CHAPTER 6

Knight and Queen: Defensive Line Breakthrough
Safety_in_Subway.

1

The second princess, Carissa, stood in the dark forest of Folkestone.

Or rather, the former forest.

Her earlier attack had broken dozens, even hundreds of the trees that had been around her, mowing them down and driving them far afield. Now, in every direction were churned-up black soil and jagged half stumps that had barely been left with their roots.

“Hmph. Did I go too far? …Well, this does mean I have a guarantee that my revolution will succeed as long as I have this sword, so.”

The second princess rested the Curtana Original on her shoulder and lightly exhaled.

The omnidirectional dome-shaped explosion wasn’t the Curtana’s original usage. As though that was affecting it, the resting sword shook and vibrated slightly. It would subside momentarily, but it was eerie—if she did the same thing again, the shaking might break the sword.

As always, you need to read the instruction manual for tools in order to use them properly, so. Temporary measures at the front aren’t enough. I’ll need to visit Buckingham Palace and do some real adjustments.

The carriage the mercenary William Orwell had ambushed was also gone without a trace. It was supposed to be transporting the Index of Prohibited Books and all 103,000 of its grimoires, but now she couldn’t know for sure if it was alive or dead.

…Well, it doesn’t matter. Its only value was as a rational pretext. It is I who holds the reins of this nation now, so. Nobody can complain if I start a war based on an irrational pretext.

With the blade-less, tip-less sword on her shoulder, Carissa used her other hand to take out her cell phone, using her thumb to manipulate it. She chose one abbreviated number from its memory and put the phone to her ear.

On the other end was one of her subordinates in the Knights, who was standing by at Buckingham Palace in London.

“How did it go in London?”

“We’ve successfully brought almost all the United Kingdom’s major cities, including the capital, under our control. London has been restored to order, and there are no signs of any thoughtless uprisings on the civilians’ part.”

“Oh. Well, it looks like the Knight Leader has lost.”

“…!! B-but that’s…”

“I know you’ve already realized it.” Carissa laughed sardonically. “Were you hoping I’d deny it?”

Because of how she was using the Curtana Original to send vast quantities of telesma to the knights and the Knight Leader, their leader being defeated would have brought about a fluctuation in the total amount of power.

Still, it looks like they can’t help being rattled, so, reflected Carissa, continuing without paying it much attention. “I’m coming back there now. Can you get a Eurostar train moving?”

“I—I received a report earlier that a freight train has arrived on-site to reinforce our troops, but…” Her subordinate’s voice sounded somehow shaken. “Directly after that, it would appear somebody detached the rail lines in several spots along the London-Folkestone line…Repairs are proceeding apace at three of those locations, but considering the possibility they tampered with other lines, we may need to recheck every line going one hundred kilometers out…”

“I see.” The Asian earlier must have snuck onto that freight train. After they were sure, they no longer had a use for the trains coming after, so they messed with the rail line and started sabotaging our infrastructure.

A smile escaped Carissa’s lips at the guerrilla-like resistance.

She looked up at the starry sky overhead and said, “In that case, call in the Air Force helicopter currently on patrol near Folkestone.”

“Ma’am…Would that be wise? You’ll run the risk of being a target for an anti-air spell.”

“Considering the total quantity of telesma in the Curtana Original, it would take more than a little midair explosion to kill me. It’s vital that I head for Buckingham Palace as soon as possible, so.”

“Understood, ma’am,” came the knight’s response. He continued, “In other news, while you’ve been away…we’ve received a telegram from France.”

“If it’s just some assemblyman, ignore it.”

“Well, ma’am, the president technically counts as a member of Parliament…What shall we do?”

“Hmm, it would be pretty funny to ignore him, too, but put him through to me now. You may listen in. I’ll show you your new head of state’s diplomatic skills.”

This time, the “understood, ma’am” response smelled of a slight smile.

A few seconds passed, and the type of noise coming over the transmission changed. She’d been connected to a different person.

“I-I’m willing to cooperate!”

The very first thing out of the person’s mouth was that.

It was the president of France, who frequently appeared in the news.

“The Eurotunnel explosion terror incident calls for cooperation.”

“Hold up, I’m getting some awful noise in the background.” Carissa made an easily understood face of displeasure, even though it wouldn’t get to him. “Are you calling me from a strip club? There’re so many lewd noises that I can’t hear what you’re saying. Stop sticking bills in the dancers’ stockings and be a little more serious about this, if you please.”

“Y-you’re the one who needs to take this seriously!! I’m telling you I’m willing to negotiate so that we can make the smartest decision for both of us!!”

“Wait a minute. Negotiate? We’re supposed to be killing each other. What, do you want me to lick your ass for you? Well, I’m not about to shame someone for their particular interests, but you should make sure nobody powerful catches on to it. Otherwise you’ll have a rough election coming up, won’t you?”

“E-enough dicking around!! I’m well aware of that!!”

As though he’d breathed heavily into the receiver, actual noise made it to Carissa’s ears this time.

As the second princess stuck out her tongue a bit in jest, the desperate French president continued, “You dispatched destroyers to the Strait of Dover, didn’t you?! Loaded with very large missiles, too! I don’t know if you’re trying to threaten us, but why the hell can’t you understand this will deal major damage to our relationship?!”

“Oh, really?” said Carissa, as though the thought was absurd. “And here I didn’t think the one who had a nuclear submarine under the Strait of Dover ready and waiting would have the right to tell me off. As far as we can make out from its frequent coded calls, it seems to have extremely France-like characteristics, and I have a feeling its nuclear payload is aimed right at London.”

“…?!”

She could almost hear the man opening and closing his mouth repeatedly.

Ignoring him, she went on. “France is a nuclear power just like the U.S. and Russia, so. I’m aware you have the option, but…Come on, now. Could you be any more obvious about it? Weren’t you the ones who got help from the Roman Orthodox Church to use the ban as a shield to convince the EU to take away our nuclear weapons and ability to develop them? In any case, I hope you don’t think a single preemptive surprise attack will be enough to finish us.”

Boom!!

The source was a distant explosion. It was far enough away that, like distant lightning, the light and sound arrived at different times. Carissa turned her eyes toward the sea, a long ways away.

“Hmm. Don’t worry about that one. According to my destroyer’s report, it was apparently just a seagull.”

As she spoke, Carissa used her opposite hand from the one holding her phone to shake the Curtana Original. Bam!! The sword sliced through a hundred meters’ worth of dimension and created a fan-shaped white debris object along its path.

Using a foot filled with a part of Michael’s LIKENESS OF GOD power, Carissa kicked the giant fan, flinging it into the night sky. The fan swung fast like a helicopter, then disappeared over the horizon.

“…Our nation’s radar and anti-air defense weapons can locate and intercept foreign midair objects with that much precision. A big old missile would just be a target, so. They’re basically lumps of metal without any concealment magic equipped. You could fire a hundred of them and we could shoot down every last one.”

Carissa then created a second giant fan, then a third, and kicked them off into the distance as well.

“N-no. No!! That submarine doesn’t belong to us. Coded calls? They must be faking them to make them seem like France is involved!!”

“Well, I don’t have any proof, so,” admitted Carissa easily. After admitting it, though, she counterattacked: “In that case, you would have no issue with us claiming self-defense and sinking this brazen sub of unknown affiliation targeting my nation’s capital, would you? France isn’t involved in any way, after all, so you’d never try to rescue the crew members, right? …But if you interfere the slightest bit in this operation, you’re accepting that we’ll label France as cooperating with this ‘unknown sub.’”

Booooom!! came another earth-shattering rumble.

This time, it wasn’t a destroyer gun. It was the sound of the giant fan Carissa had launched striking the water’s surface, then using its massive weight to sink the “unknown” submarine hidden underwater.

“Was that a hole in one? Shouldn’t have had it waiting in shallow waters to fire the missile. You won’t make it if you try to dive now. That ‘unknown sub’ fleet won’t last another minute.”

“You…You bitch…!!”

“Let’s see. For every time the unknown sub requests help from the French navy, every time it tries to move even a millimeter toward French borders, my nation’s destroyers will fire a cruise missile loaded with a bunker cluster. The first target will be Versailles, the second Paris, and the third…Well, I’m sure it won’t come to that. If you haven’t learned at that point, I can decide then, so…A ruler is judged on how many of his people’s lives he can protect. Considering your reaction, you’ll get failing marks, won’t you?”

Now, all he could do was sit by and watch as the trump card he’d gone to the trouble of deploying sank. He had no other option but to bear it while listening to his countrymen scream.

The French president was struck dumb, and Carissa continued scornfully, “Why don’t you pass the baton to your leader-princess? Or is she still sulking in her cradle? You might be proud of having won control over Parliament, but get as many fools as you want together—they’ll never come up with a plan that can oppose us. Just go bow down to your precious Saint of Versailles like your life depends on it and ask for the detestable strategist to help…If you don’t, your name might go down stained as the most incompetent ruler in history—one who caused a war due to personal pride and led his own country to ruin.”

Carissa heard a wail that sounded like a child throwing a temper tantrum, but she ignored it and hung up.

Fwup, fwup, fwup, went the helicopter rotors overhead.

It was the Air Force unit that had been conducting patrol operations in Folkestone. Observational helicopters were essentially attack helicopters with their armaments removed, so this one was extremely small, not even a meter wide. It was originally a two-seater, but it had probably taken time to let one of the pilots disembark in order to allow Carissa on board. She wouldn’t have been able to tolerate their late arrival otherwise.

Noticing the princess’s presence, the helicopter’s pilot stopped abruptly at a height of twenty meters, then began to slowly descend.

But the second princess moved before he could.

Bam!! Carissa leaped straight up the twenty meters, grabbed the side of the helicopter with an arm, and dug her sharp heel armor into it. As the pilot gasped in surprise, Carissa opened the door in front of her and entered with the levity of someone climbing into the rear seat of a family car.

“…Helicopters are useful, but the problem is they mess up my hair, so.”

After jumping high in the sky using only leg power, Carissa put a hand to her head and made a displeased face.

Then, with her arms folded, she continued, her tone suggesting she was telling her personal driver where to go.

“Could I get you to bring me to Buckingham Palace? I need to go there to rearrange this thing’s specs.” Tapping the back of her hand on the Curtana Original’s side, Carissa went on offhandedly, “And don’t be a laggard. If you start to seem useless, I’ll drop this helicopter and run there myself just fine, so.”

2

“Oww…”

Touma Kamijou awoke to a dull pain in his backbone area.

He was inside a car abandoned in the mountains, up next to the ruined foundation of a building. The car seemed quite foreign—the big sort of gas-guzzling passenger vehicle—but was he even “inside” it? It didn’t have a roof. All the doors had been removed, too. It wasn’t so much an abandoned car as just a chassis, and Kamijou lay faceup in it.

