It had become weakened.

It was not something that originally belonged in this world, nor did It wish to be present in this world.

It had the property of being drawn to strong psycheonic waves.

Rapture, anguish, abhorrence, and desire: Prayers, they could be called, these waves of crave-worthy psycheons. And by them, It had been dragged across a momentarily shaken “wall,” from a world without form to a world written by form.

The shockwave when It crossed had caused It to split into twelve, and It resided in the humans It attracted.

To continue existing, It needed to absorb psycheons. Simply existing discharged psycheons, little by little. But in this world with form, It couldn’t absorb psycheons without assistance. To replenish those psycheons, there was no choice but to become one with something with form that could gather psycheons.

As a result of using power so many times while still possessing only Its true body, It had lost a large amount of psycheons that had been accumulating ever since It arrived in this world with form. Moreover, It had been caught in a deluge of high-pressure psions, shaving away many of the parts that had intruded upon the physical dimension. That was when It lost the majority of psions as well. Psions were not essential to continued existence, but without enough psions, It would no longer be able to influence the physical dimension.

Its true body didn’t possess advanced powers of thought. It was a mere monster, a result of reflecting and amplifying Its host’s hidden thoughts and suppressed impulses. The true body only needed instinct-like thought processes to keep existing. Nevertheless, the minute intelligence It possessed understood how difficult it would be to bore a hole through the walls of willpower to gain a new host in Its current weakened state.

It needed a place to rest. A place with no minds and a large quantity of psycheons.

For example, within the blood of a body whose mind had vacated.

For example, in a mindless puppet that gathered psycheons through its human form.

After avoiding human presence and wandering, It found a container that could become a place to rest inside a warehouse on the edge of the First High campus.

The morning after the seven of them had driven off—not exterminated—the parasite:

“Good morning, Tatsuya.”

“Good morning, Mizuki, Mikihiko… Erika’s still like that, huh?”

In their classroom, Tatsuya encountered his female friend at her desk, face in hand, looking the other way and making every effort to appear displeased.

“Good morning, Tatsuya… Yeah, she’s still sulking.”

“I am not!”

After Mikihiko bowed with a pained grin, Erika snapped at him from the side, then once again returned to her I’ve been offended pose.

There was, of course, a reason she was so overtly grumpy.

After the vampire had achieved a transformation into a form they’d have to call an “information life-form” yesterday, even though they’d managed to drive it off with overwhelming six-to-one odds in their favor, Tatsuya had let Lina flee without capturing her.

Erika hadn’t taken kindly to that. She still had it in her head that Lina had joined forces with the parasite. To make matters worse, Erika had been rendered completely helpless after the parasite had changed into its new shape.

This had been an issue of mismatched strengths, and there wasn’t even a fragment of a reason Erika needed to be ashamed, but that didn’t seem to fly for her on an emotional level. She’d made all sorts of objections to Tatsuya when he had tried to let Lina leave, and at the end had tried to cut her down.

The display itself had probably been venting. Erika hadn’t really meant to kill her, and after being put in a full nelson, she had calmed down. (But when Mikihiko had put her in that hold from behind, she’d yelled “sexual harassment” and punched him as hard as she could.)

But that hadn’t convinced her, either, and ever since lunch yesterday she’d been making sure everyone knew she was mad.

“Erika, give it a rest and cheer up already.”

Tatsuya spoke directly to her, but his back was still turned.

“Didn’t I explain this yesterday? Her folks were already starting to arrive.”

He muddled the words in consideration of prying ears, but by folks he was referring to the reinforcements Lina had called in.

“It was already a huge mess by then. If more stuff happened, we wouldn’t have been able to keep other students from wanting to know what was going on. If things went bad, there would have been a panic.”

Incidentally, it had been Mayumi who had ended up toiling to cover the whole thing up, not Tatsuya.

“I get that, but…”

Erika seemed to understand that much as well. She muttered in a sullen tone, her face still turned away.

“We also needed to patch up things with the Maximillian employees.”

In addition, it had been Tatsuya who created a situation where it was necessary to patch things up, but Lina (and her subordinates) who actually did it.

“I’m not about to say Lina’s completely in the clear, but she wasn’t guilty enough in that situation to recklessly go after her. If she really is guilty of something, she’ll come attack again. And if that happens, she’ll get no mercy.”

Tatsuya’s tone of voice was the same as always. But the dangerous intent in his words caused Erika to turn around without thinking.

“…Can we beat her?”

Erika still didn’t know that the red-haired, golden-eyed magician was Lina. But even in just the battle against the parasite yesterday, she had felt firsthand that Lina was no ordinary magic user.

“Whether we win or lose is up to chance. Besides, it’s not certain that Lina is going to try something on us anyway.”

“But we’ll have no mercy.”

“Nope.”

Tatsuya’s manner of speaking was incredibly impassive, which only served to convey how serious he was. Mikihiko, who was listening from beside him, was cringing, and Mizuki was clearly frightened. But his attitude seemed to please Erika, and her mood made a full recovery.

