This is not the date I wanted.

"Kyousan, if you are free this afternoon, can you give me your time?"

Hearing Shidou's invitation, Kurumi was a little surprised, then she smiled slightly and nodded in response.

"Of course, I'm happy to."

.

15 Know Yourself and Your Enemy

==============================

Monday, February 12, noon.

At this time, Liangyi Mengyue was sitting cross-legged on the lawn in the green courtyard outside the teaching building, enjoying her lunch time alone.

Normally she eats with the Yamai sisters, but due to the injuries she suffered in the previous battle with Allen, the two of them took leave to receive treatment and physical examinations in Fraxinus.

——The superficial reason was this. In reality, Yakuya, who had been spoiled while recuperating in the hospital bed, could not face the cruel reality of not doing a single word of homework and still having to go to school and be criticized by the teacher, so he continued to pretend to be sick and slack off, and Yui, who was inseparable from Yakuya, naturally also simply said that he would skip class.

Under normal circumstances, Mengyue would have dragged them to school without hesitation. But after all, they were hurt because of Mengyue's involvement, so Mengyue turned a blind eye to their petty temper.

Of course, it wasn't that Meng Yue was alone in the class without the Yamai sisters. Although the three of them were good friends, they each had their own social circles in the class. The main reason why Meng Yue ate lunch alone here was that she didn't want the class to notice what she was doing.

"Huh...Finally, I have some clues."

Rubbing her temples, Meng Yue couldn't help but let out a tired breath. And in her mobile phone, there was an extra document.

That was the personal information about DEM's magician, Artemisia, and Ai Wulian that she had obtained and sorted out through various channels.

Only by knowing yourself can you win every battle. At present, DEM has three top-notch magicians in addition to the drones Bandersnatch and Nibelcol that can be used as human wave tactics and death squads. If a head-on battle is launched, Mengyue will be at a disadvantage.

Westcott is not afraid of losing his subordinates, but Mengyue is not. She absolutely does not want her family to be in any danger.

So she needs to investigate intelligence so that she can defeat her opponent while avoiding direct combat as much as possible.

Artemisia was fine, after all, she was the former ace of the British magician unit SSS and was a celebrity in the magician circle. With a little time, Mengyue easily found out the other party's information.

But when investigating Ai Wulian, Meng Yue encountered an unexpected bottleneck.

Date of birth, family background, personal resume, interpersonal relationships, traces of life as a human being, battle record as a magician - these are the information that can be found on Artemisia, but Mengyue basically couldn't find any on Ai Wulian.

To be honest, even when Mengyue was digging into the shameful black history of those old foxes in the upper echelons of Ratatoskr, she didn't find it so difficult.

Because it wasn't hidden very deeply, but it didn't exist at all. Apart from the bills for cosmetics and daily necessities on her credit card, and the fact that she had worked as a magician in the elf army in China for a year before joining DEM, the life of this 20-year-old woman before the age of 19 was a complete blank.

Unwilling to give up, Meng Yue spent most of the weekend trying to find out about Ai Wulian's past. It was not until today when she had an idea that she finally got a clue.

“I didn’t expect it to be from Mongolia… What a blind spot.”

Flipping through the information on her phone, Meng Yue couldn't help but sigh.

Yes, after repeated investigations by Mengyue, it was discovered that the earliest record of Aiwulian was not from China, but from its neighboring country Mongolia, a video accidentally shot by a war correspondent.

However, when we say it is Mongolia, it is only so in terms of geographical location. It is different from what Mengyue knows. The Mongolia in this world was destroyed by the "Eurasian Air Disaster" thirty years ago, which not only caused the death of 150 million people, but also turned most of the land into a death zone, and the countries around it also suffered considerable damage.

In the thirty years since then, due to the influence of various sensitive issues such as the demarcation of national borders, the allocation of resources, illegal immigration, and terrorist organizations, the land destroyed by the space earthquake has not been repaired, but has become a dangerous battlefield filled with smoke and blood, no less dangerous than the Middle East in the last world. There, undocumented people like Ai Wulian are everywhere.

And Ai Wulian is a medical soldier in one of the armed forces.

"…It turned out to be a medic."

Meng Yue's expression became very subtle.

She had never expected that the woman who fought ferociously and brutally, aimed at the enemy's vital points with every move, and even said that she wanted to rip her open, and who was in every sense more dangerous than Allen, was not a murderer standing on the front line and madly shooting at the enemy with a submachine gun, but a medic saving lives and healing the wounded in the back row.

(No, maybe he became a medic just to hide his true nature, and tortured some dying soldiers to death as toys...)

However, as she continued to follow this clue, Meng Yue found that she had guessed wrong again.

Except for the soldiers who died directly on the battlefield, the mortality rate of the members of Ai Wulian's unit was extremely low. The injured soldiers were able to recover safely after Ai Wulian's treatment, so much so that Ai Wulian was given a lot of exaggerated titles in the unit at that time, such as "the miracle doctor who brings the dead back to life", "the reincarnation of Florence Nightingale", and "the angel sent by God".

Later, a soldier who had been rescued by Ai Wulian, after making great achievements in the war and becoming famous, used his power and connections to send Wulian back to his motherland in order to repay his gratitude.

By the way, that person seemed to have proposed to Wu Lian, but was rejected mercilessly.

(…Did I look up someone else with the same name and surname by mistake?)

For the first time, Meng Yue began to doubt the information she had found. No matter how she looked at it, the person described in the information was completely different from the Ai Wulian she knew.

"No harvest? Never mind. Let's stop here for now."

Seeing that the two-hour lunch break was about to end unknowingly, Mengyue sighed in disappointment, hurriedly finished her lunch box, and stood up to return to the classroom.

