was flawless. He could never comprehend a human with the power to hunt him into a corner like this. However, Touma Kamijou was truly there. “…Give it a rest already, bastard.” Aureolus scowled at the words falling out of Kamijou’s mouth—his voice sounded like he had been struck with cold rain, you wouldn’t even know which one of them had been cornered. He had seen hell. He had seen off someone dying right in front of him, and he knew that many people in other places had died as well. And despite all that, he was able to save just one injured girl. But this alchemist had swiftly melted that one redemption, stealing it from him. Yet Kamijou didn’t talk about any of that. He stared down the enemy—if he had time to say anything more, then he had time to do something more important first. His malice was like burning steel. “Eek.” He immediately readied a Limen Magna. Not out of any desire to fight but out of fear. Unfortunately, his reaction gave Kamijou the last push he needed. SilentlyKamijou’s feet exploded off the ground toward him. Aureolus, his face twisted in terror and panic, fired off the golden arrowhead to at least prevent him from advancing. The attack was aimed at his face, but Kamijou brought his body low, like a spider, and effortlessly dodged it. He didn’t even slow down in the process. “?!” Aureolus’s panic ballooned even further. But even while panic was affecting his abilities, he could still keep up the pace of firing and rewinding six Limen Magna in one second. He easily withdrew the arrowhead into his hands and fired a second shot aimed at the face of the ducking Kamijou. He was already crouching. There was no available way out. But this time, he swung the back of his right fist up and batted away the body of the arrowhead. It and the chain both shattered to pieces like an ice sculpture. It was such an accurate interception that it seemed like he’d known from the start the arrowhead was coming there. Lowering his body had been bait to lead the opponent’s aim. By showing a fatal opening like that, Aureolus would be forced to attack there. It was much easier to deal with a straight assault whose trajectory he already knew than the lawless back-alley fights where he didn’t know how many fists would be flying at him. There were ten meters between them. Kamijou had based his ingenious move on the assumption that he wouldn’t be able to close that distance by dodging just one strike. But on the other hand, it wasn’t a distance far enough for him not to be able to close after two! “Wa—” Aureolus, twisting in surprise, shouted out as he tried to fire for a third time. But before that, Kamijou’s right fist landed a direct hit on the alchemist’s face. Kamijou didn’t slow down yet. He continued, driving his own forehead into the jaw of the enemy who was a head taller than him. Aureolus’s brain was knocked around by the hit and he helplessly crumpled to the floor. He tried to roll on the floor to evade the situation, but Kamijou wouldn’t allow that. He stamped down on Aureolus’s fake golden right leg. Then he twisted his foot and ripped it off. Splurch. A sound like a fruit being crushed resounded from the open wound into which the gold had been jammed. “Ga—aahhh” Screaming, Aureolus fired a Limen Magna at Kamijou’s face as the boy tried to straddle him. But unbelievably, he latched onto the chain with his left hand. Not to break it—only to grab it, never giving the slightest thought to the possibility that he’d be turned into melted gold if he made one wrong move. Kamijou swung his left hand around farther and wound the golden chain around his own arm. After completely blocking the Limen Magna’s movement, he looked down at Aureolus from above. It is astonishing…At this rate, I’ll be ki— Aureolus made a decision quickly. He let go of the golden chain hidden in his suit. Kamijou had been balancing himself with that opposing force, so he staggered back a bit. Aureolus used that opening to roll along the floor and get out from underneath him. His mind was screaming. The Limen Magna hadn’t been destroyed. He had willingly let go of the very proof of his own existence. That fact was trying to crush his heart into pieces. He should have been able to keep his life in exchange for everything he was. No—it wouldn’t be fair if it didn’t. But he couldn’t move any longer. Now that his fake leg had been yanked out, he could barely even walk. “…” As he crawled away, Kamijou then slammed the golden chain into him with all his might like a whip. The heavy blow drove all of the air out of his lungs, and he writhed in agony on the floor. Kamijou was silent. Without a word, he closed in and put his foot on Aureolus’s back. He took the golden chain and wrapped it around the neck of its owner. All he had to do now was to pull on the chain, and he would strangle the alchemist. It would be impossible to break the bone with his nondominant hand, though. Kamijou felt nothing about his own actions. Rather, he wasn’t able to. His mind was white-hot