Chapter 2_ Stadium of Sorcerer and Esper_1

There was no point in calling her like this. “I guess I was fooling around too much, young lady. I apologize if I offended you.” “I believe you are younger than I am…” “Yes, but you’re still a young lady. No matter how old you get. Growing old as a young lady is the ambition of all nuns, isn’t it?” “As one dedicated to honest poverty, I believe a rich-sounding title like signorina ill befits me. And you, too, have taken up the Bible, have you not? When someone enters the family of our Lord, a nun must—” Same lecture as usual. Oriana sighed. Lidvia Lorenzetti was the exemplary disciple of Roman Orthodoxy. She mainly grew passionate when praying or spreading the word. Oriana listened inattentively and waited for a chance. “Right, so in terms of the trouble I’m having—” “It is judged a crime of adultery against our Lord should we engage in sexual relations with another, for all nuns are the brides of the Son of God…Oh, but my lecture—” Oriana shrugged off the can wait and spoke. “Essentially, that spell I used on myself got all broken.” That spell. The name of the single-time use was Silent Coin. Oriana had used it as a sort of insurance. A spell to sap the energy of those who wanted to chase her. It wouldn’t have any effect if she were actually engaged in a conversation with someone. Just turning her back, though, would make the person think it wasn’t worth stopping her or that it could wait until next time. They wouldn’t, under any circumstances, call out to her after that. This sorcery was a configuration of the “vacate,” or warding, spell that operated on a similar principle to an Opila rune barrier. As long as the spell was active, Oriana could make balls of flame appear in her palms or whatever else, and nobody would feel like calling her out for it. That’s why she was using it—so she could get this “deal” finished without worry, but…for various reasons, Oriana was unable to reconstruct the spell now that it had broken. “Oh…What was the direct cause of it?” “I don’t know.” “Well then, what should we do about it?” “Don’t know that, either.” “…” “Ahh, don’t hang up on me! I’m not into the silent treatment.” “Then I would like to hear your alternative plan for what to do at this point.” “Let’s see,” she said, smiling. “…First, I’ll shake off this boy behind me.” 8 As Touma Kamijou watched the woman in the work uniform—probably the smuggler Oriana Thomson—she suddenly turned around a corner. …Did she notice me?! Still, not losing sight of her came first. Kamijou stopped his poor attempt at tailing the woman and began to run among and around people. People weren’t gathered on his route, thankfully—there might have been TV cameras set up somewhere else. He swung around the building at the intersection. The blond hair was fluttering farther away than he’d expected. He accelerated, passing by children holding balloons and couples holding hands. Guess it’s a good thing I’m wearing this gym uniform, he thought. It wasn’t made of special high-tech aerodynamic material, but it was a lot easier to move around in than his school uniform would have been. Despite essentially running at full speed, he didn’t draw strange glances from others. Maybe they were mistaking him for being in a scavenger-hunt race or something. As he thought about it, he steadily increased in speed. He was now easily a kilometer away from where he had first bumped into her and parted from Fukiyose. Not to mention the botanical laboratory where Index had been changing. That was so far away now if he was to walk back to it. Then, he heard his cell phone ringtone from his pocket. Running while talking would take too much energy. Kamijou considered deciding whether to pick up based on who was calling him, but then he saw it was Motoharu Tsuchimikado. He quickly picked up. “Kammy, where are you?! Why didn’t you wait where you were?!” “Sorry! I was going to lose sight of her otherwise!” As he spoke, the work uniform disappeared around another corner about twenty meters ahead of him. He sprinted the length of the sidewalk, heading for the corner. “Shit. Then where are you now?” As Kamijou rounded the bend, he groaned. It was a narrow road that split into three different paths. He listened carefully and ran after the footsteps he heard—straight ahead. “I’m…There’s no good point of reference! I’ll give you my GPS code in a text. You do the search” GPS-enabled cell phones provided a service to find where friends were. This required, however, that the person who wanted to be searched for send a special code in a text message. The code was changed every thirty minutes. After he sent the necessary code to Tsuchimikado’s cell phone so his friend could locate him, he hung up. He left the phone on, of course, to let the GPS do its thing. He ran down the narrow path for a while. It was longer than he thought it would be. The small cracks between the buildings got even smaller, to the point where he couldn’t see inside them. As he went farther and farther, he finally heard footsteps and the voices of a crowd. “Whoa” When he burst out of the path, he found himself on another main street. He quickly scanned his surroundings. Oriana was running from left to right across a pedestrian walkway over the road. That’s pretty far. About fifty meters away, maybe? She was absurdly fast, considering the big signboard (or whatever it was she might have been hiding) was tucked under one arm. Kamijou darted after her. Fortunately, the giant sign stuck out among the people, so she couldn’t just blend in right away. Still, the fact that she could drop out of sight at any moment made Kamijou focus on her completely. His tunnel vision practically made him stumble on the smallest bumps in the road, never mind watching the people walking around him. “Shit!” He cried out, pushing himself to run farther, when bam—something slapped him on the back. It was Motoharu Tsuchimikado and Stiyl Magnus. They’d gotten here quickly. They hadn’t come from behind him but from a small road cutting across. They’d probably seen where he was, predicted what direction he was moving in, and taken a shortcut. “Which one, Kammy? You said the Stab Sword was disguised as a signboard, right?” Kamijou gasped for air. “That one…The blond woman wearing the work outfit,” he managed, pointing. Tsuchimikado and Stiyl ran off together. Leaving him there—maybe they were telling him this was their job now, as professionals. Nevertheless, without pausing to catch his breath, he ran after the two of them. How persistent…! Oriana looked over her shoulder and privately clicked her tongue. She had fifty meters on him, but that was also all she had. She’d worked pretty hard to choose small roads that seemed easy to get lost on so that he’d lose sight of her, but it had been completely ineffective. Her current painter’s outfit combined with the “signboard” gave others the impression that she was on the job. If