Project Necro is an official initiative by Re:Library.

If the ship you’re riding suddenly gets blown to smithereens in the middle of the Pacific, confusion is the normal reaction.
You wouldn’t understand what just happened. You’d panic, thrash around, scream, gulp down seawater, spiral further into frenzy, drown, sink, and die. Some people can’t swim at all. Others are bad at it. Even if you got good grades in swimming class, wearing clothes while being battered by waves and floating wreckage, you wouldn’t be able to use even ten percent of your actual swimming ability.

But there isn’t a single “normal” person among Amaterasu’s members. Every last one of them is used to hellish situations.
When our ship was pulverized by a catastrophic giant-cat paw strike and they were thrown into the sea, the way each Amaterasu member responded clearly reflected their abilities, experience, and personality.

The moment Shouta-kun was flung into the ocean and laid eyes on the giant cat, he immediately summoned and equipped the titanium-alloy combat armor midair. With his right hand he fired a freezing beam at the sea surface, creating pack ice to land on, and at the same time blasted the giant cat with a wave of cold air from his left hand. All of that took less than three seconds. That kind of monstrous combat aptitude made it possible.
Even if you foresaw the attack, pulling off moves like that wouldn’t be easy. Terrifying. I certainly wouldn’t be confident I could do it.

Touka-chan blasted away incoming wreckage with explosions and used flame jets to hover in place. Her eyes were darting around in agitation, but her body moved instinctively. As expected of one of Amaterasu’s oldest members.
Even while flying more than ten meters above the sea, she still had to look far up to see the giant cat towering overhead. She was stunned, guarding herself and staying alert, but seemed unsure what to do next. Maybe because this was a very different kind of threat from the Shadow she usually fights, she’d even forgotten to summon her combat armor. And she was muttering something rapidly under her breath. I couldn’t make out the words, but I knew exactly what she was chanting. Same as always.

Shiori, who had been standing on deck with me watching the ocean, was listening to my telekinetic wiretap-and-livestream in real time, so she had plenty of time to react. For Shiori, a “fleeting instant” means “a full forty-four seconds.” Apparently she stopped time just before the cruiser was destroyed, because in the moment after she thought the ship had been smashed, she was already standing on a lifeboat deployed slightly away from the exploding wreckage, gazing up at the giant cat with a grim expression.
Conscious of my clairvoyance, she gracefully raised her bracelet against the backdrop of the morning sun and transformed into her dress-based combat armor. She looked exactly like a magical girl.

Mikyou-chan was blown away while holding her smartphone, let out a cute scream, and nearly fell into the sea—but at the last second she barely managed to deploy a shadow cushion. She then formed a pitch-black yacht made of shadow, quickly spotted Ig about to drown, and extended a shadow arm to rescue her.
With the shivering, seawater-spraying Ig perched on her shoulder, she stared up at the giant cat with her mouth hanging open in shock.
It seemed Mikyou-chan had forgotten to summon her combat armor too. The bracelet-and-anklet-type PSI Drive powered by Shige-jii’s blood fuel can summon and equip a custom titanium-alloy combat armor at any time.
I really wish she’d hurry up and summon it to boost her defense. If I hadn’t quietly knocked away an engine fragment falling straight down with telekinesis, Mikyou-chan’s skull would’ve gone crunch.

Shige-jii, meanwhile, fell straight into the sea with a stunned expression, still in the posture of having his pants off and wiping his butt with toilet paper.
A few seconds later, he resurfaced, looked around, spotted the shadow ship, and sneaked up from the stern. In an instant, he wrapped himself in black haze and changed into a dry suit. Then, putting on a serious, knowing expression as if he’d grasped the situation, he muttered, “So it has come after all…” while stroking his chin next to Mikyou-chan.
Well. He is an old man, after all. Reflexes dull with age. Still, being able to pull off that smug, seen-it-all act even in this situation is oddly admirable.

The remaining overseas members of Amaterasu were operating separately and scheduled to rendezvous later, so they avoided the damage.

“Enemy attack!”

At Shouta-kun’s shout, those who hadn’t fully grasped the situation hurriedly summoned their combat armor and assumed battle positions. But just as Amaterasu finished forming up, the giant cat, well over six hundred meters long, vanished abruptly. —No, in reality it just returned to its original size, but the shrinkage was so sudden it looked like it disappeared.

“It vanished! An illusion!?”
“An illusion wouldn’t destroy the ship—it was real! Did it turn invisible? Warp away? Damn it, there’s not enough info to deduce anything! Either way, I’m making a foothold! Everyone gather up!”

Touka-chan landed on the pack ice Shouta-kun had created. Shiori appeared as if she’d teleported. The shadow ship docked, Mikyou-chan jumped over with Ig on her shoulder, followed by Shige-jii. They all stood back-to-back in a circle.
Everyone stayed on guard, ready to fire their abilities at any moment, when Touka-chan suddenly gasped.

“Wait—where’s the boss?”
“You’re right, he’s not here. Did he die?”
“No way.”

At Mikyou-chan’s cold reply—she didn’t have much connection to the boss—Shiori gave a wry smile. Could you be a little more worried? I’ll cry, you know? The boss will cry, you know? A grown adult crying, you want that?

“The moment the ship was destroyed, he dove into the sea with the artifact. There should be enough time for him to reach Atlantis and activate the artifact if we hold Tsukuyomi here.”
“Wait, he free-dived? Won’t that kill him? You know, with water pressure and all?”
“He’s deployed a barrier, so he’s fine.”
“What about air?”
“He’s using compressed air made with telekinesis as an oxygen tank.”
“So anything goes with him, huh? Wouldn’t it be fine if the boss did everything alone?”

