Difference between revisions of "Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter4"
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m (→Chapter 4: The Unfortunate Boy’s Focus – Over_the_River.: fixed typo "worshiped" into "worshipped") |
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Surely he was allowed to wish for that. |
Surely he was allowed to wish for that. |
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| − | She had been abducted, remade, |
+ | She had been abducted, remade, worshipped, and rejected. |
She had appeared free, but she had always been bound by something unseen. She had always been underneath someone’s foot. And no matter how powerful she was, she had ultimately been unable to change that herself. |
She had appeared free, but she had always been bound by something unseen. She had always been underneath someone’s foot. And no matter how powerful she was, she had ultimately been unable to change that herself. |
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Revision as of 19:05, 24 April 2024
Chapter 4: The Unfortunate Boy’s Focus – Over_the_River.
Part 1
H.T. Trismegistus looked at everything before him.
He had known the cause.
Which was why he had thought Alice would go back to normal if he killed Kamijou Touma.
He had thought he needed to punish Anna for messing with Alice.
He had always been on that small girl’s side.
Because he had thought common sense said it would be cruel to throw such a small girl out into the world alone. In that case, her tremendous power would not be an advantage. It would only be an omen of danger. She would be like a young child who inherited a vast fortune. She would be the perfect bait for all the scum lurking in the shadows. He had decided he should protect her and look after her. It wasn’t about logic. He thought anyone would decide the same thing after seeing her, which meant it was common sense. He had believed in the goodness of the world at large.
But in that case…
“Oooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”
What was this?
Was this what he had wanted to see?
Wind blew wildly through the library, but this was no meteorological phenomenon. Great currents of a nonphysical power created tailwinds and headwinds in rapid succession.
As a regular Transcendent who had used Alice as an example to get where he was, he could not rescue the girl who was his starting point.
Attempting it was as meaningless as offering a hand to help her to her feet while also pinning her down below his foot. Pulling on her hand like that would only tear her arm off.
Thus.
CRC. Christian Rosencreutz.
He had thought the only way to save that lonely girl was with the help of a power not derived from Alice and that common sense told him was greater than hers.
That was the only option.
He couldn’t think up anything else.
But when the holy man was reborn, he was nothing like the common legends and he hadn’t been interested in saving the world, including Alice.
Alice had smiled like normal after having her head crushed, but it had felt somehow off.
They had reached their limit.
Alice Anotherbible had.
The Bridge Builders Cabal, who wished to save the world but couldn’t make the attempt on their own, had.
The Transcendents, who who had erased their own opinions and thrown out their own identities, had.
They all had.
They had made the wrong choice. H.T. Trismegistus had passed that fatal branch and started down a path to hell. He had finally realized that. There was no undoing what he had done, so what could he do to fight it now?
There was no optimal answer.
So what kind of compromise could he reach?
“…”
He had made a fatally mistaken decision, but H.T. Trismegistus was still a Transcendent. He dressed up in the appearance and abilities of the god he had chosen, he chose his salvation condition, and then he saved everyone that applied to. So even in this situation, he directed his question not to himself but to the thing that determined all his actions.
In other words, he asked it of the entire world.
What did common sense say?
Was it really right to ignore a crying girl?
Part 2
They were in a library filled with light.
Not a grand temple or castle. It was part of a certain boy’s school, which Alice Anotherbible had said she wanted to see. That was the reason she had chosen this as the final location.
There was no further significance there.
Alice had in fact offered up her entire being, including her life, there.
What had that small girl really wanted?
This had nothing to do with the fate of Academy City or the madness spreading across the world.
Kamijou had to sense what was deep inside Alice.
He quietly clenched his teeth.
Strongly.
The time had come to directly face that cornered girl’s feelings.
“Touma-”
“Don’t bother trying to analyze this with your 103,001 grimoires,” roared Kamijou, still facing Alice.
He intentionally ignited his heart.
“I know what I have to do regardless: punch Alice to bring her back to her senses!! Being the strongest doesn’t mean she has to carry it all on her own. I refuse to let her be alone for even a second longer!!”
Kamijou Touma.
Anna Sprengel. H.T. Trismegistus.
Those three faced the girl together. They glared at her without fleeing. Their positions, plans, and abilities were completely different, but they were all working toward a single goal here.
Don’t forget.
And if you have forgotten, we’ll show you.
“Don’t falter.”
Alice Anotherbible.
You aren’t alone.
Your loneliness is no more than an illusion.
There are still plenty of people out there who want to save you!!
“Let’s do thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis!!!”
Kamijou shouted to shake off the fear and raced forward. With his right fist still clenched tight.
Well before he made it in punching range, he heard a hard crunching sound.
It came from Alice.
No, down at her feet.
He knew better than to ask why or for what purpose.
Alice was already doing something.
Whatever this was, that irregular Transcendent had chosen to use her own body to act.
And she chose to attack.
“Fool!!”
Little Anna kicked him in the back of the knee from the side.
As soon as his view dropped straight down, something tore diagonally upwards through the air.
All sound vanished.
Five clawmarks were torn diagonally through the library wall directly behind Kamijou. Same for the many bookcases in between. Only after the fact did he realize the same would have happened to him if his head hadn’t lowered by a few dozen centimeters.
Claws.
Scratches.
That primitive attack had been amplified to the extreme.
“If you die, it’s over. I know it’s obvious, but you can’t forget that absolute rule!! Good, Old Mary’s resurrection does not work against fatal wounds caused by Alice herself. If you really want to save her, then you can’t expect the world to do you any favors. You can only reach out your own hand to help her!!”
If the expert named Anna Kingsford were here, she would have easily seen through it.
The only one here who reached that level understanding was the Grimoire Library with access to 103,001 original grimoires.
“Was that magic?” asked Index in disbelief. While reaching out a hand to help Kamijou back to his feet. “Since people’s interior worlds are linked to the physical world outside them, anything you can do with your body can be used to reach a mystical power that changes the entire world. I get that, but still.”
“All those fancy gestures and ceremonies are only meant to purify and cleanse your will,” said Othinus.
Kamijou took this time to gently push the little god into Index’s hands.
