over a fight, identifies a magic, its effect, and weakpoint

Saronia A. Irivika’s magic took its name from the Leshy, a Russian fairy that was said to
rule the forest.
The identity of the attack was unknown, but something had paralyzed half of Kamijou’s
body centered on his left arm.
Saronia loosely clenched her fists and moved her thumbs up as if flicking something
straight up and Kamijou rolled to the side to gain some distance.
But…
“Nothing…again? Another misfire!?”
“Chehh. They just won’t hit!!”
Seeming not to care that nothing had occurred, Saronia tried to continue attacking
Kamijou with her kicks. However, she was just a little too slow. Kamijou managed to
effectively gain some distance and stand up.
He used his right arm to stop the foot that flew toward him like a hammer and gave
voice to his speculation.
“Is it something like a mine or a trap? Is it an attack that waits for me to step into it
rather than firing a bullet!?”
“I guess it was only a matter of time before you figured it out. But a mine can be used as
a grenade if you get close enough to throw it.”
Kamijou could see that Saronia was holding some things in her hand.
Each one was only about a millimeter across.
The identity of the sand-like objects she held was…
“Plant seeds!?”
Kamijou immediately twisted his body to the side and managed to avoid the rain of
seeds that were thrown at him like a scattershot.
However…
“Too bad,” said Saronia with a sneer. “Pollen is good enough to bring about the effects.”
Kamijou’s body fell straight down.
Unable to support his own weight, he collapsed to the ground.
It was a simple matter of prestidigitation. Saronia had openly held the seeds to draw his
attention while using her other hand to undo the cord holding a small bag shut.
“Gh…gh…”
“Looks like I got your entire left side this time. I gotta say, you did put up a fight.
Normally, you would have undergone multiple organ failure by just breathing it in.”
The first attack when Kamijou and Kuroyoru had hidden behind the log house must
have been due to pollen on the wind.
“It’s a bit like a chemical weapon, so it can be pretty nasty, but it can get a little difficult
to use once the trick is revealed. Then the enemy just has to maintain a position upwind
of you or even produce wind themselves. That’s why there are really only two ways to
use it. You can either get a first attack in before the enemy has had time to analyze it or
find the perfect time like I just did. …It’s pretty rare for someone to get hit by both types
like this.”
Plant seeds.
Or pollen.
The Leshy fairy that Saronia’s magic was based on was supposedly the ruler of the forest.
The Leshy controlled all living things in that zone and gave or took away things in
gambles. That was what Birdway had told Kamijou.
Which meant…
“So this is a penalty against someone who injures the property…of the zone…?”
“I have no intention of giving you the answers,” said Saronia as she brought the seeds
into her palm once more.
However, she may as well have given him the answer. It was most likely a punishment
for those who obstructed the development of the plants. That was the base of Saronia’s
spell. That obstruction could be stepping on a seed or getting in the way of the pollen as
it flowed through the air.
But…
“(I still don’t know where the attack comes from once I step on the seed. What rules are
behind it? Where does the damage come from?)”
A few images flew by in the back of Kamijou’s mind.
He spoke while unable to get up.
“The ruler of the forest, hm?”
“Yes, but I’m not a forest girl.”
“If you could have the animals attack me, you would have already done so.”
“…Well, I’m not all powerful.”
Saronia seemed to try to respond without faltering, but Kamijou noticed a slight
hesitation.
Kamijou’s suspicions were confirmed.
For someone who claimed to be the ruler of the forest, only having a connection to the
plants was too weak. She could likely interfere with the insects and other animals in the
area. As Birdway had mentioned, even if she could not directly control humans, animals
with simpler brain structures like insects and reptiles were a different story.
So had Kamijou been attacked by some kind of poisonous insect?
No, he would have felt some pain if that were the case.
His only hint was…
“(In her first attack with the pollen, I was hit but Kuroyoru was not.)”
Was it because she was a cyborg? Did it have no effect on a mechanical arm?
No.
It had only been Kamijou who had taken the pollen to his left arm. Kuroyoru had been
standing next to him, so she would likely been hit by the windblown pollen elsewhere.
And yet no effects had shown themselves. Other than her arms and part of her upper
body, Kuroyoru was no different from a normal human.
The fact that she was a cyborg should not have mattered.
Something other than that had to have made Kuroyoru Umidori a special case.
She had a portion of the #1’s thought patterns artificially implanted within her.
She had inconsistencies at the instinctual level. She could not get used to standard
group psychology.
As Kamijou lay on the ground, he looked back over at his unmoving left arm.
