Toaru Majutsu no Index

Volume 22, Chapter 10: Completion of the Final Spell’s Preliminary Preparations. Rebirth_the...

Part 1

Sasha Kreutzev ran through the Star of Bethlehem.

The Star of Bethlehem was a temple on a scale never seen before in the history of the Christian Church. However, the inside was wrapped in silence to terrifying extent. She had not seen a single warrior priest. She felt as if a deep part of Fiamma of the Right was carved into that dark silence. On a fundamental level, that man did not trust in what were known as comrades. That was why he had made that structure.

Fiamma’s attack had caused her to split up with the boy who was apparently a student from Academy City.

She should really go help him out, but she had been made aware of how little a chance she had against Fiamma back in the Elizalina Alliance. That man was a monster. He had almost surpassed the laws of magic.

However, things were different if Fiamma of the Right was not the only opponent.

(My personal opinion: This temple and the altered night sky are deeply related to Project Bethlehem and it is highly likely that Fiamma is magically linked to the Star of Bethlehem in order to control it.)

While keeping a cautious eye on her surroundings, Sasha ran down the passageway at high speed.

(A supplementary explanation: Even if I cannot stand up to Fiamma, I may be able to get an indirect attack in via the Star of Bethlehem.)

At any rate, she had to hurry.

She did not know the details of who that boy was, but it had not seemed like he knew much about magic. In that case he was someone who should be protected by the Russian Orthodox Church that was supposed to inspect and eliminate the occult. Just by the fact that she was using that amateur to buy her some time against that monster, she felt the need to voluntarily punish herself.

(But where exactly am I supposed attack!? The Star of Bethlehem is a large-scale temple with a radius of over 40 kilometers. It could take quite a bit of time just to find a point to target!!)

As Sasha grew impatient, an odd voice came from behind a pillar.

“Tah dah! Tah dah! Tah dahhh!!”

“!?”

Sasha’s body stiffened like a surprised cat’s and she pulled an L-shaped crowbar from the belt at her waist. However, the end of the mass of steel did not strike the speaker when she swung it like a Japanese Iai strike.

There was a steel glove.

A spiritual item that was made of mechanical parts combined to look a bit like an arm struck the crowbar modified for torture and sparks flew through the air.

Holding the steel glove was a girl wearing what looked like a lacrosse uniform with a jacket over it. From the back of her miniskirt, an artificial tail could be seen swaying back and forth.

“Ahh. I’m glad I managed to use my steel glove to grab onto the outer wall of the Star of Bethlehem when it started rising. I tried to construct a communications line with Bayloupe and the others who are on the surface, but this fortress’s protection is tougher than I expected, so I couldn’t open a hole to get through. Right now, I’m trying to force as much of the technology in this fortress into my head as I can for the sake of the UK. I was doing it as I searched for that important boy who I lost track of.”

The black-haired girl did not seem to mind having been attacked by the crowbar.

“Are you from the Russian Orthodox Church? You seemed troubled, so I came over to explain the payment plan to you. I recommend the stopover course. It’s quite cheap right now.”

“…?”

Sasha looked confused and the black-haired girl skillfully moved her tail to point in a certain direction. She pointed to the bottom of the temple where a great number of square containers were hanging down.

“They’re something like emergency escape devices. They’re kind of like a mix between a bus and a parachute. It seemed like the Russian Orthodox magicians might try to resist Fiamma to stop his plan from being completed, but then he would just throw them out, so I led them here before that could happen. Heh heh.”

“…My first question: What do you mean by payment plan?”

“Oh, I’m not really going to be taking money. Everything I do is for the sake of the UK. I’ll help you out here if you swear to help us out if the UK is ever in trouble later,” said the black-haired girl with a huge grin on her face.

With the tail stretching from within her miniskirt, she gave the impression of a demon, but the different details were sweet and cute. She was like a mischievous little demon. Sasha wondered what the girl intended to make her do with that verbal promise.

However, Sasha did not especially care about the UK, so she didn’t ask.

“My first response: Make sure everyone who wishes to leave the warfront escapes. A supplementary explanation: I do not intend to leave yet. I must at least get one strike back at Fiamma of the Right.”

“Eh heh heh. Understood. Don’t forget that I will have you repay for this favor later either officially or unofficially.”

