Chapter 796: The Gemstone Ability, Deep Blood! A Magician Arrives in Academy City
Misawa Cram School.
Across the nation, the name commanded absolute authority in the highly competitive market of university entrance exams. Naturally, a sprawling metropolis like Academy City hosted its own branch.
Located in the Seventh District, the facility boasted a rather bizarre architectural design. Four massive, twelve-story square buildings stood on the four corners of a major intersection. Viewed from above, the complex formed the exact shape of the kanji for field. Massive enclosed sky bridges spanned the wide asphalt roads below, connecting the four independent towers into a single, isolated fortress suspended in the air.
This was the Academy City branch of Misawa Cram School.
Originally, the facility was established with a singular, corporate goal: to steal and reverse-engineer Academy City's highly classified Esper Ability Learning Method.
However, things had deviated wildly from the headquarters' original business plan. The branch had entirely severed ties with the outside world. The director in charge, consumed by a fanatical worship of science, had begun developing exclusive, undocumented technologies. His obsession twisted into a bizarre god complex. He convinced himself that his monopoly on this fringe science made him a messiah, a human chosen by the divine to lead a new era.
The cram school devolved into a heavily armed cult.
They rejected all external orders. Worse, they had forcibly imprisoned a young girl possessing an incredibly rare Gemstone ability. They dressed her in traditional garments, intending to crown her as the holy shrine maiden of their deranged new religion.
Inside a sterile, dimly lit room on one of the upper floors.
A young girl with straight black hair stood quietly by the window. She wore a pristine red and white miko outfit, her dark eyes gazing out through the heavy iron bars at the pale moon hanging over the city skyline.
Her slender fingers tightened against the cold metal. A bitter, self-deprecating sigh escaped her lips.
She had come to Academy City seeking salvation, a way to erase her esper ability. Instead, that very same power had turned her into a caged bird.
Most people in this city would kill for a rare esper ability. To her, it was nothing but a curse that had left her soul scarred with unimaginable trauma.
Her ability was classified as Deep Blood, the Vampire Killer.
The mechanics of Deep Blood were tragically specific: it only affected vampires.
It granted her no superhuman strength, no control over the elements, and no telekinetic prowess. The power resided entirely within her veins. Her blood emitted a cloying, impossibly sweet fragrance, an absolute, irresistible narcotic to any creature of the night.
If a vampire drank even a single microscopic drop of her blood, their body would instantly disintegrate into ash.
The true horror of the ability lay in its absolute temptation. The scent bypassed all logic and survival instincts. Even if a vampire knew with absolute certainty that biting her meant instant, agonizing death, they simply could not stop themselves. The hunger it induced was absolute.
Against ordinary humans, the ability was completely useless. In a modern, scientific world where vampires were dismissed as mere fairy tales and urban legends, Deep Blood seemed like a pointless, defective mutation.
But she knew the truth. Vampires were not legends.
Himegami Aisa was born in a quiet, secluded mountain village nestled in the forests near Kyoto.
Ten years ago, the nightmare arrived.
A lone vampire descended upon the village under the cover of darkness. In a desperate bid to bolster his own combat strength, he began systematically slaughtering and turning the villagers into his undead thralls.
He did not do this out of malice or a desire for conquest. He did it out of sheer, primal terror.
He wanted to kill Himegami Aisa.
Her existence, a walking, breathing beacon that endlessly tempted his kind to their own suicides, terrified him to his core. He wanted to live. To survive, he had to eliminate the source of the temptation. But he could not get close to her without risking a fatal bite, so he created an army of mindless ghouls to do the dirty work for him.
That night, the quiet mountain village drowned in screams. Everyone she knew either died or rose again as a monster.
During her frantic escape through the burning ruins, a jagged piece of shattered glass sliced deep into her arm. Crimson blood spilled freely, splashing against the dirt path.
The reaction was instantaneous.
Every single vampire in the vicinity, including the newly turned thralls, froze. Driven entirely mad by the sweet, intoxicating aroma, they abandoned their hunt and swarmed the blood-soaked ground like starving animals.
The moment their tongues touched the crimson drops, their bodies crumbled.
Dozens of people, including her own mother, turned to gray dust in the wind before her very eyes.
Himegami Aisa understood the cruel irony. The original vampire had not wanted to massacre her village. He was simply drawn by the scent, driven mad by a hunger he could not control, and terrified of the death it promised. He killed because he did not want to die.
She never wanted to hurt anyone again. She never wanted another creature, human or otherwise, to turn to ash because of her existence.
She needed to find a way to destroy the Deep Blood within her.
Academy City, the global capital of esper research, seemed like her only hope. She believed that if she could just unravel the scientific mechanics behind her mutation, the researchers here could find a way to switch it off.
Due to the extreme rarity of her Gemstone classification, she was immediately accepted into the prestigious Kirigaoka Girls' Academy.
But the hope was short-lived. No one at Kirigaoka could figure out how to cure her.
And now, her unique status had drawn the attention of the fanatics at Misawa Cram School, leading directly to her current imprisonment.
"What am I supposed to do now..."
Himegami rested her forehead against the cold iron bars, her voice barely a whisper in the empty room.
"Facial comparison in progress. Comparison confirmed. Target is Himegami Aisa. Ability classification: Gemstone, Deep Blood. Target secured. Misaka 103 reporting."
A flat, mechanical voice suddenly broke the heavy silence.
Himegami jumped, spinning around.
Standing in the middle of her locked room was a girl her age. She wore the signature beige sweater and pleated skirt of Tokiwadai Middle School, paired with a highly out-of-place set of military-grade night-vision goggles strapped to her forehead. The girl stared blankly at Himegami, seemingly talking to thin air.
Misaka 103 was, of course, not talking to herself. She was transmitting a real-time status update across the massive, interconnected consciousness of the Misaka Network.
Ever since Misaka Mikoto and her allies had violently usurped control and established the new Board of Directors, their first major directive was absolute: purge the festering darkness lurking beneath Academy City's surface.
The rogue cult at Misawa Cram School was high on the extermination list.
The new administration had already pulled every encrypted file on Himegami Aisa's tragic past, her abilities, and the exact layout of the cram school fortress.
Misaka 103 had been deployed with two simple objectives.
First: Neutralize and detain all hostile personnel within the facility.
Second: Extract Himegami Aisa without a single scratch.
Having finished her internal report, Misaka 103 blinked her blank eyes and pointed a finger at the miko-clad girl. "Himegami Aisa, you have been successfully rescued by the Board of Directors. Please come with me, Misaka informs while gesturing toward the door."
Board of Directors?
Himegami stared at the goggled girl, completely lost.
Before she could process the bizarre situation, the Tokiwadai student grabbed her by the wrist and casually towed her out of the room.
The moment Himegami stepped into the hallway, her breath hitched.
The corridor was a disaster zone. Dozens of heavily armed cram school guards, along with the fanatical director himself, lay sprawled across the floor. Some were slumped against the walls, others twitched slightly, all completely unconscious and groaning in pain.
She had absolutely no idea what had just happened.
Misaka 103 stepped over a groaning guard without looking down and spoke into the air again. "All resisting personnel have been neutralized and stripped of combat capability. Requesting Anti-Skill cleanup personnel for immediate mass arrest and processing."
Anti-Skill, the official surface-level security force of Academy City, would handle the garbage collection. The Misaka Sisters were elite tactical units specialized in precise extermination and extraction; they were not about to waste their time slapping handcuffs on a bunch of delusional cultists.
As for Himegami Aisa.
According to the updated mission parameters flashing across the Network, she was to be escorted directly to the central headquarters of the Board of Directors.
Apparently, there was someone currently residing at headquarters who actually understood the mechanics of Deep Blood.
This individual was an outsider, a non-esper recently discovered unconscious in the streets by a patrol of Misaka Sisters. Because her presence in the city was highly suspicious, she had been taken into custody.
When the strange girl finally woke up, she started spouting absolute nonsense.
She claimed to be a magician affiliated with the Christian Church.
Since the higher-ups, specifically the Big Sisters and the Administrator, were already well aware of the hidden magical side of the world, they decided to keep the loudmouthed girl around rather than throwing her out.
Just a few moments ago, this self-proclaimed magician had overheard a report mentioning the Vampire Killer. She immediately threw a fit, proudly declaring that she possessed a temporary, magical solution to suppress the Deep Blood's scent.
Following her new orders, Misaka 103 tightened her grip on Himegami's hand and led the bewildered shrine maiden through the sea of unconscious bodies, heading straight for the Board of Directors.
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