Bonus: Chapter X – Pure White Paint that Colors the World ②

"What the…!? The attacks have reached this far!?"

Kamijou had already started the call, but instinctively braced himself. Then, as only small fragments of ceiling rained down, he realized bracing was pointless. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before the entire place collapsed. He had to escape, fast—

He turned toward the spiral staircase built into the wall.

That was when it happened.

With a heavy crash, a particularly large chunk of ceiling came down—unluckily—right at Kamijou’s feet. It didn’t injure him, but instead shattered a capsule lying on the ground.

With a muffled whoomph!, a cloud of powder exploded outward, scattering through the air.

"!! Damn it—!"

Kamijou reflexively clamped both hands over his mouth.

His first thought: the powder could be some sort of chemical. This was a lab conducting research that could never see the light of day. Which meant the substances here were probably illegal.

Of course he would cover his mouth, trying to avoid inhaling it. That much was only natural.

But because of that, he reacted too late.

More ceiling chunks rained down.

And then—

BOOM!!

An instant later, Kamijou was hit by a shockwave that felt like being punched across his entire body, sending him flying several meters.

Kamijou had no way of knowing this, but—

The master of this lab, Otome Bisai, wielded as her weapon a stress conductor: a tool that could guide shockwaves in specific directions. The ability was like a one-way Accelerator for impact. She could cancel recoil, or concentrate her strikes to penetrate deeper.

To make it even more versatile, she had developed a tactic of scattering "Conduction Powder" in the air—a substance especially good at carrying shock. By striking through it and then applying her ability, she could shape the battlefield to her advantage.

On Mars World—the Martian soil she called her lair—this powder was deployed everywhere, ready to assist her whenever combat broke out.

But this time, un-fort-u-nate-ly—

"GuaaaaAAAHHHHH!?"

Kamijou clutched his face, writhing on the ground. His phone clattered away, the ongoing call completely forgotten.

The falling debris had transmitted its kinetic energy through the air and slammed directly into his face—into his cluster of sensory organs. The pain was so sudden and sharp, he was disoriented for several seconds.

And his opponent wasn’t about to wait.

"So, there you were. Enough hide-and-seek. Time to end this."

Through the gaping hole in the ceiling—

The angel of ruin revealed his face.

"……!!"

Kamijou’s throat went dry in an instant.

With a single flap of Kakine’s wings, the spiral staircase could be obliterated. If that happened, Kamijou would lose his only way to the upper floors and be slaughtered like an animal.

Even without that, a mere blast of wind—without relying on phenomenon transformation—could whip the underground lab into chaos. Kamijou would be flung around like a pinball.

The Conduction Powder would be scattered everywhere, and he would be minced meat.

If he tried to run, that fate was certain.

But right now, Kakine Teitoku was ten meters above him. Kamijou’s fist could only reach someone a meter away.

It was literally beyond his reach.

And so—

In desperation, Kamijou grabbed a nearby capsule of Conduction Powder and hurled it straight at Kakine.

"Hah? Some kind of poison brewed in this lab? Pathetic. Like hell that’s gonna—"

Unaware of what it was, Kakine swatted the capsule with his Dark Matter wings.

With a heavy whump!, the powder burst outward, scattering as it carried the shock.

Any ordinary esper would have been completely knocked out by that. But Kamijou didn’t stop to check—he bolted up the spiral stairs.

By now, he had a gut certainty that Kakine wouldn’t fall to something so trivial.

Sure enough—

Even as his footsteps clanged against the metal steps, driving him onward, when Kamijou finally burst out onto the first floor—there stood Kakine. Aside from a bruise on his cheek, he was completely unfazed.

"You sure pulled out an interesting toy. Powder that makes shock travel easier, huh? If you catch me off guard, then yeah, even my Dark Matter’s force rebounds right back at me. But did you never think of the flip side?"

Kakine Teitoku grinned.

Not the kind of grin Kamijou had seen before. This was the savage grin of a predator.

That was when Kamijou noticed—

He felt wind.

Even though he had climbed out of the basement, he was still inside the observatory. There shouldn’t be mountain winds rushing through here.

Which meant—

"No way… I thought the building was shaking, but…!"

The observatory had been completely erased.

"Before the powder could do its job, the Dark Matter surrounding me twisted its properties—that’s how it is!!"

As if his roar were the command, the lingering powder unnaturally collapsed in on itself, like a tape rewinding, gathering into a single mass.

And then—

"That right hand of yours that cancels powers—it’s still just part of a human body, right? Once I break the sound barrier, there’s no way you can react!"

KA-BOOM!!

