novelDisaster in the Depths of Fertility. Goddess_of_Fertility (2)
| ← Ch.096 | Ch.098 → |
He had survived for the time being.
But if he climbed up now, Freyja would begin her attack once more. And she might not wait until after he had finished defenselessly climbing up.
He needed a way to fight back.
Fortunately, Freyja would likely assume she had won. With that much destruction, checking for a body would be difficult. He had to make his preparations during that slight period of safety. Currently, Kamijou was supported only by his ten fingers and was about to fall to the ground which was rushing by with tremendous speed below.
The biggest obstacle was removing his coat.
Removing his arms from the sleeves meant he had to temporarily support himself with only one arm.
With his removed coat in hand, Kamijou supported himself as if performing a pull up and slowly moved toward Freyja while clinging to the side of the train.
Once he was close enough, he only had to wait.
He waited for her to peer down at him.
All he did was throw his coat up to block her vision.
"Dammit! That's your decision!?" shouted Freyja.
It seemed even a magician felt a bit fearful when her vision was blocked at the edge of a train. If she carelessly stepped off, she would fall straight for the ground.
Kamijou had to climb up onto the roof in that time, but it was still not enough. With her vision still blocked, Freyja purposefully dropped the jewel in her hand.
And she gave the incantation.
"Cost 1. White. Call / / Muninn."
(I don't have time to hesitate!!)
Kamijou faltered because his opponent was pregnant. He was quite hesitant. However, hesitating here would mean his death and Freyja would continue to use the baby inside her for her own purposes. If her shocking statement about two years having passed was true, he could not leave this be. Japan's laws seemed to not give a fetus human rights as long as it was inside the womb, but he felt those laws could eat shit.
He would bet on the possibility of saving that child no matter how slim it was.
(Sorry!!)
While apologizing to the baby rather than Freyja and supporting himself with one hand, Kamijou swept his other hand along the roof. While Freyja struggled nervously with her vision cut off, he swept her feet out from under her from behind. Kamijou was considerate enough to have her collapse onto her back rather than her stomach. He had no way of knowing how dangerous an act it was either way, though.
"Kh!!"
Before checking to make sure Freyja had fallen to her butt, Kamijou climbed up onto the train's roof.
While lying face down, Kamijou saw the jewel on the floor gathering wet red thread.
He frantically stood up.
Just as it took the form of a giant bird and attacked, he smashed it to pieces with his right fist.
(Her attacks come from those strange jewels she calls Brísingamen. )
After making sure the bird had been destroyed, Kamijou quickly turned toward Freyja.
(If I can steal or destroy that, she won't be able to attack. I will settle this no matter what! If I don't take advantage of this timing, this will turn into a long, drawn-out fistfight. I want to avoid that for the baby's sake!!)
A maternity dress was meant to reduce the burden on the mother. Its material was not made any thicker than necessary and it did not have a large number of unneeded pockets. He could clearly see her body lines through the dress and the only pockets were the ones on the left and right.
"There!!"
If the Brísingamen jewels were supported by magical power, he would not even need to steal them. Simply sticking his hand in her pocket would destroy all of the jewels she had stocked up like bullets.
This was checkmate.
But as soon as he thought that...
"Don't..."
He heard a horribly low-pitched voice.
Freyja bent her right knee just once and pulled it back like compressing a spring. Her heel shot forcefully toward Kamijou's gut.
"Don't touch my mother!!"
Kamijou felt an impact in his solar plexus and heard an odd shout.
The breath was knocked out of him and he rolled backwards. Meanwhile, Freyja stood up and threw away the coat covering her upper body. As the coat was tossed by the powerful wind, Kamijou coughed and caught it in one hand.
And then he saw it.
He saw the fertility goddess Freyja.
On the large stomach of the woman who had given that name, a complex pattern was written in light as if rising up from within the maternity dress.
"It can't be..."
He had been mistaken about something.
He had made a misunderstanding during his initial assumptions.
Kamijou could feel a strange chill running down his spine.
He had thought he was faced with the magician known as Freyja and the fetus being used as a calculation device.
But he had been wrong.
He recalled what she had said.
The mother had no magical sense, so the fetus was using magic.
In that case...
"Is it you?" muttered Kamijou in shock.
His voice said he still could not believe the thought that had entered his head.
He was looking toward the woman in a maternity dress, but he was not looking at her.
He looked at her large stomach as he spoke.
"Are you Freyja!?"
Part 12
It was often said that fetuses could hear the noises and voices of the surrounding world before leaving their mother's stomach.
That was why she had understood.
Even if she did not have the ability to accurately analyze and understand language, she had been able to distinguish the nuances and emotions of the words sent her way, at least to a certain extent.
Even if she had not wanted to, she had understood
Her mother had lived while everything in the world tried to crush her.
She had understood that this was due to her being inside the mother.
She did not know how she came to be inside the stomach of a mother so young, but she was certain she was not a child that the world wanted to be born. From the moment she was born... no, even before that, she had been hated by a large number of people.
And amid all that, her mother had desperately fought against that unreasonable world.
Even as that world tried to crush her mother from every single direction, that mother had desperately tried to protect the new life growing inside her.
In that crucible of malice, a deluge of verbal abuse had constantly washed over her mother. She had no way of knowing how painful that had been for her.
But...
If her mother had abandoned her, wouldn't it have all been over?
She had thought that but had been unable to do anything.
Even as a baby inside the womb, she had at times been able to move her arms and legs with her own will. However, her readiness to give up her own life to save her mother had come to nothing. Each time she swung her arms and legs, her mother had misinterpreted the act and only smiled and kindly rubbed her belly.
In the end, it seemed her mother was simply too kind a person.
She had lost all of her personal relationships, her parents and siblings had stopped supporting her, and she had been driven from where she lived. Even as she watched everything she had built up come crumbling down around her, the mother did not hate her child. It was not that she worked to drive the thoughts from her mind; she never even considered it.
Despite having no assurances of a place to sleep or food to eat, her mother had knitted, told old stories that focused only on the good, and enthusiastically repeated a baseless magical charm meant to ensure her child was born safely.
That was the kind of person her mother had been.
And it may have been because her mother was like that that she had been able to think there was at least one good thing in that world otherwise blotted out by the color black.
