6_Final Chapter_ Deep Blood Encroaches

FINAL CHAPTER Deep Blood EncroachesDevil_or_God. “I wonder about it every time, your body is strangely fantastic, isn’t it?” said the middle-aged doctor with the frog face in the completely white hospital room. “…” Kamijou couldn’t figure out how to respond, and his gaze fell to his own arm on the bed, tightened with a cast. His right arm had been cleanly and completely severed by Aureolus’s Ars Magna. The fact that it was an extremely clean cut was fortune in the midst of misfortune, though. There was no damage to the cells in that cross-section, so the medical staff had performed emergency procedures and stuck his arm back in. As it was stabilizing, the arm was connected completely after only a day. He possessed knowledge of yakuza having their little fingers reattached after they got cut off, but he had never given a thought to whether you could do the same with much larger body tissue, like that of an arm. Well, if he did have that sort of unsavory knowledge, Kamijou would start to seriously begin doubting his past self. Before the amnesia. “And to add to that, you’ve had two hospital visits within the last ten days. That will always cause rumors to sprout among the nurses, you know? Could it be that you’re into nurses?” “…What are you talking about? I have no risky ideas about being played around with on the operating table or anything.” “Is that so? That’s too bad—I thought I had finally run into someone with the same tastes, you know?” Kamijou looked at the frog-faced doctor silently. All of his will to be in this doctor’s care flew out the window when he considered that he had become a doctor for those reasons. Actually, I want to hit the call button right now. “Yes? Just so we don’t have any misunderstandings, I’d rather play around than be played around with, all right? And rather than the operating table, I’d rather it be the delivery tab—” “I’d rather not hear about your obsessions.…Wait, I mean, shut the hell up! Quit making weird gestures as you explain it! You want to be a nurse? Disgusting” His hand really went for the nurse call button this time, but the doctor gave a dejected look, left him with an “I’m leaving,” and went out of the hospital room. I wonder why? I get the feeling that he looked really disappointed… Someone else came in as a replacement. It was the man ridiculously ill suited for modern Japan, Stiyl Magnus. “I have no intent of cooperating with you for the moment or to make friends. I just, well, came to check up on you.” “…Wait a second. I, Touma Kamijou, would seriously and respectfully like to throw a question out there: How and why the hell are you just gallivanting about?” Stiyl groaned and scowled in sincerity, then fell quiet. Speaking of bad taste…There’s probably no injured person grosser than what he was. His body was filleted into small pieces of flesh, but he was still alive! I suppose it’s not every day you experience that sort of thing, what with your blood vessels intact and still circulating blood to your scattered organs… “Well, I was thinking of thanking you for your assistance, but…like, when I think about it, this whole thing was absurd. All you ended up doing was making Aureolus self-destruct.” “Heh. That’s all thanks to the wonderful acting abilities of Touma Kamijou.” That’s right—Touma Kamijou didn’t have the power to defeat Aureolus Isard. However, Aureolus used magic that would warp reality to align with his thoughts. In that case, things were easy: He just had to get Aureolus to think a certain way… To make him think that Aureolus Isard could absolutely not win against Touma Kamijou. That’s what his big bluffing scheme was for.…Well, in all honesty, Kamijou didn’t remember much about what happened after his arm was severed. It was more like his brain was going haywire from all the pain and the shock rather than him consciously thinking, I must act. Excessive blood is said to be linked to sexual arousal by suicide enthusiasts, but that was probably the cause of his mad cackling. But he didn’t breathe a word of that. When humans want to look cool, they do it with everything they’ve got. “But, man, it’s crazy we both lived through that. I had an arm cut off, and you were a flesh planetarium! I feel like I’ve been beholden to the mysteries of the human body…Hey, wait. Why are you grinning to yourself?” “No, no. Listen to you—seems you didn’t notice my help.” Stiyl’s grin was