Everything about Alice was the ultimate enigma, so he wanted to ensure the survival of anyone who could help explain it all. And he didn’t think he could protect Othinus if she was with him.
“But Alice Anotherbible has had her baseline purity forcibly increased, so each and every one of her actions is pure without going through that process.”
“We should consider ourselves fortunate,” said H.T. Trismegistus.
That was the gloomy young butler’s assessment.
Because…
“We are in fact incredibly fortunate that Alice cannot kill her enemies with a thought or set the world in motion to kill her enemies if she wills it. This tells us she must take a physical action to trigger her attacks. Common sense says we are lucky indeed.”
But that also meant this wasn’t limited to her scratching claws.
The girl who had become a fully-grown woman faced Kamijou while tilting diagonally.
She took a step.
Just one.
“Touma, she’s coming!!”
“!!!???”
He understood that, but he couldn’t restrain his reflexes as a living being. Crossing his arms in front of his face was a definite mistake.
The sweet scent of tea filled the boy’s nose. Something was overpowering the library’s old paper smell.
Alice Anotherbible already stood behind Kamijou.
Walking
In other words, she took action to move to her desired location.
She had not formed a special shape with her fingers, nor had she stepped in a complex pattern.
She had taken the same action anyone could.
She was blessed with a special result without having to focus on it.
The meaning extracted from her ordinary actions was just too pure!?
“Ali-!?”
She was already right there.
Kamijou spun around and swung his right hand back in something like a backhand blow.
But it found only air.
The grown woman pressed her four limbs down against the floor like an animal and lowered her head as far as it would go.
Crawling.
She had moved to his blind spot and then his last-second counterattack had missed. What this meant squeezed at his heart. He might as well have offered her the perfect chance to attack him.
The young butler did not hesitate to move.
Light flashed from his right hand as the blade hidden in his cane turned to light and sliced through the floor. The strange slash had an effect well beyond the length of the sword. And it struck right were crawling Alice’s lowered head was. It definitely hit. Except the metal blade passed right through her. Like she was intangible.
A specific meaning had been extracted from her ordinary action: evasion.
“It doesn’t matter if you hit her or not!?” hatefully spat Othinus.
As long as the adult woman moved to dodge, no external damage could affect her. Even if she took a direct hit from a nuclear missile. Alice showed no interest in H.T. Trismegistus even with his attempted decapitation of her. Still crawling, she raised her head and casually extended her hand toward Kamijou.
“I was right.”
Apparently the young butler’s attack had been to check something.
He had ended up cutting through the floor below Alice instead of her, so it fell.
That had been his intent from the beginning.
He had intentionally destroyed the floor so he could gather more information and survive.
Kamijou would die today.
But he didn’t care about that anymore.
“Hey, wait, human!”
“(Keep Othinus with you, Index!)”
Just as he passed that message on with a look, the entire floor collapsed.
His feet were freed from gravity and his vision slid straight down. Along with the heavy bookcases held in place with quake-resistant screws.
“Gah!?”
Kamijou, Anna, and Trismegistus himself were caught up in it too, successfully distancing them from Alice’s hand.
They just barely escaped alive.
Instead of an ordinary classroom, they found themselves in a large space that must have been lined with steel office desks. Or the remains of it, anyway. The first term in the new school had yet to begin, but the desks already had some personal items on them. Was this the faculty room?
Only Alice wasn’t affected.
The grown woman’s long blonde hair swayed as she looked down at them from the upper floor. The floor only remained in the corners of the room and Alice alone stood there.
Like a wounded animal bleeding and furious while trapped by a fishing hook or some plastic tape that a human had thoughtlessly discarded.
Like a lonely animal.
One that’s threats and howls echoed with melancholy.
This isn’t over, thought Kamijou as he forced his aching body back onto its feet. No matter how battered his body was – even if he was in such a bad state it would make a doctor scream in horror – he was still alive. For now, at least.
The power balance of Transcendents and whatnot no longer mattered. Just a person was good enough. As long as he still lived, even the puniest human had the right to change the course of the battle with his own conscious decisions.
And the extraordinary strongest being was only looking at him.
That much was a relief, at least.
(Index and Othinus are probably up there. And unlike Alice, they were by the door, so they can escape at any time. They don’t need to stay on the dangerous frontline. As long as I can call them, they can still provide information support!)
“She uses a variation on this, doesn’t she?”
Kamijou heard a dull “thud!!” and turned to see a 2m metal orb next to Anna. That was the Pneuma-less Shell, a spiritual item that produced tools from civilizations the world over and extracted the world’s oldest causes of death from them.
“But in Alice’s case, she doesn’t even rely on a tool. She draws out the meaning contained in the actions she takes and unleashes them as an attack. It’s a type of magic and also a type of miracle. She takes the ridiculous-sounding legends of holy men and woman producing miracles empty-handed and develops a logical way of actually doing it. Or that’s the sense I get from it, anyway.”
“…”
“Supposedly she was created when some Teacher of Crowley went a step too far and modified Alice Pleasance Liddell, so maybe if you follow the path back from Magick to Golden magic and then Rosicrucian magic, you can see the essence of my spells in what she does.”
On the floor above, Alice ignored their conversation and moved.
She tapped her heel down.
Creating a vibration.
It didn’t matter that they were on separate floors.
Kamijou and the others went stiff. They were pinned in place.
Stomping.
It was a juvenile act of resistance and intimidation. A challenge and attempted reversal against someone who was clearly your superior. It was a threat meant to overpower adult logic with childish instinct and a primitive gamble that all humans attempted at some point.
It worked.
The adult Alice jumped down in the single second the world was frozen.
She aimed to land on Kamijou. On the top of his head.
A dull sound followed.
Alice again knocked something sharply to the ground.
That broke the spell and Kamijou quickly leaped toward Anna and rolled along the floor.
Alice’s heel dropped like a shooting star and smashed deep into the floor.
Little Anna smirked in Kamijou’s arms while they lay in a jumble on the floor.
As if she were bragging to Alice that, no matter how powerful Alice was, it was Anna the boy had done this for.
