hand.

A light as bright as a camera flash filled the tunnel with a deafening “zap!!”, but the boy survived.

Carbon conducted electricity.

Mechanical pencil lead and diamonds could both be used as lightning rods that redirected electricity.

Also..

“Summon the spears here. The seven-walled secret room has protected its secrets for 120 years and allows no unauthorized intruders!!”

The pointy-haired boy’s body staggered over and pressed its back against the tunnel wall just before a high-pitched sound rang out. Anna held her small palm as if in pain. There was a sound like cracks running through a hard object, but that was all. Transparent spears – seven in all – had broken through the concrete wall behind him such that they passed over his shoulders and head.

“The depths of the earth are my territory,” said the man known as a count while gesturing like he held an invisible wand. His words carried both respect and hostility. “St. Germain controls diamonds. Even the master of the No. 1 Temple in Germany will run across a compatibility issue there. When performing a major ceremony, you must first focus on the stars and terrain. But worry not, this insolent result was not due to your own skill level.”

“Shut it, you imposter who only used our cabal’s name to increase your own prestige. You can control diamonds, can you? Did you think the true and legitimate Rose would care about some mere pebbles just because the common world attaches value to them?”

This exchange of emotions was inscrutable to the people of the present day.

It only made sense to those who had become legends simply by breathing, eating, working, reading, writing, and walking.

“Why do you deceive, Fr?ulein?”

“It is a form of defragging—an optimization.”

“I do not know how that works, but your right hand is very clearly not the same thing as Kamijou Touma’s.” St. Germain stated that with confidence. And, “Using your words to inspire others to action instead of doing it yourself is St. Germain’s way. It does not suit you. The Miss Sprengel who once ruled in the depths of the No. 1 Temple in Germany was the goal of all magicians. Everyone wished to be like Anna Sprengel who was closer to a god than anyone without actually being one and who had taken the authority to contact the superhuman Secret Chiefs while maintaining her human emotions! Perhaps you find it difficult to trust a magician who can freely swap out his own memories and ideals for fun, but I was not the only one who thought that way. The Golden cabal, the Theosophists, and the witches all set you as their goal, not god!!”

“But.” The words that spilled from the little girl’s lips sounded somehow dry. “Not one cabal actually understood my words. They all distorted the meaning for their purposes.”

St. Germain noticed something and briefly forgot all about their plan. He started to step closer like someone who had spotted a soaked child out in the rain, but then a horn sounded from the side.

It was a freight train.

The unmanned train was being used to meet the Christmas demand.

“So you will never understand me either!!” shouted Anna. “Never, ever!!!!!!”

“Tetractys, numerical triangle formed from ten points. Grant me ascension with your perfection!”

St. Germain sent carbon fiber threads from Kamijou’s fingers to jump up to the roof of the high-speed mass of metal, but Anna simply stuck her small right hand out toward the front of the freight train.

The entire space shook as the front car was crushed and lifted up and the eight cars after that stacked up against each other in a zigzag pattern.

The front car hopped up at an angle, breaking through the metropolis road and the layer of snow atop it before jutting up into the snowy winter sky.

They had emerged at a different point.

They were likely still in the vicinity of that hospital. A sign identified a nearby building as a large subway station that linked together a few different lines.

The place was already abandoned. A code red may have been issued, which indicated either a largescale terrorist attack or a devastating underground chemical fire linked to a chemical plant.

(This body really is tricky to use.)

The need to forcibly divert the lifeforce circulation around the right arm while refining magic power created a time lag before he could complete his spells. And even when he did complete them, he lost a considerable amount of the magic power. It felt as unstable as flying an airplane that had parts falling off of it and had a severe fuel leak.

But at the same time, St. Germain knew all too well what would have happened if he had hijacked a non-esper adult who would give him full use of his magic.

He would have died instantly.

Thoughtlessly pitting magic against magic with Anna would never work. That would be like an overexcited soldier loading up with a ton of ballistic missiles to challenge the sun to battle.

Light could not be used to battle light.

You needed something else entirely. Defeating the sun would require a blackhole that could swallow even light.

“..”

The pointy-haired boy focused on regulating his white breathing before jumping from the twisted roof to the main road below, but he looked at his own palm before anything else.

It was stained red and black.

