Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume4 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 1===

'''(Timeline “Now”)

It was past noon in a luxury hotel room as quiet as the Mary Celeste.

Kyousuke covered his face with a hand.

He did not understand the meaning of the vision in his mind.

“…Wait a second.”

“?”

The White Queen really did tilt her head like a navigator who had been told to wait.

“What am I involved in here? What happened after that job request?”

The vessel closest to him had vanished.

This new information could entirely change what that meant. He did not want it to be true, but he could feel himself beginning to measure Himekawa Mika as an enemy. He began to suspect she had maliciously dressed and acted like an old acquaintance to earn his trust.

He needed to investigate this again.

Who was his enemy? On whose side did Max Layard and Ellie Slide of Perfect Game stand? What was his true relationship with Himekawa Mika, his missing vessel? What about the Deltaston family with its leader lying here as a loser? Who was connected to whom, who was harming whom, and what purpose had there been in opening the door to Pandemonium’s processing core?

“Brother, I doubt all the information you need can be found in this room. After all, the person who did this to that man will have been inside here. Wouldn’t they have retrieved and disposed of anything they didn’t want seen?”

“I don’t need documents. I just have to talk to him myself.”

Kyousuke crouched down and focused on the old man in a gown who lay on the floor while slowly and endlessly acting like he was walking with a cane.

He was a lot like a zombie in the original sense of the word and he would obey anyone’s instructions, but he could barely think and could not understand any complicated signs.

Kyousuke kept it short.

“Tell me.”

“…?”

“Tell me everything about Pandemonium and what’s hidden there.”

“That question is too indirect,” commented the Queen.

“That’s fine.”

Kyousuke cut off her disruption as the old man on the floor began speaking quietly.

“…Pandemonium’s convenience is no more than a decoy to hide its true purpose…”

“Its true purpose?”

“Pandemonium is not…just a Box meant to simplify the Summoning Ceremony… It is meant to destroy the established hierarchy of Materials…and create a new possibility…”

“Possibility?”

“…So that we might receive the divine right of kings…”

“Go back one. Destroy?”

By repeating a single word or phrase from what he said, Kyousuke could guide the old man’s slow and wandering conversation.

It started as a series of random words, but he was cutting deeper and closer to the crux of the matter.

“Pandemonium can manifest new Materials…that ignore the existing costs and sound ranges. For example, even if you summon the same Material…the strength will be different between the Blood-Sign method and the Pandemonium method…”

“…?”

One phrase caught his interest.

“The strength will be different?”

“The Divine and Unexplored-classes summoned with the Blood-Sign method…do not come with their full strength. …There is always a factor of decay. Is Seth of Egyptian Mythology or Yamata-no-Orochi of Japanese Mythology stronger…? There is no definite answer…but with the Blood-Sign method, the answer is Yamata-no-Orochi because it has a higher cost. Even the sound ranges lose all meaning once the difference in cost reaches 10… It comes down to the summoning method and the compatibility between the gods…”

Kyousuke was unsure what word to choose.

He placed his hand on his chin while crouching.

“Factor of decay?”

“The actual equation is unknown. …But if the power of the gods can be increased or decreased based on the summoning method, it would also be possible to create a great enough increase to overturn the existing hierarchy… A Divine-class would be able to defeat an Unexplored-class…or the White Queen at the very top could be dragged down from the throne of the strongest…”

That felt like having a stake driven through his heart.

He tried to be extremely careful so the Queen would not notice, but the silver twintail girl simply smiled elegantly.

“Overturn the existing hierarchy?”

“The Blood-Sign method…categorizes Materials with letters and uses that to assist in the summoning. You could say the preexisting gods are managed via spelling and that overwrites them in a form that humans can perceive… So couldn’t the same god’s cost and sound range change if they are represented with another word? Think of it as the difference between the Norse goddess Freyja…and Freya. This has never been practically proven with the Blood-Sign method…but the theoretical possibility exists, so there must be a loophole somewhere. And that fits perfectly with our objective in the Deltaston family…”

If writing was not an aspect of civilization gifted to mankind by the gods, then the gods’ names were being expressed with a human language. To put it another way, it may have been like switching a telescope’s lens while viewing a star, but it was all just a theory. Kyousuke thought it was a very dangerous tightrope walk.