With a loud clunk, the containers suspended from the bottom of the temple flew out into the night sky. The flames of war were blazing on the surface, but there was no need to worry about that. They were professional Russian Orthodox magicians.

The black-haired girl lightly waved her tail.

“So how do you plan to strike back at Fiamma?”

“My second response: I feel no need to answer your question.”

“You kind of piss me off. Would you like some gum?”

Sasha’s face darkened behind her bangs.

“…My third response: I do not understand why people put that mass of synthetic compounds into their mouths.”

“Ever since the manna in the New Testament, Christians have always been reputed to love sweet things.”

Sasha ignored the black-haired girl following her and ran further into the Star of Bethlehem. She did not have a complete grasp of the construction of the temple, but she had an idea where the device she was headed for was.

She was headed for the device that connected Fiamma of the Right to the temple.

Assuming the Star of Bethlehem functioned on the idea of a “temple” from Christian-based magic both old and modern and both eastern and western, then the number, colors, and arrangement of the parts constructing the temple should be the same regardless of its size.

Basically, he had gathered the best materials from all across the world and increased the scale by quite a bit, but he was still using the same basic recipe. In that case, there was no need to be fooled by its showiness or size. The knowledge within the magician known as Sasha Kreutzev was enough.

Suddenly, Sasha stopped running. She was not at some important part of the temple her knowledge told her about. Sasha was looking out a window. Through it, she could see a dark night sky spreading out and another building.

The building’s walls and ceiling had been mostly destroyed, so she could see inside it from where she stood.

Fiamma of the Right had swung a giant sword that blotted out the night sky beyond it.

And Sasha saw the right arm of the boy facing Fiamma being cleanly severed at the shoulder.

Part 2

Vasilisa, the woman who led the special Russian Orthodox unit known as Annihilatus arrived at Moscow. Crimson stains deepened the red of her religious habit. The drawn-back edges of her lips had a similarly-colored liquid on them.

However, not all of that was her own blood.

Vasilisa also had red stains underneath her fingernails on both hands and she used those hands to throw open the main doors to a large palace. A number of assassins immediately attacked her, but she paid them no heed. She paid no heed to their strength or to the fact that they had once been her allies.

She blew them all away.

“Old cannibal woman of the one-legged house…” sang a young girl’s voice.

Along with Vasilisa’s voice, an old woman wearing torn shadows wielded great power within the palace. A giant mass of flames exploded and the professional magicians were thrown about on the floor and they let out cries and shouts.

When she reached the depths of the temple, a deep male voice came from in front of her.

“So you’ve come.”

The voice sounded annoyed.

A middle aged man stood there wearing an expensive bishop-class outfit.

“You’ve fallen in love with that cannibalistic monster, you damn witch. And you have that unaging body from going to the ends of crushing the occult.”

“I’d rather you called me a fairy tale heroine, Bishop Nikolai. I am a national idol, you know?”

“Shut up. You’re just the ruins of a girl from a fairy tale who obtained happiness by burning her mother and sister to death.”

Vasilisa ignored him.

She glanced over and the monstrous shadow moved in response. It charged straight for Nikolai.

Nikolai opened his mouth to speak while watching the witch approach.

“Cannibal witches are quite famous. They are just that strong. Russia has quite a bit of folklore regarding them, but they almost always fall into one of two patterns. Either the human is eaten by the witch or the witch lets the human go. The humans almost never win.”

With a great noise, the cannibal witch exploded.

“By the way, there is an exceptional way to kill even a cannibal witch.”

At the same time, something swirled around Nikolai. It was a clear liquid. However, it was not a normal liquid. When it appeared, holes started burning in the carpet decorating the floor.

“In one story containing a cannibal witch, the witch is in charge of two fountains. One contains the Water of Life that gives one eternal life. The other contains the Water of Death that ends one’s life. The knights asked the witch to lead them to the Water of Life and they managed to monopolize the Water of Life by pushing the witch into the Water of Death.”

The cannibal witch was sucked into the clear liquid and then disappeared. Nikolai then snapped his fingers. The water headed for Vasilisa like a tsunami and submerged her up to the head.

“That was an exceedingly rare victory at the hands of a human.”

A cruel scene was spread out before Nikolai.

