Project Necro is an official initiative by Re:Library.

On this day—September 5th—the members of the revolutionary organization whispered to each other that it would surely be remembered as a historic day for Marlstān.
The conflict that had dragged on for five long years was finally coming to an end.

The military regime, which had seized power by establishing a provisional government and ruling with an iron fist, had been weakened and cornered by resistance movements across the country. Their last stronghold was the headquarters in the capital, Arinātaya, now completely surrounded with no escape route left.
The success of the revolution was no longer in doubt. The only question was how to minimize the sacrifices.

At the operations headquarters, one of the organization’s leaders, Hishām, sat at the desk, arms crossed, listening to the endless stream of reports, deep in thought.
There were two major uncertainties looming over the revolution.

The first was the difficulty of evacuating civilians.
The sheer population size alone made it complicated. Many refused to leave their homes, fearing looters in the lawless streets. Others worried that military regime members might slip out disguised as civilians.
In the end, the safest course was to instruct everyone to lock themselves inside their homes.

The second uncertainty was the possible interference of the World Shadow.
Hishām and a handful of other leaders knew of its existence. They also knew that only one girl could stand against the monstrous threat, which grew fat on the grief and fury of war.
If Medu Sagrogo failed to defeat the World Shadow, then even if the military regime fell, the conflict would inevitably reignite.

The future of Marlstān rested on the small shoulders of that one girl.
And that was what Hishām found so shameful.
To burden a child with the debts of adults… how pitiful. What kind of era was this, where a child who ought to be protected and loved by her parents instead had to risk her life in a fight for the nation’s survival?

But to end this tragic age, there was no choice but to see it through.
Faith was all they had. They had sworn to do their best; the rest was left to God.
At least Medu Sagrogo was bravely facing her fate head-on.
And—she had comrades she could rely on.

Before the final battle, I handed Medu-chan a single-use ultimate weapon.
The PSI Drive I’d ordered from Kaneyama Tech had finally arrived.

I’d sent her blood in advance so they could build a prototype, but fixing the defects had taken so long that the delivery barely made it in time for the decisive fight.
The problem was that Medu-chan’s petrification ability, when amplified by the PSI Drive, ended up turning the drive’s internal components to stone.
With amplification, her petrification could affect not only living beings but inanimate matter as well.

It sounded absurdly powerful, but it had downsides.
First, the instant it was activated, the PSI Drive itself would inevitably turn to stone, making it disposable. A multimillion-unit custom-made precision device, reduced to a rock after a single use. Ridiculous.
And since Ig’s healing worked only on living things, once petrified, the drive could never be restored.

The second weakness was that air itself turned to stone.
If it could petrify inanimate matter, then of course air was no exception. The moment of activation, the air at the firing point would petrify, cutting off the line of effect, limiting the effective range to about 0.3 mm.
So unless you pressed the telescope-shaped PSI Drive directly against the target and fired at point-blank range, it would basically self-destruct.

They were apparently still researching whether the drive could instead be made to output her ability at normal strength, not amplified, so it could paralyze or petrify only living things. That version would’ve been much more practical, but it wasn’t ready in time for the battle.

“…That’s how it works. Think carefully about when to use it.”
“C-can I really have something like this?”
“Yeah.”

Medu-chan’s voice trembled with gratitude as she received the telescope-type PSI Drive, and she tried to tuck it away into her treasure chest.
*Wait, wait, wait.*

“Medu, that’s not for storage—it’s for use.”
“Eh… but there’s only one. Isn’t it a collector’s item?”

What is this, the ‘one to use, one to show, one to keep sealed’ mindset?
Forget that. Just use it.

Hesitant, she strapped the PSI Drive to her thigh with a belt. She was fully kitted out—combat uniform weighed down with a stone-breaking hammer, smoke grenades, fragmentation grenades, night-vision goggles, rations, a first-aid kit, and a combat knife.
I watched her leave the hideout, and behind her trailed the children of the Arinātaya Liberation Front, determined expressions on their faces.
They insisted on going with her and refused to listen.

Only Marlstān-born espers could enter the Sanctuary where the World Shadow was sealed, so they would be useless once there. Even so, they refused to let her go alone. They swore they had to help somehow.

Yup. I like that kind of spirit.
Warnings, logic, restrictions—they threw them all aside. Because they couldn’t let their leader go alone. They just had to do something.
That was Medu-chan’s charisma at work. The days they had survived together as the Liberation Front must have been that precious to them.

I’d love to let their courage and friendship shine in the actual fight, but managing the Shadow, maintaining clairvoyance, and keeping dozens of kids safe all at once during the final battle would be impossible for me. I don’t have that much brainpower.
So, I arranged for them to bow out dramatically along the way.
I contacted the Japan-made former-terrorist Fushimi.

The Sanctuary lay beyond a hidden mountain entrance near Arinātaya. A rockslide that very morning had revealed it.
Guided by my map, Medu-chan and the others headed there—only to stumble across five soldiers trying to fix a broken-down military vehicle in the wasteland.

