Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume2 Chapter1 (section)

===Between the Lines 1===

The biggest difference between a tall tourist hotel and a long luxury cruise ship was the infrastructure requiring wiring and plumbing, like power, gas, and water. A ship would of course need to contain it all inside and supply itself with what it needed. Even when moored at port, it would need to keep its massive diesel engine running, using up a lot of fuel. But Grimnoah had a specialized connection joist on the side, allowing it to borrow from the land infrastructure when moored.

“Yeah, this is the life☆”

Tanned Riho brought her hands to her silver hair while a rain-like sound washed over her body.

She was in the shower room.

With over a thousand students and teachers and with a focus on combat education, the ship was well supplied with showers. Each room had its own bathroom and there were dedicated shower rooms distributed around. That would never happen on a warship or a tanker.

The room was lazily divided into booths, but those booths were not as cramped as a phonebooth. The partitions were only simple boards, so it would not be difficult to peek over the top or crawl below them.

Another girl had climbed up onto the partition to peek over at her from the adjacent booth. She had undone her hair and removed her glasses while showering, but the black-haired girl was Sanae.

“Hey, Riho-chan. Are we going to have water restrictions once we’re out at sea?”

“Not a chance. This is the great Ocean Crystal Magic Academy Grimnoah, home of the world’s strongest.” The tanned and silver-haired girl laughed loud. “This ain’t #2 or #3. We’re talking about the #1 fortress in the world, so it’s gonna be luxury at all times. The normal rules of ships won’t apply here.”

“The great?”

“Yeah, the great.”

The frosted glass window in front of Riho suddenly opened.

Even starting from the deck, this was three floors up, but that was irrelevant when Crystal Magic allowed for flight. The blonde ponytail girl named Alice leaned exhausted against the window frame while surrounded by translucent crystals and with jagged armor jutting out.

“What are you talking about here??? I wanna join in.”

“Wait, you idiot! Don’t open the window! Remove that frosted glass and everyone can see me from the high school building over there!!”

“There are over a thousand windows on this wall, so no one will notice.”

“Liar! Karuta-senpai just looked right at me from the hallway over there! And he blushed before quickly looking away!”

The slender girl’s silhouette was extended quite a bit with that Crystal Magic armor active, so it was nearly impossible for the blonde ponytail girl to climb inside even with the window fully open.

“I’ll fall if I remove the armor, so pull me in.”

“God, really!?”

Riho grabbed that incarnation of self-indulgence by the hands to make sure she would not fall without her flight. Only then did Alice deactivate her armor. She was then pulled into the shower booth like the rope in a game of tug-of-war.

“Abwabwah. What? Why would you leave the shower on!? Ha ha☆ My uniform’s soaked.”

“You only have yourself to blame there.”

Alice did not seem to mind much. She actually laughed as she reached for her blazer uniform’s buttons. She did not have a change of clothes here, so she must not have given any thought to what she would do after stripping off her uniform and taking a shower. While watching Alice have trouble removing her blouse since it was wet and clinging to her skin, Sanae spoke up from the adjacent booth.

“Come on, you need to follow the rules, you two. We’re about to leave on a field trip.”

“Europe!! This isn’t even like a class trip or anything. I can’t believe a simple field trip is on such a huge scale. Grimnoah can just throw money around, can’t it!?”

Alice (who had grown the most of the three) laughed while exposing her body to the shower after removing her underwear, but Riho said nothing about having her shower booth hijacked. She did frown, though.

“Are you sure it’s going to be all fun and games? Just look at our normal lessons. The teachers all have a habit of betraying our expectations, right?”

“W-well, doing things by the book probably isn’t enough to fight the Threat.”

“Since it would take months to send Grimnoah to the other side of the planet, I heard we’re taking a normal airplane for this overseas trip, but it all sounds too contrived to me. Like they’re intentionally removing the normal defenses.”

The students would be a perfect target for anyone hoping to attack them.

Or for anyone who wanted to test their strength.

The nude blonde girl reached behind her head to undo her ponytail while she asked a question.

“Hm? What are you getting at, Riho-chan?”

“Alice, you’ve heard the rumors, haven’t you?”

Riho waved a hand dismissively.

This new generation did not understand the risk, so none of it felt real to her.

“They say this field trip is actually a cover for that deadly school festival they call the Catastrophe.”

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| Back to [[Apocalypse_Witch:Volume2_Prologue|Prologue]]
| Return to [[Apocalypse_Witch|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Apocalypse_Witch:Volume2_Chapter2|Chapter 2]]
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