A sonic boom roared through the air.
In that instant the airflow rushed straight into the vacuum gap left behind, and a cold, keen flash of the blade cleaved open the grinning man’s skull, carving down along its chest in one continuous stroke.
The body, split in two, dropped heavily to the boy’s left and right, and only a few scattered parts rolled a couple of turns across the muddy ground before just barely coming to rest.
As if the machinery had taken irreversible damage, the remains twitched twice on the ground and then moved no more.
And Ryōgi Minato—who had somehow already returned the blade to its sheath—now let out a soft breath of stale air, which dissolved into a small wisp of white mist in the cold.
“Sensei, Aoko, are you two all right?”
Minato turned around, cradling his blade, his tone unchanged—as if he’d simply come back from a stroll.
But Alice and Aoko were both still rooted in place, as though they hadn’t quite snapped out of the shock.
After a moment, Alice—who had had some measure of mental preparation to begin with—was the first to return to reality, giving the boy a dazed nod.
She instinctively looked at the small boy, then at the “watcher” cut so smoothly in two, and couldn’t help turning her gaze to Aoko at her side.
Aoko’s eyes carried shock she couldn’t begin to hide.
To be honest, she hadn’t made out the slightest thing of what had just happened.
From the grinning man’s sudden attack to the grinning man lying cleaved in the dirt—the process between those two points felt like a skipped frame, impossible for her to recall.
The only impression that remained was that roar, like the howl of a dragon.
“Alice, did you see what just happened?”
Lowering her voice to ask Alice—whose strength far outstripped her own—Aoko wore confusion on her face.
But even as a witch, Alice hadn’t caught that single stroke of the boy’s either, and she shook her head honestly.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
Aoko murmured in disbelief, while Alice’s heart, already tempered round after round back when the boy first revealed his gift for the magical arts, accepted this far faster than Aoko did.
“Minato, that thing—ending up like this—was that you?”
To dispel the last shred of doubt in her heart, Alice asked the question anyway.
“Yes.”
Minato nodded, not understanding why his teacher was so astonished.
He’d only swung a single 「Secret Art: Dragon Flash」 just now.
By the knowledge he’d been given, that was hardly his fastest blade technique, so it hadn’t occurred to him there was any need for such surprise.
“Is that so…”
Alice’s words trailed into silence, and she couldn’t help thinking that even if she never taught him a thing of magecraft, this swordsmanship alone was already enough for the boy to deal with the overwhelming majority of magi.
Excepting those who kept themselves warded and protected at all times, the rest would likely be cut down before they ever registered the boy’s draw.
Astonished as she was, though, Alice still set her mind in order in good time.
Rather than the boy’s inconceivable swordsmanship, what concerned her now was his mental state.
After all, that thing—however much it wasn’t human at its core—had still worn a human shape.
Even Aoko had shown discomfort when she first laid eyes on it, to say nothing of the boy, who had now cut it down with his own hand.
“Minato, are you all right?”
Alice asked softly, and after Minato tilted his head in puzzlement, he understood what she was worried about.
“Don’t worry, Sensei.
That was only a puppet—I won’t dwell on it.”
Because only something like a puppet would rely on the gears and threads within its body to move.
After focusing his rather special eyes on the puppet’s inner workings, Minato had understood that it was an existence holding neither life nor emotion within it.
And so—a cut was simply a cut.
“I see.
As long as you can think of it that way, then good.
But from now on, mind your own safety first.
Don’t go rushing straight out the way you did just now.
Aoko and I can both protect ourselves.”
Even having witnessed the result of the boy’s swordsmanship with her own eyes, Alice still gave him this admonishment—and at the end of it, she even offered him an apology.
Because it was her own failure to notice that hidden “watcher” that had let an accident like this happen.
As for Aoko, who had spent a good while sunk in the realization that she might not even be able to beat a grade-schooler, she finally came back to herself and let out a resigned sigh.
She lifted her head to glance at Alice, more gifted than she in magecraft, then at Ryōgi Minato, who seemed even more of a fighter than she was.
She couldn’t help but begin to doubt whether she truly had the talent of a so-called “Magician” at all, her spirits sinking a little.
“Aoko, are you all right?”
Seeing something slightly off in Aoko’s expression, Minato assumed she’d taken some unseen injury in the earlier attack, and his brow furrowed with worry as he chalked it up to his own responsibility.
“Ah, I’m fine, just my usual daily bout of self-deprecation—don’t mind me.”
Mustering her spirits, Aoko managed a smile and cast aside the tangle of stray thoughts.
And to ease the boy’s concern, she changed the subject too, turning her eyes to the puppet split in two on the ground and asking Alice:
“Alice, can you find out who’s behind this puppet from the thing itself?”
“No.
This is a puppet built only to record.
It doesn’t have any function that links directly back to its magus.”
Alice took a glance at the puppet, shook her head, and went on.
“Still, with it destroyed, the one hiding behind it should be able to feel the feedback.
I only hope that magus has the self-awareness to leave Misaki Town quietly.”
Just then, Minato—who’d been waiting obediently off to one side—blinked, as though he’d caught sight of something within his own field of vision.
Right as Alice and Aoko were about to suggest heading back, the boy suddenly spoke.
“Sensei, Aoko.
My Future Sight just told me—these puppets may have been sent by Aozaki Touko-san.”
…
“Oh?”
On some unlit street with no streetlights, a woman in a tight skirt—long, slender legs showing beneath its split hem—suddenly came to a halt.
She arched an eyebrow as if mildly surprised, but the next second a smile at once alluring and dashing surfaced on her fair, refined face, and she gracefully pushed up her glasses.
“What’s the matter?”
A childish voice came from the shadows behind the woman, though no figure could be seen there.
“No, it’s nothing.
Just a little surprised that the extra ones I sent over on a whim happened to run right into them.
Looks like that side’s already started to take notice of our movements.”
As though talking to herself, the woman quirked the corner of her mouth, and walked on, her figure vanishing into the night.