A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 7 (13 page)

And even
he
understood clearly that Stiyl’s prediction could very probably end up as reality.

“So don’t think about accomplishing all our jobs. The plan was bound to fail in the first place—and we’ve got enough danger on our plate right now. The worst thing that could happen is them deciphering the
Book of the Law
, so try to prevent that.”

“Well, then…” Kamijou looked between Stiyl and Index before continuing. “Then can we make Orsola our top priority?”

“I don’t care one way or the other. The book is a complete waste without the decoder. This girl here has all the knowledge of the book itself in her head, so we’re not interested in the original copy, either. And the Roman Orthodox Church is the one that owns it, so even if it’s lost, it’s no skin off the English Puritans’ back.”

“I think it’s a good idea, too. And if we told you no, you’d just go charging in there anyway! We’re already short on people, so we all need to stay together.”

Both Index and Stiyl, the English Puritan sorcerer, answered without much worry.

They probably had their own issues as professionals, but they still accepted the opinion of an entirely ignorant amateur.

“All right. Thanks!”

They both made rather bewildered faces. Index exaggerated her facial expressions from the start, so that was normal—but Stiyl, depending on your point of view, almost looked comical.

He clucked his tongue. “Don’t go cramping my style before we go charging in. The diversion starts at eleven thirty. We’ll be infiltrating when that happens, so we should—”

“Touma, don’t relax once we’re inside, okay? Make sure you hide behind me and listen to what I tell you to do, or you’ll be in danger.”

“Hah? What are you saying, you silly sister? When it comes to sorcerers, my right hand is like an iron wall. You should be the one hiding behind
me
and taking
my
advice.”

“…” Kamijou and Index hushed up at their difference in opinion.

“—We should be going in soon, so I’d appreciate it if you focused on this. Seriously,” said Stiyl calmly, feeling excluded from the conversation. And right that moment…

…there came a
bang
from the distant admission entrance.

“…Hey. Is that really the diversion?” murmured Kamijou, a little dazed at the sight of the giant, burning, roaring pillar of flame.

“It means they’ll lose unless they use things like that, Touma. Don’t let down your guard!” said Index.

“And it’s not causing an issue. They’re combining sorcery to keep people away and to interrupt. But I don’t feel the mannerisms of Roman Orthodoxy in the technique—I don’t feel that unique accent…It must have been Amakusa. Rather annoying that they have techniques this powerful.”

Either way, the time had come.

Index pressed herself against the chain-link fence and focused on something past it. After confirming there were no magical traps set up, the three of them jumped the fence and snuck into the unlit park.

The park lights were off, making it a dark bubble within a bustling city. Kamijou even felt like the starlight here was stronger than it usually was. They had entered from outside the actual viewing course. Once they passed between a gelato stand and an almond jelly stand, neither of which was much bigger than a mobile home, they entered the course.

It was a giant circular path. Right in the middle, there was a waterway—actually, more like a moat—and the surface of the water was about three meters under the walkway. He couldn’t tell how deep it went. There were tons of little stands along the outer edge of the course, on the outer circumference. All they had were counters like the ones on food carts—they weren’t made so that people could eat inside them. The space on the inside part of the waterway had been made into a plaza. There were many tables and chairs there, so that must have been where people took their treats.

According to Agnes, there was more than one ring—there were several adjacent ones, forming a shape similar to the Olympic rings.

“…”

It would have been a whale of a time had they come in the afternoon, but Kamijou knew they were in a different world right now. Without any lights, all the tiny stalls with their rustic, closed shutters easily felt like they were refusing them. The place felt eerie, like a person’s face lit up by a flashlight from below. Even the ravenous Index, normally the merriest of them all, was just looking into the darkness in tension.

“Touma, Touma. We don’t have time. If we’re gonna look for Orsola, we have to start.”

“Right—we only have thirty minutes. We could also set up an ambush if we found the eddy, but given the situation I’d say the odds of that are pretty low,” said Stiyl, who, unusually, wasn’t smoking so that he could blend into the night.

