Chapter 7
[A Grave Interlude]
"Lei-chan, what do you think about what Kirie-san was talking about?"
"I don't think Masaki-san is someone who would fall for any weird play... But it was Kirie-san who turned to us. I'm sure something strange is going on."
The two high school girls, Ichijou Akane and Ichijou Leila (Liú Lìlěi) conversed as they headed to the apartment of the subject of their conversation, Akane's older brother, Ichijou Masaki.
They took advantage of today being Sunday, a day off from high school, to check on Masaki after Kirie had called to ask about his condition.
Not long ago, Leila and Kirie contested for the spot of Masaki's girlfriend before the man himself. In reality, much as they competed between themselves, it was entirely without the consent of their would-be boyfriend.
Since the initial spark they started to see the other as a love rival, regardless of Masaki's intentions on the matter. They ─or at the very least Leila─ would be rather unwilling to turn to the other for support on any matters related to Masaki.
But Kirie expressly sought help from Leila and Akane. Nothing suggested her concern isn't genuine. And neither Akane nor Leila would imagine Kirie wass just imagining things when she mentioned feeling something was off about Masaki. Leila didn't have any reasonable argument not to hear Kirie, and Akane, who was no brocon, as such had no dog in their fight, was just there out of concern for her family member.
They did not tell Masaki they would be visiting, it would defeat the purpose if whatever the cause of the unusual behavior was something he wouldn't want others to see. But that creates the possibility that he might show up when he's not at home.
Akane thought about this and borrowed a duplicate key from their mother. It ended up being unnecessary.
[Akane!? And Leila-san too... What happened, all of a sudden?] Masaki's surprised voice came over the intercom speaker once they pressed the ring button.
They got him by surprise, as intended. This was not their first visit to his apartment, but it was the first time they came without prior notice.
"Just open the door already," Akane demanded.
[It's unlocked, come in.]
Akane tested the doorknob and, sure enough, it was unlocked like he said.
She exchanged looks with Lelia. This was strange, Masaki always kept the front door of his apartment locked. It might seem like a trivial shift of habit, but Akane and Leila could sense something was amiss.
Akane slowly opened the door. The voice in the intercom was undoubtedly that of her brother, Masaki, but she was gripped by a paranoid feeling that there were some stranger lurking in his room.
Akane carefully peers into the room.
"...What's wrong with you?" Spoke the man inside the room. There he was, Ichijou Masaki with an exasperated look on his face.
Seeing her brother's face, Akane's tension drained away. She felt like falling to the ground with relief.
"I'm sorry for disturbing you, Masaki-san." Leila showed up from behind Akane to greet him.
"No problem. Please come in." Masaki responds to Leila with indistinguishable politeness. Even if she was now officially his younger cousin, his attitude toward Leila has not changed much since when he first met her in Japan, as an exiled Strategic-Class Magician.
Leila pushed Akane on the back and they entered Masaki's room together. They crossed the doorway, and Masaki closed the door behind them, at which point Leila's expression twitched.
"Masaki-san! Who did this!?"
Leila's whole demeanor flipped 180°.
"W-What?" Masaki was taken aback, not understanding what suddenly got into her.
Leila, in the meanwhile, rushed to the opposite side of the room and flung the window wide open. Spinning on her heels right thereafter, the next moment she was shoving the front door open.
"Akane, wind!"
"Huh?" The sister shared her brother's reaction.
That's siblings for you, the thought came to Leila seeing this. She shook it away, this was not the time to tease them about it.
"Use airflow manipulation, get some ventilation in the room. Quick!"
Leila still could not use any magic freely. Her magic calculation area was heavily optimized for strategic-level magic [Thunderclap Tower], to the point where, by the time she first arrived in Japan, she was only able to use variations of two magic: [Thunderclap Tower] and [Electromagnetic Shielding].
Since [Electromagnetic Shielding] doesn't occupy as much of her magical resources, she has gradually become able to use other magic under the care of the Ichijou family, and through study and training at Third High. However, in the emergency she judged them to be, it was better to rely on Akane than on whatever low-level magic she could muster.
"Huh? Okay." Pressed by Leila's momentum, still unsure of the reason behind it, Akane did as asked and activated the magic.
A gust of wind blew from the front door through the room to the back. An apartment of a hundred years ago would have been covered in flying papers at this point, but Masaki, is a paperless person like many nowadays, so nothing of the sort happened.
"...Is it fine now?" Akane turned to Leila, who closed her eyes and sniffed the air a couple of times.
"Yes, it's all right."
Seeing her friend now looking less distraught, Akane finally inquires, "What was that all about, Leila?"
