The morning of December 31, Tatsuya, Miyuki, and Minami departed the Tsukuba villa in the hopes that the third time would be the charm.

Normally it would take two hours to drive from the villa to the Yotsuba headquarters. If they had to slow down owing to snowy conditions en route, that figure could rise to three hours. Yuuka had suggested that they needn’t leave until after lunch, but Tatsuya was anticipating further interference and therefore decided to leave as early as was possible.

Being a night owl, Yuuka was visibly sluggish behind the wheel, as though her body hadn’t fully awakened, which was probably why she’d suggested a later departure.

Nonetheless, her driving of the sedan was entirely safe, and soon they approached the tunnel that would lead to the small settlement controlled by the Yotsuba.

The tunnel diverged in the middle, and the branch that led to the village used an automatic gate with typeless magic as its key, only opening after receiving a particular pattern of psionic waves. This isolated the Yotsuba headquarters from the outside world—at least to surface traffic.

This arrangement was originally meant to conceal Lab Four, whose existence was a carefully guarded secret. Even those government and military officials who knew its name weren’t told its location. When the Yotsuba family had inherited the facility, they literally erased the knowledge of its existence from the memories of those who’d known, thus ensuring the perfect secrecy of their headquarters’ location.

There were a few other similar gates, but this was the only one that operated twenty-four hours a day, which made it the obvious place for an ambush. However, it was also subject to constant surveillance by the Yotsuba family, so anyone planning such a thing would have to be very well prepared.

For this reason, Yuuka had argued that they wouldn’t be attacked here.

Tatsuya, however, was certain that they would be.

This explained the difference in their reactions to what happened next.

There on the mountain road, just before they entered the tunnel—a tsunami of white came crashing down the slope toward them.

“Miyuki, melt the avalanche!” Tatsuya commanded, a split second before Yuuka noticed the approaching wall herself.

“I’m on it!” the girl answered.

Yuuka slammed on the brakes.

“Minami, hemispherical shield, now!”

“O-okay!”

The avalanche thundered down toward the road from both sides.

Miyuki’s magic turned the snow to water.

The car stopped.

A dome-shaped barrier encircled the car.

All of this happened in less than a second.

A muddy flood of water flowed around the car.

The avalanche had never been meant to directly impact the vehicle.

As the water from the liquefied avalanche drained away, Tatsuya ordered Minami to dispel her magic: “Minami, take down the shield.”

“Understood.” She unwove her spell before it could naturally dissipate.

Both Tatsuya’s and Minami’s faces were tense. Tatsuya got out of the car and stood in front of it. Minami, Miyuki, and Yuuka followed, a step behind him.

Boulders and felled trees blocked the road ahead of them, carried there by the avalanche-turned-flood. The four walked right up to the rubble.

“Brother, was stopping us here the point of this?” Miyuki asked, having realized the avalanche had not been aimed to hit them directly.

Tatsuya, however, had come to a slightly different conclusion. “No, this is an ambush.”

“Show yourselves!” Yuuka shouted. “Otherwise, I won’t hold back!” Her pride seemed to have been wounded by the fact that a car she was driving had been attacked here, at the very threshold of the Yotsuba house.

Furious at the lack of response, Yuuka produced a folding CAD from her handbag, pressed a button on its side, and opened it to reveal a numerical keypad.

Folding CADs had been introduced in the current year, with the lid of the opened section functioning as an aim-assistance antenna. Where a gun-type CAD was pointed at the target, with a folding CAD, the flat side of the antenna panel faced the target.

It was a new product from FLT, incorporating the general-purpose CAD and aim-assistance system developed in Düsseldorf two years earlier, but it had come not out of Tatsuya’s Section 3 lab but rather from the company’s main development team. Tatsuya had largely perfected the technology at the Nines the year before, but he’d only proposed incorporating the know-how that came from integrating assisted-aim systems into general-purpose CAD OSs. They honestly had yet to show a performance advantage over regular general-purpose CADs and were unlikely to appeal to anybody except early-adopter hobbyists—apparently Yuuka was something of an enthusiast.

However, regardless of the CAD used as a medium, the mental interference magic Yuuka cast was no joke.

“Mandrake” was an emanation of psionic energy radiating outward in a 150-degree arc that caused psychological damage to its targets in the form of pure terror.

Mandrake didn’t create terrifying images but rather terror itself. Rather than destabilize a target’s consciousness to let innate emotions run wild, it simply created the experience of terror.