On that same day, Lina (who hadn’t gone to school) was getting what was probably the first taste of discomfort she’d had in her life.

She’d once been invited to a presidentially sponsored tea party, where she’d been forced to go through a thorough body check, which for a woman was nothing if not humiliating. But this hearing, under way at the USNA embassy, was uncomfortable enough to rival that.

“…Then, what you mean to say is the Sirius of the Stars was unable to do anything against a high school student, and the suspect was taken away?”

The plea that Mikaela Hongou had self-destructed and ultimately hadn’t been stolen made it up to her throat, but even she knew that wasn’t what the inquiry committee was getting at, so she quietly lowered her head.

“And the suspect was the operator living in the room right next door, wasn’t she? You had a whole month, yet you didn’t realize who she was?”

This time, Lina really wanted to shout back that their “suspect” was someone they had chosen as an operator… But she knew she couldn’t possibly say something like that, which just stressed her out even more.

The nagging remarks continued. She may have been a magician with talent that spoke for itself, but she was a teenage major. More than a few people in the USNA military were jealous of her. The less actual combat experience a military official possessed, the stronger the tendency toward that, and right now, the men in front of her (for some reason, they hadn’t chosen any women for the inquiry committee) were all the stereotypical high-ranking officers who knew nothing of real battle.

Their pointless disagreeableness went on. It started to seem silly to bother thinking seriously or getting mad about it, so Lina idly let their words flow by her.

“By the way, did your medical check come back with no issues, Major? You had several direct exchanges with the infected person, didn’t you? Don’t you think you should at least make sure there are no bite marks on you anywhere? If you haven’t done that yet, you should check on that right now.”

But when one came out with this abuse, this absurd remark that deserved the moniker of “sexual harassment,” even she had to wake up. In the first place, they called their enemy “vampires” for convenience’s sake, but they’d never bitten any of their victims. She was astonished they’d had the gall to sit here without having read any of the reports, but more than that—were these lecherous old assholes telling her to get naked right now, in front of them?!

“That would be incredibly rude to the major.”

The only reason she could stop herself before making an outburst was because reinforcements appeared with good timing. Thanks to that, she could protect her reputation (and it was only a reputation) for being calm and thoughtful for one so young.

“Colonel Balance?”

More than one or two of the inquiry committee members moved to yell angrily at the woman who had suddenly burst into the kangaroo court calling itself an inquiry. But after realizing who she was, not one of them felt heroic enough to rebuke her for it.

Her name was Colonel Virginia Balance. Considering how the Stars organization worked, one would think her full name had to be a code name (Virginia for Virgo, and Balance for the scales of Libra), but it was her actual name. She’d just seen the last day of her thirties a few days ago, but the gallant big sister–like woman didn’t really look it.

Of course, what made them scared of her wasn’t the fact that she was a colonel, or the fact that she had a youthful appearance.

For one thing, rank wasn’t an issue, since the majority of the military officials assembled here had done inquiries on generals before.

What was making them restrain themselves (in polite terms) was her job.

The USNA Joint Chiefs of Staff Information Bureau Internal Inspection Office’s first deputy commissioner.

Reformed and rebuilt after the integration with Canada’s military, the number two of the Internal Inspection Office, which kept a watchful eye on illegal acts not only by uniformed personnel but nonuniformed personnel as well. That was Colonel Balance’s job.

Given the details of her duties, she wasn’t out of place here. In fact, it was strange that they hadn’t called her to begin with—because it was impossible, given her position and role, that the other committee members didn’t know she’d come to Japan for this inquiry.

It was impossible to lay blame on her, despite her sudden entrance.

“Please, excuse me. May I have permission to make a statement?”

The colonel looked over the inquiry committee member sitting in the highest location with a stinging glance, then asked to speak, courteous in words alone.

“Y-yeah. Go ahead.”

“Thank you. I will leave the question of why you didn’t call me here for another opportunity.”

Half the inquiry committee looked frightened, but Colonel Balance merely gave them a glance before turning back to Lina.

“The mission assigned to Major Sirius was not suitable given her duty and her skills, and it is my belief that her failing in her mission does not deserve laying the onus upon her person.”

Whispering spread through the room. The reason they hadn’t called Colonel Balance to the inquiry was because they knew they wouldn’t be able to say anything careless with her in attendance—she was well informed in both military administration and military command affairs. Some thought that, as another woman, she would also side with Lina automatically. But for her to so frankly defend Lina caught them by surprise.

“Regardless, however, of where the responsibility for this lies, the fact that someone in the position of Stars commander was defeated in magical combat is something we need to be concerned about. After all, the Sirius is the strongest magician in our forces.”

Lina clenched her fists tight. Colonel Balance’s indication was something Lina herself felt more than anyone. It frustrated her so much that her back teeth nearly started to grate audibly.

