Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume2 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 10===

The seeds of that silly discussion blossomed into toxic flowers the following morning.

It began at breakfast.

1000 people would not fit in a normal restaurant, so they had rented out an entire one-floor banquet hall.

The middle and high school naturally separated out into two distinct groups, but Karuta and the rest of the world’s strongest were also forced to sit at a table all their own. The Student Council Treasurer with the black bob cut and Secretary with her red hair worn in buns sat at a nearby table while giving Karuta a withering look of hatred, but Kyouka only smiled and stayed with his group.

The middle and high school students only mixed together when getting their food. Marika’s friend Imi used a finger and her eyes to send Karuta a warning as he passed by, so he looked over that way and saw…

“C’mon, all of you. You need to eat some vegetables.”

“Ehh? But this is a buffet where we can choose what we want to eat, Sensei.”

“And they have chicken strips! I’m gonna eat chicken strips until I pop!!”

Sanae, the black-haired bespectacled member of the usual trio of middle school girls, could not turn down the muscular track suit teacher’s high-pressure request and had her plate thoroughly customized. She had apparently been caught at the drink section while making her special drink by adding a pinch of salt to some water. She must have had trouble telling him no when she knew he meant well.

Karuta also overheard a conversation the food workers were holding. The ordinary guests who were not from Grimnoah were apparently all talking about catching glimpses of something outside the translucent dome.

And that something was looking in at them from the white blizzard outside.

“But no one can say what exactly it is,” said Marika with her strawberry blonde twintails swaying.

Karuta felt the large hotel’s buffet had a way of revealing people’s true nature. With a plate full of sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs, and corn cooked in butter, Marika was going for a very powerful meal. And she ate it all with white rice.

“And isn’t it -15 degrees out there? What ever happened to that talk of global warming thinning the ice? I bet a polar bear could hibernate out here just fine.”

“Marika-san, um, where are your vegetables?”

“Eh? Corn’s a vegetable.”

Marika sounded legitimately puzzled as she shot down Omotesandou Kyouka’s gentle change of subject. Kyouka’s plate was only vegetables and fish, so no carbs to be found. This was an all-you-can-eat buffet and she was only eating a single small plate’s worth of food for breakfast. The two of them had excellent figures, but they had apparently developed their breasts in very different ways.

Aine was only interested in pure gold, so she had nothing at all on her plate. In fact, she seemed more focused on the golden shine of the knives and forks, but she stopped gnawing on them when she realized they were brass and not gold-plated.

“Sacri-sama, they were saying it is something inhuman wandering around outside, weren’t they?”

“We can rule humans out pretty easily anyway. A stray dog has a better chance out there than we do. Dogs use their fur to keep out the cold when pulling those sleds.”

It did not seem to be a wild animal, but it was not humans who had forgotten the wild either.

That had led to speculation from those laypeople.

“But do you really think it could be that?” Marika frowned. “Do you really think the Threat could be what’s watching us from the blizzard?”

They all fell silent.

It would be simple enough to deny it, but no one knew what the real Threat was.

Karuta wanted to ask Sophia Firenze who had created a possible model of them, but unfortunately, he did not see her nearby at the moment. That was not too surprising when over 1000 students and teachers were filling this single large space. It was an even larger scale than the average party.

“I don’t know.” Omotesandou Kyouka sighed while poking at her seaweed salad with a fork. “But true or not, those rumors could lead to unnecessary panic. And they may only be linking those strange gazes with the Threat because they’re seeing the Crystal Magicians who are meant to combat the Threat.”

Needless to say, a riot inside could cause a fire or destroy the C World dome’s walls just as much as an attack from the outside could. If there were signs of it, they had to put a stop to it.

“Umm.”

A girl hesitantly approached them.

It was Alice, the well-developed blonde ponytail girl from that trio.

“Have you seen Riho-chan? She was with us during the roll call before breakfast.”

She had probably intended to ask Karuta for help, but she was speaking a little more politely than usual. Marika and Kyouka must have seemed like more distant figures for a middle school girl.

“What, has she gone missing?” asked the boy with a frown.

“It’s a buffet, so I assumed she had gone to get some more food, but it’s been a while and she hasn’t come back.”

He could imagine that girl skipping class, but not a meal. This was a breakfast buffet at a luxury hotel, so it was unlikely she would try to sneak out in search of better food. Any of them could slip out if they tried, but she had no reason to. This did sound unusual.

He set down his knife and fork and stood from his chair.

He took a deep breath to secretly switch modes. He needed to be in public mode now.

“Where have you searched so far?”

“Nowhere really. Wait, are you saying this could be bad?”

“Aine,” he said to the pale-skinned crystal girl. They asked the receptionist at the banquet hall exit leading to the elevator hall since they would have the most information, but they only shook their head. They said they would have noticed any students walking out.

“Just to be safe, what special abilities does your Crystal Magic have? Could she have turned invisible or altered someone’s memory?”

“Riho-chan’s is Verdandi from Norse Mythology, so no, she can’t.”

