Chapter 11

The battle between First High’s band of students, faculty, and attendees who were evacuating through the underground tunnel, and the armed guerillas who had followed them, was nearing its end.

The evacuees numbered more than sixty. Given that the venue had been attacked right after First High’s presentation, the number of students from the school who’d offered support was at a maximum.

While lamenting their unfortunate stroke of fate, Azusa managed to keep at least a facade of calm as the student council president.

Roars rang out farther up the passage, an exchange of gunshots and shock waves. It was the sound of Sawaki on the front lines, knocking over the handgun-toting guerillas.

They’d gotten everyone to cooperate in disabling the enemy’s main weapons—assault rifles, submachine guns, and the like. Azusa had personally used a spell that placed an air mass inside a gun’s muzzle to make it burst apart, disabling two rifles alongside their users.

She could see the results in front of her. Though this was a tunnel system, it wasn’t the kind of secret passage from premodern times. It was very brightly lit.

And with all of their destruction, guerillas lay on the underground passage floor, covered in blood.

She wanted to squat on the ground and close her eyes from the gruesome sight. But she desperately held back her fear, keeping in mind the duty bestowed upon her as a representative of the student body.

Azusa had little knowledge regarding magical warfare techniques and combat command, but she didn’t need to in the end: The members of the security team, carefully selected from the club committee and disciplinary committee, formed the main part of the group, thus far preventing the enemy from closing in.

Azusa fought back the bile rising in her throat and watched as Hattori and Sawaki, who had come running to them earlier, routed the guerillas. Watching was all she could do, but she felt it was still her duty to see this through to the end.

The enemy hadn’t been numerous, so thankfully, none of their group had died.

However, magicians weren’t immortal.

If you cut them, they would bleed, and if you shot them, they would die.

Magic-based defenses weren’t all-powerful, either. If a bullet’s kinetic energy was higher than a magical barrier spell’s event-altering force, it would pierce right through.

So she felt it an unforgivable betrayal to avert her eyes from her allies, who were putting themselves at the forefront of risk to protect the students like her, who weren’t cut out for battle.

Azusa watched carefully as Sawaki punched and kicked down the sporadically appearing guerillas and as Hattori offered magical support fire from behind him.

One guerilla fighter popped out from behind an obstacle, and Sawaki knocked him out before he could do anything.

Their enemies were informal soldiers of East Asian descent; their garb wasn’t immediately distinguishable from civilian wear. You could tell them apart right away, once they brought their assault rifles and other big firearms to bear, but with them hiding handguns and combat knives as they approached, it was difficult to tell them apart from the civilians who had fled from the surface with them.

So, Sawaki gave up any pretense of trying to tell them apart. He hardened his defenses and struck down anyone who came to attack. But he could only adopt such a recklessly violent tactic because of his strength and heightened defenses.

Air Armor, a composite convergence-/movement-type spell: It constructed a layer of compressed air at relative coordinates one to two inches from his body’s surface, which would bring any approaching object’s relative velocity to zero.

This layer of air, formed along the curved surface of the human body, could cause high-speed, low-mass bullets to stray from their paths if he turned his body to lessen the angles of approach.

He immediately calculated the bullet’s trajectory by the barrel’s direction, then took the necessary evasive maneuver.

It wasn’t only magic, and it wasn’t only martial arts. His speed and technique were a fusion of both, and it made his foolhardy tactic of counterattacking bullets possible.

A fresh enemy lunged at him, slashing with a large knife.

Sawaki used a multicast to trigger an acceleration spell on himself.

His fist sped up to the speed of sound.

Then his fist, veiled in a layer of air, slammed into the sonic barrier.

The guerilla flew away with a boom.

The force behind the attack seemed excessive, but it was also to ward off new enemies.

It started to look like, for all the enemy’s repeated threats, they were getting absolutely nothing out of attacking the students.

But just as human stamina was limited, so, too, was their determination. Sawaki’s attack had hit two guerillas—the second having tried to slash from behind his ally—and smashed them into the underground passage wall together. And that, at last, was enough to break their morale.

It was when he saw out of the corner of his eye a mean-spirited classmate hurl a statically charged vapor mass after the fleeing rogues that Sawaki finally released the armor magic protecting himself.

Fujibayashi’s team was a small one, not even amounting to a squad. It consisted of only two off-road vehicles plus eight people (including Fujibayashi), but all of them had an air about them that intimated considerable skill.

“Mayumi, unfortunately…not everyone can fit,” said Fujibayashi with an apologetic look.

The veteran air each individual soldier gave off had been overwhelming Mayumi. “Ah, no, I was planning to evacuate on foot to begin with…”

“I see. You won’t be able to go very far like that. Where are you fleeing to?”

Fujibayashi had probably spoken to Mayumi rather than Katsuto because she was a familiar face, but Mayumi wished she’d consult him instead. He was doubtlessly more accustomed to these situations than her.

“The Hodogaya force has made Nogeyama their base of operations, and they’ve split into platoons to mop up the guerillas,” explained Fujibayashi. “We haven’t seen any movements from the camouflaged enemy ship in Yamashita Wharf yet, but it will almost certainly land a task force very soon. When that happens, the coastal regions will be caught right in the middle of the combat, so I think you would be better off fleeing inland.”

“Umm…I think evacuating to the station shelter as planned would be a better idea,” said Mayumi, unable to drive the doubt from her voice. She looked at Katsuto.

“Yes,” said Katsuto, nodding immediately. “That would be best.”

Mayumi sighed in relief.

The corners of Fujibayashi’s lips turned up in amusement, but nobody, Mayumi included, noticed her modest smile. “We’ll shore you up with cars in the front and back, so please come with us. We’ll drive slowly, so you’ll be fine,” she said, heading for one of the vehicles. Mayumi and Mari followed her.

But Katsuto, instead of starting to walk, called out from behind. “Lieutenant Fujibayashi?”

“What is it?” she answered with no pause whatsoever, spinning around. The act looked swift enough to imply that she had expected this.

“I understand this is incredibly selfish, but would I be able to borrow one of your cars?”

That’s crazy, thought all the assembled freshman ears. The group only had two cars, and they weren’t just for ferrying people—they were for carrying weapons and ammunition.

But surprisingly, Fujibayashi only asked, “Where would you be taking it?”

“The Magic Association branch,” Katsuto replied without hesitation. “As a member of the Master Clans Council, though only a proxy, I must fulfill my duty as a staff member of the association.”

His tone reverberated to the pit of their stomachs. It was well beyond youthful heroism; it contained the resolution of someone with a mission.

“All right.”

Fujibayashi’s answer to that was truly a simple one.

“Sergeant Tateoka, Corporal Otowa. Escort Juumonji to the Magic Association’s Kanto branch office.”

Instead, Katsuto was the one unable to hide his bewilderment as Fujibayashi named two subordinates and lent him one of the vehicles. Then, she got in the other one, stood on its bed, and called out to Mayumi’s group, “Let’s get going. There’s no time to waste.”

Third High’s representatives and cheering group had decided on their course of action: to evacuate using the bus they had come in.

“Why did it have to be this far away…?”

“We can’t help it. That’s just how the city’s made.”

Their bus was parked in a large-vehicle lot a good distance away from the international assembly hall. When Masaki complained about it, Kichijouji rebuked him rather sharply.

It was already fortunate simply that they’d planned to have the driver wait here so they could go home after the competition instead of staying the night. The parking lot might have been far away, but it was still closer than the pier at which the evacuation boat would arrive, so Kichijouji considered complaining at this point reprimand worthy.

If there was one thing that made him feel uneasy, it was that the parking lot was south of the hall. In other words, it was near the pier where the camouflaged combat vessel was berthed. Still, the Third High students had a strong militaristic sense, so they were actually in high spirits, wanting to “kick the asses of those low-life invaders.”

Having been forced to disarm themselves on the stage earlier seemed to have just kindled the flames even more.

That optimistic stance made Kichijouji nothing but more uneasy. “Strong militaristic sense” was easy to say, but only a handful of students had any real combat experience, with Masaki being at the top of the list. Kichijouji himself had no combat experience he could call real, and the teachers supervising the trip were all academic types.

In this world, only the feelings you wish were wrong turned out to be right.

The resignation that a certain mid-twentieth-century ship captain had felt upon discovering this unamusing rule must have felt like this, thought Kichijouji, because:

Immediately after arriving at the parking lot and laying his eyes on their bus…

…it took a direct hit from rocket artillery.

Fortunately—the only fortunate part about this—the rocket landed near the bus’s back end, so the driver panicked and rolled out before he could get burned. The bus was actually made using the same kind of anti-heat, anti–shock wave armor plating and materials as military vehicles, so despite the glass breaking and the surface charring, it had no holes in it.

One of the tires, however, was done for. The heat and fragments had torn it apart.

“Bastard!” burst out Masaki from next to him.

In an attempt to be cautious and calm, Kichijouji turned his thoughts to assessment. To change the tire, they’d have to keep the enemies away from them. He decided to let his friend break loose as much as he liked.

He left Masaki’s side and went to where the teachers were. “Sensei.”

“What is it, Kichijouji?” asked one, his voice almost trembling, but nobly attempting to stay strong.

If Kichijouji didn’t have so much faith in his classmate, he would have certainly sounded the same way. “Let’s leave the enemies to Masaki while we get ready to change the tire.”

