CHAPTER 6

Resumption and End of the Pursuit
Accidental_Firing.

1

“Gosh! Hime, now it’s your fault we completely lost sight of Kami!” Miss Komoe called out the girl next to her as she marched down a corner lined with student dormitories.

The black-haired girl wearing a gym uniform following her homeroom teacher, Aisa Himegami, had a clear cup of fruit juice in one hand. She spoke in a relaxed voice. “But Miss Komoe. The next event. It’s coming up soon.”

“Mgh! I know that. That’s why I was trying to quickly scold him and go back to the class!”

They were walking on a road close to the edge of School District 7. Aside from the park Kamijou and Stiyl had fled from earlier, there were shopping districts and dormitories nearby—truly a jumble of unrelated establishments. The buildings varied greatly in height as well, making the skyline look like a comb missing teeth.

This development was a little far away from school—or the stadiums, now—so most of the people walking around seemed to be looking for souvenirs. There were many guests looking curiously at street stalls selling key chains, jigsaw puzzles, and other things city residents wouldn’t pick up very often.

Miss Komoe sighed. “I understand. I’ll wait for Kami at the stadium. Anyway, Hime, you need to get a move on, too!”

“Okay,” answered Aisa Himegami, sipping the cup of juice.

Miss Komoe noticed her reply was reluctant and looked at her askance. “…Hime? Is there something on your mind? Your teacher will listen to whatever you have to say!”

“Not really…” Himegami took the cup from her lips. “Kamijou. He was acting a little strange. It was like. He wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Hmm. Now that you mention it, he did seem impatient about something. But that’s just because the next event is coming up soon, isn’t it?”

“…I don’t know. It felt like…” Himegami broke off.

This unique chill in the air—she’d felt it personally once before. It was the same as when one boy, with only his fist, had stood up to a murderous alchemist who had power on par with a god. That boy protected others for his own sake, was never picky about how he’d win, and in the end, having his right arm severed served only to spur him on to keep fighting for her.

But…“No. It must be my imagination.”

“??? What is?”

Himegami, looking down at the mystified face of Miss Komoe, wondered to herself, her thoughts vague. But. Just the Daihasei Festival events. I don’t think. They’d make him like that.

As she stood there with a distant expression, Miss Komoe craned her neck up to look at her instead. She tugged on the bottom of Himegami’s gym uniform shirt, saying, “The point is, are you interested in Kami?”

“” Himegami froze in place. The cup with the fruit juice almost fell out of her hand before she uncharacteristically panicked to catch it again. “You aren’t wrong. It’s true. But that way of saying it. Was very frank. And might cause misunderstandings.”

“Am I wrong?”

“…Then, Miss Komoe. Are you interested in Kamijou?”

Slip! Miss Komoe suddenly tripped over her own feet. Her cheerleading miniskirt almost flipped up, but it stopped at just the right point that Himegami couldn’t see anything. Her face shot up again. “Wh-what are you saying, Hime?! I have been entrusted with taking responsibility for Kami as his homeroom teacher! The only thing I’m i-i-i-interested in is Kami’s future, and if you say it so frankly then people might assume I mean something more complicated!”

“It’s the same thing.”

“…” Miss Komoe fell silent.

Aisa Himegami held out her free hand then grabbed her homeroom teacher’s slender wrist and pulled her back to her feet. After making sure Miss Komoe hadn’t hurt herself from the fall, her eyes narrowed just a little bit as if relieved. “But. It might be good. To avoid saying things that way. Kamijou and me. We’re not very close. If someone was to misunderstand. He would be the one troubled by it.”

“Hmm?” Miss Komoe’s expression changed ever so slightly. “Ha-ha. If that’s how you feel, that must be why you avoided bringing up the night parade in front of Kami. You were paying such close attention to the flier for it, too! For the students, the night parade might be just as fierce a battle as the daytime events.”

During the Daihasei Festival, they would use illumination and laser beams to hold a huge light show after dark. There was even a parade that marched all over Academy City after the events ended, with convertibles covered in electric decorations and stages moving along the road. Television stations sponsored the festival, too, so the parade was extremely big, and many performers as well as celebrities would be participating.

Normally, nighttime travel anywhere in the city was subject to regulations. The last trains and buses of the day even lined up with the last school hours. But even the Academy City General Board would recommend everyone to have fun on this one night. Thanks to that, it was very popular with the students, though it wasn’t on the same level as Christmas or Valentine’s Day.

But…

“I can’t,” Himegami said flatly. “Even if I suddenly invite him. He would be confused. We don’t go well together. So I don’t think. I should bring it up.” Her eyes narrowed just a tiny bit, which looked both kind and somehow dark at the same time.

Of course, Miss Komoe didn’t like it at all when her pupils made faces like that. “That’s not true! Kami might be surprised, but I think it would be because he’s happy. I think he’d be happy if you were smiling, and he’d be sad if you were crying. That’s the kind of kid he is. Even I understand something that simple.” She looked up at her pupil, who stood much taller than she did. “So if you think it will be fun and invite him, I’m sure he’ll be happy. And if it’s for the night parade, there’s no problem at all!”

Himegami blinked several times.

There was a slight hint of surprise in her usually impassive face.

Himegami shook the clear cup with the juice in it a little. Then she narrowed her eyes just a bit as she made a hint of a smile for Miss Komoe. “I won’t invite him. It won’t happen.”

“Mgh! Here I am trying to push forward the shy Hime! Why are you being so stubborn now?!”

“Anyway. I won’t invite him.”

Grrr!! Miss Komoe’s face turned red, and Aisa Himegami secretly relaxed.

2

Touma Kamijou and Stiyl Magnus were running through the city.

In stadiums here and there, a variety of matches had already begun, and they could hear the commentary coming from the speakers and big-screen televisions dotting the roads. Kamijou’s own school would be starting the All Boys’ Cavalry Battle qualifiers for group A soon, but unfortunately, he didn’t think he’d have time for it.

“Touma Kamijou! If we’re going to the bus stop, then this way is a shortcut!”

“No, if you look at the service schedules, we definitely want the subway! There are too many bus stops, so we’ll stop a bunch of times along the way. We’ll have to wait a little bit for the subway at the start, but once we’re on we’ll race straight past any bus!!”

They shouted back and forth as they turned a corner onto a small street and ran down a staircase to a subway station. They dashed through the station, which was a narrow hallway made of concrete. As they came to the automatic turnstiles blocking the way, Kamijou pressed his cell phone down on one. Nowadays, it wasn’t uncommon to see cell phones with ID authentication and payment functions in Academy City.

However, the turnstiles apparently worked only with Academy City–made cell phones. Stiyl cursed and headed for the ticket vending machine. The man probably hadn’t jumped the ticket gate because he decided carelessly getting into trouble here wasn’t a good idea. He fed a 1,000-yen bill into the machine, possibly because using change would have taken too long, then he snatched the ticket from it and his change and came back. Finally, he made it through the turnstiles.

The subway car was just about to leave the station. An electronic bell was ringing. Kamijou, who had arrived on the platform before Stiyl, dove inside. Stiyl, rushing after him, stuck his arm into the doors right before they closed completely. The doors opened again, their safety functions at work, and he forced his body to twist inside the car. A station attendant had been glaring at him, but it wasn’t the time to worry about that.

The doors clicked to a close and the car began to move.

Kamijou rested his back against the car’s door. “…That Seibusan Station Tsuchimikado talked about is in two stops…,” he said, looking at the electronic sign above the doors.

Stiyl, after putting the change into his wallet, promptly fished around in his clothing and took out a new box of cigarettes.

Kamijou sighed. “How many of them do you sneak around with, anyway?”

“Do you have to know?” he replied, unwilling to give an actual response, before taking out a cigarette with his mouth.

“Gyaah! Don’t do it on the train! If it detects smoke, it could just stop the whole thing!”

Stiyl clicked his tongue at the frantic warning, seeming truly bitter about it. Normally he never listened to what Kamijou had to say, but he knew they had to catch up to Oriana as soon as possible. Frowning deeply, he put the cigarette back in the box.

Not a moment later, he pulled another box out of his inside pocket. It was about the same size, but it was made of old wood. He took something out of it and started chewing it like gum. “Chewing tobacco,” he said.

“…You must really love tobacco a lot, huh?”

“The world without nicotine and tar is also referred to as hell. A virtuous, pious lamb such as myself must never allow himself to fall to hell.”

“I wish you’d take a look at your own life before saying stuff like that.”

As they were speaking, the car came to its first stop. Some people started to get on. Everyone new stared with surprise at Stiyl’s absurd outfit.

The door closed and the car started back up again. One stop to go.

“Now, then,” Oriana Thomson said in a light tone, standing on the streets of School District 5.

She could feel people’s eyes on her as they walked past. Many attendees to the Daihasei Festival were from abroad, so a blond-haired, blue-eyed person wasn’t too unusual. However, they likely paid close attention to her attractive body and the clothes that emphasized it. It was said this nation had joined others in clothing designs becoming more liberating over the past ten years, but a long, vertically torn skirt that gave no effort to conceal the bare legs of a beautiful woman still fell into the category of “quite rare.” The fact that she needed a pareo as part of the outfit despite its not being a swimsuit already wasn’t normal.

But Oriana didn’t mind the attention too much.

She was almost unnaturally oblivious, considering she was on the run.

The clock says…it’ll probably take a little longer. Well, I’ll leave all that to Lidvy. I wonder what I should be doing in the meantime? Hmm.

