Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume4 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 1===

So, what exactly was going on at Second Grimnoah as it floated in the equatorial ocean on June 13? Take a look back in time and that will become clear enough.



“A martial arts tournament with magic allowed, huh?”

Amaashi Marika, the childhood friend with her curly twintails dyed a bright strawberry blonde, sounded skeptical. She was wearing a brand-new short-sleeved blouse of a summer uniform. She was the generally cheerful and extroverted gyaru type (while actually being extremely dangerous, obsessive, and vengeful), but unlike Karuta, she actually tied her tie.

“We never got a chance to do this on the first ship.”

“So it’s this year’s Catastrophe? It sounds a lot more friendly than the rumors I heard on the first ship.”

Kazamuki Gekiha and the other 700 students and teachers of the first ship were preserved as unspeaking crystal statues at the bottom of this ship, but Karuta did not see anything inappropriate about this conversation. They were talking about a dream those students never had a chance to live out.

They were inside the air-conditioned gym early in the morning, but it still felt hot and stuffy with all the Sub Category and Main Category students gathered there. The waxed floor and the stage at one end perfectly reproduced the look of a school gymnasium and it was large enough to play two volleyball games at once or to play a regulation basketball game. With that size, it was easy to forget this was all on a ship. But this gathering looked too fancy to be a simple student assembly. Countless cameras were filming everything from the stands on the second floor. Traditional TV cameras were carried on cameramen’s shoulders and swiveling webcams were affixed to the metal railings. All in all, there had to be more than 10 thousand lenses.

This assembly doubled as an audienceless opening ceremony.

Wheelchair spokes creaked up on the stage.

When she remained silent, no one would suspect Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka was anything more than a busty black-haired beauty, but she was in fact the Four Living Gods’ black-hearted strategist. She barely seemed to notice all the eyes on her as she spoke. She did have a transparent prompter in front of her, providing her with the text of her speech, but Karuta suspected she didn’t really need it.

“We at Second Grimnoah have had the good fortune to claim the position of world’s strongest with our cutting-edge crystal magic. But growth is not possible if we fail to look outwards. So to establish an effective exchange of knowledge, we ask for assistance from ''other types'' of magicians. We hope that you will participate in order to assist our fight against the mysterious Threat and to help bring peace to our world.”

Colorful images danced on the screen covering the wall behind her. This used a special projector that arranged its scan lines so the image would remain crisp and clear even through the mechanical lenses. It was clearly designed to be world-class entertainment. The artificial depth given to the video was so well done it was hard to tell whether the images seen in front of the screen or behind it were the fake ones.

The Four Living Gods referred specifically to Utagai Karuta, Aine, Amaashi Marika, and Omotesandou Kyouka, but Karuta and Marika had not been given seats of honor as members of the world’s strongest. They sat with the other students in their class, which gave them a chance to whisper to each other.

Karuta spoke to Marika while keeping his eyes on Kyouka shining up on the stage.

“The Four Living Gods must remain the strongest no matter what happens.”

“And?”

“''Frankly, we keep getting our asses handed to us.'' At the Port of Kobe and here on Second Grimnoah, ordinary people saw us fighting the Threat. We managed to cover up most of the information about what happened at the Crystal Beach, but we couldn’t stop people online from speculating that we were caught up in some kind tragedy there. Which is true, but we can’t let people know that. We aren’t allowed to lose or even draw like ordinary humans.”

“Because if we aren’t perfect, people will be worried we can’t defeat the Threat?”

“You should know with all the online news alerts that get automatically pushed to that phone in your hand. There are protests verging on riots in several cities out there.”

“Justice and fear and frustration, huh?”

“The usual recipe for a witch hunt. Looting doesn’t happen because people see a chance to steal – it happens because people are afraid they won’t be able to defend themselves if they don’t. It’s the same impulse as bulk-buying during a disaster, so the people doing it don’t even think they’re doing anything wrong. Humans can steal and kill as long as they can give themselves a benevolent justification for doing it, like feeding their family or protecting the weak. That’s just how we work.”

