CHAPTER 3

Confront Walls of Doubt
Great_Complex.

1

The invasion of the foreign mercenary privateer unit had begun.

And Shiage Hamazura and the others could do nothing about it.

They didn’t seem worried about the wounded Russian soldier, either. It was an all-out offensive.

“This way.”

Digurv led them to the clinic’s basement. From what it looked like, it was originally a space for storing cheese and smoked meats. Naturally, they couldn’t expect a dedicated shelter’s durability from it. This wasn’t a structure designed for weathering attacks—its only worth was to stay out of sight of the enemy.

After warming up in front of the electric stove, the frostbitten Russian soldier now seemed able to move somewhat. He was focusing on recovering his stamina, having gotten a share of the preserved cheese. However, his face was the definition of gloom. Being abandoned by the army must have been a bigger deal for him than his physical condition.

Hamazura drew Takitsubo’s limp form close. He’d never imagined something like this would happen; he’d thought Academy City’s back alleys were bad, but it turned out they weren’t the only hell. Every place had its own gaping maws of darkness. Hamazura and Takitsubo believed they’d been desperately fleeing here, away from the shadows of their city, but that didn’t mean anywhere else was pure paradise, either.

The ceiling began to give off a low rattling noise.

It didn’t seem like it was a bomb. It was sort of like a car’s engine, but the vibrations were significantly too severe for that.

“What’s that? Treads?”

“They might have sent in tanks or something,” answered Digurv. “Not many of them. Probably only two. They don’t care one bit about standard military practice, after all. They probably didn’t bring any foot soldiers along either…Of course, even armored vehicles acting arbitrarily will be enough of a threat in their own right.”

As the rumbling continued, Hamazura felt an acute sense of fear but also a streak of doubt. “Reality aside for a moment, what if there were troops with antitank rockets behind and inside buildings, waiting to ambush them? Normally, you’d take out valuable cover from a distance, then charge in after that.”

“They’re not regular soldiers. These units are filled with people who simply want to cut loose and go wild with top-of-the-line equipment. That’s why military doctrine doesn’t apply to them. Their wanton expression of their humanity might present a vulnerability, but that means they’re also far more brutal than robotic units. We’re better off not letting them find us.”

An awful creaking noise began to come from the ceiling.

The talking ceased. Only the roaring continued, like an active demolition site. They must have been charging in with the thickly armored vehicles themselves, rather than laying down a bombardment. It didn’t seem like the proper way to use them.

…They’re screwing around.

Still holding Takitsubo close, Hamazura gritted his teeth…They’re waiting until we can’t stand the fear anymore and jump out. Once we’re out of patience and cause a panic, we’ll be like fish in a barrel.

The privateers were enjoying this, prioritizing the act of killing itself over any strategic objectives. Crying and surrendering would probably be useless. Clinging to them and begging for them to save at least the girl would probably do no good. They’d both end up with bullets in their foreheads for sure.

Vehement rage bubbled up from deep inside him, but he couldn’t do a thing about it. If he jumped out in front of the privateers now, he’d be playing right into their plan.

Digurv probably felt angrier than he did. They were the ones who had invested everything in this land, not Hamazura. The fact that the privateers were mercilessly demolishing it all for sport must have been amplifying his rage.

And yet, Digurv was still enduring it.

Enduring so that he himself would survive this, and so Hamazura and Takitsubo, hiding in the same place as him, wouldn’t be caught up in it.

It reaffirmed to Hamazura the fact that he couldn’t take any risks.

However.

That alone wouldn’t be enough for the crisis to leave them.

Bk-grr!!

Because suddenly, the ceiling caved in, and the armored vehicle slid inside like an avalanche.

The privateers probably hadn’t purposely created this situation. They’d been trying to pass through the clinic without realizing it had a basement, and then the floor had given out.

But that was of no concern to those trapped inside it. A deluge of wooden planks burst forth, sending Hamazura and Digurv falling into desperate rolls. The now-jagged plank edges began to stab into the mortar walls.

The armored vehicle turned out to be an armored car with a fixed turret on the top. It had fallen into the basement at such a sharp angle that the cannon’s tip was bent.

“Run!!” shouted Digurv.

The armored car’s metal front hatch was about to open.

Hamazura dragged his unconscious charge away. Digurv, who exited the ruined basement onto the surface before him, took her and pulled her up.

Then, with a bang, the car opened up.

Hamazura and the frostbitten Russian soldier finished their frantic crawling aboveground together at about the same time rifle bullets started spraying blindly. There wasn’t anything to be seen of the clinic; the roof was long destroyed—even the walls were gone now. All that was left was an uneven pile of debris.

They’d avoided being peppered with rifle fire for now, but they didn’t have time to feel relief.

Digurv, his face white, said, “If we stay on the surface, they’ll kill us. Others in the area might find us, and if the guys in that armored car manage to crawl out, it’s all over. We have to find new shelter before they catch up!!”

Just then, an explosion went off nearby. Hamazura and Digurv were sent to the ground in different directions.

His eardrums didn’t seem to be working right.

From the ground, Hamazura gave Digurv a look. The man seemed to have sustained less damage; still holding Takitsubo, he glanced for a moment at Hamazura, then ran off somewhere as though the situation itself were pushing him. He was probably trying to flee to another shelter, just as he’d said.

…Shit, I don’t know where that place is, you know! If you let Takitsubo die, you’re never hearing the end of it!!

Hamazura wobbled to his feet. His mind was in a near-complete state of panic. He didn’t know at this point where the frostbitten Russian soldier had gone, and he was caught in the terrible stench of smoke rolling by. The old smells—of cooking and cigarettes, of human activity—were all gone. All blown away and replaced with the odor of engine oil and burning buildings.

He lowered himself, and as he hid amid the debris, Hamazura surveyed the area.

Almost half the log buildings were already destroyed, with distinct caterpillar tracks tangling through the snow. They didn’t seem to be from the armored car, earlier.

A weapon. Isn’t there anything I can use as a weapon…?

He’d never be able to overcome this crisis with nothing but the gun in his pocket.

For better or for worse, only about ten meters away was a machine-gun emplacement. Sandbags were piled up in a semicircle, and a fairly large-sized machine gun had been set up over them. It obviously couldn’t have been for shooting down attack helicopters. Maybe, leaving aside its actual effectiveness, they were making an appeal to having countermeasures like it in order to easily stop anyone from passing by overhead.

Naturally, he had no way of knowing how to use a machine gun. The recoil would probably mean the gun would control him rather than the other way around.

But it was better than nothing.

As Hamazura’s tension rose to a point where his pulse was so fast he was worried his heart was going to burst, he broke from cover onto the field of deadly white. More stumbling than running, he reached the emplacement, surrounded by several layers of sandbags. It had only been ten meters, but for Hamazura, the distance had been hellish.

The machine gun was fixed in place on a tripod. It was made so the joints could rotate; the three legs’ tips were like stakes, which kept it solidly on top of the square concrete sheet. Without tools, he’d probably never get it out.

“Damn it!!” he swore, finally pulling out his own gun. He could still hear blasts going off around him—would anyone notice if he fired a shot?

It happened just as he was thinking about doing it: An armored vehicle with tracks appeared from behind another building.

The distance was about twenty meters. It had a single rotating turret on either side, and their barrels were currently lining up in parallel. It had an antenna that looked like a plate, too—so maybe they weren’t tank cannons, but anti-aircraft ones. It seemed like they weren’t for firing explosive shells that would bombard an area; they were more like incredibly enlarged machine guns that would fire at more specific targets.

Again, that wasn’t normal tank usage. This was not a vehicle made for dashing through the front lines pursuing ground targets.

Nevertheless, it would certainly make mincemeat out of any unarmed human.

Hamazura was so shocked he almost bit his tongue off, but it looked like they hadn’t noticed him yet.

It was chasing different prey.

A woman in her thirties, running for her life with a young baby in her arms. A girl who looked about ten fled after her as well. The baby-holding woman’s expression had changed completely into overwhelming terror, exhaustion, and humiliation. Hamazura didn’t know who she was, but he felt the information squeezing out of the back of his mind. They’d probably been part of the group who had been rescued from the convoy and come to the settlement. He could tell their clothing, among other things, was subtly different from Digurv’s and the others’.

The anti-aircraft cannon barrels continued to move slightly, tracking after their backs.

Barrels of certain death; if even one hit, there’d be nothing left to bury.

Hamazura’s arms sprang up.

The next thing he knew, he was grabbing the machine gun fixed to the emplacement. There was no time to take careful aim.

He pulled the trigger.

It was fixed to the ground, but he still felt an impact shoot through his right shoulder, like a power tool had pushed back against him. The intense shock rattled his vision, and yet still, he clenched his teeth and kept pulling the trigger.

Sparks flew from the anti-aircraft tank’s armor.

With the preface of “if it could hit,” the large-sized machine gun packed enough destructive power to deal damage to a small aircraft.

Had the turret’s angle of rotation skewed slightly, pushed by the force?

The giant round fired directly after stabbing not into the backs of the fleeing women, but straight past them.

“RUN!!”

They wouldn’t understand Japanese, but he shouted anyway, loud enough to be heard over the gunfire.

The anti-aircraft guns didn’t stay quiet, either.

Brrrr!! The turrets swung his way, relying on the output of its giant motor. He could feel their irritation at him for getting in the way of their fun. The muzzles, which looked big enough to fit an entire golf ball inside, pointed at the machine gun nest where Hamazura was.

“Shit?!”

Immediately letting go of the machine gun, Hamazura dove to the ground.

The volley came a moment later.

One after another, the sandbags forming a wall burst, sending the black earth packed inside them spraying out. The large machine gun went to pieces. At this rate, he’d lose the wall before ten seconds were up. But if he brought his face out during this tempest of shells, that alone might blow him up.

