Academy City's Weather Report! (Toaru)

Chapter 468: Academy City Weather Report! - 468

Round and round it went, the clues about the mastermind led back once again to a student of Tokiwadai, pointing directly at the target without a hint of surprise.

This sensation of seeing the truth left Shokuhou Misaki feeling strangely unsettled. It was as if that person, Mitsuari Ayu, was watching her now through Houjou Arei's memories, a faint, mocking smile playing on her lips.

'What an utterly unlikable smile,' she thought. 'Did she anticipate from the very start that Houjou Arei's memories might be read by me?'

'No,' she corrected herself.

'It's more accurate to say that once her plan was set in motion, it inherently carried the possibilities of both failure and success. The chance of me reading those memories was an inevitable variable. But to so brazenly lay everything out for me like this... that's just downright arrogant.'

Resting her chin in her hand, the plump flesh of Shokuhou's cheek twitched slightly, as if she had seen right through the other party's little game.

Come to think of it, in Shokuhou Misaki's recollection, that Mitsuari Ayu also seemed to be a remnant who had left the Clone Dolly laboratory.

Or rather, after the original Clone Dolly facility collapsed, most of the students Level 3 and above, including Shokuhou Misaki herself, had been essentially packaged off to Tokiwadai Middle School.

That was the backdoor deal she had struck with that certain member of the Board of Directors behind Tokiwadai.

However, Shokuhou's own position within the Clone Dolly system was somewhat special. She belonged to the Exterior component of the project, and thus her interactions with the vast majority of students involved in the Internal Evolution project were quite limited.

Though, her acquaintance with Hokaze Junko could also be traced back to that period.

'From the intelligence gleaned from Houjou Arei, it's clear that the plan to kidnap me was only one part of their operation. Even the attack on Sonoko-chan seems to be nothing more than a bold, supplementary move to deal with an unforeseen, uncontrollable factor.'

'The subsequent action was to have me read a specific Indian Poker card customized by Mitsuari Ayu. From this, it's reasonable to conclude their goal was... to brainwash me.'

A peculiar expression surfaced on her face. Shokuhou Misaki felt severely insulted on multiple levels, even more infuriated than by the attack on her person.

If the other party had targeted her physical weaknesses, her frail constitution or the like, Shokuhou could have grudgingly accepted it, as those were indeed her vulnerabilities.

But for them to specifically choose the method she herself excelled at, attempting something like brainwashing the Mental Out... it just left a sickly, disgusted taste in her mouth.

She was fairly confident she could resist the feeble brainwashing power within an Indian Poker card.

It was as if this so-called mastermind had some perverse desire to see her humiliated or submitting to her own desires.

Thinking this, Shokuhou unconsciously frowned. She found the pettiness of the other's malice rather pathetic.

But Shokuhou quickly realized something.

This idea of 'brainwashing' was merely Houjou Arei's own wishful thinking within her memories, a notion she formed after comprehending the operating principle of the Indian Poker.

What that mastermind, Mitsuari Ayu, truly intended might not be simple brainwashing at all, but rather something deeper, hidden within the card or its dreamscape.

More importantly, according to Houjou Arei's memory, those specially customized Indian Poker cards were being mass-produced by Mitsuari Ayu. If the goal was distribution, they had likely already achieved a significant scale.

And this part of the memory seemed to be corroborated by Shokuhou's own findings. She had recently come across some unusual Indian Poker cards, standing in stark contrast to the majority circulating around.

By treating the Indian Poker card, including the information inside it, as an extension of the human brain in the material world, and by creating an environment that induced the internal information to leak out, Shokuhou could obtain partial intelligence from the card without actually using it.

This was one practical application of her ability.

This method of reading allowed her to bypass the dream within the card—convenient and safe. She was merely reading the information left behind by the 'Dream Ranker,' the card's creator.

After all, recreating the dream required the cooperation of a brain, a process Shokuhou simply skipped.

However, on one particular, newly acquired card, she found specific countermeasures targeting her remote reading ability—technology that also originated from the Clone Dolly laboratory.

This act radiated a malice that couldn't be more obvious. And with today's attack, that malice had been laid bare—slapped right across Shokuhou Misaki's face.

'But we return to the earlier problem. The fact that Mitsuari Ayu could so openly impart this information to Houjou Arei is, in a way, equivalent to indirectly telling me.'

'Therefore, whether the kidnapping succeeded or not, she is guiding me to actively read the contents of these customized cards. The only difference is whether it's under her direct orchestration, or through my own initiative. And from this perspective, those anti-telepathy measures seem almost designed specifically to catch my attention.'

'Reading the card's information externally can, at best, only retrieve the portion of information that is guided out. It doesn't access the dreamscape itself. And this Mitsuari-san seems to have an intimate understanding of my abilities, even predicting my possible actions.'

'So, figuring out what exactly is recorded within those cards becomes crucial.'

Shokuhou Misaki pondered for a moment, a trace of seriousness appearing on her face.

She felt her deductions about this incident were largely on point, but her curiosity about those customized cards had only grown stronger.

She had considered finding a guinea pig to test the cards, or directly locating someone who had already used one.

But in reality, if Mitsuari Ayu had tampered with the dreamscape itself, reading another person's memory of that dream would be no different from experiencing the card directly.

And earlier, when Shokuhou was reading memories, she had consciously avoided the attackers' memories concerning the actual dream content of the cards.

'Wait... something feels off here.'

Shokuhou's expression froze abruptly. She seemed to have spotted a contradiction.

'We can already determine that the Indian Poker cards privately produced by Mitsuari Ayu are not the same batch currently widely circulating throughout Academy City.'

'Mitsuari Ayu seems more like a Dream Ranker, or someone who has latched onto the cards mid-process to commit misdeeds, rather than the true originator of the card distribution.'

Thinking this, a strange emotion welled up inside Shokuhou Misaki, akin to the feeling of having something she'd long wanted to do snatched away by someone else.

She could resist the immense power offered by the Indian Poker cards, but that didn't mean others could.

That Mitsuari Ayu also seemed to be a psychic-type esper. The specifics of her ability could likely be found by simply checking the school's records.

But once she reached this conclusion, the incident triggered by the Indian Poker cards seemed to have gained another layer of complexity, leaving Shokuhou feeling considerably more vexed.

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T/N: If you want advance chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL