Unlike Minoru, who detected Tatsuya by feeling the echoing psionic waves of the magical battle overhead, Minami detected Tatsuya from his Elemental Sight – his vision, his all seeing gaze pointed at her.
“…he’s watching me.”
Minami felt it through her intuition rather than her magical perception. Her detection of Tatsuya was not based on anything concrete in the present – it was based on what she knew from the past. She was under his view at home and at First High. She knew he was watching because he was always watching.
Minami had crouched in fear of his gaze for the first few days, but even now she felt fear from his sight that saw all – even after more than a year.
She was never scared of being scolded, of punishment. Tatsuya never showed signs that he judged her for the things she did.
She was scared of the fact that he saw everything – every action she made. And from this, he could know everything about her character. Her quality of work, her effort.
Normally, she could hide how she felt behind her actions, but she wasn’t perfect – she couldn’t maintain a façade permanently. She could never relax and be content with what she was – she felt insecure that someone could see all the bad parts of her. Her incompetence, her laziness, her ugly side – all the parts of her she didn’t want to see herself were now open to someone else, making it all the worse.
It seemed to her that when Tatsuya was watching, he saw so much that he knew about her insecurities – and yet she knew nothing in return.
Minami understood she was making a problem out of nothing – she knew Tatsuya’s power couldn’t reach her feelings, and he wasn’t watching her actions enough to know all she did. In addition, after living under the same roof as him, she knew that he wouldn’t use her secrets against her. But that didn’t matter to her feelings – logically, she knew there was no problem, but feelings aren’t logic.
Even if Tatsuya wouldn’t use it against her, the fact remained that he possessed a power that could see her secrets, and even if the power couldn’t look into her thoughts, it could still see the sins committed by man. Her actions were revealed as if Tatsuya was giving her Last Judgement.
Tatsuya’s gaze weakened after 24 hours of not seeing his target, but this couldn’t reassure her. When they lived in the same house, there was never a time where they were apart for more than 24 hours, and now…
Not even one hour had passed since Minami had betrayed Miyuki.
Her emotions were no longer limited to just despair – now she cringed, clasping her shoulders as her hopeless eyes gazed at the floor.
Minami was scared.
Not of punishment by Tatsuya, but that he would not condemn her for her sins.
She was scared that he would say she wasn’t even worthy of condemnation. That she would be thrown away as a useless person.
Minami was scared that she would be pushed to the side, watching from the sidelines as someone who didn’t matter.
More magic was sent toward Tatsuya from Arcturus’ astral body, but Tatsuya neutralized it all by interrupting and dispelling it.
All this magic Tatsuya easily neutralized using Interrupt spells and dispel spells.
Tatsuya now knew the identity of the astral body – he had identified it as Alexander Arcturus from Stars after the body first used magic.
Tatsuya was mildly annoyed at this occurrence – after all, he was on a time sensitive mission and yet his time was being wasted by an enemy who should have been defeated. However, Tatsuya couldn’t just leave the fight. Arcturus used more diverse magic in his astral body than he had in his physical body. He even used outer-systematic magic to attack the mind this time. This only served to frustrate Tatsuya even more – this enemy, who he never should have had to fight again, was back for more and stronger than last time.
Tatsuya wasn’t surprised by the fact that Arcturus was able to use magic without a physical body, as he had fought the true body of Parasites on multiple occasions.
However, he was slightly shocked at the fact that his magical ability had increased.
In past experiments carried out in Japan, there was no indication that astral projections increased magic power or activation speed. Tatsuya had attended experiments like this twice in the past when they were carried out by the Yotsuba family. The general conclusion from these experiments was that activation speed remained the same, while power decreased.
But now, after having to neutralize heated wind blades in a state of plasma compressed via adiabatic compression, Tatsuya thought about why his opponent had seemingly increased.
“…why didn’t he use this power last time?”
He should not have been limited inside the aircraft – he had shot through the plane that time and was clearly not afraid to damage the body of the craft. It couldn’t have been the presence of friendly soldiers either, as Tatsuya had put Arcturus’ comrade in front of his eyes. Arcturus should have at least nearly used his full power when fighting on the plane, so his increase in strength was unbelievable. Had his power somehow increased the moment he got rid of the seal?
“Minoru must have broken the seal made by Mikihiko…”
Tatsuya could not use the ancient magic employed in sealing the Parasites, but he understood its nature. It could not be broken from the inside, so some outside force had to have freed him.
