Evil touma is clever

“Sup.”
“!?”
“I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided that releasing all of you would be such a waste, so I’m
gonna make use of you. Although I was worried my right hand would destroy Shokuhou’s
Mental Out along with your mental auto-fuse.”
“Do you have any idea what you have done?”
The only one capable of moving freely was the calico cat.
Unfortunately, he was not quite enough to call a queen’s bodyguard.
“You make it sound like I’m the villain here. He was the one that smashed through the
window to enter this off-limits castle.”
The boy’s words were technically accurate.
Elizard might have believed him if she were reading a report about something that
happened on the other side of the planet. His words were accurate, but they were spoken
in bad faith. She could detect that sort of underhanded scent here.
This was a detour he would not have had to make if he had truly done nothing wrong.
They appeared to be in a room other than the dance hall. The villain boy wearing an
unfamiliar tuxedo and ascot tie had defeated Elizard and now he was trying to make use
of her authority.
“What is happening here?” groaned the queen.
“Nothing really. Kamijou Touma has been here all along. And isn’t it about time you
repaid me for everything I’ve done?”
“…”
“You don’t want to ruin the party, do you? So I’m asking you to help me out. We need to
kill that son of a bitch who caused this tragedy.”
There was a loud popping sound.
She had fired a beam of magic without Curtana, but it had not reached the pointy-haired
boy.
However, she could see something like cracks running through the fingers of his
outstretched right hand. Bizarre colors showed through the gaps.
Those lines were colored a shocking pink and emerald not found in nature.
The cracks seemed to writhe before silently vanishing before her eyes.
“You really wanna keep doing this?”
“…”
“I mean, do you really think you can make your whole body glow and trigger a big
explosion faster than my fingers can reach Curtana Second?”
Elizard stopped moving there, as if she had gasped.
Yes.
He was holding the sword in his non-dominant left hand because he knew what would
happen otherwise.
“I got quite a welcome in the Tower of London, you know? Although to be honest, given
the chaos at the time, it’s possible word of it never reached you.”
Shokuhou Misaki’s Mental Out was not the only threat.
In fact, it may have been better if she was only being mechanically controlled by that girl’s
power.
Neon light seeped from the corner of the pointy-haired boy’s mouth as he continued.
“But things seemed similar enough in Edinburgh Castle and the Queen Britannia, so I can
make some decent guesses about Windsor Castle. There’s something hidden here that’s
necessary to protect the UK as a whole, isn’t there?”
“You really think you can understand it? That would require having infiltrated London
for a full decade.”
“Oh, I don’t care about all the finicky details.”
The boy held out his right palm to keep the queen from saying more.
That was not the main point here.
“I just need to know that it’s here and that my right hand can destroy it. After all, this is
the private residential area I normally wouldn’t be allowed in. I bet I can find all sorts of
valuable things if I take a look around.”
“Hold on,” said Elizard, but he was not listening.
No.
He turned his back on the queen regnant and casually walked toward the fireplace on the
wall. Specifically, he was approaching the trinkets sitting on the mantelpiece above it.
“I don’t need to worry about what color it is, what shape it has, how it’s used, or what its
effects are.”
He was going to touch them.
He was going to trace his fingers across the staff, crystal ball, vase, and painting on the
mantelpiece.
And he still lazily held Curtana Second in his other hand.
“I mean, they’ll all be destroyed the instant my right hand touches them, right? And their
destruction would be a major blow to the UK as a whole, wouldn’t it?”
“Wait. I get it, so wait!!”
“It’s a little late now, but what was that thing?”
“…”
“Maybe I need to destroy a few more to show you I’m serious. Keep in mind there’s no
repairing them.”
“Kh. Those are spiritual items used to protect the divers retrieving our country’s
equipment from the sunken Queen Britannia. Specifically, artificially-adjusted divine
punishment will befall anyone who touches royal treasures without permission, so these
are intervening in the security to deactivate that function! If that function resumes
working normally, the magicians on the scene will all die of heart failure!!”
The explanation she rattled off so quickly established their positions here.
They had just overcome a large war.
There was no archbishop to lead the Anglicans, so that faction was effectively nonfunctioning at the moment. The chain of command for anti-magician combat was in
complete disarray.
So what would happen if these foundations of national defense were destroyed?
There would be a great many people who saw it as an opportunity. This was a large
country that had earned many grudges both domestic and foreign. Very few individuals
and organizations could actually make use of that opportunity, but once those initial few
got the ball rolling, the festivities would come to an abrupt end and they would be back to
a chaos similar to the Crowley’s Hazards.