The mother had done everything she could to protect her child.
The child had done everything she could to save her mother.
However...
Part 13
"There is..."
While swaying, Fertility Goddess Freyja slowly stood up on the train's roof.
No, that was not technically accurate.
She was controlling the mother through the umbilical cord connecting the mother and child.
"... someone I must save no matter what."
The tunnel ceiling grew a bit lower.
Kamijou bent his back without thinking, but Freyja continued standing tall. Seeing the ceiling rushing past just above the top of her head squeezed at Kamijou's heart.
"There is someone in such a hopeless situation that they will receive no comfort whatsoever even after ten years of work and one hundred years of research. I know that to be the case."
Kamijou did not know the exact situation, but he could take a guess as to who she was talking about.
If the child really was controlling the mother and the mother could not even stand on her own feet without being controlled, what had happened to the mother?
"What does this have to do with Gremlin and all the destruction they spread everywhere?"
Something had to have happened to that mother and child.
Something so terribly painful it would almost break his heart to hear it.
"They want to destroy the world. Are you saying you're going along with that!?"
"You still haven't truly seen what Gremlin is."
A self-deprecating smile appeared on the woman's face.
That smile appeared based on the will of the child that was borrowing her body.
"Even if ten years of work and a hundred years of research would all be meaningless, that magic god can ignore those restrictions. It does not matter how much malice fills her. As long as the lance is completed, that person can be saved from this nightmarish situation in which she will hit an inevitable dead end!!"
"..."
For an instant – just an instant – Kamijou thought about that possibility.
What if Magic God Othinus was not a bringer of destruction but instead reached out to help people?
But...
That was not the case.
"Someone who could calmly call the incidents in Hawaii and Baggage City a success could never have such a decent heart. And once that lance is complete, Othinus won't have to listen to what anyone says!!"
"That's fine. Either way, this stopgap method will not last forever. I may be controlling my mother through the umbilical cord right now, but that is putting her in a detached state where her sense of self grows gradually thinner. She will eventually reach a limit and completely vanish. But if I am removed, my mother will not even be able to keep her organs running. It is over either way. There is only one way to protect my mother from the destruction that is coming before long. I can only take in the contradiction and borrow the power of that magic god!!"
"Do you still not see the truth!? Othinus is only using that as a convenient tool to guide you. It's the exact same thing happening in this city! The people think something is wrong, but by making them think going along with it is to their advantage, everyone splits apart and no organized resistance rises up! That's all Othinus is thinking with you!!"
"My mother collapsed while protecting me!! If she had abandoned me, she could have returned safely to her former life, but she stuck with me!!"
Those words sounded like she was coughing up blood and they seemed to be accompanied by a physical blow.
A mere high school boy like Kamijou Touma did not have the foundation needed to deny those words.
However...
He was sure that woman in the maternity dress had fought amid all that.
She had fought to protect a life in some place Kamijou could not even imagine.
"So stay out of the way."
Kamijou heard a sound like something solid being scratched at.
By the time he realized something was wrong, it was too late.
"Until that time when I can return her body, I will not let anyone hurt my mother!!"
It came from below.
But there was nothing on the roof of the train below their feet.
It came from further below than that.
They were standing on a five-car train. There was a large space inside that giant box. When he had outwitted Freyja by climbing along the wall, he had been so focused on supporting his body that he had looked only at the hands supporting his weight. He had never looked inside the train car. But what if Freyja had made effective use of that space?
What if she had called in a large number of monsters while fighting Kamijou and had fed them all to a single monster to fatten it up?
"Cost 70. Black. Shift / / Níðhöggr Vol. 02!!"
Just as the five-car train left the tunnel and appeared aboveground, Kamijou's entire vision was filled with bright sunlight.
An attack came in that instant he was blinded.
Freyja cried out and something inside the car Kamijou stood on ripped it apart like plastic. A much too large red dragon appeared with its maw pointed upwards. Freyja took three or four steps backwards and moved to the next car forward. By the time Kamijou saw that, the entire destroyed car had already been tossed into the air. The following cars were dragged along and derailed.
He could not land on the roof of the remaining cars.
He would be smashed to pieces along with the back cars being turned to scrap.
(Shit. )
The woman in the maternity dress stood out of reach in front of him.
That was the much too young magician named Freyja and the mother who had tried to protect her.
That mother and child had been forced to rely on the slight possibility of Magic God Othinus's powers even if they knew Othinus was using them.
(I can't let it end like this... I still haven't grasped anything in my hand!!)
Suddenly, the falling motion of Kamijou's body clearly changed. This was due to external interference. When he realized that, Kamijou finally noticed someone was grabbing onto the back of his school uniform.
It was a girl who had fallen from the sky.
It was a girl who had carried out the acrobatics needed to jump onto the roof of the subway train.
It was a girl who could jump from high-rise building to high-rise building with her free control over magnetism.
It was a girl who already held a white girl in one hand and had saved Kamijou from a hopeless situation with her other hand.
It was Misaka Mikoto.
Academy City's #3 Level 5 and the ace of Tokiwadai Middle School landed on the roof of the train like an arrow stabbing into it.
Only two cars remained.
Even after they landed and Kamijou sank to the roof, he still lacked confidence that he was alive.
"What a pain, " said Mikoto simply as she released Index from her right hand and Kamijou from her left."I finally caught up to you, you idiot. Just because our cell phones don't work is no reason to run off on your own and get cornered! Did you forget that you only have one life no matter what kind of power you have!?"
The white nun holding a calico cat sighed.
"Saying that won't change Touma. And because nothing will change him, we have no choice but to compromise. Sorry, Touma, but I'm joining in this time. No matter what you say, I'm not backing down."
There may have been people who would say this was pathetic.
There may have been people who would mock him as powerless.
There may have been people who would criticize him for getting others involved for his own selfish purposes.
But...
"..."
A cell phone fell onto the train roof.
It had fallen from Kamijou's pocket while he was thrown from the train and roughly rescued by Mikoto.
Some button must have been pressed during the fall because the small electronic device began playing a message.
He had set it to record the message to his phone if there was a new message on the disaster message board service.
It was a short message only a few dozen seconds long.
He heard a familiar voice.
