Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Volume 11 - Visitor Chapter (III) Page 2

  However in the present interval, the distance of sixty meters was spanned in less than two milliseconds. Which is the same as being instantaneous. It looked like evading it was impossible.

  Nevertheless……..

  (With the actual body moving at such speed, even if the gas was very diluted, a strong shockwave should occur. Since that was not happening, it meant she had to have prepared some kind of tool beforehand to keep that from happening.)

  If he could sense the creation of the ‘path’ then his body could avoid the targeting sights.

  Tatsuya fully mobilized his senses and scowled at Lina.

  In the darkness broken by the street lights, Lina just averted her eyes from Tatsuya’s field of vision, abruptly turned back, made another quick turn back and smiled weakly.

  She was clearly inviting him.

  Tatsuya was puzzled.

  Without a doubt it was a trap, but if it was a trap then Tatsuya was already in its jaws.

  Even if he did not take her invitation, he did not think she would let him return safely.

  If he couldn’t even evade his adversary’s aim then a gunfight at this location was out of the question.

  Before the gaze of Tatsuya who was still deciding what he should do, Lina’s feet lightly kicked off the road’s surface.

  That broke through his indecision.

  While she ran or rather leaped, the deep red hair was growing distant at a rapid pace.

  He left behind Naotsugu, whose convulsions had brought him to a standstill, and, invoking the same gravity control that Lina had, Tatsuya pursued that back.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  "Lt. Sirius has made contact with the target!"

  "Response?"

  "None!"

  The secret command room that had been provided at the Japanese branch office of the USNA’s dummy corporation had fallen into the state of a certain type of panic.

  The capture operation had undergone changes beyond their control from the very first stage, but something like that would not cause Virginia Barans’ limbs to shake.

  The intervention of a combatant who was apparently an agent of the Japanese army was rather predictable.

  The cause was something different.

  Lina’s arbitrarily leaving her station had begun the panic.

  While the Stars commander, ‘Sirius’ had been given the right of independent movement, she had violated military regulations by not reporting it. However, now the operation for the team was in progress. This was not a situation where asking permission before you did anything was a good thing.

  Also, Barans had left the usage of Brionac up to Lina’s personal judgment but setting it off in the middle of the street was extremely unexpected.

  "The target has begun pursuit of Lt. Sirius."

  At the report of the new information, a little bit of calmness was returned to the mood of the control room.

  When she considered the cleanup of this operation including the retrieval of Stardust, her head started to hurt. Nevertheless, for the time being, they were back on track. —That was all Lt. Col. Barans was going to think about.

  (It might be that I must completely suspend the operation….)

  "Summon the outside broadcast van."

  The colonel effectively kept her true irritation out of her voice when she gave the command to the operator.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Within the inviting light that could be seen all over the city, there was a passage where the light was interrupted.

  A nightlessness of the city of Tokyo had given it a name, the zone where the black sky becomes a white background.

  The park he had been invited to was also at the threshold of the lights.

  No, it might be better to call it a vacant lot not a park. The hedges were maintained, but there were no play areas or benches. There were no more than token street lights positioned in it. Perhaps, in the war period, it had been public land maintained as a disaster prevention zone but the redevelopment process had probably neglected it.

  Beneath those sporadic street lights, Lina revealed her golden hair.

  Above her head, darkness hung over her like a cap.

  From the beginning of this night, it hadn’t been possible to see the moon or the stars in the cloudy sky but he understood that it wasn’t just that from one glance.

  Optical type magic was being used to obstruct surveillance satellites and stratosphere platform cameras.

  Here, he was in the lair of the enemy.

  Because he knowingly leapt into the enemy’s trap, he was not surprised or flustered just now. Rather what was unexpected to Tatsuya was that there was no trace of magic being used other than concealment magic.

  (Do they hate interference from fellow magicians……)

  In short, the magic Lina was using was a technique so advanced that letting her attack alone was more effective than a mass attack where she would be forced to consider friendly troops.

  Cancelling the illusion was probably done so she could concentrate her mind on the attack sequence.

  (Just like I thought, it is ‘Heavy Metal Burst’.)

  "Tatsuya."

  Just as he finished reconfirming his impression of the name of her attack, Lina opened her mouth.

  "I didn’t think you would come here so nonchalantly."

  "Because, being followed so persistently is a bother."

  Hearing his arrogant reply, Lina made a cruel smile.

  "You’re quite confident. But that is overly pretentious at a time like this."

  Lina faced Tatsuya with the staff she was holding interposed between under her arm and her hand.

  "Tatsuya, surrender. I don’t know what means you use to dispel the effects of magic but you cannot dispel the effects of this Brionac."

  To Lina, her statement was nothing more than a simple surrender demand.

  (Bri-on-nac…..Brionake? Or ‘Brionac’?)

  Nevertheless, Lina’s words gave the final piece to the nearly complete puzzle of the beam within Tatsuya’s mind.

  The name had meaning to him.

  After the name completed the puzzle, part of many of its attributes were revealed.

