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[AI CENSORSHIP BLOCKED THIS CHUNK - RAW ENGLISH RETAINED]

Suddenly, he noticed excessively cold stares collected on him from nearby.

More than one hundred nuns had directly labeled him as a man who makes completely naked young girls cry (not to mention their similarly naked, unconscious leader beside him). The color drained from his face.

“Huh, wait, c-calm down, please, Miss Index! This isn’t your personality! Don’t you usually do something more like this? See, Mr. Kamijou’s head is right here! Just chomp it down as hard as you can already!! Wait, what? Stop, stop! Why do you look so unusually serious?! Th-that was just a figure of speech what are you doing with that saw you could slice up a huge cow with that thing wait a minute sto—Gyaaahhhh?!”

“Didn’t I tell you not to make a nuisance of yourself? Hm? What are you clutching your head and crying for?” Stiyl, lying down, tiredly questioned the worn-out Kamijou upon seeing him return to their tent. The tent’s opening had been shut—he may have known something had happened, but he didn’t seem to realize it had to do with Index. If he found out, the crazy priest would end up chasing him all over the camp with a flaming sword in his hands.

He would rather avoid any further trouble—after all, Agnes had just plainly condemned him, saying, “…I need to look over our plans. Please leave me alone.” So he crawled under his own blanket, still rubbing his stinging head. The sorcerer had said earlier that using even five or ten minutes of free time to get in a bit of sleep and rest your body was basic battlefield knowledge, but he didn’t think he’d be able to sleep until the pain in his head went away.

“Hey, Stiyl?”

“What is it? I am very irritated right now, so if possible, I would like you to leave this for later.”

“I want to ask something.”

“Everyone here has such bad crisis management. So what if it’s theBook of the Law, anyway? They’re running around like chickens with their fool heads cut off foronegrimoire! Do they have any idea how many sorcerers are after the girl controlling 103,000 of them—?”

“Is there a girl you like?”

“Bwah?!” Stiyl’s breath caught in his throat and he broke out into a full-body shiver.

Kamijou thought this was something you weresupposedto ask at a sleepover. It seemedthatwas a Japanese-specific custom, however. “Hey, Stiyl. I want to ask something.”

“I respect women like Elizabeth I, and St. Martha is a good example of the type I prefer. The anecdote where she exterminates an evil dragon using only prayers of love and charity mesmerizes me. Any other questions?”

“The Amakusa-Style Crossist Church…That’s where Kanzaki used to be, isn’t it?”

“…” Stiyl narrowed his eyes in thought and fell silent for a bit. He tried to take out a cigarette, but he must have figured that smoking in bed was bad, because his hands stopped halfway there. “Who did you hear that from? Kanzaki wouldn’t have gone into her personal history very easily. Was it Tsuchimikado?”

“Yeah. He told me while you were busy being that guy at the beach.” Stiyl’s face basically became a question mark, but Kamijou left that aside and continued. “But, well…Aren’t they Kanzaki’s friends?” He paused, perplexed. “…Are we still doing this? Like the time with Misawa Cram School?”

There was one other time when Kamijou and Stiyl had formed a united front in the past.

That battle couldn’t be calledprettyeven in flattery. A lot of people had been hurt, and some had even died. He got the picture—that’s what clashes between sorcerers, or between groups or organizations of them, meant. Their professional world didn’t permit weakness, and that was what created specialists like Index and Stiyl.

But…

As a professional who knew how strict it was, wouldn’t he be extremely hesitant about this?

“We are.” However, Stiyl Magnus gave a prompt decision, without even a second of hesitation. “Of course we are. Whether it’s obeying orders from above—or even if they’re trying to stop me, I already decided I’d do anything to protect her. I’ll kill anyone I need to. I’ll burn them alive. I’ll burn even their corpses to nothing. Whether it’s while she’s watching or while she isn’t.” His own words seemed to pain him. “Don’t get me wrong, Touma Kamijou. Everything I’m doing is for that girl. And if you did something to the contrary, I would turn your bones into ash at this very moment.”

“…” Kamijou gulped.

When all was said and done, that was the whole reason for the things this man, Stiyl Magnus, did. The fact that he was an English Puritan, the fact that he gained power to fight as a sorcerer, the fact that he came on orders to save theBook of the Lawand Orsola—anything and everything.

“I made an oath long ago—Relax, and go to sleep. Even if you forget everything, I won’t forget a thing. I will live and die for your sake.”

His conclusion was enough to make him shudder.

At the same time, a deep sense of human kindness was in his voice.

Kamijou carefully chose his next words—he thought it would be rude if he didn’t. “But then why did you get Index involved in something like this?”

