Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume7 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 2===

Preposterous theories had been whispered for quite some time.

What was the White Queen?

Was she the highest being who had existed since ancient times and helped to create the world? Or had she been created in the distant future but the past had been remade the instant she was created?

“Do you remember what Doctor S, my father, said?”

“What…did he say?”

“When his greatest desire was fulfilled in July of 1999, he saw the future.”

“What…are…?”

“Also, the Wicked Green Woman of the Unexplored-class Three said that the Unexplored-class are each in charge of one portion of the other world’s laws and that, by gathering all of those together, they can suppress all of the White Queen’s power. Although the White Queen turned out to be too powerful so all of the Unexplored-class were dragged around by her while still chained to her. …However the White Queen came to be, the current conditions were only completed partway through. Since the parameters are different than they were in the distant past, the current method would fail to summon her several centuries ago. That means the White Queen couldn’t have appeared a long, long time ago using the same methods as today.”

So…

“Let’s say there was a way of summoning the White Queen in the distant past that didn’t use the Third Summoning Ceremony or Blood-Sign and let’s say Kingdom F accurately passed down that method throughout the ages. That method should have stopped working from the moment the rest of the Unexplored-class was defeated. But since that hasn’t happened, it means your legends were wrong. It went the other way. Instead of using the past to build up to the future, the future was referenced to rewrite the past.”

“What are you talking about, Onii-chan!? You’re the one that isn’t making any sense!” Olivia shook her head with the decorative collar and pareo worn over her school swimsuit. “I mean…I mean…I mean there are statues of the White Queen in my kingdom. There are tons of paintings and old stories, so she couldn’t have just appeared recently!!”

“…”

“And what about Meinokawa Aoi here!? Sure, she was replaced, but the original one was a lookalike of the Queen and she’d been here for hundreds of years, right!? They would need someone to model her after, so it only makes sense if the White Queen has been loved by the world and answering people’s prayers for long, long, long, long time, right!?”

The answer to that was obvious.

So Kyousuke gave it.

“''And how did that work without Blood-Signs or Incense Grenades''?”

“!?”

They had seen the Meinokawa Shrine and Sekurtiti.

There were organizations that had existed long before that discovery. They had probably contacted the Divine-class. But what about the Unexplored-class? You could not find any mention of them in any ancient text.

The evidence did not make it correct.

The evidence was a problem.

It was like finding a barcode on the back of a hundred-year-old book.

…But the explanation was simple.

They might have had a method of accessing the Divine-class which contained the gods of existing religions. But what about the Unexplored-class above that? Were there past legends of them? The answer was no. They had only been discovered along with the Third Summoning Ceremony in July of 1999. Before then, how could it have been possible to access them with enough accuracy to get a clear picture of the White Queen?

And would such a method still work unchanged after July of 1999?

Even if they had existed in ancient times, they would have remained in the other world without being summoned.

They might have broken the rules, broken through the barrier between worlds, and appeared in this world when they felt like it, but there had been no way for humans to intentionally summon them.

Wasn’t that the most natural assumption?

“B-but, um, th-there are still a lot of people trying to summon the White Queen with twisted methods!!”

“Those simply dismantle the completed Blood-Sign method and reconstruct it to fit their own ceremony. It’s a lot like repackaging gasoline to create a Molotov cocktail. They haven’t created anything of their own.”

If it had been that simple, the Blood-Sign method would not have become so ubiquitous. If everyone could skip three steps to reach the White Queen with some random method they thought up, no one would bother with the rules.

The Blood-Sign method was the starting point for it all.

That was why humanity could not rid itself of those 150cm sticks.

“That’s not true! That can’t be true!! I mean, my kingdom has always had the White Queen and we prospered because she lent us her power!!”

“Olivia.” Kyousuke shook his head. “Do you know what the F in Kingdom F stands for?”

“Hm? What are you talking about? That’s obviously…”

With the decorative collar and pareo worn over her school swimsuit, Olivia’s tongue came to a stop.

The double blonde braid girl’s eyes widened and she froze as if paralyzed.

“A-ahh. Huh? But that’s such an obvious thing… We say it on a daily basis…”

“This is the normal way of things in foreign Houbi Village so far from Kingdom F. You could say there’s a kind of ‘atmosphere’ that doesn’t exist here. And that means there’s a chance of breaking your curse here.”

