Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume2 Phase02 (section)

===Part 8===

Teleria Nereid Aquamarine gasped.

The words she was hearing were utterly baffling to her.

“W-wait, wait, wait! How does that make any sense?”

She did not want to smile, but funnily enough, she found something akin to a smile plastered to her face.

“I mean Laguntreat is known for the decursing and medical therapy it provides with the spring water, right!? I thought humans and Mermaids could coexist here because human society couldn’t give up the blessings that provides. Wouldn’t they lose all that if they got rid of the Four Lord on the mountain!?”

“She’s right, Coach. This secret facility belongs to Oceavita and they gain more from that Four Lord’s power than anyone. If the source of the water is gone, their business no longer functions.”

“Exactly,” cut in Ayato. “That’s why they hate the fact that they’re so reliant on that water source.”

“Eh?”

The girls’ eyes all said “Isn’t that backwards?”

The boy in the blue blazer slowly sighed.

“Listen, everyone. Water Lord Fleurelisia is supposed to live at the southernmost end of the world. You can check any number of history books and still be unsure how long she’s been staying on this island, but it’s still only a temporary stay. Just like the Fire Lord so readily left the sky city. No one can predict when she will return to the sea on a whim and the humans and demons on the island can’t stop her once she decides to do so. Because she’s too damn big.”

“I see. And the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute has earned a vast fortune and a solid position in society using the springs, so they can’t have their water source moving elsewhere.”

“On the continents, I have heard of desert cities dying out when an oasis moves. Fleurelisia might see it as no more than returning home after a brief vacation, but the other demons won’t survive traveling all the way to the end of the world. It would be like a death march for them.”

“And if they stay on the island, they lose the privilege that was supported by the Four Lord’s presence. Don’t they, Coach?”

A cloud fell over Dark Elf Mamilis’s face. The vague anxiety and fear of persecution from humans may have faded out here, but it had not disappeared altogether.

Without the Four Lord’s backing, the Mermaids and other demons on the island were done for.

And they had already come out as demons, so a Mimic Option would not be enough to hide their identity.

“Th-then that warship is only a threat meant to keep mom- I mean, keep the Water Lord here and not actually meant to attack her?”

“Mom?”

“Y-you know how you sometimes call your teacher that by mistake!?”

Teleria forced a smile and Ayato gave her a somewhat skeptical look.

“Anyway, I do hope it remains no more than a threat, but that won’t rid them of their anxieties. Their best bet is to find a way to run the Oceavita Water Therapy Institute without relying on Fleurelisia.”

“Coach, that makes no sense.”

“No, it doesn’t. Which is why they would resort to some desperate measures to overcome that. Enough so that our client would feel the need to act.”

Ayato doubted they would find anything else of use on the deck, so he opened a watertight door and slipped inside the ship.

The interior was made of wood. Instead of a ship built of steel and mana-conducting silver, it appeared to be a wooden ship with armor panels attached on the outside.

He saw some odd things here and there inside.

Baby bottles, rattles, and cylindrical glass incubators. None of that would be out of place in an ordinary clinic, but this was a threatening warship. And there were a lot of them.

Some large cabins were packed full of cribs, like cabbages in a field. One of them would have been a happy sign, but with this many, it looked more bizarre.

“Hey, what is this, dangerous individual?”

“There’s a document on the wall.”

It looked a bit like a tournament diagram, but not quite.

“Miss Teleria, do you remember the medical experiments using pigs and cows back at the Academy Towers? After selectively breeding them so they would produce blood identical to a human’s, they began to carry organs identical to human ones in their guts.”

“Y-yes. It was honestly not a pleasant thought.”

“They are trying to do the same thing with humans and demons.”

Ayato was abnormally calm at times like this.

However, that did not mean there was no anger in his soul.

“They are crossbreeding humans with demons like Mermaids, Elves, Valkyries, Muses, and Apsaras to create something similar. This is a body part factory where they can produce the exact blood type requested of them and, once they have the type of being they need, they can freely cut and paste the necessary parts.”

