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

Mikihiko had already laid down a barrier to block the parasite from escaping its host, from a simplified altar he’d constructed on the school rooftop. He had remained there not just to guard Mizuki and Honoka but so that he could use a long-distance barrier spell.

Still, the barrier’s effects weren’t perfect. It wasn’t an issue of Mikihiko’s skill but one of the spell’s properties. Barriers were never spells meant to be constructed on the fly like this.

As long as the host didn’t die, the parasite couldn’t escape and flee. In other words, if the host died, the parasite would be able to escape his or her body. This meant they could put a corpse under their control but not capture the parasite. Now that Erika had killed the parasite, they had to deal with it before that happened.

A clump of pure psions fired from Tatsuya’s palm, ripping psions off the parasite’s main body. Actually, visually speaking, it was more like “blasting apart” than “ripping off.”

After going over the results of the last battle, Tatsuya, Miyuki, and Mikihiko had reached a hypothesis. The parasites’ core was a psycheon information body, held together by slender psion information bodies on the outside—like fibers, in a physical sense—that wove together with the psycheon core, meaning that each time one used magic, it consumed some of those psions.

It was too difficult for Tatsuya to destroy the main body’s psycheons themselves. They’d verified that over the two battles.

But at the same time, he’d felt he’d been able to weaken them.

Likewise, Mikihiko couldn’t seal a parasite in that state with his own strength, but he gave his word that he could as long as it was weakened, its magical power of resistance lost.

“Mikihiko!” Tatsuya called into the hands-free transmitter, part of the set with the receiver. But the act wasn’t actually necessary. Mikihiko knew the state of the battlefield thanks to Honoka’s optical magic and Mizuki’s “eyes.”

As proof that Mikihiko was “watching” the place, the thin bolt of lightning jolted out of the sky at about the same time Tatsuya shouted. The lightning bolt struck the host body’s remains, burning its skin to a crisp. The burn marks left on its skin depicted a regular pattern—a geometric one, with characters.

“That makes one!” cried Erika in exhilaration. And she may have been right—Tatsuya’s vision hadn’t given him a sight of an information body escaping the host. But he didn’t have the time to celebrate with her.

He fired a farstrike at the parasite whose movement he’d stolen. The host body, its vital signs lingering, jerked and jolted.

A sealing bolt fell once more from the heavens. The body, writhing at Tatsuya’s psion strike, stopped moving. That made two sealed demons.

Out of the corner of his eye, a different electric light sparked. It wasn’t an ancient lightning spell but an electric attack from modern magic.

Lina’s spell had burned the parasite’s host body to black. That one was already an empty shell.

“One got away. Mizuki, can you see it?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t make out individual movements from here…”

His question, asked reflexively into his communicator, garnered a mournful response. It made sense, upon thinking about it a little: Mizuki was expanding her physical senses to see the invisible. It was no wonder she couldn’t enlarge distant objects to see them.

“Oh. Sorry, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it,” he offered in a supportive tone before turning a bitter face on Lina and Erika. “Angie Sirius.”

Tatsuya could see the dismay behind the mask, and it probably wasn’t an illusion.

“What?”

But it seemed she’d still talk to him. Her voice was different—probably another effect from Parade.

“Could you not kill them before we finish sealing them? The cleanup is going to be a pain.”

He briefly sensed that she was dumbstruck. He didn’t call it a “pain” because he liked putting himself in a bad light. He literally thought nothing more of a human’s—well, things that used to be human—life or death. Lina probably sensed that instinctively. Still, her answer didn’t change.

“Nothing to do with me. I just need to deal with the deserters.”

She seemed to be carefully managing her tone. But you still give everything away, thought Tatsuya.

“Sirius’s mission?” Tatsuya asked, changing subjects. “What I mean is, I want you to do that after we seal the parasites’ main bodies. One of them already got away.”

“That isn’t part of my mission.”

Lina was being more stubborn than ever before. Tatsuya hated having to negotiate with people who didn’t want to listen to him. He was more the type of person who would tell someone to do whatever they wanted and, in turn, let him do whatever he wanted, but that still required them to listen in the first place. And this time was crucial. He continued his persuasion, stifling the urge to sigh.

“Your mission? That one you just killed looked like a pure-blooded Northeast Asian. Was he actually one of the deserters?”

Tatsuya wasn’t convinced he was wrong. This was a bluff—he was trying to trick her into answering. But Lina was clearly disturbed. His guesswork seemed to be on the mark.

“…If they’re assisting the deserters, they’re just as guilty.”

So Lina’s stubborn attitude still didn’t change.

“And also, these parasites are none of my concern. I only need to complete my mission—and do the Sirius’s duty.”

Leaving him with that, Lina disappeared into the forest.

Suppressing the impulse to shrug his shoulders, Tatsuya turned back to face Erika.

“Quite a star, eh?” Erika quipped. From the grin on her face, he realized it wasn’t out of a grudge from what had happened three days ago, so Tatsuya responded with a chagrined smile.

After changing her smile to an elated one, Erika wiped it from her face altogether. “That… That was Lina, right? She looks like a completely different person.”

“If she looks like a completely different person, why would you think it was her?”

“Her gestures, I guess. The way she carries her arms and legs, the way she shakes her head. And you can tell a lot from the eyes.”

“I’m impressed…”

Tatsuya couldn’t help but marvel at Erika’s insight. Parade had changed all of Lina’s features, from her facial shape to her build, but Erika had still identified tiny little characteristics. A person’s skills, honed over many years, could be more magical, more miraculous than actual magic.

But he had to put his admiration aside at some point. “I’m sure you know this, but this is a secret, too. And I’d like to say the same thing I said to her to you.”

“Not to kill them?”

