CHAPTER 5

The Complex Game Board of the Battlefield
Enter_Project.

1

In a town blanketed by pure-white snow, several trucks had been parked in a row.

Inside one rode a spiky-haired boy named Touma Kamijou. Lesser, the young sorceress next to him, rummaged through a paper bag from a global fast-food chain, filling the vehicle with the aroma of meat and sauce. It was wartime, but apparently that hadn’t affected the flow of goods yet.

As Kamijou tossed a nugget covered with a reddish sauce into his mouth, he said, “Gotta say, I never thought I’d be able to enjoy this flavor all the way out here in Russia. Although, they could have at least had a Russian-limited borscht burger or something on the menu.”

“The convenience is all about the food tasting the same no matter where in the world you are. Rather useful when you can’t handle the local cuisine.”

Lesser spoke casually as she spotted the fries she wanted, but Kamijou was no frequent-flying international businessman. In fact, he’d actually been quite aggressive in his desire to try out Russian food.

But he also understood that they didn’t have time to enjoy a leisurely meal right now.

Dipping a fry into the sauce Kamijou was holding, Lesser looked at him seriously and said, “We got this far by mixing in with smuggling brokers, but this is about as far as we’ll get in a vehicle. The Russian base Fiamma’s holing up in is about twenty-five miles away. Just like last time, we’ll sneak inside with the underground train they use to bring things in.”

“…Looks to me like we’re going in from a different direction. I don’t remember a town like this last time.”

“They’d spot us in a flash if we used the exact same route. We even captured a Russian sorcerer at that station, remember?”

Seeming unhappy with just one fry, she shoved four or five in her mouth at a time like a gatling gun and munched them down.

“From hearing the slight accent in their voices, I can tell almost for certain that they mobilized all the sorcerers in this village. Which means we can assume there’s another underground railway set up nearby, maybe in town.”

“Is that how it works?”

“Yes. You always customize secret bases so you can use them easily. It’s easy to make a maze or install all kinds of traps, but if it takes two or three hours to get through every time, it would slow down work. I can say that with confidence, since I’ve set up secret hideouts in Britain before.”

“Huh,” said Kamijou, tossing the last nugget into his mouth. “…What about the people Elizalina ordered to come with us in these trucks? What are they going to do?”

“You can think of them as something like a theater troupe that’s pretending to be human smugglers for us. They have some military experience, but they can’t stand up to frontline Russian soldiers, and they definitely can’t do anything against professional Russian sorcerers. Their job is complete now that we’re in this close. After this, they’ll go back to the Alliance, pretending to have their ‘guest’ on board.”

A complicated feeling welled up in Kamijou—he was more anxious now, but at the same time, he was relieved.

They were up against the top beast of the sorcery side: Fiamma of the Right.

There was no guarantee they’d win. Kamijou, a mere high school student, wanted as much combat power as he could get. On the other hand, he had trouble coming up with anyone who could contend with a monster like that. He couldn’t bring himself to use anyone as a shield after they said they wanted to fight alongside him.

Speaking of which, that also went for Lesser, who was sitting next to him.

When he glanced over at her face, she shoved another salt-covered fry into her mouth, saying “Whaf’s frong?”

“Nothing,” he said to change the topic after she looked at him blankly. “Still—smuggling brokers, huh?”

“Oh, not familiar with the term? I would have thought Japan has quite a lot of them,” Lesser replied casually as she swallowed her food.

“In most countries that share land borders with their neighbors, illegal immigration can be as easy as jumping over a fence in the night. Especially now that we’re in the middle of a war. There’s no end of people who want to leave the country, driven out by the dull roar of explosions and gunfire.”

“…I didn’t know that many people were flooding into the Alliance.”

“It goes both ways,” said Lesser aloofly. “It doesn’t matter if Russia wins or Academy City wins—even a layman can tell it’ll be over quickly. Nobody wants to end up being a citizen of a defeated nation. Fleeing abroad during times like that is a gamble. Your life will change massively depending on what side you’re on when the war ends. If your prediction is wrong, you will have escaped a country only to be marked as a member of the losing one, so you’d have to be very careful…I hear there’s even people who go back and forth between countries a bunch of times. Restless, like they’re waiting for a game of musical chairs to end.”

“…”

What a crappy state of affairs, thought Kamijou.

Those people moving from one nation to another weren’t being forced to—they left their homes voluntarily, hoping to find a place where they could be happy. But lying at the bottom of that idea was anxiety and fear. Ordinarily, nobody would have had to abandon their homes or homelands.

Maybe everyone was like that.

Discarding things they didn’t need to discard, things that shone so brightly, under the false assumption that they wanted to. Maybe that’s what this huge war really was, too.

“We should put an end to it quick,” said Lesser in a carefree tone, shoving her arm into the paper fast-food bag and fishing around. “Fiamma’s the one pulling the strings behind the war anyway, right? If we beat him up, stop the fighting as soon as we can, return peace to the world, and get Britain some hefty reparations while we’re at it, it’ll be a perfect ending.”

“…Yeah.”

Though I’m not so sure about all that reparations stuff, added Kamijou to himself, mostly agreeing with Lesser’s opinion. However it all shook out, it wouldn’t change what he had to do.

“We’ll smash Fiamma and rescue Index.”

“Now that that’s settled, let’s wrap up this nutrient replenishment. With this triple!!”

“Hey, wait, that hamburger’s as big as a vaulting horse. I don’t think you can eat that without breaking it apart.”

More specifically, it looked far too big to fit in the short Lesser’s tiny mouth, but…

“Not to worry. I may look small, but I can fit things in my mouth that are so big everyone around me would be shocked—and I’m proud of it. You can take that in a somewhat lewd way if you want.”

Spouting incomprehensible nonsense as always, Lesser chomped down onto the triple-decker burger. The huge serving of food began to fold in the middle and into her mouth.

And a moment later—

Squish!! Out of the opposite end of the hamburger she was biting into flew a chunk of ground beef that couldn’t fit inside any longer. The juicy meat splattered on Kamijou’s student uniform.

“…”

A moment’s silence came.

Looking highly distraught, Kamijou glanced between his clothes and Lesser’s face.

And then Lesser…

“N-now’s my chance!! I’ll make it up to you with my body!!”

“Why do you have stars in your eyes, and why are you licking your lips like that?! You aren’t sorry at all, are you?!”

2

The roaring wouldn’t stop.

At a spot about fifteen miles north of the Elizalina border, Russia’s land and sky were both a sheer pane of white. And yet, unhealthy-looking black smoke was spurting up through the winter scenery.

Resting in the snow were a tank and an armored car, both resembling empty cans ground down by cogs. Other things lay scattered about—for example, chunks of concrete that were once standing walls and ceilings. This wreckage was the source of the smoke blotting out the pristine white vista.

Death.

That was what it smelled like to Shiage Hamazura.

And yet…the smoke wasn’t from the nearby settlement.

It was from the privateers’ garrison base.

The fortress, defended by top-of-the-line Russian equipment, had been swallowed in a vortex of destruction.

Obviously, Hamazura and the others couldn’t have managed something like that.

The privateers had attacked the settlement twice, but that hadn’t been all the troop power they could have mustered. In any case, more soldiers were on standby. The force they had in reserve probably numbered over five or even ten times that. Bases had a bare minimum number of personnel needed to continue running smoothly.

Then who was responsible?

The answer to that question came into view as Hamazura watched through a pair of binoculars he held in a tight grip.

Blue clothes.

A giant sword.

A tall man who called himself a mercenary.