"Hey. I wonder if they can hear me. Touya-san, Touma-san. Is this reaching you?"
It was a female voice without a hint of unease or worry as if nothing at all was happening.
A mother.
That was a person that, unless special means were used such as Academy City's cloning technology, anyone born into the world had one of. That was an adult that it was perfectly normal but occasionally irritating to have around.
"It looks like there is some kind of commotion outside, but I'm perfectly fine. Don't worry about me and wait until all this dies down, okay?"
There was a mother and child who had not been allowed to give or be given that completely normal thing.
Not even once.
The child had not been born into the bright world and they had never seen each other's faces.
That overwhelming unfairness lay before Kamijou's eyes.
In that case, he could not worry about appearances. It did not matter if it was shameful, pathetic, or embarrassing. If it would allow him to destroy this nonsensical precipice, he would use anything. He would use anything and get anyone involved.
That was...
That was definitely...
"That is Freyja, a Gremlin magician. Her true form is the baby in the woman's womb. It seems she used some method to save the collapsed mother which gave her temporary control over the mother's body."
Kamijou picked up his scratched cell phone, squeezed it, and spoke.
And he thought.
(But that is definitely not wrong. )
"Please. Lend me your power so I can save them both."
In that instant, Index, the Anglican nun wearing a white habit and carrying a calico cat, fell silent for a moment. She slowly narrowed her eyes and thought on the meaning of the words coming from Kamijou Touma's mouth.
In that instant, Misaka Mikoto, the girl with the nickname Railgun and wearing the blazer of Tokiwadai Middle School's winter uniform, stopped moving as if thinking over the words she had heard.
They did not think it was too much to ask.
They did not find it to be a bother.
They had been waiting for those words for so long.
How long and painful had that wait been? The boy who had naturally spoken those words did not know how those girls felt. It would have taken hours or even days for them to say everything they wanted to say, but that did not matter for the moment.
The answer they had to give here was not something so long and unending.
They could take their time with that once this was all over.
They knew what would currently feel best as an answer for that boy who felt cornered and was seeking help.
"Leave it to me."
"Leave it to me."
The two girls took a large step forward to protect Kamijou Touma.
At the same moment, the train shot back into a tunnel.
Ahead of them was the Gremlin magician named Freyja. Behind them were the sounds of destruction as Níðhöggr Vol. 02 charged into the tunnel. It was clearly too large for the half circle space of the tunnel. If it continued forward, it could easily blow away the two remaining cars of the train. A powerful enemy lay ahead and behind, but Index and Misaka Mikoto both gave thin smiles.
They had nothing to be afraid of.
Their enemy was most likely unaware that they now stood in the place they had long dreamt of being in.
Part 14
It sounded both like the cry of silk being torn and the unique singing of an undiscovered culture.
As the white girl stood in the center, eight giant flower petals bloomed while fused to her ankles. It looked like the calculated beauty produced in nature to draw in insects for reproductive purposes. It looked like the artisanal beauty woven into the artificial subtleties of an analog clock face.
A great number of electrodes were sticking into the petals and various signals were being sent into the girl via cables. For better or for worse, those signals were producing extended high-pitched screams that stabbed at one's heart.
"Good, good, good, " said Marian Slingeneyer from the poolside on the ruined deck of the luxury passenger ship.
A lance handle the length of a human arm sat at the bottom of the pool filled with a thick, transparent liquid.
It was gradually growing like watching a burning candle in reverse.
The growth was gradual but constant.
"The temporary switchover from magic to science went well. If this keeps up, we will surely make it through without issue."
"You should stop using the word 'surely'. It is meaningless."
The production of the lance could not be completed with a magical ceremony alone, but the solution involved more than simply switching over from magic to science.
The ceremony was still based in magic.
To avoid that insurmountable barrier, they would temporarily switch over to the rails of the science side, but they could not complete the lance if they remained in the realm of science to the end. After overcoming that great barrier, they had to switch the rails back to magic.
Marian must have been nervous because she licked her lips even though they were not dry.
"Now then. This is the last tricky part. If we can manually overcome this, the rest will finish on its own."
"No, wait, " said the eyepatch-wearing girl in a low voice.
The girl-shaped flower tilted to the side as it continued to emit that strange voice that sounded both like screaming and singing. Its lustrous and moisturized skin began to loosen like baggy clothing. Something was collapsing within. It resembled a decomposing corpse.
Marian Slingeneyer's expression changed.
"Oh, crap... It's going to take another 10 minutes to switch back over. If the holistic esper collapses before then, the ceremony will hit a dead end here!!"
"..."
"Where are the dregs of the #2? He made this specimen, so he can replace the crumbling tissue!!"
Othinus did not reply to Marian's cries.
She instead took a step toward the white flower.
She crushed one of the eight petals underfoot and stared at the face of the girl-shaped specimen.
With one hand, she thrust her fingers toward that specimen's chest as if attempting to crush it.
The screaming and singing did not stop.
Othinus forced her hand inside and grabbed the area corresponding to a human's lungs. She squeezed like a pump to force air out.
"Othinus!?"
"Do you really think that empty husk will help us if he knows our plan will fail without him? In the time we spent negotiating, the production of the spear would fail." Othinus used her one eye to stare at Marian."Do it. We only need this thing to last the 10 minutes until you switch back over."
"..."
The white flower crumbled. Brown and black stains and wrinkles spread across it, so it could no longer be called "white".
Even so, the voice continued.
Dark red blood trickled from Othinus's eyepatch.
She had immense power, but things did not always progress as she wanted because her infinite possibilities held an equal number of successes and failures.
Sticky sounds could be heard.
It was impossible to distinguish the sounds of the magic god crumbling from those of the flower crumbling.
Finally, the cruelly decomposed flower bent at the neck and the entire head fell to the poolside floor. It completely burst with a splatting sound. It looked like the remains of a fruit that no one had picked and not even any animals had shown interest in.
The singing stopped.
Marian Slingeneyer collapsed to a sitting position on the ground.
"We did it."
"Not all of it."
"Okay, fine. We managed to switch back. We can just sit back and watch the lance complete itself. There is no way it can fail now!!"
"I see."