only she didn’t have the sign, she could go into a hotel or department store or restaurant and they’d just think she’d come there on her break…but if she was to walk in the guests’ front door of any of those places, the people working there would probably say something. She wouldn’t be able to explain why she was fleeing even if they asked, and having to get rid of employee after employee would make her stand out all the more. Still, if she wanted to go in through a staff entrance in back, she’d need a key or an ID. All of which meant she was forced to use roads—one of the reasons she was finding it difficult to throw off pursuit. However, the fact that she had so much distance and he was still on her tail seemed a bit strange. And by the time she noticed this, she also noticed that she now had three pursuers, not just one. Considering how the first was tailing her, he must have been an amateur. After the two new ones came, though, their work became much more accurate. They were probably professionals. They were trying to read her mind, to predict what routes she’d take to flee. I heard Academy City and even the whole Church can’t do anything in this city right now, but I guess the reality is more difficult than that…Whoops! Oriana stopped dead in her tracks. There must have been TV cameras ahead, because there was a much denser crowd in front of her. She couldn’t get through them with the “giant signboard” in her hand. It would get caught on the human wall, and she’d get stuck. And, of course, abandoning the “signboard” and diving in would be completely counterproductive. She looked around. It’ll be a little tough, but going through there would be safest, I think… She thought, she calculated, and she decided to veer to the side and take another route. Tsuchimikado was the fastest of them, with Stiyl in the middle and Kamijou trailing behind. Kamijou was already exhausted from running, of course—he would probably outpace Stiyl normally. Oriana suddenly stopped running about thirty meters ahead of them in the middle of the road, looked around, and went onto a different road. Tsuchimikado frowned as he ran. “That seems way different from what she’s been doing, nya…Did she change her mind?” he wondered aloud, not breathing particularly hard. He was going so fast Kamijou would be out of the running if he so much as stumbled. He encouraged his legs to continue and followed in Tsuchimikado’s wake. When they got to where Oriana had stopped, they noticed TV cameras ahead of them. A reporter’s voice filtered through the crowd, giving an excited explanation that any local would know was off the mark. People were packed in like a rush-hour train around the reporter. Oriana must have changed her route out of concern for being caught up in there. Kamijou looked in the direction she’d run. “…What’s that? A bus terminal?” Before them was a ground covered in asphalt. It was a flat, square place, enclosed perfectly by buildings on all sides. It seemed like a place that had been leveled hurriedly, someone having dismantled an unneeded structure for some Daihasei Festival requirement. It was around thirty meters wide and a few hundred deep, but it didn’t seem “wide” or “open” in the least: for there was a ton of large buses squeezed into the place like they were ready to be loaded onto a big tanker. They couldn’t see all the way back from here, but it looked like somewhere from fifty to seventy buses were parked here. Metal pillars stood in several places, connecting the whole facility to a giant roof of galvanized iron or something. There were all sorts of metal robotic arms hanging from the ceiling, like the kinds used in car factories to build vehicles. All of these vehicles were driverless, automatic buses. This was probably a temporary service facility for buses loaded with self-driving units. They, too, would have to leave their posts for maintenance at some point, whether it was for cleaning or gas refueling. These buses were basically waiting on the sidelines as they underwent repairs. They were used only during the Daihasei Festival, and this big facility had been constructed for that purpose alone. It gave Kamijou a newfound appreciation for the sheer scale of the event. One bus, with the words OUT OF SERVICE on its display, passed by them almost silently and proceeded deeper into the facility. Tsuchimikado grabbed onto the back of the slowly moving bus and used it to enter the facility just as silently. But the very moment he stepped inside… Roar Suddenly, a pale blue explosive flame plunged down from the ceiling. The unnaturally colored flame came hurtling straight down at Tsuchimikado as though it were being channeled through an invisible tube. It was a sorcery-based attack, probably—and not Stiyl’s, of course, despite his using flames often. Who had fired it, then? “Shit, she decided to set a trap to crush us instead! Get down, Kammy!” Tsuchimikado immediately jumped back and tried to push Kamijou down, but… “What are you saying? This is his cue, isn’t it?” …right before he could, Stiyl grabbed the back of Kamijou’s neck and hurled him forward. “What?” Kamijou looked up to see the pillar of flame descending on him like a guillotine. “What?! Hey, no! You gotta be kidding me” He frantically thrust his right fist upward like an uppercut. The pale blue pillar of flame scattered in all directions, fading away without burning anything. The cigarette in the corner of Stiyl’s mouth wiggled. “I must say, you are quite the team player. We have a nice division of roles; things are easy to understand and easy to deal with.” “Y-you…you…” Kamijou trembled, moments away from grabbing the red-haired priest. “Come on, do the rest of your job now.” Bam! Kamijou found himself kicked ahead again. Whoosh The sound of something splitting through the air. A clump of earth about the size of a baseball came under the frame of the self-driving bus that was put-putting along ahead of them. Then, with a metallic noise, a ton of stone spikes came out of the ball, making it look like a sea urchin. It abruptly hopped up, shooting for Kamijou’s chin. “Hey, wait, what’s going on?!” He instantly stuck out his right hand, and the stone bullet shattered like ice and faded into the air. Tsuchimikado and Stiyl had both jumped to either side to use the parked automatic buses as walls. Kamijou, quickly developing trust issues, didn’t hesitate to go over to Tsuchimikado’s side. Tsuchimikado, with his back to the side of the bus, looked at Stiyl, who was pressed against the side of the bus across the maintenance path. “Stiyl. You put up your rune cards and wait here, nya. I’ll keep going and take down the smuggler.” “All right. Should I use Opila?” “Sure. I don’t want to put any more mana in the air than we need to, but it’ll be worse if this all spreads. As long as Index doesn’t head our way, we should be fine.” Kamijou started to have doubts as the two professionals talked