Both sides froze, weapons raised.

Damn it! What are the odds!?
Who would have thought that they’d come across soldiers escaping through a hole that had somehow opened up in the revolutionary organization’s siege of the capital!
Their guns were jammed, their bombs damp, their knives stuck in their sheaths—but still, soldiers!

Five against forty! Who would win…?!

The Liberation kids threw themselves in front of Medu-chan to shield her.
With her comrades in her line of sight, Medu-chan couldn’t freely use her power, but that wasn’t a bad move.
All five soldiers trained their guns on her. The Liberation kids didn’t know their guns were useless, but they knew that if Medu-chan petrified one soldier, the other four might gun her down before she finished.

While the soldiers, hated by civilians, knew there could be no reconciliation. If they ran, they’d be chased down and beaten or reported and hunted.

So they glared at each other, locked in a standoff.
The children believed they’d be shot if they made any movement, while the soldiers estimated that they couldn’t win 40 against 5 with all their equipment malfunctioning. Neither side dared move.

But this couldn’t go on forever.
Medu-chan couldn’t afford to waste time. If she didn’t defeat the Shadow before the conflict ended, the war would only flare up again.

The deadlock broke when one girl hurled her canteen at the soldiers.
The children rushed in, shields of wood and scrap in hand, raising war cries.
Though overwhelmed by numbers, the trained soldiers fought back fiercely, peeling the kids off as they swarmed.

In the chaos, Medu-chan hesitated, flustered, until her comrades shouted at her.
Medu-chan tried to say something back, but when her comrade told her off again, she made up her mind and started running towards the Sanctuary — the site of the Final Battle.

*…Wait.*
*Did they just say “Leave this to us—go on ahead”?*
***That** line!?*
*Damn, I should’ve studied Pashto!*

The sanctuary where the final battle will take place is located in a large chamber, reached through a cavern in the mountainside.
At its center stood a temple, coiled with a writhing mass of the World Shadow. The glowing rocks (actually LED-fitted plastic props, ¥12,000 each) provided dim light.
The cavern entrance was sealed by a strange, glassy membrane—a barrier.

Medu-chan cautiously made her way through the cavern before stopping in front of the barrier, seemingly trembling at the Shadow beyond.
Terrifying, huh? Not like it particularly had a scary appearance or anything. It was simply grotesquely huge. I mean, that thing is ten meters tall.

The Shadow that Shouta-kun and Touka-chan once faced was fifty meters. The Invisible Titan fought one six hundred meters long. For a girl who had been an esper for only two months to fight one alone, ten meters seemed fair. Maybe.
Still, its volume was equal to the water in a 25-meter pool—if such a thing lunged with intent, you’d die. Maybe it couldn’t destroy a country, but it definitely could bulldoze through a single city. Bullets would be ineffective, and most convenient explosives wouldn’t even reach its core.

Then again, even if the worst came to worst, that is, Medu-chan lost and got absorbed into it, the secret organization’s ultra powerful boss would break through the barrier with psychokinesis and save her, so the only outcome here is victory. Besides, this is all rigged, large-scale, real-life play-pretend anyway, so winning or losing barely even mattered.
So really, just go all out and fight it. It’s not everyday you’re locked in a battle of destiny where you throw everything you have against a giant foe with your psychic powers.

For now, the moment Medu-chan stepped through the barrier, the Shadow would unleash its fury—
—or so it was supposed to go. Instead, Medu-chan glared at it through the barrier.
Sure enough, the barrier turned to stone.

*Hey, hey, hey, don’t try to cheese the fight!*
*Sure, it’d be a secure victory if she could petrify it from outside its parameters, but if her fight was as simple as “I Came, I Saw, I Conquered,” then there would be no point in me setting up the whole Final Battle!*

“Tch! Damn it.”

Medu-chan clicked her tongue, then hammered away at the petrified barrier with a small hammer. *Yes, you have a brilliant strategy, but you’re running the whole tempo. Please don’t do that.*

Once she broke a hole big enough to crawl through, Medu-chan tossed in a smoke grenade, dropped her night-vision goggles and charged in.
*Hnnggh! She’s smart! And I can’t see s̲h̲i̲t̲!*

I’m using my telekinetic clairvoyance to see the battlefield from a bird’s eye view, but clairvoyance is heavily optical. With a smokescreen, I’d easily lose sight of my target.
But! This is expressly why I’ve trained my psychokinesis in all sorts of ways. I can sense my opponents even if they’re completely invisible.
As I concentrated on using my psychokinesis to sense weight, my senses caught an object weighing 46 kilograms running from the entrance straight to the temple.

*Hah! I see you!*

“Ugh!”

Right as she was about close in on to the temple, a thin, roaring tendril lashed through the smoke, smacking her aside. Unable to properly take a defensive stance, Medu-chan stumbled across the cavern floor.
Having manipulated the World Shadow for so long, I know how to perfectly pull my punches. That was one perfect blow, it sent her flying without breaking any bones or leaving any bruises.

