Toaru Majutsu no Index SP c2

A completely ordinary stone apartment building existed within the London Borough of Lambeth. One room of that ordinary apartment was a base of a magic cabal large enough to shake all of the United Kingdom.

The cabal was known as the Dawn-Colored Sunlight.

They did not create the grand towers or palaces used by witches in picture books. They divided up their assets as much as possible and gathered only the necessary things and people at one of their bases when they were needed to perform some kind of ceremonial magic. These bases were not strange secret lairs. Instead, they were apartments or other kinds of rented rooms. If they did not do all that, their losses due to attacks from the anti-magician organization of the Anglican Church would be too great.

The magic side was referred to as a single entity, but many different factions and forces existed within it. While some of them were divided by their specific doctrine like the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican Church (although those two were not magic cabals), some magic cabals were created solely to maximize profit.

All sorts of different types of cabals existed and any number of things sent sparks flying between cabals. They chaotically grew, chaotically fought, chaotically destroyed each other, and finally reached some kind of strange overall balance. Like that, the different powers continued to grow and shrink below the surface where normal people never saw them.

“Ahh, now this is nice. I could get used to having one of these rather than a fireplace.”

The boss of the Dawn-Colored Sunlight, a girl named Birdway, was relaxing within a strange item she had ordered from an eastern island nation. It was called a kotatsu and it was something like a combination of a table and a bed. In order to use this strange item, she had created a “no shoes zone” in the room.

All that was well and good, but it was only the beginning of fall. It was too early to be bringing out a kotatsu. It seemed the master of the room really wanted to try out the item she had ordered from Japan.

The blonde girl who looked about 12 stuck her slender, black stocking-covered legs under the thick blanket as she flipped through a magazine and cut up some reddish-brown yokan.

The title of the magazine was Einstein.

It was a well-known science magazine.

“With the space age finally here, it seems the hot topics are acquiring lunar resources and developing low-cost launch methods. …Wait, how would you use ceremonial magic in space? The protection from leylines would weaken and the entire concept of the cardinal direction as well as up and down would be gone, so how would you create a temple? N-no, but you might be able to use that to your advantage and create some kind of never-before-seen ceremonial grounds that rotates in all 360 degrees. If you did that, you might end up with some kind of never-before-seen effect!! Dammit. I should have taken the measurements before when I had the chance!!”

“You can’t, boss,” kindly said a blond man wearing black formal clothes and a scarf.

He was pouring black tea for himself into a refined Japanese teacup.

“That is of the science side. It is outside of our jurisdiction.”

“I know, I know. …You never let me have any fun,” said Birdway with a click of her tongue in response to his realism.

But pointing out things like that could be said to be the blond man’s job.

“What is going on today? Why did you suddenly yell at me to go buy you this magazine?”

“That would be because of this.”

Birdway flipped the page and pointed toward an article titled, “Let’s Resolve the Energy Crisis! A New Weapon Appears to Advance Oil Drilling in the Arctic Ocean!!”

The blond subordinate raised his face from the magazine.

“You can’t, boss.”

“Not that, you idiot. You have guts to start lecturing me before I’ve even told you what I’m talking about.”

Birdway threw some of the cut-up yokan into her mouth and made a slurping noise as she sipped at her green tea. Her subordinate was fully permeated with European culture, so he looked displeased at the noise. The girl gave a satisfied (and evil) grin before continuing the discussion.

“Some people are saying it would be a problem if the development reaches the Arctic.”

“…? Can parts for spiritual items be found there?”

Forests and mountains where magical plants could be harvested were a vital resource for magic cabals, but the Arctic Ocean held no value for the Dawn-Colored Sunlight. They did not rely on marine products.

“No, not that.” Birdway kicked her feet underneath the kotatsu. “Suspicion has arisen that the Dusk Exit is supporting the oil drilling team in the Arctic.”

“…A British Golden-style cabal like us.”

The blond subordinate clearly looked displeased at that. The Golden-style cabals were referred to as a group, but there were countless different types. The types of spells they used and goals they held were all different. The Dusk Exit was famous for being very wasteful and causing problems for others by using up limited personnel and resources.

