Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Chapter4
Chapter 4: Decide For Yourself Which Girl to Save – Battle_of_HsB-AD-CVA01.[edit]
Part 1[edit]
With the siren stopped, the battlefield was silent.
Aradia’s bare feet traced sharply across the floor of the broken walkway.
Collapsed and unmoving, Anna Sprengel glowed with a pale light.
Mut Thebes, having become a massive bird, tilted her head.
“A barrier? No, a witch ointment. That can help you fly or transform you by rearranging the structure of your body.”
“It’s nothing that fancy. Only a mild protection. I can’t remove the Shrink Drink itself, but I can slow its spread.”
“But this anti-explosive suntan lotion disappears if you die, doesn’t it?”
“Do I really have to answer that?”
“Only one way to find out.”
An explosive boom rumbled out.
Mut Thebes horizontally swung her massive right wing, which was actually a pair of 300m aircraft cruisers.
The white torrent smashed up the entire top half of the giant cinema complex and scattered the pieces into the air.
Kamijou Touma was tossed into the air as well.
Aradia grabbed him by the back collar while straddling a mic stand used when the director or cast made a public statement at an advance screening or opening night.
A witch did not necessarily need to use a broom to fly in the night sky.
What mattered was the ointment rubbed onto the tool.
“Whoa!?”
“Grab onto me, not the mic stand. I like to think we’re safe as long as you don’t touch the shadow, but if your right hand does affect it, we fall. Also, Mut Thebes isn’t the only threat!!”
The witch goddess then took a more cautious tone.
“Why isn’t she using the Shrink Drink? Oh, she might want to avoid friendly fire.”
Aradia turned a sharp glare elsewhere.
Someone else was soaring through the night sky on a long mic stand of her own.
It was the other Aradia.
Even her choice of tool when short on time was the same.
The identical silver-haired woman held her palm out with an alluring whisper on her lips.
“The Apostle Peter forbids Simon Magus’s demonic flight!!”
“You can tell it’s her first day. She needs more training. How do you call yourself the goddess of witches and then use that!?”
Kamijou and Aradia plummeted. Flying was easy for magicians, but the counter spell was also easy, making it hard in practice. They were forced to land atop one of the aircraft cruisers Mut Thebes was swinging around.
“Where’s Anna!?”
“How are you concerned about someone other than yourself right now? I covered her with a protective ointment, so she’ll be fine! As long as you don’t touch her with your right hand, she could be buried in a pile of concrete without so much as a scratch!!”
Mut Thebes again swung the two ships of her right wing together like she was shooing away a fly.
Aradia was tossed into the empty air. She knew her flight would be canceled by the counter spell, so she guided Kamijou to different footing a lot like descending in a parachute.
They were behind Mut Thebes this time.
They were on the bow of the aircraft cruiser – also at least 300m long – that acted as the giant bird’s body or tailfeathers.
The other Aradia landed her bare feet atop a trio of ship’s guns towering overhead like a mountain. She laughed and looked down at them with the moon behind her. Even the cheap ventilation fan cover mesh was the same. Even though there was no need to match the emergency fixes if that was an official costume.
“Don’t worry. I will protect your hope. I will ensure the good witch child need not wander in the dark.”
Next to Kamijou, Aradia twirled the long mic stand like a baton and rested it on her shoulder as she looked up at her target. The two Aradias’ gazes clashed head on.
And they both spoke at once.
“I will kill her.”
“I will kill her.”
Aradia jumped up from the deck to the guns in a single bound and the identical Transcendents began their battle.
However, Kamijou was in no position to simply watch on.
He needed to settle things with Transcendent Mut Thebes.
(If this whole thing is a bird, then this is the body or tail. Mut Thebes is at the center, so I need to move from the bow to the stern of this ship!!)
Mut Thebes of course responded.
The nearest trio of guns slowly turned.
Those giant ship’s guns had a diameter of 35cm.
“Yikes!”
Multiple blasts erupted simultaneously.
The deck kicked up below him so hard he thought he would flip over onto his back. He was shaken so hard his vision broke apart and he didn’t even have it in him to thrust his right hand out toward the source of the sound.
But unexpectedly, it didn’t hit him.
Kamijou held the side of his head with a hand and wobbled on his feet while he moved to the narrow side deck. And he continued onward.
“Ow.”
(I guess I should have expected that. Aircraft cruisers aren’t designed to shoot themselves. As long as I’m on the deck, this ship’s guns can’t hit me.)
But only this ship’s.
