A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 14

by Kazuma Kamachi

  Those words made Kamijou flare up.

  Itsuwa, though, stated, “…Yes.” Yet there was a smile on her lips. “But you finally showed an opening. A critical one.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “That thing Mr. Tsuchimikado was about to say. The priority spell you’re so good at, Light’s Execution—it has a weakness. He was right. There was something unnatural about what you did just now…”

  “Oh?” said Terra offhandedly, amused.

  Itsuwa slowly leveled her spearhead at Terra. “The Amakusa-Style Crossist Church doesn’t use any incantations or magic circles. Instead, we combine magical symbols left over in everyday items and customs. Looking for those symbols is what we’re good at.”

  “I see. That is indeed troubling,” said Terra emotionlessly. “Still, there’s no time for you to apply that knowledge now that you’ve realized it, I think?”

  Terra raised his right hand above his head.

  The guillotine there sharpened like a screw and drove up toward the high ceiling.

  “Prioritize—ceiling as lower, flour as higher.”

  And when his hand jerked, as if to pull a light cord, it came.

  Tug.

  Like a trap in an old castle, the ceiling on this floor suddenly came tumbling down.

  The pillars supporting the ceiling began to sink into the floor with unnatural smoothness.

  “!!” Itsuwa hastily put her spear straight up.

  It stuck between the fallen ceiling and the floor, allowing them to just barely avoid being crushed to death.

  But because of that, Itsuwa no longer had her weapon.

  And that was when…

  Terra’s guillotine came swooping mercilessly in.

  A booming roar burst out.

  Terra’s blade came in horizontally and landed directly on Itsuwa’s unarmed torso. She bent over at the impact, and with a dull sound, her body went flying back. It bounced a few times on the floor, rolled several meters away, and finally lost its momentum, coming to a stop.

  She stayed down, body limp.

  Her arms and legs were sprawled out. Kamijou could see her chest slowly rising and falling, so she didn’t appear to be dead yet, but it didn’t look like she’d wake up anytime soon.

  Damn it…, thought Kamijou, gritting his back teeth. “Itsuwa!!”

  “Well, that’s about how it is. A simple sorcerer thinking she could stand up to God’s Right Seat was a mistake to begin with,” boasted Terra as the fallen ceiling slowly began to rise back to its former height. The compressed pillars started returning to their original lengths as well.

  Itsuwa’s spear, which had avoided being crushed, clattered to the floor.

  “You…” Kamijou slowly, slowly began to tighten his right fist.

  But even upon seeing his face, Terra didn’t look any less calm. “Oh my. It won’t do me any good if you get angry like that. We’re in the middle of a battle. I’m sure you’re not about to tell me to hold still and not attack so you can keep punching me forever, yes?”

  “…”

  “And I must say, I’m quite disappointed myself. With a name like Imagine Breaker, I thought I’d have a more difficult time of it, but I hadn’t thought it was so imperfect. If its original abilities were restored, you could have easily protected that sorcerer from my attack.”

  “What?” Kamijou frowned.

  The Imagine Breaker—its original abilities.

  Kamijou unwittingly looked at his right hand. Terra saw it and gave a thin smile.

  “Oh. Could it be that you don’t know?”

  “!”

  “Keh-heh…Well now, that can’t be possible. Normally, you would need to know about it. Which means…hmm? Could it be…that you don’t remember something that you should have known?”

  “You!!”

  “Was I spot on? Oh my. I seem to have found myself an entertaining research subject indeed!!”

  “…!!”

  Maybe it was illogical to get angry right now.

  But for Kamijou, who was an amnesiac, those words were enough to bore a hole into his heart.

  “Ha-ha!!” Terra burst out laughing as he watched his adversary manage to wobble up to his feet. “I see, I see, so that’s how it is! I certainly don’t recall any reports to that effect, but…Could you have been hiding it? What for? Did you make sure to tell that sorcerer taking a rest over there? Maybe it would be interesting to look into why you lost your memories, hmm?”

