Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume8 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 5===

Multiple swishing sounds sliced through the air.

A 150cm Blood-Sign rapidly rotated in War Criminal’s right and left hands…but that was not all.

Those two sticks kept a third one airborne despite no one touching it.

The two sticks were in constant contact with the third one’s sides to catch at it and lift it up.

“A devil stick?”

Olivia expressed skepticism about that juggling action, but they did not have time to worry over every bit of their opponent’s trickery. While he used a juggler’s illusion to swap around the sticks until it was unclear which was the third, the clock was already ticking.

The 6 x 6 x 6 – for a total of 216 – red Petals had formed the three-dimensional cube of the Rose.

36 Spots had appeared in midair.

And as soon as they appeared, white lightning raced through the submarine. Both Kyousuke and Boy A launched their White Thorns with frightening speed. A single attack shattered the red cube, causing countless Petals to scatter across the narrow corridor and ricochet wildly.

Both vessels were transferred according to the acquired Petals.

Olivia was the Original Yellow (s). Cost: 1. Sound Range: High.

The fallen angel was the Original Yellow (s). Cost: 1. Sound Range: High.

They both became translucent yellow slime Materials.

<Onii-chan, we’re equally powerful…!>

“Then I just have to change that.”

The enemy would be thinking the same thing. Blood-Signs rotated in War Criminal’s hands and in the air before him.

The third one slipped through the first two and shot straight out when the time came to hit one of the fist-sized white balls of light.

<That was fast! But you only start with 3 White Thorns!!>

If the enemy acquired a large number of Petals quickly, Kyousuke would have no chance of winning. And that could be countered with a number of interference tactics like hitting their White Thorn with one of your own to knock it directly into a Spot or using a Petal to hit and take control of a Petal they had hit.

“!!”

But Kyousuke held back at the last second.

It was not a White Thorn that War Criminal’s Blood-Sign had launched. It was only a glove balled up to look like one. Kyousuke had only had a split second to make his decision and being lured into firing a White Thorn would have wasted a precious shot.

“Ha ha!! So you won’t screw up that easily, huh!?”

War Criminal was the head of Illegal, one of the three major powers. At Award 999, he had been able to take on Elvast Toydream, a different leader who had reached Government 1000. At the same time, he was an embodiment of the concept that a faceless neighbor could be war itself.

What did that mean?

Boy A hid his eyes behind the horizontal line of his ruler-like sunglasses and he gave no thought at all to playing by the rules in single combat. He relied on trickery through and through. He was dedicated to illusions. He invited his opponent to recklessness, lured them to self-destruction, and dragged them into a bog without giving them a chance to utilize their skill. It did not matter to him if the opponent before his eyes was higher ranked or a great army. By the time they noticed their misunderstanding, the tragic damage would have spread too far and no one could lower their raised fists.

''It would become a hopeless war where the original cause no longer mattered.

You could call him a feint specialist, but as seen in professional soccer, luring someone with your gaze or footwork required excellent fundamental abilities. Feints were not the fangs of the weak. They were but one of the claws and horns of the strong.

What was the greatest form of cheating?

It was to hold the position of strongest through old-fashioned hard work and yet use all of that for cheap tricks. Just like excellent metal engraving skills could create the plates for counterfeit money, just like the forensics techniques used to track down criminals could make mafia revenge easier, and just like the acting skill to gain the trust of countless people could be used to scam people. Putting in hard work to make easy money sounded like an oxymoron and it felt like not obeying the rules even for those who did not obey the rules.

Kyousuke thought about it and clicked his tongue.

“…You really do live up to the name Illegal through and through, don’t you?”

“So you noticed, Kyousuke-chan? You might be scornfully drawing a line between the two of us, but you’re plenty evil if you ask us!!”

And since he had the fundamental abilities, he was plenty strong even when his feints did not succeed.

His attempt had failed, but he still had a solid chance.

He embodied the stability that anyone involved in crime desired, whether they acted alone or in a group.

More and more sounds of ricochets burst out as Kyousuke and Boy A knocked plenty of Petals into the Spots. The Materials also changed form, but neither side could gain much of a lead in the Regulation-class. The battlefield quickly ascended to the Divine-class.

Set.

Divine-class. Cost: 3. Sound Range: High.

An evil usurper god in Egyptian Mythology. The killer of the good god Osiris. A black god who ruled over thirst which symbolized death in the desert.

Loki.

Divine-class. Cost: 4. Sound Range: Middle.

A traitor from within the Aesir in Norse Mythology. A liar god who created many of the gods’ enemies, used his words to befuddle enemy and ally alike, and attacked Asgard with an evil army during the final battle of Ragnarok.

Prometheus.

Divine-class. Cost: 10. Sound Range: Middle.

The hero of civilization in Greek Mythology. A superficial being who stole fire, the secret of the gods, and gave it to man, which ultimately led to the misfortunes of Pandora’s Box reaching the entire human race.

(Tch. Did he stock up on Petals as much as he could and then suddenly drive up his Cost!?)

Was this sudden Cost difference another one of War Criminal’s feints?

All of the Divine-class Materials used by Boy A, whose eyes were covered by his ruler-like sunglasses, were people who had been on the gods’ side yet betrayed heaven or the gods. But those evil gods were also necessary evils whose betrayals had given shape to their respective mythologies and religions.

They were beings who would have remained hidden had it not been for the Blood-Sign method.