He heard something scraping along metal rails and looked up to see movement from the ships forming the great bird’s left wing. An angular white shadow was launched into the sky from the flight deck created by removing the stern weaponry.
That was an HsF/A-49 Sharp Frame, a stealth craft designed for aircraft carriers.
Although it looked weird colored entirely white.
“How much did she absorb, dammit!?”
Mut Thebes could increase her forces whenever her shadow touched another shadow, so even the aircraft cruisers were expendable to her. She had no problem with using the plane to obliterate this ship with its autocannons and aerial bombs.
And Kamijou was dead if even one shot hit him.
If he failed to defeat Mut Thebes and then reach Alice Anotherbible, there was no way left to save Anna Sprengel from the Shrink Drink.
The stealth craft circled sharply through the night sky and finally took aim.
(Can I stop that with Imagine Breaker!?)
Kamijou held up his right hand and clenched his teeth as he ran. If that thing sprayed 6000 bullets a minute from its Gatling gun, he would be killed before he could even use Imagine Breaker.
His throat went dry when he saw the stealth craft’s belly open up to reveal the weapons within. Apparently it was going to launch an air-to-surface missile or an aerial bomb. If the explosive contained napalm or white phosphorus, then “bad” didn’t even begin to describe it.
But Kamijou belatedly realized something.
The aircraft cruisers and the stealth craft were shadows absorbed my Mut Thebes’s magic.
So he was thinking about this wrong.
The stealth craft and its bullets or bombs weren’t the only thing his right hand could destroy. He could also destroy the very aircraft cruiser he was running on.
“!?”
He didn’t even aim for a door – he directly punched the wall of thick armor. With a dull crash, a 2m cube was torn away. Was it divided into blocks like that? Kamijou lost his balance, so he tumbled right on inside the ship.
Shortly thereafter, the outside world was engulfed in explosive flames and shockwaves.
More than his ears ringing, he felt a pain akin to an electrical tingling across all of his skin. There had been multiple explosions out there. Like someone had tossed in a bundle of giant-sized firecrackers.
“Was that a cluster bomb!?”
“I don’t know how to use it, but I assume if I simply drop it on you, you will die before you can complain.”
Mut Thebes’s emotionless voice played from the ship’s internal speakers.
Kamijou didn’t know what kind of equipment the ship had, but apparently she was tracking his location and could hear his voice.
Still, he figured he should be safe as long he remained in the indoor passageways. Whether or not the Transcendent knew where he was, the ship couldn’t shoot itself, the walls were plenty thick, and the stealth craft was too big to fit through the door. Even if he did come across a locked door or bulkhead, it was all made of magic and he could break through with Imagine Breaker.
That meant this was a sturdy and safe tunnel for him.
“What a pain,” said Mut Thebes.
“I wouldn’t be so calm if I were you! I’ve found a safe zone, so now it’s time to turn the tables on you!!”
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
Kamijou heard a sound like an electric razor.
He looked to the side to see something skillfully turn a corner in the passageway, slip through an open door, and slowly approach him at a height of about a meter.
The white shadow was only about 45cm.
Overall, it resembled the sharp isosceles triangle of a delta wing, but it had a round hole in the center and it used coaxial rotors to move vertically or hover in place like a helicopter.
What was it?
Was it another piece of the aircraft cruiser’s equipment, making it another weapon Mut Thebes had acquired by absorbing its shadow!?
“Eh?”
He was caught off guard when the lightweight solid fuel ignited and the self-destruct drone shot toward him like a missile.
Part 2[edit]
The muffled explosion was audible even on the bow deck.
Witch Goddess Aradia’s long silver hair and large wimple blew in the frigid wind, but she sighed softly.
(Well, I like to think that isn’t enough to kill him when he has Imagine Breaker. No matter what it looks like or how she uses it, everything here is magic, including the weapons and explosions.)
She also found this a strange thought.
To think the day would come she was acting based on trust in Kamijou Touma’s abilities.
She glanced down at her ankle and smiled a little.
“Now, I need to focus on my own job.”
She looked back up.
The two of them stood directly above the bow’s trio of main guns.
The moon shined down on the two identical witch goddess. Their long silver hair and ankle-length wimples blew in the frigid wind and they breathed identical white breaths as they smiled thinly.
There was no signal.
The two Aradias took action simultaneously.
They moved their mic stand brooms to their left hands.
One swung her right hand horizontally and the other did the same.
Their voices overlapped in disturbing synchronicity.
