A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 21 Read online

  “…No…”

  Upon seeing the old man enter the church’s front entrance, Peter Iogdis shook his head.

  His expression resembled that of a child on the verge of tears.

  “No!!!!!! I am…the next pope—it’s going to be me!! The decision was already made!! You’re nothing more than a ghost! You have no more place here!! K-kill him. The chaos currently gripping the Roman Orthodox Church is all this monster’s fault!! If I become pope, I promise you all lives many times more prosperous!! So kill hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim!!”

  “…”

  “What are you doing?! Warrior—for what purpose did we give you spears?! To pierce the enemy!! And skewer all the foolish masses who obey him!! You must do it!! That is the only way for me to preside over this world!!”

  “Do not fear.”

  A grave, elderly voice quieted Peter’s apparent temper tantrum for a moment.

  “I do not intend to stop you if you wish to hold the papal conclave. If you would demand that someone must bear the responsibility for the chaos in the Roman Orthodox Church, I would even consider heading for the gallows. I am no longer the pope of Rome. I am but a single believer, Matthew Reese, and I come before you today to bring an end to this war.”

  “Wh…what…?”

  “In the basement of St. Peter’s Cathedral, half destroyed by Fiamma’s hand, was a grand storehouse boasting such vast knowledge that we invited the British-made index of prohibited books to it. I am going to peruse that knowledge. A plan for combating Fiamma’s sanctuary may yet sleep within it.”

  Finished, Matthew Reese stepped forward.

  Peter Iogdis withdrew like a magnet of the same charge. But he soon hit a wall. As he continued to shake his head, the old man drew closer.

  I’ll be killed.

  That thought naturally rose to the core of his mind. It only made sense, considering what he’d done until now. Matthew Reese held no weapon or Soul Arm, but that wasn’t comforting in the slightest. Peter Iogdis knew of the man’s skill in sorcery—and even without using it, a single command would be enough for the people, the armed priests, the bishops, and everyone else to lose themselves and rend Peter Iogdis asunder. When all was said and done, he had no true allies.

  And yet.

  With a pat, Matthew Reese placed a hand on Peter Iogdis’s shoulder. It was a gentle gesture. Then, the man who had given up his papal throne said this to the man who had tried to steal it:

  “You’ve done well shepherding two billion followers in such difficult times. Your talent is unquestionably the reason everyone here has survived while I was asleep. As you say, I am an incompetent leader. Alone, I would likely have allowed the damage to grow even further.”

  He was smiling.

  It was neither an act to deceive nor a distorted grin of sarcasm or derision. Matthew Reese, now no more than another believer, had just blessed Peter Iogdis’s progress from the bottom of his heart.

  “Please, call me when the papal conclave commences. I will cast my vote for you. You have borne the brunt of the criticism, performed many decisions of authority, and protected the lives of everyone—you deserve praise for that much, at least. It may not be much, but please, allow me to aid you on the path you walk.”

  Saying only that, Matthew Reese turned about.

  “Do you understand? We are fighting so you can survive. Promise me you will not die before this war ends.”

  Matthew Reese had abandoned his position as pope—and yet, when Peter Iogdis looked at the man’s reassuring back, it seemed to him as though it contained everything he had ever desired.

  Unable even to see the one old man off as he went, pressed onward to a new battlefield to fight for what he believed in, Peter Iogdis, whose only labors had been in search of wealth, broke down into tears.

  6

  “Sasha Kreutzev…?” murmured Touma Kamijou, still straddling her.

  His thoughts weren’t coming together.

  The archangel called Misha Kreutzev was, even as he spoke, flying in the artificial night sky, trying to crush Academy City’s forces.

  But Sasha Kreutzev was right here before his eyes.

  The blond-haired girl, slight body tightened with clothing that looked like physical restraints, tilted her head a little and asked, “Question one. Why do you know my name?”

