Satsuki quickly picked up on what the doctor was putting down and activated her magic.
She’s right! If the mastermind and the heroines’ locations are blind spots in her magic, then all we have to do now is find those blind spots!
Impressed with the plan, I waited for Satsuki to finish her search.
“...”
Since she was searching for blind spots rather than directly searching, it took much longer than usual.
“I found it... There’s a spot here where my omniscience is blacked out like an eclipse. That must be where they are. I can show you the way.”
“All right. Let’s follow Satsuki’s directions moving forward, L.”
“Yeah, yeah...”
“Please, L.”
“I said okay, Satsuki! Jeez...”
L turned away in a huff and took the lead again, this time following Satsuki’s directions. We made our way forward, unlocking doors, disabling security systems, and running through corridors while avoiding the extremists. We took several elevators, heading further and further down each time. The lower we went, the less people there were. And by now, we’d reached a rather deserted area. We took one last elevator and reached the bottom floor of the base. Or so it seemed...
“Huh? This is the lowest floor?” Satsuki asked.
“That’s right,” L replied with a nod.
However...
“That’s strange.”
“What is?”
“The area I can’t see with my magic is further below here.”
“Huh?”
“What are you saying?”
We all reflexively looked down. Naturally, there was nothing to see but the floor.
“Are there any other elevators that go down?” I asked.
“Nope. Not as far as I know, at least,” L replied.
The curious situation left us all scratching our heads.
“What about a secret staircase or anything else that might lead downward?”
“If there were, wouldn’t it be the elevator we just took? Maybe there’s a special switch or something to make it go down another floor...”
“Why don’t I break it and find out?”
“Please don’t, Fam.”
“Hold on. I’ll try searching again.”
“Thank you, Satsuki.”
Satsuki used her Omniscient Magic once more. This time her search was simple and precise. But...
“There’s nothing.”
“Huh?”
“There’s no physical way of getting further down from here.”
“What the heck?”
“Well... Perhaps we need some way to teleport there instead.”
“Oh, cool. We have L’s particle relocator for that.”
“Let me remind you that it wasn’t exactly designed for human use...”
“Is now really the time to be worried about that, though?”
“Rekka, why don’t I just open a hole in the floor?”
“Please don’t, Lea.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because if you do something that flashy, then the extremists will definitely know we’re here!”
And so on, and so forth... After getting this far, we’d hit quite a stumper. Fortunately, however, one person in particular seemed to have a solution.
“Sir Rekka, Satsuki.”
“Harissa?”
“Could you leave this to me?”
“Sure... Do you have something in mind?”
When I asked that, Harissa turned to Satsuki.
“Satsuki, the room that may contain the mastermind... Can you tell me precisely how far below us and how wide it is?”
“Certainly. I can search that up in a flash.”
“If you can, I can use that information to calculate coordinates for a teleportation spell.”
I was honestly a little surprised to hear Harissa sound so confident.
“You can teleport without Red Thread now?”
“It’s a newly developed technique. If I focus the spell on myself, I can teleport to a specific location without the need for any kind of mark or connecting object.”
“You can do that with just the magic of a single person?! And without the use of a warp machine?!” the doctor asked with wide eyes.
“Way back in the beginning, Iris’s warp watch once saved us all. That’s what I used as inspiration for this spell,” Harissa replied with a nod. “Unlike with warp drives, there’s no time-space distortion upon warp-out with magic, so there’s no fear of being detected when we enter the room.”
“But... are you sure about this? Isn’t leaking a powerful spell like that to outsiders a little compromising for a royal sorcerer? If you’re not careful...” the doctor fretted.
And hearing her say that made me worry a little too. But Harissa just laughed.
“It’s fine,” she said, glancing up at me. “Putting our heads together and being resourceful like this reminds me of the old days. The Sir Rekka I knew back then accomplished great things by using everyone’s powers together.”