The effects were not lethal, but those caught in its area of effect would experience extreme dread regardless of their psychological resilience, undermining their mental state considerably. In fact, the effects could be worse on those who’d been trained to resist fear. Assailed by an emotional response they had supposedly overcome, they tended to panic. Targets would either become catatonic or, unable to bear the strain, lose consciousness. Depending on the person, the lingering psychological damage could be significant.

There was another technique with similar effects called “Phobos,” but while Phobos used psionic light as its medium, Mandrake used psionic waves—in other words, the “sound” of psions.

Because Mandrake was carried not via literal sound waves but by psionic “sound,” acoustic isolation provided no defense against it. However, if isolation was achieved by magical means, that was a different story. The sound-deadening effect could travel though the psionic field, attenuating it.

As it was right now.

Just as Yuuka had cast Mandrake, immediately across from her, another spell had been cast—the acoustic attenuation magic of “Silent Veil.”

Silent Veil couldn’t entirely negate Mandrake, but it could lower its effectiveness—and when the spell was weakened, even a magician with no aptitude for mental interference magic could defend against it by boosting their own psionic fields.

But in order to use this technique, it was crucial to know in advance that the opposition was going to use Mandrake. And there was only one person who was both familiar with Yuuka’s background and specialties and could cast Silent Veil.

“This magic… Kotona, right? I know it’s you. Show yourself! And Katsushige—stop hiding behind a woman and face us!”

Immediately following Yuuka’s provocations, a shimmering heat mirage appeared directly in front of her. This wasn’t just because of the moisture that lingered on the asphalt evaporating, but also because of the introduction of a layer of hot air above the rapidly heating asphalt itself.

“Ah, Phonon Maser.” Tatsuya spoke the name of the spell out loud, to help calm Miyuki and Minami, who were still rattled from the rapid sequence of events.

“I am not hiding,” said a clear, low voice in front of them.

Yuuka looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. Miyuki and Minami did likewise. Only Tatsuya kept his eyes on the boulder that had fallen in the middle of the road. Emerging from the shadow it cast came three people: two men and a woman.

“It merely took some time to get around this obstacle.”

The man was a head taller than Tatsuya, with a slim build, at over six feet tall. He looked skinny, which kept him from appearing slow-moving the way men of greater stature often did—it didn’t seem like the world’s number-one heavyweight boxer would have particularly intimidated him. This man was in his first year as an official in the Ministry of Defense, the scion of the Shibata family, and a candidate for the next leader of the Yotsuba family: Katsushige Shibata.

“If you weren’t hiding, why didn’t you answer me immediately?” sneered Yuuka.

“I planned to address you from a more reasonable distance,” he called, sticking out a hand to hold back the indignant young man who stood next to him. “You are the one who shot before asking any questions. You’re as belligerent as you ever were, Yuuka.” He punctuated his statement with a sad shake of his head.

Yuuka’s eyes narrowed viciously at his condescension. “You’re really going to say that after hiding in the shadows and sucker punching us with an avalanche? Okay…”

“It was set on a path that would avoid collision with your car. There was no malicious intent.”

“That’s right!” said the young man Katsushige had held back, unable to restrain himself any longer. “And I made sure that Phonon Maser didn’t hit you, either! Unlike the way you came at us.”

Evidently the Phonon Maser had been his doing.

“Kanata, would you please restrain yourself?” Yuuka said with deliberate contempt in her voice, snapping at the bohemian-looking young man. His dress and affect made him look like a musician or artist of some kind.

“What—?”

“I’m talking to Katsushige right now. The heiress to the Tsukuba family is talking to the heir to the Shibata family. This is no time for servants to be butting in.”

“Why, you—!”

“Kanata, stop.”

It was a woman standing on the other side of Katsushige who spoke up to restrain Kanata—a woman named Kotona.

“But, Sis—”

The young man’s full name was Kanata Tsutsumi, and he, along with his older sister, served the Shibata family by acting as Katsushige’s Guardians.

“It is simply fact that we are Katsushige’s servants. Nothing in what Yuuka just said is incorrect.”

“But c’mon—”

“Don’t embarrass Katsushige.”

At this, Kanata stepped back.

“Aww, Katsushige, your underlings really like you,” Yuuka spat, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “It’s not just Kotona who adores you, hmm?” she continued pointedly, causing Kanata’s face to redden.