With a deafening crack, like the entire atmosphere had been slapped with a giant rug-beater, the blast tore forward.

It rushed at Kamijou three times faster than a Railgun.

Chapter 3 – The Worth of a Soul Is Worthless  Double(Square)_Faith.
Bonus: 
        Chapter X – Pure White Paint that Colors the World II  Dark_Matter.

"………………Why?"

Instead of the triumphant one-liner he should have delivered after landing a killing blow, Kakine’s lips let slip words of disbelief.

The strike he had launched—moving three times faster than a Railgun—should have been enough to level a human being with its shockwave alone. Yet it hadn’t toppled the boy standing before him, arm raised. It had been erased.

"How!? How can you block it!? With just a right hand!! You don’t have any special power besides that! So how the hell does someone like you swat aside an attack from the Number Two like it’s nothing!?"

"…Just as I thought."

Kamijou didn’t answer Kakine’s rage with words. Instead, he quietly worked through the conclusion he had been building toward.

"I’d always thought something was off. Unlike the Number One—too strong for his own good, ending fights before he learns a damn thing—you’re different. You’ve been fighting nonstop in this city. As a pro. You should have stacked up a mountain of battle experience."

Like that shady blond kid with the sunglasses.

"A guy like you, even in this situation, still hasn’t managed to finish me. That fact alone reeked of something being wrong."

The wall between “pro” and “amateur” is thick. Kamijou knew it well—he’d already hit his knees in front of it once. Level gaps didn’t matter. A pro’s resolve, a pro’s technique—those aren’t something an amateur can improvise their way through. Even if you match them for a second, the difference in real strength will crush you almost instantly.

And yet Kakine Teitoku still hadn’t finished off Kamijou Touma.

"You’ve been shackled all this time, unable to play your real hand."

Kamijou declared it outright.

"If you’d just stayed in the sky, bombarding me from above with Dark Matter, I’d have stood no chance. If you’d used high-speed movement to circle into my blind spot again and again, I wouldn’t have lasted a second."

That would’ve been a foul move. But that’s what pros did. They collected foul moves, strung them into strategies, and wielded them without hesitation. That was the kind of “pro” Kamijou had seen.

So if Kakine wasn’t choosing those tactics, there had to be a rational explanation.

"…Pathetic. You’re saying I was pulling punches just because I wanted to crush that right hand of yours with Dark Matter alone?"

"Even if that were true, the logic doesn’t hold. You could’ve just spammed abilities. Even if I erased them, you could’ve immediately fired off the next. I’d be stuck using my right hand just to defend, and eventually the numbers game would grind me down."

It was true—when Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker canceled a phenomenon created by Dark Matter, the underlying Dark Matter was erased too.

But that was all it did: erase. It didn’t put any restrictions on Kakine re-activating his power. Which meant—

"Dark Matter can’t restart right away after it’s forcibly canceled. That’s the catch, isn’t it?"

The flaw in Dark Matter.

"Think about it. Creating a substance that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world, then manipulating it? Running the calculations for how the world behaves with that foreign element stitched into it? You’re telling me a power like that comes with zero cost? No way. When Imagine Breaker forcibly shuts it down, the calculations themselves get cut off too. With all that load dumped on you, there’s no way you can reboot instantly."

Even without the computation load, there was the psychological damage. Having your one absolute power negated over and over—no matter how much you understood it—would chip away at you. Little by little, it would drag you down.

That was why Kakine had hesitated. Why he had held back on using his ability.

That was why the Number Two hadn’t been able to kill a so-called powerless high school boy.

"If your wings vanished while you were flying, unless you were at a ridiculous altitude you’d hit the ground before you could re-activate. If you were moving at high speed and I canceled you, you’d lose control as plain flesh and grind yourself across the pavement like cheese on a grater. Of course you barely dared to use it."

In other words—

"That’s why you fed me excuses earlier about not carrying me with your ability! My guess? When you fought Gensei, you tried to use it on me, I canceled it, and that’s when you realized just how dangerous Imagine Breaker really was!"

Kakine Teitoku was… afraid. Afraid of the powerless boy standing in front of him.

“…So what if I am?”

Even with everything laid bare—even his own fear dragged into the open—Kakine kept a twisted smile glued to his face.

“You really think you’re the only one who’s figured out the rules here?! I already know the weakness of that right hand of yours! The power to cancel abilities only exists past your wrist!”

The instant the words left his mouth, three pairs of wings scattered into countless feathers, swarming around them.

Naturally, the ones that brushed against Kamijou’s right hand were erased. But because the feathers were split apart, erasing one didn’t wipe out the whole swarm.

