Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume2 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 10===

“I will now explain the details of the mission.”

Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka had sent a Crystal Blossom transmission to them all.

They would have to abandon their settlement the instant the Threat noticed it, but they also wanted to avoid having to move if possible. So instead of gathering the 1000 students in one place and holding a strategy meeting with a megaphone in hand, they more safely spoke into their Crystal Blossoms inside their individual igloos.

“Based on the material evidence Karuta-kun discovered and the theory he developed based on it, we will be ‘poisoning’ the Threat. Since the Threat tears off the usable parts of their own fallen to cannibalize them, they will only customize themselves more the more we defeat them. Instead, we will hide bombs or viruses in the wreckage to do damage from within once those parts are cannibalized.”

Someone would have to be entirely oblivious to the spreading rumors to have not heard that someone else had died. They had another casualty.

Nevertheless, Yamane Deiri, Nekoumi Hirosuke, Matsuda Imi, Hashizaki Tayori, and the Student Council’s black bob cut girl were fully focused on fighting the Threat, so they may have wanted to forget about that fear. Just like a giant meteor descending toward your city would make even a brutal robbery pale in comparison. They may have been standing up to the Threat as a way of averting their gaze.

It was important to remember these were all middle and high school students, even if they had been given Crystal Magic, the world’s strongest power.

“To act on this plan, we need the remains left by the Threat, so we will be splitting into three teams. The first is the Firepower Team that will work to destroy as many Threats as they can. Then the Delaying Team will hit the surviving Threats with a powerful bombardment to buy us even a few minutes. Lastly, we have the Engineering Team that will use that time to insert the poison in the defeated Threats. It does not actually matter if the Threat notices what we are doing. We only care about ending the negative spiral where they grow stronger the more we defeat them, so making them hesitant to cannibalize counts as a success even if the poison does no direct damage.”

They were heading to the deadly battlefield to fight.

Once in that special mental state, all their everyday troubles seemed to vanish.

Even though there was still violence on warships and theft and murder on the battlefield.

“In addition to those three primary teams, there will also be smaller sub-teams for transmission, transportation, healing, and backup circling the battlefield like satellites, so keep that in mind. The team divisions will prioritize teamwork, so it will be done by class. No hard feelings no matter what team you end up on, okay? We are all Grimnoah. We are all on the same side.”

Things were finally underway.

Rushing footsteps sounded all around them.

“Buck up, Karuta.”

“W-we just need to look at it as a chance to show off to the middle schoolers!!”

Karuta’s two classmates slapped him on shoulders or back as they passed by.

With Crystal Magic, they did not have to prepare their weapons and ammo before entering battle. They generally only had to shatter their Crystal Blossoms to activate their armor, but it was not that easy this time. After all, they were moving as a group of 1000. Simply splitting into teams and performing a roll call was on a larger scale than the average school’s athletics festival.

“Marika.”

“I’ll be borrowing the entire Firepower Team. I wouldn’t dare send them to the front line otherwise.”

“You’re sounding more like a god of war all the time.”

“Isn’t that what it means to be the world’s strongest? I’ve gotta be waving the flag out front.”

“Then you handle that,” he said with a smile. “Anyway, about yesterday.”

“I already told you everything I know about that. I wasn’t hiding anything. See you.”

She waved and flew up into the air. The class of a few dozen that formed the Firepower Team followed after her.

Karuta let out a visible sigh and spoke to someone else.

“Omotesandou-san.”

“Is this really when you want to borrow my wisdom?” she began with a laugh. “To be blunt, I doubt any investigating we do will turn up anything about the circumstances of Sanae-san’s death. Visibility was so poor with the late-night blizzard that no one would have noticed if someone was sneaking around and the igloos don’t even have doors, meaning anyone could walk right in. If ''that'' was all we had to work with, it would have been the perfect crime.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“Correct. That death instead gave us the answer we needed, so it’s time to do your job. ''This entire poisoning mission is a bluff''.”

Karuta was a Grimnoah student too.

He was one of the Four Living Gods, but that did not mean he could just sit idly by and watch things play out.

“Um,” someone hesitantly called out.

He looked back to find a 12-year-old girl standing there nervously. It was Natalena Blast.

“What are you going to do now? Um, because you don’t seem able to fly with Crystal Magic.”

“Worried about me?”

“…”

“Just kidding. I’m part of the Transmission Team providing logistical support. Crystal Blossom transmissions have a limited range, but they can cover much longer ranges if we leave someone in between to relay the signal.”

“I see.”

“You’re part of the Work Team, right? That detailed work on the front line is critical, so don’t screw it up.”

“It’s, um, weird having you worried about me.”

“But that’s how I really feel.”

An ominous atmosphere emanated from a short distance away. That girl was in turmoil as well. Her middle school classmates must have been hesitant to speak to her after what happened. And that let her lose control more and more.

“They are so dead.”

She was filled with resentment.

But not quite like Karuta’s group had been.

Blonde Alice would have been crushed by the sorrow if she did not have someone to hate, so she was adding fuel to the fire within her. Although her hatred of the Threat probably was real.

Her frenzy when he had broken the crystal statue had not seemed like an act.

“They are deader than dead. I’ll show them what a real threat is. I’ll make a pile of their corpses to prove who’s the strongest once and for all!!”

