After having a massive lunch at 2 p.m., Takahashi Yuuya took Index for a leisurely stroll back toward his apartment.
"How did you manage to eat all of that? You had a huge meal three hours ago, then a giant ice cream cone, and now you still ate an entire feast for lunch? Aren't you afraid your stomach will literally burst?" Yuuya asked, watching Index's slightly protruding belly.
"But it was so delicious! The food in Academy City is just so good, and I haven't had anything this wonderful in a long time," Index said earnestly, trying her best to explain her gluttony in a cute way. "It's not that I'm making you spend money just because I want to eat things I've never tried before! It's just that I only ate one piece of stale bread yesterday before I arrived, and I was starving. My body desperately needs to replenish its nutrition!"
"I am a member of the clergy, and I would not lie. If I did, my Father in Heaven would be disappointed in me. So, I assure you, I have absolutely no lingering desire to eat any more delicious food!"
Slurp...
She forcefully swallowed the drool that had just dripped from the corner of her mouth back down her throat.
"Pfft! You're using God as a shield just because you want to eat more delicious food. You'd better wipe the drool from your chin before you make such holy declarations," Yuuya couldn't help but laugh. She was just incredibly innocent and naive.
"A-Although I am a clergyman, it is still quite difficult for me to reach a state of perfect worldly detachment! So it is not impossible for me to accidentally let delicious food into my mouth," Index argued, wiping the drool from her chin, her green eyes sparkling. "Therefore, I am definitely not a glutton!"
"Alright, alright, I get it. I was actually going to let you try some special five-star glowing dishes for lunch, but it seems I'll have to wait until dinnertime," Yuuya said with a smirk, highly amused by the chattering nun.
"Glowing dishes?! That sounds incredibly delicious! Mmm..."
"No. You've already eaten so much; you'll actually explode if you eat any more right now."
"No I won't! I feel like my stomach can still hold another 20% of its total capacity!"
"I don't care what you think, I care what biology dictates," Yuuya's eye twitched slightly.
He didn't actually have any physical Academy City currency on him, though his System Storage was overflowing with gold bullion, US dollars, and Chinese yuan. However, those couldn't be used casually at local street vendors; they had to be properly exchanged first. He had been using his digitally hacked student accounts to pay for everything today.
While chatting with Index, he had navigated them back to his dormitory. He unlocked his apartment door, and Index curiously followed him inside, her eyes slowly brightening.
Her expression was exactly like a cat seeing a warm patch of sunlight on a soft carpet, looking like she wanted to immediately dive down and roll around on it.
"What? Do you really like this small room?" Yuuya asked, looking at the girl who was practically vibrating with comfort.
The room was just a standard student apartment assigned by the city. It only had one bedroom, a small kitchenette, a bathroom, and a balcony. It was a typical studio setup, but the room was meticulously clean. It wasn't that Yuuya was an extreme neat freak, but he liked his living space to look pristine, and he was too lazy to deal with clutter.
"Mmm! Yuuya's room feels so cozy and safe! Can I really stay here?" Index asked, her lips forming a happy 'ω' shape as she flopped down onto the carpet, thoroughly enjoying the soft texture.
"Of course. You'll have to wait until I get some actual vacation time if you want me to escort you safely back to London. Until then, this will be your home," Yuuya said with a smile.
He knew perfectly well that returning to London wasn't going to happen anytime soon, at least not until some major global events were resolved.
"Thank you, Yuuya," Index beamed, her doll-like face evoking a natural desire to protect her.
"It's no trouble at all," Yuuya said, casually turning on the television.
Index lay on her stomach on the floor, propping her head up with her hands like a curious four-legged animal as she watched the TV. She had seen scientific devices like televisions before during her travels; there were people performing shows on it, and you could receive news broadcasts from all over the world.
"Academy City is so amazing. It allows ordinary people to communicate with each other instantly and receive information about what's happening all over the world," Index murmured.
"That's the fundamental difference between Science and Magic," Yuuya noted, sitting on the edge of his bed. "Magic ultimately only benefits the individual practitioner or a select cabal. Science, however, benefits the entirety of human society. When a certain technology makes a breakthrough, it causes a chain reaction, leading to breakthroughs in related fields. This creates a technological explosion, which forcibly raises the overall level of human civilization in a very short period of time."
"Academy City is currently at the absolute epicenter of a technological explosion."
Index blinked, looking slightly confused, as if she understood the words but couldn't quite grasp the massive scale of the concept.
"Yuuya, are you saying that this 'technological explosion' is the secret to how Academy City became a world superpower in such a short time?"
"Pretty much," Yuuya shrugged. "Academy City wasn't this ridiculously advanced ten years ago. Just look at the outside world; cell phones went from giant bricks to pocket-sized smart devices in barely a decade thanks to the tech leaked from here."
'However, Index is not absolutely safe right now,' Yuuya thought, his eyes narrowing slightly. 'Those two Magicians are definitely coming back. And there are far more insidious, potential dangers hiding within her.'
Index possessed the John's Pen automated defense system—personally installed by the cunning Archbishop Laura Stuart—and a magical Collar that ordinary Magicians simply could not detect or remove.
The John's Pen system strictly restricted Index's physical constitution and prevented her from extracting any practical spells from the 103,000 Grimoires. It acted as a magical parasite, absorbing her naturally generated mana to maintain its own lock, making it impossible for her to ever use magic herself.
The Collar was even more insidious. It was a failsafe condition set to slowly suffocate her brain with "overflowing data," ensuring that if her memories weren't forcibly erased once a year by the Church, she would supposedly die.
However, none of this was an insurmountable problem for Yuuya. Through the combined, conceptual effects of The Book of the Law and his Star Cup, he had already successfully grasped a portion of the power known as World Rejecter. Because of his immense computational control, he wouldn't suffer the drawback of the power spiraling out of control once activated.
The ultimate effect of World Rejecter was to erase a target's traces of existence in the current world, banishing them entirely to a "New World," effectively detaching them from existing reality.
This erasure process wasn't a crude, violent destruction, but a conceptual one. Memories, physical traces, magical signatures—all impressions of the banished target would disappear.
Canonically, the original owner of this power, Kamisato Kakeru, was just an ordinary high school boy who didn't fully understand how to control World Rejecter, much like how Kamijou Touma couldn't control what Imagine Breaker negated.
But Yuuya could precisely control it. He could target specific, isolated concepts and cleanly eliminate the exact phenomenon he wanted to banish.
Therefore, he could achieve a surgical cleansing effect far superior to Imagine Breaker. He could directly banish the magical Collar and the John's Pen system right out of Index's body without triggering their explosive failsafes.
Furthermore, permanently banishing these magical items to the New World wouldn't trigger any immediate alarms in London; to the outside world, the concept of those specific spells operating on Index would simply cease to exist.
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