Before this battle had started, Hamazura exchanged a few words with the man who had brought down an attack helicopter. But he still had no idea what was going on. A saint? Sorcery? The guy was acting like he hailed from a completely alien culture.

Hamazura had only learned a few things.

That the man called himself Acqua. That he had some kind of powers, different from esper abilities. Also, he was apparently on their side—and he would assault the base where the privateers were garrisoned.

It all seemed like a farce.

But…

…Is this some kind of joke? I don’t know what system his power’s based on, but I don’t know if even our Level Five espers could have made it such a one-sided fight.

With every swing of his sword, huge swaths of snow melted into multi-ton masses of water that hurtled at the enemy tanks and armored cars. When a helicopter fired all its rockets at him, the man had answered with twice as many spears of ice, intercepting every single one of them. Soon after, when the water vapor in the middle of enemy lines burst outward in a sphere, the fortress, made of thick reinforced concrete, tore apart like a vinyl umbrella caught in a typhoon.

Supernatural phenomena; a natural disaster: That’s exactly what this man’s huge water attacks were.

Like a giant snake on the hunt, the liquid under his control floated in complete disregard for gravity and spanned dozens, if not hundreds, of meters. Just moments ago, Hamazura and the others had been engaged in a death match with the privateers. Now, it sent a chill down his spine as he watched a one-sided massacre unfold.

“What the hell…?” groaned Digurv, still in the anti-air tank with him. “Is that one of those supernaturals Academy City developed…?”

No, thought Hamazura.

But before he could mount any actual argument, the duel was over.

Except—it had never been a duel.

Destruction. Elimination. Eradication.

Those were the only words that could be sensibly used to describe the battle, which had lasted a scant twenty minutes.

“…I suppose that will do for now. However, this nation is incredibly large, and they will likely replenish their personnel quickly,” said the mercenary in blue, sword on his shoulder, in a level voice.

Hamazura didn’t know when the man had appeared. Just a moment ago, the guy had been standing somewhere Hamazura could only just barely make out through his binoculars.

The mercenary was far from out of breath—which was absurd considering how he’d supposedly just been fighting with his life on the line.

What the hell is this…?

Hamazura opened the vehicle’s roof hatch and leaned out. He scowled immediately at the cutting chill and the stench of smoke, now several times thicker than earlier.

The tall man wearing blue gripped a giant sword in his hand. Its length alone was over three meters, and who knew how many hundreds of kilograms it weighed. No matter how anyone thought about it, that sword was too big for someone to hold in one hand.

Baffled, Hamazura muttered, “I’m gonna ask you again—what are you?”

“Acqua of the Back. A has-been mercenary and a thug.”

He seemed to think he was replying to the question, but it didn’t answer much. Hamazura still didn’t understand anything—like how this man could summon such muscle power that clearly broke the limits of the human body, or even fundamental things, like what group he belonged to or who he was allied with.

Esper powers…?

Hamazura thought back to what Digurv had said moments ago.

He’d been living in Academy City until now, and he naturally tried to process this as the kind of “inexplicable phenomenon” he was used to seeing.

But this was different.

Even now, orbs of water floated about the tall man like he was in outer space, completely unaffected by gravity. They’d protected him from the heat, flames, and shock wave after he blew up the attack helicopter earlier.

Espers couldn’t use more than one ability.

Is he controlling the moisture in his body to augment his muscle strength? No, human bodies are sensitive to changes in internal pressure. If he did that, his blood vessels and cells would just rupture. That doesn’t explain it. Which means…

After thinking that far, Hamazura felt like he was about to be thrown into a new whirlwind of confusion.

Could it be?

Did this mean something, some unknown entity that transcended the normal rules of physics apart from Academy City’s supernatural powers, really existed?

“Hamazura.”

A voice called to him from inside the anti-air vehicle. It was Grickin, the Russian soldier who had fought alongside him. His face, pointed at Hamazura, was drawn with tension.

“This is bad…The radio picked up some transmissions. It’s encoded, so I don’t know what’s being said, but the signal is getting steadily stronger.”

“It’s getting closer,” said Digurv, riding in the same vehicle. “More privateer reinforcements?”

“Wait,” Hamazura instructed, cutting him off. He’d just realized who the radio transmission was coming from.

He checked the binoculars to make sure. Something was near the white horizon.

There were over thirty tanks drawing closer that he could see, as well. They were on a different technological level than the mobile anti-air gun Hamazura was in; the designs were obviously different, but judging from the armor, these newcomers weren’t even in the same league.

And the approaching force wasn’t only tanks.

Advancing behind the cover of the lead tanks, he could see multiple foot soldiers wearing what looked like body armor made from composite materials. The armored cars without any visible guns running alongside the rest of the formation were probably supply vehicles for providing electricity to the force’s various high-tech weapons. In the sky above them were tiny, remote-control aircraft buzzing about, each about a foot long. They seemed to be recon UAVs, but some of the models had thin tubes on their wings. Most likely, they were built for simple bombing runs, delivering the grenades attached to their dart-like tail ends by having them glide through the air.

This unit was clearly different from the privateers they had been seeing until now.

They’d brought more than one type of weaponry.

This was a formation designed for combat, using multiple varieties of soldier and weapon to cover one another’s weaknesses. There wasn’t a single hint of playfulness in their equipment. It left no openings to take advantage of, leaving Hamazura’s hodgepodge team no chance of winning.

Hamazura gulped audibly and then offered, “They’re not privateers…”

“What?”

Digurv frowned. Hamazura answered again.

“That’s an Academy City military force.”

Hamazura had kept his eyes on the infantry marching in the tanks’ shadow. They wore armor-like gear, made from composite material—in other words, powered suits. Even Hamazura, a layman when it came to war machinery, could say one thing for sure: The only people who could put such things to practical use had to be from Academy City.

…Looks like regular, official soldiers. They don’t seem to have any connection to the underworld like us, guessed Hamazura offhandedly.

Of course, there was a possibility that people from that underworld were simply using normal Academy City equipment—but he rejected that idea, not with knowledge but intuition. People from the underworld like Hamazura would never strut around so openly. Even if they tried to behave that way, their “scent” would always be detectable.

“It seems as though they’ve come to occupy this place,” said Acqua flatly, giant sword still on his shoulder. “What now? Shall I scatter them?”

“…No. I don’t know if it lines up with your goals, but if we want to keep protecting that settlement, we better not resist now.” Hamazura shook his head. “I don’t know who you are or where you’re from, but I know you’re a monster. A monster on a level that even someone like me, who’s lived in Academy City, can’t figure out how you work. That means it would be better to purposely let Academy City’s military garrison come here. They’ll occupy the area for the moment, but they’ll be able to protect it for months. Even if the privateers call up additional troops, these guys can deal with them. If we lash out without thinking, it won’t help the settlement’s situation.”

“…” Acqua grunted and nodded slightly. He seemed to have accepted Hamazura’s viewpoint.

“But…wait,” said Digurv instead. “Hamazura, aren’t you on the run from Academy City?”

The question gave Hamazura pause for a moment.

But only for a few seconds.

“…What can I do?”

Academy City’s temperament, while not as bad as the privateers’, would still be difficult to deal with. Hamazura knew that much—he’d fled from them, after all. But at the very least, they’d serve as a bulwark to protect the villagers from Russian tyranny—particularly that of the privateers.

The settlement had been a nice, comforting place. Despite Takitsubo’s sudden arrival, everyone had worried about her condition. But neither Hamazura nor Takitsubo could afford to be caught here by Academy City. They absolutely couldn’t let that happen until they found a means to negotiate.

