Misaka Sister

"Absolute Zero Freezing Air—"

The Blue-Ice White Night Dragon braced itself on the ground with both claws. Its head rose high atop its dragon neck layered with icy spikes, while a mass of cold air gathered in its mouth. The surrounding air rippled slightly as dazzling ice-blue radiance rapidly swelled.

The temperature plummeted, dropping below zero in the blink of an eye. Accelerator suppressed the tremor in his heart and cried out in ecstatic madness, "This is it… this feeling…"

There was a kind of enemy where defeating them meant leveling up!

All along, Accelerator had believed that fighting an equally powerful opponent was the most reasonable path to reaching Level 6, rather than slaughtering Misaka Sisters who could not resist at all. Unfortunately, among the people he knew, there was no one who could let him fight freely without holding back. That was why he had willingly sunk so low, joining the Absolute Ability User Project and killing nearly ten thousand innocent weaklings over and over again.

Until tonight…

Accelerator felt that he had been right. Duke was the person he had been waiting for all this time.

Ecstasy mixed with anticipation, excitement intertwined with liberation—Accelerator could not explain his current feelings to anyone. Violent emotional fluctuations flooded ceaselessly into his brain, unexpectedly allowing him to break through his limits. His computational ability soared by leaps and bounds, nearly reaching some critical threshold.

His beyond-normal computational ability made Accelerator’s Vector Manipulation even more terrifying. With nothing more than a simple thought, four tornadoes connecting heaven and earth rose behind him. One dangerous plasma sphere after another formed around the storms, while the heat of friction created a sea of flames.

Lightning, storms, waves of fire… scenes like the end of the world cycled around Accelerator, while space twisted into black vortices before this force.

Power like that of a god distorted reality and shook space!

"Ha ha… just as I thought, this is what can be called a battle!" Accelerator stomped down, leaving a deep crater in the ground. He raised one hand and clenched his five fingers fiercely. The terrifying power around him blossomed brilliantly, then erupted at once.

Electrical energy, thermal energy, kinetic energy—all energy with direction burst forth under his command, stirring up savage air currents and forming a terrifying torrent of impact.

The Blue-Ice White Night Dragon lowered its head, utterly unconcerned with the terrifying impact wave rushing toward it. The ice-blue brilliance in its mouth suddenly dimmed as bone-piercing cold compressed to its critical point. A dazzling beam shot down at the impact wave.

The freezing air, transformed into a beam of light, cut across the vast distance. Countless spatial ripples rose in its wake, and the scattered waves froze, cracked, and shattered.

The two frenzied powers met in midair. There was no explosion, no stalemate. Everything was utterly calm.

Time became immensely prolonged at that moment, as though in slow motion. Flames… froze. Storms… stopped. Lightning… solidified!

Wherever the Absolute Zero Freezing Air passed, everything standing in its path was coated in frost, then frozen forever.

Ice was temperature, and the lowest temperature was absolute zero!

At this temperature, all molecules and atoms composing matter ceased moving. This movement referred to all spatial, mechanical, molecular, vibrational, and other forms of motion.

Absolute zero brought atomic movement to a complete halt, plunging everything into a state of absolute stillness. In such a state, Accelerator’s Vector Manipulation could find no direction whatsoever to alter.

"That’s impossible…" Accelerator only had time to cry out in shock.

The next instant, every sound stopped!

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—

A cold wind blew!

In peaceful District 7, students still deep in sleep suddenly felt the temperature plunge for an instant. Although it quickly returned to normal, that one second of bitter cold jolted them awake.

"What’s going on…"

"What happened? Why was it so cold just now?"

"Am I dreaming?"

"…"

For a time, lights came on in countless homes. People opened their windows, spoke with their neighbors, or called to ask around. The quiet night suddenly became lively.

The view returned to the street beside the alley!

The ruined street, originally devastated by Accelerator’s ability, was now covered in a thick layer of ice. The solitary streetlights, collapsed buildings, and fractured asphalt road had become ice sculptures, reflecting glittering chill beneath the moonlight.

The moisture in the air rapidly condensed due to the sharp drop in temperature, turning into ice particles that fell from the sky. The entire street seemed isolated from the world as snow and ice drifted down.