  “Where to start…Uh, we actually met one time at the end of August, but strictly speaking, that was Misha Kreutzev, and we’ve never spoken to each other directly, but I heard from Kanzaki and Tsuchimikado that the original body before the substitution belonged to Sasha Kreutzev—”

  “…”

  Before he could finish, Sasha twisted and turned, throwing Kamijou wide, the boy who was leaning over her. He gave a startled grunt, and she looked at him with suspicious eyes behind her bangs.

  “Answer one. I have judged that I will not get a good explanation from you. As an addendum, I estimate the probability that you are an enemy, given that you are on board this Star of Bethlehem, to be extremely high. Are you part of their team, come to apprehend me for fleeing the ritual site?”

  Shweeng!! She pulled a saw and an L-shaped pair of pincers from her waist belt.

  The blood drained from Kamijou’s face. “Whoa!! You’re like this whether you’re Misha or Sasha?! What the hell is that angel anyway?! Is it really unrelated to you?!”

  As Kamijou, in a panic, scrambled to speak, Sasha fell silent for a moment. Like a cautious beast, she inched away a few steps, thinking, …This man still seems suspicious nevertheless, but he also appears to know something about my “condition”…

  What tugged at her was the end of August part.

  That was right around when Sasha had acquired the strange condition. It allowed her to feel a pressure in her chest whenever someone else’s mana or a Soul Arm was nearby. According to the Russian Catholic analysis team, she showed signs of having had immense power inside her on an archangelic level, but…

  She glanced at the torture saw…I can force him to speak now, but I can’t tell whether this man is a simple idiot or if he’s being intentionally dense. Perhaps a shorter route to the correct answer would be to not clearly and straightforwardly ask him.

  As Sasha quietly decided on a new course of action, Kamijou asked, “Do you know a man named Fiamma of the Right? He’s supposed to be the guy who kidnapped you from the Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations and brought you here.”

  “…?”

  “He’s gotta be doing something.” Kamijou glanced toward the door of the stone-built room. “Otherwise, that monster wouldn’t have shown up. Fiamma called you a medium for the angel or something. I’ll be direct: He used you to summon that angel, didn’t he?”

  Angel summoning.

  Calling it that might have made it sound ridiculous, but Kamijou knew firsthand how fearsome it was. Both in terms of sorcery, from the Angel Fall incident at the end of August, and in terms of science, from the events surrounding Fuse Kazakiri that took place on September 30.

  What Fiamma had done was equally threatening. But at the same time, Kamijou also thought that angels weren’t the kind of thing that could be controlled so easily. There had to be groundwork. The groundwork was for the Angel Fall magic circle for Misha Kreutzev and the AIM dispersion fields for Fuse Kazakiri. Whatever was happening, it was being supported by some large-scale mechanism, and if that was removed, they’d be unable to move, at least, in this world.

  He knew what the key was this time.

  Sasha Kreutzev.

  If a prodigious angel had appeared with her at the origin, then Sasha might have been in contact with some sort of important Soul Arm. It was an assumption that something like that even existed, but that meant Sasha might know what he should destroy to disable the angel.

  “Listen. Tell me whatever you might know. First, where in the Star of Bethlehem did Fiamma use his magic to summon the angel—the ritual, I guess you’d call it in this case? Anyway,
I want you to show me where the action happened. Also, it would be great to hear about the process, even if you only know a rough outline. I want to know what kind of tools he used at the time, and how.”

  Naturally, Kamijou didn’t know sorcery. But his right hand didn’t care whether he understood the underlying principles—his ability could erase and destroy any phenomena or object related to the supernatural. If he busted up every single thing she mentioned, it might lead to destroying Misha.

  Sasha still seemed to be suspicious of Kamijou after he suddenly asked all that at once.

  But even at this moment, the archangel was flying about in the skies, launching huge attacks at Academy City aircraft and the Russian surface—she could tell by the faint rumbling. They had a common interest, and that connection made Sasha start to murmur.

  “…Answer two. When I woke up, the ritual was already over. Maybe that was why I was able to escape. Many Russian sorcerers were around other than the mastermind, so under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have been able to flee all the way here. To be blunt, when they relaxed just for a moment after the hard part was over, I took advantage of it and ran out of the ritual site.”

