Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Chapter3

Chapter 3: Relying on R&C Occultics – Secret_DB.

Part 1

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

The siren was deafening.

The Six Wings attack helicopters were approaching.

Aradia was straddling the gun barrel and the 8-wheel mobile combat vehicle had been interpreted as an unidentified flying object violating restricted airspace.

Anna Sprengel had made a mess of Academy City, so they had plenty of reasons to want to kill her.

“Can’t you destroy that stupid tech with the weapons!?” asked Aradia.

“All I have is this flat console monitor, but it doesn’t say what controls what! And Anna still isn’t responding!!” shouted back Kamijou, holding the dead-eyed little wicked woman along with her chair back.

And that wasn’t the only threat.

A giant shape passed by unexpectedly close overhead.

On the flat monitor, Aradia looked up.

“What now? Come to think of it, there has to be real one of that AWACS thing flying around for Mut Thebes to use its white shadow.”

“No! That’s a…transport plane!!”

Kamijou didn’t know the details. He only shouted the text displayed over the footage on the command seat’s monitor.

The craft’s large, wide shape resembled a whale and the cargo door at the rear sat open. It was in flight, but roofless unmanned military 4-wheel-drive vehicles slid out into the air as if on rails.

The mobile combat vehicle’s armor did nothing to protect Aradia while she was outside making the 20ton vehicle fly. If one of those landed on her, she would be squashed between the two vehicles!

“Aradia!!”

“I…know!!”

The inertial force shifted to the side as the flying mobile combat vehicle curved in an S-shape to avoid the falling metal. After a vehicle missed its target, it fell a bit further before deploying a trio of parachutes that blossomed like flowers. The transport plane continued pursuing them from overhead, dropping air cargo containers like dice. Maybe they were full of fuel and maybe ammo, but they weren’t guided air-to-air weapons and they couldn’t reach their target.

For a brief moment, everything was still, like the eye of the storm. The interior lights returned to the ordinary LED lighting.

But it wouldn’t last.

Something slowly arrived at an even greater altitude than the transport plane.

“Another large shape?” said Aradia. “C’mon, your sketchy tech can’t bring us down if it wasn’t designed for air combat.”

“No, this is something different. What, I’m not sure, but it’s bad news!!”

At first glance, its shape looked similar to the transport plane.

But it was not the same.

A portion of the fuselage slid open and a Gatling gun, a grenade launcher, and a tank gun emerged.

A strange term appeared on the console monitor: gunship.

Kamijou wasn’t sure what to make of the English term, but then the interior lights turned red again.

That was a lock-on warning. Did that mean this attack would be guided!?

“Evasive action! You can’t let this hit us!!!”

“Don’t boss me around when you’re just sitting inside yelling! I’ll obey this particular instruction, though!!” shouted back Aradia, forcing the mobile combat vehicle to swerve side to side.

A storm of destruction rained down on them. In addition to the bombing, the Gatling gun opened fire. It was like a searchlight made of lead and explosives. Each speck was a piece of lead larger than a thumb and they attacked at a rate of between 6000 and 8000 per minute. Aradia swung the Predator Octopus around to avoid the line of fire sweeping side to side from overhead. She slipped them right underneath one of the Six Wings still in pursuit.

The line of gunfire contacted the unmanned attack helicopter.

The fearsome Six Wings was torn to pieces and exploded in mere moments.

But they had survived.

Unfortunately, their umbrella made of composite armor and an aluminum and stainless steel frame had been shredded.

“Make sure you don’t bite your tongue!!” warned Aradia.

“Yikes!!”

Kamijou clenched his teeth hard while pulling in Anna who still sat limply in the command seat.

The screen showed Aradia running her hands along the gun barrel she was straddling. As soon as she took a forward-leaning pose like she was riding a motorcycle, the ground rapidly approached.

The explosion of the attack helicopter must have briefly blinded the gunship overhead.

They quickly passed the 4-wheel-drive vehicles still floating down on their parachutes. When the pursuing Gatling gun fire pierced one of the containers, tracer rounds scattered in every direction with the force of a firecracker. An ammo case must have been ignited. The way the container’s contents continued to go off while it floated down on its parachute was terrifying. It was like a disco ball of death.

Aradia made quick evasive action to the sides while nervously shouting to Kamijou.

A major road was quickly growing to life size.

“Here goes. 3, 2, 1!”

They fell.

The 20ton Predator Octopus had flown from the giant District 6 amusement park, passed right over District 5, and now set its thick tires down on a District 7 road.

Instead of crashing straight down, they landed diagonally as if sliding down onto the road.

The screech of the tearing and burning rubber sounded like a broken whistle.

Kamijou could feel the tires and ground below them for what felt like the first time in forever.

“We’re falling!!”

“Don’t worry. You have a witch’s guidance – and the goddess of all witches at that. I won’t screw up this landing.”

The Gatling gun fire pouring down from the sky easily chewed up the hard asphalt and drew out an S-shape like an approaching serpent.

If the landing killed their ordinary momentum, the gunfire would catch up. Aradia twisted her hips atop the barrel to push the Predator Octopus toward a side road. Technically, it wasn’t really a road. It looked more like a large common utility duct…or maybe a disaster shelter.

The metal sign indicating the sloped entrance burst like a balloon, but it ended there. The downpour of lead could not reach them underground.

“Incredible,” gasped Kamijou.

“What is? You had better not be complimenting those hunks of metal over me.”

Aradia twisted around on the barrel to glare back toward him.

Magic was convenient, but they would still be too conspicuous if they paraded down a major road with a lovely young woman straddling the thick gun barrel. She had chosen to do it herself, but it looked more like some kind of punishment.

The siren was still going.

The enemy remained on alert.

The slope provided a small view outside.

The Six Wings continued circling overhead for a bit, but they eventually flew off elsewhere. Had they decided they were no use with this terrain? An urban area filled with buildings of various sizes reduced radar accuracy in the first place and they must have had an even harder time scanning an underground space.

(But how long will it take for Anti-Skill to collect the vehicles and containers they sent parachuting down? We can’t stay here forever!)

The disturbing siren finally ended.

The actual threat remained, but Kamijou still breathed a reflexive sigh of relief.

Aradia reopened the hatch and climbed back in.

“So has Anna recovered? We need her back by the time we reach District 15 so she can explain the cabal’s secret for us. Is she still trembling in nightmare mode?”

“She’s better than before…I think.”

Anna’s head was lolling to the side in the command seat, but when Kamijou waved his hand in front of her face, her eyes did follow it. She hadn’t fully recovered from the shock, but she did seem conscious.

Kamijou put on his best “helping a lost child” smile.

“Everything is going to be alright, Anna. That weird Kingsford person is gone now.”

“Eep!?”

“You probably shouldn’t say that name out loud,” sighed Aradia.

Anna was behaving like a small child after a nightmare.

“It’ll be alright! She was certainly a scary lady, but she hasn’t caught up to us here. We got away.”

“She’s gone? That monster is really gone?”

“Absolutely.”

“Sniff, uh. Wahhhh…”

Anna Sprengel clutched Kamijou’s jacket with her small hands and rubbed her forehead against him. It was actually quite disturbing coming from her.

Given her past behavior, that is.

Kamijou stared into the distance.

“Hold on. Could we nip a lot of problems in the bud by saying ‘Kingsford is coming to get you’ whenever she misbehaves?”

“Yeep!?”

“Bh!? She’s not here!! She really isn’t! You’ll always be our choice for the #1 Anna!!!”

“Don’t you dare cause a relapse. Even if I do understand the desire to get even with her,” complained Aradia (while missing the mark a bit on his intentions).

Climbing a mountain was slow-going, but falling back down happened in an instant.

Consoling crybaby Anna felt like stacking up rocks at Sai-no-Kawara.

“Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?” asked Aradia, sounding somehow exasperated.

“Because I have. I mean, all Transcendents – not just Alice – are basically selfish brats who never pay any attention to their surroundings, so getting along with them is a real pain in the- ow!? U-um, Aradia-san? Present company excluded, of course.”

All in all, it took longer than expected.

The passage of time was hard to notice in the windowless vehicle, but it had to be well past midday by now.

That said, Aradia’s flight had broken all the rules. Academy City hadn’t expected it at all, so they had made a significant shortcut.

The pursuers had to be confused and it would take time for them to piece together the information and track down Kamijou’s group, so they had to make what progress they could in that time.

And finally…

“Sniff.”

Anna of all people was sniffling.

But she still glared past her tears to view the command seat’s console monitor.

She hadn’t fully recovered, but she had raised her head and was facing forward again.

“Let’s keep going. As much distance as we gained, we’re still in the same city. If we spend too long here, Kingsford will catch up again.”

“Thank goodness. Anna’s back to normal.”

“I was not crying!! I was never anything but ‘normal’!!”

The 8-wheel mobile combat vehicle slowly resumed driving and emerged on the surface.

There was no sign of the adults who had gone to collect the roofless 4-wheel-drive vehicles.

Had they gone elsewhere afterwards, or were they having more trouble than expected separating the parachutes? Kamijou could imagine the vehicles being immobilized because their own equipment got all tangled up in the tires and steering wheel.

