Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume1 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 3===

The promised time had arrived.

It was better called early morning than late night. Karuta and Marika left the RV at 4:10 AM, which was just barely before dawn. They were in a truck stop for long-distance drivers. Those places were usually busy even late at night, but this early morning period was apparently an exception. Everyone had their seat reclined while they slept below a blanket with an empty stomach.

The sky was changing from dark blue to purple.

Just like in his memories of the Ocean Crystal Magic Academy, he found it difficult to imagine the arrangement of the stars as the darkness faded away.

Curly twintails Marika looked up and trembled a bit in the chilly air before speaking up in annoyance.

“I can tell why we chose this time. Of course, we’re headed to the weapon production plant of the world’s largest arms company that didn’t even get help from the giant sword woman, so I doubt the place is this quiet.”

“If we only knew Anastasia was there, we wouldn’t have to sneak around like this. This is going to be the final battle, so we might as well break in and end it quickly.”

Of course, that assumed this opponent was someone they could defeat that way.

As they walked out of the truck stop and toward the semiconductor plant, they received a transmission from Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka who was waiting back at the RV.

“Karuta-kun. This is the world’s most secure factory, but do you remember how to get in?”

“It’s not really all that complicated.”

To keep out industrial spies and terrorists, the factory would have cameras and sensors set up inside and out. There were sure to be a thousand or even ten thousand in all.

But there was a way around that.

Simply put…

“Sensors are meaningless if they can’t sound the alarm after detecting an intruder,” he said.

“Yes, we only have to set things up so the alarm will sound around the clock and refuse to turn off,” said Kyouka. “Security will probably work hard to search the area at first, but they will gradually give up on that. Once they realize the sensors are malfunctioning, it will not take long for them to start yelling at the alarm to stop.”

“And no will notice us sneaking in when all the sensors are already sounding the alarm? Wow, that’s like the polar opposite of ninja action,” joked Marika while walking alongside him.

It might seem ridiculous, but there was no chance of sneaking in and covertly achieving their goal when they wanted to fight one of those Problem Solvers. Chaos would arrive sooner or later, so it all came down to deciding when that was.

The factory grounds were a 3km square and they included employee dorms since it existed in such an empty area, so it looked something like a small village. It was all locked down by a fence and gate, though. There were also a few large, boxy factory buildings and warehouses for temporary storage of products and materials.

On the way there, they spotted an unmanned transformer substation surrounded by a tall fence. Backup power would likely kick in if they destroyed that and it would require some very technical skills to bypass the switchover and cut power to the sensors.

But if they only wanted to cause a commotion, things were much easier.

“Marika, blast that thing,” said Karuta.

“Oh, so we’re finally getting started.”

After she said “Tezcatlipoca, power up”, the Crystal Blossom worn at her chest shattered and covered her arms and legs with translucent armor and wings. She swung her rapier to fire a laser beam from the unit inside the reversed guard that resembled a broken umbrella on a windy day. She sliced right through the fence and the boxy concrete building of the transformer substation.

Alarms began blaring from the sleeping factory and lights switched on with the brightness of a baseball night game.

Karuta gave a snort of laughter.

He had already experienced this while traveling through London while the city was on high alert. Bright lights seemed like they would help locate suspicious people, but the extreme contrast actually created blind spots in the shadows. It looked like they had little to worry about.

“Okay, we have to play the rest by ear.”

“This is getting exciting!”

Marika again used her laser beam to slice through the chain link fence to gain access to the factory grounds.

But something seemed off once they stepped inside.

“What?”

“Is something wrong?” asked the Student Council President.

“Um, we set off the alarms as planned, but there’s no one inside,” answered Marika. “There’s no sign of the security PMC or any workers who should be checking around after this extra-loud alarm clock woke them up.”

“…”

The alarms and bright lights most likely reacted automatically when the sensors detected something. They were overcome by an eerie feeling similar to arriving at school like normal but finding yourself alone there even as the bell rang to signal the start of class.

Then all the alarms went dead.

They had chosen a method that would make the alarms hard to shut off, yet everything went silent.

A young woman’s voice spoke from the emergency broadcast speakers set up around the area.

“No need to be so shy. The doors are unlocked and the PMC has been called off. Hurry on in. I really wanted to speak with you.”

