With her Magic Calculation Area fully unsealed, Shizuku now possessed power rivaling Miyuki's. Through her training with Yugen, she had also learned to manifest magic at a distance. If the seabed took damage, Yugen could fix it later with 'Ten-yo Shoran' (Sunlight Survey); for now, he left the suppression of the submarine to her.
With Mizuki present to dampen the magical aftershocks on the boat, Shizuku's 'Phonon Tears' struck true. The thermal ray flash-boiled the seawater, sending a gargantuan pillar of white spray erupting into the sky.
"...Yugen, you really are a gigolo, aren't you?"
"Why am I the one getting blamed? ...Ah, looks like manned torpedoes are coming next. Shall we let the seniors handle them? They look like they're itching for a fight anyway."
"Sawaki and Kirihara might be, but please leave Isobuchi and me out of your 'exceptions'..." Hattori sighed, even as he chased after Sawaki and Kirihara, who were already sprinting toward the deck.
In the original history, those two had overwhelmed the enemy soldiers, but after training with an outlier like Yugen, they had reached a level of strength far beyond their peers. Sawaki neutralized an enemy with a single blow, while Kirihara used an application of his 'High-Frequency Blade' to enhance a fishing rod, cleanly slicing through an enemy's protective suit without drawing blood. When another soldier tried to take advantage of the opening, Hattori suppressed him with a volley of ice bullets.
"Who are these guys?"
"A variety of pirate, I suppose. It'll be a hassle if we bring them back with us, so let's just send them back where they came from."
As Yugen answered Hattori, he assessed the captive's identity. Then, he casually grabbed the soldier's dry-suit belt and—as if he were throwing a harpoon—flung the man back toward the sea. Hattori, Sawaki, and Kirihara could only watch in stunned silence.
"What... exactly did you just do?"
"The pursuer is a submarine, so I just threw him back toward it."
To Yugen, this was a trivial feat. He had survived assaults by spiritual entities, escaped state-level kidnappings, and once buried hundreds of missiles deep underground. He had even erased a decommissioned nuclear-armed satellite from existence. Compared to that, casting a hardening spell on an enemy soldier and shot-putting him at a submarine was barely an inconvenience.
"Regardless, that should buy us some time to escape. Just stay sharp for a while, just in case."
He was implicitly referring to the party the day after tomorrow. Yugen didn't care if they understood the full scope of the threat as he returned to the wheelhouse.
"...I've thought this for a while," Kirihara muttered, watching Yugen's retreating back, "but I truly pity anyone who makes an enemy of Kagurazaka."
His voice carried a complex mix of absolute trust in an ally and the sheer terror of imagining that same power turned against him.
◇ ◇ ◇
The party Kirihara pitied—the crew of the submarine—had not escaped unscathed. Though they had retreated to international waters, the soldier Yugen had "thrown" at them had caused enough structural damage to temporarily disable their diving capabilities. James found himself rebuking Liu, the man who had procured the vessel.
"You were the one who told me not to underestimate them, even if they are students, Colonel Liu."
James's partner, Jasmine, was not on board. This was less a tactical decision and more because James didn't want the GAA defectors to realize how potent Jasmine's appearance could be as a weapon. Consequently, she was operating elsewhere.
"So, what is the next move?"
"We narrow our target to the party on the 28th," Liu replied, his tone clipped and defensive.
Their kidnapping plot had been seen through instantly, and a mere student had physically overwhelmed trained soldiers. Logically, the mission was a failure and should be aborted, but admitting that would mean admitting James was right and he was wrong.
His "face"—his pride—was wounded. And for a man like Liu, that was intolerable.
The faction opposing the peace treaty with Japan based their entire existence on this concept of face. Whether tracing it back to ancient tributary systems or the scars of three World Wars, their pride was rooted in deep-seated ideology and belief.
"Still, I don't understand how they detected us. We were over a kilometer away, yet they changed course as if they had read our ambush perfectly."
"...Are you suggesting the Yotsubas have a hand in this, Colonel?"
Liu had no answer. Even those who knew of magic rarely understood its true principles. Most magicians in this world used their powers without ever grasping the underlying mechanics of reality.
Unless they realized that fundamental truth, they never stood a chance. But in that room, there was no one capable of seeing it.
◇ ◇ ◇
In the public records of the 21st century, only two people bore the name Kagurazaka: Chizuru and Yugen. Even within the Japanese magical community, the Kagurazaka family was recognized as masters of Ancient Onmyodo—inheritors of the blood and techniques of Abe no Seimei and Kamo no Tadayuki. They also presided over the Kagurasaka Group, one of the nation's leading financial conglomerates.
Only a handful of people knew they held a seat as one of the Four Elders of the "Senate." That was a level of secrecy even the global surveillance system Frizskjalf could not penetrate.
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