“I will bring peace to this city by defeating my enemy. Which makes this a good deed.”
“I will bring peace to this city by defeating my enemy. Which makes this a good deed.”
They sealed a cutting edge in their nails and took a step forward.
Their slicing fingers intersected for their first attack.
They jumped from gun to gun. When one threw an open-hand slap, the other struck that wrist to send it off course. They both twisted around while aiming a palm at the other.
Witch Goddess Aradia’s magic was based on the Triple Reload.
They didn’t need to defeat their opponent in one strike.
As long as they gave meaning to their attack, each consecutive one would grow more powerful in a snowball effect. It was an endless triple increase. There was no upper limit. As the chain continued, they would reach the point where they could fight the entire magic side and win.
A shockwave exploded out.
The aircraft cruiser’s gun barrel bent.
Fists flew, stainless steel mic stands roared, and roundhouse kicks tore through the air.
The rubbing of their feet squeaked like during a basketball game. The shadows at their feet grew more apparent. Both Aradias rubbed down the metal clasps of their decorations, sprinkling medicinal herbs at their feet, and used their bare feet to mix in sebum to create their witch ointment.
Their witchcraft mostly relied on that ointment.
Their shadows writhed in a disturbing fashion as the two witches shared a Sabbat dance.
The giant guns exploded below them, so one witch goddess gently landed her bare feet on the side deck another level down.
The other woman also landed with a smile.
“Oh? You aren’t leaving the human realm?”
“Kh.”
She clenched her teeth but couldn’t fully suppress the breath of slight exhaustion.
The other Aradia’s smile grew.
“Hee hee. That’s right. Using the Secret Chief’s power is a broken spell that lets us fight the entire magic side on our own. But it is not enough to come out on top when fighting another Aradia.”
Immediately after, the two blurred into motion.
They clashed.
Aradia and Aradia ran along the side deck, tore into the ship’s armor, and scattered sparks as they crashed into each other a few times. Their fingers sharply intersected, their feet ran, and they either swung their mic stand around in a hand or straddled it to fly in the night sky. They drew out large, twisted arcs and turned those into unorthodox loop-the-loops while their lights collided over and over before the two witches dropped straight toward the aircraft cruiser’s deck once more.
(If I only knew where the unseen rail is.)
Even as they fought fiercely enough to melt and distort the side deck’s armor, the witch goddess kept her thoughts cool and calm.
(Triple upon triple upon triple upon triple. My Triple Reload increases my power threefold with each new good deed, which is like creating a single rail. If I can predict hers, I can block her and keep her dominos from continuing to fall.)
Even in a battle between Aradias, how they used their spells could create a difference in strength. If one continued to grow her power with Triple Reload and the other had that process stopped early, the resultant difference could be used to end the battle.
Aradia knew she could predict that rail.
After all, her opponent was another Aradia.
She could easily tell what in this environment could be converted into a good deed.
But if she tried to take advantage of her opponent’s weakness that way, her opponent would do the same to her.
Stopping the falling dominos was meaningless if it was mutual. Then the shadows at their feet would lose everything they had built up and both of them would have to start over from scratch.
Whether she tried it or hesitated, it wasn’t enough to end the battle.
And…
“Tch!!”
She clicked her tongue and they exchanged a few more attacks.
The air vibrated and even the ship’s thick armor creaked concerningly.
Maybe it was for the best that they were on an aircraft cruiser cut off from the Academy City streets.
Even without the giant gun barrels breaking and flying away, wielding this kind of power would have done untold damage to the city.
“Oh, no. Are we stuck in a permanent stalemate?”
“Maybe so, if our power really is equal.”
They continued to clash like beams with a cutting edge, but that couldn’t go on forever.
One of them came to a stop and the other stopped on the deck in kind.
The Aradia fighting for the boy in trouble tried to surreptitiously catch her breath.
Her attempt failed.
“Huff, puff.”
“What’s wrong? Worn out already? I guess you are the old Aradia. Feel free to say you only lost because you were still worn out from your previous battles.”
“Do you really expect that to happen?”
“No, I doubt it will be that easy. But if this continues, we really will be pushing ourselves to the limits of our identical specs. And that gives me a small opportunity. One you lack.”
“Won’t you be in trouble if you’re wrong and we defeat each other?”
“Not really.”
That was all she had to say.
(Mut Thebes must have given her a lot of information on me.)