The left half of Vasilisa’s body was completely gone. Her arm was nothing but bone, her feminine silhouette had crumbled from her chest to her stomach, and the psychedelically colored insides were about to spill out. And Vasilisa was continuing to come apart. In less than a minute, she would likely not a have a single hair left on her head.

“This war is Russia’s war. The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch, personally signed this national policy into being,” said Nikolai as if he were spitting out the words. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but surely you know what it means to try to stop it.”

But then the bishop frowned.

Something was wrong.

Expressions of pain or fear did not appear on Vasilisa’s face even after half of her body had been disintegrated. She still had that smile that left one wondering what she was thinking.

And then her lips moved despite the fact that she should have already lost her lungs.

“Oh, dear. Signatures that are obtained through tricks are usually considered to be invalid.”

The instant Nikolai took a step back, Vasilisa’s wounds swelled up. With an odd noise, the portions that had been disintegrated burst from the areas they had been disintegrated from.

“The document related to the war used the military command format instead of the Russian Orthodox command format. And the Patriarch is not used to giving orders over the network. …I wonder if it is possible that someone had him electronically sign a random dummy document on a tablet and then attached the handwriting data to a more dangerous document? Not that I hate pure children or anything.”

Despite having been produced in such a strange way, the new parts of her body were young and full of life. The skin looked soft, water resistant, and like that of someone in their early teens.

It looked just like the skin of a fairy tale heroine.

“And the only person who could have used a trick like that would be the person appointed to be the pipeline between the church and the military. That’s you, Bishop Nikolai Tolstoy. You are certainly the most suspicious, but I wonder what you were after. Was it the position of Patriarch? So were you thinking of having him assassinated during all the turmoil?”

“How?”

Nikolai stared at that oddly white and shining skin as if he couldn’t believe it.

“My Water of Death was perfect!! I created that spiritual item from materials I had found and sent to me from the backcountry!! It was purposefully made to deal with your witch!! You’re the Vasilisa who is under the care of that witch, so there should have been no way for you to defend against the Water of Death!!”

“Nikolai, Nikolai. Did you forget what you yourself said?”

Vasilisa had parts of her skin that looked different from others like she was a reptile that had shed only half its skin. She shook her head with a smile on her face.

“You said the cannibal witch was in charge of both the Water of Life and the Water of Death.”

“You don’t mean…”

“Of course I do. The core of that story was the item to obtain eternal life. The means of killing the witch was nothing more than a small tool to give it a happy ending. My body is not something as ridiculous as immortal, but we don’t need to argue over which item is more important and which is stronger, do we?”

That meant the card Nikolai held could not kill Vasilisa. He possessed other excellent pieces of equipment besides the Water of Death, but she would continue toward him even if he tore her to pieces with them.

And Vasilisa was not the type of magician that would allow Nikolai to flee.

“Old cannibal woman of the one-legged house.”

As that fairy tale heroine approached him with a smile, her lovely singing voice resounded throughout the palace.

“Please lend your strength to this honest and powerless girl. Lend me your overwhelming witch’s power so that I can smash this dishonest and ugly adult to pieces and have a happy ending.”

Part 3

Kamijou Touma’s right arm spun through the air with a line of blood drawn behind it. That narrow red line made loops creating a strange form of art.

Fiamma of the Right lightly held out his hand.

It grabbed Kamijou’s right arm as if absorbing it.

That right arm was known as Imagine Breaker.

That unique right hand could negate any unexplainable supernatural power be it scientific or magical.

“I have it…”

Fiamma’s lips twisted in delight.

With a sound like a water balloon bursting, the severed right hand burst to pieces and the blood, flesh, bone, blood vessels, and nerves all neatly disassembled and spread out.

“The world environment has been prepared using the Star of Bethlehem and the right hand to act as a medium has been severed. The power that resides within me cannot show off 100% of its power except by way of your right hand. Imagine Breaker must be a type of purification tool the holy right hand naturally possesses, but to me it is no more than a mouse eating away at food stores. However, taking that unneeded ability into my power as one of the original pieces ends its role. …With this, my right hand is complete. If I wield the power that should originally have been within me at its full output, the salvation of all will be complete. After all, my arm possesses the power to save the entire world. People may refer to that as being The One Above God, but… I do not particularly care about that. I do not intend to match or exceed him. I only intend to gather all the power I have now and to save the world with it.”