The eyepatch-wearing girl removed her foot from the discolored remains of the flower petal that had completely crumbled. It was reminiscent of a flower that was returning to the earth after dropping its seeds and completing its role.
The core of Othinus shook.
"Othinus?"
"You said we can just take a nap now, right? I will focus on mending myself. If I did it here, the great power could blow away the ceremony."
"Then why don't you rely on one of the other members? You still might not succeed, after all. Let's see, I think Iðunn and Sif are free, so-..."
The eyepatch-wearing girl held out a hand to stop Marian from continuing.
She then walked away from the pool.
As Marian Slingeneyer watched the girl leave, the other girl who had taken the form of a black drum clattered next to her.
Marian looked toward the pool.
The lance had already reached two meters in length and a sharp blade was forming on the end.
"Just a bit more, " she muttered.
The lance was intended to reach 250 cm.
"Just a bit more and you won't have to go to all that effort, Othinus."
With those last 50 cm, the world would change.
Part 15
It did not matter how many new enemies arrived.
Fertility Goddess Freyja held a key that ensured her victory.
While ignoring the tunnel ceiling growing lower again, she stared at her enemies and shouted.
"Cost 1. White. Call / / Hildisvíni!"
She threw a jewel, a great amount of wet red thread wrapped around it, and a boar was born.
That was all she had to do.
Hildisvíni was the beast the goddess Freyja rode in Norse mythology. She would have it play that role here. Even Freyja would be killed instantly if she jumped from the fast-moving train, but she could survive with a cushion between herself and the ground. She would use the boar for that.
Now she merely had to send Níðhöggr Vol. 02 charging in from behind. The attack would fill the entire tunnel and smash the train to pieces.
That would annihilate her enemies.
Both Freyja and her enemies would be thrown into the air, but Freyja alone would have a cushion to allow herself to escape unscathed.
No matter how dirty the method, she would make sure to protect her mother.
She would not let anyone lay another finger on her.
"Destroy everything, Níðhöggr Vol. 02!!"
She gave the final command.
That giant dragon gained an extra burst of speed as if crossing the final line.
That dragon had cost 70 jewels. Even if it ran headlong into a ten-car linear motor train, it would smash the train without taking any damage itself.
However...
Something happened just before the dragon struck.
"Shut up!!!!!"
Mikoto jumped back as if performing a backflip.
Powerful magnetism pulled her forcefully toward the back of the train. It looked like she was throwing a dropkick with the force of a shell. That short and slender girl would be smashed to a pulp the instant she touched any spot on the tunnel, but she did not hesitate to jump from the safe zone and toward Níðhöggr Vol. 02.
The greatest roar yet burst out.
And that roar was followed by many more.
As Mikoto launched herself horizontally toward the dragon, she could be seen pulling several arcade coins from her skirt.
She fired repeatedly at point blank range.
This was the attack that gave her the nickname of Railgun and she fired it again and again to her heart's content.
The entire tunnel shook ominously and small fragments fell from the ceiling.
"It... can't be..."
The giant dragon's advance was stopped in an instant.
Freyja and the others' on the moving train saw what could only be called its remnants disappearing. Their minds had numbed to the point that they could understand nothing more than that.
Now that Níðhöggr Vol. 02 could not destroy the train, Freyja had to rethink her entire plan.
But Kamijou Touma and Index were not going to give her that time.
Just as the tunnel ceiling rose up, the two of them took a large step forward.
They boldly moved straight toward her.
"Tch!!"
Fertility Goddess Freyja scattered many, many jewels across the roof. Brísingamen was especially popular and well-known even within Norse mythology, so it had been studied by plenty of researchers. Nevertheless, it remained a black box with unknown effects and unknown symbolism. When she threw the core which held that name, she would construct a unique spell using the mother's body and the womb.
"Cost 1. Black. Call / / Þrymr."
"Cost 1. White. Call / / Hrímfaxi."
"Cost 1. Black. Call / / Hymir."
"Cost 1. White. Call / / Huginn."
"Cost 1. Black. Call / / Svaðilfari."
Who would produce what and what would eat what? She spread her options as wide as she could. She could force her way through with numbers or she could crush them with one giant monster. She expanded a spider web-like flowchart that allowed her to adapt to any number of situations.
However...
"S F O C I C R Y S!! (Fill in the missing gear of the song for the blessed child!!)"
Freyja's entire body stiffened as the white nun gave her incantation.
This was Spell Intercept.
Index used a shorthand code called Notarikon to interfere with an opposing magician's incantation and take control of the spell. Index could not refine magic power on her own, but she had put together this single compilation of skills to take part in battles using the supernatural power known as magic.
That girl took all the knowledge contained in the 103, 000 grimoires stored in her head to instantly analyze her opponent's attack method, search out the most effective method of interfering, and use that against her enemy.
At the same time, Kamijou Touma spoke to Index who was facing the enemy magician.
He told her to analyze the magic being used to give birth to those "children".
"Now that I think about it, it didn't really make sense, " said Kamijou after letting out a slow breath."You said you worked to protect your mother from within her womb. But how and where did you learn magic? Was your mother a magician? Perhaps, but seeing as your magic is specialized toward giving birth to 'children', I can guess what it is all based on. Do you know what that is?"
"..."
"Magic used to safely give birth to your child, " said Kamijou as if thrusting the words at her."The original magic was made to ensure you were safely born! I don't know if that was a spell involving an actual procedure or if it was nothing but a magic charm, but it wasn't something meant to hurt people!! You remade it into attack magic so you could join Gremlin. If that's true... !!"
"So what if it is?" asked Freyja with a voice so low it sounded like she was chanting a curse."No matter what it originally was, it failed in the end!! If I leave my mother and she loses my support, she will be unable to even breathe. She will die. But if I stay in here, her sense of self will gradually fade away. Either way, I can't protect her with any normal means!! I can't escape this dead end without a magic god's power to make the impossible possible!!"
"Then let Index finish it. Let her use her collection of knowledge that can reach the level of a magic god if used all together!!" replied Kamijou Touma without a moment's hesitation."Those 103, 000 grimoires can bring this to an end without the power of a magic god!! You could say you and your mother have reversed the normal relationship between a mother and fetus. Until a certain point, the fetus lives off of the blood, nutrients, and oxygen of the mother, but a switch is thrown so the child can supply all of those on her own once she is born. This is the same. If we can reveal the spell meant to allow the child a safe birth and send it into the mother that is fully reliant on you, your mother should be able to keep her heart beating on her own just as when a child leaves its mother!!"
