CHAPTER 3

Far from a Sorcerer
Power_Instigation.

1

Academy City School District 23.

Specializing solely in the aviation and space industries, all the important airports in the city converged there.

This district lacked the crowded high-rise landscapes of the others, featuring only rows upon rows of runways and rocket launch sites. Flat asphalt went on as far as the eye could see, with control towers and experimental stations sparsely dotting the ground.

Kamijou stepped off the train and onto the platform, staring out at the scenery. “It’s like a ranch made of stone and iron…”

They’d fought Oriana Thomson here during the Daihasei Festival as well, but he was getting the impression that security today was even tighter than it had been then.

He went over to the station’s coin lockers to stow the grocery bags in his hands. All the lockers in the city were airtight, and they even had refrigeration and freezing options. Probably thanks to all the scientists here.

Still…

“…Man, that’s expensive. How is this a normal price for one hour?!”

“Meowsa. Seems more economical to just get rid of your groceries now, then visit a cheap supermarket tomorrow and buy more.”

Tsuchimikado had a point, but Kamijou didn’t feel like letting food go to waste. After putting everything in a locker and giving his fingerprint to lock it, he decided to turn on the refrigeration function and left.

As he walked through the station toward the exit, he asked his classmate, “If we’re in District 23, does that mean we’re going on an airplane?”

“Well, yeah. We’re going to another country, after all.”

“Seriously?! …Wait, do we have passports?”

“Nope,” came the immediate, curt reply.

Kamijou grew quiet.

Tsuchimikado droned on, “It’s not like we’re going overseas for a vacation, boyo. This’ll all be off the books. If they find us out, we’re in for some international criticism. We’re nyaat gonna get anywhere if we whine about getting a couple of emigration stamps.”

“O-oh.”

There was a lot Kamijou wanted to ask, but Tsuchimikado had been so up front with him that he had to wonder if his way wasn’t actually better.

Outside the station, there was a large-scale bus terminal. In general, one didn’t walk around District 23; they used regulated buses. Tsuchimikado picked out a bus headed for an international airport and climbed aboard. Kamijou followed suit.

The roads in District 23 were mostly straight, it being no buildings and all runways. The speed limit was pretty lax here, too—they passed a road sign saying any speed up to one hundred kilometers per hour was okay.

Out his window were plains made of asphalt, and even the horizon was constructed and gray. From beyond the horizon, he could see white steam spouting up and forming cumulonimbus clouds.

A low rumbling noise turned into a quake, quickly making the windows rattle.

Tsuchimikado stared in that direction, muttering, “A rocket, huh? Looks like it launched safely, nyo?”

Kamijou took out his phone and turned on the TV app. The news was showing a rocket launch from various angles. “They’re saying it’s the fourth satellite Academy City has made,” he murmured. “Wonder what the truth is.”

“One thing they’re after by launching a rocket now is making everyone else start to ask questions. They’ll guess anything—from the city launching military satellites to testing ICBMs…The more possibilities are out there, the better we can probably hold everyone else in check, nya~.”

So this is what an information war is like…, thought Kamijou, only to have a realization strike him. “…Huh. Now that I think about her, what about Index?” He was opposed to taking her into danger, but nonetheless, he worried about leaving her alone in a room without any food.

“That’s all right, Kammy—Maika’s gonna be going to your room. Her usual gluttonous face is probably glowing thirty percent brighter right about meow~.”

On one hand, that was a relief. On the other, he was taken aback; had the meaning of his existence been reduced to “guy who made food for Index”?

In the meantime, the bus pulled up in front of the international airport. As Kamijou got off onto the asphalt, he checked the time on his cell phone. “Hey, Tsuchimikado. By the way, where are we going?”

“France,” answered Tsuchimikado offhandedly.

“Ugeh?! Europe? Another long trip…Wait, how many nights are we staying there? And we’ll be on the plane for a pretty long time…About ten hours?”

“Nah, we’ll get there in a little over one, nya know~?”

“Huh?” blurted out Kamijou. It was a mysterious declaration.

Tsuchimikado seemed to think explaining would be a hassle, so he pointed toward a runway somewhat farther away from the airport terminal. Several large passenger planes, each dozens of meters in length, sat parked in a row. “Look, we’re getting on one of them~.”

“…You’re kidding me,” said Kamijou, nearly speechless, asking his friend for confirmation. He’d been on one of those planes once before. “Um, that kind of plane? If I recall correctly, the kind we used to get back to Japan from Venice…”

“Yep, seems like it, nya. I didn’t have much to do with the Queen of the Adriatic incident, so I don’t know the details.”

“…the kind that can go seven thousand kilometers per hour?”

“Ha-ha-ha,” laughed Tsuchimikado. “Everything’s better faster, right?”

“This is way too fast!! Don’t you get it? When you’re in one of them, it feels like a thick iron plate is slowly crushing your body! Index was finally starting to open her heart to science a little bit, but after riding in one of those, she locked up her shutters tight!!”

He had another anecdote: Despite the situation, she’d unreasonably ordered an in-flight meal, which proceeded to end up all over the wall behind them in a magnificent scattershot.

“Please. Kammy, this is unofficial foreign work. You didn’t think we’d be taking our time getting to France, eating some in-flight meals and watching movies, did you?”

“W-well, I guess that wouldn’t feel very urgent…Wait, we’re seriously getting on one of them? M-Mr. Kamijou doesn’t really think he can recommend that!!”

“It’ll be fine. Once we get past Mach 3, your amateur’s senses won’t know the difference, nya~.”

“What the heck part of that is supposed to be fine?!”

Despite his weary complaints, Tsuchimikado didn’t pay attention; he just said, “We’ll talk on the plane.”

The young man couldn’t do anything if these were the only planes available to them. After he led Kamijou past business-use doors and roads instead of using any typical gates, they headed for the supersonic passenger jets.

2

“A Soul Arm called the document—that’s the key this time, nya.”

Tsuchimikado’s words echoed through the spacious interior.

The supersonic passenger plane was a size bigger than normal jumbo jets. Aside from the crew, they were the only two using it right now, and that made it feel big enough to inspire loneliness.

Since they were the only ones aboard anyway, Kamijou and Tsuchimikado sat right in the middle of first class. Unlike the packed-in economy class seats, these had enough space to stretch one’s legs and then some.

In that plane, Tsuchimikado looked at Kamijou from the next seat over. “Its full name is the Document of Constantine,” he said. “Back when Crossism had just started, they faced persecution by the Roman Empire. The first emperor of Rome to officially acknowledge the religion was Emperor Constantine. The document is something he wrote for the Roman Orthodox Church’s benefit.”

The conversation wasn’t the kind friendly classmates had with one another. Motoharu Tsuchimikado had already become a sorcerer.

“They wrote in the document that the Roman pope was the highest authority of Crossism and that Constantine would give the right to all of the land he governed in Europe to the Roman pope. Basically, most of Europe belonged to Emperor Constantine, and he handed over possession of it to the Roman pope and told everyone who lived there to follow Roman Orthodoxy…A certificate suspiciously good for the Roman Orthodox Church.”

As Tsuchimikado spoke, he fiddled with the touch screen LCD next to his seat.

“As for its power as a Soul Arm…Yeah, it’s said to be like a compass. If you use the document anywhere inside the lands Emperor Constantine governed 1,700 years ago, it still displays a seal that says this land is a legacy of said emperor to this day. Since it treats his legacy as belonging to the Church, it follows that the Church retains sole authority regarding the development and usage of any land or item its seal reacts to, nya.”

He peered at Kamijou’s face from the next seat over. “Kammy, are you listening to me like you’re supposed to, nya?”

“Oghghghghghhhhhghghghoghghoghghohhbhbffght!!”

Kamijou couldn’t answer the question.

Seven thousand kilometers per hour.

The massive g-force that speed created was crushing Touma Kamijou’s internal organs. He wasn’t exactly in a condition to talk. An analogy might be someone pushing a basketball into one’s gut, then also stomping on it from above as hard as they could.

Tsuchimikado, nonchalant about the whole situation, was the abnormal one here. “Okay, fine. I’ll just keep talking.”

“Ugehgh!!”

As Tsuchimikado listened to Kamijou’s garbled grunts, indistinguishable between answers and groans, he calmly continued, “Like I said before, it’s really fishy if the document was even authentic. Actually, scholars in the fifteenth century declared it was a fake. Even practically speaking, it was a lie. The document’s true power—its power as a Soul Arm—wasn’t nearly that weak.”

“Gigigighhhhghuughh!!”

“Its real powers are way more wide reaching. It actually has the power to make anything the Roman pope says into ‘correct information,’” he said with whispered smoothness. “For example, if the pope declared that such and such a religion was disturbing the peace and was the enemy of mankind, it would become absolutely correct that very instant. If he announced that if you prayed to God and put your hands on a burning metal plate, you wouldn’t get burned, then they’d actually believe that, even without any justification.”

“Ooohhhhhhheehhheeee!!”

“Hey, Kammy, could you look at me when I’m talking to you, nya?”

Kamijou’s upper body jerked and twitched. Still, somehow he managed to croak out a few words. “Document…usage…an’thng pope sez…all…b’comz correct…yah?”

He seemed to have kept up with the conversation, so he must have been listening, even in the current situation. This was Kamijou’s last resort—figuring it would be easier on him to talk than to stay quiet.

“So then…izzit like…alch’mist’s…Ars Magna…grant any…wish…ohwhh!!”

“No, it’s not like that, nyo~,” said Tsuchimikado in a cheerful voice, like he might start humming a tune. “Its only effect is that it makes people believe something is correct. It just makes them think the pope can’t possibly say anything wrong, no matter how ridiculous it is, you knyow? It won’t actually change the laws of nature or anything.”

He fiddled with the small monitor attached to his seat’s armrest.

“Plus, the Soul Arm only makes those of the Church believe something is ‘correct.’ It can’t control anyone who couldn’t care less about what the Church thinks is right or who didn’t mind being wrong in the first place. For better or worse, it’s a Soul Arm that exists for the Church, nya.”

“A-a-a Soul Arm…makes th’ngz…he says…correct…? B-but that…urbh!”

“Ha-ha. Maybe it sounds cowardly, nya. But back in the days, where what important people said was absolute law, they had plenty of little tricks to maintain their dignity. After all, people would only trust what an important person said as absolute law if they had dignity, nya. If that trust was shaken, the entire country would be in a dangerous situation…Remember how in Japan, during the Edo period, we had a system where samurai were allowed to kill people in the streets if they thought they were being insulted? If a commoner said one bad thing about a samurai, they ended up in two pieces. If that’s not the simplest example of restricting freedom of speech, I don’t know what is, nya.”

“Then…th-the-the-the-then…they made…the doc’ment b’cause…”

“Because they were scared, probably. Of the world they’d built shaking and swaying…And the Church did face its share of crises. In Crossism, God is absolute, and God was supposed to save people from all of that. But in reality, the bubonic plague wiped out half of Europe and the Crusades were a complete failure, and at the time, they never knew when the Ottoman Empire’s main forces would press into Europe.”

Tsuchimikado’s voice was entirely impassive. But his face was showing a little something like sympathy.

“…The idea that God is absolute was shaken many times over. But the Roman Orthodox Church had to persist in the belief. That’s why they needed the document. Faced with such a grave threat, they wanted to keep the people’s hearts close. That’s what the document was for.”

It was, so to speak, a Soul Arm to bridge the gap between ideals and reality.

By forcing people to believe, it protected their hopes.

It seemed incredibly ugly and, at the same time, done out of good intentions.

S-s-so the Roman Orthodox Church is using the document now to…, thought Kamijou, taking deep breaths, …to make people believe the statement that Academy City is bad is “correct”…And that’s why these twisted “demonstrations” are happening—because they forced the idea into their brains.

Kamijou moved his lips, blue from the g-force, and asked a question. “B-b-b-b-b-but if they…had that crrr’zy Soul Arm…why d’dn’t…use it…till now…?”