The streets weren’t quite deserted. The group wearing their school uniforms during the break were likely Judgment members sent out on patrol or assigned to keep critical areas organized. The distinctive armbands confirmed it. But Kamijou also saw the occasional boys and girls wearing casual clothing. They were aiming their phones at the city from elevated locations, so they may have been getting footage of the empty streets to go viral on social media. Maybe they wanted to transmit to the world that they had violated the rules, but Kamijou could only pray their accounts weren’t banned for it.

“Aren’t those adults part of that Anti-Skill group?” asked Aradia while playing with the periscope-like device meant for Kamijou’s seat.

“What about it?”

“They keep looking at us. Let’s hope our license plate doesn’t tell them we weren’t assigned to this area.”

That was a worrying theory, but not one they could verify.

Even if they were rousing some suspicions, no one was making a radio call and sending in a tank or attack helicopter, so it was best to continue obeying the traffic laws and leave before those suspicions grew to certainty.

District 7 bordered District 15. District 7 was longer north-to-south, so it would be fastest to travel to the southwest end of the district.

Which brought them to…

“I recognize that out-of-place European architecture. Is that the School Garden?” wondered Kamijou while watching the monitor.

That said, all he could see was an extremely tall wall and metal fence. But even the outer wall looked fancy in that exclusive territory of girl’s schools.

He stared at that European style.

Since he fled the consulate without a word of warning, he couldn’t help but worry about Misaka Mikoto when he saw anything associated with Tokiwadai. But if he pulled out his old folk’s smartphone and gave her a call, he would have to worry about her using Academy City’s #3 Level 5 power to track him down.

That probably wouldn’t end well for Misaka Mikoto herself.

Meanwhile…

“Fool, how long is Academy City’s winter break?”

“Huh? I think it depends on the school, but…generally until the 8th or the 10th maybe? Oh, but I have no clue when it comes to the universities. Then again, winter break can’t be that different can it? Unlike summer break.”

“Then is that some kind of club activity?”

He finally noticed thanks to Anna’s warning.

A few girls were standing in front of one of the gates. They all wore Tokiwadai uniforms and coats.

“Uh, oh,” groaned Kamijou.

Was that Shirai Kuroko of Judgment and a few of the Sisters? That was an unusual combination, but apparently the new year meant new rules.

Also, they were all looking this way.

Aradia tilted her head while viewing the monitor.

“Can’t we just ignore them and leave?”

“You must be joking! Underestimating Japan’s middle school girls is a bad idea. Shirai there is a teleporter. We couldn’t escape her driving full speed in a sports car. In the worst case, she could even teleport right inside the vehicle with us!!”

This was so frustrating.

He knew Shirai Kuroko and the Sisters weren’t bad people, but he couldn’t ask them for help.

The overly broad category of “Academy City” was such a nuisance.

The external microphone picked up their voices.

“Isn’t that an Anti-Skill vehicle?” asked a Sister.

“So what if it is? This street is still off limits to large vehicles due to its weight limit. We should warn them all the same,” replied Shirai

One Sister wore a heart necklace, so she was likely #10032.

“Hm.” Misaka Sister stared expressionlessly into the distance. “Involving ourselves in those grownup problems is inefficient. Misaka is more interested in the dashi vending machine she saw earlier, says Misaka as she pours all her efforts into distracting you.”

“Hey! Where do you think you’re going!? You have been tasked with preserving order, so you can’t just leave your post!!”

“Oh, shut up. Perhaps a hug will silence you, says Misaka as she attempts a stronger approach.”

“You must be joking. Onee-sama is my one and only goddess, so- ohhhhh, I’m being smothered in hugs by girls with Onee-sama’s face! My brain is glitching out!?”

Kamijou saw the Misaka Sister bow his way while they left.

(Did she know this was me?)

He had no way of confirming that.

After passing by the School Garden, they kept driving the Predator Octopus. The attack from Mut Thebes that morning felt like it had only just happened, but it was already late evening.

They passed below a blue road sign crossing the wide main road like a pedestrian bridge.

The scenery soon changed.

Looking up showed rows of high-tech high-rise buildings. Looking at the ground level showed trendy accessory shops that looked straight out of a fashion magazine. The signs seemed to reject ordinary customers by saying they had no space for products that were simply meant to sell. Kamijou had never had much reason to visit this district during his time living in the city.

This district contained the cutting edge of fashion, but it was currently deserted.

Maybe the people who frequented this district were so accustomed to breaking the rules to stand out that they knew how much you could get away with before getting in real trouble.

“We’ve finally arrived, fool,” said Anna Sprengel, tapping her finger on the command seat’s console monitor. “This is District 15.”

Part 2

The sun had fully set.

It was already dark out.

And the mobile combat vehicle had come to a complete stop.

“Another standstill?”

“Not to worry, fool. No one has found us this time. This is District 15, the most well-known shopping district in the city, so Academy City is being more careful defending it.”

Anna Sprengel kicked her little feet below the command seat while observing things outside through the screen.

She appeared to have recovered some from her previous panic.

“Also, this doesn’t look like your average security. It’s probably a patrol by unmanned ground vehicles. After using their map app to follow their preprogrammed course, they should move elsewhere.”

They were in a back road just off of the main road where the military vehicles were holding a parade.

The Predator Octopus had been installed with a drone, so they were using that now. Kamijou was kind of impressed. Safety was a wonderful thing. The way they had a top-down view of things outside while hiding behind cover reminded him of a video game minimap. This way they didn’t have to worry about emerging nervously from around a corner, running into Anti-Skill, and having that eerie siren start up again. There was of course a risk of Anti-Skill spying on them from above in the same way and the control signal could always be traced back to its source.

Also, Kamijou was alone with Anna right now.

Aradia had left the vehicle again. The witch goddess loved the forests and nature, so she found it stifling to go without fresh air for too long. When Kamijou rotated the rooftop camera – the periscope? – he saw the scantily-clad woman stretching on the pavement.

Kamijou wished she would stay inside because he feared someone would happen to see her while she was out there.

With her back to the camera, Aradia raised her arms overhead and stretched upwards and then smoothly bent her upper body from side to side.

She was also saying something.

“Ah, eh, ee, uh, eh, oh, ah, oh.”

Was that voice training? Maybe that was necessary for reciting incantations.

She was probably aware of the camera, but had she realized the microphone would pick up her voice too? She was so weirdly unguarded that Kamijou felt like he was peeping on her bathing even though she wasn’t doing anything indecent.

“On second thought, this is pretty indecent. Twisting her hips and arching her back while dressed like that in public qualifies if you ask me. Curse that flexible banana woman.”

“What are you watching, fool?”

Little Anna got after him. And she sounded miffed instead of her usual exasperation, so the boy felt ice down his spine. He quickly moved away from the periscope.

(Aradia’s the one who went out there dressed like that! I didn’t do anything wrong!!)

The silence in the vehicle suddenly felt extremely awkward.

“Man, you can’t see anything out there. See, I was trying to keep an eye on things outside, but it’s completely dark out thanks to the martial law, so there’s nothing to even see. Talk about a waste of ti-”

“To interrupt your suspiciously fast explanation there, were you aware this vehicle includes a crew recorder? It automatically activates upon detecting a voice, so everything said inside here is logged.”

“Please keep this a secret! I’ll do anything, Anna!! If Aradia hears what I said, she’ll kick me right through the gut, killing me instantly!! And I know she can do it!!!”

“Then hand over what you’re hiding.”

Little Anna smiled her wicked woman grin while holding out her little palm.

“When we were stocking up at the discount store, you bought some junk food you kept hidden from that nature witch, didn’t you? The extremely processed kind. That store had the customer bag their own purchases, so anything you didn’t want Aradia knowing about you could easily slip out of the bag and – for example – hide it in the pockets of your new jacket.”

“Ugh.”

“The high school mind is little more than an explosion of hunger and lust, so it isn’t hard to predict. When you have extra money, you would never stick to just meals. I can see right through you, so if you want my silence, you had better fill my mouth with junk food. Trick or treat☆”

Kamijou gave in and emptied his new jacket’s pockets. Anna licked her lips and began making her selection.

She had made fun of him for it, but apparently she too would die without the occasional junk food.

“What is this? It’s so thin and crispy. Is it a ham cutlet?”

“Trying it is faster than attempting to logically work out what it must be. But as surprising as it might seem, that is in fact fried fish. Never underestimate the quality of Japanese snacks, Anna.”

“Heh heh. I see. This is excellent. Hee hee. A wonderfully cheap and depraved flavor.”

Anna could be awfully honest at times like this. She grabbed the junk food bag in both hands and began nibbling at the cutlet-like food that emerged from one end.

With mystery gummies made with 0% fruit juice and ultra-sweet sugar-free chocolate, everything here would have caused nature-loving Aradia to evolve from kind older sister to furious mother.

Kamijou began munching on a round snack called Mr. Cabbage, which didn’t look like it had cabbage in it at all.

“Anna. What’s your plan after this is over?”

“After it’s over?”

She sounded puzzled, like she hadn’t even considered that possibility.

And eventually…

“Search for a king.”

“You mean to rule over you?”

“Of course, fool,” quietly confirmed Anna Sprengel.

One snack wasn’t enough for her, so she grabbed a large spiral lollipop.

