CHAPTER 3

Sorcerer’s Society of the British Labyrinth
N∴L∴

1

All told, they soon landed at Edinburgh Airport.

Edinburgh was the name of a city in Scotland, the northern region of the United Kingdom. London was in the south, so in order to get to an airport there, they now needed to transfer to another flight, this one domestic.

“There’s a lot of TV cameras around, huh? I guess because of the terrorist attack.”

After using a smattering of English to get past customs, Kamijou looked at his cell phone to check the current time.

“Huh? Oh wait, do I have to adjust it for the time difference?”

There was probably a function that would let him instantly switch to the time of any major city in the world, but unfortunately, Kamijou wasn’t one for reading thick cell phone instruction manuals. He put it back in his pocket, then looked around and spotted a clock on the wall.

“…Eight at night…I hope we’re not too close to the last flight…,” muttered Kamijou, also not very knowledgeable about airplanes.

Then…

“…Tou—rumble—ma—rumble…”

“Eek?! I-Index!! I’m hearing a beast’s growl in between the letters of my name—what’s that about?!”

“It’s because I’m so hungry. I’m so hungry I’m starving, so much I could fall over right now!! All that beef-or-fish stuff didn’t happen and I never got to eat anything! Any more and I’ll die!! I have to eat something or I’ll really die!!”

Index, still in her dress rather than her habit (it may have been a domestic flight, but they probably wouldn’t let her on board covered in safety pins anyway), flung her arms all over the place in a desperate appeal.

Kamijou sat against his suitcase, folded his arms, and groaned. “Maybe they serve food on domestic flights, too?”

“I don’t think they do!! I don’t have any proof, but I don’t think this one will, either!!”

…She had a point. As far as Kamijou could tell from the domestic flight schedule, flights from Edinburgh to London took less than an hour. They might not prepare any food for them.

He thought about it with another groan. “I can’t do it. I’m too hungry. Let’s go eat something.”

“​T​o​o​o​o​u​u​u​u​u​m​m​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​!​!​”

“You’re so happy it’s scaring me!! My eyes are full of stars! I’ve never seen you make such a glorious smile!!”

As their exchange continued, Kamijou took Index and began to wander around, looking for a food court in the airport. He’d started learning a little English with a phone app, but it was still far from usable. He could still use the symbols of knives, forks, and coffee cups to find his way through the vast airport, though.

…I think there was some British money in the stuff Tsuchimikado gave me. I think we can use a little now. It’s a necessary expense, right?

“T-Touma! I smell coffee coming from over there!!”

“What? I don’t smell anyth— What?! There really is a café around the corner!!”

Where Kamijou looked, he saw a rather stylish coffee shop, its walls made entirely of glass panes…One might expect a more well-traveled person to complain about going to a chain store they could find in Japan after having come all the way to the United Kingdom, but as an average lower-middle-class citizen (who did his best to resolve a terrorist incident), Kamijou was about to jump for joy at the sight of any food at all.

That he was acting like Index was not to be uttered. And speaking of her…

“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​!​!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!! Index, those aren’t even words anymore!! Those incredible eyes! Incredible eyebrows! Incredible mouth! All in all, an incredible smiling face!!”

Kamijou found his determination once again—he would just have to go into the café as soon as possible, then cram a ham and lettuce sandwich or something into his mouth. Taking Index by the hand, he headed for the entrance.

That’s when it happened.

All of a sudden, someone tapped on his shoulder from behind.

When he turned around, he saw a woman there. She looked about eighteen. Despite her Asian features, she was taller than average. Her long black hair was in a ponytail, and even bundled up, it still reached down to her waist. Her clothing consisted of a pair of jeans with one pant leg cut completely off and a T-shirt tied up to expose her navel. On top of that, she wore a jacket that, like the pants, had one sleeve cut off to expose the arm…And even more striking than her distinctive outfit was the absurdly large Japanese katana, the Seven Heavens Sword, hanging at her waist like a holstered gun from a western film and stealing the entire show.

Her lips moved. “(It’s been a while,)” she said.

When Kamijou heard her, he responded with:

“Wh-what is the erotic fallen-angel maid doing in a place like this…?!”

Upon hearing his voice, the katana girl Kaori Kanzaki abruptly began to have a coughing fit. As it worsened to the point where she was having trouble breathing, she inhaled deeply—half measured breath and half a pure gasp for air—then desperately started to speak.

“I…I was requested by the British royal family to lead you and Index to a royal family residence in London: Buckingham Palace. And I wouldn’t have needed to if you’d actually taken the direct flight on the supersonic plane Academy City prepared for you…”

“Well, that’s not a good reason. What’s the particular need for it to be the erotic fallen-angel maid who shows up in this situation…?!”

“I am not erotic, nor a fallen angel, nor a maid!! I—I may have done…certain things in order to repay you after the fight with Acqua. I admit that. But you took one look at me and called me an erotic fallen-angel maid! How do you explain that?!”

“I couldn’t help it!! You were actually an erotic maid and you looked a lot like a fallen angel!!”

“Stop recalling all the specifics and going crazy about it!! A-and stop your face from turning so red!!”

Kanzaki grabbed Kamijou’s shoulders and shook them back and forth, but for some reason, it seemed like Kamijou was the one who couldn’t look her in the eye.

“A-anyway!! I am not nearly that indecent right now! I’ve come to welcome you two as a servant of the English Puritan Church and the Priestess of the reborn Amakusa-Style Crossist Church, and I’m not embarrassed about it!!”

“That sounds like a pain in the ass to begin with, and besides, why are you wandering around an airport with a katana hanging from your hip?! What are you here for anyway?! Whenever two or three sorcery people get together, it’s never for anything good!! Explain this to poor Mr. Kamijou!!”

Kamijou and Kanzaki argued loudly.

At that point, Index said, “Tooouuumaaa…”

Her eyes weren’t on the nearby Kamijou or Kanzaki. She was gazing at the stylish café in question.

“…If you make me wait any longer, I won’t forgive you.”

“What?! It’s my fault?! I disagree! I don’t think the terrorist on the plane or Kanzaki talking to me were my fault!!”

None of his excuses reached Index, whose hunger was controlling her. Yikes, I need to cut this conversation with Kanzaki off right now and get her to come inside the café with us, thought Kamijou, beginning to calculate his next moves.

“Y-yes, well. Ahem. We should hurry. The time is approaching,” said the erotic maid, aka Kaori Kanzaki.

Ohhh, she gets it!! I love it when a girl can read the mood!! Wait, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m actually starving, too!! Kamijou thought, deeply impressed. But when he turned toward the café, meaning to get there immediately, Kanzaki continued:

“Because of the earlier terrorist attack, all passenger flights will be grounded temporarily for reinspection. I have a helicopter and pilot waiting, so we’ll use that to get to London.”

…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​

Kamijou was silent for a few moments. Then he looked at Kanzaki.

“…What’s going on?”

“The original plan was to go straight to London on Academy City’s supersonic jet, right? You got onto a different plane right away, which means we’re seven hours behind schedule. We don’t have a moment to waste. It was an official order from the United Kingdom to summon the Index of Prohibited Books here. As the one entrusted with her guardianship, we need you to act accordingly…By the way, she’ll have to change into her habit, the Walking Church. We have a space set up in the backseat of the helicopter for her to change.”

“…What about food?”

“Do you think there’s time to eat? Come, we’re going. I say, this wouldn’t have been a problem if we were the only ones you were making wait, but it’s a different story when it involves everyone in the royal family. To think you’d be seven hours late for an appointment with a royal family member…The Royal Family Faction is one thing, but when I think about what those hard-headed Knights would do, it sends shivers up my spine…”

As she continued muttering completely unintelligibly, she forcefully dragged Kamijou by the hand and started to walk. What followed was the most crucial thing, from his point of view, that he needed to tell her:

“I repeat for the sake of those who weren’t around: But what about food?! Index has been at her limit for a while now!! At this rate, I have a bad feeling all that angry energy coming from her empty stomach is going to burst!!”

“Administrative tasks regarding her are your territory. You do something about it.”

“You’re acting like it’s only my problem…!! You’re just mad, aren’t you? You, yes you, the young lady there—you’re a little mad I was making fun of you for being an erotic fallen-angel maid, aren’t you?!”

“No, not at all. I am calm and composed—perfectly so, I might add—so let’s get to the helicopter quickly.”

Using the strength of a saint, less than twenty of which existed in the world, Kanzaki gripped Kamijou’s arm and kept moving.

2

The third princess of England, Vilian, stood in a large room.

It was about half the size of a tennis court, and it was Vilian’s territory. Frankly speaking, it was her private chamber. Trickery and wiles were everywhere for the royal family, both inside and outside the country—and even in their own residence. But this was a safe place, one where she could shut everything out and be alone.

“…I see. Yes—yes. Either way, I’m happy to hear the plane has landed safely at Edinburgh Airport.”

Vilian held an antique phone receiver whose surface was made of ceramic. She was actually going through a top-of-the-line telephone switchboard in Buckingham Palace. She didn’t know any details about the technology, except for how calls seemed to be heavily encrypted for security.

She was talking to the one in charge at Edinburgh Airport.

And the thing she was worried about at present was the cargo on the plane.

“Yes. I’m sure you’ll be investigating several things, since a terrorist incident has just occurred…But please, distribute the liquid food to the appropriate households as swiftly as you are able. It is quite literally a matter of life and death for those who cannot eat normal food products…Yes. Please set their minds at ease as soon as you can.”

Vilian slowly hung up the receiver and exhaled a little.

To be honest, there was a chance she was being listened to by an intelligence agency (regardless of the presence of encryption), but she hadn’t said anything she wouldn’t want overheard.

The United Kingdom was a complex nation.

It had four cultures: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

It had three factions: the Royal Family, the Knights, and the Puritans.

These two groupings intertwined to create the political body called the United Kingdom. In some cases, English knights would quarrel with Scottish knights, whereas someone from Wales might have ties to both the Royal Family Faction and the Puritan Faction.

As the third princess, Vilian of course belonged to the Royal Family Faction. This had been determined the moment she was born into it. The only people who could become part of the Royal Family Faction anyway were those born into the king’s bloodline or those with enough political skills to serve as their aides. It was numbered as one of the three factions representing the country, but in terms of sheer population, it was vastly smaller than the Knights or the Puritans.

The Royal Family Faction’s role was to influence and control parliamentary politics as the ones who truly steered the country. They didn’t act from the shadows like the Knights and the Puritans; because they could influence the police and military as well, one could call their strength the most conspicuous of the three.

Still, Vilian, the third princess, didn’t have much authority in particular.

The three daughters of the queen of England were described thusly, from oldest to youngest:

The eldest was the brains.

The middle was the military brawn.

The youngest was the virtuous.

…In other words, while she had a certain degree of popularity, Vilian didn’t have a trump card strong enough to affect the nation. Even the man she’d just been talking to over the phone, the one in charge of Edinburgh Airport—he may have thought her a kind princess for being so considerate, but the thought would never make him decide to swear fealty to her and serve her for the rest of his life.

Her virtuousness wasn’t linked to the expansion of her faction.

As her older sisters put it, Vilian’s continued efforts were nothing if not pointless.

In public, she was brought up in the media as “the face of the royal family,” and in some pop culture magazines the “princess you’d most want to marry…” But when it came down to it, that was her only role as part of the British royal family.

She dangled the lure of political marriage—which she had no intention of carrying out—to throw prominent figures in other countries off their game. Then the queen and her two older sisters would take advantage of that and enter into treaties beneficial for the United Kingdom.

She was very much conducting public affairs with the etiquette and modest behavior of a royal family member, but she considered her job akin to something like working as a psychological stripper. And when a crisis Britain couldn’t avoid came to their doorstep, she knew they’d probably force her into a strategic marriage for real.

“…” In the large room, Vilian heaved a sigh.

The altercation between Britain and France that had sprung up lately—it was enough to make her envision her worst-case trump card.

Then, as if to interrupt her thoughts, there came a soft knock at the door.

“Your Royal Majesty.”

The voice on the other side of the thick door belonged to one of her young servants. She was of common origin and unacquainted with sorcery. There was a special job in the British royal family called a Guards Maid, a priestess-like role that required caring for holy objects granted to the king in accordance with the tradition of the king being appointed by God and having some of His power. Vilian, however, purposely employed maids who came from common origins.

“The leaders of the Knights and the Puritans, as well as our young guests visiting Britain from Japan’s Academy City, have arrived in the palace. The audience will begin soon. You should prepare, ma’am.”

“…I understand,” she answered, but there was nothing more for her to prepare at this point. Actually, Vilian never changed out of the bare minimum clothing required for her public duties, even in her own room. Her entire life was accompanied by a sort of constant tension.

She walked across the large room, opened the door, and exited. Right next to the door, though not in a position to impede her progress through the hall, stood a woman wearing a green-colored maid uniform. The servant nodded, and Vilian followed her down the hallway before abruptly stopping and looking overhead.

The hallway was straight and very, very long—and the ceiling was high as well. Emblems in the shape of shields lined the walls to her sides at even intervals like the lights in a tunnel.

They were the emblems of previous generations’ knights.

There was a similar hallway in Windsor Castle, another residence of the royal family’s, but the ones in Buckingham Palace were emblems of the Knight Faction in their capacity as a faction based around sorcery. Having your family’s coat of arms decorate this hallway was the first step to becoming an “elite” and was said to be the aspiration of all who took up the blade for Britain.

Because coats of arms were originally developed in order to tell people apart on the battlefield, each emblem was extremely individual—almost to the point of disturbing the space’s harmony. But there was one thing that made the hallway seem incongruent more than anything else.

A blank space.

Amid the escutcheons hung at even intervals was one spot that remained unadorned. It gave Vilian an intense feeling of wrongness, like she was looking at a comb with a missing tooth.

She knew why this blank spot was here.

One man had fought on behalf of Britain, had his merits recognized, and was supposed to have become a knight. But he left the nation to serve as a mercenary instead, and the head of the Knight Faction had left a spot empty as a sign of respect.

As she gazed at that blank spot, her lips moved in spite of her.

“…William…”

The servant beside her said nothing.

3

The helicopter Kamijou and the others had boarded landed in an enormous London park…or so Kamijou thought, but apparently these were the grounds of a residence called Buckingham Palace, where the queen of Britain lived. It was actually linked to two adjacent parks, leaving an entire area of England’s capital wide open—but, well, you couldn’t blame him for the misunderstanding.

He normally would have breathed hard, deeply moved by the sheer scale, but he didn’t honestly care about that at the moment. He was being visited by a situation far more important.

Which was…

“​T​o​u​m​a​…​F​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​d​!​!”

“H​i​g​a​g​y​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​h​h​h​?​! This isn’t just biting anymore; it’s reached a different dimension—now you’re starting to chew on me! Index, nooo!!”

Climbing up Kamijou’s back was a silver-haired, green-eyed monster making its terrifying intentions known (who had, yes, changed into her habit in the helicopter).

Kaori Kanzaki glanced at them as she got out of the aircraft first. “…To think a headwind would have made us late to arrive. I’ve failed us all. Let’s hurry—everyone should already be here.”

“Wait!! You don’t have anything to say about the tragedy you’re witnessing?! Something like Well, maybe you can have a sandwich?! Index is way beyond hungry—she’s gonna turn into a different creature in a minute!!”

“Feh, the Index of Prohibited Books is your territory. I’m relieved to see you’re handling her so perfectly.”

“I knew it—you are mad! You’re mad because of the maid stuff, aren’t you?! But you’re the one who burst into the hospital room dressed like that in the first pla— A​a​a​w​w​w​w​w​w​!​!​”

The reason Kamijou’s sentence went haywire was because Kanzaki had put a hand over his mouth.

“(…You’re not allowed to talk about that when the pilot or anyone else is around. Understand?)”

“​M​g​g​h​g​h​b​r​e​a​k​i​n​g​g​g​h​g​h​g​h​s​a​i​n​t​g​h​g​h​g​a​h​h​g​h​g​t​o​o​s​t​r​o​n​g​?​!”

Kanzaki—quietly walking out of the square that could, on paper, also be used as a heliport—began to drag the mumbling Kamijou and headed for Buckingham Palace. Index was latched onto his back, making them look like very strange companions for Kanzaki indeed.

Kanzaki was attempting to enter the building using not the huge gate out front but a small so-called back door.

But right before she grabbed the doorknob, Kamijou opened his mouth.

“Wait a minute, Kanzaki, just a minute!!”

“What is it? It looks like your face is being grabbed like a volleyball.”

“You’re one to talk—you’re the one grabbing it! Also, is it actually okay for poor old Kamijou to go into this palace?! My right hand has a power called Imagine Breaker in it! I’m not gonna start breaking all the national treasures in sight as soon as we step inside, am I? I don’t want an unlucky, compensation-ridden life!!”

“…What, that was all?” Kanzaki eventually took her hand from Kamijou’s face. “Everything is fine on that end. Although Britain is a magically advanced nation, all security features of that sort have been removed from Buckingham Palace.”

“Wait, really? Doesn’t the queen live here or something? I thought for sure the place would be some crazy magic fortress.”

“There is indeed such a citadel. The main example being Windsor Castle, one of the royal family’s other homes.” Kanzaki exhaled lightly. “Buckingham Palace is used for talks with other countries. If they put any sorcery mechanisms in without thinking, it would be like drawing important foreign VIPs into a trap, which would cause diplomatic issues. Public parties are sometimes held at Windsor Castle as well, but invitations are only given to those who trust the queen to not lead them into a trap. What I mean is: Physical objects aren’t the only dangerous things around.”

Kanzaki looked from Kamijou to Index, who was still latched onto his head. “Besides…,” she began.