“Because its powers are immense. Once it defines something as ‘correct,’ it’s hard to take it back, even by using the Soul Arm again. They can’t just go around defining anything they want as ‘correct’ without forethought.”

Tsuchimikado’s answer was swift.

“And it’s not easy to use. Remember how I said it makes people think what the pope says is ‘correct,’ nya? Not everyone can use it, and you have to be in the right place. Originally you couldn’t use it unless it was set in the heart of the Vatican. From there, the order goes along ley lines and out to the whole world.”

“H-huh? B-but…we’re going…get in the way…’f it…right now…?”

“Yep.”

“Wh-why…France? You just said…can’t use…unless…Vatican…”

“Huh? Oh, right. About that…”

“A-also…if you use…doc’ment…can’t cancel…right? Can we…stop that…errselves?”

“Well, you see, nya…I’ll need to explain that, but where should I start…?”

As Tsuchimikado was about to continue, a soft electronic beep came over the plane’s speakers. After that, a computerized female voice made an announcement. It was in a foreign language, but it didn’t seem like simple English. Tsuchimikado listened, then made a face.

“…Oops, looks like we’re out of time. Kammy, are you sure you’re okay? If it hurts, try taking deep breaths. Breathe in…”

“Shh…”

“…and out.”

“…haa.”

“And in again…”

“Shh…”

“…and out again.”

“…haa.”

While they did that, Kamijou somehow was feeling better…or at least, he thought he was. But as Tsuchimikado peered at his face, his friend’s expression was still clouding over.

“Gah, this is gonna be a pain, nya. Wasn’t breathing out supposed to make it easier? Come on, Kammy, I’ll guide you, so come over here. Push the button on your seat belt to undo it. There’s no flight attendants here, so no need to worry, nya.”

Tsuchimikado casually rose from his seat, and Kamijou wobbled up after him. He wasn’t really going under his own volition so much as he felt like his mostly hazed-over mind was piloting his body of its own accord.

Kamijou’s guide walked down the passage and opened a door, then walked down another smaller passage and slipped through a hatch short enough to accidentally bump his head, until he finally reached a place with exposed metal that was…roaring, for some reason.

Wait, where were they?

As Kamijou stood there dazed, Tsuchimikado pushed some kind of backpack at him.

“Here, put this on.”

“??? Tsuchimikado? Um, what did you mean by exhaling making it easier?”

“It’ll be fine, all right? It’ll open soon. Quick, put it on.”

Tsuchimikado was already putting his backpack’s straps around him. The thing was indiscriminate, with straps not only on either shoulder but also around his stomach and chest.

Kamijou didn’t really understand but watched him do it, then closed up his own straps.

“Great. Kammy, you look good, too, nya.” Tsuchimikado slapped a big button the size of a can lid on the wall. “Make sure you breathe out all the way before we go!!”

Kamijou heard a strange booming noise.

A moment after he realized it was some sort of thick pump going…

Ga-clat!

Suddenly, the airplane’s wall opened wide, and he saw the blue skies beyond.

“I…uh?” His pupils turned into little dots.

And then a wind so fierce whipped into the airplane, telling him this wasn’t the time for making cartoonish faces. Almost immediately, everything seemed to be on the verge of being expelled from the plane.

“Tsu-Tsu-Tsu-Tsu-Tsu-Tsu-Tsuchimikadooooo?!”

Kamijou quickly grabbed the parts of the wall that jutted out with both hands. But he didn’t know how long he’d last.

As the wind roared around them, the other youth smirked. “It’s time, Kammy. If you’re ready, let yourself loose and breathe out, nya!”

“Don’t ‘breathe out, nya’ me!! The hell?! D-did…did you just fling open the rear cargo haaaatch?”

“Well, we can’t just land in a French airport like idiots. Those Roman Orthodox assholes would find out, you knyow? This plane is headed for London. We’re getting off partway through the trip.”

“Are you a moron?! Think about how fast this plane is going! If you opened a hatch going over seven thousand kilometers per hour, it would wreck the inside of the plane!!”

“Sorry. It’s already open.”

“I’m dead!!”

“Don’t be silly, Kammy. If I really did that, I wouldn’t be this relaxed.”

…Could this plane have actually slowed down for this emergency drop-off…? he wondered. It would make sense since he hadn’t been feeling sick from the effects of the g-force…

“Y-you…Then why did you tell me to take deep breaths?! That didn’t mean anything, did it?!”

“Come on now, Kammy. You can’t struggle forever. Let go of the wall already.”

“I was thankful. I really was! Thankful to you, Tsuchimikado, for being so considerate to me!! I can’t believe you did this!!”

“Shut up. We’re going.”

Tsuchimikado kicked his hands off the dents in the wall—and the spiky-haired boy lost all his support.

The fierce winds blowing through the plane immediately picked up Touma Kamijou’s body, and he passed through the cargo-loading hatch on the fly and tumbled out into the skies.

It was afternoon, local time.

The sky was pure and blue and punctuated by a high school boy’s shriek.

“Ugyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

A 360-degree view of blue sky unfolded before him.

Wh-what’s happening? Just a few hours ago I was having a forkball contest with Fukiyose. Why the hell did I just get dropped out of a plane above France?!

As he spun so fast he couldn’t tell up from down, he saw Tsuchimikado smile like he was truly enjoying this sky sport and jump right out of the plane.

I’ll kill you…You piece of shit, when we land, I’m going to beat you into a bloody pulp!!

Then he paled. …Wait, are we even gonna land somewhere safe? he thought, and a moment later, there was an explosion as his backpack burst apart.

The giant parachute inside expanded. It must have been made to deploy automatically when it reached a certain speed.

Unfortunately for Kamijou, it had come as a complete surprise.

“Gehhh?! M-my neck…can’t bre—”

He didn’t have a chance to finish his complaint.

Plop…His arms and legs dangled limply, and in an extremely unnatural position, the boy continued his descent.

Incidentally, the wind blew his parachute far from his intended landing position, eventually grounding him right in the middle of the Rhone’s one-hundred-meter span. But he didn’t know that yet.

3

Kamijou heard a watery squelch.

When he realized it had come out of his own mouth, it alarmed him.

His parachute had drifted along with the wind, dropping him in the middle of a river. It didn’t feel like his legs were touching the bottom. He wasn’t particularly good at swimming, but he was no slouch, either. Still, underwater with his clothes on and with the big fabric sheets of the parachute tangled around him, his body was sinking so fast it was almost funny.

He didn’t see any signs of Tsuchimikado landing nearby. They might have gotten separated. Kamijou didn’t have time to bother with that, though, since he was underwater.

He couldn’t tell how deep the river actually went. It was possible it was surprisingly shallow, but with his current distress, it was more than enough to drown him. All the water gave him right now was fear.

He used his hands to try and paddle; they moved a few times slower than he thought. And his arms were trembling. Muscle fatigue, shaking from temperature loss due to the cold water, fear that he’d never go above surface again…

All those things muddled together, making him feel like something invisible was squeezing him more and more.

Crap, he thought.

The air stored in his mouth sputtered out like someone had wrenched it open from inside.

He looked overhead and saw the sunlight glittering on the water’s surface. A mad dance of light, dulling his sense of distance.

Oh yeah, I got flung into the water from the ice ship in Chioggia, Italy, too, he thought, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu as he stared at the surface.

…Then all of a sudden, something broke it with a huge splash of bubbles.

…!!

Before Kamijou had the time to be surprised, a slender arm reached out of the curtain of white air for him.

By the time he realized someone had jumped in, the pale hand had grabbed his arm.

Yoink.

It began to haul him upward. His body, in its state of odd relaxation, approached the surface, reeled in as if by a rope. It took less than ten seconds for his face to break out of the water and touch air.

He heard the water splash loudly.

He’d yearned for this oxygen so much, and yet now he couldn’t breathe much in. Something was wrong with the muscles that moved his throat or lungs.

“Are…are you all right?!” came a girl’s voice from immediately next to him.

The parachute was like a weight, still dragging him down, down into the depths. Having to support the weight of two people, the girl’s voice raised even higher.

“We’re going to…bank. Please stay relaxed!!”

The riverbank…It was more like a shallow, dry section of riverbed. When they got there, Kamijou fell onto his rear end. Not only were his clothes wet but the parachute fabric had also absorbed water, making his body feel incredibly heavy. Plus, while he’d been struggling underwater, the chute’s strings had gotten wrapped around him, and now they were nothing but shackles.

“Is…Do you do it like this…?”

The girl reached to him from the side.

With a loud ka-click, he was finally released from his bindings.

Having escaped the entwining parachute, Kamijou slowly gained his feet on the river sand, which was underneath water about as deep as a puddle.

He looked overhead and saw that the sun was high in the sky, which probably meant it was after noon. There was nobody else around but the two of them, though. Maybe they were all afraid of protests and riots and weren’t leaving their houses today.

He took a look around. Right nearby, there was an arched stone bridge. However, it was half-destroyed, crumbling and cut off mid-river. Maybe the girl had jumped into the river from there.

Right, the girl. He looked at his savior.

He was supposedly in France right now, but she was a Japanese girl. She was probably about his age. Black, shoulder-length hair, distinctive double-edged eyelids, a pink tank top, white shorts ending above her knees. All in all, she cut a slender figure.

“Did you inhale any water…?” she said, peering into his face with a look of consideration. Then he recalled who she was.

If I remember right…He coughed. “You’re from Amakusa…Itsuwa, was it?”

“Um, yes. It’s been a long time,” she said, cutely bowing her head.

But she, along with the rest of the Amakusa members, was supposed to be living in London right now. They wouldn’t be in France for no particular reason.

Why is Itsuwa here? He wondered for a moment. Wait, in this case, I guess there’s only one reason…

“Hey, Itsuwa. Did Tsuchimikado call you out here?”

“I…um. Mr. Tsuchimikado?”

Contrary to his expectations, Itsuwa gave him a blank look and crooked her head to the side.

He coughed again. Wait, was I wrong? he thought, blinking in surprise. “Well, I mean. All that stuff about the worldwide demonstrations and protests, and the Roman Orthodox Church’s Document of Constantine having something to do with it…”

“H-how do you know that?” cried Itsuwa, putting a hand to her mouth. “Y-yes, we’re currently investigating the document. But Amakusa spent so much time looking for that clue. How do you know so easily?! I should have expected no less from the one who punched our former priestess to the ground with one fist!!”

Itsuwa’s eyes started glittering for some reason, but the amnesiac Kamijou didn’t have those memories. He only wondered with a little fright, Seriously, what the heck did I do to Kanzaki?

Meanwhile, Itsuwa presented him with another commonsense question. “Um, well, that is…Wait, why did you suddenly fall here with a parachute in the first place? Shouldn’t you be at school in Japan?”

Kamijou scratched his head, wet with slightly muddy water. “Well, I came here with Tsuchimikado to stop the document…Did he not instruct the Puritans to tell you what he was doing?”

“The English Puritan Church is the one who made this request of us—to look into the magical value of the ley lines and geography of France.”

“Huh,” he muttered, then blinked. “Us?”

“Yes,” said Itsuwa with a small nod. “All fifty-two of the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church’s combat personnel are mobilized, investigating France’s main cities. I was assigned here to Avignon, but…Then you fell from the sky, and I didn’t really know what was going on…”

“…I see. This city is named Avignon?” he repeated dumbly.

Kamijou had been dragged and dropped from the airplane by Tsuchimikado, and so he hadn’t known where he was currently. When he thought about it, maybe he should consider himself lucky for running into a familiar Japanese face here.

Whatever the case, if Tsuchimikado planned on coming to Avignon the whole time, it was highly probable the Roman Orthodox Church was using the document right here.

Which made this enemy territory.

And Kamijou had fallen right into the middle of it.

“Hey, by the way, Itsuwa. I think Tsuchimikado was saying they had to be in the Vatican to use the document, right?”

“Y-yes.”

“Then why are we investigating France and not Italy? I asked him, too, but he knocked me out of the airplane before answering.”

Itsuwa must have thought the last part was a strange joke. She made a quite oddly pained grin.

