February 12th, Monday, noon.
Currently, Ryougi Yutsuki was sitting cross-legged on the grassy lawn of the school courtyard, enjoying a solo lunch break.
Normally, she would eat with the Yamai sisters. However, due to the injuries they sustained in the battle against Ellen, the two had taken a leave of absence to receive treatnt and full-body checkups aboard the Fraxinus.
—Or at least, that was the official excuse. In reality, Kaguya had been utterly spoiled while recovering in bed. Unable to face the cruel reality of having to go to school and getting chewed out by teachers for not touching a single word of her howork, she decided to just keep pretending to be sick so she could slack off. Naturally, Yuzuru, who was inseparable from Kaguya, bluntly declared she was skipping classes too.
Normally, Yutsuki would have ruthlessly dragged the two of them to school. But since they only got hurt this ti because Yutsuki involved them in, she decided to turn a blind eye to their little childish rebellion and pretend she didn't know.
Of course, just because the Yamai sisters were absent didn't an Yutsuki was a loner in class. Although the three were close friends, they each had their own social circles. The main reason Yutsuki was eating alone out here was simply that she didn't want anyone in class noticing what she was working on.
"Phew... Finally got so solid leads."
Massaging her temples, Yutsuki let out an exhausted sigh. On her phone screen, a new ssage had appeared.
It was the personal profiles and data files on DEM's Wizards—Artemisia and Ai Mulian—which she had gathered and organized through various underground channels.
Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will erge victorious in a hundred battles. Currently, DEM's combat strength didn't just rely on cannon fodder drone Bandersnatch and the Nibelcole for swarm tactics. They also had three absolute top tier Wizards. If it ca down to a direct, head on clash, Yutsuki's side was at a massive disadvantage.
Westcott might not care about losing his subordinates, but Yutsuki cared deeply. She absolutely did not want her family placed in any sort of danger.
Therefore, she needed intelligence—information that would allow her to defeat the enemy while avoiding a direct confrontation as much as possible.
Artemisia was fairly straightforward. After all, she was the forr ace of the British Wizard unit, the SSS, making her sowhat of a celebrity within Wizard circles. With a little ti, Yutsuki easily tracked down her background.
But when it ca to researching Ai Mulian, Yutsuki hit an unexpected brick wall.
Date of birth, family background, personal history, social relationships, traces of living as a normal human being, combat records as a Wizard—all the data that was so easy to pull up on Artemisia was practically non-existent for Ai Mulian.
Honestly, even when she hacked into Ratatoskr's upper echelon to dig up the dirty, hidden secrets of those old foxes, Yutsuki hadn't found it this difficult.
It wasn't that the information was buried deeply; it simply didn't exist. Setting aside her credit card bills for costics and daily necessities, and a brief one-year stint working as a Wizard for the Chinese anti-Spirit team before joining DEM, this twenty year old woman's life prior to age nineteen was a completely blank canvas.
Refusing to give up, Yutsuki spent most of her weekend trying to uncover Ai Mulian's past. It wasn't until a sudden spark of inspiration hit her today that she finally found a clue.
"I didn't expect her to be from Mongolia... Talk about a blind spot."
Scrolling through the files on her phone, Yutsuki couldn't help but sigh in realization.
Yes. After exhaustive investigation, Yutsuki discovered that Ai Mulian's earliest recorded trace wasn't from China, but from its neighboring country, Mongolia—in a video accidentally shot by a war correspondent.
However, saying it was "Mongolia" only applied to its geographical location. Unlike the world Yutsuki used to know, the Mongolia of this world had been devastated by the "Eurasian Great Spatial Quake" thirty years ago. Not only did it claim the lives of 150 million people, but the vast majority of its land beca a dead zone, and the surrounding nations also suffered heavy damages.
In the thirty years since, due to sensitive issues like border disputes, resource allocation, illegal immigration, and terrorist organizations, the land destroyed by the spatial quake hadn't been rebuilt. Instead, it beca a dangerous, blood-soaked battlefield drowning in gunpowder smoke, no less volatile than the Middle East in her old world. In a place like that, undocunted "ghosts" with no legal identity like Ai Mulian were everywhere.
