"Sensei, you'd better find somewhere safe to take cover."
Yuuya moved Kiyama Harumi two hundred meters back from the center of the street, gently leaning her against the concrete wall of an alleyway. He cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, turning his gaze toward the writhing, embryonic monster that was emitting a high-frequency, mournful wail.
SKRRREEEEEE—!
The atmosphere warped into violent, concentric shockwaves centered on the grotesque fetus, expanding indiscriminately in every direction. The asphalt roadway, already fractured from Kiyama's previous clash with Anti-Skill, was completely ripped apart by the kinetic pressure, exposing the subterranean pipes and raw earth underneath. The sonic booms shattered every glass window on the surrounding high-rises, sending a glittering torrential downpour of razor-sharp shards raining onto the sidewalks.
Yuuya narrowed his eyes, a faint, mocking smile touching his lips as his gaze drifted across the skyline toward the towering, monolithic silhouette of District 7's Windowless Building.
'Heh... Aleister, this thing can essentially be considered an embryonic Angel, right?' Yuuya mused silently. 'A crude, artificial angel born exclusively from the compressed AIM diffusion fields of Academy City. I wonder if Kazakiri Hyouka has stabilized enough to fully manifest in the physical world yet? If she does, you might as well hand her over to me. It would make executing the Artificial Heaven project much smoother for you anyway.'
His thoughts carried a distinct edge of mockery. Aleister Crowley was fully aware that Yuuya possessed unexplainable, omniscient knowledge regarding the city's deepest secrets, including the grand design behind Fuse Kazakiri and the Artificial Heaven. Even if Yuuya demanded the conceptual key to the artificial phase, Aleister was largely forced into a reactive stance.
Taking every variable into account, Aleister would likely allow things to play out—though the magician-turned-chairman was never one to remain passive for long. He inevitably had contingencies layered within contingencies.
'Aleister's entire methodology revolves around weaponizing human emotion,' Yuuya calculated. 'Just like how he subtly guided Kamijou Touma by placing people Touma cared about directly into danger, ensuring the boy would move precisely according to the script. Given my unpredictable nature, where exactly will Aleister try to plant an emotional anchor? I'm almost looking forward to seeing him try.'
SHRRRIIII—!
A piercing, unnatural harmonic frequency suddenly resonated directly through spatial dimensions, bypassing the medium of atmospheric air entirely.
Yuuya reached up and casually scratched his ear.
The embryonic entity had now swelled to the size of a minivan, erratically whipping its luminous white tentacles through the dust. Scenting the dense, concentrated Personal Reality radiating from Yuuya, its slit-like crimson eyes locked onto him with primal hunger.
CRACK-CRACK-BZZZZT—!
A deafening screech tore through the air, accompanied by the violent ionization of oxygen. Massive, arm-thick bolts of jagged blue lightning surged across the creature's back, arcing downward in a lethal blitz straight toward Yuuya's head.
Yuuya didn't even shift his footing. He simply raised his open palm.
'Calculation System: Vector Transformation.'
FLASH—!
The second the high-voltage electrical current made contact with the invisible vector barrier surrounding his skin, its direction was instantly inverted and its velocity accelerated tenfold. The reflected lightning slammed violently back into the AIM Burst, detonating its upper torso into a shower of white, gaseous particles.
Yet, before the smoke could clear, a shrill, baby-like shriek echoed through the street. The shattered tissue was instantly drawn back together by ambient AIM radiation, regenerating seamlessly while swelling even larger than before.
Over a dozen thick, undulating tendrils resembling the tentacles of an octopus erupted from its back, driving downward toward Yuuya like heavy pile drivers.
"Let's play around for a bit while I locate your core," Yuuya chuckled.
He casually flicked his index finger. By altering the kinetic vectors of the surrounding air, he launched a localized, invisible air cannonball that cleanly severed the incoming tentacles.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Yuuya continuously fired high-velocity vector blasts into the creature's torso. Each strike tore a massive, gaping hole through the white mass, yet the creature absorbed the ambient AIM fields from the surrounding city, rapidly healing each wound and expanding until it approached the size of a city bus.
