Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Epilogue
Epilogue: A Certain Truth and the Collapse of It All – Black_Humor.[edit]
It was his own groan that did it.
Kamijou Touma’s mind was shaken and he awoke in a bed.
He was in the hospital.
“Honestly. Why are you making me save you, fool?”
He heard a sulking voice.
A little wicked woman sat next to him in the visitor’s chair, something inserted into the inside of her elbow. Blood was gathering in a bag through a tube. Apparently she had given her own blood to save Kamijou from the massive blood loss of cutting off his own arm.
That was Anna Sprengel.
He wasn’t dreaming.
He hadn’t relied on Alice’s ridiculous power.
He had poured in all the strength a human had and even prepared himself for death to finally achieve this little miracle.
This was what he had gritted his teeth all this time to see.
“…I see.”
The transfusion tube descending from the stand led to Kamijou’s right arm. The arm he had supposedly lost was now attached to his shoulder like usual.
He still couldn’t get up, but he somehow managed to move his terribly dry mouth.
“How long?”
“It’s just about midnight.”
“What happened to the others?”
“They died.”
Those were icy words.
But it didn’t end there.
“You were right to hold onto Good, Old Mary and her resurrection right up until the end. If you had forced her to sacrifice herself, you would be cleaning up after a tragedy right about now.”
He wasn’t sure if he could say this was a good thing.
But at the very least, it wasn’t the end.
Misaka Mikoto, Witch Goddess Aradia, and everyone else involved in the hospital battle must have been revived. That resurrection only reverted the dead body to the moment of death, allowing an attempt at CPR. That meant there had to have been restrictions and the possibility of failure, so he was glad to hear they had overcome all of that. The large hospital would have had plenty of blood and iron supplements to go around.
“Districts 12, 23, 18, and 7 were freed from the yellow Citrinitas sand. And just like in Los Angeles, there is nothing for you to worry about, fool.”
If possible, he wanted to add someone else to the list.
But…
“Alice won’t be so simple.”
“…”
“Good, Old Mary is a regular Transcendent, so she cannot interfere with an irregular one like Alice Anotherbible who has far surpassed the usual bounds of the category. If she is dead, there is no overturning that. Like it or not, the simple hierarchy prevents an ordinary Transcendent from changing that.”
“I see,” was all Kamijou could say, releasing the breath remaining in his lungs.
He would have to accept that goodbye.
Alice Anotherbible was dead. He hadn’t reduced the number of losses to zero.
But the tragedy had been stopped there.
He had settled things with Christian Rosencreutz.
He knew this was only the selfish idea of a survivor, but he felt Alice would have wanted it to end this way.
Then Anna Sprengel asked a question.
“Why?”
“?”
“Why did you save me, fool?”
Her tone seemed to point out that her death would have meant the end of all the calamity starting with the rise of R&C Occultics.
His answer was obvious.
“I wasn’t risking my life to determine the truth and name the culprit.”
“I brought suffering to so many. And that includes you.”
“That means we’re the ones that get to choose to forgive you for it.”
“I am nothing but a villain.”
“That’s no reason to let you die.”
“I chose to let the Shrink Drink hit me. I was prepared to die.”
“But I never said I would just let that happen.”
He didn’t hesitate.
He didn’t even need to think about it. The words felt so natural on his lips. Like they were leaving his mouth before they even reached his mind.
That was what it meant to do the right thing.
You didn’t need to rack your brains working out what was right. You didn’t need to seek confirmation or prove it. You didn’t need to dress it up in fancy words or figure out how to make it look good.
Of course someone who thought about it first would have trouble reaching an answer.
Eventually, Anna Sprengel lowered her head and presented one more idea.
“You could have ended this so much sooner and easier if I had died.”
“Not on your life, Anna Sprengel.”
He didn’t hesitate.
He felt something soft.
While Kamijou lay on the bed, the little wicked woman had pressed her forehead against the center of his chest.
She sobbed.
And she couldn’t get any more words out.
In the end, that was the answer.
Anna Sprengel had created a giant IT company that encompassed both science and magic, she had stirred up trouble across the world, and she had carried out all sorts of evil deeds. But before meeting this boy, had she had anyone she could speak her mind to?
“You don’t need a king.”
Kamijou forced his still stiff and awkward body to move and rubbed Anna’s head.
She did not disappear at the touch of his right hand.
That proved she really was alive.
“There are larger umbrellas to protect you in this world. So many reliable people will risk their lives to fight for you. So I promise you, Anna Sprengel, you do not need to wander this world searching for some nonexistent king.”
