Genesis Testament A Certain Magical Index, page 12
“And magic will lose to the ordinary crowd. Bodyguards, companions, slaves, a best friend – every Transcendent belonging to the Bridge Builders Cabal seeks it in different forms, but in the end, we all long for the human world. Aleister may have tilted the scales toward science for the general public, but that is still the world we live in. Humans cling to the easily visible and controllable things. They might claim otherwise, but when they find themselves on a sinking ship, do they reach for their holy talisman or for a lifejacket made of petroleum? When their life is on the line, no one ever relies on their capricious and unfathomable god.”
“Bologna Succubus!?”
“Ah ha ha. Yes, I’m the demoness who hates any and all false accusations. The witch hunts are such a perfect example of it that they left their name in history. They weren’t even attacking the real supernatural demons at the center of the issue. They were lashing out at anyone they found suspect to forcibly stabilize their imperfect society. Really, it was little more than a human sacrifice ceremony. Watching this here isn’t at all fun for me, let me tell you.”
The Bologna Succubus laughed lightly with her mouth hidden behind her large wings.
Perhaps she was redrawing the lines of what she needed to protect after seeing the boy worry about the very witches who were trying to kill him.
“But these casual witches fell for Aradia’s temptation, went to her for easy help, found an excuse for their own weakness, and decided to attack complete strangers like you. They were bad people to begin with. Don’t kid yourselves, you rioting criminals. Did you think there wouldn’t be any consequences as long as you were just a face in the crowd? Did you think you counted as a victim for letting yourself get agitated into violence? I protect innocent people who have been falsely accused. So, boy, my concern is limited to kind people like you who have a penchant for getting themselves into trouble. We demons haven’t fallen so far we go around saving even despicable villains.”
“But you can’t let this continue! Stop it! No one wants it to end like this!!”
“Ha ha! Yes, that’s the look that makes me want to help you out so badly. And I’m sorry to say they don’t have that same appeal. Concern for others is undoubtedly the greatest virtue ever discovered, but do remember that being weak does not mean someone is pure of heart.”
Kamijou heard a shattering of glass as the demon’s pink tail swept horizontally like a whip.
A downpour of sharp shards burst out with terrifying force.
The Bologna Succubus had just finished saying not even demons would save the wicked, so she wouldn’t care what happened to the witches on the ground far below.
The Transcendent was indeed transcendent.
He had been caught up in some nerve-wracking rescues when working with Alice Anotherbible. Anna Sprengel’s many misdeeds may have been similar in that they were unpredictable and capricious. These people could not be judged as either good or bad. He was working alongside a Transcendent from the Bridge Builders Cabal, so he should have considered the possibility of her resorting to capricious violence based on a desire to help!!
She flapped her wings, jumped out from the window, and soared into the night sky.
“Wait, Bologna Succubus! Stop those witch hunters! You aren’t running away after all this, are you!? You’re they only one who can switch this off!!”
“Hah hah hah! This is where we say goodbye, sightseer boy. Serious and short-fused Aradia has a difficult time with unexpected trouble and can’t adlib to save her life, so now’s our chance to show her what for. And it’s a Transcendent’s job to clean up this Transcendent mess, so you can rest easy, join that young crowd, and head back to Academy City. That city’s thick wall will protect you from any riots in Shibuya☆”
He wasn’t in the mood for that kind of nonsense, so he reached out his hand on reflex. But…
“Stop, boy!!”
Kumokawa grabbed him around the hips and pulled back with her full body weight.
His momentum died and his grasping fingertips just barely missed the tip of the Bologna Succubus’s tail.
But without that assistance, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself and would have plummeted from the window.
With a heavy roar of something moving through the air, the Bologna Succubus vanished into the night sky.
“Dammit!!”
“Touma!”
Index called out to him after Kumokawa pulled him onto his back.
She was implicitly asking him what they should do now.
How was that even a question? The Bologna Succubus had helped him so much this entire time. Without her, he quite literally would have died to Aradia’s hand a third and final time. But that didn’t mean he could just let her use the innocent people of Shibuya as disposable shields.
He had to pursue her.
If they didn’t stop Aradia’s witches and the Bologna Succubus’s witch hunt, Shibuya would be destroyed before the countdown was complete!!
Part 5
Things had gone from bad to worse.
Pursuing Aradia or the Bologna Succubus required going outside, but passing through that crowd unnoticed wasn’t possible.
Or so Kamijou thought.
“Huh?”
After descending the emergency stairs and carefully opening the door, he found the crowd pressing in from nearby. But none of them were looking his way.
“Aradia may have ordered them to ‘kill Kamijou Touma’,” whispered Othinus from his shoulder. “But did she ever snap a photo of your face with a phone or camera? If it was an oral command with no photographic reference, you might be able to get through undetected.”
He was glad his clothes had dried. He wanted to avoid anything that would make him stand out.