They started to hear the sounds of angry roaring, shouting, things breaking, and explosions. It seemed the Roman Orthodox and Amakusa had clashed in earnest.

“R-right. Got it.”

The moment the words left his mouth, they heard a metallic
thump
.

Huh?
he thought, inadvertently turning his head upward toward the source of the noise, when…

…from the roof of the gelato specialty shop came four boys and girls leaping through the air.

All of them were gripping western-style swords.

“?!”

Kamijou pushed Index out of the way and Stiyl caught her neck and pulled her in to him. A moment later…

Slice!!
came the blades swinging straight down, leaving vestiges of reflected moonlight in their wakes. Like a bolt of lightning, they struck at the point Index had just left.

One young man and three young women. All were about the same age as Kamijou. Instead of eccentric habits, they wore what you would if you were going for a walk through downtown. Their ordinary clothing, however, made the sinister glistening of the swords in their hands feel intensely out of place.

In an annoyed tone, Stiyl said, “A hand and a half sword, a bastard sword, a boar tuck, and a dress sword. Man, the people in this country really have a thing for
our
culture, don’t they?!”

Kamijou thought to himself that those names were right out of a fantasy role-playing game. Their designs were diverse, their sizes ranging from a little more than a meter to a little less than two. And one of them, he had no idea what it was designed for—it looked like a rapier, except the very tip of it was a ball.

Damn
…
it. The diversion didn’t pull them away one bit, did it?!

The four of them landed, separating him from the other two. Considering how narrow the path was, he couldn’t just go around them and join back up with his comrades, either. Stiyl scattered a few rune cards and whipped out a flame sword, saying,

“Take this. Keep it close if you don’t want to die!”

He removed something from inside his clothing and threw it to Kamijou. He frantically caught it—it was a silver cross on a necklace.

“This is…”

…What do I do with it?

As he brought his face up to ask, though, one of the Amakusa girls silently sent the tip of a slender, double-edged sword about the length of a deck brush (apparently called a “dress sword”) roaring toward him.

“Whaa?!”

Panicking, Kamijou jumped backward to dodge it. But then the girl charged, and he couldn’t deal with it. The only reason he was able to dodge the next horizontal stroke was because he tripped over his own feet and fell onto his back.

“Watch out, Touma!!”

A moment after hearing Index’s shout, he saw the girl bringing the dress sword down like a guillotine. He didn’t break his fall; instead, he continued his backward roll and managed to evade it.

She didn’t look like she’d used any magic at all.

The Imagine Breaker in his right hand wouldn’t help him at all in a situation like this. As soon as he tried to do anything with it, she’d cleave it right off.

“Index!” shouted Kamijou, but there were four weapon-wielding assassins in the way, so he couldn’t leap in carelessly. Stiyl was standing in front of Index with his flame sword in order to protect her, but two of the assassins went charging at them, intent on piercing both the shielding Stiyl and Index’s delicate body with their swords.

Then there was a dull
boom!!

“—…?!”

Kamijou thought his heart was going to stop when he saw what was happening, but upon observing calmly, he saw that not a single drop of blood had been spilled. In fact, the two assassins who had rammed into Stiyl had gone straight through him.

A mirage.

The false image swayed, struck a sarcastic smile, and disappeared into the void. For some reason, the smile wasn’t directed at the Amakusa assassins—it kind of seemed like his eyes were locked right on Kamijou’s.

He no longer saw either of them anywhere.

The four assassins all turned their gazes to Kamijou.

Hey, wait
…
A-aren’t you supposed to agree on a signal or a meeting place when we have to run?! Are they making me the decoy again?! Something like this happened before, too. Back during the whole alchemist thing!!

Dazed and confused and now on his own, Kamijou turned his back to the enemy and began to run as fast as he could. His sudden decision seemed to catch them off guard. He looked behind him as he ran to see that three of the assassins had spread out. Maybe they were searching for the disappeared Index and Stiyl.