"There was an [Aphrodisiac smell]."
"Aphrodisiac? Wait, you mean love incense?"
"Yes."
Akane deduced what Leila was trying to communicate by her previous actions. And perhaps in part also because Akane also noticed that smell trying to reach her consciousness.
"The room was filled with such a thick [Love Incense] that it was amazing that Masaki-san was able to maintain his sanity. Other person would have snapped and attacked any other woman on sight."
"Is that true?" Masaki, oblivious to his own condition, couldn't help but to flinch at Leila's intense words and gaze.
"It's not pure aroma, this [Love Incense] has a tint of magic, so I imagine your magic resistance saved you, Masaki-san. No... it was already starting to have an effect."
Leila was already convinced at this stage that the cause for Masaki's "strange behavior" that Kirie described to them was the [Love Incense] that was filling the room.
"Masaki-san, do you have any recollection of yourself behaving in an unusual way? Actually, do you remember doing anything at all these past days?"
Masaki found himself unable to answer either of Leila's questions right away. "I..." he started while trying his hardest to think.
"Rei-chan, what kind of magic is [Love Incense]?" Instead of waiting for an answer to come from him, Akane turns to Leila.
"It's an ancient-style magic from the mainland that uses the sense of smell as a medium. It was developed and used by a corps of magicians that competed with us in the GAU forces. This magic uses the advantage of having a physical medium, which tends to give magic longer durations."
Akane interrupted before Leila continued her explanation, "Wait a minute. What do you mean a unit that competed with you? A group that was rivals with the group that developed [Thunderclap Tower]?"
"Rivals... yeah, that would be a nice way of putting it, but yes, you could say we had this sort of relationship."
Masaki suspends his pondering for a moment to ask Leila, "So it was a competition between advocates of ancient-style magic and modern magic?"
"Yes. The study of modern magic back in the GAU is not as advanced as it is in Japan. And while we in general favor ancient-style magic, the group based in the Shaanxi province was heavily skewed in that direction. They've been researching and testing how to apply ancient-style methods to create magic that can be used in modern military scenarios. [Love Incense] is one of their projects."
This is the first Masaki heard of that group. As such, probably neither Akane, his father Gouki, nor the NDF officer who conducted her questioning of Liu Leilei knew about it as well. Masaki was on the verge of asking why she kept such valuable information from them until now, but he then realized they never specifically asked about it.
"But I'm afraid we're getting a little off topic, Masaki-san." Leila fixed her eyes on Masaki, her gaze intense and penetrating.
"In a nutshell, [Love Incense] is magic designed for honey trap operations."
Masaki was speechless. Akane spoke for both of them, "A magic for honey trap?"
"[Love Incense] changes the chemistry of the user’s body scents to have an aphrodisiac effect, and then use it as a medium to work a magic on their victim that takes away their mental resistance. They might even use their own body as a medium for the magic, turning the other person into a puppet who does all their bidding."
"I had no idea" was written all over Masaki's expression. Which didn't go unnoticed by Leila, who deliberately chose not to point out.
"It wouldn't have the same effect on me and Akane. By its nature [Love Incense] only works on people of the opposite sex. Which gives us an idea who used it. If we were men, we would have fallen under the spell the moment we stepped into this room, given just how saturated this place was."
"I see it now... Thank you Leila-san. That sounded like it was a close call." Masaki humbly bowed his head to her.
"Surprisingly, not that much. Seems like you have a much higher magic resistance than I could have imagined. Perhaps you have even developed a resistance to [Love Incense] on your own."
Leila shakes her head to the show of gratitude, but Masaki insists, "Regardless, you still saved my skin. Thank you," then bowed his head once more.
"...So, Nii-san, who is the woman you've been hanging out with? Do you have an idea of at least who could be?" Akane gave an inquisitorial voice to the question that Leila danced over without asking.
"Ah, right... Could it be… her...?"
"Nii-san," Akane pressed with a firm tone, sounding annoyed with Masaki's inarticulate response.
"Hello, Masaki-san, I made some tofu pudding, I was wondering if you would like to have a taste," said a young woman as she entered through the open door.
That was his new next-door neighbor who introduced herself as Aikawa Keika.
"Aikawa-san," Masaki calls her name the moment she enters the apartment.
"You!?" Leila shouted, her voice dripping with enmity. "Lan Caihe!" Leila spoke with an emphatic accent, she referred to the neighbor with a different name than "Aikawa
Keika".
"You're Liú Lìlěi!" The words that came from Aikawa Keika's mouth were not in Japanese. "How can that be? Why are you here?" The change of language was almost like an admission to the name"Lan Caihe" over "Aikawa Keika".