“?”

“This particular queen probably doesn’t need security like that.”

After muttering that cryptic remark, the young woman opened the back door.

The door itself was small, but the scenery expanding beyond it was nothing to scoff at. Just the fact you could use the word scenery to describe the room hinted as to the sheer scale of the place.

Since they called it a palace, Kamijou had thought it would be a sparkling, shiny world for the nouveau riche, but it wasn’t like that at all. The hallways were as wide as a small room; the carpets seemed like you were supposed to look at them rather than walk on them; and paintings and sculptures adorned the walls here and there. In fact, there was even a maid carrying some kind of tea set. Though the place was anything but ordinary, it didn’t sparkle, either. It was more like a museum.

“You’ve arrived.”

As he was busy feeling overwhelmed by the scenery and the maid and everything else, a man’s voice reached Kamijou’s ears—in Japanese. A man in a suit approached them, but his was not the shabby kind of suit from one too many packed train rides. No, it was the kind you wore to flaunt your status at a party…

To be frank, Kamijou didn’t think he’d ever have anything to do with a suit like that.

As soon as Kanzaki saw him, she spoke. “Knight Leader, thank you for providing a transportation solution.”

“The helicopter? No need to worry. It was a necessary expense for us as well.”

The blond man she called Knight Leader then turned his gaze to Kamijou. “Hmm,” he said. “Are you the one tasked with the Index of Prohibited Books’ administration?”

“Uh, huh? I don’t know if I’d call it administration, but…”

“I was quite interested in what sort of person preserved those 103,000 volumes…To think you would be administering it by letting it hang from your head like that. The secret arts of Asia continue to astonish.”

“It’s weird, right?! And I’ll tell you the cause of this irregular nightmare: We’re battling empty stomachs right now!! If it’s all right with you, could we get some bread for her before she actually shatters my head with her teeth?!”

Kanzaki tried to glare at him to warn him to be more respectful, but the Knight Leader raised a hand to stop her. Then he stopped the maid holding the tea set—to have her give Kamijou and Index a kind of food called a scone, which was something between bread and a cookie.

“Hm…Hmm?! What is this? I-it’s melting in my mouth! It’s like it’s slowly melting in my stomach!”

“I see. That’s good. Now then, everyone else is gathered, so if you’ll follow me—”

“Wait, is this free? Are these all free?! Now that I know that, there’s no holding back. Index! Give it everything you’ve got!!” “I didn’t plan to show any mercy to begin with!! Scones, scones!!” “That’s right, Index, get ’em!! Eat ’em all!!”

“…Ahem. Things are proceeding as we speak, so we should go soon—”

“Putting butter on it really levels up the taste!!” “The blueberry jam is good, too!!” “But I’ll eat it without anything on it!! I want to fully enjoy the taste of the ingredients!!” “Then I’ll take all the butter and the blueberry and strawberry jam and the honey!!” “No, that isn’t what I meant at all, you stupid freaking sister!!” “​H​a​-​h​a​-​h​a​-​h​a​-​h​a​-​h​a​-​h​a​!​!” “​W​a​-​h​a​-​h​a​-​h​a​-​h​a​-​h​a​-​h​a​!​!” “This is great!!”

The Knight Leader fell silent for a moment. Then, looking down, he eventually said, “I’m drawing my sword. Do you mind?”

“No, I can persuade them to stop myself!! I’ll do something, so you just stay there!!” cried Kanzaki, flustered, punching Kamijou down and putting Index in an arm lock. The maid beat a hasty retreat, putting an end to their scone heaven for now.

4

As they walked down the huge hallways of Buckingham Palace, Kamijou suddenly said, “So why did we get called here anyway?”

“…Tsuchimikado is your guide in Academy City. He didn’t tell you anything, right…?” asked Kanzaki, a little taken aback.

Kamijou’s head bobbed up and down. “He hit us with some weird gas all of a sudden and left us in the airport.”

“That…That…” Despite herself, Kanzaki closed her eyes and clenched her teeth.

Kamijou was confused—wasn’t Tsuchimikado always acting like that? He pushed him out of the plane in the skies over Avignon with a parachute, so probably, right?

The Knight Leader, listening from beside them, spoke. “What’s about to begin is something akin to a strategy council. The members of the Royal Family Faction, the Knight Faction, and the Puritan Faction have all assembled for it. Because the Royal Family Faction leaders—meaning anyone with royal blood—will be participating, it is technically an ‘audience,’ however.”

He cast a glance at Kamijou’s clothing. “…If it were possible, I would have liked you to be in formal dress, but I suppose there’s no helping it considering what you went through. They’re not ones to get angry over a T-shirt and trousers, in any case.”

When he heard that he’d been called out, Kamijou’s shoulders gave a start. Wait, did I screw up on how high-society this was supposed to be?! he thought, panicked, until he looked at Kanzaki’s navel and exposed leg. “Well, Kanzaki looks like that, so I guess I’m actually okay…?”

“Did I just hear a rude evaluation of me? They understand my clothing is necessary for the construction of spells,” said Kanzaki, her words steadily growing angrier while her body winced and tried to escape his gaze.

Then Index interjected, “A strategy council? What kind of strategy are they talking about?”

“Mm. It was the decision of the queen herself to officially invite the Index of Prohibited Books—the matter is of enough concern to warrant it.”

The Knight Leader came to a stop in front of doors.

Grand double doors, much bigger than the others in this grand palace.

“I’m sure you’ve heard on the news that the Eurotunnel, which connects the United Kingdom and France, was bombed. All three of the individual tunnels running side by side, too. With the destruction of the seafloor tunnel, the transport of personnel and goods has slowed, dealing a heavy blow to Britain’s domestic economy.”

“???”

“The point is: It’s possible sorcery was involved in the tunnel bombing. A magical attack on a national level,” he explained, his hand touching the giant door’s knob.

Was the stage for the audience beyond that door—the room for the strategy council where the queen of Britain waited? When he thought about it, Kamijou naturally felt tension run up his spine. He was there as the Index’s guardian, so they probably wouldn’t need him to say anything—but this council was about to decide the direction of the entire nation.

He gulped.

The Knight Leader turned the doorknob.

But before the doors swung open, they heard this from the gap between them:

<“Ugh…Dresses are the worst. Why can’t I just go in a tracksuit?”>

The Knight Leader abruptly froze.

Then, as Kamijou was wondering what was just said because he didn’t know English, the man quietly said, “Please wait a moment.”

He slipped in through the gap in the doors.

<“Guwhat?! Can’t you knock first, asshole?!”>

<“I apologize, but first, if I may—this is an official function, damn it! You did not just try to show up in a tracksuit again, you dreary-eyed idiot!!”>

<“Hooray, the Knight Leader’s the first one here!”>

<“It doesn’t matter what order we get here in!! Just be more queenly, all right?! No, put that away. Nobody wants you to have an unexpected personality, so please don’t force yourself to bring the electric guitar out!!”>

A ruckus of pattering feet and slamming followed. Kamijou looked suspiciously at the doors, but for some reason, Kanzaki wouldn’t translate the dialogue into Japanese, and Index had just eaten, so she was rubbing her eyes sleepily.

After a short while, the Knight Leader’s head poked out between the doors. “…I do apologize for the trouble. Everything’s fine now. Queen Elizard has awoken.”

“?” Not knowing in the end what had just transpired, Kamijou passed through the doors.

There wouldn’t be any stairs up to raised platforms and a giant jeweled throne sitting atop it all like in an RPG. The unnecessarily sprawling space looked like a big room you could use as a party venue. The most unique thing were the tables, set up in several concentric circles like the rings of a tree trunk. It was like the United Nations assembly room you saw on TV every once in a while.

And in the center…

That person must have been the queen of Britain herself. The Knight Leader had called her Elizard. She was around fifty years old, and the shadow of age was, of course, beginning to creep into her surface features like her skin and hair, but a more fundamental part of her—her core, perhaps, or her frame—looked even stronger than teenage Kamijou’s was.

She wore a dress so long it covered her ankles. It was a two-tone outfit in black and white; if you stuck gum on it, you’d probably be paying the cleaning costs for the rest of your life.

Even more striking was Queen Elizard’s right hand. It held a sword. A typical western double-sided blade, it was about eighty centimeters long from tip to the end of the grip. But its tip was dull, and it had no edge on it. It looked like it was just a long, narrow rectangular plate coming out of a sword hilt.

The queen was the paragon of a ladylike British woman, but she had a sword…And it wasn’t sheathed and hanging at her side; it was hovering in the air, bare.

When Kamijou saw the sword, one impression immediately came to mind.

And he immediately spoke it.

“An unexpected personality…?! H-Himegami was working so hard to get a strange character trait, but she did it so easily…!!”

“No, that’s her usual self! I’ve taken away all those other tools she didn’t need, like electric guitars, soccer balls, cup-and-ball toys, and surfboards!! You may not be familiar with it, but that sword is the symbol of Queen Regnant Elizard!!”

The Knight Leader shook his head like he’d recalled a nightmare.

In contrast, the queen opened her mouth into a wide smile. “This is a sword meant for royalty, called the Curtana.”

“The Curtana?” repeated Kamijou.

The Knight Leader spoke before the queen could. “A holy sword passed down to the heads of state for generations. To know the history behind the sword is to understand the British royal family itself.”

“It’s nothing so important,” said the queen grandiosely with a grin. “I’ll admit it’s a useful tool, but it isn’t as though the royal family would end, were it to break.”

That rough—if he had to say it, accustomed—feeling actually did feel like proof that the Curtana belonged in the queen’s hand.

The queen looked again at Kamijou and told him about the Curtana.

“The Curtana is a ritual sword used for coronating kings and queens. It’s not proof of kingship but proof of the one who chooses rulers. Anyway, as you can probably tell, it has no blade, and its tip is flat. Letting it hang out won’t cause a problem.”

“It may seem queer, but it would help us if you overcame the cultural barrier on this matter,” said the Knight Leader.

Kamijou, who was neither a knight nor a samurai, didn’t understand the value in a bladeless sword. So, he asked Kanzaki:

“(…Is the sword really that great?)”

“Well, yes.” Kanzaki nodded. “Whoever owns it gains the same type of power as Michael the Archangel, the LIKENESS OF GOD, albeit a pseudo version of it. The fact that she can freely use the power of one who is not only an archangel but the leader of all angels means you can’t exactly call it a normal sword.”

“(Leader of the angels…?)” Kamijou whispered, the term disquieting to him.

The sleepy-looking Index explained, “He’s the most important and strongest of all the angels.”

“…”

The word angel brought up only bad memories for him—and now the strongest of them all? Kamijou turned back to face Elizard as the queen put the bladeless Curtana on her shoulder.

“Well, it can only be used within the United Kingdom. Broadly speaking, the Curtana gives the ruler and their knights immense Telesma—angelic power,” she explained indifferently. “The important thing is that there are special rules for each of the four cultures—England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland—and the three factions—the Royal Family, the Knights, and the Puritans—exist to protect them. And the Curtana works by unifying the rules that only apply in Britain and distributing vast power to those who protect it.”

“Special rules…?” asked Kamijou.

The Knight Leader continued for his queen, “A unique Crossist denomination called English Puritanism exists in this nation. It was created by Henry the Eighth in the sixteenth century, who disliked other nations interfering in his nation’s politics. In order to repel all foreign influence, he made sure of two things: that his nation was impenetrable by any and all foreign powers, and that the ultimate leader of the English Puritan Church was the king. That way, he wouldn’t have to obey the pope.”

“Henry the Eighth made himself higher than the pope, elevating the king’s position to the ‘leader of the angels,’” said the queen. “And he decided to change the orders of knights who served him into his ‘angelic army’ to lead the people of Britain. That’s why the Curtana now grants the same type of power as Michael the Archangel to the Queen Regnant, provided she is in the country.”

Elizard took the Curtana off her shoulder. As she twirled the bladeless, tipless sword around like a baton, the Knight Leader picked up where she left off again. “In the sixteenth century, Henry the Eighth used England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to try to establish this system. The number four represents the land, after all. By assembling a map using a meaningful number of nations, he wanted to create the magical meaning of an ‘all-British continent’ created with only four countries…A grand continent, free from the influence of various authorities at the time, namely the pope of Rome, yet still extolling a unique and advanced culture. Perhaps the king, worried about the intricate political relationships with adjacent countries, strove to create something like the ‘legendary continent’ of myth and legend.”

His reasoning hadn’t been religious but political.

By preparing an all-British continent made up only of those four nations within the greater border of Britain and symbolically linking “the leader of the angels” to its king and “the angelic army” to its knights, Henry VIII gained control over that new continent, magically speaking.

On top of making a magical mechanism that would benefit from the “all-British continent,” which couldn’t consist of one nation but used several of them to fortify its symbolic image, he also managed to take the political reins of the large, singular nation now known as Britain—the system was overwhelmingly convenient in a political sense.

A kingdom united.

And the one who presided at the pinnacle of those kingdoms, who wielded most of its power…

The queen.

“(…Of course, we can’t be so bold that everyone would detect it like the Angel Fall. I may be strong, but I’m human. I don’t believe I could use the spells of an angel so easily.)”

“What?”

“Nothing. Still, history shows Henry the Eighth didn’t have an easy time of it. Originally, it seemed he wanted to create a rule making himself the leader of the angels by using the four nations of the sixteenth century, but at the time, Scotland was its own nation that was currently at war with England. He had laid out the plan under the assumption he could easily conquer them, but Scotland resisted more than he’d expected, which came close to destroying the rule that it had to be four countries.

“Other than that, he was once troubled by not being able to use the ‘Henry the Eighth equals leader of the angels’ rule in the British colonies because of the rule that it only worked within the four countries.

“Plus, at the moment, we respect Ireland’s independence, and the corresponding locales aren’t being used as a ‘symbol.’ The reason the United Kingdom preserves one part of it, Northern Ireland, is because it needs to keep the system of four cultures,” Elizard explained as she twirled the Curtana.

“In any case,” she said, “the Curtana leveled up from ‘a sword used to decide the king or queen of Britain’ to ‘the sword used to decide the leader of the angels in Britain’…Of course, only royalty and titled nobility can use it, unfortunately for the citizens.”

Kanzaki added from beside Kamijou, “For the Puritan Faction, which I’m a part of, there is no presentation of an angelic leader or angels. We’re treated as ones who wield Crossist power, as the humans we have always been, so we can’t gain the Curtana’s benefit. Please think of the Curtana as something that gives great power to the queen and her knights.”

“The United Kingdom consists of the lands of four cultures, and the three factions exist to protect them. We’re applying this little Curtana thing in order to build relationships between those three factions.”

They all talked about the Curtana, but only the queen seemed to speak of it lightly. It wasn’t that it didn’t feel real to her but that she understood it and had enough strength to laugh those legends away. “And with that, our lecture on the Curtana is finished. I hope you’ve learned a bit about this little tool that comes up in British history.”

“So that whole thing about Buckingham Palace not needing security…?” asked Kamijou hesitantly.

The queen responded as though the thought were absurd. “Is there a person who can kill the angelic leader? I, at least, have never seen one.”

…Kamijou didn’t really get it, but it seemed like they used it for an extraordinary “ceremony,” so he decided not to accidentally touch it with his right hand, moving his caution level to max. After all, any sword used in a ceremony for choosing kings had to be a national treasure, and if he were to do anything to it, he’d surely be in all sorts of trouble.

However, when she saw Kamijou drawing back at the sword’s value, Queen Elizard broadened her worry-free smile. “Even if, by some trick of fate, it was to be damaged or destroyed, nobody would blame you. This thing, historically, is the Curtana Second to begin with.”

“Um, I have no idea what that name is supposed to mean…”

“Essentially, it’s the second one. The one that first appeared in history, the Curtana Original, has disappeared somewhere. They made the Curtana Second in a hurry because it would have made the ceremony difficult. Even if it broke, a new Curtana would be created. Don’t be so nervous.”

Is that how it is…? wondered Kamijou, but a voice cut in from behind him.

“Please, that isn’t true. The Curtana Second may be an artificial version made by the Royal Family Faction, but even the manufacturing method for the second one has been lost to us. We can’t exactly make a third or a fourth willy-nilly.”

The sound came from the doors.

A beautiful woman in her thirties entered the room, clad in an extravagant dress just as good as the queen’s. Hers was mostly blue, but the skirt didn’t extend out; it seemed like it was clinging tightly to her leg lines. She wore a monocle on her left eye, giving her the look more of a cool-headed realist than an academic. Her hair, which was shoulder-length, was black—the kind of glossy, unnatural black that might have been attained through dyes.

Extravagant but not over-the-top. Mysteriously, the woman gave off only the impression of quiet gracefulness.

“(…That’s Crown Princess Limeia,)” whispered Kanzaki in his ear.

Meanwhile, the Knight Leader seemed surprised that the princess had come alone, without a single retainer or even a maid. “If you had said something, I would have sent a subordinate—no, I would have come to get you myself.”

“Ah. No, no need for that. Having people obey me? What would I gain from increasing the chances of being backstabbed? I have no intention of granting my trust to those who know me.”

“…” Just as the Knight Leader’s mood seemed to foul, he contented himself with giving an appalled sigh. Princess Limeia’s distrust of others was a regular thing, it seemed.

“Is my sister being a wet blanket again?”

This time, a woman wearing a red dress entered the room—though her “dress,” unlike the other two, was decorated with crimson leather in spots, almost looking like bondage or something. The red-dressed woman’s age was probably just into the later twenties. She also had two knights with her, one on either side.

In contrast to the other two women, she was gaudy.