She had been placed on the Delaying Team that would keep the surviving Threats away to buy time for the sabotage of the defeated ones. It was a fruitless job but Karuta thought she might be perfect for it.

“Sensei.”

“Y-yes!?”

Flaxen-haired Sophia Firenze was holding a first-aid kit.

Crystal Magic could heal any non-fatal wounds in 30 seconds, but that did not mean they had no need for medical equipment. Sometimes stopping the bleeding would turn an otherwise fatal wound into a non-fatal one. So using both methods was more effective than one or the other. He guessed she was part of the Healing Team providing logistical support.

“Your focus was on theory, right?”

“Yes, entirely so. What am I even doing on the front line like this? I was supposed to create theories, try to reproduce them in the lab, and correct the theories based on the results.”

“Reproduce them?”

“I won’t go so far as to say reality is an awful place, but there are people who will accept something more readily when they can hold it in their hands. Especially among the elderly. So in addition to simulations, I would make models and pet robots. It was really a waste of time, but they wouldn’t fund us without those things.”

Karuta heard someone click their tongue.

Not even the imminent battle changed that muscular teacher named Kiyosawa Hadome.

But an unwavering spirit could be a reassuring thing.

“I really don’t like you,” he said to Karuta.

“Is that so?”

“But I’ll admit this isn’t a job for us. So go do what we theory-based teachers can’t.”

Karuta smiled a little. How much strength had it taken for that man to leave things in his hands here? He knew just how much that teacher cared for the students, after all.

Their preparations were nearly complete.

After leaving the teachers, he gave a quiet order.

“Aine.”

The crystal girl poked her had out from within his uniform.

“It’s time. We need to get moving.”

“Understood.”

Unlike the other teams, the Communication Team would not be gathered in a single spot. They had to spread out over as wide an area as possible to relay transmissions.

That was the perfect job if you wanted to hide and work on something else in secret.

He glanced over at the destroyed C World dome and saw the Threat must have noticed something was afoot. Snow blasted up into the air and countless red eyes glowed from beyond it. The visible range on the surface was less than 5km, so they had to be within striking range for some of their weapons. Karuta’s job was to relay transmissions, so he could easily tell where the Grimnoah students were located on the battlefield.

He slowly took a deep breath.

President Omotesandou Kyouka had called this poisoning mission a bluff.

That was exactly right. He flicked the Crystal Blossom on his chest.

“Marika.”

“I’m ready when you are.”

“Get ready, Aine.”

“Understood, Sacri-sama.”

That settled it.

The giant Threats stepped over their brethren to continue past the ones blocking the way. And while those surface-based ones struggled to move out ahead, countless flying ones filled the air like a sandstorm. Meanwhile, the Grimnoah students were putting a fair amount of distance between themselves to have enough room to fly freely.

After confirming everyone’s positions, Utagai Karuta pulled the final trigger.

Of his own free will.

“''Okay, you two, shoot down Alice Majority.''”

It must have been too sudden for her to react in time.

Laser sniping was hard enough to dodge at the best of times and she was simultaneously targeted from two different points, one on the ground and one in the air.

The lasers struck a flying angel with feather decorations adorning her armor and miniskirt made of translucent crystal.

“!?”

The blonde ponytail girl had just enough time to notice something was wrong and twist around, but her barrier was still shattered and her translucent armor hit. She lost balance in midair and entered a tailspin.

She fell straight down.

Toward the ground.

Where the Threat had created a realm of death.

“Let’s go, Aine. We need to end this here.”

Karuta was on the Transmission Team.

He could sense the amount of Crystal Blossom transmissions spike all of a sudden. The other students were sending angry and frightened complaints to ask what had just happened, but the boy did not let it get to him. He simply walked to the crash site, accompanied by Crystal Girl Aine who obeyed his orders.

There, he found a new sight.

He saw black armor. He saw scorpions that had human-like hands and airbrush-like tails they used to cause massive midair explosions to bring down all flying objects. He saw giant squids with plenty of cheap denture-like mouths. He saw carnivorous plants with coffin jaws clacking shut. He saw abnormally large ants with handgun legs. All those bizarre creatures were gathered together and tearing at each other’s armor. These were all the Threat that killed humans and destroyed their civilization.

However.

They had come to a stop.

It was like time had frozen so the crashed girl would not be caught in the middle of it all. The countless flying Threats – the giant octopuses that rotated their sucker-covered legs in alternate directions like coaxial rotors and the flying fish that were as pointy as a blade – had fallen to the ground when they stopped moving.

Just like a bizarre weather phenomenon where frogs or small fish fell from the sky. That was increasing the height of the black masses. There was no gap in the swarm of Threats, so approaching meant Karuta had to climb across the many legs like it was a jungle gym.

“Is that phone the controller, Alice?”

“…!!”

It was also possible she was using special sensors to monitor the Threat while using Crystal Magic for the actual interference with them, but even if the details were unclear, one thing here clearly stood out.

“That isn’t just a phone.”

The object in Alice’s hand was not her phone.

When he thought back to their swimsuits, he recalled that being the model used by Toudou Riho who had carried two phones with her.

“You’ve swapped out the circuit board within, making that one unique. Tell me. What is it for?”