(The wounds have widened too far. The esper’s body will not last much longer.)

Revealing that would be cruel, but St. Germain could not have the boy’s body tearing apart from within either.

“Back to you, esper. Are you prepared to hold the baton again?”

“Ahh, cough!”

The focus shifted from the left hand to the right hand. The pointy-haired boy coughed up a dark red color even as he tightly clenched his fist once more.

“St. Germain, you are no more than a collection of microbes I could kill by scrubbing you out with disinfectant soap. But you talk big, I’ll give you that. You’re still listening over there, aren’t you?”

The footsteps they heard this time were a lot rougher than before. A small figure walked through the train sticking diagonally up from the ground to crawl out onto the surface.

“You had power from the beginning, yes, but what was your goal?” she spoke slowly in a low voice that made it sound like she was uttering a curse. “To save people? I’m so sick of that. To master your field of study? I can find all the answers so easily. To destroy the world you so resent? It was already destroyed from the beginning. To fulfill your desires? I have done that more than you can imagine.”

That small body swayed side to side with that powerful right hand casually lowered at her side.

A bright light shined in her eyes and a smile tore across her lips as she approached.

“A life of fulfillment is such a bore.”

Her movements seemed so coldly robotic.

And dry.

“I want someone to support me instead.”

She demonstrated the ultimate form of wastefulness where even achieving immortality became an eternal prison of boredom.

But there had to be some hints of truth within her insolent statements.

“What do you get from a power that distorts the rules and renders the game meaningless by its very existence? Creation? Destruction? Enhancement? Reduction? Friendship? Rejection? Gluttony? Restraint? What does it mean to live? What goal am I supposed to live for? How can I find fulfillment?”

The footsteps stopped.

Anna Sprengel had taken the final step and arrived aboveground once more.

She stood below the frigid falling snow and on the same level as the others.

“The exchange of words only distorts the truth, so no words are needed here. I want to know how much people can understand from instinct alone. Hence the optimization. Kamijou Touma, the One who Purifies God and Slays Demons. What will remain once everything has been stripped from you and you are laid bare? When exposed to the supernatural with no prior knowledge, what side of you becomes most active? Show me the answer.”

“..”

Kamijou remained silent for a while.

Was he even aware his shoulders were crooked?

“Y’know,” he finally said.

“?”

“I think I kinda get why you can’t find fulfillment.”

“I might understand you, but you can never understand me. Because I contain so much more than you.”

“Still putting up your defenses like that? After we’ve been baring our hearts in this deadly battle?” spat out Kamijou. “You want others to give you fulfillment instead of finding it yourself? Don’t make me laugh. You’d just find things to complain about and keep going. You’ll never escape that feeling of unfulfillment even if you try to let go of your own life and take it easy. But you wouldn’t be able to accept that even if you grew angry with that other person, hated them, and took revenge on them. You want someone else to support you? Those are the words of someone who doesn’t know the fear of having that other person suddenly let go. You don’t have to fear their betrayal because you already know you can support your own weight if you have to. You might claim to be supporting ‘each other’, but you already have everything you need for yourself.”

“Wait.”

“And you know that that means?”

“I said wait.”

“It means..”

Anna had said she was hoping to observe herself.

And that was exactly what happened.

“You have your super-secret techniques that you refuse to actually teach anyone, but you still want to show them off. That’s nothing special. It’s what everyone dreams about every single day.”

A dull thud burst out.

“Really, why do idiots insist on using their heads when no one wants them to?”

She was showing signs of definite irritation, which was a stark contrast to the mysterious joy from before.

“Do not think you understand me, boy.”

Would this one be called Gravity Breaker?

Anna Sprengel raised a single finger and spun it around. That was all it took for something invisible to rotate around her, gather together the metal trashcans, cleaning robots, streetlights, and wind turbines into a single large mass, build up plenty of centrifugal force, and fling them at Kamijou Touma. It was like they were attached by an invisible chain she was swinging around.

“Kh.”

He could not fully block this with Imagine Breaker.

Fighting her right hand with his would not work here.

But he did not switch to St. Germain.

If he only negated the supernatural power, he would be crushed by the force gathered by the mountain of scraps. But physics was physics. He could already see the general path they would take as they swung around his way.