“Now, did you switch over to 1.5x speed because you thought it was just a boring exposition scene? The Pneuma-less Shell is not a demonstration-only show item. It is a spiritual item that randomly produces a cause of death and not even I can fully control what it does!!”
She held a staff.
The strange staff looked like a giant golden cross decorated with a red ruby rose.
“You should thank my excellent luck of the draw, fool. The gold cross and ruby rose – the world’s oldest human-made miracle of the rose is the destruction of the origin. It brings death through disillusionment. It supposedly has ancient origins, but it was first depicted in the middle ages and rediscovered in more recent times. It contains all the violence found in the magic of extreme growth and maturity!!”
Miss Sprengel raised the staff in her little hands.
That was all.
There was no fancy incantation or complex magic circle. Flames simply appeared in the empty air and were released from the staff. They shot toward Alice with a liquid motion. These were not ordinary flames. They were magic flames that scorched and burned away space itself regardless of the physical material, like an old photograph being burned from behind.
Alice grabbed her long hair as a single mass.
And she swung her head around.
In a move straight out of kabuki, the thick bundle of hair drew a large circle in the air, which narrowed down as soon as the crimson flames passed through it.
The orange flames stopped in midair.
Binding.
In other words, stopping all movement of a target. And separating the target out from all possible interference.
“Tch!!”
The Pneuma-less Shell was Anna’s spiritual item, but what weapon she acquired was a matter of chance. She wouldn’t receive the same weapon if she tried again.
But that brief moment of regret was a mistake.
Alice tugged on her hair binding the flames, causing little Anna to pitch forward and lose her balance.
At that same moment, the grown woman took a step forward. They had seen what this did already. Whatever the distance, Alice would have already arrived at her destination.
Which meant right in front of Kamijou.
For an instant, he lost all depth perception. Alice’s grown chest suddenly blocked his view and his pupils couldn’t focus in time.
She arrived straight up in front of him with a flowing motion.
By the time his eyes had finally caught up, Alice’s fingers – and their sharp claws – were extending lithely toward his throat.
Time stopped. He tried to swing his head to the side and dodge, but his body couldn’t keep up.
He couldn’t die yet.
He might die, but it couldn’t be now.
He thought that so hard it seemed to burn into his mind. After all, the girl who had forgotten how to cry and instead howled like an animal was right there in front of him. He couldn’t die until he had saved her.
Light pierced sharply in from the side.
Time resumed flowing.
Alice doubled over and rolled along the floor.
This first clean hit did not come from Kamijou, Anna, or H.T. Trismegistus.
They heard a voice.
“What the hell? Did I really just hit Alice? Not to mention I thought we couldn’t even approach this center area because we were cut off spatially and temporally in that labyrinth!”
It was Aradia, god of witches, the moon, and the night.
A short distance away, the Bologna Succubus was on the ground grappling with a bipedal hare. After absorbing the shadows of next-gen weapons until she was large enough to trample the school building underfoot, Mut Thebes was engaged in a direct fistfight with an equally gigantic cat.
Hadn’t Anna mentioned the other Transcendents had arrived at the school too?
Kamijou and the others must have fallen far enough to reach where those Transcendents were battling the Gryphon, the Executioner, and so on.
Unlike Kamijou, Alice had not invited them.
And they couldn’t slip past those defenses like Anna could.
They had forcibly entered a labyrinth with no goal. In there, they fought an endless battle against Alice’s brutal toys – which might look comical but were all monsters capable of overwhelming Academy City’s dark side. That they were still alive showed just how abnormal Transcendents were.
For a brief moment, the dark pressure of death vanished within Kamijou. He felt strength growing from the center of his being.
Alice really wasn’t alone.
The world was not such a heartless place.
Good, Old Mary, Aradia, and the others gained nothing by winning this battle, but they were still here risking their lives. Even though this battlefield was ruled by the ordinary and inviolable rule where death meant losing everything they had been working to achieve.
What motivated their desperate battle?
What could it possibly be other than kindness?
“Fool, this is bad sign. Encountering the bait meant to buy us time means we have more enemies to deal with. By which I mean the Gryphon, the Executioner, and the rest of the Alice Series.”
“You have some nerve running off on your own to flirt, you goddamn villain,” said Aradia. “Just so you know, I’m more than willing to employ spankings as punishment as long as you aren’t one of the witches I’ve sworn to protect.”
“My, my. Quite an outdated way of thinking for such a young-looking goddess. Makes me wonder how old you really are.”
“I don’t want to hear that from the preserved little girl from who-knows-how-many centuries ago.”
Alice extracted herself from the collapsed cabinets half-burying her.
Her eyeballs rolled in her head.
Even now, that enchantingly lithe woman only ever looked Kamijou’s way. She didn’t even glance over at Aradia who had delivered the attack.
“Kh. Anyway, let’s fall back. We need to put some distance between us!!”
A sharp voice rang through the broken faculty room. Aradia held out her palm and launched a scattershot of light to keep Alice back. Each shot moved like a sea snake as they tore through the air and targeted adult Alice from multiple angles.
The storybook girl said nothing.
She didn’t even look Aradia’s way.
She only extended a finger and rotated it once clockwise.
Like some kind of joke, all of the glowing projectiles veered away from the fully-grown woman, blasting through walls and pillars instead.
Cursing.
That one childish action easily confused every eye on her, bringing them under her spell.
“Kh.”
Aradia didn’t even have time to gasp in shock.
Alice really didn’t look her way the entire time. She simply changed the arrangement of her casually extended fingers. She curled up her middle finger and held it down with her thumb like she was preparing to flick something.
There was no light or sound.
It was a lot like returning the favor.
Aradia broke through the wall and flew off somewhere.
Kamijou’s face paled.
That had definitely hit.
Flicking.
What even was that?
What meaning had been extracted from that simple action anyone was capable of?
Warning bells rang loud in Kamijou’s mind.
If you died, it was over.
Death really and truly meant goodbye.
Because Alice’s attacks were the one thing not even Good, Old Mary’s resurrection could cure.
“Aradiaaa!!”
“Don’t worry, fool. It looks like the two of them distributed the damage between them. But that would have caused her heart to burst if there hadn’t been two identical Aradias here.”