The only thing they could do was run.

Flee the settlement that Hamazura had personally risked his life to protect.

“I don’t think they know I’m here. But if they use their advanced sensors to search the area, they’re more than likely to find us. Chances are slim that students have been mobilized, but if they had a psychometer or something, they’d catch us right away. I don’t want any of you to hide information about us. Tell them everything that happened here. Don’t do anything that might make those troops suspicious. If you keep a cooperative attitude, Academy City will protect you.”

As he spoke, Hamazura internally reviewed his ideas.

“Of course, Academy City troops aren’t allies of justice. They’re just a combat force, a different kind than Russia’s. But they’ll do their best to take care of useful people who side with them. So if you give them information on us, you can take advantage of them, too.”

“That’s absurd,” said Digurv quietly, though his voice trembled with anger. “Do you think we, for mere convenience, would abandon someone who fought alongside us?”

“Then what will you do? We don’t know when the privateers will get reinforcements. It might be tomorrow, it might be in a week. They might have a hundred people, and they might have a thousand. Are you saying you can fight them all off alone? That’s unrealistic, no matter how you look at it.”

“…But…”

“I don’t plan to cut my life short at this age, and I don’t feel like demanding that from any of you, either. I’ll survive—just you watch. I’ll flee to the ends of the earth to make sure of it.”

As Hamazura spoke, he reached out and rapped his hand on the beaten-up anti-air vehicle’s armor.

“Just this once, have faith in me. Don’t give up so easy. What we carry isn’t cheap—it’s not something you can just throw away using the word war as an excuse.”

The words I’m sorry played across the faces of the men by the mobile anti-aircraft gun.

But they kept it to themselves, so Hamazura decided he hadn’t noticed. Digurv and Grickin had no reason to apologize.

He met Acqua of the Back’s eyes. “I forgot to say something.”

“What is it?”

“I wanted to tell you ‘thanks.’ Nobody needed to die—not me, not the settlement, not the woman I’m in love with—because you were here…I’ll repay you someday.”

He didn’t have time to wait for an answer. Academy City’s forces would occupy that settlement in the near future, then cut off all communications with the surrounding area. He had to get Takitsubo from the settlement and leave this region before that.

After parting with Acqua and driving the anti-aircraft vehicle close to the settlement, he got out of the steel chassis and ran across the deep snow. The residents wouldn’t be in the destroyed buildings. Hamazura and the other fighters had made them evacuate their homes and take shelter in the southern woods. Hamazura hurried in that direction.

He felt like something invisible was weighing down on his back. Along the way, he tripped several times, rolling onto the snow as he desperately headed for the woods.

When he reached his goal, he heard several noises—hushed breathing. Faces were visible behind the trees here and there. The settlers. When they realized the person who had barged into the woods was Hamazura, they hastily rushed out from their hiding places. Someone shouted something in Russian, and a mother came to him with a small child at her side. She was holding an exhausted Rikou Takitsubo.

“Are you okay, Takitsubo?”

“The same goes for you, Hamazura—I’m so glad you’re alive.”

“Sorry. Things are getting dicey again.”

After learning the situation, Takitsubo spoke slowly and calmly, despite a sweat-covered frown appearing on her face. “…The Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations.”

“What?”

“Academy City is steadily taking over Russian territory. At this rate, we’ll never be able to run or hide from Academy City garrisons and their patrols. But if we cross the border, they won’t have a pretext to come after us.”

She was right—Russia apparently shared a nearby border with the Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations. If it was a land border, the security probably wouldn’t be that tight, either. All that was left was to figure out a way to break through. They’d cross the border temporarily to evade the Academy City’s pursuit for the moment, then go back into Russian lands and resume their search for something they could use as a negotiation tool.

Now that they had a plan, they couldn’t dally forever.

Lifting Takitsubo, who couldn’t walk properly, onto his back, Hamazura was about to start trekking over the snow once again. How many miles was it to the border? How many dozens of miles?

And then someone from the settlement—a short old man—tossed something silver and shiny at Hamazura.

In confusion, he grabbed it; it was a car key.

The old man smiled and said something in Russian. Takitsubo translated.

“He says it’s for a blue jeep parked outside the settlement.”

“No, I couldn’t.” Hamazura was upset. “Academy City will probably come after us. If I take this, it’ll make it look like someone from the settlement might have aided our escape. If that happens, we can’t be sure their troops will protect you.”

After he raised that point, the old man said something else in Russian.

According to Takitsubo: “He says to just turn on the engine without using the key. He wants it to look like you stole it without asking.”

“Now that’s something. What are you gonna do if they’re listening in on this conversation with high-performance microphones or telepaths?”

Still, Hamazura and Takitsubo were up against military vehicles and powered suits. It would be impossible to outrun them if he had to carry someone limp on his back while walking through the deep snow.

He gave the key back to the old man, but it seemed like a better idea to accept his goodwill and “steal” the jeep.

When Hamazura began walking from the woods toward the settlement, many pairs of eyes saw him off. The little girl tried to grab Hamazura’s clothes, but her mother stopped her. It was the same mother and daughter that the privateer anti-air vehicle had been chasing.

Readjusting Takitsubo on his back and hurrying ahead as if to shake them off, he muttered, “…I feel pathetic. The best choice I can come up with is to abandon them without trying.”

“It’s okay, Hamazura,” answered Takitsubo, still hanging limp, bringing her mouth close to his ear. “You’re still fighting to protect me. You’re not pathetic.”

As though spurred on by her words, Hamazura continued to run.

Their current destination was the Elizalina Alliance.

And to escape pursuit from Academy City’s heavy armaments, first they’d need to get their hands on that jeep.

3

It was a small room made of stone, in a building that must have been some kind of fortress originally.

The sight of a building centuries old and still in use without seeing much preservation work may have seemed strange for Japanese people, whose dwellings were often built with wood in a part of the world that experienced frequent earthquakes. But indeed, the only updates that stood out in this place were necessities added afterward, like fluorescent lighting and air-conditioning.

Founded several years ago, the Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations was a new up-and-coming country. Therefore, World War III—that massive change in the global status quo—had broken out before they’d built any modern military facilities, and so they seemed to have hurriedly incorporated military equipment like radars into existing infrastructure to transform them into makeshift army bases.

This old fortress was one of those facilities. Many of the men and women going between one door and the next were dressed in crude camouflage gear.

Amid them all stood Accelerator.

He had lost to the Level Zero but after he had been left unconscious in the Russian snow following their battle, he was brought to the Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations thanks to that boy—it seemed he’d talked to them and gotten him transferred into their soldiers’ care.

“How’s my battery? …That good, huh…”

Accelerator raised a hand to the electrode on his neck.

The battery had been drained after several back-to-back fights, but now that he’d obtained a temporary resting place, he’d been blessed with a chance to recharge it. The voltage, current, and plug shape were all different from Japan’s, so he couldn’t simply use the devices he had on hand. Instead, he’d successfully dismantled a local adapter and adjusted the insides.

Back to his usual condition, Accelerator spread dozens of parchment sheets out on a wooden table.

They were the cargo the Russian forces had been trying to transport on that freight train. Scrawled all over them were occult patterns and handwritten incantations, the kind that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror film. He could tell that each of the drawings was done by hand using sticky, waxlike ink. Despite the analog method, however, they were all exceedingly precise. The letters were uniform Latin script, but notes had been added here and there in small Russian characters.

He couldn’t tell exactly what it said. He didn’t even know whether it had any real meaning.