between themselves. “Hey, wouldn’t it be faster if we all went after her?” “Kammy, when there’re this many obstacles, we could end up going the wrong way. When you’re after someone, it’s a basic tactic to close down as many exits as possible.” “Oh.” Kamijou finally realized what he meant. They weren’t in a slugging match—this battle was about catching her before she got away. It was a different objective that called for different tactics. Tsuchimikado looked at him. “What’ll you do, Kammy? It’d probably be safe just to stay here…” Stiyl gave him a smirk. “I like that. I agree; it’ll be safer if you stay. Not for your safety but for mine.” Kamijou flung an empty can at his feet at Stiyl and decided to move forward with Tsuchimikado. He peeked around the side of the bus down the maintenance path and then leaped out at full speed. Kamijou followed right behind him, figuring his Imagine Breaker placed him in the front as a shield. But then there was a slam From straight ahead, yellow spears of fire shot toward them. They were ten meters ahead, having suddenly appeared where there was only empty air before. When Kamijou stuck out his right hand, a guillotine made of highly compressed air came for him from the gaps in the buses to either side. “?!” He faltered for a moment, and Tsuchimikado grabbed him by the collar. Then, dragging him in his wake, he ran on farther, dodging the guillotines to either side and twisting around the arcing flames ahead. When he let go of his collar, he said, “Kammy, don’t feel like you need to take them all on! They’re just to buy her time. If you try and deal with them all, she’ll get away” “Okay, I get it, but…” Five big balls of ice the size of advertisement balloons were falling on them from the ceiling. He desperately fought back the urge to use his right hand and just kept running straight ahead. He felt the roars and tremors as the giant masses shattered on the ground. It sent a chill down his spine. They shot past a line of buses. Several big washing machines for the buses came into view. They were about as high as a two-story building and had all the machines necessary to wash a vehicle on the inside. Instead of the roller brushes you might find at a gas station, they used giant, flat sponge things that utilized supersonic vibration. Once they got behind it, they caught a glimpse of long, fluttering blond hair. “There she is” As soon as Kamijou got behind the buses, a line of the ground in front of him burst upward to block him from the washing machines. The wall of earth stretched five meters high, then came crashing toward the three of them like an avalanche. The wall of earth stretched from one end of the service facility to the other. They couldn’t avoid it, and if they hid behind the buses, they’d be crushed along with them. Above all, if the metal pillars supporting the roof broke, the entire facility could come toppling down on them. “Kammy, you’re up! It’s made of temporary matter, like ectoplasm—your hand can wipe out the whole thing” As Tsuchimikado called out, Kamijou jumped in front. He felt his teeth start to chatter at the enormous opponent, but he couldn’t run away crying in this situation. He dove toward the root of the mudslide and shoved his right hand into it without a second thought. There was a loud shwshhh With the sound of glass shattering, the five-meter-high wall of earth came crumbling down. It appeared to melt into thin air, and after it vanished nothing was left. The asphalt below them returned to normal, too. Before Kamijou could pull back his right arm, Tsuchimikado ran by him and disappeared behind the big washing machines. Kamijou followed, rounding the obstacles in a single burst. Then he stopped. Oriana wasn’t there. A piece of thick paper about the size of a stick of gum, like one you’d find on a ring of flash cards, was all that was left, hanging on the washing machine wall. Kamijou overtook Tsuchimikado, who had stopped, and looked around. There was a small exit hidden in the shadows of the washing machines. A few steps away, though, a manhole cover was open—plus, the glass windows of the building were broken. Basically, there was no way to know which route she’d actually used to flee. “Oriana Thomson, the Route Disturber…Goddamn it” Tsuchimikado tore off the paper on the wall, his display of anger informing the amateur Kamijou just how bad the situation was. All right, then. I do hope that threw them off…Oriana Thomson gave a glance over her shoulder as she walked onto a main road. She’d stopped running as soon as she’d completely lost sight of her pursuers. If they had lost sight of her, too, then it was more important not to be discovered again than to gain extra distance. A full-speed sprint would be rash. She’d stand out like a sore thumb in the crowds. Still, it was getting to her. As she held the “signboard” wrapped in white cloth under her arm, she looked behind her once more…I may have gotten rid of them for now, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. It might be better if I ready the next move…Whoops! She’d been so focused on what was behind her that she ran into someone walking right in front of her. The sensation she received through her exposed navel was not one of human skin but of metal. She’d run into a pair of male festival committee students carrying a pole with a basket on the end that would be used in a high-toss game—said pole was now on the ground. “Oh, whoopsies. I’m so sorry!” She apologized lightly and left the scene. The male students got one look at her cleavage and tensed up a bit, offering awkward responses. Wet under the ears, she thought with a little smile. It means the “trick” for that purpose is doing quite well. Maybe I should get them into a little more trouble, she mouthed, whispering to herself. After that, Tsuchimikado took out his cell phone and called someone. It seemed to be Stiyl. They were both sorcerers, but Tsuchimikado couldn’t use magic. Well, strictly speaking he could, but he was an esper as well; using magic would trigger a rejection response and could create little explosions inside his body. After telling him to come over here right away, Tsuchimikado stuck the phone back into his pocket. Kamijou looked at the thick piece of paper in Tsuchimikado’s hand. “Hey, what is that, anyway?” “Huh? It’s the Soul Arm Oriana’s using, nya~,” he replied in a somewhat irritated voice, showing Kamijou the paper. There were blue letters on it—it was cursive, so it was hard for him to read, but it said SOIL SYMBOL in English. He got terrible grades in English class, so he had no idea what it meant. Tsuchimikado translated it for him. “You know how RPGs and stuff have the five major elements? Like fire, water, earth, and wind. It’s that.” “…Then this is like an earth talisman? I don’t get it.” “No, that’s not all it is. The color attributed to earth is green, but she wrote the word in blue, right?” Tsuchimikado spun the