Past the removed doors was a dark forest. It was still the middle of the night, but his eyes seemed to have gotten used to it by now. The dark wasn’t completely blacked out—it had its own values and shading, and he could make out the silhouettes of objects. Truly experiencing the concept of starlight was a relatively rare thing for someone raised in Tokyo.

What…happened…?

Kamijou rose abruptly from the indistinct sofa-like back seat still there, trying to set everything straight in his head.

…I couldn’t fully erase the second princess’s attack, then got blown away…Didn’t it launch me really high in the air…?

Common sense would suggest there was no way he could have fallen from hundreds of meters up and be fine. Having a cushion underneath him to maybe break his fall—it was beyond that level. But he still had all his limbs intact, and not only did none of his bones seem broken, but all he had were a few scrapes.

Then, as he was thinking about everything—

“Must be nice. Have you finally awoken?”

—he heard a low voice. And when he looked over:

“Ee?! Acqua?!!”

—Kamijou nearly assumed a defensive posture without thinking, but his feet got tangled up in the abandoned car, sending his raised hips sinking back down into the back seat with a plop.

Acqua of the Back didn’t try to enter the vehicle. With a stupidly large weapon in his hand again (though this one different from the time they fought in Academy City), he stood still outside the car.

Carefully observing Acqua, Kamijou asked slowly, “You’re…alive…?”

“Those are words that should only be said by those who have attacked someone with the intent to kill and were confident they had indeed killed.” Acqua sighed as though it were preposterous. “Still, of course, even I had not thought the power I had accumulated using the Adoration of Mary spell would be made to blow up from within. I immediately built a bypass and then expelled the power from my body, thereby ending things with no trouble. However, it caused my power to temporarily descend to that of an average saint in the end.”

Acqua, who relatively enjoyed keeping silent, was rattling on and on about things Kamijou didn’t understand. The grudge directed at him made Kamijou think, Wow, he could literally just come over here and crush me, and he started to tremble.

“Hey, wait, so what the heck happened to me after that explosion?”

“Hmph. Nothing worthy of note. I simply picked you up in midair and landed on the ground.”

He said it with such a straight face! thought Kamijou in shock. “Huh? Hey, wait a minute. What happened to Index?! Carissa’s attack was like an explosion that went in every direction! What happened to the carriage she was in?!”

“If you are going to ask questions, take a careful look around and think for yourself first.”

With an utterly disdainful look, Acqua pointed. Kamijou looked in that direction and saw that the sister in the white habit was sitting in the passenger seat of the abandoned car, passed out.

“…Wait. You picked her up, too?”

“Well, in that situation, two people were likely my limit.”

He spoke casually, but Carissa’s attack had been nothing less than an explosion. Was Acqua saying that in the span of an instant, he’d grabbed Index from the carriage, grabbed the air-launched Kamijou, and still kept minimal defenses up for himself, all at the same time?

…I keep feeling less and less like I can beat him. Actually, how did I even survive against such a monster when he was in Academy City…?

“Why…did you save me?”

“As you might think, it would have been easier to let you die,” Acqua agreed without hesitation. “Are you aware that you are the root cause of this disturbance?”

“…”

“Even so, the situation is different from when I spoke of it in Academy City. The problem is not merely that you have defeated someone of the Roman Orthodox Church. Genuinely, the boss’s target was your right hand.”

“What? Who’s this boss person…?”

“Currently, a man named Fiamma of the Right leads the Roman Orthodox–Russian Catholic federation. And Fiamma is after your right hand and the Index of Prohibited Books, which is required to bring out its true characteristics.” Acqua continued his monologue, ignoring Kamijou’s confusion. “In which case, one could assume the two ways to quash Fiamma’s ambitions are to break your right arm beyond repair or destroy the Index’s brain.”

“?!” Kamijou didn’t grasp the situation, but his body tensed at the crisis before his eyes.

But Acqua himself rejected those choices, apparently: “Obviously, had I intended to do that, I would have left you two, and you would have died.”

“…Then why didn’t you? What are you thinking?”

“To crush the source of this disturbance,” said Acqua smoothly. “However, I am aware that Imagine Breaker and the Index are no more than accessories to the true source. Fiamma would panic if he lost the centerpieces to his plan, but he could always change the plan and restart or even spread far more meaningless destruction in self-abandonment…Therefore, there is no choice but to destroy the source of the sources.”

Not expounding on that, Acqua turned his back to Kamijou.

The tall man with the giant sword said, “However, the necessity arose for me to first put a stop to this trivial quarrel, derived from the true source. If the British faction was to increase its power, the possibility would arise for a chance to stop the conversion of the map of the European faction to Roman Orthodoxy…Which, as a result, might also be a factor in reducing Fiamma’s aims.”

“You have a way to stop all this?”

“I have no need for parlor tricks. I believe you have some idea of how I do things by now.”

“But Carissa and the Knights have taken over the whole UK!”

“The obstacle’s size is no issue…Well, this new system of Carissa and the Knights based on the Curtana Original does hold its own unique frailties because of what it is, but…”

“Wha—?”

“…Taking advantage of that would not be my way. In the end, I must still face this obstacle squarely.”

After nearly spitting the last words, Acqua suddenly disappeared.

He must have left at a very high speed, because Kamijou’s eyes couldn’t detect it happening.

Acqua of the Back…, wondered Kamijou, putting a hand on Index’s shoulder as she sat unconscious in the passenger seat. Would this man, who as an enemy would be devastating, be the thing they needed to turn the tides?

3

Kamijou didn’t know what he should do to care for the unconscious Index, but after he waited for a little bit, the girl eventually opened her eyes.

“Mm-mmm…”

“Index! Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?!” cried Kamijou, his expression brightening.

Index shifted a little. “…Touma, did you save me from the Knights?”

“That would make sense, wouldn’t it?” Kamijou averted his eyes from the girl. “Unfortunately, it’s not that convenient.”

For a few moments, Index looked at him blankly. Then she cried out, “Wait?! You didn’t come all the way here with another woman I don’t know, did you?!”

“That would also make sense, wouldn’t it? But reality wasn’t that kind to me!!” shouted Kamijou. “But I’m glad you’re the same as usual.”

“Touma, I think I’m ready for dinner.”

“Okay, that’s too much the same.”

“Ah?”

With that, after the now-relaxed Kamijou and the blank-faced Index wandered a little in the dark forest, they were able to join up with members of Amakusa. It wasn’t a mere coincidence but rather the apparent result of detecting the large explosion the second princess had caused, and thus the others secretly moving into the region to search for the culprits and victims.

Their temporary base of operations was a large rescue plane that could take off from and land on the water. The rescue machine Kamijou and Index rode on used the slender river to shoot off into the night sky at a speed that would make any professional pilot white in the face.

The plane had seemed large from the outside, but with over fifty people on board, it obviously felt cramped. The one to come to him out of the crowd and talk was Saiji Tatemiya.

“It looks like the second princess used an Air Force helicopter to get into Buckingham Palace a step before us.”

He thought he could hear voices from the back of the plane saying things like, “Itsuwa, this is your chance; go for it!!” “I—I can’t; I still reek of alcohol!!” “You’re imagining it! How many hours ago was that anyway?!” but Tatemiya was standing right between him and them.

“If we want to put down this coup, we’re still gonna have to do something about her. Thankfully, unlike the Priestess, the body Carissa was born with isn’t special like a saint’s. This coup’s core is the Curtana Original. If we can just destroy that, we’ll be able to take away all the power she has, but…”

Without thinking about it, Kamijou looked over at Kaori Kanzaki when he said the word Priestess.

She was sitting on the floor, her back to the plane wall. She had bandages wrapped around a few parts of her, and her exposed skin showed bruises in a couple of spots. When she realized he was looking at her, she bowed her ponytailed head slightly in apology.

“…I am sorry. The former Agnes unit and Sherry Cromwell are fighting the Knights with their lives on the line, and I should have been leading them in the battle…but as you can see, I’ve suffered a defeat. I’m trying to recover my stamina, but it might be some time before I can move again.”

“I mean, I don’t care about that, but…Are you even okay?”

“I would love to brag that I’m perfectly fine.” Kanzaki’s slightly cut lips loosened a little, seeming to construct a smile. She glanced over at Tatemiya, who nodded a bit and carried on for her.

What he said was about what Kamijou had heard from Acqua. “But if your info that Acqua defeated the one big obstacle—the Knight Leader—is true, then it looks like whatever happened, things have taken a turn for the better.”

“…Just so we’re sure, he’s a member of God’s Right Seat, remember? And all I did was listen to what he said. I didn’t actually see the Knight Leader defeated or anything. Shouldn’t we consider the possibility that it’s all part of some plan?”

“Actually, scouts have confirmed a piece of it. We know they were fighting near Folkestone. Considering how Acqua was acting freely after that, we can assume the head of the Knights has been defeated.

“Of course,” he added, not really believing it himself, “we can’t discard the possibility that even that’s part of the trap.”

Kamijou thought for a moment. “…If what Acqua said is true, then…”

“All that’s left is the second princess, Carissa, with the Curtana Original…Of course, there’s also the fact that she’s gonna be the biggest pain in the ass.”

Still, they had to do something about her to solve this problem.

Then, Kanzaki cut in from the side. “What of Queen Elizard and the Puritans’ leader, Laura Stuart?”

“No reports,” replied Tatemiya bitterly. “According to the Knights’ communication network, they were trying to flee from Windsor Castle into London, but they don’t know what became of them.”

Kamijou looked between them. “The queen seems like a battle-hardened veteran. Could she think up a winning plan to turn things around even when it’s this bad?”

“With her abilities, we can expect that kind of up-front combat power from her. But even if we couldn’t, her presence alone creates great value for both internal and foreign affairs…On the other hand, that could give Carissa’s plan for a new order a way in…”

Kamijou tilted his head.

Tatemiya summed it up: “Anyway, in order to end this coup as soon as possible, we’re going to take down the nuclear core, Carissa. And to do that, first we have to stop the Curtana Original she has from functioning.”

As for how to destroy the Soul Arm called the Curtana Original, they could maybe manage with Kamijou’s right hand. “But the princess is in Buckingham Palace, isn’t she? The Knights have control of the whole country, including London. Are we gonna be able to get inside the palace when it’s so tightly guarded?”

“Right now, a frontal assault on Buckingham Palace would be the same as clashing with an entire national military…But the city of London is one place we may be able to sneak into.”

“?”

“London has a lot of subway lines underground. One of them is called the Victoria line, and it runs almost directly underneath Buckingham Palace. We don’t have to enter the palace grounds—we can mess with them from the subway station nearby.”

Tatemiya stopped for a moment, then changed the subject a little. “Besides, why do you think the second princess went back to the Palace?”