“A king who will bind my wicked nature. I don’t know if someone like that exists, but if they do, I can make a compromise with this world. As you can plainly see, I bring only ruin and destruction when I am left free.”

“If you know that…”

“If I could quit on my own, I wouldn’t be searching for a king to force me.”

She laughed and narrowed her eyes in amusement.

Kamijou could sense something was wrong here.

“I am sick of reigning supreme.”

The wicked woman pulled her legs up into the command seat to take up less space.

When she spoke, it seemed directed at herself more than Kamijou.

“I am sick and tired of trying to teach people things. I keep explaining it for them and I even write it down in letters anyone can understand, but no one ever even bothers to try and achieve the correct answer. They want to know the secret art of miracles so badly, but they want it faster and simpler and they end up skipping steps and taking shortcuts. I have shown them step by step how to take the safe and certain path, but they omit the fundamentals and ultimately fail in devastating ways.”

Anna Sprengel was enshrouded in mystery.

What exactly was the Rosicrucian magic cabal? How could she be the original owner of Aiwass when Aleister was supposed to be his master? And why was she so terrified of that mystery woman named Anna Kingsford?

Of course, Kamijou knew he wouldn’t receive an answer if he asked her here.

She would undoubtedly rebuke him for taking the easy route.

So he instead touched on a core point he already knew about.

“I hope you find your king.”

“Yes.”

While curled up in her seat, she rested her chin on her knees and narrowed her eyes in a smile.

“I do hope they are out there somewhere, fool.”

Part 3

“Now, I 💭 it is ⏱️ to get moving,” whispered Anna Kingsford.

Miss Sprengel, Mut Thebes, and Kamijou Touma. When she had asked who to target and pursue with her divination, her injured student had given the following answer.

“It is ⏱️ to find the one we must defeat.”

Part 4

After confirming with the drone that the patrolling vehicles on the main street had left, Kamijou called Aradia back into the mobile combat vehicle.

“Huh? Why are you so warm, Aradia?”

“You should try getting some exercise too. The heater isn’t enough to warm the core of your body.”

They drove slowly through the shopping district night, obeying the traffic laws within the wild military vehicle.

“Wait, wait, wait. Everything’s dark. And we’re on District 15’s main street. This is supposed to be a terrifyingly bright and shining land of fashion. District 15 should be a poison zone for me. I should be taking damage each step I take.”

“This is nothing compared to true martial law, fool. Japan really is a peaceful country. The higher ups have declared martial law, but they still have the traffic lights running for the people sneaking out into the city. And they haven’t shut down communications like TV, radio, phones, and internet.”

“If they shut all that down, it would cause a panic.”

“Yes, fool, but declaring martial law is supposed to mean you are prepared to handle the consequences like that.”

They drove slowly through the dark and silent city.

“Stretchy, stretchy.”

Aradia was again stretching her cheeks while staring into Kamijou’s old folk’s smartphone. She even pushed up on the corners of her mouth with her fingers to form a smile. Kamijou felt as awkward as seeing a schoolgirl set up her phone by the train window and start dancing when she thought the car had emptied out.

A staticky voice came from the console monitor Anna was messing with.

“Delta here. Do you read me?”

“Whisky. The encryption is working perfectly. It does introduce lag to the conversation, though.”

Kamijou tilted his head.

“What are you doing? Accessing the Anti-Skill radio?”

“This is amateur radio. Some students questioned the safety of smartphones since everything passes through a large server somewhere, so they appear to have set up a radio forum. This isn’t much safer, though,” said Anna as they drove by a 10m-tall mobile interception antenna tower.

They may have used an outdated term like “forum” because they were trying to distance themselves from cutting-edge smartphones.

“Tango here. Take a look through your telescopes. Something huge is blocking the moon.”

“Charlie. That’s not standard orbit. Are they doing something on the space station?”

Maybe that was accurate and maybe not, but the thought of something happening in space was pretty scary. Kamijou decided it was best to end this before an even more dangerous trigger could be pulled. They were already inside District 15. He wanted to avoid being hit by a major attack at this point.

“This is the place,” said Anna.

That phrase carried a lot of weight.

The Predator Octopus had arrived at a certain location.

A large shape loomed overhead.

The mass of concrete weighed tens of thousands of tons.

But…

“This is?” asked Kamijou after sticking his head out of the hatch.

He had been imagining something like a secret military base, but he instead found something completely ordinary, even if he didn’t recognize it.

It was…

“Um, this is a cinema complex?”

“Yes, it’s a collection of movie theaters. An unusually large collection, but still.”

The skyscraper was so tall that panning the screen up with the camera wasn’t enough to see the top and it was entirely filled with movie theaters. This was such a popular place that it was rumored the results here determined which movie was considered the year’s most popular. It was also famous for having the director and cast make an appearance on opening night.

Little Anna Sprengel sighed at the other two.

“Why would I hide my secret in a blatantly suspicious fortress? A sturdy safe would only draw attention. To win on the intelligence front, you need an inconspicuous location that will blend into the background.”

Was that how it worked?

Kamijou remained nervous and Anna laughed wickedly.

“In Academy City, most movies are not played by shining light through film. With an adequate optical network, you don’t even need to distribute physical media to each movie theater. Heh heh. It’s sad really. Hee hee. Video aside, the analog audio is superior to a digital signal, but the people traveling all the way to the theater can’t even tell the diff-”

“Huh, that’s fascinating. And it’s a lot more convincing coming from a wicked woman who was once turned into a human film canister.”

Little Anna’s shoulders jumped.

Aradia had rudely interrupted her, but she forgot all about being angry.

She really did behave better when someone mentioned Kingsford. You could probably get her to eat her vegetables by telling her Kingsford could come to get her if she didn’t.

District 15 was Academy City’s largest shopping district, so it was short on land. Similar to an area with tons of convenience stores but no parking lots. So the cinema complex apparently had its staff parking built underground.

“Won’t someone question a military vehicle entering here?”

“Not to worry, fool. This was only meant to bring us to the magic database. It doesn’t matter much now that we’ve arrived.”

Apparently Kamijou’s worries were unnecessary.

They entered the staff parking without permission, but no guard got after them. The place was deserted. The parking garage’s fluorescent lights weren’t even on.

Kamijou doubted they were just closed for the holiday. The martial law had to be the cause. The confusion of that declaration was obvious from how the lights and air conditioning were deactivated, but the shutters remained open.

“Let’s go, fool and rural witch. …I-I said let’s go!”

Anna Sprengel grabbed the smart glasses that let her operate the mobile combat vehicle from outside, but she seemed somehow nervous as she exited. But wasn’t this where she had hid her secret?

“Uhh.”

She clung to Kamijou’s left side.

Was arrogant Anna Sprengel really trembling as she stared into the darkness ahead? Almost like a child afraid to walk outside at night.

“Anna?”

“Shut up! You saw Kingsford, fool. Anything goes with her – in a bad way. The thought of her smiling face emerging from the shadows is just- ugh.”

Telling her she was overreacting wouldn’t help.

This reaction was based in fear, but that woman had inspired this much fear in Anna. She had to be extraordinary. It was best to assume she wouldn’t enter through the door like a normal person.

And…

“…”

Kamijou felt a soft weight on his other side.

Witch Goddess Aradia had taken his right arm.

Tears formed in the corners of Anna’s eyes.

“Hey! Leave the fool’s right hand free so he can use it at a moment’s notice, you lewd seductive banana woman!! What if Kingsford appears without warning!?”

“Shut up, you lonely crybaby wicked woman,” Aradia replied quietly but sharply.

Kamijou felt a strange pressure of a sort only a higher being could understand.

“Wait, the elevators still work with the power shut down?”

“My, my. D-don’t let that surprise you, fool. This is far easier than hijacking an online military weapon. Hee hee hee. I can close someone in and send it plummeting to the ground from outside.”

(Maybe because she was doing her best to distract herself from her fear of Kingsford,) Anna Sprengel’s voice was unusually unstable and hyper. Kamijou also had a feeling he needed to give her a talking to later on. Although if he used the Special Kingsford Attack too often, he feared it would lose its effectiveness.

Meanwhile, Aradia sounded thoughtful in her own way.

“The theater…the stage.”

“?”

The giant cinema complex had countless movie theaters stacked on top of each other, but Anna wasn’t taking them to any of those. She opened a plain metal door and stepped into a behind-the-scenes control room.

Kamijou had seen something similar on TV.

Specifically, he saw an audio console lined with more a hundred sliders, just like at a TV station or a recording studio. Monitors showing what was being played in each theater were lined up like in a security room and several industrial computers larger than refrigerators were lined up along the wall.

“This is the central theater control room. I’m sure you know they don’t hand-crank a projector nowadays, but if you extended the fiber optic cable to your home, you could watch it from there.”

“So this is the place?”

“Correct, fool. This equipment is used to download the movie file from a central server located elsewhere and then play it on the appropriate screens. But they can’t afford for the line to be busy, so they have more than 5 large capacity lines running in parallel to ensure they won’t experience even 0.2 seconds of lag. Which makes this a treasure trove of unused space the theater staff isn’t even aware of.”