If both Aradias were defeated here, did she assume it wouldn’t affect their ceremony because another performer would fill the role? Had she added the ventilation fan cover mesh to her official costume to ensure their specs were truly equal, thus not giving the “old Aradia” even the slightest chance? And as long as their savior arrived, the witches she wanted to protect would be saved.
That wasn’t good enough for this Aradia.
She smiled a little upon discovering that feeling inside her.
If their specs were completely identical, they were stuck in a permanent stalemate. That meant she needed something other than her Aradia identity. With that something extra on the scales, she could achieve victory.
(I already gave him hope as a goddess, so I can’t let myself be defeated now.)
Would that feeling give her something that let her overcome her physical exhaustion?
It would.
A heavy breath appeared white in the winter chill.
Aradia’s shoulders heaved on the side deck as she glance to the side.
“Hoping to ask him for support?”
The other noticed and smiled thinly.
The other magician taking the Aradia name shrugged with her mic stand broom still in hand.
“Seems to me that would only complicate matters. We look and act the same and we use the same spells. Can he look at the two Aradias here and tell which one is on his side?”
“Oh? Do you really think he can’t?”
“?”
Then.
A certain woman focused on one point of the Aradia standing in front of her. She noticed the difference between them.
The other one had a single loop of duct tape around her right ankle.
“Ah.”
“Our appearance and specs might be identical, but the things we’ve experienced and the memories we’ve made make a difference.”
Kamijou Touma rushed in from the side, his fist crashing into the enemy Aradia’s cheek.
Not even the triple goddess beyond human territory mattered.
No secret move was enough to block that boy’s right fist.
(I only wrapped this duct tape around my ankle at the gas station. Mut Thebes must not have seen me between then and our arrival at the cinema complex.)
“Also.”
The witch goddess wagged her finger down at the other Aradia who had been knocked out by the blow to the head. She winked and whispered.
“The goddess of all witches isn’t all that physically strong. A solid hit from Kamijou Touma’s fist is enough to knock her out. …I know that firsthand from Shibuya on the 31st.”
Part 3[edit]
Defeating the enemy Aradia wasn’t enough to end this.
An earsplittingly shrill sound exploded out.
A formation of four HsF/A-49 stealth craft passed by overhead. The aerial bombs that separated off in midair accurately dropped toward Kamijou and Aradia, but Aradia extended her left hand into the air just before they hit. One after another, several explosions burst in the frigid night sky.
“I will hold back her aerial forces. You go deal with Mut Thebes herself!!”
“Thanks!!” shouted Kamijou, running to the side deck. Aradia did not join him, instead mounting her mic stand broom and taking off toward the bridge roof.
More explosions burst like fireworks overhead while Kamijou ran until his surroundings changed.
The floor below his feet was flat.
He had arrived on the flight deck equipped with an electromagnetic catapult that launched planes using the same principle as a linear motor. That meant he was at the stern.
(Sure, you can use this to take off, but how are you supposed to land again!? Stupid Academy City and its stupid, stupid weapons!! Are they VTOL? Or do they use floats to land in the water and then the front of the ship swallows them like a landing ship!?)
He heard a dull tremor.
Mut Thebes had apparently separated the 10 aircraft cruisers attached to her back like a giant bird. The massive white shadows remained standing like shed skins as she slowly turned toward him.
And she stepped onto the flight deck.
The newly flat surface made it look like the entire environment was prostrating before Mut Thebes as its master, ensuring it would never end up looking down at her.
Kamijou Touma and the Transcendent faced each other directly below the moon.
Mut Thebes slowly tilted her head and spoke plainly. Her expression was no different from when she had asked him to pass the French dressing back at the consulate.
“Should I shout the name of my special attack?”
“I’d much prefer you said nothing and let me defeat you.”
“Leaving human territory. Risk 4: Life and death, pure and impure, quiet and noisy, holy and evil, correct and incorrect – releasing the dual seal. Swiftly activate, Dead Phoenix.”
“So much for my preference, goddammit!!!”
Kamijou clenched his right fist and Transcendent Mut Thebes swept her hand horizontally at the same moment.
Something white moved.
An object with a nearly 3m diameter emerged from her shoulder. It looked like an enlarged version of a circular saw for cutting lumber, but it was actually a giant 8-bladed propeller.
“!?”
It rotated rapidly at a diagonal angle from her shoulder. If it so much as grazed Kamijou, he would be torn to pieces. He hurriedly held out his right hand to negate it, but something wasn’t right.