  Damn it all!!

  Anger dominated Kamijou.

  He had decided not to tell anybody he’d lost his memories for the sake of the girl in white—the first person he’d met after losing them. That was the rule he gave himself. It was something he had to uphold. That rule being broken now, and like this, was enough to almost drive him mad.

  “Well, what’s the problem?” Terra of the Left laughed. “You’re about to die anyway, so why bother worrying? I don’t know what’s getting you so gloomy, but I’ll do you a favor and get rid of it all.”

  With slow motions, Terra brought his blade up. Kamijou clenched his back teeth so hard he thought he’d break them.

  …That blade’s destructive power isn’t the fatal part, he thought, glaring at the white powder roiling around Terra. The problem is that prioritizing thing…He can use it for both attack and defense. If I can find a weakness in it—if there really is one—I can use it to drive him back!!

  Both Tsuchimikado and Itsuwa had declared that there was one.

  It could have also been a riposte to Terra of the Left—or more simply, a mere bluff.

  No, there’s something, he thought, gauging the distance between them. Now that I think about it, Terra’s attacks have been somehow strange. But I was brushing it off as a fortunate miscalculation and didn’t really think about it. How he…

  “Oh, you won’t be coming to me?” mocked Terra, waggling his flour guillotine. “Then waiting for you would be a pain. Allow me to make the first move!!”

  He flung the white blade as he finished speaking.

  And as Touma Kamijou watched it come right before his eyes, he…

  7

  Shwoom!! As the flour blade came rushing at him, Kamijou didn’t bring his right hand to meet it.

  Instead, he swung his head out of the way to dodge the strike.

  As he did, he bent backward as though falling to the floor and picked up a fragment of the ruined wall—a rock the size of a bento box.

  Then he rose again, flinging it at Terra like a counterattack.

  “Prioritize—building stone as lower, human skin as higher,” sung Terra.

  The rock hit him in the forehead, but he didn’t even blink.

  At the same time, Kamijou’s hand dove into his pants pocket. Terra’s eyes sharpened. Kamijou ignored it, grabbing what was in there and hurling it straight at him.

  The flour guillotine howled.

  But when he looked at what its tip had just sliced, he frowned.

  It was a simple wallet.

  Kamijou had thrown a piece of leather with no use as a weapon at all. When he saw Terra’s reaction, he spoke. “I wonder why that is.” His words were cutting. “You could have easily turned away Itsuwa’s spear and Tsuchimikado’s spell, so why didn’t you block a simple wallet with your prioritization?”

  “…?!” Terra flung his flour guillotine at him, as though trying to shut him up.

  Kamijou turned it aside with his right hand and went on. “Now that I think of it, it was strange.”

  He stepped forward, cutting through the powdery remains of the guillotine.

  “It was strange how Itsuwa and I are both still alive after getting hit with that white blade. You’ve got no reason to hold back, and you don’t seem the type to let the loser get away. Which makes things simple. When you slashed us with the blade, it wasn’t that you purposely left us alive. It was that you couldn’t actually kill us, no matter what you did.”

  The force of that swinging blade
alone wasn’t enough to kill a person because Terra was using his prioritization spell to strengthen it.

  Which meant…

  “Your prioritization isn’t very flexible. Your blade always lost strength right after you stopped one of our attacks. Which means you can’t use it against multiple targets at once. If you want to change from one prioritization to another, you have to set it up every single time. Something like that, right?”

  “Heh,” chuckled Terra. The corners of his lips softened, and he brought his giant blade up again. “So that was what you lot meant by the Light’s Execution’s ‘weakness.’”

  He almost sounded relieved that the mystery had been solved.

  “After all, I haven’t fully adjusted it yet. I will admit I was somewhat interested in what you had to say.”

  The clergyman smiled.

  “However,” he went on, flipping back into his typical scorn, “so what if you’ve figured it out? Terra of the Left isn’t so weak that you could defeat him like that!!”

  With the sound of ripping wind, the white blade flew.