Kamijou knew now wasn’t the time to ask why that would have caused her heart to burst or what splitting that in half would mean.
He heard a dull impact and saw sparks.
After a short delay, he heard an explosion as a shockwave crashed into the distorted scene.
Something again intersected between Anna and Alice.
In the deadly battle against Alice, the value of each second was far greater than normal. Death was the end. Truly the end. The clock was always ticking in real time and everyone was moving at once.
He could not forget the fundamental rules revealed here.
“But that isn’t reason enough to relax. Splitting the damage in half means receiving the same attack twice will mean the end for both Aradias.”
“…”
So Aradia couldn’t do it.
Mut Thebes could grow endlessly by absorbing weapon shadows and Good, Old Mary could create any tool or chemical with her alchemy, including ones with great destructive power, but Kamijou couldn’t picture either of them stopping Alice.
The Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress spell could replace all pleasure with equal amounts of pain, regardless of the target’s physical toughness and endurance. That attack had made even Christian Rosencreutz grimace, but would it work here? Was this version of Alice in a mental state where she experienced that sort of human emotion?
Then would he give up?
He needed to give himself some credit for immediately answering that with a “hell no”.
He had a reason for saying that.
He needed to thank his past ordeals for preparing him for this.
“There is little meaning in analyzing each and every thing she does,” said Anna.
She raised her golden cross staff as if judging the distance between herself and Alice.
“We need to start with tearing down the idea that we can never defeat Alice. And it isn’t the Transcendents and their obvious strength that can do that. It needs to be the more unorthodox fighters like me or you who do that, fool!!”
The grown woman vanished.
The golden cross staff and the primitive and violent jabbing claws crashed together head-on.
Anna had reacted.
She was capable of it.
When the Executioner attempted to make his own attack from the side, Anna bisected him straight down the middle with only a glare. The ruby decorating her staff shined a moment later. Its role complete, a clump of compressed air burst, buffeting Kamijou’s hair and cheeks as a violent wind.
The monsters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland could actually die.
There were no absolutes in this world.
Kamijou realized it had been that way from the beginning. Alice had always been so absolute, but when Anna Sprengel showed up, the little villain toyed with the situation, laid traps, took control, and otherwise overshadowed Alice.
While Anna hadn’t managed any clean hits, being able to lock weapons with Alice was unusual in and of itself.
Anna and Alice.
Two irregular Transcendents.
Just like Alice Anotherbible brought everything to her side, including probability and insight, Anna Sprengel was manipulating some unseen factor in real time.
“Accept me, H.T. Trismegistus!! You regular Transcendents are based on Alice, so you can never harm her. But if you swap out foundations, you can bypass Alice’s precedence over you. Like comparing heights of the Tower of Babel and the World Tree Yggdrasil!!”
“I am in your debt.”
“I’m only doing this to make that fool smile. And you want Alice to smile in the same way, right? Then hurry!!”
An invisible change came over the air. A weight vanished.
New possibility had presented itself. If Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents also swapped out their connection, they could possibly overturn Alice’s absoluteness.
The young butler once more held his right hand to the staff at his hip in an iaido pose.
The meaning of his sword strikes had changed.
But he was a moment too slow.
With a dull thud, the equilibrium was broken. Anna’s small body took a powerful blow.
Even though they were supposedly equal.
With a single hand, Alice casually grabbed the beaten-up Gryphon to use it as a weapon.
As if it were a giant club.
Grabbing.
The act of denying an object its own will and applying her own will to it by unilaterally wielding it for its offensive or defensive functionality.
Anna could compete with Alice on her own, but that changed if Alice boosted her strength with something else.
That is, if Alice turned someone else into a weapon.
That absurdly powerful magic could boost her stats by forcibly equipping herself with something else: a sword, a shumai, a goddess – anything.
(Is that a superior version of Mut Thebes’s ability to absorb the shadow of any weapon!?)
“Gahh!?”
“Anna!!”
Alice made a further attack. The Gryphon extended her reach, so the little villain failed to dodge. She was pummeled hard enough to bend backwards.
Anna groaned and tried to raise her golden staff.
But Alice was again faster.
Alice was always a step ahead. To an unnatural degree.
She grabbed H.T. Trismegistus’s wrist as he tried to attack her from the side. She turned him into a weapon, equipped that weapon, and swung it artlessly to the side.
A direct hit.
A dull impact rang loud.
In this case, taking Anna’s side had been a mistake.
Or maybe he had been thwarted by Alice’s tailwind.
That magic stole power from external sources. If H.T. Trismegistus had remained no more than one of Alice’s toys, he couldn’t have provided more power on top of her own.
The little villain struggled to breathe and a red clump splattered from the corner of her mouth.
The equilibrium was broken.
Despite dropping her golden cross staff, Anna clenched her teeth and stepped forward.
Another impact sounded.
But not from more of Alice’s unreasonable violence.
It didn’t end there.
This time it came from Anna.
Anna and Alice crashed foreheads together.
“You wanted recognition, didn’t you?”
With their foreheads pressed together, Anna spoke from extreme close range.
“You wanted forgiveness, didn’t you? And you wanted love!! Just like me!!! Then you shouldn’t give up. He didn’t care that I’m a villain. I’m here now because he didn’t hesitate to run away with me back then. As long as that fool continues to reach out his hand, don’t just assume all light has vanished from this world!!!”
Alice said nothing.
But a subtle tremor did run through the cheek of her bestial expression.
Kamijou thought that came from something other than her intense emotion.
Then Alice made her next move.
Smelling.
She sniffed out her target’s precise location. Which meant her next move was guaranteed to hit, no matter how poorly aimed it was.
Once again, Alice swung H.T. Trismegistus around with a single hand and struck Anna’s little body with her boosted attack. The force of the blow caused the gloomy young butler to slip from Alice’s grasp. No, his right wrist shattered like pottery. Only his hand remained in the grown woman’s hand.
This wasn’t like a home run in baseball or a strike in bowling.
The two of them were knocked away with a strange sound.
Neither one cried out.
Kamijou didn’t even want to think about how much damage that had done to Anna.
