Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume2 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 1===

(Stay calm. You need to think.)

Utagai Karuta shut his eyes and breathed deep. A middle school girl was dead, the dome had broken, creating an icy hell, and the Threat covered every inch of things beyond the blizzard. The damage was definitely spreading, but…

(This isn’t a bunch of unrelated trouble rushing in from all directions. Don’t let it overwhelm you. Keep an open mind. This is all one connected problem!!)

He opened his eyes again and viewed the reality out the 6th-floor window.

They were in the C World dome, a sealed space with a radius of 2km. The west side had been broken through and something like a fierce white steam was pushing in from there. It was similar to the white breaths leaving people’s mouths in the midwinter. The difference in temperature between inside and out was rapidly freezing the moisture in the air.

Eyes were visible beyond that expanding white curtain.

They glowed red and there was more than just the one pair.

In fact, they did not always come as mere pairs. The sizes, shapes, numbers, and relative heights all differed. They eyes staring back at them were so numerous they looked like sinister stars in the sky. At such long range, it was hard to judge the scale of this swarm, but their “legs” crushed the large tour busses on the side of the road like tissue boxes.

That meant the creatures were larger than that. Harder and heavier, too.

With a great roar, an 8-story parking garage was torn from its foundation and knocked over.

Being on the 6th floor was no reason to feel safe. If one of those charged at the building, they would be crushed immediately. There were sounds of straining metal and scattering sparks, but were those due to the legs and hard carapaces rubbing together within the white fog? This was what it meant to have no ground to stand on. With all this going on, they had no idea where to even begin, Crystal Magic or not.

The banquet hall they were using for their buffet had large windows on the wall, giving a perfect view of the approaching hell. The asphalt road was torn up, the palm trees were snapped, and straining noises could be heard before the identity of this enemy could be seen. The exterior of the window froze over and the white frost obscured their view.

“Uh,” someone groaned.

It was not Karuta. One of the male students viewing the scene out the window – if you could call it that when nothing was reaching his mind – screamed and ran for the exit.

It was a familiar face: his classmate Yamane Deiri.

“W-w-waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

“You idiot! Sensei, please stop him!!”

Karuta shouted over, but the female teacher was still seated on the floor. Her mind had yet to start moving again after running across Riho’s death, but she did not seem to realize this left her defenseless.

Kiyosawa Hadome started to get up, but then he stopped. He had not noticed, but Sophia Firenze was clutching at his shirt like a small child.

Due to the chaos, the childish action was terribly strong.

Her fingers were clenched so tight they had grown white and they refused to budge. Kiyosawa looked Karuta in the eye and then shook his head with a tongue click. Not even an adult could free himself from that grip so easily.

(Argh.)

“Aine! Don’t let this start a trend!!”

“You have not removed my nonlethal mode for Grimnoah residents. May I cut the target’s Achilles tendons?”

He ignored that question and instead grabbed a salt shaker from a table which he then tossed to Aine. She tilted her head before reversing her blade and swinging it like a baseball bat.

A clang rang out with the perfect speed and angle.

The shaker did not break, but it did tear through the air, crack fleeing Yamane Deiri in the back of the head, and cause him to trip forward. Karuta used that moment to drive his point home to everyone there, middle and high school alike.

(I’m sorry, Yamanen!! I’ll buy you a drink later!!)

“There are over 1000 people here, so trying to use the elevators and stairs like normal would clog everything up and we’d be stuck! Do you want to helplessly wait for death here!?”

The students who had started to get up from their seats froze in place when they heard that. Not many people would immediately agree to fight now that the Threat had shown up. But no one would stick with their escape plan if they knew it would mean being stuck here until they died a pointless death.

They had at most a few minutes and at worst half a minute until the clash began. If they did not come up with a plan by then, they would be attacked with nothing to show for it and the casualties would only grow.

Marika slipped away from Imi and Tayori to approach him and whisper in his ear.

“What exactly are we going to do? Hole up in here?”

Her breath was already visible in the cold.

The hotel’s central heating was still on and none of the windows had broken, but the indoor heating system was insufficient. Since the exterior of the windows had frosted over in a matter of moments, things had to be 10 or even 15 below freezing outside.

“That isn’t possible,” cut in the track suit teacher supporting Sophia. The cold may have been affecting him far more than the students in their uniforms. “We can’t stay here in this cold. And I don’t just mean the room temperature. The water pipes will freeze and the power circuits might malfunction depending on the type. If the switchboard goes out, the building’s power goes along with it!”