She walked down the street, dragging the gazes of passersby along with her as she went. Her gait was relaxed—and unaware of the fact that her pursuers had their eyes on her.

The train stopped again. It was the second stop. They’d arrived at Seibusan Station, their goal.

As soon as the doors parted, Kamijou and Stiyl dove out onto the platform and headed straight for the nearby exit. Stiyl spat his chewing tobacco into a garbage can on the way and shouted, “Gah! Where’s Tsuchimikado? Without him, we can’t set up Four Ways to Truth and search for her!!” As he spoke, he flipped open his cell phone. They were underground, but there must have been an antenna base nearby, because his call got through easily. “Tsuchimikado!!”

“Nya~. Sorry, I’m on a bus, close to the station…But the roads around here are marked off for a 10K course. They changed the schedule and moved it up. The bus is totally stuck.”

Stiyl didn’t bother to hide his frustration. “How far away are you?!”

“If I get off and run, it’s about ten minutes.”

That’s not good, thought Kamijou. Three minutes after spotting Oriana, five more minutes to get to this station—if they had to wait another ten minutes before setting up the search spell, who knew how far she would have moved? He remembered Tsuchimikado telling him the range of the spell to find Oriana, Four Ways to Truth, was three kilometers. And if Oriana noticed them, she could get far away enough, too.

Tsuchimikado must have known that. His next words were bitter. “Stiyl. Did you memorize the Four Ways to Truth pattern I made?”

“Nope.”

“Do you think you could draw it if I gave you directions over the phone?”

“Don’t think so. I could imitate the spell’s construction all I want, but I won’t understand a bit of the theory behind it. I don’t know anything about eastern formulas. And the west and east deal with perceiving the area you used for Four Ways to Truth and the veins flowing through the space. I’m not her, after all. Unless you were going to teach me everything about everything, from basic Onmyou ideas to its essence, over the phone?”

“…What western-style search spells do you have, anyway?”

“If I had any, I wouldn’t be relying on you. It’s completely outside my expertise.”

“I see…Should have seen that one coming, nya~.”

There was a loud static noise, like he’d sighed bitterly into the microphone.

After just a moment of worry, he said:

“All right. I’ll activate Four Ways to Truth from here for ya.”

The declaration startled Kamijou.

“What? You’re only ten minutes away. That’s not enough for a fatal measurement mistake. It’s a better plan to do things here instead of taking up the time to get to the station. Oriana could be using a subway or self-driving bus, too, after all, nya~. We should get the search done sooner rather than later.”

Before Kamijou could say anything, Tsuchimikado wrapped up the conversation.

“I’ll give you the spell results over the phone, nya~. Stiyl, go with Kammy to chase Oriana and apprehend her. The Croce di Pietro might be in Lidvia’s hands, not hers. If possible, I’d like you to capture her alive.”

“Wa…” After hearing all that, Kamijou couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Wait, Tsuchimikado! Are you gonna be all right using more magic?!”

Motoharu Tsuchimikado was unable to use sorcery. More accurately, he could use it, but if he did, parts of his body would blow up. The reason was that he was not only a sorcerer but also an esper. Espers had different physical makeup than normal people, so if he used magic—which was created for normal people—his body would respond by rejecting it.

He couldn’t possibly not know that. In fact, he’d just gotten bloodied after using one spell earlier today. And yet he still said he would use Four Ways to Truth. Even though triggering it twice meant he’d be risking death.

But there was no response to Kamijou’s fears. Not from Tsuchimikado, of course, and not from Stiyl.

In fact, Stiyl spoke into the cell phone, as if to bar him from saying any more. “…You’re all right with this?”

“I dunno why you’re asking me, nya? I’m a sorcerer. Say what you like, but that means I’m an expert on magic. Oh, and Kammy, I’ll hear your complaints from the hospital bed. Bring me a melon and some apples as a visiting gift, nya~.”

Before he could shout Tsuchimikado, the phone went silent. Stiyl stowed it back in his breast pocket, saying, “Hmm. The next time we get a call from him will be after Four Ways to Truth is active. If you don’t want to let his determination go to waste, then stop thinking about unnecessary things, Touma Kamijou.”

“Shit!!” Kamijou couldn’t help but slam a fist into the concrete wall.

“And stop doing unnecessary things,” muttered Stiyl, annoyed, taking a new cigarette out of his inside pocket.

Sure enough, his phone vibrated a minute later. The number was Motoharu Tsuchimikado’s. He was calling to tell them he’d gone somewhere deserted and activated Four Ways to Truth.

Suddenly, Oriana’s shoulders gave a jump.

Ah…! I see—the exact same pattern as the spell they used before. Maybe they’re doing it out of spite, since I can’t use any spell more than once, she thought to herself as she walked down the middle of a road in School District 5.

The enemy’s spell was trying to trace Oriana’s position using one of the flash cards from her ring she’d left behind—or more accurately, one of the world’s smallest unstable “original grimoires,” which resembled haiku that she wrote down specifically for each situation.

The original copy of a grimoire fundamentally didn’t rely on a person’s mana. Instead, it was a self-activating magic circle that drew trace amounts of energy leaking from the chimyaku (earthlines) and ryuumyaku (dragonlines) present in the area.

However, Oriana’s were set up so that triggering the unstable grimoires and then self-destructing them could control the spells’ activation and deactivation. Oriana needed her own mana for that, and because the pages were endowed with the ability to detect her commands, they could trace that back to her and find her.

Which meant…My little pages…I wonder what they’re calling them? Anyway, the pages and my mana are connected, so if they start fooling around with the pages, I’ll notice something strange is going on.

She slightly quickened her pace. There was sorcery out there that ignored the barriers of distance. Attacks that couldn’t be evaded no matter where in the world someone ran were extremely sought-after, especially for assassination purposes.

But…This one isn’t like that, is it?

When she’d been about to go up in flames with the bus, her pursuers seemed to be extremely afraid of her getting far away from them. If their spell ignored physical distance and could search the entire world, they could take their time in getting to her.

Which means the right plan is to walk far away…But oh my, am I in a bind. What direction should I go in, and how far should I go?

Oriana wondered about it, continuing on her way, ever forward. Until now she’d been blending in to the crowds, but now she seemed to be overtaking them.

Now, let’s see…How should I go about this? she thought, looking at the blue sky dotted with blimps.

Kamijou and Stiyl dashed up the stairs from underground and burst out of the subway station exit.

Unlike School District 7, where Kamijou lived, District 5 had a lot of universities and vocational schools. Many buildings stood side by side, and despite the disorderly impression it gave that closely resembled other districts, the styles of clothing stores and restaurants felt more mature to him. Being a high school student, he felt like there was a slightly inaccessible air about them. It was like he’d suddenly been tossed into an orchestra’s concert hall, one that was world-famous but he personally didn’t have any interest in.

But it wasn’t the time to worry about things like that. Kamijou and Stiyl ran full speed through the chic development as if clipping through the air itself. The cell phone in Stiyl’s hands was telling them where they needed to go—in a way that was literally costing someone’s life.

“…Oriana…noticed. She started moving differently…Right now she’s headed…northwest. She’s between three hundred and five hundred meters away…Wait a bit, and I’ll narrow it down for ya…”

His voice was going in and out, and it wasn’t because of bad reception. On the other side of the phone, Tsuchimikado was probably covered in blood, continuing to cast the spell despite intense pain.

Stiyl, slightly out of breath, said, “Five hundred…seems close, but that’s rather far to chase her down then capture her. Just to be sure, you can’t use your Red Style artillery attack, can you?”

Red Style referred to the flame sorcery Tsuchimikado used to attack from long distances. He’d used it once before to deliver a precise blast to Kamijou’s family’s house to blow it to smithereens.

“No good, nya…I’d have to stop Four Ways to Truth and focus on Red Style. But Oriana’s gonna keep running, so I won’t have her latest position. Gotta be honest here—my accuracy would go way down.”

“And we can’t make Tsuchimikado go through any more than this anyway!” shouted Kamijou as they ran, but Stiyl just gave him an irritated glance.

With his cigarette wiggling at the corner of his mouth, he said, “Four Ways to Truth is effective out to about three kilometers. Another twenty-five hundred and she’s out. At this point we need to get to her no matter what we make anyone go through.”

“I know that, but…!!” As they shouted at each other, they made their way down the sidewalk of a major road in one spurt. They turned onto a small side street, rounded the corner, then burst out onto another broad street. They darted up a pedestrian bridge staircase and down the other side.

“…Got…a response…From Kammy’s position…she’s still going northwest…She’s between three hundred and nine and four hundred and thirty-three meters away…It looks like…she’s trying to go straight and throw off pursuit, nya…Hurry up—only seventeen hundred meters until she’s out of range…”

As Kamijou ran, he grabbed—with the intensity of a marathon runner grabbing a bottle of water—one of the thick Daihasei Festival pamphlets Judgment provided for free. He hastily searched for the page with the map of District 5 on it.

“Between three hundred and nine and four hundred and thirty-three meters to the northwest…Ack!”

He’d been running while looking down at the pamphlet, so he nearly crashed into an oil drum–shaped security robot puttering along the sidewalk. Kamijou frantically avoided it, and he heard the robot start making a high-pitched siren noise.

“Could this be it…? About eight hundred meters from here, there’s a monorail station. It goes on a loop around District 5. If she gets on here, she’ll move three kilometers away no problem!!”