“Urp!”

Dark Elf Mamilis brought a hand to her mouth and fought the nausea rising within her. Henrietta held her slender shoulders from behind to support her.

What looked like a tournament diagram was the guidelines for what males and females would be bred together. By filling in the blanks with humans, demons, half-demons, quarter-demons, and so on, they tried to create the ideal blood type they wanted.

“Miss Mamilis, if this is too much for you, you can leave the room.”

“No, please continue, Coach.”

Was she trying to teach herself when to withdraw and when to push on as a Forward? Ayato decided to respect her decision here.

“This would let them continue their work without using the springs created by Water Lord Fleurelisia’s power. Although that would require something as absurd as entire purifying pool of blood made to cure the type of curse or illness the person had. That way the formless curse that had worked its way deep inside the patient’s body could be safely removed by transferring to an external decoy.”

“We can discuss the details of the process later.” Henrietta clenched her teeth. “For now, I have to know: is this place up and running yet or not!?”

“Probably not. The incubators and cribs all look pristine and without any wear and tear. The extremely friendly Mermaids sunbathing in their swimsuits may have been a honey trap meant to lure in the ‘materials’ they need for this project.”

Henrietta breathed a sigh of relief, but for some reason, fluffy blonde Teleria looked close to fainting.

“But the Mermaids…this island is the home of all Mermaids and their life here is supported by the Four Lord.”

“They are at a crossroads that could lead to their doom. Every demon we have met in our journeys has been faced with similar troubles. I will admit the answer they arrived at here is perhaps the worst I have seen, but still.”

Ayato was as dry as ever.

That may have been why he was so needed yet also feared.

“Your disease or curse is removed from you by forcing it into an outside container. If this purifying blood pool method is established, Fleurelisia will become no more than a nuisance to the demons living on Laguntreat. Two standards would bring chaos to the island’s power balance and a business rival could be established if Fleurelisia moved to another island where a decursing facility was set up. The demons on this island are allowed their exceptional lifestyle here because there are curses that can only be broken here. If the same thing can be achieved elsewhere and without any risk, they lose that value. Then extinction at the hands of the humans is almost guaranteed for them.”

They were driven by fear.

And of course they were afraid.

The most frightening move that Water Lord Fleurelisia could take was not to exact revenge or to purge them. If those smaller demons took the threat seriously, they could negotiate or threaten her.

But what if she got bored?

And yawned?

If she left the island, all life on Laguntreat would dry up. That was up to her whims and could not be controlled. It did not matter whether or not she had any intention of heading home. The fact that the possibility existed was enough to burn at their hearts.

Pleasure and fear.

Superiority and inferiority.

Gluttony and starvation.

Which side of the coin would soul-bearing beings to take the most extreme and horrific actions?

“Isn’t this Laguntreat?” asked Henrietta with an exasperated hand on her forehead.

“It is. What about it?”

“This resort has the special favor of the Combined Royal Family’s Fifth Prince. It gives me a headache to think all this is going on underground here.”

Fleurelisia’s long stay on the mountain was probably driven by the fact that she could easily put off until tomorrow what she could do today. That might have continued forever. But the less powerful could not understand that relaxed attitude, so they grew anxious, burned with impatience, and gave in to their fear.

Just then, a deep rumble ran through the gray warship Ayato’s group stood inside.

“Wah!”

“H-hey. Did the ship just start to move!?”

Long silver-haired Mamilis and blonde braid ponytail Henrietta were from the sky city, so they were not used to earthquakes and tremors. However, Ayato could not focus on them at the moment. He heard some disconcerting static as the clear spherical Media Summoners installed around the ship activated a voice chat function.

There was no way this would be from someone ''not'' connected to all this.

“I am impressed you worked your way all the way in here.”

“Fear not. We still have not seen who you are.”

The speaker sounded like an elderly man, but a Media Summoner could be used to alter one’s voice. And if this was a demon, their apparent age would not mean much.

