Yuuya walked out through the automatic glass doors of the central hospital with his hands tucked into his pockets. He looked up at the vast, cloudless summer sky above District 7, a relaxed smile settling onto his face.
"Well... that mess is finally resolved."
Having remained dormant in life-support capsules for three years, the Child Errors' muscular systems had suffered severe atrophy. They would need a structured period of physical rehabilitation and neural recalibration before they could walk and run like normal kids, but with Heaven Canceller overseeing their recovery, a full restoration was only a matter of time.
'Still... did I forget something?' Yuuya stroked his chin, a sudden flicker of mild doubt crossing his mind.
Meanwhile, in an open-air public square all the way over in District 13, a silver-haired nun in a white habit was pacing back and forth with puffed cheeks, grumbling impatiently to herself.
"How much longer is Yuuya going to take?! Maybe I should just walk back to the apartment myself..."
Index stopped, looking around the towering concrete avenues with wide, lost eyes. A fresh wave of distress washed over her. She had never set foot in District 13 before and had zero clue how to navigate back to District 7. Modern transit systems were completely foreign to her, and the intricate bus and subway lines felt more complex than an ancient Sumerian ritual.
Back in District 7, Yuuya snapped his fingers as realization struck him like a bolt of lightning.
'Ah... I left Index behind in District 13!'
Entering his expanded calculation state, Yuuya locked onto Index's unique spiritual coordinate and executed a long-range Coordinate Movement.
Flash—!
Index blinked in confusion as the urban scenery around her dissolved into a blur of light. When her vision snapped back into focus, Yuuya was standing right in front of her on the sidewalk. Her anxious frown immediately melted into a radiant, beaming smile.
"Yuuya! Are you finally done saving people?"
"Yeah, mission accomplished," Yuuya smiled warmly, patting her head. "Come on, let's head home."
"Mm!" Index nodded happily, falling into step beside him.
Looking down at the cheerful girl humming a quiet tune by his side, Yuuya felt an unexpected sense of quiet tranquility wash over him.
However, the peaceful atmosphere vanished the moment they reached the second-floor landing of his apartment complex.
Pacing anxiously back and forth in front of his front door was an exceptionally tall young man with shoulder-length, reddish-brown hair. Dressed in a long black priest's habit, sporting a pierced barcode tattoo beneath his right eye, and puffing furiously on a cigarette, he looked far more like a delinquent street punk than an Anglican priest.
The moment he spotted Yuuya and Index walking up the outdoor stairwell, the priest rushed forward, ash flying from the tip of his cigarette as cold sweat beaded across his forehead.
"I've finally found you! Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting here?!" Stiyl Magnus barked impatiently.
His agitation wasn't born out of personal fear of Yuuya, but from the terrifying political catastrophe currently threatening to ignite an all-out war between the Magic Side and Academy City.
When he had received the emergency dispatch from London, he had cursed out loud in sheer fury. He had already purchased his one-way flight back to the United Kingdom, swearing he would never set foot in this scientific hellhole again—only for this sudden crisis to drag him straight back.
"Well, well. If it isn't the Fire Magician," Yuuya greeted him with an amused sneer, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. "What's with the frantic look? You look like you just got run over by a dozen beefy bouncers."
Snap!
A thick vein bulged on Stiyl's temple, and his teeth bit clean through his cigarette filter.
'Hold back... keep your temper in check,' Stiyl chanted internally, forcing his breathing to steady. 'This bastard is completely unpredictable. If we start throwing spells out here, he'll blast me off the balcony before I can finish an incantation.'
Taking a deep, trembling drag of smoke, Stiyl forced a stern facade. "I'm here regarding the rogue Magician who illegally breached Academy City's borders. Necessarius dispatched me to apprehend that traitor, but I just received word that you already neutralized him. I came here to confirm the truth with my own eyes."
"Oh~ you mean that green-haired turtle?" Yuuya replied lazily, scratching his ear as if discussing something as trivial as swatting a mosquito. "That bastard had the nerve to lay a finger on Index and demanded I yield to his delusions. So, I introduced him to modern ordnance. Is there a problem?"
"You... you actually killed him?!" Stiyl's voice pitched up in sheer disbelief, his eyes widening in horror. "He was an asset belonging to the Magic Side! Matters regarding rogue Magicians are meant to be adjudicated and executed by the Magic Side! Do you have the slightest comprehension of what kind of international fallout this will trigger?!"
"Fire Magician, watch your tone," Yuuya's voice dropped to a razor-sharp whisper, a dangerous pressure rolling off his frame. "Do you want me to throw you off this balcony?"
He understood the geopolitical ramifications far better than Stiyl did.
A collision with the Magic Side was fundamentally unavoidable. In less than half a year, a full-scale global war—World War III—was destined to erupt. The ideological and metaphysical contradictions between Academy City's scientific expansion and the Magic Side's traditional hegemony were entirely irreconcilable.
War was written into the script of this world.
The true architect steering the Roman Catholic Church from the shadows—the leader of God's Right Seat, Fiamma of the Right—had already set his global campaign into motion.
Ever since Aleister Crowley's early occult rituals and the subsequent summoning of angels and demonic entities across the past century, the metaphysical laws governing this universe had been thrown out of alignment. With the balance between heaven and earth fractured, tragedy ran rampant across the world.
Fiamma sought to "save" humanity by forcibly realigning the distorted cosmological phases back to their pristine, holy state. But to achieve that divine feat, he required absolute control over the Third Phase—the Celestial Realm. And to draw upon the true, unbridled power of his Holy Right, he needed a worthy adversary.
The authority of the Holy Right scaled proportionately to the threat before it: the stronger the opponent, the more absolute its output became. Therefore, to unlock the cosmic power required to tear the stars apart and rewrite the laws of existence, Fiamma had to treat "Global War" itself as his enemy.
War was an absolute inevitability. Academy City playing passive politics and maintaining fragile treaties was entirely futile. If the other side was already sharpening their blades, why bother playing nice? Yuuya's philosophy was simple: if they send one, kill one; if they send two, slaughter a pair. Strike first and dismantle their foundations before they even mobilize.
In fact, Yuuya had already been contemplating whether he should take a quick trip to England to deal with the Great Demon Coronzon directly.
He had even toyed with the idea of casually leaking the truth to Aleister: that the body of Archbishop Lola Stuart was merely a vessel possessed by Coronzon—wearing the name and form of Aleister's deceased second daughter, Laura Crowley.
Knowing how pathologically obsessed Aleister was with his daughters, learning that a demon had hollowed out his child's identity would probably make the Chairman tear himself out of the life-support tube and rip Coronzon apart with his bare hands.
"..." Stiyl gritted his teeth, taking a heavy, trembling breath to swallow his pride. Lowering his head, he spoke in a strained, muted tone.
"Aureolus Izzard was a high-ranking Scribe belonging to the Roman Catholic Church. Even though he deserted their ranks and illegally occupied Misawa Juku, the fact remains that he was Rome's fugitive. The Knights of the Roman Catholic Church dispatched to purge him are already monitoring Academy City's perimeter. If a rogue Magician is executed by the Science Side, Rome will immediately seize upon this as a casus belli. Radical factions will frame this as 'Science murdering the faithful' to deploy their crusader battle groups against Academy City."
Stiyl looked up, his voice tight. "So... how do you plan to handle this mess?"
Yuuya looked at the stressed, chain-smoking priest, a wicked, thoroughly amused smirk spreading across his lips.
"Handle it? What do you mean, how do I handle it?" Yuuya tilted his head innocently. "Weren't you dispatched to Academy City by Necessarius specifically to execute that rogue Alchemist? If the reports state that you tracked him down and turned him into ash with your flame runes... wouldn't that solve the entire diplomatic crisis?"
Stiyl froze, his jaw dropping in pure, unadulterated shock.
Yuuya patted the priest's shoulder with a mischievous chuckle. "Kid, you'd better wear the scapegoat jacket properly. Congratulations on your promotion."
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Give me powerstones.
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