But Katsushige’s unperturbed bass voice forestalled the man’s explosion. “Indeed, thank you. They’re wasted on me, I must confess. I am constantly striving to be a master of them, but I feel that to truly follow the ways of the Yotsuba, I should be less emotional. I have much to learn from you in that respect, Yuuka.”

This time it was Yuuka whose face flushed red.

“I’m merely a Guardian myself, but if I might be permitted a word,” interjected Tatsuya just in time to save Yuuka from a disgraceful display.

“Certainly. Guardian or not, you are a close blood relative of the family head. I don’t consider you to be of notably different status when speaking to Yuuka or me, Tatsuya.”

It was difficult to tell whether Katsushige’s easy demeanor was the familiarity of a man chatting with a younger relative, or the unconcerned ease of a man addressing himself to his servant. In point of fact, Miyuki herself wasn’t exactly sure how to address or treat Katsushige, but of course Tatsuya wasn’t concerned about such matters.

“Thank you. I will make this quick,” Tatsuya said, completely unruffled by it all.

“Oh? Do tell.”

“It’s a simple request.” True to his word, Tatsuya came right to the point: “Let us pass.”

“I see. That’s the sort of directness I’ve come to expect from you.”

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Tatsuya said politely—but he neither bowed nor took his eyes off Katsushige. He merely waited for the answer.

The man met Tatsuya’s directness with his own. “Unfortunately, I can’t let you pass.” His eyes glittered with intimidation. “Allow me to make my request as well—turn away from this path and go back the way you came. If you do, there will be no more need for fighting.”

Tatsuya nodded wordlessly, but not because he was acceding to Katsushige’s demand. It was a gesture of comprehension. “So you’re saying that a fight is unavoidable if we wish to pass here.”

Katsushige pressed his lips together. To his right and left, Kotona and Kanata became visibly nervous. “That’s correct.”

Katsushige had meant his statement to conclude the affair—but Tatsuya continued. “In that case, I have a proposal.”

Internally, Katsushige had prepared a magic program and only needed to fire it—but he released the effort required to hold it and let it disperse. “…I’m listening.”

Kotona and Kanata held their CADs at the ready. Across from them, Minami appeared similarly ready to throw up a barrier at the slightest provocation.

And then Tatsuya faced Katsushige and said something completely unexpected. “This probably goes without saying, but the Guardians of Yotsuba family are magicians who protect their master or mistress from any danger.”

“And?”

“As Miyuki’s Guardian, I do not particularly wish to put her in the middle of a dangerous battlefield. I’m sure the same is true for your two Guardians.”

“Of course it is!” Kotona hissed. “I don’t want this family dispute to put Katsushige in any danger!” The tone in her voice laid bare her feelings; she was protecting someone she loved.

“I feel the same way as my sister,” Kanata noted.

Tatsuya nodded solemnly.

“Wait, don’t tell me—” Katsushige started, seeming to suddenly suspect that he was about to be caught in a trap.

“We want to pass. You don’t want to let us,” Tatsuya said, cutting Katsushige off. “To break this standoff, combat is inevitable. In which case—”

“Wait!”

“Let a battle between the Guardians decide it. I’m alone. I’m willing to face both of yours.”

“No!”

“Fine with me.”

Katsushige and Kotona gave opposing answers simultaneously.

Tatsuya ignored it and concluded his thought: “As we have a neutral third party here, Yuuka, I’ll have Minami protect both her and Miyuki. You have my word—I won’t let them interfere.”

“Please let me fight!”

“No, it’s too dangerous!” Katsushige argued with his Guardians, not even waiting to hear the end of Tatsuya’s statement. “Tatsuya isn’t the defective magician everybody thinks he is. I’m not even certain that I could defeat him myself. The previous Yotsuba family head, Eisaku, dedicated his life to raising Tatsuya as a combat magician from the moment he was born!”

“We’re second-generation Bard series engineered magicians, made for combat! We can fight, too! Combat was written into our genes from before we were even born. I don’t care who our opponent is; they won’t beat us that easily!”

“That’s not the issue! Compared to you, Tatsuya might as well be in another dimension! He first killed someone when he was six years old, immediately after the conclusion of the artificial magician experiments. It wasn’t an accident or a misfire—seconds after gaining his newfound power, he slaughtered a seasoned thirty-year-old combat magician without hesitation. He was just six years old! He wasn’t even out of elementary school!”

Kotona’s eyes went wide.