Harissa was the first heroine that both me and future Rekka had saved. Of all the stories we had in common, hers differed the least. I could tell by the way she’d brought up Iris’s warp watch just now. Future Harissa was probably the heroine closest to the version of herself that I knew. That was why... That was why she knew firsthand how hard I’d had to work to wring every last drop of wit I had to resolve her story. It was the same way I’d worked to solve all the stories back then—by combining everyone’s powers.
“My magic... can no longer save everyone. That’s why, at the very least, I want to save the past heroines and help put an end to this long war. That is my wish.”
“...”
Her magic can no longer save everyone? I see... The horrors of war had spread too far. It was all Harissa could do to protect her own kingdom at this point. I had to think long and hard about that for a moment. The emotion in Harissa’s voice when she said those words was gut-wrenching.
Compared to my future self, I was definitely much less capable. The heroines here probably saw me as a child with no power at all, and they were right about that. But even then, even so... I’ll be damned if my name isn’t Rekka Namidare!
“Leave it to me!” I shouted, thumping my chest.
“Shh, Rekka! Not so loud!”
“Oops!”
I was proud and eager to accept Harissa’s wish, but the doctor’s admonishment quickly snapped me back to my senses. I hurriedly clapped a hand over my mouth. And it was just about then that Satsuki joined the conversation again.
“All right, I’m done searching.”
She gave Harissa the exact dimensions of the room below. She’d even determined the thickness of the floor separating us from it.
“Okay, I’m all set. Is everybody ready?”
Harissa looked to us all in turn, each of us nodding back. She then readied herself and cast her spell.
“Tri Teleatticate!”
A burst of magical light enveloped us all, and a short moment later, our vision blurred. I got that strange floating feeling I always did when leaping through time and space, but it only lasted for a second. Before I knew it, we were in another room.
While we were only further underground, this new room was expansive and well-lit compared to the dim basement we’d been in just moments ago. For its size, however, the room was practically empty. There was only a small table and a chair with two people, one seated and one standing.
One of them’s... a girl?!
The two people at the table were talking, and I was surprised to see one of them was a rather young girl. She looked about my age or maybe a little older. She had black hair, and was wearing a jacket and jeans with an oversized buckle. Even more unexpected was the fact that, at a glance, she looked like a human from Earth. Japanese, even... But that wasn’t it. There was something about her that I just couldn’t put my finger on. I was getting this weird sense of déjà vu, like I knew her from somewhere.
“Rekka?”
“Er... Sorry.”
I’d gotten lost in my own head, but the doctor’s voice brought me back to reality. The girl at the table was talking to a guy who appeared to be a humanoid alien.
“Lady Yuuhi! We’ve been completely surrounded by a Greater Galactic Federation fleet! Please give us your orders!”
“What are their demands? And how did they find our base in the first place?”
“I don’t know, but they’re demanding that we hand over Rekka Namidare... It makes no sense at all!”
We stayed quiet and eavesdropped on their conversation from across the room.
“Is that guy one of the higher-ups you were talking about, L?”
“Probably. I don’t know each and every one of them personally.”
“Seems like he’s reporting to the big boss right now...”
Did that mean this Yuuhi girl was the mastermind? The same one who’d been orchestrating the mass abduction of past heroines and the attack on my hometown?
“Satsuki, is she a heroine here in the future?”
“Not that I’m aware of... Do you know her, Harissa?”
“I can’t say that I do. Is anyone else familiar with her?”
“I’m not.”
“Me neither.”
Not Harissa, not Satsuki, not Lea, not Fam, not L, and not even the doctor... No one knew anything about Yuuhi, but the War of All had started as a quarrel between the heroines of the future. Did that mean Yuuhi was one of them?
“But if she’s a future heroine, why is she trying to kill Rekka?”
“You’re right... That would be fundamentally contradictory.”
“Maybe she just got tired of fighting?”
“Or maybe she’s one of those ‘if I can’t have him, nobody can’ types?”
“A real psycho, huh? We can’t discount the possibility.”
The conversation began progressing without me in a rather frightening direction. A-Anyway...