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

===Part 6===

“Oh.”

There was a creaking sound.

With his ruler-like sunglasses hiding his eyes, Boy A, aka War Criminal, sensed the abnormality with his killer’s instincts.

“Owwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

Then it shattered.

With the high-pitched sound of a glass container dropped on the floor, the Artificial Sacred Ground was destroyed with no regard for the 10-minute limit.

Kyousuke’s soul was hit by an impact that felt like a hammer to the center of his chest.

“Uh…bh…?”

He doubled over.

The protective circle, the Material, and every other mystical element had been erased. Even War Criminal had lost his grip on all three of his devil sticks. It was not just Kyousuke. Everyone fighting in the Artificial Sacred Ground shared this pain.

He heard the screams of the girls who had regained their human form.

(Not…good…!!)

He clenched his teeth and steadied his breathing while desperately holding onto his consciousness and working his mind.

A childish and soft-looking hand reached in from the outer wall before him.

The hand dropped straight down. The nuclear submarine’s hull was built to withstand incredible water pressure, but the hand tore a straight line through it like it was pudding or yogurt.

<Nii-sama is there.>

“…!!!???”

Then a white torrent burst from the wound in the wall like a high-pressure water cutter. The protective circles could deflect anything, but they were gone now. Kyousuke immediately rolled to the side to avoid the blade that was full of sharp metal fragments like shark teeth.

But it was not over yet.

If the submarine filled with seawater, no one would survive.

<Wait, Nii-sama.>

Another hand reached in through the vertically-opened wound. The two arms widened the wound like someone forcing open a closing train or elevator door. Even a pinhole brought the threat of sinking, but with a disconcerting creaking and cracking, the hole was widened to the point that a child could walk right through.

Unexplored-class. Cost: 21. Sound Range: None.

The Colorless Little Girl Dedicated to a Single Goal (aie – a – oio – ei – ueo – ioa – e – uai – ee).

The symbol of the Fourth Summoning Ceremony which had ended the Third Summoning Ceremony.

“Dammit, you’re falling apart…”

“Onii-cha-…”

Wet Olivia tried to tell him not to worry about it, but Kyousuke cut her off.

“I created you. I embedded you in the world. And all so I could kill the White Queen myself!! You were supposed to be the savior of this hopeless world, so why did you have to break like that!?”

<…>

There was no response.

She had succeeded in executing the Queen. ''And the fact that she succeeded without expecting to'' had been such a powerful psychological shock that the little girl had broken and there was no communicating with her any longer.

Perhaps it was like she had tried punching her father, who used his authority to force all sorts of unfair family rules onto her, and ended up bringing him to tears. Except for her it was with a god no, an absolute being greater than a god.

She looked like a girl of about 10.

Her long wavy hair formed cat-like points on the sides of her head and she had a tail on the back of her hips that moved like an independent creature. She wore something like a one-piece swimsuit, the countless blades and firearms surrounding her waist formed a dress-like silhouette, and the 12 thick books behind her were arranged in a circle that resembled a halo. She had no color to speak of, so the scene behind her showed through her smooth silhouette and a clione-like light flashed intermittently in the center of her chest.

Every one of her weapons was an ultimate divine item capable of killing the White Queen. They were not meant to be used on humans, but that assumption was meaningless now that she had gone berserk.

They were more than 200 meters below the ocean’s surface.

The Colorless Little Girl had entered from outside.

And yet ''there was not a drop of seawater'' on her clothes or her hair. She had deflected and reflected it all. No ordinary physical phenomena were allowed to touch her. She herself seemed to have become a sort of sacred ground.

“Why did you appear here…?”

Kyousuke voiced his anguish, but was he only confirming his own thoughts? Or was he letting out a problem he could not process himself?

“What are you using to travel between the two worlds, Colorless Little Girl!?”

Was there any logic to it?

Had someone made some largescale preparations to give freedom to the Colorless Little Girl just like the perpetual summoning of the White Queen?

Or was there nothing like that?

Did logic simply no longer apply to this being who had broken after killing the greatest of evils?

(No. I can’t give up.)

He clenched his teeth and resisted the temptation.

He used all his strength to resist giving up on understanding her and holing up in a convenient shell.

(There has to be something… I created her and embedded her. No one knows the Colorless Little Girl better than I do. So if I give up on figuring her out, she really will become a disaster beyond reach…!!)

Most likely, no one could understand what the Colorless Little Girl was thinking as she muttered the same things as a doll abandoned in a ruined building.

Her swishing tail slowly rose, but was that a sign of interest in something? He could not read the emotions behind her actions.