There was no concept of equivalent exchange in modern magic.

How great a result could one gain from a limited resource? It could be called a means of cheating each other using the exchange rate. As a result, the failure of a large-scale ceremony was all the more disastrous.

However, the Dusk Exit did not see it that way.

It was similar to spending a hundred million yen on a piece of gold the size of your fingertip.

They were a group of savages who acted like intellectuals and they were often criticized as not even being magicians because they abandoned all thought and tried to make everything work by brute force.

“A few pieces of technology connected to Academy City are involved with this oil drilling.” Birdway dug through a small basket that held a few different types of teacakes. “Thanks to that, both the science side and the magic side are mad at the other claiming they have ‘crossed the line’. On top of that, it seems the Dusk Exit wants to use the funds they gain from the oil drilling to deal with a Portuguese market, so it seems there’s enough of a just cause.”

A market.

When they used that term, they referred to a magic cabal that dealt in human trafficking.

“A Portuguese market… So children?”

“Yes, as materials for spiritual items. They’ll just be used up. A human’s life force is used to refine magic power, but it seems they want to refine a large amount of magic power in an instant to get an explosive reaction from a large-scale spell.”

Birdway laughed and grabbed a quill that lay beside her. She wrote on a small piece of memo paper. The curves seemed extremely arbitrary, rough, and flowing like a celebrity’s signature. The verb “drawing” almost seemed more appropriate than “writing”.

After only 15 seconds, she had completed an exceedingly simplified charm.

“Apparently, the idiots in the Dusk Exit can only create a single copy of something like this using up three whole kids. As a fellow Golden-style magician, it almost gives me a headache.”

“…”

With her subordinate looking on silently, Birdway tapped her index finger in the center of the charm. That was enough to activate the spell which caused a few biscuits to pop out of the charm.

Birdway tossed a freshly baked biscuit into her mouth.

“This is only an estimate, but most likely, it will take only about 0.7 seconds for the children they use to be shattered both inside and out. They will be nothing but empty shells by the end. Doesn’t that extreme wastefulness sound exactly like something they’d do? If the oil platform being developed is completed, the Dusk Exit will set up a distribution route using the funds they receive and that will be enough to create the framework for pitiful children to be sent flowing into the darkness.”

An unpleasant strength focused itself in the blond subordinate’s brow.

It may have seemed ridiculous, but he had his own sense of morality.

Meanwhile, Birdway tapped her finger on a photo in the science magazine with a casual expression on her face.

“And so those who claim to protect the peace are going to start by destroying this.”

“The ocean resources survey ship…?”

“It’s a large ship that is searching for areas filled with oil. It also has enough equipment and materials onboard to build an offshore oil platform. I mentioned that the Dusk Exit’s oil platform was still being developed, remember? Well, if this ship is sunk, their plan will be brought to a complete halt. It seems they don’t have the excess money needed to prepare a replacement ship.”

“What does any of this have to do with us?” asked the blond subordinate cautiously. “You couldn’t possibly be thinking of creating a united front with the Anglican Church or Academy City, could you? And even if we were to do it alone, the Dawn-Colored Sunlight would gain nothing from it.”

When the subordinate thought about it, the story may have been a good sob story, but it was so simple that it actually made him cautious. If “those who claim to protect the peace” had invited them, it could be a trap.

“No,” said Birdway denying all of that with a single word. “We have no obligation to go along with the Anglican Church or Academy City’s mission of self-satisfaction. If they were going to go and crush some shitty cabal, I’d gladly just sit back and watch the show, but that’s not what this is about.”

“?”

“Ugh, what a pain. Just look at this.”

Birdway’s small finger slid to the side of the photo of the ocean resources survey ship. She pointed at a group photo of intellectuals wearing lab coats that had a caption under it saying, “The scientists who created the world’s largest survey ship.”

The blond subordinate let out a groan upon seeing that.

He recognized one of the faces.

It was Patricia Birdway.

He had heard that she had been invited as a guest researcher at a British science institution due to the high praise her internet-published paper had received from scientists around the world, but he had never thought she would be enjoying an extended cruise after working on a project to create such a ridiculously huge ship.