Then she gave a start, remembering something. “Oh, um, could I go grab my things before we talk about that?”

“What things?”

“I left them on the bridge. I-I’m a little worried about someone stealing them.”

The bridge must have been the one right nearby—arched and made of half-destroyed stone.

Itsuwa must have really jumped into the river from there.

“Oh. It’s a little late, but thanks. If you hadn’t saved me, I would have been in serious trouble.”

“N-no, not at all! I didn’t do much!!” Itsuwa’s head whipped from side to side as she waved a hand in front of her face. Flecks of water flew from her hands.

After seeing that, Kamijou asked another question. “Oh, right, Itsuwa, do you have a change of clothes in your bag?”

“Huh? W-well, Amakusa is a religion specializing in covert activities, after all…” Itsuwa was surprised at the sudden question, but her expression as she explained herself seemed somehow prideful. “I left most of my things for this stay in the hotel, but I have a complete set of clothes for tailing or fleeing in there. I didn’t have a chance to use it until now, though.”

“I see. That’s good.”

“?” Itsuwa looked at him blankly, evidently not realizing what Kamijou was actually talking about.

But he couldn’t just say it to her directly.

Instead, he looked away and into the sky, using his index finger to point.

“…”

Itsuwa saw where he was indicating, and glanced in that direction…

…to her chest.

And to her pink tank top, which water had soaked into, causing its colors to bleed and the fabric to stick to her skin, showing the entirety of her silhouette.

4

Incidentally, this Itsuwa girl seemed to have a very peaceful, conscientious personality.

Even when Kamijou bluntly pointed out the situation, she didn’t karate chop him, bite him in the head, or try to burn him to a crisp with a one-billion-volt current, or anything eccentric like that. Her face had reddened as she gave a painful grin, saying something like, “Ah-ah-ha-ha. Well now, this is rather embarrassing. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” crossing her hands over her chest, and trotting away to the bridge with her bag on it and her change of clothes.

Her face was smiling, but her eyes seemed strangely tearful. She seemed like an adult, one with very good sense.

“Hmm…” For some reason, Kamijou was the one feeling super awkward. She could have at least yelled “kyaa” or something, he thought, gazing into the distance.

After about ten minutes, Itsuwa returned wearing completely different clothes. Where on earth had she changed? She was perfectly dry now, but he sniffed faint perfume on her—maybe she was worried about the smell of river water.

“I-I’m sorry I made you wait,” she said. She had a big bag over her shoulder.

Her clothing consisted of a blouse that was light green like ice cream and dark brown pants that went down to her calves. Her blouse looked thin enough to be see-through if one held it up to the sun. Itsuwa didn’t have the buttons done up; instead it was tied in a knot near her navel to hold it closed.

Directly over her naked upper body.

She wasn’t wearing anything underneath, which seemed, strangely enough, to emphasize her cleavage.

Kamijou gave her a blank look. “…Itsuwa?”

“I—I can’t help it! This was supposed to be worn over my tank top to change the impression my clothes gave! Please don’t say anything, please!!”

She was right; it must have been for slipping on, because upon closer inspection, the blouse had no buttons. There was no way to close it except for tying it in the front.

She seemed well aware there was only so far she could go with what she had on hand. She withered under Kamijou’s indefinable gaze.

But originally, Itsuwa had jumped into the river to rescue him. He would just have to back her up for now.

Kamijou set his lacking brain into full motion. “But Kanzaki wears something like that, so isn’t it okay?”

“The priestess does not dress this slovenly!!” Her complete denial was also a reaffirmation that her own clothes were so, and her entire face went red.

Still, if she was brazen about it like Kanzaki, she could probably pass as a “girl who probably was out dancing all night long.” But she was being coy about it, huddling up and fidgeting, which made her stand out as unusual.

“Well, I don’t know about Mr. Tsuchimikado, but if you’re here to get the document, too, shall we meet up with him and act in concert?” She must have wanted to get the idea of her wardrobe off the table quickly, because the topic shift had come with some force.

Kamijou, for his part, knew absolutely nothing about French. He had no passport, either, so he had no way of getting back to Japan if he ended up by himself. Itsuwa’s proposition worked all of that out.

“W-well, I’d appreciate it.”

“Then let’s go somewhere we can sit down first,” she suggested. “There’s a lot we have to talk about.”

Kamijou looked down at his own clothes. “I’m soaking wet,” he muttered. “It’d be nice to at least wipe off the mud.”

Itsuwa’s spine straightened. She began to fish through her bag, flustered. “I-if you need it, I—I have a hand towel right here.”

Before she finished talking, a towel slapped over his face.

Kamijou turned back, surprised, to see an older Caucasian man walking a big dog along the dry riverbed as he waved his hand behind him without looking, as if bothered and saying, “I don’t need it back.”

Kamijou took the towel off his head. “…Right. Guess there are nice people out there. Why do French people look so cool when they do simple stuff like that? Huh? Itsuwa, why are you all frozen up?”

“N-nothing, it’s nothing…,” she replied, shoulders drooping.

He tilted his head in confusion as he continued wiping up the dirt on his face and clothes with the towel. “Which reminds me. There’s demonstrations and riots happening here, too, aren’t there? Do people get inspected? I don’t have a passport or anything.”

“There have been several inspections but only of possessions. I don’t think they were serious enough to ask people to show passports. And I can trick the searches by using sorcery,” she added, then muttered quietly, “A bigger towel. That was a good idea. B-but no, hand towels are good, too…,” as she readjusted her bag’s shoulder strap.

Avignon.

A city in the south of France. The original, ancient town, four miles across, sat at the heart of the modern city, surrounded by ramparts. Many a building was crammed into the limited space there. During its golden age, it must have had a big effect on European culture as a whole. Perhaps that was why it was France’s number one tourist location to this day.

“…Hmm. Anyway, you said you were investigating the Document of Constantine in Avignon. I get that, Itsuwa, but…”

After receiving that explanation, Kamijou and Itsuwa passed through an arched castle gate installed in a giant stone wall, then entered the ancient boundaries of Avignon.

When they came out into what looked like a public plaza, they saw something like an open café. Its signboard sat beside the road, with French words (or what Kamijou had to assume were French words) next to the English on it. It didn’t feel as much meant for tourists as just made in consideration of people there for the first time.

Itsuwa led Kamijou out of the public square and onto a smaller road. Maybe she’s got a hole-in-the-wall place, he thought. “I thought we were going somewhere to sit down for now.”

“Y-yes.”

“So why are we going to a Melty Coffee? I mean, it’s a foreign business to begin with, so it’s not weird it’s in France, but I thought it was entirely a Japanese chain. Isn’t there, like…you know, a famous hidden place some old couple started up as a hobby or something?”

“W-well, there are some places like that, I suppose…,” said Itsuwa apologetically. “Um, those places mostly have only locals going there…If Japanese people from abroad like us went in, we’d really stand out. I figured, well, a chain restaurant like this where lots of Japanese tourists visited would be better…”

“Mm,” grunted Kamijou. He was about to yield to her opinion but suddenly thought of something. “…Wait, Itsuwa. If we’re worried about appearances, I’m pretty dirty right now.”

Kamijou had gotten a towel at the dry riverbed earlier, but that alone couldn’t get all the dirt off. His clothes were a lot drier, but he couldn’t do anything about the mud stains.

“If I go in like this, we might not just stand out; they might chase us away, right…?”

“No, that’s all right,” replied Itsuwa in a natural tone. “Right now, that’s all right.”

He understood what she meant as soon as they entered the store.

Its interior furnishings were exactly the same as the ones in Japan. The entire wall facing the road was a glass pane, with seats for one and longer tables lined up in rows. In the middle of the room there were four-person booths, with the ordering counter in the back. Kamijou couldn’t read French, but given the omnipresent placards with no-smoking symbols on them, these were the no-smoking seats. But if there was one difference, it would be the patrons. Since this was France, of course, he didn’t see any Japanese people.

Nobody had been around where he’d landed in his parachute, but the café was fairly crowded. Perhaps it was simply that while people were afraid of the protests and riots, they couldn’t stay cooped up at home and still live their lives. The point was that the flow of people was extremely focused, since they were only going to places they absolutely had to.

And there was one other thing.

Most of the guests had mussed hair and dirty clothes, mud on them, and arms and legs wrapped in bandages. Everyone from the burly adults to the small children had at least a bruise on their face, with uninjured people being more unusual.

“Protests and riots, huh…?” muttered Kamijou to himself.

For the time being, though Academy City and the Roman Orthodox Church were displaying completely antagonistic viewpoints, it hadn’t escalated into full-blown military action. Still, these changes were steadily starting to eat away at the world.

Unpleasant changes—changes nobody wanted.

“We have to do something soon,” said Itsuwa softly.

“…Yeah. Hence the strategy meeting.” Kamijou kept his answer short as well.

This wasn’t the time to be relaxing and eating, but Itsuwa pointed out that if they sat around without ordering anything, they’d stand out. Well, Kamijou found it uncomfortable indeed to make small talk under the glare of the employees, so they went up to the counter for now.

The lady behind the register was, of course, French.

Okay, thought Kamijou. “I-Itsuwa, since we’re in France, do I have to speak French?”

“What?”

“Like, should I be expecting some plot twist where even though she’s French, she can speak English?”

“Um, I think English should work in most places in the EU. Japan is surrounded by water, but here their sense of national borders is weak. See, look—that man over there is German, and the one across from him looks Italian. The chain restaurant service business needs employees to talk to a lot of different people, so I don’t think French is the only thing that will work here.”

“O-oh!!” said Kamijou, getting energetic all at once.

The time had come to show them the fruits of using his “Easy English Training” cell phone learning application. In truth, he was stuck on practice level four in the app, but no point worrying about that. He marched right up to the counter, and before the cashier could ask what he would like, he said, “Coffee and sandwich please!!” in English.

His English was mostly just him pronouncing the words with Japanese sounds, but the lady nodded in understanding.

Sh-she understood!!

…Being overjoyed at this made him feel like his practical English level didn’t amount to very much. Then the lady said something in a foreign language that meant something like, “That will be seven euros.”

Kamijou lost his calm.

He couldn’t pay in yen.

“What…what now…?!”

As Kamijou’s face darkened like lightning had struck it, Itsuwa held out a few paper euro notes from next to him. He told her he’d pay her back later, then started wondering how many yen were in one euro.

Itsuwa, in Japanese, said to the cashier, “U-um, I’ll have an espresso and a Berkshire pork sandwich and also a bag of Healthy Vegetable Sticks, please.”

The French cashier nodded again.

Kamijou couldn’t help but shout, “What? Japanese?! I could have spoken Japanese?!”

When he looked at the cashier more closely, he saw many small badges in the shapes of national flags attached to her uniform, near her shoulder. They were probably signs that a customer could use any of those countries’ languages.

When it came to that, Kamijou’s English ability only became even more dubious. The cashier could have just understood the Japanese-pronounced words and put in the order from that.

Now quite disheartened, he took the tray with his order on it and went to get a table. Itsuwa came a few moments later. She first placed her own tray on the table, then took her bag off her shoulder and put it at her feet.

When she did, he heard a heavy metallic clang from the bag.

“…?” Vaguely interested, he looked that way.

When he did, Itsuwa blushed for some reason and waved her hands in front of her. “P-please don’t worry about it!”

“But, well…”

Before Kamijou could continue, Itsuwa said without moving her lips almost at all, “(…It’s a weapon.)”

“Huh?”

“(…The handle is split in five pieces. To use it, I connect them all to make a spear. I know using ‘joints’ makes it less durable, but I can’t carry it around unless I do…)”

Now that she mentioned it, he thought he remembered Itsuwa using a huge spear in Chioggia, too.

“Anyway, um, did you get in touch with Tsuchimikado?”

“No.” Kamijou took his phone out of his pocket. “…Haven’t heard from him since we got separated while falling. I just can’t get through. My phone’s working, so he probably either has his phone off or isn’t near any ground antennae…Anyway, I think he’ll be fine no matter what happens.”