“When Minoru broke the seal, did he use some kind of spel to increase his magic power?”
Tatsuya didn’t know any magic that could increase the abilities of another, but he realized he didn’t know all the magic in existence. Some magic may have existed with that effect.
“…I’ll think about it later.”
Arcturus attacked using bullets made of uncompressed air. Upon hitting a target, the air around the target is scattered, causing a sudden drop in pressure resulting in cooling as a result of adiabatic expansion.
Tatsuya destroyed the portion of the magic sequence which would cause the air to scatter using Gram Dispersion.
As he expected, Arcturus’s interference force was wasted without causing an effect.
Tatsuya was defending by harassing the enemy rather than neutralizing magic, but even though it affected his opponent, it was still a defense. Arcturus wouldn’t quit just because his attacks were ineffective, so Tatsuya needed to attack somehow.
Suddenly, Tatsuya rushed towards Arcturus’s astral body using flight magic. He aimed at the Eidos storing the information about Arcturus’ physical body rather than the astral body itself.
However, Arcturus had foreseen Tatsuya’s attempt to close the distance, and he materialized a red-hot wall of adiabatic compressed air.
Tatsuya spread out the compressed gas by using a scatter spell, but this released the heat as the compressed air exploded outwards. Arcturus expected this to damage his opponent, but the blast wave was blocked by Tatsuya’s armor. At this point, Tatsuya had approached within 10 meters of Arcturus.
Tatsuya shot a mass of psions toward Arcturus to interrupt him – Gram Demolition. If Arcturus had a physical body, all he would feel was a slight disturbance as the psions hit him. The physical body acted as a reference, stabilizing the Eidos. It didn’t matter if parts of the information body were blown off as the physical body could be used to recreate missing parts. However, without a physical body, the Eidos has no way to repair broken parts, so in Arcturus’s case, if his information body was damaged by pressure from a stream of psions, he would have no way to fix it.
However, Arcturus’ astral body withstood Tatsuya’ spell. Its shape was slightly damaged, but that was all. The information making up Alexander Arcturus had not been blown away.
Arcturus moved away from Tatsuya. He wasn’t running, but he needed to make some distance.
After he felt he was a safe distance away, he released a series of thin needles made of lightning that were difficult to see. Rather than scatter them, Tatsuya evaded by maneuvering in the air, but by this time, he was too far out of range to use Gram Demolition again.
Tatsuya’s frustration grew once more.
The car with Minami continued to head west, and Tatsuya was stuck fighting a troublesome enemy.
Minoru had probably prepared a shelter hidden by magic, and Tatsuya wasn’t sure how long Minoru’s reduction in magical power would last. For all he know, it would become impossible to track Minoru within just 5 minutes.
But Tatsuya couldn’t just leave the fight. If he didn’t defeat the current enemy blocking his way, he wouldn’t be able to continue the chase. The problem was, Tatsuya still didn’t have any idea how to defeat this opponent. Though he had a rich combat experience – he could even be called a veteran, despite his age – he had never fought an enemy like this.
He had fought magicians using astral projections in the past, but he had never fought against such a strong astral body. Astral projections were usually used to search for enemies – not for direct combat.
The astral body’s natural state was tied to a physical body. Activity away from a physical body was unnatural. It was fine when using passive abilities such as detection, but actively using magic made it impossible to maintain the state for long. Even well trained magicians using this spell would only be able to carry out battles for two to three minutes. Despite this, Arcturus’ astral body showed no sign of a decrease in power or presence despite having fought for more than five minutes now. He continued releasing magic at Tatsuya without any indication that he would run out any time soon.
Worse, Tatsuya had never encountered an astral body that could withstand the stream of psions from Gram Demolition. Though he couldn’t destroy the spiritual body entirely with it, all astral bodies Tatsuya had previously faced would be forced back into their physical bodies after taking a direct hit.
Tatsuya tried to think of a way to defeat the enemy in front of him, but the astral body used this as an opportunity to attempt to drag Tatsuya into the illusion of madness using outer-systematic magic.
Mental interference magic couldn’t be avoided physically, and since Tatsuya couldn’t use any mental interference magic himself, he had no way to resist the attack other than destroying the magic itself. Each time Arcturus used mental interference magic, Tatsuya was forced to dispel the spell.
In other words, he was in a situation where he couldn’t attack, and couldn’t even focus on figuring out a way to attack.
