Her right hand hung limply at her side, the rest of her body similarly affected in varying degrees.
A vivid gash from a wind-swept stone marred her forehead, the trickling blood nearly obscuring the vision in her right eye.
This kind of ability backlash affecting her physical form was something Natsume-san had always striven to avoid, yet this time, she had initiated it herself.
Fortunately, it wasn't a high-risk miscontrol like Meltdowner, just ordinary temperature manipulation and atmospheric control, resulting mostly in burns and frostbite.
To break free from Kihara Gensei's mental control, a certain bun-girl had thrown caution to the wind. Burns were preferable to watching her senpai-s die before her eyes.
This near-fatal resolve seemed to have solidified immensely after undergoing soul fusion.
Though she had always sought power with a go-with-the-flow attitude, she deeply loathed her own powerlessness—it meant everything she cared about could be stripped away by others.
The moment Natsume-san glimpsed a lifeline, she lunged for it without hesitation.
The instant she made that decision, she even felt that getting hurt herself wasn't such a big deal; emotion had instantly overridden her rationality.
People sometimes make choices that aren't entirely self-serving. Absolute rationality doesn't exist in humans; it's just that the stakes stacked against reason aren't high enough.
But is following emotion always the right course? No one can say for sure.
Right now, however, Natsume-san understood her own heart perfectly. Even if reason warned her of great risk, she didn't want to remain powerless on the sidelines, hoping someone else would work a miracle. At the very least, she had to do something, regardless of the outcome.
The only problem, then, was Natsume-san's endurance. The intense pain stimulation could not only shatter Kihara Gensei's control but also render the bun-girl, with her low pain tolerance, completely combat-ineffective.
In fact, the moment she reclaimed control of her brain, her entire body jolted violently, trembling uncontrollably.
The relentless, stabbing pains made it nearly impossible for Natsume-san to command her own limbs.
"So painful..."
'My brain can't handle basic calculations anymore. Maintaining the thermal layer is fine, but anything more complex is impossible.'
'Thank goodness Reiko-chan is unharmed.'
Struggling to maintain her thoughts, the reclaimed Natsume-san found solace in the fact that things hadn't reached the worst-case scenario. She still had time to adapt.
The instant she regained her brain, Natsume-san attempted to restart her body's thermal layer, cutting off the ability backlash to prevent further injury.
Given her current state, letting her guard down for even a moment might mean losing all fighting capability completely.
The situation had actually exceeded Natsume-san's expectations. She hadn't cried out in pain—a significant improvement, even with her mental preparations.
Perhaps she was influenced by a certain Shirai-san, who gritted her teeth through severe injuries;
Perhaps she felt she shouldn't appear weak before Kihara Gensei or Accelerator, or maybe she believed crying was useless.
Emulating that Judgment member, Natsume Sonoko clenched her teeth hard and used her left hand to wipe the blood from her forehead.
Natsume-san wasn't defeated by the pain. She was stronger than others gave her credit for; a frail body didn't mean a fragile heart. Even pushed near her limit and rendered almost combat-ineffective,
Her gaze remained steadfastly fixed on Misaka-senpai in the sky.
For the first time, she experienced what Shirai-san must have gone through. In such perilous moments, she felt a newfound respect for the Judgement members.
Natsume-san had always felt sorry for Shirai-san but never fully understood her desperate dedication to the city's peace. Now, she was beginning to comprehend—fighting to protect something important requires no justification.
"I want to save Misaka-senpai. That doesn't require any reason either."
Forcing her expression under control, and resisting the urge to look at the tragic situation of her right arm, Natsume-san began communicating with Reiko inside the building.
She could no longer fight, but Reiko could, and would act according to her will.
Though both were incapacitated Level 5s, Natsume-san wasn't fighting alone. Little Reiko was by her side.
The Sisters inside the building were all unconscious, but Reiko, staying with them, remained largely unaffected.
It seemed Kihara Gensei hadn't obtained much information about Reiko from her, at least not the deepest secret hidden within Reiko's body.
Not that Kihara had ignored Reiko, but the Exterior's computational power was overwhelmingly focused on Misaka Mikoto. The control over Natsume-san was merely peripheral.
As for Reiko and the unlucky affected bystanders, they were low-priority matters for Kihara Gensei.
'Over half my cognitive capacity is diverted.'
A crimson glow flickered in Natsume-san's eyes as she transferred most of her consciousness into Reiko's brain, abandoning the idea of performing calculations with her own body.
The intense pain made proper calculation impossible, but Natsume-san's Personal Reality remained. The vast field extending over a hundred meters in radius was one of her greatest assets.
This superpower might have originated from that grimoire, the Book of the Law, with Personal Reality perhaps being the espers' unique interpretation of it.