While collapsed in a daze, H.T. Trismegistus simply stared up at Alice as she tossed his hand aside. The lack of blood only made the scene more bizarre.
“I…”
Something spilled from the young butler’s lips.
They were words.
That magician had believed common sense would lead anyone to think the same thing after seeing that girl with an unwanted power forced upon her. And the words left his mouth now.
“I wanted to place a roof over her head and protect her from the threats of the world…but I failed.”
Alice Anotherbible wasn’t listening.
The fully-grown blonde woman tilted her head and spun around.
“Teacher.”
Toward Kamijou Touma.
As if he was all she could see.
He understood that Alice wasn’t in a normal state of mind.
She hadn’t been when a magician had altered her body, she hadn’t been when she was surrounded and protected by the Bridge Builders Cabal, she hadn’t been when Anna had given her a deep interest in Kamijou Touma, and she hadn’t been when Kamijou’s rejection had left her dazed.
She hadn’t been for so very long.
He understood that.
But that was not a statement she should have ignored.
She had become animalistic and irrational, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t talk. She had just spoken to Kamijou. But she had still chosen to brush off the young butler.
He didn’t interest her, so she wouldn’t speak to him.
Was that the only reason she didn’t react?
(Not yet.)
Don’t lose hope.
Don’t give up on Alice.
Choose to not let her madness grow.
If you began using personal misfortune as an excuse, that was the end for you. In a way, Kamijou understood that better than anyone.
The world was cruel, so he had seen plenty of people unfairly and unreasonably devastated by it.
But Kamijou hadn’t faltered with those people.
He had fought them.
“I was unlucky” was a convenient phrase applicable to most anything, but he knew relying it and overusing it would prevent you from ever finding the way out of the darkness and would meaninglessly force you into a life of misfortune. He knew in his bones that irresponsibly relying on your misfortune would mean rotting away in that filthy dead end forever.
So.
He would teach Alice the proper way to live with unreasonable misfortune.
“You can still fight, can’t you, teacher?”
“I can.”
Kamijou readied his one and only weapon. He clenched his fist.
Hard.
“But that doesn’t matter so the girl will overturn her prophecy because she will make sure to do something to help you and then make up with you and fight with you and be happy so she doesn’t believe what that incomplete library says because there must be a way to help you out there and she refuses to fail because the girl is Anotherbible so we can make up.”
“Sure!! But I hope you don’t think saying that will stop me, Alice!!”
Part 3
He couldn’t rely on Anna Sprengel or H.T. Trismegistus anymore.
The other Transcendents were a far way off too.
The ordinary faculty room was everything.
It must have been cut off from the rest of the world long ago.
So it was one against one.
Kamijou Touma vs. Alice Anotherbible.
This had been about them from the beginning, so there was no better two to settle it.
So.
“Ooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”
“Ooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”
They clashed head on.
Alice roared like an animal and spread her arms wide.
Hugging.
An act of reliance on another and using your full body to acquire a sense of fulfillment from the outside world.
Of course, a hug from her here would have easily torn Kamijou’s body apart.
A dull sound indicated a direct hit.
From Kamijou. He felt the solid impact of landing a punch.
The sensation in his fist was enough to clear his mind.
In a way, this was to be expected when Alice went all in on attack, spreading her arms and coming straight toward him without even considering defense.
“Kh.”
Beads of sweat flew from the grown woman as she bent back and left her “hugging” pose. With the trunk of her body still collapsed, she clawed at the air with her fingers bent like hooks.
The boy dropped his body down.
After just barely dodging a deadly attack that sliced through the walls and pillars, he threw another punch that Alice blocked with her other hand. But unlike with her “walking” or “binding”, there was no special effect here.
Alice didn’t have time to extract and refine a miracle out of that action.
They clashed a few more times after that, but still Kamijou was not dead.
They both took a step back.
“Curioser and curioser.”
Alice tilted her head.
The fully-grown bondage woman moved with the mannerisms of a 10-year-old.
It was strange and bizarre.
Everything about her was.
“You’re the only one still standing, teacher, but you’re moving in ways you shouldn’t be able to on your own.”
“Of course I am.”
When Alice was taking evasive action by “crawling”, any and all attacks would pass through her.
H.T. Trismegistus had proven this for everyone to see by not hesitating to bisect the girl he so adored.
Alice could extract miracles much like the Pneuma-less Shell but without relying on any tools.
That knowledge came from Anna Sprengel.
However.
“So why don’t you just keep on ‘crawling’ while you attack? Then you could remain untouchable the entire time you send your unfair attacks our way.”
“…”
“Since you aren’t doing that, I can only assume you’re limited to using one miracle at a time. For example, your ‘crawling’ causes any attacks to pass right through you, but it also keeps you from laying a finger on us, so you can never actually end the fight that way, can you? Your ‘walking’ and ‘cursing’ are the same. Your miracles are isolated things – they can’t be combined or used in parallel! Which means I’ve found your weakness, Alice Anotherbible. I don’t know how tough you are, but you can’t make yourself untouchable while you attack. The damage will reach you then!!”
So he would aim for a cross counter.
It wasn’t much, but that was the one and only way out of this battle against Alice Anotherbible.
Alice could use any and all miracles with nothing more than her own body, but she had the mannerisms of a child. She was extremely powerful, but her attacks were all made “on a whim” or “on reflex”, which made it easy to match her timing.
Kamijou hadn’t realized this on his own.
He never could have.
He wouldn’t let anyone say the defeated people’s feelings had been any weaker than anyone else’s.
If Alice could “grab” any object, phenomenon, or person and make it her weapon, then he was supported by the strength of the feelings that had led him to this point.
He couldn’t let this end in tears at this point. He wouldn’t leave anyone behind in the darkness. He would grab Alice’s hand and drag her out of there.
Because that was the power of reality, something not even Imagine Breaker could eliminate.
“What does it matter if they’re not standing here with me? Anna, Trismegistus, and the others showed me the way. They risked their lives to test your abilities and I never would have made it this far without everything they learned. Don’t you get it? They’re still here fighting alongside me.”
“Then the girl will heal herself.”
That was all Alice said.
