Project Necro is an official initiative by Re:Library.

It took a whole hour just to clear up Medu-chan’s misunderstanding, and even though all I did was talk, I was completely exhausted.
Part of the confusion came from the fact that we were both speaking English, which isn’t our native tongue. But the biggest reason was that Medu-chan was juuuust a little intoxicated by the whole thing and wasn’t really making sense.

Once she understood, Medu-chan looked terribly sad. But when I said I intended to stay overnight at the hideout, she shrieked, bolted straight into a wall, and passed out again.
This girl is scary. To put it mildly—she’s totally lost her mind.

I had already planned to get involved with the Arinātaya Liberation Front, so staying over was part of the plan, though it feels like things got fast-tracked.
Honestly, she was so terrifying that I couldn’t even tell her I had a wife. I had no idea what might happen if I said it out loud.

Still, as one of Shiori’s chosen candidates for branch leader, she ticked all the boxes—beautiful, hardworking, passionate. She declared she’d do anything in psychic training, and when it came to welcoming me into the hideout, she even gave a fiery speech to persuade her hesitant subordinates, who were put off by their boss’s indecency.

She had the drive and the track record.
And yet, this unease wouldn’t go away.
It didn’t feel like storm clouds gathering. It felt like it was already pouring down rain.

While Medu-chan was blatantly acting like my girlfriend, humming as she stood in the kitchen preparing a homemade meal and asking about my tastes, I slipped off to a corner of the hideout to call Shiori. *Help me!*
After hearing the whole story, Shiori seemed to think for a while.

“Sorry, I know things must be tough for you too. But do you actually have the time for this? What were you doing?”
“The Pantomime Fundamentalist Organization attacked the Cologne Cultural Arts Center and staged a guerrilla play. I’m backstage watching with Adelheid-chan, the German branch leader candidate.”
“Uh…?”

Yeah, I have no idea what she’s talking about either.
I’d thought the Middle Eastern Marlstān branch was the troublesome one, but it seems the German branch is tangled up in some major nonsense too. If I’d gone to Germany, I’d be tearing my hair out as well. Same difference.

“I know I’m the one asking for help, but are you sure you’re fine over there? If you need backup, just say so.”
“No problem. You already transplanted the psychic source, remember? That’s plenty. Anyway, about Medu-chan…”

Shiori said she believed Medu-chan could be rehabilitated.
According to Rin—our daughter from the future—Medu Sagrogo reforms under Sago Kinehiko’s guidance and becomes the Marlstān branch leader. Supposedly, she’s the most loyal and upright subordinate who saved the secret organization from collapse multiple times.
Okay, I can see the loyal part. But where the hell is the “upright” part?

“The future branches and changes, so it’s not guaranteed. But the chances of her reforming should be very high. She’s endured enough trials and worked hard enough that she deserves to be rewarded… Still, if you don’t like it, we can switch to another candidate.”
“Ah…”

Sure, Medu-chan definitely has issues with her personality. But she’s suffered plenty.
And if an adult doesn’t give a struggling child a dream to hold onto, then who will?
If I ditched her now and switched candidates, Medu-chan and the Arinātaya Liberation Front would spend their youth as nothing more than a band of orphans, desperately fighting just to survive.
And if they did, would they grow up remembering childhood fondly? Not a chance. They’d become adults who could only think, If only things had been different… If only someone had reached out to us, saved us. And that’s sad.

The truth is, once you’ve grown, you’d look back on your childhood and regret a lot.
If only I had studied harder.
If only I’d listened to my parents.
Or the opposite—if only I hadn’t studied so much and taken a hobby instead. If only I’d ignored what my parents dictated for me. So on and so forth.
Even I sometimes think: If only I’d started a secret organization back in school. Things are plenty fun now, but if only I actually started this organization all the way back then, it would have been so much more fun.

I can take that kind of regret away from Medu-chan.
Yeah, her tastes are… let’s just say… deeply concerning. But if she really has a shot at reform, that’s enough to motivate me.

“How about it? Do you think you can manage?”
“I’ll do it.”
“Good. Oh, but no cheating, okay?”
“Got it. If I feel like cheating, I’ll cheat with you, Shiori.”

Shiori chuckled softly at that. Forgive me for being too embarrassed to say “I love you” straight out. Even that line was mortifying enough that I couldn’t say it in public.

When I hung up, Medu-chan—fidgeting with the tips of her chestnut hair—ushered me to the dining table. Not the Liberation Front’s usual long workbench covered with soup and bread, but a round table draped with a white sheet for a tablecloth, set with a fancy meat dish and even a wine bottle.
Sniffing the bottle, I realized it was actually tomato juice. She didn’t need to try that hard to keep up appearances.

