"Yawn..."
On the way home from school that evening, Chiba Yeyou yawned as he walked.
"Didn't you sleep well this morning?"
Walking beside her brother, Miyuki Shiba looked at Chiba Yeyou and asked.
She knew that Chiba Yeyou had slept in the Student Council room all morning. Miyuki Shiba had even visited the Student Council room twice that morning and seen him sleeping with his head down on a table off to the side.
"Hah!"
"We spent the whole morning working hard on patrol, while this guy was sleeping away in the Student Council room."
Erika Chiba grumbled beside them.
"I had things to take care of last night and ended up not sleeping at all. Yawn..."
Chiba Yeyou explained without thinking.
"Wait, why am I telling you this?"
"Anyway, Miyuki, how's your control over your magic coming along?"
Chiba Yeyou shook his head, then turned to Miyuki Shiba.
"At its smallest, I can now confine it to a support space twenty centimeters in diameter and two meters high."
Miyuki Shiba answered immediately upon hearing his question.
"And the temperature?"
"Freezing without killing, though there's still some chance of death."
Hearing Miyuki Shiba's answer, Chiba Yeyou couldn't help frowning.
"Keep compressing the range and practicing your temperature control. You need to guarantee that living creatures can be frozen without dying."
"This will become a very useful tool for you."
"At the same time, compress its range as far as you possibly can, and reach the point where you can freely unleash the magic at a designated, extremely small point within a certain area."
Chiba Yeyou slowly laid out his requirements for Miyuki Shiba.
Tatsuya Shiba merely listened beside them, neither offering an opinion nor expressing agreement as he quietly walked on.
"Those demands are way too insane!"
Erika Chiba couldn't help clicking her tongue at Chiba Yeyou's words.
What kind of insane demands were those?
"But what's the point of that?"
Leonhart asked, somewhat puzzled.
"Hmm, maybe something involving books?"
Mizuki Shibata thought for a moment before answering uncertainly.
"Huh?"
"Like what?"
Honoka Mitsui asked curiously.
"You could destroy one specific part without damaging the overall structure."
Shizuku Kitayama said.
"Or, for example..."
"For example, killing efficiently."
Chiba Yeyou calmly uttered something that made everyone present except Tatsuya Shiba pale.
"That's..."
Mizuki Shibata was frightened outright.
"What?"
"You all seem surprised."
Chiba Yeyou watched the group with interest.
"Since magic first appeared, how much of it has been integrated into society to benefit humanity?"
"And how much magic has been developed purely for destruction?"
"The pursuit of large-scale lethality is basically the mainstream right now. So what's all that destructive power for?"
"Surely you don't think it's for demolition work?"
Chiba Yeyou's barrage of questions stunned the youngsters.
They had always simply thought magic was amazing and had basically never associated it with any malicious intentions.
Still, Erika Chiba and Miyuki Shiba weren't particularly shaken. All one could say was that the Numbered Families were indeed inherently far more adaptable than these more ordinary students, and had seen much more.
"Is magic really just meant for slaughter?"
At Mizuki Shibata's question, everyone fell silent this time. Even Tatsuya Shiba didn't know what to say. After all, he was the most powerful destroyer among everyone present-at least, that was what he thought.
He had been subjected to military discipline since childhood, and his superiors had only taught him how to kill. No one considered such "childish" questions. All he wanted was to protect his little sister Miyuki, nothing more.
"Not necessarily. What magic is used for depends on the person using it."
"Magic's strength lies in defying common sense!"
"Its existence turned people's previously established notions, knowledge, and every theory into a joke."
"But it has its good side too. Using magic to create, discover new energy sources, integrate magic with technology, and put it into practice in constructing houses and bridges would greatly accelerate society's development."
"There are many, many other things magic can be used for too."
Chiba Yeyou's words made magic seem less bloody to everyone than his earlier description had.
"Still, right now, it's mainly used for killing."
Chiba Yeyou changed tack, bringing the subject back to killing.
"Listen, you. That was a great speech. Don't give another one."
Erika Chiba rolled her eyes at Chiba Yeyou in exasperation.
They had all been engrossed in imagining magic being applied to every aspect of their lives, almost seeing that beautiful picture before them, only for Chiba Yeyou's remark about killing to drag them back to reality and club them over the head for good measure.
It was easy to imagine how awful that felt.
Facing the group's somewhat reproachful looks, Chiba Yeyou merely smiled faintly.
"It's cruel, but it's reality."
"To reach the point I described, we'd first have to resolve the conflict between magicians and ordinary people."
"That's the biggest obstacle right now."
Everyone agreed with Chiba Yeyou's words. This conflict had existed ever since magic appeared, erupting into clashes from time to time. Governments had no desire to intervene and sometimes even fanned the flames to achieve their own aims.
Completely resolving this issue would be a long and difficult task.
Even among magicians, some people treated magicians as weapons.
In short, there were troubles both within and without.
"Is your goal to compress magic to a certain degree and achieve a certain degree of control, then use it to snipe a particular area or a specific target?"
Tatsuya Shiba had been thinking about the issue of miniaturizing large-scale magic all along.
Normally, the effects of large-scale magic were beyond comparison with small-scale magic, and they were used in different situations, which meant they served different functions.
In that case, wouldn't it be better to simply develop a new kind of magic?
Why insist on miniaturizing large-scale magic?
Wasn't that putting the cart before the horse?
But judging by his interactions with Chiba Yeyou, his goal definitely wasn't that simple. Yet Tatsuya Shiba couldn't figure it out at the moment.
"No!"
"The ideal state would be to force large-scale magic down to less than one centimeter in diameter, then calculate the coordinates and release the magic directly inside the target's body. That's the first stage."
"The second stage concerns how the magic detonates: it's divided into single-target killing and timed group killing."
As Chiba Yeyou finished speaking, a chill ran through the group.
How was that any different from throwing a bomb inside someone's body?
There was a huge difference!
Even strapping a bomb onto someone took some hands-on work, didn't it?
Wouldn't using magic directly be even more... huh?
Wait!
How many variables would you have to calculate to do something like that?
Even a computer's CPU would probably start smoking.
"That idea of yours is completely impossible. There are too many uncontrollable variables-a ridiculous number of them. It's simply not something a human could do."
Erika Chiba wore an expression that said his idea was nothing but a white elephant.
"Not necessarily!"