She was so powerful she had never had a chance to experience defeat and so didn’t worry too much about who won an individual battle. She didn’t fear the possibility of being beaten and dying.
If she did ultimately bury the enemy who stood in her way, it was no skin off her nose if she died once or twice first.
Because…
“Have you forgotten, teacher? The girl already had her head crushed by someone calling himself Rosencreutz. And yet here she is as good as new. So it doesn’t matter to the girl even if you do manage to kill her in exchange for severe damage on your part. The girl just has to resurrect herself a billion or even a trillion times if necessary and wait for you to finally wear yourself out.”
“But you can’t do anything else while you’re focused on healing yourself, can you?”
He also had an immediate response.
This wasn’t enough to break him.
Kamijou did not fear that the wishes and feelings left with him would amount to nothing and that all his efforts would be negated in an instant.
She could heal herself?
It would all be for nothing?
So what?
Surprisingly, it was Alice who spoke next.
The fully-grown woman spoke with an oddly calm and quiet voice, like a pot on the verge of boiling.
“What do you think you can accomplish?”
“What, out of miracles already? Why not search through my mind yourself, Alice?”
Alice’s prophecy was accurate.
Kamijou Touma would die.
He had accepted that.
And he had decided he would save this girl using the power he gained in exchange.
So he took the first step forward.
They clashed.
Part 4
In a merciless head-on assault, Alice’s fist compressed the air and tore through the existing faculty room while the path of her five claws sliced through the entire building and space itself.
Dodging was meaningless against this.
If she made a single roundhouse kick, it would probably become an AoE attack that struck everything around her. When her attack was like a massive gale sweeping right to left, there was no way to avoid it just by moving your body out of the way.
So it hit.
(Gah…)
Kamijou’s body didn’t just strain.
His body produced dull cracking and popping noises he had never heard before.
He didn’t have time to assess what exactly had broken.
The dulling of his sense of pain was actually a blessing in this case.
Yes.
The difference between fortune and misfortune was ultimately a matter of viewpoint and usage.
He bit his lip so a bloody flavor wouldn’t spill from his mouth and he swung his fist again.
He wanted a cross counter.
But if all he wanted was to knock Alice down to stop her, he didn’t actually need to skillfully evade every attack launched by that fully-grown monster.
He was lucky if he could even get an attack in for each of hers.
“Rahh!!!” he shouted, completing the swing of his fist.
He placed his body weight behind it.
Even if she was up against a being known as a god or a demon, or a human who had trained themselves up to the point that everyone would see them as such a thing, this version of Alice would likely crush them underfoot without them even realizing they had been killed.
But that didn’t matter.
Kamijou did not stop.
No amount of willpower would let him avoid taking hits here. And each time one of Alice’s attacks hit him, critical sounds of destruction came from within his body. Red beads of blood swam through the air and even ordinary pain vanished behind a wave of scorching heat.
But none of that was any reason for Kamijou to falter as he clenched his teeth and fist.
He was up against an extremely deadly power.
But what did that matter when he was going to die anyway?
The prophecy had been made quite a while ago. Nothing he could do would change the fact that he was going to die. Since he didn’t have time to spend on that issue, he was approaching death with each tick of the clock. His fate was the same no matter who won this fight.
That was enough to know that his own life was a secondary concern here.
Something else mattered more.
Namely, the girl right in front of him. The girl who was feared but also revered by so many. No one was interested in anything other than treating her like a monster, she had forgotten the proper way to lose, and she believed she could make others happy as long as she wielded her great power. And as a result, that lonely girl would lose everything she thought she had.
She was his top priority.
And this wasn’t limited to him.
Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents had to know what it meant to leave the Bridge Builders Cabal and oppose Alice. H.T. Trismegistus had stayed by Alice’s side to serve her to the end, but he had also chosen to turn his blade against her when necessary. And Anna Sprengel who had viewed Alice the way people used to view her.
None of them were fighting because they could win.
Only the people who had chosen the option least likely to ensure their survival had stuck with Kamijou. And the Transcendents understood just how much of a threat Alice was, so it must have been a much harder decision for them than for ignorant Kamijou.
Even so…
He heard yet another dull impact.
Which meant he had again failed to avoid an attack.
His movements slowed with each consecutive hit. His body felt so heavy. But this was far better than having his body explode, leaving nothing but a stain on the floor.
Kamijou knew he didn’t have luck to thank for this.
Was Alice holding back?
He smiled a little.
How happy it would make him if that were it.
Their fists collided.
Sound vanished for a brief moment.
Creating a blank.
Perhaps some vital lines had been severed inside his body.
His fist felt hot. It may have already broken.
The world seemed to tilt around him.
But he still gathered strength in his legs to keep himself from falling.
Alice’s legs were shaking too. Her shoulders were heaving as she breathed and one eye was unnaturally closed. The eyelid may have been cut.
But she was still on her feet.
This wasn’t about right or wrong and it wasn’t about like or dislike.
Both of them simply refused to back down. No matter what.
So it wouldn’t end. Kamijou refused to die before he was through. He still held his ticket to change destiny.
It would be such a waste if he collapsed before he could use it.
He would stop her.
And save her.
Kamijou Touma forced his pain-numbed body to move and clenched his fist once more.
Another attack came.
Realizing where Alice was aiming, he immediately balled up to protect himself.
To protect his right arm.
If his arm was torn off, that thing would emerge. He had proven that when he severed the arm himself to summon it against Rosencreutz.
That would work if he was only interested in defeating her.
That thing may have been the only remaining mystery in this world that rivaled Alice.
But Kamijou had made a decision back then.
He had made up his mind.
He would never use that thing again. Never against another person. Plus, a little thing like death wouldn’t be enough to stop Alice!!
He took the full brunt of the attack as payment.
He couldn’t see it, but he was pretty sure his back had split open.
He finally heard a rupturing sound within his own body.
It reminded him a lot of a water balloon.
He coughed up blood. Enough to feel like a solid clump.
That didn’t matter.
He refused to collapse.
He hadn’t saved Alice yet. So he would keep fighting until he had. No matter what anyone said – no matter what analysis had been made by the magician smart enough for Aleister to rely on and Anna to fear – whoever remained standing in the end was the winner.