  As his mind was occupied with the inspection of his ideas, Tatsuya forgot to reply to Lina’s demand.

  Lina took that for a refusal.

  She cannot be slandered as being hasty.

  She had carelessly forgotten to establish a time limit on a reply, but not replying to a surrender demand according to tradition meant refusal.

  Lina gripped the horizontal crosspiece that jutted out of one side of the staff.

  That part without a doubt served the same function as the grip of a pistol.

  Along the long thin eighty centimeters at the lower two thirds of the Brionac, a double helix of psion light ran; in the wider forty centimeter cylinder upper third of the Brionac in front of the grip, a magic sequence was instantly constructed. Tatsuya who perceived it invoked Gram Dispersion and — realizing it would be too late, suspended it.

  The tip of the cane glittered.

  A thin ray of light was squeezed out and grazed Tatsuya’s right arm.

  Despite it only being grazed — Tatsuya’s right arm from the elbow down was carbonized and blown away.

  His body was twisted by the attack.

  Tatsuya did not resist that force, he used it to propel himself behind the hedges.

  Lina released her hand from the grip, and charged like the Brionac was a spear or something.

  Within that interval, she horizontally swung it at the hedges Tatsuya was hiding in.

  The live wood caught fire here and there. The hedges were only shrubbery.

  The plasma did not reach Tatsuya who was behind them.

  Before the eyes of Tatsuya who was half kneeling with his right shoulder lowered to conceal the right side of his body, a fantastic glowing plasma sword disappeared.

  "Brionac…..’the label’ is Brythonic. It is one of the weapons of ‘Lleu’ the light god
of Celtic Myth. Does the title mean it is a reproduction of the mythical weapon?"

  While he was in that posture, Tatsuya questioned Lina who was walking toward him.

  The voice was not blurred with pain, his resistance to pain was probably high, Lina thought.

  Extensive training against torture was not unusual for special forces.

  "You’re worrying about that? Now, when you are at a critical juncture between living and dying."

  Within the staff, the magic sequence was again instantly invoked.

  The congealed metal dust was disintegrated into high energy plasma by the magic.

  The phenomenon known as ’high energy plasma’ was created by magic, but the container it was bound in changed shape in accordance to Lina’s thoughts.

  As an incandescent blade crackling with electricity was thrust at the tip of his nose the final piece slid into place within Tatsuya’s mind.

  "It bothered me. People like to give names with meaning. Brionac was a spear that sent a spear tip shaped form of penetrating light bursting out of it at foes, perhaps it could be called a bullet of light that was freely thrown about like a spear. Although, in this case, freely probably takes a lot of guts."

  "You copied a weapon of myth, a reproduction of the mythical weapon Brionac."

  "To actualize the theory of FAE………. Just what can be expected from the technical might of the USNA."

  Until then Lina hadn’t been interested in the statements she was hearing from Tatsuya but her eyes widened at the phrase ‘FAE’ and her face stiffened.

  "…How do you know about the theory of FAE?"

  Seeing Lina’s astonishment, Tatsuya also looked surprised.

  "It’s probably not all that strange. Because the FAE theory originally was espoused for a short time in a joint laboratory belonging to Japan and America."

  "That was a secret lab! Furthermore, the documents from that lab were disposed of!"

  "Nevertheless, they were not actually destroyed. Isn’t the reproduction of the mythical weapon you have in your hands the best proof of that?"

  While Tatsuya peered at the Brionac Lina had,

  "FAE — Free After Execution."

  That name conjured deep emotions.

  "In Japanese, it is called the theory of controlling phenomenon after it had been created but Free After Execution is a better way of expressing it. The phenomenon produced as a result of being transformed by magic is already a phenomenon that was not originally in this world. Immediately after transformation the shackles of the laws of physics are loose. Perhaps it would be better if I changed it to a short time lag exists before the laws of physics reassert themselves after an event produced by magic."

  The totally inappropriate explanation made in a lecturing tone created a mysterious void in the middle of this battle to the death.

  "According to the theory of FAE, if plasma constructed by magic which is supposed to scatter chaotically can be easily given directional movement then even without flash freezing, plasma can go from a super heated state to normal temperature for an arbitrary period of time, rendering it harmless. It is restrained from scattering naturally because maintaining fixed state is also possible. That is the method."

  Lina had forgotten about interrupting Tatsuya’s long winded speech and had just grasped Brionac‘s hasp.

  "Nevertheless, if you use the time lag in the law of physics presupposed by the FAE theory, it is only an instant. It is considered impossible for a magician who has just made the invocation to add new conditions to the newly constructed phenomenon."

  At this point, Tatsuya made a mid-shrug like expression with his face.

  "That’s true. There’s less than a millisecond to define the phenomenon which isn’t possible for a human."

  And his face showed a completely sincere wonder.

  "To do that……within a containment barrier isolated from the influence of the world’s physical laws, magic is executed to expand that gap in the law of physics."

  This was a manifestation of the emotions of the boyish part of Tatsuya, who desired to follow the path of science.