“Huh? I mean, she’s the leader of this coup, so they can’t make it easy to take her down. So she went to a fortress with a ton of security—”

“The Curtana Original’s power is immense, and besides, Buckingham Palace doesn’t currently have any magical defensive spells supplementing it. She could walk around in person and she still wouldn’t be easy to take down. And if she wanted to hide out, she’d have gone somewhere with tighter magical defenses…Somewhere like Windsor Palace—the royal family’s other home—or really any number of more appropriate buildings.”

“Then why? She didn’t go in there for no reason, right? Does making orders from the capital give them added value as a legitimate government or something?”

“Well, sure, it sends a good message. But there’s a more direct reason. And it has to do with the Curtana Original, which I mentioned before.”

“What’s the sword got to do with it?”

“The Curtana Original is too strong. It only works in the UK, but it lets you wield a power rivaling the leader of angels…In which case there’s something to be concerned about. The Curtana Original has the power to annihilate foreign enemies, but if the user makes a mistake controlling it and it runs amok, the user is basically the first one who will get caught up in the destruction.”

“Really?” muttered Kamijou without thinking.

Tatemiya looked at his expression and nodded once. “Whether it’s the Original or the Second, of course, it’s held by the highest power in the United Kingdom—the king or queen…But if worse comes to worst and they die, there would be an issue with the sword. That absolutely necessitates a large facility meant for preventing it from going out of control. If a group of facilities, for example, that could accurately escape the power of a berserk Curtana and withstand a huge explosion, happened to be built into Buckingham Palace, where the sword remains for the longest part of the year…

“You know, the Curtana Original disappeared once from history, so they started using the Curtana Second instead. They say the Puritan Revolution was why, but…If the Curtana’s power had been complete, this sort of revolution wouldn’t have succeeded—the Curtana would have slaughtered the entire resistance faction. But it didn’t go so easily, which means…”

“The Curtana Original went out of control once in the past…?”

It was like they were stacking theory on top of theory, but according to Tatemiya, the third princess, Vilian, whom Amakusa had placed under their protection, also seemed to view these “theories” in an affirmative manner.

“Which means,” continued Tatemiya, “we can trust the idea that they have measures in place to prevent that from happening. After all, it going out of control in the past gave a revolution the opening it needed to succeed.”

Kanzaki picked up on Tatemiya’s words from her position sitting on the floor. “If there is a large facility conducting an energy exchange for the Curtana Original, we might be able to interfere with the sword by reversing the mana flow…or so goes the theory. Now that Carissa has entered Buckingham Palace to try to stabilize the Curtana Original, we have a chance to make it go out of control or disable it.”

If they could just make the Curtana Original unusable, the second princess’s power should fall to normal human levels. The knights wielding the massive UK-only strength would lose the boost effect as well.

Furthermore:

“Carissa and the Knights aren’t bound very tightly, either. In the first place, she’s not the one leading the Knights—that would be the Knight Leader.”

“What? But they were doing the coup d’état together, weren’t they?” Kamijou wondered.

“That’s only because the Knights decided Carissa’s new order would be the most beneficial for the nation. On the other hand, if they decide the UK would suffer for continuing to obey Carissa, the Knights would mercilessly abandon the second princess and withdraw. In other words…”

“Whether or not she can use the Curtana Original is directly linked to whether the coup d’état succeeds or fails…?” Kamijou’s face nearly brightened at the vision, but then he paused in thought. “Wait. I thought there wasn’t any magical stuff set up in Buckingham Palace. Something about it causing diplomatic issues, since it’s basically like throwing your guests into a big trap.”

“That’s what the subways are for,” countered Kanzaki immediately. “There aren’t any magical facilities in Buckingham Palace during regular hours, but there are subway lines running underneath it. There’s a place where the normal line splits, and a special car equipped with a magic circle waits there. If the Curtana Original goes out of control, it’ll move swiftly and carry it underneath Buckingham Palace.”

If they did that, then they could still technically say there were no magical facilities whatsoever on Buckingham Palace property. Born Again Amakusa’s idea was that a long time ago, they had it on a big horse that stayed put right outside the palace property, and when they opened the subways, they changed it over to that.

For hundreds of years, the Curtana Original had been missing, and the safety using the Buckingham Palace subway had been put together for the Curtana Second. But it was still a Curtana, a Soul Arm, so it wasn’t strange that the second princess would use the subway’s safety feature, too.

“We’re currently keeping in contact with the Coven Compass, an English Puritan aerial fortress,” Kanzaki explained. “Once we’re ready, we’ll have the Coven Compass use its large-scale flash spell, then use the massive quantities of mana from it to interfere with the Curtana Original in the subway and start trying to make it run out of control…That’s the idea anyway.”

Carefully choosing her words, the young woman continued, “There are five hundred kilometers from the Coven Compass to Buckingham Palace, but English Puritans hidden along the way should have set up Soul Arms to serve as relay points in about ten locations in order to guide the colossal amount of mana. If they succeed, it could possibly disable that bother of a sword or stimulate it to weaken.”

“So then, we’re going to London now to seal the Curtana Original and then break into Buckingham Palace?”

“That too, but…” Unusual for her, Kanzaki fumbled for words.

Tatemiya took over, his tone one of resignation. “Remember how that special Curtana-blocking car is waiting on a piece of track split from the main subway line?”

“Well, yeah. Why?”

“At the entrance to that branched line, there’s a magical barrier that normally looks just like a regular wall. We’ll need to break the barrier to secure the route.”

I get it, thought Kamijou, looking at his right hand. He understood essentially what he had to do now. “Basically, we’ll get to the subway station close to Buckingham Palace on our own, then I’ll use my right hand to bust the barrier in the tunnel nearby, right?”

“Yes, but there is one problem.”

“What is it?” Kamijou asked.

“Now that London has welcomed in the second princess, it already has a new security system in place. And it’ll react particularly strongly to anything related to sorcery. Broadly speaking, if someone with mana is hanging around, security will find them out in no time. Their location gets displayed on a map, and within minutes, fully armed knights will rush to the scene…That means any magicians who can refine mana on their own can’t go along on this mission.”

“Wait, that means…” Kamijou looked between Tatemiya and Kanzaki as though he’d misheard something; not only Tatemiya but even Kanzaki unthinkingly averted their eyes from him.

“…U-um, anyone who can’t completely refine mana or weaker people on a civilian level…That means the only people who can fight in this mission are you and Index,” said Kanzaki, shrewdly saying what needed to be said even with averted eyes. As she gazed at the profile of the third princess, Vilian, she continued, “Without Her Royal Highness Vilian of the royal family, you won’t be able to interfere with the magical barrier set up in the subway tunnel or the special car with the magic circle. There’s no other choice—we need the three of you to do the best you can.”

4

It was to be a breakthrough right up the middle of enemy territory.

Kamijou, Index, and Vilian proceeded eastward from near the high-class residential streets in Kensington in the west of London.

Not on foot, though.

London spanned dozens of kilometers from east to west, so it wouldn’t be a simple walk-and-you’ll-get-there matter. Right now, the third princess was driving them in a small car that rattled down the road. Kamijou felt an incredible strangeness at seeing a storybook princess gripping a steering wheel, but the twenty-four-year-old Vilian offered, “…Come now, I am not that sheltered…”

Kamijou felt incredibly bad for having a bona fide princess drive the car, but it wasn’t like he or Index could drive instead.

The destination they were heading for was the subway station near Buckingham Palace in central London. They didn’t need to get onto the palace property itself, but they had to get a hairbreadth away from it, making their situation relatively desperate.

They’d told him London had tens of thousands of surveillance cameras watching it. But according to Tatemiya and the others, who were now standing by in their rescue machine that had landed in the city, the cameras didn’t seem to be functioning at the moment.

“Normally, anyone doing magic-related operations weaves through the cameras’ blind spots or plants spells on them to prevent being recorded…but the second princess, Carissa, already has nearly all the state’s functions under her control, so she probably couldn’t be bothered with them. I bet she ordered the three main London security companies. All the surveillance cameras seem to be off.”

“The cameras are off…? Then how did you steal the security company’s videos? Is Amakusa really good with the science side’s security, too?”

“No, we were just observing from a long way away with a telescope. Surveillance cameras have autofocusing, too, but it doesn’t look like they’re working at all. The things aren’t functioning. Like when someone’s eyelids are open but they’re not awake.”

…They’d analyzed it with an awfully analogue technique, but what Tatemiya and the others were saying was probably true. A sorcerer’s society called New Light had snuck into London by taking advantage of the cameras’ blind spots. Kamijou, though, was an amateur and couldn’t do anything like that. Index didn’t know much about science, either. They were driving on back roads for the moment, but if the surveillance cameras’ security networks were functioning properly, they’d have been spotted right away.

Staring at the unmoving road cameras from the passenger seat, Kamijou said, “But if we drive down the street like this, with all the noise from the engine with nobody around, won’t the knights find us anyway?”

“We’ll be okay.” The answer came from Index, who was seated in the back. “The knights are using magic for their security right now. Instead of relying on their normal five senses, they’re using magically enhanced ones for their security net. There might be a lot of them, but they need to get people to cover dozens of kilometers of all of London…But if we use their magic against them, we can pass right under their noses without their noticing.”

“Really,” said Kamijou, impressed at what the library of 103,000 grimoires had to say, but then he changed his mind. “Wait a minute, Index. How do you know what magic the knights are using right now?”

“Huh? Well, they’re right over on the roof of that building.”

“What?!” cried Kamijou in a panic, turning around to where Index pointed. There was indeed a black figure on the building rooftop. But the silvery-armored silhouette didn’t notice them and instead hopped over to another building.

…I don’t think you’d need this many people to hear a car engine…Was this the cost of relying too much on magic?

Nevertheless, they’d probably get spotted in a heartbeat without Index’s (seemingly) random periodic instructions to Vilian like, “Turn here; go slow there.”

“But don’t the Royal Family and the Knights, like, use the military or the police or something?”

“Maybe they’re too busy dealing with the civilians? Amakusa told us they were putting everyone together in hotels and theaters and other big buildings, but if they want to get people who don’t know anything to do what they say, using strange magic wouldn’t be very direct.”

Now that she mentioned it, you could shove a weird wand or crystal ball in someone’s face, but pointing a gun at them would be quicker. It was a different story if you fired a warning shot with magic, of course, but wasting shots was probably always a bad thing.

Still, though…

As Kamijou gazed at the unoccupied London scenery from the passenger seat, he unconsciously looked at Vilian, who was at the wheel in the driver’s seat next to him.

She was a fair-skinned, blond-haired woman wearing a green dress—the kind of person you’d see in a picture book. She was like Index in that neither of them knew much of the ways of the world, but comparing them made their differences in mood pretty obvious. Index would crash headfirst into any science or foreign cultures on sight, but the impression he got from Vilian was of a quietly blooming alpine plant, like she’d vanish without a delicately arranged environment.

Vilian noticed his eyes on her. “Is something the matter?”

“N-no…” Kamijou quickly shook his head.