He was now unable to move—

But then the anti-aircraft cannons stopped firing.

…Did…their gun get jammed…?

His thoughts were optimistic but inaccurate.

These privateers, unlike regular troops, didn’t act according to military doctrine.

This was entertainment.

And for the sake of their entertainment, instead of resuming fire with the anti-aircraft cannon, the crew had instead fired one of the surface-to-air missiles attached to the side of their vehicle’s turret.

With a jet of white smoke, the explosives flew toward the half-destroyed emplacement.

“Damn it!!”

Goggling, Hamazura leaped to the side, away from the emplacement he’d been using as a shield.

The explosion came an instant later.

His hearing failed.

His body, struck by an intense blast of wind, flew into the air. He landed on the snow, and when he looked around, he was in a place right behind a building. He thought it had been ten meters away from the emplacement. But it wasn’t because of any superhuman leg strength. That was just how powerful the blast had been.

His legs trembled in terror.

These privateers were insane.

Hamazura and others like him had lived lives nobody could ever praise in the back alleys of Academy City. But these people’s morals were so deviant that even he was scared. They’d crossed national borders to reach a battlefield out of a desire to kill people—that wasn’t normal.

Now that the reality was slowly creeping in, he found himself unable to move.

And then he heard a quiet clanking noise.

“?!”

It almost caused him to panic, and he nearly pulled his gun’s trigger without thinking of the consequences, but then he realized something: It was Digurv, carrying Takitsubo, who had come to him. He must have gotten behind this debris via another route. He’d kept the unconscious Takitsubo—he hadn’t abandoned her.

Her sleeping face was just enough to prevent Hamazura from losing it.

“Are you all right? I’d rather not have any more sick or injured.”

“Wait, weren’t you escaping to another shelter?”

“While we were running around trying to stay hidden from the privateers, we eventually ended up here.”

…Did that mean their encirclement was closing in? Hamazura felt the inside of his mouth dry out from nervousness. As he considered throwing some of the snow at his feet into his mouth, he asked, “What happened to the other shelter?”

“A few of them were hanging around near the entrance. It didn’t seem like they figured it out yet, but if I got close, they might have caught on to where the shelter was.”

“Damn it,” muttered Hamazura.

Checking again, there were surprisingly few engine sounds. It was probably just the anti-aircraft tank from before. The armored car had fallen through the floor and couldn’t move anymore. The small group of soldiers who had exited it were now coincidentally blocking off the shelter.

“What were they like?”

“They were checking everything, from under the roof to behind bunched-up curtains. They were looking under children’s beds, looking for anything, even little stashes of money. Also, they seemed angry they couldn’t find their targets. Every single one of them is on pins and needles, wanting to kill the enemy.”

“…So they’re not going to let us get away. Doesn’t seem like we can appeal to their humanity, either.”

The privateers had blocked the entrance to the shelter, so they couldn’t dash into a safe alcove anymore.

Perhaps there’d been no such place to begin with.

Hamazura looked at Takitsubo’s unconscious face. A few bangs were caught on the awful sweat on her forehead. He gently fixed them and, strangely, realized that his fingertips had stopped trembling.

He couldn’t afford to let her die here.

He didn’t want the people who had worried about her to die, either.

He’d had more than enough of being beaten, of never having any power to do anything about it, in Academy City’s back alleys.

Hadn’t he decided that he would escape from all that?

He felt angry toward this unfair violence. Why did there have to be people after Takitsubo’s life in a place like this? Why did nice people who would worry about someone they’d never met before have to be attacked for such a bullshit reason? It was high time they counterattacked, wasn’t it? If lives were on the line on each side, then Hamazura had the right to bite back, didn’t he?

“…Can I leave Takitsubo in your hands for a just little bit longer?”

“Wh-what are you going to do?”

Digurv might have realized it based on the difference in his complexion and attitude.

Hamazura looked at Takitsubo’s face as she rested in Digurv’s arms just one more time before answering.

“This is a load of bullshit. I’ll reduce them to a pile of metal scrap.”

“Just so you know, we don’t have any RPGs or anything. They might have lighter armor than tanks, but AKs won’t be enough to shoot through that anti-aircraft vehicle!!”

“The point card.”

Hamazura said something indecipherable.

Digurv gave him a dubious look, and Hamazura rephrased so it would be easier to understand.

“…You have the land mines you dug up to give to the NGO stored somewhere, don’t you?”

2

Accelerator burst out of the base, running through the snow.

Not to hunt prey. Nor to dash toward a destination.

But to run.

Academy City’s number one Level Five, holding Last Order in his arms, was running away from something.

Terrified.

His feeling on the matter was sincere.

More than Amata Kihara.

More than Teitoku Kakine.

More than Aiwass.

More than that boy.

In a certain way, the enemy chasing him down was so incredibly terrifying that, in one blow, she would rock the pillar that bore his sense of values.

He heard the crackling of purple lightning bouncing behind him.

It was probably somewhat smaller in scale than the number three Railgun.

But it was much larger compared to the standard Sisters.

He heard a sound like a balloon popping.

A short metal nail, a few centimeters long, had just been launched—at a speed slightly faster than that of sound.

It held approximately the same force as a pistol round.

The nail fired off from behind Accelerator, then pierced his left arm, right in the bicep.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t reflect it.

It was that he didn’t know if he should.

No.

It wasn’t that. He simply couldn’t decide if it was advisable to let his assailant die as a result of using his reflection.

If he altered its angle, he might have gotten away with not harming the target. But if, by some mistake, he let his habits take over and reflected incoming attacks with intent to kill—the possibility existed. When he thought about that, he couldn’t take action anymore.

The strength faded from his arm.

The little girl he’d been holding up floated into the air.

Last Order.

The girl who was supposed to be supporting his mind—her warmth was swept away by the cutting chill of the snowfield.

“Gaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?!”

A scream rang out.

The deep snow caught Last Order.

Accelerator couldn’t even extend his hand to her. Losing his balance, stumbling, he scattered the pure-white snow underfoot.

A laugh threatened to climb up from the pit of his stomach.

Accelerator had given himself a rule.

In the past, for his very own “experiment,” he’d murdered many somatic cell clones.

So now, he would never harm any clones like the Sisters or Last Order again, no matter what happened.

For that purpose, until now, Accelerator had been killing and killing, covered in blood. Amata Kihara and Teitoku Kakine—and Shiokishi of the General Board. He’d been in death matches with all sorts of monsters, and each time, it had chipped away at his body and heart. He’d lost to Aiwass. Following the being’s instructions, he’d fled to this snowy land. He certainly wouldn’t have received full marks, but he thought he’d been able to protect Last Order’s and the Sisters’ lives and livelihoods to some extent. He’d been able to believe he was doing what was necessary for that.

And yet, of all the things.

Academy City had worked out a plan to pinpoint and shatter that very thing he held close. A tactic to destroy his motive for combat, his having something to protect even if it meant turning the entire world against him.

They’re mad…

He needed to protect Last Order.

He needed to defeat the Sisters’ assassin.

No matter which survived, no matter which he protected, Accelerator could not break the rule he had risked his life to uphold.

A “Third Season”? Just to set up this exact situation? To take aim at my trauma? Crush my spirit? For bullshit reasons like that they made even more?! Academy City is a hellhole. I know that now that I’ve witnessed them from the outside. Something fundamental is totally fucked-up with the people in that city!!

His normal thought patterns weren’t establishing themselves.

It must have been proof the assailant’s presence was shaking Accelerator’s mental state.

Yes, for a tactic against someone with enough power to reflect a nuclear attack, it was having reasonable results.

“Oh? Hmm? Wait, are you thinking you’ve been protecting Misaka? Nobody asked you to do that, you know. You killed over ten thousand of them, and you think that will make everything right? The thought alone is arrogant.”

Those words stung.

Her voice was the same. But the emotion it carried was a world apart.

“Just do us all a favor and self-destruct already. If you break your little rule and fight at full strength, you could’ve probably beaten Misaka, too.”

His assailant’s voice reached him from inside the mask with the lenses arranged like an analog clockface.

No fear was in it.

That shouldn’t have been possible. Was this attacker confident she could attack him without reprisal?

“Maybe Misaka didn’t need to take measures against your electrode after all.”

A crackle of purple lightning sparked from her bangs, hanging out of the mask edges. She probably planned to use her electric-based ability for jamming or something. Or would she directly interfere with the Misaka network?

When he thought about that, a little doubt arose in Accelerator’s chest.

Last Order.

She was a unique individual who controlled the chain of command for all the Sisters connected to the Misaka network. If this assailant was one of them, one instruction from Last Order should be enough to stop her from moving.

The higher echelons had probably figured out Accelerator was running away with Last Order in tow.

Would they leave this assassination to one of the Sisters, control of whom could be taken over at any time, despite that?

Which meant…

A disguise!!

A moment after coming to that conclusion, Accelerator’s legs moved.

Ba-bam!!

Not only the white snow but the ground underneath it broke apart as he shot toward his assailant with unbelievable speed. It was like a shotgun discharged with dirt in its barrel.

Meanwhile, his assailant smoothly, casually, lowered her stance.

His attack, like an uppercut, was dodged easily. But clumps of black earth got caught on her mask and sent it flinging into the air.

Her face was exposed.

And.

This time, Accelerator fell onto the white snow.

He hadn’t suffered any particularly strange attack. He just felt such intense resistance to acknowledging the face that had been under the mask.

“Nope.”

The assailant.

The girl, her face closely resembling Last Order’s but older, something like high school age, spoke without even cracking a smile.

“After all, you’re using the Misaka network for proxy calculations. The Third Season Misaka monitors the Misaka network’s operation status, which lets her predict your next attack. You’d need a miracle to land a fatal attack on this Misaka. This is no time for you to be holding back, is it? If you’re going to do this, you’d better come at Misaka with the intent to kill. Get it? Then try killing Misaka. You can’t, of course. If you did, all your hard work until now would be for nothing. In that case, want to stay quiet and let Misaka beat you to a pulp? Gya-ha-ha-ha!!”