“…A-a suppression mission is going to be carried out soon, right? And that will involve sinking that ship as well as everyone aboard?”

“Correct,” Birdway said in a solemn voice as she brought both her elbows up onto the kotatsu and folded her hands in front of her face. “Simply put, this is very bad. Please do something about it.”

Mark Space had built up his determination, but…

“Mark! Do you have your handheld game system with you? Let’s make a friends connection.”

“No, um…”

The magician was seriously flustered as he stood within a small room filled with computers that used lasers or ultrasonic waves (he didn’t know the details) to search for oil at the bottom of the ocean. Somehow foolish-sounding electronic noises filled the room as if to mock him.

“Huh!? I didn’t get the Wind Angel Armor… Maybe you can’t get it with a simple friends connection. Or maybe it has to do with the date. O-okay, it’s sort of cheating, but let’s try again after I change the system’s calendar.”

“M-miss Patricia. There is something I must discuss with-…”

“C’mon, Mark!! I need your help to get the Wind Angel Armor!! Just by equipping it, you get more experience points, so I won’t be satisfied until I have it!!”

“Ee!! But this game’s balance is biased!! The gods from Japanese mythology clearly get the higher stats!!”

“Well, the game was made by a Japanese company for the Japanese market, so there’s no helping it. Even if you say it’s based around a school, I don’t have a good grasp of what a Japanese school is like,” said the small girl with a laugh as she munched on an apple pie that seemed to be freshly made. “Mgh. This is just so much better. I need to ask her for the recipe. Oh, this young American woman named Reffile who works in the ship’s kitchen baked this really good apple pie for me!”

Seeing Patricia like that calmed Mark down a little, but he was also reminded that the girl had the same blood running through her veins as her sister.

Mark had attempted to tell her he had something to tell her, but he had been cut off so quickly that he decided to change his tactic.

“W-was it really okay for me to intrude like this? I was just wondering if I was getting in the way of your work.”

“No, no. You don’t need to worry about that.” Patricia looked up from her handheld game and smiled. “This may be the world’s largest marine resources survey ship, but it’s really nothing more than a means to stand up to Academy City. Their ship is better when it comes to actual capability, but they wanted ours to be better than Academy City’s in some way. Since its sole purpose is to show off, it’s actually registered as a British ship even though the taxes would have been lower if it was registered with Panama.”

“Oh, I see,” Mark Space said arbitrarily as a sweat drop dripped down from his temple to his cheek.

He had a single problem.

(…How am I supposed to bring this up?)

Birdway, the boss of the Dawn-Colored Sunlight, worked to ensure that her younger sister Patricia did not find out about magic. There was of course an implicit understanding that all of her subordinates would go along with that as well. That meant he had to convince Patricia without using the word magic and had to get her off of the Blue Research without letting her detect any magical phenomena.

(If it comes down to it, I can use the helicopter on the Blue Research to escape if I must do so without magic. Right now, I need to worry more about how to convince Miss Patricia to leave rather than the means of escape.)

“Mwooooohhhh!! What am I supposed to do!?”

“?”

Patricia looked at Mark with a puzzled expression as he held his head in his hands and tore at his hair.

“My sister really does worry too much. I can’t believe she went to the effort of chartering a helicopter to send you here. I can deal with everything here myself. And it must be tough for you too, Mark. She just sends you all over the place on a whim.”

“Ha ha ha.”

“It’s lucky the Blue Research has plenty of heliports. What were you going to do if there was nowhere to land? My sister’s excessive use of money must cause a lot of problems for you.”

“…”

Mark buried his head in his hands upon hearing Patricia’s completely normal and common interpretation of the events.

She would never even dream of the possibility of a magic cabal being involved with the Blue Research.

She would never even dream of possibility of a combined attack being carried out on the Blue Research.

She would never even dream of the possibility of escaping the ship using magic.

And if he failed, his boss, Birdway, would make sure to thoroughly kill him.

(What am I supposed to do? Is there no way!?)

In the normal world that Patricia Birdway lived in, she had been invited to the Blue Research as a guest researcher for one of the leading scientific institutions in the United Kingdom. She was taking an extended break from school for the event and everyone was expecting great things from her, so she could not simply leave. In other words, Patricia was not going to move an inch unless Mark managed to be quite eloquent indeed.

