By the time the matches of the magical girl Illya in the neighboring Demiplane arena and even those of the other quarterfinalists had ended and the winners had been decided, the battle between the strongest Railgun, Mikoto Misaka, and the stealth specialist Valera Sangunar was still going on.
Of course, calling it a match might not have been entirely accurate.
Because...
Even now, though nearly half an hour had passed, not a single fight had taken place!
The competitor who had slipped into the shadows—Valera Sangunar—still showed no sign of revealing herself or launching an attack.
In fact, no one even knew whether she was still in the arena.
But even with her opponent nowhere to be seen, Mikoto Misaka had no intention of letting her guard down!
She still stood in the middle of the arena, braced for anything. At the same time, she gritted her teeth and kept the step-voltage electric field going, the electric snakes coiling around her body and flashing now and then just as they had from the start.
But...
What no one knew was that after maintaining a high charge for so long, Mikoto was beginning to run out of strength.
See for yourself:
Sweat trickled from her forehead, sliding down her cheeks and dripping onto her Tokiwadai Middle School uniform or the stone floor. Yet she didn't dare make any unnecessary movements, not even wipe it away. She could only stand her ground and maintain the electric field, while clutching tightly in one hand the gleaming, magnetized heat-resistant coin, ready to fire at any moment.
"..."
There was no doubt about it: Mikoto was running low on electricity. She didn't know how much longer she could hold out. Maybe five minutes? Maybe ten?
But!
At this point, she had no choice but to