All the parts were absorbed into the Third Arm stretching from Fiamma of the Right’s right shoulder.

He was in anguish.

Normally, his face did not lose its composure, but his eyebrows twisted in displeasure just slightly.

The flesh and blood that had been put together was perfect, but the power of Imagine Breaker treated Fiamma of the Right as a special case and started to eat away at his very core.

However, it was worth mentioning that he did not immediately lose his power.

In other words, the power sleeping within Fiamma was constantly creating such great power that Imagine Breaker’s effects were not enough to negate it.

(All this could not have been carried out with clever tricks, so it seems luck and true skill were on my side. And if it did not have this level of output, it would not be known as the power that the Son of God should wield.)

Fiamma of the Right’s body shook.

Not only his heart constricted and retracted. Centered around his Third Arm, his entire body did as well. It was a reaction to the power stored at his center travelling to his right arm of flesh and blood.

A great change occurred as if to prove that the power to change the world had descended.

However, this change was not in Fiamma’s body.

It was in the planet that received him.

The heavens greatly opened up.

That clear otherworldly and artificially arranged night sky of red, blue, yellow, and green split open. Like an old stocking ripping, large cracks appeared in places and they spread soundlessly.

On the other side was a golden light.

It was just like a legend. It was just like the world seen in religious art. That lowering curtain of light looked like a scene of the heavens and the earth being connected. Someone who did not know the circumstances would likely have mistaken it for an angel above the clouds about to spill out. In reality, god and the angels were not at a physical height. They were on the other side of some invisible phase like infrared rays or ultraviolet rays. However, that mistaken impression may not have been too far off in a way. That golden light was a massive amount of Telesma.

Fiamma had not called in an angel.

It may have been more accurate to say he had called in the world where angels were.

Fiamma of the Right had not pitifully knocked on the door again and again and then waited for the heavy door to open. He had only transformed the place at which he stood into an appropriate place.

When a certain Christian holy woman was forcibly thrown into a brothel, that brothel had turned into a shining place for sermons. It was the same as that.

When a different holy woman was thrown into a cold and dirty prison while injured, the entire space had overflowed with the shining power of the angels making it like a pure spring and the woman’s injuries were kindly healed. It was the same as that.

(It has been dyed by heaven.)

The area around the proper ones would be dyed in the proper manner.

Fiamma of the Right’s lips twisted in pleasure upon confirming that truth.

(Once I rearrange the depths of the earth, all the gears will have been readjusted and the devices will have been set to keep them running smoothly. Then this world will once again be moving as it should be.)

That meant that he no longer needed the boy who had lost his right arm.

That mass of flesh that had been nothing more than an adapter to keep that right arm in the world needed to be quickly disposed of.

(I will save this world. You are no longer necessary to do that.)

Fiamma thrust his Third Arm that now clearly had a physical form toward the boy who still had great amounts of blood gushing from his shoulder.

“You should be honored, you mass of flesh. You managed to carry out your purpose in life.”

That would settle it.

His Third Arm was no longer incomplete and it no longer continued to shake awkwardly.

The destruction he could carry out was different from the destruction that could be created by the 103,000 grimoires.

He held the power to save the world.

He held the power at the core of a legend.

He was known as The One Above God.

If it was necessary, he could easily smash the no longer needed adaptor with an overwhelming explosion of light that could turn an entire planet to dust.

It would have been odd if he could not.

“…?”

In that instant, what Fiamma of the Right felt first was not anger or fear. It was doubt.

There was not a scratch on the boy who should have been turned to ash.

In fact, the great swirl of light Fiamma had fired had split in two right in front of the boy and scattered to either side of him. Yet that attack had held such power that it could blow away a planet or recreate any of the legends in Christianity.

It was almost like…

It was almost like it had been blown away by an invisible right hand stretching from the wound on the boy’s shoulder.

“What…?” Fiamma of the Right said still not having grasped what had happened.

He could not stop the words spilling from his own mouth. They grew and grew like a snowball rolling down a slope.

“I took your right hand. So why do you still have that power!?”

No response came.

The boy merely hung his head down while his cheek was wet with his own blood.

An invisible power gathered.

It gathered in that right arm that should not exist. It gathered beyond that wound.

(…)

Fiamma moved only his eyeballs to look at what was growing from his own right shoulder.