He tested it once more, but it didn’t even seem to call, probably because one of them was out of range. I’m surprised it survived falling in the river. This thing is tough, he thought, returning it to his pocket.

For now, he figured he’d eat his sandwich and have this strategy meeting. But then, he realized there were no napkins on his tray. “Eek, now what? I wanted to wipe my hands off before eating.”

For some reason, Itsuwa’s eyes sparkled at his complaint. “I-i-i-if you need one, I have a…” She blushed and started fishing through the bag at her feet, but a French waitress suddenly passed by them, curtly said “sorry” in what must have been French, and very rudely slammed a few napkins down on the table.

In front of Kamijou, Itsuwa—who was in the process of taking out a hand towel—stopped moving in pure disappointment.

As Kamijou wiped off his hands with the napkins that finally got there, he broached the main topic. “By the way, about before, you said you were investigating Avignon…Wait, what’s wrong, Itsuwa?”

“N-no…nothing…,” she said, wilting like a leafy plant left unattended on a summer windowsill.

He pulled himself together and tried again: “You’ve been investigating stuff about Avignon, right? Why France and not the Vatican? Did you find something suspicious?”

“Y-yes,” said Itsuwa with a nod. “I was actually going to contact the others from Amakusa in France after getting a little more information.”

“Which means we were spot on,” suggested Kamijou.

Itsuwa didn’t deny it. “Do you know of a building called the Papal Palace?”

“?”

“It’s the largest Roman Orthodox building here in Avignon. Actually, it’s more correct to say the city of Avignon expanded out from that building.”

“Papal Palace, huh…?” he muttered. Papal—did that mean the pope? “Hm? But wouldn’t a palace for the pope be in the Vatican? It sounds like the most hoity-toity name they could think of.”

“Well, you see,” Itsuwa began, seeming a little troubled for words. “The city of Avignon has a somewhat complex past.”

“What kind of past?”

“At the end of the twelfth century, the Roman Orthodox pope and the king of France had a dispute. France won the dispute in the end. The king of France apparently won the right to make several demands of the pope at the time…One of them was for him to leave his headquarters and come to France.

“It was called the Avignon papacy,” she added. “And also the Babylonian Captivity.”

“The headquarters—you mean the Vatican?”

“N-no. I think it was called the Papal States at the time.”

Anyway, she went on to say that France wanted the Roman papacy under their control to use the Roman Orthodox Church’s various privileges and favor.

“And they chose Avignon here as their place of confinement. So the palace they locked them up in was given the name the Papal Palace, or the Palais des Papes in French.”

“Locked up, huh?”

“Several Roman popes were held by the Babylonian Captivity for sixty-eight years. Of course, they still had to do their job as pope in the meantime.” Itsuwa munched on a vegetable stick. “But as the pope, there were things they couldn’t do outside of their headquarters, the Roman Papal States. I suppose appointing new cardinals and ecumenical councils were the big ones. The Papal States’ location, the buildings there, and all the Soul Arms within…They couldn’t re-create all the same conditions in Avignon.

“That would be the same as making an entirely new version of the Papal States,” she said. “So, the Church needed a trick.”

“A trick?”

“They couldn’t create the same facilities in Avignon as back home. Instead, they built magical pipelines between there and Avignon, allowing them to remotely control the facilities in the States.”

“…Like connecting an access computer to a big server.”

“When the captivity ended and the pope returned to the base in France, they supposedly severed the pipelines several times…But considering the local ground current patterns, that seems like the only building in Avignon they could use the document from. Maybe the current Church reconnected the pipelines at some point.”

“Hmm…” Kamijou nodded. After thinking about everything for a few moments, he said, “Did you investigate inside the Papal Palace?”

“N-no,” said Itsuwa, wincing and shaking her head. “I’m just snooping around, that’s all…Originally, the plan was to get enough information first and contact the vicar pope, then get a big force here and go in together.”

Apparently, the vicar pope, Saiji Tatemiya, had received a “special Soul Arm” handed down through Amakusa. Still, now that the document was involving the entire world, Itsuwa decided that acting alone was a bad plan.

“If Tsuchimikado is trying to get here, too, you’ll have another person saying Avignon is suspicious, a different information source. That means, like you suspected, it’s very possible the Roman Orthodox guys are using the document in the Papal Palace.

“But…,” he added, “it originally belonged to the Church, right?”

“Y-yes.”

“Then why not the Papal States…er, the Vatican, I should say…? Why don’t they just use it there? I don’t see any special reason to take it out of their base. Avignon is just for remote controlling Vatican facilities, not for sorcery they can only do in Avignon.”

“I have a few theories about that, but…” Itsuwa thought for a moment, then slowly continued. “I wonder if it takes a huge amount of time to get permission to use it. The one hundred and forty-one cardinals at the top of the Church have to all agree on it. The pope has great authority in the Vatican, but I still don’t think he could use it arbitrarily. I think that’s also why they couldn’t be reckless with it before.”

Itsuwa explained that even the upper echelon of the Roman Orthodox Church had its turf wars, so the arrangement was probably to avoid using the document for those purposes.

“However, we have information saying control through Avignon is irregular and doesn’t need the agreement of all the cardinals. But in exchange for activating it outside the Vatican, they can’t do it instantly—they seem to need preparations in Avignon. To be blunt, if we act now, we might still be able to stop them from using it and calm the chaos throughout the world.”

“But either way, we can’t do anything without investigating the Papal Palace…”

“I—I almost have enough information for Amakusa to act. I think we should begin our charge on the Papal Palace in a few days.”

In a “war” that was a confrontation of science and sorcery…it seemed Itsuwa and the others would fight to stop the Roman Orthodox Church.

The English church probably didn’t appreciate the Roman church at the helm for the sorcery side. Still, they didn’t want to make trouble by openly opposing them. She used the word Amakusa, but never the English Puritan Church. Which meant that they were using Amakusa, under their umbrella, to obstruct the document. And if Amakusa failed, they could claim that a smaller faction of theirs were acting on their own accord, with no connection to the Puritans’ intentions as a whole.

“…”

Kamijou had already been separated from Tsuchimikado. Instead of going by himself to the recognizably suspicious Papal Palace and upsetting the situation, he felt like acting in tandem with Itsuwa and helping Amakusa with their plans was more reliable.

For Kamijou, it was simply more efficient to help Itsuwa gather information so Amakusa could break into the place. “Itsuwa, is there anything I could help with?”

“Huh?”

“You said you’d rush the palace in a few days, but the sooner the better, right?”

“Y-yes,” she said, trying to answer despite her confusion. “If you want—”

But he didn’t get to hear the whole thing.

Because, with a dull roar…

…the window facing the road suddenly shattered all at once.

It hadn’t been a thrown rock. And not a bat or metal pipe, either.

It was hands.

Dozens, hundreds of human hands had pressed against the glass, and their pressure had caused it to shatter inwards. He heard several shrieks in the store, but even that was drowned out by a vortex of people flooding inside. It was like a horror scene in a zombie movie.

It was clearly abnormal, but Kamijou knew the cause immediately.

“A riot?!”

“Th-this way!!”

Itsuwa grabbed her things at her feet with one hand, Kamijou’s arm with the other, and immediately ran. They went toward the emergency exit rather than the front entrance. Meanwhile, a throng in the hundreds entered the shop, very quickly transforming it into a jam-packed space like a full train car.

<“Japanese people!”>

<“From Academy City?!”>

<“Kill them. Don’t hesitate. They’re the enemy!!”>

Kamijou didn’t know a lick of French, but the emotion in their voices rang strangely clear in his ears.

He turned around behind him. Several screams overlapped. There were women and children inside, too. But before he could go back for them, Itsuwa had kicked the emergency door closed.

“Itsuwa!!”

“The way they’re moving, nobody will die. There are too many of them. The rioters are restricting their own movement. As long as they don’t start falling over like dominoes, nobody will be seriously hurt.”

“That’s not the problem!! At least the children—”

“Is that all?!” Itsuwa shouted, interrupting him. “…If that’s all, then that’s happening all over the world. And what do you think we could do if we went back into that human wave? We came this far so we could pull this disaster out by the roots as soon as possible, right…?”

“…Damn it.”

“If we can just do something about the document the Church is using, this will quiet down. If we get caught in the riots, we won’t be able to move. And then there won’t be anyone to quiet them down.”

“…Goddamn it!!” he spat, grinding his teeth. The Roman Orthodox Church is making all the riots they want, and Academy City won’t do anything about it so they can use it to their advantage, he thought. And the only ones suffering in the end are the ones caught in the middle! How am I supposed to ignore this? I’ll stop it right now. I’ll stop this stupid nonsense as soon as I can, I swear!!

Kamijou and Itsuwa ran down a back road, towered over by buildings on either side. Somewhere behind them, a large man shouted. The sound of glass breaking found its way to their ears. And whose shrill crying was that? Even an explosion shook the air; someone must have lit some gasoline.

He couldn’t figure out the goal of this.

Were they after a Japanese business chain in Avignon? Did they want to attack a hotel with a lot of Japanese tourists inside? Whatever the case was, they’d already forgotten their original purpose, and now the streets were flooded by people who just wanted to go on a rampage.

“Itsuwa, how far are we running?”

“For now, we just have to get somewhere we won’t be caught by the—”

Her words suddenly cut off.

She’d just seen a new crowd on the other side of this narrow street.

…Such perfect timing…, thought Kamijou, his shoulders giving a jerk. “Hey, Itsuwa, you’ve been looking around here a while, right? Ever been caught in a riot like this before?”

“Huh? N-no. Amakusa specializes in blending in with their environment. Normally, we see beforehand when a riot is going to happen and then leave the area before that…”

“…Thought so.” That informed Kamijou of an unpleasant fact. “Their timing is too good.”

“What do you…?”

“If we assume the enemy using the document is hiding in Avignon like us, they might have seen me falling with my parachute. Even if they didn’t get a clear look, they should have been able to detect a supersonic passenger plane made in Academy City slowing down and air-dropping something. If they’re on the lookout for me, this kind of reaction makes sense.”

“Wait, so…”

“These riots…They’re intercepting us!!” cried Kamijou, just as the crowd blocking the road started moving toward them.

The old city of Avignon, where the Papal Palace was, was small, closed in by these old ramparts. They’d kept on putting buildings in this already limited space, and the paths were so small even bicycles had trouble getting through. Add to that the ten-plus-meter-tall buildings towering over them, and all this city gave him was a bizarre sense of oppression.

Their narrow road was blocked in several places by the human hordes.

Those participating in the riot actually looked like they were hurting themselves physically.

Kamijou thought for a moment, then made up his mind. If they didn’t go against the flow of the crowds in front of them and break through, they’d never reach the Papal Palace. And at any rate, if they didn’t go there, the problem would remain unsolved. The longer time dragged on, the more everyone got hurt.

“Let’s go, Itsuwa.”

“Huh…?”

“Doesn’t look like we have time to wait for Tsuchimikado to call. Amakusa won’t be here right away, either, right? We should squeeze by them and go for the palace. Now that the enemy knows about us, even they might not be around for long.”

And…

“In the worst case, they might still be able to use the document if they go back to the Vatican. Even an amateur like me knows this’ll get worse if they take it back to their base. We need to wreck that thing here and now!!”

Itsuwa vacillated a moment but eventually nodded.

She must have decided they didn’t have time to waste summoning the members of Amakusa scattered around France.

In the meantime, hundreds of rioters were getting closer from the other side of the narrow road.

They looked packed in like sardines—a thick wall made of people.

“…When we go in, please stay low,” said Itsuwa quietly as she stared at them. “If they see our faces in the middle of the pack, they could target us. But that’s less likely if we can stay hidden in the crowds. Even if this riot is the enemy intercepting us, it doesn’t look very precise.”

“Right,” said Kamijou, feeling something between fear and excitement. “Let’s run!”

That moment, Kamijou and Itsuwa each plunged into the crowd of rioters.

They twisted and turned, wriggling through the riotous crowd as thick and dense as the walls that guarded the city. There were too many people to run. He could just barely walk and even then, only a few meters at a time.