At the same time, he confirmed that he could feel his own right hand.
It was definitely there.
He only vaguely remembered when his shadow had flickered like a dying fluorescent light and his existence was being gradually dragged into illusion. Had he not been conscious enough for the memories to be created properly, or had he touched on such a great taboo that his brain refused to access the memories? Either way, he knew one thing: that was a direct path to death. For him and for his opponent. It was the path of rejection that ensured someone would be left on the battlefield. It was a greedy antlion pit that swallowed up all life, both enemy and ally.
What would have happened had Good, Old Mary not been there?
How many people would have been lost during that one night?
“…”
He would never do that again.
Never again would he choose to throw out his own life and the lives of others.
He would never give up on his humanity and turn to illusion instead.
But.
He was still glad he had done everything he could to save Anna Sprengel.
There was a definite moment when he let himself think that too.
The hospital door was cracked open
Two girls had lost their chance to knock and had ended up listening in.
“What do we do about this, Misaka-saaan?”
“Don’t ask me.”
Christian Rosencreutz had been an extremely formidable foe. It was still hard to believe they had safely settled things with that monster. That they had was a cause for celebration, but that didn’t address what they should do about Anna Sprengel and her many evil deeds.
Misaka Mikoto thought Anna deserved to be punished.
That was her honest opinion.
Not for the sake of the world or the people who lived there.
This was nothing so grand.
For her, it was the simple fact that the boy she knew so well had nearly been killed.
But…
“He’s forgiven her before we can even have our say.”
“Anything we do now would be the super kind of fluous, wouldn’t it?”
Something else was underway as well.
It was midnight, marking the beginning of January 6.
“Was it over here?”
A nun in a pure white habit walked to District 12 with a little Magic God on her shoulder.
Their focus had been different from the start.
When the chaos of battle split everyone up, Index and Othinus had intentionally left the battle line. Christian Rosencreutz was a powerful magician whose spells were a mystery even with the knowledge of an entire library of grimoires to draw on.
Which was why they had felt a strong need to carefully observe him and divulge a weakness.
Index was specialized for that role in the first place.
…Kamijou and the others had ended the fight in a rather forceful way before these two could figure out Rosencreutz’s spells, but coincidence had worked in their favor there.
They had successfully seen what happened to CRC after he broke through the hospital wall and flew off like a shooting star.
Othinus rushed Index from atop her shoulder.
“Hurry. It’s already been several hours. If he can still move, he might decide to retreat. This is all for naught if he manages to recover his strength and returns for a rematch.”
“I know that,” snapped Index, still facing forward. With an expression she would never show in front of Kamijou. “That was clearly not a battle Touma should have won. If he’s forced to fight something like that again, there’s no way he survives.”
And they found him.
It was hard to miss. The asphalt was broken and torn up in one spot. Something stirred at the very center.
“Hee.”
It was Christian Rosencreutz.
He was still alive.
“Hee hah. This is not over. This old man’s passions have not been extinguished. So I have no reason to stop. And I have found it. The Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal, the ones who created this body, are not who will obstruct this old man’s curiosity. There is only one. Just one pathetic life not even spoken of in historyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!”
“I’ll do it,” coldly stated the 15cm god, despite the great discrepancy in heights. “I’m a war god, so I’m used to taking lives. Grimoire Library, you keep your hands clean. That would be best for my understander.”
CRC’s head turned their way.
What did they look like to that ugly young man who could only view the world through his passions?
“You would try to stop me?”
“?”
“No matter how torn my flesh and broken my bones, taking two lives is a simple task. Shall I take them as a souvenir? Not that you have any say in the matter!!”
“No, no that…”
For some reason, Othinus was no longer looking at CRC.
To the very end, he didn’t understand why.
Because the 15cm god had given up on conversing with him.
“Whatever. It’s not like saving you would accomplish anything.”
There was a sticky tearing sound.
Again, Index didn’t understand.
She had more than 103,000 grimoires in her head, but she still couldn’t explain what had just happened before her eyes.
A large chunk had been taken from the side of CRC’s neck.
“Eh? Uh?”
His grunts of surprise were disturbingly wet.
If not even Index understood, there was no way CRC could know what had happened to him.
The answer was a small hand.
The child’s hand slowly opened and closed in empty air, as if tearing off a piece of soft bread.
“Gbwah!? Eh? Huh? What happened to…this old man!!?”