Lan Caihe darted back out of the doorway and slammed the door shut with a loud thud.
Leila lunged for the door and turned the knob, but even though there was no way the door could have been locked, it didn't open.
"─Hgh. [Sealed Gate] magic!?"
Psions rouse and expand within Leila. Being an Strategic-Class Magician saw to the fact Liú Lìlěi had a limited number of magics at her disposal, but it also meant her psion count was far from limited. She is very similar to her fellow Strategic-Class Magician, Tatsuya, in this respect.
She slammed the activated Psion to the door in a single motion.
[Gram Demolition]. Blowing away magic sequences with a high-pressure Psion stream, that was the mechanism of this very straightforward counter-magic. She's been practicing its deployment since last summer.
Leila still had a long way to go with her [Gram Demolition], it only had an effective range of just five meters, besides the long activation time. Right now, that was more than enough to blow away the magic that was sealing the door.
Next time Leila turns the doorknob the door opens outward without a snag.
Leila did not put on her shoes as much as she did thrust her feet into them and, without even trying to adjust her feet into them, ran out of Masaki's apartment.
"Lei-chan, wait!"
Akane hurried after Leila. She did, though, take her time to properly slip on her ballet shoes at the entrance, then looked back at Masaki, "Nii-san, we're going to have a good talk later, don't you forget!"
"W-Wait a minute. I'm coming with you."
Masaki's words bounced off the closed door.
The residential area where Masasaki's apartment is located is a short walk from the nearest train station, there are quite a few businesses around and a lively pedestrian traffic.
"I can't let her hide in the crowd," Leila thought to herself as she chased after Lan Caihe.
As stated ad nauseam, Leila's magic repertoire is fairly limited. This is a result of her skewed upbringing back in the Greater Asia Union. In lieu of being heavily genetically engineered, she received periodic exhaustive training programs and administered medications with the purpose of developing specific talents.
As a result, Leila, or rather Liú Lìlěi, has evolved to be able to invoke the Strategic-Class Magic [Thunderclap Tower] without even requiring the use of CAD. But at the expense of this, she was unable to use any other magic with the same freedom or with similar requirements apart from [Thunderclap Tower] and [Electromagnetic Shielding], which was necessary to prevent herself from being affected by her own magic.
That said, she is limited only when it comes to magic. [Gram Demolition] is a simple technique of psion manipulation, therefore is just a matter of time and practice for her to master. The same applies to the manipulation of Qi, which Leila, at this point, already had a good command of when using it to enhance her physical abilities.
Using [Ki] to strengthen one's body is, ultimately, an act of consciously releasing the body's latent potential. It cannot produce the same magnification as a [Physical Boost] magic or Superpowers can, however, it enables the practitioner to maintain the average running speed of an olympic 100-meter sprinter for a good kilometer. Leila caught up with Lan Caihe before she reached the area immediately surrounding the station, where the crowds were thicker.
"Stop, Lan Caihe!" She spoke not as Leila, but as Liú Lìlěi, again, using Han Chinese, the official language of the Greater Asia Union in perfect, natural, accent. When Lan Caihe did not stop, Liú Lìlěi commanded again, "Stop now or I'll shoot!" Lan Caihe responded by speeding up her pace.
The words "Like you can't use [Thunderclap Tower] here," in Lan Caihe's voice to the wind reached Liú Lìlěi's ears.
"The nerve of you!" Liú Lìlěi went back to Leila to blurt out her feelings with Japanese words, which now came to her more familiarly than her mother tongue.
Leila was furious. When she explained to Akane and Masaki that [Love Incense] was made for honey traps, she misstated when saying that in some cases the user's body could be used as a medium for the magic. It was not strictly false, just as it was not technically correct.
[Love Incense] is a magic that requires long exposure to penetrate the mind of the recipient. It cannot produce an immediate effect like modern magic, rather it continuously, meticulously, and gradually takes away the free will of the subject. Then, in the final stage of the process, the will of the person can be completely seized through intimate physical contact, that is, sexual intercourse.
[Love Incense] is not a single done-deal, it is, in other words, a sexual ritual magic in which the majority of the process is a preparation for the eventual embracing (or receiving) of the target.
Leila loves Masaki. She even confessed as much to him.
And, even though she hasn't received a response yet, Lan Caihe's attempt to steal him away is nothing short of a loathsome provocation to Leila.
(I'll never, ever forgive you.)
That was both Leila's and Liú Lìlěi's genuine outrage. If anyone else knew how she was feeling, they would have every reason to call her a "straight fireball".