Was using them another form of Illegal’s blasphemy?

“Hh!!”

Kyousuke did not stick with a single god either. Again and again, he used his White Thorns to knock Petals into Spots to remake his Material.

Waltraute.

Divine-class. Cost: 9. Sound Range: High.

The fourth of the nine Valkyrie sisters in Norse Mythology. Her name meant courage on the battlefield. Only the eldest sister Brunhild did anything of note, but that was not an issue when using the Blood-Sign method. There was often a margin of error between the actual mythological hierarchy and their strength when summoned in the Summoning Ceremony which was ruled by letters and Sound Ranges. Perhaps it would be simpler to describe it as ''how easy it was to draw out their power''. Using this method, Odin had a Cost of 4 and his beloved steed Sleipnir had a Cost of 8, so looking just at Cost, Sleipnir had double Odin’s score.

A Cost 9 warrior maiden and a Cost 10 hero of civilization.

The previous difference had been so great that Kyousuke and Olivia were still behind in the pure numbers, but they forced their way past that with the Sound Range compatibility.

The large man had a large chain attached and, when he roared, the flames that symbolized his great sin burst from all of his joints.

<Oh, no you don’t!!>

But the flames missed their target because the Valkyrie, who wielded a long cross spear and a diamond-shaped shield, vanished into thin air. The legends stated that Fourth Sister Waltraute had escaped detection by the gods to visit Eldest Sister Brunhild and tell her of a threat to the world.

The flames scattered in every direction, burning and discoloring the White Queen portraits covering the walls and floor, but Waltraute ran straight forward under Olivia’s control and slipped through the hellfire tsunami. The warrior maiden suddenly appeared in front of the large shirtless man and gathered strength in the cross spear held in her right hand.

“Stop, Olivia!! Don’t break through the outer wall!!”

<!>

Kyousuke heard the girl’s gasp directly in his mind.

She quickly sent out the diamond shield in her left hand like a hook in boxing and tried to break through Prometheus’s cheekbone as if with the point of a shovel. This was more than just grabbing the reins of the rampaging Material to guide it in the direction of the target. Only Olivia could control a Material so precisely that she could manipulate each finger independently.

[[Image:BloodSign_v08_203.jpg|thumb]]

With the frightful noise of a clash between heavy metal and divine bone, the fire thief’s great form spun through the air. The inner walls were built to withstand the tremendous water pressure in the event of a flood, but he broke right through one like he was a wrecking ball on a crane.

If Waltraute had made a right swing instead of a left swing, he would have broken through the outer wall and the seawater would have come rushing in. Since the protective circle would only last 10 minutes, that would have cost Kyousuke and the others their lives.

There was no need to wait until he got back up.

Waltraute swung her cross spear horizontally to whip up destruction like a ferocious beast’s claws through wet paper. But flames exploded from Prometheus’s body once more and the pressure forcibly altered the cross spear’s path.

The steel walls and doors swelled out unnaturally and orange sparks flew everywhere. The welds burst and the screws and bolts popped off and tore through the air like bullets.

A Material was not limited to a single form.

All the while, Kyousuke and Boy A were launching White Thorns with the ends of the Blood-Signs, but each time a wall broke down or a door burst off its hinges, the battlefield was widened from the cramped corridor. Those wounds looked like bites taken out of the metal, but even they changed the course of the ricocheting White Thorns and Petals. No real preparation was possible in this battle. They observed the real-time transformations of the battlefield while summoning more and more gods.

Kyousuke had a great white winged serpent from Aztec Mythology. Cost: 12. Sound Range: Low.

War Criminal had a demon of an unknown source that was later given the name Mephistopheles. Cost: 14. Sound Range: Middle.

(I’m behind in simple Cost and the rock-paper-scissors Sound Range…)

“You stepped on the landmine of recklessness, didn’t you?”

Boy A sneered while spinning his devil stick.

Destruction blew through.

The thick pipes and walls were torn apart.

If Olivia had not used her extremely precise control to lower the great serpent’s head to the floor, the horizontal swing of spread fingers would have sliced right through the Material. The great serpent aimed for the defenseless moment of motionlessness after the attack to sink its fangs into the demon’s flank. Kyousuke watched that, but something seemed off to him.

The head of Illegal had made an appearance here. War Criminal would generally only work to fulfill his own plans.

And yet there was no hesitation in Boy A’s destruction. Destroying the System Atlantis VFX production equipment along with the submarine’s interior would be two birds with one stone for Kyousuke and Olivia, but War Criminal should have been protecting that system.

(…''Don’t tell me''…)

But something unexpected happened a moment later.

Even War Criminal had to have been surprised by this.

<…i…ma…>

Kyousuke’s soul was shaken by an impatience that felt like bluish-white electric sparks gradually frying the brain cells in the depths of his mind.

He was currently engaging Award 999, leader of Illegal, in battle.

He had no mental resources to spare for anything else, but his attention was forcibly dragged away like an invisible fishing hook had lodged itself in his soul.

<Ni…sa…>

Something scratchy rang like static in his brain itself rather than his eardrums.

It was a being similar to but very different from the White Queen.

Not many people could make Shiroyama Kyousuke feel so much danger.

In that case…

There was only one possibility.

(But she already killed-…)

<Nii-sama.>

He did not have time to brace himself.

They were more than 200m below the ocean surface, but that coordinate was meaningless.

''A young child’s hand suddenly broke through the submarine’s thick outer wall.