The name of the building Sasha Kreutzev sat within was the Phenomena Control and Reduction Reproduction Facility.
Technically, that term referred to a collection of buildings created by the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Orthodox Church was primarily an organization created to analyze and resolve spiritual phenomena. When an incident occurred, they would create a facility that recreated the scene of the phenomenon in actual size.
That thorough accuracy was mostly meant to display how relentless they were.
According to the Christian Church, the souls of the dead would head to heaven, purgatory, or hell. Therefore no souls remained in this world. For that reason, the Russian Orthodox Church viewed anything trying to deceive the living as fakes meant to take advantage of the sorrow people saw in death. By their definition, such things were only thought to exist by their absence. It was the same idea as a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
There were extremely rare cases of (real) wandering spirits appearing such as the Jack-o'-Lantern, but the Christian Church viewed those as the souls of criminals who were not worthy of going to heaven but had been barred from entering hell as well.
Anything trying to deceive the living needed to be killed by any means necessary.
That was the only conclusion they could reach.
Whether they were real or fake, they were enemies. The Russian Orthodox Church's method was to eliminate all such annoyances as if they were the same. A ghost's regrets, reminiscences, or grudges were all beside the point. If they were wandering on earth, they were evil. The Russian Orthodox Church's style was to laugh scornfully at any such circumstances and then crush them.
There were of course exceptions of humans who had been brought back to life at the hands of the Son of God, the Twelve Apostles, or someone similar. However, that could only be pulled off by the Son of God or history's most powerful Saints. Your average sinner or vengeful dead person could not manage it.
The facility was used to obtain the investigative information needed to crush those enemies no questions asked.
That was where Sasha was.
It was reminiscent of the cities created in the middle of a desert for a Hollywood movie, but its accuracy was much greater than a city street created for filming that's reverse side was made of papier mache.
It had started with facilities for just an incident or two, but more and more new reference facilities had been created around them. Now, it was large enough to hold two or three entire cities. This was a method only possible in Russia, a country so massive it cut horizontally across almost the entirety of the Eurasian continent.
Inside a building perfectly modeled after a certain palace, Sasha poured brandy into her black tea and drank from her cup with a book in one hand. This was the reference facility said to be the oldest of all the buildings in that movie village known by the overly long name of the Phenomena Control and Reduction Reproduction Facility.
The palace had a mixture of many different cultures. The occult aspects were all based in Christianity and a large onion-like objet d'art was located on the top of the roof.
"…"
Despite her small figure, Sasha again and again poured lots and lots of brandy into her tea like someone with a sweet tooth pouring sugar in. Rather than just flavoring the drink a bit, she was now essentially drinking a tea-flavored alcohol.
The thick book in her hand had the title "The True Form of Angels in a Different Shape" written in shiny foil. The Original of the book would be in the original palace, but the book had been perfectly reproduced down to the last letter as a prop for the facility. The facility was well known for having a lot of grimoire copies for a place that was not a grimoire library.
(Important notes concerning an angel being lowered into a human body.)
Sasha's hand stopped on the page she had been looking for.
Her small fingertip moved through the handwritten letters from a time before printing technology had been developed. She occasionally frowned while working through the cryptanalysis work she was not used to, but she refused to take a break. She had a reason for doing this work despite not being used to it.
Something strange had happened to her body.
The visible symptom was the irregular slight trembling of her fingertips. And the invisible symptom was her strange ability to detect magic power. Or perhaps it would be better to describe it as a type of rejection reaction. The degree of the reaction differed, but she would feel a pressure in her chest when a large amount of magic power was being used nearby.
These symptoms had begun towards the end of August, but she had no idea what could have caused it. When she had been examined at a large-scale facility, they had said her condition was similar to that of someone who had had highly concentrated Telesma residing in their body for a long period, but she had not taken part in any such magical experiment.
What had happened to her body?
That investigation had gone beyond Sasha herself. The entire Russian Orthodox Church was already secretly viewing it as a pending issue. Anyone in the Christian Church could borrow Telesma and it was not rare for it to directly reside in someone's body. Sasha herself even used it in battle. But this was the first time such special symptoms had appeared.
It also bothered Sasha that interest in her condition went beyond her organization of Annihilatus. The entire Russian Orthodox Church was interested in it. This made her suspect there was something more to it, but she had to give her own body precedence.
Needless to say, the time when Telesma resided in a human body on the largest scale was during the time of the Annunciation. With the Son of God's total amount of Telesma – that is, an amount massive enough to support and guide this world – contained within a human womb, the human would normally explode. But the Virgin Mary used her special characteristics as the pair for the holy fatherhood to its fullest so that-…
"Hmm," muttered Sasha as she nodded and read through the text.
She did not notice the threat approaching from behind.
"Saaaashaaaa♪"
Her entire expressionless face twitched when she heard that horribly ingratiating voice.
But it was too late.
Two hands stretched under Sasha's arms and grabbed ahold of her small breasts before she could take up a defensive position.
The voice behind her said, "Since you're studying so hard you have no idea what is happening around you, I think it's time you took a break. Wait, nwaahhh!?"
The voice cried out because Sasha had pulled a hammer and an L-shaped crowbar from her waist to prepare for battle. The hammer must have had some kind of magical treatment performed on it because a large crater practically exploded into the table the instant the head of the hammer touched it.
Sasha Kreutzev turned around with the weapon in hand.