“…”

“Whether you want to speak or not, you do need to meet with me, don’t you? You must be dying to kill me since I’m the last survivor. So hurry it up. I am waiting in the general reception lobby of Building A Floor 1.”

“(Hey, Karuta.)”

“(Yeah. We know there’s someone suspicious here, but there’s no guarantee they’ll be waiting there.)”

They stood back to back to keep an eye on their surroundings as they slowly made their way toward Building A.

Meanwhile, the young woman continued chatting from the speakers.

“Hey, Utagai Karuta. What are your thoughts on the Threat?”

“…”

“Oh, did I put you on your guard? It was not easy gathering information on you. I mean, checking the bodies wasn’t really an option when they all sank with the ship, so it was extremely difficult figuring out who we failed to kill. The report cards held by various governments and that fully separate Crystal Blossom you call Aine ended up being the keys there. A rare weapon can have its downsides in practice.”

This was more than just a unilateral broadcast.

She knew where they were and could see his wordless reaction.

“I don’t care what the Threat is at this point. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn you made it all up.”

“Ha ha. But that wouldn’t make any sense at all.”

It was her response that did not seem to make sense.

But he doubted she was lying at this point. She was not begging for her life, so she felt no need to worry how they felt about her. If she was going to silence them through death, she would not need to protect her image with them.

So what did that mean?

“The Threat does exist,” said the scratchy voice coming from the speaker. “It is hopelessly powerful, it is brutal with no room for negotiation, and not even the five of us working together could defeat it. It is known as a Metal-Derived Autonomous-Origin Higher Lifeform Combat Weapon, but who knows what that means. Whatever it is, it causes real damage and the world’s governments must not have been satisfied with how we were just barely restraining it. That is why they decided to develop and introduce new technologies such as your Crystal Blossoms.”

“Then why did you crush our school underfoot? Couldn’t we have all just gotten along?”

“Wasn’t fighting us enough to tell that we use entirely different formats?”

Her words seemed to decisively cast something aside.

“Your power is useful. It has in fact driven us to this point. But suddenly bringing a new weapon to the battlefield is certain to introduce confusion into the maintenance and utilization of all the weapons. We would trip each other up and fail to live up to our potential and that would cause the barely-contained equilibrium to collapse. We had restricted the damage to the occasional region or city, but from that moment on, the future of the 5.5 billion population would only grow darker and darker.”

“…”

“More power is not always a good thing. We suggested a future where the five of us continued to be updated until we could one day defeat the Threat. Everything beyond that would only hinder that future.”

“Are you kidding me? You slaughtered so many people just because they followed a different standard, yet you expect us to repent?”

“No.”

Did she resent Karuta’s group just like they did the Problem Solvers after their friends were killed?

“There is a punishment for every crime. Either I will kill you or you will kill me. But even if you defeat me, you will not escape this hell. Once you become the world’s strongest, the reality of the Threat will be thrust before you. No matter what happens, you will not find rest.”

Marika’s eyes wandered as she asked a question.

“Damn her. Is she really this insane? You killed so many people and you aren’t even talking in terms of good and evil? To hell with that! Do you not even realize what you did was wrong!?”

“We merely held different positions. And do you remember what we were tasked with protecting? You should have been able to see it from that giant ship.”

It was like a decorative piece of junk.

It was a skinny silhouette rising vertically from the horizon.

Karuta recalled what Kazamuki Gekiha had said while laughing.

“The space…elevator? What about it?”

“The world is reshaped by the victors. There was an age of mythology, there was an age of natural science, there was an age of majority rule, there was an age of God-Worshiping Magic, and now an age of Crystal Magic is arriving.”

“And you didn’t want that?”

“It all comes back to the different positions we held. We brought our magic to the table because we sensed that ordinary scientific technology would not be enough to construct a fortress against the Threat. The planetary expansion of Sunny Side Up was one option. But there were plenty of others. Elicia wanted to build a submarine city that perfectly recycled all of its waste, Yukino wanted the aforementioned planetary expansion, Jessie wanted to use largescale cold sleep to pseudo time travel tens of thousands of years into the future when the world’s environment would have recovered, and Susannia wanted to use special suits based on biological structures to endure the harsh environment. I too brought an option to the table like that. Although mine was rather bizarre. But more than that, it came down to whether or not we could construct a means of combating the Threat under own power. You could even say that was the requirement to join the Problem Solvers. Not all of it was necessary. As long as just one of us bore fruit, we would have a chance of defeating the Threat.”

