Chapter 181: The Chairman’s True Worth (Part 1)
“Ha!”
The reconciliation between Reicia Blackguard and Shiren Blackguard—
that simple fact produced results far beyond a mere boost in fighting power.
“Hahahahaha!! Of course! That’s just the kind of people you two are!!”
“…Honestly. Reicia and Shiren are always like this. I was going to lend a hand, but they just go and fix everything themselves.”
“But… now the situation’s much clearer.”
“The mastermind’s power—it all comes from a single source. Which means our target’s obvious now.”
“Tch. This is exactly why I didn’t wanna take this part. Way outta my league.”
The atmosphere among the boys and girls who had been fighting beside Shiren began to shift—noticeably for the better.
All it took was one more ally. Even though their opponent was still the mysterious ruler of the city—whose strength was still unknown—and even though the situation left no room for carelessness, their spirits soared far beyond what a simple reinforcement could bring.
“It sounds like you’re already acting as if you’ve won.”
In response, Aleister swung his silver staff.
200, 200, 90, 40, 300, 6, 40, 10, 8.
Sparks flared—accompanied by bursts of numerical imagery—like a cascade of dazzling fireworks. And just as Aleister’s pantomime began to give shape to illusion made real—
“Numerology—Gematria! Maybe it means ‘cluster bomb’!?”
Urged on by Index’s cry, Kamijou Touma charged forward.
Before the illusion could detonate, his right fist smashed into it, shattering the spell, and he glared straight at Aleister.
“…‘Acting like we’ve already won’? My cute junior just pulled off a comeback this incredible. If I didn’t answer that with everything I’ve got, that’d be a damn lie.”
Kamijou Touma.
Index.
Misaka Mikoto.
Shokuhou Misaki.
Accelerator.
The unshakable heroes who had defined the mainline history now surrounded Reicia and Shiren, standing together to face the final evil—Aleister himself.
Clenching his right fist, the spiky-haired boy at their lead declared:
“Get ready. From here on out, I won’t let you destroy a single one of my junior’s dreams!!”
Final Chapter: I Don’t Know Anything About “Predetermined Harmony” - Theory “was” Broken.
Episode 152: The Chairman’s True Worth (Part 1) - The_Fallen.
“So—‘not a single thing,’ was it?”
Aleister didn’t flinch at Kamijou’s declaration. Instead, he lightly swung his staff. The same numerological spell—a spiritual sweep kick—ignited once more as Kamijou focused on Index’s murmured words, trying to predict his next move. But beside him, Accelerator was already in motion.
“If we just sit back reacting to every move, we’ll be bled dry. The only way to handle idiots like this is to crush them before they can do a damn thing.”
The gust from his casually swung right arm solidified into four transparent spears that shot toward Aleister. In response, Aleister flicked his wrist like a conductor directing an orchestra.
The sparks that scattered formed the sequence: 8, 6, 90, 50, 9, 10, 2, 200, 300.
“…‘Conductor’s baton’?”
Index frowned, puzzling over the meaning behind the numbers.
The spiritual sweep kick functioned by projecting the image of Aleister’s pantomime directly into his opponent’s mind, forcing them to experience that illusion as real. Normally, Aleister’s precision far exceeded human limits, allowing him to reproduce anything—from modern cluster bombs to even imaginary weapons that didn’t exist.
And yet, a baton?
An image with seemingly no offensive purpose?
The answer came an instant later.
BOOOOM!!
The air itself exploded without warning, wiping out all four of Accelerator’s air spears in a single blast.
“Wh—What the hell!?”
“Tch…! Damn final boss never runs outta tricks, huh!!”
Clicking his tongue, Accelerator shot into high-speed flight to evade the following bombardment. But Index’s widening eyes weren’t from confusion—they were from realization she still couldn’t fully comprehend.
“I think I’ve got the basics of Aleister’s spell figured out,” she said quickly. “He uses pantomime to etch a weapon’s image into his opponent’s mind—and through sympathetic magic, that imagined weapon inflicts real damage.”
“Sounds like some kinda… placebo effect?” Kamijou tilted his head.
“That’s not the scary part.”
Index’s tone hardened. “The weapon isn’t real—it only affects targets linked to the mental image. That means… attacks shouldn’t be able to cancel each other out!”
And yet Aleister had done exactly that—nullifying Accelerator’s strike with a blast that by all rights shouldn’t exist. It meant he’d bypassed the spiritual sweep kick’s own rules through another mechanism entirely.
And the core of that mechanism was most likely—
“…That black-and-white haze. It’s doing something… I’m sure of it.”
Even with all her knowledge, Index couldn’t identify the true nature of that strange mist drifting protectively around Aleister.
“How troublesome,” Reicia murmured. “If he can detonate space itself without warning, your right hand won’t be able to time a counter.”
