The elder Saegusa sister had followed Minoru onto the rooftop and came to an abrupt stop. On the opposite edge of the roof, Minoru had also frozen in place. The thick clouds above obscured the moon and stars, leaving the sky pitch-black. Even from this height, the city lights below reflected faintly off the clouds, casting a dim glow over the area. This light just barely illuminated Minoru’s silhouette against the evening sky.
Minoru had his back turned to Mayumi. Even when she prepared her psions to attack, he did not turn around.
“Stop this, Minoru!” Mayumi shouted. “Nothing bad will happen as long as you stop fighting right now! I want to hear your side of the story!”
Minoru seemed not to hear, but he also didn’t seem to be preparing an attack. Mayumi hesitated. It felt wrong to attack someone who wasn’t putting up a fight.
At the same time, she couldn’t just let him go. Minoru had become a parasite. Although she hadn’t confirmed it directly, she doubted Tatsuya would blatantly lie about something like that. He wasn’t the type. Besides, it was too risky to leave parasites to their own devices.
“Drop your CAD to the ground!” Mayumi shouted.
This drew a reaction from Minoru for the first time, turning only his face toward Mayumi. His profile was both malevolently eerie and unnaturally beautiful. An almost inhuman, otherworldly smile played on his lips.
Mayumi had never doubted that Minoru had become a parasite. But at that moment, she truly came to accept—in the most profound sense—that he had transformed into something no longer human.
She quickly prepped the magic sequence for her signature spell: Magic Bullet Shooter. There was no longer any hesitation in her mind.
Twelve gun turrets fired a series of dry ice bullets around Minoru. The arctic projectiles pierced his shoulder, chest, abdomen, waist, and thighs. Or at least they seemed to. In actuality, the bullets passed right through him.
He cast an illusion with Parade! Mayumi realized.
The Kudou family spell, Parade, created illusions in the information dimension to confuse a target’s aim. When Mayumi was assigned to capture Minoru, her father, Kouichi, informed her about this spell.
As her father had said, the illusion was indistinguishable from the real thing. When Mayumi cast Magic Bullet Shooter, she could simultaneously see Minoru from six different angles. Yet none of the visual information from any angle gave her any sense of unease.
If I can’t find his real body, Mayumi thought, there’s only one thing to do!
Remote precision shooting was her specialty. If she didn’t know the exact location of her target, her skill was rendered useless. However, she was not only renowned as one of the world’s top remote precision shooters. She also held the title of “Miss Universal” for being the eldest daughter and arguably the strongest magician in the Saegusa family. In other words, Mayumi’s arsenal extended beyond just precision attacks.
Parade sets up illusions near its caster to deflect enemy attacks, she thought, reviewing what she had been taught. In that case, Minoru must be somewhere on this rooftop!
Mayumi began to construct a new magic sequence. She prepared to cast Dry Blizzard, a spell that rained down a flurry of dry ice bullets on the caster’s opponent. A mass of carbon dioxide formed several meters above the rooftop, and –80 degrees Celsius ice shards torrented down.
Mayumi remained calm. The Dry Blizzard barrage was merely the appetizer to her main strategy. She began to form a cage of gas. The only thing that could impede entry or exit was the gas itself.
Inside the cage, the dry ice sublimated all at once. An arctic mass of air, extremely high in carbon dioxide, covered half the rooftop. Mayumi gradually expelled gases other than carbon dioxide while shrinking the cage, and she simultaneously honed her senses to detect anything within.
If Minoru was inside her cage, he should be using some form of magic defense. Mayumi reasoned that while he might be able to conceal his exact location, it was impossible for him to hide his magic.
However, contrary to expectations, there was no sign of new magic on the rooftop. Instead, a powerful magic presence emerged from the ground, near the hospital’s rear entrance. It was unmistakably the psion waves of Kasumi and Izumi’s Multiplicative Cast.
I’ve been tricked!
Mayumi panicked as she suddenly realized what was happening. Minoru’s objective to infiltrate the hospital from the back entrance had never changed. His illusions had been merely decoys to keep her away.
The magic illusion incorporated perfect visual projections, remote magic cannons, and a psion barrier that could be penetrated only by the intense psion waves of Multiplicative Cast. Mayumi left her gas-sealing barrier in place and ran toward the hospital’s back entrance.
Girls!
She forced herself to stifle a scream. Kasumi and Izumi lay motionless on the ground. Her worst fears seemed to have come true. But her immediate priority was capturing Minoru. She couldn’t treat her sisters until that was done.