Was this a positive or negative interest?

<Nii-sama, Nii-sama.>

“Tch!!”

The loud click of the tongue came from War Criminal instead of Kyousuke.

He had seen motion from one of the weapons forming a long skirt silhouette: a simple speargun. The three-pronged harpoon on the end aimed directly at her target. Boy A was the leader of Illegal, placing him above every criminal organization in the world, but he was only a flesh-and-blood human when not inside an Artificial Sacred Ground.

The Colorless Little Girl did not even glance his way.

It was unclear whether she acted out of love or hate, but the trigger moved on its own all the same.

“…!!!???”

An explosive noise burst out.

It was the sound of the book girl, who was facing Olivia and who was soaked with sweat as she bore with the pain, striking the air with her dark-red swan wings. One of them weaved through the gaps in the broken inner walls and collided with short-haired Boy A. She left her own body exposed, but the cutting-edge Repliglass was simply not enough. With the sound of something being crushed, the three-pronged speargun broke through and tore off the one wing. It fell apart in midair and countless shards resembling glass or plastic scattered across the corridor.

(No. Did she intentionally place that in the attack’s way to slightly divert its path…?)

“Olivia!!”

The rising seawater caught at Kyousuke’s feet as he ran toward his vessel. That Kingdom F royal vessel could control Materials with great precision, but she was only a girl as soft as a kitten or chick without the blessing of an Incense Grenade.

He half dove over to grab at her torso and bring her to the floor. They both ended up in the seawater, but they did not have time to grimace at the unpleasant sensation. The broken ultimate weapon turned her head and the eyes peering out through the gaps in her bangs landed on that pair.

Kyousuke thought this was ''a good sign.

He could just barely see War Criminal out of the corner of his eye, but the Colorless Little Girl did not give him a chance to speak with him. Olivia threatened to slip from his grasp since her swimsuit had soaked up so much water, so he wrapped his arms around her slender body, picked her up, and passed through a nearby watertight door without looking aside.

Once he had shut the thick door and turned the round handle to seal it, pale-faced Olivia shouted from under his arm.

“What was that!? Wh-wh-what do we do, Onii-chan!?”

“We can relax as long as she’s fixated on me. If I run away, War Criminal and the rest won’t be killed instantly. Assuming Illegal doesn’t poke the hornet’s nest.”

“You need to think up a way for ''you'' to survive first! Y-you’re saying you’re going to keep her on your tail while you leave the submarine, aren’t you!?”

“More or less.”

“B-but what about System Atlantis? If we don’t destroy the computer on this submarine, we can’t stop the video supporting the Silver Resource War. My Kingdom F could be labeled part of the East Europe Axis so they can make their overclocking doll. Are you just going to let that Unexplored-class destroy it?”

“I don’t want to sacrifice any of the crew, so tearing the entire sub in two is not an option.”

“You aren’t saying we have to search through this maze of a submarine, are you?”

“About that…”

Loud footsteps sounded. They were in front of a sealed watertight door, so they were at a dead end. Crewmembers wielding shotguns appeared from around corners and stairways along the steel corridor.

They gave no warning before aiming the weapons at Kyousuke and Olivia.

Were they Illegal soldiers who had not been given vessels?

Kyousuke pulled on Olivia’s hand and ran inside a nearby cabin. Then he clicked his tongue. They were both soaked with seawater, so their wet footprints made it obvious where they were hidden.

A few gunshots rang out, the shot bounced around the corridor like pinballs, and then a young male voice gave a belated warning.

“Stop! Don’t leave that room! Stop, dammit!”

He had clearly forgotten his training and the commands were a mess. Sensing the impatience and fear in that, Kyousuke somewhat narrowed his eyes. It may have been naïve after being shot at so much, but he shouted back while holding Olivia under his arm.

“Stay away from the door if you don’t want to die! You’re up against an Unexplored-class, so she can slice through it like butter if she wants to!!”

He heard some gasps, but they did not shout back in anger or confusion.

A great cacophony of destruction followed. But not from the sealed door Kyousuke and Olivia had escaped through. It was a familiar noise. It was a scream from the submarine itself as the thick hull was torn like wet paper and high-pressure water poured in like a water cutter. And that directly hit the crew.

They had no hope of fighting back.

Instead, flat voices could be heard muttering.

“…”

“Oh…extraordinary…please…this…”

“…Sob. Oh, White Queen who guides us to victory in extraordinary battles, please reach out to this fragile human soul….uwehh…”

They had to be aware of the Queen’s death. And they had to know who had caused it.

So was clinging to that transcendent being the only way they could maintain any calm in their hearts?