Yuuya wasn't attacking mindlessly; with every impact, he was injecting subtle, diagnostic kinetic vectors deep into the creature's physiology, actively mapping its internal structure to pinpoint the exact spatial coordinates of its Triangle Core.
"Regeneration...?" Kiyama murmured weakly, clutching her throbbing forehead as she leaned heavily against the wall. She looked up at the grotesque, towering monstrosity with a self-deprecating smile. "It's continuously repairing itself by gathering the ambient AIM diffusion fields scattered across District 13. Because it lacks a fixed biological blueprint, its physical form mutates uncontrollably."
Kiyama coughed, wiping a trace of dust from her lips. "This creature... is a manifestation born from the synchronized brains of twenty thousand people, saturated with their collective despair, frustration, and negative emotions. It's only natural that it feeds on their psychic radiation. A creature like this... it's a true AIM Burst. Even a standard Level 5 would struggle to permanently put it down without an Anti-Skill canceler."
District 7 — Underground Research Facility
"Magnificent! Hahaha! Splendid! I never expected this! I truly never anticipated such a breathtaking anomaly to manifest!"
Inside a dimly lit, high-security server room, Kihara Gensei stared at the multiple high-speed surveillance monitors, his withered, arthritic fingers trembling with manic, borderline euphoric excitement.
"The collective AIM diffusion field acting as a unified biological network... to actually give birth to an independent, non-human lifeform!" Gensei cackled, his dim, yellowish eyes widening to reveal stark white sclera. "It completely shatters our traditional developmental parameters! It is literally mimicking the divine act of creation! Hahaha! My core hypothesis was entirely accurate—the AIM diffusion field is the definitive missing link required to bridge the gap toward Level 6!"
The hunched old man grinned, exposing a row of pristine, unnervingly white teeth as he watched the live telemetry feeds.
"To think my former student would orchestrate a direct clash between Academy City's only multi-ability Esper and a concentrated AIM lifeform... The sheer density of experimental data being generated right now is priceless!"
Gensei's cackling deepened as he tapped the console rhythmically. "You really are something else, Aleister Crowley. You hid such monumental secrets within the city's ambient AIM field. I originally believed your intention was to utilize the Level 6 Shift experiments solely on Accelerator and the clones, but running the higher-order mathematical deductions proved that was merely a smoke screen. Gaining absolute command over the global AIM field is your true objective. And the fact that you've allowed this entity to manifest proves that the AIM field holds the ultimate key to Academy City's existence!"
The old scientist practically danced across the tiled floor in a state of academic ecstasy, resembling a ravenous treasure hunter unearthing the vault of an ancient civilization.
Judgment 177th Branch
Meanwhile, back at the branch office, Shirai Kuroko, Uiharu Kazari, and the rest of the staff stared at the central monitor in frozen, absolute shock.
"Are you kidding me...?" Kuroko whispered, her jaw dropping. "How can a bizarre monstrosity straight out of a comic book physically manifest on the streets of District 13?!"
"T-Takahashi-senpai is engaging that creature directly..." Uiharu stammered, her hands trembling as she watched the feeds. "B-But it looks like even Senpai's attacks aren't destroying it! The monster is absorbing energy and growing larger with every single blast! What are we supposed to do?!"
"This is an unprecedented disaster!" Kuroko snapped back to reality, her face turning pale as she slammed her hands onto the console. "If that creature breaks out of the containment zone, it will trigger a catastrophic bio-psychic invasion across the entire city! Uiharu! Immediately contact Judgment Central Command and issue a Class-A emergency mobilization to Anti-Skill Headquarters! We need full containment protocols deployed right now!"
"Y-Yes! Initiating emergency broadcast immediately!"
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Give me powerstones.
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