Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume5 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 6===

Each of the adults in charge of the 15 children tried to interfere with their specimens using a unique social system as a basis.

It could be a school, a hospital, an army, a prison, etc.

The Hatter was inside what looked like a giant die.

It was a perfect cube with each side at precisely 15 meters. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all perfectly white and the lights shined in through a glass material, so the light fixtures were not directly visible. The door was made like a ''yosegi'' box, so not even the slightest crack remained when closed. It also had no knob for opening on the inside, so it would be easy to lose sight of the exit if one was not paying attention.<ref>'''Yosegi''' is a traditional Japanese puzzle box made of wood.</ref>

The highly unnatural scene worked to destroy the concepts of front and back, left and right, and even up and down.

It was like a studio set meant for composite video or like a room from an old mental hospital.

It was truly an exception among exceptions.

The Miniature Garden was meant to allow minds to grow in a social system. This place focused on that intent and yet swept it all away. It was a bizarre space created from the entirely unethical idea of wondering what happened when all that was taken away.

A brown-skinned boy stood in the center: Alberto S. Divinesmith.

He held something under one arm like a helmet. It was a device befitting the Mad Hatter.

The voice of the adults reached him from somewhere…or rather, from the vibration of the entire space.

“Now, let us begin, Alberto.”

A simple headset would have been enough, but they went out of their way to carry the physical voice in from another distant room. It was known as a speaking tube. It used the same idea as a stethoscope and carried the vibrations of the voice through a metal tube.

“Once you put on the Silk Hat, we will begin the experiment at our discretion. As usual, we will not be telling you when that is.”

“Sure.”

It had a pearly glow like a thick alloy diving suit. It had the silhouette of a bowler hat, but it was actually a fancy blindfold meant to fully cover his head and cut off most of his senses.

The Silk Hat had a large glass lens on the front and an earhole on either side. Once he put it on, everything looked small and distant, like he was looking through a telescope backwards.

But that was not the point of the hat.

Springs and gears were used to periodically seal off his eyes and ears.

The “window” might open just once every three seconds, so the subject would need to desperately memorize the scene and then move based on the memories burned into their mind like a photograph.

Meanwhile, the hands of the clock continued moving in the real world.

The subject would correct their movements each time the window opened every three seconds, so it was a lot like artificially having their senses slowed by three seconds.

So what kind of experiment was this time shift being used for?

As soon as Alberto donned the fancy hat and sealed away his senses, a portion of each wall slid open and men armed with body armor and police batons stepped in. There were more than 20 of them. The collapsible batons were long enough and heavy enough to be even more dangerous than metal bats.

But Alberto did not even pull out his silver Blood-Sign.

With his head still entirely covered by the thick hat and only a single lens to see through, he held out his right hand and gently beckoned them forward with his index finger.

“You’re insanely polite about all this, dogs,” he spat out.

Immediately afterwards, the batons roared toward him from every direction at once.

But the Hatter twisted his body in a world three seconds delayed. He took a step. He rotated his hips to easily avoid the batons swinging toward him from every direction. No, he did more than that. He thrust out his hand and dropped his raised heel. In a series of dull sounds, the men supposedly protected by cutting-edge shock-absorbing materials were knocked unconscious one after another.

The Hatter could not see it all.

The lens allowing him to see and the metal tubes of the earholes were only opened by the springs and gears once every three seconds.

He only experienced equidistant points in time.

And yet he easily kept even a single blow from hitting him.

“You just have to fill in the gaps of the limited footage.”

It was like a sport to him.

No, the Hatter did not refer to this room as a ring or a stadium. He called it the Tablecloth. So to him, anything placed on top of it was not even an animal: it was no more than food.

“I can see the movable range of their muscles and skeleton, where they’ll move in the future based on their center of gravity, where they’re looking, where their fingertips are, and what they’re thinking based on the tension of their facial muscles. If you loosen a screw in your head and release those resources, ''you can steal time''.”

Was he focusing on that passage from Lewis Carroll or not?

In the original story, the Hatter had invited the eternal girl to a mad tea party that ignored the concept of time.

The adults sounded both impressed and exasperated as they spoke through the speaking tube.

“Your brainwaves remain unchanged. …You can break through so easily it almost seems silly to monitor them.”

“This is nothing compared to the Summoning Ceremony,” scoffed the madman.

He scoffed while casually wielding violence. His hands flew, his legs roared, and he devoured the food that showed confusion and fear through their thick body armor.

“You have to calculate out everything: the locations of the Petals and Spots, the paths of your White Thorns, the traits of the Material you just summoned, simulations of what your enemy will summon 100 moves from now, the Cost and Sound Range you’ll need to beat that, and everything else. It’s all about calculations. If you’re not insane, you’ll never keep up.”

A normal person would have their hands full simply memorizing all of the Materials.

So there was not even a faint hope of memorizing the thousands or tens of thousands of patterns required to know what led to what, what detours to make when one route was blocked, and what changes to make to match the enemy’s Cost and Sound Range or the location of the Petals and Spots. Not to mention when it all had to be recalled with perfect accuracy while actually moving your body to match.

But he did it.

The Hatter calmly walked through a realm that would drive a normal person insane.

His presence swallowed up everything around him.

Certain mental states could spread to others, as if resonating with them.

It was a form of group psychology.

That may have been why the adults did not meet the Hatter directly.

Before long, he was the only one standing in the white space.

“How boring. Hey, I can give you more time if you want. 5 second intervals? 10? That’s probably a better delay for the world.”

“Hm,” said the voice as if considering it.

Then the four walls opened up once more to send in the preset assassins.

However, these were not protected by body armor.

The speaker was known for his cyberphobia, so they likely were not made of electronics. These men’s flesh-and-blood bodies had clearly manmade bug wings, pincers, grasshopper-like back legs, and compound eye goggles equipped. The bizarre group surrounded the Hatter.

“What if there was a single formula that could break through all of those complex calculations?”

“That Queen?” he spat out. “How boring.”

But he was not denying the existence of such a convenient being.

He had more to say.

“If something like that exists, she’ll naturally fall into my grasp.”

He would be first.

He would arrive before anyone else.

Everyone else had either failed before reaching that point or had failed after partially reaching it.

All alone, he calmly challenged that insane path.