Sorcery Hacker:Volume3 PhaseXX

Phase XX: Control Gate – Gorge Gate

It was closer to early morning than late night, but the sun hadn’t risen yet.

Stopping Lord Escalrain might sound like a reason to rejoice, but Ayato and Henrietta had been on his 200 esoule back. When he went limp and collapsed, the puny humans could easily have fallen to their deaths.

They risked their lives jumping down to the ground from the giant horse after he fell onto his side.

It had been like rock climbing down a mountain.

“The Four Lords are just too big,” sighed Ayato, slumping to the ground.

Henrietta sat down, just as exhausted.

“So what do we do now? He’s passed out, but only temporarily. It’s not like we can switch his consciousness on and off at our leisure.”

“Do you have a Media Summoner handy? We need to send that Demon Lord a message before this bastard wakes up and recovers his strength. We need an even more powerful being to give him an online talking to.”

Something fell from above.

It was fist-sized hail.

All that ice finally fell, like the invisible threads holding it had snapped. But strangely, it all missed those two.

The straitlaced Striker took a look around.

“What was that, anyway? You didn’t sorcery hack the hail somehow, did you?”

“No.”

“Then can someone around here use magic superior even to that Four Lord? But Fleurelisia lives in the southern ocean, so she wouldn’t be taking a stroll through these mountains. I guess someone with incredible talent must have been hiding in the Academy Towers this whole time.”

“…”

Henrietta reached an answer she found acceptable and Ayato didn’t pursue the matter. Instead, he glanced toward one of the towers.

But…

“Oh, oh, oh, no.”

That was when he heard a silly voice.

A glasses girl with braided blonde hair nervously approached.

She was a fan of Ayato’s (whose view of him may not have been entirely accurate). It looked like she hadn’t been caught in the hail or the collapse of the towers, but where had she been hiding this whole time?

“I-I heard a really loud noise and came to see what happened…so what did happen?”

Ayato slowly shook his head.

And he replied with a bitter smile.

“I’ll explain everything later. For now, just let me rest.”

“Yipes!? What is that giant thing!? Eh? That’s not a building. Is it alive!?”

The braid girl belatedly jumped, causing her surprisingly large chest to jiggle vertically.

Henrietta didn’t look happy about the shrill voice so close to her ears.

“That’s one of the Four Lords, but we aren’t returning him to you. I’m no demon protector, but giving the Academy Towers exclusive access to Escalrain would be devastating to the political balance of sorcery.”

“Four…Lords?”

“As you can see, we defeated him. It was a close one, though,” casually stated Ayato.

The girl gasped in what could have been taken as admiration or exasperation.

It felt like everything was back to normal in a number of ways.

“But.”

The glasses and braid girl paused before continuing.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier if you had used me?”

Ayato felt goose bumps spreading from his right hand to his shoulder.

But even with that, he was slow to react.

An explosive boom rang out.

It came from the braid girl raising her leg much too high for her short wine-red skirt and slamming it back down in the center of Henrietta’s chest. Henrietta was a Striker from the sky city. She should have been able to react even while exhausted. For one, she was thoroughly buffed by her armor made of asphalt-colored oxidized mana-conducting silver with monster leather and tendons.

“Kahh?”

Nevertheless.

The one blow was enough to knock Striker Henrietta unconscious.

Come to think of it, wasn’t it this girl who had dragged superhumanly-strong Henrietta away in the Sorcery Library? Henrietta hadn’t been using her armor or her magic buffs then, but she was still a Striker trained in combat, yet the girl had done it so easily.

“Who…?” asked Ayato, forgetting to even breathe.

The girl with glasses and a blonde braid answered with a giggle. She removed the glasses and undid the plain braid, revealing her long hair to have bewitching golden waves.

“Oh? I know I usually appear to you as the gun, but didn’t I show you my real identity when you signed the contract?”

More giggling.

And even more.

A mocking tone entered the laughter as the girl’s transformation continued. Curled horns burst from her temples, large wings tore through the back of her uniform and spread wide, and an arrow-like tail lifted up the back of her skirt.

“I said I was your fan, didn’t I?”

She had become…

“Hello again, my slave. Have you been gone so long you didn’t recognize Queen Astaroth’s super cute face?”

It was supposed to be over.

Yet Teleria sensed an ominous air. She had traveled all over the place with Ayato, so she had developed a decent nose for danger. And that intuition was telling her that things had only gotten worse.

(What?)

A mermaid tail was not made for running on land, so she first put on a spare pair of black tights – which were actually a Mimic Option disguised as tights – borrowed a new uniform from the home ec room, and walked down to the surface, biting her lip.

(What is this feeling!? Does this mean there was something even worse than Escalrain here!?)

When she and Mamilis arrived at Ayato’s location, the answer was waiting for them.

Ayato and Henrietta both lay on the ground, half dead.

They were badly injured.

Teleria had supposedly stopped the fist-sized hail, so that couldn’t have caused enough internal bleeding to form bruises across their bodies.

And yet…

“Wh-what happened here?”

Dark Elf Mamilis’s eyes widened.

“How did this happen to coach and Henrietta!? This wasn’t the Four Lord. Those are clearly ordinary-sized footprints on their clothes!!”

“…”

Teleria Nereid Aquamarine had no answer.

They had revealed the Student Council’s conspiracy, learned the truth of her brother’s death, found one of the Four Lords, and somehow neutralized him.

But it wasn’t over yet.

There was more.

Something was lurking here in the true depths.

Some great darkness.

Shortly before.

Just before Teleria and Mamilis arrived.

“This is your punishment for neglecting me for so long. But this is more of a reward for someone who likes to be stepped on, isn’t it?”

The demon exhaled her giggling laughter.

Her tail slowly swayed side to side.

“I was using the Council to carry the devil’s revolver from person to person. That way I could get it from the Academy Towers to you. But they were much less useful than I had hoped, so I grabbed the gun myself and did my own walking. I wanted to avoid revealing my true form since it eats up so much energy, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I just couldn’t resist any longer☆”

She had a dreamy look on her face.

But at the same time, she had the sole of her shoe squarely on Ayato’s face.

“We used to have so much fun together.”

She smiled down at him.

She moved her foot aside to look down at the unconscious boy’s face.

“No other wielder ever excited me the way you did. I still can’t forget it, as embarrassing as that is to admit. So how about we do it again? I want you to hold me. No other wielder can satisfy me now. No one can draw out my full potential the way you can. So I am willing to give you every last part of myself in exchange.”

With all that said, she sighed.

And she finally spoke again.

“You can’t hear me, can you?”

He voice showed some disappointment that this had been enough to knock the boy out.

One of her fingers toyed with her hair.

“I will return. Make sure to retrain yourself before I do.”

That was the end of it.

The devil turned around and waved goodbye.

She gave her parting words without looking back.

“Disappoint me again and one of your friends dies. Do keep that in mind, okay? And now I bid you adieu☆”

Something heavy lay by the collapsed boy’s hand.

Teleria looked down at it.

It was the silver-shining devil’s revolver.

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