CHAPTER 21
Those Whose Identities Cannot Be Discerned
Second Friday of October
It was a strange sight to behold.
School District 11: The district where all the shipping containers were held. Nothing but giant boxes made of metal lined these streets—and among them lay about nine girls, all defeated. Everything about them was identical, from their clothing to their hair, from their heights to their builds, even right down to the composition of their faces. They were the Sisters, created from a certain Level Five’s somatic cells.
Strewn about were rifles, scattered bullet casings, and the girls themselves, limp and unconscious. In the middle of them all stood a single man.
Unharmed.
The man who should have become a magic god, Ollerus, narrowed his eyes as the night breeze blew over him.
He was on the run from the entire sorcery world due to his power and had taken out every single pursuer who came after him—but even in Academy City, the headquarters of the science world, he remained undefeated.
Suddenly, a voice called out.
“This is… This is crazy. Freaking crazy.”
A short distance away from the encirclement of crumpled girls stood another person, a young man. Gunha Sogiita—number seven. Academy City’s seventh-ranked Level Five and a man with more than an appreciation for passion and guts.
He made a disgusted face at the scene before him.
But not at the fact that nine girls existed who all had the same face. Sogiita didn’t care one bit about trivial mysteries like that.
“…Standing there like you’re delighted to have beaten these delicate little, er… nonuplets, I guess, to a pulp? You’re crazy. This is the first time I’ve seen such an insane lack of guts.”
“There’s a good reason for this, you know,” said Ollerus with a chuckle. Slowly, he brought his head around to look at Number Seven.
“If Academy City wishes to recover the fifty or so Uncut Gems throughout the world,” he continued, “then I will not stop that. But I cannot ignore the risk that they might simply become the subjects of who knows what research right here within the city walls.”
As the city was gathering them here using irregular methods, they—the Uncut Gems—would naturally catch the attention of the local scientists as uniquely rare and valuable resources. There was a nonzero possibility they’d wind up stuffed into some dark institution.
“That’s why I’ve come to give them a warning,” said Ollerus. “Acting as a check—or perhaps that’s too vague. This is more like a negotiation using martial force. Defeating you, who is number seven in Academy City as well as the world’s greatest Uncut Gem, should be enough. That will communicate my intentions to him should the Uncut Gems entrusted to the city be treated as disposable.”
“Really?” Number Seven grinned. “That’s nice. That sentiment has guts behind it. Coming to pick a fight with Academy City’s dark underbelly in order to negotiate for just fifty kids? And to do that, you’d physically confront a Level Five? That’s pretty great—definitely the kind of mindset that takes a lot of guts.
“But!” finished Sogiita with a raised finger. “You don’t know who those kids are or where they’re from. And yet you’ve still rallied your manly self and tried desperately to protect them anyway. And maybe one of those people was a complete stranger: a certain Number Seven, whom you’ve never even talked to in your life.”
“……”
“I don’t have a responsibility to risk my life or anything, but I’ll use a bit of my guts here. Anyway, long story short… This is for real.”
A moment later, Number Seven did something very simple:
He took a determined step toward Ollerus, grabbed him by the head, and smashed him into the side of a nearby container.
But…
…what would happen if you performed those actions at twice the speed of sound?
There was a mind-boggling bang!!
The metal container easily crumpled, and Ollerus, after slipping out of Sogiita’s hand, crashed through it and flew dozens of meters away. A cluster of containers collapsed like a house of cards. Some of them threatened to rain down on Sogiita and the fallen girls as well, but he raised a hand overhead and blew away the airborne containers like a volcano.
Thick clouds of dust shrouded them.
The only sound was the constant, irregular, eerie clattering of metal.
And then Number Seven narrowed his eyes and tsked.
“For someone so depraved, you sure do have a lot of guts, though it’s still real twisted.”
“No, you were right the first time—I’m a gutless person.”
The voice rose from the dust. Its source formed a silhouette as Ollerus slowly walked toward him.
He hadn’t changed a bit. Not even a hair on his head was out of place.
“But, well… I do have a reason. A reason to fight. Unlike you.”
“……”
Number Seven couldn’t rightly respond.
He tried approaching Ollerus to beat some guts into the guy.
However…
…this time, it was Ollerus’s turn to show his true power.
