Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume7 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 6===

Houbi Village had been conquered by Bridesmaid and the many infected White Queens.

Nevertheless, there was still no word of Kyousuke’s group being captured.

The declining village had limited transportation access, so holding all of the exits was not difficult. Not to mention that it was not just reckless but insolent to think you could break out when surrounded by the White Queen whose sensory organs had expanded infinitely beyond enlightenment or divine visions.

In that case…

“They haven’t escaped outside,” said Doctor S as he stood up from the broken drum. “Are they actually rushing to the center?”

A White Queen joined him, but it was no longer possible to tell ''which'' Queen this was. And for him, it did not matter ''which'' one it was. She was the one and only thing in the world he did not understand in the slightest, so this merely completed that definition.

One of the Queens spoke softly.

“My. Then is this the beginning of the expected game of hide-and-seek?”

“We went out of our way to make this remote village our stage, so we need to do this right. If we’re going to be hunting them through the mountains late at night, I’d like for us bring a bunch of torches with us. Not so much for the light as providing the obvious visual of a great mob to force as much despair onto Kyousuke’s group as possible. This just isn’t the environment for IR goggles.”

“Hmm. The fact that we aren’t the actual residents of some frightening village of freaks works against us there.”

“Just think of us as witch-hunting rioters visiting from elsewhere. Either way, once you turn the entire place into a crazed human hunt, the fear kind of happens on its own.”

“My, my☆”

“Whether inborn or learned, people are susceptible to predefined categories…in other words, genres. That includes primal fears such as heights and enclosed spaces and it also includes cultural fears like the guillotine or a chainsaw. No, this isn’t even limited to that one emotion. For example, the best way to get an enemy spy to betray their side is not money or the barrel of a gun; it’s the single bowl of soup given by a normal local when the spy is starving and freezing. The trick is to disguise it all as a coincidence. That too is an obvious emotional reaction. Humans feel unreasonably compelled ''to cry'' when things follow a predefined course of events.”

“Like an abandoned puppy in the rain?”

“Or a movie where a sick kid dies.” He spread out a map on a table below the large tent. “We could always use our numbers to perform a thorough search of Houbi Village, but if we’re going to supply some fresh fear, it has to look like we can see everything. Let’s try to make some predictions. If we concentrate on a single location, Kyousuke’s group should try to take advantage of it. And giving them a hint of hope will only increase the pain. The sense of pain recedes from a frozen hand, so we need to warm it up a little.”

“Hee hee hee.” The Queen seemed unable to hold in the laughter. “You sadist.”

“That makes two of us.”

With that, Doctor S casually dropped the tip of his knife onto the map.

And it stabbed into…

“The remains of the crater lake at the mountain peak. Let’s corner them there. With all the caves riddling the mountain like a spider web, Kyousuke’s group will think they have a chance to slip past us. Not that we’ll actually give them the opportunity.”

“What makes you so confident?”

“You must already know the answer, but fine. First of all, Kyousuke’s group has no intention of falling back. Now that he’s seen you, he’s sure to challenge you no matter how outmatched he is. That tells us how to look at this: Kyousuke is hopelessly surrounded by countless White Queens, so what hope will he try to cling to?”

“I see.”

“Since he still has Meinokawa Aoi as a vessel, he will not give up on creating that new Unexplored-class. Based on the modern translations of the Joruri Method diagrams in Azalea’s research documents, it would be difficult to create an entirely new one in a short period of time, but he should be able to expand Aoi’s body to meet his needs. That means he will try to visit a modification facility.”

And this was Houbi Village, headquarters of the Joruri Method.

Most of the village had been wiped out by the rockets and Repliglass unit, but it was highly unlikely that all of the facilities had been destroyed.

“We destroyed all of the surface structures, but if they had lab equipment hidden around as backups, those spares were likely kept in underground tunnels, ships, and RVs,” said Doctor S. “And since they haven’t been caught yet, Kyousuke’s group must have headed inward instead of outward. That further limits the possibilities.”

“Isn’t there a giant network of underground tunnels below this village?”

“Sorry, but I doubt he would use one of those.”

“?”

“Why? Because he’s Alice (with) Rabbit.”

