Sorcery Hacker:Volume3 Phase04

Phase 04: Gem Faction – School Tower

Part 1

His consciousness faded in and out.

He wasn’t even sure if he was alive or dead, but Ayato Criminaltrophy eventually heard something. He could tell his hazy senses were gradually recovering and focusing in one reality.

“Hey, his cheek is twitching. Teleria, keep it up. Your recovery magic is working!!”

“Coach!!”

The return of reality brought stabbing pain with it.

This was no miraculous survival. His survival began with an explosion of pain so bad it made him arch his back.

“Ah, g-g-g-g-gahhhh, ah, ah, ah, ah!?”

“I’ve patched up everything that had ruptured, but his blood pressure still hasn’t stabilized. Someone please stick something in his mouth so he won’t bite his tongue. Hurry!!”

No one was listening to his complaints. Once Mamilis stuck a rolled-up handkerchief in his mouth, any words he might have used were muffled. Henrietta used her great strength to hold down his flailing arms. Even dentists these days would ask you to raise your hand if it hurt, so this was taking brute force too far.

“Argh, how does a half-dead boy have this much strength left!? He was better when I was carrying him on my back!!”

Shockingly, the medical device was a grenade.

Teleria pulled the pin with it pressed against the boy’s head while he was restrained in bed.

Grenades were single-use sorcery guns with their magic boosted.

Which meant they could be used for healing too.

“Secondary Ex Tuner!!”

An explosion of blue light sent blue lines running along all the blood vessels and nerves in Ayato’s body. The blood flow had been unnaturally stronger in some places and weaker in others, but this evened it out. He gradually regained control of his muscles which had been running wild from signals being sent out against his will.

Henrietta released his arms and Ayato pulled the handkerchief from his mouth so he could cough.

“Bwah!!”

He opened his eyes wide but still couldn’t get up. He dizzily observed his surroundings and found he was in an Academy Towers infirmary.

“C-coach, are you alright?”

“Hello again, Miss Mamilis. I have returned from my trip to heaven.”

He managed to get that much out while groaning.

The Striker in the armor and tight skirt put a hand on her hips.

“What happened to the…President? Or whatever that group’s leader was called.”

“I killed him.”

Teleria’s throat gave an unnatural twitch.

“I stabbed him in the chest and knocked him off the roof of the 101-floor tower.”

“O-oh.”

“So, Miss Teleria, I don’t know what he had on you, nor do I care to find out.”

He made sure to say that even if he couldn’t even get out of bed.

With a slight smile on his lips.

“So don’t worry. It’s all over now.”

“Wahhhh!! Ahhhhhhhhh!!”

She clung to him.

She wept, burying her face in his chest, and making a muffled confession between her sobs.

Yes.

Ayato had once been manipulated into shooting her stepbrother, but he had done everything he could to protect her during that incident.

He was supposed to be perfect, but he could leave that path of perfection for a single girl.

He could pull the trigger and stab with his sword.

“I’m sorry!! I’m sorry!! I’m sorry!! If…if I…if I had done things differently, you wouldn’t have had to bloody your hands! I…sob…I…!?”

Ayato didn’t say anything.

He only rubbed her hand with a hand while she continued.

Dark Elf Mamilis softly sighed.

She knew about Teleria’s secret and now she thought back on how unusually the girl had been acting recently. That was enough to make a decent guess what had happened. That President guy had bound the helpless blonde girl with invisible chains, forced her to betray the friends who were relying on her, and loved every second of it. That made her think he deserved to die, but did that mean she was viewing this as a demon who lived outside of human society?

She nodded to herself with a very childish idea in mind.

“(That settles it. If the humans say they won’t forgive coach for what he did, then I’ll take him to the demon forest.)”

Meanwhile, Henrietta, the human representative of the group, awkwardly scratched the back of her head.

“I am a Striker. It is my duty to preserve law and order, so I cannot overlook any crime you commit – no matter your reasons.”

“I know.”

This exchange made the (coolheaded-looking) dark elf puff out her cheeks.

But Henrietta continued before she could begin his demon forest tour.

“But I have a question first, dangerous individual. Did you actually see the President’s body?”

“…”

Time froze.

The President had fallen from a height of 1000 esoule, so Ayato hadn’t had any way of checking while he passed out up on the roof.

But something did bother him.

Why had Sibell Wildcat thrown that grenade at the very end?

Ayato did not like this line of reasoning.

“I don’t see how it could be possible. Miss Henrietta, please tell me you are only kidding.”

“I doubt you will find a clear answer here.”

“Are you saying his body wasn’t found after he fell!?”

The honest Striker did not shake her head.

Come to think of it, she had asked him what happened to the President. That meant the girls had lost track off him while Ayato was unconscious.

Was there some way of falling from the roof and surviving?

Yes…there was.

He could have set it up in advance. For one, the parachute bags Ayato had given to the girls had come from the Student Council Office. And Umihiko had sorcery hacked one of the serpent sorcery devices that moved along the outside of the tower.

Henrietta continued the conversation as if to confirm Ayato’s fears.