He had indeed taken in that boy’s right hand and that hand that he had made his own flesh and blood still possessed Imagine Breaker, the unique power to negate all supernatural powers.

Then what was the power gathering inside the enemy before Fiamma’s eyes?

(Something…)

Fiamma felt his lips quickly drying up. He had finally acquired the right arm of Imagine Breaker. He had made all sorts of major preparations in order to obtain that strange right hand that acted as the final key. As long as he had his own power and that boy’s right arm that had been disassembled and reorganized into a spiritual item, he could save the entire world. He had obtained something with that much value and yet…

He was inferior.

He was overshadowed.

The great swirl of power compressing toward that boy’s shoulder felt so threatening that it seemed to suck the color out of everything Fiamma had obtained.

(Something invisible…)

Fiamma of the Right looked back at the boy’s face.

He was still hanging his head down so his expression could not be seen.

It seemed that not just Imagine Breaker resided in that boy’s body. Just the ability to negate supernatural powers was not enough to shake Fiamma’s heart that greatly and to put him on his guard to that extent. Even then, he felt a painful illusion on his skin. He felt a deeply resounding shock in the bottom of his gut like large fireworks were going off nearby. That shock was similar to an invisible wall.

(Something is there!!)

“…”

The boy, Kamijou Touma, slowly raised his head.

It was not some great action. There was no great speed to it. There was no special regularity to it.

He merely raised his head.

That was all.

Fiamma of the Right felt the muscles from his shoulder to the back of his neck stiffening.

It was coming.

He did not know what, but something he needed to be cautious of was coming.

And…

Kamijou Touma used his own power to crush that invisible something.

A different power appeared above that great power that had gathered around Kamijou’s shoulder. That other power seemed to open up a large mouth and swallow up the first power. As if this giant mouth was chewing, the air around the shoulder shook looked like sugar water.

That great power was smashed in an instant.

“...You,” muttered Kamijou as his lips moved. “I don’t know who you are.”

His words were not especially loud.

And yet they still stabbed into the depths of Fiamma’s ears. His heart uncontrollably went on such high guard that he felt like overlooking a single twitch of a finger or blink of an eye could have a major effect on the outcome of the battle.

“And I don’t know what you’re trying to do.”

Kamijou was not looking at Fiamma of the Right, the possessor of the greatest power even among God’s Right Seat.

Fiamma did not know what he was speaking to.

“But…”

That may have been something only Kamijou Touma could understand.

At any rate, he continued to speak.

“…You stay silent. I’ll take care of this.”

Fiamma heard a damp noise and the next thing he knew, a right arm had already extended from Kamijou Touma’s shoulder. He had eaten away such a massive power and then grown a new part of his body.

(He…threw it away…?)

Fiamma tried to mutter those words, but he realized afterwards that he had not said them out loud.

His throat dried and a feeling like something was clinging there remained.

(He gave up all that power to get Imagine Breaker back…?)

He looked up to the boy’s right arm that he had taken for himself.

Even then, Fiamma had the Imagine Breaker arm inside his body after having disassembled it. However, he could tell the shining power was gradually fading from the flesh and blood he had acquired. It was such a unique power that two of it could not exist within the same world. The scene made Fiamma think that such a rule must exist. And that rule might also have been that the true power could only reside within the right arm if it was attached to the boy known as Kamijou Touma.

He could not allow himself to lose it.

He did not miss the power of Imagine Breaker in and of itself. In fact, he had been planning to eventually eliminate the functionality of the arm he had taken into this body. It did nothing but interfere with the power within Fiamma’s body. However, if the right arm itself continued to rapidly deteriorate, it may continue on to the point of losing its ability to receive Fiamma’s power. That would be a problem for his goal.

“…I’ve finally begun to figure this out,” said Kamijou.

“Figure what out?”

“I thought your plan seemed incredibly over the top. You created this Star of Bethlehem, you started World War III, you created an alliance between the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, and you did so much more.”

Kamijou stopped breathing for an instant.

The next words he spoke were in the form of a question to Fiamma.

“Why did the Star of Bethlehem have to be this huge? This is a ceremonial space in order for you to safely and surely carry out your magic, but if you truly were the strongest existence out there, would there have been any reason for you to tear pieces from churches and temples from around the world and gather them together?”