A disguise.

Special makeup.

She was using some kind of ability.

So Accelerator thought as he struggled to get up, but…

“‘I’m scared. Help me!’”

“…!!”

Hearing the girl’s imitation, Accelerator stopped. Even as blood dripped from his left arm, pierced by the metal nail, he couldn’t even raise his fist up against that voice.

“By the way.”

The assailant put a hand to her neck.

There was a very faint trace there, one which he would have missed unless he looked closely.

“Misaka’s body contains a sheet and a selector. Even if Last Order sends Misaka a command signal to stop, the device automatically rejects all signals as long as they don’t have the permission code from the General Board. Clumsily cling to that girl all you want—it won’t stop this Misaka.”

“…”

The answer offered to him was a very simple one.

Kill or be killed.

That wasn’t in reference to Accelerator.

If that was all, he might have given up right there and offered her his neck.

The problem was Last Order. She was now wrapped up in this assassination, too.

This was wholly different from pulverizing third-rate trash. It wasn’t a story where he could throw away his life to solve everything, either.

Was there no way to save them both?

No matter what happened, even if he had a gun to his forehead, Accelerator would never kill another one of the Sisters. He couldn’t let himself kill them. Even if he turned the whole world against him, no matter how many monsters in bloody darkness he had to fight to the death with, causing pain and suffering to girls with this face was something he absolutely, positively, could not do. He doubted he could put a smile on their faces with all the blood clinging to him, but he wanted, at least, for them to create their own smiles.

And yet.

Win or lose, it would place one of the Sisters in a crisis.

After the experiment, Accelerator knew that if Academy City said they’d kill the sisters, they weren’t joking—they would. He didn’t have any leftover time to pull his punches and half-ass this, either.

However.

This was.

If this development continued, in the end, Accelerator would probably lose the last part of his self-control.

Even if one of the Sisters died.

“…The Third Season…,” muttered Accelerator. “If they really did start a third production schedule and created you, then that means they can make other Sisters at any time and replace them. Cost-wise and ethics-wise, that’s the sort of decision they made.”

“Yep. And our command tower, Last Order, is no exception.”

Academy City was trying to conduct some sort of experiment. He got the feeling Aiwass was involved with the project and that the Sisters’ network was being used for it.

“Still, considering the General Board wants to keep constant control over the Misaka network, maybe they wouldn’t have had to make the bold decision to make a new one if she hadn’t disappeared to begin with. If only you hadn’t gone and done all that dumb stuff. It all backfired on you, huh?”

In the end, that was how it was.

This wasn’t a retrieval, but a homicide.

If they were going to create a new Misaka network and command tower, the old numbers would no longer be needed. In fact, having two command towers might be an active detriment; that was why Academy City had taken the initiative and decided to kill Last Order.

Even though she’d never done anything wrong.

She’d been made at the selfish whim of somebody else; and now, just for the reason that they didn’t need her anymore, they’d kill her.

“What’ll you do?”

The assailant smiled.

It was an evil, emotional smile, contrary to the impression the other Sisters gave.

“If you don’t want to kill the Sisters, Misaka guesses you’ll just have to stand there and get beaten into the ground. But after this Misaka kills you, she’ll attack Last Order, too. Well, even if you try to stop me by force, a Misaka will still die! Gya-ha-ha-ha-ha!! Either way, your spirit will die here. I’ll play with you until your mind is ground into dust, so let’s have fun with it!!”

With those despair-inducing words, the battle began.

The battle to thoroughly demolish all the pillars Accelerator had finally built up to support his fragile soul.

3

Avoiding the Sea of Japan battleground and making an extensive detour in the Pacific Ocean, a Russian Navy submarine had made it to the waters around Indonesia.

They weren’t preparing to pull off a surprise attack and fire a ballistic missile into Academy City.

Multiple missiles had already been fired from various angles, but all had been shot down with precision strikes. Most had been intercepted outside the earth’s atmosphere, but some had even been blown away by an unknown flash of light not five seconds after launch.

Considering missile development history, this was absolutely impossible.

All sorts of technology was concentrated within the interception systems humanity had developed, but even then, they didn’t reach 100 percent accuracy. Generally, the theory for countering ballistic missiles was supposed to be centered around political caution so they were never fired in the first place.

Countermeasures to that were for the higher-ups to think about. The current goal of this submarine, deployed in the waters near Indonesia, was to cut off enemy supply lines.

Academy City, or rather Japan, was fundamentally an island nation. Unlike Russia, its natural resources were scarce. Nobody expected the battle to get this drawn out, but now that it had, the tactic of cutting off overseas supply routes and quickly depriving the enemy of much-needed materiel became effective.

They wouldn’t be wielding their technology in perfect form for long.

Once their stamina ran out, that would be their death day.

That was what the Russian military had assumed.

They had prepared over twenty submarines to prevent even a single transport ship from getting away.

However…

“They’re not showing up,” muttered someone. No matter how much time passed, no ships appeared.

This strait was like a highway, not only to reach Japan, but for ships from all over the world to pass through. In fact, they’d confirmed vessels from various other nations entering and exiting. However, any transport ships heading to Japan were conspicuously absent.

Were they using a different route? Were they disguising themselves as other nations’ ships? They’d thought about several possibilities but never found an answer. All they knew was that without a large quantity of transport ships passing in and out, Academy City wouldn’t be able to keep running.

A voice reached them from the communications officer on another one of the submarines in the fleet. Being bored when one had nothing to do applied just as much to soldiers as it did to laymen. The fact that they hadn’t seen a single sign of their target was one that, more than necessary, rubbed everyone inside this closed-off sub the wrong way.

“Are they really using ships? Didn’t we get reports they’re using some crazy aircraft for inland operations?”

“I doubt those monsters alone could carry every single thing they need, including daily commodities. Don’t let the shock of their technology confuse you. The fact of the matter is: Sea routes are the most popular method of transporting heavy goods.”

“But we haven’t seen a single transport ship heading for Academy City. We’ve even pretended to be pirates to inspect cargo several times but always came up empty. Where are they? They’re not on the water or in the air. Don’t tell me they’re down at the bottom of the sea or something.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Submarines have a required maximum size so their sound isn’t detected. They can’t replace larger-scale transport vessels.”

“What should we do, sir? They hit the ball pretty close to the hole.”

Saying that was a young communications officer on board an Academy City–made submarine.

They were slipping past the Russian-made submarines deployed in Indonesian waters by a distance of only a few meters each time. Most of their cargo consisted of goods bound for Academy City. The Russians’ conversation had been right on the mark.

They indeed had an abnormal size. In contrast to the Russian subs, which were a hundred meters at most, this Academy City unit was easily five times that.

Academy City wasn’t situated on the water, but several cooperating organizations had, based on technical intelligence, prepared this secret trick: Once they entered Japan’s waters, they would link up with smaller submarines, which would then ferry the goods to harbor.

Another shipmate next to the young communications officer—the navigation officer—replied, in a bored voice, “They haven’t actually detected us with radar or sonar. Meaning we officially don’t exist.”

For a submarine this enormous, the sound of the screw propeller alone would be considerably loud. The noise of them splitting through water would also certainly be detected.

But that didn’t happen—because this submarine didn’t have a propeller in the first place. The ship’s outer surface read the ocean’s currents, firing water jets in such a way that it would blend in with the currents’ sound to advance forward. It even used the water jets to interfere with the very sounds scattered as the ship progressed, which they couldn’t completely erase no matter how hard they tried. All these efforts combined made it impossible for enemy sonar to detect the anomaly.

“But, sir, if we used supersonic weaponry, we could write it off as propeller trouble, not the result of a skirmish.”

No expense had been spared in other areas, either—stealth treatments had been applied to the ship’s surface, and it also had a mechanism to prevent magnetic detection.

Still, if they rose beyond a certain height, they couldn’t deny the possibility that they’d be noticed.

On the other hand, if they stayed below a certain depth, that possibility got very close to zero.

“Our orders are not to sink hostiles.”

The navigation officer responded as though confirming this to himself as well.

“We carry out our original mission. For us, the greatest victory is ensuring the safety of all.”

4

The land mines were all in one place outside the settlement.

Afraid of the anti-air tank engine noise, Hamazura jumped out from behind the rubble. As he hid behind obstacles—objects barely retaining the buildings’ original forms—he advanced across the snow.

There was a small, hut-like structure.

A little wooden building that didn’t look big enough to even fit a minivan inside.

After opening the simple door, which resembled a restroom stall’s, he saw things piled up haphazardly like stacks of magazines. They were metal plates, pentagonal, like home plate from a baseball field. Other than the ones tied together with rope, cylinders about the size of soda cans were crammed inside, too.

Hamazura groaned. “Here we are…”

According to Digurv, the antitank land mines were the home-plate ones. After grabbing a tied-up bundle in both hands, he placed it on the snow. If he’d known what the land mines were capable of, he’d never have been able to do such a thing.

He unbound the rope and grabbed the end of one of the plates.

A little triangular piece was sticking up from each of the pentagon’s points. They were probably the fuses that would detect weight. When he turned it over, he found that the central section was dented slightly, with a tree branch a few centimeters long inserted into it horizontally. It seemed to be holding down a pin-like object. It wasn’t an original part; the people from the settlement who dug it out of the ground had probably put it in there as a makeshift solution. Digurv had said these were used the same way as hand grenades. Basically, you pull the pin out, put the mine in the ground, and you’re all set. Then, if anything, even a stag beetle, so much as stepped on it, the whole thing would blow. He had to wonder if there was a tool to control the pin after setting it in the ground.