For some reason, before they’d set off on this mission, people from Born Again Amakusa like Kanzaki and Tatemiya had given him warnings along the lines of, “She might not be perfect, but she does have royal blood in her!” and “If you accidentally flip her skirt, you’ll be tried for lèse-majesté!!” But what had all that been about?

“So they were saying that it had to be people who can’t refine mana, or else Carissa or the knights would catch us, right?”

“Y-yes,” replied Vilian in an awkward tone, squirming in her green dress as though trying to escape Kamijou’s gaze. “I’m terribly sorry. I understand it’s an essential part of my education as a member of the royal family, but I just feel a sense of rejection toward acquiring knowledge or techniques that could be used for displays of force…Right now, all I can do is touch already active Soul Arms to control them. My sister Carissa seems to have wanted to execute me because she thought I might be able to use the Curtana Original, but even if someone gave me an item like that, I probably wouldn’t be able to put it to practical use…”

“Really? Wait, weren’t they saying something about needing to have someone with royal blood to get past the subway station barrier problem?”

“Yes…If only my mother or my sister Limeia were here, it would have been perfect…But someone as inexperienced as I, even with the Index of Prohibited Books advising her, might not be able to carry out her duty…”

“I—I really don’t think you need to get that down on yourself! Besides, I don’t even get why kings and stuff need to learn magic in the first place!!”

“…Is that so…? For this mission, there are apparently several regular servants, cooks, and gardeners heading from Buckingham Palace to the subway tunnel for my sake…If only I had a plan to better protect everyone; even without relying on simple brute force, I might not have needed to make the two of you go somewhere so dangerous.”

Vilian was in full-on down-in-the-dumps mode now. She seemed to feel guilty that she couldn’t contribute any combat strength during the coup.

Kamijou forced himself to examine the London streets, looking for a way to change the subject. “Anyway…You call these back roads, but even these are different from the ones in Academy City.”

“Touma, I don’t think a man can really brag about knowing the differences between alleys.”

“I wasn’t trying to brag,” he shot back. “Anyway, I get that we’ve gotta do something about Carissa the mastermind, and I get that we have to bust up the Curtana Original’s functions to do that…But is this huge coup d’état really going to end after beating the big boss, just like that? I’m worried this battle will get bogged down and keep on going.”

The city of London wasn’t the only place facing difficulties. England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland…Almost everywhere in the four areas of the United Kingdom was occupied by the knights, led by the second princess. With the problem already having progressed this far, Kamijou honestly wasn’t confident that losing one person’s support would end the whole thing then and there.

But the third princess, Vilian, said hesitantly, “I believe that if we can just stop my sister Carissa, the coup will end.”

“Is that so?” Kamijou tilted his head at her.

Vilian’s brow knotted as though she was troubled. “I think there are a lot of different kinds of coup d’états. But with the one currently happening in the United Kingdom, I believe the possibility is low that if they lose the mastermind, the fighting will continue to drag on.”

As Vilian spoke, Index nodded along with her. “Amakusa was intercepting the knights’ messages before, remember? They said a mercenary beat the Knight Leader, and now confusion is spreading through the other knights…The leader of the Knights and the second princess are the pillars emotionally holding up the people on the aggressor side. And now one of them is broken. So if the other support breaks, I think the Knights might collapse.”

“…If the person demanding that they join her plan is defeated right away, don’t you think all the people left would be at a loss?” Vilian explained.

That may be right, Kamijou thought.

“Also, the United Kingdom is split up into three factions—the Royal Family, the Knights, and the Puritans,” Index continued, “but that will be important for stopping the coup d’état, too.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because foreign relations with other countries are something the royal family has complete control over. Meaning, even though the knights are good at fighting directly, they don’t have any way to bargain with other countries. The only ones on the state level who could make sure we get equal deals would be Carissa or the Knight Leader, since he’s been the closest aide to the royal family this whole time.”

“But will they put down their weapons then? If the knights don’t know what’ll happen next, couldn’t they just go out of control?”

“I don’t have any proof, but I think it’ll be fine. The knights’ goal is to protect the United Kingdom, right? That’s why they agreed to a Carissa-led coup d’état—they thought it was the most effective way to do that…But if they lose Carissa and realize that continuing the coup would deal massive damage to the country…they’d probably put their swords away at that point. As long as they decide that doing so would keep damage to the United Kingdom to a minimum and be the best thing for the country.”

“…” Kamijou fell silent for a bit, then looked at Index in the rear seat. “Kanzaki and Itsuwa aside,” he articulated slowly, “when you say stuff like this, Index, I’m not sure how much I can trust the source.”

“…Touma, do you think I’m the kind of girl who’s totally stupid when it comes to anything besides magic?”

Kamijou nearly told her she was a girl who was totally into eating, sleeping, watching TV, and nothing else, but saying that would obviously earn him a chomp to the back of the head, so he made the wise choice and stayed quiet.

In the meantime, they’d gotten close to their destination, the subway station.

“Stop the car. At this point, I don’t think we should have the car noises going off. Buckingham Palace, their base, is close by.”

As urged by Index, Vilian parked the small car on the shoulder. After getting out, the three of them took another look around.

It was close to two in the morning, but considering it was the capital of the United Kingdom, there were extremely few people here. Nobody was on the street, and there weren’t any cars on the roads, either. Before they’d headed to Folkestone, police had been dispersing curiously onlooking residents, but there was no such commotion now.

The street battles between the Knights and the Puritans were over for the moment, too. Now that they’d gotten the residents under control, maybe they’d gone the route of positioning people all over London, then having them call for reinforcements if something happened.

Kamijou took a look around, but he didn’t see anyone like that anyway.

In fact, he couldn’t see a single soul near Buckingham Palace, visible past the subway station, either.

Suddenly, Kamijou’s right hand was covered in something soft. “Hm…?”

He looked at it again and saw that Vilian was covering the palm of his hand with both of her small gloved ones. They weren’t rough gloves for the cold but elegant ones, the kind royalty and nobility wore as accessories.

“…Please take care not to enter the property,” she said softly, looking up at his face. “I cannot say for sure, as I am not well versed in magic. However, I have heard my sister Carissa boast in the past that she could accurately detect everything down to the number of insects in the trees.”

“Uh-uhhh, yes, ma’am.”

He could feel her hands through the thin silk gloves—they were clearly different from a man’s rough hands, instead feeling like the soft surface of a marshmallow. Vilian, for her part, didn’t seem to take any notice of Kamijou’s reaction.

Index looked at them with chilled eyes but added to what Vilian had said: “There are probably knights with sniping spells doing layers of scans from windows and rooftops. Maybe a wide-area application of a spell used for assisting the Robin Hood.”

Kamijou heard her and stopped before stepping toward the subway station. “Wait, so then we shouldn’t just head to the station?”

“I’ll try getting around their search pattern. Follow me.”

Index jumped out from their cover. There was nothing there in particular, but she took unnatural detours through empty space on her way to the subway, as though avoiding invisible searchlights. Kamijou and Vilian followed. They had no idea what she was basing her maneuvers on, which made them incredibly uneasy.

Eventually, the three of them made it to the subway station.

After running down the stairs, Index finally let out a breath of relief. “We should be fine now.”

“…I have no idea what just happened, but this is where I’m supposed to thank you?”

“I’d like it if you did, but what do we do now?”

“Huh?” Kamijou looked at her dubiously.

Index politely pointed in front of them. “There’s this wall thingy with a blip-blop attached here.”

All right, everyone, let’s translate that from Indexian!

“An electrically locked shutter is lowered right in front of us, blocking our entry. What do we do?”

5

No afternoon classes, no holds barred!!

Which meant that Mikoto Misaka, the ace of Tokiwadai Middle School, an elite school for supernatural ability development, was in a family restaurant. The current time was eleven AM. There was still a little time left until lunch, so there were no more than a few customers. Mikoto planned to eat an early lunch here, then go back to Tokiwadai.

As for why she’d go back—it was because it was currently setup time for Academy City’s largest cultural festival, the Ichihanaran Festival. Because the event combined school tours with open campuses, it wasn’t freely accessible to the outside world the way their largest athletic festival, the Daihasei Festival, was but…On the other hand, the more sensitive a school was to the word advancement, the more passion it tended to have when trying to draw in lots of prospective students.

Tokiwadai Middle School hadn’t been open for the Daihasei, but parts of it would, of course, be open to the public during the Ichihanaran. Mikoto couldn’t be taking it easy now.

Still…, she thought, cutting the huge Hamburg steak on the hot plate into smaller, bite-size pieces. What is going on with this restaurant? This happens to be the first time I’ve been in here, but did I walk into the land of huge boobs…?

She was past the frustrated stage at this point. She looked around in simple astonishment.

Geographically speaking, the place seemed to be used by more high school kids than middle school ones. There was a girl with long black hair, a prominent forehead, a sailor outfit, and huge boobs (and another girl sitting across from her with decidedly smaller ones, whom a shrine maiden outfit might look good on). Plus, probably a teacher from their school, a gym teacher in a green track suit with boobs so massive it was really idiotic at that point. And, sitting in the seat by the window, a glasses-wearing, huge-chested…hologram? It might have been the newcomer Sakura, using an ability, but even still, there was no need to make her chest that large, was there?

Hm? Wait. If basically everyone in here has such an easily identifiable physical feature, then…Does the food here have nutrients that make your rack embiggen?! Wh-what the heck—? That’s, like, worthy of a Nobel prize! Well then, in that case!!

Then Mikoto, having come back around into a relatively positive mood, had just begun to chow down on the steak more swiftly than usual when it happened.

Her cell phone, which was on the edge of the table, buzzed.

Just before it vibrated itself off the table, Mikoto snatched it up. With timing like this, it had better not be Kuroko, she thought, unfolding the phone. When she looked at the number displayed on the small screen, she nearly tipped over.

It was that spiky-haired idiot.

“Mgh?! Cough-hack-wheeze-cough!!” Unprepared for the shock, Mikoto almost choked.

What—? Why?! What does he want?! He almost never calls me…Gah! If he’d just send a text message beforehand, I wouldn’t have to be this flustered—Wait, no, in that case, I’d be too nervous to even open the text…!!

Mikoto was all atremble of her own accord now, but she couldn’t just hang up on him, either. Calling him back using her phone’s call history was a high hurdle itself, too. She reached for the Answer button with a quivering thumb.

I—I guess no Academy City schools have afternoon classes today, so we should have a lot of free time! I can’t slack off on setting up for the Ichihanaran Festival, but if I tinker with my schedule, then I should be able to spare a little time…

Grabbing her phone with both hands for some reason, she put it to her ear in proper ladylike style, the kind she never used. The first words that came into Mikoto’s confused ears were these:

“Sorry, Misaka! I need to sneak into a subway station; you got any idea how to open up the electric locks on their shutters or anything?!”