Kamijou spoke as if he were checking items off of a list one by one.

“Why did you start World War III? You said it was to gather the necessary items from around the world and to make the enemy you must defeat clear. However, it can be explained in a different way. Your power automatically regulates the strength of your arm’s power matching it to the level of difficulty of your enemy. In other words, the stronger the enemy that stands before you, the stronger the power you can draw out. …But why did you have to forcibly draw out such great power?”

And each of the things on that list accurately scraped away at Fiamma making what was inside clear.

“And why did you make an alliance between the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church? Why did you want military strength to the point of contacting another denomination beyond the Roman Catholic Church and its 2 billion followers? If you were truly invincible and you could truly defeat any and all enemies, you would have had no need to prepare subordinates.”

Kamijou Touma continued to speak those words that were fatal to Fiamma of the Right.

“In other words…you were afraid, weren’t you?”

Kamijou glared straight at Fiamma as he spoke those words.

“You didn’t know if your body truly held enough power to save the world.”

An explosion of light shot out.

The sharp claws of Fiamma of the Right’s Third Arm stretched out and a tremendous attack was fired from the tips toward Kamijou Touma.

But Kamijou was not blown to pieces.

The right palm he held out in front of himself pressed against that storm of light. He twisted his wrist so that the vector of the attack was forced diagonally to the back.

He was completely unscathed.

That could be said to be a result fitting of the power that could kill any and all illusions.

And his words did not stop.

When you thought about it, it was obvious.

It was completely natural that Fiamma of the Right did not have any proof of it.

After all…

“The world has never ended,” said Kamijou. “I don’t know about the legends of ancient times, but at the very least, I have never heard any modern stories of the world being on the verge of being destroyed just like in the legends.”

His words searched for an opening through which to cut into the impregnable Fiamma.

“And if you have never prevented a threat that could end the world, you have never been blessed with a chance to draw out power great enough to save the world. It’s the same as how my Imagine Breaker doesn’t look like it has any power unless I’m surrounded by espers or magicians.”

In other words, the reason that Fiamma of the Right had put together all sorts of smaller plans to create the overblown plan he was carrying out, was actually quite simple.

“Someone who has never saved the world has no way of knowing if they have the power to save the world.”

“…”

Fiamma of the Right remained silent for a bit.

Finally, his shoulders started to shake.

The man who ruled over red, the right, fire, and Michael was laughing quietly.

“…So what?” were the words that leaked from his mouth.

Something like an unknown form of malice overflowed from the mouth of the man who had caused disturbances across the world and who completely grasped the flow of those disturbances in his hands.

“That does not apply only to me. If you live on this planet and have continued to survive without dying, then you have not experienced destruction on a legendary scale. Are you trying to say you have the right to blame me? Are you saying you have experienced the power needed to save the world?

“Of course I have,” Kamijou Touma replied instantly.

That response shattered Fiamma’s expectations.

“It wasn’t on the level of all humanity living on this planet and it may have looked insignificant when viewed from a satellite or something else looking down on the planet, but I have saved it. It may be insignificant or whatever, but I have seen the instant at which one person’s ‘world’ is saved.”

Yes.

He had been wrapped up in incidents time after time. He had desperately clenched his fist because he did not want to see the people he knew covered in blood before his eyes. He was constantly being taken to the hospital, his right arm had been severed, and his memoires cut out partway, so he could not even remember it all.

He had gotten almost nothing in return. He was aware that it was not enough to make it worth it. If he had been stronger, he may have been able to solve things in a smarter way. If he had been cleverer, he might have been able to obtain more.

But that was why he knew he had obtained something.

Kamijou Touma knew that the things he had desperately grabbed with his clumsy hands were not worthless.

If Fiamma had not been trapped within the giant concept of “the world” and he had reached his hand out to the people before him, he would not have had to be afraid of feeling a power great enough to save the world. Even without his overblown plan, without his large scale temple, without his special nature, and without his strange right arm, he would not have felt doubts about it.

But he had not done that.

That was why he could not see it at all.

“Someone who says he will save the world cannot protect the world.”

It was obvious.

If Kamijou had acted based on that idea, he would have lost everything.

Below the golden heavens, Kamijou Touma spoke to that isolated man who had never obtained anything and who had never even stretched out his hand.

“Our world is not so weak that it needs to be saved by a bastard like that.”

