Chapter 87: What Kind of Person Is She?
After that, Makoto mooched another luxurious nutritional dinner off Mikoto.
She had originally wanted to drag him to the arcade again, but Makoto refused once more. This time, his reason was simple. He had to receive a guest from far away tomorrow.
"A guest from outside Academy City is coming all this way just to see you? That isn't some excuse to brush me off, is it?"
Mikoto crossed her arms. She was one of the few people who knew his background best, so her suspicion was only natural.
Makoto smiled faintly.
"I've been away for quite a while. It's only normal that I rebuilt some of my social circle. Now that I've suddenly disappeared from outside and ended up in Academy City, isn't it perfectly normal for someone who learned the news to come see me while traveling?"
Mikoto thought that made sense, but she immediately caught something odd in his wording.
"The person coming to see you is a girl?"
"Yeah."
Makoto had no reason to lie about something like that.
Mikoto's previously lazy expression instantly tightened. Unable to stop herself, she asked, "Then what kind of girl is she? Is she pretty? And what exactly is your relationship?"
Makoto asked teasingly, "You're really interested in that?"
Mikoto immediately bristled.
"I-I'm not interested in her at all. I'm just worried you won't be able to host her properly. You only got to Academy City not long ago. Even your clothes were bought with my help... What I mean is, do you need me to prepare a travel guide for you or something?"
Makoto sighed.
"I grew up in Academy City too. I only left for a year and then came back. How could I possibly be unfamiliar with the place?"
Mikoto's face turned red as she realized she was rambling.
The tsundere girl glared at him in irritation. Did he really not understand what she was trying to say?
The truth was, Makoto really didn't know what Mikoto was thinking.
After all, what she felt for him wasn't love yet. At most, it was the trust and affection that came from meeting a reliable boy for the first time.
To calm her down, Makoto patted her head.
"How about this. If I need your help with anything, you'll be the first person I call."
"And I promise to play games with you at least once a week from now on. How's that?"
Mikoto's eyes lit up at once.
"Deal!"
"Deal."
After that, Makoto headed home and soon arrived near his dorm.
Then, all of a sudden, he felt that going straight home seemed a little boring. Maybe he should go to the arcade and play a few rounds instead.
He even took out his phone and turned around, ready to call Mikoto. Yet just before pressing dial, he stopped.
Something was wrong.
He was supposed to return to the Main God Space and train. Why would he suddenly want to go play games?
'Ah... At this time, could it be that the magicians have arrived and already set up a field to drive away bystanders?'
Makoto turned to look at Kamijou Touma's room.
As the protagonist of the original story, Touma had gone through countless battles against magicians. In this world, the magic side was one of the main opposing forces against Academy City, and it possessed terrifying power of its own.
Makoto had once seriously considered whether he should come into contact with magicians and try to obtain magic for himself.
In the end, he gave up.
He had already undergone Academy City's esper development. Even though his ability had not yet fully manifested, he already possessed his own Personal Reality and a continuous AIM Diffusion Field.
The essence of an esper was to create a Personal Reality, twist the laws of physics in the real world to produce a phenomenon, and then stabilize that phenomenon into an ability through calculation.
Magicians were the exact opposite.
They did not rely on understanding physical laws or calculation formulas. Instead, they borrowed mythology and religious symbols, imitated divine prototypes, higher beings, and legendary events, then drew magical power from the corresponding phase to produce miracles.
Because of that, if someone possessed both an AIM Diffusion Field and magical power at the same time, the two would clash violently. Their blood vessels could rupture, their organs could tear apart, or they could even explode and die.
Inside the Main God Space, perhaps AIM and magic could coexist somehow. But here in Academy City, Makoto had no desire to experience death by internal explosion.
So he had no intention of digging too deeply into the magic side of this world. At least until he possessed enough strength to oppose beings on the level of Magic Gods, he would never leave Academy City and wander into a magician's territory on purpose.
As for the magicians Touma was facing tonight, Makoto had originally planned to interfere as little as possible. After all, Touma's enemies did not follow any sensible power progression. Ridiculously overpowered foes popped up one after another like popcorn.
