Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume2 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 1===

There was no direct flight.

First, they took a flight from Osaka’s floating airport to Germany’s Frankfurt airport. From there, they flew to Northern Europe’s Reykjavik airport. That city might not sound familiar, but it was the capital of an entire country.

Namely, Iceland.

“I-I’m so tired.”

“Don’t collapse yet, Alice. We haven’t even reached the hotel.”

Utagai Karuta got after the girl (while nervous on the inside) and dragged his own luggage along.

Since the high school and middle school had been mixed together on the airplane, he had been forced into card game hell with Riho and Sanae the entire time, but he was not going to stick with them on the buses.

Someone else freaked out at that suggestion.

“Why waste such a golden opportunity, Utagai-kun!? Maybe you don’t realize how rare a treat that is since you have free access to the middle school, but you need to forget about us and accept this gift! Go to that 13-year-old paradise!!”

“Shut up, Hirosuke. Is that what you’re into? Hey, Yamanen, talk some sense into this-”

“Eh heh heh. Nothing quite like a female teacher. They’re so hot. Especially the innocent adulthood of a new teacher who’s just hatched from being a student teacher.”

“Is anyone around here normal?”

“Sacri-sama, waiting for orders is exhausting. Please give me some kind of command. I do not care what.”

“Karuta, you’re the weirdest one here.”

“Karuta, you’re the weirdest one here.”

The nervous, flaxen-haired teacher named Sophia Firenze was very unsure of herself, but Karuta was a high school student. He was pretty sure his adolescent heart would not survive being the only one in a bus full of middle schoolers.

“You did the right thing.”

“?”

For some reason, he received rare praise from Kiyosawa Hadome who wore his track suit even overseas. The man crossed his arms and stood there, not saying a word more, so Karuta was unsure how to respond.

He tilted his head while boarding one of the high school buses which drove them along a long, long bridge traveling north over the frozen ocean. Eventually, the resort they would be staying at came into view.

“I’m so glad my new swimsuit arrived in time,” said Marika with a smile while leaning forward from the seat behind him. “Sometimes it won’t arrive by the predicted date even when the site says it’s in stock.”

“…”

“Heh heh heh. Is that some red I see in your cheeks, Karuta-kun? I hope you’re ready to see just how much your childhood friend has grown.”

They were in the Arctic. The ice below this kilometers-long bridge was thick enough for polar bears to walk across it, but Marika was not being at all ironic.

Aine pressed her hands against the window after apparently spotting something outside. Karuta had taken the window seat, so she was leaning out over his lap.

“Sacri-sama, what is that?”

“A beach. And could you show some restraint? Your butt is wiggling in front of my face!!”

She entirely ignored the favor she was doing him because she was too interested in viewing something like bubbles outside.

Several translucent domes existed across the frozen ocean. The smaller ones had a radius of a few hundred meters and the larger ones had a radius of 2 or 3 kilometers. They were connected by countless clear tubes similar to an aquarium’s underwater tunnel.

Marika tilted her head while leaning against his headrest from behind.

“Which dome is ours again?”

“C World.”

“World?”

“That’s what they call them. They say each dome is like a unique artificial world. Ours is the third biggest one.”

It was below freezing outside, but not so inside. The buses parked in front of the especially large C World dome before one by one passing through the double layer of gates into another world altogether.

Inside, they found a pleasant summer beach with a temperature of 28 degrees and humidity below 50%.

The girls who tended to hang out with Marika let out a cheer.

“Ohh!”

“Wow, that really is a pretty beach. It scores high enough that I might just grant it the privilege of lying out on that sand.”

“It’s like an extreme version of eating ice cream in a kotatsu,” whispered Marika while viewing the palm trees swaying in the artificial warm breeze.

“Wouldn’t making a hotpot with the air conditioning on full blast be a better analogy?”

Was Aine right about that? Either way, this definitely won the world record for the biggest waste of energy in the world. Karuta was pretty sure some book or another had made that official.

“I heard the bath is a hot spring,” he said. “Iceland is apparently a volcanic country.”

“Sigh. I want to go crawl in a small space,” said Aine.

“They apparently have a bath full of colloidal gold. Just like a radium hot spring, the weak radiation is supposed to be good for your health.”

“What!? Can I drink it by the tubful!?”

“You would only get a few sesame seeds’ worth if you drained the entire hot spring, weirdo.”

This was the world’s largest artificial beach.

It was known as the Crystal Beach.

The Arctic ice was rapidly melting thanks to global warming, so the Icelandic government had needed some sort of countermeasure. It had all begun when they took a lesson from snow crystals and worked to make the seawater freeze easier by constructing intentional impurities – aka, a certain type of artificial island – here and there in the icy ocean. Some had said it would be a waste to pour so much money into it without making use of the land, so they had started developing a largescale resort centered on a casino. It had since grown to include a luxury hotel, a shopping center, and more, with a giant translucent dome to surround the entire artificial beach.

It was hard for much of anything to survive in this extreme land, but development could continue without end as long as the cycle of money and greed got started.

The city had gotten started in much the same way as Las Vegas.

The buses pulled up in front of a 50-story luxury hotel (which fit inside the dome). When Karuta stepped out, he found piercing artificial sunlight awaiting him. That probably came from special infrared lights, which meant he was essentially having his skin lightly roasted by a giant oven. Although it was unclear if a day of sunbathing here would really give him a nice tan.

