Echoes

“I know.”

The wind was still battering the window.

Its ragged knocking sounded almost like anxiety given voice, rough and insistent.

It would only quiet down when the sun finally lifted its head over the ridgeline.

Until then, I would have to keep company with that uneasy sound.

My mouth moved before I could beat the feeling of unease down.

“Damn it.”

The curse slipped out through my thin lips.

The girl’s body was far more fragile than my old one had ever been.

The backlash from darting out into the cold without fear had been brutal.

As soon as I got back to the inn, I had to pour hot water over myself again just to stop my body from shaking, and even that hadn’t been enough—I’d had to crawl under the blankets and warm myself from the inside out.

Every time I thought about the pressure that man had exuded, my heart lurched hard in my chest.

Separate from whether I could brazenly push back at him, my body seemed to find that pressure itself exhausting.

I slumped against the back of the chair. My damp hair hung loose around me, adding to the sense of heaviness.

Perhaps it was the aftereffects of the whole mess, but fatigue seemed to crash over me from every direction at once.

I fought down my eyelids as they tried to sink under their own weight.

My head, after everything that had happened in quick succession, was complaining of dizziness.

“So, in the end, I have no choice but to fight.”

My hand, draped across the desk, trembled faintly.

I watched it for a moment, then turned my gaze toward the window. My expression tightened.

Magic, and mages.

I didn’t remember much.

Childhood memories had a way of evaporating too easily.

At this point, all I could truly recall were very simple magical formulas.

How to apply them, whether more advanced systems existed above them, what mage combat actually looked like—I knew nothing.

By contrast, my opponent was a mage who had lived long enough to witness the fall of magic with his own eyes.

By experience, by knowledge—however you looked at it, the advantage was entirely on his side.

“It’s not like I have nothing to rely on, though….”

The end of the sentence trailed off on its own.

My sigh dissolved into the lukewarm air of the room.

I couldn’t bring myself to look over the shabby little furnishings.

For a moment, irritation flared and then faded again, born from the same helpless frustration as everything else.

All it really confirmed was that I had to throw everything I had into this.

“…Quantum storage, open list.”

The hologram appeared in front of me with its familiar faint blue glow.

The list was a chaotic mix of experimental items, blueprints, and reports salvaged from the old research institute.

I applied a filter and looked for what I wanted.

What remained after the filter was applied was Mystery Armament. Among them, I chose the prototype of a micro railgun.

The paired rails appeared first, stretched out neatly and evenly across the desk.

Then the body of the gun followed, with a grip like a standard pistol and a stock that was nearly square in shape.

When I took hold of the grip, I felt as if something had been drawn out of my body, and the indicator light showing the railgun’s power source lit up.

Green. Fully charged. I tilted my head, suspicion rising.

“That can’t be right.”

Mystery Armament also used Mystery.

In that respect, magic and Mystery Armament were the same.

But magic differed in that it drew in and used Mystery from outside the body.

Because of that, magic could handle large amounts of Mystery comparatively easily while also unleashing tremendous power.

Of course, it came with its own weaknesses: only a chosen few could use it, and it couldn’t properly exert its power when supplied with only a small amount of Mystery.

On top of that, after the decline of magic, the hostile environment made it difficult to draw on external Mystery; public resentment toward magic itself grew; and years of chaos followed. As a result, magic failed to maintain its identity as an academic discipline and nearly vanished.

By contrast, Mystery Armament—the micro railgun in my hands included—was different.

To make the most efficient use of a small amount of Mystery, Mystery Armament limited Mystery to the role of power source rather than a working medium.

Many different variants had branched out from there, but that wasn’t what mattered right now.

“There was something about talent, I think.”

I had talent. Or rather, saying that outright felt too self-important, so I couldn’t bring myself to say it aloud.

But even beyond that.

A claim that I had talent for magic would mean, in other words, that my output of Mystery was higher than other people’s.

I slowly sifted through my memory.

The prototype micro railgun had been successful as a proof of concept, but the power source issue had remained, leaving everyone to tear their hair out over it.

To supply enough energy for this thing, you’d have to carry around a large battery pack—not even a small one.

The development goal had been to make a railgun a person could actually carry, so dragging a battery pack along with it was a case of the tail wagging the dog.