“Get ready to? How…?”

“This parking lot is reserved for large or otherwise unique vehicles. They have a facility for doing simple repairs, so they should have spare tires there.”

“I—I see! All right, anyone free, go with Kichijouji and look for a replacement tire!”

His teacher included “anyone free” because several others had gone straight into battle mode alongside Masaki.

Kichijouji, who was the calmest here despite being a freshman, took the initiative naturally. The other Third High students—classmates and seniors, and even the teachers—obeyed his instructions. They would make it out.

The First High gaggle, led by Azusa, arrived at the underground shelter after the other schools.

They were late because they had more people than the others: sixty in all.

Normally, that wouldn’t have been a big number. But it was a lot to keep so many evacuees together and secure, not to mention cautiously advancing while taking down attackers. The task was definitely a double-edged sword.

During a disaster, even doors were a problem, with enemy soldiers running rampant. Many evacuees were already inside, and they would have to persuade them to unlock any given door.

As they were waiting in an antechamber for the door to the underground shelter to open for them, Hattori and Sawaki were doing a roll call to make sure nobody had gone missing.

The faculty were performing their adult roles; Asuka was going around to look at the injured; Haruka was talking to students who looked uneasy; and Tsuzura was standing guard at the end of the line with Tomitsuka.

And from his position, Tsuzura was the first one to notice an abnormality.

“Everyone, cover your heads and get on the ground!”

A strange noise rang through the ceiling—the concrete was creaking.

The lights went out, and a curtain of darkness descended.

And then they heard cracks run through the ceiling and walls.

All of it happened before anyone could take a breath.

Some screamed.

Others just cowered.

And some threw together spells to hold up the iron, concrete, and dirt.

But whatever power they tried to use, they couldn’t stop the underground tunnel from collapsing.

At the time, Azusa had been negotiating with the wired terminal on the shelter entrance, trying to get it open quickly.

When she’d reflexively turned around at Tsuzura’s warning, she couldn’t avert her eyes from the catastrophe happening right in front of her.

She couldn’t shut them, either.

The ceiling collapsed, and the walls peeled away.

There was no danger of her getting caught in the collapse.

She was outside the door, but this part of the passage was covered in sturdy alloy.

But the other students…

“…Huh?”

However, when the dust settled and the lights from the passage leading to the shelter illuminated the hallway’s collapse, no tears came from her eyes—instead, she muttered in surprise.

The First High students hadn’t been buried alive.

The concrete fragments had formed an arch.

By some coincidence, the big concrete fragments had locked together in the shape of an archway, supporting one another’s weight, leaving a space underneath tall enough to stoop inside.

No, there’s no way this can be a coincidence… thought Azusa. The chances of this happening purely out of luck were infinitely close to zero.

…I see! Polyhedra Control! It’s Mr. Tsuzura’s spell!

Polyhedra Control, the name she’d shouted in her mind, was a spell that abstracted something’s structure to a conglomeration of simple polyhedrons, then “controlled” those simple 3-D shapes—the structural elements—to manipulate large-scale changes.

Permanently changing one part of a single thing—that alone was considered to be one of modern magic’s difficulties. If you wanted to stop the event of the underground passage collapsing, you would normally need to mark the entire passage as your target, but of course the fragments were each their own targets.

But by perceiving a single thing as a collection of multiple structural elements, Polyhedra Control could change one part of that single thing and thereby affect the entire thing.

Of course, you would need the analytical prowess to break up a single structure into multiple, smaller elements to do that, but magicians who could would be able to purposely demonstrate miracles created by impossible coincidences—just like now.

Tsuzura had probably realized that, for whatever reason, there was an immense pressure weighing down on the passage, and that a collapse was unavoidable. He’d used the dirt’s pressure to control the falling fragments billiard-style and have them fall into an arch.

But this arch was still no more than rubble. It wasn’t as sturdy as natural stone.

“Quickly, everyone! Over here!”

After Azusa shouted to the others, she immediately got back to work, desperately trying to open the shelter door.

As Asuka left to examine the injured, Chiaki, all alone in the midst of their group of sixty, was one of those who had simply cowered, unable to scream.

She knew the ceiling had collapsed. Parts of the walls were broken, too. So why wasn’t she buried alive right now?

Chiaki nervously opened her eyes. The sight that flooded into her vision stunned her. The reinforcing bars and concrete fragments had come together like a complex jigsaw puzzle to create a small tunnel. She sank to the floor at the impossible coincidence.

Then—

“What are you doing?! You need to get out of there!”

A voice admonished her and someone grabbed her hand.

Her body lurched backward in surprise, and she reflexively tried to bat the hand away. But it was soft so that it wouldn’t cause her pain, yet still firm enough that it would never let go of hers.

“Hurry!”

Without showing any concern for Chiaki’s initial rejection, the hand pulled her away. She didn’t hear any voices or feel anyone behind her. In her daze, she had apparently been the last one left. There was a weak light shining up ahead that must have been someone who had already escaped the rubble tunnel and was pointing a light in for her.

Right now, Chiaki’s mind was blank. She just let herself be pulled along, in her painful half-risen posture, but kept running, never letting her feet stop.

The light grew in intensity, and she saw the end of the tunnel.

…And then she heard an ominous grrrk.

Part of the rubble was starting to collapse.

A vision of the end unfolded before her in slow motion.

The boy pulling on Chiaki’s hand tugged her into an embrace. Then, he smacked his right hip with an empty hand.

Chiaki rocked, then felt an impact like her body had been uprooted.

As she flew, she held on as hard as she could to the chest at the base of those arms.

She realized her grip had only been from inertia once they’d made it out from the crumbling rubble and into the shelter.

After seeing Tomitsuka safely rescue the girl who’d fallen behind, Azusa heaved a sigh of relief.

But when she saw the girl’s face, her heart, which had regained its calm, once again started pounding wildly.

Hirakawa’s little sister…

As a fellow member of the Nine School Competition engineering team, she was friends with Koharu Hirakawa. The calm, elder Hirakawa was one of the easier upperclassmen for Azusa to get along with, and since they both excelled at engineering, they could talk on the same wavelength.

When Azusa had first heard that her younger sister had attempted sabotage, she’d doubted her ears. She’d never directly met her before, but from what Koharu would sometimes say, she didn’t seem like the sort of girl to do that—so it shocked her more than the others.

Seeing her flustered, then looking down in embarrassment but glancing up at the boy’s face now and again, she looked like a regular freshman.

I hope we wake up from this nightmare soon… Azusa thought.

Chiaki, having escaped a live burial by the skin of her teeth, breathed a sigh of relief now that she was under the sturdy alloy roof.

And finally, she calmed down enough to realize what state she was in.

“!”

Was that reaction time a personal best? she thought, mind still fortunately muddled. Fortunate in the sense that if her mind weren’t muddled, she’d have been hallucinating.

In any case, she moved her limbs at full speed to escape the boy holding her. She couldn’t bring her gaze up because she was too embarrassed, but at the same time, she couldn’t help starting to wonder what his face looked like.

As a result, she ended up repeating the fairly suspicious act of keeping her head down but glancing up at him every once in a while, but the boy didn’t seem particularly bothered by it.

“Are you okay? You should get inside.”

The voice was worried about her.

She suddenly felt like she hadn’t heard a voice like that in quite a long time. In her “partnerships”—in which she used others and was used in return—there was no caring for the other person, nor being cared for. Once she’d been caught without fulfilling her goal, it felt like everything anyone else said to her had been criticism.

But somehow, she could feel it from his voice—how nonchalantly this boy was worried about her.

“Ah, wait…”

As the boy was about to slip through the door ahead of her—as even then, he was looking at her, guiding her in—she unthinkingly grabbed his jacket.

“Umm…thank you…”

For now, that was all she could manage.

“Hm? You’re welcome.”

The fact that this boy, whose name she didn’t even know, had plainly accepted her gratitude made her feel happy enough that even she thought it was strange.

When Mayumi’s party—with Fujibayashi’s subordinates taking the lead—arrived in the plaza in front of the station where the underground shelter was set up, the disastrous scene there put them at a loss for words.

The plaza had completely caved in.

Giant hunks of metal swaggered atop where it had been.

“Upright tanks…? Where on earth did they come from?” came a groan from Fujibayashi’s lips.

Mobile humanoid gun turrets, covered in compound armor plates. Their lower halves consisted of two short, stumpy legs with roller skate–like tracks on the feet, while their upper halves had long arms and neckless heads attached to one-person compact cars with all sorts of weaponry equipped to them.

They stood at a total height of about twelve feet, a ground-to-shoulder height of about nine feet, a width of about six feet, and a length of about eight feet. The machines were weapons originally developed in eastern Europe for the purpose of efficiently stamping out infantry in urban environments.

And there were two.

With a full ammunition load and a troop inside, it weighed about nine tons in total. Although the two of them would add up to eighteen tons, that wasn’t enough to cause the paved, reinforced road to cave in like that.

Clearly, the upright tanks had delivered some kind of attack aimed at the underground shelter, or at the underground passage.

“You…!”

“Kanon, you can’t use Mine Origin!”

In a moment recovering from her stupefaction, Kanon attempted to execute a spell, but Isori grabbed her arm and stopped her.

They didn’t know what state the underground was in. Using magic to vibrate the ground in this situation could easily magnify the tragedy.