Her skirt hadn’t fanned out, either, but…it seemed to have a wire framework inside. When she slipped through the entrance, the dress skirt made a parasol-like pop and spread to an unnaturally large shape.

“It’s all gloom and doom with you as usual, Sister. If you won’t trust anyone, you might as well just die. Would solve the problem.”

Sister? wondered Kamijou before the red-dressed woman turned a sharp gaze on him.

“I am the second princess, Carissa. A little study of history would probably do you good, young man.”

They get names on history timelines just by being born? thought Kamijou, surprised at the sheer scale of their reputation.

Carissa didn’t seem to have any interest in him, though. “Vilian? You’re here, too?”

The sudden address gave the lady wearing a green dress in a corner of the room, whom Kamijou hadn’t noticed before, a start. She had blond hair and fair skin, wore a dress with a big skirt, and was generally the typical kind of princess you might see in a picture book. It seemed to him she didn’t like to wear things that stood out. As the woman named Vilian held her skirt dress down and made herself small, she gave a silent nod, then hurriedly slid away.

“My little sister, the third princess. A boring one, wouldn’t you say?” said Carissa freely, another comment he found difficult to respond to. Vilian must have heard her as well, but she just made herself even smaller.

After seeing that the three princesses had entered the room, Queen Elizard said, “Looks like everyone’s here.”

Was her call hinting that they would be starting this strategy session called an “audience”? After this, there would probably be a lot of soldiers, sorcerers, and all kinds of other people coming in. Just based on the number of chairs set up in the room, this “council” looked like it would be big, with over a hundred people.

…I kinda feel out of place, he thought, giving himself a pained grin before the queen continued.

“Guess it’s time to get out of here, then.”

…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​

Kamijou stood there dumbly. He looked at Index, but she had a blank look on her face, too. He looked at Kanzaki, who sighed, and the Knight Leader made a bitter expression and looked away when Kamijou gave him a questioning glance.

Elizard continued with a smile on her face. “When the assembly hall is too large, everyone gets their say recorded, which often makes it hard to voice your own opinions. And with the situation developing by the second, having a hundred people arguing about this thing or that will just be a waste of time. In some cases, it’s more effective to have a few people figure things out in a short time.”

“…I do feel like such cases crop up too often with you, Your Majesty,” said the Knight Leader vacantly.

Kamijou, shocked, looked around at the giant meeting hall. “But, um, is that all right? Doing this with a small group is fine and everything, but won’t other people feel left out…?”

“What? If that happens, you can just say this: ‘I’m fine if you want to meddle in the conversation with your complaints, but if we do things your way and it fails, you’ll be taking all the responsibility for it.’ See?”

“…Whoa.”

“Many people pretend to be experts to voice their opinions, but not very many of them are actually willing to take responsibility. And we can’t have people of such a level interrupting the proceedings. Especially not when the country’s direction is in question.”

Second Princess Carissa nodded at Queen Elizard’s words. “As long as we have representatives from the Royal Family, the Knights, and the Puritans in one place, we’re good…It aggravates me personally that the leader of the Puritans, who summoned the Index here, isn’t present, but I suppose I’ll allow it since a saint is here as her proxy.”

“I…I apologize,” said Kanzaki, bowing her head. “As usual, the archbishop is scurrying around behind the scenes.”

Still, thought Kamijou. They had the Knight Leader from the Knight Faction, Kaori Kanzaki from the Puritan Faction…but the Royal Family Faction was crammed in here, with the queen and the first, second, and third princesses. He felt as though there was a bias in who had been invited to this.

“Heh-heh-heh. For better or worse, this country is a kingdom…A nation where a monarch reigns supreme,” said the first princess, Limeia, when she saw his face.

He supposed that meant the royal family’s opinion was given the most importance when it came to state-level decisions. As he was thinking about it, for some reason, the third princess, Vilian, bowed her head to him in a silent apology.

Meanwhile, Carissa pointed at Kamijou and said, “By the way, aside from the faction reps…What is that kid here for? Could you clear up what his position is at this conference?” Her voice made it sound like she didn’t want anyone unnecessary here.

Kamijou didn’t exactly feel like he absolutely needed to be here, either, but the queen gave a grin and said, “He’s the one who eliminated French terrorists trying to hijack the passenger plane for no reward, saving both Britain’s national interests and the lives of its people. In other words, a man of courageous merit. Out of acknowledgment for his deeds and experience, I believe we may let him voice his opinion, no?”

“Hmm. I get it. So that’s how it’s going to be.” The second princess’s smile broadened for some reason. She brought her face near Kamijou’s. “Courageous, is he? No problem, then. I like how the word sounds.”

Ugh…Kamijou winced a little, but Queen Elizard ignored him and wrapped up the conversation. “All right, let’s get this meeting rolling. If we waste much more time, it won’t make sense to get out of here.”

5

The group, beginning with the queen, used the stairs from the first floor of the conference hall, went up to the third floor, and finally assembled in a simple reception area in the corner of a wide corridor. A passing maid, seeing everyone sitting on sofas and relaxing like nothing important was going on, had quite the fright.

Kamijou casually surveyed the group.

The queen of Britain and three princesses, the overdone Knight Faction’s leader, plus a heaping helping of the sort of retainers you’d see in picture books. Even of the two he was familiar with, Index and Kanzaki, one was a library of forbidden books storing 103,000 grimoires and the other was one of less than twenty saints in the world…The crowd made him start to doubt whether this was really modern, twenty-first-century society.

…Seriously, what am I doing here? I don’t fit in…

Uncomfortable, Kamijou rose from the sofa and, out of habit, went to take his cell phone out of his pocket, meaning to check the time on its screen. But then he remembered the tiny lens attached to it.

The camera.

“(…Hmm, a queen and princesses…Everyone here is someone I’d want a picture with, but I don’t know if I should bring out a cell phone in such an, uh, ostentatious palace…)”

Muttering aloud to himself without realizing it, Kamijou decided to put away his phone.

But then—

—the next thing he knew, the second princess, Carissa, had suddenly and quickly approached him. She’d just been sitting across from him a moment ago, but now she was right next to him, close enough that her exposed shoulder was kind of touching his and kind of not. She was tilting her head in his direction, looking at his phone’s screen. It was like being in a train and looking at the magazine the person in the next seat over was reading. That was the feeling her posture gave.

It wasn’t as though she was actually reading his texts, but he still felt the need to cover up his screen. “…It has a film on it so you can’t see it from the side.”

“Fool. A princess would never try to sneak a peek like that. Anyway, didn’t you want to take a picture?”

Kamijou, his expression one of puzzlement, looked up from the cell phone in his hand and saw Carissa tilting her body to face the camera, pulling in her chin slightly, and making the softest expression he’d seen her give yet.

Kamijou recoiled. “…Do you practice that face for photos?”

“What are you saying? This is a basic fundamental. Unlike giving speeches to the masses, we can take as many pictures as we need and only use the best one, making it easy to preserve my dignity. I think it’s more than fair—I don’t prepare any extraordinary lighting or special makeup. It’s not like how someone does ridiculous things to photograph food for a cookbook,” countered Carissa, her picture-perfect expression fixed in place.

Kamijou could feel her urging him to take the picture…The mere fact that she was making that face meant she probably enjoyed having cameras on her.

He got the impression she’d hold the look forever if he didn’t take a picture, so he changed his phone to camera mode and held out his arm.

“Still…Is this okay? Taking a commemorative photo with a princess using a cell phone camera—that doesn’t make me a super ignorant kid or anything…?”

“Cell phone cameras are unusual, yes, but if you’re going to do it anyway, then I might as well try to look good. It’s practically a conditioned reflex…And before you ask, I’m not the only one with this bad habit. Look, my sister noticed the camera. She’s closing in.”

“Whoa?!”

The next thing he knew, First Princess Limeia was standing on the other side of him. She looked at the screen of his phone. “…Well, well. You took such a perfect picture of my younger sister Carissa, and I’m barely in it. Let’s see here; if I get closer like this—is this okay…?”

It was already hard to get three people on a small cell phone screen, but Limeia pushed herself against him, trying to get in the frame. Thanks to that, several graceful, soft parts bumped into his arm.

“(…Gwah?! Wait, what’s this? How did I end up in this situation?!)”

“(…Hmm? Well, I don’t mind, but if that hard-headed Knight Leader notices, he’ll draw his sword, so keep this secret.)”

“…???!!!” Kamijou’s face froze into an incredible smile.

And then…

“…”

Slide. So quietly nobody would notice, a third figure stood behind him. She said nothing, and she was right inside the frame—the third princess, Vilian.

Please, hang on. I had her pegged as way more ladylike than these two!!

“Heh, as expected—if we’re going to be photographed, you may as well take the initiative, eh?”

“…I, well, wasn’t…,” the third princess stammered softly to her older sister, though her expression didn’t break from her passport-worthy cool and collected one.

What the heck is up with the British royal family anyway? wondered Kamijou, deciding to just take a picture already and get it over with.

But then someone put a stop to it.

The queen of Britain, Elizard.

“…I say. Do any of you realize where we are right now?”

She waved the end of the bladeless, tipless sword around, then planted it firmly on the floor and sighed at them. Seeing that, the Knight Leader and Kaori Kanzaki (not realizing that the first princess’s breasts were pressing against Kamijou’s arm) nodded in agreement, as though saying That’s right—you tell ’em.

So Queen Elizard continued, “This is the United Kingdom—the country belongs to the queen! How dare you start taking pictures without the leader of the cast!”

“Ahh, enough, you idiot!! Stop showing your unrestrained festive side in front of people from other countries!! We’re currently having a strategy council!!”

As the queen tried to dash for Kamijou and the princesses, the Knight Leader, who had been tearing his hair out, blocked her with a full-force tackle. As Kamijou paled at the sight of them knocked to the ground, the second princess nudged him a couple times with her elbow. Her eyes said it all: Ignore the idiots and take the picture.

With an electronic ka-click, the shutter snapped, and Elizard’s face, pushed to the floor, transformed into a hopeless one. “Ahh, you took it!! You actually took it without including me!! Do it over, do it over! I’ll be in it as well—what do you say?!”

The queen wailed as she waggled the Curtana Second around, but the three princesses gave looks like they’d done what they needed to do and walked back to their original sofa spots.

Elizard stayed on the floor for a few moments, crushed in a few ways, but then, as though remembering the strategy council, she eventually wobbled up to her feet and spoke. “Th-the topic of the discussion is France.”

Perhaps in consideration for Kamijou and perhaps because everyone else had mastered the Japanese language, she spoke in Japanese.

The first princess, Limeia, spread out several magazines with horoscopes in them. “France?”

“Indeed,” said Queen Elizard with a slight nod to her daughter. “I’ll explain in order. The origin of the problem was the Eurotunnel explosion five days ago. This tunnel, the only land route connecting Britain and France, is actually three tunnels running side by side on the ocean floor. But all three of them were blown up together. I’ve decided that this was an act of sabotage by the French government.”

“…And. Do. You. Have. Any. Proof?” interrupted Carissa in a singsong voice. She didn’t sound skeptical, though—her tone implied something more dangerous, like she’d prefer pulling the trigger on a war already and settling the problem with force.

The queen shook her head. “No, which is why I’ve invited the Index. In particular, if any French spells of Roman Orthodoxy were used, the 103,000 grimoires should be able to do an accurate analysis.”

With Elizard’s eyes now on her, Index turned, startled.

The queen tapped her temple with her forefinger. “Once we’ve gotten proof, we’ll be proactive. I know I have no right to say this, but France’s state decisions are wrapped up in fairly complicated processes, like ours are. Some departments even hate any one-sided influence from the Roman Orthodox Church. If we can contact the factions that want to get this over with peacefully, we may be able to solve the problem through dialogue…Of course, this plan is based on optimistic observations on our end. I’ll admit it’s something we don’t expect to work, though we do hope for it.”

“France…That means…” Kamijou frowned. Very hesitantly, wondering if it was all right to speak during such an important meeting, he asked, “Was the plane hijacking today related to it? I think those guys were French.”

“Well,” said Elizard, looking at him. “The events are more than likely not related, actually. At least, they don’t seem to be under the government’s patronage. I cannot deny the possibility, however, that they knew about it and let it happen.”

She exhaled. “According to on-site police, they testified that they’d taught several groups the tricks to hijacking planes without weapons in exchange for their support…But even then, we don’t know for sure whether those several other terrorist groups really exist…The French government has also asked for custody of the criminals, saying that they’ll punish their criminals in their own country, which is rather shady, if I do say so.”

She voiced a number of doubts but didn’t go too far into detail. She didn’t seem like the kind of person who would pointlessly focus on problems she had too little information to figure out.

“The Skybus 365 is Britain’s main form of air transportation, and now that the hijacking has exposed a weakness, we can’t use them for a while. We’re even doing emergency inspections on other models of passenger plane, just to be safe. Normally, the loss would be acceptable…but with our land route closed off, this will be a major problem.”

“If this shuts down sea routes as well, we’ll be completely isolated,” remarked the first princess, Limeia, with a bored tone, for some reason reading the horoscopes out of several magazines. As she skimmed through various articles of different systems—constellations, blood types, tarots, something written with the symbols for “nine energy studies” (even though they were kanji, Kamijou couldn’t read them)—she said, “For example…Yes, what if we use the aircraft near the seas around Britain to scatter mines? If even one of them lands a hit, private corporations might start thinking twice…even if the areas normally don’t have mines in them.”

“…It’s always you with the scheming ideas,” muttered Carissa bitterly.

Limeia must have taken that as a compliment, or maybe a magazine simply gave her a lucky horoscope, because she smiled thinly. “The question, however, is whether crushing France will really solve the problem. French-type Roman Orthodox spells…It was most likely a direct move from France, but either way, this involves the ones backing them. We shouldn’t think of this issue as a quarrel between Britain and France but as a conflict—with the United Kingdom and Academy City on one side and the Roman and Russian factions on the other. France is just the vanguard; we can’t satisfy ourselves with beating them. And if we use up all our strength on the vanguard, we won’t last long after that.”

The Knight Leader expressed his agreement. “…Now that the Roman Orthodox Church and the Russian Catholic Church have joined hands, most of Europe is under the umbrella of the Roman-Russian faction—not just the EU but nonmember nations, too. The United Kingdom is currently moving toward isolation. Even if we drive France back now, it’s likely another nation will replace them as the vanguard.”

“And that isn’t our only problem.” All eyes focused on Elizard. “We found something interesting during the plane hijacking incident earlier.”

“Something interesting…?” repeated Kamijou in spite of himself.

The queen nodded. “We borrowed the help of the Puritan Faction’s Necessarius, the Church of Necessary Evils, to resolve the incident. We had them change the fuel meter display in the cockpit using a kind of illusion spell. If it worked, the pilots would think their fuel was decreasing rapidly—leaking, in other words—and be forced to make a landing on a major road that we set up for them. The Knight Faction was on standby after that, ready to commence a sniping attack using the Robin Hood, which would have shot through both the terrorist and the plane walls in the blink of an eye.”

“Wait…Did that happen?” Kamijou had been fighting on that plane, and he didn’t remember any such thing.

“No, it failed,” Queen Elizard continued. “Somebody remotely interfered with the illusion.”

She took a few papers from the Knight Leader’s hands and tossed them onto the table in front of her. Multiple reports fanned out right in front of Index and came to a stop.

“We’re currently looking into it—but what of the 103,000 volumes?”

The Library of Grimoires, the Index of Forbidden Books, didn’t even seem to think about it. “This was a Scandinavian spell,” she said smoothly and without an ounce of hesitation. “Seithr, a sorcery in which female Scandinavian casters specialize, uses a certain kind of song to cause victims to see hallucinations. It looks like they’re applying a spell used for waking someone up from them. It works both on phantoms that trick the mind and on fake images made to appear directly in the air.”

“Hmm.” Elizard nodded.

Limeia, as though finished reading her horoscopes, folded over the corner of a page advertising efficient body massages. “If they interfered, could they have been sorcerers?”

Carissa frowned. “…From what we already said, the terrorists that hijacked the plane weren’t magically inclined.”

“The issue is that the interference came from inside the country—from Scotland,” replied the queen, her tone bitter.

Carissa’s expression twisted into a sadistic one. “Enemies on the inside, too, eh?”

“Either French sorcerers infiltrated without us knowing, or British sorcerers have betrayed us.” Limeia smiled, tossing aside a magazine and opening another one. “We’ll have to tailor our response depending on which it is. What do you think?”

But Elizard shook her head. “No. All our problem sorcerer did was interfere with a single illusion spell…If they really wanted the terrorists to succeed, they would have seen things through to the end. By shooting the plane down from the ground, for example.”

A chill ran up Kamijou’s spine.

“Think of it this way,” said the queen. “If they were skilled enough to interfere with an illusion from far away, it’s highly likely they could put that skill to use for an attack. And yet our sorcerer didn’t do anything else. That brings up the possibility that their goal wasn’t to help the terrorists.”

“They weren’t cooperating with the criminals, but they interfered with a little illusion anyway…?” asked Carissa dubiously.

“For our mission, we had to secure a runway for the passenger plane to make a forced landing—by closing a major roadway,” the queen continued. “…If our sorcerer didn’t care about what happened to the plane, their goal could have been to remove the restriction on the roadway.”

“…Which would mean that this sorcerer,” said Kamijou, “had some reason they absolutely needed to use that road…?”

Elizard huffed, unamused. “If the sorcerer knew the illusion was activated by Necessarius and still tried to interfere for their own purposes, they’re quite an idiot. But I sense from them a desire strong enough to warrant treason. An incredibly dangerous desire, of course.”

“It wasn’t enough that we have this British-French quarrel to deal with,” answered the Knight Leader, “but there’s also independent terrorists inside the country?”