It was so large that mere contact would mean instant death for a human-sized target like Kamijou, but one look at the massive bird wings from before was enough to know that a warship’s propeller should have been more than 10m across.
(She changed its size? Could she always do that, or is that what the inhuman Dead Phoenix mode does!?)
And Mut Thebes was already expressionlessly summoning another weapon.
A white object covered her back like a giant armored snail shell. It was in fact…
“A boiler.”
“Wha-?”
Roaring flames flew straight toward him. He negated them with his right hand, but the dark smoke obscured his vision. She made her next move while he was still choking. She swept her arm to the side and something like a white beam of light shot out.
“Water jet auxiliary power.”
(Water.)
The dark smoke was sliced through along a diagonal line.
There was no time.
The blade of ultra-pressurized water extended without end. After all, this was a propulsion device meant to push a warship weighing more than 100 thousand tons. A hit would easily slice apart a human torso. Kamijou ducked low to the ground to just barely avoid the horizontal sweeping attack, but the aircraft cruiser’s bridge was sliced off at the base, causing it to collapse.
Mut Thebes tilted her head and readily threw away the weapon boasting so much destructive power.
And next…
“Grounding plate.”
“What the hell!?”
“The base of the ground line. However, a ship can’t bury the plate in the ground like normal, right? Instead, the massive amount of excess electricity produced within the ship is sent out into the seawater.”
“Not my point. What’s with all these crazy things!?”
“You mean this?”
The brown girl brought her palms close together in front of her chest and thick lines of electricity crackled between them. If what she said was true, that had to be even more powerful than a train’s high voltage line.
“As I have already explained, I absorb the weapon’s shadow, not the weapon itself. I have no real reason to use them for their intended purpose.”
“So you can just do whatever you want!?”
“More or less,” she plainly agreed. “And another thing. Remember the boiler?”
“?”
“I was opening the maintenance hatch of a running diesel engine to forcibly extract the flames, but that isn’t all that emerged. What do you think happens to a human who breathes in invisible oxygen-deficient air created when combustion steals all the oxygen away?”
“…Gah!?”
Suddenly, Kamijou’s right knee nearly dropped to the deck.
Mut Thebes’s expression was unchanged.
“You do not need a special poison gas to kill someone. The air contains around 21% oxygen. Simply reducing that by half creates deadly air guaranteed to make a human pass out.”
“~ ~ ~!!!!”
“Or so it said in the engine room manual. Extracting the knowledge from the shadow wasn’t easy, just so you know.”
Using the items in such unusual ways may have been a privilege gained by leaving the human territory, but how far would she grow if she were to absorb the shadow of, for example, an original grimoire or Index?
And Kamijou couldn’t spend any time on that thought.
He could tell he wouldn’t remain conscious for long. Similar to motion sickness, he didn’t seem able to fight it despite being aware of it.
He wanted to end this quick so he could at least pave the way to saving Anna before he passed out. He could have Aradia, the caring big sister, carry him to Alice. He had seen enough of that goddess of the cold but gentle moonlight to trust her that much.
So he didn’t need to worry about himself.
He would focus on that life they could all save together.
“Gahhh!!” he shouted, breaking through his mental limiters like a hammer throw athlete.
He clenched his right fist tight and took a powerful step forward.
Mut Thebes only tilted her head.
She did not use the electrocution weapon she had called a grounding plate.
With a deep rumble, gravity suddenly released its grip on Kamijou. A push from below had launched his feet from the flight deck. His footing – that is, the aircraft cruiser – had moved.
The brown girl sighed softly.
“My control is not limited to the weapons attached to me.”
“Gwah!?” groaned Kamijou when, a moment later, he was slammed back down into the deck.
At least his right hand hadn’t touched the floor, causing him to plummet further.
But.
He couldn’t reach her.
Gathering all of his resolve wasn’t enough for his fist to reach that Transcendent.
He was out of breath and unable to get up, but when he looked up at her, he saw the girl raising both hands overhead with the moon behind her. Thick electricity crackled between her palms.
Mut Thebes did not hesitate.
“The ship’s fluid dynamic power generator produces 45,000kW of alternating current power at a frequency of 60Hz. That easily surpasses the power of a nuclear aircraft carrier and is enough to cause the human body to explode.”
“You think you can kill me with electricity? Sorry, but I’ve built up a resistance to high voltage currents.”
“There is no such thing.”
An extra-powerful discharge burst out.
Kamijou Touma tried to raise his right hand, but he was trembling too badly to move.
