Chapter 251: Misaka... Brother?
At that time, Shirley Cromwell, following the instructions of her superiors, was teaching the esper from Academy City, Alice Wollia, a magical technique.
After Alice performed the technique Shirley had taught her, she collapsed to the ground, bleeding from her seven orifices, grievously wounded.
And at that moment, the anti-esper faction within the Church, the Knights who opposed any interaction between magic and science, stormed in.
Alice was killed on the spot by a Knight wielding a warhammer while trying to help Shirley escape.
Because of this, Shirley developed a deep hatred toward the Knight faction within the Church and believed that the casual mingling of scientists and magicians would only lead to tragedy.
And if one truly wanted to prevent conflict between the scientific and magical factions, the only way was to clearly define their respective domains and completely separate them.
However, some time ago, the Church's high command had unexpectedly reached a certain agreement with the leadership of Academy City, allowing an important Index Librorum Prohibitorum to live within the city. This reminded Shirley of the tragedy from the past.
Thus, she resolutely decided to go alone to Academy City and attack important figures such as the key to the Imaginary Number District, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and the Imagine Breaker, in order to inflame tensions between the magical and scientific worlds.
She wanted both sides to realize that continued cooperation would only lead to war between their factions and that redrawing the boundaries was the only solution.
So Shirley couldn't exactly be considered a villain—in fact, her ultimate goal was peace between the magical and scientific realms.
"Magic actually can't be used alongside esper powers. Good thing I never used any obvious magic techniques—otherwise, I might've triggered a massive upheaval in both the magical and scientific communities."
George secretly let out a sigh of relief.
According to Shirley's memories, he had learned that in this world, magicians obtain magical power by refining the vitality of their bodies, then casting spells through incantations, magic circles, magical tools, and various other means.
Espers, however, mimic natural original stones' abilities and realize their personal realities through AIM fields generated by stimulating their brains. These personal realities then influence the macro-reality, producing various esper abilities.
The two follow entirely different principles.
He figured that the reason magicians and espers couldn't coexist might be because once someone becomes an esper, their body undergoes some kind of transformation that makes it impossible to refine life energy to gain magic power.
If one tries to forcibly refine vitality, the body will clash internally, leading to things like vomiting blood or even total physical collapse.
George wasn't affected because his magical power didn't come from refining vitality in that way.
His magical power mainly came from his wizard bloodline—he was born with inherent magic in his body. Later, he learned meditation techniques to absorb external energy and convert it into magic power.
Furthermore, his esper abilities weren't completely of this world. His esper abilities also included mutant powers—essentially a fusion and evolution into something new.
As long as he didn't use this world's method of refining life force to obtain magic power, his magic and esper abilities would never clash.
That wasn't a major issue for him.
Going forward, all he had to do was learn this world's magic and cast it using his own magical power—the effect would be the same.
"Looks like those 103,000 grimoires won't be so easy to get after all!"
Turning to look at Fūnori Hyouka and Index, who had just walked over, George couldn't help but sigh again.
From Shirley's memories, he knew that it was basically impossible to extract the 103,000 magical texts inside Index's mind using methods like Legilimency, telepathy, or the Soul-Seizing Curse.
Index was a nun of the Anglican Church, and because she was born with perfect memory, she was entrusted by the Church to memorize nearly every magical text in existence.
However, in order to prevent Index from going rogue or betraying them, the Church would erase her memories once a year, assign her new partners, and establish new social relationships.
Until one day, by chance, she met the ultimate good-natured person Kamijou Tōma. With the help of Kamijou and her former partners, Index was finally freed from the cycle of memory erasure.
But even now, her body still retained a defense mechanism known as the "Automatic Writing System."
This was the strongest defensive device designed by the Church's top magicians, capable of utilizing the knowledge from all 103,000 grimoires to fully protect the contents of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum from being stolen.
Whenever someone attempts to forcibly extract information from the "Index Librorum Prohibitorum," the "Automatic Writing System" would immediately activate.
When Index faces a life-threatening situation (such as excessive blood loss), the "Automatic Writing System" also awakens.
So unless George could destroy the "Automatic Writing System," there was no way he could forcibly learn any magical knowledge from Index's mind.
And honestly, when it came to destroying the "Automatic Writing System" without damaging Index's brain, he had no confidence at all.
After all, the magicians of this world were far more powerful than he had originally imagined.
It was said that the magicians of this world, upon reaching the pinnacle of magical technique and understanding the essence of magic, had a chance to step into the realm of gods and become Magic Gods—beings strong enough to destroy entire universes and worlds at will.
If he couldn't destroy the "Automatic Writing System," then the only alternative would be to get Index to willingly teach him the magical knowledge stored in her mind.
But that wasn't realistic either.
Because Index's duty as the Index Librorum Prohibitorum was to protect the 103,000 grimoires. Moreover, she was guarded by powerful magicians from the Anglican Church.
Given that, it would be better for him to sneak into the various churches and try to steal glimpses of the original magical texts himself.
"Forget it, I won't think about all that for now. Today's harvest is already pretty great."
Shaking his head, he decided to put those concerns aside. Before learning magic from this world, he needed to first raise his esper ability to Level 5, which would take two months.
Two months was enough time for him to slowly formulate a suitable plan.
Being able to learn so much intelligence about the magical world from Shirley's mind today was already an unexpected bonus.
Moreover, he had also memorized the Kabbalah spell formulas from Shirley's memory, which he could later try to reconstruct using his own magical power.
"Misaka-oneechan, thank you for saving us!"
Index looked at George and bowed in thanks alongside Fūnori Hyouka.
But George simply smiled and waved it off:
"Not Misaka-oneechan—it's Misaka-oniichan!"
Although he couldn't get the 103,000 grimoires right now, building a good relationship first might give him a chance later.
"Misaka-oniichan?"
Index blinked in confusion at George, who was wearing men's clothing, a puzzled expression on her face.
So just changing clothes turned big sister into big brother?
"Onee-sama, so here you are."
Just then, a figure appeared beside George out of nowhere and instantly hugged his arm.
It was Shirai Kuroko, who had just rescued some civilians trapped in the underground streets and had teleported over upon hearing noise from this side.
"Onee-sama, you actually switched to men's clothing—you look so cool!"
Seeing George in men's clothes, Shirai Kuroko's eyes gradually turned… rather perverted.
(End of Chapter)