What exactly was Kujou Iruka's Garan?
Listening to Shingai Hitomi's question, Unohana Chiyo suddenly fell into deep thought.
She had once witnessed Kujou Iruka's strength with her own eyes.
She knew just how terrifying Kujou Iruka was when she went all out.
It was nothing like the setting in the game's World Boss interception battle, where Kujou Iruka could only use Garan three times.
In reality, Kujou Iruka's Garan seemed to have no limits at all.
Otherwise, twenty years ago, when Kujou Iruka was still only a Sixth Sequence, The Empire would never have been slaughtered into such a rout.
She had cut a bloody path all the way to the Tokyo metropolitan area.
It was only when Saint Michael, who had 'coincidentally' come to Tokyo on an academic exchange, stepped out of the city of her own accord and sacrificed herself to use her final Word of Command that Kujou Iruka was finally stopped outside the walls.
No matter how badly she was wounded, Kujou Iruka seemed able to recover completely just by beating her wings once.
Was it the work of those jet-black wings?
When facing Kujou Iruka, The Empire's Death Squad had once ripped the wings right off her.
But then, after a flash of that despairing blue light…
the enraged Kujou Iruka was restored once more.
And then—
with a single blow, she sent her companion plunging into hell.
And that wasn't all—
Kujou Iruka's Garan seemed to have an even more deranged function.
It let Kujou Iruka dart across the battlefield, flickering back and forth through the fighting.
For someone already blindingly agile, Garan's flickering made it look as though she were strolling through an empty field while a crowd of Espers besieged her.
Frankly… Unohana Chiyo had lived in Kujou Iruka's shadow for many years.
She had asked herself countless times.
What did that wavering blue light actually mean?
After meeting Su Yuzu, those thoughts had been given new direction.
Little Yuzu—
wielded the power to Twist everything.
Even the feathers Kujou Iruka had left behind were Twisted with ease before Little Yuzu, back when she hadn't yet entered the First Sequence.
Yamabuki Nanako had examined all manner of objects Twisted by Su Yuzu, over and over.
In the end… she had been forced to reach one conclusion.
Neither in structure nor in the arrangement of their microscopic makeup did those objects show any sign of having been Twisted.
In other words—
apart from their strangely warped appearance, they looked as if… they had always been that way.
They hadn't simply been bent out of shape on a physical level.
They had been changed… at the level of Rule, or rather, of definition.
The power of a rule-type ability user was the power to change the Rules of the world.
"Revision—" Unohana Chiyo said, pushing Shingai Hitomi's wheelchair. "Kujou Iruka's ability, or rather… Kujou Iruka's Rule, is a revision of reality."
The cold-faced girl actually looked startled.
She hadn't expected that this big-chested, brainless-looking gym teacher behind her could see through Kujou Iruka's ability so thoroughly.
"That's right—
"Kujou Iruka's power is the revision of the rules of reality."
"Or rather—" Her words suddenly took on a deeper meaning.
"the power of every generation's rule-type ability user… is a revision of the rules of reality."
"And Kujou Iruka's power—
"is Causality."
She gestured to a researcher nearby who had been recording battlefield data without pause. The woman understood Shingai Hitomi's meaning and operated the mobile base station brought over by Epiphany Manufacture. A pale blue virtual screen unfurled in front of Unohana Chiyo.
"Although neither Keigunen Private Academy nor Imperial Capital University ever reported it…"
"still—"
"Kujou Iruka was the previous generation's rule-type ability user, wasn't she?"
Unohana Chiyo's expression turned ugly.
She knew—
that with the power of Epiphany Manufacture and the Shingai family, investigating this would be no difficult matter.
The reason it had stayed hidden for so long was simply that everyone assumed the previous generation's rule-type ability user was Saint Michael.
"Her ability is… Sure Hit?"
"Any arrow Kujou Iruka looses will strike its target without fail, correct?"
"Even if the target is at home, several towns away, with no angle to shoot from at all."
"Yes." Unohana Chiyo gave a slight nod.
She was wary of the girl, but with Little Yuzu's safety at stake, Unohana Chiyo had no choice but to lay out everything she knew about Kujou Iruka.
"There are some limits, though."
"When she can't see her target, Kujou Iruka's arrows often 'can't find' it. They end up no different from ordinary arrows, or hit some unlucky innocent instead.
"Only when she fires at Director Saionji or at the young Kujou Katora can they ignore distance and ignore any obstruction."
"When she was out hunting Aberrants, she often used that trick to send letters to Director Saionji."
"Oh, right—"
"She once even tried shooting an arrow at the moon."
"And the result?" Even the icy-faced Shingai Hitomi showed a rare flash of gossip-hungry curiosity.
"In the end, the Academy commissioned Epiphany Manufacture to retrieve that arrow."
"Miss Shingai didn't know?" Unohana Chiyo turned the probing back on her.
It seemed… the Shingai family's grip on Epiphany Manufacture wasn't all that deep after all.
Shingai Hitomi paid Unohana Chiyo's jab no mind.
She simply went on, "Kujou Iruka's ability is not as simple as Sure Hit."
"Just as—" Her expression turned subtle and wicked, "Su Yuzu's ability is not as simple as Twisting, either."
Every nerve in Unohana Chiyo's body pulled taut.
Shingai Hitomi could even sense that if she said one more dangerous thing, this woman might well give her a taste of just how terrifying
the Reaper of twenty years ago had been.
But—
she remained perfectly composed. "From the very beginning, Kujou Iruka's ability was the alteration of causality."
"In her world—
"the effect comes first, then the cause."
"So-called 'Sure Hit' is only that: the result of the arrow striking comes first. With that result as the premise, it doesn't matter how she draws her bow. She could simply drop the arrow.
"The arrow will still hit its target."
"That is the world correcting itself."
"Garan works the same way."
"Once Kujou Iruka has decided on the result of coming out unscathed, then the process, the cause… no longer matters."
"In fact—"
"That's how she slipped into the Tokyo metropolitan area, and into Su Yuzu's dorm."
"Because she was already there, she appeared there."
Shingai Hitomi looked back toward the battlefield.
Kujou Iruka's power was this unreasonable.
And that unreasonable power had only shown its full shape after she fell into the Abyss.
So then, what about Su Yuzu?
What kind of power would Su Yuzu show once she had fallen completely into the Abyss?
Twisting the world?
Or perhaps… even Twisting time itself.
She was really starting to look forward to it.
"If that's the case, isn't Kujou Iruka's Garan unsolvable?" Unlike Shingai Hitomi, Unohana Chiyo only wanted to know how to defeat Kujou Iruka and take Yuzu back.
"Yes—" Shingai Hitomi nodded. "A Kujou Iruka who has entered the Seventh Sequence truly is unsolvable."
"The only one who can stand against a god—"
"is another god."
At the edge of the battlefield, the anxious Saintess stared at the enormous spherical silver-white metal device in front of her. "Are you sure…"
"that this thing will really work?"
The female researcher, clad in a combat suit rated against erosion domains, gave Lyudmila a thumbs-up. "Don't worry—
"this time, you absolutely won't have to turn yourself into the sun."
She was still worried… but thinking of Su Yuzu, who might be getting horribly ravaged, and even with the faintest sliver of satisfaction welling up in her heart that the wicked girl was finally being bullied,
Lyudmila still worried for Su Yuzu.
She pressed her hands together and prayed to the god in her heart.
"Lord Michael—
"this time,"
"we can only rely on you."
Bzzzt—
The sun rose over the earth.
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