and empty, and it was like reality itself was losing its color. However… “I…want…to…—he…lp…” With those words, the boy’s brain was robbed of all its heat like he’d just been drenched with cold water. He knew it was a selfish desire. Just how many people had he killed with this body? That question led him to only one choice. Even a children’s live-action hero wouldn’t feel any kind of hesitation. But Aureolus was weeping, and his face was wracked with tears. He knew he would never be able to escape, but he still exerted himself to reach out with his arm and to try and crawl. Kamijou remembered then—the knight they had left behind in the lobby; the students, whose bodies were bursting while they recited the incantation as they became parts of the Gregorian Choir; the one girl whose name he didn’t even know who had shielded Himegami and was turned into burning hot gold. He should know the path he must take. Silently, he channeled strength into the hand gripping the golden chain… But all he could do was let go. Aureolus slithered across the floor and crawled away from him—as if fleeing from a human-shaped natural disaster; as if lamenting the misfortune that had befallen him, while at the same time giving thanks to the fortune that had allowed him to live through the day. The boy was human. Killing was something he just couldn’t do. Dummy Aureolus no longer knew which floor of the building he was on. He had tumbled down a few flights of stairs, but he couldn’t even do that anymore. He had no strength left. He rested his back against the wall of the dimly lit emergency stairwell and stared stupidly at the one hand he still had. It was ever since that boy punched him. It felt like every bit of the power that had supported him until now was being stolen. The exhaustion felt like an energy cable supplying him from a different location had been altogether severed. At that point, Aureolus actually figured it out. That he was not human. Without the external barrier supplying him, he couldn’t even stand up. That he was the same as the Limen Magna: mass-produced and easily expendable. “Ah…” Groaning at the dulling sensation in his fingertips, he was, at the same time, fulfilled. Why is that? The Limen Magna aside, my body aside, just what in God’s name is that right hand, which can erase magic just by touching it? he thought, eyes sparkling with the intellectual curiosity of a boy looking through a telescope for the first time. His question. How far could humans rise while retaining their human bodies and their dignity? He had a notion that he had seen that limit. Not only in that extraordinary ability, but in the boy himself, who could still feel human anger and human sadness, despite possessing that sort of power. Thinking about it that way made him able to accept this humiliating end. There was no reason for a scholar to keep living after he learned the answers, after all. Click came the sound of footsteps. Aureolus sluggishly looked up at the staircase and saw Stiyl standing there. “It is dispiriting…Are you not through killing me?” The alchemist laughed at himself. “Leave me be, and I shall naturally waste away. You have no reason to kill me in the first place, do you?” “That’s right. To put it bluntly, I have no use for someone like you, since you’re not particularly involved with her,” Stiyl told him in a disinterested tone. “Ah, right. One of the Thirteen Knights was near the elevators before. But that wasn’t something you did, was it?” Dummy Aureolus looked up at Stiyl atop the stairs from his resting place on the wall. He wielded Limen Magna. Even if it could melt any physical material into gold, it couldn’t hope to physically crush the Surgical Armor of one of the Thirteen Knights. “…Hah. If you put it that way, then it is evident. You know I have killed not a single person.” “What?” “It is obvious. It’s just a loser’s boast. Struggle to understand what I said.” The edges of Aureolus’s mouth turned up. “So? Why have you appeared here, beside me, for whom you have no use? Can you not allow me to rot away naturally?” “It’s the opposite, moron. I’m placing offerings at a grave. Could you stand rotting away like this?” “…” Dummy Aureolus looked at Stiyl blankly for a few moments. Then he chuckled. It was unusual for this man, but he undoubtedly chuckled. Despite being a dummy, Aureolus was a scholar. And now, having found the answer to the greatest question—having completely investigated the limits of the human body—he was brimming with an unparalleled satisfaction. But he still had a little bit of time left. His life would expire within no more than ten minutes. However, Aureolus was a scholar. During that empty time, he would notice something. A new mystery. The next question. The unimaginably sweet and beautiful research material lying beyond. He didn’t have time to absorb himself in research, though. As a scholar, noticing a mystery and then dying without being able to put effort into researching it would be the equivalent of