She wasn’t the only one at a loss for words. Minami and even Miyuki also looked stricken.

“Kotona, what were you doing when you were six?”

She couldn’t answer his question.

“Katsushige,” Tatsuya warned, the only one willing to take up the silence. “Please don’t casually talk about other people’s private lives like that.”

He met Tatsuya’s gaze, then looked to Miyuki and Minami, his expression turning sickeningly awkward.

“Master, please let us do this,” Kanata said, breaking in to reinforce his sister’s plea. He said master like he was addressing the proprietor of a coffee shop. “It’s true that he looks like he’ll be tough. Just looking at him, I can feel the hair on the back of my neck standing up. But with both of us, I’m sure we can take him.”

Katsushige scowled. “That’s what he’s counting on you to think.”

“Then let him think that! It’ll give us the advantage.”

“Still…”

As Katsushige searched for a sufficiently convincing counterargument, Miyuki spoke up. “Katsushige Shibata,” she said, intoning his full name in a soft, polite, and terrifyingly cold tone.

Standing beside Tatsuya, she looked straight at Katsushige with a clear, sharp gaze. “My aunt, the head of the Yotsuba family, has ordered my presence at the New Year’s celebration to be held on New Year’s Day. In order to comply with this order, I must arrive at the main house today.”

Miyuki’s beautiful intonation and perfect diction made her words sound almost musical, and they left no room for any interruption, much less a rebuttal.

“Interfering with my arrival is the same as interfering with my aunt’s orders. Your words and actions are tantamount to revolt against the head of this family. The Shibata family will be declaring open rebellion against the Yotsuba family. Of course you understand the implication of this, do you not?”

Katsushige was stuck for an answer. He’d come fully prepared to be labeled a traitor, but he wasn’t so stubborn as to just agree with the proposition that the Shibata family was openly defying the Yotsubas.

Miyuki smiled angelically. It wasn’t the smile of one neighbor to another but rather the smile a judge might give a sinner. “But you have your own position. So rather than report your actions to my aunt, I am willing to let my brother decide this. If my brother loses, I will withdraw as you’ve asked me to.”

It wasn’t a proposal; it was a threat. Katsushige had been prepared to accept being labeled a traitor, but now somehow the entire Shibata family had been taken hostage, and he was cornered.

“Unfortunately, I cannot give you much time to decide. Please tell me your decision.”

“…I will fight Tatsuya. Or may I not?” Katsushige demanded bitterly.

Miyuki inclined her head apologetically. “I said I would defer to my brother. And you have already heard his thoughts.”

Katsushige continued to agonize, unaware that he was caught in a mental trap laid by Tatsuya.

Ordinarily, there would have been no cause for him to worry so. He’d come here with the specific purpose of using force to compel the Shiba siblings to turn around. That had been his intention all along, so he didn’t need Miyuki’s permission to fight the guy.

Of course, his half-baked plan was really just another reason he was trapped. He didn’t have to negotiate with them to know that neither Miyuki nor Yuuka would just obediently pull a U-turn at his request. Force was going to be required eventually—he didn’t need a final consultation with Kotona and Kanata to know that the three of them would unquestionably attack.

And thanks to his misbegotten hope that the situation could be resolved with words, what ought to have been an all-versus-all face-off had been turned into a battle with conditions attached. Instead of being able to help absorb some of their opponents’ power, Katsushige had been forced to expose Kotona to danger. And when he should have been able to say “I refuse,” he’d now been denied that option.

He outplayed badly enough that time was now conspicuously passing as he tried to find a way out—until finally, Kotona came to her master’s rescue.

“I, Kotona Tsutsumi, accept this challenge in the place of my master, Katsushige Shibata!”

“Kotona!” shouted Katsushige as he tried to forestall her, but this time she would not be held back.

“Katsushige, there is no other way. To avoid open conflict within the family, you specifically chose not to engage in a preemptive ambush attack, so this is a preferable outcome for you. No matter the result, no succession candidates will be injured or lost.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s okay for me to lose you!”

“I won’t be beaten so easily. I will win this fight. You’ll see.”

“But…Kotona, please…”

Kotona held her finger up to Katsushige’s mouth, silencing the helplessly worried man.

“Katsushige, look at Miyuki,” she said. “She believes in her brother absolutely. That is why she’s unshaken.”

Just as Kotona said, when Katsushige looked at Miyuki, she betrayed not a hint of concern.