However:

…It seems like some kind of instruction manual. I can tell the pictures here are done in sequence, like it’s following steps for something, but…

Accelerator’s eyes shifted, glancing around until he found a Caucasian man wearing a dirt-cheap camo outfit staring at the parchment with a somehow meek expression. The fluorescent lights, clashing with the centuries-old stone building, made the soldier’s skin appear even paler.

Accelerator asked in Russian, “Do you know what this is?”

Despite making the effort to speak his language, though, the soldier’s shoulders gave a jerk. He seemed to be simply afraid, in addition to being surprised that Accelerator had suddenly addressed him in Russian.

The soldier gave Accelerator a hard look up and down. “…You’re Japanese, right?”

In response, the white-haired, red-eyed monster returned a casual glance and answered the question with another one. “What do I look like?”

The soldier must have spotted the dangerous irritation behind his eyes, and Accelerator was fairly confident that the man wouldn’t be steering the conversation any further off topic. To help the idea along, Accelerator pointed to the parchment again and repeated, “Do you know what this is?”

“No…” The soldier shook his head. “But it looks like some kind of list of magical conversion requirements. I think it’s giving directions on how to cast Roman Orthodox spells with Russian Catholic standards, explaining what to replace and how to replace them. But I can’t tell what kind of spell, exactly, it’s trying to communicate.”

“…”

Accelerator assumed a dubious look, but the soldier shook his head, face paling, seeming to imply that he shouldn’t expect any more than that. As several other soldiers bustled about, only Accelerator was still as they conversed.

The soldier continued. “Don’t make that face. Unlike Lady Elizalina, I’m not up to snuff in this department. I’ve only gotten glimpses of it sometimes while on her personal security detail—I haven’t studied it. If I could chant a spell and make a flame appear in my hand, I mean…I wouldn’t be carrying around these hand grenades here, would I?”

He seemed to be under the false assumption that he’d offended Accelerator for not being able to provide the answer he was looking for, but that wasn’t why Accelerator was currently frowning.

What the hell was this soldier talking about?

Magic? Spells? List of conversion requirements? Roman Orthodox? Russian Catholic? Activation methods? Department? Gotten glimpses? Study? Chant a spell and make fire in your hand?

The words flowed from the soldier’s lips like they were the most natural thing in the world—and every last bit of it was beyond Accelerator’s understanding. It wasn’t a simple deception the man had thought up on the spot. Nor was it spiritualism or a religious take on things. The soldier had just rattled off nonsensical vocabulary as realistically viable techniques. He could tell by the man’s tone of voice. It was no different from what someone would sound like if they were explaining the timing of when to pour wine into the pot as the secret ingredient to a meat dish.

He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

But if there was anything that Academy City’s number-one monster, the crystallization of scientific technology, couldn’t understand…

Then maybe it was the key to solving the Last Order issue that had thoroughly stumped him so far.

The words Aiwass had given him: Go to Russia.

The note the Level Zero had left for him: Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

The key that would draw a straight line between them:

“…Who is Elizalina?”

“A sorceress—or no, rather, a wizard, I believe. That’s apparently what they call casters who prefer to adopt disciples rather than work by themselves. I bet if the English Puritan Church, for example, knew about that, they’d sic some ferocious hounds on her. Lady Elizalina realigned the religious underpinnings of the Alliance and successfully raised and produced sorcerers for real combat. I mean, the Russian Church is one of the three largest religions in the world. It would be crazy to fight them head-on, but she can at least fling invisible spells from afar to maintain a defensive line. Which is the bare minimum requirement to call yourself a historical nation with a mature spiritual culture.”

It would be easier to understand programming language at this point, thought Accelerator. The cultural differences were already well beyond what he could grasp in a few words.

“Anyway, this Elizalina chick—she can decode this parchment?”

“If she could talk.” The soldier sighed. “She’s in a field hospital bed at the moment.”

“Great. I have no idea why I got brought to a place like this, and now my last resort for explaining shit is groaning in the hospital.”

“Is your companion all right?”

The soldier was referring to Last Order.

The girl, who appeared to be about ten, lay sleeping on a sofa along the wall of the room they were in. Her body was limp against the cushions, and she didn’t move a muscle. She had fully lost consciousness. Every time Accelerator remembered that he couldn’t feel the “presence” of a person from her, the silence gave him a faint chill.

“Does she look all right? We had to flee the country for her.”

“All the more reason you shouldn’t move her.” The Caucasian soldier looked between Accelerator and Last Order. “Whatever you want to do now, you can’t keep bringing her along with you, can you? I mean, our hospitals might not be comparable to Academy City’s cutting-edge technology, but maybe you should get her to one. Just having a bed can make a big difference.”

“…I didn’t plan on staying long or getting into bloodbaths anyway. Ideally, I’d like for this to be our goal line, with me solving everything ASAP here and now, then have that stupid kid throw one of her usual annoying tantrums.”

As Accelerator scratched his head, he seemed to remember something else and asked, “Is there anyone besides Elizalina who can decipher this parchment?”

“…The sorcerers who belong to our unit have only gotten training for actual combat, so they can be unfamiliar with more orthodox concepts. I doubt you’ll find anyone aside from Lady Elizalina who could do decoding on this level.”

Which meant he’d just have to wait for the injured woman to wake up after all.

He had the choice of leaving the Alliance and searching for other leads, but like this soldier had said, Last Order’s health was unpredictable. She wasn’t in a state where he could drag her around without a concrete destination in mind.

…It’s in my best interest, but I never thought I’d be keeping my schedule open for someone else.

“When’s the sleeping beauty gonna wake up?”

“If all goes well, in one to three hours. That’s when the general anesthesia wears off…But she did just have surgery. At most, she’ll give the letters a look over. She needs absolute rest, and ordinarily, we’d want you to stay away from her.”

“I see.”

“What about the girl? If you need a bed, say so soon. You just crossed the Eurasian mainland—you know what state the world is in right now. We’re at war. No guarantee those beds will stay open forever.”

“…Yeah, I’d have to be an absolute moron to go into battle with a kid on my back. Considering her health, it might be better to toss her in a hospital or something.

“But—,” added Accelerator.

Ba-bang-bang-bang!!

He abruptly took the gun out of his belt and shot through another nearby soldier’s feet.

The man he’d just been speaking with froze up, sputtering.

In the meantime, Accelerator shot the feet of a few other men and women in the room.

“Spies,” said Accelerator lazily. “If I’m gonna leave the kid to you, I need to make sure her environment is clean as can be.”

Accelerator prodded one of the fallen, immobilized men with a foot. A small microphone and a recording-transmitting device, like the kind celebrities would use, was revealed to be connected inside his clothing via cable. The spies had been monitoring Alliance troop movements and transmitting it to Russia from here. Another possibility was that they’d been feeding poor advice or false information to distract Alliance forces.

His attendant soldier hurried to search the other wounded. Like the first, they all were carrying similarly hidden devices.

“These communicators don’t reach far. There must be a communications officer with real equipment somewhere outside.”

“Naturally, they’re preparing to run away now that we noticed. Or maybe they’ll try something more for the motherland, knowing they’ll die in the attempt.” Accelerator headed for the room’s exit on his crutch. “In exchange for lodging, I’ll mop these guys up for you. I don’t have time to clean out the entire Alliance, all two hundred miles from east to west, but I’ll exterminate all the pests in and around this sector. While I’m at it, I’ll give you a lecture on how to tell which pests are harmful. Then you can handle it yourself.”