Suddenly, with a shout, someone punched him in the head.

When he tried to keep going, large fingers grabbed his shirt.

From there on out, Kamijou was just as frantic as them. He bit an arm coming to grab him, pushed through the wall in his way, and went forward, albeit still dragging the hangers-on along behind. Blood crept from his side where nails had dug into him, and he caught the scent of excited men’s body odor. Explosive yells right in his ear rattled his brain, and as the crushing pressure from every direction increased, his mind began to steadily wear down.

Shit…Little by little, his legs grew dull. Shit…!!

Just as the disgusting mass was about to swallow him whole, the wall of people suddenly parted. A breath of fresh air rushed in, untainted by all the human gasping.

“A-are you all right?!”

Itsuwa’s voice came from right near him.

Blood was trickling from one of her temples. It didn’t look like she could get through this crowd unharmed, either. She had mentioned a spear being in her bag, but she must not have felt like swinging it around.

Kamijou, heaving, ran to get out of the throng. Somehow, his feet felt wobbly and unreliable. If he wasn’t being careful, he would have rammed a shoulder into the narrow road’s stone wall.

“…I-Itsuwa, where’s the palace?”

“Still up ahead. That roof all the way over there is it…W-we’ll have to get past that next,” she said, pointing.

Kamijou looked over slowly.

It was another human vortex, this one incomparably larger than the one they’d just struggled through.

5

The way to the Papal Palace was too perilous for them to make it through.

The old city of Avignon where Kamijou and Itsuwa were was a small one, spanning four kilometers and enclosed by stone walls, but they weren’t making any progress toward their destination. The parts of the old city around them, at any rate, had tight roads. There were only about three meters from one side to the other, and on each side were housing complexes towering like ramparts, all made of stone as well. With the fifteen-meter-tall walls blocking them, it would be too hard to take a detour…and if they tried to plunge straight through, a riotous crowd of hundreds or even thousands would be waiting for them. When so many people crammed into such a narrow space, they formed a thick wall. It was like trying to walk from one end of a fully packed train car to the other.

They wouldn’t get to their destination like this. The crowds seemed like they would do them in before they got to destroy the document.

“Again…,” said Itsuwa, breathless, staring at the new mobs filling the space in front of them.

Kamijou didn’t know French, but several of the men were shouting and pointing at the two of them, eyes bloodshot. Maybe they were calling out that the pair was from Japan or Academy City. Before the men could move, Itsuwa grabbed Kamijou’s arm and started running.

“That…won’t work. Please, come this way. Otherwise, we’ll be trapped!”

“Hey, wait, what about the palace?” he shouted; Itsuwa had headed back down the road from which they’d come. The men staring at them before seemed to try and give chase, but they were immediately engulfed into the swirling riots.

Itsuwa, meanwhile, gritted her teeth, not happy with the situation, either. “…That mob is past critical numbers. We can’t get through them by running!”

“You’re going to use a different route? But…”

Kamijou was cut off by several young adults from a different riot showing up in their new escape route. The already tight path was now perfectly closed in by human walls.

Which made sense. Kamijou and Itsuwa had just gotten out of that one a few moments ago.

“Here too?!!” said Itsuwa, her voice unusually angry, pulling Kamijou’s hand and running toward the housing complex walls. They burst inside one building, which looked like cliffs rather than stone-built structures. They shut the thick wooden door by ramming their backs into it.

Violent pounding and impacts recoiled through the door at them. It wasn’t someone trying to bust down the door but rather the rioters’ shoulders and arms scraping together.

Kamijou, his back resting against the door, slid down to the floor. “…What do we do now? We can’t get anywhere near the Papal Palace like this.”

“Yes, it does seem difficult to make any progress like this…,” his companion replied weakly. She let her bag off her shoulder and onto the floor before taking seventy-centimeter rods out of it. When she clicked them together through gas stopcock-like sockets, they formed a single, long pole. Finally, she attached a steel blade to the tip.

Her Western cross lance was complete. He thought he remembered its name being a “Friulian spear,” something used for shipboard combat.

He sighed. Seems like she’s rethinking the whole covert movement thing…Huh?!

Suddenly, something caught in his throat as he thought.

He’d just gotten a glimpse of Itsuwa’s cleavage through her blouse, which was only tied in the front. He thought to himself that her outfit was unfair in a few ways, but she didn’t seem to notice whatsoever.

“What shall we do? I’d been operating under the assumption we would avoid the riots. I didn’t actually prepare any plans or spells for if we actually got caught in them.”

“W-well. We need to get to the palace to calm the riots, and we need to calm the riots to get to the palace…Damn, it just goes around in circles.”

Not only that, but if the enemy felt like they were in a crisis, they could take the document home to the Vatican while they were stopped up like this. If they used it from there, taking it back would be very difficult. Then these contrived riots could just go on forever.

It was a dilemma—they needed to act swiftly, but they couldn’t make a move.

Each second that went by wasted felt ten, even a hundred times longer.

And that was when it happened.

Suddenly, the cell phone in Kamijou’s pocket played its ringtone.

It was from Tsuchimikado.

“Kammy, are you all right?!”

“Where the hell are you right now?! Wait, did you get caught in the riots, too? You’d better not be hurt!”

“I’m heading for a building called the Papal Palace right now. That’s about the only place in France they can use the document from, nya.”

“The Papal Palace…? You were going after that, too?”

“?”

Before Tsuchimikado could say anything, Kamijou added, “Which means my parachute didn’t land me somewhere strange—we definitely had something to do in Avignon all along.”

“Well, yeah, but…Kammy, how do you know about the palace? I thought we jumped from the plane before I could explain, nya.”

“I met up with someone from Amakusa named Itsuwa, and she told me something similar. But the riots got bad, and we can’t get close. How are you doing?”

“About the same over here, nya. Well, some stuff happened. Avignon’s narrow streets go too well with these human wave riots. Can’t even get near the place without busting straight through.”

With just that, each knew the other’s general situation. Tsuchimikado must have also been caught in the riots and then withdrew somewhere.

“Hey, Tsuchimikado. I want to meet for now. Know anywhere we can join up?”

“There’s riots happening all over the city. I’d like to avoid staying in one place for too long.”

“Then what do we do? Wait for the riots to die down?”

“We could, if these were naturally occurring ones. But this was all done intentionally with the document. Seeing that the Church can drag on this mess for as long as it’s convenient for them, nothing will change for the better if we just wait around.”

“You have something else in mind?!”

“I do,” answered Tsuchimikado simply. “An idea to turn things around. If we can’t go to the Papal Palace, we’ll just have to solve the problem in a way where we don’t need to.”

“…?”

“Did that Amakusa person tell you anything? No, so here’s a question for you. Why are we so focused on Avignon’s Papal Palace?”

Kamijou thought for a moment. “It’s, uh, because they can remote control a building in the Vatican, right? That’s how they can use the document from here.”

“That’s right. In that case, we just have to cut off the magical pipeline connecting Avignon and the Papal States…or the Vatican now. If we do that, they shouldn’t be able to use it. Even if it’s too hard to get to the palace, we might be able to reach a pipeline on the way.”

“Oh!” blurted out Kamijou. He was right about that…“But if they can’t use it, the guys trying to use it in the palace will realize, right? And then they might be able to get away.”

“Yeah. Can’t deny that. That’s why everything rests on how we schedule this. It’ll all come down to how fast we can get to the palace after severing the pipeline.”

Tsuchimikado’s plan seemed to make a certain amount of sense. Had he gotten that information before they’d boarded the plane? Or had he, after getting separated from Kamijou, been investigating Avignon while fleeing from the riots on his own?

Still, even Kamijou’s amateur senses saw a problem with it. “If the document is in the Papal Palace, we won’t know who’s using it, will we? If they want, they could just blend into the crowds to hide. If that happens, it’ll be really tough for us to find them on our own.”

“…” On the other end of the line, the agent was quiet for a moment. “Well, we’ll manage it somehow. For now, stopping the document comes first.”

Kamijou didn’t like where this was going…Don’t tell me he’s gonna use sorcery to locate the enemy again.

Motoharu Tsuchimikado had a handicap—when he used magic, it damaged him. But Kamijou knew he could ignore that handicap if he needed to. He’d been splotched with blood during the Daihasei Festival when they finally tracked down Oriana Thomson.

Aware of Kamijou’s unease or not, Tsuchimikado’s voice was cheerful. “We finally have our way out, Kammy.”

6

Kamijou and Itsuwa passed through a housing complex and out a back door.

“Itsuwa, your friends…the Amakusa guys. They’re still held up?”

“I…I’m sorry. We never thought this would happen. I sent an emergency message a few minutes ago, but they’d be lucky to get to us by tomorrow morning. If we were in Japan, we could have used one of the swirls for the Pilgrimage in Miniature movement spell…”

This road contained no blockades; it even started to seem like they could get to the Papal Palace without a problem. But they didn’t know when another huge crowd would clog the streets again, so it was better not to waltz on through the long distance. They’d have to aim for the nearby pipeline, like Tsuchimikado had indicated.

“O-over here.” Itsuwa, spear in hand, took the lead.

The “walls” on our sides are awfully tall. Taller than before…, he thought. This area looked like it had stone buildings built on top of cliffs that were already there. Even the black grime and dirt on the stronghold-like buildings made it seem like a kind of bulwark; he couldn’t tell what the structures were for at a glance. The residential buildings, stores, and churches all had the appearance of fortresses.

“Um, I know the spot Mr. Tsuchimikado is referring to, but…is there really a pipeline connecting the Papal Palace to the Vatican there?”

“Don’t ask me…,” muttered Kamijou, looking toward his phone.

Tsuchimikado’s voice came back buoyant. “Well, different cultures read ley lines completely differently. There’s not much doubt about this one, though.”

The “point” was apparently quite close to where Kamijou and Itsuwa were. They were fairly far from Tsuchimikado, so it had fallen to the two of them to cut the pipeline. “So, uh, what’s this pipeline going to look like?” he asked. “It wouldn’t, like…be sticking out of the ground, right?”

“Ley lines are basically flows of energy in the land. The energy could take any shape or direction. Even if a ley line has significance for one religion, it could mean nothing to another. That happens all the time. That’s why I said different cultures read them differently…”

Kamijou still looked confused. Next to him, Itsuwa, possibly having picked up on the conversation from the phone’s speaker, clarified, “It’s like different ways to use ingredients.”

In Western cuisine, things like Berkshire pork were high-class ingredients, but in Japanese cuisine—recent creative dishes aside—nobody took the slightest notice of it. In the same way, pulling out only the power you felt necessary from all the different kinds of energy seemed fundamental to using ley lines. Itsuwa had spoken smoothly and clearly about it, leading Kamijou to idly wonder if Amakusa specialized in spells using the lines.

“Anyway, there’s no rank in these lands. Meaning we’re the ones assigning our own value and using them, nya.”

“An amateur wouldn’t be able to tell just by seeing it, right?” asked Kamijou.

“Yep. An important Roman Orthodox ley line links Avignon with the Vatican. A distorted one, strictly speaking, that people created by destroying the geography,” he continued smoothly. “Ley lines shake easily. It’s a basic concept in feng shui.”

“Right. I don’t get what these ley lines are. But they’ll be lines engraved right into the ground, right?”

“What I’m saying is that if someone levels the ground, they’ll twist the ley lines there, too. Feng shui practitioners use things like the locations of mountains or directions of rivers to decide what spots are good or bad…but these days, it’s not that uncommon for people to fill up rivers and shave away mountains.”

“Sorcerers who make use of the land need to try hard, lest others develop over those important points,” added Itsuwa.

…Sounds like a huge pain, Kamijou thought with a sigh.

“On the other hand, you can use sorcery calculations to change the geography, too. More precisely, it’s closer to reselecting one ley line from many independent ones in a region, based on which flavors they can bring out the strongest. But if you mess up, you could ruin the balance and cause a huge disaster, so they end up being these huge national-scale projects, nya.”

“Like the Church’s pipeline…,” muttered Kamijou.