“Won’t you believe in me, too, Katsushige?” said Kotona in a sulky tone, a mischievous twinkle in her eye—but Katsushige knew that it was merely an act: Kotona’s best effort to appear more confident than she felt.

Kotona understood Katsushige’s fear. In the four days prior to their rendezvous with Kanata, she and Katsushige had discussed the danger posed by Tatsuya’s dismantling and regeneration abilities. He knew that she had to be aware of his preternatural ability in combat.

His training had not been focused on providing protection but rather the singular pursuit of defeating his opponent. There was no time for Katsushige to explain quickly how despite being a magician, Tatsuya had also been trained in silencing his enemies with a variety of weapons. The one example he’d been able to give ought to suffice for Kotona to understand the danger she faced.

And still she put on a brave face and asked him to believe in her. It left him no choice.

“…All right. I’ll trust you two. Kotona, Kanata—win this.”

“We got this!”

“We certainly do!”

The Tsutsumi siblings shouted their assent, then stepped forward to face Tatsuya.

With a wave, Tatsuya gestured for Miyuki to stand back.

Katsushige likewise retreated. As he did so, he used magic to push the boulders and felled trees clear from the road, the better to see Kotona and Kanata’s fight through to its end.

Tatsuya turned to face the sibling Guardians again, a strangely apologetic look on his face. “Sorry to pour cold water on this heartfelt exchange, but I have no intention of killing either of you.”

Kotona reddened. “I-if you think saying that’s gonna make us go easy on you, think again!”

“That wasn’t a ruse.”

“Well, fine then! We’re still not gonna let up on you!” Kanata shouted past gritted teeth, trying to cover up his embarrassment.

From Tatsuya’s perspective, his opponents were misunderstanding him and willfully taking offense, but if he pointed that out, the terms they’d finally managed to settle on would probably go right out the window. In any case, Tatsuya thought, he and his sister had been delayed two days. If anyone threatened to delay them further, he didn’t think he’d be able to hold himself back.

“So shall we start here? Or would you prefer a different location?”

Kotona glanced over her shoulder. She’d meant only to check that there was sufficient distance between her and Katsushige, but when she caught his eye, he silently nodded, and she felt impatient and excited despite herself. “Here is fine.”

“Well, then.”

Just as Tatsuya spoke the words, Kotona’s body flew into the air.

“Kotona!”

Ahead of her, Kanata attacked Tatsuya. But Katsushige didn’t follow him long enough to see the outcome. His attention was on Kotona, who’d been flung into the air with a flight effect that seemed to be a variation of gravity-control magic.

Katsushige reached out to try to come to Kotona’s aid—the shock of having been thrown so suddenly skyward made it impossible for her to slow her fall or assume a better landing posture.

Inertial control magic to neutralize the g-forces on her body.

Deceleration magic to slow her fall to the ground.

Kinetic magic to adjust the arc of her fall toward him.

Using his portable terminal-style CAD, Katsushige keyed three magic programs in rapid succession and directed them at Kotona.

Rather than casting the magic as a single program with three steps, he used three discrete spells, his rapid, careful sequencing avoiding interference and ensuring that she landed precisely where he intended her to—in his arms.

“Th…thank you,” she said, shamefaced even as he cradled her.

Katsushige hid his profound relief as he set her down.

“My apologies. I was so fixated on the dismantling attack I was expecting that…I left myself wide open to other magic.”

“Watch yourself. Tatsuya can flash cast things besides Dismantle and Regenerate, now. I’ve explained this several times already.”

“Yes, sir…”

“His flash-cast strength is only third-rate, but his activation speed is the quickest in all of the Yotsuba. His ability to repeatedly cast the same magic in an instant makes up for what he lacks in strength. You experienced it just now, right?”

“Yes.”

“As long as you understand. Go. Your brother is struggling.”

“Understood.”

Having warned Kotona as best he could, Katsushige sent her back out, suppressing the urge he felt to go in her place.

Taking advantage of the gap in Kanata’s attention that seeing his sister flung into the air opened, Tatsuya reached out and placed his palm on Kanata’s chest, right over his heart, firing a virtual wave oscillation into it.

But before the wave could reach Kanata’s heart, it was canceled out by another wave that flowed through Kanata’s body. Tatsuya’s magic was overwritten by the interference.

Kanata rolled backward, then snapped the fingers of his left hand.

Before the snap could become a thundering crash washing over him, Tatsuya dismantled the sound-amplification effect powering it. But as he did so, he let Kanata pull back out of range.

