Editing City Series:Volume5a Chapter1 (section)

===Beretta’s Write Bring: Entry in Heavy Barrel Protected Empress’s Memory Bank===

I performed a Write Bring.

That is, I completely broke down the Lives of my body and combined them with the Lives of the 8-yard-tall Heavy Barrel.

It was to grow stronger.

Everyone knew that a Knight Striker’s duty was to use that strength to protect people.

Doing so required stripping naked, entering the conversion device known as the Study, and to hold a powerful desire to combine with this thing.

You couldn’t find this sense of actual battle in Heavy Barrel class at college and I hadn’t felt it since arriving as an “exchange student”.

Just a few seconds before, my body was broken down into nothingness inside the Study and it was now passing through the intricate conductive panels and tubes to spread through the machine’s cylinders, frames, and sense devices for sight and hearing.

I felt like I had mechanical flesh and blood.

Borrowing the machine body brought an incredible high of objectivity. I “Signed” what my will was doing by writing it to the Heavy Barrel’s memory bank.

I had to use powerful thoughts to write down everything that happened. Yes, this city was a textual world where things would disappear if not written down, making it a contrast to Aerial City – London.

To use London’s terminology, things only existed once they were Opened.

Sound, taste, and everything else only existed once they were written down.

That was why I focused on the fact that I had performed a Write Bring.

I used that awareness to Sign that fact, which allowed me to continue to exist.

I wrote that my feet could feel the cold floor.

And once I wrote it, my feet really did feel the cold.

At the same time, the Heavy Barrel’s armored will directly sent a system message to my will.

“Write Bring complete.”

I had interfered in my own Lives to combine with the 8-yard Heavy Barrel that had a will of its own.

The memory bank was currently in Continuous Complete Sign Mode. That was normally only used during military action, but in this city, nothing I did would happen unless I wrote it down.

In this textual world, you had to constantly express yourself or you would disappear.

For the time being, I wanted to remain in the high of having my thoughts leaking out.

“Sight Devices: Sign.”

I opened my eyes.

In this textual world that existed on paper, the Heavy Barrel’s visual receptors viewed things using printed drawings or text. But I wasn’t skilled enough to express myself using drawings, so I had to write down what I saw in text to see this world.

I could create my own reality in this city by Signing a “1st person narration”. Even if I didn’t find a certain document, I could Sign that I did find it and that would mean I had found it.

But there was also an “actual reality” separate from my own opinion of whether or not I found the document.

To “Point” was to insert that objective “actual reality” into my own narration.

In battle, what I and my opponent wanted to do were the competing Signs and the actual result was the Point. If all I did was Sign my own actions, my and my opponent’s actions would fall out of sync.

And what happened then?

The one with more accurate information would win.

That was why you would think you had won and all of a sudden find yourself defeated.

On the other hand, while you were Pointing the surrounding information in this world, where being written was to exist, you couldn’t do anything yourself.

If you spent a line Pointing, that was a line in which you couldn’t Sign. So you couldn’t just sit around Pointing the reality around you. You had to Sign if you were to do anything yourself.

So I made a quick Point of the current situation.

<nowiki><I am inside a large and dimly-lit wooden warehouse.></nowiki>

I see. Then this time I’ll Sign that I’m inside there.

Umm, I’m on my knees, but my gaze is really high up. The bottom of the warehouse’s sheet iron roof is just barely above my head…I think.

Before I did the Write Bring, the pile of wooden containers had looked like a wall, but from this viewpoint it looked surprising small. The warehouse was large enough for a small ship to fit inside, but it was no more than a backyard shed for an 8-yard giant.

But this wasn’t the time for that.

I was so focused on the Write Bring that I had forgotten what I needed to do: escape the warehouse with the Heavy Barrel.

The current situation was, um…

Oh, right. Wasn’t there a searchlight shining on me from outside?

<A blinding light arrived suddenly.>

The light lit up my metal skin…oh, no. I’m naked. This girl isn’t wearing an armor dress. But there was no point in acting tough and telling people not to stare, so I just looked away.

I looked down.

I knew the 5 corpses of the Resistance members I had been working with were down there. There was a lot of blood.

Wait…oops. They might have still been alive, but after what happened, I carelessly Signed them as corpses…

I might have been wrong, so I tried Pointing.

<Just as expected, 5 corpses are lying on the concrete floor.

There is a lot of blood.>

Ugh.

Oh, no. The Heavy Barrel itself is probably reacting and working with the Write Bring to give me an emotional high. Both the Lives of my body and my will had completely synched, so if my emotions got worked up…