paper around. “Blue is the color attributed to water. Normally, it can’t be used for earth magic. If she wanted to use earth, she would have used green or the discus, since they’re more compatible. It’s like how Stiyl uses red cards to control flame.” “…Did she mess up?” “Of course not. She’s doing it on purpose. She sets up the not-quite-right colors on purpose, then transforms the recoil from it into attack power. In terms of wu xing—the five traditional Chinese elements—she’s using the order of overcoming interaction, with earth overcoming water. Bad compatibility breeds bad results, basically.” As they were talking, Stiyl came running to them from the other part of the service facility. Tsuchimikado waved the paper in front of him. “Got the mana call. If she was remote-controlling this while running, then she was probably transmitting mana back and forth. I’d like to use this to make a tracing spell. Could you help me out, nya?” 9 Tsuchimikado’s body didn’t allow him to use sorcery. More precisely, if he did, it would go out of control. Human stamina wasn’t quantified with numbers like it was in video games, so there was no specific number of times he could use magic and still endure it. Sometimes he could hold out for four or five castings, and sometimes he’d die on the first. It was essentially a game of Russian roulette. As long as he wasn’t absolutely sure he could bring things to a conclusion in one strike, Tsuchimikado seemed to completely refrain from using magic. Everyone knew what would happen if he was incapacitated on the battlefield. He wasn’t going to be the one using the tracing spell. He placed on the ground the card Oriana had left. Then all he did was draw circles around it and position origami of all colors nearby. It was apparently Stiyl’s job to actually trigger the magic. “The spell’s name is Four Ways to Truth…Man, I wish we could’ve used this during Angel Fall, nya. I was already a wreck from the defensive spell I used to escape its effects, and Zaky’s bad at drawing barriers. It was a disaster! And of course, I couldn’t teach spells to someone from Russian Catholicism—another denomination entirely…” “Why not work your hands instead of your mouth? Didn’t you say the search range isn’t even three kilometers?” “Oops, you’re right. Okay, Kammy, stand back. This won’t mean much if your right hand busts Four Ways to Truth.” Kamijou, a little startled, took a few steps back. After placing markings on the ground here and there, Tsuchimikado backed away as well and stood next to him. On the ground was a black circle about fifty centimeters across. In the middle was the card Oriana had stuck on the side of the washing machine. Four pieces of newly made origami each sat at ninety degrees within the circle—blue, white, red, and black—dividing the circle into four parts. It looked like it was separating east, west, south, and north. Stiyl knelt down by the circle Tsuchimikado had drawn, then placed his hands together and shut his eyes as if praying. A small bead of sweat trickled down his brow. “CBTW, CNABTWTTL. (Carried by the wind, conveying not air but the will to the location.)” With his words, the four pieces of origami moved despite there being no wind. Like puppets controlled by an unskilled puppeteer, they wafted upward. Each of the colored papers stood upright, then paused abruptly. Their edges evoked images of sharp blades. “Runes work by coloring and decoloring,” said Tsuchimikado, watching the circle on the ground. “One carves out meaningful characters, triggers the spell by coloring the grooves with power, and turns it off by decoloring it. Stiyl uses cards that he colored in advance—using a method called printing—so he’s crazy fast at activating spells. Plus, he can just burn the card and skip the decoloring process entirely, nya. It does mean he can only use spells that he ‘colored in’ beforehand, but…” The four papers danced around above the circle. Each time they drew a smooth line through it, it would draw a curved line of the same color on the ground. Scritch, scratch, scritch, scratch. The circle grew narrower, little by little, moving toward the card in the middle Oriana had left them. “As long as you follow the fundamental rule of coloring and decoloring, then you can actually get pretty far away from the runic alphabet, futhark, and still have the sorcery work, nya! We may call them all runic characters, but there were a few different types of them depending on what time period you look at.” Fifteen centimeters remained until the circle closed in at the middle. Kamijou watched the four swiftly revolving pieces of origami. “So if you use this, you can figure out exactly where Oriana is?” “Well, within three kilometers it’ll pinpoint her, nya. If she’s gotten outside that range, though, we won’t get anything out of it.” “…Three kilometers. That’s kinda far. Even if we found her almost exactly three kilometers away, she’d just move somewhere else while we were trying to catch up.” “There’s one more bit to all this. Once you use Four Ways to Truth, you need about fifteen minutes to let it cool down before using it again, nya! Which is no problem if we get it the first time, nya~.” Tsuchimikado seemed confident, but what if they failed? “Fifteen minutes. That sounds like a short time, but if she uses a train or a bus, we’re sunk.” “We don’t really care how she decides to flee. Did you forget already, Kammy? I’m a sorcerer, too. I can use it only once, but I’ve got Red Style if we need it.” Ten centimeters until the center of the circle. Kamijou gave him a sour look. “Wait…That’s the one you used to destroy my house from the beach house to stop Angel Fall, isn’t it? I guess if you could use a long-distance artillery move like that…But wait. If you use sorcery in the open in Academy City like that, all the other sorcerers waiting outside could use it as an excuse to break in, right?” “No, they couldn’t, Kammy. Their excuse needs to be that they’re acting to protect civilians from the evil sorcerer that snuck into the city. If I ended the whole thing in one attack, they would just have to say this to get their hands on the wreckage of the Stab Sword: The crisis is gone, so we no longer need any of you, nya~.” Five centimeters until the center of the circle. Tsuchimikado gave Kamijou a grin. “But resolving an incident as a sorcerer in the limelight would be bad for a bunch of reasons. That’s why I have Red Style. Not Black Style, which is based on water, my specialty, nya. If someone asks who used sorcery, I could just tell them, Stiyl fired it, since fire’s his specialty.” “…How bold of you. Will that really fool them?” “Sure it will! Necessarius has 103,000 grimoires stored away, remember? Wouldn’t be strange at all if they’d studied non-Crossist sorcery, nya. Stiyl’s runes don’t actually have anything to do with Crossism, either. Well, I guess I’d have to temper my mana in kind of a Western way, too, instead