He had thought there had been a problem with the “hardware” that was his arm, but he
had been wrong.
The “hardware” was being sent commands by the “software” that was his mind. That
“software” was where the interference was occurring.
However, Kamijou’s mind had not directly fallen under Saronia’s control. If that had
happened, he would have taken much more damage. It was the punishment for treading
on the development of a plant. That punishment was being accomplished solely by
controlling a group of insects or small animals.
Kamijou thought for a bit.
“!!”
He suddenly grabbed his cell phone with his still moving right arm and quickly pressed
a few buttons.
“I thought I told you I have no intention of giving you the answers!”
Saronia let fly a kick.
The kick struck his right wrist and another one stabbed into his side after he had let go
of the phone.
“Gh…gah…!!”
“Calling Birdway of the Dawn-Colored Sunlight again? Quit thinking you can just ask
her anything and get an answer! Search engines really have emptied the minds of this
generation.”
Kamijou glanced over toward his phone which had flown a fair bit away and then looked
back toward Saronia.
“This is an exclusion from the ‘forest’ you have created in this zone. By gathering the
small, simple creatures like insects and reptiles, you can control the minds of a majority
of the creatures in this area. That way, you always win in issues of majority rule. The
‘forest residents’ are forcibly linked by something like group psychology and this allows
you to focus their malice and hostility on one point. That results in what is happening
here. You can externally interfere with and distort the mind that is normally inside a
person.”
The penalty was the exclusion of an irregular element to maintain the stability of the
society.
It was the suppression of a minority by the majority.
Saronia was the one reproducing it as an attack, but she looked surprised.
“I can see why you need to rely on that phone of yours. Group psychology only exists
among humans. You were heading in the right direction with the idea of being rejected
by the forest residents, though.” Saronia sneered. “With my spell, I first evenly maintain
the minds of all living things within the specified zone. There is no distinction between
human and beetle, but there is a division between those within the zone or outside of it.
Only then can something like group psychology be used.”
The identity of her spell was made clear.
Kamijou had the information he needed to find a way past it.
But…
“So have you figured out its weakness?” Still sneering, Saronia approached him. “Even if
you have, can you pull it off with the left half of your body completely paralyzed? As I
said before, control of your weight is directly linked to the force behind your fist. Now
that you can’t brace your legs, you would need muscles on the level of a grizzly to knock
someone unconscious.”
“…Not necessarily.”
“?”
Saronia did not even have time to raise her voice in confusion.
Kamijou Touma’s body suddenly stood up from its collapsed state on the ground. It was
an impossible action for a human. As if his heel was acting as a hinge, he stood up like a
basement door on the floor opening.
“Wha—!?”
Saronia was utterly shocked, but then she realized what had happened.
Two slender feminine arms were wrapped around Kamijou’s waist. The palms had
produced something like lances made of air which had launched Kamijou’s body up and
forward.
As Saronia watched, the two arms smoothly wrapped around Kamijou’s left leg and
reinforced it like a cast.
No, it was more like a powered suit that mechanically augmented his strength.
“Mechanical…arms? So you were using the phone to—!?”
“I never said I was calling Birdway. In fact, I never said I was making a call!!”
It may have been improvised, but he now had control of his left leg.
Saronia had carelessly drawn close enough for him to plow his right fist straight into her
at full strength.
That was the strike that she—that Gremlin—was so worried about.
Imagine Breaker slammed into her and a dull noise burst out.
Saronia A. Irivika’s small body bent backwards.
But that was it.
She held her ground. Her lip split and a trail of blood dripped down, but she did not go
down.
“I already told you!” she spat out while grabbing a large number of seeds in her right
hand. “Even if you can use your leg, your left arm is paralyzed, so you can’t control your
goddamn weight!!”
She threw the seeds at Kamijou as if scattering salt.
Taking the shower of seeds straight on, Kamijou collapsed to the ground once more. His
entire body convulsed. He had no idea what expression was on his face and he could feel
his blood vessels pulsating unnaturally. He could not move anything except for the part
of his right arm that was past the elbow.
“…Chehh. So your organs are still functioning. I guess it really is best to get the pollen
directly in the target’s mouth.”
“…Gh…Khah…”
Kamijou could not even breathe without focusing on it.
He moved his right arm and slowly crawled, scraping himself across the hard ground.
“You are the one who ended the war. There was one thing I wanted to ask you if I ever
met you.”
Kamijou now knew the details of Saronia A. Irivika’s Leshy spell.
But he still had a question.