Eight hundred meters from here, which meant there was only four hundred or five hundred meters to go for Oriana, since she was ahead. Given the time to buy a ticket and a monorail to get there, how many minutes did they have left? With all the extra temporary service the monorails had during the Daihasei Festival, there might be even less than two minutes’ wait per car.

But suddenly, from the other end of the phone, Tsuchimikado started saying something strange. “No, wait…Oriana suddenly changed direction.” He heard the sound of paper flipping. Maybe he was looking at his own technique and the festival pamphlet in turn. “She’s gone off at a right angle from the most direct route toward that monorail…That isn’t where she’s going…!! No, wait—suddenly she’s going fast…?!”

What? Kamijou frowned as he ran. Next to him, Stiyl, too, seemed to be listening carefully to the exchange from the cell phone in his hand. The clamor of people was about them, and despite their own rushed footfalls and fairly heavy breathing, Kamijou’s ears detected a strange, deathly silence.

The phone was quiet. Then he heard a dry sound, like a finger rubbing the ground. Maybe he was operating the spell. The dull noise persisted for a while, distorting his sense of time.

“Where the hell is she going…Ow! Shit, not now…”

It seemed like the pain in Tsuchimikado’s body was mounting as he continued to force himself to use the spell. Kamijou thoughtlessly tried to call out to him, but he was preempted.

“I’m…fine, Kammy…I’ll get a read on her…real fast…Wait…no, that can’t be…”

There was another dry sound over the phone as Tsuchimikado frantically did something.

“This route…Shit, so that’s it! Oriana, you bitch, you’re…!!”

As he shouted, a lot of jarring noises suddenly started coming over the phone. It sounded like someone was rubbing a cheese grater against the microphone. The unnatural sounds seemed to force them to lose their connection. As if the electromagnetic waves connecting them had been torn apart.

Kamijou panicked. Without Tsuchimikado’s navigation, they couldn’t determine where Oriana was going. They had been following her before, but now they could just be creating even more distance.

“What the hell? Hey, Stiyl, is your cell phone antenna okay?!”

“It wouldn’t just drop the call like that. Stop, Touma Kamijou.”

Stiyl suddenly grabbed the collar of Kamijou running next to him and pulled him to a stop. He was essentially being strangled, and his feet ground to a halt. Without much care for the hacking and coughing Kamijou, he said, “…She got us.”

Kamijou coughed hard. “Wh-what did she do, you idiot?!”

“Even if Oriana realized we were using the trace spell to follow her, she wouldn’t know how far she’d need to run. She can’t plan out where to go in this situation. So what should she do? She came up with a very simple answer.”

“Hey!”

Kamijou had a bad feeling about this. Tsuchimikado’s shout before the phone had abruptly disconnected was strangely ringing in his ears.

“You guessed right, Touma Kamijou. In order to get away from the trace, Oriana Thomson decided not to get farther away but to get in close…Crushing Tsuchimikado, the center of the spell, is another one of her winning conditions.”

“Wait, so then she could be…?!”

“Could be, nothing. Ten to one Oriana’s going straight for Tsuchimikado.”

“Then we need to hurry! He’s forcing himself to use magic, and his body’s probably a mess! Where is he right now?!”

“There’s no way for me to know.” Stiyl responded to Kamijou’s shout with only the truth. And then he added, “That’s why we’re going to look for him.”

3

“Agh…gah…?!”

Motoharu Tsuchimikado hit the marble pathway, bouncing a few times and then falling into a roll. The impact wrenched the cell phone from his hand and it slammed into a nearby pillar.

At the moment, he was in an access passage between two underground shopping centers. It was about eight meters wide and stretched on for one hundred. Currently, another famous mall was connected right to it as a shortcut, so almost nobody, including workers, came through here. There was a line of thick pillars down the middle of the passage to separate one direction of traffic from the other, so he found blind spots in the security cameras in their shadows.

After getting gridlocked at the 10K route while riding the self-driving bus, he had hurried to find somewhere without people and deployed the search spell Four Ways to Truth, but then…

Squash. Someone stepped onto the Four Ways to Truth map he’d made on the ground and crushed it, sending it flying in all directions.

“Don’t lose focus just yet! You were using our little connection to find me, right? To think you’d forget I could still feel you from over that connection, too. A boy who thinks only of himself is going to irk his partner, you know.”

It was a joking tone of voice. She had enough strength to joke.

Oriana Thomson.

She’d changed out of the work uniform they’d seen her in before. Now she wore a deeply colored camisole and a long, lightly colored skirt cut into vertical strips. It meant nothing as a skirt, which was probably why she also had a pareo wrapped around her waist, the sort one would wear as part of a swimsuit. But her buoyant hair, her good looks, and figure that hit you upside the head like the sweetness from sticking a clump of sugar into your mouth—a mere change of clothes couldn’t hide those distinctive features.

Her hand played with a bundle of flash cards looped together by a slender metal ring. “Out of everyone I met today, you seem like the calmest. And the one who thinks most dangerously. So I’ve come to take you out. ”

“Shit…” Tsuchimikado stood up and pulled away from the pillars in the middle of the passage. As long as he didn’t know whether physical obstacles could protect him from her attacks, the walls and pillars were nothing but hindrances. “…If you would just hand us the Croce di Pietro, let us go find Lidvia, and politely put your hands up and surrender, that would be it. You really want to get your bones crushed and see what it’s like to live like a mollusk?”

“Ooh, even though your eyes say you don’t like hitting. But I’m okay with being a bit rougher. I’ll keep you company until your hips break.”

Despite her pleasant reply, she was starting to precisely measure her distance to Tsuchimikado. He mentally gritted his teeth in anger at the skillful position she took. Kammy and Stiyl…Beads of blood slowly oozed from spots on his temples, his sides, and his limbs. They weren’t from when Oriana hit him. It was his body rejecting the sorcery he’d been casting. Guess I can’t rely on them. They said it’d take ten minutes to get here on foot, but I didn’t tell them where I was exactly. I’m the one who chose a spot people wouldn’t think to come to, after all.

He lightly squeezed his fingers and let them go discreetly so Oriana wouldn’t notice. It was probably due to the magic causing havoc inside his body—his movements were stiff, like a marionette whose strings were about to break. You obviously can’t always be at full strength during combat…but in this situation, if I lose my grip for a moment, I could just fall over. This is extremely bad, he thought, showing impatience behind his cold, calculating thoughts.

But even so…

I…Wiping the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, Tsuchimikado looked ahead. I can’t retreat now.

His ten fingers, which felt slightly strange, tightened with strength. I made Stiyl eat the interception spell himself so we could track down Oriana. And I got Kammy involved in an incident he shouldn’t have had anything to do with so we could conveniently resolve our English Puritan problems.

Then, all at once, he clenched both his fists.

So I can’t retreat now. I led them onto this battlefield! I can’t just let myself go home without a scratch on me! It doesn’t matter how disadvantageous this situation is. Or how much blood covers me. Those idiots trusted this traitor and worked with him. Like hell I’m letting their feelings go to waste!!

With a strong glint of light in his eyes behind his sunglasses, he spoke.

“…Fallere825. The backstabbing blade—remember it. It’s my magic name.”

Oriana’s lips twisted up into a smile. She was a sorcerer herself, and so she understood his intent by naming himself.

“My name is Basis104—the one who carries the cornerstone…Now that I’ve announced myself, I’m going to win, no questions asked. I believe that kind of integrity is the polite response to your intentions.”

Tsuchimikado didn’t answer.

Oriana didn’t comment on his silence, either.

It was as if they were saying to start the fight as soon as possible was the greatest consideration they could show each other as enemies.

A moment later, the sorcerers clashed.

Motoharu Tsuchimikado closed the ten-meter distance all at once.

Oriana Thomson, meanwhile, seized one flash card by her mouth and bit it off the ring.

From thin air, many straw ropes appeared and wrapped themselves around her hand. The ropes looped and coiled around one another, covering her arm in the pattern of a crude cargo net, the kind you might see in an obstacle course.

However, before she could do anything with the net, Tsuchimikado swung his right fist.

He aimed it at her chest, anticipating that she’d block. Then once her arm was locked in place, he would follow with a left uppercut, a move prohibited in most situations, hoping to pulverize the arm she used to block. At the same time, he would slam his shoe soles on her feet as hard he could to break her toes. This tactic would destroy an arm and a foot in one fell swoop, taking away her mobility.

But…

As though she understood all that from the start, she pulled back her foot he had targeted and took Tsuchimikado’s first blow with only her arm. She used the fist’s impact and her lost balance to widen the distance between them, as though fading backward.

His true attack, his arm-breaking left, caught only air.

As her back continued toward the ground, she waved her netted right arm.

Wind blew.

Air flowed out of all the holes in the net like blown bubbles.

But it hadn’t created soap bubbles—each one of the air currents was a blade of explosive fire that could punch a hole in the side of a hill.

“!!”

The blades numbered close to twenty in all, and each one shot straight toward Tsuchimikado.

With the fan-shaped fusillade coming at him like a shotgun round, he dove to the side and pressed himself to the floor, which managed to save him from getting hit. Behind him, a bunch of pillars were smashed, some fluorescent lights in the ceiling were blown away, the building materials in the walls—along with the posters stuck to them—flapped around, and the marble floor began to come apart like it was being plowed.

Without standing up, Tsuchimikado pressed all four limbs to the floor then leaped at Oriana like a wild animal. He did so because they were already so close; getting up and running would have taken longer.

“Ah-ha-ha! Such a wild display of youth! I can’t say I hate that sort of thing!!”