An inescapable pressure bore down on them, just like a ritual preceding mass suicide.

“O-Onii-chan…”

“…”

Kyousuke carefully stuck his head out into the corridor to observe. The outer wall had been torn open in a few places and blade-like white torrents were bursting in. The crew lay collapsed on the ground after the masses of water struck them.

A small hand waved at him from the wall.

And then the hand pulled back.

Instead of breaking through the watertight door, she had used the hole in the hull to reenter the ocean and then created a new hole. The Colorless Little Girl had killed the White Queen, so the water pressure and lack of oxygen may have been meaningless to her.

While splashing through the thin film of water already covering the floor, Kyousuke carried Olivia through the corridor. The crewmembers lying face-up on the floor wore cellulose nanofiber bulletproof vests. That special material used plant fiber to provide strength five times greater than steel, but the center of each one was dented inwards by the ultra-high-pressure water.

“Uuh…”

They uttered scratchy groans.

They were still breathing, but not because they had been lucky. Good luck would never be enough when faced with the Colorless Little Girl who had executed the strongest of the strongest. A flesh-and-blood human could never escape an extraordinary Unexplored-class, so there had to be a reason behind this result.

The Colorless Little Girl was intentionally holding back.

Or rather, she was following Shiroyama Kyousuke’s methods.

“…''Is she trying to save me? Is that what this is?''”

He recalled how that small hand had waved as if saying hi before pulling back into the territory of death. This was an oddly broken sort of obedience very different from the White Queen’s high pressure love.

“O-Onii-chan, I don’t think we have time to stop and think.”

Olivia sounded worried as she twisted her own drenched body and wrapped her arms around herself to squeeze the water from her swimsuit like she was wringing out a rag.

Seawater continued to pour inside and the submarine would be unable to surface if this continued. Forcibly moving it while its balance was off would only cause it to roll over. Their only choice would be to wait inside the giant metal coffin until their oxygen ran out. He had to view the Colorless Little Girl as an out-of-control weapon that intended to provide covering fire but instead shot her ally in the back.

“Hey. Get up. Hey!”

“Ghh.”

“Prepare the filler and pumps. If the Colorless Little Girl destroys the hull any further, there will be no saving the sub. You need to seal the holes and pump out the water before that happens. Hurry!!”

“…Why do I have to listen to you…?”

“I’ll draw her away. I’ll remove her from the submarine entirely. How’s that for a bargaining chip?”

The crewmember fell silent.

Was he surprised or could he not rid himself of his doubt?

“There’s a lot I don’t know about the Colorless Little Girl’s behavior, but she should be fixated on me. I want to leave the submarine before the damage spreads any further. This sub is a San Francisco-class sold off by the US Navy, right? I saw on our approach that its combat functionality has been restored, but what about the direct undersea launch mass drivers?”

“…”

“The San Francisco-class was mass-produced and I know the basic layout and specs, so don’t try to lie to me. I want the giant railgun that can launch shells into orbit from depths up to 2000 meters. Using supercavitation, the shell can break the sound barrier even within the ocean’s high resistance. A San Francisco-class should have 16 vertical launch platforms on the submarine’s upper surface. It will be too late to drive us out once the Colorless Little Girl breaks the sub in two. And a sub that doesn’t exist on paper can’t send out a distress signal. Even if some country notices the signal, they’ll ignore it out of fear of being dragged into an international incident. Once this thing becomes a metal coffin, your odds of survival are nil. Everyone is watching, so try to make a mature decision.”

“Th-…”

There was nothing he could do.

The young crewmember knew that, but he just about snapped back on reflex.

That was when the Colorless Little Girl’s soft and squishy hand broke through the thick hull once more. Olivia screamed and Kyousuke pulled her close. A blast of ultra-high-pressure water shot out like a giant’s sword and just barely missed the double blonde braid girl’s face before slicing right through a thick pipe on the wall.

Had it been the hostility and resistance to Shiroyama Kyousuke?

If that was all it took for the Colorless Little Girl to act, then this really was the worst. The trigger was far too loose.

The pale-faced crewmember trembled on the floor and raised both hands.

“Okay, okay! I’ll do what you say. Just get that monster out of here!!”

“The mass driver.”

“The diagram supplied to us by Toy Dream is not reliable! We only know what information we’ve seen for ourselves. Of the 16 platforms, only 8 have been revived. They take up space, so if all of them were revived, they wouldn’t have had enough space for new equipment!!”

“Ah,” said Olivia wildly. “That’s right, Onii-chan. System Atlantis is on this submarine, isn’t it? What do we do about that?”