If they stayed here, they could not survive the cold. The necessary infrastructure would not last.

Besides, a fortress was not a defensive line. The defensive line had to be held in front of the fortress. There was no time for the preparations needed to hold off a large army, like setting up gun emplacements and laying a minefield.

So Karuta did not hesitate.

“We have to abandon the C World dome. The Crystal Beach has other domes, like A and B, so we can escape there and regroup. As long as we can keep the people safe, we can let the Threat rampage through the C World dome to analyze how they attack.”

“But how?”

He heard something heavy scraping along the floor.

Still sitting on the floor, Alice was looking up at him with Sanae supporting her shoulders. And she had her arms around the clear crystal that symbolized her dead friend.

That was what happened if they died.

No visual could have more vividly shown that.

“You said yourself there are 1000 of us. If we try to escape now, we’ll clog up the escape route and be stuck here!!”

“Normal people would, yes.”

Karuta had immediately stopped a male student from running across the floor to reach the elevators and stairs outside the banquet hall. If that set in as their best bet, it would create a meaningless struggle between the Crystal Magicians.

In other words…

“One of the Crystal Magic Presets is flight. As long as we coordinate things, you can all escape through all the windows on the walls.”

“Oh.”

“With more ways out than just the stairs and elevators, there won’t be any congestion. Flight is technically only taught to Regulation 2s, but you’ve all been practicing it in secret, haven’t you? We had been at your level. Who here can’t fly!? That’s nothing to be embarrassed of, so just ask someone nearby for help and grab on tight!!”

That set them all in motion.

The windows in the banquet hall did not open, so a flood of people rushed toward the hallway. The tickets for survival had just gone on sale and they were all taking it very seriously. All in all, the high school students were generally grabbing the hands of a middle school student to help them fly. But both age groups were new at this. Given their ages, the middle schoolers may have had more room for growth, but the high schoolers had more guts.

In truth, Karuta did not know what the right answer was here. He was only in high school too. But he knew how important it was to provide options for fighting, hiding, and escape and he knew that he could never say out loud that he did not know what he was doing. If the world’s strongest had thrown in the towel, everyone would panic.

“Alice! Take Riho with you!!”

“…”

“We can’t leave her here. She was lucky to only have her throat slit, so you can see her again in a few decades. But not if she’s caught in all this and shattered!”

“I’m…aware of that!!”

The blonde girl clenched her teeth, wiped away the tears, and picked up the heavy crystal statue.

She likely wanted to argue with his definition of “lucky”, but she still flew out the window along with Sanae. Giving her an objective, whatever it might be, had given her the strength she needed to survive in the face of this crisis. For Karuta, his ugly revenge had played that role.

“Sacri-sama.”

“I can’t fly. Neither can Omotesandou-san.”

“Then what shall I do?”

“You work with Marika, Aine. Yes, if you can, fly the waiters and cooks out of here. Omotesandou-san!!”

The President kept her confident smile even now.

Or had she decided now was not the time to let it slip?

“Oh? I could have escaped on my own.”

“When you have trouble getting out of your wheelchair on your own and need Aine’s help washing your back? C’mon, let’s go!!”

“Hee hee. I really wish the Student Council kids could show this kind of initiative. I had them escape ahead of me, so this can be our little secret. Otherwise, they would get all jealous of you again.”

“Is this really the time?”

“It is exactly the time. The normalcy of the standard rules is needed most after a casualty.”

Kyouka too called it a casualty.

Had she concluded that the military rules were the best format for rationally bringing order to human lives? Or she may have been more concerned than she let on that her heart was influenced by the shock of what happened. Just like motion sickness, there was no way to stop it once it started.

Karuta circled behind her, grabbed the wheelchair’s handles, and began running. He should not have been moving that quickly with someone in the wheelchair, but they had no time. Kyouka seemed to enjoy it like someone riding a makeshift thrill ride.

She grabbed the armrests tight and spoke up with enjoyment in her voice.

“This is the 6th floor, so is the elevator our next stop?”

“Do you want to get trapped inside? We’re using the stairs!!”

He snapped back at how she seemed to be testing him with that question.

He could already see his breath. The coldest he could imagine was 0 degrees Celsius, where puddles would freeze over, so it terrified him for the temperature to be dropping well below that. Even though this was not a snowy mountain in the winter. They were inside a well-maintained tourist hotel, even if all the hallway windows had been thrown open for their escape.

It looked like the dome had been broken through in more than one spot.

“They’re coming from this direction too?”

“You already knew we couldn’t stay here and defend ourselves, right? We have to abandon the C World dome.”