“We found the Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary on the gem tower roof where you were passed out and we arrested them. They were alive, if barely. The Health Committee was in tears when we left those three with them, but the fate of the last one – the President – remains unknown. He was not on the roof. I thought he might have fallen to the ground when I noticed traces of explosions on the roof, but I did not find a body there.”

Only Teleria breathed a sigh of relief at that, since it meant she didn’t have to feel any excess guilt about this. Ayato honestly felt like he had screwed up. He felt it would have been a hundred times better if he had killed Umihiko there and ended this once and for all.

But on the verge of death, Sibell had focused on the President’s escape over her own. So she had used the grenade to hit Umihiko with the magical blast. She had thought knocking him from the roof so he could escape would change something for the entire Council.

Ayato could not forget that the President was the ultimate Sorcery Hacker.

He would have no trouble doctoring evidence and documentation and he could even open physical cell doors. So it didn’t matter to the Council if they were arrested for the time being. Maybe Sibell believed the Council members would never remain under arrest for long since he could shake up the entire Academy Towers.

There was something more here.

Umihiko still had something in reserve.

And it was bound to make Teleria suffer again.

Ayato felt a dangerous burning sensation in his temple.

“Coach,” interrupted Mamilis.

She held out her hand to show several items clinking together in her palm.

“Um, we found all four keys, so what now? Do we still want to open the sofa in the Student Council Office?”

Ayato recalled that some things had fallen away from the President when the Linkage Plug sword stabbed him in the chest. The sword must have broken the thin chain around the boy’s neck, so the key fell to the floor along with some blood and a uniform button. Mamilis and the others had then collected it.

“Right…”

“Ayato, you can’t get up yet!!”

Against the advice of the girl who knew how to use recovery magic better than anyone, Ayato got out of the bed. His right half still felt weird, but he could at least move the hand. She must have gotten all the broken bones and torn muscles mended. He couldn’t ask for anything more.

“I still can’t tell what Umihiko is after. He could still have some kind of scheme at play.”

He swallowed his pain and grimaced.

“But since he had the whole Council gang up on me to end this, I doubt he ever planned for me to get these four keys. We can damage him by opening the sofa and taking a look inside. It’s high time we settled things with that goddamn Council.”

Part 2

Ayato’s group left the infirmary and saw the curved hallway’s windows letting in the colors of night.

It was a bit chilly even with the heated floors.

“Heh…heh heh.”

“What’s so funny, Ayato?”

“Just that you are lending me your shoulder when you normally throw a fit if I so much as hold your hand. Perhaps I should get injured more often.”

“You are not allowed to make a habit of this. I can’t believe you…”

They had rewritten their front sights to Grade S and acquired the assassin handguns that functioned as a secret second key, so they didn’t need to circumvent the gates with rockets or space armor this time.

They simply used the elevator to reach the top of the gem tower.

And on the way…

“What happened to the Rocket Club?” asked Ayato.

“They left us a message for you: ‘If you do us the courtesy of dying, we will laugh and post on our social media journals that this was the best day of our lives.’ Although I got the feeling this was a joke based on the assumption you would pull through,” answered Henrietta, sounding somewhat exasperated.

It sounded like that bunch were their usual selves. They would probably be released soon.

They had to switch elevators every 10 floors, so it was still an exhausting climb. But they eventually boarded the final elevator.

They arrived at the true top floor past the Grade S zone.

They stepped off the elevator, walked to the Student Council Office, and approached the leather sofa. They lifted the cushions, glared at the coffin-like metal box made of mana-conducting silver, and inserted the four keys.

They opened the door to find the box was packed full. The bottled scraps of paper and shards of metal may have been material evidence for some incident or another and the large document envelopes may have been full of some kind of secret information. The human fingernails and skin collected below plastic like a photo album was a less than pleasant discovery. Those may have been materials to use (imperfect) magic for searching out the students or teachers’ locations.

Henrietta looked disappointed.

“Is that all? It’s so businesslike. I was expecting a mysterious organization to be hiding jewels and bars of gold.”

“Their Vice President is a real princess, remember? They don’t need money. Misappropriating some taxes is all they need to fund just about anything.”

The straitlaced Striker froze. She may still have had trouble accepting that a princess was involved in filthy criminal activity.

But more than that…

“Coach, this is a lot. Which files are we supposed to read?”

“All of them.”

They split up and got to work on the mountain of document envelopes.

However, these were secret documents from the Academy Towers, which was second to none when it came to sorcery R&D. Ayato told Mamilis and Henrietta to hand him anything that was too scholarly for them to understand.

That meant most of it ended up with Ayato.

“Theoretical plans for constructing a colossal sorcery gun capable of launching intercontinental attacks. Strategic manipulation of public opinion of an expedition into the Furthest Reaches of each cardinal direction. Scrapping any fragmentary reports of devil sightings. It’s all interesting, but not what we’re looking for.”

“Hold it, dangerous individual. Is this really worth hiding so thoroughly? Are you sure this isn’t decoy information? This right here looks like the results of a survey about sorcery gun grips.”