Oriana was about to fall on her back onto the floor, so she couldn’t evade. Instead she flung out a leg to intercept him, but Tsuchimikado grabbed her ankle with his right hand and her calf with his left. If he wrenched her ankle at a right angle, he’d have only one to go.

“Shhh!!”

The instant Tsuchimikado inhaled before smashing her ankle, a moment before he had a perfect hold on her, Oriana used that ankle as a fulcrum to whip around her body. Her free foot came from the other direction and slammed into the side of Tsuchimikado’s face like a hammer, sending him flying away.

“Gah…ahh!!”

Tsuchimikado’s body slammed into the ground and rolled to the left. As Oriana got back up, she tore off another flash-card note with her mouth.

She unleashed from her hand a wall made of invisible force, which drew itself over Tsuchimikado as he rolled along the floor. His momentum changed, and as he expected to bounce back up into the air, his back instead slammed into the wall without bouncing off. He could hear terrible scraping sounds emanating from inside him, and he could taste blood in his mouth.

Damn…it…!

Oriana sent a bullet of light at him next, and he jumped to the side to dodge it. The sphere was white and about the size of a basketball. As it collided with the wall, it exploded, and the overpressure slammed Tsuchimikado to the floor once again.

Slowly, he got up from the floor of the passage.

He wiped the blood pooling on his lips with the back of his hand, thinking, It’s just by one beat, but…my movements are definitely duller…If I was in peak condition, I’d have already broken one or two of her bones by now…!

“Hmm? Is your personal style using the least amount of magic possible? Well, I don’t mean to start commenting on how others live their lives, but…if that’s true, you’ll die.”

After her unamused words, she put her soft lips on the corner of a flash card. At some point, her gaze had frozen over. “If this is your true skill, you can’t dodge my next attack. If this is the level of your determination in giving your magic name, then I don’t have any obligation to go along with this.”

It was like she was complaining that it was too soon to finish him off. It seemed to him as though she felt like she’d done so much studying for a test, only to see the questions were so easy they made all her hard work completely moot.

“…If you were expecting someone to help you after all this, you came ill-prepared. Even I’m capable of planning how to divide your forces. I have a barrier set up over this tunnel at this very moment. Nobody will come near, nobody will find anything strange, and nobody will know what’s happening in here. I’ve hidden the flow of mana and all magical arts, even taking precautions to ward against accidental outbreaks of any sixth sense from leading anyone in—even professional sorcerers can’t get close to here very easily.”

…At those words, Tsuchimikado looked up.

There was something wrong with what she’d just said. But his mind was weakened, and he couldn’t decide what it was. And even if there were contradictions in what she said, she was the enemy. It could just be false information to invite intimidation and chaos on his end.

“So I’d appreciate it if you’d let me break you now. You’ll regret having me give my magic name to someone with such weak determination so much, you’ll literally die.”

After she spoke, she crushed the flash card between her teeth with a single breath. As though she were pulling the pin out of a grenade.

…What do I do?

The card began to flutter down to the floor.

With how much damage I’ve taken, my body’s done for with the next spell. But even if I wanted to use Red Style, I don’t have the time to chant the spell!

As it touched the floor, a fallen steel pillar next to Oriana burst upward. The one-meter-thick pentagonal beam stabbed up toward the ceiling.

In that case, what would deal the most damage to Oriana…?! Shit, make it in time! Please be in time!!

Tsuchimikado took out a single folded paper from his bloody gym uniform. As he quickly weaved up the crumpled, twisted scrap like a precision instrument, he shouted, “Hey, you maggots drunk on peace! If you don’t wanna die, then wake up!! (Bring to me a signal to begin all! Along with twirling lights and piercing sounds!!)”

“You’re too late.”

As she spoke, the giant steel pillar shattered like an ice sculpture.

A storm of thousands, millions, billions of sharp fragments blanketed the width and height of the entire hallway, hurtling straight toward Motoharu Tsuchimikado. He thought this must be what it would be like to stand inside a giant cannon the moment it fired.

Whump!! The roar reached his ears a second later.

Be in ti!!

Before he could finish his plea…

…an obliterating wave of steel rushed through the passage behind him.

4

The entire passage had been destroyed.

Every pillar from where Oriana stood to the end of the hallway had been crushed. It seemed like they weren’t actually holding up the ceiling; they were no more than just decoration. The only thing the passage had avoided was a total collapse. The walls, ceiling, floor, and everything adorning them had been ripped apart like wrapping paper. Rough ground now showed through the flooring, broken apart as though it had been plowed. There wasn’t a flat place in sight. The ceiling tiles had all been ripped off, and water poured out of a broken pipe used for the sprinkler system.

“…”

Oriana’s eyes skimmed the disaster she had wrought. Did I break the surveillance cameras? Security might get a little tougher now.

The sorcerer she’d been fighting had immediately dove behind a pillar, and he’d apparently crouched down even farther to minimize the damage he took. But, of course, it wasn’t enough to protect him. Tsuchimikado lay facedown now, four scraps of metal protruding form his back. Each fragment was only a few centimeters long, but they were sharp as knives. To top it off, several chunks of the fallen pillars rested on top of his body. These were clumps of concrete as big as melons.

“I guess it’s over already.”

Oriana had been careful to keep casualties to a minimum, but that didn’t apply to someone who had given his magic name. Magic names were what every sorcerer strove for, and Oriana believed turning aside such a declaration was the most disrespect you could show to those involved with sorcery. To both the one who had been spurned and the one who spurned them.

That’s why Oriana didn’t like it.

She knew she’d eliminated the threat in a minimal amount of time and that she needed to get out of here posthaste, but ignoring her efficiency, she actually felt dissatisfied at having settled things so quickly and easily.

Anyway. Suppose I’ll get rid of the barrier around here and quickly escape. I do enjoy basking in the afterglow, but I suppose there’s no choice.

After concluding her irritated thoughts and casting them aside, she surveyed her surroundings. To dispel the barrier, she would need to use magic to create a certain type of signal, then send it to her unstable “original grimoire” and cause it to self-destruct.

But…

“…?”

Oriana’s expression morphed into one of suspicion. The only change in her face was a slight movement of her eyebrows, but that was all that was needed to express what she was feeling inside.

The barrier was already gone. But she hadn’t given the command.

What’s…going on here? Sure, it’s unstable, but it’s still an original grimoire. Pretty sure it can’t be broken without any magical interference. Does that mean his little friends are here…?

Oriana slowly checked both the front and back entrances. But there was nothing. Destroying a barrier meant telling the barrier’s owner you did so. Nobody could have surprised her from the beginning in this situation, so the usual practice would be to launch a lightning attack as soon as the barrier was destroyed…

The suspicion coloring her face deepened.

Suddenly, her thoughts arrived at another possibility.

“No…” She froze for a moment and then turned around. Her eyes fell to the sorcerer on the ground, pierced by four scraps of metal. At first, she thought he looked no different from before, but then she noticed something.

A single bird-shaped origami, covered in blood, had fallen from his hand.

I think he was trying to construct a spell as a last resort there…Are you telling me it was to destroy the barrier? But why? Why would he do something that futile and not defend against my attack?

It wasn’t like destroying the barrier would immediately cause Oriana to lose. It was just a small piece of insurance.

Which meant he was aiming for…

“It looks like…my hand’s got its own spell that can break stuff.”

The voice startled Oriana. The enemy she thought she’d sent to the grave along with his magic name wasn’t dead at all.

“You don’t look the type…I didn’t know you were into rougher stuff.”

Oriana’s needless retort made the fallen enemy magician’s lips turn up…

…into a smile—and a relaxed one at that.

He…

Motoharu Tsuchimikado moved his bloodstained lips and spoke in an amused way. “You said it yourself, Oriana Thomson. Nobody will know what happens inside the barrier. Y’see, that doesn’t quite work for me.”

“What are you…?” started Oriana before realizing it.

If you couldn’t beat an enemy alone, what was the first thing you’d think of? Calling a friend, obviously. Now that she knew what her enemy was thinking, she felt weary of it all. It was just too pathetic to cling to that.

“You’re so silly. Your allies—you mean the two who were tailing me before? They’re not a big enough threat for me to be afraid. I could take them both at once and not even be out of breath.”

“They’re not what I’m talking about.”

“What?” shot back Oriana reflexively. Right now, she had physically seen only three people.

But…

“What are you, a moron? We’re acting on behalf of our national religion, English Puritanism. Do you really think they’d send only three people here? Sure must be peaceful up there in that brain of yours. Maybe you should wash your hands of this sorcery business and take up being a florist or something. How many people do you think belong to Necessarius? We were always supposed to stay hidden. You think we’d show ourselves to the security forces of this peace-drunk nation?”

He’s bluffing, decided Oriana.

She hadn’t come here to sightsee. She and Lidvia had done their research beforehand. Leaving aside the Daihasei Festival’s detailed schedule, they had come here knowing that Academy City currently sat in the center, shielded by a delicate power balance between the science faction and sorcery faction.

While the festival was going on in the city, they couldn’t call in a bunch of sorcerers from only one particular group. If they did that, it would damage the relationship between the two sides. Their current plan to use the Croce di Pietro had been slipping through the gaps in that fragile equilibrium. Because of that, there could not be any irregularities like what Tsuchimikado was saying—especially if he was talking about the English Puritan Church, which maintained order among the sorcery factions.

