Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume7 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 4===

Kyousuke had announced his intention to kill the White Queen.

He had expected to run into Bridesmaid since they worshiped the Queen over anything else in the world.

But as he pulled his Repliglass Blood-Sign from his back, a certain phrase came to mind.

(I need to fix this little by little. If I do what they want, things will only get worse!!)

To be blunt, his group gained nothing from fighting Olivia.

Their goal was to learn from Meinokawa Aoi and acquire an artificial vessel that suited their purposes.

And yet the situation was rapidly headed toward battle.

Win or lose, they took damage just from taking part. It would tear their schedule to shreds.

They did not have time for a strategy meeting with the enemy right in front of them. Biondetta made complex movements using the artificial bones inside her dominant hand in order to communicate with Kyousuke.

(Let’s throw our Incense Grenades simultaneously. They must not want to let us build up our Cost using Chains because they haven’t surrounded us with summoners. It’s two-against-one, so we have the advantage and we need to use it!!)

Kyousuke had no objection to that plan.

Alice (with) Rabbit pulled a metal can the size of a hairspray can from his hoodie pocket, pulled the pin, and threw it. Liar Cat spread her legs and a sphere a bit smaller than a baseball fell from her waitress-style miniskirt.

Even if one was deflected, the other would detonate.

The standard for a group battle was to trap your target in your own Artificial Sacred Ground.

And that was what should have happened.

However.

It was a pristine sound, as if from a metal wind chime.

By the time the vibrations had propagated through the air, the change had already arrived.

“A cut…!?”

A slight vertical cut ran through the very bottom of the miniskirt and the tool she had supposedly dropped between her legs was cleanly destroyed. Even Biondetta felt her throat grew so dry she could barely force her voice out through it. The Incense Grenade was sliced apart as easily as a piece of fruit. And with enough accuracy to remove the fuse, preventing it from detonating.

Aoi brought a hand to her mouth in surprise, pushing up on her soft breasts in the process.

“Even with Incense Grenades thrown in two different directions, that helmeted man not only sliced through them but defused them as well!?”

That 2m Japanese sword had supposedly been held in place with wire, but the strength of his thumb had been enough to forcibly break that wire and release the seal.

It had been an ''iai'' strike.<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaido Iai] is a technique of quickly and smoothly drawing out the sword..</ref>

Without losing any momentum, he had smoothly made a second and third sword strike. Just like a roller coaster endlessly switching between kinetic energy and potential energy, the faceless man’s sword edge never came to a stop. After the storm of flowing silver lines was released from the sheath, it could not have been even two seconds before it was returned to the sheath.

And that frightening sword edge would be able to target more than just Incense Grenades.

In general, an Incense Grenade’s timed fuse took 3-5 seconds to detonate.

Against this lab coat and riding suit man, those few seconds seemed to stretch out into an eternity. It was hardly surprising that Biondetta and Meinokawa Aoi decided their best course of action was to immediately move back to put some distance between them and wielder of that long weapon.

But the boy chose the exact opposite path.

Shiroyama Kyousuke adjusted his grip on his similarly long Blood-Sign and charged forcefully in toward the man.

The previously pristine sound grew distorted.

It was not the man’s blade that Kyousuke’s Blood-Sign had caught. He refused to even let the man remove the sword from its sheath, so he had caught the wrist of the hand holding the hilt.

“The weakness of longer weapons is the range you need.”

He approached to just a dozen or so centimeters away and they both poured all their strength into their respective weapons.

“And it’s even worse with a sword since you can’t move your hand up the shaft like you can with a spear or ''naginata''. So it’s actually safer to move in close.”

That was as far as he got.

The supposedly-restrained helmeted man turned his body even further. That freed his arm from the Blood-Sign and pulled Kyousuke’s wrist forward as he tried to pursue it. When using ''iai'' techniques to kill instead of as a performance, this was a recovery technique for when your sheath or hilt was captured.

He did not rotate his hips to shift his entire body weight. He only used the strength of his arms. And there was not much actual power contained in the movement.

But Kyousuke’s body flipped quite dramatically. He had been forced to do it himself to escape the pain in his wrist joint. This was an ''aikido'' style throw that used the bare minimum of strength to control your opponent.