If she had the energy to fuss over me like this, she should’ve given her comrades more food. The difference between my table and theirs—just bread and vegetable soup—was brutal. *Don’t force your comrades to go without just to play hostess!*
*See, the kids are glaring daggers at me already. Doesn’t she know how terrifying food envy can be?*

I turned to Medu-chan, who was pressed up against my side like some kind of personal waitress.

“I don’t need all this. Just a bite’s enough. Share the rest.”
“As expected of Lord Invisible Titan, how kind! But I want you to eat it all. I worked so hard just to hear you say it’s delicious!”

Well… maybe I shouldn’t throw her good will back in her face. I’ll sneak the kids something later.

“What happened to your hand?”
“Eh!? My hand? Oh, um, I just cut it a little. Hehe, eheh.”

I pressed a PSI drive, charged with Ig’s blood-fuel, against her scarred hand to heal it. Medu-chan immediately contorted her face in silent, forbidden ecstasy. So that’s what happens when someone’s happiness breaks past its limit? …I didn’t need to know that.

Not wanting to waste time worrying about her antics, I dug into the meal. She had asked in advance about my likes and dislikes, and although she used local ingredients and methods, she somehow managed to make the dishes taste vaguely Japanese.
Every dish, though, carried the faint taste of blood.

………
Yeah, I’ll be preparing my own meals starting tomorrow.

*Now I get it.*
*This is a race—whether my spirit breaks first, or Medu-chan reforms first.*
*Am I ready? I’m more than ready to throw in the towel!*

Since I had already transplanted the psychic source into her, training could begin immediately.
After one night at the Liberation Front hideout, by the next day the source had already settled in her body. From the way it felt, it was probably an ocular-type ability.
Ocular abilities are fairly common—they change the color of the user’s eyes when activated, making them very obvious.
I led Medu-chan down into the hideout basement and began her secret training.

“Fu… fufufufufu, just the two of us, what could you possibly—? No! It’s fine, I’m ready…!”
“We’re doing psychic training.”
“Oh, training, huh…”

She drooped, quickly buttoning up the uniform she’d started to undo. Seriously, what else did she think we were gonna do?

“Wait, are you saying you’ll personally train me, Lord Invisible Titan?”
“You don’t want that?”
“No way!!!”

Her denial was so loud it nearly destroyed the basement.
Thought so.

“B-but, if I may… wouldn’t it help if I had, um, a goal? Like, a reward after training? I mean, of course I’ll do anything if you just command me! But still…! Something small! Just a little! Please!”
“Hm. Sure. What do you want? Say it.”
“Really!? Then I want you to have se—”
“Okay, fine, if you work hard at training, I’ll pat your head.”
“I’ll give it my all!!!”

Training, begin!

Medu-chan’s ability turned out to be, as expected, an Evil Eye power. When she used it, her black eyes changed to gold.
On the first day, the moment she activated it she ran out of strength, yet still tried to force it, ending up bleeding from her eyes.
Seeing her smiling energetically through tears of blood, saying “I did my best!”, was something I really wanted her to stop. It was bad for her body, outright horrifying, and made me seriously worried.
I patted her head since I promised, but “doing your best” doesn’t mean pushing yourself to the point of breaking your own body.
What kind of upbringing did her parents give her, anyway…
…oh, right, she didn’t have parents.

There’s no need for tricks to boost basic ability. Simply pushing her power to the limit makes her grow.
The first day of training ended instantly, and the next day was canceled due to growing pains. When I’m at the hideout, Medu-chan clings to me, fussing over me and constantly demanding attention to the point of ignoring everything else, so on her recovery days I went outside for behind-the-scenes maneuvering and preparations.

On the second, fourth, and sixth training days, I used a high-sensitivity camera to measure how long she could sustain her Evil Eye activation. The results: 0.43 seconds → 0.54 seconds → 0.67 seconds.
That’s a growth rate of 1.25 times, improving once every two days. I figured out at least that it’s the type of ability that grows in duration with basic training. I’ve raised plenty of espers before, so extracting this baseline data is smooth by now.

Apparently uneasy from not feeling much progress, Medu-chan clung to me crying, “Please don’t abandon me, I’ll try harder!” But it was way too soon to panic. I told her not to worry, that everyone’s like this at the start, and she calmed down.

In fact, her growth rate was pretty average. Not knowing exactly what her ability did yet wasn’t something to worry about either.
Shiori, for example, took nearly a whole month before she even realized her power was time-stop. Six days in and still not knowing is basically nothing.