There was little risk of that chaotic destruction posing any danger to Elizard or her
daughters.
It was the ordinary citizens who were vulnerable to the kind of opportunistic attacks this
would lead to. And Elizard could not assign a bodyguard in black to each and every one of
them 24/7.
She could only clench her teeth.
Nations had to be supported. Peace would not last forever all on its own.
The boy made a blunt suggestion when he returned to Elizard.
“Well, you get the idea. So give me a helping hand this time. I want to defeat that monster.
It’ll be the reverse of how you used me to overcome your national crisis. …Shokuhou’s
power can only control about twenty percent of the people here, so I want something done
with the other eighty percent. Your job is to convince those British-born magicians once
their auto-fuse cuts out, Elizard.”
“Are you threatening me? The queen regnant!?”
“I’ve always been no more than a weak human. Kamijou Touma is the kind of ordinary
high school boy you can find anywhere, so I’ve always had to take inspiration from those
proper heroes we call espers and magicians and fake my way through it all. I don’t think
I’ve ever had a fight I could’ve smoothly resolved all on my own.”
Kamijou Touma—or this boy who looked just like him—did not bat an eye.
This was a side of him that occasionally showed itself.
It was the opposite of intense emotion or spiteful persistence that led one to keep getting
back up no matter how many times they were knocked down. When standing on the brink
of death, he would calmly analyze his opponent’s attack and come up with a move that
threaded the needle to victory. That cold core had definitely been a part of him.
Of course, it was a last-ditch choice only made when truly pushed to the edge.
But what if he learned to consciously wield it?
An emerald line flashed in the corner of this boy’s eye for just a moment.
“So I’ll use everything at my disposal. Back then, when I had to help the injured Index, I
didn’t hesitate to rely on the ignorant Komoe-sensei. Elizard, surely you understand since
you’ve used so many people to protect your country. I’m not some perfect person who can
solve everything on my own.”
“I wasn’t using them…”
“Don’t give me that crap. What did the British coup d’état have to do with my life? You
stole Index away for your own purposes and dragged me into it when I had no idea what
was going on. And if I’d died, I bet you wouldn’t have done anything more than shed some
crocodile tears for the cameras. And it’s not like you gave me anything after I survived
either. You’d set everything up so you wouldn’t lose anything no matter what happened.
Am I wrong?”
Despite his sharp words, the boy did not seem to carry any powerful hatred over this.
In fact, he seemed to be using it to his advantage.
As if to say it was the only way to live with his misfortune.
“All I’ve got is power as an individual, so how did I end up in a position where I could
influence a huge group battle like British Halloween or World War III? I find the
weaknesses in people and my influence spreads from there like falling dominos. In the
end, that’s all Kamijou Touma ever does. Whether you consider that a good thing or not
comes down to whether it helps you or not. I bet my enemies see me as some hypocrite
who preaches at you while using the dirtiest methods available.”
“…”
“Use it.”
There was a dull thud.
It was the sound of the pointy-haired boy tossing Curtana Second to Elizard’s feet without
hesitation. He spoke with a shocking-pink light scattering from the corner of his mouth.
“Either way, I can’t do anything with that spiritual item, so I’ll give it to you. Let me make
this very clear, Elizard. If you want to protect your people, then work for me. Use your
authority and whatever else to control all the magicians in this castle as my pawns. Unlike
that other guy, I know everything. I’ve even got your Achilles’ heel in my head here.”
It was all to support her country.
To protect everyone.
“This will not last, boy.”
“Ha ha. So the friendship ends once I work against your precious country’s interests, does
it? I risked my life fighting for you, but none of it’s worth risking your own life, huh? It
was the same when I was fleeing with Othinus in Denmark. You didn’t say a word until
you thought I could win. Eternal friendship sure is a fleeting thing.”
When Elizard spat out her words, the pointy-haired boy only gave her a cynical smile.
But the queen’s hand reached for Curtana Second’s hilt on the floor and, more importantly,
she was speaking in Japanese. That seemed to establish the pecking order here.
“Even if you win this battle, you will not win the future you want. From now on, you are
an enemy of the UK as a whole. And that is true whether you are Kamijou Touma or
something else.”
“You’re going to retaliate? But how?”
He only laughed.
He snorted with laughter while an emerald glow leaked from the corner of his eye.
“There’s only one name and face this time. Just this once, your enemy and your ally are
Kamijou Touma. So if I play my cards right, I can shove all the blame on that son of a
bitch and claim the future I want. That’s the whole point of this fight, after all.”