“Of course, Major Sirius will no doubt also want a chance to vindicate herself. Isn’t that right, Major?”

“Of course, ma’am!”

The colonel nodded at her response and moved her eyes to the group on the platform. “It is my opinion that we should have Major Sirius resume her current mission. I also suggest that we raise our on-site support to the highest level.”

“The highest level of support, ma’am?” asked one of the committee members. “What do you mean by that exactly?”

Colonel Balance gave a fearless grin. “I believe I will remain here in Tokyo under the pretense of monitoring our military attaché.”

The muttering that occurred this time didn’t go away very quickly.

“In addition, the director general has already given permission to use the Brionac.”

The muttering changed into a clamor.

Even Lina wore an expression of disbelief. “Colonel, ma’am, is that true?”

“It is.”

The question wasn’t very discreet from a rank order perspective, but the colonel answered it with a smile. And then, she added,

“I was the one who brought it here.”

Silvia was waiting for Lina upon leaving the inquiry committee room.

“Silvie, where on earth did you go? That was awful!”

It had been nearly a day since Lina had seen Silvia in person. For some reason, when she safely returned home from First High yesterday, Silvia was nowhere to be seen, either in their apartment or in any secret locations.

Because of the stress she’d accumulated during the inquiry, Lina sounded like she was venting. Still, it was like an innocent joke from someone who was off her game, and Silvia would normally have smiled and ignored it. But Silvia accepted the reproach with a serious expression, straightened up, then offered, “I apologize, ma’am,” in an unresisting voice.

“Huh? Silvie? I wasn’t being serious or anything…”

“I know you weren’t being serious, Lina. But I have to apologize to you.”

Lina frowned, realizing this wouldn’t be a conversation to have lightly.

“If I’d realized Mia’s identity earlier, it wouldn’t have driven you into such a disadvantageous situation, ma’am.”

Saying That’s not true would have been bravado. She’d been completely cut off amid the enemy yesterday. Lina was aware of that, so she couldn’t deny Silvia’s words.

“I was not good enough to fulfill my rear support role on this mission. I’m terribly sorry, Commander.”

“What’s wrong, Silvie? You’re acting like we won’t see each other again—”

“Commander,” said Silvia, her address cutting off Lina’s response. “I’ve received orders from the General Staff Office to return home. Last night’s investigation has diagnosed me as possibly infected, and I’ll be undergoing a thorough examination on home soil.”

“That’s nonsense! That mutation isn’t like a virus! There’s no possible way a medical examination could tell you whether you have it before you change!”

“That’s exactly why, Major.”

“Colonel?!”

Addressing her from behind was Colonel Balance, who had just saved her from a tight situation.

“I apologize. I had no intention of eavesdropping.”

“No, ma’am. We were the ones standing here making conversation.”

“I see.” Balance gave a slight smile to Lina as she did her best to stand on ceremony, then immediately went back to her stone-faced expression. “Regarding Warrant Officer Mercury’s treatment, it’s as you said, Major—we have no current way to detect the contagion before it changes you. In other words, we can’t say for sure that the warrant officer hasn’t been infected.”

“Then why not me, ma’am?!”

“You’re right. There’s no proof that you’re not infected, either. But if you were to oppose the military, Major, our forces would suffer grave losses. Therefore, we cannot allow you to return home until we know you’re safe.”

Lina’s face paled. With no way to discern if the parasite had possessed someone, this was essentially a declaration of exile. At the same time, the pieces clicked together. This was the reason Balance had stressed that she continue her mission.

“On the other hand, were Warrant Officer Mercury to become a vampire and betray our military, considering her skill set, she could leak our military secrets to plenty of other nations. Therefore, she needs to return home at once.”

That was logical as well. She felt emotionally opposed to it, but as a soldier who prioritized logical reasoning, Lina had to accept it.

“That’s how it is. I’ll assign you a different aide.”

“No, ma’am. I don’t need one.”

Balance’s proposal was based on her needs, but there was clearly also favorable consideration in it. Lina refused it outright.

“Anyone living with me will come under the same suspicion of infection. Thankfully, even living alone, Japanese apartments are set up so that I have no trouble.”

“I see. If that’s what you wish, Major, I’ll arrange for nobody to be sent.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

After the two saw Balance off with a salute, Silvia gave Lina a teary-eyed smile.

“Commander…”

“Silvie, stop calling me that. It’s too stiff. Please, call me Lina, like you have until now.”

“…All right. Lina, it hurts me to go back home and leave you to your own oversleeping habits, but…”

“Now you’re too informal! Besides, the day before yesterday was the only day I slept in, wasn’t it?!”

As Lina’s breathing became rapid, Silvia gave her a smile, this time without tears. “Lina, you haven’t been infected. The demon has another thing coming if it thinks our Sirius is weak enough for it to possess her.”

“Of course. I would never lose to a mere parasite. The next time I find it, I’ll burn it to cinders for sure.”

