Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume1 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 1===

''“I bind this covenant of blood in the name of The Spirit of Fluttering ‘Yellow’ Gills that Rules the Heavens (s – a – so – voz – tix – ei – yw – za), one of the Three which manage and guide the summoning ceremony. You are of human flesh with a proper heart and soul, yet from this moment onward, you shall be a limited vessel that can hold all things.”

''“You shall be a lord of emptiness that uses the power filling you to at times bend the laws of this world.”

''“So I shall prepare this vessel. I am a summoner, unable to leave the world of man, yet a symbol of haughty intellect that uses power from beyond the world of man to guide the world of man to the next age!!”

Shiroyama Kyousuke’s contract with Higan had been stolen in an irregular fashion, so he had restored it to its proper form.

He had already discussed this with her sister Renge.

''“I think we would both be in agreement that we need to search for every possible means of saving her.”

''“Get to the point.”

''“Which one of us can make better use of Meinokawa Higan as a vessel? If you want to increase her odds of survival as much as possible, then I want you to hand her over to me.”

He felt that was an inhuman opinion.

He was basically telling her to butt out when her sister was in great need.

Even so, he forced it through.

That was why he was known as Alice (with) Rabbit.

“Fwahh… I-I’m finally back in my shrine maiden outfit.”

Below the countless crisscrossing bridges of Toy Dream 35, cruisers and boats were moored in the evening sunlight. There, Higan lightly patted the waist of her shrine maiden outfit.

To her, that was likely about as important as the fate of the world that hung in the balance

“B-but where are we going to sneak in? Guard of Honor’s headquarters is located in those staff-only passageways covering this city like a spider web, right? Doesn’t that mean any part of this thirty kilometer square city is a candidate?”

According to Aika, the passageways covered a combined total of three million kilometers. One could not cover all of that in a lifetime while wandering around randomly.

“There are entrances everywhere.” Kyousuke did not sound worried. “And even if this looks like an over-the-top setup with a complex ceremonial process, it’s really just a treasure hunting game set up by her and her love for being in love. There’s no meaning to it. So I’m betting ''the first place that comes to my mind will be the right place.'' That’s just how it’s set up.”

He did not need any obvious evidence.

His confidence came from the long time they had spent together.

“W-we have to do everything we can,” said Higan. “They’ll finish in three hours and then uncontrollable Materials will pour out, swallow up the people of this city, and wreak havoc on the entire world. We have to do something.”

“Yes. But to be honest, fighting the White Queen is more than enough of a threat on its own. Going up against her at full power is more frightening than fighting a million summoners.”

“The White Queen…”

“Is it still a shock?”

“Yes. Of course it is. But we have to do something… If the White Queen will really bring that kind of catastrophe, um, we can’t just ignore it.”

Higan sounded more sad than afraid, but that may have been because she did not directly remember the White Queen’s violence.

She had managed to shake free of her dependence, but that likely had nothing to do with herself. It would have more to do with seeing the painful-looking injuries left on her sister’s body.

“Fortunately, Guard of Honor’s Sewn Realm Summoning is apparently full of holes. The White Queen’s perfection is unstable and she might have a few extra vulnerabilities. It looks like there might be something we can take advantage of.”

That was not a lie.

However, there was something Shiroyama Kyousuke was not telling Higan.

''“This is the only way.”

A certain girl had literally tried to chop up and sell her body to protect her family.

''“Thanks to this, the normal theories of organ transplants don’t apply.”

She could have run away if she had wanted to. If she had given up on this one thing, she would have been free to live a completely different life. But out of those infinite possibilities, she had chosen death in order to protect her sister.

''“Why not? I’m a Joruri Method machine while she’s human. Protecting her is my only reason to continue functioning. The optimal answer is right before my eyes. We don’t need to bet on the ridiculous possibility of defeating the White Queen. I can save her like this! So…!!”

That was beautiful, but it had to be mistaken. Just like a sculpture that ignored proper anatomy in order to increase the apparent beauty, it was praiseworthy but wrong.

So Shiroyama Kyousuke had broken her heart for his own convenience. And he had drawn a certain word out of her.