  Kamijou blocked it with his hand, and as Terra backstepped to gain distance, he chased.

  “Terra!!” he shouted, but the man was faster. He swung the flour guillotine again, bringing it stabbing straight down.

  “Prioritize—floor as lower, flour as higher.”

  The thick stone floor was blown away, and its fragments rushed at Kamijou. He jumped aside to dodge them. “What’s the reason you’re going this far?! You got not only us but everyone in Avignon wrapped up in this! Is whatever you’re doing really worth all this?!”

  “Hah, I do believe half the blame belongs with your Academy City, am I wrong?!” answered Terra, retreating with short hops and gathering the floury powder at his hands. “All of Crossism shares one final goal—the kingdom of heaven.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, but were you of a Crossist culture, you’d know it better than the colors on traffic lights. Well, you do seem to be from a Far Eastern island nation, where organized religion runs thin, so I suppose there’s no helping it.”

  Terra spoke with light boredom and disappointment.

  “After the Last Judgment, God will build a new kingdom with his own hands. Only those whose faith runs deep will be permitted a sojourn in its eternal salvation. Don’t you think it’s truly wonderful? That is where I aim, and I was fortunate enough to help others toward that same goal.”

  Terra fired the flour guillotine, and Kamijou repelled it with his right hand.

  Several of the cylindrical shells on the floor began rolling around with the wind pressure.

  As he watched his weapon scatter into powder, he said, “But then I had a thought, you see.”

  No wind was blowing, but the powder began to return to Terra’s hand unnaturally and systematically.

  “Wouldn’t man wage war in this holy land? Even if God built a perfect kingdom and called together the faithful and just from around the world, would the group called mankind be able to answer God’s expectations?”

  Kamijou ran forward, listening.

  Terra flung his guillotine to stop him. “Suppose I lead the faithful of Crossism to this holy land. But even the Roman Orthodox Church is separated into countless factions. If God used the search condition of ‘only pious Roman Orthodox followers’ to grant salvation, it would mean the Church’s faction problems would carry over into that land.”

  The flour wriggled in concert with Terra’s right hand and changed into a giant blade.

  The white guillotine and Kamijou’s fist collided.

  “…No matter how perfect the kingdom God builds, if the humans inside it break up in an unsightly way, what’s the point? If we brought the same old wars into this so-called perfect kingdom, everything will have been for nothing. You cannot call that ‘eternal salvation.’”

  Even as Kamijou nullified the flour guillotine with his right hand, he listened.

  Terra, too, moved forward, realizing it was pointless to retreat any farther.

  “We want salvation. And I want to give salvation. Even if God’s plan is perfect, if we, mankind, fall below his expectations, everything will start over! I want to know!! Is humanity doomed to warring within the holy land as we stand now? And if so, I want to know what direction I should steer everyone in before the Day of Judgment!

  “And that is why I am in God’s Right Seat!!” he roared.

  Unlike his fellow member Vento of the Front, he had chosen this path himself, for the sake of the Roman Orthodox Church. If he had gone that far, then maybe he really was trying to protect all those who believed in the institution.

  But…

  “…Is that all salvation is?” asked Kamijou, unwittingly clenching his back teeth.

  The face of Monaka Oyafune came to mind, who had taken a bullet to get him to act.

  He thought about Tsuchimikado and Itsuwa, who had fought alongside him.

  “It’s not like the Church is wrong. I don’t think the teachings of the Church that raised Orsola and Agnes have grown into this. You’ve got a problem before that. You have no idea what the word salvation even means!”

  The rioters all about the town of Avignon.

  The powered suits that had come to suppress them and been crushed by this man.

  “There’s no way your God spread teachings so that they would create this kind of war! That’s bullshit. If you insist on redefining what salvation means so that it satisfies you alone…”

  He simply set his eyes forward, sending a glare at the man before him.

  There was his enemy.

  “…then I’ll tear down that screwed-up illusion here and now!!”

  Kamijou dove at Terra.

