Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume2 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 2===

The Threat filled every part of that icy world, both the land and the sky, and they showed no sign of being driven back on either field.

(How far have they evolved?)

Karuta grimaced when he returned to the surface and viewed the battlefield, but he at least saw no obvious changes in the flying ones. The Crystal Magicians had the upper hand there. For now, anyway.

But Marika and the others appeared to have intentionally gathered on a single point while defending a location that did not actually matter to them. They were intentionally losing those battles and withdrawing bit by bit. The Threat must have had some level of intelligence because they would go to the effort of digging through the defended location after Marika and the others left. As if wondering what the Crystal Magicians were so intent on defending.

In truth, those were only the unmanned devices that produced the artificial waves of the now frozen beach.

“That’s clever.”

“Yes, looks like this has evolved beyond a silly battle where both sides are simply comparing their specs.”

While the gradual withdrawal paid off, Karuta used his Crystal Blossom to contact Marika and the others. He made sure to use the hotel, theatre, and other tall buildings to stay out of view from the Threat as he regrouped with the others. He felt out of breath simply traveling along the asphalt.

This was already the Arctic.

It was so cold the palm trees and hibiscuses had frozen instead of withering. He did not want to think what happened to the colorful animals.

And amid it all…

“What happened?”

Natalena Blast forgot all about the visible breaths escaping her mouth as she viewed not Karuta but the 20-ish people following after him. She had seen the hopeless looks in their eyes.

Her anger flared up.

Or maybe this was a pure emotion that could actually worry about others.

“What did you do to those people!? I thought you said you would get them to safety while we risked our lives fighting out here? How could you do this!?”

He could only weakly shake his head.

He had no answer for her.

That 12-year-old girl must not have realized that digging back up that issue was like a rusty knife to a festering wound for those ordinary people who had felt so powerless they had abandoned their goodness.

They must have felt blinded by the bright light of Natalena Blast’s eyes as she faced the Threat head-on out of no more than a desire to help others. They must have been crushed under the weight of the fact that they had chosen selfishness, that had backfired, and they had even failed to die.

“Kill me,” groaned a vanishingly quiet voice. It was the young man who had stubbornly yelled at Karuta earlier. “Use me as bait to fight the Threat or whatever. I can’t stand to go on like this.”

Karuta ignored that outright. They might not be happy, but he was not going to let them die now that he had saved them. Besides, people who jumped to suicidal that easily tended to be the type to change their tune quickly once their life was in immediate danger. And that was not Karuta judging someone he disliked; these people really had abandoned the Grimnoah students to win the B World dome’s favor and then been abandoned themselves. Someone who was willing to risk their life for something from the beginning would not have done that. Karuta really wished they would learn a lesson from this. His patience had been stretched dangerously thin.

Marika must have figured out what happened when she saw the boy’s exhausted face and saw the President whistling nonchalantly while inspecting her nails. She knew they had encountered some kind of malice, so the twintails girl put a hand on her hip and made a suggestion.

“We can carry those 20 with us. There are 1000 of us, after all. It isn’t efficient, but that’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Thanks.”

“Sacri-sama.”

Aine emotionlessly approached.

She still held her drawn sword in one hand, so he would prefer she not move too close, though.

“What exactly will we do now? The delaying tactics using decoy defensive locations will stop working before long. We need another objective.”

He had put off making a decision here. Kiyosawa Hadome and Sophia Firenze were watching him from a distance, but the adults apparently had no intention of butting in. For better or for worse, the lives of Grimnoah’s 1000 were in the hands of the world’s strongest. That included his classmates, the middle school underclassmen, the Student Council, and the teachers. The number was even greater when including all the ordinary people in all the other domes.

This was different from risking just their own lives to seek revenge.

The weight was bearing down on him, so he took a deep breath before speaking.

“Could we gather them all in one place and bomb them with all our firepower?”

“We’re already exhausted.”

Marika did not explain what she meant, but he caught the implication that an explanation would only bring despair. They might be able to destroy the small Threats individually, but they could not be entirely wiped out. And if even one survived, it would ''cannibalize'' the defeated ones to become an even more horrific Threat. After defeating the occasional Threat and finding it only inspired unwanted growth in their foe, Marika and Aine had thrown in the towel. That was why they had resorted to deceptive delaying tactics using decoy defensive positions.

They never would have used delaying tactics if they could win in a direct fight.

Those were the tactics of the losing side.

“First of all, we can’t stay here in this broken dome.”

C World dome was already an icy hell of -15 degrees.

Holing up in a surviving building and cranking up the heat would not be enough. All concrete structures were not made equal; some had better insulating structures than others. The ones inside the dome had been designed for a tropical environment, so they could not keep out the cold.

Not to mention the many Threats lurking in this space. Even if they managed to hide for the time begin, it would not last. They would be found and the battle would begin anew.

