From Sherry Cromwell's memories, the truth emerged piece by piece.
Years ago, she had followed the orders of senior figures within the Church and taught magical techniques to a young esper from Academy City. The girl's name had been Alice Waria. The moment Alice attempted to use the spell Sherry taught her, blood poured from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. She collapsed, critically wounded.
That was when the Knight faction stormed in.
They despised espers. Despised any attempt to bring magic and science closer together. In the chaos, Alice bought Sherry time to escape.
She paid for it with her life.
Crushed by a war hammer.
From that day on, Sherry came to loathe the Knights and the blind arrogance on both sides. Scientists and mages closing ranks without understanding the consequences only bred tragedy. If peace was ever going to exist, then the two worlds needed clear boundaries.
No overlap. No experiments. No cooperation.
Recently, the Church's leadership had crossed that line again, cooperating with Academy City and allowing the Index Librorum Prohibitorum to live within its walls. To Sherry, it was history repeating itself.
So she came alone.
She attacked Academy City's most sensitive targets, determined to ignite a crisis large enough to force both sides to pull back. War now, she believed, was the only way to prevent something worse later.
In a twisted way, she wasn't evil.
She was trying to protect the world.
Rowan Mercer absorbed it all in silence.
"So magic really can't coexist with esper abilities," he thought, a flicker of relief passing through him. "Good thing I never used this world's methods."
According to Sherry's memories, mages refined their own life force into magic, then shaped it through chants, formations, and tools. Espers were something else entirely. They stimulated their brains to produce AIM fields, projecting a personal reality that overwrote the world around them.
Two systems. Two laws.
Rowan suspected the incompatibility came from physical change. Once someone became an esper, their body could no longer refine life force in the way mages required. Trying to force it caused violent rejection. Bleeding. Collapse. Death.
He was exempt.
His magic didn't come from refined life force. It came from his bloodline. From innate reserves he had carried since birth, later reinforced through meditation that drew in external energy instead of burning his own vitality.
His esper abilities weren't native either. They were a hybrid, shaped by something far beyond Academy City's framework.
As long as he avoided this world's life-refinement methods, his magic and abilities would never clash.
That problem was solved.
Learning magic here would be no different. He would simply use his own power to fuel it.
Still…
Rowan glanced at Index and Kazakiri standing nearby and let out a quiet sigh.
"So much for taking the shortcut."
From Sherry's memories, he now understood just how impossible it was to steal the one hundred and three thousand grimoires from Index's mind. Index was a nun under the Church's protection, chosen because she possessed perfect memory. The Church had loaded her with nearly every magical text in existence.
To control the risk, they erased her memories once a year. New companions. New relationships. A reset button.
Until she met Tōma.
With his help, and with support from her former allies, the cycle finally broke. But the Church had left behind something else.
A system.
Automatic Scribe.
A defensive spell construct designed by the Church's greatest mages, capable of drawing on the full knowledge of all one hundred and three thousand grimoires to protect Index's mind. Any attempt to forcibly extract her memories would trigger it instantly.
If Index's life was threatened, it would activate on its own.
Unless Rowan could dismantle Automatic Scribe without harming her brain, brute force was useless.
And honestly, he had no confidence he could do that.
The mages of this world were stronger than he had assumed. At the extreme, some were said to grasp the very essence of magic and ascend beyond humanity. Beings capable of erasing worlds without effort.
Breaking a system designed by minds like that was not something to take lightly.
Which meant there was only one remaining path.
Index would have to teach him willingly.
That, however, was even less realistic. Protecting the grimoires was her duty, and the Church would never allow her to do so freely.
Compared to that, infiltrating churches and studying original spell texts on his own sounded far more practical.
"Enough overthinking," Rowan decided. "Today's gains are already more than I expected."
Two months. That was all he needed to reach the next threshold in his abilities. Plenty of time to plan.
Besides, Sherry's memories had gifted him something else. He now understood the structure of Kabbalistic spellwork in detail. Recreating it with his own power was just a matter of experimentation.
"Thank you, Misaka… um, sister!" Index said brightly, bowing deeply along with Kazakiri.
Rowan waved it off with a grin. "Not sister. Brother."
"Brother?" Index blinked, staring at his outfit in confusion. "You just changed clothes. How did that happen?"
Before Rowan could answer, space folded beside him.
A girl appeared and immediately clung to his arm.
"Big sister! There you are!"
Kuroko Shirai had returned after evacuating the trapped civilians.
Her eyes swept over Rowan's outfit, then widened.
"…Wow."
Her expression slowly took a turn for the dangerous.
"Big sister in men's clothes looks incredible."
Rowan felt a familiar sense of doom creep up his spine.
Tonight wasn't over yet.
...
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