“I don’t want that!! Give back…give back my answer, Onii-chan!”

“The answer is the Flanguild Permanently Neutral Kingdom. It’s an absolute monarchy with a long history reaching as far back as 600 CE and, instead of an officially registered military, it responds to emergencies by openly using a conscripted militia and secretly sending in summoners and vessels taken from the Royal Shadows and the knights.”

“Th-that’s right, that’s right! Then what’s the prob-…”

“But, Olivia, if anyone but the two of us heard this answer, they’d probably just tilt their heads. ''Is that really right?'' they’d ask. ''Does that kingdom really exist?'' Spin the globe and you won’t find it. Search on a map app and you’ll get zero results. Can a kingdom like that really exist in this day and age?”

“A…awa…awawawawa…”

“Since the White Queen has worked her way into the very foundation of the kingdom, Kingdom F’s existence is far too unstable. So its appearance seems to waver when viewed from outside. The civil war I fought in was the same. A lot of theories were whispered here and there, but the truth is simple. Some of the people questioned it and some held no doubt whatsoever. Those conflicting values came to a head and led to a clash. The Queen was the source of it all. After those sparks set things ablaze, it was all erased in a great conflagration. That’s all there is to it.”

“What’s your point…?” asked straw hat Olivia with a tremor in her voice. It sounded like she was begging him to tell her it was not true. “No matter what you say, Onii-chan, the White Queen has left her mark all over the world. What’s your point!?”

“That’s obvious,” he immediately answered. “''That plain and simple history does not exist. We need to assume both the past and future were overwritten when the White Queen defeated all of the Unexplored-class and rewrote the rules.''”

Centuries of tradition and legends older than a millennium meant nothing to that great evil. That ultimate distortion was far greater than a black hole and she would alter everything just by being there. Who could say that her influence did not reach time and space as well? Who could claim that those remained absolute sanctuaries?

Plus, the Unexplored-class were anthropomorphized versions of the other world’s rules and the White Queen had destroyed them all and was dragging them around with her. How could anyone calmly assume that had no effect on history? It made no sense to assume that was a safe zone. In fact, the only sensible conclusion was that everything visible had been thrown out of order in that moment.

Take the Rainy Girl incident for example.

That proved the White Queen was not affected by changes to history and causality.

It was a simple matter. The distortion spread outward from the Queen like ripples, so no matter what happened, it would never change the center point where she stood. The central axis of the spinning top was the most stable point. One theory said the universe was infinitely expanding due to the Big Bang, but how true was that now? Even if it had been correct at one point, ''a second explosion, this one spiritual in nature,'' had occurred at some point. So the center point of the expansion had to be where she stood.

“You…”

A nearly empty look came over Olivia’s eyes.

No, the unnatural part was the nonexistent thing that had filled those eyes before.

“You have no way of proving that…”

“It’s the opposite, Olivia.”

Kyousuke calmly corrected her.

But he was far from gentle.

“I’ve already pointed out a contradiction. If you want to prove something, Olivia, it’s your turn to prove that the White Queen has been appearing in the same way ever since the distant past. If you can’t answer my question, then our discussion is over. ''That will mean your kingdom’s story of salvation was wrong.''”

“A-awawa.”

“So what will you do, Olivia? Are you all out of arguments?”

“Awawawawa…!! But…that…doesn’t make sense. I mean, what about my mom? Or my mom’s mom? Or my mom’s mom’s mom!? You’re denying everything they did and I…I just can’t-…!!”

“No, Olivia.” Kyousuke shook his head. “Since you exist here, that long, long history must have existed. Your kingdom overcame its crises without any help from the White Queen. She came in and stole the credit for all the work your people did. You had worked up an impressive score even if you didn’t take the shortest route, but the White Queen used her cheats to take it all away. She erased all the proper records!! Just like dumping some doping drugs in an Olympic gold medalist’s test sample to get them disqualified after the fact!! We can’t let her get away with that. Everyone settled things with good, old-fashioned hard work, so we can’t let her distort the results as she sees fit using those modified test results! Or am I wrong!?”

“But…my mom…”

“It’s true you might have gained an advantage if you had been able to access the White Queen. That’s the world we live in now, after all.”