“How did you know? Spies come in two flavors. The first shows their strength by organizing into a large-scale group, like the KGB or the CIA. The second doesn’t maintain a name or structured organization—they take all the jobs that would cause international problems if things got into the public record. These people are clearly the second kind. Some teenager from Japan shouldn’t be able to spot them.”

“Not necessarily,” Accelerator replied easily. “If you observe everyone’s subtle traits and habits, you’ll naturally find the ones who stand out against everyone else.”

His words were delivered in such a light tone, so conversational, that it made the soldier shudder.

“This place you’re all standing in now ain’t the only hell out there. If you ask me, darkness in these parts is barely scratching the tip of the iceberg.”

It was instantly obvious whether the intimation was a bluff or not.

And thus, the monster born of the world’s most advanced technology and shaped by the greatest evil, who had been single-mindedly eradicating the darkness, began laying the necessary groundwork.

4

St. George’s Cathedral, London.

“Chapter eight, verse twenty-five. Commencing elimination of entity obstructing remote access operation. Reverse-engineering spell structure of hostile entity.”

A girl’s voice flowed out smoothly.

The damaged record–like noise from just moments before had ceased.

And.

Roar!! Accompanied by an immense gust of wind, red wings sprouted from the young nun in white. They were a hue closer to that of blood than flames; and as intricate magic circles blinked in and out of existence in her pupils, she slowly turned her head, observing.

Index.

Seeing her utterly changed form, Stiyl Magnus scowled slightly. He never made a face when burning enemy sorcerers to a crisp, but he had wrinkles on his brow now, as though he was suppressing some pain.

“OOTFECOTW, TGFOB. (One of the five elemental components of the world, the great fire of beginning.)”

And yet, Stiyl didn’t hesitate to fight.

He’d been entrusted with her life.

He took out a rune card.

“IITBLNL, AIITLOJTPTW. (It is the blessed light nurturing life, and it is the light of judgment to punish the wicked.)

“IFWGH, AIINMWECD. (It fills with gentle happiness, and it is numbing misfortune which extinguishes cold darkness.)

“IINF—IIMS. (It is named fire—it is my sword.)

“MTAMMBFGP!! (Manifest thyself and masticate my body for great power!!)”

No, it wasn’t only one card. In an instant, a multitudes of cards were plastered on every single spot in the room. Too many—it was unearthly.

Flames roared to life.

A column of fire over ten feet tall appeared, coalescing into a human form. The fiery 3,000 degrees Celsius mass was named Innocentius—the Witch-Hunter King.

Index’s head jerked slightly and took aim at her target.

A moment later.

Boom!!!!!!

By the time he heard the tremendous boom ring out, Innocentius had already been mowed down.

The red wings sprouting from the girl’s back had swung around. That simple motion instantly tore through the blazing titan, supposedly supported by thousands of rune cards. It had even prevented automatic regeneration that should have activated. Due to feedback from the damage Innocentius had sustained, the cards surrounding it blackened, now useless.

This was ultimate defense system of the library of magical grimoires—the index of prohibited books that freely wielded the power of 103,000 volumes to protect the storehouse of knowledge from all would-be thieves.

However, Stiyl didn’t have the time to calmly mull this over.

The defeated Innocentius fell apart and scattered in all directions, and the shock wave now bared its fangs at the flame’s summoner.

“…?!”

Stiyl was thrown directly into the wall.

His back took the brunt of the impact, knocking the wind out of him. The girl, magic circles floating within her eyes, watched him calmly.

“Chapter ten, verse three. Confirmed effectiveness of current spell. Increasing spell’s power and scope. Determining most effective method to terminate hostile entity’s life-sustaining processes.”

Foom!! Several red wings extended all at once.

Now extending far enough to scrape against the cathedral’s ceiling, they assailed Stiyl with all the force of a steel trap slamming shut.

He had no time to think of a spell.

Willing his body to move despite nearly having lost its strength from the earlier blow, he rolled to the floor.

The many wings fell.

Only good fortune was responsible for none of them landing a direct hit.

However…

Following a great rumble, the floor of St. George’s Cathedral split wide open.

It swallowed both Stiyl Magnus and the stone he stood upon, dropping them underground.

The very idea of breaking his fall somehow was nonexistent.

Every breath was accompanied by the taste of blood.

Stiyl had fallen faceup, and it took him a few moments to finally realize what had happened.

This was the basement’s Soul Arm storehouse.

Index’s attack had damaged the foundation itself, the backbone of the cathedral’s structure.

Guh…hah…! Blast, how many barriers do you think we had set up? This cathedral is the main base of anti-sorcery operations—how could she break through it all in one attack…?!

Index’s original purpose was to serve as a defensive mechanism to keep important technology and knowledge from passing into the hands of international magic societies.

Even ten thousand versus one wouldn’t be enough to challenge her.

One versus one was the height of folly.

Fighting against her in her John’s Pen state was the same as engaging in a full-scale war.

There was a time when a saint named Kaori Kanzaki was around. Once, there had been an illusion killer named Touma Kamijou.

But now, things were different.

He couldn’t rely on those irregulars.

Then, he heard a scraping noise coming from above.

Stiyl peered up, still lying on his back, and saw the girl staring down at him from the edge of the collapsed hole.

Her lips—were moving.

“Chapter eleven, verse two. Confirmed effective destructive power. Determining optimal course of action—follow up with continuous attacks to deny opportunity to recover.”

The library of grimoires jumped down from the crag-like height without hesitation.

Stiyl rolled to the side with all his might.

A moment later, Index’s feet ruthlessly destroyed the spot where he had been lying.

5

He was pressing the accelerator so hard he thought it might break.

Turning the jeep’s steering wheel with small, jerky motions, Shiage Hamazura desperately tried to keep the car tires from losing their grip on the snow. It had studded tires, which was forbidden in Japan, but on thicker snow like they were on now, the car was still about to slide sideways.

What was the reason he chose to drive so dangerously?

The reason was visible in his rearview mirror.

“Shit!! I can’t even find a chance to shake them!!” he shouted, clenching his teeth.

Behind him, closing in from a distance of a little over 50 meters, were Academy City–made powered suits. The monsters came in a set of five like the main cast of a sentai superhero team, using the high speed of their suits to draw ever closer. Their pursuers slid across the ground with the ease of ice skates and leaped like they were participating in a triple jump event. These guys were keeping up on foot and steadily closing in.

Hamazura hadn’t been able to get out of the encirclement safely. The enemy had troops to spare. Five foot soldiers should be more than enough to handle a single jeep was probably what they were thinking. They were clearly making light of him.

Still, under no circumstances was Hamazura about to provoke them. Fighting even one of those things head-on would end in instant death. A battle against five of them at once wouldn’t last one-fifth of a second. Hamazura didn’t even have the vocabulary to express it properly.

Takitsubo, securely buckled into the passenger’s seat, looked up from the map on her lap and said, “Hamazura, they’re closing in little by little.”

“I know that!! Those bastards, coming after us like pro ice skaters or something!! With all that insane tech on full display, we’re gonna have way more urban legends on our hands soon!!”

“It’s about five hundred meters until the border with Elizalina. Can you make it?”

He didn’t have time to answer.

The four-wheel-drive jeep had been just barely maintaining its balance, but now it was finally beginning to slide sideways. Hamazura hastily turned the wheel in an attempt to recover, but the car veered way off the road—which had no fence or guardrails—plunging into a forest of conifer trees.

Hamazura didn’t have time to hit the brakes.

If he didn’t keep the accelerator floored, the powered suits would catch them.

The scenery change came with an immediate uptick in sensory speed.

