Chapter 127: The End of the Plan
In that instant, it felt as though the flow of the world itself had slowed.
The blade of light unleashed from Gensei-san’s hand severed Touma-san’s right arm cleanly from the root────
"!!!!"
Immediately afterward, as I registered Touma-san’s right arm beginning to fall from his shoulder, I focused on deploying a ‘Fissure’.
The target was the cut surface of Touma-san’s arm. By using the ‘Fissure’ to cover the wound, I could attempt to stop the bleeding. If I locked it down in a way that covered the whole shoulder, the blood loss should be greatly reduced. From here, if I went full speed, the hospital was close. With an injury of this level, Heaven Canceller-sensei could handle it immediately…!
《Idiot!! Shiren, not that way!!!!》
──But my train of thought was crushed in an instant by Reicia-chan’s sharp voice.
《Get a grip!! When Kamijou Touma’s right arm is cut off, what appears—don’t tell me you forgot!?》
"Ah!!"
Her words jogged my memory at last.
The Aureolus battle. The Fiamma battle. The Othinus battle. The Kamisato Kakeru battle.
Whenever Imagine Breaker, our trump card, was severed, something unknown would manifest from Kamijou Touma’s right arm and bare its fangs at the enemy before him.
The undeniable truth────something lurks behind Imagine Breaker!!
《Aureolus lost his memory. Kamisato Kakeru suffered some massive damage. If that same effect applies to Nurikae? With the damage he’s already taken from Gensei’s reckless double-layer personality Square Face, he has no room left to withstand something like that……!!》
《…………!!》
But if I acted now with awareness of the ‘something’ that would emerge from Touma-san’s right arm, it would without question seem unnatural. Touma-san had been pushed this far. Aleister was surely observing us, and Gensei-san was staring at us from right in front. Showing knowledge of something we shouldn’t possibly know would massively raise the risk of drawing the suspicion of the hidden masterminds in this city──no, of the Magic Gods lurking behind the world, watching from somewhere.
I fully recognized that risk.
And then.
"Touma-san!! Please, somehow hold ‘that’ back!!"
I chose to ignore that risk.
There was no time for hesitation. Compared to the danger to Nurikae-san’s life, the risk of us being marked or feared by Magic Gods or Aleister was insignificant. If things had already come to this, then the usefulness of our ‘true history’ knowledge was already almost worthless anyway. But it was far too late to worry about that.
Ever since Daihaseisai, not a single event we knew had happened as expected.────Once I resolved myself to that, it felt strangely like some unseen gears had clicked tightly into place.
"!"
And then, it happened.
Without a sound.
As if salt were crystallizing in saline water, from the spot where Touma-san’s right arm had been──a ‘dragon’ appeared out of nowhere.
Without a sound, that dragon rushed straight for Gensei-san.
With a crunch, it devoured half of Gensei-san’s body.
No──not physically.
In the three-dimensional world, Gensei-san had narrowly evaded the dragon’s strike. And yet, I could clearly see that some residual force of the attack had consumed part of the ‘power’ Gensei-san possessed.
"Wha──!? Th-this is……!? The power I had stored……!? Wh-what!? Ha, ha, hahahahaha! What is this power!! Show me more…… show me more, Kamijou-kun!!!!"
"…………!!"
《This is bad! He’s completely lost himself before an unknown phenomenon beyond his comprehension! He’s heading straight down Kihara’s death route!!!!》
"I know that already……ッ!!"
With a heavy thud, I slammed ‘Remnant Matter’ sideways into Gensei-san, shoving him back as he tried to lunge toward the dragon. For an ordinary person, that would have been instant death, but for Gensei-san, who had the output of an ‘angel’, it wasn’t a problem. ……No, with half his power already eaten, maybe he took some real damage.
Either way, I pushed that concern aside for now and turned my gaze to the dragon that had tried to devour Gensei-san.
──Dragon Strike, the Fangs of the Dragon King.
I recognized that form. Not from my experience after possession, but from memory before that.──From Old Testament, Volume 2. The delusion of the alchemist who sought to grasp the entire world. The vision made manifest by Kamijou Touma’s words.…………A vision.