The pain must have caught up to him because Christian Rosencreutz held a hand to the side of his neck and raised his bloody voice. The dark red liquid continued to flow out from between his fingers. And from his mouth. Where was the blood coming from and where was the flow connected? It was a frightening thing to imagine.
He received no mercy.
He slipped on his own blood and fell to the filthy ground where he found someone peering down at him. Someone very small. She had been short to begin with, but she was even shorter due to the lack of anything above her neck.
He recognized her.
There was only one person this could be.
Alice Anotherbible.
That little headless corpse stood firm on her two legs.
A dark figure stood next to her.
The young butler wore a tailcoat and held a sword cane.
He did not speak a word.
H. T. Trismegistus was entirely unchanged, still serving his master as common sense dictated, so he must not have felt any particular need to speak.
Only that butler remained dedicated.
He was a true Transcendent in that he had not set one foot outside his own salvation conditions.
“Why?”
The pain vanished once more within CRC.
A much greater question had numbed his entire brain.
Or maybe it was the common fear.
“Yes, this old man made use of her body. I made her dead flesh rise again to launch a surprise attack on Anna Kingsford! But how is this possible!? Why would she get back up again now!? That spell does not last forever. Rigor mortis should have faded away and decomposition should have begun by now!!”
“Stop.”
That word was not directed at Alice or at Rosencreutz.
Othinus had stopped Index from thoughtlessly rushing in.
That calamity was already over.
So do not get yourself involved.
“You are looking at this the wrong way around. You completely killed Alice Anotherbible? So what? We don’t even know for sure if Alice is really human. She could be a tarot deck or the result of someone’s special right hand parting with them. You should have been more thorough and made sure her body couldn’t resume moving after death – by hanging her corpse from a tree, by skewering her and lifting her high into the air, or whatever else.”
“…”
“Good, Old Mary is one of the lesser Transcendents and she can resurrect people. So why are you surprised to learn that Alice Anotherbible, a greater and highly irregular Transcendent, has a more powerful version of the spell? Good, Old Mary is out of options if she is the one to die, but maybe Alice can absorb power from a ley line or gather Telesma to activate her magic and revive herself after death.”
“……………………………………………………………………………………………”
Rosencreutz couldn’t do anything.
Death loomed over him, but he was rooted to the spot. Even though each movement of the little hand produced a disturbing sound while more of his body was torn away.
So.
He couldn’t stop the movement of the headless corpse.
The incomplete vocal cords vibrated.
He should have stopped this immediately.
“…Ah…”
“?”
“The man always…resented it.”
It was like the beginning of a storybook.
The words were spoken in the smooth, gentle tone of a mother reading to her small child.
“He resented his own creation. He resented that a legend which should have been laughed off as an obvious lie instead gained a life of its own. So he tried to put a stop to it and reject it. He wanted to make it nothing more than a joke. But by that time, too many people had come to truly believe in that legend. So no one believed what he said.”
However, the actual story being told was a terribly cruel one.
CRC stared blankly, forgetting all about the destruction of his body.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed.
It was more like the shock was so great his mind had gone blank.
“Eventually, the pitiable man’s words were entirely ignored. And as time passed, knowledge of him faded until he was entirely forgotten. Why? Because that was more convenient for the people of the world. Because no one cared anymore if their truth was in fact an obvious lie. So the poor man resented it all the more. He resented the foolish people who refused to listen to him. But more than anything, he resented that the character he created had gained eternal fame while he had vanished into obscurity.”
Why?
Why did she know this!?
(Is she reading this from the pieces of my body she is tearing away? Like a potter checking the broken fragments in the kiln to see what went wrong!?)
“So to give his character a bad name…”
“Stop. Wait…”
“…he chose to become his character.”
“Shut your mouth. Right this instant!!”
She did not stop.
Something sharper than any blade stabbed deep into Christian Rosencreutz’s chest.
No…
“Johann Valentin Andreae. The foolish ordinary man who created the fictional Rosicrucian legend and was crushed by the truth that came from that fiction. Oh, how tragic. But now the self-debased clown’s mask has been stripped away and it all comes to an end.”
There was smoke.
Strange, unhealthy-looking smoke much like that created from chemicals or acid.
He screamed.
And when the smoke cleared, it did not reveal a silver young man.
He was now a wrinkly and unkempt old man who was nothing but skin and bones. All charisma had been stripped away.
This was his true identity.
He was an author who had so loathed his own fictional creation he had chosen to roleplay that character and carry out enough contemptible actions that the entire world would be disillusioned. That ugly nature was on display here.