“That’s not what I’m doing!”

Kanon shook off the hand and went to trigger her spell again.

She set her aims on the targets…

…when they suddenly filled with holes and froze into white ice.

“Ah…”

“As expected of Mayumi and Miyuki. We didn’t even have time to act,” praised Fujibayashi with a bit of a dry grin, as Kanon, next to her, stared in awe. Mayumi and Miyuki both returned a bow, Mayumi blushing a little and Miyuki with a slight smile.

“…It looks like those who went underground are safe. No traces of anyone being buried alive.”

That report came from Mikihiko. He had his eyes closed, and his expression was distant. He’d probably been searching underground, giving over part of his senses to the spirits.

“I see. If someone from the Yoshida family says so, it must be true. Excellent work.”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t anything at all!”

Mikihiko, after Fujibayashi commended him, popped his eyes open in a fluster and gave a quick bit of deference. There were plenty of members in their group who would have loved to tease and make fun of his innocence, but…

“…So now what do we do?”

…what actually came was Erika, on point.

The fact that Fujibayashi didn’t react a bit to the challenging tone must have simply been her years of maturity. “If they’ve gotten upright tanks this far inland, then the situation is escalating faster than we thought. I would personally recommend evacuating to the Nogeyama encampment.”

“Won’t that make us a target for the enemy forces, though?”

“Mari, they don’t care whether we’re combatants or not. It won’t be any less dangerous to separate ourselves from the army. In fact, I think it would be more dangerous.”

Mari had asked the question to keep things formal, but Mayumi gently shot it down.

“Do you think we should head for Nogeyama, then, Saegusa?” Isori’s question also seemed natural.

But Mayumi shook her head. “I plan to call in a transport helicopter for the civilians left behind,” she said, looking toward the station. There, the number of potential civilian losses under the crushed shelter entrance was increasing by the minute. “First I want to clear away that rubble, secure a landing zone, and then wait here for the helicopter to arrive. Mari, you take everyone and go with Ms. Kyouko.”

“What are you saying?! You plan to stay here alone?!”

Her unexpected declaration, of course, made Mari lash out. But Mayumi’s response was firm: “This is my duty as part of the Ten Master Clans. Under the Clans, we enjoy many conveniences. Officially, Japan has no aristocratic rank any longer, but for all intents and purposes, the clans can sometimes act freely without being restrained by the law. The price for that is needing to use our strength to help out in times like these.”

“…Then I’m staying here, too,” Isori answered. The determination in Mayumi’s words appeared to have strengthened her resolve while losing Mari hers. “As a number-holding member of the Hundred, we get a lot of conveniences from the government, too.”

“If Kei’s staying, then I’m staying! I’m one of the Hundred, too!”

“Guess I’m sticking around, too. I am a daughter of the Chiba, after all.”

“I will stay as well. I cannot sit idly by when my brother is out there fighting.”

“M-me too!”

“I’ll contact my father to see if we can send the company helicopter over, too.”

“I’m not part of the Ten Master Clans or the Hundred…but if girls younger than me are saying they’ll stay, I can’t exactly tuck my tail and run.”

“The same goes for me. I’m confident in my muscles.”

“I’ll stay, too. I’m not as strong as Eri or Kirihara, but I at least want to repent.”

“The Yoshida aren’t part of the Hundred…but we’re alike in that we get favored treatment just the same.”

“Umm, I don’t know if I’ll be any help, but if I can at least be everyone’s ‘eyes’…”

“Ichihara. Our underclassmen are all saying they’ll stay here. We’re not going to be the only two evacuating, are we?”

“Well, leaving Mayumi by herself would make me uneasy, too,” Ichihara noted. “She can be surprisingly dull-witted sometimes.”

“Hey!” Mayumi objected. “Still…I suppose we’re all stupid.” She sighed in a suffering way for real, not only as an act. Her pretty features now colored with resignation, she turned back to Fujibayashi.

“We’ve made our decision. Our kids are just so disobedient… I do apologize for letting your goodwill go to waste.”

Mayumi bowed deeply while the rest of the group behind her looked away awkwardly. Fujibayashi, looking serious on the surface at least, was clearly amused. “How dependable. I’ll leave a few of my people here, then.”

“No, the situation doesn’t call for that.”

That voice didn’t come from the First High side but from someone behind Fujibayashi.

“Oh, Chief.”

“Kazu?!”

Two different greetings for the same person.

Chief Chiba turned to face Fujibayashi, the former speaker. “The military’s goal is to eliminate outside threats; securing civilians is the police’s job. We’ll stay here. Ms. Fujibayashi…er, Lieutenant Fujibayashi, please go join the main force.”

“Understood. Chief Chiba, I’ll leave the rest here to you.”

One’s appearance was too well-timed, and the other’s words sounded rehearsed.

But without touching on either of those things, Fujibayashi made a crisp salute and ran off gallantly.

“Hmm…what a nice woman.”

“Ah, it’ll never work, Kazu. She’s too good for you.”

Upon receiving a merciless retort to his serious mutterings from his sister, Chief Chiba deflated just like a balloon and fell silent.

The Third High students taking up arms against the guerilla fighters in the large-vehicle parking lot had dwindled to fewer than half their numbers—all unable to fight because they were unable to stop themselves from retching.

“Ichijou, go a little easier on them!” balked one upperclassman.

“No! Would you all please stand back?”

The cause of all this—Masaki—wasn’t hearing any criticism.

His reddish, handgun-shaped specialized CAD pointed at the guerillas from a nation unknown…

…and a crimson flower blossomed and scattered.

The sound of another wet groan reached Masaki’s ears.

Every time he sent an enemy to the grave, both their morale and the enemy’s continued to fall.

If this is enough to scare them, they shouldn’t have thought to stand on the battlefield to begin with, Masaki told himself, coolly ignoring the verbal and visual remarks the others were giving him.

His claim was right; it was a correct argument that left no room for complaint.

But how many soldiers were out there who could stay calm at the sight of human bodies bursting apart into showers of fresh blood (red blood cells, to be precise)?

The Ichijou family’s secret technique, Burst: a spell that instantly vaporized the fluids inside a target.

Used on a human, the spell would cause blood plasma to vaporize; the pressure would burst out of a person’s muscles and skin, and the solid components of blood—the red blood cells—would blossom into a flower of scarlet and crimson.

His fellow freshmen and upperclassmen, save for a handful of exceptions, had learned the true meaning behind “Crimson.”

Despite the camouflaged landing ship cleanly and successfully pulling off a surprise attack, the mood on the ship’s bridge—its command center—was far from smooth sailing.

“We’ve lost contact with the agents who were headed to secure the shelter. No response from the upright tanks.”

The captain of the camouflaged landing ship, also the commander of the invading forces, frowned at his communications officer’s report. Their strategy had planned for the agents already on the inside to secure hostages, then send all their mobile troops in.

The losses among their casual-clothed agents were a lot more severe than they’d expected. The forces they’d sent to the international assembly hall and the large-vehicle parking lot, in particular, had taken heavy damage.

Unfortunately, the captain decided, they’d have to change the plan. The diversion could no longer be sustained by their undercover agents alone.

“Send in the mobile troops.”

Thus, he ordered the mobilization of his upright tanks and armored cars—deployed in the country that had made them.

“…So? What are you doing here, Kazu?”

In a corner of the station plaza, the Chiba siblings were busy having a not-exactly-heartwarming time enjoying (?) each other’s presence. (At the very least, the brother was enjoying it, so that statement was half-correct.)

They were in a corner because neither Erika nor Toshikazu was fit for the jobs of cleaning up the upright tank wreckage, dragging out the pilots and interrogating them, or preparing the road so that the helicopters could land—though it was suspicious whether Toshikazu, the acting chief of police, was cut out for interrogation.

In any case, both of them were out of work. (Though one might add that, in order to protect their honor, so were Kirihara and Sayaka.)

But at the very least, Toshikazu didn’t seem bothered by being treated as useless—which Inagaki had already done—and instead seemed to be enjoying his conversation with his quick-tempered, bellicose sister.

“You wound me. Why is it strange at all for a kindhearted brother to want to give his dear sister a hand?”

“Kindhearted?! The freaking nerve you have to say that, you hypocrite…”

“Come on, Erika. A girl shouldn’t be using vulgar words like ‘freaking.’”

“Who! Gave you! The right! To start telling me to behave like a proper lady after everything you’ve done?!”

“My, my, how sad… This is what I get for all my love for my little sister.”

That must have been too shameless, and Erika’s flared emotions cooled right down. She turned around, then glared at him coldly.

Toshikazu sighed, fed up. “I really did come to help you,” he said in an uneven tone, face unamused. When his sister snorted at him, he gave her a mean smile. “Should you really be acting like that, Erika?”

“What?”

The girl appeared to flinch a little. Her sense of weakness against people who were strictly stronger than her—which she has had with him since she was a lot younger—wasn’t something she could wipe away that easily.

“I brought you a nice present.”

“A present? Hmph, I don’t need it.”

Still, her tough talk—her pride—wasn’t broken. To her, Toshikazu Chiba was someone she couldn’t yield to a second time.

For Toshikazu, that was a good thing, something he’d wanted from her when she was little.

“Don’t say that. Today it’s something you need.”