The inhaler man breathed a muffled sigh behind the transparent mask.

And then he chuckled.

“I had completely forgotten, but this village has a fair number of residents. Whether they are aware of the Summoning Ceremony or not, that network of tunnels will be the lifeline for all of the survivors. The limit is already set at two or three days, but if we begin a more thorough search for Shiroyama Kyousuke, it will expose all those hidden people to danger. So Kyousuke will not share their living space. No matter how illogical any other option might be.”

That left only one possibility.

And the answer had already been given by the knife on the map.

“If he’s eliminated the tunnels as options, this is the most likely place: the cruise ship left behind in the dried-up crater lake. It should be big enough to hold all the necessary lab equipment. And if not, they can use the cooking equipment left in the industrial kitchen to improvise. After all, kitchen equipment and lab equipment are a lot alike.”

As twisted as their relationship was, they were still father and son.

At times like this, Doctor S and Shiroyama Kyousuke could predict each other’s actions even from a distance.

“Let the hunt begin.”

The father stared at the son’s game board and moved a piece.

Once they had a goal, the greater than 10,000 White Queens would begin to move as one. And any member of that group was powerful enough to destroy the entire galaxy.

Doctor S continued speaking as if to see what she would do.

“It’s time to overwhelm him with fear and despair. With this, your experiment can advance to the next stage, Queen.”

“Oh? You’re still making battle preparations? Isn’t having me with you enough?”

The White Queen said that because Doctor S reached for the long sheath placed on the table. No, that was not all. He also touched his vessel.

But that no longer referred to Olivia Highland.

He had readily ended that contract. She had served her purpose once she had brought him to Shiroyama Kyousuke.

He was now using his usual animal vessel. More accurately, it was an extraordinarily large Joro spider with a distinct black and yellow striped pattern. Except a great many of them were lined up, each in their own bug cage.

In this case, the phrase “palm-sized” did not bring to mind a small size or sense of comfort. This was far too bizarre for that.

But at the same time, spiders were a beneficial bug and some folklore had them as the targets of jinxes.

And if the inborn talent of a vessel was hard to come by, then you only had to increase the denominator. If you wanted a surefire method to obtain a one-in-a-billion talent, you only had to search through a billion people. A spider’s egg sac would contain tens of thousands of lives. From there, you could use Mendelian cross-breeding by taking the specimens with slightly greater traits as a vessel, placing them in the same bug cage, and adjusting the temperature and humidity to fake the seasonal cycle. That let you repeat the generational cycle in a short period of time.

Doing this with humans would be frowned upon, but the hurdle was much lower for other life forms.

Just like researchers could do live experiments with rats even if human experimentation would not be immediately possible.

That wise and sensible man had learned his lesson.

Not all experiments needed to use humans. Using Shiroyama Kyousuke too much had worn the boy out and caused all sorts of problems. The self-proclaimed “professional” summoners who claimed to be entirely immersed in the underside of the world would apparently let their human side show fairly easily. As long as it did not interfere with their own interests anyway.

“Oh, dear. I see there is no lovely trust between us whatsoever.”

“This is the digitally-calculated answer. I do not want a single vessel with exceptional talent or specs backed by willpower. It’s simply inefficient to use the human species. The short lifespan is a bottleneck when it comes to bugs, but if I maintain an environment in which I can always scoop up the next specimen from the large denominator, I can always have a stable supply.”

No matter what, they were always a target of observation and an experiment animal.

In a way, the relationship between researcher and specimen was an absolute one.

As Doctor S casually spoke with the White Queen, he opened the lid to one of the many bug cages. The large spider deftly used its long legs to crawl out, onto the back of his hand, and up his arm to his shoulder.

Perhaps for ease of observation, each of the bug cages was given two numbers. One number for the row and one for the column. And the form those numbers took could not have been simpler:

“Block 7 House 12.”

The clear inhaler man recited it in a singsong voice.

He also increased the oxygen level and tightened the air pressure tubes in his riding suit to increase his brain activity.

“Block 7 House 12, hm? It would probably be best to use the ones around here for the next round of cross-breeding.”

''Yes.

''They sounded just like the addresses of perfectly normal homes.