“I know you will, so please finish your mission quickly and come back to HQ, Commander.”

Silvia saluted, the smile remaining in her eyes, and Lina returned the salute, her attitude a deliberately confident one.

Mitsugu Kuroba, who was on a business trip in Yokohama for his legitimate job, thought hard when the phone in his hotel room rang. He hadn’t told the person he was in town to see that this was where he was staying. That person could contact him over wireless whenever they wanted, so he didn’t need to tell them the hotel. And for the same reason, nobody related to him would call him over a landline, either. If it was for his other job, a call that went through the hotel front was even less likely…

“Hello?”

But he didn’t feel the need to let the answering machine pick up. Just in case, he responded to the voice-only call without naming himself.

“Mitsugu, do you have a free moment?”

The moment he heard the voice drift from the receiver, his back unconsciously straightened. “Miss Maya… Yes, I’m quite fine right now.”

His anxiety didn’t come out of his voice, though, even when faced with the current leader of the Yotsuba. He was, after all, the leader of one of its branches—the one in charge of its information network. Maya and Mitsugu were cousins, though she was a bit his elder. The younger sister of the previous Yotsuba head was his mother, and his son was a candidate to be the next leader. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t of direct Yotsuba descent, but using a more general standard, Mitsugu was extremely close to it. But it was exactly because the blood ran so thickly in him that he knew quite well how terrifying Maya could be.

It also immediately answered the question of why she was calling the hotel phone. This hotel was managed by a business the Yotsuba controlled in much the same way as Four Leaves Technology. The room he was using was also equipped with secret gimmicks for those with connections to the Yotsuba. In fact, he almost felt embarrassed for not immediately realizing the call would be from the main family.

Of course, he didn’t mention that.

“It must be something urgent, yes? Please, go ahead and ask whatever you wish of me.”

“You know, Mitsugu… Can’t you do something about that theatrical way you talk?”

“Oh, my beautiful cousin, you wound me. Theatrical? I am always quite serious, I assure you.”

He heard a tired sigh over the phone. He had a surprisingly good relationship with this terrifying cousin of his. She’d usually put in a courteous retort at his mannerisms, and so Mitsugu felt himself calm down completely through the exchange. That might have been his cousin’s plan as well, but he knew he’d gain nothing reading too much into it.

“I’ll get to the point, then… Mitsugu, have you finished locating the parasite hosts?”

The man was well aware that his face pulled back. This wasn’t his legitimate job, or his other job—but his real job: the original role of the Kuroba. Mitsugu understood that, thus, he could not cut corners nor be unable to answer.

“Twelve in total. The US has dealt with four, and Miyuki and Tatsuya blew away another yesterday, so there are seven remaining. I’ve pinpointed where they are as well.”

“My, a fast worker as usual. I should have expected as much, Mitsugu.”

“Not at all. You were the one working so hard to draw the attention of the Saegusa and Chiba. You saved me the effort of bringing it to light.”

“How modest of you.”

Mitsugu didn’t deny her this time—what he’d just said was, as Maya noted, nothing but modesty. He’d only finished finding all seven of them last night, of course, so he was just on time.

“I actually received a request this morning from our client, telling us, and I quote, ‘not to let these filthy monsters do as they please in Tokyo any longer.’”

“Well, that’s harsh. I don’t recall Tokyo being under the Yotsuba’s jurisdiction.” Mitsugu frowned—a sincere gesture. It was for that very reason he had to be very delicate in moving his pieces around the city.

“I’m sure they have other pressing concerns. In any case, that’s what things look like, so if you would please put an end to things for now.”

“An end, you say?” he asked carefully. If he mishandled his reaction, he’d end up forced to overwork himself.

“Please remove all the hosts.”

Maya’s voice was incredibly plain. Her voice wasn’t suppressing any emotion, nor did it sound cold or cruel. The Yotsuba head’s voice was awfully—if the word could be used like this—routine.

“Not capture them?”

“Yes. Erase them.”

“If the current hosts die, the parasites will apparently scatter in search of a different host. It will take a bit more time to locate their new hosts—”

“I don’t mind. How does a parasite leave a host after death? How far is it able to move in an information body state? How much time does it need to fully merge with a new host, and how long does it take to resume its activities?”

“You’d like me to observe that and report to you?”

“It will probably give us valuable data. You can do it, can’t you?”

With the receiver in his hand, despite this being a voice-only call, Mitsugu bowed deeply. “I am at your disposal.”

“Please make another report after you’ve finished getting rid of them.”

“I ask that you give me until the day after tomorrow.”

“That will be fine. Thank you.”

After Mitsugu assented to her command once more, the call ended.

Gathering psions in the palm of one’s hand and grasping them.

That was the usual image for employing Program Demolition.

A normal Program Demolition would imply ramming those gripped psions into an expanding activation sequence or a functioning magic program. But the skill Tatsuya desired now wasn’t to shoot down an information body using the actual body hosting it but to snipe an information body in the information dimension.