They had only been able to see out the one direction from the banquet hall, but the opened windows in the hallway showed another white curtain with many eyes lurking beyond it. The C World dome had been attacked at multiple points simultaneously, opening more and more holes.

Kyouka waved something toward him while he pushed her wheelchair toward the stairs.

It was a phone.

“The phones no longer have a signal.”

“You mean they destroyed the antenna tower or the undersea cable connecting back to the mainland?”

“Hard to say if they have that kind of intelligence, but this means calling for rescue is not an immediate option.”

The transmissions they could send with their Crystal Blossoms did not have infinite range, so they could not contact anyone on the other side of the planet.

On the other hand, this was Ocean Crystal Magic Academy Grimnoah’s field trip, so if they were still gone after the scheduled return date, the world would quickly take note. The world’s strongest would make for valuable allies, so nations around the world would send out their armies to get in their good graces.

However…

“This trip was scheduled for all of Golden Week. We still have 5 days until our scheduled return date and I seriously doubt we can last that long out here.”

“Not to mention that I’m not sure what an army could really do about this even if they did notice we had not returned,” added Kyouka. “If this is the real Threat, then only the world’s strongest should be able to do anything about them.”

These were the source of the unnatural disappearances of cities, states, and countries in a single night.

The Threat.

They had finally shown themselves, but they would never have remained such a problem for so long if they could simply be bombed into oblivion by drones.

That was when a dull rumbling shook the entire hotel.

At first, Karuta cautiously glanced out the window, assuming the owners of those many eyes behind the white curtain had arrived at the hotel, but then the Crystal Blossom at his chest vibrated to produce a human voice.

This was apparently being broadcast to everyone and not sent to him in particular.

The speaker may have wanted to find some peace of mind in someone approving of his actions.

“This is Yamane. My Kagutsuchi bombing is working! Ha ha. Crystal Magic really is the world’s strongest. Ha ha ha ha ha!! I ain’t afraid of the Threat!”

“You dumbass!!”

But Karuta had to shout back at him.

They still had no idea what this opponent could do. The first time you saw an enemy, you had to escape to safety and let them reveal their hand. They could not predict what this enemy would do and they could not fly well inside the dome. Plus, Crystal Magic was not all-powerful against an unpredictable attack.

A moment later, Karuta’s retinas were fried by a lightning-like flash of light.

This was not just a laser beam.

As soon as something was launched from the ground, explosions scattered in every direction from a certain point in the air. The translucent dome had only been broken in a few defined points before, but now it was completely blown away. Shards rained down on the rapidly-freezing tourist city.

One space elevator method was to use a laser.

A powerful laser would be fired on the bottom of a container connected to a wire and the heat would cause a rapid expansion of the air that launched the container upwards.

This was a variation on that.

First, a small pellet made of some sort of heavy metal was launched into the air and then a powerful laser or electron beam was fired into that. And instead of directing the force in a single direction, the barrier of air was formed in all directions equally. The result was a spherical explosion. Enough energy to launch something into space was fully converted into lethal force. The destructive power had to be equal or greater to a thermobaric weapon.

The destruction was massive.

Karuta could not tell which flyer in the frigid sky was Yamane Deiri, but the several people there suddenly stalled and dropped like poorly-designed paper airplanes.

Their crystal armor shattered and arms and legs were torn from their bodies.

“!!!???”

“They might not be dead yet.” 

Karuta clenched his teeth hard, but the President calmly observed the scene outside the open window.

“If they make sure to make an emergency landing on a building rooftop instead of falling all the way to the road, they can survive this.”

That was exactly what happened.

A different voice arrived over their Crystal Blossoms.

“Th-the person called Yamane-senpai was hit! Um, it will take 30 seconds for his wounds to heal, so we need to buy him time to withdraw. Someone fly in formation with me!!”

“Be careful. Was that a glass laser?”

“This opened up the space overhead. I don’t know about the laser, but the pellet looked like a normal metal bullet, so won’t we be safe if we keep away from that!?”

(Is that Sanae and Alice? This can’t be an easy time for them. I’m impressed how well they’re holding together!!)

This was not over yet. Yes, as long as the wound was not fatal, a Crystal Magician would heal in 30 seconds. Losing an arm or a leg was not enough to give up on their survival. That did not count as a casualty.

And their enemy here finally broke through the white curtain hiding them.

They were finally revealed.

What even were they?

Black metal.

Solid eyes glowing red.

They were different in size and shape to the pill bug that had killed Riho in a surprise attack.

