A Certain Magical Index New Testament Volume 7

She was bitten into.
She was eaten.
With no physical body, Yakumi Hisako could not be described using the standard parts
of the human body such as “limbs” or “head”. And yet she could tell. If her existence was
described as a percentage, that white girl had taken away over 30% in a single bite.
As she saw that girl acting like her cheeks were stuffed full, Yakumi Hisako was
overcome with fear. And what frightened her the most was just how “cute” the girl
looked.
She tried to move back, but the girl took another step forward in response.
That was all it took to fill the gap.
And then the girl, that “human” named Fräulein Kreutune, opened her small mouth
wide and spoke.
“Two stars. Not bad.”
In no time, she munched through the powerful and overwhelming existence that was
Yakumi Hisako. The girl did it as easily as a child eating freshly baked bread.
Yakumi Hisako was disappearing.
She was dying.
Just before that moment, she felt an odd peace that exceeded the fear. She had tried to
build her existence up with more and more information, but now it was disappearing.
And as she simplified, she felt ecstasy.
(Is that what it is to die?)
But as soon as she had that thought, she learned of an even greater hell.
“Burp.”
The frightening white girl suddenly stopped.
Only a tiny piece was left.
It was just a single bite. She left behind just one piece of that existence like leaving one
last scrap on the plate.
“Now then.”

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“…Wait…What are you-…?”
“This is your punishment. Your punishment for hurting my friend.”
She had not managed to continue down the path of complexity, and now she was
prevented from continuing down the path of simplicity.
Just as a fish sliced up to be eaten could never swim through the ocean again, Yakumi
Hisako would have to writhe around like this forever.
That girl faced her with cold eyes and said, “After having a long, long time to think on it,
you might truly manage to see yourself properly. If that happens, I will eat the final
piece. You can look forward to that at the end of your long, long life.”

♦
It all came to an end as if someone had flipped a switch.
The riot made up of 7500 people attacking Learning Core in District 13 had ended with
an eerie silence. The fact that the commotion had ended with the defeat of Rensa and
Yakumi Hisako hinted that the two of them had been influencing the rioters in some
way. (Although there had been a bit of a delay after Yakumi’s apparent defeat.) However,
there were still some unknown factors about that incident with close ties to Academy
City’s dark side. And even if it became fully understood, would the students who took
part as rioters be considered truly innocent of any wrongdoing? That was another
unknown factor.
“Oh, no. Oh, no.”
Dawn had arrived.
A woman wearing a cheap suit and a lab coat muttered to herself while taking a walk on
a District 13 jogging course along with a golden retriever. The November mornings had
grown more cold than refreshing, so no one else was using the course. After an hour,
when the temperature had risen some, it would probably be overflowing with health
nuts.
“Well, I had a feeling it would fail, but I may have let her go free for a biiit too long.
Yakumi-san was a member of the board of directors and a nice patron.”
And then she received a response.
“Are you sure it isn’t that you played around too much?”
The voice sounded like that of a man in the prime of his life. However, the woman in the
cheap suit and lab coat was the only person there. The voice had come from the golden
retriever on the end of the leash she held.

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He(?) spoke with his long tongue sticking out.
“That was the same as the Dark May Project that Kinuhata Saiai and Kuroyoru Umidori
went through. You implanted your intellectual curiosity into Yakumi Hisako and it fused
with her original field of expertise. I do understand that you could not get her to
understand how we Kiharas think otherwise, but still.”
That was why Yakumi Hisako had continued with such dark research.
It was possible that the bonds placed on her by the Dark May Project had been partially
broken around the time she had lost control to Fremea Seivelun. She may have mistaken
it for being buried by strange external information, but the truth was the opposite. What
Yakumi Hisako had thought was the base of her being had been a lie.
“Heh heh heh heh. She had been wondering why she got along so well with me. She had
my thoughts implanted into her, so of course we got along. She was excellent as a patron
who let me do anything I wanted. It was like she was my knight in shining armor. I had
all the funding I wanted and all the authority I wanted.”
“You went too far.”
“And I’ve seen the error of my ways,” honestly admitted the woman in the cheap suit
and lab coat.
The conversation sounded like a teacher speaking with a student.
“You have already started playing around with a new candidate to hide behind, haven’t
you?”
“With a member of the board of directors gone, they need to bring in a replacement. I’ve
already identified the top 3 likely candidates, so-…”
“…”
“Yes, yes. I know it would be way too suspicious. I really do. But preparing insurance
and having a plan B just isn’t very Kihara-like, you know?”
“What is your plan?”
“I was thinking of going with the Shadow Ruler plan.”
“…Is there really some convenient organization you can use?”
“No, but they’ll take action if we make them think there is. Even in this city of science,
things like jinxes are all over the place. If I manipulate a bit of information to make
certain facts seem true, they will bring the pieces together themselves to form the jigsaw
puzzle that shows a giant monster. The method is used all the time. Think of the M-