To Toshikazu, little Erika was his cute sister who always made him want to tease her. But right now, she was even stronger than back then, which made her even cuter. As he thought about how it would make him sound like a villain—or defeated—if he said something like “I’ll do you a favor and leave it at that for today,” he took a long, slightly curved object out of the station wagon he was lounging against.

When Erika saw the object’s silhouette, her eyes went wide and she couldn’t say anything.

Toshikazu took off the long, slender bag and offered the extra-long sword to her.

Its length of seventy inches was far more than Erika’s own height.

Just the blade itself was fifty-five inches.

But for a katana, it had a mysterious lack of curvature.

“The Orochi-Maru? Why did you bring it here…?”

“Why? That’s a silly question, Erika. The Orochi-Maru is a sword for creating the Mountain Tsunami, and you’re the only one who can do that. Neither our father nor Naotsugu can use the spell. They can trace its form, but you’re the only one who can say she can actually use it. That means the Orochi-Maru is the katana for you.”

Erika’s hands quivered as they took the long sword offered to her. She gripped it tightly to prevent her body from tipping over from the weight, and her trembling finally stopped.

The strongest weapon ever created by the Chiba family. A secret weapon they claimed to be their masterpiece, along with the Ikazuchi-Maru, a sword-shaped, integrated armament device.

Even if it was only for a short time, Erika never thought she’d be allowed to wield this katana freely.

“You seem happy.”

Her face pricked up at her brother’s voice.

Her heart had been taken by the Orochi-Maru to the point where she had forgotten to be rebellious against him.

Because this katana was…

“Are you that happy about holding your favorite sword, your other self, Erika? Heh…I knew it. No matter what Dad thinks, or what Naotsugu thinks, you are a daughter of the Chiba.”

“…Hmph! I guess I’ll thank you this one time.”

“I told you, girls shouldn’t be talking like that…”

Without listening to her brother’s pronouncement all the way through, Erika spun around.

She swiftly left, the Orochi-Maru in hand.

Toshikazu smiled gleefully at his sister’s transparent attitude.

“Find anything out?”

Isori, who had his upper body inside the upright tank’s cockpit item from which they’d dragged the pilot, pulled himself out in response to the voice, turned around, and shook his head. “Nothing. I’m not very knowledgeable about weapons like these, but I think it’s an old model they sell in used marketplaces. I couldn’t find anything on it to pinpoint what country it’s registered to.”

“They have marketplaces for used weapons?” asked Mayumi, surprised.

Isori smiled and nodded. “There’s a market for used fighter jets, too. Even World War II weapons are still around for pocket conflicts.”

“Huh,” said Mayumi, impressed.

Isori began to smile even wider, but then something disturbed the air next to him. He didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. He tightened up, loosened his expression, and looked at Mayumi once again. “Of course, even in used marketplaces, it’s easiest to get weapons from allied nations. This upright tank seems to be from eastern Europe, so I’d say the chances are high that these agents are from the Great Asian Alliance… But to know the mastermind for sure, I don’t think there’s any option but to make the pilots tell us.”

“But will they tell us the truth?” Kanon asked.

Mayumi shrugged. “That’s where we rely on Mari’s skill.”

“Then I’m going to go help them clear the space out,” Isori offered with a bow.

As she watched him leave with Kanon right behind him, Mayumi went over to Mari and the others who were going to be doing the interrogation.

Aside from minor freeze wounds on their faces, the two tied-up pilots had no notable injuries.

Inagaki was interrogating one while Mari was questioning the other.

“How’s it looking?” Mayumi asked simply, upon approach to the latter.

Mari seemed a little irritated. “Nothing. If I knew it was going to come to this, I would have brought stronger perfume…”

“It’s not your fault. Our condition for questioning Sekimoto today was not to use chemicals.”

Known as a personal-combat specialist, Mari was more skilled in the use of small firearms and chemical weapons than magic or swords.

One of her special techniques was to control airflows in order to nasally administer volatile medicines only to enemies. She also had a more secret technique—a wicked (actually, outright illegal) method of having a specific target smell mind-altering perfume. Just now, she’d tried to sneak some of that perfume onto the person they had tied up, but unfortunately, she’d seen no effect.

“Guess we’ll just have to torture him,” Mari muttered.

“Wait, you can’t just do that…” Mayumi protested.

“It’s fine,” Mari replied. “I’m confident I can give just the pain and none of the injuries.”

“That isn’t what I mean! Ugh…Mari, why don’t you take a break?”

“…Yeah, I guess. I’ll do that.”

She probably felt somewhat like her mind had melted into soup.

Mari waved to Mayumi, then walked over to where Suzune was sitting on a bench with a map spread out in front of her.

On the pavement in front of the bench Suzune was sitting on was a highly precise map of the area enlarged to three by four yards. Suzune had called up the map on her terminal, and Honoka was refracting light to project it.

The map showed a detailed view of the coastal area from Sakuragi Town to Yamashita Town. Then, Honoka projected ships, crowds of people, and buildings onto it.

“Hey, that’s really something.”

“Oh, Watanabe!”

The image projected on the road shook and collapsed but soon returned to a clear image.

Suzune’s fingers danced busily on the keyboard of her fully opened notebook terminal, until finally pressing the Enter key to finish. She looked up. “Did you find anything out?”

“Unfortunately, no.” The answer put a bitter look on Mari’s face as she shook her head. But then, Mari went right back to her brimming-with-curiosity expression. “But this looks pretty hopeful.”

“Yes. Thanks to Mitsui, I have a good grasp on the current enemy troops and their movements… Mitsui, that’s enough.”

Honoka smiled widely at Suzune’s praise and nodded. At the same time, the map on the road disappeared.

“Even for light-controlling spells, isn’t this level of precision kind of unusual?”

“Yes. I have no memory of anyone being able to display a clear, low-altitude reconnaissance plane image just by bending light. As it is, we should consider it a different kind of spell than normal light-refracting ones.”

Honoka’s face reddened at the flatly spoken praise from Suzune. “No, I… Compared to Tatsuya and Miyuki, my magic isn’t much.”

“You don’t need to be modest, Mitsui. Sure, those two are pretty strong, but sometimes information can change a battle more than attack power.”

“That’s right, Mitsui. Getting a comprehensive grasp on the situation like this is extremely meaningful. We don’t have any way of communicating with unmanned reconnaissance craft or stratosphere cameras, so this spell only you can use is incredibly beneficial.”

“Thank you!” said Honoka, blushing even more.

The two seniors grinned at her. With all the insolent (?) underclassmen around, such an unspoiled reaction felt fresh.

Although coastal roads were the quickest way from the international assembly hall to Yokohama Bay Hills Tower, where the Magic Association’s branch offices were, using a more inland route wouldn’t be too much of a detour. The enemy forces set to storm the building consisted of a landing team dumped out by a war vessel of unknown affiliation. The troops who had been hidden throughout the city were also very active along the coast.

But when asked whether they would take the long way around, Katsuto shook his head.

And now, the army vehicle he occupied was heading for Bay Hills using the shortest possible ocean-side route—straight through the crossfire.

The closer they got to Bay Hills—technically, the closer they got to Yamashita Wharf—the heavier the enemy’s armaments became. The frequency at which he spotted invading mobile weapons (upright tanks, to be exact) was rising steadily.

“It’s not that their forces are concentrated here but that they’re still expanding outward as we speak,” explained Sergeant Tateoka from the passenger’s seat.

Katsuto returned a wordless nod. Not because he looked down on the low-ranking officer but because he was devoting most of his focus to magic.

A moment later, a small group with a multibarreled missile launcher came onto the street from a side road in the direction they were going. They weren’t the ones in civilian dress. Nothing on their clothing made it clear what country they were from, but they all wore field gear of uniform design. It was unmistakably part of the enemy landing force.

The small unit fired four portable missile shots, probably anti-tank missiles, at the vehicle Katsuto was on.

It was essentially point-blank range. However slow the missiles started out, an off-road car wouldn’t have been able to avoid it like that.

But Corporal Otowa, gripping the steering wheel, showed no dismay as Sergeant Tateoka stationed an automatic rifle over the windshield.

The missiles struck the air five yards in front of the car. Explosive flames licked at a hemispherical barrier covering the vehicle.

Bullets fired from within mowed the enemy soldiers down.

They wouldn’t let any outside attacks penetrate, but every attack from inside got out.

This clear, directional barrier was, needless to say, Katsuto’s area-of-effect spell.

He altered the properties of a thin hemispherical space centered on him to disallow penetration by large foreign objects with more than a fixed amount of heat and oxygen molecules.

Even with the car moving quickly, Katsuto’s defensive spell never wavered.

During this short process, Fujibayashi’s subordinates had already realized firsthand what his nickname, the Iron Wall, meant.

The Independent Magic Battalion was graded a “battalion,” as a strategic unit that operated independently, but in terms of numbers, it was only as large as two companies. Today, they had sent out fifty of them for their original mission—field tests for magi-tech weapons. There was enough new equipment packed into the two large armored trailers for that many.

“…How does it look, Specialist?”

“Amazing as always, sir. I take my hat off to you.”

Sanada, standing in front of a hangar, on which was what looked like a single-piece riding suit with protectors on it, nodded proudly several times. “The size should be just right. Hurry up and get changed.”

At Sanada’s request, Tatsuya removed everything he was wearing. Female officers and soldiers were in the trailer, but no one involved was bothered.