The magician named Freyja was using her mother's senses to make her way through the world, but she was actually a tiny life curled up in that mother's stomach. In that instant, she was unable to grasp the identity of what it was descending upon her.
The world was overwhelmingly dark and filled with malice pressing against her from all sides. She had been hated by a great number of people even before being born and her mother had desperately tried to protect her amid all that.
Just how great a disadvantage would her birth be?
Even as her mother's body was about to break while desperately working to support her, someone had attacked that mother.
Unable to fight back, she had been knocked to the dark road surface. At the very, very end, she had used her hands to protect not her own head but her large stomach. That was likely why the mother's life had been damaged beyond the point of no return.
And so Freyja had given up.
She had given up on hoping for anything from that dark world. The one soft and bright thing in her life had been cruelly taken for someone else's benefit. In a world in which even that would be taken, there could not be any light remaining whatsoever.
And so she had not hesitated to twist the laws of that world.
As her mother lay on the road with something crucial broken within her body, Freyja had not hesitated to take control of that body. She had instinctually known that her mother would stop breathing otherwise. And she had already decided she would do anything to protect her mother. What she had needed to do first was exterminate the masked attacker who stood before her mother's eyes.
And so she had distanced herself from the warm future her mother had wished for her.
That mother had been a truly harmless woman who knew nothing of magic. At some point, she had learned a magic charm to give birth to a healthy baby and she had desperately repeated it over and over. Freyja had thoroughly analyzed that charm down to its numerical values and the logic behind it. She had rewritten it and built up the magic she needed to endure fighting in that dark world filled with nothing but bogs and shed blood. She crushed her mother's ideals in order to save that mother.
She had needed no reason.
She had never thought up a single excuse.
She had not seen herself as having fallen so low as to worry about that kind of thing when it came to rescuing her mother's life.
However...
"I..."
For one thing, Freyja's current state was not normal by any stretch of the imagination.
Normally thinking, a fetus could never control the mother. Even if the pregnancy had lasted two years and even if she had taken control of a portion of the mother's brain, she should not have been able to fully use logic and language at such in immature state.
She had used magic to twist all of that.
Index was attempting to accurately analyze it all.
It went beyond how she used the Brísingamen jewels as an attack. Index was essentially attempting to hack into the single system known as Fertility Goddess Freyja that was made up of the mother and the fetus.
"I decided I would protect my mother no matter what I had to do. Even if I had to sell my soul to a magic god and even if I had to spill great amounts of innocent blood as a pawn of Gremlin, I decided I would do this! I decided I would do it myself!!"
"It's over, " cut in Kamijou. He repeated himself."It's over now. You no longer have to use that bare hostility as a weapon to protect your mother. That horrible unfairness is over, Freyja. You can trust people now."
A great cry exploded out.
It was accompanied by a heavy roar.
A large man and a giant horse had taken a step forward. They were both made from a complex collection of wet red thread.
There was no meaning in this fight.
Now that Fertility Goddess Freyja no longer had to obey Magic God Othinus, she had no more reason to fight for Gremlin.
The reason Freyja did not back down was because she did not know how to trust people.
But Kamijou did not think that was wrong or meaningless.
After all, it was completely natural.
That was something she could learn bit by bit after being born and facing this wide world.
What was wrong was the great burden that much too small body had borne for so long.
"Index."
Kamijou once more stepped forward to face the approaching threat.
He spoke without turning around.
"I'll take out everything that tries to interfere. I'll buy you the time you need to prepare. You can focus on this one thing without worrying."
He stared forward.
He confronted those monsters of muscle that held frightening strength.
He confronted them and he spoke.
"So do this."
Kamijou and the monsters ran full speed toward each other.
Their clash lasted an instant.
While it was an important element that would decide the trend of the situation, it was a trivial matter that did not produce a single scratch.
The white nun muttered an accurate incantation under her breath.
The young child trying to protect her mother let out a bestial cry.
Kamijou naturally smiled as he used his right fist to blow away the monsters of muscle that were made up of dark red thread wrapped around a jewel.
"It's over, Freyja, " he said without thinking.
All of this had just been a long rehearsal. Her true performance was yet to come.
"So let's end this and bring on the next age. We're waiting for you in the wide world ahead of you!!"
The battered train left the dark, dark tunnel.
And it entered the bright, white sunlight.
"... Uh?"
The train no longer held any monsters with the strength to crush a human in a single blow or any Gremlin magicians who possessed the frightening power and skills needed to keep the head of a nation from acting.
"Um, excuse me. Where am I?"
This was the same pregnant woman as before, but she asked that question with a frailty that was completely different from before.
This was no longer a mother whose fetus had been forced to take control to keep her alive.
This mother and child were no different from those found anywhere.
Part 16
The train carrying Kamijou, Index, and Freyja continued on. Freyja had lost consciousness as if sleeping and Kamijou and Index did their best to stay down. They did not want to be thrown from the roughly shaking train and the ceiling came frighteningly low at some points, so they did not want to stand up if they could avoid it.
The subway train continued all the way to Tokyo Station before stopping.
"Damn. So it won't take us all the way to Tokyo Bay. Moving to a different train is a pain right now."
Shinbashi or Shiodome would have been closer to Tokyo Bay. It was not that far from here, but that distance would feel a lot longer while walking through those crowds. They had to think up some other means of travelling.
(... ?)
For some reason, the large station was completely deserted. The main entrances may have been sealed off early on and the remaining people may have been led out through the staff entrances and evacuation corridors. They had actually wanted people out so they could use the station themselves, but the official reason had likely been to protect the people from being killed by the smoke if a fire broke out.
This subway facility had handled the situation very differently from the one on Shinjuku.
That alone showed just how confused the station workers were.
(What? The platform is covered in tons of wooden boxes. )
They could not stay on the train's roof forever. If it set off again, they would not be able to climb down.
"Now then."
Kamijou had been worried because over half the train's cars had been damaged or derailed, but after climbing down and checking inside, it seemed the train had held no normal passengers. A single man sat in the driver's seat and the passenger areas were filled with tons of wooden boxes.