If Tatsuya didn’t change something, the situation would only grow worse. Tatsuya was currently neutralizing or evading all of Arcturus’ magic, but if Arcturus didn’t run out of energy and cancel his astral projection, Tatsuya could even lose the battle.
Once again, Arcturus used mental interference magic to attack Tatsuya – The Illusion of Chaos. It was magic that caused the subject’s mind to experience psychedelic visions and sounds as if they were under the influence of a hallucinogen.
It was first used medically to treat mental disorders using the effects of drugs without their physical side effects. At that time, its name was the far more innocent “The Illusion of Disorientation”.
The magic didn’t pose much of a threat on its own, but it put the recipient at a fatal disadvantage in battle, so Tatsuya was forced to react and decompose it with Gram Dispersion. However, Tatsuya’s situation was growing worse and worse as all he was doing was reacting. He had completely lost the initiative in the battle as he waited for Arcturus’ attacks without attacking himself.
Tatsuya had to retake the initiative to get out of the impasse. Since Arcturus was using wave, energy, and projectile attacks in addition to outer-systematic magic, Tatsuya sometimes had the chance to evade and counterattack Arcturus rather than the magic, but he was too far away.
Gram Demolition had too short of a range to be effective in this situation. The spell’s effectiveness was determined by the density of psions, so as distance increased, the spell grew progressively weaker.
Usually, effectiveness of magic was not correlated with physical distance. Since magic was activated from the information dimension, magic could generally be used anywhere from anywhere. Distance was mainly an obstacle due to the feeling of the operator that the target was too far away for the magic to reach; it was a limitation imposed by the magician.
However, since Gram Demolition worked by sending a mass of psions through the physical plane, it was an exception to the general rule. The maximum range varied on the users psion count, but though Tatsuya’s psion count was impressive, Arcturus was still able to maintain a distance at which Tatsuya could not reach him.
Tatsuya’s current limit was about 30 meters. This distance restriction was unique to Gram Demolition, and it was a much more serious limitation than limitations on other magic.
Arcturus was maintaining a distance of more than 50 meters away from Tatsuya.
Tatsuya had been able to approach to within 10 meters during his first rush, but his attack had been enough to alert Arcturus to the danger so Arcturus was being especially careful about keeping his distance.
Tatsuya’s only way to defeat Arcturus seemed to be to reduce the distance. Since Gram Demolition had been able to inflict some damage, it would probably be able to defeat Arcturus eventually, and it was Tatsuya’s only method of attack – his innate Decomposition magic had no effect on spiritual bodies.
“…but why is it not reacting?”
While he continued neutralizing Arcturus’ magic, he had yet another question about his opponent.
“I can’t recognize the structure of his mind? …I can’t use decomposition magic.
Since the mind is a pushionic information body? …I can’t see pushions.”
The mind was a pushionic information body, so Tatsuya couldn’t see or feel it –
Miyuki was better suited for that. He realized that he was weak at detecting pushions, so he answered his own question.
“…I can decompose a man’s body, but I don’t look directly at its structure. I can’t see every microscopic cel , nor can I see the molecules making up each cel .
It’s the same for other substances too. I don’t recognize the components making molecular compounds directly.
When disassembling things into its components, I do not see how the parts combine –
only the Eidos recording information about the substance.
I don’t see the structure – I see information connecting it, and delete it.”
Tatsuya thought back to what he did when using decomposition magic.
Magic was the technology of copying, storing, and replacing information about phenomena existing in the world. The Yotsuba family didn’t consider Tatsuya’s decomposition – the mass deletion of information making a body – to be magic, but strictly based on the definition of magic, Decomposition was fundamentally magic.
“Despite not seeing the structure of substances, I can decompose them.
Then why can’t I used decomposition just because I can’t directly see the structure of the mind?
…
The body of the enemy in front of me right now – what is it?”
Tatsuya’s train of though finally started to reach a conclusion.
The body he recognized as Arcturus was a psionic structure storing information about his physical body.
The information making up the physical body was not just about the substances composing it. It wasn’t yet fully clear what the purpose of psions were, but they seemed to provide a link between the material world and the mind.
Psions generally didn’t interact with the material world, with one exception – psionic waves could generate and detect small electrical signals. Because of this, nerve cells could generate psionic waves, and psionic waves could generate an electrical impulse in nerve cells, allowing magicians to feel psionic waves. This two-way communication with psions provided a link between the mind in the information dimension and the body in the physical dimension.
