A Certain Magical Index New Testament Volume 15

But why?
Before he could ask that question, the long-haired girl in a baggy lab coat said something
more.
“What’s so strange about us doing everything we can for you, Kamisato-han?”
“…”
“C’mon, why are you acting so distant after everything we’ve been through? Haven’t we
told you we’ll do anything for you, boss?”
“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”
He was speechless.
“H-hey. What is it, boss? Why are you covering your face like that? Does your wound still
hurt? Dammit, if only they’d had some specialized anesthetic here. All we can do is cool
the injured area to numb the pain.”
“He’s probably more shocked about the loss of his dominant hand. You’ve always been
awful at taking care of people’s hearts, Elza.”
The usual circle of girls was there.
They had all accepted Kamisato Kakeru himself, not World Rejecter.
He had a place here.
A boy with another right hand had once said people were not defined by their right hands.
He had said the people were the ones that summoned the power of their right hand. He
had said Kamisato had so many people around him because all of those people adored
him.
Kamisato had not been able to believe it.
That normal high school boy had lacked what he needed to believe it.
But…
But…
But…
(Yes…)

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That puny boy covered his face with one hand and one wrist to desperately force down
the sobs as he built his resolve anew.
(Yes, yes!! I’d made up my mind from the beginning, hadn’t I? No matter what happens
to them and no matter what influence they fall under, I will never abandon them. I will
return to them to their original lives!!)
World Rejecter.
That power had been given to him because he sought a nonexistent ideal.
But the answer had been right in front of his eyes the entire time. He had never needed to
do anything at all. If they had all just returned to their original location, it would all have
been settled.
Yes, for every last one of them.
Including Kamisato Kakeru.
“Ellen, Elza.”
“What is it?”
“Do you want something, boss?”
He smiled a little when they responded like they were looking after a child with a cold.
(Do I want something, hm?)
He focused on that again and spoke.
“How long will it take for Claire to recover?”
“She should be working at reconnecting her upper body to her lower body right about
now.”
“But if you say you need something, boss, I’m sure she’ll come running. If she wants to,
she can move around as just her upper body. In fact, I bet she could hop around as just a
head in an emergency.”
Kamisato sighed.
His thoughts turned to his lost hand.
“The hand Kihara Yuiitsu cut away from herself should still be in the schoolyard. Go get
that. I’ll use it as a replacement hand for the time being. If Claire connects it, I should be
able to move it properly.”

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There was of course the issue of compatibility just like with organ transplants, but since
Kihara Yuiitsu had already stolen his hand and attached it to herself, he doubted there
would be any issues there. And even if there was, he could just have one of the girls find a
breakthrough using some dirty technique of theirs.
(I doubt World Rejecter will come back if I just sit around.)
Imagine Breaker prioritized Kamijou Touma as its owner even if his arm was stolen, but
either World Rejecter lacked that ability or Kihara Yuiitsu was keeping it from working
right with some kind of trick.
That meant he would never get it back if he did not take action.
He would have to chop off the right hand she had stolen and take it back.
“…”
He would now seek the very right hand he had hated so much.
He was aware of the irony, but he still thought quietly to himself.
(It doesn’t matter if I have conflicting desires. I don’t care if I end up blowing myself away
the instant I get the power back. Kihara Yuiitsu. I can’t let her abuse my right hand. I need
to take it back before that happens. If I’m going to bring back those normal days, I need
to end the tragedy here!!)
Kamisato Kakeru slowly breathed out and then stood on his own two feet.
“Come with me, everyone. Let’s bring this all to an end.”

♦
And finally, one superfluous conclusion.
It is a truly small and insignificant conclusion.
“Morning, Kami-yan. Heading to a new school really changes when you have to leave in
the morning, doesn’t it? I keep leaving early cause I’m afraid I’ll be late, but then I get
here way too early.”
“Not that it really matters, but what happened to that pointlessly strained atmosphere?”
“Well, once we calmed down and thought about it, we couldn’t figure out why we were so
obsessed with burning porn magazines, dolls, and body pillows at school last night.”
“So you idiots saw the light, huh?”

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“Also…”
“Yeah?”
“We should’ve realized sooner that you’d never be working that hard to stop us if it wasn’t
for our own good.”
That everyday sort of recovery was small.
But it was not something to be looked down on.

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AFTERWORD

If you’ve been reading the volumes one at a time, welcome back. If you had the courage
to buy them all at once, welcome.
This is Kazuma Kamachi.
New Testament is already at Volume 15! As I mentioned in Volume 14’s afterword, I think
this was another volume of Kamisato Kakeru and those around him destroying the
“sanctuaries” that had settled into place in this series. I think I placed most of the main
characters in a position where they couldn’t maintain the usual look on their face. The
only exceptions are the girls of the Kamisato Faction who (should have) looked most
suspect at first glance.
The Kamisato Faction first appeared in Volume 14, so they are quite shallow and I expect
a lot of readers thought they were mostly just a symbol. But what they’re doing isn’t that
much different what the people on Kamijou’s side do. My experiment for Volumes 14 and
15 was to see how different a character looks if you’ve seen them gradually built up as a
protagonist or if you haven’t.
So now that you’ve seen Kamisato Kakeru’s character over the course of two volumes,
your impression of his environment may have changed. But as the writer, I didn’t do
anything special. The main point is that he “looks” different just by having his character
built up like that. …In other words, this is something that can influence people’s
impression of a series as a whole, yet it’s something the writer can’t do intentionally. By
building things up, the characters become more appealing and you can dig deeper into
the world building. All of that is great, but it also works against you when you’ve built up
certain expectations and have “sanctuaries” you can’t move even if you want to. They all
start piling up like a falling block puzzle game. This has strengthened my desire to work
toward opening up some breathing room in that sense.
This story was set in Academy City and involved a variety of technology, but the overall
theme was more related to magic. To be more specific, I took my material from the
concept of “sacrifice”. It was touched on in the novel, but people often have a grim view
of sacrifices since the idea of living sacrifices has become so prominent. But since we have
to specify “living” sacrifices, there are of course non-living sacrifices. I focused more on
those.
The most obvious one was Salome, the naked raincoat girl(!?), but I also added in some
other characters, gimmicks, and situations that included the symbolism of sacrifice.

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Combine that with my focus on destroying “sanctuaries”, and this volume may have had
an overall ominous atmosphere or unstable image.
For the Kamisato Faction, I tried to use a naming system I hadn’t used in the series before,
but…hm. I think I may have gone a little overboard there. Yet when I look in baby name
dictionaries, I find them recommending even crazier names as if it’s normal. Is this what
they call the flow of time? I try to give my protagonists relatively easy to read names since
their names appear the most often, but I’ve started worrying over what qualifies as “easy
to read” with some of these modern names I’m seeing.
I give my thanks to my illustrator Haimura-san and to my editors Miki-san, Onodera-san,
and Anan-san. This threw in a ton of characters instead of focusing on a single point, so
it must have been hard to adjust for that. Thank you very much for sticking with me.
Also, Kasai Shin-san designed the A.A.A. Mikoto Version. He has helped here and there
with mecha-related stuff. I get the feeling that none of the illustrators that work with me
are your average person, and he is no exception. Anyway, thank you very much!
I also give my thanks to the readers. This story involved drawing on a bunch of past
characters and parts of the setting, so it might have been harder to read through than
normal. I was trying to create something enjoyable by having everything build up in a
positive direction even as the sanctuaries were destroyed. I leave it to you to judge how I
did. Thank you yet again.
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.
Is it just me or did Salome actually have the strongest mind?
-Kamachi Kazuma

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