“Oh, that’s probably the groundwork for experiments in the artificial evolution of humans on the skeletal level.”

“Evolution…on the skeletal level?”

“For example, if all weapon grips have a standardized length and width, people’s stances and tactics will naturally change and become standardized for easiest use of those guns. As people train with those guns day in and day out, it will influence how their muscles and bones grow. That can change the average height, weight, and even lifespan of humans across the Static Continent. This is about doing that on purpose. Making the masses a size the elites find easier to control. Don’t ask me if the point is to make people less disease prone to cut medical costs or to make people too frail to ever stage a successful rebellion, though.”

“…”

“Still, this isn’t very important. You can probably find similar plans in the Academy Towers faculty room. We’re looking for something much more important.”

Henrietta’s mouth flapped and she failed to get any words out this time. After all, this was a research paper by President Umihiko Darkavenue. Despite what Ayato had said, each and every piece of paper in here was worth an endless supply of gold. Not that he needed to say that out loud and deliver the finishing blow against the Striker.

Ayato was accustomed to secrets like these, but he eventually found something that made even him frown.

“What the hell?”

The boy’s concerning comment led the three girls to gather around him.

He explained while seated on the floor and reading through the document.

“It looks like the Academy Towers were running a few unofficial projects. This one received a very large sum of funds that circumvented the usual budget process. My guess is that money came from the princess.”

Ayato flicked one of the pages of the document.

“It’s an anti-mimic project,” said the Sorcery Hacker. “They’re developing a largescale sorcery facility that can see right through the Mimic Options demons use to hide their demonic traits.”

It wasn’t Mamilis who jumped in surprise. It was Teleria.

“Wh-why would they want to do that?”

“Looks like they’ve seen Mimic Options as a threat for a while.” Ayato pointed at a different document. “There’s a lot of human sorcery tech here at the Academy Towers, but what if a demon who was indistinguishable from a human managed to enroll?”

“Oh.”

“Humans don’t win against demons because of our strength or numbers. It all comes down to our advanced sorcery tech. Or so the Council thinks, anyway. Of course, there’s also the fact that our magic is supported by the Four Lords and other higher demons.”

“Wait, that’s what the Council thinks? So do you think differently, coach?”

Ayato responded with an unreadable smile.

Humans never could have wielded the technological system called sorcery to this extent without their endless thirst for violence, their drive to invent new ways to kill, and their bigoted cruelty that made them feel joy in the abuse of others. But there was no need to explain that unfortunate side of humanity to Mamilis when she was so easily scared.

Not everyone would go in for the kill because they had the upper hand. In fact, wasn’t it more “normal” to feel sorry for someone when they were so much weaker than you? Like how people would be hesitant to strike an abandoned kitten or puppy.

“The Council does not want demons to get their hands on human sorcery tech. So to make sure that doesn’t happen, they need to eliminate any possible demons from the Academy Towers. And it has to be precise enough to eliminate even the smallest possibility of a demon slipping through.”

They hated the Mimic Options that let a demon masquerade as a human.

Hadn’t Demon Lord Nirvelphany been slain by the human hero (who was unwittingly set up by the royals and aristocrats) for that same reason?

Human history refused to change.

They kept making the same mistakes. The powerful and tolerant demons only wanted to hide their horns and tails so they could live in peace, but the weak and underhanded humans could not eliminate their fear of those demons. So they would reveal those demons and drive them out. Even though no one had ever said the world belonged to humans alone.

“But, coach, was that anti-mimic magic or facility actually completed? If it was, I would think us demons would have been wiped out already.”

“It looks like they have the theory complete in a lot of detail, but they haven’t actually made it yet.”

“Of course they haven’t,” bluntly stated Mamilis even though the scholarly stuff was supposed to be beyond her education.

Ayato wondered if her weapons developer grandma had told her something, but apparently not.

“Magic works by getting help from the Four Lords and the Demon Lord, right? They would never allow magic that would lead to the elimination of demons.”

It wasn’t that simple. The Demon Lord and the Four Lords had once lost a war to human magic (and technology). That meant their power could be drawn out without their permission. The ultimate form of that was the sorcery hacking used by Ayato and Umihiko.

However…

“It looks like they have a few ideas concerning that.”

“?”

“They’ve considered using a completely manmade facility to apply elemental color to the colorless mana or creating null-element magic that can control the mana itself without needing to use the four elements.”

“I’ve never heard of that before. Have you?” asked Mamilis, bending over to peer down at the documents.

“No,” replied Ayato from the floor.

That suggested those ideas hadn’t worked.

None of that had reached the practical stage yet.

Which in turn meant this wasn’t enough to assume the plan would be forever stalled.

“But another dangerous project has reached the practical stage.”

“What…is that?”

“You experienced a portion of it yourself back in Laguntreat, Miss Teleria. This is where Jennifer, the Student Council Advisor, got her tech.”

A cloud fell over the blonde girl’s face at the mention of the mermaid island.

Teleria couldn’t manage to speak, so a pale-faced Henrietta did so for her.