Since we didn’t know what the evil eyes did, I prepared some items: water (to check temperature changes), nails (for inanimate/metal transformation), fluff (for levitation, telekinesis, ignition), and mice (for biological interference). We continued “glare practice” lasting less than a second a day.

On the tenth day, we saw results. A mouse running around its cage suddenly froze under her glare.
Closer inspection showed that although it stopped moving, it still had body heat, was breathing, and its heart was beating. No blinking. Even tugging its whiskers or picking it up by the tail got no reaction. Meanwhile, the water, nails, and fluff she glared at showed no change.
Apparently she had paralyzed it. Even when Medu cut her gaze and left the basement, the paralysis continued, wearing off on its own after about half a day. Once paralyzed, the effect stayed until time naturally ended, no need to keep glaring.

*A paralyzing Evil Eye against living creatures, huh.*
*Can I call it strong?*

I mean, it’s strong, yeah—but really only specialized for fighting people. It doesn’t work on inanimate things like World Shadow. Fighting that will need a lot of ingenuity. I’ll have to rethink her training plan.
Maybe amplification with a PSI Drive could even let her paralyze nonliving things (?).

The target for establishing the Marlstān branch was about two months ≒ 60 days. If we assume growth every other day, that’s 30 increments. If she never hits a growth cap, dedicates everything to basics, and keeps her 1.25x rate, then by the final day of the event Medu-chan should be able to paralyze with her evil eyes for a total of 274 seconds per day.
Considering Shiori can already fight decently with just 44 seconds of time-stop, there’s no need to stretch her basics all the way to 274. Even around 30 seconds (likely after 20 increments, i.e. 5 weeks), she’ll be fine.

So: 20 increments (five weeks) on basics, then move on to applications.
I’ll put in an order to Kaneyama Tech now for a PSI Drive just for Medu-chan, and once it arrives, she’ll equip it to make up for the lack of training and close out the event in style.
That’s the roadmap. The events we prepare will change according to Medu-chan’s growth.

Since it’s an Evil Eye type, we’ll need props suited for that in her applied training.
In my free time I prepared things like 3D picture books, eye drops, tinted glasses, 3D glasses, contact lenses, and vision test kits. Marlstān’s distribution network is weaker than Japan’s or America’s—you can’t just make a phone call and get whatever you want delivered instantly.

On top of that, I also made contact with Baba’s pure-blood Japanese former-terrorist squad that had arrived in Marlstān, giving them instructions to bring the conflict to an end.

Even in this short stay in Marlstān, it became clear to me that as long as the fighting continued, there was no way we could have a fun, exciting psychic youth story here. With robberies, rapes, murders, shootings constantly happening, and the city so dangerous you could literally bump into a toast-in-mouth old man just by running around—there was no “fun” to be had.
The conflict must end. That’s non-negotiable.

Of course, if it were that easy to end, Marlstān wouldn’t have been stuck in conflict for five years. It’s not something an individual, a bunch of kids, or even a small group can stop.
It would be incredibly dramatic and cool if newly awakened Medu-chan ended the conflict with her own hands, but I’d had enough of that in New York.
Paula fought against a nasty, competent old man backed by big corporations and cult, and she was left in tatters, nearly dead. If a little girl tried to solve the conflict here, she’d die too.

Which is where I come in—an excessive violence device that goes beyond nations, beyond Earth itself, to the scale of the cosmos.

Conflict.
In other words: violence.
That’s my specialty.
Far easier to deal with than trickery-filled challenges like St. Germain.

Among the warring factions, I’d send the Japanese-made former-terrorists into the least-bad group, have them cooperate, give them technical guidance, and set them up as the hub for material supply and financial support. Funding would be handled by Ruu-denka, and Raincoat Inc. would pitch in too. This is the security of having both a nation and a major corporation backing us.

And when clashes happen, I’d step in with psychokinetic support.
Psychokinetic support.
Which means guaranteed victory.
Thus, in the middle of the conflict, a mysterious undefeated faction with endless resources would be born.

Political ideologies, economic balances, poverty—there are always tangled, messy causes behind conflicts.
But overwhelming violence can crush all violence, forcefully ending the conflict itself.
After that, we just need to keep up a strong-arm presence while letting the locals slowly solve the underlying issues themselves, so it doesn’t flare up again.

All the bloody struggles with society’s darkness will be handled by me and the Japanese-made former-terrorists.
Teenagers should live out bright, youthful adolescent days. That’s what I want to see—that’s why I run this secret organization.

Unaware of the schemes I was weaving behind the scenes, Medu-chan’s training went smoothly.
The second turning point came on the 20th day of training.
A paralyzed mouse turned to stone.