That’s why Oriana could speak with confidence—though without realizing the tiny hint of unease she showed at listening to everything he was saying. “If that was true, I’d be in a spot, wouldn’t I? But that absolutely can’t be true. The Puritan Church and Academy City would never allow such a foolish plan.”

“Why should I have to ask for permission?”

“…”

“Did you forget my magic name? Thought I told you to remember it. Who do you think a backstabbing blade would backstab first? Who gives a shit about the Church’s situation? Or what’s convenient for Academy City? I’m not drunk on peace like them. No way I’d let dumb shit like that prevent me from winning.”

Oriana felt an unsettling silence coming down around them. She took a slow, deep breath.

“I’ll do anything to win. I’ll use anything that lets me hit a weak spot. If I’m going to stab you in the back, I’ll get behind you no matter what you do. Get a grip, Oriana Thomson. If I wanted to, I could have stopped as many of these metal scraps as you wanted to throw at me. But I can’t secure a sure victory like that. So I played an even better card. That’s all it is, yeah?”

“…Did you think I’d believe that? If you had so many friends, why would you be acting on your own? You should have wanted bodyguards and lookouts for that search spell you used before, too. And even if you didn’t, you at least wouldn’t be moving in groups of two.”

“If small talk’s what you’re into, then I’ll oblige you. But it’ll let me buy as much time as I want. As soon as the barrier went down, I sent out the signal. Won’t be too long now—she’s a serious one, you know. She took her magic name exactly to stop life-or-death situations like this one.”

Tsuchimikado slowly reached out with his bloody hand sprawled on the ground.

It came to a simple paper talisman. It was a small sheet of paper, colored and folded up into a shape you might see being sold as a protective charm at shrines. Eastern characters flowed down vertically through the middle. They looked less written in ink than branded on the paper.

“Tsukebumi Tamazusa—it looks like a Shinto protective charm at first glance, but this thing’s part of Onmyoudou. Originally an item for cursing someone. A Soul Arm for causing distant opponents to hallucinate and kill one another…but if you turn down the power on it, you can use it a little more peacefully.”

“Wait…A communication spell?!”

“Correct-a-mundo. Looks like a bag, right? There’s a wooden card inside with a person’s name on it. Real quaint, eh?” Tsuchimikado smirked. “Now then. Given the situation, who might I have contacted?” he asked slowly. Despite all the blood covering him, it seemed like he was harrying his prey. “You should have just kept on saying you were carrying around the Stab Sword. Now that I know you’re not, I can bring her into the fray no problem. Actually, without the Stab Sword here, there’s no reason she needs to be on standby. After all, her biggest weakness is gone now.”

Oriana’s lips began to dry without her realizing.

She’d heard of this.

There were fewer than twenty saints in the entire world and one stood with the English Puritan Church as a member of Necessarius. She had heard there was a sorcerer, a girl with immense power, who wielded a katana because she didn’t want anyone to die. Oriana Thomson was originally a British citizen, and she mainly worked around the London area. So she knew all about that saint. Oriana knew if they had an encounter, she’d lose instantly. She knew that the only things capable of beating that saint would be literal gods or angels.

“That’s right. Kaori Kanzaki.”

Oriana Thomson’s eyes sharpened slightly. She licked her slightly dry lips.

“It’s not really all that surprising given what’s at stake here, is it? We already know you’ve got the Croce di Pietro, not the Stab Sword, and she was at the center of a battle between the English Puritans, the Roman Orthodoxy, and Amakusa not ten days ago. Didn’t it occur to you that she might still be in Japan? Plus, Kanzaki has a personal acquaintance here in Academy City. She’s no more than a special guest, so even if she did get found out, it wouldn’t be an issue anyway.”

Tsuchimikado went on. “You probably don’t get it. Kaori Kanzaki’s got a personal debt to me. When she first came over to England, who do you think took care of her? Another Japanese person was the obvious choice to look after her. For me it was just a tiny little thing, but she was very attached to those conversations we had. If she knew what was going on, she’d come right away.”

Damn…Oriana’s mind went through several calculations.

Tsuchimikado watched her as though he’d been made fun of. “Whoops. Don’t go thinking about destroying Tsukebumi Tamazusa now. Frankly, it’s impossible. It’s basically an emergency button. Once I activate it and send the signal, its job’s over.”

As he spoke from his vantage point on the ground, he gave his words weight by taking the communication amulet he made himself and crumpling it up.

“…” Oriana tried to breathe a little more calmly.

She couldn’t quite figure out if this Kaori Kanzaki was actually coming here or not. Even if a saint was really on the way, she didn’t think she’d necessarily lose to her. If she came up with an effective tactic and went at it prepared to lose a limb or two, she was pretty sure she could kill a few saints at the cost of her own life. But that wouldn’t work. She couldn’t be preoccupied about winning or losing a simple personal battle—she had something much bigger to accomplish. She couldn’t let herself get hurt too badly.

Then…For now, she made her first choice: to immediately kill Tsuchimikado, the one using the search spell, and get out of there promptly—however…

“Shhhn!!” Tsuchimikado, still on the ground, used the last of his strength to pull a reinforcing bar out of the middle of the pile of rubble. Then he slammed it down onto the destroyed floor, instantly sending up a billowing curtain of gray dust.

She couldn’t see anything.

“!!” Oriana immediately launched a heel kick at the spot Tsuchimikado had been.

But the only feeling she got back was that of the hard floor.

He bought time to rally his strength?! It’s futile…!!

And now her first choice had been foiled. Her opponent could still fight, and if he was looking for a chance of a certain kill from within the dust screen, it could be a little troubling. Given the situation, she could send Tsuchimikado to his grave for sure, but now it would take a little longer. That meant there were two options.

One: Decide Kaori Kanzaki was not coming, and take down Tsuchimikado slowly and surgically.

Two: Decide Kaori Kanzaki was coming, and make a swift retreat, even if it meant leaving him here.

She could easily blow away the dust around her with a flash card. But if he saw that as a signal that the battle was starting, she would be stuck here until she killed him for good.

It wasn’t so much about which to choose…

…but that she regretted being forced into making the choice.

For now, the search spell is gone, along with my page. It would be absurd to get even more badly hurt playing around with a wounded boy…

With a single click of her tongue, Oriana Thomson ran toward the tunnel’s exit.

If he was telling the truth, then the English Puritan saint Kaori Kanzaki would be joining the battle. If so, she figured she should have made better use of the Stab Sword cover story. She could prepare a plan or tactics all she wanted, but a saint wasn’t something she could run into accidentally and walk away unharmed.

Of course…

…she had no intention of losing.

“Piece of shit…,” spat Tsuchimikado in spite of himself in the destroyed tunnel. He knew from the fact that Oriana hadn’t left a page spell as a parting gift that she’d left the area.

The dust curtain cleared.

Tsuchimikado had rolled a mere human’s width to the side of where Oriana had kicked. With all his wounds, moving that distance had been everything he could do. It meant that he had made a narrow escape, thanks to blocking Oriana’s vision, making her impatient, and taking away the calm she needed to discern if he was telling the truth.

“Tsukebumi Tamazusa, a communication spell to call on Kaori Kanzaki in times of need…”

He aimlessly looked up to the ceiling.

Then the sides of his mouth turned up in a self-deprecating grin.

“Wouldn’t that be nice, nya…”

Naturally, they didn’t have a single person in reserve. The only ones inside Academy City chasing down Oriana and Lidvia were Kamijou, Stiyl, and him.

He looked at the origami amulet he’d crumpled up.

You could look all you wanted—there was no protective amulet or Soul Arm anywhere in the world with such a foolish name, much less in Onmyoudou. He had figured Oriana wouldn’t know much about eastern magic anyway, so he had just folded the piece of paper arbitrarily. It had no magical properties, of course, nor was Kanzaki’s name written on a wooden card inside.

Tsukebumi and tamazusa both mean “love letter” to begin with…And how would a love letter be a curse? Though I guess a real deep love can be like a curse, nya~.

Earlier, Stiyl had mentioned tiredly that he had no clue how eastern spells worked, so he couldn’t use them alone. Tsuchimikado hadn’t thought the notion would help him here. In short, he had made a bet on the possibility that Oriana was ignorant of amulet construction in Onmyoudou, then brazenly showed her origami with random Chinese characters written all over it.

Unfortunately…

She believed it, which means she’s gonna be more careful now, nya. I doubt it ended up delaying their plans at all, though. Wish I could have gotten at least a scratch on her…Still on the ground, he stared down the ravaged tunnel. The magic circle’s broken. The page we had is gone. My cell phone’s busted, too. What should I start with, nya…? Don’t honestly think I could use Four Ways to Truth again. He tried to get up, sending a wave of pain through his body.

He mindlessly writhed for a moment, and then finally realized he didn’t have the stamina to get up anymore. His body was cold. And heavy. He could inhale, but he wasn’t getting enough oxygen.

First things first…

Tsuchimikado thought about the ability his body possessed—not as a sorcerer but as a member of Academy City.

His Level Zero ability, Auto Rebirth: a self-restorative ability that spread a thin membrane over torn blood vessels.

“…Guess I’ve gotta do something about this body of mine, nya…?”

5

Finally, they got a call from Motoharu Tsuchimikado. It was from a different number, so Stiyl had stared at the screen suspiciously at first. He must have called from a new phone.

After Stiyl heard what he had to say, he learned that Oriana had indeed attacked Tsuchimikado as he’d predicted. In the end, his cell phone—and the tracing spell Four Ways to Truth—had been destroyed beyond repair. He couldn’t use the spell a second time with the state his body was in, and more important, the page from Oriana’s flash cards that they needed to actually use the spell was gone, too.

