A Certain Magical Index New Testament Volume 18

Even after he began to fall, he did not immediately slam into the ground.
Mikoto was flying through the air in the A.A.A. and collecting a few people from the air.
But she could not arrive in time for the very last one: Kamijou.
He did not even have time to scream.
But his life was not crushed and lost.
Even though Mikoto’s hand did not reach him, something did suddenly interrupt his fall.
“Gweh!?”
He felt intense resistance in his neck. Only a little later did he realize the tip of some kind
of stick had caught on the back of his collar at several dozen meters above the ground.
He heard a voice like a small bell.
“Do not swing your right hand at random. Destroy the broom now and I will have trouble
ensuring either of our lives.”
“…Wha-?”
The voice was not at all similar.
This one definitely belonged to a girl of middle or high school age.
“The city’s core functions have been taken, but your Imagine Breaker and the #1
Accelerator are needed to contact Aiwass’s core. We will also receive backup from Aneri,
the version of the Reading Thoth 78, aka Mina Mathers, which I had spread throughout
the city after lowering it to a consumer level. Lola…no, Coronzon seems to think she has
reached checkmate, but there are plenty of holes in her encirclement.”
However, a completely different name appeared in the back of Kamijou Touma’s mind.
Yes, the name of that magician.
“Allow me to introduce myself again.”
The girl smiled.
And that nemesis spoke like they were old acquaintances.
“I am Aleister Crowley. Or, one of his many possibilities.”

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AFTERWORD

If you’ve been buying one volume at a time, welcome back. If you bought them all at once,
welcome.
This is Kamachi Kazuma.
This will be the 18th volume since New Testament began. After biding his time, it’s
Aleister Crowley’s time to shine. But instead of the straightforward power of a Magic God,
I focused on the strength he had built up “as a human”. After all, he’s the leader of
Academy City, so of course he’ll have some largescale gimmicks and I wanted to build up
the one large stage that has been present throughout the series.
Crowley is treated very differently depending on the book you are reading and some of
them highlighted the more mischievous (can you really call it that?) stories introduced in
this novel. People having a variety of facets depending on what part of them you look at
is an important pillar of thought in this series, but I think Crowley is the greatest example
of that.
Whether he succeeds or fails, the result is always pointed in a single direction. Without
letting his surface emotions get the better of him, he is always looking to his Thelema, the
will hidden deep in his soul. Simply put, whether he wins or loses, his emotions remain
unmoved and he continues calmly toward his goal at the exact same speed. That makes
him a truly cruel enemy for a battle series and I also wanted to show the strength that
symbolizes his life of setbacks. But what did you think?
…The Battle of Blythe Road that appeared in this book was an internal conflict in which
the leaders of the world’s largest magic cabal fought for supremacy in the foggy city of
London. It sounds full of romance when you look at that explanation, but the actual events
and result were apparently a complete mess, so I changed things a bit to push it more
toward the fictional side. (Not to mention that the “real” magic they used was not the kind
that let them shoot fire or fly around on a broom.) I thought it would be best to shift the
timeline and make the daughter the cause. If you’re interested, it might be fun to look into
the details for yourself, but I will say you might feel disillusioned after learning about that
struggle for power.
I give my thanks to my illustrator Haimura-san, to my editors Miki-san and Anan-san,
and to Itou Tateki who I had work hard creating the overall image of the stage this time.
With the stage and the enemies, I think there were a lot of fairly amorphous things in this
one. That must have been extremely difficult to illustrate. Thank you for sticking with me.

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And I give my thanks to the readers. In a way, this volume returned to the basics and I
tried to give it a structure that summed everything up with a battle in the end. I hope you
enjoyed it.
As reference material for the magic in this volume, Magick in Theory and Practice (by
Aleister Crowley, translated by Shima Hiroyuki, Uematsu Yasuo, and Eguchi Koretaka)
and Liber 777 (by Aleister Crowley, translated by Eguchi Koretaka) were very useful.
Thank you for the excellent reference material.
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.
I’ve taken a liking to the double high-class ladies. Combining is the romance of men. Learn
to appreciate it.
-Kamachi Kazuma

193

Someone spoke within Academy City.
“Nhuh? What is it, Aneri? My smartphone’s just flashing ‘warning, warning’, but that
doesn’t tell me anything.”

♦
And somewhere else, someone else spoke.
“…What a pain in the ass. What dumb piece of shit decided to spying on me was a good
idea?”

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