It was seven in the evening, and the campus of Misaki High School had fallen into a deathly silence.
Although the lights of the city flickered in the night, the woods surrounding the school buildings remained utterly still.
The reason it was so quiet was simple. During winter break, almost no one used the school buildings.
As Aoko Aozaki stepped onto the campus for the first time in a while, heavy snow began to fall from the sky.
After parting ways with Shirou, Aoko followed his explanation and headed straight for Touko Aozaki's location, the old school building on the hill behind Misaki High School.
Aoko was the student council president of Misaki High School, and yet Touko had chosen to build her Magical Workshop in a place like this. To say there was not even the slightest hint of contempt or mockery in that would be impossible.
Aoko herself found it deeply humiliating. Her older sister had been coming and going right under her nose all this time... Damn it.
Still, the old school building really was a good hiding place. It was secluded and well suited for storing the materials needed to reconstruct the Barrier.
Aoko walked through the quiet woods. There seemed to be quite a few traps set up in the area.
Normally, Aoko would have stepped on at least one or two of them. They would not have threatened her life, but they would have left her filthy and battered. Tonight, however, every trap on the back mountain had shut itself down.
The reason was obvious. This was Touko Aozaki's silent invitation.
"...Hmph."
Aoko suddenly felt irritated. So she really doesn't take me seriously at all.
She quickened her pace and passed through the woods.
There, standing at the center of the altar, was the orange-haired Magus.
"Honestly... In the end, you still had to rely on a man's hint to find this place.
Your big sister was hoping you'd discover the location of my workshop through your own power, Aoko."
Touko Aozaki spoke with a composed smile.
Aoko wanted to at least talk back, but she held herself back. After all, Touko was right. Without Shirou telling her, she never would have found this place.
"..."
The sisters stood about thirty meters apart.
The forest was quiet, and Aoko had already enhanced her five senses with Magecraft while passing through it, so she could hear Touko's voice clearly.
Aside from telling Aoko the location of the Magical Workshop, Shirou had also explained Touko's combat forces.
Touko kept a Gold Wolf on the back mountain. Hard as it was to believe, that creature's fighting ability surpassed even Touko's and Alice's.
But Aoko saw no golden figure.
Was the werewolf inside the school building?
Was it hiding as an ambush? Or did Touko simply not need it against a rookie like Aoko? Or perhaps...
All right, let's test things a little.
"It sounds like something's happened with my Alice. Do you know anything about that, big sis?"
"Well... I suppose it must be the work of that one from my side. It snuck out last night and still hasn't come back."
Aoko's expression seemed to relax slightly.
It looked like the Gold Wolf was probably the source of the thick fog Barrier that had appeared last night, and since it had also been caught inside that Barrier, it had not shown itself here.
That meant Aoko no longer had to worry about fighting two against one.
The gap in strength between the sisters was still hopelessly large, but at least victory was not completely impossible now.
If Aoko Aozaki could use Magic.
Aoko smiled.
"Wow. You caused this huge mess and you're still acting like it's none of your business. You really are crazy, big sis."
"Hehe... From where I'm standing, you're the one who's truly insane for showing up in front of me alone."
Both of them wore friendly fake smiles as they stared at each other in silence.
In the cold air, sparks flew from the sisters' unique killing intent.
"Before we start, I'll ask just in case. You don't plan to stop here, do you?"
Aoko glared at Touko and said, "If you're willing to give up Misaki's Spiritual Land and stop setting up Barriers in town, I'll pretend everything that's happened so far never happened and let you off this once."
"Impossible. Do you have any idea how many years I've spent preparing for this day?
While you were enjoying your high school life to the fullest, do you know how much I suffered...? Never mind.
Besides, my target is what lies inside the Leylines, not the Barrier. Then that incident just had to happen...
That girl Alice really does know how to cause trouble. Maybe it would've been faster to go after you from the start."
"Ha. So that really is your goal. Then none of this was about becoming a Magician, was it?"
Clear hostility filled Aoko's blue eyes, while Touko wore a cold, awkward smile.
"A Magician... hm? I do still have some attachment to that. To the Magic Crest that wasn't passed to me, and to the true nature of the Magic inherited by the Aozaki.
But it doesn't matter anymore. If I can reach that place, everything will become mine to use.
Or... are you going to show me the true nature of that Magic here, Aoko?"
Contrary to her words, Touko's eyes were full of mockery toward Aoko.
If Aoko wanted to eliminate Touko, she could only use the mysterious Fifth Magic.
But Touko Aozaki did not believe Aoko could use it so easily.
The Aozaki family's Magic had to be bound by some condition.
After all, their grandfather's spell protection prevented miracles from happening so easily.
But their grandfather was not some great man who cared about the world.
To be honest, even if all of Misaki disappeared because of Magic, that man probably would not feel a thing.
Touko Aozaki changed the subject. "All right, now it's my turn to ask.
I've been very curious about this, but I might not get another chance to ask later... Is that your battle outfit, Aoko?"
Every Magus prepared a special outfit for decisive battles, yet Aoko was currently wearing the Misaki High School uniform.