“W-wasn’t that plan about sorcery hacking Fleurelisia of the Four Lords as a stepping stone to controlling one of the Combined Royal Family’s swords?”

“But that Vice President girl is a princess and used one of those swords all on her own, right? Why would they need magic to control those swords?”

Mamilis’s pure question helped guide Henrietta to a different answer.

The straitlaced Striker’s face grew even more pale.

“Y-you mean the Academy Towers intends to control one of the Four Lords to attack us!?”

“No.”

Ayato softly rejected that idea.

Henrietta had wanted that rejection, but she didn’t look any happier now.

The bad feeling she felt proved accurate.

He went on to give the worst possible answer.

“It looks like he’s been researching how to make a strategic sorcery weapon that can kill the Four Lords and eliminate their elements. That would render all existing magic unusable, but he believes they could create a new magic system based on colorless mana, which would allow them to eliminate all demonic involvement in the magic system.”

Whose throat gave a twitch, pushing out a weird noise? It may have been Ayato himself.

Yes.

At the mermaid island, Student Council Advisor Jennifer Evening had stabbed several sharp objects into Fleurelisia’s massive body and sorcery hacked her. Then Jennifer had used the massive processing space that gave her to hack the Fermiliquidio sword.

But hold on.

Ignore how shocking and unusual that was and think back to the original assumptions. Hadn’t the Annihilator-class Predator Island been designed to kill Fleurelisia?

Humans could build something like that all on their own.

And the current age of human supremacy was built atop the past war against and defeat of the demons.

“But…”

Henrietta raised her voice to try and break through the solidified atmosphere that had set in.

It didn’t work.

“If they are constructing a massive weapon on the same scale as the Predator Island, what is it!? The President has gone missing, but if he is alive, he has to be pretty desperate. And we still might run into him here!!”

“I can’t say for certain, but it looks like they were taking practical data. That means this isn’t just a theory. The R&D is based on data taken by actually attacking a captured Four Lord and seeing how much it injured them.”

“They captured…one of the Four Lords?”

Mamilis couldn’t believe her ears.

Fire Lord Blasthogg and Water Lord Fleurelisia.

Restraining a true monster like that was extraordinary enough on its own. And this said the Academy Towers were researching a way to kill them.

Whether that was to actually kill them or to use the possibility as a threat, it would require tremendous power.

But it didn’t sound like Ayato was joking.

“Wind Lord Escalrain is supposedly a giant horse with four wings. Those wings produce the east, west, south, and north winds and the rest of him supposedly determines the weather. He supposedly weaves the air currents as if on a loom. He moves the world’s atmosphere, he decides the weather on a whim, and his anger causes natural disasters. The rise and fall of civilizations, gluts and famines, floods and droughts, and all other good and bad trends in the human world are determined by him.”

“That’s so poorly defined I’m having a hard time imagining it.”

Henrietta was astonished, but this probably wasn’t an exaggeration. They had already seen the Fire and Water Lords. If the Wind Lord was at their level, he had to do at least that much. If they actually encountered him, they would be witnessing something straight out of the ancient stories.

And there was something out their capable of injuring and killing him.

Ayato shrugged.

“For us, having to go up against a superweapon capable of killing one of the Four Lords is a failure in and of itself. It might be too late already, but I want to find Umihiko before he reaches the weapons development factory. …How far behind are we? How far has he made it while we’re spending our time on this?”

“Ayato, um.”

Teleria was hesitant to interrupt, but she appeared to have found something.

Ayato gasped when he read the title of the document she handed him: The Conclusion of the Gem Science Gemboard Processing Tower Incident and How To Use Ayato Criminaltrophy.

“…”

This was what he had most wanted to know.

But he responded with a puzzled frown. Most of the document was covered up by black pen, preventing him from reading the details. And when he held it up to his face and gave a sniff, he could still detect an oily scent.

There was a single stain inside the oblong space within the sofa. It looked an awful lot like an ink drop.

Except it wasn’t black.

It was red. Whoever had opened the sofa had been bleeding. Not that any of the curses one could use from a drop of blood would be enough to defeat that person.

(That bastard still had enough life in him to pull this off?)

Yet again, Ayato was a step behind.

The more he wanted an answer, the further away it felt.

Very recently, someone bloody had opened the four locks, blotted out this document, and then put it back. The culprit shouldn’t have even been alive, but he had prioritized tormenting Ayato by ensuring this was what he found.

It was extremely cruel, but also a very Sorcery Hacker thing to do.

The culprit played the part much more thoroughly than Ayato who had only become one later on in life out of necessity.

And this also announced that the culprit didn’t particularly care if Ayato learned about the superweapon to kill the Four Lords. If he did, he would have covered up that document or taken it with him.

And this was only possible if a master key existed.

There was only one possible suspect.

If the Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer had known about the spare keys, they wouldn’t have worked so hard to protect theirs.

This could only have been done by that boy who had no qualms about keeping secrets or sacrificing the comrades who trusted him. No one was threatening him like he had Teleria. He felt no guilt over keeping secrets and betraying people.