“I agree,” said Shiren. “It feels like he’s factoring that uncertainty into his plan.”
The sisters’ quiet exchange carried a strange weight. Normally inseparable, seeing them converse apart was oddly unsettling—yet their alternating rhythm was so natural it seemed as if they’d always fought this way.
“I’ll move in first. As long as my head stays intact, I can endure three hits.”
“What!? That’s insane!” Shiren cried.
Ignoring her sister’s protest, Reicia charged forward. Her body—constructed from AIM diffusion fields—granted her the agility of a wild beast. Her movements were so sharp and unpredictable that even aiming at her became difficult; that alone gave her a layer of defense.
But Reicia wasn’t relying on that.
“You think you can slip past my attacks?”
“Of course not.”
Clap!
A sharp, ringing sound split the air—Shiren’s clapping echoing like a bell.
“──Reicia! One second! As long as the sound lingers, Aleister can’t cast spells! Do it now!!”
“Unfortunately for you, even apart, we’re still one and the same! No matter how many hidden tricks you have—it ends here!”
Reicia’s high kick swung toward Aleister’s neck. He ducked, anticipating the strike—but her speed was overwhelming. Before he could move again, Reicia spun midair and slammed her foot down with a heavy thud, regaining her stance.
Then, drawing back her right hand, she seized Aleister by the face and smashed him into the ground.
“…Yikes. That’s brutal,” Shokuhou muttered from afar.
A blow to the face was one thing—but grabbing the head and driving it into the earth concentrated all force on the skull. It was a killing strike, far more lethal than a simple punch.
Not out of malice, but of calculation: “If I don’t go this far, it won’t even hurt him.”
“…Tch. Miscalculated.”
Her judgment had been correct—and still not enough.
Reicia’s right arm was gone, severed clean at the shoulder. Meanwhile, Aleister—whose head should have been buried in the ground—simply fell backward, not a drop of blood spilled.
“Reicia!?”
“If the echo from your footstep hadn’t erased the residual sound, you’d have finished me off,” Aleister said calmly. “It was close, Reicia Blackguard.”
──At point-blank range.
As Shiren reached out to activate the Result Twister to save her sister, Nayuta caught her wrist.
“Nayuta!? What are you—!?”
“The big-sister with Jagged Edge is fine. Accelerator went to help her. More importantly—”
“Aleister’s holding the conductor’s baton! Another one’s coming!!”
WHOOSH!
A violent gust erupted, launching Reicia’s body dozens of meters into the air. A heartbeat later, a massive explosion consumed the area.
Thanks to Kamijou’s right hand, Accelerator’s vectors, and the combined efforts of Nayuta and Misaka, the group managed to contain the blast without suffering major injuries. But Aleister had gained both distance and time—advantages far more dangerous than any weapon he could summon.
“Reicia! Are you alright!?”
“Losing an arm is hardly worth worrying about. Look—see? Fully restorable.”
Reicia raised her arm as the severed limb reattached itself, rewinding the damage in reverse. The sight made Shiren’s chest tighten—not because her sister was careless, but because she viewed herself as a piece on a board, recovery already built into the plan.
Of course, for an ordinary middle-school girl, that mindset was terrifying enough.
“By the way—”
Once the dust settled, a subtle but undeniable change had taken hold of the battlefield.
“...Wait. Did he just add reinforcements?”
“And troublesome ones, at that…”
──Five_Over.OutSider Modelcase “MENTALOUT.”
Round-headed constructs with mechanical tentacles—squidlike, octopuslike—another manifestation of the artificially engineered Fifth Ranked esper. But these were no illusions born of the spiritual sweep; Aleister had summoned them as real, physical weapons.
In the canonical history, these models were designed to merge with a human host. Yet in this twisted timeline, Aleister’s summoned versions showed no trace of humanity.
Their purpose became clear immediately.
BZZZT—
Aleister’s figure shimmered, then vanished—like static on a broken television screen.
Magnetic-Control Display.
Essentially, a hyper-precise form of projection mapping. Normally, this “Outsider” system recreated a target’s external world so convincingly it forced them to doubt their own senses—Maybe it’s my perception that’s wrong—and thus manipulated their psyche.
But Aleister didn’t need such complexity here. To achieve his goal, simply hiding himself was enough.
With access to coordinate-free bombardment, Aleister could attack from anywhere. Concealed, he was untouchable—while his strikes rained freely from every direction. A truly invincible setup.
“Misaka!”
“No good…! He’s jamming us with interference waves! I can’t detect his position electromagnetically!”
Shiren’s call for help met only Misaka’s frustrated shake of the head. Aleister had already accounted for such countermeasures.
Realizing time was slipping away, Shiren began to activate the Malicious Result Twister to suppress Aleister’s advance—
BOOM!!