However…

“…”

Shiroyama Kyousuke did not bat an eye even as he was flipped upside down.

Had the man failed to notice his expression because they were too close for his eyes to focus properly?

Kyousuke’s flipping body obscured the lab coat and riding suit man’s vision and he moved to the side as guided by the man’s recovery technique.

And once he was out of the way, the helmeted man saw something else instead: Biondetta’s bolt-action sniper rifle.

A dry blast rang out.

The recoil ran violently through the alluring body contained in the waitress uniform.

The fact that the man managed to draw the blade and block the rifle proved his skill really was the best of the best.

But this was not a battle between a blade and a bullet.

It was a battle between summoners who fought by calling in otherworldly beings.

They had only needed to stop the man’s movement for just a moment.

Even as he was thrown into a side flip and out of the way, Kyousuke stuck his left hand in his pocket and tossed out the metal can found inside.

He had already been outside the swordsman summoner’s focus.

And he had also tensed up due to the knockback from the rifle bullet.

The silver flashes would return a moment later, but that brief pause had killed the speed of proper ''iai''. It was only by some miniscule fraction of a second, but he was too slow all the same.

The blade did dig into the surface of the metal can.

But that was when it detonated.

The mixture of herbs and minerals was arranged differently for every summoner, but that incense now spread out and surrounded a 20m cube to cut it off from the rest of the world.

A stock of three white balls of light known as White Thorns appeared near Kyousuke, Biondetta, and the helmeted man, a Rose created from 6x6x6 red balls of light known as Petals appeared in the center of the Artificial Sacred Ground, and 36 Spots opened all across that space.

“We finally cleared step one…”

The first one to hit a White Thorn with their Blood-Sign was Biondetta who had moved away and was thus free to act.

“…But we’ll have the upper hand once I summon a Material!!”

The sword user cut at Kyousuke to force him to block with his Blood-Sign and launched a White Thorn while Kyousuke was knocked back. But in the meantime, Biondetta’s White Thorn caused the Rose to burst and the red Petals scattered every which way. She really was the fastest one. Several Petals fell into the Spots and the white snake vessel transformed into a Material.

Sound Range: High. Cost: 6.

Predatory Fire (l v z – w z b).

Seeing as Olivia’s side only had the Original Yellow (s), a slime of Cost 1 from the high Sound Range, their plan had paid off. This was an overwhelming advantage. They were the same Sound Range with a Cost difference of 5. There was no way Biondetta could lose.

But Kyousuke felt a chill down his spine.

That line. Biondetta’s words. He felt like the pupa of hopeless slaughter was waiting to spread its wings…

“Wait, Biondetta…”

Then it hit him and he called out to her.

“Don’t let your guard down!! This isn’t over yet!!”

“?”

He did not get through to her. 

Biondetta gave him a puzzled look just before it happened.

There was a cost difference of 5.

They were both at the same Sound Range, so that would not have played a role.

“…Eh?”

Biondetta’s eyes opened wide, like she was viewing something truly unbelievable.

The translucent yellow slime’s body had burst straight through the pulsing central weak point of Biondetta’s supposedly stronger Material.

It had broken through the Silhouette.

That was the Material’s weak point where the vessel’s mind resided.

That blatantly-displayed weak point was never taken advantage of because not even the chosen vessel could fully control the Material. The best they could hope for was to just barely keep the rampaging targeting cursor on the target, so precise targeting was no more than a hopeless dream.

(The Third Summoning Ceremony refers to a contract bound between humans and Materials.)

And yet.

The enemy had done it.

(So the exact classification and definition of “human” becomes an issue. The more accurately a vessel can indicate what a “human” is, the clearer the Material can perceive them and the greater they synchronize. And that binds them more closely together. That is why shrine maidens and holy women cut themselves off from worldly impurities to preserve their purity, and that is why there are traditions of finding special meaning in the structure of the human body itself, such as a sage’s skeletal structure or the Adam Kadmon. While you can be taught to be a summoner, being a vessel is mostly reliant on inborn talent. There are natural ones like Meinokawa Higan and Sekurtiti and there are created ones like Isabelle who had her soul artificially worn away and Lu-san whose family is searching for the perfect form of mankind. And the greatest one I’ve ever seen is…)

''The small vessel before his eyes right now.