Karuta’s tone of voice tended to drop when he was discussing matters of morality.

He had thrown out such lies after his “baptism” aboard the first ship.

“The fear market has people making a bundle remodeling people’s bathrooms into panic rooms or selling family shelters buried in the backyard. Not to mention self-sufficiency products like rooftop solar panels or herb planters that can be installed on a balcony. There are even services to manage your possessions or to fully erase your search history or hard disk after your death. Hell, we’re even seeing apocalyptic cults and cold sleep services. This event is needed ''to put an end to those things''.”

Simply put, crystal magic had to be powerful. And that did not necessarily mean they needed some secret training regimen to actually increase its power. In fact, that sort of power boost was too subtle a flavor, so it would mostly go over the public’s heads.

Instead, they needed some strongly-flavored junk food that everyone could appreciate.

The Catastrophe was the perfect candidate there.

“Just like we used our crystal magic to battle against the god-worshiping magic, there are plenty more forms of magic out there. According to Omotesandou-san, Letnahe Kurent of the human string-pullers used Indian mythology magic.”

“So we just have to kick all their asses on camera? Sounds pretty immature.”

“The point is to prevent any riots by showing the world that crystal magic really is the strongest in the world. ''We don’t actually need to get any stronger to do that.'' As long as we defeat the competition in the Catastrophe tournament, the world will see that we’re a step above everyone else.”

Besides, if wanting to get stronger was enough to do so, they would already be as strong as they needed to be. As pathetic as it might sound, they had already hit their upper limit. Their power wasn’t going to suddenly level up just because they had run into a new problem.

Instead, they would con the world.

Solving these social problems was where Omotesandou Kyouka’s cunning mind came into play. Her idea had been to invite different magic systems from around the world to participate in a martial arts tournament. This wasn’t a subtle secret ingredient requiring in-depth culinary knowledge to identify; it was omurice smothered in ketchup.

“Marika.”

“Yes?”

“Given the point of tournament, all four of us should be automatically entered. I’m sure you get this already, but this event is only using the Catastrophe name. I’ll say this as many times as it takes for it to stick, but the entire point of the tournament is to bring peace of mind to the nervous people around the world. So ''don’t take things too far.'' Or to spell it out for you: don’t kill anyone. Please, Marika, I’m begging you.”

“Is that any way to talk to your cute and heroic childhood friend?”

Unfortunately, that was exactly how he had to talk to God of Destruction Marika. What would happen if she carried out a gruesome execution on a global livestream? This entire event was meaningless if people walked away thinking crystal magic was an even greater monster than the Threat.

[[Image:ApocalypseWitch_v04_bw1.png|thumb]]

Then Karuta felt small fingers tugging on his short-sleeve dress shirt.

The white figure seated on the other side of him from Marika was the only person not wearing a Second Grimnoah summer uniform. That pure white dress with large slits for ease of movement stood out like a sore thumb in the sea of purple uniforms.

She was Crystal Girl Aine.

She seemed upset that Karuta was only speaking with Marika, so she started whispering to him to draw his attention.

“Sacri-sama, Sacri-sama.”

“Huh? I mean that’s cute and all, but since when does Aine-chan get so blatantly jealous over Karuta?”

“Sacri-tama.”

“Again, since when is this a thing!? She hasn’t been infected with – I don’t know – crystal malware or something, has she!?”

Karuta himself slapped a hand against his forehead.

A lot had happened while they were retaking Second Grimnoah near the Port of Kobe. How had the crystal girl interpreted things when he fought for her against the armored warrior Threat in this very gym? That was something only she could know. And once the battle was over, he had sensed a subtle change in how Aine acted around him. It was a weird sensation, like one side of his headphones was intermittently going out, and Karuta himself was unsure how to process it.

“Anyway, Aine, I’m counting on you. There’s nowhere to hide in the limited field of a tournament ring, so my usual trickery isn’t going to work. I imagine most of my fights are going to come down to sending you in as the vanguard the instant the battle begins.”

“Roger that, Sacri-tama. You can count on me.”

