Albert Dying

Albert Dying (アルバート＝ダイイング), also known as Tu, is the leader of the Guild and the main antagonist of Toaru Majutsu no Index SS: Agnese's Magic Side Work Experience.

Etymology
Albert's alias Tu is derived from the Roman god Saturn (サトゥルヌス), possibly emphasizing the difference between Saturn and the similar sounding but unrelated, perhaps linked to resentment at similarity from Roman worshippers as the spread of Christianity had them viewed as demon worshippers.

Appearance
Albert is described as a tall young man with blond hair. During the confrontation in the Vatican, he wore an attire which initially appeared as a stereotypical black priest's cassock, but when he spread his arms, became loose and pure white with the fabric unravelling, making him look like a marble sculpture.

Personality
Albert Dying has been described as a dreamer, and is focused on achieving his own dreams, carefully planning and manipulating towards that end. He has no compunction about causing chaos and destruction, both openly and secretly, in the process of accomplishing his dream, or manipulating people to support it at their expense, often convincing them that it will bring them happiness but leading them to lose everything, taking as much as he likes without taking responsibility.

When Agnese first confronted him in the Vatican, he displayed a casual attitude with an apparent lack of attachment and aimlessness despite the power he had acquired, projecting a gentle and pleasant air while attempting his usual manipulation, as if he were trying to sound enlightened.

Much like the Guild he leads, Albert Dying wishes to remain in a constant state of winning and plans his actions in order to be victorious, not willing to allow a single loss. If his winning streak is broken (even if he won't admit it), he will seek revenge on those he deems responsible, as seen from Brax Mizhine's gruesome fate. Even when ultimately brought down, he did not give up and struggled in vain until rendered unconscious. While doing so, he claimed that no one protected him so he had to protect himself.

Background
At some point in the near past, as the Guild believed that Christianity's time had come and that it was time to act and move on as they had done so in the past, Albert and the Guild made preparations to bring about the end of Christian society. As part of their direct approach, as opposed to their indirect approach of secretly providing support for various magicians in Europe to cause incidents and chaos, Albert intended to acquire the Sickle of Saturn and deploy it in the center of the Vatican, the heart of the Roman Catholic Church. In order to acquire what they needed, he and the Guild carried out a series of thefts from various museums across Europe, including one in. The other incidents were also intended as decoys to give them time to secretly secure and prepare the sickle, with Albert intending for Catholic special forces to take the bait to cover up internal scandals, but not anticipating Anglican interference.

After stealing what he thought to be the Sickle of Saturn, Albert took the spiritual item to Brax Mizhine for appraisal. Wanting to earn a little extra money, Brax gave the item a false stamp of authenticity. Albert subsequently tried to carry out a ceremony with the fake item, only discovering the truth when the ceremony failed as a result. This resulted in him nearly being killed by a Necessarius squad, which included Stiyl Magnus (who would believe he had killed him), and losing many subordinates and resources. Afterwards, an angry Albert returned to execute Brax for his deception, dismembering his corpse and leaving the preserved pieces in his mansion's fridge. He and the Guild then resumed their museum thefts, with a total of seven known, to make up for what they lost and finish the preparations needed for their plot.

Toaru Majutsu no Index SS: Agnese's Magic Side Work Experience
By the time that the Anglicans attacked the Guild's base on, having discovered their involvement behind various incidents across Europe through Agnese Sanctis, Lucia and Angelene's investigation, the group's plan was ready to go and the main force had already escaped. A stolen statue of Saturn at the base was destroyed beforehand to prevent their enemies from finding out about the truth behind Albert's alias Tu and the role of the Sickle of Saturn in their plan. Although the Anglicans seized the Guild's records in the attack, they were initially unable to identify Albert as the Guild's leader, having no complete voice sample and only the alias Tu to go on.

Around the time that the Anglicans had discovered his identity and the nature of his plan after investigating the remains of the destroyed statue, the divined lead of the museum thefts and the disappearance of Brax Mizhine,    he had stabbed the Sickle of Saturn into the ground at the center of the Vatican. With the sickle's territory immediately engulfing the entire Italian Peninsula, including Sicily and other islands but excluding the sea, and gradually spreading outward with Europe's ley lines contaminated (being predicted to reach the United Kingdom in 5 hours), Albert attempted to have the sickle's territory cover the area of the Roman Empire at its peak, causing a reverse tectonic movement to revert the state of the ley lines to the time of the Pax Romana - with either full control or resultant tectonic cataclysm to bring about the destruction of Christian society he sought. However, the Vatican's defenses blocked the sickle's influence, and Albert subsequently attempted to kill the Pope, who formed the core of those defenses, in order to bring the Vatican's land fully under the sickle's control.