“Your objective?”

“The Deltaston family desires absolute authority… That perfect authority would be unshakable by anyone…not even the White Queen at the very, very top… By escaping the fear and control of that Queen…man can finally return to being man. In accordance with the concept of noblesse oblige…we in the Deltaston family are obligated to take on that burden…”

Kyousuke breathed a heavy sigh.

In any other situation, he would have loved to listen to this until morning.

“Escape?”

“By summoning the Wicked ‘Green’ Woman who Fills the World with Empty Treasure…one of the Three from the Unexplored-class…and increasing her power with Pandemonium…we will tear down the hierarchy and defeat the White Queen…”

The old man was probably telling the truth.

In fact, his zombie-like state did not leave him with enough of a will to lie.

The boy slowly stood up and the White Queen gave an exasperated comment.

“What a foolish idea.”

“Perhaps so.” Kyousuke decided to avoid argument for the time being. “But this is strange. If they were trying to summon the Wicked Green Woman, then why is it the White Queen standing here?”

“Who knows. Why don’t you ask him?”

He tried, but the old man said nothing.

Kyousuke frowned.

“He can’t refuse to answer, so he must not have the answer. Does that mean he wasn’t the one that did it?”

It also bothered him that the head of the Deltaston family had been defeated and that a third party may have taken control of Pandemonium. That might also explain why the Wicked Green Woman had become the White Queen.

And there was one more thing.

How did the Pandemonium method work? Was Himekawa Mika inside the White Queen? She had supposedly been a Holy Key Woman, a special vessel that could instantly summon a specific Divine-class, but could he explain the discrepancy between that and the White Queen’s presence?

He tried asking about every term he could think of and received a surprising answer.

“Pandemonium is a symbol of a parliament, not an absolute monarchy.”

“Hm? A parliament?”

“Even if each individual person can only reach the Divine-class…bringing them all together to reach a single conclusion can overthrow heaven. …Divvying up a single Material among all 353 of them allows us to stably summon an Unexplored-class…”

Kyousuke felt something heavy weighing on his stomach.

It took him some time to grasp what those simply spoken terms meant.

“Wait a minute.”

“…”

“That wouldn’t work. You divvy up a single Material to multiple vessels? That might be theoretically possible, but can you really divide it back up into the 353 individual vessels once the limit is up!? In the worst case, wouldn’t you end up with ''a single hunk of flesh''!?”

“Brother, you are speaking too complexly. A loser’s mind cannot process that.” The White Queen sighed. “And he is saying hundreds of sacrifices are acceptable if it means constructing a thousand-year kingdom outside my control. Do you really think that man who seems himself as a hero has enough of a conscience left to care about what happens to them afterwards?”

“Goddammit!!” spat out Shiroyama Kyousuke.

The information he lacked formed an ominous silhouette and tormented his mind.

Himekawa Mika was missing.

All of those vessels had not been in the processing core.

The White Queen had already been irregularly summoned.

How did it all fit together? Why was it the White Queen instead of the Wicked Green Woman, why had Himekawa Mika had him open the door to the processing core, and why had he lost his memories in the first place? He still did not have the whole picture, but a bad feeling still spiraled through his mind. His soul was warning him that digging further would only reveal despair.

He was still missing something needed to know it all.

He faced the head of the Deltaston family with far more aggression than before.

“Tell me!!”

“…”

“What would cause you the most trouble!?”

What if the many vessels had not wanted to continue with the Deltaston family’s plan?

What if they had wanted to avoid being a single hunk of flesh?

What if they had fought back?

And the old man gave a simple answer.

“Summoning a strengthened White Queen…using Pandemonium which was meant to summon the Wicked Green Woman… If the very, very top is boosted further…there will truly be no way to defeat her…”

Kyousuke felt a pain like his head was splitting open.

He had finally reached the crux of the issue.