''“If you think you can help us, then prove it!!!!!”

“…”

Kyousuke lightly cracked his neck.

He shifted his focus from inward to outward.

“Now, let’s get started.”

“Wh-what exactly are we going to do? Guard of Honor is a collection of summoners powerful enough to face the aces of Government, Illegal, and Freedom head-on, right? And they even have a Repliglass army. A direct attack on them would turn into a real war, wouldn’t it?”

“I have an idea.”

Higan heard a thunk. It was the sound of Kyousuke lightly kicking something in the evening road.

She hesitantly looked down.

It was a Horseshoe Crab.

It was a cutting-edge amphibious Repliglass soldier with a giant hemisphere of armor on its back.

Including the tail, it was about four meters long. It was one of the things Kyousuke had fished up while scouting out their strength. An unarmed boy could not defeat that cutting-edge weapon covered in a shell and artificial muscles made of silicon. But if he threw an Incense Grenade into the center of the enemy formation, a great number of guards would notice and it would cause a huge commotion.

However, that had not been enough for Shiroyama Kyousuke to give up.

He had started by spotting a single Repliglass soldier carelessly moving out alone on the very edge of their patrol route. He had then walked right up to it and thrown the Incense Grenade ''backwards''.

The Artificial Sacred Ground had opened with its outside edge just two meters ahead of Kyousuke. He accurately brought in that nearest Horseshoe Crab without including any of the other guards. The surprised target had tried to fight back with its close-range weaponry, but Kyousuke had already been automatically moved back to the center of the Artificial Sacred Ground. Then, as the Horseshoe Crab stared in confusion at the spot where its target had dodged with inhuman speed, he had used his Blood-Sign to summon the weakest and simplest Material and quickly defeated it. He had dumped the defeated Horseshoe Crab into the ocean directly below the bridge and then collected and towed it away using the cruiser he had waiting in case he needed to flee.

It had been over in less than five seconds after the Artificial Sacred Ground had opened.

They would almost certainly have seen that two meter glowing cube from the outside, but it had only lasted five seconds, there was no report of an intruder or a battle, and searching the scene would turn up nothing.

A group that takes in so many summoners would first assume an Incense Grenade had gone off by accident. Of course, if they checked the reports of all the summoners working for Guard of Honor, they would eventually find out that no one had done that. However, it would take some time before that happened.

Finding a definite hole was easy, but checking to see if “no one did anything” required going through what every single report said and deciding if they were telling the truth or not.

“Either way, they’ll get suspicious as time goes on and this Horseshoe Crab doesn’t make its periodic reports. It doesn’t really matter if they figure it out sooner or later. We just have to get in before that.”

Kyousuke calmly answered Higan who looked worried.

She nervously peered at the unmoving Horseshoe Crab.

“There’s, um, a bunch of stuff underneath that shell, isn’t there? …I don’t know what it’s all called though.”

There was indeed a Gatling gun made for underwater use, a super-high temperature saber that reached temperatures of five or six thousand degrees using a plasma jet also made for underwater use, and amphibious guided weaponry. A specialist in that sort of thing would probably have been drooling if they saw all that cutting-edge technology, but that was not Kyousuke’s focus.

“So it’s completely reliant on the detachable visor during night battles. Infrared, ultraviolet, ultrasound visualization, and light amplification… It combines them all into a single grayscale image. It looks like a modified version of the Quad Motors CE-30.”

Summoners and Material did not appear on mechanical sensors when the Incense Grenade was in effect. The visor was detachable so they could switch between the naked eye and the mechanical sensors.

After checking over the equipment, Kyousuke grinned.

“I think we can use this.”

“H-how?”

“One: the advantage of numbers doesn’t really apply in summoner battles unless it’s a large battlefield like a desert or plain. If you can build up a high-level Material with a Chain, you can defeat all of the others that have to start from scratch.”

He bent another finger down as he continued.

“Two: Summoners can bend the laws of physics, but even they have to follow a few steps to summon a Material. To put that another way, they’re almost completely helpless if you can seal off those steps.”

At that point, he asked a sudden question.

“Just to be sure, you don’t have glaucoma, do you?”

“?”