Tatsuya was not a battle junkie. At least he thought so, and so far any fights he had taken part in hadn’t actually been started by him. Essentially, they were all for the sake of defending Miyuki’s safety and prestige.
That being said, he was not a practitioner of nonresistance. He possessed the youthful(?) idea that it was necessary to fight and win to protect peace.
(Hmm, five men…..)
They were parked across the street in an SUV. Tatsuya deliberately hesitated to confirm the number of men in position to spring from the car even now.
In this situation, if you wanted to flee, you should be able to do so. It should be alright to retrieve the car by remote control later.
The decision only took a second.
He finished settling his bill on the table terminal and stood up.
They probably saw that, as they hurriedly opened the SUV’s door.
Tatsuya went to the entrance at a quick pace.
The shop’s entrance was directly across from the SUV.
The five men who were wearing something like ski masks stood in the road. They had gotten there about the same time Tatsuya left the shop.
The eyes in the masks were blue, red, black, brown, and gray.
They were color contacts worn to completely disguise the fact that foreigners were committing a crime, but it’s possible that that wasn’t the reason. On the contrary, it didn’t really feel like they were trying all that hard to conceal their appearance. Perhaps, they had confidence that they had concealed everything about their identities aside from their faces.
The attackers seemed a little perplexed at the fact that Tatsuya was standing right in front of them.
Nevertheless the exchanging of stares did not continue for long.
Tatsuya moved.
He neither advanced or retreated, he walked out on the road past the line of vision of the men.
A feeling of astonishment came from them,
Tatsuya was distancing himself from them without changing his pace.
Just as the distance of five meters was going to become ten meters, the attackers came to their senses.
The small clink of a gun being leveled at him reached Tatsuya’s ears.
This was not a gun shaped CAD, this was a weaponized device that combined a CAD with a submachine gun.
This armament alone was enough to serve as a confession from them that they were USNA magicians.
Western European, Eastern European, and New Soren did not use complicated mechanical weapons.
The only ones aside from the American army who might use such an elaborate weapon would probably be Japan’s Independent Magic-Equipped Battalion.
From the unfolding of the activation sequence, he understood that the rubber bullets would be electrified upon firing and release their charge upon impact. Probably, it was some type of taser gun. Apparently, they had received some kind of order to take Tatsuya alive.
Tatsuya had already thrust his right hand into his pocket and was holding the grip of his CAD. And he had used his fingers to find the trigger and put his finger on the switch.
With his back facing the masked men, Tatsuya pulled the trigger on the CAD.
He quickly turned around and kicked the surface of the road.
The parts of the submachine gun made a dull sound as they scattered all over the pavement which Tatsuya could hear as he was running away.
All these actions were stuffed into the interval when his opponents were frozen in shock.
Just as Tatsuya entered the period where they were all without weapons, his enemies were finally released from their stupor.
The shock was probably too much for them, Tatsuya thought, but all this might be unavoidable.
Under normal circumstances, in order to interfere with an object under the influence of someone else’s magic, it was necessary to have interference power that obviously exceeds the other person’s magic power.
In the cases where the other magician was physically touching the object, the level of difficulty went way up. So it could be said that it was close to impossible for the CAD and Armament devices to be instantly destroyed by magic for a number of reasons.
However, it would be a mistake to believe that this is why the men were surprised.
The magic used by them was the magic that would make the rubber bullet electrified upon firing and release their charge on impact. The target of their magic hadn’t been the guns but the bullets. The bodies of the guns were connected to the CADs but the breech-blocks, the percussion devices and the rest were mechanisms completely isolated from the CADs.
Originally, for the sake of maintenance, the weapons were constructed to be easily taken apart into pieces; something Tatsuya’s magic could easily manipulate. The reason they had been shocked until now might possibly be because until now they had believed that the Japanese were probably aficionados of swords, the way Americans were probably aficionados of guns.
Of course, Tatsuya was not just casually thinking about such a thing.
Those thoughts he had made out of reflex when he saw his adversaries’ shocked faces were only running in the back of his mind. The focal point of his mind was on taking out whatever means they were going to use to attack him in this interval.
