Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume7 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 4===

It was either a stone temple designed to inspire awe or a stone crypt built to prevent its occupant from ever escaping. Either way, the space was shaped like a 20m die. And that geometry was instantly recognizable to any summoner or vessel.

(An Artificial Sacred Ground?)

Central American crystal skulls would apparently take centuries to complete if a spherical crystal were simply polished and worn down by human hands, but in that case, how much work had gone into creating this? The six faces had no seams and the surfaces were polished as smooth as human skin. It felt like a complex intertwining of the biological and the artificial, so it felt like being swallowed into the stomach of some giant creature.

Kyousuke had experienced something similar before.

(Sekurtiti’s Egyptian-style temple combined a micro universe and a macro universe in the same room.)

Did that prove that the Meinokawa Shrine had used their experience and intuition to subconsciously distort the world before the Third Summoning Ceremony was discovered in 1999 and thus before the actual logic and system behind it all was completed?

The sacred ground that had appeared in Toy Dream 35 had ruled all space around the silver-haired and brown-skinned Tomb Priestess.

Then what was at the center here?

“…”

There was a stone torii.

There were three small steps.

At the very center was a miniature shrine about the size of two vending machines.

None of it used a single screw or nail. In fact, there were no seams to suggest stone had been piled up. It was all perfectly smooth as if the water dripping from the ceiling had carved away at the great stones micron by micron.

And in the slight depths of the opened miniature shrine, a thin and slender form sat calmly with eyes closed.

She resembled that greatest white evil in every possible way.

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

This was history’s very first Joruri Project.

It was the Meinokawa Shrine’s secret god, made to resemble the White Queen.

Her outlines were entirely motionless as if time had stopped. Her chest did not rise and fall with breath and there was no sign of the minute but uncontrollable movement of her muscles.

Was this what it meant to be artificial?

Kyousuke had known what to expect, but he still felt a strange sensation crawling up from the tips of his fingers. He was being sucked in. This was what happened when he knew the answer in advance, so if he had been caught off guard by it, he might have immediately run over to snap her neck.

From her hair to her clothing, she was a perfect reproduction.

He could see here why the Joruri Method was able to produce such skilled vessels. In the end, they too had ''ended up'' bowing before the white and creating a container into which they could invite that being.

And at the same time, he understood why Azalea Magentarain and Guard of Honor had been so fixated on the Joruri Method.

…The Meinokawa family could freely assemble entirely artificial summoners and vessels, but they had not had much of an effect on the world of the Summoning Ceremony. But what if that was not a tragic case of unrecognized genius? What if they had already burned out? What if they had already completed their perfect masterpiece with ''this'', their very first one? It was a lot like a mountain climber scaling Everest before any other mountain. That might make for an incredible record, but it would be a tragedy for the mountain climber themselves. They would be forced to wander forever in search of some new stimulation.

Silver twintails fell to waist level.

A wedding dress had been cut down to size and silver armor had been added here and there.

Her face and body allowed the cute and the seductive to coexist in a way impossible for humans.

Altogether, she was a sweet poison far too potent for humankind.

The only evidence that this was merely a lookalike was the thin layer of dust on her hair and eyelashes. Since the dust on the tip of her nose was not moving, she must have felt no need to breathe.

“Is this…?” Kyousuke gulped. “Is this Meinokawa Aoi…?”

As if to answer his question, something clearly filled the twintail girl seated in the miniature shrine. Rather than an external power, an internal power filled her and she began to move. Her eyelids were as dusty as an antique left forgotten in an old house, but now they trembled slightly as if she were stirring. Her eyes silently opened.

Those rosy lips had forgotten to breathe for so long, so what would they say first?

Everyone focused on that living legend as she finally moved.

With a heavy thud, her head, one arm, and one leg fell off.

“Wha-…!?”

Even Kyousuke widened his eyes at that, but there was no changing what had happened. After falling off on its own, the head bumped into the removed right forearm, but that was not enough to stop its momentum as it rolled down the short series of steps. It rolled right up to Kyousuke’s group and stopped with the face pointed straight up.

“Ho ho? You, the ''kafay'' worker. Those white and pink stripes do not seem to match the rest of your getup, so is there some deeper meaning there?”

“Oops.”

Biondetta looked fairly shocked as she held her miniskirt down with a hand.

“And you, my successor. Just because you are a shrine maiden is no reason to go around without wearing any of those newfangled Western ''panteez''.”

“Ooooops!? You piece of crap!! You junk heap!!”

Renge blushed and used her sandal-wearing foot to kick the world’s oldest whatever-it-was like it was a soccer ball.

The living(?) severed head bounced off the walls several times, but it did not seem to affect her mood.

“Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!! If you don’t like it, then curse your own poor judgment for setting foot in my sacred ground when I have so much free time on my hands. I haven’t had visitors in forever, so I’m not about to let you go so easily. I hope you’re ready to have so much fun tonight that you’ll feel the weariness down to the marrow of your bones. Not to mention that you’ve been getting lax about cleaning this place recently!!”

“W-we’ve had other issues to deal with!! Like our finances and our summoning jobs. And you’re the one that drives your caretakers away by messing with anyone who bothers to come here!”

“Those worldly troubles only sound like bragging to someone kept in a bird cage to intentionally distance her from such things. Harumph.”

“Anyway!!”

Renge roughly grabbed the severed head at her feet, stomped up to the miniature shrine, attached the arm and leg to the body, and then docked the head at the top.

“Your visitors seem to have something important to discuss with you, so switch over to serious mode!!”

“You have some guts talking down to your ancestor like that. If you want to challenge me, come back once your chest and sense of respect have grown some.”

“…!?”

Before Kyousuke and Biondetta could sort through their thoughts, blushing Renge had ripped Aoi’s head from her shoulders once more.

“And who the hell do you think designed me like this!?”

“Well, you were probably given a more modest chest to match Higan. Isn’t that better than being built by someone with certain special proclivities, Renge?”

“Shut up! Don’t you dare place Higan on the chopping block, too!”

“Poo hoo hoo. I believe we were talking about washboards, not chopping blocks.”

“Sh-sh-sh-shut up! Bwah!!”

She rapidly inserted and pulled out the head over and over.

Kyousuke watched to see if treating the head more roughly than changing a lightbulb would have any effect, but that did not seem to be the case. The silver twintail beauty cracked her neck, stretched her arms upwards, and stretched her back like she had just gotten out of bed. Because she was modeled after the White Queen, this pushed forward her surprisingly large breasts.

“How can she move around just fine after that???”

“Back in the CRT TV era, there were apparently martial arts experts who could fix them with a karate chop, so maybe that’s the perfect shock therapy for some centuries-old junk.”

As Kyousuke and Biondetta whispered to each other, the black-haired shrine maiden shouted at the living legend while still blushing.

“C’mon, ''granny'', those two seem to be caught in a whole lot of trouble, so listen to what they have to say! Isn’t that what a shrine god is for? Letting people ask things of you while giving you offerings!?”

“You don’t have to repeat yourself. I haven’t forgotten. And I’m the secret god, so it’s not like anyone shows up for New Year’s. Ahhh, I want more to do!! I get that the allure of the secret boss is lost if she doesn’t stay hidden, but I’m just soooooo bored!!”

Meinokawa Aoi cutely puffed out her cheeks and then clapped her hands in front of her large chest with the smile of a mischievous child.

“But anyway, this ‘trouble’ you speak of has caught my interest. That sounds interesting indeed. I will hear you out to stave off boredom. If it is enough to provide a break in this tedium, I might just help you out.”

The lookalike licked her lips as if she were viewing an extravagant feast.

In the end, this may have been what prayers really were.

The humans desperately made their way to the temple and begged the god to grant their wish, but the god was under no obligation to help them. In that case, the very first condition was to draw their interest. How justified or pitiable the human was may have only been one piece of the puzzle.

At the same time, Kyousuke felt like he had finally found a way to escape the confusion in his mind.

No matter how much she looked like her, the person in front of him here was not the White Queen.

The White Queen would never need to appraise the situation. ''As long as she could be with Shiroyama Kyousuke, she had found the greatest happiness and would ask for nothing else in the world.

The boy exhaled and faced the living legend once more.

“If you’re looking for history’s greatest way of killing some time, then you’re in luck. You can rest easy knowing this isn’t going to end up being disappointingly easy.”

“What is it? Are you planning on proving ''Fer-mah''’s Last Theorem?”

“Wipe that smug look off your face, old lady,” said Biondetta. “Your information is a little out-of-date. Fermat’s Last Theorem was resolved at the end of the last century.”

“Eh? Seriously!? So how did it turn out!?”

“If you must know, you damn religious shut-in, X<sup>n</sup> + Y<sup>n</sup> = Z<sup>n</sup> has no positive integer solutions when n is a natural number greater than 2.”

“I already knew the answer. The question was how to prove it…”

“Oh, that would be a pain to explain, so I’ll pass.”

“Yes, and that ‘pain’ is how ''Fer-mah'' caused the world so much trouble!”

No matter what anyone said, it certainly was a pain.

Aoi made her demand while placing her hands on the waitress girl’s shoulders and moving in close enough that their noses nearly touched (although their large breasts were already squished up against each other), but Biondetta looked the other way and refused to listen.

And this was no time to be explaining a problem that had been solved before Nostradamus’s prophesied end of the world.

“Hmm, so what is this problem that you claim is even more difficult than ''Fer-mah''’s Last Theorem?”

Kyousuke’s answer was brief.

“At the very least, this mystery is more exciting.”