And Anna herself had shown him the answer earlier. If he moved further in than the radius of the rotation, he could not be touched by that outward-swinging path.

He only had to step forward.

He clenched his right fist as hard as rock and moved toward the little girl. He could ignore that morning star now. He only had to forget about their difference in body types and throw his full weight behind a merciless punch right into that small face.

A dull impact followed.

But not from a clean hit. His punch had been stopped.

Stopped by..

“My left hand.”

“Kh.”

She only wrapped her small hand around his fist to defend, but that was enough to stop him.

However, she had broken her pattern.

That was critically important, so Kamijou Touma put on a belligerent smile.

“What kind of ‘Breaker’ was that? Honestly, who cares? You keep going so over the top that it all starts to look cheap, so I can’t help but wonder. You’re not even using that Aiwass you made a point of showing off earlier, are you? Since you broke your own rules to stop me with your left hand, let me guess: getting punched hurts like hell even for a legendary magician, doesn’t it? Am I wrong, Anna Sprengel?”

“Who gave you permission to speak?”

This time, she pressed her right palm against the boy’s stomach.

He had swung his fist and had it blocked, so he was defenseless at the moment.

The girl with the wounded pride widened her eyes as far as they would go.

“Do not get carried away. You should be dead already.”

A human-sized mass was blasted backwards as if by a point-blank shotgun blast.

“Esper!!”

“Shut up, Germain. I’m staying in control. I can keep going.”

“No, not that. You need to get up before the next attack arrives!!”

He was not even given time to lie sprawled out in the snow.

Kamijou rolled across the cold asphalt and two things entered his vision.

He could hear the straining of her skeleton even from here. Anna Sprengel had changed from a fragile-looking ten-year-old little girl to a voluptuous yet toxic woman.

She moved her right hand’s index and middle fingers together in a scissors gesture.

“Break.. Breaker.. you know what? I’m sick of coming up with these names. Maybe this is how women lose their charm.”

Anna gave up on naming her right hand.

But that did not mean its destructive power was in any way reduced.

“Since it’s Christmas, how about I treat you to a show?”

The other thing he had seen was an airship that had been slowly floating across the white sky above.

Its rugby-ball-shaped gasbag had ruptured, transforming it into an orange shooting star. It scraped along the walls of the skyscrapers as it fell straight toward him.

Ironically, the large LCD screen on the side of the shooting star displayed a large image of white-bearded Santa Claus aboard his sleigh.

“Merry Christmas☆,” whispered Anna while viewing that giant face falling toward the surface.

(Dammit!!)

Kamijou slowly got up and made his way to a nearby building. He pushed open the glass door with his shoulder and collapsed inside. The world outside of the thick reinforced glass was consumed by flames and heat.

This was a department store, but not a fancy one.

They must have tried to make it look fancy to earn shoppers during the Christmas season, but that had only emphasized how unfancy it was. It was the kind of store even Kamijou would feel comfortable entering alone.

His ability to sense warmth must have broken because he did not feel at all comfortable even though the heat had to be on in here. Did that mean the trembling of his fingertips was not caused by the cold?

The first floor seemed to be for jewelry, glasses, and musical instruments. The rows of glass showcases with gentle music playing in the background was somehow reminiscent of a museum.

After a freight train bursting out from the ground and a burning airship crashing down, there were of course no people around. All the customers, employees, and even guards had left.

Only the gentle music remained.

Good, thought Kamijou.

They might not have survived if they had decided to stay here to protect the jewels or the money in the till.

“..”

He still did not know what Anna was doing.

But something about it seemed wrong to him.

She drew in external power, rearranged it how she liked inside her body, and then fired it back out. Her attacks were definitely deadly and destructive, but when he thought about it, they seemed more centered on the productive side of things.

Kamijou had fought a great number of magicians over his right hand. Maybe this was just another part of that. They had all provided their own view of things. During all those exchanged words, some had said his Imagine Breaker was a reference point for the world. Magic put everything in flux, so those who wielded magic could put their minds at ease by focusing on a single immovable point that would never change. In that sense, the idea of adding more to it was incredibly unusual.

It did not fit.

He felt certain that Anna Sprengel’s method was incorrect.

So..

(Magic.)

He shifted the focus of his mind.

St. Germain had said Anna’s spells were not pure Rose spells.