Having overcome the Pope and cardinals in a hidden underground chapel near St. Peter's Basilica and setting about unlocking the protection on the unconscious Pope's robes in order to kill him, Albert was confronted by Agnese, Lucia and Angelene, who had approached the coast by air over the sea and taken underground waterways constructed in recent times, which did not exist during the days of the Roman Empire and were not taken into account when determining the sickle's territory, to bypass the sickle's area-of-effect and infiltrate the Vatican. Albert attempted to persuade Agnese as he had done to many others before, but misread her desires and ultimately failed, as the nuns prepared for battle.

Albert then declared a duel as the nuns knocked the unconscious cardinals out of the way of stray attacks. Wielding his compass with the sickle, he overwhelmed the nuns with powerful spells based on ancient Roman deities, talking throughout the battle while also acting to mislead. Angelene was soon incapacitated in protecting Agnese, who was late to react after focusing on the discrepancy with the needles, with Lucia following suit soon afterwards. With two of the trio down, he attempted to stab the Pope with the sickle but Agnese shielded the Pope with her body, having her insides messed with on being stabbed.

Albert continued his attacks against his remaining opponent, while considering his enemy's possible battle plan to ensure the certainty of his victory, but was surprised to find Agnese suddenly moving faster than he anticipated, keeping up with him. As he was trying to keep ahead with reloading his compass, Agnese exposed the trick which he was using to mislead her from the reloading period when he was vulnerable. In order to regain his lost advantage and use his foe's assumed plan against her, Albert stabbed his shadow with the sickle, using the link to manipulate the micro world of his body and quickly unleash an attack in the macro outer world, but Agnese was able to interrupt it by striking his fingers with her Lotus Wand, having experienced that method from when he stabbed her.

Finally noticing that the fallen nuns he had disregarded were boosting Agnese's speed, Albert tried to reload for another spell, but was hit by the Lotus Wand's remote attack and fell to his knees, dropping his compass and sickle. Unwilling to accept defeat, Albert scrambled to reclaim the sickle, now trapped under Agnese's foot, but was struck several more times, struggling until he lost consciousness. The nuns then carried him on their way out to ensure that there was no chance of him escaping after they left, destroying the sickle on the way.

Abilities
Albert is competent at manipulating people, reading their desires and weaknesses, choosing pleasant, suggestive words to instill his own desires in them and convince them that they can achieve happiness by supporting his dream, at their own expense. He also makes use of tricks and deceptions in battle, in order to mislead his opponent and obtain victory.

He claims to be good at number games, stating how the Guild inherited them from the Greeks, and estimated that he would be able to get the protection of the Pope's robes (one involving four doors, three corridors, two bell towers and one cross, with a total of ten equilateral triangles) open with an hour's work. When attempting to unlock this protection in order to kill the unconscious Pope, Albert used a spiritual item called Violator of the Peace (平和の侵害者) (after a term relating to the Peace of God, a rule of war spread by the Christian Church, to never target women, children, churches, or food supplies, on threat of excommunication), consisting of metal belts connected to a donut-shaped disk. The belts crossed in an X-shape, squeezing at the Pope's chest and passing through the disk to press a metal stake down towards the heart, building up pressure over time. The tool automatically continued its work while he was otherwise occupied, but stopped on his defeat.

Sickle of Saturn
For the cornerstone of his guild's plan to destroy Christian society, Albert located and stole a spiritual item known as the Sickle of Saturn (サトゥルヌスの鎌), based on the Roman equivalent of the of  (アダマスの鎌) which Saturn's Greek equivalent  used to castrate  and usurp his throne as the chief god (before being overthrown in turn by ),. It is described as looking like an ordinary sickle, with a blade not made of metal but a rougher material coated with something like transparent sand.

Acting as a large-scale field constructor, when stabbed into the ground the Sickle of Saturn can take over local ley lines and remake the surrounding area into the user's territory. It is described as similar to Croce di Pietro, which can Catholicize land it is stabbed into, but said to be worse, being able to provide 'foundation' to any land, cut it away from the surrounding land and apparently grant the user near-godlike authority.

Given its use of the ley lines running through the planet, the sickle's location can cause the field to cover more than just a single settlement or region, with Albert's own target being the Vatican, and from that the former lands of the. During Albert's use of the sickle in the Vatican, the land under its control glowed with a pale golden light.