He thought a true Sorcery Hacker should delight in such things.

Ayato ground his teeth.

“This means he’s at least far enough ahead to make a detour. Dammit!!”

Part 3

The black-haired boy’s search ended in failure.

But next to him, Teleria Nereid Aquamarine’s face was clouded.

Because she could guess how this was likely to end.

The Student Council who held all power in the Academy Towers refused to let demons walk through the school’s halls disguised as humans.

That was why they had set this all up.

In that case…

They must have been involved in that hostage situation in the gem tower. That had ended with Ayato using his devil’s revolver on Teleria’s stepbrother. Despite the fact that she had already convinced him to surrender.

But.

Had that really been the planned ending?

What if the Student Council had been working behind the scenes to advance their hatred of demons?

(Could it be?)

The nightmare wasn’t over yet.

The girl thought the guilt would crush her.

(What if my human brother wasn’t the intended target? What if it was…me, the mermaid?)

Ayato had made a mistake when he fired.

In two different ways.

Due to some kind of mix-up, Ayato hadn’t lived up to the Council’s expectations while they pulled the strings.

So her stepbrother had been shot when he wasn’t meant to die and Teleria had survived when the entire incident had been about her. The Council had conspired to have her eliminated, but she had slipped through their fingers. Sensing danger, they had focused on developing even more extreme anti-demon measures.

What if that was the truth of the matter?

The anti-mimic research would have a deleterious effect on all surviving demons. The research into recreating magic as a human-only system would mean killing the Four Lords to erase the four elements from the world.

And Ayato had given up his stable position as the strongest Forward to enter the underground world of sorcery hacking.

What if all of that was the direct result of Teleria surviving when she wasn’t supposed to?

What if none of it would have happened if she had died like she was meant to?

Part 4

“Pant, pant.”

He dragged himself along.

He trudged.

President Umihiko Darkavenue breathed heavily while slowly walking along. He was honestly pushing himself too hard. His body wasn’t going to last.

But he didn’t care.

(Escal…rain)

One of his glasses lenses was broken and his brown hair was stained dark red. He was bleeding badly and his many broken bones caught inside him when he moved in certain ways. He focused his woozy mind on a single name.

(I need to that giant spear…capable of killing the Four Lords…of killing that monster.)

Who would imagine that weapon was hidden in the sky everyone looked up at every day? But ayone with a functional brain, should have considered the possibility. The Academy Towers’ alphabet grades created a hierarchy based on the height of the towers. So the most powerful person there belonged on a floating landmass hovering above even the tops of the towers.

This was past the Grade S zone.

The adult headmaster and board chairman were satisfied with their card-sized assassin handguns that acted as a second key, so they were unaware this higher level even existed.

Only the Student Council – the truly privileged class – knew of it.

Privileges were best kept hidden.

The tech involved was the same used by Sky City Celedileka. The Academy Towers were more advanced than them, so of course they could reproduce it.

Spies from the Ghost Investigation Club were apparently spending night after night peering through special photography devices to investigate something that felt off to them, but they would never arrive at the truth. Because the hints they were working off of were all controlled by the Council. The Council only had to use the Newspaper Club as an unwitting jammer since that club would simply regurgitate any of the Council’s official announcements.

There was a mass of mana-conducting silver there.

It was large enough to cover half the floating landmass.

The giant, six-legged thing formed a single spear launcher. By using the massive multistage acceleration firing device on the rear, the spear could theoretically pierce the moon in the night sky.

It had high mobility, heavy armor, and the ultimate destructive power.

The weapon was capable of challenging the lord of the impure demons to a duel and of winning that duel. A clean hit would pierce through the giant bodies of the Four Lords and the disposable shield held by the front two legs could protect against three direct blasts of Four Lords magic. So as long as the battle was kept short, it could win.

Yes.

This was what humans could do when they put their minds to it.

So surely they could put together a magic system with colorless mana once the elemental colors of the Four Lords were gone.

Yet the ignorant masses and even the sorcery researchers and teachers at the Academy Towers didn’t even dream of the possibility. They couldn’t look past the elemental paradigm and were forever trapped by the assumption that the Four Lords’ power was necessary. Because everyone could use magic so easily, they relied on the easy tricks and loopholes and never even considered creating a new path up the treacherous mountain.

So he would take that from them.

He would kill the Four Lords and eliminate all of the elements.

Would people give up on their lives of magic then? Of course not. Humans could never abandon a comfort once they came to take it for granted. Could you bear a life without a refrigerator or without a washer and dryer? So the people would complain to everyone from the downtown inventor to the court scholars. They would demand human-only magic that didn’t need the four elements. A noble cause couldn’t rouse them to action, but they would make short work of a world that didn’t satisfy their lowly desires. That was the true nature of humanity.

(I will activate the Genocide Motor even if it means destroying my body. As long as I replace my biological organs with replacements of mana-conducting silver, my mind will survive. I’d been considering the process already, so I know how. Oh, how I loathe those demons. They supposedly form a fundamental and irreplaceable part of the magic system, but is that really true? I’ll prove it isn’t. By breaking down those four pillars and eliminating all elements from the world. Then humanity will create a new magic system in a world with only colorless mana.)