To Tatsuya there was no reason not to capitalize on this.
However, this was a public thoroughfare.
This was not a busy street, this was not late at night, there were passersby, and traffic cameras here and there. Killing them would cause various problems.
Therefore in the presence of so many reliable witnesses, he did not want to display ‘disintegration’ magic. So it was best if he did not disintegrate the parts.
All that thinking was packed into that interval.
Tatsuya stuck out the back of the palm of his hand.
His target was the stomach.
Aiming at the solar plexus didn’t take much work.
He used flash cast just as the bottom of his hand struck.
The invoked magic was an oscillation type.
From the touch of his palm, his opponent’s body was filled with oscillating waves — that was what was supposed to have happened.
However, his magic splattered. Tatsuya realized that not from the feelings from his hand but from the ‘eye’ he observed with.
He immediately jumped to the side.
He felt a wind blowing up from below.
His afterimage was pierced by a glossy black knuckleduster worn on his adversary’s fist.
He escaped to the side and switched to the back and sent a vibration wave through the man one more time.
The man’s body fell to the ground from the single attack that came from his blind spot.
Even so, the man’s ability to resist magic was astonishing.
In spite of physical touch increasing the amount of information about how to weaken the armor that was part of the magic he was launching against the man, the man’s reflexively invoked interference power had wiped it out. No matter how power is put out, the magic was emitting from an inferior virtual magic area; so ordinarily, this was impossible.
(Modified body — no, probably a reinforced human.)
While he was jumping and dodging the attack from his enemy who had stood up and resumed his stance, he was accessing information on his opponent’s body and investigating this living organism.
From the report on the warped structure, this was not simply DNA modification; unmistakably the report showed results of multiple preposterous reinforcements.
(With their bodies like this, how are these guys even moving?)
To Tatsuya who had ‘observed’ hundreds of people on the brink of death, the fact that these guys could collapse at any time was obvious.
It would be more appropriate for them to be in hospital bed receiving intravenous drips than to be waving around knives and guns.
Despite that, they had this vitality.
They were like shooting stars just before they burned out.
Without a doubt, they were stardust trapped by the earth; their bodies whittled down by the blaze of the radiance they could not endure emitting.
If it was at this level, then they would never accept themselves failing; there was no way to know what kind of recklessness this type of irregular opponent would commit.
It was somewhat risky, but he had to finish them off quickly.
With that, Tatsuya’s objectives changed. Within his mind, he quickly redrew his plan for his upcoming attack.
—After jumping even further back to gain distance, his hand reached toward the CAD in his pocket.
—As he took it out, he performed a fourfold invocation of part separation.
—This would certainly be able to halt his opponents.
As Tatsuya was solidifying the image, by coincidence just as he was doing that.
A man intruded on the scene.
Chiba Naotsugu was rushing.
Unbelievable, a street fight suddenly starting was unanticipated. The excellent data on the classroom educational records had left him with the preconceived notion that Tatsuya had a timid introverted personality.
He was about eight hundred meters away from the boy who was the focus of his observation and protection assignment on the third floor terrace of a mid-sized building. The dossier said his target was extremely sensitive to his surroundings, so he had kept his distance and it led to this screw-up.
Running down the stairs was also a waste of time.
Maintaining his specialized skill, he jumped off.
Continuing in that fashion, Naotsugu kicked the surface of the road.
Naotsugu’s mastery of the acceleration magic (formerly a sage’s skill) made it possible for his running speed to reach 120 kph for a short distance.
At this distance running was faster and swifter than using a car.
It took him about thirty seconds to arrive.
Along the way, he sensed two invocations of oscillation type magic.
He was able to see from behind the fight, an attacker receive a bottom of the palm strike and tumble down onto the road.
Within his mind, Naotsugu murmured, ‘did that boy use magic arts?’.
The dossier did not mention this information.
Since this was not information worth concealing, the dossier makers had probably not gotten a hold of this detail.
There seemed to be various other hidden gems of information.