“When I rained feathers down on you before, you dodged instead of blocking. Which means—when I split the Dark Matter into fragments, your hand couldn’t erase it all! And—”

Rumble, rumble.

The ground touched by the feathers began to swell and crack.

“‘Eruption.’ You didn’t block that one either. Which means your right hand alone can’t stop it. So if I just unleash a storm of these things—more than that right hand of yours can keep up with—then no matter what you do, I’ll crush you for sure!!”

“……!!”

“Heh. What’s the matter, looking pale now? Don’t kid yourself. I already finished analyzing you.”

Cornered, in the moment where life or death would be decided—Kamijou charged straight at him.

Kakine faltered for a heartbeat, then smirked.

“I see. You think closing the distance puts me in danger too? That my attacks might catch me in the blast if you get too close? Don’t underestimate me. I don’t just use distorted phenomena. I con-trol them.”

With a twitch of the last pair of wings, Kakine braced himself. Even at close range, he wouldn’t get caught in his own attack.

But Kamijou’s move was something Kakine never saw coming.

Kamijou Touma was… touching the ground.

Kakine sneered when he noticed.

“Hah! What, you gonna snuff out each ‘eruption’ one by one? Pathetic! I split the Dark Matter precisely to overwhelm your processing speed. Even if you go all out trying to erase each one—”

“Who said I was erasing your ability?”

“…What?”

Then he realized. The feeling of Dark Matter hadn’t disappeared. He could sense where every fragment he controlled was. And normally, if his power was erased by that right hand, that sense would vanish immediately. But when Kamijou touched the ground—nothing changed. His control remained intact.

Worse—there hadn’t even been any Dark Matter at the spot Kamijou touched. No ‘eruption,’ nothing at all.

“…Don’t tell me…”

“And more than that. Those ‘particles’ I threw before? I didn’t scatter them for your sake. I had someone else in mind. She always uses something invisible at times like this.”

The last of the conductive powder still floated faintly around the battlefield. Against that pale white dust, something invisible was made visible—transparent fractures floating in the air.

—Reicia Blackguard’s air manipulation worked by creating ‘cocoons’ of cracks, then releasing them to precisely control the airflow that rushed in to fill the void.

Even now she was locked in her own fight. Kamijou couldn’t count on her direct help. But with Baba’s remote-feed relaying the battle, if Reicia learned Kamijou’s situation, she would at least spare the thought to plant a few ‘cocoons’ in advance.

Kamijou had gambled on that. And the conductive powder he’d scattered earlier—that was his way of checking. To paint those invisible cocoons with pure white color.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me—!!”

“Not a chance. You should know her better than anyone. Reicia Blackguard—the kind of girl who’d say she wants to save even the bastard who hurt what she loves most. That’s who she is.”

Kamijou thought of two girls’ faces, their stubborn kindness etched in his mind. And along with them—the profile of the one man they had both tried to protect.

Imagine Breaker brushed against a ‘fracture.’

The released cocoon howled, birthing a storm. And into that storm, Kamijou flung the capsules of conductive powder he had taken from the underground lab—

"I’ll protect her illusion!!"

CRAAAASH!!

The capsule, carried on a violent gale, slammed in.
Kakine tried to shield himself with his wings at the last moment, but with only one pair left after being split apart, he couldn’t hope to block out the cloud of dust.

Soaked in it almost completely, Kakine was blown back several meters without even touching the ground.

──But no eruption followed.
With Kakine’s consciousness knocked out, all the divided Dark Matter vanished.

Seeing that, Kamijou walked up to him. Kakine lay flat on his back, his wings gone.

"Phew… looks like that worked. Guess I should go back and back up the other two…?"

"No, you won’t need to."

There wasn’t even time to glance down.

WHOOMPH!!

Kamijou’s body was smacked aside by Dark Matter, sent flying through the air like a rag doll.

The only reason he wasn’t killed was simple—he was too close. It wasn’t a controlled strike from the wings, just the raw burst when they appeared. That tiny twist of luck saved his life.
Otherwise, his upper body would’ve already been reduced to a cloud of blood.

"Guh… GAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!?"

"You clueless little surface brat. Running your mouth, spewing laughable sermons like you’ve got it all figured out. Don’t you get it!? Playing hero, you’re the one cutting off Ringo’s only chance at salvation!"

Kakine Teitoku stood up.

By all logic, he shouldn’t have been able to. His whole body had been pummeled by storms and the transferred energy of Dark Matter, more than enough to keep him down.
Yet he forced himself up on sheer willpower, pushing past the agony and driving his brain to the limit.