“…” Tsuchimikado said he was fine, but if he was really okay, his magic circle wouldn’t have been absolutely wrecked like that. Above all, his frail voice conveyed his pain just by listening to it.

Stiyl spoke, cigarette wiggling around at the corner of his mouth. “So what do we do now? If we can’t use Four Ways to Truth anymore, we basically don’t know what direction to go in.”

“Yeah, nya…But the one thing I do know is…Oriana’s on her guard right now—she has misgivings…but there’s a high probability she’s getting away from here…For now, at least…it looks like my little bluff worked, nya~. Which means I don’t think she’s walking…She’s probably gonna take a bus, subway, train, or monorail line to its last stop…”

His voice was broken and intermittent, like he wasn’t breathing fully.

“Tsuchimikado’s in this tunnel now, right?” said Kamijou, opening the Daihasei Festival pamphlet to the page with the map of School District 5 on it. The closest thing to that tunnel was the subway whose line went from District 5 to the neighboring District 7.

“…Without any other guide, we’ll just have to follow that. If we can pinpoint which car she got on, we could search for her more efficiently, but…”

“But we don’t know that, so we’re gonna have to work for it. Anyway, let’s get a move on, Stiyl.”

“Nya…I’ll try…getting into the security again…If she’s too impatient to check where the cameras are now…that would be delightful, nya~.”

Each of the three spoke, and the phone conversation ended.

They then resumed their battle of pursuit, as though following exceedingly thin threads.

Oriana Thomson was in a subway car.

If I get off this car…

This subway line went from District 5 to the entrance of District 7. It wasn’t actually that great of a distance. If she wanted to get farther away, she’d need to transfer to a bus after that.

Oriana came up with a few ideas. Run as far away as I can? Watch and see what happens? Or lay a trap and see how they react? She was frustrated, but if Kaori Kanzaki really did enter the battle, then any poorly thought out plans would probably earn her an intense counterattack. At this point, I’d really like to take a breather and give this some thought.

She clicked her tongue while looking out at the unchanging underground scenery outside the window. Eventually, the car reached its last stop, the District 7 entrance.

As soon as the automatic doors opened, she leaped out onto the station platform. Then she ran up the stairs and aboveground, slipped past the ticket gates, and rushed outside all in one go.

Her next destination was a self-driving-bus stop not too far from the station. Academy City was still caught up in the festive mood of the events, and large numbers of people milled about the area. The streets were filled with parents with their children waving balloons or seniors come to see their grandchildren, placid faces one and all. But—Oriana wasn’t peaceable enough to take this as meaning it was safe.

She needed to follow some specific steps to ensure no assassins were present. I doubt I’d have to worry about anyone who gets caught by a simple theory like this, though. Whatever. Let’s get the annoying stuff out of the way now.

Looking around carefully, she entered a smaller side road slightly off the beaten path. There were tall buildings surrounding the narrow street, so none of the sun’s light got inside despite the cloudless sky, making it feel unpleasantly cold.

Oriana was entering an empty alley to see if any assassins were on her tail. Naturally, if anyone dashed into the alley after her, they would basically be announcing they were assassins. Any pursuers who realized this would have to come up with something really clever then. They could call up their allies and get them to head her off at the alley’s exits or use a charm of some sort for remote surveillance. Those were the minute movements she was looking for to see if anyone was tailing her.

We’re basically trying to outwit each other, but it really is a pain in the butt to have to think of another plan after your old one was figured out. Like Oriana, the assassins could possibly want to intentionally show her false signs of movement. They could have her think she’d evaded pursuit, then attack when her guard was down and capture her. For a smuggler like her in the sorcery world, these little games of cat-and-mouse were something she was very familiar with.

In any case, if she got any response, no matter how slight, that meant someone was tracking her. If there was no response, then there wasn’t. It was that simple.

She exhaled. The Croce di Pietro will take a little longer to set up. I wonder what I should do in the meantime. Oh, it would be fun to think up anti-Kanzaki spells! That sounds good. What would constitute “winning” against that saint in this case? Successfully running away? Successfully hiding out…? Or maybe just successfully killing her outright?

As she thought to herself, she overlooked something.

This road was already small, and yet there was another side road branching off.

Suddenly, someone ran out from around that corner.

“Hime, if we don’t take a shortcut, we’ll never make it to the next event—Eek!!”

“!!”

They collided.

A small girl, about the size of an elementary school kid, ran into Oriana’s stomach and bounced off. Then, the back of her head bumped into the girl she had come with, who had black hair and wore a gym uniform. Oriana immediately moved to bite off a flash card, but she stopped herself just barely before doing it. The person who had collided into her was only 135 centimeters tall, dressed in a cheerleading outfit.

The black-haired girl had accidentally dropped her cup of fruit juice from the impact of the short cheerleader in front. She made a tiny grunt as the cup’s entire contents spilled all over her gym uniform. The liquid that hit her chest dripped off it onto the smaller girl’s head, too.

The black-haired girl looked at her chest impassively and then at the girl who’d run into her. “Miss Komoe. Now you’ve done it.”

“I…I’m so sorry! But I’m soaking wet, too, so that means we’re even! Oh, are you okay, Miss?” the drenched girl asked worriedly, looking up at Oriana.

They…don’t look like sorcerers following me, decided Oriana, an easy guess based on their clothing and behavior. She gave them the bright smile she always kept on hand. “Yes, I’m perfectly fine. But I think I’m more worried about her. That seems a little too stimulating to show on a main road.”

“Oh no! Hime, you’re all wet and see-through now!”

“So are you, Miss Komoe. Less so in the chest, though.”

The cheerleader yelped and hurriedly covered her flat chest with her hands. After seeing her face go bright red, Oriana looked at the black-haired girl’s chest once again.

And then she noticed it.

On her chest.

Her short-sleeve T-shirt was completely see-through because of all the juice on it. She could easily see the pink underwear decorated with a green ribbon she had on under it.

But aside from that…

There was another thing visible inside her sheer gym uniform. It was like a necklace, hanging around her neck by a thin chain. The chain went inside her uniform. And attached to the bottom end of the chain was an inappropriately big, metallic—

Celtic cross with an English Puritan arrangement on its design.

Oriana had no idea what that cross was supposed to be for.

And she didn’t know what sort of ability the black-haired girl had.

But she was pretty sure about one thing.

A sorcerer from Necessarius?!

They certainly sold plenty of cross-shaped accessories in Academy City. Some children would wear them as earrings or necklaces without knowing the real meaning behind them. That wasn’t very unusual by itself.

However…

Roman Orthodox crosses were one thing—they were famous throughout the world. But an English Puritan–style cross? Japan didn’t even have a proper Puritan church in it. The very fact that she’d imported such a thing from England was abnormal to begin with. But a Soul Arm that functioned as a barrier? No normal person would have something like that. And to put the nail in the coffin, she knew exactly what that barrier’s name was.

English Puritanism’s…Walking Church?! She’s wearing a Soul Arm in the same vein as the one that index of prohibited books uses as protection?! This monster…!!

Her hand moved immediately.

Oriana brought the ring of flash cards to her mouth. She took one page between her teeth and then ripped it off. On the card’s surface were red letters spelling out SOIL SYMBOL in English. An unstable original grimoire came into existence, and with her mana, it activated a spell…

Krsshhh!!

A muffled sound tore through the air.

6

Kamijou and Stiyl exited the subway station and went aboveground.

The streets were bustling with people, and the heat showed no signs of receding. Kamijou quickly looked down at the Daihasei Festival pamphlet, wiping the sweat from his brow. “…I think the closest place to transfer is a bus station about three hundred meters north of here!”

“Three hundred…Urgh,” Stiyl said bitterly, taking out a new cigarette.

“But there’s, like, ten minutes until the next bus comes! We might make it if we hurry!”

As they talked, they broke into another run, weaving through the crowds. A little less than seven minutes separated them from Oriana. It was just barely enough time.

“If we can, we should try and capture Oriana, at least. We don’t have any hints as to where Lidvia Lorenzetti’s hiding!” shouted Stiyl as he cut through the wind, looking ahead.

The station was three hundred meters north, but in front of them was a large road going to the left and right; a cluster of mixed buildings prevented them from seeing any farther.

The pedestrian signal next to the overpass had just flickered green. Kamijou and Stiyl shot across the street toward the other end. The sidewalk they came to was even more packed than the previous one.

The row of multi-tenant buildings was like a giant wall. To get to their goal, the bus stop, they would need to weave between buildings and run through alleys unless they wanted to take a huge detour on the main road.

They searched for an alley to get past the wall of buildings as they ran down the sidewalk teeming with people.

“Do we seriously have no freaking hints?! Weren’t you just talking to someone on the phone before at the park?!”

Kamijou and Stiyl each twisted in a separate direction around an old lady in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Yeah. That was from London! They’re checking the British Library, but…”

They looked to and fro but couldn’t seem to find an alley to get inside. The actual route seemed longer than they thought, compared to the direct distance there. If Oriana had faced the same difficulties, though, that would help.

“Getting info on the Croce di Pietro?!”

As they went on, Kamijou spotted a crowd in front of them.

“Yeah, but…Doesn’t look too good. There’s barely any literature on the subject. The most they figured out was that there’s a vault specifically for the Croce di Pietro when it’s being stored. All the windows closed up, two separate doors to get in, and no light allowed inside…That’s all we know.” He puffed cigarette smoke.