The glasses boy glanced to the side.

He looked to the thing directly facing the Genocide Motor.

The poor lab animal had wounds and bruises all over and his four wings were bound by thick barbed wire and sharp hooks.

That was Escalrain, one of the Four Lords.

The giant horse with a wingspan of 200 esoule glared down at the President looking up at him.

He concluded what was happening right away.

“You wretched human.”

“?”

“The Genocide Motor? A noble experiment to expel the Four Lords from the system of magic? Admit it – you despise your own body for how readily it ages and how easily it dies. You hate mermaids, dark elves, and the like because they remain forever young like they are untouched by the stream of time. No amount of training can ever bring you to that point, so you are ready to rely on mana-conducting silver replacements. Are you a Sorcery Hacker who can’t even fight on his own? You are pathetic. You are motivated by no more than self-interest.”

“What are you-”

Umihiko Darkavenue muttered something blankly, but his rational mind slammed the lid shut on that.

Instead, he shouted with his face red.

“Shut the hell up! You can’t even pretend to be human and infiltrate society! The times have left you behind! You think I want to be like you? Don’t make me laugh, you inhuman monster! Is that what passes as a brain for you demons!?”

Umihiko knew of an unfortunate boy who had ended up like that.

He had been a member of the Student Council.

But he was a traitor who had gotten too involved in the mermaids and Fleurelisia, felt sorry for them, and said he was looking for a path to reconciliation.

Umihiko had thought showing him the truth would bring the boy back to his senses.

Showing him the truth that even those foolish and arrogant demons with their eternal youth would still die if a human put a bullet through their head. And that they were no more than a hunk of meat that would rot away once dead. And thus, they were worthless and not worth protecting.

But then the boy had shoved Teleria Nereid Aquamarine out of the way at the last second, betraying Umihiko’s expectations to the bitter end.

(Ayato Criminaltrophy. That idiotic Forward screwed everything up. People’s lives were on the line, but he pulled the trigger without even questioning it!! I should’ve given more thought to using him as a pawn!!! I never should have relied on some freak who was so taken by that devil he was only interested in building up his score!!!!)

“None of this matters to me,” said Escalrain.

“It doesn’t matter to me either. Whatever nonsense you might spout, my decisions are final. The Genocide Motor has entered the final testing phase. I have been very, very careful this whole time, but it is effectively already complete. First up will be that thorn in my side Ayato and his friends. After that, each of you Four Lords in order. None of you will survive. That will usher in a new era that encourages wide development of human-only magic!!”

“You say this Genocide Motor is a colossal sorcery device guaranteed to kill the Four Lords.”

Escalrain skillfully tilted his giant horse head.

He followed up the human-like motion with a clear question.

“You think this puny thing can do that?”

It was such a simple sound, like someone stepping on an empty can fallen on the side of the road.

He had only casually reached out his right foreleg.

That was all it took to reduce a twisted dream to wreckage.

It was like a dropped piece of porcelain sending pieces scattering in all directions. Except each piece of mana-conducting silver scrap was bigger and heavier than a puny human. Umihiko was dumbfounded. He was too badly injured to dodge nimbly out of the way. The piece casting a shadow on him from overhead fell and crushed him beneath.

The real tragedy may have been that he wasn’t killed instantly.

“Gahh!?”

“You gave me plenty of time to think about it. What ‘passes as a brain’ for a demon was more than enough to solve the puzzle presented to me. A power capable of killing the Four Lords? That thing is no more than a trick disguised as a direct attack. It’s no more than an issue of technology. It’s a cheat, like saying running and running while looking at a calendar will never take you to tomorrow.”

He wasn’t aware.

He had only seen what was in the reports.

Once, at Laguntreat to the south, Lord Fleurelisia was nearly killed by the Predator Island. While the Student Council had provided some technology through their advisor Jennifer Evening, a group outside of the Academy Towers had accomplished that. So he assumed they could accomplish something even greater. That assumption had made him confident that the Council was on the right track here.

But since he hadn’t been there personally, he wasn’t aware of a crucial fact.

Fleurelisia had only hesitated to attack because her daughter was aboard the Annihilator-class ship. In a pure 1-on-1 battle, Fleurelisia would have turned that humanmade junk into ocean wreckage in no time.

Someone with something to protect was indeed powerful.

But someone without that had a different sort of freedom.

“Kah!”

Umihiko was trapped below the wreckage and unable to get back up. Rather than being pinned by its weight, more than half his body had been crushed too badly to move. But he seemed to find that hard to believe while he lay there on his stomach.

“Wha-? The puzzle? You expect me to believe…a demon…a mere demon…figured out the Academy Towers’ greatest secret?”

He may have been so twisted he had started to worship the science that supported him and those like him.

The giant horse gave a mocking laugh and spread his wings.

“Correct.”

A new shadow was cast on the President.

It came from Esacalrain’s right foreleg, its enormous hoof ready to drop.