Enough so that it was unclear why they even bothered with the element of surprise.

They were like scorpions larger than dump trucks. Except instead of the pincers used to protect the head(?), they had something like 5-fingered human hands opening and closing. The grooves running along the palms flashed with a disconcertingly wet yellow light. They were brimming with massive energy.

The thick tail was shaped like an airbrush, so did that launch the pellets?

And did the palms fire the lasers that hit the pellets to cause the explosive expansion of air?

Except that was just one of the designs.

Carnivorous plants the size of cars were crawling at the scorpions’ feet, opening and closing coffins as mouths. The entire swarm of creatures was entirely covered by giant ants with revolvers instead of their six legs. Some were like giant squids with their head, belly, or whatever you called the main part covered with gaping mouths lined with teeth like dentures. Did they directly bite things, did they send out ultrasonic waves that created some kind of omnidirectional barrier, or did they snipe things with pressurized water? Karuta could not even hazard a guess.

They had never seen any of these monsters before.

Just like with the Problem Solvers, ignorance was a terrifying thing.

A dark mass was rippling in from beyond the broken dome. Instead of a single giant unit, this had to be a different swarm crawling over the Threat that had already arrived. The total number was impossible to guess.

To save their allies who had stayed in the buildings to avoid being swallowed by the swarm, the students continued making bombing runs from the air. Some were shot down by the omnidirectional explosions caused by the scorpions, but others made accurate strikes from 10m above their targets to slam an explosive blast and clear glass shards toward them.

Some of the Threat were broken by this and others were not.

When one of them was broken, the rest of the swarm would walk right over the unmoving mass of black metal, crush it, and devour it. The surviving cannons and armor would be cannibalized while the swarm marched onward with no drop in speed.

Yes. This was not about defeating them or not.

The Threat remained a threat even after they were defeated.

“What the hell?”

Utagai Karuta had done his best to remain calm and act the veteran in front of the middle school girls, but he was really a freshman who had only arrived at Grimnoah at the start of April and this was his first time seeing the Threat. With no one watching, the mask quickly slipped.

“What the hell is going on!?”

“They look more mechanical than biological to me. They also seem to be strong advocates of recycling. Humanity could stand to learn a thing or two from them.”

Only that unfathomable President could remain calm at a time like this.

The Threat could not be entirely destroyed unless the entire swarm was destroyed.

Even if they walked across a minefield and marched straight into a hail of machinegun fire, only the units out front would be destroyed and the rest would customize themselves based on the surviving parts of the fallen. A desperate resistance would only create more powerful monsters that would easily trample on humanity’s military bases.

(This is worse than I imagined.)

There was a full swarm of them and they cannibalized their dead.

He had not known how frightening an enemy could be when they had no sense of self-preservation.

This was entirely different from the Problem Solvers who they had only needed to kill even if it meant mutual destruction. The more these monsters were defeated, the more powerful they would grow. This would explain why the insane firepower of Anastasia’s group had not been enough to fully eliminate this.

There were hundreds, thousands…no, maybe more.

(We can’t push them back with strength! Their attack types and parameters are up to us. If we go at this wrong, we could end up creating the ultimate monster that no one can hope to defeat!)

“But if we don’t fight, we’ll just be killed. …Okay, you need to get out of there once you finish regenerating! Some of them might be able to fly for all we-!!”

Karuta’s throat grew bone dry when he heard what sounded like an electric shaver but much larger.

Some looked like giant octopuses with red and green lights attached to their round bodies and with their sucker-attached arms spinning in alternating directions. Some looked like flying fish with razor-sharp pectoral fins and a metallic sheen. They borrowed their shapes from actual plants and animals, but they used their parts in entirely different ways. Countless shapes left the swarm and invaded the sky with movements reminiscent of coaxial rotors or surface-to-air missiles.

(Already!? They customize themselves and evolve to match their needs way too fast!!)

“Ksshh. Y-you make it sound like we are recklessly trying to prove ourselves.”

Someone else’s voice cut in.

He recognized it.

“Natalena!?”

“Everyone is trying to buy enough time for the ordinary people to escape. Um, uh, we think we might be able to distract the Threat from the ground by fighting back from up in the sky!”

Utagai Karuta fell silent for a moment.

Meanwhile, another transmission reached him.

“Listen, that blast might cover a massive area, but it’s only a shockwave. You can reduce the damage by hiding behind a building!”

“Wh-when hiding, make sure to look out for any of them that have fallen to the ground. You can stay out of view from the surface using the walls or ceilings at the top of a tall building.”

