different rails?

(Is it a spell to change something’s precedence like with Terra of the Left? Was it not superhuman strength that let him destroy or swing around those buildings? Did he weaken what was to be destroyed or used?)

Kamijou felt like he was a step away, but he could not quite grasp it.

For one thing, would a Magic God like the High Priest really use the same sort of power as Terra who had remained in the category of human?

But that thought process was the same as giving up on thinking.

It was easy to conclude that a human mind could not understand a Magic God, but that would mean Kamijou had no chance of winning. He would essentially be moving the chess pieces without giving it any thought.

He understood that.

He understood it painfully well, but he still just about threw it all aside.

That was how overwhelming his despair was.

“If you accept defeat after merely being killed, you will never leave the category of magician. Those are the rules of the lower world and they do not apply to Magic Gods like us.”

It was on an entirely different level.

It was just too different.

It felt like running the 100-meter dash at full speed and gasping for breath while crossing the goal only to find that a 42.195 kilometer full marathon awaited you.

Where was the goal?

How far did he have to go to end this battle?

“Kamijou Touma.”

The High Priest tried to rest on his staff, realized there was nothing there, and idly remembered that the golden sword had melted from the heat.

“Do you mind if I ask one – just one – pointless question?”

“What...might that be?”

“There is no need to be so defensive. It is a simple matter.”

The orange and boiling High Priest patted his own shoulders and continued speaking as if nothing had happened.

He said just one thing.

“It feels like everything you are doing here is so uninteresting.”

He sounded bored.

Or perhaps disappointed was the better description.

“It isn’t like you. It isn’t like you at all. Kamijou Touma, did all of this logical fighting come from that girl’s knowledge? Are you being dragged along by her way of thinking? If so, I can understand why this has been so uninteresting.”

“...”

“Ho ho. I thought so!! For one, why didn’t you use Imagine Breaker right away? Normally, when faced with an impossible phenomenon that ignore the laws of physics, the sensible thing to do would be to at least try using your right hand’s power!! Even if that merely proved it did not work, knowing you couldn’t use it would still be a step forward!!”

Kamijou did not know what the High Priest was getting at, but the mummy continued on regardless.

“You ran away as soon as you saw me? Boring. You fled all throughout Academy City? Oh, how boring. Just when it seems I’ve caught up, you use compressed gas cylinders to create magma? Oh! How! Boring!! All of this has been a complete waste of time!! Think how I have to feel going along with it all! I’ve been waiting this whole time for you to use Imagine Breaker against me just once!! To be honest, the one thing that was most like you was the courageous dive from the rooftop at the very beginning! Everything has been so boring ever since that girl showed up!! You’ve shrunk down and curled up! You’ve only been using petty tricks to reduce the amount of damage!!!!!”

“What...are you saying?”

That was all he could say back.

He did not know what the mummy meant.

“There’s never anything ‘interesting’ about fighting. Don’t decide on your own what’s ‘like me’ or not!! If I can keep things peaceful, that’s obviously for the best! If I can keep anything from happening, what could be better!? Why do I have to purposefully turn in the direction I know to be more dangerous!?”

“Is that only because you feel that girl is still nearby?”

It did not get through to the High Priest.

No normal reasoning would reach him.

“Kamijou Touma, you are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. All you have is great talent in one extremely specialized area, yet you have risen to a place so very close to guiding the world. Everyone knows what the right thing to do is, but that does not mean they have the courage to act on it. It is the decisiveness to grasp that opportunity despite the great risk that has brought you so high.”

Someone else was explaining a side of himself he was unaware of.

The situation was almost laughable.

“And yet you have grown so focused on protecting something, that you are abandoning that talent of yours. You’ve grown weak, pathetic, exhausted, and a shadow of your former self. Did you mistake that for growth? What has happened to you would better be described as growing decrepit.”

The High Priest paused for a moment in preparation for his decisive statement.

“You are letting that boring girl drag you around and it is just sad. You are not so small a ‘human’ that you should be contained here.”

Part 4

“!”

Kamijou Touma was not the only one listening to the High Priest.

Misaka Mikoto was as well.

A narrow catwalk was positioned by the wall about twenty meters up in the giant cylindrical space. Tokiwadai Middle School’s Ace hid herself with a hand on the wall that said “Watch out for secondary electromagnetic waves while using precision medical equipment.” Her face twisted like she had been stabbed.