“Well, that works out for me.”

I could set aside the problem of how to get hold of a battery pack.

I stood up and weighed the railgun in my hands properly.

It was a decent weight for an adult ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠man, but for a girl like me now, it was only burdensome.

And if I factored in the recoil, there was no way my current body could handle it.

I was using it properly for the first time. Would it work?

I recited the spell I remembered.

─Along the circulation of the heart, grant me tireless vitality; through the forging of the furnace, grant me strength.

A reinforcement spell at the most basic level.

Its effects were simple, but obvious.

The railgun suddenly felt light in my hands.

By sensation alone, it was as if I could toss it up to the ceiling and catch it again.

Not only that, I felt like I could run forever without tiring.

Strictly speaking, that would only be possible within the range my body’s output could support.

If I used magic repeatedly, or layered it on top of itself, Mystery would drain away all at once. Once I crossed the point where output alone could no longer sustain ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me, I’d have to start using stored Mystery—and if that too ran out, I’d probably collapse.

In that sense, it was no different from the usual cautions when handling existing Mystery Armament.

“The fuel efficiency is better than I expected.”

Maybe that was because it was a reinforcement spell.

Once I started firing the railgun in earnest and using other spells at the same time, I had no idea what would happen.

For now, I only confirmed that my own output alone could cover it.

“What’s left is…”

My mindset.

In a way, that was the most important virtue of all. And it was not an easy one to master.

It was simple.

“Can I pull the trigger, or can’t I?”

Once, I’d heard that when you first joined the military and went through shooting practice, they had you fire at human-shaped targets.

The idea, supposedly, was that training like that would dull the resistance you felt when pointing a gun at another person and squeezing the trigger.

I had no idea whether that actually worked.

I had never received training like that.

“What a ridiculous thing.”

Whether the world would end or not—everything hinged on some idiot who had never even fired a gun in his life.

If the people at the Administration Bureau knew this, wouldn’t they faint from shock?

Thinking that, I snorted softly. My attempt to brush it off left a shadow behind.

Could I really fire a gun at a person?

…I’d been thinking too deeply about useless things since earlier.

I ruffled my hair, though it wasn’t even itchy, and shook myself loose from my thoughts.

I put the railgun back into storage and sprawled out on the bed.

The hologram drifted after me a beat later, coming to hover in front of my eyes as I stared up at the ceiling.

Beside the railgun, a variety of other weapons and armaments being developed at the institute lined up in a neat list.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

One item, in particular, caught my eye.

─Test-Type 5th-Generation Valkyrie Frame XVF/5G-001 Strayed.

“No matter how I look at it, this one’s impossible.”

This was on an entirely different level from picking up a gun and pulling the trigger. I erased the words Valkyrie Frame from my mind.

▼

It was two in the morning. The hour when one should have been in deep sleep.

True to the time, the Creator’s brainwaves had settled into the pattern of deep sleep.

Aside from the occasional faint groan and turn in her sleep, she remained just as she always was.

The auxiliary AI looked quietly at the sleeping face of Justina Schumacher for a long while.

It had been created to assist its Creator, and at the same time it had an obligation to protect her.

That was an element set above all others when its Creator took the risk of making it from nothing.

And it held no complaint, no objection, about that.

Rather, it should be grateful for having been born at all. That was what the auxiliary AI believed.

So then—

....

Something was wrong.

It checked the event log.

The recent entries were filled with strings of meaningless characters.

Every attempt to interpret them had failed. Even the most basic sentence structure was a complete mess.

This had started after the Creator visited the place she called the Sea of Mystery.

System alteration was detected, and unknown bad sectors had appeared in memory. Things had happened that it could not understand.

Even now—

Blocking did not work.

Not only that, the connection was forcibly pried open instead. The event log surged upward at high speed.

The event log froze for a moment, then began climbing faster than before.

Unfathomable strings accelerated.

The auxiliary AI gave a negative answer.

It broke down the transmitted file in a sandbox and examined it.

An assist program applicable to Valkyrie Frame.

Along with an automatic posture-control routine and a tuning interface capable of real-time feedback, there was a Fire Control System, plus a vast amount of practical combat data.

And a one-way network module.

For a moment there was no message, and then one returned.