“…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​…​”

Mikoto Misaka brought the cell phone away from her ear, heaved a big sigh, and then, in an extremely composed manner, moved her thumb and hung up.

She set the phone down on the table, then turned to face her giant steak again—

—only to hear the small buzzing of vibrate mode reach her ears.

To calm her mood, she took just one sip of her no-sugar latte, politely wiped her lips with a paper napkin, and finally reached for her cell phone again.

“Sorry, Misaka! I need to sneak into a subway station—”

“I heard you just fine the first time and hung up anyway!! Get a clue, idiot!!” she shouted, drawing energy from the pit of her stomach. Eventually, after regaining her usual composure, she gave the phone a scathingly annoyed look. “And why the heck do you need to sneak into a station? Are you trying to go through an employee entrance or something?”

“No, no. There’s some kind of shutter down over the entrance and I can’t get in. I mean, it’s an emergency so I can’t blame them, and we’re past the last train at this hour anyway, so normally you’d have the shutters down.”

“What? Last train?” Mikoto’s expression went past dubiousness and into suspicion.

She was sure it was about eleven AM right now. She’d never heard of train lines shutting down before noon.

Then, he seemed to realize Mikoto’s doubts. “Oh, I get it. The time difference. Sorry, Misaka. Did I call you in class or something?”

“No, that’s not the issue…Wait a second. Time difference? Where the heck are you right now?”

“London.”

Mikoto nearly hung up the phone again.

That couldn’t possibly be right. She glanced at the giant flat-screen monitor installed on the restaurant’s inside wall. The screen showed the same sort of news over and over from foreign journalist teams in the pitch-black middle-of-the-night hour. The people in central London had been herded into large facilities like hotels, theaters, cinemas, and churches, and apparently they weren’t even allowed to go home. It wasn’t a joke—the news was reporting that people had been told that if they left those buildings and facilities, the authorities wouldn’t hesitate to use firearms. The United Kingdom hadn’t made an official statement yet, but the theory that a coup d’état had taken place seemed to be a very strong possibility.

…But didn’t he go to France before…? Mikoto was overtaken for a moment by an ominous premonition but quickly shook her head and rejected it.

It couldn’t have happened again.

“Do you have any idea how annoying the paperwork to get out of Academy City is? Even for city-approved wide-area field trips, it’s a pain in the butt.”

“Yeah, but I really am in London…” He must have been troubled by this, too, since she could hear a light scratching noise over the phone. “And I really can’t do anything about this shutter here not opening…”

“I have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself caught up in, but this isn’t the thing to ask a girl for help with,” said Mikoto, appalled.

The cell phone groaned for a bit. “Hmmmmmmm.”

And then, Touma Kamijou said this one word, mostly offhandedly: “…I can’t?”

The words you can almost made it out of Mikoto’s mouth without thinking.

6

“Hmm, yes. That’s a type-225 passive from Marvelous Locks Inc. In that case, if you undo the two latches underneath the panel, there should be a maintenance jack there.”

After using his cell phone camera to take a picture of the electronic lock panel and sending it to Mikoto, he got an answer back in five seconds. When he heard her remark, he felt like she’d said one thing and he already couldn’t keep up with her. Kamijou grunted, choking on his words a bit. “Hey, there’s, like, a twenty- or thirty-year difference between tech outside Academy City and inside, isn’t there? Do you know a lot about outside tech, too?”

“Marvelous Locks is a company that cooperates with Academy City. So the tech they’re using there is a cheaper version with lower specs,” Mikoto replied smoothly. “Even I wouldn’t know anything about stuff made on the outside only, but I don’t think I wouldn’t be able to get them open. I mean, they’re twenty or thirty years behind the tech curve. Even military lab security on the outside isn’t as good as the log-in management for throwaway desktop computers sold in Academy City.”

“…Well, I can’t even open padlocks.”

“That’s because your tech level is stuck in the Edo-era,” came the stinging retort.

Kamijou got to work fiddling with the electronic lock panel the way she described. “Anyway, it’s weird for me to say, since I’m the one who asked, but…you really do know a lot about these things, huh?”

“D-don’t get the wrong idea. I only learned it so I could make sure my powers don’t mess with electronic locks if they malfunction. I’m not some kind of sneak thief or super hacker or anything.”

“Hey, couldn’t you have said that a little more simply?”

His fingertips moved here and there, using a handkerchief to at least make sure no fingerprints ended up on it, but he was honestly just doing as he was told. His understanding wasn’t keeping up one bit.

Eventually, he heard a ker-clunk.

The shutter towering in front of him gave a clatter and began to rise. The knights had already suppressed the main road, so there was nobody around, which made the noise ring much louder than they’d thought, putting Kamijou’s and Index’s hearts in a flurry, but the knights never caught wind of it.

“It’s open! Thanks a bunch, Misaka!”

“Sure thing. Just to be clear, you owe me one.”

“Yeah, got it. I’m in a hurry, so bye!”

“Hey, wait! You know how we’re setting up for the Ichihanaran Festival now, and there’s gonna be a lot of morning-class-only days? I mean, if I plan things out the right way, we could, I don’t know, hang out for a—?!”

She was trying to say something awfully quickly, but suddenly the phone call ended. With a “?” Kamijou looked at his cell phone screen and saw that he was getting zero service now.

…Well, if it was important, I can just call her back later, he thought, putting his phone in his pocket. For now, they needed to go inside the subway station structure and into the tunnel, then destroy the magical barrier with Vilian’s royal help.

The Vilian in question, though, had a hand to her cheek as she gazed in pure admiration at the opened shutter. “Academy City truly is the frontier of scientific technology…You can even do things like this just by getting help from a friend.”

“Uh, right…Well, she is number three, the Biri Biri, so I can depend on her at times like these…Hey, Index, what are you doing over there with the pouty face?”

“…Nothing at all,” Index remarked simply, eventually moving her feet and walking over next to Kamijou. But her small feet had the option of giving him a kick to the shin area.

??? Why is there an angry aura around her?

Kamijou had so many questions, but he got the sense from Index that if he carelessly asked any, she’d explode and start biting him. He decided not to mention it again.

He turned his gaze forward.

The shutter had been down to begin with, so there was no light inside the subway station proper. However, the lamps marking the emergency exits and evacuation routes meant that it wasn’t completely dark, either. Other lamps were embedded directly into the floor, so for the moment, the passage felt walkable without a flashlight.

After advancing a little, Kamijou looked behind him, thinking things like…

…Oh, right. Wonder if we should have closed the shutter at the entrance. But he didn’t know how to open or close it. He’d have to call Mikoto again to close it, and then he’d end up having to call her another time when they were getting out.

“Is something the matter?”

“No, it’s nothing…Right, ’cause if we run into trouble in this tunnel and need to make a quick escape, there wouldn’t be time to get Misaka’s help.”

Vilian tilted her head in confusion, but Kamijou stopped talking and made a conclusion himself.

All the way from the subway station to the stairs down to the platform, there were no human figures to speak of, nor were there any signs of a presence. Kamijou wasn’t exactly a professional at scouting or searching, but it was kind of like…The place was so silent he figured he’d be able to hear it if anyone was hiding here just from their breathing.

With the lamps indicating the emergency exits and evacuation route as a guide, Kamijou, Index, and Vilian moved in the opposite direction from them and proceeded ever deeper into the subway station.

After descending the stairs and getting to the platform, they could finally see the fluorescent lights.

Still, they weren’t the ones that were often installed in ceilings. As though this tunnel was on a separate electrical system from the station, only the lights attached to the tunnel wall opposite the platform were shining.

This, of course, was not enough light to illuminate the entire platform.

It was like a hospital after lights out.

Kamijou leaned over the edge of the platform, glancing down the tunnel lined with evenly spaced fluorescent lights. “…It might be past last train, but I don’t know about jumping down there…”

Still, they wouldn’t get anywhere unless they moved on.

Kamijou and Index got off the platform and onto the tracks. Vilian didn’t seem able to do it in one go, though; her long skirt, spread out like a princess’s, was getting in the way. He offered Vilian his hands but then withered under the unexpected full weight of her body. With a yelp, they fell onto the tracks.

“E-excuse me. I don’t know what sort of manners apply in this situation…”

“Y-y-y-you’re absolutely fine! And I don’t think they’d teach you how to get someone to let you down from a station platform in a Q and A or an etiquette class!! But if you could please maybe remove yourself from me, that would be wonderful, Princess Vilian!!”

“Touma, that is lèse-majesté.”

Index’s cold words shot Kamijou through the heart. Meanwhile, Vilian was saying something like, “Y-yes, I’m truly sorry,” and hurriedly moving off him.

After standing up on the tracks, Kamijou cast his eyes down the tunnel.

The point Amakusa had designated in advance was apparently only a few dozen meters away. However, it was in the opposite direction of Buckingham Palace.

“That way?”

“Yes. I, too, have only heard of it. This is my first time actually seeing it,” said Vilian, her face looking a little nervous.

And then it happened.

They heard the clapping of a metallic footstep from right behind them.

“?!” Kamijou whipped around. Is it the knights…?

For a moment, he remembered the sorcerer Lesser from New Light, whose shoulder had almost been severed by a long-range sniping attack. If they aimed for him from the darkness with the same Soul Arm, could he block it with only his right hand?

Kamijou was thinking about things like that, but his prediction was off the mark. Vilian, who along with Index was in a position of being covered, spoke up from behind him.

“P-please wait a moment! They don’t seem to be enemies. They’re the servants who planned to join us from Buckingham Palace.”

“…Does that voice belong to Princess Vilian…?”

The words that came to them sounded like a verification process.

Perhaps because Vilian had just spoken to Kamijou in Japanese a moment ago, the voice from the darkness adapted to them and spoke Japanese as well.

After that, several figures shuffled toward them. What emerged from the tunnel to approach the station platform was a total of nearly twenty men and women. The group burst with variety, containing everything from an elderly man in a faded work uniform to a girl wearing a maid outfit ordered from who knew where.

Vilian passed by Kamijou. While standing in front, she looked around at their faces. “Is this everyone?” she asked.

The maid, about twenty years old, nodded. “Only so many are working on night duty, Your Highness. And today, well…We had to split up to accompany you to Folkestone. Out of everyone who was waiting in Buckingham Palace, this is everyone who comes from a commoner background.”

“I…see…” At the word Folkestone, Vilian’s face clouded subtly.

At the sight of her choking on her words, Kamijou opened his mouth. “I’m gonna assume…that once this mission is over, you’re going to escape from London with us?”

“Yes, sir. Originally, we would have come to the subway tunnel and done the work ourselves instead of bothering Her Highness with it, but…Being of common birth, we alone will not likely understand the inner workings of these strange phenomena you call sorcery. Nor are we deeply familiar with royal family secret information. We are here to request your assistance in full knowledge of the dangers.”