The light filled his vision.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
His pure white vision did not return to normal. But that he could sense the passage of time meant he was still conscious?
“What…happened?”
He tried to speak and found his voice was terribly hoarse.
Still collapsed, he blinked hard several times before his vision somewhat returned. The deck was scorched brutally black right next to him. And Mut Thebes stood a short distance away. But she hadn’t had any reason to move away in that situation?
No, that wasn’t true.
The aircraft cruiser itself was tilted diagonally. The girl was leaning her back against a wall to prop herself up.
“What…”
She was moving her head side to side to see what had happened.
“…the hell?”
Part 4[edit]
Aradia tore through the night sky on her mic stand, bringing down one stealth craft after another.
Her magic was based on tripling. So the more she brought down, the greater her power. Once she got the ball rolling, she had nothing to fear. She weaved in an S-shape to dodge the shots from the 35cm ship guns firing from the giant bird wings spread out overhead. When antiair missiles were vertically launched from the deck, she let them follow her for a bit before she spiraled around one of the five legs until they had all crashed into that “wall”.
The antiair laser units could shoot down cruise or ballistic missiles with greater than 99.9% accuracy, but not even they could catch the witch goddess flitting this way and that in the sky.
She slipped through the deadly net pouring down like rain.
“I had heard laser weapons aren’t visible, so are those weird green lines the equivalent of tracer rounds?”
(The giant bird is made up of 10 ships and each one is loaded with 30 or 40 planes. That means they could carry nearly 400 in all. And since I’ve taken out- hm? How many was it?)
Aradia flew straight up again on her mic stand and smacked her forehead.
Apparently she had earned too good a high score.
The ship guns roared and an ordinarily impossible scattershot approached her like a wall.
The projectiles were all Shrink Drink spears.
In a way, this was the most fearsome attack for a Transcendent.
(With the second Aradia defeated, I guess Mut Thebes doesn’t have to worry about friendly fire anymore.)
“Tch!!”
Aradia sharply changed course to slip through a gap.
(How am I still in the air? I’m pretty sure warships and aircraft carriers need a crew in the hundreds or thousands. And there are ten of them here. Are there too many weapons for Mut Thebes to control them all? She also must be too focused on Kamijou Touma to eliminate my flight ointment.)
The ordinary firepower wasn’t a threat.
She needed to be on the lookout for something else instead.
“Oops.”
She twisted around and flew in a spiral to let a slowly-approaching 45cm self-destruct drone pass her before detonating. Fortunately, their rotors were too loud for them to sneak up on her, but she still had to be careful because they moved differently from artillery or a missile.
Aradia’s top priority was drawing the fire of the aircraft cruiser and its aircraft since Kamijou Touma couldn’t dodge or defend against them on his own. That way he could focus on his own fight. So she could accomplish her goal just by flying around.
But if possible, she also wanted to do damage to Mut Thebes.
This wasn’t even about wanting to repay him for saving her before.
That boy was already her target of salvation.
The Bridge Builders Cabal may no longer recognize her legitimacy, but that goddess had to save him.
The witch goddess flew her stainless steel mic stand in a large circle around the giant bird like a drone getting video footage. She focused on one point of that massive bird comprised of several aircraft cruisers.
It technically wasn’t a weapon.
“Hm,” she muttered quietly.
She was said to be the goddess of the night and the moon and her lips contained the bewitching shine to match.
“I bet I can use that anchor.”
She took aim and sharply descended.
Her target was the metal latch holding a chain thicker than her arm.
Part 5[edit]
An unnatural tremor ran through the ship.
If Kamijou wasn’t careful, he would have slid to the side even as he lay collapsed on the flight deck. In this case, it looked like Mut Thebes had a harder time keeping her balance while standing up.
Yes, the giant bird created from several aircraft cruisers was clearly shifting out of place. It tilted diagonally and didn’t fix itself. One of the five legs extending down like a long skirt must have been squashed like an aluminum can.
This was no coincidence.
Good fortune had no love for Kamijou Touma.
“Aradia?” asked Mut Thebes, looking somewhat confused.
This couldn’t possibly be good fortune, so the boy had to ask which goddess had chosen to protect him.
“She must have lowered the anchor. But how did that cause so much damage? The anchor is a standard piece of the ship’s equipment and it isn’t even a weapon. It isn’t enough to bend and break a military ship.”
“Don’t be so sure. I don’t know what exactly Aradia did, but if that really was the anchor, it is possible for that to destroy the ship. There are standards concerning the water depth and the chain length and there are apparently detailed rules about using two anchors at once and how to lower them. Forcibly lower the anchor in the wrong way and the power of the waves tugging on the ship can bend or even break its hull.”