The queen nodded.

They had two big problems on their plate. From without and within…Britain would have to deal with attacks from both.

“The roadway in question,” the queen continued, “is a road connecting Scotland and England. The interference itself came from Scotland…which means our dangerous sorcerer, as we would have it, might have been attempting to travel south from there.”

“If you wish, I can have the Puritans conduct an investigation into societies based in Scotland, just to be sure,” suggested Kanzaki. “After all, there are several sorcery factions of all sizes in this country who would see this chaos as an opportunity. At the moment, I can’t guarantee we’ll come up with an answer right away.”

“That’s fine,” said Elizard. “All I ask is that you do everything you can.”

Then the third princess, Vilian, who hadn’t said anything before now, opened her mouth and spoke even more nervously than the outsider Kamijou had.

“France, the Roman Orthodox Church, and terrorists…,” she said, eyes slightly downcast as she clasped her hands before her chest. “They, too, must be acting because there’s something they want to tell us. Can we not bend our ears to their thoughts and guide us all to a nonviolent solution?”

“Of course not,” rejected Carissa.

“I will admit that talking is important. But there’s no point in talking on and on when we don’t need to. Besides, even if they answered us, we’d still need to pay them back in equal measure,” agreed Limeia, checking out the special feature on beauty face wash in a magazine. “I don’t enjoy physical methods as much as Carissa, but I agree that there is no quick way out of this situation. Come now—you needn’t worry. There are ways to keep the grudges between nations at a minimum.”

“…” The third princess seemed to want to say something to her two sisters, but in the end, she stayed silent.

The queen, watching their exchange, eventually said, “Either way, there are two things we need to do. The first is to respond to France, the outside enemy, and investigate the cause of the Eurotunnel explosion. The second is to learn the affiliation and goal of the sorcerers, the inside enemy, and take action to destroy them if need be.”

“Which is our priority?” interrupted the second princess. “…Personally, I think the first would be best. I’d like to start setting up our own forces to conduct armed diplomacy.”

“No,” said Elizard, shaking her head. “We need to investigate the incident that already happened and stop any more from happening in the future. Our first priority should be eliminating the sorcerer’s society in the country.”

Carissa openly clicked her tongue in frustration but yielded.

“We’ll do this one by the books,” the queen instructed. “We’ll assign the Knights to the outside enemy—the anti-France Eurotunnel investigation—and the Puritans to the inside enemy—the sorcerer’s societies in Britain. I hereby grant them authority respective to their roles. However, the Index will not be searching for said societies with the rest of the Puritan Faction. We’ll have her on a separate assignment for our own investigation.”

The queen was direct in giving instructions to everyone present. Overblown majesty and organizational dignity, those needless decorations common to those in power, weren’t part of the picture. All she did was give businesslike orders with the knowledge of what she needed to do as someone who knew her position.

She delegated tasks like a commander.

“Report this decision to your organizations…Let’s settle each of these pending issues quickly. After all, there’s no nice rule saying only one incident can happen at a time.”

6

Kaori Kanzaki had a cell phone to her ear.

At a glance, it looked like she was calling someone, but she wasn’t. Her telephone wasn’t the thing sending and receiving information—it was the pigeon charm hanging from it. The rubber mascot character vibrated to create a “voice.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s right. We’re looking into Scottish magical groups centered around Edinburgh, but most of these groups seem to be reserves for the actual sorcerer’s societies.”

The voice belonged to Agnes Sanctis.

Originally the leader of a unit under the Roman Orthodox Church, the girl, along with her entire unit, was currently working for the English Puritan Church. Evidently, they’d been using their greatest weapon—their numbers—to look for any group that might have used an illusion to interfere with the forced landing and headed from Scotland to England using that main artery.

Watching Kamijou and Index out of the corner of her eye, Kanzaki spoke. “Society reserves—such as clubs or circles of friends—not polished to the point of being an actual sorcerer’s society but made by newcomers simply interested in magic?”

“They seem to be groups of anywhere from three to five people each. Small groups that don’t do anything more serious than love readings. We’ve confirmed between one hundred and two hundred in existence. In most cases, their ‘activities’ seem to start and end with meditation or other mental acts, and they dissipate naturally without affecting other people or society at large.”

“…And someone like that caused an incident that affected a country?”

“The thing about the society reserves is that it’s a mix of small fries who amount to nothing and bigger, actually polished fries. This incident was probably a group of golden eggs.”

“Does that mean you’ve already found something out about their identity?”

“I’ll give you the details at a later time, but there are traces implying they’ve been secretly doing stuff for quite a while. They seem to have plotted all sorts of things in the past, but they never had a chance to do any of it in reality. They turned up after tracing strange device purchases and dubious eyewitness information,” explained Agnes in a natural tone. “Our unit depends on our numbers. With our human wave tactics combined with English Puritan authority, we can get our hands on quite a bit of information.”

She said the next part as though she was reading from a memo. “Their group is called New Light. Their composition is the typical society reserve layout, but their polish is far superior to all the others. They seem to be using the category of ‘society reserves’ to maintain a relaxed position. Four members in all. I’ll send you their names and pictures later.”

“Where’s their base?”

“We found it, but we were too late.” Agnes’s voice was tinged with bitterness. “The place was set up to manufacture Soul Arms of fair quality, though it smelled of Scandinavian magic to me. Also, there was a detailed map of a certain city. Not just where roads and buildings are located—it was detailed down to the surveillance cameras, of which there’s said to be tens of thousands in the city.”

“Tens of thousands of cameras…Wait!”

“Yes.” Agnes paused, then said this:

“London. It seems like they’re ready to do something serious.”

Kanzaki bit her lip.

This time, Agnes sent a question her way. “We know the main road they used, right? Why not figure out their route from their base to London and set up a checkpoint?”

“…I’ll make arrangements, but it won’t be a perfect guarantee. Scandinavian magic has a lot of Soul Arms you can conveniently conceal. At worst, they could break through an inspection station by force.”

“Stop being so wishy-washy about it, then, and block off the entire road physically—”

“Look, I’m doing what I can here, but we’re already not getting enough supplies from outside the country. If we block off a transport route in Britain, it could mean hanging ourselves. An inspection station is all we can manage.”

“Which means…”

“I’ll do everything I can to prevent them from getting inside the city, but if worse comes to worst, they might make a move in London.” Kanzaki repositioned her phone. “What about their motives? Do you know exactly what they plan to do in London?”

“I mentioned before about signs that they’ve been active in secret for a while, but…,” she began evasively, her voice shrinking. “We don’t have proof, but there is a possibility that New Light’s members are involved in some kind of mining operations in Scotland…I mean, we didn’t get any mission plans or anything. We only speculated based on the list of devices they’d bought.”

“Mining operations…?” Kanzaki frowned.

Agnes continued, sounding rather baffled, as though she honestly didn’t have enough proof. “They seem to have been active mainly near castle sites, but we don’t know exactly what they were trying to get. Based on the ratio of time to money, though, it must have been something central to their plans.”

Magical items, most likely—Soul Arms.

And if they were digging them up instead of making them, maybe that meant they were the kind modern materials would have a hard time creating.

“Then perhaps we should assume they’re bringing Soul Arms they ‘mined’ into London and want to cause some kind of destruction.”

“It’s not conclusive evidence, but there was a very mysterious note at their base. It had today’s date and a simple sentence on it.” Agnes paused. “It said, ‘Today, we will change Britain.’”

“A strange message, to be sure…but you certainly can’t interpret that in a peaceful way.” Kanzaki shifted her grip on the cell phone again. “Agnes, continue investigating New Light’s base. What did they get from their mining in Scotland, and what do they plan to do with it in London? If we can figure out their goal, we’ll have a greater chance of preempting them…We intend to intercept New Light outside London to the best of our ability, but we may need to consider skirmishes in the city. Please look into what New Light has equipped themselves with so we can prepare for that as well.”

“Right,” came the reply before the call cut off.

Kanzaki turned to Kamijou and Index, who’d been standing listlessly that whole time. “…I need to see to London’s security with the rest of Amakusa.”

“Are you fighting the sorcerers inside the country they were talking about?” asked Kamijou.

“Yes. You…or rather, Index should go to the site of the explosion in the Eurotunnel. The investigation is leaving from Folkestone, so please head there.”

“Folkestone? Doesn’t the Eurotunnel go through a place called Dover?”

“Yes. However, its terminal on the British side is in Folkestone, a town several kilometers away. Anyway, please head there at once.”

“Huh? What?” Kamijou was confused, but then someone else cut in.

“Actually, young man, it looks like you can’t go to Folkestone.”

Approaching them was the second princess, Carissa. She pointed at Kamijou’s right hand. “I’ve gotten the report—that thing will nullify any kind of magic. I don’t think it would be a great idea for you to get near the Eurotunnel, since it’s being held up by magical methods right now. It could also affect the analysis work.”

“But he’s Index’s guardian—both the English Puritan Church and Academy City recognize that,” argued Kanzaki.

“I understand that, but this could change the relationship between Britain and France. And aren’t the inner workings and principles of that right hand unknown? It’s not like you have any proof it won’t disrupt the investigation.”

“Then…” Kanzaki began to speak, then hesitated.

“I will be going to the terminal in Folkestone to do the Eurotunnel investigation personally, along with my two sisters and the Index. We’ll have a unit from the Knights there for security, a team directly under the Knight Leader. That should clear up any issues, right?” Carissa said lightly. “If you’d be happier if a Puritan bodyguard was with her, you can come with us to Folkestone…But I’m sure you can’t spare the hands right now. And I’m not going to hold you back, either.”

“That’s…That’s true, but…,” stammered Kanzaki.

Maybe she couldn’t complain based on her position or something. In this situation, it was actually easier for Kamijou, an outsider, to make a remark. “Just the three princesses? Not the queen?”

“Mother apparently has some work to do at Windsor Castle, our other home. Possibly preparing her little tricks to use against France. It probably has to do with how the leader of the Puritan Faction has been sneaking around lately.”

Kanzaki and Necessarius would search for the sorcerers en route to London.

The three princesses and Index would be investigating the Eurotunnel.

The queen and the leader of the Puritan Faction would be doing sneaky stuff in Windsor Castle.

“…Wait, so what exactly am I supposed to do?”

“Touma!!”

Before the second princess could answer, Index put her hands on her hips. “There’s your bad habit again! You always go wherever there’s an incident!! You’re just a regular person, so you can just wait here for everything to be over!!”

“Are you sure about that? Necessarius is spread pretty thin, inside and outside Britain, so they’re probably short on hands. It would be more efficient for everyone to be somewhere they can be useful.”

“N-no,” said Kanzaki. “We could certainly use every person we can get right now, but…I still don’t think it’s a good idea to put a civilian in danger.”

It was at that very moment that Queen Elizard passed by.

She said this:

“Oh, right. Yes. If he’s a civilian, we don’t need to force him to help us. We can have him stay here as he likes until the situation is resolved.”

“That’s right, Touma.” Index nodded in agreement.

“However, if someone staying here were to, say, act outside our national interests and run up a bill, we can’t have taxpayers’ precious money paying for that. I’ll have them add up those costs separately in a few days—does that sound good? Oh, think of it as the cost of two or three suites in a high-class hotel with bad taste. It’s a good deal, isn’t it?”

“…Please humbly allow me to help you for the sake of Britain’s peace,” said Kamijou with a bow.

7

It was a scene straight out of a commercial for milk or butter.

Gentle, green sloping hills all the way to the horizon. The odd cattle barn or silo dotting the view. It was eleven in the morning, so the beef cattle were probably asleep in their pens, but the milk cows were slowly grazing their pastures.

A road ran through the fields of green, splitting it in two.

And on that road drove a car. A small one, one that felt somewhat cramped for an entire family. It looked like a rental car borrowed from somewhere, and four girls were packed inside it.

One girl, sitting in the backseat, was sticking her head out an open window. She was in her teens, wearing a bluish miniskirt and a rough-looking jacket zipped up all the way to her neck. Her long black hair was braided but only at the end.

“Blech, we have to say good-bye to this smell of greenery soon…”

“Get down, Lesser,” came an unhappy voice from next to her. “I can see your ass. Also, your tail is in the way.”

It was a young woman of about eighteen with silver hair. She wore the same thing as Lesser but without a jacket. She had on a long-sleeved running shirt, with the chest poking out an awful lot. There were a few small buttons near her neck, but they were all undone, so you could see a little of her cleavage. The legs inside her miniskirt were covered in blue leggings, all the way down to her ankles.

“Put that away, or I’m pulling it off.”

“Don’t be such a hard-ass, Bayloupe. Why are you so angry anyway?” Her eyes still out the window, Lesser sent a command to her “tail.” She put it “away,” but that didn’t mean it retracted into her body. Instead, it coiled like a snake inside her miniskirt, around the top of her thigh.

But this time, possibly to pull her tail back in, Lesser lifted her rear end high.

With white panties nearly crammed in her face, Bayloupe’s eyebrow began to twitch. “Didn’t you hear me?! I just said!! Put that thing away!!!!!!”

“Gwaaaaaahhhhh?! Grabbing with two hands right off the bat?! Hey, Bayloupe blew her fuse before the mission even started!! Tell her to stop, Florice!!”

“Well, you know, I’m pretty busy driving right now.”

The blond girl gripping the steering wheel was listless. She was around fifteen years old, and her clothing was, again, much the same as the aforementioned passengers. She had her jacket on over a running shirt, but it was open, and under her miniskirt, she wore spats.

“…More importantly, the scenery hasn’t changed in a long time. I don’t remember this road being the kind you can get lost on. Lancis, are you sure this is the right road?”

The driver named Florice tossed the conversation to the brown-haired girl helping her navigate from the passenger seat, but…

“P-please stop…That tickles…Ah-ha…Whenever the mana…the mana hits me, it makes m-my whole body tickle…Ee-hee-hee-hee…”

“Shit. She’s shaking all over from mana she made herself. Where in the process of refining life force into mana does it feel that ticklish…?” Florice clicked her tongue and glanced at the backseat through the rearview mirror. “I know you two lesbians are about to bust into an erotic novel back there, but did you finish setting up Skithblathnir? We went through all the trouble to excavate that thing, so pay close attention to them, too.”

“You fool!! If you do it like that, it’s only gonna hurt my butt!! Huh? You mean the ‘cases’? We finished setting all four of them up already.”

“Wonderful, Lesser. As a reward, I’ll tell you that Bayloupe’s weak spot is her calves.”

The shaking and rattling of changing positions sent vibrations through the vehicle. Florice took a hand off the wheel to massage one of her shoulders. “And the ‘wings’ are good to go…And it looks like we don’t have to worry about the ‘tail,’ either.”

The rearview mirror showed a wriggling Soul Arm coming from Lesser’s miniskirt as she rampaged. It wasn’t an animal tail so much as a deformed devil tail.

“Are your ‘claws’ all right, Lancis?”

“Ahfya…All ready here…Th-that tickles, hee!”

After hearing the reply from the passenger seat, Florice looked into the rearview mirror again. “Hey. You’re still not done setting up the ‘scissors’ yet, are you? Get that done before we arrive. As you can see, I have my hands full driving. Lancis is too ticklish to be useful right now. You two are the only ones with free use of their hands.”

“Bayloupe is berserk! I’ll do anything if you tie her up!! Also, hitting her calves isn’t doing a thing to her!!”

Sounds like a pain, thought Florice, ignoring her and gazing ahead. “Anyway. Pull yourselves together. We’re about to pull apart the entire framework of the United Kingdom.”

The road came to a fork where a traffic sign was in front of them. On it was a simple arrow and English letters, which read:

STRAIGHT AHEAD: 30 KILOMETERS TO LONDON.

8

Kamijou was in the passenger seat of a red convertible.

At night, London smelled kind of like exhaust. Many a centuries-old historical building lined the streets, but the stench covering everything clashed with the scenery, ruining the mood.

“I have to say—I never thought you’d show up here.”

“Oh, well. This was an unexpected development for me, too,” giggled the sorcerer, her manicured fingers on the steering wheel.

Oriana Thomson.

She had blond hair, green eyes, and beyond all that, a huge rack. She’d once tried to wreak havoc in Academy City with her partner Lidvia Lorenzetti during its citywide athletic festival, the Daihasei Festival.

She’d fought Kamijou, Stiyl, and Tsuchimikado evenly, making her astonishing combat skills known. Ultimately, though, they stopped her ambitions, and the English Puritan Church took custody of her…

“I’ve had a lot going on, too,” she said. “I cut a little deal, and now I’m using my skills for Britain instead.”

“…Wait, so this Eurotunnel explosion—France and their supporters, the Roman Orthodox Church—they’re all linked to it, right? I don’t know anything about the sorcerers who move around inside Britain, but they could be related, too. Are you sure you should be baring your fangs at them?”

“Just for your information, my real job consists of working as a magical courier. I haven’t sworn my allegiance to any particular group. I’m free to help whatever faction and fight against whoever I want—in fact, as long as there was a reward, I wouldn’t mind breaking a sweat for you…personally.”

Feeling a sweet breath on him, Kamijou locked up. As a high school kid, he was uncomfortable around this sexy lady for a few reasons.

“O-oh,” he managed. “Then, what? Do they want you to use your courier skills to find the sorcerers we’re looking for?”

“Well, fleeing and chasing are two entirely different skill sets. You probably wouldn’t understand without experiencing it yourself.”

“Where are we going now, then?”

“The deal was whether our suspects, a four-person group known as New Light, would get into London or not…but the inspection station they set up midway there seems to have failed. I found some strange traces there.”

“…Then they’re already inside?”