  “That’s fine. Did you see anything in the ritual site before you ran away?”

  Would Fiamma allow an opening that easily? And how could you even run from Fiamma, who could travel miles in a single instant? Kamijou was privately dubious, but he didn’t mention it now. Maybe he’d just decided she had nowhere to run, locked up on a fortress high in the skies.

  Sasha, for her part, seemed to notice what he was thinking and continued the technical explanation. “Answer three. The ritual site was of the Crossist format. It had an odd construction, intensively using fire in particular out of the four aspects…Normally, excluding extreme usage as a means of attack, ritual sites only gain significance after bringing all four aspects together as one. But that man called Fiamma—his ritual site was far too unified in a single color…”

  Kamijou abruptly looked at his right hand. Maybe…

  …there was another way.

  Fiamma had used Sasha to summon that archangel. This time, instead of it residing inside Sasha like during Angel Fall, the archangel was pure—and exposed to the open air. On the other hand, if he’d used Sasha to summon Misha, it was highly likely the same logic was being applied here. Sasha was still necessary to stabilize the archangel’s existence.

  In that case, maybe Sasha and Misha were connected, like with an out-of-body experience. If so, Kamijou could use the Imagine Breaker. By touching Sasha, he might deal direct damage to Misha. After all, angels were apparently big clusters of magical energy.

  …While we’re standing around, Misha Kreutzev is wrecking the entire area. Academy City and Russian forces are one thing, but the damage could have even spread to civilian homes already.

  Kamijou opened and closed his right hand.

  Which means the only thing I can do is test everything I can. Here and now, we’re the only ones who can act!!

  “As an addendum, regarding the ritual site’s location…When observing the fortress’s direction of motion, it should be located at the rightmost tip of the Star of Bethlehem. Here, too, he is probably trying to take advantage of the sign of the angel Michael, who symbolizes fire. His methods are thorough, but on the other hand, the angel floating around the battlefield now is Gabriel, which symbolizes water—and on that point, I feel a strong sense of strangeness— Hyawaah?!”

  Sasha abruptly straightened up and let out a yelp.

  Kamijou’s right hand had reached for her cheek.

  Not noticing how she was trembling, he repeatedly pressed his hand to her head, then shoulders, side, stomach, and thigh.

  “…Not here. Not here, either—or here or here. Damn it—no change in Misha. Maybe this won’t work. I’ll just check the back first. I gotta say, these are some ridiculous clothes…”

  “…”

  While Kamijou murmured to himself, Sasha, without a word, swung around her L-shaped crowbar.

  Ba-gam!! She struck him with the back of the weapon, cleanly in the temple.

  “…Question two. Are you of the same mind as Vasilisa?”

  “Grbhhh?! What—? Kfht! What’s a Vasilisa?!” shouted Kamijou faintly from the floor, limbs twitching.

  Sasha swung down the crowbar’s right-angle section a few more times, but then, apparently deciding beating him to a pulp wouldn’t improve the situation, she went bright red in the face and put the torture device back on her belt for the time being.

  “Answer four. The man named Fiamma’s ritual site was of high grade, but the Soul Arms he used himself were commonplace ones. Not the sort that should give him the power to control an angel of that magnitude.”

  …Maybe the special-made tool in this case was Sasha herself, and he only needed tools of normal capabilities to draw out hers.

  “However, as an addendum, there was one Soul Arm I’d never seen before.”

  “A Soul Arm?!”

  Kamijou jumped at that without thinking.

  Maybe it was related to the Soul Arm that remotely controlled Index.

  “Answer five. In concrete terms, it was a staff. Actually, the symbolic weapon of fire is a rod or a staff, so that isn’t strange, per se.”

  “Why’d it catch your attention, then?”

  “As an addendum, a staff as the Symbolic Weapon of fire is completed by inserting a bar magnet into the end of its red-painted body. But his staff wasn’t like that.”