“They teach these things in Academy City?”
He decided it was best not to mention he knew this from an old B movie he had seen on TV recently. Even if it only came once in your life, not every day of your first high school winter break was guaranteed to be exciting.
“And let’s not forget what you said about reaching the cinema complex.”
“?”
“You walked here.”
Kamijou slowly gathered enough strength to stand back up.
His head was still woozy from breathing in the oxygen-deficient air, but he could still fight.
He could pass out a little later.
“You also said it took some time to absorb multiple 300m aircraft cruisers, but that means you would have needed to rush here to make up for the lost time. You would normally run and jump in those circumstances.”
“…”
“But you didn’t do that.”
No.
Was there a reason she couldn’t do it?
“Ships are made to float in the ocean, not walk on land. Even if you can pull it off slowly, forcing it to a run would bend the hull and concentrate enough weight to crush it. I’m betting you gave it five legs because you wanted to distribute the weight. And even then, you had to walk slowly and carefully!!”
Aradia had done it on purpose. By lowering the heavy anchors one after another, each part of the giant bird had been forcibly twisted in different directions. She had broken a weapon larger than the average building by using the enemy’s weight and momentum against them like a form of martial arts self-defense.
“Tch.”
This may have been a first.
Mut Thebes clicked her tongue. And her focus shifted from Kamijou to Aradia, who was flying around in the sky.
She didn’t even need to use the Shrink Drink designed to kill Transcendents.
Flying with magic was easy, but shooting her down with the counter spell was just as easy.
Kamijou couldn’t let that happen.
“Ohhhh!!’
“?”
In the precise moment her focus shifted, Kamijou Touma shot to his feet and used all his strength to push himself forward while crouched low. He threw a full-power tackle toward Mut Thebes’s slender hips.
He struck.
Gravity briefly vanished and then they both crashed down onto the flight deck.
Afterwards, a powerful vertical tremor hit them. Had Aradia dropped another anchor to the ground, tugging unnaturally at the great bird?
The shaking and tilting sent Kamijou and Mut Thebes rolling along the flight deck while tangled together. They picked up speed. They rolled on and on and belatedly realized the tilting of the deck was getting worse.
There was no stopping it now.
They grabbed at each other while sliding down the steep downward slope of the flight deck. Kamijou couldn’t stop their momentum, but by pressing the soles of his shoes against the deck and creating resistance, he could guide their slide to the sides. They would be badly injured if they hit a wall at this speed, so he desperately directed them toward the starboard side deck, slammed Mut Thebes against the base of the destroyed deck to dislodge her grip on him, and slid another few hundred meters down. They both slid all the way down to the asphalt far below.
“Gh.”
They had reached the ground.
A short distance away, the girl silently rose to her feet.
The massive bird seemed to cover the sky overhead.
A dull, heavy scraping and groaning of metal came from above. The bird could no longer keep its balance, so its upper body pressed against the remaining bottom half of the cinema complex and it stopped as if leaning against the building for support.
Most likely, that massive bird was no longer usable.
But the aircraft cruisers were not Transcendent Mut Thebes’s only weapons. She took a quick look around at the bottom of the skirt-like five legs and her eyes stopped on an armored vehicle flipped over on the road. No, it only looked like one. A high pressure water weapon was crushed between the vehicle and the road.
That meant the vehicle was an anti-NBC decontamination vehicle.
Or was Mut Thebes focused on the revolving grenade launcher fallen next to it? If it was meant to distribute gas, it likely contained tear gas or emetic gas. Artillery only fired upon a single point, but these invisible chemicals would spread to cover an entire area. Was she going to use that to take out Kamijou? It was true gas was a more effective anti-personnel weapon than bullets.
And she had already had some success with the damage caused by the oxygen-deficient air.
She licked her lips and held out her palm.
“The vulture devours the flames enveloping it and devours the dead flesh. All is reborn anew. In other words, the Dead Phoenix.”
“!?”
There was a powerful flash of light.
But it didn’t come from Mut Thebes. A nearby streetlight was blown away by a tank gun at close range. The gun was attached to an 8-wheel mobile combat vehicle – a Predator Octopus. Only one person could have used the smart glasses to control that military vehicle which should have been abandoned in the underground parking garage.
And the shadows stretching across the road were influenced by the number and position of light sources.
So.