"Ms. Mengyue, please stay."

At this moment, a voice suddenly called her. Meng Yue turned around and saw Tokisaki Kurumi, who was wearing a black Gothic Lolita outfit and had her left eye covered with an eye patch, walking out from the shade of the trees.

Meng Yue narrowed her eyes vigilantly.

"What's up? Kurumi."

Obviously, the Kurumi in front of him was not the real one. After all, the real one was flirting with Shidao in the name of "competition". If Meng Yue remembered correctly, this should be the clone who had a lot of common topics with Yakuya during Kurumi's past dark history.

Of course, if possible, Meng Yue didn't want to see Kuang San, because her intuition told her that the other party was looking for her with bad intentions.

“The fourth axis’s regression has already occurred.”

Wearing an eyepatch, Kuang San said seriously,

"After school today, Mr. Shidou will die on his way to a date with my real self."

"——!?"

After hearing the lines that could not be ignored, Meng Yue's pupils suddenly contracted.

"Kyousan, has she come back from the future again?"

"Didn't I just say that? The backtracking phenomenon of the fourth coordinate axis has occurred..."

"..."

Who can understand what you are saying? Resisting the urge to complain, Meng Yue took a deep breath, calmed herself down, and began to ask Kuang San questions.

"What was the cause of death?"

"Died from an accident where someone was hit by falling objects from a tall building."

Hearing this, Mengyue couldn't help but frown.

"Did the magician from DEM do that?"

"I don't know. I didn't see them, but I can't rule out the possibility that they deliberately disguised their deaths as accidents."

"…What should I do?"

"As for Mr. Shidou, 'we' will find a way to deal with it, but considering that DEM has other backup plans that I don't know about, Miss Mengyue will help us solve it."

"Okay, leave it to me."

After thinking about it, Meng Yue nodded and agreed to Kuang San's request.

"What a reliable answer. You are indeed our only ally in the entire space and time."

"It's just a temporary cooperation because we share the same interests. I didn't agree to let you eat Shidou."

Meng Yue replied helplessly.

"Haha~ I understand."

Lifting her skirt and bowing slightly, Kuang San, wearing an eye mask, disappeared into the shadows.

16 BadEnd①

==============================

"what……"

On the rooftop of the department store, nearly a hundred meters above the ground, a "Nibelcol" floated in the air like a ghost and yawned with a bored look on his face.

"There are so few people, so cold, so boring~"

I couldn't help but grumble in complaint.

Unlike drones like Bandersnatch that only follow orders rigidly, Nibelcol has a certain degree of emotion and autonomy. Although their appearance and tone give people the impression of high school girls, in fact, whether it is a defect or a matter of course, their personalities are more like active children.

Of course, the orders of "Father" will still be carried out without hesitation, but waiting in such a deserted place is indeed a torture.

"One hundred and one... one hundred and two... one hundred and three... got it!"

While killing time by counting the number of people on the street, "Nibelcol" finally saw the young man named "Gokawa Shido" walking towards him, just as he had said at the intelligence agency.

“What a relaxed expression with no tension at all~”

"Nibelcol" chuckled, pulled himself together, took a few steps back, aimed at a small flowerpot in front of him, and made a snapping gesture with his right hand.

(Itsuka Shido's walking speed, the height of the building, the change in wind direction...construction of gravity amplification formula...OK.)

After completing the simulation in his mind, "Nibelcol" flicked his fingertips and a pitch-black spiritual energy bullet shot towards the flowerpot.

Like a balloon filled with water, the spiritual power exploded the moment it touched the flower pot, turning into a thin layer of light film that wrapped around the flower pot.

Then, the weight of the flowerpot suddenly increased a thousand times. The foothold at the bottom could not withstand the surge in gravity, so it broke off the building and fell violently to the ground.

"Okay, now it's time to die."

Nibelcol said confidently.

Even if he sealed the spiritual power of more than a dozen elves, if he did not deploy the angels, Gokawa Shidao's physical strength would be no different from that of a mortal. A weight of more than ten tons falling from a high altitude could directly smash him into a pool of meat paste.

However, after a few seconds, "Nibelcol" did not hear the expected commotion and collision.

"Eh? Weird?"

Looking toward the bottom of the building in confusion, "Nibelcol" discovered that the rocks he had thrown down had disappeared for some reason.

"Ala, throwing rocks from the roof to the ground is too bad. It's just like a child's prank. It's so innocent that I was caught off guard."

At some point, a loud laugh sounded from behind "Nibelcol".

"you……"

--boom!

Before Nibelcol could turn around, the flintlock bullet mercilessly pierced her forehead.

Then, "Nibelcol"'s body turned into a page of a book, and then turned into smoke and disappeared into the air.

"It's solved."

"But the enemy suffered no losses."

"As long as the 'Divine Eclipse Volume' is still in Westcott's hands, the lost 'Nibelcol' can be replaced at any time."

"Ah, there's no way I can kill them all. It's really frustrating."

"I can now understand a little bit how Miss Mana feels as she has been chasing 'us'."

……

"Ok?"

When passing by the entrance of the department store, Shidou looked up at the sky for some reason.

Of course, he personally had no particular intention. Rather than noticing something, it was more like a conditioned reflex of his body's instinct.

In fact, nothing happened.

"What's wrong, Mr. Shidou?"

Kurumi, who was following him, asked curiously.

"Well, nothing... By the way, the sky is so blue."

Shidou replied awkwardly.

————————————————I am the dividing line for shifting perspective——————————————————————

"That... Meng Yue?"

Nanashi scratched his cheek and couldn't help but speak.

"Hmm? What's wrong, Seven Sins?"

Meng Yue stared in the direction of Shidao and Kurumi and asked without turning back.