“Exactly. You heard my explanation, right? As long as the host body doesn’t die, the parasite can’t get out of it. We can put up a barrier to block their escape, but nonlethally disabling them is more certain to do the trick.”

Tatsuya’s request was logical. Erika knew that, too.

“Sorry, Tatsuya. I just can’t do that.”

But now she was shaking her head, too.

“I’ve been prepared for my opponent to kill me ever since I decided I’d kill others with my sword. So when I think about me being killed… Well, I can’t leave them alive on purpose and draw out their pain.”

Her reason, though, was quite different from Lina’s. It was personal and thus sincere.

“If we were rescuing them instead of killing them, that would be one thing. But sealing them is the same as killing them, isn’t it? Even if they’re not human, I don’t want to make them suffer for long. I want to give them a swift death.”

Her face, her eyes, showed no sign of eagerness. But she was certainly displaying a different sort of resolve.

“Well, can’t argue with that.”

Tatsuya considered killing an absolute form of theft and didn’t think there was any difference between making them suffer before killing them and killing them before they suffered, given that they had the same end result.

But that didn’t mean he was about to try to convince Erika.

Everyone had their own set of values. And some of them would never be up for discussion.

“I guess I’ll just have to put in more work, then.”

This parasite hunt wasn’t worth him breaking that taboo.

As Leo was chasing after Tatsuya with lightning bolts and psionic lights flashing by, he stopped a moment before setting foot onto the battlefield. Almost at the same time, Miyuki stopped as well. It was such a sudden stop that Pixie, who had a robot body, stumbled a step or two forward.

“Saijou, be careful.”

“That’s my line.”

One might have called his tone joking, but his eyes were darting left and right without cease.

“We’re not exactly surrounded. Just feels like it, I think. My right hand’s open. What do you think, Miyuki?”

It wasn’t X-ray vision, infrared perception, or anything like that. Despite never having gone through this sort of training, Leo realized their opponent’s trick just by sensing their presence—they were half-encircled.

“Let’s go out to meet them.”

Miyuki’s answer was short and clear.

“…You’re pretty gung ho about this.”

It was firm enough that even Leo had to pause before responding.

“Am I? Still, there’s no reason to be scared, is there? If this is too much for me, Brother will come to my rescue.”

“Uhh, yeah, sure.”

But secrets aside, it was a cute thing indeed.

Enough so that his eyes narrowed and he sighed.

“But I wouldn’t want to bother Brother with too much…” she continued, as if to herself. Turning to face the brush to her left, Miyuki gave out instructions. “Pixie, stay behind me, all right?”

“Understood.” The robot, which Tatsuya had ordered to obey Miyuki’s commands, gave the minimum required response and moved to the position stated.

Miyuki held a portable terminal-type CAD in standby mode in her left hand. Despite having been next to her this entire time, Leo hadn’t realized she’d ever gotten it ready. He looked at her with admiration and praise anew.

Unfortunately for Leo, his gaze never even entered Miyuki’s mind. She completely ignored it actually, but right now, anyone other than her brother looking at her would automatically just slide off.

Her mind was on her enemies.

Miyuki’s fingers moved smoothly. With her left hand holding the CAD, her thumb danced swiftly over the force-feedback panel.

She gave no warning of any sort. And then:

Small flashes of light melted into the forest air. Tiny droplets of ice fell onto trunks, branches, and the ground. It was a phenomenon called diamond dust. February, inland, nighttime, a mountain forest—it wasn’t totally unfeasible considering the environmental conditions.

But nobody, friend or foe alike, misunderstood this as a natural occurrence.

The spell instantly created diamond dust in an area one hundred meters in radius. But this was neither an offensive spell nor a defensive one. Miyuki had simply placed the surrounding space into her sphere of perception just in case someone without clear hostility was to attack her.

Just by spreading a thin layer of event-influencing force, she could alter the weather conditions. Once before, during the Yokohama Incident in October, Mari had praised Miyuki’s magic as possibly even strategic-class.

Part of that assessment was correct and part wasn’t. Miyuki’s magic wasn’t possibly strategic-class—it was.

For Miyuki, skill in magic wasn’t for increasing effectiveness. It was more for limiting and suppressing a range of influence.

A power that, if unleashed with abandon, would bury the world in white for as far as the eye could see

That was Miyuki’s magic.

Presented with it, Leo actually started to panic.

For him, fights were a way to get your point across; for situations like Yokohama, when the opponent had no intention of listening to you, he’d use force to ask them to leave. Should the opponent come along trying to humiliate him and butt into his business, he would use his fists to let them know he wasn’t cheap or easy. If someone he knew was being subjected to trouble, he’d get a little bit rough and make them go away.

It might have been a somewhat (?) violent way of talking things out, but fights were nothing more than a way to negotiate.

But this power Miyuki had wouldn’t only blow off whatever it was the opponent was saying—it could blow off their very existence.

She wasn’t a cat tormenting mice. She was an elephant stepping on ants.

It made him feel really sorry for their opponents. After all, it went against how Leo did things.

“Miyuki, I’ll take these guys. Back me up until Tatsuya gets here.”

In a world where thin fragments of ice piled up, a will to fight, pointing in a specific direction, sprang forth.

Not hostility but will. A sense of purpose with no negative emotion.

He was up against pros, incomparably better than street punks. But they would be a piece of cake for Miyuki. It probably wouldn’t ever be a “conversation” in the first place.

“Oh? I’ll leave it to you, then.”

Miyuki readily took a step back at Leo’s words, but the chill blanketing the forest stayed put.

Can’t pull back now, thought Leo, pumping himself up.

From the shadows of the foliage, from inside the brush, men holding large knives and wearing field uniforms appeared, one after the other. After their numbers reached ten, the increase stopped.