“There are three of you and one of them uses Verdandi?”

“Ah ha ha. Bingo. I use Skuld and Sanae-chan uses Urd.”

The Crystal Blossom at Alice’s chest suddenly shattered and expanded into her armor. There was a lot of fabric fluttering in a risqué way. The translucent crystal formed armor and a miniskirt with feather-like decorations in places. It did make her look a lot like a Norse goddess. She did not seem to have a weapon, but the pointed parts of the skirt and feather decorations were apparently all sheathed short swords.

Karuta sighed.

“Watch out behind you.”

“Oh, whoops. Sorry, did I hit you?”

She apologized to a middle school boy while storing the armor once more.

The name of the god sealed inside the Crystal Blossom’s small circuit board could not be changed, but apparently even that could lead to friendships. That did explain why they seemed downright inseparable.

Anyway, if the receptionist was to be believed, Riho had not left the buffet hall.

Which meant…

Before Karuta could turn his head, a shrill scream exploded.

By the time he turned around, Kiyosawa Hadome was already running alongside him.

They ran over to find Sophia Firenze fallen to a sitting position. The track suit teacher grabbed her shoulders to support her and she seemed entirely unaware of all the students focused on them. Her flaxen hair was plastered to her cheeks while she held her hands over her mouth and stared at something with her eyes as wide as could be.

Her gaze was fixated on the bathroom door.

Kiyosawa started to move in that direction, but then he seemed to notice Sophia’s weight. He had said she was the niece of a professor who helped him earn tuition money. He was clearly having trouble deciding whether he should leave her there and go check or stay here with her.

Karuta hesitated for a moment too, so he went with another option.

“Aine.”

“Understood. Although I imagine you will be checking for yourself soon enough.”

With crystal sword in hand, Aine poked her head into the women’s bathroom and took a look around like she was peeking inside a shop she frequented. Then she turned back and emotionlessly beckoned him over.

“Well?”

“She is dead.”

She stated it so plainly he thought he had misheard her at first. The nervous teacher’s head slumped back at an unnatural angle, so Kiyosawa Hadome quickly propped up her body weight.

Meanwhile, Aine continued speaking in a mechanical way.

“Casualty report: One corpse was found with entire body crystallized. Based on the physical traits-”

“No…wait. What are you saying? That can’t be true!!”

Alice cut off the crystal girl with a shout. Sanae rushed over after hearing her friend’s voice, but Alice did not seem to notice.

She may have been afraid that letting someone put it to words would make it actually real.

But Aine did not even tilt her head.

“Based on the physical traits, this is almost certainly the individual we are searching for. The damage took the form of a large horizontal gash to the throat, but…”

She would not stop.

The way Aine spoke of it like an unexpected casualty during a mission may have helped reduce the shock, but it also did not treat a human life with the appropriate weight.

Alice grabbed Aine’s slender shoulders and shoved her out of the way of the bathroom door. She took a look inside and fell back onto her butt.

Just like she had run full speed into an invisible wall.

She had been rejected by that forbidden space and gained nothing from it. Despite her explosion of energy just now, her entire body went limp and her hands wandered slowly through the air. She more or less clung to Aine’s left thigh, but the crystal girl ignored her while continuing her mechanical report.

“But it does not appear to have been done with a simple horizontal cut. It looks like something applied force from both sides of her throat, like a pair of scissors. Also, I discovered this on the scene, so it is likely related.”

Aine held the tip of her sword out toward Karuta.

No, she held out the thing impaled there.

He asked about it without thinking. He had to ask.

“What is that?”

“Unknown.”

He heard a grinding or squealing noise.

Or was it a voice?

The thing looked something like a slipper-sized pill bug. Except this metal bug shined dully in the light and had large steel mandibles that were sharper than scissors. The tanned and silver-haired girl named Riho had crystallized, but her blood remained on the weapon. Those mandible blades shined a horrifically vivid red.

Weapon?

Was this a weapon?

Something flashed through Karuta’s mind.

What was it Anastasia Blast had called the Threat?

Yes.

A Metal-Derived Autonomous-Origin Higher Lifeform Combat Weapon.

“Aine, kill that thing.”

“?”

“Kill it now!! Hurry!!”

She only tilted her head.

And it was too late.

The windows in this large space gave a view of an artificial summer beach.

But all that was rejected by a deafening sound of destruction.

Someone had broken through the outer perimeter of the C World dome and the blue ocean froze over in an instant.

Since this one was small enough to slip through ducts and water pipes, it had likely been a scout meant to perform reconnaissance and sabotage. It was exactly the same as how human special forces would send in a small camera to check on the interior of a building before entering it themselves. Had Riho stumbled upon it by chance, so it had silenced her?

The main unit was waiting somewhere else.

What was it they had heard talk of this morning?

Something was looking into the dome from the fierce blizzard outside.

And people wondered if it could be the Threat.

Whatever it was had finally arrived. By destroying the foundation of this temporarily livable environment, they had taken the best possible action toward eradicating all life here.

Most likely, this was something inhuman working to destroy all that was human.