《N-no way!? A-a real dragon!? Wasn’t that just Aureolus’s imagination!? That was supposed to be an illusion he perceived, judging the invisible force from Touma’s right arm through the lens of his own common sense……!》
《No……that was just one interpretation!! In fact, the idea that Aureolus could pull such a concrete image out of nothing was what never made sense!! It wasn’t produced by Ars Magna Golden Transmutation. That was something that truly manifested from Touma-san’s right arm! If anything……maybe everything that came after was the uncertain part!?》
Hypotheses were endless.
We had plenty of clues, but nothing decisive. The only option was to act as if the most immediate explanation was fact.……A bet with our very lives on the line. It made my skin crawl……but there was no other way.
"Then we’ll just have to finish it here and now……!"
The being lurking inside Touma-san’s right arm──Dragon Strike, the Fangs of the Dragon King, was not invincible.
Yes, its record was dazzling, defeating Aureolus with his omnipotent power and Fiamma with his ultimate might. But in truth, Aureolus was caught by Touma-san’s bluff, and Fiamma had failed to fully seize control of Imagine Breaker. At the moment Dragon Strike clashed, neither could be said to have been at their full condition.
Moreover, in the battle against Fiamma, Touma-san himself suppressed Dragon Strike by his own will. In that scene, readers had called Dragon Strike “Chuujou-san,” but the reality didn’t seem to match that.
At any rate, since Touma-san could seal it with his own will, and since Othinus defeated it with ease, Dragon Strike was by no means an unstoppable instant-death entity. That meant that maybe, just maybe, we could stand against it.……No, if we couldn’t, then everything would be over!!
To save Nurikae-san safely, and to survive ourselves. For that……this dragon must be defeated!!
The moment I braced myself, my eyes met the dragon’s. That pressure—it was just like the presence on the other side of that “rift” Index had once opened.
It was then that we realized. …This is bad. This isn’t an opponent we can beat. Buying time, stalling, none of those naïve ideas would work here. This was something far beyond our league. The kind of existence only Magic Gods, the very top of the world’s hierarchy, could face head-on. To fight against it, jagged edge wasn’t enough…!?
Just as something inside me began to surge up along with a wave of anxiety—
“…Not your turn yet.”
Touma-san pressed a hand to his shoulder and muttered quietly.
“Shiren and Reicia are my precious juniors. I won’t let them get hurt.”
BOOOOM!!! The instant Touma-san said that, the dragon burst apart like steam dissipating into the air—and standing there afterward was Touma-san, with his right arm completely restored.
…What???
Chapter 3 – The Worth of a Soul is Worthless: Double(Square)_Faith.
Episode 101: End of the Plan – Haphazard_Drive.
Same day, same time, at an undisclosed location.
In a room without a single window, where only the glow of monitors lit up the darkness like starlight, a human figure suspended upside down muttered just one phrase.
"────This has turned into quite the mess."
"Uh… Touma-san?"
Cautiously, I approached Touma-san and tried to check the condition of his right hand. His shirt sleeve had been blown apart around the shoulder, and without a doubt, his right arm had been blown clean off once. This wasn’t an illusion. But now… clearly, the arm had grown back, hadn’t it?
N-no, wait. Sure, it grew back during the fight with Fiamma, and if I think back, after the battle with Aureolus, Heaven Canceler-sensei did say something like he had a “fantasy body” (if I remember right). So I guess that means his arm really did just grow back on its own.
Still, seeing it this close is shocking. His arm really grows back…
"Ah, it’s fine now. …But what do we do from here? Looks like Reicia managed to take down Gensei…"
"No."
On that point, I answered briefly.
It was true Gensei-san had taken a clean hit, and his movements were sluggish. However, according to air-flow detection, he was already getting back on his feet, and there seemed to be no problem continuing the fight.
The dragon had eaten up about half of his strength earlier, but even so, his power was off the charts to begin with. Even cut down by half, he still far surpassed any human, so it was only natural that much wouldn’t be a finishing blow.
"Gensei-san… can still fight. But we can’t rely on that dragon anymore. There’s no telling what kind of harm it might cause to Nurikae-san’s body."
"Yeah. I know. If we hit him with that one more time, things might get seriously bad…"
Touma-san lowered his gaze to his right hand.