Testing showed that glaring for one second caused paralysis, and three seconds caused petrification.
And unlike paralysis, petrification didn’t wear off naturally. Since the whole body was transformed to stone down to the core, no medicine or surgery could help.
Loading Ig’s blood into a PSI Drive cured it, so it wasn’t completely untreatable—but it was essentially a one-hit-kill unless you had esper healing.

Medu-chan’s “glare” didn’t require direct eye contact with the target.
Even if most of the mouse’s body was hidden, glaring at just the tip of its tail for three seconds would petrify the entire thing.
Range was unlimited, as long as she could clearly focus her sight.
But through video, mirrors, or binoculars, paralysis or petrification wouldn’t work.
And as usual, espers are resistant to their own powers—she couldn’t petrify herself with a mirror.

It really was specialized against living beings.
At long range, glaring from hiding, she could probably beat anyone. Even my barrier might not block it. My barrier can shut out electromagnetic waves, radiation, even excessively strong light—but I wasn’t confident it could cut off a petrifying gaze. I hesitated to even test it. Injury or pain I could handle, but turning completely to stone—that’s something I was genuinely afraid of.

The petrifying eyes were simply powerful. Just a one-second glare paralyzed, leading into petrification, practically a literal “came, saw, conquered” ability.
From paralysis to full petrification gave only two seconds’ grace, and the horror of seeing one’s body freeze into stone from the feet up made for excellent intimidation.

Still, it wasn’t well-suited for fighting the World Shadow. *What the hell should I do?*
It worked on weeds too, so apparently any living thing could be petrified, not just animals. Maybe I could grow some kind of World Shadow subspecies made of petrified weed balls…?

As I was scribbling ideas into my notebook in the basement after training, military-uniformed Medu-chan asked me in a stiff tone:

“Lord Invisible Titan—”
“Just call me Sago. It’s getting hard to say, isn’t it?”
“……”

Suddenly she fell silent—and then fainted again.
Please get used to it already. Your reactions are way too much.

“Wake up. How many times does this make now?”
“!? Th-thank you very much!”

I slapped her cheek and she woke up, looking dreamy. *Terrifying.*
Seriously, my spirit’s going to break soon.

If someone has a good heart, I can overlook their flaws. But with Medu-chan, I wasn’t sure.
She paralyzed every single Liberation Front comrade who complained about a shady Japanese guy loitering around, and once even petrified one, forcing me to use a PSI Drive to fix them. When scolded, she’d act meek and contrite on the spot, but never actually changed her behavior.
Apparently, she couldn’t tolerate any criticism or insults of Invisible Titan, no matter how trivial.

Will Medu-chan really reform? In the future they say I reformed her, so there must be a method, but no matter how I thought, I couldn’t figure it out.
Shouta-kun was reformed by a scripted defeat event, but I couldn’t see Medu-chan changing that way. Should I try it anyway? If nothing changed, I’d have to consider stripping her powers. Fan or not, at this rate she was dangerous.

“Lord Sago?”
“Hmm? Oh, you have something to say?”

I turned to her again—and noticed for the first time that she looked different than a few days ago.
Different, as in… makeup. *Damn brat’s trying to look sexy… I wanted to tell her it was pointless since I already had a wife, but I felt like she’d snap if I did. What the hell was this situation?*

“Lord Sago, can you nullify my ability? Or reflect it? I’d like to know for my training.”
“No idea. Haven’t tested it. Chances are high I can do neither.”
“? There’s no way my petty ability could affect Lord Sago.”
“No, espers have compatibilities and exceptions—”
“No. It won’t work. Lord Sago is the absolutely invincible esper.”

Medu-chan declared it firmly, like delivering a divine oracle.
*Great, she knows about me more than myself now?*

“Uh… I won’t deny I’m the strongest, but I do have weaknesses. I’m not invincible—”
“Lord Sago wouldn’t say such weak things. Lord Sago is stronger than anyone, amazing, cool, and eternal.”

We were conversing, but not communicating. *Terrifying!*
As I teetered on the edge of giving up on this troublesome fan, Medu-chan’s eyes turned gold and she smiled at me.

“I want to see Lord Sago’s strength!”
“…Huh? …!?!”

*Hey.*
*Hey!!
*Stop!*
*Stop that!!*
*What the hell, I can’t move!!*

*You idiot, what the hell are you doing?! There are lines you don’t cross!! Yeah, a PSI Drive can heal it but no, I haven’t even taught you how to activate it yet, the lock password’s still on—this has to be a joke! Damn it, maybe I’ll have to blast her away with telekinesis to force a break—*

The two seconds between paralysis and petrification was far too short.

Caught off guard by the sudden fanatical ambush, hesitation cost me. My body froze completely, and my vision was swallowed by pitch darkness.