Hamazura wanted to bring along as many land mines as he was able, but they were quite heavy. He could manage holding two to three at most, probably. If he carried four or five of these things, he wouldn’t be able to run straight. He was already at a disadvantage in this situation. His handicap had better be as small as possible.

…Two’s my limit.

Just then, a wall from one of the civilian homes relatively close to the hut blew up.

A giant shell from one of the anti-air cannons.

Digurv had said they probably only brought two armored vehicles to the settlement. And the armored car had slipped through the floor and fallen into the basement shelter. If they could just get rid of that anti-air tank, they would be mostly safe for the moment.

Wincing at the blast from the anti-air tank’s shot, Hamazura left the hut with the mines in his arms.

Next, he’d have to get close to that vehicle.

He could place the mines in spots he predicted the tank would go to, but that didn’t absolutely guarantee it would pass over those locations. He only had so many mines, and what’s more, he didn’t have the leeway to leave his hiding spot and set the mines right out in the open, so that wouldn’t be a very realistic plan.

If he wanted to take it down for sure, the fastest way would be to get close and throw the mines at it. Digurv had only used hand grenades as an analogy, but with this method, Hamazura would actually be using them like that.

Still…

…Running up close is gonna be a really high hurdle.

After all, his opponent had a large-bore autocannon with enough power to mow down buildings, to say nothing of human bodies. If they spotted him, it was over. He would basically be jumping right into the middle of them, taking a risk that would make it easier for them to notice.

He had to say, this plan of his wasn’t exactly sane.

But if he didn’t succeed, everyone in the settlement would be helpless.

Takitsubo would be killed, too.

Why would he have bothered fleeing from Academy City, then? He wouldn’t be able to go back to his old life after finding a bargaining tool and making a deal.

I have to do this!!

Hamazura broke out into a run along the backs of the fallen rubble. The anti-air tank was having fun breaking down all the buildings in its search for prey—they might find where the people of the settlement were hiding quite soon. He ran underneath a precarious, nearly fallen ceiling balanced against a practically destroyed wall.

The sound and vibrations from the caterpillar tracks closed a fist over his heart.

The iron hulk went straight past the broken glass of the window.

Hamazura rested his back against the half-collapsed wall and peered out the window.

It was close.

Only about five meters away.

He reached for the small branch underneath the antitank mine.

If he pulled it out, the land mine would spring back to life. Even the slightest impact would cause it to explode. Naturally, it should ignite if he threw it against the tank.

He took just one deep breath and then set his stance.

Pulling the branch out from under the land mine, he picked himself up off the wall. He leaned out of where the glass used to be in the window.

The anti-air tank seemed to have noticed, too.

But between its giant turrets rotating and a human hand swinging, Hamazura was always going to be faster.

He hurled the explosive, then hid on the wall.

The land mine struck the side of the turret, then went off.

A roaring blast rattled Hamazura’s brain.

However, land mines were not the same as hand grenades. They were explosives meant to be used on the ground. Obviously, you could achieve a more efficient explosion if the blast could only go upward, rather than having it spread in all directions.

The antitank land mine Hamazura had thrown was put together in the same fashion.

And that land mine, as it spun through the air, had struck the anti-air tank’s turret right on its bottom surface. It had exploded, detecting an impact, but most of the blast escaped in other directions.

It hadn’t destroyed the tank.

Hamazura watched as the turret squeaked around and aimed at him.

And then, yet another strange sound went off.

The blast, which had missed its original target, had knocked down building walls that were on the verge of collapsing. Across from the dwelling in which he hid was a small church, the only stone structure in the settlement. The steeple on top with the bell in it came apart and fell toward the tank.

The tank’s crew must have realized that as well.

However, before they could run away on their caterpillar treads, the iron steeple hammer swung down onto it. The anti-aircraft vehicle was a hunk of thick steel, so it didn’t break just from that. However, the incredible weight on top of it had completely prevented it from moving. The machine-gun turrets couldn’t rotate anymore, either.

“…”

For a moment, Hamazura was silent.

All the emotions that might otherwise have been bubbling up within his heart didn’t come.

After pulling his head inside the window again, he looked around the utterly wrecked civilian home. It wasn’t just a movie set—it was a room someone had definitely just been living in.

And in a rack that had fallen onto its side, he took a bottle of vodka that still hadn’t cracked yet.

He left the building and stood in front of the self-propelled anti-air gun.

If it had been a main battle tank, it would have been equipped with light machine guns in addition to its main gun in order to spray suppressing fire at any infantry that got close. However, this was an anti-air vehicle—it wasn’t designed on the premise that it would be advancing through enemy lines. No such firearms were fixed to it.

Nothing was left to hurt Hamazura.

He brought his mouth near the small air vent used to supply oxygen into the vehicle, then quietly spoke.

“…Pretty cold today, isn’t it?”

It was pure, unadulterated Japanese, but he didn’t care.

It wasn’t his job to exchange pleasantries with them.

“Perfect weather for roasting some meat.”

He rapped on the anti-air tank’s roof with the bottle of vodka, and the privateer soldiers frantically burst out of the metal hatch.

Hamazura pointed his handgun at that hatch.

He had no hesitation swinging its muzzle toward them.

5

Touma Kamijou ran about the plaza, which was now in ruins.

The results had been awful.

The professional sorcerers Lesser, Elizalina, and Vento of the Front had been defeated. Sasha Kreutzev had been taken away by Fiamma personally, and the only things that remained of the battle were the scars.

Kamijou was currently giving first aid to the wounded sorcerers. Still, he didn’t have much real knowledge. He was just following the others’ instructions, since they couldn’t move.

“Vento…”

“If you’re going to thank me, you’ve got the wrong person,” she spat, sticking her tongue out for want of being able to move her limbs in her current state. “I just don’t like how Fiamma does things. I really can’t forgive him for causing mayhem in the Roman Church any more than this. In the process, my actions only happened to be to your benefit.”

“…”

The voice was hateful, but Kamijou was somehow relieved.

Not everyone in the Roman Church was saying things like Fiamma was. People who would properly argue were part of the organization, too. He’d learned that fact once again, and it lightened his load a lot more than he’d thought it would.

Elizalina, lying down in the same way, spoke to him.

“I never thought Fiamma would be in a state where he could use the knowledge from the one hundred and three thousand volumes.”

“Index couldn’t completely cover the God’s Right Seat spells, though. He’s probably using her to clear away his obstacles and be more efficient.”

“Do you know where Fiamma of the Right went?”

Elizalina should have been in an ambulance, but she had refused personally. Maybe it was out of regret from magic having been revealed to the masses during the fight with Fiamma. Maybe she wanted to avoid leaving this place during such a difficult phase. Only Elizalina herself knew for sure.

“…Probably a base over the border,” Kamijou answered, after thinking for a moment. “He was preparing for something there to begin with. To the point where he evicted all the people living nearby, too. I think he wants to bring Sasha there to try something.”

As for what Fiamma was trying to do—that wasn’t clear yet.

But his advance preparations alone had already caused this many casualties. Maybe even World War III itself was only part of them. Considering that, it was then possible that whatever Fiamma was trying to do would be even bigger than that. Either way, he couldn’t stay silent and watch. He didn’t want to let something like this happen again.

“I’ll manage,” said Kamijou to Elizalina after a moment’s thought. “I’ll do something about him. I have to save Index, too. You all wait here. Nothing says all the crap he stirred up won’t turn around and spread back here again.”

He tried to burst out then.

But a hand grabbed his arm.

It was Lesser, who had sustained relatively light wounds. She didn’t say anything in particular, but he could sense that unless he gave permission for her to come, she wouldn’t let go of his arm.

Kamijou wavered a moment, then eventually nodded.

Lesser let go and got up to stand beside him.

“We don’t have much time. Let’s borrow the Alliance’s strength. We’ll ask their military for help and get right up close to the base.”

“But they’re opposing nations, aren’t they? Wouldn’t that make them even more cautious?”

“The Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations is a group of countries that gained independence from Russia in recent years. The vehicles they use are all basically the same. If we break through where their border security is thin, we shouldn’t have a problem after that.”

Kamijou fell silent for a bit. “…Is it okay to get them involved, though?”

“?”

“Like I said before, they’re opposing nations. If they’ll cooperate, then fine, but if we get found out in Russian territory, we definitely won’t have any guarantee of survival. Is it really okay to ask them to help us, in that kind of situation…?”

“We’re not the ones who get to decide that,” Lesser said without hesitation.

At first, it might have seemed like a haphazard reply, but it seemed to prove that she was used to the politics of life and death.

“The people who would be risking their lives can decide that. At the very least, they should be able to choose how to live their own lives. If they turn us down, we’ll look for a different way.”

“…”

But Kamijou, once again, fell silent.

Lesser put an index finger to her temple and, in a mildly irritated tone, said, “In the end, it’s all probably the same, though.”

“What is?”

“Fiamma can say what he wants, but a person’s life is for the person to decide, right?”

“…Maybe.”

“And whatever you happen to be hiding, it’s not like you’ve been stuck like that forever, right? You’re still risking your life to keep moving ahead. As a result, you’ve saved a bunch of people’s lives, and you even stopped the coup in the UK. Frankly speaking, I think that’s a life worth being proud of.”

Hadn’t it been a mistake to hide his memory loss and go on living?

Hadn’t everything he’d done to protect Index’s smile been complacency?

But she was right.

Kamijou had resolved so many incidents and saved so many lives before now. That was probably praiseworthy, wasn’t it? He had gotten to know other people after he’d lost his memories, too. For those people, what did it matter whether he had his memories or not? Either way, it didn’t change that he’d fought for their sakes.

“But still…,” said Kamijou to himself.

As if to dig a knife into his own chest.

“…Still, wouldn’t that mean that I’m not the one allowed to decide whether everything I’ve done has been good for Index?”