  “?”

  “As a further addendum, to specify, it was a cylinder about this big, small enough to fit in your palm, and it had several small rings on the side. It looked similar to a dial padlock. He’d embedded that in the tip of his staff.”

  “…”

  He had an idea what that Soul Arm was.

  The one that could remotely control Index.

  Had Fiamma used the knowledge in the 103,000 grimoires in his ritual to summon Misha Kreutzev? For a moment, he thought so, but then he realized something didn’t make sense about Sasha’s explanation.

  Fiamma had been controlling Index just by using the Soul Arm in his hand. He would have been able to draw the necessary knowledge from her.

  Why would he have had to modify it, then embed it as part of a staff?

  Kamijou thought for a moment, then murmured, “…Wait, you mean he’s applying the Soul Arm’s effect—to manipulate others from a distance—in order to control Misha Kreutzev…?”

  7

  “We’re on the counterattack at last…,” murmured Nikolai Tolstoj, Russian bishop, in a palace in Moscow.

  He was holding a communication Soul Arm shaped like a book.

  Right now, it was connected to Fiamma.

  “We saw Misha Kreutzev’s emergence from here as well. I’m surprised you were able to amass that much telesma in one place. As long as we can use it as a combat force, nothing else matters. I’ll have you help us crush Academy City’s forces at once.”

  Nikolai had several other maps and documents spread out on the table aside from the communication Soul Arm.

  “Most of their forces consist of unmanned weapons, a mixture of AI and remote control. We’ll start by destroying their command center here. Our first priority is to win on the EU front that’s steadily approaching Moscow from eastern Europe. Once that’s over, we eliminate the airborne forces passing over the Arctic Sea. I’ll send you maps and their unit movements. Waste no time when you get them—”

  “Heh-heh.”

  Then it happened.

  Nikolai was sure he’d just heard Fiamma laugh.

  “It may be incomplete, but I have the archangel of water under my full control—and all you can think of is trivial nonsense.”

  “What…are you saying?”

  “I understand why you capped out as a bishop. The world is full of incongruity, but this, perhaps, was correct. The office of Patriarch doesn’t suit you. The organization would doubtless begin to collaps
e.”

  “What are you saying, Fiamma?!”

  His position—his complex—attacked, Nikolai flew into a rage.

  But nothing changed. Fiamma of the Right only continued to laugh.

  “Let me ask you something, Nikolai. Did you think I would spend my personal wealth for Russia’s sake? Of course not. Not even if the opposite happened.”

  “You…little…”

  “I use my wealth for my own, much greater purposes. Why don’t we sum this up? You’ve done well buying me time, reverent Bishop Nikolai Tolstoj. A low role such as that suits you. Fight with Academy City on your own now—and be destroyed on your own.”

  “Heh…”

  Nikolai’s emotions exploded.

  But it wasn’t anger.

  It was joy—joy that what he’d prepared for this moment hadn’t gone to waste.

  “You’re an imbecile, Fiamma!! You are wrong about the most fundamental thing! Have you forgotten the Russian spells embedded in the fortress you personally lifted into the sky?!”

  “…”

  “The two hundred sorcerers I dispatched there are all working for me. Did you think I wouldn’t plant anything? One order from me, and that fortress will fall apart in the blink of an eye, raining back down upon the earth as so many random items.”

  In exchange for the ability to use special sorcery normal people couldn’t, those in God’s Right Seat couldn’t use magic normal sorcerers could. That was why Fiamma had asked for sorcerer aid from the Russian Church. In other words, normal spells were absolutely indispensable for that fortress’s structure.

  And.

  The same went for removing Nikolai’s trap, laid secretly within the spell that had constructed the fortress.

  “What now, Fiamma?” demanded Nikolai. He had always made his fortune off of profiteering during wartime—he was used to deals like these. “I don’t know what you’re trying to use that fortress for, but if you were that thorough in your preparations to lift it up, it must be essential to your plans. Do you want me to destroy it?”