If she had been unwisely standing next to that boy, she would likely have worked to control her expression.

But that proved impossible when she was on her own.

After all, the words of that bizarre mummy seemed to tear into her heart.

“If that girl is keeping you from using your right hand, that is a distinct negative.”

There was no ill will there.

It was no different from seeing a plastic bag on the side of the road and wanting to remove it.

“If that girl is keeping you from saying you will destroy my illusions, then she is already tripping you up.”

That was exactly why it stabbed into her.

She had held pride in her position as Tokiwadai Middle School’s Ace, but that meant nothing against this opponent. That was why the sound waves he had not meant to reach her tore into her heart all the more.

“I simply cannot understand it myself, but is it that hard to push someone aside? I would think it is plain as day that girl is nothing but a burden to you. I can’t think of any reason to have kept her with you all this time.”

The title of Academy City’s #3 was meaningless now.

She had no idea how much the category of Level 5 meant in the wider world outside of this city.

“I can understand fleeing the school with her and I can understand keeping her with you until I lost sight of you. But why after that? If you had thrown her out and had her slip into the crowds, you would have been freed from that annoyance, so why did you keep her with you?”

A certain doubt had occurred to her quite a while ago.

Was that boy walking through some distant world? He was not special himself, but was the world surrounding him on a stage or two above her, was he surrounded by people who knew him better than her, and had she fallen behind to the point that she could only see an afterimage of him?

“Take that grimoire library for example. The knowledge of those 103,000 grimoires might have been helpful. And Othinus might have been able to give you some accurate advice from the viewpoint of a Magic God. Then you would have been able to clench your right fist and challenge me to a battle focused on Imagine Breaker. That would be the proper way of doing this, but it all fell apart thanks to that girl. What do you think about this situation?”

She had stretched out her hand, but she had not reached him.

She had thought she only needed to reach out a little more, but that was because she had not wanted to admit she had fallen so far behind.

Wasn’t that all it was?

“Kamijou Touma.”

The girl thought.

Had she really been of any help to that boy?

Had she really done anything that only she could have done?

“Say it now. Tell her to get behind you. Tell her to curl up in the corner and stay put because she is getting in your way.”

That attack made her gasp and her mind nearly went dark.

But she still could not find any way of denying it.

After all, even she could tell.

Kamijou Touma’s actions this entire time had not been like him.

Immediately running from a powerful enemy? Not like him. Facing an opponent with clearly superhuman abilities yet not using the mysterious power that had defeated Academy City’s #1 Level 5? Not like him. Making his final trump card to defeat that powerful enemy a strategy anyone could trigger that was based on normal physics that a girl had told him about? Not like him.

Not like him, not like him, not like him.

He would always act recklessly, ignore efficiency and logic, and simply reach out to grab victory. Watching him had always been so thrilling, but nothing here seemed like it came from that same boy.

In that case, what was forcing him in this other direction?

What was making him suppress himself?

When he had made jokes as the High Priest pursued them and when he had seemed entranced by Nephthys and Niang-Niang on the work ship, she had thought he lacked any tension.

But what if those things had meaning, too?

She could not say this applied to it all, but what if a portion of it had been an act on his part?

What if he had done it to ensure the fear and pressure did not crush Misaka Mikoto’s heart?

And what if that had placed an even larger burden on that boy himself?

The flow of events from Tokyo Bay to Denmark had seemed a mystery to her, but what if that was the same?

It had not been about Kamijou. It had been about Othinus.

He had simply gone along with her, just like with Mikoto now.

He had been determined to protect the girl standing alongside him.

That was beautiful.

But at the same time, it presented Mikoto with an awfully cruel answer.

(Oh...)

She felt like all strength was leaving her body.

Her life was being directly threatened here, but she nearly forgot even that.

(I’m only...to him.)

She gritted her teeth.

Her mind tried to seal that word away to make this even a little easier for her, but she forced it to the surface.

(I’m only a burden to him!!)

This situation strained her very identity.

Still, she had to accept it.

What if she had not been here?

Or what if someone else had been here instead?

The boy named Kamijou Touma probably would have walked an entirely different path. He could have relaxed, let them support him, spread his wings wide, used his strong points to their fullest, and clashed with the High Priest head-on.