The sickle will automatically search out and eliminate enemies, defiance and disobedience within its territory with a direct attack on the soul, being said to be powerful enough to wear down the souls of unauthorized intruders to the point of death - the approach of slaughtering all who don't convert being noted as a way to rule fitting Roman Mythology. This applies to anyone on and above the land within the sickle's territory - flying enemies will be struck as soon as they enter the air directly above the field. The effect is also applied to a certain extent underground, but if there is an underground structure which is not on the 'map' that is being used as the basis for the sickle's territory, it may escape the field's area-of-effect.

If one is asked to convert, the field will only trigger its deadly rejection if they give a clear 'no' - at least initially, they are allowed to put off answering or say that are still thinking. In the case of Isabella Theism, who had gathered techniques relating to death from many cultures (including Greek and Roman Mythology), she did not need to convert to Roman Mythology as she already loved the associated death, but at the same time she also loved deaths of other cultures just as much. It is also possible for someone to escape the deadly attack by having another person rendering a fake or temporary death and reviving them outside of the field, as Isabella did by temporarily stopping Stiyl Magnus's heart with lime poison.

Although the sickle is primarily meant to affect the land, it can be used to affect the microcosmic territory of the human body if it is stabbed into someone.

Compass
During the battle in the Vatican, Albert made use of a special compass in order to cast spells related to ancient Roman deities and similar figures. While the Sickle of Saturn was the foundation of Albert's offense and defense, the compass was considered sufficient if he only wanted to crush and kill his opponent.

The compass is described as a bit larger than the palm of Albert's hand, carved from an oily wood (giving off a sweet smell) and supposedly with a glass cover (actually just a frame) placed on top. The needles of compass are a pointed diamond shape prior to usage. Agnese noted that the compass is unusually large, suggesting that there might be a secret hidden in it to warrant the larger size.

When using the compass, in the other hand from the sickle, Albert inserts a needle into the compass and once it is loaded, utters a short incantation relating to the figure involved in the spell, with Theory (仮設) before the name and a number afterwards (e.g. Theory: Angerona I (仮設アンゲロナ・壱)). Afterwards, the needle is left distorted (possibly destroyed from drawing in an impossible power from an impossible direction, directions being important in the world of magic) and has to be ejected and replaced with a fresh one before the next spell is used. Albert has a large supply of replacement needles on hand and multiple options, but he can only use one spell at a time.

The compass doesn't actually have a glass cover, just a frame, as part of a trick which Albert uses to reduce the reload time and deceive his opponent into missing the timing to exploit this vulnerability. When reloading, Albert pushes in the needle with a finger, and then exaggeratedly opens and closes the frame with his thumb, leading his opponent to think that he is opening the glass cover, discarding the old needle, setting a new one in the center and then closing the cover again. This causes them to miss the actual reloading phase. He also incorporated a few false hints into the compass to mislead opponents from the simple solution, such as palm wood (which a foe might take as a religious symbol used for an acceleration spell) and the sweet smell (which a foe might guess to be a chemical causing hallucination).

Spells which Albert has used with the compass include:

Quotes

 * "The current state of the world is the result of tragedy. The world has lost its core. The current age is ending. A culture that should have ended is stubbornly holding onto its former glory, mucking up the entire system. The only course of action is to hit the reset button. The time has come to destroy Christian culture starting with the Vatican.”
 * "Even formless dreams have the power to change reality. And only those who know how to wield them carry the power to change the world."[...]"If there is anything you want to do, you need only make the attempt. The possibility lies hidden even in you.”
 * “During the Roman age, it was Roman mythology. During the Christian age, it was Christianity. I blend in with the victor of the current age to keep myself safe and protect myself. Just like someone dressing in all the latest fashions and throwing out piles of usable clothing each season. Not even I know the answer. All I can do is line up endless ‘theories’ that no one can prove correct or not.”[...]“The same applies to what I am using here.”[...]“This is not what we had initially hoped to pass down. As the many mythologies and religions mixed together, the original forms were entirely lost. But I will still win. I will survive. The Guild will always view the world from the side of the winners.”
 * “I…I will win. I must always be winning. I will do…do anything to ensure it.”[...]“This isn’t…this isn’t over!! No one ever protected me, so I had to protect myself. Do you have any idea how hard it is to always be winning? I came all this way because I couldn’t allow a single loss, so…so I…!!”