“You know how there are tens of thousands of surveillance cameras set up in London? One of them, in northern London…,” she said, pressing a button on the GPS with her slender fingertips. It changed to an odd video, like looking down from a street light at the road. “This video is from ten minutes ago.”

Kamijou stared at the video for a few moments as it fast-forwarded. “…Hey, nothing’s happening.”

“There is something. The top edge of the screen. Can’t you see the shadow of a car there?”

Now that she mentioned it, he sort of did, but he wondered why she had to bother showing him this camera’s video. If there were tens of thousands of them, he figured there’d be one looking directly at the car.

“There isn’t,” answered Oriana. “No matter what video you look at, none of them show what road that car came from. They knew exactly where every single camera is, and they parked their car right in a blind spot—can’t exactly chalk that up to coincidence.”

“But does that really tell you they’re the sorcerers?”

“No, which is why we’re going to look,” said Oriana, returning the GPS to its navigation screen. “The roads in London are like a grid, but only so many of them are important traffic spots. Even more so if you’re trying to weave between the cameras’ blind spots…Whether or not they’re the sorcerers we’re after, we’ll catch them soon. If something looks fishy, we check it out. Then we just wait for a hit.”

Her remarks made it seem like they were falling behind, but there was no helping it—they didn’t know if this was the real deal. In fact, they still didn’t know what this New Light group was even trying to do in London.

“…Are we going to find them like that?”

“Ah well, in reality, it’s much more unusual to be chasing someone knowing exactly what they’re after.”

9

One member of New Light, Bayloupe, was near a staircase leading down to the entrance of a subway station, leaning against the wall. Attentive to the worn-out rectangular bag at her feet, every once in a while, she glanced at the hands on an illuminated clock tower face.

Using a communication Soul Arm, she contacted her other teammates.

“Now then. Has the game begun? We have Lancis as the goalkeeper. If we win, the current British administration will crumble from its foundations, and London might not go unscathed, either. Not that there’s any particular reason to bust up the city streets more than we need to, though.”

One member of New Light, Lancis, placed a worn-out rectangular bag on the ground and sat on it. With a long, thin package in her hands and her body trembling, she looked up at the night sky.

Using a communication Soul Arm, she contacted her other teammates.

“…It…It tickles…Th-that’s why, ah, why we…why we went for this time of day, when everyone’s already gone home…Ah-ha. At least, it shouldn’t be as chaotic as…as the daytime…Hhyauuu…”

One member of New Light, Florice, walked down a small road just off a main street. She had a worn-out rectangular bag over her shoulder, hanging there casually like combed-back hair.

Using a communication Soul Arm, she contacted her other teammates.

“I would have liked to use Opila, but if we used any kind of barrier, they’d find us right away…On the other hand, we can use that to divert their attention, too. Anyway, we halves will launch a swift attack and end things quickly.”

And…

One member of New Light, Lesser, was in a bar on the outskirts of the city. The people here near the edge of Islington in northern London all seemed the sort to drink at least two liters each.

Lesser, a girl in her early teens, stood out like a sore thumb, but when she told them she’d come all the way here on vacation to find that all the restaurants had closed for the day, the muscle-bound manager had given her a plate of fish fries on the house. For her drink, she had orange juice.

After this and that, she sat at the bar cramming the sizzling-hot fries into her mouth, with the strap of a thin case about one meter long hanging from her shoulder. A worn-out rectangular bag also sat at her feet.

Then she heard a “voice” directly reach her mind.

“Look, I’m glad you’re catching a meal without us, but you haven’t forgotten you’re one of the halves, too, right?” Bayloupe said. “You bungle things in a place like this, it’s your fault.”

“I would never!” Lesser spat back. “But I wish I could have been the forward…Wait, Bayloupe, isn’t it dangerous to use sorcery for communication inside London? This is still the 0th parish’s home base.”

“Being in Necessarius’s backyard is what’s really worrying me. Ugh, why did it have to be you watching my back?”

“You’re just mad because you’re hungry, aren’t you?” Lesser chided. “Here, I’ll add olfactory information to our call! See, isn’t the smell coming from the grease just the greatest?”

“(…I swear.)” Bayloupe could be heard muttering to herself. “(And for some reason, she had to be the one with the most combat power in New Light, too. Sigh. Still, now I want to eat something. Fish fries, huh?)”

“Hee-hee. Thank you very much for those leaked thoughts— Bugyahhh?!”

Their communication cut off with a brain-rattling screech of mental white noise. The obviously spiteful act having sent her head spinning, Lesser resumed her battle with her fish fries.

All right. Once I finish these up, I’ll carry the bag to the designated spot. Then all I have to do is wait for instructions…I wonder if Britain will change. I hope it does…

Lesser hummed a happy tune to herself and swung her feet around underneath her stool. Her toes struck the rectangular bag in question.

Whoopsies, whoopsies, whoop…sies?

Her movements came to an abrupt halt.

Not because the bag was gone.

The rectangular bag she’d brought was still right at her feet where she’d put it.

But…

There seemed to be a second rectangular bag there.

They both had the exact same features. Frankly, she could barely tell the difference between the two.

“…”

Nervously, Lesser looked to her side.

Instead of the customer who’d been there a moment ago, there was now a tall black-skinned man sitting on the small stool. The other rectangular bag probably belonged to the frothy-beer-guzzling man.

Now, then.

Which was the bag Lesser had brought?

G​y​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​!​! Crap, c​r​a​p​c​r​a​p​c​r​a​p​c​r​a​p​c​r​a​p​c​r​a​p​!​!

Bayloupe had just cautioned her moments ago, and she’d already gotten into trouble.

She could check the contents to be sure, of course. The bag itself was a Soul Arm called Skithblathnir, the Great Ship Cloth. If she activated its magic, she’d tell them apart. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t open the rectangular bag here, and if she wasn’t careful and triggered that huge spell, the risk of Necessarius finding them would increase.

As she was wondering about it, the tall man finished downing the contents of his mug. “Ooh-wee. That’s enough for today, I think.”

“What? That’s only your third one, isn’t it?”

“Doctor told me to lay off the booze. Said I gotta drink in moderation.”

“Then you shouldn’t have even had three.”

As he and the manager talked, the tall man began counting out bills on the counter.

Crap. I don’t think I know which one is mine…

For an instant, her attention moved to the thin case about a meter long hanging from her shoulder, and she barely stopped herself. If she took the “weapon” out here, that was sure to cause a huge problem.

Agh, come on!! Which is it? Which one?! Right?! Left?! Which is Skithblathnir?!

As she racked her brain, the tall man reached for the rectangular bags at their feet with a wobbly arm.

Then…

Gshhh!! Lesser’s small hand grabbed the man’s wrist.

“Hm?” The man looked at her questioningly.

Lesser said, “Th-that one’s mine. This one is yours, sir.”

“H-huh?! Oh, I see, I see. Sorry about that, young lady.” The man gave a pained grin, then picked up the other rectangular bag.

As she watched the drunk black man get out of his seat, Lesser heaved a sigh.

…Safe…Jeez, a little more, and I’d have been in for a butt-crushing from Bayloupe…

If she had to say, she was pretty sure her own rectangular bag had been more scuffed up. She ran a finger over its surface, checking the feel of her own possession, and managed to come to the conclusion that it was hers.

Lesser finally relaxed. She buried her face on the counter, exhausted. When the manager saw her, his expression became rather worried, and he mumbled, “What? I didn’t let her drink anything, right?”

And then Lesser saw it.

There seemed to be a third rectangular bag on the floor.

Sweat began to pour down her cheeks in buckets.

This one must have been another drunkard’s belongings. Or maybe someone forgot it here. But after seeing this third one, her confidence wavered. Which one was the real one, again? Was it this one? Did it look a little different just because of the way the light was? What about the one the black man took before? I want to look at them all at the same time! Ah, but he’s already left the bar!! Lesser was at her wits’ end, and then…

“N-nobody m​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​v​e​!​!”

…It was said that Bayloupe, who learned of the events through their Soul Arm communication, nearly foamed at the mouth and collapsed.

10

It was the car that was apparently parked in a surveillance camera blind spot.

Kamijou and Oriana came right up to it in the convertible, but then Oriana suddenly turned the car a different way. The GPS must have had a radio in it; he began to hear a man speaking static-filled English.

“Just got a notice. Looks like one of them slipped up!!”

“Whoa?! Wait, from Necessarius?”

“No, from the London Police, under the Royal Family Faction’s intervention. Seems like some idiot is making trouble in a bar nearby!!”

Many patrol cars were on the road, their red and blue lights flashing. Oriana, as though she had some kind of permission, ignored the speed limit and drove the convertible into their group. After Oriana pulled a hard right at an intersection without using her blinker, Kamijou’s eyes caught sight of something strange—

It was a short girl dashing down a brick road.

Wearing a thick jacket and a miniskirt—and for some reason carrying three rectangular bags—she said, <“Um, which one, which one, this one?! It was this one!! Crap, if I had lifted them up a little to test the weight, it would have been easy!!”>

Kamijou didn’t understand the swift stream of English, but based on her expression and behavior, she seemed to be regretting something. She threw two of the bags she was holding onto the road, then continued running with the one remaining.

That in itself was a strange situation, but something else was even more eye-catching.

Something was tucked between her shoulder and cheek like a phone.

It was a spear.

Strictly speaking, it was a metal shaft of a spear about 1.5 meters long. It seemed to have been made so you could store a thinner shaft inside a thicker shaft in order to increase portability. An additional forty centimeters of blade was affixed to its tip. Not only one blade, either—there were three on the upper part and one on the lower part. Given how the spear’s bottom end was shaped like a bicycle hand brake, it probably opened and closed via lever operation.

“What’s that…?”

“Some sort of Soul Arm, I’m sure. Clearly an explosion of suspiciousness. That’s got to be one of New Light’s members. Gracious, don’t sorcerers have any awareness of how strangely they dress?”

“…” Kamijou looked Oriana up and down without a word. She didn’t realize it.

Oriana took her hands off the wheel and reached into her cleavage. From there, she drew out a bundle of notecard-like papers. She bit one of the flashcard pages with her teeth, then moved her jaw to tear it from its metal link. Then, as they passed by the girl running down the road, she threw it onto the ground.

“It’s a ward,” she said as something seemed to activate.

Kamijou didn’t understand why, but their target’s face abruptly looked upward.

A moment later, the card Oriana had thrown flipped over. She’d used two cards at once.

Before he’d realized it, characters had appeared on the previously blank page.

They spelled out Fire Symbol in yellow lettering.

And that was the key to the courier Oriana Thomson’s sorcery that wouldn’t let her use any spell more than once.

Pop-boom!! An explosion of flame ripped along the street.

Nearby shutters and windows rattled and shook, and the darkness of night was lit up in red.

After seeing the explosion, Oriana shifted the hand brake, abruptly cut the wheel, and did a U-turn almost without losing any momentum. The convertible’s nose pointed back at the blast, and the car itself stopped there.

Kamijou was the one who panicked. “H-hey!! Wasn’t that going a little too far?!”

“No—in fact, this isn’t looking good!!” Oriana shouted back, throwing open the driver’s side door and nearly rolling down out of the vehicle.

“?” Kamijou was confused.

Jingle. He heard a metallic rubbing noise.

It came from beside him.

He didn’t have time to fully look that way. In the span of what he could call an instant, his eyes just barely managed to move in that direction and saw that the girl in question had slid right up next to the passenger seat. As she ran with the speed of a cannonball, something trailed behind her. It was a “tail.” A clear tube, like a bike chain lock, extended from under her skirt, inside of which was something metal and flat.

Their eyes met. She said this to him in English: <“No complaints, I’m sure?”>

The girl shoved the “spear’s” tip through the metal door—in order to pierce both the door and Kamijou’s gut.

“​E​r​r​r​…​​r​a​a​a​a​a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​​?​!”

Ignoring the car’s structure, Kamijou planted his foot on the passenger seat and immediately jumped forward toward the hood. The instant his feet left the seat, he definitely felt the four blades that pierced through the door make a shallow cut in his basketball shoes.

Thump!! The impact of the spear piercing the metal door came a moment later.

After landing on the hood, Kamijou jumped again, this time onto the road.

Then he heard a strangely loud clunking noise.

He turned around and saw the short teenage girl rip the convertible’s passenger side door off. She had swung it around, her “spear’s” tip stuck through it. In contrast to the absurdly violent sight, the “tail” in her miniskirt wagged humorously.

She swung the spear again, along with the passenger side door its four blades had pierced. Not thrusting it but swinging it. But it wasn’t aimed at Kamijou.

It was aimed at the back of the convertible—at its fuel tank.

There was a high-pitched groan as it easily tore through the metal wall. The weapon’s tip sank into the fuel tank.

With an ear-shattering roar, the convertible exploded.

That, however, wasn’t what surprised Kamijou.

The flames, which should have been spreading in every direction…

The four blades the girl carried had “grabbed hold” of them.

He had no idea how it worked, but the four blades forming the “spear” opened wide like human fingers. When they clenched closed again, it suppressed all the flames that almost scattered all about the area.

Flames leaked from the gaps between the blades, but then created a new form in the air.

About one meter long at maximum, its sides of unequal lengths—an unnatural block of fire.

The four blades looked just like a fork stabbing a giant carrot.

Instead of blowing out, the explosive flames swayed heavily with the four blades’ movements.

After she lifted the flame-imbued spear like a hammer, the girl’s eyes met Kamijou’s as he sat on the ground, having fallen there in surprise.

She was grinning.

Kamijou immediately got his right hand ready to defend himself, but she brought the spear down at a slightly angled trajectory, aiming to weave around his defense.

“You’re kidding me…?!”

As his body tensed, his eyes alone moved, following the flaming spear held by the girl, “tail” hanging from her miniskirt.

But then…

Boom!! An impact slammed into the girl from the side, doubling her over and sending her flying.

It was Oriana, who had gotten out of the car before him, and her sorcery.

The girl’s body soared several meters. She was still clutching the spear, but the giant clump of flame wrapped around its tip slipped right out like the fork had shaken the carrot off. It flew off in the wrong direction, exploding and spreading orange light over the road.

But the girl still didn’t go down.

Her heels scraped against the road to decelerate. She’d used the rectangular bag in her other hand to parry Oriana’s sorcery.

Sizzling smoke rose from the surface of the bag as the girl gave a sharp, glinting glare from behind her shield.

However…

<“​O​o​h​h​h​h​w​w​a​a​a​a​a​a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​?​! Crap, I accidentally used it to block! It’s the most important thing and I used it as a shield!!”>

Kamijou couldn’t understand a word of her native English, but the sorcerer seemed to be panicking. He, however, had almost just been killed by the confused and upset girl, so he said it straight. “Hey, Oriana. I don’t really get it, but I think that rectangular bag is her most important item. I didn’t want to beat up a girl anyway, so let’s concentrate our attacks on the bag.”

“Quite fine by me. And if it is a kind of Soul Arm, wouldn’t it be interesting to try punching it with your right hand?”

When the girl heard them going about their strategy session, her shoulders gave a start. “Y-you’ve done well to spot my weak point in such a short time! But I cannot afford to be defeated here! Partly because Bayloupe would crush my butt. It seems I shall have to make a tactical retreat. Toh!!”

With a wide, pendulum-like swing of her “tail,” she jumped straight up.

After her vertical ascent brought her up three stories along a building, she broke a window and dove inside.

Nobody made a fuss about it because Oriana had used a concealing Opila at the last moment.

As for the girl, she wasn’t bothering to be discreet.

“Damn…,” cursed Kamijou. “Can we even follow that?!”

With that much jumping power, she could freely come and go throughout the city without having to use roads. Hoofing it was out of the question, but even chasing her by car would be difficult. After all, cars could only move on roads.

“That’s not true,” said Oriana, though, dismissing his unease. “She can move between buildings and rooftops, but there’s a limit. Buildings are built along roads to begin with. If she’s using those buildings to move, she’ll naturally have to follow roads.”

“?”

“Don’t understand yet? If she runs into a main road, three or four lanes to a side, we can prevent her from moving from building to building.”

“Is it possible she’ll jump from a building to the road?!”

“If she could do that, she probably wouldn’t need that ‘tail.’ It’s insurance for keeping her balance in the air. It’s the same as how certain monkeys use their tails to jump from tree branch to tree branch. If she brought a Soul Arm like that, it means even she’s afraid of being higher than a certain elevation!”

Which meant the sorcerer wasn’t all-powerful.

And that her escape route would naturally begin to constrict.

“Are we going after her?”

“Of course!!”

Kamijou and Oriana nodded to each other, then began to run through the London night.

11

Near a subway station entrance about a kilometer away from said disturbance, Bayloupe was at her wits’ end.

That idiot…!! Of all the things she could have done—the trouble she’s causing is leaking intel not only to the 0th parish but to the damn London Police…!!

Shrill cries of “Help me, help me!” were still coming over her communication Soul Arm, but Bayloupe gritted her teeth—at this point, she wanted to be the one to finish Lesser off.

The stairs down to the subway were surrounded by walls on three sides. It was almost midnight—in other words, time for the last train—so a lot of office workers and drunks were being drawn to the stairs. Amid the crowd, Bayloupe leaned her back against one of the walls, then focused on the meter-long package hanging from her shoulder and the worn-out rectangular bag she’d dropped at her feet.

…Either way, even if the worst comes to pass, we’ll still “activate” at least one. For now I should wait for Lancis to contact me. The holdup is not knowing the positional information even when our back is against the wall. Our destination being unknown is making quick improv difficult.

