A Scientific Urban Detective.

Chapter 1021 The Mage's Nemesis

"Touma!" Index shouted immediately upon seeing Orianna's actions, "Stop her!"

But it was too late. The two sides were too far apart, and Index and Touma Kamijou lacked long-range attack methods. So, while Touma Kamijou rushed forward, Oriana calmly took out a pen and quickly wrote a few strokes on a shorthand notepad.

Then he ripped the sticky note off.

In the alley that was clearly a dead end, a sudden gust of wind arose.

Kamijou Touma felt as if he had run into a wall of wind. Instead of moving forward, he was blown back several steps and almost fell to the ground.

Fortunately, he reacted quickly, instinctively swinging his right hand forward to wipe out the wind wall.

“‘Imagine Breaker’, it’s really amazing.” Orianna mumbled as she saw this.

She was seen scribbling notes in one hand and writing furiously with a pen in the other, while a torn piece of note was in her mouth.

Oriana moved swiftly, completing the construction in a few strokes, then deftly folded the note in half with one hand and threw it forward.

He then spat out what was wet with saliva from his mouth.

The ground bulged up, and stalagmites emerged from beneath the concrete road; at the same time, as if rain was falling, water droplets fell from the sky.

Feeling he had figured out the enemy's tactics, Touma Kamijou was not alarmed. He crouched down and swept his hand across the ground. The stalagmites crumbled as soon as they touched Imagine Breaker, just like piles of sand.

But just then, Touma heard Index's voice behind him: "Touma, there's something above your head..."

Without hesitation, Touma Kamijou immediately raised his right hand to protect the top of his head.

A series of crisp cracking sounds rang out as the crystal-clear ice needles lost their momentum and fell to the ground.

Upon seeing this, Touma Kamijou couldn't help but gasp – this was the true appearance of the water droplets that had just fallen from the sky.

—If you get pricked by this, it would probably hurt a lot, right?
Looking up again, I saw Oriana already writing furiously.

"Hiss..." Touma Kamijou felt a chill run down his spine—this guy's never going to stop!

Kamijou Touma is only good at close combat, so his tactical strategy is to rush up and throw a punch to knock out the enemy.

Unfortunately, Oriana gave him no chance at all.

While Touma Kamijou is frantically dealing with the previous spell, Oriana is already writing a new spell on a sticky note.

But her movements were incredibly fast. She claimed to be "writing magic," but it felt more like she was simply signing a note. Her movements were so skillful and swift that it didn't take her much time at all.

Touma Kamijou tried many times, but he was unable to break through the enemy's magical barrier and was firmly restricted to a position ten meters away from Oriana.

Some special spells can even knock you back a distance.

This is also what Touma Kamijou finds difficult to understand; judging solely by the magical effects, he is completely unable to categorize Orianna.

Orianna wields all four elements—fire, wind, water, and earth—with ease, and even possesses eerie magical effects such as lightning and laser-like phenomena.

After several rounds of combat, Touma Kamijou realized he was completely unable to summarize or categorize his opponent's fighting style and tactics. If it weren't for Index occasionally offering reminders from behind, Touma felt he might not have been able to handle several of the spells.

"Touma, take two steps back!" Index's voice came again.

Without the slightest hesitation, Touma Kamijou retreated in two quick steps.

Immediately afterwards, I saw an unexplained explosion occur at the spot where I had just been standing.

Although he didn't see any flames, the loud explosion and shockwave still left Touma Kamijou feeling shaken.

—What kind of magic is this? This Oriana is far too troublesome!
No matter how resilient his personality is, he becomes a target and is bombarded by the enemy, yet he cannot advance even a single step—this situation frustrates Touma Kamijou.

On the other side, Oriana also felt disgusted, thinking that the opposing team was being completely unreasonable and was simply cheating!

Although Orianna didn't go all out in order to better test Touma Kamijou's strength, it shouldn't have been that after fighting for so long, her notepad was already thin, while her opponent was completely unharmed.

Oriana even felt that she was wasting her time and creativity, and that it was not worth the effort.

However, there were gains as well—at least the mission of "testing Touma Kamijou's strength" can be considered a complete success.

As it turns out, "Imagine Breaker" is indeed as magical as the legends say, indiscriminately erasing all magical effects.

Using her "Shorthand Text" ability, Orianna cast almost every type of elemental and special magic, but all of them were directly canceled out by that right hand without exception!

At this point, Orianna felt she could draw a conclusion: "Imagine Breaker" was indeed not to be underestimated; it could almost be called "the nemesis of sorcerers."

The reason for adding the qualifier "almost" is that while "Imagine Breaker" may be perfect, Touma Kamijou himself is not without flaws.

At least in Oriana's view, she had plenty of ways to defeat this boy...

If it weren't for the "List of Banned Books" causing trouble.

That's right. The reason why Touma Kamijou is still unharmed after the battle is so far is because Index is supporting him from behind.

Index indeed lacks any direct combat ability and is unable to intervene in the battle between Touma and Orianna; however, the knowledge of the 103,000 original magical books in her mind, as well as her expert eyesight, are her most powerful weapons at this moment.

As she observed, Index gained a deeper understanding of Oriana's magical "Shorthand Codex".

Although she couldn't yet decipher what she had written on the notepad, Index was able to roughly determine the type of magic and even the direction of the attack the moment it was activated, based on her every move and the movement of the pen as she wrote.

Then, all that's needed is to convey this information to Touma Kamijou, so that he can escape danger and either avoid or use Imagine Breaker to nullify the enemy's magic.

Of course, in the heat of battle, opportunities are fleeting, and Index couldn't be too detailed in her intelligence—after all, she didn't have skills like "high-speed divine speech"—so she could only simplify it to broad commands like "left," "right," "backward," and "jump."

Fortunately, Touma Kamijou is also very perceptive of fighter jets and crises, and his tacit understanding with Index almost perfectly compensates for the accuracy issues of broad commands.

If Touma Kamijou is "almost" a "magician's nemesis," then adding "A Certain Scientific Railgun" to the mix makes them a truly formidable "nemesis."

(End of this chapter)