''As a vessel with royal blood, royal flesh, and a royal soul, Olivia Highland could fully control her Material.

“Kah.”

And no matter how it had happened, there was only one result once the Material had been defeated.

The defeated summoner and vessel would be hit by a shock equivalent to seeing their god slaughtered before their eyes.

“Kahahhh!!!???”

As soon as everything burst and the white snake was released into the world once more, Biondetta arched her back. As if she had been hit by a stun gun in the back, she could not close her gaping mouth and she collapsed to her knees.

Even so, this would never have happened to Biondetta normally. At Freedom’s 900 level and as an actively scheming demon, she would have immediately picked up on the scent of her opponent trying some kind of trick and she would have put up her guard.

It was obvious what had dulled her senses.

(That summoner was trying to prevent us from using the Summoning Ceremony, so she assumed victory was ours as soon as the Incense Grenade detonated. ''Even though there was nothing at all to suggest that.'' They placed a nonexistent borderline in her mind and launched a surefire attack in the instant she crossed it and relaxed. Olivia, when did you get so clever!?)

The yellow slime turned to face him.

A Material was normally a mass of fighting instincts, but this one came to a stop even though Kyousuke had yet to summon a Material and thus gain a protective circle. It was like a rider holding their trusty steed’s reins and ordering it to wait. That alone proved just how extraordinary Olivia’s talent was.

She had overcome a Cost difference of 5 for an instant kill, so even if Kyousuke summoned a Cost 1 member of the Original Series and tried to build his Material up from there, Olivia would kill it before he got anywhere. And even after all this, Olivia may not have been satisfied. She had said she wanted to show off all sorts of great things about the White Queen, so she did not seem to want a quick end to the battle.

But then…

“I see.”

The silver-haired shrine maiden sighed in a mixture of exasperation and awe.

She held her own head between her soft hands, but it did not look like her mind was ruled by agony. She also gave her partner a glimpse of her defenseless armpit through the opened shoulder of her clothing.

“So this is the cutting-edge form of the Blood-Sign method. And it would seem you have developed some secret techniques not even I am familiar with. But if you are going to cheat, then you can’t complain when I do the same, can you? I have had far more than enough time to sit around and think while being used as a shrine god.”

As soon as she said that, something happened.

She used her hands to pull off her own head. It came off far too easily.

The action was as casual as removing a full-face helmet.

And with her head missing, Meinokawa Aoi held the removed head to her surprisingly large chest and spoke.

“Now, a question. Girl, where do you think the human soul resides? In the brain? Or maybe in the heart? But the answer doesn’t actually matter. I am a fully artificial vessel, so I am not actually a living creature. In other words, I have no center point. That is an extremely important fact.”

Olivia had become the Material, so she could not actually speak.

But even if she had a mouth with which to speak, would she have tried to communicate with Aoi?

“Since I have no center, where will the Material reside if I split my body in two within the Artificial Sacred Ground? In the brain, or the heart? As I said, I do not have the center point you call a soul. Now, will the Material choose correctly? Or will it choose wrong? Or will it be unable to choose just one and be torn in two to reside in both halves? What matters here is that the Summoning Ceremony is the modern version of the extremely dangerous ceremony used to call down the gods. If you keep that in mind, I think it should be obvious what is about to happen.”

She was plotting something.

Knowing that must have been enough because the Original Yellow moved swiftly. It moved to eliminate Meinokawa Aoi who was producing dissonance.

But it was just a moment too late.

“If the margin of error grows beyond the tolerable limit, the contradiction cannot be contained and ''the ceremony will fail''. It does not matter what Material you have or how long until the proper end. It will be immediately canceled, the Artificial Sacred Ground will collapse, and we will regain our freedom.”

It was like a giant balloon popping. The pull of gravity vanished from Kyousuke’s feet. By the time he realized he had been blown away by an invisible explosion, he had been knocked quite a ways backwards. And he was not the only one. The same had happened to all of those arrogant enough to take part in the Summoning Ceremony and insolently wield a higher power.