  "I humbly praise this person. To bravely evade the law of physics. The person who constructed ‘Brionac’ is a true genius."

  "Tatsuya!"

  Lina who had been listening to Tatsuya’s words suddenly raised her voice. She had gotten rid of the plasma sword, and was once again poised to bombard him as she gripped Brionac when she interrupted Tatsuya. —It was the voice of someone forcibly revving up their lost combative will.

  "I will say it once more. Surrender! You can’t use your special techniques with one arm. You no longer have any way to win!"

  Listening to Lina’s wail, Tatsuya made a cruel smile. The smile was so inhuman that it made her shudder and didn’t seem to be made by the same being who had shown her a different smile just a little while ago.

  "If you are able to capture me, what do you want to do to me?"

  However, despite the look on his face, Tatsuya’s voice was not cold,

  "Maybe experiment on me?"

  With a rather sweet snare, he gently laid bare the wickedness of humans.

  "Like those guys?"

  Unhappily, Lina was sharp enough to understand that by ’those guys’ he meant Stardust. The combination of stress and shock made Lina’s face pale.

  "Naturally……I refuse to become a guinea pig."

  "Then don’t move until I come to get you!"

  The tip of the Brionac was at point blank range and aimed at his raised knee.

  Into that gun barrel, Tatsuya thrust his gun shaped CAD, the custom Silver Horn, Trident.

  With the right arm that was supposed to be blown away.

  "That arm!?"

  Lina shrieked.

  Partly due to her shriek, her sequence invocation was slow.

  Tatsuya had already drawn his magic.

  The ‘gun barrel’ of the thrust out CAD — the aiming assistance device lead him to the target within the barrier containment unit.

  Within the reproduction of a mythical weapon in the part that was supposed to be filled by the power of the USNA’s strongest magician ‘Sirius’, the dissolution magic Mist Dispersion was invoked.

  Metal particles changed to gas at normal temperature forcefully burst from Brionac’s muzzle.

  Due to the pressure from the gas, the Trident went flying from Tatsuya’s right hand.

  However, the impact it had on Lina was greater.

  The thing she was holding so tightly backfired.

  The unintended backlash blew Lina and the pieces of the Brionac backward.

  The shock of being slammed to the ground caused the Eidos reinforced armor that protected Lina to fluctuate.

  After picking up the Trident, Tatsuya invoked ‘Restoration’.

  He reconstructed the relative coordinate information using the data on CAD construction and his own body as reference points, and the Trident returned to his hand in repaired condition.

  Tatsuya fired six shots of his ‘dissolution’ but it had no effect on Lina’s magic barrier, it persisted in sticking to her limbs.

  At the joints of both arms and legs, he was able to drill thin holes large enough to put a needle through. The four microscopic scars caused Lina intense pain equal to having a file whittle directly on her nerves.

  She didn’t have time to cry out in pain before her mind blew a circuit.

  Her mind was swallowed by a white darkness.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  "Lina……"

  After finishing his task, Tatsuya returned to where Lina was. He looked down at her body which still lay limp on the ground unconscious and murmured to her knowing she wouldn’t be able to hear him.

  "It would be better if you quit the army as soon as possible."

  He had been saved by her softness in the skirmish that had just taken place.

  Even only giving consideration to the battle power, Tatsuya should have had a much more difficult struggle.

/>   As her first shot had reduced his right arm to cinders, he interrupted Gram Dispersion in order to avoid receiving greater damage; if he destroyed the information that coalesced it into a beam, the plasma would disperse. He had lost from the moment the beam had started coalescing, and if there had been wider dispersion of plasma when she fired then Tatsuya probably wouldn’t have just lost only his right arm; as much as half his body could have been burned away. Of course, even if it was, his body would probably be instantly restored; however, that had become his winning move and without the sleight of hand with his right arm, he wouldn’t have been able to launch a surprise attack.

  From the beginning of the bombardment he had to avoid interfering with Lina in order to curb consecutive damage by using the extra time to construct how the ‘path’ was created. Even if he followed the path of the shot by the shockwave it produced, without a doubt he would have been given enough damage to hinder his counterattack.

  During the time the hedges were mowed down, he also shouldn’t have avoided receiving damage. Despite the fact that in order to take away the enemy’s ability to resist, the accumulation of damage was a cornerstone.

  The long conversation on the theory of FAE wasn’t necessary. There was absolutely no reason to disturb Lina by revealing the operating principle of the secret weapon.

  In the last attack, she hadn’t aimed at the legs, the power had been regulated to stop before the underlayer of the skin burned. By changing the orientation of the Brionac, she had lost critical time. It was not the time lag from being surprised by the restoration of his right arm but rather the time lag produced by moving Brionac that was actually the fatal one.

  "Stars Commander ‘Sirius’……I don’t think the job is suitable for you."

  Tatsuya muttered the words as he picked up Lina.

  Chapter 14

  When she opened her eyes, the scene that filled her vision was a ceiling – a ceiling that she seemed to recall belonged to the large cargo truck that served as their mobile base.

  The dank, stale air caused her skin to feel clammy.