“That is fortunate, but I am still going to get rid of you here. Tradition and precedent are crucial in all things, so I would have loved to stick with Laguntreat if possible, but we are willing to move to another island if need be. What matters is developing the purifying blood pools to a functional level while continuing to hold the top spot as a decursing and medical therapy institute. If it is not too far away, swimming to another island and starting fresh there can work.”

Henrietta’s eyes widened at that. The villain was not compromising in the slightest on that bloody methodology.

Ayato sighed.

“That won’t work. Your plan would require getting rid of Fleurelisia since she acts as a pillar of the old, safer method. Your method would never work if the competition is effective, risk free, and a lot less gross.”

No one would want to enter a purifying blood pool.

But they might do it anyway if it was the only way to break a curse. For themselves or for someone even more important to them. But what if a spring of pure water could break the curse just as well? With the exact same effect, who would ever choose the grosser method?

“That is why we are preparing to slay the Water Lord. The Annihilator-class Predator Island can be controlled remotely, just like the Dextral Mk. IIs. It requires more personnel to pull off, however.”

“You call this ship the Annihilator-class Predator Island? That’s an impressive name, but it isn’t complete yet, is it? I doubt you could defeat Fleurelisia if you used it now.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said whoever this was. “Now, did you think your provocation would anger me and get me to start some grand speech about my plans? Did you think I would say this was all to give the island’s demons a future and that I would fight back tears to slay the very Four Lord that supported our island and brought peace and tranquility back to our lives? Did you think I would tell you all about my background and brag about the detailed specs of the Predator Island I spent so long to build? ''In front of a Sorcery Hacker who values information above all else''? Ridiculous. I am not some regional king or powerful merchant showing off his evil plans in a theatre production.”

“So you actually understand that speech is silver and silence is golden, huh?”

“Flattery will not get me to speak either.”

None of Ayato’s attempts bore fruit.

Trying to rattle this man psychologically was not going to work, so Ayato finally clicked his tongue. This person seemed to have learned the bare minimum of courtesy as a villain. A single careless statement made to praise himself or disparage someone else could have been used to reveal his identity, but Ayato could not shake a single hint out of him.

When you knew who your enemy was, they were no more than a target.

It did not matter how powerful they were – even a wicked Demon Lord or a tyrannical emperor. The person standing at the top of the pyramid to stand out as much as possible was the perfect target for a hacker or a sniper. Their definition of a formidable foe differed from that of a hero or a knight.

They feared a unilateral attack coming from an unseen location.

The absolute worst-case scenario would be to have their party members being picked off one by one by an unidentified curse.

There was no way to reach the attacker then.

The unseen and unnamed villain’s words rang through the shuddering ship.

“It is true we would not stand much of a chance against Fleurelisia with the ship supported by floats and unable to remain afloat on its own. As I am sure you can tell, our great fear of the Water Lord led us to add on so much weaponry and armor that the ship has grown tragically top heavy. But what if that ship carried something she cared about more than her own life?”

“…!?”

Someone crouched down in fear behind Ayato.

It was Teleria Nereid Aquamarine.

The fluffy blonde girl shook her head as if trying to shake free of something.

“Y-you can’t. You couldn’t possibly!!”

“Miss Teleria?”

“I-I mean the Four Lords provide an elemental color to the colorless mana floating in the atmosphere. Humans or demons use that power for their magic, so they can’t possibly defeat one of the Four Lords who give that power its color.”

“With pure magic, that would be true. However, the magic is only used to supply an explosive force within the cannon and that is used to launch an ordinary shell of lead and explosives. And those cannons are more than large enough to fatally wound Fleurelisia.”

He was not shaken at all.

He continued in the worst possible way.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It may be even more valuable than the 0.5 esoule<ref>Approximately 60 centimeters.</ref> cannons. This is well worth forcibly deploying an unfinished weapon. She cannot sink our ship now. ''No matter what''. Now, my friends, it is time to set out on a hunt that will go down in history. This voyage shall end the life of Water Lord Fleurelisia.”