Even within the magical community's general understanding in this world, no one was believed capable of finding the correct interpretation.
[A/N: Personal understanding, not explicitly stated in canon.]
Returning to the subject, as long as Natsume-san's brain wasn't completely unconscious—even if functionally disrupted, as long as she could still think, however barely—she could still output calculated results.
The best course for Natsume-san now was to immerse her entire being into Reiko's mind.
Losing most of her cognitive functions would inevitably leave her original body difficult to control.
But this also allowed her to circumvent the constant pain wracking her body.
The original body would merely provide basic formula execution and the temperature field, becoming a mere tool for Natsume-san herself.
The portion of consciousness left behind was enough for Natsume-san to perceive the changes in her body post-soul fusion.
As the surrounding light shifted, Natsume-san's main body returned to the interplay of light and shadow. A mysteriously rising gust of wind lifted her from her original position, carrying her into the air.
By now, several seconds had passed since Natsume-san reclaimed her body.
Though only seconds, Kihara Gensei hadn't deployed that large-scale Mental Out again. Natsume-san knew he couldn't spare the computational power.
Furthermore, her own constant, severe pain made her nearly worthless as a controlled asset.
Kihara Gensei might be able to control a functionally disrupted brain, but it would undoubtedly be harder and incapable of precision tasks.
This was one reason Natsume-san had chosen the ability backlash—to prevent immediate re-control after breaking free. It seemed Natsume-san's luck was holding.
At that moment, a pair of soft arms suddenly appeared, embracing Natsume-san's dormant main body from behind.
It was Reiko, now housing nearly seventy percent of Natsume-san's consciousness.
The sun hung high, unleashing its heat relentlessly.
Yet, the sky before Natsume-san's eyes grew dark, as if veiled in gauze.
Beneath this veil, the esper known as Accelerator could no longer maintain his earlier patience.
Though he repeatedly shattered Misaka Mikoto's defenses, she returned too quickly, like a tireless beast.
In this high-intensity stalemate, Accelerator's villainous grin had vanished completely.
Only one thought remained: eliminate Misaka Mikoto at any cost, before the evolution reached the threshold where Last Order would also dissipate.
Pity the #8 seemed to have slipped Kihara Gensei's control and was no longer coordinating with him. He lacked a sufficiently impactful striker.
The Misaka Mikoto before him had reached an extremely dangerous point, teetering on the brink of will dissolution.
An evolving Level 6 significantly influenced the surrounding environment.
The sunlight seemed to be constantly absorbed by her, leaving behind an increasingly massive, dark energy form in her place.
Misaka Mikoto's brain was being pushed to evolve, her consciousness forcibly expanded layer by layer, extending her perspective into an entirely new realm.
She could even glimpse the operation of the cosmic starscape through her Personal Reality.
All the stars and cosmos in this universe operated through fundamental physical laws, entirely different from Phases.
Therefore, no matter how many orders of magnitude higher the energy level might be than an individual esper's, in a specific domain, it still fell within the realm of an esper's comprehension.
And the starting stage of Level 6 might involve communication with this starscape, even this universe. Perhaps this was one interpretation of "comprehending God's will with a mortal body."
This "God" might never have referred to a religious deity or certain magicians.
But to the physical universe itself, or the true creator god of this world. After all, Academy City's mad scientists weren't adherents of any religion.
Now, Misaka Mikoto's consciousness continued to ascend.
The cost was vast empty spaces left in her psyche, constantly eroding her existence.
As the flood of memories from the dead Sisters poured in, they bound tightly to Misaka Mikoto's consciousness, stuffing emotions like rage and hatred into those voids.
To some extent, besides inducing evolution, these emotions, along with Mental Out, helped sustain Misaka Mikoto's consciousness, preventing her from being completely assimilated into something unspeakable in the experiment's early stages.
Although Misaka Mikoto's consciousness needed to reach a critical point to fully dissipate, it didn't mean she could reach that threshold while retaining human consciousness.
Attempting to preserve human thought was the most crucial problem in the Level 6 Shift experiment; the ultimate goal was to create a Level 6, after all.
In the real world, this strange substance composed of AIM diffusion fields enveloped the heart filled with rage and hatred, slowly constructing a solid, dark fortress.
More than just a change in light, the intense negative emotions radiating from the dark energy form continuously spilled outward. The nearly ten thousand dead Sisters had awakened the deepest darkness within Misaka Mikoto.
--+--
T/N: I have a Patreon! While it may seem empty as of now, webnovel will get 3 Chapters Every Day, and advanced chapters will be uploaded on Patreon.
It may not seem worth it now, but maybe in the future. Who knows!
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If you guys wanna check it out.