“Okay.” Kamijou nodded. In that case, we’ll have to get this stupid job over with quickly and bring them somewhere safe, he thought, beginning to walk to their destination—down the tunnel in the opposite direction of Buckingham Palace. The end point was apparently only a few dozen meters down.

They headed for it, more than twenty of them, each with quiet breath.

As always, both sides were concrete walls, with fluorescent lights shining at regular intervals. There were two tracks on the left and right, with pillars in the middle to support the tunnel, also spaced evenly.

“According to Tatemiya and Kanzaki and the rest, there should be a branching track for the special car to get onto the main one…” Kamijou looked around. As far as he could see, there was no such entrance.

Looking anxious, Vilian glanced at their surroundings, too. “I am quite sure it is around here, though.”

“You can tell?”

“Yes, well…It should be, anyway, but…” Vilian’s tone was getting weaker and weaker, and then Index interrupted:

“There are markings around here that used mana ahead of time. I think they’re so the sorcerers who maintain the Soul Arm don’t lose track of where they are.”

“Ah, yes. That’s right. Now that you mention it, there should be marks to guide the way. Um, drawings, where are the drawings…?”

After Vilian spoke, the maid next to her offered her some annoying-looking stationery: a set of high-quality letter paper and a feather pen. The maid herself held on to the ink bottle.

The third princess frowned. Hesitantly, she moved the pen.

“Yes, I think it was…like this. The guide marks should look something like this. I know little of magic, so I’m not aware of what these mean, though,” she prefaced, offering the letter paper. On it was written some sort of symbol, which, as she said, meant nothing at first glance. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d see going about your daily business, but it also didn’t have the foreignness of a strange magic circle that made it easy to understand. If someone had told Kamijou it was an uncommon map symbol, he’d probably have believed it.

Only Index, however, that personification of magical knowledge, frowned slightly at the paper Vilian displayed.

“What’s the matter, Index?”

“Nothing…It’s just kind of weird. They’re using the ‘heart’ as a symbol of an alarm? What for?” she muttered to herself, but it didn’t reach Kamijou’s ears clearly.

Kamijou and the others came to the conclusion that they just had to look around for the marking Vilian drew. They split up, deciding to check the tunnel walls and floors in different places. The servants, almost twenty strong, aided them as well, thinking that they’d be able to find some hidden markings just fine.

These evenly spaced lights give us enough light to walk but not enough to make it easy to look for a tiny little mark. We knew we’d be coming through a tunnel, so we should have brought a flashlight or something…, Kamijou thought, walking slowly along the wall, his eyes peering through the semidarkness.

Whatever the case was, once they found the mark, it would be up to Kamijou after that. However secure the spell protecting it was, the Imagine Breaker would be the quickest way to destroy it.

Then, the fingers on Kamijou’s right hand ran across something rough.

“Ah?” He took his fingers away from the wall, then looked closely into the dark again. It looked like some kind of poster. It was about two meters tall and one meter wide.

He couldn’t tell what was depicted on it, since it was dark and the light was unreliable…but its upper-right corner was flapped over, as though the tape had peeled. It kind of looked like it was bowing in his direction.

Huh…?

Then Kamijou frowned.

He brought his face closer to the peeling poster to see what was on it.

Was this thing here before?

And then he saw it.

It wasn’t a poster.

It was a wall.

Something with the exact same color and texture as the wall had been loosely taped to the wall. A big wallpaper, like the kind ninjas used to hide themselves in low-budget period films.

“This is—” began Kamijou in spite of himself when something moved.

Bshhh!! From the center of the peeling wallpaper, there appeared a faint ray of light that crisscrossed over the whole tunnel wall. The rectangular lattice, the exact same size as the poster, widened in the blink of an eye.

“What the—?!”

“Touma!!” shouted Index, who noticed something had happened, but then she was cut off.

It was a sound like paper scraping.

The tunnel wall appeared to ripple like a wave. Kamijou went on his guard, and a moment later, the rectangular wall divisions peeled away like posters, came off, and assembled into a giant piece of paper.

Several sheets fell to the ground like dead leaves. Those were probably the ones Kamijou’s right hand had touched, then caused a chain effect that brought down others.

But all the others danced madly through the air.

A magical…barrier…, thought Kamijou, immediately wanting to grin.

Gsh-gsh-gsh!! roared a sound like a giant’s hand crumpling up the paper.

“I mean, I know magic doesn’t work on any principles of common sense, but…”

A tempest of papers swirled like a scene out of an office, eventually focusing down onto one point.

And when they did, there was a certain regularity to their shape.

“A wall turning into a person and attacking you? Who the hell even thinks of that?!”

7

With the magical paper sheets having been removed, a new semicircular tunnel appeared. It even came with a special set of rails that could retract and extend like a fire-truck ladder, possibly to force it to link to the main line.

However.

Standing in their way now was, instead, a paper Goliath.

It stood about three meters tall and gave the impression of weightlessness, like paper, but…

“?!”

When the giant swung its fist around horizontally, it smashed through the tunnel pillar on its course and continued hurtling for Kamijou’s cheek without losing any momentum at all. The fist was now covered in big hunks of concrete, each one larger than a student bag. Kamijou gave up on using his right hand to intercept it. He managed to barely escape the strike by nearly falling over backward.

There was a short and shrill cry. Did it belong to the commoner maid, or was it the third princess, Vilian? Kamijou didn’t even have the mental leeway to devote to that. The giant was trying to obliterate him at this very moment.

He glanced at the monster. It had destroyed concrete in one hit.

Crumple, crumple.

Its internal paper bundles moving, the giant’s surface rippled like firm muscles.

Ah, shit! It’s just paper, but I guess when you have so much of it, it starts to get real heavy!!

In a sense, it was like swinging around a bookshelf loaded with dictionaries. The giant’s arms could quite literally pulverize a person or two.

“Touma, get away!” shouted Index from a short distance afield. “That’s a Soul Arm based on how Mokkurkalvi was created!”

Before Kamijou could ask what the heck that was, she laid the giant’s identity bare. “It’s a model giant from Norse mythology! They designed it to fight the thunder god, Thor, known for being the strongest of all the gods, but the story goes that they used the wrong thing for its heart and they got poor results from it. Whoever made that reimagined the whole thing based on British-style theories. It’s a custom model perfectly suited for this place! I think the symbol Vilian drew before was the symbol for its newly designed heart!!”

Another piece of work with a long history, then! Kamijou thought, clicking his tongue. As he did, the paper giant wound up for a swing.

Kamijou unconsciously put distance between them, but the giant kicked the wreckage of the pillar it had destroyed. Pieces the size of soccer balls stabbed up from underneath, their trajectories like uppercuts, striking Kamijou’s jaw with force.

“Guh…!!”

Kamijou reeled. The taste of blood spread through his mouth.

But the paper giant’s movements didn’t end there.

Using its giant foot, it took one step and closed a considerable distance. With Kamijou defenseless, his body weight all tipping backward, the giant once again swung its paper-made fist that had more weight than a stack of textbooks.

Confronted by this desperate situation—

…This is my chance.

—Kamijou immediately filled his right fist with power.

The moment the giant approached was the greatest opportunity Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker had to attack. If he missed, he’d be instant mincemeat. But if he could stop the incoming fist, it would leave the giant open for a fatal counterattack.

Don’t fear—just go!!

Roar!! The two fists flew.

The giant fist could possibly reduce a car to scrap with one hit, but Kamijou’s knuckles crashed into the middle of it. Instantly, the giant stopped moving. Its bonding came undone, and it changed into a flood of so many paper scraps. Dozens, even hundreds of huge posters flowed out, almost halfway burying Kamijou’s body. As an eerie susurration echoed, his body was moved to the tunnel wall as though caught up in a watery stream.

“Guh…!! Crap. Did I get him?!”

Pain shot up his back and the rear of his head. Kamijou struggled, flailing his limbs, but he couldn’t move the way he wanted. It was like he’d been rolled up in a futon. But now that this Mokkur-whatever, this difficultly named giant, had gone back to being a mere collection of papers, it shouldn’t function further. He could take his time and maybe have Index help him. Once he crawled out of this paper mountain, he’d be problem-free.

However.

Ksh-ksh-ksh went a sound like paper crumpling, sending something cold up Kamijou’s spine.

“You’ve…gotta be kidding me.”

When he looked again, he saw an odd figure. Needly limbs and a spine, made out of only strings of a tiny bit of rolled-up paper. In contrast, its face alone was still the same giant size as before.

Moving its wrinkles, which looked somehow like a human face, the creature brought its right hand behind it as though drawing back a bowstring. It had no stout fist there. In exchange, though, waited a sharpened pile-like tip.

Oh shit, move—I can’t get away!!

Kamijou was being held in place by all that paper and couldn’t make a move.

The giant was aiming its lance at the center of Kamijou’s face.

Without hesitation, the projectile fired with force enough to break through walls.

…Damn it!!

But that was when it happened:

All of a sudden, a figure cut in from the side.

It was one of the almost twenty servants who had joined them from out of Buckingham Palace. The middle-aged gardener, wearing a faded work uniform, clung to the paper giant’s arm and managed to throw off the nail’s aim.

Thanks to that, Kamijou’s head was spared from being crushed like a melon.

Instead, the pile arm jammed into the concrete wall next to him with a ferocious ka-shook!

But his savior the gardener was not unscathed.

He’d tried to suppress the paper giant’s arm, but its power had been way too high and had flung him away. On top of that, the automaton’s body was hard, like it had been made by layer upon layer of paste. Its surface was now roughly the same as a fiberglass boulder. Because of that, the gardener’s work uniform had been forcibly ripped up, and no small amount of blood flowed from his skin.

Instead of feeling thankful, Kamijou felt the hair all over his body stand on end. “You idiot!! That was insane…!!” he shouted as he struggled to get out from the heavy heap that held him.

The fallen gardener gave this display a thin smile. It was like he was happy that someone else was actually worried about him.

“…I’m sorry…,” said the man. “Talk about sorcery all you want and I won’t understand a lick of it. But we can fight this thing as long as we have your power, right…?”

Gk-gk went the paper giant as it tried to pull its pile arm out of the wall.

Small fragments of concrete scattered to the ground from the cracks in it.

“If I’m right, then I beg of you: Please do something about this thing. Quickly, before it aims that javelin at Her Highness!!”

8

At the same time as the giant appeared, the servant who had gone in front to be Vilian’s shield heard the gardener’s words, and her shoulders suddenly relaxed.

Vilian had a bad feeling about this.

And she’d already had several bad feelings tonight alone.

As if to prove that the third princess’s instincts were correct, as Vilian stiffened, the young female servant slowly turned around and spoke.

“Please leave this to us, ma’am.”

“…?!”

“It seems that if we can buy time for that boy to recover, we should be able to overcome. We’ve barely learned martial arts, but if all twenty of us press in as one, we should be able to restrict its movements right well.”