“We lent the power of mana to you in the first place. Who could understand it better than its rightful owners?”

A tremor ran through the floating landmass.

Puny red and black splattered out and everything went silent. No one was going to weep for the President’s death. Because no one even knew this place existed. No one would give him a funeral and his body would remain here, rotting and desiccating.

A voice spoke much like a lonely wind blowing through the ruins of a city.

“I cannot speak for the Demon Lord or the other Four Lords.”

Given how he had been treated, this may have been the natural conclusion.

The lord shaped like a giant horse spoke to himself.

“But I do not see how I can forgive these creatures known as humans.”

New hatred was budding.

And this time, it came from the demons whose hearts were just as sensitive as the humans.

Part 5

The air bent.

Shockwaves spread in every direction like thick walls, causing the school’s irregularly placed towers to groan. Cracks ran through walls and items fell from shelves.

“Kyah!!”

The intense shaking made Teleria crouch and scream, so Ayato gently supported her.

Something was happening.

“Dangerous individual!”

“Yes, it may have begun.”

There were no windows here, so Ayato’s group left the Student Council Office and entered the hallway. Shards of glass littered the dark hallway. This was the top floor of the tallest tower at the top of the mountain. An intense chill had taken hold and not even the heated floors helped.

But they couldn’t afford to shiver in the cold.

“Coach, look!”

Dark Elf Mamilis pointed out the window.

A figure large enough to be seen from just about anywhere floated in the night sky.

Lord Escalrain.

Maybe because he was the lord of wind, his four hooves were not planted on the ground. The massive horse with four wings slowly circled a fair distance away from the towers.

The giant horse’s voice was like a deep tremor in the air.

He probably hadn’t seen Ayato’s group, so this had to be addressed to the entire human species.

“Hear me, you loathsome humans.”

“?”

“Academy Towers, you are a collection of wicked knowledge which corrupts the world and tears natural life asunder. As one of the Four Lords, I shall clear away the filthy smoke your sins have created. Such is my duty as Escalrain, lord of all the world’s winds.”

“Hey, something isn’t right.” Henrietta whispered to Ayato while crouching by the window. “I thought the President had captured him. I would understand if he was being forced to fight with that superweapon used as a threat against him, but that mysterious organization called the Student Council wouldn’t want to destroy their own fortress here!!”

Ayato could not logically explain this either.

Which led to a separate concern.

One of the connecting walkways was destroyed with a dull crash.

Something like a shooting star had collided with it, but that something was a giant hunk of smashed-up mana-conducting silver. There was no telling what its original shape had been, but it had to be the wreckage of something. It wasn’t clear if that was the whole thing or just a part. And it was covered with someone’s blood.

The Sorcery Hacker clicked his tongue.

“That bastard screwed up. His anti-Four-Lords weapon must have been destroyed. Really, the Four Lords are just too big. He was wrong to think they could be captured and killed by human hands. You were a classical fool, Umihiko.”

The superweapon had ended in failure.

And now that Escalrain had broken free of the restraints humans had put on him, what would that wind lord do?

It seemed unlikely he would just leave.

After being so thoroughly exposed to the arrogant side of arrogant humanity and the dangerous side of dangerous knowledge, just how deep would his hatred run?

“Wait!!”

The one to shout and recklessly stand up was Dark Elf Mamilis.

The brown girl leaned out of the tower’s top floor window, removed the Mimic Option earrings hiding her long ears, and looked up another 300 esoule.

“I’m a demon too, so I understand. Humans do have a scary and unpleasant side. But there’s more to them than that. So please don’t say you’re going to destroy them!!”

For the first time, the Four Lord seemed to focus on an individual here. His eye clearly looked in Mamilis’s direction.

And he asked a question.

“You are a demon, yet you choose to walk with humans?”

“Yes, so-”

“Then you too are my enemy.”

He was not willing to converse.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen Mamilis with her face scrunching up.

The giant, four-winged horse was looking right at her as he spoke.

“I will kill the humans and I will kill any who coddle them. I will kill you all. I will clear away the filthy smoke blotting out the sky and I will eliminate its source. I must return this world to its rightful state and the existence of the humans prevents that. Thus, removing any foolish traitors is the only way to save demons as a whole. That means you, dark elf girl. You must die here for the good of the world.”

“It’s no use, Miss Mamilis.”

“But…”

“We must not unjustly look down on demons, but we must not place them on a pedestal either. Just as there are good humans and bad humans, there are good demons and bad demons. He is beyond reasoning with. And it was the Academy Towers – us humans – who pushed him to that point.”

Escalrain likely was justified to feel the way he did.

The Academy Towers had wronged him, so he had the right to vengeance. More than that, smashing the Academy Towers to smithereens now would likely prevent future demons from being captured and subjected to the same treatment.

Now, these misdeeds had only been committed by the Student Council and the majority of the students and teachers hadn’t had a hance to actually do anything to any demons.

But that was irrelevant as far as Escalrain was concerned. The humans were at fault for failing to notice their leaders’ misdeeds and punish them for it. If they could not police their own, then an outside source had to tear the organization down at the source. It was the obvious conclusion for him.