6

The sorcerers of the United Kingdom and France clashed atop the hardened surface of the Strait of Dover. It was nearly a melee, but they were slowly and steadily rallying around the Knights, who had borrowed the power of the Curtana Second and the mobile fortress Glastonbury.

However, when pushed, it’s human nature to push back even harder.

The French sorcerers weren’t the sort who would calmly calculate numbers on each side and the conditions of the field then just walk away. The more they were pushed back, the more bloodcurdling their expressions got as they utilized a myriad of offensive spells.

Several of the British Knights tried to draw back.

They positioned themselves as if to regauge the distance just a little bit.

Carissa, second princess of Britain, took this as a show of weakness and stepped out onto the front line.

“Oh, bollocks. Those French bastards are going to kidnap me and rape me to death,” she baited.

“…???!!!”

Now her knights’ pride wouldn’t let them withdraw any farther.

Wielding their weapons as though ripping through physical limitation itself, they just barely managed to prevent Carissa from being swallowed up in the French throng.

Meanwhile, Carissa put her hands on her hips and said, “I better not see you holding back on the battlefield again. You should have been fighting with that much energy from the beginning.”

At that point, the Knight Leader finally used his communication Soul Arm to secretly contact Windsor Castle.

“Yes. Put me through to Queen Elizard! It’s extremely urgent!! I would like to ask permission to give Princess Carissa a good spanking!!”

“Would you quit that?! My mother might actually focus all the Curtana Second’s power on you just so you can do that!!”

Even as they bickered and snatched the Soul Arm back and forth, the battle between the two forces raged on. As many swords and spells intersected, Carissa cast the French sorcerers a glance, then moved her lips.

“Hmph. What a bunch of clones.”

The words came out like spit.

“They have a lot of sand grains with passing marks, but they lack decisiveness. Are they planning on using troop numbers as an excuse or something? If this is all they have, they certainly won’t be able to deal with a group containing saints and Knights.”

Ga-bam!! An explosion went off.

It was above Carissa.

A lightning bolt had shot down from the heavens, aiming to obliterate the second princess.

But she hadn’t sustained any injury.

Through whatever means, the nearby knights had lofted their blades and cast the lightning attack away.

“In the end, trying to win from a distance is all the Saint of Versailles can do,” Carissa said. “But it’s clear you fundamentally cannot leave your palace, even though no seals are preventing you from escaping. Your body was readjusted down to your very organs so that you can’t live anywhere but the magical environment inside the palace…by the foolish French powers that be.”

The distant Saint of Versailles could probably hear her voice as well.

There was no response.

Even so, Carissa continued. “And after increasing the range on your spells more than necessary, you can’t easily land a finishing blow.”

Assume a sorcerer has the power of one hundred. If the sorcerer was able to use his full power for attacking, his attack power would be one hundred. But if he combined it with a spell for extending his firing range, the percentage dedicated to attacking would go down proportionally to the increased range.

There were certain spells that could ignore physical distances from the start and deal the same amount of damage to any location in the universe. But the Saint of Versailles’s spell had no such trait. It was a typical spell, one whose power would decrease the farther it was extended.

On top of that, the Knights, currently borrowing strength from the Curtana Second, had superhuman abilities to begin with. They were not the sort an enfeebled spell would do anything about.

“Anyway,” Carissa said to the Saint of Versailles, who was probably observing the state of battle from afar, “if you don’t mind, I’ll be getting serious now. Please, twiddle your thumbs and watch us as we land on your shores.”

7

The crack of purple lightning cried out across the snow.

The Third Season.

A project executed to put a guaranteed end to Last Order, growing ever more useless thanks to Aiwass’s existence, and to get rid of Accelerator, whom the powers that be could no longer rein in.

A series that was different from the twenty-thousand-plus-one Sisters, who came as a single set.

In the end…

“An extra specimen—you could say Misaka Worst.”

The assailant named herself. Likely in the knowledge that she was an organism that never should have been born, whom nobody particularly desired.

In her hand danced short metal nails, each a few centimeters long. Now and again, with a balloon-like pop, a nail would fire at him at supersonic speeds.

But…

Judging by the electric power she’s using, she seems different from a Railgun.

Cornered, Accelerator desperately worked his nearly chaotic mind and analyzed her.

The same method as a magnetic rifle some sniper used. It’s simpler than Fleming’s left hand; she’s using an electromagnet to fire metal ammunition at me.

Even having come this far, he still hadn’t used his reflection.

Manipulating his leg-force vectors and conducting short bursts of super-high-speed movement, he was instead taking evasive action to avoid Misaka Worst’s aim.

To align with the situation, and to protect Last Order, he wouldn’t be able to avoid fighting.

But it was also true that he didn’t want to kill this girl if he didn’t have to. Even if she’d been created through a different project than the Sisters, even if she was a specimen from a third development project designed to kill Accelerator and Last Order, he still felt an extreme aversion to letting any of these somatic-cell clones die.

It was a cruel thing, but Accelerator couldn’t help thinking of what he’d do if it had been Amata Kihara or Teitoku Kakine. If it was a shithead like that, he probably wouldn’t hesitate. He’d mercilessly shred them, flinging the resulting pieces in all directions, for the sake of protecting Last Order.

After all, Accelerator was no philanthropist. He wouldn’t stop himself from getting into a killing match with an enemy if that lined up with his own objectives. But even still, he absolutely wanted to avoid applying that rule to the enemy who had appeared here now.

And.

Naturally, Misaka Worst had realized that.

She’d realized he was hesitating, and she’d taken advantage of it, working it into her tactics.

Because that was why she’d been born.

“Might want to be careful.”

Grin.

With an “expression” clearly different from any of the previous Sisters, Misaka Worst spoke.

Yes—while wearing a smile filled with malice.

“Misaka doesn’t have as much power as the original, but even this Misaka can manage to get up to two billion volts. I’d probably be around Level Four.”

Roar!! A blast went off.

And the girl’s body vanished.

She’d ignited the air by using a huge amount of high-tension current, then used the force to take flight. It was the same as what she’d used to land on the ground from the transport plane.

By the time Accelerator realized it, it was too late.

“Look—one more for you.”

He heard the voice from overhead.

And then a two-centimeter-long metal nail shot down at him.

He jumped directly to the side, but halfway through his jump, he lost his balance and fell spectacularly onto the snow.

There was a dark-red wound in his thigh. This metal nail had apparently stopped in his body.

“Would you please run away some more?”

Misaka Worst stepped down onto the snow, the metal nails in her hand jangling. It was an aggravating noise—was it affected to torment her target as much as possible?

“You killed over ten thousand times, over ten thousand Misakas, didn’t you?”

The words cut deep.

It carried a whole different weight than if a complete stranger had been blathering on about it.

The subtle vibrations in the air from her voice caused Accelerator, who could even reflect nuclear attacks, to begin collapsing from the inside out.

“So run away. Beg for your life like a dog. You’re not a normal person facing a normal death. The books won’t be balanced unless I trample over your human rights at least ten thousand times worse. And just so you’re aware, that’s a minimum number. It’ll be more than three times that, with interest.”

The skin on Misaka Worst’s face twisted from the inside.

Her carefully crafted face distorted like a vinyl puppet in the oven.

The source: abhorrence.

Her insane smile, something more than anger, something more than horror, spread across her face so much it seemed her original face would never come back.

…Don’t let her get to you, thought Accelerator desperately, holding back the intense pain crawling out to his arms and legs. She isn’t one of them. She wasn’t born for that experiment specifically. She’s literally a fake who talks with the same face and body. I don’t need to trip up over every little thing she says!

With a shudder, he felt a strange sensation begin to gather toward the center of his forehead.

Could he apply his reflection to his whole body?

Should he even block Misaka Worst’s voice with it? The scales were starting to tip.

However.

“Misaka is the same.”

That one phrase.

Just four words put a halt to Accelerator’s decision.

“Misaka was born to kill you. She didn’t want to be born, but they made it happen. They cut open Misaka’s skin to cram piles of strange sheets and selectors inside, all to cut off the signal from Last Order. This wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for you. If you hadn’t made the choices you did, Misaka would never have been born. Even if she had, it wouldn’t have been through this futureless method. ‘It hurts— Help me.’ By the time Misaka knew those words, she couldn’t say them anymore. Misaka has the right to denounce you. She has a reason to kill you.”

And, added Misaka Worst, like a murderous huntress showing off each and every one of her vaunted weapons:

“Misakas are each individual specimens, but at the same time, they’re one big Misaka connected by a network. It’s not some unique way of thinking that only specimens called Misaka have. Because it’s one part of what the big Misaka encompasses.”

Accelerator’s vision blurred.

It had taken him a moment to realize Misaka Worst had combusted the air to move swiftly and kicked him in the face.

“Why do you think none of the other Misakas, including Last Order, ever denounced you before now? Didn’t it seem unnatural to you? Ten thousand people, ten thousand times you kept on killing, and why didn’t they ever harbor any hatred? The answer’s simple. The Misakas are no saints. The Misakas aren’t like those mythical princesses, either, pure and just…It isn’t that they decided not to hate you. It’s just that the way they handled humanlike emotions was too incomplete for them to understand and express it, so it never come up.”

This was her aim.

She wanted to drive Accelerator into a corner.

Which meant he didn’t have to care.

It was all an act, and he didn’t have to take every little thing as the truth.

However.

What he couldn’t bring himself to do was ignore any malice that Misaka Worst—or the Sisters—had for him.

Even if he knew it was part of her strategy, he would get caught in it.

But what if…?

What if Last Order’s smile wasn’t one of forgiveness—it was nothing more than a product of her personality, formed rapidly by the Testament, and not mature enough to properly recognize and understand negative emotions like hatred or fear? With everything he’d done, he couldn’t possibly be so easily forgiven, could he? These apprehensions made him reel.