At some point, the flashes in the direction of their travel had stopped and, with it, the sounds of fighting. The other group seemed to have finished up for now.

“Panzer,” intoned Leo, the voice command for expanding an activation sequence.

You better get here soon, Tatsuya.

Ironically, that was the signal to go.

Without a word, without a sound, one of the soldiers charged in at him from the front.

The knife was thrusting at Leo before he had a chance to think how fast he was.

He repelled it with his left arm—

And that was when both Leo and the soldier gave each other astonished looks.

But that didn’t lead to a delay of game. The soldier’s left hand, the one not holding the knife, reached toward Leo’s face.

Despite all the distance they still had between them, Leo obeyed his instincts and threw himself to the right.

A shock wave crashed by his face.

Eardrums—normal. Balance organs—slight damage.

Confirming the damage he’d taken, Leo rolled once on the ground and immediately stood. He’d wanted to get a little more distance first, but the opponent wouldn’t make that easy.

Right after rising, the knife thrust at him again. If he’d kept rolling, the soldier would have leaned over him from above and that would have been checkmate.

As the blade’s tip came toward the base of his shoulder—the soldier didn’t seem to want to kill a civilian from his own country—Leo lifted an arm and caught it.

The piercing spell cast on the knife clashed with the hardening spell cast on his faux-leather sleeve.

The knife didn’t reach Leo’s skin, and Leo’s fist rammed into the soldier’s jaw.

It was a superb left hook.

His power defied logic, a result of genetic enhancement combined with assiduous training, and it did the illogical and knocked out a trained soldier in one hit. However, the other nine people didn’t stop in awe.

Without skipping a beat, they came at him from the sides, knives drawn. He felt like he had his hands full with just one, but now it was two at once. To make matters worse, their weapons all sported blades of different lengths.

Even a famed swordsman would have had trouble parrying this combination. His reflexes might have been incredible and his motor nerves superhuman, but Leo was far from a master of the blade. To learn the Usuba Kagerou, he’d trained at the Chiba dojo, if only for a short period of time, and as a result, he had sword combat power that would rival some lower-ranked black belts. However, it was still only like forcing vegetables. He was being whipped around by a storm, and the abundant soil of his physical abilities wasn’t enough. He could only do so much.

Believing in his own magic, he focused on the left-hand enemy.

He ejected the incoming blade on the right from his vision.

As the slender straight sword went for a spot under his clavicle, he threw his left hand up and bent it.

The flicker punch struck the opponent in the nose at about the same time the right-hand blade met with a hard-sounding clang.

“Thanks for that.”

Leo’s flicker punch hadn’t landed very heavily on the opponent’s face. It was far from a decisive blow.

The two soldiers who had attacked him withdrew to a safe distance.

One of them was now unarmed. The knife he’d been holding lay at Leo’s feet.

“Looks like they’re a handful even for you, huh?”

Erika’s katana had been the thing to knock his knife down.

“Well, looks like Miyuki had things covered even if I didn’t butt in.”

Leo’s eyes swiveled around. Miyuki responded with a slight smile. It looked like if Erika’s support hadn’t made it in time, she would have frozen the enemy soldier’s arm.

Leo secretly trembled.

“What happened to Tatsuya?” he asked, changing the topic to get rid of his weakness.

“He’s taking the ones who went around to flank us,” answered Erika in a purposely loud voice.

Sure enough, just as she’d ordered, a tremor rolled through the soldiers.

“Miyuki, Tatsuya says to go meet up with him.”

“What about Pixie?”

Erika, who had been playing the observer from behind, responded to Erika’s message with a slightly restless tone.

It wasn’t the time to be laughing, but the impulse still made it to Erika’s throat.

“Pixie will help us. Pixie, you got an order from Tatsuya, right?”

“Confirmed an order from master, along with permission to use psychic power.”

“There you have it. Miyuki, you can just leave this one to us!”

Despite the situation, Erika decided to goof off, feigning total relaxation.

“I will, then. Thank you,” answered Miyuki shortly, running off without turning back around.

“Huh… Does she know where he is? Thought she had a brain in there.”

“Well, you know how those two are,” said Leo, a fearless grin on his face, completely unlike before—though he’d have vehemently denied as much given the chance. “Anyway… Gotta keep up our end of the bargain. Let’s get this over with, eh?”

Without noticing the change in Leo, or maybe just not pointing it out, Erika repositioned the Mizuchi-Maru, and then—

“No, that’s enough, Erika. Lower your sword.”

A new actor came onstage.

Erika sucked in her breath.

A tall figure came out of the web of darkness in the man-made woods.

“Brother Tsugu…”

It was Erika’s older brother—Naotsugu Chiba.

Tatsuya hadn’t called Miyuki to his side because he was worried about her. It wasn’t necessarily wholly without such a factor, but the reason he was conscious of, at least, was different. He’d detected a situation occurring that Erika’s and Leo’s abilities wouldn’t be able to deal with. And his thought was that he needed Miyuki’s power to respond.

And a situation exactly like what he’d predicted had, in fact, happened.

Right behind him, Miyuki gasped—at the carnage spread out before her brother.

In front of him lay groups of JGDF soldiers in groups of twos and threes. Tatsuya and the others weren’t aware, but these combat personnel were from a team under the Kudou family’s influence. Eight of their ten were corpses, and the other two were heavily wounded to the point where they couldn’t stand. In other words, they’d been wiped out.

Tatsuya hadn’t been the one responsible for these results.

It had been the parasites Lina was now engaging.

“Lina, get back!”

“Nobody asked you!”

Tatsuya hadn’t simply been viewing the fight, either. Far from it—he was in the middle of the engagement, too.