Yes, civilians would seek solutions such as these. But even Vilian, who didn’t know much about sorcery, could tell. Normal rules like that wouldn’t work on the strange, mysterious phenomenon occurring before their eyes. If twenty civilians with no power at all rushed in, the paper giant would apply its normally unthinkable strength and rout them.

The servants weren’t stupid, though. Maybe they couldn’t come up with any hard numbers, but the experiences they’d personally had since the start of the coup d’état probably allowed them to guess that much.

And yet—and yet none of them said a word about that.

It was almost like they were telling Vilian not to worry about them.

One servant, seeming resigned to the decision, removed his shirt. One cook wrapped his necktie around his fist, probably hoping to protect his hand with whatever he could. One tailor spared a momentary glance for the exit but then rallied her courage and returned her gaze to the beast. Even as they did all this, their faces were pale, and it wasn’t only their legs trembling—it was their whole bodies.

There was no way they weren’t scared.

And yet, when Vilian looked at her servants trying to face down the jaws of death, she couldn’t help but ask, “Why…?”

“There’s no logic to it, ma’am,” answered the young woman, her expression almost a pained grin. “People don’t need any unique reason to stand up and fight. We’re here because we want to fight for you. That’s all the reason we have, Princess.”

And then it happened.

The paper giant, whose pile arm had been stuck in the wall right next to Touma Kamijou’s face, made a move. As though it decided pulling out the buried pile arm would be impossible, the paper near the end of its arm scattered apart of its own accord. It had sacrificed its volume to regain its freedom of movement, and now it was starting to sharpen its arm into a hard tip again.

Once more, and this time, it would surely impale Touma Kamijou.

This time, it would eliminate the boy with the means to fight it.

When the servants realized that, they began to move.

But then, the third princess gently laid a hand upon her young servant’s shoulder.

“I understand how you all feel.”

It held a firmness that she hadn’t had before.

“However, that is not a good reason for you to die. If that Soul Arm exists to prioritize the elimination of dangerous factors that could defeat its role as a wall, then I am the most well suited to be the decoy.”

As she finished speaking, Vilian jumped out. The young woman who had spent this whole time hiding behind others now stepped farther forward than any of them.

“Ma’am, wait—!!”

She heard her servants trying to stop her from behind, but nobody was willing to actually pull her back. It wasn’t because they were too stunned to react; no, their fear was already preventing their legs from moving.

It was natural to be scared.

It was natural to want to run away.

Grkk!! Clenching her teeth, Vilian ran down the dark tunnel. She picked up a giant spanner the size of a mop, probably placed near the wall to switch the rails manually in case of emergency, and plunged ever forward. She ran, ran, and ran, diving in a straight line at the paper giant, putting all her strength into the heavy spanner.

People didn’t need any unique reason to stand up and fight—that was what the servant had told her. Vilian wanted to believe that as much as the woman did, so she swung the giant spanner in a horizontal arc aimed at the giant’s head.

“O​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​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!!”

As she swung out the spanner, she let loose a roar she had never once done in public.

The Goliath responded. After changing the aim of its arm-turned-spear, the paper Soul Arm blasted its sharp edge at the incoming spanner.

Brang!! went the sound of the shock rolling through Vilian’s head.

The nail hadn’t landed a direct hit, though. The tip of the spanner, now bent about midway up, had struck her in the head.

…If my sister Carissa was here, considering her total power, a contrivance like this would be a light warm-up, not even enough for her to bend her little finger. If she saw how much effort we’re having to make, she would only laugh at our incompetence.

As Vilian bent over backward and fell, her gaze never wandered.

She tossed aside the wrecked spanner.

Amakusa had told them right at the start that they needed someone from the royal family to release the magical barrier. She’d been lectured on the spell she’d need for it, too.

I may not have much, but even I have a little. If she insists on hurting those who stand up to support me…And if she would try and cause others to suffer using such overwhelming power that this much terror seems like “a little”…

Now she just had to activate it.

In order to successfully use sorcery on her own, Vilian began to move.

That paper giant was the barrier itself that protected the subway tunnel and the special train car meant for the Curtana. And Vilian knew the barrier was controlled by magic only the royal family had.

So Vilian decided she’d put it to the test.

It was her, a member of the British royal family, against this colossus of paper.

To save her servants who had come here for her. To force the Curtana Original to run rampant. To save all the United Kingdom from Carissa’s control!

Normally, she might have been trembling with fear, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. But now, the third princess glared distinctly at the paper giant.

I will resist!! No matter what, I will resist to the very last moment!!

However, before she regained her footing, the paper giant aimed its pile arm toward her. But the third princess ignored it. With time for evasion or defense a luxury, she began to desperately and rapidly incant the spell to herself.

Her voice made no sound.

As a Soul Arm, automatically, the paper giant tried to eliminate the foreign enemy.

Boom!!

The pile arm flew out.

Its course led straight to Vilian’s face.

And then…

“CP! (Change path!) RATTR!! (Right arm to the right!!)”

…Index’s words suddenly rang out, causing the paper giant’s lance to immediately twist in an unnatural fashion. It should have pierced Vilian through the head, but instead it stabbed deep into the concrete ground.

Then the third princess’s incantation caught up.

Strictly speaking, Vilian had been doing the incantation the “right” way, going through each step in turn. But using Index’s abbreviation as a reference, she successfully switched over to high-speed incantation.

“IAWTOOSWITRB, SOTG!! (In accordance with the order of she who inherits the royal blood, swiftly open the gate!!)”

As the last letter came out, the greater part of the paper giant’s body shattered.

Like death throes, however, the right arm portion alone retained its shape, and even as it crumbled, the sharp, pile-like tip drove toward Vilian’s face.

But the princess didn’t close her eyes.

Because…

“Sorry about that. You saved us, Vilian.”

…right then, the Goliath’s arm ceased to move.

All because the boy had reached out from behind and grabbed the creature’s arm, as though stopping a street fight.

After that, the giant continued to collapse.

Its original form unraveling, it still turned around to the boy, as though its danger priority had shifted to Kamijou’s right hand.

“Leave the rest to me. I’ll take it down this time.”

Touma Kamijou and the paper giant.

Neither of them waited even an instant.

The Imagine Breaker and the pile arm.

The strikes, each having enough destructive force to kill the enemy, crossed without hesitation.

Ga-bam!! came the roar.

And this time, Touma Kamijou’s fist smashed the paper giant beyond all recognition.

The magical creature had been barely managing to keep its human form until now, but currently it exploded everywhere from the spot where Kamijou’s fist had hit. The masses of rectangular parchment whipped all the way up to the ceiling, then slowly began to be pulled down by gravity.

“…”

The third princess stared at the sight in a daze for a few moments.

For the first time in her life, she had acted with the clear intent to defeat an enemy. And this scene of all the dancing parchment paper was the result.

Kamijou didn’t know what she was feeling, so he decided to leave her be for the time being.

Which was just as well, because that was when his cell phone began to vibrate.

He didn’t recognize the number, but when he put it to his ear, a familiar voice came through.

“Oh, thank goodness! I got through!”

“Is that you, Itsuwa…?”

“Y-yes! It is Itsuwa, yes, now with no alcohol left in her whatsoever; good evening!!”

“?” Kamijou tilted his head at the strangely energetic young woman, but of course, she couldn’t tell that he did so.

“The operation is a success. Now that Her Highness and the others have undone the magical barrier’s lock, we were able to remotely access the special car’s power source.”

“Oh. That means you can indirectly attack the Curtana Original now, right?”

“Well, about that…Since the special Curtana car is currently stationed right underneath Buckingham Palace, it’s now dashing toward you at a breakneck speed! Please get away from there quickly!!”

Kamijou listened with a blank stare.

“A-anyway, we’re about to link the core of our aerial fortress Coven Compass to the Curtana Original through that special car,” Itsuwa continued quickly. “When the power’s flow reverses, there will probably be a large-scale emission of mana. The knights who detect it will likely go where you are to investigate, and if you stay there, you’ll be at a high risk of being caught in the explosion! Please get back here as quickly as possible!!”

9

October 18, 2:30 AM.

The Curtana Original went out of control.

The explosion had a fifty-kilometer radius, centered on Buckingham Palace, home of the British royal family. Still, it was an explosion that had only magical meaning, one that extremely average people living normal lives weren’t able to detect.

However, the glass windows of the palace rattled noisily in their frames, reacting to the low frequencies humans couldn’t detect.

Then came the sound of someone coughing up blood.

Chunks of blood fell, dirtying the magnificent palace carpets.

It was the second princess, Carissa.

“…A flow reversal from the Coven Compass…”

She’d taken a blow from the total power of the aerial fortress’s core, but it was no more than one tenth of what she needed to control the Curtana Original. However, the Curtana itself had been negatively stimulated by the irregular energy forced through it, disturbing it. Shards of power leaked from the destabilized Curtana Original, and they damaged the body of the second princess, Carissa, like knives packed in an exploding bag.

This is why I told them not to be satisfied with taking control of most positions and not to let their guards down until they’d quashed all of them…Or maybe I’m supposed to respect the cunning of those urchins?

The power distributed to the knights using the Curtana Original was nearly all lost.

The second princess had lost some of her own strength as well.

In fact, probably about 50 percent of it had been scooped out.

But…

I suppressed it.

Carissa had conviction.

They had probably developed this nasty plan by considering the historical fact of the Curtana Original’s loss during the Puritan Revolution, then deciding that the Curtana going out of control would be the foothold they needed to overthrow the head of state. But she would not fall. They hadn’t dealt fatal damage to Carissa’s forces.

“P-Princess Carissa!” came a knight’s voice from the other side of the room’s large door. “We’ve completed recovering and resealing the special train car positioned directly under the palace. Now the Puritans will be unable to interfere with the Curtana Original by reversing the flow.”

“Hmph.” Carissa wiped the blood left on her lips with the back of her hand. “Then go survey the London area to see what kind of effect all the scattered power from the Curtana Original has had. And then all the Soul Arms stocked in the palace, too. If things went badly, almost half of them could be useless now, so.”

Carissa reaffirmed her grip on the blade-less, tip-less sword. “Bring me a Soul Arm interference tool. I’ll start rechecking the Curtana Original, so. And temporarily suspend all spec changes and readjustments for the sword. I will place importance on wiping out the remnant forces inside the country for now, above any cheap tricks with the Curtana.”

“Yes, ma’am,” came the clipped response before the knight left.

On the surface, he seemed obedient, but Carissa knew that the scales in his heart were swaying.

Their organization, the Knights, had originally been led by the Knight Leader. Carissa, too, had been using the Knight Leader as a window to the Knights. With that lost now, disturbance was spreading through their forces underneath the surface, creating small but new gaps between them and Carissa.

And to top it all off, the Curtana Original had just gone out of control.

It had actually been the result of Puritan sabotage, but on a psychological level, the knights would have to think, even if only for a moment, that the second princess couldn’t control it.