"But it’s fine. We’ve got Shiren and Reicia here. We’ll make it through."
Ugh… There he goes again, saying embarrassing things like it’s nothing…
《Shiren. If you get flustered here, you’ll be no different from any other run-of-the-mill heroine. Accept it as natural. This is where you show the composure of the rightful wife.》
《The fact that Reicia-chan already embodies that is pretty amazing…》
Seriously… this girl’s mental fortitude when it comes to romance is unreal. Now that I think about it, it always has been.
"But because I withdrew, the doppelgänger is now free to roam. What are we supposed to do about that…?"
"Ah, you don’t have to worry about that, y’know."
────And then.
Just as we were discussing, a voice suddenly called out from the side.
Sugary-sweet, as if drenched in honey──
"Shokuhou-san!?"
The Fifth Ranked, Shokuhou Misaki.
…Come to think of it, wasn’t it because of Shokuhou-san’s request that Mikoto-san got involved in this case to begin with? If so, then even with Gensei-san barging in and warping the whole incident, Shokuhou-san might have been working hard behind the scenes to keep the reins steady…
And now that Touma-san had stepped in, it was only natural for her to make contact.
"Aah, I’ve got a pretty good grasp of the situation. Honestly, I didn’t expect Misaka-san’s idiot-level electric power to become useless, so I was a teensy bit flustered, but still…"
"…And you are…?"
"Oh, don’t worry about me☆ After all, you won’t remember me anyway, and the nature of our relationship is just like that, isn’t it?"
Shokuhou-san dismissed Touma-san’s bewildered remark with a sharp cut and instead gave me a sidelong glance.
…Ah, so she’s telling me to cover for Touma-san’s suspicions that come from his memory gaps. Well, after that whole Exterior incident, I more or less got a peek at the circumstances. I suppose I owe her at least that much.
I nodded silently.
"But that’s still a problem. With Misaka’s combat strength lost, our forces are down to myself, the ‘Member,’ Hokaze, and Yumiya’s little sister, but…"
"Don’t just go counting my Hokaze without asking, okayぁ?"
Shokuhou-san pouted, lips sticking out.
"There’s no need to worry. As for Misaka-san, I gave her a liiittle bit of help. She should at least be able to hold her ground in a tug-of-war, don’t you thinkぁ?"
"…………?"
What does that mean…? A tug of war…?
Well, if Shokuhou-san says there’s no need to worry, then maybe there really isn’t…
"Anyway. That’s how it is, so you can leave the doppelgänger to Misaka-san. You all just focus your strength on Gensei, okay?"
Listening to her instructions, I suddenly found myself wondering.
Sure, the information was a godsend to us. But couldn’t she have just told us over the phone? Considering that she’s the physically weakest among us, why would Shokuhou-san bother showing up in person if she was already supporting Misaka-san somehow…?
《No, there is a very big reason.》
As I tilted my head in doubt, Reicia-chan flatly declared it.
《Her beloved darling is working together with a love rival, you know? Obviously she’d want to interfere. That’s the natural thought process.》
《Ehh…》
C-come on, that’s way too simplistic… Whether she’s on the battlefield or not shouldn’t really matter for the outcome of love, should it…?
《Besides.》
Reicia-chan started to add onto her absurd commentary when—
BZZZZZTTTT!!!! Lightning struck down right beside Shokuhou-san. …No, not quite.
《Her trusted aide is out there getting injured while still fighting. That woman isn’t the kind of “queen” who would just sit back and watch in silence.》
──Like a heavenly maiden clad in a robe of violet lightning.
She must have prepared a change of clothes after retreating earlier. Dressed in an immaculate Tokiwadai uniform without a single tear, Hokaze-san now stood there.
"Hokaze. You can fight, right?"
"Of course, My Queen."
As if in answer to their exchange, the distant sky revealed the silhouette of Gensei-san, seemingly recovered at least to a minimum.
──Even halved, he was still on the level of an angel.
But our side’s forces weren’t falling behind either.
Rampage Dress.
Mental Out.
Jagged Edge.
And──Imagine Breaker.
This time for sure────we’ll rescue Nurikae-san from Gensei-san’s clutches!!!!
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