Lina charged at the group. The parasites stood six strong. Given the number they’d already finished off, they’d increased beyond what Pixie had told him.

With just six normal opponents, one could have made the case. The name Sirius wasn’t for nothing, and the Sirius’s central mission was to handle deserted magicians. Anti-magician combat was practically the Sirius’s specialty. Normally, the Sirius having trouble against this few people would have been impossible.

And yet Lina was struggling. If not for Tatsuya continuously dismantling all the spells attacking her, they might have gotten her already.

Lina’s greatest weapon was her spell activation speed.

It was so overwhelming that even if she started late, she’d still take down her opponents without letting them do anything. That was Lina’s specialty and her style. She favored a handgun armament device because it matched this style.

But the parasites could literally use magic just by thinking it.

Just envisioning something turned it into magic.

The fact that they didn’t need activation sequences or other trigger mediums meant they had the same characteristics as psychics.

It wasn’t only the parasites’ strong points that matched—their weaknesses were similar to those people as well. It was the lack of variation in the abilities they could use. There must have been a limitation on the images these monsters could manifest but for a different reason than humans.

The system of modern magic was advanced on the concept of increased variety being a merit. By sacrificing the speed psychics had, it granted versatility and stability. Many experiments and tests had proven this to be a beneficial change. That was why they’d pressed onward in that direction.

But the benefits applied to small groups and individuals being able to react to a myriad of situations. In cases where one had to focus on a restricted response, such as “defeating detected enemies,” speed still had great meaning.

CADs had unquestionably been developed as tools to allow both speed and versatility. But the mere fact that a subtype existed called “specialized CADs,” which sacrificed versatility to prioritize speed, spoke to how much of an advantage speed was.

These parasites already excelled in speed—and now, instead of three of them, there were six.

One couldn’t call that simply twice the threat.

According to Lanchester’s second law, the difference in combat strength in a ranged firearms battle occurring within a visual space (the perceivable area) was proportional to the square of the number of soldiers (weapons, or discrete units of combat power). If you applied this law to magical battles, if the number of possible magic activations at a discrete time was one to three, the combat power would be one to nine, a difference of eight. If the number of possible magic activations was two to six, the combat power would be four to thirty-six, a difference of thirty-two.

It was a very large difference in the number of people.

Tatsuya and Lina could take on multiple opponents because they could overcome the numerical difference with a higher number of possible magic activations at a discrete time. With this option unable to put them at an advantage, both of them were forced to prioritize defense. Tatsuya in particular had been completely shut down, only able to dismantle the spells flying at him and Lina.

He’d called Miyuki here because he’d predicted a situation like this beforehand.

“Miyuki!”

“Yes, Brother!”

Those were the only words they exchanged.

Miyuki fully understood what her brother wanted from her just from him calling her name.

A high-pressure, event-influencing force shot out from Miyuki’s body—more specifically, from the coordinates that her body inhabited.

Area Interference.

An anti-magic spell that, rather than defining the result of an event alteration, simply applied a force of influence to a specific region.

In other words, a spell that wouldn’t let others alter events. A trick to disable all spells except her own.

Lanchester’s second law worked when you could quantify attack power against interspersed targets. You couldn’t apply it to overwhelming surface suppression, since you couldn’t measure that on the same scale.

Miyuki’s Area Interference created a zone that was empty of magic, whereas Tatsuya and Lina built narrowed, thin spells with high density.

They possessed enough influence to overcome Miyuki’s Area Interference. They would have had trouble launching a direct attack on her while under the effects of it, but otherwise, they could still go through the activation process for spells, even if their number and speed was low and their effects were dampened.

But the parasites didn’t have the event influence to rival the two of them—no, the three of them.

Tatsuya and Lina fired a volley of spells.

Lina’s had six targets. Tatsuya’s spell had twelve. Half of his were to dismantle Lina’s spells, since she was trying to kill the parasites’ host bodies, but his Program Dispersion only made it in time for half of the magic programs Lina fired.

As a result…

Three of the parasites were killed by Lina’s magic, and three of the parasites self-destructed after Tatsuya’s magic pierced them.

Sword magicians.

This nickname was given to the Chiba family when they’d established close combat techniques that mixed swords and magic together before anyone else could.

Close combat techniques using magic wasn’t exactly a Chiba family patent, though.

Chronologically, magic martial arts were created earlier, by the Stars before they’d split from the Marines. Even the New Soviet Union had developed a melee-magic combat style colloquially called Command Sambo, based on military hand-to-hand combat techniques. (This quickly died out, however.) Areas around Delhi in the north of the Indo-Persian Federation during its period of formative upheavals saw the birth of a set of melee weapon techniques that used traditional short swords called jamadhar, improved in a modern style.

However, these magic-combined close combat techniques created outside of Japan were all, as far as was known, developed as a way to supplement firearms or spells used as projectile weapons. Their chief form came in close-quarters situations, where they could exhibit attack power rivaling that of firearms or defensive power to nullify them.

In contrast, the Chiba family’s systematized kenjutsu was a set of techniques with its main emphasis on close combat using swords. You would cast magic on yourself to jump from firearm range into sword range, then use a sword, which had more offensive power than bare hands or a knife, to quietly and swiftly slay the enemy. The techniques were excellent in terms of surprise and stealth, and they gave Japan’s military and police force a large advantage during urban guerrilla warfare and anti-terrorist operations.

Kenjutsu by itself wasn’t something the Chiba family had developed. At about the same time Japan began researching military applications for magic, various magicians had tested the idea of linking it with sword techniques to varying degrees of success. The Chiba family had just systematized everything to make it easier to learn.