Leila started the process of activating the magic ingrained in her mind.
The ability to activate magic without a CAD was originally tied to her training from before she was picked to be a Nationally Recognized Strategic-Class Magician. Her previous life path would see her serving her nation on the opposite side of the spectrum, as an undercover disruptor agent in Japan.
"Leila" was originally meant to be her cover name.
It was drilled into her that an agent should never stand out in every aspect. Her hair color, eye color, facial features, and physique were all carefully refined to ensure that she perfectly blended in with the Japanese
Having a pretty face comes with the advantage that it makes it easier to win favors. And the hefty demerit that it makes one stand out, which is a great demerit in a task that also involves not standing out. And while the expression "A woman becomes tired of being beautiful in three days" holds some truth, in a society where most astrive to reach some semblance of beauty, it is harder to remember a well-dressed person in the median of the sample space. That is because it's the unusual that contrasts with the background of normalcy. Even if a person tries to say otherwise, the memory will often skew towards the beautiful or the diametric opposite; the exceptional; the most; the out of the ordinary, who stand out. So it's better to have some flaws to blend in better with the masses.
Another important skill for a modern undercover agent was the ability to activate magic without requiring a CAD. At the time of her training, fully thought-operated CAD were still stuck in prototype hell. Magicians generally had to stick with the conspicuous movements of operating a CAD if they wanted to activate magic.
Carrying a CAD around, a tool that is useless out of the hands of a magician, is itself like a public declaration that you are one.
Leila was the only one to achieve the difficult feat of activating powerful magic without a CAD among her peers during training.
If her predecessor, "Apostle" Liú Yunde, had not been KIA at the Scorched Halloween, She would probably have been despatched to Japan as "Leila", without the "Ichijou" Leila, instead of having the name "Liú Lìlěi" being put on the "Apostle" pedestal.
As long as it is one of two certain magics, she is fully capable of executing magic with equivalent speed and reliability as with CAD.
And this time it was no different. The construction of the [Thunderclap Tower] sequence went quick and smoothly.
(Lock on)
She narrowed down the target of the magic on Lan Caihe.
[Thunderclap Tower] is generally expressed as a large-scale offensive magic. Attributing to that is the fact that the creator of this magic, Liu Yunde, was only able to deploy this magic in such a way.
Leila's original intended assignment was disruption undercover work, however, with the onset of a war, she was ought to be fit for deployment in tactical, large scale, attacks or in guerrilla-style limited attacks.
With that factor in consideration, the straightforward route would be to adopt different magics for different tasks, but since she couldn't meet the criteria of "mastering use without a CAD", this was not viable. However high Leila's potential was, she just isn't that flexible.
Instead, Leila complied with the order by starting to develop her control over the deployment scale of [Thunderclap Tower]. Her training was interrupted with her elevation to the status of "Apostle," but after defecting to Japan and ending up in the care of the Ichijou family, she voluntarily resumed her training. Thus, currently, she is able to set down the target to any scale she desires.
An area of reduced electrical resistance forms around Lan Caihe.
Noticing this, Lan Caihe's face froze in shock. She attempted to break from that cage somehow with the titular Bāxiān's counter-magic [Húnrán yītǐ ].
But it was a futile attempt. [Húnrán yītǐ] only nullifies magic that interferes with the user. [Thunderclap Tower], by principle, produces effects on a delimited space, not at a specific object.
Potential difference is generated in a virtual cylindrical space, spelling the onset of an electron avalanche at the top. [Thunderclap Tower] is often thought to induce effects in a dome-shaped space, but in fact, the "tower" in the name suggests, the phenomenon is caused within a cylindrical space.
An instant later, it happened.
Successive electrical discharges directly struck Lan Caihe. The power of the discharges was suppressed, so with luck, Lan Caihe would not die. Nonetheless, the agony of the repeated electrical discharges was more than Lan Caihe could tolerate.
Even as a Bāxiān, she was usually never tasked with the rough-and-tumble kind of operations. Her last task, for instance, was to help Laura escape from Japan along with He Xiangu. Lan Caihe never had to dirty her hands herself, at most, she used [Love Incense] to entrap men, extracting information from them and, at other times, forcing them to kill their compatriots.
In the process, she grew accustomed to being violated by men's animalistic desires, but not to being exposed to violence whose only purpose is to inflict pain.
[Thunderclap Tower] ends and Lan Caihe is relieved from the electric assault. Her exposure to the discharge storm lasted only a few seconds at most. She nevertheless didn't twitch.
Leila's Thunderclap Tower ruptured Lan Caihe's heart.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login