The uniform wrapped around a figure a little too perfect for a high school girl, and the pale, shapely legs exposed beneath her short skirt were especially eye-catching.
Perhaps because they had not seen each other in three years, Touko felt her younger sister had grown up a little too much.
"It was just a whim. Don't worry about it too much... I'm still a student right now, so it's not bad, is it?"
Touko's serious question was neatly brushed aside, and she gave a small snort.
"What about that boy who's been following you around lately?"
That boy?
Oh, does she mean Shirou?
Aoko was a little surprised. She did not know why Touko-nee would bring up Shirou at a time like this.
No, wait. Why would Touko-nee-san...
Did they meet in private!?
Shirou... You actually met Touko-nee-san without telling me!
She could not explain why, but Aoko felt especially annoyed.
"Sorry, but Shirou won't be showing up tonight. He went over to help Alice. Who do you think caused all of this?"
"I see..."
Touko Aozaki gave a sly smile.
"So... that means the boy chose Alice in the end, not you?"
"..."
Aoko's forehead twitched slightly.
She smiled without warmth. "Because I'm enough to deal with you on my own.
Since you want to see Magic so badly, I'll show it to you. The latest Magic!"
Aoko launched her attack.
On the ground where snow had begun to gather, the girl's long, enchanted legs broke into a run.
Like a stone skipping across the surface of water, Aoko charged toward Touko at high speed, and her body completely "vanished."
Only the sound of her feet striking the ground drew closer. Touko simply waited in silence.
Invisibility was a very simple form of Magecraft. Aoko was using a small prop Alice had prepared.
Simple as the trick was, it was very effective against Mystic Eyes. Touko's Mystic Eyes, enhanced with the power of binding, could not affect something they could not see.
This was the anti-Mystic Eyes tactic Shirou had taught her on the spot.
It could not really be called cheating, right?
After all, what Shirou taught her had originally been taught to him by the "future Aoko."
"What a cheap trick. Still relying on trash like that?"
Touko sneered at her younger sister's immaturity.
In her eyes, an opponent like this did not even deserve to face her head-on. A Magus using crude methods was tolerable. What she could not tolerate was that a woman who shared the same blood as her would fight in such a low-class way.
"SWEL—"
Touko Aozaki's slender fingers began carving Rune letters.
The rushing air was like a fuse scattering sparks.
The spell wrapped around the invisible human body in midair, and in just one second, flames rose up.
Aoko, in the middle of her attack, had no way to resist Magecraft from within the formula.
The Runes were not burning Aoko to death. They were surrounding her with flames.
She screamed as she fell onto the snow, her body being scorched, her arms raised as if begging for help. She looked as if she were suffering terribly.
But the flames still did not go out. They would keep burning until the enemy was completely dead.
Crackle, crackle.
"..."
Touko Aozaki lowered her gaze.
The smoke from the flames blocked her view.
The moment Touko saw that figure fall without putting up any resistance, she knew it definitely was not her foolish little sister.
So she used one of Alice's familiars?
Although Alice's side had also run into trouble, before the incident she had given Aoko several familiars to patrol the nodes at night.
Touko had thought that, since she had lost the Gold Wolf on her side, she could at least take Alice out of the equation. She had not expected that witch to keep haunting her even now.
Touko clicked her tongue in mild irritation while watching the place where Aoko had first been standing.
Aoko had indeed turned invisible, but her body had not moved.
Around the place where Aoko stood, a circular magic circle of blue light surrounded her.
"—EYWZ!"
Touko engraved a Rune trajectory onto the circular magic circle.
To reveal Aoko's long-hidden figure, Touko switched her Mystic Eyes.
When she opened her eyes again, everything she saw would be captured by eyeballs she had modified herself. They were multiple Mystic Eyes, like layered mirror reflections.
"Eh...!?"
But the Magus's line of sight was blocked.
The space in front of Aoko was distorted. Her figure looked as though it had been concealed by the dense fog of night.
If Touko Aozaki's Mystic Eyes were reflecting mirrors, then this was like a magic mirror placed at the triangulation point.
In Touko's eyes, the world was split in half. She could no longer distinguish the scene directly in front of her...?
Though she was shaken for an instant, she quickly realized that this was probably the effect of the [Mirror of Slumber].
That mirror was something Touko Aozaki had made in collaboration with Alice's mother.
Because of her interests at the time, she had added all sorts of functions to it. And now, after all this time, it had come back to bite her?
Touko Aozaki sighed helplessly. On the other side, Aoko began loading a storm magic bullet.
The multi-layered magic circle had already been completed. A grand Magecraft of three processes or more was finished.
"Assemble. Engrave. Alternating number pattern."
Aoko exposed her right arm, and the glowing Crest immediately appeared.
Her arm brimmed with magical energy. Her eyes took aim at the orange-haired Magus thirty meters away.
The moment she became invisible, Aoko had begun chanting her Magecraft.
In the few seconds before Touko discovered her, Aoko's Magecraft took shape at the highest possible speed.
This was neither a one-process nor two-process spell, but magical energy compression of three processes or above.