As the magician trembled, Patricia stared at him in confusion.

“What’s wrong, Mark? You aren’t looking too good.”

“D-don’t worry. It’s nothi-…”

Before he finished speaking, a light bulb switched on above Mark Space’s head.

He had only one possible strategy.

“That’s iiiiiitttttttt!!”

“Ee!?”

“Miss Patricia, Miss Patricia!! The situation is most dire!! This is no time to be sitting her searching for the Wind Angel Armor!!”

“Wha-? Eh…? Th-there’s something more important than the Wind Angel Armor? D-do you mean a super rare item like the Water Angel Lily!?”

“Lady Birdway has collapsed!! She is currently in the hospital, but the doctors say she only has about a 50/50 chance. This could be a truly urgent situation. Just in case, you need to head to the hospital to see her!!”

That was his sure-fire fake illness attack. He did not feel right lying about it, but a kind and pure girl like Patricia was sure to be worried enough to come with him.

“Hmm. I’d really like to do that, but…”

“Huh!? That’s surprisingly cold of you!!”

“Ah ha ha. My sister always says you need to be able to take care of yourself before you can worry about others. That’s part of the reason that I’m working so hard on my own. Not to mention that she would come out looking perfectly fine even if a building exploded around her.”

Patricia was likely only joking, but that was actually literally true. However…

(E-even when she is not here, you are the only one that can say that kind of thing about that monster!! That is a frightening ability, Miss Patricia!!)

However, that was no time to tremble in fear. Since he had come so far, Mark had no choice but to make sure the sure-fire fake illness attack worked.

As such, he had to add on details to her condition.

“Th-the truth is Lady Birdway managed to get her hands on an Ultra Huge Breasts Cream Set that claimed it could easily give anyone large breasts.”

“A-and did it work!? Where did she get it!?”

“No, her breasts stayed the same size, but her areola alone grew quite large. It was a most tragic incident.”

“No…”

“And on top of that, she also acquired an Academy City breast growing machine. She put two bowl-like items over her breasts like vacuum packs. This caused them to turn a strange bluish-purple and she writhed around on the ground.”

“Nnn. But surely someone like my sister could deal with a situation like that.”

“Gh!? Th-that damn brat then refused to admit defeat and insisted with teary eyes that her breasts had grown and that she had leveled up. That was when even more strange side effects started occurring. After all sorts of strange twists and turns, her bust size ended up at over 5 meters and she had 8 nipples. They looked something like Gatling guns and it was quite disturb-…hahh!?”

A chill suddenly shot down Mark’s spine.

He had a feeling it had been killer intent.

He didn’t want to think of the possibility, but Birdway might have been using some kind of magical means to keep an eye on him.

With sweat covering his body, Mark Space timidly looked around the area.

The pure Patricia was not aware of the impending danger and she was tugging on Mark’s clothes.

“H-her life might really be in danger!! If that really did happen to her, I can’t just ignore it! I don’t like leaving the research team, but I really am only needed once the drilling point has been discovered, so they should manage.”

“Now you tell me!! If I had known that, I wouldn’t have had to cross that deadly tightrope!!”

“?”

Patricia gave an innocent and lovely look of puzzlement.

Mark pointed and said, “Oh, Miss Patricia. Did you just get the Wind Angel Armor?”

“Eh!?” she said and frantically looked down at her handheld game.

Just as she did, Mark’s leg flew straight over her head.

Of course, his kick had not been aimed at Patricia.

Something had been creeping up behind her. A strange green figure had appeared there at some point. Mark’s leg had moved just before its hand had reached Patricia’s shoulder.

When his whip-like kick struck the side of the figure’s head, he felt a damp feeling like he had crushed a clump of rotting leaves. No noise was made. The figure disappeared as if it had never been there at all.

“Oh, c’mon, Mark!! This isn’t the Wind Angel Armor; it’s the Exusiai Armor! That’s a common item!”

When Patricia raised her head, Mark had a bitter smile on his face and his foot was lowered to the same position it had been in 2 seconds before.