"What else am I supposed to do…!? In this city’s darkness, saving someone without sacrifice is impossible from the start!! You have to choose what matters most to you and throw away the rest. Live any other way, and you’ll lose what’s truly important. That’s how this city’s darkness is built!!!!"

Hearing those words, Kamijou pushed himself to his feet as well.

"You’ve just been playing hero in the lukewarm safety of the surface, and now you act like you know something? Crushing the future of an innocent kid while wearing that righteous mask? Don’t give me that crap! If the one who dies is just some scumbag, then what’s the problem!? One bastard dies and a good person is saved—who the hell would complain!? There’s nothing wrong with compromising that much!!!!"

"…Don’t screw with me."

Growling like a beast, the spiky-haired boy muttered.

He was wrecked himself. His school uniform was still abandoned in the underground lab, and the orange polo shirt beneath was scorched from battle. His knees were beginning to give out; even standing was becoming a struggle.

But still, Kamijou Touma would not bend.

"You’re the one giving up before even trying. ‘It’s fine if it’s a bad guy’? ‘Just compromise a little’? Weren’t you the one who fought this hard because you refused to lose to that kind of worthless surrender!?"

Baring his fangs, Kamijou roared.
Step by step, he pushed forward.

"Could you say that pathetic excuse straight to Ringo’s face? ‘In this city’s darkness, I couldn’t save you without sacrifice, so I had someone else die in your place’—you’d really throw that worthless excuse at the girl who looks up to you!?"

"…!"

Kakine Teitoku’s foot slid one step back.
Perhaps pressured—by a powerless Level 0 standing right before him.

"What you’re saying amounts to nothing more than this—you’re spewing pathetic excuses, dumping everything on Ringo’s shoulders. …And you dare to call that ‘saving’ someone?"

"…Shut up."

"What you’re doing isn’t saving anyone. You dress it up with nice-sounding words, but all you’re really doing is stripping away any escape and forcing the one you wanted to protect to bear a cross: ‘I’m alive because someone else was sacrificed.’ That’s not salvation. That’s the worst kind of cruelty."

"I said… shut up."

"No one can be saved without sacrifice in this city’s darkness? Don’t make me laugh. That’s just your experience. I know people who fought in a darkness far deeper than anything you’ve ever seen, and still managed to protect what mattered most. Idiots who coughed up blood, got called liars, and still fought to the bitter end to protect their world. Men who threw away their very missions, even risked rejection, just to entrust the defense of their world to the woman they loved. …Compared to people like that, your self-righteous logic isn’t worth a damn. It’s nothing!!"

"I told you to shut the hell up, you goddamn bastard AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"

The premise was ignored.

Even the searing pain tearing through his brain was ignored as Kakine’s three pairs of wings extended to a grotesque length behind him.

They expanded at once—hundreds of meters in an instant—then swung with his rage. By now, they weren’t strikes anymore. They were something worse: the very air, turned into a weapon. The aftershocks alone carried enough force to kill.

Even if Kamijou touched the Dark Matter with his right hand, just like with the “fracture,” the moment it was dispelled, a storm would erupt around Kakine and tear everything apart.

But even knowing that, Kamijou did not stop.

"If you’re just going to keep giving up—if you’re going to lock yourself away inside that suffocating despair you defined as your own ‘common sense’…"

He pulled back his right fist like a drawn arrow.

"…then first, I’ll shatter that cramped little illusion of yours!!!!"

And then—Kamijou Touma’s right fist slammed straight into Kakine Teitoku’s face.

Naturally, the storm raged.

And at its center, Kamijou and Kakine should have been torn apart, taking fatal damage—at least, that was what Kamijou half expected.

But what met him instead was… the soft, floating sensation of something gentle wrapping around him.

"…Honestly. You never change, do you? Always so reckless."

"I figured you two would come to back me up… Shiren, Reicia."

Hundreds of meters of Dark Matter spread across the battlefield.

Seeing that, Reicia—specialist in storms caused by space compression—would instantly grasp the danger it posed. That was why Kamijou had been able to bet on her intervention. Though, even if no help had been coming, he probably would’ve punched Kakine anyway.

"…Ah! Wait! What about Kakine!?"

"You needn’t worry about him."

Startled, Kamijou lifted his head. Kakine too had been retrieved by someone else.

A boy wearing a headgear shaped like Saturn’s rings had slung Kakine over his shoulder like a sack of rice. From the look of it, he had no intention of continuing the fight, and was preparing to retreat.

"…Oh, right."

As if remembering something, Kamijou raised his voice.

"Thanks—for everything, Shiren, Reicia."

The only reply was a faint blush coloring the pale cheeks of the white-skinned girl.