“That’s it?!” Kamijou ran for the crowd.

Beside him, Stiyl answered, “Don’t ask me! Now we…Damn it.” He coughed a little before he could finish. They were running hard, but maybe it was because he smoked on a regular basis. “Not enough time to explain. Give me your address. I have a text with Orsola’s report, so I’ll forward it to you. Read it later when you have time.”

I didn’t know Stiyl and Orsola knew how to text message…, thought Kamijou in veiled admiration, giving Stiyl his contact information. Actually, maybe Index is the strange one. She’s totally useless with anything electronic.

As Kamijou ran down the road, he decided to give the text a quick skim.

“Vi riporto qua informazioni che ha trovato nella Biblioteca Brittanica…”

Wait…How am I supposed to understand this?! He could tell they were English letters, but the only thing he got out of it was that it wasn’t English. He closed his cell phone screen, figuring he’d get Tsuchimikado to read it for him later.

Stiyl sighed as he ran beside him. “Damn. It would be great if you at least knew what the words meant without needing to go through a grammar textbook…But if you can’t read it, don’t look at it. It’s not much to read anyway.”

“…Uhh, sure. So basically we’re trapped with no way out. Damn it!”

“Yeah. That’s why we want to capture Oriana Thomson personally. Then we’ll figure out where to go. That’s all…Hmm?” Still running, he frowned to himself.

There was a cluster of people in front of them—mostly students, all standing around, blocking their path. No one in the crowd was looking at them. The people had gathered in front of the entrance of a branching small road.

“There’s the back road we needed…but I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Huh?” said Kamijou dubiously.

The cigarette butt wiggled up and down as Stiyl spoke. “That smell. It’s not a good smell. When a certain kind of group is in an excited state, they spread their emotions like a scent. This crowd’s got the smell of people seeing blood.”

The disturbing words startled Kamijou. Meanwhile, they reached the tail end of the crowd. And then he noticed. Everyone here was leaning forward, standing on their tiptoes and even jumping up and down to get a look at something.

But what…? He frowned, but he didn’t have time to check. He decided to go straight for the back road and began somewhat forcefully pushing his way through the crowd to get there.

And then he heard an unexpected voice from beyond the wall of people.

“P-please move out of the way! Everyone, open up the path! Hime? Are you okay?! Himeee!!”

“Move it!!” Kamijou instinctively thrust the people near him out of the way and got to the front. The mass of people swayed and split to the left and right. Kamijou felt like some of them wanted to complain about his pushing through, but he ignored them and jumped to the very front row.

Then, without stopping, he dove toward the entrance to the path.

And there he saw it.

Blood.

It was a narrow alley. It was midafternoon, but because of the tall buildings overlooking it, there was no sunlight on the ground. The air smelled stagnant, too.

In that dark space…

…was a much darker redness staining the ground.

“K-Kamiii!!”

The familiar voice belonged to Miss Komoe.

But her small hands, her soft cheeks, her cheerleading tank top and miniskirt—it was like dark-red blood had been draped all over them. Teardrops fell from her big eyes, mixing with the splattered blood and dripping down her chin.

The blood wasn’t hers.

A single girl lay right at her feet. Her black hair was soaked in the blood on the ground. Aisa Himegami. In contrast, her skin, from her face down to her hands and feet, was pale, devoid of color.

The upper half of her gym uniform had been ripped to shreds. She was covered in bandages from her collarbone to a little above her navel—basically everywhere. It didn’t take a doctor to tell she’d been bandaged up properly, but the oozing fluid had already stained them bright red. Her normally smooth features looked somehow uneven.

“…!” Immediately upon considering why, Kamijou felt immense regret.

In the puddle of blood, he saw small pieces of flesh, still with skin attached—as if someone had failed to take the shell off a hard-boiled egg.

Himegami didn’t move. Kamijou could hear only her shallow breathing. So shallow it might have been his imagination.

He felt a dull impact, like someone had smacked his head. He’d seen this before. When he discovered one of the Sisters whom Accelerator had killed, it felt exactly the same.

“No, why…Why Himegami? Miss Komoe, what happened here?! Who the hell did this?!”

“I…I don’t know!” replied Miss Komoe with a very shaky voice, looking at him. “I…I ran into a lady here…And then I said I was sorry, and she smiled, and I thought she forgave me. But then all of a sudden she made a scary face, and…and she…!”

“Oriana…,” Stiyl said, grabbing his still-long cigarette and pushing it against the wall in irritation. “With this kind of timing, it would have to be her…She must like messing with us.”

“Why?” said Kamijou, his expression bewildered. “Why her? She had no reason to attack Himegami! She doesn’t have anything to do with this incident!!”

“That’s why.” Stiyl pointed at the ground with his cigarette butt.

A bloody cross was on the ground. It was the small, wearable, accessory-shaped barrier the English Puritan Church had made for her to seal her power, Deep Blood.

“That Soul Arm uses the same formula as the Walking Church. Not even Kanzaki, Tsuchimikado, or I was deployed with something so special. If Oriana saw it, she’d naturally think the girl was a sorcerer on the index’s level of importance. Academy City is a bastion of science. The presence alone of an English Puritan Soul Arm is strange. Perhaps Oriana thought a powerful pursuer was cutting off her escape route and decided to act first.”

When Kamijou realized what he meant by that, his cheek muscles tensed. “By…mistake…?” His throat twitched strangely. “Just…a mistake? She did all this…to Himegami…and it was…by mistake…? That…that…It’s a load of fucking bullshit!!”

Without thinking, he slammed a fist into the nearby wall. Miss Komoe, who was still crying, started in fright.

Stiyl sighed, then took rune cards out of his habit’s inside pocket. He scattered them about, and they stuck themselves to the ground and walls as if pulled by magnets.

“IHCTPIMTP. (I henceforth change this place into my tranquil place.)”

As he spoke, the people standing around the entrance to the alley began returning to the main road as though a cork had been removed. Kamijou guessed it was Stiyl’s Opila spell, which warded off people.

“You’ve done a perfect job applying first aid. I’m sure you called an ambulance. Just wait at the entrance to the alley. The EMTs won’t be able to find either of you if you stay in here now. I think that’s better than rubberneckers stopping to stare, anyway.”

Stiyl headed deeper into the dark alley to follow Oriana. If she was still trying to get to the bus stop to escape, she would have gone this way as well.

He didn’t hesitate at all to venture farther in.

Stepping right across Aisa Himegami and the pool of blood in which she lay.

“Wait, you bastard!”

“What? What on earth do you want? Do you want to stand there yelling or find Oriana Thomson right now and wrap this up?”

“This happened because we got her involved! How the hell can you just leave her here like this?!”

“Kami?” said Miss Komoe, looking up at him. She was related to this, but she hadn’t been told anything. She wouldn’t know about any of this.

“Then what are you going to do?” Still standing over Himegami, Stiyl looked straight at his face.

And then he reached out with his ring-covered fingers.

“Don’t be so full of yourself, you amateur.”

He grabbed Kamijou’s hair hard and forced him to look down. There was the girl, barely breathing, bathed in blood.

“Is there something an amateur like you can do for this wounded girl? There’s nothing I can do, either, and I’m a professional! Will staying with her heal her wounds? Will holding her hand make the pain go away? If you really believe it, then do it right now! Meanwhile, the cold reality will keep sapping her strength! Right now, the only thing we can do is chase Oriana! If you want to do that, then step over her! If you don’t, then stay here like a useless brat!!”

Stiyl jerked his hand violently away from Kamijou’s hair.

Kamijou took one unsteady step back, then another.

“…Don’t you dare think you’re the only one angry about this, Touma Kamijou. Everyone would feel that way if they saw something like this. Even Stiyl Magnus does. I risked my life to rescue her from Misawa. You think I can stay calm seeing her torn apart like this?!” Stiyl pointed his index finger, the ring on it glaring in the sunlight, directly below him. “Step over her, Touma Kamijou. Step over her and follow Oriana! This is our world. And it’s a cruel one. We can’t heal her wounds, and nothing will ever change that. If you want to protect someone, clench your fist. There was only so much we could ever do. Your right hand can kill only illusions. And now you’re trying to protect one? Give me a break.”

“…Shit…” Kamijou looked down. His bangs hid his eyes. And, just beneath them, he began to grit his teeth so hard he thought his molars might break. The frustration he felt—was it toward Oriana or toward himself for not being able to offer any argument?

“Fuck…this…!!” he roared, voice trembling, nearly crying. And then he brought up one foot. It, too, shook as he tried to take the first step. Tried to prioritize catching Oriana instead of doing anything for Himegami.

“” The sorcerer Stiyl Magnus narrowed his eyes and stared at the ceremony Kamijou was performing.

And just before Kamijou’s foot went over Aisa Himegami’s body…

…the priest saw.

Komoe Tsukuyomi, who had just been a few steps away from the gored Aisa Himegami.

She was sitting there dumbfounded now, her hands, face, and clothing bright red with splattered blood. She sat on her legs, not caring about her skirt or that she sat down with nothing between her skin and the ground.

But that wasn’t the crucial thing.

She had begun to slowly gather small rocks and empty cans from nearby. She started lining up the various objects like she was building with toy bricks. And not in a random pattern, either. It appeared to be an unskilled miniature representation of the buildings in this alley and the fallen Aisa Himegami.