(…Earth Telesma. So it is a fellow Golden-style magician!!)

As he internally analyzed the situation, Mark reached his hand out toward the center of Patricia’s chest like he was pressing an elevator button.

He held a single card in his palm.

It was the two of swords.

Silence and interruption. Just as he did, Patricia’s mind and body were split apart causing her to lose consciousness.

It was as if he were making sure no one else could interfere with her.

“Hehh. What a kind attacker.”

Along with that sudden voice, he heard a dry sound and the ceiling of the room was sliced apart in a straight line. No, that was not quite accurate. An invisible blade extending from the ceiling reached down and sliced the floor at the same time. It headed straight through the spot Mark had been standing in an instant before.

(The enemy is…above!?)

Mark held Patricia’s unconscious form in one arm as he opened the metal door to leave the small room and head into the passageway.

That had been a mistake.

“But it seems you are more stupid than kind.”

“!?”

The instant he heard that voice coming from the side, Mark felt a dull but heavy shock in his side. It felt like he had been struck by one of the giant bells in a Buddhist temple. Mark doubled over and flew a few meters before landing. His sense of professionalism made sure he balled himself up in order to protect Patricia.

The world’s largest marine resources survey ship was a mass of scientific technology and its main purpose was for oil drilling. The passageway Mark rolled through was a surprisingly dirty one filled with ugly metal pipes.

“Gh…bh…!!”

As Mark coughed, a dark red liquid escaped his lips.

He just barely managed to get back up and spotted a cylindrical stone pillar floating on its side and a woman standing next to it. She wore a short skirt, a shirt that was open on the front, an oddly long glove that reached her upper arm on her right hand, and a lace glove of the sort a lady would wear on her left hand. The left glove was light pink while the right one was split vertically with one side white and the other black.

On her left hand, the woman wore rings with letters of the alphabet on them as if they were stamps. She was using that hand to toy with her bangs as she gave a faint smile.

“A tarot user, hm? And instead of using the 22 cards of the major arcana that each connect directly to their respective sephira, you’re using the minor arcana as symbolic weapons of fire, water, wind, and earth.”

Mark saw no sign of the ship’s crew coming to see what the commotion was about.

The woman before him had likely used a people clearing spell.

“You cannot use their power to its fullest because the pathways to the one who can give you permission to touch the gem have been intentionally cut off. …You must be from a cabal with quite some leadership. The idea that only the limited supervisors may touch the true meaning of Kabbalah has made its way into your very core.”

“…To be honest, you do not look like someone from the Dusk Exit.”

“Please do not think of me as the same as those beasts,” said the woman as she looked at Mark as if evaluating him. “My name is Wyss Winered. I am also known as Time Loss. Simply put, people hire me to buy them some time. I was hired here to deal with magicians like you.”

“Why?”

A lot of assumed information was contained within that short question.

The marine resources survey ship, Blue Research, was being supported by the Dusk Exit. They were crossing the line between magic and science in order to use the crude oil they found to obtain children from a Portuguese “market”. Those children would be inefficiently used en masse to create only small effects. Mark was asking why she would join them.

“Well,” Wyss’s response was short as well. It too held quite a bit of assumed information. “I was just hoping for some leftovers.”

“…”

He said nothing more.

Mark Space ended the conversation with her.

Power filled the tarot card he held.

The card Mark held between his index finger and middle finger was the three of swords.

The trigger of mayhem and the sorrow that invites bad luck. Mark swung it upwards diagonally and the air sliced, following that motion. The air became a single giant sword and sliced through even the very end of the passageway.

“Your speed’s not bad.”

In response, Wyss lightly swung her left hand with the alphabet rings and spun her right arm with its long, black-and-white glove.

Matching that motion, the stone pillar floating next to her crushed the air blade. Wind and earth. The two elements came into conflict, exploded, and a storm of vacuum and stone scattered about at high speed.

Mark made no attempt to defend against it.

Instead, he pulled out the four of swords.

Flight and banishment. The instant the card emitted a soft glow, Mark and Patricia’s bodies disappeared into thin air. The card floated through the air and avoided the violence. Once it had escaped the barrage, the human forms reappeared…and directly attacked Wyss.