“As I mentioned, there are so many lines throughout the land with heaps of different kinds of energy, you couldn’t even count them all. Which, well, means it’s extremely tough to pick out one line you’re after without any hints,” added Tsuchimikado. “But if you have a search condition…in this case, a line tying the Papal Palace to the Vatican, it’s a different story. You can find it just as easily as a car GPS can find a destination you give it, yeaaah~? Anyhow, if you two could go bust that pipeline soon, that would be great. Uh, Itsuwa, right?”

“Y-yes!!”

“Just want to confirm you knyow a spell or a way to destroy the pipeline.”

“Um, well, I know an Amakusa-style one. It should cover anything standard, as long as it’s Shinto, Buddhist, or Crossist…”

“That should be all you need. If you find the pipeline on your end, you’ll do it.”

Kamijou quirked his head to the side as he listened to their exchange. “Wait, couldn’t my right hand take out any of these ley lines or pipelines in one hit?”

He had a power called the Imagine Breaker. Whether sorcery or magic, a single blow would destroy any preternatural power.

Tsuchimikado, however, didn’t approve of the suggestion. “We don’t know if your Imagine Breaker can actually destroy ley lines.”

“Huh?” Kamijou asked, surprised. “But ley lines…they’re magic…right? Then…”

“About that,” he interrupted. “We don’t really understand everything about your right hand. It can negate anything, magic or supernatural ability, but…for example…right. A person’s ‘life force’ is an occult energy, but you can’t kill people just by shaking their hands, can you?”

“Well, no…”

“I get the feeling there’s some strange exceptions. And I think ley lines fall under that category. It’s hard to imagine you touching the ground and the planet blowing up.”

But at the same time, Misha Kreutzev hadn’t tried to touch Kamijou’s right hand, and Hyouka Kazakiri was unconsciously afraid of it.

“…”

Kamijou suddenly fell quiet and glanced at his hand.

…Exceptions?

How did it work on the inside? Did the way it worked mean something?

Thinking about it calmly, he realized he didn’t know much about his own power, the Imagine Breaker. Part of it was because he’d lost his memories…but maybe he wouldn’t know even if that hadn’t happened. At the very least, there were no hints, much less answers, in the “knowledge” that remained after his amnesia.

In any case, severing that pipeline was their first priority now. Kamijou collected himself and looked ahead.

7

Kamijou and Itsuwa came to a small museum in Avignon.

The museum wasn’t a big, isolated building. Like the other housing complexes and stores had been, it was just using a section of one of the fortresslike buildings towering to either side of the road. The small, ancient city of Avignon, surrounded by its ramparts, didn’t have that much space to begin with. City planners had probably wanted to keep the scenery unified.

At the front entrance stood a signboard in French, but seeing as how the store’s metal lattice shutter was pulled down over the wooden door, the plate near the doorknob probably had the word for closed on it. Even though today was a weekday afternoon.

“They probably closed up early for fear of the riots,” said Itsuwa, looking up at the building.

Kamijou glanced at the sturdy shutter. “But according to Tsuchimikado, the invisible pipeline runs through this museum, right? How do we get in? Does Amakusa have some kind of lock-picking skill, or—?”

“Yah!” came a cute call, interrupting him.

A moment later, Itsuwa stuck her spear’s tip through the gap between the shutter and the ground, then moved it, using something like the principle of leverage. The very cogs that moved the shutter creaked, then broke apart.

A high-pitched crime-prevention alarm went off, but Itsuwa ignored it as she pushed the shutter farther open and used the principle of leverage again to pry open the wooden door behind it. Then she waltzed inside.

“Come on, hurry.”

“Um…Itsuwa?” said Kamijou, staring in shock at the girl. His eyes asked, Weren’t you supposed to be a normal girl…? but she only looked at him blankly. Was she planning to punch out anyone who heard the clamor and came to the museum?

Fearful of the loud, shrill alarm, Kamijou entered as well. It wasn’t well lit…Actually, it was pretty much pitch-black. They’d probably closed all the windows so the exhibits wouldn’t get hit by direct sunlight. Their normal fluorescent lights wouldn’t cause a problem, but right now, the only light was the faint glow of the emergency exit sign. Walking around in here made him uneasy.

“Tsuchimikado was saying…”

“Now that we’re here, I can tell. Looks like it’s over here.”

Itsuwa went farther in, spear in hand. Kamijou followed; the floor was completely normal. Looking at where the glass exhibition showcases were, though, this one spot broke the rules for some reason. It was unnaturally empty.

Itsuwa looked slowly across the unnatural floor. After a few moments of observation, she eventually nodded, satisfied with something. “It definitely looks like it’s here. I can feel power treated in Roman Orthodox fashion…a certain purification effect applied to other religions’ spells. This ley line is unique to Western Crossist society. Though it’s hidden quite well…I had to get fairly close before I could sense it.”

Then she looked over at Kamijou. “…Mr. Tsuchimikado hasn’t come yet, but we should do this before the enemy notices us. I’ll get to work cutting the pipeline, so please stand back a bit.”

“It doesn’t look like there’s anything there,” said Kamijou, staring hard at the floor near Itsuwa. “…Is cutting it going to be that easy?”

“Well, breaking the ley line clean in two would take a lot more people.” Itsuwa laughed. “We only need to make it so they can’t use their Papal Palace–Vatican line. All I’m doing is damaging it a bit and shifting its direction slightly, so I can manage by myself.”

“I see,” he said, not really seeing.

Anyway, I can’t let the Imagine Breaker get in the way. He backed up a few steps.

The Amakusa girl put down her bag and rummaged through it. She seemed to be choosing everyday items to use for the spell.

As he watched, he asked, “I forget—did Amakusa use stuff like that to make their spells?”

“Y-yes. Right now, I need…a camera, slippers, this pamphlet, a bottle of mineral water, white panties—”

After taking them out, Itsuwa gave a “hyaa?!” and hurried to put the article she’d probably just changed out of back into the bag. Her face grew bright red, but the rest of her froze completely.

“Wh-what’s wrong, Itsuwa?”

“…Essential…,” mumbled Itsuwa, still not moving. “It’s absolutely essential for this spell…”

Her face drained of hope, she took the underwear back out with slow movements. Seeing her about to cry, Kamijou considered turning around, but she told him, “N-no, please don’t worry about it”—so he couldn’t move at all.

Meanwhile, she arranged the items from her bag on the floor. At first, it looked like a circle…but it was probably governed by some kind of minute regulations.

After she finished positioning them all, she spun the spear in her hand around and pointed its tip downward.

“Here I go,” she said, a short declaration before taking it in both hands and stabbing it into the floor.

It hit the exact middle of the circle.

It didn’t make the sound of a blade hitting stone.

The spearhead slowly vanished into the floor as though sinking into a swamp.

When Itsuwa cuts the pipeline, it’ll make the document lose its effect. That means the riots happening in this old city should calm down, too, he said to himself as the girl kept her spear in the floor. It continued to sink deeper, ever so slowly.

But when that happens, the guys using the document in the Papal Palace will suspect they’ve failed. If they decide the prospects are grim, they could take it and run back to the Vatican.

Her foot moved—her heel kicked the floor.

The index fingers of her hands grasping the spear tapped out a rhythm on its handle.

It’ll be a race against time. Once the riots are settled, we’ll run to the Papal Palace right away. We’ll coordinate with Tsuchimikado and capture them before they vanish from the building.

Over half the spear was now buried, and the end of the shaft had fallen to the height of her chest.

She took her hands off, then regripped the spear.

Then she bent her wrists and twisted it.

Like turning a giant key…

…the next thing to come was a sound.

However—

It didn’t come from Itsuwa’s spear.

Bam!!

Suddenly, some kind of attack ripped through the museum’s outer wall and flew toward both the spear in the floor and Itsuwa.

In terms of what it felt like—a blade swung by a giant.

White in color.

The attack traveled a straight line toward Itsuwa.

When she realized it, she left the spear stuck in the floor and wheeled around behind it. The unleashed attack shot right past her, but the fragments of the destroyed wall—a big bundle of rocks—struck her spear directly.

“Itsuwa!!”

Upon receiving the attack, the spear bent in the middle like paper.

Itsuwa took the aftershock. Still grasping the broken spear, she bent over backward.

After stirring up a certain amount of destruction, the white attack swayed and vanished like smoke.

“Why, you…!!”

Itsuwa took each of the spear’s broken halves in each hand. After removing the broken rod piece from the place where it was attached, she kicked the bag on the floor into the air, grabbed a replacement rod from out of it, and built the spear anew.

The second attack came a moment later.

Tearing through one outer wall after another, a white blade rushed in from outside the building at them.

The white blade’s motion, having penetrated straight through from wall to wall, was erratic, like a child violently swinging a tree branch. But the overwhelming destructive force behind it changed things. Stone walls and flooring crumbled, glass showcases shattered, and all the fragments flew in every direction.

Boom-bang-crash!! A series of loud noises.

Kamijou, crouching, saw a thin powder dancing down.

Crap…This building won’t hold up…!!

“Itsuwa!!” he shouted, gesturing for her to run to the exit.

She complied, and they hurried to the museum’s front exit.

Meanwhile, white blades swung around and carved up the walls, hot on the heels of their prey.

It felt like with each strike, their aim was getting more precise.

Was the opponent getting used to how they were fleeing?

Or…

Was the attacker at a long distance, approaching little by little?

After barely scraping past a blade falling on them like a guillotine, they practically stumbled out of the museum.

And there…

“Well, well. As I thought, it seems this is less precise if I’m not at close range.”

…they heard a voice from nearby.

Only a dozen centimeters or so in front of him…

Someone was there, as though they’d waited from the beginning, and now Kamijou was the surprised one.

The person in front of them didn’t wait for him to answer before swinging his right arm.

Something white was coiling around it.

Despite the languid motion, it shot toward Kamijou’s neck with the speed of a guillotine sliding down.

Boom!! came an air-splitting roar.

“Oooohhhhhhhh?!”

Kamijou immediately held his right hand out and it crashed into the white blade.

The blade blew to smithereens that very moment. And not metaphorically—it actually turned into a fine, white mist and burst out into their surroundings.

His attacker made a gesture with his fingers, and the roiling, fog-like curtain of powder reassembled.

“Please stand back!!” shouted Itsuwa from behind him.

Kamijou quickly put distance between them.

Finally, his eyes focused on the entire form of his assailant.

It was a man wearing a green dress uniform.

Perhaps short for a Caucasian, he was about Kamijou’s height, if not shorter. On the other hand, he might have been twice Kamijou’s age. He had a slender frame, and the uniform seemed to have some space on the inside. An odd sense of vitality exuded from his hollowed cheeks.

Kamijou kept his right hand up and asked the attacker in uniform, “…From the Church?”

“You aren’t wrong, but I would have liked it if you’d called me God’s Right Seat.”

The man spoke with levity, and his words made Kamijou speechless.

God’s Right Seat.

Once before, on September 30, Vento of the Front, one of their number, had almost completely paralyzed all of Academy City’s functions by herself.

If he was on her level, then…

“My name is Terra of the Left.”

The white powder, which had gathered at his hand, now took shape.

It was another guillotine.

A plank-shaped blade, as though cut apart diagonally from the lower part of a seventy-centimeter square. The man was grabbing it by the hole where the rope would normally hang from.

“It seems my turn has come at last. After all, we can’t use the normal sorcery humans can—we must entrust the usage of the document to another caster.”

Terra let the blade of execution dangle loosely at his side, speaking with a bemused tone.

And smile.

“And so, I’ll have you accompany me to kill some time. You two are the first ones I’ve caught in the anti-ley-line investigation trap, so I’d very much appreciate it if you would let me have a little fun.”

8

In front of the museum’s destroyed outer walls were Kamijou, Itsuwa, and Terra. As the view worsened from the dust, they moved, splitting through it all.

Terra of the Left swung his right hand.

From left to right.

The white guillotine matched his hand’s motion. He wasn’t so much holding it as something floating in the air was moving in tune with his arm. The guillotine had been about a meter long, but now it abruptly lost its form, turned into a giant white wave, and mowed through everything in a horizontal sweep.