“The flying ones aren’t the most maneuverable things, so they can’t keep up with dogfighting alongside the buildings and end up crashing into the wall. I’ll show you what I mean, so you need to learn how to do this!!”

That was the teachers, Kiyosawa Hadome and Sophia Firenze. Their focus on theory left them without any combat experience, but they must have been hiding the trembling of their legs and putting on a courageous face to keep the students from panicking.

It was still possible to save them.

They could survive this and get back on their feet. They all believed it.

The Student Council President quietly clicked her tongue.

“They beat us to the punch. I know you, Karuta-kun, so I bet you were planning to leave the others and sabotage the boiler in the basement or something. That way the big explosion and subsequent fire would draw the Threat’s attention long enough for everyone to escape. No matter what you do, you refuse to get other people involved.”

The boy had no answer to that.

He only smiled and spoke under his breath.

“We’re all such idiots, aren’t we?”

But he liked what he was seeing. He enjoyed this recklessness. This seemed a far better use of Crystal Magic than flying around the world in secret to have revenge.

“Natalena, do the ordinary people have an evacuation route?”

“Um, yes.”

She seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then she began her report. Had she decided now was not the time for revenge? Ironically, she may have been a lot like him. Neither one of them would get other people involved to accomplish their goal.

“According to a hotel worker I picked up along the way, the dome has a central heating facility used to keep the entire thing warm. Um, so in addition to the heaters in the individual buildings, there is another one for the dome as a whole. The central heating facilities for each dome are connected underground, so, um, well, that is apparently to ensure the dome can receive heat from another dome if its heater malfunctions.”

That was evidently insufficient when the entire dome had been blown away, though.

Still, they could make use of that.

“Once the heat supply extracted from the lava is cut off, it’s only a large tunnel. Um, if the workers, guests, and other ordinary people who can’t fly are guided through there to the adjacent B World dome, they should be safe from this army of the Threat!”

It was a decent idea. Far better than using any surface path. Marika, Natalena, and the rest may have been fighting primarily in the air to prevent the Threat from evolving into something that dug through the ground.

This of course required caution since it all went out the window if the Threat learned of the heat tunnels, but it was still better than flying around with ordinary people in their arms when they could be shot down at any time by the explosion produced from the heavy metal pellets and lasers. Unlike Crystal Magicians, normal people would die of blood loss if an arm or leg was blown off.

“Is there anything I can do?” asked Karuta.

“Do not head outside on the surface. And…”

Another explosive boom shook the entire 50-story hotel. Several beams of light shot down from the sky to pierce into the main road, primarily taking out the scorpion-like Threats that functioned as wide-range antiaircraft weapons using lasers and bullets. The person responsible zigzagged through the air to slice through some flying octopuses and flying fish with her rapier. She was handling the dogfighting in her spare time.

“Is that Amaashi Marika-senpai? She’s so powerful it’s probably best to just leave her be. What is with her? Um, she isn’t using the buildings as cover while approaching, so she’s staying exposed to their fire yet dodging those huge anti-air explosions while bombing them. I appreciate it though, since this is gradually bringing us closer to holding air superiority.”

“Oh, dear,” said Kyouka. “It looks like Marika-san’s berserker tendencies have been fully unleashed. Does she see herself as the adorable knight protecting you and Aine-chan?”

This was not entirely a good thing. Defeating the Threat here would only power up the next wave that would cannibalize their parts. That meant Threats other than the scorpions would have those pellets and lasers equipped. And those evolved versions would be even more powerful and precise.

The same could be said of the flying ones. The Threat had begun with coaxial rotors and missiles, but they would probably find that to be insufficient and soon begin devouring their crushed allies to evolve. That repeated optimization would continue on and on until they finally had the top speed and mobility needed to surpass Crystal Magic.

“Marika-san’s biggest flaw is how she gets so caught up in protecting things now that she forgets to consider what happens next.”

Either way, they needed a fundamental countermeasure here. For example, they could destroy the enemy so utterly no usable parts remained, or they could do something to prevent the scraps from being recovered. But what exactly that would be and whether it would actually be usable on the front line were entirely unknown.

“Anyway, um, if you can’t fly, you aren’t any help here,” said Natalena. “You need to take the President into the central heating tunnel!”

“Don’t push yourself too hard. You only have to buy us time, so we’ll prepare the evacuation route for you!”

When he ended the transmission, he found the President laughing for some reason.

“She’s such a good girl,” she said.