Still, tonight Makoto decided to step in.
One reason was that he and Touma got along quite well now. As a bro, watching him die without helping was not Makoto's style.
The other reason was that Sakiko was arriving tomorrow, and Makoto absolutely could not let this fight wreck his single dorm room.
What if, just what if, Sakiko ended up staying at his place?
The moment that thought crossed his mind, Makoto turned decisively and headed for the stairs.
Before he had even taken a few more steps, Touma came crashing down from upstairs with a scream and slammed onto the bicycle shed on the first floor with a loud thud. Even Makoto felt his teeth hurt just watching it.
Could an ordinary human body really survive that kind of fall?
The answer was yes.
Touma groaned, staggered to his feet, and was just about to rush back upstairs when he spotted Makoto by the stairs.
"Kitano, why are you here? Get out of here, quickly. It's too dangerous!"
Makoto pointed at the giant of flames appearing at the stairwell entrance and asked, "What's that? Some kind of fire esper?"
Of course, Makoto knew exactly what it was. He was simply asking on purpose.
It was called Innocentius, the Witch-Hunting King.
Its origin came from Pope Innocent VIII, who had issued a papal bull in 1484 that intensified witch hunts.
The spell had been created by the magician Stiyl Magnus after learning rune magic and incorporating it into Christian symbolism. It was a papal-class spell.
First, it formed a massive sphere of flame. Then that fireball took the shape of a giant over three thousand degrees Celsius, holding an enormous two-meter cross-like blade.
Attacking Innocentius itself was useless. As long as it remained within the area covered by the runic seals, it would revive in less than a tenth of a second after being destroyed.
It also possessed a relentless pursuit function, allowing it to hunt down enemies until they were exterminated.
Touma had only escaped being chased further because his fall had carried him outside the spell's active range.
"Explaining it all would take too long. Just leave. I can handle it myself."
Touma had no intention of dragging an innocent friend into danger, but those words only strengthened Makoto's determination to act.
More importantly, that bastard Stiyl had plastered runes all over Makoto's own doorway too, which meant his room had also become part of Innocentius's movement range.
If Touma went on and triggered the fire alarm, then the sprinkler system would go off. At that point, Makoto's room would become uninhabitable, and all the clothes and appliances he had just bought would be ruined as well.
So Makoto said, "Take care of that arm first. It just barely recovered enough to use. Don't go breaking it again with another fall."
"As for that guy, leave him to me. I don't want my newly cleaned-up dorm to turn into a water curtain cave."
With that, Makoto no longer bothered with the stairs. He stamped once on the ground and launched himself straight up to the fifth-floor balcony, landing where he could take in everything at a glance.
There stood Stiyl Magnus, the two-meter-tall fourteen-year-old magician, looking sorrowfully at his former companion, Index.
In the past, they had fought to protect her. Now they were forced to hurt her in order to erase her memories.
The moment he heard Makoto land, Stiyl's mournful look twisted into a vicious villain's expression. He immediately began chanting and raised his hand.
"My hand is flame. Its form is sword. Its duty is execution."
In an instant, a straight blade of fire, hotter than three thousand degrees, appeared in his hand.
But when he saw that the intruder was Makoto, he paused for the briefest moment. According to his information, there was no one named Kitano Makoto here, and the anti-bystander field should have driven away everyone in the area.
So who exactly was this boy?
Then he dismissed the thought.
It didn't matter.
If the boy belonged to Academy City, then he was an enemy of the magic side. Killing him would be no problem.
Unlike the childish schoolyard atmosphere of Academy City, magicians lived with killing as a regular part of life. Stiyl, as a member of Necessarius, regularly hunted and destroyed evil magicians.
And when it was for the sake of a companion, he would kill without hesitation.
He swung his arm and continued the chant.
"O flame, bring pain as a gift to the giant."
The fire sword shot straight toward Makoto. It exploded in midair and became a massive wave of flame over ten meters long, filling the corridor and more than capable of swallowing almost any enemy.