“Trying to sucker punch me, huh? Fine by me!” Kanata waved his pistol-shaped CAD in an arc, pulling the trigger repeatedly.

Each trigger pull caused a sound-emitting magic program to appear in midair. It was Acoustic Cannon, which blasted sound waves at energy levels that could temporarily interfere with the human body’s functioning.

Tatsuya dismantled each one in turn, rendering them powerless.

“Damn, so that’s ‘Program Dispersion,’ huh?” Apparently Kanata was the kind of person who narrated whatever was happening. Maybe it was his way of encouraging himself—the effect on his morale was undeniable. But as far as Tatsuya was concerned, it was both a waste of effort and a vulnerability.

Tatsuya filled his body with psions, using them—rather than mere nerves—to control his physical movements.

“Fine, how about this?” shouted Kanata, leveling his CAD at Tatsuya.

But by the time he did, Tatsuya was already upon him.

This was shukuchi—not the mystical teleportation of fictional martial artists, but a true hand-to-hand combat technique.

It was one of the physical body control techniques Tatsuya had learned from Yakumo. He’d heard the term shukuchi from his teacher but didn’t know if that was really its name. In any case, historically accurate naming conventions were not something Tatsuya was concerned about.

What mattered to him was its effect.

Kanata’s eyes went wide as Tatsuya suddenly appeared right in front of him, without having used acceleration-type magic.

Before Kanata could react, Tatsuya slapped his CAD out of his hand, then landed a hard punch to his solar plexus.

Kanata folded with a grunt, collapsing to the ground.

The strike hadn’t involved any vibration magic. It was pure martial arts, which meant that the vibrations Kanata had set up within his own body were completely useless as a defense.

Tatsuya had struck with the intent to render Kanata instantly unconscious. He wouldn’t kill him, but short of that, he was unconcerned about any physical complications Kanata might suffer. But the soccer kick he aimed at Kanata’s head was cut short.

Tatsuya leaped back, rendering the sonic explosions suddenly going off around him inert.

Katsushige sent Kotona back out immediately after Kanata’s Acoustic Cannon shots were nullified. There had been thirty meters, at best, between Kotona and Kanata.

And yet, by the time she had closed to within ten meters, her brother was on the ground.

Kotona couldn’t even take the time to call out his name before she activated her CAD.

The Bard series of engineered magicians were combat focused, specializing in vibration-type magic—particularly sonic interference. However, the term combat focused covered a wide variety of applications, and Kotona’s skills were more focused on support—battle awareness, deception and camouflage, and damage reduction—than attack.

Her strongest abilities were Passive Sonar, Silent Veil, and Sonic Bomb. While technically an attack, Sonic Bomb was really a support technique better suited to restricting an enemy’s movement rather than inflicting damage; its capacity to do so paled in comparison to her brother’s Acoustic Cannon and Phonon Maser.

But with him in danger, she deployed her own attack magic as far and as densely as she could manage.

Sonic Bomb emanated acoustic energy in a spherical area from the point of its activation, and at this distance it normally would have hit both herself and her target. But both Kotona and Kanata constantly maintained a layer of sound information amplification between their bodies and the air immediately surrounding them. For the two of them, it was as natural as the Eidos Skin—the information amplification magicians used to protect their bodies from outside magic. Any physically harmful sound would be rendered harmless by it.

This had been the basis of her calculation when she’d unleashed as much attack magic as she could possibly muster.

But before Kotona’s Sonic Bombs could become physical sound, each of them had been dismantled by Tatsuya’s Program Dispersion.

“He targeted twenty-four separate locations at once?!” she shouted in dismay.

A bystander might suggest that she should have been readying her next move rather than pointing out the obvious, but that was easier said than done. She was shocked to her core at Tatsuya’s capacity for nullifying magic, and it didn’t occur to her that even this moment’s hesitation would lead to an opening that Tatsuya could exploit.

Her opponent suddenly vanished from view.

He had merely jumped diagonally upward, but Kotona’s eyes weren’t quick enough to follow.

It was a simple leap with a moment’s worth of acceleration magic applied to it. Since he hadn’t used any inertial damping, the g-forces Tatsuya experienced were considerable, but he was used to them. And, crucially, because he’d used magic only momentarily, with no continuous effect, Kotona could neither track him with her naked eye nor with any magical senses.

He used another burst of acceleration magic in midair to change direction.