A means of directly attacking a parasite drifting through the sea of information.

He opened his clenched hand.

He left his arm at his side.

Any actions to complement his image of the physical direction would actually get in the way. Things like trails and trajectories didn’t come about in the information dimension. If one defined what existed where, it was there.

Overlapping his targets, independent information bodies—apparently a type of shikigami—the clump of psions Tatsuya fired appeared in the information dimension, the Idea.

In a physical dimension, multiple objects cannot occupy the same position simultaneously.

But information had no such rule. An information body that existed in the information dimension didn’t have a physical allocation restriction. Tatsuya’s psions released from a compressed state at a “location” that overlapped with the independent information bodies, dissipated, and vanished without having any effect on the independent information bodies.

He grunted, clenching his teeth in frustration. As Miyuki looked on from the side with a worried expression, Yakumo, who had helped him with creating the targets, began to speak in his usual transcendental tone.

“It figures that even you’d have trouble with this,” Yakumo went on drolly. “Well, this is one of those skills that those who can’t do it will never be able to, no matter how hard they try.”

Miyuki shot a murderous glare his way.

To Yakumo’s credit, his expression didn’t change. Although it did look as though a bead of something like cold sweat formed near his temple.

“Doesn’t seem to me you have absolutely no compatibility with it, though, since you learned how to fire a farstrike in the true world in three days.”

As Yakumo continued, somewhat flustered, Miyuki directed an even more criticizing gaze at him.

“Master, please set up the next ones.”

But after Tatsuya requested to continue the training, Miyuki’s attention turned to her brother.

It had been one week since that day. The day when the parasite had invaded the school and the fight had come to a bitter conclusion. Tatsuya had asked for Yakumo’s training the morning after, and today was now the seventh day.

Yakumo had tried to reassure him, but Tatsuya had gained a renewed sense of the walls to his own talent in these past two or three days. The fact that he’d learned to fire a psionic bullet at a target in the information dimension would have been rapid progress for a normal pupil. But Tatsuya had always been able to perceive information bodies adrift in the Idea. If you compared him with a normal pupil, he would have had a huge advantage before starting. So the fact that he couldn’t make a psionic bullet work against a target was not the sort of thing that gave him an optimistic evaluation of himself.

“Well, sometimes you can’t tell whether or not you have the affinity until you see the results. Part of spell casting means not being anywhere close one day and then suddenly being able to do it the next.”

Perhaps picking up on Tatsuya’s irritation, Yakumo gave him a few words of consolation.

“Although, it’s also true that we don’t have time to wait for eventualities.”

Of course, he didn’t end with just consolation.

“In your case, you know where you’re supposed to aim, so I’d think putting together a different attack method instead of the farstrike would be an idea.”

Upon hearing that, though he knew he was being rude, Tatsuya gave a bitter chuckle. “You can’t develop new spells willy-nilly like that. I’ll admit we’re getting nowhere, but you think too highly of me.”

“Do I, though? You’re certainly incapable in certain fields, but you have extraordinary talent in spell improvement and development. Not a good idea to limit your own possibilities like that, in my opinion.”

“That’s right, Brother!”

As Tatsuya looked even less enthusiastic, his sister stepped up to encourage him.

“I know you can do it, Brother. You can make wonderful ideas reality, ideas that other people would never even think of.”

…Actually, that was well past encouragement; it was sheer confidence. The way she said it didn’t leave anything open to interpretation.

“I do not mean to intrude on Yakumo’s strategy, but I believe you have no need to give up on either option. Couldn’t you continue your first plan of using Program Demolition to directly attack, while you move forward with new spell development at the same time?”

If it had been anyone but Miyuki who said that, Tatsuya would have scorned it as ridiculous or settled it with a laugh, asking if the person wanted him to die of overwork.

But faced with his little sister’s gaze, so radiantly confident that it far surpassed mere hope, he found that calling the idea impossible was instead what was impossible for him.

Tatsuya and Lina weren’t the only ones who had gotten moving in the hopes of exacting revenge. Erika, Mikihiko, Mayumi, and Katsuto had all gone to work for the rematch against the overarching threat called the parasite.

But then, in the first week of February 2096, bad news drifted in from beyond the Pacific Ocean:

“Brother, this is…!”

The Shiba siblings learned of it on the news during their morning meal. It was as if the story had waited for morning to come; it was so shocking that Tatsuya was dumbfounded.

“…That’s just what Shizuku told us, isn’t it?” Tatsuya muttered darkly, after finally getting his voice back.

“…Yeah, though it seems like it’s been dramatized quite a bit.”

The news itself took the form of an anonymous whistleblowing report from a certain government-related official.

It went like this.