[edit] Between the lines 7

Mikoto stared straight ahead.

The night sky had started emitting a strange golden light, but she had no time to worry about that odd weather. If there was anyone who could think about that kind of thing when they were on the verge of a nuclear explosion occurring or not, that person deserved to be in the Guinness Book of Records.

“…”

The flames spewing from the bottom of the ballistic missile with the Nu-AD1967 had disappeared. The large missile could not stay vertical for long with the arm about to let go of it, so it slowly but surely tilted. After reaching a certain point, it fell over toward the ground like a tree felled by a lumberjack.

The missile could no longer be fired.

Mikoto sighed slightly and then looked around.

Black smoke was rising from the tanks and armored vehicles of the independent unit. They had been sliced cleanly apart by the friction of the iron sand that was vibrating at high speed and could stand up to the assault rifles and handguns the unit had been armed with. Given the destruction, it was odd that no one had died.

“…Well, I guess that’s that,” Mikoto said arbitrarily before looking for the Sister.

The Sister poked just her head out of the hatch of the tank sitting in the middle of the enemy lines.

“You managed to singlehandedly defeat a company of troops 200 strong. Seeing that, it seems to be giving Misaka a complex, says Misaka as she feels a bit downhearted.”

“What are you saying? Your strength is on a scale close to 10,000 when you’re all together. And you have your powers, your network, and you even have Academy City’s cutting edge tactics inputted into you. These guys are nothing compared to you.”

The Sister mumbled something about wanting that much individuality, but then her eyebrows twitched and she put her hand to her headset.

“What? Are you intercepting another Russian military transmission?”

“…They seem to be confused over being unable to contact the man who seems to be behind this, Nikolai Tolstoy, reports Misaka with a serious expression.”

“You always have the same expression. So this guy ended up destroying himself? Or maybe an Academy City unit did it.”

“The details are unknown, but the unit seems split on whether to continue the mission or not, adds Misaka.”

“There’s another unit? But if the boss character was taken out already…”

“It seems they have decided to continue, concludes Misaka.”

“Ah, dammit! Why are they so fired up over this!?” Sparks flew in all directions from Mikoto. “Okay! Where’s the next unit!? Don’t tell me they can fire Nu-AD1967s from multiple places at once!!”

“From the contents of the transmission, it seems they cannot do that, says Misaka denying that possibility. The remaining independent unit has only 10 commissioned officers that can fight directly. It seems that Nu-AD1967 collapsed there is the only one they are able to use, says Misaka while listening to the transmission.”

Even if they had multiple warheads or missiles, it seemed there were a few processes that had to be carried out before firing such as the arrangement of related vehicles and regulating the electrical foundation for controlling it. Mikoto had just previously defeated the people with the skills needed to do that. The commissioned officers remaining could not set up a missile or transport a warhead.

“But that missile fell over, so they can’t use it, right?”

“They have not realized that fact, so they are attempting to forcibly send out the signal to fire it remotely, says Misaka in shock.”

Mikoto blinked.

“That means…”

“Even if they send the signal out over the emergency remote, the missile will not fire, but the warhead may detonate here, says Misaka expressing her own prediction.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!!”

Mikoto frantically looked over at the collapsed missile.

“We’ll die! If that happens, we’ll definitely die!! You said they were sending out a remote signal, right!? So if I use my power to jam the signal…!!”

“It is an optical transmission that uses infrared, so your electromagnetic jamming will not work, warns Misaka.”

“Gwahh!! C’mon! What is it, a TV remote!?”

Mikoto doubted the radioactivity would leak out so easily, but she timidly headed around the nuclear missile examining it. The missile itself was over 20 meters long.

“Maybe the circuits for receiving the transmission shorted out from my lightning spear…”

“The main circuitry is protected within thick lead and reinforced glass, reports Misaka. And ICBMs are made so they will not have errors even while cutting through cumulonimbus clouds, so they are made to be resistant to high voltage electrical currents, says Misaka announcing the obvious. The missile likely stopped before because the system in the launch vehicle was fried.”

“If it uses infrared, then there must be a sensor to detect it. We should be able to block the signal by covering it in cloth!”

“Will we make it in time? wonders Misaka with a sigh. Do your best. Sigh. But when will I get to see him?”

“You sure are calm!!”

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