Maybe magicians just liked to explain things because Anna talked on and on as she walked further in. She sat in a chair much too large for her and started up the equipment like she knew what she was doing.

As usual, Aradia’s dislike of Academy City had her over by the wall where she could keep her distance from the monitors. She apparently wasn’t aware that “wall” was actually the large computers. Was she trying to master the careless older sister class?

“More strange tech? Can you really reveal the world’s secrets with this?”

“Oh? Isn’t all magic much the same?”

Surprisingly, the equipment looked like an ordinary computer as it booted up.

But before that boot up was complete, Anna pressed a key combination Kamijou didn’t recognize and a different screen popped up. It was only white text on a red background. This was either an industrial mode or a special mode the computer’s actual owners weren’t aware of. Anna selected a few options written in English and directly typed in what appeared to be a command to search through the data she had hidden in the unseen space of that vast storage device.

The screen became a lot more understandable then.

It was the R&C Occultics homepage that Kamijou had seen on his old folk’s smartphone. Maybe this was an older version, but she had apparently kept a full backup.

The little wicked woman typed a language other than Japanese and English into the search box. She had probably switched modes in some way, but Kamijou was surprised to see she could use the keyboard to type characters that looked like the ancient writing from an other world fantasy.

(Then again, maybe Japanese keyboards look just as strange to everyone else in the world. They let you type hiragana, katakana, kanji, numbers, the alphabet, symbols, and even emoticons with the one device.)

The screen arrived at a certain entry in the magic database.

“Here we go. This is it, fool. Reviewing the material leads to the same result.”

Anna was speaking under her breath, so she probably wasn’t really trying to explain anything to Kamijou or Aradia.

Her eyes followed the text on the coldly glowing screen and she spoke her knowledge aloud in order to compare the past with the present.

“The Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal. H. T. Trismegistus is most likely from BCE times. Good, Old Mary is from around the 3rd century at the latest. Yet the spells they receive from their Secret Chiefs display hints of Magick.”

The R&C Occultics magic database came from all the secret knowledge and techniques Anna Sprengel had typed up herself.

She was only relying on her own reference material because she wanted solid confirmation outside of her own head. This was similar to reading back through her mountain of notes in chronological order to organize her thesis.

This meant something had that wicked woman so concerned that she needed to check each and every little thing to put her mind at ease.

“Fool. The first thing you have to keep in mind is that the Transcendents exist to protect others. Just like Aradia there.”

“…”

Aradia didn’t respond to the mention and remained by the wall with her arms crossed.

Anna shrugged.

“But they each want to protect a different group. It could be persecuted witches, the falsely accused, anyone not in the privileged class, or the people unseen among the masses who are satisfied with their current lives. There might be some overlap, but never a perfect match. If any one of them tries to protect someone, they will bring harm to the people another Transcendent is attempting to protect. So none of the Transcendents is allowed to act on their own.”

The Bologna Succubus had already explained this to Kamijou.

That was why the Transcendents had gathered and started talking things out. They had wanted to create a world where all of them could save their targets of salvation without interfering with each other. It was like an extremely complex puzzle, so they had talked on and on in search of an answer.

Alice Anotherbible was independent and capricious, so she threatened to ruin all of that.

Alice was still young(?), so she likely hadn’t decided on her conditions for salvation yet. So she might wield extreme violence on a whim, or she might save the innocent on a whim.

Did they save people based on a list of rules?

Or did they save people on a whim?

Kamijou still couldn’t decide which was more ordinary and human.

“So they decided to create a certain person.”

“?”

This deviated from what Kamijou knew.

It gave him a discordant feeling like the record needle had just skipped to a different song.

What kind of corroborative evidence did Anna have of this? She slowly scrolled down the screen and viewed the many formulas displayed there to reinforce her knowledge.

“They concluded they could never reach the answer on their own. No matter how hard they tried to solve the complex puzzle, someone would inevitably bring harm to someone else’s salvation target. But if they could create someone capable of solving that problem, they concluded they could save the entire world.”

“What…are you talking about?” asked Kamijou, astonished.

They were dumping the problem on someone else?

Something was wrong with the world and the people they cared for would die if they didn’t start fixing the problem immediately. They understood that perfectly, but they ultimately let go of the world’s lifeline and handed it off to someone else entirely?

But when he thought about it, the very idea of there being Transcendent people tasked with saving the world was based on the assumption that there were special geniuses who were superior to everyone else. Unlike the Magic Gods, the Transcendents did not expect to be worshipped. Was it H. T. Trismegistus who had said that? That meant they didn’t seek the understanding or sympathy of those below them. The decision of the majority was final and they didn’t bother to explain to the 7 or 8 billion people how they were being saved.

Take that reasoning further and the Transcendents themselves formed a pyramid hierarchy with a special being at the very top.

They believed they could save the entire world if they created that one person.

“Think back, fool. I said they displayed hints of Magick, didn’t I? That is the Crowley brand of magic.”

“You mean that Crowley?”

Kamijou was of course very familiar with the name.

Anna sighed.

“Correct. Aleister theorized that what you could call a soul enters a baby’s body three months after conception and he released a spell based on that theory. His theory implies there is no soul there until the 90th day of pregnancy, so he thought you could guide whatever soul you wanted into the body during that time. That would allow you to give a physical body to a superhuman beast or spirit and then manage it as your own child.”

Kamijou had known Aleister had a bad reputation as a magician, but had he really gone that far?

“Specifically, you impregnate a woman using a special method, place her in the center of the ceremonial ground, and arrange the appropriate magical symbols around her. Cursed gems, a special magic sword – things like that. Then you use purification and barrier spells to thoroughly clean away all forces that would have an unnecessary influence on the process. An empty place like a desert is convenient there. That way the child in the woman’s uterus receives only the necessary forces, so the magician has complete control over the creation and growth of the body and they can create exactly the child they want.”

“Wait…you’re dressing it up in a lot of magic terminology, but how is that any different from taking a delicate pregnant woman and pumping her full of nasty chemicals based on some human recipe you created!?”

“Did I ever say it was different, fool? Keep in mind that Aleister Crowley was known as the wickedest man in the world and the 20th century’s greatest villain because his magic research included the use of young boys and drugs in his ceremonial grounds. That magician ignored the moral issues in pursuit of what he wanted, so do you really expect him to make an exception because someone is pregnant or not even born yet?”

“…”

“By violating that taboo, you can acquire a beast or spirit beyond human understanding. Of course he would do it. This is the human who created a temple known as Academy City in the Far East, developed esper powers by using drugs and electrodes on children as young as 1st grade, and created more than 20 thousand human clones only to have them killed.”

After all that, Anna Sprengel shrugged. She must have seen the look on Kamijou’s face.

“He completed the logic of the spell. That much is true. But, fool, you should already know how emotional Aleister could be about his family. The annoying thing about that human is how his outward actions don’t tell you everything about who he is.”

Kamijou recalled when Aleister had held the baby Lilith and wept in the UK. Or the reason he had begun the Battle of Blythe Road all on his own.

From a young age, he had been persecuted by those who claimed to be good and moral, so he had sought familial love more than anyone else. But at the same time, he had also carried out heartless experiments and research. He was an extremely complicated person.

Perhaps that was why he was so thoroughly hated by the majority of people who needed no excitement in their lives and, for better or for worse, sought a peaceful life. They had seen him as an unstable and incomprehensible detonator for the world.

“But…”

Why had she brought up Aleister Crowley’s spell here in the first place?

What did it have to do with the mysterious Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal?

Seeing how puzzled Kamijou was, Aradia spoke up.

“We chose a method that doesn’t use a pregnant woman.”

“So? You were still messing with the fertilized egg undergoing cleavage in the test tube. Even in the original Crowley version, the mother remained an ordinary human. Birthing a special child did not remake her into a holy mother who could cause miracles.”

The little wicked woman patted her own stomach while laying out her accusations.

And she winked.

“Crowley used the word karma in reference to the current or directionality of the force that binds the soul. And he said that karma could not be judged good or evil – high or low.”

“You mean…?”

Kamijou looked over at Aradia by the wall.

Anna laughed as she continued.

“The Transcendents were the people who could not find a perfect form of salvation even with their connections to the powerful Secret Chiefs. I said an empty desert would work best, but they attempted to grasp perfect righteousness by surrounding their sterile container with imperfect good. Whether we are talking about a Saint, a Magic God, or a Great Demon, any perfected form of good will not function as the karma needed to draw in a different sort of being. The Transcendents theorized their imperfection and incompleteness would allow them to function as the unique trigger capable of drawing in their savior like a magnet. Hee hee. You were willing to use anything, weren’t you?”

“…”

“But in the end, the sin is the same. They blotted out an existing life to bring an inhuman being to this physical world. That is merely another form of human sacrifice – an exchange ceremony used to obtain the mystical.”

What had the Bridge Builders Cabal wanted badly enough to do that?

Or rather, who exactly had they created?

There was only one candidate.

“Alice-”

“It was not Alice Anotherbible,” quietly interrupted Witch Goddess Aradia.

She was still leaning against the equipment by the wall and refused to look at Kamijou.

While Anna was an irregularity and a traitor, Aradia was a pure and genuine Transcendent. She had to know what their plan was.