“…”

“We are the people who killed her sister, remember? If she really was prioritizing revenge above all else, she could have given us false information to isolate us so she could attack us in the confusion.”

Natalena was not that kind of person.

She was forcing the gears of revenge to turn right now, but they would stop once she found something more important along the way. She would set it aside and focus on what ever had to be done right now.

She could do that.

The title of good person definitely belonged with Natalena Blast. Karuta’s group had failed to do that. They had prioritized their revenge no matter what it would have meant for the rest of the world.

They had lacked the courage to come to a stop.

Because they had known they could not start up again once they did stop.

For the stairs, he spun the wheelchair around 180 degrees so he walked backwards to descend the stairs ahead of it. He could have run down the stairs while princess carrying her, but there was no guarantee they would find a spare wheelchair at the bottom. There were no windows in here. He did not want to see those things for a moment longer than necessary, but the lack of information still clutched at his heart.

This hotel was the tallest building in the C World dome, so it contained a large casino within it. It could even be called the center of the dome.

That meant the central heating facility was located below it.

After descending three floors underground, they found bare concrete walls very different from the luxurious interior of the hotel. The thick metal door was already open. Inside, they found machines like a large cargo ship’s engine crammed in tight and leaking white steam.

“It’s still a little warm in here.”

“That won’t last long. And watch out for the steam, Karuta-kun.”

“?”

“Head out into the -15-degree air while somewhat damp and you might have an entire ear fall off.”

He fell silent and went pale, so she laughed and said more.

“Don’t worry. Even if you ignore my kind advice, you still have your regeneration, right? Fourth degree frostbite is nothing to be afraid of☆”

Further in, they found another metal door.

That led to the heat tunnel.

They peeked inside and saw darkness gaping as wide as a highway tunnel. But instead of concrete, the floor, walls, and ceiling here were made of stainless steel.

They saw light in the distance, but not from stationary fluorescent lights. These light sources were moving around. Karuta tensed up, thinking they might be strange “eyes”, but they were not. A large group of people was using the backlights of their phones and other devices to light their way through the tunnel. The walls and ceiling were apparently reflecting the artificial lights.

“We caught up.”

“Given the state of things up above, this is more or less a miracle.”

He guessed they were about 400m away from the tourists and workers. They easily closed that distance even with him pushing the wheelchair, so the other group must have been slowed by their numbers. After all, that was everyone from the C World dome. As seen at Shinto shrines during New Year’s and in the city during Halloween, a large gathering of people took a long time to move.

Once Karuta and Kyouka arrived at the tail end of the group, a waitress, tour guide, supermarket worker, and convenience store worker still in their uniforms noticed them and kindly shined their flashlights over to light their way. The group had not collapsed to the point that they were willing to shove aside a schoolgirl in a wheelchair to get through faster.

(But what do we do now?)

“Karuta-kun.”

(We’re up against overwhelming numbers here, so protecting one specific dome for 24 hours straight is honestly unrealistic. It’s all over as soon as they break a single hole in the dome, so the attackers have the clear advantage there. Also, where did the Threat even come from? Do they have a mothership or command tower? Either way, we need some way to go on the attack if we’re going to end this.)

“Karuta-kun, something isn’t right.”

Hearing that, he noticed a deep sound. It was not the tremors from the aerial battle fought by Marika, Natalena, and the others. This was more mechanical, like heavy gears moving. It was hard to tell in the crowd, but he could detect some angry yelling and shouting further up from here.

That sound had to be the door to the B World dome shutting.

“Wait!” he shouted. “We aren’t all inside yet!!”

“You’re from Grimnoah, aren’t you?”

A different sort of voice shouted back from beyond the crowd.

The male voice was full of the superiority rather than relief of someone who had already ensured their own safety.

“I’ve seen you on those online news sites. You’re Utagai Karuta and Omotesandou Kyouka. The representatives of justice who defeated the Problem Solvers to become the new world’s strongest!”

Karuta was taken aback when this complete stranger identified him.

And this stranger’s voice carried an emotion Karuta was not responsible for.

“Then this is none of our business. You just have to go do your jobs! Go save us! Go fight the Threat out there!!”

“…!!”

(This isn’t the time!)

Karuta clenched his teeth, but someone else had something to say as well.

“We’re normal people, so the Threat would have no reason to attack us.”

This place was ruled by the ominous elation of having outdone the world’s strongest. No, of having shoved them down to stand above them.

During disasters, it was said the EMTs and volunteers supposedly there to help would sometimes be intentionally stingy with their rescue supplies so they could laugh as they watched the victims suffer. The line between the rescuers and the rescued could turn the weak-willed into frightening tyrants.