“But they have access to those modern marvels too,” cautioned Kumokawa Seria. “New Year’s Eve is basically one giant photoshoot here. They might be tracking down a photo on social media that happened to catch you in the background. This doesn’t guarantee your safety, so be careful.”
But he honestly had some more immediate things to worry about at the moment.
“Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!?”
“Kyah!? Stop grabbing at my clothes!”
“I work so hard! Day in and day out! So why don’t I ever have any more money? Someone out there must be counteracting my efforts!!!!!”
The people out there were arguing back and forth.
The girl in a large eyepatch, a wimple, and a modified bikini looked an awful lot like the video site ghost Kamijou had seen near the station. Her lack of chest left a lot of openings in Aradia’s costume, which actually made it more risqué. And who was that swinging around a folding chair with all her might? Yes, wasn’t that the tanned call girl in a camisole?
The deep metallic sounds coming from her didn’t match her jiggliness at all.
(I met them both with my delivery job, so I’m glad we didn’t use our names or phone numbers. We only know the 8-digit single-use ID we gave each other.)
“Give it a rest, you- gyah!?”
A bluish-white beam shot off in the wrong direction.
Was that lightning? The eyepatch ghost had flipped through her looseleaf papers and traced her finger along something written there, but it looked like her attempt to retaliate with Triple Reload had failed.
Yes, the scary thing here was how the magically-powered witches were being pushed back by the powerless witch hunters. The Bologna Succubus had said the Rule of Three magic introduced a large risk of self-destruction. It was a tricky spell and going through the process was probably hard in this chaos and with a crowd packed around you so tightly.
“The real difference is that the witches want the help of the beneficial supernatural if they can get it, but the witch hunters will not give up until they have eliminated the negative anxiety they feel.” Exasperated, Othinus watched the commotion from Kamijou’s shoulder. That god of war, deception, and magic explained her thoughts. “A group that fears death will act fearless if it will distance them from death. That might look contradictory, but it happens all the time during riots and wars. When people are pushed passed their limits, they will step on a mine themselves or rush straight toward the incoming shells or flamethrowers. With enough people doing that, they can bring down the enemy force. When you aren’t crossing the border for fun and the collapse of your country is a real possibility, anyone who still acts ‘reasonable’ will be overwhelmed and lose.”
“I don’t believe it…”
“That’s the normal way to think. And war doesn’t just mess with people’s patience and sensibilities – it tears down their standards of normalcy. Which is why this sort of thing is best avoided.”
They didn’t have time to stand around watching.
There was more than one kind of hell underway here.
The cat on Index’s head was growling a low warning for once.
In fact…
“Damn, this area’s covered in blood!”
“Boy, the rioters didn’t do this. It was the glass shards that supposed demon sent raining down earlier.”
In her thick coat and tight skirt suit, Kumokawa pointed toward the rusty smell.
Several girls lay on the cold sidewalk at the base of the building. They were all witches. Their groans joined the rusty smell. The downpour of clear blades must have hit them directly, but everything around them was in chaos. No one was even considering treating their wounds.
And Kamijou himself couldn’t do anything more than pull out the obvious shards and tie up the wounds with whatever cloth he could find. He had no way of checking for smaller shards and, even if he saved their lives, he wasn’t sure if this would leave scars on their skin.
“Ugh.”
“Don’t say anything. I stopped your bleeding, so you’ll be fine for the time being!”
“Thank you. Now I just have to find Kamijou Touma.”
“…”
With no photo, the girl had no idea who she was talking to.
For that matter, what had they even gathered here to do? What would have happened to him, Index, and the rest if no one had interrupted? For that matter, if the witches couldn’t determine who near the building was Kamijou Touma, could they have tried to fulfill Aradia’s command by going on a magical mass shooting of every high-school-aged boy they came across?
“(Boy, it would be dangerous to stay much longer.)”
“(But we have to call an ambulance for them, Senpai!)”
“(I overheard some girls over there talking about your delivery job. Delivering the food uses a single-use ID, but you have to use your real name when cashing out at the convenience store. So you need to get away before they- hey, wait! You and your stupid kindness!!)”
Kamijou shook his head to drive out the fact that he was being targeted by 100 thousand witches who had given up on thinking for themselves and converted to the Transcendent’s cult.
He couldn’t do this like the Bologna Succubus.
He refused to accept that you didn’t need to care about someone if they were a bad person.
After roughly stopping all the injured witches’ bleeding, Kamijou tried to call an ambulance but found he couldn’t get through even with the emergency line. He didn’t hear the usual ringing – he just heard three short beeps before the connection ended.
“What, I can’t even call the emergency number? Why are the lines so overloaded?”
“Because the entire city is like this right now, human. Unless Aradia and the Bologna Succubus are stopped, who knows how long it would take for an ambulance to arrive even if you did call for one. These people are covering the sidewalks, roads, and the cars parked on the curb.”
That meant he had to end this entire commotion if he wanted to get professional help for those girls.
That meant chasing down Aradia and the Bologna Succubus.