“Wait,” Stiyl said in spite of himself. Kamijou, about to set down his foot on that first step, lost his timing and pulled back. Stiyl didn’t watch, instead staring straight into Komoe Tsukuyomi’s eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“The other time…,” began the woman, no more than 135 centimeters tall, returning the sorcerer’s gaze with bloodred eyes. “…With the sister…This…This worked somehow. So now…this time…it has to work again somehow. Because before, the sister, her back was cut, and there was a lot of blood, but I did what she told me to do, and…”

“I…Wait…” Stiyl Magnus tried to recall. Back to when the index of forbidden books first came to Academy City. Kanzaki had slipped and slashed Index in the back, and Touma Kamijou had fled to Komoe Tsukuyomi’s apartment while carrying her on his shoulders.

But…

Neither Index nor Touma Kamijou could use sorcery. Not because they lacked the know-how but because of how their bodies were made. So at the time, who had been the one to use healing magic on Index?

“Was…it you…?” murmured Stiyl in a mix of astonishment and respect.

The small woman didn’t notice the change in his tone of voice. “…Before, this worked just fine. I remember it; I remember it exactly. The sister told me what to do, and I did it, and I’m doing it, but…! Why…why won’t Hime get any better…?! Hime, she was just talking about the night parade. She wanted to go there with Kami and the others, and she had been constantly checking her pamphlet since yesterday, so why, why did this…!!”

She hadn’t directed her cry at anyone.

Nevertheless, Stiyl and Kamijou silently listened to her complain.

Komoe Tsukuyomi was trying to put together a type of spell that linked a fixed area to a sorcerer-made miniature garden. Healing magic generally required extremely fine control to use, but with this system, one could simply repair a wound on a puppet in a rough diorama to “repair” the wound on the body of the linked person.

But it wouldn’t produce any effects unless the person actually defined the spell’s scope and created a complete link to the miniature garden. It wasn’t just a physical thing. You’d need to think about the placement of the magic-related symbols and the flow of telesma as well.

It wasn’t easy enough that every sorcerer could do it.

Even Stiyl, handy enough to link together runic and Crossist spells, could heal only burns.

Healing magic was a single term, but there were many different kinds that differed depending on religion, rules, and techniques. Not everyone could just repeat an incantation to heal whatever wounds they wanted. Cold medicine couldn’t be used to cure broken bones. Unless she put together an appropriate spell based on the situation before her, it wouldn’t have any effect on an injured person.

Plus, if they wanted to heal everything—the lacerations, bruises, broken bones, and even her arteries and organs—they’d need an expert caster specializing in all that. Perhaps with the support of someone with as much knowledge of the index, an amateur could do it, but such a major premise was far too unusual.

“…”

And sure enough, Komoe Tsukuyomi’s spell was utterly incomplete.

She had caused magic to activate only at Index’s instructions before, so it was inevitable. She had learned about the “miniature garden” by pure imitation, and her current one was in complete disarray. Not a single magical symbol was incorporated into it. But of course there wasn’t. Komoe Tsukuyomi resided in the realm of science. She had absolutely no idea what underlying theories made the spells work.

But she had called an ambulance…

And she’d done all the first aid she could…

She had used every method she could think of, and none of them had worked. Now, in the end, she clung to “sorcery,” of which she understood neither the theories nor the rules.

She didn’t even know how terribly far off the mark she was.

She didn’t even understand how crude was the spell she was betting everything on.

But she was still doing it…

…all to save the fallen girl in front of her.

“Damn…,” Stiyl said, almost unwittingly looking away. This Komoe Tsukuyomi woman was extremely like another certain girl.

She was short, naive, and innocent. She could get angry for others. She could cry for others. She couldn’t use any magic herself, even though she knew all about it. She was covered in the blood of another and weeping.

Stiyl narrowed his eyes a little. He was, from the bottom of his heart, bitter.

He took a breath, then tossed behind him the cigarette butt in his hand.

“No. That isn’t how it works.”

“Huh?” Komoe Tsukuyomi looked up.

Stiyl took several rune cards with complex markings from his black habit’s inside pocket. “It’s like scooping water out of the ocean with a bucket. First you need to set up the region you’re going to delimit with the miniature garden. And you’re not thinking about the angle. You have to imagine what direction the angel will come from, and which seat the angel will arrive at. Just imagining it is fine. You’re not actually calling a winged angel. It’s just a cluster of a certain kind of power.”

He squatted down.

He faced Himegami, covered in bandages, as she breathed shallowly.

He faced her once again, after having already stepped over her.

“Touma Kamijou. Go on ahead and chase Oriana.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll give you Tsuchimikado’s new cell phone number. If I’m not here, you two had better be able to talk to each other.”

“Wait a minute. Are you gonna…”

“Don’t expect much. This is out of my field.” The sorcerer Stiyl Magnus spoke bitterly. “I can heal only burns. Healing blood loss and broken bones is a completely different family of technique. I’ve never even tried to do this before, and these wounds are terrible. Not sure even a caster specializing in healing could completely fix all this…” But still, he kept speaking. “…Part of the archive’s knowledge must be inside this person. I’ll borrow that and reinforce the theory. I can’t even commit to memory Tsuchimikado’s Four Ways to Truth or Divination Circle, so I’m not sure about this one bit…but I’ll buy her time before she gets taken to the hospital. Then we just have to pray there’s a good doctor where she’s going.”

“Ah…Huh…?”

Komoe Tsukuyomi rubbed her eyes.

Stiyl unwittingly averted his own from hers. “When you’ve finished what I tell you, go to the alley’s entrance and lead the EMTs here. Touma Kamijou, you go on ahead and do something about Oriana, will you? This healing spell is going to be really half-assed already. If you stay here, that right hand of yours might just wipe it out completely. When I’m done, I’ll follow after you right away…so I’ll say it again. If you want to solve everything the right way, step over her.”

“…All right.” Kamijou looked at Aisa Himegami’s face, lying in her own blood.

Then he tightened the five fingers on his right hand.

“I’ll do it. If that’ll solve everything. I’ll leave Himegami to you, Stiyl.”

“I already told you not to expect much,” Stiyl said, heaving a sigh. And in a seriously bothered tone, he finished. “I’m not used to this, either. With this world of ours…Who would have thought I’d be using magic on someone for a reason other than to attack them?”

INTERLUDE FIVE

Why…?

Aisa Himegami thought as she lay on the cold ground.

I wonder why. It came to this.

The end of September had been wrought with the lingering heat from summer, but this dark side road was cold enough to pierce her skin. Maybe it never felt any sun all year long. The colors of the walls, ground, and street as a whole were a gloomy black.

She could feel her body pounding.

A single slash had ripped her apart, starting above her chest and ending below her stomach.

The feeling of pain had passed the point of saturation, and now it was starting to feel numb instead. Now she had the ability to look around her. But when she saw the splattered blood and pieces of flesh, her mind felt like it was ready to explode.

But…

A fact more painful than that was staring her in the eyes.

Two boys were standing facing each other, one on either side of her fallen body. In her hazed-over vision, she saw them arguing about something.

“Don’t be so full of yourself, you amateur.”

An eerily cold voice.

At the same time, there was a strangely piercing clarity to it.

“Is there something an amateur like you can do for this wounded girl?”

There is, Himegami tried to say.

But her voice wouldn’t come out. It was like her mouth had shriveled up.

“There’s nothing I can do, either, and I’m a professional!”

Those words stung the other boy.

She could see his face twisting a little bit every time he spoke.

“Will staying with her heal her wounds? Will holding her hand make the pain go away?”

That doesn’t matter, she wanted to say.

Maybe the wounds wouldn’t heal. Maybe the pain wouldn’t go away. Something would still happen. She was sure of it.

“If you really believe it, do it right now! Meanwhile, the cold reality will keep sapping her strength!”

Why? she thought.

Why hadn’t the world been made to be better?

If the boy could just reject him one time, that would be all he needed. Then the boy wouldn’t need to look at him with those tears in his eyes.

But his lips wouldn’t open even a little.

His tongue wouldn’t move even a little.

His throat wouldn’t speak even a little.

The two boys were arguing about something. No, at this point, one of them was doing all the attacking. Violence by using words. Every time the boy heard another word, it hurt him a little more, sapping the emotion from his face.

She didn’t want to see him like that.

The honest truth was that she wanted to be with him. And it didn’t just have to be the two of them. Being part of the events with everyone else. Cheering for friends with everyone else. Going around the stalls with everyone else. Watching the night parade with everyone else. Making fun memories with everyone else and smiling with everyone else.

That was all she wanted.

“…so I’ll say it again. If you want to solve everything the right way, step over her.”

No, she tried to say.

“…All right.”

No, she wanted to say, but nothing came out.

“I’ll do it. If that’ll solve everything. I’ll leave Himegami to you, Stiyl.”

And then the boy stepped over her fallen body, having decided to head farther down the small road. Her words wouldn’t reach him. She watched his back retreating, seeming like it would go far, far away.

Why hadn’t the world been made to be better?

Why couldn’t everything go their way?

None of her fervent wishes had come true. She rallied all the strength she had and still couldn’t squeak out a word. From beginning to end, all her hope had been stolen from her…

“Sorry, Himegami.”

And yet, she heard just a few words then.

“I’ll go back to your hospital before the night parade. Promise me you’ll wait for me.”

She thought she managed a thin smile then.

This isn’t fair.

The world around her was cruel in every way. She couldn’t tell him a single thing she wanted. She could desperately summon all the energy she had, but nobody would ever grant her wishes…

…so why did this boy’s words have so much strength?