At Mikyou-chan’s mutter, Touka-chan nodded slightly.

Yeah. That’s true. Your boss theoretically has the power to erase the universe, after all. It’s not that anything goes—it’s just that, there’s a lot I can do. Even now, sitting on the ruins of Atlantis at the ocean floor, secretly livestreaming and wiretapping the surface while subtly intervening to prevent casualties—it’s all thanks to telekinesis. Amazing, right!

Shiori then admonished the group, who had grown a little lax after Mikyou-chan’s comment.

“Going to the deep sea is difficult even for espers, but with cooperation it’s possible. If Tsukuyomi chases after him and interferes, even our boss will struggle. Especially since the man who’s their leader seems evenly matched with ours.”
“Oh? A rival, then. Long ago, I too—”
“Shige-jii, be quiet.”
“Mm.”
“Excuse me, but why don’t you two save your routine late and fuse while we still have time? I’m sure a follow-up attack is coming, and they seem strong. I’ll start chanting sutras now too.”
“Fusion is gross, so no.”

You guys sure talk a lot.
That said, no one was letting their guard down. Every time the stormy sea splashed up from the giant cat’s earlier strike, someone reacted slightly. Even Ig, sensing the tense atmosphere, crawled into the storage space on Shouta-kun’s combat armor belt, poked out just his nose, sniffed the air nervously. If Tsukuyomi launched a second surprise attack, they’d be met with a concentrated barrage of esper fire from a fully prepared Amaterasu.

Tsukuyomi knew that too.

In fact, thanks to Baba’s super-hearing, Amaterasu’s conversation was completely exposed.
With Chris’s precognition, they likely understood that a battle would be brutal for both sides.
Tsukuyomi’s goal was the artifact, and Amaterasu’s boss was clutching it tightly while heading to deep-sea Atlantis. To chase him, they’d have to overcome two obstacles: the harsh deep-ocean environment and Amaterasu itself. By common sense, the reasonable choice would be to eliminate Amaterasu first and remove future trouble before pursuing.

I was monitoring not just Amaterasu but Tsukuyomi as well via telekinetic wiretap and surveillance, and the moment I realized what they were planning, the blood drained from my face.
You can do that? Seriously? Stop. Please, don’t.
No—thinking it over carefully, it did seem theoretically possible. Maybe this was our fault for not predicting it and preparing countermeasures. But still!

The core of this out-of-left-field solution was the gravity user, Haoran-kun.
He had once perfectly controlled the gravity of the massive six-hundred-meter-long giant cat, Huang-hu, with nothing more than a light touch.
Regardless of an object’s weight or size, Haoran-kun can manipulate its gravity just by touching it.
After hearing about Amaterasu from Chris and Baba, Haoran-kun thought for a moment, then touched the ocean surface with his index finger.
The change that single touch caused—no, unleashed—was far too dramatic.

Willie Robbins (52), captain of Flight AA334 from San Francisco International Airport to Narita, boarded that day as usual after drinking a cup of chamomile tea, and proceeded smoothly along the flight path.

“Captain, we’ve passed the halfway point. No abnormalities with the aircraft. Coffee?”
“No, I’m good.”

Willie answered with a grim face to the relaxed voice of the copilot beside him. The copilot shrugged and sipped the remainder of his milk-heavy coffee that had once filled an L-sized paper cup to the brim at takeoff.

Drinking chamomile tea before boarding had been Willie’s habit since his rookie days, and he’d never skipped it once. He’d started it casually on a friend’s recommendation, but at some point it became indispensable—and developed a bit of a superstition.
Whenever the chamomile tea tasted bitter, something troublesome would happen.

The incidents that followed bitter chamomile tea included finding a malfunction during final preflight checks, forcing a four-hour departure delay and making him late for his daughter’s birthday; or triggering a bird strike just as they entered landing approach, causing the timid copilot at the time to scream and faint.
There were others too. Some days nothing happened despite the bitterness, but Willie believed in the superstition. That’s how superstitions work.

That day, the chamomile tea Willie drank was exceptionally bitter. So much so that he checked the brand and expiration date.
Thinking something would happen, he boarded with heightened alertness and entered the cockpit—but so far, nothing had. Below, the Pacific glimpsed through breaks in the clouds shimmered with blue beauty. The copilot was a pleasant young man, and there were no signs of mechanical trouble.

Perhaps because he was on edge, Willie noticed the anomaly a few seconds before the copilot.
At first, Willie thought his eyes were playing tricks on him and wiped the window with a cloth. But it wasn’t a mistake.
They happened to be flying under a perfectly clear sky with no clouds, so the abnormal phenomenon was plainly visible.

“Hey… do you see that? That… thing?”
“Huh? What is—!?”

The copilot leaned forward to look out the window and fell silent.

“The water… oh God, what in the world?!”

It was a mystical, absolute sight that felt like the end of the world—or the beginning of one.
The sea surface, which moments ago had calmly reflected the sunlight, visibly defied gravity, rising upward, drawn—or falling?—toward a single point in the sky, forming an unbelievably massive sphere of water. Near that water sphere, one might even think they saw something like a human figure—perhaps an optical illusion.

While Willie stood there utterly dumbfounded, unable to do anything, all the ocean water within sight floated up into the sky, leaving the seafloor completely exposed. The ocean was drained, transformed into land.
Majestic undersea mountain ranges that should never have seen the light of day. Vast trenches stretching endlessly. Soft sediment accumulated over countless years. Was that a shipwreck? Even gigantic, mysterious structures were laid bare under the sun.

“Contact air traffic control—no, the White House.”

Willie’s voice trembled.
Without question, this was the biggest incident of his life—and one that would never be surpassed.

“All the water in the Pacific Ocean has been drained!!!”