At the same time, Innocentius charged back into the corridor and locked onto Makoto, ready to pursue him to the death.
What Stiyl did not know was that Makoto had been observing him the entire time. Or rather, he had been observing the casting method and power of magic itself.
Makoto had to admit that three-thousand-degree flames flying at him were genuinely dangerous. Even he did not want to tank them head-on with his bare body.
The problem was that Stiyl still had to chant properly to cast his spells. To someone like Makoto, who could move at one hundred meters per second, that was an insult.
At the very instant the flames rushed toward him, Makoto kicked off the balcony edge and jumped toward the opposite school building. Then, after the fire burst apart and weakened, he bounced back like a cannonball.
To Makoto, it was nothing more than a simple back-and-forth sprint. To Stiyl, it looked like something impossible.
Only a Saint should be capable of movement like that through raw physical ability alone.
Had Academy City really sent out a Saint just to deal with him and seize Index?
By the time Makoto closed the distance, Stiyl had already opened his mouth to chant again, but Makoto's fist got there first.
A heavy crash rang out.
The two-meter-tall delinquent magician was punched straight into the wall. His face twisted, teeth flew, and who knew how many bones had broken in the impact.
Only then did Innocentius finally reach Makoto and swing its two huge blades at him.
Makoto was slightly surprised that the giant of flame continued its pursuit even after Stiyl had lost consciousness and been reduced to half-dead misery.
It apparently had no fixed physical body, either.
So how exactly was he supposed to get rid of it?
Then Makoto's eyes lit up.
Even if it had no solid body, it was still flame. In that case, could wind deal with it?
So instead of dodging, Makoto faced the rushing giant head-on. He drew a small amount of chakra into his hand and then threw a savage punch straight ahead.
This time he did not use taijutsu in any formal sense, but he accelerated his fist to supersonic speed and infused chakra into the air around it.
If Might Guy had been here, he would have recognized the principle immediately. It was the core technique behind many Eight Gates attacks: the air cannon.
Of course, Makoto's version was still far inferior to Guy's true techniques. Even so, it already carried the rudiments of the Daytime Tiger used by Seventh Gate Guy.
In an instant, a torrent of compressed air shot forward like a laser and slammed into Innocentius. The impact hurled it down the corridor like a truck crashing into a tiny toy car, blasted it out of the spell's territory, and even smashed through the wall to launch it into the open air.
Makoto was briefly worried that hurling the thing into the sky might cause more trouble. But once it left the barrier, Innocentius quickly dissolved into sparks and vanished, never reviving within the runic range.
Only then did Makoto notice that most of the rune papers Stiyl had plastered onto the walls had been torn down and shredded into powder by the gale produced from his punch.
That was probably the real reason Innocentius had disappeared.
Satisfied, Makoto shook out his fingers.
No wonder Guy preferred to fight with air-cannon techniques later on. For a taijutsu specialist, they were absurdly useful.
The only drawback was that compared to landing a real punch directly, attacks based on compressed air were probably a little less efficient.
For Makoto, though, that was hardly a problem.
At the moment, he had more chakra than he knew what to do with.
Only then did Touma finally come running back.
He stared dumbfounded at the heavily injured Stiyl and at the wall Makoto had blasted apart, then swallowed hard.
"Kitano... since when were you this strong? This definitely has to be Level 5 territory, right?"
Makoto shrugged.
"More importantly, don't you have something else you should be doing?"
Touma immediately ran to Index's side, while Makoto turned his gaze toward the roof of the building opposite.
A tall woman stood there.
She was over one hundred seventy-five centimeters tall. Her black hair was tied in a ponytail that reached all the way to her waist, and she wore old jeans with a plain white short-sleeved T-shirt.
The left leg of those jeans was completely missing from the thigh down, leaving the entire leg exposed.
With such a bizarre outfit, plus the Japanese nodachi more than two meters long in her hand, it was impossible not to notice her.
She was Stiyl's companion.
Kaori Kanzaki.
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