However, the act of systematizing something so that it was easier to pass down elevated “techniques” into “technology.” For technological proliferation, this meant something revolutionary. The previous head of the Chiba family was praised as a modern Kamiizumi Nobutsuna, and out of respect for his deeds, the family became known as the sword magicians.

With that historical background, they said that 70 to 80 percent of all magicians now foot soldiers in the army or working as riot police had once studied the Chiba’s kenjutsu.

The JGDF’s First Division’s commando infantry platoon, nicknamed the Batto-tai: They belonged to the Kudou family’s faction, but they were also a close combat team that used swords and close combat magic. Some of them had been trained in the Chiba style for an exceptionally long time.

For them, the Chiba family was their collective sword master. They might not have known about Erika, since she’d never appeared at a public function, but they sure did know of Naotsugu, famous as the Kirin Child of the Chiba. In fact, they more than knew of him—this team’s commander had experienced sword fundamentals training from Naotsugu himself.

Thus…

“The acting master…”

When Naotsugu appeared from nowhere, they froze, and they had a good reason for it.

Since Naotsugu was still a student, the official officer in charge of this team held rank over him.

But right now, it was the ranking of a martial family that held sway over this place.

With the team stopped, Naotsugu passed beside them, coming to face his stepsister.

Erika winced.

But she immediately met Naotsugu’s gaze with a strong one of her own.

It might have been an empty display, but for Erika, and more so for Naotsugu, this was epoch making.

Erika pitted against Naotsugu.

They weren’t actually pointing their swords at each other. Both had their weapons aimed at the ground.

Nevertheless, emotionally, their blades were pointed at each other.

Naotsugu had realized his stepsister sometimes depended on him. And he knew he couldn’t blame her for it.

The way he saw it, children weren’t strong enough creatures to live without anyone to lean on. He was the same. That was why he knew he didn’t have the right to tell anyone else to grow up, to stop relying on others so much. At least, that was how he thought of it.

Normally, you had parents. Children could depend on their parents unconditionally.

But that didn’t apply in Erika’s case. Her mother was frail, and her father never wanted to play the role of parent in the first place.

Naotsugu actually hated his father in his own right, too. When he’d worked himself heart and soul over what Erika would call “cheap tricks,” it was partly to get back at his father. For some reason, his older brother and older sister didn’t see their father’s abdication of his parental responsibilities as anything strange. In fact, Naotsugu had reason to believe they considered it rightful as a leader of one of the Hundred.

Maybe Naotsugu had felt a sense of camaraderie with this younger stepsister of his. That was why he, and nobody else in the family, treated her kindly, sometimes spoiling her, sometimes encouraging her, and letting her depend on him.

But, thought Naotsugu, it seemed the time had come for her, too, to grow up.

As a test, Naotsugu let out a burst of sword ki. It was a technique called ki-atari, but when a high-leveled magician did it, an opponent could, if they thought they’d been cut, actually experience line-shaped bruises or literally have their skin sliced.

Erika repelled Naotsugu’s ki with ki of her own. She hadn’t dodged it or diverted it—she’d fought back directly.

A smile appeared on Naotsugu’s lips despite himself.

His right arm rose.

By the time it was visible that he’d lifted his weapon, the blade was already swinging down at Erika.

It wasn’t so fast the eye couldn’t even see it.

It was a speed born of skill, of having only the bare minimum amount of windup, so little that the borderline between windup and the actual motion was imperceptible. A technique that lied to your face and plunged into a blind spot in the opponent’s perception. The sword of a genius, which itself became a technique through the mere movement of hands and feet.

Erika’s katana caught Naotsugu’s slash.

He had planned to stop right before landing the strike, but he hadn’t held back. Erika had blocked his early attack with superb reaction speed and swiftness of blade.

The smile that came to Naotsugu’s lips had now changed into a very clearly ferocious grin.

The tension apparent in Erika’s eyes grew thicker.

She held her ground, pushing Naotsugu’s single-handed katana back with both her hands.

Suddenly, the pressure disappeared.

Without wasting a moment, Erika pulled back.

Brother and sister faced each other once more, neither even needing to regroup.

Naotsugu whirled around, showing his back to her.

Caught off guard, an “empty gap” appeared in Erika’s stance.

But no attack came to take advantage of it.

“Brother Tsugu…?”

Without answering her dubiousness, Naotsugu directed his ki at the Batto-tai.

He could sense their consternation. They’d adopted stances of their own, but as far as Naotsugu could tell, their reactions were slower than Erika’s had been.

There was nothing appealing about them.

The smile vanished from Naotsugu’s face.

“I am Naotsugu Chiba, second lieutenant in reserve, from the Academy of Defense’s special combat techniques graduate course.”

With his katana still lifted in front of him, Naotsugu announced only his attachment, his rank, and his name. (As for why he’d been given the rank of second lieutenant despite still being in school, and a second year, and in the reserves: It was an exceptional treatment even considering he was a magician and spoke fully to the fact that he had the achievements to back it up.)

“I am currently on a mission to protect civilians targeted by terrorists. I ask for your attachment, your ranks, your names, and your objective!”

Erika and Leo exchanged glances. Naotsugu’s attitude seemed to have turned on a dime.

“If you have been mobilized with the objective of harming civilians, I warn you that this is an act of treason against our democracy, and I will stand my ground and stop you from doing so.”

Someone from the Ten Master Clans or Hundred Families bringing up the democracy like this was deceitful, in a way. They pursued benefits for magicians more than benefits for the nation.

That was what Erika thought of his speech. To be honest, Naotsugu himself didn’t exactly believe what he said, either.

But the spirit and energy he was emitting hadn’t even the slightest disturbance.

With his sword thrust toward them, the situation entered a state of deadlock.