So.
Kamijou ignored the red spilling from between his pursed lips and clenched his broken fist even tighter. He may have been further breaking his bones with his own strength, but he didn’t care in the slightest.
He used his knees to push Alice back a bit while feeling her warmth.
He secured the optimal position while right up in front of her.
Surprise colored her face.
It was the look of a child refused a hug.
He smiled a little.
Because he would never do that.
He swung his fist with all his might.
There was just one sound.
Alice’s fist finally swished through empty air while Kamijou’s found a solid cheekbone.
The impact rang dully out.
The blow actually broke his elbow and shoulder.
Nevertheless, he kept his full weight on his broken fist to the end.
He brought her down.
Part 5
“…”
Kamijou Touma was standing.
He had remained on his feet to the end.
Something appeared to have torn through his arm, but he felt no actual pain.
He saw white bone.
The skin and flesh had come away more easily than with chicken on the bone.
Maybe he was hallucinating it.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
He didn’t let it bother him. His sense of pain melted away within the growing heat and he lost all interest in his own injuries. To be blunt, they didn’t matter.
He took a step forward.
“Tea…cher?”
Alice Anotherbible was still down where she had fallen on her rear.
She was trembling.
She may have seen a bit of what she had done. It had come into focus for her. Who could say when it would all “cloud over” once more, but for this moment at least, her vision was clear.
She sounded more than a little dazed. The fully-grown woman spoke with unstable confusion in her voice.
Like she had finally caught on.
“It’s alright.”
Kamijou smiled.
The smile came to him naturally.
“You did enough to deserve that. But now we’re even. Aren’t we, Alice?”
“No…”
The fully-grown woman shook her head.
Like a small child.
Something floated in the air. The teacups and saucers had been flying around weightlessly, but now they vanished into thin air like fading sparks. Everything around them distorted as the illusion inside the girl crumbled away.
Alice’s dream was ending.
Kamijou could sense reality pushing its way in.
It wouldn’t be long now.
He had not put together any kind of response to the prophecy from that absolute being.
But he had accomplished a more important task.
He had saved her.
So.
It was time to pay the price.
“…”
Had it taken a long time, or a short one?
Reality had raised the white flag almost immediately, so maybe this hadn’t been a path that could be measured with time.
So many events had happened in such a condensed time period.
December 24.
In the middle of the Christmas season, R&C Occultics had suddenly risen to prominence and revealed the hidden existence of magic online.
And CEO Anna Sprengel had appeared in Academy City.
She had mouth-to-mouth delivered the body-hijacking St. Germain microbe to Kamijou, infecting him.
December 25.
Anna Sprengel had stood on center stage.
Kamijou had attempted to communicate with the St. Germain microbe infecting his body and had fought Anna using magic despite the side-effect it had on his body.
Kamijou had just barely managed to defeat Anna, but to protect Kamijou’s life, St. Germain had negated himself with Imagine Breaker. This made it a bitter event for Kamijou.
December 25.
Another incident occurred in Academy City that same day.
Defeated Anna was left in Anti-Skill’s custody, but the problem hadn’t ended there. A probability-manipulating spiritual item called the Coin of Nicholas had been spread around Academy City. The new Board Chairman’s plan to quietly correct the city’s darkness was hijacked and Anna easily left her cell.
Kamijou was barely involved in this incident.
But it was very significant that he encountered Alice Anotherbible after that incident full of so much death and defeat.
December 26.
The threat of R&C Occultics was not limited to Academy City. Los Angeles was suddenly engulfed in yellow sand and its tens of millions of residents disappeared. While pursuing this, it was revealed that Anna had caused such a large-scale incident just to acquire a skilled engineer.
At first glance, it looked like an arrogant act that ignored the costs and risks.
But thinking back, Anna had already been mentioning her “king” at this point.
December 29.
But the true center of the world’s problems was not Anna Sprengel.
Anna readily threw out her global IT company to join the Bridge Builders Cabal.
Alice Anotherbible, the mysterious girl at the top of that cabal, caused plenty of trouble for Kamijou in the darkness of Academy City.
This was the true starting point.
Alice had warned him thrice.
She told him he would die if the altered branch was returned to normal.
December 31.
In Shibuya, Kamijou began working to correct his extreme lack of funds. There he found the Bologna Succubus and Aradia waiting for him. Those magicians were known as Transcendents and possessed powers on another dimension entirely. A clash between just those two produced enough overflowing charisma to engulf the entirety of Shibuya in rioters.
January 1.
A building calling itself a consulate for the Bridge Builders Cabal suddenly appeared in District 12, which had a focus on mythology and religion. The greater focus on the idea of Transcendents further showed how unique Alice was.
Alice wanted to to provide deadly punishment for H.T. Trismegistus and the other Transcendents who threatened Kamijou’s life, but Kamijou himself intervened, driving a decisive wedge between the two.
January 3.
Kamijou happened to rescue Anna Sprengel after she was captured by Aleister and fled around Academy City with Aradia, who they had happened across. They were pursued by Mut Thebes, a Transcendent in charge of punishment.
This was when Kamijou first heard Anna clearly talk about her “king”.
She wanted someone who would restrain her wickedness and protect her.
But she never had a chance to meet this person. She was doomed to die after being hit by the Shrink Drink, a special spear that borrowed a portion of Alice’s power.
Alice was the only one who could save Anna, but at the same time, the Bridge Builders Cabal was working to bring back a dead magician: CRC, Christian Rosencreutz. But when he was reborn, he was not the man seen in the legends. He obliterated the Bridge Builders Cabal just to stave off boredom and Alice Anotherbible was killed.
January 5.
The reborn Christian Rosencreutz began fighting his boredom.
Kamijou faced that ultimate threat to protect Anna who was on the verge of death in the hospital. As the ring of defenders grew, ultimately Academy City as a whole was working to stop CRC from taking that life.
Once it was all over, Alice got up like nothing had happened to her.
CRC was not the greatest monster.
And today.
It had been a long time.
Yes, a very long time.
Unbelievably long.
This wasn’t about the literal time it had taken.