His blood was trailing through the white snow. It was like someone had drawn a line to trace his movements.

Misaka Worst rubbed the red liquid on the end of her shoe onto the snow.

“Gya-ha-ha!! The Misakas are slowly becoming more human! They’ll be able to do all sorts of new things like humans can!! But being more human isn’t always a good thing! Many Misakas will come to realize their hatred soon. They’ll start thinking they have the right to pursue a just revenge!! All this atonement that you’ve been so absorbed in until now was nothing but self-satisfaction you were consuming for yourself!! None of it will dampen the Misakas’ hatred!! In the future, every Misaka connected to the network will gain human hatred and go after your life!! Will we succeed and kill you, or will they fail, and you’ll kill us all? Either way, that convenient future you’re imagining will never be real!!”

As she spoke, again and again, her shoe’s toe flew.

Each time, blood spurted from several places on Accelerator.

He would have been able to avoid it if he had tried.

He would have been able to counterattack if he had tried.

But he couldn’t do that.

The stirrings of the mind needed to do so weren’t forming.

Because in his heart, something was close to breaking.

It wasn’t just the external damage. Just trying to get angry in order to resist her was about to utterly destroy him.

Destroy him so badly he’d never return.

Maybe even so badly that he’d transform into a greater monster than he’d even been during the experiment.

“If you want to drown in your sentimental delusions and deny what Misaka says, that’s fine. But what Misaka has said is already proven. This Misaka, Misaka Worst, isn’t like the other Misakas. She had her intracerebral substance secretion patterns purposely readjusted so that negative emotions come to the surface more easily. So that it’s easy to read negative emotions out of the giant network. They figured out that it isn’t that the Misakas don’t possess the emotion of hatred, it’s that they do, but they don’t have a way to express it…And that goes for all Misakas, including Last Order over there!!”

Misaka Worst’s foot abruptly stopped after stomping on his face.

She was watching something.

A short distance away, on the snow, lay Last Order. The effects of Aiwass’s emergence had put the young girl’s very consciousness in danger. Still buried in the snow, her hand was squirming, reaching out—in Accelerator’s direction. As if to somehow protect him from the bloodshed, from the trampling.

Not caring about any realistic numerical values…

…like whether that hand would reach him.

Last Order seemed to be trying to stop his assailant’s movements by using some kind of ability, but there was no change in Misaka Worst. She appeared to be using some “countermeasure,” and above all, it wasn’t certain whether Last Order, in her current ragged state, even had enough spare energy to properly serve as a command tower.

Thick sweat dripped from the little girl’s face.

Clearly, something ominous was happening inside her body.

“…”

For just a moment, Misaka Worst stopped moving.

And then her twisted smile broadened even further.

“All right. Misaka will start by taking care of that defective product over there. Seems like it would be more effective.”

With a shudder even larger than before, an awful premonition swelled deep within the heart of Academy City’s number one.

“The Misakas have been refurbished for the Third Season, plus the network’s expansion and redeployment have strengthened and rapidly increased their capabilities.”

Jingle-jangle.

The two-centimeter iron nails in Misaka Worst’s hand gave off a grating cadence.

“They no longer need a last-generation command tower like Last Order. In fact, now that all the Misakas are going to be deployed, all she’s doing is shackling them.”

The situation was almost cannibalistic, but if he assumed the Sisters to all be controlled by one giant Misaka network, he could also apply her words and actions to human thought processes and deal with them that way.

Normal humans thought in ways that were convenient for them, too.

The you right now isn’t the real you. You have wonderful talents hidden inside you. Draw them out and become the real you. Abandon the old you.

In normal humans, convenient but empty ideas like that came from the mental parts inside the body. The Sisters, however, were a giant network composed of many bodies. The notion of “abandoning the old you” would then come to be used in a physical, rather than metaphorical, sense.

…Right.

Wanting to prevent their spontaneous “advancement” and keep them the way they were now was nothing but pure egotism. Nothing but an idea to take someone’s freedom away, much like how a parent wanted their child to remain a child forever.

…So that’s what it meant.

It wasn’t possible to settle this without letting anyone die.

The following two choices were available:

Kill Misaka Worst to protect Last Order.

Or keep one of the Sisters alive and watch Last Order die.

Metal nails had pierced his body. He’d been kicked in every spot imaginable. He’d been trampled on. And now the spear was pointed at Last Order.

Finally, Accelerator realized there was only one question left:

Was giving up the only thing left he could do?

Ba-bam!! A blast rang out.

It was the sound of Misaka Worst—this girl who had stomped on Accelerator’s face and aimed her metal nails at Last Order—being hurled into the air. Her body flew in a wide arc, going a good ten meters during her flight before plummeting to the snow.

Yes.

If the number one in Academy City got serious, such a thing was easy.

Whether it was a two-billion-volt high-tension current, or metal nails flying faster than sound could travel, or one of the Sisters.

One or two insignificant chumps couldn’t do anything to him.

“Gah?!”

As Misaka Worst groaned, she saw a figure standing up unsteadily.

Accelerator—like a mirage, bereft of his central core.

Originally, she should have successfully weakened him, then arrived at the chance of a lifetime.

And yet…

“…!!”

Misaka Worst puffed out a burst of air, then focused some magnetic force to launch a shot.

The metal nail, flying faster than the speed of sound, was arced precisely to Accelerator’s forehead. He didn’t dodge it. He didn’t swing his head away or even shut his eyes. Despite that, not a fraction of his skin tore, and not a drop of his blood spilled.

It was due to his reflection.

The metal nail bounced back and penetrated Misaka Worst’s arm. Accelerator had had no hesitation, no indecision. As she tumbled, she took out another nail. This time, her aim was Last Order. She reached out her arm, attempting to destroy the core of Accelerator’s proxy calculations.

And then the mirage-like Accelerator moved distinctly.

Only when he had manipulated his leg-force vectors and approached her, all in the span of an instant, did he bring his fist down onto her outstretched arm.

It broke.

The nail still buried within her arm, he used blunt force to break her bones.

She screamed, searing the air with a high-tension current, attempting to immediately withdraw. However, Accelerator grabbed her leg and slammed her onto the snow.

Wh-whump…!! A tremor dispersed into their surroundings like the venue of a fireworks show.

As Misaka Worst coughed, he swung his fist down again.

Only the sound of pounding meat, creaking bones, and spattering blood continued.

Misaka Worst had evidently brought a way to interfere with Accelerator’s electrode, but he never gave her an opening to use it, whatever it was. The intense, continuous agony prevented her from gaining even the scant focus to use her ability.

As he did so, he felt the sensation of something that was inside him now slowly beginning to collapse. He wasn’t walking a path that anyone in their right mind would praise him for, but it was still his way of life that he’d crafted with his own unskillful hands—and he could tell that now, he was losing every last bit of it. Even if he made the whole world his enemy, even if he had to fight to the death against other monsters while crawling through a bloodstained world—his wish, his desire, to protect the people who shared this girl’s face at all costs, was crumbling.

Except…

It wasn’t exactly crumbling.

It wasn’t approaching zero.

It was going below that.

He himself realized that he was transforming into a far more terrifying monster than what he was when he met Last Order, or even what he was during the experiment.

“Hah, ha-ha.”

The next thing he knew, Misaka Worst wasn’t moving anymore.

“…It hurts…Misa…ka…” She was managing to inhale and exhale, but several places on her body were torn apart. Her arm was bent in an unnatural direction. Her regular features had swollen. The girls he had to risk his life to protect, one of their number, was at death’s door.

“Help me. Someone…”

Accelerator realized that.

He saw the blood covering his hand, and he dropped to his knees in the snow.

“Gya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! Giiyaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

Only dry laughter seeped out of him.

It was over. He couldn’t move anymore. Everyone from Academy City was insane. He couldn’t keep up with something like that. And he couldn’t make sense of a world that prospered on that sort of power. He was acutely aware of the pitch-black underbelly lurking just behind all the peace and happiness in this world. Exactly the way amiable smiles in television commercials were artificial things created to gain immense wealth, he could no longer believe in any of the light or good that he’d so idealized.

In any case, this wouldn’t be the end.

If they realized that Number One’s spirit hadn’t broken yet, they would no doubt execute a second plan, a third. Would other Sisters appear next? Or would it be a specimen adjusted to have a body like that brat’s? Would they use Yomikawa or Yoshikawa? Or would they use a completely unrelated village or town wholesale, like a disposable tool?

Whatever it might be, this was all he had. After this, his opponent would definitely deliver greater pain than he felt now, and he wouldn’t be able to endure it. He didn’t even want to fight it. Letting himself be broken now would probably be easier for him. The darkness Academy City gave form to simply wasn’t normal.

But then, he heard a stirring.

It was the sound of Misaka Worst, so viciously flattened, squirming on the filthy red snow.

As he recalled it, she’d said she had a plan to use her ability to block Accelerator’s proxy calculations.

The beating earlier probably hadn’t given her the time to use it.

This time, she might use it to counterattack.

For some reason, Accelerator shook his head, still grinning. He didn’t know the meaning behind the act. But he didn’t want to move any longer.

Nothing mattered anymore. The pain in his heart had wiped out everything he’d had inside him just a moment ago. With his spirit in tatters, he decided if he was to be killed now, he didn’t mind.

However.

Academy City was more insane than even Accelerator thought.

He heard a soft brrrrkkk.

It was the sound of a selector, buried in Misaka Worst’s body, rupturing.

“…Eh?”

Whatever happened next, the damage to his heart was now at its height.

There was no greater pain than this.

The tormenting mental attacks Misaka Worst had used on him had ended.

That was what he had thought—and that was why his mind, if only for a moment, had blanked.

All his emotional waves had flatlined.

And a moment later—

Every emotion a human could possibly have exploded in his head.