Anna Sprengel had messed with Alice because she wanted to stop that plan. That was why Alice adored Kamijou as her “teacher” despite him never having met her before. But if Alice was the core of the Transcendents’ plan, Anna would have had other options.

She could have directly harmed Alice to remove her from the picture.

Or if killing her wasn’t an option, she could have embedded a poison-like spell in the girl’s body to immobilize her.

Someone as wicked as her was bound to know some tricks for defeating an opponent too powerful for a traditional attack to work.

Kamijou had always thought she seemed to prefer indirect methods.

Alice Anotherbible certainly stood out as unusual in the cabal, so she probably could have done considerable damage to the cabal’s plan if she opposed their decision regarding Kamijou.

But was that enough to say the plan’s destruction was a sure thing?

Anna had turned Kamijou into Alice’s controller(?). Now, Kamijou didn’t know if the Transcendents’ plan to save the world was good or bad, but what would Anna have done if they had explained their plan to him and he decided it wouldn’t be a problem and they should go through with it?

In other words…

Alice Anotherbible was an important part of this, but she was not the very center.

So who was?

Who was this monster capable of pushing aside Alice of all people?

“Fool, you already have the answer. The name has been right there in front of us all along.”

Anna’s next statement was brief but tense.

“Which is why I want to stop their plan.”

“?”

Anna did not give any further answer and instead worked at extracting the data from the audio console. However, that did not mean searching out a port and inserting a USB memory stick. She took out an aluminum-looking device resembling the heated tobacco products Kamijou had seen in convenience store ads and simply placed it atop the console. It apparently read and forcibly saved the faint magnetic field produced when a computer sent electronic signals back and forth. Which meant she didn’t have to consider passwords or security when copying it over.

Either the data she wanted didn’t require much space or that extraction device was incredibly efficient. After seeing the LED flash a few times, Anna picked the device back up.

“Would H. T. Trismegistus be the best one to contact? He is something of a manager. Either way, this lets us directly negotiate with that cabal of Transcendents. As long as we know the details of their ceremony, we only need to remove one of the many conditions needed for success and the rest of the plan will come crashing down. …Also, this isn’t the only bombshell I have on them.”

Anna toyed with the metal device, but made no attempt to explain further. She shut off the large computer screen since she no longer needed it.

But just before she did, Kamijou’s eyes happened on a certain piece of text.

Alongside the symbol of a special cross, he saw the name of the person the Transcendents had unanimously chosen to recognize.

Their savior was named…

…Ch…s………ut…

“Chris…?”

Part 5

Meanwhile, Transcendent Mut Thebes whispered to herself.

She was focused on some distinctive tire tracks left on the cold road.

But she was observing them from a large distance.

“Found you.”

Part 6

Kathoom!!!

A tremor thrust up at them from below. Kamijou seriously did lose his balance and fall to the floor before he heard the sound of snapping metal. The anti-earthquake supports broke and the refrigerator-size computers by the wall began to topple, one after another.

“Whoops.”

Aradia tugged on little Anna’s hand and then picked her up to protect her from the falling machinery.

And…

“The trouble I go through for you.”

Kamijou heard a high-pitched sound.

As soon as Aradia ran her bare feet across the floor, a circular shockwave formed around her. The professional computers had to weigh at least several dozen kilos each, but all of them were smashed against the wall.

“Saving this little wicked woman despite her misdeeds counts as a good deed. So as a witch, you owe me thrice the benefit in return, world.”

Kamijou stared in astonishment after she saved him from the group of machines that possibly weighed as much as a ton.

“Th-thank-”

“Hmph. It is only natural for the witch goddess to save you,” interrupted Aradia, brushing her silver hair back from her shoulder with her empty hand.

She then released Anna whose face had been pressed into Aradia’s chest.

“Also, we don’t have time to discuss it. What caused the tremor matters more than the tremor itself. This reinforced concrete building has to weigh 150 thousand tons, so it would take more than a traffic accident to shake it that badly.”

The deep siren ended suddenly.

Unnaturally suddenly.

That meant Academy City likely hadn’t used their online controls to shut it off for some reason. Most likely, all of the outdoor speakers had been destroyed.

All of them? Over how wide an area?

“What’s happening?”

Kamijou was creeped out, but he wasn’t going to find an answer in this small room. It had no windows.

While on the run, that siren had been a symbol of death, but it was still part of the infrastructure meant to warn the city’s people of danger.

If that had been destroyed…

“This isn’t Academy City’s next-gen tech. Why did the siren cut out like that?”

This meant someone was here.

But who?

Was it Transcendent Mut Thebes of the Bridge Builders Cabal? Or was it Anna Kingsford who was working with Aleister? Either option was about as bad as it could get.

The instant Kamijou kicked open the bent door and rushed out into the hallway, he found he had wandered into another world.

Everything had changed.

The cinema complex was well soundproofed since it was designed for screening movies. Now Kamijou knew why he had suddenly heard the siren through that soundproofing.

“!?”

He heard an endless series of dull sounds like something hard being chewed apart.

He moved to guard little Anna who was clinging to him.

He didn’t need to investigate the source of the noise.

The thick wall of reinforced concrete had collapsed. The piercing cold wind of the January 4 night blew in, but Kamijou was beyond sensing such things. What he saw was too overwhelming for that.

He saw Mut Thebes.

The brown-skinned girl whose long, wavy blonde hair spread out behind her.

A massive white flower was spread out behind that hair. Armor and gun turrets stretched out for dozens – no, hundreds – of meters. This was a large cinema complex, so each floor was extremely tall. This floor was the equivalent of dozens of floors up on an ordinary building, but Mut Thebes was at his eye level. And not because she had used a flight spell.

She was standing. On the ground.

That Transcendent could absorb any shadow cast on the ground and use it as her weapon. It worked for a tank, an attack helicopter, a security robot, and even an AWACS aircraft.

But this?

Could this be real?

“A…warship!?”

“It is called an aircraft cruiser. Its exact name and specs were given, but I don’t remember what they were. Ask a military nerd if you care.”

The brown girl was careless even with this.

She felt no attachment to it.

She treated this even more casually than selecting a hot snack next the convenience store register. She saw a new product and didn’t know what it was or if it was any good, but decided to buy it just because. But for her, that meant absorbing the shadow of a 300m…aircraft cruiser?

And not just one.

Five of them formed legs arranged around her like a long skirt. Another four were spread out behind her like wings. Another continued on behind her like a bird’s body or tailfeathers. Altogether, 10 aircraft cruisers formed a giant white bird. Didn’t that mean she had an entire carrier group with her!?

“I absorb shadows,” casually explained Mut Thebes. “So by providing multiple light sources, I can increase the number of shadows on the ground and absorb multiple copies of a single weapon. The number of physical objects is irrelevant. Admittedly, it did take some time to absorb multiple 300m shadows at once.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Goddamit.”

She had previously used multiple tank guns at once. Did this mean she hadn’t necessarily stolen the shadows of multiple weapons for that?

And these weapons were on another level altogether.

The giant bird she formed even had legs with a proper avian backwards joint. That meant the white aircraft cruisers were forcibly bent near the center.

If you sliced apart a tanker, aircraft carrier, or other ship measuring several hundred meters long and then painstakingly welded all the parts back together like that, you could indeed construct a similar silhouette. Just like forming a long cylinder from stacking coins. But even so, no one would think to bend a ship down the center to produce a walking joint.

She would use any weapon she came across, but she only saw them as materials for her white shadows.

She didn’t care how they were meant to be used.

Was that because she was ultimately a magician?

How many main guns and antiair guns did she have in all? What did the aircraft part of the name mean?

It was bound to have cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, but based on the flight deck, it might also have stealth craft.

The weapon specs were frightening enough, but at the same time…

“How did you do it?”

“?”

“Where did you acquire that and how did you get here from there!?”

“I walked. It should be fine. Thanks to the martial law, I probably didn’t step on anyone while walking here.”

Kamijou shuddered.

Should be?

Probably?

How could she talk about people’s lives like that?

They were speaking. Probably using the strange technique known as common tones. But the conversation did nothing to help him understand Transcendent Mut Thebes.

And even if they did find common ground, she was bound to put her own convenience first in the end. She would pursue them when necessary and kick them aside when they were in the way. No matter how much she praised peace and benevolence beforehand.

If no discussion came with a guarantee, then he couldn’t trust anything she said.

She was likely the reason the creepy siren had suddenly ended.

It didn’t matter if she had meant to do it or not. Had she directly stepped on them, or had the tremor of her footsteps knocked them over? The countless temporary speakers for the siren must have been destroyed more on accident than intentionally.

And the damage wasn’t going to end there.

With those white “wings” spread, that white colossus was over 600m wide.

That had walked through the city.

What had happened to Index, Mikoto, and the city they called home!?

This was on another level entirely. She wasn’t even attacking people with a powerful intent to kill. In all seriousness, what had happened to Academy City when that thing simply walked across it? The Transcendent hadn’t tried to hide what she was doing, so some people would have tried to run away in fear but tripped and some people would have stood up on trembling legs and tried to defend their city. What had happened to them? How far did the damage spread? Some of the casualties could be people Kamijou knew. No, this was beyond that!!!

The Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal could singlehandedly fight the entire magic side and emerge victorious if the conditions were right.