cocky, like he was purely making fun of him. “Twice after your arm got cut off. You stood still and dodged Aureolus’s bullets, right? How on earth do you think that happened?” “…Huh?” “It’s true that your act fooled Aureolus completely. But there was no way your bluff would sink in right away, right? Twice, after your arm was cut off and you started your comedy routine. Wasn’t it because you effortlessly avoided his attacks that he started to believe you?” “…Umm.” Kamijou looked at Stiyl like a fool. “You still don’t understand? Let me spell it out for you. Aureolus’s first two attacks didn’t fail because your bluff was working. I simply used magic to screw with Aureolus’s sense of distance.” “Wha…?!” Kamijou was startled. “Is it that surprising? My specialty is fire. It’s really not difficult to make a heat mirage, change where light gets refracted and blur his vision,” he explained like it was a trifling matter. “No, not that! I’m not surprised about that! You were a freaking flesh planetarium at the time, all floating in the air! You were still able to use magic like that?!” “‘Flesh planetarium,’ eh? Quite a merry way of putting it…But there’s no real problem, is there? I was still alive at the time, so there’s no reason I couldn’t temper my life force to refine it into mana. Fortunately for me, the rune cards I had hidden scattered everywhere when my body exploded, too.” Kamijou stared at him, flabbergasted. This incident had involved vampires and Deep Blood…This guy here wasn’t the—Couldn’t have been the biggest monster of them all, could he? “Leaving pointless things like that aside, I figured you’d want to hear about your own charges, too. I just came here to explain what happened after Misawa School.” His charges. Kamijou looked at his right hand, wrapped in a cast. The dragon’s jaw. It was nothing more than self-destruction born from Aureolus’s anxiety, but he was driven to self-destruction by none other than Kamijou himself. “Oh, there’s no need for faces like that. Aureolus apparently imagined that dragon king to be something mental, rather than something physical. The point is that he accidentally imagined some kind of ghost, which would take his soul without touching his body, or something like that.” “?” “To put it simply, you didn’t injure his body at all. On the other hand, that means you destroyed Aureolus Isard’s mind without injuring him at all.” “…Is that supposed to be praise?” “It’s certainly praiseworthy; in short, you resolved the entire situation just by stealing Aureolus Isard’s memories. This was a team battle against a sorcerer holing up in a stronghold, and yet the only casualty was the one from the Thirteen Knights by the elevators. That’s only the third time something like this has ever happened in the entire two-thousand-year-long history of magic.” So I should be happy about it? thought Kamijou, but suddenly he remembered. He didn’t think the Roman Orthodox Church’s Gregorian Choir had gotten through unscathed. Stiyl might not remember it, since his own memories were erased at the time. “…And? What happened to Aureolus Isard after he lost his memory?” He couldn’t possibly be in the same hospital as us, right? thought Kamijou. “Oh, that’s simple. I killed him.” Stiyl Magnus answered outright, with such brevity that Kamijou thought he misheard him. “What are you making that face for? Listen up. Aureolus Isard betrayed the Roman Orthodox Church and converted to alchemy. He made an enemy out of Academy City the instant he confined Deep Blood and made Misawa School into a fortress, plus he’s got a bounty on his head for the forces of Crossism that took on Misawa School and ended up being defeated themselves.…And, of course, Index and I—or rather, the witch-hunting specialists in Necessarius—have gotten their own orders, too.” Stiyl was speaking with irritation, possibly because he wasn’t allowed to smoke in the hospital ward. “Look. After making enemies out of this many different worlds, and with all his memories gone, could Aureolus Isard really have opposed them? No—he wouldn’t remember anything in the first place, and without anything to protect, do you think he would have the willpower to keep on living with the whole world against him?” “…” “Aureolus wouldn’t be killed easily. Reprisals are one thing, but on top of that, he’s the first sorcerer in the world to succeed at Ars Magna. Of course, many organizations trying to search for that secret