“This explains why the supposed founder of Rosicrucianism was so intent on killing Anna Sprengel. His stated objective of slaughtering the Transcendents was only camouflage to disguise his weak will. Johann only wanted to destroy CRC and everything that had built that nonexistent man’s legend.”
“Ahhhh!!”
Collapsed and lying on the ground, the wrinkly old man still raised his empty palm.
This action was clearly driven by fear, not passion or playfulness.
The air was compressed.
Kamijou Touma had already proven this was no more than a projectile attack.
But.
“I…don’t believe it,” muttered Rosencreutz.
The headless girl hadn’t moved a finger. She hadn’t dignified him with any kind of response. Instead, a cricket bat had flown in and blocked the bullet on its own. It resembled black coal the size of a golf ball, but its surface shined with a strange luster.
This was the truth of it.
“Diamond.”
This had one-shotted Kamijou despite his special right arm.
This had injured Good, Old Mary.
This had tossed aside Aleister in the hospital.
“All you did was cling to old legends. Your magic was a rehash of St. Germain. A certain right hand failed to negate it because the diamond crystal is constantly growing too quickly to be fully negated.”
To those in the know, that may have reminded them of the Innocentius spell. Yes, it was not impossible to force through Imagine Breaker with pure magic.
Forcing the Anti-Skill officer to count on his fingers was also an application of that carbon-controlling spell. There was nothing unknown about CRC. It could all be explained using the Rosicrucian St. Germain.
“Thinking back, something about what my understander said seemed off from the start,” spat 15cm Othinus on Index’s shoulder.
When Kamijou Touma had first clashed with Rosencreutz, that boy had been easily defeated.
But why had CRC started by destroying the Shrink Drink?
That spiritual item was only effective against the Transcendents who took on roles to perform, so the reborn Christian Rosencreutz shouldn’t have had anything to fear from it.
So.
If Rosencreutz feared the Shrink Drink, he too had to be a fake playing a role.
That also explained why Index and her vast knowledge had failed to predict Christian Rosencreutz’s actions and thoughts.
Because he wasn’t CRC.
The knowledge contained in the grimoire library was not actually flawed or incomplete. She was never going to find the correct countermeasure if she was searching the wrong bookcase.
“This is just sad,” muttered Othinus.
CRC had frequently said magic was nothing but a boring illusion.
And there had been a faction within the Golden cabal that claimed magic was not something used to influence the physical world – it was ultimately something to enrichen your own soul.
So.
Had he been trying to enrichen his soul by misrepresenting himself and ruining the reputation of the fictional character? He was like a self-hater. He displayed the world’s most unproductive form of malice.
“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ends with it all being a dream. Alice wakes up before the climactic trial can end and that’s it. That is world-famous nonsense story dressed up in countless illusions, but it is also a story that presents the reader with hard, unshakable reality right at the end. I will admit that is a side of Alice, but this seems a bit much.”
This may have been a sliver of the real reason the Transcendents had all feared Alice. She had the power to reveal your true nature, no matter how deep you tried to bury it.
And there was no need to deliver a finishing blow.
She had already torn out the side of his neck.
No, it was much more than that.
Pieces had been torn from all over his body. She had taken away pieces of his muscles, his fat, his blood vessels, and even his bones. The legendary Christian Rosencreutz may have been able to recover from that, but the grounded Johann Valentin Andreae would not be so lucky. The color drained from his face as the blood gushed from his wounds, his eyes rolled back in his head, and the old man lay unmoving on the cold ground.
Never to move again.
He was dead.
This unsightly fate left no room for resurrection or any other form of salvation. And…
“Cackle.”
Something happened.
It came from the headless girl. Because she had been so lovely and beautiful to begin with, the loss of the head, her most identifiable feature, gave her remains a horrifyingly grotesque sort of beauty.
The severed vocal cords vibrated in the blood-drained neck stump.
It took even the war god several seconds to realize this was laughter.
“Cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle cackle!!!”
There was no room for conversation here.
Had Alice Anotherbible always hidden this cruelty within her?
Or had the destruction of her head knocked some gears loose?
Either way, one thing was for sure.
“This isn’t over,” said Index.
The false CRC wasn’t the only one. They were faced with the magician who the grimoire library’s wisdom had truly failed to comprehend.
“None of this is over.”
What was Alice Anotherbible?
How was she defined?
That question had been there from the start and they had put it off until now.
And now that greatest of mysteries was truly baring its fangs.