An explosion erupted somewhere random, cutting her off mid-action.
She froze, breath catching as realization struck.
(Damn it—!! He struck first with sound! As long as that blast’s echo remains, I can’t use the Result Twister!)
Invisible.
Unavoidable.
The moment those two impossibilities closed in—
—they were saved by a sudden tornado of four colors.
“!?”
“This spell…!”
“Glad I made it in time! Everyone—fall back!”
There stood Oriana Thomson, cloaked in her “Original Scripture.”
“I’m interfering with angelic energy right now, so Aleister’s bombardments won’t reach us! Come on—move!”
At her command, Shiren and the others exchanged quick nods and retreated from the battlefield.
Thus ended the first round against Aleister—
not in victory or defeat,
but in a draw, drenched in exhaustion.
"Oriana, are you already alright?"
It was a perfect demonstration of the Tracking Suppression Route Disturb. The group had successfully escaped the battlefield with Aleister and now found temporary refuge in an abandoned hamburger shop.
Inside, Kihara’s Grimoire, Stiyl, Kanzaki, and several others were already gathered. All of them showed signs of fatigue, but at least they had recovered enough to move. Even Oriana Thomson—who should have been heavily exhausted from oxygen deprivation amid the fiery battlefield—appeared stabilized.
"Well, yes. That red-haired boy over there treated me."
"Don’t call me a boy, or I’ll roast you alive… If it’s oxygen deprivation from flames, I’ve got a treatment spell for that. Have you forgotten what my specialty is?"
Stiyl’s usual sarcasm lingered in his voice, but without his intervention, Aleister’s bombardment would have struck them directly. In that sense, he rightfully deserved part of the MVP credit.
But Shiren’s focus was elsewhere. Oriana had claimed she blocked Aleister’s bombardment using her four-colored tornado—that meant she understood the mechanism behind it. Knowledge like that was far more valuable than brute strength.
"More importantly, Oriana—"
"Ah, the true nature of Aleister’s technique?" Oriana cut in, smiling faintly. "If that’s what you’re after, you should probably ask him."
She gestured toward the back of the shop. There, a blond man sat slumped against the wall, breathing heavily. Kihara’s Grimoire met her gaze and spoke.
"…Well, this function was originally meant to be realized through my mechanism. So I’ve got some idea."
He gave a casual shrug.
"It’s a replication of ‘Lucifer, the Bearer of Light.’"
He said it bluntly.
"Do you know what that means?"
"…Uh…"
Naturally, none of them—except Index—knew the full details. Even Shiren and Reicia, versed in canonical history, only recognized Lucifer as a fallen angel. Inevitably, it was Index who answered.
"…It was a being that once sat at God’s right hand. But then it malfunctioned, and that malfunction dragged down thirty percent of Heaven’s forces… Ah."
"Exactly. That’s what Aleister replicated."
Fallen.
The chaos it brings to the battlefield. That black-and-white haze was doing precisely that. For instance, when the remnants of angelic Telesma scattered during battle were affected by it, the “fallen” Telesma went berserk—triggering explosions. The sudden spatial detonations they had witnessed were caused by interference with these invisible angelic forces. Oriana’s four-colored tornado had neutralized that interference, preventing the chain reaction of “falling” energy.
"The berserk state induced by the ‘fall’ of residual Telesma—and the cascading reactions it causes—that’s the true nature of Aleister’s technique," Kihara explained. He paused, frowning slightly. "…Still, there’s something that doesn’t quite sit right with me."
"A part that doesn’t sit right?" Shiren asked.
"No matter how skilled Aleister is, my one hundred and thirty thousand grimoires weren’t just for decoration," Index said, brows furrowing. "Even after seeing the spell multiple times, I couldn’t fully grasp its structure. That suggests it includes non-magical components. It might be a decoy meant to fool me—but still…"
"There’s a hidden mechanism—something rooted in science," Reicia said quietly.
Index nodded. It was a plausible theory. Aleister’s technique likely wasn’t limited to pure magic.
"…But whatever hidden tricks he’s packed into it, it doesn’t matter."
Kihara pushed himself to his feet.
"As I said earlier, this system was originally supposed to function through my mechanism. If I use it to its fullest, I should be able to jam it completely. …Aleister probably intended to finish me off back there, but luckily, a certain magician here managed to keep my body stable. Thanks to that, I’m still alive."
Oriana Thomson—having created a “Grimoire” similar to Kihara’s and capable of operating it in wearable form—had handled the emergency treatment with ease.
Kihara’s sly grin returned, though this time, it carried a warmer edge.
"Leave the neutralization of the ‘Fallen Technique’ to me. You guys focus on one thing—finish Aleister off before he triggers the spell’s full runaway effect."
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