Kamijou did not even need to check on the contents.
The man in the driver's seat did not look like a normal driver hired by the railroad company. The camouflage he wore was a dead giveaway.
(The riot police or the JSDF are using the railroad to transport materials. Those boxes aren't full of ammunition, are they?)
He was worried because a dragon had broken through the roof of one of the passenger cars and several of the cars had derailed, but it seemed no one had been hurt.
Freyja may have intentionally set it up that way.
That child had been fighting against the unfairness of the world to protect her mother, so she may have wanted to avoid sullying her mother's hands as much as possible.
Kamijou wondered how difficult it had been to get Gremlin to recognize her as a useful member of that inhuman organization.
"At any rate, the driver looks fine."
Kamijou knocked on the door to the driver's area and called out to the man but received no response. He and his organization had likely been trying to stop Gremlin's invasion in their own way, but he had apparently fallen into mental shock upon seeing Gremlin's destructive power up close.
Index spoke from the roof.
"Touma, what should we do?"
"I'm probably a high priority target for Gremlin. Not because of my strength or anything but because my right hand can stop the production of that lance. The best way of keeping her safe would be to keep her as far away from us as we can."
On the other hand, they could not just leave Fertility Goddess Freyja while she was unconscious. She was a member of Gremlin and could possibly regain her great strength under the right conditions.
Gremlin would want to capture her to regain her power and the defenders would want to capture her to defend against Gremlin's invasion.
"I see. So you give top priority to the girl. I see, I see, " said Index.
"I haven't done anything wrong, so why are you glaring at me like I'm a terrible person?"
Either due to passing out or due to the child inside her stomach, the woman in the maternity dress showed no sign of waking up after closing her eyes that first time.
According to Index, her breathing and heart rate were normal. However, her sense of self was quite thin due to giving control of her body to someone else for two years. It would apparently take some time before she could naturally accept that role back and fully regain control of her own body. It would be similar to regaining feeling in a limb that had gone to sleep.
It took some doing to lower her from the train roof.
Fortunately, Index's spell to return control from the fetus to the mother was not needed after the switch had been made. That meant Kamijou could touch the mother with his right hand with no ill effects.
Index worked from above and Kamijou worked from below to lower the calmly sleeping woman to the platform.
Index looked like she was about to jump down after her, but Kamijou frantically recommended she instead use the ladder on the side of the train.
"Touma, I hear a clanking sound."
"It seems the other tracks are running, too. They may be using Tokyo Station as a relay point for transporting supplies."
"That sign is covered in so many colorful lines that I can't tell what it means!"
"The Japanese salarymen who can read this really are amazing."
They walked down some stairs, headed for a different subway platform, climbed over the ticket barrier, and succeeded in boarding a different train. The subway train was being used as a cargo train, so the car was filled with wooden boxes. That gave them plenty of places to hide. And due to the structure of the train, all of the doors opened when boxes were being loaded or unloaded, so sneaking aboard was easy as well.
"If this place was safe, we could leave Freyja with the station workers."
"You aren't going to?"
"If this station is being used as a central supply base, Gremlin might target it. And if the people working here learn Freyja is a member of Gremlin, things could get bad."
As the train shook, it took them to the harbor area that bordered Tokyo Bay.
Just as Kamijou thought they would arrive at the station, the train passed right by and continued through the tunnel. It came out above ground and arrived at a switchyard near the bay.
"Is this Shinbashi? No, Shiodome?"
Kamijou lived within the walls of Academy City, so he had little knowledge of the 23 special wards in the city. However, even he had to tilt his head here. Was there a switchyard in a place like this?
It may have been a facility belonging to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency or Ministry of Defense that had not been officially announced. But if that was the case, an amateur like him would find nothing if he searched the internet for the answer.
Once again, all of the doors opened.
"Let's get off here.... Help me out, Index. I'll climb to the ground first and you take care of Freyja."
Meanwhile, a rubber boat with an engine attached passed by along a nearby river. It was headed toward the mouth of the river.
Kamijou recognized the girls on board.
They also noticed him, so the rubber military landing boat decelerated, made a U-turn, and came right up to the edge of the switchyard.
"You've caught yourself another strange girl? And this one's pregnant?"
It was Birdway.
She was operating the tiller and engine while Lessar and Kumokawa Maria sat in the boat.
Index looked like she was about to be crushed under the weight of the woman and it would be a big deal if she was dropped, so Kamijou could not leave Freyja (technically, it was her mother) with Index. However, if Kamijou held that sleeping woman in his arms, it seemed things would develop in an amusing but chaotic direction.
"You three would be amazed if you knew what's happened while you've been leisurely floating around."
But something else happened before he could get to an actual explanation.
With the sound of scattering sparks, Misaka Mikoto fell from the sky and used magnetism to land on the metal railing alongside the river mouth.
"Honestly!! You make that big announcement about fighting together and then leave me behind after the very first attack!?... And why are you forcing yourself on the pregnant woman who was trying to kill you not long ago?"
"Please let me answer one question at a time!! You're chaining them together like some kind of competitive puzzle game!!"
A great number of sparks appeared along the path of the rubber boat and Misaka Mikoto's descent. Between fifty and one hundred flame figures appeared, so they did not have time to stand around talking.
Birdway held up her wand and Misaka Mikoto flicked a coin up with her thumb.
With a great roar, the army of automatic soldiers was blown to pieces before it could begin to attack.
Lessar calmly placed a hand over her eyes and looked off into the distance.
"Hmm. It really does look like these attack automatically if you exceed a certain speed. Does it check over a distance of 10 meters?"
"I ran into some at the subway station. Is that what calls them in?"
"By the way, I'm perfectly fine with a guy who can't help but go for a pregnant woman."
"I'm not fine with that!!" protested Kamijou.
Kumokawa Maria wore a maid uniform colored in black and yellow like a bee and she slowly looked away from Kamijou.
"That's going a bit far for me. I know you should try to value as many things as you can, but that's just... yeah..."
"It's going a bit far for me, too!! What is with this? Can no one see anything but what they want to see? If you think you can escape your lack of knowledge by typing your favorite words into a search engine, you are sorely mistaken!!"