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Fund or the UFO Investigation Committee. Now, let’s go deceive some important
people.”
“I suppose the basics are the best way to get back on your feet. I can give you two or
three people who seem unintelligent enough to use in your plan. They have plenty of
money, but are frustrated at their inability to gain any real social standing. They should
jump at any chance you present to them. Do your best to prod them in the right
direction.”

“Thanks as always,” said the woman in the cheap suit and lab coat.

It was hard to imagine how a Kihara in the form of a dog could make connections with
such prideful people, but he(?) was actually the most influential of the Kiharas in many
different fields.
“Agitate Halation is as good as dead now. What should we do about it now?”
“I was never particularly interested in it, but can you really call that a failure?”

“?”

“Against Yakumi Hisako’s wishes, the Level 5s gathered in one place. And despite that
Imagine Breaker presumably negating any influence from the AIM diffusion fields, that
boy appeared on the stage of his own free will to end the incident. …Yakumi Hisako’s
experiment may have ended in failure, but what if Agitate Halation was simply too much
for her to handle? There may still be something hidden there that would make your eyes
sparkle in excitement.”
“Ugh. Now that you mention it, you’re right.”
“You truly never show any motivation if I am not keeping score for you,” said the golden
retriever in annoyance
However, the woman in the cheap suit and lab coat only scratched at her head in
embarrassment.
“I’m getting that same feeling as always.”
“Yes. Once more, the world is simply filled with science.”

♦
The incident came to an end.
And that meant there was one piece of business that had to be dealt with.
“…”

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Tsuchimikado Motoharu was waiting for someone on a metal bridge in District 7. As he
looked down at the river flowing below at the same rate as ever, he heard quiet footsteps
approaching him. Despite hearing them, he did not turn around. While still leaning
against the railing, he waited for the footsteps to walk up behind him.
Finally…
Tsuchimikado opened his mouth to speak.
“Is your eye okay?”
“It’s been eight hours. That was enough time to transplant a new one in and get used to
it. It doesn’t even feel like I have something in my eye anymore.”
“That’s good,” he muttered.
The strained atmosphere did not disappear.
The girl behind him asked, “Are you ready?”
“Do you really think I wouldn’t be?”
“I see,” was the only reply.
In the next moment, several gunshots rang out and Tsuchimikado felt a burning pain in
his back.
Kumokawa Seria held a large military handgun in her right hand.
As Tsuchimikado was leaning on the railing, the impact sent him tumbling over it. While
bleeding, he fell into the river. Kumokawa heard a loud splash. She moved forward and
looked down into the river with unfeeling eyes.
She hid the gun below her clothes and instead pulled out a handheld device.
She was of course calling Kaizumi Tsugutoshi of the board of directors.
“Is it over?” he asked.
“I have finished the execution.”
The incident had ended and Tsuchimikado Maika had been protected from Yakumi
Hisako’s organization that had been running the Agitate Halation project. However, that
did not tie up all the loose ends. If something was not done, the battle would never end.
If it was all left up into exchanges of emotion, Tsuchimikado Maika would end up
involved again at some point.

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Tsuchimikado Motoharu had realized that and had offered up his own life to avoid it.
“Will you be retrieving the body?” asked Kaizumi.
“No. Someone will pick it up for us. …We know each other fairly well, after all. If we took
care of the body, it would create some strange conspiracy theories. People would claim
the execution was an act and that he was secretly living somewhere after we announced
he was dead.”
“I see. So it is best to let our enemies pick him up.”
“Exactly. Of course, a simple investigation here would show I wasn’t using some cheap
trick like firing blanks.”
With that offhand comment, Kumokawa Seria ended the call.
She looked back down into the river, but Tsuchimikado’s body had already flowed
downstream. She could only see the clear surface of the river.
(Now then.)
Kumokawa Seria now thought silently so no one could overhear her.
(That should convince those that were watching the execution. Those paint rounds had
his blood inside. That should help fool the forensics team Tsuchimikado’s enemies will
send.)
What mattered was convincing them.
Even if it came out later that Tsuchimikado had survived, they would not pursue him
any further after they had given the sign that they were convinced. That was the
etiquette of underground society. And that was why those watching the execution would
be so careful in their initial determination of his death. They would have sent specialists
out.
However, Kumokawa Seria was not exactly a kind person.
After all, she had fired several paint rounds at his back from close range when he was
not wearing a bulletproof vest.
It would not have killed him, but the impact would have been quite something. It could
very easily have knocked him unconscious. And he had then been dropped right into the
river. Even with that trick, his life was still in danger. Kumokawa felt it was a fair
punishment for taking her eye.
She had no reason to save Tsuchimikado Motoharu for nothing in exchange.

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If he was her enemy, she would kill him. If he needed to be executed, she would not
hesitate to carry out the “ceremony”.
The reason she had not done that here was quite simple.
(I need to thank him for not telling that boy about me. …That really is all there is to it.)

♦
Hamazura Shiage was in a District 7 hospital.
His injuries were the type that would raise questions yet Anti-Skill was not hanging
around outside the hospital room. He felt like he had been placed atop a conveyer belt to
prevent a commotion. Something about it all seemed strange.
“Hey.”
It was just past noon when someone called out to him in the hospital hallway.
It was Kuroyoru Umidori who was sitting in a wheelchair in the rest space next to a line
of vending machines.
When he saw who it was, Hamazura was not sure what to say.
“…Um, we both had a pretty rough time of it, didn’t we?”
“At least you’re still alive,” replied Kamijou Touma.
All three of them had white bandages wrapped all over their bodies. If they showed up in
a school at night, they could likely start a new ghost story.
Kamijou must not have been at his best either because he was leaning up against one of
the vending machines against the wall.
“From what the doctor told me, you two had it worse than me. How bad is it?”
“I’m just here for the time being to be safe. Kuroyoru will probably take a while, though.”
“It’s not a problem.” Kuroyoru took her hands off of the handles connected to the
wheelchair’s wheels and playfully spread her arms. Her overall movements were
awkward, but her arms moved oddly smoothly. “As long as I can move my arms, I’ll have
no problem living in the hospital. And it isn’t like my injuries will have any lasting
effects.”
“?”

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Kamijou frowned slightly.
He could not quite place his finger on it, but he felt like there was something a bit
different about how Kuroyoru was acting.
When she noticed him looking at her, Kuroyoru looked away slightly.
“…I’ll be fine. If you say anything unnecessary, I’ll kill you,” she said in an oddly low
voice.
It seemed there was something she did not want them to bring up, so Kamijou and
Hamazura did not say anything more.
Hamazura had been forced out of the fight partway through, so he had a few questions
for Kamijou.
“So how much did you find out?”
“It’s hard to say.” Kamijou gave a heavy sigh. “That cyborg named Rensa was defeated.
She was completely destroyed, so she won’t attack again in revenge or anything.”
“I guess we can relax for the moment then,” said Hamazura in disgust.
He may have been plagued with nightmares of some immortal monster continuing to
walk toward him through the flames even after being hit by a tanker truck and blown up
along with an entire building.
Kamijou’s image of her had been different.
“Her machine heart was destroyed.”
“What?”
“That isn’t something my right hand can do. It may simply have been destroyed as she
lost control, but…”
He did not think that was what had happened.
From what #029 had said while controlling Rensa at the very end and from what
Fremea had told him afterwards that had sounded like a dream, he knew that the
monster known as Yakumi Hisako had been brought inside the cyborg body and that
had started to destroy the cyborg.
And Kamijou Touma’s right hand could negate any and all supernatural powers.
What if #029 had wanted to protect Yakumi Hisako at all costs?