By the time Kotona’s magic sense let her turn to face him, he was already too close for her to do anything else.

If he’d been attacking Kanata, Tatsuya would’ve kicked him into the air. But with Kotona, he was reluctant—not because he had suddenly developed a sense of chivalry but rather because an impact on Kotona’s delicate body at this velocity might well have killed her.

As he hit the ground, Tatsuya reached for his opponent’s neck and, using the remaining kinetic energy, pressed down.

Kotona’s body fell, and careful not to injure her, Tatsuya caught her and lowered her to the ground.

As he recovered from Tatsuya’s jab and came to, the first thing Kanata saw was his sister being held to the ground with Tatsuya’s hand around her throat.

“Get away from her!” Kanata quickly snatched up the CAD he’d dropped, took aim at Tatsuya, and fired Phonon Maser.

If it hit him, even Tatsuya wouldn’t escape unscathed. A highly skilled magician like Katsuto or Minami might have been able to erect a barrier that would have deflected it, but without a barrier in place, it would have been a fatal attack for anyone except Tatsuya.

But the Phonon Maser’s beam simply stopped.

The instant after it was activated, its program was dismantled, and with the dissipation of the coherent waves that powered it, it seemed to vanish in midair.

Technically, the beam had hit Tatsuya. But the amount of time he was exposed to it was so short that it didn’t even singe his clothing.

Shocked that his specialty had betrayed him, Kanata tried to activate it a second time. And a third and a fourth. “Why—?”

But each time, it was dispelled by Tatsuya and refused to re-cohere.

And then his opponent leaped again—toward him.

But this time, the attacker was struck in midair by an explosion of compressed air.

“Tatsuya!”

After hitting the ground, Tatsuya scrabbled to his feet at the sound of his sister’s voice.

Miyuki allowed herself the briefest moment of relief before whirling on her heel. “Katsushige, what is the meaning of this?”

The blast had come from him. He did not answer Miyuki’s question—but he did loose another blast.

This magic was Katsushige Shibata’s specialty, and he was a candidate to become the next head of the Yotsuba family. His casting was so fast that Tatsuya’s nullification couldn’t keep up with it.

Katsushige specialized in density manipulation. It was a fundamental skill of convergence-type magic, and being so basic, it had a wide variety of applications. It was the manipulation and control of solid, liquid, and gaseous substances.

For example, selectively lowering the density of a volume within a solid substance could create a hole. The avalanche from earlier had been created by altering the distribution density of the snow on the mountain, sequentially creating spots on the slope where the snow was thinner.

By altering the density of a liquid, a high-pressure stream of that liquid could be created. It was also possible to direct a flow of liquid upstream, against the pull of gravity.

And by manipulating the density of a gas, he could make vacuum-like suction forces or explosive blasts of gale-force wind.

Unusually for a magician of the Yotsuba family, Katsushige had specialized in normal magic. But in his application of it to a huge variety of circumstances, the speed at which he cast it, the amount of simultaneous programs he could deploy, and the breadth of physical phenomena to which he could effect change, he was an excellent magician by any normal definition.

Seeing that his cancellation ability couldn’t keep up with Katsushige’s casting, Tatsuya instead directed his dismantling magic to the construct that was causing the variation in the air density.

The influence trying to create a high-pressure area—

—and the influence trying to dismantle the construct creating the air density differential—

—clashed with each other.

As a result, Katsushige’s magic misfired.

“Wha—?!” Kanata croaked in dismay.

But unlike the Tsutsumi siblings, Katsushige didn’t hesitate after his magic was thwarted. He had fully joined the fight and was already preparing his next attack.

However, he was brought up short by a sudden violent localized updraft. The gust wasn’t enough to lift his body off the ground. In fact, the wind hadn’t itself been created by magic.

The updraft focused around Katsushige was the result of magic that had been employed in the air above him.

The wind being sucked into the vortex overhead was being chilled by rapid depressurization, with the water vapor in the rarefied air condensing and freezing into tiny grains of ice.

The rapid depressurization itself was a byproduct of the fact that a large volume of nitrogen—which comprised almost 80 percent of the air—had been instantly liquefied.

With an influence far beyond anything Katsushige could match, Miyuki had cast Niflheim.

The mist of liquid nitrogen mixed with the vortex’s swirling flow, then under the influence of gravity, began to fall as droplets of rain.

Above Katsushige, sleet poured down. The solid portion of the sleet was crystallized water, but the droplets were liquid nitrogen, registering at -200° centigrade.