The stare down between Naotsugu and the Batto-tai broke down after an explosive psion emission happened a short distance away.

“Erika, Leo, be careful!”

“The parasite’s main body is over there!”

Voices, speaking quickly and slightly tangled up, betraying panic, came to them from their communicators.

The voices belonged to Mikihiko and Mizuki.

For a report, it was imperfect.

“Brother Tsugu! It looks like the parasite’s main body is heading this way!”

But Erika accurately deduced what they wanted to say. In turn, the Batto-tai actually showed more caution than Naotsugu when she said that.

On second thought, it was highly possible Naotsugu hadn’t been briefed on the parasites in detail. Erika faltered, then panicked, trying to think of how to explain the threat they presented.

Her mind, having spread a net of caution out in all directions, even under her feet, now turned to Naotsugu.

It struck at that very moment. Had it precisely timed it like this, or was it a coincidence?

Behind Erika, the ground suddenly erupted. A figure leaped out from underground with a spray of dirt.

“Doton?!”

That shout had come from Leo. Aside from the five tonjutsu techniques, which were known as being commonplace, ninjutsu as an ancient magic style handed down reconnaissance, escape, and surprise attack spells that used the five elements—wood (moku), fire (ka), earth (do), metal (kin), and water (sui)—as a medium. This five-elemental idea had come from mainland China, from the main family, and it passed down a plethora of many kinds of ancient magic spells using those elements as a medium. It had more variations than ninjutsu and Japan’s onmyou-jutsu (yin-yang techniques), but because of how famous ninjutsu’s five tonjutsu techniques had become, the spell using those five elements as mediums tended to be called by their Japanese names internationally: mokuton, katon, doton, kinton, and suiton.

The important thing was that this spell, which you could use to spring an ambush from underground, wasn’t restricted to ninjutsu. It was perfectly possible that it was some ancient magic from mainland China. But now wasn’t the time to figure out which it was, nor was there any time to do so.

The man’s target as he fluttered up from underneath the ground wasn’t Erika, but Pixie, who was on the opposite side of her.

The assailant from underground swung his blade, which was like a thick billhook, at Pixie.

“Schild!”

Leo jumped out before he could hit. With his left hand, he caught the man’s billhook perfectly on his hardened CAD protector.

“Leo, that’s a parasite!” Mikihiko warned.

Leo swung his left arm around, knocking back both the billhook and the parasite holding it.

He hadn’t directly touched the opponent’s body—he knew better from his bitter experience of having his spirit energy taken. But even Leo’s physical strength couldn’t put enough distance between them just by knocking the weapon away.

The parasite swung its billhook again.

But the demon never got started running.

Instead, a katana tip appeared, protruding from its chest.

Having pierced the parasite’s chest with the Mizuchi-Maru, Erika made an oh, crap expression. She’d probably just remembered how Tatsuya had cautioned her not to kill them. She’d snubbed his words at the time but now seemed to have taken them to heart.

Underground wasn’t the only possible attack route. The very instant Naotsugu had turned his gaze on the pillar of earth that sprang up behind Erika, one of the soldiers jumped out from behind the rest of the Batto-tai with an unsheathed sword in hand.

He’d looked like a soldier, but that had been an illusion. The man, dressed in deep blue garments to blend into the dark, stole one of the Batto-tai’s katanas and shot toward Pixie. His leap was enhanced with a weighting-type spell. Instead of going through an arc, his body fell with acceleration exceeding gravity.

But his uplifted blade never reached its target. Naotsugu had kicked him away during his descent. It was a splendid flying kick, not at all what one would expect from a kenjutsu practitioner. His form was beautiful, the kind you’d want to adapt for a karate dojo poster. In the past, Erika had criticized Naotsugu for wasting his time with “cheap tricks,” but he was experienced in many things, not just magic but martial arts as well.

A murmur came from the Batto-tai. The soldier whose katana had been stolen was down. This man had probably hit him with an attack.

Naotsugu felt that his kick had done enough, so with careful steps, he walked toward the man on the ground. The man was skilled enough not to let even Naotsugu realize his intent until a moment before the attack landed. There was no being too careful here.

His caution, his deliberation, was immediately rewarded.

Once Naotsugu had drawn within three steps, the man’s body suddenly burst apart. Naotsugu quickly jumped back, but he couldn’t avoid the spraying blood.

It was such an unexpected development that even Naotsugu was at a loss. Behind him, Erika and Leo were grimacing as well. The Batto-tai was dumbstruck. Everyone present missed how clumps of psycheons wrapped in psions escaped, one each, from the man whose chest had been pierced and the body that had blown up.

“Pixie, get over here!”

Tatsuya’s harsh voice, audible through their transmitters, broke the spell.

“At once, sir.”

Pixie began to run toward Tatsuya—in the direction of the psionic wave explosion and the direction Miyuki had run off in.

“Honoka, you back up Pixie.”

Tatsuya’s voice sounded again from the voice communication unit, which was set to conference call mode.

“Right!” came Honoka not a breath later.

“Erika, Leo, stay where you are. Tell the others there, too.”

“Huh…? Okay.”

“R-right.”

Erika and Leo responded with shaky voices.

Above them, the two clumps of psycheons and psions began to move like a cloud, drifting after Pixie as she ran.

“Honoka, you back up Pixie.”

“Right!”

When Tatsuya’s instructions came flying through her receiver, Honoka agreed without skipping a beat. Then, after replying that she’d do it, she realized she had no idea what, in this case, “backing up” meant.

It was a very Honoka-like problem to have, as was the way she dealt with it. To back Pixie up, she had to get a good read on her situation first, so she connected a visual pathway to the robot using optical magic.

Attempts sometimes go easier than expected.