(She’s using some kind of method to manipulate the mystical and miraculous. I can’t let the focus on my hand lead me astray. She’s only using ordinary methods that even Stiyl or Kanzaki could use if they knew how!!)

However, he was not currently with Index, who had memorized at least 103,001 grimoires, or Othinus, a true god given a new form. So even if he could make some guesses, he could not find the answer.

There was also the time she had used her left hand. Her power must not have actually been limited to her right hand, but that did not tell him what she was doing. He felt like someone questioning what the doctor said, but not sure what the actual cure was.

But..

“..”

He came to a stop.

He had seen something.

The jewelry section of the department store had a lot of showcases. The employees must have put in more effort than usual since it was Christmas because there were a few handmade signs inside the glass cases, perhaps hoping to catch the eye of customers who were on a date.

Kamijou had noticed one of those:

“Check out our December Gematria Special☆ An available employee will convert your name into numbers and find which gem is a must-have for you. The process is free of charge! Are you a couple that feels they don’t have enough in common? Dig deeper and you’re bound to find a stronger connection there!!”

He could not believe his eyes.

Had magic always been stuff like this?

“Engrave your favorite rune into a pure gold ring! Some civilizations used to carve these holy symbols into gold coins and cups to bring themselves wealth or avoid poison. And..”

“Would you like to add an extra something to your usual yoga lessons? By creating your own personal incense, you can more easily picture the breaths moving through your body, so..”

“Crystal healing isn’t just a Western thing! Even something you have lying around the house can work! Prayer beads are a hot choice at the moment!! You can even select stones other than crystals to..”

Kamijou had been vaguely aware that jewelry stores would use this kind of thing to sell birthstones and healing crystals.

But this was too much. This kind of jargon and equations was knowledge meant to be strictly stored in an ancient library or in that white nun’s head. That info should not have been advertised on handmade signs cut out of cardboard and written with a felt-tip pen.

How had this happened?

There was only one possible answer.

“R&C Occultics has gotten to places like this too!?”

He heard the reinforced glass shattering. The road out front should have been consumed by orange flames, but it had instead frozen white. The thick glass wall had failed to withstand the temperature difference, so the entire thing shattered and rained down like a waterfall.

The sexy woman took a single step into the department store.

She did not seem at all worried about the sea of glass she had created. You would be hard-pressed to find a woman better suited to be surrounded by jewelry and musical instruments.

Kamijou silently raised his right fist again.

“Are you..” He gulped but still faced that blatant threat. “Are you using something to switch between different kinds of ‘power’? What you’re doing isn’t like my right hand. That’s the magic of the outside world that lets you control a variety of supernatural powers by default!!”

“This is the rose and the cross.”

The sexy woman waved her right hand with a sadistic smile.

And she said one more thing as she approached.

“Not that I expect you to understand what that means.”

Part 4

Losing his phone was a heavy blow.

The answer was somewhere out there. And it would be so easy to find that an amateur might accidentally stumble across it. But Kamijou Touma currently had no way of accessing that site.

“Tch!!”

“Hee hee.”

With each casual swing of the sexy woman’s long hand, a powerful gust of wind would blow through, caustic acid would spread out like an amoeba, or a bright light would flash.

The movement of her hand was more like a pliant whip than a solid fist. She put on the smile of a sadist while mercilessly producing deadly slap after deadly slap.

Instead of trying to kill him with the occult, she was trying to kill with him with physical attacks. She would shatter a glass showcase to kill him with the shards flying toward him.

His fist alone was not enough to deal with that.

“St. Germain, switch!!”

“I will keep you alive.”

They reversed hands.

Of course, St. Germain could not overwhelm Anna on his own, so they would switch back and forth.

They called each other’s names like partners fighting back to back. The right hand deflected the blowing wind, a diamond pillar burst diagonally from the floor to hold back the flood of acid, Kamijou ran along the transparent pillar like a steep slope, and he leaped at Miss Sprengel from midair.

The one body played the roles of magic and science.

But..

“You’ve reached your limit, haven’t you?”

“!!”

She swung her right hand horizontally and the light that burst out slammed into Kamijou’s side. He was knocked away from his downward path toward her. He flew to the side and crashed into a showcase, sending ruby rings, emerald necklaces, and more scattering around with the shattered glass.