That might have been an incredibly dangerous path, but it might also have had the highest odds of victory.

But that path had been sealed.

Thanks to Misaka Mikoto’s presence, the boy who had stopped World War Three and the international terrorist group(?) named Gremlin had been dragged down to a position anyone could fill.

She had accomplished nothing.

It had seemed that boy had moved far ahead of her and that she had not wanted to accept she had fallen behind, but her desperate attempts to catch up had only hindered him and held him back.

Everything she had done had backfired.

She had only been a nuisance.

Misaka Mikoto could only hang her head.

“...oking?”

But then she heard that boy’s voice.

“Are you joking, High Priest? You’re a complete stranger, so quit acting like you know who I am!!”

The basis of it all crumbled away after that one strike.

That was what his words had done.

“I could have chosen a different path if I was with Index? I could have taken the best possible path if I was with Othinus? That’s not what this is about.”

How much courage had it taken to speak those words?

That abnormal monster stood there nonchalantly even while surrounded by magma easily exceeding one thousand degrees. It was impossible to tell whether that mummy was alive or not. How could they defeat him and end this? Was it even possible to end it? Not even that was clear with him, so how difficult had it been to speak those simple words?

But that boy had done it.

He spoke like it was normal.

“It was because Misaka was with me that I made it this far. She kept my trembling legs moving, supported my heart as the pressure bore down on it, and kept me in a position to make jokes. With Index, things may have been too focused on magic. With Othinus, it would have been exclusively about Magic Gods and having a clear understanding of their strength might have crushed me with despair. It was because it was Misaka. I survived this long because she was the one by my side. She saved my life and you want me to tell her to back off because she’s in the way? Who the hell do you think you are!? You don’t understand the first thing about the human emotion of this human world, but you’re trying to act like some all-knowing god!!!!!!”

“Heh heh. Argue from a position of emotion or willpower all you want. It does not change the fact that she was, in fact, a burden. What does that girl understand of magic? Not to mention of the territory known as a Magic God. What use is someone who has fallen so hopelessly behind? Enough pretending, Kamijou Touma. You were honestly growing sick of having to lower the conversation to her level, weren’t you?”

“You’re thinking about this entirely wrong.”

Kamijou Touma did not hold back even when his opponent was truly on an entirely different level.

No.

No.

“It isn’t a question of being useful or not!”

Misaka Mikoto realized a dizzying truth.

It was not that he was on a different level.

At this very moment, Kamijou Touma was rising to another stage and leaving her behind in a way other than the one the High Priest had mentioned.

“Hey, High Priest. I’m not enough of a crazed hero to throw my life away if I’m not supporting something in need of protection! You senile old man!!”

Part of that saved her.

But another part of it she could not accept.

“Take it back.”

Kamijou Touma was admitting that Misaka Mikoto had fallen behind. He was admitting that, yet announcing he would still patiently stick with her. Ultimately, she could not stand on the same stage as him and she had not approached the truth of this “Magic God”. In his mind, she was “something in need of protection”. She was intensely dissatisfied with that.

“So take it back, you piece of shit Magic God!! If you badmouth the person who saved my life any more, I’ll go punch you just like you want!!”

But what did that matter?

Was that any reason to stop?

“I don’t care if you’re covered in magma or if you’re over one thousand degrees! Imagine Breaker? I don’t need that for you and I don’t care if it doesn’t work on you! I don’t care if my fist melts away or if my entire body bursts into flames. Yeah, if you don’t shut that filthy mouth of yours right this instant, I’ll keep punching you until you finally do!!!!!!”

The boy was ignoring their original plan and putting his own life in danger. His every word stabbed into Mikoto’s chest and filled her with countless emotions.

If she had fallen behind, then she had to gather her strength and move forward more than anyone else. The greater her debt, the more she had to build up speed and catch up as soon as possible. Wasn’t that all this was?

“I see,” said the High Priest.

Most importantly, hadn’t she made up her mind from the very beginning?

It went back to Sargasso in Tokyo Bay and the trip to Denmark where he made an enemy of the world.

“Was it emotion that led you to the peace of mind we so yearned for?”

“Grit your teeth, High Priest. This might ruin my right hand and I might really have to get it amputated at the hospital, but I’ll trade that arm for your face!! Prepare yourself because I’m going to keep beating you until you realize the error of your ways!!”