If the emergency numbers weren’t working, then the normal internet was out of the question.
“If no one can use social media, it might take them longer to work out your identity,” said Kumokawa.
“…”
“Okay, okay. I take it back, boy. Say whatever you want, just don’t glare at me like that.”
How frightening did he look today? For some reason, even that perfect upperclassman raised her hands awkwardly. When he tried to look her in the eye, she averted her gaze.
Othinus sighed from his shoulder.
“Your face was everywhere back when the two of us were on the run from the world in Denmark. No one can check that right now with no internet access, but someone with a good memory might still recognize you.”
“Are you saying they’re gradually narrowing in on me?”
“Frankly, it’s strange they haven’t figured it out yet.”
Kamijou was so plagued by misfortune he knew better than to chalk that up to luck. He needed to be on the lookout for some even greater disaster waiting to ensnare him.
At any rate, he wouldn’t be able to track down the Transcendents by checking for the latest photos posted by witnesses on social media.
“Shibuya is a big place. Where do you think they went?”
“Those Transcendents are decently skilled at magic, but too dumb to even use a people clearing field to hide their presence. Just head for the center of the commotion, human. That will get you there quickest.”
“Got it, Othinus. Index, Senpai, follow me!”
The god was telling him to charge right into the most dangerous part of the riot. He would honestly have preferred having Index and Kumokawa take refuge in a sturdy building, but he had no idea where would be safe at the moment.
They kept low while moving through the crowd flooding the streets. It pained him when he saw some people grappling nearby, but Kumokawa grabbed his hand when he reached out to help. She silently shook her head.
The ordinary ramen shops scared him at the moment.
A riot like this could lead to a fire so easily.
None of them recognized him without a photo, but all of these 100 thousand witches were after Aradia’s enemy: Kamijou Touma. However, the witch hunters had no real reason to protect him either. If he did anything to stand out or the witches learned who he was, both sides would attack even harder and make it impossible to move.
“(Hate me for this if you want, but for now you need to keep your head down and ignore all of these supposed witches.)”
“(But, Senpai!)”
“(If they notice you and start to attack you directly, the individuals working to protect you will be trampled by both sides of the conflict. And I mean that literally. We will be trampled to death below living people’s feet. The supernatural isn’t the greatest threat during a riot. It’s being crushed to death without anyone even noticing they’re doing it!!)”
He was honestly surprised there weren’t any fires yet.
Meanwhile, Index spoke up.
“Aradia, huh?”
“?”
He really didn’t want her saying anything that would provoke the witch hunters, but they mostly appeared to be responding to the witch outfits at the moment. Index was dressed pretty unusually (and had a cat on her head), but they ignored her completely.
But that meant the witches could attack them at any moment for not wearing that uniform.
“Touma, do you know when Wicca was created?”
“Don’t use his name!” shouted Othinus from his shoulder.
Kamijou frowned.
“When? I mean, we’re talking about real witches here, so long, long ago in the times told of in fairy tales, right?”
“No, it was created in 1954 AD. Yes, there may have been some prototype witches before the official textbook was released, but it was officially announced in 1954.”
That was a surprise.
What the heck was this? That was after World War Two. Hadn’t the story of the bear grease come from a cursing ceremony some British witches had directed at an entire country to keep the German army away during the war?
“What’s this textbook?” he asked in a bit of a daze.
“The witches use what they learn to write a grimoire they call the Book of Shadows, but it is highly unusual for one of those to reach the level of a true Original Grimoire. When Gardner released his own collection of self-taught knowledge, it doubled as a report on the truth of witches.”
Kamijou wasn’t exactly an expert on children’s stories and fairy tales, but he was pretty sure there were stories that included witches – like Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, and Hansel and Gretel – that were older than that.
For that matter, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland would have already been out by 1954. He had a hard time believing that no one around the world had ever imagined a witch flying a broom through the night sky before then.
But Index’s explanation kept going. She made sure to hold down the cat on her head when he took an interest in the garbage strewn from a toppled garbage can.
“Witches are said to be the priestesses of an ancient religion that predates the arrival of Christianity, but they aren’t the originals. They’re a reproduction created in a later era. A magical researcher named Gerald Gardner, who even interacted with Crowley, is said to have dug up the ancient mythologies and religions from before they were twisted by Christianity and carefully reproduced the original texts from before witches were considered villains.”
“And Aradia is the perfect witch based on his findings?”
“I don’t think so,” bluntly stated Index.
In the distance, something was being shaken up and down like a mikoshi. Kamijou glanced over at it without really thinking and gasped when he realized it was a van large enough to carry 10. Since the windows were covered by a chain mesh and the roof had red lights on it, that had to be a police vehicle here to keep an eye on the countdown. Also, it didn’t look like it was the supernaturally-powered witches who were doing it. The panicked group didn’t even care if their targets wore a witch outfit anymore.
Othinus sighed from Kamijou’s shoulder.
