Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume5 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 5===

The 7000 Years Theory


“Okay, our top batter is me: everyone’s idol, Imi-san! Let’s start by discussing the Crystal Magic presets we can all use.”

A popular Main Category girl took the microphone in the crowd. Was that Matsuda Imi, who was friend with Karuta’s group?

“More specifically, you know how we won’t die even if we do take a lethal injury? The regeneration preset lets us heal any nonlethal injury in only 30 seconds, but even something that would have killed us only turns us into a crystal statue. And we’ll recover from that after a long period of time.”

“Hold on. You’d better not be saying you’re okay with letting Karuta and the others go off and die because of that. That recovery takes centuries if not millennia. If any of us is lethally injured, none of us will ever see them again.”

The mocking rebuttal came from the delinquent boy named Yamane Deiri.

And Sophia Firenze delivered a further attack.

“W-we also don’t know if the regeneration will work if they have been thrown out into space. They might end up stuck in an endless loop of coming back to life and then immediately dying again because they’re out in the vacuum of space.”

“Yeah, I know☆” Matsuda Imi didn’t seem bothered by their remarks. “But don’t you see a loophole there?”

“Um?”

Natalena gripped the microphone up on the stage, but couldn’t come up with an actual answer.

They didn’t have much time and she wanted as many ideas as they could get, so she wanted to shorten the time spent judging the crowd’s reaction. Imi appeared to understand that because she winked and continued.

“Listen. Sure it might be millennia for the living people waiting for them to recover, but it’s instantaneous for the person who died. It would feel the same as going to sleep at night and waking up in the morning. So what if we had every student and teacher killed with the exact same severity of lethal wound? Whether that takes centuries or millennia to recover from, it would feel like only ''an instant'' before we all woke back up together.”

Who was it that gasped in realization?

Matsuda Imi shrugged with the spotlight pointing out her location in the crowd.

“Marika and Karuta-kun seemed pretty attached to the students from the first ship, so if we calculated out what kind of wound would match our recovery time to theirs, we could kill two birds with one stone. For example, that Kazamuki Gekiha guy isn’t supposed to recover for 7000 years, but if we match our timing to that, we could instantly travel to that point 7000 years in the future and everyone from both Grimnoahs could meet each other with no more injuries. How’s that for a happy ending!?”

“I-I think that could actually work,” said Nekoumi Hirosuke.

“Not quite,” interrupted Letnahe Kurent. “What happens to the Threat in that scenario? That is meaningless if all of you Crystal Magicians wake up to find the 300 million Threats swarming the Earth. You would be right back where you started. Worse, really, since all civilization would have been destroyed by that point.”

That problem still remained.

However…

“Then let me ask you this: what do those 300 million Threats use for food or fuel?” asked Imi.

“…I see.”

“''With that many of them, keeping them fed or fueled can’t be easy.'' In our fight against them near the Port of Kobe, we saw signs of them passing supplies on the ocean floor, but they don’t seem to eat or drink the resources already on the Earth. That means they can’t become self-sufficient on this planet. 300 million of them is a devastating force and they will quickly conquer the Earth if nothing is done to stop them. But I get the feeling that wouldn’t last long. Granted, my mind can’t perfectly simulate what the world will be like 7000 years from now, but I doubt the Threat will still be walking around.”

There was actual applause.

Not thunderous, but not scattered either.

However…

“Yes, that is a fair point.”

There was a loud scraping sound as someone roughly scratched his head with a large hand.

The interruption came from Kiyosawa Hadome, the gym teacher who made a point of playing the bad guy when it really mattered.

“So let me tear it down with a dose of reality. Your plan may give the Crystal Magicians of Second Grimnoah a path to survival, but what about ''the other 5.5 billion people out there''.”

No one had a response.

They even swallowed their gasps of realization.

“So we instantly wake up 7000 years in the future and the 300 million Threats can’t survive long term, so we can all live happily ever after in the distant future? That’s an awfully self-centered idea that pretends the intervening time just doesn’t exist. So what happens to the powerless 5.5 billion who we’ve abandoned to their fate? You predict the Threat will die off on their own, but are they really the only group that would go extinct on the planet during those 7000 years? I seriously doubt it.”

“Sensei, I won’t deny it’s self-centered, but I do have a rebuttal.”

“What, that we don’t need to care what happens to the kind of people who let themselves be manipulated by the human string pullers?”

Kiyosawa Hadome shut down the rebuttal by giving it in advance, so Matsuda Imi shrugged.

Those who agreed with that argument would be fine with the idea.

But there would be some who didn’t agree.

“Fine, fine. I withdraw my idea!” Matsuda Imi didn’t seem to mind all that much as she raised the white flag. “I’d be fine with that if it was just me, but Tayori’s got a big family with lots of siblings and there’s no way I could convince that homemaker gyaru to abandon them. Besides, Kurent-sensei, who teaches dance for our Main Category, isn’t even a Crystal Magician, so it would be narrowing ‘us’ down to only ‘the Crystal Magicians’. That means we couldn’t save everyone that way and Second Grimnoah would be missing someone afterwards. And Crystal Magic requires an aptitude, so not everyone in the world can use it. I understood all that already, to be honest.”

The silver-haired, brown-skinned teacher cleared her throat.

That may have been a way of warning the drama club member to not shine the spotlight on her.

“Assuming the Threat cannot teleport or warp, they must have spent a long time traveling through space. That means they can last a very long time without resupplying.”

After listening to Kiyosawa Hadome’s last point, Matsuda Imi winked at him with the mic in hand.

“But it was nice, powerful idea to start us out on, wasn’t it? Feel free to make the next theory even more out there. Now, then! We have to save Marika and the others before they can go off and kill themselves when no one asked them to! Stop worrying if it’s realistic and grab the mic!! You shot down my idea, so show me you’ve got a better one yourself. It doesn’t have to be perfect cause we might be able to combine several rejected ideas to reach a viable one!!!”