Bad choices occasionally brought good results.

There were a lot of expressions and interpretations, but her choice coincidentally opened a psion circuit from her to Pixie.

A total of twelve parasites had been drawn into this world.

One of them had possessed a human-shaped chore-assistance robot, a Humanoid Home Helper 3H type P-94 nicknamed Pixie.

Two of them had been sealed during today’s battle.

During the battle, Lina had killed four of their hosts and Erika one, releasing their main bodies.

The remaining four had self-destructed to release themselves.

Nine—that was the number of parasites that had lost their host bodies and were now assembled here. The number of demons drawn together to Pixie, exposing their main bodies.

They were psycheon information bodies summoned to this dimension from another one.

Originally, they were twelve in one “consciousness.” Now that their main bodies were exposed, they tried to return to their singular state.

Nine parasites had already combined.

A protean information body with one consciousness but nine wills.

The structure was like nine branches coming from one trunk. If one had the ability to “see” psycheons, one would have seen something akin to an orochi, this nation’s most famous monster, with one extra head.

And now it was trying to absorb one more fragment of itself.

A huge serpent, rearing its nine long necks, trying to devour Pixie.

Pixie resisted with a barrier from her own “will.”

This will had been shared with her by the one who had molded her, the human known as her “mother.” Even now, things were flowing into her through a psion circuit, mixed in with the psions.

A will: that the self was not part of “that thing.”

A will: that she didn’t belong only to herself.

A will: that she belonged to “him.”

Any will derived from an individual would not normally have been able to oppose “that thing.”

But Pixie’s “mother” Honoka was not normal.

She was a descendant of Elements. The inheritor of the “light” Element’s blood.

The Elements were the first magicians this country had tried to create, even before developing the Numbers. At the time, the classification and systematization of four families and eight types hadn’t yet been established. At the time, people instead thought an approached based on more traditional elements—earth, water, fire, wind, light, lightning—would be more effective. They advanced the Elements’ development based on this concept.

However, when the system of four families and eight types was established, magician development based on traditional elements was deemed inefficient, and development on the Elements stopped.

One may say that alone was a story seen all over the world in the hidden histories of magician development. But in the Elements’ case, there was something aside from magical talent they gave them, something innate—or, at least, had tried to give them.

The dawn of magician development research. An age where those in power were so fearful of magic as to be superstitious.

Those in power who had decided to develop the Elements wanted a guarantee that these artificial “wizards and witches” would never turn against them. They ordered the scientists to program into their genetic code a factor of absolute submission to their master.

Did personalities get passed down?

This was still a subject of debate that worried geneticists and psychologists, one for which no answer had been found.

Even identical twins could grow up with completely different personalities. Given this fact, many would be willing to conclude that personalities must not be genetic.

On the other hand, if one looked at vertical bloodlines such as parent and child, grandparent and grandchild, great-grandparent and great-grandchild, there would be a trend of similarity that one’s environment couldn’t merely account for, and that couldn’t be ignored.

The genetic engineers went along with the task set forth by those in power and took whatever measures they’d been able to.

As a result—though it wasn’t even certain that it was a result—a certain tendency could be found at a high percentage among descendants of the Elements.

Dependency.

One could observe at a large probability a trend in which the person would aggressively depend on a specific other person, in most cases of the opposite gender.

The descendants of the Elements themselves considered it their destiny, engraved into their DNA.

Perhaps they could use that excuse to forgive themselves for depending on others.

But their “dependency” was not a “weak” emotion seen in the rest of the world.

It was, in other terms, “loyalty.”

An unbending belief that one belonged to another.

And it was strong enough to repel the collective will of these combined demons.

This was the point at which Tatsuya was engaging the parasites and the point at which Erika had confronted Naotsugu.

Pixie was fighting “the thing,” withstanding it, at a point exactly halfway between those two.

When Tatsuya arrived at that point, he saw the nine-headed dragon, heads reared and trying to devour Pixie.

He didn’t understand the psycheon information body’s structure. But he knew it was there. And he could see anything that existed.

Nine psycheon information bodies were combined into one at the base, trying to absorb Pixie with its nine-branched interface. In Tatsuya’s head, that matched up with his image of a nine-headed dragon.

“What is that?!” cried Lina in surprise, who for some reason had followed him.

“You can see that?”

“I can’t…really, but I just know. There’s a giant power pressing down on that doll. Tatsuya, what on earth is that?”

“The result of you not listening to what Brother told you.”

It was Miyuki, not Tatsuya, who answered Lina. Her voice was brusque and below freezing. Lina kept her mouth shut for now, even though it riled her up.

“Brother told you not to kill them, but you went around killing every parasite host body in sight without a second thought. Now they’re free—and on a rampage. How exactly do you plan on making amends for this mismanagement?”

But this time, she couldn’t stay quiet. “What do you mean mismanagement? I was just carrying out my mission!”

“Then the least you could do is clean up after yourself. Can you do that? Even Brother is stuck with having to seal them—a passive method.”

Ever since the previous battle in this outdoor training ground, an air of storm itself had been drifting between these two beautiful girls.

And into that storm now came words of provocation.

“Just watch, I’ll do it!” she shouted, accepting the impossible task.

“Wait, Lina!”

This was too much—he had to stop her. It was far too reckless to dive into the fray when you didn’t have a good countermeasure for the opponent.

That was what Tatsuya thought when he tried to soothe her.

“Shut up! You be quiet, Tatsuya!”

But he was thrown upon his own resources.

“I need to finish this mission successfully! If I don’t, then what am I even doing here?!”

Lina’s fit of anger wasn’t only directed at Tatsuya. He understood that, too, after hearing her shout.

