By the time Mayumi and her sisters arrived at the scene, the battle had come to a temporary halt, and four magicians lay unconscious on the ground. The twins immediately rushed to the magicians’ side, checking for a pulse and monitoring their breathing.
“They’re both alive over here!” Kasumi shouted.
“Here, too,” Izumi chimed in. “And no visible injuries.”
Mayumi walked over to speak with two panting magicians who had managed to stay on their feet.
“Where is Minoru?” she asked, lifting her goggles to reveal her face.
“He disappeared down one of the alleys on the right,” one of them replied. “We already asked our allies in that area to intercept him, if they can.”
There were no doors leading into the hospital on the right-hand side. Mayumi wondered if this meant Minoru planned to break through a window or sneak in from the rooftop. Either way, she was certain he hadn’t fled the scene.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll go after him. The two of you can return to your standby positions.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the other magician responded.
The two magicians Mayumi had been talking to were from the Juumonji family. All four of the unconscious ones were on the Saegusa family team.
The Juumonji magicians bowed before heading back to the hospital’s rear entrance. Their primary mission was to prevent any intrusions into the building. They had rushed to this location to assist the Saegusa magicians but had clearly strayed too far from their posts.
“Izumi, Kasumi. I’d like you to take care of the unconscious magicians,” Mayumi ordered.
“You’re going off on your own?!” Kasumi exclaimed.
“It’s too dangerous!” Izumi chimed in to try to stop their elder sister.
Mayumi solemnly shook her head. “We can’t just abandon our injured allies. While they might not be hurt physically, they are still unconscious. Besides, for all we know, Minoru might come back this way.”
The twins knew Mayumi had a point. Minoru could have feigned going to the right to lower security on the left and sneak in when everyone’s guard was down.
“Fine…” Kasumi grumbled reluctantly.
“Be careful,” Izumi warned.
“You too,” Mayumi said.
She slid her goggles back over her eyes and headed to the right side of the hospital.
✦ ✦ ✦
Suddenly, powerful magic surged through the air. Mayumi quickly traced it to the source, sprinting down an alley along the hospital’s edge and turning onto a side street farther out.
A flash of lightning split the sky.
About five meters above the ground, an electric bolt shot out from the impenetrable darkness against a thickly clouded night sky. Its target was two male magicians, who had been introduced to Mayumi before the operation as members of the Yotsuba family forces.
One of them was on the ground, blood seeping through his fingers as he applied pressure to a gaping wound on his leg. The other was still on his feet, positioning himself in front of his injured comrade to cast a magic barrier that absorbed the brunt of the lightning.
With typical emission-type magic, an attack would end the moment a shield stopped it. Modern magic simply sets an attack’s starting point away from the target to prevent enemy interference from disrupting a spell’s activation.
However, this lightning spell didn’t contain an ordinary flow of electrons. The bolt, running diagonally for several meters, left a glowing trail through the air, resembling a serpent of light. Instead of dissipating upon impact with a magic barrier, it began to slither along its surface and wrap itself around the side.
Giving form to an event was a technique that involved using additional resources to give a formless phenomenon a symbolic shape. This enhanced the controllability of the magically induced phenomenon. It was an ancient magic technique that was foreign to modern magic. In this case, the caster seemed to be using the technique to sustain and manipulate a normally fleeting bolt of lightning, allowing him to control it for a longer period of time.
It was clearly a sophisticated technique. At first, Mayumi thought it would be more efficient to repeatedly generate lightning strikes rather than develop a single bolt. But as she watched the serpentlike lightning move across the surface of the shield, she quickly realized she had underestimated its purpose.
The Juumonji magician had cast a dome-shaped barrier, designed to defend from all sides. Even if the lightning serpent tried to circle around the shield, it couldn’t slip past it. However, the reason for the seemingly futile action of slithering across the shield became clear when it completed a full loop. By biting its own tail, the serpentlike lightning bolt formed a ring that trapped the magician inside his own shield.
It was at this moment that Mayumi finally understood: This wasn’t just an attack—it was a restraining spell, designed to immobilize its target.