“Playful answers like that only make me more worried, you know?”

Their exchange made it clear Karuta was not really all that worried. The entire event was meaningless if the crystal magic users didn’t win. In a way, it was a major gamble with no redos, but he couldn’t imagine how Aine or Marika could possibly lose to an ordinary magician. He didn’t mean to insult all the participants who had gathered from around the world, but he did not sense the same skin-crawling pressure he had felt from simply being near the Problem Solvers or the Threat. Karuta himself could not use any real magic and might only get in the way, but Aine could easily defeat any challenger even with him weighing her down. In fact, he was more worried that she wouldn’t be able to make nonlethal strikes with her crystal sword.

“Aine. If anyone other than us wins, they earn the title of world’s strongest plus a large sum of prize money. That money comes from all the money people lose betting on the tournament – in other words, the jackpot. Omotesandou-san says that should reach more than 2 billion. You can’t take human greed lightly. It’s a powerful motivator different again from the vengeance that drove us. It’s best not to underestimate something just because you don’t have it yourself.”

''However.

A subtle change happened then.

So subtle only Karuta and Marika could notice it thanks to the time they had spent with the sexy Student Council President after the destruction of the first ship.

Images of the four world’s strongests were displayed on the wall behind her.

And then the photos of Aine, Amaashi Marika, and Omotesandou Kyouka were removed one by one.

“The primary objective of this year’s Catastrophe Magic Combat Tournament is the exchange of valuable magic, so we can’t have people skipping it because they assume the world’s strongest are guaranteed to win. That is why we will be accepting a few handicaps.”

Omotesandou Kyouka’s eyes blinked at an odd moment. It was the look she made when something caught her by surprise but she was working hard to not let it show.

“We are the current world’s strongest, but we could not learn anything new if the four of us all took part and immediately crushed the competition. These handicaps were our own idea to make this a more valuable experience, so do not feel like you are being given an unfair advantage. If your opponent has a weakness, do not hesitate to attack it. As the four who must always defeat the Threat, we know that greedy ambition very well.”

“What the hell?” muttered Karuta.

They had shifted to another set of ''rails''. What in the world was being displayed on the transparent prompter in front of Kyouka?

“You didn’t hear anything about this either, did you, Karuta?”

Kyouka herself looked uncertain whether or not she should go along with it.

But the footage was already being played on the screen behind her. Any discrepancy between that footage and her explanation would prove to everyone that something was wrong. The entire event was meant to prevent the people from worrying, so Kyouka must have decided she could not allow any hint of trouble to enter the global livestream of this opening ceremony.

They were in the middle of a fear market where even half a second of unnatural silence could cause a stock price to crash and start riots. To avoid any unnecessary damage to the entire world’s crowd psychology, she ended up saying exactly what she was told. The screen behind her displayed each item as she said it.

“1. Utagai Karuta shall be Second Grimnoah’s only contestant.

“2. The Four Living Gods are considered a group of four, so Aine is considered her own independent person despite being his crystal magic. Thus, Utagai Karuta is forbidden from ‘using’ her during the tournament.

“3. If Utagai Karuta is killed in an accident during the tournament, his opponent will not be charged with a crime regardless of how it happens. And to fill the gap his death would create, any contestant who kills him and wins the tournament shall become a new member of the Four Living Gods.”

''This is really bad,'' realized Karuta.

He hadn’t heard anything about this. Weren’t they motivating people to participate by awarding them the betting jackpot as prize money?

Something was happening here. They had switched over to the most dangerous set of rails for the Four Living Gods. He did not have many good memories of Grimnoah’s gym – on the first or second ship.

“Or to put it another way, if you can kill Utagai Karuta – good luck, by the way – then feel free. If you are willing to risk your life and pride on it, then this is your chance to steal the title of strongest for yourself. Now, everyone, do you think you can kill Utagai Karuta? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so do not expect it to come again. Drag out the musty-old magic of a bygone era and join the fight. If what I just said pissed you off, then maybe you have the fighting spirit needed to join us in the fight against the Threat.”