Far too much had happened over winter break. Kamijou had been exposed to multiple new forms of threat and been badly beaten, but that had built up his unseen heart and soul enough to make it this far.
And.
He had dragged his heavy body far enough to stand before Alice Anotherbible.
He had stood right in front of her.
He could say that for certain.
Everything that had happened had been leading up to this moment.
He had arrived.
All the past storms seemed like a fantasy now.
It hadn’t been pretty and he had been badly delayed, but he had made it.
On his own two feet.
“I’m here, Alice.”
He barely got his voice out.
With all the blood clogging up his throat, he wasn’t sure if his voice was even audible.
“I made it here.”
“You can’t defeat the girl, teacher. If everything had gone as planned and the girl had used her full power, you might have been spared this death coming from the outside.”
Alice could say what she liked, but the winner made the decisions.
That’s what he had been fighting for.
So he could tell her it would be alright.
The girl might not get what she wanted.
If Kamijou died here, Alice’s wish to make up with him would go forever unfulfilled. She had become a world-destroying storm to make that happen, but Kamijou himself had put a stop to it.
But.
He just hadn’t been able to leave her all alone and howling.
“…”
His limit had arrived.
He would die today.
But Alice still had her life. She still had plenty of happy paths left for her. She could meet so many people and surround herself with so many smiles she forgot all about today.
Surely he was allowed to wish for that.
She had been abducted, remade, worshipped, and rejected.
She had appeared free, but she had always been bound by something unseen. She had always been underneath someone’s foot. And no matter how powerful she was, she had ultimately been unable to change that herself.
So on the verge of death, surely Kamijou was allowed to imagine a world where she was happy enough to make up for all that with interest.
Allowed by who?
Not that bastard god.
Kamijou Touma would allow himself that happy wishful thinking.
He would celebrate this ending.
Slowly, fully-grown Alice once more got up from the floor. She stood up.
As if to cling to him.
“You will die if you move any more, teacher. You will die and leave nothing behind.”
“So...what?”
The pointy-haired boy dragged his body along and struggled to support himself.
He faced Alice head on.
The girl seemed unable to move beyond her incessant trembling. She was extraordinarily powerful. She had easily killed the reborn Christian Rosencreutz, who not even all the regular Transcendents working together had been a match for, but she was rendered motionless at the sight of this ordinary high school boy.
It wasn’t a physical matter.
But just this once, Kamijou Touma had defeated Alice Anotherbible.
He was an unfortunate person.
He had lost his memories, been placed in mortal peril more times than he could count, and actually died on occasion. Not even being killed had been enough to end it. There probably wasn’t any real reason why. He just so happened to be there, so he was dragged into it. His life was a series of those coincidences.
It hadn’t started here.
And it had probably happened plenty of times he couldn’t remember.
But.
Even so.
“I…”
He felt the grasping hand of death at the center of his chest.
He didn’t need to hold his hand to his chest to know his heart wanted to rest.
Wounds caused by Alice Anotherbible could not be healed with Good, Old Mary’s resurrection.
The tearing sound inside him was continuing.
Only he could hear it. Were those blood vessels tearing? Or maybe muscles?
It didn’t matter.
Some major arteries and even his heart had probably already ruptured.
But there was something he still had to say.
“…I…”
Maybe it was the blood loss, but the sweat on his brow was unusually cold. His tongue and cheeks were numb.
He had trouble speaking.
He prayed that he would get the words out. Failing to say this before the end would just be too cruel.
But what was he praying to?
Not to god, that was for sure. He knew better than to expect anything from that jerk.
So he chose to pray to himself. To the human being he was. Only he could change the world with his will. He would endure until the end. He just had to think back on the path he had taken and compare this to all that pain and suffering.
A little thing like death was nothing.
If he clenched his teeth, he could keep on moving for a little while longer.
He had a lesson for that girl.
If she understood this, she would be alright.
Alice Anotherbible could probably do anything.
But there were no absolutes for any human.
So he had to tell her.
No matter how extraordinary she might be, if she acted thoughtlessly and carelessly long enough, she would pay a painful price eventually.
And if she took it too far, that price could even be the life of someone she cared deeply for.
Alice could protect herself from anything. Even if she died, she could resurrect herself right away. She was so powerful it was fundamentally wrong to even think about defeating her. But could she protect other people?
Violence took important things from yourself and others.
She could fight and win, but would that even matter?
Had Kamijou gained anything at all when he released the mysterious dragon from his severed right arm and defeated Rosencreutz with it?
Violence was not a valid solution.
He had forever lost a future where he and CRC could smile together.
He had done it himself.
By giving up.
That wasn’t a solution.
He had realized that afterwards.
And he had stopped himself from making that mistake again.
“I don’t…”
So.
If Alice was greater than Rosencreutz – if her power was truly extraordinary – she had to think even deeper about strength and power.
Kamijou was just an ordinary high school boy. He wasn’t arrogant enough to think he was in any position to teach anyone anything. But if Alice realized this for herself, she could stop herself. She could learn to think about compromising with the wide world around her instead of focusing only on what she wanted.
That was Kamijou’s battle.
There was no avoiding death for him, so that was his one and only win condition.
So he made sure to keep speaking to the end.
Because he had to accomplish that.
He held the fully-grown woman’s face between his bloody hands.
He looked Alice straight in the eye.
And the ordinary high school boy got the words out.
He made it in time.
“I don’t want to see anyone suffering from even more misfortune than me!! You got a problem with that!?”
From the start, they had both known how this would end.
There had been no changing it.
Alice fell back onto her rear. As if she were backing away from a truth she didn’t want to accept.
She had blood on her cheeks.
The faint red stains left by the boy’s fingers.
What little warmth was left in that blood was fading fast.
“Tea…cher?”
Her voice was scratchy.
It was a definite physical voice.
The voice of her original young form.
But no one answered her fearful, trembling question.
The boy had not fallen.
Whoever remained standing in the end was the winner. So he had refused to fall until he had saved Alice. This proved his resolve more than anything.
Part 6
Kamijou Touma was still standing.
He was no longer moving.
His brain, his heart, and everything that provided life had fully ceased functioning.
