Eventually, he quietly got to his feet.
…To smash every last person who could possibly pose a threat to that little girl’s life.
Bam!!
A moment later, Accelerator’s slim body flew up, tearing through the steel ceiling and jumping onto the freight train roof.
After seeing the young man appear from the fissure, which now looked like torn vinyl, the assailants backed away a little. They had been atop the freight train, buffeted by incredible gusts of wind.
White powered suits.
Soldiers, all armed with the same equipment. About ten in all.
In contrast to their surprisingly slim upper bodies, their legs were extremely thick. Special models, probably, designed purely for assisting movement. They could obviously move swiftly, but they’d also be outfitted with all the necessary mechanisms to maintain proper balance and soften impacts to compensate for the increased speed.
There was a large variety of powered suits, ranging from those designed for construction work to disaster rescue models. The military ones used for the invasion of Avignon seemed to have been deployed to Russia, too, probably because they were in the middle of a newly hatched World War. However, the models facing Accelerator were clearly different: It was as if their designers had completely ignored development or maintenance costs in favor of simply aiming for the absolute best thing possible. The bigwigs who had dispatched this team must have really wanted this operation to succeed.
Though he was surrounded by heavy weaponry, Accelerator didn’t waver.
He looked around with shining red eyes, then spoke softly to himself.
“…You’re trash. And you’re really getting under my skin.”
A Russian soldier trembled with fear.
He had never gone through the harsh training to prepare him for a fight on the front lines. Logistics was his specialty—making sure the supplies necessary for war got where they needed to go. But despite that, he was still a soldier. His resolve wasn’t so fragile that he’d hesitate when a gun was pointed at him.
But the scene unfolding before his eyes wasn’t something so mundane.
Terrifying white machine soldiers had suddenly jumped onto the freight train.
And then—
An unknown monster with white hair and red eyes destroyed them all with one attack.
Roofs were broken. Walls were blown off. Intense winds were coming in through the gaps. Several machine soldiers were kicked outside. A container car, made of steel at least two inches thick, ripped apart like paper by mere human limbs. This was no regular feat. He knew about Japan’s Academy City scientific development of supernatural powers, but seeing it up close and personal was an entirely different story.
“Tsk. That wasn’t enough to kill you?” muttered the monster, peering outside. That was all he said after kicking people off a train running over five hundred kilometers per hour. This wasn’t an issue of identifying which was the monster. Neither was in any way normal.
The monster checked around.
A moment later, a wall separating two freight train cars tore open, and a giant machine soldier jumped through. It had appeared directly to the monster’s side—but the white creature wasn’t bothered. It waved a hand, and the mechanical soldier’s armor, which weighed who knew what, was blasted into bits and blown away.
Something the machine soldiers had been carrying was lying at the monster’s feet.
Probably loot that had been stolen earlier.
The object was a suitcase made of duralumin. The battered remains of handcuffs were hanging off the handle. It had originally been attached to the Russian soldier’s wrist, but a flick of one machine soldier’s finger had easily torn the chain off.
The monster headed for the suitcase, but the Russian soldier couldn’t stop it.
If the monster turned its attention toward him, he was sure he’d die. It was like he’d been thrown into a small cage with a predator.
The suitcase was locked, but the monster opened it as easily as one might open a wallet. Or rather, it was supposed to have had a lock on it—but the monster had used brute force to crush the locking mechanism itself.
“…What’s this?” muttered the creature.
The Russian soldier hadn’t been told what was inside. And what came out of it were dozens of parchment pages. On them were inscriptions written in old ink, bringing to mind eerie curses or magic circles.
It was a meaningless sham. Some people might have held vague anticipations or anxiety toward magic charms. But would they think that following the instructions would actually cause a crazy demon to emerge in real life? For example, if a murder occurred and an eyewitness seriously claimed that a demon did it, what would everyone else think?
However…
The military’s higher-ups probably hadn’t ordered him to carry a handcuffed suitcase stuffed with something useless in it. And machine soldiers that looked like they were from Academy City had come for it…
What is going on here? thought the Russian soldier.
Had Academy City fallen for a diversionary tactic concocted by Russian officers?
Or…
Was the parchment in that suitcase actually so valuable that an Academy City special forces team would do everything in their power to steal it?
“…That’s interesting,” muttered the monster to itself.
An insane smile rose to the creature’s lips—and that, above all else, seemed to be a sign for the Russian soldier that it wasn’t just any ordinary parchment.
“This operation was as important as recovering me, Academy City’s strongest Level Five…Can’t exactly see the effects yet, but this might be connected to those other laws that shithead was talking about.”
3
And Touma Kamijou was in Russia as well.
It was late October, but everything around him was already covered in white snow. A few centimeters of accumulation wasn’t enough to completely stop public transportation, but it was rough on his basketball shoes and feet. There were spots where the stuff had melted into cold water that soaked through his shoes, and a stinging chill tormented his fingers.