In a sense, all the soldiers in the Independent Magic Battalion were test subjects, and full-body inspections were nothing unusual. Not only would male soldiers see the female soldiers stark-naked, the reverse happened sometimes as well. You couldn’t make it in this line of work if that petrified you with embarrassment.

Tatsuya quickly put on the special underwear, then briskly got into the black one-piece—the MOVAL suit. He wrapped a thick belt around his waist, then clicked it into the suit’s joints. After placing his personal CADs in the holsters on either hip, he slipped on his full-face helmet, which had a removable mask.

“No problems, looks like.”

“None, sir. Errors are within acceptable bounds.”

Tatsuya’s voice came over a speaker inside the trailer. Realizing the communicator was set to On by default, he manipulated the helmet and took off the mask covering his mouth.

“In addition to the usual bulletproofing, heatproofing, and shock absorbing, we got the simple power assistance in there just as specified. And of course, the flight unit is packed into the belt. It’s also made to be used in tandem with the shock absorbers as a reaction canceler, so you’ll be able to shoot from the air.”

“All I can say, sir, is wonderfully done. This has higher specs than my design.”

“Hey, you let me do a good job on it.” Sanada sought a handshake from Tatsuya, and as their hands tightly gripped each other’s, Kazama arrived.

“Sanada, satisfied now?”

As his subordinate silently saluted, Kazama gave him a stare, then moved his gaze to Tatsuya. “Let’s get right to it. Specialist, I want you to meet up with Yanagi’s team. They’re holding off an enemy unit in front of the bridge connecting to Mizuho Pier.”

“You can display Captain Yanagi’s position on your visor.”

“Understood, sir.”

Tatsuya placed his mask back on, and after confirming his position relative to the Yanagi team, he headed out of the trailer.

He jumped out without using the ramp, and while he still had momentum, he hit his belt buckle.

It was the switch for the flight magic CAD.

Tatsuya lightly kicked off the ground and dashed off, up into the sky.

The invading army of unknown affiliation that had landed a mobile force at Yamashita Wharf was split into two units.

One was their advance force, which would head straight to Bay Hills, where the Magic Association was. The other would advance north along the coastline.

Instead of joining the guerillas stalled by Third High, the northbound force took a detour around them, moving to chase down the civilians trying to escape via water.

Their movements were known to the Independent Magic Battalion—an advance force of six-wheeled armored combat vehicles with a focus on mobility.

As they reformed their ranks into two lengthwise lines, their armored vehicles flooded toward the bridge and Captain Yanagi grinned from beneath his helmet.

He was the definition of an anti-personnel combat magician.

His specialty was a close-combat skill where he predicted his opponent’s movement vector, then used a combination of martial arts and magic to guide, amplify, or reverse the enemy’s course. An armored unit like this was something he’d rarely been up against before—at least, before being assigned to the IMB.

Because the IMB’s leader was a user of old magic, they had a relatively large number of old-style magicians compared to the rest of the 101st Brigade, but Yanagi was a model old-style caster even among them.

Yanagi had inherited physical movement skills where he substituted symbolic hand gestures with the actions in kata themselves as a trick to utilize magic in the midst of a swordfight or brawl. He even kept well away from having to handle his CAD, wary of the time loss that created.

But even he had to admit how practical specialized CADs were for building large-scale spells that could flip over huge weights of many tons at the mere flick of a trigger. If he’d wanted to trigger this kind of spell using hand gestures or some substitute ritual, it would have taken him at least five seconds. With the enemy right in front of them, he didn’t have that kind of time.

I don’t like this, he thought, though his lips were still twisted into a smile.

A bestial smile carved into his face under the mask, Yanagi jumped out from behind his cover and toward the front of the armored-car lines.

As a man in a full-body black armor suit.

A man who was alone.

The armored cars’ turrets didn’t fire, probably out of surprise at such an unexpected enemy. Or perhaps they planned to run over the lone soldier with their giant wheels.

There was far too much of a discrepancy in defense between an armored car and an armored suit. And Yanagi had no intention of sticking around in front of their guns in the first place.

He pulled the trigger of his bayonet rifle–shaped CAD, saw the spell go off, then dived behind cover again.

Immediately, dust appeared to spring up and engrave a line into the road.

Any armored-car wheel that touched that line was sent into the air.

A series of earth-rattling tremors told Yanagi the result of the magic he’d used.

A line of armored cars turning over, colliding with nearby cars… Upon closer inspection, he could tell that the vehicles proceeding east were ending up on top of the vehicles heading west, and flipping.

The acceleration-type spell Floor Flip: By severing the earth’s gravity on a north-south axis for a moment, the spell’s targets would have their eastern part lifted up by the planet’s centrifugal force, causing them to topple to the west.

Bullets rained down from the sky, aimed at the armored cars’ undercarriages. The attack came from his team members, who had risen into the sky in tandem with his spell. The bullets fired from their rifle-shaped, integrated-armament CADs had added penetrative effects, and they easily pierced the landmine-equipped armored-car bottoms.

The cars, their fuel tanks shot through and now on fire, bounced upward, pushed from below.

It seemed the defensive personnel inside the invaders’ attack vehicles specialized in repulsion. Their strong barriers brushed aside the ten-ton objects, and they would doubtlessly nullify most shots from normal firearms. They were very clearly strong magicians—or perhaps just loaded with systems that amplified magic.

Another barrage of bullets showered down from the sky.

The influence of the spell to strengthen the bullets, and the spell to reflect them, dug into one another and canceled each other out.

The armor-piercing ammunition dug into the armor but didn’t penetrate.

The armored cars’ machine-gun turrets angled upward, then loosed a volley of large-bore bullets into the sky.

Two of his team members lost their posture and fell to the ground. One appeared to have been hit in his leg, the other in his gut. Thanks to the bulletproofing on their suits, the attack didn’t result in wounds that tore their bodies completely apart.

Yanagi, who saw all that from behind cover, jumped out in front of the enemy again, then pulled the trigger three times in succession.

His Floor Flip spell cut off the earth’s gravity. It didn’t interfere with the information attached to its targets.

So regardless of the defensive spell on the enemy’s vehicles, the gravity-severing magic activated.

Their armored cars rocketed over backward.

The magical barrier protecting them must have ceased from the impact of their fall, because the bullets from above began to pierce the armored-car hulls, sending the last three of them up in crimson flames.

The speed that flight magic could output depended on how trained the magician was with the spell. Tatsuya, who had built the spell from square one, understood it better than anyone. For the flight magic he used, the distance between IMB’s mobile HQ trailer and Yanagi’s position was practically within hailing range.

The scenery flew by. Tatsuya had honed his perception of moving objects quite a bit in training, but given that flying in the sky wasn’t something humans could naturally do, he wasn’t confident in his motor functions. He was paying close attention to obstacles in flight by using his physical eyes, along with Elemental Sight as a kind of radar.

And thanks to that, he noticed something:

A small flying object about three feet long. The canard craft, painted all in black, had to be a low-altitude unmanned reconnaissance craft. It was circling the air above his destination—the area in which Yanagi’s unit was currently engaged.

To avoid magical detection, Tatsuya first ascended high above the craft, then brought his CAD to bear in his right hand and turned off his flight magic.

He dropped, upside down. When he’d gotten the closest he could to the craft, he cast his dismantling spell, Mist Dispersion.

The unmanned reconnaissance craft instantly turned to dust and scattered into the wind.

Tatsuya reactivated his flight spell and prepared to make landfall.

When one of the video feeds from their unmanned recon craft suddenly ceased, the invading army’s command center didn’t quite turn into a panicked mess, but the chaos that ensued was close to it.

It wasn’t as though that one craft they’d lost their link with had been their only one, but the small planes were expensive, so they didn’t bring any extra. They’d doubtlessly lost an invaluable “eye.”

Launching an attack deep into enemy territory meant, on the flip side, isolating yourself in the middle of enemy territory. The fact that they’d lost a means of keeping track of the situation put no small pressure on them.

When Tatsuya joined Yanagi, the initial battle had already ended. Yanagi was overseeing the treatment of the injured.

“Perfect timing, Specialist.”

Before Tatsuya could address him, Yanagi had spotted him and called him over.

After crisply saluting, Tatsuya peered at an injured man lying on the ground with his suit off.

“The bullet went through. Can I leave this to you?”

Nothing worthy of calling an expression was on Yanagi’s face as he took off his helmet, but his eyes couldn’t completely hide what he felt deep down.

“Yes, sir” came the definite reply as Tatsuya rejected the man’s guilt and pulled out the silver CAD from the holster on his left hip.

The injured soldier’s low groaning stopped, and instead, Yanagi heard the slight sound of teeth grinding from inside Tatsuya’s closed mouth.

Suzune, having gotten a bird’s-eye image of the invading army with Honoka’s magic, realized their forces were smaller than she’d expected.

“Maybe, but doesn’t it seem like the battle lines are expanding pretty quickly?” asked Mari.

“There is no real battle line at the moment,” replied Suzune without reserve. “The internal battles are happening at points. The guerillas that infiltrated are wreaking havoc on transportation and communication, and the landing force is heading straight for their objective of taking control… I believe this is a fundamental strategy invaders tend to use.”

“If you say so, Rin… But what is their objective, then?”