“I’m not the one who planned this—if I had the choice, she wouldn’t be anywhere near this place,” answered Stiyl smoothly. “But I must not settle things on my own. They would judge her worthless then. If I cannot display value in using Index to my superiors, they might end up sending her back to London. Tearing her away from her life in Academy City would be the most unbearable thing that could happen to her right now.” His voice was casual. Given that Stiyl Magnus was her English Puritan colleague, Kamijou would think he’d be happier if she came back—but Stiyl Magnus spoke in a casual voice. “Go to sleep. We only have two hours until the assault. We’ll start to have nightmares if we talk for much longer.”

Leaving it at that, the runic sorcerer shut his mouth and his eyes.

How am I supposed to get any sleep when people could start killing one another in a few hours?he wondered. But after wrapping himself in a blanket and closing his eyes, drowsiness must have overtaken his body at some point. In other words, he was asleep before he knew it. Maybe he was a lot more tired from Daihasei Festival preparations than he’d thought.

Mm…huh…?

Kamijou then opened his eyes for a simple reason—because he felt a weight pressing down on him.

Rustle—he perceived the weight of a grown person, saw some kind of swell in his blanket, and felt the soft, warm sensation of human skin.

He began to hear a soft sleeper’s breathing from inside the blanket.

Hey, wait. Crap, could this be…?! Damn, I just remembered that you can’t lock tents!

Normally, Kamijou spent his nights locked in his bathroom, sleeping in his drained bathtub. For a simple reason, too—to stop Index from climbing into his sleeping space no matter what. He was always so thankful he had a long bathtub he could stretch his legs out in.

Not only was the crime of invading someone’s sleeping space already having a terrible effect on the healthy young man, but Stiyl was also sleeping next to him right now (and he had just said some serious stuff about oaths before going to sleep). Depending on how this turned out, he could be quite literally beheaded for his crimes.

And atop Kamijou’s body as it exuded a cold sweat, a fairly young girl’s body squirmed about. He came in contact with all kinds of defenseless parts of her—he thought his heart would stop.

“…(Wh-whoa?! Wait, wait a minute, Index! Hey, sleeping next to me would be one thing, but taking up a position right on top of me—isn’t that going way too far?!)” protested Kamijou hurriedly in a low voice (though he thought he was practically yelling).

“Mm…What is it, Touma…?”

Then he heard a familiar voice from the entrance to the tent.

He looked to see Index, her eyes half-closed in sleepiness, opening the zipper on the tent and about to creep into his blanket.

Huh?

Kamijou looked at her, aghast.

“Mgh……Papa…Lo non posso mangiare alcuno piu qualsiasi piu lungo……”

The one who came out of the blanket was Agnes Sanctis.

She was probably half-asleep and so didn’t realize, but there were less than three inches between their lips.

What?! Are you serious?! She has this sleepwalking-into-other-people’s-futons habit, too?! Wait, didn’t she just get done telling me at the shower to go away?! Eeeek!

He averted his face from the small lips verging on touching him, then hastily crawled out from under Agnes. As he rolled, he pulled the blanket off of her.

“Wha?!”

Kamijou was dumbfounded.

From out of the blanket appeared Agnes, wearing nothing but a white lace bra and panties with rope sides that were tied in bowknots.

And as if she normally did so before sleeping, her habit was neatly folded up in a corner of the tent.

Index, in a complete daze, looked at them both and spoke.

“…Papa?”

“Waaait! Index, I don’t know what’s going on, either! I absolutely didnotforce a young girl to call me such a particular name! I donothave a habit of wallowing in self-satisfaction like this!!” Kamijou attempted a vindication, trembling in fear from having gotten his head bitten in regards to Agnes just a little while ago.

Index observed his expression of fear.

“Ah-ha…Maybe this…is a dream?”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, even Touma would never be this unfaithful. So this is a dream.” She yawned.

“Y-yeah, that’s it! This is a dream! You’re silly—Touma Kamijou isa woman-discarding bad-luck flag master who always runs away. He would never do something this shameless, would he?!”

He had been attempting to lead the sleepyhead Index on as if through hypnotism, but…

“Mmh. Okay, if this is a dream, then it’s okay. I can bite Touma as much as I want and it’s okay. Since this is a dream. And I can vent all my complaints from today on him and it’s okay. Mmh.”

“Huh? Ah, what?! W-wait, Index!! No, this is all definitely re—?!”

Kamijou telaşla kendini düzeltmeye çalıştı ancak onu durduramadı; kız tüm gücüyle kafasına ısırdı. Sağlıklı liseli gencin attığı çığlık, hatta feryat üzerine, hemen yanında iç çamaşırlarıyla hâlâ yarı uykulu yatan Agnes irkilerek uyandı ve doğruldu. Bu arada, aynı çadırda uyuyan Stiyl Magnus, tüm bu kargaşaya şöyle bir bakıp sırtını dönerek tekrar uykuya dalmıştı.