The person who had been behind her grew pale.
"S-Sasha? This facility was created as a perfect spiritual replica of the scene of an incident, so its role will be compromised if you keep destroying items inside it!!"
"My first response: You can send a written apology to Bishop Nikolai Tolstoy."
"No, wouldn't you be the one to write it!? Dammit, why does Sasha look so lovely even while feigning ignorance like this!?"
Sasha sighed as the person waved their hands about.
She was Sasha's direct superior.
Her name was Vasilisa. She was a woman with white skin that had just begun to show some signs of decline and she was exceedingly worried about ultraviolet rays and spots on the skin. While battles with "those that should not exist" was their basic nighttime activity, she had lately formed a bad habit of saying staying up late was bad for the skin and heading home on her own. This meant Sasha often had to catch Vasilisa's body in a lasso and throw her into the middle of a group of their target.
But back to her name of "Vasilisa".
It was unclear why she had taken the name of a heroine form a Russian fairy tale, but it was of course a fake name. She apparently just barely qualified as being in her late twenties, but no one knew the exact number. She would just say "Women have plenty of secrets!", but she would look depressed for about half a day if someone responded with "So basically no one would celebrate your birthday".
That horribly immature superior caused Sasha lots of problems. The main issue was that this was not an issue of the past. She was still constantly causing her problems.
Vasilisa glanced at the pages of the book Sasha had been reading and said, "You're reading some musty old book again? So have you still not figured out what happened to your body? Then how about I give that body a thorough examination. Eh heh heh. Ah ha."
Sasha took the hammer spinning in her hand and swung it down on Vasilisa's head.
After hearing a nice, dull noise, she said, "My first question: Would you prefer the hammer or the screwdriver?"
"It's not a very useful question if you wait until after the fact to ask. Oh, Sasha. Your destructive power is as unthinkable as ever."
She did not want to hear that from the superior who had not batted an eye at being struck by a hammer with magical effects meant for torture. Vasilisa liked to joke, but she was actually stronger than Sasha.
"Come to think of it, wasn't the Telesma that resided in you the back-oriented blue color of Gabriel?"
"My second question: what does it matter?"
"And wasn't it a normally unthinkable amount that might have even been greater than the total amount of the Twelve Apostles?"
"My third question: What does that-…"
"Bpph. Wasn't Gabriel the angel that was responsible for the Annunciation? And wasn't that when an amount of power greater than the Twelve Apostles was forced into a woman's body? Oh? Oh, oh? Sasha, by any chance is your stomach growing a bit plump…bggh!?"
Sasha swung a saw such that it struck Vasilisa directly in the face
The woman remained unscathed.
"Ah, sorry, sorry. That's right. With that heavy restraining outfit you always wear, you could never withstand pleasureless baby-making, could you?"
"My fourth question: Don't sully even one holy page of the New Testament, you piece of shit. An added explanation: You abused your authority to force me to wear this outfit."
Sasha was wearing a restraining outfit made up of black belts and a red mantle worn over a see-through suit that looked like nothing but innerwear. Overall, it looked like something a perverted old man would wear at night. Vasilisa had claimed it was so she could restrain herself as a last resort if her own body was possessed by "those that should not exist", but it was plainly nothing more than her own tastes.
Sasha did not want to even touch such a slutty outfit, but unfortunately Vasilisa was her direct superior. She had to obey the oaths she had made on paper. She would feel like a complete fool if she was sent to a convent (or rather, a detention center called a convent) for disobeying over something so ridiculous.
Naturally, not all Russian Orthodox nuns wore that outfit. The Russian Orthodox Church was not a collection of perverts.
Sasha hid her body behind her red mantle and glared up at her superior.
Vasilisa cackled while wearing a completely normal red habit.
"Eh? You dislike it that much?"
"My second response: That question in and of itself is an insult to my personality."
"Then let's get you a different outfit," readily replied Vasilisa.
"…?"
Sasha was a bit taken aback by this as she looked up at her superior through her bangs that got in the way. Vasilisa started rummaging through the old-looking bag at her feet.
"Y'see, for business reasons, I was doing some investigation into Academy City and that island nation's occult."
"…"
Sasha had a bad feeling about what was to come.
She had a feeling she must not see what was inside that bag.
She had not received any help from an astrological institution, but she felt a distinct chilly premonition for some reason.
"Well, it turns out Academy City has a certain unique culture. And when I say culture, I think you can guess what I mean. Japan really has given me a lot of excellent reference material. I got my hands on some genuine data and worked hard to sew it thread by thread. Ah ha♪"
Sasha looked over to the door.
She started to calculate out its thickness and materials.
"So Sasha, have you ever heard of Magical Powered Kanamin?"
She used her L-shaped crowbar to break through the heavy door and escape.
When she had seen the outfit Vasilisa was holding out while smiling from ear to ear, Sasha had thought she was going to cry. She had known that superior had been gathering information on Japan's suspicious otaku culture via France, but she had never thought the woman had gotten quite that crazy.
She could never stand to wear that shiny and sparkling outfit.
Sasha Kreutzev was a battle nun belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church's special forces known as Annihilatus. She fought harshly with the desire of bringing extinction to "those that should not exist", so she could not run around in such a thin and fluttering outfit.
She decided it might be in her best interest to transfer to another post.
No one would want to die in battle while wearing such a hardcore outfit.