  The man retreated farther, readying his guillotine. At this rate, Kamijou would never catch up, no matter how long he chased.

  But he advanced anyway.

  The bottom of his foot caught a powered suit shell on the floor, but he ignored it and stepped forward with even more force.

  Then he used all his might to kick something at his feet ahead.

  It was the Friulian spear Itsuwa had dropped.

  The spear didn’t get kicked up easily and went sliding across the floor. It collided with the barrel of an anti-bulkhead shotgun that a powered suit dropped; its trajectory curved somewhat but still slipped toward Terra’s feet.

  “!!” Terra swung down his guillotine and smashed Itsuwa’s spear. He could have avoided the attack simply by lifting his foot, but he expressly used the guillotine to block it.

  Just like I thought. Meanwhile, Kamijou stepped even closer to Terra, sharply making his way toward the man, more deeply than he’d been able to get thus far. If Terra himself had so much strength to begin with, he wouldn’t need that whole “priority switching” magic at all. He wouldn’t have to switch them; people at the top were already at their highest point. It doesn’t mean they have high physical abilities. In other words…

  Kamijou’s conclusion was reached.

  He poured every ounce of strength into his right fist.

  …Terra of the Left isn’t strong at all. This bastard’s just been watching from a safe distance, pretending he’s strong. But there’s no way he’s stronger than Itsuwa or me, when we’ve actually been on the battlefield personally!

  After smashing Itsuwa’s spear to the floor, Terra countered, muttering his “priorities” and launching his flour guillotine. But Kamijou’s right fist destroyed the attack.

  “You’re too slow!!”

  His fist flew at Terra’s face.

  A dull wham!! burst out.

  He felt his tightly clenched fist make a direct hit from the recoil.

  He’d put all his weight into his right arm, so his body pitched forward.

  I got you!! he thought, confident.

  But Terra didn’t go down.

  “You…bastard…You heretic monkeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!!”

  With an angry scream, the man’s strength returned.


  The scraping sound of shoe soles resounded on the floor. Terra’s foot got caught on a powered suit, almost tripping. He lost his balance and leaned back, but his will to fight hadn’t broken. He swung his right hand from his unstable position, sending the flour guillotine stabbing toward Kamijou’s gut with all his might.

  “Prioritize—human body as lower, flour as higher!!”

  The blade he fired had been set to cleave a human.

  Meanwhile, Kamijou punched Terra in the face again, sending him flying.

  In this state, it would be hard to repel the guillotine with his right hand. The same went for twisting himself out of the way.

  —!! Kamijou suddenly stomped hard on an object at his feet.

  It was an extremely thick-barreled anti-bulkhead shotgun—the one from the powered suit Terra had destroyed.

  The shotgun was on an oblique angle atop a pile of debris, and when Kamijou stomped on it, it swerved like a seesaw, the hunk of metal standing straight up in front of him in reaction.

  “That is…quite naïve of you!!”

  But Terra’s expression didn’t change.

  The anti-bulkhead shotgun was heavy and not easily brought to bear. Even if Kamijou had grabbed onto the giant firearm, it would take seconds before his hands could aim it in this state and pull the trigger on his enemy.

  His desperate recovery had failed. Terra’s guillotine crashed toward Kamijou’s side, encompassing the anti-bulkhead shotgun he’d frantically tried to grab as it went.

  A tremendous sha-bam!! echoed throughout the Papal Palace.

  Red blood flew.

  The slimy liquid dropped from Kamijou’s mouth as he doubled over. Unable to block it with his right hand, unable to twist himself out of the way, he had taken the hit straight to the gut. Energy seeped from his body.

  “Wha…?”

  A gasp.

  But Kamijou wasn’t the one who produced it; it came from Terra of the Left’s mouth.

  It was only natural. He’d strengthened his guillotine with his prioritization spell, and yet Kamijou’s body hadn’t come apart in two pieces.

  “…” Kamijou grinned and tightened his right fist around the guillotine poking into his stomach.