She exhaled through her nose and, with her arms folded, stared at the office workers coming and going. Not only were there typical British stock-trader types in the crowd; she could see a Japanese person or two here and there. Their black hair stood out in the sea of blond. When she looked casually in their direction, the number of people with black hair increased to eight or nine—and before she knew it, there was nobody but Japanese people around her.

“…?!”

Suddenly surrounded, Bayloupe glanced at the “package” hanging from her shoulder. Meanwhile, one girl stepped out of the group of Japanese people and slid over to her.

“English Puritan Church, 0th parish, Necessarius, the Church of Necessary Evils—understand?” said Itsuwa, member of the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church, in an officer-like tone. Despite being in the middle of the hustle and bustle, she was already gripping a sort of cross spear in one hand.

After the girl made her incomprehensible introduction, which only people in that line of work would understand, Bayloupe’s lips pulled back into a smile, arms still folded.

“…So, you’ve gotten here already?”

“We make it a principle to blend in with our environment. But we also have ways to search out people acting unnaturally. Of course, the techniques were originally for quickly spotting Bakufu watchdogs blending in with the townspeople.”

Bayloupe sniffed. “I see—so you’re under their banner. Jeez, I guess the 0th parish really does scrape together whatever they can get their dirty hands on.”

“We will now escort you to the Tower of London. Shall I read out your crimes just to be certain?”

“No, that’s quite all right.” Bayloupe unfolded her arms and reached for an inside pocket. With movements casual enough to look like she was putting headphones on, she attached something like hearing aids to the backs of her ears. Each of them, however, had two vacuum-tube-looking things sticking out of it.

“Until I ‘activate’ this bag…”

Bayloupe, having put on special ears, or perhaps horns, reached with her toes to the grip of the rectangular bag she’d put on the ground.

“…I’m not about to let anyone catch me!!”

With a kick, she flung the rectangular bag into the air, then grabbed it with one hand. At this, Itsuwa unflinchingly thrust her spear. Her aim was the right shoulder. She wanted the spearpoint to drill into the joint between her shoulder and arm.

Whump!! A noise split through the air.

But Bayloupe’s soft skin wasn’t sliced.

The reason: the “package” that was hanging from her shoulder. It had detected her intent and burst open from within—and the “weapon” inside it was swung in a horizontal arc. It wasn’t a spear nor was it a barehanded attack; the “weapon” was a long metal rod with four blades attached to the end. When Itsuwa had stabbed with her spear without a second thought, Bayloupe’s “weapon” collided with it, scattering sparks and pushing each away from the other.

If Kamijou had been there, he probably would have thought the “weapon” Bayloupe had was the same as the sorcerer girl’s he’d already encountered.

“…!!”

With a shrill metallic whine, the dozens of Japanese people around the two of them all took out their hidden swords and axes at once. Even surrounded by the threatening glint of steel, though, Bayloupe grinned defiantly. The hand gripping her “weapon” tightened even more.

Spinning her entire body, Bayloupe swung her “weapon.”

Itsuwa went on the defensive out of reflex, but the attack hadn’t been aimed at anyone from Amakusa. Instead, Bayloupe destroyed the concrete wall she’d just been leaning against.

The walls around the stairs leading down to the subway were set up on three sides like an open rectangle. Bayloupe had just crushed one like a biscuit. Her intent was clear:

To flee.

“Kuh!” Itsuwa grunted in frustration and loosed another spear thrust. It never made it to Bayloupe’s body, though. She was already rushing down the stairs—and through the debris—to the subway station.

“Itsuwa!!!”

“I know!! Tatemiya, please position everyone else at all the other entrances!!” she shouted back to her colleague, plunging down the stairs leading underground. She didn’t use the stairs so much as jump down the whole thing.

As she landed, she reached for an inside pocket. Her hand came out with a pistol. The magazine in it was loaded with blanks, but she pulled the trigger anyway.

Bang-bang-bang!! A series of ear-shattering blasts echoed to the end of the underground space.

Upon hearing it, all the passengers in the subway station darted for the exit. They must have thought it was a terrorist or someone firing randomly on people. In a mostly crazed panic, they all vanished from the underground in moments.

Tatemiya and the others have the entrances under control. If the sorcerer is still in the station, we no longer need to worry about getting civilians involved.

Itsuwa tossed her empty pistol aside and regripped her spear. Sorcerers like her could use a spell called Opila to keep people away, but physical methods were sometimes more effective when the situation called for urgency. Especially for Amakusa, which extracted magical meaning from everyday objects around them—if it would take too long to search for something to fit their conditions, this was the faster method.

After running down a rather long passage, she came to the ticket machines and automatic turnstiles. Itsuwa leaped over the turnstiles like a hurdle and kept running until she got to the subway platform.

She arrived just as Bayloupe was trying to jump off the vacant platform. Her idea was probably to eschew the train entirely and run through the tunnel on foot.

Their gazes met.

“…!!”

“…?!”

In that instant, the first one to move was Bayloupe.

One hand still gripping the rectangular bag, she used her other to swing her spear-like, handlike, four-bladed weapon in a sweeping arc—hurling the giant signboard clutched in its tip at Itsuwa.

The signboard soared over ten meters, but when it reached Itsuwa, it was cut by seven slashes, and its pieces were scattered.

It wasn’t an effect from the spear.

She had seven wires strung around her.

“A Scandinavian symbol of superhuman might…,” said Itsuwa, readying her spear again and proceeding silently as she carefully gauged the distance. “I was almost fooled by its shape, but its essence isn’t that of a spear. From its magical signals, I sense that it belongs to the thunder god Thor, known for his fearless strength. But…”

“Please don’t go calling it Mjölnir the thunder hammer or anything. That hammer was used in areas of northern Europe where Crossism didn’t exist in order to spread Crossist teachings. Sure, you could use it for quite a few things in modern western sorcery. But that’s not what we’re using.”

Bayloupe grinned.

“Thor’s famous for wielding Mjölnir, but just once, the god of thunder used a different weapon. He borrowed it from a certain female giant. We analyzed the anecdote to manufacture these Soul Arms, the Steel Gloves. It’s a more fitting weapon for a girl.”

“A weapon for a girl…?”

“I’m aware that, unfortunately, all the members of New Light are skinny girls. Maybe you’ll understand if I put it this way: Any Soul Arm made by analyzing Mjölnir would be a little too heavy for us.”

Bayloupe pointed the tip of the “glove” forward. When she flicked the lever on the bottom of the handle, the four blades opened like human fingers.

“We don’t even believe Thor is a mere ‘thunder god’ in the first place. We’ve interpreted Thor’s true essence as a god of agriculture and his lightning strikes as a weather-controlling ability possessed by gods of nature’s blessings. Even in that sense, though, Mjölnir’s ‘characteristics’ as the weapon of a thunder god are too strong. If we wanted to use the more flexible powers of an agricultural god beyond his mere offensive abilities, we needed to prepare a different weapon.”

Itsuwa jutted her spearhead at Bayloupe, carefully gauging the distance.

Meanwhile, Bayloupe continued, “In place of Mjölnir, Thor borrowed a three-piece set: a belt that augmented his physical strength, an iron staff with incredibly potent destructive force, and iron gloves. The purpose of the gloves is largely unknown, but we’ve interpreted them to be an interface that let him use high-power Soul Arms with precision—but in any case, there is one thing I can say for certain.”

She twirled the Steel Glove around, then slammed the four blade edges onto the platform floor.

“We already made the one—wouldn’t it be easier to just make the entire set?”

Thump…!! The four blades sank into the tiled floor.

With the Steel Glove still stuck in the floor, she whipped it around in front of her. Like a golf club hitting a sand trap, the Steel Glove sent hundreds of tiny fragments flying toward Itsuwa.

“…!!”

Itsuwa crouched to let the shrapnel go by her and immediately closed in. However, Bayloupe swung the Steel Glove back around with one hand like a tree branch, instantly intercepting her.

It wasn’t just a slashing attack.

The Steel Glove was “grabbing” something.

The wind—no, the particles in the air…?!

The instant Itsuwa realized it, the concrete powder right next to her face expanded with such force, it was like an explosion.

With a roaring kaboom!!, both Itsuwa’s body and the spear she held at the ready were flung straight to the side. As she dug her heels in to put on the brakes, Bayloupe jumped. Then, from a position about a meter high, with her knees pulled up to her chest, she rotated vertically and dove at Itsuwa.

With the Steel Glove still in her hand.

With all that compressed dust “gripped” in it, just like before.

Not…good…?! The physical strength alone was already a pain to deal with…!!

For an instant, Itsuwa reflexively tried to use her spear to block but immediately loosened up and jumped to the side. The hit would be too heavy to take. Meanwhile, Bayloupe, after spinning twice in the air, swung the Steel Glove down using her centrifugal force. Her physical strength and the dust’s power caused the subway station floor to erupt like a volcano.

Itsuwa thought she’d dodged it, but her body spun up off its feet.

Several of the scattered fragments had hit her.

Still, she didn’t fall to the floor—like a figure skater who almost failed a jump, she landed on her tiptoes just as Bayloupe “grabbed” the dust in the air and made another swing, this one horizontal.

Itsuwa, on the verge of losing her balance, couldn’t immediately back away from it.

All that dust expanded, ballooning out near her like an explosion.

“Guh…aahh, g​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​?​!”

This time, she’d taken a direct hit. It slammed her body off the floor, then sent her flying backward. The hilt of the Friulian spear in her hands broke into little pieces and dispersed around her. Her weapon cartwheeled through the air, the blade cutting into the floor mere inches away from her face.

Bayloupe picked up her rectangular bag in one hand, then slung the Steel Glove back over her shoulder with the other. “I guess that’s game, set, match, huh? I’d love to go more, but I’ll be using Gjallarhorn now,” she said, raising the hand with the bag up and stroking the side of her head as if to check headphones.

She wore the devices on her ears like hearing aids, but they hung behind her ears. Two things that looked like vacuum tubes stuck out of each of them.

“The only traits the Steel Gloves reproduce are the destructive power of the iron staff the female giant used as a weapon, the strength augmentation from the belt, and the applicability represented by ‘grabbing.’ But by adding ‘intelligence’ to the mix, I’m the only one in New Light who can be imbued with partial lightning affinity…Using a different method that doesn’t involve Mjölnir, unlike Thor. You should stay put unless you want me to reduce you to cinders.”

Itsuwa wiped the blood from her lips with the back of her hand, but she couldn’t get up.

Bayloupe hefted the rectangular bag again and said, “This thing will change British history. The Royal Family, the Knights, the Puritans, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland…The very United Kingdom itself. But it’s not all bad. Sit tight—you’ll enjoy the changes to come.”

Bag in hand, Bayloupe straddled the Steel Glove like a witch’s broom.

She didn’t fly through the air.

The end of the Steel Glove—the four blades—grasped the floor. Then, by cleverly moving each individual blade, like using tentacles to prowl across the ground, the Steel Glove with Bayloupe on it jumped down from the platform and swiftly disappeared down the trainless tunnel.

“…Urgh…”

For a few moments, Itsuwa stayed put.

Eventually, she slowly rose, then reached for a microphone used for announcements hanging on a pillar.

Bayloupe, riding the Steel Glove like a witch’s broom, with her rectangular bag in one hand and the Glove’s base in her other, sped down the train tracks. She was going fast enough to keep pace with cars on the highway.

She slowly let out a breath, shoulders loosening.

…I’ve escaped danger for now. Lancis is probably fine, but I’m worried about Florice. Damn it, this is all because that idiot Lesser screwed up…!!

She gave an additional command to the fast-traveling Steel Glove to guide it along the gently curving tunnel. For now, the question was whether to head for a nearby station or look for an employee exit to use. As she was thinking, she was suddenly struck by the feeling that something was wrong.

…It curved?

According to the route map, this rail was a straight line to the next station. There was no route that would curve like this. And there certainly shouldn’t have been any forks in the road.

Unconsciously, she stopped the Steel Glove and alighted on the tracks.

She thought for a moment she’d traveled down some weird path, but that wasn’t it. This had definitely been a straight line until now. But if that was true, why were the tracks curving? Wait, more importantly, where did these strangely curved tracks even lead to?

Suddenly, a voice interrupted her thoughts.

It came from the speakers installed in the subway tunnel. They were probably used to tell tunnel workers that trains were approaching. A familiar voice came from them.

“…It does no good to explain this now, but did you know that Necessarius’s combat personnel are all perfectly geared toward practical skills?”

It was the voice of the girl she’d just fought on the subway station platform earlier.

She didn’t know where she was going with this, but she had a bad feeling about it.

Meanwhile, Itsuwa continued over the speakers, “There are surprisingly many facilities and establishments in London for the purpose of testing the abilities of newly recruited members. Labyrinths full of traps, for example—practice grounds. Now then, I’m sure you already understand where those tracks, which I’ve magically forced into an unnecessary and extremely unnatural curve, lead?”

“You didn’t…”

Bayloupe was at a loss for words. She was already trapped in the spell.

Now that Bayloupe couldn’t move anymore, Itsuwa left her with this:

“…Seriously, please do your best not to die. From what I’ve heard, that maze’s difficulty was misadjusted, and they had to close it off because people kept dying.”

12

The latest traps were made to be convenient. Their functions included automatically transporting battered and broken victims through the giant Soul Arm in the form of a labyrinth as well as recovering and sorting any items they may have dropped on the way.

Due to that, Itsuwa was in the subway station’s lost articles vault. In plain terms, the room was for gathering things people had forgotten or dropped.

Along with the rectangular bag was a sheet of parchment. On it were the results of the “test subject’s” actions in battle and an incredibly objective readout of her “sorcerer combat power rating.” It seemed like they were still doing regular tests even now.

She heard a soft rustling.

It came from the ducts near the ceiling. Itsuwa, being a newcomer, didn’t really understand, but it probably had something to do with whatever function connected the labyrinth with the lost articles vault. Without thinking anything of it, she went for a peek inside.

“If you hear something unpleasant, ignore it,” said a voice suddenly from behind her. “The automatic self-defense system will kick in.”

Startled, Itsuwa quickly turned around.

A woman stood there in a black gothic-lolita dress that was beat-up and torn. With blond hair like a lion and characteristically light-brown skin, her name was Sherry Cromwell. The sorcerer was one of Itsuwa’s seniors in Necessarius.

“It’s a test mechanism originally made to bare its fangs at veteran Necessarius members. It looks like you used it discreetly, but if you slip up, it’ll tear you limb from limb.”

“…Hah, ah-ha…hah…,” laughed Itsuwa nervously in spite of herself.

The rectangular bag New Light’s Bayloupe had been carrying like a treasure was stained in places with dark red.

“Don’t let it scare you. The test mechanism here is too insane. They don’t use it anymore. The regular tests these days involve being thrown into an empty room for a week and being told to magically create any necessary materials to live, like water and food—that’s all.”

“Um…That’s very much a chilling proposition on its own.” Unsure of how to respond, Itsuwa could only give a pained smile. “I’m sorry for calling you at such a late hour.”

“Fortunately, I’m not a rule-upholding nun. Set sleeping times don’t exist for me.”

Sherry originally used a golem for direct combat, but she was also an expert in deciphering magical encryption hidden inside art, handicraft, and Soul Arms, like allegorical paintings or religious sculptures.

She brushed back her already mussed blond hair without a thought. “…I don’t care if it helps the Puritans’ sorcerers, but I hate that this is benefiting those bastard Knights, too.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Sometimes I think about Ellis—ancient history, really—and I can’t help myself. I’ll concentrate on my job for now. You called me here ’cause there was something you wanted me to see, right?”

“Y-yes.”

Itsuwa had called Sherry to have her look at the inner workings of a certain Soul Arm.

Sherry glanced at the rectangular bag sitting on one of the lost articles vault’s metal shelves. “That the bag you were talking about?”

“Yes. Could I possibly ask you to analyze it?”

Sherry sniffed at that, then put on a pair of thin gloves as if she was about to handle an antique.

“Harder to create optical illusions with three-dimensional objects than with paintings. You have to build it and cut it without depending on stuff like making things big or small to express perspective. That’s why I don’t dislike this kind of thing.”

“What? Aren’t there pieces of 3-D trick art that use a big ball and a small ball to create perspective? You think it’s just two balls, but when you change the angle you look at it…That sort of thing.”

“Any 3-D object you need to look at from a certain angle isn’t that much different from a flat painting. The illusion wouldn’t work at every angle, right? It only has two points of view: from the front and from the side. Frankly, you could already do that kind of art with paintings.”

Her fingers ran along the rectangular bag’s contours.

The analysis of the sorcerer who specialized in sculptures began.

“…It’s made of mainly oak. They cut millimeter-thick pieces of wood, then treated it with smoke to gently curve it. Its structure is complex, but it doesn’t use any nails or screws. Maybe the way they built it is like when you weave bamboo baskets or create wooden mosaics. It’s put together in a complex way by manual procedure, but that means you could unravel it with manual procedure as well and rebuild it into a different shape…”

“U-um…? And what does that mean exactly?”

“This bag was made to transform.” Sherry made a fist and rapped on the rectangular bag’s side with her knuckles. “In fact, it wasn’t even a bag originally. They took some other object, then folded it up in a systematic way like origami to force it to have a bag’s shape. New Light’s field of expertise is Scandinavia, right? Which means—”

“Origami? Really?”

As she listened to Sherry’s explanation, Itsuwa casually reached out a hand for the surface of the rectangular bag.

When she did, she heard a clack.

It was the sound of the key, which nearly broke after being “beaten to a pulp” in the training grounds, unlocking on its own.

A moment later:

“Ah, w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​-​w​a​?​!”

With a pop, the rectangular bag inflated.