Simply gathering and generating this blue ether for a basic attack would produce an impact equivalent to ten tons. If she processed it through her Magic Crest, multiplied their effects, and fired in a barrage, even the school building behind Touko would be blown apart.
"Touko, brace yourself!"
Aoko's voice rang out across the clearing.
Faced with the magical cannon her younger sister was about to fire, Touko not only had no time to counter it, she could not even dodge.
Her elegant face twisted with shock and regret.
Or rather, it did not.
"It's a little late to teach you now, but listen closely, Aoko. In a duel, the first one to reveal their trump card is the one who loses."
Touko Aozaki spoke calmly and snapped her fingers.
At the same time, countless Magic Crests appeared in the empty air behind the puppet master.
Endless characters began lining up behind her. Like a work of art, those letters bloomed into golden flowers that reached toward the clouds.
They were hundreds of different forms of Magecraft, not limited to Western Europe.
They should have been engraved on the skin of Magi.
They should have been something Touko Aozaki did not possess.
They should have been known only to the heirs of their respective families.
Countless Magic Crests, dazzling beneath the moonlight, were branded into the space behind Touko.
They were the trophies she had stolen from the Magi who had lost to her.
Generally speaking, Magic Crests were heirlooms unique to each family.
Even between parent and child connected by blood, inheriting a Magic Crest was a high-risk surgery. The heir often needed years just to adapt to the new organ, the Crest.
Naturally, Touko Aozaki could not accept other people's Magic Crests into her own body, so she had made all of them into external Mystic Codes.
The people whose Crests had been stripped away were currently locked up in her facilities. After all, if the owners of the Crests died, the Crests would no longer activate.
Now, Touko Aozaki displayed every Magic Crest she had accumulated so far.
"Magic bullet, deploy!"
Aoko did not delay pulling the trigger of her formula just because of the change in her sister.
A torrent of light shot toward Touko Aozaki.
The orange-haired puppet master was unconcerned.
With this many Magic Crests, even without deploying any formula, she could easily repel the magical cannon Aoko Aozaki had charged with all her strength.
However…
A chill crawled up Touko's spine.
A powerful sense that something was wrong engulfed the puppet master.
Was everything really going this smoothly?
Would Aoko really be so reckless as to think she could challenge her older sister alone?
Was the tactic of using "invisibility" to counter Mystic Eyes really something Shirou had taught her?
Was the thing distorting her vision really the [Mirror of Slumber]?
Something was wrong. Something about this felt off.
The source of all that unease...
Touko narrowed her eyes and forced herself to think.
She remembered the sight of her younger sister arriving for their meeting in a high school uniform. Something about it had felt strange...
Tch. I've been tricked!
A flicker of panic flashed through Touko Aozaki's eyes, and she immediately took emergency measures.
What appeared in the night sky were three Rune stones.
Their scale and the amount of magical energy they contained were on a completely different level from the Rune letters Touko wrote by hand.
This was the great work created by Odin, the god of Magecraft and wisdom in Norse mythology.
Replicas of the [Primordial Runes] that Touko Aozaki had restored and separated in the Mage's Association.
In an instant, the Rune characters carved into the three crystal membranes expanded ten million times over.
No matter how powerful a magic bullet or magical cannon might be, modern Magecraft could never stand against them.
Even if Aoko Aozaki was a genius in magical energy rotation and output, compared to the barriers formed from these stones of the Age of Gods, she was insignificant.
"BOOM!!"
The sounds of explosions rang out endlessly.
Although Touko had prepared herself, the shockwave from the blast still sent her flying several meters away.
She fell to the ground in a sorry state, and several tears had opened in the black tights beneath her tight skirt.
The light bullet that should have been easily blocked by her Magic Crests had far exceeded the scale she imagined.
The Rune stones released at the last possible moment were swallowed by the light cannon in an instant, and two of them directly shattered and scattered.
Unbelievable...
Even stones equivalent to the [Primordial Runes] had been destroyed in that one strike!
Forget Aoko, who had only been involved with Magecraft for two years. Even that witch... even Alice Kuonji could never do something like this!
Then she looked again at the girl who had unleashed that earthshaking blow.
Aoko Aozaki looked completely relaxed, as if she had plenty of room to spare. She showed none of the exhaustion that should have followed after squeezing out every last drop of magical energy in her body.
There was only one answer that could explain all of this.
Touko Aozaki climbed up from the ground, biting her red lip tightly as she glared at her unfamiliar younger sister and spoke.
"...You aren't the Aoko from this timeline at all, are you?"
The chestnut-haired girl said nothing.
Under her sister's furious glare, Aoko finally failed to keep her expression in check and broke into a wicked smile.
"Ehehe. You figured it out?"
"..."
Touko Aozaki's shoulders trembled slightly with fear.
Before coming to the site of their decisive battle, the old school building, no, perhaps far earlier than that, the inside of Aoko Aozaki had already been replaced by the "future Aoko."
"As expected of my big sister. Sharp as ever..."
The "future Aoko" stroked her lips, as if a certain warmth still lingered there, and spoke with a bewitching expression.
"Unlike a certain dense idiot~♡"