“So this must be your fault. If you Crystal Magicians hadn’t shown up, the Threat never would have attacked the peaceful Crystal Beach!!”

Utagai Karuta thought his heart would stop.

That argument was of course nonsense.

It was unknown if the Threat was even intelligent enough to prioritize who they attacked and areas around the globe were attacked whether or not Karuta and the other Crystal Magicians were there. There was no causal relationship between the attack on Iceland’s Crystal Beach and Karuta’s school’s presence.

But.

''The correct answer'' was not what mattered here.

The atmosphere seemed to strain.

The tail end of the group had been cut off along with them like the lizard’s tail, so they turned dead eyes toward Karuta and Kyouka. The waitress, tour guide, supermarket worker, and convenience store worker who had kindly lighted their way before had changed their tune entirely. There was no way to know which was the real them since they would be isolated if they did not side with the group here. That much was obvious enough to see.

“What does that have to do with us?” Finally, one of the tourists got things started. “''I’m not with these monsters!! Help me! I can’t use Crystal Magic! I’m not like them! I’m human like you''!”

Karuta understood it was an emergency.

He understood you had to make some extreme decisions to survive.

But.

Those words seemed to strip away all the kind feelings found in human beings. And that one woman was not alone. Voices of agreement spread like wildfire until the tunnel was inundated with criticism and jeers. If they were told they would be let in if they beat up Karuta and Kyouka, they would have mercilessly ganged up even on the girl in a wheelchair. They would have done it with dark smiles on their faces all while telling themselves they had done nothing wrong.

“I’m getting the feeling this won’t work,” said Omotesandou Kyouka with a tone of disinterest. But she was not talking about whether or not he and she would be let into the B World dome. The answer there was obvious enough already.

The heavy rumbling sound did not stop, despite the other normal people still out here.

“Wait, no! Why!?”

“Weren’t you listening!? We’re human too! You only need to shut ''them'' out!!”

“Wait, wait! I have a small child with me! Are you going to abandon a child!? Can’t you at least let me in!?”

Those on the other side did not care.

Only the C World people were assuming any kind of camaraderie while they forced ugly smiles on their faces and tried to be accepted. The B World people held those lives in their hands, but they only wanted to ensure their own safety by closing that door as quickly as possible.

The survivors who had made it through the door in time were already on the other side – they were B World people now. They showed no sign of attempting to stop the door from closing or even begging the door operator to stop. Because if they rocked the boat before that door was fully closed, they could always be thrown out of that safe zone. They had to be smiling thinly as they watched the suspension bridge cut away immediately after they safely made it across. Because they were safe, unlike the poor “others” stuck on the other side.

Utagai Karuta did not bother with this any longer.

He had something more important to do.

“Get away from the door.”

“What!? You dare order us around when it’s your fault we’re stuck here in the first place!?”

“That door has to way tons, so do you really want to be caught in it when it closes!? Hurry!!”

His words fell on deaf ears.

Were they going to continue trusting in the good will of humanity and let that thick metal door crush them?

The President must have already given up on them because she spoke without a moment’s hesitation.

“Okay, let’s head back. There’s nothing we can do here.”

“But if we leave them here-”

“How are we supposed to deal with the few dozen stuck on this side? I can’t use Crystal Magic and you left Aine-chan back there. If a group this large insists on being smashed into mincemeat, there’s nothing we can do to stop them. I’m sure they will continue trusting in the good will of humanity as they are crushed like bugs. Or do you want to rush in there and get crushed along with them?”

“Shut the hell up!” he shouted back without thinking. “Natalena left them in my care. She told me to get these people to safety while she fights the Threat!”

“Oh? I don’t recall her saying quite that much.”

“Maybe not in so many words, but you have to read between the lines! If she didn’t trust me, she wouldn’t have left these powerless people with me. Listen, I stole her sister from her. Yes, the Problem Solvers had to go, but Natalena doesn’t have to agree!! And now you want me to betray her good will too? I can’t keep doing this. How much more do we have to keep taking from that little girl!? Are you kidding me!!!???”

Omotesandou Kyouka only shrugged.

And she spoke.

“Then give it a try, but the door will be closed in 30 seconds.”

“!!”

“Show me how cool you can be, Karuta-kun.”

Grabbing them by the shoulders and dragging them away one by one would be too slow. He looked around the tunnel and noticed a small but thick fire-resistant door on the wall. He opened it to find an AED bag. He pulled out the device and found a lithium ion battery far larger than the ones found in phones or handheld game systems. It was the size of an energy drink can. He used the unnecessary plastic casing to create a trumpet-like shape, used the metal clip on the inside to intentionally cause a short, and tossed the battery inside.