But…

“Too slow.”

Mark heard those words right after using the five of swords to slice through Wyss’s body which he quickly realized was a fake made of sand.

However, he did not make it in time.

He felt something touch the left side of his head. Mark immediately swung his head to the side and a tremendous shock shook his brain. He could not even comprehend how he had been attacked. At any rate, the heavy, hammer-like attack caused his semicircular canals to cease functioning. To prevent himself from falling, Mark steadied himself against the narrow passageway’s wall.

His vision shook.

Mark somehow managed to hang on to his fleeing consciousness.

That was when the third wave arrived.

Something like a bowling ball shot toward him. He managed to detect that much, but his body did not move in response. The blunt weapon struck him directly, applying even more pressure to his skull. This time, all strength left Mark’s body. Patricia’s body fell from his grasp. Mark could see that as he slid down to the ground, but he could not bring his body to move.

“Golden-style magic is often referred to as a whole, but there are all sorts of different types.” Wyss’s voice reverberated within Mark’s throbbing head. “Your tarot is intended for large scale ceremonies. It just isn’t suited for battles where quick actions are needed.”

Mark did not say anything in response.

Instead, he silently pulled out the six of swords.

That card symbolized the chance to answer a difficult question.

His conversation with Wyss Winered was already over.

A small Cessna plane flew slowly through the blue sky.

Its flight plan said it had taken off at an airport in Scotland and would return after flying around the Arctic Ocean for two hours. At that time of year, curious sightseers wanting to watch orcas through binoculars would likely be paying for it.

However, that Cessna plane had two things that set it apart from most planes with similar flight plans.

First, it did not have any sightseers aboard.

Second, a few devices in its storage area were dumped down into the ocean.

The devices were long, narrow, and about a meter long. There were four of them. The Cessna plane dropped them so they formed a circle with a diameter of 500 meters.

When the devices hit the ocean surface, they sank down and then floated back up like a buoy or fishing bobber. The Cessna’s pilot made two or three quick transmissions.

After that, everything would continue according to the normal flight plan.

The Cessna plane slowly flew across the Arctic Ocean.

Only the devices floating among the waves remained.

The letters on their side read “Down Waver”.

“Well?”

A completely ordinary stone apartment building existed within the London Borough of Lambeth. One room of that ordinary apartment was a base of a magic cabal large enough to shake all of the United Kingdom.

The cabal was known as the Dawn-Colored Sunlight.

The cabal’s boss, Birdway, was for some reason standing dauntingly atop a Japanese kotatsu.

A news program was running on a flat-screen television in the corner of the room.

“A down wave suddenly occurred in the Arctic Ocean, but the entire crew of the world’s largest marine resources survey ship, the Blue Research, is confirmed to be safe.”

The announcer reading the script must have been glad he was reading positive news because a slight hint of pride could be heard in his accurate pronunciation.

“According to the crew, a sudden tsunami lifted the entire Blue Research up temporarily, allowing the ‘cliff’ of the down wave to pass below them.”

The picture switched over to a recording of a familiar girl of about 12.

The lucky girl who had miraculously survived was known to the two in the apartment as Patricia Birdway.

“It really is quite a mystery. There was no sign of an earthquake, so the cause of those two sudden waves has greatly roused my curiosity, not to mention the curiosity of every other scientist in the world. There are just so many mysteries left in this world! This is why I can’t stop loving oceanology! Oh, sis, Mark, are you watching?”

Birdway did not even glance over at the screen. Instead, she simply remained standing dauntingly atop the Japanese kotatsu while staring down at Mark Space.

“So a massive amount of bubbles was mixed in with the seawater below the Blue Research to explosively increase the volume of the water. The ship was lifted up with simple explosive force rather than with the buoyancy of the water. I suppose that is a way of manipulating the ocean surface with only the element of wind and air.”

A dark aura exploded out from Birdway.

Her displeasure was on full display.

“It seems some idiot called in an idol of an angel to crush a single freelance magician and then secretly lifted the world’s largest marine resources survey ship to keep its crew from falling into the down wave. This idiot saved those people despite doing so also interfering with Academy City’s plan and destroying

Chapter end