A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 7 by Kazuma Kamachi Read Free Book Online

I—?”
    The sister’s face was slowly getting to the point where she might cry. He was pretty sure he knew how dangerous these sorcerer people were, so he was hesitant to just leave her here, but…
    “—Would you happen to be able to read the bus route map?”
    “How many pages ago did we leave that topic?! And this time you added a new term, ‘bus route map’! Where did the issue of whether you could get into Academy City or not go?!” Kamijou shouted. He was thoroughly exasperated at the surprised sister who had backed up to the topic of some minutes earlier.
    If sorcerers were really chasing her, he didn’t think it would be good to ignore her. But he had a situation on his hands and couldn’t afford to take anything lightly. He was worried about Index, who had been kidnapped (apparently). It was a deeply suspicious situation, but he still couldn’t ignore it.
I don’t want to discard either of them! Jeez, what should I do?!
wondered Kamijou, about to start frantically scratching his head, when he suddenly realized something.



Wait…Why don’t I take this nun with me to Index?
    He thought it was a splendid plan.
    He did seem to recall something in the threat letter about coming alone, though.
5
    Stiyl and Index left Hakumeiza’s great hall and walked into the remains of a lobby that must have been where tickets were sold.
    A girl wearing a jet-black habit led them a few steps ahead.
    She was about one or two years younger than Index, and her hair was a reddish-brown—she was essentially a redhead. Her hair was braided into many strands, each about the thickness of a pencil. The sleeves on the habit she was wearing were long enough to cover her fingertips, but in contrast, her skirt was so short you could see her thighs. Looking closer revealed a fastener-like object on the skirt’s edge. She must have taken off a detachable piece of the clothing. Her waist was more slender than Index’s, who was still definitely on the skinny side.
    She was as tall as Index. But when you followed the sound of her clopping, horse-like footsteps down to her feet, you would find them wearing cork platform sandals thirty centimeters high. They were called chopines, footwear popular in seventeenth-century Italy.
    She was a nun of the Roman Orthodox faith, and she had introduced herself as Agnes Sanctis.
    “The situation is already a mess. We’re getting conflicting information, too, so we don’t exactly know where Orsola went, I suppose? We don’t rightly know if they secured the
Book of the Law
, either, so we’re in a pile of trouble.”
    There were no Japanese people here, but Agnes spoke in fluent Japanese.
    “For the moment, our raid against Amakusa-Style as they were transporting the kidnapped Orsola could be considered a success. Despite one of our people rescuing Orsola, Amakusa kidnapped her again before they could reunite with the main force. Then, when we took her back a second time, a separate Amakusa-Style group kidnapped her yet again…We’ve been going around in circles. We spread out our scouting operations too thin, and it came back to bite us. Even though we have more people than they do, each separate group has been losing people, and they’ve been capitalizing on that. So while we’ve been stealing and capturing Orsola over and over and over and over again, Orsola herself, whom we should have caught up to by now, has disappeared to who-knows-where.”
    Agnes’s tone was both rough and polite. If she had learned the language on the job, it might have been from talking to Japanese detectives and investigators.
    As Stiyl mulled that over, Agnes spun around. Her short skirt fluttered, revealing more of her pale thighs.
    “What is it? Oh, I apologize. I can speak English as well, but I can’t seem to get my Italian accent out of it. No one usually cares, unless they’re from England, anyway. So if you wouldn’t mind, I’d prefer to speak in the local language.”
    Stiyl smoked the cigarette in