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Was it possible she had destroyed her own heart to throw off the balance of her body
enough that it lost its functionality as an output point that could take in esper powers
and supernatural beings? Was it possible she had done that to expel Yakumi Hisako to
let her escape?
What they had done was by no means praiseworthy.
However, that decision #029 had made just before her defeat prevented Kamijou from
feeling nothing but scorn for her.
In that moment, #029 had crushed her own heart to protect the person she cared about
most.
In that instant, she may have surpassed Kamijou Touma.
“I know that someone named Yakumi Hisako was behind all this. I know that Fremea
Seivelun was placed at the center of a project known as Agitate Halation. But beyond
that, I know nothing. Although it seems all sorts of dangerous things were found in the
university hospital Yakumi Hisako used as a base.”
“…And you’re satisfied with that?” whispered Kuroyoru. She sounded half in shock.
“Then it’s over. The truth will never come to light. Once those ‘dangerous things’ are
found, it’s over. No one will find the truly dangerous things hidden further in. The truly
dangerous things are the ones that would make anyone who sees them go insane.”
Hamazura frowned.
“Are you saying there are still people out there who will try to use Agitate Halation?”
“It doesn’t have to be anyone directly related to the project. There are people who don’t
want the light of day to reach the darkness in any form. Good and evil, likes and dislikes,
gains and losses, strength and weakness… All sorts of things are wrapped around a
single organization. This will be covered up for many different reasons.”
“…”
Hamazura fell silent for a moment.
Even after World War III, the city’s malice was as strong as ever.
In fact, being destroyed once may have caused it to mutate into something even worse.
“I know that,” replied Kamijou with a bit of bitterness mixed in. He pulled out two hard
objects from his pocket. “That’s why I retrieved these.”

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They were transparent cylindrical containers about as thick as a little finger. They
contained something red.
Hamazura could not even guess what they were.
“Even after that huge incident, you were still running around doing things? You didn’t
head straight to a hospital bed?”
“…”
While Hamazura asked questions, Kuroyoru stared at the containers with a grim look in
her eyes. As a cyborg herself, she may have guessed what they were.
Kamijou sighed and said, “This one is #028 and this one is #029. Apparently they’re still
alive even like this. …Up to #40 were stored in Yakumi Hisako’s lab. They were all
forced to operate that cyborg and they were left on standby when not in use. When not
placed inside the mechanical cerebrum and cerebellum prepared inside Rensa, they
cannot even think.”
The possibility for a flawless victory had never been there.
That was what #029 had told him from within Rensa. If enough cyborg bodies identical
to Rensa were created, they could be given a certain sort of freedom. But that could not
happen. The meaning behind Rensa was so great that even an amateur high school boy
like Kamijou understood it.
There was no way to save them.
At the very least, there was no way in the current social system of Academy City.
Kuroyoru Umidori stared at the finger-sized brains and asked Kamijou a question.
“What are you going to do with them?”
“I gathered all of them up to #40, so for now I’m going to have them put in cold storage.
I don’t like it, but all I can do is buy them time until some real method of saving them is
found. I can only hope that a method of allowing them to walk around like normal
people will be completed with the next generation of technology.”
Kamijou returned the containers for #028 and #029 to his pocket.
He turned his back on Hamazura and Kuroyoru perhaps to go hand those containers
over to a doctor.
Hamazura called out to his back without thinking.

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“What are you going to do now?”
“The same thing as always,” replied Kamijou Touma without turning around. “No
matter how many times I reach game over and no matter how many times I must
pathetically hit continue, I will not stop moving forward.”