He could blow off his hand doing this, but he had the Crystal Magic regeneration.

“Cover your ears, Omotesandou-san!!”

He than aimed it toward the remaining people.

But aimed a bit upwards instead of straight on at them.

The sexy girl in the wheelchair covered her ears with her lithe hands just before the high-capacity battery burst with a deafening noise. The explosion’s shockwave was directed in a single direction, making it an acoustic weapon. But sound being what it was, it could be absorbed or reflected.

For example, the sound that flew above the crowd’s head could hit the wall with the door beyond them and make a U-turn right back to hit them head on.

“…!!”

Hit by the blast of sound, Karuta himself toppled backwards. As did the crowd trying to push their way toward the door. The solid group was knocked back toward him.

That settled things.

One group had made it to the other side of the door, and the other had not. A dull metal boom finally sounded. If he had been just 3 seconds later to act, the dozen or so nearest the door would have been crushed.

The President said something to him, but his ears were ringing too badly to hear it. As large a space as this was, using an acoustic weapon in an enclosed tunnel was tantamount to suicide.

Eventually, he could make out some of what Kyouka was saying with a smile.

Her words seemed designed to act like a knife to the heart.

“This isn’t going to be the happy ending you want.”

She was quickly proven right.

A young man slowly got to his feet after being knocked away in the nick of time. But his brow was wrinkled in a way Karuta had never seen before. Karuta was actually amazed that human facial muscles could do that and then the man began yelling.

“What the hell is wrong with you? I was almost there…I was so close to getting through!! Unlike you monsters, I was chosen! I was supposed to get through there!!”

He had not given up.

Even with that hope forever lost, he had not awoken from the dream.

It was like seeing an old man so obsessed with the horse races that he ended up glaring at the horse track’s ATM in the hopes that would somehow make it give him money that was no longer in his account and, when that did not happen, go running to a loan shark. The yelling and shouting actually inspired pity rather than anger.

“Leave immediately,” said a voice over a speaker installed in the tunnel.

That was probably meant to provide warnings to the inspection and maintenance crews.

There was no tremor in the voice.

Did that person think this was the C World dome group’s fault since the machine had closed the door automatically and they had been given plenty of warning? It was not that simple and they were sure to be overcome with regret down the road. They would forever have to live with the fact that they had left people to die. Especially when those people had been begging for help.

“Half an hour should be enough for you to return the way you came. You have that much time before we switch on the heater. To be clear, the dome’s central heating system produces a massive amount of heat. So turn back now unless you want to stick your head in a giant oven powered by the heat of lava!!”

Several people began to cry.

But eventually, someone realized something. And that realization quickly spread through them all.

Since the B World dome had abandoned them, these people stuck in the tunnel had to find someone else to rely on. And the only option was the Grimnoah Crystal Magicians they had been treating like garbage until now.

A uniformed waitress looked Karuta in the eye with a disturbing smile.

She apparently wanted him to forget everything that had happened a moment before.

The look on her face said she would do whatever it took to make that happen.

Her smile looked like an extremely detailed rubber mask that had been forcibly stretched to fit on her face. And she was not alone. They were all like that, even the young man who had been yelling at them.

In a way, the ability to lick at someone’s boots and become their slaves if that was the only way to survive may have been another form of human strength. But that was something Karuta’s group could never imagine doing since they had fought back against the Problem Solvers to the end, despite knowing those five were the world’s strongest.

“Karuta-kun, are you done here? Then let’s head back.”

Omotesandou Kyouka did not sound bothered at all.

When you truly gave up on someone, perhaps you did not even feel anger or hatred toward them.

“There’s nothing for us here. ''Not even human resources''. If ''we'' are to band together and survive, we need to secure the necessities. We can work up a new plan centered on that.”

“…”

The boy squeezed the wheelchair’s handles tight.

He felt ashamed.

Did this qualify as living up to Natalena Blast’s trust in him?

Did it really?

He had saved their lives.

But that was all he had done.

The waitress, tour guide, and others would surely have nightmares about this day for the rest of their lives.

Nothing was more absurd and horrifying than when life bared its fangs against your idea of justice and pride.

He did not want to change who he was. He wanted to remain someone who could look Gekiha and the other crystallized people in the eye. It was that selfish desire that had led Karuta’s group to fight back against the former world’s strongests and annihilate them.