Naotsugu’s interest in the observation target — in the current situation, he was switching it to subject of protection — ‘Shiba Tatsuya’ deepened inside him.
Good grief, just what is his fighting ability…
Nevertheless, there would be other chances to check that out. Naotsugu was a person who drew a line between private and business matters. (At least, he thought himself as such)
He pressed the switch on the armament device he was holding in his hand.
The short baton morphed into a kodachi.
Naotsugu had modified the newly developed product that the Chiba clan had just begun to supply to law enforcement for his personal use.
He preferred convenient, easily replaced, general use weapons to unique high quality weapons like ‘Ikazuchimaru’ and ‘Orochimaru’.
Weapons were fundamentally tools to be used and replaced. Besides, even famous blades became dull with use.
It was an ironic thought for someone who styled himself as ‘one of the world’s greatest magicians in combat within a three meter limit’.
The boy which he had to protect made a great leap backward.
The information contained in the dossier concerning the troops facing the boy displayed itself in Naotsugu’s brain.
His opponents were Stardust — modified magicians attached to the USNA, no, they were weapons made from the bodies of magicians. A suicide squad constructed of magicians who were certain to have no more than a few years left to live who had been strengthened and altered. In Stardust, there existed groups that had various abilities. Naotsugu was able to learn that the unit that the boy was now facing were soldiers modified for close combat.
If I don’t have long to live then I don’t want to die a futile death……they had been brainwashed to turn their thoughts in that way without a doubt, but Naotsugu did not think of it as evil. Instead he felt sympathetic, they were gambling their lives on a mission — not theoretically — literally.
Nevertheless, that made them dangerous opponents.
Suicide soldiers were the toughest soldiers in the world.
No matter how skilled the boy was, they were probably too much for a high school student to handle.
Naotsugu interposed himself between Tatsuya and Stardust.
Tatsuya had already grasped that he was under observation. He had even known that it was the USNA and another party.
Nevertheless, he hadn’t anticipated intervention within this short time period. Tatsuya had believed that the other party would remain as onlookers.
The fact that the newcomer turned his back to Tatsuya probably meant that the newcomer wasn’t an enemy at least in the current situation.
He even knew who this person was from the profile he’d seen when the man had intervened.
Erika’s second eldest brother.
However, Tatsuya did not know the reason why Naotsugu was lending Tatsuya his assistance in this fight.
"Shiba-kun"
Tatsuya had also not expected to be spoken to.
"My name is Chiba Naotsugu. I am the elder brother of your classmate, Chiba Erika."
That the man would personally identify himself was also unexpected.
"I will deal with this situation. Retreat behind me."
As expected, there was not an explanation, but this was not the occasion for that.
"Thank you."
If he was going to say leave it to me then Tatsuya wasn’t going to contradict him.
As he retreated at a rapid pace, Tatsuya discerned indications from Naotsugu’s back that he was going to make an under shoulder swing.
Naotsugu had probably expected him to make some kind of "I will fight, too!" statement.
Unfortunately, Tatsuya did not have that kind of egotistical personality. If a specialist said fall back, all he would do is meekly obey. —As long as it was to his advantage.
Naotsugu’s sudden intrusion confused his adversaries for several seconds.
Since one opponent was already down, the four remaining masked figures produced guns from somewhere and pointed at Naotsugu.
CADs answered the speed factor that was significant in modern magic.
Even so, taking off the safety from a gun is faster than constructing the magic sequence needed to process the activation sequence. At this distance, it wasn’t necessary to spend time aiming.
These men were probably extremely accustomed to real fights. Rather than relying on their unique magic skills, they chose an option that eliminated the hindrance to speed without hesitation. Abandoning magic did not mean not using it at all, a movement type magic — an activation of magic that halted flying objects was simultaneously proceeding. Probably, to deal with any airborne tools their opponent might have.
They were armed with guns and shielded with magic.
They were using their faculties to their best effect. As he thought, their true fighting potential had probably been hampered by their need to ‘to capture Tatsuya alive’. Don’t ask questions, just destroy the enemy; without a doubt, that was their original fighting style. The fighting style was extremely pragmatic and sufficient to take down the average enemy.