“…”

“I’ll talk!!” shrilly replied the crewmember. “System Atlantis is not on this submarine. This is just another relay station.”

“Eh?”

“It’s only connected to a distant antenna buoy by fiber optic cable. That’s what makes contact with System Atlantis. It’s on a space station in orbit!!”

Olivia looked shocked, but Kyousuke looked like he had found the answer he had been looking for. He had been wondering why War Criminal had not seemed to care if the submarine was destroyed from within despite supposedly being here to protect it. He would never have done that if it contained equipment he could not afford to have destroyed. He would also have been more worried about damage to the equipment than the oxygen supply when the flooding began.

“A cruise ship, the deep sea…and now outer space…???” asked Olivia.

“But why wouldn’t they use the Missing Princess’s antenna tower to directly communicate with the satellite? Oh, I get it.”

“Space looks like it’s out of anyone’s reach, but it doesn’t actually provide that much of an advantage,” explained the crewmember. “A single ballistic missile fired from a silo could shoot it down and civilian companies are beginning to reach space these days. So they hid that System Atlantis was on the space station…on Toy Dream OP-01 and then placed the communication equipment on a submarine to erase it from the globe. Space and the deep sea. You can’t find those locations on a search engine’s satellite map. It was a form of double camouflage.”

“That’s perfect then. Let’s use the direct undersea launch mass driver to leave the submarine and make our way to Toy Dream OP-01.”

“Wait.”

“You still want to follow the rules? Well, I won’t stop you if you’d rather share this metal coffin with us.”

They had a plan.

Kyousuke grabbed a dropped shotgun from the wet floor and the young crewmember’s shoulders jumped. But Kyousuke only removed the shells and pressed the empty gun against the crewmember’s chest.

Seeing Kyousuke wink and raise his hands, Olivia raised her hands too.

“You can take the credit.”

“…”

“You’re free to draw your loaded sidearm if you want, but not even I can predict what the broken Colorless Little Girl will do. You saw how frightening seawater is just now, didn’t you? If you provoke her and her attack moves past the point of no return, you are responsible for the death of the 100 or more crewmembers.”

With that, Kyousuke and Olivia walked boldly through the submarine while being held up. The other crewmembers gave them curious looks but then raced past while carrying filler materials like thick rubber mats and steel beams. Needless to say, the young crewmember was holding a shotgun behind them, so it looked like they were being led away after been captured.

“Uuh.”

“Olivia, don’t lower your hands. You’ve been fidgeting your butt around a lot, but what are you doing?”

“It feels gross, Onii-chan. You wouldn’t understand since you’ve never worn a wet Japanese school swimsuit after it cools down. I-it’s clinging to me…”

If he needed to do that to understand, then he never would understand.

The direct undersea launch mass drivers had originally been a crucial component of the nuclear submarine as a strategic weapon, but their importance had dropped now that it had been modified into a communication ship. The equipment remained, but there was no reason to ever use it. Thus, the loading room for one of the vertical electromagnetic tubes was not even guarded.

Once inside the empty steel room, Kyousuke lowered his hands.

“The San Francisco-classes had multipurpose platforms. That means they can launch more than just normal explosives or ABC weapons. They can also launch containers loaded with supplies or actual troops. So we can have it carry us just fine.”

“Sigh. Is there a towel or something anywhere? I just…I just want to dry off!”

There were some rags, but they were all covered in machine oil.

Meanwhile, the crewmember who had guided them here spoke up nervously.

“You can do that if you want, but how are you going to fire it? Surely you aren’t going to have me take control of the strictly-guarded combat command all on my own.”

“I don’t need that much from you. I said it’s a multipurpose platform, didn’t I? Since they allegedly have peaceful uses, the San Francisco-class’s trigger is much lighter than most. It won’t be like a war movie where you have to read off a one-time-use launch code and then turn two keys at once.”

“Are you serious…?”

“Now do you understand what kind of place you’ve been working in? That’s the real reason a military reduction treaty was used to force these into early decommission. Bring over the explosion-resistant briefcase in the glass case on the wall. That’s the repair kit for reconnecting the severed wiring.”

“Wait, wait. What kind of magic are you going to use now?”

“After reattaching the wiring, there’s a special sequence you can do to reset the entire ship’s system. Then a single command from the briefcase’s test laptop can bypass combat command and fire the mass driver.”

The young crewmember blinked several times.

It seemed to take him a moment to grasp what Kyousuke had just said.

“I-isn’t this a multipurpose platform that can carry strategic weapons into orbit…?”

“Now do you see why Russia was so mad? Okay, let’s get started.”