Last year, on October 31, the United States government ordered its military magicians to develop a way to counter Japan’s secret military weapon that they’d used on the southern shore of the Korean Peninsula. The magicians then went to the Dallas National Particle Accelerator Institute and forced the scientists there to perform an experiment to generate a micro black hole, ignoring the scientists’ warnings. During the experiment, a hole opened in the dimensional wall, and it called forth a demon from another dimension.

The magicians tried to counter Japan’s secret weapon by using the demon.

But they failed to control it, and it possessed their bodies instead. The true identities of the vampires who had been causing such a mess on the streets since the beginning of last year were the magicians possessed by the demon.

That placed threefold blame on the military for the victims. First: They failed to stop their magicians from forcing such a reckless experiment to go through. Second: Knowing the risks were high, the experiment went through anyway. Third: Magicians belonging to the military had brought harm to civilians, notwithstanding the high possibility they’d gone mad.

The underlying cause of this scandal was the military’s failure to completely regulate magicians. Magic was powerful, but nobody knew when the supernatural ability would go out of control. Was using it truly within national interests? Shouldn’t citizens be carefully rethinking their stance on the matter—?

“It’s skillfully sugarcoated, but…”

“Then…”

“Yes, the expulsion of magicians is probably their true intention.”

Tatsuya’s voice was bitter as he answered Miyuki, who had grimaced, not so much in concern as from being appalled.

“The same roots as humanism… Non-magicians tremendously outnumber the magically inclined, so it doesn’t bear thinking about which group the media would side with. The bigger issue is the news source.”

Tatsuya reached out for the telephone console, but halfway there, he stopped.

Who had he been about to call…? Out of several candidates, for whatever reason, one face, who they couldn’t call an ally, was the one that came to Miyuki’s mind.

After hearing the sudden and unexpected bombshell news story—or maybe scandal was more appropriate—Lina’s head was in nonmetaphorical pain. It wasn’t just her imagination—she had a real headache.

Her honest feelings were that this was no time to be going to school. Still, a girl who was 100 percent combat oriented wouldn’t be of any help in quelling a media panic; and besides, Colonel Balance had specifically instructed her to go about her business as usual.

After receiving a direct order from her superior officer, she couldn’t claim ignorance and skip out on classes. As she nursed her throbbing headache, she went through the ticket gate at First High Station. From here, it was a straight shot to the school gates, but…

“Good morning, Lina.”

Suddenly, a figure appeared in front of Lina. It made her forget all about her headache, turn on her heel, and dart away like a fleeing rabbit.

“What’s the big idea, running away at the sight of us?”

“Ah, ah-ha-ha-ha-ha…”

Lina’s escape ended in failure after just three steps.

Miyuki had gone around the turnstiles in advance.

With her classmate smiling sweetly and nowhere left to run, Lina seemed to settle on smiling and passing it off as nothing for now.

Not that it meant much.

“That’s fine. Well, it’s not actually fine, but we don’t need to be late because we wasted time here with pointless banter. There’s something I want to ask you. Let’s talk as we walk.”

“…Talk about what?”

She obeyed and went with them, even with her caution clear as day. The reason was that Lina knew her current position; she couldn’t cause a fuss in a place like this. Tatsuya knew from their short acquaintanceship that she wasn’t a very patient person, so he got right to the point.

“Did you see the news this morning?” he asked.

“…Yeah. Not that I wanted to anyway,” she answered, sounding genuinely displeased.

“How much of it is true?”

Lina didn’t have any duty to faithfully answer his questions. But she felt like complaining to someone. As though she were thankful they knew everything about her, since she didn’t need to hide anything at this point, she began venting her stress.

“All the important bits are downright lies!” She was still keeping her voice down, but her tone was severe. “They don’t tell you anything except surface-level facts, which makes them even nastier! Typical information control!”

“So, as I thought, they’re manipulating public opinion.”

Lina tilted her head to the side—she couldn’t understand why that seemed to make sense to Tatsuya. “What? As you thought? They’re controlling opinions?”

“Well, it’s just speculation. Anyway, the surface-level facts are correct, right?”

“…Yeah!” spat Lina in response, rankled that he’d so bluntly noted the one thing she didn’t want him to.

“But those things should have all been naturally treated as confidential. I wouldn’t think someone on the outside could find out about them so easily.”

“…It’s the Seven Sages, probably.”

“Seven Sages? Not the Greek ones, I presume?”

“There’s this group that calls themselves that. Nobody knows who they are, though.”

Tatsuya couldn’t help but be surprised at Lina’s comment. “You don’t know who they are? Aren’t they a USNA-based organization? Is that possible?”

“It is possible! Frustrating though it may be!” Lina’s expression betrayed genuine annoyance. “All we have is their name, which they gave us. No matter how much we investigate, we can’t come up with anything. The only thing we know is that they call their officers Sages, and there are seven of them.”

“Sages… That’s rather on the nose, isn’t it?”

“I’m telling you, we don’t know who they are!”

“Hold on, Lina. Don’t get mad at my brother for it.”