Katsushige threw up a double-layered shield—a material deflector and vacuum seal.

The extreme low temperature that resulted from the vaporization of liquid nitrogen could be life-threatening even without direct contact with the droplets. Katsushige was temporarily trapped within his own barrier, his movement completely halted.

Tatsuya took three leaps.

Kanata tried to draw a bead on Tatsuya with his handgun CAD but was unable to follow Tatsuya’s three midair direction changes.

Unlike his sister, Kanata was shown no mercy when Tatsuya kicked him into the air.

As Tatsuya looked down at the fallen bodies on the road, Miyuki came running up to him.

“Brother, are you okay?!”

—No attack came from Katsushige.

“Are you hurt?!” Miyuki asked, worried about any injuries Tatsuya might have sustained from being shot down by Katsushige’s initial compressed-air round.

“I’m fine. I haven’t sustained any wounds that need to be rolled back.” Tatsuya smiled faintly.

“Thank goodness…” Miyuki breathed a sigh of relief.

Minami arrived beside them and held out a hand towel to Tatsuya. “Here, Tatsuya, you can use this.”

“Ah, thanks.”

Miyuki’s keen gaze then fell not on Minami nor the white hand towel, but rather upon Katsushige. “Katsushige, I will ask you again. What was the meaning of your intervention?”

Before Katsushige could answer, Yuuka arrived at Miyuki’s side and shouted a condemnation. “Katsushige, what you did here was a contemptible ambush. Not only did you break the terms of Tatsuya’s fight with Kotona and Kanata, but you also committed an outrageous sneak attack. Explain yourself!”

“Miyuki, Yuuka,” Tatsuya interrupted, “would you mind saving this conversation for a later day?”

It was Katsushige, formerly silent, who asked the obvious question: “Why?”

“If you don’t attend to those two, they’ll suffer complications.” Tatsuya’s answer was exactly what Katsushige was most concerned about. “Given modern medicine and magical healing techniques, there shouldn’t be any lasting health issues, but I do think you should get them medical attention as soon as possible.”

Tatsuya didn’t wait for Katsushige to answer before looking back over his shoulder to his own sister. “We should get moving, too.”

She nodded wordlessly. Not only did Miyuki have no desire to quibble with her brother’s words, she showed not even a trace of discontent.

Tatsuya wiped his face with the towel, then handed it back to Minami. Minami took it and briskly refolded it.

Tatsuya turned to Yuuka. “Yuuka, would you be willing to drive us?”

Unlike Miyuki, Yuuka’s brows knit in frustration. “Tatsuya, are you okay just leaving it like this?” she asked, glancing in Katsushige’s direction.

Katsushige was currently applying healing magic to his Guardians with a desperate expression on his face. Even though he was alternating between the two rather than attempting to treat them simultaneously, it was still a high-level procedure that even a trained medical magician would have found challenging. The fact that he wasn’t letting his personal feelings interfere reflected well on his sense of responsibility as their superior.

But the sight did nothing to repair Yuuka’s low estimation of him after his interference in the battle that had just concluded.

“Am I okay leaving it like this? That’s an odd question. I have no reason to condemn him in the first place,” Tatsuya replied.

“Huh?” Yuuka gawked, surprised. “I mean, he blindsided you, didn’t he?”

“His assignment was to prevent Miyuki from going past this point. I expected the three of them to attack us all at once from the very beginning, honestly.”

Yuuka looked stunned. “That’s why you sent Kotona flying toward Katsushige in the beginning?”

Tatsuya didn’t reply to that. “Meanwhile, my goal was to ensure Miyuki’s safe attendance at the New Year’s party. Allowing time for preparation before the event, this doesn’t mean we have the luxury of arriving any time today. I would like to reach the headquarters as quickly as possible.”

“I see…so as long as Katsushige doesn’t interfere further, you don’t care what happens.” Yuuka glanced in the man’s direction again.

He seemed to have finished administering first aid to Kotona, who had regained consciousness but was not yet sitting up. In any case, she had merely been rendered unconscious and had sustained no external injuries, so Katsushige’s primary concern was that not too much time passed before she awoke. He was now crouched down next to Kanata, seeing to him.

“All right. If you’re satisfied, I’ll let it go for now. Let’s move on.”

The four got in their car, and Yuuka drove them onward.

As they passed by Katsushige, still tending to his charges, he didn’t even look up.