As Mayumi cocked her head, Suzune pretended to think about it for a moment. “…One possibility is your prediction—the Magic Association’s Kanto branch offices. That one is for certain; their other objective appears to be going after civilians trying to escape by sea, but I believe they may want hostages.”

“Hostages?” repeated Mayumi reflexively.

Suzune’s answer was careful. “It doesn’t seem like killing civilians is their objective, in and of itself. If it were, I think they would have invaded with artillery ships rather than landing ships. They could be after a prisoner exchange, or a ransom… I don’t know their end goal, though.”

“Which means they probably won’t be in danger of artillery and missiles suddenly coming at them,” said Mari, analyzing the situation under Suzune’s lens.

“Most likely. But if they want hostages, it’s highly possible this is one of their targets,” said Suzune, looking behind her at the group of civilians gathered in the hall in front of the ticket gates.

“Going by what Ms. Kyouko said earlier, reinforcements from Tsurumi should be arriving soon,” Mari added. “Considering their route, they should be going to secure the civilians at Mizuho Pier, then have their remaining forces start mopping up.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” Suzune agreed.

“If they’re after hostages, they’d naturally end up here, where defenses are thin… I’ll— Hmm. I’ll go join Kanon’s group,” Mari proposed.

“Yes… They may not have many people, but Miyuki is there,” Mayumi agreed.

“Yeah. That girl’s freezing magic is practically on a tactical level.”

Mayumi and Mari exchanged dry grins. Both of them were probably thinking, Just like her brother…

“…But, Mari,” Mayumi cautioned, “don’t do anything rash. You won’t have an easy time against mechanized units.”

“I know that.”

After watching Mari run off at a trot, Honoka, who was standing nearby, nervously spoke up to Mayumi, who had remained. “Umm, should I intercept them, too? I can’t stand at the front, but I think I could back them up.”

Honoka probably had to muster every ounce of courage to make the offer, but Mayumi smiled and swung her head left and right. “I’ll need your help when the helicopter arrives, Honoka. And Miyuki and Kanon’s job isn’t to intercept—it’s to keep watch. We’re not professional combat magicians; we don’t need to expose ourselves to danger for it, and we shouldn’t be fighting anyway. In fact, we should think about running away.”

Mayumi ended her sentence with a mischievous tone to discourage her.

But Honoka was more than half-certain Miyuki and Erika wouldn’t ever run away. She looked over at Shizuku, unease wavering in her eyes, and saw that her friend had the same look as she did.

The team that Mayumi had mentioned keeping the watch—in reality an interception team—indeed decided to split into two groups along the invasion paths Suzune had predicted. When they arrived at the fork, Kirihara abruptly said to Sayaka, “Look, Mibu…I’d rather you stay in the back.”

Sayaka was more confused than surprised as to why he’d say that at this point. “Kirihara, I’m a swordsman, too. I’m prepared for a true battle or two.”

“Just stop!” Kirihara blurted. Sayaka opened her eyes wide in confusion and froze. “Mibu, please, don’t talk about battle that lightly!”

“…Kirihara?”

“Kirihara…what are you mad about?”

After the sincerely perplexed questions from Sayaka and Erika, who had been watching, Kirihara calmed down enough to get his thoughts in order. “I just…don’t want your sword to get blood on it.”

Taken aback by the unexpected words, Sayaka gave him the argument that scarcely needed saying. “But…swords were originally made for—”

“I know all that!” he interrupted. “Swords are tools for fighting people. Unlike spears and bows, they were made with the intent to kill people from the start. You’re right—anyone who uses them needs to prepare to draw blood one day.”

Kirihara accepted what Sayaka was trying to say. But then, he attempted to reject that reasoning: “But kendo doesn’t need to be an art that uses real swords, does it? Isn’t it okay for a killing form to create a sport?”

Sayaka and even Erika felt enough passion from their classmate that they listened intently.

“When I… In middle school, when I saw Mibu’s swordsmanship, I thought it was amazing. Amazing that the art of wielding a sword could be polished that much to turn into something that beautiful. The art of the sword— No, the way of the sword, without any of the terrible killing aspect, purely for bettering oneself. A beautiful form, one that I couldn’t imitate. I remember thinking that I wanted her swordsmanship to stay that beautiful, to keep ascending in that beauty. So, well… Agh, I can’t find the right words!”

“I understand, Kirihara.”

As Kirihara wracked his brain over how to properly express himself, Erika responded in a different tone than usual.

“During club recruitment week, Saya’s swordsmanship had been advancing in the correct direction, but you didn’t think so, right? It might have been right for a sword, but wrong for kendo.” She paused. “All I know about swords is how to kill people with them, even more than you, but that wasn’t how it looked to me.”

“Eri…” said Sayaka worriedly; Erika’s tone was more gloomy than usual. Kirihara, meanwhile, was struck dumb with surprise.

“But, Kirihara, Saya has to be the one to decide,” Erika added, piercing his gaze with a firm look of her own. “Real battle is definitely different from practicing together. I don’t think you’re wrong to want to keep blood off Saya’s hands, and her sword. But I think Saya’s feelings are just as correct. She doesn’t want the one she likes to be in danger, and she wants to fight for him.”

Sayaka and Kirihara were both blushing. The phrase one she likes probably embarrassed them. But they seemed to know full well this wasn’t the time to act bashfully or feel teased by it.

“…Aha, listen to me. I don’t even sound like myself.”

In fact, it was Erika herself who couldn’t endure the embarrassment anymore, but neither Sayaka nor Kirihara criticized her.

“Time for the third wheel to step aside, huh? Talk it over and decide what you’ll do.”

At that, Erika walked off in a hurry.

Sayaka and Kirihara exchanged a glance, and then calm returned to them.

Masaki and Kichijouji of Third High didn’t know that the enemy line didn’t go very deep for lack of any bird’s-eye recon tools.

The total invasion force consisted of one landing ship (or rather, one ground troop transport) disguised as a large cargo vessel and the guerilla fighters who had infiltrated beforehand. After all, the goal of their military action wasn’t to spread out their forces and continuously establish points of control.

“Is it over already…?”

Masaki, who wasn’t aware of that, was dubious of the enemy waves running out, and it wasn’t only because he liked to fight.

“There’s no way for us to know if that was it. We don’t have any way to get information.”

Masaki’s mutterings received an answer from Kichijouji, who had walked up to him from behind.

He was the only one around him. There were no allies at his sides, and only blood-covered corpses in front of him.

“If we’re going to escape, we have to do it now.”

Masaki put his handgun-shaped CAD with its glossy, reddish sheen back into his pocket and turned around as Kichijouji continued, face serious.

“We’re finished changing the tire, so we should hurry back to the bus.”

Masaki looked around; most of the students who had been engaging the enemy were clustered near the bus.

“Let’s go,” urged Kichijouji. “We should leave as soon as possible.”

But Masaki shook his head.

“What is it?”

“I’m going straight from here to the Magic Association.”

“That’s crazy!” Kichijouji cried, eyes widening. “For what, even?!”

Masaki drew closer with an oddly cold look. “To join the reinforcements. The association’s magicians won’t be sitting around in this situation. They’ll obviously be putting together a volunteer force to add to the defense.”

“But that doesn’t mean—”

“And I’m an Ichijou.”

The quickly spoken words made Kichijouji suck in his breath. “…Are you bothered by what happened before? Nobody meant anything by it. They just aren’t used to this, that’s all. It wasn’t like you were—”

“That’s not bothering me,” Masaki interrupted, shaking his head. “I wanted to throw up the first time I went out on a battlefield, too. I didn’t actually do it, though,” he added with a wry grin.

Kichijouji felt like he saw loneliness cross his face.

“Plus, here we’ve been thrown into the battle without any preparation, good equipment, or reliable officers. This was the worst first battle I can think of.”

“Exactly! Nobody means anything by how they were acti—”

“I said that’s not why,” Masaki interrupted again as Kichijouji desperately rationalized it—though knowing that’s what he was doing stung Masaki a little. “I can’t say anything specific, but the Ten Master Clans have a responsibility to the Magic Association. I can’t pretend I didn’t see anything and run away. Not as the eldest son of the Ichijou.”

Masaki clapped his friend’s shoulders, then headed in the direction opposite the bus.

“Then I’ll go with you!” Kichijouji managed to shout, stopping him. “I’m your adviser. If you’re joining the volunteer force, then I will, too!”

“George, you make sure everyone escapes safely,” said Masaki, turning his head to look at him from the side. “This city is still a war zone; we don’t know what’ll happen. To be honest, I’d be too worried about you getting out safely with just our teachers and seniors to focus on fighting.” He turned back around.

“…All right, Masaki. I’ll take responsibility for getting them out safely, so you come back safely, too.” Because you’re the only “general” I have, he added reluctantly to himself.

Masaki answered by raising one of his hands, back still turned to him, and headed for farther battlefields.

“…They’re here.”

The first one on the First High watch team to notice enemies approaching was Mikihiko. The spirits roused by the paper talismans he’d scattered to the winds had sent him an image of the enemy.

“Upright tanks… But different from before. They’re moving much more humanlike.”

“Humanlike?” repeated Erika, who had momentarily removed a set of sound-dampening earmuffs.