And Ai Mulian was part of one of those ard militias—as a combat dic.
"...A combat dic, of all things."
Yutsuki's expression beca incredibly complicated.
She completely failed to comprehend it. That woman—who fought with brutal ferocity, aid every single strike at a vital organ, openly declared her desire to gut Yutsuki alive, and was, in so ways, even more unhinged and dangerous than Ellen—wasn't a bloodthirsty killer standing on the frontlines spraying bullets at the enemy. She was a combat dic saving lives in the rear.
(No, maybe she just beca a dic to hide her true nature, and then conveniently used dying soldiers as toys to torture to death...)
However, following this clue further down the rabbit hole, Yutsuki found she guessed wrong again.
Aside from the soldiers who died instantly on the battlefield, the fatality rate of Ai Mulian's squad was absurdly low. Any wounded soldier treated by Ai Mulian fully recovered without issue. Because of this, within her unit, Ai Mulian had earned a slew of exaggerated titles, such as "The Divine Doctor with Miraculous Hands," "The Reincarnation of Florence Nightingale," and "An Angel Sent by God."
Later on, a soldier whose life Ai Mulian had saved achieved great military rit and rose to prominence. To repay his debt of gratitude, he used his authority and connections to help Mulian return to her holand.
As a side note, it seed that man had also proposed to Mulian, only to be rcilessly rejected.
(...Did I pull up the records of a completely different person with the exact sa na?)
For the first ti, Yutsuki severely doubted the intelligence she had gathered. No matter how she looked at it, the person described in these files and the Ai Mulian she had fought were two entirely different people.
"Still no solid leads... Forget it, I'll stop here for today."
Seeing that the two-hour lunch break was unknowingly coming to an end, Yutsuki sighed in frustration. She quickly finished the rest of her bento and stood up, ready to head back to class.
"Yutsuki-san. Please wait a mont."
Right then, a voice suddenly called out to her. Yutsuki turned her head and saw a Tokisaki Kurumi dressed in a pitch black Gothic Lolita dress, with her left eye covered by a dical eyepatch, walking out from the shade of the trees.
Yutsuki narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
"Is there sothing you need? Kurumi."
Obviously, the Kurumi standing before her was not the original body. After all, the original was currently flirting with Shido under the guise of their "competition." If Yutsuki rembered correctly, this clone was from Kurumi's dark, chuunibyou past—the one who shared a lot of common interests with Kaguya.
Of course, if possible, Yutsuki didn't want to see this Kurumi at all. Her instincts told her that whenever this Spirit sought her out, it was never for anything good.
"The regression phenonon of the fourth coordinate axis has already occurred."
The eyepatch-wearing Kurumi spoke with utmost solemnity,
"Today, after school, Shido-san will perish during his date with the original ''."
"—!?"
Hearing a line she absolutely couldn't ignore, Yutsuki's pupils violently contracted.
"Kurumi ca back from the future again?"
"Did I not just say so? The regression phenonon of the fourth coordinate axis has already occurred..."
"..."
Who is supposed to understand what that ans? Suppressing the urge to scream that out loud, Yutsuki took a deep breath. Once she cald down, she began questioning Kurumi.
"What was the cause of death?"
"Death by accident. Crushed by a falling object from a high-rise building."
Hearing this, Yutsuki frowned deeply.
"Was it the work of DEM Wizards?"
"Unknown. Their figures were not spotted, but we cannot rule out the possibility that they deliberately disguised the assassination as an accident."
"...What do you need to do?"
"Regarding Shido-san, 'we' will find a way to manage his safety. But considering DEM might have other hidden trump cards I am unaware of, I must trouble Yutsuki-san to eliminate them for us."
"Alright, leave it to ."
After a mont of thought, Yutsuki nodded and agreed to Kurumi's request.
"A truly reliable answer. As expected of the sole ally 'we' have across all of space and ti."
"It's just a temporary alliance because our interests align. I never agreed to let you eat Shido."
Yutsuki replied helplessly.
"Hehe~ This humble maiden understands."
Lifting the hem of her skirt into a slight curtsy, the eyepatch-wearing Kurumi lted into the shadows and vanished.
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