She had decided she would ask Kamijou Touma what had happened to him at that time and that place. She had been prepared to accept it no matter how inconvenient a truth was hidden there.

Hadn’t that been her way of catching back up?

(I’ll do it.)

In that case, this was no time to be sitting around worrying.

(I swear I’ll do it.)

If she had any complaints and if she had things she wanted to correct...

(I’ll catch up to him!!)

She had to start by telling him!!

Part 5

Even with Imagine Breaker, it seemed unlikely he could negate the Magic God portion of the High Priest. Even after all the contact he had with Othinus, she had never died.

Even if he desperately punched the mass of molten rock, it seemed unlikely that strike would break the High Priest. He only had the physical strength of a high school boy. He doubted it would do any damage to the High Priest who had endured the previous fierce attacks as casually as having a chat over tea.

That was why the resolution relied on something else.

“Why are you letting the blood rush to your head, you idiot!!”

Just as Kamijou Touma clenched his fist as hard as rock and prepared to take the first step toward the orange and burning High Priest, he heard a shout.

“Isn’t there something better you can do than let that magma man set you ablaze!?”

There was something else that felt much closer by than his mysterious right hand.

The look in his eyes changed when he heard the girl.

“...Tch.”

Meanwhile, the crimson mummy known as the High Priest clearly clicked his tongue.

He seemed to be giving up on something.

He seemed to be saying he would find someone else to be the scorer who influenced the world, created the seventh path, and became the sheath for the Magic Gods’ power.

He did not hesitate to drag his 1000+ degree body toward Kamijou.

But the boy was not bound in place and he was not set alight.

“Oooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

Misaka Mikoto gave a yell from directly above and a cascade of rubble poured down.

The burning mummy was briefly swallowed up by the rubble.

The orange glow vanished.

“We aren’t in this to defeat him. We’re trying to safely reach the end of this day! We decided that before falling down here, remember!?”

When he heard that, Kamijou shifted to a different train of thought.

He shifted from destruction to survival.

He grabbed the handlebars of the acrobike that had fallen with him, he pedaled it from the side without sitting in the saddle, and he let it drag him away.

(That’s right. There’s no real reason I have to settle this. There’s no rule saying magicians or Magic Gods can’t be defeated if I don’t use my right hand to negate their magic.)

Strength filled his thoughts as he just barely managed to avoid being swallowed up.

(You called Misaka’s power worthless, High Priest, so it’s time that very power sent you tumbling down into defeat!!)

This may have been meaningless against an opponent who would not stop if he was only killed. It might only delay the inevitable by a dozen or so seconds and that mummy might crawl out unharmed.

But buying that time was more than enough.

“Misaka, are you ready!?”

“If I wasn’t, I’d be panicking a lot more right now!! So hurry!!”

The two of them clung to the acrobike and sent it flying.

But not toward the pile of rubble burying the High Priest.

They turned their backs and moved in the opposite direction. They made their way to a metal maintenance door so they could escape the large cylindrical space.

What was this space meant for in the first place?”

“...oring...”

Resentment filling his voice, the High Priest thrust his dried hand from the top of the rubble.

The rubble around him glowed orange and melted into a syrupy substance as a surprisingly sticky sound signaled his regained freedom. The surrounding oxygen was absorbed and his temporarily extinguished body burst into flames once more.

A Magic God was not going to complain about the pain that would normally have caused.

“Boring, boring, boring, boring!!!!!! At last, at long last, it looked like the winds were changing, but that girl!! Are you going to run away after all this? How many times have I told you it is only a matter of sooner or later? How long are you going to delay the inevitable!? What happened to Imagine Breaker!? What happened to your right hand!? What happened to the One who Purifies Gods and Slays Demooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnsssssssssssssssssssssssssss!?”

Kamijou and Mikoto ignored what he had to say, slipped through the metal door, and vanished.

The High Priest’s skinny body swelled out with immense strength as if to break through that thick door.

But that was when it happened.

“...?”

Something like static electricity scattered.

A stinging chemical smell reached him.

Anyone with the proper knowledge may have realized it was a catalyst like neon or argon that would produce a plasma flow when immense amounts of electricity were passed through it in an enclosed space.