He was wearing his school uniform. Normally, that would have been inconvenient, but now, he was actually impressed at the wide scope of environments that it could handle…Of course, maybe that was because it used Academy City–made textile technology. He certainly would have been happier to have a coat, but he couldn’t ask for luxuries in a situation like this.
War…
It was a word that was hard to process if someone suddenly brought it up. According to Queen Elizard of England, the way this happened was “unnatural,” even after taking into account current international politics. If it was likely that the Roman Orthodox Church and Russian Catholic Church were cooperating behind the scenes, then did that mean Fiamma of the Right was the true mastermind pulling all the strings?
Was that really all there was to it?
The officially stated reason was simple, and it would be easy to cling to that, accepting it at face value. But didn’t Academy City seem way too eager to answer with military force? They’d dispatched huge amounts of troops and unmanned weapons into Russia as soon as the war started. Almost like they’d been preparing for this for years…
What was actually happening backstage?
Kamijou was close to the center of this war, but he was just a high school student. He couldn’t figure out anything about what was going on beyond the surface.
But.
If stopping Fiamma would stave off the war for now, he could see what he needed to do. Besides, stopping that man’s plans was linked to an extremely personal reason Kamijou had for fighting.
A certain girl named Index.
She had the special trait of having completely memorized 103,000 grimoires, but other than that, she was a totally normal girl. And someone was after her vast stores of knowledge.
Fiamma of the Right.
He had stolen the Soul Arm ne
eded to freely extract the knowledge from Index at a distance. When he activated it, Index’s mind and body had suffered immense strain, and she fell into unconsciousness.
In order to save her, Kamijou needed to defeat Fiamma as fast as he could and destroy the remote-control Soul Arm.
That was why he’d come all the way to Russia, where Fiamma of the Right was apparently hiding out, but…
“…Why are you here again, Lesser?” Kamijou asked heavily.
Some might have understandably stared blankly when hearing the name Lesser. She was a member of a British sorcerer’s society reserve force called New Light. When the second princess, Carissa, had used the Curtana Original to initiate a coup d’état, they were the ones who had secretly dug up the Curtana and transported it to her.
Her skin was white, and her stature short. She was probably somewhere in her teens. Her long black hair was tied into braids at the tips. Her outfit consisted of a jacket on top of a lacrosse uniform, but the thing that stood out most was probably the “tail” coming out from her rear. It was like a flat chain running through a clear tube. After adding in the arrowhead-like tip at the end, she had a somewhat mischievous air about her.
When they’d met before, Kamijou was pretty sure it had been as enemies.
Those ill feelings had faded once the coup d’état ended, but that didn’t make her unexpected presence in Russia any more sensible.
Lesser, while swinging the tail she was so proud of left and right, replied to her companion’s reasonable question.
“Hmm? Well, it’s not because the British royal family ordered me to, or because I have a grudge against Fiamma of the Right, or because I want to be part of the Kamijou faction, or anything like that.”
Her tone was incredibly offhand.
“But if you dying here would be against the United Kingdom’s interests as a whole, then we figured we might as well be supporting you…I wonder if it’s okay to say we? Bayloupe might grab my butt again…”
In the middle of her response, she fell into talking-to-herself mode…He’d gotten a sense of it when they first met, but Kamijou deduced she had some extremely self-centered thought processes.
Without a care for whatever Kamijou might think of her, a mean smile made its way onto her youthful face. “Well, you can just think of it as the two of us using each other. Considering you can use a pro sorceress for combat, it’s not a bad deal for you, is it?”
“…I forget, but are you even that strong? I seem to remember you fleeing all over London that night with a weird bag in your hand.”
“Shall I send you flying to prove it? Necessarius can’t give you any backup, right? Maybe you should value me a little bit more. Oh, yes—when it comes to purely using the Jarngreipr, I’m better than Bayloupe. As long as there’s no Gjallarhorn involved, I’ll never lose,” said Lesser, adding that she wouldn’t be able to whine if it was a real fight. “Also!! These Steel Gloves have been powered up!! Ta-daa—the Lesser Special Custom! Red laser things shoot out from the tips, see, and these bladed fingers can grab anything they’re not touching, no matter how far away it is, and swing it around!!”
“…I didn’t ask for any of that…”
“You really don’t think I’ll be of any use in a fight, do you? Maybe it’s because the coup d’état came off as so flashy in comparison…,” muttered Lesser, downcast, before apparently deciding to appeal in a different area. “Besides, it would be easier for you in a lot of ways to have someone who can speak Russian translate for you, right?”
“Wait, before all that, I snuck into Russia in secret. How did you get that information…?”
Right after the coup d’état had ended, he’d told Elizard and Stiyl he’d be going to Russia, but he never gave them a concrete method or schedule for it. How did Lesser know where he’d be despite that?
Actually, as someone who had marched into Russia alone without telling anyone, suddenly meeting up with a friend was pretty pathetic. Maybe this wasn’t the time to be saying such things, but he still couldn’t help feeling that way.