What did a human do when they found a hornet nest by their front door? Did they worry about the hornet’s family?

This was the same.

But Ayato wasn’t about to give up and accept it.

Mamilis shook her head.

“You can’t,” she said. “Escalrain hasn’t done anything wrong. It was the humans that did all the bad stuff!”

“But it’s the demons who will be destroyed if this continues.”

Mamilis’s eyes widened to the limit when she heard that.

Her breath caught in her throat, so Ayato explained.

“If he defeats the humans here and destroys the Academy Towers which act as a symbol of sorcery research, it will encourage the demons who have been living in hiding. Most likely, a lot of them will support Escalrain and start a war for independence. Whether or not he wants that, it’s bound to happen. But it won’t last. Remember, the demons couldn’t defeat the humans even when they had the Demon Lord and the Four Lords together. With just one of the Four Lords rampaging, they will lose in the end. But only after so very many unnecessary deaths on both sides.”

“…”

“All that will remain is an even greater hatred of demons among the humans. Repeat that mistake a second time and the humans will explode. They will start talking about eradicating every last demon. Maybe Escalrain is right, but what if doing the right thing leads to mass death on both sides? I can’t accept that kind of ‘right’. Forcing your own self-destructive act onto those around you is a twisted form of ‘right’ that has lost sight of what it truly means to be right.”

The victim was becoming the attacker.

As sad as it was, this happened a lot in human society. And since demons also had minds of their own, similar trouble must have occurred in their society. It was only natural. But the human heart was not noble enough to unconditionally accept that sort of attack.

If someone raised a blade to strike you down, you had to do everything you could to defend yourself, no matter what conditions led the attacker to do it. Humans would grit their teeth and do exactly that to protect their current society.

If they knew a tragedy was coming, they would stop it.

Even if it meant unfairly intervening in someone else’s decisions and keeping them from doing what they believed was right. Ayato was a Sorcery Hacker, a position that required ignoring the line between right and wrong. He had accepted the title of criminal so he could protect something.

Escalrain had to know he was going too far. He had to know how wretched he was for letting himself go through with it regardless. So he could only hope for the most thorough of tortures.

Humans and demons were the same.

So it came as no surprise that there were bigots among the demons too. And not all of them had been born as cruel sadists.

There were those who couldn’t live any other way after being damaged by the pain and suffering they received as victims.

Ayato understood that.

He really did.

But he would still defeat this demon. Ayato had turned his back on the sunny side of the world and become a Sorcery Hacker so he could protect something that couldn’t be saved with the simple arithmetic of right and wrong. He had chosen to become someone who had a solution when an unfair system or situation got in the way.

He would carry the weight of those sins.

As long as he could save just one more life.

“Miss Mamilis. Miss Henrietta.”

His right half still felt odd.

Nevertheless, he drew the Linkage Plug sword from his hip.

This was not a time for the devil’s revolver that was guaranteed to take a life whether it succeeded or failed.

“And Miss Teleria.”

He spoke clearly.

This had nothing to do with their client. This went far beyond revealing the misdeeds of the Student Council that had worked its way even into the Combined Royal Family’s system of succession. Winning this fierce battle would not reveal some truth about a past incident. But Ayato stared straight at his enemy.

Becoming a Sorcery Hacker would have been meaningless if he was willing to look the other way now.

“Give me your help. We will stop Lord Escalrain here. We cannot let him give into his anger and kill all the humans and all the demons who wish to get along with humans. So I’m counting on you. We need to show Escalrain that being one of the Four Lords does not give him the right to trample on people’s lives!!”

Option 04: Monument Concerning the Wind Lord

(This text is written in an ancient language that is notoriously easy to misinterpret and the stone monument itself is badly weathered. Keep in mind that some holes in the text have been filled in with the best guess of the translator.)

He sought no crown. He desired no land.

Loyal servants who sang his praises and poets who told his tales were seen as no more than dead weight to him.

He only asked for one thing: freedom.

So he would not allow anything to take that treasure from him.

When a cataclysm strikes, know that someone stood in his way. When a drought leaves the land parched and cracked, know that someone called out to him. You may not have intended to do so. But if he feels you are infringing on his freedom, then only ruin awaits you. It could strike your home, your city, your kingdom, or even your civilization or world. That is all it takes for the systems built up by humanity to collapse.

You must not contact him.

You must not call out to him.

He is a capricious lord who cannot be judged by tiny human morals. Whether he seems to have blessed the world or has brought ruin to the world, he is not actually thinking about humankind at all. If he does focus on an individual, it is only to kill them. Avoid drawing his attention at all costs.

His name is Escalrain Hraesv Iron.

I have written all I know about him here.

For the sake of future generations. For the sake of those of you who have not yet seen him.

But by writing his name here, I have called out to him.

Some dreadful disaster will likely reach me soon.

No, not just likely. There is no doubting it.

(The rest of the monument is too badly damaged to read.)

Back to Phase 03

Return to Main Page

Forward to Phase 05