The walls of the large cylinder began to glow with a bluish-white light. The smaller pieces of rubble began to ignore gravity and float.

That strange power gradually grew stronger and finally even the High Priest’s body was floating.

Yes.

With the melted rubble, dirt, mud, and metal surrounding his body, he could easily fill the role of a metal shell.

“O-ohhhhh!? C-could this be...!!!???”

Part 6

Parasatellite 01 was an unmanned astronomical probe developed for the Arrowhead Comet as it made its closest approach to Earth in 1700 years.

It was to be fired from an underground silo-style mass driver in Academy City’s District 23.

It could be fired for only the cost of the electricity needed to power the low-temperature superconductor electrodes and the space-filling plasma flow. It was single-stage, so it did not require any complex trajectory management.

Less than ten minutes after being fired, it would leave the atmosphere and place its payload in the desired orbit.

Part 7

The immense plasma flow was given directionality and everything inside the cylindrical space was fired.

It all broke through the clouds and scattered out from the center. A single line of light burnt through the heavens as it left the planet.

Part 8

The explosion blew away their sense of hearing.

The thick metal door was closed, yet the two of them still abandoned the acrobike and threw themselves onto the floor. It was just like a stun grenade. Even if no actual damage was done, the light and sound were intense enough to give the illusion of damage. Also, humans could die from shock just from having soft serve ice cream pressed to their chest while they were blindfolded.

The gyros continued functioning, so the acrobike remained standing all on its own.

“...Ah...!! Khah!! Ahh!!!???”

“Kh...gh... A-are you okay?”

Kamijou’s mouth continued flapping like a goldfish’s, so Mikoto recovered first. That may have been because she was accustomed to using abnormally high voltage currents.

“Wh-where’s the High Priest?”

“We used a real mass driver. He’ll have been launched beyond the moon.”

However, they apparently could not open the door right away and check. They would supposedly lose an arm or a leg if they set foot inside before the excess electricity was removed from the inside of the “barrel”.

The two of them made their way outside.

The acrobike proved useful again. They were at the bottom of a three hundred meter pit, so it was anyone’s guess how long it would have taken them to climb the stairs on foot. The suspension absorbed most of the shock from the steps, so it only felt like a slightly bumpy slope.

“Thanks, Misaka.”

“...For what?”

“Without you, I never would have imagined I could use a mass driver. Even if the idea came to me, it would have ended as a fantasy I couldn’t hope to pull it off in reality. I wouldn’t have any idea what switches to use or anything like that. The High Priest controls the dirt, so there’s nothing he can do once he’s removed from the planet. ...The scope of this whole thing has gotten so crazy.”

If that comment had been ironic or sarcastic, she would have punched him.

If he had laughed and praised her for at least taking part or making an effort, she would have thrown him down the stairs.

“But I didn’t do anything.”

“You’re saying that after everything you did?”

“But I really didn’t.”

Mikoto pouted her lips without thinking and belatedly realized how childish it was.

But she could not stop herself. Not in front of this boy.

“I didn’t do anything. I’m not saying that on the level of using my power to throw rubble around or to hijack the mass driver’s firing sequence. This entire incident was between you and that monster called the High Priest. There was never a place for me here.”

“Are you sure?” His response came immediately. “It honestly doesn’t matter to me who the hero is. As long as everything’s been resolved, I couldn’t ask for anything more. So... So Misaka, this didn’t need a hero. It ended without losing anyone and that’s all that matters.”

“(Sigh. He wouldn’t be so hard to deal with if he wasn’t honestly thanking me from the bottom of his heart.)”

“Hm? Did you say something, Misaka?”

“No, nothing. I’m not so unprincipled that I would use a cobra twist on you when you’re so exhausted, so I’ll have to give you a rain check.”

“???”

At any rate, they had somehow dealt with the High Priest. Nephthys and Niang-Niang remained in Academy City and there could be several other Magic Gods hiding around, but this meant a lot. For the moment, they had ended the destruction spreading indiscriminately through the city.

With that in mind, Kamijou breathed a sigh of relief and drove out onto the surface with Mikoto.

They stepped down from the acrobike and placed their feet on the ground without worrying.

But then they noticed something was wrong.

“What?”

Kamijou was the first to ask about it.

“The sky’s...dark???”

Sure enough, it was still the afternoon, b-->>

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