Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume1 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 1===

The flat-screen TV fell silent once more.

Crystal Girl Aine had thrown the remote at it to see how her reattached arm was doing.

“Hey! Aine!!”

“If it is broken, you do not mind if I dismantle it and extract the gold from the circuit boards, do you? That would be a much more efficient use for it.”

Aine showed no sign of guilt and instead made a strange suggestion while on the verge of drooling.

They had driven the RV from Northern Europe’s Finland to a rural Russian city to hide out. The news was more or less the same wherever they went. The only difference was the language being used.

Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka sighed.

“It feels like we are finally at home with being the villains.”

“They keep telling everyone to remain calm, but the scripts they read are clearly trying to get everyone worked up. In fact, they’re treating us like some kind of cryptid. Not that being seen as a terrorist would be much better,” said strawberry blonde Amaashi Marika while pouting her lips.

The Threat did not matter here.

Whether it existed or not, the governments had definitely used information concerning it to stir up anxiety and confusion among the people and manipulate public opinion to their liking.

No one trusted Anastasia, the final Problem Solver any longer.

It was doubtful she would simply return to guarding the space elevator.

The heads of state had to be at a complete loss now that they could not contact her. They wanted to make a comment through the Problem Solvers. They could not stir up anxiety and confusion and they had lost their means of controlling public opinion. Now that the ordinary people had regained their calm, they had to be erupting with the appropriate emotions toward those heads of state who had sat around having the Problem Solvers handle everything. At this rate, a few governments might even collapse. If the timing matched well enough to appear simultaneous, coordination within international society could be lost.

Right now, the enemy before their eyes mattered more than the Threat that they had no information on.

But this was still chaos and some might lament that needless chaos. Entire cities or nations might oppose it.

Nevertheless, Utagai Karuta’s group could not stop now. With even one Problem Solver remaining, the tropical cave containing the 700 Crystal Magicians could be found and they could all be left unable to regenerate which seemed like a fate worse than death. Even if they could never speak with those 700 again and even if there was a seemingly infinite expanse of time separating them, they could not let any further danger reach Kazamuki Gekiha and the others. They had defeated four Problem Solvers, but they would still lose everything if they gave up now. They could not save anyone’s life if they did not see this revenge through to the end. Not even a single life.

“So what do we know about the last one?” asked Karuta while looking up from the sofa.

“Discussing Anastasia Blast requires discussing what we recovered from Susannia Evans.”

“Huh?” Curly twintails Marika tilted her head while playing rock-paper-scissors with Aine. “I don’t remember finding her car or snowmobile or something.”

“Oh, dear. Did you forget?” The Student Council President gave a bewitching smile while turning toward the girl helping the crystal girl test out her arm. “We managed to collect something very important indeed: the cyborg parts stuffed inside her gut. They were scattered all around that crater, weren’t they?”

“Oh.”

“With products that specialized, neither the hardware nor the software will be found for sale on the general market and only a select few places will be able to produce them from a technological standpoint. So they can lead us to a hideout that the Problem Solvers fully trusted. And investigating the data on the control circuit boards was enough to see some rather distinctive signs.”

Kyouka shut off the room’s lights and operated the projector’s remote.

A red mark appeared at one point on the world map she displayed on the wall.

In other words…

“Silicon Valley in the United States of America. After they reorganized to handle everything from social media to drone factories, the city’s scenery has changed to become something like a strange precision industry district. One good example is the precision electronic weapons plant owned by Smart Arms, one of the world’s largest international arms companies. That is the most suspicious place. The supply of power and now food has been destabilized, but that money drain continues to run with a staff of around ten thousand and without using the giant sword woman’s factory☆”

Karuta just about asked how she could act so unconcerned when they were the ones that caused it, but perhaps he was too soft since he had yet to actually kill anyone.

“I wonder if arms production was one thing the all-purpose factory would not do.”

“But, Omotesandou-san, that’s the place that supplied Susannia with her parts, so why would we find Anastasia there?” cautiously asked Karuta.

“There is no guarantee, of course,” agreed Kyouka in the darkness. “But what if the online flow of money proves the factory has maintained an unnatural level of security even after Susannia went missing? This is the downside of relying entirely on an outside PMC to avoid military oversight as much as possible. We know someone other than the original owner is hiding out there, and who is the most likely suspect?”

“I suppose another Problem Solver would have an easy time slipping right in there. Plus, Anastasia is in charge of the military infrastructure and her share of the global business is in North America. This would have been the perfect fit for her.”

“Yes, very well done, Karuta-kun. You get a gold star from me.”

Of course, this could always be a trap.

The flow of data could have been faked to draw out Karuta’s group. Just like how the log cabin in Finland had been used.

Marika frowned.

“Arms corporations do business with entire countries, right? If Anastasia is hiding out there, wouldn’t the head of the company report it? Y’know, to the US President or someone.”

“Someone may be weighing their options. After all, this is the last remaining Problem Solver and no fighting force is rarer. The company might want that last member to be indebted to them or the White House may secretly want Anastasia all to themselves.”

This talk of the US President and the White House had no real basis to it, of course. Karuta spoke up while making sure not to let cowardly speculation bind their actions.

“Also, Anastasia is in charge of the global military infrastructure. I don’t know what exactly she does, but her presence is key to the jigsaw puzzle made from the national borders on the world map. Any country would want to control her if they could.”

“There is no way to know where word of her presence is being stopped, but this factory is still fishy. Of course, that means it is also extremely dangerous.”

That said.

Even so.

“Nothing will change if we don’t go there, huh?”

“Even if it is bait or a diversion, we might find another hint based on who gave the order and through what channels.”

The Student Council President pressed a button on the projector remote to display a photo of Anastasia Blast.

She was a sexy woman with long, wavy blonde hair.

They of course wanted as much information on her as they could get before fighting her, but there was unfortunately nothing else to display here.

“Just like with Susannia, she does not make public appearances. We took out Elicia in a surprise attack while she was out on her own, but they were waiting as a group at the London summit and Susannia had set a trap in Finland to kill us. …And yet Anastasia did not make an appearance at either of those.”

“So she’s either very cautious or a coward.”

That was an odd thing to say about a Problem Solver, but some people were both cowardly and powerful. Those people would go nuts and use everything at their disposal to crush even a small honeybee approaching them. That panic could create an opening, but they also never let their guard down or compromised. If someone like that had the power of the world’s strongest, they could be even more dangerous than someone who calmly worked out the optimal solution to their problems.

And what if that person directly controlled the world’s military infrastructure?

“We’re going in blind against the strongest again,” bitterly stated Marika while playing with Aine.

They had initially thought Susannia Evans’s God-Worshiping Magic was about mechanization when it was really about regeneration. If a misreading like that led them to make a misstep here, they could be wiped out. It was only natural to want to avoid returning to such a nerve-racking situation.

“But we can’t come to a stop, can we?”

“No,” agreed Karuta with a shake of his head. “We have to end this here.”