For as long as Kazakiri Hyouka could remember, she had lived on the edge of the world.
She had drifted through Academy City like a ghost, unable to touch anyone, unable to speak to anyone. People passed through her as if she were fog. The loneliness had been crushing, the fear constant. She had existed, but never lived.
That changed a few days ago.
By chance, she touched Index.
Through Index's presence, Kazakiri crossed from illusion into reality. She felt warmth. Voices. Companionship. She learned what friendship was. What happiness felt like.
So when Sherry Cromwell sneered and called her a monster, something inside Kazakiri settled instead of breaking.
"If I really am a monster," she said quietly, "then I'll deal with you myself."
Energy surged.
The cracks in her shattered body sealed themselves in an instant, light knitting her form back together. She raised both arms and braced herself.
The stone giant's next strike slammed down.
Kazakiri caught it.
Barely.
Only one arm was stopped. The force drove her feet into the ground, but she held.
Rowan Mercer watched closely, eyes narrowing.
"Interesting," he murmured.
Kazakiri wasn't just an anomaly. She was the collective manifestation of over two million esper fields, condensed into a single existence. That wasn't an accident. It reeked of Academy City's hand, of a massive experiment buried beneath layers of secrecy.
"Enough!"
The stone giant twisted, its free arm swinging toward Index.
That was when Rowan finally moved.
"Railgun."
A coin flashed.
A thunderous blast tore through the air, shredding the stone giant's arm in an explosion of heat and light.
Sherry whirled around. "You again? Don't think I'm afraid of you!"
She mistook him instantly. Same attack. Same overwhelming force. Same presence as the city's strongest esper.
Rowan ignored her shout, watching the stone giant instead.
Its shattered arm regenerated within seconds.
"So it's not disposable," he said, mildly impressed.
This construct wasn't like the ones he'd seen before. It could heal. It could be resummoned. That made it far more interesting.
Sherry laughed and swept her crayon through the air, activating an amplification array. The stone giant grew, swelling from five meters to nearly eight, its mass and power surging.
"Alice," she commanded, "kill them all!"
The giant roared and slammed both fists together, bringing them down toward Rowan.
He didn't block.
He grabbed Kazakiri with one hand and Index with the other and leapt backward, the ground exploding where they had stood.
"If partial destruction doesn't work," Rowan said calmly, setting them down, "then total annihilation should."
He clasped his hands together, then pulled them apart.
Energy condensed between his palms.
Every spark of electricity in his body fed into it.
"Plasma Railcannon."
A column of blinding plasma erupted forward.
The beam punched straight through the stone giant's chest, then swept upward and downward, vaporizing it completely. When the light faded, nothing remained. No rubble. No residue.
This time, the giant did not regenerate.
"Full destruction," Rowan noted. "That's the key."
Sherry stared, her breath catching.
"That's… that's the power of a Level Five?"
Her hands trembled. She knew they were strong. She had never imagined this.
She recovered quickly, frantically drawing another magic circle. Less than a second later, a new stone giant clawed its way out of the ground.
But before she could give it a command, she heard a voice whisper into her ear.
"The problem was never the construct," Rowan said softly. "It was you."
Her elbow lashed out on instinct.
It hit nothing.
The next instant, her vision spun and went black.
Rowan had crossed the distance in a blink, electricity driving his muscles beyond normal limits. He slipped past her attack and dropped her with a precise strike to the head.
He glanced at the unconscious mage.
"Physically fragile," he concluded. "Seems magic doesn't reinforce the body. At least not in your case."
Her spellwork was impressive. Durable constructs. Self-repair. Rapid resummoning. Against most espers, she would have been a nightmare.
But standing in the open, relying purely on magic, she had made herself vulnerable.
Rowan crouched beside her.
"Let's see what you know."
He placed two fingers against her forehead.
"Legilimency."
Magic and psychic perception overlapped, his mind diving into hers.
A lifetime of memories surged forward. Decades of experiences. Knowledge. Training. Secrets.
Normally, it would take months to sift through it all.
But the mind did not move at real-world speed.
Thoughts blurred. Memories folded in on themselves. Time stretched and compressed like a dream. What felt like hours passed in seconds.
Less than a minute later, Rowan pulled his hand back.
His expression had changed completely.
"So that's how it is."
The truth was clearer now.
Sherry Cromwell was a mage of the English Puritan faction, a member of a covert unit known as Necessarius. Her specialty was golem-based earth magic, combined with advanced cryptographic spell analysis. She was no minor operative.
More importantly, her memories revealed something far larger.
Twenty years ago, a faction of Puritan mages and a group of Academy City scientists had shared the same dream.
Magic and science, united.
They wanted to combine esper powers and magic into a single discipline. A new kind of wielder who could command both. Someone beyond either system.
The experiment failed.
Catastrophically.
In this world, magic and esper abilities could not coexist within the same body. Attempting to merge them led to violent rejection. Best case, catastrophic injury. Worst case, total bodily collapse and death.
Rowan straightened, the implications settling in.
So that was the rule of this world.
Magic and esper powers stood on opposite sides of a line that could not be crossed.
And Academy City had already paid the price for trying.