Trees thicker than power poles kept almost grazing the jeep as they passed at breakneck speeds.

Five hundred meters…

The powered suits wouldn’t care.

Despite entering the forest at the same speed as Hamazura and Takitsubo, they continued their pursuit without hesitation, as though running across roller coaster rails. The snow-covered ground posed no problem—and sometimes they’d even kick down branches, boughs, and trunks to take bold shortcuts. Their strength hadn’t simply been amplified with the machines. Their sensors and devices for heightening the speed of their decision-making abilities were out of this world. Maybe they had electrodes plugged directly into their brains.

Five hundred meters!!

And then the jeep was suddenly floating.

Inside the forest, the ground wasn’t flat like asphalt.

The jeep had bounced off a slightly inclined bump, launching it up into the air like a jumping platform.

“Oh…sh—?!”

Before he could finish talking, the tires landed on the ground again.

The vehicle began sliding around incomparably more than before. Hamazura desperately manipulated the steering wheel, but in the blink of an eye, they’d ended up spinning ninety degrees sideways.

Still, luck was on their side.

A moment later, the car burst out of the forest and onto a snowfield.

And at the other side: the Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations’ border.

A chain-link fence, about two meters tall and topped with barbed wire, stood between the two nations, but Hamazura had already stopped thinking about it. If he was careless in trying to regain control over the jeep, he’d lose that much more time. Instead…

I’m gonna slide right in!!

They plunged toward it, still going sideways.

The powered suits’ thick fingertips came close enough to reach out toward them, but all they grabbed was air.

An instant later, the metal fence wrapped around the jeep, and the driver’s side window shattered with a brilliant noise. The jeep continued on, hurtling into Alliance territory; a strange sound rang out, almost like the front wheels had had gotten jammed up by what remained of the fence. As soon as Hamazura had that thought, the jeep finally lost what semblence of balance it had left. It continued to spin around and around three more times before ultimately coming to a stop with its front facing the Russian border.

They’d escaped.

It was only about twenty meters, but the jeep had definitely made it into Alliance. The justification for the presence of the powered suits—or rather, Academy City—in this war was only to fight Russia. They couldn’t act freely within the borders of the Independent Nations.

However.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me…,” moaned Hamazura from the driver’s seat.

The powered suits couldn’t lay a hand on them now—but they were still relentlessly coming closer.

They had to be aware of the border.

They knew, and they were ignoring it.

Nestled in their mechanical fingers were certain objects.

Insanely huge revolvers. The muzzles were so big a soda can could fit inside them. They probably shot grenades or something. What if they were actually oversize shotgun shells? How much power could each round possibly have? Either way, this jeep ain’t bulletproof, so one shot is all it’ll take to turn into a ball of flames.

The suits wasted no time aiming at them.

No voices to threaten them or give them a warning.

Hamazura immediately glanced at the driver’s side door handle, but outside was covered in broken fence fragments; even if he tried to open it, it was staying right where it was.

I’d forgotten, he thought, staring at the muzzles blankly like they were tunnels connecting to death.

This wasn’t a sporting event.

This wasn’t a card game.

It was actual combat.

Hamazura had fled through countless back alleys in the City—didn’t he know best that nobody would step in to referee if a weakling or loser cried foul?

He didn’t even notice his mouth drying out.

The powered suits’ thick fingers, riding on the giant revolvers’ triggers, moved.

And then—

Hamazura heard a noise like fireworks going off. Not the bang when they exploded—it was the sound of the firework itself shooting up high into the sky from the ground.

He frowned.

There was no time to see where it was coming from.

Because a moment later…

Fwoosh!!

The national border transformed into a straight-edged sea of fire, engulfing the powered suits.

The scene looked like a joke.

The blast hadn’t flown off in every direction like it should have. The flames spread unnaturally, like someone had poured oil on the ground in a line. Their height was about ten meters, and the length reached a good five-hundred. The jeep’s front windshield shattered to pieces. A fair bit of distance separated them from the epicenter, but the intense light and heat blew straight into Hamazura’s and Takitsubo’s faces. The jeep itself, which had come to a stop in the snow, seemed like it slid a few centimeters when the shock wave passed.

“Wh…what?” squawked Hamazura, confirming that he could still use his own voice. “Napalm…?”

“Based on the sound we heard right before it…They must have been rockets loaded with liquid explosives.”

Takitsubo seemed like she was barely breathing.

But she was still alive.

He didn’t know who was responsible, but for the moment, he figured they should get out of the car now that it was unusable and take refuge inside the Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations. However…

Bam!!

It was the sound of crumpling metal.

Someone was standing on the jeep’s hood. It was unbelievable, but the person appeared to have fallen right out of the sky and landed there.

From the driver’s seat, Hamazura could only see slender legs.

Since the person’s heels were facing them, their face must have been looking toward the wall of liquid flames, where several powered suits writhed.

Despite the raging inferno, they were still operating properly. However, when they saw the person standing on the hood, they edged…away. A moment before that, though, Hamazura had seen them pause for just an instant. And then, as though withdrawing deeper into the wall of flames, the powered suits began to retreat.

The person on the hood seemed to have rescued Hamazura and Takitsubo from their crisis. But who was it?

The answer came a moment later.

Their apparent savior, who still had their heels facing them, used one of those heels to lightly tug on the broken windshield’s frame. At least, that was what it looked like. But the simple gesture tore the jeep’s roof off with a loud riiiip, completely separating it from the vehicle.

Grrk-grraaa!! came the tremendous noise as the view from the interior expanded all at once.

And dominating that new view: a monster with white hair and red eyes.

Shiage Hamazura knew who this was.

The monster’s identity:

“Accelerator…?!”

“Great. Looks like my search for nearby spies got me caught up in some extra bullshit.”

The monster spoke as though he found all this truly annoying.

“Spill it. Everything you know.”

6

“You have me at a loss.”

In a field hospital—well, in a stone fortress that had been around for centuries, a building that the staff had simply wheeled medical equipment into—a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman spoke in Japanese.

The woman, sitting up in bed, had bandages wrapped around various spots. But even disregarding them, she didn’t appear physically fit. Her skin was more wan than fair, she sported large rings under her eyes, and her body was more bony than it was slim. On the whole, she was the kind of person who might have been beautiful if someone made her go on a sumo wrestler’s diet for half a year straight.

Elizalina.

In a melancholic manner, the woman after whom the Alliance was named held her slender hands to her head.

“…If there was even a chance to use recovery magic, I’d like to do something about myself first in this situation.”

“Ahhh. Uh, sorry.”

“No need to apologize. I’m the one who claimed I didn’t need to rest, and that only resulted in my aide needing to perform emergency surgery on me.”

She seemed to be wounded in her own right, but it sounded like she’d treat Takitsubo. Mentally thanking her, Hamazura was still confused.

What was re-coverie majik supposed to be?

For a moment, he thought she’d learned some sort of incorrect Japanese, but Elizalina clearly had a better command of the language than the idiot Hamazura. If he took her words at face value, then…what did that mean, exactly?

Without thinking, he glanced over at Accelerator, who clicked his tongue at him and looked away.

Hamazura’d heard that the Independent Nations might have some kind of special medical technology that Academy City didn’t. He didn’t know whether it could alleviate Takitsubo’s symptoms, but he’d figured that it would be worth asking. That was why he’d carried the limp young woman on his back to this field hospital, and yet…

Recovery? Recovery magic— Am I hearing that right? Like in RPGs? Or is it related to medicine somehow…Like convalescence? But wait, what about “magic”? Is that a medical term around here?