It wasn’t on the level of expanding to only two or three times its original size. The conglomeration of wooden material began to tower, changing form and becoming gigantic. It blasted away the shelf it was sitting on, then proceeded to mow down the other shelves lined up like a library, one after another.

When its expansion stopped, the rectangular bag had become a giant boat.

It had a large wooden canoe-like design. It was over ten meters long.

Sherry sighed. “…I get it. You’ve got Orsola Aquinas–class airheadedness in you.”

“Th-that’s outrageous!! I may be bad, but not as bad as that birdbrained sister!!”

Itsuwa denied it in a hurry.

Orsola Aquinas was an expert at decoding encryption in text, but the sister was in any case known as a bouncy, airheaded woman who walked to the beat of her own drum.

Feeling awkward after the lost-and-found-vault fiasco, she looked away from Sherry. “C-come to think of it, you didn’t call Orsola? You’re in different fields, but I thought she specialized in decryption, too.”

“I left her behind so she wouldn’t screw up like this.”

Itsuwa let out a cute (from a man’s point of view), flustered groan.

Sherry, looking fed up with things, glanced at the bag that had changed shape into a giant boat. “…So, its original form was a boat? If it’s out of Norse mythology, maybe Skithblathnir would be a good line of reasoning.”

“Skithblathnir…You mean the boat big enough to let all the Aesir on, including Odin? Yes, the story was that it could be folded small enough to fit inside a bag, but…”

Of course, it probably wasn’t the legendary boat that appeared in the myths…just a Soul Arm named after it. Still, if they’d gone through the trouble to use that story as a reference, there must have been some relation.

“Well, the bag was simply a means of transporting it. Their goal is probably to load something else onto it and bring it somewhere…They did still compare it to a vehicle of the gods, though—what could they want to carry with such an exaggerated boat?”

“…That…must be the center of New Light’s plan,” muttered Itsuwa. Not the bag but what was supposed to be inside—the necessary item for overturning Britain.

As they could see, the rectangular bag was empty on the inside, but their goal couldn’t have been just to carry the boat. New Light had “mined” some sort of item in Scotland, so Itsuwa had predicted bringing that into London was the core of their scheme, but…

Nevertheless, Bayloupe being a decoy for her other comrades…didn’t make sense to her, either.

“The sorcerer who had this never let go of the bag, even while she was fighting me. If it was just a decoy for insurance, I don’t think she would have risked fighting with just one hand and tried to protect it to the death…If she were to die along with her decoy, everything would be lost.”

The parchment spit out by the “training grounds” with the bag had a record of the “test subject’s” actions and combat. As far as she could tell from that, even after Bayloupe’s Steel Glove was smashed, the girl had continued to protect the rectangular bag right up until she lost consciousness…No matter how Itsuwa tried to wrap her mind around it, that wasn’t the way you would treat a dummy.

“Which means there’s still a secret. Some secret about this empty bag that meant she had to risk life and limb to protect it.”

Sherry took several things out of her pocket—a small brush, a magnifying glass—making it look like she was going to dig up fossils. She seemed to be interested enough in the item to research it for real now.

“Well, it can’t just be a jack-in-the-box, can it? I’ll see what I can find regarding its detailed effects as a Soul Arm, but no guarantee I’ll find something right away. I think Agnes and the others are snooping around New Light’s hideouts in Edinburgh. Might be faster to go with them.”

“A-all right then. Please excuse me.”

“Right.” Sherry nodded casually, not turning around to look at her. “You get aboveground and take out the rest of the trash.”

Itsuwa bowed to her again and left the lost articles vault.

She ran through the subway station premises, heading for the exit, and meanwhile got in touch with Agnes just in case via cell phone (strictly speaking, not using phone lines but using a magical method).

Instead of the small speaker in the phone, her cell phone charm vibrated, creating the voice of the recipient—Agnes, who was currently investigating in Edinburgh, Scotland.

“I’m sorry, but no. We’re looking into things now, but we haven’t even found info on something called Skithblathnir. We’ll begin a more focused search along those lines soon.”

“I…see. Thank you for your help,” she answered, running up the stairs to the surface.

“Anyway, we finally took one down? According to our intel, New Light is a four-person group. If there are still three out there, things are a little dicey, to be honest.”

“Actually, I have good news regarding that.”

Just as she said that, it happened.

Something shot right by Itsuwa’s side. A thundering craaaack rang out. When she looked in that direction, she saw a girl stuck in a giant signboard. She’d flown twenty meters through the air, the wreckage of her wing-shaped Soul Arm scattering about, until she’d crashed into it.

As Itsuwa watched the now completely unconscious girl, she said:

“Two to go.”

When she looked in the opposite direction from where the girl was buried, she saw their Priestess, Kaori Kanzaki, returning her long katana sheath to its original position. She must have used it to knock the girl away as hard as she could. The physical strength of a saint, one of less than twenty in the world, was far beyond anything the Steel Glove could handle.

Itsuwa ended the call, picked up the new rectangular bag from the road, then began to walk over to Kanzaki and the other Amakusa members following her.

“I…I see there wasn’t only one bag.”

“Yes. If we decide that nothing in it is the thing they actually needed, we will have to look elsewhere. As I thought, we can’t rest easy until we stop them all—though I’d prefer to avoid violent methods.”

13

On the roof of an extravagantly furnished horse-drawn carriage, a lamp emitting a soft light shook slightly.

About one hundred kilometers from central London, on a dark road without even a streetlight, the carriage ran. And it wasn’t alone. With a particularly large one at the center, over ten others were driving in a line from front to back. Apart from the carriages, knight horses fitted with ritual armor added to the convoy as well.

It was a scene out of a picture book or fairy tale, but contrary to the antique appearance, their speed was over five hundred kilometers per hour. It wasn’t due to the capabilities of each individual vehicle but magic circles in the road, constructed at even intervals way back when the pathway was first built. From afar, the carriage convoy may have looked like a linear motorcade with lights on it.

Each vehicle in the gold-plated and rare-metal-decorated convoy gave off its own unreal radiance, but what stood out the most was the large carriage in the center, on the move while guarded by a phalanx of people.

It was commonly known as the Mobile Fortress.

A long-distance escort carriage used by the British royal family.

It had a license plate so it could drive on public roads, and its wheels and wooden frame strength had been adjusted. At the same time, it was aggressively protected by over seven hundred Soul Arms and magic circles.

Riding inside the carriage, decorated like a fairy-tale vehicle, were three women.

The second princess, Carissa; the third princess, Vilian; and Index.

“…Guess our sister didn’t come after all,” muttered Carissa, looking out the window.

She’d let her dress skirt expand to the limit, taking up the space normally reserved for three people. In contrast, Vilian was scrunching up her clothes as much as she could, forced to feel small in a space for half a person.

In a nervous tone, Vilian said, “She is rather untrusting of others.”

“Rather untrusting? More like staunchly untrusting. Even with a carriage strong enough to withstand someone throwing the sun at it for three days, we still can’t get rid of all the risks?”

“That’s exactly why, isn’t it?” replied Vilian. “She absolutely never trusts any security she didn’t make herself. There’s no room for her when they’ve already prepared every last detail. And she can’t personally verify it, either, which is why she can’t trust it…You know the story of how she cut off her private room in our other home, Windsor Castle, and remade it into something she liked?”

“Well, she does raise pets for their ‘taste,’ so…That said, she’s also constantly sneaking out of the palace to visit places nearby.”

“She said there’s no malice in the words of people who don’t know who she is, didn’t she?”

“Hmm.” Carissa sighed. “Right now, I guess the Eurotunnel is more important than her.” She glanced at Index, who was letting her legs swing with nothing to do. “The Curtana Second protects our nation, but it doesn’t mean our nation is guaranteed to prosper forever. We likened the angelic leader to the king or queen, the angelic army to the knights, and then we subdued the masses, but if those same masses rise up against us, the nation will lose its ability to function…And we can’t rely on a great flood purging us all again, like in the Bible.”

“…”

“Preventing a crisis like that is why we’ve got the Knights acting in the public eye, with the Puritans behind the scenes cleaning up the stragglers, each doing their own job to keep the peace…But now we have the Eurotunnel bombing and the attempted terror incident on a passenger plane…These problems coming at us one after another were far more than enough to shake the hearts of our people.”

“But…,” said Vilian, choosing her words carefully, “even if France is involved in this string of incidents, they must have the Roman Orthodox Church’s influence behind them. What would you say blaming only France would accomplish?”

“Maybe you’re right, but regardless of who was the mastermind, we need to force France to yield.” Carissa folded her arms. “The Vatican is well guarded. We can’t conquer it in a single day, so we’ll need to prepare for a protracted conflict and construct front-line supply bases. Which would just leave the geographical issue. We need France to cooperate with us by any means necessary so that we can build bases a stone’s throw away from the Vatican.”

“I-it doesn’t have to be France, does it? Don’t we also have the option of building a large-scale resupply base that can serve the Mediterranean, just to apply pressure to them?”

“France is the one who would have to protect the Mediterranean in that case. It doesn’t change the fact that we need to silence them…Not only that, but the sea fortress would have to keep watch over both the skies and the seas, so I can’t say it’s a very realistic option. There’s also the problem of how sturdy it would be.

“With land bases, if a wall gets broken, you can just patch it up, but one hole on the sea will get you sunk,” added Carissa.

Vilian frowned in unease and put her hands to her chest. “…To request aid from France…is there really no other option than to use military action?”

“If you seriously want it to be otherwise, you have to think of concrete methods,” noted Carissa.

Vilian looked up while Carissa spoke.

“Our sister is the brains; I’m the military might; and you’re the virtuous. I ended up naturally only able to think up forceful methods, but you might be able to find a more efficient way…And possibly not only with France but with the Roman Orthodox Church as well.”

“Carissa…”

“And investigating the cause of the Eurotunnel bombing is necessary to gather information on how to do that, too. If you want to lead us to the best solution, brace yourself. We’re almost at Folkestone. And that means the Eurotunnel terminal connecting to Dover isn’t far, either.”

14

Touma Kamijou raced through late-night London.

He wasn’t doggedly chasing the girl Lesser—he didn’t know the member of New Light’s name, though. He was dashing straight down small roads nestled between buildings.

Overhead, shrill noises moved through the night.

They were the burglar alarms set up in all the buildings. Even now, as Lesser jumped from third-floor window to fourth-floor window, she was breaking the glass. Since that was setting off the alarms one after another, it would have seemed from afar that the sound itself was moving along in a clump.

They seemed to be uninhabited business buildings, so he didn’t hear any distressed cries or shouts, but the girl probably wasn’t paying attention to that. She also didn’t appear to be using anything like Opila. She’d probably charge on through even if yells or screams rang out.

Gah!! She’s so crude! Certainly doesn’t look like a sorcerer on a secret mission!! he shouted to himself in complaint, running ever farther.

And then something unusual occurred.

Before he knew it, something was there, traveling parallel to him.

It was a small orange pumpkin.

About the size of a clenched fist, it had eyes and a mouth carved into it. It was running along a nearby wall, staying at eye level with Kamijou.

“Sir, you don’t appear to be either a sorcerer or British. Why might you be following me, of all people?”

The words, spoken in a joking tone, belonged to a young girl.

She continued, purposely speaking Japanese for him. “Well, sorry if you’re someone who moved to Japantown, but you’re not, are you? I can tell by how you smell. You don’t seem like you know all that much about Britain.”

“…Are you with New Light?!”

“Bull’s-eye. I’m Lesser, from New Light. The fact that you’re fighting alongside the 0th parish, the fact that you know our name…Huh. If you were a regular person, I would have warned you to go home this instant. What should I do about this?”

Her words sounded worried, but there was no depth to them. Kamijou gritted his teeth. She was completely making fun of him.

“In any event, it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re a sorcerer. You’re not British, which means you’re out. You don’t have the qualifications for this. Go home this instant instead of sticking your nose in weird places.”

“Qualifications?! What are you talking about?!” Kamijou’s angry shout rang through the narrow path.

The pumpkin, meanwhile, answered him as though it were a guide giving him directions. “Just what I said. We’re carrying all this insanity out as representatives of the sorcerers who live in Britain so that we can lead the country in a better direction. If someone shows up to stand in our way, they at the very least have to love Britain as much as we do, or why bother fighting? This isn’t the sort of problem some random tourist should be sticking his nose in.”

“Don’t give me that crap! I know you mined up a weird Soul Arm in Scotland and brought it to London! You’re clearly doing something bad! I can’t just leave you be!!”

“I don’t know what to say. Is that what the 0th parish’s analysis decided? Anyway, it would be pretty dumb to give the enemy any hints, so I guess they can go ahead and think that if they want.”

“What…are you talking about?”

“You don’t need to understand. All I can say is that Britain will lose for certain over the course of the ‘war,’ and we want to veer it in a different direction at the very last moment. That’s all.”

The existence of the Soul Arm they mined. The girl’s words, which didn’t deny the fact that they’d brought it into London and planned to activate it…

…Nobody knew in concrete terms what sort of scheme New Light had put together, but it certainly couldn’t be anything good.

“In any event, unless you’re a citizen of Britain, you probably can’t get a real sense of how urgent this problem is. I don’t exactly want to go ahead and kill someone who’s not an obvious bad guy. You seem like the kind of guy who would get mad while staring at something burning on a faraway shore, so I’d like it if you would stay quiet.”

As her words ended, the pumpkin popped. Like a confetti-shooting party toy, the pumpkin spewed paper streamers of all different colors, which Kamijou punched away with his right hand, knowing it wouldn’t do anything but hit it anyway.

Damn it! She’s not just quick to flee—she’s got a perfect read on the route I’m using to follow her, even though she shouldn’t be able to see me!! I just hope Oriana’s all right!!

Kamijou, clicking his tongue in frustration, burst out of the small street onto a major road. It was large, with three lanes on either side. It was almost midnight now, but there were still quite a few cars on their way home and late-night buses coming and going.

Then Kamijou stopped moving.

As his soles scraped along the ground to stop him, he glanced at the corner of a building.

A window on the third floor.

Bang!! Lesser hit her hands against the reinforced glass. Her shocking ability to jump was something to be proud of, but even if she was good at jumping up from below, she didn’t seem able to jump down from above and neutralize the impact.

And she didn’t have enough jumping power to leap across the six-lane road in one go.

Lesser was at a dead end, so to speak, and even more hardship awaited her.

Whump!!

Oriana caught up to her from behind and delivered a rock-hard drop kick to the girl’s back.

The reinforced glass shattered and Lesser was flung out into the air.

Oriana’s plan had been this:

I’ll throw her out of a building onto a main road, so you make sure to catch her on the ground.

Kamijou spread his arms wide and shouted, “Ha-ha-ha!! Dead or aaaaaarrested!!”

“…?!” Lesser was dumbfounded, but she couldn’t do anything in midair.

But that was when Kamijou realized: As the girl’s small body fell, so did a rain of hundreds of glittering glass fragments.

“I…I’m gonna die, gonna die gonna die gonna die gonna die gonna die gonna die!!”

<“Don’t cower like that!! If you don’t catch me, I’m going to die!!”> shouted Lesser in English. She swung around her four-bladed spear—the Steel Glove. When its tip struck the side of the building, there was a massive bang, and Lesser’s body surged sideways.

After crashing directly into a pile of Halloween decorations between two street-side trees, she kept falling downward, crushing and cracking all the decorations underneath her. It seemed to have cushioned her fall; while her clothing was torn in places, she accurately landed on the ground, turned her back to Kamijou, and began to run again.

As Kamijou stood there flabbergasted, Oriana poked her head out of the broken third-story window. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted:

“Y​o​u​u​u​u​u​u​u​u​u f​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​i​l​!​!”

“Well, sorry!! I’ll get back to chasing her, jeez!!”

With a tear or two appearing at the corners of his eyes out of fear of the glass rain, Kamijou followed behind Lesser.

15

Agnes Sanctis was in Scotland, in the northern part of the United Kingdom.

She was at a yacht harbor in the capital, Edinburgh. High waves had trouble forming here, located in the bay as it was, so it was valued as a place to keep your yacht or cruiser safe for long periods of time.

Agnes was on a boat.

But she wasn’t on the sea.

In front of the yacht harbor was a large, asphalt square. Lined up along it were cruisers beaten up by the elements. They pulled onto land anything that had deteriorated to the point where holes prevented it from floating on the water.

Most of the cruisers here were either waiting to be dismantled or belonged to a rank-and-file employee who bought it on the cheap, keeping it there until they could repair it.

“That’s the third place, is it?” muttered Agnes.

Lucia, a nun and her colleague, said, “…It’s no longer seaworthy, but the living space has been kept clean. We also found a security system shared with the previous two hideouts. This must be a New Light base, as we thought.”

Agnes narrowed her eyes. Most advanced sorcerers—ones who lived in modern times—didn’t build things like extravagant castles or towers. If they devoted all their energies to one place, they’d lose everything if it was raided. Instead, they prepared several places, like apartments, rooms in multipurpose buildings, and campers: bases they could easily abandon at any time. By dividing their finances, they could keep the risks manageable.

New Light understood that unwritten rule.

That was a blunt indication that these girls were more than just interested in telling fortunes—they were powerful, a bona fide sorcerer’s society.

They’ll be a pain to deal with…Agnes sighed, then asked Lucia, “Is there any information left inside? Details about the bags they’re using—Skithblathnir—or their plans for them?”

“They seem to have things set up to erase sources of information in all their bases with one remote signal, following common practice. Sisters Catherine and Agatha are currently investigating the interior in more detail, but—”

“Sister Agnes!”

A hatch directly attached to the cruiser’s floor opened upward. A nun with glasses, Agatha, poked her face out and beckoned for them.