And the last one…

Only the girl who had pointed her sword at him before was pursuing him. And she was fast. She was catching up to him, fast as a bird, despite holding such a heavy sword.

Agh
…
shit
…
! I won’t get away from her by running straight!

In panic, he strayed from the circular viewing course and dove into a cramped space not seventy centimeters wide between two shops. It wasn’t even an alleyway—it was just a gap.

He tried to run through the narrow gap, but he tripped over something and fell spectacularly to the ground. Apparently they had planned to renovate the shops, because there were signboards on the wall and a box of construction materials on the ground. That’s what Kamijou had tripped over.

Gah
…
! Don’t leave your crap lying out like this!

Even if he continued to run away, he’d find the girl’s sword sticking through his back. He gave a quick glance at the contents of the scattered toolbox, looking for something that could serve as a weapon. But he quickly realized it was futile—he didn’t think he’d be able to beat a real sword by swinging around a hammer. His assailant was quite capable of slicing in two anything he found to throw at her.

…
Slicing them? In that case!!

Then, the girl holding the dress sword slid around the corner on her shoe soles and entered the gap as if she were a car drifting around it.

He grabbed a toothpaste-like bottle from the various tools littering the ground and immediately threw it behind him at her.

The girl, without realizing what was coming, swung her sword to cut it down and dove into the gap.

“!!”

He rose right away and crossed his arms in front of his head to protect it.

Her sword didn’t stop. Her strike came roaring down perfectly vertically, cutting the wind itself, and closed in to slice both him and his upraised arms in two.

Thump
.

There was a dull noise, but the sword that struck his arms didn’t even make it past one layer of skin.

Inside the toothpaste-like tube had been grease used for construction.

The sticky substance had completely dulled the sword’s sharpness like blood or animal fat stuck to a katana. If her weapon had been as heavy as a Japanese katana, then even with a dulled blade, it probably would have broken his arm. But he couldn’t expect a dress sword—a rapier, extravagantly adorned with precious stones—to do that.

“?!”

The girl panicked and tried to ready her dress sword again…

“Too slow!!”

…but before she could, he waved both hands to get the sword off of him and tackled the girl right in the stomach, bringing his arms around her. His entire body weight was enough to send her falling to the ground on her back. Kamijou was too much of a softie, though, not to put his hands around her head to prevent it from slamming into the ground.

As they collided, the girl went
oof
as the air left her lungs, and she hadn’t moved since then. She had essentially been hit with a judo throw without being able to take the fall, so there was really no helping it.

“…Goddamn it. That hurt.”

After just checking to make sure the girl wasn’t hurt, Kamijou sank to the ground. When he looked up, he saw a night sky, enclosed on four sides by building walls. It was a sight he was used to seeing in alleys.

Back-alley brawls in Academy City didn’t obey general Japanese common sense—they were far different from the normal, the average, the standard references. There were people who flung around strange
powers that could be as dangerous as a handgun depending on how they used them. And there were also plenty of delinquents with special weapons meant to fight against such espers. Kamijou had still been able to move his body without being overtaken by fear when he saw the blade because it was just something else he’d gotten used to.

He stayed there for a few moments to catch his breath, but finally grabbed the dress sword the girl was carrying. It was slender but felt oddly heavy—maybe it had something to do with its center of gravity. He thought for a moment about whether or not he would be able to use it, but he gave up on that. He didn’t even know how to hold a sword properly, so he didn’t think he’d be able to deal an effective blow with one. And even if he did strike well with this real sword, just thinking about what it would do to the opponent made his spine freeze. It may have lost a lot of its sharpness, but he didn’t want to go swinging it around.

Still, if he left the sword here, he’d have a problem when the Amakusa girl woke up. He decided to leave the area, dragging the sword behind him.

Damn, are Index and Stiyl all right? What about Orsola? Should I meet up with them first or go search for her by myself?