Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter5 (section)

===Part 5===

Before the fighting actually began, Mikoto and Shokuhou of course held a strategy meeting.

They sat around a table in the dining hall on the 1st floor of the village’s inn with snacks in hand. Patissiet and Elder Bakerian joined them.

Something had been low-key bothering bikini armor Mikoto for a while now.

(How many layers of floating lands overlap each other? How do we even hold a briefing for a battle fought in three dimensions?)

“Um, this is a map of the Poseidon Lakes where we are now.”

Little Patissiet spread something out on the table.

And she continued, “And this is the floating land above us.”

The maps were not on parchment. They were on some kind of transparently-thin paper and they were placed on top of each other. If this village was on the bottom layer, then you could apparently place the maps for the middle layer, top layer, and whatever other layers were needed on top of it.

“Hm. That’s hard to read. I get why it has to work this way, though.”

“We aren’t done yet. This finishes it up.”

Bakerian held out her hands and muttered something under her breath, causing a buzzing sound. A 3D image of the terrain shown on the thin maps appeared above the table.

“Oh, that’s neat,” said Shokuhou. “Now this is really feeling like a fantasy world☆”

“?”

The ordinary elf tilted her head at that one.

“We are in the Poseidon Lakes, but there are two floating lands approaching above us from the west. The middle layer is the Hades Plains, famous as a necropolis. The top layer is the Zeus Mountains. The Zeus Mountains are so high up they often collide with the clouds, altering the weather and sending frequent lightning down toward the Poseidon Lakes.”

“…” “…”

“Um?” said Patissiet giving them questioning looks.

Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus. Even residents of science-obsessed Academy City recognized those names. The names in Celesaqphere continued to be extremely lazy. Anyone with any experience with myth-based manga and anime would know these ones.

The worst part was that the Poseidon Lakes was apparently dotted with seawater springs, meaning the name actually kind of fit.

(Someone from Earth didn’t visit here long before we did, did they?)

“Most of the soldiers and bombs will be deployed to the Hades Plains in the middle. As that land travels from west to east, they can drop their bombs to achieve a complete carpet bombing of the Poseidon Lakes where we are.”

Needing to view multiple lands to understand the win conditions for this battle was annoying. If the floating lands were on a set course, the enemy could take a higher layer of land long before it arrived, wait until that floating land was on top of the target, and then send in all their soldiers.

“But the bottom layer and middle layer are only 30m apart. I can make a direct attack there,” said Mikoto.

“That is a wondrous thing to hear, but the real problem is the Zeus Mountains at the very top.” Elder Bakerian pointed up toward the ceiling. “The distance between the middle layer and top layer is 200m. Even your power will have a hard time taking you that far, won’t it?”

“Well, yeah…”

“And it goes without saying their top commander is going to be watching everything from up there,” said Shokuhou. “Is there any way we could take over the middle layer and ask for a truce?”

“The Zeus Mountains will be prepared for at least a bombing. But less for dropping on an attacking enemy and more for threatening disobedient troops into continuing the attack from the Hades Plains.”

So even if they took the middle layer, they would have bombs raining down on them from the top layer.

They could not win this battle without directly attacking the top layer.