She could only use her magic after creating numerous “enclaves” linked back to her
small forest in Russia. Birdway had suspected the preparation time for one of those
enclaves was a few days long.
However, Saronia had only learned that Lindy Blueshake was there a half hour or so
before.
Saronia would not have had time to prepare an enclave.
“Why did you end the war the way you did? The areas like Russia that were brought to
ruin by the war are undergoing reconstruction, but do you know what is actually going
on there?”
“Academy City and America are…”
“They are messing with other people’s countries as they see fit just for fun.” Saronia
smiled, but it was completely devoid of joy. “In exchange for all the money they are
throwing around, they are interfering with the structure of the government, seizing
control of infrastructure like electricity and water, and deciding who will be saved and
who will not. And yet they are part of the group that pulled the trigger that started that
war. They are dividing people up like oranges being packed into boxes and then
throwing away the boxes they don’t like the taste of.”
“…”
“Even my small forest was cleared away and covered in asphalt. If I had not joined
Gremlin, I would have been unable to transfer over the power that makes me a
magician.”
Had she started by making all of Hawaii or at least Kauai into an enclave? That was not
it. If she had done that, she would have put Lindy into a trance before trying to forcibly
abduct her. Even if she was up against amateurs, it would have been better to eliminate
all possibility of escape or resistance.
“I know that world has ended and cannot be brought back, but we can live on even after
it has ended. I want to make the preparations for that. And this life will not be
something forced on us by Academy City or America.”
That meant there had to be a reason.
There had to be some kind of trick that allowed her to create an enclave there without
waiting for days.
“It seems Gremlin as a whole and Olay are trying to destroy the balance between science
and magic by recreating the United States into a theocracy, but that is nothing more
than a trivial task to me. I don’t care what it is as long as it rids Russian and Europe of
those who use the name of justice to profit.”
“We…” Kamijou forced out his words even as it felt like his breathing would stop. “We
did not…end that war…for that to happen. We…”
“But that was the result.”
“Then…it is my duty…to fight those who…are making you suffer in the…name of justice.
There is no…need for you to…do these things… that will make the world...blame you.”
“How naïve. You were only able to end that war because of all the preparations made by
others. What can a mere pawn do when faced with the people who made those
preparations?”
Saronia needed two things for her Leshy spell.
Plants and animals.
When Saronia possessed plants and animals that created a cycle of oxygen and carbon
dioxide, she transformed that area into a “forest”. In that twisted zone, she ruled over
the twisted community and had assaulted Kamijou with a twisted penalty based on
twisted rules.
“And you are weak. Gremlin has joined together to fight the world’s victors. How is a
loser who cannot even defeat a single one of us supposed to accomplish something as
grand as you are proposing?”
In that case, couldn’t she use a type of supplement?
Instead of using the cycle of oxygen and carbon dioxide to make an enclave out of the
local plants over the course of a few days, she could bring in one of the original plants
and plant it directly into the soil. That would get rid of the few days of lag. If she also
opened cages holding insects and small animals already under the control of that plant,
Saronia would indeed have control of the majority of the forest residents.
And as an extra hint, Kamijou Touma had seen someone bring a plant into that area.
“And so I think it is about time I sent the finishing blow to your heart.”
“Saronia…!!”
“If you’re going to make some idealized argument, I wish you would give some strength
along with it. After all, that’s what led to us getting trampled on during that war.”
Harzak Lolas.
That large man who was Lindy Blueshake’s guardian. Just before the attack, he had been
planting a seedling. Kamijou doubted Harzak was working for Saronia, but all the flower
shops or vending machines he might have stopped by to buy the seedling could have
been attacked and had the seedlings switched out. That way he would have unwittingly
carried out his role.
It was also true that Trident had waited until after he had finished planting the seedling
to attack.
In that case, it had to be the origin of Saronia’s magic.
The seedling had been planted in the small garden to the side of the log house!!
“…Ah?” said Saronia A. Irivika questioningly.
She was surprised because Kamijou was still breathing even after she had scattered
countless seeds atop him.
And then she realized something.
At some point as Kamijou used only his right hand to drag himself along the ground, he
had made it to the garden. And he had used that single usable part of his body to pull
out the seedling that had been planted in the soft soil.
That seedling was the origin of the spell that took its name from a fairy that ruled the
forest.
Normally, countless such origins would exist within the zone, but that one plant was the
core due to that zone’s rushed construction.
And he had pulled it out using that right hand that had an absolute effect on magic.
“Im…possible…”
“…”
Kamijou Touma slowly stood up.

- New Testament Volume 3 Chapter 5 Part 15