When she said “here,” she wasn’t just referring to this location. No, she was referring to the fact that she—Angie Sirius, not Angelina Shields—was here now, in this situation, in this position.

Before he knew it, the gold had returned to her hair and the blue to her eyes. Even exposure to Miyuki’s Area Interference hadn’t canceled it, and now she did so on her own.

She was giving everything she had as Angelina Shields to carry out Angie Sirius’s duty. She was trying to remain the Sirius.

After getting a glimpse of the burdens she bore, Tatsuya faltered over his next words. During the time, Lina unleashed every spell she had at her disposal.

A rainbow of magic, each one firing after the other, all ending in vain.

It was to be expected.

Lina’s magic was for altering physical events. She didn’t have spells that could affect mental bodies.

The thing’s consciousness pointed toward Lina. Tatsuya immediately “saw” it, as though its nine heads had turned upon her.

Instantly, a magical storm was upon them.

Tatsuya had to rally every last bit of his power to shoot it down.

When he’d fought the parasite in its information body form at First High, he’d only been up against one, which had possessed a single human.

And he’d struggled that much against it.

This time, there were nine times as many.

It gave him no time to use his farstrike.

Not only that—Tatsuya wasn’t the only one bearing out against the thing’s vehement assault. Behind him, Miyuki was maintaining a spherical Area Interference field where the thing likely existed. But though she may have had the sense of touch to detect psycheon information bodies, she didn’t have the sense of vision to get a bird’s-eye view. Because of that, the area of interference was necessarily slipping out of position. But if she created a field to cover the entire area, she’d end up blocking Tatsuya’s Program Dispersion, too.

With the desperate conflict continuing, it would be too much of a risk to go for any plan that had even a slight chance of whittling down their combat power.

He felt a firm tug on the back of his blouson. Miyuki was feeling anxious, too.

They knew that if the parasites “consumed” all their magic now that they were outside their host bodies, they would eventually lose their strength. But it was extremely taxing to think about holding out in a situation you didn’t know how long you’d have to hold out for.

At this rate, Miyuki and Lina might give in before the thing did.

Because of her earlier recklessness, Lina was already holing up inside an Information Boost shell and staying there.

None of them could make an effective attack. The handicap was too high.

Magic that interfered with physical events wouldn’t work.

Physical attacks were out of the question.

If they had any chance, it was magic that affected the mind…

…It’s the only way left.

Tatsuya gritted his teeth, then resolved himself on a gamble.

“Mikihiko, can you see what’s happening here?”

“Yeah. I’m in the middle of really quickly making a sealing circle, so wait just a little longer.”

There was more panic in the voice coming over his voice communication unit than in Tatsuya’s. “How likely is it that the sealing circle will suppress all this?”

In response, a short silence.

“…To be honest, probably less than fifty-fifty.”

And a bitter confession.

Hearing this answer didn’t make Tatsuya think of Mikihiko as weak. Tatsuya would know better than him that they couldn’t make rash promises against something like this, since he was the one confronting it directly.

“Mikihiko, it only needs to be for a moment. Ten seconds—please just suppress it for ten seconds!”

It was Tatsuya’s first-ever plea to someone.

So not only Mikihiko gasped but everyone else listening to the call.

He gave nothing to explain himself—just a request to “do it.” One could call it reliance on others, in a bad way.

But it could only be done when one trusted the other.

“…All right.”

Mikihiko, at least, felt that way.

“I’ll suppress that thing for ten seconds, no matter what it takes. I’ll give a countdown, so you do whatever you need to do.”

He knew Tatsuya must have had some sort of plan, and he needed ten seconds for it.

He knew his power was necessary to secure that time.

The trust Tatsuya had placed in him was rousing.

“Tatsuya, I’ll help, too!”

Honoka’s earnest voice followed after Mikihiko’s. She wasn’t trying to one-up him. She was of one emotion: the desire to help.

“Great. Mikihiko, start the countdown.”

“Okay… Three, two, one, now!”

As he called out “now,” Mikihiko fired his anti-demon spell, Garudaflame.

Its “flames,” independent information bodies, coiled around the thing, the nine-headed parasite amalgamation. It was as though two draconic serpents were trying to devour each other.

From below, Pixie put more strength into her thoughts, trying to push the thing away. Psions came in to replenish her own expended ones at the same rate they left. Honoka seemed to have mastered the art of supplying psions to Pixie.

Tatsuya didn’t just sit there watching, of course.

As Mikihiko gave the signal, he reached behind his back with his left arm, the one not gripping a CAD.

With that arm,

he took Miyuki’s waist,

and pulled her in tight.

“…!”

A silent yelp. Maybe it was actually a cry of joy.

In that moment, Miyuki’s Area Interference and Tatsuya’s Program Dispersion both ended, but Mikihiko and Honoka were suppressing the thing just like they’d promised Tatsuya.

Miyuki, now hugged in Tatsuya’s arm, looked up at him with a blank, utterly surprised face.

As she stood on her tiptoes, looking at him at point-blank range, he drew closer still to her face.

Their foreheads touched,

their gazes melted into each other,

and with their noses close enough to graze each other, their lips almost about to meet…

“Miyuki, look!”

Tatsuya whispered firmly into his sister’s ear.

An invisible light flowed into Miyuki from Tatsuya.

An invisible light flowed into Tatsuya from Miyuki.

Two auras revolved between them.

“I can see it, Brother!”

Those words may not have been from her lips—her mind may have spoken them.

Their communication lasted but a moment.

Half the ten seconds they’d been given were still left.

Tatsuya’s left hand pulled Miyuki’s head to his chest.

Miyuki’s hands pressed against it, too.

Tatsuya’s right hand showed her the way.

And that thing was now displayed in Miyuki’s mind.