Blowing away the streetlight and spreading explosive flames in an unexpected direction caused the vehicle’s shadow to stretch in the opposite direction, as if fleeing from Mut Thebes. Same for the grenade launcher next to it. Now she couldn’t absorb the surrounding shadows and create her white versions.
Now an ordinary fist could reach her.
“What!?” groaned the brown girl.
This wasn’t over yet.
Kamijou clenched his teeth and his right fist.
And he thought of the person who had fought alongside him.
(Anna…Sprengel.)
Part 6[edit]
The small girl was crawling on the floor.
That position was impossible to imagine from her usual vicious pride.
She was more than 50m from the ground.
The half-destroyed cinema complex didn’t have any real floors left. Only some slight remnants of the floor still existed around the thick pillars and by the walls. Anna was crawling along that narrow space, meaning she had nowhere to go and no way to go back.
“Kh.”
Maybe she couldn’t defeat Alice Anotherbible’s power. The amount of power alone was extraordinary.
Maybe she couldn’t escape the Shrink Drink.
Maybe she was doomed to die.
Without ever finding the king she sought.
“But…”
She refused to give up without at least trying first.
Those two had done nothing wrong. They had not ignored her explanations and they had not impatiently skipped through the text. They hadn’t made any of those mistakes.
Anna was sick of watching people digging their own graves.
She was frustrated with this world where no one would follow her instructions.
But.
If someone who had followed her instructions and hadn’t done anything wrong were to fall, something even deeper than the core of her being would break.
(I…)
She was not a praiseworthy person.
She was a wicked woman through and through.
If Kingsford did everything the right way, then Miss Sprengel did everything the underhanded way.
This Anna had not lived a life she could be proud of.
But even so.
(I wanted to teach people. I wanted to be someone’s teacher.)
“I thought as much.”
She heard a voice.
Probably Aiwass’s.
“Finally decided to be honest with yourself? You did not want a king because you wanted someone to bind your wicked ways. You wanted to give this would-be king a proper education, didn’t you? And this time, you would keep trying no matter how many times you failed. Because you believed doing that would make the present world a better place, at least a little bit.”
Anna did not reply.
She wasn’t in a position where she could explain every little thing anyway.
The goal of the Rosicrucian magic cabal was to use mystical magical knowledge to eliminate the world’s sickness and restore it to a healthy state, just like a person took medicine to heal their illness.
She had simply been too powerful a medicine to take as is.
The world’s sickness had definitely existed.
In that case…
(I can’t die yet.)
Miss Sprengel caught something with her trembling hand’s fingertip: her smart glasses.
(I can’t die now that I know what I truly want!!)
It took all her strength just to place them on her face coated with gray dust. She clenched her teeth and focused like never before.
“Those innocent ones…sought out my teachings.”
It was fortunate the walls and floor had crumbled away and she was stranded partway up the building.
This gave her an excellent view of the world.
She could see the city that she knew would soon be destroyed but she still wanted to remain beautiful.
She wasn’t going to remain conscious for long.
She could tell.
Her vision was flickering in and out, but she managed to raise her voice just before it went dark for good.
“So keep your hands off of theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeem!!!”
She could see two people far below.
As well as an 8-wheel Predator Octopus.
Part 7[edit]
Kamijou Touma walked on wobbling legs.
He was at his limit thanks to the shockwaves pummeling his body and the oxygen-deficient air reaching his blood.
But he still managed to clench his right fist tight.
He thought about Aradia, goddess of witches, the moon, and the night. He thought about Miss Sprengel who had played a role in founding the Golden cabal. He thought about those two who weren’t physically with him, but were fighting alongside him all the same. The labels of human and Transcendent – of regular and irregular – didn’t matter here. Their desire to help each other intersected and laid out a powerful web of support.
Kamijou Touma was the same. He had no grand purpose, but he wouldn’t concede to anyone when it came to the strength of his feelings. If he didn’t win here, those two were in trouble. He would have to helplessly watch as they were killed for the grand plan of the great Transcendents.
He couldn’t let that happen.
He refused.
So a completely ordinary high school boy gritted his teeth and clenched his right fist tight.
Just like those two, he would force this to work.
Stronger. Stronger! Stronger!!
“It doesn’t matter how many weapons you have. That power is only an illusion.”
“Kh.”
“True strength comes from your friends, Mut Thebes!!!”
He caught the Transcendent’s cheekbone right when she finally turned his way.
Kamijou Touma swung his right fist with his full weight behind it.