Upright tanks were simply tanks made to enter narrow roads, with tracks on the end of short legs to make it easy to climb stairs or rubble, and with a set of mounted, swivel-type gun turrets. They hadn’t been developed as combat mechs. With current military technology levels, at least to Erika’s knowledge, there were no combat mechs that could replicate a human’s movements.

“We’ll be able to see them soon… There!”

But she didn’t have time to be thinking about how far removed from common sense it was.

At Mikihiko’s signal, upright tanks came out from behind a building.

Short legs equipped with tracks. A long torso front to back. Those parts were the same as regular upright tanks.

But the chainsaws equipped to the right hand and the gunpowder-type pile drivers attached to the left were never seen on regular upright tanks. If you’d set out to make a piece of heavy machinery intended for removing obstacles at disaster sites into a human shape, it might take on this form—but these had grenade launchers on the right shoulder and heavy machine guns on the left.

“Combat mechs?!” cried Erika, feeling like fantasy had infiltrated her reality.

Next to her, Miyuki pointed an icy stare at the sinister mobile weapons’ forms.

As soon as these new weapons entered their fields of view, Miyuki triggered a spell.

It was over in an instant.

The three machines stopped their advance.

Their tracks frozen, they now stood immobile.

But they didn’t tip over forward—a testament, perhaps, to excellent balance-control systems.

But their legs weren’t the only things frozen; Miyuki’s spell wasn’t nearly that trivial.

Anyone with enough military knowledge to control an upright tank would immediately know the freezing had been a magical attack. And they would have instinctively known the magic user in question was the girl standing defiantly in their path, long hair fluttering in the wind.

And yet, neither their machine guns nor their grenade launchers spouted any flame.

This wasn’t just a freezing spell but Freeze Flame—Miyuki’s magic had both limited their movements and forbidden any increase in heat.

As the ice continued to spread, Leo rushed out into the fray.

This reaction speed, this sharp nose for any chance at victory—it could only be compared to a wild beast.

The weapon in his hand: a short stick that looked like a double-headed hammer.

Its length: twenty inches; its grip: about twelve.

The tip protruding from the hammerhead was quite a bit wider than the grip, at four inches in length. Its vertical-horizontal proportions might have been close to a Latin cross.

The noise of a motor turning on came from the hammerhead portion, and the stick’s tip shot out a black film.

Thin, very thin—a black, see-through film.

When the sound of the motor stopped, the film turned into a straight blade two yards long.

It was a superthin blade with a perfectly flat surface, one invisible if looked at from the side.

This was the secret art of the Chiba: Usuba Kagerou, the Antlion.

A carbon nanotube sheet blade, stabilized into a perfectly flat surface with hardening magic. The Antlion was both the name of the spell and the name of this unique armament device.

Leo’s right hand flicked the Usuba Kagerou.

The superthin sheet, five nanometers thick, made of woven carbon nanotube, was a sharper blade than any sword, than any razor, and easily cleaved through the frozen armor plating.

The front armor was slashed through diagonally.

The line was so slender that you couldn’t even tell it was cut.

But red soon dripped out of it.

This was the power of his trump card, that which had taught him to kill, the fruit of his short but dense training.

Leo quickly jumped back, and as if chasing him, the upright tank’s body fell onto the road.

Leo had gotten a slight head start in terms of reaction, but Erika might have been the first to actually finish off her prey.

She slid her muffs back into position, then grabbed the hilt of the Orochi-Maru, which had been resting on her left arm, and loosened it from its sheath.

As she moved her left hand from the sheath to the hilt, the sheath popped open, hinged on the back, and the long blade appeared.

Leaving the inside of her hand where it was, Erika used her right index finger to press the button just under the guard. Then, she hefted the six-foot weapon onto her shoulder.

The spell had already activated by then.

She easily swung out the long twenty-two-pound katana. And then, a moment later, she disappeared.

At least, it looked that way to Miyuki, who had been next to her.

A crunching sound thundered.

It was the sound of crushing and tearing metal that one might hear in an old scrapyard.

Erika reappeared, now in a posture of having already swung the blade.

The upright tank, its front armor severed like a bamboo shoot, fell over as though it had been clubbed down.

The red fluid mixed with motor oil whetted her blade. The red was, without a doubt, the fresh blood of the pilot.

The weighting-type inertia control spell, Mountain Tsunami: a secret sword technique where the user minimized the inertia on herself and her blade, approached the enemy at a high speed, and at the moment of impact, added the erased inertia to amplify the blade’s inertia as it struck the target. The longer the approach, the greater this false inertial quantity would be, reaching ten tons at max.

The speed gained from eliminating inertia—and the weight gained from increasing it: At maximum power, Mountain Tsunami was like dropping a giant ten-ton guillotine blade from high in the sky.

At this point in time, there was probably no armor that could withstand its force.

The timing to gauge when to switch from inertia cancellation to inertia amplification; the footwork to run in an unstable state with no inertia; the blade work to keep the cut straight; and above all, the perception, speed, and athleticism to handle such speed in that inertialess state: These were the necessary requirements for Mountain Tsunami.

It was a sword technique made possible only by Erika’s natural speed and the days she’d been made to spend training for this skill alone.

Erika looked toward her next target.

Leo had already closed in on his.

But Mountain Tsunami activated.

An instant later, in front of the smashed upright tank, Leo released the Usuba Kagerou once more and then doubled over, covering his ears.

The other part of the halved watch team—actually an interception team—had plunged into combat against upright tanks as well.

Here, Isori had built a wall to block geological vibrations up to ten feet underground, making Kanon’s spell, which used the ground as a medium, possible. His underground circle also served the purpose of searching for enemies aboveground.

The spell constructed a pattern with effects that assisted magic activation (in other words, a magic circle) by channeling psionic threads through a fixed surface. It was Kei Isori’s forte as the gifted child of the Isori family, who were authorities on seal magic—and it looked eerily similar to the spell circles in the old magic Mikihiko used. As a result, it basically confirmed that modern magic and old magic were both truly expressions of the same system.

So in a way, it was only natural that they’d be tasked with the same types of battle responsibility.

“They’re here.”

At Isori’s voice, Kanon expanded an activation sequence. Even though Isori had it covered, if she didn’t clearly know what state the underground was in, she couldn’t use overly powerful vibration magic.

Two strange-looking upright tanks appeared.

Kanon wasn’t very familiar with types of weaponry, so she wasn’t overly surprised by their oddity. So without getting caught up in unneeded consideration, she simply sent out a spell as planned.

The paved road broke into dirt-sized pieces, and water seeped from the subtly vibrating ground, forming a pool.

The upright tanks got one head shorter in height. Their feet had sunk into the ground.

Their endless tracks were for running over beach, swamp, and plain. But the road, turned to quicksand, easily absorbed the little caterpillars.

This was Vibrating Landmine, one of the variations of the Chiyoda family spell, Mine Origin.

Its effects were as demonstrated here: It turned the ground fluid to stop enemies in their tracks.

The upright tanks’ tracks squealed as they scooped out muddy water, but soon sand got stuck in them and they froze. Then, abruptly, the moisture was gone, and the liquefied road re-hardened around them. Kanon had continued the ground liquefaction until the water molecules had vibrated themselves into evaporation.

Everything up until this point of capture was a single process for Vibrating Landmine. Though somewhat different in composition than that of roads from the previous century, paving materials were fundamentally concrete—but that didn’t mean they had reproduced the effects of the chemical mixture process, so it was just like moist sand had simply hardened. Therefore, despite the term capture, it was really only a temporary restraint, but if they were unable to move with the enemy right there, even for a moment, that spelled doom.

To either side of the forlorn upright tanks, Toshikazu and Kirihara showed up.

Toshikazu attacked from the air.

The enemy pilot had no hope of reacting.

With the force of a peregrine falcon, he descended, slashing deeply into the pilot’s seat.

The secret sword technique Zantetsu: a movement-type magic that defined a katana as a singular concept of existence, then moved it along a slashing path set by the magic program—at least, that was what it would have been, had he been using anything but the Ikazuchi-Maru.

Triggering Zantetsu with the Ikazuchi-Maru included the caster himself, not only the sword, as the magic’s target. Along with defining the katana as a single concept, it defined the entire sword-wielding person as a collective Idea, allowing for perfectly straight high-speed approaches and slashes.

And what movement was it that could be used so perfectly that it was part of a spell? Only full-body-slashing practice consisting of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of both solo swings and kata drills hammered into him could make this skill possible.

In fact, Toshikazu personally considered Naotsugu to be the genius, not himself.

But because he wasn’t a genius, as a result of repeated secret, honest kata practice, he had attained the Zantetsu of the Ikazuchi-Maru—the Jinrai Zantetsu, named for its lightning speed.

Because it was a master’s technique, he could only use the Jinrai Zantetsu in practice, a practice he could never show anyone. As such, many misunderstood him as a lazy man, but in reality, at the end of his endless endeavors, he had gained this secret technique.

Its console cleaved in twain, the upright tank fell dead silent.

As Kirihara leaped off the ground to approach, the upright tank’s upper body swiveled to face him.

One more step until he was in blade range.

A machine-gun barrel aimed at him—

But nothing fired from it.

Because a small katana that flew in from behind Kirihara plunged into the gun, tearing it free of the tank’s shoulder.

Sayaka, who stood diagonally behind him, threw another kodachi, and the grenade launcher tore away in the same manner.