“Kuh, ha-ha?! Gi-ha-ha-haaaahhh!! Gyaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

The impact caused his vision to spin.

In a world where he could no longer tell the difference between colors, only a small reddish hue remained—and spread.

Something had torn Misaka Worst’s skin, from the base of her skull to the bottom of her neck.

She was losing an enormous amount of blood.

Meanwhile, the girl, lying on her side, was grinning. A smile that seemed to be her negative emotions having hardened on her face. It was like invisible fingers of malice were tugging at her skin from the inside.

Her mouth opened and shut, opened and shut.

In a hoarse, grating voice, she hissed:

“…This…is…your…fault.”

He thought she would spray vomit and excreta everywhere.

“Gfh!! Gah-ha-fhgh!! Gibh, gya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

Those Academy City bastards had designed her body so that no matter what her results were, she would be able to put an end to Accelerator’s life. So that if Accelerator had wielded overwhelming power but tried to settle the matter without killing her in half-done measures, she could tear whatever remained of Accelerator’s mental state into shreds.

Until now, this was how he’d figured they were thinking:

If they could use Number One’s trauma against him to weaken and kill him, that was fine.

Even if she lost, the fact that he’d murdered one of the Sisters would crush his mental state.

But he’d been wrong.

It hadn’t been that simple.

It wasn’t about whether he won or lost.

Whether he won, lost, fought to a draw, escaped, reconciled—this device would always lead to her finishing off Accelerator, no matter what the situation was. That was what this girl, Misaka Worst, really was.

The term breakdown seemed apt.

It was a mental term, and what he experienced was strong enough that Academy City’s number one believed that he really had died.

And Accelerator’s spirit, in fact, had been almost obliterated.

He’d lost the power to interact with other humans as a human.

He didn’t want to keep living in this rotten world. He didn’t even want to change this rotten world. It was too far gone. Too far gone for human strength to do anything about. If he could leave this world, then maybe letting himself sink into the snow was a better deal.

Misaka Worst’s body twitched and squirmed, unconnected to her will.

She’d probably lost so much blood in such a short time that the shock was manifesting its effects.

A result the rotten people from Academy City had produced.

Now, having seen the absolute worst ending, Accelerator…

“You m​o​t​h​e​r​f​u​c​k​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​e​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​r​s​!​!​!​!​!​!”

…finally screamed and rushed to the near-dead Misaka Worst’s side.

His ability was vector manipulation.

The power was one he mainly used for offensive purposes, but that didn’t mean that was the only way he could use it. By reading the direction of blood and electrical signals flowing throughout a person’s body, he could examine the state of a person’s health, and if he really applied himself, he could even perform some medical treatment and first aid.

“Bastards, bastards, bastards!!”

Accelerator’s eyes were bloodshot.

A new objective was born.

It was a paltry resistance.

Yes—

“This was what those Academy City bastards were planning, wasn’t it…? No matter how I struggled, this kid would die, my mind would be ripped to shreds, and someone in a nice warm room somewhere would sip their wine and smile. Pretty clever of them to tie it all together like that…”

His emotions frothed and bubbled up.

As did the necessary impetus for affecting another human as a human.

“In that case!! I’ll wreck everything!! If their plan won’t succeed unless this kid dies, then I’ll save her and ruin it for them!! You shitheads, you better be watching!! I’m about to wipe those shit-eating grins off your faces!!”

An overwhelming anger.

A clear intent lay in Accelerator’s eyes.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!! You scum, always looking down on me, thinking I only have the power to kill people!! I’m about to show you something you’ll never forget!! Just like how I saved that brat from Amai’s virus before—even I have the power to protect people, damn iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttt!!”

8

Her blurred vision never shut off, no matter how much time passed.

Eventually, Misaka Worst was able to interpret that to mean she was still alive.

The selector embedded in her body was for refusing signals from Last Order, and she had intentionally set it off. The explosion was an extremely small-scale one, but several broken pieces had gone deep inside her. Normally, there would have been absolutely no saving her; even an operating room in a hospital outfitted with the latest equipment probably couldn’t have pulled it off. And with nothing but empty snowfield around, there was nothing anyone could do.

She was a disposable specimen.

It didn’t matter if she won; nobody had considered any other use for her. Even in the Third Season project, she was a specimen designed to die before the official network was constructed.

And yet…

…?

No matter how much time passed, a definite death never came.

Only an obscure life continued on and on. Eventually, she also dimly came to the realization that it was because her vitals were stabilizing.

Had she survived?

Had Academy City’s plans failed?

Could this have meant Academy City’s number one Level Five had been able to overcome a malice that operated on a global scale?

That notion was hard for her to accept as someone fine-tuned to pick up more negative emotions from the Misaka network than normal. But the reality was that she’d lived through a situation that she was pretty sure she had to die from. And with the help of a third party, no less.

Misaka Worst stayed quiet for a while.

For someone built to accept only negative emotions, the silence was bewildering, but at the same time, somehow comforting.

However.

“Gya-ha.”

She heard something—an unpleasant noise.

The noise of whatever she’d been about to accept shattering into pieces.

“Gya-ha-ha. No good, no good. Ku-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

The waves of the voice were unstable, going high, then low; loud, then soft. The sound evoked a far greater sense of danger than even the sound of something leaking from a gas main.

Misaka Worst slowly turned her head.

And before her was…

“Ihya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! I can’t hold it in anymore!! That brat’s smile isn’t enough anymore!! Gya-ha! Gya-ha-ha-ha-ha!! I wanna destroy all of it! I wanna tear them all to shreds, every single one of them!! All those bastards who get their kicks making stuff like this and the bastards happy to benefit from it! I won’t leave a single one standing!! Not a single damn one!! Gya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

Boom!! A blast went off.

Misaka Worst thought it was Academy City’s number one having lost himself and flinging his ability in every direction.

But it wasn’t.

She saw black wings.

Wings like a solidification of all despair.

Each of the wings in the pair tangled with the other, crushing each other, plucking the other off. The stirrings of his heart, likely manifesting on the surface in some form. Each time, Accelerator’s mouth unleashed a scream. The air tingled and trembled, and she could tell the white lands of Russia were creaking, hurting, from the energetic aftermath. Fissures sprawled through the foundation like a spiderweb, centered around Accelerator’s feet in the snow.

Misaka Worst didn’t know how far it would expand.

She could have been witnessing the day the world ended.

Maybe what she’d felt just a moment ago hadn’t been a mistake.

Maybe something warm like that flowed within Academy City’s number one Level Five as well.

But.

This shattered all of that.

What had she started? As she began to realize what she’d done, her entire body began to shake in a strange, awful trembling.

9

The anti-air tank attacking the settlement had stopped moving.

The other soldiers, spread out here and there, were the ones who had originally been driving the armored car. They weren’t geared up like they would have needed to be for actual melee combat.

Their proficiency as soldiers aside, a simple comparison of how many people had assault rifles actually showed that the villagers had greater numbers. After all, the things were more widespread than fire extinguishers in these parts.

Each side was stopped in place, their guns aimed at the other battle line.

However, the privateers’ armored car and anti-air tank were both destroyed. The fact lifted the spirits of the villagers more than necessary.

After seeing the people of the settlement standing firm, it didn’t take long for uneasiness to spread through the privateers. If the strings of tension snapped for either side, and this turned into a shoot-out, there would definitely be casualties on both sides. The privateers probably didn’t want to consider that sort of development; they’d come to this battlefield to go on a homicidal safari.

It didn’t take long for their morale to break and their hands to rise.

Maybe the very fact that they believed it would save them meant they still hadn’t realized the true gravity of what they’d been doing until now.

“…We patted them down and threw them into a usable shelter for now.”

Digurv was delivering a report of that nature to Hamazura.

Hamazura had just been putting disinfectant onto his scrapes here and there.

“Oh.”

“To be honest, I wanted to break their legs and leave them for the wild dogs. In fact, some are saying they’re going to try exactly that. But you’re the one who blew up that anti-air gun. They wouldn’t have listened if it wasn’t you who had asked.”

“…”

Hamazura thought for a moment about how heavy the gun in his pocket was.

In the end, he hadn’t been able to shoot the soldiers who had come out of the immobilized anti-air tank. No matter how detestable they were, he couldn’t pull that trigger. If they’d been about to take his life, if it had been that very moment, he probably would have. Or rather, he wouldn’t have had the time to think about it. But back there, he had the time—time to think about how they were people just like he was.

Either way, though it may have been temporary, they’d averted a crisis.

He wanted to stop people’s thoughts from becoming bloodthirsty. Most of the buildings were now rubble, but in his view, everyone could still be smiling. Not shooting the privateers who had surrendered earlier would, one day, surely be a great help to the people in the settlement. He was sure it was okay to think that way.

Despite all that…

“Somebody, come here!! It’s bad! Way worse than the guys before!!”

Someone shouted in Russian. Hamazura didn’t understand it, but it sounded important. He ran there along with Digurv to where many people had gathered in a yet-unbroken building. They weren’t just holding out against the cold. There was something that looked like an out-of-date television. It was showing green dots of light on it.

“It’s an old-gen radar,” explained Digurv. “It picks up metal response reflections and shows them. The closer they are to the middle, the closer they are to the settlement. Things along the ground won’t show up.”

“What are those three dots for?”

“They’re big ones. Maybe over thirty meters long. Doesn’t seem like they’re fighter jets. Which means…”

“Then what are they?”

“Helicopters.”

Digurv’s expression visibly shifted, tense.

“Attack helicopters for strafing the surface. We can’t tell the exact models, but they’re fairly large. If all three are the same kind of attack helicopter, we can’t fight them with what we have in this settlement. Grabbing some mines isn’t going to do anything about them, this time.”