method would come looking for Aureolus to torture him—and the worst part is that since Aureolus lost all of his memories, he’d never even be able to cough it up,” said Stiyl with annoyance. “Look. All Aureolus had left to him was either death or a hell worse than death. If I were told to pick one, I’d recommend the former without skipping a beat.” But still, thought Kamijou. “I can’t…agree with that. Of course I can’t. Even if that was the only way…If there’s such a thing as a world where people laugh together by taking the lives of others, then why the hell did we even go to that stupid Misawa School in the first place?” That’s right. Kamijou had motivation to fight because he couldn’t agree with something. Deep Blood was treated like a playing card, the students were used and thrown away like cogs for the Gregorian Choir and Limen Magna, and Aureolus had tried to kill Himegami just to lash out with the anger he couldn’t endure. Kamijou tried to move onto the battlefield without running away from it because he couldn’t forgive the bastards who thought nothing of human lives, and yet… If, at the very end of it all, he acknowledged someone’s death as right… …then Kamijou couldn’t bear the guilt from wielding a fist himself. “…” Besides, Aureolus was definitely an unforgivable bastard, but he didn’t think he was completely worthless as a human being. Because if things had really gone according to Aureolus’s plans… Then the reason Index hadn’t turned back to look at Aureolus was because he never wanted to “revise” her, even if it meant he was rejected—that would have been the alchemist’s final act of humanity. “That’s why you’re naive,” said Stiyl Magnus disinterestedly, looking away. “I said ‘kill,’ but the word has meanings other than taking someone’s life, you know.” “Huh?” Kamijou looked at Stiyl. Stiyl, in a really bored-sounding voice, without linking eyes, continued, “Listen up. Aureolus Isard lost all his memories. What if, in this situation, I were to do a little bit of cosmetic surgery and change the construction of his face? The outside would be different and so would the inside. Look, that person honestly isn’t Aureolus Isard anymore. There’s no difference between doing that and killing him, is there?” “…Are you a good person?” “What’s that supposed to mean? I’ll have you know that I’m still an English Puritan priest. My specialty is fire, so reconstructing someone’s face is an easy feat. I just have to melt it and then fix it back up.” “…You’re a good person!” “Hm? Well, I guess that was an unexpected response, but…Wait, what?! What are you suddenly trying to hug me for?! Stop trying to stand on your tiptoes and pet my head like that!” As Kamijou and Stiyl raged about the room, kicking and struggling, suddenly the hospital room’s door opened without anyone knocking and in burst Index. “Touma! They’re selling cantaloupe-flavored potato chips at the store! They’re rare and I want to buy them, so I think I might want some money!…Er…” Index abruptly stopped moving. In front of her were the struggling runic magician and Touma Kamijou, currently trying to pet his head against his will because he was impressed with something. All three of them stopped. The world froze. “…Touma. I’m sorry, I guess this was a bad time.” “Wa…wait. You’re being weird. Why are you looking away? Hey, you don’t just walk out without saying anything!” Kamijou shrieked and desperately tried to pull back Index before she left. Well, he got the premonition that telling Index, “No, really, I’m very attracted to your childlike body so don’t worry!” would also be pretty socially unacceptable. No, wait! thought Kamijou, his mind collapsing into a wormhole of confusion. “…” Stiyl Magnus watched the two of them. Kamijou and Index were in a heated debate, but it somehow looked like they were enjoying themselves. It was like the two of them just being there was incredibly natural. Stiyl Magnus watched the two of them. Not out of envy nor out of animosity. It was just because he had come all this way to protect Index so she could smile like that. He gazed at the face of the girl he had to defend with a satisfied expression. Then he sighed. “I’ve got jobs piling up for after this, so I should be leaving soon.” Stiyl’s tone of voice was one of boredom, but his face looked somewhat fulfilled. Index looked at Stiyl once again and quickly hid herself behind Kamijou. She stared at him like a detective trailing a