♦
“Honestly, my shoulders are so stiff,” said a carefree voice along the path to the hospital.
A nun in a white habit walked along that path with a schoolgirl wearing the maid
uniform of a certain maid school. The one in the maid uniform was sitting seiza-style on
a drum-shaped cleaning robot.
The schoolgirl was lightly massaging her own shoulders.
“When I suddenly received a request to clean an external institution as an
extracurricular activity, I was wondering where it was. I never thought it would be an
automated factory in District 17! It was so dirty!! And oil stains in a car factory are not
an opponent a maid should have to fight!”
“Touma didn’t come home for an entire day.”
“And then Ryouran Maid School tells me it must have been a misunderstanding because
they know nothing about it! I spent all night making it squeaky clean and I don’t even
get any credit points for it!!”
“Touma really is stupid!! There was nothing but bread, cereal, biscuits, canned food,
ham, bacon, bananas, and apples in the room! Does he not know that people can starve
to death!?”
“Honestly, what is wrong with this world?”
“I know! It’s so hard to get by!!”
The two girls were as indignant as ever.
And they had no way of knowing just how much had been fought to protect that.
A certain elementary school in District 13 was filled with chaos once more.
The dispute would likely continue all the way to December 25.
“Nyah! Santa really does exist!! Why can’t you understand something so simple!?”

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“You liar! There’s no way Santa Claus exists!! I heard the trivia king on TV saying his
clothes are only red due to a soda advertisement!!”
“Nyah, nyah! That’s a conspiracy. They’re lying so they can hog all the presents for
themselves!!”
“Don’t be stupid!! The adults don’t get any presents!!”
“In the first place, you’re already being tricked. The adults actually-…!!”
Fremea and the others were almost grappling each other with no concern for boy or girl.
And then the intellectual girl (with glasses) nervously spoke up.
“U-um…Fremea-chan?”
“Nyah! In the first place, what is it!?”
“Then is that black Santa Claus I saw before real, too?”
Previously, this may have temporarily wrapped Fremea’s class in terror just like when
they discussed the mysterious people spotted after school. To make sure they did not
forget the magic words that would save them, they might have begun reciting them.
But that is not what happened this time.
Fremea puffed out her chest and blew air from her nose proudly.
“Nyah! Don’t worry. In the first place, I’ll do something about that!!”
A frightening incident had occurred.
A lot of people had been hurt. Something even greater had been lost.
However, it did not end there. Something had been gained from it all.
If one continued forward, one could grab it.

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AFTERWORD

To those who have bought one volume at a time: welcome back. To those who bought
them all at once: welcome.
This is Kamachi Kazuma.
Okay! This was a science side story!! But with Kamijou Touma in a leading role, it
cannot be said to be wholly science. Then again, it didn’t have any magic mixed in, so it
falls along an odd line. This may be one of the benefits of having that spiky-haired boy
walk through so many different worlds in the course of the incidents he has experienced.
Here in Volume 7, I brought out a lot of the material I had been building up since the
start of New Testament. I had been thinking for a while that this kind of surprise turn of
events wouldn’t be too out of place if the series continued this long. And one of the
reasons I added New Testament to the title was because Academy City has finally made
it “this far”.
A boy who sacrifices everything to get vengeance for his step sister, a brain that rules
over the darkness with nothing but her speaking skills, a cyborg that uses up multiple
brains to keep a single body running, an AIM thought being that abandoned her
physical body, a gathering of the Level 5s, and even an artificial heroine who can freely
lead around all of the heroes. …I think this volume was filled with a lot of crazy people
that just scream “Made in Academy City”. What did you think?
I give my thanks to my illustrator Haimura-san and my editor Miki-san. With a cyborg
and a formless final boss, this had to be one of the most troublesome volumes to deal
with. I am truly thankful that they stuck with me this time as well.
And I give my thanks to all the readers. I think it is thanks to how accepting you all are
that I can write these stories that lean all the way to one side or the other of magic or
science. I hope you will stick with me from now on too.
It is time to close the pages for now while praying that the pages of the next book will be
opened.
And I lay my pen down for now.
Heroes must work on a floating exchange rate. It causes problems when there are too
many of them.
-Kamachi Kazuma

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