The summoning had failed.

This never should have happened in the modern age of the Third Summoning Ceremony.

“I may only be an artificial lookalike, but do not forget that I am a shrine god who has long listened to people’s prayers and warded off evil, you fools. If I was going to give up on someone’s life just because that life is not my own, I would never have been worshiped by the people in the first place.”

Kyousuke took the full brunt of the magical reaction and rolled across the scorched paddy field. The core of his spine ached from the pain he never should have experienced as the successful one.

“Kah…hah…???”

He groaned on the ground and nearly forgot how to breathe, but it could have been worse. ''He would have been hit by far more had he already summoned a Material.'' Then he heard a rustling sound. He looked over while holding his throat and saw Meinokawa Aoi looking down at him with her head reattached and unconscious Biondetta held under one arm.

The silver-haired girl needlessly pushed her chest out, causing that portion of her shrine maiden outfit to swell out.

“Honestly. Back before the convenient Blood-Sign method, magicians said you only counted as a proper beginner once you could eliminate the reaction assaulting your body. I feel like I’m looking at a chef who specializes in using a peeler and doesn’t actually know how to use a knife.”

From Kyousuke’s perspective, that sounded like trying surgery using the techniques from a time when no one knew to sterilize their tools. Attempting a few reckless stunts was not at all useful when standing on the modern front line where common knowledge had been entirely rewritten.

Regardless, Aoi herself was entirely unaffected.

“As I don’t have a soul, I can’t think of anything within me that could be shaken by that shock. That means this kind of reaction can’t damage me. You should be thankful the Joruri Method can cheat like this. Let’s get out of here while they’re knocked out.”

“Kh…”

Once she grabbed Kyousuke’s arm and forced him to his feet, he kept his unsteady body standing and looked around the area. Olivia Highland and the helmeted man were indeed collapsed on the burnt paddy field.

“Hey, we don’t have time to carry an extra burden,” said Aoi. “I’m sure more of them will be after us soon. If we don’t get out of here, they’ll capture and interrogate…no, torture you.”

“…”

“C’mon already. Besides, that would be suicide if she swallowed a homing beacon. I don’t know if you’re planning to stick your hand down her throat or up her ass, but can you really search the inside of her body right away?”

“…”

“Oh, come on! Come oooon!!”

“…”

Kyousuke ignored her as he moved his unsteady body and scooped up Olivia’s small frame in his arms. The straw hat girl was not even 135cm tall, but she felt as heavy as a weightlifting barbell to Kyousuke at the moment.

Even so, he picked her up.

He had a reason to do so.

He had once bound a contract with her, saying he would save her.

(Olivia seems to be in the same state as anyone who loses. That means she’ll be like this for 24 hours. I’m really glad that happened ''before'' I summoned a Material.)

“Okay. Let’s get out of here, Meinokawa Aoi.”

“Fine then, you kidnapper. Quit acting like some kind of hero, you pervert. But looking at her again, that is quite the getup that brat is wearing.”

“She was born in the landlocked Kingdom F, so she had never visited the beach. She had this weird obsession with Japan’s swimsuits and the idea of swimming in the ocean.”

18,000 rockets had leveled the village and then a great number of summoners and Repliglass soldiers had landed. It was best to assume Houbi Village had fallen into Bridesmaid’s hands, but while the outsiders would be using satellite photographs and map data, Meinokawa Aoi knew the land inside and out. There was no hesitation in her step, so she likely already had a destination in mind.

Her scent and warmth were just like that of a human.

Kyousuke made a comment while following her.

“The Joruri Method can cheat, huh?”

“All ''cam-er-uh''s and ''sen-ser''s cease to function inside an Artificial Sacred Ground, so it’s already cheating that an artificial summoner or vessel can do anything inside there.”

“That’s true enough, but…no soul?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“…But Meinokawa Renge was affected by the penalty when she lost. She was hit by the shock equivalent to seeing her god slaughtered before her eyes. That would mean she has something inside her that can be shaken.”

“I see.”

While placing limp Biondetta over her back, the very first Joruri Method gave a dry smile.

“Then it would seem future generations have gained some functions I lack. Now I’m jealous.”