suspect from the shadows. Stiyl went for the room’s exit without having any particular feelings on the matter. He chose to come all this way so she could be like that. “Umm…” Right before Stiyl turned the room’s door handle, Index spoke up. Stiyl turned back. Index was probably angry. Stiyl was the one that got Touma Kamijou wrapped up in the Misawa School incident. There was no reason she wouldn’t heap all manner of abuse on him for it. “Well, I’ll just say it. Thanks.” And yet, that’s what she said. “After all, if Touma knew the building was like that, he’d definitely have gone diving in by himself. So I think it was a good thing you were there. So—um, what’s the matter?” It’s nothing, said Stiyl’s smile. He didn’t say anything more. Stiyl turned back to the exit again and left without a word. For some reason, Kamijou got the feeling that was the first time he’d seen Stiyl smile. “Touma.” Kamijou returned his eyes from the doorway to Index. When he did, Index puffed out her cheeks and looked at him, possibly somehow mad at him for not paying attention to her. He grinned at her in spite of himself. The battlefield in Misawa School had certainly been fierce, but he had been able to make it back home. He smiled because that feeling hit him then. But… A question he left in the war zone came to mind. The thing that flew out of his severed right arm—the jaw of the king dragon. It was nothing more than a product born of Aureolus Isard’s anxiety toward Kamijou. Nothing more, he thought…But at the time, was Aureolus Isard actually thinking something that specific—that a transparent dragon jaw would spring out of his right arm? There’s no way, he thought. It had to have been Aureolus’s power…right? … Impossible, he thought. But still. Kamijou thought back to Aisa Himegami. “Deep Blood” Aisa Himegami—the girl with a special power that only worked against vampires. If such a disturbance was caused by a girl who could do nothing except kill vampires, then if Touma Kamijou’s right hand, Imagine Breaker, could even kill divine miracles, then how much must it be worth? No… Just what was Imagine Breaker in the first place? “Touma! I said, they’re selling cantaloupe-flavored potato chips.” He gave a start and finally snapped out of it after what Index said. “Uh, right. I see.…Wait, would cantaloupe-flavored chips be sweet?” Kamijou tried to engage in the conversation that was going on and attempted a vague smile. This is fine for now, he thought. Whatever kind of weird power it was, I was still able to protect one girl through the whole thing. I can’t ask for more than that. So it’s fine for now. For now. “Touma, Touma! Hey, you know how there was that person named Aisa Himegami in that building?” Index suddenly began as they were walking down the hallway toward the shop. “Yeah, that nutso, fake magician. What about h—Wait, what is it, Index? What are you looking at me with suspicion for? You’re the one who asked.” “…Touma, you were fighting for Aisa this time, weren’t you. Aisa and not me.” “Excuse me?” Kamijou tilted his head, puzzled. Index was saying some weird stuff all of a sudden, and she somehow seemed really bothered about something—enough to purposely show Kamijou her making a pouty face. “Nothing, nothing really.” After Index grumbled to herself a bit, she said, “Yeah. Well, that Aisa person was actually admitted to this hospital. I just went and talked to her.” “Uh-huh,” Kamijou said, throwing in an appropriate grunt to keep the conversation going. Now that she mentions it, what is Himegami going to do from now on? he thought. She said she didn’t want to attract vampires, but the Misawa School barrier doesn’t exist anymore. Apparently she can use a Walking Church like Index for it, but Aureolus Isard was the one who promised to make one, and he’s gone, too. “So after talking to her about lots of stuff, Aisa is apparently gonna be looked after by the Church!” “…I think I’ve managed to figure out how this is going to end, so can I just say it first?” “Gah! Someone goes through all the trouble to do some storytelling and this is what she gets! Touma, saying the ending before the play ends totally kills it! Shakespeare would probably stab you, Touma!” “Quit saying people will stab me while you’re smiling.” Kamijou took one single, quiet breath and threw out the answer that anyone at this point would have guessed. “You’re about to say, ‘By Church, I mean the Walking Church!’ right?”