“What? I—”

Miyuki’s comment had been incredibly blind—she hadn’t read the mood at all. Lina nearly exploded and shouted, What was that?! or Are you saying it’s my fault?! but after a few deep breaths, she managed to stop herself from doing something that would draw attention.

“…Don’t let it get to you, Angelina,” she muttered under her breath. “Miyuki’s the strange one here. If you start letting every one of that brother-obsessed girl’s brother-complex remarks get to you, it’ll never end. Don’t think about the brother complex! No brother complex, no brother complex…”

Thankfully, nobody heard the calming, spell-like words well enough to find fault with them.

“Lina?” wondered Tatsuya.

“Huh? Sorry. What did you say?”

“These Seven Sages—is it possible they’re linked to the humanist movement?”

As they walked, Lina returned to reality and considered the possibility for a moment—only to shake her head. “I can’t deny it outright, but probably not. Judging from past examples, the Seven Sages aren’t fanatical, and they don’t abide by an ideology.”

“Fanaticism aside, can any organization really not have an ideology?”

“…Sorry, that didn’t come out right. They don’t have an ideology in the normal sense of the word. According to our profilers, their mentality is transient and delights in committing crime. Stubbornly holding true to a single ideology wouldn’t match their image. After all, they’ve even worked with us in the past. It was apparently pretty one-sided cooperation, though.

“That was when I learned the name,” Lina finished.

Tatsuya nodded in understanding. They certainly didn’t seem much like the humanists.

“One last thing, if it’s all right.”

There was still a short distance to the school gates, but Tatsuya told her he was almost finished.

“…What?” His voice was more serious than before, and Lina’s own answer was replete with caution, too.

“Did they draw the parasite into this world on purpose?”

“No.” Lina’s denial was clear. “If you were serious about that, I’d be angry, Tatsuya,” she added. She was already pretty mad—it was just that her anger wasn’t directed toward Tatsuya alone at the moment. “We’ve already passed judgment on four of the infected. If you’re suggesting someone did this as part of a scheme, I could never forgive them.”

DD was a white male in his late forties with brown hair, brown eyes, and an average appearance. His real name was Donald Douglas, but almost nobody called him Mr. Douglas. Ever since he was a kid, people had just called him “Dee-Dee,” a familiar nickname when put positively, and a lack of respect when put otherwise. His work colleagues and the other residents of his apartment thought of him as neither a poison nor a salve but as an ordinary person.

DD had been doing maintenance work in Dallas until three months ago. He was set up for a good career after graduating from a technical school with high marks, but because of a single misplaced button (he believed), he was unable to get a job that he could be fully proud of, and he changed jobs several times before getting married.

DD had been unhappy with his maintenance job, too. It was blue-collar work, though one offering a stable social position and a living-wage salary. In short, his standard of living was exactly average for those who lived in the old USA region. When you looked at the average for the whole USNA, including Central America, you could call it fairly high.

But he perpetually believed there was a job out there he was better suited for.

Nevertheless, after getting married, he’d put his family first and locked his ambitions deep inside. Fortune had seen to it that they weren’t blessed with children, but one could call his relationship with his wife a happy one. He continued to be a good husband to her. Perhaps, though, his self-denial was too strong. If he’d stayed a little truer to his own ambitions, then maybe he wouldn’t have been possessed by the demon that day.

On the day of the micro black hole experiment, he’d been doing a switchboard inspection on the outer wall of the building adjacent to the linear particle accelerator facility. That was when he gazed upon the giant experimental apparatus with longing eyes. His sealed-away unfulfilled ambitions transformed into pure longing, filling his heart. But that should have ended as a fleeting fantasy. Once his job was over, he would have exercised his usual self-denial and gone home a good husband.

That is, if the parasite hadn’t possessed him.

That day, he became a parasite. He’d had latent psychic abilities, and by merging with the parasite, that ability—Hypnosis Force—awakened. He used the power to trick his wife, then followed Their Own will and came to Japan.

DD’s Hypnosis Force wasn’t a very powerful ability. It couldn’t make someone believe something remarkably against common sense, nor could it cause a person to behave contrary to deeply rooted moral or religious beliefs. Even the suggestion he’d used on his wife had been A long business trip to Japan.

But if something fell within a person’s sphere of common sense or morals, he could order them to do it, even if it was a considerably odd command. For example, he easily got the real estate agent to believe all his necessary paperwork was in order and rented an apartment without going through a physical examination. Using this ability, he’d secured places to live for his comrades, who—including himself—had not been dispatched there by the USNA military. DD also used the sensible idea that demons can’t possibly exist on eyewitnesses to warp their memories and cover up his comrades’ activities.

But one week ago, they’d lost a succession of comrades central to their activities, and so they’d decided to move to a different location. He’d interfered with the minds of the USNA military staff to place him and his comrades at the back of the medical examination line so they’d be exempted from them. When his comrades who had fled the military in the meantime escaped their home country and entered Japan, he contacted the collaborator who had pulled the strings and arranged for their next hiding spot.