hell. It would linger. It would be a regret he couldn’t get away from. That’s why Stiyl was saying this: Shall I send you on your way before you discover that sweet mystery and writhe in agony? Shall I send you to heaven while you still have the satisfaction of having accomplished your goal? “Heh.” So Aureolus chuckled. “You knave. I cannot tell whether you are angel or demon.” “They’re essentially the same thing anyway. The only difference is who they follow.” Stiyl slowly descended the staircase. “I prove here the reason my name is the mightiest—Fortis931.” He bared his jet-black robes. Runic cards fluttered out of them like flower petals. “Your magic name is it,” Aureolus lazily noted under his breath as he watched Stiyl come down the stairs. Now that I think of it, what was my magic name? He remembered it. “Ah, yes.” My honor for the sake of the world—Honos628. The name he had charged himself with. The name he had constructed himself with. He finally remembered it and narrowed his eyes slightly. “Shall I say a last prayer as a priest, alchemist?” asked Stiyl Magnus. He had come down the stairs and walked up to the alchemist. “Do not sing, you damned sorcerer.” The moment after Dummy Aureolus answered, Stiyl’s flames shot into the alchemist’s mouth. They entered the alchemist’s body quickly and completely scorched his insides. If there was a hole on his body, fire spouted from it. But it didn’t stop there—he split into an upper half and a lower half, and the flames that came out of him from there blasted his upper half away like a rocket. 9 Meanwhile, in one room of the student dormitories—or to be more precise, in its bathroom—the runaway girl (or rather, Index) was staring down the stray cat (or rather, Sphinx). It seemed like this tortoiseshell cat had been raised by someone before. In other words, it had no charm. If you threw a ball of yarn, it wouldn’t chase it down. If you said its name, it would just stay curled up under the table. If you were trying to eat, it would snatch some of your food. Well, that last one was serious business. The food Touma Kamijou made meant a lot to Index—or rather, the girl with the bottomless stomach. With this and that, Index figured she should completely retrain it. She did away with her collusive mood and was in the process of covering the cat with bubbles. Incidentally, she had just dreadfully tried out the bathtub’s automatic water-heating function, following the friendly instructions Kamijou had left her. …But I wonder where Touma went? There were a few questions on her mind. The first was about the phone call. It wasn’t that he’d only wanted to know if the phone was connected, it was his attitude—she’d selfishly eaten his pudding, and he let it go with just a “whatever.” And speaking of his attitude, it was the same story with this uncharming cat bristling its hair at her. Fundamentally, Kamijou would never do something he didn’t want to. He was the kind of person to try and work out his own solution, even if there was no other way. And yet, he let two things he found undesirable pass. It’d be weird if she didn’t think something was up. Okay! nodded Index. She got out of the bath and wrapped herself in her habit, the Walking Church, and then made her way to the front door. Without thinking, she opened it—and then considered. Even if she asked Kamijou, she still wouldn’t be able to find out where he was. She hadn’t even thought about calling him on the phone. She’d admit it: Using the telephone was a concept far beyond her understanding. Especially the one in the Kamijou residence—it was the kind with the fax machine built in. It had so many buttons on it that she didn’t even know where to start. I guess I have to give up, huh, she thought. But as she turned to reenter the dorm, she suddenly caught something out of the corner of her eye. Something like a tarot card was hanging on the wall. It was one of the runic seals that the sorcerer Stiyl Magnus used. “…” Index stared at it silently. Something had happened. Something was definitely taking place somewhere she didn’t know, and she had been left behind again. She thought back to that transparent boy she had been reunited with in the hospital room just a few days ago. The same despair and panic that she felt back then started to burn its way through her heart. She ran. The only thing she could do was to chase him. Thankfully, Index had 103,000 grimoires in her head, so she knew what kind of magic Stiyl’s sorcery was. Runic seals were a variety of magic where the sorcerer needed to keep sending magic power back to them or else they wouldn’t work. Putting it simply, there was a line. A slender one, like the sort connecting the body and soul during an out-of-body experience. She couldn’t use magic, but she could detect it. There was no reason she wouldn’t be able to follow it. With that, Index darted toward the battlefield, forgetting to even close the door… …without realizing that she would actually be the one to ignite more trouble.