Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 2===

Shiroyama Kyousuke was curled up in the hallway of Aika’s apartment with his back pressed against the wall. The female announcer on the living room TV said it was ''nine in the morning''.

Aika and Lu Niang Lan were checking on Meinokawa Higan’s condition in the guest room.

He had screwed up.

He had put his partner and vessel in danger.

——It was Meinokawa Renge that summoned the White Queen, not you.

(…That isn’t an excuse.)

——You did not know that twins could ignore the contract between summoner and vessel to seize control.

(That isn’t an excuse.)

——If you had been able to settle things with Golden Luxury there, this would not have happened.

(That isn’t an excuse!!!!!)

For one thing, combat never went as planned. If there were rules he did not know about, that was his fault for not learning about them. This was not a sport held in a ring, so it was not necessarily going to remain one-on-one from beginning to end.

That was the most basic lesson.

The smallest things had built up and the discrepancy they created had bared their fangs against his vessel instead of him.

“What is this Alice (with) Rabbit crap…?”

He heard a low growl.

He glanced over and saw the five meter white liger that Aika used as a sofa sluggishly approaching him.

He did not move in the slightest.

“Stop this. I don’t have it in me to deal with you right now.”

The beast did not understand human language.

It moved its giant face in close enough for him to feel its warm breath on his own face.

Then he spoke more succinctly.

“''Stop.''”

The word pierced the silence.

Only once he spoke it did he realize what had happened.

That cross between a lion and a white tiger, that king of beasts that did not exist in the natural world, had pressed its stomach against the wooden flooring as it cowered down like a child after being yelled at.

When he saw the giant beast trembling, Shiroyama Kyousuke sighed a little.

“Sorry. I should have known that shouting at you wasn’t going to help.”

He held out his hand and the white liger licked his fingertips with its large, rough tongue. He then reached an arm around the neck of the beast as it hesitantly approached once more.

“It’s okay. It really is. Thanks for worrying about me.”

A nearby door opened. It led to the guest room. Swimsuit Girl Aika stepped out with a dumb look on her face.

“Onii-chan, if you were craving your little sister’s scent, you just had to hug the real deal. Or are you a true genius who’s only satisfied with the scent she leaves on things?”

“How’s Higan?”

His short, monotone question elicited a shrug from Aika.

“That China Dress is using acupuncture to slow down the progress, but it’s really only buying us a little more time. She says we’ll be lucky to get even a few extra hours out of it.”

“I see,” was all Kyousuke said.

But someone was dissatisfied with that exchange.

“What is with all of you?”

It was Meinokawa Renge, Higan’s twin sister.

“By the White Queen, you mean ''the'' White Queen, right!? She’s the top of the Unexplored-class who gathers cult-like popularity from Government, Illegal, and Freedom. Everyone knows and yearns for that Material, from the lowest rookie to the most skilled expert!! She’s the collection of benevolence, symbol of holiness, and anthropomorphism of radiance that Higan prayed to every single day!! So how…how does that lead to her body being eaten into like this? I’ve never heard of anything like this before!!”

Meinokawa Higan was unconscious and nearly half her body was covered in a dark blue mark.

Once it covered her entire body, she would die.

This was happening due to the simple fact that the White Queen had resided inside her body.

But at the same time…

“In a way, the White Queen is the most famous Material in the world, isn’t she? It’s true you don’t often get a chance to summon her in a real battle, but some of the top ranked summoners have to have summoned her in the past, right? And if that led to their vessel being eaten away from within and dying, there would be rumors of that, wouldn’t there!? And yet…!!”

“There’s no meaning to it,” spat out Kyousuke. “If you summoned the White Queen like normal, it wouldn’t lead to this. And while that was an abnormal situation since you forcibly stole the contract from me, I doubt that was the reason for this.”

“Then…!!”

“She’s ''in love with being in love.'' There’s no more to it than that,” he decisively stated. “She’ll keep running forever even though she doesn’t know where the goal is. She’ll destroy an entire country or the entire world without a second thought if it’s to fulfill a desire she thought up on the spot. …Creating this time limit inside Meinokawa Higan was to prevent me from escaping her. That’s all. There’s no grand reason, singularity, or law behind this. That really is all that there is to it.”

“You’re kidding…right?”

Renge started mumbling, but she did not stop there.

She continued in a low groan.

“I can’t believe this. I saw it with my own eyes and I still can’t believe it. I mean, isn’t the White Queen the symbol of justice held up by summoners the world over? She’s basically an indulgence we hold up to prove that we’re just in using her. And yet…she talks on and on like that and she grows violent when she doesn’t like something? That’s…that’s…”

The White Queen was the legendary Material longed for by every summoner. She held the greatest power within the Unexplored-class that lay beyond the Divine-class.

After seeing her for herself, Renge could not reconcile that with what she had seen.

“Do you know the White Queen’s official name?”

“The ‘White’ Queen who Wields the Sword of Unsullied Truth (iu – nu – fb – a – wuh – ei –kx – eu – pl – vjz). For summoners, it’s like a children’s counting song. I think you’d be harder pressed to find one who didn’t know it.”

“Now what about the opposite? What’s the name of the Material every summoner hates?”

“?”

“Taboos one and three. The Black Maw that directly kills any summoner that makes a fatal mistake.”

“Oh, you mean the Black Maw that Swallows All (nu – lp – eu – bf – zuh – ei – jkv – iu – a – xw). You never need to summon it yourself, so there’s no real point in memorizing the letters, though.”

Kyousuke stared intently over at Renge as he continued.

“Rearrange the letters for those names and compare them again.”

“Huh? Wait a second…”

As she did the work in her head, her face froze over.

Kyousuke gave the answer

“They both have twenty-one letters and those letters are identical. They’re made from the exact same number of low, middle, and high sounds. …In other words, the famous White Queen and the infamous Black Maw are one and the same.”

With that in mind, one could guess what was hidden behind that pure white smile.

She was not something that would obey mankind.

She was capable of selfishly tricking people into worshipping her even as she feigned obedience while consuming countless summoners.

She was capable of fully sealing such great evil behind her smile.

A god did not serve man.

Man served the gods.

That should have been the proper way of things, but it looked so twisted due to the great evil at its core.

“What is she?” asked Meinokawa Renge as if digging down to the heart of the matter. “What is the White Queen?”

Kyousuke had a simple answer.

“If I knew that, this would be so much easier.”