All phenomena in the physical world are accompanied by information in the information dimension recorded by psions, and using psions to rewrite or change the information about an object changes the object. Phenomena in the physical world are intrinsically linked to the information recorded in the information dimension, so changing one also changes the other.
However, to change the information, the information must be completely overwritten.
Changing information requires an interference force determined by the number of psions used to overwrite the information, or else the object will simply repair damage to its Eidos using its physical body as a reference. The object must be
“convinced” that the new information is correct, causing the physical body to change in accordance with the Eidos.
In the psionic body Tatsuya observed in Arcturus, he found a link allowing the mind to work in the physical dimension.
“Why is there any need for a spiritual body need to be accompanied by a psionic information body?”
Tatsuya stopped trying to maneuver closer to Arcturus to get in range to use Gram Demolition, returning to evading and intercepting attacks. Tatsuya’s intuition told him to follow the course of his reflections, and he began building a new hypothesis based on his reflection.
“This enemy is not just Alexander Arcturus – it also contains the true body of the parasite covered in a psionic shel .
The mind can’t control the body directly, and nor can it directly recognize information recorded by the body. The mind – the pushion information body – gives orders to the physical body by emitting psionic waves, and receives information col ected by the physical body by receiving psionic waves.
Would everything be the same if there was no physical body? The mind can’t directly interfere with or receive information from this dimension, but would it stil be able to access and send information?”
Arcturus’s attacks suddenly became fiercer as he realized Tatsuya was no longer trying to counterattack. However, Tatsuya continued automatically neutralizing his magic, and he plunged back into his thoughts.
“The information dimension is not a world separate from this one so much as it is a platform in which information about phenomena is recorded, so the spiritual body can’t access information in the same way it is in the material dimension.
Then, it gets access to both the material and information dimension using a passage formed inside a psionic structure serving as a medium?”
Tatsuya finally came up with a revelation.
“So if I decompose the psionic structure connecting the mind to the physical dimension, the mind would be cut off from the material world ?”
Tatsuya immediately decided to try this.
First, he used his Elemental Sight to view the Astral body of Arcturus. Inside, he found a structure connecting the mind with the information dimension.
The structure didn’t contain information about the physical body.
It wasn’t really information about the link between the physical body and the mind.
It was more like information about the gate, which connected the mind to the Idea –
the platform of the Eidos – from which the magician released magic, but…
“…not quite.”
The gate existing between the lowest part of consciousness and the highest part of the subconscious is the area in the minds of magicians that released magic sequences from the magic calculation zone to the Eidos. Since Arcturus had left his physical body, he needed the function of the gate, but more.
This gate was more like a modification of the connection allowing the mind to communicate with the physical body.
“… ?”
Arcturus suddenly sent a mental interference attack.
Since Tatsuya was distracted from his observations of Arcturus’ Eidos, Tatsuya was a moment late. He had waited until the moment of release to catch the magic.
Tatsuya was attacked by hallucinations depriving him of his sense of direction, forcing him to lose his orientation in space.
However, after falling just two meters, Tatsuya used his own magic sequence to restore his orientation, allowing him to control his flight magic once more.
“What now …?”
Tatsuya went back to observing the gate in Arcturus’ Eidos but made sure not to concentrate too much on his observations.
The part of the spiritual body outputting magic sequences seemed to be disposable, as it only left small traces.
There didn’t seem to be any activity in this connection.
But next to it, he discovered an active channel.
As he neutralized Arcturus’ next attack, Tatsuya studied this passage. He used his interference force on the phenomenon almost instantly.
Arcturus continued attacking, but Tatsuya was focused enough to constantly neutralize the magic.
He might be able to find more channels if he didn’t rush this fight, but he didn’t have the luxury of time – he needed to finish this battle as quickly as he could in order to continue pursuing Minami.
Tatsuya directed his Elemental Sight towards the new passage he had discovered with the ability to interfere with the Eidos, analyzing its structure.
Finally, Tatsuya found his answer after devoting most of his time in the fight to observing Arcturus. He was able to understand the content of the structure because he had significant experience studying information bodies of material phenomena as well as the different structures in magic sequences.
“… this is a passage to sustain the Astral Projection spel ?”
As soon as his analysis was completed, Arcturus’ attacks became even more intense as if he had realized Tatsuya figured out an important key to defeating him.