However, he did not have time to spend hours solving the misunderstandings. For one thing, Kamijou Touma's life was made up of a series of those misunderstandings. The bitter flavor of his life was stronger than that of a pain reliever made from 50% kindness.
Birdway smacked the cover of the rubber boat's engine.
"Well, at least we managed to meet up. Gremlin's base of Sargasso is located on Tokyo Bay. We'll be heading straight there. They may have destroyed the major roads and railroads to set up a thick barricade of living flesh with the crowds filling Tokyo, but that has no effect on the ocean. Now that we've come this far, it finally looks like we can actually do something."
"Magic God Othinus."
"I have serious doubts whether that monster can be killed with direct strength. However, she's currently producing that lance. If we interfere in the large-scale ceremony that Gremlin is pouring all of their power into, the energy that has lost anywhere to go will bare its fangs toward the spell user. Even if we can't kill her, there is a decent possibility her own power can be used to kill her."
Most likely, none of them fully approved of the word "kill" being used there, but they all knew Gremlin had to be stopped. Setting aside the question of how far they would go, they needed to prevent Magic God Othinus from doing anything more.
"If you understand, then get aboard. We can't waste any more time.... And don't tell me you plan to bring that pregnant woman along with you."
"To be honest, I can't figure out what to do with her. Do you think the hospitals are running properly right now? And is there a safe route to get her there? From what I heard, the child has been in there for two years. I have no idea what will happen or when, so I can't just leave her in some warm place and-..."
He trailed off because a powerful gust of wind blew through.
A shadow appeared overhead.
Kamijou looked up and his face stiffened.
It was Níðhöggr.
That giant monster which had glared down at the people from the top of the tower earlier was now soaring very close nearby.
That dark red dragon passed above Kamijou and the others and then slowly circled around in midair. After turning 180 degrees, it charged toward them again.
The first pass had been to locate its enemies in preparation.
The second pass was the attack.
As the dragon charged at them with tremendous speed, it showed no concern about striking the ground. It flapped its wings to pick up more speed as if it was fine with creating a giant crater in the ground and causing that coastal area to crumble and allow seawater in.
With his hands full due to holding the woman in a maternity dress, Kamijou shouted to Mikoto.
"I thought you defeated that thing!"
"I did!! This one is a lot bigger. It looks easily over 100 meters long! If a mass that large slams into the ground with the speed needed to catch up to a supersonic passenger plane... !"
"This is different from those sparks from before. It has some special conditions for attacking."
"Does it have to do with that pregnant woman?"
Birdway and Lessar prepared strange spiritual items.
Níðhöggr may not have been trying to exterminate them. Fertility Goddess Freyja had been the primary person sealing off Tokyo, so her defeat may have triggered a rescue attempt by the dragon. It may have been ordered to do that from the beginning.
But it was all for nothing.
Freyja no longer wanted to be rescued by Gremlin and this violent method would smash both enemy and ally to pieces. Freyja may have originally intended to provide adjustments for this simple rescue order, but she could not do so anymore.
The impact from that great mass would tear into the planet.
None of them could stop it.
Even if they tried to run, they could not escape that dragon. The destruction would be on too large a scale and it was not a simple mass of stone falling from the sky. It flapped its giant wings to adjust its course and accelerate. It would follow them if they tried to run, so they had no way to escape.
(Dammit. )
The enemy was approaching from the sky, so Kamijou and Kumokawa Maria's hand-to-hand combat was of no use.
They could only rely on Misaka Mikoto, Birdway, and Lessar.
But could those three push that dragon back?
Kamijou glanced around in search of something to use as a shield or wall, but he found nothing. The switchyard had a number of trains stopped in it and it had warehouses that were likely used for maintenance, but none of those were strong enough to withstand this attack.
They had to worry about both the initial impact and the immense shockwave it produced.
The trains would roll like empty snack boxes and the warehouses would be smashed flat. When the attack would eliminate all unevenness in the area and leave only empty land behind, thinking about cover was hopeless.
"What can I do!?"
"Stay out the way!!" roared Birdway.
A coin was fired at three times the speed of sound and multiple explosions followed behind it.
It did have an effect.
The dragon's silhouette crumbled as if its temporary flesh was being torn away.
However, the dragon ignored it.
Níðhöggr continued charging toward the ground at full speed.
(It didn't work!!)
Kamijou began to squeeze his eyes shut.
But then he saw something else.
He saw a man's silhouette.
The man grabbed a crane's wire and flew through the air like a pendulum. He appeared in the space between the dragon and the ground. Níðhöggr did not hesitate to tear this intrusion to pieces with its giant maw. The man made no attempt to dodge. His body was taken between the dragon's teeth and the destruction began.
It was as if the man had wanted that.
Immediately afterwards, a bluish-white blade of light extended from the dragon's mouth and sliced its giant body two or three times.
"Ah..." said Kumokawa Maria without thinking from aboard the rubber boat.
She recognized the silhouette.
She recognized that man who had constructed a spell to neutralize only the fatal wounds he received and a sword spell that amplified its tremendous sharpness the more he was injured.
"Ahhh!!"
The man had not sliced the dragon into pieces.
That would have left the pieces of that giant corpse to rain down on the switchyard. The countless flashes of that sword of light did not fully slice through the dragon's body. He left the pieces attached like vegetables cut by a terrible cook.
All he needed was air resistance.
He needed to throw off the dragon's balance.
Níðhöggr's giant body could no longer maintain its orientation, so the direction of its flight greatly changed as if a giant invisible hand were moving it off course. The dragon now headed toward the river instead of the land and it crashed into the water, starting with its battered head. Water flew in every direction with incredible force and the rubber boat shook, but that was all. A hopeless situation similar to an asteroid strike did not occur.
The man in the air twisted his body around a few times to adjust the direction of his fall and landed on the gravel-covered ground after falling from a height of over ten meters. The bluish-white blade of light extending from between his index finger and middle finger slowly disappeared.
He was Bersi.
He was Kihara Kagun.
This man was officially a member of Gremlin and had supposedly died during the commotion in Baggage City. He had risen again with the power of Magic God Othinus, but that had not meant his life had been saved or that he was once more working for Gremlin of his own will.
