Vento's attacks destroyed the interior of the family restaurant further and further.
It did not take long for her to corner Kamijou.
He was bloody and pressing his back against a crumbling wall. Even if he could defend against the direct attacks with Imagine Breaker, he could not stop the fragments of the broken floor and tables.
Ultimately, the paths in the narrow restaurant remaining for Kamijou had grown severely limited.
Once he was cornered in a single spot, he had no choice but to continue defending with his right hand. Vento did not attack that frequently, but the trajectory of each shot was complex and he could only move after reading what that trajectory would be. His hand was starting to fall behind.
In pure destructive power, the attacks were inferior to those of Misaka Mikoto the Railgun. But it was partially due to the terrain that Kamijou was able to handle Mikoto. When he had to fight her, he never wanted to be in a narrow area. He would only confront her in a wide open area in which he could move as he wished and freely run away.
Otherwise, she would corner him in no time.
However, in this half-destroyed family restaurant…
(There's also the other unconscious people.)
Here and there, customers and waiters were lying unconscious after succumbing to some unknown attack. Not only were they threatened by a direct hit from one of Vento's attacks, but the ceiling could fall and crush them all if the building took too much damage.
Kamijou was paying more attention to his surroundings than was absolutely necessary.
And Vento plainly saw through that.
"How kind of you." Vento giggled while holding her giant hammer up horizontally. "But should you really be worrying about others? Look♪"
She swung the weapon with a careless motion.
The chain attached to Vento's tongue flew in a trajectory to the side of Kamijou's face.
The wind weapon curved to the side slightly. It had intentionally been set to fly just far enough away that Kamijou could not reach it with an outstretched arm.
"!!"
Kamijou leaped with all his strength and repelled it with his right hand just before it struck one of the customers.
Vento now fired a wind weapon in the opposite direction.
Kamijou was forced to throw his body around like he was practicing for receives in volleyball. Shots were fired one after another at the surrounding customers and occasionally one would actually fly directly at Kamijou himself. The unreasonable demand on his body left him short of breath. The stamina remaining in his body was quickly depleted.
"Damn you!!"
"Neh heh heh? Why are you getting so upset now? You know what state Academy City is in. If I cared at all about others, I wouldn't have done that in the first place."
"Shit!!"
Kamijou could not believe it, but she almost seemed to be saying everything she had done was simply in order to kill him and him alone.
But he did not see how that could be the case.
It was just too grand a scale for killing a normal high school student.
"Please realize how valuable you really are," said Vento lightly as she swung the giant hammer through the air once more. "My objective is you, Kamijou Touma. Everything else is a bonus. Even that Index Librorum Prohibitorum is trivial compared to you." She said it so readily. "You are unmistakably an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. And we will use any means necessary to kill our enemies. Let me spell it out for you: We are willing to annihilate the entire country of Japan to kill you. …But given that right hand of yours, my usual pattern is unlikely to be of much use. That is why it seems I need to kill you directly."
As she spoke, Vento waved a document she had pulled out as if by sleight of hand.
It may have been her orders, but it was too dark to read the document. Kamijou also doubted it would be written in Japanese.
"As you can see, it is directly signed by the pope himself. You are being targeted by 2 billion people."
"What?" muttered Kamijou in astonishment at what she had said.
He was astonished to hear her mention the Roman Catholic Church and to hear her speak of erasing an entire nation from history to get at him.
In the past incidents, Kamijou Touma had mostly gotten himself involved in someone else's incident. The last time an incident had actually occurred around him personally was with the Aztec magician on August 31.
As Kamijou stared in horror, Vento hid the document once more by sleight of hand.
"Do you think I'm joking? Then I'll open your eyes to the truth by doing something that can never be passed off as a joke."
Vento smiled as she brought the hammer up with a wooshing noise.
The chain attached to her tongue moved and caused the cross to sway back and forth slightly.
"What are you-…?"
"I will now kill everyone in this restaurant."
Kamijou's breath caught in his throat.
Vento grinned as she continued speaking.
"I am doing it because that should be painful for you. I am killing them all for no other reason than that. If I go that far, surely even you will grasp the situation."
"Stop!!"
Kamijou ignored the circumstances and ran toward Vento without thinking. She stepped backwards while smiling. As she stepped back, she swung her head around. With the sound of scraping metal, the chain attached to her tongue spiraled around her.
If Vento swung the hammer now, a spiral of destruction would appear around her.
"I'll blast you all to pieces!!" roared Vento while moving her right hand.
A great roar rang out.
The stench of iron filled the dark ruins of the family restaurant.