The two kodachi curved through the air in an arc, then returned to Sayaka’s hands.

A sword-throwing technique.

Sayaka belonged to the kendo club at school, but her father had used kenjutsu in actual combat before. Her family had initiated her into kenjutsu techniques as well, and among them, she was best at this throwing technique. Not with shuriken or throwing daggers but with kodachi and wakizashi.

Being female, she would always lag behind in strength if things came to physical blows. Kirihara’s specialty, the High-Frequency Blade, was something he swung using force, for example. Similarly, controlling the blade’s motion to the point necessary for magic was difficult for her. But with throwing techniques, physical strength had nothing to do with it, since the idea was to cast the spell during her throwing motion. That had been the idea during her training.

Because of the huge opening left behind after the throw, she couldn’t use it against fast opponents. But against large, slow-moving targets, it demonstrated its maximum efficacy.

Seeing that the firearms had been disabled, Kirihara took the final step in.

A giant chain saw swung down from overhead.

But he could tell where it was going.

Kirihara put his body into a natural slide, his katana slicing through the tank’s left leg as he went.

The High-Frequency Blade.

This was the spell he was most skilled with, and it had easily ripped through the armor plating, which had been devised for landmines and anti-tank rifles.

The machine leaned forward and began to fall.

Retreating, Kirihara cut its pile driver free from the base, then went around to its side and thrust his blade into the pilot seat.

The sensation of penetrating flesh rang through his hands, and his face changed slightly as he pulled the blade out. But he still managed to leap back and put distance between him and the falling upright tank.

The expression he had made was certainly not a smile.

Tatsuya, who had been rummaging through what remained of the armored car, removed from it a one-foot cubed box to the side. “Is this it, sir?” he asked, pointing the box at a camera.

“Yes, that’s it. Just hold it up to the analyzer… Hmm, that’s definitely it” came the reply from the display hooked up to the camera. “That’s a Sorcery Booster.”

“It looks like just a box, sir.”

“One hundred percent of its connection and control are done through magical circuits. It won’t have a mechanical terminal,” Sanada explained through the display while Tatsuya frowned dubiously at the box, which was flat save for the handle.

“Does this mean they used this Booster to amplify their defense magic?” Yanagi added.

“Well, it’s only speculation, but I think that’s on the mark,” Sanada agreed.

“Guess we know exactly who they are now. Even though there was really no other possibility to begin with.”

“It’s weak evidence, but we’re neither policemen nor judges. Still, knowing this doesn’t change our response.”

The two captains traded a dark smile between one side of the display and the other.

“Sir,” Tatsuya broke in, “should I sink the camouflaged GAA warship?”

“We can’t do it in the harbor” came back Sanada. “It’ll impact its functions too much.”

Tatsuya knew that, of course. He’d only been joking, but when he received a more serious reply than expected, he started to feel a little apologetic.

But it was then that Kazama pushed Sanada out of the way to get into the frame. “Then should we go aboard and seize it, sir?” Yanagi asked the newcomer.

Tatsuya got the feeling that they’d long since decided to attack the enemy ship, even with this few people. It reminded him that these friends of his—well, his commanding officers, at the moment—didn’t understand jokes, or at least use them in daily life on a regular basis.

“That comes later. Helicopters have been prepared to evacuate the civilians in the station plaza, courtesy of some civs themselves. Once we’ve handed over monitoring your site to the Tsurumi advance unit, go to the station and help them escape.”

“Understood, sir.” Tatsuya saluted next to Yanagi, impressed that civilians had the courage to maneuver themselves to safety like that. He thought that the stance of taking civilians left behind with you as you escaped was praiseworthy, but then…

“The names of the civilians who called the helicopters are Mayumi Saegusa and Shizuku Kitayama. If either of them requests it, I want you to do everything you can to help.”

Upon hearing those all-too-familiar names, Tatsuya nearly cleared his throat despite himself.

At about the same time, people in another location had arrived at the same conclusion as to the enemy’s identity.

The wreckage Erika was responsible for was a far cry from its original form, so Miyuki, Erika, Leo, and Mikihiko all gathered before the other upright tank, mostly unharmed save for the pilot seat Leo had sliced through. Mikihiko had called the rest of them there.

“About this upright tank… I don’t think it was moving purely by mechanical control.”

“Do you mean they were using some sort of magic in parallel?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

It wasn’t unique for a male student to address Miyuki formally. But whether he was acting in line with that or not, Mikihiko just couldn’t seem to loosen up when talking to her.

“These three were moving oddly, like humans. The pilot seat takes up all of an upright tank’s torso, so its internal structure is nothing like a human. Even if you tried to make it move like a human being, you couldn’t make it act as a human being does. If you tried too hard, I believe you would only end up losing power for it.”

“And they still tried too hard?” asked Leo.

Mikihiko nodded unfalteringly. “I can only think pistons, gears, and wires weren’t the only things contributing to its power source. It must have had a power that directly made the limb movements look lifelike.”

“So with magic?” asked Erika. “What kind of spell would that be?”

Mikihiko’s answer was fluid. “It’s probably an application of the Paper Soldier spell.”

“Paper-whatta now?” Erika balked back, cocking her head in confusion.

“Is that the onmyoudou spell that uses a human shape? I hear it was originally from Taoism.”

But when Miyuki answered her instead, Mikihiko nodded, unable to hide how impressed he was. “Yes. You cut a person shape out of paper and house any old spirit in it. That’s the Paper Soldier spell.” The latter half was his explanation to Erika.

“So we’re dealing with the Great Asian Alliance, then?” Erika, however, breezed past his explanation and got straight to the heart of the matter.

“Isn’t it too early to jump to conclusions? If it’s an onmyoudou spell, they could simply be Japanese defectors, too.”

“No, in all likelihood, Erika’s correct.” Though Leo had proposed an unusual caution, Mikihiko shook his head and supported Erika’s opinion. “This may sound odd, but there are fads among old magic spells, too… Even if you honor tradition, some techniques see booms in certain times, while others are abandoned. No form of old magic in the country has used shiki with physical forms for over ten years now. Paper Soldier was abandoned in this country. If you wanted to control the saws and pile drivers on the upright tanks’ arms, there are many other options that are more efficient. If it were me, for example, I’d put a spell on the driver and saw myself. We old sorcerers aren’t stubborn enough to purposely bring out an abandoned technique if we knew it was uneconomical.”

“Hey, I’m not trying to call anyone stubborn here.” Leo waved his hands, flinching somewhat from Mikihiko, who seemed a little irritated—too conscious—of it. “The point is, we’ve got GAA magicians controlling these upright tanks, right? Got it. Makes sense.”

“Ah, well, I… You’re right.” Mikihiko realized he was letting frustration into his voice, too, and clammed up, embarrassed. But soon his face tightened, and he said something the other three did not expect:

“Huh? You want Shibata over there?” Mayumi asked into the air, unintentionally shouting her reply to her voice communicator. “…I see. Well, you have a point, but… Yes, I understand. But let me clear it with her first… Yes, it would be better if you explained directly. Shibata?”

Mayumi took her face from the terminal and held it toward Mizuki.

“Um, what is it…?”

“Miyuki and the others want you to go to them. She wants to explain the reason directly, so listen to what she has to say and decide for yourself.”

Mayumi and Mizuki had barely ever spoken. Mayumi offered her the voice unit in a rather businesslike tone, and Mizuki awkwardly—no, outright nervously—decided she had no choice but to take it.

“Oh, Shibata?”

“Yoshida?” Once she knew Mikihiko was on the other end, she gave a look of relief. If it had been Erika, she wouldn’t know when the bomb would be dropped on her, and even now, she was unreasonably nervous whenever she spoke to Miyuki. Still, as to why she was relieved it was Mikihiko—she herself didn’t quite understand that yet.

“I want you to lend us your strength.” Meanwhile, Mikihiko’s voice sounded rather hurried—or excited, perhaps.

“Huh? My strength?”

“The enemy is moving their armored weapons using an old magic spell called Paper Soldier. It’s not the same kind that I use, so I can’t really figure the spell out. But with your eyes, you’d be able to catch sight of enemy movements faster than me, since they always have the spell active. And you should be able to figure out where their magical cores are located. If we find that, I can disable their Paper Soldier spells with my magic. So I want you to come here, Shibata. I know it’s more dangerous than over there, but I promise I won’t ever let you get hurt.”

“…!” Mizuki, dumbstruck, felt her cheeks heat up. She knew he didn’t mean anything by it, of course, but…

“Isn’t that nice, Mizuki? Yoshida-kun says he’ll protect you.”

“…!”

“…!!”

Miyuki’s remark cut into their communication, and now both of them were at a loss for words, which they could each feel through the waves. Time stopped during that awkward silence, where she could easily imagine his face, down to its own bright color.

“…Not only Yoshida, of course. We’ll all do our best to back you up.”

Time started moving again with Miyuki’s bald-faced follow-up. Mayumi, who had been listening in, said to herself, I knew Miyuki was an A-plus catch…

“R-right! We’ll all make sure you’re well defended!” cried Mikihiko, desperate in more ways than one.

Mizuki, for her part, nodded. “All right. I’ll go over there now.”

She lowered the communication terminal from her face and breathed a sigh of relief. Then, after returning it to Mayumi and bowing, she quickly ran off at a trot to the front line, where Mikihiko and the others had taken up position.