In short, it was an inexplicable phenomenon.
Even Sogiita, who took the attack face-first, had absolutely no idea what had just happened to him.
But the next thing he knew, his body was flying away. The damage washed over him—all of it equal, from the surface of his skin right down to the core of his body. This wasn’t an attack that struck a single place, with the impact spreading through him after it hit. It was more like soaking a cloth in water. Unnatural damage was now permeating his entire body.
“……?”
Even after suffering the clean hit, his legs giving out, and his body crumpling to the ground, Sogiita wasn’t afraid—he just had questions.
Ollerus’s attack hadn’t even allowed him to sense a threat to his life.
“The most fearsome attacks in this world come from powers that cannot be explained.”
The lips of the man who should have become a magic god moved.
“No matter how vast the wellspring of mysterious power, if you swing it down like you would a sword, you need only respond in kind. If you fire it like a gun, you can defend yourself in the same way you would against a gun. That’s all that ‘strange attacks’ are when explained on the most basic level.”
Number Seven groaned as he tried to pull himself out of his prone position.
Ollerus didn’t move.
He made absolutely no action that could be explained or understood.
But something still happened, and Sogiita’s body was blown even farther away.
“But you can’t deal with inexplicable powers that way.”
Ollerus spoke quietly and slowly.
“The most fearsome thing in the world is to be defeated by something you cannot understand, by powers that cannot be explained, and without any time to think of a counter. The ambiguity makes it impossible to even define conditions, and it forces you to fight without knowing if dodging the attacks is possible even if you moved thousands of kilometers away in any direction. I believe you now know how frustrating such a thing can be.”
There was no gasp of surprise from Sogiita.
Though it was incomplete, Ollerus had struck him directly with his Hli?skjálf twice. Originally, the throne that appeared in Scandinavian legend had no such offensive properties—but Ollerus’s spell forcibly used it as a weapon, which was how he’d escalated its force into something inexplicable. He’d used it while keeping the attack’s scope and power only vaguely defined, and Number Seven was probably already out cold.
“You and I aren’t so different,” he said quietly, relaxing. “One of us is subjectively wielding an inexplicable power, and the other isn’t. That’s about the only thing that sets us apart. The delicate and complex Number Seven, whom even Academy City’s scientists couldn’t meddle with… In fact, you’re such a unique esper they’re not even sure if they should really be classifying you as a Level Five. And if you’d understood that, you might have been able to beat me.”
The goal of the man who should have become a magic god was to fight Number Seven and defeat him with overwhelming power.
It was a subtle restraint against Academy City for its collection of all those Uncut Gems.
Ollerus, deciding this show would do the trick, quietly turned around to leave.
“And I do have a reason I can’t allow myself to lose, either. It might have been a disaster for you, but stay down—for your own good. This isn’t about what your guts can or cannot do.”
And then…
“…I can’t let that go now, can I?”
Ollerus heard someone get up.
He slowly turned around to find the wound-covered young man standing there. By all accounts, he should have been unconscious after getting hit twice by the unknown attack Hli?skjálf, and yet he was standing. It didn’t mesh with Ollerus’s calculations. But this was the kind of world Ollerus and the others lived in.
“Don’t you dare treat someone like they’ve got no guts before they’ve even given up, you turd.”
Blood dripped from Number Seven’s brow.
His breathing was ragged.
But he ignored the intense pain and glared at his opponent.
“Don’t think for a second I’ll go down that easy. I’ll show you that strength is more than getting all cocky on your high horse…! Guts isn’t something you lose just because you don’t have the advantage anymore!!”
Roar!! Some sort of strange energy surrounded Sogiita.
“I’ll show you what real guts looks like!! I don’t need any outrageous reasoning. If a man walks the straight and narrow and never strays from his path, he can at the very least stand up for some wounded girls, regardless of whether they’re total strangers or whatever!!”
Number Seven didn’t fight it—he let the energy fill him, then began to run forward.
Unlike Ollerus’s inexplicable powers, he simply ran forward.
Ollerus laughed in response.
And as he did, he made no moves that could be explained or understood.
The third cast of Hli?skjálf—and the charge of the seventh-ranked Level Five.
The indescribable, inexplicable, and incomprehensible monsters clashed.
And then…
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