Project Necro is an official initiative by Re:Library.

The Brotherhood of Luna, to which Ruben Rooney belongs, is the successor organization to the Lunar Wisdom Order. Its remnants—or rather a splinter group.
After the exposure of the crimes committed by the sect’s leader, the Grandmaster John St. Germain, the vast majority of the organization’s core leadership either turned themselves in or were detained. Some, however, avoided arrest through plea bargains, feigned withdrawals to claim innocence, or employed various other means to secure their freedom.
Six months had already passed since the Lunar Wisdom Order spectacularly imploded in New York. That was more than enough time for the cunning individuals who slipped through the net of the law to quietly regroup beneath the surface.

That said, having lost their powerful leader, the uncooperative remnants were incapable of uniting as they once had. The exact number of comrades seeking revival was unclear, and petty ideological differences caused infighting. Already weakened, the remnants fractured further into splinter groups, diminishing their strength even more.
In fact, Ruben—who, after the nightmare six months ago, feared the Bouncer and fled the United States to hide in Japan—had only been recruited into the Brotherhood of Luna a month earlier. The Brotherhood’s membership numbered only a dozen or so. Far from striving to reclaim power, they were barely managing to maintain the organization and exhaustively conceal themselves while evading a purge of the remnants.

The reason the organization could even maintain itself, conceal its activities, and recover and absorb scattered remnants was thanks to the individual who controlled it all: a junior magister known by the codename “Little Elf” (with the position of Grandmaster intentionally left vacant by common consensus among the remnants).
Little Elf was an enigmatic figure who issued orders solely through the internet. Their age, nationality, and gender were all concealed. Nevertheless, their instructions were clear, precise, and produced tangible results. The number of crises escaped thanks to Little Elf could not be counted on one hand. Because of that proven track record, even without knowing their face, the members placed complete trust in them, and no one objected to regarding them as the leader for the time being.
Ruben naturally felt the same. Leave it to Little Elf, and things would almost certainly go smoothly.

The Lunar Wisdom Order had championed “a bright future through the development of psychic powers,” but the goal upheld by the Brotherhood of Luna was slightly different: “the creation of God’s kingdom by espers.” Interpreting “a bright future” as “the creation of God’s kingdom,” their original cause had grown more concrete while simultaneously transforming in nature.
Ruben and the others believed that if the new humans awakened to psychic powers joined forces, it would be possible to create God’s kingdom—namely, Heaven—on Earth.
Humanity was far too imperfect and fragile. Was it not only natural that more perfect and powerful beings should correct and guide this problem-ridden world?

Now then. By day, Ruben worked diligently under the guise of a foreign laborer, while by night he searched for psychics. The world was flooded with impostors who merely claimed to have psychic powers, making it no easy task to find the real thing. Still, true espers undeniably existed, and it was believed that the former Grandmaster had once come within a hair’s breadth of capturing one. Finding a genuine esper and recruiting them was possible.
Once an esper was secured, they could attempt to free the Grandmaster, or conduct awakening and transplantation experiments based on real examples to expand their influence.
In any case, nothing could begin until an esper was found.

That night, in the basement of a rented house on the outskirts of Tokyo, Ruben was preparing to torture a boy and a girl who were believed to possibly have some connection to espers.
One was a petite girl; the other was a sturdily built young man. Both had burlap sacks pulled over their heads and their hands and feet bound with rope, and were now additionally tied to chairs in the dimly lit basement.

Ruben did not know who they were. The ones who captured them and delivered them to the torture room in a HiAce van were people from a different clique than his. Little Elf had instructed him only to torture them and extract information about espers, forbidding any unnecessary probing. Do not look at their faces. Do not ask their names. Extract information only about espers—those were the orders.
This judgement was based on the Need-to-Know principle—which was to restrict sensitive knowledge to certain actors.

Little Elf was secretive. Even members of the Brotherhood of Luna did not know the full scope of the Brotherhood. Little Elf had even said they intentionally omitted parts Ruben did not grasp. Considering how the Lunar Wisdom Order had collapsed all at once due to information disclosure by a single individual, restricting information was likely the correct choice.

That said, it was hard not to feel dissatisfied with being made to do incomprehensible jobs without being told anything.
Being ordered to steal a strangely colored stone enshrined in the main hall of an old shrine, or to win an untraceable antique cup at an online auction only to destroy it afterward—Ruben had received many instructions whose intent he could not grasp.
At the same time, however, there were many cases where he later came to understand the meaning of those puzzling orders and found himself convinced.

In that regard, this mission—the torture of a boy and a girl—was easy to understand. How Little Elf had determined that the two were connected to espers was unclear, but if torture could bring the Brotherhood closer to espers, there was no reason to hesitate. Whether some nameless brats suffered or died stirred not even a fragment of pity in him.

Casting a sideways glance at the silent girl bound to the chair, Ruben flipped through the pages of the torture manual he had received from Little Elf. Michael, the fellow member assigned to torture the young man, also began checking the manual.
According to the torture manual—with its cute rounded handwriting and pop-style illustrations—the standard opening move was to inflict pain using a branding iron.
So that was why Michael, who had arrived earlier, was heating the branding iron on the gas stove. Ruben nodded to himself in understanding.
When Ruben set the manual on the table and picked up the branding iron, Michael did the same. Without a word, they nodded to each other and began their respective interrogations. Torturing them in the same room was a deliberate choice—the screams would be more audible, making it easier to break their resolve.

“Hey. Spill what you know about espers.”
“……”
“You understand me, right? Talk.”
“……”
“I see. I’ll make you regret keeping your mouth shut.”

After the brief exchange, Ruben pressed the branding iron against the girl’s upper arm without hesitation.
Then, to his horror, the girl did not writhe in pain, nor was there the vivid sound of flesh sizzling. Instead, the steel branding iron melted into a gooey mass from the point where it touched her skin, dripping onto the floor and rising in smoke.

“!?”

Stunned, Ruben stared intently at the branding iron whose tip had melted away.
What on earth had just happened? Had he overheated it?
But could steel really melt from the heat of a gas stove…?

As he turned in confusion to call out to Michael, who was torturing the young man beside him, he saw that Michael, too, was staring intently at his own branding iron.

“Hey, Michael. What’s wrong?”
“No, it’s just… my branding iron froze.”
“Froze? That’s ridiculous.”

Looking closely, he saw white frost covering Michael’s branding iron, faint wisps of cold air drifting from it.
Holding up the frost-covered branding iron and the one with its melted tip side by side, the two exchanged looks and fell silent. What in the world was this…?

Before their minds could fully process the abnormal situation and grasp what was happening, an even stranger anomaly appeared before Ruben and Michael.

Black haze seeped out of thin air, and a masked old man holding a cane emerged at leisure—only to trip over the gas stove on the floor and fall flat.
Before their wide-eyed stares, the masked old man stood up briskly as if nothing had happened, produced the strange stone Ruben had just recovered the previous week under Little Elf’s orders, holding it with a handkerchief, and said a single sentence.

“Good work serving as decoys, both of you. Retrieval complete. Subdue them.”

Without understanding anything at all, Ruben was struck by the raging violence of blazing crimson and freezing argent—and lost consciousness.