However, Chiba Naotsugu was not an ordinary opponent.
Faster than the men could pull the trigger, Naotsugu had closed the distance. Unquestionably, aside from the man Naotsugu had closed with, they had all lost sight of him. His speed was such that even Tatsuya would have lost track of him if he hadn’t been concentrating.
As he passed by, the kodachi flashed. He had added a black border to the edge of his blade.
The hand holding the gun fell from the wrist down. The point of repulsion produced by the edge of the blade of the kodachi as it moved from left to right parted skin, flesh, and bone with astounding pressure.
His adversaries were probably aware of the instant slashing attack executed with the weight type magic ‘pressure cut’.
Unconcerned with their comrade’s cry of pain, the three men redirected their guns at Naotsugu.
The bullets penetrated Naotsugu’s afterimage.
To the BGM of glass breaking and painful moans, Naotsugu bridged the gap between his opponents.
Despite it not being the swiftness of the gods, the soldiers could not keep him in their gun sights.
Their fields of vision were too full of real and false images of their target.
Even Tatsuya watching from behind was not confident that he’d be able to perceive Naotsugu’s true whereabouts if he was facing him at point blank range.
The root of the trick was to continually cycle between charging and freezing.
Due to Naotsugu repeatedly charging, freezing, changing direction, charging, and freezing, afterimages were being produced in his adversaries’ retinas.
Originally, the logic of sword technique abhorred suspension or in other words ‘being still’. Without going into the fine details of the theory, being still was stiffening the muscles, halting the movement of the legs meant fixing the legs in a state where the leg muscles were stiffened, being still could lead to collapsing.
However, that was the case when only the muscles were moving.
Naotsugu used ‘Beginning’ in short, by controlling his body’s first movement with magic, he could switch from being at a complete standstill to top speed without a time lag.
Nevertheless, saying this was easy, doing it in combat was incredibly difficult.
Movement proceeding thought was the natural state in the world of martial arts. It was said that if you did not move before thinking then you would never become first class.
What Naotsugu was doing could be called the body’s movements surpassing thought even beyond the invoking of magic.
Come to think of it, with the ‘pressure cut’ from a little while ago, Naotsugu went from being an onlooker observing the adversary from far enough away in the area that he could not be sensed to instantly invoking and instantly finishing off an opponent. To do that without being able to read his opponents intentions, he probably did not take any countermeasures.
This switching, indeed this on and off speed was without a doubt the essence of the techniques that made Chiba Naotsugu one of the top ten martial artists in the world, Tatsuya thought.
While Tatsuya had been analyzing Naotsugu’s fighting abilities, all of the masked men had been rendered powerless.
Naotsugu lowered the hand holding the kodachi.
He did not visibly relax his vigilance, but it felt like he was less tense.
It was the same for Tatsuya as well.
He must thank him for his assistance, as he took his third step towards Naotsugu,
an intense sense of danger assaulted Tatsuya.
Naotsugu probably sensed it as well. Tatsuya hit the deck and Naotsugu raised his kodachi almost simultaneously.
Afterwards,
a shining ray attacked Naotsugu.
The kodachi was attacked by the shining ray — a high energy plasma beam.
As the blade took a direct hit, the beam parted left and right.
The point where ‘pressure cut’ would form a point of repulsion was probably bending the raging stream of plasma.
However, the electromagnetic wave’s influence would not be enough to block it.
The shining ray disappeared.
Strangely, the plasma beam disappeared before it reached the buildings along the road.
Naotsugu’s body trembled slightly as he stood stock still with his kodachi raised. His muscles were probably convulsing from being bathed in the electromagnetic waves shielding him at point blank range. It was probably like having his whole body receive the full force of a stun gun.
Tatsuya directed his eyes to where he estimated the ray had been fired from.
Far away, in the center of a roadway shrouded in darkness.
Floating leisurely in the street light,
with deep crimson hair and golden eyes.
Something cane-like was pointed in this direction. The masked magician, ‘Angie Sirius’ was looking at Tatsuya with a gaze of invitation.
(To be continued)
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