of doing it the Eastern way.” “…” “Don’t look so shocked! Anyway, if we can pinpoint Oriana’s location, we’ve won. If we can, I want to capture her myself and get her to tell us where Lidvia and the other party for the deal are. For now, though, stopping the Stab Sword deal takes priority, nya! We can blast the Stab Sword to outer space or tear apart Oriana’s body to do it. Either way.” Zero centimeters until the center of the circle. The four pieces of folded paper touched the card left by Oriana. There was a dry pop as the colored paper bounced away. Then, at an incredible speed, they started to draw a precise map on the ground. At first it was a blurry image like an unfocused camera, but it steadily came into focus. Roads, buildings, trees on the streets, benches, vending machines, wind-power-generating propellers, and even an empty can—it was less a symbolic, simplified map than a super-high-resolution satellite image from space. The location, once it finally came into focus, was… Oriana Thomson suddenly perked up her head. She craned her neck as she held the signboard-shaped object covered in a white cloth; the action caused her breasts to put more stress on the second button of her outfit—the only one buttoned. White smoke fireworks were popping in the late September sky, and there was a cool, comfortable breeze despite the summer’s lingering heat wave. The mottled white clouds lazily drifted in the same direction, giving the appearance of absolute peace and tranquility. Nevertheless, Oriana felt a tingling nervousness on her skin…like the feeling right before charging into a building a bank robber was holed up in. Oriana Thomson thought for a moment about what was coming. “CBTW, CNABTWTTL, is it…? You’re wide-open. ” And then she grinned. “Grah, gaaahh?!” All of a sudden, Stiyl bent over like he’d just taken a body blow. With a loud crack, the map lines being drawn on the ground all scattered in every direction. It was like someone had sneezed on a picture drawn with sand. Many more snaps and cracks of things breaking followed. For a moment, Kamijou thought it was Stiyl’s bones. “The sound of out-of-control mana warping space—a simple ghost sound! Kammy, give Stiyl a punch! That should stop it” Kamijou was taken aback by his words. At the moment, he was scared, since he didn’t know what was going on. He rushed to Stiyl and hastily hit the bent-over boy in the back. He was trying to do it fast, without thinking about measuring his strength. There was a pop of air rushing. Then, as though exhausted, Stiyl fell over onto the ground. Nevertheless, it seemed to have calmed the situation; he couldn’t hear the weird noises anymore. Stiyl breathed heavily for a little while, but eventually he combed his sweat-soaked hair out of his face. “What…was that…? Some kind of defensive spell…in case she was traced…?” Tsuchimikado walked over and picked up one of the unmoving pieces of origami. He set his fingers on it, folding it here and there. “If that were true, the something should have happened to me for setting up Four Ways to Truth’s magic circle…but there’s no trace of that.” He waved the cleanly folded paper. “I think she read your mana, Stiyl. And she probably set up an interception spell that would activate when it detected your mana specifically. Damn. I thought she was suddenly counterattacking, but this was her aim all along. She let us use sorcery, read our mana, and then must have set up a magic circle to transmit it or something, nya!” Kamijou winced at Tsuchimikado’s words as he kept tinkering with the origami, then reached out a hand for Stiyl. Stiyl pushed his hand away, annoyed, and stumbled up to his feet. “An interception spell to stop me after figuring out my mana patterns? Sounds like quite the problem.” “…What’s that mean? She made a pinpoint attack on you, then, Stiyl?” Kamijou made a face like he didn’t understand half of what they were talking about. Tsuchimikado sighed. “Yeah, mana does differ in quality and quantity depending on how the user tempers it…but I don’t think that alone would have given her the ability to pull off such a perfect interception, nya~,” he said, his hand diving into his shorts pocket, bringing out a red calligraphy pen…or something like it, anyway. According to him, magic was like gasoline: It took the raw fuel, the person’s life force, and used the refinery of their style or religion to refine it. But if, for example, the rune-using Stiyl used an Aztec method of tempering his mana, the mana he got out of it would be wholly different in nature. “Like making heavy oil or light oil instead of gasoline, nya~,” he said. People like Kaori Kanzaki, the saint of Amakusa, were experts in Buddhism and Shinto as well as Crossism, and could freely use whichever type of mana fit the situation. If Oriana wanted to intercept Stiyl alone, she would have to know every type of mana he was likely to create. Tsuchimikado was of the opinion that she wouldn’t have thought herself safe for only sealing one of the mana patterns Stiyl refined in the service facility. Oriana wouldn’t have a grasp on the extent of Stiyl’s power, so she would have to consider possibilities that didn’t involve his true strength. “Umm, then what is Oriana doing?” “That’s the tricky part…I think it was something like this,” said Stiyl, still unsteady. “Mana itself has several different patterns. But that’s not the case for its previous state. The way a person refines mana differs based on their religion, the technique, and their life force. From there it’s just a mathematical problem. You can find the answer by following the numbers.” For example, say there were twenty points’ worth of mana type A, and a mana refining method B. You compare them, then ask how many points of type B life force would be needed to refine twenty points of mana A with refining method B—you could calculate the original life force used like that. Irritated, Stiyl took a new cigarette out of a box and cast his stare at Tsuchimikado. He was busy writing some kind of symbol on the origami he held, using the red calligraphy pen. He then dropped it in front of him, telling Kamijou he was making a circle to get them out of the situation. Stiyl looked back at Kamijou. “Mana doesn’t have traits that differ, but life force, of course, does. And that means Oriana figured that out. Damn it. I shouldn’t have placed those rune cards without thinking…Still, I would have understood if she used some large-scale holding facility for holding sorcerers, like the Tower of London or the basement of Windsor Castle. To think there was someone who could detect life force, analyze it, reverse-engineer it, apply it, and intercept it all by herself…I suppose I should have expected as much from the Route Disturber.” He practically spat the words as he, in an unusual act, took out a match and struck it on the sole of his shoe. Maybe he was being careful not to use sorcery to create