Mut Thebes definitely qualified there.

The entire building raised a groaning cry. The earthquake countermeasures at the base must have reached their limit. Mut Thebes had smashed a hole as large as a theater in the building, but some armor or a gun still caught when she tried to enter.

But that wouldn’t last long.

If she made a powerful horizontal sweep with her massive wings or fired with the guns sticking out from them like feathers, she could probably destroy the entire cinema complex building.

Kamijou shouted to her on reflex.

If he let his momentum die here, he would be paralyzed by fear. Or so it felt to him.

“Mut Thebes!!”

“Yes?”

The brown girl at the center of the armor flower was surprisingly responsive.

She tilted her head like this was only a casual chat.

Was that because she didn’t feel a single twinge of guilt over the violence she was causing?

“We know what your cabal wants! You’re inserting a special soul in a fetus to create a savior, right!?”

“Is that all you know? Then I have no reason to stop. The best way to achieve our goal is to swiftly and surely eliminate the source of our information leak. As the Transcendent in charge of punishment, I will fairly carry out the will of the cabal.”

What did Mut Thebes want to protect as a Transcendent? H. T. Trismegistus had said she would do anything to protect whatever she had defined as her territory. Aradia had said she was the goddess and queen who protected her country.

Was she an ancient Egyptian god, or was she a human?

Was she a Transcendent who protected Transcendents?

Or was she a Transcendent who changed what group she would save from one moment to the next?

He couldn’t get caught up in this.

Better to keep speaking than be overwhelmed into silence. Otherwise, her fierce attack would begin.

“That’s not my point!! Your plan should need all of the cabal’s Transcendents. Which includes Aradia! That’s right. Won’t your plan fail if you let her die here!?”

His logic was sound…he thought.

The Transcendents had to surround the container holding the fertilized egg with their imperfect good to distort things in just the right way to give physical birth to the ultimate being they were willing to bow their heads to.

But.

(Huh? But wait.)

Something cold ran down Kamijou’s spine as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

(If that were true, why were the Bologna Succubus and Aradia trying to kill each other on the 31st? And what about when Good, Old Mary and H. T. Trismegistus fought and when Alice knocked them all down on the 3rd? I get how I could be a hindrance to their plan, but if any one of the Transcendents is lost in trying to save an outsider like me, wouldn’t that ruin everything for them?)

Or had they decided any of their own members that died could be brought back with Good, Old Mary’s resurrection?

That was Kamijou’s best guess, but he was completely wrong.

The truth was much worse.

“That is not a problem.”

Transcendent Mut Thebes remained entirely expressionless and tilted her head as she explained.

We already have a new Aradia.”

Kamijou heard footsteps.

But these were not the sound of solid shoes. It was the lighter sound of bare feet on the floor.

“Ah.”

Kamijou couldn’t believe it.

“Ahhh.”

Or maybe it was better to say he had believed a little too much about the enemy.

He had believed that there couldn’t be all that many Transcendents out there since they were so powerful. He had believed they must be special, irreplaceable beings like Academy City’s Level 5s or the magic side’s Saints.

He had been naïve.

A woman with pale skin and long silver hair emerged from the shadows in the same cinema complex and joined Mut Thebes at the broken wall. She wore an ankle-length wimple and an unusual purple bikini. That Transcendent could create various witch ointments by rubbing together her outfit’s decorations to sprinkle metal powder in with the chemicals at her feet and mix that with the sebum from her bare feet.

In other words, she was the witch goddess who ruled the night and the moon.

She was a second Aradia?

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

Kamijou Touma felt faint.

Was that allowed?

Could they really get away with cheating like that!?

That witch goddess had nearly destroyed Shibuya all on her own. She had killed Kamijou multiple times in the process and he had only managed to defeat her and reach an understanding with her thanks to lots of help from the Bologna Succubus and Good, Old Mary.

And another one could just appear like this?

It was true the Bridge Builders Cabal was a group. He knew there were Transcendents other than Aradia out there. But this was something different. It entirely changed the level of the threat.

What if Aradia could be duplicated or mass-produced?

What if, with effort or training, a second or third could be produced?

Wouldn’t that mean it was even possible an Aradia Squad existed out there!?

“…”

But.

On the other hand, it had been strange.

Anna had said H. T. Trismegistus was from BCE times and that Good, Old Mary was from the 3rd century at the latest. And that Aleister was the wickedest man in the world and the greatest villain of the 20th century.

How did that work?

How could a legendary person from around 2000 years ago have their magic based on Aleister’s magick when he was active in the 20th century? The timeline didn’t work.

It was also puzzling that the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Russian Orthodox Churches had never noticed any sign of the Bridge Builders Cabal’s existence. Not to mention that Othinus, High Priest, Nephthys, Niang-Niang, and the other Magic Gods from the underside of the world hadn’t known anything about the Transcendents.

For that matter, Aradia hadn’t seemed to know about the Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress spell until she was hit by it in Shibuya on the 31st.

In the consulate on the 3rd, H. T. Trismegistus and Good, Old Mary had only then been working out what each other’s secret techniques were.

How could you explain that if they really had been working together in the Bridge Builders Cabal for centuries, if not millennia?

Which suggested…

“I had it wrong?” blankly muttered Kamijou Touma.

He looked back and forth between the Aradia standing with him and Anna and the perfectly identical silver-haired girl standing with Mut Thebes.

“The Bridge Builders Cabal wasn’t a legendary magic cabal going back millennia? The Bologna Succubus and Aradia, are magicians who only started using those names recently!?”

“It’s called ceremonial magic, fool. They play parts in the ceremony.” Anna Sprengel smiled softly. “By systematically positioning the necessary symbols and an imperfect good around the sterile container holding the fertilized egg, an inhuman beast or spirit’s soul will enter the human child and manifest in the physical world. And in their case, they seek their savior. I explained that was the point of the cabal’s spell, didn’t I? So the Transcendents are just more symbols for the ceremony. But the colors and forms are what they need, not the actual goddess Aradia or the actual sage Trismegistus. So each member of the cabal has changed form by dressing up in the appropriate costumes and truly dedicating themselves to their respective conditions for salvation. Using a borrowed power gives them a strong sense of how imperfect their goodness is, right? And it is all to perfect the ceremony meant to summon a special high-level soul.”

Kamijou felt faint all over again.

Hadn’t H. T. Trismegistus himself said the Transcendents were not like Magic Gods? Kamijou should have thought harder back at the consulate about how they differed!

Their names and appearances were only costumes.

Their spells were all connected to the Secret Chiefs, weren’t they? In other words, they were borrowed.

Each of them had tremendous power, but they were entirely different from Othinus in every conceivable way!!

“But…but…”

Kamijou was at a loss for words.

Why did this shock him so much?

He should have been happy to have the enemy’s illusion broken. Had he started to hope that the Transcendents were higher beings than him at some point?

He found himself shouting at Anna in defense of his supposed enemies.

“Th-that can’t be true! Oh, right. The Bologna Succubus said she wants to save the falsely accused because of an incident that happened centuries ago!”

“Don’t modern people feel their heart ache when they read articles about wars and crimes from the distant past? Fool, how old does she look to you? You aren’t going to tell me you think she’s more than 500, are you?”

Come to think of it, what was it the Bologna Succubus had said in Shibuya on December 31? She could never forgive the people who executed a man for the absurd charge of running a brothel full of succubi.

He had accepted that reasoning at the time, but thinking back, it didn’t add up.

He still didn’t know for sure if the Bologna Succubus he knew was a human or a demon, but if she had been in Bologna hundreds of years ago, she would be the living proof that beings known as succubi really had existed there. So whether or not the charge was true, it at least wouldn’t be “absurd”. If the Bologna Succubus had really existed back then, she would have looked down at herself and thought, “yeah, I could see that happening”.

But…

Even then…

“What about Witch Goddess Aradia!? If she didn’t exist in ancient times, who were the real witches worshiping back then!?”

“Forget it, fool. The goddess named Aradia almost certainly didn’t exist and was a legend invented on the spot by a witch in Tuscany, Italy. The story only got out of hand after Gardner, the top witch researcher, included the story in his own theories. So why does the magician using the name now need to actually be that goddess?”

“…Um…”

“Despite the danger we were in, Aradia was picky about what she ate and made sure to leave the cramped confines of the vehicle to stretch. Those unnatural actions were a continuation of her daily routine to keep up the Aradia persona. You could think of it as training to prevent her behavior from slipping. She needs daily corrections to ensure the margin of error doesn’t reach a noticeable level.”

Kamijou couldn’t find anything to say.

Harsh truths sounded better coming from a wicked person’s mouth.

“Why was she doing voice training? The witch goddess’s spells are based on her witch ointments, so incantations aren’t all that important to her. Why was she so upset about falling out of her exercise routine during the few days you had her tied up? My guess is it came from the fear that her Aradia persona would fall apart.”

Kamijou stopped breathing and his head wobbled atop his neck.

Not even Aradia – either Aradia – said a word.

Was this true of Good, Old Mary and H. T. Trismegistus too?

Thinking back, Good, Old Mary had called herself the one who rules over the Tribikos, Kerotakis, and the other experimental tools that had built the foundation of alchemy, but she had never said she was the person who had invented them in the 3rd century.