He would not let her question it.

He had already given the answer.

“But if they resolved all those problems on their own without using the White Queen, that’s an even more impressive accomplishment. Your mom wasn’t amazing because she could access the White Queen! It was your mom herself that should have received that praise! It wasn’t statues of the White Queen that should have been erected in the city squares! It was statues of your mother herself!! Who needs miracles!? Hard work is what’s truly necessary!! Why haven’t you noticed how much has been taken from you? Why can’t you tell that your desire to be on the winning side has let her continue to take everything away from you!?”

“…”

“It’s time you realized you were a victim!! You haven’t won anything and you haven’t achieved true victory even once!! So escape this life of failure. Stop smiling happily while oblivious to everything you’ve lost! If all of you stop offering your family’s glory to the Queen, take it all back with the power she’s been extracting from you, and plant your own two feet on the ground, you’ll naturally rise up together, won’t you!?”

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Straw hat Olivia gasped.

And that small girl had to have realized that there was something strange about the White Queen.

“Say it, Olivia.”

Kyousuke was acting like a beast at this point.

No matter how coolheaded he was, he could not contain himself here.

The boy’s original driving force was an exposed and primal humanity.

“If you want to save your family!! And if you want to free your beloved kingdom from a millennium of bondage, then say it!! Everything you need to do that is gathered here. Let’s show the White Queen what human hard work can do! So say it!! ''You know what kind of person I am, don’t you''!?”

It was like a repeat of the past.

It was just like the cry that girl had heard in that hellish world covered in rubble and ash as a vortex of malice pressed in from every direction and dragged her down into the depths of despair.

“…I…”

And.

Finally.

“I wouldn’t like it either if that was true!! Then what did I believe in all this time? No, what did my mom and grandma and so on rely on for so long!? That’s what this would mean!!”

She knew what had been lost.

She thought of what had been stolen.

Olivia Highland had finally regained her humanity.

“My kingdom was split in two back then. But everyone was risking their lives for what they believed in. That’s what it was supposed to be! But if both the enemies and the allies were being manipulated by the White Queen and she wouldn’t have batted an eye whether we won or lost, then how can I forgive her!? And not just that. That wasn’t the only war! If things just like that…no, even worse than that ''are happening somewhere in the world every single time'' and I just haven’t been able to see it, then we would have to stop that!! I understand that much!!”

But.

However.

“I can’t… I don’t have the right…”

It was like looking up at the moonlight from the bottom of a dark, dark well.

The girl crumpled up her lovely face as she spoke.

“''I can’t say that after everything''…!!”

“''You can.''”

This was another side of people.

But Kyousuke discarded it.

Did someone seeking help need to be pure and unsullied? Did they have to fit all the obvious qualities of a “weak” person? The answer was no. In fact, the people who found themselves completely cornered tended to be in extremely complex situations that could not be judged on a simple good or evil basis.

He had decided to help them regardless.

He had decided he was in no position to judge whether a specific person needed help.

So.

In that case.

“This isn’t something you need a ‘right’ to or any kind of ‘qualification’ for. I don’t care how shamelessly you’ve changed your ways. Listen, Olivia. If anything about you catches my attention and your path seems at all odd to me, that’s enough for me to take your side. If you’re being swallowed up by a great current and you’re flailing your hand around in search of something to grab onto, I will grab that hand. So ''what happened before this'' doesn’t matter!! Don’t let the self-made ghosts of your past hold you back!! Stay true to ''what you want to be from now on'', Olivia!!!!!!”

Remove all the stops.

Forget about the hurdles.

Those things aren’t good or benevolent. If anything in your heart is holding you back from salvation, don’t call it self-sacrifice. Those things are no more than obstacles to your true desire.

The inability to resolve your own problems might hurt your pride.

Seeking out someone else’s help might be embarrassing.

But overcome it.

[[Image:BloodSign_v07_331.jpg|thumb]]

True salvation lies beyond that false sense of righteousness. If salvation without a struggle seems wrong, then think of the shattering of those chains as your first and last penance.

“…me.”

So.

So.

So!!

“Help me, Onii-chan…!!”

He had received her resolve.

And the boy once more rebooted Freedom Award 903, Alice (with) Rabbit.

A collection of combat instincts responded.

“As you wish.”