They’d already lost their direct leader, and now they were getting glimpses of inferiority from the person above him.

If the old queen Elizard and the Puritans joined forces and began a large-scale counteroffensive, could the knights’ spirits endure? It didn’t matter that the actual numbers were overwhelmingly in Carissa’s favor. It was a problem of the human psyche. Could they keep on thinking they could win? Could they go on believing in the head of state Carissa?

Well, truthfully speaking…If they started a counteroffensive, it would shatter the spirits of half of them, she calculated honestly, even while giving a thin smile.

As she smiled, she put the Curtana Original in her hand on her shoulder.

Now, then. I’ve no use for cowards, but defections might cause some trouble, so…I suppose I’ll just take the initiative, then.

10

Saiji Tatemiya of the Born Again Amakusa-Style Crossist Church was holding a telescope.

He was in a field on the outskirts of London, out of range of the Curtana’s rampage. The only thing around him was green underbrush. He couldn’t tell how much of it was an artificial pasture and how much of it was nature that had been left alone. In that one spot, members of the Puritan faction scattered across the United Kingdom were steadily gathering.

“Aw, shit,” he said. “Looks like we shaved off some of the Curtana Original’s power, but it doesn’t look like we avoided that big reaction happening.”

Tatemiya was sitting on a stepladder, the kind a gardener might frequently use. He was peering through the telescope, his posture almost that of a tennis official.

Meanwhile, the big Ushibuka at the bottom of the stepladder gave a low groan. “Yes. A massive quantity of telesma was emitted in all directions, centering on the second princess. It looks like it’s affecting the Soul Arms and other facilities in the city, too. Apparently, three smaller churches have collapsed.”

“If the values from the monitoring equipment we left in St. George’s Cathedral are correct, the telesma hanging in the city of London is, like, really dense,” put in the smaller Kouyagi, writing small numbers in a notebook. “At the moment, if someone accidentally uses magic in the city, the entire region of London could ignite, too.”

Tatemiya, still looking through the telescope, nodded slightly. “The knights have lost their leader and lack control. And with the Curtana Original having gone out of control added to that, their trust in the second princess is wavering. If we press her hard and fast now, we might be able to mentally wreck the knights without directly clashing with them, but…”

The elderly Isahaya picked up where he left off. “…We’ll have to wait for the telesma to naturally disperse, then charge into enemy territory after London is stable. What are the chances of the Curtana Original recovering its power or the Knights’ forces converging on Buckingham Palace before then?”

“I can’t say anything for sure about the Knights’ forces, but the Curtana shouldn’t be much of a problem. It has too much power to control, so once it goes crazy, she won’t be able to recover its functions very easily. If we calculate using the theoretical values of the power controlling the Curtana Original, it would take at least a month.”

“Which means…?”

“A short rest for both of us. And this will be the last time we have to prepare for battle.”

Tension ran through everyone, and someone audibly gulped.

Then…

“Look, you people…If you know that, then do your jobs already.” A woman with fluffy blond hair, Tsushima, sighed from a short distance away.

The group of men, centered around Tatemiya, all made frowny faces and argued.

“Wish you’d stop trying to pick a fight with us,” said Tatemiya.

“That’s right! This is an extremely serious strategy meeting we’re having.”

“This is the moment of truth, so we have to make sure everyone’s on the same page.”

“Mm. I concur with all honesty—we must decide the issue.”

The men unanimously gave their objections to Tsushima, but her attitude didn’t change. Putting a slender index finger to her temple, she closed one eye and said this:

“Then why is that telescope aimed at Itsuwa in an apron?”

With one thing or another, this was their last supper.

Starting with the Necessarius members who had withdrawn from the capital, people from a rainbow of religions and cultures were assembling in one place—like Born Again Amakusa in their water rescue machine, the former Agnes unit who had been liberated from the freight train, and many more.

The sisters coming and going around Kamijou exchanged various reports.

“Theodosia Electra’s team has arrived as well. Now almost all the Puritans’ remaining forces in the English region have been assembled.”

“Stiyl Magnus’s team has yet to arrive. He had borrowed a transport plane during the Skybus 365 incident, but it seems that when the coup d’état broke out, he ended up in a skirmish at the military airport. He boasted that he would overpower them on his own, so I don’t expect any issues, but he may take a little bit longer.”

Several other voices added reports. It seemed that the greater part of the remnant forces had assembled in London.

Even as the Puritan sorcerers continued to prepare and fine-tune their respective weapons and Soul Arms, they assigned great importance to managing their own physical conditions—first and foremost eating meals. After all, thanks to the chaos that had ensued ever since the coup d’état began, plenty of people were nearly out of stamina from drawn-out battles and escapes, and plenty of others who knew they’d be working through the night hadn’t eaten yet and skipped dinner to take a midnight meal later.

And of course, whenever lots of different people assembled, lots of types of cooking assembled as well.

“Th-this is crazy! It’s filling me up…This warm soup isn’t just filling my stomach; it’s filling my entire body…!!”

“U-um, you’re about to exercise, so please, everything in moderat—”

“No, there’s no way I’m eating a light salad or something at this point!! I’m going balls-deep! Straight for the heavier meats that drop into your stomach like a bowling ball!!”

“W-well, I mean that about eighty percent full is a good point, because if you get completely full, you’ll—”

“Seconds!! I demand seconds, and I’ll hear nothing from you!!”

“J-just make sure to chew, and eat more slowly so that you don’t upset your stomach—”

“Myaaa!!”

…Countless sisters, large and small, had gone straight into a mode of overeating and overdrinking that was not at all nunlike, and the apron girl Itsuwa of Born Again Amakusa was fluttering frantically among them, not sure what to do, and to top it off, Kamijou felt like apologizing because he was pretty sure even a calico that looked kind of like his cat was chowing down on the food.

With only a small serving plate with nothing on it in hand, and unable to keep up with the throng of sisters and sorcerers and who knew who else, Kamijou stood there doing nothing, somewhat dazed.

Meanwhile, a short distance away from those commotions, the double-headed glutton sisters Index and Angeline were at the same table. At a glance, they seemed to be getting along, sitting next to each other and eating their food, but…

“Ah!!”

“Hey!! Y-you just ate it! You ate my food!!”

“I didn’t eat it.”

“S-Sister Lucia, you saw it, too, right?! You saw the glutton reach her fork over to my plate!!”

After speaking, the tall, cat-eyed sister (she had her eyes closed in pre-meal prayer, so she wasn’t watching, and she didn’t care, either) sitting across from Angeline breathed a sigh. “Sister Angeline. We must not doubt our neighbor, whom we must love.”

“Mgh?! I-is that right? I’m pretty sure she definitely just ate my food—”

“Om, nom.”

“See? She just ate it for sure!! She’s not even trying to be sneaky about it! She just reached over and ate a meatball right out from in front of me!!”

“I did not— Burp.”

“You just said ‘burp’ on purpose!! S-Sister Lucia, you say something to her!!” wailed Angeline, half crying.

Appearing to give in, Lucia angled her own plate up. “In that case, I’ll give you mine, so distance yourself at once from the cardinal sins of wrath, gluttony, and envy.”

“Gyahhh!! It’s full of vegetables—and only the bitter kind! What is this? Sister Lucia, are you the type of person who brings trials and training into even the food she eats?!”

She took a hesitant bite, then began to thrash about. Lucia hastily offered some vegetable juice, and Angeline drank it all at once and then writhed even more in her seat. Ignoring the hunchbacked, braid-wearing sister practically convulsing, Index set off in search of ever-greater amounts of food.

Still, even Index ran across hard times. They came in the form of Puritan nuns who had been near the table with all the meat-containing dishes on it.

“Oh wow, this brings me back!! Do you remember me? I’m Rachel—Rachel! We always played together, remember? Oh right. Do you want some steak?”

“Munch, munch. Who are you and why do you keep grabbing my cheeks?”

“Ku-ku-ku. Rachel, I knew you would completely forget about the Index’s memory loss issues. Well, she probably doesn’t remember me, either. But hey, whatever. I wonder if she’s as much of a glutton as she used to be. You want some of mine? Okay, say aah.”

“Mgah?! But I just ate a steak before mghgmgm!!”

“Eeeee!! She’s still just too cute! All she’s doing is filling her mouth with food and it’s adorable!! Mine too—you can eat my steak, too!!”

“…Uh, uhhh…I—I think I’m done…,” said Index, a very rare choice of words for the silver-haired, green-eyed sister.

But the Puritan nuns only increased, saying things like, “Mine too, mine too!” and “Me too!!” and “I’ll let you eat mine, too!!”

In the meantime, the regular girl Itsuwa, who was providing all kinds of food, had fallen into her own psychological crisis.

The boy was right near her.

The potato shochu had completely broken down in her body, and she’d regained her usual composure.

…But thanks to the sisters spread out all around her creating a tempest of demands for more food, more food, graaahhhhhh!! she was no longer able to make a move. For a maiden in love (and not on a foppish or whimsical level but on a serious, I-would-die-for-him level), it was a state of considerable suffering.

But then rescue arrived.

It was in the form of the fluffy-blond-haired Tsushima, another of the women in Born Again Amakusa:

“Argh. You’re quite obviously getting nowhere as usual, so I’ll step in for you. Look, the boy is being swarmed by hungry sisters and hasn’t had any food yet. If you brought some to him, it might win you points.”

“Wh—That—N-no!! I’m fine, perfectly fine! I don’t need to do anything like…?!”

“You don’t like making calculated moves? If you keep saying things like that, you’ll never close the distance, you know.”

“Yes, but I’m pretty beaten up from all the fighting, and I stink of sweat, so I’m not sure I want to face him like this…”

Itsuwa’s intent was partially visible, even through her muttering, possibly because they were both women.

But then the unnecessary male group stuck its head in.

“Ta-daa!! For you, Itsuwa, we thought of a grand Cinderella operation!! A presales road show!!”

“Th-that was sudden, and what do you mean by road sho—? Hic!”

Itsuwa’s sentence ended in something like a hiccup because she was so surprised that she’d caught her breath. Her mouth moved further without much coming out of it as she used a trembling index finger to point at what Tatemiya was holding.

He was spreading something out in both hands.

“Yes sirree!! It is the one, the only great fairy peeping maid!!”

“Wh—? Cough! Cough, cough!! T-T-T-Tatemiya, how do you have that ultimate weapon?!”

“Heh. We all know you want someone to give you a push. The designer happens to be based in London, so I got my hands on one right after the coup d’état broke out. It’s a huge prerelease false start.”

“How did you even have time for that?! And what’s going on with how we handle my personal information anyway?!” Itsuwa shook madly. “Ack, you even got my sizes exactly right! That just makes it more creepy!!”

Still, she might have thought this was the key to launching an attack on that boy, because she couldn’t take it and throw it onto the ground with all her might, which, you know, would have given him a different kind of show…