Shokuhou Misaki was too kind.
Because she had given up once her powers failed to control them.
That may have been the logic that developed inside someone blessed with a great ability.
But the pointy-haired boy did not have that luxury. If he did not find some way to make
it all work out, his doom was assured.
Strength and weakness were not just about measuring a simple power level.
He thought it also had to do with how many continue tickets you were given to use when
you screwed up.
A Level 0 had no chance of getting ahead.
He did not have incredible athletic ability, a great academic mind, or artistic talent.
He had not been blessed with wealth or an influential family.
He knew all too well that, when someone like that made a single mistake, they were not
given a second chance.
So.
A weak person like him had developed a unique sort of strength that allowed him to dig
his heels in even when he was at a disadvantage. Someone like a queen would never
understand that persistent strength.
“…Where are you going?”
“I’ve got the general path laid out, so now it’s time to untangle some of the hairier
problems.”
The boy thought of some of the fighters here.
Once Stiyl Magnus and Kanzaki Kaori knew that staying with Kamijou Touma would
work against Index, they were sure to agree to fight.
Once Kanzaki Kaori agreed, Tatemiya and Itsuwa of the Amakusa would be dragged along
with her or at least shaken.
Orsola, Agnese, and the other former Roman Catholics would be unable to keep their
hearts in balance if the new home they thought they had finally reclaimed might be taken
from them again.
It all came down to this.
Once Queen Regnant Elizard grabbed Curtana Second against her own will, the dominos
would begin to fall in every direction around her.
Yes, she herself had said that nations had to be supported.
And that how you position just one of the supports could lead it to collapse.
In their experience, this had all started with the Crowley’s Hazards, but they were at least
vaguely aware that Lola Stuart had caused it as much as Aleister if you looked back to the
source. And the problem had spread to the entire world. As the top of the royal family,
Elizard knew quite well that “it was all the Great Demon’s doing” and “we didn’t know
anything about it” would not be accepted as valid excuses.
They were in a similar position to the Roman Catholic Church after Fiamma of the Right
manipulated them.
That Church had managed to neatly avoid taking the blame, but if they had failed to
properly clean up during the aftermath, all their nations and organizations around the
world would have had all assets stripped of them.
There was no point in winning the war if your country collapsed afterwards.
What about the Amakusa Church, the former Agnese Forces, and even the ordinary
citizens who knew nothing of magic?
She had to protect all the people relying on British land even if it meant dirtying her hands.
She had chosen that as her #1 duty as the one who supported this nation.
And yet.
The demon before her was well aware of all that, but he still cut in.
“Itsuwa, Orsola, and…yeah, it’s a shame Lessar and Oriana weren’t here. Regardless, it
might be fun to try going at it from a different angle than the benefit to their organization.
People get overwhelmed when their processing power is pushed too far and then they do
things they never would have imagined otherwise.”
“Damn you…”
That boy had boldly added people to the circle around him and built up a great web of
people. That had sometimes meant intruding on their twisted hearts to stop them from
losing control. And now this person was trampling all over those truly precious treasures.
However.
He could transform that violation into the worst kind of rusty blade.
Instead of cutting, it caused rot.
“You know all about that, don’t you? I learned a lot from the way you threw me into that
coup d’état and world war for your own purposes. …Oh, right. I had a question for you as
Villian’s mother. Is she quick to fall in love? If you send her into a panic by setting up
conditions A, B, and C, will she forget all about the person she originally had feelings for
and fall for you instead?”
“Don’t you dare!!”
She roared at him, but the tuxedo boy only waved his right hand and turned around.
He had not been serious about that. The third princess always prioritized people’s feelings
and had trouble making pragmatic decisions, so she would not be easy to ensnare by any
normal means. …Although it might be interesting to see what she did if she was told Acqua
was about to be executed in the Tower of London.
He had been exposed to so much malice, so he felt he knew quite well how to wield it
himself.
He knew what he could say to hurt people. Because people had so often manipulated him,
used him as a shield, and hurled malice at him.
He had wanted to see how sturdy Elizard’s “shackles” were.
“Honestly.”
He would use everything at his disposal.
So.
To put it another way, he would not let anyone else use him.
Even if he did lose control of Academy City’s #5, Shokuhou Misaki, that would not be the
end of his story.
A slight shocking-pink light spilled from the corner of his mouth.
And he spoke to no one.
“This was all unnecessary, Elizard. If you had only let Mental Out control you, you might
never have been driven to the edge like this.”

- New Testament Volume 22 Reverse Chapter 3 Part 4