His behavior was impatient.
Perhaps Arcturus had felt Tatsuya’s sight, and deduced its danger?
But Tatsuya didn’t change his plan of action. He continued decomposing his enemy’s attacks as he prepared his own.
There were usually small differences between the Eidos of various physical phenomena, but they are fundamental y similar, and decomposing information bodies was similar to decomposing magic sequences.
Having come to this conclusion, Tatsuya finally applied his new knowledge while constructing a magic sequence for Gram Dispersion.
It took him twice as long as it usually did, but Tatsuya still completed the modified magic sequence in less that half a second. Tatsuya released the sequence of magic for decomposing information bodies into Arcturus’ Eidos. Its target was not the whole Astral body, however, but rather the passage supporting the Astral Projection.
The effect… was:
He saw the passage with the power to interfere with phenomena be destroyed, and pushionic waves burst away from the corresponding location on the astral body.
Tatsuya couldn’t detect the particles in the waves or detect the waves as signals, but he could still sense their presence.
“Is this the nature of the power to interfere with phenomena ? But these are – pushion waves ?”
The power of magicians to interfere with phenomena was directly related to the goal of the Eidos being interfered with, but the magician couldn’t see the event in any way other than interfering with the phenomenon.
However, Tatsuya had now looked into the structure of the channel integral to the power of magicians to interfere with phenomena – he may have been the first magician to look into the nature of interference force.
“So in magic, pushions are also used? It’s not just psions …?”
Tatsuya unconsciously muttered his conclusion aloud.
The interfering with phenomena happened instantly, so even magicians who could see pushions – those with supernatural abilities like “Crystal Eyes”– could not see their nature as psion waves.
Even magic filling a space with interference force could only be observed after the space had already changed.
There had been studies in the past about the nature of interference force, and some magic researchers did have the hypothesis that the conductor of the interference force was not a psionic but a pushionic information body – though its supporters were in the minority.
However, this was probably the first time that the nature of interference force was actually observed as pushion waves. This could be a great discovery in magical science.
However, Tatsuya’s instincts as a soldier quickly overpowered his curiosity as a researcher, and he turned his attention away from the collapsing channel giving Arcturus’ Astral body interference force.
The situation changed quickly.
Arcturus’ Astral body stopped moving for the first time since it had started attacking Tatsuya. It hadn’t just physically stopped, either – Tatsuya couldn’t observe any activity from the remaining Eidos of Arcturus.
Then, the density of psions in the projection the Astral body began to decrease.
This lasted for about 10 seconds before Arcturus’ Astral body completely disappeared, sucked into emptiness.
Closing the passage between Arcturus mind and physical body made it impossible from him to continue supporting the Astral projection, and his spiritual body was thrown back into his physical body.
Arcturus felt a sudden change in his state.
“…but the battle was going in my favor.”
Arcturus though back on the battle that had just occurred once his mind accepted the darkness.
“I met the enemy of both my comrades and me.
I tried to get revenge as hard as I could.
The enemy only had one way to attack my spiritual body, and its range was extremely smal . He may have a powerful means to neutralize magic, but I won’t lose as long as I keep my distance and continuously attack.
At least, that’s how it should have been.”
Suddenly, Arcturus felt sever pain.
He had never had his teeth removed, but he perceived his current pain as similar to the pain of removing a tooth without anesthesia.
He felt like something was flowing out of him, like blood, but more directly connected to his life.
Then his senses dulled. His sight darkened further to the point he could no longer see, and the rest of his senses suddenly died out.
He felt like reality was drifting away, but when Arcturus realized it, he had already been embraced by that darkness.
He remembered this darkness. This darkness was non-existence; void, null, nothing.
He was isolated from the outside world; from everything, completely alone.
“…I returned to my sealed body?
…I thought I was dead. That the connection between my mind and body had already been completely cut off.
I guess I was wrong. It seems there remains a connection between me – my mind –
and my body with a link unknown to me.”
While Arcturus thought about this, his mind was clouded and his thoughts became increasingly vague. It became impossible to think and reflect at all, and even his mind faded.
***
“I think, therefore I exist.” – Descartes.
Assuming this quote was true, then one would disappear as soon as they stopped thinking.
July 8, 2097. Arcturus fainted just a few hours after he had woken up. His thinking stopped, and his identity drowned in the darkness of emptiness.
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