He was still dead even now.
He had completely lost the life force he should have produced. Instead, he was a doll that never rotted and moved using the magic power injected into him from outside.
The look in Birdway and Lessar's eyes showed those two girls of the magic side had silently put up their guards.
But Kumokawa Maria was a bit different.
Kihara Kagun was acting somehow different from the lifeless doll she had seen at the end of the incident in Baggage City.
And finally, she found it.
There was a slight scar on the back of his neck.
Part 17
The eyepatch-wearing girl in Sargasso narrowed her one eye slightly and looked up.
Part 18
That man had once devoted everything to take revenge on and kill a certain Kihara.
He had thought of every possibility and left behind backdoors with which to escape any dilemma.
One of his ideas was a countermeasure for a very dirty and Kihara-like method.
From the beginning, Kihara Kagun had considered a certain hopeless possibility.
What if he failed in his revenge and, upon his defeat to Kihara Byouri, control of his physical body was taken in some way? What if he was ordered to attack one of the people he most wanted to avoid baring his fangs against?
To escape such a situation...
"There's something embedded in here, " muttered Kumokawa Maria."That freed him from being controlled like a doll!!"
It was nothing more than a small semiconductor.
A list of how Kihara Kagun would act given certain conditions had been inserted as a string of 1s and 0s. Kihara Kagun was not thinking using the brain of Kihara Kagun.
However, a tiny effect would appear only when he was forced to do something that was "not like him".
He wanted to ensure that he would take the actions that were "like him" based on the list he had inputted into the device.
1. He would exterminate his enemy, Kihara Byouri.
2. As long as it did not interfere with 1, he would limit the loss of life of both enemy and ally as much as possible.
3. To achieve 2, the damage or destruction of anything other than human life was allowable.
No one but Kihara Kagun himself knew those rules. He had already fought a few times along the coast of Tokyo Bay in order to fulfill those conditions.
It was not limited to this attack on Níðhöggr.
He had only run across Kumokawa Maria by coincidence and had recklessly tried to save the people there while he saved Freyja.
It was the same as that time when he had held a shovel and stood before a killer in order to protect a few children.
"..."
He would no longer say anything to her.
That device most likely did not support something so complicated.
No one could ever know the truth of the matter.
However...
"I'm going to stay here, " said Kumokawa Maria.
She stepped out of the rubber boat and onto the concrete bank of the river.
"Someone needs to take this pregnant woman to a safe place, right? I'll take her.... And she might not be the only one in an urgent situation. Even if the rest of you go to defeat the cause of all this, it wouldn't hurt to have someone in the city, right?"
Kumokawa Maria slowly took Freyja from Kamijou's arms.
"You understand... right?" asked Kamijou.
"I have already accepted that he is dead, " she readily said."This is just the last remaining trace. It's like finding his will after the fact. Most likely, he wasn't trying to save me. Nor was he only trying to save this woman.... In the end, he hasn't changed. He tries to save everyone around him even if it wears away every last piece of his own body. Someone needs to reward his foolish selfishness."
She was not trying to run from reality.
She did not think she could save this moving corpse.
In that case, it was her problem.
Kamijou Touma had no right to stop her.
"We're counting on you, then."
"We're counting on you, too."
With that short exchange, Kamijou Touma and Kumokawa Maria went on their separate ways.
The boy climbed aboard the rubber boat along with Index and Misaka Mikoto.
Birdway steered the small boat away from the shore.
They continued into the fog-like steam covering Tokyo Bay.
They moved toward Gremlin's base of Sargasso.
Part 19
As Kihara Kagun moved his feet as precisely as the second hand of a clock, Kumokawa Maria followed behind with the pregnant woman in her arms.
She had not noticed before, but a large number of men in camouflage were collapsed in the area. They seemed to be riot police and JSDF members.
Most likely, they were volunteers who had attempted to fight Gremlin without knowing what a threat the group was.
The armored vehicles and self-propelled guns had been sliced to pieces, but the people were almost entirely unscathed. If a single shell had been fired at Gremlin, the counterattack would have caused such great destruction that the people would have been smashed into too many pieces to count. Kumokawa Maria could clearly imagine that simple truth after what she had seen in Baggage City.
Kihara Kagun had carried out an obvious act of destruction.
It may have been a quick decision after receiving an order from Gremlin.
However, he had ultimately protected the lives of his enemies.
"..."
Seeing that, Kumokawa Maria knew that man never would have changed.
She had once viewed him with nothing but respect and admiration, but her impression of him had changed after her short but deep contact with him.
He was definitely not suited to being part of a household.
She doubted he could fit within the structure of society even in his job.
No matter how old he grew, he spoke seriously of dreams and ideals, he refused to look at problems realistically, and he smiled at the small results he gained even as he lost so much more. That was likely who he truly had been. He had not been perfect. In fact, his personality had contained more negatives and problems than anything else. While young, Kumokawa Maria had just so happened to see the lovely side of him.
However, she did not feel disappointed.
In fact, even if it was all over, she felt fortunate to have seen the human side of him that was closer to his true self.
She no longer distorted her view of him or deified him.
She could now speak properly about this man who had been lost.
"I'll stay with you."
Kumokawa Maria walked alongside that man while holding that unconscious pregnant woman in her arms.
"I have no choice, so I'll stay with you. Just like leaving flowers by a grave, this is nothing more than self-satisfaction, but what's wrong with one person being led around by this awkward will? I will not stop you anymore. Just like in Baggage City, you will probably wear away every last piece of your body to achieve your goal, but I will watch over you as you do so."
That man gave no response.
She knew he would not.
"So..."
This was a living human replying to a will.
It was no different from speaking to a grave.
"So..."
But...
Kumokawa Maria did not think it was meaningless. Just because those words would not reach anyone's ears and just because science could not prove her actions would accomplish anything, this was not something one could make light of.
"Once you see this selfishness through until you cannot move a finger, you truly lose your human form, and you face true death as nothing but a pile of flesh, then we can return to our city."
Below that chilly November sky, a certain girl was able to stand next to a certain man after several years had passed.
In that instant, she accepted the death of someone she cared about. That was an instant anyone had to overcome at some point.
| ← Ch. 096 | Ch. 098 → |