“We discovered a prototype bag in the engine room,” said Agatha. “Considering how they failed to directly destroy the Soul Arm, they probably didn’t stop by here, only destroyed the information remotely in a hurry. This seems to indicate the possibility of some irregular factor having sped up their plans.”

“And the bag?” asked Agnes. “Do we know Skithblathnir’s effects as a Soul Arm?”

“We have no proof, so I can’t give any guarantees, but according to what we could analyze…” Agatha flipped through a notepad in her hand. “It seems to allow free teleportation of an object inside Bag A to Bag B, Bag C, or Bag D. Its range is approximately one hundred kilometers. They can pass the item to anyone as long as they’re in that range.”

“I see…They’re trying to get right to the heart of London while passing some kind of crucial item among the four of them like a game of lacrosse.”

Agnes didn’t know what the “crucial item” was, but it was important enough to warrant preparing a Soul Arm like this. Doubtlessly it was “crucial” in the bad sense.

“Ordinarily, it would be a replacement for a bomb or weapon, right?”

“We’ll have to look into that as well.”

Of the four New Light members, two had already retired thanks to Amakusa. But as long as they could freely pass the Skithblathnir’s “contents” between them, it was extremely likely that any of them could activate whatever those contents were.

While receiving a written report from the nun Angeline beside her, Agnes said, “…According to the information we nabbed from the two previous hideouts, New Light was conducting some kind of excavation near Edinburgh. Whatever they got is probably this ‘no-good item.’”

“Sister Agnes! It’s an emergency!”

Then she heard Catherine open the door connecting to the living block and shout to her. Agnes looked over as Catherine threw her a rolled-up piece of parchment. Agnes unfurled it and froze in surprise.

“…This can’t be…”

16

Touma Kamijou ran down a back road.

He knew he’d be up a creek if Lesser made another one of her astonishing high jumps again, but something seemed to be malfunctioning on her end. The roadside tree had served as a cushion, but she probably couldn’t have landed unharmed.

Right now, with her clear, metal-spine-filled, tubelike tail swinging left and right behind her, she was running down the street like a normal person. She was far from your average girl, though. It was like she took the speed of a short-distance sprinter and used that pace to run a marathon.

It must have taken Oriana time to get down from the building; she wasn’t nearby.

If he lost sight of the girl here, it would really be over.

As Kamijou’s tension grew with every corner Lesser turned, he heard his cell phone’s ringtone. When he looked at the screen, he saw an unfamiliar caller. It wasn’t even one he’d ever see in Japan, either, given the first few numbers.

Still running, he answered the call and heard the familiar voice of a girl.

“Thank goodness, I got through! It was the right move wringing information out of Amakusa!!”

“Agnes…?”

He wanted to ask why Amakusa had his phone number, but Agnes’s tone sounded too urgent for her to answer a question like that.

“We discovered part of New Light’s objective! Their ultimate goals are the princesses of Britain who went to the Folkestone tunnel terminal to investigate the Eurotunnel!!”

“Are you serious…?” Kamijou tensed.

“Buckingham Palace isn’t fitted with a magical security system for diplomatic reasons. But the truth is, it’s still guarded by many knights and sorcerers…and above all, the strength of Her Majesty herself. The princesses’ leaving the palace by carriage was a perfect chance for New Light!!”

The assassination of Britain’s princesses.

Something cold ran down Kamijou’s spine as Agnes continued. “That isn’t the only problem. The British royal family is denying this officially, but given the existence of the Curtana Second, they have one fear: that there is a large-scale spell for which someone in the royal house is the activation key.”

By “someone in the royal house,” Agnes seemed to mean it wasn’t a simple matter of bloodline—it was anyone who had been integrated into the framework of the British royal family by magic. The family had connections to leading figures in various countries through affairs such as political marriages; it didn’t seem like Agnes could explain this by referring to only “those of the royal bloodline.”

If being in the royal house or not was only based on bloodline, then if an originally foreign princess became the queen and thus part of the royal family, she would end up being the only one who couldn’t use the royal family’s magic.

“There are a bunch of rumors about what the spell really is that needs someone from the royal house as an activation key, but…The most extreme of them is a large-scale spell that uses the person’s death as a trigger.”

“What…the hell?”

“The rumor has been around for a while, but…Broadly speaking, it’s one of the strongest attack spells in Britain, which will cause ultimate destruction on a national level. It was deployed around the sixteenth century, and of course, the enemies they had in mind were European countries. They say when activated, it would almost completely wipe those regions off the map.”

Agnes’s words didn’t feel real to Kamijou anymore. She told him it was possible this was an exaggerated rumor…but that didn’t make him feel any better about it.

“But if they activated such an insanely powerful spell, Britain would face diastrophism and disasters…It would be a literal final attack that doesn’t take what happens afterward into account whatsoever. Maybe it’s like firing a super-powerful magnum with one hand. It’s all still rumor, but they say as soon as it activates, most British citizens would die from the recoil and aftereffects.”

If that information was correct…

Then New Light’s goal was—

“One of them said something along the lines of…if you’re not someone who can risk your life for Britain, you don’t have any right to be part of the battle, or something.”

“That goes to show how serious they are about assassinating the princesses. As well as the sorcery that will be unleashed upon their death.”

A chill ran up Kamijou’s spine. Hurriedly, he said, “Wait. The British royal family has been going for centuries, right? Lots of kings and queens have died in that time, haven’t they? If there really was a large-scale spell like that, shouldn’t it have already wiped out Britain and Europe a long time ago?!”

“In Crossism, there’s a sacrament called the Final Anointing. Broadly speaking, it’s a sort of ceremony where you prepare someone to receive the final judgment to send them to Heaven after they die…Could it be that also works as an avoidance code? Historically, all the royalty who have died in their castle or were executed there have had the Final Anointing sacrament administered to them. But if something else happened…A sudden death in battle or successful assassination that didn’t give time for someone to administer the Final Anointing…”

“Then the royal spell on this country would activate…”

The death of a king meant the death of a country.

They had to avenge that death, even if it meant using an assembly of all their strength in one final attack.

If the sorcery from that time period was still functional…

Kamijou imagined it and shuddered.

Hastily, he searched for a reason to deny it. New Light had attached the Soul Arm they used for communication to the royal carriage, but that didn’t mean the assassination would succeed right away.

“That’s right. A princess wouldn’t go out unarmed! I don’t know about regular people, but aren’t the cars and planes and stuff that presidents use specially made?!”

“Yes, the carriage has so many security systems installed that they call it the Mobile Fortress. But the communicator they put on it seems to be able to know not only the carriage’s location but also whether the doors are closed…”

“So when the princess gets out of the car herself, some kind of attack will go off…?” Kamijou said to himself, feeling a shiver run down his spine. “Doesn’t the vehicle have any escorts?!”

“It does, of course…But their security layout is probably based on the carriage’s defensive functions working properly. If the basis is wrong, even a perfect system will show holes. If they did something like sniper her through that net from afar…”

“Shit,” Kamijou swore. “A communicator…How did they put something like that on the queen’s carriage?”

“We don’t know how they pulled it off. And if they got the communicator on, we can’t be sure they didn’t plant some other traps…Like one to temporarily weaken the carriage’s magical defenses.”

“…This is the worst,” moaned Kamijou. Index, of course, was traveling with the princesses.

“We still don’t know how they plan to attack. Is London nothing more than a shortcut to get to the tunnel terminal in Folkestone, or can they fire some kind of long-range attack? Whatever the case is, please arrest their members quickly!”

Kamijou stared at Lesser’s back as she ran away. “Isn’t there a member we haven’t found yet?!”

“New Light has four people in it, and we’ve already taken down two. That leaves the one you’re following and the last one, whose location is unknown. But we discovered how the Skithblathnir works earlier. Their ability to move around should weaken if they’re not all doing this together.”

Agnes explained the Soul Arm effects of the rectangular bags she called Skithblathnir. Apparently, it was an item that let you transfer the contents from one rectangular bag to another, whenever you wanted.

“There are two enemies left. One of them should have the real thing in their possession.”

Even if Lesser, the one Kamijou was chasing, had the “contents,” she would just pass it to the last member if she got cornered.

Which meant…

“Yeah, if they go down to one person, it’ll stop them from passing it along, but it won’t stop the actual assassination!! As long as they have those contents, anyone would be able to do the real attack whenever, wouldn’t they?!”

“Yes. In the end, we won’t be able to rest until we’ve smoked each of them out and arrested them all. So hurry!”

Kamijou ended the call, shoved the phone in his pocket, and set his sights in front of him again.

Then Lesser turned a corner, and when Kamijou followed—she was suddenly not there.

?! For a moment, he thought his heart would stop, but he recovered immediately.

There was an emergency staircase going up the side of a building.

When he looked up, he heard the plat-plat sound of someone running up the metal stairs growing more distant.

“Up, huh?”

After taking a moment to catch his breath, he dashed up the stairs. The building was about five stories high. Along the staircase, the fourth-story door was open. Climbing the stairs that were like an ever-turning dance floor made him dizzy, but he shot up the steps in one sprint.

Creak.

Suddenly, four blades that shone the color of silver appeared.

Lesser had shoved the blades between the metal emergency staircase and the brick wall, forcing their connection apart.

“Th…this can’t be…?!”

The bolts in one part broke, and the entire staircase swayed violently. The heavy shake made bolts on the other floors begin to pop off like buttons on a shirt. Kamijou quickly grabbed the railing, but the whole staircase began to tip over. It wouldn’t hold.

But…

After tilting about fifteen degrees, the emergency staircase abruptly stopped. He looked to see that it had originally been installed in a narrow alley, so a spot near the top of the staircase had run into the building next door.

“…!!” Lesser saw it, too, and tried to use her Steel Glove to attack again.

But before she could, Kamijou moved. He got up onto the railing of the diagonal staircase, ignoring the stairs, and made a big jump toward where Lesser was on the fourth story. Just as he did, the staircase buckled under its own weight, collapsing and beginning to fall toward the ground.

“You little!!” As Kamijou approached, Lesser made a swift stab with the Steel Glove.

But she didn’t know.

His right hand had a power called the Imagine Breaker in it.

“​O​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​!​!”

As he fell, he swung his fist down directly onto the tip of Lesser’s Steel Glove, shattering the four blades and blowing them away. Before she had time to be shocked, Lesser collided with him, which ended up sending her flying.

Behind them, the emergency staircase made a huge crashing sound as it completely collapsed.

Kamijou, having lost his balance and rolled onto the floor, panted as he got up.

In front of him, Lesser, even without her weapon, didn’t let go of the rectangular bag at her side.

Lesser glanced around in search of an escape route, but Kamijou spoke first, interrupting her. “It’s over.”

“…”

“You don’t have the strength to run with the speed from before. Plus, you don’t have that weird, crazy-strong spear weapon anymore…I think even my fist would beat you down now.”

Lesser cast a baleful glance toward the elevator, but then it became clear that her defeat was assured. Oriana appeared from the elevator as though following the commotion.

Surrounded, with her exit blocked, Lesser breathed a short sigh.

Then she threw open a nearby door and dove into the room on the other side—but there would be no exit there. Kamijou and Oriana exchanged nods and entered.

This seemed to be a multipurpose building; the room was an office space. It was a little surreal to see the typical steel desks and copy machines sitting in an attractive brick building.

Lesser was near the window.

But she didn’t have it in her to jump down. She knew that if she did, she wouldn’t be walking away.

“We know what you’re after,” said Kamijou. “It looks like you were targeting the princess who left Buckingham Palace, but it also looks like you failed. We caught the others already.”

“Heh,” Lesser tossed over her shoulder. She responded in Japanese for him: “But you don’t know where Lancis is, do you?”

“…”

“The answer is simple. Lancis isn’t even in London right now.”

Kamijou’s spine froze.

For a moment, he imagined the last New Light member already having gotten through London, heading for Folkestone, where the princesses were.

But the answer was different.

“Lancis is awaiting instructions about thirty kilometers north of London. The three of us are her ‘relays.’ All we needed to do was to each get the right distance away, knowing the royal family carriage’s location. It didn’t matter which one of us she went through—our plan would still succeed.”

“What…are you saying…?” Kamijou frowned.

But then Oriana suddenly looked up. The courier must have realized something. “Relays…Wait!!”

As Oriana hastily tried to get a flashcard ready, Lesser hummed a haughty laugh at them.

And smiling, she said:

“If you knew we produced a lot of them, why didn’t you think of the possibility that there’d be a fifth Skithblathnir?!”

Lesser held her rectangular bag aloft.

Then some sort of blue laser came through the wall and pierced the bag. The ray of light changed direction there, as if refracting, then shot off toward a different location.

From what Agnes had told him, the Skithblathnir’s effective range was one hundred kilometers. It would reach Folkestone from here.

But…

…This Lancis person must have just sent this bag the contents.

“Who did you send the contents to? Who the hell has the fifth bag?!”

Kamijou tried to grab the bag in spite of himself, but Lesser tossed it aside, its purpose served, and spread her arms out wide. As he glared at her, she spoke.

“…I achieved my goal, but I also lost the game. There’s not much point in my annoying the forward player of your little alliance simply because I don’t like the result.”

This time, her smile was the resigned sort.

“I’ll accept my loss. If you’re going to silence me, now’s your best chance.”

Kamijou saw a speck of light in the nightscape flare outside the window.

He immediately stepped forward and tried to shove Lesser out of the way, but as he grabbed her arm, something happened.

The glass window behind Lesser shattered, and bright red blood splattered.

“A sniper?!” shouted Oriana.

Without Kamijou needing to pull her down, the impact sent Lesser spinning and crashing into the ground. Possibly because he’d grabbed her arm, the aim had been off, if only slightly. Still, whatever it was that struck her in the shoulder had nearly torn her arm off. An unbelievable amount of blood flowed from the wound—had it sliced an artery?

“Get down, stupid!!”

Despite the warning, Kamijou couldn’t move.

They want to silence her.

If that was true, whoever did this certainly wasn’t trying to support Kamijou.

The attack was clearly malevolent.

“Shit!!”

Finally able to move, Kamijou looked around and spotted a sheaf of printer paper. He grabbed some, rolled it up into a ball, and pressed it against the wound. Because of the sudden blood loss, Lesser began to have convulsions. She was going into shock.

Things would really be bad at this rate.

“Oriana, call an ambulance!! Wait, don’t you have any healing spells in your repertoire?!”

“Unfortunately…,” said Oriana regretfully.

Then she suddenly froze.

The “thing” that had shot through the window and pierced Lesser’s shoulder had gotten stuck in a steel desk in the office. It was a rod, about thirty centimeters long, one half of it an aerodynamic arrowhead shape—a unique projectile.

Its destructive force wasn’t what surprised Oriana.

She was surprised because she’d seen it before.

“…Robin Hood…”

“What?!”

“It’s a Soul Arm the Knight Faction uses for long-distance sniping. But the Puritans are supposed to have jurisdiction over magical incidents in Britain. Nobody told me the Knights were working with them.”

Oriana plucked the projectile out of the desk. As she ran her finger over its surface, she muttered, “Robin Hood was developed by a team directly under the second princess, Carissa, famous for her military acumen…If that team is involved in silencing New Light, that means…But that can’t be…?!”

Next to Oriana, Kamijou’s body tensed.

The reason was Lesser.

With him holding all that paper to her wound, maybe in a bragging mood because she’d beaten him or out of some emotion caused by his first aid, she moved her trembling lips and whispered:

“…What we were transporting was the Curtana Original…”

And then she grinned.

Grinned as her face was spattered all over with blood.

“…The sword of mercy, the ceremonial sword for coronations lost to history, which only the royal house can use…And of course…they made a successor, which the current queen has…but this is far stronger than the Curtana Second…It’s the strongest Soul Arm in the United Kingdom…and a perfectly fitting sword to change Britain…”

17

Folkestone.

A port town about one hundred kilometers from London. This was the location of the British-side terminal to the seafloor railroad tunnel that crossed the Dover Strait—the Eurotunnel.

Countless horse-drawn carriages were parked near the terminal, veiled in the dark of night. One was the royal family’s, and the others were its escorts. Several other military horses were resting as well, with dozens of knights clad in silvery armor waiting nearby.

There was no light at the entrance.

The terminal’s power wasn’t currently operating because of the explosion midway along the seafloor tunnel and because Index was headed there. The third princess, Vilian, standing a few steps away, took a thermos of black tea from a young servant.

That was when the Knight Leader’s eyebrow twitched.

He glanced at the rectangular bag in his hand.

After testing the bag’s weight, he quietly went over to the second princess. Still holding the bag, he whispered into Carissa’s ear:

“(It has been delivered.)”

“I see.” The second princess smiled thinly.

The Knight Leader continued, his voice low enough that only she could hear. “From communications intercepted both electronically and magically…The Puritans seem to have misunderstood…and believe that New Light’s assassination of a princess will automatically trigger a large-scale, anti-Europe attack spell cast on the entire British territory.”

“Hmph. What a shady-sounding legend. It’s obviously not real.”

“Yes. If we could prepare such high-powered sorcery, negotiations would have proceeded more easily. After all, it’s a plan to ensure our people don’t die so easily.”

After hearing her right-hand man’s words, Carissa’s smile deepened. And as it did, she said:

“Inform all knights hidden around Britain.”

That was the signal.

The single instruction, given to burn a certain nation to a crisp from within.

“Begin the invasion. The kingmaking blade Curtana Original is in our hands. I, Carissa, will now assume the position of the United Kingdom’s head of state. Anyone who does not want to let Britain rot away with the former Pacifist Queen should rise up of their own will. In order to start Britain anew, level as much as necessary—and destroy as much as necessary.”