The cold wind swept up snowflakes and blew down several slender icicles.

Accelerator maintained the posture of swinging one hand, his entire body covered in ice, utterly motionless. The savage expression on his crazed face was still visible, but his unfocused eyes held not the slightest trace of life.

Accelerator’s life force had paused, falling into a state of stillness. Beneath absolute zero, time itself had yielded around him.

Duke gently exhaled a breath of cold air. With two cracking sounds, he lifted his feet that had been frozen in place, walked around Accelerator, and headed toward the end of the street. As he passed Accelerator, he gave him a surprised glance. Through his senses, Accelerator was frozen, yet a hair-thin gap remained between the ice and his body.

After thinking about it, Duke understood. Absolute Zero Freezing Air was supposedly cold air at absolute zero that froze all things, but he knew it was all a lie. Absolute zero existed only in theory, because any space necessarily contained energy and heat, constantly undergoing energy conversion without vanishing.

Even the Boomerang Nebula, the coldest place in the universe, was still one degree warmer than absolute zero. Countless years after the Big Bang, the residual high temperatures still affected that place. Therefore, absolute zero did not exist unless a space had contained no energy or heat from the very beginning.

Even the universe could not accomplish such a thing, so Duke naturally could not either. His Absolute Zero Freezing Air was still far from absolute zero. Precisely because of this, the atoms he froze merely became incredibly slow, infinitely close to stopping.

At the final moment, Accelerator had seized this flaw and found the direction of force. Unfortunately, he had found it too late!

"Computational ability really is a wonderful thing…" Duke thought as he walked around Accelerator. The two great supernatural powers of A Certain Magical Index World—powerful espers and magic—were like an enormous treasure vault, making him drool with desire. Not only for himself, but also for the Dukes in other worlds. As a freeloader who rode the Golden Thigh, he wanted to give something back to everyone as well.

As for whether Accelerator would freeze to death, Duke was not worried in the slightest. Academy City’s black technology was so advanced—how could it possibly fail to save Number One? Besides, there was the bug known as Heaven Canceller. As long as even a quark remained, he could save him.

All the coffee Duke had bought at the convenience store had been blown up, so he planned to make another trip there. But as he walked, he suddenly noticed a little tail following behind him.

The Misaka Sister followed behind Duke expressionlessly, matching him step for step. When Duke walked, she walked. When Duke stopped, she stopped. She looked entirely like she wanted him to take her along.

"Why are you following me?" Duke asked in confusion.

"…"

Silence was her only response.

The Misaka Sister remained expressionless, her vacant eyes staring straight ahead. Her head was covered in blood, one arm was broken, and the heavy blood loss had left her face pale. On a deserted street, she looked exceptionally frightening.

Duke sucked in a breath and said to her, "Keep going straight down this street, then turn left twice in a row and you’ll reach the hospital… I’m in a hurry, so I won’t be taking you there."

After saying that, Duke vanished from where he stood.

With her target gone from sight, the Misaka Sister froze for a moment, then jogged to the end of the street before running back. She stood there blankly, the expression on her face unchanged. There was no sadness, no fear, not even resentment at being abandoned.

As an experimental consumable priced at 180,000 yen each, she could be mass-produced without limit as long as there were sufficient materials. Moreover, as manufacturing technology grew more advanced, her cost continued to decrease. In order to speed up the experiment, her knowledge had been copied and implanted into her brain through reading and writing.

It was precisely because of this hollow cognition and the forcibly instilled notion of cooperation that she had never thought of resisting her short life of repeated death. In the eyes of others, Misaka Sisters were like walking corpses, incapable of thought and only able to mechanically carry out orders. This was also Accelerator’s excuse for numbing himself: what he killed were merely humanoid shells, living puppet dolls.

Duke’s interference had caused Accelerator’s premature defeat, and the Absolute Ability User Project could no longer continue. The cognition implanted in the Misaka Sister’s mind had never taught her how to choose under such circumstances. Thus, she chose to follow Duke—or rather, she chose the lab coat on Duke’s body… it belonged to the closest researcher to her.