More question marks were popping up in his mind by the second, but he didn’t ask them immediately because Elizalina had talked about it so fluidly and naturally. It could have been a con, but with all the words coming one after another without giving him a chance to interrupt, it made him feel like there had to be some kind of logic behind it.

Elizalina ignored him and turned her head.

Elizalina glanced over at Takitsubo, just barely sitting up in a small chair, and another girl of about ten years, lying asleep on a bed. She’d been called one of the oddest names Hamazura had ever heard—Last Order. Was that an ability name or something?

“I’ll start with my conclusion.”

Elizalina pointed to Takitsubo, then Last Order, from her bed.

“The girl in the tracksuit, I think I can manage. The little girl’s condition doesn’t look promising. That is all.”

“…” Accelerator, still leaning against a wall, twitched an eyebrow.

Hadn’t Last Order come here first?

Hamazura blinked; Elizalina had made the declaration calmly—or put another way, cruelly. “Uh, wha?” he stammered. “What do you…? You think you can manage?”

“I suppose you wouldn’t understand if I told you it was sorcery.”

“What?”

“I suppose you wouldn’t understand if I told you it was sorcery,” she repeated. She didn’t seem willing to proceed with the conversation until he offered some kind of reaction.

Hamazura nodded for now. Sorcery? What’s sorcery?

“Leaving aside whether it really exists or not,” she said casually, cutting out the most important point, “you are familiar with how witches and whatnot have always done occult rituals since ages past, right? Leaving aside whether they have any real effect, in an era when people believed in it, you know that rituals were performed based on a certain sequence of actions, right?”

“What, like wrinkly old women stirring big cauldrons and stuff?”

“You understand that such rituals used all sorts of herbs—well, in modern day, plants close to what we refer to as narcotics, as well as poison taken from animals and such, right?”

“??? Hang on a second. What does all this have to do with Takitsubo’s symptoms?”

The cause of Takitsubo’s affliction was Crystals, created by Academy City’s science and technology. All this talk of strange, occult spells didn’t seem very helpful for fixing it.

“Leaving aside for now whether it is simply a hallucination or whether it truly provided supernatural effects,” she said, sounding strangely like she was implying something, “it means that since rituals that dealt with poison were so rampant, they would have orally passed down methods to perform them safely. For example, training yourself to grow used to the poison little by little so you don’t break down. Or antivenom methods that heal by removing the toxins accumulated in the body.”

“That’s— Uh, what do you…?” Hamazura almost shot out of his seat. “You mean you can cure her?!”

Elizalina stopped him with a hand. “That’s right. The girl in the tracksuit and the little girl each have their own symptoms. The little girl essentially has toxins perpetually being injected into her, so even if you remove it temporarily, it’ll fill back up again. But with the girl in the tracksuit, she should manage if we can remove what’s accumulated inside her. I don’t mean to say that I can completely cure her, but she’ll be a lot better off than she has been.”

Was Elizalina talking about the Crystals? Either way, her theory was correct—if they could remove the Crystals from Takitsubo’s body, she might not see a full recovery, but her condition would immediately improve. He was suspicious of how far civilian medicinal methods could go when dealing with Crystals developed by the cutting-edge Academy City, but even health methods that seemed fake at a glance sometimes revealed scientific underpinnings if examined closely, and it wasn’t rare that new medicinal techniques were devised based on such inspired breakthroughs.

“…Okay.”

Slowly, hope was building inside Hamazura.

Without thinking, he embraced Takitsubo.

“Hell yeah!! We did it, Takitsubo. It’s a little different from what we planned, but coming to Russia was the right move after all!”

“Hamazura. You’re hurting me.”

“Sorry! But I just, I just…!!”

Seeing that Hamazura was on the verge of tears, Takitsubo, even as she complained, softened her expression a little and gently rubbed his back.

“…”

Meanwhile, Academy City’s strongest Level Five leaned against the wall quietly, arms folded.

This place held no clues to save Last Order, either.

Just a few hours earlier, hearing that news might have caused intense impatience and fear to burn within him. Or maybe he would have raged, demanding that Elizalina relieve Last Order’s pain, even for a second or less, claiming even a futile struggle was enough for him.

Something inside him seemed to be changing, little by little.

Like how steel’s properties changed after burning ardently, then suddenly cooling down.

…Yelling and throwing a temper tantrum isn’t going to make the situation any better, he thought, digesting everything he had learned. Either way, I know we don’t have much time. Which means I definitely don’t have time to waste on pointless shit anyway. If I struggle for stopgap measures and use up all the time I’ve gained, it’ll catch up to us in the very end.

Making the decision immediately, Accelerator took out the sheaf of parchment. “Feel free to give your treatment in your way. But first, answer my question. Can you read this thing?”

“Given time, I believe there’s a possibility I could.” Elizalina nodded slightly. “The text on the surface is only a foothold for decoding the contents. From what I can see, it looks like Russian Catholic, so I might be able to, but it will probably take a while. Do you want to leave it with me anyway?”

“No.” Accelerator waved the parchment a little as if to confiscate it. “I just needed to know if it was possible. You focus on treatment.”

“I…”

And then Hamazura, who had been listening to them, opened his mouth to speak.

But he couldn’t form any actual words.

Accelerator sniffed at him. Maybe the guy assumed being openly joyous about his own companion being saved was rubbing salt in Accelerator’s wound, since there was no end in sight for him yet.

“I don’t have time, either. I’m gonna get going, if you don’t mind.”

As Accelerator moved toward the door on his crutch, it wasn’t the speechless Hamazura but Elizalina who asked him this, not particularly hopefully: “Any leads?”

“Maybe not, but I’ll find one.”

After leaving the hospital room, Accelerator called out to a soldier walking down the passage. This wasn’t a peacetime medical facility. Originally, it was a fortress designed for war—they’d simply lugged some medical equipment inside. It was more military than anything else.

“How are those spies I weeded out?”

“We’re, uh, interrogating them, but things don’t look hopeful,” said the soldier, withering. “We’re not experts at coaxing people to talk, and Russian spies get assigned to several small cells for a single operation. It’s possible they don’t even know any intel beyond what they needed.”

“That so.”

“Where are you headed? I can bring you there if you want.”

“Don’t bother,” Accelerator said, waving a hand haphazardly at him. “I’ll try going after an information source who’s a bit more reliable.”

The soldier frowned, but Accelerator wasn’t duty-bound to explain anything more to him.

After leaving, Accelerator walked through the long passage to a different hospital room from Elizalina’s. Without knocking, he opened the door.

The occupant was someone that, strangely, wasn’t tied up.

Maybe that was another of the Level Zero’s ideas.

“…Misaka Worst,” he muttered.

The girl sitting on the bed, who looked about high school age, looked at him with a scornful glare.

A unique human clone created in a project called the Third Season, based on the third-ranked Level Five’s somatic cells.

She wore mostly white combat gear for her clothing, but her right arm hung from a cast and a belt. Accelerator had snapped it when he became enraged during their battle. She had large pieces of gauze in other places, too, like from behind her ear to the back of her neck.

Two enemies.

Two people who would stab each other in the heart without so much as a word passing between them.

“What might’cha be lookin’ for today?”

Just by shfiting a few millimeters, Misaka Worst created an expression that would have made anyone uncomfortable.

It seemed almost as though she’d prepared it beforehand.

“If you saved Misaka in that situation, her only value would be information. Unfortunately for you, Misaka doesn’t have the programming to tell you whatever you want. Which means it’s as clear as fire what happens next. Still, even though it was necessary, healing Misaka only to break her all over again shows what good taste you have.”