“Kahh!?”

Sharp glass stabbed into his thigh.

But he did not have time to grimace in pain.

“It might look like you are holding your own with that bizarre fighting style, but surely you know better. In a clash between magic, the theory behind it matters far more than the quantity. And after all this, you still do not understand what I am doing.”

“..”

He did not need to admit to it out loud, but Anna was right. Kamijou only knew that she could change her right hand’s power at will, but he did not actually know what spell it was or what category of magic it belonged to.

He could negate all kinds of supernatural powers by brute force, but that was not enough to get by with someone like this.

Rushing blindly in at a magician was like running into a densely-packed minefield. You could even say a magician’s standard strategy was to set things up so a direct attack like that could never work.

“St. Germain.”

“You aren’t going to get an answer back when you don’t even know what question to ask,” said Anna.

She casually swung her open palm from a distance and three explosions appeared in quick succession.

Kamijou swallowed the blood that had gathered in his mouth and let out a roar.

“Take over!!”

Once St. Germain was in control, he moved back while blocking the attack with a diamond shield and pillar. It was a solid defense, but that was all it was. Relying on magic was clearly only going to get them backed into a dead end. Kamijou alone could not defeat Anna and neither could St. Germain.

So they swapped out.

Never relying on only one of them was the only way to stay alive.

“Back to you. Alter your timing a bit next time. Don’t let her predict our actions!!”

“St. Germai-!!”

“No. I said alter the timing, esper!!”

A broken square pillar was spinning Kamijou’s way, but he would have to deal with it himself. He frantically dodged the giant blunt weapon that knocked aside the entire register counter and eye test machine.

While they frequently switched back and forth, Kamijou’s fist threw off the destructive rhythm.

He had no choice but to confront her head on.

Any cover he tried to hide behind would only get destroyed along with him and moving over by the wall left him without enough room to swing his right arm.

While buying time like that, he had to ask about everything he had seen. Whether or not it would be helpful, he did know that this jewelry section had already been influenced by Rose magic.

He did not have to hit the jackpot right away. In fact, he doubted that was possible.

He swung his bloody fist while asking his inner partner some questions.

“What’s crystal healing!? I know I’ve heard the term a lot!”

“It is believed that jewels can gather up the power of the constellations and return it to their wearer. It is also said the harder the stone, the more power it absorbs, making diamonds the most extreme example. That is why it is thought they can be used for a great many specific goals such as detoxing and exorcisms, not just vaguely providing good fortune.”

“What’s this about engraving runes on treasures like gold coins and cups?”

“Engraving the rune for victory into a coin is a way of praying for wealth and engraving the rune for suffering into a cup is a way of detecting poisoned drinks. You could think of them as protective charms with specific effects.”

“Then what’s the connection between yoga and incense!?”

“Yoga is not technically a form of training done at the gym. It is actually a method of controlling your inner body through your breathing to have an effect on the outside world. Tools are generally not needed. In fact, you are supposed to rid yourself of all worldly possessions and thoughts, but beginners would probably find it easier to focus on their breathing if the air were given a color or aroma. Of course, using a guide means only following the rails laid out for you, so the act loses all meaning.”

“What about gold and silver!?”

“Seven metals were given a position of importance in ancient times, but since that included iron and lead, they were not all precious metals. On that note, the idea of silver weapons being effective against monsters is mostly the influence of folklore and entertainment, so I would not rely on it if I were you. There might be some effect, but a truly pious person would not melt down a silver cross to create a knife or bullet in the first place.”

“Argh, what else was there? Prayer beads!?”

“They are a type of spiritual item used in Buddhism. The term generally refers to seeds of the bodhi tree strung into a loop by a single thread, but beads of crystal are also used. The number of beads is usually 108, but there are other versions. The Christian rosary is the same basic idea.”

None of it was very specific and they were getting off topic.

Even now, the boy’s life was being shortened for every second of freedom. He bled more each time he and St. Germain switched out, but they kept it up. He had to pick up every single hint he could get from the handmade signs and the occult code(?) conversion chart pasted on the side of the register.

“Then what about birthstones!?”

“Each of the twelve months is given a different gem, but there are several different versions. The version most well-known now was created by the American National Association of Jewelers.”

That one was a comp-->>

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