After cleaning up his things in the apartment, DD called upon his remaining comrades.

Are preparations for our move complete?

DD’s question, which he directed within his mind, received an affirmative thought-response.

Even if there was someone with a strange ability that could intercept thought waves, they would have only heard a buzzing, like of bees’ wings, regardless of the language. DD was the only one who communicated with human words—the parasites didn’t need words to transmit their intent.

In the first place, they were essentially sharing a single consciousness. There was no need for everybody to think about what they should do; and now that the comrade who had previously been the main body of thought had completed their assimilation into a new host, DD became the new carrier of the main consciousness—the seat of humanlike thought.

Then we leave tomorrow morning. Be sure not to do anything conspicuous that might draw attention.

……

It’s essentially already midnight. It would be more of a risk to move immediately.

The thoughts that came back contained three affirmatives and two negatives. And one death cry.

“What happened?!”

Without thinking, DD stood up and shouted in his physical voice. His “voice” went through the consciousness-sharing organ that had formed behind his brow. It had to have reached his comrades.

But the only thoughts that came back were death cries. At about the same time, his comrades’ minds disappeared, one by one.

After counting four cries, DD felt something strange in his chest.

Panicked, he looked down at it.

Right around where his heart was, there was something that looked like a black needle stuck in his chest. When he looked more closely, he saw that it was an accessory called a lapel pin. The end of the pin had only slightly pierced his clothing, and no blood was coming out.

Before DD could consider why something like this was stuck in him, he reflexively tried to pull it out.

But his hands didn’t move like he thought they would. An instant after DD realized it was there, an intense pain shot through his entire body, so strong that it wouldn’t allow him to retain sanity.

Pain tore through his heart, and his physical body ceased its functions permanently.

The cause of death was shock.

The postmortem certificate would probably read “commotio cordis–induced cardiac arrest.”

DD never noticed the figure in black standing in front of him.

“Two seconds… I just can’t get it to be as good as Uncle’s.”

While picking up the lapel pin that had fallen to the floor, Mitsugu Kuroba muttered to himself in a self-deprecatory manner.

The spell he’d sent the parasite to the grave with was an original he’d designed himself. “Poison Wasp” was the flavorless name he’d given the spell; it was a mental interference magic that infinitely amplified the pain felt by whomever he cast it upon, until they died. Because of how it worked, it wasn’t impossible for a magician with high pain tolerance to use anti-magic to nullify the pain before dying of shock, and it exhibited no effects on those who could cut off their sense of pain. In terms of its lethality, it was a far cry from Grim Reaper, which was what his uncle, Genzou Yotsuba, previous head of the Yotsuba family, had used. Mitsugu’s muttering originated in this difference being demonstrated once again.

But in terms of whether Poison Wasp was worse than Grim Reaper as a spell—that, he couldn’t say for sure.

Poison Wasp’s strongest point was that it could stop a target from breathing using, as its name implied, a wound as small as a needle. Grim Reaper was a spell that made targets inflict fatal wounds on themselves. It left a mark on the corpse, and blood would splatter everywhere. Poison Wasp, however, left such a small wound that one would never pinpoint it as the cause of death. Anyone who saw a victim of Poison Wasp was sure to first suspect death by poisoning, and then death by suffocation, but they wouldn’t find traces of either on the corpse. In terms of which was more suited for assassination, Poison Wasp was the better spell.

The other aspect Poison Wasp excelled at was that others could use it besides Mitsugu. Unlike most mental interference magic, Mitsugu had written a nonindividualistic activation sequence for Poison Wasp and formularized its execution process. That meant magicians other than Mitsugu could use it, too. You had to have an affinity for it, of course, but Kuroba’s entire team had already mastered Poison Wasp as a trump card.

“Boss.”

Addressed by a voice from behind, Mitsugu slowly turned around. His pose, holding the soft cap on his head with one hand, made it look like he’d clearly read too many old novels (or so his subordinate thought). But the theatrical motion was quite fitting on him.

“We’ve finished cleaning everything up.”

“Any casualties?”

“No, sir.”

After hearing his subordinate’s reply, Mitsugu nodded in satisfaction. These were the ones the USNA’s pursuit team had been struggling so much against. A little lenience in his scoring when it came to his men was permissible.

“Orders from the head. Don’t forget to track the mental body escaped from the hosts. We can’t help ultimately losing them, but follow them for as long as you can.”

At the order Mitsugu handed down, his subordinate made a subtle expression. The part of him that was lenient with them, the part that lacked strictness toward his men, didn’t really mesh well with the part of him that calmly ordered multiple assassinations and sometimes impassively cut down his own subordinates.

Mitsugu Kuroba was an inscrutable man.

You could never see his real face through the several masks he wore.

He didn’t even know if he had something to call a real face.

And the more closely one worked with Mitsugu, the more strongly one felt it.