fire. Perhaps that was why he was waiting for Tsuchimikado to finish setting up, too, instead of counterattacking right away. The fact that a man with such immense self-pride was being cautious gave Kamijou an idea of the depth of Oriana’s skill. Now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure the only one who clearly used sorcery in the earlier battle in the service facility had been Stiyl. “If she had calculated the spell itself, instead, then Tsuchimikado would have taken damage, since he’s the one who drew the Four Ways to Truth circle on the ground. He didn’t, which means she had to have reacted to my life force.” “You’re saying Oriana was analyzing your mana or life force or whatever on the run?” Kamijou looked at him askance, but Stiyl blew out smoke in irritation. Maybe he’d lost his usual calm because of the damage he’d taken, or maybe he just felt like it was a pain to explain something so basic for sorcerers. “If she could do that, then…she’d be seen as even more valuable than your right hand.” He took in a full breath of smoke. “That interception spell of hers…it was a surgical-class spell on Tower of London levels. She would need a magic circle— No, she’d need command of an even larger facility. What that means is that Oriana didn’t use only a spell. She built an entire facility for it. Essentially what she probably did was get a super-fast computer and have it do the analysis for her. That way she’d be able to focus on getting away. Still…” “Still what?” asked Kamijou. Stiyl responded in a bitter voice. “…No, it’s probably just my imagination. I feel like I’ve seen this automatic processing trick before…but that can’t be. Oriana may be strong, but she can’t possibly have one of those…” He was essentially talking to himself at that point. Kamijou could only frown in confusion, but suddenly Tsuchimikado stopped writing on the origami next to him and grinned. “Nah, Stiyl. I’m thinkin’ the same thing, actually.” “Are you serious?…Well, if she did have one of those, it would make sense that she could automatically operate a separate facility. But if that were the case, that would make her a wizard, not a sorcerer.” “Well, now. Maybe she really is, nya! From my point of view, there are some things about her that aren’t stable. If she really is a complete wizard, she should have a sorcerer subordinate for her to lecture. I would guess that would be Lidvia’s role, nya~.” As Tsuchimikado spoke, he marked up his origami even more with the calligraphy pen, writing symbols on top of his old ones. “? What exactly are you referring to?” The two sorcerers had been prattling on, leaving the amateur Kamijou completely in the dark. Tsuchimikado looked at him and gave a little grin. “Right, right. I guess you’ve never really seen one, Kammy! You should know about them already, though. Has sorcery-related knowledge packed away inside, activates itself as a magic circle despite what the person wants? Stays active semipermanently by amplifying its strength just a tiny bit with what leaks from life force and ley lines?” Tsuchimikado’s smile deepened. His blue sunglasses lenses reflected a glare. “Still don’t get it? Kammy, I don’t think there’s anybody closer to them than you, nya. After all, Index is with you, and she’s got 103,000 kinds of them!” 103,000 kinds. Index. He didn’t understand everything Tsuchimikado had just said, but he knew what he was referring to. “Wait, c-could it…,” he stammered. “That’s right, Kammy,” Tsuchimikado said with levity, waving the origami in his hands. “The original copies of a grimoire.” An original copy. Grimoires had knowledge pertaining to sorcery recorded within. By itself that wasn’t much, but it was said that if a normal human were to try and read it, it would destroy their mind. Plus, the grimoire’s sentences, passages, and letters would activate themselves as a magic circle, creating a semipermanent interception system against those who would destroy the grimoire. These original copies of the grimoires were indestructible, which was why they took the more temporary approach of sealing them instead. Index had 103,000 grimoires recorded in her mind, and Orsola Aquinas was trying to analyze the original copy of the Book of the Law—both, however, did so in order to oppose the danger presented by the grimoires. Kamijou was basically an amateur when it came to sorcery. He’d never seen an actual grimoire. Despite that, weird stuff involving sorcery and grimoires always seemed to spring up near him, and people gave him nothing more than knowledge to combat it. Tsuchimikado heaved a sigh and drew a symbol on the four pieces of origami. “It’s because, fundamentally speaking, magic circles and grimoires have similar characteristics, nya. I mean, the primary side effect of original grimoire copies is a magic circle, after all.” Kamijou frowned. He had no idea what Tsuchimikado was getting at. And there was a problem even before that. “How are they the same? Grimoires are some old books, and magic is like star charts you draw in circles like in RPGs, right?” His question earned an irritated glare from Stiyl. “…Again with the absurd analogies. They’re Seals of David. And it’s not a single item—it’s an intermediate magic circle used as part of the larger circle.” He cast a gaze toward Tsuchimikado’s hands. “Suppose I’ll start with explaining the circles first…The initial state of a magic circle is just that of a simple circle. Like this.” As he spoke, he picked up a rock on the ground and squatted, before drawing a fifty-centimeter-wide circle. Despite it being freehand, the circle was scarily perfect. It surprised him, but Tsuchimikado didn’t even look over from his pen-writings. Maybe it was important for sorcerers to be dexterous so they could make circles and talismans and stuff on their own. “Even amateurs like you think of pentagrams and hexagrams for this. They’re used for additional effects. To amplify the effects of the base circle, you overlay Seals of Solomon or David on it.” Stiyl breathed out some smoke and continued to draw a pentagram inside the circle. This, too, was a perfectly equilateral five-pointed star, which separated the circle exactly. The lines were completely straight. But what does this have to do with magic circles? Kamijou wondered. When Stiyl saw his confusion, he clicked his tongue to himself. His irritation was at not only Kamijou and the physical damage Stiyl had taken, but also at Tsuchimikado’s taking so long to set up for this plan he was considering (apparently considering, anyway). “Then we come to the later stage of the magic circle.” Stiyl paused. “I don’t want to have to explain this again, so watch closely.” He moved the small rock some more. “In the late stage of a magic circle, you add other things on the top. These are the characters. In most cases, you would write the name of the angel you wanted to borrow power from around the edge of the circle, but…” As