The flailing tendrils howled through the smoke, and so Medu-chan decided to crawl under them instead. Since I sensed her through her weight, crawling made her even more visible to me, but hitting her in this situation would just corner Medu-chan too much, hence I decided I didn’t know where she was.
*Damned it all~ I lost sight of her again~ Where, oh, where could you be~ You must be somewhere around here~ All this smoke is so annoying~*

Before the smoke fully cleared, Medu-chan crawled to the back of the temple, using it as a cover, and began glaring at the tendrils from safety.
The Shadow froze, petrified, then sloughed off its shell and attacked again.
After which, Medu-chan used the temple to cover from those attacks, then glared at the Shadow again.
And that cycle repeated.

That was a simple and effective tactic. I secretly extended a tendril across the floor to launch a surprise attack by her feet, but she noticed it and promptly turned the Shadow into stone once again.
However, the stone temple walls shattered under the thrashing tentacles. Sure, she kept her petrifications up, and the World Shadow was clearly shrinking, but she herself must be on pins and needles. After all, if those tentacles could easily shatter stone structures, a clean hit on a human would mean instant death.

Also, though there were short intervals in between, for the first time Medu-chan used her Evil Eye repeatedly in a desperate fight against a large opponent. Within three minutes, she exhausted her psychic source and her Evil Eye could no longer be activated.
The World Shadow remained active. However, it had shrunk from 10 meters to 4 meters, and the tendrils it swung around became shorter, smaller, and thinner.

All that’s left is to twist a grenade into its body and detonate it. Explosions probably wouldn’t reach its core when it was at 10 meters, but the core would definitely shatter now that it was only 4 meters tall.
Medu-chan reached for the grenade on her waist. She tried to pull its pin—and then froze.
She strained, so much her face turned red, and yet the pin refused to move.

It had warped. The pin jammed.

Damn it!
I must’ve bent it when I delivered that first blow in the smoke. I’d been so focused on trying not to hurt her that I didn’t pay any attention to her gear.

*What now? You’re stuck, Medu-chan!*
*And I’m stuck too! I don’t know how to bring an end to this battle!*
*You know what, anything goes now! Just do something random, Medu-chan! It’ll just blow up in pieces on its own!*

Having lost her means of attack, Medu-chan panicked and tried to escape from the tendrils—only to trip on some rubble and crash face-first.

*Ugh, I mean…yeah.*
*If I attacked her now, she’d…yeah.*

It’d be weird if I attacked her while she was prone and she took no damage either way. After all, I already landed a weak hit in the smoke. Doing that twice would make it obvious that I’m being easy on her.
On the other hand, if I missed this golden opportunity and just waited until Medu-chan was back on her feet before the tendrils started attacking again, it would definitely look fake.

*…Absorb her, it is!*

I wrapped Medu-chan in tendrils and brought her into the World Shadow. Inside the watery body, I scraped at her psychic source with my psychokinesis.

“!!!!???”

Bubbles began to form in the water as Medu-chan screamed voicelessly.
The World Shadows prey on espers to gain power. The pain of having one’s psychic source damaged is indescribable. Shouta-kun had her entire personality changed, and Shiori writhed in agony in her natural voice.

Bullying her too much will only traumatize her, so I only scratched her psychic source once and prepared to rescue her.
I removed the barrier and tried using my psychokinesis to rescue Medu-chan and make the World Shadow implode, but before I could do any of that, the World Shadow petrified completely and slipped out of my control.

Hm?
…Oh, she activated her PSI drive.
I guess, even if it only had an effective range of 0.3mm, as long as it’s activated within the body of the World Shadow, range didn’t matter. It would completely turn into stone from the inside out.
Medu-chan herself would be trapped inside a stone, but the World Shadow would definitely be defeated.
A suicidal, self-sacrificing move.

Medu-chan had fought a 10-meter class World Shadow and brought it to a draw, all by herself.
*Yup. Excellent. Amazing, even!*

She probably did it while fully prepared to die, but sorry to spoil your resolution, because now is time for the forced happy ending.
With psychokinesis, I turned the stone sphere that trapped Medu-chan into sand and pulled her free. With the Shadow gone, the barrier dissolved and my powers could reach inside the sanctuary.
Finally exposed to air, Medu-chan gasped for oxygen, falling flat on her back.
As her breathing steadied, she scooped the sand in confusion, then shot upright.

“Lord Sago…?”

I answered, writing in the sand with psychokinesis:

“Well done. The Sanctuary’s role is over. It will collapse. Escape.”

She nodded, groaning, and staggered out of the sanctuary whilst clutching on her side..

Through my clairvoyance, I saw the military flag dragged down from the parliament building. The citizens cheered as they saw a flag of black snake with golden eyes now being raised in its place.

Thus, the small Middle Eastern nation of Marlstān was freed from conflict by its people.
And in secret, through a battle by a single young esper, was also freed from the World Shadow—this was an untold truth, hidden from textbooks, known only to a select few.