A rumbling boom!! split the air.

“Oooohhh?!” Kamijou instantly readied his right hand.

A moment later, the vortex of destruction shot after them. The streets of the old city of Avignon were narrow; the attack carved craters into the cliff-like buildings standing on either side, blew away cars parked on the road, and tilted the very buildings themselves.

Was it to Kamijou’s right or his left? He didn’t know—that was how neatly it was dividing the old streets and mountains of rubble.

The attack was certainly powerful, and he’d be helpless if it hit him straight on, but…

I can do something about that white blade with my right hand!!

“Itsuwa!!” he shouted, dashing off toward Terra without waiting for her to answer.

As he drew Terra’s attack to him, Itsuwa used the time to slip closer. It was the most efficient pattern.

Meanwhile, Terra seemed to have taken notice of Kamijou’s right hand.

Narrowing his sickly-looking eyes, he spoke with admiration. “Normally, you would have died from that attack just now. I see, so that is the Imagine Breaker…Still, I heard it nearly got the better of Vento of the Front.”

With a smirk, he swung the guillotine.

From back to front.

To match the motion, the white blade sharpened, and the keen strike flew straight at Kamijou’s chest.

“…!!”

He managed to block it with his right hand, but now that he had to focus on defense, his own movements dulled.

Whoosh!

Itsuwa ran by Kamijou’s side in a low crouch, her spear at the ready.

“Hmph.”

Terra directed his guillotine toward her.

A huge boom!! hit Kamijou’s eardrums. The white blade had fired in a straight line, but Itsuwa had swung her upper body around to dodge it. Despite that, her feet kept moving. As she dodged a second critical attack, then a third, she regripped her Friulian spear and dove closer to Terra.

After pulling the spear back once, she unleashed a powerful forward thrust.

Terra repelled it with a sideways swipe of his guillotine. Then he moved it in the opposite direction, attacking Itsuwa from the side this time.

The giant blade shot out as a counterstrike.

“!!”

Itsuwa didn’t force herself to parry it, instead jumping forward and to the side to evade while advancing. Meanwhile, she pulled her spear back and gave another full-force thrust with the energy.

But because of the extra dodge, Itsuwa lost her balance, and there was a moment before her attack began.

Terra used that moment to release the next guillotine.

At this rate, Terra’s white blade would stab through her faster than her spear could hit him.

Flick.

A small light popped up next to Terra’s face.

By the time it registered, rays of light had already crossed before her adversary’s eyes, with many more of them winding and weaving through his surroundings like a spiderweb.

“Allow me to apologize…”

At the same time the words left the man’s mouth, there was an alarming grinding sound.

Filled with her power, they were…

“…Seven Teachings, Seven Blades!!”

…steel wires.

A ga-bam!! split the air as the wires surrounding Terra blasted toward him. The superthin blades attacked him from seven directions, aiming to sever every part of his body, from his ankles to his heart.

Terra didn’t have the time to get out of the way.

Kamijou thought they might have been traveling faster than bullets from a pistol.

However…

“…Prioritize.”

…Terra’s expression didn’t change.

All he did was mutter a single word. But the seven wires targeting his body didn’t cut him up—in fact, they simply coiled around him like kite strings, not damaging his skin in the slightest.

Itsuwa’s face filled with shock.

Terra lightly waved his right arm as if to split the spiderweb apart, ripping open the seven wires on his skin.

“!!” Itsuwa shoved her pulled-back spear forward. The sharpened head flew at lightning speed and nearly stabbed Terra through the shoulder.

“Prioritize—outer wall as low, human body as high.”

It happened the moment Terra said those words. His body disappeared into the wall behind him, as if passing through an invisible hole.

“?!” Itsuwa’s spear collided with the empty wall with a shrill clang.

The impact traveled back up her wrists; she grimaced in pain.

Then…

“Prioritize—outer wall as low, blade movement as high.”

With a whack!!, the white guillotine pierced through the wall, then came in on a sideways sweep toward Itsuwa’s torso.

She gave up on blocking, instead rolling onto the ground to evade the horizontal slash.

Strands of severed hair danced through the air.

Meanwhile, Terra reappeared outside from the gap in the outer wall he’d destroyed. Finding Itsuwa right after she’d taken evasive action, he recklessly swung the guillotine once again.

The girl, her body now pressed to the ground, couldn’t avoid it.

So Kamijou jumped between them to interrupt.

“Wooohhhhaaaaahhhhh?!”

Just before the giant blade came down onto her neck, he sent it flying with his right hand.

The guillotine began to burst apart into a white powder.

Terra’s expression remained level. Calm was the only thing on his face.

“Prioritize—outer wall as low, blade movement as high,” declared Terra again, casually stabbing his reassembled white blade into the wall to his side.

Then he swung both the guillotine and the wall, as if knocking over shelves.

The outside wall fell apart, and ten or so rocks the size of melons came flying at him.

“!!”

Kamijou grabbed his champion’s arm as she tried to get up and yanked her back. The spot they’d just been in immediately became buried in building materials.

Rather than chasing them right away, Terra walked slowly toward them, stepping on the rubble as he went.

“I heard about the Imagine Breaker before, and I must say, I was hoping for a bit more.” Terra laughed in a low voice, his white blade of unknown composition hanging in his right hand. “As far as I can see, it doesn’t seem like much. To be quite honest with you, I find myself disappointed at seeing it in real life. Disappointed enough to consider it not worth seeing. You apparently defeated Vento with it, because not only was her divine judgment gone but Academy City was also using things such as the fallen angel and the plane compression, strangling her from within. If her attacks had been at full strength, she would never have struggled against the likes of you.”

Kamijou backed up as Terra moved forward, covering Itsuwa.

This is…Even as he felt a chill in his spine, somewhere in his mind, he was convinced. A man on Vento’s level would have more than just that blade to attack with.

This is God’s Right Seat…!!

He gritted his teeth, but Terra wasn’t about to wait around for his confusion to settle.

“Oh my. What’s the matter?” Terra laughed, ominous guillotine in hand. “I know you don’t think backing up like that is enough to beat me. Please let me have some more fun. This won’t help me tune it.”

“Urgh!!”

Kamijou and Itsuwa, dragging their heavy bodies, charged at Terra at the same time.

Terra held his right hand with the guillotine in it out in front. “Prioritize—the spear movements as low, the air as high.”

That was all it took for Itsuwa to grind to a sudden halt. The tip of her spear, which she’d flung out toward Terra’s throat, stopped as if hitting a wall made of air.

Kamijou saw it out of the corner of his eye; he clenched his fist tightly and stepped toward Terra.

But the man was faster. A simple, casual sideways swing of the hand, and he fired the white blade. The giant blade grazed past Kamijou’s right hand and stuck into his body.

Oh, shi—, he thought, before being cut off.

The blade, bigger than his thumb, pressed into his body. It felt like it was eating into him.

Pain exploded.

The guillotine continued, bending Kamijou in half, slamming him full force into the wall to the side.

Thwunk!! Then a painful snap from inside.

…?! The extreme situation disabled his ability to think.

Pressure jolted into his gut and his back at the same time, driving the air from his lungs.

“Gho…hah…?!”

But that was all.

Unlike the outside wall, it didn’t cleave his body in two.

He took his trembling hand and punched the guillotine pinning him down. The giant blade exploded into a fine dust, and Kamijou fell to his knees, trying desperately to catch his breath.

“…” Terra stared at his destroyed guillotine with keen interest. He took a step back, flicked his fingers—and just like that, the powder returned to him.

I’m…alive? thought Kamijou, rubbing his stomach, which still throbbed. A direct hit from that blade, and I’m alive…?

Terra’s very first attack had easily carved up the museum’s outside wall. If he used the same attack, his body couldn’t stand up to it.

Which meant…That blade was different than the rest…?

Kamijou looked from his stomach to Terra.

The man, standing in front of the ruined museum, was the picture of relaxation.

Is something amplifying its power? It must mean there’s a trick to that blade.

One thing stood out as most suspicious.

Kamijou locked his eyes on Terra, who was checking the condition of his once-destroyed guillotine.

“Prioritize…,” Itsuwa suddenly said, having pulled in her spear and swapped positions with Kamijou, now covering him. Then she noticed the powder stuck to the spear’s tip. “…Flour?”

She thought for a moment, then her face lit up in surprise. “Wait, that weapon…It interacts with the body of Christ…?”

“Well, well. Even an Asian can tell?” said Terra, challenging the speechless Itsuwa. “During Mass, wine and bread are treated as the blood of Christ and the body of Christ. And for Mass itself, it’s modeled, of course, after one thing—the crucifixion of the Son of God.”

Itsuwa bit her lip. Kamijou didn’t understand, but Terra’s words seemed to pack a punch for people who knew magic.

“The Son of God was hung on the cross…but thinking rationally, it isn’t normal for a regular human to be able to kill him. It would probably be hard even for me. But sometimes, in the legends, the order of priority changes. Like how a normal human killed him, ignoring the natural order, so that he could shoulder mankind’s original sin.”

His guillotine made a coarse sound as it crumbled. His expression was getting more and more amused, despite Kamijou being on his guard.

“The secret that completes the Son of God’s legends…Changing the order of priority. That is the true form of my only spell, Light’s Execution. The optional transformation into a blade with flour as the medium is like a side effect. I wonder—do you understand now?”

In other words, this is what he meant: Terra had prioritized his body over the wires, so he hadn’t been wounded. He’d prioritized the blade made of flour over the outside wall, which gave it all that destructive potential. He’d prioritized the air over the spear, which stopped Itsuwa’s attack dead in its tracks.

“Strength and weakness mean nothing before me,” said Terra. “Because I can control their very order.”

This was the power of God’s Right Seat.

Vento of the Front had attacked Academy City’s functions wielding her divine judgment, used by gods. This time, it was the Son of God’s crucifixion.

Every sorcerer Kamijou had ever met used queer theories and rules that he didn’t know anything about, but he got the feeling the ones God’s Right Seat used were unique.

“But what shall happen now? I’ve revealed the secret, but now what? I’m sure you don’t think everything’s over now that the mystery is solved.”

Kamijou unconsciously tightened his right fist at Terra’s words.

He was right. Just because he knew how it worked didn’t mean he could find a way to beat it. That was why Terra had so calmly revealed his trick to them.

“Why don’t I give you some time?” said Terra mockingly. “For me, drawing this battle out isn’t terribly bad. I’ll give you ten seconds. Please come up with a plan in that time, whether it’s to defeat me or flee…if such a thing exists, of course,” he said, amused, or perhaps searching.

“Shit,” spat Kamijou despite himself. Was the gap between him and Terra of the Left that big?

As Kamijou clenched his teeth, Terra watched, as if to savor each of his reactions…

“Real nice of you. With ten seconds, I could think of three plans.”

…when suddenly, Kamijou heard a familiar man’s voice come from the side.

Before he could look over, a red bullet pierced through the air. It was a piece of origami, wrapped in an orange flame. The complex folds in the square paper shot toward Terra’s face with the strength to tear apart concrete.

All Terra did was move his eyes in that direction. “Prioritize—sorcery as low, human skin as high.”

It was a direct hit. But the moment the origami touched Terra’s skin, it radically changed direction and crashed into the wall right next to Itsuwa. The response was like a bullet ricocheting off a metal wall.

Kamijou finally looked at the intruder.

Standing there was a boy wearing blue sunglasses.

As a side effect of forcing the sorcery, a bead of blood trickled from his lips.

“Tsuchimikado…?!”

The youth nodded slightly in response. His eyes were still on Terra.

“Really, now.” Terra chuckled, right hand holding the dangling guillotine. “I do hope that wasn’t your plan to overcome the situation.”

“Unfortunately, no.”

Tsuchimikado was smiling as well. Despite his attack ending in failure, only calm filled his expression.

“That was to back you into a corner.”

“…?”

“My next move will be checkmate. What I’m saying is that my deductions are being confirmed.”