he spoke, he started to write something along the circle. It was a dreadful magic circle, so he had thought Stiyl would write some unknown letters there, but instead, he just wrote in English. Scritch, scratch. Stiyl’s stone etched into the asphalt. “You write the name of the angel to borrow power from first, like this. Well, this is like indicating what kind of power you want, like fire or wind. You specify what type of telesma—angelic power—and how much of it you need. The type goes without saying, but the amount is actually very important. If it’s too little, the spell obviously won’t work, and if you have too much, the extra will do whatever it wants. It’s quite difficult to figure out the appropriate amount.” It didn’t take long before the English letters made a complete revolution around the circle. Stiyl kept going, though, continuing the line of text on another line outside the first. “Once you acquire the necessary amount of telesma with the right type from a different plane, you write down how you want to use it. You can put it into a staff to imbue it with a special effect, or use it for defensive powers around the magic circle. Things like that. When you do…” From the second line to a third and then a fourth, he continued his passages, the characters curling around each other like a Swiss roll. They might have been for a magic circle with symbols on it, but… “…it looks like a page from a book, doesn’t it?” Stiyl puffed some smoke onto the circle on the ground. It actually looked exactly like that. The way he wrote the characters had been irregular itself. There was no rule, none of the normal horizontal or vertical text you would find in a regular book. However, the lines of characters around the circle—what if you were to place them horizontally? If it was saying what type of power and how much you needed, how to construct the magic circle, and what effects it would have…then wasn’t that basically just a recipe for a spell? A spell recipe. What else was a grimoire but that? “Of course, there’s a flaw to using magic circles like this. The more complicated the diagram gets, the more difficult it becomes to control the circle. For example, the English word front can refer to the front of something, but in certain circumstances it can mean ‘promenade.’ If there’s any misinterpretation between what the caster is thinking and what’s written on the magic circle, the spell can easily go out of control and hurt the user.” He paused for a moment. “Though mistaking the meaning of a word you wrote on the magic circle is a pretty dull-witted thing for a caster to do.” Stiyl slowly stood up. He tossed away the stone he was using. Tsuchimikado saw that and spoke. “When all’s said and done, the amount of information in a magic circle is directly linked to its power. The extra characters you write into complicated patterns are no more than a little trick to help out. Same goes for the origami I used for the Four Ways to Truth spell. They’re like accessories providing information through the four colors in each direction. And if this is the case, how much information do you think grimoires must have, considering they’re entire books of the stuff?You could basically say the original copies of grimoires are super-compressed magic circles. So dense that pro sorcerers wouldn’t know what to do with ’em, nya~.” Tsuchimikado came to the conclusion. He had used the red calligraphy pen to write symbols all over the origami in his hands, to the point where they were totally covered. Kamijou fell silent for a moment. Then he decided to ask the question he was thinking. “So…what? You’re saying Oriana got her hands on the original copy of a grimoire just so she could make an automatic interception spell for the Daihasei Festival?” That was a scary thought. Kamijou himself had gotten wrapped up in the battle over a grimoire called the Book of the Law, caught in the middle of three separate sorcery factions. Of course, grimoires probably differed in value and rank, too, but this just didn’t make sense to him. It wasn’t just that they were a big deal—it was like they were too big a deal and Oriana was wasting the one she had. Still, Stiyl didn’t agree with his opinion. “…Can she actually do such a thing? The alchemist Aureolus Isard is known for being a grimoire author, and he was seen as the fastest writer among the Cancellarii—but even with no rest or sleep, he’d take three days to pen one grimoire at the least. A thicker grimoire would have taken a month for him. I really don’t think she could have put together an original grimoire while on the run. And we don’t know if she actually has one in the first place…” “You’ve got it wrong. Creating the book from start to finish would take at least that much time, nya. That, though, isn’t what Oriana’s after.” Tsuchimikado spoke in a lighthearted tone. “For her, the effects of the grimoire converted into the magic circle are what’s important. She doesn’t care about the format of the book. It’s more like a quick memo, one she didn’t care if others could read, isn’t it, nya?” he finished, completely reddened origami in one hand. “…A Shorthand one, then? I still don’t think she could do that, but…it doesn’t matter. We need to consider every possibility right now.” Kamijou looked down and mulled over what the sorcerers were saying. Eventually he brought his head back up. “Nobody can destroy the original copies, right? If people could just jot them down on the fly for every fight, wouldn’t the world be full of grimoires?” “You’re on the right track, nya. Necessarius hasn’t received any report to that effect, either. This is just speculation, but Oriana’s Shorthand probably isn’t perfect. Real grimoires will convert their pages into a magic circle and stay semipermanently active. But I’d think her chicken scratch would break down on its own pretty quickly,” he answered smoothly. He continued writing with his pen on top of the already filled origami. The appearance wasn’t everything, he said with a dry grin. It mattered a lot what order you wrote the seals in and how you overlapped them. “Lots of sorcerers have tried penning faulty grimoires in the past and died when they went berserk, nya. Maybe Oriana is keeping her Shorthand grimoires able to be destroyed at will. That would make it easier for a caster to use. A mixed technique, blending grimoire and sorcerer…Not one to save knowledge or skills for future generations, but one she could use immediately and discard a moment later. Something like that, nya?” “Hmm.” Kamijou folded his arms. “I still don’t really get all this original-grimoire-and-magic-circle stuff, though.” “…Really, why bother explaining anything to you?” said Stiyl, frowning, his face still pale from his injury. “Now that she intercepted you, does that mean you can’t use any magic on her?” “No. I don’t think I can use any magic until we do something about the interception spell. I’m pretty sure