Lesser seemed to pick up on Kamijou’s troubled face. “Ha-ha. Were you feeling guilty about Index, asleep in the cathedral in London? You said you’d do your best to save her and everything, and the very first thing you do is meet up with another woman.”
“Guh…?!”
“And now I have a piece of welcome information for you. I, Lesser, do indeed have a tail coming out of my skirt—but to tell the truth, I’m not wearing leggings under there. I’m only wearing panties.”
“What do you expect me to do with useless information like that?!”
“Go behind me!! And flip it!! Forget about all your old flames!!”
“Everything you’re saying warrants me punching you in the nose, you know!!” shouted Kamijou, blue veins popping on his temples.
But Lesser, without responding or giving up, cheerfully swung her tail around and asked, “Besides, how are you going to look for Fiamma of the Right in this big country?”
She made it sound like she suspected he didn’t have any clue what to do.
“Russia is really big, you know. It basically connects the Eurasian continent from west to east in a straight line, and not many countries have more than nine time zones. This place seems far too large to randomly bump into a particular person.”
“Or so you’d think.”
“?” Lesser gave the unexpected answer a blank look.
In response, Kamijou said, “…How many sorcerers do you think I’ve fought until now? At this point, I’m slowly getting used to how they do things.”
4
The Strait of Dover.
A thirty-kilometer-wide waterway between the United Kingdom and France.
A sea full of bloody history, and a place that became a crucial strategic point whenever the two countries’ relations worsened, ever since long ago. And that sea was once again about to guzzle the blood of many lives.
“Puritans and Knights’ combined-force deployment complete.”
Kaori Kanzaki nodded quietly in response to the voice.
At the moment, they weren’t standing on land. They were on a boat.
Giant hundred-meter sailboats made of wood dotted the sea. All were magically reinforced ships, tougher than normal warships and with greater maneuverability to boot.
One could call it a strange sight to behold. Not about the sight of so many sailboats, but that a war between sorcerers had escalated into something so massive.
“Times really have changed, haven’t they?” Agnes Sanctis asked from where she stood next to Kanzaki.
The petite young woman held her palm above her brow as if in a clumsy salute as she looked out over the water. “I hear they’re calling the coup d’état in Britain the British Halloween. And they’re treating it like one of the world’s seven great mysteries, like Nessie and the Nazca Lines. People sure are tough, eh? It might not be something they can understand logically, but they’ll accept it eventually, even if time is the only thing pushing them.”
“Though it doesn’t appear that any have realized it was actually due to something called sorcery.” Kanzaki slowly sighed. “Besides, the fact that Japan’s Academy City is scientifically developing strange supernatural powers is somewhat known. The principles are completely different, but it means people have just a little bit of tolerance. They’ll figure that something like it exists somewhere out there, so maybe it was actually close at hand.”
Though as she said that, she could feel something tugging at her, deep in her throat. To stabilize the faction that they called the sorcery side, general awareness of the science side had been a big help. If not, there might have been a much more severe panic. Something had burrowed its way inside without anyone knowing, and it had Kanzaki a little on guard.
“In any case,” she said, trying to change the topic, “if they get through us here, it’s a straight line to London. I’d like to avoid skirmishes as much as possible, but if the French faction a
ttacks, we must hold the line at all costs.”
“But we know they’re basically one hundred percent coming, right?” replied the small nun in command of her own unit, sniffing. “The UK and France were in an extremely dangerous and tense situation even before the coup broke out…And though I am absolutely loath to admit it, it’s all thanks to the elites in the Roman Orthodox Church. It was already a hotbed, and then World War III broke out. Plus we’re getting glimpses of Roman Orthodox and Russian Catholic shadows behind it. France not attacking the UK is an impossibility, eh? Can’t say whether it’ll be Orthodox vanguards or if France will try to put an end to the historical and magical conflicts between it and Britain, though.”
It happened just as Agnes was speaking: She received a transmission from Agatha, a nun working under her.
“Intervention confirmed from the French side!! They’re on their way— Please take caution!!”
A moment later:
All at once, the waters of Dover, locked perpetually in gentle waves, hardened everywhere past the French national border. It was like ice was spreading in the blink of an eye, cracking as it froze over the seawater.
“Salt?!”
“Rotten bastards. It looks like their plan is to give themselves suitable footing while robbing our ships of their mobility!”
Shadows ran like arrows.
Not just one or two, either.
More than a hundred—perhaps a thousand—sorcerers were running across the hardened white waters in a straight line from the French border toward Kanzaki and the others. At this rate, it would be a slaughter. Like orcas forced up onto land and made into fodder for a murder of crows, they would be crushed.
If their ships were rendered useless, over half the combat force Kanzaki and the others had assembled would essentially be eliminated.
But they couldn’t roll over without a fight.
The Born Again Amakusa-Style Crossist Church’s sorcerers, Kanzaki first and foremost, excelled in close-quarters combat. They jumped down from their ships, moving to intercept the French sorcerers.
A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 20 Page 3