The duel’s outcome was clear as day.
Two figures collided, and one fell down the mountain’s sloped surface.
✦ ✦ ✦
Silence once again returned to the white Russian landscape.
The victor cast a single glance down the slope before saying, while melting his body into the air, “…The fact that you sought to explain the right hand and the Imagine Breaker and the kamijou—god’s purification—with your petty Crossist ideas—that was your failure.”
✦ ✦ ✦
And then, in faraway London, someone was smiling.
“We detected something!! Only for about seven hundred seconds, but this wavelength is unmistakable. It belongs to the sorcerer Aleister Crowley!!”
St. George’s Cathedral.
As she received the report from an English Puritan Sister, the Archbishop, Laura Stuart, gave a lip-twisting smile.
A man who should have been dead.
A sorcerer who was supposed to have been buried by English Puritan assassins.
There had been an official report that he’d died over sixty years ago, but experts on Crowley continued to exist so that they could deal with the sorcerer’s society that named itself his successor—and the theories that he himself might still be alive. And now, an individually set-up Soul Arm for searching had just given them an unexpected result.
Of course.
For Laura Stuart, that “unexpected result” was no more than how people thought the universe was born—theories existed, but nobody had ever found a way to prove it.
The search spell, which used farsightedness, was nearly useless, only showing a blurred outline of the figure that appeared. The target seemed to be conversing with someone, but they couldn’t make out the details, either.
Nevertheless, that paltry amount of information made Laura confident.
His features had changed quite a bit.
And he may have well have been using some sort of perception-blocking method all this time.
However.
…I knew it. He is alive.
Laura had never believed that his existence had truly disappeared.
Certainly, after World War III, the ones who would gain the most would be the victors: Academy City. After this, the scales of the sorcery-science power balance would unavoidably tip far toward science. The Roman and Russian Churches’ power would weaken, and though the English Church had won the war, they were no more than one of the three largest denominations of Crossism. Academy City, however, was the single leader of the science side. It was a simple matter of power distribution. The victors’ apportionment of world control would, no matter how one looked at it, be in favor of Academy City.
But it wouldn’t end in a place like this.
If Academy City’s general board chairperson was who Laura estimated he was, it then gave her the right to kill Crowley. And traditionally, targets of witch-hunting would forfeit their assets to the Church.
In other words.
There was still a chance to steal everything from the greatest winners of the war: Academy City and the science side.
Obviously, even if her guess was right, he wouldn’t roll over for her. She couldn’t deny the chance a fourth war would happen, either. But those things didn’t matter. As long as there was a chance, as long as there was hope for putting the whole world at their fingertips, none of that mattered a bit.
The Royals had been concerned that it didn’t matter whether Academy City or the Roman Church won World War III—the United Kingdom would be forced to walk a path of decline. Enough so that the second princess, for example, had caused a coup.
Laura Stuart’s answer to that was this:
They could just pluck from the victors.
Pluck away everything they had.
After all, it was the English Church’s special right as an anti-sorcerer organization to put the sorcerer Aleister Crowley to death and keep his dangerous fortunes for themselves.
Had the Roman Church won, things would have moved toward a decisive expansion of the Crossist world as well as the magic side’s domination of the world, so for her, despite being an English Puritan—a faction of Crossism—she’d no longer be able to come up with a pretext. Or at least, she wouldn’t be able to use an inquisition to snatch everything away.
That was why she needed Academy City.
And the situation had taken a delightful turn for the better.
“…Now then, Chairperson Aleister—it is the hour when things truly grow interesting.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Heh-heh, came a soft chuckle.
Atop an Academy City building, the being called Aiwass was looking at its hands and laughing, distinctly and amusedly.
When Accelerator had interfered with Last Order’s mind, the power holding Aiwass’s existence here had been greatly reduced. Soon, Aiwass would withdraw for a time from the “surface.” Nevertheless, Aiwass was cheerful.
“…You seem to be enjoying yourself.”
It heard a voice. A girl’s.
Hyouka Kazakiri.
The light in her eyes, behind her glasses, was a sharp one, unusual for the constantly afraid girl.
“I am delighted,” said Aiwass, moving its hands out slightly. “More precisely, I am happy this delightful time seems like it will continue. With that method, it would have ended in the blink of an eye. As though not very many dominoes were lined up before someone flicked the first. In order to enjoy this situation, I should retreat into the depths for a time. Livestock is best eaten once it’s fattened.”
“All this for that?”
“Why, yes. Whether or not I had appeared, the command tower would not have lasted long. It didn’t have the strength to line up the dominoes. Thus, to grant the necessary strength, I provided a hint…And he did well. This method was not in my elimination, but in the shift to a different domain. Still, it was a very good job on his part to do this much.”
Whether it saw value and interest or not.
That was the only condition this being, who could instantly destroy this star if it was unnecessary, ever acted on.
“I think you should learn more about what humans are.”
“?”
“It’s strange that you never knew from the start. After all, it’s their power that supports our bodies. They have so much possibility sleeping in them that they can give us form. Needless to say, humans are incredibly strong creatures…If you make light of them, you’ll find your heart pierced before you know it.”
“What are you saying?” answered Aiwass, looking back at Kazakiri but not hiding its excitement. “If a frail human could truly do something like that…That would be so incredibly fascinating, don’t you think?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Mikoto Misaka arrived on the shore.
But it was a very different shore than Japan’s bathing beaches. It was technically a small fishing port, but she didn’t know if it was running at the moment. After all, the sea had been completely covered in white ice before. The water was flowing.
The VTOL hadn’t had enough fuel, so she’d been forced to land on the surface.
She’d boarded a high-speed freight train, but even then, she’d been definitively late.
She’d gone in the direction of the floating fortress, and kept going, and kept going, and kept going, but what she’d run into was this fishing port.
Possibly because of the evacuation warning from when the fortress was falling, nobody was around. The roads nearby were awfully frozen; maybe after the tsunami had hit, the chill had frozen the water.
She hadn’t found a trace of anything that might provide a clue about the boy.
Looking around at a loss, Mikoto eventually picked up a large stick. From a concrete embankment, she reached out with the stick and stirred around the seawater, its surface covered in ice like a soda at a café.
The tip of the stick caught onto some kind of small plastic clump.
The Sister next to her asked her what it was.
Mikoto couldn’t answer.
Exactly because she’d seen it before.
✦ ✦ ✦
Its string torn apart by some strong force, it was a Croaker cell phone strap.
Something they’d gotten together on August 30.