Temperance in Practice Leads to Abundance

Having changed into a new set of clothes, Raven left the hospital an hour later with the Hama Yumi in hand. I guided her to War’s van. Walking was just so much slower compared to flying, but at least it was a fresh experience.

I got to appreciate how enormous the Kensei Data Center was. It spanned several blocks, looming over the other buildings. What an interruption to the city landscape, as if it were an alien object dropped from the sky. No attempt was made to harmonize with its surroundings. Its presence only served as a reminder of how insignificant the other buildings were.

War stood tall behind the van, staring at me.

“Have you been standing here the whole time?” I asked. Her vessel was wearing heels too. A normal person would have waited on a chair in fear of leg cramps, but War, the weirdo that she was, must not have even registered the soreness as a possibility.

“No, I was watching you through security cameras.”

“I can’t decide which is creepier.”

War knocked on the truck door. Two neatly dressed men stepped out. Holding a sheathed sword, a golden shawl, and two bracelets. Cloudie, a Feather Mantle, and the Tide Jewels.

“Where did this Feather Mantle come from?” I asked. Pestilence mentioned that more than one was circulating in Japan, but I found it hard to believe this wasn’t the one E.T. had.

“One of my people got it from the hospital roof.”

“The roof?”

“The Robin Hood tossed the Hagoromo aside after landing there.”

He probably ditched the Feather Mantle to prevent it from interfering with the spear. The story made sense, but another realization hit me. “Wait, how do you know that?”

“I had cameras set up around the hospital.” Of course, she did. But why would she bother to check those cameras when she had quasi-omniscience? What a waste of her attention while the Pestilence situation was still unresolved, unless…

“You knew that E.T. was coming.”

“Knew is a strong word. Your host had ceased being a blind spot. So I just had a feeling that he might see her predicament through the mirror, and the love-struck Robin Hood meme might force him to appear.”

Because Pestilence deleted E.T.’s social media accounts, he couldn’t control the memes anymore, but it seemed they were still affecting him. It was obvious in hindsight that he would attack the hospital, but I didn’t think of this possibility.

Can I really protect Raven while fighting Pestilence?

“But you defeated him, so all is well,” War added.

My self-blame flipped towards her. “You could have given me a heads-up.”

“This is a pointless argument. Get ready to attack the data center.” She grabbed my arm and stuffed a coin-sized gemstone into my hand. The rock glimmered between red and green. “That is the Heavenly Jeweled Spear. Keep this with you.”

“And six magical artifacts in total. Do you see the problem here?” The Tide Jewels counted as one, while the spear probably wouldn’t interfere with the others while it stayed dormant. But this was still far too many for me to control at once.

“You have Midorikawa Karasuya-san with you. She can take charge of three of them.”

“I’ll do it,” Raven said before I could protest further.

“But, Raven…”

“I want to help.” Her voice had never sounded firmer.

I guess having more magical artifacts would improve our chances. “Fine,” I muttered. “So annoying… What is Pestilence even doing this for?”

War had evidently never heard of a rhetorical question before, because she answered my question instantly, without even thinking. “Nature. What else would it be? She had done things in the name of nature many times over the years, just not to this scale, and never in a way that actively disobeyed me. Maybe I should be stricter with her next time.”

“But then why doesn’t she create magical tree monsters or something? She has enough information in the building to level Tokyo.” Even though War severed the information supply, the building still possessed thousands of racks of computers filled to the brim with data.

“She is a follower, not a planner. And speculating about her goals is pointless. Stopping her is the priority.”

“Right…”

Throwing that musing to the back of my mind, I slipped the Spear Gem into my pants pocket, next to the Fetus Jewel. Feather Mantle over my shirt; the sheath with Cloudie tied to my waist; the Hama Yumi mounted on my back; the Tide Jewel bracelets around my wrists. I gave Raven a brief rundown of how each magical artifact worked, and the preparations were done.

I took off into the skies, gliding within the atmosphere; the gale roared as it rolled past my face. My time mid-air only lasted for a few seconds, as I descended onto the roof of the giant cube.

Pestilence bragged that the system could evolve against War and me. But in practice, it could barely notice me. I was a blind spot to its magic, and it didn’t have good facial recognition software to analyze the camera footage. An unexpected entry point could catch it even more off guard.

I raised Cloudie, calling the clouds to cover the heavens. Rain fell upon the land soon after in pitter-patters; the water seeped into my clothes. More dark gray puffs joined from afar, replenishing the hydration lost from the descending droplets.

Raven held out her other hand. Sparks flicked around her hand as the OP Spear popped into her hand. “Give us access to a server room on the highest floor,” she whispered. She lifted her arm and then jammed the spear into the roof surface.

The spear gained a life of its own. It burrowed deeper into the aluminum. Cracks fanned out from the origin until the roof caved in. Not the entire roof, which was the size of several theaters, but only an area that could fit in a bus.

I dispelled the spear and flew in through the hole. Uniform rows of black computer racks slipped into my visual field, looking like a mystical, forbidden archive. The dots of light on the machines blinked like cats’ eyes at night.

Rainwater seeped in through the opening and splashed onto the floor tiles like a waterfall. The Tide Jewels allowed me to direct the liquid to the server units.

A splash. The wave flooded the closest mechanical tower, scrubbing away the information flowing within. The magic exploded into the air and crashed into my body. The heat it generated burned my skin, but the Fetus Jewel healed me in the next moment.

I shifted the body of water to the next rack. That was when my quasi-omniscience sensed the AI springing to action. It found a counter to my strategy. Frost propagated through the fluid, freezing it solid. The advance halted. More rainwater rushed in from outside. I switched my control to the reinforcement, clumping the newly arrived liquid together.

The AI targeted the moving blob, overwhelming it with cold. The liquid almost reached a computation unit by the time it froze completely. Despite the mass of information possessed by the AI, its use of magic was still inefficient. It chose the whole building as an anchor for its magic, instead of a smaller object; and it changed its code constantly to react to my actions, instead of sticking to a fixed set of codes.

The flow of rainwater persisted, so I could keep producing new waves of water whenever the previous one froze up. The freezing effect didn’t last forever either. The earlier ice blobs began to crack.

The AI couldn’t hold back the endless stream of water. Vines spread to try to fill the ceiling hole, but the effort amounted to nothing. The rainwater just burst through regardless.

The ice shattered and melted back into liquid. The resulting water rushed forth, flushing through the server units one by one. The magic that leaked out dispersed into nothingness; its momentary effect upon my body failed to deal any permanent damage.

Then all at once, the sound of the rain receded. I turned my gaze from the computers to the spot below the ceiling opening.

A figure stood there, holding something above her head.

Pestilence, raising the Hand of Glory. The mummified index finger produced a small flame. Thousands of droplets were suspended in mid-air, with more joining every second.

“You can’t beat nature,” she said. How could she not see the irony of her literally holding back the rain?