Touma's plan

[Brassa P. Marhaisk frowned.

Brassa operated the small 8-wheeled carriage pulled by Sleipnirs at the front of the trucks transporting the prisoners. The carriage looked like a pill bug with silver metal plates covering it like armor. However, he was not frowning out of displeasure. All the drivers of the armored vehicles had a similar expression as they stared out the long narrow horizontal slit of a window that only allowed them to see forward . It was the same for the magical vehicles and the scientific ones.

All he could see was a white snowy plain.

There was little difference between the asphalt and the dirt.

At first glance, it looked as if one could just ignore the road and head along whatever path one wanted, but that was not actually true. The problem was the snow. It was impossible to tell how deep it was just from the surface. You also couldn’t tell if any thick trees were fallen and buried underneath it.

Carelessly hitting something like that would break the 8-legged horse spiritual item, and he wanted to avoid that. Also, Russia was a vast country. Its urban areas were some of the most developed in the world, but in the places where there was nothing, there truly was nothing. Being stranded there would be as bad as being stranded in a desert.

It was the kind of place where a map would only tell you that there was nothing there. The maps hadn’t been updated in years, so you really couldn’t know what was there. Straying from the small roads partially hidden in the snow was something you truly wanted to avoid. “How much longer to the detention facility?” said a bored voice in a transmission from one of the trucks.

Of course, it was sent by a magical spiritual item.

“We packed too many people in here, dammit. It’s a like a sauna in here.”

“Then open up the door for some ventilation. In about 10 seconds, you’ll be wishing you had that heat back,” Brassa replied to his fellow magician.

Then a high-pitched roar came from overhead.

It was one of Academy City’s supersonic bombers.

He was pretty sure they were called HsB-02s. According to a report he had read, they had turned the French city of Avignon into a sea of lava. They were apparently transporting goods instead of bombing, but he still couldn’t exactly remain calm with one passing by overhead.

“Dammit. Where’s the proper Russian army? Can’t they do something with surface-to-air missiles?” said the driver of the truck.

“They fly at 7000 kph. A missile can’t lock on and fire fast enough. It’s like they’re mocking the theory of aerial warfare.”

“What about the Migs or Sukhois? They can take on American stealth fighters, right?”

“I don’t know. My scientific knowledge isn’t too great.”

Brassa glared up at the large bomber in annoyance.

(Thank to John’s interception spell, the age of magicians flying came to an end. If it weren’t for that…)

If that airplane dropped a bomb then, Brassa and the others could be killed instantly. Having the bombers dropping small lightweight airborne tanks on parachutes was a problem, but Brassa felt more humiliated than relieved that the bomber wasn’t directly carrying out its normal job.

“(…Damn you. I know you can see us,)” he muttered under his breath.

Immediately afterwards, flames suddenly burst up on the route Brassa and the others were heading on.

“!?”

It was only about 300 meters ahead. Brassa hurriedly ordered the Sleipnirs pulling the armored carriage to stop. The entire convoy stopped on the road.

He thought there would be nothing but snow all the way to the horizon, but he saw a log house-like building that was likely there for anyone whose engine stalled or who ran into some other type of trouble. The explosion had occurred right next to that building. When he looked closely, he saw what looked like a four-wheel drive vehicle sitting there.

The explosion continued.

The log house itself was blown away. The sole manmade structure on the vast landscape was blown away.

It wasn’t just a normal explosion.

It ran across the ground in a straight line for over 3 kilometers. The white snow was blown up into the air instantly and the ground glowed orange. It was like the Russian earth was being torn apart and melted causing magma to spew forth.

“What!? Are they bombing!?”

Normally, Brassa would have been unable to respond to his companion’s question, but he had heard that Academy City’s supersonic bombers had cleanly cut the French city of Avignon off of the map. He had heard that they had weapons that used the air friction created by speeds of over 7000 kph to produce fearsome destructive force.

“So they’ve finally done it!!”

An unpleasant sweat started flowing from Brassa’s back. The convoy composed of trucks and armored carriages traveling along in the middle of nowhere were a convenient target when seen from the air. They had nowhere to hide and they were clumped together enough to be easily locked onto with the radar.

“Hey, can you use a people clearing field or something to prevent them from targeting us?!”

“We don’t have to time to prepare something like that,” Brassa responded as he re-realized just how much danger he was in. “This is bad. We should get out. They’ll just continue bombing us until they hit us if we stay inside.”

“But they’re bombing us with some super weapon from Academy City!! If we get out, we’ll have nothing protecting us from the blast!!”

“You saw that destructive force just now, didn’t you!? With just the spiritual items we have on hand, the trucks and carriages will just be blown to pieces!! It’s better to make sure they can’t target us. If we spread out and hide ourselves on the snow with our white outfits, our odds of survival go way up!!”

“What about the villagers we’re transporting!?”

“Leave them.” Brassa grabbed his usual staff and headed for the exit to the carriage. “We’re just taking them to the concentration camp anyway. Who cares if they fall victim to the bombing here?!”


What Kamijou Touma had asked Lessar to do was actually quite simple.

“You said your steel glove had been improved, right? It can grab distant objects just by having a red laser-like thing touch them instead of the blade fingers, right?”

“What about it?”

Kamijou pointed up into the air in response to the girl’s question.

“Then can you grab that?”

“?”

She frowned, but still began to follow his instructions.

“Wait. I have one more request. Can you stab the steel glove into the ground and make it move from a distance?”

“…Why do I have to do something like that?”

“So you can’t?”

“No, I can,” said Lessar as she stabbed the steel glove upside down into the snow and moved back a few meters. She then sent a bit of magic power to the spiritual item causing it to “grab” a distant object.

That distant object was the supersonic bomber flying at over 7000 kph at an altitude of 10,000 m.

Immediately afterwards, the steel glove split the Russian ground in two as it was dragged by the supersonic bomber.

It was a simple issue of air friction.

By slicing through the lower altitude area with its higher concentration of air at over 7000 kph, a massive amount of energy was produced.

With a tremendous explosive noise, an orange line raced across the white land along the route of the supersonic bomber. It was roughly 3 kilometers long. The ground melted like magma and blew the white snow away. The steel glove must not have been able to withstand the friction partway through because the line of destruction ended shortly after the steel glove was torn to pieces.

Lessar was the one that was shocked by this.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!? M-m-my steel glove!! That was the one and only Lessar Special Custom!!”

“Good. It had a nice effect similar to what happened in Avignon. That might very well fool the Russian Orthodox magicians.”

The trucks and carriages that were protected by solid spells had been abandoned in the middle of the snowy plain. Kamijou could see that the group of strong magicians that a normal high school student couldn’t hope to take on had distanced themselves from the convoy on foot.

It probably wouldn’t have been as effective if they had just used some kind of explosive to emulate an aerial bombing. An amateur like Kamijou couldn’t tell the difference, but there were different types of bombs and those different types spread out differently and made different types of noises. For instance, someone may have been able to tell that a faked explosion using propane or gasoline was not an aerial bombing.

That type of bombardment using air friction was exclusive technology of Academy City. There was no analogous weapon in Russia.

That was why Kamijou had managed to trick them.

Whether they were professional magicians or tough soldiers, he could fool them at least once that way.

“If they were transporting guests they had to protect with their lives, that wouldn’t have worked so well. But they didn’t care about those villagers, so they were willing to just abandon them when it came down to it.”] - Toaru Majutsu no Index Volume 20 Chapter 1 Part 7