The new and nervous female teacher was already approaching him.

“U-um, uh, Utagai-sensei.”

“No! I am a student and I want to enjoy this trip!!”

“But I can’t possibly handle all of those powerful children, so will you please help me!?”

Hearing that, Marika smiled bitterly and waved him away. She dragged her suitcase over toward her girl’s group that included Matsuda Imi and Hashizaki Tayori to keep her distance from all that trouble. Aine simply tilted her head. She was waiting for orders, so she would not do anything on her own.

Was he really the only option?

After traveling overseas, he had to put on a school performance all on his own?

He was starting to tremble at this point, but he had always been the kind of person to do what was asked of him. Or you could say he lacked the courage to say no. He sighed and walked toward the middle school students. It took a lot out of him to maintain that public mode that lived up to people’s image of the strongest, an upperclassman, a veteran warrior, and a successful avenger, but he had no other choice right now.

He clapped his hands to gather the excited underclassmen’s attention. It almost felt like a ritual he used to switch modes.

“The teachers will get us all checked in, so once you receive your card key, carry your luggage to your room, and gather back in the 1st floor lobby. This Crystal Beach is the world’s largest airtight living space, so it is full of facilities that should be extremely useful when constructing a fortress city to defend against the Threat. This is all civilian tech, but there is still much we can learn from it, so keep your eyes open and take in as much as you can.”

“Ehh!? There’s a sparkling tropical beach right over there and you expect us to sit through another class in our uniforms, Senpai!? Don’t you want to see all us teenage girls in our swimsuits!?”

Tanned and silver-haired Riho immediately snapped back at him, but he could only shrug in response.

He was scared.

To be frank, if he was booed by all these girls here, he might end up reliving the moment in his nightmares, but he could not let it show that this bothered him at all.

He forced the feeling away and kept going.

“I don’t believe I mentioned what you should be wearing. But if you forgot to bring a swimsuit, then yes, you will probably have to head to the lobby in your uniform.”

Riho stared blankly at him, but Sanae clapped her hands together with a bright look on her face.

“He’s saying we can use that observation of the facilities here as an excuse to play around in our swimsuits.”

“You probably shouldn’t call it an excuse out loud. But hurry! There are a thousand of us in all, so the elevators are gonna be packed soon!!”

When Alice added that, Riho’s thoughts finally seemed to catch up. She frantically pushed her suitcase toward the elevators with both hands.

That settled things for now.

Once they all disappeared into the elevator hall, Karuta finally let out a long, long sigh. None of them meant any harm, but being exposed to all of their eyes at once was a living hell. That was just the one class, yet Student Council President Kyouka would address the entire student body. How could she do that with a smile? Was she just made of different stuff than him???

Sophia Firenze must have been delighted that she had avoided a breakdown of her class immediately after arriving because she bowed over and over with her semi-long flaxen hair swaying. Although that too was awkward for the boy who only wanted to be a student here.

“…”

A short distance away, he noticed Natalena Blast standing there silently without following the others.

He was curious about how she was standing there in her uniform and with her beret on her head.

And he had wanted some kind of reason to approach her anyway.

When he did, he grabbed the handle of her suitcase.

“I’ll carry that for you.”

“Y-you don’t have to do that.”

“Sacri-sama. Lonely kids do not know how to process kindness, so trying to help can actually hurt them and make them resent you. You must be on the lookout for hidden pride.”

“I am not lonely!! And I am not some child who does not understand kindness, so I will gladly accept your offer!!”

Natalena blushed and snapped back at Aine with tears in her eyes, but the crystal girl did not react. She was not even human, after all. Shouting at an ATM because you did not understand how it worked would change nothing about its politely-worded messages.

They had gotten a late start, so there was a long line waiting for the elevators.

When Karuta’s group joined the end of the line, his phone vibrated.

“Hirosuke> Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who’s that blonde cutie!? Aine-chan wasn’t enough for you!?”

“Yamanen> Wait, where’d that delectable teacher go!? How could you let her get away!?”

He immediately blocked them. Unaware of that interaction on his phone, Natalena looked up at him and pouted her lips.

“Have you…?”

“?”

“Have you ever seen the Threat? I mean, um, you did just give a speech about what would be useful in a fortress city.”

“I haven’t,” he readily admitted. Inside, he was surprised to find how dry his voice could sound. “But Anastasia said they do exist.”

“…”

“At that point…or rather, she was dedicated to the path of the strongest and gave no thought to the future, so I can’t imagine she was lying out of self-preservation or to trick us. We still don’t know what the Threat is, but cities, states, and countries are still disappearing. ''Even with the Problem Solvers gone.'' That means it was not all being faked by Anastasia and the other four.”

The Problem Solvers had been the worst, but if they had functioned as humanity’s defense against the Threat, then it was Karuta’s group that had destroyed that thick barrier and left nothing to replace it.

So now it was their turn.

Not even the God Worshiping Magic of the previous world’s strongest had managed to fully eliminate the Threat, so it was obvious that task would require significant power.

So.

They had to thoroughly train these children before that clash occurred. They had to be able to protect their own lives with the strongest power.

Karuta’s group had failed to do that when they were new students on the first ship, but they had to make sure it happened this time.

“Of course,” said Natalena under her breath while looking away from him. Almost like she was squeezing a broken protective charm in her hand. “My sister wouldn’t lie. She was one of the Problem Solvers who risked their lives to protect everyone right up to the very end.”