The Irregular at Magic High School, Vol. 11: Visitor Arc, Part III

“Is that what you’re worried about? You know you’re on the brink of life or death right now.”

Inside the staff, another magic program instantly activated.

The spell that broke a tightly bound clump of metallic particles apart into high-energy plasma.

The event—the high-energy plasma created by the spell—changed its form according to Lina’s will while inside its container.

With the electricity and the scorching blade right in front of his nose, the last piece clicked into place in Tatsuya’s mind.

“Yeah, names can be important. People like names that mean something. The various legends say that the Brionac was a spear that could create a bolt of lightning to pierce its targets, or that it was a spear that could fly around on its own, or that it was a bullet made of light. I bet the key lies in the ‘on its own’ part.”

“The Brionac, a legendary item modeled after a mythological weapon.”

“To think you’ve put FAE theory into practical use… I shouldn’t have expected anything less of the USNA’s technological power.”

Lina had been listening to Tatsuya talk without much interest until then, but when he said the term FAE, her eyes widened and her expression stiffened.

“…How do you know about FAE theory?”

When he saw her expression, he gave her surprise of his own. “Is it that strange? FAE theory was originally a hypothesis advanced by Japan-America joint research.”

“That research is top secret! And it was all supposedly canceled!”

“But it wasn’t really. That sacred imitation in your hand is pretty damning proof of that, isn’t it?”

Tatsuya gazed at the Brionac. “FAE—Free After Execution,” he said, deeply moved. “In Japanese, it was called variable post-discharge event theory, but the term free after execution is a better description of what it is. Events created as a result of magical alteration are events that should never have been part of the world in the first place. Therefore, restrictions posed by the laws of nature are looser directly after the alteration occurs. You could alternatively say that there’s an extremely short time lag before the laws of nature kick in when a magic-caused event occurs.”

Tatsuya gave the explanation in an unwarranted lecturing tone of voice, creating an odd lull in the middle of their death match.

“FAE theory posits a few things about magically created plasma. Even though it’s supposed to scatter in complete randomness, it’s easy to give it a direction for movement. And despite its original cooling rate, returning it from its heated state to normal temperatures can be done within any arbitrary amount of time. If its scattering characteristics are suppressed, then it’s even possible to keep it in a certain shape. Like that.”

Lina, missing a chance to interrupt Tatsuya’s long-winded speech, just kept her grip on the weapon’s handle.

“But the time lag of when physical laws are predicted by FAE theory to kick in is less than an instant. It was thought impossible for the magician to be able to add more definitions for the event they created within such a short time after triggering the spell.”

Then Tatsuya made a face like he was in the middle of shrugging his shoulders. “And with good reason. It’s not possible for a human to define an event in less than a millisecond.”

And then pure, honest admiration crossed his face. “And to imagine…you lengthened the time lag for the laws of nature to apply by executing the spell within a bounded barrier container that blocked the very world’s physical laws from having an effect on it.”

It was a manifestation of natural emotion for Tatsuya, as a boy who wanted to walk the path of science.

“You have my honest praise. I raise my hat to you. Whoever created that Brionac is a true genius.”

“Tatsuya!” yelled Lina suddenly, cutting him off. She gripped the Brionac, whose plasma blade had disappeared, then positioned it again to shoot.

Her voice made it sound like she was forcing herself to rouse her spirits and will herself to fight.

“I’ll say it again. Surrender! With only one arm, you can’t use your martial arts. You don’t have any chance of winning!”

Upon hearing Lina’s shout, Tatsuya gave a cold-blooded smile. It was even more inhuman than the one Lina had given him earlier—enough to chill her to the bone.

“What would you do with me as your prisoner?”

But contrary to his expression, his voice had no coldness in it.

“Human experimentation?”

In fact, it was more like he was gently coiling around her, softly exposing her evil deeds.

“Like you did with them?”

It sounded like the whispers of a demon.

Despite her misfortune, Lina was smart enough to understand that “them” referred to the Stardust. The nervousness and shock caused the blood to drain from Lina’s face.

“It doesn’t really need to be said, but…I refuse to be your guinea pig.”

“Then I’ll just cut off all your limbs and drag you away with me!”

The Brionac’s tip aimed at the foot of Tatsuya’s kneeling leg at extremely close range.

Then Tatsuya shoved his handgun CAD, the Silver Horn custom Trident, into the end of its nozzle.

With his right arm—which had been burned away.

“Your arm?!” cried Lina.

Her cry made her late to trigger the spell.

But Tatsuya had already formed his.

He guided the aim of the gun barrel—the targeting assistance mechanism—of the CAD he’d shoved into the bounded container.

Then, inside the re-created mythological weapon filled with the power of the USNA’s strongest magician, his dismantling spell Mist Dispersion activated.

Metal grains, now changed into a gas of normal temperature, spurted from the Brionac’s nozzle.

The gas pressure caused the Trident to fly out of Tatsuya’s right hand.

But Lina was the one affected more.

Her tight grip had worked against her.

The unexpected recoil sent both Lina and the Brionac flying backward.

The impact of her slamming into the ground shook the Information Boost armor covering her.

Too impatient to recover the Trident, Tatsuya activated Regenerate.

The CAD’s structural information and its coordinate information relative to his body reverted, and the Trident returned to his hand in a repaired state.

He fired off six instances of Dismantle, nullifying Lina’s magical defenses and piercing each of her limbs.

The shots bored small holes the size of a needle into her arms and her thighs.

Without time to express her agony with a scream, the pain tripped her mental breaker.

A blanket of white swallowed Lina’s mind.

“…Lina.”

After finishing a certain thing up, Tatsuya returned to Lina, then looked down at her limp, unconscious body lying on the ground and spoke, knowing she wouldn’t hear him.

“You’d be better off quitting the army as soon as you can.”

Her naïveté had saved him in their earlier battle.

Judging only by their combat strength, Tatsuya should have had a rougher time.

After his arm had been blown to ash, he’d canceled his Program Dispersion. The reason was because he wanted to avoid taking even greater damage when the plasma dispersed once the structural information holding the beam together broke down. If she had lowered that first shot’s degree of convergence and fired the plasma so that it dispersed more from the very beginning, it would have roasted more than just his arm. Half of Tatsuya’s body would be gone, and he’d have lost his freedom of movement. Of course, he still could have reverted his physical body to its previous state in an instant, but he wouldn’t have been able to use his winning move—a sleight of hand using his right arm to stage a surprise attack.

In terms of things Lina could’ve done from the start—she shouldn’t have added the needless process of creating a “path” to limit collateral damage when she’d fired her original shot, either. The shock wave created along the firing path would have definitely done enough damage to block Tatsuya’s counterattack.

And when she mowed down the hedge before, she shouldn’t have tried to avoid hurting him. It was a basic rule of combat—to take away an enemy’s ability to resist, you had to keep dealing damage.

She also didn’t need to go along with his long talk about FAE theory. There was literally zero reason she needed to be shocked just because he’d exposed a secret weapon’s operational principles.

For the last attack, she should have adjusted the power to stop after burning the surface of his skin instead of aiming for his foot. She lost a decisive amount of time when she changed the Brionac’s aim. It wasn’t the hesitation from being surprised that his right arm had regenerated that was truly fatal—it had been the lag from having to move the Brionac.

“Sirius, commander of the Stars…I really don’t think you’re fit for this job,” he said to himself again, picking her up in his arms.