The lightning bolt could only electrify. It alone couldn’t exert pressure on the shield or constrict the magician inside. However, the moment the shield was dispelled, its caster could instantly be struck by lightning.
Although the lightning serpent appeared to be wrapped around the shield, it was actually anchored at specific points. Trying to move while maintaining the shield would result in a power struggle between the shield and the magic holding the lightning serpent in place.
Lightning struck from the sky again, not just once but in a successive triple strike. The resulting electricity transformed into more lightning serpents that encircled the two Juumonji magicians, shield and all.
The dome-shaped magic barrier was now bound by three concentric rings. The magicians may have avoided the initial strike, but the second wave of lightning intersected at six points, surrounding the shield in a tight, three-layered ring.
Mayumi fired a psion bullet at the lightning bolt’s point of origin. While her psion bullets lacked the destructive power of Tatsuya’s dismantling techniques, her accuracy was unparalleled. She was not renowned as one of the world’s top remote precision magic shooters for nothing.
Mayumi’s psion bullet struck a magic cannon suspended in midair. This cannon was a psion information entity used for the continuous remote activation of magic. The psion bullet destroyed the cannon’s information structure and effectively dismantled it.
Not only was Mayumi proficient in the four main systems of modern magic and the typeless magic of firing psion bullets, but she also possessed an innate ability related to perceptual magic. This ability was known as Multiscope, a type of remote viewing magic. While it was possible to achieve similar effects through regular magic, Mayumi’s ability revealed itself as what was formally known as psychic power.
Magic and psychic powers were essentially driven by the same force, but it was usually impossible for a single person to possess both simultaneously. Psychic powers could be used to alter phenomena merely by thought, but they were limited to specific patterns of alteration. Modern magic, on the other hand, adjusted the mental functions used in psychic powers to affect a wide variety of phenomena. Then, to use magic smoothly, various supplementary tools beyond mere thought came into play.
In terms of only handling specific patterns, Tatsuya’s Dismantle and Regenerate were closer to psychic powers. The biggest hint was his limited ability to adapt to other patterns of phenomenon alteration. His case demonstrated that specialized psychic power focused on certain types of phenomenon alteration and a magic system capable of handling diverse phenomena could not coexist.
And yet Mayumi managed to integrate a diverse range of magic with her unique perceptual abilities. In this respect, she was a conventional magician, distinct from Tatsuya in her own way.
At this moment, Mayumi had her Multiscope ability operating at full capacity. It flooded her with visual information from various angles, placing a significant burden on her mind. Since Multiscope could blur her consciousness even after a few minutes, she rarely used it to its full extent like this.
Aware of the risks she was putting herself through, Mayumi scoured the area for Minoru. She had a good feeling he was hiding nearby. Physical distance didn’t often matter when it came to magic, but magicians didn’t typically cast a high-level spell, like the lightning serpent, from an out-of-sight location.
Whether it was her relentless determination or her strong mental focus that paid off, Mayumi’s heightened Multiscope vision caught sight of a boy’s back. She could only see a silhouette and not a face, but the figure gave off an otherworldly, beautiful, and enigmatic presence. Mayumi adjusted her viewpoint to confirm it was who she thought it was.
Found you! she exclaimed internally.
The moment Mayumi “saw” Minoru’s face, whether by coincidence or because he sensed her gaze, he turned away. But she needed only an instant to confirm her target.
Mayumi swiftly moved her fingers across the CAD on her wrist to cast her signature spell, Magic Bullet Shooter. Three cannons appeared in midair to fire a series of dry ice bullets.
Via her remote viewing, Mayumi confirmed that Magic Bullet Shooter was locked on to Minoru. The silhouette of the boy she was watching vanished from the ground. But Mayumi’s Multiscope did not lose sight of his elegant figure.
All of a sudden, Minoru was in the air. Mayumi created new cannons to unleash another barrage of dry ice bullets, but the shadow darting through the sky evaded most of the shots.
With an intricate flair, Minoru landed on the hospital rooftop. Mayumi concentrated the remaining power of her Multiscope on maintaining aerial visibility while preparing a capturing spell. Leaving her allies ensnared by the lightning serpent behind, she leaped up to the rooftop of the hospital.