According to Othinus, Trismegistus was only a throwaway penname used for ancient academics to release texts anonymously. That had never been someone who needed to be declared real or fictional.

“Then…”

Hesitantly – for a different reason this time – Kamijou looked to a certain girl.

“Mut Thebes too?”

“Fool, I have heard that true military nerds will weep upon seeing an old map of Greece or Egypt – they don’t even need to visit the ruins of an old castle. Just like a train nerd seeing a regional train schedule.”

Aradia had explained that Mut was an Egyptian goddess, but she had never said that about Mut Thebes.

The blonde-haired, brown-skinned girl tilted her head.

Like a small bird.

Her secret was revealed, yet…

“Why does that matter?”

That was all.

She acted like it had never been a secret to begin with.

“You’re kidding…right?” asked Kamijou, dazed.

That meant they chose the clothing that fit their goal.

That meant they watched what they ate.

That meant they used exercise and stretching to achieve the ideal body down to the muscles and skeletal structure.

That meant they carefully watched the people of every job they came across.

That meant they made sure to look in the mirror and practice their expressions.

That meant they monitored their condition every single day so they wouldn’t overlook even a slight error.

That meant they used even swelling, bloating, and emaciation to change their appearance.

That meant their morning voice training was not for magic incantations.

That meant they had memorized a detailed and accurate script just like a phone scammer.

That meant it was all thorough training to perfectly rearrange who they were, even on the inside.

That meant the Bridge Builders Cabal had not recruited the people needed for their ceremony – they had created them from scratch?

They probably had originally loathed false accusations. Or deeply hoped to save all the witches around the world. So those ordinary people had chosen a demon or goddess that would most strongly emphasize that incomplete goodness needed to draw in the desired soul like a magnet. They had dressed up as those identities and become Transcendent.

“…”

It was hard to believe.

How was he supposed to believe something so ridiculous?

But there had been statements that caught his attention.

From time to time, Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other cabal members had referred to “irregular Transcendents”. They had spoken the term with annoyance, but also with an envy of those who could reach out and save or accuse others without having to follow a detailed flowchart.

One of those was the pure Alice Anotherbible.

The other was the wicked Anna Sprengel.

They were the only two who couldn’t be reproduced.

No third party could replace them. They existed outside the usual rules for Transcendents.

Or to put it another way, the rest were regular Transcendents. Did that mean all of them could be mass-produced and managed and were willing to follow the original calculations?

Their irregularity – that they didn’t fit the usual definition – may have been what allowed Alice and Anna to criticize the ordinary Transcendents from an outside perspective.

Come to think of it… Kamijou had no way of knowing if there was any basis to it, but he had sensed something on an instinctual level removed from logic.

(I thought something was weird. I thought they were different from normal magicians. Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents all wear those costumes. And it’s almost like they tell each other apart using those flashy costumes instead of by their faces.)

That wasn’t how it usually worked. Magicians were extreme individualists. They carved their way of life into their hearts. So no matter what might happen, they would never place the core of their being in something they could simply remove.

“The old Aradia is no longer necessary,” plainly stated Mut Thebes.

Even though this meant rejecting her own purpose.

Something was terribly different between the Transcendents and the magicians Kamijou had encountered before.

“Anna Sprengel was not originally part of the cabal. She was a last-second addition of dubious origin. A guest performer may have brought the performance to new heights, but she has gone beyond some unasked-for adlibbing. So we have decided to return the plan to its original form. By preparing the sterile container as the irreplaceable target of our performance and by promoting Alice Anotherbible as our lead, we will complete our parade with only the original cast. Old Aradia, you have been too affected by Anna Sprengel’s influence. And as internal distortions cannot be seen, we can never know for sure if we have removed them all. Since you are easily replaced, we can reduce our odds of failure by placing a fresh Aradia on the stage.”

To the audience, the big star of the parade at the center of everyone’s attention was a unique and irreplaceable performer. They were the world of the performance to the point that you couldn’t imagine anyone else there.

But to those managing the parade, the star was just one more person who could be fired and replaced if they weren’t providing the desired performance or effect. No matter how many dreams an event or festival performer inspired in people, they were little different from the person inside a mascot costume.

But how could she do it like it was nothing?

“You would throw out your fellow cabal member that easily?”

“Did I confuse you with my use of ‘old’ and ‘new’? That Aradia by you was only chosen to be Aradia by proving her skill and outdoing the other candidates. I did the same. I only stand here now as Mut Thebes because I took my own audition and won the position I wanted.”

“What do you want enough to do that!?”

“To bring unbiased salvation to the world.”

Her answer was quick and certain.

These people had big dreams because, unlike Saints or Magic Gods, they had only managed to create an imperfect righteousness. They were permeated by the temporary worldview they shared as performers on the stage where they would perfect their magic.

“We want someone who can really and physically – not philosophically or hypothetically – bring about a salvation that aligns with all of our hopes. We want the holy bearer of the cross. Unlike us Transcendents, that man can truly save the entire world, so we wish to invite him back through the process of rebirth.”

Kamijou could not sense personal conviction or a personal cry of the soul – yes, he could not sense a magic name there.

To achieve this one goal, they had thrown out their insignificant individuality to become a part of the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Just like a type of destructive cult.

“Satisfied now? I have a job to complete: punishing the traitor Anna.”

“Do you really think I’ll let you?”

“Do you think I care? You are blameless and thus not my target. This is a staff-only backstage matter. I would prefer not to involve an outsider, so I would prefer if you ran away.”

The wind stirred like a solid mass.

No, that was a side effect of Mut Thebes moving her giant wings. The countless guns of various sizes installed on the 300m aircraft cruisers all turned to accurately take aim.

Kamijou expected an explosion.

But giant cannons unleashed a scattershot of throwing spears from muzzles measuring more than 30cm across.

Every single spear was a spiritual item designed to kill Transcendents.

They were all the Shrink Drink.

Hadn’t that weapon been created to slay even the most irregular Transcendent?

“Anna!!!” shouted Kamijou, leaping forward.

He felt like a wall of spikes was approaching fast. His right hand couldn’t handle so many at once. But at the same time, the Shrink Drink was only designed for use against Transcendents. If he used his full body as a shield, he might be able to protect Anna.

The wicked woman spoke in an uncharacteristically weak voice behind him.

“Thank you…”

That was good enough for him.

He wished he could negate them all with his right hand, but he figured he could survive being pierced by one or two of them. At the very least, doing this was better than standing by and watching the tragedy play out.

Or so he thought.

But he was knocked away by a hard blow from behind.

“Wha-?”

From behind.

That meant it had to have been Anna Sprengel.

“But, fool, that is the one thing I cannot accept.”

She had put her full weight behind her little foot to forcibly kick away the boy protecting her. She kicked him toward Aradia.

She had a point.

These spiritual items were designed to kill only Transcendents, but that meant Aradia was as much at risk as Anna. Mut Thebes did not show any concern for the cabal member she had already given up on. Kamijou had completely forgotten about her, but at the same time…

There was still the irregular Transcendent.

That little wicked woman could do things normal Transcendents couldn’t.

While everything else moved in slow motion, Anna Sprengel cutely stuck out her tongue.

Written on her face was a refusal to let herself be rescued and turn into a good person. She would instead keep her true intentions hidden to the very end and go on deceiving people.

She was saying she would walk the path of the wicked woman to the bitter end.

A moment later, everything sped back up.

The Shrink Drink spears crashed into the world as if filling up the entire space around her.

There was no dodging that. Anna Sprengel might be a Transcendent – albeit an abnormal one – but maybe not even her defense spells could have stopped the onslaught.

The countless spears pierced her small form.

Strangely, not a drop of blood was shed as the sharp glass tips shattered inside her. The toxic pink liquid contained in all those spears permeated her from the inside out. Something unhealthy circulated through her little body.

Yet Kamijou, who had ended up guarding Aradia instead, remained standing even though his right hand wasn’t enough to block them all.

Anna didn’t scream. She didn’t even writhe in pain. She simply lay motionless on the ground.

If what he had been told was correct, Anna Sprengel was beyond saving.

Just like he couldn’t resurrect an incinerated corpse by touching it with his right hand.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Kamijou screamed.

Almost like he was screaming in Anna’s place since she couldn’t even express the pain.

Maybe he had started to sympathize with her while traveling with her. Maybe her wicked side was easy to forget now that she couldn’t display it any longer. Maybe he had actually found her cute in some ways. The reason didn’t matter. He just had to gather up whatever strength he could find inside him, no matter how small, and use it to break through this worst case scenario and save that little wicked woman!! That was the only thought in Kamijou’s shaky head.

But none of that could alter the reality.

He was too weak.

He crumbled to the ground after protecting Aradia and he couldn’t get back up.

Sure, she was a wicked woman.

But what did that matter, goddammit!!?

“My job is now complete,” said Mut Thebes, all business.

She was a punishment expert. She knew not to let her emotions interfere and to avoid causing any unnecessary harm.

She played her role with the accuracy of turning gears.

“But since we have updated Aradia, the retired one is no longer needed, so I will kill her. This isn’t meant to be my job, but better safe than sorry. Once that is done, I can bring the new one back with me and order will have been restored to the cabal.”