As he spoke, he took something out—something not related to magic.

It was a shining black handgun.

The same one he’d used to shoot Monaka Oyafune in the stomach.

“You think a toy like that could beat me?”

Tsuchimikado didn’t answer. He squeezed the index finger on the trigger.

Standing in the road without any particular cover to hide behind, Terra slowly opened his mouth.

““Prioritize—bullet as low, human skin as high.””

Tsuchimikado’s voice overlapped Terra’s.

Bang-bang-bang!! A series of gunshots.

The lead bullets struck Terra’s face and heart but then bounced off.

The result was clear.

Despite that, the smile on Tsuchimikado’s lips didn’t disappear.

“Terra of the Left…”

Keeping the gun level with one hand, his other dove into his pocket.

He took out a black piece of origami.

“I told you it would be checkmate.”

“…”

Terra stayed quiet.

Then, slowly, he readied his guillotine again.

An odd silence overtook the streets, which should have been wrapped up in rioting.

It’s changing…, thought Kamijou.

For better or worse, the battle situation was about to change significantly.

He almost found himself absorbed by their confrontation, but then Itsuwa, who had approached without him realizing, whispered into his ear:

“(…Um, when Mr. Tsuchimikado moves, I’ll take advantage and run in.)”

“Huh?”

“(…I have a message from him. Defeating him isn’t important—stopping the document in the Papal Palace is.)”

Itsuwa showed him a piece of origami in her hands.

It must have had directions from Tsuchimikado on it. He didn’t know when he’d given it to her, but he’d probably flung it at her while talking to Terra.

Tsuchimikado and Terra both inched forward, step by step.

They were about to clash.

Right as Kamijou thought that, there was a roaring noise loud enough to pierce his eardrums.

…?!

It wasn’t caused by sorcery.

It was the sound of a bomb demolishing the streets of Avignon.

Obviously, it wasn’t something Tsuchimikado or Terra had caused.

A third party had interrupted.

As proof, both of them swore and retreated a distance.

As Kamijou looked on in surprise at the sudden event, the outside walls of the housing complexes towering over the roadside like cliffs began to crumble. A gray dust cloud whipped up and began to block their vision.

On the other side of it, he saw the silhouettes of the things that caused the explosion.

But they were very far from being human.

“…What the hell? What’s going on here?”

Where Kamijou looked, hidden beyond the curtain of gray, distorted human shapes crawled.

9

Academy City’s unofficial composite armored unit began the attack on the old city of Avignon from its edges.

Their main armament was the HsPS-15, code-named “Large Weapon”—a powered exoskeleton suit built with the very best technology Academy City had to offer.

Powered suits were Academy City’s new weapon. Covered in special armor resembling Western plate mail, they used electrical power to move their joints and granted dozens of times the strength of a regular human being.

Different standards specified different sizes and combat capability, but each here was a hunk of metal with a total height of two and a half meters.

These machines, specially camouflaged in blue and gray, each had robot-like armor with two arms, two legs, and even five fingers on each hand. But if one were to ask if these powered suits looked human, the answer would be no. Their headpieces were enormous, and when added to their large chest armor, it made it look like they were wearing oil-drum-shaped police robots on their heads. They had no neck; their headpieces rotated on a fixed axis atop the chest.

Snap-snap-snap-snap!! The sound of hard objects being crushed.

It was the noise from their legs trampling over rubble.

They were destroying the wreckage of the stone and brick streets, which had lasted hundreds of years with incredible ease.

The powered suits gripped special firearms, their barrels awkwardly thick, in their hands. They looked like large rifles—like tank cannons cut short—but strictly speaking, that was incorrect.

They were anti-bulkhead revolver shotguns.

The ammunition these firearms used was special. Dozens of bullets that would be loosely classified as anti-matériel were crammed into each shell; every single shot packed enough punch to blow through a tank. A few shots from short range could even wrench open the door to a nuclear shelter. Normally, the barrel wouldn’t be able to withstand the gunpowder’s explosiveness, but through fine adjustments to the type of powder and loading position, the gun delivered the most destructive potential for the least possible strain on the weapon.

These armaments were developed for breaking down and devastating thick shelter entrances, which enemies often holed up behind. Now, dozens of powered suits had these guns trained on Avignon’s ramparts.

“Commence invasion.”

Two short words.

As the voice spoke, flames erupted from their anti-bulkhead shotguns. Each time they pulled the slide, like a pump-action rifle the revolver’s cylinder rotated.

The stone walls, which had restricted entrance for centuries, blew away like tissue paper in the wind.

The powered suits stepped over the wreckage and began to enter the old city of Avignon.

Their artificial limbs advanced more smoothly than real humans could have.

In front of them were the young people who had been rampaging through the city. They showed no single emotion like fear or anger; instead, the abruptness of the situation tossed them into a mixed-up vortex of emotion that defied any such easy classification. Even their bones were rattling.

Meanwhile, the powered suits’ response was incredibly simple.

They aimed their thick shotgun muzzles, which had blown apart the ramparts in one shot, straight at the humans.

A curt voice spoke to his allies over the radio.

“Enemy faction spotted.”

10

Upon seeing the swarm of powered suits ignoring the tightly interlocking roads of Avignon and breaking down whatever walls they wanted to walk where they pleased, Kamijou was stunned. The walls of the cliff-like buildings towering over them broke down, and on the other side of the wreckage was them.

Such things weren’t supposed to exist in the normal world.

Academy City was likely the only facility that could develop powered suits of a practical level.

In their hands, they held anti-bulkhead revolver shotguns.

As they blew through one obstacle to their advance after another, tearing through buildings and cars, they also began mercilessly pointing their muzzles at the recklessly counterattacking rioters.

Flame burst from a gun barrel that was easily thick enough to fit one’s fist into.

With echoing crashes and bangs, it mowed down swaths of people effortlessly.

But those probably weren’t real bullets. Kamijou didn’t know how they operated, but the anti-bulkhead shotguns were probably made to use different bullets for different purposes. Maybe the gun distinguished how to handle them on the inside of the revolver’s cylinder, based on whether it was an even shot or an odd shot, rotating two shots at a time. If that was the system, then switching modes between even and odd would sort of make sense.

They were firing blanks.

However, the shock waves, which used a ton of explosives to fire, was all it took to drive the oxygen from the people’s lungs and send their bodies careening to the ground. Once they silenced the first wave of hot-blooded rioters, the ones standing back as the second and third waves went white-faced and began running every which way.

The powered suits didn’t overlook them.

After passing by a civilian who was cowering in the street and trembling, they fired blanks without mercy at anyone who showed even the slightest sign of resistance. The sound of shells kept on clapping. Then when the force had neutralized the immediate rioters, they affixed their shotguns to their metal backpacks, leaving the machines to automatically reload them.

…What’s going on? Kamijou could do nothing but stare at the absurd situation. Didn’t Tsuchimikado say Academy City wasn’t going to do anything? And even if they decided to, why the hell are they going about it so senselessly?!

Monaka Oyafune had talked about Academy City’s higher-ups purposely not making a move, thus trying to make the current chaos worse.

Did this mean the time was ripe?

Were they trying to end it all with a flip of the switch since the damage from the chaos had exceeded what was deemed allowable?

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

Academy City’s higher-ups.

The General Board.

And the true top of the science side who led them.

“I see. It’s come to that, has it?” said Terra, sounding amused.

With those few words, he retook control of the air colored by shock around them.

Even Tsuchimikado, leveling his smoking gun muzzle, was emitting a piercing enmity.

“As the ones using the document in the Papal Palace are, indeed, normal casters, this looks to be something of a predicament,” said Terra. “I had wanted to collect more combat data for my priority spell, Light’s Execution. Ah, well.”

Without sparing a glance for any of them, Terra rolled into a housing complex whose outer wall was blown open by a powered suit and left.

“Wait!!” shouted Tsuchimikado, but a split second later, he jumped to the side.

Before Kamijou realized why, a huge blast exploded from inside the complex—possibly coming from a powered suit.

With the thundering boom!! Kamijou’s tiny body was swept off his feet and thrown backward. The gaping hole Terra had gone through was instantly covered in flames.

“Ow…?!”

“Are…are you all right?!” cried Itsuwa, hurrying to take his hand.

As she helped him up, Tsuchimikado shouted, “Kammy, can you move? We’re going for the Papal Palace, too!!”

“Those powered suits have got to be from Academy City!! I thought they weren’t supposed to move!! They’re just making things worse. Shouldn’t we be stopping them?!” Kamijou shouted.

“Following Terra comes first!! And they’re after the document, too. We might be able to calm the chaos by destroying that Soul Arm!!”

“Damn it,” he spat bitterly. “That better be what they’re really after—calming the chaos.”

The document riots and the powered suits—which were the people of Avignon really more afraid of?

“Let’s go, Kammy. God’s Right Seat has made light of us in the past. But now that things are like this, they’ll try to escape with seriousness. Now’s our only chance to destroy the document!!”

“Shit,” he cursed reflexively.

Several powered suits clambered out of the flaming hole in the wall Terra had escaped through and were now out onto the narrow road.

They aimed straight for them, even though they were Academy City citizens, too.

It didn’t seem like they’d bother to ask who they were with. They’d set every single person in Avignon as an attack target.

“…Kammy, let’s split into two. Itsuwa, right? You take Kammy and head for the Papal Palace.”

“Tsuchimikado?” Kamijou asked, confused.

“It looks like Avignon has two problems now. I thought we could leave the powered suits to their own devices, but that’s not looking hopeful. Kammy, follow Terra and do something about the document. I’ll stop these party-crashing Academy City idiots.”

“But you—” can’t do that, he tried to say, before Tsuchimikado interrupted.

“They’re not completely hostile. We’ll fight for now, but I’ll basically be looking for a chance to talk to them. I think I’m a little more cut out for a gamble like that than you, Kammy.”

“…Damn it.”

“Kammy, go!!”

“Damn it!!” shouted Kamijou, running with Itsuwa down the slender street. From behind, they heard the noises of the powered suits moving and—Tsuchimikado must have done something—a series of what sounded like ice shattering. Kamijou clenched his teeth. He knew using sorcery just once would leave Tsuchimikado bloody, but there was nothing he could say to him.

They ran down the narrow path and advanced through the old city of Avignon.

He smelled gunpowder and smoke.

Saw frantic people escaping and powered suits chasing them with surgical precision.

What the hell is going on?!!

This wasn’t even comparable to the demonstrations and riots. The sight of this overwhelming violence called “military action” made Kamijou feel like he was about to burst a blood vessel.

Itsuwa, who had already been investigating Avignon, remembered where their goal, the Papal Palace, was. As she ran ahead to guide him, he looked up and saw its outline ahead.

 

INTERLUDE THREE

Stiyl Magnus had briefly left the Tower of London.

The city was seeing fairly sunny skies today, but tourists were sparse. Unlike other nations, England hadn’t experienced any large-scale rioting, but that didn’t keep an air of tension from spreading through the streets.

“God’s Right Seat, eh…?” Stiyl said to himself, a freshly lit cigarette in his mouth.

According to Lidvia Lorenzetti, it only had four official members, but each possessed the attribute of one of the four archangels.

“What do you think of their story?” said Agnes Sanctis in a bored tone, having left the building with him. “I wonder how much of it’s true. At least, I know I’ve never heard anything about such matters when I was with the Church. They could be feeding us lies to throw us off their scent.”

“I can’t deny that, but anything said in those interrogation rooms is magically recorded. The things you wrote on that parchment, if we analyze it, we’ll be able to tell the truth from the lies.

“Can’t say it’ll be perfect, of course,” added Stiyl, thinking to himself. If Lidvia was telling the truth, God’s Right Seat referred to both an organization in the dark side of the Church and to their ultimate goal.

…The seat on the right. Sounds like a hint, but it might not be. It isn’t enough to narrow things down. For now, I suppose I’ll see what else they have to say.

Stiyl glanced over at Agnes. “Should we take a break for a little longer?”

“No, let’s get this finished up already.”

“All right.”

They returned to the dark Tower of Execution.