“You don’t mean…”

“Yes, as you Crystal Magicians rose to prominence, you got in the way of those things. Your side effects – that is, the absurdly tall buildings and ridiculously large ships and aircraft – sucked the resources dry in the blink of an eye. No matter how bizarre a fortress civilization the five of us tried to create, your new technologies would get in the way. The planet would dry up and humanity would be wiped out before the Threat could do it. Nothing developed from Crystal Magic can defeat the Threat.”

How much of what she was saying could they believe? Karuta could not tell how much was true, but he knew something in there was not right. But as he focused on that camouflage story, he could not deny one thing. Whatever the specifics were, the birth of Crystal Magic was threatening to thoughtlessly destroy everything God-Worshiping Magic had built up.

It was not an issue of each individual power.

The rise of that new power was like an invisible hand attempting to drag God-Worshiping Magic from its throne.

Was that what the Problem Solvers had been fighting?

“For one thing, we never considered you Crystal Magicians yourselves to be good or evil,” continued the voice over the speaker. “The real issue was the Original Crystal Embryo. That gave humanity something we did not need. We could have continued combating the Threat with decent results, but that was getting in our way. Its thoughts and lifespan are unknown, but Crystal Magicians can only be found within humanity. Perhaps it hopes to wipe out the entire species and let a new green ecosystem spring forth over the course of tens of thousands of years. Perhaps it wishes to reorganize the pyramid so humans are no longer at the top.”

“…”

“Have you started to question it yourself now? Not even I know what will become of humanity if we abandon any new path and stick with what we have. Perhaps the resources and food will quickly run out and we will all die, or perhaps Crystal Magicians will find a new solution that not even the Original Crystal Embryo considered. But I do not like having the choice taken from us. Humanity must decide whether we do something or not. We do not need to cling to the skirt of that Original Crystal Embryo.”

They had nearly arrived at Building A.

Karuta and Marika gulped while the speaker continued.

“And this is not an issue of good or evil. It is about different positions. There was an age of mythology, an age of natural science, and an age of God-Worshiping Magic, and then Crystal Magicians were rising to the forefront. This is nothing complicated. The world is reshaped by the strongest. The strongest get to decide how the world works. In our attempt to work together and combat the Threat, we once got in someone’s way and led to the deaths of our predecessors and now others are similarly getting in our way. We remain the strongest until we are eliminated. When we are defeated is when the title of strongest is passed on. That is all it means to be strongest. It is a flimsy thing that leaves you so readily.”

“You…”

He shuddered.

He finally understood why she did not work with the other Problem Solvers. She wanted to combat the threat in every way she could and she wanted to use her full strength to achieve victory, but she did not think she would survive in the end. If other people’s lives were necessary to achieve victory, she would crush them and she would not hesitate even if her own name was on that list. She made no attempt to avoid the inevitable fall awaiting her. She would wait for it to reach her and she would crush it head-on once it did. She had survived this long that way. And she truly stood at the peak if she had managed to hold the title of the strongest with so little planning behind it.

“Simple, isn’t it? It might happen today or it might not. That is how we have lived our lives.”

They never arrived at the general reception lobby of Building A.

Something happened before they could.

The entire giant boxy factory was slashed diagonally from within.

Everything collapsed and so much dust filled the scene.

But that screen was sliced through and swept away so nothing remained.

Below the purple sky, a woman grinned at Karuta and Marika. She had long, wavy blonde hair and she wore a tight skirt military uniform with a yellow and black coloration that signified danger.

“I beseech thee, Anubis, Egyptian God of Judgment.”

This was Anastasia Blast.

She was the final Problem Solver and the undeniable world’s strongest.

She defined today’s justice, but she might not define tomorrow’s.

“So let us begin yet another day in our apocalyptic lives. There is no good or evil here. This is no more than a waking dream until I destroy someone or they destroy me. The shape of the world supported by the ‘strongest’ is no more than an illusion drifting in the gap between dreams.”