“No, not yet.”

“You would resist me? You are no longer Aradia. What can a retired nobody do in the professional world? Any attempt to survive is doomed to fail.”

“No, I am the goddess who always finds a way to rescue a witch in need. So I figured I might as well save Anna Sprengel.”

When he heard that, Kamijou slowly looked up.

The silver-haired woman had lost her position as a regular, but she still hadn’t given up.

She stood in the way, just like a goddess.

“Save her?” asked the slumped and battered boy, his voice scratchy.

He looked to that faint light that continued to shine like the moon in the darkness of fear and rejection.

“She can still be saved?”

“Yes, so don’t worry. This is not a loss or a dead end. You don’t need to give up on anything. The goddess of all witches will turn it all around. Wandering good witch child, behold a miracle.”

Mut Thebes stared at the light protecting the boy who looked ready to blow away in the night breeze.

She stared at the person whose skin shined a pale white after bathing in the moonlight for so long.

The punishment expert expressionlessly tilted her head.

“That is not possible. The Shrink Drink borrows a portion of Alice’s power, so not even Good, Old Mary’s resurrection can heal Anna Sprengel. It would violate the cabal’s order.”

Deep, dark resignation threatened to blot out Kamijou’s vision again.

But the goddess would not allow it.

Aradia, goddess of witches, the night, and the moon, spoke clearly.

“Silly girl. You just gave the answer right there.”

The brown girl clearly didn’t know what Aradia meant.

Goddess Aradia gave the answer to raise the light of hope in the darkness.

The shadow of magic was not a depthless darkness.

The night was meant to be a kinder and gentler thing.

“We just have to get Alice’s help. If Good, Old Mary can do it, you can’t tell me Alice can’t. And if Alice does it, the quality is bound to be better. So as long as we get Alice on our side, we can avoid the Shrink Drink’s death sentence. It might be cheating, but there is still room to save Anna Sprengel.”

This didn’t even feel like the logic of magic anymore.

It was entirely based on the Transcendent belief that Alice Anotherbible was the most frightening thing imaginable.

But Mut Thebes’s response was immediate.

“I will not let you.”

Which meant it would work.

Her confidence was gone.

Something about her voice was different from before. She forgot all about the air of stability she always carried with her. She remained expressionless, but she showed some panic that said this really would work if she didn’t do whatever it took to stop it.

“Alice is the biggest irregularity there is, but she is one of the main performers and has the charisma to match. Traitor Anna and Retired Aradia, you have been purged from the stage and are no longer permitted back in. Hand over your cabal member passes and begone. We cannot have outsiders disturbing the order of the cabal any longer.”

“But you can’t tell Alice Anotherbible what to do. There’s no actual rule saying it has to be a professional member of our field. The one and only key lies elsewhere, like the performer’s lover rather than the performer herself. And that is why you are panicking, isn’t it, Mut Thebes?”

“…”

Everyone’s eyes gathered on a single point.

The tension was so dense an ordinary person might have suffocated.

But.

That brought a quiet thought to a certain boy’s mind.

Oh, right. If they were that cautious…

(Then it really would work.)

Of course, this wasn’t the result of Kamijou’s own efforts.

He held the final key to saving the girl he had thought was lost. So he didn’t have to curse his own life here. This was the unique treasure that none other than Anna Sprengel had given him.

He was the only one in the world.

This was about as selfish as it got after hurting her and making her cry. He knew that. But what if he still had some slight connection left with that girl?

Then a miracle was still possible.

Kamijou Touma could change Alice’s mind and have her save Anna Sprengel.

That knowledge was all it took.

The perfectly ordinary high school boy stood back up on his own two feet.

He clenched his right fist as hard as a rock and rejudged the size of his foe.

“Aradia.”

“Just to be sure, you do mean me, right?”

The witch goddess who had protected Kamijou stood alongside him and glared at the woman dressed identically to her.

Yes, they had more than one enemy now.

It was two-against-two.

“Can I leave her to you?”

“Of course. I will take care of the other Aradia. Witches operate on the threefold return. If that wicked witch did a good deed, then the least I can do is return her life to her.”

Thinking back, Kamijou had always died instantly when he tried to fight a Transcendent.

Good, Old Mary wasn’t around this time. Even if she was, he couldn’t expect her to save him when their interests weren’t aligned.

He wouldn’t be resurrected.

If he died here, that was the end.

But Kamijou Touma had zero intention of falling back.

Anna Sprengel was an indefensibly wicked woman.

She had deceived Kamijou to the end with a smile.

So what?

Morality could get lost. That was a measuring stick invented by someone else. This was his life. It was up to him to decide who in this world he would save and whether or not he would risk his own life to do it.

Mut Thebes quietly tilted her head while surrounded by weapons weighing hundreds of thousands of tons.

She looked to Kamijou Touma and asked him a question.

“Are you saying you will fight me?”

“I am.”

“But you’ll die?”

“Probably!!”

She wasn’t being ironic.

The blonde-haired, brown-skinned Transcendent really was worried for the reckless boy.

“Oh, dear. But I have no real reason to fight an innocent boy.”

“After everything you've done and you expect me to believe that!?”

It was two-against-two.

Kamijou Touma vs. Mut Thebes.

Aradia vs. Aradia.

Power through it. No matter how impossible it seemed, if they didn’t win here, there was no saving Anna Sprengel, who had refused salvation and been pierced with a smile on her face.

This was the best result?

She had done well for the ultimate wicked woman?

If that girl would sneer and say she couldn’t escape her wicked ways – if Anna truly thought that while lying all alone on the ground…

“I’ll destroy it.”

Kamijou Touma clenched his teeth and chose to challenge certain death once more.

He wouldn’t be bound by the morality invented by someone he’d never met. If he felt any doubt at all, he only had to hold a hand to his heart and ask himself what he should do. That would tell him what was really and truly important.

Yes.

So the perfectly ordinary high school boy raised his head.

“I’ll smash that illusion until not even the tiniest piece is left!!!”

If the right person were to hear this, they surely would have been reminded of a certain theory.

The theory that a certain human had advocated until the moment he vanished from the known world, even as he was rejected by all and called a demon.

Do what thou wilt.

They had parted ways, but that power did still reside within this boy.

Between the Lines 4

Anna Sprengel was a bad person.

There was no wiggle room on that point. She had admitted to it herself.

She had of course done what she could as a wicked woman to survive. She had detected a plan she couldn’t allow to continue and put together a concrete plan to stop it.

But.

Deep down, she had known all of her efforts would never bear fruit. Or you could say she had resigned herself to her fate. She hadn’t known when exactly it would happen. But she had known her hopes and prayers would be smashed to pieces at some point. They would be destroyed at the worst possible point. She had spread her arms and done so much in this attempt, so she had known the retaliation would be coming sooner or later.

In a way, that despair may have been the core of who Anna Sprengel was.

So she had frozen up when Anna Kingsford – something capable of threatening her very existence – had shown up. She had forgotten all about enjoying the situation as a wicked woman and had grown aware of how much she disliked loss. It wasn’t an issue of skill with spells or the amount of magic power they could refine at once. She had been shaken at a more fundamental level.

That had to be it.

In the end, she couldn’t live free without being disrespectful.

So the more that little wicked woman struggled, the worse things got for her.

It had been all too obvious. Simply put, the bad guy is meant to make a memorable exit when it was time for their defeat.

(Well.)

She felt cold.

Ice cold.

This wasn’t the biting chill of the January air or of the floor she was lying on. It was a more intense cold coming from her spine. It was the invisible hand of death spreading through her from the inside out.

Anna Sprengel slowly narrowed her eyes.

(I already told them about the Bridge Builders Cabal’s grand plan. The line between Alice Anotherbible and Kamijou Touma has only been bent not broken. Really, I’m not strictly necessary…anymore…)

So maybe this was good enough.

She had advanced the game pieces far enough for the next move, so maybe she was the most expendable one in the group. If Kamijou Touma received Witch Goddess Aradia’s help and smashed the Bridge Builders Cabal’s ambitions, wouldn’t that qualify as a happy ending?

And in a way, maybe she could call herself lucky this had ended before Anna Kingsford could reveal everything.

But.

Even so.

“Are you saying you will fight me?”

“I am.”

She heard that voice.

It reached her.

“But you’ll die?”

“Probably!!”

She heard the voice of someone who refused to accept that ordinary ending.

She heard the voice of the boy who would stand back up as many times as it took while he clenched his teeth and fought back against this unfair world.

“Oh, dear. But I have no real reason to fight an innocent boy.”

“How the hell am I innocent after everything I’ve done!?”

It was not a voice of anger.

It was the cry of a boy who was fighting to suppress the tears and struggling with all his might to keep from trembling.

So the wicked woman found herself biting her lip while collapsed on the ground.

(Damn. And I was all ready to accept this. I had eliminated my fear by wrapping it all up with me smiling and dying, wicked to the end.)

The Shrink Drink was a special product made with the help of extraordinary Alice Anotherbible. That spiritual item had been created for the sole purpose of killing a traitor and its lethal effect was already at work within her.

There was no saving her.

She knew that.

(But how can I die when he says that?)

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