“Help me.”

“With what? Why? How?”

“The Russians planted some bugs and I found a bunch. They’ll spit out fragments of information, some real and some lies. Figure out which is which for me. With your knowledge, I might find a clue.”

“Your reasoning?”

“The timing of your attack.” Accelerator shook the rolled-up stack of parchment. “It was right after I tried to ask some lady named Vodyanoy about this parchment. Your interruption felt contrived. Maybe they were just manipulating you to make sure I didn’t find a lead. It’s possible that if I combine the intel in your head and the Russian spy information, I’ll come up with something.”

“Not that. What’s your reasoning that Misaka needs to help you?”

Misaka Worst grinned.

Her words seemed to purposely place herself in a dilemma. Perhaps a person who had gazed upon a world through eyes laden with malice wouldn’t feel any hesitation at being hurt.

However.

His face remaining steady, Accelerator answered, “The Third Season isn’t on the winning side or anything, here. Unless you’re more of an idiot than I thought, you know that.”

“…”

“Those guys in Academy City plan to use the Misaka network for something. Meanwhile, you came after the kid and me to reconnect the malfunctioning network…But why? I don’t know how many thousands of somatic cell clones have been created since the Third Season got going for real, but if you’re all the new network, you share the same fate. Either someone will use and discard you for their own ends, or they’ll reconstruct the network without even being able to do that. Whichever happens, you’re stuck. We’re talking about people who consider the slaughter of twenty thousand puppets to be a success. I’m sure you realize they’re not gonna use you in any kind of decent way.”

“Is that why I have to help you?” Misaka smirked. “To join hands with not only an enemy, but one who stands at the dead center of hate and malice?”

“You said you had a mechanism that prioritizes picking up negative emotions from the network, like malice or loathing or whatever, right?”

“So what?”

“Is that shitty, evil brain of yours really considering something as admirable as staying loyal to your master who’s using you as a disposable pawn? You know, I heard from that kid that not even one more of you can die right now.”

“Even if that was true, that doesn’t mean listening to you will solve anything. It would just shorten Misaka’s life span, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah? Then it’s time to make a deal.”

“What?”

“Project Dark May.”

“…You can’t be serious.”

“A project that tried to apply my ability-control method to boost espers’ personal realities. They apparently got a little out of it, but never anything that led to a Level Five. The only way for you to be someone they can’t replace is to gain abilities the other Sisters don’t have. So? If you analyze my fighting style, you might be able to find a way out.”

“…”

For a few seconds, there was silence.

It wasn’t time used to think.

Her life wasn’t important to her.

Anyone could have seen that from her words and actions thus far.

The scales of this deal tipped based on whether it would be fun. Whether it was worth getting a taste of, even if it meant turning her back on the giant organization of Academy City.

She was giving it close consideration.

Rolling the malice around in her mouth, tasting it to see if it was worthy.

And then she replied with a smile.

In accordance with her production objective, Misaka Worst took up her malice once more.

“Misaka understands…Yeah, that would be more like this Misaka. Probably more effective than bringing that painfully adorable command tower’s face of suffering in, in an appeal to goodwill or charity.”

“I’ll find a clue to wiping out the kid’s ailment. You look for a different route so they don’t use you and lose you. We’ll fight Academy City. We’ll outsmart them. Our interests are aligned now. If you get it, quit whining and do something.”

“Still, I have to say…”

Misaka Worst rose from the bed she’d been sitting on, giving a slight wave of her elbow on her right arm, fixed in place by the cast.

“They tuned Misaka specifically to kill Academy City’s number one. Can’t believe the day has come where even after all this, she’d give one of those insincere business smiles in agreement.”

Her allusive words were probably something like a personal quirk; she expressed negative emotions from the network easily. She’d rub him the wrong way, even if she didn’t mean to. Especially when it came to interactions with Accelerator, she’d always do that.

In response, Accelerator glanced at her cast, then moved his lips, his next words barely coming out.

“…Sorry. That was my bad for letting them manipulate me like that.”

For a moment.

Misaka Worst’s face, painted over with malice, took on an expression that really didn’t seem to be thinking anything, like her thoughts had ground to a halt. Frankly speaking, it was a blank look.

“Pff-hya!”

And then.

Misaka Worst, who had just stood up on the floor on her own feet, rolled back onto the bed again.

“Ah-hya-hya-hya-hya!! What the hell?! What the hell was that about?! They went through all that to give me a body, tuned me specifically for the battlefield, and now this!! They could have at least put me at the top of the evil ladder so everyone hated me! Seeing you make such a meek little expression is really calling my own existence into question here!! Hya-hya-hya-hya-hya-hya!!”

“…To hell with villains,” spat Accelerator in response as Misaka Worst held her stomach and flailed her arms and legs. “I got to the top—and that didn’t make the kid’s life the least bit safer. I don’t have a reason to bother with that anymore.”

Yes.

Neither that Level Zero nor that monster named Aiwass belonged strictly to good or evil to begin with. If he wanted to fight people like that, he couldn’t stick to an easily defined side.

Tears forming in her eyes, her voice strangely refreshed in contrast to her sneering, Misaka Worst asked, “A monster like you that’s so deep in the mud—even if you got out of the darkness, where would you go?”

“Hell if I know. I’ll find a place,” answered Accelerator, sounding for all the world like he found simply replying to her annoying. “Both of us are monsters those Academy City bastards purposely programmed hate into…I doubt I can abandon all that responsibility, and I don’t want to think about it, but at the very least, they cast their lines, and we took the bait like dumb-ass fish. Which means what? Reaching the pinnacle of evil wasn’t fighting against them—it was literally just running along the track we were supposed to be on.”

“…”

“This time, they’ll pay for this. We’ll rebel against them for real. I’m sick and tired of dancing in the palm of their hand. And I don’t care if it means doing things that don’t suit me.”

As he spoke, Accelerator slowly reached out with his free hand.

Almost as if asking for a handshake from a compatriot he’d trust his back to.

“Please.”

In that instant, Misaka Worst fell silent, as though time had stopped.

But that didn’t last more than a few seconds.

As if her pent-up feelings burst out all at once, Misaka Worst cradled her stomach and swung her legs around on the bed, back and forth, tears even coming to her eyes. “Hya-hya-hya-hya-hya-hya-hya-hya!! Are you stupid? Are you stuuuuuuupid or something?! Wow! That idiotically serious look is just wow!! Ah-hya-hya-hya-hya-hya-hya!!”

Rolling on the bed, she continued her bizarre cackle, this time hysterical enough to make one wonder if her diaphragm had actually torn.

But eventually, she curled up, and from that position, she sprang to her feet.

She firmly grasped the hand extended to her with a smack!!

A sharp sound echoed in the hospital room, similar to the kind made when catching a baseball with a baseball glove.

For her as well, someone drowned in malice, the act of taking someone’s hand must have demanded determination in its own right. And Misaka Worst had overcome it. Their linked hands, the handshake between two who had once been after each other’s lives, proved that.

Misaka Worst stood up, hand still in the grip, like she was a wife being escorted. Giving a mean-spirited smirk, she spoke to the one who was her fated enemy. “Same goes for Misaka. But isn’t this the first time you’ve ever held someone’s hand like this?”

“…No,” murmured Accelerator, looking away slightly. “I’ve done that a lot before—with an annoying kid who has the exact same face as you.”

Recalling the one girl due to the sensation of their connected hands, he renewed his resolve.

This wasn’t the end.

Once more.

Without fail.