This settlement had assault rifles like AKs, but they probably wouldn’t hit helicopters. Attack helicopters had thinner armor compared to tanks and anti-air cannons, but they could move around faster as well. So fast they might even dodge portable surface-to-air missiles unless you fired right behind one.

On top of that, if they could move quickly, that meant they’d be hard to run away from. If you were just fleeing in a car, they’d catch up in no time. He doubted they could endure swarms of missiles and machine-gun-strafing runs from the air.

“…Privateers again?”

“Most likely. If this was an official cleanup operation, they would have attacked with more than just one kind of weapon. Theoretically, you’d have multiple weapons and service branches and deploy in a combined-arms unit to let them cover one another’s weaknesses. Tactics like that don’t even enter the privateers’ minds.”

Which meant…that in light of the armored car and anti-air tank never returning, a second wave showed up. If it was true, their tenacity of purpose was really something else. Doubtless they would commit to a fierce offensive, less to retaliate for their comrades and more to recover their own besmirched honor.

“We can’t use basements anymore. They’re all pretty damaged from the battle earlier. If they fire missiles at us from above, we’ll be buried alive,” Digurv explained to Hamazura, unfurling a map.

He’d probably already conveyed their general plan of action to everyone else in Russian.

“There’s a big forest to the south of the settlement. The leaves and branches will block them from seeing us from the air. We’ll just have to run through it, spreading out as much as possible, not clumping together. As long as the helicopters haven’t caught on, they’ll focus on the settlement.”

The bit about “not clumping together” got to him. The helicopters probably had sensors that could detect heat sources and magnetic fields. If they moved as a group, the pilots would realize it was a bunch of people. But by moving scattered, and if the pilots mistook them for beasts roaming the forest, the possibility for survival went up.

But that was all probably superficial reasoning. In truth, all they were trying to do was decrease the number of people who died in a single strafing run.

…We can’t get away with zero victims.

Everyone understood that, but they were all too scared to say it.

Hamazura didn’t think that was enough. Looking at the map as Digurv explained, he interrupted and said, “…We might be able to win if we use an anti-air tank.”

“You want to lay down curtain fire to shoot down aircraft? No, this isn’t some Russian military installation. We don’t have any weapons like—!!”

As he was about to finish, Digurv caught himself.

He’d figured it out.

Didn’t Hamazura just put a caterpillar-tread anti-air vehicle out of action?

This time, Hamazura shoved away the map they’d prepared in order to run away and said, “Any heavy construction equipment? Even a power shovel or something is fine! If we can just move all the debris covering the anti-air tank, everything changes!!”

“But we—”

“You want to let yourselves get killed without doing anything?! Anyway, aside from using the anti-air tank, nothing about the plan changes. We’ll still move the battlefield away, and we’ll still get everyone else to hide in the southern forest! We’re better off with as many plans as we can get, aren’t we?! Even if I mess up and the anti-air tank blows up with me in it, they might be satisfied they took down a target with some fight in it and go home!! That’s a hell of a lot better than doing nothing!!”

Digurv ran toward the building’s exit. Hamazura followed behind him.

Apparently, they had an excavator in the settlement to deal with blocked roads whenever tons of snow accumulated.

Hamazura had controlled a heavy construction vehicle like it once when he was robbing an ATM in Academy City.

When they removed the rubble, out came the caterpillar-type anti-air tank.

The treads themselves were undamaged.

However, one of the two turrets set up in parallel was bent way out of alignment. If they fired it like that, they’d be hurting themselves instead. But nobody here had the expert knowledge of how to take one of the cannons off. As a hasty stopgap, they pulled out all the ammunition from the busted cannon. Now even if they fired the cannons, ammunition would only come out of the working one.

“Their accuracy will plummet,” said Digurv. “Why do you think they put two turrets facing in the same direction? It’s because they almost never hit. Even with rapid-firing cannons made specifically for anti-air, they normally never use just one. They put dozens on a single vehicle, put out a huge bullet curtain in a section of air, and then you can only shoot those down if a few of those hit. That’s the kind of weapon they are—”

“I don’t need your whining,” interrupted Hamazura. “We’re not exactly in a situation where we can get top-of-the-line weapons. If there’s even a slight chance, that’s enough. I’ll pass on staring at the sky waiting to be killed, thanks. If there’s any chance left for me to affect something with my own strength, then I’m plenty happy.”

“Do you even know how to operate one of these things?”

“Using the treads is the same idea. It’s probably the same idea as the excavator, right?”

Digurv watched Hamazura shimmy up the dented vehicle and gave a bitter grin. “These things generally need more than one person to move.”

“What?”

“Someone to move the vehicle, someone to move and fire the cannons, and someone to keep an eye on the surroundings and command…You need three people at least. Its specs say it normally needs five.”

Hamazura stopped moving.

If he tried to do all those things himself, he’d have to stop in the middle of one thing to do another. Evasive maneuvers might not mean much against attack helicopters freely flitting about in the skies, but fighting while moving and stopping just to fire completely changed the tactics they could use and their chances of survival.

“Which means I’m coming, too,” said Hamazura. “I’ll ask the others in the settlement. If we get two or three, we should be able to operate it. Can’t say everyone who hears about this will want to fight—that would be more worrying.”

“W-wait a minute.”

Hamazura was at a loss.

A different sort of tension ran through him than that which the thought of going to a battlefield on his own gave him.

“Are you sure? You just said it’s not a sure thing that we’ll be able to win. It’s more than likely a busted-up anti-air tank like this won’t stand a chance against three attack helicopters, isn’t it?”

“Hey!”

Then it happened.

From a different direction, a Japanese voice spoke to them. When Hamazura and Digurv turned around, they both wore dubious looks.

The one who had spoken to them was the Russian soldier who had been suffering from frostbite.

“In that case, count me in. I was assigned to an air base, but before my transfer, I had training in anti-air weaponry like this. You’ll have a better chance of winning if an actual soldier helps you out.”

“…Wh-what are you thinking?” asked Hamazura somewhat cautiously. “Those privateers are with the Russian army, just like you.”

In response, the Russian soldier answered as though spitting out bad food. “Russian army just like you, my ass.”

“…”

“You two saved me when anyone else would have left me to die. And those guys are trying to exterminate you like you’re some kind of bugs…I’m sick of it. Fuck the military. I don’t care if they come after me. In fact, I might as well defect to Elizalina. It’s more important that I repay my debts. I want to use what I have to help the people who saved my life.”

“…All right.” Digurv, too, relaxed his shoulders slightly and grinned. “You seemed to be more concerned than anyone else that we’d get mixed up in the fighting. I don’t want to leave someone like that out to die. If that’s your reason, we can look forward and fight…And you’re not the only possibility I’m betting on. We’re getting pretty sick and tired of the way the privateers do things ourselves.”

When Hamazura heard those words, he silently lowered his head to the two.

He quietly savored how reassuring it was to have people fighting with him.

Then he turned back to the anti-air tank.

The weapon Hamazura had won from the enemy.

The last possibility that might let him save a girl more important to him than his own life—and the people who were worried about her.

Once more, he felt firmly.

That he couldn’t afford to lose.

The privateers, that foreigner mercenary unit on a homicidal safari, would be here soon.

10

Something had broken apart inside Accelerator. Something that had been holding him up.

The black wings, symbols of malice, stretched out on and on, endlessly.

But even that wouldn’t last forever.

The core of his spirit, the part that caused negative emotions to spring forth, was gone. Neither candles nor lighters could retain their flame without something to burn.

That was when it happened.

Something came up at the edge of his vision.

It was a motorcade. Several large vehicles were driving through the snow. They weren’t Academy City’s; the level of the tech used was different. Still, he couldn’t deny the possibility that the shadow group was disguised, purposely using Russian vehicles.

If that was all it was, he might not have paid it any mind.

The typical, astute Accelerator certainly would have cautiously observed. He’d have been on guard, considering the chance that it was the shadow group. But now, having lost his vigor, things that unimportant wouldn’t have been worth thinking about. In the worst case, he might have decided that he didn’t care if he was shot dead because of it.

However.

His heart, the empty husk that it now was, had stirred.

The cause came from one of the big vehicles. A man’s face, seen from the side, riding within.

It was the face of the man who had defeated Accelerator in a switchyard in Academy City. The face of the man who had stopped the experiment, permanently froze the Level Six Shift project, and saved the lives of a little under ten thousand Sisters. He would stand up for himself no matter how critical the situation, would always save lives in danger, no matter how desperate their position. That was the kind of man he supposedly was.

He should have been in Academy City.

Why was he in Russia, of all places?

And.

That hero.

The hero who would properly save others, unlike Academy City’s half-finished number one.

Why was he just trying to pass by, without noticing the threat to Last Order, who was suffering right nearby?

Before he knew it, Accelerator was screaming with all his might.

As he bellowed his throat-ripping roar, he snatched up a boulder buried in the snow and manipulated vectors to hurl it full force toward the motorcade.

The back of the vehicle blew up like a balloon, and the motorcade instantly halted.

He knew he was venting for no reason.

This was originally something Accelerator was supposed to accomplish. Not only had he willfully abandoned it, he was denouncing someone completely unrelated, and he realized full well his anger was misplaced.

However.

“…Weren’t you the hero who saved all the Sisters? Weren’t you the real hero who rescued almost ten thousand clones, every single one of them?”

That man climbed out of the busted truck.

He seemed to have noticed Accelerator and the black wings he was sprouting.

“Then save that brat’s life, you bastard!! Why only her? She hasn’t done anything wrong—why does she have to suuuffffffferrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr???!!!”

With a roar, the black wings crashed outward, spreading even more.

He knew he was wrong.

He was perfectly aware, but he couldn’t stop his own powers anymore.

Last Order.

The symbol of goodness—but even her smile wasn’t enough for him to be able to hold it back.

Academy City’s number one.

Through sheer rage, the monster had gone above and beyond that title—and now, his battle was about to begin.