Minoru was reaching for the hospital’s back door. Mayumi used the copious amounts of carbon dioxide she had created on the rooftop to fire an array of dry ice bullets. Minoru dodged quickly with a backward leap. Mayumi’s attack managed only to pierce the spot where he had just been.
“Give it up, Minoru!” Mayumi yelled.
Minoru lifted his head but said nothing. He showed no sign of heeding Mayumi’s words. Without hesitation, Mayumi aimed her dry ice bullets at him again.
One more time!
Her bullets collided with Minoru’s body and shattered on the ground behind him. This time, he had cast Parade. Mayumi recognized it immediately. She compressed ten square meters of carbon dioxide into a one-meter semisolid sphere and threw it at Minoru.
Upon hitting the ground, the sphere expanded into a dome with a five-meter radius. It didn’t spread any farther to maintain a safe area outside the danger zone for Mayumi’s sisters. The concentration of carbon dioxide had easily surpassed toxic levels. As long as Minoru’s metabolic system was similar to a human’s, he would need to avoid breathing in the gas.
Mayumi created a gentle airflow within the dome, so weak it could barely be called a breeze. The air appeared to move randomly, but it had a complex pattern. At a certain point, between 170 and 180 centimeters in height and 50 centimeters wide, the flow was obstructed. Mayumi set up Magic Bullet Shooter cannons and directed a wave of concentrated fire at that point.
All of a sudden, Minoru appeared, his silhouette illuminated in the dim streetlights. Parade had been breached. Mayumi increased the power and intensity of her gunfire. She had ample carbon dioxide available for creating bullets. Anything already fired would sublimate back into gas so she could reuse it as ammunition.
Suddenly, Minoru raised his right hand. Mayumi thought it might be a sign of surrender. Although this could have meant a potential opening on her part, Magic Bullet Shooter continued unabated. As a result, Minoru’s counterattack was independent of any openings Mayumi might have had. His illusion was already spent by the time she cast Dry Blizzard.
Mayumi’s consciousness no longer retained any memory of the vanished illusion. When a dense shadow formed where the illusion had been, she didn’t even notice it. From the shadow emerged four legs, followed by a head and slender tail, resembling a tiger. As its mouth opened wide, fangs appeared, and instead of a roar, it unleashed a thunderous blast.
Mayumi spun around in a panic. The shadowed beast wrapped in lightning was already right in front of her. Before she could react, the beast tackled her to the ground. Rather than sink its fangs into her flesh, it unleashed a paralyzing electric shock. Mayumi’s body convulsed as the electrical surge overwhelmed her, and she rolled precariously toward the edge of the rooftop.
A sharp gasp escaped Minoru’s lips as his opponent plummeted toward the ground.
“Mayumi!”
It had not been his intention to push her off the roof. He quickly began to cast a gravity-control spell to catch her. But before the spell was completed, Mayumi’s body was swooped up by a sturdy male figure that fell from the sky.
The man expertly controlled the gravity and inertia around him to land gracefully on the ground below. Though the landing was silent, Minoru’s ears picked up a heavy phantom thud, which shook the earth beneath his feet.
“Juumonji…” he whispered.
The sturdy figure belonged to Katsuto Juumonji, the head of the Juumonji family. He turned his back to Minoru and gently laid Mayumi down on the ground.
Minoru did not attack Katsuto from behind. In fact, he couldn’t. He was paralyzed by Katsuto’s silent command to wait.
Once Mayumi was safe, Katsuto stood up and turned around. Minoru instinctively cast a Parade illusion to escape, but it was no use. A transparent barrier rose from where Katsuto was standing. It was a solid, impenetrable magic shield measuring roughly two tatami mats in size, which shot toward Minoru at high speeds.
Minoru quickly leaped to the right. The magic shield, while having no direct effect on nonsolid materials or physical energy, possessed the properties of a transparent wall that would not allow solid objects to pass through it. In other words, it was incompatible with illusions that conferred contradictory properties to any given space. It easily shattered Minoru’s Parade, casting his illusory figure into the darkness.
The real Minoru had thrown himself onto the ground to evade Katsuto’s attack. He then scrambled to his feet and began casting his next spell. Drawing on his newfound knowledge of Qimen Dunjia, Minoru concealed his position. Simultaneously, he dashed to the left.
If Qimen Dunjia was successful, it would appear to Katsuto as if Minoru had escaped in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, his escape was thwarted after only two steps as an imposing barrier sprang up directly in his path.