Needless to say, the Threat was powerful.

If they were going to fight, they had to go on the offensive.

They could not allow themselves to be caught by surprise while asleep or eating.

“But it also doesn’t look like the other domes will let us in. They expect us to fight the Threat for them. In fact, they even think the Threat is here for us, so it’s our responsibility.”

“Then what? We go outside?” asked Marika. “That’s a -15-degree blizzard, just like in here. Crystal Magic does give some protection against the cold since we have to fly around at high altitudes at Mach speeds, but we won’t last out there forever. I imagine we’ll reach our limit after a full day – 24 hours.”

Aine glanced over at the armed students hanging around a short distance away.

“Just so you know, some of them have suggested we attack another dome and occupy it. Since the B World dome abandoned us, that seems like the best candidate. There have been non-fatal casualties in the high school, such as Yamane Deiri and Matsuda Imi.”

“Stop them from doing that. It wouldn’t solve anything.”

Karuta immediately rejected that idea.

That plan was likely fueled by a desire to protect the middle school, not to run wild out of pent-up frustrations. Karuta understood the desire to look like a proper upperclassman, even if only to keep your own will from breaking.

But.

“Whether you break in through the double-layer front gate or the dome’s exterior, an armed attack will only break the seal and create another -15-degree space. And even if you did manage to take control, that ends once the frustrated ordinary people riot. They do not need magic to blow a hole in the dome wall using a propane tank found behind a restaurant. They would choose to throw out hope themselves.”

“Wh-why would we have to go that far?” Natalena hesitantly spoke up. Her feelings must have been complicated, but she must have decided she could not stay stubbornly silent when everyone’s lives were on the line. “We can fly using Crystal Magic, right? So instead of staying here, um, why not fly across the ocean to escape to the Icelandic mainland?”

“We don’t know how many of the Threat are out there. In fact, it’s recklessly optimistic to assume what we see in here is all of them.” Marika winked with a hand on her hip. “What if they have those anti-air pellet cannon scorpions out in the ocean waiting? If they have the entire Crystal Beach surrounded, flying out there would only get us shot down.”

She had once fought a true dogfight with Susannia of the Problem Solvers, so her superhuman flying skills might be enough to find a spot to slip through the gaps of those wide-range explosions, but they could not force the middle and high school freshmen to do the same thing.

“What will it even accomplish for us to run away?” asked the crystal girl with a tilt of the head that sent her long silver hair swaying. “If humanity has no means of defeating the Threat better than Crystal Magic, then they will continue to pursue us even if we run, destroying any armies that try to stop them. If we escape to Iceland, wouldn’t it only turn Iceland into the next battlefield?”

Natalena was shocked into silence. That must have been a difficult fact to face.

That pure girl had yet to exact her revenge, so she could not let herself bring disaster to innocent people. If she did that, she would lose the right to ''feel righteous hatred toward her target of revenge.

And sending Marika alone into the storm of explosions to seek rescue would also be fairly meaningless. Any government she went to would demand that the Crystal Magicians do the fighting here.

“Hm.”

“Sacri-sama?”

But how had it worked in the past? They knew the Threat had eliminated cities, states, and countries around the world, but they did not know how that had eventually ended. Only that cities would suddenly disappear. They had never heard of the Threat staying somewhere and setting up a country for themselves, or them gradually expanding their territory of death. It was generally considered to be a series of random attacks where they suddenly appeared and just as suddenly disappeared, like a game of whack-a-mole.

If they stayed here to the end without a plan, they might figure that out firsthand.

Although they would join the dead, unable to pass that information on to anyone else.

The Threat would not spare them on a whim. The Threat’s past actions made it clear they would destroy everything when they made an appearance. Grimnoah’s students were already caught in the center of that unpleasant legend. If they did nothing, they would be killed just like those past examples.

So Karuta decided resistance was the only option.

“We still need to figure out how, but we’ll have to defeat the Threat here. What other choice do we have when running away won’t ensure our safety?”

“B-but we don’t stand a chance, do we?” asked Natalena.

“We know they can be defeated.”

Young Natalena may have found his confidence strange, but he had a reason for it.

“The Problem Solvers fought them off. They couldn’t fully eradicate them, but they still succeeded in saving individual cities.”

“…”

“They were as human as we are, so we should be able to do the same thing. At the very least, we proved we’re stronger than God Worshiping Magic on that day.”

Those five had been the worst of the worst and lowest of the low, but Anastasia would have felt no need to lie when she was willing to accept her death whenever it might come. When they had fought the Problem Solvers, they had doubted whether the Threat even existed, but they had to accept it now that they had seen it for themselves.

Those five had been the lowest of scum, but they had still fought to protect the world.

“We know there is a way, so we just have to find it. What we need is time to think, so we need to find that no matter what.”