her spell will detect when I try to use anything and will intercept it. It doesn’t care why I’m trying to cast it, and there wouldn’t be any point in adding such bothersome commands.” Stiyl had just confessed a weakness, but his tone of voice was bitter. It showed no weak emotion. He was showing that things weren’t over yet. “So what should we do? Stiyl can’t use magic anymore, so that, er…Four Ways to Truth? We can’t use that to locate Oriana anymore, right? And Tsuchimikado can’t use sorcery in the first place.” “Not quite,” said Tsuchimikado, shaking his head. The origami in his hand were soaked in red ink, wet to the point where it seemed strange they didn’t just tear apart. “This is an automatic interception spell using Shorthand, remember? We just have to hold that in check. We could make an amulet as a countermeasure if things go well, but she still has that original copy, imperfect though it may be. It might just be easier to smash this spell and let Stiyl use sorcery again, nya~.” Kamijou glanced down at his right hand. Original grimoires supposedly couldn’t be destroyed by any means, but the Imagine Breaker might be able to manage. Stiyl breathed out smoke. “We can break her Shorthand grimoire, but is it possible Oriana flees outside Four Ways to Truth’s search area?” “Yeah. But if she was confident enough to flee so quickly, she wouldn’t have put together an interception spell, would she, nya? That sorta thing takes time to make. She’s already pressed for time, so she shouldn’t normally want to make more work for herself.” “Hmm.” Stiyl folded his arms. Kamijou frowned. For a basic objective, that was enough, but… “So where is this Shorthand thing exactly?” “I believe it would be hidden somewhere.” “Oriana can’t take it with her?” “We don’t know the subtle conditions for using Shorthand, so we can’t really say, nya. But here’s how she’s doing things. She sets up stationary traps in this service facility to figure out Stiyl’s life-force pattern. Then she sets up an automatic circle to grab that life force and send it to her. I think it’s possible the last in her little chain of spells would be in the same vein—a stationary spell—don’t you, nya?” “Then you know where she set up the Shorthand grimoire?” Without knowing what route she’d chosen to flee, they couldn’t decide where the interception grimoire was set up either, of course. “That’s what we’re gonna find out, nya~.” “How?” asked Kamijou, but he got no response. Tsuchimikado, for just a moment and very quietly, exhaled and inhaled. He returned to his pocket the red calligraphy pen he’d been using, then held the soaked, dyed origami delicately in both hands. Then he spoke. “Stiyl, I don’t care what kind—use a spell. I want to know where the interference is coming from.” They were cold words. Kamijou was shocked, and Stiyl’s face became completely impassive. “Oriana used a Shorthand grimoire to interfere with our movements after figuring out Stiyl’s life force. Even that interception spell should be using mana. I’ll set up a Divination Circle around you—it’ll react to that mana like a litmus test. It’ll be an unused magic circle, one none of our mana is going through yet. The Divination Circle will activate in response to the interception spell’s mana, then calculate the direction and distance the mana is coming from.” As he spoke, he took his red-dyed origami and squatted. Then, he moved the origami on the floor as though he were wiping a table. In a matter of seconds, a vermilion circle two meters wide had been drawn. After finishing his work, he stood up, not seeming pleased at all. Kamijou found himself doubting Tsuchimikado’s sanity—how could he say that so calmly, like he was reading out of an instruction manual? He hastily grabbed his shoulders. “He can’t do that, Tsuchimikado! Do you have a concrete idea of what will happen once the interception hits him?! If we do this one more time, Stiyl will end up collapsing again” “One more time?” Tsuchimikado frowned, confused. “Who said that? Once obviously isn’t gonna be enough for this. Stiyl won’t be dropping out of the running here. At worst, after we destroy the interception spell, I’ll need him to use Four Ways to Truth again to find Oriana. And if the first Divination Circle doesn’t detect the interception spell, we’ll need him to keep on trying.” Kamijou’s expression darkened. “…You…Are you serious right now?” Tsuchimikado looked him dead in the eye. “Kammy, you seem to be forgetting something important. Even if Oriana isn’t here, even if we’re not crossing blades or firing bullets at each other, we’re still in the middle of a battle with our lives on the line. Whole nations, even the world, could be affected by its outcome.” “But…” Kamijou stomped on the ground. “I could understand being absolutely sure we’ll win in exchange for Stiyl getting hurt again. Why can’t you guarantee that?! You’re saying it’s possible nothing could happen no matter how many times he gets hurt! Plus, even if we did find and wreck the interception spell, you’re gonna drag him with us to fight even more? That’s bullshit And I’m not gonna stand for it” At the end, he barely managed to hold in the last words he was going to say. …You’re getting Stiyl to use magic so that you don’t have to fight while hurt… “I know. Let’s get started,” answered Stiyl, accepting the clearly unfair proposition. “But you…” “Would you please not act so friendly with me, Touma Kamijou? It’s creeping me out. If this is what it takes to end things, then I have no problem with it.” He gave Tsuchimikado a glare. “In exchange, you’d better find exactly where that interception spell is. And we’re settling this problem ourselves. We will not let it continue to spiral out of control. Do you understand me?” Tsuchimikado didn’t avert his eyes under the glare. “Yeah, got it. We won’t let this get any more out of hand—Index could be forced to return if that happened. We’ll be sure to defend her life in Academy City. That was your condition, wasn’t it?” Kamijou was at a loss for words. In the end, Stiyl was only thinking of how to make a certain girl happy, even if it meant getting hurt. Even if he didn’t exist in that happy world. Even if Touma Kamijou was now standing where he should have been. It would take more than those facts to stop him. The sorcerer Stiyl Magnus turned his back to the two of them and removed a rune card from his inside pocket. The Divination Circle. Stiyl didn’t hesitate to step into the vermilion ring Motoharu Tsuchimikado had drawn on the ground. “Touma Kamijou…I’m not pleased by the fact that you’re here,” said the red-haired priest in an unwavering voice. “Why are you not at her side? If anything were to befall her, it would be your fault.” Then, runic flames erupted—and at that moment, the interception spell activated. A scream rang out, followed by the sound of someone collapsing. That was how Stiyl Magnus lived his own life. Word Count: (10169)